Mouin Rabbani makes the argument for why the U.S. should step aside as Mideast broker:
The main achievement of the diplomatic process initiated by Washington in 1991 and monopolized by it ever since has been the exponential acceleration of Israel’s illegal settlement enterprise.
Last month, the PLO submitted an application for U.N. membership for the missing state to the Security Council. In response, Washington all but declared a global state of alert. The ferocity of its campaign to deny Palestinian statehood, including the credible threat of yet another veto on Israel’s behalf, the incessant bullying of friend and foe alike and punitive congressional sanctions, conclusively demonstrate that the United States is incapable of mediating anything other than a one-state outcome.
This raises the question of why Washington remains so committed to extending its perfect record of abysmal failure. The answer increasingly provided by Palestinians and Arabs alike is that the United States is devoted to its monopoly precisely because it views its involvement as a success – for itself and Israel — at the Palestinians’ and the international community’s expense. If there are indeed other factors that explain why Washington opposes even a symbolic Palestinian diplomatic initiative, and goes rabid at the very suggestion of multilateralism, these have yet to be persuasively presented.
Not all successful mediators are neutral, yet America’s seemingly limitless devotion to the colonizer against the colonized cries out for a counterweight. To the extent Washington succeeds in excluding other actors from the equation, it will increasingly be called to account by the region’s citizens. As Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak and other trusted American friends are forced to make room for more representative leaderships, Washington’s startling incongruence with the spirit of the times is creating a massive problem for itself.
To retain what prospects remain for a constructive relationship with the Arab world, Obama and Washington politicians would do well to follow the president’s own advice to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad: If he cannot lead, he should follow; and if he refuses, he must get out of the way before being forced aside.
Actually, the US record on the Mideast peace process has to be accounted a perfect success from the standpoint of its true objectives. From the start, the peace process has been entirely controlled by the Israeli government and the Israel lobby, using agents and operatives like Dennis Ross and Aaron David Miller inside the American government. The name of the game has been to drag out, stall and obstruct the peace process for as long as possible while creating new settlements in the occupied territories and advancing the project of building Greater Israel.
When Barack Obama foolishly began to show signs of taking the peace process seriously, pro-Israel militants inside his own political party straightened him out on the real game right quick with a brutal pushback.
On the Mideast process so far, which has been a carefully crafted deception and charade, mission accomplished.
“conclusively demonstrate that the United States is incapable of mediating anything other than a one-state outcome.”
WRONG or INCOMPLETE. USA is capable only of aiding longevity of apartheid, non-democratic, slowly-strangling, status quo (strangulation and shrinkage is part of the status quo). The threat to the status quo from Israeli settler pogromist-terrorists (who could perhaps expel the Palestinian residents) is IGNORED. The threat to status quo from PA UN manoeuvres is violently opposed. The see-through fig-leaf of “support for negotiation” is part of the USA empire’s “Emperor’s New Clothes” which no-one can see but the emperor.
The US isn’t interested in a “constructive relationship” with the Arab world – they are interested in it’s continued dominance of the region.
This is part of the “Grand Area” after all. I wouldnt count Uncle Sam out yet; Mubarak, Ben Ali, Gaddafi and others might be gone – but are their regimes? Or have they been re-constituted? We shall see
Who can step into the US shoes? No one. Only the US has the ability to make Israelis take security risks for peace. Another post howling at the moon with zero constructive criticism and no real alternative proposed.
I saw Hillary’s full interview last night, talking about Iraq withdrawal.
She said we went to Iraq to free it from Saddam because Iraqis deserved their human rights and a sovereign state they controlled themselves.
Didn’t mention the WMDs, guess she thinks we have short memories.
I just sat here listening in amazement as she went on and on about the US commitment to oppressed people and how we had an obligation to help them.
All I could think about was how totally opposite the US stance is on Palestine.
Our government isn’t just liars, they really are mental cases.
What could be more scary than a country’s leadership that doesn’t even know or care about the hypocrisy the public recongizes….they just keep on this other world babbling like wind up toys.