Category: Palestine 2009

Rabbani comments on the Fateh post

Here are the comments Mouin Rabbani made on what I posted here today:

    On the whole I agree with you – particularly your debunking of the five myths.
    Some additional points:
    – I think a sixth “myth” you could have added is that Abbas is Fatah and Fatah is Abbas. I think people have a tendency to overlook the extent of the separation between Abbas and his entourage on the one hand and Fatah (however defined) on the other. It is all but complete. If previously people could vote for Hamas in PA elections to protest the failures of Fatah, it wouldn’t be much of an exaggeration to say that today a vote for Fatah is a vote against the PA. The top echelons of the PA, the security forces, even to an extent the PLO have been massively de-Fatahised since 2005. I’ve always believed that upon assuming office Abbas saw his main obstacle as not Hamas, but Fatah, and has worked assiduously since to incapacitate (what is left of) it. While there were various compelling reasons for him to seek the political integration of Hamas into the Palestinian political system in 2005-2006, I remain convinced that using it to cut Fatah down to size was one of his primary calculations (this backfired disastrously, of course, but then again has he done anything that hasn’t?).
    – I disagree with you that inviting independents is a viable option. Who selects them? In 1991 they were appointed by the PLO. Today there is no legitimate Palestinian leadership that could fulfill a similar role. I therefore remain convinced that for Palestinians achieving consensus on a new leadership and joint political program remains an absolute priority. This is, I hope, shorthand for the rejuvenation of the PLO. For what it’s worth I am also convinced that reconciliation (particularly between Fatah and Hamas) cannot be achieved so long as Abbas remains in a position of power, and that his removal from office is a precondition for this to succeed.

Thanks for the contribution there. And definitely thanks for adding ‘Myth #6’, a significant addition to the list.
On how a negotiating “team” of political independents might be constituted in the current circumstances, I certainly agree that Dr. Haidar and Co., back in 1991, were named from PLO-Tunis. (Though Arafat never did wholly trust or empower them– or anyone else. Hence, in their case, his interest in the whole Oslo gambit, as devised by… Mahmoud Abbas.) I guess this time around, if one could find honest and smart Palestinian independents who could get enough of a popular mandate just by virtue of who they are and considerable prior coordination with Hamas and all the factions, then to a large degree it would be up to them to continue to build their own mandate from there on…
In several of the decolonization processes the Brits participated in in the 1950s and 1960s this was the approach used… I guess we’d need to think through the issues a bunch more.
But anyway, Mouin, thanks for adding your wisdom in here. And since I trust your judgment so much I feel really good that you apparently agreed with my basic thesis that the crisis inside Fateh is a real problem for everyone involved in the peacemaking venture– including, at this point, Hamas.

Fateh’s woes an obstacle to diplomacy

Many Israelis and their supporters just love to argue that they “have no partner for peace” on the Palestinian side. (And therefore that, with “deep regret”, an Israeli government that wants nothing more to make peace, currently finds itself unable to do so… Cue the violins.)
I have generally given these pleadings short shrift. I mean, if an Israeli government came forward and put a good-faith and reasonable offer to make peace on the table, then there would certainly be a Palestinian party on the other side of the table ready and willing to negotiate.
Now, however, I think there is a non-trivial problem on the other side of the table. And no, at this point this is not mainly– as many people argue– Hamas, with its well-known obduracy on the “three preconditions” that’s the obstacle, but rather Fateh.
(Regarding Hamas, Paul Scham and Osama Abu-Irshaid have a fascinating report, PDF, that came out recently that probes the evident political/diplomatic flexibility that coexists with ideological rigidity in its practice. I too shall be writing about this in the days ahead.)
Fateh’s “problem”, from the peacemaker’s viewpoint, is not its ideological obduracy but rather its now near-total lack of any internal structure or ability to make decisions.
Fateh has never, really, had any ideology beyond a vague general commitment to “national liberation.” And all of that commitment became rapidly wasted away after the majority of the movement’s leaders skipped ahead of the queue of the other waiting Palestinian refugees and “returned”– to Ramallah and Gaza– in 1994. (I’m just now reading Sara Roy’s brilliant 2007 book Failing Peace, in which she describes in exquisite and painful detail how that worked out in post-1994 Gaza.)

