This morning at the AIPAC convention Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sought to continue the effort to smooth over last week’s tensions between the Obama and Netanyahu governments.
A key line at the outset of her speech Secy Clinton stated the relationship is “rock solid” and “….there is no gap between the US and Israel on security….”
This is crucial. But it is also telling of where the gap is – America’s support for Israel’s security in the Obama era is unstinting, but it is the Obama team’s view that getting to a two state solution is in Israel’s security interests and they have ideas of how to get there that are, likely, different from PM Netanyahu’s ideas of how to get there. That is where “the gap” is. And, if negotiations get underway in the wake of last week’s events, that’s where the tensions will come from in the months ahead.