Oh, right - all of his supporters pledged this. I forgot.
Good call Dix; ya got me. Who can forgot all of his supporters talking about how he'd eliminate hate and how we'd all get along?
LOL
'I will bring peace to the middle east if I become U.S. president', Obama vows during Israel visit
Barack Obama has vowed to bring an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict if he is elected President of the United States.
The senator said today that he would work to bring to bring peace into the troubled region 'from the minute he is sworn into office.'
Obama, who has flown into Israel, faces a packed schedule of meetings with Israeli and Palestinian leaders.
After arriving in Jerusalem a day earlier, Obama said he hoped his administration would strengthen the historic special relationship between the United States and Israel.
He also vowed that Israel as a valued ally with the United States.
'That policy is not going to change,' he said.
But he added: 'What I think can change is the ability of the United States government and a United States president to be actively engaged with the peace process and to be concerned and recognise the legitimate difficulties that the Palestinian people are experiencing right now.'
Read more:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/wor...nt-Obama-vows-Israel-visit.html#ixzz1Gde2MRAe
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Can Obama bring peace to the Middle East?
Patrick Seale
THE Middle East desperately needs a peace-maker. Will Barak Obama, the US President-elect, rise to the challenge? He will need courage, a clear strategic vision, and – this is the difficult bit –the readiness to use America’s political muscle to persuade Israel and its many friends in America and elsewhere that the time to make peace has come.
It has long been clear that, while the Arabs are ready for peace, Israel is not. It has shown little interest in the Arab Peace Plan of 2002, which offers it peace and normal relations with all 22 members of the Arab League, if it withdraws to its 1967 borders.
The Arab peace plan is still on the table. But powerful forces in Israel are still bent on expanding the borders of the state, whether for religious reasons or for considerations of national security. There is huge resistance – from settler lobbies, religious nationalists and right-wing strategists – to giving up the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Syria’s Golan Heights, and a small frontier enclave in Lebanon, all conquered in the Six-Day war.
Israel has had little incentive to return these territories because, ever since its peace with Egypt 30 years ago – and thanks to massive American military, financial and political backing – it has become immeasurably stronger than its neighbours.
But the situation is changing – both for Israel and for its American patron. Deeply rooted in the local population, resistance groups have arisen – Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza – which Israel has tried but failed to crush. By waging guerrilla warfare, these groups have even managed to acquire a certain deterrent capability vis-à-vis the mighty IDF.
Hezbollah managed to check Israel’s assault on Lebanon in 2006 and hold it to a draw – the first time an Arab force has scored such a success since the creation of the Jewish state in 1948. Hamas, in turn, has compelled Israel to accept a truce – fragile perhaps but still holding – although at great cost to the Palestinian population of Gaza, which has had to endure a cruel Israeli siege. Just this week, half the inhabitants of Gaza have had to make do without electricity because Israel suspended fuel deliveries to the Strip’s single power plant.
Yet, the oft-expressed Israeli view that there can be no political negotiations with Hamas because it does not ‘recognize’ the Jewish state and is out to destroy it, no longer holds water. Just last Saturday, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh repeated that his government would accept a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders and was ready to offer Israel a long-term Hudna or truce, if Israel recognised Palestinian national rights. Most observers believe such a Hudna could become a formal peace once a Palestinian state is created, and there was no further need for violence by either side.
Quite apart from Hezbollah and Hamas, Israel faces a novel challenge from the Islamic Republic of Iran, a country of 70 million people, which has taken up the championship of the Palestine cause. Throughout the 1990s, and especially after 9/11, Israel and its friends pressed the US to attack Iraq so as to remove any potential threat to Israel from the east. But destroying Iraq had the unforeseen consequence of overturning the balance of power in the Gulf to the great advantage of Iran, which has thus emerged as a serious rival to both the United States and Israel in the region.
Yet another important development which is transforming Israel’s strategic environment is the rise of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States as an Arab pole of wealth, high-tech modernity, educational endeavour – and considerable military power. One way and another, Israel’s long-held policy of seeking to dominate the entire region by military might is beginning to look unrealistic.
For all these reasons, many world leaders have concluded that it is time for Israel to end its occupation of Arab territories, give up its expansionist ambitions, and make peace with the Palestinians and with Syria and Lebanon, thus opening the way for peace with the whole Arab world. After years of conflict and bloodletting, the opportunities for a historic breakthrough are immense.
For the United States, the stakes are also very high. Its uncritical support for Israel, its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, its tolerance of settlement expansion on the West Bank, its indifference to the suffering of Gaza, its support for Israel’s 2006 war in Lebanon – all these have served to fuel hatred of America. This is the ground from which terrorism grows. For America to be safe – for Al-Qaeda and its offshoots to wither away for lack of support – peace in the Middle East is essential, not just Arab-Israeli peace, but peace in Iraq and in Afghanistan, too.
At a meeting last Sunday in the Egyptian resort town of Sharm Al-Shaikh, Tony Blair, the Quartet’s representative, was asked for his views on the Arab-Israeli peace process. He replied, with evident fervour: “The single most important thing is that the new administration in the United States grips this issue from day one… There is a foundation. It can be built on. And it has to be built on by treating this issue as of fundamental importance, not just to this region, but to the world, from the very first day of the next administration.”
