Obama and US-Israel Relations - Article Example

In fact, there has come the time when the sovereign state of Israel will be accountable for its actions and the continued pressure from the US for the peace-keeping process in the region will receive more momentum. The significance of Obama is that he has set the right passage for the state of Israel to join the community of peace seeking nations and to recognize its responsibility for the long-standing stalemate in this region. Significantly, this state has been responsible for political and social stalemate in the region and only the regressive reactionary forces of fundamentalism have gained and continue to gain from this state of affairs.

Thus, there has come the time for Israel to come of age in this respect and the U.S role is critical. From the radical and critical standpoint of the several critics of Israeli policies it is essential for America to be firm about more than freezing settlements on freshly-grabbed land. For them, Obama has the better chance of doing something meaningful in the region than any president since Israel's founding. "No wonder, then, that the Obama administration is already reverting to the old pre-Bush assumptions that have repeatedly been discredited in practice: that Israeli "intransigence" is the main obstacle to ending the conflict with the Palestinians; that "restarting" the "peace process" therefore requires putting the onus back on Israel; and that this in turn necessitates forcing Israel back to the 1967 borders.

" (Podhoretz) Therefore, it time for Israel to stop finding fault with the other side with charges of anti-Semitism and it is for the US to ensure that the peace-process in the region is not affected. The election of Barack Obama to US Presidency has a major impact on the peace process in the Middle East and it is the best thing to happen to the State of Israel since its founding. Whereas it is obvious that the role of the US president Barack Obama in brining the State of Israel back to the global peace process is generally accepted, there are critics who do not believe in this phenomenon of peace-keeping.

Ben-Dror Yemini, who has been a fierce critic of the view that Obama can bring about any progress in the matter of Israel and according to him the West remains indifferent to the situation. "And where are the world's leaders Where is the wondrous rhetorical ability of Barack Obama Where has his sublime vocabulary gone Where is the desire that is supposed to be built into all American presidents, to defend and act on behalf of freedom seekers around the globe What is this stammering" (Caspit and Yemini) Yemini, along with Caspit, has been too critical about the abilities of Obama in bringing about peace in the region by forcing Israel to move in the path of peace process.

However, it is obvious that the critical arguments made by Yemini do not give an exact explanation of the context of U.S Israel relations under Obama. According to him, "The voices being heard from Obama elicit concern that we are actually dealing with a new version of Chamberlain. Being conciliatory is a positive trait, particularly when it follows the clumsy bellicosity of George Bush, but when conciliation becomes blindness, we have a problem." (Caspit and Yemini) The Ma'ariv correspondents Ben Caspit and Ben-Dror Yemini harshly criticize the limited role of Barack Obama in responding to the needs of the region, especially in checking the