I had a really informative talk yesterday with Shelley Deane, a prof at Bowdoin College in Maine who’s one of the world’s leading “George Mitchell scholars.” An Irish citizen, Deane wrote her doctoral dissertation at LSE on Mitchell’s role in brokering Northern Ireland’s “Good Friday Agreement.” Right now, she has unique access to all the records of the commission he co-chaired with Warren Rudman, at the invitation of Pres. Clinton, to look into the causes of the Second Palestinian Intifada. Along the way, she has also done a lot of work on the general topic of “Paramilitaries to Parliamentaries” and other issues in complex peacemaking. (Check her publications list at the link above.)
Now, of course, Mitchell is in the hot seat as Barack Obama’s quick-off-the-blocks special envoy to the Middle East. It’s a task to which he brings his long experience as a US Senator (including a stint as Senate Majority Leader), his ultimately successful peace-brokering record in Northern Ireland, and the very granular experience of Israeli-Palestinian issues– and of its interaction with US politics at the highest levels– that he gained during his work on the Mitchell-Rudman Commission.
Deane said she’s identified several key of the personal qualities that have aided Mitchell’s approach to peace-brokering. The main ones are his persistence, his friendly and unflappable temperament, his commitment to building longterm relations of trust, his deep personal decency, and his very strong preference for approaches that inclusive, even-handed, and values-based. (My wording there, not always hers.)
She said that Mitchell’s approach is to create a “hyperbaric chamber– because when you’re in the depths of a conflict you can’t just rise to the surface immediately, or you’d ‘get the bends’. So you have to create this hyperbaric chamber, hopefully including all the relevant parties, as a safe place where relationships of trust can be built over time.”
She noted that he’d experienced many serious setbacks during his efforts in Northern Ireland, but had calmly persisted with the job nonetheless.
She said he places strong emphasis on trust and trustworthiness, and was upset though not thrown off balance by instances of Israeli “spoiler-leaking” that had occurred during Israeli-Palestinian discussions that had been intended to be kept quiet.
She talked quite a bit about the similarities she sees between Hamas and Northern Ireland’s Sinn Fein, including the strength of their internal discipline, their lack of corruption, and the fact that both organizations, by design, refused to establish a patronage- and fiefdom-based internal structure. But she also talked about the structural differences between the Northern Ireland situation and that in Israel/Palestine, including the fact that in Northern Ireland both blocs of major protagonists– the “Unionists” and the Sinn Fein/IRA– had important state systems behind them; and the situation there was not exactly one in which one protagonist was running a military occupation over the other. (The role of the British Army in Northern Ireland was much more nuanced than that; and anyway, the major reconciliation that needed to occur was between the opposing local forces, not between the entire indigenous population and a foreign occupation army.)
It strikes me this question of the structural differences between the two situations is one worth quite a lot more study. But I need to run now. (I’m going to a talk Jimmy Carter;s main Middle east person, Bob Paster, is giving about Hamas.)
More on all of this, later. However, the next few days look pretty busy for me…
Category: Obama presidency
Possible US military attack against Somalia? Not again!!
Steve Clemons and Bernhard of Moon of Alabama have both been writing about the possibility that the new Obama administration might launch some form of attack against ground targets in desperately war-torn Somalia.
Please God, no! Does no-one in this White House have a memory that stretches back to 1993, when a newly inaugurated Bill Clinton thought that– especially as a Democrat with a previous pro-peace record– he needed to “show some spine” and turn the US’s existing aid-protection mission in Somalia into a war-fighting “compellence” mission instead?
With disastrous effect.
Wikipedia reminds us (footnotes removed) that,
- On July 12, 1993, a United States-led operation was launched on what was believed to be a safe house in Mogadishu where members of [anti-US Somali political leader Mohamed Farah] Aidid’s Habar Gidir clan were supposedly meeting. In reality, elders of the clan, not gunmen, were meeting in the house. According to U.N. officials, the agenda, advertised in the local newspaper, was to discuss ways to peacefully resolve the conflict between Aidid and the multinational task force in Somalia, and perhaps even to remove Aidid as leader of the clan
During the 17-minute combat operation, U.S. Cobra attack helicopters fired 16 TOW missiles and thousands of 20-millimeter cannon rounds into the compound, killing 73 of the clan elders…
Some believe that this was a turning point in unifying Somalis against the U.S. and U.N. efforts in Somalia, as it unified many Somalis, including moderates and those opposed to the Habar Gidir.
Pres. Clinton’s childish and destructive “spine-demonstration” exercise in Somalia turned out very badly indeed for Somalia. As did the “compellence by proxy” mission that Pres. George W. Bush launched against the country in December 2006, using the Ethiopian invasion army as his proxy.
Clinton’s completely needless chest-baring exercise in Somalia also turned out very badly for the US. With Somali politics thrown into uproar after the July assault, by October the US military (and White House) had decided on another raid, this time to try to capture two key aides to Aidid from a house they were in, in Mogadishu. That raid, codenamed ‘Operation Gothic Serpent‘ was a complete and embarrassing fiasco. Two US helicopters were downed and there was a very serious lack of communication and coordination between US ground and heli-borne units– and also, between US units and the Pakistani and Malaysian troops who were supposed to be their allies in that nominally UN force. A total of 18 US servicemen– and many, many more Somalis– were killed. Clinton’s attempt to demonstrate US military capabilities and resolve was quickly abandoned as he turned back to using much more diplomatic means to try to de-escalate the Somali situation.
That mad, destructive, and completely avoidable firefight then became the subject of the book and movie “Black Hawk Down.”
Another consequence of Clinton’s childish attempt to “show US muscle” in Somalia in 1993 was that the US military (and Clinton) then became extremely casualty averse. To the extent that the following April, when Gen. Romeo Dallaire, commander of the UN’s small peacekeeping force in Rwanda, was crying out for reinforcements in the lead-up to and the early days of the genocide there, Clinton and Madeleine Albright worked actively at the UN to have Dallaire’s force completely disbanded, instead. Their “fear” was that even if there were no US units in the UN force in Rwanda, the US would somehow get sucked into it, and US troops might end up dying as they tried to save Rwandan lives.
(Actually, people who join an all-volunteer military like that in the US do so knowing full well that they might die on the job. That’s part of the deal. Also, Dallaire was able to hang onto a much-reduced skeleton force in Rwanda, which saved thousands of lives– though not nearly as many as it could have, if he’d been sent the reinforcements he’d begged for.)
