BUMBLING CLOWNS – AT 8:18 P.M. ET:  What can we say about the conduct of American foreign policy under Barack Obama and his little poodle, Hillary?  The ideological rigidity, joined by a lovely incompetence, makes for a package that we show off to the world.

Nothing exposes the sheer blundering of this crowd than the handling of Israel, one of our closest allies, in the last two weeks, and, indeed, since Obama took the oath.  It rivals Obama's humiliation of Britain, which has been an outrage.  Jackson Diehl of the liberal Washington Post expresses his dismay at a president who wants to be more Palestinian than the Palestinians:

So it’s now been two weeks since President Obama chose to seize on a poorly-timed Israeli announcement about new Jewish housing in Jerusalem to launch another public confrontation with the government of Binyamin Netanyahu...

...Meanwhile, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has adopted Obama’s original demand as his own: He’s saying he won’t begin even the indirect, “proximity” talks he previously agreed to until Israel accepts the Clinton terms on Jerusalem. How could he do otherwise? The Palestinian leader cannot be less pro-Palestinian than the White House. But Abbas cannot climb down from his position so easily -- which means that, for the second time in a year, the Middle East peace process has been stalled by a U.S.-engineered deadlock.

The Palestinians oppose Israeli settlements on the West Bank, but that never stopped them from negotiating...until Barack Obama came to office and made settlements an obsession.  Big, big mistake.

Finally, Obama has added more poison to a U.S.-Israeli relationship that already was at its lowest point in two decades. Tuesday night the White House refused to allow non-official photographers record the president’s meeting with Netanyahu; no statement was issued afterward. Netanyahu is being treated as if he were an unsavory Third World dictator, needed for strategic reasons but conspicuously held at arms length. That is something the rest of the world will be quick to notice and respond to. Just like the Palestinians, European governments cannot be more friendly to an Israeli leader than the United States.

At least the Brits probably feel they have company now.  This is obnoxious behavior for an American president.  Even presidents who were somewhat distant from Israel, like Carter and Bush 41, never behaved this way.

U.S. pressure on Netanyahu will be needed if the peace process ever reaches the point where the genuinely contentious issues, like Palestinian refugees or the exact territorial tradeoffs, are on the table. But instead of waiting for that moment and pushing Netanyahu on a point where he might be vulnerable to domestic challenge, Obama picked a fight over something that virtually all Israelis agree on, and before serious discussions have even begun. As the veteran Middle East analyst Robert Malley put it to The Post’s Glenn Kessler, “U.S. pressure can work, but it needs to be at the right time, on the right issue and in the right political context. The administration is ready for a fight, but it realized the issue, timing and context were wrong.”

And Malley tends to be sympathetic to the Arabs.

A new administration can be excused for making such a mistake in the treacherous and complex theater of Middle East diplomacy. That’s why Obama was given a pass by many when he made exactly the same mistake last year. The second time around, the president doesn’t look naive. He appears ideological -- and vindictive.

COMMENT:  He is both.  And peace will pay the price.  Small timers don't make it in international diplomacy.

March 24, 2010