I've always had a moderate view of the ME.

You just don't get it because you are so far out on the left wing, that even the middle of the road looks far right to you.

Before you congratulate yourself too much on Obama's remarks about Israel; they were surrounded with at least 10 or 12 extremely strong admonitions as to what the Arabs need to do to clean up their act. 10 to 1 ain't bad.

In any case, the whole flap about settlements is BS anyway. Those which even Israel acknowledges are illegal will be the first to go in any settlement. Those around East Jerusalem which were Jewish towns before they were cleansed by the Jordanians in 1948 will remain with Israel. Most of the border settlements are right up against Israel and it's unlikely that most of them will be abandoned. None of the main settlements has expanded outward anyway, so no new land has been built on for quite a while now. Once Israeli checkpoints are removed, the rest of the West Bank will be 95% contiguous - not a Bantustan in sight. Arafat knew that perfectly well too.

Netanyahu believes that the current hard-line on the settlements is a ploy to get Arab and Muslim support for stuff like Pakistan and Afghanistan. What's really interesting is that he thinks that Axelrod and Emmanuel are actually behind it. What? Obama's chief Zionists are trying to squeeze Israel? What happens to all the dual loyalty arguments? LOL

Anyway, Mitchell is there right now to assure Israel that everything is kopecetic and not to pay too much attention to all the buzz about the settlements, even while they go about figuring out just how exactly to deal with this thorny issue.

Again - the settlements are a side issue that the Arabs have been raising in order to get concessions from Israel before any actual negotiating takes place. Israel won't give up its security willy-nilly, so some sort of compromise is needed. Obviously, that's what Obama's about.

And then there's Hamas with that pesky charter again. I see that today 4 Hamas fighters and horses equipped with suicide vests were killed by Israeli soldiers during an unsuccessful bid to take Israeli prisoners. I suppose they will declare the cease-fire to have been broken by Israel. Whether or not they increase rocket attacks is the big question now.

I wish Obama good-luck and Godspeed. He's going to need it.