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Obama’s Middle East speech missed ‘historic opportunity,’ say many Arabs

What is all this hubbub about this speech? It might seem surprising that US pundits are primarily concerned that Obama called on Israel to go back to the 1967 borders, but there was not much else new or exciting in the speech, and that was probably just another bluff, like Obama calling on Israel to stop building settlements. He backed down on that, and will presumably back down on the border question as well, despite the fact UN resolutions and international law would require Israel to give up the land it conquered, and there is no hope of peace while Israel insists on keeping that land. This story is from the Christian Science Monitor

Obama’s Middle East speech missed ‘historic opportunity,’ say many Arabs
By Kristen Chick, Correspondent / May 19, 2011
Cairo

President Obama pledged American support for pro-democracy uprisings in the Middle East Thursday, trying to put the US on the right side of history as he laid out his vision for US involvement in the region after the Arab Spring.

Those from nations where opposition movements are fighting brutal crackdowns welcomed the president’s messages of support. But what was billed as a major speech left some in the region nonplussed. They said that the speech didn’t cover new ground, was short on policy prescriptions, and that the president missed a chance to apologize for America’s history of supporting the dictators people revolted against.

“Obama really had an opportunity to reshape and reframe the debate and … he gave it away,” says Shadi Hamid, director of research at the Brookings Doha Center, adding that there was nothing distinctive or imaginative about the address. “This speech was an opportunity to say to Arabs, ‘We as Americans made mistakes, we did not support democratic aspirations as much as we should have, but we’re going to do better.’ Obama didn’t say that.”

Marked difference from Obama’s 2009 Cairo speech

The muted response to the speech differed markedly from the widespread interest and pockets of hope generated by Obama’s landmark speech to the Muslim world from Cairo two years ago. Many felt that Obama has failed to follow through on the promises he made in 2009, and declined to give him another chance.

“It will be the policy of the United States to promote reform across the region, and to support transitions to democracy,” he said, calling this moment a “historic opportunity” after years of accepting the status quo. “We have embraced the chance to show that America values the dignity of the street vendor in Tunisia more than the raw power of the dictator. There must be no doubt that the United States of America welcomes change that advances self-determination and opportunity.”

Still, his words rang hollow to some in the region who see that US support for uprisings is not consistent across the region. But regarding Bahrain, where US criticism of the regime’s crackdown on protesters has been muted, he spoke more forcefully than any US official has since the uprising began in February. He specifically criticized mass arrests and the use of “brute force.”

“The only way forward is for the government and opposition to engage in a dialogue, and you can’t have a real dialogue when parts of the peaceful opposition are in jail,” he said. Later, he added, “Shia must never have their mosques destroyed in Bahrain.”

“I’m shocked because this is the first time we’ve seen such clear remarks about Bahrain,” says Mohammed Al Maskati, head of the Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights in the country’s capital, Manama.

Yet Mr. Maskati said there was much left to be desired from the speech as well. Obama did not mention Saudi Arabia’s intervention in Bahrain, where more than 1,000 Saudi troops remain who helped quell the uprising, or make clear how the government could be compelled to talk with the opposition when its actions imply that it is decidedly opposed to negotiations.

‘He can’t say now that he was with the revolution’

In Egypt, where the US strongly supported former President Hosni Mubarak for 30 years, and resentment of that support still runs high, relatively few people paid attention to the speech. Some who did were critical.

“He gave a speech as if he was with the revolutions from the beginning,” says Emad Gad, an analyst at the Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo. “But we know his administration was with Mubarak totally. He can’t say now that he was with the revolution.”

Mr. Obama did say that “for decades, the United States has pursued a set of core interests in the region,” adding later, “but if America is to be credible, we must acknowledge that at times our friends in the region have not all reacted to the demands for consistent change – with change that’s consistent with the principles that I’ve outlined today.”

But, says Mr. Hamid, “If you heard this speech in isolation, you would have thought that America had always naturally supported democracy. There was no acknowledgment of America’s very complex and sometimes tragic history in the Middle East.”

