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Arab world says hopes in Obama are dwindling
Paul Salem, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, said Arab countries will be less likely to engage with the US on issues such as Iran if they get nothing in return. “A lot of the Arab countries already in the last year saw that there wasn’t much delivery from the US on the Israeli side,” Salem told The Associated Press. “So why engage, why compromise, from their point of view?”
The United States has been working for more than a year to get Israel and the Palestinians negotiating again, and Washington strongly criticized Israel’s plans, announced last week, to build 1,600 apartments in disputed east Jerusalem. Israel captured East Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war, and Palestinians claim the sector as a capital of a future state.
The building plan touched off the worst US-Israeli diplomatic feud in decades. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called the announcement an insult. US envoy George Mitchell, who had hoped to wrap up preparations for relaunching Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, called off a visit to the region.
But Clinton was quick to soften her tone, saying there is “a close, unshakable bond between the United States and Israel and between the American and Israeli people.” Such rhetoric fuels Arab doubts that Washington will press its ally to make concessions widely seen as necessary for any final peace deal with the Palestinians.
During a speech in Cairo in June, Obama called for a complete settlement freeze and the creation of an independent Palestinian state. But Arabs were disillusioned when his administration appeared to back down and accepted a partial 10-month freeze called by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu late last year.
Badei Musa, 55, a Palestinian engineer who lives in Dubai, said he does not trust America’s stated opposition to the settlements. “It’s a joke,” Musa said. “What’s happening on the ground, that’s what counts.” Jordanian political analyst Oreib Rentawi said Wednesday that Arabs do not believe there is true disagreement between the United States and its longtime ally, Israel. “Arabs consider what is taking place now as a summer cloud or a storm in a tea cup,” Oreib Rentawi told the AP.
In Egypt, a column in the Al-Gomhuria newspaper expressed doubt that Israel would face any repercussions for its actions. “The extremist ruling clique [in Israel] knows well that they are outside the range of being punished by sanctions, economic or political boycott or even a threat to freeze aid,” wrote Sameer Ragab.
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