Why Obama, And What Took So Long?
It may seem hard to believe, given America's vital regional interests, but the last president to develop a deal to mitigate Middle Eastern violence - and throw the full weight of his presidency and the international community behind it - was Dwight D. Eisenhower, in 1957. John F. Kennedy had no wars to respond to, and was largely concerned with preventing Israel from acquiring nuclear weapons. But ever since Johnson - since the Six-Day War, that is - one president after another has behaved as though America's role was limited to facilitating a negotiation between Israelis and their neighbors: a kind of regional Dr. Phil. Israel was the client state, yet presidents, in effect, worked to preserve its freedom of action. They might carp half-heartedly about settlements, or empower their secretaries of state to exert
economic pressure about particular instances of foot-dragging (Kissinger on Rabin in 1975, or Baker on Shamir in 1991). But presidents did not - how did Colin Powell put it? - presume to want peace "more than the parties themselves."Some have argued, notoriously, that the Israel lobby must be
credited (well, blamed), if presidents have been relucant to lead. This
view is too elegant for competent historians, and it also fails to
explain why things are changing so fast in Washington. With Benjamin
Netanyahu sitting edgily at his side this week, Barack Obama sternly
included Americans and Europeans as interested parties in the regional
goings-on, too. And he seems poised to sketch out a plan that will bear
his stamp, beginning with his upcoming speech in Cairo. Obviously, he
wants Israelis to imagine joining a bigger peace process than any they
could themselves organize or scuttle. Why Obama and not his
predecessors?
This is
not the place to review the records of eight previous administrations.
But there is an obvious taxonomy for presidents, at least with respect
to this region, and Obama emerges as one of a kind. First, we might
categorize presidents according to their knowledge of the region - if
not their subtlety about the Arab world, then their sophistication
about the developing world more generally. This may be compared with,
say, a president spouting a Manichaean ideology in which preemption of
dark forces takes precedence over any peace, which could anyway never
be trusted. (The latter view was hammered into a platform by early
neoconservatives during the late 1970s, one that cast America in a
perpetual fight against evil - "evil empire," "radical evil," "axis of
evil" - and cast Israel as America's biggest aircraft carrier.)
Second, we might categorize presidents as relatively strong or weak. Do they enjoy broad popularity and reliable congressional support for their agenda, however modest, or does presidential popularity fluctuate with media-hyped judgments of their efficacy or ineffectuality, or their virtues or peccadilloes, while each congressional action hinges on tough votes? Finally, do presidents have a peculiar soft spot for Israel, a penchant for seeing it as a tribute to freedom or the answer to an ingenuous religious impulse - as natural to the Middle East as the Holocaust museum is to the Washington Mall or "Jerusalem" is to Baptist hymns? Or, do presidents see Zionism admiringly enough, but mainly through the prism of the practical security problems Israeli leaders say they have?
When you think about it, Obama is the only president since Eisenhower whose profile resembles that of Eisenhower - which means virtually complete freedom to act. One, he has worldly sophistication and knows it; he was brought up in Jakarta and is not put off by the extremist language of the poor and desperate and young; yet his allergy to ultra-nationalist rhetoric was hard won, when he rejected (as only a "mutt" could) Louis Farrakhan's acolytes in Chicago. Two, he has an unprecedented mandate at home. He also enjoys the European Union's support. But, he also has something Ike did not have, the affections of the vast majority of American Jews, 78 percent of whom voted for him. Against this trifecta, it will be hard to flog Israel's role in a clash of civilizations.
Netanyahu - as indeed many Israelis of a certain age - may say that what makes Obama unique is his inexperience, or recklessness, or both. That his presidential predecessors learned from Eisenhower's failure not to meddle in Israeli security strategy. After all, Eisenhower and secretary of state John Foster Dulles forced the Israeli government to evacuate the Sinai after the Suez War. In return, Israel got the opening of the Straits of Tiran, but manned by UN peacekeepers - "the umbrella," as Abba Eban memorably complained to the UN Security Council after the 1967 war, that was taken away "as soon as it begins to rain." Indeed, the justifications for making the Sinai's occupation permanent in 1957 were the same as the ones advanced after 1967: keeping Palestinian terrorism in check, strategic depth through territorial expansion, "deterrence."
