[Peace-discuss] Fisk on the Obama inaugural

[Morton K. Brussel]

Hanan Ashrawi got it right. The changes in the Middle East - justice  
for the Palestinians, security for the Palestinians as well as for the  
Israelis, an end to the illegal building of settlements for Jews and  
Jews only on Arab land, an end to all violence, not just the Arab  
variety - had to be "immediate" she said, at once.

One of the most incisive commentaries on Obama's speech. --mkb

So Far, Obama's Missed The Point on Gaza...

by Robert Fisk

It would have helped if Obama had the courage to talk about what  
everyone in the Middle East was talking about. No, it wasn't the US  
withdrawal from Iraq. They knew about that. They expected the  
beginning of the end of Guantanamo and the probable appointment of  
George Mitchell as a Middle East envoy was the least that was  
expected. Of course, Obama did refer to "slaughtered innocents", but  
these were not quite the "slaughtered innocents" the Arabs had in mind.

There was the phone call yesterday to Mahmoud Abbas. Maybe Obama  
thinks he's the leader of the Palestinians, but as every Arab knows,  
except perhaps Mr Abbas, he is the leader of a ghost government, a  
near-corpse only kept alive with the blood transfusion of  
international support and the "full partnership" Obama has apparently  
offered him, whatever "full" means. And it was no surprise to anyone  
that Obama also made the obligatory call to the Israelis.

But for the people of the Middle East, the absence of the word "Gaza"  
- indeed, the word "Israel" as well - was the dark shadow over Obama's  
inaugural address. Didn't he care? Was he frightened? Did Obama's  
young speech-writer not realise that talking about black rights - why  
a black man's father might not have been served in a restaurant 60  
years ago - would concentrate Arab minds on the fate of a people who  
gained the vote only three years ago but were then punished because  
they voted for the wrong people? It wasn't a question of the elephant  
in the china shop. It was the sheer amount of corpses heaped up on the  
floor of the china shop.

Sure, it's easy to be cynical. Arab rhetoric has something in common  
with Obama's clichés: "hard work and honesty, courage and fair  
play ... loyalty and patriotism". But however much distance the new  
President put between himself and the vicious regime he was replacing,  
9/11 still hung like a cloud over New York. We had to remember "the  
firefighter's courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke". Indeed,  
for Arabs, the "our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of  
violence and hatred" was pure Bush; the one reference to "terror", the  
old Bush and Israeli fear word, was a worrying sign that the new White  
House still hasn't got the message. Hence we had Obama, apparently  
talking about Islamist groups such as the Taliban who were  
"slaughtering innocents" but who "cannot outlast us". As for those in  
the speech who are corrupt and who "silence dissent", presumably  
intended to be the Iranian government, most Arabs would associate this  
habit with President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt (who also, of course,  
received a phone call from Obama yesterday), King Abdullah of Saudi  
Arabia and a host of other autocrats and head-choppers who are  
supposed to be America's friends in the Middle East.

Hanan Ashrawi got it right. The changes in the Middle East - justice  
for the Palestinians, security for the Palestinians as well as for the  
Israelis, an end to the illegal building of settlements for Jews and  
Jews only on Arab land, an end to all violence, not just the Arab  
variety - had to be "immediate" she said, at once. But if the gentle  
George Mitchell's appointment was meant to answer this demand, the  
inaugural speech, a real "B-minus" in the Middle East, did not.

The friendly message to Muslims, "a new way forward, based on mutual  
interest and mutual respect", simply did not address the pictures of  
the Gaza bloodbath at which the world has been staring in outrage.  
Yes, the Arabs and many other Muslim nations, and, of course, most of  
the world, can rejoice that the awful Bush has gone. So, too,  
Guantanamo. But will Bush's torturers and Rumsfeld's torturers be  
punished? Or quietly promoted to a job where they don't have to use  
water and cloths, and listen to men screaming?

Sure, give the man a chance. Maybe George Mitchell will talk to Hamas  
- he's just the man to try - but what will the old failures such as  
Denis Ross have to say, and Rahm Emanuel and, indeed, Robert Gates and  
Hillary Clinton? More a sermon than an Obama inaugural, even the  
Palestinians in Damascus spotted the absence of those two words:  
Palestine and Israel. So hot to touch they were, and on a freezing  
Washington day, Obama wasn't even wearing gloves.


© 2009 The Independent
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