'A Nobel prize for hope' (UK Guardian)

[Jackeens]

The awarding of the Nobel prize to Barack Obama is a timely boost for his efforts to bring peace to Israel and the Middle East

Daniel Levy and Amjad Atallah

President Obama's efforts to achieve a comprehensive peace agreement between Israel and the Arab states, including a Palestinian state, received a much appreciated, if surprising, boost with the awarding of the Nobel peace prize to the US president. It's fair to assume that the Nobel prize committee is hoping that the award will promote Obama's diplomatic efforts across a range of issues.

President Obama said he considered the award support for American leadership on behalf of international aspirations and "as a means to give momentum to a set of causes". He also made it clear that a top agenda item, along with nuclear non-proliferation and climate change, is achieving peace for Israelis and Palestinians. In fact, it was the only conflict he mentioned by name, noting: "We must all do our part to resolve those conflicts that have caused so much pain and hardship over so many years, and that effort must include an unwavering commitment that finally realises the rights of all Israelis and Palestinians to live in peace and security in nations of their own."

As in his UN general assembly speech last month, where the president devoted 559 words out of 5000, more than on any other issue, to ending the occupation and achieving a comprehensive peace, Obama again made it clear that this conflict is central to his vision for a transformed Middle East.

The Israeli and Palestinian public will no doubt be skeptical, and understandably so. Events on the ground continue to move in the opposite direction and have even begun to spiral back towards violent confrontation, as evidenced by Friday's clashes in occupied East Jerusalem and outside Ramallah. Yet on both sides polling consistently shows the desire for a very different, more peaceful future. Obama's Nobel prize, and his highlighting of Israeli-Palestinian peace in responding, provides an injection of that most precious of commodities: hope.

More: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/oct/09/barack-obama-nobelpeaceprize

[DevonRex]

1. Everybody gets it but teh pukes and the DU Obama haters. Thanks

for the article and link!

[Baltoman991]

2. Exactly!!!

Those here who have wanted failure from day one are pissing all over this award because they can't stand the fact that this man, Barack Obama, is lifting America out of the gutter it's been in for the past 8 years and lifting the views of other countries towards the United States.

It's a damn shame that something that our whole country won is looked at by the haters as nothing but a sham.

[DevonRex]

3. Yep. There are varied reasons for their Obama hate, none of them good.

I've tried to give them the benefit of the doubt. No longer. If they can't say a simple "congratuations" then I'm done with cutting them any slack. For some it may be leftover primary BS. For others it might be that they have a hard time with a black man winning the presidency and the Nobel Prize.

No matter what, if they don't have the grace to say congratulations, they deserve no benefit of the doubt.