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Israel remains a strategic ally of the United States, the US State Department reaffirmed Monday amid a dispute over Israeli plans to build settler homes in east Jerusalem.

(IsraelNN.com) U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell has delayed his scheduled trip to Israel on Tuesday while the United States waits for a formal response from Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on his intentions concerning a building project for Jews in Jerusalem. Obama Under Fire U.S. President Barack Obama is behind the public chastising of Prime Minister Netanyahu over the housing plan, according to the New York Times. His handling of the diplomatic crisis with Israel is being increasingly criticized in the United States, with reporters confused following different signals by different American officials. The Obama administration apparently is not making...

An ill-timed municipal housing announcement in Jerusalem has mutated into one of the most serious conflicts between the United States and Israel in two decades, leaving a politically embarrassed Israeli government scrambling to respond to a tough list of demands by the Obama administration. The Obama administration has put Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a difficult political spot at home by insisting that the Israeli government halt a plan to build housing units in East Jerusalem. The administration also wants Mr. Netanyahu to commit to substantive negotiations with the Palestinians, after more than a year in which the peace process...

US envoy cancels Mideast trip, Israel feud deepens By AMY TEIBEL, Associated Press Writer Tue Mar 16, 7:40 am ET JERUSALEM – A U.S. envoy's postponement of his Mideast trip appeared Tuesday to deepen one of the worst U.S.-Israeli feuds in memory — even as Israel's foreign minister signaled his government had no intention of curtailing the contentious construction at the heart of the row. Hundreds of Palestinians hurled rocks at police and set tires and garbage bins ablaze across the holy city's volatile eastern sector, where the construction is planned. Plumes of black smoke billowed and the air reeked...

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Tuesday hailed the "unshakeable bond" between the United States and Israel in an effort to quell the diplomatic spat that has rocked ties between Washington and its closest Middle East ally. "We have an absolute commitment to Israel's security. We have a close, unshakeable bond between the United States and Israel," Clinton told a news briefing. Her comments marked a turn after days of tough U.S. talk following Israel's announcement last week that it would approve construction of a housing project in East Jerusalem, a move which infuriated the Palestinians and put hopes for...

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday that Israel must prove it is committed to the Middle East peace process, but brushed aside suggestions that U.S.-Israeli relations are in crisis. U.S. and Israeli officials are in intense talks over "steps that we think would demonstrate the requisite commitment to the process," said Clinton. She added that the Obama administration was awaiting a response from Israel to suggestions on how to repair damage caused by last week's announcement of new housing in East Jerusalem.

No matter how events play out, this story ends with U.S.-trained soldiers pointing their guns at Israel. ‘The stupidest program the U.S. government has ever undertaken” — last year that’s what I called American efforts to improve the Palestinian Authority (PA) military force. Slightly hyperbolic, yes, but the description fits because those efforts enhance the fighting power of enemies of the United States and its Israeli ally. First, a primer about the program, drawing on a recent Center for Near East Policy Research study by David Bedein and Arlene Kushner: Shortly after Yasir Arafat died in late 2004, the U.S....

A “Sister Souljah moment” in American politics occurs when a politician chooses to loudly rebuke a traditional ally to show they’re not beholden. The Biden dust-up is such a moment. Israelis are right to be insulted by the unequal and coerced treatment they have received at the hands of the Obama Administration. President Obama’sintentions are public and on the record. His Administration’s hostility toward the Jewish State is embedded in their agenda.No amount of hand wringing will change the facts. No amount of “Hasbara” will deflect their enmity. No amount of “explaining” will alter the Administration’s animosity or change their...

Kurtz was referring to Rashid Khalidi, close friend of Barack Obama and Bill Ayers. Khalidi is the former spokesman for Original Terrorist, Nobel Prize winner, and inventor of the suicide bomb, Yasser Arafat. Following the traditional career trajectory of washed-out radicals, Khalidi went from terrorist advisor to academia as a professor at the University of Chicago. He eventually would take over from Edward Said the Middle East studies program at Columbia, described as a “bubbling cauldron of anti-Semitism.” Details are scant about Obama’s time at Occidental College in California and Columbia University. We know that at Columbia, Obama studied under...

Why can’t the Obama administration simply ask Mahmoud Abbas to stand up and deliver, as Netanyahu did at Bar-Ilan last year, a ‘two states’ speech? Sixty-two has been a lousy year for American-Israeli relations, and all the signs are that the coming 63rd year of modern Israel is going to be worse – notwithstanding President Barack Obama’s warm Independence Day message. On the personal level, many people on either side of the bitter divide acknowledge a fundamental lack of trust between our two nations’ leaders. Much worse, there is acknowledgement that each side believes the other to be plain wrong-headed....

