High-ranking officials often turn against their governments or regimes and adopt critical stances, after leaving their position in the state. Or they might join the ranks of the political opposition, where people find them opposing the same regimes of which they previously had been the “shields”. This has happened in Egypt and in other Arab countries. And when one asks such officials about their changed stances and opinions, and about the increased sharpness of their tongues, they usually swear and assert that nothing has changed and that they used to adopt stances in favor of the people, but that no one in the government, the ruling party or the entire regime would listen to them. They often claim to have left their post after “they became angry” with them, gave up on them and exchanged them with others in whom they found greater ability to comply with “them”, and a particular consideration for not leaving the tracks upon which runs the train of power. However, the scene of former US President Jimmy Carter participating, alongside former President of Ireland Mary Robinson, in a demonstration for the Palestinians in Jerusalem to protest the unjust measures taken by Israel against the Palestinian people, will remain the most memorable of stances taken by senior officials, who used to hold the power to make strategic changes in the world by virtue of the positions they held but did not, and who then returned to the right path, yet after it was too late. It is true that Carter, when he sat in the Oval Office at the White House, adopted the process which led to the peace agreement between Egypt and Israel, exerted tremendous efforts to bring late Egyptian President Anwar El-Sadat and then Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin closer together, intervened many times and succeeded in avoiding the failure of the negotiations. However, Carter, who at the protest praised the resilience of the Palestinian people and criticized Israel's siege, pointing to the presence of one and a half million Palestinians living in a prison or a cage in the Gaza Strip, did not voice these same opinions when he held the power and the authority that would have allowed him to break the siege and release the prisoners. Ever since Carter left the White House in 1981, he has dedicated himself to participating in world politics, being later awarded the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize for his “untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts”, knowing that the Arab-Israeli conflict was raging during his term in office and that the Palestinians suffered terribly during the same period. Compared to the optimism of the Arabs in particular and of Muslims in general towards the election of current US President Barack Obama, and their trust in his ability to change the world, make things right, support the Palestinians and stand on the side of justice, Arabs and Muslims were not at all optimistic before the US elections that brought Carter as President of the United States. Despite that fact, the man exerted all the effort he could muster and achieved peace from his own perspective. He had hoped that the peace process would spread to include the remaining Arab parties, but things happened as they did. Yes, Carter could have, if he had wanted to, stopped Israel's massacres, or at least have taken the same stances he did after he became free of the bonds of the presidential post, but the rules of the game in the US prevented it. Indeed, the President's abilities are limited, especially when it comes to Israel. On the other hand, those who are shocked by what they consider to be President Obama's “negativity” should have been aware of the difference between what one wishes to achieve and what one actually can achieve. It is true that the language used by Obama during his electoral campaign aroused optimism, and that the blows dealt to Arabs and Muslims by the previous president, Bush Jr., made them wish for any other president. Yet the requirements of rule in the US and the balance of power between the ruling “parties” facing the President's power always prevent any US Administration from taking forthright stances against Israel, stances that would go beyond words or dreams and would turn into policies that would set limits to Israel's arrogance and would grant the Arabs their rights. It is therefore not at all unlikely for Obama to lead a march for the Palestinians in Jerusalem or in any other Palestinian city, demanding justice for them, supporting their struggle and inspiring the world to support them, but that is a scene we will never see until after Obama has been freed… of his powers.
