Iranian women chant slogans during an anti-Israeli demonstration at Tehran’s Palestine Square in December.

By ETHAN BRONNER


JERUSALEM - The new government of Israel is seeking to reorient the country’s foreign policy, arguing that to rely purely on the formulas of trading land for peace and promising a Palestinian state fails to grasp what it views as the deeper issues: Muslim rejection of a Jewish state and the rising hegemonic appetite of Iran.

Advisers to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are drafting policy suggestions aimed at forming a framework that he plans to present to President Obama at their first summit meeting, in Washington on May 18. In addition, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman left for Europe on May 3 on his first official visit, and on May 5, President Shimon Peres met with Mr. Obama in Washington.

Such an ambitious effort to reformulate the conflict will be, by all accounts, tough to sell for two reasons.

First, even though the standard approaches have not yielded success, no alternative has emerged.

Second, the Obama administration has repeatedly backed the two-state solution, as have the Europeans. In other ways, too, this White House has seemed to be closer in outlook to Europe than the past administration was.

Israel’s effort to switch the discussion to Iran is likely to be met in Washington and in European capitals with the assertion that it is precisely because of the need to build an alliance to confront Iran that Israel must move ahead vigorously with the Palestinians as well as with the Syrians.

“President Obama views the region as a whole, and trying to isolate each problem does not reflect reality,”said a senior American official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the American policy was still in formation.“It will be a lot easier to build a coalition to deal with Iran if the peace process is moving forward.”

A senior Israeli official, who also would speak only if not named because Israeli policy was being formed, said he believed that when Mr. Netanyahu met Mr. Obama, he would acknowledge that ultimately the goal was a Palestinian state. But it is expected that he would say that such a state was far in the future because Palestinian institutions and economic development required a great deal of work - as well as investment from Arab states - and that Palestinian education and public discourse needed to be more oriented toward coexistence.

It seems likely that the plan that Mr. Netanyahu will present to Mr. Obama will have a strong regional component in an attempt to fend off pressure on Israel to accept the Arab League peace plan, which calls on Israel to return to the 1967 borders as well as to accept a right of return for Palestinian refugees to Israel. The new Israeli government completely rejects both.

“People try to simplify the situation with these formulas: land for peace, two-state solution,”Mr. Lieberman told The Jerusalem Post in a recent interview.“It’s a lot more complicated.”He added that the real reason for the deadlock“is not occupation, not settlements and not settlers.”Nor, he said, is it the Palestinians. The biggest obstacle, he said, is“the Iranians.”

He argues that because Iran sponsors Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, both of which reject Israel’s existence and seek its destruction, the key to the Palestinian solution is to defang Iran and stop it from acquiring the means to build a nuclear weapon.

Increasingly, the Arab world - especially Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan - seems worried about Iran as well. Therefore, the opportunity for a regional alliance against Iranian influence is great.

But, they say, for Arab leaders to work alongside Israel on this, even quietly, requires demonstrable Israeli movement on ending its occupation of the West Bank by freezing or reducing settlements and handing over more power to the Palestinians.

Israel argues that the two issues need to be addressed separately. Israel says the occupation can be ended most easily once Iran is put in its place because then there will be much less risk of Iranian weapons being used against Israel from neighboring territory. Meanwhile, Israel says it cannot be expected to freeze settlement growth entirely.