AIPAC: US Should Not Be Even-Handed Toward Palestinians

Day after U.S. president clarifies vision of Palestinian state within 1967 borders, director of pro-Israel lobby urges Jerusalem and Washington to avoid any public display of diplomatic crisis, as it would likely be exploited by Israel's enemies.

By Natasha Mozgovaya
Published 18:42 23.05.11
Latest update 18:42 23.05.11
Courtesy Of "Haaretz Newspaper"

AIPAC Executive Director Howard Kohr said Monday that U.S. President Barack Obama should not take an even-handed approach to the Middle East conflict, as it puts Israel at a disadvantage.

“Part of being an honest broker is being honest," Kohr said in an address to AIPAC, a day after Obama spoke to the pro-Israel lobby and clarified his remarks regarding his vision for a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders, adding "that honesty "should not be confused with even-handedness".

	U.S. President Barack Obama arriving at the AIPAC Conference dais for his keynote address on May 22, 2011.
	Photo by: AP

"In a world which is demonstrably on the side of the Palestinians and Arabs - where Israel stands virtually alone - the United States has a special role to play," said the AIPAC director. "When the United States is even-handed, Israel is automatically at a disadvantage, tilting the diplomatic playing field overwhelmingly toward the Palestinians and Arabs."

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On Monday, Kohr urged Jerusalem and Washington to work out their differences privately, warning that any public display of a diplomatic crisis would serve as fodder for Israel's enemies.

“If Israel's foes come to believe that there is diplomatic daylight between the United States and Israel, they will have every incentive to try to exploit those differences and shun peace with the Jewish state," warned the AIPAC director..

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Israel and The Palestinians Through The Looking Glass

By Ira Chernus and Tom Engelhardt,
May 27, 2011
Courtesy Of "Anti-War"

It’s been like dueling banjos in Washington this week.  President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu each got to say the same thing at length and at least twice.  Last Thursday, the president gave his "Arab Spring" speech in which — after a reportedly "furious phone call" between Netanyahu and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — he included the following line: "We believe the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states."

And a storm of commentary burst forth.  Though this, it was said, had long been aprivately agreed upon American presidential position, it had never before been stated publicly by a president (or perhaps any other top U.S. official).  Netanyahu was reportedly incensed and on Friday could be found "hectoring" a polite but uncomfortable-looking Obama before the cameras in the Oval Office on the "indefensibility" of those 1967 borders.  On Sunday, Obama nonetheless went before the wildly pro-Israeli lobbying group AIPAC and gave a speech restating his position on the 1967 borders, but qualifying it as well.

On Monday, to rapturous ovations, Netanyahu appeared before the same crew to restate his position on the indefensibility of those borders and on Tuesday before Congress — in an invitation initiated by the House Republican leadership and clearly meant to embarrass the president — he did it again to more standing ovations (29 of them).

It was a clash of titans over a difference so basic that… in November, the two governments were theoretically in accord on the very same point.  Chris Nelson of the insider Washington newsletter The Nelson Report has just uncovered a "joint statement" agreed to and issued after a Netanyahu meeting with Secretary of State Clinton last November which said in part: "The Prime Minister and the Secretary agreed on the importance of continuing direct negotiations to achieve our goals. The Secretary reiterated that ‘the United States believes that through good faith negotiations, the parties can mutually agree on an outcome which ends the conflict and reconciles the Palestinian goal of an independent and viable state, based on the 1967 lines, with agreed swaps, and the Israeli goal of a Jewish state with secure and recognized borders that reflect subsequent developments and meet Israeli security requirements.’"

No screaming.  No complaints.  No hectoring.  Nothing.  An old Miller Lite ad comes to mind: "Tastes Great.  Less Filling."  Or perhaps the immortal lyrics given to Eliza Doolittle in the musical My Fair Lady: "Words, words, words! I’m so sick of words!… Is that all you blighters can do?"

All that sound and fury signifying, well, maybe nothing at all.  As TomDispatch regular Ira Chernus points out, it’s not just what the president says, but what he does that counts.  And when it comes to doing, with George Mitchell, Obama’s special Middle Eastern envoy (appointed on his second day in office) abruptly quitting — whether in frustration, despair, or disgust we don’t know — there’s no evidence that the president will do anything at all when it comes to those 1967 borders, not before the 2012 election anyway.

