Obama Sees ?67 Borders as Starting Point for Peace Deal

A day before the arrival in Washington of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, Mr. Obama declared that the prevailing borders before the 1967 Arab-Israeli war ? adjusted to some degree to account for Israeli settlements in the West Bank ? should be the basis of a deal. While the 1967 borders have long been viewed as the foundation for a peace agreement, Mr. Obama?s formula of land swaps to compensate for disputed territory created a new benchmark for a diplomatic solution.

Mr. Obama?s statement represented a subtle, but significant shift, in American policy. And it thrust him back into the region?s most nettlesome dispute at a time when conditions would seem to make reaching a deal especially difficult.

The Israeli government immediately protested, saying that for Israel to return to its pre-1967 borders would leave it ?indefensible.? Mr. Netanyahu held an angry phone conversation with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Thursday before the speech, officials said, in which he demanded that the president?s reference to 1967 borders be cut.

Israeli officials continued to lobby the administration until right before Mr. Obama arrived at the State Department for the address. White House officials said he did not alter anything under Israeli pressure, though the president made changes in the text that delayed his appearance by 35 minutes.

Mr. Obama?s reference to Israel?s borders came toward the end of a somber, 45-minute address that sought to articulate an overarching framework for the disparate American responses to the Arab Spring, which has taken a dark turn as the euphoria of popular revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt has given way to violent crackdowns in Bahrain and Syria, a civil war in Libya and political stalemate in Yemen.

The president offered a blunt critique of Arab governments and, without promising any changes in policy to confront repressive ones more aggressively, sought to assure protesters that they were squarely aligned with democratic American values in a region where the strategic interests of the United States have routinely trumped its values.

Those issues are delicate enough, but the diplomatic row with Israel highlighted the acute sensitivities that Mr. Obama faces as he seeks to link the changes in the Middle East with the conflict at the region?s heart.

?At a time when the people of the Middle East and North Africa are casting off the burdens of the past, the drive for a lasting peace that ends the conflict and resolves all claims is more urgent than ever,? he said.

At one level, by putting the United States on record as supporting the 1967 borders as the starting point for negotiations over a Palestinian state, Mr. Obama was simply endorsing reality: Middle East analysts say a new state would inevitably be drawn on the basis of Israel?s boundaries before the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, which created the contours of today?s Middle East.

Israel?s victory over Egypt and other Arab neighbors in that war expanded its control over territory in the West Bank and Gaza inhabited by millions of Palestinians, creating a greater Israel ? including all of the capital, Jerusalem ? but one that oversees a resentful occupied population.

Mr. Obama also noted that Israel and the Palestinians would have to swap territory on either side of that border to account for large Jewish settlements that have taken root in the West Bank since 1967.

But the shift moves the United States a step closer to the position of the Palestinians, and is viewed as vital to them because it means the Americans implicitly back their view that new Israeli settlement construction will have to be reversed, or compensated for, in talks over the borders for a new Palestinian state.

Some analysts said Mr. Obama?s shift was less strategic than tactical, seeking to lure the Palestinians back to the negotiating table, as a way of heading off their campaign to seek international recognition of a Palestinian state at the United Nations General Assembly in September.

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The most beautiful way to check weather on your iPhone, iPad and now Mac

Most of the time I settle for checking weather on the web at whatever site I happen to remember at that moment. That?s before I saw Weather HD over at Macstories. This is a fantastic looking weather app for the Mac that combines beautiful interface elements with a cool window that displays animated views of the current weather conditions. It actually makes me want to check my weather even more often.

Weather HD [Mac App Store, $3.99] is from app maker Vimov who is behind the popular iPod, iPhone and iPad version of the title. The Mac version of the app is packed with even more visual content than the iPad version and supports over 150,000 locations around the world. You get severe weather alerts, weather maps and Moon phases as well as notifications that you can customize with alerts when certain temperatures or conditions are met. It?s a full features suite that rivals just about any other weather app I?ve seen for any platform.

Although Weather HD is a solid weather app in it?s own right, the visualizations which put you right into the weather are the real treat here. You?ll want to leave it up on your second monitor just to see  what the weather looks like in your area or in any other areas around the globe you choose to peek in on. The quality of the animations are top notch. Combined with the great darkly-skinned elements of the UI, Weather HD is a truly stunning app.

