White House Blasted for Playing Hardball with Israel

JERUSALEM, Israel -- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has drawn fire for saying on election day that foreign-backed leftist groups were busing Arabs to the polls to defeat him.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called that charge "racist" and suggested that a two-state solution in the Middle East is impossible.

Since Netanyahu's solid victory in the election, the Obama administration has threatened to pull U.S. support from Israel at the United Nations because of the prime minister's pledge that a Palestinian state wouldn't happen on his watch.

In an interview with MSNBC, Netanyahu said his backing of a Palestinian state hasn't changed since 2009 and has always been dependent upon several conditions:

• Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state,
• Defensible borders,
• And a united Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

Abbas has rejected all of those conditions.

Meanwhile, the Gatestone Institute's Khaled Abu Toameh reported in The Jerusalem Post that the PLO leadership in the West Bank (biblical Judea and Samaria) is making detailed plans to end economic and security cooperation with Israel.

The Palestinians will also proceed with efforts to charge Israel with war crimes before the International Criminal Court in The Hague, The Netherlands.

"Halting security cooperation with Israel means that Abbas and the PLO will be paving the way for Hamas to extend its control from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank. With that, the Palestinians would have another Islamist state that seeks to eliminate Israel," Toameh wrote.

In a speech on the Senate floor Thursday, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., delivered a scorching attack on the administration's treatment of Israel and Netanyahu.

Calling the decision to consider withdrawing support for Israel at the U.N. "a historic and tragic mistake," Rubio cited a list of incidents in which President Barack Obama and his administration slighted, berated, or spoke ill of the Israeli prime minister.

"I think Netanyahu is right," Rubio said about the security concerns Israel faces. "The conditions do not exist for a peace deal with people who teach their children that killing Jews is a glorious thing."

He added, "Allies have differences, but allies like Israel, when you have a difference with them and it is public, it emboldens their enemies to launch more rockets out of southern Lebanon and Gaza, to launch more terrorist attacks, to go to international forums and delegitimize Israel's right to exist. And this is what they're doing."

Rubio also claimed the alliance with Israel is not a Republican or Democratic issue.

"If this were a Republican president doing these things, I would be even angrier... No people have suffered more at the hands of this violence and this terrorism than the people of Israel. And they need America's support--unconditionally," Rubio said.

Watch more of Rubio's address below:

Toameh wrote, "Abbas and the international community -- especially the U.S. administration -- are ignoring the fact that the Palestinians already have two separate mini-states, in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The two-state solution was born the day Hamas kicked Abbas out of the Gaza Strip and turned it into an Islamic emirate.

"In the end," he concluded, "the Palestinians got two states that are even at war with each other. Now, by joining forces with Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Abbas is paving the way for turning the West Bank into another Islamist state."