Israel in Danger of Peace

“So long as our relationship is defined by our differences, we will empower those who sow hatred rather than peace, those who promote conflict rather than the cooperation,” he declared. “Faith should bring us together.” Barack Obama, Cairo Speech.

Clémenceau once said about America: It’s the only country where barbarism has crossed over to decadence without passing civilization. During the Bush era, these words would have had a stinging truth. With Obama, it is okay to doubt them in light of the sincere speech he gave in Egypt. The American President, Barack Obama, had arrived in Saudi Arabia on June 3rd. “I thought it was very important to come to the place where Islam began and to seek his majesty’s counsel and to discuss with him many of the issues that we confront here in the Middle East,” the American president explained next to Abdallah. After the stop in Cairo, where he delivered an important speech, he went to Buchenwald. “We can’t separate the speech in Cairo from the visit to Buchenwald,” Volkhard Knigge said, who led the memorial at the concentration camp.

“As-Salamu Alaikum.” Peace be with you. It’s with those words that Barack Obama addressed a billion and a half Muslims. Selected excerpts. “The relationship between Islam and the West includes centuries of coexistence and cooperation, but also conflict and religious wars. Moreover, the sweeping change brought by modernity and globalization led many Muslims to view the West as hostile to the traditions of Islam. Violent extremists have exploited these tensions in a small but potent minority of Muslims. All this has bred more fear and more mistrust. [America] and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap and share common principles, principles of justice and progress, tolerance and the dignity of all human beings. As the holy Quran tells us: “Be conscious of God and speak always the truth.”

That is what I will try to do today, to speak the truth as best I can. Humbled by the task before us and firm in my belief that the interests we share as human beings are far more powerful than the forces that drive us apart.”

What Did Barack Obama Say?

“As a student of history, I also know civilization’s debt to Islam. It was Islam at places like al-Azhar that carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe’s Renaissance and Enlightenment. And throughout history, Islam has demonstrated through words and deeds the possibilities of religious tolerance and racial equality. I also know that Islam has always been a part of America’s story. And when the first Muslim American was recently elected to Congress, he took the oath to defend our Constitution using the same holy Quran that one of our founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson, kept in his personal library.”

“So I have known Islam on three continents before coming to the region where it was first revealed. That experience guides my conviction that a partnership between America and Islam must be based on what Islam is, not what it isn’t. That is what it means to share this world in the twenty-first century. That is the responsibility we have to one another as human beings. This is a difficult responsibility to embrace. In Ankara, I made clear that America is not and never will be at war with Islam. We will, however, relentlessly confront violent extremists who pose a grave threat to our security.”

“Now, the second major source of tension that we need to discuss is the situation between Israelis, Palestinians and the Arab world. America’s strong bonds with Israel are well-known. This bond is unbreakable. It is based upon cultural and historical ties and the recognition that the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied. Around the world the Jewish people were persecuted for centuries. And anti-Semitism in Europe culminated in an unprecedented Holocaust. Threatening Israel with destruction or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews is deeply wrong and only serves to evoke in the minds of the Israelis this most painful of memories while preventing the peace that the people of this region deserve.”

That said, it is equally undeniable that the Palestinian people, which is comprised of Muslims and Christians, have suffered in pursuit of land. For over 60 years, they have known the pain of dislocation. Many wait in refugee camps in the West Bank, in Gaza and in the neighboring territories to know a life of peace and security in which they have never had the right to taste. They submit to the daily humiliations – large and small – that accompany the occupation. One doesn’t doubt it: the situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable.

America will not turn its back on the legitimate aspiration of the Palestinian people to have dignity, to have the chance to succeed in having its own state. The only resolution is to respond to their aspirations by creating two states, where Israelis and Palestinians will each live in peace and security. It’s in the interest of Israel, in the interest of Palestine, in the interest of America, in the interest of the world. The Palestinians have to renounce violence. Resistance in the form of violence and massacres will not succeed. Violence will lead to nowhere. Hamas enjoys support from some Palestinians, but it must also recognize its responsibilities. It has to play a role in realizing the Palestinians’ desires and recognize Israel’s right to exist. At the same time, Israel has to realize that while everyone can not deny Israel’s right to exist, the same has to be true for Palestine.

The United States does not accept the legitimacy for the continuation of the Israeli settlements. The Israeli-Arab conflict should no longer be used to distract the Arab states from other problems. Jerusalem will be a definite and permanent homeland for Jews, Christians and Muslims and a place where all of the children of Abraham will be able to coexist in peace in the story of Israh, of Moses, Jesus and Mohammed (may peace be with them) united in prayer.

I understand those who protest against the fact that certain countries own arms while others do not. No state should decide or choose which countries can have nuclear arms. That’s why I reassert strongly America’s commitment to a world where no country has nuclear weaponry. I hope that every region will be able to share this objective (1). What must be remembered is that Obama didn’t say the word “terrorist” once. He came humbly with a disarming speech far from the “You’re either with us or against us” of Bush. He dispensed justice for Islam by asserting it. This speech had a positive response from the international media. While passing through Switzerland, the South African archbishop Desmond Tutu asked: “If Obama doesn’t succeed, who will? If Obama the visionary delivered a lot of just words in Cairo, Obama the builder has yet to show himself.” The speech thus welcomes hope, even if the American president’s rhetorical talents have an enormous disadvantage: he arouses some attempts that will be forcibly thwarted.

