CS Monitor today includes an interesting story about pending recognition of Kosovo’s independence. The article is built around the theme that Kosovo’s bid is somehow unique, that Kosovo has emerged without the imprimatur of the United Nations Security Council.
News flash to the Monitor: the UN Security Council is hardly the sole arbiter of international legitimacy in the world today. International “law” is not equivalent to Security Council “votes.”
Kosovo’s appearance as a new state owes to a long struggle for recognition from as much of the world as it could obtain. Yet Kosovo lies at a fault-line of great power tensions. Russia, not surprisingly, vehemently opposes the further partition of the former Yugoslavia, along with other (but not all) Slavic populated states. With Russia holding a veto at the UN Security Council, it’s of course not surprising that the Security Council could not bestow its institutional approbation on Kosovo.
To legalists who narrowly view the UNSC as the sole “guarantor of legality among nations,” Kosovo’s emergence will be “illegal.” Russia condemnation of Kosovo’s “independence” as “illegal” is something other than “candid,” when it alone is the reason for the technical basis of that claim.
To be sure, the UN Security Council, when it can agree, remains an important indicator of international norms and rules. But when consensus fails, the battle for international legitimacy goes on at other levels.
Kosovo’s case for international recognition outside the UNSC was won in the broader battles for international opinion, what Thomas Jefferson, when reflecting in 1825 upon America’s own revolutionary struggle, referred to as “the tribunal of the world.” Serbia’s claims to retain “sovereignty” over Kosovo were weakened by its own flagrant lack of a “decent respect to the opinions of mankind.” It now reaps the fruits of that disregard for the opinions of a “candid world.” Huffing about “international law” won’t change that.
Discussing Hamas on Capitol Hill
At yesterday’s Capitol Hill panel discussion on “Re-calculating Annapolis” I tried to present the best arguments I could for the US to end its profoundly anti-democratic current practice of working with Israel and others to exclude and crush the organization that won the 2006 Palestinian parliamentary elections, Hamas.
The US, I concluded, should do whatever it can to promote these short- and medium-term goals:
- 1. A prisoner exchange between Israel and Hamas;
2. A working ceasefire between Israel and Hamas;
3. Gaza’s economic disengagement from Israel and its connection to the world economy either through Egypt or directly; and
4. A reconciliation between Fateh and Hamas.
Attentive readers of JWN will be familiar with most of the arguments I made along the way, which I have made here on the blog and in this November 2007 article in The Nation. I also noted that the dedication with which the Bushists have pursued their anti-Hamas agenda since the 2006 elections has very seriously undermined the claims the administration has made that it is somehow (counter to the evidence on the ground) committed to spreading the ideals and practice of democracy around the world, and has made the administration look very hypocritical and opportunistic indeed.
I may or may not have noted in my presentation that the campaign to exclude and crush Hamas– which has included giving full support to all of Israel’s policies of besieging Gaza and undertaking large numbers of extra-judicial executions there and in the West Bank– has actually had the opposite of the desired effect. Hamas has thus far emerged stronger politically than it was back in January 2006. (And meanwhile, the cost that these policies have imposed on the Palestinian people, and also to the Israelis who reside in the south of their country, has been high. In the case of the 1.4 million Gazans, quite horrendous.)
I should have quoted Uri Avnery’s great recent quote that the Olmert government’s actions against Gaza have been “worse than a war crime, they have been a blunder.” But I didn’t have time to. At the very last minute my position on the event’s roster was changed from #5 to #2, so I had to do some very rapid last-minute editing/revising of my comments.
We spoke in this order:
- 1. Andrew Whitley, who runs UNRWA’s representative office in New York;
2. me;
3. Ghaith al-Omari, Advocacy Director for the American Task Force on Palestine, and a former foreign policy advisor to PA President Mahmoud Abbas;
4. Rob Malley of the International Crisis Group;
5. Daniel Levy of the Century Fund and the New America Foundation.
Two of the other panelists, Malley and Levy, presented broadly the same arguments I was making. Whitley is precluded by the nature of his job as a UN employee from expressing political judgments; but the picture he painted of a besieged Gaza facing “a social explosion and an economic implosion”, and being poised “on the verge of a health pandemic”, was grim indeed.
As for our fifth fellow-panelist, Ghaith al-Omari, he was advocating a path very different from that urged by the rest of us. He spoke right after me, and almost his first words were that, “Elections are highly over-rated.” He argued that trying to deal with Hamas, “is neither doable nor desirable.” He acknowledged that Hamas, “represents a real force in Palestinian society and needs to be taken into account.” But, he said, the question was “On what terms should Mahmoud Abbas be expected to reconcile with it?” His answer was that Hamas needed to be further weakened before Abbas could deal with it.
