Opinion Editorials, September 2010

Obama Speaks at the UN:

Goodbye to the Palestinian-Israeli Peace

By Alan Hart

Redress, Al-Jazeerah, CCUN, September 27, 2010

Alan Hart argues that US President Barack Obama’s speech at the United Nations demonstrates beyond doubt that he is not interested in a just solution of the Palestine-Israel conflict and is not prepared to declare openly and sincerely that the occupation must end.

On marks out of ten for his speech to the UN on the subject of ending the conflict in and over Palestine that became Israel, I’d give President Obama minus five.

Earlier this month I wrote a piece with the headline “Obama has signalled his coming complete surrender to Zionism and its lobby”. That surrender, it seems to me, is now effectively a fait accompli.

“After 60 years in the community of nations, Israel’s existence must not be a subject for debate,” Obama proclaimed. “It should be clear to all that efforts to chip away at Israel’s legitimacy will only be met by the unshakeable opposition of the United States.”

"The question is: WHICH Israel must not have its existence debated? Israel inside its borders as they were on the eve of the 1967 war or the greater Israel of today? That’s not a question Obama is prepared to ask let alone answer.”
Leaving aside the matter of whether Zionism’s monster child is legitimate or not (I say it’s not), only a complete idiot would deny that Israel exists. The question is: WHICH Israel must not have its existence debated? Israel inside its borders as they were on the eve of the 1967 war or the greater Israel of today? That’s not a question Obama is prepared to ask let alone answer.

In my view the most appropriate response to Obama from the Arab and wider Muslim would be something like this: all American presidents who refuse to demand (with the promise of sanctions if necessary) that Israel end its occupation of all Arab land grabbed in 1967 will only be met by the unshakeable opposition of all Arabs and other Muslims everywhere.

We now know what Obama himself expects of those Arabs who “count themselves as friends of the Palestinians”. They “must seize the opportunity for a peace agreement that will lead to a Palestinian state”. They can do that, Obama added, “by supporting the Palestinian Authority financially and politically, and by coming to terms with Israel’s existence.”

Again the question: the existence of WHICH Israel must the Arabs come to terms with? To Obama I say, “Mr President, until you are prepared to answer this question, you will have no credibility whatsoever in the Arab and wider Muslim world, at least far as ‘the street’ (the masses) is concerned.”

Obama’s notion that there is an opportunity for a peace agreement to be seized can only be the product of desperate and deluded wishful thinking on his part, unless he believes that he can bribe and bully the discredited Palestinian Authority into accepting crumbs from Zionism’s table. It’s not totally impossible that he might be able to do so, but that would only provoke a Palestinian civil war. Could that be what Zionism really wants, in order to have a pretext for completing the ethnic cleansing of Palestine?

Perhaps most depressing of all was Obama’s statement about the need for an independent Palestinian state. It is required, he said, to provide Israel with “true security”. No mention of it being needed to go some way to righting the terrible wrong done to the Palestinians in Zionism’s name.

Yes, President Obama did call on Israel to continue its moratorium on new settlement activity. The question is: what is he going to do when, in a few days or three months from now, Israel defies him?

We know the answer. Nothing.

Alan Hart is a former ITN and BBC "Panorama" foreign correspondent and a Middle East specialist. His Latest book Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, is a three-volume epic in its American edition.  He blogs at www.alanhart.net and tweets at  www.twitter.com/alanauthor.

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