David Frost and guests on 2010 news events, Part 2

Part 2 of David Frost's 2010 year-end wrap-up, from Aljazeera English:



Tags: 2010, israel, palestinians, us economy

Stephen Walt: two-state solution for Israel-Palestine is dead

Stephen Walt, one of the most prominent of the Realist foreign policy theorists, declares the long-standing US goal of a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict is now dead. In Two-state solution, R.I.P. Foreign Policy 11/23/2010. For Walt, the final nail in the coffin was apparently the law recently passed by the Israeli Knesset (Parliament) requiring a referendum on withdrawals from the Occupied Territories:

Wake up and smell the coffee, folks. "Two states for two peoples" is dead. I say that with genuine regret, because I've long thought it was the best solution to a long and tragic conflict. If Obama's Middle East team had any backbone -- and it's been clear for some time that they don't -- they would pull their demeaning offer to give Israel extra $3 billion in weapons and a bunch of diplomatic concessions in exchange for a partial 90-day settlement freeze off the table immediately, and keep it off until the Israeli government voted to rescind this law.

It seems clear that Israel's choice now is whether they want to become a multicultural democracy in which Jewish citizens will soon be a minority, or whether they want to continue the current trajectory toward becoming an apartheid state with a Jewish majority but a less and less democratic system.

If Walt is right, 43 years after the Seven Day War in 1967, the possibility of a two-state solution leaving Israel as a majority-Jewish democracy over the long term is gone. Permanently.

Tags: israel, palestinians

Gideon Levy on Peace Process: "I don't know if it's time to lose hope"

Tags: israel, palestinians

J Street's position on the US-Israel dispute over settlments

I just received an e-mail from J Street calling for support of a petition to back the Obama administration's position in opposition to new illegal Israeli settlements and in favor of a serious peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. It says [footnotes omitted]:

It all started with a slap in the face to Vice President Biden - a provocative announcement of new housing in East Jerusalem, which Biden condemned and that now threatens to derail recently-announced proximity talks.

Then, Secretary of State Clinton spoke to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu for nearly an hour on Friday to relay her own deep concerns about the construction and the "deeply negative signal" it sends. She demanded that the Israelis "demonstrate not just through words but through specific actions that they are committed to the [US-Israel] relationship and to the peace process."

We support the Obama administration in standing firm against provocative actions on any side intended to undermine efforts to achieve a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We believe such a resolution is essential to American interests and to Israel's future as a democratic, Jewish homeland.

The administration is already under attack from those here in the US who seek to maintain the status quo. Help us show the Obama administration that there's broad support for a tough but fair approach to ending the conflict. ...

The Palestinians are making their own incendiary announcements, dedicating a public square to the leader of a 1978 terror attack that murdered 38 Israeli civilians, including 13 children. J Street strongly condemned the announcement.

The US administration is really going to have to take the reins before things spin out of control. ...

- Jeremy

Jeremy Ben-Ami
Executive Director
J Street
March 14, 2010

Tags: israel, obama administration, palestinians

The current US-Israel dispute

I've been posting all week about the amazing disrespect that Israel showed to the Obama administration in general and Vice President Joe Biden in particular this past week over their efforts to push forward long-stalled Israel-Palestine peace talks. I don't know for sure when we reach the point where a two-state solution becomes impossible, though I think we're already there. But the United States needs to prepare our Middle East policy for decades in which Israel will face the choice of either becoming a non-democratic, apartheit state even within Israel's current legal borders, or becoming a democratic state that no longer has a Jewish majority.

Here are some recent articles on the immediate situation:

Jacob Heilbrunn, Hillary Clinton and Israel Huffington Post 03/12/10: he puts great significance on the fact that the US government was willing to publicly complain about a blatant diplomatic "bitch slap" from Israel, and one that has real consequences for the US position in the Middle East and Afghanistan-Pakistan. "Obama, in other words,is going for broke," he writes. If we see his administration actually start to reduce military and economic aid to Israel to impose material consequences for their settlement policies, then we can say he's applying a level of seriousness to Israel-Palestine peace issues than we've seen from a US administration in a long time. But responding with a bare minimum of diplomatic griping in response to a serious diplomatic incident doesn't merit being described as some new breakthrough, as Heibrunn does. At best, it's marginally more pragmatic than the Christian Zionist/neocon policy pursued by the Cheney-Bush administration.

