Abdul Rahman Al Rashed schreibt in der saudisch finanzierten Tageszeitung Asharq Alawsat über Obamas Chance:
Usually, pleasing the Arabs is an unachievable aim, because they blame Washington nearly for everything, whether it interferes or stays away. Washington is blamed for the dictatorships if it deals with them, and if it topples them, it will be accused of wanting to impose its political culture. It is blamed for all the contradictions: poverty, ignorance, occupation, terrorism, oppression, the support for the extremists, the hunt down of the Islamists, and even for the divorce of wives. Practically, Washington is the devil who is blamed for everything evil.
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Obama should not get fed up with the huge amount he will hear in the region of urging him to settle the Arab-Israeli conflict, because this is praise for him. It is a new phenomenon that the Arabs, however different their political stances might be, consider that he is the trusted man who is capable of resolving the issue. This is a huge turning in the Arab thinking, which has been rejecting in principle the US mediator, and in the past had insisted on European and Russian participation as it believed that any US president would be biased in favor of Israel from the start.