Obama Speech a Good Start, but Finish Remains Uncertain

Obama Speech a Good Start, but Finish Remains Uncertain
RealClearPolitics.com
David Paul Kuhn David Paul Kuhn – Thu Jun 4, 1:00 am ET

“It is time for us to act on what everyone knows to be true,” President Barack Obama said this morning in Egypt.


This is the great fact of the region. Thomas Friedman's column yesterday deftly summed up the chasm in the Middle East between understanding the problems and taking the action needed to solve those problems—not to mention even the less-dire repercussions of those brave enough to make the hard choices.

Israeli parliamentary governments are fragile. They do not have the leeway of an American president. Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu appears married to his conservative coalition. If he is to be the hawk who makes peace, then he will have to be willing to risk his power to construct a new coalition that will back that peace.

The Muslim authoritarian powers often depend on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to distract their people from the corruption and repression at home. They have a great stake in the Israeli scapegoat and keeping the Palestinians in plight. And the president understands that.

"The Arab-Israeli conflict should no longer be used to distract the people of Arab nations from other problems," he said Thursday.

Israeli conservatives are strident Zionists. Yet all, but the most radical, know that Israel either can be a Jewish state or a bigger state. The rising population of the Palestinians, their struggle and the way the issue forces Israel into a political bunker on the world stage, leaves no choice but the hard choices. Well, that's not exactly true. As an Israeli teenager once said, we don't have peace but at least we are not at war. This is a region that has been forced to accept the imperfect.

Now the United States asks Israel to take the first step and freeze settlements. Israelis understandably ask, what about step two, three, four and so on? Who are they to negotiate peace with? Hamas, however slightly, won the most support in the last Palestinian election. In the last 24 hours, Hamas and Fatah again clashed in the West Bank, leaving three Hamas members and a Palestinian policeman dead.

As their leaders fight, regular Palestinians remain in limbo. Obama spoke this morning of the "occupation" suffered by the Palestinian people. That was further than past presidents were willing to go. He tied that Palestinian struggle to the Jewish experience. Yet poetry is easy here. It's the prose of daily life, the action now needed, which is the real challenge before Obama.

Obama, as RealClearPolitics reported this morning, has become the Mediator-in-Chief. Now he has picked perhaps the world's most difficult dispute to resolve.

This brings us full circle to Friedman's column. Friedman interviewed Obama. As with today's speech, one walks away from the column comforted that the president understands that the Middle East depends on action and not talk. Obama clearly gets the big picture of the region's big problems.

But moving forward, agreeing on the most pressing problem is also part of the problem. The Palestinians are consumed by stability and statehood. The Israelis are deeply worried about an Iran on the cusp of nuclearization. Iran's foreign policy is focused on defending its domestic nuclearization.

The Arab regimes drum for a two-state solution. But again one asks, what will those authoritarian regimes do without their Israeli piñata? Self-preservation pervades all foreign policy, but particularly autocracies. And many Arab leaders remain equally weary of the rooster of radicalism coming home to roost ever more.

Still, to be sure, it is always good to have an American president speaking the hard truths. Today's speech was a good start. But this region is full of starts. It's the finish that feels like a mirage in the Middle East. History depends on follow-through.

Source :http://news.yahoo.com