Hariri court orders generals’ release; case in disarray

A judge in the Hague-based Special Tribunal for Lebanon today ordered the release of the four senior members of Lebanon’s internal security services who were arrested shortly after the February 2005 assassination of Rafiq Hariri and have been held in prison since then.
Bloomberg’s Massoud Derhally reports:

    Judge Daniel Fransen of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon said the four generals held in Lebanon since 2005 are to be freed because there isn’t sufficient evidence to continue their detention, given that some witnesses have modified or retracted their statements. Proceedings were aired live from The Hague by Arab and Lebanese broadcasters and on the Internet.
    There were “inconsistencies in the statements of key witnesses” and a “lack of corroborative evidence to support these statements,” Fransen said.
    Former Canadian Deputy Attorney General Daniel Bellemare, who took over the investigation last year and became the court’s chief prosecutor on March 1, said he wouldn’t appeal the ruling.
    The judge ordered the immediate release of Mustafa Hamdan, former head of the Presidential Guard; Jameel al-Sayyed, the former general security chief; Ali al-Hajj, the former internal security head; and Raymond Azar, the former army intelligence director.

The Special Tribunal is a new kind of a mixed, national-international court that was established specifically to deal with the Hariri case. When the leaders of Lebanon’s US-backed ‘March 14’ movement worked for its establishment, they hoped that it would add the weight of the international community to the campaign they were trying to wage against Syria’s influence inside Lebanon, with which the four arrested generals were associated.
However, once the cool, fact-based analysis of Bellemare and Fransen were brought to bear on the case, the evidence against the four generals was judged too thin to justify their continued incarceration.
Hariri’s son Saad, one of the leaders of M-14, said he accepts and respects the STL’s decision.
Derhally quotes LAU prof and Hizbullah expert Amal Saad-Ghorayeb as saying,

    “This verdict underlines how politicized the investigation was… It also discredits the Lebanese judiciary and the politicians who accused these generals.”
    The ruling has “far-reaching political implications,” she said. “It may weaken the pro-Western coalition in the upcoming elections and strengthen Hezbollah and its allies.”

Hizbullah’s Al-Manar website reported (in somewhat tortured English), that:

    The decision was… immediately hailed by the national opposition that announced the day “a day of joy for the Lebanese,” regretting that such decision be made by the international justice not the Lebanese one.
    In this context, Hezbollah issued a statement in which it hailed the international tribunal’s decision to release the officers after a long arbitrary decision imposed unfairly by the March 14 authority without any charges. Hezbollah recalled that the detention of the four officers brushed aside all laws and legal procedures and caused a status of attenuation and politicization of one of the most important authorities responsible for the maintenance of life and law in the country which is the judicial authority.

The site also listed a number of Lebanese politicians who hailed the decision, including former president Emile Lahoud, former PM Selim al-Hoss, Vice President of the Higher Shiite Council Sheikh Abdul Amir Qabalan , etc.

Obama opens timid discussion with Congress on Hamas

The Obama administration has launched a tiny first discussion with Congress over the issue of dealing with Hamas. Administration officials did this, according to this piece in Monday’s LA Times by Paul Richter,by seeking a change in existing legislation that forbids the US from giving aid to any PA government that contains Hamas members.
Richter writes:

    U.S. officials insist that the new proposal doesn’t amount to recognizing or aiding Hamas. Under law, any U.S. aid would require that the Palestinian government meet three long-standing criteria: recognizing Israel, renouncing violence and agreeing to follow past Israeli-Palestinian agreements.
    Hamas as an organization doesn’t meet those criteria. However, if the rival Palestinian factions manage to reach a power-sharing deal, the Obama administration wants to be able to provide aid as long as the Hamas-backed members of the government — if not Hamas itself — meet the three criteria.

