Once Barack Obama shockingly unveiled his true and one-sided views regarding a Palestinian-Israeli peace settlement at last week's meeting in Washington of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, it became obviously clear that he has unwittingly disqualified himself as the much-promised instrument of "change" or that "we can" help bring about an honorable end to the decades-old conflict.
It is doubtful that he had a sudden memory lapse about the severe nose-dive the U.S. standing in the Middle East had taken, in part, because of the George W. Bush administration sat on its hands for seven years without moving forward to pacify the region.
The pandering, sometimes nauseating, that followed was inexplicable because the presumed Democratic presidential nominee seemed to no longer be in dire need of money or votes from some of the Zionist hardliners at AIPAC. The outcry against Obama's poor judgment was deafening and still reverberating, coming from varied groups, domestic and international.
A Washington Post columnist underlined the Obama turnaround when he noted that "a mere 12 hours" after claiming the nomination of his party, Obama "changed himself into an Israeli hardliner," promising that "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided."
In fact, Dana Milbank observed that Obama, "who has generally declined to wear an American-flag pin, wore a joint U.S.-Israeli pin, and even tried a Hebrew phrase on the crowd," which gave him more than a dozen ovations.
At one point, Milbank continued, "[Obama] almost sounded as if he were Jewish." The African-American senator was quoted as saying, "I had grown up with a sense of roots," adding, and much to the obvious surprise of his audience, "I understood the Zionist idea, that there is always a homeland at the center of our story."
The Arab reaction to the "groveling and fawning," as one British colleague described it, that took place at AIPAC, "the one organization whose former officials face trial for spying on the United states," as another British journalist noted, was loud and clear.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas declared emphatically, "We will not accept a Palestinian state without having Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state."
The Washington Post unintentionally dealt him a severe whiplash: Obama's pronouncements were "not very much different from that of the Bush administration – or that of Republican John McCain," the presumptive GOP presidential nominee.
Whatever. The Arab world, especially the Palestinians, should not expect too much from an Obama administration should he - as he is seen as most likely - win the presidential election next November. And that, even though he has promised that his administration would give the Palestinian-Israeli conflict immediate attention unlike both the Clinton and Bush administrations, who waited until the closing months of their terms to search for a fair solution.
Soon after leaving the AIPAC conference, Obama began back-tracking, especially when he was confronted by a CNN reporter saying the Israelis and Palestinians will have to negotiate over the future of the Holy City. "Well, obviously, it's going to be up to the parties to negotiate a range of these issues. And Jerusalem will be part of those negotiations."
Although the senator acknowledged that dividing Jerusalem "would be very difficult to execute," he went on, "I think that it is smart for us to – to work through a system in which everybody has access to the extraordinary religious sites in Old Jerusalem, but that Israel has a legitimate claim on that city."
Likewise the Palestinians.
Within the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem under the British mandate, which ended in 1947, "overall Jewish ownership had not exceeded 24 percent." However, in the last months of the mandate, the Jewish forces captured 84.13 percent of the city, later called West Jerusalem, within which Jewish land ownership approached 30 percent. "What was left in Arab hands – East Jerusalem – constituted 11.48 percent" of municipal Jerusalem, reported Professor Walid Khalidi in a study he has undertaken for The Journal of Palestine Studies, now based in Washington, D.C.
The Palestinians have a tough year ahead since the likelihood of a serious movement toward an agreement cannot possibly be achieved before the end of Bush's term in January.
The Palestinians should not expect any tangible or fair agreement as long as the feuding continues among Fatah and Hamas. Once they are reconciled they would be better off to follow in the footsteps of others in the region, that is, seeking regional intermediaries; as is the case at present with Turkey which is helping both Syria and Israel in settling their border dispute, and Egypt which is mediating between Israel and Hamas to end the Israeli blockade of Gaza, which President Jimmy Carter recently described to a British newspaper as "one of the greatest human rights crimes on Earth."
An American role to seal any of these bilateral agreements is necessary only in the closing months and once it can serve as an honest broker. This will give the new American administration time to feel its way in this complicated region, time during which neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis can afford to stand idly by.
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