The leader of the US House of Representatives, Speaker John Boehner, is heading to Israel as already strained relations between the White House and newly re-elected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hit a new low this week.
On the surface, the Republican leader's announcement today that he'll visit Israel looks like a jab at the White House.
But a congressional aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to publicly disclose details of the trip, insisted that Boehner's trip during the two-week congressional recess that begins March 30 was planned before new rifts developed over Netanyahu's address to Congress and the Prime Minister's remarks this week about the peace process.
President Barack Obama bristled when Boehner invited Netanyahu to address US lawmakers earlier this month about his fears that an emerging nuclear agreement would pave Iran's path to nuclear weapons.
Relations took another hit Monday when Netanyahu made hard-line statements against the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Speaking on the eve of his re-election, Netanyahu said there could be no Palestinian state while regional violence and chaos persist conditions that could rule out progress on the issue for many years. That ruffled the Obama administration, which views a two-state solution as a top foreign policy priority and had dispatched Secretary of State John Kerry for months of shuttle diplomacy in an effort to reach an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement that never materialized.
Netanyahu yesterday seemed to backtrack, saying in a TV interview that he remains committed to Palestinian statehood if conditions in the region improve. Netanyahu told MSNBC that he hadn't changed his policy and that he remained committed to the two-state vision he spelled out in a landmark 2009 speech.
Obama called Netanyahu to congratulate him on his re-election, but also told the Israeli leader that the US is reassessing its approach to Israeli-Palestinian peace in light of his comments about a Palestinian state.
A White House official said Obama also raised Netanyahu's critical comments about Israeli Arabs ahead of the election, which the White House has denounced as a "cynical" effort to mobilize voters.
