Obama to face skepticism during Mideast trip

Israelis worry how US will handle Iran

JERUSALEM - When he arrives in Israel today, Barack Obama will set off on the same type of dignitary circuit he has planned elsewhere on his foreign trip. But nowhere are he and his brand of charismatic internationalism likely to receive such a skeptical welcome.

The difficulty Obama has encountered in trying to win over Israelis, whose attention to American politics revolves almost entirely around diplomatic and security policy toward the Middle East, magnifies a broader challenge that the presumptive Democratic nominee also faces at home.

Despite indicating broad support for many of Obama's individual foreign-policy positions, polls have demonstrated American voters have far less confidence in his ability to serve as commander in chief than his Republican rival, John McCain.

To Israelis, the election's outcome "may be more crucial than any other in recent memory" given the "existential threat" posed by Iran's leadership, and the disagreement between Obama and McCain on how to confront it, according to Michael Oren, a senior fellow at the Shalem Center, a Jerusalem think tank.

"What was the difference between Kerry and Bush, or Gore and Bush? There weren't many policy differences," said Oren, who authored a report issued yesterday identifying Iran as one of many areas of considerable distance between Obama and McCain on issues relating to Israel. "There are major policy differences on just about everything."

Neither candidate is particularly well known in Israel, according to analysts, but a smattering of polls have shown McCain leading Obama when Hebrew-speaking residents are given a matchup between the two or are asked which candidate they most trust. Polls taken during the Democratic primary season also indicated Obama trailing Hillary Clinton by considerable margins. (Obama led Clinton in one survey of Israeli Arabs this spring.)

It is an unusual position for Obama, whose candidacy has engendered enthusiasm nearly everywhere else in the world where pollsters have tried to measure it. In each of 23 countries, not including Israel, surveyed by Pew Global Attitudes, more residents said they had confidence in Obama as a future president than McCain. In each of the three Western European countries Obama will visit after leaving Israel on Thursday, Obama was seen favorably by three-quarters or more of those questioned.

"There are two things that stick out that are problematic for Obama among Israeli Jews," Mitchell Barak, a Jerusalem-based pollster. He cited Obama's willingness to meet with Iranian leaders, and what sounded like a confused statement to a Jewish group in Washington last month in which Obama said Jerusalem needed to remain "undivided," before hastily amending that view to say Jerusalem's status needed to be settled by negotiation.

Barak's Keevoon Research has surveyed public opinion in the country toward the American election. A poll he conducted in late May showed McCain leading Obama by 43 percent to 20 percent, with over one-third undecided.

This week's visit will be Obama's first since becoming a presidential candidate, and much of the itinerary is designed with American Jews, a highly contested bloc with which Obama has had trouble in some key states, in mind.

In addition to meetings with government officials and opposition leaders, according to local press reports, Obama will make a series of stops that have become mandatory for visiting foreign politicians: Jerusalem's Western Wall and Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, in addition to the town of Sderot, an Israeli town repeatedly targeted by rockets launched from Gaza.

"American Jews want to see how he relates to Israel," said David Ehrenwerth, a Pittsburgh lawyer and fund-raiser who has represented Obama at Jewish community events in Pennsylvania. "You'll really get a comfort level based on what I think he's going to say that will respond to the disinformation over the last several months."

The trip will also offer Israel its first up-close look at Obama since he became a presidential candidate. (McCain visited most recently in March after securing the Republican nomination.) This is only the second US election since Israel's founding without a candidate directly connected to the incumbent administration, leaving residents here without a familiar frame of reference. "Israelis like incumbents," said Barak. "Israelis don't really know senators."

Even so, the hawkish war hero and longtime legislator offers a more familiar election-year archetype here than a foreign-affairs novice with an Arabic name whose career has been built less on achievements in government than reminding voters of the poetic potential of politics.

"It seems to me that for the Israeli Jewish population there is a certain naivete that is apparent," Barak said of Obama. "Israelis take foreign policy and defense very seriously, and people who are seen as strong on those issues are very appealing to Israelis."

Yet a wide gap exists between the candidates in key areas, according to Oren's report, which surveyed public statements and policy pronouncements made by the two campaigns. Unlike McCain, Obama has criticized Israel's settlement policy while remaining mum on whether he would move the US Embassy to Jerusalem, a position commonly held by American politicians.

Obama has identified the unresolved Arab-Israeli conflict as a central source of instability in the Middle East, while McCain has shared the Bush administration's perspective that "radical Islamic terrorism" is the catalyst. Obama will visit Ramallah, in the West Bank, to meet with Palestinian Authority leaders, a stop that was not on McCain's itinerary in March.

"Obama's making a statement that he's striving to be evenhanded," said Oren.

Obama is likely to get his toughest scrutiny from Israeli officials and media over his approach to Iran and his apparent about-face on the matter of an "undivided" Jerusalem.

"We tend to see things in a much clearer way when it comes to Israel than Jews in the US, who are looking at candidates with a much wider set of issues," said Marc Zell, a Jerusalem-based lawyer with dual citizenship who co-chairs Republicans Abroad in Israel.