Alexander Cockburn: Israel, Gaza and the US - what will Obama dare to do? | News & Politics | News & Comment

any equitable US policy to address Palestinian aspirations, the international situation does offer opportunity and demands a shift.

Although ruthless and horrifying, Israel's onslaught on Gaza is evidently an expression of weakness, in a quest for military credibility forced by the imminence of elections in Israel, just as Shimon Peres, in

"In the dying moments of his administration, Bill Clinton nearly brokered a successful deal between the Ehud Barak government and Arafat."

Ehud Barak, Bill Clinton and Yasser Arafat at Camp David

similarly dire straits, launched Operation 'Grapes of Wrath' against Lebanon before an election (which his party lost) in 1996. Bombardment, as always, unites the population on the receiving end and rallies it around its political leaders, assuming they don't run away.

In the end, Israel will stop the bombing and what will it achieve beyond another exhibition of futile strategy, like the attack on Lebanon in 2006? The last time Israel had an effective military campaign that could be called a victory was 27 years ago, in the 1982 attack on Lebanon.

Hamas has been greatly strengthened by the current attack and the status of President Abbas reaffirmed as a spineless collaborator with Israel, Mubarak likewise; Syria and Turkey alienated from Western designs; Hezbollah and Iran vindicated by the world condemnation of Israel's barbarous conduct.

It’s hard to shoot dramatic photographs of empty medicine bottles, but easy to film a Palestinian mother weeping over her five dead daughters

For months Israel besieged Gaza, starving its civilian inhabitants of essential supplies with almost no effective international reproach. It's hard to shoot dramatic photographs of an empty medicine bottle, but easy to film a bombed out girl's dorm or a Palestinian mother weeping over the bodies of her five dead daughters, as featured on the front page of the Washington Post this week.

Israel's current crop of leaders are second-raters, and conditions ripe for a forceful push from the US, assuming that the new administration has the requisite modicum of courage and ingenuity - a very long bet, as the bitter experience of nearly 40 years instructs us.

In the dying moments of his administration, Bill Clinton nearly brokered a successful deal between the Ehud Barak government and Arafat. Hillary Clinton certainly knows that the story of Arafat walking away from "the best possible deal" is a myth fostered by Israel and that it was Barak, facing elections, who collapsed the deal at the Taba summit.

Everybody knows what the contours of a settlement should be. Olmert, on his way out, put it flatly in his famous October interview in Yediot Aharonot: "We must reach an agreement with the Palestinians, the essence of which is that we shall actually withdraw from almost all the territories, if not from all the territories… Anyone who wants to keep all the territory of [Jerusalem] will have to put 270,000 Arabs behind fences within sovereign Israel. That won't work."

In that same interview Olmert said of his previous 30 years as a politician, apropos the Palestinian question, "I was not ready to look into all the depths of reality." Will Obama and Clinton confront reality? America's changing and weakening circumstances will prompt them to do so. If Obama wants to be judged as anything more than a partisan of the Israel lobby, he will have to make the attempt.

That said, no one who has followed US policy in the Middle East with any attention since the Six Day War in 1967 should discard profound pessimism as the anchor for all assessments.

FIRST POSTED JANUARY 2, 2009

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I'd be surprised if there is any shift in the Israel lobby's stranglehold on American power. Money doesn't talk, it swears. This current situation was engineered by Israel; pushing Palestinians to the limit so that Hamas reacted and dropped the ceasefire it had held for six months of Israeli blockade when Israel gave back nothing in return. Then they could 'respond' to the largely ineffective rockets with aerial bombing. They don't want to live with Palestinians, they want them to disappear so they can take their land.

Posted by Peter Simmons at 12:26pm on January 2, 2009

Obama is a politician. I cannot imagine him having the vision to push for any attitude changes for Israel. I think the only hope for the Palestinians lies in Hillary Clinton.

Posted by BILL MUNTZ at 1:25pm on January 2, 2009

There may actually be a greater truth behind Tzivi Lipni's Gaza holocaust. If the favourable polls then keep out the arch devil Bibi Netenhayu from the Israeli leadership we may well have been saved from a major war in the Middle East over the coming decade. Ironically, Obama who was elected with the aid of the timely providential 2-3% 'financial meltdown' swing vote in the crucial states, may actually be having another push from Providence in the 'right' direction !!

Posted by Iqbal Halani at 2:33pm on January 2, 2009

The answer to this question is quite clear, that is if he has the brains to learn from the 20th century of failed European colonialism that created artificial countries and borders supported freedom fighters that eventually landed on Europe's doorstep? isn't that silly to hate someone for having the light while you know your living a lie?

Posted by Avi-Hecht at 3:39pm on January 2, 2009

This is a very good and interesting article and I would to know some of the answers to the big questions that it poses.Only time will tell I guess.It does pose a big question about the active Jewish lobby in washington,98 % is the figure given but can this be true about pro Iraeli representation in the USA Congress? If so then this is truly disturbing on many levels, political and economic as the artilce points out. I just hope that Obama / Clinton can bring a differenet persectrive to US foreign policy and the Middle East in particular.We can but live in Hope. Bill Beeby England.

Posted by william beeby at 6:37pm on January 2, 2009

The article quotes Obama as saying: 'Israel should get whatever it wants and an undivided Jerusalem should be its capital.' Um, where did Obama actually say this? It does not appear to be a direct quote from his speech to AIPAC: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91150432. True, Obama does say that Jerusalem 'must remain undivided', and it is possible to interpret his speech as saying that Israel should get whatever it wants. However, should this be presented as a direct quote?

Posted by John Smith at 6:41pm on January 8, 2009

The most depressing situation in the world today covered with insight by Alexander Cockburn. I did not get any sense from Hillary Clinton's address at her senate hearing that it will be anything but business as usual where the Middle East is concerned. One does not have to be Arab or Muslim to feel deep pain for people like the mother who lost her 5 daughters, and the hundreds of others maimed or killed by this brutal assault. If the pro Israeli/ Jewish lobby in the US administration is as strong and influential as Cockburn claims, then there is no hope, I fear

Posted by Yolande Agble at 8:06am on January 17, 2009