The first round of the Obama-Netanyahu contest did not draw blood. At their 90-minute meeting in Washington on 18 May, the U.S. President and the Israeli Prime Minister circled each other warily, striving with studied politeness to conceal their considerable mutual antipathy. There was no disguising, however, the wide divergence of their views. The coming rounds promise to be more bruising.
Obama represents a political challenge such as Israel has not faced for many a decade. For the first time since at least 1967, Israel can no longer count on the unquestioning support of the President of the United States. There will be no blank cheque for Israel from the Obama White House.
But there is far more to it than a mere cooling of the intimate relationship. Obama is, in effect, asking Israel to discard ambitions, patterns of behaviour and security doctrines, which have become ingrained in the Israeli psyche over the past six decades. He is demanding a radical change of thinking about Israel’s borders, its long-term security and its place in the region.
Since the Six Day War, every Israeli government, whatever its political colouring, has sought to expand the country’s borders by the seizure of Palestinian territory. Some have acted by stealth, others have openly declared that the 1947-48 ‘War of Independence’ was still unfinished. Clearly, for many Israelis, a Greater Israel from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean remains the ultimate objective. Even as Obama and Netanyahu were meeting last Monday, Israeli settlers announced that the government was accepting bids for new housing in a Jewish community in the Jordan Valley.
http://newageislam.com/why-obama-frightens-the-israelis---/islam-and-the-west/d/1504
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