Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pleaded with his Italian counterpart, then prime minister of Italy Silvio Berlusconi, to help him mend ties with US President Barack Obama after the embarrassment of an announcement of new settlement construction marred a high-profile visit by US Vice-President Joseph Biden in 2010.
New documents released by WikiLeaks early Tuesday reveal that Israel reached out to the Italians and to other European countries to help with “smoothing out the current rift in its relations with the United States.”
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The announcement of new construction threatened to derail talks with the Palestinians announced a day earlier, a fear expressed by the Israeli prime minister.
“The objective now, Netanyahu said, is to keep the Palestinians from using this issue as a pretext to block a resumption of talks or to advance unrealistic claims that could risk sinking the peace negotiations altogether,” the cable reads.
Berlusconi, who a month before had visited Jerusalem, promised to help mend ties with Obama. He was later felled from power by the so-called bunga-bunga scandal, involving his ties to a 16-year-old Moroccan call girl.