Who does President Obama think he is fooling? USA has been extremely selective in its support for rebellions against dictators seen as US allies. Is that about to change? Many Arabs are skeptical, rightly so. Flowery rhetoric not backed up by actions does ring hollow, for good reason. Obama has been criticized by the right wing for apologizing for past US actions, though whatever muted criticism Obama has volunteered hardly qualifies as an apology. The right wing thinks any criticism of US actions is unwarranted, therefore even normal quibbling over foreign policy decisions of prior Administrations is to be denounced! This exemplifies the ridiculous excuse for democracy that prevails in USA. Meanwhile, the right wing in USA and Israel is up in arms because Obama had the nerve to call on Israel to respect its rightful borders! This story is from Reuters

Israeli rebuke of Obama exposes divide on Mideast
By Jeffrey Heller and Matt Spetalnick
WASHINGTON | Fri May 20, 2011 7:25pm EDT

(Reuters) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu bluntly told President Barack Obama on Friday his vision of how to achieve Middle East peace was unrealistic, exposing a deep divide that could doom any U.S. bid to revive peace talks.

In an unusually sharp rebuke to Israel’s closest ally, Netanyahu insisted Israel would never pull back to its 1967 borders — which would mean big concessions of occupied land — that Obama had said should be the basis for negotiations on creating a Palestinian state.

“Peace based on illusions will crash eventually on the rocks of Middle East reality,” an unsmiling Netanyahu said as Obama listened intently beside him in the Oval Office after they met for talks.

Netanyahu insisted that Israel was willing to make compromises for peace, but made clear he had major differences with Washington over how to advance the long-stalled peace process.

Netanyahu’s resistance raises the question of how hard Obama will push for concessions he is unlikely to get, and whether the vision the U.S. leader laid out on Thursday to resolve the decades-old conflict will ever get off the ground.

Obama on Thursday embraced a long-sought goal by the Palestinians: that the state they seek in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip should largely be drawn along lines that existed before the 1967 war in which Israel captured those territories and East Jerusalem.

Netanyahu, who heads a right-leaning coalition, responded with what amounted to a history lecture about the vulnerability to attack that Israel faced with the old borders. “We can’t go back to those indefensible lines,” he said.

In a pointed comment clearly aimed at Obama’s new approach to the long-running conflict, Netanyahu said: “The only peace that will endure is one that is based on reality, on unshakable facts.”

Netanyahu, Israeli officials said, was determined to push back hard because the reference to 1967 borders was a red flag that would attract more international pressure on Israel for concessions. A senior Israeli official said Netanyahu felt he had to speak bluntly so he would be “heard around the world.”

“There is a feeling that Washington does not understand the reality, doesn’t understand what we face,” an official on board the plane taking Netanyahu to Washington told reporters.

Despite that, Obama’s first declaration of his stance on the contested issue of borders could help ease doubts in the Arab world about his commitment to acting as an even-handed broker and boost his outreach to the region. Another failed peace effort, however, could fuel further frustration.

In line with Netanyahu’s stance, Obama voiced opposition to the Palestinian plan to seek U.N. recognition of statehood in September in the absence of renewed peace talks.

The Democratic president has quickly come under fire from Republican critics, who accuse him of betraying Israel, the closest U.S. ally in the region. Pushing Netanyahu could alienate U.S. supporters of Israel as Obama seeks re-election.

Going into the talks, Netanyahu said he wanted to hear Obama reaffirming commitments made to Israel in 2004 by then-President George W. Bush suggesting that it may keep some large settlement blocs as part of any peace pact.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said on Friday that Obama had said nothing that “contradicts those letters.”

Obama on Thursday also delivered a message to the Palestinians that they would have to answer “some very difficult questions” about a reconciliation deal with Hamas, the Islamist group that runs Gaza and which the United States regards as a terrorist group.

Both leaders want to have their cake and eat it too. Neither is serious about peace between Israel and the Palestinians; they both claim to be willing to compromise, but not enough to change anything. Obama is not betraying Israel; he is merely trying to sound as if he is serious about being a fair and honest broker, though that is all for show. How much land is Israel willing to swap to keep some of its “large settlement blocs?” Presumably whatever land Israel might propose to swap would be land Israel does not find of value. Israel has placed its settlements in land it does consider valuable; it wants all the best land for itself. Bush and now Obama made that promise to Israel to give Israel an excuse for not making peace with the Palestinians, as everyone knows the Palestinians are unlikely to accept that kind of raw deal. That way, Israel can use that reluctance to say Palestinians are unwilling to compromise, therefore they are the roadblock, not serious about making peace. This is all a spin game. Israel can maintain its choking occupation of Palestinian land while USA meekly protests and the peace process goes nowhere. This is by design of both Israel and USA. The Palestinians should continue their efforts to win UN recognition of their state, and UN should use the occasion to put this rogue nation and international scofflaw, Israel, in its place. However, I cannot be optimistic that will happen. It seems as unlikely as UN putting the rogue nation and international scofflaw, USA, in its place.

