One day after Barack Obama’s landmark speech to the Muslim world in Cairo, it is becoming increasingly clear that his attempts to be “even handed” on the Israel-Palestine conflict have earned him few friends among Palestinian groups. Having been slammed by Islamists and Palestinian militants just hours after his speech (see previous blog entry), today it emerged that the American president’s refusal to condemn the very legitimacy of the state of Israel had even infuriated so-called moderates.

Writing in today’s Guardian Ali Abunimah, co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and a prominent Palestinian opinion former, tore into Obama in the following terms:

“He gave his audience a detailed lesson on the Holocaust and explicitly used it as a justification for the creation of Israel. “It is also undeniable,” the president said, “that the Palestinian people – Muslims and Christians – have suffered in pursuit of a homeland. For more than sixty years they have endured the pain of dislocation.”

“Suffered in pursuit of a homeland? The pain of dislocation? They already had a homeland. They suffered from being ethnically cleansed and dispossessed of it and prevented from returning on the grounds that they are from the wrong ethno-national group. Why is that still so hard to say?”

Later the author adds:

“He may have more determination than his predecessor but he remains committed to an unworkable two-state “vision” aimed not at restoring Palestinian rights, but preserving Israel as an enclave of Israeli Jewish privilege. It is a dead end.”

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US President Barack Obama’s speech to the Muslim world in Cairo today has elicited an ecstatic reaction from his supporters in the West but it has already been rebuffed by Islamists such as the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran. “Moderate” Arab countries and institutions focused on the parts of his speech which suited them such as his calls for Israel to work towards a two-state solution with the Palestinians while ignoring his simultaneous calls for the Arabs to recognise Israel and end anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial.

Here is a set of comments on his speech from Islamists across the Middle East which suggest that pretty speeches will not be sufficient to deal with the real problems the region faces:

1) Hezbollah spokesman Hassan Fadlallah. Reported by the BBC:

“The Islamic world does not need moral or political sermons. It needs a fundamental change in American policy beginning from a halt to complete support for Israeli aggression on the region, especially on Lebanese and Palestinians, to an American withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan and a stop to its interference in the affairs of Islamic countries. We have not seen any change in US policy towards the Palestinian cause.”

2) Joint statement by eight Damascus-based radical Palestinian factions, including Hamas. Reported by the Associated Press:

“Obama’s speech is an attempt to mislead people and create more illusions to improve America’s aggressive image in the Arab and Islamic world.”

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June 12, the day of Iran’s presidential elections, could be a fateful day in the modern history of the Middle East. The elections are real but not liberal or democratic — candidates are vetted carefully by the religious authorities who regardless of the outcome remain the country’s real leaders. Nonetheless the difference in perceptions in the West in general and Israel in particular of the two leading candidates could mean the difference between military action to stop Iran acquiring nuclear weapons or a continuation of the current policy consensus of sleep walking towards a nuclear armed Iran.

If the incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, stays in power it becomes more likely that Israel, with or without American approval, will launch a military attack. Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, will not want to be remembered as the man who allowed Iran to go nuclear on his watch, especially in view of the current president’s oft stated remarks about destroying Israel by wiping it “from the page of history”. The Obama administration, deeply concerned about Ahmadinejad but lacking the will to take action itself, may just be pursuaded to let the Israelis do the dirty work on their own. On the other hand, if Ahmadinejad’s chief rival, Mir Hossein Mousavi, wins the elections the calls for restraint from Washington may be so strong that Israel has no choice but to hold off. Mousavi is billed as a “moderate” in most press reporting in the West. Washington will therefore likely tell Israel that Tehran must be given time to show that it is charting a new course. Of course, since some intelligence estimates suggest Iran could cross the nuclear threshold within a year, restraint could very well equal allowing Iran to go nuclear unmolested.

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Even the most passionate supporters of European integration are now starting to voice their concerns about the future of the EU publicly. In a panicky looking article distributed by Project Syndicate and picked up by the Guardian, Germany’s Joschka Fischer — foreign minister from 1998-2005 — openly frets about Germany’s increasing scepticism towards the European Union. Two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall and almost as long since Germany reunified he sees nationalism replacing Europeanism as the dominant current among the German people and its main political parties.

“…while Europe no doubt remains important for asserting both common and national interests, it is no longer a project of the future. The German perspective is thus shifting in the direction of that of France and the UK: the EU is increasingly seen as a framework and precondition for asserting national interests, rather than as an aim in itself.”

For Fischer, this is a deeply worrying state of affairs. But he seems quite unable to understand why it has come to pass.

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