By Rand Paul
Obama acts as though we no longer have a Constitution
A leading Palestinian Authority said in an interview broadcast earlier this month that he supported violence against Israel, including a nuclear attack.
For all his legendary powers of persuasion, Bill Clinton never could quite sweet-talk Yasser Arafat and Ehud Barak into closing the deal on a final status peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority back in 2000. Looks like he whiffed again with Jimmy Page and and Robert Plant.
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas again insisted at a two-day "Freedom and Dignity" conference in Ramallah last week that Palestinians who murder Israeli Jews cannot be punished.
U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry on Sunday urged Turkey to speed up and cement an American-brokered rapprochement with Israel, and he explored with Palestinian officials new ways to relaunch Mideast peace efforts.
Turkey has become the first state to appoint and recognize an ambassador to Palestine.
Palestinian officials say Palestinian Prime Minister Salaam Fayyad has resigned.
Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has tendered his resignation to President Mahmoud Abbas.
Brokering an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement for recent American presidents, it's been the holy grail of foreign policy. Unfortunately for President Obama, a comprehensive accord is just not in the cards for his second term.
One key shift in U.S. policy was overlooked in the barrage of news about President Obama's eventful 50-hour visit to Israel last week. That would be the demand that Palestinians recognize Israel as the Jewish state, called by Hamas leader Salah Bardawil "the most dangerous statement by an American president regarding the Palestinian issue."
Symbolism matters, and President Obama knows it. When the president spoke at Georgetown University in 2009, his advance team asked that the Roman Catholic university cover an image derived from the first three Greek letters of the name of Jesus Christ.
Israel is a land of symbols. It's fitting then that President Obama's arrival in the Holy Land on Wednesday was bedeviled by a breakdown. The wrong fuel for the president's limousine (diesel instead of gasoline) was quickly remedied, but four years of U.S. policies that have fueled turmoil in the region won't be fixed so easily.
As President Obama wrapped up his three-day visit to Israel Friday, he spent some solemn moments at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, relighting the eternal flame there, laying a wreath and vowing to fight anti-Semitism and racism of all kinds.
Meeting with Palestinians leaders in the West Bank, President Obama condemned an overnight rocket attack from Gaza.
In separate talks before West Bank Palestinians and Israeli college students that carried echoes of Abraham Lincoln's call to "think anew and act anew," President Obama urged both groups Thursday to abandon old ways of thinking and search for new means to reach peace while it was still possible.
President Obama arrived in Ramallah on Thursday morning for a meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. The meeting comes at a time when Palestinians are pushing Mr. Obama to ratchet up his involvement with peace talks.
