I was traveling Sunday and thus missed this important piece in Sunday’s Haaretz by Akiva Eldar and Ami Issacharoff that says,
- The United States will only recognize a future Palestinian unity government if Salem [sic] Fayyad is reappointed prime minister, according to a message relayed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to European and Arab leaders at last week’s donor summit in… Sharm el-Sheikh.
Flourish of the chapeau to Bernhard of MoA for pointing that out.
Clinton’s reported ‘message’ is of course extremely relevant to the whole question of the meaning of the Fayyad resignation, that I discussed here yesterday.
First, though, let’s stand in amazement at– yet again– just the entire neo-colonialist chutzpah of a power that still believes it has somehow has the right to choose who should be the leaders of distant nations.
The article contains this:
- Western diplomats confirmed over the weekend that Washington has relayed messages to Hamas, via a European country that… intimated that a future unity government in the Palestinian Authority must be composed of technocrats who are members of neither Hamas nor Fatah, apart from Fayyad. Even though Fayyad is not officially a member of Fatah, the U.S. administration sees him as the leading candidate to replace Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas following the election that is due to be held within the next 12 months. While Marwan Barghouti enjoys wide popular support, Washington does not believe he is ready to assume the mantle of leadership. Fayyad, who studied in the United States and was a senior staffer at the World Bank for several years, is trusted by the administration and the international financial establishment.
Talk about chutzpah!
Memo to members of the democracy-loving public around the world: The PA already has a prime minister, whose party was elected in an election judged by international monitors to be free and fair. That election was held in 2006, and the prime minister is Ismail Haniyeh.
So now Pres. Obama’s secretary of state apparently believes that she– like Bush/Condi before her– somehow still has a ‘right’ to determine who the prime minister and/or president of the PA should be?
That is what I, as a citizen of the US and a citizen of the world, object most strongly to.
Memo to Barack Obama: This is not the way that the vast majority of your supporters elected you to act in the world!
… As noted in my post yesterday, Hamas reacted with extreme skepticism to the news of Fayyad’s ‘resignation’ (from a position that he did not legitimately hold, anyway.)
I had written that I thought there was a chance that Fayyad had resigned, Saturday, as PA prime minister because he hoped thereby to increase his chances of remaining as PM in a national unity government in which Hamas would be a strong presence. And the forthrightly nationalist positions he has espoused over the past couple of weeks strengthened that possibility.
I still believe this may well have been his motivation.
I also believe that Fayyad is a basically well-meaning person of significant intellectual honesty. Remember, it has been this honesty that all along has been his main attraction for the Americans (especially amidst the roiling mire of corruption and dishonesty that mark his Fateh colleagues in the heavily US-backed Ramallah ‘government’.)
So my assumption is that the clear nationalist positions that Fayyad expressed to me in the Feb. 24 interview, and that he also reportedly expressed to Hillary Clinton herself in their meeting in Ramallah exactly one week later, were his actual views.
As too was the desire he clearly enunciated to see Fateh and Hamas reach a workable national agreement.
Of course, having people in Hillary’s entourage ‘leak’ to Haaretz that the whole resignation thing was a carefully orchestrated US ploy could significantly reduce the chances of Hamas agreeing to work with Fayyad… But that leaking might itself have been the ploy.
So who knows how this will turn out?
What I know is this:
- 1. The 1.5 million people of Gaza desperately need Hamas and Fateh to reach a working entente so that the rebuilding of their shattered homes and infrastructure can commence.
2. Fateh is still in extremely deep trouble, having substantially collapsed from the inside due to its leaders’ corruption, their complete inattentiveness to the challenge of raising up successor generations, and the complete (US-induced) failure of the ‘peace’ diplomacy that has been their raison d’etre since 1988.
3. There are recent precedents in both Iraq and Lebanon in which US-supported ‘leaders’ have quietly been co-opted by the nationalist forces to act in alliance with them rather than at the behest of their US paymasters. Hamas’s people have always had a good working relationship with Hizbullah, in particular; so we can assume that “the Fouad Siniora option” might well have occurred to them as a way of dealing with Fayyad.
