U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaking on Obama's foreign policy at the U.S.-Islamic World Forum On the morning of Valentine's Day, as Dick Cheney was once again calumniating the President on network television, I was in Doha, Qatar, listening to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton attempt to explain Barack Obama's foreign policy to several hundred restive representatives of the Islamic world. The event was the annual U.S.-Islamic World Forum, sponsored by the Brookings Institution, and the mood was a bit more testy than last year's Obama-induced euphoria. There was a universal sense among the Muslim delegates that the President had offered fine words in the past year but not much action. And now, Clinton entertained a question from Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, on behalf of an interfaith group of religious leaders, about the suffering of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip: Why wasn't the U.S. doing more to alleviate it? (See pictures of Obama's diplomacy.)
Good question. In fact, it cut to the heart of the Obama–foreign policy frustrations. Clinton's tough talk on Iran got most of the U.S. headlines, but her position on Gaza was far more important to the Islamic participants at Doha, especially the Arabs. The Israelis have stubbornly maintained a stiff blockade after pounding Gaza into submission in January 2009. Food is allowed in; Gazans aren't starving. But tight restrictions remain on construction materials for rebuilding homes and public buildings and on many of the nonessential necessities of life (Israel recently lifted the ban on cigarettes). Israel has suggested three conditions for lifting the siege to Hamas, which controls Gaza: no more rocket attacks against Israeli civilians, no arms smuggling into Gaza and the release of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier kidnapped by Hamas in June 2006. The rocket attacks have pretty much stopped and the arms smuggling — I am told — is an issue that can be negotiated, but the fate of Shalit has been an insane sticking point. On the evening before Clinton's speech, Recep Tayyip Erdogan — the Prime Minister of Turkey and an erstwhile ally of Israel's — was cheered when he raged against the conditions in Gaza, calling it "an open-air prison." (See pictures of George W. Bush in the Middle East.)
Clinton's response to McCarrick's question was forceful but inadequate. She reminded the delegates that "violence preceded the suffering," a local coup d'état by Hamas, which then used Gaza "as a launching pad" for wholesale rocket attacks against Israel. She acknowledged the humanitarian suffering and said the U.S. had pressured Israel to increase the flow of essentials like food "from a trickle to a flood," but ultimately, she concluded, the fate of Gaza would have to await a comprehensive settlement between Israel and the Palestinians.
Wrong answer. And not merely because the Islamic participants in Doha were hoping for something more concrete. It was wrong because it demonstrated the chronic weakness of Obama's Middle East strategy. As soon as he was inaugurated, the President went directly for the big prize: a comprehensive two-state solution. But the timing was lousy. The Israelis had just elected a right-wing government led by Benjamin Netanyahu, whose coalition partners were vehemently opposed to negotiations. The Palestinians were fiercely divided between Fatah, which controls the West Bank, and the more militant Hamas. U.S. envoy George Mitchell's slow-moving effort to start talks tanked because of Israel's unwillingness to stop building illegal settlements on Palestinian land. The Administration seems boggled now; the President told me in a January interview that the Middle East had proved tougher than he'd expected. It was not an admission that inspired confidence in the region. (See pictures of heartbreak in the Middle East.)
It might have been more profitable for Obama to have concentrated on trying to fix Gaza first. It was the immediate crisis when he took office, and it remains so. It is difficult to solve, but not impossible. Success would set a predicate: the Administration could be relied upon to work hard, and pragmatically, on vexing issues along the way to an ultimate deal. It could be trusted by all sides. That possibility still exists, although senior Administration officials seem unduly pessimistic about the chances of success. And there is a big obstacle here: the best way to resolve Gaza is for the U.S. to quietly convince Hamas that if it gives up Shalit — a huge issue for the Israelis — the U.S. would work to persuade Israel to lift the siege. The trouble is, the U.S. won't talk to Hamas. But if Obama's policy really is about engaging our enemies, he needs to engage Hamas — and Hamas needs to respond. Quickly. (Joe Klein interviews Obama on his first year in office.)
