Gil Troy: Obama the President is Not Alexander the Great
[The writer is professor of History at McGill University and a Shalom Hartman Institute Research Fellow. He is the author of Why I Am A Zionist: Israel, Jewish Identity and the Challenges of Today and Leading from the Center: Why Moderates Make the Best Presidents.]
I understand Barack Obama’s impatience with Israel. I see his logic whereby if only Israel would freeze, concede and withdraw, the conflict would end. I can imagine the appeal, for the first African-American US president – the first incumbent president to win a Nobel Peace Prize in decades, the first to pass such sweeping health-care legislation – to seek his next big win in the Middle East.
Just as Alexander the Great legendarily solved the problem of the Gordian knot by slicing it in half rather than untying it, Obama wants to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict by cutting through what the world has deemed to be the obstacle toMiddle East peace: Israeli intransigence.
Alas, Obama is no Alexander.
So far, the more Obama pulls at this Gordian knot, the tighter it gets; the more Obama pressures Israel, the more the Palestinians raise their demands. Obama is failing – and flailing – because he is blind to history. He is ignoring the history of Israeli willingness to compromise.
In 1947, David Ben-Gurion accepted the UN’s partition plan; the Arab leaders did not. Thirty years later, Menachem Begin relinquished the entire Sinai Peninsula in return for Egypt’s promise of recognition and peace. And in 1993, Israel accepted the Oslo Accords, recognizing Yasser Arafat as a peace partner and arming his henchmen.
No one, no matter how charismatic, self-confident or powerful, will succeed in jump-starting the Middle East peace process without acknowledging Israel’s long-standing openness to compromise – and the series of betrayals it has nevertheless endured. The Oslo Accords degenerated into Arafat’s war of terrorism, which murdered more than 1,000 innocent people. The Gaza withdrawal of 2005 led to Hamas’s rise, and intensified the rain of Kassams pounding Sderot and other towns. This is not ancient history. This is not about who first had ties to Jerusalem centuries ago (which, of course, the Jews did). This is about a long-standing pattern of Palestinian violence and intransigence, manifested repeatedly....
Read entire article at Jerusalem Post
I understand Barack Obama’s impatience with Israel. I see his logic whereby if only Israel would freeze, concede and withdraw, the conflict would end. I can imagine the appeal, for the first African-American US president – the first incumbent president to win a Nobel Peace Prize in decades, the first to pass such sweeping health-care legislation – to seek his next big win in the Middle East.
Just as Alexander the Great legendarily solved the problem of the Gordian knot by slicing it in half rather than untying it, Obama wants to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict by cutting through what the world has deemed to be the obstacle toMiddle East peace: Israeli intransigence.
Alas, Obama is no Alexander.
So far, the more Obama pulls at this Gordian knot, the tighter it gets; the more Obama pressures Israel, the more the Palestinians raise their demands. Obama is failing – and flailing – because he is blind to history. He is ignoring the history of Israeli willingness to compromise.
In 1947, David Ben-Gurion accepted the UN’s partition plan; the Arab leaders did not. Thirty years later, Menachem Begin relinquished the entire Sinai Peninsula in return for Egypt’s promise of recognition and peace. And in 1993, Israel accepted the Oslo Accords, recognizing Yasser Arafat as a peace partner and arming his henchmen.
No one, no matter how charismatic, self-confident or powerful, will succeed in jump-starting the Middle East peace process without acknowledging Israel’s long-standing openness to compromise – and the series of betrayals it has nevertheless endured. The Oslo Accords degenerated into Arafat’s war of terrorism, which murdered more than 1,000 innocent people. The Gaza withdrawal of 2005 led to Hamas’s rise, and intensified the rain of Kassams pounding Sderot and other towns. This is not ancient history. This is not about who first had ties to Jerusalem centuries ago (which, of course, the Jews did). This is about a long-standing pattern of Palestinian violence and intransigence, manifested repeatedly....