The damaging legacy of “Gothic Serpent” lived on for many years, and in many different ways… both in Somalia and far beyond.
So please, please, President Obama, don’t even contemplate launching any kind of new military attack against Somalia– whether under the pretext of “fighting piracy” or any other pretext.
There are plenty of nonviolent ways to address any problems the international community faces in (and from the shores of) Somalia. Another war is not the answer. Plus, you have absolutely no need to “prove” anything, in a chest-thumping militaristic way. We elected you to solve problems, not create new ones; and most of us who elected you did so based on your promise to find nonviolent ways to resolve tricky conflicts, to de-escalate international tensions, and to build better relations of mutual respect and respect with the other nations of the world.
We certainly did not elect you to launch another US military attack against Somalia.
If there is a viable two-state solution in Israel/Palestine…
… then my judgment is that it will lie somewhere between the cluster of ‘plans’ that emerged between December 2000 and mid-2003– the ‘Clinton parameters’, ‘Geneva Accord‘, and ‘Nuseibeh-Ayalon Plan‘, which collectively we can call CGNA– and the Arab Peace Plan proposed by Saudi Arabia and adopted by the Arab League meeting in Beirut in 2002.
Probably, closer to the Arab Peace Plan.
The Arab Peace Plan is the only one of these that has the explicit support of (in this case, a large number of) the regional governments concerned, including the Palestinian Authority. The Clinton Parameters were then-Prez Clinton’s restatement of what he understood to be the points of convergence between negotiators from the then-outgoing Ehud Barak government in Israel and negotiators from Yasser Arafat’s PA. The Geneva Initiative was a well-meaning and well-funded Swiss project, undertaken after Ehud Barak fell from power, to get some of Israel’s out-of-government pro-peace actors to reach an agreement on details of a possible peace agreement with people very close to (still in office) Yasser Arafat. Nuseibeh-Ayalon was a similar attempt, focused on one pro-Arafat Palestinian and an Israeli figure who had previously been head of the Shin Beth.
One problem with all the CGNA projects is that they did not involve in any way either Hamas or that vast portion of the Palestinian nation (five million or more people– a number greater than that of Palestinians now living in the land of Mandate Palestine) who now live outside Mandate Palestine. These diaspora Palestinians include around 2.5 million UNRWA-registered refugees and an equally large or larger number of Palestinian exiles who still have demonstrable claims on property and national rights inside Palestine but who are not, for various reasons, registered refugees.
Another problem with the CGNA projects is that they completely ignored the requirements of international law, which underline the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by force, the complete illegality of a country planting its own settlers in land it holds only through belligerent military occupation, and the right of refugees to return to the land of their origin.
The problem with the Arab Peace Plan is that deliberations on it did not involve Israel’s seven million people, a good proportion of whom– though by no means all– could be expected to object to its international-law-based insistence on a complete Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines and the return of Palestinian refugees to their ancestral homes and farms.
Back in 2000, and perhaps as late as 2003, it looked plausible– sometimes even advisable– to many people in the US and elsewhere in the west to proceed with Israeli-Palestinian “peacemaking” according to a model that relied on US monopolization of the whole process. Given the immense power of the pro-Israel and indeed also the pro-settler lobbies within the US political system, this tipped the balance systematically against any fair and equal consideration of Palestinian rights, claims, and needs.
In April 2004, President Bush went further than any previous US president in bowing to the demands of the pro-settler lobby when he gave Israeli PM Sharon a letter saying,
- In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population centers [i.e. West bank settlement blocs], it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949 [i.e. the pre-1967 lines], and all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion. It is realistic to expect that any final status agreement will only be achieved on the basis of mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities.
Though this letter has often been seen as an important new “fact” in the Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy, it actually has no force of law whatever and is merely an exchange of views between two government leaders. Neither George W. Bush nor any other US president is, after all, the “boss of the whole world” or of the Middle East; and pronouncements by the US president have no particular force in international law, though they– as in the case of this letter– considerably complicate the efforts of diplomacy.
The entire US diplomacy from, or before, the time of the ill-fated Oslo Agreement of 1993 until now has also been very centrally based on “letting the two parties to this dispute work it out between themselves.” This approach built on a generally attractive opposition to the idea of imposed peace settlements. On the other hand, it built on and further propagated a myth that the two parties in question were in some way “equal” in stature and power. They never have been. Israel is a long-established state with its own power in the international system and its own army. The Palestinians are not a state but a dispersed and dispossessed people, some 3.8 million of whom now live directly under Israeli military occupation in the West Bank and Gaza.
How can representatives of the prisoners “negotiate” on an equal basis with jailers who currently hold them captive, controlling their economy and their every movement, and who have repeatedly shown their readiness to use blunt force to control, punish, and impose their will on the imprisoned people?
Those were the structural problems behind all the attempts (some well-meaning, some perhaps not) to reach simply a “bilateral” agreement between the two sides, with the US government playing merely a role to “facilitate” that negotiation. A more accurate description of that version of the US role would be that it was to protect that extremely inequitable encounter between the imprisoned and his jailer from any demands for equity or international legal standards that might come from outside the closed room of their “negotiation”.
Hamas and other Palestinian groups always rejected that model of negotiation. Many other actors in the Arab world, including many Arab governments, also always had strong reservations about it. The Arab Peace Initiative poses a distinct contrast to the CGNA approach, primarily because it is based on international law and makes no assumption about the special or authoritative value of highly inequitable “direct, bilateral negotiations.”
Meanwhile, in the five years since George Bush’s extremely arrogant letter of 2004, the US’s relative position within world politics has been tumbling. There still seems to be a working assumption in much of Washington that the US can continue to monopolize Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy, and apply ground-rules very similar to those it has used since 1993; but I believe that Pres. Obama and his advisers will rapidly discover that this is no longer the case.
A more truly international, UN-based and international law-based approach is the only sure way forward. (This could also, incidentally, provide Obama a sort of “Well, the UN made me do it” argument with which to counter the storm of internal criticism he’ll doubtless get from the pro-settler constituencies in both the Jewish and evangelical-Christian communities in this country, when and as he moves towards a more even-handed and law-based approach. After all, the US citizenry very evidently does need the active support of a range of other world powers at this point, if it is to avoid complete cataclysmic disasters happening to our badly over-stretched armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, or further, even worse additional disasters striking our already badly battered national economy.)