In addition to all of the features in windowed mode there is also a QuickMenu that you can access in your toolbar for a quick look at current weather conditions and alerts. Admittedly, the animations definitely aren?t for everyone and if you?re looking for an unobtrusive weather widget to hide in your dashboard or menu bar then you probably don?t need to invest in something like Weather HD. But if you want the option of a beautiful interface and really like to see your weather, not just read it then it?s worth taking a look at.

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Source: http://thenextweb.com/apps/2011/05/20/the-most-beautiful-way-to-check-weather-on-your-iphone-ipad-and-now-mac/

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The over-socialization of website design

Social distribution of content by casual users is such a powerful catalyst for traffic growth that there is not a single publication that does not want to harness it. But with every strength comes a weakness, and the desire for increased social reach has led to a new reality of web design: over subscription, or the over socialization of design.

Yes, you know what I am talking about, the annoying spammy reminders of websites to subscribe, and distribute their content (often in a surreptitious manner) that seem to scream that you are not so much a reader than as a potentially tweeting, ?liking? tool that they can use.

It hurts my feelings. After scrolling through a good number of the web?s top 25 publications (as counted by Technorati), I have come up with an ironclad rule for website design in regards to self-trumpeting social bits: twice per page is the good-taste maximum. Call it Alex?s rule.

Let?s break into some examples so that you can see what I am talking about, and why I am right. Let?s begin with the Huffington Post. Actually, the good ol? HuffPo starts well with a tasteful call for readers to connect their social accounts to the website:

It?s not pretty, but it?s small enough to not be annoying. The website then has a second section that wants even more from readers:

This expanded selection caters to all users, no matter the platform or location. It?s nice, and again, it?s small.

In fact, the HuffingtonPost often adds a Facebook ?Like? box to each of its separate topic pages, keeping the total clutter low, while the functionality high. This breaks our two per page rule, but only if the one of the other two elements is shown at the same time. In the two days in which this article was built, their design was a bit inconsistent (a/b testing?), so we can?t say if they are always breaking Alex?s rule. Anyway, this is what they have, usually, at least:

But then the wheels start to fall off of the truck, as the HuffPo just can?t help itself and begins to add in stuff like this:

This is merely a shill to get people to spread popular posts on Facebook. And as you will notice, nearly all of this is crap that has no news value. And yet, there are a total of six Facebook ?Reccomend? and ?Like? buttons included. But, you might say, aren?t those links important to help with user navigation? Maybe, but as there are links to that same content all over the site, they do not need to be rebroadcast; this is a merely a play for Facebook love.

HuffPo loves their readers doing their distribution for them. It?s a bit like hand delivering your friend?s copy of the Times. But HuffPo just keeps on going:

Ok, we added in the red parts, but this is not only an annoying tool, it?s yet another call for free social love, in this case tweets. ?It?s hot on Twitter,? the post says, ?so be cool and share it!? No thanks. Let?s move on:

Now this is special. And we mean that it is especially bad. This is another widget, that adds to HuffPo?s already glacial load time, to get you to tweet HuffPo content. Only this time, it reaches into your social graph, we think, and therefore makes you feel obligated to share. We shudder.

But the real crowing jewel in the HuffPo social tool debacle is a user?s ?Social News Page,? or profile page on the site. What follows are elements of my page on the site, for your reference (recall that I have written for the HuffPo so I have a few more ?fans? than normal):

Did you see that last one? Where it was literally bringing in my Twitter timeline into HuffPo? Why? Because it can! And while I am tweeting from the HuffPo, why not tweet what I see, which, lo and behold, is more HuffPo content. Gag me.

But the HuffingtonPost is not alone in suffering from a ridiculously over-subscribed design. Even the savvy Mashable can push it too far:

But it is not all bad news. ReadWriteWeb and TechCrunch both are quite minimal. So much so that we took the time to snap some shots to show you how some of the big boys are doing is right:

See how nice? If you want to see how TNW handles this, just look around.

We don?t mean to pick on the HuffingtonPost, but it is a role model for many online publications, and so its choices have real impact. And we don?t want them to lead the world down the wrong path, now do we? So follow the Alex rule: two social elements per page and you are in the clear. More, and you are just shouting at me.

Sound off in the comments, how annoyed are you by the social invasion of good website design?

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Source: http://thenextweb.com/dd/2011/05/20/the-over-socialization-of-website-design/

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Do Biofuels Reduce Greenhouse Gases?

