Archive for May, 2010

The Russians are coming

by Editors on May 14, 2010 in Politics with Comments Off

Jamal Dajani - Israel expressed “deep disappointment” Thursday over a meeting the Russian
President Dmitry Medvedev held this week in Syria with Hamas leader Khaled
Meshaal, saying the organization must play a role in peace efforts.

Calling Hamas “a terror organization in every way,” Israel’s Foreign Ministry
said in a statement that it expected Russia to stand by Israel in its struggle
against Hamas.

“Hamas is a terror organization whose declared goal is the destruction of the
state of Israel…Hamas is responsible for the murder of hundreds of innocent
civilians, among them immigrants from the Soviet Union and also Russian
citizens.”

Russia, the United States, the European Union and the United Nations, make up
a quartet of Middle East mediators. The U.S., EU and Israel consider Hamas a
terrorist group. Russia insists that Hamas should not be isolated.

But Israel is not the only country that has expressed disappointment over the
Russian president’s trip to Syria. On Wednesday U.S. State Department spokesman
Philip J. Crowley told reporters that Washington was cautious over any nuclear
deal that included Syria. His comments came after reports surfaced that Russian
President Dmitry Medvedev and his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad had
discussed the possibility of nuclear collaboration in Damascus earlier this
week.

Russian news agencies quoted Assad as saying that he and Medvedev had
discussed the possibility of building power plants, including nuclear ones, in
Syria.

In September 2007, Israeli warplanes bombed a site in eastern Syria, which
the U.S. later claimed was a nuclear installation aimed at building an atomic
bomb with aid from North Korea.

Also this week, Turkey and Russia agreed on a $20 billion project in which
Moscow will build and own a controlling stake in Turkey’s first nuclear power
plant, as the two Cold War-era rivals try to build a strategic partnership.

The Middle East was a staging area for Cold War conflicts between the United
States and the Soviet Union for many years until the USSR collapsed in 1991. Are
the Russians making a comeback into the region?

Recently there have been debates and articles published warning about the
revival of Cold War-style regional confrontation due to Russia’s recent
activities in the Middle East; I disagree. Russia has no interest in
repositioning itself as a regional superpower, nor does it have the desire to
maintain a military strategic foothold in the region. Unlike the United States
and China, Russia is not dependent on the Middle East for its energy supplies.
The Russians are interested in economic opportunities, and for the past several
years Russia has been re-establishing economic links and developing new
interests in the region, including cooperation with Israel.

Although Russia differs with the US and Israel over its policy towards Syria,
Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas, its objective is to establish regional stability.
For instance, Russia and the United States share the objective of the two-state
solution for Israel and Palestine and agree on many issues about Iran’s nuclear
file. Russia’s engagement in the region should be viewed positively. The
advantage Russia has over the United States is its ability to talk to all
parties. The Russians are back, but this time in a positive way.

Yemen’s sorrowful options: ‘Revolt, migrate or die’

by Editors on May 13, 2010 in Arab World with Comments Off

Ramzy Baroud - When the Soviets concluded their pull out from Afghanistan in February 1989, the United States government abruptly lost interest in the country. A devastated economic infrastructure, entrenched poverty, deep-rooted factionalism and lack of international aid caused the country to descend into complete chaos. Internal violence also worsened, but it was no longer an American concern. All that mattered was that the Cold War rival had been defeated. Mission accomplished.

Afghanistan remains the starkest illustration of how poor countries are used, then betrayed when their usefulness runs out. But Afghanistan is not an exception; US relations with many other countries, including Pakistan, Somalia and the Palestinian Authority remain hostage to this very model.

Yemen is now emerging as the newest casualty. Its government is desperate to hold on to the rein of power, amid corruption, extreme poverty and untold Western pressures. Ali Abdullah Saleh, the country’s president of the last thirty one years, has impressively negotiated his political survival through mounting challenges. The 1994 civil war left many thousands dead, and despite the north’s ‘victory’ the discontent of the south never waned. More, a Houthi revolt in the north is long running. Its latest manifestation lasted for sixth months and caused many deaths, most of which remained unreported. A mass migration of hundreds of thousands (270,000 by the recent estimates of the United Nations World Food Program) coincided with or followed the fighting. This is now temporarily in check, thanks to a fragile ceasefire.

