"STEPHANOPOULOS: Would you say that in Israel today?
"OBAMA: I think that's a basic principle of any country is that they've got to protect their citizens. And so what I've said is that given the delicacy of the situation, the one area where the principle of one president at a time has to hold is when it comes to foreign policy.
"We cannot have two administrations at the same time simultaneously sending signals in a volatile situation. But what I am doing right now is putting together the team so that on January 20th, starting on day one, we have the best possible people who are going to be immediately engaged in the Middle East peace process as a whole.
"That are going to be engaging with all of the actors there. That will work to create a strategic approach that ensures that both Israelis and Palestinians can meet their aspirations."
Note the sentence: [Obama's team, i.e.] "the best possible people" [...] "are going to be engaging with all of the actors there." All of them. Not excluding Iran or Hezbollah or Hamas. The bone thrown at the Europeans -- even though they already volunteered support to Obama -- may actually have a tiny bit of meat.
Anyway, the main reason why a lasting arrangement may be feasible now (still unlikely, but I'm betting on the tail) is that Israel has finished throwing the kitchen sink at Hezbollah and Hamas, and failed.
This only reinforces what we already knew about the hard limits of U.S. power in the region, especially thanks to Iraq.
I'm no expert on these matters, but it seems to me that most of the support to Hamas and Hezbollah in the last few years in the Arab world is not due to the re-growth of Islam per se, as a religious movement, but to the fact that secular left-wing organizations have been decimated badly, and to advance their basic needs people use whatever political vehicle is at hand. The fact that people in the Arab world cheer Chavez, a non Muslim, a Christian socialist, for his gesture in support of Gaza is indicative of this. At some points, strongly felt, even if vaguely articulated, needs of large crowds wind up better articulated and, then, shaping things up on the ground.
The basic, pressing need of peace with a modicum of national (and economic) dignity is pretty strong in the region. And the need to have national states that stand up to imperialism (e.g. in Egypt and, coming up, Gulf countries) is also strong. I don't see evidence that Obama is committed to propping up Mubarak or the monarchies in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf region. Whatever we may say about Obama, the possibilities of an arrangement re. the Palestinians is significantly higher with him that would have been with McCain.