Greenhouse-gas emissions from biofuels, such as ethanol and biodiesel, may be lower than many researchers have estimated, according to a new study. The findings could further fuel a debate over whether biofuels actually reduce greenhouse-gas emissions compared to gasoline, and if so, by how much.

Some recent studies have suggested that the indirect effects of biofuels production, such as higher food prices, could encourage farmers to clear forested land to grow more crops?thereby worsening climate change. At least one study suggested that the emissions resulting from such decisions would make biofuels?even advanced biofuels made from cellulosic materials such as switchgrass?worse for the environment than gasoline. These studies use economic analysis to predict the effect of future biofuels production on land use, while attempting to control for other factors that influence farmers, such as the amount of grain stocks on hand and changes in food demand.

The new study, to be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Biomass and Bioenergy, uses analysis of historical data instead of economic models. It found no statistical correlation between changes in biofuel production in the U.S. from 2002 to 2007 and recorded changes in cropland use outside of the country. "There is no evidence for indirect land use change," says Bruce Dale, a professor of chemical engineering at Michigan State University, who led the study.

Jason Hill, a professor of bioproducts and biosystems engineering at the University of Minnesota, says that it's not surprising that the study found no correlation, given that there are many competing forces that influence crop use. "It's difficult to distinguish the signal from the noise," he says.

Indeed, another study, due out in July, draws different conclusions from an analysis of historical data, says Wallace Tyner, a professor of agricultural economics at Purdue University, who is one of this study's authors. He says that the data shows a large increase (27 million hectares) in the amount of land under cultivation for key crops from 2006 to 2011, a time when biofuels production rapidly increased. Most of the land was cultivated for corn, soybeans, and rapeseed, all biofuels crops. Tyner attributes the increase to biofuels production and factors such as growth in demand from China. But he says the only way to estimate how much of that increase in cropland was due to biofuels production would be to run an economic simulation. Using one such model, he recently estimated that the share of the increase from U.S. biofuels production was about 2 million hectares.

Given the lack of scientific consensus around the impacts of land use changes on greenhouse-gas emissions?and the likelihood that there will always be some uncertainty in the estimates?some researchers have recommended policies that account for a range of possible impacts.

They think, for example, that policymakers should weigh the risk that a biofuel will increase greenhouse-gas emissions against the risk of not using the biofuel, and using gasoline instead. This would resemble the way that regulators weigh the risks and benefits of new drugs, says Michael O'Hare, a professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley.

Others, including representatives of the biofuels industry, argue that policymakers should ignore the effect of land use change until there is better research. They also say that if indirect effects of biofuels are to be estimates, studies of indirect effects of gasoline production should also be considered when comparing gasoline and biofuels.

For example, a recent study suggested that factoring in the impact of land use changes from mining oil sands in Canada could increase estimates of carbon-dioxide emissions. Including such emissions could make gasoline look worse than it does now, and make biofuels look better.

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Source: http://feeds.technologyreview.com/click.phdo?i=391f183a7a7b5d3681395c0bbe36f7f0

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Thoughts on Jumping

It may seem an odd subject to focus on, as jumping doesn't seem to be very important on the face of it ? cut it out of a game, though, and it can make a huge difference. Games in which players can?t jump, or at the very least dodge or roll, can seem painfully slow, dull and static. Games in which players can jump around and use that movement to interact with the environment can seem immeasurably more fun because of it.

Take Half-Life 2, for example. It?s a game which nearly everyone would agree is well-made, decently written, fun and fast to play through. Now cast your mind back to the first scene in Kliener?s lab, where Gordon is first properly introduced to his allies, where the plot is given its first proper push and where you?re gifted with the HEV suit again. It?s a busy sequence; lots to do, lots to take in. You?d expect most players to pay close attention, at least the first time around.

Instead, every single player I know spends most of the time jumping around. Sometimes they try to jump on the scenery or knock over objects, other times they just leapfrog around the room when a simple stroll would suffice.


The same behaviour holds true in most other games too, I?ve found. When I played Beyond Good and Evil for the first time I hardly walked anywhere across the surface of Hillys; I rolled. In Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, any hallway that involved walking for more than two seconds would be punctuated by periodic bounding. It seems like aberrant behaviour at first, yet it seems as though everyone does it. Why?

The reason, I think, is actually more to do with player speed than actually jumping. It?s not that people always like to move fast through games or that they enjoy spending time off the ground. Instead, it comes back to the original point ? games that don?t feature jumping can feel static and slow, so we use these features if they're present to help negate this effect. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is a pretty fast-paced game, but running down a long corridor can still feel dull and empty; jumping as you run lets you vary the speed of the game. It creates tiny events of player agency and interaction, which stave off that staid feeling.

