Not his problem. Obama
Photo: AP
A warning from America
Obama still committed to peace efforts, and expects Israel to do more
Barack Obama promised transparency to the America people and he is delivering on his pledge: The president has admitted the failure of his Mideastern moves.
We can be jealous of such transparency, yet around here shallowness reigns supreme; instead of listening to the message being conveyed to us from Washington, we are being overwhelmed by stupid glee at Obama’s failure – there, we managed to screw up yet another American fool who understands nothing. As if this is his problem, rather than ours.
American Leader
Shimon Shiffer
Obama may have screwed up, but Israelis should not rush to disparage US
We need to make something clear: America is not abandoning its efforts to take care of the Middle East, and the president has no intention of leaving our Special Ed class unsupervised. The Americans have already learned over the years that if they leave these Mideastern nutcases unsupervised for a moment, they end up entering US homes through television screens and disturbing America’s public opinion with horrific images.
The day Obama took office he declared that resolving the Middle East conflict is a strategic American interest, no less. This marked a fundamental shift in policy, as his predecessors – both Clinton and Bush – ruled that the US cannot desire peace to a greater extent than the parties to the conflict. Indeed, the two former leaders gave up when they encountered crises.
Obama admits to failing his first year, but for him there is no option of abandoning the region. Senior Israeli officials who met with Special Envoy George Mitchell this week also formed the impression that the American motivation to bring the two sides towards a solution has not diminished at all.
In that same Obama Interview with Time Magazine, he presented the Mideast conflict alongside two wars engaged in by America – in Iran and in Afghanistan – and alongside the grave Iranian problem. In other words: We are a high priority for the president; much before Russia, the European Union, and China, not to mention Haiti and environmental issues, which he did not even mention.
Impossible targets
Obama summed up his first year in the Middle East with a simple message, which almost all of us remember from parents’ night at school: We expected more of you. I failed on my part, he said, but you – both Israelis and Palestinians – are not less at fault here.
Please note that I will be correcting my own mistakes, Obama added, and you better toe the line. I’m also not too satisfied with you, Bibi, the president said. You’re supposed to be the best and most disciplined students in class, yet you are not behaving accordingly.
How does the president intend to correct his mistakes? He is not telling. The main mistake by his administration was the setting of impossible targets, such as an unlimited settlement construction freeze. Hence, what we shall likely see in the future are several intermediate targets that are feasible, in an effort to stabilize and regain the trust between Israel and the Palestinian Authority and to prevent explosion on the Gaza front.
Officials in Jerusalem are trying to create the optical illusion that Obama equally blames Israel and the Palestinians for the failure. Indeed, he declared that both political establishments are at fault and that both are too weak to rise to the occasion. Yet if we honestly examine his words, one cannot ignore the fact that he attributes greater responsibility to Israel.
Israel did not have the courage to adopt steps that would facilitate progress in the diplomatic process, the president said. In other words: Abbas may have barely received a passing grade, but Netanyahu’s grade is “insufficient” – he could have advanced the process but he did not sufficiently want it.
This is the way we should see Obama’s summary of his first year in the Middle East; he has no intention of making it easier for us or pampering us in his second year.