Let’s give David Bromwich, writing on the President’s Thursday speech for the New York Review of Books, the last word for now: "Obama has always preferred the symbolic authority of the grand utterance to the actual authority of a directed policy — a policy fought for in particulars, carefully sustained, and traceable to his own intentions."  (To catch Timothy MacBain’s latest TomCast audio interview in which Chernus discusses the strange, looking-glass world of Israeli-Palestinian nonnegotiations, click here, or download it to your iPod here.)  Tom

The Myths That Underpin The Failure Of American Policy In The Middle East 
By Ira Chernus

Tuches aufn tish: Buttocks on the table. That’s the colorful way my Yiddish-speaking ancestors said, "Let’s cut the BS and talk about honest truth." It seems like a particularly apt expression after a week watching the shadow-boxing between President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that brought no tangible progress toward an Israeli-Palestinian peace.

The truth, like the table, is usually hard and uncomfortable. President Obama’s carefully hedged public call for a two-state solution along Israel’s 1967 borders may indeed represent a new step. Maybe it will even prove part of some long-range game plan that will eventually pay off.  But here’s the problem: as of now, Obama shows no inclination to back his words with the power the U.S. government could wield. Until he does, those words won’t provoke any change in Israel’s domination of the Palestinians.

And there’s a deeper issue.  The influential Israeli columnist Sever Plocker pointed to the heart of the matter: the American president has "unequivocally adopted the essence of the Israeli-Zionist narrative." Plocker might have said the same about all top American political leaders and the U.S. media as well. The American conversation about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is dominated by the story that most Israelis tell.

Ass-Backward Realities

Tuches aufn tish. Let’s be honest. The Israeli story doesn’t merely distort the truth, it turns the truth ass-backwards. Eerily enough, its basic claims about the Palestinians more accurately describe the Israelis themselves.

The Israelis might as well be looking in the mirror and talking about themselves when they say things like "They are the aggressors; we’re the victims just defending ourselves." That’s part of an Israeli-generated myth of insecurity whose premise is that Israel bears all the risk in the conflict with the Palestinians. Obama fed into that myth in his recent "Arab Spring" speech when he called, in effect, for an even swap: the Palestinians would get a state and the Israelis would get security, as if the massively stronger Israelis are the main ones suffering from insecurity.  

In the process, he repeated a familiar mantra, "Our commitment to Israel’s security is unshakeable," and offered a vague warning that "technology will make it harder for Israel to defend itself."  Perhaps that was a coded way of hinting that someday some other Mideast nation might have a handful of nuclear weapons — as if any of them could threaten Israel, which already has as many as 200 nukes and can surely build more.

Obama did make one reference to what he called "the assumption of Palestinian security." That’s how the Israelis typically phrase their long-standing hope that the Palestinian police will become what Netanyahu once called Israel’s "sub-contractors," taking over from Israeli soldiers the job of quashing resistance to Israel and its policies.  Again, the premise is that Israel bears all the risk.

Yet the Palestinians are far more insecure than the Israelis. Like any victims of colonial military occupation, they’re constantly subject to the threat of death and destruction without notice, at the whim of the Israeli military, and increasingly from Israeli settlers as well. Over the last quarter-century, the conflict has killed roughly eleven Palestinians for every Israeli who died. And yet you’ll never find this line in the speech of an American politician: "Our commitment to Palestine’s security is unshakeable."

Obama did declare that "every state has the right to self-defense." In the next breath, however, he demanded that a new Palestinian state must have no army. Would any sovereign nation accept such a demand, especially if its closest neighbor had dominated and pummeled its people for years and possessed by far the most powerful military in the region?  Yet the idea of a "demilitarized" Palestinian state is a given in the U.S. and Israel, as if the only conceivable future threat could come from those occupied, not from the former occupier.

The staggering power imbalance between occupier and occupied points to another looking-glass-style distortion that dominates America’s conversation about the issue: the absurd idea that the two parties could negotiate as equals, that the weaker of the two, which has already given up approximately 78% of its territory, must be the one to make the major compromises, and then operate as a nation from a position of utter weakness.

Obama told a meeting of Jewish leaders in private that he knows the truth of the situation: "Israel is the stronger party here… And Israel needs to create the context for [peace] to happen." But as long as his public words reinforce the myth of Israel’s insecurity, the Israelis can safely resist any demands for change.