But Obama surely knows that this is a very partial assessment of Eisenhower's achievement. Just as the current occupation makes a succession of intifadas inevitable, continued occupation of the Sinai after 1957 would hardly have made a new war with Egypt less likely. As Israelis learned bitterly in 1973, occupation made war inevitable, and on terms that made a preemptive strike diplomatically impossible. For his part, Eisenhower proved that when the U.S. and Europe act together, and rally the UN and America's regional clients, deals get done. On the whole, the decade after Dulles' ultimatum proved to be the golden age of state building, Hebrew cultural innovation and immigrant absorption. So the question is not really why Obama is trying this, but, what took so long?
(I shall take up the question of presidential power and the Middle East more fully in a forthcoming review of Patrick Tyler's book, World of Trouble, in the Nation.)
Very interesting analysis, although it is obviously speculative to compare the historical presidencies of Ike through W with the 11/12 yet-to-go first term (or 23/24 of two terms) of Obama.
Why did it take so long to get to the broad Mideast possibilities of an Obama? There are of course many reasons. Here is one view of several that may be pertinent.
You might call this a "running out of excuses to adopt common sense" explanation:
1. After their defeat in 1948, it took Arab leaders thirty years to finally realize that Israel was not an aberration and was not going to be made to disappear by force of arms.
2. Twenty-five years after their unexpected territorial windfall of 1967, Israeli leaders began to seriously acknowledge that the Palestinians would not magically vanish into Jordan, Egpyt or other Arab countries, that they would remain in what for them, as for Israelis, is their homeland.
3. After years of international disasters at the hands of Cheney-Rumsfeld-Bush, the mass of American voters came to appreciate that the pre-emptive violence approach of that administration, particularly in Iraq, was not only hypocritical, amoral, unAmerican, blunder-ridden and utterly ineffective, but that it was intolerably costly and ultimately unworkable. It has taken longer, but wise heads are now coming to the awareness that a kind of mass paranoid stupidity such as America suffered after 9-11 (though arguably or at least hopefully an aberration, has long been (in different forms and for rather less unjustifiable reasons) at the core -though not always a dominant influence- of Israel policy towards Palestinians. A couple of Hamas rockets kill a few Israelis, IDF kills hundreds of Gaza children in response, etc.
Implications:
The Cold War is over, the lunatic neo-conservativism of Cheney and the chickenhawks is back to the dumb-downed talk shows where it belongs and out of power in Washington, and Americans -or at least a growing number- are realizing that Israel deserves no more special kid-glove treatment from us (if it ever did). If it behaves, it certainly qualifies for a close and cordial relationship with America. If it commits horrific idiotic atrocities as in Lebanon three years ago, or Gaza 4 months ago, it deserves no support and no shielding from the sanctions of a very justly outraged and fed-up international community.
Once the Palestinians finally get their state (60+ years after the Israelis got theirs) and proceed (probably, to be realistic) to mismanage and abuse it, we will face a dicey set of new challenges, especially if by then Iran is nuclear. But for the time being, and certainly for the rest of 2009, the ball is very much in the court of American "progressives" and journalists -for obvious reasons especially though not exclusively of course Jewish-American opinion shapers- to swiftly and totally cease tolerating the regurgitation of deceit-based AIPAC and AIPAC-like propaganda, to expose and denounce it unrelentlessly, and thereby help to finally free America to pursue the potential new change in direction that Obama represents. Mssrs Avishai and Rosenberg and others on this website are on the right track; they need to focus on their real targets more sharply, double their numbers, triple their activities, and garner and octuple of their support. And, America having wasted 8 long years on this front since 2001, there is no time to lose now.
May 22, 2009 7:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thank the Lord there actually are people out there who understand what has happened and what is happening. The challenge now is how to get you (PTroub)or another realist of integrity, to replace the current WH Chief of Staff.
Obama is a breath of fresh air in a stinking, sickening sea of lobbyist coercion which still retains a proportion of those incompetent, incontinent, incoherent, invaginate Bush acolytes.
Undue political influence on behalf of a foreign power must be curtailed and the activity of groups such as AIPAC, managed and policed. Any proof of corrupt or criminal practice by any political lobby group should be stamped on immediately and hard. That includes espionage and any activity that is ultimately damaging to the US.
We need political integrity, human rights and a democratic executive that truly represents the wishes of the people. That is the American people.
Tax dollars should only be used for humanitarian and economic aid and not to finance political/ military regimes that are disadvantageous for the majority of the electorate and which treat international conventions on human rights with such disdain.
