Obama's Middle East moment of truth: His diplomatic moves are a good start. But does he have the

will to challenge Israel?

By Gary Kamiya

link:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2009/03/17/middle_east_obama/index.html?source=newsletter

March 17, 2009 | Trying to figure out what Barack Obama intends to do in the Middle East is like trying to read the leaves in a cup of tea stirred by Jackson Pollock. For every signal Obama has given that he intends to break decisively with Bush's failed approach to the Middle East, he has given another that indicates he plans to simply give the same policies a fresh coat of paint.

snip:"Not surprisingly, Obama's most contradictory messages concern the most important, and politically radioactive, issue of all: the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. His appointment of the respected negotiator George Mitchell as special envoy for the Middle East was taken as strong evidence that he was prepared to challenge Washington's blank-check support for Israel. In a major break with the Bush administration's refusal to deal with Hamas, Mitchell told Jewish leaders that a Palestinian unity government made up of the U.S.-backed Palestinian Authority and Hamas would be "a step forward" for peace. Similarly, after Britain announced that it would break with U.S. and European policy by beginning low-level contacts with Hezbollah, an anonymous State Department official told reporters that the U.S. might enjoy some benefits from the diplomatic rapprochement. "We are looking for a comprehensive approach" in the Middle East, the official said. For her part, Secretary of State Clinton, on her first trip to the Middle East, criticized Israeli house demolitions in East Jerusalem, albeit in feeble, Condoleezza Rice-like terms as "unhelpful," and hinted that the Obama administration was prepared to challenge the ongoing expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. She also pledged $900 million in U.S. aid to rebuild Gaza after Israel's devastating 22-day onslaught earlier this year."

snip:"His cautious and contradictory moves so far give the impression that Obama hopes that more diplomacy will somehow cause the chess pieces on the Middle East board to move in such a way that he will be able to broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace without going head-to-head with Israel. But that hope is unrealistic."

snip:"The fact that all the Arab states have adopted a uniform position on the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, demanding that it be resolved along the lines of the 2002 Arab Peace Plan, spells a death knell for Bush's attempt to use the "moderate" regimes' fear of their own Islamist radicals to sideline them on Israel-Palestine. And it puts the onus squarely on the U.S., and its client Israel, to take immediate and concrete steps towards a two-state solution.

Seen in this light, Israel's Gaza war was a major strategic blunder. Not only did it achieve nothing militarily -- the crude rockets it was ostensibly intended to stop continue to rain down, Hamas is more popular than ever, and Abbas is weaker -- but it united the Arab states against it. The Saudis and Egyptians fear Iran and were enraged after Syria's Assad derided them as "half-men" for failing to oppose Israel, but after Gaza they had no choice but to present a united front on Israel-Palestine. As Agence France-Presse reported on the recent Riyadh meeting, "he Saudis see themselves as 'delivering' the Arabs to comprehensive peace talks, hoping to provoke the Obama administration to 'deliver Israel' -- regardless of who is leading Israel's government. Riyadh wants to maneuver Israel into 'a put up or shut up' situation, said one foreign analyst." "

snip:"Paradoxically, the huge gulf between the Obama administration and the Netanyahu government could actually make it easier for Obama to broker a peace deal. As veteran analyst Henry Siegman, president of the U.S./Middle East Project, recently argued in Haaretz, center-left Israeli governments have never been willing to take the steps necessary to make peace: They have "used the peace process they champion as a cover for the continued expansion of settlements and the closing off of East Jerusalem to any future Palestinian entity." But American presidents have been unwilling to challenge any Israeli government that pays lip service to the two-state solution, which means that such governments can stall forever. By contrast, Siegman notes, "a Netanyahu-led government with coalition partners like Avigdor Lieberman and other extreme right-wing parties that do not enjoy much popular support in the U.S. (or anywhere else for that matter) would allow President Barack Obama and his administration to advance initiative."

Finally, there is Obama himself. Elected to bring change, in the wake of a disastrous war whose intellectual architects were ardently pro-Israel, he has more of a mandate to change the imbalanced U.S. policy toward Israel and the Palestinians than any recent president.

So Obama has the power, and probably the wisdom, to change America's misguided course in the Middle East. Whether he has the will, or the courage, is another question."

link to full article:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2009/03/17/middle_east_obama/index2.html

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