A top Shiite cleric close to Hezbollah favorably contrasted US President Barack Obama’s inviting language with his predecessor’s invading tanks — but also used a sermon to pour contempt on the president’s mention of the US’ strong ties with Israel.
The view of Lebanon’s Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah reflected the ambivalence of many Muslims about Obama’s speech in Cairo.
The optimism immediately following Thursday’s address was tempered a day later, as the complexities of the Middle East and its conflicts left many skeptical that Obama’s talk could lead to action on the peace process. Some also said they were disappointed that Obama offered no apology for the US’ wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
More than anything else, some influential figures said on Friday that they could not look past Obama’s affirmation of the “unbreakable” bond between the US and Israel, and they took that as a sign that nothing had changed.
“We have witnessed that despite every nice word he said toward Arabs and Muslims or Islam, he is still committed to the unbreakable bond toward the Zionist entity,” Fadlallah said.
Obama’s speech dominated the Arab media on Friday, with newspaper headlines like “A New Beginning” and most editorials and opinion pieces devoted to analyzing every word. Regional news channels like Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya continued to air excerpts from the speech, which dominated political chat shows for a second day.
On Friday, Obama repeated during a visit to Germany his call for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and a halt to Jewish settlement activity in the West Bank.
Obama said he recognized the politics involved in Israel that made it difficult to accomplish this task, but he said: “The moment is now for us to act.”
He also announced he was dispatching special envoy George Mitchell back to the region next week.
Israel’s current government is opposed to the US leader’s position on settlements and refuses to endorse the idea of a Palestinian state. It responded on Friday by saying it would not heed Obama’s appeal.
The likelihood of a policy clash between Israel and its most powerful ally seems certain to block a resumption of serious peace talks — the issue that Arabs across the region said was the most important for repairing US-Muslim ties.
In Iran, Washington’s adversary for 30 years, a sermon by a hard-line prayer leader revealed the depth of hatred felt by Muslims toward Israel as much as the magnitude of the task ahead if the Obama administration is to keep its support for Israel from poisoning relations with Muslims, as it has for decades.
“Israel causes tension and clashes in the Middle East, imposes oppression and kills innocent people,” Ayatollah Ahmadi Jannati told worshippers in Tehran. “Israel does whatever evil she likes. What are you going to do about it? Will you answer this, Mr Obama?”
The US and Iran are at odds over what Washington and some of its Western allies say is Tehran’s attempt to acquire nuclear weapons, though Iran says it wants only peaceful nuclear power. Washington also accuses Tehran of destabilizing the region with its support to militant groups like Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas.
Hamas on Friday commended Obama for taking a different approach from that of former US president George W. Bush, widely reviled by Muslims for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as his war on terror.
A Hamas statement posted on the group’s Web Site, however, said the speech “lacked policies and practical steps” to stop Israel’s “aggression” and support the rights of the Palestinians.
In Damascus, Syria, Hamas politburo member Ezzat Rashq said the speech signaled no change in US policy, and he rejected Obama’s call on the group to renounce violence and recognize Israel’s right to exist.
“We hope that the American position will change from being biased to at least being neutral,” Rashq said.
Even longtime US ally Egypt bemoaned the lack of concrete steps in Obama’s speech, but its tone was different from that of Hamas or the ayatollahs of Lebanon and Iran.
Obama’s speech, Egyptian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hossam Zaki said, had many positive signals that need to be “translated to mechanisms on the ground,” and “a will that is ... imposed on the parties, particularly Israel.”
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
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