The Obama administration's hysterical response to Israel's announcement that it will continue to build new homes for its expanding population in disputed territory ought to evoke one response: Methinks thou doth protest too much.
Given that the United States is supposed to be committed to the parties determining ultimate legal ownership of the land in final status negotiations, what is going on?
The Palestinian Authority is the only side refusing to sit across the table from its interlocutor without preconditions. Recent reports indicate that Mamhoud Abbas and company are still inculcating the next generation of budding terrorists in the abc's of antisemitism, refusing to put Israel on the map in their authorized school books and fanning the flames of Islamic extremists at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem - all of which is incitement and a gross violation of the Roadmap. As for Hamas, the other Palestinian authority running Gaza, it is just openly dedicated to Israel's annihilation.
None of that is preventing the Obama administration from insisting that Israel negotiate with one half of the Palestinian split personality.
In fact, the words of Vice President Biden, Secretary of State Clinton, and top advisor David Axelrod in the last few days suggest, instead, that what really concerns the human rights gurus in the White House is preserving the option of apartheid Palestine. After all, the purpose of denying the ability of a Jew to build a house on land that theoretically may one day change hands, is to ensure that a Jew-free Palestinian state can come into existence unimpeded.
This strategy is not only repugnant, it is nonsensical. Making settlements the issue will only have the predictable effect of pushing the Palestinians further away from the negotiating table.
Reading between the lines, the true explanation of the hyperbole of describing the announcement of housing plans as "insulting" - to use Clinton's word - is something else entirely: Iran. Ironically, when Vice-President Biden went before the Israeli public on March 11 and told them "The United States is determined to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, period," only politeness prevented Israelis from laughing out loud. Nobody believed him.
Everyone knows that the UN is not going to deliver a Security Council resolution imposing serious sanctions on Iran in time to prevent an Iranian nuclear weapon. Every time Obama officials claim they are working on sanctions, it just reinforces the conclusion that they have absolutely no intention of doing what is necessary to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran.