The biggest loser in the Palestinians’ bold move to take their sham peace process with Israel, which was going nowhere, to the United Nations is US President Barack Obama. Seldom in international affairs has a major world leader soared so high so quickly to plummet so low in such a short time.
It was not so long ago that Mr Obama was welcomed the world over even before he assumed office, feted like a king and hero in Germany, a bright new star in the global firmament. And then he made the stirring speech in Cairo, opening out to the Muslim world in particular. And the Nobel committee were so overwhelmed by him that for the first time they awarded a peace prize on the promise of what he would accomplish, rather than anything he had actually achieved.
The world has watched the unravelling of the Obama presidency over the past two years and more as economic difficulties have taken their toll and a nativist Tea Party movement has taken hold, both distorting mainstream politics. But above all, the all-powerful Israeli lobby has driven him into a political corner by denouncing him on
the most serious crime in the American political lexicon, being inimical to Israeli interests.
Mr Obama had been seeking to inject some life into the make-believe peace process between Palestinians and Israel by asking Israel to stop further illegal building on occupied land before a new round of talks. Israelis, nurtured on American political, military and moral support, cried blue murder. There is no point in continuing talks while Tel Aviv continued to swallow and colonise more of Palestinian land. Sheepishly, President Obama swallowed his pride and words.
A bigger battle was shaping up. In desperation, Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority, decided to take the problem to the UN, seeking the organisation’s full membership. After all, the state of Israel was formally created by the UN. Intense American efforts to dissuade Palestinians from pursuing their new course was rebuffed and Mr Obama plumbed to his lowest depth by telling Mr Abbas that he would veto Palestinian membership if it came to a vote in the Security Council. Palestinians have the option of taking the issue to the UN General Assembly where they have overwhelming support to become an “observer state”, a notch higher than their present observer status.
To anyone who has observed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over the decades, as I have, the cards have always been stacked heavily against Palestinians even as the US, Israel’s chief mentor and military and economic aid-giver, chose itself as the sole mediator. And in a brilliant act of one-upmanship, it even persuaded three other parties — the UN, the European Union and Russia (dubbed the Quartet) — essentially to serve as cheer leaders for American policies. Why Russia chose to play such a subservient and demeaning role remains a mystery, except in the context of the collapse of the Soviet Union and a phase in which President Boris Yeltsin and his foreign minister were eating out of the American hand.
It is only after Mr Abbas took the issue to the UN that Russia has shown some signs of following an independent policy on Palestine. But the proposal to throw Palestinians again into interminable and fruitless discussions with Israel while the latter swallows up more occupied land and builds more settlement colonies, even with new time limits, is no solution; the record offers a litany of a succession of limits not honoured.
One can sympathise with Mr Obama’s fate. The Israeli lobby is simply too powerful to let the US play an even hand. Even today Republicans jockeying for the party’s nomination for presidency are damning him for being antithetic to Israeli interests and, irony of ironies, the Obama administration has had to seek the help of the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to save a congressional move to slice economic aid for Palestine. Having surrendered to the Israeli lobby to save his bid for re-election next year, he is in danger of losing the election at the altar of Israel’s all-powerful influence on American congressmen and senators and the clout of the Christian Right.
A major consequence is that Mr Obama has lost his aura and moral compass. Everyone realises that statecraft involves the practice of realpolitik. One can even accept the reality of the US going soft on the turmoil in Bahrain because of the fact that the US Fifth Fleet is stationed there.
But how can the world reconcile itself with America singing the praises of the Arab Spring and welcoming the new Libyan administration into the comity of nations, thanks to Nato bombs, and stop short on what President Abbas in his UN address called extending the Arab Spring to a Palestinian Spring?
While the Nobel Peace Prize Committee must be ruing its over-enthusiasm in anticipating Mr Obama’s good deeds, his dilemmas are growing each day. Events are no respecter of persons and as economic woes have mounted and America is going through one of its periodic madness in the shape of the Tea Party, it has left the first black President stranded. It is often suggested that President George H.W. Bush lost his election (even as his son later made the grade) because he had withheld construction guarantees to discourage Israel building more illegal settlements.
It would be a tragedy for America and the world were Israel to win Mr Obama’s scalp for daring to challenge Israel’s divine right permanently to rule over occupied Palestinian land and people. Israel’s nemesis will come in the shape of its total ostracism from its neighbours. The Egyptian revolution has meant the end of one Israeli prop in President Hosni Mubarak, and Turkey’s increasingly strident policy towards Israel, its old ally, has seen the end of a close relationship. The question is: At what cost can Israel survive with US help in an increasingly hostile environment?

The writer can be contacted at snihalsingh@gmail.com