New York - The features of the American foreign policy towards the Middle East are getting clearer, with the beginning of the final countdown to President Barack Obama's address to the Arab and Islamic worlds, due in almost two weeks. There seem to be new and different elements in the political discourse, as well as in the chosen style and content. A part of the most significant American messages in this regard came last week through U.S Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice – who has the rank of Secretary in the U.S government –during both closed and public sessions of the Security Council, particularly with regards to Palestine and Lebanon. The Ministerial Meeting of the Security Council last Monday – held upon a Russian initiative – was an opportunity to launch an international initiative, from the Security Council, in partnership with the United States. Its aim was to inform Israel that the era, when it had been shielded from international pressure and resolutions, is gone, and that peacemaking and the establishment of a Palestinian state are an international responsibility that will not be left to bilateral negotiations, as the Government of Benjamin Netanyahu would wish. United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon redressed his previous fault in handling the investigation into the Israeli attacks on the United Nations facilities in the Gaza Strip, known as the Ian Martin report. Ban Ki-Moon made one of his most important speeches concerning the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and the requirements of a comprehensive peace in the Middle East. Meanwhile, Russia has reactivated its role through its presidency of the Security Council this month and through the international conference to be held this year in Moscow. Furthermore, the Arab peace initiative has garnered global support, and was described by the British Foreign Secretary as a “deposit that must have a parallel”. Rice called for its adoption and its merger into what is expected to become an upcoming integrated American initiative. This in itself is a shift in U.S. policy toward the Middle East. It is noteworthy to mention here that the previous administrations tried to evade and throw away this “hot potato”, which would subject them to local elective pressures from domestic constituencies, thus neglecting the issue of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict – and the Israeli-Arab conflict – until the seventh year of their eight-year tenure in the White House. This applies not only to George Bush's administration but also to the administration of Bill Clinton. Today, Barack Obama's administration talks about the imperativeness of solving the Palestinian issue as the focal point of any comprehensive peace in the region. It is talking of achieving tangible results, instead of a process of stalling and postponing called the peace process. All of this is evidently new. Meanwhile, Barack Obama's administration is still under probation, and will remain so until it proves its determination and ability to do what must be done, rather than being contented with merely cosmetic operations or incomplete steps that would be the most of what can be achieved. It is necessary for Arab parties, however, and especially those that have loud and angry voices, to contemplate and appreciate the steps being taken then encourage them instead of blaming and denouncing them. They must also check what they should do themselves, in order to truly help the Palestinian people and rid them from the oppression of the occupation. Barack Obama does not have a magic wand, but is in a position – more than anyone else– to employ the popular support he has to intervene as a leader and directly head the efforts to address the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. He now understands the relationship between the Palestinian issue and the feelings of Muslims worldwide toward the United States. He is aware that one of the most important weapons to help him defeat Al-Qaeda and terrorism against the United States and the world lies in the mobilization of public opinion in the Arab and Muslim world to his side, against terrorism and Al-Qaeda. This requires a just solution to the Palestinian issue. However, the US president is also aware of the magnitude of the obstacles facing this, and the difficulty of imposing solutions on Israel. Thus, he is trying to develop an initiative broader than just a narrow solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict – or the Israeli-Arab conflict. It is clear that he has listened carefully to the proposals of King Abdullah II, who was entrusted by moderate countries in the region to put forward their proposal in Washington. These are the same proposals, which King Abdullah II included in his address to Congress, and during his visit to the White House when George W. Bush was still president about a year and a half ago. At the time, proposals did not get even a word or a phrase of coverage in the American media. The position that he reiterates over and over again is that peace with Israel is based solely on a just solution to the Palestinian issue, and does not come only as peace with 22 Arab countries, but must also be with the majority of Muslim countries in the world. The Jordanian King consulted several important Muslim countries and got their approval on this before he stated this position and repeated it time and again. What's new in Barack Obama's proposal is the effort to work out a comprehensive peace, while halting the competition between the Syrian, Palestinian, and Lebanese negotiation tracks with Israel. Efforts are ongoing to activate all the tracks at the same time, rather than the separate tracks competing against each other – provided that the Palestinian track will be an integral and independent part that does not yield to bargaining or trade-offs. In other words, there is no peace without resolving the issue of Palestine, and no one will be allowed to disrupt the Palestinian solution and use it to move their own tracks. But at the same time, there will be no exclusion of the Syrian and Lebanese tracks. Rather, work is being done to activate those at the same time, independently from each other and without them being interconnected, in order to reach a comprehensive, just and lasting solution. In