Obama sees Netanyahu as most disappointing of all Mideast leaders — report

Source: Times of Israel

The Atlantic: Israeli PM is ‘in his own category’ when it comes to those who frustrate US president; article cites ‘condescending’ lecture by PM, asserts that Obama sees Netanyahu as ‘too fearful and politically paralyzed’ to secure two-state solution

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “is in his own category” when it comes to the Middle East leaders who have most deeply disappointed President Barack Obama, according to a major overview of the Obama presidency, featuring numerous interviews with the president, published online Thursday by The Atlantic.

In the piece, headlined “The Obama Doctrine,” writer Jeffrey Goldberg goes to great lengths to trace the president’s growing disillusionment, over the course of his presidency, with the possibility of changing the region for the better. “Some of his deepest disappointments concern Middle Eastern leaders themselves,” Goldberg writes. Of these, “Benjamin Netanyahu is in his own category.”

According to Goldberg, “Obama has long believed that Netanyahu could bring about a two-state solution that would protect Israel’s status as a Jewish-majority democracy, but is too fearful and politically paralyzed to do so.”

To illustrate Obama’s impatience with Netanyahu, one of several Middle Eastern leaders said to have questioned the president’s understanding of the region, Goldberg relates an incident during an undated Obama-Netanyahu meeting, at which the Israeli prime minister “launched into something of a lecture about the dangers of the brutal region in which he lives.”

Read more: http://www.timesofisrael.com/obama-sees-netanyahu-as-most-disappointing-of-all-mideast-leaders-report/

The Atlantic article here: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/04/the-obama-doctrine/471525/