Al-Watan (June 10) and Arabnews (June 11) both published a cartoon suggesting that both McCain and Obama were in Israel’s pocket.

There may be no bigger foreign policy challenge facing the next president of the United States than the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. And so Barack Obama’s visit to Israel and to the West Bank was closely watched in the United States as well as in the Middle East.

Obama’s trip to the land holy to three faiths generated massive media coverage, with the Jerusalem Post reporting in detail on his meetings with Israeli government ministers and the president of the Palestinian Authority. Arab-language media also closely followed the putative Democratic presidential nominee’s trip to the region.

“In June Obama caused anger in the Arab world when he said that Jerusalem should be Israel’s undivided capital,” Al-Jazeera noted on the English-language page of its website. “The international community, including the United States, does not recognise Israel’s claim that Jerusalem is its undivided capital and Palestinians hope to have occupied East Jerusalem as the capital of any future Palestinian state,” Al-Jazeera added.

Al-Jazeera is the most popular news source in the Arab world, and its broadcasts from Qatar are watched by millions of Arabs from Morocco to Iraq. Obama “reiterated his position that Jerusalem “will be” the capital of Israel,” Al-Jazeera reported on Wednesday, adding that “the Illinois senator, currently on the final leg of his Middle East tour, said that he believed the city to be a ‘final status issue’ that must be decided by negotiation and said he remained committed to a two-state solution to the conflict.”

If Israelis are far more reassured by the thought of the United States being led by John McCain than by Barack Obama, many in the Arab world seem to believe that Obama will be as much a captive of the ‘pro-Israel lobby’ in Washington as McCain, to judge by cartoons that have appeared recently in Arab-language newspapers in the Middle East.

The simple fact is that every president of the United States has failed to broker a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians since the Truman administration recognized the new state of Israel in 1948. Bill Clinton came the closest though George H.W. Bush was perceived in the Arab world as the most even-handed. There has been no significant progress under his son’s leadership — or lack thereof. In fact, George W. Bush and Condoleeza Rice have completely mishandled the Israeli/Palestinian issue, having encouraged the Palestinian Authority to hold elections in January 2006 and then refused to recognize Hamas after it won an overwhelming majority in the Palestinian parliament and gained control of the Gaza Strip.

It will take all the skills that the next president of the United States can muster to prove his bona fides as an honest broker and resurrect the Middle East peace process.