This tracks, by the way, with other information I have received, that the administration is still sticking exactly to the “three conditions” defined by the US and its allies/satraps in the so-called “Quartet”, immediately after Hamas won the PA elections in 2006.
Richter quotes Nathan Brown, a prof at George Washington University, as describing the administration’s request as “gutsy.” I don’t think it’s gutsy. Gutsy would be to come out and say the US respects the results of the 2006 election and intends to explore all possible ways of working with the duly elected Palestinian government– just as it works with the duly elected government in Israel that contains some extremely rightwing figures and is headed by people who are much more opposed to a two-state solution than is Hamas.
I do think the administration’s move is a tiny and realistic move in the right direction.
Realistic, because without making some move like this the US could pretty rapidly find it has dealt itself out of having any real influence at all in the Palestinian political sphere.
As it is, the portion of US aid that goes into the PA’s budget is already, I think, much smaller than the EU’s aid. (And I see that Chinese foreign minister Yang Jiechi has been in Ramallastan and Israel recently.)
Plus, as I have noted elsewhere, the net effect of all of the US-mobilized aid that’s been poured into Ramallastan in recent years has been to further feed the culture of clientilism and corruption that has become rampant in the Fateh-controlled (Ramallah) wing of the PA, and thus to hasten the internal disintegration of Fateh and its secular allies.
With all that US-mobilized money that has been poured into Ramallah since 2006, Hamas’s popularity in the West Bank has only been rising, and now easily tops that of Fateh!
(Bottom line: It’s not the aid itself that wins influence. Aid when allied to correct policies would have a much better chance of doing so.)
…Anyway, inside Washington, the administration’s move sparked exactly the kind of knee-jerk response you could expect from some heavily AIPAC-influenced members of congress.
Richter reports,

    Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank) said the proposal sounded “completely unworkable,” even if the individual Hamas-backed officials agreed to abide by U.S. conditions.
    “You couldn’t have the leadership of a terrorist organization pick the ministers in the government, with the power to appoint and withdraw them, and answering to them,” he said.

What’s notable to me, though, is the absence of any knee-jerk condemnation, up to this point, coming from anyone with any real clout in congress. (Schiff is the congressman from one of the LA Times’ home constituencies, and was quoted for that reason rather than because he has any huge clout in congress.)
Officials in Israel were described in this Haaretz piece as “surprised” by the Obama administration’s move– and also, of course, opposed to it.
The pro-Hamas PIC website somewhat over-interpreted the move.
Regarding the possibility of progress in the long-drawn-out intra-Palestinian reconciliation process, the PIC website has this fairly detailed report, published under the title “Hamas: The fourth dialog round made slight progress and will resume next month.”
It included this:

    [Hamas official] Dr. Ismail Radwan said that the current round of reconciliation talks in Cairo ended with a joint meeting between delegations of Hamas and Fatah in the presence of Egyptian intelligence director Omar Suleiman and it was agreed upon to resume the talks on May 16.
    Dr. Radwan underlined that the two parties agreed on the importance of the one package solution either with respect to the referential authority, security, the government or elections.
    The Hamas official also pointed out that the two parties agreed on the necessity of the PLC’s work, and the respect of the majority within the council and the mechanism of proxies it approved.
    In the same context, Palestinian informed sources told the PIC on Tuesday that during a closed meeting attended by Suleiman, the delegations of Hamas and Fatah agreed on the formation of an interim referential national authority to oversee the rebuilding of the PLO composed of factions, independents and the executive committee.
    … In a joint statement issued Tuesday during their meeting, the alliance of Palestinian forces, which are composed of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Al-Sa’ika, the popular front-general command, the popular struggle, the Palestinian liberation front, Fatah-Intifada and the communist party, rejected all calls for the recognition of the Israeli occupation and the international quartet’s terms, or the commitment to the agreements signed with Israel.

Anyway, let’s see what happens between now and May 16.

Netanyahu and the ‘Palestinian state’ card

Israel’s former failed prime minister and current defense minister, Ehud Barak, is now saying that PM Netanyahu

    will present the U.S. administration a diplomatic plan in line with the principle of “two states for two nations” during his upcoming visit to Washington.