That seemed to me like a clear invitation to the forces currently seeking to punish and crush Hamas to step up their efforts. And this from someone who, though he is not a Palestinian, works for an organization that claims to speak in some way for the Palestinians…
In Rob Malley’s presentation, which came next, he directly challenged the assumption underlying that last argument of Omari’s. “Hamas is getting stronger and Abbas is getting weaker,” Malley warned. “We should not assume that time is our friend.” He also warned that the very difficult situation in Gaza could well be “the crucible of the next Arab-Israeli war.”
He noted that the attempt to isolate Hamas had been aimed at pushing forward the “peace process.” But he noted that had not happened. (A little later, Levy argued that the Annapolis formula “was the best that Condi Rice could win support for from the White House; but it wasn’t actually a recipe for success.”)
The major point at which Malley seemed to diverge from my views is he said he thought Mahmoud Abbas should mediate both the ceasefire asnd the prisoner exchange between Israel and Hamas. Personally I think that’s a recipe for disaster because (a) Abbas is not even on speaking terms with Hamas at this point; (b) There is anyway an existing mediator between Israel and Hamas on these two issues, and that is Egypt; so neither side “needs” Abbas to mediate for them (they could also communicate directly with each other if they wanted; this has happened in some limited ways in the past); (c) from a national-interest point of view, it actually seems very inappropriate for Abbas to “mediate” between Israel and Hamas; and finally (d), the biggest point of all: Abbas is actually increasingly weak and irrelevant.
Levy made a couple of excellent observations. Firstly, that “We now have no fewer than three U.S. generals in the region working on this issue– and none of them is doing anything that would count as de-escalation of the tensions.” Secondly, that what he had been learning from his Israeli compatriots was that Hamas had discernibly been trying to target military installations with its rockets, while it was Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Popular Resistance Committees who had been sending rockets simply into the (populated) general vicinity of the city of Sderot. “Though Hamas,” he added, “has not intervened to stop them from doing that.”
I was encouraged to hear that Levy’s Israeli sources saw clear evidence of an attempt by the Hamas rocketeers to restrict their targeting to military installations. But that guidance certainly needs to be extended to their people undertaking other kinds of violent operations, too. (Hamas credibly claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing that on February 3 killed an elderly woman in Dimona; the two operatives involved reached Israel from the Hebron area, not from Gaza or Egypt.)
It was significant that though the title of our discussion was “Re-calculating Annapolis”, no-one spent much time looking at the actual (and very sad) record of what has been going on in the post-Annapolic negotiations. I made a point, in my presentation, of noting the political impact of the fact that the Syrians— after having taken the bold step of attending Annapolis– had received nothing but a very cold shoulder from the Bushites in return.
But really, none of us spent any time discussing the minutiae of the current formal “peace process.” Partly because so very, very little has been, in fact, going on. And partly because the whole confrontation over– and the recent bustout from– Gaza has completely eclipsed in importance whatever teeny baby steps forward (or backward) the “peace process” negotiations might have taken.
Talking of which, I found it intriguing to note that Salam Fayyad, the man whom Abbas picked as his Prime Minister after the Israelis had conveniently imprisoned a large number of the Hamas parliamentarians, has not been completely acting the role of compliant US/Israeli puppet. Fayyad’s been here in the US, partly doing family things. But he also gave a couple of policy addresses here in Washington, DC. And in one of them he complained openly that the checkpoints that the IOF maintains inside the West Bank– which were supposed to have decreased in number after Annapolis– “have increased, not decreased.”
Oh, and in further related news, on Tuesday Israel’s housing minister, Zeev Boim, announced plans to build more than 1,100 more new apartments in occupied East Jerusalem.
Under these circumstances, is it really any surprise that Abbas is so rapidly becoming weaker?
Bush trying to entangle NATO allies in Lebanese strife?
I was trying to think through why the Bush White House and its Lebanese allies have been acting in such a provocative, escalatory way in Lebanon in recent weeks. There is no way the pro-US forces in Lebanon could ever hope to “win” a civil war if the country should indeed be tipped over the brink into one.
Actually, the history of the past 33 years in the country should prove that no-one wins if there is a civil war there.
So why do the US and its Lebanese allies currently seem so risk-happy?
Then it struck me. There are 15,000 UN troops, most of them from NATO countries, currently deployed in the south of the country; and most of them aren’t doing very much there. (The peace is kept between Israel and Hizbullah much more by the deterrent power that they exert towards each other than by UNIFIL’s lightly armed peacekeepers, as I wrote here, a long time ago.) But if a civil war should suddenly threaten to engulf the whole of Lebanon, maybe the Bushists would seek to get UNIFIL’s mandate suddenly enlarged, so that its troops could intervene at short notice, and in support of the Lebanese side that the Bushists judge to be “legitimate”?
