By ETGAR LEFKOVITSobama notre dame 248.88(photo credit: AP)
US President Barack Obama is distancing America from Israel, and a more reserved relationship is forming between the two allies, a top aide to late prime minister Yitzhak Rabin said Wednesday.
"The State of Israel is losing its greatest asset in the White House: intimacy with the president," Rabin's bureau chief, Eitan Haber, told The Jerusalem Post. "The Obama administration is giving up the decades-old intimacy the White House had with the State of Israel."
The unusually harsh forecast by the dovish former top official came two days after the first summit meeting between the American and Israeli leaders at the White House, and amid media reports of a new Obama initiative for Middle East peace.
Haber said that such a peace proposal would never have been initiated under the past two US administrations, which were considered the most friendly to the Jewish state in its 60-year history, without consulting Israel first.
"Both presidents Bush and Clinton consulted with Israeli prime ministers over and beyond what was required by their position before going public with any major peace initiatives and plans regarding regional peace issues," Haber said.
He noted that Obama's decision to visit Turkey and his upcoming trip to Egypt next month - without stopping in Israel - spoke volumes about the new direction of the US administration.
"This certainly points to new priorities for the Obama White House," he said.
Haber opined that the US president's attempt to garner support in the Muslim world with its conciliatory approach to radical Muslim and Islamic states would inevitably mean more distance from Israel.
"America at this point is distancing herself from Israel," he said. "Whether we want to or not, we will have to pay the price for this policy."
Haber said that the new winds blowing from the White House were due to Obama's worldview.
"It's not us, it's Obama," he said.
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