PPI Senior Fellow Josh Block writes in Politico:

Seven months ago, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed strong U.S. opposition to the Palestinians’ unilateral statehood bid at the United Nations. One month ago, Congress threatened to cut off U.S. aid for the Palestinian Authority if it carried on. Yet President Mahmoud Abbas is still moving full-speed ahead to September with his U.N. initiative.

The Obama administration and Congress have rightfully taken a firm stance against unilateral recognition of a Palestinian State. But with every sign indicating that the Palestinian leadership won’t be changing course, it’s time for the White House to assert a more active approach to blunt the potential impact of this collision.

The United States must begin a vigorous public effort to lobby other countries, large and small, to oppose the Palestinian effort and join President Barack Obama in pressuring the PA to call it off. Acting decisively now, we can persuade the Palestinians not to press ahead with this damaging course – which undermines our quest for peace and risks anti-Israel terrorism and violence on the Palestinian side, when carelessly raised hopes are dashed.

Football, they say, is a game of inches. So too, is Middle East peace making — both figuratively, and in some cases quite literally. President Obama was reminded of that last week when his comments about terms of reference for future Israel-Palestinian peace negotiations provoked a significant public debate, and in some cases, a furious reaction.

Many Republicans – some acting out of purely political motives – and many Democrats, myself included – acting out of genuine concern – reacted quickly and negatively when President Obama adopted as American policy on Israeli-Palestinian peace talks what had previously been described by this Administration as a “Palestinian goal”– that is, a Palestinian state “based on the 1967 lines, with mutually agreed swaps.”

In the view of some, including the White House, that statement was not new U.S. Policy. Those views assert that negative reactions suggesting otherwise “misrepresented” the President’s statement, or perhaps more importantly, his intended meaning.

But as we know, when it comes to issues about Israel and the Arab-Israeli conflict, nuance matters. This is a place where inches count.

UPDATE: We are re-posting this piece from Friday as events over the weekend continue to highlight the need for American attention on pro-democracy protests in Syria. Over the weekend, 12 people have reportedly died during demonstrations in the northern port city of Latakia–where the military has reportedly been deployed–and some 4,000 people gathered again in Daraa.

You may not have noticed between the new war in Libya and the nuclear crisis in Japan, but the latest Arab country to see popular protests is Syria. Unlike Egypt and Tunisia, Syria has been an opponent of the peace process and allied with Iran.

Yet, like President Mubarak and President Ben-Ali, President Assad is following what seems to be the traditional playbook in response to a week of intensifying and pitched protests, again making noises about reexamining the country’s decades-old emergency law barring free political expression. Unlike these gauzy allusions to “reform,” however there has been nothing vague about the soldiers and anti-terrorism units attacking Syrian citizens in the streets.

The Obama administration must do more to help Syrian democracy and human rights activists to expose this regime for what it is. The Administration should start by dispatching Ambassador Robert Ford to Daraa, where dozens were slaughtered in the streets this week by government security forces firing on crowds and attacking those rallying for freedom from Bashar al-Assad’s tyranny. From Daraa, Ambassador Ford should call for a full UN Security Council investigation into what happened during the recent protests. His mere presence can bring hope to those brave enough to stand up to Assad’s thugs. America owes them that much.

Democrats and Republicans showed admirable bipartisanship as President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton led the nation through the crisis in Egypt. It wasn’t exactly a return to an era when politics stopped at the water’s edge, but it was a fair-minded recognition that the administration had no great choices and limited control over the direction of the Cairo protests. Stuck between a multi-decade autocracy on one side and potentially pushing a country of 75 million Muslims to the Muslim Brotherhood’s virulent political Islam through our lack of support for the protestors on the other, the President and our political establishment steered a steady course.

I only bring up the thorny issue of Egypt to point out that, in comparison, the policies we should be pursuing on Iran this morning are no-brainers. As of yesterday there’s a very real possibility that the example of Egypt has reignited the Green Movement, and that the IRGC-dominated oligarchy is again in some peril. Riots have again broken out throughout the country. Tear gas and truncheon and electric batons are again being used openly against the protesters. Videos are again being uploaded to YouTube showing that the Basij have resorted to batons and bullets.

Events unfolding in Egypt are cause both for celebration and concern. Extremely important questions for American national security are at stake in the orientation of the Egyptian government that emerges from this period of upheaval. A fundamental question looms large: Will the Egypt that emerges be a reliable US ally and a force in for peace and security in the Middle East?

Key questions surround the Muslim Brotherhood, a well-organized force in Egyptian society. Though reformist factions exist within the Muslim Brotherhood’s leadership, the group’s stated opinions on issues of sharia law, women’s rights, relations with Israel, and the legitimacy of terrorism should give American policymakers pause.

As the foreign policy community begins a reevaluation of conventional wisdom about the Middle East, an obvious consequence in the aftermath of events in Egypt, one of the many questions that will get revisited is how to incubate a Palestinian state. It would be a pity if that track escaped the same needed consideration, or proceeded without an eye towards the pressing lessons emerging, even as the riots continue to simmer and the dominoes continue to teeter.

Just a few years ago, Lebanon appeared to be a foreign policy success for the United States. Outraged by the brutal assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri (likely at the hands of Syria and its allies), the Lebanese people, bolstered by international support, succeeded in expelling Syrian military forces and asserting Lebanese sovereignty in 2005 for the first time in decades. And again in 2009, the Lebanese affirmed their support for the pro-Western ruling coalition, awarding them a solid majority of seats in Parliament during the May general elections.