Change: Anything More Than A Nice Idea?

When he wanted to address the Muslim world, the American President Barack Obama went to Saudi Arabia and said: I wanted my tour to start from the cradle of Islam. But when he wants to address the Arab-Israeli conflict, an essential goal of this most recent tour, Obama has to make himself known from the cradle of the Palestinian cause.

When we assess the significance of the historic mission undertaken by President Obama, we will not reference the Crusades, the Balfour Declaration, nor the British Mandate. We will jump over all of this, and ask him to go back to the historic origins of the Palestinian Cause represented in the Resolution of Partition.

The Resolution of Partition no. 181 was passed by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1947 and called for establishing two states, a state for Jews and another one for Arabs. This move ultimately gave birth to the State of Israel and closed roads towards establishing a Palestinian State.

It is worthwhile to remind Obama now, as he works to understand the root of the Palestinian Cause, that his government, the government of the United States of America, recognized the State of Israel less than an hour after the declaration of its establishment.

We are not concerned here with the issue of this initial recognition, rather we are more concerned with the fact that recognition was given to a state with borders that went far beyond those delineated by the UN, stretching across the Negev Desert reaching to the Red Sea at Um Al-Rashrash, which is now called Eilat Port. In recognizing this country, with these unruly boundaries, the American government legitimized the Israeli Occupation as early as 1948.

This was not the only damage the American government has inflicted on the Palestinian cause- the 1948 recognition was followed by a precedent of more serious consequences in the wake of the Fifth of June War, 1967. After Israel invaded the territory of three Arab countries (Egypt, Jordan and Syria), the U.S. supported Israel in its quest to make the occupation permanent, first under the pretext of a need for secure and internationally recognized borders (under Henry Kissinger). Under George Bush Sr., the reasoning shifted to the ultimate impossibility of evacuating settlements already built across post-1967 borders.

Thus, U.S. governments throughout the years have transgressed international norms and laws, encouraging Israeli aggression and occupation. If Obama wants to live up to his ideas of change, and to truly and fully comprehend the root of the Arab-Israeli conflict, he must reexamine the American outlook on the Palestinian Cause and face tough truths about past U.S. involvement. Is the President ready to do that?

We ask this question keeping in mind that Obama has called on Israel to halt settlement expansion and in viewing this call as the beginning to Israeli-Palestinian negotiations that could lead to the two-state solution. The President’s speech pointed out sound principles, but he left those principles out of context and vulnerable to manipulations.

As far as settlements are concerned, Obama expressed, reiterated and stressed the importance of a hold on construction, but he did not talk about a permanent end to settlement expansion. He did not discuss removing settlements that Israel consider “legal”, settlements housing 85% of West Bank settlers. Along with failing to speak about removing settlements comes an implied approval of the continuation of occupation of the territory captured 1967. Is that what Obama wants?

What does the slogan of change mean when he is content with following the same U.S. policy adopted by previous governments?

For how long will Obama continue, under the pretext of change, to lay down his ethics and morals without bothering to enrich those principals with practical content essential for their application?

We asked this as we listened to Obama’ Islamic speech delivered on Thursday, June 4th at Cairo University, during which he addressed the Palestinian Cause with nice (but insufficient) rhetoric. Will his words always remain as nice yet just as insufficient?

In his Cairo speech, President Obama touched upon Israelis and Palestinians, expressed sympathy with the Jewish experience in Europe on the hands of Nazis, and expressed sympathy with the Palestinian Cause under occupation (although he avoided such politically volatile wording). His speech openly displayed the President’s deep empathy for human pain but this ability to feel still faces incredible deficiencies.

President Obama recognizes tragedies as parallel to each other: on one side a Jewish tragedy, and on the other a Palestinian, both parties that deserve justice. We cannot here accuse Obama of ignorance- he was a university teacher with encyclopedia-like knowledge.

Still, like all Western thinkers, he holds himself and his civilization above the Holocaust, asking Palestinians and Arabs to understand the Jewish struggle while fully ignoring that the Palestinian tragedy is not parallel to that of the Jews- Palestinian suffering originated from the Zionist occupation of Palestine, and later Israeli occupation of the rest of the region. Is it right in light of this to talk about two parallel injustices?

Still, any talk about a Palestinian State is something positive. But why do details always disappear when addressing any Palestinian issue? What is the shape of this State? Will it have the original borders of the Resolution of Partition, or the borders that resulted from the expansion and occupation of 1948? Or will they be the borders of the 1967 War, or the present day boundaries, borders that face questionable legality internationally?

Moreover, with all appreciation for the initial firm position against (the continuation of) building settlements, why is there no talk about removing settlements? Why is there no discussion of the illegality of building settlements on an occupied land, according to both international law and the Fourth Geneva Convention?

Obama’s speech is positive and significant, and we must appreciate its importance. However, we should be aware of its deficiencies where Palestine, Arabs and Islam are concerned. We must call on President Obama to fill in the gaps-gaps the deeply and daily affect the lives of millions of human beings-so that his speech could be considered a constructive speech for establishing new and historic relations.

Here, we must state that there lies a responsibility on the shoulders of all our rulers to work to fill in those gaps ourselves. Arab leaders should start by mapping out a unified, detailed plan that embraces all of our collective beliefs and demands. Together, we as nations can present this plan to the U.S. as the demands of the Arab and Islamic world as a condition for cooperating with Obama on his desired issues.

We know that Obama is seeking an Arab and Islamic cooperation in staving off American defeat in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq. As we express our readiness to help, we must ask in return for American support in dealing with our issues, most significant among them being the Palestinian Cause. If we do not make our cooperation conditional, Obama could very soon be content with his nice words and lack of action.

Obama has so far left the policy of the Neoconservatives behind, seeking to deal with the evils America has sown, and this is an achievement for history to record. This is the valuable and positive side of his speech, but there should also be a noteworthy establishment of any new American policy regarding the Arab world.

It is on that new policy, that new action, which we Arabs wait.