| ||||||||||
| Homepage Articles Blog | ||||||||||
| You can follow Daniel Pipes and the Middle East Forum on their Facebook and Twitter pages. | ||||||||||
Please take a moment to visit and log in at the subscriber area, and submit your city & country location. We will use this information in future to invite you to any events that we organize in your area. Obama vs Netanyahu, Round Threeby Daniel Pipes http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2011/05/obama-vs-netanyahu-round-three
  Be the first of your friends to like this.Barack Obama gave two major policy speeches about the Middle East in quick succession, May 19 and 22; and while he discussed a number of Middle East topics, the Arab-Israeli conflict portion received the lion's share of attention. Analysts and politicians who care about the Middle East's only democratic country (yes, I use that formulation now that Turkey is under AKP control) have excoriated Obama and see Israel in great jeopardy. For example, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich called the speech "a disaster" and said that Obama, in effect, asked Israel "to commit suicide." I see things more positively for Israel. My reasoning: This is Obama's third gratuitous, unprovoked, and unilateral picking of a fight with Israel. The prior two took place in May 2009 and March 2010: in the one, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared no Israeli building even in eastern Jerusalem and in the other, Vice President Joe Biden got (mock?) outraged when such building did take place. In all three cases, the fight dwelt on a secondary issue that few had been focused on – Israeli building in the first two cases and the June 4, 1967 ceasefire lines as the basis for a permanent border agreement – until Obama turned them into headlines. Obama's picking a fight led in all cases to an immediate hardening of positions by both Israelis and Palestinians. Israelis retreated, wounded, disinclined to make concessions, while Palestinians added Obama's demands, Jerusalem and the 1967 lines, to their prior list of demands of Israel.
When Obama realized his mistake – that Israeli governments make concessions more readily when relations with Washington are strong and Palestinians need to be pressured, not coddled – he crawled back to the Israeli prime minister, making nice as though nothing had happened. This has occurred twice already, in September 2009 and July 2010. The Washington Post's Dana Milbank used choice language to describe the latter episode, describing a "routed and humiliated" Obama in a White House flying "the white flag of surrender." I predict that a "routed and humiliated" Obama will regret his ill-chosen fight over the 1967 lines and, if he follows his prior schedule, should be crawling back to the prime minister in about four months' time, or September 2011. In conclusion: As someone opposed to Arab-Israeli negotiations while war is underway and to Obama's presidency, I take solace in his making a hash of diplomacy and politics. This way, Israel is less likely to make more counterproductive "painful concessions" and, with a slew of former Obama supporters abandoning him, Obama has hurt his chances for reelection. (May 24, 2011) Related Topics: Arab-Israel conflict & diplomacy, US policy Tantawi – The New Mubarak?by Daniel Pipes http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2011/05/tantawi-the-new-mubarak
Be the first of your friends to like this.I have predicted that the Egyptian military government will remain essentially unchanged even after the departure of Hosni Mubarak in February 2011. Here are developments that confirm or contradict that argument, starting with a quote from Muhannad Galal, a 27-year-old executive at the Cairo offices of Yahoo!: "We have the same mentality in place making decisions." (May 20, 2011)
May 21, 2011 update: Egypt's strongman, Mohamed Hussein Tantawi announced that Riyadh has pledged US$4 billion in aid to Egypt. Comments: (1) As one Egyptian puts it, these funds assure that "Egypt remains an ideological colony of Saudi Arabia." (2) One can only guess how much money – perhaps more than this amount – is directed by the Saudi authorities toward Salafi groups in Egypt. May 22, 2011 update: An Ethiopian commentator, Keffyalew Gebremedhin, notes that "the Mubarak regime is only decapitated but its unhealthy legacies have not been uprooted yet." May 24, 2011 update: Khaled Abu Toameh writes at "Egypt Run by a Military Dictatorship" that "Hosni Mubarak is gone, but dictatorship in Egypt is still alive and kicking. … In light of growing uncertainty and scenes of anarchy and lawlessness throughout Egypt, it is highly likely that General Mohammed Tantawi, head of the military council, and his colleagues will not cede power to a civilian and democratic regime." Related Topics: Egypt This text may be reposted or forwarded so long as it is presented as an integral whole with complete information provided about its author, date, place of publication, and original URL. | ||||||||||
To subscribe to this list, go to http://www.danielpipes.org/list_subscribe.php Sign up for related (but non-duplicating) e-mail services: |
Send
Comment
RSS
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment