WASHINGTON  George J. Mitchell likes to remind people that he labored for 700 days before reaching the Good Friday accord that brought peace to Northern Ireland. So the fact that Mr. Mitchell has shuttled back and forth to the Middle East for the last 190 days without any breakthroughs, he said, does not mean that President Obama’s push for peace there is stalled.

But while the negotiating has continued  mostly in closed-door sessions with few comments for the press, in keeping with Mr. Mitchell’s close-to-the-vest style  reports in Israel, in particular, have focused on the claim that the Obama administration’s pressure is alienating Israelis even while it is failing to sway Arabs.

“One of the public misimpressions is that it’s all been about settlements,” Mr. Mitchell, the administration’s special envoy to the Middle East, said in a rare interview Friday after six months on the job. “It is completely inaccurate to portray this as, ‘We’re only asking the Israelis to do things.’ We are asking everybody to do things.”

Another misperception, he said, was that Arab countries had rebuffed Mr. Obama’s request to make moves toward a more normal relationship with Israel  a perception fueled by a Saudi official’s blunt public rejection of such incremental steps in Washington on Friday.