Obama gave possibly the most vaunted foreign policy speech today at the AIPAC conference. He's once again reiterating and repeating his committment to Israel' security and well being as well as his belief in the historical bound between the US and the Jewish state. Remarkably, he also promised that Jerusalem will become Israel's undivided capital, something that unheard of from Hillary, Bill Clinton, and even the Bushes. In terms of Iran, Obama promised to use a strong diplomacy and no longer applying the word "unconditional" dialogues with the Mullah's regime. Instead, he would carefully set up a preparation before engaging with it and only when Iran will not become a threat to the state of Israel (it sounds like a conditionality to me).
Obama's speech today is, unquestionably, a beautiful music for Israel and the Zionist lobby, while giving a sense of deja vu for the Palestinians and, most probably, an anti climax message to the Muslim world. It seems that it would be delusional now to expect a different trajectory for the six decades Israeli-Palestinian conflict after listening to the speech. If anything, the speech will send a strong message for the people in the Mideast to prepare for another eight years of continuous violence.
It's revealing to me that even a Presidential candidate whose main credential and strongest message is about change could only go so far when it comes to foreign policy related with Israel and the Mideast. If the AIPAC speech will become Obama's policy blue print for the Mideast in the next eight years, I would argue that there will be no significant and real change in terms of conflict resolutions and the relationship between the Arab and Muslim world with the US. To make things even worse, his open threat to use economic boycott to Iran will hardly succeed just like the US economic embargo for more than two decades to the Shiite regime has been a total failure to date.
Obama's speech today is nothing but a rerun of what's been so wrong about the US foreign policy in the Mideast. It was truly a shocking revelation that after so many months of entertaining the idea that Obama will genuinely offer some breakthrough in that particular issue, he is in fact just recalibrating what has been the basic principle of the US foreign policy in the region in the post WW II era. In fairness, I would credit Obama for his consistency in his committment to oppose to the war in Iraq and support of troop withdrawal from the country.
The candidacy of Obama is undoubtedly a historic one American politics and it would open a new Chapter in the Republic's history. And yet, I must say that the door will remain shut for the possibility of peace in the Mideast if the AIPAC speech today will become the foundation of the US foreign policy the next eight years.
God Bless Obama!!