It's hard to overstate the importance of the press briefing held by senior White House staff Nov. 5 on the eve of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Washington. They said that not only is there no chance of reaching a permanent Israeli-Palestinian agreement during the time left in President Barack Obama’s last term, but further negotiations will also have to wait for the next president. Coming after these statements and preceding Obama's Nov. 9 meeting with Netanyahu, the declaration by the president that he intended to speak with his guest about ways to return to the peace process sounded hollow and even grating. Obama also stated, “Israel has not just the right but the obligation to defend itself.” Ok, but what about the right of Palestinians to defend themselves against settler violence and the commitment of the Palestinian Authority (PA) to ending the settlement enterprise? 

If Obama refuses to withdraw his “resignation” as senior mediator between Israel and the Palestinians, he will leave his successor scorched earth between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. It would mark the first time since Lyndon Johnson's administration that a US president left the White House without writing a note on the unfinished symphony of the Israeli-Arab conflict.

Richard Nixon delivered the “separation of forces agreement” between Israel and Egypt. Gerald Ford will go down in history for his “reassessment” of US-Israeli relations, a threat that contributed to the acceptance of those agreements. Jimmy Carter is mentioned in the same breath as the 1978 Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt. Ronald Reagan opened the dialogue between the United States and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO); George H.W. Bush organized the 1991 Madrid Conference. Bill Clinton was the matchmaker for the Oslo B agreement and the Hebron Accord. George W. Bush put forward the “roadmap” and assembled the Quartet (the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and the United States). Obama entered the Middle East pantheon as the champion of peace speeches. For now, he gets a 10 for speechmaking, and a 0 for actions. On one grave note, during his presidency the number of settlers in the West Bank has increased considerably, from about 297,000 to nearly 400,000.

In April 2014, in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Secretary of State John Kerry described the collapse of the futile negotiations he had orchestrated for nine months: “Unfortunately, the [Palestinian] prisoners weren’t released on the Saturday they were supposed to be released … Day (one) went by, day two went by, day three went by, and then in the afternoon, when they were about to maybe get there, 700 settlement units were announced in Jerusalem, and poof, that was sort of the moment.” Twenty months have since passed with absolutely no American action on the peace process. In effect, it is more correct to say that the time has passed with the Americans putting up roadblocks to alternative diplomatic paths, the foremost of which is recognition of a Palestinian state by the UN Security Council on the basis of the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative.