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On Wednesday, Sept. 23, PresidentBarack Obama used his first-ever address to the U.N. GeneralAssembly to try and reverse the impression that his ambitious MiddleEast peace effort had suffered a reversal at the hand of Israel’s hawkish Prime Minister,Benjamin Netanyahu. "I am not naive," Obama told the gathered world leaders. "I know this will be difficult.But all of us must decide whether we are serious about peace or whether we only lend it lip service."

Many a jaded commentator saw Obama’s Tuesday meeting with Netanyahu and PalestinianAuthority President MahmoudAbbas as a symbol of surrender to Netanyahu’s refusal of the U.S. demand that Israel halt all construction on land conquered in 1967. Instead, Netanyahu offered a partial and time-limited freeze and appeared to force the President of the United States to back down. ForAbbas, the handshake with Netanyahu orchestrated by Obama was viewed as a humiliating climb down from his refusal to talk to the Israelis until they implemented that settlement freeze.
Netanyahu, briefing the Israeli media after the talks, suggested that the Palestinians had also caved in to his demand for a reopening of talks without preconditions on an agenda the two sides would determine in discussions.ButAbbas insisted that any talks would be based on the full range of final-status issues established by previous agreements—Netanyahu has publicly ruled out negotiating on two of those issues, the fate of Palestinian refugees and the status of Jerusalem, which both sides claim as their capital.
Abbas appeared to win Obama’s backing in the U.N. speech, which made clear that the President has not accepted Netanyahu’s position on the precursor issue of a settlement freeze even if he’s decided to move on to the final-status negotiations. "America does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements," the President insisted on Wednesday. That could be read as a response to the damage Obama’s credibility has suffered in theArab world as a result of being forced by Netanyahu to retreat on the settlement issue, which had been widely viewed as a test of Israel’s peacemaking bona tides and had been a centerpiece of Obama’sCairo outreach speech in the spring.But there was an even stronger challenge to Netanyahu in Obama’s declared plan to relaunch negotiations "that address the permanent-status issues: security for Israelis and Palestinians; borders, refugees and Jerusalem." He also spoke of the goal of those negotiations as being the establishment of" a viable, independent Palestinian state with contiguous territory that ends the occupation that began in 1967."
While many analysts focused on Tuesday’s meeting as an Obama admission of defeat on settlements, some were more optimistiC、Former Israeli peace negotiatorDaniel Levy believes that theAdministration’s pivot on the issue smartly boxed Netanyahu into a negotiating process the Israeli leader would have preferred to avoid, by turning his own argument against him: if, as Netanyahu insists, settlements should be an issue for negotiation rather than a precondition because their fate will depend on future borders, then why not move straight to final-status negotiations over those borders Final-status talks were something Netanyahu had hoped to dodge. Not only does his right-wing coalition government refuse to countenance negotiations over refugees or Jerusalem, but also, the Prime Minister, much of whose political career has been built on resisting the Oslo peace process, has sought to promote incremental improvements in Palestinian life, particularly the economy, over the search for a final two-state agreement. Obama isn’t buying it.According to Israeli accounts of Tuesday’s meeting, the U.S. President "scolded" Netanyahu andAbbas, declaring "We’ve had enough talks. We need to end this conflict. There is a window of opportunity, but it might shut."And according to these reports, Obama insisted that the neg