Is There Really a Difference Between Bush and Obama

Presently, the two ideas that have been suggested to solve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict are to adopt roundtable discussions or to regard resistance as the only way to force the occupant to retreat to the 1967 boundaries and give the Palestinian people their legitimate rights if not also to compel Israel to leave Palestine as a whole.

And with those two ideas, the views and attitudes differ between the Palestinians, the Palestinian National Authority ( PA) and their resistance movements on one hand, and the Arab countries on the other to the extent that political dissimilarities have become characteristic of their dealing with their issues, especially Palestine.

For his part, Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian head of state, and those behind him take negotiations as a good solution in light of the Oslo agreement they signed. However, it was a fruitless tendency due to the promises of successive American administrations and Israeli governments, based on procrastination and time-wasting policies solely aimed at founding a new demographic status quo in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to serve Israel’s interest by in by increasing the number of Jewish settlers populating Jerusalem at the expense of the natives. Moreover, the negotiating attitude proved to be an abject failure in getting back even the most basic rights of the Palestinians. And with all the late events and changes taking place on both the Palestinian and Israeli scenes, the NPA (and of course Fatah at the forefront) is still giving the thumbs up!

In the same sense, the hawkish Right of Israel turns down the idea of recognizing an independent Palestinian state and vows to crush the Palestinian resistance, starting from the theological claims of the West Bank being “the land of Judea and Samaria, the land on which the Jews built their state a long time ago and had been forced out of it.”

Even before the American presidential election where Barack Obama, he with a father of African and Muslim roots who himself has embraced his mother’s Christianity, won, the initial signs were grasped by his visit to Israel during the electoral campaign against his Republican rival John McCain where he blessed Jerusalem to be Israel’s capital, as if to indicate his inclination towards consolidating towards the orthodox policies of Uncle Sam’s at the expense of the oppressed Palestinians.

Still and in spite of her knowledge of Netanyahu’s inclinations towards “No Palestinian state established or recognized” and her never mentioning any goals behind negotiations to the exclusion of “sincere hopes to lay down the bases of peace efforts.” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton supports talks between the Palestinians and Israelis.

So with the proposed Zionist-American solution, a Palestinian independent state will not be approved by the new American administration as Obama will not be willing to put any pressure on Israel whatsoever lest he should clash with the American Jewish lobby. And it will not be strange to find him planning to back Abbas, and only him, in his negotiations with Israel by raising the 70 million dollars assigned for the American plan, approved by the former Bush administration and carried out by Jordanian police forces in a Jordanian military base near the capital Amman, to 170 million dollars with the aim of training the NPA-affiliated forces and help Abbas deter the resistance groups, especially Hamas which appropriated Gaza Strip, and suffocate their project of a “united resistance.”

According to analysts, it is common knowledge in America, Europe and the entire West that a strong political Palestinian resistance, backed by the Arab and Islamic world, would give the green light to other resistance activists in Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia to take up arms against the foreign Western troops there (synonym for hegemony and colonialism) and consequently threatening the state of Israel and Western interests abroad.

Perhaps this was a reason among many that the leadership Hamas accused the forces of the PNA of being agents, executing the enemies’ schemes and that the American program could escalate the current intra-Palestinian and regional tensions in addition to spurring Abbas to bridge he gap with Hamas and other movements through dialogue after refusing it altogether after the hubbub Gaza Strip witnessed when it was gripped by Hamas in 2007.

Nobody here can deny that the ground won by the resistance and Gazans in the Israeli aggression on Gaza on December 27th, 2008 could justify Abbas’s response to the American, European and Israeli demands of taming resistance for fear of the same situation in West Bank after the Israeli offensives revealed the PNA’s total isolation and inability to realistically move and stop Israeli war crimes. Rather, it only went on suppressing the demonstrations erupted in West Bank towns and villages in support of their Gazan folks. This then hammers the notion that the Americans, Israelis and other parties of Oslo are the virtual actors on the Palestinian scene: the strong opponents of resistance and supporters of dialogue even if this would deepen the gap between the two Palestinian players and increase the resistance’s invariable refusal for any negotiations.

Actually, this is what analysts demonstrated by a handful of signs and indications, the most important among them:

1- The American plan we mentioned before.

2- The “stick and carrot” policy followed with the Arab and regional countries, supporters of resistance other than peaceful negotiations.

3- The attempts to sowing dissension between Arab countries, especially those in the Gulf, and Iran claiming that its success in the nuclear field would mean its hegemony in the Arab region and the creeping of the Shiite doctrine to reach the Sunni countries. This becomes evident by Morocco’s severing relations with Iran.

4- Driving a deeper wedge between Arab countries enjoying friendly relations with Iran, the “patron of resistance,” and the moderate ones that take sides with peace efforts.

5- Continuous threats to the heads of the pro-resistance Arab countries of besiege and isolation with the aim of forcing them to change their policies as it is with Sudan and Syria.

6- The opposition on part of America, Britain and France to the Arab, African and Muslim demands of suspending the arrest note issued for the Sudanese president, Hassan al-Bashir, pursuant to the claims of his committing war crimes and genocide in Darfur while remaining passive before the massacres the Israeli forces commit all the time against the Palestinian.

7- The allegations by the PNA and Fatah that the release of Marwan al- Barghouthy, the Hamas leader detained by Israel, should politically and popularly consolidate Hamas’s position and embarrass Abbas who failed to convince Olmert of releasing al-Barghouthy in addition to bringing Fatah leaders under difficult obligations. However, it comes to mean that this wholly contradicts the interests of those taking the helm in the PNA and Fatah, and negatively affect the advantages they gained.

And in conclusion, resistance as an option does not mean giving up peace efforts that might help find satisfying solutions for the never-ending Palestinian-Israeli conflict since 1948. Meanwhile, the traditional road of negotiations Abbas walked with the international arbitrators and the road map cannot be something new, especially for the resistance, simply because it bore no fruits, involved good-for-nothing concessions and made the peace process promoted by the Israelis always nothing more than a humiliating surrender of the Palestinians and the Arab nation.

Seemingly, Obama who made “The change we need” the slogan for his electoral campaign is not willing to apply it on the ground to restore the Palestinians’ legitimate rights. And the utmost thing he looks forward to is establishing a “marred” Palestinian state on the remaining West Bank territories: Does not that ring the bell of Bush’s plans?

Here’s how it does:

– First: Israel is not obliged to make any concessions.

– Second: America and Europe will go on backing Israel due to the notion that a stout resistance in Palestine, even with its recent triumph, would ignite the wick of a vehement war in the region.

– Third: the victory of the extreme Right in the Israeli elections shall enable its leadership to carry out the Zionist schemes of establishing the Jewish state on the land of Palestine and forcing out the natives and Arabs of 48.

So, if this is the current situation, how would Obama venture his political future?!