M.J. Rosenberg, The US-Israeli Crackup TPM Cafe 03/13/10 and The US-Israel Crackup: Part Two Huffington Post 03/12/10: He reminds us that Biden's trip had two purposes. Promoting the peace talks was one. The other was to coordinate US policy on Iran with Israel. Which makes Prime Minister Netanyahu's attending a John Hagee hoe-down in Jerusalem the day before Biden's visit a double message: Hagee is not only totally opposed to peace talks there, he's also an advocate for US war against Iran. Rosenberg - a former editor of the AIPAC lobby's newsletter - thinks that it's good to see Secretary Clinton responding diplomatically to Netanyahu's insult to the United States. But he's not confident it represents a substantive change:

... although this all looks good, we should not kid ourselves. AIPAC is coming to Washington for their grovelfest (see link in original column below) and that means angry donors demanding that the US apologize to the Israeli government for hurting its feelings. Count on your favorite House liberals (Chris Van Hollen, Anthony Weiner, Jerry Nadler, Steny Hoyer, Alan Grayson, Debbie Wasserman-Shultz, etc) to lead the charge for Bibi with Senators Boxer, Schumer, etc joining in).

In the end, we'll almost surely cave. One thing to remember, though. Israel's behavior this week really does indicate that its posturing about Iranian nukes is a kind of head fake. If Israel was really worried, it would not have insulted the US government publicly. At least those of us who really do care about Israel (the real Israel, not the Israel of the settlers) can rest assured that the Iranian threat is not "existential" at all, as Israelis are always claiming. If it was, they would not have forced a confrontation with America over these fanatical settler zealots rather than seriously coordinate with the US on Iran (which is what Biden was in Israel for).

Remarks by Vice President Biden: The Enduring Partnership Between the United States and Israel White House Web site 03/11/10: a surprisingly gushing speech at Tel Aviv University Thursday after just being diplomatically humiliated before the world by the Netanyahu government.

J.J. Goldberg, Knesset to Biden: For Smooth Relations, Free Pollard Jewish Daily Forward 03/11/10: Jonathan Pollard is serving time in US federal prison for espionage on behalf of Israel.

Mark Landler, Clinton Rebukes Israel on Housing Announcement New York Times 03/12/10: news report on Clinton's diplomatic response to the Netanyahu government. Clinton is currently scheduled to speak at the annual AIPAC Policy to be held in Washington, March 21-23. Since Netanyahu is also one of the featured guests, how she approaches that speech - and if she gives it there at all - will tell us a lot about how serious the Obama administration takes Netanyahu's diplomatic insult this past week.

Abraham H. Foxman, After Biden's Israel Contretemps, Stepping Back Anti-Defamation League Web site 03/11/10, and Administration's Dressing Down of Israel is a 'Gross Overraction' Anti-Defamation League Web site 03/12/10: quotes ADL Director Foxman's reaction to US diplomatic response to Netanyahu:

We are shocked and stunned at the Administration's tone and public dressing down of Israel on the issue of future building in Jerusalem. We cannot remember an instance when such harsh language was directed at a friend and ally of the United States.

Obama swallows pride as Israel continues defiance Gulf News 03/12/10

Sima Kadmon, Our government is a joke YNet News (Yedioth Ahronoth) 03/13/10:

Yet it appears that again we are dealing with disorderly conduct by the Prime Minister’s Office that allows such grave matter to materialize. Time and again, we see incidents happening here that attest to foolishness, indifference, and insensitivity. Otherwise, how could it be that every time an American envoy arrives here, ranging from George Mitchell to Hillary Clinton to Joe Biden, we embarrass them with acts that look like sticking a finger in one’s eye?

Report: U.S. vows to halt Israeli building in East Jerusalem Haaretz 03/13/10

Jennifer Rubin, More Criticism Commentary 03/13/10: a neconservative reaction.

Jim Lobe, US-Israel: Tiff or Tipping Point? Inter Press Service 03/13/10:

This week's contretemps with Biden and now Clinton, however, has moved the settlement issue - and particularly the fate of East Jerusalem, whose status as the capital of any future Palestinian state is widely considered a pre-condition for any viable two-state solution - front and centre once again.

"It is now abundantly clear that with or without a formal declaration from Netanyahu, getting events in Jerusalem under control - which includes a de facto full-stop settlement freeze in Jerusalem - is no mere discretionary gesture but a political imperative," according to Lara Friedman and Daniel Seidemann of Americans for Peace Now (APN). "Failing that, this political process will be stillborn."

