My president looked as tense as I have ever seen him in the press reception he just had with Bibi Netanyahu. His face was reddened, sweat shone on his cheeks and forehead, his jaw was clenched as he listened to the prime minister. I sense their long meeting was also tense.
Obama differed sharply with Netanyahu when the Israeli P.M. kept insisting on the primacy of the Iranian threat over the necessity of Palestinian self-determination. "I personally think it runs the other way–" Obama said. To the extent that we make peace between Israelis and Palestinians– a lasting peace, a "wide-ranging" peace, not "a grudging peace, not a transitory peace"–it will make negotiating with Iran easier.
As Netanyahu promised to begin negotiations, but avoided any use of the word "state," I saw my president standing on his core values and speaking up at last for Palestinian human rights! He spoke of the absence of hope in Gaza.
"The people of Gaza have no hope. They can't even get clean water." Without humanitarian and reconstruction efforts, he suggested, no one can have peace. "Settlements have to be stopped."
Netanyahu seemed to me to be bullying Obama, or trying. He called on an Israeli reporter who promptly suggested that Obama was appeasing terrorists by talking to Iran. Felt like a plant. He said that the leaders had seen "eye to eye" on the importance of security–the Iran threat–when clearly they did not. He spoke of a threat that had united the region and the world–even the Arab states are afraid of Iran, he said–but Obama sat there stony-faced and maybe somewhat angry, too. I saw him smile only once in the photo op.
The most dramatic moment of the new presidency. And my president seemed strong in the face of right-wing fearmongering.
