Michael Freund: Impatient Obama Is No Gandhi
[Michael Freund He writes a syndicated column and feature stories for the Jerusalem Post.]
If anyone still thinks of US President Barack Obama in superhuman or pseudo-messianic terms, those thoughts can now surely be put to rest.
Just prior to his joint meeting on Monday in New York with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, the leader of the free world put on a performance that was so dreadfully uninspired as to border on the unpresidential.
In a statement to reporters, Obama could barely contain his annoyance, emphatically declaring that "simply put, it is past time to talk about starting negotiations - it is time to move forward. It is time to show the flexibility and common sense and sense of compromise that's necessary to achieve our goals."
Sounding like a scorned substitute teacher being ignored by his pupils, Obama lectured his Middle Eastern guests, telling them, "Permanent-status negotiations must begin, and begin soon. And more importantly, we must give those negotiations the opportunity to succeed."
Some may cheer this "straight talk" as precisely the kind of push that is needed to restart the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. But the truth is that it is more a reflection of the president's impetuosity than of a well-crafted policy. As such, its chances of success are highly doubtful.
Indeed, the US media was rife with leaks from administration officials about how "impatient" Obama is. Fox News, for example, reported: "Though it's early in the Obama administration, aides suggest he's running out of patience with both sides." The New York Times took note of "the president's impatience with the slow pace of the peace negotiations," and Politico revealed that White House "aides indicated that Obama is frustrated and impatient with what they described as foot-dragging by the Israelis and inflexible positions from the Palestinians."
The president is clearly a prisoner of his own restlessness, diving head-first into one complex and knotty problem after another with little to show for it but bruises. Thus, the same man who tried to rush through an unprecedented overhaul of America's colossal health-care system in just a matter of a few weeks, now seeks to solve a century-old conflict by forcing a photo-op meeting in New York in order to jump-start negotiations in its wake.
This is no way to run a country, and certainly no way to bring about a real and lasting peace - not among bickering members of Congress, and certainly not between Arabs and Israelis.
Yet perhaps the strangest thing of all is that Obama himself should know better than to act with such rashness. After all, just two weeks ago, on a highly-publicized visit to a high school in Arlington, Virginia, he cited Mahatma Gandhi, who was a pillar of patience, as one of his key influences...
Read entire article at Jerusalem Post
If anyone still thinks of US President Barack Obama in superhuman or pseudo-messianic terms, those thoughts can now surely be put to rest.
Just prior to his joint meeting on Monday in New York with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, the leader of the free world put on a performance that was so dreadfully uninspired as to border on the unpresidential.
In a statement to reporters, Obama could barely contain his annoyance, emphatically declaring that "simply put, it is past time to talk about starting negotiations - it is time to move forward. It is time to show the flexibility and common sense and sense of compromise that's necessary to achieve our goals."
Sounding like a scorned substitute teacher being ignored by his pupils, Obama lectured his Middle Eastern guests, telling them, "Permanent-status negotiations must begin, and begin soon. And more importantly, we must give those negotiations the opportunity to succeed."
Some may cheer this "straight talk" as precisely the kind of push that is needed to restart the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. But the truth is that it is more a reflection of the president's impetuosity than of a well-crafted policy. As such, its chances of success are highly doubtful.
Indeed, the US media was rife with leaks from administration officials about how "impatient" Obama is. Fox News, for example, reported: "Though it's early in the Obama administration, aides suggest he's running out of patience with both sides." The New York Times took note of "the president's impatience with the slow pace of the peace negotiations," and Politico revealed that White House "aides indicated that Obama is frustrated and impatient with what they described as foot-dragging by the Israelis and inflexible positions from the Palestinians."
The president is clearly a prisoner of his own restlessness, diving head-first into one complex and knotty problem after another with little to show for it but bruises. Thus, the same man who tried to rush through an unprecedented overhaul of America's colossal health-care system in just a matter of a few weeks, now seeks to solve a century-old conflict by forcing a photo-op meeting in New York in order to jump-start negotiations in its wake.
This is no way to run a country, and certainly no way to bring about a real and lasting peace - not among bickering members of Congress, and certainly not between Arabs and Israelis.
Yet perhaps the strangest thing of all is that Obama himself should know better than to act with such rashness. After all, just two weeks ago, on a highly-publicized visit to a high school in Arlington, Virginia, he cited Mahatma Gandhi, who was a pillar of patience, as one of his key influences...