Tag:

Rex Tillerson

Firing Rex Tillerson Removed an Obstacle to Middle East Peace

by Caroline Glick March 18, 2018

written by Caroline Glick

As Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was being fired on Tuesday, his central assumptions about the Palestinian conflict with Israel, which are shared by the entire Washington foreign policy establishment, literally blew up in Gaza.

On Tuesday morning, Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah’s convoy was attacked by a roadside bomb during an official visit in Hamas-controlled Gaza.

Hamdallah was in Gaza to inaugurate a wastewater treatment facility sponsored by the World Bank. The facility was approved 14 years ago, but infighting between Hamas, which runs Gaza, and Fatah, the PLO ruling faction which controls the Palestinian Authority (PA), blocked its operation time after time.

The shuttered water treatment facility in northern Gaza has long been a monument to the Palestinian leadership’s incompetence and indifference to the plight of the people it is supposed to be serving. As the plant gathered dust, Gaza plunged deeper and deeper into a water crisis.

As the Times of Israel reported, Gaza has two water problems: insufficient ground water, and massive pollution of the existing supply due to the absence of sufficient sewage treatment facilities.

Untreated sewage is dumped directly into the Mediterranean Sea, and then seeps back into Gaza’s groundwater.

Gaza’s polluted acquifiers only produce a quarter of its water needs, and due to insufficient water treatment facilities, 97 percent of Gaza’s natural water sources are unsafe for human consumption.

Hamdallah’s visit to Hamas-controlled Gaza was supposed to show that the Fatah-Hamas unity deal Egypt brokered between the two terror groups last year was finally enabling them to solve Gaza’s humanitarian needs.

And then Hamdallah’s convoy was bombed, and the whole charade of Palestinian governing competence and responsibility was put to rest.

Later in the day, the White House held a Middle East summit that demonstrated Tillerson’s basic assumptions have the problems of the Middle East precisely backwards.

Under the leadership of Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, along with Jason Greenblatt, Trump’s senior negotiator, Israeli officials sat in the White House for the first time with Arab officials from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Oman, and Qatar. Representatives from Egypt and Jordan, with which Israel enjoys open diplomatic relations, were also in attendance. Canadian and European officials participated as well.

Although they were invited, the Palestinians chose to boycott the conference. Their boycott was telling. The PA claimed it was boycotting the conference in retaliation for America’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and President Trump’s plan to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem on Israel’s 70th Independence Day in May.

But anger over Jerusalem doesn’t justify the snub. The purpose of the summit wasn’t to reach “the ultimate deal.” The summit was called to to formulate the means to contend with the humanitarian crises emanating from Hamas-controlled Gaza. The Palestinians boycotted a summit whose sole purpose was to help them.

As Palestinian commentator Bassam Tawil noted, the PA’s boycott while appalling, was unsurprising.

The White House summit was a threat to both rival Palestinian factions. It showed that the Trump administration, which both Fatah and Hamas hate passionately, cares more about the Palestinians than they do.

The humanitarian crisis in Gaza is entirely the product of Hamas and Fatah actions. In an op-ed in the Washington Post last week, Greenblatt laid the blame on Hamas. “Hamas’s utter failure to fulfill any of the most basic functions of governance has brought Gaza to the brink of collapse, which has necessitated the response of the international community.”

Fatah, Tawil noted, is just as responsible. The Fatah-controlled PA has used the Palestinians of Gaza as a pawn in its power struggle against Hamas. Rather than work to decontaminate Gaza’s water supply and provide for the basic needs of the population, for the past year the PA has imposed economic sanctions on the Gaza Strip.

Ostensibly imposed to induce the population of Gaza to rise up against Hamas, they have simply served to increase the misery of the residents of Gaza. Hamas’s power remains unchallenged as Qatar, Turkey, and Iran shower the terror group with cash and arms.

As Tawil noted, Hamas and Fatah are willing to fight one another until the last Palestinian in Gaza.

The conference showed that the attack on Hamdallah’s convoy was not a freak episode. The bombing was emblematic of the Fatah-Hamas leadership’s obsession with their own power, to the detriment of the people they claim to represent.

The events in Gaza and the White House on Tuesday tell us two important things.

First, they reveal that the primary obstacle to both peace and regional stability in the Middle East is the Palestinian leadership – both from Fatah and Hamas.