Obviously, I have no way of knowing if this is their plan. If it is, it would be a plan fraught with large numbers of dangers and uncertainties. For one thing, it’s by no means certain the UN Security Council– or indeed, most of the troop-contributing countries– would ever agree to such an enlargement of the UNIFIL mandate. But if entangling UNIFIL in a Lebanese civil war is not part of the Bushists’ plan, then what are they doing acting in such an escalatory and self-defeating way there?
Who is seeking to destabilize Lebanon?
Tomorrow is the third anniversary of the truck-bomb killing of former Lebanese PM Rafiq Hariri. Quite understandably, many of those most horrified by that killing are planning large-scale marches to commemorate it. This, amidst the the political crisis caused by the failure of the country’s political leaders to agree on a formula for forming the country’s next government. (That bottleneck has also led to the failure of the country’s MPs to form a quorum large enough to elect the new president; the country has been without a president since November 23.)
Obviously, many Lebanese and their friends are concerned at the possibility that the spate of acts of violence that has occurred in recent weeks might, at this very sensitive time, tip over that hard-to-discern brink into a large-scale, outright, very damaging, and possibly lengthy civil war.
Last Saturday, February 10, I wrote a post here in which I said that the real story in Lebanon is actually that there is not, already, a civil war there. I also noted the efforts that many Lebanese political leaders, including those from Hizbullah, had been pursuing in an effort to prevent the outbreak of a civil war.
But on that very same day, MP Saad Hariri, the son of the late Rafiq H. and a leader of the anti-Syrian “March 14” bloc in the parliament, made a belligerent speech in which he said that if the country’s “destiny” is confrontation, then he and his allies were “ready” for that.
The following day, Hariri’s ally, the ever-mercurial Walid Jumblatt, went much further, issuing this very public threat:
- “You want disorder? It will be welcomed. You want war? It will be welcomed. We have no problem with weapons, no problem with missiles. We will take them from you.”
On Feb. 11th, too, at least two people were wounded Sunday in a gunfight between Jumblatt supporters and opponents in Aley, east of Beirut, and shots were reportedly fired Sunday in an altercation between Hariri supporters and members of Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri’s security services.
(When I got to the bottom of my incoming mail pile on Sunday, I found a charming, Christmas card from Walid– featuring a photo he had taken of the snow-covered steps of his family’s feudal home in Moukhtara. Maybe I should have a conversation with him about Jesus’s teachings on nonviolence sometime?)
Back in November, Walid notoriously threatened to unleash car-bombs against the Syrian capital, Damascus. Yesterday, just such a bomb did explode there. It killed Imad Mughniyeh, long wanted by the US government as being the accused architect of the very lethal attacks against US military and diplomatic facilities in Lebanon in 1983-84, and by Israel for his alleged role in organizing very lethal attacks against Israeli and Jewish facilities in Buenos Aires. Hizbullah’s Manar website today described him as “a great resistance leader who joined the procession of Islamic Resistance martyrs.”
No indication, yet, of whether Walid’s threat of last November was related in any way to Mughniyeh’s killing. But did the belligerent words Walid pronounced last Sunday about “We have no problem with weapons, no problem with missiles” have anything to do with yesterday’s visit by US Undersecretary of Defense Eric Edelman to Beirut?
This AP report tells us that,
- Since 2006, the United States has committed US$321 million in security assistance to the Lebanese army, and has pledged to provide equipment and training to the country’s armed forces.
In the letter Edelman handed (Lebanese PM Fuad) Saniora from Bush, the American president expressed strong support to the Lebanese government and said that Iran and Syria are trying to “undermine Lebanon’s democratic institutions through violence and intimidation.”
This move of accusing Syria and Iran of unacceptable intervention in Lebanese politics is an increasingly common one– from a US administration that is also, (a) majorly intervening in Lebanon’s domestic politics, and (b) quite evidently a non-Lebanese actor. It would be a laughable move to make if the reality that blies behind it– of US arms supplies to the Lebanese army and hostile, escalatory rhetoric– were not so serious.
All power to the de-escalators and the bridge-builders. May their efforts succeed.
Live-blogging Obama’s “Potomac” breakthrough
We did it! In Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia, we voted Barack Obama overwhelmingly in the Democratic primary.
I’m watching Obama giving the victory speech. He’s doing it in Madison, Wisconsin, since Wisconsin is one of the upcoming primary states.
But Obama’s stupendous. He’s talked quite a bit about the need for clarity on the war. He said some good things about John McCain’s past heroism– a nice touch. But then he said that McCain lost his way. That McCain, who had once stood against the tax cuts Bush gave to the rich but now he supports them. A number of times Obama made the link directly between the cost of the war in Iraq and the lack of investment at home.
He’s been talking in a very personal vein– about the fact that his mother was a teenager in Hawaii, and then his father left the family when Barack was only two years old…
Most interesting of all, though, has been to see him suddenly looking like someone who is ready to be president. He’s been saying a number of times “When I am president…” and suddenly it looks as if he is growing into a self-realization of the possibility, growing into the role.