Continue reading “Fateh’s woes an obstacle to diplomacy”

Carter in Gaza: Meets Haniyyeh

Here’s the Ma’an version:

    De facto Palestinian Prime Minister Isma’il Haniyeh said on Tuesday he would support any real proposal to establish an independent and sovereign Palestinian state on the 1967 borders with Jerusalem as its capital.
    Haniyeh’s comments came during a joint press conference in Gaza City with former US president Jimmy Carter. “I will exert pressures towards realizing this dream,” said Haniyeh.
    Meanwhile, he said that his government in cooperation with other Palestinian factions to maintain ceasefire, yet border crossing should be opened to guarantee continuation of ceasefire.

On the Shalit issue, one interesting development has been that Dr. Mahmoud Zahhar, the “De facto foreign minister” (as Ma’an would probably put it– I would be more likely to say “foreign minister in the elected Hamas government”), has given an interview directly to Israel Radio on the topic.
Ma’an tells us this:

    Mahmoud Az-Zahhar said in an interview with Radio Israel that Hamas will consider the possibility of delivering the message [from Shalit’s father] to Shalit.
    He said that if Israel is interested in putting an end to the Shalit issue, they have to release Palestinian prisoners especially those demanded by Hamas. He said Israel is less interested in a prisoner swap as much as they are interested in knowing Shalit’s location in order to free him in a military raid.

Carter in Gaza

Jimmy Carter has been in Gaza today, having crossed from Israel through the horrendous concrete processing-point at Erez. He is due to meet with elected Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haneyya of Hamas, and to pass on to him a letter for longtime Israeli POW Gilad Shalit, that he was given by Shalit’s father in Israel.
It’s been a busy trip for the 84-year-old former president. He started in Lebanon where he monitored the (very well-run) June 7 elections. Then he went to Syria, where he met the Syrian president and the overall head of the Hamas movement, Khaled Meshaal. In Israel, he met prime minister Netanyahu, other government leaders, some settlers from the West Bank, and Noam Shalit. In Ramallah he met US-backed Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and the few elected Hamas parliamentarians who are not currently in Israeli prisons on terms of imprisonment without trial…
And now he’s in Gaza.
During the trip Carter is almost certainly following up on the efforts he made last year to help Hamas and the Israelis find a way to– indirectly– negotiate a robust ceasefire along the Gaza front. He has also urged the Palestinians to end the lengthy feud between Hamas and Abbas’s Fateh movement. (The Bush administration, by contrast, did a lot to fuel that feud.)
In Gaza today, Carter has already visited the sites of some of the buildings destroyed by the IDF during the recent war, including the “American International School” in northern Gaza. He denounced the treatment of the Strip’s 1.5 million people, who have been subjected to a tight Israeli siege for the 41 months since Hamas won free and fair Palestinian parliamentary elections in January 2006.
After the latest round of intense fighting came to a halt January 18, Israel– with cooperation from Egypt– tightened the siege yet further, blocking the entry into Gaza even of basic materials needed to rebuild homes.
Carter called for an end to the siege:

    “Tragically, the international community too often ignores the cries for help and the citizens of Palestine are treated more like animals than like human beings,” he said as he toured the war-torn, blockaded Gaza Strip.
    “The starving of 1.5 million human beings of the necessities of life — never before in history has a large community like this been savaged by bombs and missiles and then denied the means to repair itself.”
    … The US and Europe “must try to do all that is necessary to convince Israel and Egypt to allow basic goods into Gaza,” he said. “At same time, there must be no more rockets” from Gaza into Israel.
    “Palestinian statehood cannot come at the expense of Israel’s security, just as Israel’s security cannot come at the expense of Palestinian statehood.”