At the same time, adventure games that don?t feature anything so much as a sprint button? Don?t they seem increasingly slow and dated these days?


This isn?t the only reason why jumping is important, though. It helps you practice for later. It can be used to ward off boredom. It helps you to further explore the game space away from the key features. There's an abundance of smaller reasons; not least of which is possibly the fact that some people just have twitchy thumbs.

For the best games, though ? and this ties into a more overarching theory of mine about character speed ? the act of jumping can be a joy in itself. Master Chief?s jump, for example, is pleasantly floaty, while Dante?s can last for as long as you can hammer the attack buttons. Faith?s standing jump in Mirror?s Edge, however, is realistically awkward; she?s much better with running leaps.

Getting these nuances of player speed correct is one of the most subtle and important aspects of making a good game, especially for first person shooters. Trust me, I play a lot of really rubbish games and I can tell you that, if you throw all the cleverness away and boil it down to basic functionality, Half-Life 2 would still stand above Conspiracy Island 2 based solely on player speed. And the quality of the jumping.

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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/bit-tech/blog/~3/6bFW1jFzmgo/

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Do Biofuels Reduce Greenhouse Gases?

Greenhouse-gas emissions from biofuels, such as ethanol and biodiesel, may be lower than many researchers have estimated, according to a new study. The findings could further fuel a debate over whether biofuels actually reduce greenhouse-gas emissions compared to gasoline, and if so, by how much.

Some recent studies have suggested that the indirect effects of biofuels production, such as higher food prices, could encourage farmers to clear forested land to grow more crops?thereby worsening climate change. At least one study suggested that the emissions resulting from such decisions would make biofuels?even advanced biofuels made from cellulosic materials such as switchgrass?worse for the environment than gasoline. These studies use economic analysis to predict the effect of future biofuels production on land use, while attempting to control for other factors that influence farmers, such as the amount of grain stocks on hand and changes in food demand.

The new study, to be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Biomass and Bioenergy, uses analysis of historical data instead of economic models. It found no statistical correlation between changes in biofuel production in the U.S. from 2002 to 2007 and recorded changes in cropland use outside of the country. "There is no evidence for indirect land use change," says Bruce Dale, a professor of chemical engineering at Michigan State University, who led the study.

Jason Hill, a professor of bioproducts and biosystems engineering at the University of Minnesota, says that it's not surprising that the study found no correlation, given that there are many competing forces that influence crop use. "It's difficult to distinguish the signal from the noise," he says.

Indeed, another study, due out in July, draws different conclusions from an analysis of historical data, says Wallace Tyner, a professor of agricultural economics at Purdue University, who is one of this study's authors. He says that the data shows a large increase (27 million hectares) in the amount of land under cultivation for key crops from 2006 to 2011, a time when biofuels production rapidly increased. Most of the land was cultivated for corn, soybeans, and rapeseed, all biofuels crops. Tyner attributes the increase to biofuels production and factors such as growth in demand from China. But he says the only way to estimate how much of that increase in cropland was due to biofuels production would be to run an economic simulation. Using one such model, he recently estimated that the share of the increase from U.S. biofuels production was about 2 million hectares.

Given the lack of scientific consensus around the impacts of land use changes on greenhouse-gas emissions?and the likelihood that there will always be some uncertainty in the estimates?some researchers have recommended policies that account for a range of possible impacts.

They think, for example, that policymakers should weigh the risk that a biofuel will increase greenhouse-gas emissions against the risk of not using the biofuel, and using gasoline instead. This would resemble the way that regulators weigh the risks and benefits of new drugs, says Michael O'Hare, a professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley.

Others, including representatives of the biofuels industry, argue that policymakers should ignore the effect of land use change until there is better research. They also say that if indirect effects of biofuels are to be estimates, studies of indirect effects of gasoline production should also be considered when comparing gasoline and biofuels.

For example, a recent study suggested that factoring in the impact of land use changes from mining oil sands in Canada could increase estimates of carbon-dioxide emissions. Including such emissions could make gasoline look worse than it does now, and make biofuels look better.