Half an hour ago, I saw a very mechanical speech from Hillary Clinton.
Oh, and now CNN has shifted over from Obama to McCain. The difference in age and energy level is evident.
Also, Obama was speaking in a huge, two-tiered stadium with tens of thousands of people there. (He has shown this amazing ability to mobilize large numbers of voters, especially young voters.) The camera there kept moving into a wide shot and then panning over the massive crowd. With McCain, now, all you can see is five other– all white– people in the frame behind him as he speaks in Alexandria, Virginia. One of them is, I think, the ageing and about-to-retie Republican Virginia senator, John Warner, who is 80-plus years old.
But McCain is also promising a respectful, decent campaign. Including– I just heard him using Obama’s signature chant of “I’m fired up and ready to go!” That, with a large smile.
Virginia’s Primaries (& Huckabee/Copeland note)
There’s much to mull over concerning Iran’s pending parliamentary elections – the vetting process yet again. Yet for the moment, we have the American political circus to comprehend, and our own “vetting processes” are less than perfect. For our Presidential primary here in Virginia tomorrow, we are pleasantly surprised to contemplate that our votes might still mean something. Alas, (and this is Scott writing) my early favorites (Chuck Hagel, Bill Richardson, or Ron Paul) either chickened out, gave up early, or have been quite marginalized. But there is still a race on; in both parties, it’s not yet certain who will win.
What’s an independent thinker to do? I’m tired of being “embarrassed” every time our current President speaks, smirks, or slurs.
By contrast, Saturday’s Jefferson-Jackson Day speech here in Virginia by Barack Obama gives me hope that we might yet have a President by this time next year who won’t cause me to cringe:
[W]hile Washington is consumed with the same drama and division and distraction, another family puts up a For Sale sign in the front yard. Another factory shuts its doors forever. Another mother declares bankruptcy because she cannot pay her child’s medical bills.
And another soldier waves goodbye as he leaves on another tour of duty in a war that should’ve never been authorized and never been waged. It goes on and on and on, year after year after year.
But in this election – at this moment – Americans are standing up all across the country to say, not this time. Not this year. The stakes are too high and the challenges too great to play the same Washington game with the same Washington players and expect a different result.
Many of these themes echo recent Obama stump lines. I especially like this passage:
If I am the nominee of this party, John McCain will not be able to say that I agreed with him on voting for the war in Iraq; agreed with him on giving George Bush the benefit of the doubt on Iran; and agree with him in embracing the Bush-Cheney policy of not talking to leaders we don’t like. Because that doesn’t make us look strong, it makes us look arrogant. John F. Kennedy said that you should never negotiate out of fear, but you should never fear to negotiate. And that’s what I will do as President. I don’t just want to end this war in Iraq, I want to end the mindset that got us into war. It is time to turn the page. (emphasis added)
Yes, this primary is personal for me. My son the Army reserves Lieutenant was just activated into the full-time Army, with his unit slotted for “deployment” later this year. So the ole’ “pro-life” card has, shall we say, a different meaning for me.
McCain, Huckabee & Kenneth Copeland!?
As much as I once liked him, voting for McCain, Mr. Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran, or Mr. “stay in Iraq for a 100 years,” would, for me, be the antithesis of “supporting the troops.”
I do realize that many “independent” friends think McCain is one of them — and that may indeed explain much of his success thus far. But for me, McCain gave up the “Maverick” mantle when he went with the imperialists of old, backing the surge and now loose chatter advocating staying in Iraq without end.
Huckabee for a few moments intrigued me. To be sure, he’s the ultimate un-foreign policy candidate, and he’s tried to turn it into a joke. (He’s been staying at a lot of Holiday Inn’s lately). When he wasn’t “boasting” of consulting with John Bolton, his campaign did float some curiously “independent” ideas, such as the notion of serious talking to Iran (what a concept!) in the current issue of Foreign Affairs. He also notably criticized the Bush Administration for its “counterproductive… bunker mentality” towards the world.
I anticipate Huckabee might do better than expected here in Virginia, though more on social issues, as conservative religious “folk” here remember John McCain’s blasts at them eight years ago. It was no accident that Pat Robertson endorsed Rudy Guliani – after courting Romney) Huckabee yesterday was “speaking” before Falwell’s mega-church in Lynchburg.
But Virginia’s “conservative Christians” are hardly a monolith; the formulas that worked before are in tatters. Jerry Falwell is gone; Pat Robertson is on the way out, and his once intimidating “Christian Coalition” barely even exists – even what it stands for anymore is a mystery. (A friend yesterday even hinted that the current CC leader is quietly supporting Clinton)
Continue reading “Virginia’s Primaries (& Huckabee/Copeland note)”
Congratulations, Egypt and Abu Treika!
