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A big yawn....and it's too late

Whilst the last week has seen acres of analysis of the Obama and Netanyahu speeches on Israel and the conflict with Israel it would appear that it evoked little interest in the Arab world.

Rashid Khalidi is the Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University and the author of six books on Middle Eastern history, including "Palestinian Identity", and "Resurrecting Empire". Khalidi is a former advisor to Palestinian negotiators at the Madrid and Washington peace talks and is the editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies.

He writes on Salon in "How Obama enables Israel's worst impulses" -

"The old Arabic proverb has it that the dogs bark but the caravan goes on. President Obama's comments about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in his speeches last week at the State Department and then at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) produced a great deal of sound and fury in Washington. However, the sense I had being in Beirut and the Gulf when they were delivered was that they meant much less to Arabs than they did in Washington or in Israel. There is little sense in the Arab world or among Palestinians that the United States has a constructive role to play in resolving this conflict. Indeed, if anything, it has only succeeded in making itself even more of a roadblock to progress than it was before."

****

"Given the ongoing revolutionary changes in the Arab world, and their profound impact on the Palestinians, as could be seen in the inter-Palestinian reconciliation, and the march of Palestinians to the borders of Israel from five directions on May 15, events in the Middle East have in any case passed President Obama by. This is not only because his hands are tied by the onset of the presidential election campaign. He is also the victim of the bad advice of veterans like Dennis Ross, who have helped steer administrations since that of Ronald Reagan in the wrong direction.

In view of these factors, there should be no surprise that where actual peacemaking is concerned, Washington is a day late and a dollar short."

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