The Middle East: Pope Francis and Obama on a Delicate Mission

When, during his trip around the Middle East, Pope Francis put aside his retinue and protocol and took the opportunity to pray with head bowed at a wall covered with pro-Palestinian slogans, the gesture was interpreted as the spontaneous fit of a leader usually only interested in assistance. The reality of the situation reveals a much more sophisticated plot.

The gesture itself, both at the wall as well as the invitation of Israeli President Shimon Peres and the Palestinian territories President Mahmoud Abbas for a summit at the Vatican on June 8, did indeed happen. But it was hardly the product of a sudden moment of inspiration.

Actually, this meeting was formulated as the first step toward mediation. These are hints of a force that could produce results that not only Pope Francis hopes for.

When the two previous popes traveled to the region, Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI — there was a previous visit in 1964 by another pontiff, Paul VI, but at that time the Vatican did not recognize the state of Israel — they also traveled to the occupied Palestinian territories. However, they made sure to first travel to Israel and from there continue to the disputed regions.

Pope Francis altered that agenda. He arrived in Jordan and traveled by helicopter directly from Amman to Bethlehem, one of the most important Palestinian cities in the heart of the West Bank, and traveled to Israel in the last stage of the tour. Still dealing in symbols, apart from that change in itinerary, it was also surprising that the official spokesperson for the Vatican referenced the ultimate authority of the Palestinian territories as the “president of the state of Palestine.” That “state” is not recognized by the United States or by Israel. But its existence is the goal of the Palestinians and of those around the world, including notable Israelis, who propound that the establishment of such an entity is the definitive solution to this dispute.

It’s unlikely that these movements were ignored by the pope and Barack Obama when they met at the Vatican. This is one reason that there is more than just spiritual sensibility in what has come to pass, in addition to the urgency imposed by a crisis that has been so daunting that it only seems headed toward self-destruction.

Washington, for various reasons, has failed to alter this course.

What this drama demonstrates is the debt that, since the middle of the last century, humanity maintains with its commitment to the birth of two nations instead of one from the partitioning of the former Ottoman Empire under the British mandate. The right of the Palestinians to a place in the world ended up being denied, discrediting the historical identity of its people. In this sense, for Israel, the West Bank and Gaza are simply disputed territories and not occupied ones.

Had there been some perspective and inspiration at the time of the partition of 1947, this double birth of nations would have been permitted to prevent the conflict from reaching the levels it has achieved today. But what actually happened was only a mirage in an alley. On the path without escape that followed, the term “refugee” was born from the flood of villagers who had to leave their lands, where generations of their ancestors had lived and died. This sorrow contributed to a feeling of rage in the Arab world, which launched a handful of wars that only consolidated power in the hands of those who they had meant to defeat, further aggravating the crisis. Since then, Israel also navigates within the same nebulous logic of negotiations that perpetuates the conflict, raising fears and suspicions that the partition will never materialize.

Perhaps the most recent examples of that path can help one understand this idea. In December, when the U.N. elevated the status of Palestine to that of an observer state by a wide majority, Israel responded with the announcement of 3,000 more settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem where, respectively, the Palestinians hope to establish their home and their capital, and where more than 700,000 Jewish settlers live. The plan promises construction in an especially sensitive zone, E-1, located beyond the suburbs of East Jerusalem. The effort, which was subsequently halted, attempted to rewrite the compromise in order to avoid a dangerous proximity between the Israeli capital and the Jewish colonies.

The U.N. and Washington historically demanded that nothing be built in that area because new settlements would block the territorial link between the north and south of the West Bank. The management of a future Palestinian state would then be extremely complicated, and the precise and safe borders would again become a tangled and confused outline. Finally, the Israeli minster of the economy, the ultraconservative leader Naftali Bennett, added another brick in the wall by demanding the direct annexation of zone C of the West Bank, an area which makes up 62 percent of the territory that should be on the future Palestinian map.

This already profoundly negative picture of the situation is aggravated even further by the vacuum of global leadership.

There is no power that can delineate an end to the conflict. It is here where the backing of Bergoglio comes in, whose pastoral influence has grown enough to reverse the path chosen by his predecessors, who created a smaller and less popular Catholic church.

At West Point, Obama recently broadcasted a message in favor of restraint, in which he acknowledged that lack of power. This idea of global leadership is not negative, but is more a consequence of the fact that there is no conviction. His proposition has features of President Woodrow Wilson (1913-1920), who tried to inspire his foreign policy, led by a radical pacifist, in a democratic internationalism of “missionary diplomacy,” which ended up being false. The similarities end there. What is certain is that Obama did not achieve the construction of a vigorous leadership that could, among other things, disarm the pressure of the Israeli hawks and salvage the implementation of his own foreign policy.

What the head of the White House spoke of with the pope likely concerned these necessities. It is difficult, however, to hope for a crucial advance by the Vatican. Peres is a prominent president, and Abbas has already won his mandate. But the support of the pope could bring the vacuum of negotiations to an oceanic size. It cannot be avoided, and perhaps it can’t be cheated either. In any case, it is much more than what there is now.