Israelis worried as Obama tours Mideast

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By Joshua Mitnick

TEL AVIV | Excluded from President Obama's first Middle East trip as president, Israel is worried that ties with its most important ally are more tense than at any other time in nearly two decades.

At issue beyond Mr. Obama's itinerary is a serious disagreement over Israeli settlement policy. The Obama administration appears to have scrapped an agreement between Israel and the George W. Bush administration that permitted Israel to increase the number of settlers in communities that Israel wants to retain if the Palestinians establish an independent state.

Mr. Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton have said repeatedly that Israel must halt all settlement expansion to increase the chances for Arab-Israeli peace. On Monday, Mr. Obama told National Public Radio that the United States has to be more "honest" with Israel and that the direction the Middle East is going is "profoundly negative."

In an apparent gesture to Mr. Obama, Israel on Wednesday dismantled a military checkpoint near Ramallah that had been a major obstacle to Palestinian travel in the West Bank, the Associated Press reported.

"Israel does not seek stagnation," government spokesman Mark Regev told the AP. "We want to see momentum in the process between us and the Palestinians."

However, Israeli government press director Daniel Seamen earlier reacted angrily to the Obama administration's refusal to permit what Israelis call "natural growth" - allowing the adult children of the 300,000 settlers to build new homes adjacent to their parents.

"I have to admire the residents of Iroquois territory for assuming that they have a right to determine where Jews should live in Jerusalem," he said.

Elliott Abrams, who played a prominent role in U.S.-Middle East policy as deputy national security adviser in the Bush administration, said an agreement reached during that administration allowed Israel to build "up, not out" in the settlements and came in the context of Israel's decision to withdraw unilaterally from Gaza in 2005.

He agreed with many nervous Israelis that relations between the United States and Israel have not been so fraught since 1992, when the administration of George H.W. Bush punished Israel over settlement growth by withholding guarantees for loans to aid a wave of Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union.

"We are asking an Israeli government to do what no Israeli government can do: freeze natural growth," Mr. Abrams said. "Only the Israelis are being asked to put something on the line, while the others are floating about. There is a new attitude in Washington."