Rarely if ever has an American President shown such intense concern for Israel’s welfare and such casual indifference for the Arabs.
The visit to Israel and its Arab neighbours marks an important moment in Obama’s presidency. It sends a clear message that he is not prepared to engage in a fight with powerful pro-Israeli forces deeply entrenched in American government and society. To the Arabs, it signals that resolving the Palestine problem is no longer his priority. He seems prepared to leave it to the next incumbent of the White House, whoever that might be.
No doubt John Kerry, America’s new Secretary of State, will go through the motions of addressing the Palestine problem for a while, but it would be naïve to expect any real progress without vigorous and sustained presidential attention, and that now seems highly unlikely.
Many Arabs had thought that Obama, on this his first presidential visit to the region, would give fresh impetus to the search for an Israeli-Palestinian settlement — even at this eleventh hour. Their disappointment has been bitter. They had failed to grasp how the evolving power relationships — in the region itself and also in Washington — had undermined their interests and hardened the resolve of Israel’s land-hungry leaders not to give an inch.
The truth is that the Arabs’ attention over the past two years has been fully engrossed by the political upheavals in their own societies. Revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen, as well as the bitter civil war in Syria, have absorbed Arab attention, virtually blotting out everything else. The Arabs have failed to grasp that their revolutions — whatever promise they may hold of a better future — have for the moment at least gravely weakened them, reducing their influence on the international stage.
It is, therefore, not surprising that, on this visit to the Middle East, Obama felt no obligation to calm Arab fears or help the Palestinians towards their longed-for independence. Instead, he devoted himself entirely to celebrating Israel’s achievements as the region’s most powerful and dynamic actor — as well as hailing its ever closer ties with the United States. No doubt he felt free to flatter Israel and offend the Arabs because of the lamentable state in which much of the Arab world now finds itself.
As a handsome parting gift to Netanyahu, Obama brokered a peace deal between Turkey and Israel, putting an end to the three-year feud between them. It will be recalled that their quarrel dates back to May 2010 when Israel attacked and boarded a Turkish ship, the Mavi Marmara, which was seeking to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza. Nine Turks on board the ship were killed. During his visit to Israel this month, Obama persuaded Netanyahu to issue a public apology to Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, together with a promise of compensation, thus putting an end to the quarrel.
The sudden and dramatic Israeli-Turkish reconciliation has come as a bitter blow to the Arabs. They had thought that their alliance with Turkey would help them stand up to Israel. Instead, Obama has brokered an alliance between the United States, Israel and Turkey which is intended to dominate the region and dictate terms to the Arabs.
Indeed, the Arab heartland has rarely seemed so weak and vulnerable:
• Egypt is today close to bankruptcy, a condition which severely limits its regional influence. Once the most powerful Arab country, it is today a victim of long years of authoritarian rule and of a population explosion. When Nasser’s Free Officers took power in 1952, there were about 18m Egyptians; today there are 85m. Egypt desperately needs international credits and is dependent on American support to get them. It cannot afford to show sympathy for Hamas in Gaza since the United States — pandering to Israel — considers it a terrorist organisation.
• Iraq has far from recovered from the American invasion of 2003, engineered and driven by pro-Israeli neo-cons, and from the nine-year occupation which followed. Now under Shia leadership, and allied to Iran, it is a long way from recovering its once influential place in Arab affairs. It has virtually lost control of its Kurdish territories and is being torn apart by Sunni-Shia strife.
• Syria is in the grip of a brutal civil war, which threatens to overthrow its secular Ba‘thist regime, in power since 1963. If the regime is toppled, Syria could then be ruled by hard-line Islamists who are leading the revolt against President Bashar al-Asad. More probably, however, the country could be partitioned into small confessional units, each looking desperately to its own defence. So great is the human and material damage Syria has suffered in these past two years that it seems unlikely that it will recover its long-standing role as a barrier to Israeli power in the Levant.
• Under Israeli pressure, the United States is subjecting Iran to a cruel siege. This has greatly enfeebled the Iran-Syria-Hizballah alliance which, over the past three decades, had attempted to keep Israeli power in check. Today the alliance is in grave danger of collapse: Iran is battling against crippling sanctions, Syria faces dismemberment, while a nervous Hizballah contemplates the potential loss of its two external patrons. In Jerusalem on March 21, Obama blatantly embraced Israel’s point of view by calling on foreign governments to brand Hizballah as a ‘terrorist organisation’. Blinded by their fear of Iran and puffed up by their vast income from oil and gas, a number of Arab Gulf states have also joined in the effort to dismantle the Iran-Syria-Hizballah alliance and rob it of its regional influence. They may live to regret it.
What sense, therefore, can one make of the overall picture? How to explain Israel’s arrogant self-confidence and its cold-hearted refusal to allow the Palestinians a mini-state of their own? Part at least of the answer must surely lie in Egypt’s insolvency; in the deep divisions in Iraqi society, scarred by a decade of conflict; in Syria’s cruel civil war; and in Iran’s struggle to survive harsh American sanctions.
By all accounts, Arab public opinion has been shocked by Obama’s extravagant love affair with Israel. It was not what the Arabs had expected. In their innocence, they had thought the American President would put on a show of neutrality and do his best to promote a settlement of the Palestine problem. They had not realised — or had forgotten — how little influence the Arab voice has in Washington and how their own long-running and still unfinished revolutions have sapped their energies and undermined their international influence. The awakening has been rude.
Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East. His latest book is The Struggle for Arab Independence: Riad el-Solh and the Makers of the Modern Middle East (Cambridge University Press).
Copyright © 2013 Patrick Seale – distributed by Agence Global
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Released: 26 March 2013
Word Count: 1,148
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