Impotence in the Middle East

The U.S. president won’t follow up his words with deeds: There will be no new Palestinian state this month. Seldom has a U.S. president given up so easily on his international agenda. If anyone is incapable of nourishing hope for the Middle East, it is surely Obama.

The President of the Palestinian National Authority knows where the U.S. president is most vulnerable. He knows exactly those spots where he can produce the most pain with the least pressure. So Mahmoud Abbas grants the ultra-right wing Fox News channel an interview because both Fox and Abbas have the same goal in mind: to cause Obama pain. And Abbas reminds the powerful U.S. leader that it was he who promised Abbas a state by September 2011, sardonically adding that he hoped Obama would deliver on his promise.

But Obama, of course, will deliver no such thing. There will be no Palestinian state this month. With luck there may be serious peace talks at the end of which, perhaps six months hence, a state could come into existence. But such lofty ambitions in the Middle East have already so often been dashed. And it’s not Obama who nourishes such hopes: If anyone is incapable of nourishing hope for the Middle East, it is surely the U.S. president.

Obama is not only at the nadir of domestic accomplishment in his administration, he is embroiled in a foreign policy that is also driven by internal considerations. Seldom has a U.S. president given up so easily on his international agenda. He let himself be pulled down into the ideological trenches and thereby lost all power to shape events. It’s not Obama who attracts attention when world leaders convene in New York at the United Nations for their annual meeting. It’s Obama’s opponent Rick Perry, not yet even the Republican’s chosen candidate, when he goes onstage expressing his blind loyalty to Israel.

In the ideological battle in the United States, foreign policy always provides bargain-basement ammunition. The president is unable to put across his sovereign views and loses the ability to demand more sincerity and honesty from his opponents. Hamas and Fatah, Mashaal or Abbas — it’s all the same, they’re all terrorists and they’re all enemies of Israel. Amid this remarkably loud pre-election tumult, there’s little room for a big breakthrough of peace in the Middle East, for the tactical finesse of Palestinian leadership or for internal Israeli consensus.

But Obama isn’t simply the victim of internal U.S. conditions. At the beginning of his administration, he awoke unrealistic expectations. His speech to the students in Cairo and his appearance before the United Nations a year ago gave the impression that America the savior was prepared to get involved in the intricacies of Middle East politics and work its wonders there.

But then came the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt and the U.S. government was slow to sever its ties to Hosni Mubarak. Then the U.S. went to war in Libya, but decided not to stay for very long. And finally there’s the problem of Palestine. There, Jewish interests in America paint a portrait of Israel that has very little to do with the realities on the ground, thereby benefiting Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.

So Obama has become a prisoner to his own words, to his own hesitancy, to his domestic situation and, of course, to the right wing opposition whose radicalism makes statesmanship an impossibility. Because of its size, military strength and ability to pay, the United States remains a central character on the Middle East stage. But it has relinquished its role as a mediator.

Can there be a new Palestinian state because of Obama? Will Israel and the Palestinians reach agreement? If such an undertaking to reach peace is attempted by the U.N. in New York this week, it won’t succeed because of Obama.