[Reader-list] Fwd: [chhattisgarh-net] Chomsky on Obama's Cairo Speech

Tue Jun 9 16:59:53 IST 2009

Excuse any multiple postings.
Naga

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: V R Raman <weareraman at gmail.com>
Date: 7 Jun 2009 09:20
Subject: [chhattisgarh-net] Chomsky on Obama's Cairo Speech
To: friends at ramansmailinglist.net

 *Hope one would like to go through, especially when the Cairo speech has
been highly celebrated by the world media. Raman*

*Chomsky: What Obama Didn't Say in His Cairo Address Speaks Volumes About
His Mideast Policy*

*By Noam Chomsky <http://www.alternet.org/authors/3640/>,
AlterNet<http://www.alternet.org/>.
Posted June 4, 2009<http://www.alternet.org/ts/archives/?date%5bF%5d=06&date%5bY%5d=2009&date%5bd%5d=04&act=Go/>
.*

*The U.S. has played a decisive role in sustaining the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict. Obama gave no indication that its role should change.** **
*

A CNN headline, reporting Obama's plans for his June 4 address in Cairo,
Egypt, reads "Obama looks to reach the soul of the Muslim world." Perhaps
that captures his intent, but more significant is the content hidden in the
rhetorical stance, or more accurately, omitted.

Keeping just to Israel-Palestine -- there was nothing substantive about
anything else -- Obama called on Arabs and Israelis not to "point fingers"
at each other or to "see this conflict only from one side or the other."

There is, however, a third side, that of the United States, which has played
a decisive role in sustaining the current conflict. Obama gave no indication
that its role should change or even be considered.

Those familiar with the history will rationally conclude, then, that Obama
will continue in the path of unilateral U.S. rejectionism.

Obama once again praised the Arab Peace Initiative, saying only that Arabs
should see it as "an important beginning, but not the end of their
responsibilities." How should the Obama administration see it?

Obama and his advisers are surely aware that the initiative reiterates the
longstanding international consensus calling for a two-state settlement on
the international (pre-June 1967) border, perhaps with "minor and mutual
modifications," to borrow U.S. government usage before it departed sharply
from world opinion in the 1970s. That's when the U.S. vetoed a U.N. Security
Council resolution backed by the Arab "confrontation states" (Egypt, Iran,
Syria), and tacitly by the PLO, with the same essential content as the Arab
Peace Initiative, except that the latter goes beyond by calling on Arab
states to normalize relations with Israel in the context of this political
deal.

Obama has called on the Arab states to proceed with normalization,
studiously ignoring, however, the crucial political settlement that is its
precondition. The initiative cannot be a "beginning" if the U.S. continues
to refuse to accept its core principles, even to acknowledge them.

In the background is the Obama administration's goal, enunciated most
clearly by Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., chairman of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, to forge an alliance of Israel and the "moderate" Arab
states against Iran. The term "moderate" has nothing to do with the
character of the state, but rather signals its willingness to conform to
U.S. demands.

What is Israel to do in return for Arab steps to normalize relations? The
strongest position so far enunciated by the Obama administration is that
Israel should conform to Phase I of the 2003 Road Map, which states: "Israel
freezes all settlement activity (including natural growth of settlements) ."
All sides claim to accept the Road Map, overlooking the fact that Israel
instantly added 14 reservations that render it inoperable.

Overlooked in the debate over settlements is that even if Israel were to
accept Phase I of the Road Map, that would leave in place the entire
settlement project that has already been developed, with decisive U.S.
support, to ensure that Israel will take over the valuable land within the
illegal "separation wall" (including the primary water supplies of the
region), as well as the Jordan Valley, thus imprisoning what is left, which
is being broken up into cantons by settlement/infrastr ucture salients
extending far to the east.

Unmentioned as well is that Israel is taking over Greater Jerusalem, the
site of its major current development programs, displacing many Arabs, so
that what remains to Palestinians will be separated from the center of their
cultural, economic and sociopolitical life.

Also unmentioned is that all of this is in violation of international law,
as conceded by the government of Israel after the 1967 conquest, and
reaffirmed by Security Council resolutions and the International Court of
Justice. Also unmentioned are Israel's successful operations since 1991 to
separate the West Bank from Gaza, since turned into a prison where survival
is barely possible, further undermining the hopes for a viable Palestinian
state.

It is worth remembering that there has been one break in U.S.-Israeli
rejectionism. President Clinton recognized that the terms he had offered at
the failed 2000 Camp David meetings were not acceptable to any Palestinians,
and in December, proposed his "parameters," vague but more forthcoming. He
then announced that both sides had accepted the parameters, although both
had reservations.

Israeli and Palestinian negotiators met in Taba, Egypt, to iron out the
differences, and made considerable progress. A full resolution could have
been reached in a few more days, they announced in their final joint press
conference. But Israel called off the negotiations prematurely, and they
have not been formally resumed. The single exception indicates that if an
American president is willing to tolerate a meaningful diplomatic
settlement, it can very likely be reached.

It is also worth remembering that the George W. Bush administration went a
bit beyond words in objecting to illegal Israeli settlement projects,
namely, by withholding U.S. economic support for them. In contrast, Obama
administration officials stated that such measures are "not under
discussion," and that any pressures on Israel to conform to the Road Map
will be "largely symbolic," the *New York Times* reported (Helene Cooper,
June 1).

There is more to say, but it does not relieve the grim picture that Obama
has been painting, with a few extra touches in his widely heralded address
to the Muslim World in Cairo on June 4.

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