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.

Obama’s visit has been overshadowed mainly by what Palestinians perceive as a turning of the tides. Many believe that his speech gave Israel carte blanche to move ahead with plans to build more West Bank settlements, which have been steadily gnawing at any hopes to create a Palestinian state.

For many, the outcome of Obama’s trip was expected. Since he first took office in 2009, Palestinians saw settlements sprawl across the West Bank unabated. Since the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993, settler numbers have doubled to more than half a million today. Obama’s assertion that settlements should not prevent Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from holding direct talks once again put settlement building at the center of the debate and raised the question, what is there to negotiate on when most of the West Bank is dotted with Israeli settlements?