Just World News with Helena Cobban – Page 71 – Info, analysis, discussion

Transit systems, Turkey

I’m writing– and also, crucially, posting– this while traveling on a Nilufer long-distance bus from Istanbul to Bursa. We were promised wireless on the bus; and yes, here it is. The uniformed attendant just came along the aisle. In addition to giving me the wireless password he was doling out tea, cake, and freshen-up towelettes to all passengers.
Definitely superior service!
Superior by far to dear, grungy old Greyhound, back home in the US. Superior, too, to the service on US domestic airlines (grudging ‘service’, no wi-fi, minimal or no snacks.)
Nilufer seems to be a Bursa-based private company. The friend who booked our tickets told us the bus will at some point board a ferry to take us some of the way across, rather than round, the Black Sea. The company may or may not be one of the many that have been successfully run by piously Islamic families here over the course of several decades. At the company’s terminal in Istanbul, there was a small room designated as “Mascid”.
From what we saw during six days in Istanbul, the city’s own municipal transit systems are fabulous. Earlier this week we took the city tram (sleek, clean, very frequent) from near to our hotel down to the Eminonu stop on the southern bank of the Golden Horn, then took a ferry across to Uskudar on the other (Asian) side of the Bosphorus.
The ferry network that still forms the main arteries of the city’s circulation system is amazing! At any one time, scores of rather large ferries, for both passengers and cars, are at work either determinedly stitching their criss-crossing paths across the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus, or very efficiently loading and unloading their passengers at one of the city’s numerous well-run ferry terminals. I didn’t see a single hitch in the in the system: no mechanical breakdowns, no accidents, no glitches…
(While I’ve been writing the bus attendant has come around again twice: once with sealed plastic containers of drinking water, once to pick up our trash. He also brought a hygienically wrapped blanket to the woman across the aisle from us.)
Yesterday we took part in a small conference in the amazing Sabanci Towers complex in an area called 4-Levent. We took the tram from the hotel to the end of the line in Kabatas; then the “Funiculer” that runs up to Taksim; then the metro from there to 4-Levent. The interchanges were pleasant and well-marked. The vehicles frequent, clean, and well-maintained. Each part of the trip cost about $1 (US)– probably a lot for most city residents, but cheap and efficient for us.
I mention all this not only because I’m a real mass transit junkie, but also because the state of the city’s transit systems– along with the well-planned, well-kept, and clean state of the streets, parks, historic buildings, and other public facilities is a real testament to the effectiveness of Turkey’s moderately Islamist AKP ruling party.
Before current prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his colleagues in the AKP won their first national election in 2002, he had made his name as a very successful mayor of Istanbul. I believe the party still dominates city politics, though I am not sure. Anyway, the kinds of policies that make this city of around 12 million people such a pleasant and well-run place today must have been put in place a number of years ago.
Erdogan, his party, and his intriguing new foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu– who previously worked as a special adviser to the PM on foreign affairs– all deserve a lot more consideration. But just for now, the legacy the party has given to the amazing city of Istanbul is certainly worth noting.
I’ve been reading Orhan Pamuk’s book of memoirs about his childhood in the city, growing up there in the 1950s. He makes a big deal about the “huzun” (melancholy) with which he judged the city to be extremely deeply imbued at the time.
Pamuk attributed that huzun to a sense of post-imperial loss and shame. Interesting. If I have the time I’d love to compare that with my sense– as someone who was also, like Pamuk, born in 1952– of growing up in an empire that was actively disintegrating even as I was racking up the inches of childhood growth.
But today, Istanbul has very little discernible air of huzun at all. It seems optimistic, self-confident, clean, purposeful– and also, extremely pleasant.

More on ‘natural growth’ in settlements

My friend A writes:

http://www.cbs.gov.il/shnaton59/st02_18.pdf

I am not sure where he got the figure for ‘natural growth’ from…
I note that what A is writing about is only the West Bank (‘Judea and Samaria’) outside occupied East Jerusalem. The statistical table here doesn’t break out East Jerusalem from West Jerusalem, but the net out-migration from Jerusalem in 2007 was 6,100.
It is intriguing, though, that at the level of “internal” (intra-Israel) migration, 11,700 people left the settlements in 2007.

Thinking on Iran decision-making

This missive offers up ongoing research to colleagues and jwn readers for comment. sh
Lately, I’ve been paying closer attention to various Iranian think-tanks, particularly those that are part of a complex behind-the-headlines foreign policy decision-making process — one rarely written about in the west, much less understood. Even the need to study such a process would be “foreign” to those imbibing the shallow propaganda about the Islamic Republic being a “totalitarian theocracy.”
Yet even serious Western analysts and journalists take fuzzy short-cuts. They commonly start with factional tendencies on various domestic issues and then assume, quite erroneously, that these “divides” translate neatly into similar takes on international affairs. When contrary evidence inevitably arises, analysts revise and (I suspect) often invent, all manner of elaborate sub-factional group labels, which then get reformulated from one book to the next, often by the same author.

Continue reading “Thinking on Iran decision-making”

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

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

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

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

1. No settler children are going to be “living on the roofs.”

2. This excuse has been used– and abused– before.

3. Accommodating Jewish Israelis’ alleged “natural” growth claims is inequitable unless the Palestinians’ much more urgent needs for housing are on their way to being met.

4. Why think about “natural growth” at all if the peace agreement is, as we hope, due to be completed in timely fashion?

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

Abbas losing support from Fateh

Mahmoud Abbas is supposed to be the head of the Fateh movement, as well as of the PLO (!) and the US-supported Palestinian Authority (PA.)
Yesterday, Abbas swore in a new PA ‘government’, headed as before by the strongly US-backed Salam Fayyad… and most members of Fateh’s own parliamentary bloc opposed the move and refused to join!
This is a further illustration of the fact I have mentioned before, that Fateh no longer has any coherent internal organization at all– let alone one that could make any strategic or tough decisions or exercise other functions of national “leadership.”
And the more money the US and its friends shovel into the PA project, the faster the internal disintegration continues.
This commentary from Ma’an News tries to unpack Abbas’s reasoning for forming the new “government”. The one I find most convincing is that Abbas and his American masters/friends figured it would look bad if he turned up in Washington May 28 without having some kind of a Potemkin government in tow. (My somewhat liberal paraphrasing there.)
The Fateh PLC bloc’s grounds for objection are interesting. They center primarily around the legitimacy of the move. I guess that back in June 2007, when Abbas appointed the first Fayad government, he was still uncontestedly the PA President; and he claimed a right under the PA’s Constitution to form an “emergency” government.
But even that was supposed to last for only 30 days.
Also, Abbas’s mandate as President ran out last January.
I find it interesting that the Fateh LC members are standing up on the basis of the PA’s Constitution. The PA was only ever meant to be a short-term (five-year), transitional body, pending conclusion of the final agreement that would– all palestinians hoped– give the the full powers of an indpendent state.
Surely that would have been the time to work out a proper Constitution?
Instead of which, a lot of people became heavily invested in fashioning a constitution for this transitional body, the PA; and now both Hamas and the Fateh parliamentarians have become very attached to it.
All of which is almost completely meaningless–Potemkin politics; a misleading substitute for the real thing– unless there is a strong and workable final-status deal involving real national independence… and soon!

Open Thread, Istanbul, London

Hi, all. I’m in Turkey for a couple of weeks on a great trip that combines some good time with the spouse (to celebrate our 25th anniversary) and some good time with Turkish friends and colleagues. Not much time to blog but plenty of opportunity to do some deep thinking.
Currently, we’re in Istanbul. Ship’s horns, fresh breezes, huge bustle, excellent urban mass transit, monuments from a former empire that are far more beautiful, extensive, and impressive than those in London (where I came here from.)
Actually, part of the problem in Britain is that so many Brits have still not come to terms with the fact that the country they’re living in is indeed the head of a former empire. They still love to talk about “punching above our weight” in world affairs, the “special relationship” with the US, etc. So there hasn’t been that clean break with the past glories of empire that you had in post-Ottoman Turkey. Let alone any of that post-imperial “melancholy” that Pamuk writes about at such length, regarding Istanbul.
London, of course, was also interesting to be in, with the Daily Telegraph doling out a gob-smacking daily diet of revelations in the still-unrolling “Expense-gate” scandal. Most of the amounts involved were not large. But the fact of all that jiggery-pokery going on pointed to most MPs, from all parties–and in this, I think the DT was trying to be quite “fair”–having this strong sense of entitlement to feed liberally from the public trough, and a tin ear as to how this would be received by the now-hurting public whom they claim to “represent.” Such a sense of insulation from the public mood is something that builds up over time, of course.
It will hurt both big parties to some extent, and the institution of parliament in general. But it is bound to hurt Labour more than the Tories. Plus, of course, Labour and in particular Gordon Brown have to take direct responsibility for the economic policies that have led directly to the current economic woes. (Labour also has to take responsibility for the craven lap-dogging with Bush that, under the dreadful Tony Blair, led Britain so deeply into its expensive participation in the US’s foreign wars.)
Anyway, it was my intention not to blog much here, but to leave this post as an open thread for your comments. Have at it.

