The (Middle East) headline from President Obama’s Friday press conference was his appeal to Prime Minister Netanyahu to maintain the settlement moratorium.
Fair enough, and that’s what we went with this morning (we observe the holidays, so we’re lagging a little here) — or more precisely, Netanyahu’s apparent agreement to do so, at least in part.
But pay attention to how Obama leads into it — there’s a signal here that so far, he’s getting more joy from Israel on the peace process than the Palestinians.
First, the question from the New York Times’ Helene Cooper, which hews to an unfortunate Beltway mindset that holds Israel as the only responsible party in the conflict:
And on the Middle East, do you believe that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should extend the settlement moratorium as a gesture to peace? And if he doesn’t, what are you prepared to do to stop the Palestinians from walking?
Now here’s Obama. I’ve made Obama’s evident sarcasm bold:
Now, with respect to Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Middle East, a major bone of contention during the course of this month is going to be the potential lapse of the settlement moratorium. The irony is, is that when Prime Minister Netanyahu put the moratorium in place, the Palestinians were very skeptical. They said this doesn’t do anything. And it turns out, to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s credit and to the Israeli government’s credit, the settlement moratorium has actually been significant. It has significantly reduced settlement construction in the region. And that’s why now the Palestinians say, you know what, even though we weren’t that keen on it at first or we thought it was just window dressing, it turns out that this is important to us. What I’ve said to Prime Minister Netanyahu is that, given, so far, the talks are moving forward in a constructive way, it makes sense to extend that moratorium so long as the talks are moving in a constructive way.
Administration officials have said that they consider tone to be critical to these proceedings — they want to see the sides praise each other for deeds well done. Netanyahu seems to have gotten this, and praised Abbas for condemning the terrorist attacks that killed four settlers immediately before the talks.
Obama wants to see more like that, and from the Palestinians too.
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