Carter has been closely concerned with Israeli-Palestinian issues continuously since the time of his presidency. His 2007 book Palestine: Peace not Apartheid was controversial in much of the United States– but it was also a runaway best-seller. With the book and with his many public appearances around it, he opened up considerable new space in the American public discourse in which people could start to think about and discuss the Palestine question in new and much more realistic ways.
(Carter was always at pains to clarify that when he talked about “apartheid” he was referring to the emerging situation in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, not in Israel itself.)
In addition, working with Robert Pastor and other leading staffers at the Atlanta-based Carter Center, the former president has made several very helpful contributions to Israeli-Palestinian peacebuilding. The Carter Center has monitored all the Palestinian elections that have been held under the terms of the 1993 Oslo agreement– including that 2006 parliamentary election, in which Hamas competed for the first time and won 74 of the 128 seats.
In early 2008, Carter and Pastor worked hard, and generally behind the scenes, to help nail down the terms on which Israel and Hamas would enter into a six-month ceasefire along the Gaza front. That ceasefire went into operation June 19, 2008 and led to a near-total end of hostilities between the two sides that lasted until, on November 4. On that day, Israel committed a serious violation by undertaking a big ground operation into Gaza that killed five or six Hamas fighters. (Most Americans were focused on other issues that day.)
The November 4 operation led to a progressive breakdown of the June ceasefire. As the ceasefire’s endpoint approached in December, the parties were unable to reach agreement on renewing it… and that set the stage for Israel’s launch, on December 27, of its big assault against Gaza.
On January 18 Hamas and Israel each, separately, announced a decision to cease military operations against the other. That completely un-negotiated brace of ceasefires is inherently unstable and could lead to a new explosion at any point. Meantime, Israel’s tight maintenance of its siege imposes a harsh and continuing collective punishment on Gaza’s people. Egypt is a junior partner in maintaining the siege– partly because of its responsibilities under the terms of its 1979 peace treaty with Israel, and partly for the Egyptian government’s own reasons.
Untangling all these complex issues– as well as the ever-thorny questions of Israel’s settlements in the West Bank, Jerusalem, the Palestinian refugees, etc– is a big challenge for Sen. George Mitchell’s peacemaking mission. And Mitchell is for political reasons currently quite unable to meet directly with Meshaal, Haneyya, or any other leaders in Hamas, a movement that has a strong following among Palestinians, as has been proven at the ballot box.
Earlier this month I interviewed Meshaal in Damascus. He expressed great readiness to meet with Mitchell, and asked, “Why is Obama ready to deal with Iran without preconditions, but not us?”
He and I both knew that is unlikely to happen in the near future. But at least Mitchell and Obama can benefit from having former President Carter’s eyes, ears, and and considerable talents as a peacemaker brought to bear on the situation.

The results of free and fair elections

All this commentating in the American media about whether the Iranian powers-that-be have negated the results of the election held there yesterday prompts me to ask about the Palestinian parliamentary elections of January 2006.
How many Americans have ever protested the negating of those certifiedly free and fair elections, that was carried our by our government in coalition with the government of Israel?
… Or, protested other acts like the assassination attempts made by Israel against the political leaders duly elected in Palestine in 2006… or, Israel’s imprisonment without trial of around 40 of the legislators elected in those elections… or, the damaging, collective-punishment siege that Israel imposed on 1.5 million Gazans, and continue to maintain in harsh form until today, in order to “punish” them for the way they voted in 2006… or, the US government project to arm and train an insurgent force tasked to overthrow the results of the elections by force… or, the full-scale military assault Israel launched in December to try to overthrow the results of the 2006 elections with the application of huge amounts of brute force… or, the numerous other moves made to negate the results of those elections and to punish or kill their victors… ?
Just asking.
It strikes me that having a single standard to apply in response to the results of elections in other countries would be a mighty handy thing for a country that aspires to be a worldwide “beacon of democracy” to have.
Actually, if I heard even one peep of protest from the US government or from any MSM commentators here about Israel’s lengthy continuing imprisonment without trial of scores of elected Palestinians legislators, that would already make me just a little bit happy.
Otherwise, all the bloviating about whatever it is that’s going on in Iran these days (and who, actually, knows at this point?) has all the air of hypocritical and decidedly partisan point-scoring.

