No one would have imagined that, after winning his historic election as president five years ago, Barack Obama would morph into a frustrated chief executive unable to convince a divided Congress to cooperate with him on his domestic agenda, or to take bold steps in trouble spots around the world, mostly in the Middle East and South Asia, that would have solved many a problem.
To be sure, as he delivered his State of the Union message last Tuesday, he did not come across as a lame duck president so much as a president who is now resigned to go it alone. Because of implacable Republican opposition to his pet projects, from immigration reform to minimum wage standards and from health care to education opportunities, the remainder of his presidency will be characterized by his effort to use executive action in order to bypass Congress — and thus political gridlock.
But what of his intentions overseas? Clearly, a president’s State of the Union message is traditionally devoted to domestic issues, but this year Obama alluded, albeit briefly, to the “prudent limits.”
“We must fight the battles that need to be fought, not those that terrorists prefer from us, large-scale deployments that drain our strength,” he said.
He equally advocated limits on the use of drones, a surprising call given the fact that he has, over the last five years, ordered their deployment far more frequently and lethally than his predecessor had and again promised to close once and for all the prison at Guantanamo Bay, an act he had pledged to see done even before he took office.
Syria and Palestine were not missing from his speech, though he referred to the one obliquely by saying that the US will “continue” to help opposition groups who are not affiliated with extremists and to the other menacingly by saying he looked forward to seeing Palestinians living in dignity in their state alongside a “Jewish state.” For here’s the rub. We know, of course that this is the new catch phrase that Israel has introduced into the political lexicon of the region, demanding that Palestinians recognize it as a “Jewish state,” homeland and exclusive property, as it were, of the “Jewish people.”
Did Obama slip this catchphrase into his speech innocently or was he deliberately and calculatedly declaring that the US would go along with that demand? My guess is that it is the latter. Let’s face it, a president’s State of the Union address is the most vetted, revised, edited, scripted, drafted and redrafted speech — often involving the input of several professional speechwriters — that a chief executive gives every year.
Moreover, there have been reports in Washington recently that the US is planning to present its own “framework” for a peace settlement, known as the “Kerry Plan,” named after Secretary of State John Kerry — to be unveiled after an expected impasse in the current six-month talks between Palestinians and Israelis — that Washington will twist arms to see implemented. And the Kerry Plan will insist, among other things, that Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state or the “state of the Jewish people,” renounce the Palestinian refugees right of return and accept a more or less permanent presence in the Jordan Valley of Israeli occupation troops.
All in return for a truncated state in that little smidgen of land of historic Palestine we call the West Bank and Gaza — a dubious terminus to decades of struggle, sacrifice and unspeakable suffering.
The Palestinians, sadly, do not have a strong position in the balance of power between themselves and Israel and that by definition limits their ability to assert a muscular posture in how they determine their political destiny at this time. And one doubts that their leaders have thought out what their next, most coherent move might be in the very likely event that yet again the Palestinians are shortchanged by Israel and its patrons in the US government.
We all know that Obama is a compelling speaker and he sure can turn a phrase. And loaded phrases like Israel being the “homeland of the Jewish people” are not loaded in and by themselves, for people can adopt whatever self-definitions they please. These phrases become loaded when they are thrown down the throat of another people, in this case the Palestinians, who are expected to embrace whatever toxic implications the carry.
And Obama’s administration appears to be aiding and abetting this charade. Was that the same Obama who reached out to the Arabs and Muslims everywhere when delivered that stirring speech at Cairo University in June 2009? My, how presidents change once in office!
