For too long the Arab world has been waiting in vain for a US administration that will address the rights of the Palestinians within a viable sovereign state of their own. For too long America’s friends and allies within the region, among whom the best and most long-standing has been Saudi Arabia, have been urging on successive US presidents the reality that the terrible injustices done to the Palestinians underpin the violence and extremism that has gripped the region. For too long Washington has not listened to our message that its slavish and unquestioning support for a bullying and expansionist Israel has, in fact, sabotaged America’s wider foreign policy goals in the Middle East and throughout the Muslim world.
As today we welcome President Barack Obama to the Kingdom, dare we hope that we are greeting a US leader who is at last listening to the advice and warnings that have so long been ignored in Washington? Saudi Arabia has itself provided one of the major building blocks for a lasting resolution. The 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, first proposed by King Abdullah when he was crown prince and later endorsed unanimously by the Arab League summit in Beirut, remains in place. It negates Israeli protests that they have no partners for peace, because it offers 22 Arab states who will recognize Israel as part of a comprehensive and just settlement for Palestinians. Once the Arab countries recognize Israel, the rest of the Muslim world will follow suit.
The American president has to cut through much lumber left by his predecessors. At the heart of it lies a legacy of often-deep distrust that has built up in the Arab world.
From time to time Washington promises to tackle the Palestinian issue, especially when it wanted Arab support for the Iraq war or its confrontation with Iran. Because it failed to honor this pledge, it encouraged extremism among Palestinians who felt the betrayal bitterly and gave the bigoted thugs of Al-Qaeda an excuse for their fanatical violence. Obama’s people say that when he addresses the Arab world in Cairo tomorrow, he will be speaking from the heart. No doubt. But he should know that he needs also to be speaking to the hearts of Arab people themselves, who have learned to disbelieve Washington’s warm words and will only now judge America by its deeds.
No one believes the president has a magic wand. In the Likud government of Benjamin Netanyahu he faces an apparently intransigent negotiator. But it is often the most inflexible sticks that break first. Despite the powerful Zionist Washington lobby, Obama has the power to bring about radical change for the Palestinians, for Israelis too and for the whole region. He is a man who has dedicated himself to change and indeed represents it in his own presidency. His domestic and international agendas are daunting. But it seems he recognizes how pivotal a Palestinian settlement is to a large portion of US interests. His welcome here today is, therefore, all the warmer for the high hopes with which we greet him.
Bankruptcy of General Motors
The root problem, which GM shares with Chrysler and Ford, is that American cars cost too much and are not good enough, said the Times in an editorial yesterday. Excerpts:
General Motors (GM) has been part of American life for more than a century. Yesterday it filed for bankruptcy. GM’s is the largest corporate failure in American industrial history.
The company will now be protected from its creditors under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code. The intention is that the company will restructure its finances (it has $173 billion of current debt), cut jobs and emerge from bankruptcy in a leaner and more profitable state. The US Government will be taking a 60 percent stake in the company and providing an extra $30 billion of taxpayers’ money in emergency loans. GM is more than an industrial concern: It is part of US popular culture. For most of its life the company has embodied the notion that manufacturing lies at the heart of America’s economic strength. It provided skilled and high-wage jobs for its workers and iconic products for its customers. It is now the second (after Chrysler) of the big three American car manufacturers to file for bankruptcy. How the industry reached this state is a dispiriting tale of inefficiency, a bloated cost base and prolonged mismanagement.
The US economy is in deep recession, but GM’s failure has merely been hastened rather than caused by the crisis. Consumers are struggling to get loans for buying big-ticket items such as cars, but even if credit were plentiful there would still be insufficient demand for GM’s cars. American manufacturers’ costs are far higher than those of other car producers operating in the US, such as Toyota and Nissan. The main reason is benefit costs, principally health care and pension contributions for current and retired workers. These costs reflect not a humane working environment that is under attack from globalization: They are a legacy of overmanning and inefficiency over decades.
