JERUSALEM– Vice President Biden has spent the last three months preparing for his visit to the Middle East. Most of the preparations would not normally be needed, but considering Joe “Gaffe Master” Biden was to be the one involved, White House officials deemed the extra preparations especially necessary. “They spent a whole week making sure I wouldn’t make any magician jokes,” Mr. Biden told an ICTPT reporter. “I still don’t get what’s so bad about shouting ‘Allah-kazam!’ and pulling a coin from King Abdullah II’s ear.” Mr. Biden promised that he would refrain from doing so despite this.
All seemed to be going well at first. Biden made it to the residence of Israeli President Shimon Perez, and even kept from falling asleep when a planned opportunity for brief remarks turned into an hour-long opportunity for Mr. Perez to talk about his gout. However, a gaffe was finally committed when Mr. Biden praised Prime Minister Netanyahu for having taken “significant steps” towards peace and pledged “absolute, total, unvarnished commitment to Israel’s security.” As Mr. Biden was finishing his remarks, Israel announced the authorization by the Jerusalem District Planning and Building Committee of a plan to build roughly 1,600 housing units in East Jerusalem.
“Oops,” Mr. Netanyahu is known to have remarked.
In a meeting in Jerusalem, Mr. Netanyahu reportedly told Mr. Biden that he had no prior knowledge that the announcement would come today. “Sure we wanted to undermine the peace talks which are the sole purpose of your visit, but not while you were here,” he said. At the same time, an Interior Ministry spokeswoman stressed that there was “no connection” between the timing of the announcement and Mr. Biden’s visit, prompting Mr. Biden to ask, “How the hell does that make anything better?”
The White House immediately condemned the decision, with spokesman Robert Gibbs reminding all that President Obama’s stiff position against Israeli settlements in the West Bank was well known.
Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, reportedly said that this made it abundantly clear that “the Israeli government does not want negotiations, nor does it want peace.” Another Palestinian official told a ICTPT reporter that “It’s not like we didn’t know already. Netanyahu’s resistance to the peace process is almost as well known as Hamas’.”
Defense Minister Ehud Barak sought to play down the situation, saying that “This is an ultra-Orthodox city very close to the Green Line, and these are housing units for people who are struggling and cannot buy elsewhere, and who do not pay taxes, serve in the army, or even acknowledge the legitimacy of the State of Israel.”
In surprisingly gaffe-free written statement, Mr. Biden himself said “I condemn the decision by the government of Israel to advance planning for new housing units. The substance and timing of the announcement, particularly with the launching of proximity talks, is precisely the kind of step that undermines the trust we need right now.”
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1155460.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/10/world/middleeast/10biden.html?hp
http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=170611
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/11554
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