Author: Helena

Greek-Turkish humanitarian project in Cyprus

The strategic stance of Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has for some years now been one of “zero problems with our neighbors”. And since those neighbors include a number with which Turkey previously had longstanding quarrels and conflicts, the AKP government, in power since 2002, has worked hard to find ways to de-escalate and resolve those conflicts.
I’ve blogged quite a lot over the past 14 months about Turkey’s rapprochement with neighbor Syria. And more recently, that outreach has been extended even further, into the project for a visa-less free trade zone involving Turkey, Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon.
The present Turkish government has also been working to resolve Ankara’s longstanding tensions with Armenia, Greece, and Greek Cyprus. Today’s Zaman has an intriguing article on its website about the Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus, a project in which some 40 Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots work together to locate and exhume as many as possible of the 2,000 people who were killed or went missing during the 1974 war between the two sides. (That war also involved the Turkish military, which intervened after the island’s ethnic-Greek leaders unilaterally announced a Union– Enosis– with Greece.)
TZ also, today, carries this short item about Education Minister Nimet Çubukçu having recently visited graduation ceremonies in private Greek-language and Armenian-language elementary and high schools in Istanbul. The article said she was, “the first education minister to have paid a visit to an Armenian school in the history of the Turkish Republic.”
Regarding the work of the Committee on Missing Persons (CMP) in Cyprus, that TZ feature article notes that the CMP’s work has been supported by the governments of both Turkey and Greece. The CMP has been able since 2006 to work on both sides of the line that has divided Cyprus since 1974.
The article gives these details:

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Patten on Europe’s role

Former British diplomatic heavyweight Chris Patten had an important piece on the Guardian website yesterday. He was arguing for a considerably more robust EU role in Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking.
He writes,

    the EU has too often since taken the view that only Washington really drives things forward. Yet what should the EU do when American policy is going nowhere? Not surprisingly, the secretary-general of the Arab League called the so-called quartet (the EU, US, UN and Russia), which supervised the non-implementation of the road map for peace, “the quartet sans trois”.
    It is true that the US has the primary external role in the region, and that any peace settlement will require Israel’s willing agreement. But none of this justifies the EU’s nervous self-effacement. This removes much of the political price the US should pay when it does nothing or too little. It gives Israel carte blanche. It damages Europe’s relationship with its alleged partners in the Union for the Mediterranean, and makes Europe complicit in outrageous and illegal acts.

He argues that one specific role the EU should play is in actively brokering a new inter-Palestinian agreement (in conjunction with Turkey and the Arab League.)
He also makes this important argument:

    Without Hamas there will not be a peace settlement. What we should require from Hamas is simple – a ceasefire, acceptance of the outcome of a peace process provided it is endorsed in a Palestinian referendum, and help in securing the release of Corporal Shalit. To insist that they accept all past agreements is bizarre when no such requirement is made of Israel. Look, for example, at settlement building.

This is the first politically significant (though still non-governmental) voice I have heard from Europe arguing that the EU should abandon the three ironclad “conditions” it has until now placed– at the behest of the US– on any Palestinian unity government that might include Hamas.
Patten concludes thus:

    The present situation is awful for the Palestinians, denied a decent life in their own country, bad for Israel and its prospects for a peaceful future and wretched for relations between the US and EU on the one hand and the Islamic world on the other. It is time for Europe to go back to what it said 30 years ago [in the 1980 Venice Declaration, which was very rapidly brushed aside by Washington] and act with real rather than rhetorical courage.

As someone with a European background, I agree heartily with everything Patten says here. However, to be honest, I don’t see the European nations getting their act together to “act with real courage” any time soon. The “European idea” has been a big disappointment in all geopolitical respects except the transformation of the Franco-German relationship. And today, the European nations are grappling with a financial crisis that calls into question the basic underpinnings of the entire “European” project. It is therefore very hard to see why, at a time of such internal stress and challenge, any European leaders might feel moved to cast aside the “nervous self-effacement” that has, as Patten wrote, been the EU’s modus operandi in Arab-Israeli affairs for most of the past 30 years. (I hope I might be proved wrong.)

