We are continuing to collect responses to the Obama/Netanyahu meeting on Monday. Ali Abunimah says the meeting represented no hope or change for US policy. He is especially critical of Obama’s endorsement of Israel as a Jewish state and raises the important point – what’s the point of the US pressuring Israel if the solution they’re advocating won’t end the conflict? Abunimah:
Obama reportedly believes peace in Palestine is the key to transforming US relations with the "Muslim world." If he were serious about this, the US would have to break with all its past policies and support peace based on democratic and universal human rights principles and equality — something incompatible with a commitment to Israel as a "Jewish state" practicing legalized discrimination. All the signs are however that the Obama administration will push to try to force Palestinians and Arabs to accept and normalize Israel as it is and that the US will continue to underwrite a morally and politically bankrupt Zionist settler-colonial project with a permanent American military, economic and diplomatic bailout.
Mustafa Barghouti made a similar point in the LA Times and I agree. How can ensuring a exclusive Jewish state end a conflict that is rooted in systemic inequality between Jews and Palestinians? Obama should take a more radical, and democratic, approach – equal rights for all.
