The supposed controversy over President Obama's speech on the Middle East, manufactured by Prime Minster Netanyahu and enabled by the media, is disgraceful and dishonest.

The Obama administration is close to reaching a new agreement with Israel that would freeze Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank for a non-renewable three months. Once the negotiations resume, and regardless of the outcome, it will be necessary for the administration to replace Middle East Envoy George Mitchell who led the negotiations for the past two years to no avail.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been riddled with many intractable problems whose solutions have eluded both sides for more than 60 years. None, however, has been as politically and emotionally charged as the Palestinian right of return to the land they inhabited and lived in prior to the war of 1948.

With the changing political and demographic dynamic between Israel and the Palestinians and the advent of a new American administration, a new government in Israel and Palestine and a renewed push of the Arab Peace Initiative, an Israeli-Palestinian peace can be reached. The question now is will all these forces coalesce to drive for a peace agreement now which has eluded them for decades.

One of the most momentous declarations to come out of the
Arab world since Israel's inception in 1948 is the Arab Peace Initiative, launched in March 2002 in Beirut, Lebanon, and re-adopted by the Arab League in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in March 2007. It would be tragic to allow the Initiative to languish as it offers a solid promise for a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace.

The result of the Israeli elections on February 10th expressed clear sentiments of the public's weariness of the political process and deep cynicism about the campaigning leaders.

To make serious progress toward a final status agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, George Mitchell must first work on restoring confidence in a peace process that years of havoc and destruction have all but destroyed.

Israel's ongoing and decisive military response to Hamas' continuing rocket attacks should have been anticipated by the organization's leadership. Yet it seems they have badly miscalculated the Israelis' sentiment and resolve.