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In a bid to repair relations with the Muslim
world that were damaged under the Bush administration,
President Barack Obama told the Muslim world Tuesday that
Americans are not your enemy. In an interview with Al-Arabiya
TV channel, Obama said: My job to the Muslim world is to
communicate that the Americans are not your enemy we
sometimes make mistakes we have not been perfect. He spoke
about Afghanistan, Iran, the Middle East, Al-Qaeda and
Guantanamo Bay Prison. On the Middle East conflict Obama
said he believes that the moment is ripe for both sides to
realize that the path that they are on is one that is not
going to result in prosperity and security for their people.
Instead, its time to return to the negotiating table.
If we start the steady progress on these issues, Im
absolutely confident that the United States, working in
tandem with the European Union, with Russia, with all the
Arab states in the region ... can make significant progress,
Obama told the Al-Arabiya TV network. The interview is part
of the Presidents broader outreach to the Muslim world,
which includes a promise to make a major address from the
capital of a Muslim nation. There has been mixed reaction to
Obamas interview. While many in the Muslim and Arab world
welcomed the interview but some looked at it differently by
pointing out that his interview was rich in rhetoric but
poor in content. He did not offer any change of policy and
failed to mention the Israeli carnage of Gaza while
reaffirming Americas support to Israel: I will continue to
believe that Israel’s security is paramount.
This says a lot to the Arabs and Muslims who have fresh
memories of the US-backed 22-day Israeli carnage in Gaza
that massacred about 1400 Palestinians, of whom 412 were
children and a hundred were women. More than 5,000 were
injured, 1,855 of whom were children and 795 were women,
according to UN sources. While the tone appears to have
changed quite substantially, Obama has yet to make clear
that policy changes on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will
follow, according to Jim Lobe of IPS. A reader of Lebanons
The Star newspaper described the interview a window
dressing: The fact that Obama gave this interview to the
house media of Saudi sheiks and the Egyptian dictator (some
“moderates”!) shows that he is insincere. The Arab masses
watch and believe in Al Jazeera. By choosing to grant the
interview to this State Department allied media company he
gave an unmistakable message; he talks only to the
discredited Arab elites.“We have to lower our expectations
that he has a magic wand to solve all our problems,” Reuters
quoted a Mideast analyst, Mustafa Alani, as saying. “The
Arab attitude is basically optimistic that Obama will turn a
new page and his inaugural speech reached out to Muslims but
the devil is in the detail.” “I heard Obama, his tone is
different, but I can’t believe that any U.S. president can
be different when it comes to the Arab-Israeli conflict,”
Haytham Rafati, in Ramallah told the Associated Press. “I
will believe Obama is different in his approach to the
Islamic world only when I see him pulling out his forces
from Iraq and pressing Israel on the Palestinian rights.”
At least 100 comments were listed on Al-Arabiya TV website
about Obamas interview, most of them welcoming his new
approach to the Muslim World but many did not see anything
new. The following comment perhaps represents the sentiments
of those who do not see any change in Obamas policies: So
now Obama expected us to believe that the us is not the
enemy and thus we should forget about the millions of dead
souls and years of death and destruction at the hands of the
Americans directly or through proxy. He was saying: Muslims
are not the enemy, it is only Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas and
Iran that we are trying to “isolate”. My response to him:
America is not the enemy, it is only the US Military, the
CIA and their proxies that we are trying to get them off our
backs. The most ridiculous item in his speech is that while
he was trying to please Israel in every step of the speech,
he adds insults to injuries by trying the divide Muslims and
splitting hair and telling us whom we should support and
whom we should not. To me it is the same old sh*t.
Obamas Al-Arabiya TV interview came five days after he
singed an executive order to close down the Guantanamo Bay
prison within a year. That order was one of three the
President signed on that day. Another formally bans torture
by U.S. interrogators, and the third establishes an
interagency task force to set policies for the apprehension,
detention, trial, transfer or release of detainees. These
orders were signed on the first day of his office (January
22) when he also called President of the Palestinian
National Authority Mahmoud ‘Abbas first, followed by calls
to Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, President
Mubarak of Egypt, and Jordan’s King Abdullah. On his second
day (January 23), the President named former Senator George
Mitchell, an Arab American and the architect of the peace
accord in Northern Ireland, as special envoy to the Middle
East. He also appointed Richard Holbrooke as special
representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Interestingly, whilst announcing George Mitchell’s
appointment, the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did not
even mention Palestine and stated that Mr. Mitchell would
undertake to negotiate between Israel and the Arab States.
It was only after Mr. Mitchell clearly mentioned Palestine
as being the key to the region, did Hillary refer to the
matter. Appearing with Mitchell, President Obama made his
first substantive comments on the Middle East conflict since
Israeli massacre of Palestinians in Gaza. He first mentioned
his commitment to Israels security, without affirming his
commitment to Palestinian security. He condemned Palestinian
rocket attacks on southern Israeli towns, but didnt
criticize the US-backed Israeli bombings of densely
populated Gaza. In carefully crafted words, President Obama
said: Let me be clear: America is committed to Israel’s
security. And we will always support Israel’s right to
defend itself against legitimate threats. The President
concluded his remarks with an endorsement of the Arab peace
initiative saying: the Arab peace initiative contains
constructive elements that could help advance these efforts.
Now is the time for Arab states to act on the initiative’s
promise by supporting the Palestinian government under
President Abbas and Prime Minister Fayyad, taking steps
towards normalizing relations with Israel, and by standing
up to extremism that threatens us all. Obama’s remarks
warrant examination. To borrow Noam Chomsky: So the thrust
of his remarks, is that Israel has a right to defend itself
by force, even though it has peaceful means to defend
itself, that the Arabs muststates must move constructively
to normalize relations with Israel, very carefully omitting
the main part of their proposal was that Israel, which is
Israel and the United States, should join the overwhelming
international consensus for a two-state settlement. Thats
missing. In short, both President Obama and Hillary Clinton,
to whom Mitchell will report, have made clear their support
for the 22-day Israeli onslaught on Gaza.
Mitchell chaired the negotiations in Northern Ireland that
led to the landmark 1998 Good Friday agreement, under which
the IRA disarmed and Irish Republican politicians have
joined the provincial government. He later chaired a
commission on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict whose report,
delivered in April 2001, was ignored by the incoming Bush
administration because it called for a freeze on Israeli
settlements on the West Bank. So when he skips that it is
purposeful.
That entails that the US is not going to join the world in
seeking to implement a diplomatic settlement, and if that is
the case, Mitchell’s mission is vacuous.The Secretary of
State has just talked about our long-term objective, and the
President himself has said that his administrationand I
quotewill make a sustained push, working with Israelis and
Palestinians to achieve the goal of two states: a Jewish
state in Israel and a Palestinian state living side by side
in peace and security. |
