As a keen student of history, Binyamin Netanyahu knows one of the fundamental truths about American presidents in the Middle East: their power to push Israel in a direction it does not want to go is extremely limited. President Obama’s decision to insist publicly and bluntly that Israel should freeze all further building on its settlements — made during a speech delivered in Cairo, no less — was calculated to divide the Israelis, while encouraging the Arab world to begin normalising relations with the Jewish state.

Yet Mr Netanyahu’s refusal to halt the growth of Jewish settlements on the West Bank, repeated in his speech yesterday, was a further act of defiance and the latest reminder of just how far Mr Obama is from achieving peace.

In private meetings with the US special envoy, George Mitchell, last week, Mr Netanyahu suggested that he might be willing to order a temporary halt to new construction. This, however, is a well-worn tactic: Israeli Prime Ministers have made such promises before, only to restart construction. Moreover, by debating the minutiae of settlement construction, he is dragging the US down into the reeds over an issue that, under the 2003 “road map”, was meant to be a straightforward first step ahead of such intractable issues as the right of return of Palestinian refugees and the status of Jerusalem.

The sobering reality is that it takes bold acts of leadership to achieve breakthroughs in the Middle East, such as Anwar Sadat’s decision to break with Russia and forge peace with Israel in 1979. Mr Netanyahu is playing for time. Soon, he calculates, Mr Obama will become burdened by other issues, foreign and domestic.

This is an ancient conflict, and the Israeli Prime Minister is in no hurry to help the latest US President to achieve what his predecessors in the Oval Office failed to do.

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