Associated Press:
President Obama was "incensed" by Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu’s decision this weekend to demolish more Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem, according to a high administration official, and plans to reverse longstanding policy and go to Congress to seek a cutoff of military aid to the Israelis.
The official, who spoke on background, said that the president was angered that he has repeatedly stated that he will support Israel’s security needs but that these assurances have been "repaid in insults to American requirements in the region." The U.S. gives $3 billion a year in foreign aid to Israel.
Netanyahu authorized the destruction of more Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem months after the Obama administration said last spring that it opposes the practice. Privately, the president is said to have referred to the ongoing removal of Palestinians to make way for Jews as "ethnic cleansing by another name."
"We’re just waiting for the World Series to end," the official said, before the president will give a major speech to the country, laying out the American interest in resolving a conflict that the Obama administration believes is damaging national security as well as fomenting unrest in a volatile region.
"The president will explain that there are no such thing as settlements," the official continued. "’Settlements’ means people are going to a place where they belong. These are colonies. They are illegal under international law and undermine our country’s longtime commitment to the creation of a Palestinian state."
Obama will name all the other countries that have been created since the United Nations promised the creation of an Arab state in Palestine in 1947 and state that the world’s failure to grant 5 million Palestinians the right of self-determination is a "gross injustice" and a "blot on American ideals of equality."
The official predicted that the speech "will be a game-changer–high noon for the Israel lobby."
Israel’s supporters in the U.S. are widely thought to play a large role in determining American policy. "The Israel lobby" is not a formal group, but as described by a recent book by that name, authored by prominent professors at Harvard and the University of Chicago, is a "loose coalition" of organizations and individuals–many of whom are Jewish and have a religious belief in the Jewish right to a homeland in the Middle East– who promote Israel’s interests in the media, political races, the Congress and even the executive branch.
