If any Israeli politician is so obtuse as to worry about Barack Obama’s fealty to Israel they needn’t worry. But I think they worry about something else–that Obama will be his own man. He will do his own thinking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and not necessarily be led by the nose by AIPAC or by an Israeli PM. There will be no plane rides over the Green Line like the one Ariel Sharon used to bamboozle George Bush into supporting Sharon’s view of Israel’s security interests. And thank God for that.

I don’t want to make the mistake of claiming that an Obama presidency would provide the break that many of us hope for from the conventions of past history in Israel-U.S. relations. He’s a politician after all and has many interest groups to satisfy not the least of which are American Jews and their conservative leaders. But I think things would be different from the recent past. I believe Obama as president would combine elements of Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter and the first George Bush in his willingness to exert pressure on both sides for concessions. If he finds that negotiations with Iran or Syria are in the U.S.’s best interests, he will pursue them and not be constrained by ideological myopia as Bush has been.  And this is what has the Israelis nervous.