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Here’s a list of 8 headlines, all from the last 48 hours, but from different media outlets. There’s reassurance, there’s pressure, there’s cooperation, there’s confrontation. In many of the cases, the same words lead the contradictory headlines. In many cases, the ideology of the news editor is no less important than Obama’s words.

Here’s a taste of the many faces of Obama’s Israel policy:

Obama for compromise on MidEast peace

Obama reassures Arabs, nudges Israel on peace

Obama tells Muslims: Don’t vilify Israel

Obama team readying for confrontation with Netanyahu

Israel not behind all Mideast problems: Obama

Palestinians, Israel hail Obama remarks

Israel fears US pressure to continue Annapolis process

Israel pledges to work with US for Mideast peace

‘Israel does not take orders from Obama’

Now, here’s what we know and here’s what we don’t know:

1. A Two State Solution is US’ policy. No surprise here. If an Israeli politician was hoping for anything else (I don’t believe such politician exists), he has no sense of reality.

2. Obama doesn’t think Israel should be blamed for all ME troubles. He does think, though, that Israel is at fault on some issues, like settlements.

3. Some confrontation is to be expected. It’s good for Obama (to show the Arabs that he’s not in Israel’s pocket), and will also give Netanyahu an opportunity to make a stand.

4. Obama is right in some cases. Example: Israel has promised to evacuate illegal outposts. If this becomes an issue – Netanyahu doesn’t have a case.

5. Netanyahu is right: Israeli moves on settlements will still not bring about peace.

6. The most fascinating part of it: Just like his predecessors, Obama is already personally involved with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Those wanting him to succeed should constantly remind him that it ended in misery for both Clinton and Bush (here’s my prediction: he will still want to get personally involved. This conflict never fails to work its magic on American statesmen).

Hecklers disrupt Lawrence Summers, director of President Barack Obama’s National Economic Council, as he speaks to the Economic Club of Washington.

Writing in the New Yorker, George Packer cautions that pragmatism is a useful way to explain Barack Obama’s temperament. While pragmatism can serve as a useful adjective describe hang specific presidential actions — or actions within the larger context of something — it cannot and does not explain what Obama is doing and why he is doing it. “What underlies so many of Obama’s decisions,” Packer writes, “is an attachment to the institutions that hold up American society, a desire to make them function better rather than remake them all together.”  Obama is therefore more than Republicans an heir of Edmund Burke’s “respect for tradition” and James Madison’s “promotion of countervailing checks on concentrations of power.”

…It seems to me that most of Obama’s concessions to political reality are temporary and designed to further other goals; he’s deferential to Congress here — he asserts his power there. He meets with Republicans to build a long-term relationship. He lets the House roll the Senate on the budget. He intervenes, surgically, when necessary.  We’re obsessed with short-term, short-term, short-term — whether Obama gets France to spend more money or commit more troops to Afghanistan — and we ignore the year’s worth of fundamental changes to the world that he packed into that week.

Writing in the New Yorker, George Packer cautions that pragmatism is a useful way to explain Barack Obama’s temperament. While pragmatism can serve as a useful adjective describe hang specific presidential actions — or actions within the larger context of something — it cannot and does not explain what Obama is doing and why he is doing it. “What underlies so many of Obama’s decisions,” Packer writes, “is an attachment to the institutions that hold up American society, a desire to make them function better rather than remake them all together.”  Obama is therefore more than Republicans an heir of Edmund Burke’s “respect for tradition” and James Madison’s “promotion of countervailing checks on concentrations of power.”

…It seems to me that most of Obama’s concessions to political reality are temporary and designed to further other goals; he’s deferential to Congress here — he asserts his power there. He meets with Republicans to build a long-term relationship. He lets the House roll the Senate on the budget. He intervenes, surgically, when necessary.  We’re obsessed with short-term, short-term, short-term — whether Obama gets France to spend more money or commit more troops to Afghanistan — and we ignore the year’s worth of fundamental changes to the world that he packed into that week.