When President Obama tried to get a real Middle East peace process going by calling on Israel to halt its illegal settlement activity and his "Yes, we can" became "No, we can't", I dared to invest some hope in the idea that in a second term he would use the leverage all presidents have to oblige Israel to end its defiance of international law and be serious about peace on terms the Palestinians could accept. And that investment was not the consequence of mere wishful thinking on my part. There were two main reasons for my cautious optimism. The first was (and is today even more so) in the fact that behind closed doors in Washington D.C. top military and security people are completely aware that it's no longer in America's own best interests to go on supporting the Zionist (not Jewish) state right or wrong. The second was my knowledge from sources I trust that Obama has always understood that without an acceptable measure of justice for the Palestinians there could be no end to the conflict, only catastrophe for all. When he was preparing for his first run for the White House, he told a close American-Palestinian friend not to expect too much from him in his first term but to be optimistic about what he could and would do in a second term. (I took that to mean that Obama was fully aware of a fundamental truth expressed to me by former President Carter. As I have