Nasser Shiyoukhi / AP

Palestinian activists vandalize a poster of U.S. President Barack Obama in the West Bank city of Bethlehem on Monday.

TEL AVIV – Among Palestinians there is a coming president whose approach is creating quite a buzz of expectation.

With apologies to the White House, it is not Barack Obama, who is set to meet with Israeli and Palestinian leaders on a three-day Middle East visit that kicks off Wednesday.

Indeed, his or her name is not even known. What is being awaited with mounting excitement is the winner of the latest reality TV show.

Called simply "The President," it is a search among the youths of the West Bank and Gaza for a candidate with the skills and charisma to lead a people still in search of their own state.

Some of the 1,000-plus hopefuls were gathered for a recording in Bethlehem over the weekend.

It was quickly obvious that these were well-educated, serious-minded young men and women thinking serious thoughts about the Palestinian territory's many economic, social and political challenges.

An irony was quickly apparent, too.

For many, President Obama's rise from outsider to Oval Office is an inspiration for their own ambitions.

But when it comes to helping realize their ambition for a Palestinian state, they have more or less given up on him.

"Not all Palestinians welcome Obama," said Bashar Falashat, a 26-year-old business studies graduate from Hebron. "Half see his visit as just a tourism trip. We need him to see the reality, to see how we are suffering, but most Palestinians believe that he will not change anything."

Several of the candidates think Obama's heart is with Palestine but his head is wedded to Israeli interests.

Twenty-one-year-old Akhla Salman studies psychology and social work in Jerusalem.

"I know America is the leading country for freedom and human rights, and I respect Obama because he is a good man," she said. "But between America and Israel there is a very strong relationship."

Near-zero expectations
Their near-zero expectations are being deliberately matched by the White House: Obama might be Nobel Peace Prize winner but he has no new plan to make peace between the Israelis and Palestinians.

Instead, the president will be in "listening mode" as he meets with Israeli President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday, and with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday.

According to a recent poll by the Israel Democracy Institute at Tel Aviv University, a majority of the Jewish public -- 51 percent -- believes Obama's attitude toward Israel is merely neutral, while 10.5 percent regard him as hostile.

Meanwhile, Israel's Arab minority sees Obama as being very much pro-Israel.

On the face of it, Obama's more passive stance ahead of the visit is good news for Aviela Dietch, a mother of three and someone with perhaps as little trust in Obama as in her Palestinian neighbors.

Lior Mizrahi / Pool via Reuters, file

An Israeli border police officer stands in front of a truck lifting a structure during its removal from the Migron outpost near the West Bank city of Ramallah on September 5, 2012.

"I don't find that it is his place to tell us what to do here," she said.

Born in Milwaukee, Dietch is one of the three hundred thousand Jews who have made homes on the West Bank – land seized by Israeli forces in the 1967 war and occupied ever since.

These settlements, illegal under international law, are widely seen as the biggest obstacle to a peace deal. They are eating up territory earmarked for a Palestinian state.

Dietch lived in a hilltop community called Migron, unusual because it was deemed illegal even under Israeli law. Last autumn, after years of court action, the government was forced to demolish it.

"It was gut-wrenching, heart-breaking, to leave," she said as she walked past the few cabins and a small playground that still survive.

Her home now is just a few hundred yards down the hill, in another Jewish settlement.

Asked if she would be prepared to sacrifice that in the cause of peace, she replied without hesitation: "Of course not," she said. "And I don't think it would bring anybody peace. To ask us to sacrifice lives and homes we have been building up – there would be a civil war. A civil war."

The settlers are by no means representative of wider Israeli opinion but they are a big power in the newly formed Israeli coalition government.

That's one reason why Obama seems to have concluded there is no reason to waste energy and political capital on pushing along a peace process.

The highest hope is to cajole confidence-building measures out of Netanyahu: the release of some Palestinian prisoners, or perhaps progress on a temporary settlement freeze.

Indeed, in media briefings, Ben Rhodes, deputy National Security adviser, has placed the Israel-Palestinian conflict last on an agenda topped by Iran, Syria and wider regional turmoil.

'Operation Unbreakable Alliance'
These are issues which matter much more to mainstream Israel, and the best place to measure the mainstream is Tel Aviv – the beach-side city that is more Mediterranean than Middle Eastern.

"Personally, I was more moved by Bill Clinton, but Obama is totally reliable," said David Malka, a 52-year-old taxi-driver who works streets that were protected by the U.S.-funded Iron Dome missile shield during last year's conflict with Hamas.

That's a practical demonstration of the value of U.S. defense aid worth $3 billion annually, not to mention American diplomatic clout, a sort of Iron Dome that deflects unfriendly fire at the United Nations.

"He is a hundred percent committed to Israel's security and on Iran; if the moment comes, the U.S. has proved in the past that they help when we need help."

As for Iran, Israel and the U.S. are clearly working on different timetables. Obama told Israeli TV last week he believes Tehran is a year away of nuclear weapons; Netanyahu's "red line" is this summer.

The two leaders have notoriously cool relations -- and this visit is Obama's first to the Jewish state as president. Many here suspect Obama doesn't quite get what it is to be Israeli.

But most are as confident as the Palestinians are pessimistic, that the fifth serving president to visit Israel will be true to the trip's branding as "Operation Unbreakable Alliance."

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A $1 billion bet on peace: Qatar funds huge Palestinian settlement in West Bank

Paul Goldman / NBC News

The new settlement under construction at Rawabi.

RAWABI, West Bank — As gambles go, it hardly gets bigger: A $1 billion dollar bet on peace — or at least a measure of calm — in the West Bank.

Even the founder of Rawabi, the biggest construction project in the history of the Palestinian people, says nobody in his right mind would invest here.