The same call was made at Sharm Al-Shaikh by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. In Paris on Oct 30, the European Union’s foreign policy chief Javier Solana declared: “The parameters of an Israeli-Palestinian agreement are clear – and have been for some time. It is urgent – finally – to bring this conflict to an end, through persistent engagement.” France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy never tires of saying that the creation of a Palestinian state in a context of Arab-Israeli peace is the only guarantee of Israel’s long-term security. Sarkozy wants the EU to throw its whole weight behind an Arab-Israeli settlement.
Only the United States has the power to persuade Israel that the time for peace has arrived – and only the US can give it the security guarantees some Israelis feel they need. This is Barack Obama’s challenge. He knows what needs to be done. He is a man of stable temperament, who has shown that he knows how to control his inner demons. Can he now do the same for Israel, calming its lingering fears, tempering its exaggerated ambitions, as he brings it to the table?
To do so he must not hesitate to intervene in Israel’s forthcoming elections next February, a few short weeks after his own inauguration on 20 January. Only a strong signal of support from Washington for the Israeli peace camp will defeat the diehard expansionists and the hawks.
Obama will soon have to learn the art of governance in a globalized, multi-polar world. But as President-elect of the greatest country of all, he must shoulder the world’s problems. A peaceful Middle East, freed at last from the horrors of war, could be his greatest single achievement. __
http://www.saudigazette.com.sa/index.cfm?method=home.regcon&contentID=2008111421982
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A recent polls by Pakistani leading news channel showed that Pakistani nation is expecting that obama will bring peace and stability to pakistan.In a state message of Pakistani president zardari and pakistan pm gillani both called on USA to concentrate efforts on peace and stability in south asia.Pakistani pm said with new leadership they expect a change in usa ways of talking with pakistan with respect and honor and not threatening or attacking or killing people by bombings inside Pakistani land.Whereas pakistan army chief general kayani said he also expect change in usa behavior now.where the stance of army chief kayani remained clear that pakistan won’t,can’t allow any foreign troops presence single inch inside pakistan.his warning was again clear, if someone enter our area, we think you attacked our country thats mean war for enemies.pakistan urged usa to respect the pakistan borders and stop voilating pakistani air space.<< do u think obama will stop attacks of usa airforce and spy aircrafts inside pakistani land?or continue bush policies which have destroyed and ruined pakistan economy with recent capital flight of $90 billion from pakistan.although the total money usa paid to pakistan is not even close to $15 billion.
http://iask.ws/pakistan/pakistan-zardari/will-obama-bring-peace-in-pakistanafghanistan/
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Yes we can, Middle East leaders tell Obama
by Sana Abdallah
Amman - Leaders across the Middle East congratulated Barack Obama on his historic election victory as the 44th president of the United States. Many anticipated that his administration would usher in a fresh new policy and approach that would bring peace to a region plunged into great turbulence during the past eight years of the George W. Bush presidency.
http://www.commongroundnews.org/article.php?id=24350&lan=en&sid=1&sp=0
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David Miliband: Barack Obama Middle East plan best since Camp David
Source: The Times
Tom Baldwin in Washington
David Miliband hailed President Obama’s efforts to kick-start the Middle East peace process yesterday as a once in a generation opportunity to resolve the 60-year conflict between Palestinians and Israelis.
The Foreign Secretary, speaking before talks in Washington with Hillary Clinton, the Secretary of State, said that this was the first US Administration since that of Jimmy Carter in the Camp David talks of 1978 to have “thrown itself into the peace process from day one”. He also praised Mr Obama’s team for recognising “the regional context” of the need to broker a settlement that not only allows Israel to live in peace alongside a new Palestinian state but also with the 21 other Arab nations.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3874147
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European Union: Barack Obama 'will bring new era of international co-operation'
The European Union has hailed Barack Obama's sweeping presidential election victory as a "turning point" for the entire world and the dawning of a new era of international co-operation.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...ng-new-era-of-international-co-operation.html
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Obama’s Road to Damascus By: John Perazzo
History will record that Barack Obama’s first act of diplomacy as America’s president-elect took place two days after his election victory, when he dispatched his senior foreign-policy adviser, Robert Malley, to meet with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad—to outline for them the forthcoming administration’s Mideast policy vis-à-vis those nations. An aide to Malley reports, “The tenor of the messages was that the Obama administration would take into greater account Egyptian and Syrian interests” than has President Bush. The Bush administration, it should be noted, has rightly recognized Syria to be not only a chief supporter of the al Qaeda insurgency in Iraq, but also the headquarters of the terrorist organization Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the longtime sponsor of Hamas—the terrorist army whose founding charter is irrevocably committed to the annihilation of Israel. Yet unlike President Bush, Obama and Malley have called for Israel to engage in peace negotiations with Syria.
