The fall out from Barack Obama's speech aimed at sparking renewed negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians continues as more pundits and career diplomats weigh in on the incidents preceding and following the speech. There seems to be no one other than Obama who has anything positive to say about his statement that new negotiations must use the 1967 borders as a starting point. The '67 borders have always been the starting point for negotiations, but it has never been stated in public by an American president. Obama's intention in putting it out in the open was ostensibly to goad Israel to the negotiating table before the September vote at the UN that is expected to follow the leads of several countries in recognizing a Palestinian state, however premature such recognition may be. The vote, hardly a guarantee that there will soon be a Palestinian state to recognize, will, nevertheless, be a tremendous embarrassment to Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who Tuesday said that Israel was prepared to make “painful sacrifices” for peace, did not win much support with his earlier reaction to Obama's speech as he was recorded giving a history lesson to President Obama about the state of affairs in 1967 and the changes that have been made all but permanent in the region. Essentially lecturing the American president, on the president's own turf and in front of the American public, may, however, turn out to be a costly mistake. Netanyahu basically claimed that he wholly expected the President to renounce the essence of the speech in the near future. Obama's speech, however, was largely viewed in a positive light with the exception of partisan Republicans out to embarrass Obama in any way possible. Attacking the head of the country that basically guarantees your own country's existence is not smart politics, and while it might have played to Netanyahu's Likud support base back home, it did not endear the American public to him. This is not to say that the US-Israel relationship is threatened by any of this, but Netanyahu's role in that relationship is likely to be running out of time. Some career diplomats have criticized Obama for introducing a new initiative at a time when the region, as a whole, is in turmoil, and Israel is contending with a united Fatah-Hamas. Netanyahu, however, has been at the fore of the Israeli government throughout numerous recent imbroglios, ranging from the assault on Gaza to the fiasco on the aid ships. Even Israeli voters are likely to begin regarding him as an obstacle, not the American president. __
