Watching Barack Obama’s inauguration on television in Amman, Jordan, as he stumbled over his words during the oath, then spoke eloquently of Americans now choosing “our better history”, I wanted to celebrate, like many, as we did in November. After the election, the change of mood in the normally subdued Jordanian capital was palpable. Everybody wanted to talk about Obama, and there was genuine hope among many that the Israeli-Palestinian peace process would finally make the progress the Bush-Blair era made much noise about but never delivered. The sense of goodwill toward Obama also stemmed from optimism that, after eight disastrous years of Bush-Cheney foreign policy, Iraq might finally begin to heal and Guantanamo Bay might finally be closed.
Today, however, the mood couldn’t be more different, and the word that most often follows Obama’s name in conversation is not “Iraq” but “Gaza”. “Hope” is probably the last idea that would accompany it. The aerial bombardment and later ground invasion of the Gaza Strip over the last three weeks has changed everything, and few people here watched the build-up to the inauguration. While CNN is spending 48 hours in ceaseless coverage of events in Washington, reporting the great narrative of American political change, the focus of Arab news networks and of people in the Middle East is still largely on Gaza — the dead and the tens of thousands now homeless.
Every Middle Easterner knows who Livni is now, and Obama is now often currently seen as the good man who did nothing — who, his difficult position during the transition period acknowledged, nonetheless frustrated many by barely speaking out while some 1,300 Gazans were killed by one of America’s closest allies. Around half of Jordan’s population is of recent Palestinian descent, and Gaza is less than 100 miles from Amman. But the geographic proximity felt increasingly like a bad joke or a mind trick, as the already-blockaded Strip became increasingly sealed under siege, and Jordanian-Palestinians were left unable to contact their families and friends on the other side of Israel.
Obama encouraged Americans to spend this year’s Martin Luther King day volunteering for their communities. Over the past three weeks here, Jordanians, Palestinians and others bought food and medical supplies and organized dozens of fundraisers for international charities working in Gaza. The Jordan Hashemite Charity Organization was overwhelmed by donations from ordinary people of canned food and medical supplies for UNRWA aid convoys, an initiative which suffered a setback on Jan. 8 when UNRWA seemed about to leave Gaza when its aid convoy was hit.
Obama’s inauguration is historic and contains, at least, the hope for change. Unlike most American stories pushing humanitarian tragedies off the front page, Obama deserves to dominate the world’s news today. From here, the start of Obama’s presidency is the start of one dream fulfilled. But the dream of a just peace between Israel and the Palestinians is still denied. It still festers.
A hundred miles away from Gaza, it feels as though so much has happened since the optimism of November’s election night that, while most here still wish Obama well, there is little to hope for or celebrate. In his inauguration speech, Obama claimed to “seek a new way forward” with the Muslim world, and that “those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society’s ills on the West — know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy”. Obama still represents a better chance for something lasting and just to be built in the Middle East, but it is far from being fulfilled.
