While chastising Israel for its handling of the eastern Jerusalem construction announcement during Vice President Joe Biden’s visit last week, both Maureen Dowd and Thomas Friedman use their Op-Eds in Wednesday’s New York Times to question President Obama’s game plan for Israeli-Palestinian peace.
Dowd:
Obama knows that Jews no longer speak with one voice. That gives him enough room to keep the heat on Netanyahu. But the president’s smackdown also obscures the fact that the administration has no real strategy for peace and no impressive team below Hillary and Biden pushing for peace. Arab leaders groused to me that Obama has gotten so weighed down by problems at home that he has lost the thread of his promises abroad.
Friedman:
President Obama was 100 percent right to call out Israel on its settlement expansion, which undermines the opportunities inherent in this moment. But he also needs his own clear strategy to exploit the opportunities inherent in this moment — and that has been lacking up to now from his foreign policy team. If we are going to fight with Israel — or better yet, work with it — let’s do so over a big U.S. strategy that we think can shape a more stable Middle East.
Friedman says Iran and the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank know what they’re doing — the former pressing for Israel’s destruction, the latter focused on building the institutions of Palestinian statehood — but Israel, America and the pro-U.S. Arab states are myopic.
Dowd, in her gossipy style, says Obama and his inner circle are "appalled at Israel’s self-absorption" and cites Obama saying part of America’s job is to hold up the mirror to Israel and show it the ugly truth. She also repeats the unsourced tale that Bibi described Obama aides Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod as "self-hating Jews" — something that we showed back in September lacks real evidence).
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