The Deeper Reason for Disappointment

Submitted by Ron Thompson (United States), Jun 3, 2009 at 20:29

Although I strongly disagree with Obama pressuring Israel on the settlements in any way, I'm disapponted in him for the deeper reason that such a stand by can only mean he doesn't comprehend the fundamental reasons why it's not only foolish but delusional to expect either the Israelis or Palestinians to agree to any Palestinian State the other side would accept.

As was mordantly said at a conference held today in Washington, the 16 year search for a two-state solution is the most successful failed policy of many decades, with billions of dollars poured down the money hole - simply wasted - amid non-stop global diplomacy over that period, when the only result is that everybody is worse off and in a more dangerous position than they were in 1993.

And still, the fact of the failure of this policy is not yet grasped by the Washington foreign policy establishment, nor by the new administration.

Obama, and Clinton and other members of the administration (where is Rahm Emanuel and the usually astute Axelrod?) have shown they not only fail to understand the rift between Hamas and Fatah, but that they have not grasped the relationship of this divide to the larger and deepening split in the Moslem world. A split which is becoming not only a religion-fueled civil war at the core of Islam, but, as Pipes puts it, a New Cold War akin to that between Russia and the United States. i.e. between the Shia States and non-state terrorist groups aligned with Iran, and the Sunni States grouped around Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

It is huge failure of foreign policy leadership for Obama and those in his administration to be focusing on a secondary disagreement with Israel instead of educating the Public that this Civil War/Cold War is the fundamental fact of the Middle East powder keg. That Islam's dispute with Israel is a proxy battle and a distraction from the larger struggle which pits Islam not only against itself, but against any sort of basically rational relationship with the rest of the world, and with a worldwide modernity defined as democracy within the rule of law, and a sensibly regulated globalized capitalism.

It's a shame and surprising that Obama has put himself so quickly and so completely on this dead-end path.

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