Associated Press. Many questions, few answers await Obama on Mideast visit

President Barack Obama is due to make his first official visit to Israel and the Palestinian Territories this week, looking to improve ties after sometimes rocky relations with both sides during his first term in office.

Obama is not expected to come with any new Palestinian peace initiative and will spend most of his time in Israel, the closest U.S. ally in the Middle East, where he will make a keynote speech to hundreds of students.

The American president will hold separate talks with both Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who finally formed a new coalition on Friday after a January election that weakened his grip on government.
Here are some of the issues that are likely to dominate the March 20-22 visit.

Obama said on March 14 that Iran was still more than a year away from developing a nuclear weapon and repeated his assurance to Israel that military force remained a U.S. option.

Israeli officials, who see Iran's nuclear advances as an existential threat, make no secret of the fact that they would prefer to see the U.S. military, with its greater firepower, tackle Iran's far-flung atomic installations. Tehran is improving its defenses and Israel worries that sooner rather than later Israeli warplanes will not be able to destroy this infrastructure. This would mean its own military option would be off the table, leaving Israel utterly reliant on Washington.

The White House believes Israelis have yet to reach a consensus on how to confront Iran, according to a source familiar with the administration's thinking, who added that Obama would stress the need for patience with sanctions and diplomacy. U.S. officials also hope a high-profile recommitment to Israel's security will increase public pressure on Netanyahu to avoid aggravating the situation while negotiations continue.

Seen from Netanyahu's office, U.S. policy-making in the region has been naive and failed to anticipate the rise in power of Islamist forces in one Arab nation after another.

U.S. officials argue that Washington could not have stood in the way of the march of history and believe that dialogue with the new governments that have emerged in the wake of the Arab uprisings is the only way to forge meaningful ties.