Obama talks tough on Israel before Mideast speech

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Yet signs from Washington ahead of the Middle East trip suggested that Obama would not be bound by those understandings.

"Bush was prepared to look the other way when it came to settlements," said Gadi Wolfsfeld, a political scientist at the Hebrew University. "Barack Obama has perhaps enough popularity both in America and in the world, that he feels he doesn't have to look the other way."

"For as long as Netanyahu rejects the two-state solution and refuses to stop building settlements, let's face it, I don't think there are going to be any carrots coming along," said Wolfsfeld.

Meanwhile, Obama has a new mission in mind, which is to repair bridges with the Muslims that were damaged during the Bush years. For Israel, that is not necessarily good news.

Yet some analysts said that Obama would not exert real pressure on Israel.

"The appearance of being tough on Israel is a policy that the Obama administration wants to portray itself as having not so much in respect of Israel itself but in respect of the Arab world," said Glen Rangwala, from the Department of Politics at Britain's Cambridge University.