Ten reasons to talk to Hamas

1. Diplomacy is not mainly about talking to people you agree with, but to people you disagree with.
2. They won a free and fair parliamentary election in 2006. Fateh’s Mahmoud Abbas won a free and fair presidential election in 2005. Outsiders have no credibility when they seek to include one of these parties while excluding and indeed also attacking the other.
3. For 18 months or more in 2005-6 Hamas participated in good faith in a ceasefire against Israel even though the ceasefire was not reciprocated by Israel either formally or informally.
4. When the British government finally realized it could not “defeat” the IRA by force but needed to explore reaching a political agreement with the IRA / Sinn Fein, they set as the only two preconditions for any party entering peace talks that it should (a) engage in good faith in a ceasefire and (b) demonstrate that it had at least some significant mandate from the electorate. The peace negotiations thereby started met with eventual success.
5. When the (White) South African government finally realized it could not “defeat” the ANC by force but needed to explore reaching a political agreement with the ANC and other anti-apartheid parties, they set as the only two preconditions for any party entering peace talks that it should (a) engage in good faith in a ceasefire and (b) be prepared to participate in good faith in an election. The peace process thereby started met with fairly rapid and amazingly far-reaching success.
6. In both those peace processes, and countless other successful peacemaking ventures around the world, the idea that one party– and one party only– should have to completely demobilize and disarm, and make significant concessions on its core political doctrine, before it could be admitted to any peace talks had already been proven to be a non-starter for many years before the more flexible, limited– and successful– view of the pre-requisites of peacemaking was adopted.
7. Everyone around the world should be opposed to acts that constitute terrorism, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and other serious laws-of-war violations. As part of a reasonable ceasefire process, all parties should indeed be asked to foreswear the use of such vile, anti-humane tactics. (Though this would be strictly entailed in any meaningful ceasefire commitment, anyway.) However, the tactic of labeling one party to a contest as “terrorist” and arguing that that disqualifies it from inclusion in any peace diplomacy, while completely ignoring the very serious laws-of-war violations committed by other parties (a) is intrinsically inequitable and erodes respect for the integrity of the principles underlying the whole process, and (b) was shown to be completely unsuccessful in South Africa, Mozambique, and elsewhere. Getting stuck in the discourse of counter-“terrorism” blinded Maggie Thatcher and others to the reality of the situation in South Africa. In the Arab-Israeli arena, recourse to this same tactic has paralyzed the ability of the main western powers to play any constructive role in the diplomacy.
8. Hamas is very different from Al-Qaeda. Westerners need to to pursue intelligent policies that differentiate between, on the one hand, Islamist political movements that are rooted within and answerable to an identifiable national or sub-national community, and are willing to prove their links to this community by participating in good faith in free and fair elections (see #2 above), and on the other, Islamist movements that have no such community anchor or answerability but instead roam nihilistically across the world stage sowing destruction and tension wherever they go. If we and our leaders can’t engage in this kind of intelligent differentiation, then we’ll end up merely pushing additional tens or hundreds of millions of Muslim men and women into the ideological embrace of the nihilists.
9. Western governments already engage in intention-probing diplomacy with many international actors whose actions are far more damaging than those of Hamas. (Such as North Korea.) I understand the concern many people have with those parts of Hamas’s core ideology that threaten Israel’s existence; and indeed I share a good part of that concern. But Hamas leaders have talked about their readiness to enter into even a very lengthy, politically endorsed ceasefire with Israel (the tahdi’eh, which is a more serious undertaking than the merely operational hudna that they already engaged in for a long time, though it did not bring them any reciprocation.) Why should that Hamas proposal not be diplomatically probed?
10. The Palestinian issue cannot be resolved if the policy of excluding and attacking this significant component of the Palestinian body politic is maintained. Hundreds of millions of people around the world (Arabs, Muslims, and others) continue to consider this issue one of major significance in the encounter between the Western countries and the rest of the world. Realism, including the realism of compassionate and principles-based conflict termination, dictates that Hamas should be urgently included in the peace-seeking diplomacy.
(JWN readers who haven’t yet read the article I published about Hamas in Boston Review last summer might want to do so. It used much material from the reporting trip I had made to Gaza and Israel in February/March 2006. Several aspects of the situation have changed since then, of course. Principally, Hamas showed itself able to withstand the tight siege imposed around its strongholds in Gaza, and Fateh’s main leadership showed itself more willing than I had judged possible to accept the role of Inkatha/Contras that was being offered to it. Still, the broad political facts of the unconquerability of Hamas and the need to include it in any peacemaking effort that is serious both still remain. This, notwithstanding the hoopla in some of the western media over the current diplomacy, that involves a very small number of not terrifically representative Middle Eastern leaders.)

Reconciliation, from Africa to the Middle East

Actually, the reason that I received a paper copy of the latest issue of the Palestine-Israel Journal, which I
have just written about on JWN here, is that
it has a review of my latest book, Amnesty
after Atrocity?: Healing Nations after Genocide and War Crimes. 
Since the book hasn’t actually received many reviews yet– though it
got some great pre-publication blurbs, that are printed on the back
cover– I wanted to write something here on JWN about this one… Okay,
I’ll admit: Especially, because this is a very favorable review! 
The reviewer, Sol Gittleman, seemed to really “get” what I was trying
to do with the book, which is always a good experience for any author
to have.

Gittleman is a former provost of Tufts University in Medford, Mass.,
and currently holds a University Chair there.  He twinned his
review of my book with another, of a book called Bridging the Divide: Peacebuilding in the
Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, which is co-authored by my old
friend Edy Kaufman along with Walid Salem and Juliette Verhoeven..