Not only did the PA refuse to participate in a summit dedicated solely to helping the Palestinians, but also the very day the summit took place, PA-controlled Voice of Palestine Radio reported that the PA intends to file a complaint against President Trump at the International Criminal Court. Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem, the PA insists, “violated all international laws and resolutions.”

The report also said the PA intends to sue Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman for “crimes against the Palestinian people.”

Tuesday’s second lesson is that while the PA is the primary obstacle to peace and regional stability, it is easily surmountable.

Tuesday’s conference was a diplomatic triumph for the Trump administration. For the first time, official representatives of five Arab states that have no diplomatic relations with Israel sat publically in the White House with Israeli officials. They were brought together due to their common concern for the Palestinians in Gaza, and for the instability that the plight of the Palestinians in Hamas-controlled Gaza might encourage.

Although it is still unknown whether anything discussed at the conference will turn into concrete improvements on the ground, the summit itself was a concrete achievement. It showed that the Arabs are willing publicly to bypass the Palestinians to work with Israel. The fact that the conference was devoted to helping the Palestinians served to transform the PA from the critical partner in any peace deal to an irritating irrelevance.

And that brings us to Tillerson, and the foreign policy establishment whose positions he channeled.

During his 14 months in office, Tillerson insisted on maintaining the establishment’s view that the Fatah-controlled PA is the be-all-and-end-all of Middle East peace efforts. The view that there can be no Arab-Israeli peace without the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLOP compelled successive U.S. administrations to continue to embrace it despite its support for terrorism, and despite its refusal to accept or even respond to any offer of peace by either Israel or the U.S.

The belief that there can be no peace without Fatah convinced successive American administrations to pour billions of dollars in aid money down the black hole of PA treasury accounts. Since the Israeli-PLO peace process began in 1993, the Palestinians have received more international aid per capita than any nation on earth has received in world history. And all they produced are an impoverished, sewage-filled terror state in Gaza, and a jihadist hub in Judea and Samaria that would explode in violence if Israel did not control security.

The view that the U.S. needs the PLO and its PA to achieve peace gave the Palestinian leadership an effective veto over every U.S. policy towards Israel and towards the peace process.

Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and move the embassy to Jerusalem was the first time any American leader since Bill Clinton had dared to reject the Palestinian veto on US Middle East policy.

Tillerson supported maintaining the PA’s veto. As a result, he all but openly opposedTrump’s decision.

So too, last June, in a bid to protect U.S. funding to the PA — despite the fact that fully 7 percent of its donor-funded budget is used to pay salaries to terrorists in Israeli prisons and their families — Tillerson falsely told the Senate Foreign Relations committee that the PA had agreed to end the payments. After the Palestinians themselves denied his statement, he only partially walked it back. The next day, he told the House Foreign Affairs Committee that the U.S. was in “active discussions” with the Palestinians regarding halting the payments.

In the event, the PA raised its payments to terrorists in 2017 to $403 million. In 2016, the PA spent $347 million to pay salaries to terrorist murderers and their families.

In other words, Tillerson is so committed to the view that there can be no peace without the PA, that he willingly misled U.S. lawmakers.

Trump administration officials keep insisting that they are almost ready to present their peace plan for the Palestinians and Israel. But whatever the plan may entail, the steps the White House has already taken – Tuesday’s summit, Trump’s move on Jerusalem, and his determination to sign the Taylor Force Act to end U.S. support for the PA if it maintains its payments to terrorists – have already advanced the cause of peace more than any American peace proposal ever has and likely ever will.

Those moves removed the principle blockage to all peace deals – namely, the Palestinian leadership from Fatah and Hamas alike. By bypassing the PA, the White House has focused its efforts on expanding the already burgeoning bilateral ties between Israel and the Arab states. It has encouraged the expansion of cooperation between these regional actors. That cooperation is the key to diminishing Iranian power in the region; defeating Sunni jihadists from the Muslim Brotherhood and its spinoffs; and to improving the lives and prospects for peace of Palestinians, Israelis and all the nations of the region.

Tillerson opposed all of these actions. Like the foreign policy establishment he represented, Tillerson refused to abandon the false belief that nothing can be done without PLO approval. By removing him from office, President Trump took yet another step towards advancing prospects for peace in the Middle East.

