Thanks, President Obama!  The Palestinians understand that you gave them a huge gift, and are taking advantage of it.

No matter how much spin the president and his Democrat supporters put out, the State Department speech in which Barack Obama called for the 1967 lines to be the starting point for a settlement represented a huge change in American policy, a tilt toward the Palestinians.

Jonathan Tobin reports in Commentary that the Palestinians also understand this, and have changed their bargaining stance:

 ...in the wake of President Obama's decision to demand that the 1967 lines be the starting point for future Middle East negotiations, the Palestinians have adopted that point as their latest precondition for talks. Earlier this week, PA "negotiator" Saeb Erekat stated that they would only return to the talks with Israel that they have largely boycotted for three years, if Netanyahu accepts Obama's dictat.

Apologists for Obama have said that the 1967 lines demand was nothing new in terms of U.S. policy just as they have attempted to argue that his position on Jerusalem was no innovation. But once again the Palestinians have exposed this defense as mere sophistry. No previous American president had ever treated Jerusalem as if it were a remote West Bank settlement nor had any ever explicitly said that the 1967 must be focus of negotiations or done so (as President George W. Bush did in 2004) without acknowledging that the Palestinians were going to have to accept the demographic changes in both Jerusalem and the West Bank in any peace accord.