The Obama administration needs to recommit to helping solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or risk the ire of a whole generation of Arab youth demanding democratic change in the region, Jordan's foreign minister cautioned during a visit to Washington Tuesday.
“You don't want to get to the U.S. election without something substantial in motion,” Nasser Judeh said in remarks at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Judeh addressed the think tank after meeting with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Monday.
The “Palestinian problem ... is not removed or detached from the current upheaval in the Arab world,” he said. “Arabs who took to the streets across the entire spectrum of the Arab world to uphold the values of freedom, dignity, equality, human rights, justice and equal opportunity will and are already demanding the same for the Palestinian people.”
Judeh said the Arabs who are gaining power as a result of democratic elections across the Arab world will “calibrate their relations with Israel on the basis of justice being done to the Palestinians.”
“This has got to happen soon,” he said. “Stagnation and stalemate on the front of Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking will give the upper hand to the radicals in the new emerging order in the Arab world.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he added, has unprecedented power to press forward following his surprise formation last month of a unity government with the opposition Kadima Party.
Netanyahu, Judeh said, is now the “most powerful prime minister in the history of Israel.”
“He is able and he is enabled to do things,” Judeh said. “He has the mandate.”
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