"A SPEECH is just a speech," one particularly blasé Israeli peacenik remarked in the wake of Barack Obama's address to Israeli students in Jerusalem on March 21st. Her hard-nosed observation was incontrovertible. But so was the fact—as this writer ascertained in unscientific polling—that the American president's elegant, empathetic rhetoric brought tears, literally, to the eyes of many other Israelis who yearn for an end to the conflict with the Palestinians.

Just a speech, yes. But a corker of a speech.

Mr Obama scored with the Israeli public—and well beyond the confines of the hard-core "peace camp"—principally because he embraced in this speech the Israeli narrative of what has gone wrong in the peace process.

"I know," he declared, "Israel has taken risks for peace. Brave leaders—Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Rabin—reached treaties with two of your neighbours. You made credible proposals to the Palestinians at Annapolis. You withdrew from Gaza and Lebanon, and then faced terror and rockets. Across the region, you have extended a hand of friendship, and too often have been confronted with the ugly reality of anti-Semitism. So I believe that the Israeli people do want peace, and you have every right to be skeptical that it can be achieved… There is no question that Israel has faced Palestinian factions who turned to terror, and leaders who missed historic opportunities. That is why security must be at the center of any agreement."

Palestinians would subscribe to practically none of that. Indeed, Mr Obama himself may have reservations about some of it. But his purpose in the speech, watched by millions across the country, was to build a rhetorical, logical, political basis upon which to found his central contention: the two-state solution with Palestine is in Israel's own vital, existential interest:

Peace is necessary. Indeed, it is the only path to true security… Given the demographics west of the Jordan River, the only way for Israel to endure and thrive as a Jewish and democratic state is through the realization of an independent and viable Palestine. Given the frustration in the international community, Israel must reverse an undertow of isolation.

This, for years, has been the central argument of Israeli doves—the so-called "demographic threat" endangering the essence of Israel as a Jewish-majority state and a democracy.

But Mr Obama reached out to Israeli hawks, too, turning an argument they often use on its head:

I recognise that with the uncertainty in the region—people in the streets, changes in leadership, the rise of non-secular parties in politics—it is tempting to turn inward. But this is precisely the time to respond to the wave of revolution with a resolve for peace.

And he addressed a blunt challenge to the whole of Israeli society when he spoke of the justice of the Palestinian aspiration to sovereign statehood and of the injustice of the ongoing occupation.

The Palestinian people’s right to self-determination and justice must also be recognised… It is not fair that a Palestinian child cannot grow up in a state of her own, and lives with the presence of a foreign army that controls the movements of her parents every single day. It is not just when settler violence against Palestinians goes unpunished. It is not right to prevent Palestinians from farming their lands; to restrict a student’s ability to move around the West Bank; or to displace Palestinian families from their home. Neither occupation nor expulsion is the answer. Just as Israelis built a state in their homeland, Palestinians have a right to be a free people in their own land.

Mr Obama steered clear of controversial analogies between the Israeli occupation of the Palestinians and regimes in other times and places. But the depth and personal context of his feelings came through clearly in his remarks earlier in the day at a press conference with the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, in Ramallah.

Whenever I meet these young people, whether they're Palestinian or Israeli, I'm reminded of my own daughters, and I know what hopes and aspirations I have for them. And those of us in the United States understand that change takes time but it is also possible, because there was a time when my daughters could not expect to have the same opportunities in their own country as somebody else's daughters. What's true in the United States can be true here as well. We can make those changes.

He made the same point, with exquisite care, in his remarks in Israel, dwelling on the festival of Passover, to be celebrated next week.

To African-Americans, the story of the Exodus told a powerful tale about emerging from the grip of bondage to reach for liberty and human dignity—a tale that was carried from slavery through the civil rights movement… For the Jewish people, the journey to the promise of the State of Israel wound through countless generations. It involved centuries of suffering and exile, prejudice, pogroms and even genocide… Israel is rooted not just in history and tradition, but also in a simple and profound idea: the idea that people deserve to be free in a land of their own.

Mr Obama delivered his message to Israelis on the need to end the conflict and the occupation only after reiterating yet again the assurance he has emphasised throughout this visit—that America is Israel's unwavering ally and guarantees its security.

While he has not hidden his continuing difference with Israel's Binyamin Netanyahu over the urgency of the Iranian nuclear threat, he has sought to convince the Israeli public that America's commitment to prevent Iran getting the bomb, by military means if all else fails, is firm and reliable.

He has spoken here, too, with somber forcefulness of America's determination, acting with allies, to prevent the Assad regime in Syria from using its chemical weapons or enabling them to fall into the hands of terrorists. (And for America, as Mr Obama pointedly reiterated here, Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite movement, is a terrorist force.)

On Palestine, with the speechmaking over, much will depend on Mr Obama's staying power. His peacemaking efforts during his first term—he now admits they were not free of ineptness—imploded and left him and his team reluctant to invest more political capital. Now, he says, he is back with renewed determination.

"I want both sides to know," he declared in Ramallah, "that as difficult as the current situation is, my administration is committed to doing our part. And I know that Secretary of State John Kerry intends to spend significant time, effort, and energy in trying to bring about a closing of the gap between the parties. We cannot give up on the search for peace. Too much is at stake."

(Photo credit: AFP)