Great reporting on effects of siege in Gaza

John Lyons of The Australian has a great report in tomorrow’s paper about the nuts and bolts of how Israel’s siege kills the most vulnerable of Gaza’s citizens.
He chronicles the political problems that prevent five-day-old Seraj Abu Jarad from getting the prostaglandin that he needs to survive:

    IT’S hard watching a baby slowly die. He’s only five days old and you can see how hard his little chest is thumping. He seems to be fighting to stay alive.
    It’s 9.24 on Wednesday morning this week and he has only 36 minutes of guaranteed life left.
    After that, he’s on his own. He’s got a heart problem and needs a medication that would be available in any hospital in Australia.
    Gaza doesn’t have any more prostaglandin. It can’t get through Israel’s and Egypt’s blockade of the strip of land…
    Another baby near him is dying too. Her name is Noor Taha and she’s 34 days old. Both her kidneys are failing and doctors need to do a CT scan before they know exactly how to treat her, but a tube has broken on the CT machine and the hospital hasn’t been able to get the tubes into Gaza.
    Unlike Seraj Abu Jarad, Noor Taha’s cloudy little eyes are open as she tries to focus.
    One doctor says her condition is critical, very bad. The hospital cannot send a request for her to enter Israel until it has an accurate diagnosis and it cannot do that without a CT machine. So Noor Taha is dying, too.
    Another girl, aged nine, may die as well. Because of a lack of equipment, her lymphoma was not diagnosed early enough for effective intervention.
    Once it was diagnosed, the hospital tried to get her into Israel for treatment of a disease that is usually manageable.
    It took seven months for Israel and the Palestinian Authority [in Ramallah] to process her paperwork, during which time the tumour grew and spread into her lungs…

Lyons tries to apportion the blame for these children’s suffering, as follows:

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Washington abandons Gaza tunnel-blocking system?

Maan had a little story June 8 noting the departure of what were apparently the last of the US army engineers who’ve been trying to install a system along Egypt’s border with Gaza to block the hundreds of tunnels used to get supplies in and out of Gaza.
The story, which is attributed to un-named “Egyptian officials” gave some intriguing systems about how the system was supposed to work. First off, once the work started in early 2009, the Americans tried to bury a steel wall 30 meters (93 feet) underground along the 13.5-kilometer length of the border. However, the Maan report said,

    more than 450 estimated tunnels already [had] cut through the wall. Officials said tunnel owners paid some 10,000 US dollars to have welders spend days in the tunnels and cut through the wall.

So then the Americans turned to a very clunky Plan B:

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Chinese official discusses Afghanistan

Khaleej Times has an interesting interview today with Sun Weidong, Deputy Director General of the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s Asian Department.
It’s a particularly timely interview because Afghanistan has been high on the agenda of the annual summit of the Chinese-hosted Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). The SCO includes China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan and has among its observer-states Mongolia, Pakistan, Iran and India.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai was invited to attend the meeting, but it’s not clear whether he did so.
People’s Daily reports that the summit repeated its earlier call for the U.N. to play a greater role in Afghanistan and expressed the belief that believed “‘military means alone’ cannot solve the country’s problems.”
Sun expanded on that latter point in his interview with the Khaleej Times. He noted– as was also made clear in the SCO summit statement– that China and all of Afghanistan’s other neighbors have been experiencing great problems from the inflow of drugs to their countries from Afghanistan.
Here is some of what Sun said about political initiatives in Afghanistan, the links between the situation there and the challenges China faces from the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), and the limited utility of military power:

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Washington’s bizarre stance on flotilla raid investigation

Haaretz is now reporting that,

    Israel and the United States agreed Thursday on the nature of the Israeli investigative committee that will look into the events surrounding the takeover of the Gaza-bound aid flotilla nearly two weeks ago.

