As US President Barack Obama wrapped up his trip to Israel and the West Bank, many Palestinians were still angry over comments he made a day earlier, in which he implied that preconditions to peace talks — including a freeze on settlement construction — would just delay the inevitable: negotiations. Palestinians were expecting that settlements would at least be a red line, but were disappointed when Obama said, “Let’s not put the cart before the horse. If the only way to even begin the conversations is that we get everything right at the outset … then we’re never going to get to the broader issue.”
Many observers took this to be a reversal of the stance he held during his first term. At that time, Obama was adamant that a halt to settlement construction was a precondition to renewing talks between Palestinians and Israelis. And while a 10-month settlement halt was agreed upon, negotiations never took off and have, in fact, stalled since.