Gittleman starts his review by writing: “It takes a very special kind
of courage to continue pressing toward reconciliation in the face of
overwhelming odds… ”  Then he writes appreciatively about
Kaufman et al’s book before he comes to my book.  Which is where he says
(okay, here is where I blush):

Helena Cobban is a first-rate
journalist who has observed the transition from anarchy to justice and
reconciliation all over the world. [Actually
a bit of an exaggeration there; but in many places, yes.
~HC]  She has no axes to grind. Her analysis of the post-war
responses to the horrors of South African apartheid, genocide in Rwanda
and the brutal armed insurgency in Mozambique are moving, but marked
completely by a reality developed over years in reporting on humanity’s
capacity for brutality…

In each of the three case studies, Cobban asks the difficult
questions…

He gives more details about the topics  the book covers, and my
reflections on them there.  Then he concludes the review by
writing

Here we have two serious studies that
hold up at least the possibility of peace on Earth, good will toward
humanity.  If their goals and aspirations were fulfilled, it would
mean, paradoxically, the end of civilization as we have known it. [I take it that is written with some irony??] 
Good luck to all of us in these perilous times.

So, a big thanks to you for that, Sol Gittleman… And here, by the way, is a nice, easy-to-download JPEG version of the
book’s cover:

AAA-cover-smaller.JPGAnyway, I’m really happy this review appeared where it did– that
is, in a journal that is seriously read and referred to by many people
in the Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking community– and in the way it
did: Namely, alongside consideration of a book on the challenges of
peacebuilding in the Israeli-Palestinian context.  When I launched
into the research that became this book, I knew I was venturing out
into some geographical terrain in sub-Saharan Africa that was almost
completely new to me.  But I found the topic of how people emerging from
very hard- (and roughly) fought conflict could ever possibly overcome
the many wounds from the past to be a riveting one, and it was one that I
had often wrestled with during my earlier engagement with various
citizen-diplomacy peacemaking efforts in the Middle East.

When the “flavor of the month” (okay, decade) in the international
human-rights movement increasingly, throughout the 1990s, became to
consider that every conflict that came to an end should be accompanied
by– or even, God help us, preceded by– some form of war-crimes
trials, I was already very skeptical.  How could that ever happen
in the context that I knew best, that of the Palestinian-Israeli context?  Goodness, when the
Palestinian and Israeli leadership do finally manage to get together
and conclude a final peace
agreement, as I sincerely hope they do before too many more years have passed, how would one ever start in the context of that, to unravel
the many long chains of responsibility for the very many
thousands of dead and harmed on either side of the national
divide?  And if one ever attempted to launch such a process– in
the accusatory way that criminal prosecutions always, of necessity,
assume– what effects would that have on the prospects of maintaining
and building the peace thus with such difficulty won?

I honestly couldn’t see it as being helpful.

In 2001, when my friend the Lebanese lawyer Chibli Mallat worked with
some survivors of the 1982 massacres in Beirut’s Sabra and Shatila
refugee camps to bring a prosecution against Israeli PM Ariel Sharon–
and under Belgium’s extremely bizarre law allowing for “universal”
(i.e. completely extra-territorial) jurisdiction– a part of me
applauded the effort from the sidelines.  But an even larger part
of me asked, “How on earth is this
going to help bring Sharon to where he needs to be: Namely, sitting
down in an authoritative, final-peace negotiation with the Palestinian
leaders?”  I mean, really: How will it help the Palestinian and
Israeli people to escape from the yoke of war, occupation, pervasive
insecurity, death, and destruction if this one man, Ariel Sharon, ends
up in the dock as a defendant?

Later, as my research on the Africa book continued, I met and interviewed some people
in Mozambique who had committed and organized acts of anti-humane
terror that dwarfed many times over any of the bad actions that
Israelis have ever committed against Palestinians, or Palestinians
against Israelis.  (If you don’t believe me, go back and read some
of the reports on the kinds of tortures, mutilations, and other
terrioble abuses that the fighters from Renamo, in particular,
committed during the 15-year civil war there.)  But here’s the
thing: By the time I met these men, who had been the highest military leaders of Renamo, in Maputo in 2003, they had been
completely reintegrated into national society.  Very nearly all
Mozambicans had judged at the end of that terrible war that the only
way they could move forward
as a country was to put all the pain, ugliness, loss, grief, and
blame from the war era very firmly behind them…

So yes, I do still think that the big lessons that I learned from my
work on the book have huge relevance in the Middle East. 
Including, of course, in Iraq, where surely we have all now seen the
debacle and the horrendously peace-threatening tensions that resulted
from the knee-jerk application of the prosecutorial strategy in the
case of the Saddam trial.

Anyway, if you JWN readers have not yet read (and preferably also
bought!) my book, I hope you do so… I hope, too, that wherever you live
in the world and whatever parts of the world you are concerned about,
reading the book might help you to think more deeply about what it
really takes to make and build sustainable peace processes in
conflict-wracked parts of the world.  (My hint in this regard:
Western-based rights activists have not yet found all the answers…)

Discussing Jerusalem (reasonably)

I got a wonderful item in the mail this week: the latest issue of 
the Palestine-Israel Journal, a
quarterly, now co-edited by (Palestinian) Ziad AbuZayyad and (Israeli)
Hillel Schenker, that’s been coming out since 1994.

This issue is focused on the situation in and prospects for Jerusalem,
40 years after the Eastern half of the city, including its historic,
walled “Old City” area, came under Israeli occupation in 1967. 
You can read some of these articles online (the portal is here.)  I
think it’s a pity they didn’t also make freely available there the
article in which former City Council member Meir Margalit writes quite
explicitly, and with apparent personal contrition, about the ways in
which the  Israeli-dominated City Council has practiced, and
continues to practice, systematic discrimination against the 35% or so
of Jerusalem’s current residents who are Palestinian Arabs.

For example, Margalit writes (pp.24-25),

East Jerusalem [i.e. Palestinian]
residents, who make up 35% of the population, receive 9-12% of the
municipal budget– well below their urgent and legitimate needs–
suffer from deprivation and a chronic lack of infrastructure… 
Regarding demography, the State determined, in one of its most shameful
decisions, that the Arab sector should not exceed 30% of the population
of the city in order to maintain an absolute majority of Jews. 
The latest master plan … sets a new limit– 40% Arab. The
decisionmakers are apparently incapable of understanding the moral
implications of their untenable policy.  It is not difficult to
imagine how the State of Israel would react if a European country
intended limiting the number of its Jewish residents. (pp.24-25)

His exploration of the mindset of the Israeli officials who administer
what is, in intent as well as in effect, a very racist policy, as well
as his comparison of this with the mindset of officials implementing
European colonial policies in Asia and Africa, are very interesting and
could well have been developed even further.

