The 10-day period between June 4 and 14 witnessed two speeches (by US President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu) and two elections (in Lebanon and Iran) whose outcomes and aftermath will determine the foreseeable future of the Middle East.
On June 4, Obama set out his Middle East policy in Cairo. Vowing that he would "tell the truth", he spoke of his hopes for greater liberalism and reform throughout the region. He advocated "mutual respect" and negotiation rather than the violence and intolerance which has characterised the region's turbulent history. Having neatly sidestepped the Israeli slaughter of 1,400 Gazans on the eve of his inauguration, he urged Israel to freeze (not dismantle, mind you) illegal colonies and voiced his support for the two-state solution.
Obama's Cairo speech was well received locally and may have had some impact on the Lebanese election on June 7, when the liberal, reformist March 14 Alliance won the majority of seats. Although the Hezbollah-led March 8 Alliance retained 57 seats and won 55 per cent of the actual votes, the outcome was optimistically processed, from the American point of view, as the tentative shoots of a new, less radical era.
The Obama administration had done some groundwork for the result it preferred in Lebanon, launching what amounted to a scare campaign in the run-up to the election, with Vice-President Joseph Biden threatening to withdraw all financial aid to the country if the Hezbollah bloc won.
Tzipi Livni, the leader of the opposition in Israel, also entered the fray with a June 5 article in The New York Times calling for the exclusion of Hezbollah from the Lebanese election process altogether on the grounds that it was an "illegal" entity, reliant on "violence" rather than change through the democratic process.
Hezbollah might have fared better had it worked harder on the ground to gain favour with the electorate; it is not clear whether this laxity was due to over-confidence or a considered decision to postpone taking the reins of power at a time when Lebanon is in economic crisis, with a $47-billion (Dh172.4 billion) national debt (more than that of any other country in the Middle East or Europe), and dependent for its present survival on Hezbollah's enemies such as the US and Saudi Arabia.
Furthermore, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah alienated the Sunnis first by glorifying the events of May 8 - the day last year when the resistance group's supporters briefly took over Beirut's western suburbs to demonstrate their undiminished military strength - and then by responding to Biden's threats by asserting that Hezbollah would not hesitate to ask Iran for financial and military help if denied by the US.
In Iran, the presidential elections on June 12 saw 63 per cent of the electorate give incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad another term in office. Though the supporters of Mir Hussain Mousavi, the incumbent's closest rival with 34 per cent of the vote, claimed the election had been rigged, it is more likely that the Iranian people wanted to deliver a powerful message to the West despite the so-called 'Obama effect'. Elected on a platform of continued opposition towards US hegemony and the assertion of Iran's right to develop its nuclear capacity, Ahmadinejad will prove a resilient counterweight to the new American president's undeniable charm.
The US and the western media have seized upon the continuing demonstrations by Mousavi supporters in Tehran, hoping they are a prelude to some kind of 'velvet revolution' which will undermine the Iranian religious establishment. The fact that most of the demonstrations have taken place in Tehran and not in smaller cities and rural areas strongly suggests that they represent the position of the well-heeled elite, rather than the poor Iranians who form Ahmadinejad's core support group.
Nevertheless, internal divisions - not just between the reformists and the radicals but between the Grand Ayatollahs themselves - pose the first real threat to Iranian stability in 30 years. It would be in everybody's interest to breach the widening gap, even if temporarily, in view of the external pressures on Iran.
Iran has become a regional superpower under Ahmadinejad, increasingly capable of launching a devastating attack on Israel. Obama has refrained from questioning the election result although he reiterated his desire for rapprochement, regardless of which man won, before it took place.
On June 14, Netanyahu responded to Obama's Cairo speech when he addressed an audience at Tel Aviv's Bar-Ilan University. The day after Obama's Cairo speech, Occupied Jerusalem had been plastered with posters depicting the US President wearing an Arafat-style keffiyeh and bearing the slogan, 'Barack Hussain Obama, Anti-semitic Jew-hater'.
Netanhyahu's speech was equally provocative and disrespectful. The hardliner rejected all the concessions Obama had proposed in the interest of peace: responding with a categorical 'no' to a proposal to limit the colonies; 'no' to a viable, independent Palestinian state (proposing instead a demilitarised autonomy); 'no', too, to the right of return for the Palestinian refugees and a final big 'no' to surrendering Occupied Jerusalem which, he asserted, would remain the undivided capital of Israel.
In addition, he demanded that the Palestinians recognise Israel as the "state of Jewish people" as a pre-requisite to negotiations. Even as Netanyahu delivered this slap in the face to Obama and the moderate Palestinians, Washington was preparing a response in which Obama welcomed "the important step forward in Prime Minister Netanyahu's speech". If refusing every possible concession is a step forward, what, one wonders, could possibly constitute a "step backwards"?
In less than two weeks since his Cairo speech Obama has lost a great deal of credibility with Muslims and Israelis alike. Nevertheless, he is clearly a man of great determination and it is to be hoped he now has the courage to face the challenge to the ideals of truth, mutual respect and justice issued by Netanyahu, standards the US President himself set on June 4, 2009.
Abdel Bari Atwan is editor of the pan-Arab newspaper Al Quds Al Arabi.