Until now, Netanyahu has refused to commit himself to agreeing with the Obama administration that statehood for the Palestinians is the way forward for peace. So now, Barak is indicating Netanyahu may be a bit “flexible” on the statehood issue. (Foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman, however, remains strongly opposed. Oops.)
But here’s the thing. It is not the word “state” that’s important, regarding the outcome. South Africa’s Bantustans were also called “states”, remember.
It is the content of the sovereignty and decision-making powers, the independence of the decision-making process, and the territorial and economic foundations that support this independence that are important.
So people should not get hung up on the word “state”– and certainly, they shouldn’t suddenly rush to crown Netanyahu with a peacemaker’s laurels if he should deign to say the Palestinians might be able to have one.
Look at the content of any proposal made, not just its name.
A couple other things to bear in mind:
1. Past PM Olmert also said he believed in a Palestinian “state.” His concept of it was very restrictive, including of course territorially. The fact that he accepted the notion of a Palestinian state did not mean his proposals regarding the final settlement were in any way acceptable.
2. Ten years ago, Barak won a strong victory in the polls against Netanyahu, and replaced him as PM. On that occasion, Barak won by promising Israelis that he was the man who could conclude a final peace with the Palestinians “within six to nine months.” Eighteen months later his premiership collapsed into chaos with that pledge still unfulfilled.
Worse than that, the peremptory and bullying way he conducted his peace “diplomacy” with the Palestinians ensured that the Camp David II summit was a disaster. Barak then loudly blamed PA leader Yasser Arafat for the failure and said Israel “had no partner for peace.” (Clinton, quite shamefully, completely backed him up on that.)
Leaders and activists in the real Israeli peace movement say that Barak’s behavior at that time was a stab in the heart for their movement, from which it has still, nine years later, not recovered.
This time, Barak is “promising” that the Netanyahu government will have peace with the Palestinians “within three years.” He has no credibility.

China Hand on the bleak prospects for the US in Afghanistan

Longtime JWN readers will know I’m a fan of the analysis that a blogger called China Hand produces on Pakistan and Afghanistan. (He doesn’t, as it happens produce much on China. Go figure.)
Anyway, today CH has a well-worth-reading (though not short) post in which he deconstructs and tries to assess the policy toward the Pakistan and Afghan Taleban that he sees the Islamabad government as most likely pursuing.
Bottom line, at the end:

    if we let Afghanistan go down the tubes, as the deep thinkers in Pakistan are proposing, there’s no assurance that the Taliban can be rolled back in Pakistan.
    Perhaps this problem has become too big for the United States and Pakistan to solve on their own. And, since Washington and Islamabad apparently disagree on the definition of the problem, let alone the outlines of a solution, it looks like nothing but years of bloody muddle lie ahead.

I humbly submit, however, that there is another option, in addition to leaving the US and Pakistan to handle the whole Af-Pak/Taleban problem “on their own.” This would be for Washington to invite the UN Security Council to convene a broad and authoritative new conference, including, certainly, all Afghanistan’s neighbors, all the P-5 powers, and anyone else the Secretary-General considers worth inviting, and have that gathering take responsibility for real Afghan peacemaking away from the US and NATO.
The US and NATO seem almost uniquely ill-suited to the challenges in Afghanistan! I can’t imagine why anyone thinks these western armies could do anything to achieve stability in Afghanistan– at a price that’s affordable by their increasingly cash-strapped treasuries, or at all.
Sure, China and Russia might both be very wary of assuming any additional responsibilities in a place as intractable as Afghanistan. But it is, after all, far closer to them than it is to any NATO members; and the restoration of a decent degree of stability to Afghanistan and Pakistan is actually much stronger an interest for them than it is for the distant NATO members.
Of course I can quite understand, from a realpolitik POV, that China and Russia might both be extremely happy to see the US and its NATO allies continuing to degrade their forces and their treasuries by trying to hurl their militaries against the brick wall in Afghanistan. But at some point that has to be counter-productive for them.

‘Sensitive’ developments in Saudi Arabia? Succession-related?

