Well, guess who I’ve been hanging out with in Gaza these past couple of days…
If you guessed Ismail Haniyeh, well yes, you could be right. (Did you see this bellicose statement from Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, warning that Haniyeh is “not immune” from being assassinated? Or this, from Olmert saying Haniyeh should fear for his life if Hamas militants resume their attacks on Israel?)
If you guessed Dr. Mahgmoud Zahhar, you could be right.
And if you guessed Leila el-Haddad, the talented author of “Raising Yousuf” and the Gaza correspondent of the Al-Jazeera English-language website, you’d be right, too.
It’s been a huge pleasure getting to know Leila a bit. She’s the same age as my son, which is fun. She’s also a plucky mom-journalist trying to juggle a zillion things. She’s a Palestinian from Gaza, got a BA from Duke University and an MA from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. She could be working here as a journalist along with her spouse and child except that–
Her spouse is a Palestinian originally from Haifa, who was born in the Tel al-Zaatar refugee camp in Lebanon just three months before the Israeli-backed Flangist forces stormed the camp in 1976. He carries the travel document that the Lebanese government gives to Palestinian residents of Lebanon. And guess what–
The Palestinians don’t have the right to control who comes in and out of Gaza. Even after the withdrawal of Israeli troops and settlers from the Strip: Israel still gets to detrmine that. So Leila’s Palestinian husband is among that majority of Palestinians who are actually forbidden from coming to Gaza. He can’t even come under “family reunification.”
So anyway, she’s working here. He’s actually doing a medical residency in the States. They have a long-distance commuter marriage. Luckily she has a great set of parents who have recently retired– both of them were phsyicians– and she and her two-year-old, Yousuf, live with them.
What I love about her blog is her sense of connectedness to the society here.
Discussions in Gaza
I’ve had some interesting conversations since coming here. Yesterday I conducted an interview with Ghazi Hamad, the managing editor of the Hamas weekly, Al-Resalah. (Here‘s their online edition.) Today I interviewed two of the six newly elected Hamas women MPs, Jamila Shanty and Mariam Farhat (Um Nidal). I also interviewed Khaled Abdel-Shafi, the head of the UN Development Program’s Gaza office.
I got great material in all these interview. But I don’t have time to write them all up now, so I’ll start by giving you a few of the most important points from Ghazi Hamad. This portion was when I’d asked him how Hamas intended to deal with the three demands placed on Hamas by the international community:
- We don’t want to go into a clash with the international community. There are some issues on which we can be flexible, and some we can’t…
We see that they ask us to make commitments, but not Israel. This is a problem for us.
We accept a state in the 1967 borders. And a long truce means we can stop all the attacks.
Before the elections we said we opposed all the agreements previously reached with Israel. Now we say we can consider all of them. (At another point he said, “Hamas has been moving very fast toward the Red Line issue of recognition, saying we can rule within the 1967 borders. We know we have further to go.”)
We have a problem when they demand that we recognize Israel. It’s difficult for us because it would be recognizing the Israeli occupation–as Khaled Meshaal says. But we say we accept the 1967 borders.
… Hamas is not ready to sell the political decision for money. Don’t ask us to do that.
… Arafat gave them everything they asked for– including saying that they could keep the Gush Etzion [settlement bloc.] And you see how they treated him!
But if Israel would say publicly that Gaza and the West Bank are occupied territories, and that they could give us a timetable to withdraw all their settlers, even over three years or four years– that is what we need to hear from them. But now Olmert is saying that he’ll keep ‘unified’ Jerusalem and keep the big settlement blocs, and he won’t recognize our right of return. What is there to talk about?
… We don’t expect to see a political solution in the next 3-4 years because the rightist parties will be ruling in Israel. But we will not be isolated. We’ll move carefully. We don’t want to get trapped in the muddy lake of negotiations!
Actually, there was a lot more in the interview, so I need to write the whole thing up a lot better. (Right now I’m composing online, on an internet link on someone else’s phone connection. Not ideal, but a lot better than nothing.)
The two women were really interesting…
Weekend Haaretz
One of the interesting things about being in Israel is to be able to read the paper versions of English-language Ha’Aretz and the Jerusalem Post… However good it is to read content on-line, still, there’s something special about newsprint!
The weekend edition of H’Aretz, which came out yesterday, had a number of really interesting articles:
This well-researched piece by Akiva Eldar, which is worth reading in full, tells us about the failure of the government to live up to its commitment to destroy settlement outposts that were constructed not just– as all Israeli settlements in the occupied territories have been– in clear contravention of international law but also, in contravention of Israel’s own laws about such construction activities.
