WASHINGTON -- It was billed as a "major speech" following up President Obama's promise last June in Cairo of a "new beginning" with the Muslim world. As soon as it ended, though, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was embarking on a hastily arranged detour to Cairo to salve Arab anger over her comments over the weekend.
Clinton planned to return to Washington on Tuesday after she addressed a development conference in Morocco. Instead, she rendezvoused with U.S. Mideast peace envoy George Mitchell in the Egyptian capital for meetings sparked by her praise for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's "unprecedented" move to restrain -- though not freeze -- Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Arab officials who hailed Obama in June for speaking of the Palestinians' "daily humiliations" under occupation said Clinton's words echoed those by previous U.S. administrations that sided with Israel. On Monday, she read a statement reiterating that "the United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements."
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton listening during the Forum for the Future conference on Tuesday in Marrakech.
Clinton had hoped to end her trip, which began a week ago in Pakistan just hours before a car bomb killed more than 90 people at a Peshawar market, on an upbeat note.
"It is results, not rhetoric, that matter in the end," she told leaders from the Middle East, North Africa and G8 developed countries in Marrakech. "Economic empowerment, education, health care, access to energy and to credit -- these are the basics that all communities need to thrive. And the United States seeks to pursue these common aspirations through concrete actions."
But despite a five-point program that includes everything from creating jobs to teaching grassroots groups how to launch text-messaging campaigns, Clinton's explanation of the administration's new beginning was hijacked by an old conflict.
"In order to follow through on this 'new beginning,' they'll have to follow through on the peace process," said Scott Lasensky, a Middle East expert at the U.S. Institute of Peace. "Expectations are high, partly because the administration set them high."
"They completely blew any good will from this initiative with the bizarre comments on settlements this weekend," said Jeremy Ben-Ami, executive director of J Street, a liberal Jewish advocacy group that supports a freeze on settlements. "Secretary Clinton had to add an extra day to her trip in the Middle East to do damage control."
State Department spokesman PJ Crowley disagreed, telling reporters en route to Cairo that the added stop was not designed as damage control. "We want to see the parties get to negotiation as quickly as possible," he said, adding that "if this particular path we don't think can get there, then we'll look at other opportunities."
Robert Malley, Middle East director for the International Crisis Group, said Clinton's trip has been overshadowed by her "rather clumsy" statements and points out what many consider a truism in the Arab world. "The prism through which people in the region will interpret everything is whether there is an effective Arab-Israeli peace process," he said. "Whatever we do in other areas will be clouded and muddled and muddy if we don't have a clearly articulated and visibly effective effort to move the peace process forward."
Aaron David Miller, who advised six secretaries of state on the Middle East and has criticized Obama's policy of pressuring Israel over settlements, called the administration's policy "inconsistent and unfocused" and said Clinton's dueling statements reflect the uncertain strategy. "They now have the worst of all possible worlds: Arabs, Israelis and Palestinians all said no to the great power without cost or consequences."
Others agreed that the weekend's misstep points to a deeper problem for the Obama administration's high-priority goal of ending the stalemate in what many consider the root cause of hostility between the West and the Muslim world.
"Their attempt to revive peace talks has essentially petered out and they don't know where to go now. They're on automatic pilot," said Nathan Brown, a Middle East expert at George Washington University. Neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians are interested in serious negotiations, he said, and having Clinton engaged in "high-level diplomacy is probably futile over the long term."
And what of initiatives like the one unveiled in Cairo and fleshed out in Marrakech?
"A watered-down and sanitized version of (President George W.) Bush's 'freedom agenda' recast to embody Obama's vision," Brown said. "The administration is finding out that whatever new language it wants to use, it is still confronting the same old problems."
