Subscribe to Print Edition | Thu., November 27, 2008 Cheshvan 29, 5769 | | Israel Time: 06:47 (EST+7)
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Obama's opportunity
By Haaretz Editorial
Tags: Israel News, Barack Obama

In a few days, after this Thursday's Thanksgiving Day holiday, United States president-elect Barack Obama will begin presenting his candidates for cabinet and advisory posts. In the coming weeks he, together with his team, is sure to begin putting together the administration's agenda, setting priorities and crafting his inaugural speech. This is a formative period, during which many issues and individuals will be competing for Obama's attention. There is a great temptation to focus on the most urgent issue - rescuing the American economy from the great blows it has suffered in recent months - and in the event any time and energy remains for foreign affairs, to concentrate first of all on the military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Arab-Israeli conflict, which has not been solved in the past 60 years, not to mention the past 120, can wait until the new president has a little time.

If Obama takes this approach, he will be missing a rare opportunity. He is about to take up his post with a great reserve of hope and of credit on the national and even international levels. The Middle East peace process, which the Bush administration was very late in joining, has not borne much fruit but that's no reason to bury it prematurely only to revive it later, as Bush did following the efforts of the Clinton presidency. Obama's expected pick for secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, is well aware of this lesson.

New administrations tend to act slowly. First come the Senate hearings for cabinet candidates, then the positions are approved and the senior agency posts are filled. Following that, work begins, within and among the agencies, to frame proposals and submit them to the president for approval. A presidential envoy is sent to the region to listen to each party and hear their positions before returning to Washington to report and make recommendations. The months go by, and each side continues to remain entrenched in its own positions and to study the bias of the incoming U.S. administration.
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This fact is well known to individuals who have worked in previous administrations and who are now counseling Obama to learn from their failures, to turn things around and create facts on the ground - to first announce the principles of his plan for an Arab-Israeli agreement and only then to get the parties' responses to the plan, when each side understands the price to be paid for refusing to contribute to the plan's success.

Immediacy, priority and the personal involvement of the president are no less important than the components of the plan, one version of which was made public last weekend by two old U.S. foreign affairs and security hands who are advising Obama, partly behind the scenes - Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski.

There's nothing wrong with a peace based upon ensuring Israel's security within the 1967 borders, with agreed-upon changes to the border and exchanges of territory that will leave within Israel those settlement blocs whose evacuation would be too expensive and too painful; a demilitarized Palestinian state whose capital is East Jerusalem; and the retraction of the demand for resettlement of the refugees within Israel. It is campaign season in Israel as well as in the Palestinian Authority. These ideas deserve to receive the official stamp of approval of the Obama administration and to be, in practice, submitted to the voters in both communities so that those who prefer the hard right parties here, and Hamas there, know in advance that they are choosing confrontation with Obama's America.
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  1.   He has more important issues to take care of 12:31  |  Zev 25/11/08
  2.   duo citizenship at birth 14:52  |  Terry J 25/11/08
  3.   U.S. Constitution forbids mixing in religious issues of israel 18:36  |  sam 25/11/08
  4.   A Golden one, too. 20:38  |  Gideon Reader 25/11/08
  5.   Won`t reject pie in the sky if it`s offered 20:43  |  Christopher Rushlau 25/11/08
  6.   How irresponsible and stupid this editorial is 22:07  |  Shalom Freedman 25/11/08
  7.   Sam - you must be against peace 22:36  |  David Israel 25/11/08
  8.   OBAMA MISSING OPPORTUNTY 21:30  |  CHARLIE ROME 26/11/08
  9.   Haaretz`s Idea of an "Opportunity" 21:50  |  Tod Zuckerman 26/11/08
  10.   obama missing opportuntiy 06:42  |  jasperway 27/11/08
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