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Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Obama's Israel Itinerary Skirts Settlements but Not Symbolism

Obama's Israel Itinerary Skirts Settlements but Not Symbolism
 President Barack Obama will embrace Jewish history while skirting the morass of West Bank settlements when he visits Israel this week - a selective itinerary laden with diplomatic signals.
The tour, running from Wednesday to Friday, is meant to warm Israelis to the cool-tempered, second-term Democratic leader who is prodding their rightist prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to hold fire on Iran and make way for a Palestinian state.
Some in Israel smart at the fact Obama took this long to come and that in a speech in Cairo in 2009, he appeared to argue that the legitimacy of Jewish sovereignty in the Middle East stemmed from the Holocaust - a European calamity foreign to many Arabs.

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