Obama must face Mideast realities

U.S. should prepare for region's new extremism

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Transcribed from the clipping

President Barack Obama deserves credit for keeping his promise to work for peace in the Middle East from the earliest days of his administration. Unfortunately, the results so far have proven less than encouraging. In fact, some recent trends look downright ominous. On all sides American efforts have run into embarrassing setbacks.

Much global attention has focused on the spat between Washington and Jerusalem over the growth of Israeli settlements on the West Bank and Jerusalem. But Obama's efforts to pressure the other side are running into stiff resistance — and much worse. Obama planned to use his verbal gifts of persuasiveness to persuade all sides to start with small gestures of reconciliation.

All the players would then develop the mutual trust required for the push towards the ultimate prize, peace. It hasn't worked out that way. The first major setback came during a humiliating visit to Saudi Arabia by the American president. The incident received little attention, since it happened hours before Obama's headline-monopolizing speech to Muslims from Cairo.

Obama asked Saudi King Abdullah to give him a token of good will to show Israelis as he publicly pressured them to freeze settlement activity.

The Saudi's answer was a most definitive "No." Even more troubling are developments inside Fatah, the more moderate Palestinian faction, the one the world backs because it favors coexistence with Israel in contrast with Hamas, whose charter calls for Israel's destruction.

Fatah, the party that controls the Palestinian Authority, just held its first convention in two decades in Bethlehem. In advance of the gathering, Fatah officials displayed a troubling tendency toward renewed radicalism. The aim is to drum up popular support among the Palestinian public.

How this transcription was made

Date confirmed on the page (folio-partial).

Context added by this archive

The folio across the top reads 'The Anniston Star' at the left and 'OP-ED' at the right; paper and page are verified from the page itself, but no date is printed on the clipping, so the date is label-only in effect and 'In Washington on July 31' is the only internal dating evidence, consistent with mid-August 2009. 'GLOBAL AFFAIRS' below the folio is a SECTION FLAG, not a deck; the deck is the single line 'U.S. should prepare for region's new extremism'.

The nut graf is set in display type centred under the byline and is transcribed here as the first paragraph of the excerpt, which is how the page reads it. Tagline: 'Frida Ghitis writes about global affairs for The Miami Herald.' A wash drawing of a crane swinging a wrecking ball shaped like a peace symbol fills the lower half of the page; it carries no caption.

The column's structure places every Palestinian statement inside a frame of 'radicalism', 'extremism' and 'moderation'; no ordinary Palestinian is named or quoted, and the three Palestinians who appear are all Fatah officials quoted to establish their unreliability.

Columns were read at page magnification except the nut graf, the opening paragraphs and the Saud al-Faisal quotation, which were transcribed from magnified crops.

Cite this clipping

"Obama must face Mideast realities," The Anniston Star, 13 August 2009, p. OP-ED. Covering Palestine archive, CP-2009-046. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-2009-046