Obama's Real Reason For Visiting Israel
President Barack Obama’s visit to Israel is not motivated by a desire to win over the Israeli public, writes Akiva Eldar, but rather by the need to salvage the standing of the United States as an influential power in the region.
Already in his first speech upon landing in Israel, US President Barack Obama did not limit himself to polite niceties, as expected from an American president on a first visit to Israel. The important visitor stressed the winds of change blowing through the Middle East and pointed to the opportunities and hopes that they carry for the pragmatic forces in the region. But he was careful to warn of the heavy price of missing these opportunities for positive change, and of the dangers posed by that loss.
Most analysts explain that President Barack Obama’s visit to Israel is a make-up visit designed to repair the damage to his public standing in Israel for skipping Jerusalem on his way to Cairo in 2009. The question is this: Why does the leader of the free world need the sympathy of the Israeli public? Why is the leader of the strongest global power making such an effort to court a country with a population equal to about two percent of the US population?
Who says an American president has to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem? Since the founding of the state in 1948, no more than four presidents have visited us (Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and George Bush, Jr.). Having been elected to a second term, Obama obviously has no need to kiss up to Jewish voters. Just this year, he sent his vice president, Joe Biden, to speak at the annual convention of the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC. And there’s still more than a year and a half to go before mid-term elections for both houses of Congress.
Giving up the leading role in the play entitled “The Peace Process” is a declaration of bankruptcy by US foreign policy.
