Obama on Israel: Both sides should 'look in the mirror'

Obama suggested back in February that he would be pro-Israel without hewing to the Likud hard line, but more recently has expressed more generic backing for Israel.

In Amman today, though, he suggested again that the fault in the region is not the Palestinians' alone, something you'll rarely hear from Republicans.

"It’s difficult for either side to make the bold move that would bring about peace," he said, noting (generously) that the weak, scandal-tarred, deeply unpopular Israeli government is "unsettled," while the Palestinians are "divided."

"There’s a tendency for each side to focus on the faults of the other rather than look in the mirror," he said.

Obama condemned today's attack in Jerusalem, but he also cast it in tactical terms: "That’s why terrorism is so counterproductive as well as being immoral," he said. Attacks make "the Israelis simply want to dig in and think about their security … the same would be true of any people when these kinds of things happened."

And he stressed the role the desperate Palestinian economic situation plays in continuing the conflict.

"What I think can change is the ability of a United States government and a United States president to be actively engaged in the peace process," part of which is to "recognize the legitimate difficulties that the Palestinian people are experiencing right now," something he said would be "also in the interest of the Israeli people."

These are differences of nuance, not dramatic ones; its also easy to overstate the degree to which American Jewish voters -- who, as Sam Stein catches, much prefer Obama to Joe Lieberman -- will vote a pro-Israel hard line.