Sound The Trumpet : Analysis: Obama Trying to Find Roadmap Out of Mideast

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“Analysis: Obama Trying to Find Roadmap Out of Mideast”
by IsraelNN - Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
November 12th, 2009

Foreign analysts and media observers say that U.S. President Barack Obama’s failure to advance the “diplomatic process” is forcing him to find alternatives, one of which is “just walking away,” according to observers quoted by the French news agency AFP.

The president has three options, and “none of these is very good…because the Palestinian side is melting away,” Center for Strategic and International Studies director Jon Alterman told the news agency.

"One is to have the president even more directly engaged to make a more obvious personal effort;” the second is put his own solution on the table; the third is to “find some way to redefine this, so people aren't looking for the president to move it forward, walk away in some way. It would be playing for time."

He acknowledged that the refusal of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas to budge on his demands “reinforces the Israeli thinking that now is not the good time to move."

The Obama administration suffered a major diplomatic setback last week when U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in an abrupt change from previous statements, complimented Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on his moves to reduce new construction for Jews in eastern Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria and appeared to accept a partial building freeze.

Abbas followed by announcing he will not run for re-election and may resign before his term of office ends early next year, a move that experts predict could cause mayhem and even anarchy in the PA.

As previously reported, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote last Sunday that President Obama should take a “radically new approach…and just go home.”

Despite statements by Prime Minister Netanyahu and Obama officials claiming that the two leaders conducted “warm and friendly” talks at the White House earlier this week, all observers have noted there was no news conference following the meeting and not even a photo of a handshake.

Pro-Arab analyst Robert Malley, who is close to President Obama and was one of his advisors before he took office, said this week that the diplomatic freeze is not surprising because the president raised expectations in his ”reaching out to the Muslims” speech in Cairo last June.

"What is of concern is not so much the failure to reach the goals ... but that they set the goals in the first place without a plan to address the situation if they weren't able to achieve them," he told AFP.

Elliott Abrams, an expert with the Council on Foreign Relations, recently wrote in The Weekly Standard, "The fundamental problem with Obama's policy is: like too many of his predecessors he believes that a solution is at hand if only he can force the parties to the table.”

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