Obama's tryst with Palestine

What? Look at the future of Palestine optimistically, even after the carnage in Gaza, after Palestinian deaths have passed the 1,000 mark, after Jakob Kellenberger, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross, described the humanitarian situation there as "shocking", after yet more evidence that Israel continues to sustain itself on the illusion of military triumphalism? I still would have to say yes.

Israel's pipedream of resolving issues with their Palestinian victims by dropping bombs on their women and children may have reached its terminus in Gaza, just as the now discredited neocons' pipedream of might-is-right reached its terminus in Iraq.

It will all come to a head soon, after Inauguration Day in Washington next Tuesday. President-elect Barack Obama may have evinced ardent support for Israel on the campaign trail, but he is no innocent abroad. He knows that ardent support of Israel's existence is anchored in his country's political ethos, well and good, but unstinted support of its military excesses, and territorial expansion, is not, and will only harm the national interests of the United States by earning it the enmity of the peoples of the entire world, including those of the European world.

Is he not after all the new broom that will sweep clean and bring about "change that matters"?

I think it won't be long before Obama's administration, Hillary Clinton, his secretary of state, not withstanding, will have to tell Israeli leaders that enough is enough: Go back to your internationally recognised borders and give up your fantasy about "Greater Israel".

Imagine the response in the Arab world - and elsewhere - if the new president instead ended up emulating his predecessors in the White House who traditionally had turned a blind eye to Israeli excesses and a deaf ear to Palestinian suffering. Arabs will give up then on America ever being even-handed, or trust it ever again. Arabs will brand Obama as yet "another American president", another political hack, who will back Israel right or wrong. Because of Obama's moral promise, his skin colour and his middle name, Arabs will expect more from him, not so much favouritism as fairness. If that is not forthcoming, it will trigger twice the rage at the US than if he had been another run of the mill, new occupant of the White House.

My instinct (and that's what we all have to go by as of now) tells me that Israel will be told a few blunt truths in the months to come.

Look, that's not to say that the Palestinians will not, or should not, be told a few blunt facts themselves. Fatah, for decades the ruling party of the Palestinian movement, but recently only in the West Bank, should be told to mind its manners. It cannot employ intimidation and fraud while in power (the original cause of the current schisms in Palestinian society), keeping control through patronage, cronyism and corruption, as it had done for years. As well it might be told that civil society, including non-governmental organisations and the media, should remain genuinely free, not part of the party's political apparatus, as it had been in the old days when adversarial vices were silenced and political prisoners tortured.

In those old days Fatah's dictum could effectively be summed up thus: You want to play in our movement, you pay with your obedience. All this must stop.

Meanwhile, Gaza burns as Israel brazenly tries to fool Americans (there is no one else anywhere it can fool anymore) into thinking that its invasion of the Strip was to "defend" itself against rocket attacks by Hamas, when in fact it was Hamas that all along had been defending itself against Israel, responding to the Zionist entity's blockade of their people's airspace, maritime approaches and land crossings, which strangled the territory's economy and starved its residents. In international law, such a blockade is an act of war.

Recall, in this context, if you wish, the time when Jamal Abdul Nasser, the Egyptian president, closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping on the eve of the June War in 1967. Yes, you guessed it - Israel then identified that as an act of war, a casus belli justifying its devastating military assault on Egypt. And that was one puny, little entry point to Israeli shipping through the Red Sea. Now consider, in contrast, the choke hold Israel put around the pauperised people of Gaza.

When Israeli leaders tell us that Israel is "defending itself", they are moving into the penumbra of the "Big Lie", or the "variable truth", a re-formulation of objective reality.

An entity that kills women and children, 40 of them huddled in a UN school building for shelter, will retreat before no mendacity to justify its bent for revenge and violence. When those 1,000 Gazans were being killed, and those 5,000 others were being injured, by Israeli bombing raids, and when the "humanitarian situation" there was becoming "shocking", I, a Palestinian living in Washington, was fed, fed beyond my need. I slept in a warm house. I was safe. And I felt guilt that I was not there, the kind of guilt that gnaws at the soul. I was guilty that there are Palestinians out there, in Gaza, in the West Bank, in exile, who yearn to be free, but are not.

Yearning to be free is a term that Obama, an African-American, should be familiar with, and should keep in mind when his administration finally addresses itself to the issue of the people of Palestine - whether or not, in the words of Martin Luther King, they are entitled to be "free, free at last".

Fawaz Turki is a veteran journalist, lecturer and author of several books, including The Disinherited: Journal of a Palestinian Exile. He lives in Washington D.C.

Muslims should not expect much from Obama becouse I think he would follow a similar path as Bush.
Abdul Khadir
Dubai,UAE
Posted: January 17, 2009, 10:26

It is yet to be seen whether the new US administration will have the bold approach to handling Israel suggested in this article. There are many issues in which the Obama team needs the support of Congress and Senate to realize their vision of a new USA. One needs to understand that the Israeli lobby has a record of withdrawing financial support for any politicianâ??s election campaign if they do not follow the Israeli line, furthermore they will finance the opposition to such a politician and do what they can to punish disloyalty. Consequently the Obama team will want a strategic plan that does not upset the Israeli lobby sufficiently to prevent support from Congress and SenateEssentially this means that any criticism of Israel has to be heavily nuanced and an approach would be to indicate the desire to save Israel from itself. They key is to manage the opinion of the US electorate towards an understanding that it is possible for Israel to do wrong. There is a further opportunity of using the narrative that US at this time of economic crisis needs to see a return on its annual investment in Israel, which will enhance not detract from its global reputation. This combined approach may be sufficient leverage to impose a solution on both parties, through carrot and stick.To assist this process there needs to be greater effort from those supporting the Palestinian agenda to influence public opinion in the US. A comprehensive approach is required encompassing, blogging, letters to US media and even perhaps targeted individual boycotts of selected US companies that support Israel, so everyone can contribute to the effort.
Tim
Dubai,UAE
Posted: January 17, 2009, 10:12

No matter how depressing the subject, it is always a pleasureto read your take on it. More power to your pen! Couldn't have said it better. Keep up the good work. What I don't understand is why so many innocent people have been left in the mercy of such a vengeful enemy. Haven't the Gazans suffered enough already?
Nawa
US,US
Posted: January 17, 2009, 09:27

If Obama really wants to bring change then the first thing he has to do is to stop supplying arms to Israel and secondly he has to be fair with Palestanian and Hamas and stop blaming Hamas. They are only defending their land. Don't forget that what goes around comes back around.
Sara Moin
Dubai,UAE
Posted: January 17, 2009, 09:07