:: Nihal Singh

Can Obama engineer justice for Palestine?

S. Nihal Singh

May.28 : Returning to the Prime Minister’s office after a gap, Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu has won the opening round in his confrontation with US President Barack Obama. Israelis were nervous about the new President’s activism in seeking an opening to Iran and a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the beginning, rather than the end, of his term.

Mr Netanyahu left Washington without agreeing to a two-state solution, linking it to Palestinians accepting Israel as a Jewish state, and extracting a deadline out of Mr Obama — the end of the year — for substantial progress to be made on tackling Iran’s nuclear programme. The Israeli Prime Minister showed yet again what astute diplomacy buttressed by unparalleled clout in Washington can do.

It has been the Holy Grail for years that Israel and Palestine should exist as independent nations in peace on the basis of their 1967 borders and even President George W. Bush proclaimed it from the housetops while letting Israel do anything it wanted to consolidate its colonial rule over Palestinians. Now the new right-wing government in Israel has elevated the two-state solution, as it is called, to a dispute, thus ensuring that ultimately accepting it in theory would be marked as a concession given to Palestinians.

It is no secret that Israel had a role in egging on the neo-conservatives in power in the Bush era forcibly to dethrone Saddam Hussein, a thorn in its flesh. But the result of the Iraq war was immeasurably to increase Iran’s influence in the region with the installation of a Shia majority regime in Baghdad. Israel’s theme song changed and propaganda offensive was mounted to clip Tehran’s wings.

There has been public debate in Israel, and some preparations, for taking out Iran’s nuclear establishments, Tel Aviv awaiting Washington’s nod. That nod has not been given; with the result that Israel has mounted a new propaganda offensive saying that Iran going nuclear represents an existential threat to itself. In the process, Israel has linked the conflict with Palestinians to a reasonable outcome of Iran’s nuclear programme.

The truth is that Mr Netanyahu and his ultra-right wing foreign minister have no intention of giving Palestinians their state and have set about obfuscating the core regional conflict by adding new conditions. Demolishing more Arab homes and changing its typography are tightening Israel’s grip on occupied East Jerusalem and even as West Bank settlements are expanded, some token demolition of outposts are sops to bleeding hearts.

These are early days yet and it would be unfair to judge Mr Obama’s promise of new openings by the first battle he has lost. But there are already murmurs of disapproval from reputed American experts on secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s less than enthusiastic endorsement of her President’s policies and the fact that such dyed-in-the-wool pro-Israelis as Dennis Ross have been appointed to key positions for the region. It is also being suggested that Mr Obama lacks the grand vision in reordering America’s relations in the region, in particular towards Tehran. His predecessor’s programme for regime change, for instance, has not been terminated.

It is well understood that any solution to Iran’s nuclear programme must allow it to continue conducting the full nuclear fuel cycle on Iranian soil under international oversight and rules. But one section of the Obama administration, including Ms Clinton, is pushing the permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany to impose tougher sanctions on Iran if it does not limit its nuclear programme by the September session of the UN General Assembly. And Mr Netanyahu got President Obama to endorse the formation of a high-level US-Israeli working group to identify coercive options if necessary.

Already, what is on offer to Palestinians resembles Swiss cheese and Prime Minister Netanyahu’s concept seems to be Palestinians living in policed cantons with autonomous municipal functions on the West Bank while the Gaza Strip is choked off, permitting little other than minimal essential supplies after the devastation of the last war Israel fought, its methods now the subject of a United Nations investigation.

Complicating the picture is the forthcoming Iranian presidential election on June 12, but the essential Iranian stance on the nuclear programme will remain the same whether Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or one of his adversaries occupies the President’s office. The gesture made by Mr Obama on the Iranian New Year has been duly acknowledged, but the bottom line is what the supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei pronounced: words must be matched by deeds.

Politics, of course, is the art of the possible and Mr Obama has formidable problems to contend with: the economic meltdown and two wars, to begin with. Can he take on the might of the Israeli lobby at home to give Palestinians justice in a conflict with emotions and religious fundamentalism running high on both sides of the divide? Israelis are now selling the line that moderate Arab states can be in tacit agreement with Tel Aviv in curbing Iran’s regional clout.

It is equally clear that no amount of sophistry can alter the essence of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: the continued colonial occupation and usurpation of Palestinian land by an occupying power that has bottled up the Gaza Strip and made life hell for Palestinians on the West Bank by erecting hundreds of checkposts they must daily negotiate many times whenever they leave home. There are, of course, separate exclusive roads for Israeli settlers.

Palestinians, on their part, remain divided between Fatah and Hamas factions, the latter controlling the Gaza Strip. Indeed, the Palestinian Authority is in danger of becoming obsolescent, with little prospect of renewing its mandate, given Israel’s control over borders that would deny Palestinians free access to vote. In the short term, it might suit Israelis to cement Palestinian divisions, but the important question is: Where is it taking Israel and the region in the medium and long term?

In the end, only Mr Obama can provide the answer. Does he have the vision and daring to leave the legacy of being the peacemaker in West Asia, aside from being the first black to reach the White House?