Anyway, you can read a lot about the substance of the speech from Mike Allen and the backstory behind it from Ben Smith and the overall framework from Laura Rozen, who broke the news of the speech last week. For more substance, Greg Sargent reports that Clinton will criticize Arab leaders for not doing enough to support the Saudi peace initiative with Israel. An advance excerpt:

The Saudi peace proposal, supported by more than twenty nations, was a positive step. But so far, those who embrace it seem unwilling to do anything until the Israelis and Palestinians reach an agreement. This may be understandable, but it is not helpful. Anwar Sadat and King Hussein crossed important thresholds, and their boldness and vision mobilized peace constituencies in Israel and paved the way for lasting agreements. By providing support to the Palestinians and offering a concrete opening, however modest, to the Israelis, the Arab states could have the same impact. So I say to all sides: You can’t claim to be sending messages of peace until you also act against the cultures of hate, intolerance and disrespect that perpetuate conflict.

Greg points out that the excerpt “seems designed to publicly reinforce the message that Obama delivered privately the other night to concerned Jewish leaders” who fret that the administration is putting more pressure on Israel than its Arab interlocutors for peace. To which I’d merely observe that if so, Clinton is still shifting the debate in favor of the Saudi initiative as a model for a comprehensive peace plan, which is not something that the rightward elements in either Israel or the U.S. favor.

“There’s a kindred spirit between Christian Zionists and Netanyahu,” said the Rev. James Hutchens, president of The Jerusalem Connection, a Christian group. “He has demonstrated his willingness to reach out to us in the past and he shares our views. He is much more resistant to giving up land for peace — he’s referred to it as land for terror. I’m looking forward to working with him in any way we can.”

An interesting sidepoint: it’s the Christian lobbies, more than the Jewish Israel lobbies, that command more attention and deference and support from lawmakers. That’s why conservative Jews have embraced organizations like John Hagee’s Christians United For Israel despite the unsettling theological stuff about God eventually wiping the Jews off the face of the earth after the ingathering. (And Sen. Joe Lieberman: you drive me nuts. You say you support a two-state solution, but you pal around with all of these guys who don’t. Why?) But anyway.

Much of Besser’s piece is appropriately devoted to an analysis of the differences in the political landscape between the 1990s — the last time a Netanyahu government used Christian and Jewish lobby groups to depressurize U.S. peace-processing efforts — and today. Here’s another that isn’t discussed in the piece: Netanyahu’s basic challenge is to say no to the peace process and to Barack Obama without appearing to say no. But Obama has recognized that a two-state solution “is not easier than it was” before Netanyahu won the ability to form his government, which indicates that he’s not in the mood to be smoothed over with talk about how Palestinian “culture” needs to change before Israel can be persuaded to end the occupation.

Netanyahu’s U.S. allies will then have the challenge, with him, of arguing about why he isn’t the intransigent one, and as Karl Rove will tell you, if you’re explaining, you’re losing. Rather than pressuring Obama, in other words, Netanyahu’s allies are more likely to spend their time defending their man. Think it’s going to be fun defending Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s ranting about how what the U.S. and Israel committed to in 2007 no longer matters?

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