I was really sorry to hear of the death, a few days ago, of the veteran Israeli defense-affairs correspondent Ze’ev Schiff. Schiff was a smart, well-connected, and extremely canny individual. He was also a real gentleman.
I had known Ze’ev since the mid-1980s. We had many, many long conversations about defense affairs. Often we disagreed. But that did not interfere with the high regard and friendship in which I held him or the serious consideration that he always gave to me and my work.
In 1991, when I was working at a Washington DC-based conflict-resolution organization called Search for Common Ground, helping them set up their first project in the Middle East, Ze’ev was one of the first people I invited to join the project; and he was immediately eager to do so. I had already, sometime before that, introduced him to Ziad Abu Amr, the serious Palestinian political scientist and public intellectual who was the Foreign Minister in the Palestinians’ recent unity government (and prior to that, Culture Minister in the government that Mahmoud Abbas headed as PM, back in 2003.) Ze’ev and Ziad proved to be two very important pillars of the project as it became launched.
In spring 1993, I felt obliged to leave SCG because of a serious breach of trust committed against me and the integrity of our project by the organization’s president. (This, in an organization in which trust-building was the essence of our work…) After my resignation was announced, Ze’ev was almost immediately on the phone to me, pleading with me to stay in the project. To my regret, I did not feel able to.
Anyway, I kept in as good touch with Ze’ev as both of our busy schedules would allow, and would certainly always call him whenever I was in Israel. When I was there in early 2004, I really needed to get Gaza, because I was doing some pro-bono consulting with a US-based aid organization that was active there. The Israeli military maintained– then, almost as much as now– iron controls on all entry of persons into Gaza, and they wouldn’t give me permission to go. Ze’ev was extraordinarily generous and persistent in calling all the relevant military people on my behalf. (But even then, it didn’t work.)
When I went back to Israel and Palestine in February 2006, I spent a couple of hours one morning having coffee with Ze’ev, in one of the malls in the fairly luxurious strip of developments north of Tel Aviv. One of the nice things about Ze’ev was that he would often introduce me to some of the extremely interesting people he knew who would happen to be passing by. (Israel is, after all, a fairly small place.) In 1998, I remember, he introduced me in the lobby of the Dan Hotel in Tel Aviv to Fouad Ben Eliezer, now a lynchpin of Olmert’s government and always a solid rock of the Israeli center-right. In 2006, Ze’ev introduced me to a guy who had been a key Mossad hit-squad organizer back in 1973.
Anyway, on that occasion, I told Ze’ev I was once again planning to visit Gaza. Indeed, since this time I had an Israeli “foreign press” pass, I knew I’d have a better chance of getting in, which I did. “Send my regards to Ziad,” Ze’ev said. Then he leaned forward… You have to remember this was in the weeks immediately following Hamas’s victory in the January elections. It was before Hamas had formed their government. They were still eager to have it be as broad a national unity government as possible. The American and Israeli government were agitating hard against that: from that point, it was already very evident that they really, seriously, wanted the Hamas-led political order in the PA government to fail. Ziad, who had always been a key bridging personality between Abu Mazen and Hamas, was widely rumored to be in the running to be named Foreign Minister in the Hamas-led government…
So Ze’ev, who has always been extremely well connected with the Israeli authorities, leaned forward to me over the open-air table at the coffee-shop and said, “Tell Ziad not to do it! Tell him, if he does, he will face the most serious consequences.”
Later, in a phone conversation we had while I was on my way to Gaza, Ze’ev repreated that warning, in even more urgent terms.
It was my clear understanding that this was the transmission of (or very well informed reporting of) a death threat from the Israeli authorities. Ze’ev Schiff was not a person prone to exaggeration.
Personally, I felt uncomfortable at the prospect of being party to the continued transmission of this threat. I figured if the Israeli authorities really wanted to communicate a serious death threat to Ziad Abu Amr at any time, they had hundreds of ways to do so and were not reliant on me to do so. On the other hand, I figured Ziad deserved to at least know about it. So yes, I did raise it in a conversation I had with him.
(In the end, some combination of threats and and inducements were successful at keeping Ziad and all other independent Palestinian politicians of note out of the Hamas-led government at that point.)
But back to Ze’ev Schiff. No doubt about it, for the last few decades of his life he was very much more than “just” a reporter of the Israeli defense scene. He was a canny behind-the-scenes player in Israeli politics. Among the community of Israelis whom I encountered and worked with in various portions of the “track-two” diplomatic scene, he was definitely not a dove-ish visionary. He was a hard-nosed realist. But as such, he was very interested in testing out the intentions and views of the “other side”; and he worked hard to build relationships of mutual respect with Palestinians and other Arabs on a professional and collegial basis so that all of them could jointly explore the various options for their peoples’ futures. And yes, actually, to do this does require a degree of vision, self-confidence, and empathy that all too often seems lacking in strategic “thinkers” who imagine that all problems can be solved by force and by trying to delegitimize dissenting voices and views and exclude them from the discussion.
I should also note that, in a field in which the contributions of women are far too often either ignored, expropriated by guys, or otherwise sidelined, I always felt that Ze’ev took my work seriously, and valued my views on strategic and regional issues.
So for a large number of reasons I shall miss Ze’ev Schiff. I think Israel and the region will be diminished and just a bit less stable in the absence of his hard-nosed realism, his decades’ worth of experience of regional defense matters, and his gut understanding of the fact that Israelis really do need to build decent, respectful relationships with their Arab neighbors– even those they disagree with– if they are to have a stable and assured future in the region
I send my deep condolences to his wife, Sarah, and their children and grandchildren. I’m sure they will all miss him much more than any of us outsiders.