Mitchell includes Syria, Lebanon

It’s now confirmed. US peace envoy George Mitchell, now on his fourth trip to the Middle East, will travel to both Syria and Lebanon this week.
He met this morning in Tel Aviv with Ehud Barak, and is meeting– possibly as I write– with Avigdor Lieberman and PM Netanyahu. Tomorrow, Mahmoud Abbas, in Ramallah. So Damascus maybe Thursday?
This is excellent news. Mitchell certainly shouldn’t have delayed so long in going to Syria, a country that is a necessary and pivotal part of any comprehensive peace between Israel and all of its neighbors.
The type of peace, that is, that will end the state of war that Israelis have lived in, with their neighbors, throughout all the 61 years since the establishment of their state in 1948.
(How will Jewish Israelis– whose national culture, mindset, and economy have all been built importantly, though not wholly, around their sense of of being surrounded by hostile others– deal with the prospect of such a ground-shifting transformation in their situation? This is a non-trivial question that too few Israelis have ever studied in much depth… )
When I was interviewing Syrian foreign minister Walid Moualem and other high Syrian officials in Damascus on Tuesday-Thursday of last week, they expressed eagerness to receive Mitchell and to be fully included in the peace-making venture that he leads.
Syrian officials are also very eager to have a serious discussion with the Obama administration on issues of joint concern regarding Iraq.
They told me they have a strong interest– in common with the Obama administration– in seeing the Maliki government in Baghdad increase its effectiveness and strength: something that will both prevent the whole region from collapsing into a chaos that would be very harmful for Syria, and will allow US troops the smooth exit from Iraq that Obama is now committed to.
(In discussions with a few Syrian private citizens, I heard a little speculation that if the situation in the Gulf area is for whatever reason too chaotic to allow US troops to exit Iraq through that route, they might even be allowed to exit through Syria…. Interesting!)
More, obviously, from my important Moualem interview later– here and elsewhere.
One of my main observations, after 35 years of reporting on and studying the dynamics of various Israeli-Arab peace-making efforts, is that US peace brokers have a number of different ways of approaching the Syrian (and Lebanese) tracks, and their relationship with the Palestinian track.
Here, in capsule form, are my further thoughts on this subject:

    1. Washington ‘peace’ brokers have very frequently tried to play the Syrians off against the Palestinians.
    2. They do this either over a longer or shorter time frame. That is, sometimes they have both these tracks “in play” at the same time, and there is a literal use of pressure as when Dennis Ross or whoever conveys a message like this: “We’ve got the other track just about ready to reach completion but we wouldn’t have any more energy then to deal with your track– so give me an even better offer!” Sometimes the manipulation occurs over a longer time-frame than that.
    3. The success of that manipulative strategy depends crucially on the maximization of distrust between the Syrian and Palestinian leaderships, and the minimization (or absence) of direct communications between them.
    4. Presidents Clinton and GWB both relied on this manipulation strategy very heavily. The whole Oslo phenomenon, of course, fed very strongly into it.
    5. Neither Clinton nor GWB proved able to secure a final-status peace, on either of these crucial negotiating tracks!!!
    6. So the ‘manipulation’ strategy really doesn’t have any credibility– unless the goal is to delay the conclusion of final peace agreements on these two tracks, which “by an amazing coincidence” gives Israel the opportunity to build more Jews-only colonies in both the occupied West Bank and the occupied Golan.
    7. Obama has committed himself to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state within a relatively short time frame– some say two years, some say four.
    8. While he has publicly reiterated that commitment a large number of times, including in Cairo last Thursday, his references to the need for a comprehensive peace between Israel and all of its neighbors have been far fewer, and far less clear.
    9. He has, however, made several approving references to the Arab Peace Initiative, which is based centrally on the concept of a ‘comprehensive’ peace between Israel and all neighbors, and which also stresses the need for Israel to evacuate all the Arab lands occupied in 1967.
    10. In the context of an effort to build an fair, stable, and increasingly trust-imbued order in the Arab-Israeli region, the manipulative, “divide and rule” approach that has marked all US peace efforts since 1993– whose failure has now been amply documented– needs to be laid aside in favor of one that actively welcomes the building or rebuilding of good working relations among all the Arab parties as the Arab parties walk together along the path laid out by their peace initiative of 2002.
    11. It was, remember, only a level of decent working relations among ideologically diverse Arab parties that in 1991 allowed the convening of the breakthrough Madrid Peace Conference. The same is true– but even more urgent!– today.
    12. Decent working relations are therefore now needed both within national communities– as in, between Fateh and Hamas; and also amongst the different large parties in Lebanon– and among the Arab states themselves.
    13. GWB’s malicious and divisive policy of stoking “moderates” versus “extremists” tensions at the regional level needs to be decisively cast aside. The languaging around that policy also needs to be jettisoned.
    14. One big challenge, obviously, is for the Palestinians to find a workable amount of intra-party reconciliation. It is good news that Hamas head Khaled Meshaal traveled to Cairo yesterday– hopefully, to try to break the logjam in the Cairo-mediated talks with Fateh. (It is my hope that one of the big things Obama and Hillary did when they were in Cairo last week was to tell Mubarak and his man Omar Suleiman quite clearly that they want him to succeed in this mediation, regardless of what Mubarak’s own small sectional interests in the matter might be.)
    15. Another challenge will be to build good relations between the Palestinian and Syrian leaderships as the negotiations gather steam. Having a national unity government for the Palestinians would most likely make that easier, as Hamas has had a long working relationship with Syria.
    16. Good relations between these two important Arab parties, and between Syria and Lebanon, (and among all the Arab parties) should be seen at this point as potentially synergistic and very helpful for the peacemaking effort, rather than being feared as presaging the imminent creation of a strong anti-Israeli military alliance– which was always the old fear of Israel and its western backers.
    17. We need to remember that these days, no Arab leaders have either the will or the capability to launch a military attack against Israel. They are all– including Hamas– focused on the peace arena. “Divide and rule” would be a completely counter-productive way for Washington to deal with this situation. Inclusion has to be the name of the game. Oh, and of course, real forward progress on securing the actual peace.

