Obama will hit a brick wall in the Middle East
By Ted Belman
Obama is a man on a mission. He doesn’t have enough on his hands in solving the economic crises so has to flex his muscles on the Middle East. He says he is going to “hit the ground running”. Should we be impressed or worried. I think not. He will hit a brick wall instead.
Last month, he sent Malley to speak with Hamas Though he denied it. Now the cat is out of the bag.
Obama to ‘Open Channel of Communication’ with Hamas
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According to three sources “close to the transition team,” Obama was unlikely to approve direct talks with Hamas initially. However, reported the Guardian, Obama “is being urged by advisers to initiate low-level or clandestine approaches, and there is growing recognition in Washington that the policy of ostracizing Hamas is counterproductive. A tested course would be to start contacts through Hamas and the US intelligence services, similar to the secret process through which the US engaged with the PLO in the 1970s. Israel did not become aware of the contacts until much later.”
Steve Clemons, director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation, said frankly that “The total isolation of Hamas that we promulgated under Bush is going to end.”
Clemons added that the Obama team would most likely consider a multilateral approach that involves secret envoys talking simultaneously with various parties. “I think it is going to happen.”
Obama and his advisors believe that they can make a difference either because they believe that they can do what Bush wasn’t able to do or they intend to force Israel to be more compliant. They are wrong on both accounts.
Obama will have no luck with either Hamas or Iran in getting them to give up their dreams or their means.
He also will find Israel more obdurate than expected. And this is true whether Likud forms a coalition with the right or the left. Israel’s victory in Gaza left Israelis in no mood for compromise. Israel isn’t about to retreat or agree to retreat from Judea and Samaria.
A coalition with Kadima will convey a message to the world that Israel is united and is backed by the center. It will be harder for the world to ascribe Israeli intransigence to the “rightwing, hawkish” Netanyahu.
Of course many Israelis worry that such a coalition will in fact do what the Kadima government didn’t do…capitulate. I have some concern on this account but do feel that a Likud/Kadima coalition will to hold their ground. A coalition with the right will have greater resolve but will have more international pressure to deal with.
Obama’s policies seem to be in line with the criticisms levied against the policies of Bush over the last seven years. They fail to realize that in part they were wrong and in part, Bush adjusted his policies already.
Obama will be nothing more than a shooting star.
Israel Matzav has different take.
Former Pentagon chief predicts Iran crisis soon
William Perry, who headed the Pentagon during a 1994 nuclear standoff with North Korea, predicted on Thursday that President-elect Barack Obama will soon face a nuclear crisis with Iran.
Iran is “moving inexorably toward becoming a nuclear power,” with ominous implications for the Middle East, Perry said.
“It seems clear that Israel will not sit by idle while Iran takes the final steps toward becoming a nuclear power,” Perry told a conference on foreign policy challenges facing the incoming Obama administration. The former Clinton administration defense secretary held out hope that more vigorous U.S. and international diplomacy could reverse North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. But he was less confident about stopping Iran’s ambitions.
“President Obama will almost certainly face a serious crisis with Iran,” Perry said. “Indeed, I believe the crisis point will be reached in his first year in office. So on the nuclear front, President Obama will face a daunting set of problems, none of which can be solved unilaterally.”
Iran denies that its nuclear program is intended to build weapons. The Bush administration, while dismissing Iran’s claims of pursuing only peaceful uses of nuclear power, declined to negotiate directly with Iran.
Obama has said he favors “tough and direct diplomacy with Iran without preconditions,” and that his administration, working with allies, will seek a comprehensive settlement with Iran to end its nuclear ambitions.CONTINUE
Why must we be told in advance of anything at all that Obama will fail? In fact, ignoring Hamas will not make it go away. Talking might very well be a total waste of time but what has worked thus far for keeping rockets from being fired?
In passing: some very very good articles that are (at last) pro Israel here (a Brit sopurce!)
http://www.spiked-online.com/the.week/9_January_2009.htm
Comment by davidstill — January 9, 2009 @ 10:59 am
Negotiating with terrorists and recognizing Hamas! Obama thinks he will be the MLK of the Middle East. I see it all now.
He will get Chicago or an American city blown up. He will seriously weaken American and his legacy will be to show the futility of Leftist appeasement. Obama is the rope the leftist terrorist appeasers and supporters will use to hand themselves.
Oh for sure he will hit the ground hard and break his leg. Only we don’t know how many others he will sacrifice first.
Comment by Max — January 9, 2009 @ 11:10 am
Who said, “It’s the economy, stupid!”
I’m not sure Obama will have much time to waste on the Middle East.