But it is not only the peace talks, which Obama's special envoy, George Mitchell, had laboured long and hard to convene, that this week's incident has put into question. In the words of one veteran U.S. Mideast hand, Aaron David Miller, it also raised new questions over "the degree to which Israel is willing to take into account U.S. interests."

Indeed, while Biden's mission was originally aimed at publicly reassuring Israelis of Washington's "absolute, total, unvarnished commitment" to their security, as he put it immediately after his arrival, the private message, especially in light of the Interior Ministry's announcement, was that Israel should reciprocate, according to an account published in Yedioth Ahronoth.

"'This is starting to get dangerous for us,' Biden castigated his interlocutors," the newspaper reported. "'What you’re doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That endangers us and it endangers regional peace.'"

Yitzhak Benhorin, Ambassador Oren reprimanded YNet News (Yedioth Ahronoth) 03/14/10: "The US State Department summoned Israel's Ambassador in Washington Michael Oren for a meeting Friday where he was reprimanded by a US official."

Khaled Abu Toameh, PA [Palestinian Authority] demands US assurances on settlements Jerusalem Post 03/14/10

Aluf Benn, Obama tells Netanyahu: Show us you're serious about peace Haaretz 03/14/10

Netanyahu is trading Israeli security for right-wing ideology Haaretz editorial 03/14/10:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has led Israel into a serious crisis in relations with the United States and to a collapse in peace talks with the Palestinians just when they were to be resumed.

A year after he took office, it is apparent that his government's policies, which made it top priority to populate East Jerusalem with Jews, is leading to Israel's increasing international isolation and threatening its key security interests in the name of an extreme right-wing ideology.

Tags: israel, obama administration, palestinians

A big setback for peace prospects

Juan Cole (Informed Comment 03/11/10) recounts the results of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's "bitch slap" diplomacy during Vice President Joe Biden's visit to Israel. And it's bad:

Obama's Mideast policy lies in tatters this morning and US credibility as a broker of any future settlement was deeply wounded.

Amr Moussa, the secretary-general of the Arab League, announced Wednesday that he had been informed by Palestine Authority president Mahmoud Abbas that the latter has pulled out of indirect talks with Israel. Late Wednesday, the Arab League itself reversed its earlier cautious endorsement of the proximity talks, recommending that that support be dropped.

Israeli colonization of Palestinian territory lies at the heart of the Mideast conflict. It isn't a complicated issue in the law, since Israel's actions are clearly illegal and unethical to boot. But might makes right and Israel is the most powerful country in the Middle East, so all the protests on legal and humanitarian grounds have amounted to nothing.

The talks were likely deliberately sabotaged by Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who had his Interior Minister announce the construction of 1600 new households in Occupied East Jerusalem the day before they were scheduled to begin. In fact, Israel is actively planning 50,000 further housing units on occupied Palestinian territory. US Vice President Joe Biden had come to kick off the process with visits to Netanyahu and Abbas, but he has now been sent home empty-handed by Netanyahu's sheer effrontery. [my emphasis]

American foreign policy has been plagued with a misplaced emphasis on American "credibility" in a general sense. But Neyanyahu's government has challenged the Obama administration's credibility in a very specific way that requires more than a rhetorical response like diplomatic expressions of deep regret or whatever. And the Israel-Palestine peace process is something that's very much in America's national interest. Cole puts it this way:

Obama is in real danger of seeing his allies lose respect for the United States once they see that Israel can treat him in this humiliating way with impunity. The security implications for the US are enormous. Many European allies feel strongly that Israel is an aggressor state in the region, and when Obama asks them for help in the fight against al-Qaeda, they may feel that Washington's coddling of Israeli colonialism produced much of the radicalism that they are now asked to spend blood and treasure combating. Moreover, many leaders may be emboldened to treat Obama and Biden just as Netanyahu did, if the latter faces no consequences for his impudence.

We have wars going in Iraq and Afghanistan/Pakistan, and are actively intervening in Somalia, Yemen and probably Iran. Those Muslim nations and their attitudes toward the United States are affected by US policy toward Israel-Palestine, as well as by the deaths on their own territories from US military actions. That emotional investment in the Israel-Palestine situation may be irrational. But then so is Israel's determination to colonize the West Bank and keep the Palestinians there and in Gaza stateless indefinitely.

