When President Obama first entered the presidency, great expectations had been raised by the campaign catchwords of "hope and change". One of the US policy areas this extended to was the Palestinian/Israeli peace process: in 2010, Obama said that a Palestinian state was a realistic goal within a year.
In practice, that objective is no closer today than it was in 2008, and arguably is further away. So, is there any real chance now of serious peace negotiations? And can Obama be helpful in restarting the peace process?
Ask the people concerned – Israelis and Palestinians – and the answer is no, on both counts.
The percentage of Palestinians who want to return to the 1967 borders and normalize relations with Israel under the "Saudi Plan" has fallen far since the beginning of Obama's presidency. Back in December 2008, 66% of Palestinians agreed to this plan. Now, only 53% think it's a good idea.
On the Israeli side, support for the two-state solution is not down since the beginning of Obama's term, but the demographics spell doom. A very high 69% of Israelis over the age of 50 want a two-solution. That drops to 63% among those 30-49, and to an even lower 42% among those 18-29. Furthermore, 25% of Israeli youth want to annex the West Bank territories without granting Palestinians full rights, if (according to the poll question) that was necessary to keep Israel a Jewish and democratic state.
The only good news is that both a majority of Palestinians and a majority of Israelis are still in favor of a two-state solution: 52% of Palestinians want it and 62% of Israelis want it. The problem is that this is a very broadbrush question.
The percentage of Palestinians who want an independent state alongside an Israel that is a state for the "Jewish people" and want Palestine as the state for the "Palestinian" people is way down. At the beginning of Obama's term, 53% of Palestinians agreed to that. Now? Only 40% of Palestinians do. This is a problem for any peace settlement considering that 58% of Israelis want Israel to remain a specifically Jewish democracy.
It doesn't help that neither side trusts the other: 61% of Palestinians think that Israelis' real intention is to create a state "to cover all the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean sea and its Arab citizens"; 67% of Israelis think that the peace process problems are beyond Israel's control (that is, on the Arab side)
Not surprisingly, Palestinians and Israelis alike have very little hope for peace. A full 62% of Palestinians think that peace is not possible at this time, while 54% of Israelis don't believe that the two-state solution is possible.
Meanwhile, President Obama seems to have squandered any chance for helping out with peace talks. Back when Obama first took office, 57% of Palestinians wanted the United States to play a stronger role in the pace process; 41% thought Obama had improved the way the United States dealt with Middle East issues, against only 7% who thought that there had been a regression. A relatively optimistic 35% of Palestinians thought that Obama would increase the chances of peace, while just 12% thought it would reduce the chance.
All that hope is gone on the Palestinian side. Now, 93% of Palestinians were dissatisfied with the United States role in November's Gaza conflict. Only 2% of Palestinians currently want the United States to act as mediator if peace talks between the Palestinians and Israelis resumed. After Obama's re-election, 50% thought that his victory would have a negative impact on peace negotiations, as opposed to the 10% who thought it would have a positive impact.
Obama, on the other hand, blew it with the Israelis pretty much right away. When he first entered office, 31% of Israelis thought he was pro-Israel, against 14% who thought he was pro-Palestinian. After he delivered his Cairo speech in 2009, six months into his presidency, 51% of Israelis thought that Obama was pro-Palestinian, while just 4% believed he was more pro-Israeli. By the time of the 2012 American presidential election, Israeli Jews favored Republican Mitt Romney over Obama by almost a 3:1 margin.
Today, Obama's numbers in Israel are still pretty low: 36% of Israelis think Obama is pro-Palestinian, which 10pt lower than the 26% who think he is pro-Israeli. Israelis are also doubtful that Obama in his second term can help out with the peace process. Just 11% of Israelis believe that Obama can be helpful in bringing about peace over the next four years.
The ugly truth is that the Palestinians and Israelis are arguably further apart on peace now than they have been at any point in the past 20 years. Both sides want a settlement, but they can't see how to achieve it and they don't trust each other. The only aspect they really agree upon at all is that President Obama will not be helpful in establishing peace. Whether as a symptom or as a partial cause of the impasse, Obama has succeeded only in alienating himself from both Palestinians and Israelis.