The Way to Obama

In a legendary event marked by enthusiasm and optimism, the first black American president, Barack Hussein Obama, as he likes to be called, was inaugurated and supported by 80 percent of his people, awaiting him to fulfill his promise of “The Change We Need” into actual deeds to change their current situation: to save the American economy from being on the brink of collapse and a rising unemployment rate to more than 10 percent and bringing back to them the security, trust and all of the civil rights that were violated by wiretapping, torture and arrest by the administration of the worst American president ever, George W. Bush, which did harm to American democracy and its credibility during the past eight years.

On the other hand, the Europeans deem Obama a president who would help make Europe an equal partner on the international scene again and get it more involved in the decision-making process. This can be achieved along with overcoming the shallow-minded attitudes of Bush’s administration that divided Europe in two: an ancient Europe and a new one whose countries came out of the Warsaw Pact.

The Islamic world looks forward to an administration capable of gaining the support of Muslims everywhere and ending the misguided link between violence and the intellectual Islamic structure, the notion which opened the door wide for the clash of religions and civilizations and made Islam the bitter enemy of Western civilization and democracy after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Also, the Arabs expect America to stop taking sides with Israel and play an effective role in the peaceful settlement of the Israeli-Arab conflict. They also expect Obama’s administration to make up for Bush’s false promises of recognizing an independent Palestinian State.

Despite the new American head of state’s foremost concern of the economic catastrophe that afflicted his country and threatens every single citizen of his, the impasse of the Middle East that’s swollen especially after the events of Gaza, will jump to the top of his agenda’s priorities, along with the American withdrawal from Iraq, crushing the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, rectifying the American image in the Islamic world’s eyes and binding Tehran to a more reasonable and moderate attitude where negotiations replace war as much as possible.

However, this does not mean that Arabs should remain onlookers till Obama wraps up his exigencies. Instead of wars and considering the Arab initiative nil, it is rather a stout Arab attitude that refuses splitting the Arab ranks into moderates and extremists, masters using the cards of their capabilities, including Hamas into a strong Palestinian fiber, stops forwarding concessions for nothing, determines a schedule for Israel’s withdrawal from all the territories it occupied, introduces a resistance image, recognized as legitimate by the world’s public opinion, rebuilds the democratic bridges between Arab regimes and their peoples and maintains all the Arab rights.