US President Barack Obama will make a historic visit to Tel Aviv and Ramallah in March, the first since he took office in 2009. The visit comes amid a suspended peace process, a weak performance by Netanyahu's political party in the recent Israeli elections, and continued Palestinian division through Hamas’ control on the Gaza Strip and the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank.
Factions in the Gaza Strip exhibit traditional skepticism over the ability of the American administration to pressure Israel to achieve its vision of a two-state solution. They also criticize Washington’s failure to deter the Israeli government from continuing settlement activity, which is taking chunks out of territory on which a Palestinian state is supposed to be built and was the reason for stopping the negotiations between the Palestinian and Israeli sides.