Eldar writes:
- Next Wednesday will mark a year since the modest ceremony at which the outposts report was submitted to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Instead of an answer to the obvious question, “What has happened since then,” the author of the report, former state prosecutor and attorney Talia Sasson, suggests visiting Migron, in the Binyamin region. This outpost starred in the report as a symbol of systemic collapse.
It all began in April 2002, with a fake antenna, “a pole with a costume,” as the Israel Defense Forces’ brigade commander told Sasson. Pinhas Wallerstein, the head of the Binyamin Regional Council and a public servant, gave a commitment in writing that the antenna would not develop into another illegal outpost. But it ended up as such – the permanent home of 150 families, with public buildings, roads, lighting and so on.
“I am not naive about the state’s conduct in the territories,” says Sasson, “but in the case of Migron, it is a matter of establishing a settlement on private land that belongs to Palestinians, without a government decision and without any legal status. And as if that were not enough, it is the public coffers that are paying for the tractors that broke the road through to the outpost and funded the public buildings there. It is important to understand that every day that the state allows the settlers to hold on to the land is another day of violating the law and human rights. A state that respects its desire to be democratic cannot accept this phenomenon. I put very grave findings on the government’s table, but to my great regret, what there was is what there is and apparently also what there will be.”
Sasson notes that at least half a dozen outposts the High Court of Justice ordered evacuated are still standing. The court handed down this decision after the Defense Ministry and the area commander told it that the outposts are not legal and that therefore the government must evacuate them. “This is a serious and unparalleled failure at the government level,” says Sasson decisively.
And indeed, despite the government’s explicit commitment – in the framework of the road map plan – to dismantle the 24 illegal outposts that have been established during the terms of Sharon’s governments, not a single outpost has been evacuated. Had it not been for the petition by Peace Now, even the nine houses at the Amona outpost would have remained standing.
I had a good talk with Eldar as couple of days ago. He did say that he thinks that after the failure of the extremist settlers to prevent last summer’s disengagement from Gaza, he thinks the settlers are “in deep crisis”. He said that whereas previously, most Israeli elections have been fought over the issue of how (or wherther) to make peace with the Palestinians, “This time the issue is not about peace; it’s about quiet. It’s about conflict management, not conflict resolution.”
Though he sees Kadima’s position as representing this broad public sentiment at this time, he said he thought the longer-term outlook for the party isn’t very good. “The Kadima Party is a cocktail party,” he said. “It’s not yet the end of Labour and Likud… Israel has seen a whole series of these ‘third parties’ that have come and gone, and most likely Kadmia will be like the rest of them.”
He said that the Hamas victory in the OPTs hadn’t affected the Israeli electrions much– “except that it seems to prove to many Israelis that ‘there’s no-one to talk to.’ So it’s made Labour more irrelevant.”
Well, talking of Labour, Ha’Aretz also had a lengthy, very informative (to me) interview with new Labour head Amir Peretz. He presented himself very much as a plucky outsider who has fought for his values and will keep the interests of Israel’s huddled masses front and center in his work. (Not surprisingly, since his power base was with the Histadrut trade-union federation. Additionally, he’s of Moroccan Jewish background, which makes him doubly an ‘outsider’.)
Here’s what he said about the ‘peace process’:
Coming to Gaza
The taxi took around 75 minutes to drive from Jerusalem down to the
Erez checkpoint at the northern end of Gaza. Two years ago, when
I was trying to enter Gaza to do some consulting for a US-based NGO, I
waited here at the main entrance to the crossing-point for about five
hours before it started to get dark and I decided to hitch a ride back
to Jerusalem with some passing UN bureaucrats. This time, my
Israeli press pass worked like a charm. The Israeli army girls
behind the counter had me fill out one form– I believe I was signing
something to the effect that I understood that going to Gaza was very
dangerous but I was going anyway– and then told me to walk on
through. That was literaly all there was to the border
formalities at this end.
They indicated that I walk “straight through”. There was a sort
of maze of gates, concrete blocks, watchtowers, little trailers,
concrete blocks and so on outside. As I approached a one-way
turnstile one of the security people said, “No! Gate No.
2!” So I went through gate No. 2 and entered the beginning of a
long, covered and enclosed walkway. It was maybe about 25
feet wide. The “walls” on each side were made from the same
sections of preformed concrete that the “Wall” in the West Bank– and
indeed, the wall that surrounds Gaza– is also built. That is,
sections of concrete walling about four feet wide and to one side of me
about 8 metres tall, to the other, about 6 metres tall, each section
sitting on its own heavy 20-inch-high solid footing. Above the
tops of the walls there were light metal structures that gave a few
inches more open height for ventilation and also provided a frrame for
the canvas that formed the “roof” of the tunnel. Somewhat
bizarrely, these canvases were in different colors– starting out blue,
then moving to pink and green, all of which gave the light inside the
tunnel some interesting tones.
