Forget the naysayers: Obama has made significant progress in changing US Middle East policy, writes Emad Gad* On 4 June 2009, US President Barack Obama delivered an address from Cairo University, heralding a new epoch in the relations between East and West. He spoke of an era of "dialogue" rather than a "clash" between cultures and civilisations, and of a drive to promote law-based settlements to complex conflicts, most notably the Arab-Israeli conflict. The speech had an overwhelmingly positive effect, so much so that the ideas he expressed in it were sufficient to earn him the Nobel Peace Prize, which is customarily awarded to peacemakers on the basis of their accomplishments. Still, there were sceptics. Some wondered at his true motives and intentions. Others questioned the ability of the young, African-American president to deliver on his hopes and pledges, arguing how difficult it would be for him to transform his dreams into practical policies in view of the complexities of the current situation and prevalent attitudes in the US and the intricacies of decision-making processes and dynamics that are so resistant to change by a single individual, even one as powerful as the occupant of the Oval Office. The anniversary of the Cairo University address occasioned numerous and frequently contradictory appraisals of how Obama has measured up to his stated hopes and intentions. Some observed that he is proving to be little more than an ephemeral "phenomenon" in American politics -- chiefly a speech phenomenon. Others remarked that he is a talented actor capable of donning many masks. Here, I would like to approach an appraisal of Obama's performance over the past year from the perspective of a single issue: the Palestinian cause. Before beginning, it is necessary to make several observations. First, we are speaking of only one year. This is a very short period, especially for newly elected administrations that use most of their initial year in power to study the issues and examine alternative positions. Second, the subject at hand is an extremely complex conflict unfolding in a hostile environment. Third, we must keep in the back of our minds an important hypothetical question: If Obama had not been elected and if US foreign policy had continued to be shaped by the conformity between US neoconservative thinking and the Israeli rightwing, would this region and the rest of the world have been propelled further towards the nightmarish "clash of civilisations"? Finally, it is essential to analyse all the components of the issue as objectively as possible, which means avoiding the general inclination many Arab commentators and analysts have to issue pat, categorical judgements. Some developments in the Palestinian cause and US-Israeli relations tell of significant progress with regards to the promotion of a negotiated settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Obama began his term by assigning George Mitchell the task of overseeing Palestinian-Israeli negotiations. A seasoned negotiator, Mitchell had scored a remarkable success in engineering a settlement to a conflict no less acute and persistent than the Palestinian-Israeli conflict -- the conflict in Northern Ireland. Obama had also asked Israel to halt settlement construction before negotiations began. When he met with the refusal of the Israeli government, he reproached the Israeli prime minister more than once, switched the mode of negotiations to indirect talks, used other means to pressure Binyamin Netanyahu, and eventually succeeded in wresting an agreement from that government to halt settlement expansion, including construction for "natural growth", without having to issue a formal declaration to this effect. During that time, Israeli officials charged that Obama was the reason behind the Palestinian Authority's adamance on the demand for a halt to settlement construction. They claimed that the Palestinian side had never insisted on this demand in advance of any previous negotiations and that all previous rounds of negotiations since Oslo (1993) had taken place while settlement construction was in progress. However, they added, Palestinian negotiators did not want to appear "less Palestinian than Obama", so dug in their heels on the demand for a halt to settlement expansion. In addition, during the past year, the Obama administration capitalised on the support of J-Street, an American Jewish organisation that supports a peace process that aims to create an independent and viable Palestinian state. The more attentive ear of the Obama administration has helped this recently founded organisation gain ground against AIPAC (the American Israel Political Affairs Committee), the bastion of the Israeli rightwing in the US, and expose the growing breach in mainstream American Jewish opinion. Simultaneously, Washington has succeeded in breaching the Israeli right. When Netanyahu tried to impress upon Washington that a settlement freeze would cause the collapse of his ruling coalition, the representative of the keystone of that coalition, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the spiritual leader of the Shas Party, issued a statement saying, "Preserving relations with Washington takes priority over building settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem." In tandem with the foregoing, the Obama administration over the past year has gradually lifted America's political and legal cover for Israeli policies. Because much of the hatred for American policy in the Middle East stems from the growing emphasis given to the Israeli component in Washington's agenda for this region, Obama grew convinced that reducing this emphasis by reducing Washington's tendency to automatically adopt and blindly defend Israeli policies and viewpoints would help improve Washington's image and promote its interests in this region. In this regard, it is noteworthy that Washington approved the explicit mention of Israel in the closing statement of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference in New York in May and that, just before this, it had given its backing to the project to make the Middle East a nuclear weapons-free zone. The most notable development for the Palestinian cause during the past year was Washington's creation of an alternative plan to the negotiating process it is brokering. The Obama administration has set a two-year time frame for this process (one year of which has passed). If these negotiations fail, it will move to plan B, which would involve taking the matter to the UN Security Council and seeking a resolution calling for the creation of a Palestinian state, or convening an international conference that would declare the establishment of such a state. In the meantime, regardless of whether the current negotiating process succeeds or plan B needs to be put into play, the infrastructure for the forthcoming state needs to be put in place. In fact, work to this end is currently in progress through US-European cooperation with the Salam Fayyad government. Unfortunately, from the UN Partition Resolution (Resolution 181 of 1947) to the Oslo Accords (signed 13 September 1993), little attention had been devoted to this need. Nor did this situation change significantly in the Oslo period. Fatah, which had represented a revolutionary movement in the framework of the Palestine Liberation Organisation suddenly had to shift gears into governing mode, without passing through the intermediate phase of state building. The leadership style of the powerful and charismatic president Yasser Arafat helped little. The late Palestinian president fought the creation of effective institutions of government that would have reduced the personalised nature of his command and control system. Lacking Arafat's charisma and influence, Mahmoud Abbas, Arafat's successor, was more open to the idea of institutionalised government. In fact, his choice of Fayyad as head of the Ramallah government was intended to signal his desire for power sharing, and to pave the practical way towards statehood. Upon becoming prime minister, Fayyad adopted an ambitious plan for inaugurating the edifices of a Palestinian state, beginning with the financial component and then moving to the security component. Over the past few years, Fayyad has largely succeeded in his task of laying the foundations for statehood, with the encouragement and assistance of the US and the EU. Because this process proceeded independently of the negotiating process, some commentators have dubbed him the "Palestinian Ben-Gurion". David Ben-Gurion launched the edifices of Israel during the British mandate period, so that when the mandate ended on 15 May 1948, the Israeli flag was hoisted over already-existing government institutions, permitting a smooth transition to statehood. Today, six decades after the Resolution 181, we are witnessing a similar phenomenon in Palestine. The institutions of statehood are nearing completion, leaving only the decision to formally declare the establishment of a state. Indeed, Fayyad was perfectly clear on this when he stated, earlier this year, that a Palestinian state could be declared unilaterally in a year. He foresaw that by this time preparations for statehood would have been completed or, at least, almost completed. He also realised that either negotiations with Israel would have arrived at an advanced enough stage to bring Palestine to the threshold of a declaration of statehood or that, in the event of Israeli foot-dragging, the question would have been turned over to the Security Council for international resolution to this effect. In the latter case, whether the US had given the EU the green light to pursue the Security Council route or backed a Palestinian- Arab appeal to the Security Council, the Israeli occupation would no longer have the assured protection of the American veto. In conclusion, much has been accomplished on the ground for the Palestinian cause in the year since Obama's address from Cairo. How Obama will build on this is the question. * The writer is editor-in-chief of Mukhtarat Israelia, a periodical published by Al-Ahram Centre for Strategic and Political Studies.
