Peace in the Middle East has been on the Obama administration's mind from the beginning. Two days after his inauguration, the president traveled to the State Department to announce the appointment of George Mitchell as his Middle East peace negotiator.

President Bush was disgusted by the Assad regime's oppression of the Syrian people as well as its support for terrorism, interference in Lebanon, and encouragement of jihadist attacks on Americans in Iraq.

During most of the Bush administration, human rights and democracy in Egypt were on the front burner.

America's relations with complex Middle Eastern states such as Egypt are often difficult.

In the Bill Clinton years, the foreign leader who visited the White House most often was Yasser Arafat - 13 times.

The failure to set standards for Palestinian conduct hurts the cause of peace.

It is a keen measure of the fall of American influence in the region when a Palestinian leader responds to intense American pressure to go to the negotiating table by waiting to see if Arab League foreign ministers will let him take that step.

The U.S. has the power to block all anti-Israel moves in the Security Council, not just some of them, and to do so without agreeing to unfair, damaging compromises.

At the United Nations, a lynch mob for Israel is always just a moment away.

History may someday record that the Arab awakening that began with the Arab revolt of 1916 against the Ottomans ended about a century later with a whimper.

The anchors of the Arab consensus have long been Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and both are now weakened forces in Arab politics and diplomacy.

Needless to say, if the Arab-Israeli conflict is about interstate disputes and the need to resolve the future of the West Bank and Gaza, it can be solved; if it is a religious conflict, nothing but violence is ahead.

Turkey's solidarity with Hamas is not, of course, based on Arab nationalism, which as a non-Arab nation it does not support. It is instead based on a definition of the Mideast conflict as one between Jews and Muslims, precisely the position of Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.

Immanuel Kant famously claimed that 'he who wills the ends wills the means,' but he never spent much time in Washington.

Fatah is a political party and movement, whose chairman is Mahmoud Abbas.

The Knesset is in Israel, and the Western Wall is in Israel, and the sooner the Obama administration realizes this, the closer it will be to a Middle East policy worthy of our country and its long alliance with our ally in Jerusalem - which is, actually, the capital of the state of Israel.

When a deeply sympathetic American president asks for concessions and compromises and appears able to cajole some from the Palestinians, which was the Clinton/Rabin and Bush/Sharon combination, Israel must respond.

Israel and the Palestinians had been at the table together for decades until the Obama/Mitchell/Rahm Emanuel decision to demand a total end to Israeli construction froze not the settlements but the diplomacy.

The Fayyad cabinet may well be the best the Palestinians ever get. But whatever its good qualities, there is no democracy.

The ransoming of captives has been practiced by Jews for many centuries and has been regarded as a greater obligation than charity for the poor.

There is no way around the contradictions and dangers inherent in Israel's decision to free over 1,000 prisoners in order to liberate Gilad Shalit.

Palestine, as Icelanders see it, includes the Western Wall of the Second Temple, Judaism's holiest site.

You know, there are no guarantees on prognosis.

Having bought furniture for my own house, and bought furniture for our house in Washington, a furniture store seemed like a good idea, and it also played into my personal history.