US Middle East policy: Another great disappointment

Will she manage to break loose of the one-sided Israeli approach?

After an initial period of high expectations, that the world had from the new US Administration, signs that it is, once more, backtracking to the old familiar one-sided, pro-Israeli approach are on the horizon.

As a clear example of the US Administration’s backstepping is one of the latests interviews of the US State Secretary, Mrs. Hillary Clinton to the BBC. In this interview she calls for a restarting of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations without any preconditions, thus accepting in its totality the Israeli position and backtracking from its previous statements (Obama, Clinton, Mitchel) for a full and total freeze of any settlement activity, including physical growth, in the occupied territories, including East Jerusalem.

I don’t like being a messenger of bad omens but I am afraid that if once more the US policy in the Middle East fails to take a more balanced and fair approach in the different issues tantalizing the Middle East, and instead it chooses to continue seeing things only through the Israeli eyes, one should not expect much of a change, not to mention any improvement.

Time will be the final judge of us all, but Mrs. Clinton should bare in mind that time and patience is something that runs out quickly in the Middle East and the next crisis is often just around the corner.