It seems the first foreign visit [2] of Barack Obama [3]'s second term will be to Israel [4]. In making that choice, the president sends an important signal and one that is long overdue. What is optimistically still referred to as the peace process has been stalled for several years. There is plenty of blame to go around for that. But a small part of it rests with Mr Obama himself.
In his first term he didn't visit Israel once, not even, Israelis complain, when he was in the neighbourhood. That was a mistake, limiting the influence he could exert over Israel's government and, more importantly perhaps, its people. As Bill Clinton, the last US president to come close to a Middle East breakthrough, advises today's diplomats: Israelis need to know that if the tanks were ever to start rolling in from across the Jordan, you'd be there in the trenches with them. An unlikely scenario these days perhaps, but the emotion is real.
Still, an Obama visit can do more than offer reassurance of US solidarity. The mere announcement of the trip, scheduled for 21 March but liable to slip if there are delays in the formation of a new Israeli government, can itself have an impact. Some have argued [5] that the White House published its travel plans now, earlier than necessary, in order to remind the parties to ongoing coalition talks in Israel that peace should be a factor in their negotiations. With Mr Obama coming, perhaps Binyamin Netanyahu and his potential partners will be obliged to think not only of currently dominant domestic issues but also of relations with their most immediate neighbours. If that was indeed the motive, it may be paying off. Israel's outgoing deputy foreign minister, the hawkish Danny Ayalon, now says Israel should accept the UN's recent upgrade of the Palestinians' status – a move he and his government fiercely rejected last November.
For Palestinians too, an Obama visit should be a boost – especially if he visits the West Bank cities of Ramallah or, as has been mooted, Jericho. The message will be that, for all the talk of a Washington foreign policy pivot to Asia, the Middle East is still a US priority and the Palestinian issue has not been forgotten. The prestige of a presidential visit will strengthen those Palestinians who advocate the path of diplomacy over the path of violence – welcome, given that events in recent months have tended to have the reverse effect.
Bitter experience suggests no one should expect too much of a single visit, even if the speculation [6] is right and Mr Obama chairs a mini-summit, perhaps in Jordan, between Mr Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas. But the fact that the president is coming, and that he has in John Kerry a new secretary of state long engaged in the issue and bitten, says one colleague, by "the peace bug", are small grounds for hope in a region that does not have many.
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