sectarian discourse. when you hear republican politicians talking about the shia crescent and adopting this kind of very sectarian arab discourse, i think that s not what the u.s. should be doing. martin, what about the other part of the president s middle east strategy, which we haven t heard from much, but jared kushner was going to bring peace to the middle east. he was going to he was going to present a peace plan, palestinians, israelis, this is something that they had talked about privately for a long time. where is it? well, it s actually an interesting contrast between obama s speech ten years ago in which he promised that he would make a major effort to resolve the israeli/palestinian conflict and spent a good third of his speech on that subject, and the one sentence that secretary of state pompeo referred to this as something the united states was going to try to do.
spokesman announced that america had begun the process of its deliberate withdrawal from syria. those words ended some of the contradictions from the administration and the confusion from the rest of the world about whether the administration was actually going to pull out in the short term. the announcement came white secretary of state mike pompeo is making a middle east tour hitting all the major capitals to reassure allies that america has their backs. joining me now to discuss the whole issue, martin indig the former u.s. ambassador to israel, now a distinguished fellow at the council on foreign relations. robin wright a triebter writer at the fellow and tarek masou. martin, it struck me let s talk about pompeo s speech because that was meant to the administration s grand middle
under net under netten yeah huhanyahu. in his book and in subsequent articles he explains the ways he thinks the obama administration lost the trust of israel from relying public day light to the president making speeches about the middle east that the president didn t clear with the prime minister first. and much more. i asked martin indig to join me as well. he was president obama s special envoy for israeli-palestinian negotiations. he was on the other side of many of the issues orrin brings up. he was ambassador to israel under bill clinton. we talk about the day light and the speeches but i want to pick up the conversation where i asked about one other criticism that orrin made of the obama administration. listen in. let me ask you, michael, about another decision that you seem you seem to have some problems with which was the decision to appoint martin indig special envoy. you say in the book you thought
that s what you re doing. i think you re well briefed. let s get to the heart of this. why now. you raised you raised a question. let s get to the heart of the issue. we are missing the huge forest for the trees right now. this book was scheduled to come out in october, and it would have been much easier for me. i pressured my publisher random house to bring it out now before the fateful vote on iran. this is not about books. it s not about fires or about pouring it s not about pouring fuel on fires. it s about the security and the future survival of the jewish state. it s not about legacy. it s not about diplomacy. it s about my children s lives. my grandchildren s lives and i am not speaking as anybody s spokesman here except for myself. i am telling you this is a very bad deal that endangers our future security of survival. i ll give martin the last word. look i think that the issue
happened. i think it s an odd response for ambassadors, whether shapiro or indic to say another ambassador doesn t have a full picture but they do. of course ambassadors don t have the full picture. we have our insights our perceptions. and that s what this book is about. the book does not claim to know the entire picture. the book is about what the the situation looked the unfolding events how they seem from the perspective of the israeli embassy in washington d.c. there is no claim to omnipotence here. none whatsoever. but the end of this process, we re a talking about a process that at the end took place for the most part after my term in washington. in israel the only blame that is really heard was the blame that both martin and secretary of state kerry put on israel for settlement building in areas which are not considered