(Download) "Despite Lack of Progress, Obama Warns Against Despair (Peacemaking)" by The Weekly Middle East Reporter (Beirut, Lebanon) # eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Despite Lack of Progress, Obama Warns Against Despair (Peacemaking)
- Author : The Weekly Middle East Reporter (Beirut, Lebanon)
- Release Date : January 13, 2010
- Genre: Reference,Books,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 64 KB
Description
U.S. President Barack Obama has acknowledged he had moved ahead of himself when he raised hopes of early success by making Mideast peacemaking a top priority of his new administration. "I think it is absolutely true that what we did this year didn't produce the kind of breakthrough that we wanted," Obama said in a Time magazine interview published recently. "If we had anticipated some of these political problems on both sides earlier, we might not have raised expectations as high." Solving the Mideast riddle has bedeviled U.S. leaders for six decades. No American leader has managed to foster a breakthrough in the region since President Jimmy Carter's success in negotiating a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel in 1978. Even that, in the end, produced only a cold peace and minimal benefits for remaking relations between Israel and other Arab neighbors. Jordan and Israel also signed a peace treaty in 1994 For most Americans--increasingly angry about double-digit unemployment figures and perceptions of special treatment for the banks that are held responsible for causing the financial misery--progress in the Middle East is the least of their worries. But Obama made such a big deal out of solving the Israeli-Palestinian puzzle because it remains critical to American security. Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden continues to cite the conflict--and America's close links to Israel--as a key motive and recruiting tool among Muslims for his terror campaign. Likewise with Iran, whose leaders call for Israel's destruction even as they are believed to be moving toward ownership of a nuclear weapon and the missiles that could fulfill that ambition, though Tehran denies this.