Each to His Own

And on the morning of the fourth day, the Israelis loved Barack Obama once more! The U.S. president could thus leave for Jordan with a feeling of accomplishment. In Jordan, he will undoubtedly deliver some rhetoric full of good intentions about Syria between stops at two tourist sites in Petra.

In Israel, Obama did what he came to do, and then some, when he reconciled the Jewish state and Turkey, a reconciliation not without importance in the event of a future conflict with Iran, even if it was obviously a bonus and not the main task at hand. The key purpose of the trip was to pick up the pieces with Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli society, who up until now have been skeptical, if not outright hostile, toward him.

The peace plan that he called for when he won the presidency and which earned him, along with other achievements, the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, is now nothing more than a memory. He has taken too many hits on this front, and suffered too many rebuffs and humiliations, to persist in trying to resolve a conflict that is unending and yet impossible to ignore.

For this first trip to the Holy Land since his election, the U.S. president simply came to tell Israelis what they wanted to hear. That the support of the U.S. is “eternal,” that the two countries are inextricably linked and that he will not compromise on the security of the Jewish state. But then, also, that it needs to take into account the hopes and the suffering of its neighbors, the hungry and the deprived, who seek a place on the international field.

He said enough for everyone to understand completely that the U.S. has no intention of involving itself in affairs here that are apparently considered to be internal affairs. Things like legitimating the de facto settlement policy for four years and eliminating that as a prerequisite for the resumption of negotiations, which have been suspended since September 2010.

The regional maps were not redrawn after his trip but, all the same, Netanyahu received some additional assets in his arsenal. The Palestinians can’t say the same.