Obama’s vision raises hopes in Mideast talks

(This post is a revised and reduced version of the next post. The title is the making of the editor of the Delco Daily Times. This version is published in the said newspaper on Wednesday 22, 2010)

By
Dr. Mahmoud S. Audi

The negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians had been orchestrated by the internal politics of the United States and Israel, and by denying leverage for the Palestinians. But the current round of talks may be different because of President Obama’s vision, and because the issues for a settlement have already been discussed and the different views have already been tabulated. Now is the time to start to compromise.

However, the fate of the current negotiations might have already been written, and failure has already been stacked on top of previous failures. Nevertheless, there is hope that some agreement will have been produced by the time the talks are concluded. The genuine resolve of President Obama would have been the prime mover to get results.

Because it’s believed that the security of the United States will be vastly improved by settling the conflict between the Palestinians and the Israelis, he started to work on the issue immediately after he became president. If he were a typical president, he would have left tackling the thorny problems of the Middle East to the last few months of his administration, but because of his deep convection of the seriousness of the problem, he pushed the parties to start the negotiations as soon as he could, and continued, although we are in the shadow of the campaigns for the mid-term elections. The momentum is on his side, because he has already tackled successfully a number of thorny issues; and adding one more does not look to be far to achieve.

Obama knows how frustrated and skeptical the Arab and Muslim worlds are, and how deep their conviction that the United State does in the Middle East what Israel wants it to do, disregarding the genuine security needs of the United States and the safety of its people. To start repairing that image he travelled and lectured in Ankara, Turkey, and in Egypt, at the Al Azhar University, a thousand years old university, in Cairo, and promised the Arab and the Muslim worlds that he would help solve the vexing problems of the Middle East by pushing the two parties to work and never to give up.

One of the basic and most difficult issues on the table is the issue of the Palestinians in the Palestinian diaspora. Their main concentration, though, is in Gaza and the West Bank, in Lebanon, Syria, and Jordon, where most of them have lived in refugee camps, which have become shanty towns, sustained by the United Nations rations and other needs. There are many Palestinians in Europe, Canada, and the United States. They are citizens of these Western countries and they have enjoyed their rights as equal citizens with the citizenry of these countries.
The Palestinians want to go to their homes, businesses, orchards, and farms. But Israel has vehemently refused to let them back, because of the fear that they potentially would become athe majority in Israel.

Here is where an ingenious solution must be found. Many of the Palestinian leadership in Gaza and in the West Bank, including Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, are from these refugees who want to go home; so they understand the plight of their countrymen.

Jordan had given the Palestinians who crossed the river Jordan in 1948 coded citizenship, but the refugees who crossed the river in 1967 do not have that privilege. In Lebanon, the Palestinian Christians were given Lebanese citizenships, some Muslim Palestinian refugees in Lebanon bought citizenships, some were asked to change their religion or the sect of religion they had belonged to, to get citizenship.

In Syria the Palestinians have been given all civil right including working in the government, but no political rights.

In Iraq, the Palestinians had been given some help to stand up on their feet and to start working, but they did not have any political rights.

Many Palestinians would like to go to their homes at any material cost, others who are educated in the manners of Western Civilization and have become enchanted with the concepts and applications of freedom and democracy would refuse to accept anything less than full participation in a democratic state.

Still, I believe a large number of Palestinians would accept generous reparations and stay permanently where they are now. So the right of return and other options could also be included in a fair-enough formula.

So in practice not all Palestinians will return permanently, and the return of the reduced number of Palestinians would not risk the Jewish Israel if that is what the Israelis want.

The other issues include the Jewish settlement in the Palestinian land, the mutual security and the borders of the two states, and the fate of Jerusalem. These issues are not as difficult as the issue of the right of return of the Palestinians, and on the negotiation table, there are lists of would be fair solutions.
Finally, Hamas should be part of the peace process. This organization had won the American and European monitored 2006 election in the West Bank and Gaza. Fatah lost, and unlike Al Gore in 2000 who ceded the results of the presidential election to George W. Bush, it wanted to annul the victory of Hamas.

There is not much difference between Fatah and Hamas in their objectives. And calling Hamas a terrorist organization is merely a political label to justify punishment.

Hamas must be in the mix for the peace process to have a chance to succeed. And for the Palestinian State to fulfill its obligations toward the desired peace treaty, it must be democratic in a Western content.