"For Israel, the chorus of cheers about Iron Dome risk muting the smart strategic reason why it was put in place: to ensure that a huge number of Israeli fatalities did not force the government's hand in launching a land war in Gaza. The shield provided the political space for a conservative leadership, and a divided nation, to consider alternatives to an invasion that would have surely inflamed Palestinian and Arab sentiment."

"The Jewish community in America is much more diverse in its opinions than AIPAC's vociferous leaders would suggest. The same is true in Israel. Though Netanyahu pounds Obama on his lack of specific plans, the prime minister has hardly been forthcoming about his own. He seems more comfortable asserting Israel's right to strike at Iran than in actually explaining why such a strike would eliminate the long-term threat."

"Gingrich's diehard allegiance to Israel is a way to align himself with the side he knows might win — the hawks who decry Obama's weakness. Gingrich is not only presenting himself as anti-Obama, but the most anti-Obama of all the GOP hopefuls. It is exactly the tactic that Obama used against Hillary Clinton; he was more anti-Bush than she was."

Every crisis has a trigger moment, and at least in their telling, the Palestinians left a meeting with the US envoys more determined to go for broke. If the settlements were described merely as a demographic change, then there should be no mystery about why our diplomacy failed to prevent this week's scramble. The use of misleading Israeli terminology to hide the intent of a settlement policy that Obama himself has condemned seems glaringly at odds with Obama's hopes for a new relationship with the Arab world.