planet earth looks blue

Day two.  So tell us, what’s in store for the Middle East?  Most of us are crossing our fingers for olives and doves after the bombing campaign of the past month, leaving more than 1,300 Palestinians dead, many of them civilians, as well as 13 Israeli soldiers.  Is peace a possibility?  One thing that President Obama has guaranteed is change, just what that means is what we are all waiting to find out.  

There will, no doubt, be a shift in Middle East policy with the Obama administration.  He has begun his term showing respect for the Palestinians, making Mr. Abbas, the Palestinian President, his first phone call on Wednesday morning.  With a history of a strong pro-Israel bent in American politics since Israel’s inception sixty years ago, there has been sparse American support for the Palestinians.  While the US funds Israel’s military, we have often not even recognized Palestinian governments, listing their leadership as terrorists.  But what happens when the bias is gone, when both sides can be spoken to, listened to, and negotiated with, as equals?  They are after all, two sides that have been fighting, more or less, for decades, and have rightly so both compiled a long list of grievances.  

The President has also chosen as one of his advisors, Robert Malley, Director of the Middle East/North Africa Program at the International Crisis Group.  Malley has met several times with Yasar Arafat, honoring the former Palestinian leader as a great man for recognizing Israel’s right to exist peacefully with his people’s right to exist.  Malley also calls for the two Palestinian political groups in Gaza, Hamas and Fatah, to reconcile their differences and move forward as a nation to be recognized as one.  

And looking at President Obama’s likely appointee to the Middle East, the former Senator from Maine, George Mitchell, we all have reason to believe the change will be a good one.  Mitchell is already a successful peace-broker, a title few can claim.  He is attributed with the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, making peace in Northern Ireland.  Mitchell is known for his ability to listen, to everyone, treating both sides as equals.  

On February 10th Israel will hold its elections.  The expected winner is former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has wholeheartedly supported the attack on Gaza, and believes in an end to Hamas.  Hopefully his hardline approach or that of Hamas won’t throw a wrench at our poor little dove.