Obama Beams On Mid East Trip
Updated: 11:49am UK, Saturday 23 March 2013
By Sam Kiley, Middle East Correspondent, Jerusalem
He beamed and Bibi-ed at every opportunity literally back slapping his way out of a sour relationship with Israel's Prime Minister.
Then Barack Obama shooed Benjamin Netanyahu into a cabin at Ben Gurion airport which was being swept with a khamsin sandstorm from the Sahara.
Inside the little room he stood over "Bibi" like the parent of a petulant child ordered to phone to apologise to an angry neighbour.
The call to Recep Erdogan, Turkey's Prime Minister, was to say sorry for the deaths of nine of his countrymen who were killed in a botched commando raid on the Mavi Marmaris in May 2010.
The raid was intended to stop the Marmaris from breaching the sea blockade of the Gaza Strip by Israel.
It shattered relations with Turkey, until then an Israeli ally.
Obama told Netanyahu to fix it - and he dutifully got some diplomatic glue out and got to work.
After four days of his first tour of Israel and Palestine since he became US president, the Israel-Turkey break through was Mr Obama's only visible achievement.
The Palestinians expected nothing and got it from an administration which has, in their eyes, woefully neglected the region while illegal Jewish settlements continued to eat into Palestinian lands on the West Bank.
The Israeli public was charmed by a speech he gave to 600 university students in Jerusalem in which he quoted the Torah, dropped the occasional Hebrew phrase and celebrated the princes of modern Zionism, Theodor Herzl and David Ben-Gurion.
That speech was an effort to reach past Netanyahu and appeal directly to the Israeli people. He told them to campaign for change and peace directly and demand their politicians take risks to achieve a two-state solution.
Many in Israel believe that the "status quo" is acceptable. He told them that no wall was high enough, no anti-missile batteries too impregnable, that Israel could survive indefinitely without making peace with he Palestinians.
But he didn't demand a freeze on settlements, which he has in the past and which has been a pre-condition for the Palestinians to return to talks.
Obama was his usual captivating self when delivering a set-piece speech.
Off the cuff at press conferences he was as poor as a performer as Ronald Reagan. Not with gaffes but by appearing uncomfortable, halting and insecure when asked to provide solutions to the problems that he had eloquently identified.
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