Speech unveils Obama's strategy

US President Barack Obama's speech in occupied Jerusalem on Thursday could be compared with his Cairo speech at the beginning of his first term in the White House, said a UAE newspaper.The English language daily Gulf Today said in its today's editorial that the key feature of the Cairo and the occupied Jerusalem speeches is that both deviated from traditional rhetoric and directly addressed the people, not their leaders. Obama said that calls for Israel's annihilation are empty, since Israel "isn't going anywhere." He underlined the combined ability of the US and Israel to defend against the very real threats in the region, helping him to guarantee the security of Israel. That could be seen as an implicit reference to many Israeli politicians' deceptive contention that the creation of a Palestinian state would pose an existential threat to the Jewish state. They used this contention to reject Obama's statements that Israel should not worry about the issue since the US remains committed to ensuring Israel's security.In his speech on Thursday, Obama addressed young Israelis, who are less likely to remember the wars of 1967 and 1973, and called on them to persuade their politicians that Israel should recognise that compromise will be necessary to secure peace and lasting security for the Jewish state.Affirming that the United States is their country's best friend and most important ally, Obama said the US will never compromise in its own commitment to Israel's defence, particularly against threats such as the one posed by Iran and its nuclear programme.At the same time, he said, Israel must make peace with the Palestinians if it is to ensure its survival and long-term viability as a homeland for the Jewish people. Israeli occupation of areas that the Palestinians claim for their state must end, he said."The Palestinian people's right to self-determination and justice must ... be recognised," he said. "Put yourself in their shoes - look at the world through their eyes. It is not fair that a Palestinian child cannot grow up in a state of her own, and lives with the presence of a foreign army that controls the movements of her parents every single day. It is not just when settler violence against Palestinians goes unpunished. It is not right to prevent Palestinians from farming their lands; to restrict a student's ability to move around the West Bank; or to displace Palestinian families from their home. Neither occupation nor expulsion is the answer. Just as Israelis built a state in their homeland, Palestinians have a right to be a free people in their own land." Well, this is what international laws and conventions say. The problem is that Israel does not care for international laws and conventions and lives by rules that it has created for itself.By the same token, serious questions remain whether Obama can follow through after raising expectations for the Middle East peace process. Reports say that he did not visit the Middle East with any specific plan to break the deadlock in Israeli-Palestinian "peace" negotiations and that he would come up with something concrete in six to 10 months.Obama's strategy appears to be based on convincing the young people of Israel that their security could be guaranteed only through making peace with the Palestinians and the broader Arab World. No overnight miracle could be expected, but the strategy is sound and Obama should pursue it so that it produces results at some point in time.