via Obama and Israeli PM meet amid dispute – Yahoo! News.
President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went two hours overtime in an unusually low-profile meeting Tuesday at the White House in the midst of a serious dispute about settlement construction.
It is highly unusual for a visiting ally not to be seen with the president, either for photographs or statements, and the treatment seemed linked to a crisis marring relations between the two countries.
At issue is Israel’s announcement two weeks ago, as Vice President Joe Biden visited the country, that it will build 1,600 new apartments in east Jerusalem, the largely Arab section of the disputed holy city. Palestinians claim east Jerusalem as the capital of a future state and have delayed new U.S.-sponsored peace talks over what they say is an Israeli land grab.
Biden was visiting Jerusalem when Netanyahu’s government announced the major building plan. Netanyahu said he was unaware of the move, blaming low-level bureaucrats, but Biden condemned the step in a written statement and Clinton followed up with an angry phone call to the prime minister.
but
On Capitol Hill, Netanyahu received a warm public reception from Congress on Tuesday, with a top Democrat and Republican joining to praise a leader who has refused to back down in a disagreement the White House says threatens new peace talks.
The bipartisan welcome underscored the breadth of congressional support for Israel even when a U.S. president wants to keep his distance. And it pointed to the limited options, beyond verbal rebukes, that the Obama administration faces in pressuring the Jewish state.
We have an interesting comment below:
As an American I am totally confounded how Israel is supported as a champion for democracy. There is nothing democratic about.
In a democracy we do not have one road for Israelis and one road for Palestinians. That is not democracy that is aparthide.
In a democracy we have freedom of religion. We don’t say you have to be at least 50 years of age before you can enter a certain place of worship. We don’t call that democracy we call it religeous persecution.
In a democracy we do not kick people from their homes and then tell them they can never return. In the 1948 military operation thousands of civilians from present day Israel, afraid for their lives, fled to present day West Bank, never to be allowed to return to the homes where their families had lived peacefully for hundreds of years. We dont call that democracy that is called ethnic cleansing.
In a democracy we don’t erect checkpoints where Israelis are not stopped and Palestininas have to stop and get frisked. Thousands of Palestininas have to stop at 3 or 4 checkpoints on their way to work and again on their way home. The gates of many of the checkpoints are closed at night. Mothers have given birth and some have blead to death from complications of giving birth while their husbands begged to be let through so they can make it to the hospital. Basically your neighborhoods gate is closed at night and it is not opened even for medical emergencies. We don’t call that democracy that is aparthide, that is inhumane.
In a democracy we don’t bulldoze the homes of a criminal. We punish the person who has comitted the crime. We do not make homeless the innocent occupants of a home where one individual may have committed a crime. That is not democracy it is an attrocity.
(UPDATED) do you know that there is “New Law Requires the President to Report to Congress Periodically On Actions Taken By the Administration to Ensure Israel’s Military Advantage“?