According to some analysts, the ceasefire in the north could allow the central government in Sanaa to tend to the challenge growing in the south. Victoria Clark, author of the recent book Yemen: Dancing on the Heads of Snakes claimed that, “Southern disaffection has gone beyond the point of no return…Saleh’s biggest mistake would be to crack down on southerners as hard as he has tried to do on the Houthi rebels.”

However, under immense (and increasing) western pressure, Saleh is likely to crack down. Western governments, led by the US and Britain, run out of patience fairly quickly when the leaders of a poor, fragmented country opt for dialogue – even when such a choice might actually result in long-term political stability. When Afghan President Hamid Karzai merely mentioned of the possibility of engaging the Taliban, it generated much rebuke. A similar scenario happened in Pakistan. When Palestinian factions achieved the Mecca Agreement in February 2007 to mend their differences, the US immediately conditioned its financial backing of Mahmoud Abbas, and the agreement was successfully disintegrated. In the same vein, any Yemeni attempt at reaching out to the disaffected forces within the country, including tribes, opposition parties, and the various militant offshoots has been dismissed as an attempt to appease the terrorists.

Following a plot to blow up a US airliner over the city of Detroit on Christmas Day, the US renewed its interest in Yemen – in a predictable way. The administration of President Barack Obama issued an order early April authorizing the assassination of a US citizen Anwar al-Awlaki, a Muslim cleric linked to the plot. It seems like the Bush years all over again.

US Special Operation Forces have been at work in Yemen for years, following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Yemen was then declared “an important partner in the global war on terrorism,” and it remains so, whenever there is a need to chase the elusive militant groups partly or wholly linked to al-Qaeda.

The violent perusal of US enemies in Yemen comes at a heavy cost. On one hand it has undermined the central government, which is being increasingly challenged from the north, the south and the center. Naturally, no self-respecting government would allow its territories to be used either as breeding grounds for militants, or as a hunting ground for foreign forces. A raid involving US cruise missiles at an alleged al-Qaeda camps in December 17, 2009 killed dozens, including 23 women and 17 children, according to Yemeni sources.

Indeed, Yemen is to a great extent a battlefield in which the central government is hardly the central player. However, the so-called ‘war on terror’ has presented many self-seeking forces in Yemen with a golden opportunity to extract wealth. Much has been ‘invested’ to beat al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsular (AQAP). But little has been spent elsewhere, for example, in providing sustenance to the hundreds of thousands victimized by the ongoing violence.

When problems become insurmountable and there is no effective system of accountability in place, corruption becomes rampant. It is no wonder that Yemen ranks 154 of the 180 countries examined in the Transparency International Corruption Index. Corruption is often an outcome of poverty and lack of accountability, and it also contributes to them. Yemen is unable to escape this vicious circle.

Since Yemen is not officially an occupied country, donor countries can easily disown their financial promises. Such promises are only made when Yemen is set for some military operation or another, or to prop up the central government’s own proxy war on terror. However, when the Yemeni people are in genuine and dire need for help, Yemen becomes such a distant subject. It begets pity, at best, but no action.

According to the World Food Program (WFP), 7.2 million people – about a third of the country’s population – are suffering from chronic hunger. Almost half of them require immediate food assistance, but fewer than half a million are receiving it. They have been directly affected by the policies of western governments, and the central government’s own involvement in proxy wars on militants, tribes and other disaffected Yemenis.

How much money is the WFP is asking for in its latest appeal? A meager $103 million, out of which only $27 million has been received. A Tomahawk cruise missile – celebrated as both cheap but effective – costs around $600,000. The cost of the operation that killed dozens of innocent Yemenis last December could have, in fact, fed millions in need.

This is not a matter of mathematics; it is common sense. The ongoing miscalculations in Yemen are securing the very environment that lead to poverty, corruption, anger – and ultimately militancy and violence.

According to Emilia Casella, spokeswoman for the WFP, “people have three other options after that — revolt, migrate or die.”. Sadly, it is what millions of Yemenis are already doing.

Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is “My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story” (Pluto Press, London), now available on Amazon.com.

Again, Israel breaking a promise

by Editors on May 13, 2010 in Politics with Comments Off

George S. Hishmeh - As Palestinians and Israelis took their first step in the much-delayed peace
negotiations, there is strong evidence emerging that the hawkish government of
Benjamin Netanyahu is about to break its promise to hold off on its illegal
expansionist plans in the Palestinian-occupied territories.

