Clinton silent on honouring Bush's congress commitments to Israel

Indeed, Israelis and Palestinians have held several intensive negotiations that involved swapping lands along the Arab-Israeli dividing line that existed before the 1967 war - technically known as the Green Line, or the boundaries established by the 1949 Armistice agreements. (Click here for a visual description of the swaps discussed between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in 2008.)

So, in many ways, it is not news that the eventual borders of a Palestinian state would be based on land swaps from the 1967 dividing line. But it makes a difference when the president of the United States says it, particularly in a carefully staged speech at the State Department. This then is not an off-the-cuff remark, but a carefully considered statement of U.S. policy.

Given the chaos in Syria since Obama's statement, the birth of Islamic State in 2014 and the continuing unstable political and security situations in Gaza and the West Bank – mutually agreed land swaps as a concept has become yet another missed opportunity whose use by date has indisputably expired.

Michael Oren, Israel's Ambassador to Washington between 2009 and 2013, was moved to make the following call in January 2015:

.. it's time to revive the Bush-Sharon letter and act according to it.

Will Clinton so act, if elected America's 17^th Democratic President, to honour a former Republican President's commitments to one of America's longstanding allies that go far beyond personal partisan politics?

Her answer is eagerly awaited.