With the dust having settled following Obama's New York meetings with Netanyahu and Abbas, a sober assessment of what actually happened, and what may happen next, is in order.
Obama has said that good friends should be honest with each other and that he intends to be honest with Israel -- and that looking out for Israel means calling on her to take difficult steps and make painful compromise.
President Obama has just articulated the United States' goals to the world. Time for the Israelis and Palestinians to dust off all their permanent status plans that have been gathering dust for more than a decade.
What is clear from his statement following the "trilateral" with Mahmoud Abbas and Benjamin Netanyahu is that Obama did not get the settlement freeze he called for from Israel.
The Palestinian Prime Minister's plan for statehood not only represents a blueprint to address inherent problems, but it is the first outline for a viable homeland based on freedom, democracy, non-violence and international law.
If Israel has full American backing in security and defense, it will have more flexibility to concede the occupied territories because ultimately ensuring Israel's security takes away its main rational for keeping Palestinian and Syrian territories.
On a recent trip to the Middle East I had the opportunity to meet with Israelis and Palestinians from all walks of life. What I saw reconfirmed the lack of political cohesiveness within both communities.
Noah Efron: "To be a secular Israeli in 2009 is a demoralizing and demoralized affair... We are tired of the bombs... Of UN and EU condemnations... Of our lives and tired of ourselves."
It is useful to trace the evolution of the acceptance of a two-state solution in our political discourse -- recalling, as we do, how difficult it was just a few decades ago to support Palestinian rights.
The determination, focus, patience, and perseverance demonstrated by the Obama Administration are already having a significant impact on the long-standing efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
It's hard not to wonder why a government that is confident it won fair and square would authorize police to beat citizens with abandon.
Maybe it's time to inscribe it high on the walls of Jerusalem. I'm talking about that old Abba Eban line :"The Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss...
Obama wants to stop the growth of West Bank settlements, whereas (according to the settlers) God wants the people of Israel to populate all of the promised land; it says so in the Bible. I have a different take on what the Bible says.
Can you imagine President Bush delivering a speech to Muslims and quoting seamlessly from the Bible, the Quran and the Talmud? Any reconciliatory word...
We must marginalize and defeat the ideas of political Islam which ultimately drive the dreams of militant Islamists.
I was brought to tears by the president's simple, but truthful approach to building a bridge with the Muslim world.
To curb the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea, to stimulate a viable Israel-Palestine solution, he's going to have to pay. I'm talking cold hard cash.
I know many will gush over President Obama's Cairo speech and I'm likely swimming against the tide of the media and my fellow Democrats and progressives.
The diverse reactions to Obama's speech in Cairo will have little to do with what he actually says. What the "Muslim World" wants and thinks remains a mystery to most people, including many Muslims who live in it.
Egypt has the least favorable approval rating compared to other Arab countries in the Middle East, which begs the question: is Egypt the right place to address the Muslim World?
