US President Barack Obama’s brief visit to the Middle East has given the Arab world a brutal lesson in power politics. Every word he uttered in Israel, every gesture he made, served to illustrate the unprecedented closeness of the US-Israeli alliance, as well as his disregard for Arab interests and his evident reluctance to give the Palestinian cause any serious or sustained attention.
Rarely has there been an American president showing such intense concern for Israel’s welfare and such casual indifference for Arabs.
The visit to Israel and its Arab neighbours marks an important moment in Obama’s presidency. It sends a clear message that he is not prepared to engage in a fight with powerful pro-Israeli forces deeply entrenched in American government and society. To the Arabs, it signals that resolving the Palestine problem is no longer his priority. He seems prepared to leave it to the next inhabitant of the White House, whoever that may be.
No doubt John Kerry, America’s Secretary of State, will go through the motions of addressing the Palestine problem for a while, but it will be naive to expect any real progress without vigorous and sustained presidential attention, and that now seems highly unlikely. Many Arabs had thought that Obama, on his first presidential visit to the region, would give fresh impetus to the search for an Israeli-Palestinian settlement — even at this 11th hour. Their disappointment has been bitter. They had failed to grasp how the evolving power equations — in the region as well as in Washington — had undermined their interests and hardened the resolve of Israel’s land-hungry leaders not to give an inch.
The truth is that the Arabs’ attention over the past two years has been fully engrossed by the political upheavals in their own societies. Revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen, as well as the bitter civil war in Syria, have absorbed Arab attention, virtually blotting out everything else. The Arabs have failed to grasp that their revolutions — whatever promise they may hold of a better future — have, for the moment, at least gravely weakened them, reducing their influence on the international stage.
It is, therefore, not surprising that, on this visit to the Middle East, Obama felt no obligation to calm Arab fears or help the Palestinians towards their longed-for independence. Instead, he devoted himself entirely to celebrating Israel’s achievements as the region’s most powerful and dynamic actor — as well as hailing its ever closer ties with the US. No doubt he felt free to flatter Israel and offend the Arabs because of the lamentable state in which much of the Arab world now finds itself.
As a handsome parting gift to Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, Obama brokered a peace deal between Turkey and Israel, putting an end to the three-year feud between them. It will be recalled that their quarrel dates back to May 2010, when Israel attacked and boarded a Turkish ship, Mavi Marmara, which was seeking to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza. Nine Turks on board the ship were killed. During his visit to Israel earlier this month, Obama persuaded Netanyahu to issue a public apology to Turkey’s Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, together with a promise of compensation, thus putting an end to the quarrel.
The sudden and dramatic Israeli-Turkish reconciliation has come as a bitter blow to Arabs. They had thought that their alliance with Turkey would help them stand up to Israel. Instead, Obama has brokered an alliance between the US, Israel and Turkey which is clearly intended to dominate the region and dictate terms to the Arabs.
Indeed, the Arab heartland has rarely seemed so weak and vulnerable:
* Egypt is today close to bankruptcy, a condition which severely limits its regional influence. Once the most powerful Arab country, it is today a victim of long years of authoritarian rule and of a population explosion. When Jamal Abdul Nasser’s Free Officers took power in 1952, there were about 18 million Egyptians; today there are 85 million. Egypt desperately needs international credits and is dependent on American support to get them. It cannot afford to show sympathy to Hamas in Gaza since the US — pandering to Israel — considers it a terrorist organisation.
* Iraq has far from recovered from the American invasion of 2003, engineered and driven by pro-Israeli neo-cons and from the nine-year occupation which followed. Now under Shiite leadership, and allied to Iran, it is a long way from recovering its once influential place in Arab affairs. It has virtually lost control of its Kurdish territories and is being torn apart by Sunni-Shiite strife.
* Syria is in the grip of a brutal civil war, which threatens to overthrow its secular Baathist regime, in power since 1963. If the regime is toppled, Syria can then be ruled by hard-line Islamists, who are leading the revolt against President Bashar Al Assad. It is quite likely, however, that the country may be partitioned into small confessional units, each looking desperately to its own defence. So great is the human and material damage Syria has suffered in these past two years that it seems unlikely that it will ever recover its long-standing role as a barrier to Israeli power in the Levant.
* Under Israeli pressure, the US is subjecting Iran to a cruel siege. This has greatly enfeebled the Iran-Syria-Hezbollah alliance which, over the past three decades, had attempted to keep Israeli power in check. Today, the alliance is in grave danger of collapse: Iran is battling against crippling sanctions, Syria faces dismemberment, while a nervous Hezbollah contemplates the potential loss of its two external patrons. On March 21, in occupied Jerusalem, Obama blatantly embraced Israel’s point of view by calling on foreign governments to brand Hezbollah a “terrorist organisation”.
What sense, therefore, can one make of the overall picture? How to explain Israel’s arrogant self-confidence and its cold-hearted refusal to allow the Palestinians a mini-state of their own? Part of the answer, at least, must surely lie in Egypt’s insolvency; in the deep divisions in Iraqi society, scarred by a decade of conflict; in Syria’s cruel civil war; and in Iran’s struggle to survive harsh American sanctions.
By all accounts, Arab public opinion has been shocked by Obama’s extravagant love affair with Israel. It was not what the Arabs had expected. In their innocence, they had thought the American president would put on a show of neutrality and do his best to promote a solution to the Palestinian crisis. They had not realised — or had forgotten — how little influence the Arabs have in Washington and how their own long-running and still unfinished revolutions have sapped their energies and undermined their international influence. The awakening has been rude.
Patrick Seale is a commentator and author of several books on Middle East affairs.
