I’m back. Here’s a link to my CSM piece of Oct. 9th. In it I argue that if Israelis are unwilling to provide the Palestinians with the territorial/jurisdictional basis for a viable independent state alongside Israel, then perhaps the only acceptable outcome would be to have a unitary, one-person-one-vote system in the whole area of Mandate-era Palestine.
I’ve received some interesting reactions to this suggestion. It is not, of course, original, having already been articulated in recent times by Sari Nusseibeh, Meron Benvenisti, and many others. (Including, in the New York Review of Books by Tony Judt.)
Another wrinkle on this is that just after my piece appeared came the news of Yasser Abed Rabbo and Yossi Beilin’s success at shepherding their “citizens’ diplomacy” venture of describing a framework for a final outcome in a two-state context that could win support from the people in both national comunities.
I think theirs is an a wonderful approach! The idea of having substantial citizen groups on both suides of the lines working together on this– and each, then, going back to its home community to win support for their vision– is great.
And if, moreover, they succeed in changing the dynamics in both communities from one of hopelessness, dread, and fear to one of hope and a sense of possibility and reasonableness– then that is exactly what needs to happen!!
In the Ha’Aretz piece on the Beilin-Abed-Rabbo project, Beilin is quoted as saying of the project’s many critics on the Israeli right– including, of course, from an infuriated Israeli government– that: “I know that they’ll say this is a bad agreement, that we caved in and gave away everything. But one thing they won’t be able to say: that there is no partner [for an agreement].”
That is certainly the case. Yasser Abed Rabbo is a very well-connected former (and present?) PA minister who still has very good relations with Yasser Arafat, who has given the venture his approval. YAR has won significant support for the project from other significant figures in the Palestinian movement, including some leaders of the hardline, Fateh-linked “Tanzim” organization. (Actually, “tanzim” means “organization.”)
On the Israeli side, meanwhile, Beilin is also a former government minister. His role in this project has the support of a number of Labor MKs including Amram Mitzna, Avraham Burg, Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, and Yuli Tamir; a number of Meretz MKs including Haim Oron (Meretz); former MK Nehama Ronen; Brigadier General (reserve) Giora Inbar, and author Amos Oz.
It’s worth noting, too, that the Swiss government seems to be ready to host the final announcing/publication of what is already being called the “Geneva Accord”, and that the project received financial backing from a number of governments around the world but NOT, notably, the US government.
What is different about this venture as opposed to the ill-fated “Oslo Accords” of september 1993? Mainly–and here’s the source for hope in it–that it delineates what the the final outcome of the Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiation would look like– whereas Oslo only defined an set of interim phases and, at the Israeli side’s insistence, still left the final outcome undefined.
Over the ten years since the conclusion of the Oslo Accords, all of Israel’s governments have continued to alter the facts on the ground, implanting hundreds of thousands of additional israeli settlers into East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank. So continuing to chase after ever smaller-scale and ever more elusive “interim” arrangements, as the moribund “Roadmap” does just continues to postpone the final day of reaching peace while allowing Israel’s territorial maximalists to continue with their settlement-building project…
As for the ‘one-state’ outcome, I am not personally wedded to either it or the two-state outcome. Indeed, I think that is totally not a decision for outsiders to make. But I don’t think we should ignore the idea of the one-state outcome. In Israel/Palestine– as in South Africa– it could be an exciting possibility.
Author: Helena
Bad week for a break, I know
What a week, already! The big suicide bomb in Haifa; Sharon launches a provoocative attack against Syria– and then, to cap that, the Prez of the World says he was quite right to do it…
So much I should be writing about… Also, two really thought-provoking stories in the NYT about the death penalty back on Monday, and another piece abvout various non-African companies moving in on the continent to get its people hooked on gambling…
And here I am, in Brooklyn, deeply engaged in the last throes of helping my daughter Leila prepare her wedding… It’s been fun, but also a lot of running around.
I’ll be back in regular commentator/essayist mode early next week. Hey, maybe I can even write a lyrical post or two about the joys of wedding planning. (We checked out the midtown-Manhattan Flower District yesterday: that was great experience. We’ll go in early Friday a.m. to buy the flowers.)
Also, along the way, I wrote a column for my regular slot in the CSM: it’ll be in Thursday’s paper (Oct. 9). Check it out if you can, at www.csmonitor.com.
Jailed CO Stephen Funk: update
Thanks to all JWN readers who responded to the earlier appeal from Chuck Fager, director of Quaker House in fayetteville, North Carolina, for folks to write to jailed conscientious objector Steven Funk. Funk, a gay man from California, has been sent to the brig at Camp Lejeune in NC, where he knows almost nobody.
