Obama's Talk Underwhelms Arabs, Israelis
CAIRO -- President Obama said political change sweeping the Middle East is an opportunity for "a new chapter in American diplomacy." Yet his speech on Thursday, billed as a landmark address by the administration, received a tepid response in the region to which it was directed.
Israelis were widely dismayed by Obama's call for a return to pre-1967 borders. Many Arabs dismissed the address as ignoring key issues.
A former Egyptian parliamentarian, however, praised it as offering support to Egypt's embattled Coptic Christians.
The president spoke for nearly an hour from the State Department about recent revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia, and continued bloody uprisings in Yemen, Libya, Bahrain and Syria.
Obama also touched on unrest in Iran and the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
"It was disappointing. It was underwhelming, a major lost opportunity for the Obama administration," said Shadi Hamid, research director at the Brookings Center in Doha, Qatar, a branch of the Washington-based liberal Brookings Institution.
"It was entirely predictable and devoid of new and creative thinking," Hamid said. "It really confirmed what many of us suspected -- that the Obama administration is largely devoid of big ideas when it comes to the Middle East ... lacking in imagination and boldness."
The president began by calling slain al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden a "mass murderer that offered a message of hate." Even before bin Laden was killed in Pakistan by U.S. Navy SEALs, Obama said, al-Qaida was becoming irrelevant, "seen by the vast majority of the region as a dead end."
Instead of following that radical ideology, he said, people in the Middle East have largely taken their future into their own hands.
"The events of the past six months show us that strategies of repression and diversion won't work anymore," Obama said.
The president praised the courage of Syrians who are rising up against the repressive regime of Bashar Assad, who he said "now has a choice: He can lead that transition, or get out of the way."
Obama said the Syrian regime "must stop shooting demonstrators and allow peaceful protests, release political prisoners and stop unjust arrests."
The president said the United States will wipe out $1 billion of Egypt's debt and will provide $1 billion in aid "to finance infrastructure and job creation. And we will help newly democratic governments (to) recover assets that were stolen."
His words did not impress many observers in Egypt, which ousted dictator Hosni Mubarak in February. Several dismissed it as addressed to Americans, not to Arabs.
"I thought, 'Why did he give this speech? What did he say?' Nothing, nothing new," said Hisham Kassim, an Egyptian publisher and longtime human rights activist.
"Obama told us about what we did here in Egypt and Tunisia, and then he packaged the double standards," Kassim said. "He tells Bashar (Assad) to lead the change or go, as if that butcher can lead any change.
"What a disappointment. What a letdown," he concluded.
Hamid said the president offered nothing new on Egypt, a key U.S. ally in the region and the second-largest recipient of American foreign aid after Israel.
"For the Obama administration to act as if they were on the side of the protesters and this is what the U.S. always wanted is disingenuous," Hamid said. "We supported the very dictatorships that the Egyptian people wanted to get rid of for over three decades."
He said he wanted to hear some self-criticism of past U.S. policies, as former President George W. Bush and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice offered in past speeches.
"Obama couldn't even do that," Hamid said.
Gigi Ibrahim, a young Egyptian activist, complained that the president did not mention Saudi Arabia, which she described as "the biggest dictator in the region."
The president said U.S. support for Israel is "unshakable. ... But precisely because of our friendship, it is important that we tell the truth: The status quo is unsustainable, and Israel, too, must act boldly to advance a lasting peace."
Obama called for a two-state Israeli-Palestinian solution based on borders before the 1967 Six-Day War -- in which Israel seized portions of Syria's Golan Heights, Jordan's West Bank and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip -- along with "mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states."
That provoked angry criticism in Israel.
The Jerusalem Post newspaper headlined its coverage of the speech: "Netanyahu rejects complete pullback to 1967 border."
The newspaper reported that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, departing for a meeting with Obama in Washington, said, "The viability of a Palestinian state cannot come at the expense of Israel's existence."
Not all were critical of Obama's speech, however.
Former Egyptian parliamentarian Mona Makram-Ebeid, a Coptic Christian, described it as "fantastic ... sweeping" and "very evenhanded" on the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
"He focused on the anguish of the people," said Makram-Ebeid, a Harvard-educated professor at American University in Cairo. "He spoke about Coptic Christians and their right to pray.
"It will give comfort to the Christians; they are besieged here. The Copts have never been as embattled and besieged they are today. They are living in fear."
Sectarian violence in Egypt has killed scores of Coptic Christians in recent weeks.
Makram-Ebeid praised the president's focus on women in the region: "The (Egyptian) army here seems to forget about women, that they are 50 percent of population.
"Obama spoke to the people, not to the leaders. That is the difference," she said.
David Ainsman, a Downtown lawyer and chairman of the Community Relations Council of the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh, said the Jewish community is diverse enough that some will receive Obama's comments well, while others will criticize the president.
"I wasn't shocked at all," said Ainsman, who noted that he was speaking on behalf of himself and not the council.
The points Obama made - namely about a two-state solution and that the Palestinians plan to go to the United Nations - are not new, he said.
"I've always been optimistic two states could be created, but I'm no more optimistic about that after the speech than I was before," Ainsman said. "Creating two states right now would be very difficult."
Lou Weiss, a self-described conservative from Squirrel Hill, said Obama did not say anything radically new.
"Not to sound like a pessimist, but the conflict -- the way I see it -- isn't about land, and it never has been," Weiss said. "It's really about the Palestinians' absolute denial of the Jewish state to exist."
Weiss, who is Jewish, was appreciative of Obama's comments to push other countries in the Middle East.
"If it were only about land or property, it would have been settled 63 years ago," Weiss said. "Everyone is onboard with two states - everyone except the Palestinians, unfortunately."