Jennifer Loewenstein is the Associate Director of the Middle East Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; she is also a freelance journalist, a member of the board of ICAHD-USA, founder of the Madison-Rafah Sister City Project and has lived and worked in Jerusalem, Gaza City and Beirut.
Writing "How Much Really Separates Obama and Netanyahu?" on CounterPunch, she castes doubt on whether any real progress will be made "on the ground" despite all the rhetoric of Obama in the last days - and the impression sought to conveyed that the US is exerting some sort of pressure on the Israelis in a variety of ways, not the least of which in relation to what are clearly illegal settlements. By the way "settlements" is a misnomer. Many of the so-called settlements are towns with between 30,000 and 50,000 inhabitants and the whole infrastructure that goes with it.
"Benjamin Netanyahu and Barack Obama have one thing very much in common: both of them have nearly the same vision for the future of “Palestine”. They may not recognize it yet, but sooner or later, whether Netanyahu remains in power or is replaced by someone who speaks Dove-Liberalese better, they will shake hands and agree that the only thing that really separated them in the early months of President Obama’s administration was semantics: the language each man used to describe what he saw for the future of Palestine, or “the Israeli-Palestinian conflict” –a phrase that suggests there are two sides each with a grievance that equals or cancels out the other’s and that makes a just resolution so difficult to formulate.
How deeply have we been indoctrinated.
If President Obama’s speech in Cairo signified anything, it was that the likelihood of a dramatic shift in United States’ policy toward Israel in the coming years is almost nil. The rejectionist framework in which both states have pursued their policies for the past 33 years – or since the 1976 UNSC resolution that first acknowledged Palestinian national rights within the context of two states—is slated to continue. If Obama clarified anything in his lengthy, often patronizing, often obsequious speech in Egypt – a country whose leader epitomizes the tyrannical and repressive regimes so often the primary recipients of massive US foreign aid for doing as they are told – it was the fact that no threat to the status quo of the Bush-Clinton-Bush decades is waiting in the wings."
Writing "How Much Really Separates Obama and Netanyahu?" on CounterPunch, she castes doubt on whether any real progress will be made "on the ground" despite all the rhetoric of Obama in the last days - and the impression sought to conveyed that the US is exerting some sort of pressure on the Israelis in a variety of ways, not the least of which in relation to what are clearly illegal settlements. By the way "settlements" is a misnomer. Many of the so-called settlements are towns with between 30,000 and 50,000 inhabitants and the whole infrastructure that goes with it.
"Benjamin Netanyahu and Barack Obama have one thing very much in common: both of them have nearly the same vision for the future of “Palestine”. They may not recognize it yet, but sooner or later, whether Netanyahu remains in power or is replaced by someone who speaks Dove-Liberalese better, they will shake hands and agree that the only thing that really separated them in the early months of President Obama’s administration was semantics: the language each man used to describe what he saw for the future of Palestine, or “the Israeli-Palestinian conflict” –a phrase that suggests there are two sides each with a grievance that equals or cancels out the other’s and that makes a just resolution so difficult to formulate.
How deeply have we been indoctrinated.
If President Obama’s speech in Cairo signified anything, it was that the likelihood of a dramatic shift in United States’ policy toward Israel in the coming years is almost nil. The rejectionist framework in which both states have pursued their policies for the past 33 years – or since the 1976 UNSC resolution that first acknowledged Palestinian national rights within the context of two states—is slated to continue. If Obama clarified anything in his lengthy, often patronizing, often obsequious speech in Egypt – a country whose leader epitomizes the tyrannical and repressive regimes so often the primary recipients of massive US foreign aid for doing as they are told – it was the fact that no threat to the status quo of the Bush-Clinton-Bush decades is waiting in the wings."
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