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Matt Duss flagged this video of Rep. Mike Pence (R-Indiana), a senior member of the Republican leadership in the U.S. House of Representatives, talking to the Christian Broadcasting Network about why he unquestioningly supports Israel.

Pence is literally saying, Israeli officials should tell us what they want us to do, and we'll support it. That's an insane premise, and if you replace "Israel" with any other country, no U.S. politician would accept it.

I'm pretty pessimistic about Obama's Middle East policies -- but it's worth remembering that Obama has to work within the confines of the U.S. political system, and there's broad bipartisan consensus for Pence's views on Israel (as he notes in the video).

We mentioned this in our weekly newsletter -- are you subscribed? -- but Stephen Walt posted an impassioned call for George Mitchell's resignation on his Foreign Policy blog. Walt argues that Mitchell was conned into accepting the Middle East envoy job by an Obama administration that claimed to be committed to solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

... he is wasting his time. The administration's early commitment to an Israeli-Palestinian peace was either a naïve bit of bravado or a cynical charade, and if Mitchell continues to pile up frequent-flyer miles in a fruitless effort, he will be remembered as one of a long series of U.S. "mediators" who ended up complicit in Israel's self-destructive land grab on the West Bank.

We've needled Mitchell for months -- we made our own frequent-flyer crack back in November -- but the truth is that, as Walt writes, Mitchell is only as good as the administration he represents. If Obama isn't willing to take serious (and politically difficult) steps towards brokering a peace deal, Mitchell is doomed to failure.

Yesterday was President Obama's one-year anniversary in office, and so predictably we saw a rash of anniversary pieces (we thought about writing our own but decided to spare you).

Joe Klein's Time Magazine anniversary piece is based on a Jan. 15 interview with Obama. Most of it is focused on domestic politics -- but towards the end, they discuss the Middle East peace process, and Obama really tries to dial back expectations for progress in 2010. Excerpt after the jump (emphasis mine).

Ha'aretz ran an almost Onionesque headline yesterday: Mitchell to arrive in Mideast this week with no plan, no agenda.

That's not really an exaggeration, nor an attempt at humor. President Obama's Middle East envoy is headed back to the region for meetings with Israeli and Palestinian officials. He does so without any guarantees: Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas asked Mitchell to promise that Israel would totally freeze settlement-building, and Mitchell refused, because Israel hasn't approved anything of the sort.

A senior Obama administration official has now denied to Yedioth Ahronoth that Middle East envoy George Mitchell threatened to cut off aid to Israel (a claim that was never terribly believable to begin with).

"It was not a threat and not an implied threat," the senior official told Ynet.

Other U.S. officials are also pushing back against Mitchell's remarks: Sens. John McCain, R-Arizona, and Joe Lieberman, I-Connecticut -- traveling in Jerusalem -- said today that Congress would never approve a reduction of aid to Israel.

There are reports this morning that George Mitchell, the Obama administration's Middle East envoy, threatened to cut off U.S. aid to Israel if the Jewish state blocks final status talks with the Palestinians. (The original source for these reports appears to be this Yedioth Ahronoth story.)

Certainly makes for a compelling headline -- but there's much less here than the headline suggests. If you read his remarks, Mitchell said only that the U.S. could, in theory, cut off aid to Israel. That's thoroughly uncontroversial! The question is whether the U.S. would cut off Israel.

If you think that's possible, then I have a bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell you.

George Mitchell, the Obama administration's Middle East envoy, is meeting in Washington today with Egyptian foreign minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit and Jordanian FM Nasser Judeh. They'll discuss the Obama administration's two-year timeline for final status talks, and the plan for "proximity talks" between Benjamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas.

We've written a lot over the last few weeks about settlements and peace talks and domestic politics in Israel and Palestine -- so I thought it would be useful to pull back a bit and summarize the current situation.

Remember all of that optimistic talk in the beginning of the week about restarting Israeli-Palestinian peace talks? Take it away, Al-Jazeera:

Israel has launched air strikes against at least seven targets in the Gaza Strip, killing one man and wounding two others, Palestinian medics say.

[...] The air raids came after Israel said a dozen mortar bombs and rockets were fired from the Hamas-run territory into Israel. No casualties were reported from those attacks.

Israeli jets dropped thousands of leaflets before the bombing, warning Gazans to stay away from the border. Israel also reportedly bombed three targets in Gaza City and two in the southern city of Khan Younis; Israeli media say the Gaza City target was a weapons factory.

The Israeli foreign minister tells Quartet envoy Tony Blair that a two-year deadline for a final status agreement is simply impossible to meet:

"It is important to hold an honest, open dialogue with the Palestinians without sowing delusions that are disconnected with reality and that will only lead to violence and frustration," Lieberman told the former British premier. "It is not possible to reach a full agreement within two years."

Which begs the question, of course, "what does Avigdor Lieberman consider a reasonable timeframe?" And I'm not sure such a thing exists.

The White House and Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak are close to unveiling a new plan to restart final status talks between Israel and Palestine, a process which has been stalled for more than one year, according to Israeli and Arab news sources.

