George J. Mitchell likes to remind people that he labored for 700 days before reaching the Good Friday accord that brought peace to Northern Ireland. So the fact that Mr. Mitchell has shuttled back and forth to the Middle East for the last 190 days without any breakthroughs, he said, does not mean that President Obama’s push for peace there is stalled.
But while the negotiating has continued — mostly in closed-door sessions with few comments for the press, in keeping with Mr. Mitchell’s close-to-the-vest style — reports in Israel, in particular, have focused on the claim that the Obama administration’s pressure is alienating Israelis even while it is failing to sway Arabs.
“One of the public misimpressions is that it’s all been about settlements,” Mr. Mitchell, the administration’s special envoy to the Middle East, said in a rare interview Friday after six months on the job. “It is completely inaccurate to portray this as, ‘We’re only asking the Israelis to do things.’ We are asking everybody to do things.”
Another misperception, he said, was that Arab countries had rebuffed Mr. Obama’s request to make moves toward a more normal relationship with Israel — a perception fueled by a Saudi official’s blunt public rejection of such incremental steps in Washington on Friday.
“We’ve gotten, over all, a very good response, a desire to act, some public statements to that effect from the crown prince of Bahrain, the president of Egypt,” said Mr. Mitchell, who returned last week from his fifth trip to the region, including stops in Israel, Egypt and Syria. Saudi Arabia’s negative public comments, other officials said, bear little relation to what it is saying in private.
In coming weeks, senior administration officials said, the White House will begin a public-relations campaign in Israel and Arab countries to better explain Mr. Obama’s plans for a comprehensive peace agreement involving Israel, the Palestinians and the Arab world.
The campaign, which will include interviews with Mr. Obama on Israeli and Arab television, amounts to a reframing of a policy that people inside and outside the administration say has become overly defined by the American pressure on Israel to halt settlement construction on the West Bank.
“We’re at a crucial moment now,” said Martin S. Indyk, a former ambassador to Israel and peace negotiator in the Clinton administration. “There are only so many visits George Mitchell can make.”
In Israel, public opinion toward Mr. Obama, which was skeptical to start with, has soured because of the tension over settlements. In the Arab world, there is little evidence of a change of heart toward Israel.
Saudi Arabia, by all accounts the central player in developing a consensus among Arab countries, appears utterly unmoved by the American argument that “confidence-building” gestures can open the door to more substantive negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.
“Incrementalism and the step-by-step approach have not, and we believe will not, achieve peace,” the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, said after meeting Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. “Temporary security, confidence-building measures, will also not bring peace.”
Mr. Mitchell, however, insisted he was getting a very different message in his private meetings with more than a dozen Arab leaders, including the Saudis. Many, he said, were ready to consider new measures.
He declined to discuss what kinds of steps, but other officials said the United States was pushing for a package of measures ranging from Arab countries’ opening commercial offices in Tel Aviv to their leaders’ granting interviews to Israeli journalists. Another step would be getting Arab nations to allow Israel’s state carrier, El Al, to fly over Arab countries to cut flight times to Asia.
Even the Saudis, he said, “want to be helpful. They, like everyone we’re talking to, want a peace agreement that will lay the foundation for the end of this conflict. I truly believe that’s what they want.”
The trick, analysts said, is persuading both sides to act simultaneously when each wants to see the other move first.
The United States and Israel, officials said, are narrowing the gap on a deal to freeze construction of Jewish settlements in the Palestinian West Bank for a period of time, possibly six months. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has proposed completing 2,500 housing units, for which there are contracts in place. Mr. Mitchell, who met Mr. Netanyahu for two and a half hours last week, said there was no agreement yet.
Even if Mr. Obama persuades Israel to freeze settlement construction, Mr. Mitchell said the deal would probably not be one that “everyone is going to stand up and cheer about.”
“The question is, ‘Will it be substantial? Will it be meaningful? Will it enable us to achieve what is, after all, the overall objective?’ ” Mr. Mitchell said. “The phase we’re now engaged in is a means to an end; it is not an end in itself. The end is getting a peace agreement.”
Indeed, the hard part will come when Mr. Netanyahu sits down for substantive talks about a Palestinian state with the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen.
“The minute Abu Mazen and Netanyahu sit down to negotiate, it’s going to be clear there are galactic differences between them,” said Aaron David Miller, a public policy analyst at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars who was a peace negotiator in several administrations.
Mr. Obama, he said, will have to present proposals to bridge those differences.
Assuming that Mr. Mitchell can break the deadlock over settlements issue in the next few weeks, Mr. Miller said, the Obama administration will most likely aim for a peace conference in the fall.
To get even that far, however, the United States may have to do more aggressive public diplomacy, according to analysts. Mr. Obama, commentators in Israel noted, delivered his major speech on the Middle East in Cairo. He has not yet visited Israel as president, and in the view of some, has not laid out his broad strategy to the Israeli people in a persuasive manner.
“Even if it was wise to focus on settlements, what the administration failed to do was provide a context,” said Daniel C. Kurtzer, a former ambassador to Israel who has advised Mr. Obama on the Middle East.
Perhaps sensing that, the administration sent a parade of officials to Jerusalem in the last two weeks. In addition to Mr. Mitchell, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates; the national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones; and a senior White House adviser, Dennis B. Ross, all visited.
Mr. Mitchell is getting away for a few days to see his family in his native Maine. But he said he would be back in the region soon, and planned to take a more public role in selling the president’s vision.
Insisting that he remained optimistic, Mr. Mitchell said, “These are discussions among friends, not disputes among adversaries.”
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