by Zhang Yanyang
JERUSALEM, May 28 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may have found more common ground for Middle East policy following their meeting in Washington than has so far been speculated, analysts said.
"Obama is a friend of Israel who will maintain the ethos of Israeli-American friendship from the two prior administrations," Uri Savir, Israel's chief negotiator of the Oslo accords and president of the Peres Center for Peace, said in an opinion piece.
"He is aware of Israel's security needs and will consider them in the peace process," he added.
Netanyahu, who has been back from his U.S. trip last week, said he and Obama agreed on the importance of pursuing normalization of ties between Israel and its Arab neighbors and also concurred on the view that the Iranian threat could create an opportunity to bring Arab countries together in a coalition of moderates.
On Wednesday, the Prime Minister told lawmakers and ministers during a plenum at the Knesset that he and Obama had reached understandings on key defense issues and that the U.S. administration accepted Israel's position on Iran.
Savir said it was crucial that Obama understands that all issues are intertwined: the Palestinian-Israeli peace process, the regional peace process and the effect of pacification in the Middle East on isolating Iran and its allies.
He believed that Obama's success in the Middle East largely depends on Netanyahu's decision whether to head towards an unprecedented, historic peace move with the Palestinians that could ultimately isolate Iran and thwart the existential threat posed by Islamist fundamentalism, or to resort to the old ideology promoted by allies on the Right side of the coalition.
In a dilemma to balance between international pressure to make concessions to the Palestinians and internal calls from within his right-leaning coalition not to concede, Netanyahu urged Arab countries to make immediate moves toward normalizing ties with Israel and said he would offer concrete steps toward peace with the Palestinians."
"We are prepared to make, and will make, concrete steps for peace with the Palestinians," Netanyahu said, noting that the Israeli government would uphold terms set in past agreements signed with the Palestinians but would also require reciprocity in future peace talks with the Palestinian National Authority (PNA).
Meanwhile, some analysts said Netanyahu, for his part, also sought to link the Palestinian quandary to Obama's involvement with Iran.
"Netanyahu wants some sort of trade-off that links his concessions to the Palestinians to the U.S. dropping their soft line towards Iran," Dahlia Golan, professor of Government at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, told Xinhua.
But she noted that Netanyahu and Obama's meeting in Washington made it very clear that Obama was not willing to agree to any trade-offs.
"The linkage for Obama is that progress on the Palestinian issue is going to help him pursue things with Iran but it is not dependent on it. Obama will pursue Iran regardless of what Netanyahu does," she said.
"He also made it very clear that there is no backtracking on the two-state solution idea and came down hard on the settlement issue," she added.
She said she did not really see any signs of progress beyond Obama's initial statements.
"There was the American attempt to go ahead with Syria, but that seems to have been frozen for now. And then there was the attempt with (U.S. Middle East envoy George) Mitchell's trip which also seems to have been slowed down," she said.
Golan noted that another statement from Washington hinted at Obama's willingness to change the earlier American position of not dealing with any government that Hamas is involved with.
"The problem is that Fatah and Hamas haven't gotten it to getheryet," she said. "I think about all we can say at this point is that Obama is taking everything into consideration, not rejecting the two state solution and pressuring Israel on the settlements issue."
