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 Fatah-Hamas reconciliation agreement is a byproduct of the Arab Spring, and the Palestinian chess game to position the public of both the West Bank and Gaza Strip for Palestinian statehood. The questions that the deal raises are numerous-yet so are the possibilities.

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.

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 momentous withdrawal from Gaza and the ceasefire agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, while substantially reducing the level of violence in the past eight months, have not produced the hoped-for momentum to propel the peace process forward.

Historically and theologically, the Jews could be, and to a certain extent were being, trusted by Muslims as long as they were subordinate to the Muslims. Since the beginning of Zionism and the establishment of Israel, the Palestinians have been called upon to trust Israelis when they are powerful.