Three Shocks Awaiting Arabs in the Age of Obama

Three potential shocks awaiting the Arabs in the age of Obama

Arabs might be shocked when the policies of the first black president of the United States are revealed. Barack Obama’s policies will not be in favor of Arabs at all because of concessions he was obliged to make during his campaign. He had to deny possible accusations of bias to Arabs and Muslims. This might make him more dangerous than the current president, George W. Bush, whose administration was the worst for them. Some political observers are afraid of this as they are warn against over-optimism and against reliance on the coming American administration to solve any Arabian problems.

Observers believe that three possible shocks await the Arab street that exceeded in sympathizing with the elected black American president and put great hopes to win the election. Those shocks are his pragmatic behavior, his relation with the Jews and the complication in decision making in America.

The political speech to Obama according to the vision of a large number of observers changed in two stages, the first was during the race with his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, the second when he became the competitor with Republican John McCain. In the meantime he tried to show wisdom and diplomatic policy under the guidelines very far from the neoconservative visions that tend to decisive military theory.

But the people who think that he will make political breakthroughs in the Middle East must know that positive points which is the same as the negative points make the task more difficult, starting from the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Israeli-Palestinian crisis leading to the Iran nuclear crisis and even the Israeli-Syrian track of negotiations. As the guideline for this policy in Obama speech is the need for dialogue with all parties and abandon the policy of military option. But remains complexities of decision-making process in Washington is known to all.

Abdel Moneim Said, director of Al-Ahram center for political studies, sees that there will be no dividing lines with Bush’s policy.

“I think it may be compared with the policy of Clinton,” he said. “Obama’s approach in foreign policy will be based on understanding, diplomacy and bringing different viewpoints. But the guidelines of foreign policy will remain as they are.”

Said also commented about Obama’s use of some Arab faces in his campaign.

“American-Arab originally figures which appeared alongside with Obama whether from CARE center or Zogby or other in his election campaign were marginal,” he said. “The only Arab person who planned in directions of presidential election speech was Professor Shibley Telhami from Israeli Arabs and served in congress for a long time. He is one of the political experts at the University of Brookings. He has at least two political tendencies: one of them American because of citizenship and patriotism, and the other is Arabian because of his roots.”

Said Okasha, an expert on Israeli affairs, referring to what he called a severe state of confusion in Obama’s political discourse concerning the Palestinian-Israeli situation, and indicates that Obama appears to still need more time and more effort to understand the foreign policy frameworks to Middle East issues. It is important to realize that there are key points of contact regarding the phenomenon of Obama and the Jews as it is difficult to imagine that Obama and American society transcended the racism test sediment despite the election of the first black president to govern the White House. Here we can say that Obama will do his best to prove the contrary and that the color of his skin would not be reason for giving priority to the sympathies (of who?), also he will seek to prove that he is an elected president of all Americans and they are reflected in his policies even at the expense of the Arabs and Muslims.

Hassan Nafaa, a political science professor, indicates that the most Arab Obama supporters were shocked at the outset from his declarations, several months ago, at the AIPAC conference when he declared that Jerusalem will be a united city and eternal capital of the Jewish state of Israel. Since that time his policy appeared to be the mirror image of Bush policy. However, this method involves a clear systematically analysis wrong, as the speeches and candidate declarations formulated for purely electoral goals, but the policies formulated at the actual take charge especially in the field of foreign policy which designed according to the balance of forces and interests and determined on the basis of mechanisms totally different from the logic of various campaigns and mechanisms.