Author: Helena
Hamas, the US big media, and the world
Ahmed Yousef, a senior political advisor to recently ousted Palestinian Ismail Haniyeh, scored an impressive double victory today by having slightly different op-ed articles published in both the WaPo and the NYT.
More on the content of these two significant articles later. But first, we should note that the existence of these two soberly argued articles indicates a couple of very important things that are often overlooked in the US discourse: First, that the Hamas leaders are eager to reach out to and engage intellectually with the US mainstream discourse, and secondly that they have maintained a good capability to do this, even in circumstances of great tension and difficulty for all Palestinians, in Gaza and elsewhere.
Regarding their desire to engage with the US discourse, there have of course been numerous other examples of this, including earlier op-eds that Haniyeh himself, Mousa Abu Marzook, and other Hamas luminaries have published in the WaPo and the NYT. The decision to reach out and engage is not a trivial matter– and maybe, amidst all the anti-Israeli and anti-US anger that pervades much of the Hamas base, it was not an easy one to take.
Regarding the ability of the Hamas leaders to continue to pursue their intellectual-engagement decision, even in very tumultuous times, this is also significant.
A noticeable amount of the discourse in the US “big media” these days about the situation in Gaza and the role played by Hamas has focused heavily on (and quite possibly disproportionately magnifies) the negative aspects of the situation. Mainstream commentators seem to want to portray Hamas-controlled Gaza as a wild place, ungoverned except by wild men in scary ski masks, while painting the (currently Fateh-dominated) West Bank as a potential haven of stability.
However, on Monday, Karen AbuZayd, who’s the head of the UN agency, UNRWA, that’s responsible for providing basic humanitarian needs to the refugees who make up a large proportion of the Palestinian population in both areas, announced that,
- we are now operating in Gaza as we did before the recent violence… UNRWA is working at full capacity once again, delivering services to a population that has been so badly affected by chronic insecurity.
And in the West Bank city of Nablus, the World Food Program reported on Saturday that unidentified armed men “ransacked the well-marked warehouse this morning, stole several tons of WFP food and looted office equipment including computers and fax machines.”
Of course, considerable problems remain in both territories. A number of Fateh-related families and Palestinians eager to be reunited with families in the West Bank have been camped out for many days now at Israel’s dreadful, always-inhumane, cattle-yard/crossing at Erez. The plight of these families is terrible. Many of them have expressed strong (and currently, probably untestable) fears regarding their fate if they remain in Hamas-controlled Gaza; and the Israeli authorities have also treated them extremely badly, and in clear, very racist violation of all international codes regarding the obligation of states to offer a safe refuge to people suffering from a well-founded fear of persecution in their homelands.
Plus– and this is very relevant in the context of the present topic– Hamas-affiliated gunmen have attacked pro-Fateh media installations in Gaza and Fateh-affiliated gunmen have attacked pro-Hamas media installations, and one journo associated with one of these, in the West Bank. See PCHR’s report on these serious violations of the freedom of the press, here. Plus, of course, BBC’s Gaza correspondent Alan Johnston is still one of the many thousands of people in today’s Middle East who are being quite unjustifiably deprived of their liberty.
So, on to the content of Ahmed Yousef’s two pieces:
Understanding the Palestinian crisis
I have been scouring the web, trying to gain a deeper understanding of what’s been going on in Palestine. So far, the very best account and analysis that I’ve found is this document, which was posted yesterday on the site of the (Gaza-based) Palestinian Centre for Human Rights. I suspect it was written by the Centre’s extremely dedicated and professional director, Raji Sourani.
Its title is No Alternative to Political Dialogue; PCHR’s Position towards the Current Crisis in the Gaza Strip and the Palestinian National Authority. I believe this correctly describes the problem. There is both a crisis inside Gaza, and a crisis in the PA.
PCHR has been doing careful, well-documented human rights monitoring and advocacy work in Palestine for around 20 years now. This is how the “No Alternative” text describes the recent clashes in Gaza:
- The Gaza Strip has recently witnessed an unprecedented escalation in the violence between the Hamas and Fatah movements. Last week, as the fighting came to a head, Hamas decided to resolve the conflict militarily by taking over all Palestinian security headquarters and sites and seizing complete control over the Gaza Strip through its military wing – Izziddin al-Qassam Brigades. The fighting claimed the lives of 146 Palestinians (36 of them are civilians), including 5 children and 8 women, and wounded at least 700 others.
According to PCHR’s documentation and observations, this latest armed conflict between the two movements has been accompanied by grave breaches of provisions of international law related to internal armed conflicts, particularly Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions of 1949. Under Common Article 3, each party to an armed conflict not of an international character is bound, at a minimum, to treat persons taking no active part in the hostilities humanely, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms. It also prohibits “violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture; taking of hostages; outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment; and the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court.” It also calls for humane treatment of the wounded and medical patients.
In violation of these international standards, the fighting was accompanied by many cases of willful killings, extra-judicial executions, and firing at combatants after their capture. According to eyewitnesses, a number of the wounded were killed inside hospitals; reprisal kidnappings and torture of persons affiliated or suspected of being affiliated with a party to the conflict were also reported. Although most civilians were confined to their homes for the duration of hostilities, numerous unarmed civilians also became victims of the fighting. The status of civilian structures, including houses and tower apartment buildings, was not respected and such locations were often used by the hostile parties during the fighting. As a consequence, many civilians were forcibly placed in a combat area, increasing their suffering and risk of injury. Many casualties were ultimately reported among civilians, including women and children.
Additionally, the access of medical crews and firefighters to combat areas to evacuate the wounded and extinguish fires was severely restricted (see PCHR’s press releases during and after the fighting).
