Charles Krauthammer explained the visibly warmer relationship on display today between President Obama and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is the result of the president’s abandonment of “the naive view he had when he came into office that he could remake the Middle East and restart negotiations.”
“After three years of negotiations with the reality of the Palestinians,” Krauthammer explained, “no interest in negotiations, walking out, and then sort of humiliating the United States by going against us in getting statehood recognition at the U.N. without any agreement, any concessions, any negotiations . . . I think they each can see closely together, look at Syria and look at Iran, and even though there remains a difference over what is the red line with Iran, the fact [is] that Obama seems to have recognized that Israel might need to strike earlier.”