Good Old Boys' Geopolitics

When President Barack Obama assumed the presidency of his country, the sharp-witted intellectual Noam Chomsky said in an interview, “This administration will be less confrontational with the rest of the world, but it will follow the same policies. One can see this with the recent attacks on Gaza. The campaign in Gaza was a perfect example. It was planned very carefully months in advance, and the Israeli media talked about it openly.”

It was meticulously and clearly planned so that it would finish just before the presidential inauguration, one day before he was sworn into office. This isn’t a coincidence; it made it possible for Obama to pretend he couldn’t say anything about the matter. While the atrocities were taking place, he said, “There’s only one president who can speak for America at a time.” Of course, he expressed his opinions about everything else, and that didn’t stop him from talking about the “hate-filled ideology” behind the terrorist attacks in Mumbai.

In his last speech about the Middle East and North Africa, Obama pointed out that, “the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps … for both states.” I suppose that, due to its provocative nature, this has been one of the most commented-upon phrases of recent times. When the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, heard it, and even before he arrived in Washington, he let the world know that this proposal was “untenable.” During the televised meeting held between both leaders in the White House, it seemed like one could cut the tension with a knife. But when it comes to geopolitics, one has to read between the lines and spin finer threads.

In the midst of an environment of social upheaval which began in Tunis and continued in Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain and other areas of the Mediterranean, the diplomacy of Obama’s administration will try to avoid the UN council’s recognition of Palestine as an independent state in September. Obama himself has shown that he does not agree with unilateral proposals, and Netanyahu said, “I don’t think that the president said it was necessary to return to the 1967 lines, but rather that we need to start the discussion based on the 1967 borders.”

On the other hand, Obama asked Palestine to explain the reconciliation agreement between the secular party Fatah and Hamas, reached just recently, and demanded plausible answers to the “legitimate questions” arising from the Muslim organization’s refusal to recognize the state of Israel. Furthermore, he agrees with the security measures Netanyahu has conceived for a “non-militarized” Palestine which requires a gradual withdrawal from occupied territories. Silence signifies consent; Obama didn’t even suggest putting a stop to the construction of Jewish colonies in the West Bank, even though he knows that Israel officially approved 500,000 dwellings in the eastern part of that territory. Nor did he mention the Arab Peace Initiative drawn up in 2002, which was defended by so many progressive Israelis; it proposes Israel’s withdrawal from the occupied territories, recognition of the independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital and a just solution for Palestinian refugees.

In 1967, Israel conquered the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the Six-Day War — but in 2011, a large part of the international community doesn’t recognize this annex. Nonetheless, support from the U.S. has been decisive in drawing the map of Israel today. Placing the borders upon those of 1967 and promoting “swaps” as suggested would permit Israel to retain, by means of an agreement, large settlements which it has occupied in the West Bank for the last 40 years. Recognized as the Jewish state and the Jewish homeland, no Palestinian would be able to stay there; they would have to go to Palestinian zones, which is what Israel has always wanted. Will the Palestinian state be born in September? And if it is born, will they allow it to live? Geopolitics is complicated and so alien to the everyday reality of the people who suffer from it and long for peace.