Home > Olives & Thorns > Archives > 2008 > November > 07 > Entry
Change they can believe in?
The buoyancy of Barack Obama’s message has yet to reach these shores.
Palestinians and Israelis don’t agree on much, but they echoed each other this week in the wake of Obama’s victory: Change is not likely here.
Skeptics all, folks here hold little hope of the sort that has swept up so many people in so many other places these past few days.
“There’s no difference because there will never be peace,” Yair Gilor, 30, from Haifa, told me the day after Obama’s landslide win.
Obama hasn’t said much about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and he is likely to focus first on Iraq and Iran.
But every recent American president has tried his hand at Arab-Israeli peacemaking, and Obama will be no different. So many have failed, that folks here have become too jaded to be stirred by Obama’s hopeful rhetoric.
“We hope he can do something for us,” Jalal Salaimay, 45, a Palestinian university lecturer in mechanical engineering, told me in Ramallah. “But I have to be realistic,” he continued, shaking his head.
Even the youth were unmoved. Akram Abdel Fatah, from an Arab village in northern Israel and a U.S. citizen, turned 18 on Nov. 3, a day before the election. He didn’t bother to vote.
“He may change some things in America, maybe in Iraq,” said Abdel Fatah, while waiting outside the gates of Hebrew University to take a bus to a violin lesson. “But the Palestinian case, it’s really hard to solve. It’s complicated.”
.JPG)
-1.JPG)
Services »
Comments