America’s President-elect Barack Obama has chosen a fiery, pro-Israeli, US Congressman who happens to be a Jew, as his White House chief of staff, less than two days after he won a historic victory as the first African-American president of the United States of America.
For many Americans the choice of former Bill Clinton political director Rahm Emanuel for one of the most important posts in the new administration is nothing to fret about. But for millions of Arabs who expressed jubilance at the monumental victory of Obama, Rahm’s appointment has put a damper on a short-lived fiesta.
Let’s be clear. Arabs hated Bush and everything he did during his eight-year reign. The 43rd president waged war on Afghanistan, invaded Iraq, took Israel’s side against the Palestinians, tortured and imprisoned Muslims in Guantanamo, tormented and humiliated Iraqis in Abu Ghraib, bombed innocent Afghans, Pakistanis, Iraqis, Syrians and would have wiped hundreds of thousands of Iranians if he had the opportunity. Bush was the devil incarnate for millions of Muslims.
Enters Barack Obama: A charismatic figure of Muslim roots; a half-black man with liberal ideas, promising change and a more benevolent America. Few in the Muslim world believed he had a chance in winning the White House in a racially divided America. But he did, and the euphoria was overwhelming, at least for few days.
Who is Obama? That question is as fundamental to many Americans as it is to Arabs and Muslims. But as much as his rise to the highest political office in the United States is pertinent to the world, for Arabs the fairy tale of Obama boils down to one central issue: Is he with us?
The frustration with his first political appointment underlines the degree of hope that millions of Arabs have pinned on the first black president in the United States. As much as this move may give a clue to the policies of the new president, it also exposes Arab fatalistic beliefs. Obama is black, part Muslim, and therefore he must be sympathetic to our causes. This is a fallacy that characterizes decades of Arab-US relationship. Every time there is an election in the US the Arabs, both leaders and citizens, ask the same parochial question: Is the new leader of the United States with us or against us?
We have failed many tests before. Benefit of the doubt mentality has mired our perception of the US and its policies toward our region. No American leader, since Truman, has ever given weight to Arab interests when it came to the core of the Middle Eastern conflict. We have seen them all; Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton and the junior Bush. Not a single US president has ever departed from the mainstream of domestic politics which treated Israel as a special case; an ally, a friend, a victim and an asset in a region that has always been considered volatile, hostile and alien.
If some presidents appeared to be breaking away from the norm, it was only in response to geopolitical threats and international developments. Carter did it in 1977, Reagan in the early 1980s and Bush Sr. in the aftermath of the first Gulf War. Clinton appeared evenhanded, but in conclusion, they all catered to Israel’s needs. The Arab point of view, in particular the legal and inalienable rights of Palestinians, was secondary and ancillary.
For decades, Arab-US relations have traditionally centered on the Middle East conflict. But that was not the only central issue. There was oil, as it will continue to be for some time, religious fundamentalism linked to terror, the region’s vacillation between West and East, and complex cultural challenges. In spite of years of often-tense affinity, the US has never sympathized with this region’s problems. From the Mosaddiq affair in 1953 to the Lebanon debacle in 1983, to the Iraq invasion in 2003, the US has never understood this region or tried to empathize with its problems.
Much of the political realities we face today are a direct result of US hegemony over the Middle East during the past 50 years. The Iraq invasion represented the most severe approach of direct US interventionism in this region. The damage that Iraq’s occupation has created goes beyond that country’s borders. Its repercussions will last for generations. It will become the only benchmark of US foreign policy toward the Middle East for a long time no matter who rules the White House. While the Middle East may, in the end, be viewed as America’s Achilles heel, the meddling in this region’s affairs will take a long time to subside.
Obama may disappoint millions of Arabs who saw in his victory a beacon for change in America’s turbulent affair with the Middle East, in particular the Arab world. It is still early to make final judgments but the chances that he will implement a new approach in dealing with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and other complicated issues in the region are not great.
The problem is not with Obama or any other US politician. We have failed to understand the complexity of US-Israeli relations, and we have been unable to play a pro-active role in steering a new course for our region. But this remains a precious time for Arabs to move away from fatalistic policies and try a different hand altogether. America is going through change and the time for Arabs to get their act together and project a unified and strong position is opportune.
— Osama Al Sharif is a veteran journalist and commentator based in Jordan.
