The last time Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the Oval Office as leader of his nation in 1998, President Bill Clinton was in the White House pressing Netanyahu to negotiate with Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat.

Netanyahu did, negotiating the Wye Memorandum with Arafat, an understanding for Israel to turn over as much as 40 percent of West Bank territory to the Palestinians. That led to a revolt by Israel's right-wing groups and contributed to Netanyahu's ruling coalition crumbling.

That's the difficult background President Barack Obama will be working against in his meeting with Netanyahu at the White House today.

Obama would like Israel to negotiate with the Palestinian Authority towards achieving a two-state solution — Israel and Palestine living side by side in peace and security. In the nearer term, he would like the Israels to stop building West Bank settlements.

For Netayahu, talks with the Palestinians didn't work out so well politically for him the last time. So whatever Obama suggests that looks from Netanyahu's point of view as more concessions to the Palestinians, may not get friendliest reception.

Indeed, it's hard to see how the two leaders bridge their different political and strategic needs. Their differences almost appear irreconcilable from the outside.

 

As Lourdes Garcia-Navarro reported today on Morning Edition, Netanyau would prefer to focus on Iran. As she wrote in her accompanying web piece:

The hawkish Netanyahu wants to make Iran the focus of the talks. For the Israeli prime minister, the potential threat posed by a nuclear-armed Iran is paramount. Israel has not ruled out a military confrontation with Iran, a scenario that concerns Washington.

So it would be accurate to say experts aren't expecting much to come from this meeting. At least the two leaders in one of the world's most important alliances will finally get the chance to take the measure of each other.

And the media will get the de rigueur images of the president and a foreign leader, in this case Netanyahu, sitting before the Oval Office fireplace, uttering the diplomatically correct phrases about the importance of the relationship between the two nations.