SDEROT, Israel/GAZA: If there is one thing that seems to unite Israelis and Palestinians days before Obama's visit to Israel, the occupied West Bank and Jordan next week, it is their talk of broken promises and lack of hope that he will ever bring peace.

Across the frontier, in Gaza, Badiaa Anbar, 53, was demonstrating with other parents for the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. Her own son, she said, was imprisoned 18 years ago for being affiliated with militants.

Despite initial pledges to work hard for a Palestinian state, Obama has turned out to be no different than any of his predecessors, she said. "Obama's promises were as deceiving as a mirage. None of these promises came true."

In his first term Obama started off by making peace between Israelis and Palestinians a top priority. His 2009 "new beginning" speech in Cairo raised Palestinian hopes of establishing a state in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, territories Israel captured in a 1967 Middle East war. But those hopes plunged when US-brokered peace talks collapsed in 2010, only weeks after they began. Israel ignored Obama's call to halt the construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank; the Palestinians refuse to talk as long as settlements are being built.

This time around Obama's administration is wary of risking its credibility on efforts to revive talks. The White House has said there would be no launch of a diplomatic initiative during the trip. In the market of Gaza's Beach refugee camp, Baha Al-Haddad, 45, a public servant, predicted nothing would come of Obama's visit. "He will make another speech and make promises but it will only be words without fulfilment," he said.

In November last year, days after Obama's election to a second term, Israel and Hamas, the Islamist movement that rules the Gaza Strip, fought an eight-day war in which some 170 Palestinians and six Israelis were killed. The United States funds Israel's missile interceptor system, Iron Dome, which blew up many of the incoming rockets. Nevertheless, some Sderot residents do not believe Obama has their best interests at heart.

"It would be disastrous without Iron Dome," said Yaffa Malka, 49, a hairdresser who has lived in Sderot her entire life. "But all he (Obama) cares about is talking about a Palestinian state and not how to stop Hamas arming itself."