Obama Abandons the Promise of a Renewal

American president Barack Obama’s speech to the U.N. General Assembly was to blame in that he refused to sponsor the plan for an independent Palestinian state to the Security Council. Obama caused a high level of frustration, not only among the Arab powers who had hoped that America’s role would be to positively support the rights of the independent nation of Palestine, but also because of the failure of the hope that he would promote peace and rights in much of the world. It is ironic that articles in some Israeli newspapers criticized Obama’s speech, which was greatly biased in favor of the Israeli right, although some articles suggest that a Palestinian nation would benefit Israel.

It was not Obama’s position to refuse the petition of the blessed Palestinian nation, it does not in any way befit the president of the most powerful nation in the world, as someone who proposes to act as an honorable mediator in the peace process in this region before the world. He is completely incapable of presenting even a simple document supporting the Palestinian alternative, to speed up access to their goal of a Palestinian state, which Obama himself had promised earnestly two years ago. Obama has demanded that the Palestinians return to the long process of negotiations though he is too weak now to achieve tangible progress in the peace process. He wants them to begin to negotiate in the same old closed, boring circle of formal words and empty promises, while the entrenched Israeli occupation forces that settles daily on Palestinian land, making it Jewish, plundering its resources and breaking the links between the land and its people in 1967, which makes the establishment of a state very difficult.

Two years ago, I realized that the Palestinian Authority cannot progress one iota in the negotiations in the presence of the Netanyahu government. The Palestinian government has arranged to consolidate their operation, to build a political foundation for the Palestinian state, as well as private infrastructure services, political, economic and educational institutions, and other key elements that must be met to build a sustainable nation. Now the time has drawn near for the Palestinians drag their historic rights to a Palestinian nation out of the United Nations. The United States has lost great international support through its embarrassing position.

President Obama could not, even now, several years after the presidential election, and in the middle of a wave of general optimism in the region, go beyond verbal theorizing and reach the point of taking the right and historic action that must be taken by international forces in order to achieve peace in the region. President Obama has broken his promises to the Palestinians and the Arabs, and abandoned the principles of justice and international law that that the world praises, all in order to satisfy right-wing forces in the U.S., in an attempt to get a second presidential term. Furthermore, President Obama does so to placate Netanyahu and his hopelessly extremist policies, to delay the achievement of the Palestinian state, and the U.S. wants to continue the useless negotiations without conditions or clarity.

Obama has retreated and continues to retreat from his promises, which have a negative impact on American-Arab relations on the grassroots level, since Obama has thrown away the truth, as well as the hopes and confidence of Arab public opinion that he would adhere to ethical values and international law in dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

We are not imagining this radical takeover in the American position on its support of Israel, but it was expected that this president would grasp the true picture of conflict in the region, and know that America cannot achieve even the most basic goals unless they force Israel to undertake their international obligations. But even this hope is disappointed and Obama returns to the box left him by the neoconservatives.