Less than three weeks before its departure, the Obama administration had one final slap for Israel.
"If the choice is one state," Secretary of State John Kerry said in a more than hour-long speech Wednesday, "Israel can either be Jewish or democratic, it cannot be both, and it won't ever really be at peace."
Throughout his eight years in office, Obama has been a critic of Israel, the closest ally the United States has in the Middle East. He consistently appeared to take the side of any country with which Israel was in dispute.
The U.S.'s 2015 one-sided nuclear agreement with Iran was a giant punch to the Jewish state, and last week's U.S. abstention from a United Nations Security Counsel resolution declaring Israeli settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem illegal was another. Adding insult to injury, U.S. officials now have acknowledged they suggested ways in which the resolution could be written so they could abstain from it and not block it, as they have similar previous resolutions.
We believe there is room for compromise on the settlements, seized by Israel in 1967, but we don't believe the way to achieve it is to constantly criticize your ally.
Previous administrations have tried unsuccessfully to broker peace between Israel and the Palestinians, but none have ended their tenures with the U.S. and Israel so far apart.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyau, with whom Obama has had a particularly difficult relationship, said Kerry's style of diplomacy "obsessively dealt with settlements" and too often overlooked "the root of the conflict - Palestinian opposition to a Jewish state in any boundaries."
As recently as this month, Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas said in front of several terrorist groups that his people would never give up the fight against the Jewish state, would not recognize Israel as it is constituted as a Jewish state and has suggested forming a unity government with the Hamas terrorist organization.
Netanyahu, meanwhile, has previously said, if the Palestine Authority would just say, "We recognize Israel as a Jewish state," the conflict between the two could end, and Israel would vote for Palestinian statehood.
But the conflict rages on.
On Jan. 20, 2017, the problem becomes that of then-President Donald Trump, who says he will be more of a friend to Israel than the Obama administration. In truth, he could hardly be worse.