I’m quite strongly inclined to the view that the answer is “No”, but the question is still worth asking. It was triggered in my mind by a phrase in the introduction to the lead story of the BBC’s World Service (Radio) news bulletins late on 17 November and early the following morning. The story was the Obama’s administration’s “dismay” at Israel’s decision to approve 900 new homes in occupied Arab East Jerusalem “in defiance of world opinion“. The words emphasized were those of a BBC scriptwriter, not a spokesman for the Obama administration.
They reflected the fact that many if not most peoples of the nations of the world (so-called ordinary folk) are becoming increasingly fed up with Israel’s arrogance of power, its contempt for international law and its appalling self-righteousness and, also, are beginning to see the Zionist state for what it really is – the prime obstacle to peace, because of its preference for more and more land rather than peace.
Could it be that in the quietness of his unspoken mind, President Obama is counting on this growing anti-Israel sentiment, if and when it takes hold in America, to give him the freedom to respond to Netanyahu’s two-fingered gestures by taking on the Zionist lobby’s stooges in Congress?
Put another way, is it possible that Obama can live for the time being with the humiliation Netanyahu is heaping upon him because he believes that the Zionist state will so overplay its hand that it will alienate even Americans, enough of them to make it possible for him to do whatever is necessary to oblige Israel to be serious about peace on terms virtually all Palestinians and most other Arabs and Muslims everywhere could accept?
On this occasion, I’m not answering the question. Only asking it.