Here's Obama's Real Motive in Israel

President Obama is keeping intense pressure on Israel not because he wants to destroy relations but because he wants to boost the political prospects of centrist Tzipi Livni, writes Jeffrey Goldberg. Obama would love to force out current prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu (the president doesn't think he's "very bright"), but short of that he wants to make Netanyahu boot far-right members of his coalition. It's the only path to peace.

"The goal is force a rupture in the governing coalition that will make it necessary for Netanyahu to take into his government Livni's centrist Kadima Party (he has already tried to do this, but too much on his terms) and form a broad, 68-seat majority in Knesset that does not have to rely on gangsters, messianists and medievalists for votes," Goldberg writes at the Atlantic.
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