No previous American president has had so strained a relationship with Israel as Barack Obama. As Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren said in 2010, “Israel’s ties with the United States are in their worst crisis since 1975 ... a crisis of historic proportions.” Author and scholar Dennis Prager concurred, “Most observers, right or left, pro-Israel or anti-Israel, would agree that Israeli-American relations are the worst they have been in memory.” In the spring of 2011, David Parsons, spokesman for the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, said: “There's a traditional, special relationship between America and Israel that Obama is basically throwing out the window...

Vice President Joe Biden condemned an Israeli plan to build hundreds of homes in disputed east Jerusalem on Tuesday — a disagreement that tarnished a high-profile visit that had been aimed at repairing ties with the Jewish state and kickstarting Mideast peace talks.

Clinton underlined profound US doubts about Netanyahu’s commitment to peace. WASHINGTON –They applauded her entrance. They applauded intermittently throughout her speech. The loudest and most sustained ovation, predictably, came when she demanded that “Gilad Schalit must be released immediately and reunited with his family.” Overall, the reception, if not euphoric, was warm. But most importantly, even though just 10 days ago she had apparently questioned, in her ground-shaking 43-minute telephone conversation with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, whether Israel was truly committed to its bilateral relationship with the United States, not a soul among the 7,500 American pro-Israel activists who gathered...

AIPAC is a parody of itself. AIPAC's donor base is left-wing Democrats. Its chairman is a dyed in the wool supporter of President Obama. The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations is an antic joke. Their chairman has raised millions for various Obama campaigns and projects. In a moment of prideful boast he publicly assured those of us with doubts that President Obama would be "the first Jewish president." The emperor has no clothes. Of course, the actions of mainstream Jewish organizations and their leadership are not necessarily intended to benefit the Jewish state. They are most often...

PA president should come under pressure to compromise – and to take positions that give his people, and ours, the opportunity for genuine reconciliation. The Israeli government is moving toward accepting the Obama administration’s request to renew the building freeze in Judea and Samaria for another three months. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s support for the measure and Shas’s willingness to abstain in a vote would likely yield an approval of the plan in the appropriate cabinet forum. This is a necessary step, not principally because the US has sought the extension in return for a package of security incentives, various...

The humiliating treatment accorded Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu during his recent visit to the White House and the 13-point diktat that he received from President Barack Obama have brought relations between the US and Israel to a point of crisis. But however this particular dispute is played out in the days and weeks ahead, observers must ponder what will follow during the rest of the Obama presidency. Though much of the focus of Obama’s foreign policy has seemed to be a fixation with making nice with rivals and enemies, it has also been accompanied by what appears to be a...

The Middle East peace process is stalled thanks to a second deadlock engineered by the United States government. President Obama began the process with his call for a settlement freeze in 2009 and escalates it now with a major change of American policy on Jerusalem. The president seeks to prohibit Israel from any construction in its capital—in an exclusively Jewish suburb of East Jerusalem. This, despite the fact that all former administrations had unequivocally understood that the area in question would remain part of Israel in any final peace agreement. Objecting to this early phase of the planning process for...

Martyrs Brigades calls on PA to release jailed "fighters" to "defend J'lem." The armed wing of Fatah, the Aksa Martyrs Brigades, on Tuesday called on the Palestinian Authority to give back the weapons it had confiscated from the group’s gunmen so that they could participate in the “Jerusalem Intifada.” The call came as both the PA and Hamas continued to accuse Israel of planning to destroy the mosques on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. “We call on all the Palestinian security services in the West Bank to release all Palestinian fighters from prison and to give them back their weapons...

Would Muslims surrender Mecca? Should Catholics give up the Vatican? These may seem like ridiculous questions. The answer to both by any sane person would be "of course not." Why on earth would the answer to "Would Jews ever surrender Jerusalem?" be any different? The answer is simple. It shouldn't. With the exception of a seven year period in the sixth century when the Persians restored Jewish sovereignty, the Jewish people were denied a homeland from 70 C.E. until 1948. During that time the Jewish people suffered pogroms, expulsions, mass murder, persecution, and assorted other forms of denial of basic...

Although Israeli officials publicly play down the crisis in relations between Jerusalem and Washington, privately the language is much different. Sources close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu describe Obama as a “strategic catastrophe” for Israel. Officials in the Prime Minister’s Office, speaking on condition of anonymity to the nation’s top newspapers, see the Obama administration as a serious threat to the future of the State of Israel. On the record, Israel and the US have a “strategic partnership that is unbreakable”; off the record, the terminology is blunt to say the least. “President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton...