Now that Senator Barack Obama has had his turn in the merry-go-round called Fact Finding tours by United States Senators, it is time to address the expectations we have of how he will handle the Palestinian Question. Israel and the Palestinians have been at war for the most part of the past 30 years and the chasm does not appear to be bridgeable at this point.
The Palestinian Question is summed up in the United Nation’s resolution 3236 (XXIX), which acknowledges Palestinians’ rights to include: “the right to self-determination without external interference; the right to national independence and sovereignty; and the right of the Palestinians to return to their homes and property from which they had been displaced and uprooted”.
The implementation of U.S. policy toward resolving the Palestinian Question in the past eight years has been nothing but mind-boggling in its ineptness and lack of leadership. There has been no single point of contact for a coherent policy on what exactly the role of the United States is. While we have an Ambassador in Tel Aviv, and a U.S. Consul General in Jerusalem, it seems that the orchestration of the resolution of the Palestinian/Israeli crisis is done in Washington D.C. There have been numerous visits to the region by “Senior” diplomats and the Secretary of State herself has been to the region a couple of times, yet, there does not seem to be a coherent plan on how to resolve this long-standing source of political tension and instability in the Middle East.
That the Bush Administration is no longer interested in the resolution of the Palestinian Question is no longer in doubt as has been exhibited by the unabashedly one-sided bent on its pronouncements on the issue. Most baffling of all, when an opportunity arose through the democratic elections that brought Hamas to power, the administration allowed dogma and political arrogance to divert its attention from seeing the bigger picture – that the Palestinians had to have a say in any resolution of the crisis, in addition to what the United States, Israel, the European Union or United Nations agreed upon.
Rather than objectively analyze the reason behind the sound rejection of Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah because of gross corruption, ineptitude and weak leadership, the United States became reactionary and allowed events to dictate its actions instead of the other way around.
The imposition of sanctions following the victory of Hamas was a major disservice to the efforts of past administrations in building goodwill and trust among the Palestinian people and the demonstration that the United States was willing to be an impartial interlocutor. The message sent by that singular action was that the claim by the U.S. that it was going to be the champion of democracy in the Middle East was a lie, to put it bluntly. The reactionary policy of shoring up the corrupt leaders of Fatah, who were seen as “friendly” to the U.S. was a throwback to the era of supporting illegitimate, brutal and oppressive regimes around the world by the U.S. because they agreed with our view of the world – the Shah of Iran, Saddam Hussein, Arap Moi, Mobutu Seseseko etc. What was missing in the response of the Bush administration was an understanding of the net effect of Israel’s actions in the West Bank and Gaza.
The question now is, will Barack Obama find himself in this familiar spot in the life of most U.S. presidents since the end of the Vietnam war? Will he have the courage to re-assert the impartial stance of the American government in trying to solve the Palestinian Question? From his pronouncements so far in his campaign for the U.S. presidency, there is very little to give one the hope that his will be a different agenda. When Senator Obama says “Israelis should not have to live endangered in their homes and schools. I’m hopeful that the recent understanding to end the attacks will provide some relief, but America must always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself against those who threaten its people”, the question arises, what about the Palestinian people?