Cry me a river, Israel, about those indefensible borders. Israel is one of the strongest military powers in the world. The borders Israel wants are indefensible as a matter of international law. That is an “unshakable fact” Israel refuses to accept. Netanyahu says Israel cannot go back to those borders? That is a typical distortion of those wielding illegitimate power over others. Israel is not willing to go back, but that does not mean it could not. It is true that, “The only peace that will endure is one that is based on reality,” but what Israel calls reality is what they want to force on the Palestinians. Israel needs to get real. Since it will not, UN, and USA, should recognize a Palestinian state, which would force Israel to deal with reality, as opposed to what it calls reality.

This entry was posted by Aletha on Saturday, May 21st, 2011 at 1:08 am

One Response to “Obama’s Middle East speech missed ‘historic opportunity,’ say many Arabs”

  1. Aletha Says:
    May 24th, 2011 at 11:41 pm

    Al Jazeera has an illuminating editorial about this speech.

    Emperor Obama vs the Arab people
    Despite calling for change in some parts of the Middle East, the US president reaffirmed the status quo where it counts.
    Joseph Massad
    Last Modified: 21 May 2011 13:17

    In 1960, British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan delivered an important speech titled Wind of Change, first in Accra and later in Cape Town, signaling British decolonisation of its African territories and warning the South African regime to move away from its apartheid policies. In 2011, US President Barack Obama begged to differ. While dubbing his speech Winds of Change, in reference to the uprisings ongoing across the Arab World, his speech made it clear that the same winds were not yet blowing in Washington DC, and perhaps never will. President Obama’s second speech on the Arab world, delivered on 19 May, showed such constancy and lack of change in US policy as his first speech, delivered in Cairo on 4 June 2009. This is not to say that the two speeches lacked flair and imperial hubris in the delivery, but rather that their characteristic lack of substance or novelty, let alone their decorative and gratuitous verbosity, demonstrate that imperial climate control in Washington can never be “changed”, not even by the wind of the Arab uprisings.

    The problem with US policy in the Arab world is not only its insistence on broadcasting credulous US propaganda – easily fed to Americans, yet with few takers elsewhere in the world – but also that it continues to show a complete lack of familiarity with Arab political culture and insists on insulting the intelligence of most Arabs, whom it claims to address directly with speeches such as Mr Obama’s.

    When President Obama peddles the Israeli lie, that his pro-Israel advisors at the White House – and there has been no other kinds of Middle East advisors at the White House since the Clinton administration – feed him, that “too many leaders in the region tried to direct their people’s grievances elsewhere. The West was blamed as the source of all ills, a half-century after the end of colonialism. Antagonism toward Israel became the only acceptable outlet for political expression,” to which leaders is he actually referring? Sadat, Mubarak, Ben Ali, Kings Hussein and Abdullah II of Jordan, Kings Hasan II and Muhammad VI of Morocco, President Bouteflika, any of the Gulf monarchs or the two Hariri prime ministers, Rafiq and Saad?

    Not only are such lies not believable to anyone in the wider world, but also, were the US administration to believe them, explain the ongoing foreign policy failures in a region the US insists on dominating – but which it refuses to learn much about.

    Popular opposition and leadership support

    Opposition to the United States and Israel in fact is something espoused by the peoples of the Arab world, not by their leaders, who have been insisting for decades that the US and Israel are the friends of Arabs. Indeed the people of the region have been the only party that insisted that US policies and domination in the region and constant Israeli aggressions are what make these two countries enemies of the Arab peoples, while Arab rulers and their propaganda machines insisted on diverting people’s anger toward other imagined enemies, which the US conjured up for the region, while making peace with Israel.

