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Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2011 > May > 22 > Entry
Editorial: Obama doing what any president would on Mideast
President Barack Obama, in his speech on the Mideast on Thursday, May 19, did pretty much what any American president would do right now.
The time had come to take stock and lay out some sort of plan.
Events of recent months included the long-sought demise of Osama bin Laden — the most important human symbol of terrorism — as well as the outbreak of Arab Spring, in which people across the Mideast are rising up against harsh regimes (not against Israel or the U.S.).
And the president was just about to set off on a trip around Europe, after two years without having much impact on the Israeli-Palestinian issue.
Having, like everybody else, been caught off guard by the Arab Spring, the White House has sent mixed signals. So the president had to make clear that the United States stands foursquare with those who seek democracy and liberalization, that it will pressure besieged regimes to ease off their brutal responses, that it will foster economic aid and more trade, but that it sees its military role as decidedly limited.
All of this will sound merely commonsensical to most Americans. But it’s a new direction after decades of close relations with all manner of authoritarian regimes, about the only kind to be found in the Mideast until now.
The direction changes on Barack Obama’s watch — though relations with the Saudi Arabian regime look pretty stable — not because he’s a different kind of president, but because he’s president in 2011.
On the Israeli-Palestinian issue, too, the president mainly played the assigned role of an American president. He tried to put pressure on both sides to move toward an accommodation based on a Palestinian state and the survival for Israel in peace.
Most newsworthy, he said a peace settlement would have to be based on Israel’s 1967 borders with “mutually agreed swaps” of land. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu immediately said those borders are “indefensible.” And Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney denounced the president for throwing Israel “under the bus.”
In fact, though, except for that line in the speech, there’s almost nothing to discomfit Israel (though the president left out some things that the Israeli government would have liked in).
Meanwhile, the president rejected the plan of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to go to the United Nations in pursuit of a declaration of a Palestinian state, as well as his new alliance with Hamas, which rejects the very existence of Israel.
So the American president found the kind of balance that will help him be seen as a constructive force by Europeans and others seeking peace, and will even earn a grudging respect from the two sides.
At any rate, his position on border is not a great departure from previous American presidents, previous Israeli prime ministers, the course of negotiations over the years or the views of many strong friends of Israeli. Indeed, the speech is not necessarily a major turning point in the history of the Palestinian issue. The American role is important but limited. Events drive much, including, apparently, the recent departure of former Sen. George Mitchell as the president’s special pursuer of a negotiated settlement. He saw things going nowhere, what with Israel and other forces caught up in watching events in the Arab world with uncertainty.
The larger importance of the Obama speech may be the part about the Arab world. The uprisings of 2011 are unleashing long dormant forces. The call for democracy is certainly not the only force at play. Poverty, religious differences, old grudges and more will complicate the task of moving in a direction the region has little experience with.
The president’s promise to be on the side of democracy and human rights will be harder to carry out than to articulate. But, along with its risks, it holds the possibility of a new connection between Arabs and Americans.
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