Richard Haass: America First Doesn’t Necessarily Mean Israel First

EXCERPT:

HAASS: "There’s lots hanging in the air. I mean, as you said, the United States, America first doesn’t necessarily mean Israel first. The president, if you remember, pushed back against Netanyahu on attacking Iran. Israelis wanted to do it to, U.S. had its own deal with the Houthis, they had their own deal with Hamas, you could go on and on. On the other hand, the president is intervening in Israeli politics right now, essentially saying that the legal case against Bibi Netanyahu should be dropped. This is an interesting relationship. President, if you remember, when he ran, said one of his goals, to bring about a ceasefire in Gaza, to bring the hostages back home, you had a deal which the new administration then and the old administration jointly brought about. Then the Israelis balked at the second phase of it. The whole idea was, to get the hostages back, the Israelis would have had to agree to a cease fire and a pullout from Gaza. So that’s still where things stand. And things have gotten worse, as you just saw on that story. A lot of people are being killed. And the people of Gaza, the 2 million residents, are being packed into ever, ever smaller pieces of territory, so life there is unimaginably awful. So the question is, can now the administration resurrect the basis of a ceasefire?"