Menachem Klein’s short reflection on his his own personal journey–
from having been a religious nationalism-infused teenager who in 1971
proudly took part in establishing a new Jewish settlement near
Bethlehem to being a convinced peacenik who worked with Yossi Beilin
and Yasser Abed Rabbo on drafting the “Geneva Initiative”– is also
well worth reading.

The paper edition also carries the transcript of an intriguing
round-table discussion on the Jerusalem question among eight of the
city’s sons and daughters– four of them Israelis, and four Palestinian.

I just note, yet again, the degree to which discussions that are held
on these weighty issues on the Palestinian-Israeli agenda among the
people most directly concerned can frequently be so much more calm and
realistic than the one-sidedness, ideological rigidity, and
name-calling that one so frequently encounters in discussions of these
issues in the US.

So anyway, go and get hold of the paper version of this issue of the PIJ if you possibly
can!  (Ordering instructions are there, on their website.) 
The articles on Jerusalem in this volume, in particular, will make an
excellent addition to any library in the west.

Ze’ev Schiff, RIP

I was really sorry to hear of the death, a few days ago, of the veteran Israeli defense-affairs correspondent Ze’ev Schiff. Schiff was a smart, well-connected, and extremely canny individual. He was also a real gentleman.
I had known Ze’ev since the mid-1980s. We had many, many long conversations about defense affairs. Often we disagreed. But that did not interfere with the high regard and friendship in which I held him or the serious consideration that he always gave to me and my work.
In 1991, when I was working at a Washington DC-based conflict-resolution organization called Search for Common Ground, helping them set up their first project in the Middle East, Ze’ev was one of the first people I invited to join the project; and he was immediately eager to do so. I had already, sometime before that, introduced him to Ziad Abu Amr, the serious Palestinian political scientist and public intellectual who was the Foreign Minister in the Palestinians’ recent unity government (and prior to that, Culture Minister in the government that Mahmoud Abbas headed as PM, back in 2003.) Ze’ev and Ziad proved to be two very important pillars of the project as it became launched.
In spring 1993, I felt obliged to leave SCG because of a serious breach of trust committed against me and the integrity of our project by the organization’s president. (This, in an organization in which trust-building was the essence of our work…) After my resignation was announced, Ze’ev was almost immediately on the phone to me, pleading with me to stay in the project. To my regret, I did not feel able to.
Anyway, I kept in as good touch with Ze’ev as both of our busy schedules would allow, and would certainly always call him whenever I was in Israel. When I was there in early 2004, I really needed to get Gaza, because I was doing some pro-bono consulting with a US-based aid organization that was active there. The Israeli military maintained– then, almost as much as now– iron controls on all entry of persons into Gaza, and they wouldn’t give me permission to go. Ze’ev was extraordinarily generous and persistent in calling all the relevant military people on my behalf. (But even then, it didn’t work.)
When I went back to Israel and Palestine in February 2006, I spent a couple of hours one morning having coffee with Ze’ev, in one of the malls in the fairly luxurious strip of developments north of Tel Aviv. One of the nice things about Ze’ev was that he would often introduce me to some of the extremely interesting people he knew who would happen to be passing by. (Israel is, after all, a fairly small place.) In 1998, I remember, he introduced me in the lobby of the Dan Hotel in Tel Aviv to Fouad Ben Eliezer, now a lynchpin of Olmert’s government and always a solid rock of the Israeli center-right. In 2006, Ze’ev introduced me to a guy who had been a key Mossad hit-squad organizer back in 1973.
Anyway, on that occasion, I told Ze’ev I was once again planning to visit Gaza. Indeed, since this time I had an Israeli “foreign press” pass, I knew I’d have a better chance of getting in, which I did. “Send my regards to Ziad,” Ze’ev said. Then he leaned forward… You have to remember this was in the weeks immediately following Hamas’s victory in the January elections. It was before Hamas had formed their government. They were still eager to have it be as broad a national unity government as possible. The American and Israeli government were agitating hard against that: from that point, it was already very evident that they really, seriously, wanted the Hamas-led political order in the PA government to fail. Ziad, who had always been a key bridging personality between Abu Mazen and Hamas, was widely rumored to be in the running to be named Foreign Minister in the Hamas-led government…
So Ze’ev, who has always been extremely well connected with the Israeli authorities, leaned forward to me over the open-air table at the coffee-shop and said, “Tell Ziad not to do it! Tell him, if he does, he will face the most serious consequences.”
Later, in a phone conversation we had while I was on my way to Gaza, Ze’ev repreated that warning, in even more urgent terms.
It was my clear understanding that this was the transmission of (or very well informed reporting of) a death threat from the Israeli authorities. Ze’ev Schiff was not a person prone to exaggeration.
Personally, I felt uncomfortable at the prospect of being party to the continued transmission of this threat. I figured if the Israeli authorities really wanted to communicate a serious death threat to Ziad Abu Amr at any time, they had hundreds of ways to do so and were not reliant on me to do so. On the other hand, I figured Ziad deserved to at least know about it. So yes, I did raise it in a conversation I had with him.
(In the end, some combination of threats and and inducements were successful at keeping Ziad and all other independent Palestinian politicians of note out of the Hamas-led government at that point.)
But back to Ze’ev Schiff. No doubt about it, for the last few decades of his life he was very much more than “just” a reporter of the Israeli defense scene. He was a canny behind-the-scenes player in Israeli politics. Among the community of Israelis whom I encountered and worked with in various portions of the “track-two” diplomatic scene, he was definitely not a dove-ish visionary. He was a hard-nosed realist. But as such, he was very interested in testing out the intentions and views of the “other side”; and he worked hard to build relationships of mutual respect with Palestinians and other Arabs on a professional and collegial basis so that all of them could jointly explore the various options for their peoples’ futures. And yes, actually, to do this does require a degree of vision, self-confidence, and empathy that all too often seems lacking in strategic “thinkers” who imagine that all problems can be solved by force and by trying to delegitimize dissenting voices and views and exclude them from the discussion.
I should also note that, in a field in which the contributions of women are far too often either ignored, expropriated by guys, or otherwise sidelined, I always felt that Ze’ev took my work seriously, and valued my views on strategic and regional issues.
So for a large number of reasons I shall miss Ze’ev Schiff. I think Israel and the region will be diminished and just a bit less stable in the absence of his hard-nosed realism, his decades’ worth of experience of regional defense matters, and his gut understanding of the fact that Israelis really do need to build decent, respectful relationships with their Arab neighbors– even those they disagree with– if they are to have a stable and assured future in the region
I send my deep condolences to his wife, Sarah, and their children and grandchildren. I’m sure they will all miss him much more than any of us outsiders.