Standing on a wind-swept hilltop overlooking the biblical hills of Judea, a half-hour drive from Ramallah, Bashar Al-Masri points to the Palestinian flags flying atop the giant cranes that are building, with phenomenal speed, the first modern Palestinian town.

"As a teenager, raising the Palestinian flag was enough to be shot and killed," he says, immaculate in a form-hugging, thin-lapelled dark suit and narrow burgundy tie.

"This is a small, symbolic way of how long we came along, and how much we will come along in the future," adds Al-Masri, who as a teenager threw stones at Israeli soldiers.

The largest flag is mounted on a pole facing the Jewish settlement of Atteret, a community of about a hundred families located across a small valley.

The flag is a deliberate statement.

"So that we can show our unfriendly neighbors who were violently against us that we're here, and we're here to stay, and we're not afraid of you, we will remain here," Al-Masri says.

Nation-building
Two-thirds of the investment in this town comes from the government of Qatar’s investment fund, Al-Masri explains. The design, planning and construction are all by Palestinians, with outside help, and what appears to make him proudest of all, he says, there is no input from Israel.

He says there are more than 8,000 families interested in moving in, and the first few hundred apartments will go on the market in March, with the town’s inauguration in May. The cost of the apartments, depending on size and location, is between $75,000 and $140,000.

"This is about nation-building, this is about doing what’s right, this is my contribution that I know the best," says Al-Masri. "The human rights activists have their contribution, the [Palestinian Authority] people are building capacity and building the government, we're all together as the Palestinian people building a state."

There are two main practical problems for the new town. All the water has to be piped in, and there is no obvious source. “We are in this project, putting facts on the ground, and things will have to follow,” is Al-Masri’s answer, hoping for a miracle.

And access. The only road to Rawabi passes through what is known as Area C: that part of the West Bank that is fully controlled by Israel, administratively and militarily. It is a narrow, winding road that the Palestinians can use only with an Israeli permit, which must be renewed each year.

Al-Masri talks of a tunnel through the hills linking Rawabi with Ramallah, barely visible on the horizon. Will that ever happen? "Probably not,” he admits. "It’s a problem."

Paul Goldman / NBC News

The view to Rawabi from the nearby Jewish settlement of Atteret.

On the nearest hill, looking at Rawabi from Atteret, the manager of the Jewish settlement, Noam Aharon, agrees. "They throw stones at us," he says, talking about young Palestinians. "Just last month they smashed my windscreen. Stones can kill. And if they try to kill us, we will kill them."

"What do you think of their new town?"

"It spoils the view. But they can have it — they can do what they want, as long as we can live here in peace. If we can’t, neither can they."

Leap of faith
Building a new town out of this scraggly, dry wilderness — from where on a clear day you can see the towers of Tel Aviv and the Mediterranean Sea — is a leap of faith, which al-Al-Masri does not deny.

It is being built against the opposition of many Palestinians who see any peaceful project as a way of affirming the status quo with Israel, of denying the Palestinian struggle.

"Of course I believe, I must believe that there will be peace with Israel, and it’s a matter of time," he says. "The majority of Israeli people, at least 70 percent, want a Palestinian state. So, peace is possible. It just requires the right leaders."  

So what percentage of Palestinians want peace with Israel?

"The vast majority. I'm certain of that."

Rawabi looks much more like an Israeli middle-class town than a Palestinian city: It will have high-rises, an outside theater to seat 20,000, soccer fields and cinemas and a theater, a swimming pool, a pedestrian precinct in the city center, bars and shopping malls.

All it needs now is people, water and a larger access road.

But the statement the project makes may be as important as the facts on the ground. It says that, between a failed peace process and a possible third intifada, there is a third way: Building Palestine from the bottom up.

Martin Fletcher is the author of "The List", "Breaking News" and "Walking Israel".

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Hebrew graffiti, including the phrase "Jesus is a monkey," was daubed on the walls of a monastery near Jerusalem early Tuesday in what police suspect was a so-called 'Price Tag' attack by right-wing, pro-settler extremists, according to reports.

Vandals torched the wooden door of the Latrun Monastery and spray-painted the graffiti on the holy site's stone walls, Israeli police said.

PhotoBlog: Jewish settlers voluntarily evacuate West Bank enclave

Menahem Kahana / AFP - Getty Images

A Trappist monk stands between graffiti reading in Hebrew, "Jesus is a monkey" (L) and "mutual guarantee, Ramat Migron and Maoz Ester" (West Bank settlements) (R), which was sprayed on the wall of the Latrun Monastery between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv on Tuesday after unknown people set the monastery's door ablaze.

"Police have opened a special investigation into the incident," Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.

Israeli security officials had expressed concern about possible acts of retribution by a suspected settler vigilante campaign known as 'Price Tag' for Sunday's court-ordered eviction of 50 families from Migron, a settler site near the West Bank city of Ramallah. Police believe the incident was part of the campaign, the Times of Israel and the Jerusalem Post reported.

Rosenfeld said "Migron" and the words "Jesus is a monkey" were among the phrases scrawled at the monastery, which is located inside Israel but not far from the occupied West Bank.

'Price Tag' incidents are so-called because the extremists believe their attacks are extracting a price from Palestinians for their action in evicting settlers.

Jerusalem Post reporter Melanie Lidman posted pictures of the graffiti on Twitter.

She reported that, following the evacuation of Migron on Sunday, Judea and Samaria District police commander Amos Yaakov said: "I assume that there will be an increase in 'Price Tag' incidents, and we have carried out preparations for this."

The attack happened at around 3:30 a.m. local time Tuesday (8:30 p.m. ET Monday) and was quickly discovered by monks, who notified police, she reported.

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The report added that the monastery was a way station for pilgrims on their way from Jaffa to Jerusalem in the 19th century, and that the current building was built in 1890.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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