Obama, His Chief of Staff, and Palestine: The 2002 Interview

Juan Cole offers an incisive analysis of the appointment of Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff to Barack Obama. I share his view of Emanuel's family and political background:

Emanuel is not responsible for his father's activities or views. Rahm Emanuel was the one in the Clinton White House who arranged the logistics of the handshake between then Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in 1993. He supported the Oslo Peace Process and the Camp David negotiations, which the Israeli Right absolutely hated.

That said, I'm not as sanguine as Cole about Emanuel's views on the Middle East, as least as they emerge in the 2002 interview on MSNBC that Cole has reprinted. It's not just a case of Emanuel being firmly against any pronouncement of a Palestinian state before an "end to terrorism". Emanuel's closing line, in the context of the last seven years of US foreign policy, is disturbing:

People believe we're in a real battle here. That is defined in people's minds. And you'll see people either with us or against us.

More on the 2002 interview and Cole's analysis....

Obama, His Chief of Staff, and the Middle East (Part 2)

The item on Barack Obama's selection of Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff has sparked a good deal of discussion. Some readers have noted the welcoming of Emanuel's appointment by Israeli media, in particular the headline in Ma'ariv "Our Man in the White House".

I cannot find an English translation of the Ma'ariv story, but a reader has pointed me to the summary in Al Jazeera magazine. While noting from the outset that Al Jazeera is likely to have a far different perspective from most of the Israeli media, it does offer some interesting quotes. The most striking comes from Emanuel's father in Ma'ariv, 'Obviously he will influence the president to be pro-Israel. Why wouldn't he be? What is he, an Arab? He's not going to clean the floors of the White House.'

I'm still not convinced that Emanuel's appointment is that significant for the Obama Administration's Middle East policy. Few Presidents have taken foreign policy advice from their Chiefs of Staff, and I don't sense that Obama is going to prefer Emanuel to, say, the Secretary of State or National Security Advisor.

It's striking, though, how much play this story is getting in the Middle Eastern press (though, interestingly, the English-language Jerusalem Post was much more muted, merely recycling the quotes from Ma'ariv) and how non-existent the Israel-Palestine angle is in the US and British media's coverage of Emanuel's appointment One has to wonder if the Obama team realise that the issue is so charged that a tangential appointment causes consternation throughout Middle Eastern communities and, consequently, how expectations --- positive and negative --- are already being formed.

Obama, His Chief of Staff, and the Middle East

Dr Seyed Mohammad Marandi, a colleague at the University of Tehran, offers this comment on Barack Obama's choice of Rahm Emanuel as his Chief of Staff:

I think I can safely say that most people in the Middle East have always felt that a new president in the White House, effectively means a continuation of the same American policies in the Middle East.

The fact that Obama's first appointment, and one of the most important appointments that he could possibly make, was to choose a person whose middle name is Israel will cause major waves in the Middle East. Those optimists who thought change meant the end of apartheid in Palestine or at least some sort of relief for the nearly starving Palestinians in the Gaza Strip will feel deeply disappointed and hurt. The choice of Rahm Israel Emanuel who has been selected as the US president-elect's chief of staff will do Obama no good if he wishes to change the image of the US in the region and it will reaffirm the widely held belief that the United States government simply can not free itself from the Zionist lobby.

Dr Marandi's comment indicates to me the challenges already facing the President-elect, a day after the Bush Administration declares that it has abandoned all hopes of brokering a Middle East peace before its departure.

I doubt that the root problem is the choice of Emanuel. His father was Israeli, and thus Emanuel was born as a dual US-Israeli citizen; however, he renounced Israeli citizenship when he was 18. In 1991, he served as a civilian volunteer with the Israeli Defence Forces. Despite this background as well as his middle name, his primary engagement as both a key staffer for Bill Clinton as a Democratic Congressman has been with domestic issues. He has criticised the Palestinian leadership, both Fatah and Hamas, but his comments are far less strident than those offered by other US politicians and pro-Israel activists.

Instead, my suspicion is that Obama made a rod for his own back earlier this year with his appearance before the America Israel Public Affairs Committee. That speech may have been politically necessary to ensure the Democratic nomination, but Obama re-cast himself from being a proponent of "engagement" of both sides to a backer of Tel Aviv.

It is in that context that a Chief of Staff's middle name and ethnic background take on significance. It is transposed into the belief that Obama's primary advisor, including advice on foreign affairs, is an Israeli citizen --- incorrect both in the understanding of the Chief of Staff's role and in the facts about Emanuel --- and thus it adds to the high hurdles the Obama Administration faces before it can even begin to think about a restoration of American credibility on the Israel-Palestine issue.