Staring Into The Mirror 

The Israelis justify their intransigence with yet another looking-glass claim: "We want peace more than anything, but they have no interest in peace." Israelis love to repeat a phrase coined decades ago by their foreign minister Abba Eban, speaking about Arab leaders: "They never miss a chance to miss a chance for peace." 

In reality, it’s the Palestinians who should lodge that complaint against Israel.  "Israel’s right needs perpetual war" is the way the eminent Israeli intellectual Zeev Sternhell sums up the situation. Netanyahu, like all right-wing Israeli leaders, has in fact built his career on his image as the toughest of hawks when it comes to the Palestinians. With the Israeli electorate shifting steadily rightward in the twenty-first century, that image serves him better than ever. So, even as he pleads his devotion to peace, he shows no interest in actually ending the conflict — and the creeping Israeli program of ongoing settlement-building in East Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank only guarantees that the conflict will continue.  

As it happens, however, the need for an enemy, and so for an ongoing conflict, isn’t restricted to the political right or the settlers. "Our enemies have made us one, and, thus united, we suddenly discover our strength" Theodore Herzl wrote in Zionism’s founding tract, "The Jews’ State." And perceptive Israeli commentators have been asking for years what would hold Israeli Jews together if they had no common Arab or Palestinian enemy. That is still "the defining question" for all Israelis, according to Avraham Burg, former speaker of the Israeli Knesset: "Can we continue to exist without a perennial adversary, without being victims of persecution?"

Sadly, the answer for most Israelis seems to be: no. A prominent Jewish columnist in the Jerusalem Post said it best: "Israelis get mad when you tell them we don’t have to keep going to war, that we’re strong enough to deter our enemies… People don’t want to hear anything about possibilities for peace… All they want to hear is ein breira, we have no choice, it’s either fight or die."

Israeli political life suffers from "a real obsession," according to the editors of Israel’s most respected newspaper, Haaretz, "a sense that we are constantly under attack.. an insanity of persecution."

That’s an old story, of course. "Israel’s position today is similar to its position after the wars of 1948 and of 1967," an editorial in Haaretz noted: "The potential for negotiations was there, but the [political] cost was considered too high. Now, too, maintaining the status quo appears to be preferable to making changes that Israelis perceive as threatening, even if they do not necessarily pose a genuine danger."

The recent Hamas-Fatah reconciliation gave Israelis a new imaginary danger to worry about. The news of Palestinian unity launched a verbal tsunami in Israel, a flood of warnings that a far-right theocratic ideology might easily take control of a Palestinian state. President Obama fed that fear when he said "Hamas has been and is an organization that has resorted to terror; that has refused to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist.  It is not a partner for a significant, realistic peace process."

"Israel obviously cannot be asked to negotiate with a government that is backed by the Palestinian version of al Qaeda," Netanyahu responded.

It’s just another case of Israelis staring into that mirror. Hamas has, in fact, been moving steadily toward a form of secular nationalism and greater political moderation. Its government in Gaza is busy fending off threats from the true theocrats of the Muslim right, who despise Hamas. The rare volleys of Hamas rockets that now come into Israel are triggered by and responses to Israeli attacks.

Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal has been saying for years that he and his party are absolutely willing to accept a two-state solution — implicitly accepting the permanent existence of Israel — as long as a majority of Palestinians approve it.  Meshaal now speaks of "peace" rather than merely "truce" and views the infamous Hamas charter, calling for the destruction of Israel, as no longer relevant.

When it comes to the all-important question of recognition, it’s Israel that refuses to recognize Hamas as a legitimate party or the Palestinians’ right to be a democratic state and choose their own government.  Meanwhile, the Israeli government has been doing exactly what it accuses Hamas of doing — opening the door to increasingly reactionary, racist, and theocratic laws. "Public opinion polls point to increasing extremism, bordering on racism, in Jews’ opinion of Arabs," as Haaretz has noted, so "it’s no wonder there is no public pressure on the government to advance the peace process." 

Israel is fast coming under the sway of far-right theocrats, and "ever more Israelis are infected by the symptoms of Messianic thinking: ‘We are right, and the whole world is wrong; hence we must no longer listen to anybody,’" as one Israeli Jewish columnist observed.

