In Height of Rudeness, Obama Leaves Bibi to Eat Alone

B"H

Obama would never treat his enemies this way! Why would he treat his friend this way?

This requires a strong diplomatic response from Israel. Stand strong, Bibi!

This was beyond rude!

M
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Obama 'dumped Netanyahu for private dinner'
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/international/obama_dumped_netanyahu_for_private_fyKoe5dGuDsgFgQexOrmBJ
By Giles Whittell and James Hider
TIMES OF LONDON/NEWSCORE




For a head of government to visit the White House and not pose for photographers is rare. For a key ally to be left to his own devices while the President withdraws to have dinner in private was, until this week, unheard of. Yet that is how Binyamin Netanyahu was treated by President Obama on Tuesday night, according to Israeli reports on a trip viewed in Jerusalem as a humiliation, The Times reported Friday.

After failing to extract a written promise of concessions on settlements, Obama walked out of his meeting with Netanyahu but invited him to stay at the White House, consult with advisers and “let me know if there is anything new”, a U.S. congressman, who spoke to the Prime Minister, said.

“It was awful,” the congressman said. One Israeli newspaper called the meeting “a hazing in stages,” poisoned by such mistrust that the Israeli delegation eventually left rather than risk being eavesdropped on a White House telephone line. Another said that the Prime Minister had received “the treatment reserved for the President of Equatorial Guinea.”

Left to talk among themselves Netanyahu and his aides retreated to the Roosevelt Room. He spent a further half-hour with Obama and extended his stay for a day of emergency talks to try to restart peace negotiations. However, he left last night with no official statement from either side. He returned to Israel yesterday isolated after what Israeli media have called a White House ambush for which he is largely to blame.

“The Prime Minister leaves America disgraced, isolated and altogether weaker than when he came,” the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz said.

In their meeting Obama set out expectations that Israel was to satisfy if it wanted to end the crisis, Israeli sources said. These included an extension of the freeze on Jewish settlement growth beyond the 10-month deadline next September, an end to building projects in east Jerusalem and a withdrawal of Israeli forces to positions held before the second intifada in September 2000.

Newspaper reports recounted how Netanyahu looked “excessively concerned and upset” when he pulled out a flow chart to show Obama how Jerusalem planning permission worked and how he could not have known that the announcement that hundreds more homes were to be built would be made when Biden arrived in Jerusalem.

With the atmosphere so soured by the end of the evening, the Israelis decided that they could not trust the telephone line they had been lent for their consultations. Netanyahu and Ehud Barak, his Defense Minister, went to the Israeli Embassy to ensure that the Americans were not listening in.

The meeting came barely a day after Obama’s health reform victory. Israel had calculated that he would be too tied up with domestic issues to focus seriously on the Middle East.