the context of American public opinion that has not seen significant changes in regard to favourability toward Israel while favourability toward Palestinians markedly increased in recent years. Yet while interests groups and their effects on American politics have certainly created a pro-Israel bias in American mediation, they are able to do so in conjunction with a constant which hasn't changed in the past two centuries and isn't likely to change in the next decade: the American electoral cycle. Romney pledges support for Israel Every four years the United States has Presidential elections and pro-Israel interest groups have proven a consistent ability to use these domestic constraints to hold first-term presidents in check. For this reason, presidents who have engaged in Israeli-Palestinian peace making have done so in their second terms. Take Camp David and Annapolis for example: both came in the final years of the Clinton and Bush presidencies. Obama, who sought to engage early by merely asking the Israelis to comply with obligations and freeze settlement building, realised quickly that he didn't have the political capital in his first term to actually use leverage against a recalcitrant Israeli Prime Minister. This, in turn, creates a situation where Israel, particularly when it is governed by the settlement-addicted right, prefers first term Presidents. This explains why the self-proclaimed most pro-settlement Israeli government in history has clashed with a first-term American president who engaged early and backed, more overtly than ever before, his opponent. But even presidents in their second term are