Obama’s Day in Palestine

Palestinians in the West Bank woke up Wednesday morning to a glorious sunny 75 degree day and the news of a new American leadership — as President Elect Barack Obama put it, a new dawn — not just for the US but for the world. THe earliest news reports and my own conversations with people in Ramallah indicate an obvious satisfaction at the very least with America’s choice for preseident, if not the same celebratory and hopeful mood we saw on TV in Washington, New York, Kenya and around the world.

Digging deeper, there exists for the Arab world reasons to be skeptical toward the idea of radical change in the Middle East. But optimism is the prevailing sentiment with the election of America’s first African-American president. During my day in Petra, Jordan last Sunday, I spoke with the young men who sell colorful Petra sand designs in bottles to tourists from all over the world. Cultured and knowledgeable, they had much to say about the US elections and it echoed messages from other non-Western countries.

“I want Obama to win,” one of the sand bottle merchants told me. “When the dark-skinned people in the world, from Africa and the Middle East, see that a black man made it to the top in America, they’ll think that they, too, can make it in life.”

One of the women in the first taxi I took from Amman to the Jordanian border on Monday saw it as a chance for the US to reclaim and solidify its standing in the world as a land of equality and opportunity. She started off as so many others I talked to did: “They’ll never let a black man win.” But, she said, “If he wins, America will truly be a great nation. If humans can get over racism, then there’s hope in the world.”

My grandfather, too, was pleased with the election results. Seedo (grandpa in Arabic) Bahjat Tahboub is 84 years old and now sells sweets, milk etc from his small corner shop outside Ramallah. He used to be postmaster and lived in Bethlehem, Jericho, the Jerusalem suburbs, and Liba and traveled all over the Middle East. WHen we awoke this morning, Seedo said it was good Americans didn’t put another “buckethead” like the last president in office, and that he hoped Obama cound bring a new day to the Palestinian territories. “Whoever takes on this issue now will have to find a middle ground acceptable to both sides,” he said. “Israel is a country now, it’s not going anywhere. We just want peace.”

In one of the most educated and politicized corners of the Middle East, Palestinians are adept ad delving beyond the headlines into deeper issues. Most are aware of Barack Obama’s strident support for Israel throughout his campaign and especially his declaration during the 2008 AIPAC conference that Jerusalem will be the capital of Israel — something no US president has ever said. It was looked upon by the distraught Palestinians as an unnecessary exaggeration even for politicians, whom Palestinians suppose must give Israel an obligatory and unconditional embrace to get ahead in America.

They remember, too, that on Obama’s Middle East trip, he met with and ate with and prayed with Israelis and barely spent any time with the Palestinian leadership. Obama may have lifted up the citizens of the world, but Palestinians have heard no words of change or hope directed specifically to them. While people I talk to here are encouraged that Obama is so different than George W. Bush, they are also skeptical that the president himself will be able to bring about positive change for the Palestinians. “Their politics are all the same,” and nothing will get solved for the Palestinians, I heard from the aunt and uncle I stayed with in Amman, from the sand bottlers in Petra, from the first woman in the taxi in Amman. “No president can do anything by hiimself, even if he does want to help Palestine,” the woman said. “The Pentagon makes all the decisions. Nobody knows how it happens. It’s like magic.” (I think she meant Congress).

And finally, the dismal chance that an American president will ever sympathize and produce positive results for Palestinians was the reason the Palestinian woman from New Mexico I met on the last taxi from the border to Ramallah voted for John McCain.

The talk in the Arab world is mostly about the fresh, young, history-making black senator. The news-savvy know McCain’s basic biography and especially highlight his similarity to Bush. Sarah Palin is rarely mentioned here, let alone anything close to the butt of all the jokes she is in the US. I asked the people who could list reasons they liked Obama, to list reasons one might vote for McCain, and nobody could identify his positives. But on Monday this Nablusi woman from New Mexico next to me in the taxi asked me who I thougth would win and I said Obama. She agreed but was outraged at the Arab support for him. She started talking about the taxes she was afraid of paying under an Obama presidency.

“So you have businesses and money in America,” I immediately asked her. She was clearly among the ranks of well-off Arab American families who historically vote Republican. The trend of Arab-Americans leaning red is often attributed to the fact that Arabs overall in are better educated and and wealthier than the average American (in addition to being socially conservative).

In her adamant swing-state support for McCain, the woman could talk of nothing but her taxes and not wanting “to support those bums” on welfare and in harder climes than her family. What about the wars in the Middle East, what about the comments about Arabs and Muslims by the McCain campaign, or the marginalization of people of color by the Republican party over the past eight years, the devastation to the domestic economy and our image internationally, on and on, I prodded her? None of it mattered to her, as long as McCain would keep the wealthy in his favor.

Clearly, the lone McCain supporter of all the Palestinians I spoke with in the past week stands out beacuse of where she lives and her financial situation. But among the majority of Palestinians here in the West Bank, stateless and living under Israeli occupation, Obama has reawakened the dormant yet ever-present hope that maybe someday soon, change will reach here too.