AFIF SAFIEH TELLS OBAMA THERE IS CHANCE TO REMAKE THE MIDDLE EAST
Al-Quds, 6 Jumadil Akhir 1436/26 March 2015 (MINA) – In an open letter addressed to US President Barak Obama, veteran Palestinian diplomat Afif Safieh called on the US to expedite peace efforts in the Middle East in the wake of the re-election of Benjamin Netanyahu as Israeli prime minister.
The former Palestinian ambassador to the United Kingdom wrote that: “America is a fascinating society. It is a nation of nations: the world in miniature.Every continent, culture and civilisation is represented within your ranks.
“In our unipolar world, non-alignment is no more the policy option of Third World countries who feared the collision or collusion of the two competing superpowers. Rather, it should be what characterises American foreign policy, Middle East Monitor (MEMO) quoted by Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA) as reporting.
Because if the US sides with one belligerent player in a regional conflict, not only does it unnecessarily alienate and antagonise all the other countries in the area but it also offends and ghettoises a domestic component of its own national and social fabric.
“A recent poll showed that 66 per cent of the American public wanted the US to be a neutral in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” Safieh pointed out.
He noted that often during his lecturing circuit he is regularly interrogated about his feelings concerning Obama’s candidacy for the White House to which he answers that “As a foreign diplomat, I am expected to exercise self-restraint on domestic issues.”
“After a very promising beginnings especially, the Cairo speech about opening a new chapter in American-Arab and American-Muslim relations, Netanyahu is known to have told his entourage on the eve of one of his visits to the US: ‘I am stronger than this man in Washington, DC.’ In your repeated confrontation of wills, he has undeniably prevailed.
Commentators would write that he has shot himself in the foot but, so far, that does not seem to have affected him,” writes Safieh.
The veteran diplomat remarked on the Israeli elections saying they were “an eye-opener”.
“Netanyahu publicly and categorically rejected not only a Palestinian state but Palestinian voters. For him, we are a threat as both a nation and as individuals. The Palestinian and Arab side have been what I call ‘unreasonably reasonable’ in their pursuit of a negotiated settlement.
They no longer challenge Israel’s existence; they only question its expansion. Yet today one can’t help concluding that what is democratically acceptable to one side is totally unacceptable to the other.
And maybe here resides the major flaw in the peace process as it was choreographed up until now. Too much was left for the local belligerents ‘to sort out’.”
Safieh said the Palestinians have “negotiated at the mercy of an uncomfortable balance of power” and that “Israel was constantly inclined to dictate the ceiling of the possible and permissible.
Safieh also reminisced about the late US president, Dwight Eisenhower, who with a single telephone call in 1956 had David Ben Gurion withdraw from the occupied Sinai and during a Presidential election year. “Compared to Ben Gurion, Netanyahu looks like a lamb,” Safieh said.
Safieh concluded his letter by urging Obama to follow on Eisenhower’s lead, saying: “Can we really witness another Eisenhower moment? Yes, Mr President, I believe we can.” (T/P002/P3)
Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA
