|
World Jewish News
Barack Obama: Gaza crisis will not distract from fixing America's economy
04.01.2009
President-elect Barack Obama has signalled that the Gaza crisis will not detract from his new administration's top priority – jump-starting America's economy with a spending spree.
[...]"The best leaders can multi-task while keeping their priorities clear," said Dan Gerstein, a Democratic strategist.
"The discipline that Obama showed during the campaign bodes well for his presidency and his ability to handle more than one crisis at a time. But he was elected to solve the country's economic woes and he won't be distracted."
Mr. Obama used his weekly video address to the country on Saturday to offer the most detail yet on his proposals for widespread infrastructure spending and tax breaks.
The clashes 6,000 miles away between Israeli forces and Hamas are a stark reminder of the daunting array of challenges outside his core policies that he will face after the inauguration.
During his election campaign Mr. Obama focused his foreign policy agenda on withdrawing from Iraq and changing the direction of war in Afghanistan. Aaron David Miller, a former US Middle East negotiator and adviser to six secretaries of state, said that although Mr Obama was elected to mend the US economy, he would inevitably have to involve himself in events in Gaza.
"He'll have no choice but to try to tackle the Middle East," he said. "The issue will stick to him like a barnacle to a boat. The Europeans, the Arabs and the international community will be all over him like a cheap suit demanding he do something.
But he could inherit a very different situation on Jan 21 from where we are now. Three weeks is an eternity in the Arab-Israeli conflict."
He predicted that an Obama administration would "differentiate between a special and an exclusive relationship with Israel" and would seek ways to talk to Hamas through a third party such as Egypt.
Daniel Levy, who was a special adviser to the former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak and is now the director of the Middle East Initiative at the New American Foundation think-tank in Washington, said the incoming president's words would come under intense scrutiny.
"Obama will face his first challenge on the Middle East as soon as makes his first comments," he said.
"Everyone is waiting not just to hear the words but to hear the nuance. We may hear language that has not been heard for a long time – strongly supportive of Israel's security concerns, but also empathetic to the Palestinians and their needs."
Источник: TELEGRAPH.co.uk
|
|
