FOR reasons of his own, Barack Obama chose to disregard the advice he got from many quarters that he should spell out his views on Palestinian statehood before Israel’s voters went to the polls on February 10th. That is a pity. Israelis disagree about many things, but most understand the value of having a prime minister who is liked and welcomed in the White House. Had Mr Obama made it clearer before the election that he is impatient to see Israel withdraw from the bulk of the West Bank and the creation there and in Gaza of an independent Palestinian state, more Israelis might have cast their vote for Tzipi Livni, the leader of Israel’s centrist Kadima party. Ms Livni showed as foreign minister during Israel’s recent Gaza war that she is no cooing dove. But she appears genuinely to believe not only in the possibility but also in the urgency of negotiating a peace agreement with the Palestinians.

As it is, voters gave Kadima only one seat more than Binyamin Netanyahu’s Likud, which thanks to Israel’s fractionated political system means that he may yet lead a ruling coalition (see article). And on peace Mr Netanyahu has depressing form. As prime minister in the late 1990s he failed to build on the opening initiated by the assassinated Yitzhak Rabin. In campaigning for this week’s election he poured cold water on the idea of a two-state solution, arguing that the moderate Palestinians are for the foreseeable future too weak to be good neighbours if Israel were to pull its soldiers and settlers out of the West Bank. Such a Palestinian state, he says, would swiftly become, like Lebanon under Hizbullah and Gaza under Hamas, another bridgehead from which Iran and its proxies would pursue their ambition to extirpate the Jewish state.
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It may now take weeks for Israel to choose a new government. Although Ms Livni would probably make the more amenable interlocutor, Israel’s eventual choice is not as decisive as it may seem. For even if Ms Livni becomes prime minister, the road to peace will not be straight. Many obstacles block the way: not just Israel’s complicated wants and fears but also, on the Palestinian side, the bitter rift between Fatah and Hamas. By the same token, even if it is Mr Netanyahu who triumphs, Mr Obama must resist the temptation to conclude that the conflict is deadlocked and nothing can be done for now. That is what George Bush did eight years ago, after diplomacy failed and a Palestine intifada set Israel and the occupied territories on fire. But the correct lesson from the Bush years is that when there is stalemate in Palestine, or the fire is left untended, things do not remain the same. They get worse.

The most obvious cost of inaction is the leaching away of trust. Many Israelis, bombarded by Hizbullah after withdrawing from Lebanon and by Hamas after withdrawing from the Gaza Strip, no longer believe in the old formula of land for peace: it has been more like land for war, they say. Many Palestinians, likewise, have lost faith in what they consider the lip service Israel pays to a two-state solution. How can Israel expect to be taken seriously, they ask, when even under left or centrist parties, such as Labour or Kadima, every single Israeli government extends and fortifies the Jewish settlements inside the West Bank, in territory that ought in justice and logic to be the preserve of the long-promised Palestinian state?

As relations between Israelis and Palestinians deteriorate, so does the state of the respective societies. The rise of Avigdor Lieberman’s party in Israel reflects a fraying of cohesion as Arab Israelis identify more with the Palestinian cause and Jewish Israelis come to see Arabs as fifth-columnists. Across the line in Palestinian society the schism between Fatah and Hamas has meanwhile grown increasingly violent, a competition for power and ideas mirrored in its turn by a wider split between the “resistance” block of Iran and Syria and a pro-American camp led by Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Israel tends to exaggerate for American consumption the extent to which Iran is the puppet master of Hamas and Hizbullah. But Iran has indeed exploited the Palestinian cause in its bigger competition with America for dominance of the region as a whole.

Time to speak out, Mr President

However unripe the present conditions seem, it would therefore be folly for Mr Obama to adopt Mr Bush’s semi-detached approach to Palestine. Justly or not, America’s stance on this conflict is now entangled in its own interests and alliances in the Middle East and the wider Muslim world. The new president has made a good start by appointing the fair-minded George Mitchell as a special envoy to the region, but this is not enough (see article). It would strengthen moderates in both camps if he gave his personal imprimatur to the two-state “parameters” laid out at the beginning of the decade by Bill Clinton, and mobilised international support for them.

Mr Obama should also exert whatever pressure is needed to make Israel freeze settlement in the West Bank. That will be a vital test of his own seriousness as well as Israel’s good faith. The settlements are by no means the only obstacle to a two-state solution. Mr Netanyahu is right to finger Hamas and Iran as determined spoilers. But all the actions outlined here would have the effect of bolstering the moderates and making the job of the spoilers harder, increasing the likelihood that Hamas too will eventually be forced by its own people to accept the logic of two states. Drift and inaction have done more than anything to strengthen the rejectionists this past decade.