Yet Another Failure! Change We Couldn’t Believe In! Obama Shows Us His Greenhorn Credentials! He Really Should Have Known How Intractable the Israeli-Palestinian Problem Truly Is.
THE GUARDIAN: US president tells Time magazine his efforts to secure a Middle East peace deal have failed

Barack Obama has admitted that his attempts to break the political deadlock in the Middle East by pressuring Israel to end the construction of Jewish settlements have failed.

He said he raised expectations of a breakthrough too high because he underestimated the political obstacles involved – an acknowledgement that he was unable to force the hand of the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu.

"The Middle East peace process has not moved forward and I think it's fair to say, for all our efforts at early engagement, [it] is not where I want it to be," he told Time magazine. "This is just really hard … This is as intractable a problem as you get. If we had anticipated some of these political problems on both sides earlier, we might not have raised expectations as high."

Obama made a push to break the political logjam in his first months in office. Unusually for an American administration, he focused his pressure on the ­Israelis by demanding that Netanyahu halt all Jewish settlement construction in the occupied territories. The growing settlements are widely considered to be one of the major obstacles to peace and a test of the sincerity of Israeli claims to accept an independent Palestinian state.

Obama put pressure on Netanyahu at a testy meeting in Washington in May, leading to a strain in relations rarely seen between the two governments. But the White House disappointed the Palestinian leadership by weakening its demand in the face of Israeli resistance.

This opened the way for Netanyahu to announce that he would scale back, but not halt, settlement construction in the West Bank, and continue unfettered building in East Jerusalem, which is the focus of a strategy to seal off the city and ensure all of it remains under Israeli control.

Obama said that the Israelis "after a lot of time showed a willingness to make some modifications in their policies" but "still found it very hard to move with any bold gestures". Obama admits US underestimated Israeli-Palestinian deadlock >>> Chris McGreal in Washington |Friday, January 22, 2010

Will Benjamin Netanyahu Fall Out with Barack Obama?
THE TELEGRAPH: On Monday, Benjamin Netanyahu will have his first formal meeting with Barack Obama in the White House. All the signs are that relations between Israel and its superpower ally are not as harmonious as usual, says David Blair.

Before going into politics, Benjamin Netanyahu made his name as a skilled ambassador to the United Nations. But he will need every ounce of diplomatic finesse to deal with the conundrum he faces as Israel's new prime minister.

On Monday, Mr Netanyahu will have his first formal meeting with Barack Obama in the White House. All the signs are that relations between Israel and its superpower ally are not as harmonious as usual.

In the next few weeks, America is expected to publish the outlines of a new Middle East peace plan. The goal will be the creation of a Palestinian state based on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Mr Netanyahu, however, has not accepted the principle of Palestinian statehood, and his coalition is filled with Right-wing politicians who are bitterly opposed to the idea. A public rift between Israel and America over the endgame of a Middle East settlement is a real possibility.

On its own, American support for a Palestinian state is nothing new. George W Bush was the first US president to make this pledge explicitly when he produced his "road map" to peace in 2003. But two factors make the present situation different and more dangerous for Israel's government.

Mr Bush waited until his third year in office before coming up with the map – and he only did so because he needed diplomatic cover after his invasion of Iraq. Mr Obama, in contrast, seems set to publish his vision for a settlement in the first six months of his presidency, at the apex of his prestige, and without any diplomatic distractions to compare with the Iraq invasion.

Moreover, Israel assumed during the Bush presidency that it could get away with ignoring the map without incurring any serious penalties. So it proved: the path that supposedly led to a Palestinian state turned out to lead nowhere. >>> By David Blair | Tuesday, May 12, 2009