High-level visit: Tom Perez, a senior adviser to the president, and other advisers had planned to sit down in three separate meetings with various Palestinian, Arab and Muslim leaders and elected officials to talk about tensions in the Middle East. The private meetings were to come on the heels of similar gatherings in Detroit.

But most folks contacted turned down the request, according to six people we talked to. Any meeting being held will be with a smaller group of players.

‘Absolute sell-out’: “All the Palestinian leadership we work with in Chicago have rejected this overture, and USPCN [U.S. Palestinian Community Network] considers anyone — Palestinian, Muslim, Arab — who takes a meeting with the White House to be an absolute sell-out. There’s no more time for meetings,” said Hatem Abudayyeh, an organizer with the group.