http://frontpagemag.com/2013/davidhornik/war-of-words-in-the-middle-east/
President Obama capped off the substantive parts of his visit to Israel with a speech to Israeli students Thursday afternoon in which he again focused heavily on the Palestinian theme. He repeated the standard, discredited claim that “given demographics,” Israel could only survive as a Jewish and democratic state by creating an “independent and viable Palestine.”
He allowed that: “There is no question that Israel has faced Palestinian factions who turned to terror, and leaders who missed historic opportunities. That is why security must be at the center of any agreement.”
Obama’s stock words, though, about the need to create Palestine drew lusty ovations from parts of a crowd that included a good many Arab students and left-wing Jewish students. Obama has been criticized for declining to address the Israeli Knesset. Claims that he was seeking a more congenial audience of Israeli students seemed borne out by Thursday afternoon’s address and its setting. He went so far as to seem to circumvent Israel’s political leadership by declaring that “political leaders will not take risks unless people push them to take risks.”
It was not hard to see shades of the same, delusions-of-grandeur, world-changing Obama who had addressed a Cairo audience of students almost four years ago, although in a different context and with different aims.
Earlier in the day Obama had gone to Ramallah for a meeting with Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas. At their joint press conference Obama retracted demands he made during his first term for an Israeli settlement freeze, saying no preconditions should be set for Israeli-Palestinian talks.
Yet, in his Jerusalem speech, Obama went back to making hard knocks against Jewish life over the 1967 Green Line, calling it “counterproductive” while sparing the PA any criticism for problematic behavior like systematic incitement and rampant anti-Israeli violence.
And not only anti-Israeli; Obama’s arrival in Israel on Wednesday had “sparked rage on the Palestinian street, as hundreds of Palestinian protesters rallied in Ramallah and Bethlehem against the visit. The protesters ripped posters of the American president and sprayed swastikas on others.”
It continued on Thursday during his Ramallah visit, as
Around 150 demonstrators chanted anti-American slogans, saying they wanted weapons not presidential visits.
“We want RPGs, not collaboration with the CIA,” they shouted, referring to rocket-propelled grenades….
In the Gaza Strip…Palestinian opposition to Obama’s visit was more militant.
Guerrillas fired two rockets at southern Israel in the early morning, causing only slight damage, in a signal that the world should not ignore them in any discussions on regional diplomacy.
Dozens of protesters in Gaza city smacked pictures of Obama with the soles of their shoes, burned US flags and chanted that the president should “get out of Palestine.”
The contrast between such conduct and his uniformly gracious reception in Israel clearly did not persuade Obama that an enduring cultural difference between Israel and the two Palestinian entities makes grandiose talk of a definitive peace hollow.