So watch this space as the story develops.
And a note to my US compatriots: We really do need to raise our voices to our leaders at all levels to say that colonialist interfering like that reportedly engaged in by Hillary’s people is not what we elected our government for! Palestinians inside and outside Gaza desperately need to have leaders who are accountable to them, not to Washington.
I think 1 is wrong.
The Palestinians need the siege to end so rebuilding of their shattered homes and infrastructure can commence.
The siege can end, among other ways by the US asking Egypt to allow goods through Rafah, or more probably by the US ceasing to instruct Egypt to deny goods crossing through Rafah.
Or the siege can end by the US threatening to deny further US aid and support to Israel until Israel allows reconstruction materials to pass the Israeli crossings.
Or the siege can end by the US allowing material to reach Gaza by sea, breaking Israel’s blockade.
The idea that ending the siege requires a unity government is entirely a US/Israel invention to pressure Palestinians to accept a two state solution.
Palestine actually already had rules for the creation of an elected government, not a “unity government” and the United States paid, pressured and supported Abbas in breaking those rules.
While I, in the abstract, favor reconciliation and peace between Palestinian factions, Helena Cobban’s (as well as Egypt’s) decision to follow the US formula and framing of the requirements for a “unity government” is actually an acquiescence to US/Israel’s policy to starve the Palestinians into accepting two-states.
Helena Cobban, not to join Dominic, but I don’t see any indication that you believe the Palestinians have a right to refuse to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.
If you do, I don’t understand why you go along with the US/Israeli framing of the unity government issue.
Arnold,
Or, the siege can end by Hamas ceasing the firing of rockets into Israel and letting go the Israeli soldier who is being held in violation of the laws of war.
N. Friedman:
Unlike Helena Cobban, you’re unreachable. Which is fine though interacting with you is usually a boring waste of time.
But out of curiousity – let’s pretend, that the siege is being imposed because of Hamas’ refusal to recognize Israel. Just for argument’s sake. Not because of the numerous American and Israeli officials who’ve said it, but just for argument’s sake.
You obviously would support a siege held on that basis, correct?
As far as you’re concerned, Palestinians starving if they vote for a party that does not recognize Israel’s right to be a Jewish state would be fine with you, correct?
Just for argument’s sake. Not arguing right now that this is the case, regardless of who has actually said it is the case.
So the “laws of war” stuff would just be a convenient rationalization, right?
Arnold,
Fine, let us suppose, as you posit, that the “siege” is not due to the Hamas’ refusal to recognize Israel. You ask, on that thesis, whether I would support the “siege.”
First, read my comment again. My comment was directed to rocket fire and the illegal holding- under International law – of an Israeli soldier. So, I do not understand quite what you have in mind.
The issue for most Israelis is the rocket fire and the holding of an Israeli soldier – who, in fact, is being held in violation of the laws of war. I have spoken with numerous Israeli friends and they say the same thing: the rocket fire and the soldier. The Israeli government is more or less responsive to Israeli public opinion so those things are the issues that determine whether Israel continues to cut off trade and some of the assistance to Gaza. Which is to say, I think your last comment that the laws of war is irrelevant here is mistaken.
Second, the underlying issue with Hamas is that the group is dedicated to destroying Israel and substituting an Islamic state. The group’s covenant incorporates the same conspiracy theory asserted by the Nazis – i.e., that the Jews are behind all wars. The covenant also includes an explicit threat of genocide – as recently confirmed by an Egyptian cleric, as quoted by me on your website.
In that Hamas has not altered the covenant, I can only assume that the group holds an eliminationist form of Antisemitism. The best way to deal with such groups is to undermine them. If a siege does that, I am for it. If a siege does not do that, then I am not for it.
So far as people starving, you might note that such has not been occurring. It is propaganda. By comparison, in the 1980’s and 1990’s, the Sudanese government had a policy of starving Christians and animists in order to influence them to convert to Islam. Large numbers of people starved to death.