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On Arab-Israeli
Conflict Obama Manages to Infuriate Almost Everyone
By Judith Miller
Published May 20, 2011
President Obama’s second Middle Eastern speech on Thursday was very
different in tone and substance from his first in Cairo back in 2009.
His first “new beginnings” speech was defensive, an effort to repair
longstanding mistrust between the Arab Muslims and America. Now with
the killing of Usama bin Laden behind him, Obama could gloat that Al
Qaeda had failed. But on the democracy front, he was largely responding
to dramatic upheavals that Arabs themselves had wrought, with virtually
no prodding or help from the U.S. This was Obama’s “get on the right
side of history” speech.
Comparing those speeches reminds us of how profoundly the Arab world
has changed since Obama headed for Cairo.
For one thing, there were no apologies in this speech for America or
American foreign policy in the Middle East, no quotes from, or repeated
references to the “Holy Koran,” as there were back in 2009.
For another, the president emerged as a full-throated, if still
somewhat inconsistent proponent of the freedom and democracy agendas
that former President George Bush embraced after 9/11, only to abandon
them in his second presidential term.
Though he insisted in both speeches that democracy could not be imposed
by force, Obama could not have been more adamant about naming and
shaming the Arab leaders who he thought had to yield power – Yemen and
Libya -- and if their leaders do not stop killing protesters and
denying legitimate demands for freedom, less corrupt and more
responsive governments, Bahrain, America’s long-term ally in the Gulf
and home to the Fifth Fleet, and Syria, with whom the administration
had been negotiating.
Third, this speech was far tougher on Iran than was the Cairo speech or
any of his earlier pronouncements. Gone was the genteel reference to
the “Islamic Republic of...” The president just spoke of “Iran,” and
harshly at that. He denounced Teheran’s hypocrisy in endorsing the
overthrow of tyrants while killing and repressing its own people. There
was no renewed call for “engagement” or “negotiations” as there was in
the Cairo speech. Teheran had its chance, and blew it, President Obama
seemed to imply.
Finally, his discussion of the Arab-Israeli conflict – not the core of
his remarks any more than it is the heart of the instability dogging
the region – managed to infuriate almost everyone.
Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu immediately rejected the president’s
suggestion that a final resolution of the contract would involve
Israel’s eventual return to the 1967 borders with land “swaps” to
achieve “secure and defensible borders.”
But Hamas denounced the speech even more harshly. Sami Abu-Zuhri, the
spokesman in Gaza of militant Islamic Hamas, which rejects Israel’s
right to exist, called the speech a “total failure.”
“Obama is the one who needs the lesson given his absolute endorsement
of Israel’s crimes and his refusal to condemn Israel’s occupation, he
said. “The (Arab) nation does not need a lesson on democracy from
Obama.” he said, adding that the group would “not recognize the Israeli
occupation under any circumstances.”
Any speech that Hamas, which is on the U.S. terrorist list, hates that
much must have something to recommend it. And indeed it does.
Athough many supporters of Israel are upset that President Obama
referred to the 67 borders with unspecified “land swaps” as the base
line for borders of future Israeli and a Palestinian state, this was
not really new. It was just made explicit for the first time.
Palestinians and Israelis had already negotiated prospective borders
for two states along those lines in peace talks held under presidents
Clinton and Bush, offers that the Palestinian negotiators, not Israel,
ultimately rejected, incidentally. My friend Rob Satloff, the director
of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, complained that
Obama’s speech “concretizes a move away from four decades of U.S.
policy based on U.N. Security Council resolution 242 of November 1967,
which has always interpreted calls for an Israeli withdrawal to “secure
and recognized” borders as not synonymous with the pre-1967
boundaries.” But Obama amended his reference to 1967 borders with land
swaps notion by saying that any division of land had to achieve “secure
and recognized borders.”
There was much that friends of Israel should like about the speech and
the peace process. For instance, President Obama personally endorsed
the insistence that the Palestinian state would have to be
de-militarized.
He also all-but-dismissed the agreement between the more pragmatic,
Palestinian West Bank leadership and militant Hamas as being a
non-starter, suggesting that Israel could not be expected to negotiate
with a group that rejects its right to exist. Even more encouraging was
his portrayal of the Palestinian initiative to ask the United Nations
General Assembly to declare a Palestinian state in September a
“symbolic” diversion of time and effort and a colossal waste of time.
Perhaps most telling of all was the presence of George Mitchell in the
audience at the State Department, not as a Middle East peace
negotiator. The fact that Mitchell, who reportedly had earlier urged
Obama to highlight settlements as the most important obstacle to peace,
resigned just prior to the speech, and that President Obama did not
replace him before he delivered what was billed as such a major policy
speech suggests that Washington does not expect negotiations between
Israelis and Palestinians to begin anytime soon.
Arab-Israeli peace was clearly the caboose of this Middle Eastern train
– a car that seems no place close to leaving the station.
Judith Miller is a writer, Manhattan Institute scholar and Fox News
contributor.
Read it at Foxnews
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