Barak Obama needs to spell out his ideas on the Middle East more clearly, and he needs to stick to what he says, once he knows what he wants.
A few months ago he was questioning President George W. Bush's overwhelming focus on stopping Iran's plans, and wanted to get out of Iraq within a year. Now, he has stopped questioning the anti-Iran logic and is taking a longer perspective on Iraq.
But the most obvious confusion has been over the core issue of Palestine. The Israeli lobby has been very anxious about Obama and now that he is the Democratic candidate they are working hard to tie him into their narrow view of how America should treat Israel.
Despite one disastrous statement, Obama seems to remain balanced, but he is showing a worrying desire to tell people what they want to hear rather than defining his policies. If this is electioneering it is understandable, but it will be a problem if it continues and if he makes it to the presidency.
Unaware
Obama's statement last week at a conference run by American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the hard-line Israeli lobbyists, was a major problem for all Arabs when he said that occupied Jerusalem "will remain the capital of Israel and it must remain undivided".
He seemed to be unaware that the United States does not recognise occupied Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, so he cannot say that it should remain the capital.
The problem is that by telling AIPAC that occupied Jerusalem should remain undivided and be the capital of Israel, Obama told his audience what they wanted to hear.
But his pandering to that powerful but narrowly focused pro-Likud hard-line lobby group was reported all over the Arab world and led Obama into trouble. It appeared to the Arab world that once he had become the Democratic candidate he was shifting his position to be more pro-Israel.
However, his positions are not clear. During the same speech he had said, much more acceptably, that "most Israelis and Palestinians want peace and the United States must be a strong and consistent partner in this process - not to force concession but to help partners avoid stalemate and the kind of vacuums that are filled by violence".
A day after the damage done by his AIPAC speech, he spoke to CNN to explain himself better, when he said that the status of occupied Jerusalem is still up to the two sides to negotiate and "[occupied] Jerusalem will be part of those negotiations".
He added that "I think that it is smart for us to work through a system in which everybody has access to the extraordinary religious sites in old Jerusalem."
This might imply that he is ready to work with some sort of internationalisation of the Old City, and leave East Jerusalem as an Arab capital and West Jerusalem as the Israeli capital.
This is not very far from the Palestinian position, and close to the emerging consensus on how the Two-State Solution will have to treat occupied Jerusalem. His "undivided" claim becomes a matter of legal definition revolving three interlocked administrations, giving free movement of people to all sections.
Outside his occupied Jerusalem gaffe, the rest of the AIPAC speech was hopeful on how he sees Palestine. Obama has pledged that the United States would be active in working for peace between Israel and Syria, and Israel and Palestine (which he contrasted to the neglect offered by the Bush administration).
He called on Israel "to ease the freedom of movement for Palestinians and to refrain from building new settlements [colonies]".
Instability
In the wider Middle East, he shifted his position to be much stronger against Iran's nuclear ambitions and more or less now follows the Bush line, although with a very welcome insistence that "principled diplomacy" is the way to achieve the aims of the United States, rather than using Bush's bizarre and dangerous idea of pre-emptive regime change.
Obama's statements remain far more hopeful for peace than his Republican rival John McCain, who also spoke at the AIPAC conference.
He made no comments on Palestine, and seemed ready to continue the Bush tactic of remaining apparently committed to a negotiated peace in Palestine, but not doing much about it and treating it with neglect.
The main focus of McCain's remarks was Iran as a source of terror and instability, and he was vicious in his opposition to Hezbollah and Hamas, and in this context he spoke repeatedly of his readiness to resist any threats to the security of Israel.
The Arab world is watching all these statements as closely as anyone else, but as Obama speaks of change, there is a danger that the Arabs are expecting too much from him.
He will probably continue to make various statements, encouraging or depressing various groups, but his main focus is winning the election and that will be done on local US issues, with improving the economy and rescuing the health service at the top of the list.
The Middle East is not what he is thinking about right now, other than to promise the families of soldiers serving there that the war will come to an end. Only if he wins, and once he has had time to think about the Middle East, we will get to know what he actually will do to support the cause of peace.
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