‘Enough, enough, enough!’

Published September 25, 2011

IT has taken Barack Obama three years to make the morally fraught transition from “Yes, we can!” to “No, you can’t!” It was the Palestinian bid for statehood that was the victim of the American president’s newly discovered pragmatism. Apart from the disappointment millions have felt over Obama’s opposition to Palestinian aspirations, we have all been let down by his fall from lofty idealism to grubby cynicism.

However, this universal regret at what might have been is largely our own fault for believing that a politician could actually mean what he said. As we have discovered, Obama can talk the talk, but is seldom able to walk the walk.

When he addressed the Muslim world from Cairo over two years ago, he promised that he would change unjust US policies.

Above all, he spoke out powerfully against Israeli settlements, and expressed his support for Palestinian statehood. He repeated this at the UN General Assembly in 2010 when he said he looked forward to welcoming the state of Palestine to the world body in the near future.

Understandably, this rhetoric raised expectations of a more even-handed American approach to the conflict. Thus far, US mediators had always sided with Israel in attempting to pressure the Palestinians to accept a lop-sided settlement. Now, for the first time in decades, Obama’s words led millions around the world to expect greater fairness from Washington.

However, this is not going to happen. By vowing to veto the Palestinian quest in the Security Council, he has made his administration’s position very clear. Some people suggest that his change of heart has been caused by the compulsions of American electoral politics. To get re-elected next year, he cannot afford to alienate the right-wing supporters of Israel, principally in New York and Florida, two swing states that a candidate must win to get elected. Both states contain sizeable Jewish populations; but more than Jews, it is the Christian evangelists who stand by Israel, and who increasingly influence the outcome of elections in America.

However, Obama did not have their support when he won his first term: his victory was the result of forging a coalition of blacks, Hispanics and moderate white Americans. Above all, he carried American youth with him.

Now, as his presidency falters in a slew of compromises and ill-judged steps, he seems willing to cut any deal with the right to secure re-election. In his speech to the General Assembly last week, he said that Palestinians could not get their own state at the UN without first reaching an agreement with Israel. This was echoed a couple of days later by the Israeli prime minister, Bibi Netanyahu who went on to describe the world body as “a theatre of the absurd”.

Both leaders forgot that it was through a UN resolution that the state of Israel came into being, and there were no preceding negotiations with Arabs. Now, Palestinians are being told they cannot win statehood without Israeli approval.

Considering that Israel has been dragging its feet at every turn, it might easily be another sixty years before the hateful occupation ends. Of course, there will be little Palestinian territory that is free of Israeli settlements by then.

One reason Obama is furious at the Palestinians for refusing to wait before submitting their application to the UN Secretary General is that he has been forced to threaten a veto at a time the US is trying to engage more deeply with an Arab world in ferment. Embarrassingly, his fine-sounding words to the Muslim world have been exposed for exactly what they were: words.

A couple of years ago, it would have been back to business as usual. The oppressive Israeli occupation would have continued, with resistance at containable levels; more Palestinian territory would have been effectively annexed; and desultory statements about the need for a peace settlement would have been made by American and Israeli officials.

But events over the last year have seen the tectonic plates shifting. Political changes in Israel’s neighbourhood are challenging its strategic dominance. While it remains the military top dog in the region, it now has genuine security concerns, unlike the invented ones it invoked to block Palestinian statehood.

Its peace treaty with Egypt and Jordan had bought it security along its Sinai and Jordan River borders, while Syria could be depended on to maintain peace along the Golan Heights. Now, Egypt is poised to become a democratic state, with unknown leaders who might choose to take a more principled stand on relations with Israel than Hosni Mubarak did. Jordan, for the moment, is quiet, but the brutal Syrian regime seems doomed. It is likely to be replaced with a democratic dispensation that, like Egypt, might well adopt a more pro-Palestinian position.

Just as important has been the shift in Turkey’s position. An important Muslim ally, its leaders have distanced themselves from Israel in the wake of last year’s bungled interception of a flotilla carrying relief goods to Gaza in which Israeli commandos killed nine Turkish volunteers. Israeli refusal to apologise has inflamed public opinion in Turkey, and its government has, for the first time, come out openly in support of Palestine.

Thus, in a sense, both Obama and Netanyahu are on the wrong side of history on this issue. President Mahmoud Abbas made it clear that his aim was not to de-legitimise Israel, and he wanted to live in peace alongside his neighbour. Israel needs to come to terms with reality: it cannot always live in a state of no-war, no-peace. If it wants its isolation to end, it cannot forever be seen as a hostile, aggressive bully by its neighbours.

Since its creation, Israel has been perceived as a colonial enterprise, established as a Western outpost in the heart of the Arab world. But as I have argued before, its millions of opponents must accept it as a member of the international community.

However, to gain recognition, Israel must behave as a responsible state, and not as “a spoiled child of the West”, in the words of the Turkish prime minister.

And to echo Mahmoud Abbas: “Enough, enough, enough!”

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