A former Middle East troubleshooter predicted that the United States will lose interest in its strategic alliance with Israel.
Yediot Achronot on Tuesday quoted James Wolfensohn, a former World Bank president and envoy for the Quartet of international mediators in Israeli-Palestinian relations, as saying he fears that the Jewish state “will be pushed to the sidelines of the American administration’s interest within two years.”
Wolfensohn, who was speaking at a Jewish United Fund/Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago dinner, cited the ascendancy of Iran, the disarray in Iraq, the fallout of the Lebanon war and the resilience of the Palestinian Hamas regime as having changed the strategic realities in the Middle East, as far as the United States is concerned.