This NY Times article discusses the issues: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/21/world/middleeast/21prexy.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha2
The story in short:
- A new Israeli government under Benjamin Netanyahu took office in March 2009, just months after the new Obama administration took office. The new Israeli government had and it’s heart of conservative coalition although including members of the more liberal major party.
- At the same time at the start of his administration, President Obama began overtures to various countries in the Arab world. Part of those overtures included distancing his policies for the US from Israel’s own policies. This strained relations between the Israeli and US governments.
- A variety of pensions and competing objectives stalled any Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Even when they occurred, they were between the Palestinian government on the West Bank and Israel and did not include the Hamas forces running Gaza.
- The Arab Spring so the collapse of a pro-US government in Egypt. There was a common misunderstanding in the US of how this may affect US-Egyptian relations. Some felt that Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak wasn’t liked and that his pro-US stance course the US not to be liked; others understood and beyond economic issues one of the reasons the buyer wasn’t liked but Egyptian population was because of his pro-US stance.
- The collapse of the Egyptian government has already started to allow increased trafficking of military weapons to Hamas forces in Gaza and to hostilities in the area.
- This September the UN is widely thought to approve a resolution recognizing Palestinian statehood. This will almost certainly be opposed by both the US and Israeli governments increasing tensions and highlighting differences between them and other governments in the Middle East.
- As pointed out in the article, relations remain strained to the point that President Obama met with Israeli President Yitzhak Rabin rather than Prime Minister Netanyahu. At the same time, the Republican House leadership invited Netanyahu to make a speech before Congress.
- This now seems to have created a new tension between the Obama administration any Israeli government about who will propose a new peace plan to restart Israeli-Palestinian negotiations with the intent to present a plan prior to the expected UN resolution.
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