Ben Smith writes on Clinton's latest meddling:
To keep this straight: Clinton leaned harder on Israel than the administration intended, infuriating the Israelis while putting the Palestinians far out on a limb. Then she sawed off the limb.
The early questions about her role in Middle East politics -- would she be as hawkishly pro-Israel as she was in the Senate -- haven't really been answered, and her actual views remain unclear. But in this most delicate, closely parsed of diplomatic arenas, her inexperience as a diplomat, and her tendency toward incautious statements (disguised by a campaign image of "competence") has really turned into a liability for the administration.
This is precisely right. Clinton was the one who demanded a complete freeze on Israeli settlements (though she may have been previewing adminstration thinking), providing the Palestinians with American cover for a precondition on talks that had never before been demanded. And now the Palestinians look like they're getting rolled as the Obama administration inevitably caves on that ill-conceived demand. (The only precondition this administration would put on any talks the world over would be placed on the Israelis? Obama would talk to A'jad without preconditions but he would have preconditions on talks with Bibi?)
The Obama administration spent the spring working, in very methodical fashion, to alienate the Israeli people and convince them that this administration, unlike the others that came before it, was no friend. The result was a 4 percent public approval rating in Israel that is probably the greatest obstacle to peace right now and which is also an obstacle entirely of Obama's making. Now the administration is spending the fall trying to convince the Palestinians, too, that they have no friend in this administration -- undermining Abbas by pushing him to slow-walk the Goldstone report and rolling him on settlements.
I honestly believe that opponents of the peace process could not have done a better job scuttling it then this administration has done through a combination of well-intentioned blundering and unprecedented arrogance.