Steve Clemons wrote on his blog Saturday that Dennis Ross was due to arrive in Saudi Arabia today on a big (and possibly hastily scheduled?) trip today.
He added that the Kingdom’s ambassador to the US, Adel Jubair, was due to hurry to Riyadh to help prepare King Abdullah for the Ross meetings.
Clemons also wrote:

    A source in the White House has shared with me that there is a lot underway right now with Saudi Arabia — and things are “sensitive.” I have no idea what is sensitive–

He then suggested quite a few items on the regional diplomatic agenda that might be “sensitive.’
I would say “sensitive” could well be some big development in the Kingdom’s slowly unfolding succession struggle.
To recap: Abdullah is 86. His half-brother Crown Prince Sultan is 82 and in very poor health– reportedly in a hospital in New York. When Abdullah traveled to Doha for the Arab summit at the end of the month, he appointed Sultan’s full brother, the “sprightly”, 75-year-old Prince Nayef, to be “second deputy prime minister”. First deputy PM is always, in this sui generis system, the Crown Prince. Previously the position of 2-DPM has been the stepping stone for successive sons of long-deceased patriarch King Abdul-Aziz to become later, 1-DPM (i.e. Crown prince), and later King.
When Nayef got the 2-DPM appointment, the well-informed Saudi expert Greg Gause wrote this about the development and about Nayef.
Bottom line: No non-prince ever really understands princely politics inside Saudi Arabia; but Nayef is extremely conservative on social issues and reform issues.
Early this month, the Guardian’s Middle East editor, Ian Black, had this article about Saudi succession issues.
He wrote there:

    the technical-sounding news about Nayef’s new job was something of a bombshell because it implied he was next in line for the throne.
    Taking into account the advanced ages of both Abdullah and Sultan, he could be sitting on it sooner rather than later.
    Experts point out that this is not certain. Formally, the choice is down to a secretive body called the Allegiance council, set up in 2006 and made up of the most prominent members of the royal family (all the sons or grandsons of the late King Abdulaziz, or Ibn Saud, the founder of the kingdom), who vote to appoint crown princes.
    Gregory Gause, of the University of Vermont, calls this a “wild card” in the succession process.
    Other Saudi-watchers predict that Nayef will eventually take over.
    “The question is still open but, most probably, Nayef will be king,” Mai Yamani, a London-based Saudi political analyst, said. “He is too powerful to be ignored.”
    Nayef’s claim to fame is more than 30 years of service as the interior minister.
    He organised the attack that ended the traumatic siege of the Grand Mosque in Mecca 1979, and has led the fight against al-Qaida since the 9/11 attacks (having first blamed Israel’s Mossad and denied that any Saudis were involved).
    Brute force has been combined with a sophisticated rehabilitation programme to coax repentant “deviants” or jihadis back into the fold.
    With his son, Prince Mohammed, as the deputy minister, Nayef runs a classic and powerful Saudi fiefdom.
    He is also a social conservative who declared, days before his appointment, that there was no need for either elections or for female members of the advisory Shura council.
    Nayef rarely travels overseas, and is one of the few Saudi princes never to have visited Washington…

Anyway, at a time when the Saudis may well be dealing with some extremely sensitive succession-related issues, I imagine the presence of the extremely pro-Israeli Ross might be somewhat unwelcome.
Of course, there is a lot to discuss with the Saudis on the foreign policy agenda– including the collapse in Pakistan, where they are huge players, and the ever-simmering Palestine Question. But those two issues each have their own US special envoys, not Ross. (Steve Clemons wrote in that blog post that Palestine-Israeli envoy George Mitchell is also expected in Saudi Arabia this week.)
Oh, I see Xinhua is reporting about Dennis’s trip that he’ll also be going to Egypt. (As well as the UAE, Oman, Bahrain, and Qatar.)
Egypt?? That’s not part of the weird region of “South-west Asia” that is supposed to be Ross’s bailiwick. I wonder what all this is truly about?

