Striding to the podium inside the Washington Convention Centre, President Barack Obama did his very best to avoid any sense that he felt intimidated by entering what was, in political terms, the lion's den.
There was tepid applause and a couple of isolated boos from the crowd of almost 10,000 members of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, better known as Aipac, the premier and most hardline mainstream group in the powerful pro-Israel lobby in the United States.
The reception was one of intense scepticism. A vast majority of delegates felt that Mr Obama had a need to explain himself after his comments that a Middle East peace deal should be based on Israel's 1967 border incorporating agreed land swaps with the Palestinians.
But if they thought that the American president was going to take back his words in Thursday's speech at the State Department's Foggy Bottom headquarters, then they were sorely mistaken.
Wagging his finger repeatedly, Mr Obama adopted the manner of a schoolmaster frustrated that his pupils were too dim or inattentive to pay attention to what he had said. Continue reading and comment » | Toby Harnden | Sunday, May 22, 2011