Here, for example, was a PCHR press release issued during the fighting, on June 14. It detailed several law-of-war violations without, in most cases, specifying which side had committed them. (I imagine it must have been very hard to ascertain that, in many cases.) In one case, that report specified that”Hamas gunmen” had committed violations, as follows:
- At approximately 16:00 [on 13 June], Hamas gunmen stormed the house of Atef Baker, a Fatah operative, near Beach Camp. They fired indiscriminately inside the house, killing two women and seriously injuring 4 others. The women killed are Jehan Nayef Baker (18) and Heba Sobhi Baker (30). And at approximately 17:00, Hamas gunmen surrounded a number of Baker clan members in the same area, and fired at them. Three Baker clan members were killed: Mansour Omar Baker (47), Mohammad Suliman Baker (28), and Hamada Samir Baker (18).
But here is the way the clashes and their effect on civilians were characterized in the report’s introductory paragraph:
- The clashes erupted on Thursday, 7 June 2007, and have led to the death of tens of victims from both sides as well as innocent civilians. Gaza and Khan Yunis were the scene of unprecedented violence. Most victims fell in these two places, especially during Hamas control of the compounds of the National Security Forces and General Intelligence. It is regrettable that both sides were more brutal in bringing civilians into the conflict by taking positions on the roofs of houses, preventing food from reaching civilians, firing at peaceful demonstrations, and preventing civilians from access to healthcare. In addition, they targeted hospitals and transformed them into battle grounds, attacked medical crews, and prevented health workers from carrying out their duties. Life was paralyzed throughout the Gaza Strip, including the areas that did not witness clashes. Houses of members of both sides were destroyed and set on fire or targeted by projectiles in a policy of collective punishment to subdue the other side.
Then, regarding the crisis inside the PA that has been sparked by the Gaza fighting, the “No Alternative” report says this:
- After Hamas took over security headquarters and sites and seized complete control over the Gaza Strip, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas issued 3 decrees on Thursday evening, 14 June, dismissing Prime Minister Ismail Haniya; declaring a state of emergency in all Palestinian National Authority (PNA) controlled areas; and forming a government to enforce the state of emergency. On 17 June, President Abbas issued two more decrees, one suspending the enforcement of articles 65, 66 and 67 of the Basic Law (the temporary constitution of the PNA), and the other one outlawing the Executive Force (formed by the Ministry of Interior in 2006) and Hamas’s militias “because of their insurrection against the Palestinian legitimacy and its institutions…”
In response to Hamas’s actions, Israel has closed all border crossings with the Gaza Strip, halting all international commercial transactions. As a result, Palestinian civilians have rushed to shops, bakeries and fuel stations to buy their basic needs, in the wake of expectations of a possible humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip. Rafah International Crossing Point between the Gaza Strip and Egypt—the sole outlet for the Gaza Strip to the outside world, which Israel already subjects to sporadic and lengthy closings—has now been completely and indefinitely closed.
Parallel to the incidents in Gaza, supporters of Fatah movement in the West Bank have carried out a series of retaliatory attacks against members, supporters and institutions of Hamas. Such attacks have targeted health and cultural associations, charities, press offices, television and radio stations, sports clubs, and various local councils that have been run by Hamas following local elections. According to PCHR’s documentation, at least 50 public and private institutions have been attacked; 3 persons, including a child, have been killed; and at least 60 persons have been kidnapped since Wednesday, 13 June 2007.
In light of these accelerating developments in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), particularly in the Gaza Strip, PCHR stresses the following:
1) PCHR condemns the use of military means to resolve the conflict between Hamas and Fatah movements, particularly the decision to resolve the conflict militarily through the seizure of Palestinian security headquarters and sites in the Gaza Strip by the [Hamas-run] Izziddin al-Qassam Brigades. Although PCHR is aware of the legitimacy of the government and its right to fully have its constitutional powers, and conscious of the security problems that preceded and the urgent need to reform the security establishment, there is no justification for the use of Izziddin al-Qassam Brigades in the military conflict and in the take over of the security establishment, which will only frustrate reform of the security establishment.
2) Steps taken by President Mahmoud Abbas in response to these events violate the Basic Law and undermine the Basic Law in a manner that is no less dangerous than what is happening in Gaza, especially as:
- A. The President has the right to declare a state of emergency and to dissolve the government in accordance with Chapter 7 of the Basic Law, but according to the Law, the dissolved government shall serve as an acting government until the formation of a new government that must be approved by the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC).
B. The Basic Law does not give the President any authority, even during a state of emergency, to suspend the enforcement of any provision of the Law concerning the PLC’s authority to grant confidence to the government, and he does not have the authority to dissolve or interrupt the work of the PLC during the period of emergency (article 113). The Basic Law is superior to all laws, from which all powers, including those of the President and Prime Minister, are derived, and it must not be undermined or suspended in all circumstances.
3) Steps taken by the President are likely to complicate the crisis rather than solving it. The President’s response may lead to further isolation of the Gaza Strip and throw its 1.5-million residents into the unknown by subjecting them to international sanctions. There is also concern that a de facto political situation may develop in which the Gaza Strip is cut-off from the rest of the OPT.
4) The current crisis in the PNA is a political rather than a constitutional or legal one. There is therefore no alternative to dialogue based on real partnership, respect for the results of the legislative elections that were held in January 2006, and putting the interests of the Palestinian people above the narrow, factional interests of the conflicting parties.
5) In the context of such a dialogue, it is important to stress the need to reconstruct the Palestinian security establishment on professional and national foundations, to ensure its independence and not to push it into any hideous factional conflicts so that it may be able to carry out its constitutional duties to defend the homeland, serve the people, protect the society, and ensure security and public order.
