Despite his moral rhetoric and his offer of economic aid to the emerging democracies together with his condemnation of the regions bad boys - Gadaffi ("when Gaddafi inevitably leaves or is forced from power, decades of provocation will come to an end, and the transition to a democratic Libya can proceed.") and Assad ("President Assad now has a choice: he can lead that transition, or get out of the way"); his softy lines on Bahrain and his inability to remember what and where Saudi Arabia is (or maybe he did - and therein lies the rub) -, all media attention has concentrated on his undermining and incorrect statement: "The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states.".
President Obama does not realize this fundamental truth about the State of Israel: what Israel wants is negotiated peace and secure borders. What happens to the Palestinians - their own state etc. - is a detail dependant on peace and secure borders, not the reverse. Convince the Arab - not just Hamas but also those endemically anti-Jewish states such as Syria and Iran, to recognise and respect the State of Israel and everything will fall into place. Unless this happens - nothing will change.
Besides, it is an error of puerile proportions to consider a return to a situation from a time past. From whom did the Israelis occupy the land of the West Bank and East Jerusalem in the first place? Not from the Palestinians, but from the Kingdom of Jordan who had occupied these lands illegally since the end of the British Mandate in Palestine. Perhaps, with the possible declaration of a Palestinian state by the UN imminent, we should consider returning to 1947 when the UN first offered the two states (only for Israel to accept and the Palestinian partition to be violently rejected by the Palestinian representatives and all the Arab countries)?
Of course not. Different conditions prevail. There have been causes and there have been consequences. Time moves on from when the President of the USA Barack Hussein Obama was 6 years of age. Whilst little Barack played with his toys, the Prime Minister of the State of Israel Benyamin Netanyahu (the democratically elected head of the USA's best ally in the region) was signing up for his first tour of duty in the Israeli Defence Force.
I was 20 years old in 1967 and selectively remember these events from that year of different mind sets, with the Vietnam War, race riots, an elected segregationist governor in Georgia etc. (what Obama needs to show for Netanyahu is a little R*E*S*P*E*C*T):
January 6 - Vietnam War: USMC and ARVN troops launch Operation Deckhouse Five in the Mekong River Delta.
January 8 - Vietnam War: Operation Cedar Falls starts.
January 10 - Segregationist Lester Maddox is sworn in as Governor of Georgia.
January 14 The New York Times reports that the U.S. Army is conducting secret germ warfare experiments.
February 14 - Respect is recorded by Aretha Franklin (to be released in April).
April 2 - A United Nations delegation arrives in Aden due to approaching independence. They leave April 7, accusing British authorities of lack of cooperation. The British say the delegation did not contact them.
April 4 - Martin Luther King, Jr. denounces the Vietnam War during a religious service in New York City.
April 7 - Six Day War (approach): Israeli fighters shoot down 7 Syrian MIG-21s.
April 10 Oral arguments begin in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967), challenging the State of Virginia's statutory scheme to prevent marriages between persons solely on the basis of racial classifications.
April 14 - In San Francisco, 10,000 march against the Vietnam War.
April 15 - Large demonstrations are held against the Vietnam War in New York City and San Francisco.
April 28 In Houston, Texas, boxer Muhammad Ali refuses military service.
May 6 Four hundred students seize the administration building at Cheyney State College, now Cheyney University of Pennsylvania, the oldest institute for higher education for African Americans.
May 17
- Syria mobilizes against Israel.
- President Gamal Abdal Nasser of Egypt demands withdrawal of the peacekeeping UN Emergency Force in the Sinai. U.N. Secretary-General U Thant complies (May 18).
May 18 Tennessee Governor Ellington repeals the "Monkey Law" (officially the Butler Act; see the Scopes Trial).
May 23 - Egypt closes the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, blockading Israel's southern port of Eilat, and Israel's entire Red Seacoastline.
June - Moshe Dayan becomes Israel's Minister of Defense.
June 1 - The Beatles legendary release of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, nicknamed "The Soundtrack of the Summer of Love"; it would be number one on the albums charts throughout the summer of 1967.
June 5 Six-Day War: Israel occupies the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Sinai peninsula and Golan Heights after defeating its Arab neighbours.
June 8 - Six-Day War - USS Liberty incident: Israeli fighter jets and Israeli warships fire at the USS Liberty off Gaza, killing 34 and wounding 171.
June 10
- Israel and Syria agree to a United Nations-mediated cease-fire.
- The Soviet Union severs diplomatic relations with Israel.
June 11 - A race riot occurs in Tampa, Florida after the shooting death of Martin Chambers by police while allegedly robbing a camera store. The unrest lasts several days.
June 12 Loving v. Virginia: The United States Supreme Court declares all U.S. state laws prohibiting interracial marriage to be unconstitutional.[4]
June 13 - Solicitor General Thurgood Marshall is nominated as the first African American justice of the United States Supreme Court. [5
June 23 - Cold War: U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson meets with Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin in Glassboro, New Jersey, for the 3-day Glassboro Summit Conference. Johnson travels to Los Angeles for a dinner at the Century Plaza Hotel where earlier in the day thousands of war protesters clashed with L.A. police. [7]
June 26 The Buffalo Race Riot begins, lasting until July 1; leads to 200 arrests.
June 28 - Israel declares the annexation of East Jerusalem.
July 12 After the arrest of an African-American cab driver for allegedly illegally driving around a police car and gunning it down the road, race riots break out in Newark, New Jersey, and these riots last for six days.
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