“Is it that he has to say these things,” the official wondered out loud, “or is that the Israeli lobby is so strong that he daren’t execute a different foreign policy even if he wants to?” Senator Obama clarified his remarks later, backtracking somewhat and falling in line with official U.S. policy (and in recognition of U.N. resolutions) that the status of Jerusalem is a matter for negotiation between the Israelis and the Palestinians, but the Iranian official also added that day, wistfully, “How is it that there is no Muslim lobby in America that can even come close to having even a little influence, let alone challenge the Israeli lobby?”
The simplest answer to that is that Islam-phobia, if not outright anti-Muslim sentiment, rages unchecked in America, surely one reason that the son of a Muslim father, one who even continues to use his most Muslim of middle names, feels obliged to have his “more Catholic” moments and has to label the “accusations” that he is a Muslim a “smear.” (I was unaware that being a Muslim could be either.) Given those moments, and Senator Obama’s almost allergic stance toward anything to do with Islam, is there any reason to believe that he can play a different and more encouraging role in the Middle East peace process? (Senator McCain, we know, has not distinguished himself from the Bush administration on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict [or Israeli conflict with any entity], including in his steadfast refusal to commit to talks with groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas, despite the Israeli government’s own backdoor negotiations with both those stated enemies.) Can one take Obama at his word (his early words anyway) that one needs to talk to enemies as well as friends in order to resolve conflict?
“Change We Can Believe In,” one hopes, includes candidates for public office who don’t lie, and some “change” for the Muslim world, too. But perhaps it doesn’t matter, for Obama has the advantage of perception: that he will bring a new and more evenhanded approach to the Middle East that at the very least, according to him, involves respect for all parties involved. It’s one that has been eagerly awaited by parties (read: Muslim) who consider themselves perpetually aggrieved.
Obama’s summer trip to the Middle East, partly undertaken to reassure American Jews of his steadfast commitment to Israel and partly to burnish his foreign policy credentials, unfortunately did not do much to assuage the Muslim “street” with his appearances in Jerusalem, Amman and the West Bank (meeting with Mahmoud Abbas, something McCain has not yet done), simply because he appeared to be following a traditional U.S. line on the matter of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, albeit a far more nuanced one than in recent years. (Had Senator Obama ventured into Gaza, even without meeting with Hamas’ senior leadership, he would have gone far in Arab eyes, but realistically, he may have also lost the election before he set foot back on American soil. Ditto Damascus.)
Perhaps recognizing that a Hamas endorsement may win him friends in the Middle East, as it did when Hamas suggested they would be happy if he were president, but lose him many more votes in the U.S., Obama has since gone out of his way to distance himself from his earlier language of talking to one’s enemies. So Hezbollah, Hamas, and Bashar Assad will have to keep waiting for Obama’s attentions. But Obama did miss an opportunity nonetheless (even in his meeting with Abbas) to at least bring up the question of Hamas. It’s all well and good to dismiss them as a “terrorist organization” and refuse to deal with them, but if Obama is to be an effective peace-broker, he will have to address the issue of Hamas sooner rather than later. Mahmoud Abbas is incapable of making a deal with Israel without Hamas (or any deal he can make will be rendered useless), and he must be pressured to figure out a way to make a deal first with Hamas before he can make a state-creating deal with Israel. There will be no three-state solution, nor will there be a Palestinian state in the West Bank alone.
The issue of Hamas, the inconveniently democratically elected political party, refusing to recognize Israel’s right to exist (as a Jewish state), the issue that President Bush, John McCain and now Barack Obama have used as an excuse to ignore them, has always been a red herring: Who really cares if they recognize a “right to exist” before a deal is made, or if they “renounce terrorism”? What matters is whether they will explicitly or implicitly recognize that “right” and renounce the use of not just terror but all violence in negotiations, or in a final deal, and that should be the stance of anyone claiming to want to further the cause of peace in the region. Negotiations, after all, have the goal of reaching an agreement satisfactory to all parties.
Obama’s strength in his approach to the Middle East until now, as far as the Arabs are concerned, has been that he does not favor preconditions in any potential negotiations, but seemingly in this case, he does, which may be partly a reason for the somewhat subdued reaction to his trip from ordinary Arabs in the region, according to press reports. Senator Obama may have succeeded in appearing “presidential,” in dominating the world’s television screens and in seducing the Germans and the French, but he made no inroads with Middle Easterners, except, perhaps, in Israel.
Senator John McCain, who is likely to continue an unconditional-support-for-Israel policy, doesn’t seem to even consider the Palestinian issue a particularly pressing one. He has said that Iran is the No. 1 foreign policy challenge we face. Of course, many ordinary Americans who view foreign policy in terms of how it directly affects them might think that Iraq, with over a hundred thousand U.S. troops stationed there, is the true foreign policy issue, and others, including many on the left, believe that crushing Al Qaeda and capturing or killing Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants is the No. 1 foreign policy issue, but Senator McCain is rather more concerned with Iran, at least for now.
