Israel pulled out of the Gaza Strip in 2004, Jewish settlements in the West Bank

Obama: US Must Distance Itself from Israel

By Fred Dardick
Thursday, July 16, 2009

This week President Obama took the opportunity at a meeting with 16 Jewish American leaders to tell them that the especially close relationship that existed between the United States and Israel over the past 8 years was directly responsible for lack of progress in the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

According to Jeremy Ben-Ami of J-Street, a participant in the discussion, Obama argued, “For eight years under the prior administration, there was no daylight between the two sides and there was no progress on the peace front, and no hard decisions were confronted.â€