Last week, in an "exclusive" interview granted to Time magazine, U.S. President Barack Obama admitted he erred during his first year in office by raising unrealistically high expectations of solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"I'll be honest with you, this is just really hard," Mr. Obama said when asked about the Middle East.

"This is as intractable a problem as you get," he went on, noting that while Israel had showed a willingness "after a lot of time" to make "some modifications" in policy, it "still found it very hard to move with any bold gestures."

"I think it is absolutely true that what we did this year didn't produce the kind of breakthrough that we wanted, and if we had anticipated some of these political problems on both sides earlier, we might not have raised expectations as high," Mr. Obama added.


Are we sure Obama is as smart as he is being made out to be?

Really, there are political problems in Israeli-Palestinian relations? Who knew? If only someone had told us, we could have reacted differently.

What, exactly, did they do regarding the relationship besides ask Israel for some concessions in building on the West Bank?

Duh.

Fixed to sum up the whole last year.

Ironically, later in the artical, Abbas decries Obama's call for a freeze in settlements, saying that basically tied his hands, as he couldn't let the American President seem more Palestinian that the Palestinian President.

But hey, if he (Obama) had only known there were political issues here, he would have approached it differently.

now this is not Bush's fault!

clearly it started with Abraham and Sarah not waiting until her 95th year....

Since Israel has already ceded Gaza to the "Palestinians", what building were they to freeze?

Oops, I meant West Bank, my mistake.

Actually working today...

But it was the moment the seas began to recede and the planet healed and the unicorns brought us all cotton candy - how can expectations possibly be too high about such a glorious time in history?

so the "just talking to them option" is no longer? or did we maybe just not explain it good enough to them...

I think more speeches will do the trick.

Maybe if he speaks louder and slower.

exactly

He'll take full responsibility for the fact that he didn't realize everyone else was so stupid.

what's considered the "Middle East?"

west virginia

!!!!

If West Virginia is the Middle East, I live on the West Bank.

These people have been trying to kill each other for 2000 years. Is Obama really arrogant enough to think that he can fix it? Yikes!

There's that much unrest in West Virgina?

will i need a visa to come visit you?

They only take Amex on the West Bank.

The Hatfields and McCoys, right?

add another 2,000 years to that....

some of Shem's kids were not easy to get along with...