Israel Matzav: C is for Cookie, that's good enough for me

C is for Cookie, that's good enough for me

The White House has finally released a picture of President Obumbler's meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu on Monday night. The picture (at left) shows the President and the Prime Minister eating cookies in the Oval Office dining room. The meeting was apparently a good meeting.

Meanwhile, a White House official has called the meeting "very straightforward and a good positive discussion of all the key issues' lacking any drama or big expectations."

But Haaretz couldn't leave it at that.

But Dr. Stephen Cohen, President of The Institute for Middle East Peace and Development Partners in Peace, called the meeting "a non-meeting."

"They just talked past each other. I don't see how they can save Abbas by just saying that they want to save Abbas," said Cohen, who is also the author of the recently published book Beyond America's Grasp: A Century of Failed Diplomacy in the Middle East.

"There is a way of making him a realistic candidate, but it's very far from what he'll be hearing from Netanyahu and Obama this time."

Cohen said he believes Netanyahu must be faced with the choice between settlement growth and the maintenance of Israeli nuclear ambiguity.‬

"This old-style method of Senator [George] Mitchell going back and forth trying to move one inch a week didn't take us anywhere," he added, referring to Obama's special envoy to the Middle East.

That assumes the meeting is about the 'Palestinians' - you may recall that I argued that it was about Iran. Haaretz continues to claim otherwise.

In the photo, which was released on Friday, the pair are sitting around a dinning table, speaking and smiling as if the relations between their two countries had never been strained. A painting hangs on the wall beside the two leaders, which if Netanyahu did not see it, or saw it and did not understand its significance, then Obama, who recently won the Nobel Peace Prize, must have taken the trouble to explain to him its historic importance.

In the picture, which was painted in 1865 by the artist George Peter Alexander Healy, Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, is seen conferring with William Sherman, Ulysses Grant and David Porter, the commanders of the Union army. During conversations the four men held on the River Queen steamboat on March 27 and March 28 of that year, just over a week before the end of the U.S. Civil War, they discussed the conditions of the peace treaty they would offer the defeated Confederate forces. The accord, even if it had many deficiencies, brought about the reunion of the North and South, the economic recovery of the South, the abolition of slavery and the emancipation of African Americans.

Obama's message to Netanyahu, if there really was such a message, is quite clear: If you end the blood feud and make a peace of the brave, you will be remembered in history as a great leader, like Lincoln (the former president most esteemed by Obama).

I wonder if anyone at the White House thought of that before they released the photo. Maybe Obama was telling Netanyahu that you have to fight a bloody war before you can make peace.

Let's just say that someone has confirmed my report from last Tuesday and leave it at that.

By the way, here's a picture of the painting:

Despite Haaretz, the US will not pressure Israel and the 'Palestinians' to resume talks.

The U.S. said it would not pressure Israel and the Palestinians to resume direct peace talks unless both sides are ready, senior U.S. officials were quoted as saying in a report published Saturday by London-based Arabic-language newspaper A-Sharq Al-Awsat.

"The U.S. will not back down from its policy that refuses to negotiate over negotiations," one official was quoted as saying, adding that Washington won't pressure the two sides into direct talks for fear that they will fail.

Another official told the newspaper that U.S. envoy George Mitchell continues to lay the groundwork for peace talks in the Middle East, which the official said are of utmost importance to the Obama administration.

"No one expects results overnight," said the official. "We don't want to press for negotiations before all sides are ready."

So I guess Netanyahu and Obama discussed something else on Monday night.
Israel Matzav: C is for Cookie, that's good enough for me