Easy award, tough peace

News of President Barack Obama being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize early this month was, naturally, greeted with disbelief worldwide.

The sceptical press in the United States could not have been more sarcastic: some calling it "April's Fool Day comes early", others likening it to someone winning an Oscar even before a well written script was made into a movie.

To be fair, the president did not court the prize in the first place; he too appeared surprised and then did the right thing by giving the money to good causes.

Much rhetoric has changed since Obama moved into the White House early this year. Even the jingoistic Iran has signalled willingness for further engagement with Washington.

However, whether or not the existing positive sentiments in the Muslim world towards the US can sustain depends to a large extent on progress made in the Middle East.

Just two weeks ago, US Special Envoy George Mitchell returned from a visit to Israel without achieving much breakthrough despite the White House's eagerness to make some impact there.

While the hawkish elements in Jewish society remain strongly opposed to any peace deal so long as Hamas is in control of the Gaza Strip, and make no compromise on the settlement issue, all is not well within the Palestinian community too.

Potpourri of Palestine problems

The Palestinians are now divided, and the problem can no longer be described as Israeli-Palestinian but Israel vs Fatah vs Hamas. President Mahmoud Abbas is desperate to win back grassroots support, for which he cannot afford to be soft when it comes to dealing with Israel.

Any concession made will invariably be played up by Hamas, thereby constraining the Palestinian president's ability to act decisively and resolutely.

If anything, the struggle for support between Fatah and Hamas is only becoming more intense by the day.

On Sept15 2009, Richard Goldstone, the South African judge appointed by the United Nations to look into the aftermath of Israel's military offensives in Gaza during the winter of 2008 - 2009, came up with a report that condemned both sides for human rights violations.

In particular, the report chastised Israel over targeting non-combatants and civilian infrastructure in Gaza.

Expectedly, the 575-page Goldstone Report taken up in Geneva by the UN Human Rights Council was criticized by Tel Aviv as being "slanted and libelous". Amnon Rubinstein, a former minister, described it as "riddled with half-truths and contradictions".

The Israeli authorities are now considering setting up a "credible" panel of jurists to address the charges made in the report in the hope that it would help the US - Israel's most reliable ally - justify a veto of a Security Council vote on whether to refer the matter to the UN's judicial body, the International Criminal Court (ICC).


Such reactions are typical of the Israel authorities, which always see the UN as biased against the Jewish state. Tel Aviv has also in the past taken the Human Rights Council to task over having countries with dubious track records such as Egypt, Pakistan and Malaysia on board.

Israel displays torpedo skills

The Israelis now refuse to work with Goldstone and his team simply because the bulk of the criticism is aimed at Israel.

After the report was made public, Israeli media claimed that Abbas had requested that the Human Rights Council defer the vote on the report to March next year, allegedly under pressure from the US.

It prompted leftist parties, liberals, students, Hamas members and Palestinian youths in Gaza to take to the streets in protest of their president's "subservience" to the Americans and the Israelis.

In any case, the vote went ahead on Oct 16, when the Human Rights Council endorsed the report by 26 to 6 and called on both Israel and Palestine to conduct their own investigations into human rights violations.

Failure to comply with the ruling will result in the issue being referred to the ICC, something that Tel Aviv has been trying to avoid.

The Obama administration very much hopes the whole thing will not escalate into a full-fledged war crime trial, and is likely to exercise veto in this regard.

But it cannot be done without risking alienating the Palestinian population and jeopardizing the warming ties with the Muslim world. Already, human rights groups have appealed to London to arrest Ehud Barak - Israeli defence minister - on war-crimes accusations.

Securing peace in the Middle East is a tough mission regardless of who the White House's occupant is. With Palestine split down the middle and Israel intransigent as before, Mitchell's failure to move things forward was only a natural outcome.

Now that Obama has been given the peace prize, turning the script into a blockbuster movie proves a much harder job.