Then there’s the upcoming vote in the U.N. General Assembly in September, when Palestine is expected to be granted full status as a nation. In his speech, Obama echoed the Israeli line that the Palestinian push for recognition there will harm chances for peace. In fact the vote would promote the peace process by pushing a nay-saying Israel closer to what it now fears most: finally being forced by irresistible world opinion to negotiate peace rather than become a pariah state.

There’s one last point that Obama and American public discourse get absolutely backwards: the idea that being a friend of Israel’s means endorsing its popular narrative, which offers no more truth than Alice’s looking-glass. Real friends don’t enable their friends to engage in self-destructive behavior.  Real friends wouldn’t let them get so drunk on a delusional story that they have no compunctions about driving what might otherwise be a peace process off a cliff. 

The U.S. has the power to push the Israelis away from that cliff and head them in a new direction. There’s real truth in the common Israeli joke that the U.S. is "the eight-ton elephant that can sit down anywhere it wishes."

Yes, Obama can put his tuches anywhere he wants.  If he ever feels politically safe enough, he just might put it on the table.  Then, Israel might have to leave the looking-glass world and agree to start genuine peace negotiations.

Ira Chernus is a TomDispatch regular and Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Read more of his writing about Israel, Palestine, and the U.S. on his blog. To listen to Timothy MacBain’s latest TomCast audio interview in which Chernus discusses the strange, looking-glass world of Israeli-Palestinian nonnegotiations, click here, or download it to your iPod here.

Copyright 2011 Ira Chernus

The 535 Americans Who Are Blocking Peace In The Middle East

The home of the problem. Photo: Getty Images.


The US Congress Is So In Thrall To The American Israel lobby AIPAC That It More Of A Hindrance To The Peace Process Than The Knesset Itself.

By Mehdi Hasan
Published 19 May 2011
Courtesy Of "The New Statesman"

"I had 700 days of 'no' in Northern Ireland, and one 'yes'," remarked George Mitchell in May 2010. A year on, and having spent more than 800 days in the Middle East with no sign of a "yes" on the horizon in Ramallah or Tel Aviv, the frustrated former senator announced his resignation as President Obama's peace envoy to the region.

Cue much hand-wringing about the future of the "peace process". But there is nothing new about the Obama administration's failure to get Israelis and Palestinians back to the negotiating table; peace talks have been on hold since 2008. As the mild-mannered Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, a long-time ally of the US, noted in a recent interview: "It was Obama who suggested a full settlement freeze. I said OK, I accept. We both went up the tree. After that, he came down with a ladder and he removed the ladder and said to me, jump."

Obama, however, like George W Bush before him, is a distraction. When it comes to the US's Middle East policy, true power and influence lies elsewhere. Pronouncements from the executive branch of the US government attract much of the attention of foreign governments and the world's media; few outside (or, for that matter, inside) the US pay attention to the behaviour of the country's legislature when it comes to Israel and the Palestinians.

It is Congress that passes resolution after resolution backing Israel and condemning the Palestinians; it is Congress that approves arms sales to Israel and grants Tel Aviv billions of dollars in aid. Presidents, secretaries of state and special envoys come and go; meanwhile, Congress, whether Republican- or Democrat-controlled, always stands four-square behind Israel's occupation of the West Bank.

Following The AIPAC

The Congress of the United States consists of 100 senators and 435 members of the House of Representatives; in effect, just 535 Americans are blocking efforts to bring peace to the Middle East. Why? Forget the pious guff about Israel being the region's "only democracy" and a "valued friend and ally" of Washington. In the corrupt and dysfunctional US political system, where legislators are outnumbered by special interests, from the gun lobby to Big Pharma, the Israel lobby - specifically, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) that brags on its website about being "the most important organisation affecting America's relationship with Israel" - has a financial stranglehold on both main parties. According to William Quandt, a former adviser on the Middle East to the Nixon and Carter administrations, "70 per cent to 80 per cent of all members of Congress will go along with whatever they think Aipac wants".

It is Aipac that polices congressional votes on Israel, demands unconditional US support for the occupation of the West Bank and insists that Israel remain the largest single annual recipient of US foreign aid ($250 a year per Israeli, compared to $1 a year per African). Consider this: the upper and lower houses of Congress are more divided, polarised and partisan than in any other period in recent history. Democrats and Republicans agree on nothing. Except Israel.

