The Right’s Nutty Reaction to Obama’s Middle East Speech

-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger

President Obama’s middle east speech contained this exact quote: “The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states.”

So started the insanity. The fact that this has been the U.S. policy over several administrations seems to be lost on the outraged.

Even the NY Times is getting into the act. In one sentence they claim that “using the 1967 boundaries as the baseline for a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute” is a first by an American president, and just two paragraphs later quote President George W. Bush using the phrase: “it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949,” another way of describing the 1967 boundaries. Those two statements, by Obama and Bush, convey the same concept.

In 2009 Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said:

We believe that through good-faith negotiations the parties can mutually agree on an outcome which ends the conflict and reconciles the Palestinian goal of an independent and viable state based on the 1967 lines, with agreed swaps, and the Israeli goal of a Jewish state with secure and recognized borders that reflect subsequent developments and meet Israeli security requirements.

Where was the manufactured outrage then?

In 2008 President George W. Bush, on a middle east trip, said:

I believe that any peace agreement between them will require mutually agreed adjustments to the armistice lines of 1949 to reflect current realities and to ensure that the Palestinian state is viable and contiguous.

In 2005 President George W. Bush, at a White House meeting, said:

Any final status agreement must be reached between the two parties, and changes to the 1949 Armistice lines must be mutually agreed to.

President Obama is following the same policies put forth by George W. Bush. To claim that Obama’s speech represents some departure from previous U.S. policy is absurd.

Andrew Sullivan notes the immediate hysteria and hypothesizes that “it was the Israelis who immediately got their US media mouthpieces to spin the speech as some sort of attack.”

Anonymous Liberal tweeted:

I never cease to be amazed by the right-wing’s ability to – in unison – decide that a previously uncontroversial position is now anathema

H/T: Kevin Drum, Walter Russell Reed (cool image at bottom), Jeffrey Goldberg, Charles Johnson.