Originally Published in Breitbart Jerusalem

March 18, 2018 0 comments

Politics

State Department Hiding ‘Game Changer’ Report on Myth of Palestinian Refugees

by Adam Kredo January 21, 2018

written by Adam Kredo

Classified report could bust myth that millions of refugees need UNRWA

Originally published in Free Beacon

The State Department is hiding a classified report on Palestinian refugees that insiders say could be a game changer in how the United States approaches the situation and allocates millions in taxpayer funds to a key United Nations agency, according to multiple sources briefed on the situation.

As the United States moves forward with a decision to slash funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the agency responsible for providing education and support to some five million Palestinian refugees, officials on Capitol Hill and elsewhere have been pressuring the State Department to declassify a report that is believed to show the actual number of refugees is far fewer than the U.N. claims.

Multiple sources with knowledge of the situation told the Washington Free Beacon that the State Department first classified the report under the Obama administration and still refuses to provide U.S. officials with the information despite laws mandating its release.

The report was described to the Free Beacon as a potential tipping point in the debate over UNRWA and its mission, which has come under increased criticism in Congress for what many claim is the agency’s anti-Israel bias and routine promotion of pro-terrorism doctrines.

Some State Department officials have acknowledged in private meetings that there is no reason the report should remain classified, according to sources who said the over classification is part of an effort to suppress this information from Congress and the public.

“I was informed that there is no justification for classifying the report. Rather, it is the officials at State Department who do not want this information out as it could and would lead to a call to reform UNRWA,” said one source briefed on the matter.

While UNRWA provides support to some 5.3 million Palestinians they claim are refugees, the actual number could be closer to 20,000. This disclosure could fundamentally shift the narrative with UNRWA and lead the United States to consider cutting even more of its funding to the agency.

Currently, any U.S. official seeking to read the little-known report’s findings must have top-secret security clearance and access to a secure facility containing the documents.

Revelations of this classified report’s existence and the potential implications come as the Trump administration announced that it would slash UNRWA’s funding by half, from $125 million to $65 million, in order to force the organization to implement a series of reforms.

UNRWA has come under fire from pro-Israel activists and some lawmakers for anti-Israel bias and complicity with radical elements of Palestinian society.

In addition to reports that UNRWA is using anti-Israel content in its classrooms, it has been caught hiding Hamas rockets in its schools on at least three separate occasions.

The U.S. report on UNRWA was first commissioned in 2015 by former senator Mark Kirk (R., Ill.), who was spearheading an effort to increase the organization’s transparency.

Kirk forwarded a congressional amendment to require the State Department to provide Congress with a report on the number of refugees served by UNRWA who actually lived in the territory now known as Israel between 1946 and 1948.

The State Department never acknowledged having completed the report, sources said, and instead classified it.

“State had neglected to tell Sen. Kirk’s office,” said one source with knowledge of the situation. “It seems that this was intentional.”

Once the report’s existence was confirmed, Congress, in a 2017 measure, directed the State Department to provide an unclassified version of the report. This, too, was ignored, sources said.

The report is said to confirm that, as opposed to what UNRWA and its supporters claim, the number of refugees is actually in the tens of thousands, not the millions.

Richard Goldberg, a former deputy chief of staff for Kirk, told the Free Beacon that the UNRWA effort was always about exposing the myth that there are millions of refugees who still require aid.

“This is about basic taxpayer oversight of an agency that gobbles up hundreds of millions of dollars ever year,” said Goldberg, the author of the original amendment that required the report. “Are we funding a refugee agency or are we funding a welfare agency that nurtures a culture terrorism and violence?”

“There’s a moral difference when it comes to U.S. policy and foreign assistance,” said Goldberg, now a senior adviser to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “American aid for true refugees is one thing; American aid to subsidize a culture of welfare and terrorism is entirely different.”

Pro-Israel advocates are now urging the UNRWA report be provided to the public.

EJ Kimball, director of the Israel Victory Project, a coalition of pro-Israel lawmakers, told the Free Beacon that those under UNRWA’s care should be compelled to admit they are not actually refugees in the technical sense.

“If the State Department is interested in resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the number of actual refugees from Israel’s War for Independence must be publicized,” Kimball said. “For the approximately 5 million Palestinian Arabs in need of aid, they should be helped after acknowledging they are not refugees. By doing this, we can break the yoke of victimhood and oppression and give these ‘refugees’ the human dignity they deserve. UNRWA has failed and it either needs to be drastically reformed or tossed into the dustbin of history.”

