In December of 2011, former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Thomas Pickering, emboldened by a speech made by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, sent her a few ideas as to how to reignite the Palestinian-Israel peace negotiations that had reached a stalemate. A newly released email captured the exchange.
War was out of the question. The change, Pickering insisted, must come in the form of peaceful demonstrations. Those protests, he continued, must be female-only, because male involvement runs the risk of violence.
The Palestinian women have to begin this. Some few already have. They should use peaceful demonstrations and sit-ins in their own territories calling for peace and seeking to get their own leadership — which is more than willing — also to support them if they look successful. They must develop growth and momentum, just like Tahrir Square, and attract more women to participate and thus gain world attention — not easy to do in their area and under their conditions. Their leadership has shied away from this idea because they can't control it; they too are afraid of being replaced by a Tahrir Square style action. Women acting alone could help counteract that thinking.
How seriously Clinton took Pickering’s advice is unknown. Yet, this communication reveals how apt the Obama administration was in generating unrest in the Middle East to intimidate Israel into accepting Palestinian statehood.
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Also on display in this email was the White House’s distaste for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. We already knew that President Obama is not his biggest fan. He did not even grant him a meeting when he arrived in Washington, D.C. last year to speak in front of Congress. Moreover, Obama essentially ignored Netanyahu’s repeated warnings that the Iran Deal would have catastrophic consequences. Recent reports also revealed that the NSA had been spying on Netanyahu and his aides.
In his urgent email, Pickering noted that they can’t count on the Israeli leader to move forward with Palestinian negotiations because he is a stubborn potentate.
“Netanyahu is not going to move,” he said.
(H/T Free Beacon)
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