From the beginning Obama played a double role, showing to the American Jewish people, most of whom had voted for him that he cared. But looking at the situation now, he feels that what he did could damage the Democratic Party at the next election. He doesn’t want to be blamed by the American Jewish voters, who could vote for other parties.

As usual, Obama maybe wanted to be the hero of the Muslim World, (see Cairo Speech, which contained many exaggerations) but he realizes that he lost all the Arab counties. He wanted to show them that he helped to save the Palestinians. In fact, the root cause for the war episode we are seeing now was started when Obama forced the Israelis to negotiate with Mahmud Abbas, the leader of the Palestinians, by putting pressure on Netanyahu through John Kerry. As the negotiations were ongoing, Obama didn’t stop pressuring Netanyahu directly or thru John Kerry.

Finally and in my view, it was Obama or Kerry who influenced Hamas to go along with Abbas and become part of the negotiations with Israel. I believe that Israel would not have any objections, if Hamas gave up violence and terrorism. This was a very fine line that we crossed in order to satisfy some Muslim countries, by showing to anyone who asked the question, “how come that Obama accepted to let this terrorist government enter the game, against US Law?” that he does not care. In fact, by doing so, he made Hamas an ally of the United States, betrayed Israel and the Jewish people and opened the door for Putin or Japan to approach the Israelis.

Furthermore, after checking the general situation between the Israelis, the Hamas, the Egyptians and the Saudis, by approaching Hamas, Obama chose to disregard Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States. By doing so he is in fact making Hamas (a terrorist organization) our ally and is alienating the others. Those countries will not say it out loud for diplomatic reasons. I can suppose that our next allies will be the ISIS-Sunni extremists and the Hezbollah and other Shiite extremists.

If this is the direction in which we are going, this is not only hurting Israel, but also the United States, as Obama is taking revenge on Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the new president of Egypt, who ousted Morsi, the last Egyptian president who was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, while compensating the latter (of which Hamas is an integral part). All this could please Iran, as Obama’s intention is to remove the US influence from the Middle East and to direct it toward Asia. If Obama succeeds in his theory he will set back the United States to a pre-WWII situation.

Copyright 2014 Emile Tubiana