Anyway, as I say, I’m planning blog a lot more on all of this over the days ahead… For now, you’ll have to make do with my “17 points”.

Longer Meshaal

A longer version of my interview with Khaled Meshaal yesterday is here. Also here.
It covers the most important points he made on current issues in Palestinian-Israeli peacemaking, as well as his reaction to the big Obama speech.
I’m planning to transcribe the full version of the recording I made of the interview, and will publish it here as soon as that work is done.

Meshaal reaction on Foreign Policy website

It’s here. Good exposure, I think.
But now I have so much more writing up to do! (Also, I’ll try to get a few more reactions from Syrian friends to the speech.)
Update: I just did a Google news search on ‘Meshaal’ and the FP piece came out at the top. But where was the JWN post that had scooped it? (Also: The FP version contains two small typos, since corrected in the JWN original.)

Meshaal on Obama speech: Good, but–

A couple of hours ago I finished an hour-long, on-the-record interview here in Damascus with the head of Hamas’s political bureau, Khaled Meshaal.
I started, not surprisingly by asking his reactions to the Speech that Obama made in Cairo earlier in the afternoon.
He replied,

    Of course I listened to the speech. The words are different from those used by Bush. The speech was cleverly written in the way it addressed the Muslim world– using phrases from the Holy Kor’an, and referring to some historical events. And also, in the way it showed respect to the Muslim heritage.
    But I think it’s not enough!
    What’s needed are deeds, actions on the ground, and a change of policies.
    For example, if the Palestinians today don’t find a real change from the situation of siege in Gaza, there’s no point; the speech by itself doesn’t help them. What they’re looking for is an end to the siege and an end to occupation.
    We want to see practical steps by the United States such as ending Israel’s settlement activity, putting an end to Israel’s confiscation of Palestinian land and its campaign to Judaize Jerusalem; an end to its demolitions of Palestinian homes; and the removal of the 600 checkpoints that are stifling normal life in the West Bank.
    Rather than sweet words from President Obama on democratization, we’d rather see the United States start to respect the results of democratic elections that have already been held. And rather than talk about democratization and human rights in the Arab world, we’d rather see the removal of General Dayton, who’s building a police state there in the West Bank.
    In the speech, Obama talked about the Palestinian state, but not its borders. He didn’t mention whether it should comprise all the Palestinian land that was occupied in 1967, or just part of it, as Israel demands.
    He made no mention of Jerusalem or the Right of Return.
    Yes, he spoke of an end to settlement activity; but can he really get them to stop?
    Without addressing these issues, the speech remains rhetoric, not so very different from his predecessor’s.