I am the only person in this tunnel, which has two sides to it, divided
by a metal fence….
Kaplan making sense?!
I don’t think I’ve ever agreed with much at all of what Robert Kaplan– just one of a long string of western male writers who trail around the world imagining themselves to be Joseph Conrad– has written in the past. So imagine my surprise today when I read this piece in the WaPo in which Kaplan seems to have come round almost completely to the view of the world I’ve been articulating for many years now.
It includes these important truths:
- Physical security remains the primary human freedom. And so the fact that a state is despotic does not necessarily make it immoral. That is the essential fact of the Middle East that those intent on enforcing democracy abroad forget.
For the average person who just wants to walk the streets without being brutalized or blown up by criminal gangs, a despotic state that can protect him is more moral and far more useful than a democratic one that cannot.
Also this:
- The lesson to take away is that where it involves other despotic regimes in the region — none of which is nearly as despotic as [Saddam] Hussein’s — the last thing we should do is actively precipitate their demise. The more organically they evolve and dissolve, the less likely it is that blood will flow. That goes especially for Syria and Pakistan, both of which could be Muslim Yugoslavias in the making, with regionally based ethnic groups that have a history of dislike for each other. The neoconservative yearning to topple Bashar al-Assad, and the liberal one to undermine Pervez Musharraf, are equally adventurous.
Kaplan was an eager supporter of the decision to topple Saddam. Now, he seems to be hedging his bets– or would you say this paragraph qualifies almost as a mea-culpa?
- In the case of Iraq, the state under Saddam Hussein was so cruel and oppressive it bore little relationship to all these other dictatorships. Because under Hussein anybody could and in fact did disappear in the middle of the night and was tortured in the most horrific manner, the Baathist state constituted a form of anarchy masquerading as tyranny. The decision to remove him was defensible, while not providential. [Meaning– what??] The portrait of Iraq that has emerged since his fall reveals him as the Hobbesian nemesis who may have kept in check an even greater anarchy than the kind that obtained under his rule.
No, I don’t think it’s a mea culpa. But still it’s great to see someone who has been such an inspiring figure for the architects of various US military adventures since the early 1990s suddenly starting to urge caution.
(Hat-tip to spouse for telling me I should read that. It was interesting to see that George Will had a piece urging US caution re Iraq on the same op-ed page… Those two, and Frank Fukuyama: quite interesting how the debacle in Iraq is starting to fragment the previously existing bloc of US militarists of both left and right.)
Articles in Salon.com, Foreign Policy
So the piece I wrote for Salon on Hamas went up onto their site last night. It’s here. If you don’t have a subscription you just have to sit through a little ad thing that comes on, before you can read it.
This is a new experience for me, writing for an online publication. I was sued to a whirlwind news cycle back when I worked for Reuters in the 1970s. Recently, in my ‘composed’ writings I’ve become used to a much more leisurely pace. (Btw, my piece on international courts is now up on the Foreign Policy website, but there’s a strict pre-registration thing you need to go through there if you want to read it.)
On the other hand, I’ve also been blogging for three years– and that can be just as immediate as you (I) want it to be.
My CSM columns typically have a turnround time of some 2-3 days. Working on the Salon piece felt fairly similar to that.
Tel Aviv, Jaffa, Walls
Well, I just heard I got my Israeli press pass. This is excellent
news. One of the main reasons I need it is that being the bearer of a
press pass is the only
way foreigners and Israelis get to cross into Gaza at all these
days. Of course, once I’ve got it no doubt there are all sorts of
other fascinating things I can do with it.
I’m still in Tel Aviv. I’ve been hanging around waiting for an
interview that now (nearly 6 p.m.) looks as though it ain’t going to
come through for me. All Israeli political figures are incredibly
busy these days, organizing their campaigns for the March 28
elections. I even had a hard time getting an “appointment” with
Naomi Chazan, the former deputy Knesset Speaker from the leftist Meretz
Party, whom I think of as a dear friend. Oh well, I understand…
Actually, one thing quite a few Israelis have remarked on since I came
here has been how indifferent much of the public seems to be to the
whole campaign. Usually, politics in Israel is a 24/7
obsession. But as much as I can figure out from listening to
radios in taxi-cabs, that portion of the media seems much more
interested in Hamas (or as Israelis say it, “Khamas”) and Abu Mazen
than they are in their own politicians. Go figure.
Also, I haven’t seen one single recognizably electoral billboard or
informally posted flyer on the hoardings in the streets yet.
