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David Frum writes:
Obama's messages to Abbas:
1) You should be talking to Israel, not UN
2) Your inclusion of Hamas in your government is unacceptable – and a problem for you not us to resolve
3) Any deal with Israel must be final. No using “declaration of statehood” as a basis for further demands against Israel.
4) Your state will be non-militarized.
5) The border question will be resolved broadly in your favor: i.e. you get territory equal to pre-67 West Bank and Gaza. But the security question will be resolved in Israel’s favor: we believe that they need to be protected from you, not you protected from them.
Bottom line: that was not the speech of a man who sounds like he intends to work very hard on Israel-Palestinian peace talks over the next 18 months.
At The Corner, Tevi Troy says this about how Obama's speech sounds to the Jewish community:
There were three main problems with the address. The first is the way in which Obama explained the ongoing Israeli–Palestinian conflict...A plausible interpretation of [what he said] is that, in Obama’s view, Palestinians walked away as a result of Israel’s settlement activity, and the Palestinian walkaway is therefore justified
Second is that Obama did not demand an end to Palestinian misbehavior so much as predict, in a removed way, that such behavior will not serve them well.
Third, Obama placed few limits on his support for a two-state solution.
Hayley Peterson at the Examiner writes:
Obama compared Assad's violent crackdown on political protestors in Syria to Moammar Gadhafi's murderous oppression in Libya, but the commander-in-chief refrained from calling for the Syrian leader to step aside.
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