In Egypt it's being asked what the ruling National Democratic Party will do for its people. Elsewhere in the Arab world, Obama looks to have failed the Israeli settlement test. Doaa El-Bey examines the issues Writers were not optimistic about a change in the US stand regarding peace in the region. The editorial of the Saudi daily Al-Riyadh questioned whether US President Barack Obama failed in his first test of peace. He put the Palestinian issue and peace in the region atop his priorities, and started by pressing Israel to halt settlement construction. But he hit an Israeli wall of opposition and was forced to agree to Israeli Prime Minster Binyamin Netanyahu's suggestion to accept to start peace negotiations without preconditions. That suggestion has been accepted before by all US administrations, dating from Harry Truman to the present. The editorial said the Arab fight with Israel and the US under the present conditions would be lost. Thus, it suggested that Arab states should take a united stand and abide by the principles of "land for peace" and no peace negotiations unless settlement building is stopped. It would not harm us if the negotiations were stopped for a year or two as long as that leads to a breakthrough, the edit added. However, "the whole matter depends on resolving inter-Palestinian differences. If they fail to unite their ranks, Arab states will lose an important tool in their fight with the two allies, the US and Israel," the edit summed up. The editorial of the London-based independent political daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi described the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as the devil's advocate because she ferociously defended Netanyahu's viewpoint to start Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations without a freeze on settlement construction. She seized the opportunity of a meeting with Arab foreign ministers in Morocco to praise the unprecedented slowdown in settlement construction which she considered concession enough for the Palestinians to return to the negotiating table. Although the Arab ministers expressed frustration in the change in the US stand, the editorial expressed fear that they would eventually espouse Clinton's stand and press Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to return to the negotiating table without halting settlement building. That fear is based on the fact that many Arab leaders asked Abbas to respond to Obama's calls to go to New York to meet Obama on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meeting. "What's the use of restarting peace negotiations under these provocative policies and complete US bias towards Israel? The Palestinian president should not return to the negotiating table with a radical rightist government that wants to judaise Jerusalem, divide Al-Aqsa Mosque and build a Jewish shrine in its court," the edit read. As a result of the present US stand, Obama lost his credibility in the Arab and Islamic worlds and has proven that his policies do not differ from that of his predecessor George Bush, the edit added. Mustafa Zein wrote that it was widely believed inside the US that Obama, who promised to make major changes, has started to realise how difficult it is to keep his promises. As soon as he came to the White House, he was engaged in a confrontation with major oil and arms companies, failed to ratify his health programme, did not dare stop the war in Afghanistan and withdrew his troops from Iraq for the sake of the war in Kabul. However, Zein added, the test in the Middle East was even more difficult because he promised a Palestinian state in two years and underlined the importance of a freeze on settlement building. But he soon bowed to Israeli pressure and started pressing on the Palestinians to start negotiations without an Israeli freeze on settlements. In addition, Clinton travelled from Jerusalem to Morocco to ask Arab foreign ministers to persuade Abbas to accept Netanyahu's offer. "But if the Arabs and Abbas accept the offer, the inevitable result will be more Palestinian division and more differences between the authority and the people. And this could be a magic recipe for civil war," Zein summed up in the London- based independent political daily Al-Hayat. Writers commented on the impact of the massive blasts that shook Baghdad on Sunday 25 October, reminding them of the black Wednesday explosions of two months ago. Nesrine Murad called that day "black Sunday" because it aimed at two targets that represent Iraqi sovereignty: the Ministry of Justice and provincial offices in central Baghdad. She criticised the Iraqi government for failing to find the perpetrators of both blasts and consequently asked the help of the UN Security Council. "The security bodies responsible for investigating these blasts are in bad shape," Murad wrote in the United Arab Emirates' political daily Al-Bayan. However, she focussed on the type of explosives used in the blasts which killed and injured some 1,000 people including many children whose bodies were torn apart. That raised the question of whether these are special types of explosives that aim to cleanse the Iraqis. But these explosives, as the writer argued, are not available with the opposition, militias or even the government. There are only two states involved in Iraq that possess these weapons -- Israel and the US. The two blasts also exposed the fragility of the political process that the occupation created in the hope of keeping Iraq on the brink of civil war. The Islamic parties are also contributing in making the situation in Iraq worse, as Murad added, because they are harping on racial and factional discrimination. The two Kurdish parties are creating problems with the central government and other Iraqi minorities in order to usurp all oil revenues and serve secessionist interests. The issue of Kirkuk, for instance, has become a nightmare to whoever is involved. Furthermore, Washington, the main supporter of the political process in Iraq, is facing a difficult situation domestically and abroad. Still, Murad added, it is premature to declare total despair in the political process in Iraq. "Iraqi officials should seize the short period before the withdrawal of all occupation forces to work hard in reforming the present absurd situation, or else one will hardly feel optimistic about the future."
