CNI Foundation group returns: Mideast leaders losing patience with Obama
Posted November 20, 2009
Nov. 19, 2009
Co-led by Jack Matlock, a former Ambassador to the Soviet Union, and CNI executive director Helena Cobban, a 10-member delegation of American citizen-diplomats returned home November 16 after participating in a 17-day study tour of Israel, Palestine, and all their neighbors.
The group’s members, who come from a variety of professional backgrounds and half a dozen different states, visited Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel, the West Bank, Egypt, and Gaza. The 30-plus figures with whom they held meetings included Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad in Ramallah, Hamas head Khaled Meshaal in Damascus, Naomi Chazan, a former deputy Speaker of Israel’s Knesset (parliament), Lebanon’s president and incoming and outgoing prime ministers, high-ranking officials in the Egyptian and Jordanian foreign ministries, and American and Norwegian diplomats deeply conversant with the affairs of the region.
Group members participated in a very informative, on-the-ground tour of Gaza, organized by the United Nations field office there. They visited Hebron University and downtown Hebron, in the occupied West Bank, and took an in-depth tour of the way that Israeli settlements and the Separation Wall are impacting life in East Jerusalem and areas to its south. They also visited Bethlehem, in the West Bank, and Maaloula, an ancient center of Christian monastic life in Syria.
Through the experiences the CNI Foundation was able to organize for them, delegation members gained an in-dpth understanding of the status of US-Mideast peace diplomacy, at a time when Pres. Barack Obama’s early strong push for peace seems to have stalled badly.
In Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, and Palestine, Arab leaders who are longstanding friends and allies of the U.S. warned tour participants that Washington’s failure to make any discernible progress toward attaining a comprehensive final peace agreement with Israel, and its apparent inability even to rein in Israel’s continued settlement building project in occupied Arab land, had considerably dented their own standing with their publics—as well as the United States’ general standing in the region.
Records of the pilgrims’ meetings and other experiences on the trip are posted on CNIF’s new “Fair policy, Fair discussion” blog at, <www.fpfd.wordpress.com>. Check back there frequently as more material—including photos and videos– will published there over the days ahead.
After returning to Washington, the trip’s participants took an energizing training in “How to speak out on Palestinian-Israeli peace issues” that was conducted by CNI board member (and recent Jon Stewart guest) Anna Baltzer. If you’d like to invite one of them to come and speak at your congregation, school, or community group, contact us at: Ellen@cnionline.org.