So what would an international-law-based outcome look like on the ground? Probably, something very much closer to the Arab Peace Initiative than to the CGNA plans. The 470,000 illegal settlers whom successive Israeli governments have planted into the occupied West Bank (including occupied East Jersualem) and the 17,000 it has planted into Golan will just have to deal with this. Perhaps some of them would be willing to stay where they are under Palestinian (or in Golan, Syrian) governance; and perhaps those new governments could help to arrange some sort-out for the complex property issues involved if some settlers did choose to stay. But extra-territorial civil status of any kind for these (former) settlers would be a quite unworkable can of worms. They have lived as completely privileged “Lords of the Land”, lording it arrogantly over their dispossessed Palestinian neighbors for far too long to allow any “special civil status” arrangement to be viable.
The vast majority of the settlers will simply have to go back and live in Israel proper; and the Palestinian (and Syrian) governments can then decide in a fair and inclusive way how the very lovely housing stock thereby released can be allocated among the many claimants from among their respective citizenries.
Special arrangements could be made to protect the access of religious pilgrims from the Jewish and other faiths to holy sites in East Jerusalem and elsewhere in the West Bank; and perhaps some special religious institutions could be built near those sites to service those pilgrims– but still under the national sovereignty of the rightful Palestinian government. The Muslim and Christian authorities in sovereign Palestine might also want to gain reciprocal access and facilities for pilgrims from Palestine who want to visit holy sites and graveyards inside Israel.
But one central point here is that, while claims for “pilgrimage access” and the facilities attendant thereto should always be considered with favor by national authorities, the idea that pilgrimage or any other kind of religious claims can provide any kind of property or sovereignty “right” in international law is plainly untenable… What would Rome look like now if every Catholic from anywhere who now is able to go and pray there thereby acquired a “right” to settle in Rome, instantly become an Italian citizen, and then take over Italy and make it into their own new kind of religio-national state?
Another central point: We need to be able to identify who the “primary stakeholders” to this conflict are. They are, surely, members of the following groups:
- a) All Israeli citizens, whether ethnically/religiously Jewish, or ethnically Palestinian/Arab;
b) All Palestinians, including both those who currently residents of the occupied West Bank and Gaza and those forced into exile from mandate Palestine over the past 61 years, and the descendants of those “original” exiles.
Each person who is a member of one of these groups should count as one, and none as more than one, to use the old Benthamite definition of human equality. And though many of the rest of us– American Christians, French Jews, Buddhists from China, or agnostics from Sweden– may have special feelings of affection (or even religious longing) for various aspects of life or objects of devotion in that area of Israel/Palestine, we are not actually, direct stakeholders at all. We are outsiders, and have no special claims.
There are around seven million Israeli citizens. And though the counting of Palestinians– especially those in the diaspora– is less precise, the total of Palestinian “insiders” and “outsiders” (but excluding those 1.2 ethnic Paestinians who are citizens of Israel) doubtless comes to more than 7.5 million, perhaps a lot more.
A person does not lose his claim to be a Palestinian if he leaves his home under situations of duress and is thereafter denied the right to return to it; and nor do his children lose the rights they would otherwise have had to and in their homeland, simply because their parents were refugees. This principle of the continuation of the property and political rights of refugees is well founded in international law. In the political settlements of recent years in South Africa, Bosnia, Cambodia, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, those exiled from their homeland were included in voting and referendum processes on an equal basis with those who were never thus exiled. Palestinians are no different.
(Hence, incidentally, I find the arguments of many of those who discuss the “demographic threat” that Israel now faces as the number of Palestinians in mandate Palestine starts to overtake the number of Jews residing there quite ill-directed. Everyone who uses those arguments has already assumed the longterm disfranchisement and marginalization of that majority of the Palestinian people forced to live in complete exile from their homeland for, in many cases, the past 60 years… Some of those exiles have found citizenship and a modicum of a decent life elsewhere. A troubling number have not. But whether they have or not, nothing has happened that annuls the full citizenship rights they have as part of the Palestinian citizenry.)
… So, to return to the main topic of this post, if there is a two-state solution in Palestinian/Israel that is viable at the all-important political level, then it will be one that lies somewhere between the CGNA guidelines and those of the Arab Peace Plan-cum-international law approach, but most likely closer to the latter than to the former.
I know a lot of people who put a lot of effort into the Geneva Initiative. And I know a lot of people for whom the name “Clinton” is itself (fairly inexplicably to me) quite golden. But I think the advocates of these two approaches, and of Nuseibeh-Ayalon, need to understand that their approaches were centrally flawed because they so deeply excluded and marginalized the claims of the Palestinian exiles and of international law. I urge everyone who worked hard on behalf of any of the CGNA plans now to work just as hard promoting the Arab Plan.
My gut sense is that it will be extremely hard, if not impossible, for all, or indeed, for many at all, the claims of the Palestinian refugees to their lands and homes in Israel to be met. (And the provision of UN GA resolution 194 which detailed that right of return also prescribed that the returnees should live peaceably in their homes under the prevailing government, which might not be easy for them to accept, anyway.) But the needs of most of the refugees could surely be sufficiently met through some combination of compensation for properties lost and an expression of remorse from government authorities in Israel for the harm caused in the fighting of 1947-49.
Meantime, it is the needs and claims for political and other forms of inclusion of that vast body of the Palestinian refugees who are also exiles from historic Palestine that now need urgently to be brought back into the peacemaking agenda. If their needs and claims can be sufficiently met within the contours of a politically robust Palestinian state, then a two-state solution can still– not without difficulty– be salvaged.
But this needs to start happening very soon indeed. In this JWN post yesterday I outlined the seven important steps that President Obama should take, to get us on speedily on the path to this.
If a two-state solution cannot be salvaged, then the only alternative– down the road– will be an inclusive, South-Africa-style, one-state solution within Mandate Palestine. But that outcome will be far harder, and more damaging, for the region to get to than the presently offered road to a workable two-state outcome. It would involve, most likely, regionwide turmoil and upheaval on a scale we have not seen yet, that would directly threaten supply lines vital to the US and other world powers, and also the peace and security of the entire world system.
It would be the height of folly and recklessness for President Obama to even risk going anywhere near that road. Using the opportunity that’s presently offered to work with the world community to win a viable two-state outcome may look difficult. But it is by far the wiser course. And with a substantial portion of both the world and the US citizenry urging him on, he can start to spell out visions of an Arab-Israeli theater at peace that have been literally unimagineable for most of the past 60 years.