Egypt’s national football (soccer) team won the African Nations Cup final in Ghana last night. Huge congratulations to them and to their scorer! Muhammad Abu Treika (no. 22).
Abu Treika is probably today the best-known 29-year-old in Africa and perhaps the whole of the Muslim world. If you want to see one amazing recent goal he scored, look at the second goal on this Youtube clip. Abu Treika had already won attention by raising his No.22 shirt at the end of a game in an earlier round of the cup, revealing a tee-shirt underneath that said “Sympathize with Gaza.” (See his explanation of this, to English Al-Jazeera, here.) But the guy is also just an amazing player: intuitive and disciplined at the same time.
For those US or other readers who don’t know much about football the way the whole of the non-US world plays it, or who don’t know much about Abu Treika, Time’s Scott MacLeod has a nice post on Abu Treika, and on the wildly enthusiastic reaction that last night’s win saw in downtown Cairo. (Hat-tip Bram.)
MacLeod writes:
- A midfielder for Egypt’s hugely successful and popular al-Ahly team, he’s been the top-rated player in the country for four straight years. An outfit called the International Federation of Football History and Statistics said a recent poll it sponsored named Aboutreika the world’s most popular footballer, with more than 1 million votes, well ahead of the likes of Ronaldinho.
It is Aboutreika’s character as much as his playing that endears him to his fans. His gesture to the Palestinians was in keeping with his active involvement in humanitarian causes, such as his role as a World Food Program Ambassador Against Hunger. In Egypt, he’s known as a devout, humble man who has not let success go to his head. He has been photographed with his mother, who wears a traditional hijab, or headscarf. “He’s a great player, but he’s also honest and knows his god,” a kid in the cafe wearing a Billabong sweatshirt tells me. Once, as the new young star for the Egyptian Tersana team, Aboutreika refused to sign a contract that elevated his salary way above those of his teammates. “We need to stop this habit of praising an individual player,” he told reporters after the 2006 Cup victory. “It isn’t Aboutreika, but the whole team who got the Cup. Without the others’ efforts, I can’t ever make anything.” His first words after tonight’s victory: “It’s one of the greatest days of my life.”
MacLeod was writing from a downtown coffee shop. (It goes by the significant name of the “Fallujah” coffee shop.) He wrote:
- Egypt, blessed with such an athlete, is desperately in need of a little joy. Everyone agrees that the country has been sliding backwards lately. The flood of Palestinians into Gaza exposed an embarrassing decline in the Egyptian government’s ability to influence developments in the Middle East, even on its own border. The regime has been arresting journalists, bloggers and Islamic fundamentalists in another big domestic crackdown on dissent. Meanwhile, ordinary Egyptians are grumbling about the higher price of such things as electricity, water and bread. Even government employees have been going on strike. “We wanted a reason to be happy,” says Salah, one of the customers at the Falluja coffee shop. “Egyptians are feeling choked. Everything is no good.”
Except, that is, a certain No. 22 footballer who sent Egyptians by the millions into the streets tonight. After the winning goal, Gamal, a brick layer next to me, sits down and kisses his fingers. “Thanks to God,” he says. “It’s a victory for my country, my people.” As I passed Tahrir Square on the way home after the match, gathering crowds were waving the Egyptian flag and whooping it up. And they were chanting, “A-bou Trei-ka! A-bou Trei-ka! A-bou Trei-ka!”
The story: Lebanon NOT consumed by civil war…
… so what’s going on?
This is a really interesting story, though most of the western (“If it bleeds, it leads”) MSM haven’t even started to notice it.
But what’s been happening in Lebanon since even before the Feb. 14, 2005 killing of ex-PM Rafiq Hariri is that– okay, in addition to the ghastly Israeli assault of summer 2006, and the brutal fighting at Nahr al-Bared refugee camp last summer– there have been numerous other sporadic acts of lethal violence. And each time, many people around the world would perk up their ears and say, “Oh my! Is Lebanon about to plunge back into civil war?” But it doesn’t happen.
Why not?
I think this is due, in large part, to the sense of realism and political wisdom that so many Lebanese political leaders actually have. Starting with the country’s biggest party, Hizbullah, but extending far beyond them. Nearly all the acts of violence that have occurred since late 2004 have been unclaimed, and unexplained. Under those circumstances, normally, people would have every reason to be fearful. Where might it happen next, and to whom? People would be on-edge and ready to “counter-attack first”. Back in December 2006, there was a small eruption of fighting between Sunni and Shiite militias in South Beirut. But it was rapidly contained and defused. Last Sunday, there was another such cliffhanging incident. Again, it got contained. There is evidently some very serious and intentional conflict-defusing work going on there, for which the people of Lebanon and the region should all be glad.
I’m just thinking back to the few days I spent in the generally cosmopolitan hub of Ras Beirut last month. Ras Beirut seemed a lot more relaxed and pleasant to be in then, than it did when we were there for two months in later 2004 (i.e., before the Hariri killing.) Maybe that had to do with the removal of the Syrian military presence from the country, which happened– as a response to Hariri killing– in summer of 2005.
