U.S. President Barack Obama expressed hope today of making serious progress in Middle East peacemaking this year and said Israelis and Palestinians had to "get serious" and make tough compromises, according to Reuters. On a visit to Germany, Obama repeated his call for Israel to halt settlement expansion in the West Bank, but he also pushed the Palestinians to improve security and pressed Arab states to match any Israeli peace steps with confidence-building gestures. "The Palestinians have to get serious about creating the security environment that is required for Israel to feel confident. Israelis are going to have to take some difficult steps," he said. Obama, who sees Israeli-Palestinian progress as crucial to repairing the U.S. image in the Muslim world, was speaking a day after delivering a speech in Cairo in which he offered Muslims a "new beginning" with the United States. Germany is the third stop on a trip which started in Saudi Arabia. On Saturday, he will attend commemorations in France marking the 65th anniversary of the World War Two D-Day landings in France. "I am confident that if we stick with it ... we can make some serious progress this year," Obama said of the peace process at a news conference in Dresden with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. "The moment is now for us to act on what we all know to be the truth, which is that each side is going to have to make some difficult compromises."
