We Need to Talk...

Listen Up, George

Nicholas Noe

Working for (then) First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton during the summer of 1999, I learned something very simple but also very important about politics: if you want to gain people's trust and find just solutions to the issues they face, you have to, as a first step, listen as broadly as possible.

(Now) Secretary of State Clinton understood exactly that when she launched her first ever run for public office by travelling the length and width of New York over the course of several weeks, hearing the diverse array of problems which the people of the state faced both upstate and down. Predictably, much of the New York media derided "Hillary's Listening Tour" as a clumsy ploy that stood little chance of overcoming her status as a "carpetbagger" (she had never held residency in New York until she ran for Senate). By the time the tour was done, however, Hillary and the campaign both believed that she had firmly planted her feet as a credible candidate in one of the most politically bruising states – primarily because she understood and could sincerely articulate the concerns of different New Yorkers, not just those New York City types with which she identified most.

President Obama, for one, appears to have taken notice of the approach. In his first interview Monday with an Arab TV network, Al-Arabiya, he told the interviewer that his Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, was headed to the region to listen, "because all too often the United States starts by dictating – in the past on some of these issues – and we don't always know all the factors that are involved. So let's listen."

On its face, the break with the old Bush administration way of dealing with the Middle East could not be more clear. After all, Karen Hughes, Bush's former counsellor and PR envoy to the Arab and Islamic worlds, had clumsily set up a "war room" at the State Department for the overriding purpose of getting the US message out better, faster and wider, rather than learning more about what the people in the region had to say about the policies themselves.

But, as Mitchell visits the princes, kings, lame duck presidents and prime ministers and other assorted rulers in the region (otherwise known as US allies), two important poles will apparently be missing from this particular "listening tour": the political parties that are increasingly playing central roles in the Arab-Israeli conflict, specifically Hamas and Hezbollah, as well as the people themselves whom these parties partially represent through democratic institutions.

So, President Obama may have been fudging it when he told Al-Arabiya that Mitchell, "is going to be speaking to all the major parties involved". (In fact, Obama did not mention Hamas during the interview; strangely, was not asked about them; and had already made it clear that Mitchell would not be meeting with them). As Ian Black also commented, he should have been more forthright, certainly.

The deeper problem, though, lies in the overall approach – one that seems, at the outset at least, couched and clothed in the guise of change, but holding fast to some of the same destructive assumptions, calculations and fears that have failed the US, the Arabs and the Israelis in the past. If a sincere engagement with Hamas and Hezbollah is politically impossible – a confounding position given the US's direct negotiations with Sunni jihadists in Iraq who have killed US troops, elements of the Taliban that have supported al-Qaida, and Iran itself – then Mitchell should at least start by unshackling one debilitating aspect of US policy and spend some time listening to those average people who support the groups we say we will not deal with.

Take some time, then, to listen to the residents of Gaza. (Incredibly, the Quartet's envoy, Tony Blair, has never even visited the Strip.) And spend some time in the southern suburbs of Beirut, too, if your portfolio permits, listening to people who are not members of Hezbollah, but who can articulate a compelling set of reasons why they support the party's de facto and de jure status as a resistance group in Lebanon. Both Hamas and Hezbollah would be hard-pressed to prevent you from making such visits, given their oft-stated attitudes on the importance of change in US policy, as well as their open calls to deal directly and fairly with the region's people.

Of course, this type of "listening tour" would probably not, on its own, recalibrate the US position as mediator in the region – a recalibration for which many here are desperately hoping. But it certainly stands a better chance of demonstrating some of the humbleness that Obama has said is a founding principle for resolving conflict, in contrast to the Bush administration's practice of ignoring and aggressively isolating whole peoples and movements.

As the entire region stands perched on the edge of a potentially violent series of showdowns – in particular, with the cracks already appearing in the Hamas-Israeli ceasefire in Gaza – it is critical to start a credible listening process now, even if it involves those voices which seem at first glance to be so unfamiliar and dangerous.