MUSTAPHA AJBAILI
President Barack Obama initially didn’t quite get the enthusiastic response in the Arab world that some of his supporters may have expected as he outlined his vision of US foreign policy in the Middle East against the backdrop of pro-democracy uprisings sweeping the region.
Some Arab media pundits saw the Obama speech, the steps he has taken to impose sanctions on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and his pledge of support for the nascent democracies in Egypt and Tunisia, as encouraging and demonstrate a change in the US foreign policy.
But other commentators said the speech reflected the same time-honored US foreign policy approach of supporting a favored dictator until it became clear that he was losing control—then switching sides, claiming to be on the side of people, providing aid and doing whatever possible to re-instate the old system under a different name. In politics this is called: being on the right side of history.
Commenting on President Obama’s speech both Amr Hashem Rabie, of Al‐Ahram Center for Strategic Studies, and Hisham Melhem, the Washington bureau chief of Al Arabiya, agreed that the initiative in the Middle East today was in the hands of the people regardless of whether the US was genuinely siding with the people or not.
The Kuwaiti newspaper Al Rai revealed on Thursday that during a discussion earlier this week between President Obama and Jordan’s King's Abdullah II, the two leaders agreed that “It was impossible for the Assad regime to survive,” and that “the attention of Washington and its allies should now be focused on ensuring a smooth power transition stage in Syria.”
The newspaper quoted Tony Badran, expert on Syria, Lebanon and Hezbollah at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, saying, “Assad’s regime is finished” and that “it may hold on for a few months or more but it will eventually surrender to the wide opposition to its rule.”
This, according to the newspaper, explains the shift of the US policy toward Mr. Assad. President Obama seeks to position the United States on the side of the winner—the people.
In his speech, President Obama made it clear that the goals of the US Mideast foreign policy will remain the same, but that the strategy to achieve those goals will need to be fine-tuned.
“The question before us is what role America will play as this story unfolds. For decades, the United States has pursued a set of core interests in the region: countering terrorism and stopping the spread of nuclear weapons; securing the free flow of commerce, and safe-guarding the security of the region; standing up for Israel’s security and pursuing Arab-Israeli peace,” President Obama said.
He added that the US “will continue to do these things” but in a slightly different way.
“We must also build on our efforts to broaden our engagement beyond elites, so that we reach the people who will shape the future—particularly young people,” Mr. Obama said.
Israel on Thursday rejected President Obama’s call for a peace deal based the 1967 borders, as the Palestinians said their leadership would hold a meeting to discuss the US leader's policy speech.
Mr. Obama’s address, billed as an announcement of reoriented US policy in the Middle East after a slew of regional uprisings, focused heavily on the stalled talks between Israel and the Palestinians.
He called for a negotiated solution based on the borders that existed before the 1967 Six Day War, but also warned the Palestinians that a bid for UN recognition of a unilateral proclamation of statehood would not work.
“The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states,” said Mr. Obama. “The Palestinian people must have the right to govern themselves, and reach their full potential, in a sovereign and contiguous state.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, due to fly to Washington just hours after Mr. Obama’s speech, immediately called on the White House to guarantee Israel would not have to withdraw to the 1967 lines.
He urged Mr. Obama to commit to the assurances laid out in 2004 by then president George W. Bush, who said “new realities on the ground,” meant a “full and complete return” to the 1967 borders was “unrealistic.”
“Prime Minister Netanyahu expects to hear a reaffirmation from President Obama of US commitments made to Israel in 2004, which were overwhelmingly supported by both houses of Congress,” Mr. Netanyahu’s statement said.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, however, welcomed Mr. Obama’s efforts to renew talks with Israel that collapsed last year, a senior Palestinian official said.
“President Abbas expresses his appreciation of the continuous efforts exerted by President Obama with the objective of resuming the permanent status talks in the hope of reaching a final status agreement,” said the official, Saeb Erekat.
Mr. Erekat, responding to Mr. Obama’s Middle East policy address, added that Mr. Abbas would soon convene “emergency” talks with Palestinian and Arab officials to consider further steps.
The Islamist Hamas movements immediately called on President Obama to take “concrete steps,” not merely issue “slogans” in support of Palestinian independence and an end to Israeli occupation.