The
anti-colonialist Israeli watchdog group, Peace Now, revealed that Israeli
settlers have begun work on a 14-unit apartment building in an abandoned police
station in Ras al-Amoud, an Arab neighborhood in occupied East Jerusalem. The
Palestinians immediately viewed the project as a violation of the terms of the
so-called proximity talks, which began last week just before U.S. Middle East
special envoy, George J. Mitchell, returned to Washington to prepare for the
second session next week.

This is a serious crack in the relaunched
U.S.-mediated talks in which Washington had warned both sides not to jeopardize
the process. In a readout of a telephone exchange with Abbas last Monday,
released by the White House, President Obama “confirmed his intention to hold
both sides accountable for actions that undermine trust during the
talks.”

Nevertheless, Israeli cabinet secretary, Zvi Hauser, had told
Army Radio over the weekend that “building is expected to begin in Har Homa …
and Neve Yaakov, where (construction) bids have been issued,” referring to the
two Arab East Jerusalem neighborhoods. “Building in Jerusalem is continuing
according to its regular pace.”

The expectations, according to earlier
Israeli press reports attributed to a high-level Israeli official, have been
that the Obama administration will not unveil mediation proposals or a Middle
East peace plan before the start of direct, substantive talks between the two
sides on final-status issues. In turn, the Israeli prime minister is said to
insist that although the “core” issues – the status of Jerusalem, the borders
and the rights of Palestinian refugees — will be discussed during this indirect
phase he would not be making binding decisions on them.

As in the case
of the refugees, they have been waiting for more than 60 years to return to
their usurped homeland, ever since Israel had pledge to allow them to return
when it became a U.N. member state. How much longer will they have to wait is
now more dependant on American intervention as much as on Arab and Palestinian
efforts.

Although the focus is generally on the Palestinians who took
refuge in the neighboring Arab states, the condition of those who remained under
Israeli control since 1967 is deplorable and understandably intolerable. The
Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) has reported last Sunday that
three out of every four Palestinian children living in occupied East Jerusalem
live below the poverty line.

This Israeli rights group maintained in its
report that “a unified Jerusalem does not exist,” in contradiction to official
Israeli claims that the Holy City is now unified. “Over 95,000 children in East
Jerusalem live in a perpetual state of poverty.” The annual budget allocation
for an elementary school child in Arab East Jerusalem is $152 compared with
around $627 in West Jerusalem.

ACRI added: “Israel’s policy for the past
four decades has taken concrete form as discrimination in planning and
construction, expropriation of land, and minimal investment in physical
infrastructure and government and municipal services.” About 160,000 Palestinian
residents have no suitable and legal connection to the water network, and 50
kilometers of main sewage lines are lacking.

Moreover, the hard-hitting
report noted that Israel has expropriated more than one-third of Arab East
Jerusalem land, which was once privately owned by Palestinians, on which it has
built more than 50,000 homes for the Jewish population.

No wonder the
Palestinians want out, now and not later. A prominent Palestinian peace
activist, Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, praised in a an interview with Foreign Policy
magazine that the institution-building efforts initiated by Palestinian Prime
Minister Salam Fayyad in the West Bank. But, he stressed, the Palestinians do
not want to give the wrong impression “that internal economic development means
statehood,” underlining the point that the Palestinian govenment “is not allowed
(by Israel) to function in 60 percent of the West Bank,” including Jerusalem.
All this, he underlined, is not a “substitute for the need to end (the Israeli)
occupation.”

Obama cannot afford to allow Israel to break its promise,
one more time, such as it did when Vice President Joe Biden visited there
recently.

A republican’s case for Middle East peace

by MJ Rosenberg on May 13, 2010 in Politics with Comments Off

Marshall Breger is a law professor, an Orthodox
Jew, and a Reagan Republican.  During the Reagan administration, he served as he
White House liaison to the Jewish community.  In short, he is a lifelong
defender of Israel.

And that is precisely why he is speaking up now
for peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians.  Breger understands that
Israel’s deadliest enemy is the status quo and that those of its supposed
friends who defend it are not friends at all.

Here is Breger’s roadmap, enumerated in Moment magazine’s 35th anniversary
issue.