    Obama’s attempt to deny the hatred that Arabs feel towards the United States and Israel because of the actions of these two countries is nothing short of the continued refusal of the United States and Israel (not of Arabs) to take responsibility for their own actions by shifting the blame for the horrendous violence they have inflicted on the region onto their very victims. When Obama and Israel call on Arabs to take responsibility for the state of the region and not blame the US and Israel for it, what they are essentially doing is to refuse to take responsibility for what they have inflicted on Arabs.

    Arabs have clearly taken responsibility and have been trying to remove the dictators that the US and Israel have supported for decades – and which they continue to support. The only parties refusing to take responsibility here are the United States and Israel. Obama’s speech, sadly, continues this intransigent tradition.

    In the same vein, Obama chastises Syria for following “its Iranian ally, seeking assistance from Tehran in the tactics of suppression. And this speaks to the hypocrisy of the Iranian regime”. He would have done well to accuse the French, British, and his own government – with whom the regimes of Ben Ali and Mubarak consulted until their last moment in office. The scandal of French collaboration with Ben Ali’s and Mubarak’s governments until the last minute, especially in “security” matters, has filled world newspapers over the past months, as did the news that both the Egyptian defense minister Muhammad Tantawi (now in charge of the military council governing post-Mubarak Egypt) and army chief of staff Sami Anan spent much of the Egyptian uprising in Washington DC consulting with the Americans on how best to “deal” with the uprising – leaving aside the other direct line to Mubarak and Omar Suleiman that many US government and security organs had until the last moment of Mubarak’s rule – and since.

    But Obama thinks Arabs are stupid or ignorant of the fact that it is the US and European countries who train and fund almost all governmental security agencies in the region. Iran’s help to Syria may expose Iranian hypocrisy, but US, British and French hypocrisy, thankfully remains unexposed.

    Freedom – for some

    Obama spoke of how “there must be no doubt that the United States of America welcomes change that advances self-determination and opportunity”, but given his insistence that such change be brought about in Syria and Libya, but not in Oman, Jordan, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain (among others), does raise many doubts. The silence on demonstrations in monarchies (Saudi Arabia, Oman, Jordan, Morocco) and the mild criticisms of Yemen, whose popular uprising precedes Libya’s, stand in stark contrast with the vehemence of Obama’s criticisms of Syria and Libya.

    The belated mention of Bahrain stood out as a sign of a lack of courage, as now weeks after the Bahraini uprising has been successfully crushed through use of a US-supplied and supported Gulf mercenary force led by Saudi Arabia, Obama mustered the courage to speak about ongoing arrests there and the destruction of Shia mosques.

    In the case of Syria, however, his criticisms and those of his government started from day one. Indeed when juxtaposed with his statement that “we will keep our commitments to friends and partners”, a clearer picture was revealed about where and what kinds of changes the US welcomes – and where and what kinds of changes it does not. Obama even went further by enumerating where America’s “core” principles should apply: Baghdad, Damascus, Sanaa, and Tehran, in addition to Benghazi, Cairo, and Tunis – but not Riyadh, Manama, Muscat, Amman, Algiers, or Rabat.

    America’s alleged core principle of religious tolerance and equality is also highly country-specific. Aside from identifying Iraq, a country the US destroyed and where it instituted the most virulent form of religious sectarianism and ethnic hatred in the region, as “a multi-ethnic, multi-sectarian democracy”, Obama’s concern for religious tolerance applies to Egypt – and thankfully, but more mildly, to Bahrain only. But when it comes to Israel, this commitment disappears, as Obama insists that Arabs must “recognise Israel as a Jewish State”, and once again threatens Palestinians (as he had threatened them in his Cairo speech) to desist from “delegitimising” Israel’s right to be a state that discriminates by law against its non-Jewish citizens on a religious and ethnic basis.

    Sympathy for colonisers

    Finally, Obama comes to the Palestinian question and tells us once again nothing new or substantive, Zionist protestations notwithstanding. First, Arabs are enjoined once again – as we were in his Cairo speech – to sympathise with the poor Israeli Jews who experience “the pain of knowing that other children in the region are taught to hate them”. That Israel and the leading US Jewish organisations have for decades been the main global purveyors of the most racist and virulent forms of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hateful propaganda seems to have escaped Obama and his advisors.