6) The only party that benefits from the continuation of the current crisis is Israel and its occupation forces, which continue to create new facts on the ground, especially in the West Bank through the construction of the Annexation Wall and settlements, which undermine any possibility of establishing a viable, independent Palestinian state within the OPT.
7) The humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip, which has been deteriorating due to the Israeli siege and the suspension of international aid to the PNA, will further deteriorate with the closure of all border crossings and the halting of international economic transactions.
8) The current Palestinian crisis is a new Nakba (in reference to the dispersion of the Palestinian people in 1948) that if not immediately stopped, will only grow as expectations of more economic and social strangleholds fuel concerns over massive emmigration from the Gaza Strip. All Palestinian political factions and civil society groups must therefore bear the historical responsibility to end this crisis and prevent this new Nakba, which has been created by Palestinians on the 59th anniversary of the Nakba of 1948.
9) The international community and Arab States are invited to take immediate steps to prevent this catastrophe by pressing for political dialogue between the Hamas and Fatah movements, as well as all other political factions, and to end this crisis which threatens the PNA and the Palestinian people as a whole.
Well, on this last score, good luck to anyone urging the “international community”, as presently constituted, to press for the immediate resumption of political dialogue between Hamas and Fateh! Right now, Mr. 3% (Ehud Olmert) is in Washington DC, crowing with Mr. 30% (George W. Bush) about the “opportunity” the Hamas-Fateh split presents for (their endless, always inconclusive version of) the peace process… and Mr. 30% has hurried to send more financial aid to help prop up Abu Mazen and Fateh.
However, there are three big problems with providing such speedy, one-sided US support to Fateh at this moment:
- (1) It makes even more of a mockery than we have seen before, of all the Bushites’ earlier pronouncements about the depth and sincerity of their support for democratization of the Palestinian polity;
(2) It makes Fateh look even more than before like the cat’s-paw of the Israelis and the Bushites in the Middle East– not a good thing for anyone at this point;and
(3) All this aid will make no difference at all to Fateh’s political fortunes with the Palestinian public unless (a) Fateh can show itself capable of using the aid in a way that is accountable, well-governed, and speedily makes a demonstrable contribution to the public good, and (b) the Fateh leaders can show palpable achievements in other key areas of the Palestinians’ quality of life– primarily, the freeing of the Palestinian communities in both the West Bank and Gaza from the socio-economic strangulation that Israel continues to maintain over both territories, and by making palpable progress in the peace negotiations with Israel.
Regarding #3 there, neither ‘a’ nor ‘b’ looks likely.
I see that already, within even a few days of the debacle Fateh suffered in Gaza, its ever-jockeying array of second-level bosses have already resumed their longheld practice of working against each other in very public and very damaging ways. Primarily, many Fathawis seem to have their knives out against Mahmoud Abbas’s strongly US- and Israeli-backed “national security advisor”, Mohammed Dahlan.
In that Haaretz report there, Avi Issacharoff wrote:
- Palestinian sources said that the subject came up at a meeting of 20 council members in Ramallah on Sunday. According to sources, some of the council members said they believed that Dahlan should be relieved of his duties as part of Fatah’s efforts to regain strength on the Palestinian street.
Among those attending the meeting were Jibril Rajoub, Ahmed Ghanem, Mohammed al-Horani, Samir Shehada, and other prominent Fatah members. “We hope that Dahlan will be removed,” one of the participants said. “We hope this will help stop the atrocities that Hamas is perpetrating in the Gaza Strip.
Dahlan is among those responsible for this debacle, and even his own men are saying that he had deserted them along with Fatah’s top-brass in the strip.”
[The charismatic and long-imprisoned Fateh operative Marwan] Barghouti, who is serving five life sentences in Hadarim Prison, released a statement from prison yesterday in which he demanded that Fatah’s leadership in the strip be replaced with other operatives currently in the region.
Indeed, the political situation inside the West Bank seems to be very far from the anti-Hamas triumphalism that is being portrayed in some of the western mainstream media. Some western analysts and politicians seem eager to paint a picture in which all of Fateh and a large proportion of the Palestinian people are locked into bitter, irreconcileable hatred and fear of Hamas, such as can easily be harnessed to the US and Israel’s further campaigns against the organization. But even within Fateh, this seems not to be the case.
The fact is– as the PCHR document so aptly described it– the Palestinian political situation is in a deep crisis. Both President Abbas and the Hamas-led legislature have earned a notable degree of democratic legitimacy in the fairly recent past. That is a basic fact to remember.
And now, for Abbas to summarily dismiss the Haniyeh-led National Unity Government by declaring a “State of Emergency” may seem to buy him a little time. But the Palestinian Basic Law allows him to rule through his own hand-picked PM, under his own, unilaterally declared State of Emergency, only for 30 days before the SOE has to be renewed “with the consent of two-thirds the Legislative Council.” (Answer to qu.6 in that PDF file of commentary by Nathan Brown there.) And even under the SOE, his powers are strictly limited.
So after 30 days, he requires the cooperation of the Legislative Council… This, while significant numbers of elected Hamas deputies have been detained by the Israeli Military Occupation.
Where is the concern expressed in the US or other western countries about those detentions? And how on earth can any democracy-respecting government anywhere support Abbas in extending the SOE beyond the allowed 30 days if he can do so only by having an Israeli-picked subset of the elected deputies ready and able to support that extension?
… Anyway, I have a lot more to say about this topic, but no time now to say it. One aspect I want to pursue is the ways in which the West Bank is different from Gaza– and the ways in which it is not as different as many of the “instant” commentatoriat here in the US seems to think.
