In Middle East, Obama gives peace-making a chance

SDEROT, Israel -- Barack Obama's promise to serve as the nation’s envoy-in-chief faced a test run today, as he practiced a sort of shuttle shadow diplomacy in an armored Volvo limousine moving between Israeli and Palestinian capitals.

Obama aides have emphasized that the presumptive Democratic nominee’s frantic week-long foreign tour was not designed as a policymaking mission. "The United States has one president at a time, and that president is George W. Bush," said his foreign-affairs adviser Susan Rice.

Yet Obama has pledged that he would preside over a new era of outreach and evenhandedness in American policy towards the Middle East. On today's tour -- a routine circuit for visiting dignitaries fraught with unique political challenges for Obama -- he committed to defend Israel’s security while emphasizing the value of negotiations in resolving the region's most vexing problems.

"It's the job of the United States, I think, to make sure that peace is centered and promotes Israel's long-term security," Obama said. "We need a peace deal that's going to mean something, and it's not going to be meaningful if Israel's security is not part of that package."

Unlike his Republican opponent, John McCain, who did not visit Palestinian territory on a similar trip to the region in March, Obama traveled to Ramallah, in the West Bank, to meet with Palestinian Authority leaders. According to a statement released by President Mahmoud Abbas, Obama "corrected" a comment made last month to a pro-Israel group in Washington that Jerusalem “must remain undivided," perhaps the most contentious element of territorial negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.

"That's an issue that has to be dealt with the parties involved, the Palestinians and the Israelis, and it is not the job of the United States to dictate the form in which that will take, but rather to support the efforts that are being made right now to resolve these very difficult issues that have a long history," Obama told reporters later.

Yet only about ninety minutes of Obama's day was spent in Palestinian territory. The rest was spent meeting with Israeli officials and touring sites they have bestowed with symbolic power as they seek international backing for a forceful stance on national-security matters.

In Israel, Obama seemed to put as hawkish a face possible on his diplomatic agenda. He refused to negotiate with Hamas and framed a willingness to engage Iran -- including a personal encounter with its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad -- as part of an aggressive stance towards the country, not an accommodating one.

Obama emphasized the use of appearing "to exhaust every possible avenue" with Ahmadinejad's government, suggesting obliquely that a failed diplomatic effort could help efforts to marshal international support for other forms of action.

"I bring to Sderot an unshakable commitment to Israel's security," Obama said on a stop in a town bordering Gaza that has regularly come under rocket fire from Palestinian militant groups, including Hamas. Obama visited a family whose home was damaged in such an attack, and addressed reporters before a display of rocket shells at the local police station.

"It's important for people to come to Sderot to understand the gravest security situation outside the Iranian threat," said Marcus Sheff, executive director of the Israel Project, a non-partisan group involved in organizing Obama’s visit.

(CORRECTION: The Israel Project says it was not involved in organizing Obama's visit to Sderot.)

Obama traveled to Sderot by helicopter with foreign minister “to see firsthand the topography, the terrain and the strategic implications of the terrain," according to Rice. The helicopter tour has become standard fare for Israeli officials trying to demonstrate the country's cramped quarters to outsiders: George W. Bush credits a similar expedition guided by then-foreign minister Ariel Sharon with giving him a new perspective on the country’s security concerns just prior to his first presidential campaign.

In the morning, Obama toured the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum and memorial, where he rekindled an "eternal flame" and lowered a white-crysanthemum wreath onto a slab containing victims' ashes, with his head bowed and hands clenched at his waist. Obama wore a white yarmulke that stood out, in a photo-friendly way, against the dark room -- others in his entourage were offered black

"May we remember those who perished, not only as victims but also as individuals who hoped and loved and dreamed like us, and who have become symbols of the human spirit," Obama wrote in the guest book.

Obama, who has said that he wanted to use his trip to get to know foreign leaders "who I expect to be dealing with over the next eight to ten years," ended his day with dinner at the residence of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. But given the chaotic world of Israeli politics, the series of five meetings held earlier with other political figures in the country could be more useful: many of them could end up greeting the next U.S. president as a peer.

One of them, opposition leader Binyamin Netanyahu, welcomed Obama by asking how he felt. "I could fall asleep standing up," the senator replied.