The media has been exaggerating alleged differences between Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Barack Obama, former U.S. security advisor Dr. James Lindsay said in an address at the University of Haifa. President Obama will not be "putting Netanyahu up against the wall" at their meeting in Washington next week, he said. Dr. Lindsay, former advisor to the U.S. Commission on National Security and now on the faculty of the University of Texas, added that President Obama likely will express expectations that the Prime Minister would prefer not to hear but that he will not make any hasty decisions on a Middle East peace treaty. Dr. Lindsay was speaking at a University of Haifa seminar on American foreign policy, hosted in collaboration with the United States Embassy in Israel. The head of International Affairs at the University of Texas and a leading expert on the process of American foreign policymaking, he reassured listeners, “Obama won’t be as good as you hope, or as bad as you fear.” Prime Minister Netanyahu is scheduled to meet with the American leader on Monday, less than a month after Jordan’s King Abdullah II was the first Arab leader to be welcomed at the White House by the new President. King Abdullah said after the meeting that Israel faces war if it does not accept the Saudi Arabian 2002 Peace Plan. The White House has not commented on reports that the President requested of Abdullah to tell Arab leaders to fly the Israeli flag over their capitals and that the Palestinian Authority flag should fly over eastern Jerusalem. Prime Minister Netanyahu is committed to retaining Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and maintaining sovereignty over the entire city.