Presidents who have tried to pressurise the Israelis - from Reagan to Obama - have found themselves attacked not just in the Knesset but in Congress. In the words of Paul Findley, a Republican from Illinois who served in the House of Representatives for 22 years before being
defeated by an Aipac-funded candidate in 1982: "Congress behaves as if it were a subcommittee of the Israeli parliament." The irony is that there is far more heated debate about Israel's actions on the floor of the Knesset than on Capitol Hill. "For 35 years, not a word has been expressed . . . in either chamber of Congress that deserves to be called debate on Middle East policy," Findley wrote in 2002.

A Move To J Street

On 2 May 2002, after Ariel Sharon's invasion of the West Bank and the destruction of the Jenin refugee camp, both houses of Congress overwhelmingly approved resolutions expressing "solidarity with Israel" - 352 to 21 in the House, 94 to two in the Senate.

On 20 July 2006, eight days after the start of Israel's war against Lebanon, Congress passed a resolution endorsing Israeli military action by a vote of 410 to eight. On 9 January 2009, as the Palestinian death toll from the Israeli air assault on Gaza topped 700, the House of Representatives passed a resolution "reaffirming the United States' strong support for Israel in its battle with Hamas". The margin was 390 votes to five.

These comically one-sided resolutions illustrate the power and influence of the Israel lobby on Capitol Hill - and the way in which craven legislators in both main parties blindly throw their support behind any and every act of belligerence. As Uri Avnery, the Israeli author and peace activist, once remarked: if Aipac "were to table a resolution abolishing the Ten Commandments, 80 senators and 300 congressmen would sign it at once".

But, slowly, the tide might be turning: the left-leaning, liberal Jewish lobby group J Street, founded in 2008, now provides political and financial support to about 50 members of Congress and aspires to become a counterweight to the hawks at Aipac. And on 22 May, pro-peace groups will hold a "Move Over, Aipac" rally in Washington, DC to try to remind legislators down the road at Aipac's annual policy conference not to conflate the views of the Israel lobby with US Jewry.

In September, the UN General Assembly will prepare for a vote on whether to recognise Palestine as a sovereign state. But Israel's illegal occupation of the West Bank is a reminder of just how irrelevant UN votes are. It is the votes on Capitol Hill that matter.

Obama Demolished Palestinian Chances For Statehood

U.S. Supports Israel's Demand For The Palestinian State To Be Demilitarized, It Supports Postponing Discussions On The Refugees and Jerusalem, It Talks About Israel's Security and Israel's Security Alone.

By Gideon Levy
Published 02:11 20.05.11
Latest update 02:11 20.05.11
Courtesy Of "Haaretz Newspaper"

Benjamin Netanyahu may as well have canceled his trip to Washington: Barack Obama did the work for him, or most of it. But the prime minister is already on his way, so he should at least send to the White House a big bouquet of flowers.

Netanyahu can sit back and relax. It's not that Obama didn't say clear, firm words on the Middle East; it's just that most, if not all of them could have been said by Netanyahu himself, who would then go on doing as he pleased.

	Palestinians march for unity in Ramallah, March 15, 2011.
	Photo by: Reuters

The 1,500 new apartments in Jerusalem will be built, speech or no speech. The real test for that speech, as for any other, is what happens next, and the suspicion is that nothing will happen at all.

Obama didn't say a word about what will happen if the parties disobey him. This was the king's speech, but the king already appears a little naked. Considering America's weakness, and the power of Congress and the Jewish and Christian lobbies working on behalf of the Israeli government, the Israeli right wing can relax and go on doing what it does.

Yesterday, the U.S. president demolished the Palestinian's only accomplishment so far - the wave of international support for recognition of statehood in September. September died last night. After America, Europe too will have to withdraw its support; hopes have ended for a historically significant declaration at the United Nations.

The Palestinians are left once again with Cuba and Brazil, while we get to keep America. Here's another reason for a sigh of relief in Jerusalem: No diplomatic tsunami is forthcoming, the United States is sticking with Israel.

Regrettably, the president also voiced reservations about the Palestinian unity government. The United States supports Israel's demand for the Palestinian state to be demilitarized, it supports postponing discussions on the refugees and Jerusalem, it talks about Israel's security and Israel's security alone, saying nothing about security for Palestinians. All these are impressive, even if virtual, achievements for Israel.

The Palestinians yesterday were not listed among the oppressed Arab people of the Middle East who need to be liberated and aided on the way to democracy. Obama spoke impressively about America's corrupt allies in the region, and provided further enlightened encouragement to the people of the region.

