"Jamais un président américain n’était allé aussi loin dans la pression, sur Israël notamment pour ce qui concerne le gel de la colonisation et la nécessité de reconnaître la souveraineté d’un Etat palestinien, et l’insistance sur la souffrance palestinienne. Ce qui crée, bien sûr, un froid dans la relation israélo-américaine et met une pression considérable sur le gouvernement Nétanyahou", selon Gilles Kepel (source LeMonde.fr).
Dans le New York Times, le journaliste palestinien Daoud Kuttab (professeur à l’école de journalisme de Princeton) exprime clairement en quoi le discours du Caire était important sur le fond :
President Barack Hussein Obama clearly won over the hearts and minds of many people (…). Politically President Obama spoke forcefully against violent religious extremists without ever mentioning the word “terror” or “Islamic extremists.” (…) He adopted the international consensus by declaring settlement in the Palestinian territories “illegitimate,” a major shift in U.S. foreign policy. “The U.S. does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements,” he told the cheering Egyptian attendees. President Obama committed to being personally involved in solving the conflict. He recognized the Palestinian refugee problem and even made a positive hint toward Hamas by saying that they “have support” among Palestinians and called on them to use that fact in a responsible way. By retelling the Holocaust he was able to call settlements illegitimate. And by honoring the Islamic faith he was able to talk about the need to honor Christian and other minorities in the Islamic countries. By hinting to the existence of Israeli nuclear weapons he could call on Iran to give up the militarization of its nuclear program".
Points forts et avancées
Gideon Levy, dans Haaretz, analyse à son tour les points forts du discours :
"A U.S. president talking about negotiations with Iran without preconditions or tacit threats, even willing to accept Iran having civilian nuclear capability ; a president who talked about Hamas as a legitimate organization that represents part of Palestinian society, but that needs to relinquish violence ; who spoke with empathy about Palestinian suffering ; who spoke, believe it or not, about security not only for Israelis but also for Palestinians ; who said that all the settlements are illegal ; who called for nuclear disarmament of the entire region. All are sensational messages, headlines whose significance cannot be exaggerated, even if there are those who desperately tried to argue yesterday that "there was nothing new in his speech."
Yossi Shain, directeur de la Hartog School of Government (Université de Tel Aviv), énumère les avancées du discours (source : Reuters) :
"What he told the Arab world about Jews, about Israel’s right to exist, about the Jewish suffering and history and about anti-Semitism was essential. The fact that he called on Hamas and the Arabs to stop hatred and senseless violence is essential. The fact that he told Israel to keep the rule of law and abide by resolutions it signed on issues of settlements is essential. The fact that Israelis have to recognise the suffering of Palestinians is essential. But most of all, for the Israeli point of view, as he said, we as Americans have a special bond with Israel which is unbreakable, and that is essential for the Arabs to understand."
En Israël, le discours de Barack Obama n’a pas été très bien perçu, comme l’indique David Newman (professeur de géopolitique à la Ben Gurion University), dans le New York Times :
"Many Israelis are in semi-shock at the statements emanating from Washington in recent weeks, not least the fact that they were not allowed to see the Obama speech in advance, or the rumor that a failure to stop all settlement activity could result in the U.S. withdrawing its automatic veto on anti-Israel resolutions at the United Nations. (…) We, in Israel, have spoken peace for a long time but have never really done much to implement it. Now is the time, now is the challenge".
Rupture avec Israël ?
Au point que la National Review (revue américaine proche des Républicains), parle d’une "rupture" du lien privilégié entre les Etats-Unis et Israël :
"From an Israeli perspective, Pres. Barack Obama’s speech today in Cairo was deeply disturbing. Both rhetorically and programmatically, Obama’s speech was a renunciation of America’s strategic alliance with Israel. Rhetorically, Obama’s sugar coated the pathologies of the Islamic world — from the tyranny that characterizes its regimes, to the misogyny, xenophobia, Jew hatred, and general intolerance that characterizes its societies. In so doing he made clear that his idea of pressing the restart button with the Islamic world involves erasing the moral distinctions between the Islamic world and the free world". (article de Caroline Glick).
Du côté du Fatah palestinien, la perception du discours est positive : Nabil Abu Rdainah, porte-parole de Mahmoud Abbas, décrit le discours du Caire comme un "bon début" :
"His call for stopping settlement and for the establishment of a Palestinian state, and his reference to the suffering of Palestinians ... is a clear message to Israel that a just peace is built on the foundations of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital. President Obama’s speech is a good start and an important step towards a new American policy". Source : site web d’Al Jazira.
Du côté du Hamas, les sentiments sont plus mitigés :
Ahmad Yousuf, a senior Hamas official, told Al Jazeera that Obama’s speech reminded him of Martin Luther King’s "I have a dream speech". About Obama stressing on the legitimacy of Israel, he said the Palestinians must have a state of their own before being asked to recognise another. However, Fawzi Barhoum, a Hamas spokesman, added : "He did not respect the democratic choice of the Palestinian people who voted for Hamas." (Source : site web d’Al Jazira).