Hamas, the US big media, and the world

Ahmed Yousef, a senior political advisor to recently ousted Palestinian Ismail Haniyeh, scored an impressive double victory today by having slightly different op-ed articles published in both the WaPo and the NYT.
More on the content of these two significant articles later. But first, we should note that the existence of these two soberly argued articles indicates a couple of very important things that are often overlooked in the US discourse: First, that the Hamas leaders are eager to reach out to and engage intellectually with the US mainstream discourse, and secondly that they have maintained a good capability to do this, even in circumstances of great tension and difficulty for all Palestinians, in Gaza and elsewhere.
Regarding their desire to engage with the US discourse, there have of course been numerous other examples of this, including earlier op-eds that Haniyeh himself, Mousa Abu Marzook, and other Hamas luminaries have published in the WaPo and the NYT. The decision to reach out and engage is not a trivial matter– and maybe, amidst all the anti-Israeli and anti-US anger that pervades much of the Hamas base, it was not an easy one to take.
Regarding the ability of the Hamas leaders to continue to pursue their intellectual-engagement decision, even in very tumultuous times, this is also significant.
A noticeable amount of the discourse in the US “big media” these days about the situation in Gaza and the role played by Hamas has focused heavily on (and quite possibly disproportionately magnifies) the negative aspects of the situation. Mainstream commentators seem to want to portray Hamas-controlled Gaza as a wild place, ungoverned except by wild men in scary ski masks, while painting the (currently Fateh-dominated) West Bank as a potential haven of stability.
However, on Monday, Karen AbuZayd, who’s the head of the UN agency, UNRWA, that’s responsible for providing basic humanitarian needs to the refugees who make up a large proportion of the Palestinian population in both areas, announced that,

    we are now operating in Gaza as we did before the recent violence… UNRWA is working at full capacity once again, delivering services to a population that has been so badly affected by chronic insecurity.

And in the West Bank city of Nablus, the World Food Program reported on Saturday that unidentified armed men “ransacked the well-marked warehouse this morning, stole several tons of WFP food and looted office equipment including computers and fax machines.”
Of course, considerable problems remain in both territories. A number of Fateh-related families and Palestinians eager to be reunited with families in the West Bank have been camped out for many days now at Israel’s dreadful, always-inhumane, cattle-yard/crossing at Erez. The plight of these families is terrible. Many of them have expressed strong (and currently, probably untestable) fears regarding their fate if they remain in Hamas-controlled Gaza; and the Israeli authorities have also treated them extremely badly, and in clear, very racist violation of all international codes regarding the obligation of states to offer a safe refuge to people suffering from a well-founded fear of persecution in their homelands.
Plus– and this is very relevant in the context of the present topic– Hamas-affiliated gunmen have attacked pro-Fateh media installations in Gaza and Fateh-affiliated gunmen have attacked pro-Hamas media installations, and one journo associated with one of these, in the West Bank. See PCHR’s report on these serious violations of the freedom of the press, here. Plus, of course, BBC’s Gaza correspondent Alan Johnston is still one of the many thousands of people in today’s Middle East who are being quite unjustifiably deprived of their liberty.
So, on to the content of Ahmed Yousef’s two pieces:

Continue reading “Hamas, the US big media, and the world”

Failed States Index & “Failing the Faithful”

The July-August issue of Foreign Policy magazine features the 3rd installment of the annual “Failed States Index,” (FSI) a tool intended to identify the world’s “weakest links.” A project of “The Fund for Peace” and Foreign Policy (via its parent, the Carnegie Council for International “Peace”), this year’s top five “winners” are:

Sudan, Iraq, Somalia, Chad, and Zimbabwe.

This year’s FSI report covers 177 states, considerably more than the first two studies. Africa is well “represented” among “top” failed states, as are those in the Middle East and West Asia. Among the latter:

Afghanisan #8,
Pakistan #12,
Uzbekistan #22,
Yemen #24,
Lebanon #28,
Egypt #36,
Turkmenistan # 43

Iran, compared to its neighbors, comes in “relatively” well, with an FSI rank at #57. Israel comes in at 67, though no explanatory notes are provided to explain if “Israel” includes the occupied territories or not. “Palestine” is not covered. Conveniently, the study only provides country notes for the first 60 states.
With considerable hesitation, I concede that such reports may be useful in trimming away ideological biases while equipping citizens and policymakers alike to discern what areas of the world may be suffering from, or sliding toward, critical instability. Not just dangers to themselves, states on the verge of implosion “threaten the progress and stability of countries half a world away.” (Or so we say. But do we really believe it? That’s another subject.)
Yet this study’s utility, at least to me, slips when it starts with an “elastic” multi-functional definition of a “failed state.”

“A state that is failing has several attributes. One of the most common is the loss of physical control of its territory or a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. Other attributes of state failure include the erosion of legitimate authority to make collective decisions, an inability to provide reasonable public services, and the inability to interact with other states as a full member of the international community. The 12 indicators cover a wide range of elements of the risk of state failure, such as extensive corruption and criminal behavior, inability to collect taxes or otherwise draw on citizen support, large-scale involuntary dislocation of the population, sharp economic decline, group-based inequality, institutionalized persecution or discrimination, severe demographic pressures, brain drain, and environmental decay. States can fail at varying rates through explosion, implosion, erosion, or invasion over different time periods.”