May 22, 2009 8:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
Interesting but I'd rank Carter above Eisenhower since the Sinai withdrawal he brokered included settlement removal and was far more difficult. I'd have to say Ford, Bush 41 and Clinton also pushed the peace process. (And even Bush 43 oversaw the Road Map neither side followed.) Clinton, like Ike, had high popularity. Like Obama he had strong Jewish support. He had a small window of between Bibi and Sharon and almost took advantage of it.
But what Obama can accomplish with this hand? Bibi still resists commitment to a 2-state solution, and Hamas maxes out on a 10-year truce which Israel and can't even make peace with Fatah. And the sides on Jerusalem seem irreconcilable.
I'd think it makes sense to revive the Clinton parameters which allowed the most progress to date on negotiations. But as with Iran, we may need elections to give us a new head of state to talk to. Perhaps Mitchell can broker the trade including Gilad Shalit and Marwan Barghouti which might be in Israel's interests: a popular Palestinian prez who supports the Arab League Initiative, then negotiate the specifics of a deal - including mutual recognition and perhaps incorporate an Iranian nuclear deal.
May 22, 2009 7:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
Bernard, you are really jumping the gun here. So far, we have not even seen the plan, and have no idea whether it will achieve any results or prove to be just another gust of Washington wind.
May 22, 2009 7:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
....and that gust of wind might just turn out to be a stinking fart.
May 22, 2009 9:04 AM | Reply | Permalink
And the Israel/Egypt peace accord under Carter was what? Chopped liver?
May 22, 2009 11:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
amazing.
there is no peace because israel never wanted peace and still does not want peace.
and we saw how idiot bush handled the peace process.
the truth is the congress because of the influence aipac and its agents weild over them, will never act in the best interests of this country.
its easier to toe the line and be re-elected then show courage.
we have a government full of cowards , corrupted by money who are only interested in doing what it takes to win elections.
the truth is always simple.
May 22, 2009 1:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
two-state peace isn't the Arab goal
by Jeff Jacoby
The Boston Globe
May 20, 2009
http://www.jeffjacoby.com/5603/a-two-state-peace-isnt-the-arab-goal
WHO FAVORS a two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict?
President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu converse in the Oval Office (May 18, 2009)
President Obama does, of course, as he made clear in welcoming Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House on Monday. So does former President George W. Bush, who began advocating Palestinian statehood in 2002 and continued until his final days in office. The Democratic Party's national platform endorses a two-state solution; the Republican platform does, too. The UN Security Council unanimously reaffirmed its support a few days ago. The European Union is strongly in favor as well -- so strongly that the EU's foreign-policy chief, Javier Solana, has been warning Israel that its relations with Europe "will be very, very different" if it drops the two-state ball.
Pope Benedict XVI called for a Palestinian state during his recent visit to the Holy Land, thereby aligning himself -- on this issue, at least -- with the editorial boards of The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times. And, for that matter, with most Israelis. A new poll shows 58 percent of the Israeli public backing a two-state solution; prominent supporters include Netanyahu's three predecessors -- former prime ministers Ehud Olmert, Ariel Sharon, and Ehud Barak -- as well as president Shimon Peres.
The consensus, it would seem, is overwhelming. As Henri Guaino, a senior adviser to French President Nicolas Sarkozy, put it in speaking to reporters on Sunday: "Everyone wants peace. The whole world wants a Palestinian state."
It isn't going to happen.
International consensus or no, the two-state solution is a chimera. Peace will not be achieved by granting sovereignty to the Palestinians, because Palestinian sovereignty has never been the Arabs' goal. Time and time again, a two-state solution has been proposed. Time and time again, the Arabs have turned it down.
In 1936, when Palestine was still under British rule, a royal commission headed by Lord Peel was sent to investigate the steadily worsening Arab violence. After a detailed inquiry, the Peel Commission concluded that "an irrepressible conflict has arisen between two national communities within the narrow bounds of one small country." It recommended a two-state solution -- a partition of the land into separate Arab and Jewish states. "Partition offers a chance of ultimate peace," the commission reported. "No other plan does."
The Peel Commission's proposed two-state solution (1937). The Arabs said no.
But the Arab leaders, more intent on preventing Jewish sovereignty in Palestine than in achieving a state for themselves, rejected the Peel plan out of hand. The foremost Palestinian leader, Haj Amin al-Husseini, actively supported the Nazi regime in Germany. In return, Husseini wrote in his memoirs, Hitler promised him "a free hand to eradicate every last Jew from Palestine and the Arab world."
