Netanyahu Warns Obama on Talks as He Challenges Livni

[bijou]

Feb. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Even before Benjamin Netanyahu finds out whether he will be Israel’s next prime minister, he is sending a message to President Barack Obama that he won’t be pushed around.

Netanyahu, the Likud party candidate who narrowly leads Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni ahead of elections tomorrow, last week took reporters to Arab parts of Jerusalem, where he helped establish Jewish footholds when he was previously prime minister. No pressure, he said, would make him cede those neighborhoods “to our enemies.”

Just as he confounded former President Bill Clinton in the 1990s, Netanyahu probably will resist if Obama pushes too hard to extract Israeli concessions for peace in the Middle East.

“He’s extremely effective politically, unbelievably smart and relentlessly suspicious when it comes to the Arabs and the Americans,” says former U.S. negotiator Aaron David Miller, author of “The Much Too Promised Land: America’s Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace.”

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Since many other world leaders have had a go at Obama, I guess Netanyahu doesn't want to be left out.

[thundley4]

Maybe an open confrontation between Israel and a liberal/demonrat president is what it will take to wake up the Jewish people in this country.  In many ways they remind me of the blacks in that they both vote heavily in favor of the democrats even after being held on the plantation in their own ways.

[DumbAss Tanker]

Maybe an open confrontation between Israel and a liberal/demonrat president is what it will take to wake up the Jewish people in this country.  In many ways they remind me of the blacks in that they both vote heavily in favor of the democrats even after being held on the plantation in their own ways.

I doubt it.  As a voting block, 2/3 of them seem much more committed to a Liberal social(ist) agenda for the US than to any other thing in the world, including Israel.  Which is itself a socialist state, FWIW, but at least it's a Western democracy, which puts it a couple centuries up on its competition.

[Baruch Menachem]

in my opinion, it is the socialist flavor of the place that gives it so much grief with the arab population.   Being part of the perpetual outs in a socialist state is a miserable way to live.

I also give credit for the socialist nature of britian in the 60s for creating the grievances in N. Ireland.  Socialism is very hard on minorities.


Which makes me think the next four years are going to be quite a shock to quite a lot of people.


I like Bibi a lot.   He talks strait.  Which probably confuses the hell out of DC

[JohnnyReb]

I picture Netanyahu holding Obama by the ear and saying, "Now listen here boy....."

[Eupher]

I picture Netanyahu holding Obama by the ear and saying, "Now listen here boy....."

Yep. He's nothing if straightforward. No room for bullshit with him.