Middle East in 2009

The year began for the Middle East with conflict raging in the Gaza Strip. Israel's three-week land, sea and air offensive which began on December 27, 2008 continued as the year turned and finally came to an end on January 21 after some of the deadliest fighting in decades.

Reacting with overpowering force to years of Palestinian rocket attacks on its southern territories, Israel launched its war against Hamas in the densely-populated strip as the world watched and the United States sat impotent, waiting for its new president to take office. By the time President Barack Obama was sworn in, Israel had retreated from Gaza, its objective of smashing the Hamas military structure complete but at the cost of 1,400 Palestinian lives, many of them civilians.

The war, from Israel's point of view, appeared to be a success. The offensive all but stopped rocket attacks on Israeli communities in the south, restricting Hamas splinter groups to 275 rockets and mortar attacks since the war's end, down from 3,300 in the year building up to it.

However, while Israel may have achieved increased security for its citizens in range of Hamas rockets, the victory was to be exposed as a hollow one as the year went on. Any hopes of a lasting peace coming from the Gaza war would be dashed, the international community would increasingly isolate Israel, a UN report by South Africa's Richard Goldstone would accuse both Israel and Hamas of war crimes and threaten to bring both sides before the International Criminal Court.

Hopes of peace increase with Obama inaugeration

International hopes for a lasting peace settlement between the Israelis and Palestinians rested on the stance the new administration in Washington would take.

When President Obama appointed George Mitchell as Washington's envoy to the Middle East, many were surprised by the US diplomat's optimism regarding his new challenge. Mitchell, the broker of the 1998 Good Friday agreement which brought peace to Northern Ireland, raised hopes but also suspicions when he said: "I don't underestimate the difficulty of this assignment." Drawing on his experience of Northern Ireland, he added: "I formed the conviction that there is no such thing as a conflict that can't be ended."

"Mitchell's appointment was very much welcomed and seen as a good thing but at the same time it didn't mean that there was going to be a lot of progress in the peace process because there was still the division between Hamas and Fatah, meaning the US didn't have a strong partner on the Palestinian side," Clara O'Donnell, a Middle East expert at the Center for European Reform in London, told Deutsche Welle. "While there was caution not to expect Mitchell to deliver straight away, there was a message coming from Obama that he was sending an even-handed envoy with a clear track record in delivering peace from the outset which was a very positive thing."

Obama confirms commitment in first TV speech

The first indication of how President Obama would personally tackle the Middle East crisis came with his first interview on January 27 with the al Arabiya channel.

"Obama was clearly showing that he wanted to send signals out to change perceptions about how the US viewed the world, how the US wanted to approach the Arab world and he was very clear that he wanted to make a distinction between his administration and the previous one," said O'Donnell. "He was seen as showing intent, even-handedness and moving away from the past. But unfortunately, as time would tell, he was dealing with a very difficult set of partners and as a result, the administration promised much but delivered very little."

"Obama made it very clear that the Middle East conflict would be a very important part of his presidency and although he said that a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian situation would be sought in his second term, he showed a great commitment from the start to get involved and start laying down the groundwork for a resolution," Sawsan Chebli, a Middle East expert with the German Council for Foreign Relations (DGAP), told Deutsche Welle.

Obama would again address the wider Middle East and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict within this context when he gave a speech at Cairo University in June.

Read more on the elusive quest for peace in the Middle East

Obama called on both Israel and the Palestinians to live up to obligations under the stalled "roadmap" for Middle East peace but while his al Arabiya interview had been a statement of commitment, his Cairo speech took a harder tone and set what many saw as Obama’s boundaries.

"Obama showed continuity between his first interview and the Cairo speech but the Cairo speech contained strong language, language we’re not accustomed to hearing from a US president," said O'Donnell. "He said it was essential that Israel stopped settlement building; he highlighted the unbearable plight of the Palestinians and the need to recognize the Palestinian state. What's key here is the context: that this came at the time of a new hard-line government in Israel and yet Obama was coming out and showing where he stood on these issues."

Netanyahu's election win complicates situation

Between Obama's inauguration and his speech in Cairo, Israel had taken a radical swing to the right. Many observers believed that the election victory for Benjamin Netanyahu of the hard-line Likud party was a direct reaction to the rise of Hamas, the continued threat of rocket attacks from Gaza and the increasing anti-Israel rhetoric from a belligerent, nuclear ambitious Iran.

"Even when he was the opposition leader it was very obvious that Netanyahu would be a tough person to deal with," said Chebli. "He was very strong and committed to the settlement issue and made it very clear that no one, not even the United States, was going to influence Israel's policy on this. Once Netanyahu got into power, the situation on the ground for the Obama administration became even more difficult."

Palestinians lay down demands for peace

With a right-wing hardliner now in power in Israel, the Palestinians made concrete demands on the new Netanyahu government. Before peace talks could resume, President Mahmoud Abbas demanded that Israel should endorse a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, stop all Israeli construction in the occupied West Bank, and pick up peace talks from where they left off with the previous, centrist Israeli government.

"The Palestinians made it very clear that they would not enter into peace talks with the Israelis before Israel put a stop to the settlements," said Chebli. "The fact that the Israelis would not put a complete stop to the settlements and not remove those already built showed the Palestinians how committed the Israelis were to a real peace."

Then Netanyahu made a surprise move in November by imposing a ban on the building of new settlements in the West Bank for 10 months. It was the most far-reaching moratorium ever decreed by an Israeli government and it caused outrage among Israeli right-wingers.

But despite this, Netanyahu's ban on construction fell far short of the full freeze demanded by the Palestinians. The ban did not include settlement building in Jerusalem or the continuance of construction of public buildings, as well as a few thousand residential ones, whose construction had already begun in the West Bank.

The White House had made it clear that it wanted a halt to all settlement building. "With respect to settlements, the President was very clear when Prime Minister Netanyahu was here. He wants to see a stop to settlements - not some settlements, not outposts, not natural growth exceptions," said Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in May. "We intend to press that point."

US waters down language, angers Arab world

But in November, the United States was forced to acknowledge that the Netanyahu moratorium fell "far short" of its position, but still praised it as "unprecedented" and tried to convince the embattled and bitterly disappointed Abbas to drop his preconditions for opening negotiations.

"What really shocked the wider Middle East and the Palestinians was when Hillary Clinton began to urge Abbas to back down on his demands over settlements in a bid to get peace talks restarted," Chebli said. "Abbas, of course, refused and so the stalemate resumed."

The apparent inability of the Obama administration to get Israel to agree to its first condition for resuming peace talks angered the Arab world and heaped more pressure on a US president who had promised much when he first came to office.

"Obama is in a very difficult position now that the US position has shifted to one of calling on Israel for restraint rather than pushing for the complete ban on settlements," Chebli said. "Obama is now struggling because it is clear that he cannot put any pressure on Israel. Netanyahu is not going to budge and in fact, Obama has failed in his first attempt to get Israel to agree to anything, which was the settlement freeze.

"The Arab world is therefore very disappointed with Obama because the Arabs really thought that this president would be able to put pressure on Israel, not only on the settlement issue but in the wider context of finding a solution to the Middle East conflict," she concluded.

Author: Nick Amies

Editor: Rob Mudge