In the end, righteousness must prevail. Egypt and Saudi Arabia are the most important Arab countries, politically and economically, and if Syria was on their side, they would all be even more important. Moreover, if all Arab countries were to agree on objectives and the means to achieve them, they would not need an intermediary. President Barack Obama will visit Saudi Arabia a few days from now, and then he will deliver a key speech in Cairo addressing Arabs and Muslims, and presenting his ideas for peace in the Middle East. He will not offer a new peace plan or a timetable to end the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in this speech, but the plan is coming. It needs closer examination, review and consultation with the concerned parties, ruminated several times until its maturation. There are reassuring signs in our dealings with the Obama administration, but then there are some concerns. Barack Obama himself is reassuring. He is intelligent and can hardly be fooled, and he knows that the establishment of an independent Palestinian state is in the security, political, and economic interest of his country, as it is in the interest of the Palestinians. He is thus both sincere and serious in his quest for Palestinian statehood. In reality, the “two-state solution” is the name of the game in Washington, in the same manner that the Arab peace initiative is in Arab capitals. Both visions converge towards the same aim, but not in all details. The U.S. president met with President Mahmoud Abbas and said that he was optimistic; so perhaps he has some reasons for optimism that we have not heard of yet. He also called for speeding up the peace process. Can Obama succeed in achieving no less than this miracle of biblical proportions where 11 American presidents have failed before him? I have no definitive answer, but I want to say that apart from these optimistic signs, there are many things that discourage hope and dampen the spirit. In America, Israel's lobby is very powerful, while the spy den known as AIPAC has proven time and again the extent of its influence its annual conference, with American politicians prostrating before it in allegiance and obedience. This is while both houses of the Congress are under the lobby's command, to such an extent of malevolence and bias that I always found the Israeli Knesset to be more moderate. Meanwhile in Israel, those in power are nothing but a gang of charlatans and extremists, led by Benjamin Netanyahu. This gang certainly does not want a solution based on two states living side by side, and will do everything in its power to thwart it – and is most likely to succeed in doing so with the help of a Congress that can be easily bought and sold. If the reader follows the Israeli press as I do every day, he will find that the main issue there is the outposts, with no mention of settlements or Israel itself. The focus of the Government of extremists is the removal of illegal outposts as if this is the problem and not the continued occupation, killing, destruction and siege of Palestine. The Israeli leader did not back down from anything and offered nothing, in his last meeting with Obama. All of Israel will remain an illegal outpost until a Palestinian state is established, and this is the only thing that would give Israel the legitimate right to exist. Only the people of the land stolen then occupied since 1948 and 1967 can provide such legitimacy. In Palestine, there is continuing disagreement and an inability to agree on forming a government of national unity. This is as bad as the Likudian-American and Israeli reasons for despair. I add to the above what some officials in the American administration are saying, because while the president, vice president Joe Biden and the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made the appropriate statements, there are lower-level officials who called on the Arabs to provide confidence-building steps, namely, to stop calling for the return of refugees, and to open their airspace to Israeli airliners, and put an end to what remains of their boycott of Israel. Perhaps these officials are speaking out of good will, but their statements are wrong and hurtful, and go against the peace process. This is because Israel will not have any reason to engage in the peace process if it is going to get what it wants before even taking the first step. President Obama addressed the Islamic World from Turkey last month and said the United States will never be at war with Islam. He will probably say the same thing in Cairo, while extending hands instead of the fists of the previous administration, which only brought disasters upon the United States and everyone else with it. The U.S. president might need to pursue a parallel policy with Iran, especially as the Netanyahu government requires a firm American stance as the price of making any progress with the Palestinians. His administration is not lacking in courage, as his VP Biden spoke at the AIPAC conference and called for an independent Palestinian state, and as Obama said himself in his meeting with Netanyahu in Washington, while stressing the need to stop building settlements. Secretary Clinton had also declared similar positions in this vein. Obama will address the Arabs, Muslims, and the whole world from the capital of Egypt, which is also the capital of Arabs, of Africa, and of all Muslims. Peace as such will not be with the Arabs alone, but rather with 57 countries, as King Abdullah II said, or a peace with a third of all mankind.
