The US talks, but the Arab world has heard it all before

It is now an under-statement to say that majorities in the Arab world are disappointed with US leadership. After President Barack Obama's latest speech, and Benjamin Netanyahu's speech to the US Congress, the Arab world has now just given up on the US.

I am writing from the Middle East where I am catching an earful about last month's duelling speeches by the US president, Barack Obama, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

To say that majorities here express deep disappointment in American leadership would not be accurate. They were already disappointed. Now most have given up.

We had seen warning signs of this distressed mood in earlier polling. After the post-Oslo let down in the 1990s and the deep damage done by the policies of George W Bush during the past decade, even the hoped for change promised by Mr Obama was tempered by a degree of cynicism.

So while the US president was receiving mildly favourable ratings in a few Arab countries following his early post-election actions and his Cairo speech, a majority of Arabs in most of the countries covered in our surveys expressed the belief that "no American President can make change" either in improving US-Arab ties or in solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

This negative attitude was reinforced in the fall of 2009, when the Obama administration appeared to back away from what Arabs had felt was a White House insistence on an Israeli settlement freeze before direct peace talks could start, and when the US pressed the Palestinian Authority to call for shelving the UN Human Rights Commission's report on the abuses that had occurred during the Gaza War.

America's standing in the Arab world is largely shaped by its performance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This is because successive American administrations have invested so much time and energy in diplomacy; because the US has made such a point of asserting its "special relationship" with Israel; and because the US has failed to understand the deep historical and emotional place "Palestine" holds in the Arab psyche.

It was, therefore, in this context that Arabs judged the leaders' speeches.

Seven-eighths of the US president's State Department speech last month was thoughtful and well considered, especially for an American audience. After being criticised for being slow to respond to the Middle East upheavals and for rejecting a simplistic one size fits all approach to democratic transformation, it appeared that the president was determined to respond by laying out a comprehensive, but flexible, democracy agenda.

It was when his attention shifted to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that the message fell flat. Having had their fill of Mr Bush's "vision" and words without performance, Arabs were listening for a sign that two years after Cairo Mr Obama was ready to advance a plan of action to move peace forward. This they did not get.

Two points in his speech were especially intriguing. The line about 1967 borders with land swaps drew so much attention that it drowned out the president's more direct and frontal assault on Mr Netanyahu's hard-line positions. When Mr Obama noted the fact the Palestinian state should be contiguous and have borders with Egypt, Jordan and Israel, he was directly challenging the Israeli leader's insistence on controlling the Jordan Valley and separating Gaza from the West Bank.

And while there were some who commented on Mr Obama's remark that Palestinian demographics posed a challenge to Israel, little notice was given to his more profound observation that transformations in the Arab world must also be considered.

In the past, he observed, Israel could make peace with a few Arab leaders. Now, however, in the context of the Arab Spring, any peace deal must take into account and meet the expectations of Arab public opinion - a fact that neither Israel nor much of the West has ever considered in their past dealings with this region. But even with these observations, it was the absence of a plan to advance peace that left Arabs cold.

If Mr Obama's speeches came up short, Mr Netanyahu's performances served as disturbing reminders of why Arabs no longer see the US as capable of leading the search for peace. Arabs were stunned by what they saw as Mr Netanyahu's rude and arrogant "schooling" of Mr Obama at the White House and his shocking display of mastery over the US Congress - and that body's embarrassing display of subservience to a foreign leader.

After hearing the speeches, one important Arab commentator compared the US commitment to the Palestinians as "receiving bounced cheques" and told me that "we've decided to stop accepting them because we know you can't make good on the payment".

This region is only too aware of the role domestic politics plays in limiting the ability of US presidents to "deliver the goods". Hence, Egypt's decision to press forward with Palestinian reconciliation and opening Gaza's borders, the newly assertive role of the GCC in regional affairs, and the growing support across the Arab world for the effort to push for a UN vote recognising Palestinian statehood. All these initiatives are being seen as forms of defiant self-empowerment.

What comes through so clearly in media commentary and conversations is that confidence in the US may have reached a tipping point in this region. In this emerging new reality, the cautionary observation Mr Obama offered on the importance of a newly freed and now consequential Arab public opinion may apply as much to the US as it does to Israel. But in this region, that fact is already understood.

James Zogby is the president of the Arab American Institute