In a speech in which he again voiced his five conditions for peace with the Palestinians, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had this to say about prospects for real change in the Middle East:

"... it will still take a whole generation before Palestinians internalise recognition of the state of Israel and its permanent legitimacy".

In other words, Netanyahu seems to believe that on an emotional level -- after decades of conflict -- Palestinians will not fully accept Israel for about another quarter-century. That means, Netanyahu said, that a future Palestinian state must be demilitarised, with international guarantees to safeguard Israel's security.

Netanyahu, in his speech, made no reference to Israeli attitudes towards the Palestinians.

What do you think about his comments?

(PHOTO: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (2nd L) speaks to the media during a visit to the Israeli-controlled Allenby Bridge crossing between the occupied West Bank and Jordan, July 28, 2009. Netanyahu announced he would extend the opening hours of the crossing to facilitate the passage of Palestinian goods as part of his plan to ease Israeli restrictions and boost the Palestinian economy. REUTERS/Jim Hollander/Pool)

Palestinians call the network of mostly razor-wire tipped fences and towering concrete walls a land grab by Israel, which captured the West Bank in the 1967 Middle East war. Palestinians hope to establish a state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Israel says the barrier, deemed illegal by the World Court because it crosses occupied territory, has stopped suicide bombers from reaching its cities and that it can be moved once a peace deal is struck.

He finally said it -- in Hebrew -- "shtai midinot l'shnai amim", or, "two states for two peoples".

Breaking a barrier that appeared to be as much psychological as political, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used the phrase, while spelling out his conditions for Palestinian statehood, in his opening remarks at the weekly meeting of his cabinet on Sunday.

Under U.S. pressure, Netanyahu publicly endorsed for the first time, in a major policy speech on June 14, the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. But in that Hebrew-language address he refrained from uttering what has become the mantra of U.S.-sponsored Middle East peace efforts -- "two states for two peoples".

Just a month earlier, briefing journalists in Washington on his White House talks with U.S. President Barack Obama, Netanyahu made a point of heading off any suggestion he had bowed on the statehood issue.: "I did not say two states for two peoples," he said.

In recent weeks, Netanyahu has used the phrase in private talks with visiting foreign officials, a spokesman said. And in a June 23 interview with the mass-selling German Bild newspapaper, Netanyahu made clear that "... on the question of whether we favour two states for two peoples, we say yes."

Now he's said the same in his native language to his own people -- "We've achieved national consensus over the idea of two states for two people" -- while hanging tough on his terms for statehood that included demlitarisation of a Palestinian state and Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state.

(Photo: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (2nd L) gestures as he speaks during the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem July 5, 2009. Also pictured are (L-R) Minister for Regional Cooperation and Vice Premier Silvan Shalom, Cabinet Secretary Tzvi Hauser and Minister in charge of Strategic Affairs Moshe Yaalon. REUTERS/Sebastian Scheiner/Pool)

What's wrong with Benjamin Netanyahu?

That was the question Israelis asked on Sunday after the Prime Minister's Office announced he would be absent from the weekly cabinet meeting "for personal reasons".

Netanyahu, however, showed up at the session -- 10 minutes late, enough time for the vague wording of the announcement to touch off a flurry of speculation on Israeli radio talk shows over the state of the 59-year-old leader's health.

Radio hosts asked: Had he contracted swine flu? After all, Israel's Haaretz newspaper had reported earlier that Netanyahu might have been exposed to the virus after the driver of a close associate was diagnosed with the ailment.

But Netanyahu's bureau, issuing a second announcement, offered another explanation.

"The prime minister awoke this morning with a foreign object in his eye -- a small piece of grit," it said in a beeper message to reporters.

"He drove to the medical clinic where an eye doctor extracted the grit and released him so that he could chair the cabinet meeting and go about his normal workday."

(PHOTO: Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrives for a non-confidence vote at the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, in Jerusalem June 15, 2009. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun)

Appearing before the Israeli parliament's Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee, an Israeli Foreign Ministry official explained why Israel, locked in conflict with the Palestinians, was having image problems internationally.

"The Arabs, our adversaries, have succeeded in doing to us what 'Borat' did to Kazakhstan," Ido Aharoni said, displaying a photograph of the fictional Kazakh TV journalist created by British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen.

Baron Cohen poked fun at the former Soviet country in the highly successful 2006 movie, "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan." The Borat film portrayed Kazakhstan as a nation of horse urine-drinking racists.

"There is no concept about who we really are," Aharoni said, citing a survey the ministry conducted that found that many Americans and Europeans see Israel mainly in the context of the Middle East conflict.

As an example, he showed a dramatic photograph of a Palestinian youth, rock in hand, standing defiantly in front of an Israeli tank.

Aharoni said the Foreign Ministry, through a "Brand Israel" public relations project, hoped to change Israel's international image and portray the country in more "human" terms.

Gone were the track suit, the back-slapping and the wise-cracking, all part of Ehud Olmert's casual demeanor when he used to fly to the United States for White House talks and stand in the back of a chartered El Al plane, fielding questions from the travelling press.

His successor as Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, managed the media very differently this week during his first visit to the White House since taking office on March 31.

It began with a meet-and-greet on the flight to Washington and an admonishment from Netanyahu's spokesmen that the prime minister would not be answering any questions. "Bibi", in a dark business suit, and his wife Sara walked down the aisle and shook hands with each and every reporter. Testing the "no-question" rule drew a "no comment" along with a firm handshake.