Videos from the recent Georgetown University CCAS conference

… are now up on the website, here.
This is a fabulous resource. I shall certainly be coming back to it again and again. Many of the presentations were extremely important and well done: I learned so much from attending the two days of the conference.
The schedule for the conference is at the top of that web-page. Then scroll down to see the videos, which are not in the same order.
(My performance looks okay. One small mis-speaking– a reference to 40 Hamas people being incarcerated in the West bank, as opposed to 60 Hamas parliamentarians— and some possibly overdone, BBC-style hand gestures…. But it’s the way I communicate in large-group settings, so what can I do?)
Anyway, big congratulations to the CCAS staff for having gotten this up on the website so speedily. Just one small caveat: those presenters who relied heavily on Power Points get a bit short-changed since the videos don’t, I think, cue to those.

More dishonest argumentation from the WaPo’s Hoagland

Veteran WaPo columnist Jim Hoagland was a big drum-beater for the US invasion of Iraq, and he is now playing a belligerent and fundamentally dishonest role in trying to win US support for a still very possible Israeli attack against Iran.
In his column yesterday, Hoagland seems to be adopting a strongly Israelo-centric– or let me say Likudo-centric– perspective.
He writes,

    Obama has already offered diplomatic engagement to Iran without preconditions — making Tehran’s behavior, not Washington’s conduct, the dominant issue for international opinion. The policy adjustments have been necessary and adroitly handled.
    But they have also stirred doubts in Israel’s untested and politically heterogeneous government about Obama’s commitment to Israel’s security, as Netanyahu defines it…

And then this extraordinary piece of misjudgment:

    The nightmare scenario for Obama is that Israel launches an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities that is largely unsuccessful but that provokes an Iranian missile retaliation against Israel and all-out guerrilla campaigns by Hamas and Hezbollah. Could any U.S. president, however angry, turn his back on Israel in that situation?

No, Jim Hoagland. The nightmare scenario for any American president is that Israel launches an attack against Iran that then invites– and under international law, almost certainly justifies– Iranian retaliation against the vulnerable, over-extended supply lines in the Middle East of Israel’s strategic ally, the United States.
Not even one whisper of a mention of that possibility, Jim Hoagland? What an incredibly dishonest and extremely dangerous silence on your part!
Hoagland alludes to what is the most compelling evidence the Iranians would have, in certain circumstances, for retaliating against the US. Namely, that Israeli aircraft used in an attack on Iran would most likely have to have either flown through US-controlled airspace, whether in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, or elsewhere, or to have used refuelling planes supplied by the US to Israel for specifically defensive purposes.
If Israel uses other delivery platforms for munitions used against Iran, including missiles or drones, US collusion in the development of those weapons could also be argued by the Iranians.
In any case, the Iranians would have a very strong case under international law for an argument that retaliating against such a close Israeli ally in military affairs as the US would be justified in the event of an attack against them by Israel.
It has been that contingency that has kept several high-level American military planners up late at nights with worry for the past few years. It was that contingency that persuaded even the Bush administration to state forcefully to Israel last year that it would not give Israel the permission (and associated IFF codes) its planes would need if they were to fly to Iran over Iraq’s extremely sensitive airspace.
Hoagland referred to last year’s Israel-US exchange about overflight rights– but he made no reference at all to the concern many in the US military have about the blowback their very vulnerable forces would most likely suffer in the event of an Israeli attack against Iran. Why is he being so dishonest?
Elsewhere on the same page yesterday, I note, David Ignatius scored a hole in one by asking this simple question, in response to a series of vivid war reports the NYT has carried about firefights the US forces have been engaged in in Afghanistan’s remote Korengal Valley:

    I found myself wondering: Why is the United States fighting insurgents in the remote Korengal Valley in the first place? The story described the enemy as “Taliban,” but it said the locals are angry “in part because they are loggers and the Afghan government banned almost all timber cutting, putting local men out of work.” There’s apparently no sign of al-Qaeda in the valley, where people are fiercely independent and speak their own exotic language.
    While applauding the bravery of the U.S. soldiers, we should also ask the baseline question: Is this use of American military power necessary or wise?

