Writing in the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof advises Barack Obama, should he become President, to show Israel some “tough love.”

The problem is this: Kristof’s advice is flawed because his assumptions are flawed. The thrust of his argument is that it’s Israel that is holding up a peace deal, and therefore that it’s Israel which needs prodding.

Much of his piece is taken up with answering challenges to his thinking as expressed in an earlier article. So, replying to a correspondent who writes about the historic Jewish connection to Hebron in the West Bank, Kristof says that “deep ties” do not “confer any right” to live or even visit there.

If he’d said that historic ties are not the only consideration in determining whether a certain group obtains political sovereignty over a certain territory, he would have a point. But he’s talking about residential and visitation rights. What needs to be stressed is that no government has the right to call itself responsible or decent, and then prevent people of a certain nationality from entering its borders. If Mahmoud Abbas, whom Kristof deems to be the most reasonable partner Israel has ever had, was to forbid Jews from entering parts of the State of Palestine, could he really be regarded as a trusted partner? There are enough historical precedents to cast doubt on that.

In other words, if we are to arrive at the robust two-state solution which Kristof rightly argues we need, then certain fundamental principles, such as freedom of movement, have to be accepted on both sides. If that means putting Israel’s checkpoints under the spotlight, then it also means doing the same with some of the uglier notions that inform the Palestinian position - in particular, that there are certain portions of the territory between the Mediterranean and the River Jordan where Jews should not set foot, even as tourists or pilgrims.

Kristof is a thoughtful columnist, so he does concede that if “Israel were to stop the settlements, ease the checkpoints, allow people in and out more freely, and negotiate more enthusiastically with Syria over the Golan Heights and with the Arab countries on the basis of the Saudi peace proposal, then peace might still elude the region. But Israel would at least be doing everything possible to secure its long-term future, rather than bolstering Hamas.”

On one level, it is true that Hamas thrives on continued conflict. However, precisely because of that, Hamas can be relied on to interpret even the riskiest propositions from the Israeli side as designed to perpetuate the occupation, and to impose that interpretation on large sectors of the Palestinian population.

For Kristof, Abbas is the key, and Israel is undermining him - hence, the need for tough love. When it comes to Hamas, he certainly doesn’t advocate involving them in the negotiating process; at the same time, he seems to believe that all factions could be brought into line if only Israel would emulate, as he says in his penultimate paragraph, the “extraordinary restraint” shown by Britain during the conflict in Northern Ireland.

Aside from whether Britain really was that restrained (even a sympathetic observer like the journalist Andrew Marr writes in his recent book that, in its war with the terrorists of the IRA, who showed utter contempt for human rights and human life, the British frequently resorted to “over-reaction and army brutality”), there is the larger question about the degree of comparison between the two conflicts. In a recent paper on what they call the “misapplication” of the Northern Ireland peace process, John Bew and Martyn Frampton argue that when it comes to Hamas, the “particularly aggressive character of its ideology possibly makes the emergence of more pragmatic strains (in a way that did occur among Irish republican leaders in Northern Ireland) much harder to envisage.”

Simultaneously, Bew and Frampton note that Hamas is on an “upward trajectory.” It is powerful both politically and militarily. While Hamas cannot be pushed aside, it can also upset any agreement reached with Abbas. Therefore, even if one agrees with Kristof’s tenuous assertion that Israel’s current policies bolster Hamas, any sign of weakness could bolster them too. Certainly, inviting Hamas into the political process (as recommended only today by a group of British parliamentarians) would, at this point in time, conjure up the image of a white flag forlornly waving.

What to do? During election campaigns, politicians like to talk about grand visions. The devil, as they say, is in the detail. As Middle East envoy Tony Blair said the other day in an interview, “for ordinary people on the Palestinian side, the occupation is in the detail … and if you don’t get down to the detail you don’t get it done.” The next US President will need to absorb the truth of this, in order to show how a peaceful settlement will positively impact even the most mundane aspects of daily life.

Which brings me to Kristof’s first point last. He says the US should tell Israel that bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities would be “crazy.” But would permitting Iran to obtain nuclear weapons not be “crazy” too? Just the very fact of an Iranian nuclear weapon could have a catastrophic impact upon the prospects for peace, not only for Israel and the Palestinians, but for Lebanon and Iraq as well. If we want what Kristof wants - to bolster the moderates against the extremists - then we have to recognize that the biggest problem in the region today is Iranian policy, from its nuclear ambitions to its support for the obscurantists of Hamas and Hezbollah. It is the clerics of Iran, much more than the politicians of Israel, who prevent us from getting to grips with the detail.