Obama's Options

"Gaza Crisis Is Another Challenge for Obama, Who Defers to Bush for Now"
A10, Monday 12/29/08
By Steven Lee Myers and Helene Cooper

Some important notes before an analysis of the Times' options for Obama to bring peace to the Middle East:

Giving a snapshot of the challenges facing Obama, readers are told that "even before the conflict flared again," there are recent tensions with India and Pakistan, a nuclear North Korea, "while Iran continues to stall the international effort to stop its nuclear programs."

The last point about Iran is a good one, but unfortunately one too seldom covered by the Times.

A paragraph later it's noted that "Mr. Obama has not suggested he has any better ideas than President Bush had to resolve the existential conflict between the Israelis and Hamas." (emphasis added)

Of note is that this wasn't labeled an existential conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, just Israelis and Hamas, which ensures the legitimacy of the Times' prescription for a speedy resolution with "moderate" Fatah. If the Times, in using "existential," doesn't imply an "either/or," or "us or them," then at the very least it implies a conflict between Israel and Hamas so severe as to be intractable.

So this is another good point not generally emphasized or even mentioned by the Times, which has instead advocated not only negotiations with Hamas, but the position that the peace process is fundamentally flawed without Hamas' inclusion.

This last point is made two paragraphs later:

"The omission of Hamas from any talks between the Israelis and President Mahmoud Abbas had always been a landmine that risked blowing up a difficult and delicate peace process, but so have Israel’s own internal political divisions."

Aside from the clichéd metaphor and the even more clichéd red herring of "Israel's political divisions," it's astounding that the problem with the peace process is not Hamas – in an "existential conflict" with Israel – but the omission of Hamas.

The point, one the Times is loathe to make, is that maybe serious talks shouldn't be had at all when a party like Hamas is a major player, many say the most popular, in Palestinian politics.

Another sad Times truism is repeated a paragraph later, with "high expectations, particularly among Muslims around the world, that [Obama] will make an effort at dealing with the Arab-Israeli conflict." Again, the Times dangerously fails to distinguish how the west, particularly Israel and the US, wants to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict: a two state solution; and how the Muslim and Arab world wants to resolve it: a one state solution, meaning the purging of Jewish dominion over land most Muslims see as forever theirs. This concept is controversial and seems conspiratorial mostly to westerners – including those at the Times.

This piece ends with two sets of options laid out for the new Obama administration, and in so doing, more false equivalence:

Option One: "to respond much more harshly to Israel's policies, from settlements to strikes like those this weekend."

Option Two: "try to pressure surrogates to lean on Hamas, including Egypt, which shares a border with Gaza. [Obama] can build international pressure on Hamas to stop the rocket attacks into Israel."

First, there's a horrible equivalence made between settlements and Israel's defensive and preventive actions (no matter how misguided or counterproductive one might deem them) and Hamas' blatant attacks on civilians.

Second, a key word here is "try". As Israel's closest ally, the US could apply pressure if it wanted to, but with Arab countries – even allies which the US heavily funds and arms like Egypt – the US can only "try" to pressure them.

Lastly, the second set of options sounds pretty sensible, especially since, if successful, it would render the first set of options moot. Yet we shouldn't get our hopes up since we're told "all have been tried, and all have failed to avoid new fighting." What has Bush, other leaders or international bodies done to pressure Hamas (through surrogates or not) to stop its rocket attacks? Nothing, which is the worth of this Times analysis.