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Instantaneous Outrageous Outrage: 'Obama Sides with Palestinians!'

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kristina375/19/2011 6:13:43 pm PDT

re: #374 lawhawk”Moreover, everyone is ignoring the actual policy change - which is that if the Palestinians don’t accept Israel’s right to exist they don’t get a state. That’s the strongest iteration of those comments by a President, whether it was Clinton, Bush or Obama.”

Exactly. And in terms of the parts of the speech that refer to Israel/Palestine, the part about the requirement that the Palestinians must recognize Israel for anything to proceed may well be the most important part. What concessions were asked of Israel (borders, etc) are actually irrelevant— if it never actually happens! And none of this will happen if the Palestinians don’t recognize Israel’s right to exist.

And what are the odds of that happening? Abbas won’t say it— and there’s no way Hamas can accept that.

I don’t know if this theory of mine is true— but consider this possibility: the speech was actually not biased against Israel— in fact, it actually serves their interests. And (if this theory is correct) it wasn’t carelessly vague— it was deliberately a bit vague (Notice the lack of clarity even here as to what “1967 borders” or “1967 lines” actually means). In fact, it may have been quite brilliant.

Why? Perhaps Obama knew that many would interpret it as being too “pro-Palestinian”. So now we have a situation where the world perceives (whether true or not) that Obama is making an extremely generous offer to the Palestinians. How could they refuse? If they did refuse what appears to be an unprecedented “pro-Palestinian” offer, then the world would see them for what they actually are— the real obstacle to peace.

In other words, its possible what Obama did is to devise a clever and subtle strategy…to call the Palestinians bluff!!!

(And that may be why Abbas went into an emergency meeting with staff…he realizes they now have a dilemma). If my theory is correct, Abbas realized the true significance of the speech.

IMO the perception amongst much of the world will be that Obama made a fair, and if anything pro-Palestinian offer— and if they refuse it, the world would come to realize who is the real obstacle to peace. In other word— this speech has created a real problem … but for the Palestinians, not Israel!