By rejecting US President Barack Obama's proposal for Israel and its troops to pull back from the West Bank to behind the indefensible 1967 lines, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu lands in the company of eleven Middle East and North African rulers who spurned Washington's Middle East policy in the six months of the unfolding Arab uprising.
In his speech Thursday, May 19, Obama strengthened those Arab rulers' determination to oppose his policy and increased the prospects of an Israel-Arab war.