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The Pharaoh Comes to Washington
Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP Photo
To get Arab nations behind the Middle East peace process, Barack Obama is making nice with the king of Egyptian corruption, President Hosni Mubarak. Can he be trusted?
President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, who held talks at the White House with President Obama on Tuesday, paid lip service to the need for political reform in his country. But the 81-year-old leader, often compared to the ancient pharaohs, kept the door open on the possibility he may seek a sixth term in office in 2011, amid speculation he was grooming his son, Gamal, to succeed him at the helm.
The talks came following a clear warming of bilateral relations prompted by a mutual need to contain Iran’s growing influence in the Middle East, and the rise of Islamic extremism in general throughout the region. Relations between Washington and Cairo deteriorated during the Bush administration because of the former president’s push for spreading democracy in the region, the Iraq war, and what Mubarak considered a blanket American support for Israel at the expense of Palestinian rights.
The 81-year-old leader, often compared to the ancient pharaohs, may seek a sixth term in office in 2011, amid speculation he is grooming his son, Gamal, to succeed him at the helm.
Obama said on Tuesday he saw encouraging signs of a softening of Israel’s resistance to his call for a freeze on settlement activity in the occupied Palestinian territories. Earlier in the day, an Israeli government minister said no tenders had been issued for new housing projects in Israeli settlements since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard-line government took office nearly five months ago. Netanyahu had rejected Obama’s demand for a complete freeze, offering instead a temporary halt in return for Arab steps to normalize relations with Israel.
"There has been movement in the right direction," Obama said when asked about the latest development after talks with Mubarak. The two leaders, meeting for the third time in as many months, talked about how to jump-start the stalled Middle East peace process, a top foreign-policy priority for Obama.
Mubarak's visit comes as the Obama administration has been pushing moderate Arab states to take steps that could encourage Israel to freeze settlement building on Palestinian territory. Mubarak, however, said Arab states would only take a more active role in supporting the peace process once Israelis and Palestinians began direct negotiations.
Arab states have so far been cool to the idea of steps such as giving overflight rights to Israeli civilian aircrafts and allowing Israel to open interest sections in foreign embassies in their capitals.
They have put the onus on Israel to revive the peace process, while Israel has said the Palestinians and Arab states must first do more to advance the peace process.
According to Suleiman Awaad, a spokesman for Mubarak, the two leaders discussed a U.S. plan to present a peace proposal for Israelis and Palestinians next month.
“What is needed now is for the Americans to declare a plan to achieve peace in the Middle East,” Awaad said. Obama indicated that a U.S. plan may be presented when the United Nations General Assembly meets in September, Awaad said.
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There are three general approaches for foreign relation strategies:
1 - Isolation; minding our own business and staying out of other country's business.
2 - Intervention; Using influence and/or force to control or influence other enemy nations.
3 - Collaboration; finding common causes to align with.
Each strategy has pitfalls. The current administration is clearly picking a collaboration strategy for the middle east. This was kicked off with the apology tour and continues with relationship building meetings with the leaders of all the nations in the region.
The primary pitfall with this strategy is that you must "collaborate" with nations that are pseudo- enemies, dictatorships and downright evil. Only time will tell if this works. If it does, it will be the first time in history. Generally, bad people/nations cannot be trusted and they will betray agreements if it benefits themselves at the expense of their enemies. France never learned this and paid for it dearly over and over throughout history.
good call! because intervention (think iraq war) and isolation (think WW1 and 2 before we helped) are so much better at achieving goals.
also, collaboration has never ever worked in the history of mankind, ever! who has ever heard of two countries or any entities for that matter ever coming together to find common causes in order to achieve a goal???
if anyone has heard of such a crazy thing, please feel free to post...
Can he be trusted? Hmmm....maybe to do whatever we bribe him to do, if the money weighs more than the favor(s) cost him to carry out.
Oh hell, he might teach him something he didn't think up in Chacago....we're screwed.
Instead of criticizing the Arab world and the Muslim world - some of it deserved, some of it, though, just like the Orientalists - why doesn't Salameh Nematt criticize Israel for a change? The U.N. just issued a report on the war in Gaza last January: over 1,400 Palestinians killed, only 3 Israelis killed. Why doesn't he write a criticism of Israel's war crimes? Most stories have pilloried the report, criticizing it for bias. Perhaps. But no one seems to have confronted its major conclusion: the disproportionate application of fire power by the Israelis against relatively defenseless Palestinians. Unless, of course, you're too busy being a self-hating, Ajami-like Arab.
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