Biden made a vague but likely empty comment to the effect that the Obama administration would hold Israel accountable for the diplomatic punch they delivered to Biden's mission (Biden tells Palestinians U.S. won't be deterred by Paul Richter Los Angeles Times 03/11/10):

Around the Middle East, the exchange was seen as proof that the latest peace initiative was doomed and that the U.S. protests were unlikely to lead to more strenuous action.

In an appearance with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at his headquarters in Ramallah, Biden again scolded the Israelis. He said U.S. officials "will hold both sides accountable for any statements or actions that inflame tensions or prejudice the outcome of talks, as this decision did."

Arab nations understandably have reason to be dubious:

Biden's visit dominated headlines and news broadcasts across the region, but the sight of the vice president embracing Israeli officials disappointed many skeptical Arabs.

"Biden has said that Washington is committed indefinitely to Israel's security," said an Egyptian radio commentary broadcast Wednesday. "Hence, the decision of Tel Aviv to build 1,600 [housing units] in eastern Jerusalem is not strange."

A correspondent on the pan-Arab news channel Al Jazeera said Biden's visit was primarily intended to reassure Israel that the U.S. would confront Iran.

But commentators said Washington's unqualified commitment to Israel's definition of its own security guaranteed the failure of any peace talks.

I find Biden's somewhat old-fashioned style of grandiloquent glad-handing to be often pretty endearing. But it doesn't look like it served him well on this trip. Paul Richter previously reported (Biden's Israel visit takes a rocky turn Los Angeles Times 03/09/10):

In the first hours of his visit, the vice president, who was staunchly pro-Israel during his many years in the Senate, played down frictions and emphasized his personal love for the country.

"It's great to be home," Biden told President Shimon Peres during a morning visit to his official residence.

He set aside criticism of Israelis or Palestinians, saying that "it's easy to point fingers at what both sides have done. But it's also important to give credit for what has been done."

Biden offered praise for Israel's temporary halt on settlement growth, and for allowing Palestinians to move more freely in the West Bank.

"The cornerstone of the relationship is our absolute, total, unvarnished commitment to Israel's security," he said. In the guestbook at Peres' residence, Biden wrote that the U.S.-Israeli bond is "unshakeable."

When Netanyahu presented Biden a picture of a grove of trees Israel had planted in honor of his late mother, Biden responded that "my love for your country was watered by this Irish lady." [my emphasis]

Given that his visit to Israel was intended to build Israeli public support for the American peace process ideas that Netanyahu's government opposes, Biden probably shouldn't have been using such extravagant language since he knew that the Israeli government wouldn't be entirely happy about his visit.

Stephen Walt weighs in on the Biden visit in Welcome to Israel, Mr. Vice-President! Foreign Policy 03/11/10:

... why should anyone be surprised by this sort of "in-your-face" reception? The Netanyahu government has been stonewalling Obama ever since the Cairo speech, and so far the only price they have paid was some tut-tutting that they were being "unhelpful." Some observers used to maintain that Israeli prime ministers got in trouble at home if they didn’t get along with the U.S. president, but Bibi's popularity seems to have been enhanced by his spats with Obama and Mitchell. If Biden was expecting a love-fest when he arrived, he just hasn’t been paying attention. ...

There isn’t going to be any deal if the United States and/or EU don't put a lot of pressure on Israel, and Barack Obama has already shown us that he’s not capable of doing that. There may be some more sharp words from Washington (i.e., Biden has already "condemned" Israel’s action and Bibi has expressed regret for the timing of the announcement), but don’t expect anything significant. So the proximity talks are pointless, ... and people ought to start thinking about what they'll do if it ever becomes clear that "two states for two peoples" just ain’t gonna happen. ...

Just as America’s dominant position allowed it to pursue a lot of ill-advised excesses over the past fifteen years (see under: Iraq), America’s “special relationship” with Israel has insulated the latter from the consequences of its own follies. We see the results in the entire settlement enterprise -- which threatens to turn Israel into an apartheid state and jeopardizes its long-term future -- and in ham-fisted diplomatic kerfluffles like the Biden visit or the deliberate humiliation of the Turkish Ambassador by Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon. The original Zionists faced a more challenging environment and usually acted with great adroitness, consistency of purpose and imagination, while their successors in recent decades have been able to misbehave in part because Uncle Sam was always there to provide support and diplomatic cover. And that’s why some of us think the “special relationship” is unintentionally harmful to both countries, and that a normal relationship would be in everyone’s interest. [my emphasis]

