OCCUPIED JERUSALEM (AFP) Israeli-U.S. relations have undergone a huge shift amounting to what Israel’s ambassador to Washington has termed “a genuine tectonic rift,” media reports said on Sunday.
Briefing officials at the foreign ministry last week, ambassador Michael Oren described the state of ties between Israel and its closest ally as worse than a crisis, something akin to that of two continents drifting apart.
According to one diplomat quoted by the Haaretz daily, Oren used bleak terms to explain the changes which have taken place under the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama.
“Relations are in the state of a tectonic rift in which continents are drifting apart,” Oren was quoted as saying by the diplomat.
Another diplomat who spoke to the top-selling Yediot Aharonot daily said there had been an historic change in Washington’s approach to Israel.
“There is no crisis in Israel-U.S. relations because in a crisis there are ups and downs,” he quoted Oren as saying.
Both papers quoted Oren as attributing the shift in sentiment to “interests and cold considerations” by Obama who did not have the same historical-ideological bent towards Israel as his predecessors.
The Israeli foreign ministry was not immediately available for comment on the reports, which came just over a week before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu heads to the White House for talks with Obama.
Israeli-U.S. relations have taken a battering in recent months amid a row over settlement building in east Jerusalem and the fallout from a deadly Israeli raid on an international aid fleet trying to break the blockade on Gaza.
The two leaders had been due to meet on June 1 for a reconciliatory meeting that was called off at the last minute after the flotilla raid