Obama faces repeat of Clinton fiasco as “moderate” Palestinians slam his views on Israel
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.”
In other words, unless Obama says Israel is a racist state which has no right to exist, unless he participates in lies about a pre-1947 Palestinian homeland which itself never existed — it is quite extraordinary how this appalling perversion of the truth continues to be perpetuated — and unless he joins in with the mass demonisation of Israel in the Arab and Muslim world he will be rebuffed and disrespected.
Unfortunately, this is all looking depressingly similar to the fate of Bill Clinton who thought he had brokered a fair and equitable settlement between Israelis and Palestinians in 2000 only to have the Palestinian leadership reject it.
If he is to avoid the same humiliation, Obama needs to understand that the real root cause of the Israel-Palestine conflict remains what it has always been: a deep seated rejection among mainstream Palestinians of Israel’s fundamental right to exist as a Jewish state.
To read the full article quoted in this entry, click here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/04/barack-obama-middleeast
July 20th, 2009 at 11:07 pm
“a deep seated rejection among mainstream Palestinians of Israel’s fundamental right to exist as a Jewish state”
le plus ca change………
The Palestinians have not learned since Haj Amin El Husseini formed his SS battlion to hunt down partisans, gypsies and jews in WWII.
After the war the Haj removed back to Palestine to repeat the effort(with not a little help from Glubb Pasha and British army officers directing point blank artillery fire into defenceless jewish civilian areas of Jerusalem – read Amos Oz’s autobiography for more on this shameful episode of British intervention against Israel even before it got off the ground)
The terror of the Palestinians carried on in the 1950′s with the so-called Fedayeen, and then again with Arafat’s PLO terror (with a short break for Oslo) until his death.
Palestinians have never come to terms with Israel maybe in large part due to the support they get from the west in their intransigence. Why ever accept Israel when the West will help dismember it, a west that never allows Israel’s enemies to lose soundly, and always help its enemies back on their feet for the next round.