But Ali Hasan Abunimah, a Palestinian-American journalist and co-founder of Electronic Intifada, an independent web site about the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, said Obama's speech did not represent anything new.
"That bodes very ill for the peace process that he's so invested in," Abunimah told Al Jazeera's Shihab Rattansi, speaking from the US state of Indiana.
"Let's judge him not by what he says, but what he does."
