Let's B Friendz! - featuring Israel and Palestine and Obama

One of the strangest rituals of any US Presidency is the moment when they turn around and say "Right chaps, enough of this home town stuff, time to sort the ol' Israel-Palestine mess, 'ey". Strange because evidently US Presidents are massively British behind closed doors. But also strange because resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict has over the years developed into something akin to the holy grail of the US Presidency. Basically, you find a way of getting Israel and Palestine to live happily ever after in side-by-side two-state harmony and you can pretty much pack up your bat and ball and go home because you have just won at being President. Even if you spent the rest of your Presidency shooting jets of lava at towns in the Deep South while bankrupting the country by having a three kilometre tall diamond statute of yourself built on top of Mount Rushmore you'd still probably be hailed as the greatest statesman of all time. And have a bitching statue to leave behind. Some incentive.


For decades now, US Presidents have staked their legacy on attempts to finally resolve this most enduring of conflicts. And yet despite these many years of hardened diplomacy there is a reasonable argument that right now the situation is in as dire a state as it's ever been; certainly there have been no face-to-face negotiations between the parties for close to two years. At the same time, Israel is being led by a hard-right Government with marginal sympathy for the plight of the Palestinian people whilst the Palestinians are themselves hopelessly divided with a weak civil Government holding sway over the West Bank and professional assholes Hamas basically angry, hungry and locked up in the Gaza Strip. And, lest we forget, earlier this year Israel killed 9 Turks (i.e. nationals of a country that could be described as their closest Islamic friend) trying to bring aid to the profoundly impoverished people in Gaza. For a further rundown of it all, I put together a background summary at the time.

So with tensions at a high, Obama has evidently figured this was as good a point as any to wade into the shitstorm. In some ways this was not entirely the worst idea: if he can even get the two talking again it'll be considered a small-scale diplomatic miracle. And with the sense that Iraq may be a country on the up once more (no-one mention Afghanistan...), the US' moral authority in the region has been at least partially rehabilitated too. And both Israel and Palestine may be getting to the point where they're eager for a resolution as well. For all its obstinacy, Israel must be getting a little tired of its perennial pariah status, and the flotilla incident certainly didn't do anything to sell it or its cause to the international community. Meanwhile, Palestine is similarly eager to stop being an international pity case/terrorist wonderland and is actually being (financially) pushed towards the negotiations by previously antipathetic allies such as Saudi Arabia and the Arab League. Obama has even shipped in the leaders of Egypt and Jordan, Israel's only regional allies, to give the talks a further semblance of stability. Whether any of this will change the character of the many intractable issues that have derailed in often bloody fashion the eight previous attempts at reconciliation - the status of Jerusalem, ongoing violence by Hamas, retributive violence by the Israeli military and the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank amongst them - remains to be seen. But nonetheless, as one of the least politically tainted Presidents in living memory, this could be Obama's time to shine!



Or to fail miserably.



For me, the strangest thing about the Israel-Palestine conflict is the way that it occupies such a central and divisive place in the global geopolitical spectrum despite having essentially zero strategic relevance to anyone except the Israelis and Palestinians themselves. On a purely pragmatic level, both of them could essentially vanish from the Earth and the world's economies would barely notice, except perhaps to acknowledge that there was going to be a lot less Israeli psytrance around. Potentially a good thing for lovers of music everywhere. Of course, though, there's a lot more at play and at stake here: the cultural and religious significance of the territory involved; the historical hangover from the Holocaust; the strength of the Jewish lobby in America; the burgeoning economic clout of post-colonial Arab nations; the Western world's desire for a stable, democratic Middle East. And perhaps that's part of the reason for its intractability too - this isn't simply a territorial dispute between two nations, it's a fulcrum point around which many of the primary divisions of the post-Cold War world order are being waged. Iran, energy security, American power, Arab identity, Jewish identity, Islamic extremism, global governance: all are lensed through the Israeli-Palestine conflict in some way. And when you break it down like that, it seems little wonder they've never been able to sort things out. Everything is so tangled and inter-related on both a micro- and macroscopic level. It's like trying to solve a Rubik's Cube when you've had both hands replaced by Rubik's Cubes. Which sounds like a scene you might find somewhere in the Saw franchise.


But, nonetheless, in spite of it all, the talks begin once more. People are hopeful. Politicians are are saying optimistic things. The timing seems oddly right. But Obama has still got a long way to go until he can start building that diamond colossus.