Iraq open thread #12
I’ve been busy for three days with Bill, getting our new part-time digs in Washington DC set up. Saturday I drove sundry items of furniture etc up here in what felt like a HUGE truck. (It was actually far bigger than we needed, but it was all I could find to rent.)
Anyway, we don’t have our communications set up here yet; so blogging has been a bit difficult. Tomorrow we return to C’ville after our first foray in the new apt. Next week, I’ll be back in the apt and able to schedule the installation of the DSL, phone lines, etc.
Meantime, lots has been happening re Iraq, I know. So I’ll leave this comments thread open for y’all to comment.
Hamas takeover in Gaza; diplomatic stasis continues
Some good, if very sobering, reporting on the events in Gaza from AP’s Sarah el Deeb is here.
Doubtless JWN readers are aware that yesterday and today there were fateful battles in Gaza during which the US-backed and US-armed Fateh forces were routed by the better disciplined and better organized forces loyal to Hamas. There have also been some less decisive clashes in the West Bank, where Fateh is relatively much stronger (though no better organized) than in Gaza.
Deeb writes that Fateh head, and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas,
- fired the Hamas prime minister and said he would install a new government, replacing the Hamas-Fatah coalition formed just three months ago. Abbas’ decrees, which he issued in Ramallah [in the West Bank], won’t reverse the Hamas takeover of Gaza. Instead, his moves will enable Fatah to consolidate its control over the West Bank, likely [as she claims] paving the way for two separate Palestinian governments.
At a news conference in Gaza City early Friday, deposed Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh rejected Abbas’ declaration, calling it “hasty” and saying he would maintain the unity government. Haniyeh said the situation was “not suitable for unilateral decisions.”
He said the Hamas militia would impose law and order “firmly, decisively and legally.” He also rejected the idea of a Palestinian state in Gaza only, run by Hamas.
In Damascus, one of the exiled leaders of Hamas, Moussa Abu Marzouk, also rejected setting up an Islamic state there. “Gaza will remain Gaza and there will be no changes in its future and will continue to be linked to the West Bank,” he said.
Sarah El Deeb is not the only commentator in the Anglosphere– and perhaps elsewhere?– who has started to write about the possibility of Gaza becoming even more deeply politically split off from the West Bank. The two territories have already been functionally split from each other for several years, due to Israel’s refusal to honor agreements mandating the nearly free flow of goods and persons between them. All diplomatic agreements regarding the OPTs have meanwhile stressed again and again that the two territories form “one political unit”, but of course that hasn’t stopped Israel from trying to split them apart, for many years– and nor has it stopped Israel from strying to split East Jerusalem off from the rest of the West Bank, and indeed from dividing the rest of the West Bank into a large number of sometimes hermetically sealed-off tiny cantons (or large-ish prisons.)
Anyway, the fears– or possibilities, or in some cases desires– that are currently being expressed in much of the Anglosphere center on the possibility of the emergence of a “Hamastan” in Gaza. I guess some western commentators think the name sounds cute and indicates how “in style” they are? They use the term despite the insistence of the leaders of the elected Hamas plurality in the Palestinian parliament that this is absolutely not their intention…
Deeb wrote:
- Fatah’s old demons — corruption, petty quarreling, lack of leadership — led to its dismal performance in Gaza. While disciplined Hamas systematically hoarded weapons, Fatah’s Gaza leader, Mohammed Dahlan, preferred travel and West Bank politics to preparing for the inevitable showdown with the Islamic militants. Dahlan returned Thursday from Egypt, where he stayed several weeks after knee surgery. But instead of going to Gaza, he headed for Ramallah.
Many West Bank Palestinians, watching the fall of Gaza on their TV screens, pinned the blame on Abbas, whom they see as indecisive and detached. During Hamas’s assaults in Gaza this week, no prominent Fatah leader was in the coastal strip to take command.
“Hamas has leadership, a goal, an ideology and funding,” said Gaza analyst Talal Okal. “Fatah has neither leadership, nor a goal, a vision or money.”
The Guardian’s Ian Black had these pieces of reaction from respected (but generally secularist) Palestinian commentators:
- “The government will remain, but it does not govern. It will be there, but is incapable of doing its job,” predicted Bir Zeit university’s Ali al-Jarbawi. “The situation will be completely paralysed.”
Palestinians see the Gaza crisis as the disastrous outcome of years of failure: of the Oslo peace process, Hamas’s electoral win and the international sanctions imposed as a result. “If you have two brothers put into a cage and deprive them of basic essential needs for life, they will fight,” said the Palestinian foreign minister, Ziad Abu Amr. Many say the Palestinian Authority is already effectively dead.
Al Jazeera’s English website featured a story saying that UN Sec-Gen Ban Ki-moon was considering the possibility of despatching a UN force to Gaza:
- Ban said Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, had raised the idea with him in a phone conversation on Tuesday and noted that Ehud Olmert, Israel’s prime minister, had also brought it up.
“I need to consider more in detail with the countries concerned,” he said…
That Jazeera story also noted that many Fateh fighters had either fled to Egypt or surrendered en masse to the Hamas side, which is what I’d expected.
Haaretz’s Aluf Benn is reporting that,
- In the wake of the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip, United States said Thursday that the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush will now work to prevent the violence from spilling over to the West Bank. The U.S. therefore aims to accelerate the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations to allow Abbas to present some achievements.
H’mmm. Wouldn’t you say it’s about three (or 30) years too late to suddenly say, “Oh, we have to give Abu Mazen some diplomatic achievements?”
Anyway, Benn goes on:
- Prime Minister Ehud Olmert also intends to tell Bush that Hamas’s coup d’etat must be contained in the Gaza Strip, and not allowed to occur in the West Bank as well, a government official told Haaretz on Thursday.