Why this American peace diplomacy is different
Many people, including Chris Toensing and Mouin Rabbani at Merip and many of the commenters here at JWN, find it hard to believe that Barack Obama’s Arab-Israeli peace diplomacy will be much different than that of the US presidents who have preceded him. Look, I can understand why people who followed Obama’s sometimes pander-y election campaign closely, and then watched him remain studiously silent (“one president at a time!”) while the US-supplied Israeli military rained death and destruction on Gaza’s people for 23 days, might find it hard to believe that the new president truly might be inclined to take up the task of returning the US to a more even-handed role in Arab-Israeli diplomacy– and to take up this task, moreover, as one of his first and seemingly highest priorities upon coming into office.
But I think the doubters are wrong. Or, at the very least, that they don’t have enough feel for the nuance of policy and the possibility– at this time perhaps more than any other in recent decades– of a determined and smart US president undertaking a radical realignment of the US posture back towards a fair-minded and effective peace diplomacy.
I have been following Palestinian-Israeli affairs very closely for more than 34 years now. My first book was a pretty ground-breaking study of the politics of the PLO: It came out in 1984, has been translated into several languages, and has been used as a textbook in universities in both Palestine and Israel. (Remarkably enough, it’s still in print.) I’ve been hounded and harassed by the powerful pro-Israel groups in the US for many years because of the positions I’ve articulated in favor of Palestinian rights, Palestinian humanity, and fundamental fairness… And I can honestly say that I have never seen an incoming US president launch his Arab-Israeli policy with such urgency, sensitivity, and intelligence.
(I wasn’t here in the US when Jimmy Carter came into office in January 1977. I saw him on last night’s Jon Stewart show, talking about his new book, which is yet another tome about “Peace in the Holy Land.” I think what the hugely popular Stewart is doing to rehabilitate the still much-maligned Carter in the US is great. But I don’t think even Jimmy Carter came into office with a Middle East policy that was as powerful and focused as Obama’s… )
To a certain degree, I think the ‘troika’ of Olmert, Barak, and Livni that’s now ruling Israel handed Obama his present opportunity for real change on a plate, when they made their momentous decision to launch an ‘exemplary punitive campaign’ against Gaza back on December 27. Obama and all who work for him are notoriously tight-lipped, so we won’t know for, perhaps, many years precisely what effect the events of December 27 through January 20 had on the president-elect. And remember: those events included not only the Tel Aviv troika’s launching of the reckless, destructive, and ultimately counter-productive war but also the advanced state of panic that war engendered among all of Washington’s allies in the Arab world, and– perhaps equally importantly– the vainglorious and completely arrogant comments that Olmert made publicly about Bush and Rice simply bending to his will. But it seems clear to me that those events likely did a lot to force changes in the policy decisions that Obama would otherwise have taken.
Absent the events of those 25 days we might well have had: Hillary Clinton in charge of all Middle East policy– as had definitely been the message given, back when her appointment as Secretary of State was first announced; Dennis Ross at her right hand as premier ‘interpreter’ and adviser on Arab-Israeli developments for the highest decisionmaker on these issues; and thus, a far more incrementalist and one-sided approach to the diplomacy than we have seen from the Obama presidency thus far.
It’s certainly significant that Obama has now taken this entire portfolio out of the hands of the woman whose main experience of the issue has been as spouse and consort of the endlessly foot-dragging and manipulative Bill Clinton and then as Senator from the deeply lobby-influenced state of New York. And I think what Obama has done with the portfolio thus far has been great: the conveying of signals of very serious intent and commitment “from Day One”, with those phone calls to leaders in the region; the appointment of George Mitchell, and the strong messages of true presidential support for his mission; and most recently, yesterday’s interview with Al-Arabiya.
Sure, Obama has also said a lot in all these encounters that is deeply engrained boiler-plate for any US president to say: about the centrality of his commitment to the security of Israel, and so on, and on, and on. And sure, he has said absolutely nothing about trying to reach out to Hamas in any way, shape, or form.
Hey, just in case nobody noticed this, it’s also important to remember that Hamas doesn’t actually crave a public relationship with Washington, either. Its leaders certainly don’t see that as something that’s in their interests– and in the circumstances you can see why. This fact makes them noticeably different from, say, the Yasser Arafat of 1988, who was quite happy to go down on his knees and grovel, or jump through endless hoops, if he could only win a nod of public support from Washington… But Hamas is different.
So today is the one-week “anniversary” of Barack Obama’s presidency. In just these seven short days, he’s already started to make a difference. Mitchell is already in Egypt, where he met with EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana. Arab League head Amr Moussa, and Egypt’s foreign minister and much-beleaguered president are also on his call-list before he heads off for Israel. He is not due to meet anybody from Hamas, though this AFP report says it’s possible he might travel to Gaza.
By the way, the elected (and then besieged and bombarded) Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas has sent Obama a letter congratulating him on his election, which he described as “a day of victory for the human struggle for freedom.” Haniyeh also urged Obama to support the Palestinians’ struggle for freedom and national independence. Interesting…
Anyway, I’ve been thinking through some of what Obama could and should be doing over the coming days and weeks if her really wants to push the Arab-Israeli peacemaking forward in a determined and successful way.
He should:
- 1. Give swift and real backing to an intra-Palestinian reconciliation between Fateh, Hamas, and the other factions. This would be huge turnround from the policies pursued by the Bush administration since January 2006. Bush gave weapons, training, funds, and all other forms of support to Mahmoud Abbas’s Fateh leadership on condition that Fateh would use the weapons to subvert the Hamas government that was duly elected in January 2006. After Fateh and Hamas briefly reconciled February 2007, the US’s key agents inside Fateh subverted that agreement, too and made extensive preparations to mount an actual coup against Hamas in Gaza that spring, as David Rose has documented… The whole policy of bringing Fateh back to power in the OPTs with US-supplied guns has failed miserably. After Israel’s war on Gaza, both Abbas and Fateh are hanging on for dear life. Their only hope for some form of political survival is through a new agreement with Hamas. And Hamas needs Fateh (with or without an extremely weak Abbas) to some degree, too. Fateh or its allies can be the public face that do the formal negotiations with Israel and provide international political cover for Hamas. It remains possible that the Hamas leaders don’t see having such a “cover” as providing them any real benefit. But they’ve given many signals that, on some basis, they would welcome a reconciliation with Fateh. This time, the US should not stand in the way. Indeed, it should give real support to the move.
