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http://www.williampfaff.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=537
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few Americans feel vulnerable to Middle Eastern risk. Least of all do they feel threatened by what Israel might do..

This is a serious mistake. National vulnerability has returned. A State Department official has confirmed that the United States intends to veto the expected Palestinian demand for UN Security Council recognition as a member state. The U.S. Congress, moreover, under pressure from Israel’s American friends, has declared that it will then cut off funding for the Palestinian Authority. Egypt and the Arab governments will be angry, but the Arabs have before been angry with the invulnerable United States, and nothing has come of it—except for the 9/11 attacks, and a war “on terror” that has gone on for a decade.

The former head of Saudi Arabian intelligence, and former ambassador to the United States, Turki al-Faisal, has rather desperately been trying to warn the United States. He has published his warning in articles in The Washington Post and The New York Times, and circulated it on the Web.

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However what Turki al-Faisal does not say is that the United States is the only nation to possess the strength and opportunity to act preemptively to solve this crisis. Israel now is itself incapable of rescuing itself because of its quasi-permanent internal political deadlock.

President Obama could spectacularly reverse policy and save the day. He could declare that the United States will vote in support of Palestine’s full membership in the United Nations. It will use all of the means at its disposal to support Israeli withdrawal of illegal settlements from territory designated as part of the Palestinian state by the United Nations. It will do all in its power to impose the solution everyone—including realistic Israelis and the Palestinians—understand to be the permanent, just and inevitable solution to this problem. The world would be dazzled. Barack Obama’s place in history would be assured.