“What Obama needs to do is not to add slogans but to take concrete steps to protect the rights of the Palestinian people and the Arab nation,” Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri told Agence-France Presse.
The New York Times reported:
“His message is clear,” said Muhsen Awajy, a dissident Islamist lawyer in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. “Do the job, and when you finish — when you have paid the price — we as Americans are ready to support our interests in a new phase.” He added: “It is a great country with great values, and he should translate that into timely intervention.”
The financial support that the president offered Egypt in the speech — forgiveness of $1 billion in debt — met with appreciation, but it was tempered for some Egyptians by memories of the tens of billions of dollars in aid that the United States gave to the authoritarian government of former President Hosni Mubarak over the years. Others said that Mr. Obama’s talk of support from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund was likely to remind Egyptians of the economic liberalization under the Mubarak government — led by Mr. Mubarak’s banker son, Gamal — which enabled a small elite to accrue vast wealth.
“The Egyptian experience with both these institutions is totally negative, because the so-called structural economic adjustment that had been done only made the rich richer and the poor poorer,” said Hassan Nafaa, a political scientist at Cairo University who attended Mr. Obama’s speech in Cairo two years ago. “It seems that he is helping the capitalist system, and not taking into account the social situation in Egypt.”
In contrast to the fascination with President Obama’s address to the Muslim world in Cairo two years ago, or the rapt suspense at his comments toward his former ally Hosni Mubarak during the Egyptian revolution, Egyptians, Syrians, Libyans and Saudis generally professed only a dim awareness on Thursday of what was being said in Washington.
Even in Libya, where American-backed air strikes rain down on the forces of Col. Muammar Qaddafi, most patrons of a café in the rebel stronghold of Benghazi were more concerned with a local street protest against a man from the city who was still supporting Colonel Qaddafi as an anchor on state television.
“We’ve had long experience with American policy in the region, and we don’t trust Obama’s call for change in Syria,” said Abdel Majid Manjouni, head of the opposition Socialist Democratic Arab Union Party in Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city. “Only the Syrian people can impose change, not the powers abroad.”
Still, some close observers said they detected a “new strategy” from Washington.
“We felt that for the first time that he was taking to us, and not to the leaders, as he did before,” said Mona Makram-Ebeid, a professor at American University in Cairo and a former member of the Egyptian parliament from a legally recognized liberal party. “This time he put his hands on the real problems that are affecting the different countries.”
Ms. Makram-Ebeid applauded Mr. Obama’s talk of tracking down the money stolen by ousted dictators and combating corruption.
“He is not just talking about democracy and human rights, he is talking about throwing back the shackles of the past and looking for hope for the future, and he spoke about the risks,” she said.
Some others around the region agreed that Mr. Obama’s professed support for the democratic movements in the region — “two leaders have stepped aside, more may follow” — sounded unlike the statements they heard during the first days of the uprising in Egypt.
“Everybody still has it in the back of their minds how America flip-flopped in their position toward these Arab revolutions,” said Amr Jarrad, 28, a banker in Amman, Jordan. “If you were so good in supporting autocratic regimes, why can’t you be so good in telling them to leave?”
In Riyadh, the Saudi capital, the speech fell awkwardly between two evening prayer times as the Arab weekend was beginning, so it was not easy to find people who had heard Mr. Obama speak. A few Saudi women dispatched Twitter postings underscoring that the president stressed gender equality in his remarks, and a few Saudi men said they thought the point might have been directed at them.
Saudi activists noted that Washington had already, as long ago as 2004, taken the line publicly that the Saudi monarchy had no choice to reform, but nothing tangible had come of it.
“With all these nice words, will it be transformed into policy?” said Mohammad F. al-Qahtani, a political activist. “That is a big if.”
That was the widespread reaction to the sections of the speech dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. In general, Arabs find it galling that American presidents rarely criticize Israel; while Mr. Obama did say, “the dream of a Jewish and democratic state cannot be fulfilled with permanent occupation,” some viewers found that insufficient.
In Cairo, Essam el-Erian, a spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood and its newly formed Islamist political party, said the message to the Arab world was: “Do not wait to get any support from the White House, maintain your efforts and achieve your freedom.”
(Published in http://english.alarabiya.net/ on May 19)