My IPS piece on Netanyahu’s big meeting with Obama

… is here. Also here.
What I didn’t have the space to put in there were two things:
1. My judgment (as explored here before now) that Bibi might well throw out the bone of saying he’s prepared to engage with the idea of a Palestinian state… as a way of demonstrating his “flexibility”. But that he would still hedge this apparent acceptance of the idea around with so many caveats that it would be worthless and above all time-wasting. (As was the case in the 1990s when he finally agreed to make the “concession” of meeting with Arafat, etc.)
2. My disgust at the way so many western analysts and journos just lazily accept and perpetuate the US/Israeli spin that “the Arab world” is more concerned about the Iranian “threat” than they are with Israel and Palestine. In the case of the vast majority of Arab governments this simply isn’t so. Imagining that it is simply plays into Netanyahu’s “Iran first” agenda.

Uzi Arad in Washington

So controversial Netanyahu aide Uzi Arad has been in Washington this week, doing advance work for his boss’s upcoming visit with Pres. Obama.
From June 2007 until this week Arad was barred from visiting the US, given his role in running the spy ring involving convicted spy Larry Franklin in which former AIPAC officials Steve Rosen and Kenneth Weissman were also implicated. Long-outstanding charges brought against Rosen and Weissman were recently dropped by the FBI.
I imagine no-one in the administration was very keen to share any actual secrets with Arad on this latest visit. So what would have been the point in sending him? Just to jab a finger in Washington’s eye, I guess.
I would love to know who Arad met with in Washington, and what the back-story is regarding him getting this long-denied visa.

Uzi Arad and other aspects of Netanyahu’s Washington visit

Richard Sale had an excellent post on Pat Lang’s blog yesterday, in which he surveyed some of the key problems in the relationship between Pres. Obama and Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, who will have their first face-to-face meeting as national leaders in Washington, on Monday.
There are plenty of serious disagreements between the two leaders, which have been well described both by Sale, writing from Washington, and by the pro-Likud magnate and commentator Isi Leibler, writing in the Jerusalem Post on Monday.
Leibler, who had just concluded a quick visit to New York, wrote,

