Not only did President Obama’s condition of using the 1967 borders as a starting point for any peace accord show a stunning lack of respect for an essential strategic ally, it was woefully inopportune and very poor timing.
Disrespectful because apparently the President neglected to “tip off” his counterpart in Israel before laying down this marker in a speech that was hyped for days to ensure optimal international coverage. Binyamin Netanyahu was right to react forcefully and angrily to such ambush diplomacy.
And woefully inopportune because now is certainly not the time to be posturing at the expense of Israel when it is unclear just who and what will emerge from the turmoil of this year’s “Arab Spring.” Indeed, this was not simply a negotiating tactic designed to appease the Palestinians, it appears to be a nod designed to appease the region’s Muslim nations.
But just to whom is President Obama attempting to curry favor? At this point, we have no idea what kind of new government will take root in Egypt or Tunisia, to say nothing of who ultimately will “win” the civil war in Libya or what will be the outcomes of the simmering conflicts in Syria and Bahrain.
With Israel surrounded by instability, with the unknowns in the world’s most volatile region in at least a generation, President Obama showed a stunning lack of timing when he put forward such a public ultimatum on the only democracy and America’s only true ally in the region.
