The government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu received two pieces of bad news within hours on Aug. 22.
First, President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, considered a Netanyahu champion and a hard-line standard-bearer in the administration, told Reuters that the United States had not changed its position on Israel’s unilateral annexation of the Golan Heights in 1980. That was all it took to sink the latest initiative by Israelis hoping to take advantage of Trump’s move into the White House and his (alleged) basic ignorance of Middle Eastern affairs in order to obtain US recognition of the annexation.