WHEN Barack Obama sets foot in Jerusalem next week, he will know that Israelis view him as the least friendly incumbent president of the United States in living memory. His relations with Israel’s recently re-elected prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, who did nothing to hide his preference for Mitt Romney in last year’s American presidential campaign, could hardly be chillier. Mr Obama will protest his love for the Jewish state, once again declaring America’s bond with Israel unbreakable. He will promise to stop Iran’s ayatollahs from getting a nuclear weapon. Mr Netanyahu, for his part, will thank the president for standing by Israel recently over its latest mini-war with the Palestinians in Gaza and for providing some of the know-how for Israel’s “Iron Dome” defence. But after such public assurances, the two men should exchange some harder truths. Their failure, in Mr Obama’s first term, to advance the cause of peace between Jews and Arabs was due to gross mistakes on both sides, though Mr Netanyahu was the guiltier party. Having made a fine speech to the Arabs in Cairo early in his presidency, Mr Obama then lamentably failed to go to Jerusalem to persuade the Israelis of their need to strike a deal with the Palestinians. Mr Netanyahu went behind his back to Congress and kept on expanding Jewish settlements on Palestinian land. Talks between the Israelis and Palestinians have gone nowhere. Now Mr Netanyahu is close to forming a coalition government with right-wingers who are even less interested in setting up a viable Palestinian state. Given the two sides’ proven inability to negotiate—and the Palestinians are as inept as the Israelis are unyielding—Mr Obama and his new secretary of state, John Kerry, must soon come up with a detailed peace plan of their own. But the president’s mission on this trip is to convince Mr Netanyahu and ordinary Israelis that he believes making peace is in their interest and that he is determined to get involved. That means explaining to Israelis that two states is the only solution. Seldom has that cause looked more tattered. It is not just that Jewish settlements on the West Bank are now so numerous that they make a contiguous, viable Palestine hard to construct. The one-state idea is now gaining supporters—both romantic idealists who dream of Jews and Arabs co-existing in a binational state and supremacist extremists on both sides who think of the land as wholly Jewish or wholly Arab.

Mr Obama should argue, as our briefing does this week, that the one-state option is a dangerous diversion, especially for Israel. The Palestinians are outbreeding Jewish Israelis, who, confronted by a single state where Palestinians have a voting majority, would eventually face a decision: give up the idea of the Jewish state or deprive Palestinians of their rights as citizens, opening up comparisons with apartheid South Africa. And long before that day arrives, Mr Obama should make clear to Israelis, their prospects would turn ugly. Israel cannot continue to suppress millions of surly Palestinians under occupation for ever, while the rest of the Arab world embraces democracy, without risking both international anger and another Palestinian uprising.

Instead, Mr Obama should argue for two states, divided by the border of 1967 with adjustments and land swaps to let most of the settlers stay within Israel. Those who refuse to leave Palestinian territory may, if the Palestinians can be persuaded to be flexible, be able to stay under Palestinian authority. Jerusalem needs to be shared, with the holiest places under international supervision. The Palestinians will have to drop their demand that all refugees have a right to return to the Israeli side of the new border. And the Jordan valley may require special security arrangements to reassure Israel that a Palestinian state could not one day use it as the platform for an attack.

Homeland truths

For this state to come about, Mr Obama will need to bully the Palestinians, who are still divided among two-state pragmatists, one-state belligerents and one-state idealists. Egypt, Jordan and other Arab states will also have to be pushed. But the focus of this trip should be on Israelis.

By spelling out his vision so clearly, Mr Obama would be calling Mr Netanyahu’s bluff. After all, the Israeli prime minister claims to believe in two states. In private, the president should make two other things clear. Mr Netanyahu’s oft-repeated excuse that he has “no Palestinian partner” is bogus. The Palestinians’ main leader, Mahmoud Abbas, is Israel’s best bet as a negotiator. And America’s support for Israel in international organisations such as the UN will not be infinite. This president is not running again. If Mr Netanyahu tries to outflank him in Congress, he can expect a fight.