There are plenty of billboards bearing the ayatollah-like image of the
Shas Party’s spiritual mentor Rabbi Ovadia Youssef– not just
billboards, but massive displays on the sides of buses, etc etc.
But people say even that even there, the “message” is not political at
all, but one that features some kind of religious exhortation.
In fact, Youssef’s bearded and turbaned visage on these billboards and
displays is quite reminiscent of the parades of beared and turbaned
ayatollahs who (along with their own religious homilies) grace many of
the billboards of Hizbullah-dominated South Lebanon or come to think of
it of the posters for Hamas I saw in the West Bank, which have an
impishly grinning photo of a (bearded, headscarveded) Sheikh Ahmed
Yassin.
.. Well, anyway, late this morning, cellphone clutched in hand, I
decided to walk down the seaside promenade to the old city of Jaffa
that’s perched on a hilly promontory that juts out into the
Mediterranean just over a mile south of Tel Aviv’s city center.
The seaside promenade is beautiful: much nearer to sea-level than the
Corniche in Beirut, and much cleaner and better appointed. As I
walked briskly along I passed a few groups of older guys sitting
together on folding chairs playing shesh-besh (backgammon) almost
exactly as they would be doing at the very same time on the Beirut
Corniche…
Wolfensohn letter, text
I just want to bookmark the link to the version of James Wolfensohn’s letter of February 25 that was acquired by the WaPo and published yesterday.
Tel Aviv etc.
Yesterday morning I wrote a long piece for Salon– putting in a lot more of my Dore Gold material along with the Dr. Mahmoud Ramahi material and a bunch of background stuff. I didn’t have time for lunch as I had to get out my hotel room there in East Jerusalem; anyway I was writing up a storm. Once I was done I got a cab across a Jerusalem swathed in a real storm, a dust-storm of fine yellow-grey dust, over to the massive new Central Bus Station and came down here to Tel Aviv..
I have to say Israel’s system of inter-city and intra-city buses is a real national asset: frequent, comfortable buses, well driven, with the schedules and routes all well posted; a good system for prepayment; busy, apparently safe terminals in the major cities, and designated bus lanes in most city centers to speed the buses along… On nearly every score it makes the national transit “system” in the US look totally pathetic.
… About 50 minutes after leaving Jeruslaem the bus rolled into the sixth level of the Tel Aviv Central Bus Station… I hauled my bag down two floors and got a #4 bus which brought me to the door of my hotel here near the ocean.
Then I got a call from my handler at the Government Press Office, telling me my application for a foreign press card had been turned down. Turned down! He claimed that the Boston Review, which had been sponsoring the application, “didn’t meet the guidelines” for their department because it comes out only bimonthly and therefore doesn’t count as “news” media.
He sounded really nervous throughout the whole conversation…
So then I sent an email to my editor at the CSM. She got on the case and I think it’s being handled… Keep your fingers crossed.
… This morning I had meetings with two really nice, really smart Israeli guys whom I’ve known for many years. Each meeting was set up in a cafe in a different shopping mall in a different part of North Tel Aviv. Driving out to these meetings– especiaslly the first one–was unbelievable! Mile upon mile upon mile of enormous, extremely lavish-looking apartment buildings and cranes hanging over the horizon at every aspect building yet more of the same.
Who on earth can afford to live in all these super-luxury apartments? What companies have the capital to invest in such mammoth-sized projects? This country has become so unbelievably wealthy since Yasser Arafat’s conclusion of the Oslo Accords with them in 1993 opened the door to much wider trade and investment relations with Europe and (especially) the “tiger” economies of East Asia! But for the poor old Palestinians themselves, meanwhile, Oslo brought almost nothing but further land-exprorpriations, further represssion, the deliberate fragmentation by the Israelis of much of the West Bank, continued economic dependence, insult, injury, and and penury…
Life, logistics, Jerusalem
I am still waiting for my Israeli press card to come through! This is a pain, as I can’t get to Gaza without it. But tomorrow I’m going down to Tel Aviv to talk to some folks there.
Shoot, I also have lots of great material for a great post about “Sunday morning in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.” But I only have time for the very short version here: Big disappointment. No transcendental music. No services at all in any of the church’s heavily contested nooks, crannies, or broader open spaces– even though I was there for a good part of the morning. Only the old game of fleece-the-tourist continued apace. Though several of the church’s soaring domes and cleverly contrived stone staircases could be described as beautiful, still, to my plain Quaker sense of esthetics the odor of idolatry far outweighed the faint whiff of sanctity. As I said: big disappointment.
(Once, I went there and there were some Armenian monks chanting on a hidden high mezzanine. That was lovely. None today.)