The speech Obama delivers at Binyanei Ha’Uma in Jerusalem next Thursday evening to an audience of young Israelis will be the long-awaited analog to the speech he made to the Arab world in Cairo in June 2009. It will provide him with an opportunity to reintroduce himself to the Israeli people, identify with their hopes and fears, and build a quotient of trust that has been missing in their relationship.

If Obama can achieve that purpose, the trip will have been worth it. For if the Israeli public comes to view Obama as the trusted friend that he in fact is, Prime Minister Netanyahu will have to think long and hard before he decides again to upbraid the president in the Oval Office. It will not be so easy for him to refuse Obama’s requests to restrain settlement activity, take confidence-building steps toward the Palestinians, and pipe down about Iran’s nuclear program. Historically, the Israeli public has punished prime ministers who mishandle Israel’s all-important relationship with a popular U.S. president. It’s precisely because Obama has been so unpopular with the Israeli public that Netanyahu has been able to thwart his purposes. If the resident can change the balance of Israeli public opinion in his favor, he will benefit from a more positive relationship with a more pliant Israeli prime minister.

That in turn will help him with the Palestinians and Arabs. Obama thought he could please them by distancing the United States from Israel. What he didn’t understand is that they gave up believing that will ever happen a long time ago. What they care about is not splitting the United States from Israel but having the president use his influence with Israel. His inability to do that in his first term cost him Arab support as well (today Obama’s standing in Arab public opinion is lower than George W. Bush’s).

Read this article in full at Haaretz.