Chuck says that Funk has really appreciated all the letters he’s received, and hasn’t been able to reply to all of them. He’s asking folks to keep the letters flowing there for the rest of Funk’s term. For more info, and some advice from Chuck on how your help can be most effective, read on…
What Condi told Chalocchio
According to the L.A. Times Condi met Chaolocchio in NYC in late Sept., and then again in DC September 30:
- “She was instructed to tell him to behave. She stressed how unhelpful it was for Iraqis to be enunciating positions that were personally embarrassing for the president, who was the strongest advocate of a new regime in Baghdad,” said a senior U.S. official. “She was blunt.”
That story, by Robin Wright and Maggie Farley, ran in the LAT yesterday.
(Thanks to Juan Cole for pointing me to that piece. Robin W, who has a great, decades-long track record of reporting and writing about Iran and Iraq, has another good story in the LAT today, saying that Iran is offering some reconstruction aid to Iraq. That development was, of course, totally predictable– indeed, actually predicted long ago by yrs truly. Plus, it has considerable weight of sheer logistical/political logic behind it.)
Anyway, back to the story on Chalocchio, Condi and the UN: it notes that when Chalo gave a long address at the UN Thursday, he was actually not any more the “President” of the Iraqi Governing Council, whose presidency had rotated away from him Oct. 1.
It also has an interesting quote or two from former Chalocchio boosters close to the administration who articulated their sense that they had been seriously let down by him. (Duh! Ask hundreds of thousands of small Jordanian investors who felt the same way 20 years ago when his so-called “Petra Bank” ran away with their life savings… )
The story quotes Henri Barkey, a well-connected former State Dept staffer who, it says, once worked with Chalo, as now saying,
- He didn’t deliver. Once we got into Iraq, intelligence provided– whether on weapons of mass destruction or other issues– could be tested. We began to realize that all these things he was telling us were not exactly correct.
Transatlantic Differences
… No, I’m not talking political differences here. I’m talking political culture. Bill (“the spouse”) and I are coming up to 20 years of a transatlantic marriage. It took us a few years to figure out that when we talked about the role of “race” in society, we were talking about different things. (Americans construe “race” largely in terms of skin color– a legacy of the role of slavery, I guess. But in Britain, it’s construed much more along the lines of “national group” or whatever– the concept for which US citizens now use the term “ethnicity”.)
Actually, once we figured that out, it became easier to see the “Zionism is racism” resolution at the UN came to spark such hot controversy. Basically, people east and west of the Atlantic were talking about different things…
So here’s another interesting difference. On the whole bottom half of page A11 of today’s New York Times is an ad placed by a group of communities in the Outer Banks region of North Carolina. That region, which is heavily dependent on tourism, got very badly hit by the recent hurricane here, so the communities were advertising to urge tourists and investors to come back as soon as possible. “While the storm shifted our dunes and reshaped our coastline, she hasn’t changed the resiliency of the people of the Outer Banks,” etc., etc.
And then, the ad copy gets to waxing rapturous about why it’s important “to preserve this coastal destination for our children’s children” and talk about the “rich cultural and historical heritage for which we’ve become known.” The prime example they give of the latter? “After all, colonial settlers chose our islands to start a brave new life on the cusp of a new worold.”
Excuse me? We extol “colonial settlers” and their historical role?
For Europeans, the whole role of “colonial settlers” in their nation’s histories is an intense embarrassment– terrifically nineteenth century.
But not here, it seems.
Oh, and did I mention what had drawn me to p. A11 in the first place? Most of the top of the page is given over to a really depressing news acount of the Israeli government’s plan to build 600 new homes in three (highly illegal) settlements in the West Bank.
Colonial settlerism in action!
War Profiteering Hall of Infamy
“One well-stocked 7-11 could knock out 30 Iraqi stores; a WalMart could take over the country,” exults one of the partners in New Bridge Strategies in a good round-up article in yesterday’s Washington Post.
NBS is the “consulting” firm hastily put together by well-connected Republican lobbyists. Their website promises that:
- The opportunities evolving in Iraq today are of such an unprecedented nature and scope that no other existing firm has the necessary skills and experience to be effective both in the United States and on the ground in Iraq.
If you go to the site, click on the “Bios” section and learn about all these lovely people…
Well, as I said in the handy how-to guide I put into a post here a few days ago, on how to run a successful colonial empire, Step 2 included: “Pauperize the ‘native’ population as fast as you can by destroying their ‘native’ economy.”
Seems NBS is doing well, following my simple 5-step program. I think “knocking out 30 Iraqi stores” for each 7-11 foisted onto the native population would count as part of Step 2, don’t you?
