By Arun Kumar, IANS,
Washington : President Obama’s speech to the Muslim world may have received enthusiastic reaction abroad, but his remarks over Israeli-Palestinian issue came in for sharp criticism from his Republican and conservative opponents at home
Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner blasted Obama’s approach endorsing a two-state solution and urging compromise between “two peoples with legitimate aspirations.”
“He seemed to … place equal blame on the Israelis and the Palestinians. I have concerns about this,” the Ohio Republican was cited as saying by CNN. “The Israelis have the right to defend themselves.”
Boehner’s Republican colleague Mike Pence added that “there was a sense in here of a moral equivalency between those who are driving for a Palestinian state and the state of Israel.”
Marc Thiessen, a former Bush administration speechwriter, suggested that Obama had reversed President Bush’s policy that America would only engage “Palestinian leaders not compromised by terror”
“In Cairo today, Obama reversed this policy … This is na�ve and dangerous,” Thiessen wrote on National Review Online.
Republican strategist and CNN contributor Ed Rollins said Obama may have further soured relations with Israel.
“I think the key thing here that he has to worry about is that he clearly drew the line and set some standards that the Israelis may not go along with,” he said.
Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, an often-talked-about 2012 Republican presidential candidate, said Obama needs to stop using foreign soil to apologise for US relations in what he called a “tour of apology.”
Romney also took aim at Obama’s plans to trim the missile defence budget a “grave miscalculation” that puts the nation at risk in the face of urgent threats like Iran and North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.
Other Republican opponents decried Obama for seemingly apologising for US foreign policy in Iraq and Afghanistan.
(Arun Kumar can be contacted at [email protected])