The Jerusalem Post reports: Just one day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s meeting with US President Barack Obama at the UN, in which Netanyahu thanked Obama for the signing of a $38 billion military aid package, Israeli cabinet minister Tzachi Hanegbi on Thursday panned the US president as “naive and messianic” towards Israel.
The Likud minister, who was appointed a minister without portfolio earlier in the year, said that there had been an “improvement” in Obama’s stance towards the Jewish State in his second term, however he said that the president was “not acting as the world’s strongest man, but as an employee of the Clinton campaign.”
He also predicted that both Netanyahu and Obama were pleased to be rid of one another, despite the smiles on show for the cameras in New York.
The meeting between the two premiers is expected to be the final face-to-face parley before the end of Obama’s second and final term in office.
Recounting the meeting, a senior White House official said the two men “never papered over their differences.” He said Obama reiterated the profound US concerns about the “corrosive effect” the settlements are having on the prospects of two states.
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