Mr. Obama’s aides ... pointed to statements Mr. Obama made during the campaign, in which he said he supported Israel’s right to defend itself from rocket attacks.
That stance has thus far been interpreted in the Arab world as a tacit assent to the Bush administration’s Middle East policy — the very policy that Mr. Obama criticized during the campaign as too divisive, and which he vowed to change.
So far, pretty bad.
"For Mr. Obama, there are risks in being viewed in the Arab world as Bush 2."
Wow, I guess even the nytimes is losing copyeditors left and right. Who let this through? The sentiment is logical but factually inaccurate (more like Bush 3!)... plus this doesn't really reflect how he's viewed in the Arab world. It doesn't matter who the president is, a perceived bias predates the soon deposed invader of Iraq.
Hmm... so if Obama could (have) represented a clean break, perhaps this was Israel's intent?
Yikes.Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator, argues that by attacking Hamas in Gaza just days before the new administration takes over, Israeli leaders may have calculated that it is best to establish to the world, early and emphatically, that when the chips are down, Mr. Obama — and any American president — will stand by Israel over all others.
“There are some who argue that this forces Obama to side with us,” said Mr. Levy, director of the Prospects for Peace Initiative, a joint project of the New America Foundation and the Century Foundation. “In a way, that’s very brazen, this calculus that he might as well get himself washed in this from the start.”
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