http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-13879652
actually, this goes back a couple months, when obama articulated a firmer u.s. position re: negotiations in the israeli-palestinian conflict.
...President Obama hasn't made the process any easier. His apparently personal decision, late in the day, to include in the May speech a reference to the peace process and in particular a solution based on the 1967 borders infuriated the Israelis. "We felt like it was an ambush," an Israeli cabinet minister told me. "What seems clear at the moment is that America's most important ally doesn't have a voice in the inner circle.
"Netanyahu is a disaster. Everybody knows that," the PLO member said. "I don't know how in his right mind he thinks he can deceive everybody all the time - except the Americans, who are willing accomplices. They do want to be deceived.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-13553575And how much the GOP-dominated Congress appears to love Netanyahu and his uncompromising stances...
(palestinians want a capital in east jerusalem).His speech to Congressional lawmakers was punctuated by around 30 standing ovations. Some of the biggest came when he listed the things Palestinians would have to accept to make a deal with him. "Jerusalem must never again be divided, it must remain the united capital of Israel," he said to waves of applause.
Even when he spoke of giving up land that has been occupied and illegally settled since it was captured in the 1967 Middle East war, he chose a defiant tone. Using the biblical names for the West Bank, he told Congress "you have to understand this - in Judea and Samaria, the Jewish people are not foreign occupiers".
The reception Mr Netanyahu had from Congress shows why he feels politically strong enough not just to ignore but to reject President Barack Obama's suggestion that Israel's permanent borders should be more or less what they were before the 1967 war, adjusted by land swaps. . . The president fixed him with an unsmiling, almost unblinking stare as he spoke.