Obama and Palestine
By A.G. Noorani | From the Newspaper
(17 hours ago) Today
PRESIDENT Barack Obama consistently disappoints those who expected him to
depart fundamentally from the policies of George W. Bush. Whether it is regime
change (Libya) or the Guantanamo torture camp, the policies remain the same, for
two reasons. He shares the national outlook and the prejudices that go with it.
Besides, he needs to win acceptance.
Anyone who imagined that his much-touted Cairo speech was a prelude to change, must
be disillusioned after the four days (May 19-22) during which he capitulated to the hard-
line prime minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu.
Just before boarding a plane to Washington, D.C. on May 19, Netanyahu said that he
expected “to hear a reaffirmation from President Obama of American commitments made
to Israel”. This was a reference to a letter of April 14, 2004 by President Bush to Israel`s
then prime minister, Ariel Sharon. that reflect these realities
He wrote, “In the light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major
population centres, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations
will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949. … It is realistic to expect
that any final status agreement will only be achieved on the basis of mutually agreed
changes .”
Israel thus acquires a veto on change and a US endorsement of its stand that its settlement
on the West Bank (“these realities”) must not be unduly disturbed.
This is in wilful violation of the UN Security Council`s Resolution 242 of Nov 22, 1967,
in the wake of the Six-Day War in June, “emphasising the inadmissibility of the
acquisition of territory by war” and calling for “withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from
territories occupied in the recent conflict”.
Netanyahu held “an angry phone conversation with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham
Clinton on Thursday [April 19] before Obama delivered his speech that day”. The New
York Times
Ethan Bronner of reported that “he demanded that the president`s reference to 1967
borders be cut”. While US officials denied that Obama altered “anything under Israeli
pressure”, they admitted that he “made changes in the text that delayed his appearance by
35 minutes”.
In the speech he actually delivered, on May 19, Obama asked the Palestinians not only to
accept Israel`s right to exist but to abandon “efforts to delegitimise Israel”. To the
Palestinians, the establishment of Israel, on May 14, 1948, was Al Nakba, the catastrophe.
They are being asked, as price of a settlement, to rewrite history and accept the forcible
occupiers of their lands as its legitimate owners.
This is the real significance of Netanyahu`s demand, ever since he won the February
2010 elections, that Israel must be recognised by the Palestinians as a Jewish state. This
would affect the rights of Israel`s Arab citizens, who comprise one-fifth of its population,
and the refugees` right to return. A million and a half Palestinian Christians and Muslims
will become aliens in their own home. Obama explicitly endorsed Israel`s demand that
Israel be accepted “as a Jewish state”.
Obama added that “the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on 1967 lines” but
“with mutually agreed swaps”. Was this qualification the last minute change which
delayed him by 35 minutes? Israel will have a veto on the extent of the “agreed swaps”.
Obama thus accepted the lines Bush supported in his infamous letter to Sharon in 2004.
Palestine will be a non-militarised state at the mercy of Israeli might. So much for its
`sovereign` character. Obama left out the future of Jerusalem and “the fate of Palestinian
refugees”. Netanyahu`s anger at Obama dissipated.
The next day (May 20) they met when both reiterated their agreed positions; except that
while Obama expressed his concern at the Fatah-Hamas accord, on May 4, Netanyahu
declared that Israel “cannot negotiate with a Palestinian government that is backed by
Hamas”. different
Soon after he won the Democratic nomination as candidate for the presidency, Obama
went to the powerful Israeli lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, to
declare his support for a united Jerusalem as Israel`s capital. He went to AIPAC on May
22 to dispel any doubt on his full support to Israel, a “national security interest” of the US.
“Agreed swaps”, he explicitly clarified, meant “a border that is from the one that existed
on June 4, 1967”.
Two days later on May 24, Netanyahu addressed a joint session of both Houses of the US
Congress. Almost every sentence of his received rapturous applause; almost every second
sentence won a standing ovation.
Towards the end, Netanyahu defined his terms with clarity and finality. Israel must be
accepted as a Jewish state. Palestinians who were evicted in 1948 will not be permitted to
return to their homes in Israel. They are free to go “outside the borders of Israel”. Jews
will be free to immigrate to Israel. There will be no return to the borders of June 4, 1967
and “no division of the united capital of Israel”, Jerusalem. The Palestinian state will be
demilitarised. Israel will have a “military presence along the Jordan river”. All this was
packaged as “creativity”.
The former US president Jimmy Carter said on April 2, 2008 that Hamas leaders assured
him that they would accept a peace settlement negotiated by Fatah`s Mahmoud Abbas
“on the 1967 borders”. A Place Among the Nations
In his book (1993) Netanyahu equated the Palestinian`s demand for statehood with
Nazism. In 2011, he offers them a Bantustan alleging, on May 16, that they were out to
extirpate Israel. The acclaim he won in Congress would confirm to Obama that, besides
his own pro-Israeli position, he lacks the capacity and the domestic support for any stand
that deviates significantly from Israel`s stand.
It is a dismal situation. The only hope lies in the awakening of the Arab masses and the
Palestinian leaders` resolve to forge a united front to evolve a peaceful strategy for
political struggle.
The writer is an author and a lawyer