"... The much-trumpeted alignment of interests between Israel & Arab leaders on IRAN, .... is wafer-thin..."

Marc Lynch, here

Don't view the Israeli-Palestinian issue through the Iranian lens. The Israelis are going to try to argue that the U.S. can't do Israeli-Palestinian peace until after "solving" Iran, while many Arabs and others are going to argue that the U.S. can't solve Iran without first addressing Israeli-Palestinian issues. Both are wrong, or at least over-stated. The two issues are only loosely related, the much-trumpeted alignment of interests between Israel and Arab leaders is wafer-thin, it's important to move towards an Israeli-Palestinian two state solution for its own sake, and there is absolutely no logic to "sequencing" the two since both will take long, painstaking diplomacy.

Don't get sidetracked into a never-ending process. ..... they want a peace settlement along the lines of a two-state solution, and soon. The piecemeal approach is a recipe for delays, intentionally or otherwise. Since every step, no matter how small, will likely become the subject of political warfare, better to get straight to the heart of the problem rather than wasting political capital on small stuff. Be very wary of anything likely to waste time or divert energies into marginal affairs. And any approach in which progress is made conditional on the performance of Palestinian security forces under occupation is likely to fail badly.

Don't think that you can succeed by doing a bad policy better. There are deep conceptual problems with the approach of the last few years which go beyond just execution. There's a real risk that the Obama administration will fool itself into thinking that it can do the same basic things as Bush -- strengthen the Palestinian Authority, build the PA institutions and security forces, isolate Hamas, lay out a new version of the road map -- but succeed through better execution. .....

The Arab cold war is an obstacle to Arab-Israeli peace. Watching Hosni Mubarak shadow box with Iranian phantoms, Hezbollah, Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood should drive home the point that the current inter-Arab tensions contribute to a toxic environment for any serious moves towards peace. Their detachment from wider Arab public opinion should be a bright warning light for the Obama administration, who should take everything they are hearing from the procession of Arab leaders with a major grain of salt. Encouraging those divisions in the name of promoting "moderates" against "extremists" is a losing game, ...

Don't ignore Gaza. The Obama administration has said and done regrettably little about Gaza, preferring to focus on the Ramallah government and the West Bank, and the Arab world has noticed. But Gaza continues to suffer....

Find a workable formula for a Palestinian national unity government. There doesn't seem to be any stomach to initiate direct talks with Hamas, which probably wouldn't amount to much anyway under the current conditions. But it has signaled flexibility on some key issues, .... some formula must be found for a Palestinian national unity government which can negotiate authoritatively -- which Mahmoud Abbas simply can not -- and which can enforce a ceasefire arrangement. The prospects for this don't look good, of course. The Cairo talks look close to dead, though Fayyad may yet pull a rabbit out of his hat with the "wide" government he promises within the next day or two. ..."