To clarify a bit more, the “Failed States Index” is derived from an aggregation of 12 indicators of state performance:

1. Demographic pressures (e.g. too many people, compared to resources);
2. Refugees (desperate people on the move);
3. Group grievances (people hating each other);
4. Human Flight (brain drain);
5. Uneven development (too many poor);
6. Sudden economic collapse;
7. Deligitimization of the State;
8. Public Services Deterioration;
9. Rule of Law (lack thereof) and Human Rights Violations;
10. Security Confusion (states w/n states?);
11 Factionalism of elites;
12 External Penetration (foreign meddling)

One could get an honest “headache” deconstructing the definitions of each of these FSI indicators and numerous internal contradictions therein. I’ll spare readers, save for the worst.

Continue reading “Failed States Index & “Failing the Faithful””

Understanding the Palestinian crisis

I have been scouring the web, trying to gain a deeper understanding of what’s been going on in Palestine. So far, the very best account and analysis that I’ve found is this document, which was posted yesterday on the site of the (Gaza-based) Palestinian Centre for Human Rights. I suspect it was written by the Centre’s extremely dedicated and professional director, Raji Sourani.
Its title is No Alternative to Political Dialogue; PCHR’s Position towards the Current Crisis in the Gaza Strip and the Palestinian National Authority. I believe this correctly describes the problem. There is both a crisis inside Gaza, and a crisis in the PA.
PCHR has been doing careful, well-documented human rights monitoring and advocacy work in Palestine for around 20 years now. This is how the “No Alternative” text describes the recent clashes in Gaza:

    The Gaza Strip has recently witnessed an unprecedented escalation in the violence between the Hamas and Fatah movements. Last week, as the fighting came to a head, Hamas decided to resolve the conflict militarily by taking over all Palestinian security headquarters and sites and seizing complete control over the Gaza Strip through its military wing – Izziddin al-Qassam Brigades. The fighting claimed the lives of 146 Palestinians (36 of them are civilians), including 5 children and 8 women, and wounded at least 700 others.
    According to PCHR’s documentation and observations, this latest armed conflict between the two movements has been accompanied by grave breaches of provisions of international law related to internal armed conflicts, particularly Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions of 1949. Under Common Article 3, each party to an armed conflict not of an international character is bound, at a minimum, to treat persons taking no active part in the hostilities humanely, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms. It also prohibits “violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture; taking of hostages; outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment; and the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court.” It also calls for humane treatment of the wounded and medical patients.
    In violation of these international standards, the fighting was accompanied by many cases of willful killings, extra-judicial executions, and firing at combatants after their capture. According to eyewitnesses, a number of the wounded were killed inside hospitals; reprisal kidnappings and torture of persons affiliated or suspected of being affiliated with a party to the conflict were also reported. Although most civilians were confined to their homes for the duration of hostilities, numerous unarmed civilians also became victims of the fighting. The status of civilian structures, including houses and tower apartment buildings, was not respected and such locations were often used by the hostile parties during the fighting. As a consequence, many civilians were forcibly placed in a combat area, increasing their suffering and risk of injury. Many casualties were ultimately reported among civilians, including women and children.
    Additionally, the access of medical crews and firefighters to combat areas to evacuate the wounded and extinguish fires was severely restricted (see PCHR’s press releases during and after the fighting).

Here, for example, was a PCHR press release issued during the fighting, on June 14. It detailed several law-of-war violations without, in most cases, specifying which side had committed them. (I imagine it must have been very hard to ascertain that, in many cases.) In one case, that report specified that”Hamas gunmen” had committed violations, as follows:

    At approximately 16:00 [on 13 June], Hamas gunmen stormed the house of Atef Baker, a Fatah operative, near Beach Camp. They fired indiscriminately inside the house, killing two women and seriously injuring 4 others. The women killed are Jehan Nayef Baker (18) and Heba Sobhi Baker (30). And at approximately 17:00, Hamas gunmen surrounded a number of Baker clan members in the same area, and fired at them. Three Baker clan members were killed: Mansour Omar Baker (47), Mohammad Suliman Baker (28), and Hamada Samir Baker (18).

But here is the way the clashes and their effect on civilians were characterized in the report’s introductory paragraph:

    The clashes erupted on Thursday, 7 June 2007, and have led to the death of tens of victims from both sides as well as innocent civilians. Gaza and Khan Yunis were the scene of unprecedented violence. Most victims fell in these two places, especially during Hamas control of the compounds of the National Security Forces and General Intelligence. It is regrettable that both sides were more brutal in bringing civilians into the conflict by taking positions on the roofs of houses, preventing food from reaching civilians, firing at peaceful demonstrations, and preventing civilians from access to healthcare. In addition, they targeted hospitals and transformed them into battle grounds, attacked medical crews, and prevented health workers from carrying out their duties. Life was paralyzed throughout the Gaza Strip, including the areas that did not witness clashes. Houses of members of both sides were destroyed and set on fire or targeted by projectiles in a policy of collective punishment to subdue the other side.