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Source: http://feeds.technologyreview.com/click.phdo?i=391f183a7a7b5d3681395c0bbe36f7f0

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Turning to Academics for Analytic Insight

Since 2007, the online ticket broker StubHub has been trying to study the buying habits of its customers more closely. Every month, it randomly selects 2,000 first-time buyers and tracks their behavior on its site over time. But analytics experts at the company were already swimming in too much data to make full use of the added information.

So last month StubHub provided all that data to academic researchers to see if they could tease out new insights. StubHub wants to know whether its discount offers get dormant buyers to return to the site, whether buyers who are regularly offered discounts stop buying at full price, and which of its e-mail campaigns are successful in retaining customers.

StubHub agreed to work with the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton Customer Analytics Initiative, a three-year-old organization that aims to make connections between companies with lots of data and academics from multiple universities who want to figure out new ways to analyze it. Originally called the Wharton Interactive Media Initiative, it changed its name this year to reflect its goal of working with more traditional companies rather than just online media. Cofounder Peter Fader, a Wharton marketing professor, hopes it will soon be working with a pharmaceutical company, a financial services firm, and some nonprofit organizations. With growing pools of data, he says, many kinds of companies that want to understand their customers' behavior need tools more sophisticated than focus groups.

Last year, Wharton researchers worked with ESPN to help the sports network better understand the behavior of World Cup soccer viewers. ESPN wanted to know whether making games available on cell phones and computer monitors hurt viewership on its cable TV channels. It concluded that this cross-platform availability didn't cannibalize viewership, because fans watched on the best available screen. That's logical, but it's important for ESPN ad salespeople to have the research when selling ad time to sponsors.

Companies pay $150,000 to sponsor the initiative, which helps pay for its eight-full time employees. The companies also provide their data to make it all work. One key rule Fader has when evaluating proposals: the research should seek to establish causality, not just correlation. The organization seeks what he calls "granular, longitudinal data" that reveals what individual consumers do over time.

StubHub, a subsidiary of eBay, has such data from the 2,000 first-time buyers it randomly selects to follow every month. It has records of when it sent them e-mails, when it sent them special offers, when they visited the website without buying tickets, and what and when they purchased. It also creates control groups who don't receive any special offers, so it can tell whether offers made a difference.

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Source: http://feeds.technologyreview.com/click.phdo?i=69e2d4efe8ba1d8819312295ebc16684

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Verizon expands LTE, plans to axe unlimited data this summer

Verizon has launched its 4G network in nine more markets today, advancing the company's goal of covering 147 US cities with LTE by the end of 2011. With today's rollout, Verizon is now blanketing 55 metropolitan areas with its next-generation mobile broadband and the telecom giant expects to deliver 4G connectivity to its entire 3G coverage area by the end of 2013.

The latest LTE markets include Mobile and Montgomery (AL); Greater Fairfield and New Haven (CT); Gainesville, Pensacola, and Tallahassee (FL); Fayetteville-Lumberton (NC); as well as Bryan-College Station and Temple-Killeen (TX). Along with those new additions, the Verizon has expanded existing LTE coverage in Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, New Orleans and Philadelphia.

In related news, Reuters reports that Verizon plans to launch a tiered pricing scheme this summer -- a move that has been rumored since last year. Precise figures and dates haven't been shared yet, but it seems reasonable to expect fees in line with AT&T, which axed its unlimited data plan last June and charges $15/mo for 200MB or $25/mo for 2GB with $10/GB overages.

Verizon CFO Fran Shammo mentioned the possibility of offering family data plans, which would let various devices share a single pool of bandwidth. "I think it's safe to assume that at some point you are going to have mega-plans (for data) and people are going to share that mega-plan based on the number of devices within their family. That's just a logical progression," he said.

Shammo also revealed that Verizon will receive the next iteration of Apple's iPhone at the same time as AT&T, and Verizon's version will also work in as many countries as its competitor's. The executive wouldn't confirm whether the next iPhone will support LTE. Previous reports suggest iPhone 5 is expected to enter mass production in July followed by a September debut.

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Source: http://www.techspot.com/news/43880-verizon-expands-lte-plans-to-axe-unlimited-data-this-summer.html

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Microsoft closes Pioneer Studios, ?a hub for innovation?

With innovation one of the biggest buzzwords across the technological industries, it?s a little ironic that Microsoft has opted to close the doors to its Seattle-based Pioneer Studios, a ?skunkworks? initiative launched a little over three years ago.

