.out of Obama's Middle East initiative .

Saree Makdisi is a professor of English and comparative literature at UCLA. wrote, among other books, “Palestine Inside Out: An everyday Occupation

The only conceivable Arab and Palestinian response is to stop taking official America so seriously in turn: to separate themselves from the official American narrative of a "peace process" (which has, in any case, proven its bankruptcy); to look to themselves to continue developing their own strategies for achieving their rights based on the nonviolent protests and symbolic actions that proved so successful in Egypt and Tunis and in countless other struggles for freedom in other times and places (the Palestinian Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement is an exemplary case); and to insist that there will be no peace without justice for all Palestinians--the ones under occupation, the ones enduring apartheid inside Israel, and the ones whose right of return to their homeland has been blocked for six decades.-Published 23/5/2011 © bitterlemons.org 

 Yossi Alpher is coeditor of the bitterlemons family of internet publications. He is former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University

 The main thrust of Obama's State Department speech was an attempt to integrate all aspects of American policy with regard to a radically changing Middle East. It's not clear why he felt the need to do this when he is not about to intervene on behalf of the Syrian or Bahraini masses and he has no active, US-sponsored peace process to offer Israelis and Palestinians. To talk about the Middle East "not as it is, but as it should be" is extremely ambitious and almost certainly over-reaching. As with his Cairo speech some two years ago, he is in danger of falling hostage to a paradigm of words that replace actions.

This writer has only one hope left. After this week, the speechmaking will be over for a while. All those Israelis, Americans and Europeans of good will who for months have evinced confidence that it is still possible to squeeze a viable peace process out of Obama, Netanyahu and Abbas, should now come to their senses. It's time to prepare not for a bilateral process but for a UN process. It's not too late to leverage the Arab UN initiative into a win-win dynamic for both Israelis and Palestinians that will transform a seemingly hopeless morass into a far more manageable two-state conflict.-Published 23/5/2011 © bitterlemons.org

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 Kassan Khatib is coeditor of the bitterlemons family of internet publications and director of the Government Media Center. This article represents his personal views.".

Obama rightly said that the status quo is unsustainable. That's why Palestinians believe that if, between now and September, the US administration is not able to convince Israel to stop settlement expansion and resume talks for the two-state solution on the basis of the 1967 borders, this status quo will collapse. This is why the Palestinian leadership wants the world community to intervene in this conflict in a more serious and collective manner.

Obama's other main problematic reference was to the "Jewishness" of the state of Israel. This is an artificial obstacle that was created by Israel in order to avoid serious engagement in peacemaking. States cannot be recognized on religious, ethnic, or racial bases in our modern times. Israel does not include only Jews, and supporting the Jewishness of the state will endanger the future of one-fifth of its citizens, who are Arabs. It will also jeopardize the legitimate rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their land, as sanctioned by international law and United Nations resolution 194.-Published 23/5/2011 © bitterlemons.org 

 Aluf Benn is the editor-at-large for Haaretz.

Not even Israel, which praises itself as "the only democracy in the Middle East", passes Obama's bar. Instead, he warned Israel that "the dream of a Jewish and democratic state cannot be fulfilled with permanent occupation." And although he did not mention him by name, Obama is clearly counting Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu among those who favor "the shackles of the past" over "the promise of the future".

Obama's main lesson from the Arab spring appears to be the preference of human values over cold-blooded national interests. In the early days of his presidency, Obama based his foreign policy on promoting American interests abroad. He even argued that resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was a "vital national security interest" of the United States. But that was in April 2010, when Middle Eastern governments still appeared as eternal forces of nature. In May 2011, however, Obama puts "advancing our values" before "strengthening our security" and treats the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a problem of human suffering and fear, rather than as a strategic issue. 

 Last week's Nakba day marches along Israel's borders have marked the advent of non-violent mass protest in the Israeli-Palestinian arena, and probably serve as the harbinger of the coming third intifada. Obama's speech gives unprecedented American sponsorship to the marchers. If the Palestinians take his words seriously, we're going to see many, many more Nakba days in the coming months.-Published 23/5/2011 © bitterlemons.org

 But otherwise it was OK

http://www.bitterlemons.org/index1.php

(watch out, the sub headline labels the participants incorrectly.)