The conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is about the map — who gets what and how much of historic Palestine. US Secretary of State John Kerry may well have an opinion about this — it is hard to believe that he does not — but President Barack Obama's White House has yet to decide whether to break with the history of the last four decades and draw an American picture of what the states of Israel and Palestine should look like.

No such hesitation is to be found among the Palestine Liberation Organization and its chairman, Mahmoud Abbas, the signatories to the Arab Peace Initiative or members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). They accept the June 4, 1967, border as the line dividing the state of Israel from the yet-to-be-created state of Palestine. They are prepared to consider modifications to this map, the so-called land swaps, not because they want to, but in order to satisfy Israel’s territorial demands over this demarcation.

In contrast, Kerry is not close to divining the picture that Israel is prepared to draw. Israel’s rejection of Gen. John Allen’s Jordan Valley security ideas is the latest evidence of this debilitating weakness. Netanyahu will, like all those Israeli leaders before him, continue to struggle mightily to avoid getting to the point in negotiations where he will have to present Israel’s bottom line, which will necessarily define the limits of Israel’s territorial appetite in Palestine.

This map, Bibi’s map, has never been taken out of the drawer. Chances are, Netanyahu and his advisors have never drawn such a map, even for themselves. Why bother, when, Kerry’s effort notwithstanding, there is no serious American or international pressure to do so? Presenting such a picture, even if only among themselves, would suggest that Israel is indeed coming to the point where it will be forced to make a choice. Why would Netanyahu, who has yet to demonstrate that kind of leadership while becoming Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, put himself in such a predicament?