Washington – Palestinians Stunned by First Presidential Phone Call

Washington – U.S. President Barack Obama’s first full day in office certainly made a big impression on some people. His first action – the suspension of the Guantanamo system for alleged Islamic terrorists – caught the attention of Muslims around the world. And his first overseas telephone call, to Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas, stunned Palestinians and many Israelis as well.

“We were not expecting such a quick call from President Obama, but we knew how serious he is about the Palestinian problem,” said a very excited Yasser Abed Rabbo, a senior adviser to Mr. Abbas.

Faced with a struggle to regain control of the Gaza Strip, and growing popular support for the Islamic resistance movement, Hamas, in the West Bank, the beleaguered PA president could take particular comfort from the call.

“The speed of the call is a message signalling to all concerned parties that the Palestinian people has one address and that’s president Abbas,” Mr. Abed Rabbo said.

Many in the Arab world had taken encouragement from Mr. Obama’s address the day before in which he specifically called on “the Muslim world” to join him in “a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect.”

Young Jordanians and Palestinians were ready to join him. They flooded radio programs and YouTube with their comments.

“I’m ecstatic,” said Omar Jibril from Ramallah. “The world is fed up with Bush,” said a teenaged Jordanian. “Don’t we deserve a better future?” another asked.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak wrote Mr. Obama to congratulate him. “This region is looking forward to your handling of the Palestinian cause from the first day of your tenure,” he said. “It is an urgent priority and the key to all the other difficult crises of the Middle East.”

Even Iran appeared to have noticed Mr. Obama’s offer to “extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.”

“We are ready for new approaches by the United States,” said Iran’s Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, even allowing that “a new Middle East is in the making.

“The new generation in this region seeks justice and rejects domination,” Mr. Mottaki explained, referring to U.S. domination.

Hamas was non-committal about the message of the new President. “We will judge him by his policies and actions on the ground and how he will learn lessons from the mistakes of the previous administrations, especially that of George Bush and his criminal and unjust policies,” said Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhum, in Gaza.

He said Hamas expects Mr. Obama “to respect the will of the Palestinian people, support their usurped rights and their right to defend themselves, away from any pressure or bias in favour of Israel.”

You can be sure that every Israeli watching the Obama inaugural address Tuesday was listening carefully to hear their country named. They were disappointed.

“He only mentioned ‘Iraq’ and the ‘Muslim world,’” said Eytan Gilboa, a specialist on American-Israeli relations at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar Ilan University in Tel Aviv, who had been keeping careful track. “But I take that to mean that these are his priorities.

“I don’t believe there’s any cause for concern,” he said.

Many Israelis disagreed.

“Does he [Mr. Obama] have a solution to the greatest threat to the free world – Islamic fundamentalism?” asked the lead editorial in yesterday’s Maariv newspaper. Islamic extremists “are not looking for a free world that understands them; they want to eliminate the free world.”

The respected Israeli columnist Nahum Barnea, writing in Yediot Ahronot, Israel’s most popular daily, said that there were moments in his address Tuesday when Mr. Obama looked “like a bar-mitzvah boy who found himself at a grown-up game – impressive, but not presidential; a rock star – not the CEO of the world.”

Mr. Barnea zeroed in on the Obama foreign policy appointments as a more concrete way to judge the new President’s performance. He railed against the expected appointment of former senate majority leader George Mitchell as a new Middle East envoy.

Mr. Mitchell, appointed by Bill Clinton to examine the events surrounding the Palestinian uprising in 2000, had concluded that the spread of Israeli settlements, as well as terrorism carried out by Palestinians, had contributed to the tensions.

Mr. Mitchell’s report “was received with great anger by [Ariel] Sharon’s government,” Mr. Barnea wrote. “[Prime Minister Ehud] Olmert’s government also does not consider him a friend.”

Mr. Barnea goes on to conclude: “Since it is reasonable to assume that the next government will be more right-wing than the current government, it is doubtful whether it will feel as comfortable in Washington as the Sharon and Olmert governments felt.”

Moshe Arad, a former Israeli ambassador to Washington, is much more positive about the appointments.

“Obama hasn’t put a foot wrong,” he said. “George Mitchell is a very skilled, patient, fair man. He is opposed to settlements, yes, but he is in favour of Israeli security, and he knows both sides quite well.