I originally thought that government intervention will keep this Great Recession from becoming a second Great Depression.
But the real question is, “When the economy finally bottoms out, how far down will it have gone?”
If America does not manufacture anything anymore, and everybody in America makes a living by selling things to each other that are made outside of America, and people stop buying things because they have no more money, and the government tries to keep things going by printing up or borrowing money and giving it away and telling people to go out and buy things, then how does that result in a “turnaround?”
I am now starting to think that instead of a sudden crash, the government is giving us a slow-motion trainwreck, but at the end, both are equally awful.
Comment by Samuel Fistel — January 9, 2009 @ 11:35 am
The point is the world’s double standard, its contemptuous treatment of Israel and its dismissal of the danger Israel’s civilian population is in has unified the Jewish population from left to right behind the government. There’s not much interest in what the world thinks and Jews can rely only on themselves to survive because no one else is going to defend them. Any one who thinks the peace process is going to be revived is deluding themselves. This is now a completely new era and the Middle East rules are being rewritten.
Comment by NormanF — January 9, 2009 @ 2:52 pm
This is why Israel chose to go to war with hamas now and hopefully put an end to that terror group before obama gets in.
Comment by Laura — January 9, 2009 @ 4:29 pm
Foolish foolish.
There is no recession or depression. It’s only on the books and the books are rigged. Absolutely nothing real has happened.
There is a repression or a new phase in the ongoing repression.
True it may have been initiated by accident but it happened in a system that was designed to do such things sooner or later. But once it started to happen ed, the power elite danced for joy and opened the floodgates.
They even had a laugh on the the oppressed.The top one percent having 40 percent of the wealth in the first place fleeced hundreds of trillions form those in the bottom 40 percent who have only one percent of the wealth.
For sure those figures have now shifted in favour of the elite. Then the punch line of the joke came when they got the suckers to give even more hundreds of trillions pretending that the oppressed had to “bail them out”.
But the money they stole could have been returned. The money and assets needed could have been taken from the rich. The government has the power to do practically anything to save the people, it can make laws, it can make laws retroactive, it can seize assets, it can incarcerate the rich thieves.
But not a one had to give up a penny.
The current government, ALL the political parties, don’t work for the people, they work for the fascist economic elite. The people are nothing to them , they are garbage. They are zombies to be manipulated and mislead and bullied.
——
Bottom line: What will happen?
Nothing for a long, long while , no matter who is in charge.
Why?
Because the power elite loves this, it’s gravy, they want it this way, this is their Triumph Ascendant. It may even be the last stage in their quest for absolute domination.
..
The corporations that count, the banks etc will all make super profits for the next decade they will cement their economic ascendance. They will kill all their economic completion from whatever mom and pop’s may be still surviving to whatever completive corporations (and opposing elites) that they want dead.
They have acquired a slave work force willing to abstain all their human rights and desperate to do anything to survive, Those outside the system and not needed will be left to flounder and die just as the uninsured and expensive-to-treat cancer patients and the like are spit out and left to die by the American Health System.
…
There is the historical proof which the zombie public is unaware which is that in every previous recession or depression the elite has more than thrived and had accelerated profits and transfers of wealth. If anyone here studied any sociology in depth, they would have even read the personal accounts of members of the power elite who cheerfully admitted they loved “recessions”.
…
Brainwashed zombies, you’ve been had, you are being had, you will be had. Perhaps it is justice. You thought that if you overlooked the sins of your masters and what they were doing to the other poor SOB’s on the planet that you could get a piece of the pie. Now you find that you are the pie.
Tough luck for you.
If you get to live in another reality, I suggest you have more courage to demand your freedom and to care about the oppressed the next time around.
And if that doesn’t happen, you didn’t matter anyway. There are fields of bones in Siberia. Who is in there doesn’t matter because they are not even graves, not even names and family to even look for names.
The gullible American dreamers, who worshiped their executioners and enslavers will join them to keep them company.
Yes “they have a dream”, and in that dream you have an RFID in your wrist, and bracelet locked to you ankle which monitors your blood chemical every half hour, you are force fed psychotropic medications, you are in a prison, you are working producing services for a major corporation for nothing that could be called “wages”.
That dream is today, that is what is happening to Americans in the here and now.
Of course those are “hooligans” and soon you will find out that you are one too.
So why is the MSM anti-Semitic?
nothing to do with religion. They don’t want any winners neither at home or abroad.
Winners are free people. They are RFID-resistant.
Free people barf when reading MSM news so they are propaganda-resistant.
They don’t want free people anywhere, at home or abroad.
