Must-y Cairo rhetoric
Some excerpts
[Obama] hoped to relieve tensions between Islam and the West, but what light did he cast on those tensions?
...The speech was unsatisfying in a standard way. It was a "must-y" talk in which the president, instead of addressing problems analytically, merely asserted time and again what other people "must" do. Palestinians "must abandon violence." Israelis "must take concrete steps" to improve life for the Palestinians. The Arab states "must recognize" their responsibilities. Muslims "must" close the fault lines between Sunni and Shia. Mr. Obama used the word more than 30 times.
The problem with "must" is that it kills analysis. A good policy discussion brings forward a sensible set of goals and well-considered assumptions and then weighs the pros and cons of various courses of action that aim to achieve the goals. But the promiscuous use of "must" short-circuits all this.
When Mr. Obama asserts, for example, that "Hamas must put an end to violence, recognize past agreements, and recognize Israel's right to exist," what is he actually saying? Is he predicting that Hamas will do that? Is he saying he thinks Hamas itself sees its interests that way? Is he ordering Hamas to perform, or else? Or else, what? Does he actually think the United States can compel Hamas? These questions are of the essence, but they're blown aside by a gust of "must." Is it realistic to expect Hamas to become a nonviolent, law-abiding, good neighbor of Israel? Mr. Obama says it "must."
...Of course, it may be that there's more serious thought in the Obama administration's policies than the president chose to reveal in Cairo. It was only a speech, after all.
...He would not have suggested that the Arab-Israeli conflict is fundamentally about Israeli West Bank settlements or about Israel's denial of the Palestinians' "legitimate aspirations" for a state of their own in the West Bank and Gaza. The notion that Arab objections to the Jewish state are focused narrowly on the territories the Arabs lost to Israel in 1967 is ahistorical in a way that should be obvious: The conflict predated the 1967 war, or there would not have been a 1967 war, let alone the Arab-Israeli War of 1948-49.
The Arab cause against Israel and Zionism is rooted in religious and nationalistic principles. It's far more than a hodgepodge of practical grievances about boundary lines, settlements and refugees. It's been a century-long war based on the conviction that all the land governed by the Jews in Palestine - including Israel within its pre-1967 boundaries - is Arab land.
...If Mr. Obama thinks the conflict is less than a principled rejection of Israel and Zionism, his diplomacy will strain U.S. relations with Israel without moving the region closer to peace. American pressure on Israel to ban natural growth within existing settlements - that is, to prevent families from adding new bedrooms when they add new children - is sure to remain unconstructive.
Israel's enemies have made a fetish of the settlements because the issue fits within their grander campaign to delegitimize all of Israel as a Jewish settlement on Arab land. The right of Jews to settle in the West Bank is rooted in the same law and history that Zionist leaders invoked in declaring Israel's statehood in 1948. Mr. Obama may not know this, but key parties in the region do. The president's peace policy will have better prospects if he systematically discourages - and does not inadvertently encourage - ongoing efforts to deny Israel's legitimacy.
...The Cairo speech...exposed superficial thinking by the president about important subjects. In the words of an old political quip: Deep down, it was shallow. It raises the question of whether Mr. Obama can manage major problems that he seems not to understand. The answer is: He must.
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