The Washington face-off between President Obama and Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu, prime minister of the new right-wing Israeli government, represents the first chapter in a new era. It could yet go either way.
On the surface, smiles and handshakes are de rigeur. Meanwhile, everyone is asking what's going on behind the scenes. New Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman was in no doubt - he said recently to a Russian newspaper that the US "accepts all Israel's decisions": Obama will do as he's told.
US National Security Adviser James Jones and the president's chief of staff Rahm Emanuel reportedly have a different take. In the words of the Economist, "What may be Israel's most intransigent government ever elected is scared stiff that an American administration may squeeze it until its pips squeak."
Beyond the politicking, questions of what ordinary Israelis and Palestinians want, and who they trust, are just as crucial in determining whether peace is possible. So last week we asked them -- in representative Israeli and Palestinian public opinion polls specially commissioned for global citizens' network Avaaz.
The results of these new polls were striking -- so much so that they inspired us to make a TV ad called "Leadership," addressed to President Obama and opening with Lieberman's incendiary statement quoted above. Running on US television networks this week, the ad centers on what people in the region told us in those polls.
For starters, Israelis trust Obama as a leader far more than their own prime minister Bibi Netanyahu -- with 59% of Israelis calling the US President trustworthy, and only 31% saying this of Bibi.
What is more, 65% of Israelis -- that's almost two in three -- want President Obama to get actively involved to help solve the conflict, as do 70% of Palestinians.
That amounts to a stunning vote of confidence from people in the region for Obama to take a lead for Middle East peace. It seems to be linked to Israelis' and Palestinians' doubts about their own leaders' ability to bring peace when they're left alone together -- doubts which are very understandable when you take even a glance at the record.
It used to be a point of principle for US negotiators like Dennis Ross that "We can't want peace more than the parties." But most ordinary Israelis and Palestinians desperately want a peace based on two states. It is their politicians who are failing to knuckle down and deliver it -- which is why the people's hopes for leadership, and peace, now seem to rest more with Obama.
Two recent polls in the US, by Zogby of Americans at large and by JStreet of American Jews, found similar results supporting forceful leadership by Obama for peace.
Thousands of people have donated to our ad to show the President that people in the region, in the US and around the world will back him if he takes the lead. It calls for him to advance a bold Obama Plan for Middle East peace, instead of endorsing just more dead-end talks between failing leaders. Here is the ad:
One thing is for sure: we can't afford to fail. As King Abdullah of Jordan said last week, it's now a simple choice between more war or peace in the Middle East.
Israelis and Palestinians are crying out for someone to change the game. Yet if Middle East peace is a US interest, it is US citizens who will need to stand up and be counted, and US politicians and policymakers who will need to steel their nerves, to engage all the parties -- and, finally, to lead.
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Avaaz.org - The World in Action
V Summit of the Americas in Trinidad & Tobago: mission impossible, mission accomplished.
No matter who was now PM of Israel your poll would have registered the same 59% vote of trust in Obama. Israeli's see Obama's Arabic middle name and Moslem family roots as giving him a diplomatic advantage over Israel's Jewish PM in persuading the Palis to accept Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state and abandon the absurd demand for a right of return of Palestinian refugees. Howver, the chances of Obama succeeding at this is practically nil. Palis who want Obama to get actively involved in a new peace process see him as a potential tool for weakening the Jewish state. The vast number of Palis still don't accept the reality that the Jewish state is here to stay. Until the Palis give up the lunatic hope of victory the conflict will continue..
THEY elected the rightwing nut Zionists.
Please - don't come running to Uncle Sam when your process fails you.
I am truly sad for Israel, a young 60+ and she STILL doesn't 'get it'.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxGN29njs3Q&feature=PlayList&p=7A75B61ADC477DB7&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=8
International law makes this /very/ clear -- Gaza and the West Bank, in their entirety, both belong to the Palestinians. International law is /not/ negotiable.
- Isn't Gaza, West Bank, Israel, & Jordan all part of Palestine? If so, don't the Muslims already have more than their fair share?
Also, you seem to also skip over the fact that the offiicial line from the Palestinian "authority" is not a two-state solution, but the removal of the state of Israel. How can Israel negotiate a two-state solution when the other state will not even recognize them as a sovereign nation with a right to exist.
Another question, how involved are other nations (besides the U.S.)? How much influence do they have? Iran, Syria, Lebanon all seem to be pulling the Palestinian strings at one point or another. How do they figure into this?
http://www.knesset.gov.il/elections/knesset15/elikud_m.htm
"The Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza are the realization of Zionist values. Settlement of the land is a clear expression of the unassailable right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel and constitutes an important asset in the defense of the vital interests of the State of Israel. The Likud will continue to strengthen and develop these communities and will prevent their uprooting."
That said, still pertinent that settlement activity is a place of contention
Well, that may be true, but as this map of the West Bank indicates, a viable Palestinian state isn't possible without massive uprooting of Israeli settlements, which might spark a rebellion within the settler-heavy IDF and a civil war. The Palestinians already live in a Bantustan, calling it a "state" solves nothing.
http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2009/03/30/270-palestines-island-paradise-now-with-a-word-from-its-creator/
The two state "solution" died with Rabin. There are only two alternatives.
A single democratic state that embraces Arabs and Jews. Difficult, but not impossible. See South Africa. The settlements can stay, they'll just have many, many new Palestinian neighbors as the dispossessed and their descendants return
or
Continued war, killing and possibly an attack on Iran -- with catastrophic regional and global effects. Even without an attack on Iran, the unravelling of Israel as fewer people settle there and younger people emigrate. Death by slow leak. The Arabs just need to wait.
Let's make peace with a two state solution and move on!
God promised the land to the Jews, so whoever is living there must leave or be killed.
And forces like Iran, trying to prevent this must be stopped by the Noble Americans.
Iraq was about spreading Freedom, Iran will be about helping the state of Israel achieve it military superiority- because we can never let the a Holocaust occur again.
I can write a book and say that god promised me the land where Israel is also.
Its a nail-biting time for the rest of the globe because, of all the first world's populations to bear such critical responsibilities, why did it have to be the most naieve, least politically sophisticated, most commercially manipulated population on the planet? Doh!
I wish we had inspirational leaders like Obama in here. The Israeli side and the Palestinian side suffer from the same problem.
The political environment in Israel is pretty crazy right now, and nothing will be done unless there will be pressure from the US government.
I do hope that your president will be more serious then Bush and will have a good plan to end this horrible conflict, because our leaders will never do anything that will jeopardize there political place (and right now Bibi is in a serious mess with his all-over government, where each side tries to drag him to it's way).
I read your whole post but I didn't really need to (interesting article by the way). But it can be summed up best as follows:
Netanyahu's nuts!
Israel has the know how, the treachery, and the motivation to say "screw you" to the United States, inasmuch that it will never give up part of Jerusalem, water rights, and its desire to keep the West Bank, and to maintain that it has the right to not be content with the confines given it when it was created by the United States, Britain, and France under UN aegis.