Opinion

Palestinian problem is central to region but Israelis control U.S. policy — Brahimi

In The Nation, Barbara Crossette interviews Lakhdar Brahimi, 80, the Algerian who served as a leading diplomat for the United Nations over a couple of decades, including as the lead Syrian negotiator. Brahimi makes it clear that the U.S. Palestinian policy is at the heart of our problems in the Middle East. He refers to the Israel lobby as a “formidable machine” that will overcome U.S. efforts to be fair; he watched it foil Obama and Kerry’s efforts. Obama was supposed to be the world’s president, but Israel controls U.S. policy re Palestinians.

To add to the skepticism, despair and alienation across the region, Brahimi says, is the corrosive, unconditional American support of Israel despite its unending land grabs and military assaults on Palestinians, most recently in the attacks on Gaza this summer. It was outrageous that the reaction in Congress and from President Obama to the most recent carnage and death was prefaced with the time-worn expression “Israel has the right to defend itself,” Brahimi said, adding that the lack of sensitivity to the hugely imbalanced casualty figures—more than 2,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza compared with sixty-eight Israelis, almost all of them soldiers, according to United Nations figures—seemed to imply that “Gazans are not human.”

“I generally don’t like to speak about countries,” said Brahimi, usually a consummate diplomat who was Algeria’s foreign minister from 1991–93, “but [Obama] is not the president of the United States only. He’s a kind of president of the world. I still remember his Cairo speech in 2009. That was an inspired and inspiring speech. So looking back at that speech, definitely we are disappointed.”

Brahimi, now 80, speaking in an interview from his home in Paris, said that, like it or not, “the Palestinian issue is still important for all of us in this region. This is a very, very big part of the story. Anything on the Palestinian issue is decided by the Israelis. It is a mistake to go to the Americans: Please come and help us with this problem. They cannot. They are not allowed to. We need Americans. They have a huge role to play. But they cannot be an honest broker.” Not that there have never been laudable American efforts to find solutions, he said.

“I had an opportunity to hear [Secretary of State] John Kerry speak of what he was trying to do to help solve that [Palestinian] problem,” Brahimi said. “That was just over one year ago. I was profoundly impressed at how much work he had put into the exercise, how he was genuinely trying to be fair and impartial. But I had no illusions: the present Israeli Government and the formidable machine supporting them in the US. shall not allow him to succeed. That is why I say the US cannot be an honest broker.” He recalls the day when Condoleezza Rice, as secretary of state, was forced to veto a resolution on the Middle East that she had personally negotiated in the Security Council after Washington got a call from Israel opposing the measure.

Condoleezza Rice told the story about that come-down in her memoir, No Higher Honor. It was an abstention, not a veto, of  a resolution she had written. Elliott Abrams writes in his memoir that he found Rice’s resolution “shameful,” and Abrams carried the day at the White House even as Rice railed. “What’s wrong with this language, she asked; she did not see what [Ehud] Olmert was screaming about.” So an Israeli P.M. had more power than our secretary of state.

This piece is a challenge to David Remnick, who joked years ago that if only the I/P situation were fixed, Osama bin Laden would go back into the family construction business. Why not try and fix it and see what good would flow?

Thanks to James North, who writes about petroleum dictatorships for The Nation this week.

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Brahimi is correct. So is Rouhani. So are other folks in the ME.

We are complicit in Israel’s crimes and hypocrites of the highest order in the region and beyond.

Our ‘foreign policy’ is a nightmare.

This is true, it is well-said, and from a reliable source. It also has been obvious for many years to any who had eyes to see, alas. We are complicit, we are hypocrites, or rather, our leaders are.

Brahimi speaking truth to power, at his age there is nothing they can do to him, I thought he lost credibility when he wanted Assad to step down, virtually supporting the Syrian opposition, still, I fully agree with his assessment of the US/Israel relationship.
For those who find the latest middle east war confusing here is a summary from a comment in Moon of Alabama..”ARE you confused about what’s going on in the Middle East? Allow me to explain.
We support the Iraqi government in the fight against the Islamic State. We don’t like IS, but IS is supported by Saudi Arabia, whom we do like.
We don’t like President Assad in Syria. We support the fight against him, but not IS, which is also fighting against him.
We don’t like Iran, but Iran supports the Iraqi government against IS. So, some of our friends support our enemies and some of our enemies are our friends, and some of our enemies are fighting against our other enemies, whom we want to lose, but we don’t want our enemies who are fighting our other enemies to win.
If the people we want to defeat are defeated, they might be replaced by people we like even less. And all this was started by us invading a country to drive out terrorists who surely actually they’re to begin with until we went in to drive them out”. Do you understand now?

.
http://www.itbn.org/index/detail/ec/5raDEzbzqz-JWxvkmQptuyq-sS0BJdu4

http://www.itbn.org/index/detail/ec/NjODA3bzrNBHRpLdoQkvXKO-ZIgBnUn7

http://search.aol.com/aol/search?s_it=topsearchbox.search&v_t=client96-newtab&q=david+siegel+tbn

i saw some of this on the tv and there’s
plenty more just like it 24/7….
enough to know it is part of the problem
as to why the American people are silent
.
the truth the whole truth that’s what people need
.
collectivly ‘we’ the 99%ters are more wealthy powerful
and just than all the 1%ters
‘we’ made the 1%ters and we can unmake then too
.
G-d Bless
.

Its like the whole world is a worse place because of Israels policies, their need for support from the US drives the political caste into a race to the bottom in a bid for AIPAC money and support, the hawks get the seat. Most of Washington pushed to the right means more colonialism, more hegemony, more wars, and of course their European vassals tag along, no way are they gonna miss out on the spoils. Whole regions become endless battlefields, four consecutive US Presidents have bombed Iraq, a country that’s not so much as fired a pea shooter at America. Presidents don’t even go through the pretence of asking Congress any more, its a given.

In 2007 when Amy Goodman interviewed 4-star General Wesley Clark http://www.globalresearch.ca/we-re-going-to-take-out-7-countries-in-5-years-iraq-syria-lebanon-libya-somalia-sudan-iran/5166 for Democracy Now! and he said “We’re going to take out seven countries in 5 years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran” it sounded far fetched. Not any more, only optimistic with the time frame.