Little Green Footballs has busted Reuters for cropping out an “activist’s” knife from a photo taken on board the Mavi Marmara. The original photo, published by Turkey’s Hurriyet (and, to their credit, by AP) clearly shows one of a group of “activists” standing over a wounded Israeli soldier (in the lower right corner of the [...]
Netanyahu 1, Obama 0
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Score one for Netanyahu.
Haaretz is reporting that the United States has dropped demands for freezing any construction in Jerusalem, indicating that Netanyahu’s firm stance and consistent message of Jerusalem being off the table is paying off.
Just as laudable, though, were the other stipulations that Netanyahu insisted be part of this new “gesture” toward the Palestinians of a nine-month temporary settlement freeze:
- This freeze will exclude some 2,500 housing units on which construction has already started.
- Some natural growth will be exempt, e.g., kindergartens and schools and other special cases where construction is necessary to maintain a “normal life”.
- This freeze must have a clear “exit plan”, i.e., it is a confidence-building measure that must be matched by reciprocal steps from the PA and Arab states. If these fail to materialize, Israel wants an American guarantee that it will not oppose renewed building.
So, although there is some sort of settlement freeze in the works now, it is not at all what Obama had been pushing and its details seem to be almost entirely controlled by Netanyahu.