Obama: US Endorses Middle East Reform, Palestinian State

US President Barack Obama (R) is greeted by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (L) before delivering an address on events in the Middle East and North Africa and US policy in the region, at the State Department in Washington DC, 19 May 2011. EPA/BGNES

The United States will support efforts for reform across the Middle East such as "transitions toward democracy," President Barack Obama declared in a speech outlining US policy towards the region.

Announcing what he called a "new chapter in American diplomacy," Obama pointed to recent popular uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Syria, and elsewhere.

"The events of the past six months show us that strategies of oppression and strategies of diversion will not work anymore," he said in a televised address from Washington, DC.

He said people in parts of the region "have seized control of their own destiny" but pointed out that the changes under way will take time.

In his words, a "deepening spiral of division between the United States and the Arab world" needs to be reversed.

Obama is convinced that repression will no longer work in the Middle East to keep in power political regimes.

On Libya where the NATO-led coalition is bombarding the forces of dictator Muammar Gaddafi, the US President said that while the United States cannot intervene militarily everywhere, it had to act in Libya to prevent an imminent massacre.

"Time is working against Gaddafi," he said, adding that when the Gaddafi goes, "decades of provocation will come to an end" and a democratic transition can begin.

Obama commented on the civil unrest in Syria by stating that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad must either embrace the democratic transition and be a part of it, or must go.

"President Assad now a choice. He can lead that transition, or get out of the way," the US President said, while demanding an end to the violence that Syrian security forces and authorities employ against anti-government protesters.

The president also accused Iran of hypocrisy for publicly supporting protests in parts of the Arab world after violently cracking down on protests at home.

He said Iran helps the Syrian regime, which is its ally, to organize the crackdowns on the protest movement.

On the unrest in Yemen, Obama underscored that President Ali Abdullah Saleh must honor his commitment to step down.

 In his address, the US President said also that Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who was hunted down by US commandos earlier this month, was a mass murderer, and no martyr, and that global terrorist network Al Qaeda was losing the battle even before Bin Laden was killed because the majority of the people saw that the murder of innocent civilians through terrorist attacks does not correspond with a quest for a better life.

The most ground-breaking policy statement that the US President made in his Middle East speech, however, was the endorsement of an independent Palestinian state in the 1967 borders, and, respectively, of the 1967 borders for Israel.

President Obama for the first time publicly called for a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that would create a non-militarized Palestinian state on the basis of Israel's borders before 1967.

Although Obama said "the core issues" dividing Israelis and Palestinians remained to be negotiated, including the searing questions of Jerusalem and the fate of Palestinian refugees, he spoke with striking frustration that efforts to support an agreement had so far failed. "The international community is tired of an endless process that never produces an outcome," he said.

Obama urged mutual exchange of territories in order to create internationally recognized borders for Palestine as well as the withdrawal of Israeli forces, and the assumption of security commitments by the Palestinians.

The US President explicitly rejected any efforts to isolate Israel, warning the Palestinians that such efforts will fail.

Immediately after Obama's statement on Palestine, PA President Mahmoud Abbas called for an urgent meeting of Palestinian leaders to discuss the proposals put forth by the US President.