Then, regarding the crisis inside the PA that has been sparked by the Gaza fighting, the “No Alternative” report says this:

    After Hamas took over security headquarters and sites and seized complete control over the Gaza Strip, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas issued 3 decrees on Thursday evening, 14 June, dismissing Prime Minister Ismail Haniya; declaring a state of emergency in all Palestinian National Authority (PNA) controlled areas; and forming a government to enforce the state of emergency. On 17 June, President Abbas issued two more decrees, one suspending the enforcement of articles 65, 66 and 67 of the Basic Law (the temporary constitution of the PNA), and the other one outlawing the Executive Force (formed by the Ministry of Interior in 2006) and Hamas’s militias “because of their insurrection against the Palestinian legitimacy and its institutions…”
    In response to Hamas’s actions, Israel has closed all border crossings with the Gaza Strip, halting all international commercial transactions. As a result, Palestinian civilians have rushed to shops, bakeries and fuel stations to buy their basic needs, in the wake of expectations of a possible humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip. Rafah International Crossing Point between the Gaza Strip and Egypt—the sole outlet for the Gaza Strip to the outside world, which Israel already subjects to sporadic and lengthy closings—has now been completely and indefinitely closed.
    Parallel to the incidents in Gaza, supporters of Fatah movement in the West Bank have carried out a series of retaliatory attacks against members, supporters and institutions of Hamas. Such attacks have targeted health and cultural associations, charities, press offices, television and radio stations, sports clubs, and various local councils that have been run by Hamas following local elections. According to PCHR’s documentation, at least 50 public and private institutions have been attacked; 3 persons, including a child, have been killed; and at least 60 persons have been kidnapped since Wednesday, 13 June 2007.
    In light of these accelerating developments in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), particularly in the Gaza Strip, PCHR stresses the following:
    1) PCHR condemns the use of military means to resolve the conflict between Hamas and Fatah movements, particularly the decision to resolve the conflict militarily through the seizure of Palestinian security headquarters and sites in the Gaza Strip by the [Hamas-run] Izziddin al-Qassam Brigades. Although PCHR is aware of the legitimacy of the government and its right to fully have its constitutional powers, and conscious of the security problems that preceded and the urgent need to reform the security establishment, there is no justification for the use of Izziddin al-Qassam Brigades in the military conflict and in the take over of the security establishment, which will only frustrate reform of the security establishment.
    2) Steps taken by President Mahmoud Abbas in response to these events violate the Basic Law and undermine the Basic Law in a manner that is no less dangerous than what is happening in Gaza, especially as:

      A. The President has the right to declare a state of emergency and to dissolve the government in accordance with Chapter 7 of the Basic Law, but according to the Law, the dissolved government shall serve as an acting government until the formation of a new government that must be approved by the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC).
      B. The Basic Law does not give the President any authority, even during a state of emergency, to suspend the enforcement of any provision of the Law concerning the PLC’s authority to grant confidence to the government, and he does not have the authority to dissolve or interrupt the work of the PLC during the period of emergency (article 113). The Basic Law is superior to all laws, from which all powers, including those of the President and Prime Minister, are derived, and it must not be undermined or suspended in all circumstances.

    3) Steps taken by the President are likely to complicate the crisis rather than solving it. The President’s response may lead to further isolation of the Gaza Strip and throw its 1.5-million residents into the unknown by subjecting them to international sanctions. There is also concern that a de facto political situation may develop in which the Gaza Strip is cut-off from the rest of the OPT.
    4) The current crisis in the PNA is a political rather than a constitutional or legal one. There is therefore no alternative to dialogue based on real partnership, respect for the results of the legislative elections that were held in January 2006, and putting the interests of the Palestinian people above the narrow, factional interests of the conflicting parties.
    5) In the context of such a dialogue, it is important to stress the need to reconstruct the Palestinian security establishment on professional and national foundations, to ensure its independence and not to push it into any hideous factional conflicts so that it may be able to carry out its constitutional duties to defend the homeland, serve the people, protect the society, and ensure security and public order.
    6) The only party that benefits from the continuation of the current crisis is Israel and its occupation forces, which continue to create new facts on the ground, especially in the West Bank through the construction of the Annexation Wall and settlements, which undermine any possibility of establishing a viable, independent Palestinian state within the OPT.
    7) The humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip, which has been deteriorating due to the Israeli siege and the suspension of international aid to the PNA, will further deteriorate with the closure of all border crossings and the halting of international economic transactions.
    8) The current Palestinian crisis is a new Nakba (in reference to the dispersion of the Palestinian people in 1948) that if not immediately stopped, will only grow as expectations of more economic and social strangleholds fuel concerns over massive emmigration from the Gaza Strip. All Palestinian political factions and civil society groups must therefore bear the historical responsibility to end this crisis and prevent this new Nakba, which has been created by Palestinians on the 59th anniversary of the Nakba of 1948.
    9) The international community and Arab States are invited to take immediate steps to prevent this catastrophe by pressing for political dialogue between the Hamas and Fatah movements, as well as all other political factions, and to end this crisis which threatens the PNA and the Palestinian people as a whole.

Well, on this last score, good luck to anyone urging the “international community”, as presently constituted, to press for the immediate resumption of political dialogue between Hamas and Fateh! Right now, Mr. 3% (Ehud Olmert) is in Washington DC, crowing with Mr. 30% (George W. Bush) about the “opportunity” the Hamas-Fateh split presents for (their endless, always inconclusive version of) the peace process… and Mr. 30% has hurried to send more financial aid to help prop up Abu Mazen and Fateh.
However, there are three big problems with providing such speedy, one-sided US support to Fateh at this moment:

    (1) It makes even more of a mockery than we have seen before, of all the Bushites’ earlier pronouncements about the depth and sincerity of their support for democratization of the Palestinian polity;
    (2) It makes Fateh look even more than before like the cat’s-paw of the Israelis and the Bushites in the Middle East– not a good thing for anyone at this point;and
    (3) All this aid will make no difference at all to Fateh’s political fortunes with the Palestinian public unless (a) Fateh can show itself capable of using the aid in a way that is accountable, well-governed, and speedily makes a demonstrable contribution to the public good, and (b) the Fateh leaders can show palpable achievements in other key areas of the Palestinians’ quality of life– primarily, the freeing of the Palestinian communities in both the West Bank and Gaza from the socio-economic strangulation that Israel continues to maintain over both territories, and by making palpable progress in the peace negotiations with Israel.