Tags: israel, obama administration, palestinians

Looks like more empty posturing by the Obama administration

Joe Biden paid an official visit to Israel on Tuesday. In what had to have been a calculated diplomatic "bitch slap", the Israelis announced while he was there further illegal housing construction in the occupied West Bank. From Biden's Israel visit takes a rocky turn by Paul Richter Los Angeles Times 03/09/10:

In the midst of a high-profile trip by Vice President Joe Biden, Israel unveiled plans for new housing in disputed Jerusalem on Tuesday, a surprise step that embarrassed and angered the highest ranking Obama administration official yet to visit the country.

Biden, who had come to try to smooth relations with a longtime ally and promote new peace talks, denounced Israel's plans to build 1,600 housing units in traditionally Arab East Jerusalem as a threat to the search for peace.

"I condemn the decision by the government of Israel to advance planning for new housing units in East Jerusalem," Biden said, calling it "precisely the kind of step that undermines the trust we need right now."

I'm sure the Israelis don't give a flying fig about what Joe Biden or Barack Obama say about the settlements. When Obama came into office, he demanded that Israel freeze their settlement activity. This activity is clearly illegal and officially recognized by the United States, though it's been a long time since the US Government was willing to state that publicly. Look at Biden's statement quoted here: not that the new housing is illegal, only that it "undermines the trust we need right now."

But after Obama's public demand and his announcement of a new peace initiative that so far has been nothing substantive, the Israelis resumed settlement activity. And the Obama administration increased military aid to Israel.

Talk is pointless if the administration isn't willing to back up their demands with a cutback of material aid.

But the fact that the Israelis would pull an blatant diplomatic insult on the country that is supposedly their best and most loyal ally shows that they have no fear that Obama is serious about what he says on the Israel-Palestine conflict. And this is a way of demonstrating to the whole world, especially the Arab world, that the Israelis can get away with something like this and suffer no consequences except some empty talk from Joe Biden and maybe a rescheduled diplomatic dinner or something.

This is another clear indication that the diplomatic slap at Biden and Obama was intentional:

The announcement caught even many Israelis by surprise, in part because the neighborhood, home to many young couples, had not been among those previously earmarked for expansion. Ramat Shlomo is in an Orthodox neighborhood built on land annexed by Israel after the 1967 war.

"It's totally out of the blue," said Hagit Ofran, spokeswoman for Peace Now, which tracks Israeli settlements.

She said the project came up for initial review at a planning meeting Tuesday, and still faces several hurdles before approval. Construction may not begin for two years, she said.

"But politically, it means there is an intention to expand there," she said.

Daniel Levy and Amjad Atallah have an overview of the current, stuck-in-the-mud-as-usual state of the US non-efforts in the Israel-Palestine peace non-process: A Path to Peace The American Prospect 03/10/10 Apr 2010. They write:

Expectations were high -- and now so is the disappointment, as peace efforts have floundered on the ground and were absent even rhetorically from January's State of the Union. ...

The United States must act on the recognition that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is central to every other issue in the region and beyond. Palestinian dispossession remains the lens through which the Muslim world and much of the global South view the United States. Much as many Americans are rightly preoccupied with Israel's acceptance and security, more than 1 billion people throughout the world are rightly preoccupied with Palestinian freedom and security. Although other atrocities have sometimes competed with the Palestinian cause for the attention of Muslims, nothing else has had the staying power.

The best attempt to articulate the linkage between Israeli--Palestinian peace and the rest of the Middle East so far remains Obama's Cairo speech last year. In that speech, the president brilliantly lined up the Muslims of the world (Arabs and Iranians included), Israelis, and Americans on the same side of a divide that left the al-Qaeda brand of Salafist jihadism isolated. Middle East peace, he said, "is in Israel's interest, Palestine's interest, America's interest, and the world's interest."

That speech needs to become U.S. policy.

Tags: israel, obama administration, palestinians

No more chance for two-state solution in Israel-Palestine?

Juan Cole reports that Saeb Erekat, the head of the Palestine Liberation Organization's Steering Committee and a key figure in the negotiation process with Israel, is saying that given the Israeli colonization of the West Bank, a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palesinitian conflict will not be possible. While Erekat's statement doesn't seem to be a flat-out rejection of the two-state solution as a goal, Cole's conclusion is:

I think the whole thing is over with. I can't see a viable Palestinian state in the West Bank as it is now configured, and I can't imagine the Netanyahu government halting settlements.

