Arabs should act now â€" not wait for Obama

Because expectations across the Middle East are so high and the need for change is so great, during the next two months, all eyes will be focused on the early decisions made by President-elect Barack Obama. But precisely because the need is so great, I believe that the region’s leadership should be more than spectators during this critical transition period. This is especially true with regard to efforts to achieve an Israeli-Palestinian peace.
The damage done by eight years of the Bush administrations’ neglect and recklessness is all too clear. The Palestinian house is in disarray, with leaderships in the West Bank and Gaza both physically and ideologically divided. Gaza, under the control of Hamas, is being strangled by an oppressive embargo, with an on-again, off-again truce punctuated by periods of rocket attacks and Israeli assaults. The West Bank, itself, is being slowly strangled by never-ending settlement growth, hundreds of intrusive and humiliating checkpoints, and an oppressive wall/barrier snaking in and out of Palestinian lands.
The paths chosen by the two leaderships, though contradictory, are both flawed. Hamas has made a religion of “resistance� which has won nothing but death and hardship for Palestinians, and insecurity in Israel and reinforcement for hard-line Israeli policies. Meanwhile the Palestinian authority’s commitment to negotiations, while commendable, has become pointless, since negotiating without leverage (and without control over the constituency for which they are negotiating) becomes an empty exercise.