It was essential for US President Barack Obama to pack and leave for Israel and the Palestinian territories in order to restore momentum to the file of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict after interest in it had declined in light of the long Arab Spring season. However, this visit is predestined to fail even before it begins. Indeed, all the predictions concerning this visit are ridden with disappointment as they merely indicate that the US president will conduct nothing more than a touristic visit to Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Ramallah and Bethlehem. Benjamin Netanyahu prepared a poor welcome for Obama as he hastily formed a new cabinet whose actual mission is to prevent any progress of the peace process, even if Obama were to flex his muscles and remind the Israelis of the need to solve their conflict with the Palestinians on the basis of the two-state solution. The radical religious parties are not represented in the new cabinet. However, those who are represented and those who constitute the main weight in it – such as Naftali Benet the leader of the Jewish Home party or even Yair Lapid, the chairman of the Yesh Atid Party – will certainly veto any progress of the peace process even if Netanyahu wanted to give the Americans and the world the impression that he is working in that direction. Benet's electoral program was based on calling for the annexation of sixty percent of the West Bank lands to Israel. He also made public statements indicating that it is unlikely that a Palestinian State will be established “for at least another two hundred years". As for Lapid, contrary to his moderate speech and his wish to halt the exemption of yeshiva students from military service, his main concern as indicated by his electoral campaign is to “forget the crisis with the Palestinians", focus on the domestic Israeli arena, and conduct the necessary economic and social reforms in order to meet the demands of the “Israeli Spring" protestors who had taken to the streets of Tel Aviv and several other cities in the summer of 2011. For the first time in the history of the Hebrew State, the protests included no references to the peace process or the future of the Israeli relations with the Arab surroundings. Unlike the crisis with the Palestinians, which ranks low on the Israeli priorities' checklist, the crisis with Iran over its nuclear program is at the top of these priorities. Obama and Netanyahu are in disagreement over this point, even though the two of them have been employing a similar escalatory tone against Tehran. The Israeli prime minister believes that the only solution to this problem is a military one through dealing a blow to the Iranian nuclear reactors. Meanwhile, as he did in an interview with the Israeli TV, Obama is reiterating that “all the cards must be laid down on the table" in an attempt to stand midway between the Israeli desires and the decision of the US administration to resort to the diplomatic solution to settle this conflict, since the Pentagon and the US administration have no wish to use military means. Hence, a standstill reigns over the Israeli-American and the Palestinian-Israeli relations, and the Israelis are taking advantage of it to proceed with building their settlements without any restraints. They are “creating a new status quo", as they say, because they believe that this will prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state in the future – since most of the lands on which this state might be built in the West Bank will already be in the hands of the Jewish settlers. In addition, the Judaization of Jerusalem is ongoing, and this essentially aims at putting an end to the Palestinian dream of turning East Jerusalem into the capital of the promised state.
