The United States and Israel are said to be trying to dial back a sense of mutual outrage that has developed over the blindsiding of Vice President Joe Biden in Israel.
It has been followed by complaints from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, press secretary Robert Gibbs and presidential counselor David Axelrod, expressing U.S. outrage at what Mrs. Clinton called an "insult to the United States." What should be deemphasized, instead, is the curious notion that it is up to the United States to design and broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement and micromanage the process of establishing a two-state solution.
If the United States contented itself with having diplomatic relations with two entities — Israel and the Palestinian Authority — that are in the midst of what appears to be a currently intractable dispute over territory, diplomatic life would be much simpler.
One can understand why the Obama administration was especially embarrassed by the announcement, during Biden's visit to Israel, that Israel planned to build 1,600 new housing units in East Jerusalem.
President Barack Obama demanded a year ago that Israel stop building new settlements entirely on the West Bank of the Jordan River, then discovered that his demand had no effective leverage over Israel except to cut off some $3 billion a year in military and economic aid, which he wasn't about to do.
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