Experts and Elon University students weigh in on the president’s ability to reverse decades of war
By Scott Van Dorn
Over the next few weeks, President Obama’s focus will be on planting the roots of peace with the leaders of Middle Eastern nations. On May 18th, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will visit Washington, followed by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on the 26th and Palestinian National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on the 28th.
But the question still remains: Can the new president bring peace to the Middle East?
Today, Obama’s meeting with Netanyahu will focus on a large range of topics, including the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel in order to establish peace.
Aaron Miller
Aaron Miller, a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, said the talk is the “beginning of a long movie” and that two issues will dominate the meeting.
“The only two questions that matter right now are will they come to a consensus on Iraq and will they trust each other,” he said. “And they’re probably not going to answer them.”
Ali Al-Ahmed, however, had a slightly different take. Ahmed is the founder and director of the Institute for Gulf affairs, a think tank in Washington dedicated to improving U.S.-Gulf relations.
“The Obama-Netanyahu negotiations are an important step in building up peace in the Middle East,” he said. “The peace goals must focus on creating ties between Israeli and the major Arab powers, such as Saudi Arabia.”
However, like Miller, Ahmed doubted the feasibility of a positive outcome in the near future.
“It seems that this peace issue won’t be solved anytime soon, as the parties
Ali Al-Ahmed
involved are benefiting from such crisis,” he said. “I do not see any realistic chance for a permanent settlement between the Palestinians and the Israelis. We will have some Palestinians make peace with Israel, but that would be limited to the West Bank.”
Students at Elon University offered a similar sentiment – even with the hope Obama brings.
“I think it’s silly that people think he can all of the sudden fix things,” junior Kyle Davidson said. “Its been going on for so long, and I feel like people are putting unrealistic expectations on Obama. He’s not Jesus.”
Whether or not Obama can make a change is still unforeseen. But Michael Carver, a junior political science major and former associate analyst under Ahmed, pointed out Obama’s main strength with the Arab leaders.
“What Obama brings is quite simply that he isn’t George Bush,” Carver said. “Obama’s foreign policy thus far isn’t that different from Bush’s second term foreign policy, but Bush was so polarizing his first term, when his foreign policy moderated he was unable to come off as credible in the eyes of world leaders making negotiations rather untenable.”
“Most of these leaders still remembered how Bush said, ‘you’re either with us or against us.’”
Scott Van Dorn 