He only raises the questions and is not yet prepared to give the only answer that makes sense to me. (Neither necessary nor wise.) But at least he’s heading in the right direction.
Unlike that dishonest old war-monger, Jim Hoagland.

Ahmadinejad: “Whatever decision they (Palestininians) take is fine with us”

ABC’s This Week program today featured an extended interview, conducted apparently last Wednesday, with Iran’s President Ahmadinejad. (A/N) Here’s the full transcript, and (H/T to Nader) here’s a new link to the full video.
As usual, it seems the western media is missing the significance of what he said. The discussion on ABC’s “This Week” after the interview is even worse; They essentially ignored what Ahmadinejad said. ABC had a scoop on their hands, they sat on it for several days, and flat missed it!
But contrary to VOA and AFP headlines, I don’t think it’s at all clear that A/N has added “preconditions” for US-Iran talks. At one point in the interview, yes, he indicates that any talks should have a clear agenda, and that should be worked out ahead of time. But he isn’t about to do so in public for ABC. Is that so shocking? (And it’s light years different from the old Bush/Rice position that Iran had to stop enrichment first, then we could talk about it.)
In any case, at another spot in the interview, Ahmadinejad insists: “We are always ready to talk… with no preconditions.” (so no headline there)
Second, yes, A/N does comment on the holocaust, its ramifications for the Middle East, and its study. Readers can read the passage for themselves. While grating, I don’t see any holocaust “denial” here, per se.
Most newsworthy, and of surprise to those who subscribe to the Ahmadinejad as “Hitler” motif, the Iranian President had this to say about a two-state solution for Israel-Palestine.

Continue reading “Ahmadinejad: “Whatever decision they (Palestininians) take is fine with us””

Destruction of mosques in Israel after 1948

An argument that I heard from many peace activists in Israel and Palestine during my recent visit is that the Nakba– that is, the dispersal of the Palestinians from their homes, primarily in 1948, and the expropriation and frequent destruction of the properties they had left behind– was not a one-ff affair, but is a continuing process.
Current news photos of Palestinians in Gaza or Jerusalem who have been expelled from their homes through Israeli acts of violence, and are forced to live in tents while Israelis either take over or demolish their homes, are continuing evidence of this.
Recently I read Meron Rapoport’s painfully evocative article “History Erased: The IDF and the post-1948 Destruction of Palestinian Monuments”. It originally appeared– I believe only in Hebrew– in Ha’aretz in July 2007, and was published in English in the Jouranl of Palestine Studies in Winter 2008. Sadly, it’s behind a pay-wall.
Rapoport gives some information about a controversy that arose inside the Israeli bureaucracy about the IDF’s July 1950 demolition of the Mashhad Nabi Husain (Prophet Husain Mosque) in what had been the Palestinian town of Majdal– now, in Israel, Ashqelon.
According to local Islamic tradition, the mosque was the spot where the head of Husain ibn ‘Ali, one of the Shiite tradition’s most revered founders/martyrs had been buried.
After the mosque was levelled by the IDF, Shmuel Yeivin, the director of Israel’s department of Antuities, became quite angry.
Noting that the mosque in the nearby, abandoned Palestinian “village” of Ashdod had also been blown up, Yeivin wrote to the head of the “department for special missions” in the defense Ministry, “I believe the commander responsible for this explosion should be brought to trial and punished, because there was no justification for a swift, war-contingent operation.”
Guess what. It never happened.
Rapoport also noted that Israeli historian Meron Benvenisti has written of the 160 mosques in Palestinian “villages” incorporated into Israel under the 1949 Armistice Agreements, “fewer than 40 are still standing.”
This makes me want to go and read Benvenisti’s 2000 book on the subject, Sacred Landscape; The Buried History of the Holy Land since 1948.
Anyway, I just wanted to mention the work of the two Merons here, because I recall that a few years ago some of the Israeli apologists who comment here at JWN were claiming there was no evidence at all regarding widespread Israeli destruction of Palestinian places of worship and cemeteries inside Israel.
Au contraire. There is lots of evidence– even for Engish-speaking readers. We just need to know where to look.