Abstract
Does the advent of Barack Obama as president of the US signal a change in US policy towards Israel/Palestine? The US has presented itself as the ‘honest broker’ in attempts at settling the crisis from the late 1960s on, as the history narrated here of these initiatives demonstrates, yet all have foundered, not least on the rocks of Israeli intransigence and US partiality. With Israel’s continuing punitive policy towards Gaza, and insistence, despite US caveats, on building settlements in Palestinian areas, and new housing in Arab East Jerusalem, this article argues that the Palestinians are undergoing a second Nakba, subjected to a process of erasure as a legitimate national entity. Whether Obama’s Cairo speech, in its even-handed approach to both Palestinian and Israeli aspirations, marked a new beginning is proving ever more doubtful. It is time for Palestinians to abandon the pseudo-diplomacy of the past and develop a grassroots-based political struggle.
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