Skip to main content

Obama's 'Palestinian friend' laments catastrophic U.S. policy in Mideast

"Rashid Khalidi, considered the successor to Prof. Edward Said among the Palestinian intelligentsia, studied and taught for 12 years, until 1983, at the American University of Beirut and the Institute for Palestinian Studies there. While he did maintain connections with foreign reporters, he was never a PLO spokesman. Later on, between the Madrid summit in late 1991 and the Oslo Accords in September 1993, Faisal Husseini got Khalidi added as a consultant to the Palestinian delegation to the Madrid summit and to the bilateral talks with the Israeli team, headed by Elyakim Rubinstein. That was when Khalidi formed his opinion of the coordinator - the U.S. mediator Dennis Ross, who is one of Obama's advisors on foreign affairs. Khalidi alludes to him when he says in the interview that he hopes the new president will not bring back the same people who contributed to the failure of the peace process here. Nor was Khalidi thrilled to hear that Obama has appointed Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. Clinton's courting of Israel during the darkest days of the intifada made her a darling of the Jewish community and distanced her from the Palestinian community."

The above from Haaretz on a man who "figured" in the US election campaign because of attacks meted out to him by the McCain-Palin camp. Visiting Israel, Haaretz interviewed Khalidi including this:

"How do you assess the last eight years of U.S. conduct in the Middle East and specifically in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

"It has been catastrophic. It made a bad situation worse, undermined democracy all over the region by helping to sabotage the results of the 2006 Palestinian elections, played a major role in splitting the Palestinian national movement, and helped Israel dig itself even deeper into the hole of a permanent occupation. The administration's other foolish Middle East policies, like the occupation of Iraq, the 'cold war' with Iran and Syria, and encouraging Sunni-Shi'ite conflict in the region, have all been negative in and of themselves, but they also had a profoundly harmful effect on the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Many American historians say George W. Bush may have been the worst president in American history, but his impact on this region has certainly been little short of a disaster."

Read a most interesting Q & A here.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Robert Fisk's predictions for the Middle East in 2013

There is no gain-saying that Robert Fisk, fiercely independent and feisty to boot, is the veteran journalist and author covering the Middle East. Who doesn't he know or hasn't he met over the years in reporting from Beirut - where he lives?  In his latest op-ed piece for The Independent he lays out his predictions for the Middle East for 2013. Read the piece in full, here - well worthwhile - but an extract... "Never make predictions in the Middle East. My crystal ball broke long ago. But predicting the region has an honourable pedigree. “An Arab movement, newly-risen, is looming in the distance,” a French traveller to the Gulf and Baghdad wrote in 1883, “and a race hitherto downtrodden will presently claim its due place in the destinies of Islam.” A year earlier, a British diplomat in Jeddah confided that “it is within my knowledge... that the idea of freedom does at present agitate some minds even in Mecca...” So let’s say this for 2013: the “Arab Awakening” (the t

The NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) goes on hold.....because of one non-Treaty member (Israel)

Isn't there something radically wrong here?    Israel, a non-signatory to the NPT has, evidently, been the cause for those countries that are Treaty members, notably Canada, the US and the UK, after 4 weeks of negotiation, effectively blocking off any meaningful progress in ensuring the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.    IPS reports ..... "After nearly four weeks of negotiations, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference ended in a predictable outcome: a text overwhelmingly reflecting the views and interests of the nuclear-armed states and some of their nuclear-dependent allies. “The process to develop the draft Review Conference outcome document was anti-democratic and nontransparent,” Ray Acheson, director, Reaching Critical Will, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), told IPS. “This Review Conference has demonstrated beyond any doubt that continuing to rely on the nuclear-armed states or their nuclear-dependent allies for l

#1 Prize for a bizarre story.....and lying!

No comment called for in this piece from CommonDreams: Another young black man: The strange sad case of 21-year-old Chavis Carter. Police in Jonesboro, Arkansas  stopped  him and two friends, found some marijuana, searched put Carter, then put him handcuffed  behind his back  into their patrol car, where they say he  shot himself  in the head with a gun they failed to find. The FBI is investigating. Police Chief Michael Yates, who stands behind his officers' story,  says in an interview  that the death is "definitely bizarre and defies logic at first glance." You think?