Last month, the main gripe of many people in Ras Beirut was against the selfishness and arrogance that so many local parliamentarians seem to display in various facets of their personal and political lives. The parliamentarians have periodically been enacting their big drama of “Can they convene enough MPs together and reach agreement on the formula for forming the next government?” Yesterday, they just postponed that constitutionally vital session for the 14th time. As a result, the country still doesn’t have a president. The sitting ministers– that is, all the non-Shiite ones, since the Shiite ones all resigned a year or so back– continue to get their hefty salaries and to do not very much of anything except renew the contracts they all gave to their friends a while back. The MPs also take their salaries, and throw out huge barricades around their lavish residences, which inconvenience everyone else no end. No legislating, and precious little real governing, gets done at all. The country generally keeps running along, even if in an extremely unorthodox way.
Lebanon, remember, is a country whose founding ethos was one of aversion to, or flight from, anything resembling central government authority. That’s what being a mountain-dominated society full of theologically heterodox communities is all about. Iraq, which is a plains country, is actually far, far worse affected when the central government doesn’t function, since back to the days of the Sumerians the river/plains systems there have always totally relied on having a central authority to regulate both waters and the livelihoods and communities so heavily dependent on them.
So in Lebanon, it is indeed quite possible that the country won’t get a new president or a new president before the scheduled holding of parliamentary elections next year. In which case, the main job for the sitting MPs will be to draw up the rules for that election. (A bizarre system, eh?) It will be interesting to see whether an international community in which George W. Bush is no longer a leading actor will be one that supports Lebanon at last having a strong, fair, and non-sectarian election system… Let’s hope so.
Mubarak on the Gaza question
This is the English-language version of an interview conducted on January 30th with Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak by two correspondents from Italy’s La Repubblica. A very well-informed person tells me it’s a good representation of what is known of Mubarak’s views. (Hat-tip to that person.)
Here is how it starts:
- “Listen to me carefully.” The Egyptian leader’s voice rose: “Gaza is not part of Egypt, nor will it ever be a part of Egypt.” Then he got tough: “I hear talk of a proposal to turn the Strip into an extension of the Sinai peninsula, of offloading responsibility for it onto Egypt, but what I say to Israel is this: Its plan is nothing but a dream, and I would add that I do not accept faits accomplis…
“Some people in Israel are talking about creating an ‘expanded’ Gaza Strip, building a part of the Sinai peninsula into it via a trade in land between Egypt, Israel, and the Palestinians. Well, my answer is this: Let them trade in shoes and clothes but not in land, truly not in land.”
That part certainly rings very true. Mubarak’s political patron, Pres. Anwar Sadat, was extremely proud of the fact that in the Camp David negotiations of 1978 he managed to win Israel’s agreement to withdraw its forces from all of the Egyptian territory occupied in 1967. It’s quite clear that Mubarak would not easily agree to any non-Egyptian party infringing on Egypt’s sovereignty now. (The concept of Egyptian sovereignty goes back, um, around 7,000 years or so.)
The whole text of the interview is fascinating. Here are some more highlights:
- [Mubarak] …The strangulation of Gaza that Israel has put in place to try to weaken Hamas has produced a contrary effect. Hamas has been strengthened by it. There you have it, that is Israel’s big mistake.
I note that the great Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery has described Olmert’s attempt to strangle Gaza’s population in very similar terms, as “worse than a war crime– a blunder.”
Back to the interview:
- [La Repubblica] What are the consequences for Egypt? Is proximity with an area under Islamist control a threat to your country’s security?
[Mubarak] What happened in Gaza last June is important for us in terms of the implications that it has for the Palestinian people. Where Egypt’s national security is concerned, we are perfectly capable of defending ourselves. We are deeply aware of the suffering in Gaza, and sure enough, I have called on Israel to resume supplies to the Strip. We, for our part, are sending food and medical supplies from Egypt. But I will not allow new crises to be fomented at the Rafah border crossing, or a hail of stones to be thrown at the Egyptian security forces. Nor, I repeat, will I allow Israel, the occupying power, to offload its responsibilities towards Gaza, which is an occupied territory.
[La Repubblica] President Bush came to the Middle East as a peace broker. Can he play a role in defusing the crisis?
[Mubarak] A peace broker? I would not call him that…
Now, that is really something, from a guy considered to be a lynchpin of US diplomatic/strategic policy in the Middle East! Earth to Condi! Maybe you should pay some heed to what the Arab allies on whom Washington’s Middle East policy is so dependent think about your peace diplomacy?