There are other obstacles. Three of the four interested parties — the Israelis, the West Bank Palestinians and Egypt — are more than happy to let Hamas suffer in perpetuity. That may make political sense in the short term, but it is creating an intractable long-term problem: the rise of a new generation that's even more radical than Hamas and even more angry at Israel.
Which brings us back to Cheney. He and his hard-line allies are rooting for Obama to fail. The leaders of Hamas — and other potential interlocutors, like the Syrians — need to understand that this may be their last best chance for progress. After Obama, the deluge.
See the best pictures of 2009.
This article is filled with as much science fiction as the Star Wars movie, with Darth-Vader playing the lead role, as the evil villain. Only, Israel is now portrayed as the villain, while the liberals weep over the fact that one of the most evil TERRORIST organizations in the world has been curtailed (as much as possible) from its on-going rocket attacks into Israel's bordering towns. Yes, Hamas kidnapped a young IDF soldier approximately 3 years ago; they have not allowed the Red Cross or anyone to visit this solider in all the time of his capture. Their demand to Israel included the release of ONE THOUSAND Palestinian terrorist in exchange for the kidnapped Israeli soldier - and such a bargan, Israel cannot afford to agree to, unless she wishes even more blood shed from these same terrorist, upon her innocent civilians.I love the quote "pounding Gaza"! Did this come out of the Goldstone Report? This is the attitude of most of the world - a world that ignored EIGHT YEARS of Hamas pounding Israel. Hamas had bombed schools, buses, restaurants, and shot rockets into Israel for over EIGHT YEARS - and not a peep out of the UN Humaan Rights organizations; no one wept over the loss of innocent lives. Israeli children, sleeping in their beds, murdered by Hamas terrorists; and the only ones who wept were the families and all of Israel, at the funerals of the innocent.
And yet, there is no mention in this article about the Israeli physicians who treat wounded Palestinians; or the truckloads of food and supplies that Israel donates to the Palestinians living in Gaza, to relieve them of the suffering caused by the Hamas Terrorist government of Gaza! A government, I might add, that was ELECTED by these same Palestinians.
And, there is no mention of the Hamas TERRORISTS that attacked a small church in Gaza on Christmas Day, killing innocent Christians on their holiest day of the year - the same day a would-be Yeman Islamic terrorist tried to blow up a plane filled with over 300 passengers in the United States.
There is no mention of the fact that PLO's i.e. Palestinians is nothing more than a group of Arabs being used by 27 Arab countries, as a ploy to destory Israel from within its borders. No mention of the 27 Arab countries wanting to ease the suffering of their brothers in Gaza, by allowing them to live in any of the 27 Arab countries with enough land available to them for every single Palestinian to live among their own brothers and sisters.
Instead, the continuation of the world wanting to cut up Israel into smaller pieces, with a two-state solution is just another way of robbing the Land of Israel of her right to exist among her own people, within her own borders, without the constant attacks by both the terrorists and the world's opinion - an opinion that Israel builds and grows on illegal land. Who exactly determined that the land within Israel is now "illegal" Israeli land?! The same people who have only one solution for Israel - that solution being "erase her from the map"?!
This article is science fiction; the writers of Time.com have demonstrated their lack of knowledge of the Land of Irsrael; her rights to exist among all nations; the extreme sacrifices her people pay for just being Jews living in their own land.
Let the world continue to pound out their propaganda against tiny Israel; Israel will continue to grow and prosper; continue to help both her enemies and nations needing humanitarian aid; she will do this in silence, because she asks for no acknowledgment for her good deeds; she only asks that you allow her to live in peace.
Finally, I would like to close this with a response to this article's author insunating that those who oppose Obama, wish him to fail. WRONG! Obama failed the moment he took office, due only to the fact that his un-American, un-Constitutional, Muslim-hugging, terrorist-defending, ally-betraying, policies are ALL un-patroitic and not what our founding fathers intended for these United States of America. Ameicans will not allow their country to fail; they will defend it and do, with Justice on her side.
God bless America! God bless her troops in harm's way all over the world, fighting the very terrorists that this news article defends.
Bee Sting
