issue here. by and large it doesn t appear as though people are expecting to hear very much of anything new here. all right, there we have it, frederick pleitgen, difficulty with our live significant nal. it will be interesting to see after the speech. we were talking in the break i lived there for a year or so. the feeling has always been pro-american, love americans but don t like u.s. policy, particularly don t like u.s. policy towards israel. that s always been, as you know, covering the region for so many years, the dichotomy that exists between egypt and the middle east. the other die kchotomy is we
affect change in this process in a way that it isn t in other parts of the middle east. and that s the big difference there, i believe. all right. hala, thank you very much. wolf or ed, twunt ayou want to ? i just want to bring in gloria and john king for a moment on this whole relationship this president has. gloria, as you know, the best-laid american politics is having a significant role right now in what the president can or cannot say as far as israel and the palestinians are concerned. barack obama, let me remind you although i m sure you all know won 80% of the jewish vote last time around. they ve been very skeptical of barack obama because of the pressure on the settlement issue. as you pointed out earlier. israel is feeling very risk averse right now because the diplomatic world has kind of just blown up around them and i think they want to go slowly. and so as we see this tension within the administration about how specific to get from the hillary clinton camp who
role america will play as this story unfolds. for decades, the united states has pursued a set of core interests in the region. countering terrorism and stopping the spread of nuclear weapons, securing the free flow of commerce and safeguarding the security of the region, standing up for israel s security and pursuing arab-israeli peace. we will continue to do these things with a firm belief that america s interests are not hostile to people s hopes, they re essential to them. we believe that no one benefits from a nuclear arms race in the region or al qaeda s brutal attacks. we believe people everywhere would see their economies crippled by a cut-off in energy supplies. as we did in the gulf war, we will not tolerate aggress across borders and we will keep our commitments to friends and
interview discussion that i had with formerrd jimmy carter just a couple weeks ago who believes that hamas has to be at the negotiating table if this is god to work. take a listen. there have been atrocities committed by hamas and fatah. and on occasionally a lot of palestinians are killed who are not combat tapt. so things happen in a case of serious disagreement. but this new agreement is a major step forward. how do you suppose the obama administration gets beyond this hurdle, that hamas is now in these discussions? you have president obama meeting with israeli s prime minister netanyahu tomorrow at the white house. neither one of them will go for this about. the only way they would go for it, the only way they would agree with former president jimmy carter is if hamas did what the u.s., israelis, you are
instead, the president s going to speak much more generally about the mideast peace process, leave some of the details to tomorrow when he welcomes israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu to the white house. we should also say sunday here in washington the president will be giving another speech on the mideast to aipac, the american-israeli group. so there will be a flurry of activity even after today s speech but i wouldn t anticipate too much detail about the peace process from this president, wolf. ed, i want to bring suzanne into this conversation as well. it is intriguing to me he decided woe speak at this time. it is now approaching noon, exactly noon on the east coast of the united states, it is 56:00 p.m. in tunis, 6:00 p.m. in cairo, 7:00 p.m. in jerusalem. these are times when people are near a television, they can watch. they specifically timed this address so that people throughout europe, the middle east, north africa would be at