Just for the record, Obama did mention Jerusalem, when he said he wanted to work for the day,

    when Jerusalem is a secure and lasting home for Jews and Christians and Muslims, and a place for all of the children of Abraham to mingle peacefully together as in the story of Isra, when Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed (peace be upon them) joined in prayer.

The Meshaal interview contained in-depth answers to numerous other questions I posed; but I wanted to get this answer published as soon as possible. The other answers ranged across a broad spectrum of issues related to ongoing political/diplomatic dilemmas.
One of his key answers that really stuck in my mind was this:

    We’ll work for the success of any project that ends the occupation, restores Palestinian rights, and achieves the right of Palestinians to self-determination.

I’ll publish a lot more from this interview, and from other interviews conducted here, including with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Mouallem, over the days ahead.

Why Israel’s ‘natural growth’ claim is dishonest: Four reasons

In an interview with Al-Jazeera Tuesday, Secretary Clinton unequivocally called on Israel to halt all construction activity connected with its settlement project in the occupied West Bank.
She said,

    First, we want to see a stop to settlement construction, additions, natural growth – any kind of settlement activity. That is what the President has called for. We also are going to be pushing for a two-state solution…

In reporting this earlier today, Haaretz’s Natasha Mozgovaya also noted that when Israeli President Shimon Peres was in Washington earlier this month he discussed the possibility of getting a waiver from the US regarding “construction to accommodate natural growth in the settlements.”
The actual words she reported from Peres on this issue were, “These children are not going to live on the roofs.”
This whole “natural growth” argument is a dishonest canard, whether used by Peres or anyone else,for the following four reasons:

    1. No settler children are going to be “living on the roofs.”
    The settlements– whether in East Jerusalem or elsewhere in the West Bank– have plenty of spare capacity, as evidenced by the facts that they continue to advertise for home-purchasers and that both the Israeli government and numerous private settlement organizations provide generous subsidies to (Jewish) people who want to go and live in them.
    2. This excuse has been used– and abused– before.
    Past Israeli governments have a track record on this question, having promised on several previous occasions to limit the growth in settlements to so-called “natural” growth and then continuing to build just as before while also giving all the incentives to non-settler Jewish people to move into the settlements. That record of past abuse needs to be taken into account.
    3. Accommodating Jewish Israelis’ alleged “natural” growth claims is inequitable unless the Palestinians’ much more urgent needs for housing are on their way to being met.
    It is simply obscene that, at a time when the Israelis are still refusing to allow into Gaza even the most basic materials required to rebuild the thousands of housing units destroyed during the recent war, they ask the world to pay heed to the almost completely specious claims they have regarding the alleged housing claims of residents of the illegal settlements.
    Wherever Palestinians currently live under Israeli rule, Israeli zoning and home-demolition policies have forced them to live in extremely overcrowded conditions. Any sustainable peace settlement between the two peoples must be based on equal rights and equal access to the basics of a decent life. Shifting towards a sustainable, equality-based outcome will be hard if, right at the start of the process, specious Israeli claims get any precedence over the far more pressing needs of Palestinians.
    4. Why think about “natural growth” at all if the peace agreement is, as we hope, due to be completed in timely fashion?
    In demographic terms, “natural growth” only becomes a real factor over a time period of five or more years. Proponents of the natural growth argument seem to assume the peace negotiations might go on for that long, or even longer. Peres’s use of the term “children” was telling. Was he assuming that settlers who are currently children will grow up, get married and want homes of their own before a final peace agreement is reached? If so, the peace process is doomed before it even starts.

For the above four reasons, the Israeli argument about “natural growth” is nonsense.
Congratulations to Sec. Clinton and Pres. Obama for being quite clear on this issue.