The American administration is also interested in improving living conditions in the West Bank to demonstrate to the Palestinians that they are better off under Fatah than Hamas.
Benn notes that Hamas’s takeover in Gaza will dominate the discussions the two very lame ducks– Olmert and Bush– will have when Olmert goes to the White House next Tuesday:
- in this context, Olmert will discuss the possibility of deploying a multinational force in Gaza with both Bush and United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. The security cabinet, however, has not yet decided on its stance regarding the deployment of such a force, and will address the issue only after Olmert returns…
So there you have it: US-fueled death and destruction in Palestine; a continuing complete stasis in the peace negotiations; and the UN and the world community it represents is expected once again to stand aside and wait on the pleasure of this government in Israel whose only imperatives seem to be (a) to somehow hang on in office, and (b) to obstruct any meaningful peace negotiations while Israeli concrete-mixers continue their transformation of the West Bank into a vast network of lavish, Israelis-only settlements punctuated by large numbers of hellish Palestinian Bantustans.
There really is a better way to end this state of fearfulness and violence in Israel/Palestine, and to bring security, hopefulness, and a decent life to everyone concerned. Engaging seriously in negotiations over how to build a peaceful, equality-based social order among all these people– whether in two states of equal standing, or in a single binational state– is the place to start.
The US, the UN, and the world: The De Soto report
The London Guardian yesterday published the 52-page “End of Mission Report” written by the UN’s recently retired envoy to the Middle East peace talks, Alvaro De Soto.
De Soto reportedly confirmed the authenticity of the text, but said it had been intended only for inside-the-UN consumption. It contains his scathing criticism of the way that, in regard to Israeli-Arab diplomacy, the UN has subordinated its unique global legitimacy and position to the diktats of the US and Israel.
In para 132, he writes:
- Unfortunately, the international community [i.e., in this context, the UN bureaucracy], through a policy hastily laid down, has gone along with Israeli rejectionism, making it very difficult to climb down even if Israel decided to do so.
I haven’t yet had time to read the whole report. Guardian journos who have done so have produced three accounts of its highlights (1, 2, and 3), and the paper’s editors have also penned this editorial on De Soto’s charges and the whole tragic mess into which Israel and the US’s actions have helped to drive the current situation in the OPTs.
Attentive JWN readers are doubtless aware that my own strongly stated position is that, despite its many flaws, the UN must take– and must be allowed and empowered to take– the leading role in conducting the global-scale diplomacy that is now so sorely needed in both the Israeli-Arab sphere and the US-Iraqi sphere. (I laid out these argument most recently in, respectively, this May 10 CSM column, and this column in today’s CSM.)
Of course, there is a major problem in both these projects: that is, that in all matters Middle Eastern the UN bureaucracy– which is answerable in the first instance to the Security Council, and only at a broader level to the annual “General Assembly” of all the world’s nations– has indeed, increasingly throughout the past 15 or 20 years, subordinated itself to the whims and diktats of one nuclear-armed superpower, the US, and that power’s Middle Eastern sidekick, Israel.
For the sake of global stability, and if humanity is to have any chance whatever of building a humane, egalitarian world-political system in which disputes are addressed using means other than brute force, this has to change. In the May column, I argued– re the Israeli-Palestinian arena– that, “Global stability can no longer be held hostage to the claims of the Israeli settlers.”
In today’s column (which was written and edited before the publication of De Soto’s indirectly related text) I wrote,
- Any orderly US withdrawal from Iraq requires a leading role from the United Nations. It also requires a more capable and empowered UN than the one we see today, and this requires that the whole US political system undertake a serious recommitment both to the world body and to the egalitarian global values it embodies.
These tasks form the main challenge for America in the months ahead. The longer the American public and US leaders postpone dealing with them, the higher will mount the casualty toll in Iraq – among both Iraqis and US troops – along with the risks the Iraqi caldron poses to regional and world stability.
Now, the publication of De Soto’s detailed and very well expressed insider’s account of exactly how the US and Israel have, in their relationship with the UN, subverted the norms and ideals on which the world body has been based since its creation in 1945, allows us to see more clearly than ever before many key dimensions of the challenge we all– both US citizens and citizens of other nations– face as we try to bring the relationship between the US and the rest of the world back into a better and more productive balance.
At this stage in the history of our fragile planet here, I don’t think that this challenge can be avoided very much longer.
Final CSM column: on the US and the UN, in Iraq
So Thursday’s CSM will be publishing the final column in the series I have published with them since 1990. It is here. (Also here.)
In it, I write:
- Can Washington disentangle itself from the lethal imbroglio of Iraq without radically revising the prickly, dismissive attitude it has maintained toward the United Nations for the past five years? I doubt it.
For if America’s very vulnerable troop presence in Iraq is to be drawn down, either partially or – as I believe is necessary – wholly, and in anything like an orderly way, then that withdrawal must be negotiated. And no body but the UN can successfully convene these negotiations.
At the end of the column, I put in this short note to readers:
- Because the Monitor is ending its regular columns, today’s essay is my last as a Monitor columnist – a post I’ve held for 17 years.
I have been proud to write for a paper guided by high standards, strong values, and a desire to understand all the nations of the world. And I have been grateful for the opportunity to contribute my expertise here.
Mine was one of the few voices in mainstream media that seriously questioned the grounds on which the Bush administration took the US into the war in Iraq and that warned strongly and consistently that this war would be disastrous.
While my work may well appear in the Monitor in the future, I invite you to keep up with my writing at www.justworldnews.org.
