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Arabia: Inshallah, Obama
With two little words, Barack Hussein Obama thrilled the Muslim world.
“Salaam aleikum,” he said, offering the traditional Arabic greeting “Peace be upon you” at the start of his Cairo speech last year.
The address of the first American president with Muslim roots was a bravura attempt to leech out the poison between the Islamic and Western worlds, and revive the moribund Middle East peace talks. But now, many disillusioned Muslims are echoing the all-talk, no-action refrain first popularized by the woman who became secretary of state.
“He said all the right words in his speech,” said Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister. “But the implementation took traditional roads.”
Privately, other highly placed princes in the family oil business groused louder. “Things are worse now than before,” asserted one, “because our hopes were so high after Cairo.”
Actually, the president didn’t say all the right words in his speech. He created an obstacle for himself by demanding that Israel stop expanding settlements when it was not going to do so — even though it should — and when that wasn’t the most important condition to Arabs.
Now Obama seems ineffectual, as Israel pushes ahead on 600 more new homes in East Jerusalem, where the Palestinians want their capital, despite the White House protest in November about 900 other houses that Israel plans to put up there.
I asked Prince Saud if he thinks America has less influence over Israel than it used to.
“You’re asking me about something that has tickled our imagination,” he replied. “If the settlements are illegitimate, the least you would expect is that the aid the United States gives to Israel would cut that part that is going to build settlements. Israel is getting away without implementing the Geneva Convention as an occupying authority. Now if it were somewhere else, in Burma or somewhere like that, hell would be raised.”
It’s probably a sign of progress that Prince Saud calls it “a border dispute.” Unless it’s just his understated way. He also refers to “the 9/11 incident” and alludes to the Holocaust obliquely as “World War II.”
Despite repeated attacks by Arab states and Arab and Iranian-backed militant groups, and a call for Israel’s destruction by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, Prince Saud suggested that Israel might be overreacting about security because of “World War II” and that this prevented a peace deal.
“There are no troops arrayed on the border of Israel waiting for the moment to say, ‘Attack Israel,’ ” the prince said. “Nobody is going to fight them and threaten their peace. But they didn’t accept that. So it makes one wonder, what does Israel want?”
If anyone deserves to be paranoid, of course, it’s Israel. But Israel can’t be paranoid because paranoia is the mistaken perception that people are out to get you.
Asked about the possibility that Israel could attack Iran with its new drones, Prince Saud said dryly: “Talk about changing lifestyle. I think this would change lifestyles at once, forcibly.”
Hillary Clinton was in the region recently, warning that Iran was “moving toward a military dictatorship” and could trigger a nuclear arms race.
“God help us if we see countries with atomic weapons in the Middle East,” said Prince Saud. “The way to resolve this is through the United Nations.” Good luck.
Clinton’s request that Syria begin to move away from the relationship with Iran and stop supporting Hezbollah was rebuffed 10 days ago when Ahmadinejad and the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad held a news conference underscoring their ties.
Ahmadinejad advised America to stop interfering, pack up and leave the region.
The blustery Iranian president has threatened to bar airlines that use the term “Arabian Gulf” instead of “Persian Gulf” from Iranian airspace. He stamped “Persian Gulf” on the Islamic Solidarity Games’ logo and medals, spurring the Arab states to call off the Muslim Olympics.
Prince Saud had been frank enough to confess to Hillary that camels were ugly, so I wondered if he’d say the same about Ahmadinejad’s crazy rants.
“It achieves no objective,” he agreed, “and just creates tensions.”
He said America would have to focus on social and economic problems in Afghanistan, since the war cannot be won only militarily — “unless you want to bring down the Himalayas.”
He opened the door to the possibility that the kingdom might help the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, persuade Taliban militants to switch sides.
I wondered how he felt about Senator Russ Feingold’s contention that America needs to treat Al Qaeda as an international network rather than striving for a country-by-country eradication.
He demurred, saying, “There is nothing wrong with keeping the terrorists on the run.”
Maureen Dowd
New York Times