Topic:
The first question the headline begs is this: What is, or rather what could be, Israel's worst?
I am sure that U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is right when he says that Israel has not yet made up its mind about whether or not to attack Iran's nuclear facilities. The question is - What will most likely be the determining factor in the mind of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu?
As the New York Times put it, "President Obama used his last major address on a global stage before the November election to deliver a strong defense of America's belief in freedom of speech, challenging fledgling Arab and North African democracies to ensure that right even in the face of violence."
In an article for TomDispatch, Peter Van Buren (a U.S. Foreign Service Officer for many years) posed what he described as Six Critical Foreign Policy Questions That Won't Be Raised in Presidential Debates. Question three was under the headline - What do we want from the Middle East?
The third and final debate between President Obama and challenger Romney was so lacking in real and relevant substance about foreign affairs that I had to struggle, several times, to resist the temptation to turn it off and go back to bed.
More than 24 years after the event, and to prevent a battle with the newspaper in the courts, Israeli military censors cleared for publication by Yediot Ahronot a truth - that it was Israeli commandoes who, on 16 April 1988, went all the way to Tunis to murder Abu Jihad, the co-founder with Arafat of Fatah and, at the time of his death, Arafat's number two and most likely successor in the event of his assassination.
When Israel rained death and destruction on the Gaza Strip four years ago, Chris Hedges wrote the following. "Israel uses sophisticated attack jets and Naval vessels to bomb densely crowded refugee camps, schools, apartment blocks mosques and slums, to attack a population that has no air force, no air defense, no navy, no heavy weapons, no artillery units, no mechanized armour, no command and control, no army and calls it a war. It is not a war. It is Murder. Images of dead Palestinian children lined up as if asleep on the floor of the main hospital in Gaza are a metaphor for the future. Israel will from now on speak to the Palestinians in the language of death."
It's too soon to know whether the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas will be more than a sticking plaster to be ripped off by more violence whether provoked by Israel or not, but while we wait for events to give us the answer, there is a good case for saying that under Netanyahu’s leadership the Zionist (not Jewish) state has suffered a significant defeat.
In the final countdown to the UN General Assembly vote on recognition of Palestine as a non-member state, the PLO has indicated that it's expecting "a pleasant surprise"; it being the number of European countries which will not do Zionism’s bidding on this occasion and will vote for the resolution. Victory for the Palestinians in this forum can be taken for granted, and it will help to further isolate the Israel of Netanyahu as a pariah state, but... It won't be, can't be, a substitute for a viable strategy to secure justice for the Palestinians.
The longer version of the headline question is this: Given the corruption of the American political system which puts what passes for democracy up for sale to the highest lobby bidders, will any U.S. President (not only a second-term Obama) ever be able to shape and implement policies which best serve the longer term interests of all Americans rather than the short- term interests of the most powerful lobbies?
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Rashid Khalidi is the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University and the author of several books focussing on the Middle East including 'The Hundred Years' War On Palestine'. He explains some of the basic facts of the struggle for Palestinian independence and the creation of the Zionist project of Israel.