Little behind Obama's tough Mideast talk: analysts

[Scurrilous]

<snip>

"The Obama administration is hardening its tone against Israel, but analysts warned Wednesday the tough talk was mere bluster hiding the lack of a viable plan to revive the Middle East peace process.

"You've had three 'no's' to an American president in his first year," Aaron David Miller, who has served as advisor on Middle East peacemaking to previous US administrations, told AFP.

President Barack Obama is now "faced with the default position, which is words," said Miller from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

"And the louder they shout, the more there is a paradox. The tougher the words are, the weaker we look."

Ten months into office, Obama has hit a brick wall as his high-profile push to restart negotiations falls flat, damaging his broader aim to improve ties with the Arab and Muslim world.

After coming into office vowing to make the push for an elusive peace a top priority, the administration appears weaker than ever in the Middle East.

Israel's hawkish Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly defied US calls to totally halt settlements; and the Palestinian leadership -- weaker and more divided than ever -- refuses to resume talks without such a freeze."

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Rejecting Obama, U.S. Jews push W.Bank settlement

<snip>

"President Barack Obama may be telling Israelis that building settlements round Jerusalem risks dangerously fuelling Palestinian anger, but some of his fellow Democrats brought the opposite message to the city on Wednesday.

Dov Hikind, a member of New York state's assembly, looked out over Jerusalem's Old City and dismissed the "extreme" view on the matter taken by his party's president.

He urged fellow American Jews to buy homes on occupied land rather than in traditional U.S. vacation spots.

"I'm trying to get a whole bunch of my friends to actually buy," said Hikind during a tour of settlement housing projects for several dozen potential U.S. investors.

"Rather than buying second homes in Florida, we want people to buy in Israel," he said, having watched a foundation stone laid for an extension to the Nof Zion, or Zion View, settlement.

Palestinians, whose leaders declared this week's Israeli government approval for more settlement building near Jerusalem a killer blow to peace, reject Hikind's description of Nof Zion as "Israel", as it lies on occupied land they want for a state.

But his views, shared by significant numbers of American Jews, many of them Democrat voters, are an indication of Obama's difficulties in holding to his demands that Israel halt its expansion of settlements in the interests of a peace agreement."

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[niceypoo]

1. Stop sending Israel money

...until they end their racist apartheid system. That would get their attention.

[lamp_shade]

2. "Cute" little behind Obama.

[oberliner]

3. Kind of a perverted subject heading

How is the size of Obama's behind relevant?