Bargaining For Peace

"Arab states must adapt to a world that has changed. The days when they could condemn Israel to distract their people from a lack of opportunity or government corruption or mismanagement -- those days need to be over. Now's the time for the Arab world to take steps toward normalizing relations with Israel."
U.S. President Barack Obama

Well, there spoke the man awarded the Noble Peace Prize, forthrightly and in full command of the scene that has always prevailed in the Middle East. In this, his second term of office at what might be conceived of as the highest political executive office in the world community of nations, he has chosen to abandon his first term's aloof position respecting Israel, appealing instead to the Muslim world on the basis of his uniqueness, that he could be trusted.

His appeal moved them, they felt something stirring within this man of biracial origin whose forbears were both Muslim and Christian. But for all of that he is American and he is the President of the United States, and there is so much room for deviation and no more. He sought to restore trust in America from both within and without, finding the task far more difficult than he had envisaged, and the dense black hair covering his scalp fading to grey is testament to that.

His exalted public office and his clear vision within himself of what he sought to accomplish convinced him to a different path where he now evinces the realization and knowledge that loomed less instructively to him formerly than it now does. The suffering and sacrifices of Judaism throughout the historical record has its analogue in the black condition; Islam has not spared black Sudanese or Somalians from the spiteful hatred of their less-tinged brethren.

President Obama, Hall of Remembrance, Yad Vashem...Pablo Martinez Monsivais, AP Photo

President Obama paid homage to  history, heritage and tragedy on his visit to Jerusalem. He made a prodigious effort to wean himself away from his disapproval of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's political hue and he endeared himself to Israelis by his own emotional response to their heritage and history, no less the tragedies that life has imposed upon them; distinctly savagely unforgivable.

He will remain conflicted in his intentions and his understanding of the savagely Byzantine politics that play out in the Middle East. No less the tribal ferociousness, the polarized sectarianism, the propensity to strike, hard and bloodily when inconvenient challenges persist in unsettling relations. He chose to throw his expectations toward the belief that fundamental Islam would trump secular tyranny, and perhaps now vacillates between staying the course or second-guessing.

He will have made no friends in the Arab or Muslim world by his declaration. Urging positive action, not spurning opportunities, left Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas seething at the message delivered through President Obama's address in Ramallah, to which he politely differed, being yet mindful of the financial support that the PA is always eager to accept. And the coolly professorial urging to proceed with peace talks fell on intransigent ears.

In the Middle East, one side does not capitulate to the other unless there is no other choice. And in the uneven situation prevailing there with a sole small presence and an array of multitudinous ones arrayed against it, there is opportunity for choice. Once capitulation occurs, honour has been blackened. The party that won the contest views the other as weak, unworthy, pitiful, dishonourable.

And ripe for further conquest, with compassion fully withheld for compassion is a very rare commodity in the Middle East.

There are always other avenues open to the enterprising, the crafty, the skilled player. The forum of the United Nations has proven itself to be a boon, an absolute Godsend to the world of the unaligned and the aligned alike, as long as they are not the former imperialists and representative of the Western democracies whom all others hold in vitriolic contempt among the General Assembly.