The State Department declined to comment on the report or its status when approached by the Free Beacon.

January 21, 2018 1 comment

McMaster is an enemy of the State of Israel

by Caroline Glick September 14, 2017

written by Caroline Glick

Despite the happy face that Israeli officials tried to put on last month’s meeting of intelligence/security leaders with President Trump’s National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, as David Steinberg’s blockbuster scoop at PJ media, posted in the first comment below makes clear, the meeting was horrible, and its failure bears out the criticisms that I and other analysts sounded against McMaster in early August.

While firing NSC directors and senior officials like Derek Harvey and Ezra Cohen Watnick who share President Trump’s view that Israel is a strategic US ally and who share Israel’s growing concerns over Iran and its takeover of Syria, McMaster hired anti-Israel analyst Kris Bauman to head the Israel-Palestine desk of the NSC and has allowed anti-Israel former Obama NSC officials like Robert Malley to continue to wield influence at the NSC .

Even more importantly from a strategic perspective, McMaster hired Mustafa Javed Ali as the NSC’s Senior Director for counter-terrorism.

As Steinberg reports, Ali believes that Hezbollah is not a terrorist organization and insists on making a distinction between active trigger pullers and their terrorist leadership, viewing only the former as bad guys while the latter labelled “moderates.” In this vein, he similarly rejects efforts to label the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization.

According to Steinberg’s exclusive report based on statements by multiple sources, the Israeli delegation to the NSC last month, which was led by Mossad director Yossi Cohen demanded that Ali be removed from the conference room during the parlay at the White House.

As I and others have reported, McMaster belittles Israel’s concerns about Iran and its takeover of Syria.

This basic perspective has had deleterious consequences for US policy towards Iran, as another story from yesterday makes clear….

Yesterday Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu devoted time during his appearance with Argentine President Mauricio Macri in Buenos Aires to denying a Reuters report claiming that Israel opposes US withdrawal from Obama’s 2015 nuclear deal with Iran.

The report, published by Reuters and linked below outlines the Iran strategy that McMaster, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary James Mattis have put together and hope to convince Trump to accept.

The reported strategy involves the US allowing Iran and its Shiite proxies to have free reign in Syria and Iraq in order not to distract US forces from the campaign against ISIS. The report claims that Trump’s top national security advisers think that Iranian-controlled Shiite militia have been doing great work fighting ISIS.

And, again, the report falsely claims that Israel wants the US to continue abiding by the nuclear deal.

The Reuters report appears to be sourced from officials who at a minimum support the plan to maintain Obama’s pro-Iran policies in Iraq and Syria.

As for the rest of the strategy, it revolves around stepping up US responses to Iranian aggression in the Gulf. In other words, Trump’s team wants to roll over on Iran in the Levant, sacrificing Israel and Jordan, and pretend that Iran doesn’t have an overall strategy that involves the entire region.

Taken together, the Steinberg report and the Reuters report indicate that Trump’s national security team, quarterbacked by McMaster is maintaining Obama’s policy of rejecting the importance of the US-Israel alliance while mollycoddling Iran and facilitating its expansion of power and aggression in the Levant while enabling it to continue its nuclear weapons development.

As the Steinberg article points out, after I wrote my Facebook post in early August outlining allegations by senior White House sources claiming that McMaster is anti-Israel, McMaster’s allies carried out a major media campaign to discredit these allegations.

These two stories indicate that while the pro-McMaster campaign succeeded in silencing criticism, the allegations I and others reported regarding McMaster were valid. They exposed a real problem with the strategic outlook of the Trump administration with everything related to Iran and the threat it poses to the US and to the US’s allies and interests in the Middle East.

Originally Published by Caroline Glick on Facebook.

September 14, 2017 0 comments

Partnerships Politics Regional Analysis

Has the Trump Administration been Arabized?

by Allan M. Coleman June 14, 2017

written by Allan M. Coleman

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_btn title=”FOR $5/MONTH YOU CAN SUPPORT ALLAN’S WRITING” color=”primary” size=”lg” align=”center” button_block=”true” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.paypal.com%2Fcgi-bin%2Fwebscr%3Fcmd%3D_s-xclick%26hosted_button_id%3DPBTQ2JVPQ3WJ2|||”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]The struggle between the US Deep State and the Trump administration can probably be felt the most in foreign policy, especially when it comes to Israel. It is no secret that Donald Trump wants to arrive at a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs. Despite the goal, administration or at least many in the administration believe the method rto arrive at such a coveted agreement should be far different than those attempted before.