The Egyptian press competed for praise on June 5th for the American president, comparing him to a prophet. “Obama is the one for whom we’ve waited,” proclaimed the daily Al-Masry Al-Youm, in reference to iman Mahdi, the twelfth and last of the Shiite imans, who faithfully wait for a coming return of their land to reestablish peace and justice. “It wasn’t an ordinary speech. It provided Arabs and Muslims with a document, a standard to which he will be held,” writes Oussama Saraya, editor-in-chief of the official daily Al-Ahram. Belmos in Liban, where the newspaper Al-Safir is located, affiliated with the Shiite group Hezbollah, finds that “the charisma of hegemony are well-chosen words, excerpts from the sacred texts have found the way from the hearts of his audience without reaching its brains.”

Even if he had said some noteworthy things [to say], wrote Mr. Saâdoune from the daily Oran, the American president gave himself up to the artificial exercise of the symmetry of concessions that the concerned parties must make in the Middle East conflict. Yet, symmetry is the only thing that doesn’t exist between Israel and the Palestinians. How can you affirm that when faced with the colonialism that the Palestinians have to live with where “violent resistance and death is erroneous and can’t be swept away?” Together, beyond his “great word,” Arabs say: “Now act.”

What of Israel then? We say that the gravest threat towards Israel … is peace! It is certain that this speech is new and that the Israelis aren’t used to hearing it. The government’s news release remains cautious: “Israel wants peace and will do all in its power to extend the circle of peace while taking its national interest into consideration and its security first,” they affirmed. “Israel is fundamentally favorable towards Obama’s initiative for the peace process in the region.” The problem is that even in Israel, there hasn’t been a second Begin who has said that the Bible isn’t a land registry.

The current politics coast on fear and the garnering of votes. Does Obama have the political means? Will he make Israel listen to reason? John J. Measrheimer, professor of political science at the University of Chicago, gives some thoughts that could advance things. “There isn’t any doubt that the Obama administration wants to increase pressure on Israel to advance the peace process. I’m not talking only about stopping the construction of settlements, but also to dismantle them in order to create a Palestinian state in the West Bank and in Gaza. Up until this point, Barack Obama has been pursuing a very intelligent policy. It remains to be seen how far he will go and if he will be capable of confronting the pro-Israeli lobby in his country.

Since 1967, every American president has been opposed to the building of Jewish settlements in occupied territory, but no one has been successful in exerting sufficient pressure on Israel to stop and create a Palestinian state in the occupied reprioritizes. The chief reason for this impotence comes from the might of the pro-Israeli lobby in the relations between the United States and Israel. It all depends on the pro-Israeli lobby. Yet, even in the heart of the Jewish lobby, there are new signs [of a] call for more firmness towards Israel (2).”

The Style and Method of Obama

In the Middle East, like elsewhere, we read in the Nouvel Obseratieur that the victory of Barack Obama “cut through the red tape.” In Washington and in New York, even the most blunt of people recognize that the stakes have changed. The password? Popularity, in particular that of Barack Obama among Jewish Americans who voted for him overwhelmingly, but also those worldwide who play a role. “Bush tried the regional approach at Annapolis in 2007,” Nathan Brown, professor at George Washington University and specialist on Palestine, writes, “but his administration didn’t have the experience nor the credibility of Obama, nor his team’s likely approach.”

Through style and method, Obama breaks away from his predecessors. He understands international politics in a way that is rare for a new president. Will the Americans put pressure on Israel? Henry Siegman, former director of the American Jewish Congress and president of the U.S. Middle East Project, gathered twelve big names (among them Paul Volcker, Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinsky) to have them hand in a letter to Obama asking him to “at least explore the possibility” of negotiations with Hamas. Siegman recommends firmness with Israel: “It is possible,” he said, “to imagine an American president using stronger language and without concession: ‘Here is our interest in the region, things must progress and here is the setting where you must talk.’ The notion upon which all of the previous politics have been founded and that have failed is that of an America playing the role of a simple facilitator: lead people to the table, take off their coats, ask them if they want some coffee, but let them decide.”

But on the ground, the cases where they can advance aren’t missed. “Take the West Bank: 280,000 settlements are living beyond the pre-1967 borders. It isn’t enormous, and you can very well imagine a swap of territories on an egalitarian basis,” David Makovsky proposes. The issue of East Jerusalem (200,000 settlers) and the Golan Heights would remain questionable, but that would singularly unlock the peace process. Would Barack Obama be satisfied with ambitions so limited? Maybe not. But will it be seen as risking prestige and popularity for an agreement destined to fail? Certainly not (2). For professor John J. Mearsheimer, a serious pressure on Israel would mean to cut off American financial aid that raises more than three billion dollars a year and refusing to systematically support Israel in the Security Council at the U.N. by opposing the American veto on resolutions condemning Israel (3).

No one is expecting that this speech changes much in one blow after decades of conflict and centuries of mistrust and hostility. The Iranian problem may have its solution in the case of a nuclear disarmament that Obama mentioned. The fitna of Palestinians stays between them. It will not be difficult to reconcile Hamas and the newly recognized Fatah. At the end of the day, in the place of the “airborne democracy” of George W. Bush, Obama proposes to support democracies by calling on Arab autocrats to respect their people not by using “the American way of war,” but to go back to “the American way of life.” May the powerful God help him to make peace a reality in this region of the world exhausted by adversity.

1. Speech by Barack Obama at the University of Cairo, July 4th, 2009.

2. John J. Meaarsheimer-Can Barack Obama Promote Peace in the Middle East?

Recorded by François D’Alançon La Croix 03/06/2009

3. Obama, Israel and the Jews. Le Nouvel Observateur Nº2325 week of May 29th, 2009.