No American president has spoken to Israelis quite the way Barack Obama did on Thursday in Jerusalem.
Importantly, President Obama began by establishing beyond doubt that he understands Israel’s security needs and that he has internalized the Jewish-Israeli narrative. He paid tribute to the full sweep of Jewish history and acknowledged not only that Jews have the right to exercise their national self-determination on their historic homeland, but that Israel is a living, breathing reality that is not going away.
He also acknowledged that friends speak truth to friends; they give honest advice that comes from the heart. They challenge friends to be the best they can be.
That’s why Obama went on to lay out, as only a friend can, the central challenge facing Israelis in this generation: that Israel can only uphold the vision of its founders as a democracy and a Jewish homeland if the Palestinian people also have a viable and secure state of their own. Peace is necessary, he said, for Israel to thrive, but it is also just, and it is possible.
Few of the president’s predecessors ever achieved such sincerity, clarity or balance in presenting the challenge. And never before has a president laid out in clear-sighted, almost brutal honesty the future that awaits Israel if peace does not come.
Obama did not shy from portraying the ugly face of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land: the children who cannot grow up in a state of their own and live with the presence of a foreign army that controls the movements of their parents every day; the settlers who commit violence against Palestinians and go unpunished; the Palestinian farmers who cannot cultivate their land; the families displaced from their homes.
At a gut level, most Israelis know that Obama spoke no more or less than the truth. There remains majority support for a two-state deal among the Israeli population. What’s been missing is political leadership.
Some profess disappointment that Obama did not go further in the speech, perhaps to lay out the specific parameters of a peace deal, or to put an actual peace plan on the table. But the goal of this speech was to use the power and moral clarity of his words to change politics in the region.
Obama sought to inspire Israelis and Palestinians to demand more from their leaders and to focus on the historic challenges not the petty squabbles that characterize political life.
It’s right to demand more from the president as well. His historic words must be followed by serious, sustained and imaginative U.S. diplomacy led by Secretary of State John Kerry.
The goal can’t be simply getting the parties back to the table. We don’t need talks for talk’s sake, or more process.
It is up to Kerry to follow up the speech with hard diplomacy, possibly through back channels where real business can be done away from the glare of TV lights. Hopefully, he can and will engage European and Arab leaders in a sustained, ongoing effort.
And, hopefully, he will recognize that active U.S. mediation will be essential given the mutual suspicion that has built up between the parties over the years.
If nothing else, Obama’s speech accomplished one important thing: proving wrong all those experts who touted that he had no taste for this challenge and no wish to expend much time or political capital on it. The president himself acknowledged that the politically easy path would have been to content himself with the usual, formulaic statement of undying love for Israel — and then to walk away.
That is not in this president’s DNA. Now in his second term, Obama has his eyes on history and his legacy. He recognizes that time is running out to achieve a two-state solution and he does not want to be the president on whose watch it died.
He has taken a critical first step on this trip, proving that he is as true a friend as Israel has ever had in the White House.
Jeremy Ben-Ami is president of J Street, a pro-Israel, pro-peace lobby in Washington.