2. Find a reliable way to communicate quietly with the Hamas leaders. This could be through a government, like the Turkish, Qatari, Swiss, or Yemeni government. It could be through the CIA (though I’m not sure Hamas would be open to that.) Or it could be through private individuals trusted by both sides. But a lot of signaling and brainstorming needs to be done.
3. Re-engage the United Nations, in particular, in high-level sponsorship of the peacemaking. For the past seven years he UN has been in the shameful role of “junior partner” in the Quartet that was established in 2002. But an Arab-Israeli peace that is fair and durable is in the interest of all the peoples of the world. The US has no compelling claim, in 2009, to be recognized as a “uniquely qualified” peace broker. Obama has called, quite rightly, for a new relationship between Washington and the UN, and has sent his closest foreign-policy aide and adviser, Susan Rice, to be his ambassador there. As part of her role, she and the president should invite the UN to bring its considerable powers and legitimacy much more centrally into the peacemaking.
4. Take speedy action to stabilize the Gaza crasefire and start to rehabilitate Gaza. The ceasefire remains very fragile, as we saw already today, and the situation of scores of thousands of Gaza’s worst-hit homeless people remains dire. They must not be used any more as pawns in Israel’s power games! Obama should send a strong message to Tel Aviv that he expects Israel to prolong and strengthen the ceasefire, not subvert it. Also, US and NATO ships have a big presence in the eastern Mediterranean. Why can’t they or non-military US ships be used to convey large amounts of cement and other building materials to points near Gaza’s shores, with final ship-to-shore delivery undertaken by non-military aid agencies in conjunction with local NGOs? The US can take many actions that underline to Israel’s vengeful government that it cannot continue to hold its jackboot on Gaza’s neck.
5. Make some clear and authoritative (re-)statements of American principles on peace-related issues well before Israel’s February 10 elections. These should certainly include statements underlining clear US opposition to any further Israeli investment in the settlement-building project and promising serious financial and political consequences if any additional settlement housing or other infrastructure is indeed built. Other such statement might include statements of support for “land for peace”, for “the non-acquisition of territory by force”, for the need for a cooperative regionwide arms control regime, a shared Jerusalem open to followers of all faiths, and so on.
6. Make clear and repeated statements of the United States’ own strong interest in seeing the remaining strands of the Arab-Israeli conflict resolved. For too long, Washington policy has been dominated by the dreadful Dennis Ross view that “the US can’t want peace more than the parties themselves.” That argument has been used as a major justification for a diplomatic quietism that has been a cover, actually, for continued, very generous US financial and military help to Israel that has completely underwritten Israel’s pursuit of its illegal policy of land-grabbing settlement-building in the West Bank and Golan and its very destructive launching of periodic wars, assassination campaigns, and other acts of lethal physical violence against its neighbors. The US is absolutely not “neutral” between Israel and its Arab neighbors. And now, since the US has 140,000 troops strung out in very vulnerable positions inside Iraq, this matters a lot. The US certainly has its own strong interest in a rapid de-escalation and resolving of tensions between Israel and the Arab world.
7. Restore full diplomatic relations and a good working relationship with Syria as fast as possible. This one strikes me as a no-brainer. The US has had no ambassador in Syria since 2005, and the harsh sanctions that have been maintained on Damascus under both the anti-terrorism policy and the Syrian Accountability Act of 2003 have inflicted real pain on Syrian that the country’s people, not surprisingly, resent a lot. Syria will be an essential part of any successful peace diplomacy. It withdrew all its troops from Lebanon in 2005, and maintained intriguing and constructive proximity peace talks with israel for a year until Israel decided to attack Gaza in December. George Bush and his Middle East adviser, Elliott Abrams, worked hard for many years to topple the Asad regime in Syria. It ain’t going to happen. (Asad is actually a whole lot more popular with his country’s citizens than the US-supported regimes in Egypt and Jordan are with theirs.) Plus Asad, unlike say his allies in Hamas, is actually very eager to have a good relationship with Washington.
Let’s see how many of these steps Obama takes by, say, February 10.
All the indications from Israel are that the politicians there are very closely attuned to the signals coming out of Washington– now, as always.
Washington really has been the central lifeline of the Jewish state for many decades now. Now, let’s see how Barack Obama uses that power.
Obama continues to move fast, surefootedly…
…on Arab-Israeli peacemaking. Yesterday he gave an interview to Hisham Milhem of al-Arabiya TV channel. That was in connection with the ceremony at the White House where he sent off former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell on his first “special envoy” fact-finding trip to Egypt, Israel, Jordan, France, and Britain.
The NYT wrote:
- “The charge that Senator Mitchell has is to engage vigorously and consistently in order for us to achieve genuine progress,” Mr. Obama said in the Cabinet Room of the White House, according to The Associated Press. “And when I say progress, not just photo ops, but progress that is concrete.”
It is significant that Obama himself is taking such a high-profile interest in this mission. It seems Mitchell will report back to him more than to Hillary Clinton.
Also, though Rob Malley is quoted in the NYT piece as saying there’s not much political work that can be done before Israel’s Feb.10 elections, I disagree strongly with that assessment.
Obama is already doing some of the much-needed political work! He’s doing it by appointing Mitchell so very early in his term and by sending him off the region so quickly, too.
What he’s doing is signaling, at the very highest level possible, that the US has its own very strong interest in the Arab-israeli peace process making rapid progress at this time.
That sends exactly the right message to Israeli voters, who need to think carefully whether they want to elect a party/leader who could be expected to clash early on with this politically popular and sure-footed US president.
Of course we want more details as to what kind of a peace agreement Obama plans to work for. Probably he’ll let us know more when he’s heard back from Mitchell.
But to say he’s not doing any political/diplomatic work on the peacemaking right now is just plain wrong.
IPS articles from Syria and Washington, DC
I’ve been really busy these past couple of weeks– plus, figuring out too much new technology. So, to catch up a little, here are the last two pieces of News Analysis that I wrote for IPS:
- — from Damascus, datelined January 16 (written Jan. 15), and
— from Washington DC, datelined today.
Read and enjoy. Or not; it’s up to you.
Obama moves fast on M.E. diplomacy
I just read the transcript of Pres. Obama’s address at the State Department today. That’s the one where he appointed former Sen. George Mitchell as Special Envoy for Middle East peace, and former Amb. Richard Holbroooke as Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Mitchell is a good choice. He has a good feel for the needs of brokering peace in tricky situations, which he helped do in Northern Ireland. And he knows quite a lot about the Israel-Palestine issue from his earlier work investigating the causes of the Second Intifada.