Regarding #3 there, neither ‘a’ nor ‘b’ looks likely.
I see that already, within even a few days of the debacle Fateh suffered in Gaza, its ever-jockeying array of second-level bosses have already resumed their longheld practice of working against each other in very public and very damaging ways. Primarily, many Fathawis seem to have their knives out against Mahmoud Abbas’s strongly US- and Israeli-backed “national security advisor”, Mohammed Dahlan.
In that Haaretz report there, Avi Issacharoff wrote:

    Palestinian sources said that the subject came up at a meeting of 20 council members in Ramallah on Sunday. According to sources, some of the council members said they believed that Dahlan should be relieved of his duties as part of Fatah’s efforts to regain strength on the Palestinian street.
    Among those attending the meeting were Jibril Rajoub, Ahmed Ghanem, Mohammed al-Horani, Samir Shehada, and other prominent Fatah members. “We hope that Dahlan will be removed,” one of the participants said. “We hope this will help stop the atrocities that Hamas is perpetrating in the Gaza Strip.
    Dahlan is among those responsible for this debacle, and even his own men are saying that he had deserted them along with Fatah’s top-brass in the strip.”
    [The charismatic and long-imprisoned Fateh operative Marwan] Barghouti, who is serving five life sentences in Hadarim Prison, released a statement from prison yesterday in which he demanded that Fatah’s leadership in the strip be replaced with other operatives currently in the region.

Indeed, the political situation inside the West Bank seems to be very far from the anti-Hamas triumphalism that is being portrayed in some of the western mainstream media. Some western analysts and politicians seem eager to paint a picture in which all of Fateh and a large proportion of the Palestinian people are locked into bitter, irreconcileable hatred and fear of Hamas, such as can easily be harnessed to the US and Israel’s further campaigns against the organization. But even within Fateh, this seems not to be the case.
The fact is– as the PCHR document so aptly described it– the Palestinian political situation is in a deep crisis. Both President Abbas and the Hamas-led legislature have earned a notable degree of democratic legitimacy in the fairly recent past. That is a basic fact to remember.
And now, for Abbas to summarily dismiss the Haniyeh-led National Unity Government by declaring a “State of Emergency” may seem to buy him a little time. But the Palestinian Basic Law allows him to rule through his own hand-picked PM, under his own, unilaterally declared State of Emergency, only for 30 days before the SOE has to be renewed “with the consent of two-thirds the Legislative Council.” (Answer to qu.6 in that PDF file of commentary by Nathan Brown there.) And even under the SOE, his powers are strictly limited.
So after 30 days, he requires the cooperation of the Legislative Council… This, while significant numbers of elected Hamas deputies have been detained by the Israeli Military Occupation.
Where is the concern expressed in the US or other western countries about those detentions? And how on earth can any democracy-respecting government anywhere support Abbas in extending the SOE beyond the allowed 30 days if he can do so only by having an Israeli-picked subset of the elected deputies ready and able to support that extension?
… Anyway, I have a lot more to say about this topic, but no time now to say it. One aspect I want to pursue is the ways in which the West Bank is different from Gaza– and the ways in which it is not as different as many of the “instant” commentatoriat here in the US seems to think.

Iraq open thread #12

I’ve been busy for three days with Bill, getting our new part-time digs in Washington DC set up. Saturday I drove sundry items of furniture etc up here in what felt like a HUGE truck. (It was actually far bigger than we needed, but it was all I could find to rent.)
Anyway, we don’t have our communications set up here yet; so blogging has been a bit difficult. Tomorrow we return to C’ville after our first foray in the new apt. Next week, I’ll be back in the apt and able to schedule the installation of the DSL, phone lines, etc.
Meantime, lots has been happening re Iraq, I know. So I’ll leave this comments thread open for y’all to comment.

Kimberly Dozier: A Year Later

It has been just over a year since Kimberly Dozier, CBS News correspondent, was critically wounded in Iraq. JWN regulars may recall a tribute here, reflecting on her University of Virginia graduate studies and her extraordinary 3 year coverage of the Iraq war.
I am happy to pass along that CBS News aired a one hour program on May 29th, featuring Kimberly Dozier, with fellow UVA product Katie Couric. Title of the program is Flashpoint: Kimberly Dozier and the Army’s Fourth ID, A Story of Bravery, Recovery, and Lives Forever Changed. CBSNews now provides transcripts and the full video at its website.
At least for me, much of this is difficult to watch. Yet characteristically Kim, brief accounts of her own painful story transition into longer reflections on the lives lost that day and the families left behind. There’s little overt “political analysis.”
In the list of related videos (and sub-sections) on the right of the link noted above, check the interview given to Harry Smith. Therein, Kimberly hints at getting back to “her” story; if not Baghdad, then surely the Middle East.
The candle is burning brightly for Kimberly Dozier’s recovery and return. Our best wishes stay with her.

Footnote: (as of 6/17/07)
As I watched the program and the support clips at the CBS web site, I couldn’t help but think of PTSD – post traumatic stress disorder. Today’s WaPo & LATimes both have cover stories regarding the Pentagon’s apparent “compulsion” (pun intended) to deny support for vets so suffering.
Back in 1996, I learned of the subject first hand via work for a year with Amb. Nathaniel Howell and trained PTSD professionals on a sensitive project to evaluate how Kuwaiti society was being rocked by unresolved traumas from the Iraqi invasion and occupation. I confess to having been a bit doubtful at the outset — until I personally witnessed horrendous manifestations of wounds of a different sort.
As the right-wingers so often say, war is hell. (particularly when they wish to dismiss concerns about JIB violations….) But apart from the physical carnage, the chaos of war wreaks its own “hell” on the minds and families of those who “return.”
Supporting the troops means more than just giving them more destructive arms and armour for “the mission.” It also means taking care of them, their whole persons, afterwards.
My mother’s eldest brother recently passed away. He was a kindly man; think Bing Crosby. Yet as far as I know, he never was able to talk in the least about his WWII service…. He had been an ambulance driver for over 3 years in North Africa & Europe. He never resolved the inward horror of what he saw. Rest in peace Uncle Bill.

