Clinton Calls Netanyahu Out on Settlement Expansion Project

Just days after Vice President Joe Biden’s good-will trip to Israel, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to deliver a stern warning about Israel’s announcement, which unfortunately coincided with Biden’s visit, that it will build 1,600 more housing units in East Jerusalem.  —KA

The Washington Post:

Relations with Israel have been strained during the Obama administration, and Biden’s trip was intended as a fence-mending mission. Now it has led to the biggest crisis between the two countries in years.

Clinton called the prime minister “to make clear the United States considered the announcement a deeply negative signal about Israel’s approach to the bilateral relationship and counter to the spirit of the vice president’s trip,” State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley told reporters at his regular news briefing. Clinton, he said, reinforced “this action had undermined trust and confidence in the peace process and in America’s interests.”

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Wikimedia Commons / U.S. Department of State

Better times for Bibi and Hillary: Israel’s Netanyahu meets with U.S. Secretary of State Clinton in May of 2009.