Opinion: Obama's Middle East policy a failure

Ma'an- Reza Aslan - ...It did not have to turn out like this. When Obama traveled to Cairo last year, he spoke eloquently about the daily struggle of Palestinians living under Israeli “occupation” (the first sitting American president ever to use that word). He followed that historic speech by calling for an immediate and unconditional halt to all Israeli settlement construction in the occupied territories — “not some settlements, not outposts, not ‘natural growth’ exceptions,” as Hillary Clinton famously put it, but all settlement construction.

When that demand was ignored (much to the embarrassment of the White House), the Obama administration immediately backpedaled, accepting as “heroic” Netanyahu’s decision to put in place a 10-month moratorium on new settlement construction in the West Bank. As that moratorium expired last month, President Obama placed his reputation on the line by sending a secret letter to Netanyahu in which he offered substantially more aid, more weapons, and more attention to Iran’s nuclear ambitions in return for a 60-day extension of the settlement freeze. That too was embarrassingly rebuffed, leaving Obama looking weak and ineffectual to both its allies and enemies in the region. Read more