Obama’s plan for Mideast peace falls short
Despite several attempts, Obama has made less headway than his predecessors
When he came to power, he appeared to imply Israeli-Palestinian peace was one of his priorities. In reality, US President Barack Obama has made less headway than many of his predecessors trying to achieve Mideast peace.
No one in Washington was expecting a sudden breakthrough but in New York today for the final United Nations General Assembly of his eightyear double term, Obama is to meet the Israeli leader, perhaps for the last time.
“This would be a declaratory effort to put on record what America believes are the parameters for a solution,” argued Aaron David Miller of the Wilson Centre.
“And it would be an effort to put the Obama ... signature or stamp on an issue that presumably he cares deeply about,” the former senior adviser argued.
On January 22, 2009, Obama marked his second day after his swearing in as US president by nominating George Mitchell as the Middle East peace envoy.
The former senator had been the pointsman in talks to end Britain’s Northern Ireland conflict, and his promotion had been seen as marking the young US leader’s seriousness.
The president himself vowed to “aggressively seek a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians”.
Eight years later, that has not come to pass. Israel and its neighbours are enduring a rough patch of political violence, despite high-profile international oversight. Despite Obama’s protestations, since he took office, Israel has pushed a wave of colony construction that matched or even exceeded the pace of building when George W. Bush was president, according to Israeli government data obtained by The Associated Press.
Final push
Previous efforts to broker Israeli-Palestinian peace have left a bad taste for the Obama administration, most notably a frenetic attempt by Secretary of State John Kerry that collapsed in 2014.
Obama has long since conceded that his administration won’t be the one to forge a resolution to the Mideast conflict.
Yet that has not stopped the president from publicly flirting with the possibility that, in his final months in office, he will seek to influence the future debate by laying out what he sees as the contours of any viable deal.
On Tuesday, Barack Obama told Israel it cannot permanently occupy and settle on Palestinian land in a speech to the United Nations.
“Surely Israelis and Palestinians will be better off if Palestinians reject incitement and recognise the legitimacy of Israel,” he said on Tuesday.
“But Israel must recognise that it cannot permanently occupy and settle Palestinian land.”