Opinion Obama’s missing Middle East agenda
The US president's trip was a new nail in the coffin of the Israel-Palestine peace process
Ahead of US President Barak Obamas visit to the Middle East,the White House downplayed expectations,saying the president hoped only to help leaders come together to bring peace and democracy to the region. Yet,for anyone who still hoped for a substantial breakthrough in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict during Obamas visit despite these statements,the four-day trip,which concluded in Jordan,has proved to be a new nail in the coffin of the peace process. With much style over substance as sceptics described it,Obama missed yet another opportunity for Middle East peace,and instead used his visit to reinstate unconditional US support for Israel and its so-called security. Obama went further,saying that Palestinians must recognise Israel as a Jewish state.
While openly embracing the Zionist narrative,which renders the right of indigenous Palestinians to their own land,Obama retreated from his earlier demand,during his first term in 2009,which called upon Israel to freeze settlement-building in the West Bank,implying that the freezing of the illegal Israeli settlements now should not be a precondition for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Perhaps Obamas plane,which carried him to Ramallah bypassing the Israeli separation wall and the diplomatic convoy that speeded through the Israeli military checkpoints,prevented him from seeing the real face of the Israeli occupation.
Not only his eyes,but Obamas ears were also shut,even when his speech was interrupted earlier by a Palestinian student (with Israeli citizenship) protesting US military aid to the Israeli occupation and disapproving of Obamas statement about a Jewish state. Rabee Eid,a 24-year-old student of Haifa University,reminded Obama of American peace activist Rachel Corrie,killed while trying to stop Israeli bulldozers from demolishing a Palestinian home in Gaza. He also shouted that Israel must be a state for all its citizens,not a state for the Jewish people, referring to a population of over 1.5 million Palestinians who are citizens of Israel.
Just a day before Obamas first presidential visit to Israel,and on the occasion of the swearing-in of the new Israeli government and the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination,an Israeli discriminatory database has been launched by Adalah,the Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel. According to Adalah,the online resource collects more than 60 Israeli laws enacted since 1948 that discriminate against Palestinian citizens of Israel in all areas of life,including land and planning; education; budgets and access to state resources; prisoners and detainees; civil and political rights. However,perhaps none of this really mattered to Obama whose eyes,as we have now come to know,have been fixed on Syria.
Before Obama landed,it was clear that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was not at the top of his agenda. Obamas rushed visit to Ramallah,or the fact that he paid tribute to Israels roots by visiting the graves of Theodor Herzl,founder of modern Zionism,and former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin,while abstaining from paying the same tribute to the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat,have all been indications that his visit will not boost the peace process. Not only that,Obama did not make any effort to restore his steadily declining popularity among Arabs since his famous speech in Cairo in 2009.
What Obama did manage to do was broker an apology from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan over the Mavi Marmara incident in 2010. The Israeli military raid on the Turkish flotilla had resulted in the killing of nine Turkish citizens. In return,Turkey agreed to drop all criminal charges against a group of former Israeli military commanders it had indicted in the flotilla raid. Obamas effort to end the dispute and renew the friendship between Turkey and Israel has been essential to end Israels isolation in the post Arab Spring Arab Middle East. It is also indicative of the importance of strong cooperation between US allies in the region,especially in the face of a collapsing Assad regime in Syria and the worrying future of a post-Assad Syria.
As observers noted,perhaps this breakthrough could not have been possible if it was not for Erdogans recent remarks equating Zionism with crime against humanity. These remarks upset the American side and threatened to hurt US-Turkish bilateral relations,something that Turkey cannot afford. On the other hand,Israels increasing concerns about the implications of the crisis in Syria as well as Irans nuclear programme on its own security has pushed Netanyahu to end the three-year rift. However,what remains to be discovered is whether there is any hidden strategic agenda for the Middle East behind this American/ Israeli-Turkish reconciliation.
The writer,assistant professor of international relations at Bilkent University in Turkey,is the author of Israeli-Arab Political Mobilisation: Between Acquiescence,Participation,and Resistance
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