  • Israel cannot be a “warrior state” forever…. A warrior state will almost
    ineluctably become a “pariah state.” And against whom will the warrior defend
    himself? The Palestinians or the entire Muslim world? A round of the conflict of
    civilizations is one we Jews must avoid no matter how many neo-cons thirst for
    the final showdown.
  • Peace requires territorial compromise: I know that territorial maximalists
    like to throw around the mantra, “not land for peace, but peace for peace.” But
    that, of course, is meaningless rhetoric. For the Palestinians, peace without
    any resolution of their national ambitions is submission. Why does anyone
    imagine that the Palestinians will be satisfied with non-voting resident alien
    status in Greater Israel? Would we?
  • An Israel at peace will not give up its vigilance… The fact is that any
    conceivable Palestinian state would be demilitarized, and Israel’s
    communications surveillance and military expenditure would be increased, not
    decreased. Israel’s present peace with Egypt is correct but “cold.” But I doubt
    that Israel has given up its vigilance on the Sinai front, nor should it in any
    arrangement with the Palestinians.
  • You will never get to peace without some kind of compromise on Jerusalem:
    Jerusalem is both a nationalist issue for Israelis and Palestinians and a
    religious issue for Jews and Muslims. If we refuse to work out a way to allow
    Muslims a place in Al Quds, we expand the conflict beyond the Palestinians to
    all Muslims and we ensure religious conflict with Islam for generations. And
    don’t be so sure that the Christian world will remain quiet on this
    subject….

So there it is: Some basic truths about the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict that are true whether you believe that the children
of Jacob and of Ishmael are consigned to eternal enmity or not.

Unfortunately, the current Israeli government
does not see things the way Breger does.  The Netanyahu crowd believes it can
have it all: the West Bank, all of Jerusalem, and a caged Gaza, while still
receiving more US aid, by far, than any other country.  And it believes that we
will use our power to preserve a Middle East where Israel — and Israel alone —
has nuclear weapons and the freedom of action that they provide.

Dream on.

Even the United States during the last few years
has seen itself losing primacy as a superpower.  A few decades ago, it would
have been inconceivable to imagine that the economic stability of the United
States would hang on decisions made in Beijing and Tokyo.  Had anyone told
Richard Nixon, at the time he opened relations with China in 1972, that less
than 40 years later China would hold the upper hand in our relationship, he
would have laughed.

No one is laughing now.  The United States now
treats Beijing the way renters treat landlords or mortgage holders treat the
bank.

Every nation in the world is constrained by
reality.  And that includes Israel. 

That is why the Obama administration needs to
move quickly from support for step-by-step proximity talks to an aggressive push
for a comprehensive final status agreement.

Fortunately, Obama does not need to devise his
own plan.

The Arab Initiative, endorsed by every Arab state as
well as the Palestinians, offers Israel full peace, recognition, and
normalization of relations in exchange for the establishment of a contiguous
Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.

The Arab Initiative, in itself, is not a
full-blown, detailed peace plan. It is an offer to Israel: full peace in
exchange for full withdrawal. To get to the offer, negotiations need to first
take place between Israel and the Palestinians.

Once they reach agreement, the rest of the
initiative comes into play. In the words of the Saudi government, “If Israel and
the Palestinians can find a peaceful territorial compromise along the lines of
UN Resolutions 242 and 338, under which Israel would withdraw from the lands it
occupied in the 1967 War, including East Jerusalem, and make peace with a
Palestinian state, then the Arab world would not only accept Israel’s existence,
but have normal relations with it.”

In other words, it’s up to the Israelis and
Palestinians to come to a deal. Once they do, the Saudi offer takes effect.

That is why it is silly to argue about the exact
language of the initiative itself. It is not a peace treaty. Its terms, in the
initiative’s own words, must be “agreed upon,” which means that Israelis who
complain about the language on refugees have erected a straw man. If the
provisions on refugees need to be accepted by Israel, as the initiative states,
then what is there for Israel to worry about?

Nothing.

President Obama should unequivocally endorse the
Arab Initiative as the rubric under which negotiations should begin.  Prime
Minister Binyamin Netanyahu will not like it. But so what? Netanyahu will never
agree to anything unless pressured hard.

Even after relations with the United States
practically ruptured over the issue of settlement expansion in Jerusalem,
Netanyahu keeps emphasizing that nothing, absolutely nothing, will stop him from
building settlements and evacuating Palestinians from their homes whenever his
rightwing coalition partners ask him to.

