John Kerry’s Israel speech met with shrug in Arab world

Across the Arab world, US secretary of state John Kerry's harsh words for Israel on Wednesday were met with a collective shrug, coming at the end of eight years of policies that left many frustrated with the Obama administration's stance toward the Middle East.

"At the last five minutes of the hour, apparently Kerry and Obama are showing some courage to stand up to Israel, but it is coming too late in the game," said Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, a professor of political science in the United Arab Emirates. "It is after the fact. They should have shown this amount of political courage four years ago, if not eight years ago."

In his speech, Kerry accused prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu of Israel of standing in the way of peace in the Middle East and defended the Obama administration’s decision to allow a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlement construction.

Many in the Middle East are keenly aware that the current American administration's days are waning, and that Obama is soon to be replaced by president-elect Donald Trump, who has trumpeted his backing of Israel without expressing even token support for the idea of a future Palestinian state – a key piece of US foreign policy for decades.

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"We have seen pro-Israeli presidents all along, and Israel First was the standard policy of the United States of America over the last 50-plus years," Abdulla said. "But Trump is going much further than that. It seems he is even more Zionist than the Zionists."

United in sympathy

Sympathy for the Palestinians has historically been among the few issues that united Arabs across political and sectarian lines, and fiery speeches condemning Israel have long been a reliable way for Arab leaders to fire up their people. But the Palestinian issue today is not as central as it once was in the wider Arab consciousness.

While most Arab states remain unlikely to recognise Israel any time soon, the Arab Spring uprisings and the violence that followed in Egypt, Syria, Yemen and Libya have left both heads of state and their populations more focused on domestic concerns. And the rising influence of Iran has created new regional worries for Persian Gulf states like Saudi Arabia, which now share a strategic interest with Israel in checking Iranian power.

"Arab countries have sociopolitical problems that trump the Palestinian cause," said Ziad A Akl, a senior researcher at the Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo, noting that few Arab governments have done much for the Palestinians over the last decade. Now, he said, "a lot of Arab nations have interests with Israel and it is part of their national security equation".

"They have realised that Israel is a fact that they have to live with," he said. The region's population is also skewed young, and younger Arabs feel less loyalty to the Palestinians than their elders, said Bassel Salloukh, a professor of political science at the Lebanese American University in Beirut. "There are generations of Arabs who have no idea what Palestine symbolises and what the issue means," he said, "and the fratricide among the Palestinians has also undermined the Palestinian cause."

But one issue that could revive the old passions, he said, is Jerusalem, which is claimed not only by the Arabs but by the wider Muslim community because of its holy sites. Trump has vowed to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a departure from decades of US policy that could have widespread international ramifications.

“This is no longer an Arab issue, this a pan-Islamic issue,” Salloukh said. “It would be throwing oil on the fire and it would give credence to the anti-American discourse.”

Last weeks

Some questioned why Kerry had waited until his last few weeks in office to articulate criticisms that many in the region have been voicing for years. “It is difficult to believe that Kerry came to these conclusions this week, since he has been around for four years and the Obama administration has been around for eight,” said Mouin Rabbani, a senior fellow at the Institute for Palestine Studies. “One wonders what is the point here.”

He said that if Obama had really wanted to advance the two-state solution before Trump enters the White House, he could have taken more concrete action, like officially recognising a Palestinian state.

“Instead, this will be another forgotten speech and Trump will very seriously consider moving the embassy to Jerusalem,” he said. While Kerry’s speech was seen by many in Washington and Israel as harsh, Rabbani argued that it was still a mild response to Netanyahu’s combative actions toward the Obama administration over the last eight years.

“If I were Netanyahu and the only price I had to pay for all my efforts to undo the Iran deal and the two-state settlement was a single abstention by the US at the security council and a speech by Kerry, I’d be a very happy man,” he said.

New York Times