http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=33036
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Obama Mideast Watch
American policy has also more or less held that holding peace negotiations is effectively conditional on the cessation of violence and threats of violence against Israel. Accordingly, Ross seems to suggest in his recent writings that the U.S. confront and defeat Iran's growing power and ambitions in the Middle East--including Tehran's support for Hamas and Hizballah--before seriously tackling the vexing core issues of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute again. Ross's thinking echoes the failed neo-conservative logic that says reforming the Middle East will bring peace instead of the other way around. That's an approach sure to keep professional peace negotiators like Ross in business for ever--endlessly negotiating rather than actually achieving peace. When it comes to Iran, the U.S. has fought yet failed to extinguish the Islamic revolution in a winner-take-all strategy for 30 years, with the result that Iran has repeatedly won strategic gains all over the Middle East-- at the expense of both Israel and the U.S.
Kurtzer, in contrast, has recognized and written about the failure of U.S. policy over the years. He understands that brokering Arab-Israeli peace should be a signal priority, that U.S. peacemaking is not solely to assist allies but is the pursuit of America's own national strategic interests, that peace is a key to achieving other crucial goals like defeating Islamic radicalism, that Israel's strategic advantage doesn't remove the necessity of fulfilling Palestinian needs and that ultimately to be successful the U.S. must engage in demonstrably even-handed diplomacy.
In their 2008 book, Negotiating Arab-Israeli Peace: American Leadership in the Middle East, Kurtzer and co-author Scott Lasensky cite America's "alarming pattern of mismanaged diplomacy" in the region since the end of the Cold War. "Flaws in U.S. diplomacy stretching back to the Clinton administration have contributed to the worst crisis in Arab-Israeli relations in a generation," they write. "This devastating failure has hurt U.S. interests and damaged our ability to gain cooperation from allies and key regional players. At the popular level, it has weakened the U.S. position in the region and on the world stage. It has also jeopardized our long-term investment in Arab-Israeli peace."
Make no mistake, Kurtzer-Lasensky warn, "Arab-Israeli peacemaking is crucial to our own national security interests." They argue that the lack of peace has undermined the U.S. effort to combat Islamic radicalism and terrorism and to promote democracy and stability in the Arab world. At the same time, they say, America's commitment to Israel's security and well-being "is best served by moving toward, rather than away from, a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace settlement."
Kurtzer-Lasensky are particularly dismissive of the Bush administration's tragic neglect of Arab-Israeli peace negotiations. But they are nonetheless damning of the Clinton administration's Ross-managed approach to Israeli-Palestinian talks, which they say was "hands off" for two years even after Oslo. "Early inaction by the president and his team, together with the administration's failure to hold Israelis and Palestinians accountable to the agreements they signed, were to have far-reaching consequences for the peace process and U.S. policy."
As for the failure of the 2000 Camp David summit that Ross blames on Arafat, Kurtzer-Lasensky find fault all around. They say that Clinton's summit was "ill-conceived" and constituted the "most glaring failure" of Clinton's last-ditch diplomatic efforts in the Middle East. They describe a policy-making process that was "too insular and inhibited the development of U.S. positions on the core issues... the United States was unprepared, and our negotiators scrambled at the last minute to put together U.S. positions on complex issues such as Jerusalem and borders."
Kurtzer-Lasensky write that their Institute of Peace study group was repeatedly told that, at the Camp David summit, "the United States gave the Palestinians proposals that originated with Israel. In the words of a senior U.S. policymaker, the Clinton team allowed itself to be manipulated and relinquished too much control over U.S. policy." The book quotes a former Clinton official saying, "when it came to dealing with Jerusalem, there's some very embarrassing episodes that betrayed our lack of knowledge or bias." After the talks collapsed, Kurtzer-Lasensky write, "Clinton acceded to Barak's request to blame Arafat publicly...because of Barak's domestic political needs."
A problem with such a reflexively pro-Israel approach, as Kurtzer-Lasensky indicate elsewhere, is that a strong third-party mediating role is essential in order to overcome the Israeli strategic superiority that puts Palestinians at a negotiating disadvantage and therefore makes them warier of deal making. "Power dynamics in the Israeli-Palestininan conflict are deeply unbalanced," they explain. "Israel is an established sovereign state with a robust, thriving economy and a world-class military; Palestinians remain under occupation, bereft of effective public institutions, highly dependent on international economic assistance, lacking basic security, and incapable of providing the full measure of security to which Israelis are entitled... Left on their own, the parties cannot address the deep, structural impediments to peace."
In Kurtzer-Lasensky's conclusion, they emphasize the importance of being seen as an honest broker if the U.S. is to achieve success in the Middle East. "The next president will need to ensure that the manner in which we conduct our diplomacy results in the peoples of the region sharing this perception." That's Statecraft 101, but it's been tragically lacking in the U.S.'s Middle East diplomacy.
http://mideast.blogs.time.com/2008/12/23/obama-mideast-watch-ross-vs-kurtzer/
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And I haven't even done a search of the pinheads on this board, who were SO HOPEFUL Obama would be the Great Messiah and deliver us out of the hell Bush had caused in the region. What happened???
