Thursday, May 23, 2013

Obama’s Great Triumphs in Middle East Peace So Far

May 23, 2013 By 
FRONT PAGE MAGAZINE


obama arafat

Every time Obama gives a speech about foreign policy, he inserts some obligatory mention of how he wants to negotiate peace between Israel and the “Palestinian” people. And how that will create stability in the region.


The latter is a Saudi line that the parrots of the West have been taught to repeat back until they confuse it with reality. But let’s look at much Obama has done along those lines in Term 2.
Obama made a splashy trip to Israel. The only thing of substance that came out of that trip was to force Israel to apologize to Turkey. The apology did not actually repair relations, but the apology agreement gave Turkey more influence over Gaza. And Turkey’s Islamist regime is a strong supporter of Hamas.
These are signs that the Hamas regime in Gaza is stepping up efforts to create active cells in the Fatah-ruled West Bank.
Hamas’s West Bank terrorism infrastructure has not recovered after being devastated by waves of Israeli counter-terror operations launched a decade ago, and the organization’s leadership would like to change that.
Last year, Israeli President Shimon Peres named Turkey as a sponsor of Hamas terrorism, saying that Ankara was sending hundreds of millions of dollars. Qatar in recent months gave Hamas $400 million for public works in Gaza. With no independent oversight, it is impossible to know how much of that cash might be siphoned off to terrorism. Gaza received a total of $1 billion in international aid in 2012, according to defense sources.
So we now have a Hamas upsurge thanks to Obama’s meddling. And that’s not all. Fatah’s best bet for the future was using Prime Minister Salam Fayyad as a shield. But Obama’s warm embrace of President Abbas emboldened him to push out Fayyad. Kerry’s attempt to keep Fayyad in place only forced him out.
What Obama’s visit really accomplished was to force out Fayyad and embolden Hamas making even the prospect of negotiations that much more impossible.
About 
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam. He is completing a book on the international challenges America faces in the 21st century.