Mubarak continues, about Bush:
- Of course, he came here to promote an accord, to assess the results of the Annapolis summit, in an attempt to implement his personal vision of two states. But from the United States I hear it being said and repeated that he is not going to intervene in the negotiations on the final issues, which are the most sensitive ones. It is almost as though he had forgotten the lesson of Camp David: President Al- Sadat and Prime Minister Begin would never have achieved an accord if Carter had not spurred them on.
A little later, this:
- [La Repubblica] There is an additional problem, which some people call Iran’s interference in Middle Eastern affairs. Did Bush ask you to forge a common front against Tehran?
[Mubarak] This is not the time for resorting to threats or to the use of force: That would serve solely to set the Gulf, the Middle East, and the whole world on fire. What is needed, rather, are dialogue and diplomacy. The US intelligence report on Iran’s nuclear ambitions lends itself to opposing interpretations, but in any case it paves the way for diplomacy. Greater transparency is needed on Iran’s part, and greater flexibility is needed on the part of the international community.
[La Repubblica] Yet Egypt has now chosen to move down the path of nuclear energy. Is that, too, a reaction to Iran’s programme?
[Mubarak] No, it is not. It is for purely economic reasons…
[La Repubblica] We have recently seen the Arab countries making overtures towards Iran. People are talking about the resumption of diplomatic ties between Egypt and Tehran after fully 30 years. Is it going to happen?
[Mubarak] Our contacts with Iran are ongoing despite Tehran’s breaking off ties back in 1979, after Egypt made peace with Israel. There are various issues on the table, but once they have been resolved, we are prepared to establish diplomatic relations once again.
[La Repubblica] Does that mean that Iran’s influence today is a reality that the world needs to take into account?
[Mubarak] I would prefer not to talk of influence so much as of the role and contribution of the countries in the region to peace, to security, and to stability. Iran is one of the most important countries in the region. It can play a positive and constructive role in the stability of the Gulf and of the Middle East. [Mubarak ends]
At the end of the interview, the authors note that, “Outside the door, the mirrors reflected the profile of the region’s new leading players: A composed and unruffled Iranian delegation stood waiting.”
Well, that interview was conducted ten days ago, and a lot has happened since. In the interview, Mubarak told the reporters that the border with Rafah would be closed “today”– yet it took his security people a further four days to close it; and even then, they were only able to do so with the help of Hamas.
The Egyptian authorities also made some quite heavy-handed attempts to mount a (dis-)information campaign against Hamas, with some writers even calling it something like an “Israeli fifth column” in the region. I’m not sure if that information campaign is still continuing?
The government has also continued its crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, arresting numerous MB organizers around the country.
And security chief Omar Suleiman– sometimes also mentioned as a possible political successor to the ageing Mubarak– has reportedly been in Israel trying to work out a solution to the Gaza issue.
Such a solution, to work, probably needs to include these elements:
- 1. A ceasefire between Israel and at the very least Gaza, but preferably also one that covers the West Bank as well.
2. A solution to the question of Gaza’s economic links– one that definitely does not include Gaza remaining shackled under Israel’s ever-tightening siege, and one that preferably also allows considerably more freedom of movement within the West Bank, and between the WB and East Jerusalem.
3. A prisoner release/exchange that is actually implemented (as opposed to the many in the past that have been concluded but not implemented by Israel.)
4. Agreement on a Fateh-Hamas working arrangement.
A tall order? Yes. If Suleiman can pull this one off, maybe he deserves to be president of Egypt!
Daniel Pipes, making sense?
Every so often people can surprise you. Thus it was today with Daniel Pipes, writing in the Jerusalem Post that Israel should just “offload” Gaza onto Egypt.
What I don’t like about Pipes’s piece is the extremely demeaning way he writes about the Palestinians. “Given that Gazans have shown themselves incapable of responsible self-rule… ” and so on. But here’s the thing about the “parallel unilateralisms” approach– parallel as between Likudniks like D. Pipes, and the people in Hamas, as I wrote about here, back in 2006: participants in that kind of approach don’t have to be all lovey-dovey; they don’t have to like each other, or even particularly pretend that they do. They just need to let each other get on with their lives.
Pipes says that the “disengage from Gaza” project was suggested to him by Rob Satloff of the Washington Institute for Pro-Israeli Policy. He writes that Satloff suggested that Israel announce these three steps:
- “a date certain for the severing of Israel’s provision of water, electricity and trade access, free entry for replacement services through Egypt, and an invitation for international support to link Gaza to Egyptian grids.”
And he notes that “Giora Eiland, a former Israeli national security adviser, would also detach Gaza from its customs union with Israel and the West Bank.”
This would be music to the ears of many or most of the leaders of Hamas. Interesting. Particularly interesting if Likud comes into power and actually does this.
