iStock/Thinsktock(WASHINGTON) — During an interview at the White House Friday, President Obama said peace in the Middle East would be difficult to resolve during his term in office.
In response to a question from Al Arabiya, the president said the bloodshed in Syria will “probably not” end before he leaves office, and he does not expect to make much progress on Israeli-Palestinian peace.
“I’ll be honest, probably not because the situation in Syria is heartbreaking, but it’s extremely complex,” he said.
There was a suggestion that the crisis in Syria would be his “Rwanda,” or a situation in which some argue the United States should have intervened forcefully and quickly. Critics of his administration had also originally called for swift action at the beginning of the Assad crisis.
“If you look at the history of the process,” said the president. “Essentially what they’re arguing is that we should have invaded Syria and overthrown the Syrian regime.”
On peace in the Middle East, the president tampered expectations and said it was going to be difficult to make progress during the rest of his term in office.
“Realistically what we can do is to try to rebuild trust, not through a big overarching gesture,” he said. “Which I don’t think is probably possible in the next year, given the makeup of the Netanyahu government, given the challenges for President Abbas.”
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