Radio France Internationale
RFI: King Abdullah of Jordan met this week in Washington with President Barak Obama. The monarch was the first Middle East leader invited to visit during the new administration. The dialogue permitted the US president to expand upon his new policies for the region. Obama invited the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Leader Mahmoud Abbas as well as the Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. The triple meetings signal Washington’s firm course toward the two-state solutions in the Middle East: Israel and Palestine. The analysis of IRmep director Grant Smith:
Grant Smith: They are firmly backing this desire to put a two state program into place, a Palestinian state alongside Israel, before all else. They are trying to shore that up by meeting with different sides at the same time in separate meetings.
Before this announcement there was a push for an exclusive Obama-Netanyahu meeting, Obama rejected that kind of program for a more open dialogue with parties to the conflict in Washington simultaneously. That’s a huge change, and members of the Obama cabinet have clearly stated, “the program is for two states, side by side, that’s the track we’re pursuing,” neither the overt preference, nor siding openly with the Israelis as we saw in the Bush administration.