Hamas takeover in Gaza; diplomatic stasis continues

Some good, if very sobering, reporting on the events in Gaza from AP’s Sarah el Deeb is here.
Doubtless JWN readers are aware that yesterday and today there were fateful battles in Gaza during which the US-backed and US-armed Fateh forces were routed by the better disciplined and better organized forces loyal to Hamas. There have also been some less decisive clashes in the West Bank, where Fateh is relatively much stronger (though no better organized) than in Gaza.
Deeb writes that Fateh head, and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas,

    fired the Hamas prime minister and said he would install a new government, replacing the Hamas-Fatah coalition formed just three months ago. Abbas’ decrees, which he issued in Ramallah [in the West Bank], won’t reverse the Hamas takeover of Gaza. Instead, his moves will enable Fatah to consolidate its control over the West Bank, likely [as she claims] paving the way for two separate Palestinian governments.
    At a news conference in Gaza City early Friday, deposed Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh rejected Abbas’ declaration, calling it “hasty” and saying he would maintain the unity government. Haniyeh said the situation was “not suitable for unilateral decisions.”
    He said the Hamas militia would impose law and order “firmly, decisively and legally.” He also rejected the idea of a Palestinian state in Gaza only, run by Hamas.
    In Damascus, one of the exiled leaders of Hamas, Moussa Abu Marzouk, also rejected setting up an Islamic state there. “Gaza will remain Gaza and there will be no changes in its future and will continue to be linked to the West Bank,” he said.

Sarah El Deeb is not the only commentator in the Anglosphere– and perhaps elsewhere?– who has started to write about the possibility of Gaza becoming even more deeply politically split off from the West Bank. The two territories have already been functionally split from each other for several years, due to Israel’s refusal to honor agreements mandating the nearly free flow of goods and persons between them. All diplomatic agreements regarding the OPTs have meanwhile stressed again and again that the two territories form “one political unit”, but of course that hasn’t stopped Israel from trying to split them apart, for many years– and nor has it stopped Israel from strying to split East Jerusalem off from the rest of the West Bank, and indeed from dividing the rest of the West Bank into a large number of sometimes hermetically sealed-off tiny cantons (or large-ish prisons.)
Anyway, the fears– or possibilities, or in some cases desires– that are currently being expressed in much of the Anglosphere center on the possibility of the emergence of a “Hamastan” in Gaza. I guess some western commentators think the name sounds cute and indicates how “in style” they are? They use the term despite the insistence of the leaders of the elected Hamas plurality in the Palestinian parliament that this is absolutely not their intention…
Deeb wrote:

    Fatah’s old demons — corruption, petty quarreling, lack of leadership — led to its dismal performance in Gaza. While disciplined Hamas systematically hoarded weapons, Fatah’s Gaza leader, Mohammed Dahlan, preferred travel and West Bank politics to preparing for the inevitable showdown with the Islamic militants. Dahlan returned Thursday from Egypt, where he stayed several weeks after knee surgery. But instead of going to Gaza, he headed for Ramallah.
    Many West Bank Palestinians, watching the fall of Gaza on their TV screens, pinned the blame on Abbas, whom they see as indecisive and detached. During Hamas’s assaults in Gaza this week, no prominent Fatah leader was in the coastal strip to take command.
    “Hamas has leadership, a goal, an ideology and funding,” said Gaza analyst Talal Okal. “Fatah has neither leadership, nor a goal, a vision or money.”

The Guardian’s Ian Black had these pieces of reaction from respected (but generally secularist) Palestinian commentators:

    “The government will remain, but it does not govern. It will be there, but is incapable of doing its job,” predicted Bir Zeit university’s Ali al-Jarbawi. “The situation will be completely paralysed.”
    Palestinians see the Gaza crisis as the disastrous outcome of years of failure: of the Oslo peace process, Hamas’s electoral win and the international sanctions imposed as a result. “If you have two brothers put into a cage and deprive them of basic essential needs for life, they will fight,” said the Palestinian foreign minister, Ziad Abu Amr. Many say the Palestinian Authority is already effectively dead.

Al Jazeera’s English website featured a story saying that UN Sec-Gen Ban Ki-moon was considering the possibility of despatching a UN force to Gaza:

    Ban said Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, had raised the idea with him in a phone conversation on Tuesday and noted that Ehud Olmert, Israel’s prime minister, had also brought it up.
    “I need to consider more in detail with the countries concerned,” he said…

That Jazeera story also noted that many Fateh fighters had either fled to Egypt or surrendered en masse to the Hamas side, which is what I’d expected.
Haaretz’s Aluf Benn is reporting that,

    In the wake of the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip, United States said Thursday that the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush will now work to prevent the violence from spilling over to the West Bank. The U.S. therefore aims to accelerate the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations to allow Abbas to present some achievements.

H’mmm. Wouldn’t you say it’s about three (or 30) years too late to suddenly say, “Oh, we have to give Abu Mazen some diplomatic achievements?”
Anyway, Benn goes on:

    Prime Minister Ehud Olmert also intends to tell Bush that Hamas’s coup d’etat must be contained in the Gaza Strip, and not allowed to occur in the West Bank as well, a government official told Haaretz on Thursday.
    The American administration is also interested in improving living conditions in the West Bank to demonstrate to the Palestinians that they are better off under Fatah than Hamas.

Benn notes that Hamas’s takeover in Gaza will dominate the discussions the two very lame ducks– Olmert and Bush– will have when Olmert goes to the White House next Tuesday:

    in this context, Olmert will discuss the possibility of deploying a multinational force in Gaza with both Bush and United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. The security cabinet, however, has not yet decided on its stance regarding the deployment of such a force, and will address the issue only after Olmert returns…

So there you have it: US-fueled death and destruction in Palestine; a continuing complete stasis in the peace negotiations; and the UN and the world community it represents is expected once again to stand aside and wait on the pleasure of this government in Israel whose only imperatives seem to be (a) to somehow hang on in office, and (b) to obstruct any meaningful peace negotiations while Israeli concrete-mixers continue their transformation of the West Bank into a vast network of lavish, Israelis-only settlements punctuated by large numbers of hellish Palestinian Bantustans.
There really is a better way to end this state of fearfulness and violence in Israel/Palestine, and to bring security, hopefulness, and a decent life to everyone concerned. Engaging seriously in negotiations over how to build a peaceful, equality-based social order among all these people– whether in two states of equal standing, or in a single binational state– is the place to start.