| Publication |
2010.
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| Summary/Abstract |
In his commendably candid interview with Time in January 2010, President Barack Obama noted that managing politics in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict "is just really hard."1 The president, however, might well have been speaking about the Middle East as a whole. It is not just the Israeli-Palestinian track that has been difficult, so too have the Iranian and Syrian tracks, where engagement has not taken traction. Iran, Iraq, Israel, Lebanon, Syria-nothing has been exactly easy for U.S. policymakers this past year. To be fair to the president, he has taken office at a time when the whole region is journeying into a new era. In a sense, the president is facing the consequences of three key events that took place in the region more than 20 years ago.
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