The "one-state solution" would mean basically having the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza as citizens of Israel. Such an outcome would mean that Israel could remain a democracy but not a majority-Jewish state for very long.

The Israeli Right's goal has always been to take over the West Bank. But the Israeli Labor Party has also supported the colonization movement. It may well be that the two-state solution really is no longer a viable solution because the West Bank settlement has now proceeded so far that for an Israeli government to force their evacuation is completely politically infeasible, even if there were the will to do so among Israeli political leaders.

Tags: israel, palestinians

... and America's, too

Barak Ravid reports in Haaretz Gaza op causing long-term harm to Israel's image 01/14/09. And since both the President and the Congress generally have gone out of their way to identify the US with it, too, there's a big spillover effect to the United States.

Ravid writes:

A similar message also came across in a conversation that President Shimon Peres had with the delegation of European foreign ministers who came to Jerusalem a week ago. Benita Ferrero-Waldner, the European Union Commissioner responsible for External Relations and European Neighborhood Policy [and formerly the Austrian Foreign Minister], said to Peres: "You have the right to self-defense, but what is happening in Gaza is beyond all proportion. I am telling you, Mr. President, Israel's image in the world has been destroyed."

Even though the issue is not being accorded much attention in Israel, in Europe, the Arab countries and even the United States, the main story regarding Gaza is the many civilians hurt in the fighting. According to United Nations reports, approximately 300 civilians were among the more than 900 Palestinians killed. People are seeing images from Gaza of a sort that were not broadcast in previous wars, such as Kosovo or Afghanistan. Incidentally, these pictures are hardly being broadcast at all in the Israeli media. [my emphasis]

Clinton in her Senate testimony this week stuck to the current official US position that we shouldn't enter negotiations with Hamas until they basically agree with the US position on everything that needs to be negotiated. She could hardly say anything else at the moment.

But Obama seems to understand clearly that the notion that just talking to some hostile power or group is in itself some kind of reward is a concept doesn't go very far when there are things that need to be negotiated.

If neither Israel nor Hamas has the desire to reach a real peace agreement, it will not be possible for Obama and Clinton to force them to do so. But putting the US clearly into the position of actually trying to bring the two together in a serious way will open better options for the US in the Middle East and the wider Muslim world. Because it would at least reduce the automatic identification of the US with Israel's more dubious wars, like Lebanon in 2006 and the Gaza Strip now, that much of the world currently makes.

It's hard to see how the highly one-sided position the Cheney-Bush administration took with Israel these past eight years has enhanced Israel's overall security situation. Unless we're assessing Israel's security interests as requiring an indefinite postponement of any final peace settlement until the West Bank Israeli settlers are so strongly established there any two-state solution will no longer be possible.

And that point may be reached already with the Gaza offensive. That would mean, realistically, that Israel's future would be as a single state that incorporates Gaza and the West Bank and majority Palestinian.

Israel's goal has been to remain a Jewish and democratic state. Under those conditions, they will have to give up one or the other. Because remaining a Jewish state with a Palestinian majority would mean a full-blown apartheid system, of which we see a very definite initial phase in the West Bank. Staying fully democratic will mean accepting the status nominally envisioned in the old Palestinian Liberation Organization's program of a "secular democratic state".

Tags: israel, palestinians

Israel, Iran and the US

Laura Rozen at her War and Piece blog (01/11/09) comments on this article by David Sanger, U.S. Rejected Aid for Israeli Raid on Iranian Nuclear Site New York Times 01/10/08. She writes:

... we may have seen reports on some of it. But the Sanger piece gives far more credence to and, more importantly, the imprimatur of White House confirmation on, two things: [Seymour] Hersh's report on the existence of a US Iran covert action program (however limited in aims, scope and effectiveness), and how Israel tried to push Bush as recently as this past summer to hit Iran by trying to get permission to make acquisitions and get Iraq overflight permission to do it themselves. (Worth noting: I had reported that Israeli intel chief Meir Dagan was unusually having meetings at the White House one day last July, regarding Iran. But after reading the Sanger piece, it occurs to me that the meeting was likely about the White House briefing Dagan on the alleged covert action program [which seemingly only Bush and his immediate lieutenants would be authorized to do], rather than Dagan reiterating Israeli requst for some sort of bunker buster it apparently already had acquired from the US, the GBU-28.) What Sanger says the Bush White House can't answer is how seriously Israel was actually considering doing it itself had it gotten permission from the White House, which it was reportedly denied. [my emphasis]

Those covert ops inside Iran may be something that bores our celebrity pundits to death, so they they don't much talk about it and therefore much of the public gets little or no awareness that such things are going on. But the Iranians surely know that some of this is happening, although depending on how well the "covert" part is working, they may not exactly know how. So far, there have been no reports of US Special Forces being captured in Iran.