According to a Channel 20 report, the White House has presented a set of principles to restart negotiations between both sides. The principles include:

Tempering construction in Judea and Samaria
Security measures in coordination with Jordan and the Gulf States
Normalization of relations between Israel and the Arab states

The thorny issues of Jerusalem and the refugees will dealt with after real normalization takes place.

The same report cites Israel as wanting to add two more principles to the list:

Cessation of incitement to violence on the part of the Palestinians
Cessation of payments to terrorists and their families

The important part to this report is the fact that the White House is demanding that real normalization between the Sunni Arab world takes place first. At first glance, this appears to be a break through in approach. However, lets keep in mind that the Saudi Peace Plan, which calls for a full Israeli retreat to the arbitrary green line expects the same thing. There is an argument to be made that Trump has succeeded in calling for a change in order in that this normalization must come first, but at the end of the day normalization can be reversed if the Arabs feel Israel is not “retreating” fast enough.

Any connection between an Israeli retreat and the ethnic cleansing of its Jewish citizens to normalizing ties to Arab states who only yesterday were funding Hamas, ISIS, and the Muslim Brotherhood smacks a severe disconnect with the issues at the core of the conflict.

With all of that being said the Trump administration seems intent on battling back the State Department’s classic approach on the subject of Israel-Palestinian peace by disconnecting Foggy Bottom from the process altogether. The truth is that any process will have negative effects, yet there is something to say in battling back the Deep State, which has been embedded at the State Department for decades.

The key person to look at it in all of this is the President’s long time lawyer and confidant, Jason Greenblatt. As one source involved in the White House said:

“There’s basically only one guy – Jason Greenblatt. That’s it. There’s no office, there’s no bureaucracy.”

Greenblatt is an orthodox Jew and deeply connected to the right-wing in Israel. The crafting of the above principles clearly came from him. Once again, this seems excellent for Israel. On the other hand, the State Department, which has been Arabized since the 1940’s has clearly convinced the Trump administration by way of Rex Tillerson and Gen. McMaster that the Arab peace proposal should be considered as an important part of an overall framework.

So how much has their influence crept into an overall policy by the President? This is hard to know and won’t be known until negotiations reach a decisive phase where Trump’s loyalties to one of the sides will be tested.

Regardless of this, Tillerson’s comments to a Senate Committee regarding Palestinian payments to terrorists should be noted and done so with concern:

“They have changed their policy,” Tillerson said, referring to the Palestinians. “At least I have been informed they’ve changed that policy and their intent is to cease payments.”

The problem with this statement is that the Palestinians admit themselves that they did not change their policy concerning payments to terrorist families.

“There have been talks about making the payments in a different way, but not ending them,” said one official, according to Reuters who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment on discussions held with the Americans. “They could perhaps be labeled differently,” he said, suggesting the description “martyr” could be dropped, but he added: “They are not going to be stopped.”

Israel concurred and added:

“Israel is unaware of any change in the policy of the Palestinians, who continue to make payments to the families of terrorists.”

This purposeful obfuscation presents a challenge to those who understand that the peace process is nothing more than a globalist imperative to break down Israel’s ancestral rights to Land with a false occupation narrative. Will Tillerson and McMaster win out? That depends on the coordination between Greenblatt and Israeli officials who are being very careful to point out the Arabs true reasons for normalizing relations with Israel.

At the end of the day, if Donald Trump wants a deal no matter the cost and the Arabs continue to shower accolades on him, then the peace process he hopes to invigorate will turn out to be a disaster.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

June 14, 2017 0 comments

Partnerships Politics

Can One Man Make a Difference? Just Ask Israel

by Dan Calic March 1, 2017

written by Dan Calic

Donald Trump has been President for just over 5 weeks. Yet on many fronts there is little doubt a new era has been birthed. One of the most obvious is relations with Israel compared to the previous 8 years under Barack Obama.

From the beginning of the Obama administration he was determined to put the US on a different path with regard to the Muslim world. Indeed, the first foreign leader he called was Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority. Obama even made a point of telling Abbas his was the first call to a foreign leader, emphasizing his intent to signal a new direction for the US.

