Dennis Ross: Israel-US crisis will be resolved

WASHINGTON - Dennis Ross has spent more hours with American presidents and Israeli prime ministers than any other person. He doesn’t think the relationship between Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu is the worst that has ever been between a US president and an Israeli prime minister. The veteran diplomat refuses to say that they loath each other.

They don't trust each other, Ross asserts in an interview to Ynet, but the worst relationship in his opinion belonged to President George H. W. Bush, who thought that Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir had deceived him, and that was a definite rift. Israel-US relations didn’t reach a low over the Iranian nuclear deal, he says, but over the siege on Beirut and the Sabra and Shatila massacre.

Ross served in Republican and Democratic administrations since the days of President Ronald Reagan, when he served as his Middle East advisor. In the Bush Sr. administration, he was director of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff, which worked on the US policy towards the former Soviet Union, the reunification of Germany, the arms control talks and forming the coalition for the 1991 Gulf War. Bill Clinton put him in charge of the peace team, and Obama used his services as a special advisor on the Middle East and mainly on Iran.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4711964,00.html