But this no doubt has an effect in Iran's overall foreign policy calculations, including the nature of their support for Hamas in the occupied territories and Hizbullah in Lebanon. On Iran's relations with Hamas and how their are being spun by those still wanting a US war with Iran, see also In Washington, All Roads Lead to Tehran by Daniel Luban, Inter Press Service 01/09/09.

Tags: iran, israel, laura rozen, palestinians

Consequences of the Gaza offensive

Tony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in a piece earlier this week from CSIS asks, The Fighting in Gaza: How Does It End? (And, Will It?) 01/05/09:

The fighting in Gaza is already a major human tragedy for the Palestinians. It compounds the impact of Hamas’s takeover of Gaza, a heritage of terrorism and rocket attacks on Israel, and Palestinian and Israeli internal political tensions that have made the search for peace largely a matter of hollow rhetoric. ...

One thing is certain. The fighting has already become a strategic liability for the US. There is no good answer to what level of force is “proportionate” in this kind of asymmetric warfare. There is no equation that can decide how many rocket firings and acts of terrorism justify a given level of air strikes or use of conventional ground forces. The fact that the weak suffer more than the strong in war is a grim reality, as is the fact that no power is going to accept terrorism because its best military options produce civilian casualties.

Nevertheless, the US has again been pushed into being Israel’s only defender in an international environment where it is far easier (and more lucrative) to take the Arab side than seek any form of balance. Arab and Islamic media and think tanks already portray the fighting as enabled by US support of Israel and actions in the UN, and this is the judgment of most media and think tanks in Europe and outside the US. [my emphasis]

Cordesman is part of the "realist" school of foreign policy, and his absurd rejection of the notion of proportionality in warfare is an example of the downsides sometimes displayed by the Realists.

But he's pointing to a fact that gets too little discussion in the American reporting on the Gaza offensive. The US is not in the position of just cheering from the sidelines like a football game. The world's identification of the US as an unconditional supporter of Israel in this offensive and in much else has a real price. As Juan Cole wrote at his blog yesterday:

Iraqi cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called on Iraqis to kill US troops in Iraq in revenge for the Israeli assault on the people of Gaza. "I call upon the honest Iraqi resistance to carry out revenge operations against the great accomplice of the Zionist enemy," [Muqtada said.]

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki from Baghdad attacked the international community for its silence in the face of what he called Israeli brutality, and he put pressure on Jordan, Egypt and Turkey (without naming them) to break off diplomatic relations with Israel.

Cordesman cautions against taking the Israel-Lebanon War of 2006 as a strict parallel. The Israeli Defense Force (IDF) is in a stronger position in Gaza than it was in Lebanon. But he see the larger question as what Israel can reasonably expect to gain in political terms from the Gaza offensive. He writes:

It ... seems difficult to believe than any military outcome that leaves Gaza far more damaged ... is going to have a population that is not more anti-Israeli and whose young men are not even more vulnerable to extremism and terrorism – regardless of the immediate post-fighting impact on Hamas. ...

In short, the most likely answer to the question of how the fighting ends, is that it doesn’t. If so, the risks go beyond Israel. They will further empower Iran and the Hezbollah even if they do not make token or real efforts to actively support Hamas. They will aid Al Qa’ida and its ilk. They will divide moderate Arab regimes from their people, reinforce Arab anger against the US, and make long term and lasting solutions to the broader Arab-Israeli conflict even more difficult.

Obviously, all of this greatly complicates Obama's foreign policy efforts in the Middle East and South Asia. That's why it would be especially interesting to know just how much encouragement the Cheney-Bush administration gave to Israel for going ahead with this military action at this time.

