President Obama today called King Abdullah of Jordan and together agreed on the need to quickly launch Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Obama said he’d dispatch special envoy George Mitchell would follow up in coming weeks to try to set the stage for jumpstarting the long abandoned talks.

“The president and the king agreed on the need to launch Israeli-Palestinian negotiations as soon as possible,” White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Thursday.

“They also agreed that all parties _ Israel, the Palestinians and Arab states should take steps simultaneously to create a context in which these negotiations can succeed.”

Obama’s call to Abdullah and joint plea to resume peace talks comes just two days after Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak visited the White House and urged resuming peace talks that would cover the whole breadth of issues in the region, without waiting for interim steps such as the Arab and U.S. demand that Israel stop adding to its settlements in the occupied West Bank.

That came as Israel said this week it would stop new construction, though not existing construction.
Taken together, the actions suggested a simultaneous press for efforts to build confidence and trust _ including Arab concessions _ as well as final status peace talks.

“The president is hopeful that the meetings that he's had here this week and the phone call, the Mubarak meeting and the Abdullah phone call today, that we are continuing to make progress on the path toward Middle East peace,” Gibbs said.

“The optimism continues to rise. We're hopeful and understand that the road ahead will not be easy. It's a complex and emotional set of issues that we look forward to working through.”

While Gibbs refused to characterize Abdullah’s remarks on the phone conversation between the two leaders, he said that Obama lauded Jordan’s efforts to prod Arab states to reach out to Israel.

“The president underscored his strong support for Jordan's efforts to work with other Arab states to reach out to Israel and undertake gestures that would demonstrate the meaning of the Arab Peace Initiative,” Gibbs said.

As President Barack Obama meets with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs says the U.S. and Israel are making headway on negotiations to end the construction of new Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.

"Both sides believe we are making progress on the settlement issue," Gibbs said Tuesday morning.

Obama was meeting later at the White House with Mubarak, who said on Monday that it's time to move past the old demand that Israel halt settlement construction before further talks can take place.

"Instead of saying stopping more settlements, and we heard this many times now for over ten years and never come to a stop," he said. "What I can say is that we have to consider the whole issue holistically, to negotiate on the final resolution."

President Obama’s demands that Israel stop adding to settlements in the West Bank – repeated forcefully in his speech Cairo today - is drawing protests in Israel.

The Jerusalem Post reports that about 200 people demonstrated outside the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem, chanting “No, you can’t,” in a barbed response to his campaign slogan, “Yes, we can.”

"We decided to launch a campaign against the president of the United States and to say that Barack Hussein Obama is bad for the Jews,” the Jewish National Front said in a statement to the paper.

“From the moment that he entered the White House, we have been feeling anti-Semitism and hatred toward Israel. We have a number of plans, among which are demonstrations in the US and protests in front of the consulate and homes of the ambassadors."

The protests featured a poster making it appear that Obama is shaking hands with a smiling Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in front of a mushroom cloud.

President Obama will host three Middle East leaders at the White House starting next week as the new administration looks to move the Arab-Israel peace process forward.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits on May 18; Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on May 26; and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on May 28, the White House announced today. "With each of them, the President will discuss ways the United States can strengthen and deepen our partnerships, as well as the steps all parties should take to help achieve peace between Israelis and Palestinians and between Israel and the Arab states," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said in a statement.

The meetings come in advance of Obama's visit to Egypt, where he is set to deliver a June 4 speech to Muslims worldwide.