They need black , white, Jew, Muslim, Mexican, Palestinian to fight each other, there are no winners, no one gets wise and frags the bosses. They sell arms and shoes and caskets to both sides and everybody is kept to be as nothing, as groveling worms to the bosses of Empire.
Comment by Max — January 10, 2009 @ 1:58 am
Obama has spent hours being counseled by his chief senior advisor on Israel, former President Carter. That does not bode well for Israel’s future but it will make terrorists in the region very, very happy.
Comment by Gary — January 10, 2009 @ 8:09 am
Come on people, we *know* what Obama will do, his head foreign policy guy (who does *not* need to be confirmed, but is appointed) is Gen. James L. Jones, for crying outloud.
Comment by soren — January 10, 2009 @ 8:13 am
This is the companion piece to Martel’s vision of the endgame
Foolish foolish.
There is no recession or depression. It’s only on the books and the books are rigged. Absolutely nothing real has happened.
There is a repression or a new phase in the ongoing repression.
True it may have been initiated by accident but it happened in a system that was designed to do such things sooner or later. But once it started to happen ed, the power elite danced for joy and opened the floodgates.
They even had a laugh on the the oppressed.The top one percent having 40 percent of the wealth in the first place fleeced hundreds of trillions form those in the bottom 40 percent who have only one percent of the wealth.
For sure those figures have now shifted in favour of the elite. Then the punch line of the joke came when they got the suckers to give even more hundreds of trillions pretending that the oppressed had to “bail them out”.
But the money they stole could have been returned. The money and assets needed could have been taken from the rich. The government has the power to do practically anything to save the people, it can make laws, it can make laws retroactive, it can seize assets, it can incarcerate the rich thieves.
But not a one had to give up a penny.
The current government, ALL the political parties, don’t work for the people, they work for the fascist economic elite. The people are nothing to them , they are garbage. They are zombies to be manipulated and mislead and bullied.
——
Bottom line: What will happen?
Nothing for a long, long while , no matter who is in charge.
Why?
Because the power elite loves this, it’s gravy, they want it this way, this is their Triumph Ascendant. It may even be the last stage in their quest for absolute domination.
..
The corporations that count, the banks etc will all make super profits for the next decade they will cement their economic ascendance. They will kill all their economic completion from whatever mom and pop’s may be still surviving to whatever completive corporations (and opposing elites) that they want dead.
They have acquired a slave work force willing to abstain all their human rights and desperate to do anything to survive, Those outside the system and not needed will be left to flounder and die just as the uninsured and expensive-to-treat cancer patients and the like are spit out and left to die by the American Health System.
…
There is the historical proof which the zombie public is unaware which is that in every previous recession or depression the elite has more than thrived and had accelerated profits and transfers of wealth. If anyone here studied any sociology in depth, they would have even read the personal accounts of members of the power elite who cheerfully admitted they loved “recessions”.
…
Brainwashed zombies, you’ve been had, you are being had, you will be had. Perhaps it is justice. You thought that if you overlooked the sins of your masters and what they were doing to the other poor SOB’s on the planet that you could get a piece of the pie. Now you find that you are the pie.
Tough luck for you.
If you get to live in another reality, I suggest you have more courage to demand your freedom and to care about the oppressed the next time around.
And if that doesn’t happen, you didn’t matter anyway. There are fields of bones in Siberia. Who is in there doesn’t matter because they are not even graves, not even names and family to even look for names.
The gullible American dreamers, who worshiped their executioners and enslavers will join them to keep them company.
Yes “they have a dream”, and in that dream you have an RFID in your wrist, and bracelet locked to you ankle which monitors your blood chemical every half hour, you are force fed psychotropic medications, you are in a prison, you are working producing services for a major corporation for nothing that could be called “wages”.
That dream is today, that is what is happening to Americans in the here and now.
Of course those are “hooligans” and soon you will find out that you are one too.
So why is the MSM anti-Semitic?
nothing to do with religion. They don’t want any winners neither at home or abroad.
Winners are free people. They are RFID-resistant.
Free people barf when reading MSM news so they are propaganda-resistant.
They don’t want free people anywhere, at home or abroad.
They need black , white, Jew, Muslim, Mexican, Palestinian to fight each other, there are no winners, no one gets wise and frags the bosses. They sell arms and shoes and caskets to both sides and everybody is kept to be as nothing, as groveling worms to the bosses of Empire.
Comment by Max — January 11, 2009 @ 8:00 pm
comment blocked second time in 2 days waiting.
Comment by Max — January 11, 2009 @ 8:01 pm
Comments came through in Backlog.
Thanks
Comment by Max — January 15, 2009 @ 6:04 am