    What kind of credibility does Obama think he will have with Arabs who have been on the receiving end of such global hatred for decades, when he wants them to sympathize with the suffering of their persecutors who have been blowing up Arab children non-stop since 1948?

    But Obama went further, not only does he believe that, unlike all other countries in the region which must practice religious tolerance, Israel should be exempted from that condition and must be supported in its legal practice of religious and ethnic intolerance – but tells us that such exemption should only apply inside the state of Israel but not in the Occupied Territories.

    Right to exist

    Obama proposes that the negotiations over the Israeli occupation of Jerusalem be postponed, but he simulatenously proposes that Israel should withdraw to the borders of 1967; here he is either showing ignorance of the situation, or outright malice. The 1967 borders of which Obama speaks include East Jerusalem, but Obama seems to have excepted the city from these borders a priori, as if it is not part of them, even though international law and the United Nations recognise it as part and parcel of the territories occupied through war in 1967.

    This is aside from the fact that Israel has illegally expanded East Jerusalem at the expense of West Bank lands, with some estimates putting its current municipal size at ten per cent of the West Bank (in 1967 it was a mere six square kilometers). The so-called “mutually agreed swaps” of land that Obama proposes are no such thing. Israel already took a further ten per cent of the West Bank behind its apartheid wall. Add to that the settlements and the Jordan Valley, which Israel claims is the part it wants to swap land for.

    What Palestinians have left at the end is less than 60 per cent of the West Bank that could be designated as a “Palestinian state”, although even that state should be “non-militarised,” yet surprisingly “sovereign”, as Obama tells us.

    Obama also remains concerned about Israel’s right to exist but not that of the Palestinians. He declared,without irony, in reference to Hamas: “How can one negotiate with a party that has shown itself unwilling to recognise your right to exist?” After all, the Palestinians have been negotiating for two decades with Israel, which refuses insistently to recognise the Palestinians’ right to exist in a state of their own.

    If Harold Macmillan’s speech in 1960 urged the South Africans to abandon apartheid, Obama’s in 2011 insists that the Palestinians must recognise Israel’s right to continue to be a racist state.

    When Obama speaks of how America’s “short-term interests” in the region, at times, “don’t align perfectly with our long-term vision for the region”, he is peddling the biggest imperial lie of all. America’s short- and long-term interests in the region have always been control of oil resources, securing US profits, and defending Israel. Until “winds of change” blow on these interests, the position of the United States as the most powerful anti-democratic force in the Arab World will remain the same, Emperor Obama’s speeches notwithstanding.

    Joseph Massad is Associate Professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History at Columbia University. He is author of The Persistence of the Palestinian Question (Routledge, 2006).

    Meanwhile, Prime Minister Netanyahu had the gall to claim in his address to Congress today that Arabs only enjoy real democratic rights in Israel! Haaretz sets that story straight:

    “Of the 300 million Arabs in the Middle East and North Africa, only Israel’s Arab citizens enjoy real democratic rights.”

    When making this claim, Netanyahu failed to mention the “loyalty oath” blitz of Yisrael Beiteinu, that afforded preferential admission to civil service positions for those who served in the Israel Defense Forces and demanded that those seeking citizenship pledge allegiance to a “Jewish democratic” state. What about the law granting town councils the prerogative to selectively admit members into their communities?

    These examples all appear in a report compiled by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel that deemed the current Knesset “the most racist in state history”

    I heard today a most amusing exchange between a talk show host substituting for Mark Levin, Mark Simone, and a caller defending Obama. The host was trying to get the caller to identify anything that had changed in US foreign policy since Obama took office. The caller was stumped. Mr. Simone said the only thing that had changed is that now Obama has us involved in three wars instead of two, and challenged the caller to attack Obama for carrying out policies for which Obama supporters denounced Bush. This might be put down to overheated right-wing propaganda, but Professor Massad also finds more similarity than difference in the foreign policy of Bush and Obama. The style has changed, but in substance, same old story. Hypocrisy reigns supreme in these United States. What else could one expect, when public relations spin takes precedence over truth, when political reality trumps reality? There is no truth or reality in US politics; it is all propaganda, spin, public relations, marketing, illusion, happy talk, half-truths, outright lies, and other forms of nonsense. I ask again, who does President Obama think he is fooling?

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