Thomas Mattair Interviewed on Rick Perry’s Critique of Obama’s Mideast Policy

McClatchy Newspapers

Middle East Policy Council executive director Thomas R. Mattair has been interviewed by McClatchy Newspapers on Texas Governor Rick Perry’s recent attack on President Obama’s Middle East policy. Below is an excerpt from the article, “Perry assails Obama’s Mideast policies as ‘dangerous’.”

In a scathing critique, Texas Gov. Rick Perry on Tuesday called President Barack Obama’s Mideast policies “naive, arrogant, misguided and dangerous,” blamed him for bungling the Israeli-Palestinian relationship, and embraced policies popular among the Israeli right wing.

“It is time to change our policy of appeasement toward the Palestinians,” he said. “Our policy of isolating and undermining Israel has only encouraged our adversaries in their aggression.”

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Dr. Thomas Mattair, executive director of the Middle East Policy Council … [says Perry] is “wrong on every major point” – legally and from a national security perspective, starting with the assertion that Obama has sought to isolate or undermine Israel.

“The Palestinians are not our adversaries, and Obama is not ‘appeasing’ them as Perry alleges,” he said.

“This is campaign rhetoric,” Mattair said, and beyond that, it is “basically a right-wing Likud point of view. This could have been written by Benjamin Netanyahu.”

Obama has threatened to veto Palestinian statehood in the Security Council. Perry went further than that, threatening to cut off U.S. aid to the Palestinian Authority ($4 billion since 1994) and kick out its representatives in Washington. He also would cut off U.S. dues to the United Nations if the U.N. declares statehood over American and Israeli objections.

Mattair warned that Perry’s approach would mark an unwelcome return to Bush-era go-it-alone diplomacy.

And cutting off aid would lead to more desperation and violence in Gaza and the West Bank, he said, and “once there is violence, it won’t be only the Israelis paying a price.”

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