By Ted Belman On Monday, Jeff Daube, Director of Israel Affairs for ZOA, approached me and told me about an LA Jewish Journal article about the gun Obama reputedly put to Netanyahu’s head. Knesset visitor blasts Obama and Netanyahu advises that MK Eldad accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of buckling under intense pressure from President Barack Obama, who wants to prevent any Israeli retaliation against the Palestinian Authority in its bid to win recognition as a state from the United Nations. Specifically, Obama has demanded that Netanyahu and Israel’s supporters in the United States pressure Congress to abort two pending resolutions to penalize the Palestinian Authority (PA) if it pursues its bid, Eldad claimed. One would shut off U.S. aid funds to the Palestinians and a second would support Israel’s right to annex the West Bank. The legal justification for such actions, cited by many Israeli officials, would be that the unilateral statehood request would be a direct violation of the 1993 Oslo Accords. Eldad said he was certain of the accuracy of his information, but declined to name his sources. Obviously, Obama wanted to avoid the annexation bid at all costs as he wanted to keep alive his plan for negotiations. In his speech which has been liberally praised as pro-Israel he said, In effect Obama prevented the PA from being penalized for breaching Oslo yet again. He wants to keep Israel shacked by Oslo so it is not free to act. No doubt part of this deal is Netanyahu’s agreement to maintain a defacto freeze throughout J&S and Jerusalem.Obama extorts a high price for the veto and the speech
I put forward a new basis for negotiations in May of this year. That basis is clear. It’s well known to all of us here. Israelis must know that any agreement provides assurances for their security. Palestinians deserve to know the territorial basis of their state.
He (Eldad) charged that Obama was holding Netanyahu “at gunpoint” – the gun being the U.S. threat to go back on its promise to veto the Palestinian statehood bid in the UN Security Council.
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