Obama furthered his effort at a new direction by making his first international speech in Cairo. During his address he lamented about how the Palestinians suffer “daily humiliation under occupation,” and criticized Israel for building “settlements.”

Plus, throughout his two terms, it was clear Obama did not like Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.

Right up to the bitter end the Obama administration went out much like it began, with a slap at Israel. The final kick in the stomach was UN resolution 2334, which singled out Israel’s construction of “settlements” as the main obstacle to peace. The US was intimately involved in the language of the resolution, yet not a word was mentioned about ongoing Palestinian terrorism and murder of innocent Israeli civilians. As a permanent member of the UN Security Council, the US has veto power and could have killed the resolution. However, knowing this would be his last opportunity to make a statement against Israel, Obama directed the US to abstain from the voting, thus allowing it to pass, cementing his legacy as the most anti-Israel US President.

One Door Closes, Another Opens

Contrast this against the early stages of the Trump administration. Throughout his campaign he made it clear that the US had treated (Israel) its best Middle East ally terribly. Since taking office the difference can only be described as startling.

For example, he has called the Iran nuclear deal “the worst deal ever negotiated,” and has already imposed new sanctions on Iran.

His Secretary of State Rex Tillerson criticized former Secretary of State John Kerry for how he handled Israeli-Palestinian issues. “Israel is, always has been, and remains our most important ally in the region” according to Tillerson. He characterized UN resolution 2334 as an effort to “coerce” Israel to change course, further stating, “that will not bring a solution.”

Trump’s Ambassador the UN Nikki Haley has already come out swinging against the overwhelming anti-Israel sentiment which dominates the organization. After attending her initial Security Council meeting and witnessing the absurd obsession it has with Israel she said “the United States will not turn a blind eye to this anymore. “ Additionally she stated “the United States is determined to stand up to the UN’s anti-Israel bias.” She went on to say “we will never repeat the mistake of resolution 2334 and allow one-sided Security Council resolutions to condemn Israel.” Haley called the UN’s double-standards “breathtaking.”

In fact President Trump is so upset at how unfairly Israel is treated by the UN, there is some discussion that the US may be considering withdrawing from the UNHRC. Could anyone imagine Obama doing this?

Trump has also indicated he will move the US Embassy to Jerusalem. However, this is still under discussion.

In another clear effort to demonstrate US-Israel relations have changed Trump invited Prime Minister Netanyahu to a meeting at the White House. (He also invited Netanyahu to his inauguration)The chemistry between the two of them was obvious and in stark contrast to the strained relations with former President Obama.

Let the Parties Decide for Themselves

During a press conference Trump moved the peace process in a heretofore new direction by backing off the long-standing US policy pushing for a two-state solution. He made it clear the position of the United States is to have the two parties negotiate a solution between themselves, saying “I want the one both parties want,” referring to a deal.

This doesn’t suggest the US is against a two-state solution, because Trump has indicated he would be fine with it. However, in a clear departure from the Obama administration’s attempts to strong arm Israel, the Trump administration is saying let the two sides negotiate their own deal.

Such a stand by the US sends a blunt message to the Palestinians that Israel has every right to expect them to come to the table without pre-conditions, and has the freedom to tell the Palestinians what their conditions are for a resolution to the conflict, without being bullied by the US. Abbas has made it known he isn’t happy about this by stating his commitment to a two state solution and demanding the world recognize Palestine. In my view Abbas missed a golden opportunity to demonstrate some flexibility and strike a deal during the 8 years of the Obama administration, which was clearly more favorable toward the Palestinians.

For example, he could have urged Abbas to amend the charter of his Fatah Party by eliminating the language requiring Israel’s destruction, as a gesture toward being a genuine peace partner. Moreover, he could have cut off US aid because Abbas uses US money to pay huge salaries to terrorists who have murdered Israelis. These are just two examples of how Obama could have been more even handed with the Palestinians. He did neither of these.

On several occasions Obama tried to almost force Israel to accept a two state solution. He showed more interest in promoting self-determination and dignity for the Palestinians, than understanding Israel’s obvious need for security and a genuine peace partner willing to recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.

While it is still very early in the administration of Donald Trump, there is little doubt as Bob Dylan once sang “the times they are a-changin’.