Over the last several months, Shimon Peres, the Israeli president, and Barack Obama, the US president, have led the campaign praise for Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, despite his extremist views.
Peres, for long Netanyahu's political nemesis and considered the architect of the 1993 Oslo Peace Process along with Mahmoud Abbas, commended the right-wing Likud leader's stance on peace as "brave and real".
The Obama administration spoke in a similar tone, noting and praising Netanyahu's acceptance of the principle of a two-state solution and Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, celebrated the unprecedented 'limited temporary freeze on settlement'!
The message from Israel and the US has been clear: Give Netanyahu a chance. He means business.
Netanyahu, who boasts of knowing US power politics better than most since his tenure in New York as ambassador to the UN, seems to have outsmarted his US counterpart.
![[QODLink]](http://english.aljazeera.net/mritems/Images/2012/2/12/2012212114913931580_16.jpg "The miracle generation")
