President Barack Obama gives a keynote speech on developments in the Arab world and his proposal for resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is rejected by Israel out of hand.
Referring to the “Arab Spring,” the U.S. president praised the democratic movement in the Middle East and North Africa. “The people of the region have achieved more change in six months than terrorists have accomplished in decades,” Obama said in remarks at the State Department on Thursday. He added that the upheavals in countries like Tunisia and Egypt have presented a historic opportunity. He compared the developments in the Arab world to the American Revolution and the Civil Rights movement and recalled his Cairo speech to the Muslim world given nearly two years ago. After the withdrawal of 100,000 soldiers from Iraq and the killing of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, he said the United States would interact with Muslim countries on the basis of mutual respect and shared interests, even if they ran contrary to short-term U.S. interests. He said that universal human rights were not just tangential but were a central concern to the United States. Besides political reforms, he said that investment and open markets were important building blocks in Middle East and North African development. He said that in order to promote economic development in Tunisia and Egypt, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund would present proposals next week at the G-8 summit saying that both nations could function as central examples of what change can do. To that end, Obama granted Egypt relief from up to $1 billion of its current debt and a credit guarantee for the same amount.
According to Obama, this support must also be extended to those nations in which political change is still underway. While he talked of the threat of massacre by the Libyan army, he described the conduct of Syrian security troops, where thousands of people had already been killed, as the “murder and mass arrest” of its citizens, adding that “President Assad now has a choice: He can lead that transition, or get out of the way.” Obama only cautiously criticized his allies, Yemen and Bahrain. On Bahrain specifically, he remarked that it was difficult to negotiate when part of the opposition was in prison. The brutal suppression of that liberation movement took place with the support of neighboring Saudi Arabia, which received no criticism whatsoever from the U.S. president. Even when he addressed women’s rights, Obama neglected to mention Saudi Arabia, a country known to be one of the most repressive regimes in the Middle East.
Obama devoted a part of his speech to the Israeli-Palestinian problem. He repeated former President George W. Bush’s call for negotiations that would lead to a two-state solution. But Obama also added another detail in that regard: The borders of a future Palestinian state should generally follow the 1967 borders in place prior to the Six-Day War. Although that had long been America’s position, Obama was the first president to actually mention the year 1967. Benjamin Netanyahu’s office immediately rejected this suggestion. Netanyahu is scheduled to meet with Obama in Washington on Thursday. Referring to a letter from former President George W. Bush in which he called a retreat to the 1967 borders “unrealistic,” Netanyahu announced that those borders were “indefensible.” An exchange of land as suggested by Obama was also rejected out of hand by Israel. The speech also produced little positive reaction in Arab countries; early media commentary there was characterized by the use of terms like “old rhetoric” and “recycled ideas.”
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