When he spoke at AIPAC the day after sewing up the nomination, Barack Obama sounded a lot like John McCain, who was there the day before.

Like McCain, Obama talked about the “unbreakable” bond with Israel and his “unshakeable commitment to Israel’s security.”

Like McCain, he assured Israel of its “qualitative military advantage.” (Can you say 150 nuclear weapons?)

Like McCain, he stressed the “grave” threat from Iran and vowed, “I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.” He added: “I will always keep the threat of military action on the table to defend our security and our ally Israel.”

But Obama was more nuanced than McCain.

Obama defended diplomacy not only with Iran but also with Syria, noting that the Israelis are willing to renew peace talks with Damascus, and Washington shouldn’t stand in the way.

Obama also talked in greater detail about the Palestinians, endorsing the two state solution and promising to involve himself actively in that negotiating process.

He said, “The Palestinians need a state that is contiguous and cohesive,” and John McCain doesn’t even know what “contiguous” means.

And he called on Israel “to ease the freedom of movement for Palestinians, improve economic conditions in the West Bank, and to refrain from building new settlements.”

But then Obama abandoned Oslo and tore up the Road Map when he said: “Any agreement with the Palestinian people must preserve Israel’s identity as a Jewish state,” and “Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.”

Guaranteeing the Jewish identity of Israel negates the possibility of the right of return for Palestinians.

And putting an undivided Jerusalem as the capital of Israel takes this crucial chess piece off the bargaining table, where it was supposed to stay until the final negotiations, and places it solely in Israel’s hands.

That was a huge and telling and unnecessary concession for Obama to make.

And it proves that, if he becomes President, he will maintain what he called the “strong, bipartisan consensus”—a consensus that consistently denies Palestinians their rights.