Sweet-talking Netanyahu won’t work.  Only
pressure will.  So apply it — but not just over settlements — over borders,
Jerusalem, Palestinian statehood, the Gaza blockade, all of it.

That is the only way to achieve an agreement. 
And it is the only way to save Israel from the zealots who, left to their own
devices, will destroy a 1,900-year dream. It is your call, Mr. President.  Not
Netanyahu’s.

Friends do not let friends drive drunk. And no
friend would let Israel continue to ignore an offer from the Arab League that
addresses every legitimate Israeli concern but also will expire soon if not
seized.

No wonder they say that the Israeli right never
misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

Maariv: Lieberman launching diplomatic offensive against Saudis

by Didi Remez on May 13, 2010 in Arab World, Israel with Comments Off

The new front

Ben Caspit, Maariv, May 13 2010 [page 2 with front-page teaser; Hebrew
original here
and at bottom of post]

Israel is threatening to launch a global campaign
against Saudi Arabia, in keeping with a decision that was made by Foreign
Minister Avigdor Lieberman and which has been kept secret until now. The
campaign, if launched, will include the use of various means of leverage and
lobbies in the United States, Europe and other places around the world, raising
the issue of human rights, the status of women and financing terrorism in the US
Congress, the European Parliament and other venues, a public relations campaign
and even lodging complaints with international courts.

Lieberman’s decision was made in the wake of a conclusion that was drawn by
foreign minister officials that Saudi Arabia was the principal force behind the
global campaign to delegitimize Israel. Senior political officials said this
week in closed conversations that the Saudis have financed a large part of the
lawsuits that were filed to international courts, the public debates, the
conferences, the slander and hounding of Israel in the United States, Europe and
elsewhere. “They’re playing a double game,” said one political official. “The
Saudis act as if they are part of the moderate camp and are trying to exploit
the West for their own needs, when at the same time they have been financing an
orchestrated campaign against Israel’s legitimacy, against Israel’s economy and
more. That needs to be ended.”

Lieberman’s plan calls for Israel to convey a strenuous message in the next
number of days to the United States that will include information about Saudi
Arabia’s involvement in the above-cited activities. Israel will demand that the
Americans intervene and use their influence and the leverage that they have over
the Saudis to pressure Saudi Arabia. In tandem, all Israeli representatives
overseas will be briefed, as will all the Jewish organizations, the Jewish lobby
and Israeli allies in the US Congress and elsewhere so as to begin to “pester”
Saudi Arabia, to place on the public agenda its involvement in financing
terrorism, the state of human rights in the kingdom, the status of women and
numerous other issues. The possibility of filing lawsuits to either
international or foreign courts will also be looked into, among other
options.

Not everyone is pleased with this direction. Quite a number of political
officials both in the Foreign Ministry and in other capacities, believe that
such a course of action by Israel would be gratuitous and would not yield Israel
any benefit. The Saudis have their faults, they aren’t Zionists, say the
opponents, but they are clearly situated in the moderate camp, they support
political negotiations, they stand behind the Arab peace initiative and they are
threatened by Iran and radical Islam just like Israel.

Another troubling arena in that context is the Iranian nuclear program.
According to foreign reports, Saudi Arabia has already agreed to let Israel use
an aerial corridor through Saudi airspace on its way to a possible attack of
Iran’s nuclear facilities. According to those reports, that means that Saudi
Arabia has agreed to permit Israel combat jets pass through its airspace without
responding so as to provide the IAF with the fastest and shortest route possible
to distant Iran. If Lieberman’s program sparks a public crisis with the Saudis,
that could have an adverse effect on the above-cited aerial corridor. At the
current juncture in time, when Israel’s relations with Turkey are at a low,
peace with Jordan and Egypt is frozen, Europe is turning a cold shoulder and the
crisis with the United States is worsening, Israel ought not to look for yet
another front to fight on. This is neither an existential war nor are the
Saudis’ actions something that Israel simply can’t ignore. Israel has far more
pressing troubles than the Saudis’ hypocrisy. We need to work at finding the
common ground between us and our shared interests, and not the things that
divide us, say the political officials opposed to Lieberman’s initiative.

That criticism, however, is unlikely to change Lieberman’s decision.

 

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