WASHINGTON – A little more than 50 days into his presidency, Barack Obama is already carving a new path toward resolving the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Middle East experts say the U.S. and Israel are still aiming for a two-state solution, an objective dating back to Harry S. Truman’s days in the White House. But while the goal is the same, now that Obama is in charge, the process to get there could be different.

“Most of the Israelis are still for a two state solution, but they are worried,” said Northwestern University Postdoctoral Fellow in Sociology Liora Sion, who is from Israel and teaches an Arab-Israeli Conflict class. “They are worried because ever since the Israelis evacuated every millimeter of Gaza [in 2005], the result was they were bombed. So, it’s hard thinking about also evacuating the West Bank and [the Israelis] being bombed daily from there also.”

Challenges like these will test Obama in his attempt to reframe U.S. policy in Israel.

“This is very complex because everyone and his kid brother are telling us what to do,” said Bernard Reich, a professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University who specializes in U.S.-Israel relations and trains outgoing Middle East diplomats.

Starting early, Obama quickly gathered top-level experts, a move that Reich says shows a primary difference between Obama and Bush.

“The fact is that this administration has been moving quickly [in appointments for Middle East positions],” Reich said, “Whereas the Bush administration took awhile to get started. Only at the very end did it push hard.”

The key players include former Sen. George Mitchell as the special envoy to the Middle East, appointed on Obama’s second day in office. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her special adviser, Dennis Ross, are also central figures. Ross was a top designer of negotiations aimed at resolving the conflict during the George H.W. Bush and Clinton administrations.

Mitchell, who brokered a peace agreement in Northern Ireland, already has headed to the region twice, and Clinton made her first visit in early March.

Despite the increased diplomatic attention to the Middle East, Reich predicts that some U.S. policy in Israel will not change.

He says that Israelis view Hamas as an immediate threat because the Palestinian group continues to lob rockets from Gaza into Israel -- and did so throughout the summer despite a ceasefire.

“The difference between Obama-and-Hamas and Bush-and-Hamas is there doesn’t appear to be one,” Reich said.

While the two men agree that Hamas is a risk to be dealt with, Obama – like Bush before him – is blocked from directly engaging the group because Hamas’ charter calls for the destruction of the Jewish state.

“The president has stated that those organizations [Hamas and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon] need to take certain responsibilities,” said White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs in a news conference this week. “They must do that before this administration can render any judgment.”

Gibbs said Hamas, which controls Gaza, must recognize Israel’s right to exist before the U.S. government will meet with its leaders.

During Clinton’s meeting with Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Clinton was asked by a reporter whether the Obama administration would consider engaging Hamas, similar to the U.S.’s attempt to reach out to Iran. “Hamas is not a country,” she said. “Everyone knows what Hamas must do, and it is up to Hamas.”

While Obama’s attitude toward Hamas mirrors Bush’s, Reich says Iran is a different story.

Hamas is seen as a next-door neighbor threat, but the Israelis view Iran as a “much more serious” existential threat.

“When you are in Israel you can see the borders from wherever you are, and you are surrounded on all sides by Muslim countries,” said Northwestern's Sion. “But the threat of Iran is very, very scary for Israelis.”

Iran has been accused of funding terrorist groups including Hamas and Hezbollah.

To contain Iranian threats, Obama has said he supports tough nuclear sanctions against Iran. But he also said as a candidate last October that he is willing to engage in direct diplomacy with Iranian leaders.

In May 2007, then-Sen. Obama introduced strongly worded legislation aimed at containing Iran through sanctions. But during the first presidential campaign debate, Obama said refusing to talk at all with a country does not work.

Yet Clinton, in her recent visit with Livni, hinted that talks in the near future with Iran were unlikely. Secretary Clinton quoted the president’s inaugural statement that the U.S. was ready to “stretch out his hand to any country that unclenches its fist.” But she said, in Iran’s case, “that is yet to be seen.”

Focusing on Iran and Hamas are just two aspects U.S. policy makers are considering in efforts to achieve peace in the region. Reich frames the broader issue as trying to help the more moderate Palestinian Authority, led by Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party in the West Bank, to win favor among the Palestinian people and drain the support that Hamas receives in Gaza.

Under Obama, the U.S. strategy to improve Fatah’s reputation among the Palestinian people involves channeling aid to Gaza through the Palestinian Authority government.

“We’re trying to do this through Abbas because we want to build him up as the deliverer of good things,” Reich said. “We want it to say, ‘Look what Hamas caused for you in the Gaza Strip and look (how) Abbas can get support and build it up and make it better.”

But U.S. strategy toward Israel cannot be fully crafted until Israel forms a government in the wake of the February elections. Only when the Israeli government gets itself in place can the U.S. work with the new officials and help Israel and the Palestinians come to peace.

Prime Minister designate Benyamin Netanyahu of the right-wing Likud party has been assigned the task of forming a coalition government, but is having trouble pulling in more centrist and left leaning Israeli parties.

Right wing Israeli parties tend to drift away from a two-state solution.

“I think Netanyahu himself is more moderate than he used to be,” Sion said. “And I think he realizes even further that he will have to cooperate with Obama’s administration.”

Whether the left wing Labor party, headed by Ehud Barak, or Livni’s centrist Kadima party decide to join in Netanyahu’s coalition will dictate how the government operates. If Netanyahu's overture is accepted, the government will likely be more moderate, but if he is forced to include other right wing parties, such as Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu party, it could spin to the extreme right.

“It will be interesting to see what the Israelis put together,” Reich said. “At least for now, everybody is stuck with an imprecision of response to an imprecise situation.”