White House Uses Blackmail Diplomacy in Becoming Negotiator for Palestinian State

By Bill Wilson
Word of Life Ministry

The United States seems to have changed sides in the Middle East debate. The rift between the White House and the Israeli government over the building of homes in East Jerusalem is just the public manifestation of many more problematic and deeply concerning actions that US leadership has fomented in the past year. The Netanyahu Administration of Israel apparently has been bearing the weight of these dramatic policy shifts by internally shifting its own strategy toward going it alone in the Middle East as the White House has diplomatically taken a stand to blackmail Israel into accepting a Palestinian state defined by pre-1967 borders.

Case in point is a very disturbing article written by Avi Yellin for the Israel National News website. Yellin writes that The Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs revealed in a recently updated report that the "government of Israel has been concealing a change in arms policy by the United States against the Jewish State." Yellin says that the Netanyahu government has "refrained from protesting massive American weapons sales to Arab states in the region, an initiative that has eroded Israel's military edge over its neighbors." Conversely, the Institute reports that the US Administration has refused approval of any major weapons sales to the Israeli government.

This policy shift began with the previous Bush Administration, but is being executed by the current Administration with zeal. Yellin reports that "Government sources asserted that the refusal represents a new White House policy to link arms sales to the Jewish state with the Netanyahu government's willingness to submit on Washington's demands that Israel surrender Judea, Samaria and most of Jerusalem to the American-backed Palestinian Authority." The World Tribune reported March 18 that the White House ordered a shipment of smart bunker-buster bombs destined for Israel to be diverted to a US military base in the Indian Ocean. This was in response to the spat over the Jerusalem settlements.

These are the very political results of "Blackmail Diplomacy" announced by White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel at the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee meeting on May 5, 2009. Emanuel said, "Israel now faces a moment of truth - it can either acquiesce to international demands and in return have its most serious threats dealt with, or maintain the status quo and have those threats persist." Emanuel was saying that the White House would ignore Iran's nuclear threat, if Israel did not buckle to demands over a Palestinian state.

Zechariah 12:9 says,