Plus, as a former Senate Majority Leader, he has the political stature that will be required to cajole people from both sides– and even Israel’s well-entrenched ‘Amen Corner’ in the US Congress– towards the decisions that will be needed to build durable final peace agreements.
Of course, it’s also a good sign that perennial “Israel-right-or-wrong” cheerleader Abe Foxman actually criticized Mitchell for being “too even-handed” between Arabs and Israelis. (I have it on good authority that there was a time when “even-handed” was thought of in Washington as a good description of what was needed in US diplomats working on Israeli-Arab issues. But it certainly hasn’t generally been seen as a good thing for as long as I’ve lived in the country– since 1982. Let’s hope we’re returning to a decent respect for even-handedness and basic fairness.)
I am seeing some excellent early actions from Obama. On the day he was inaugurated he phoned the leaders of the PA, Israel, Jordan, and Egypt– starting with the PA’s (time-expired but who’s counting?) President, Mahmoud Abbas. That was one early sign of his concern for moving fast on Arab-Israeli issues. Today’s appointment of Mitchell is another, even stronger one.
Plus, I think it’s excellent that on his second full day in office the President went to the State Department to join Sec. Clinton in making these announcements. That’s a strong signal of the value he places in the work of diplomacy that the State department’s employees do.
Regarding Mitchell’s appopintment, of course a lot remains to be revealed. One telling sign was that the hawkish Clinton adviser Dennis Ross, whose strongly pro-Israeli think-tank had previously announced that he would be kind of super-adviser for the whole region stretching from the Middle East to Afghanistan, reportedly wasn’t even present at tofday’s announcement. (Maybe, though, he’ll end up working more on Iran issues? Who knows?)
Clinton said at the State Department event that “the president and I have asked [Mitchell] to be the special envoy for Middle East peace.” That leaves it a little unclear who he’ll report to, which is a key detail.
When Obama spoke, he said this about Mitchell’s task:
- He will be fully empowered at the negotiating table, and he will sustain our focus on the goal of peace.
No one doubts the difficulty of the road ahead, and George outlined some of those difficulties. The tragic violence in Gaza and southern Israel offers a sobering reminder of the challenges at hand and the setbacks that will inevitably come.
It must also instill in us, though, a sense of urgency, as history shows us that strong and sustained American engagement can bridge divides and build the capacity that supports progress. And that is why we will be sending George to the region as soon as possible to help the parties ensure that the cease-fire that has been achieved is made durable and sustainable.
Let me be clear: America is committed to Israel’s security. And we will always support Israel’s right to defend itself against legitimate threats.
For years, Hamas has launched thousands of rockets at innocent Israeli citizens. No democracy can tolerate such danger to its people, nor should the international community, and neither should the Palestinian people themselves, whose interests are only set back by acts of terror.
To be a genuine party to peace, the quartet has made it clear that Hamas must meet clear conditions: recognize Israel’s right to exist; renounce violence; and abide by past agreements.
Going forward, the outline for a durable cease-fire is clear: Hamas must end its rocket fire; Israel will complete the withdrawal of its forces from Gaza; the United States and our partners will support a credible anti-smuggling and interdiction regime, so that Hamas cannot rearm.
Yesterday I spoke to President Mubarak and expressed my appreciation for the important role that Egypt played in achieving a cease-fire. And we look forward to Egypt’s continued leadership and partnership in laying a foundation for a broader peace through a commitment to end smuggling from within its borders.
Now, just as the terror of rocket fire aimed at innocent Israelis is intolerable, so, too, is a future without hope for the Palestinians.
I was deeply concerned by the loss of Palestinian and Israeli life in recent days and by the substantial suffering and humanitarian needs in Gaza. Our hearts go out to Palestinian civilians who are in need of immediate food, clean water, and basic medical care, and who’ve faced suffocating poverty for far too long.
Now we must extend a hand of opportunity to those who seek peace. As part of a lasting cease-fire, Gaza’s border crossings should be open to allow the flow of aid and commerce, with an appropriate monitoring regime, with the international and Palestinian Authority participating.
Relief efforts must be able to reach innocent Palestinians who depend on them. The United States will fully support an international donor’s conference to seek short-term humanitarian assistance and long-term reconstruction for the Palestinian economy. This assistance will be provided to and guided by the Palestinian Authority.
Lasting peace requires more than a long cease-fire, and that’s why I will sustain an active commitment to seek two states living side by side in peace and security.
Senator Mitchell will carry forward this commitment, as well as the effort to help Israel reach a broader peace with the Arab world that recognizes its rightful place in the community of nations.
I should add that the Arab peace initiative contains constructive elements that could help advance these efforts. Now is the time for Arab states to act on the initiative’s promise by supporting the Palestinian government under President Abbas and Prime Minister Fayyad, taking steps towards normalizing relations with Israel, and by standing up to extremism that threatens us all.
Jordan’s constructive role in training Palestinian security forces and nurturing its relations with Israel provide a model for these efforts. And going forward, we must make it clear to all countries in the region that external support for terrorist organizations must stop.
This is pretty good as a starting US position.
I was also interested to see that Pres. Obama went into considerably greater detail about Mitchell’s task than Sec. Clinton did. So that might well indicate that Mitchell will be reporting more to him (through National Security Adviser Gen. Jim Jones) than to Clinton.
Inaugurating
Barack Hussein Obama was sworn in as our president at noon today– Hurrah! … Four hours before that, I and four (mainly Quaker) friends from Charlottesville who slept over in our apartment in Washington had finished our mammoth “survival-dressing” operation and ventured out into the sub-freezing air to start our trek to the National Mall.
As we walked along streets from which, today, all moving vehicles had been banned we merged with other groups and then converged into ever broader and broader streams of humanity. We surged across Constitution Avenue onto the National Mall at around 18th Street and turned left on the Mall so we could get as close to the Capitol Dome end of it as possible. At one point the whole river of humanity had to get over a line of yard-high concrete barricades, which we did by helping each other across.
At our “hoi polloi” end of the mall there were no security checkpoints, though I assume the police were watching people very closely from the few temporary elevated watch-towers I saw, and from the ground. Some of the streets along which we’d walked had National Guard Military Police units strung lightly along them, but the security on and around the Mall was light.
The excitement built as the crowds around us grew denser. We made our way with increasingly difficulty around the northern shoulder of the hill on which sits the vast obelisk of the Washington Monument, hoping to reach at least the east side of 14th Street. But it was not to be. The entire section of the Mall east of 14th Street was already, at 8:45, filled to capacity and they were letting no more people in there. So we were stuck back on the eastern slope of the Washington Monument’s hill– facing the Capitol Building, which gleamed light-golden around 1.3 miles away.
