Super:

President Obama placed the Middle East at the forefront of his first hours in office yesterday as he sought to make good on his promise of "ushering in a new era of peace". In a flurry of telephone calls from the Oval Office, he reached out to leaders in the region and vowed to engage immediately in pursuit of a permanent Arab-Israeli settlement. The spokesman for President Abbas revealed that Mr Obama had told the Palestinian leader that their conversation was his first with a foreign statesman since taking office. Mr Obama also spoke to President Mubarak of Egypt, Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister, and King Abdullah of Jordan.

Wow. I guess he really is a friend to all nations. Even to nations that aren't really nations because their most exuberant partisans are genocidal terrorists. At least Abbas isn't a notorious Holocaust denier who occassionally declares that the Palestinians should use their US-supplied weapons to wipe out Israel.

I've been thinking about it, though, and I think that this snub is still less egregious than his post-election snub of India. He made a well-leaked show of calling Pakistani leaders while neglecting to respond to India's congratulations. Then - when the snub became a political scandal in India - he called China while still refusing to call Singh back. That seemed a little weird because in some diplomatic circles it could be perceived as geopolitical payback for India's steadfast support of Bush.

Two potential pro-Obama excuses why the India thing wasn't petulant diplomatic payback:

(1) "It wasn't a deliberate snub - he's just really bad at handling highly-symbolic phone calls" - he created an identical scandal in the Phillipines by not acknowledging their congratulations, even while Filipino media noticed that he had found time to give a nod in Iran's direction. So it could have been simple rank incompetence.

(2) "He had to call Pakistan first - his previous blunders had endangered what's left of US-Pakistani relations" - after publicly threatening to bomb sovereign Pakistani territory during the election he gave a post-election interview where he arguably endorsed an Indian attack in response to Mumbai. So it could have been a bumbling post-hoc attempt to repair the diplomatic rifts created by his vaunted "judgment."

The Abbas call though: that was obviously deliberate.

References and previously after the jump...