The WP piece, by Thomas B. Edsall and Juliet Eilperin, notes that many NSB principals are also involved in a security company called Diligence -Iraq that provides physical protection for “companies and for corporate leaders visiting the country.” Amazing, Diligence is already reporting turning a profit…
How does that work again?
The general state of insecurity in public spaces throughout much of the country is so grave that women dare not go out of their homes for fear of being abducted, raped, or otherwise harrassed. Much of the country’s public space is still like the OK-Corrall. Under the Geneva Conventions, the “occupying power”– that is, the aptly named USUK coalition–has the responsibility for ensuring public order… But the Bush administration, which is so hand-in-glove with all these people in NSB and Diligence, decided it could get along with “occupation lite” and didn’t put nearly enough boots on the ground to meet their obligations re public security…
So in steps “Diligence”! Does it provide pro-bono services so that Iraqi women can go to school, to their jobs, or to the market? You gotta be kidding! They provide highly-priced services to corporate exex who are eager to visit to go and scout out prospects for those 7-11s and those WalMarts…
So there are two nominations for the Hall of Infamy. Paul Krugman, in one of his recent, excellent columns in the NYT, recalled that when the Truman Administration set aside some very huge amounts of $$ to invest in the Marshall Plan in Europe, he was at great pains to ensure that there was no possibility of political favoritism being employed in the awarding of the contracts. (Plus, I seem to recall, much of the thrust then was to empower European companies to pull themselves back together and do much of the work.)
Well, that was then and now is now. It’s sick, it’s disgusting, and it signals a massive collapse in public morals in this country.
Chal-occhio cuts his strings
As if it isn’t bad enough for the poor Bush administration that US soldiers keep getting killed in Iraq, that Colin Powell can’t persuade the balky furrners to agree to serve as cannon-fodder for the US occupation forces, that someone snitched on Karl Rove or whoever else it was that outed Joe Wilson’s wife, that the ungrateful US public seems no longer to be swooning at every mention of W’s name– but what else has to go and happen?? Now, well-tuned puppet Ahmed Chalabi has cut his strings and seems to be taking on a life of his own, independent of his creator!!
Don’t you just hate it when that happens?
There was Chalocchio, just the other day, schmoozing at the UN with the French, and agreeing with them–against the Bushies– that the CPA (a.k.a. the Condesecending and Patronizing Americans) should hand over power to the “Interim Governing Council” on a speedy schedule.
And there he was yesterday, schmoozing on Capitol Hill with the congressional Democrats, and agreeing with them–against the Bushies– that the CPA certainly shouldn’t just be handing out non-competitive contracts to big, well-connected US conglomerates like Halliburton…
As you may know, I am not (to put it lightly) any great fan of Ahmed Chalabi. But even I have to recognize the guy’s political wiliness and sheer chutzpah. And it certainly couldn’t happen to a more fitting bunch of folks than this White House, and this Pentagon, to have their carefully-groomed puppet turn against them…
But don’t worry, readers. I still haven’t been snowed by old Chalocchio. I can still see that his nose is still ten times longer than anyone else’s.
Some truth-finding efforts in DC
At last! News that the US intelligence community is going back to re-evaluate the “information” it bought from Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congres in the months and years leading up to the invasion of Iraq.
The initial reports don’t look good for Chalabi. The New York Times is reporting today that, “An internal assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency has concluded that most of the information provided by Iraqi defectors who were made available by the Iraqi National Congress was of little or no value, according to federal officials briefed on the arrangement.”
It’s significant that this piece is reported by Douglas Jehl, the Timesperson put onto the case after numerous questions were asked by the role of fellow Timesperson Judith Miller as a totally uncritical– nay, often overtly laudatory–conduit for much of Chalabi’s most blatant agitprop.
In what may have been designed as an indirect admission of this uncomfortable record, Jehl writes, “The Iraqi National Congress had made some of these defectors available to several news organizations, including The New York Times, which reported their allegations about prisoners and the country’s weapons program.”
Ah well, better late than never– both for the Times and, more importantly, for the DIA, which is the organization responsible for getting accurate defense info to US military commanders all around the world…
More power to the DIA folks’ elbows if they should decide to really go after the snake oil purveyed by Chalabi. But in addition to tracking down his many mis-statements and outright lies, they should also be looking at the broad nexus of people in the administration, so-called “think tanks”, and the US media which between them packaged Chalabi’s snake-oil into a political package that was designed to jerk the US public into supporting the war.
Part of this investigation could focus on the Halliburton alum (and continued beneficiary) Dick Cheney. And another whole part on Bombs-Away Don and some of hawkish advisors in the civilian part of the Pentagon.