We had a large Jumbotron screen on which we could see the details of what was happening there… and all around us an ever-thickening crush of humanity. A large preponderance of hardy young and middle-aged adults, but several families with kids aged seven or over. (Families with younger kids, and older people, had been warned to think carefully before coming, because of the lengthy waits expected, and the cold, the cold, the cold.)
So from around 9 a.m. through 11:15 we stood there. We got to know the people standing around us a bit– one family had come from Oregon, a young woman and her mother from Washington State. The crowd immediately around us was around 25% African-American and also contained a large group of Latinos. The Jumbotrons replayed the tape of the big concert held at the Lincoln Memorial on Sunday, which sparked sporadic waves of singing, swaying, or quasi-dancing among the crowd. A light sun peeked through. But still, it was cold, cold, cold. I pulled on my second pair of gloves and my third pair of legwear. The six layers on my upper body just sufficed.
At around 11:15 the Jumbotrons switched to showing us the things that were happening in real-time, in and around the Capitol Building. Various dignitaries arrived and were announced. A few of us raised a loud cheer for Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter. The Clintons got a louder cheer (but not from me.) The arrival of George W. Bush got deeps boos from our understandably partisan crowd. We saw the Obama daughters; Laura Bush with Michelle Obama… then out came “the President-Elect” to the delight of all.
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts flubbed the administration of the oath of office, but that didn’t seem to matter. After Obama took the oath, many people in the crowd hugged each other, and there were some tears.
We then listened carefully to his Inaugural Address. He started off with a couple of quick grace notes to the man he had now replaced in office (yay!)… But just about all the rest of the speech was a pointed and powerful indictment of the value and policies pursued by Bush– though Obama never mentioned Bush by name during the rest of the speech.
I thought it was a great speech: serious, somber, inclusive. I do still have a problem with mentions of the concept “American leadership”, given the terrible straits into which this concept has led the world over the past 17 years. But it is sort of “boiler-plate” in the official rhetoric of the country at this point. But the main things I liked about the speech were the serious commitment he expressed to restoring the rule of law (“we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals”) and its emphasis on fairness, mindfulness, and inclusivity (“We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus — and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth… “) He made an indirect reference to the formerly enslaved (“We were lashed by the whip”), but I wish he had made a parallel reference to the indigenous people of the country.
But what he said, directly, to the Muslim world and to the people of the world’s low-income nations sounded good, respectful, and serious.
Soon after he finished the address, our group and many others turned to start to leave. Because of the crowds, it took a long while to straggle back to Constitution Avenue. As we walked we heard the chopper carrying the departing Bush fly overhead, and gave a cheer for that departure.
… Anyway, I’m pretty tired right now. I am really happy I was able to be a part of it.
Then I came back to the apartment and saw the new White House website, too. Wow, this is starting to feel real.
So if “inaugurating” is about getting the “augurs”– the heavenly signs; the karma– more rightly aligned, then I think that task has been achieved today. But there’s still a huge amount more work to do.
Palestinian politics and the rest of the war’s political endgame
This morning the time-expired PA president, Mahmoud Abbas of Fateh, called for the establishment of a Palestinian national unity government. The political endgame of Israel’s 22-Day War against Gaza has begun in earnest on the Palestinian side.
(On the Israeli side, the whole war can be understood as an internal political game, with the “end” of that game being focused on the general election of February 10.)
All wars are about politics: Clausewitz 101. In Israel’s 22-Day War against Gaza, one major war goal was– as Olmert and others repeatedly said– to “change the situation” regarding the politics of Gaza and the rest of Palestine. That was, to change it in a radically anti-Hamas and probably pro-Fateh way.
Remember that ever since Hamas’s victory in the January 2006 parliamentary elections, Israel and its Bush administration backers have waged a strongly anti-Hamas campaign, including maintaining the brutal siege of Gaza, arming and training Fateh militias and police in order to set them against Hamas, attempting (but failing to bring off) a coup against Hamas in Gaza in 2007, etc, etc.
The 22-Day War was a continuation of that anti-Hamas campaign.
The IDF’s violent and damaging rampage against Gaza did not, however, succeed in either crushing Hamas or forcing it to surrender. But it did considerably weaken the political situation of Mahoud Abbas and his Fateh colleagues– both within the Palestinian public and among the broader Arab and Muslim publics.
So that is the importance of Abbas’s terse call for a Palestinian national unity government.
Last night, elected Hamas PM Ismail Hanniyeh declared the outcome of the war a “victory” for the Palestinian people. He added that this victory would be,
- a springboard towards the restoration of national unity and the launch of internal dialog in order to reach genuine and comprehensive national reconciliation.
So both major Palestinian parties are now expressing their support for, apparently, a speedy reconciliation between them. This is excellent, even though the terms of the reconciliation remain to be worked out.
The last time the two sides attempted national reconciliation it was through the (Saudi-sponsored) Mecca Agreement of February 2007. Under that agreement, Haniyeh was the PM but the crucial Foreign Affairs portfolio was given to pro-Fateh independent Ziad Abu Amr, and there was a clear understanding that Hamas would encourage the Abbas-Abu Amr team to negotiate the very best possible peace deal with Israel that should then be submitted to a Palestinian national referendum.
It was that agreement that was ripped apart by Fateh’s Washington-instigated coup attempt in Gaza just four months later.
After foiling the coup attempt, the Gaza-based Haniyeh then established his own, Hamas-dominated PA government in Gaza while Abbas formed a rival, US-supported PA government in the West Bank and resumed his participation in the chronically unending “peace” negotiations with Israel.
Abbas’s term as elected PA president ran out on January 9, so there are now considerable questions about the legitimacy of his claim to “represent” Palestinians.
Hamas, now relatively strengthened by its survival of Israel’s assault on Gaza, now looks as though it is inclined to throw the badly weakened Abbas a political lifeline. (This would parallel the policies that Hizbullah, in Lebanon, pursued toward Lebanese PM Fouad Siniora in the aftermath of the– politically very similar– Israeli assault on that country in 2006.) Hamas may well now allow Abbas to “front” for a unified Palestinian participation in all the big diplomacy that lies ahead, while Hamas can focus more of its energies on the much-needed tasks of physical and social reconstruction in Palestine.
