Obama’s Cairo speech gets quick results

Obama’s public weakening of support for Israel is getting the results you would expect:

Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, said the US should use aid it gives Israel as leverage in order to pressure the state into accepting the US-backed two-state solution.

[…] When asked whether the US should withhold funds until Israel agreed to a peace plan calling for the establishment of a Palestinian state Faisal said, “Why not? If you give aid to someone and they indiscriminately occupy other people’s lands, you bear some responsibility.”

Why not, indeed. And al-Faisal speaks for the rest of the Saudis. Of course, there are no reciprocal demands on Arab nations:

What are Arabs prepared to do now that Obama has come out so firmly against Israeli settlements?
The speech is one stage, but it has yet to be translated into actions. Arab countries have learned through 60 years of experience with Israel that it’s not the agreement you reach with them; it’s the implementation.

No, really. No obligations whatsoever.

I would be very frustrated if I were Obama having this conversation with you. You’ve got Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu saying he won’t budge, and you saying “we made our offer. Take it or leave it.”
What can we do more than that? The land that is occupied is in the hands of Israel. We don’t have anything to offer Israel except normalization, and if we put that before the return of Arab land we are giving away the only chip in the hands of Arab countries.

And about that bow?

Yes, he bowed. But remember, he is also of a culture that respects age. It was not demeaning or servile bowing to somebody. When you see an older person, you respect him. I think those who made a fuss about it would do well to take such good manners to heart.

Really, I didn’t think we could have an administration that was further in bed with the Saudis than the Bushes.

I was wrong.

What remains to be seen now is how Israel’s friends in Congress deal with this new direction. Because the Obama administration is making it clear that they’re not going to honor the Bush Administration’s promises to Ariel Sharon:

“We have the negotiating record, that is the official record that was turned over to the Obama administration by the outgoing Bush administration,” Clinton said Friday at a joint press conference with her Turkish counterpart Ahmet Davutoglu.

“There is no memorialization of any informal or oral agreement” concerning the settlements, she said.

That’s a legal distinction. But this is not a court of law. This is the Obama administration choosing to ignore a deal that its predecessor made with another nation, thus diminishing the word of America in international relations.

And by the way, to those of you who voted for Obama insisting he was an Israel supporter: Still think he wasn’t lying?

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3 Responses to Obama’s Cairo speech gets quick results

  1. Alex Bensky says:

    Breaking with a lifetime’s habit, I voted Republican for president last fall and as I walked out of the voting booth I remember thinking I would be most pleased in four years to vote for Obama and happily concede I’d made a mistake and misjudged him.

    I have seen no sign that I did. I especially like that part about the Arabs implement their agreements but the Israelis don’t. I see; that explains why Israel is still holding onto the Sinai and why the Arabs–not just Palestinians–have abandoned the constant, vile anti-Semitism that spews out of virtually every source.

    Why anyone will again credit a solemn American promise about anything is beyond me.

  2. Michael Lonie says:

    Alex,
    They could have learned to judge such promises from what happened to South Vietnam and Cambodia. Now we hear that the Obama Administration threatens to cut off arms supplies if Israel does not kowtow to them. In 1974 the Democrat controlled Congress cut off military supplies to South Vietnam and Cambodia, precipitating the fall of both countries to the Communists in april 1975. I don’t care how good your army is, without ammunition, shells, spare parts, and fuel, to mention only a few items, it cannot fight. Zahal would be no different. It may be a better army but absent American supplies Israel will die. Israel is the only country in the world that the USA actually treats as a colony, but without the guarantee of American troops if needed to meet a genocidal invasion.

    Watch for Egypt and Jordan to start revising their relations with Israel, now that the latter seems weakened by a withdrawal of support by America. Obama is stoking another war, but he does not understand what he is doing and/or does not care.

    As for Iran, watch the Arabs start to triangulate towards an agreement with Tehran, leaving America out in the cold. If America will hang Israel out to dry, what will America do to Arab allies that have no real public support in the US or, like the Wahhabist Entity, rely on buying their support among the foreign policy and political elites of the US upper classes? The Euros will also move towards Iran’s positions, including on what to do about those pesky Jews.

    What none of the incredibly naive “realists” understand is that we will not make any friends or new allies by stabbing Israel in the back. We will reap only a justified contempt for deserting a friend in need.

    If Iran and/or the Arabs manage to perpetrate another Holocaust, as they continually say they intend to do, and if Western Civilization stands by sucking its thumb while it happens, again, it will show that Western Civilization is dead. It only remains to see when the corpse starts to rot and be carried out and dumped in the desert for the jackals to finish off. And it will deserve that fate.

  3. Eric J says:

    I wonder if Taiwan is feeling nervous. If they’re getting the same treatment as Israel (just with less media attention) they’d probably be best off just negotiating some kind of Hong-Kong-like reunification with Mainland China, because if they’re relying on US protection, they’re nuts.

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