In 1947, the Palestinians were again presented with a two-state proposal. Again they spurned it. Like the Peel Commission, the United Nations concluded that only a division of the land into adjacent states, one Arab and one Jewish, could put an end to the conflict. On Nov. 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly debated -- and by a vote of 33-13 adopted -- Resolution 181, partitioning Palestine on the basis of population. Had the Arabs accepted the UN decision, the Palestinian state that "the whole world wants" would today be 61 years old. Instead, the Arab League vowed to block Jewish sovereignty by waging "a war of extermination and a momentous massacre."
Over and over this pattern has been repeated. Following its stunning victory in the 1967 Six Day War, Israel offered to exchange the land it had won for permanent peace with its neighbors. From their summit in Khartoum came the Arabs' notorious response: "No peace with Israel, no negotiations with Israel, no recognition of Israel."
At Camp David in 2000, Ehud Barak offered the Palestinians virtually everything they claimed to be seeking -- a sovereign state with its capital in East Jerusalem, 97 percent of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, tens of billions of dollars in "compensation" for the plight of Palestinian refugees. Yasser Arafat refused the offer, and launched the bloodiest wave of terrorism in Israel's history.
To this day, the charters of Hamas and Fatah, the two main Palestinian factions, call for Israel's liquidation. "The whole world" may want peace and a Palestinian state, but the Palestinians want something very different. Until that changes, there is no two-state solution.
May 22, 2009 5:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
and the writer does not address the most difficult issue:
Palestinian Divisions Complicate Talks
Aside from the weighty issues discussed at the negotiating table during the past year, the talks were hampered by the political divisions and leadership struggles on the Palestinian side. Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad have had no control of Gaza since June 2007, when the terrorist group Hamas staged a violent coup against the Fatah party.
Hamas, which was in a unity government with Fatah, forcefully took control of Gaza and stepped up rocket attacks against Israel while leaving Fatah in control of the West Bank. This development dramatically changed the tenor of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, forcing Israel to isolate Hamas and protect Israelis from attack while pursuing talks with the legitimate Palestinian leadership in the West Bank.
It will be very challenging to make diplomatic progress in 2009 so long as Fatah and Hamas fight over who is the legitimate governing authority. And even if Israel were to reach a peace agreement with Fatah leaders, it would be difficult to implement so long as they exercise no authority in Hamas-controlled Gaza.
May 22, 2009 6:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
i wish i was brain washed too.
everything is so obvious.
and best of all. one sided!!!
May 23, 2009 9:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
RE:"...a president spouting a Manichaean ideology in which preemption of dark forces takes precedence over any peace..."
SEE:"Biblical Prophesy and the Iraq War - Bush, God, Iraq and Gog" - By Clive Hamilton, 05/22/09
(EXCERPT)"...In 2003 while lobbying leaders to put together the Coalition of the Willing, President Bush spoke to France’s President Jacques Chirac. Bush wove a story about how the Biblical creatures Gog and Magog were at work in the Middle East and how they must be defeated..."
ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.counterpunch.org/hamilton05222009.html
May 22, 2009 10:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Bush Jr. did valiantly try to move the peace process along, but was stopped by apocalyptic Christians. When the road map was released several Christian leaders of the Robertson/Falwell ilk start a huge letter campaign to prevent Israel from moving away from the signs of the second coming.
This is another advantage that Obama has in trying to broker a deal. He doesn't depend on this group for re-election. In fact, just the opposite.
I would also feel much more comfortable if Palestinians and Muslims could attain more air time on news and talk shows. How often do we see experts on the Arab position that have Jewish names? Both sides need to be plead freely and fairly in the public arena.
May 23, 2009 11:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
True, but it would also help to have more Muslims AND Jews of integrity, objectivity and intelligence. A better quality of "experts" not just more shouting matches between propagandists.
AMERICAN audiences should not have to put up with motor-mouth propagandists for ANY foreign entity, let alone notoriously pigheaded and tiresomely repetitive "its all the other guy's fault" Palestinians and Israelis. Just because we too often run our domestic politics this idiotic way doesn't mean we can't try to adopt a more civilized and mature discourse concerning foreign affairs.
May 24, 2009 10:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yes American intellectuals still will not give Carter his due. They hated Carter as much as the Right Wing and they were unbowed in their early support of Reagan.
I just learned that Carter's Sec. of Ag was the first to support organic farming, which was stopped cold by Reagan, the man is a visionary.
History will be kind to Carter, once this crop of Carter haters die off.
May 25, 2009 9:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
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April 28, 2011 4:51 AM | Reply | Permalink