Wednesday on NBC’s “Today,” chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decisive election victory last night means his “relationship with President Obama, is going to be even more poisonous.”
Mitchell said, “Netanyahu not only won, won big. The opposition leader conceded this morning. Instead of a tie that might have forced Netanyahu to moderate some of his hard line stances, he has a clear sailing to form a government. What does that mean. In the closing days of the campaign he came out against the creation of a Palestinian state. The celebration last night was raucous in his headquarters even before the votes were counted. They know what this means. He is against a Palestinian state, a clear reversal of decades of Israeli commitments to the U.S., including Netanyahu’s own commitment to President Obama.
She continued, “This also means that the relationship with the president, President Obama, is going to be even more poisonous because on election day Netanyahu appealed to his voters to come out saying that the Arab Israelis were coming out in droves and he also said that foreign money from the U.S, from the State Department, was financing his opposition. That’s only going to make it even harder to get along with president Obama. It also vindicates Republican congressional leaders inviting him to congress. This is going to be a big issue for 2016 candidate notably Hillary Clinton. So it has a big effect on America.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN