Peace is good for the American Dream

The euphoria and optimism that accompanied the inauguration of the White House's first black resident, Barack Obama, was not entirely unjustified. The most powerful man in the world had made his way to the top, against all odds, and with grace and charm. With the catch-all slogan, "Yes we can," Obama is the ultimate fulfilment of the American dream.

While Americans were pointing to Obama's victory as an endorsement of the fairness of their social and electoral system, the Palestinians might reasonably have expected that a man with a Muslim father, who counted many Arab intellectuals, including the late Edward Said, among his friends, would bring a fresh, even-handed and well-informed sense of justice to the peace process with Israel.

So far we have been disappointed.

Obama's progress to the White House has seen him grow incrementally closer to the immensely powerful Washington Zionist lobby with an attendant bias towards Israel.

Only 10 years ago Obama regularly attended Arab-American community events in Chicago and when he ran for Congress in 2000 he was openly critical of US policy towards Israel. He was not elected. Four years later and noticeably silent on the Palestinian question, Obama won his senate seat.

March 2007 found Obama, in pursuit of the Democratic nomination for the presidency, addressing the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) - the most powerful pro-Israeli lobby group. His performance on this occasion led the Israeli paper, Ha'aretz, to conclude, "He is pro-Israel. Period."

Obama's inauguration as the 44th President of the USA was inauspiciously ushered in by the most bloody Israeli assault on unarmed Palestinians since 1967. Although a ceasefire was conveniently and unilaterally called just in time for the ceremony, his silence on the massacre, Israeli war crimes too numerous to mention, and the demolition of one in six Gazan houses spoke volumes.

On January 22, Obama made his first major foreign affairs statement in office and set out his stall, portraying Israel (which lost 13 people in the "conflict") as the innocent victim of a terrifying enemy (Hamas) intent on its destruction. "America is committed to Israel's security," Obama told the world's press. "We will always support its right to defend itself."

Enlarging on his populist credentials, Obama recycled a winning sentiment first voiced in his speech to AIPAC: "If missiles were falling where my two daughters sleep, I would do everything in order to stop that," he said.

He was equating his children not with the more than 300 ragged Gazan waifs butchered by Israeli missiles, bombs, tanks and guns but with well-scrubbed Israeli children (none of the 13 Israeli casualties in the conflict are believed to have been children) living in a US-endorsed "democracy", who resonate with the American dream.

In the same speech, Obama, a lawyer by profession, appeared to endorse the Arab League peace proposal whose aims he summarised thus: "Supporting the Palestinian government under President [Mahmoud] Abbas and Prime Minister [Salam] Fayyad, taking steps towards normalising relations with Israel, and standing up to extremism that threatens us all".

This crafty re-packaging of the proposal ignores most of the key issues, predominantly the boundaries of a two-state solution (which Obama would do well to recognize is in any case rapidly losing currency with frustrated Palestinian negotiators).

Furthermore, Abbas' term actually ran out on January 9 and Fayed's appointment was never ratified by the Palestinian parliament (in any case many of its members are languishing in Israeli jails). Obama, like his predecessor, limits his support for "democracy" to elections that have the correct result. Hamas' 2006 victory does not fall into that category.

As for the final status of occupied Jerusalem and the right of return for millions of exiled Palestinians, Obama had already promised AIPAC in June 2008 that "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel and undivided."

In January 2008, he reassured the Jerusalem Post that "the right of return is not an option in a literal sense."

This does not sound like Obama's much-vaunted pledge to "listen".

The appointment of George Mitchell, who made his name as the architect of Northern Ireland's peace settlement, gives some cause for optimism but even as he embarked on an extensive fact-finding tour of the Middle East, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, told a January 27 press conference that "Palestinian rocket attacks...cannot go unanswered."

In Clinton's apparently rejectionist terms, peaceful negotiation is not a sufficient "answer" whereas the murder of 1,300 people, half of them women and children, the destruction of 6,000 homes and the displacement of 50,000 people, is.

If any progress is to be made on Obama's watch, the new administration must opt for a truthful re-appraisal of the reality on the ground.

It cannot always buy the Israeli line, cynically overlooking inconvenient facts like the use of proscribed weapons against the children of Gaza, like the ever-expanding illegal colonies, like the apartheid wall, like the blockades, the checkpoints and the ongoing siege of Gaza which makes starvation a weapon in a systematic genocide.

Despite the efforts of much of the British and American media, the global population is now witness to Israeli atrocities and the mood on the street is changing. President Obama risks being out of kilter with the rest of the world if he continues to participate in this charade - and the American dream will be revealed as nothing more than a reality deficit.

Abdul Bari Atwan is editor of the Pan-Arab newspaper Al Quds Al Arabi.

Great article, well done!
From A Reader
Moss Landing, California,USA
Posted: February 08, 2009, 10:56