If the first Cairo speech provided the initial inspiration, Cairo 2 provided a more significant push. Obama and his determination on this should be praised. His words were heard not only in Damascus and Benghazi, but also in Jenin and Rafah. Did he mean to praise Majdal Shams as well? Hooray for the unarmed protesters, hoping Obama meant Palestinian ones as well. If he did, it's a pity he didn't say so.

When he mentioned the Tunisian vendor who was humiliated by a policewoman who overturned his stall - the vendor who later set himself and the revolution ablaze - was Obama thinking about the hundreds of Palestinian vendors who have suffered the exact same fate at the hands of Israeli soldiers and policemen? When he spoke nobly about the dignity of the oppressed vendors, was he speaking about their Palestinian brethren as well? The speech didn't show this enough.

The conflict between Israel and the Palestinian was sidelined in Obama's speech for the most part, more so than it deserved. This conflict still incites great passions in the Arab world, and with all due respect for the new Marshall Plan for Egypt and Tunisia, the Arab masses don't want to see another Operation Cast Lead and more checkpoints on their TV screens. When it got to us, the tone was different.

Yes, there were stern words about how a Jewish and democratic state is not compatible with an occupation. There was even a proper presidential plan - the '67 borders with corrections, a Palestinian state and a Jewish state, Israeli security and the demilitarization of Palestine.

But let's not get too excited. We've heard it before, not only from American presidents, but from Israeli prime ministers. And what did we get? Yet another Jewish neighborhood in East Jerusalem.

The heart wants to believe that this time it's different, but the head - wise from bitter experience after years of shelved peace plans and vacuous speeches - is finding it hard to believe.

The optimists will say that yesterday signaled the end of the Israeli occupation. The pessimists, and I, regrettably, among them, will say that it was just another speech. It changed virtually nothing for the better, virtually nothing for the worse.

Netanyahu Will Never Do What It Takes To Achieve Mideast Peace

Obama To Aides

Comment Reported In New York Times Comes Amid Growing Tensions Between Washington and Jerusalem Over The U.S. President's Backing Of A Palestinian State Within 1967 Borders.

Published 08:31 20.05.11
Latest update 08:31 20.05.11
Courtesy Of "Haaretz Service"

U.S. President Barack Obama does not think Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will ever make the concessions necessary to achieve a Middle East peace deal, the New York Times cited Obama aides as saying on Friday.

The comments attributed to associates of the U.S. president comes amid what is turning become into a veritable war of words between Israel and the U.S., following Obama's Mideast strategy speech on Thursday in which the American leader voiced his support for a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders.

	U.S. President Barack Obama delivering a speech about United States' policy on the Middle East and North Africa at the State Department in Washington May 19, 2011.
	Photo by: Reuters

Following Obama's speech, Netanyahu, who is set to meet the U.S. president later today, said Thursday that Israel would object to any withdrawal to "indefensible" borders, adding he expected Washington to allow it to keep major settlement blocs in any peace deal.

"Israel appreciates President's Obama commitment to peace," Netanyahu said, but stressed that he expects Obama to refrain from demanding that Israel withdraw to "indefensible" 1967 borders "which will leave a large population of Israelis in Judea and Samaria and outside Israel's borders."

In what seems to be a response to Netanyahu's comments, Obama aides told the New York Times that the U.S. president did not believe Netanyahu will ever be willing to make the kind of concessions that would lead to a peace deal.

Those comments, which seem to heat an already intense atmosphere between Netanyahu and Obama, comes just hours before a fateful meeting between the two leaders in the White House on Friday.

Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor expressed disappointment Thursday in regards to Obama's Mideast policy speech, saying he failed to propose a serious plan for achieving Mideast peace.

"Today, the president outlined his hopes for Mideast peace – a goal that we all share – but failed to articulate a serious plan for achieving this goal," Cantor said in a statement. "This approach undermines our special relationship with Israel and weakens our ally’s ability to defend itself."

"The President’s habit of drawing a moral equivalence between the actions of the Palestinians and the Israelis while assessing blame for the conflict is, in and of itself, harmful to the prospect for peace. In reality, Israel - since its creation - has always proven willing to make the sacrifices necessary for peace, while the Palestinians on numerous occasions have rejected those offers."