Tuesday, March 17, 2015
U.S. opens up to Hamas, Muslim Brotherhood, Syria, and Iran
By Nicola Nasser*
The appointment of Robert
Malley as White House Coordinator for the Middle East, North Africa and the
Gulf Region is not considered a sufficient indicator that there will be any
radical change in U.S.
strategy despite the campaign launched against the U.S.
by the Zionists due to its openness to Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, Syria and Iran
On 6 March, President Barack
Obama's administration appointed Robert Malley, the former senior director of
the National Security Council who dealt with the Iraqi, Iranian, and Gulf
issues, and a member of the delegation negotiating the Iranian nuclear programme,
as the Special White House Coordinator for the Middle East, North
Africa and Gulf region. Malley is scheduled to assume his new
position on 6 April, succeeding Philip Gordon.
Edward Abington, former U.S. consul general in occupied Jerusalem
However, the Zionist
Organisation of America (ZOA) opposed the appointment of Malley for several
reasons, stating that Malley is an "Israel-basher, advocate of U.S.
recognition of major, unreconstructed terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah, and
proponent of containment of Iran (i.e., not preventing them from attaining
nuclear weapons) and proponent of negotiating with Syrian President Bashar
Al-Assad (i.e. not changing his regime)."
He also believes that working
with the Muslim Brotherhood is "not a bad idea" and called Israel
Malley also called for
"involving" Hamas in the PLO's negotiations with the occupation,
explaining his statement by saying that the PLO must include Hamas because it
has become "antiquated, worn out, barely functioning, and is no longer
considered the Palestinian people's sole legitimate representative." He
also called for the resumption of negotiations between the Arabs and Israel
The ZOA did not fail to mention
his father, Simon Malley who was born and worked in Egypt
as a journalist for Al-Goumhouria newspaper before moving with his family to France Third
World 'liberation' movements." As for his mother, Barbara
Malley, she worked with the United Nations delegation of the National Liberation
Front (NLF), the Algerian independence group.
Robert Malley was Barack
Obama's colleague at Harvard Law School
and a Middle East affairs adviser for his 2008
campaign. However, Obama was forced to cast him aside due to the Zionist
campaign against both of them after Britain
In his media interviews Malley
explained that the contacts were part of his work with the International Crisis
Group, saying: "My job with the International Crisis Group is to meet with
all sorts of savoury and unsavoury people and report on what they say. I've
never denied whom I meet with; that's what I do."
He added that he used to inform
the State Department about his meetings beforehand and briefs them afterward.
During the same year, London's Al-Hayat newspaper quoted deputy head of the
political bureau of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, and Hamas official Dr Ahmed Yousef as
saying: "We were in contact with a number of Obama's aides through the
internet, and later met with some of them in Gaza, but they advised us not to
come out with any statements, as they may have a negative effect on his
election campaign."
Before this, Malley, who was a
member of the U.S. negotiating team in the 2000 Arafat-Barak-Clinton summit at
Camp David, was the target of an Israeli-Zionist campaign because he held all
three leaders responsible for the failure of the summit, and not only the late
Palestinian leader, who was repeatedly accused by Bill Clinton, Ehud Barak and
their team of negotiators of causing the failure.
Morton A. Klein, president of
the Zionist Organisation of America, said: "How exactly does someone, who
is dropped as an adviser because he advocates recognition of, and meets with,
the genocidally-inclined terrorist organisation Hamas, now became a senior
adviser to the president, unless President Obama has all along agreed with much
of what Malley thinks and advocates?"
Due to the fact that the
appointment of Malley coincided with the crisis in relations between the U.S.
and Israel, caused by the recent speech made by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu before the U.S. Congress behind Obama's back and without his
approval, analysts have begun to talk about "changes in the U.S. role in
the Middle East" in the context of the Israeli media outlets and its
Zionist and Jewish arms abroad.
They have also predicted that
"there will be no doubt that the U.S. policy will be focused exclusively
on pressuring Israel over the course of the last 22 months of Obama's term,"
as written by Jonathan S. Tobin in America's Commentary magazine on 10 March.
During this time, Obama will be
"free of electoral pressure" so the Obama administration's treatment
of the Palestinian issue is about to take on a much more aggressive attitude
over the next two years. This will allow Obama to "invest the little
political credit he has left in 'bringing world peace'," as written by
Alex Fishman in the Israeli daily the Yedioth Ahronoth.
In Fishman's view, there are
now two courses of work on the White House's agenda. First, it can follow the
path of the "European Initiative" which proposes issuing a UN
Security Council resolution for a "lasting solution in the Middle
East", while the second path involves waiting for the results of the
Israeli elections this week, as it is a "renewal of the American peace
initiative, which will have behind it a very skilled, determined person, who
isn't very fond of the current government: The president's new man in the
Middle East," Robert Malley.
It is clear that these courses
of action, the appointment of Malley and his record will undoubtedly breathe
life into the PLO's negotiating team, especially since President Abbas
repeatedly says that going to the UN and international organisations, as well
as the latest PLO's Central Council recommendations, do not necessarily mean
that negotiations will be abandoned.
These negotiations can also be
considered new material used by the American camp in the Arab League to justify
its on-going pressure on the PLO to continue to rely on the United States
The appointment of Malley
indicates one conclusion: that the U.S. U.S.
In this case, the PLO's recent
diplomatic actions not related to the negotiations and the United States
However, these actions can
still be built upon in order to completely depart from the American vision for
the "resolution of the conflict" in the event that Netanyahu is
re-elected as prime minister.
On the other hand, Hamas should
not be fooled by Robert Malley's positions towards the movement, despite its
importance, as it is an attempt to contain the movement and drag it into
"negotiations" between the PLO and Israel
As for Malley's performance in Iran , Iraq ,
Syria Iran
and Syria is nothing more
than tactical dealings in order to serve the unchanged U.S.
Appointing Robert Malley as White House Coordinator for
the Middle East, North Africa and the Gulf Region is not a sufficient indicator
of any radical change in the U.S. Syria and Iran
* Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Birzeit,
West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories (nassernicola@ymail.com). This article was
translated from Arabic and first published by the “Middle East Monitor”.
