Posted on 07/03/2012 1:27:28 AM PDT by Eleutheria5
Yitzchak Shamir, who passed away Saturday, called Binyamin Netanyahu "squishy" and "too soft," according to James Baker, who was Secretary of State under George H. W. Bush.
Shamir himself was "really hard-line," in Baker's view. However, the diplomat said, Shamir's relationship with President George H. W. Bush got off to a bad start when Bush felt Shamir had misled him regarding settlement in Judea and Samaria (Yehuda and Shomron).
An interview with Baker last year gives fascinating insights into the dynamics that led to the Madrid Conference in 1991 and the Oslo Accords in 1993.
The loan guarantee request came up just as the U.S. was assembling a coalition to eject Iraq from Kuwait, Baker recalled. "One of the major things we did was to keep Israel from being involved in that war, but I give credit to Yitzchak Shamir. He was really hard-line. Did you know that after [Benjamin] Netanyahu became Prime Minister the first time Shamir called him squishy, too soft, he’d given away too much? So that’s how hard-line he was."
Shamir was presumably referring to Netanyahu's agreeing, in the 1998 Wye Accords, to give up Jewish control over most of Hevron.
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(Excerpt) Read more at israelnationalnews.com ...
Bush I was that far left in regards to settlements, eh?
James Baker is an Arabist.
I despise James Baker.
Baker is evil, and now he takes advantage of a dead guy by attributing to him a slam on Bibi. Just a trashy bastard.
He used to be an Arabist, but because he co-chaired the Iraq Study Group he was re-classified as a Jew-Hater.
Of interest are Bill Kristol's statements a few weeks ago that he and the NeoCons had purged the foreign policy Realists from the republican party. That follows the previous purge of the Isolationists from the GOP.
Some of the Realists, GHW Bush, Baker, Schultz, and Condi Rice have endorsed Romney, but others, Powell, Scowcroft, and Kissinger, have not.
A lot of freepers and GOPers are conflicted on interventionism and unilateralism ala Libya and Syria.
Netanyahu has proven to be “squishy and soft.”
Let’s not forget duplicitous and two-faced.
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