The Coming Obamafada

by Scott Italiaander

Our feckless President is apparently not content to merely confuse our allies and seek to appease our rivals and enemies.  Now he has managed to significantly weaken the strategic position of our greatest ally, Israel, vis a vis its already hostile Arab and Persian neighbors.  By prematurely pushing Israel into peace talks with the weak and disingenuous  Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas, he ensured that those talks would fail and that Israel would be held responsible for the collapse.  

The whole world knew before the start of "peace" talks just weeks before the expiration of Israel P.M. Bibi Netanyahu's 10-month freeze on building in the West Bank settlements that Abbas would break off the talks if the freeze wasn't extended indefinitely.  And the world knew that Netanyahu would be forced into deciding whether to play the spoiler of those talks.  It is a virtual certainty that Obama intentionally put Bibi in the no-win position of either (1) caving to American pressure to extend the freeze, thus putting him at odds with his own ministers and voter base in the Likud; or (2) caving in to domestic pressure and letting the freeze expire, thus putting the P.M. crosswise with the international community.

Well, Netanyahu seems to have made his choice:  the building moratorium expired at midnight Sunday without action by Netanyahu or his security cabinet.  And, according to the pro-Israel intelligence website Debkafile.org., Abbas has left the talks, as threatened.  The predictable results are already being felt:

The breakdown of the talks was widely predicted by every seasoned Middle East hand. Many political observers therefore wonder: What was the point of filling the air waves for 26 days with the extravagantly upbeat phrases heard from Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Binyamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak calling the process "a historic opportunity for peace in the region?" The letdown was inevitable and leaves none of them looking good.

Perhaps the last word has not been said. Washington may go back for another try to restart the talks in a few weeks or months, but the process has already had a negative impact in the region, hardening the moderates and strengthening the rejectionists:

1. Israel is bracing for a fresh round of terror in the light of Hamas threats;

2.  The feuding Fatah and Hamas are talking again, a process that will force Mahmoud Abbas into continuing to harden his posture;

3. Egypt and Israel have drawn apart on the Palestinian issue;

4. Cairo and Damascus have begun talks to bury the hatchet.

All four developments are a triumph for the Middle East radical camp and strengthen the hands of Hizballah and Hamas.

So, Obama has finally notched his first real foreign policy victory: by teeing up the media narrative that Israel's failure to extend the freeze was the proximate cause of the talks' collapse he simultaneously (further) isolated Netanyahu and his government, handed Israel's enemies a club with which to beat up the Jewish State and drove a wedge between Israel and the so-called moderate Arab States, which have apparently decided to make common cause with Syria, Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah.  The hapless, self-righteous Jimmy Carter could have never pulled off such a feat.


Already on Sunday, a Jewish woman was shot by "gunmen" (code for "Arab terrorist" in mediaspeak) near Hebron, thankfully not fatally for mother or child.  But one can reasonably expect increasing violence and murder  of Jews in the weeks and months to follow, thanks in large part to the fallout from the so-called peace talks forced upon Israel and their predictable failure.  


Perhaps it is not premature to honor Obama's great success by labeling the next round of violence against Jews the "Obamafada."