Kumbayah Express
In the wake of the Iranian nuke talks/election train wreckage, the Obama admin, pumping like crazy on its Cairo handcar, rolls toward a major new foreign policy derailment. NYT:
In coming weeks, senior administration officials said, the White House will begin a public-relations campaign in Israel and Arab countries to better explain Mr. Obama’s plans for a comprehensive peace agreement involving Israel, the Palestinians and the Arab world.
The campaign, which will include interviews with Mr. Obama on Israeli and Arab television, amounts to a reframing of a policy that people inside and outside the administration say has become overly defined by the American pressure on Israel to halt settlement construction on the West Bank.
“We’re at a crucial moment now,” said Martin S. Indyk, a former ambassador to Israel and peace negotiator in the Clinton administration. “There are only so many visits George Mitchell can make.”
In Israel, public opinion toward Mr. Obama, which was skeptical to start with, has soured because of the tension over settlements. In the Arab world, there is little evidence of a change of heart toward Israel.
Saudi Arabia, by all accounts the central player in developing a consensus among Arab countries, appears utterly unmoved by the American argument that “confidence-building” gestures can open the door to more substantive negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.
Apparently the problem is that no one seems to get that while the trains carrying Israeli and Arab interests are on the same track and pointed at each other, that doesn’t mean they are on a collision course. It goes on to say that George Mitchell reckons the project’s still on track because while conductors loudly denounce everything in public, they’re quite pleasant behind closed doors. They’re not exactly at the stage of getting both locomotives to pull all the train cars in the same direction yet. The trick is convincing one locomotive to get on the siding at the right moment, while the other blows past. Something like that. Meanwhile, one trainspotter observes, there’s a bridge out up ahead, but the attitude seems to be, we’ll plummet off that bridge when we get to it.
Israel Matzav cocks a skeptical eye at Amtrak’s efforts to get the passengers to rewrite the train schedules for Tel Aviv & Mediterranean and ConArab. Notes public opinion of Obama’s conducting skills is headed south on the northbound tracks.
Uh oh, here’s a loose tie under the rails. via MEMRI, top Abbas aide: “Jerusalem cannot be regained without thousands of martyrs.” Well, that’s usually how it goes when that place changes hands, though he might be underestimating the damage this time.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 8:39 am Comments (2) on Monday, August 3, 2009
2 Responses to “Kumbayah Express”
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August 3rd, 2009 at 1:11 pm
Obama still hasn’t learned that sweet-talking the American public is one thing (and probably a one-time thing), and that sweet-talking the harder-nosed rest of the world is another thing entirely. I fear that once he starts, the Middle East is going to be far worse off than it would have been if he’d just kept his mouth shut.
August 4th, 2009 at 12:44 pm
Is the New York Times really this clueless? Who the heck writes this stuff?
“Saudi Arabia, by all accounts the central player in developing a consensus among Arab countries, appears utterly unmoved by the American argument that “confidence-building” gestures can open the door to more substantive negotiations…”
By ALL accounts? I guess this is code for “we at the mighty NYT believe…”
Who says there is a central player in developing a consensus? Who says Arab countries are interested in consensus? Why is this the lens through which to consider Saudi involvement? Did the reporter interview anyone at all except George Mitchell?
Utterly unmoved! How rude of the Saudis to be unmoved by an argument! How could that possibly be? The President has been making this same argument for months–it must be true by now!
I followed the link to see if there’s anything more sensible there. It just gets worse and worse. More Mitchell, claiming that everyone is saying all the right things to him in secret, and that the magical gestures are under way.
“He declined to discuss what kinds of steps, but other officials said the United States was pushing for a package of measures ranging from Arab countries’ opening commercial offices in Tel Aviv to their leaders’ granting interviews to Israeli journalists. Another step would be getting Arab nations to allow Israel’s state carrier, El Al, to fly over Arab countries to cut flight times to Asia.
Even the Saudis, he said, “want to be helpful…”
Right. Interviews with Israeli journalists. That’s a gesture, alright! Flying over Arab countries starts to sound a bit interesting… to cut flight times to Asia? Oh, that is rich.
I suppose it is possible that the New York Times actually does not know that the only off-the-record conversations in the Middle East lately that have any actual bearing on the deadly serious situation there are the recent discussions between the Saudis and the Israelis. (Heck, I suppose it is possible that George Mitchell doesn’t know that.)
If there is one rational actor, as we say, in the entire Middle East, and there is, it is Israel. President Obama has made it clear to Israel that the United States cannot be counted on to prevent a nuclear Iran, so Israel is making its new foreign policy clear. The Saudis are equally astonished at President Obama’s blase attitude, and now have no choice but to pursue the enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend strategy, just as Jordan and sometimes Egypt have done in the past. Happily for the Saudis, they can afford to hire really terrific PR counsel to save face for them along the way. I understand the Saudis did indeed grant permission for flights across their airspace. Might not have been El Al they were thinking of, but, let’s just keep that as our little secret, shall we? For goodness sake don’t tell the Times!
Even the Saudis want to be helpful. Inexplicable! Couldn’t be the threat of a nuclear Iran—President Obama hasn’t scheduled that press conference yet.
I just checked the headline to see if I could discern what the heck the scope of this story is. “U.S. to Push Peace in Middle East Media Campaign.” So it has come to that. The Times news item is the President’s PR campaign. The balance of power in the actual countries that make up the Middle East is a small background item. No wonder the details are sketchy.