other words, the attempts to rally around the Palestinian track through focusing intently on the Syrian track in the framework of the negotiations with Israel will not be successful and will not be accepted by the Obama administration, regardless of who is leading them in terms of US experts and mediators, or Syrian and Israeli officials. There are also those who challenged the parties, which said that the Syrian track is easier than the Palestinian track and that there are numerous benefits behind separating Syria from Iran. They pointed out that the US demands from Syria include the necessity of suspending support to the Damascus-based Palestinian factions that roam in Lebanon, and preventing the passage of weapons and assistance from Iran to Hezbollah. They found that the first reading of Syria's stances shows that it is not ready to meet these demands. Susan Rice's speech before the Security Council during a closed session last week, which was published on the website of the United Stated Mission to the United Nations, contained significant indications on Barack Obama's policy towards Lebanon and Syria. She announced that the US sees no difference between the so-called military and political wings of Hezbollah and will not be involved with it unless it completely disarms – regardless of its relation with the Lebanese government. She also said that the increased involvement of the US with the regional parties and neighbors will never lead it to sacrifice Lebanon's sovereignty or accept any deal at its expense. This includes the important non-negotiable task of the International Tribunal as an essential part of putting an end to the impunity related to the political assassinations in Lebanon. These are the Obama administration's strongest and clearest stances towards Lebanon and Hezbollah, especially that Rice considered that Hezbollah's acknowledgement of supporting extremists in Egypt and incitement of the Egyptian army to challenge its political leadership are acts that remind us that Hezbollah constitutes a threat not only to Lebanon, but also to the whole region. Rice echoed the UN Secretary General's condemnation of the unjustified interference of Hezbollah in the domestic affairs of a sovereign country. Rice demanded the disarmament of Hezbollah and recalled last May's events, when Hezbollah elements tried to take over West Beirut through military force, warning against the grave error of assuming the continued implementation of Resolution 1559, as long as the militias are not disarmed. She demanded Syria to delimit borders with Lebanon and thus put an end to the smuggling of weapons to Hezbollah and Palestinian militias – particularly the Popular Front-General Command and Fatah al-Intifada, which are located in Lebanon, on the border with Syria. During her public intervention at the Ministerial Meeting, Rice reconfirmed the US commitment to Lebanon's sovereignty and independence and said: “We must insist on putting an end to weapons smuggling and disarming all militias, including Hezbollah.” Also, the US Ambassador/Secretary addressed Israel with a new discourse characterized by demands and insistence on the right of international intervention for implementing the two-state solution and the establishment of the State of Palestine alongside Israel. She said that the United States is ready to make efforts towards making the vision of global peace a reality, and pointed out that President Obama is personally committed to achieving this objective, and is directly involved in leading this issue. She affirmed that the interest of the United States does not lie in an extended and slowed down operation but rather in real results. She also said that the United States has made its choices and decision, and addressed the Security Council directly, saying: “We ask you all to stand by our side, to stand together with permanent peace.” This is a new discourse for a US administration at the beginning of its mandate, which supported a Russian initiative to hold a Ministerial Meeting, in order to send the consensual message of the international community on the importance of the two-state solution and its agreement on direct interference for the establishment of a Palestinian state with international partnership and participation. This caused displeasure in the ranks of the Israeli government. It is certain that the determined and angry words of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon were also behind Israeli displeasure: “It is time for Israel to radically change its policies, particularly regarding its individual measures in East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank – destroying homes, promoting settlement activities, settlers' violence, and prosecution resulting from closing passages and building the separating wall – which in the end are related to the settlements.” He added that Israel had always repeatedly promised to stop these measures but had not kept its promise. Ban Ki-moon challenged Israel's claims that the policy of closing the Gaza Strip weakens Hamas and affirmed that the situation in Gaza is intolerable. He referred indirectly to Israel's permanent evasion of peacemaking through the claims of an absent partner or a new framework, and said that the frame for regional peace is present and that the international community has to guarantee the implementation of the two-state solution – or else its ‘credibility' would be endangered in this test. The presidential statement that was issued after the Ministerial Meeting focused on the commitment of the Security Council to make efforts for achieving the objective of establishing two states – Palestine alongside Israel – and this in itself is a new element in the US Middle-Eastern policy. It is true that at the beginning and end of its mandate, the Bush administration introduced the issues of the Middle East, the peace process, and a two-state solution to the UN Security Council, becoming thus a major partner in the important resolutions 1515, 1850, and 1860. However, it is also true that no US administration has sought a partnership with the UN Security Council at the beginning of its mandate on the issues of the Middle East and the Arab-Israeli conflict. Hence, it is best to encourage such an initiative rather than waste the opportunity with accusations of treason and conspiracy.
