Obama said he would tell the truth, but instead we get a revisionist history on the region, and proffered the usual nonsense about settlements. Of course, it’s the same nonsense that the State Department has been spouting for decades (which helps explain why the Presidents have been saying the same).

The settlements were never the problem - and as I’ve repeatedly pointed out, Israel has repeatedly removed its citizens from communities in Sinai, Gaza, and the West Bank in pursuit of peace. Israel got peace in the Camp David Accords with Egypt, but the Gaza disengagement showed the limits of land for peace when one party - the Gazans seek war and annihilation of Israel over peaceful coexistence in a two-state solution. Israel created no-go areas for Jews in the West Bank, and still terrorism remains a concern so that there are checkpoints that the Palestinians bitch and moan about and that the terrorists can’t seem to avoid. Maybe if the Palestinians do more to stop the terrorism and indoctrination into an anti-Israel stance that doesn’t recognize Israel as anything more than for targeting data, there could be peace eventually.

What the Muslims heard from that particular phraseology was that the US would demand the end of settlements, which will also be taken as a minimum precondition for any peace deal. It will be added as yet another grievance, despite the fact that everyone knows that it is no such obstacle to peace.

The obstacle to peace remains as it has been - Palestinians who refuse to recognize Israel’s existence; Palestinians who seek war over peace; and Arab nations that fund and encourage the war against Israel’s existence.