Israel

Well-known Israel expert Sarah Palin criticizes President Obama’s criticism of Israeli settlement expansion (most recently over Gilo):
“I disagree with the Obama administration on that,” Palin told Walters. “I believe that the Jewish settlements should be allowed to be expanded upon, because that population of Israel is, is going to grow. More and more Jewish people [...]

Maybe “blasts” was the wrong verb for my old headline on the White House’s response to Israel’s expansion of settlements in Palestinian East Jerusalem. The White House appears to have done some editing.
When the White House press shop sent out its statement criticizing Israel this afternoon — I received mine at 2:14 p.m. — the [...]

Contrary to nearly a year of stern insistence from the Obama administration that Israel refrain from all growth in occupied Palestinian territory — an insistence that frayed with a recent comment by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton that the administration has tried to walk back — Israel has announced the construction of 900 new [...]

Buried within Joe Klein’s new Time profile (great first line, by the way) of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton:
The Israelis have been difficult, as always: whenever [Special Envoy George] Mitchell raises East Jerusalem in talks with the Israeli Foreign Minister, the Israeli stands up and walks out of the room.
Is there any cost to [...]

I said in an earlier post on the Obama administration and the Goldstone commission that Hamas might “benefit if next year’s scheduled elections go forward.” That was poorly phrased. What I meant was that Hamas stands to benefit from the weakening of more moderate factions. Because, as George Washington University’s Nathan Brown emailed me, I [...]

As if to underscore the point made in this post, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas says he won’t run for reelection. Israeli, Egyptian and Jordanian emissaries are trying to get him to change his mind.

Missing from this otherwise-very good Washington Post piece about the Obama administration’s early and serious missteps on restarting Israel/Palestine peace talks is, unfortunately, the Goldstone commission on Gaza, which is relegated to a single sentence. This is the capsule version: Obama feared that Israel would freak out and foreclose on any peace talks if U.N. [...]

As expected, the House approved Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.) and Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen’s (R-Fla.) resolution condemning South African judge Richard Goldstone’s inquiry for the United Nations into war crimes committed last year in Gaza by Israel and Hamas. The lopsided final vote was 344 in favor to 36 opposed, with 22 “present” votes.

The House will shortly begin debating a resolution to denounce a U.N. report into Israeli and Hamas war crimes in last year’s Gaza war co-sponsored by Rep. Howard Berman’s (D-Calif), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. The author of that report, South African Judge Richard Goldstone, wrote last week to Berman and his co-sponsors, [...]

Last week, Richard Goldstone, who investigated Israeli and Hamas war crimes in Gaza for the United Nations, wrote to Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.) to say that a resolution co-sponsored by Berman, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, denouncing Goldstone’s report was significantly factually inaccurate. A spokeswoman for Berman, Lynne Weil, told me that [...]