Now it's the Palestinians' turn. With Israel having issued no new housing settlement contracts for months, President Barack Obama is beginning to make headway in his Mideast peace strategy. He may well have a lasting, major Israeli concession in his pocket, something short of a freeze but with serious possibilities of sparking progress.
And now, he said Tuesday, ``My hope is that we are going to see not just movement from the Israelis, but also from the Palestinians.' Obama cited the areas of incitement and security, apparently referring to quelling attacks on Israel. With Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak at his side at the White House, Obama said Arab states also must show their willingness to engage Israel.
Next week, US special envoy George Mitchell will return to the region with hopes of finding that elusive sentiment for compromise. Obama sought an Israeli freeze on settlement work that would have the effect of diminishing some of the Israelis' claim to permanent possession of the West Bank. Housing Minister Ariel Atias called what is going on a ``waiting period.'
But the Israeli official underscored that Israel is trying to reach an agreement with the United States. A full-scale freeze could be an early step to Israel relinquishing all or most of the land the Arabs lost in the 1967 Middle East war as part of an overall agreement.
Most significantly, that could include parts of Jerusalem that Jordan relinquished and Israel reunited with the rest of the city as an undivided capital. Some 180,000 Israelis live in east Jerusalem neighbourhoods built since Israel took over.
Obama already has obtained a big concession from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who despite his tough views, agreed to the concept of a Palestinian state existing alongside Israel. The president's next big step toward that goal would be a resumption of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. His call on the Palestinians and the Arabs for concessions probably reflects a view by Israel and its supporters that the other side must give ground as well.
Like all US presidents, Obama is part statesman, part politician. He is viewed in some pro-Israeli circles as tilting toward the Arabs, or at least softening the strongly pro-Israeli positions of his two immediate predecessors, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
That view was fuelled with a speech Obama made in early June at Cairo University and now could be balanced by drawing concessions from the Arab side. That speech, Mubarak said at the White House, ``was very appreciated by the Muslim and Islamic world because the Islamic world had thought the US was against Islam.'
Being traditionally _ and still _ extremely close to Israel it has been difficult through some four decades of peace efforts for the United States to fill the role of honest broker. It takes the kind of balance, leaning, coaxing and even threatening both sides, that Obama is inclined to try.
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