A perhaps more Microsoft-esque moniker would be a Consumer Development Unit?which is what it was, and it was Microsoft?s attempt at creating a fertile breeding ground for new and exciting projects.

As reported on Zdnet, Pioneer Studios was the idea of former Microsoft man J. Allard, who was responsible for the original Xbox launch and was the CTO of the Entertainment and Device division. He jumped ship last year.

Microsoft never made a big song and dance about Pioneer Studios, and from what we can tell, nothing major emerged from the studio. It did produce the Microsoft Courier Tablet though, a pre-iPad project that was cancelled before it made it to market.

And so it seems, Microsoft?s attempt at nourishing early-stage innovation of the kind that Apple and Google have been churning out, seems to have ended before it really started.

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Source: http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2011/05/20/microsoft-closes-pioneer-studios-a-hub-for-innovation/

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Obama and Netanyahu Are Facing a Turning Point

By all accounts, they do not trust each other. President Obama has told aides and allies that he does not believe that Mr. Netanyahu will ever be willing to make the kind of big concessions that will lead to a peace deal.

For his part, Mr. Netanyahu has complained that Mr. Obama has pushed Israel too far ? a point driven home during a furious phone call with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Thursday morning, just hours before Mr. Obama?s speech, during which the prime minister reacted angrily to the president?s plan to endorse Israel?s pre-1967 borders for a future Palestinian state.

Mr. Obama did not back down. But the last-minute furor highlights the discord as they head into what one Israeli official described as a ?train wreck? coming their way: a United Nations General Assembly vote on Palestinian statehood in September.

Mr. Netanyahu, his close associates say, desperately wants Mr. Obama to use the diplomatic muscle of the United States to protect Israel from the vote, not only by vetoing it in the Security Council, but also by leaning hard on America?s European allies to get them to reject it as well.

Mr. Obama has indicated that he will certainly do the first. But it remains unclear how far Mr. Obama can go to persuade Britain, France and other American allies to join the United States in rejecting the move, particularly as long as Mr. Netanyahu continues to resist endorsing the pre-1967 lines.

From one of their first meetings, at the King David Hotel on July 23, 2008, when Mr. Obama, then the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, visited Israel, the two men have struck, at most, an intellectual bond. Mr. Netanyahu, as the leader of Israel?s conservative Likud Party, was far more comfortable with the Republican Party in the United States than with Mr. Obama, the son of a Muslim man from Kenya whose introduction to the Arab-Israeli conflict was initially framed by discussions with pro-Palestinian academics.

?Their relationship is correct at best,? said Judith Kipper, director of Middle East programs at the Institute of World Affairs. Mr. Netanyahu ?likes the status quo, and he particularly identifies with conservative Republicans.?

Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League and a friend of Mr. Netanyahu?s, recalled that after the first meeting, Mr. Netanyahu walked out of the hotel and told him that he had been impressed with Mr. Obama?s intellect, and that the American presidency ?was his to lose.?

But things went downhill soon after Mr. Obama took office and, within months, called for a halt in Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank. Mr. Netanyahu refused, handing the president his first foreign policy humiliation when Mr. Obama had to abandon the demand in the face of Israel?s refusal to comply.

Compounding the problem, Mr. Netanyahu delivered a fiery speech to a pro-Israel lobbying group in Washington declaring that ?Jerusalem isn?t a settlement, it?s our capital.? A furious White House promptly denied him all the trappings of a presidential meeting with Mr. Obama the next day, refusing to allow photographers to take pictures of the two men in the Oval Office, as is usually the case for meetings with foreign leaders.

Things got so bad, Mr. Foxman recalled, that Mr. Netanyahu ?told me, ?Abe, I need two hours just alone to talk to him.? Late last year, Mr. Netanyahu got his two hours at the White House with Mr. Obama, a meeting which, both American and Israeli officials say, helped clear the air. ?The relationship now is very cordial,? a senior White House official said.

But the easing of tensions ended this spring when, Israeli and American officials said, Mr. Netanyahu got wind of Mr. Obama?s plans to make a major address on the Middle East, and alerted Republican leaders that he would like to address a joint meeting of Congress. That move was widely interpreted as an attempt to get out in front of Mr. Obama, by presenting an Israeli peace proposal that, while short of what the Palestinians want, would box in the president. House Speaker John A. Boehner issued the invitation, for late May.

So White House officials timed Mr. Obama?s speech on Thursday to make sure he went first.

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Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=e1a54f3c87a39129e3dc13691bf1b5ef

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