The plan sets a two-year deadline (עברית) for reaching a final deal, according to the Israeli daily Ma'ariv. Israel and Palestine would start by discussing final borders, with a nine-month deadline for reaching an agreement; that deadline is timed to coincide with the expiry of the ten-month partial settlement freeze imposed last month by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Ha'aretz reports that the the plan also includes the release of political prisoners, and the transfer of some land from Israeli to Palestinian security control, as incentives to bring Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas back to the negotiating table. Abbas broke off final status talks with Israel last year over Operation Cast Lead.

Israel's Channel 10 news reported yesterday on the peace deal Ehud Olmert offered to the Palestinian Authority in 2008. The channel also described a separate deal offered by then-foreign minister Tzipi Livni, which was apparently less generous than Olmert's offer.

Both reports come just days after Olmert's lengthy interview with The Australian (which we analyzed last week).

So here's my question. The Israeli PR machine is obviously trying hard to push this story; why? Olmert, I'm sure, is trying to rehabilitate his corruption-stained image. But is there a broader political goal here, too? Like trying to portray the PA as obstructionist?

You can see the broad outlines of Netanyahu's 2010 strategy emerging: He claims that the PA ignored his unprecedented partial settlement freeze, just like it ignored Olmert's and Livni's peace offerings in 2008; he condemns it for refusing to negotiate; and he writes off any further meaningful talks.

Has the Syrian government suddenly reversed decades of standing policy and dropped its demand that Israel agree to return the Golan Heights as a precondition for peace talks? Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu thinks so.

The Australian ran a heavily sympathetic 3,200-word profile of former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert over the weekend. (It's truly one of the most lopsided articles I've ever read.)

Olmert's positions are fairly predictable. He defends the 2006 war in Lebanon and the 2009 war in Gaza; he calls the Goldstone Report a "moral indignity"; he speaks highly of both Benjamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas.

After the jump: A just-released transcript of a press conference today by George Mitchell, the Obama administration's envoy to the Middle East, in which he discusses the Israeli settlement freeze offer, the regional peace process, and various and sundry other topics. (You know it's a slow blogging day when we're posting George Mitchell transcripts.)

I'll have some insightful thoughts as soon as I've had a chance to read the thing.

Israeli newspapers and wire services are reporting that Benjamin Netanyahu will announce a 10-month settlement "freeze" today.

I use scare quotes because the proposal will include the usual loopholes: The government will continue to issue building permits in East Jerusalem, and it will not stop construction on some 3,000 homes which have already been approved. So today's "new" proposal is actually very similar to Israel's previous proposals, which the Palestinians said they wouldn't accept.

Benjamin Netanyahu -- who apparently does not lack a sense of irony -- will reportedly propose a partial settlement freeze soon, just days after approving 900 new homes in the Gilo settlement. Take it away, Ha'aretz:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is soon going to announce a complete freeze in West Bank settlement construction for 10 months, Army Radio quoted former Meretz chairman Yossi Beilin as saying on Wednesday.

Let's make a few bold predictions about what happens next! Netanyahu's offer won't include East Jerusalem, so the Palestinians will reject it. Netanyahu will claim that Abbas is being an obstructionist. George Mitchell will rack up some more frequent-flyer miles shuttling to Cairo and Jerusalem and Amman. (Dude's gotta be real close to a free vacation by now.)

A month later, Israel will build some more apartments in Gilo or demolish some more Palestinian homes in Sheikh Jarrah. The U.S. will be dismayed -- perhaps even frustrated! And the whole cycle will repeat. Sound familiar?

One thing to one audience, one thing to another. Saeb Erekat told the Jerusalem Post today that the Palestinian Authority is not, in fact, planning to unilaterally declare a Palestinian state.

"What we are asking the world to do is to specify the borders of the state as the 1967 border," Erekat said. "I want to make sure the Israeli people understand that we are not speaking of a unilateral declaration... this is not an option."

That would pretty clearly seem to contradict his interview with AFP this weekend, when Erekat said the PA wants "recognition of an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital and with June 1967 borders."

Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed today that he won't accept Turkey as a mediator for those Israeli-Syrian talks that may or may not be starting sometime soon. (Our money's on the latter.)

"If a mediator is involved, he should be impartial. The Turkish prime minister has not reinforced his image as an objective, unbiased mediator," Netanyahu said.

"We would agree to talks under French mediation, if France is so inclined."

Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, the industry and trade minister (and a member of the Labor Party), disagrees: He insisted last week that Turkey is the only effective mediator.

Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and French president Nicolas Sarkozy had their much-anticipated meeting in Paris this afternoon. The two men had a nearly two-hour meeting; Sarkozy reportedly gave Assad a letter from Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu offering peace talks without preconditions.

Assad told reporters after the meeting that a face-to-face meeting with Netanyahu was out of the question, because he didn't think Israel was seriously willing to talk about peace.

There's some speculation in Al-Sharq Al-Awsat today that Mahmoud Abbas will stay on as Palestinian president, despite his pledge not to run for re-election.

The moral of this story, I guess, is that it's pointless to speculate about what Abbas will or will not do. We'll find out in January. Actually, we probably won't; it seems almost certain that the PA will have to delay elections, since Hamas is threatening a boycott in Gaza and no preparations have begun in the West Bank.