You can't make everyone happy
Barack Obama mildly pleased some Arabs, annoyed a lot of Israelis and has yet to bring the prospect of Middle East peace any closer
IT WAS a tricky few days for Barack Obama in his latest bid to please the Arab world in general and, more specifically, to break the logjam between Palestinians and Israelis. By contrast, Israel's prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, after frosty talks in the White House and rapturously received speeches to Congress and to the most powerful of America's pro-Israel lobbies, must have chuckled at having once again—at least in the short run—fended off an American president seeking to prod him more brusquely than usual down the road to compromise with the Palestinians.
This article appeared in the Middle East & Africa section of the print edition under the headline "You can't make everyone happy"
From the May 28th 2011 edition
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