Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s Prime Minister, arrives in Washington, D.C. tonight and may or may not meet with President Obama on Monday to discuss the controversial new apartments to be added to existing complexes in West Jerusalem. If the two leaders do come face to face, it is safe to say there is a good chance voices will be raised. The source of the tensions giving rise to such a scenario, however, is not the apartments, but rather the calculated obtuseness of U.S. policy toward Israel and the Palestinian Authority in the “road map” to Mideast peace.

Too often it seems that, for U.S. policymakers, Israel can do nothing right, while the PA can do no wrong. This is monstrously unfair to Israel, America’s closest Mideast ally and a heroic nation with an ancient history that is central to the American religious and cultural experience. This reality was vividly demonstrated last week in the contrast between the U.S. reaction to the apartments announcement and the PA’s glorification of a mass murderer of Jews. The White House perfunctorily condemned the announcement, but the major channel for the U.S. response was the 43-minute harangue Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivered telephonically to Netanyahu. Vice President Biden even went so far as to ludicrously suggest the new apartments jeopardize the lives of U.S. troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.