This is so bizarre and poses such a threat to the American people’s true interests that I don’t know where to begin, in commenting.
The investigative committee, due to have its establishment announced in Israel today, will be an Israeli body. Haaretz says it will be headed by a retired Israeli High Court judge and the other members will include “jurists specializing in international law as well as two observers – one American and the other European.”
Haaretz reports that,

    Contacts with the United States on forming the panel have been handled by the prime minister himself and Defense Minister Ehud Barak. Their main contact has been U.S. Vice President Joe Biden. It was the Americans who proposed the nature of the committee – similar to the one that investigated the sinking of a South Korean ship by the North Koreans.

What on earth do Biden and his boss think they are doing here?
Why don’t they support an international commission of inquiry under the aegis of the United Nations?
Why do they want to give any overt American “blessing” to this Israeli venture, whose proceedings and results will surely not satisfy any of the other governments of the world that– like the U.S.– had nationals aboard the flotilla boats who now have serious claims to raise against Israel for its act of piracy on the high seas?
And yes, of course those other governments include Turkey, which along with the U.S. were the only two countries to have citizens murdered during the raid. Some 30-plus other countries, however, had citizens who were wounded (in many cases grievously), or were kidnapped on the high seas and mistreated by Israel, and had their private property, including significant amounts of expensive camera and recording equipment, stolen by Israel.
Clearly, this case is not going to go away. An all-Israeli, or Israeli-US investigation will not be trusted by many (if any) other governments– either to uncover all the facts of the matter, or to give them a fair reading in the light of international law.
Turkey is just one of the many aggrieved countries that is a close military ally of the United States and a member of NATO. Indeed, Turkey has military forces operating inside Afghanistan alongside American forces.
Why on earth would Washington want to jeopardize its relationship with Turkey and these other important allies at a time when NATO is in such a perilous position in the complex, overwhelmingly Muslim land of Afghanistan?
In the past few days, a gang of Israeli apologists around the world has cranked up an extremely sleazy campaign against Turkey. (E.g. here, or even Steven Cook, here.) This is related both to Turkey’s vote against the Security Council sanctions resolution against Iran, and to the role the Turkish government has already played in demanding justice for its citizens who were murdered, maimed, kidnapped, and robbed by the Israeli military. One big theme of the campaigns has been the idea that Turkey (population 74 million) has been “getting uppity” and needs to “know its place”, etc. Another has been a more directly anti-Muslim argument.
Obama and Biden’s decision to back Israel to the hilt over the flotilla murders will simply– and quite unnecessarily– exacerbate anti-American tensions around the world.
In his recent National Security Strategy document, Obama called for strengthening international institutions, international alliances, and the international rule of law.
The guy gives a great speech. (The first great speech he gave as president outside the U.S. was in Ankara, Turkey, in the spring of 2009.)
But no-one out “here” in the rest of the world is satisfied with speeches any more. They are looking at his actions.

Flotilla: Sweden’s Bildt and other international dimensions

I’m traveling. No time to blog properly. In the meantime, here is an important-looking item:
Swedish FM Carl Bildt says Israel needs the international community to help it get out of the mess it brought upon itself with the flotilla raid. He also says he’s pretty sure the raid was illegal and that Sweden is a strong believer in upholding international law.
This article in TZ has details on the proposal UN Sec-Gen Ban delivered to Turkey and Israel on Saturday. It would be for a five-member investigation commission headed by former New Zealand PM Geoffrey Palmer, who’s an expert in maritime law. Ban himself would choose the other two members, one of whom would almost certainly be American. Israeli PM Netanyahu has turned the proposal down flat.
Last week, the Obama administration’s position was that it wanted to have the Israelis invesitage themselves (!)– but also to have some international presence, which they suggested should be American, involved in the investigation as well.
I cannot imagine what they were thinking! Such an investigation would be an absolute tar-baby for the U.S., because it would have to play some role in making the determination whether to accept Israel’s or Turkey’s view of events.
Bildt’s argument, that the international community should run the investigation, is a far more powerful one.
Turkey’s government is also, importantly, urging that the need for a thorough investigation should not be used as an excuse for delay and for sweeping the matter under the rug. They have urged– and I think Ban has agreed– that the investigation should be completed within two months.
International fallout from the flotilla massacre continues to rock a number of international forums. Right now, Turkey is hosting a summit meeting of the 20-member Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA), of which Israel and various significant big Asian powers are members. Syria’s Pres. Bashar al-Asad is there as an invited guest. Israel has sent only a low-level consular official, fearing a torrent of post-raid criticism if any significant national leader took part.
On Wednesday, Arab League Foreign Ministers will be in İstanbul for the Turkish-Arab Cooperation Forum. The Organization of the Islamic Conference has already been holding a meeting in Saudi Arabia, at which the flotilla raid has been, not surprisingly, a huge issue.
Carl Bildt, in his interview with TZ, said the EU would consider tackling the issue further in its upcoming summit meeting, scheduled for Brussels on June 17. The report also noted this:

    Bildt said this is an international diplomatic crisis, not an issue between two or three countries. “We are still in crisis mode and interviewing our citizens who participated in this aid convoy,” he said, adding that his government is asking for the return of the personal belongings of its citizens seized by the Israeli police. Bildt said 11 Swedish citizens, including a member of parliament from the Green Party, joined the aid flotilla.

I think he’s right. This is certainly not just an issue between Turkey and Israel.

IDF Hasbara does Keystone Cops

Yesterday, or was it Thursday, the IDF’s disinformation (hasbara) units released a Youtube clip with audio, allegedly recorded in the leadup to Monday’s murderous assault on the Mavi Marmara, in which someone from the Turkish ship was supposedly telling the Israeli assailants to “Go back to Auschwitz!” etc.
Turns out it was doctored.
Jared Malsin has the story here.
Today, in response to persistent questioning from the fearless Max Blumenthal, the IDF spokespeople issued a revised version of the audio. You can find both versions at Jared’s blog post there.
Jared is still not satisfied that the “new” version of the audio that the IDF issued today has not been doctored.
Why should anyone believe anything the IDF has to say about this matter??
In particular, it’s imperative that no-one in the so-called “international community” let the Israelis get away with doing their own “investigation” of the whole piracy incident.
Some aspects of this botched attempt at hasbara intrigue me, however. It used to be the case that people in the west had a lot of admiration for the deftness of the “information operations” (IO) with which Israel always accompanied its warfighting. But now it seems the people who run the IDF’s hasbara (IO) units don’t really give a damn about the “quality” or believability of their work. Have they become arrogant and lazy? Perhaps.
Of course, it is also important to see that nowadays these units are being actively challenged on the accuracy and credibility of their statements and other IO products by dedicated young journos like Blumenthal. But where have all the “great and good” of the MSM’s correspondents been all this time? Why were they not expending the energy and shoe-leather required to check up on these things?
Maybe they became arrogant and lazy, too. Or maybe they’ve been so busy guarding their sacred “access” to Israeli decisionmakers that they didn’t want to rock the boat by questioning the IO people. Or maybe they just have such deep gut sympathy for Israel that they wouldn’t even dream of rocking the boat.
Israel, of course, has been doing a whole lot more to boats in international waters than just rocking them.
Update 5:50 pm I just listened to the whole of the allegedly “unedited” tape released today by the IDF. It does not contain the Auschwitz remark anywhere. How did that get in??
There are also huge new questions about the authenticity of even this tape. Jared now has an update in which Huwaida Arraf, the American-accented woman whose voice is heard clearly on the tape communicating on behalf of the Freedom Flotilla, says she was by the radio the whole time on Monday and she never heard most of these exchanges, and never on this occasion made the remark recorded there about “Gaza Port”– though she says she may have said that on the radio during a previous Freedom Flotilla action…
Bottom line: No, absolutely no-one should trust the Israelis to “investigate” themselves over the flotilla murders.

See the racist hate in today’s Israel

The present era in Israel is one in many members of the Jewish majority are expressing anti-Arab race-hate more openly and more frequently than ever before. But there are also courageous Israelis– Jewish and Palestinian– who try to counter this trend.
See this film clip shot by Ashira Ramdan, who went with a group of Israeli leftists to mount a counter-protest against an extreme nationalist gathering in Ashdod.
Ashira is amazing there: Calm, courageous, principled. Her assailants– not so, at all.