My colleague and long-time friend Ayman Bardawil got a call from his family in Rafah. The house he was born and raised in was totally destroyed last week. His brother and family, who live in that house, were miraculously saved because one of his daughters had a cold and they went over next door moments before the house was shelled. These are the kind of stories that you hear every day. Ayman's family support Fatah, but that didn't save them from the destructiveness of the Israeli onslaught.

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The Current Discussion:What's the biggest mistake Barack Obama could make in his first six months in foreign policy?

The one mistake that President Obama should be careful not to commit is to continue the status quo when it comes to the Arab-Israeli conflict. The Middle East has been in turmoil for years because one country and one country alone, the U.S., for purely domestic reasons, has chosen to go against the entire world in its blind and unhealthy support for Israel. The time has come for international law to prevail also on Israel, and for common sense and multilateralism replace the unjustified unilateralism when it comes to absolute support for Israel. A popular T-shirt in the old city of Jerusalem states the following: "Don't worry U.S., Israel is behind you."

It is this arrogance that allowed the disgraced and criminally-charged prime minister of Israel to boast that he forced President Bush to leave a speaking engagement in Philadelphia in order to take his call and accept his orders that the U.S. should not vote in favor of a security council resolution that the U.S. itself had helped draft. The only word for this is a Jewish word, chutzpa.

So Mr. President, please don't make the mistake of protecting the Israelis from their own arrogance. Please think of the innocent people dying, suffering and living under occupation for political reasons. Don't make that mistake.