21 May, 2011
Countercurrents.org
President Obama has again come out with yet another hot-feeler. The ‘Arab spring’ speech he delivered on 19 May—viewed by many as a possible breakthrough in the American policy towards the Middle East—is yet another ‘strategic’ ploy to masquerade Washington’s’ long-term goals in the region. Think-tanks may initiate a debate whether it is the ‘beginning’ of a ‘new end’ in the US policy, but Obama’s disorientated analysis of the ‘Arab spring’ offered hardly anything substantial. The most sensitive aspect of his speech came when he referred to the 1967 lines to be the basis for Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations over final borders, adding that negotiated land swaps would also be needed. His call for negotiations based on this ‘line’ could be yet another attempt to place himself as an able international negotiator and honest ‘broker‘ but his constraints and compulsion are even more palpable.
In his speech, President Obama had stressed the need for negotiations “based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states.” His statement on Palestine came in the background of the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s visit to US. Hours before the visit of Netanyahu, Obama’s formula apparently sought to set in a new framework for Washington’s finesse. The New Right in the US has already seized on this statement saying it amounts to a ‘betrayal’ of Israel. A senior Israeli official said that “Washington does not understand the reality, doesn’t understand what we face.” Israeli daily Haaretz wrote that tensions between the two reached fever pitch following Obama’s speech and ahead of Netanyahu’s planned address to American Congress. New York Times reported that Obama had told his close aides that he did not believe that Netanyahu would be able to make the concessions necessary to strike a peace deal that would even the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. In a statement after Obama’s speech outlining his new policy, Netanyahu said before leaving for Washington that “the viability of a Palestinian state cannot come at the expense of Israel’s existence.” Can Obama cross the Rubicon?
After talks with Netanyahu in Washington, Obama reiterated that “a true peace can only occur if the ultimate resolution allows Israel to defend itself against threats, and that Israel’s security will remain paramount in U.S. evaluations of any prospective peace deal.” He also underlined the American goal, ie., “a secure Israeli state, a Jewish state, living side by side in peace and security with a contiguous, functioning and effective Palestinian state.”
Earlier, it may be recalled, Obama made no condemnation of the illegal settlements nor did he demand a freeze on settlement activity, which is sharply accelerating with plans for building 1,550 new homes in the occupied territories around Jerusalem. Curiously, Obama’s speech referred to Israelis living in fear of their children being killed and Palestinians’ “suffering and humiliation” under occupation. It is hardly surprising that the Israeli occupation has claimed 100 Palestinian lives for every Israeli killed in the conflict or that just days before, Israeli troops had shot to death 16 unarmed Palestinian protesters who sought to assert their right to return to their homeland by scaling borders into Israeli occupied territory. That these demonstrations, which were joined by many thousands who marched on the borders from the refugee camps, are part of the revolutionary wave sweeping the region was missing in Obama’s speech.
Eventually, Obama’s speech offered hardly anything new in terms of US policy and expressed the US commitment to militarism, economic domination to assert its control over the region’s strategic energy resources. At the same time, however, the absence of substantive initiatives and inability to make any credible appeal to the Arab masses express the decline of US influence in the region and the increasing frustration of the American ruling elite as it attempts to repel the threat of revolutionary upheaval.
It was natural that the speech was received with scepticism and contempt in the Arab world. Despite Obama’s repeated references to ‘democracy’ or ‘democratic’ nearly two dozen times in his address, there was no reference at all in the speech that anything has changed in the policy of a government that has backed dictatorships and monarchies in the region and given unqualified support for six decades to Israel’s suppression of the Palestinian people.
Obama went on to boast of the US killing of Osama bin Laden as a major ‘blow’ to al-Qaeda, while acknowledging that the former CIA ally had lost his ‘relevance’ in the face of the upheavals in the region over the past several months. He tried to call the US as the model to be emulated and the benevolent power whose role it is to guide the Arab peoples to democracy. He said that the US would continue to pursue its “core interests” in the region, which he defined as “countering terrorism and stopping the spread of nuclear weapons; securing the free flow of commerce, and safe-guarding the security of the region, standing up for Israel’s security and pursuing Arab-Israeli peace.” Obviously missing from this list and indeed from the entire speech was the subject of American interest in oil. Its omission is certainly glaring. The US, Obama said, would continue to pursue the ‘core interests’ with “the firm belief that America’s interests are not hostile to people’s hopes; they are essential to them.” What Washington’s proposed economic policies amount to is an attempt to use the changes brought about by the mass upheavals to open the region up even more fully to the exploitation of American capitalism and US-based transnationals. He said that US policy would “focus on trade, not just aid; and investment, not just assistance.” Its aim, he said, would be opening up the region’s markets, while “ensuring financial stability.” Obama is obviously in the ‘businesses’ of furthering Washington’s goals in the region with a heavy-load of rhetorics.
Obviously, the presidential election due next year could be a major factor for Obama to take ‘new’ initiatives. But it is certain to trigger more confusion than consolation. Many eyebrows were raised when Obama made a U-turn in his Middle East Policy particularly when Dennis Ross—Obama’s chief adviser—is Israel’s most trusted man’ in the White House and one of the most influential pro-Jewish figures in the country. Naturally, the position of the Jewish lobby in the US is very crucial in the emerging scenario.
(Prof. K.M. SEETHI is Dean of Social Sciences and Director of Research in Mahatma Gandhi University, Kerala. He is also Professor of International Relations and Chairman, Centre for Cross-National Communication in South Asia, School of International Relations and Politics(SIRP) in Mahatma Gandhi University. He has been the General Editor of Indian Journal of Politics and International Relations a biannual of the SIRP and currently the Editor of South Asian Journal of Diplomacy, published by the KPS Menon Chair for Diplomatic Studies. Prof. K.M. SEETHI can be contacted at kmseethimgu@gmail.com)