By the way, some folks have been talking a bit recently about Under-Secretary of Defense Doug Feith and his relationship with a firm of lawyers/consultants who have been making a big pitch to get into Iraqi consulting “on the ground floor.”
If you go to the website of Feith’s old law firm, “Feith and Zell”, a.k.a. cutely FANDZ, you might think from the home-page that this is one big, well-extended international law firm with practices all around the globe. Click on “Participating attorneys”, however, and you see they have offices only in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. But the new Iraqi Governing Council is saying that for alol they’ll open their economy up to foreigners, still, they won’t be allowing deals with Israeli firms.
So how does Marc Zell hope to get his entree? Makes one wonder… Funny that he’s been starting up a bunch of new projects with Chalabi’s nephew…
More broadly, though, it’s great news that serious people in and around the US political class are starting to ask serious questions about the so-called “reasoning” that jerked the US into this war. The new questioning about the INC’s “intel” is one part of that– though I don’t necessarily expect it to get very far since the DIA report was given the Stephen Cambone, who as far as I know is a pro-war hatchet-person in his own right.
The other good investigation that’s opening up is opf course the one into Novak-gate— the questioning into who it was in the administration who told Novak that Amb. Joseph Wilson’s wife Valery is a CIA agent…
This one may well go pretty far, since the question of “outing” a CIA officer is something that folks on the right wing in this country have to take seriously. Plus Wilson– far from being intimidated or silenced by the threat made to his spouse’s career–seems intent to take this as far as he can. (One assumes, with her support.)
There are of course some superficial similarities with the David Kelly /Andrew Gilligan case in England. In both cases, you have a (probably highly placed) political operative seeking to silence and intimidate a “lower” member of the government bureaucracy by leaking the name of the latter to compliant folks in the media.
But in this case, it certainly doesn’t seem as if either Wilson or his wife seem as though they are going to be so intimidated and humilated that they follow David Kelly’s example and commit suicide. Instead, they are going to (well, he is going to) hang in there and fight this one. Excellent!
There are several reports, of course, that the leaker in chief was Karl Rove. Well, couldn’t happen to nicer guy.
Back to Africa (mentally, at least)
Finally! Last week I finished a writing project that has been hanging over me for many, many months. Then, I gave myself a quick treat by going to NYC for a surprise bridal shower for my daughter Leila. Then, I had to finish some other bits of writing– editing a contribution to a book on “Violence” that the Center for Research on Women at Barnard College is publishing soon, other smaller tasks. So, poor old Edward finally passed away yesterday. The poor guy. He was so brilliant, so insightful, and so frequently wearing his sense of deep psychological wounding right there on his sleeve.
And on Wednesday, I finally got back into writing about Africa.
It was such a deep, deep pleasure to pull out, arrange, and then start diving back into all the materials I have gathered on the Rwanda portion of my Africa project so far. Actually, formally speaking, the project is called the “Project on Violence and its Legacies” (the VAIL project), and you can see some background info about it if you click here.
What I’m doing right now, is a small part of it: rushing to meet an end-of-September deadline to write a long article about the trip I made to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha, Tanzania, last April.
I have so much great material– from that trip; from my research trip to rwanda last year; and from the three years of background reading that I’ve done on the topic so far. As I started to lay out some of my documents, reports etc on my desk yesterday, prior to starting the writing, I had a strong feeling that trying to get this article written is like a fisher-person fashioning the right shape net to throw over a large, unruly school of fish, and then throwing it before gently gently pulling the catch together into some shape on the shore.
ICTR is so interesting, and so little studied. I met some really remarkable people while I was there. One was a younger journalistic colleague called Gabi Gabiro, who gave me some invaluable help there. (Yo, Gabi, what’s up with you these days anyway?) Folks can read Gabi’s current great reporting from inside his native Rwanda if they check into the
Edward Said, RIP
It’s not easy being a lightning rod, I know. But he hung in there, proclaiming his values against all critics from all sides.
The most outrageous thing that anyone did to him was the pro-Israeli extremist agitator or agitators who went to great lengths to “disprove” that Edward had any legitimate links to Palestine. But I read a great piece someplace by the Israeli psychologist Benjamin Bet-Hallahmi who said it was truly ridiculous that any Jewish Israelis– who had come “back” to Israel from all over the world–should be the ones trying to besmirch Edward’s claims to his links with the land.
BBH was quite right!
My deep sympathies to Edward’s wife, his kids, his sisters, and the rest of his family. May he now rest in the peace that was so brutally denied to him for nearly all his life.