Of course, Leibler’s intention in calling “J Street” a “fringe group” and mischaracterizing its platform in the way he did is quite clear…
Sales’s piece has more details of the problems that have arisen between leading representatives of the two governments. Including, crucially, the issue of Uzi Arad, the man named by Netanyahu as his national security adviser.
Arad has been barred from getting a visa to enter the US since June 2007 under section 212 3(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, because of FBI concerns about his role in having “run” Lawrence Franklin, the former Pentagon analyst jailed for 12.5 years for having passed highly classified U.S. intelligence directly to Arad.
Will Netanyahu try to take Arad with him when he travels to Washington this weekend? As Sales writes, when Hillary Clinton was in Israel in March, Netanyahu and his team pulled a fast one on her by sneaking Arad into a meeting with her even though her people had already conveyed their desire this not happen.
I imagine this did little to endear Netanyahu or Arad to her. (Which is probably good.)
Beyond the question of Uzi Arad, however, there are numerous other matters of significant disagreement between the two governments. The main one is the peace process with the Palestinians.
Netanyahu has continued to refrain from expressing any support for the approach favored by Obama: the two-state solution involving a viable Palestinian state. He’s been expressing support for some form of an “economic peace” for the Palestinians, instead.
Today, he took a step that was most likely designed to make him look “flexible” and “visionary” ahead of his visit to Washington: He announced that he would allow a full range of foodstuffs to be shipped into Gaza.
Hold the applause, folks!
Firstly, this is only a promise; who knows about its implementation? Secondly: Israel is still the occupying power in Gaza and therefore has entire responsibility for the welfare of Gaza’s 1.5 million people, so why should anyone applaud Netanyahu when he “promises” to fulfill this small part of that responsibility? Thirdly, of course Israel’s responsibility to Gaza’s people goes considerably beyond the provision of adequate foodstuffs; Israel has a responsibility to support the full social and economic development of the Strip’s people, including, as a very first step, allowing the shipping into the Strip of the the construction materials needed to repair the horrendous damages from the recent war… No word from Netanyahu on that, yet.
And finally, on those foodstuffs, don’t you remember that back at the end of March, outgoing PM Olmert already promised that full shipments of them would forthwith be restored? So why would Netanyahu expect anyone to “applaud” now if he is merely– two months after Olmert’s promise– finally getting around to “promising” implementation of it, once again?
It is interesting to see, though, how desperately Netanyahu seems to be trying to appear “reasonable” and “flexible” in front of an American public that is much more skeptical of the Israeli PM’s good intentions than at any other point since– well, since he was PM the time before, in the mid-1990s.
My expectation of Monday’s meeting between him and Obama, fwiw, is that Netanyahu may well decide to show some more apparent “flexibility” inside the meeting room by telling Obama that he has, indeed, finally become convinced that a Palestinian “state” of some sort could be a workble idea…
Of course, he would continue to hedge that position around with all kinds of preconditions for what powers the “state” might have, and the timeline on which it could even start to be established.
Regarding its powers, do recall that South Africa’s Bantustans were given the formal name of “states”. (Also, in US political parlance, a “state” is a distinctly sub-national entity.)
Regarding the timeline for it, Netanyahu and his people would certainly, under this scenario, bring forward all those huge preconditions that the “state” could only start to be established after all Palestinian “terrorism” has been completely eradicated, and after the US and the rest of the international community have destroyed Iran’s nuclear programs, etc etc etc…
They might also bring in the language of “viability.”
When most people talk about the need for a future Palestinian state to be “viable”, they look at two key aspects of it: its territorial base and the base of its political support among Palestinians.
When people around Netanyahu talk about “viability” it often seems they are talking about the state having been built over many years, “from the bottom up” (as they like to say), by the Americans, and along a template that the Israelis themselves would still completely control.
So anyway, my bottom line on Monday’s meeting is that Obama’s people should be ready, in the event that Netanyahu grants them the “concession” of starting to agree to the idea of a Palestinian state, with their own response to that that makes clear that the US version of a viable Palestinian state is one that is truly viable.
Palestinians and all other Arabs are very wary of the prospect of a Palestinian end-state that is only a Bantustan. (It’s bad enough that Ramallastan looks and acts so much like a Bantustan already today; but at least the PA is only a “temporary” body, not the end-state.)
If Netanyahu comes out openly and says he supports a “state”, and then immediately hedges his definition of it around in an impossible way, and without his caveats meeting a firm and clear reaction from the Obama team, then that could end up killing the two-state project far faster than anything else.
Netanyahu’s hug for an Israeli-dominated and completely non-indepedent Palestinian “state” would a hug of death.
You see, there is this concept that Americans used to adhere called, quite quaintly, the “consent of the governed.”
Remember that?
… Anyway, we’ll clearly have some interesting days ahead.

After Hamas’s Hudna, what?

On Monday, I blogged some excerpts from the informal interview I had with the close-to-Hamas scholar and media mogul Dr Azzam Tamimi, earlier in the day.
He read the blog post, and emailed me that he found the comments there very interesting. He added, “In fact the question about what comes after Hudnah is answered in my book.”
He then copied into the email the following text which he describes as “an excerpt from the draft of my book.” I think he was referring to this book, Hamas: Unwritten Chapters, which is due to be published this July here in London. (It seems to be an updated edition of this 2007 volume.)

What comes after hudnah?