US President Barack Obama on Wednesday rejected Palestinian plans to seek UN blessing for statehood and urged a return to peace talks with Israel as he tried to head off a looming diplomatic disaster. Addressing the UN General Assembly, Obama – whose earlier peace efforts accomplished little – insisted Middle East peace “will not come through statements and resolutions” at the world body and put the onus on the two sides to break a yearlong impasse.
No short cut: “There is no short cut to the end of a conflict that has endured for decades. Peace is hard work,” Obama told an annual gathering of world leaders. Grappling with economic woes and low poll numbers at home and growing doubts about his leadership abroad, Obama is wading into Middle East diplomacy at a critical juncture for his presidency and America’s credibility around the globe.
Obama attempted to strike a delicate balance as he took the UN podium. He sought to reassure Palestinians he was not abandoning his pledge to help them achieve eventual statehood while also placating any Israeli concerns about Washington’s commitment to their security. Members of the General Assembly, where pro-Palestinian sentiment is high, listened politely but had only a muted response to Obama’s 36-minute speech. Obama followed his speech with a round of talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who echoed the president’s assertion that renewed negotiations were the only path to a peace deal but offered no new ideas how to get back to the table. He said, however, that the Palestinians’ UN statehood effort “will not succeed.” He was due to meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas later on the UN sidelines.
Syria: Obama also used his wide-ranging speech to tout his support for democratic change sweeping the Arab world, urge further UN sanctions against Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad and call on Iran and North Korea to meet their nuclear obligations — twin standoffs that have eluded his efforts at resolution.
US President Barack Hussein Obama understands the Israeli-Palestinian issue very clearly. President Obama knows the Israeli-Palestinian peace process is at a dead end. Earlier President Obama tried to revive the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations by mandating a complete West Bank settlement freeze, only to be forced embarrassingly by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to back down. May President Obama had the temerity to publicly tell Israel that its current policy towards the Palestinians is untenable and unsustainable, and to modestly suggest a negotiating formula to break the impasse, President Obama was publicly chastised by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and had to submit to the humiliation of seeing the US Congressional leaders of the Democratic Party repudiate him in favour of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. Eventually President Obama has washed his hands of the Palestinian issue. Once again, President Obama is being forced to publicly support an Israeli policy position fundamentally opposed to his own. President Obama knows very well that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has no intention of permitting formation of a viable Palestinian state, and that the Palestinians have little choice but to pursue their current course at the United Nations. The America's lonely support for Israel and the inevitable US veto of the Palestinians' bid for full membership at United Nations will terminally undermine the US position in the Arab World, and will expose the USA's nominal support for popular Arab rights as a fraud. USA again undermines its security and its global position, pointlessly and gratuitously, in blind allegiance to ungrateful and self-destructive Israel. If any country should be saved by the West it should be Palestinians suffering in Gaza for decades as a result of Israeli. What does the US do instead – it vetoes Resolutions brought against Israel in the UN.
– Nalliah Thayabharan
"Peace will not come through statements and resolutions at the United Nations," Obama said. This may be true, but it has yet to be tried and tested. What we do know is that peace has not come through the diplomatic wrangling of the United States. The current president of the United States would rather continue the myth of progress initiated by those who sat in the White House before him, a myth that includes a sense of self-awarded respite from concern for those who are in lethal trouble on the part of those who aren’t.
The President says, "One year ago, I stood at this podium and called for an independent Palestine. I believed then – and I believe now – that the Palestinian people deserve a state of their own. But what I also said is that genuine peace can only be realized between Israelis and Palestinians themselves." His words, unfortunately, are like mental illness – there is no basis for optimism. The Middle East peace process has only allowed the Palestinian people to fall a little bit deeper into despair and oppression, dying amid useless dialogue and nonstop occupation. Death, torture, refugee camps, more settlements, an apartheid wall and the passage of time are evidence that the Palestinian people are not free, but worse – they have not been treated human. It is more sickening, more repulsive, when this optimism comes from those who are so well-informed and cannot recognize that they are lying to themselves while the Palestinian people are being annihilated.
The President does not say, “It is a fact that loyalties cannot be built on a framework of moral disloyalty. Human need is not answered by mere ideas, which has been the only thing offered to the Palestinian people.” If the president should make this kind of statement, and if other world leaders gave up the will to be silent and respectful, things might finally change and there would be no reason to believe that they are committing political treason or continue to corroborate in the lie that has continued for more than 60 years.
The President says, "Ultimately, it is Israelis and Palestinians who must live side by side," He says, "Ultimately, it is Israelis and Palestinians – not us – who must reach agreement on the issues that divide them: on borders and security; on refugees and Jerusalem." If it were any other situation, we might be able to believe that these words are backed by sincerity and raw truth and not on behalf of those who have cash and power or who have the advantage of the hour.
The President says "Israel deserves recognition. It deserves normal relations with its neighbors.” He did not say that the Palestinians deserve recognition or that the Palestinians deserve liberty and justice.
Here alone is where we must stop pretending that serious changes will occur within the lives of those under occupation, without the need for unjust ideals to be altered. The end results of this conflict are tied directly to the value of America’s contribution; this obviously means much less, especially when impartiality and fairness are so obviously missing. It's time for the UN to do more and the US to do less.
Khalilah Sabra
MAS Immigrant Justice Center
Comments are closed.