In Israel, Some Anxieties About Obama
How will the United States Shift on Iran, Palestinians, Mideast Peace?
JERUSALEM—Israelis aren't so sure what to make of a President Barack Obama, particularly when it comes to dealing with Iran.
Sometimes dialogue "can be interpreted as weakness," Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said in a radio interview, referring to Obama's stated intention to try diplomacy with Iran. She revealed what seems to be Israeli leaders' main worry about Obama—that he will not be as antagonistic toward Iran as President Bush has been or as most Israelis assumed a President John McCain would have been.
This is one reason, though not the only one, why Israel, in contrast to much of the rest of the world, greeted Obama's victory with dry eyes.
Except on the far right, however, the concern is muted. Soon-to-depart Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and other government officials have expressed confidence that the U.S.-Israeli alliance will remain rock-solid, a pledge Obama took pains to repeat during the campaign.
After President Bush's embrace of Israel as a front-line ally in the war on terror, Israeli leaders are banking not on change from the incoming president but on continuity.
It's no secret that Israelis, by and large, wanted McCain to win; a poll a week before the election showed them favoring him by a 3-to-2 ratio—a narrower lead, though, than McCain had held here in earlier surveys.
In sharp contrast to American Jews, who voted better than 3-to-1 for Obama, many Israelis identify more with the Republicans' Us vs. Them approach to foreign policy than with the Democrats' more nuanced view.
Then there is the name issue. Obama's middle name, Hussein, didn't do him much good among many Israelis. Nor did his associations with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, radical-turned-educator William Ayers, and Rashid Khalidi, a controversial Columbia University scholar of Palestinian descent.
"I think he'll be more sympathetic to the Arabs than to us. When push comes to shove, he'll side with them because of his Muslim background," said Moshe Ozer, a labor contractor waiting for a flight at Ben-Gurion Airport. Ozer refused to believe Obama is a Christian.
Sheri Oz, a family therapist who was waiting for her daughter's flight, said she has no problem with Obama's middle name. But she has been anxious "about his associations, like with some of those Palestinian academics who'd be happy if Israel just disappeared." Her attitude softened upon learning that Obama's first appointment, as future White House chief of staff, was Rahm Emanuel, who volunteered in Israel during the 1991 Gulf War. (Emanuel's Jerusalem-born father was a member of the same pre-state Zionist guerrilla movement, the Irgun, as Livni's father.) "Now, I'm ready to be happily surprised," said Oz.
As much as Israelis want Obama to go easy on the change stuff with them, Palestinians are more than eager for it. "We hope the two-state vision would be transferred from a vision to a realistic track immediately," said a statement from Palestinian negotiator Sa'eb Erekat, making clear his impatience with Bush's "vision" that never got off the ground.
In one of the bustling shops on the Arab side of Jerusalem's Old City, cellphone dealer Ra'ed Sublaban said, "All the people here are happy because they hated the old [Bush] administration. Bill Clinton was different, and I think Obama will be similar to Clinton."
Hassan Alka, a Palestinian construction worker whose view of Bush was succinct and unprintable, believed the Palestinians now will have a friend in the White House. "Obama is the best," Alka said, "because he's a Muslim."
Reader Comments
Israel vs. everyone else
A little history lesson: Israel was given a plot of land from the British government that nobody wanted in 1948. Why? Because everybody in Europe felt bad for the treatment of the Jews during the Holocaust and hoped that a chance to become a nation in a barren wasteland would help. So Zionists came and the desert began to bloom back into life. The Palestinis felt they were being slighted and the other Arab countries didn't like to have a Jewish state for a neighbor. After about three wars, Israel still remains a nation and has acquired more land than it originally received. (Praise be given to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob!) This left the Arab and radical Islamic peoples holding grudges, which gives us the problem today. One more thing, most countries wouldn't blink an eye one way or another if Israel ceased to exist, with the exception of Britain and the US.
With that being said, it is understandable why Israel is a little nervous about Obama becoming the next president of their most powerful ally. Sure, Israel doesn't have to and probably won't wait for us to give the go-ahead to start a war. But it pays to make sure that you have a world power on your side when you do so. The US's involvement in the Middle East under President Bush's administration has essentially assured the alliance with Israel, since we are the only ones fighting their enemies right now. Obama's peace talks and shady friendships/religious background on the other hand could weaken Israel trust in us and could provoke them to do something rash.
As for supporting our future president, I may have to support him as an American patriot and citizen, but don't think for one moment I am going to support all of his actions and ideologies. I didn't support the way Bush decided to use an American version of Blitzkrieg in Iraq or his No Child Left Behind policy, but I still supported him as our President these last eight years.
Obamas' ascendancy to the Presidency in fact, it is an opportune moment to resolve the long and bitter infighting of the past. Why not Israelis or Iranians and other concerned should at least consider it to have a meaningful dialogue?
Long lasting conflicts can only be resolved by peace not by force.
I don't understand why the Israeli's would care one way or another about the USA president.
Israel is an independant, self-sufficient nation with the most advanced military machine in the Middle East.
Surely, it they are threatened or attacked, they (I hope) would not look to the USA to save them. They have their own highly successful and able army and air force. No need tobe concerned who the next USA president is, or what his feelings towards Israel is.....or whether his middle name is Hussein.
I would hope that if the Israelis are attacked, or if they decide to initiate an attack on anyone, they know that they don't have to depend on the USA to bail them out, or come flying to their aid.
Considering our battered economy, and our misguided misadventures in Iraq under the leadership of an incompetent Republican president, now is not the time for foreign countries, including Israel to look to the USA to defend or support them.
I hope Israel never is attacked....or initiates any attack on any of their neighbors. But considering their military might, I also hope they know that rather to worry about or look to our new American president to see how he will react....they will be mature enough to face their situation head on together and face their problems on their own.
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