Palestinians deserve more, Obama says
U.S. president applauded by Israelis as he pushes two-state solution, says future is Israel’s to decide
WASHINGTON— Everyday life for Palestinians, Barack Obama told Israelis in the straight-talk portion of a visit too long in coming, is not fair, not just, not right — and ultimately, not his call.
The still harder truth, the president warned, is that the absence of peace is steering Israel toward an eventual demographic crisis, where the occupied will outnumber the occupiers. The Palestinian Womb Bomb, as some observers indelicately describe the two people’s mismatched birth rates, is an existential threat.
But here too, the American president assured, the future is Israel’s to decide. Either way, he pledged, America has its back. Forever. Full stop.
“Truth, no consequences,” is the best way to describe Obama’s direct-to-the-people address in Jerusalem, where the president’s read of harsh reality came wrapped in empathy for the Israeli dilemma.
Barely a tenth of Israelis, polls suggest, trust Obama. But you wouldn’t know it from the applause that cascaded throughout the Jerusalem International Convention Centre for 50 minutes Thursday as he spoke to college-aged Israelis, over the heads of their leaders.
They applauded his Hebrew. They went wild as he described Pass- over’s ancient ties to the ground underfoot. They had his back when hecklers interrupted, standing in ovation when Obama quipped the nuisance made “me feel at home — I wouldn’t feel comfortable if I didn’t have at least one heckler.”
The applause continued even through the harsh bits, when Obama put his cards on the table on the untenable Palestinian reality.
“Put yourself in their shoes — look at the world through their eyes,” said Obama.
“It is not fair that a Palestinian child cannot grow up in a state of their own, living their entire lives with the presence of a foreign army that controls the movements of her parents every single day.
“It is not just when settler violence against Palestinians goes unpunished. It is not right to prevent Palestinians from farming their own lands; to restrict a student’s ability to move around the West Bank, or to displace Palestinian families from their home.
“Neither occupation nor expulsion is the answer. Just as Israelis build a state in their homeland, Palestinians have a right to be a free people in their own land.”
Points to Obama for saying it; points to these young Israelis for applauding it. But points don’t mean much when there’s no game. And as Obama readies to depart Jerusalem for Jordan on Friday, af-
“It is not fair that a Palestinian child cannot grow up in a state of their own, living their entire lives with the presence of a foreign army that controls the movements of her parents every single day.”
BARACK OBAMA
U.S. PRESIDENT
ter a final visit to the Holocaust museum of Yad Vashem and a wreath-laying ceremony at the grave of Yitzhak Rabin, the peace process remains mothballed until further notice.
In merely awakening the word peace — calling it “necessary” and “possible” — during a trip otherwise designed to reinforce the U.S. president’s pro-Israel credentials, the president won plaudits from his dovish allies.
Jeremi Ben-Ami of J Street, the pro-peace Israeli lobby group, hailed it as “amazing . . . never has anyone expressed with greater clarity and with greater conviction everything our movement fights for and holds dear. We must back up the president and support him against his critics. The president has spoken up for us. We must now speak up for him.”
But for the Palestinian peace camp — those working outside the shadow of Hamas, which continues to reject Israel’s right to exist — the revival of two-state talk awakened heavy doubts.
“Reading between the lines, this speech suggests that President Obama will do little more than pay lip service to an outcome he refuses to put the muscle of his office behind,” said Yousef Munayer, executive director of the Palestine Centre in Washington.
“Rather, what he has told Israelis is that the U.S. will stand by Israel regardless of what choices it makes — even if that choice continues to be perpetual occupation. That is, to say the least, unbecoming of the leader of the free world.”