National Post (National Edition)
Abbas on short end of Obama rhetoric
President gives pro-Israel speech in Ramallah
In eight years on the job, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas has seen his share of ups and downs. Thursday’s appearance with visiting U.S. president Barack Obama looked like it was one of his lowest points.
At a joint news conference in Ramallah, Mr. Obama delivered a stinging rejection of Mr. Abbas’ key demand that Israel stop building settlements before peace talks resume.
Mr. Abbas has long argued that he cannot be expected to negotiate the borders between Israel and a future Palestinian state while Israel builds in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.
The Palestinians had desperately hoped that Mr. Obama would press Israel to halt construction. Instead, Mr. Obama said disagreements should not be used as an “excuse” not to talk.
“Even though we know what compromises have to be made in order to achieve peace it’s hard to admit that those compromises need to be made,” Mr. Obama said. “People want to cling on to their old positions and want to have 100% of what they want or 95% of what they want instead of making the necessary compromises.”
Mr. Obama also professed a deep belief in the legitimacy of the Zionist dream of a Jewish ancestral homeland.
Those rejecting Israel’s right to exist “might as well reject the earth beneath them and the sky above,” he said. “Israel is not going anywhere.”
As the animated Mr. Obama explained his positions, the subdued Mr. Abbas looked on with a blank expression. When it was his turn to speak, Mr. Abbas publicly disagreed with his visitor. An aide later acknowledged Mr. Abbas was disappointed.
Some analysts appeared shocked.
Ahmad Rafiq Awad, a Palestinian specialist in Israeli affairs at Al Quds University in east Jerusalem, said Mr. Obama appeared, “biased in a way we’ve never seen before.”
Later, Mr. Obama made an impassioned plea to Israel’s people over the heads of its government by calling on them to put themselves in the shoes of Palestinians and pressure the country’s political leadership to seek peace.
In a speech deploying his full range of rhetorical gifts, the U.S. president first cast himself as an unyielding friend of Israel before appealing to ordinary Israelis by asking them to recognize that Palestinians shared their hopes and aspirations, but were being denied the right of an independent state.
Addressing an audience of around 1,000 students at Jerusalem’s International Convention Centre, Mr. Obama then went a step further by urging a public long-wary of him to pressure Israel’s political leaders to take risks for peace.
“Speaking as a politician, I can promise you this: Political leaders will not take risks if the people do not demand that they do. You must create the change that you want to see,” he said in a refrain that reprised the message preceding his election as president in 2008.
Many Israelis would regard his plea for peace with skepticism, the U.S. president acknowledged: “But the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination and justice must also be recognized,” he said.
“Put yourself in their shoes — look at the world through their eyes. It is not fair that a Palestinian child cannot grow up in a state of her own, and lives with the presence of a foreign army that controls the movements of her parents every single day.”
He went on, “Israelis must recognize that continued settlement activity is counterproductive to the cause of peace, and that an independent Palestine must be viable, that real borders will have to be drawn.”
It would mean abandoning settlement building and giving up dreams of establishing a Greater Israel on lands once inhabited by Jewish people in biblical times. Quoting the former Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, the president said: “It is impossible to have a Jewish, democratic state and at the same time to control all of Eretz Israel. If we insist on fulfilling the dream in its entirety, we are liable to lose it all.
“Given the demographics west of the Jordan River, the only way for Israel to endure and thrive as a Jewish and democratic state is through the recognition of an independent and viable Palestine,” he added to surprisingly loud applause.
In his speech, Mr. Obama also stated his willingness to stop Iran building a nuclear bomb — a prime concern of Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister.
As if to reinforce Israeli fears, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,
It is not fair that a Palestinian child cannot grow up in a state of her own
Iran’s supreme leader, threatened in a speech marking the Iranian new year, to “raze Tel Aviv and Haifa to the ground” if Israel attacked the Islamic regime’s nuclear installations.
There was mixed reaction to Mr. Obama’s speech among audience members. Noam Eliahu, 25, a technology student at Haifa university, said she was “inspired.” But Dani Dayan, a former leader of the Settlers Council, accused Mr. Obama of offering a “utopia” with no idea of how to get there.