I had put a little more about this rather abrupt change of editorial policy at the Monitor, and how I felt about it, into this JWN post last week. It’s true, I am “looking at a number of options”, as I wrote there. One is a really engaging new book idea that I discussed with Jennifer Knerr, the Editor for Political Science and Communications at Paradigm Publishers, when I was able to spend some great time with her, Paradigm President Dean Birkenkamp, and some of their other colleagues, at their HQ in Boulder last week.
More on this later, I hope!
Another regular column slot elsewhere is also an option, of course… Also, doing some more pieces for the CSM under their new regimen…
Anyway, the Kissinger position, as referred briefly to in the latest column, is really quite interesting. Especially given the role he played, according to Bob Woodward, back in 2001-02, in supporting Cheney’s relentless push to get the US into invading Iraq…
How about the pacemakers?
The AP newswire yesterday carried an intriguing report about the US Navy using carrier-launched electronic warfare planes called ‘Prowlers’ to prowl around Iraq “trying to stop the scourge of roadside bombs by jamming ground signals from mobile phones and garage door openers.”
My question: How on earth can the people operating this electronic-jamming equipment be certain they will not also trigger life-threatening responses in pacemakers being used by Iraqi cardiac patients or in other ways cause potentially lethal harm to civilians?
The AP account quotes U.S. Navy Capt. David Woods, the commander of a Carrier Air Wing aboard the USS Nimitz (which is now in the Gulf) who is also described as “one of the Navy’s most experienced Prowler pilots” as saying that the ship’s Prowlers fly over Iraq “at between 20,000 and 30,000 feet… steering invisible waves of electromagnetic signals over areas where insurgent bombs may be waiting for U.S. convoys.”
The AP writer adds:
- According to outside experts, receivers inside the Prowler’s tail collect radio signals from the ground, which are analyzed by an on-board computer. As threats are identified, the plane’s crew floods the area with electromagnetic energy that blocks the signal.
The plane’s computer is loaded with a “threat library” of hostile signals, which are used to match those on the ground. The jammers can block transmissions across wide range of frequencies, everything from TV and radio signals to mobile phones and the Internet.
But its jamming gear has no effect on bombs that are hard-wired to their triggers, Woods said.
So I guess my picture of what they’re doing is that they are flying around at between 4 and 6 miles high over Iraq, sending down large waves (“floods”?) of electromagnetic energy that may well end up blocking or otherwise interfering with electromagnetic signals being used at ground level to perform a broad range of tasks– some of which “may” (or may not?) be connected to physical attacks to US forces.
This strikes me as being a highly non-discriminating means of conducting warfare– i.e., one that fails to undertake the discrimination between legitimate military targets and (quite illegitimate) civilian targets that is positively required of commanders and military planners under the laws of war
As it happens, this morning I was checking in the ICRC’s excellent on-line library of texts in the laws of war to remind myself what these texts actually say regarding the unacceptability (or, indeed, illegality) of the use of military technologies and methods that do not undertake the necessary discrimination between military and civilian targets.
At this URL (PDF), I found a good, basic compilation of The rules of international humanitarian law [i.e. the laws of war] and other rules relating to the conduct of hostilities. From it I extracted two key texts relating to the question of discriminate/indiscriminate attacks; and I cut and pasted those into this eaiser-to-use HTML file. (I have underlined and bolded there various clauses that are of particular relevance in recent and current Middle East conflicts. I did that markup for reasons other than the writing of this post.)
If you scan through that file you will see that Article 51 of Additional Protocol 1 (1977) of the Geneva Conventions is particularly focused on the need to take active steps to avouid indiscriminate attacks. Clause 4 of Art. 51 reads:
- 4. Indiscriminate attacks are prohibited. Indiscriminate attacks are:
(a) those which are not directed at a specific military objective;
(b) those which employ a method or means of combat which cannot be directed at a specific military objective; or
(c) those which employ a method or means of combat the effects of which cannot be limited as required by this Protocol; and consequently, in each such case, are of a nature to strike military objectives and civilians or civilian objects without distinction.
Article 57 of the Protocol lays upon military commanders and military planners a positive responsibility to exercise “due diligence” to ensure that the attacks they undertake are neither “indiscriminate” in the defined sense nor “disproportionate” (regarding the foreseeable proportion of harm inflicted upon persons versus the military value– if any– of the objective.) It says, in Clauses 1 and 2:
- 1. In the conduct of military operations, constant care shall be taken to spare the civilian population, civilians and civilian objects.
2. With respect to attacks, the following precautions shall be taken:
(a) those who plan or decide upon an attack shall:
- (i) do everything feasible to verify that the objectives to be attacked are neither civilians nor civilian objects and are not subject to special protection but are military objectives within the meaning of paragraph 2 of Article 52 and that it is not prohibited by the provisions of this Protocol to attack them;
(ii) take all feasible precautions in the choice of means and methods of attack with a view to avoiding, and in any event to minimizing, incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians and damage to civilian objects;
(iii) refrain from deciding to launch any attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated;
(b) an attack shall be cancelled or suspended if it becomes apparent that the objective is not a military one or is subject to special protection or that the attack may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated;
(c) effective advance warning shall be given of attacks which may affect the civilian population, unless circumstances do not permit.
Now, it is true that US government has not yet ratified Additional Protocol 1. But it has signed it. And though it has not yet ratified this precise language, it certainly has for a long time been a full party to numerous other laws-of-war agreements that– in somewhat less detail– include strict clauses about the need for both discrimination and proportionality in the planning and conduct of military operations.
