What's Obama Up to in Israel?

American relations with Israel got awfully frosty awfully fast after the country announced plans to expand settlements in Jerusalem during Joe Biden’s visit last week—most recently, the U.S. envoy to Israel canceled his trip. What’s Obama up to? Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic writes, “I think it's fair to say that Obama is not trying to destroy America's relations with Israel; he's trying to organize Tzipi Livni's campaign for prime minister, or at least for her inclusion in a broad-based centrist government. I'm not actually suggesting that the White House is directly meddling in internal Israeli politics, but it's clear to everyone—at the White House, at the State Department, at Goldblog—that no progress will be made on any front if Avigdor Lieberman's far-right party, Yisrael Beiteinu, and Eli Yishai's fundamentalist Shas Party, remain in Netanyahu's surpassingly fragile coalition.” Goldberg says the goal is to “force a rupture in the governing coalition that will make it necessary for Netanyahu to take on Livni's centrist Kadima Party (he has already tried to do this, but too much on his terms) and form a broad, 68-seat majority in Knesset that does not have to rely on gangsters, messianists and medievalists for votes.”