The constitutional situation within the PA is badly complicated by the fact that Israel has held in prison since 2007 either all or nearly all of the two dozen pro-Hamas parliamentarians, elected in January 2006, who were resident in the West Bank. That includes Parliament Speaker Aziz Dweik.
It strikes me that a first demand for the Palestinian national unity government– one that democrats around the world should support unconditionally– is that Israel should immediately release all the elected Palestinian parliamentarians whom it now holds captive. (Possibly, their release could be part of a broader detainee-release program that would also involve Israel’s Hamas-held POW, Gilad Shalit.)
Meanwhile, as noted above, the political endgame of the war on the Israeli side will be continuing until February 10, and quite possibly after that, during the cumbersome coalition-forming process that follows all elections in Israel. The Likud party has been chafing in opposition in Israel as Kadima and Labour have led this highly popular (in Israel) war. Immediately after the ceasefire started, its leaders quite predictably started criticizing the Kadima-Labour team for “not having gone far enough, and not having finished the job.”
It’s not clear yet what effect this pressure from Likud will have on the stability of the– tenuous, un-negotiated, and parallel– brace of ceasefires that went into operation yesterday. But I fear it can’t be a good one.
What is clear to me is that almost-President Obama should, as an early order of business very soon after his inauguration tomorrow, start laying out a specifically American vision of the urgency of securing a final peace between Israel and all its neighbors, along with some of the principles on which this peace should be based. They should include the folloowing:
- — Land for peace, and the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war;
— Security for all the people of the region, including both Israelis and Palestinians;
— A complete end to the use of force between Israel and its neighbors, with the establishment of robust and accountable mechanisms that can verify that aggressive actions are not being prepared;
— Jerusalem to be shared as a focal point for respect, coexistence, and dialogue among all the world’s nations and religions…
Obama should, ideally, lay out these ideas in a public speech that he personally gives on the subject considerably before February 10, so that the strength of this inspiring new US president’s commitment to this vision will be clear to Israeli voters before they go to the polls.
(Previously, I’d expressed some support for Naomi Chazan’s argument that for the US to try to do something to “influence” Israel’s voters on February 10 could well end up back-firing. Now, however, in light of the urgency of the Gaza crisis and its worldwide repurcussions, I think Obama really needs to try to do this. Every action or gesture he takes that can strengthen the hand of the pro-peace forces in Israel and the rest of the region is very urgently needed.)
Politics and diplomacy: These are what this war has been all about. Now let’s see the Palestinians, the Arabs, and the US all at least get their own houses in order. As for the Israelis– whose deep bellophilia has shocked much of the world over the past three weeks– let’s just hope that they have time to reflect, in the three weeks ahead, on the proposition that war, truly, is not the answer to their problems.
Their country’s war against Gaza might have made many of them “feel good” over the past three weeks. But at what cost, at what cost? Certainly, it has not made the prospects for longterm good relations with their Palestinian neighbors any easier, at all.
Obama’s grandfather, the British in Kenya, and Gaza today
Barack Obama’s Kenyan grandfather, Hussein Onyango Obama, became involved with the Kenyan independence movement while working as a cook for a British army officer after World War 2. Reporters for the London Times recently wrote about H.O. Obama’s experiences in the British-ruled Kenya of those years that
- He was arrested in 1949 and jailed for two years in a high-security prison where, according to his family, he was subjected to horrific violence to extract information about the growing insurgency.
“The African warders were instructed by the white soldiers to whip him every morning and evening till he confessed,” said Sarah Onyango, Hussein Onyango’s third wife, the woman Mr [president-elect] Obama refers to as “Granny Sarah”.
Mrs Onyango, 87, described how “white soldiers” visited the prison every two or three days to carry out “disciplinary action” on the inmates suspected of subversive activities.
“He said they would sometimes squeeze his testicles with parallel metallic rods. They also pierced his nails and buttocks with a sharp pin, with his hands and legs tied together with his head facing down,” she said The alleged torture was said to have left Mr Onyango permanently scarred, and bitterly antiBritish. “That was the time we realised that the British were actually not friends but, instead, enemies,” Mrs Onyango said.
Harvard historian Caroline Elkins has exhaustively documented the mass incarceration and intimidation campaign the British ran against suspected Kenyan independence activists in her recent book Imperial Reckoning. What she documented there tracked very closely with what Sarah Onyango told the Times reporters about her late husband’s treatment (except that according to Elkins’s documentation, around 150,000 of the Kenyan incarcerees may have ended up dead.)
Elkins also noted that life had become particularly difficult for the Kenyan indigenes, and their anti-British fervor had increased, when the British decided to plant many more white settlers into Kenya after the war, displacing hundreds of thousands of indigenous African farmers from their land and resources and confining them to “reserves” that had pitifully few natural resources that rapidly became depleted as the additional displaced Africans were all trucked in.
In my late-2006 review of Elkins’s book, (PDF here), I noted that the “anti-Mau-Mau” campaign the British carried out, very brutally, in Kenya in the 1950s was a sort of “bridge experience” that linked the many equally brutal campaigns of counter-insurgency that colonial settler regimes around the world had waged for many earlier decades against the indigenous people of the lands where they settled, and some of the later COIN campaigns (Algeria, Vietnam, etc) that constituted, in effect, the “last throes” of settler colonialism.
Elkins’s work was also notable because she had access both to several portions of good British archives and to some living survivors of the concentration camps whom, after learning some local languages, she was able to interview for her work.
But settler colonialism hasn’t gone away, has it? It lives on in the lengthy campaign that Israel maintains to this very day to implant its settlers in occupied Arab lands, stealing the land and associated natural resources from their indigenous owners and forcing the indigenes into tightly controlled “reservations”, penal areas, large open-air concentration camps, and actual prisons. This campaign involves– just as in British Kenya or apartheid South Africa– a ruthless effort to oppress and punish anyone who tries to make a sustained objection to the ongoing projects of settlement aggrandizement.
The London Times is making some of its archives available online these days. On this portal page, you’ll find links to several (generally PDF) contemporary articles and photo-spreads about the anti-Mau-Mau campaign in the 1950s. Many of the accounts look as if they were about Israel in Gaza and the West Bank today. (You can also find a link to an even older Times story, titled, “Gandhi’s Salt March: Extremist Leader in Illegal Salt Collection.” No comment needed.)
President-elect Obama has written eloquently about the “Dreams of his father.” I hope he also takes some time to reflect on the meaning, in today’s world, of the actual experiences of his grandfather.