That’s why that (somewhat admiringly phrased?) AP report gave me cause for concern. I really do not understand how, from a height of 4-6 miles, the operators of the Prowler’s electronic jamming equipment can undertake anything like the required degree of discrimination between military and civilian targets and take anything like the steps that would be required to avoid or minimize harm to civilians.
Can any readers who understand more about electronic warfare provide us with any more details or information that might allay (or sustain) my concern in this regard? Or, can anyone steer me to accounts that Iraqis or others may have written about any effects that these floods of electromagnetic energy have on their lives at ground level?
Condi Rice’s “Uniquely American Realism”
On Thursday, June 7, Secretary Rice gave a a speech at the Economic Club of New York that was the most sustained expression of her view of the world that we have seen any time since she became a significant force in national policy-making, back in January 2001.
Many people who have known her in the past have described her as “a conscientious staff person” and given her other damning-with-faint-praise accolades like that. But the statement of her view of the US’s role in world politics that she produced Thursday is worthy of some close study. Especially since, with Dick Cheney’s star in the decline and the President himself daily losing his political mojo, her position in national security decisionmaking is becoming stronger and stronger. (Stronger and stronger within an administration that is becoming weaker and weaker, that is.)
So I have started annotating her speech. I’m afraid I haven’t finished doing it yet. But since I’ll be busy for the next couple of days, I thought I would get this much up onto the blog, and try to get around to the rest later. (By the way, if readers would like to suggest their own annotations for some of the paras I haven’t yet gotten around to, just put that in a comment here and note the number of the paragraph.)
40 years ago: Attack on the Liberty
Forty years ago today, Israeli navy and air force units maintained a two-hour-long assault against a ship in international waters in the Eastern Mediterranean belonging to another country’s navy. The assault included attacks with napalm, and the machine-gunning of three life rafts launched in an attempt to float the most seriously wounded sailors to some safety. (This latter being clearly a war crime.)
The assailants killed 34 of the other country’s sailors and injured 172 more. Only 30 percent of the sailors on the targeted ship escaped injury, and it was only through heroic efforts that those survivors were able to keep the ship afloat at all and thus avoid considerable further loss of life.
The nationality of the targeted ship? It was a US Navy vessel.
If the assailants had belonged to just about any other country than Israel, imagine the uproar that would have followed within the US political system!
Today, 40 years after Israel’s attack on the USS Liberty, the San Diego Union-Tribune carries an anguished, very thought-provoking op-ed contribution on the affair from Ward Boston, Jr., a former naval aviator and FBI agent who served as chief counsel to the Court of Inquiry that the US Navy ordered into the attack.
Boston notes that though June 8, 1967 was a “sunny, clear day” the government of Israel claimed that this two-hour assault was “an accident.”
Well, if the attack had taken the form of the landing on the ship of a single missile, or perhaps even a small number of missiles, you could make that claim with a straight face? (As the Israelis did in 1996, when they claimed that their shelling of the UN compound in Qana, Lebanon, had been an “accident.”)
But a sustained, two-hour-long assault that was coordinated between the two very different Israeli combat arms– an accident??
Boston writes:
- I know from personal conversations with the late Adm. Isaac C. Kidd – president of the Court of Inquiry – that President Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara ordered him to conclude that the attack was a case of “mistaken identity.”
Again, given the weather conditions, this seems like an inherently implausible claim.
Boston wrote that as part of their enquiry he and Adm. Kidd,
- boarded the crippled ship at sea and interviewed survivors. The evidence was clear. We both believed with certainty that this attack was a deliberate effort to sink an American ship and murder its entire crew.
I am certain the Israeli pilots and commanders who had ordered the attack knew the ship was American. I saw the bullet-riddled American flag that had been raised by the crew after their first flag had been shot down completely. I heard testimony that made it clear the Israelis intended there be no survivors. Not only did they attack with napalm, gunfire and missiles, Israeli torpedo boats machine-gunned at close range three life rafts that had been launched in an attempt to save the most seriously wounded.
He writes, “I am outraged at the efforts of Israel’s apologists to claim this attack was a case of ‘mistaken identity.'” He also gives several details about how the various levels of ther US government carried out their politically motivated cover-up of the findings of the professional, technical investigation that he had helped to lead…
He writes,
- I join the survivors in their call for an honest inquiry. Why is there no room to question Israel – even when it kills Americans – in the halls of Congress?
Let the survivors testify. Let me testify. Let former intelligence officers testify that they received real-time Hebrew translations of Israeli commanders instructing their pilots to sink “the American ship.”
Surely uncovering the truth about what happened to American servicemen in a bloody attack is more important than protecting Israel. And surely 40 years is long enough to wait.
The ensuing cover-up has haunted us for 40 years. What does it imply for our national security, not to mention our ability to honestly broker peace in the Middle East, when we cannot question Israel’s actions – even when they kill Americans?
The survivors of the USS Liberty have been muzzled for a long, long time. Now let’s see if any other major media outlets will take up this story– and even more importantly, let us see if any US political figures will join the call for an honest commission of inquiry that will tell the whole truth about what happened on that sunny day 40 years ago today.
Then, those responsible for organizing and participating in this attack should be held to just as much account as any other body that knowingly and systematically carries out attacks on US forces.
The attempts by Israel’s supporters in the US to muzzle public consideration and discussion of some of the more sordid aspects of Israel’s policy over the decades have gone far too long for this to be a healthy part of the US political scene. The success of these muzzling (and self-muzzling) efforts have distorted both the US’s relationship with Israel, and the terms of the US’s general engagement with the world, in a way that has helped nobody…. certainly not the US citizenry!
I see that the survivors of the attack on the Liberty are asking for an official US investigation into the war crimes committed against US military personnel on June 8, 1967. Who in the US political system will be courageous enough to support their campaign?