While you were sleeping, Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev traveled to Prague and signed the New START nuclear-arms reductions accord, pledging to reduce their countries’ nuclear arsenals by 30 percent and cap the deployed missiles, submarines and bombers that deliver nukes at 700. The task before the White More…
Set for release early next week, the Obama administration’s long-awaited statement on the future of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile won’t provide a roadmap for their elimination, according to administration officials. But it will chip away at the strategic justification for the stockpile and shift the country’s defense away from More…
If the Israelis’ announcement of new settlement construction in Jerusalem during Vice President Biden’s Israel trip was “insulting,” what’s this?
The Jerusalem municipality has given final approval to a group of settlers construct 20 apartments in a controversial hotel in East Jerusalem, Haaretz learned on Tuesday.
The announcement
A terse account from the White House press shop:
Last evening, the Vice President and General Jones had a working dinner with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Barak at the Vice President’s residence at the Naval Observatory, together with their delegations. They had a productive, candid discussion
The conventional wisdom in Washington about the U.S.-Israel spat is well expressed by this Josh Rogin post and this Ben Smith post. Basically, people think the Obama administration messed up by publicly recognizing that Prime Minister Netanyahu insulted the U.S. by moving forward with settlement expansion in More…
Laura Rozen reports that both the Obama administration and the Netanyahu government are trying to climb down from the past week’s diplomatic acrimony. But the acrimony started when the Israelis announced an expansion of settlements in east Jerusalem, an act that broke faith with the Obama administration during More…
So the insult stands, apparently:
In the face of sharp American disapproval of an Israeli plan for an East Jerusalem building project, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu firmly rejected Monday any curbs on new Jewish settlements in and around Jerusalem.
Meanwhile, demonstrating the firm commitment to diplomacy that has More…
J Street, the progressive pro-Israel/pro-peace lobby group, has issued a statement urging both the Obama administration and the Israeli government to remember that they have a shared goal in “tackl[ing] a core issue at the heart of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians – the need to establish a More…
A recap: Vice President Biden flies to Israel this week and gets hit with word that Israel will expand settlements into Arab areas of Jerusalem. It’s widely seen as an insult.
This afternoon, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley let it be known that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham More…
The Washington Post is pretty sure that Obama’s advisers are congealing around abandoning Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in civilian court. Apparently President Obama has yet to make a decision. If he goes back to the military commissions for KSM and the other 9/11 conspirators — military charges More…
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