Obama's Middle East Moment

Libya, Syria, Palestine, and more make this one of Obama's busiest weeks as commander-in-chief.

U.S. President Barack Obama will deliver a speech on Thursday about American foreign policy in the Middle East, providing him with a platform on which he can weigh in on seemingly countless uprisings across the Muslim world. The Daily Beast's Michael Tomasky hopes Obama will discuss the upheaval in Syria beyond the lone written statement he issued on April 22. A ban on Syrian oil imports and freezing the assets of the ruling Ba'athist party are two good places to start, as military intervention is clearly off the table. “It’s quite true, as some observers have noted, that we are in no position to do anything dramatic about Syria,” writes Tomasky. “But it doesn’t follow from this that Obama should remain silent.”

As far as Libya goes, the Boston Globe calls for Obama to report to Congress on the mission's progress. The War Powers Act of 1973 gives the president 60 days to intervene militarily without the consent of Congress, and the Libya undertaking hits that deadline this Friday. “Congress should require from the administration more details about U.S. goals, more transparency about the costs, and some metrics for success in the absence of Moammar Gadhafi's removal — which is still not a stated reason for the military intervention,” the editorialists write. Obama has hinted he'll provide a full accounting, but that Congress has remained nearly silent on the matter (to say nothing of its Canadian counterparts) suggests a worrying lack of seriousness on one of the gravest issues before it.

If that wasn't enough, Obama hosts Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week for talks that The Guardian's Aluf Benn predicts might be a tad testy. “To the U.S. president, Israel's occupation and settlement-building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem represent grave injustices ... To Netanyahu, Jewish people have a birthright to the Judean and Samarian hills; at most, Israel should throw a bone to the Palestinians to satisfy its western supporters who, in Netanyahu's view, simply don't get it.” Benn imagines the two will keep up appearances of cordiality to bolster their electoral hopes. But behind closed doors, the camps could prove irreconcilable, making Palestine's goal of declaring official statehood in September all the more likely ­– and potentially volatile.