Parallel unilateralisms is almost the polar opposite of the “integrationist” approach to peacemaking that has been pursued in particular by Shimon Peres and some people in Fateh– with huge amounts of funding from well-meaning people and governments in the west who just love all that encounter-group bonding stuff. However, I worked in one such project, at the non-governmental level, for nearly two years back in the early 1990s; and I can tell you there are a lot of very unhealthy power plays that go on in many or most of them. How could there not be? What you’re talking about, after all, is representatives from one very powerful group, that have passports and resources and nearly all the contacts with the funders, ability to set the agendas, etc etc, and representatives from the other group who have almost none of those advantages…
Thus you had, for example, Shimon Peres who even while he was professing all his “New Middle East” business, was the one who as Prime Minister launched Israel’s extremely lethal 1996 punitive military attack against Lebanon and supported various other uses of quite disproportionate military violence. He wasn’t about to cede any real say in the diplomatic agenda to anyone, no matter how nice he made… And there are power plays and huge vested interests from many of the “mediators” and would-be mediators in the west, too.
I know politics and diplomacy are not the same as interpersonal relations. But they sometimes have a lot in common. Speaking from my experience of my first marriage breaking up, I think it was essential for me– and maybe for my ex, too– to be able to have a “Clean break” from each other. While we still both tried thereafter to deal with each other in a cordial, indeed helpful, way in our management of our continued joint interests (that is, the rearing of our children), once we’d made the decision to divorce neither of us was under any pressure to be “best friends” with each other any more. That would surely have led to some horrendous “Kramer vs. Kramer”-type difficulties. Instead, we both moved on and married other people, and created two new blended families.
The “integrationist” approach has been pursued by Israel towards the Palestinians– without success– since Oslo. Maybe it could have worked in the 1990s, under very different circumstances. (Including some serious and visionary engagement by Bill Clinton in the process, rather than having him just act as in-house attorney for whoever happened to be in power in Israel which was the role he played for eight years there.) But we are 15 years on from Oslo now. The integrationist approach has not worked and it shows no imminent signs of working. Maybe it really is time for a “Clean break”– but of a kind notably different from the one the Likudniks and PNAC-ers proposed back in 1996.
I have Palestinian friends who, when we’ve discussed this matter, have argued passionately that if Gaza “switches” from being tied to the current Israeli-dominated customs union to being linked to Egypt’s economy, then that would signal a disastrous break between Gaza and the West Bank. A long-held mantra of the Palestinian nationalists has been that Gaza and the West Bank are “one political entity.” All previous moves Israel has made at enacting a “Gaza first” approach were strongly criticized.
But Gaza has been disconnected from the West Bank, in practice, for 15 years now. And meanwhile, its people– as also, indeed, the 2.2 million Palestinians of the West Bank– have been suffering hugely from their subordination to Israel’s economic as well as military domination. So if the 1.4 million Gazas have a chance to escape that economic servitude, at last; to break out of the completely anti-humane conditions of economic siege that Israel has imposed upon them and re-open their economy to the world through Egypt: then why should a completely unelected Mr. Salam Fayyad in Ramullah and his many western bankrollers forbid them from doing that?
We should underline the fact that since Oslo it has been forbidden for nearly all Gazans even to visit Jerusalem or anywhere else in the West Bank. Travel between the two territories was far easier before Oslo– even during the height of the First Intifada! It was Oslo that brought the tightened restrictions on travel and trade. Most Gazans alive today have never had the chance even to visit their holy places in Jerusalem.
But– and this is important to note– the fact of this longlasting separation in practice between Gaza and the West Bank has not diminished by one jot the feeling that Gazans have of allegiance to the Palestinian national identity, or their love of and longing for Jerusalem. Similarly, nearly all the millions of Palestinians living as multi-generational refugees in Jordan, and Syria, Lebanon, or elsewhere, also still keenly feel themselves to be Palestinians, who have a special tie to Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank. So the argument that if Gazans build new economic ties with Egypt then they will somehow “forget” their Palestinian-ness, seems without merit.
It’s worth remembering, too, that more than 80% of Gaza’s people are also multi-generational refugees from inside current Israel. They are certainly not about to simply forget all those longstanding claims they have against Israel, which are specifically Palestinian claims and are not shared by Egyptians or any other non-Palestinians.
To be honest, I haven’t made my mind up yet– for what it’s worth– as to whether the unilateralist (or more precisely, Egypt-focused) approach to socioeconomic reconstruction and regional diplomacy can offer a viable path forward for Gaza’s people. What I do see is that the “integration with a much more powerful Israel while sporadically trying to disentangle” approach ihas not worked for the Gazans or the West Bankers… Worse than that, it is inflicting visible harms on Gaza’s people (and the people of the West Bank) day after day after day.
Hey, here’s an idea: Why not let the people of Gaza– or, the people of Gaza and the West Bank– have a free and fair vote on this matter? Why, the vote might even take the form of a parliamentary election… (What do you mean they did have just such a vote back in January 2006? They did? So where are all those parliamentarians now? Oh, in Israel’s jails… Ain’t democracy great?)