With Netanyahu at odds with U.S. President Barack Obama over Palestinian statehood, a cornerstone of Washington's Middle East policy,  shifting the media focus to common ground appeared to be part of a game plan for message management. For Netanyahu, that meant getting the point across back home that, in his words, he and Obama saw "eye-to-eye" on the need to prevent Tehran from developing nuclear weapons.

Just hours after landing in Washington, Netanyahu sent his national security adviser, Uzi Arad, to speak to the travelling press in time for the evening TV news in Israel. The prime minister, he said, would stress in his talks with Obama the next day the need for urgency in dealing with Iran.

Score one for Netanyahu when at their meeting on Monday -- preceded by preparatory talks between the prime minister's top advisers and Obama's team on finding points of agreement -- the president for the first time set a rough timetable, of about a year, for his diplomatic outreach to Iran.

After the Oval Office talks, Israeli and foreign media reporters who accompanied Netanyahu to Washington gathered at Blair House, the official U.S. guest house where he was staying, for a briefing by the prime minister.

Again, Bibi was all business.

"Let's have each reporter sitting around the table here introduce himself to the prime minister before we start the briefing," his spokesman suggested affably.

"No need," Netanyahu shot back, unsmiling and shuffling a stack of index cards that apparently contained talking points. "We all know each other."

No recordings are allowed at the briefings. To ensure Netanyahu's message of agreement with Obama on Iran got through in his own voice to radio and television audiences in Israel, his aides reserved a room in the Capitol where he could speak in Hebrew to microphones after his meetings on Tuesday with Congressional leaders.

"The prime minister will make a brief statement. There will be no questions," his spokesman said.

And again addressing Israelis directly, without interruption from reporters eager to ask him about differences with Obama on Middle East peacemaking, Netanyahu stood in front of microphones on the tarmac at Tel Aviv's Ben-Gurion airport after arriving home. Israel Radio carried his words live.

Netanyahu made his statement, this time focusing on what he described as another area of agreement with Obama, on widening the Israeli-Palestinian peace process to include Arab countries. When he was done, a reporter called out a question. Netanyahu just walked away.

The annual policy conference of the pro-Israel lobby, AIPAC, in Washington this week will provide a stage for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres to present the policies of Israel's new right-leaning government. On Monday, Peres will address the conference in person; Netanyahu will speak by satellite from Jerusalem. Iran's nuclear ambitions and the way forward in peace efforts with the Palestinians are likely to be the main themes of their speeches.

Peres has spoken of "containment" in dealing with Iran, suggesting that he would not advocate a military strike to halt Tehran's nuclear programme. But Peres, whose job is largely ceremonial, does not set policy. Netanyahu has said a nuclear Iran would threaten Israel's existence. One Israeli political commentator wrote recently that Netanyahu has a simple message: If the world doesn't halt Iran's nuclearisation, Israel will act alone, and it is already preparing for such an eventuality.

Netanyahu is due to discuss Iran and the Middle East peace process with U.S. President Barack Obama at the White House on May 18. Peres sees Obama on Tuesday.

(Photo caption: Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (L) and President Shimon Peres attend a ceremony marking Holocaust Remembrance Day at Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem April 21, 2009. REUTERS/Ammar Awad (JERUSALEM ANNIVERSARY CONFLICT)

There haven't been any official announcements yet, but it appears Benjamin Netanyahu will be heading to Washington in early May for his first meeting as Israel's prime minister with President Barack Obama. There's also been talk, so far unconfirmed, of an Obama visit to Israel and the occupied West Bank in June.  The above photo was taken when the two men met in Jerusalem last July, when Obama was the Democratic candidate for president and Netanyahu, head of the right-wing Likud party, served as opposition leader in Israel's parliament.

So what do you get when a conservative Israeli leader who has shied away from endorsing the creation of a Palestinian state comes face-to-face with an American president who keeps on reaffirming that goal? Confrontation -- at least according to this article in Israel's left-leaning Haaretz newspaper.

An analysis by Reuters' Washington-based Arshad Mohammed addresses the issue, noting that Netanyahu's far-right foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, has described the U.S.-backed Israeli-Palestinian peace process as being at a "dead end".

Israel's new foreign minister, ultranationalist Avigdor Lieberman, sounded a resounding "no" in his inaugural speech to restarting talks with the Palestinians on core issues, such as borders and the future of Jerusalem, leading to peace and the creation of a Palestinian state. Spelling out that position, Lieberman, an immigrant from the former Soviet Union, said Israel was no longer bound by understandings reached at a Middle East peace conference in Annapolis, Maryland in 2007.

Instead, Lieberman said only a U.S.-backed peace "road map", drawn up under the Bush administration in 2003, was binding on Israel.

That document makes so-called final-status talks contingent on Palestinians meeting their road map commitments, including a crackdown on militants, and Israel carrying out its promises to freeze all settlement activity and uproot outposts in the occupied West Bank built without Israeli government approval.

Take a look at Adam Entous' analysis, which explains all.

As Adam points out, by embracing the road map -- which envisages a "permanent two-state solution" to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict -- Lieberman took a step towards meeting the international call for the creation of a Palestinian state.

The new Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who has angered Palestinians by shying away from saying he backed their quest for a state, could point to his government's acceptance of the road map to try to avoid any conflict with U.S. President Barack Obama, who last week reaffirmed Washington's commitment to a two-state solution.