The Middle East Overwhelms Obama

Barack Obama possesses messianic self-confidence. But in the area of foreign policy, almost everything has gone wrong. Ultimately, the Iranians would be capable of selling the U.S. president his own watch.

Something is different than usual. Haaretz, a left-wing Israeli newspaper that tirelessly defends the rights of Palestinians, suddenly reads as if its editors were replaced overnight by neo-conservatives. When the American secretary of state held his proposals for a cease-fire under the nose of the Israeli cabinet more than a week ago, a chief columnist of Haaretz wrote that these proposals could have been submitted in person by Khaled Mashal, the head of Hamas.

Here, all the demands of the fundamentalist terror organization were considered most generous. Kerry’s plan — which is, in truth, Obama’s plan — “recognized Hamas’ position in the Gaza Strip, promised the organization billions in donation funds and demanded no dismantling of rockets, tunnels or other heavy weaponry at Hamas’ disposal.”

Another commentator added that “the Obama administration proved once again that it is the best friend of its enemies, and the biggest enemy of its friends.”

The American Middle East policy is currently based on the following premise: Israel is the most unpopular kid in the schoolyard, an overweight boy with freckles, glasses, braces and greasy hair that is pushed around by everyone else. This fat boy is lucky if a teacher occasionally shows up, warns him with his finger and saves him from the worst.

Israel — the Fat Kid?

In return, the teacher (America) can expect a certain kind of conduct from this child. He must, for example, accept the fact that his neighbor will occasionally hit him with force on the nose, and must not hit back — because that is not right.

But the Americans’ premise is wrong. Israel is not currently the most unpopular kid in the schoolyard. When the recent war in Gaza began, the fat kid with the glasses had the following allies: Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the other Gulf States and, at least secretly, also Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the Palestinian government in the West Bank.

Abbas would love to assume control in the Gaza Strip if it were possible to get rid of Hamas. The majority of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip would welcome this after the recent polls.

This is not surprising. They see that their brothers and sisters are economically relatively well off, while the rule of Hamas has brought them nothing but a permanent blockade and one war after another. The least popular kid in the region’s schoolyard is not Israel, but the head teacher, Barack Obama. He is the most luckless individual in the Middle East. There is nothing that apparently wants him to succeed in this part of the world.

Let’s be fair. Every president since Lyndon B. Johnson has tried to bring peace to the Middle East and, in fact, all of them have flown back home looking like idiots. (Except Jimmy Carter, who managed to ensure that Menachem Begin and Anwar al-Sadat signed a peace treaty at Camp David.) No other president had so much ignorance and illusion packed into an empty suitcase as Barack Obama when he flew to Tel Aviv for the first time.

The Naive U.S. President

Obama believed at the beginning, in all seriousness, that there would immediately be peace when the Israelis withdrew from the West Bank and abandoned all their settlements. Apparently no one, not even Hillary Clinton, informed him that if it was really so simple this conflict would have been resolved decades ago.

No one has carefully explained to the American president that this conflict will last at least another generation, that all attempts to urge the parties toward negotiations of a final resolution will make things worse on the spot and that the best you can hope for in this situation is a reasonably sound management of the conflict.

Of course, Obama has failed not only in terms of Israel and Palestine, which is indeed only a secondary aspect of the whole regional situation. Throughout the Middle East, he is standing in front of a pile of bloody shards: Syria is a slaughterhouse, the military victory in Iraq is squandered, Sunni anger in the border area between the two countries is on the rise and in the background is an Iranian regime that giggles and rubs its hands together while deep underground the centrifuges with nuclear materials continue to run.

Let’s again be fair: No one knows exactly how to deal with a Middle East in which the artificial nation-states that Winston Churchill came up with in 1922 collapse before our eyes with a loud roar.

Should we support the Islamic fundamentalists because only they have the necessary brutality to deal with the jihadis, so that in the long run democracy will arrive in the region, as the neoconservative Reuel Marc Gerecht believes? Or should the Americans pledge themselves without ifs, ands or buts to General el-Sissi, the Egyptian Pinochet?

The Tragedies in the Middle East

Difficult questions. Politically, it would be sufficient to remember the historical lesson from the Spanish Civil War. In 1936, the western democracies, due to their fear of communism, left the left-wing government of the Spanish Republic in the lurch, and the Spanish Republic then led a desperate battle against a handful of rebel generals, among them Francisco Franco. The result: Spain became a battleground on which the Soviet Union and the fascist Axis powers fought a proxy war. This is exactly what has just happened in Syria, but under different historical signs.

Barack Obama has refused to assist the (moderate and secular) Free Syrian Army with air strikes. He is tolerating the fact that Syrian dictator Bashar Assad is massacring, torturing and gassing his own people. The result: Sunni fundamentalists, who have a mutual understanding with al-Qaida, have moved into the power vacuum.

Now there is not even a small chance that something good wil result from the carnage. The “Islamic Republic of Iran” is leading a dirty proxy war in Syria against the most extreme outgrowth of the Muslim Brotherhood. Perhaps historians will later say the Third World War started in Syria.

Nevertheless, in the past two weeks, while the world has focused on the situation in Gaza, Islamic State group terrorists have managed to kill about 2,000 Syrian government soldiers and countless civilians.

Iran and Obama’s Watch

Given the American attempts to engage the Iranian regime in a deal on the nuclear plants, not only have the Israelis thrown up their hands in despair, but so have the Saudis, Egyptians and Jordanians. They all know that the Americans have the best intentions and are kindhearted, whereas the Iranian regime, on the other hand, is hard and insidious.

The Iranians are capable of selling Obama his own watch. If everything proceeds as previously assumed in the Middle East, the “Islamic Republic” will unveil its first nuclear missile in a ceremony at the end of Obama’s term in office. That will be terribly funny.