WEIGHING IN

Perry Slams Obama on Middle East

Says president urged Palestine to avoid talks with Israel.

Despite the Obama administration’s clear sentiment that Palestine should not be granted statehood by the U.N., Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry took a swipe at Obama’s handling of Israeli-Palestinian relations in a speech on Tuesday, blasting the president’s policies in the Middle East as “naive, arrogant, misguided, and dangerous.” He referred to Obama’s stance on the situation as a “policy of appeasement” toward Palestine, saying the president had urged the country to avoid direct negotiations with Israel. He also bad-mouthed Obama’s speech last spring in which the president said the 1967 borderlines should be a starting point for negotiations between the two countries, claiming it isolated Israel in an “insulting” manner.