Almost everyone in a dispute hopes to find an honest broker to mediate their differences. The controversy over the Goldstone Report on Gaza and the active role of Turkey’s prime minister therein has raised a collateral issue, which is the US role as a go-between or broker in the Middle East. So let’s look at the prospect that the US can be such a broker, either alone or in tandem with Turkey, which has been actively involved in the area. Obama as Broker in the Middle East No one can be a broker when beholden utterly to one side, and while Obama sounds much better than Bush (he could scarcely sound worse), and is better in some areas, where Israel is concerned he is all talk and no action — except where supporting Israel is concerned, where his words and deeds go hand in hand. Israeli leaders have spit in his face diplomatically, and it has cost them nothing — not a penny in aid, not a bullet, not a plane, and especially not a veto in the UN. Obama takes the insulting rebuffs in public silence, reaffirms his support of Israel, fends off its critics, and continues to send it aid, just as if nothing had happened. The rest of world generally crosses its metaphorical fingers, re-reads increasingly tattered and bloodstained copies of Obama’s Cairo speech, and hopes that his promise is not for nothing. And hopes. And hopes…. Now, no reasonable person expected Obama to change America’s Middle East policies immediately. But few expected him to do nothing but talk, words with… >>>