Tags: anthony cordesman, israel, palestinians

Obama's predecessors on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

God Shows Moses the Promised Land by Luca Signorelli

Hussein Agha and Robert Malley wrote in a review of three books by experienced Middle East hands, How Not to Make Peace in the Middle East New York Review of Books 12/17/08, before the current Israeli offensive in Gaza began, about the general approach of the Cheney-Bush administration to Israeli-Palestinian peace and of the Clinton administration before it. They disagree sharply with the common criticism that George W. Bush as President has been "disengaged" from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:

It is a curious charge, at once too mild and off-target. It suggests a passive, flaccid, laissez-faire attitude that could hardly be further from the historical truth and that would have been far preferable to it. Bush's policies did not reflect disengagement; they were the outcome of a uniquely ambitious, often brutal, and always intensely engaged effort to reshape the Middle East. At its core, Bush's Middle East strategy was as intrusive and interventionist as one could imagine.

Almost from the outset, the administration clumsily intervened in Palestinian politics, helped rewrite the Palestinian Basic Law, proclaimed Arafat a pariah, anointed its own favorite substitute leaders, insisted on Palestinian internal reform as a precondition for peace, took positions on a final agreement in a 2004 letter from Bush to then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that tilted the playing field, encouraged confrontation between the nationalist Fatah and Islamist Hamas, imposed sanctions on Syria, and discouraged the resumption of Israeli–Syrian talks. Throughout, the Bush administration misread local dynamics, ignored the toxicity of its embrace, overestimated the influence of money and military assistance, and neglected the impact of conviction, loyalty, and faith.

On the dubious premise that talking to an enemy is a reward, the administration cut itself off from, and left itself with little leverage over, the region's more dynamic actors, whether Islamist organizations, Syria, or Iran. It propped up local Palestinian and Lebanese allies, who mimic the West's language, depend upon the US for resources and support, yet lack an effective domestic base. In short, it helped them in ways that hurt. How much more the US could have achieved by doing much less. [my emphasis]

Referring to the books they are reviewing, they write of Clinton's policy on the Israeli-Palestinian issues:

For all its positive qualities, the books argue, the Clinton approach was excessively undisciplined; it privileged process to the detriment of substance, and too often failed to hold parties accountable. [Martin] Indyk argues that as Clinton's presidency came to a close, he projected his timetable on Israelis and Palestinians who lacked his sense of urgency. He assumed they were driven by the sort of American pragmatism for which they had little appetite. [Daniel] Kurtzer and [Aaron David] Miller complain that the US kept potential Arab and European allies at arm's length and sought to resolve the conflict step by step rather than aim for a final resolution. They also regret the insularity of an American peace team whose insufficient balance and diversity led it to see things, according to Miller, "mainly from an Israeli perspective." Mostly, they fault the Clinton administration for lacking a coherent strategy that would have enabled it to promote its own ideas rather than be subject to the parties' will and whims. [my emphasis]

Martin Indyk is a close adviser of incoming Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Daniel Kurtzer is one of President-elect Obama's main advisers on the Middle East.

And the authors in question also take issue with the general American view that Yasser Arafat was primarily to blame for the failure of the Camp David Summit during the Clinton administration:

Outwardly, Miller, Kurtzer, and Indyk do not claim to take part in the debate over who lost Camp David, though, practically speaking, they close it. They castigate Arafat and the Palestinians for excessive passivity and an inability or unwillingness to seize the moment. But they do not stop there. Miller, who attended the summit, contradicts the accepted view with a detailed account demonstrating that each party bears heavy responsibility. Barak eroded the Palestinians' confidence during the months preceding the summit by renegotiating past agreements and reneging on promises. The Israeli proposals at Camp David, says Shlomo Ben-Ami, Israel's foreign minister at the time, "fell far short of even modest Palestinian expectations." The Americans had "no sustained strategy," did not put a negotiating text on the table, and caved in when faced with the parties' objections. They did not consult with other Arab countries and, in deciding to blame Arafat at Barak's request, betrayed a prior commitment not to do so and also jeopardized hopes for a peaceful aftermath of the conference.

Likewise, Kurtzer and Lasensky describe the US as "unprepared," lacking its own positions on fundamental issues, and, eager to embrace "Barak's priorities...but also Barak's tactics," ultimately "ced[ing] effective control over US policy to the Israelis." Even Indyk, the harshest of the three toward Arafat, disputes the conventional wisdom. "Camp David," he writes, "was hardly a good laboratory" for Barak's proposition that the Palestinian leader was unwilling to reach a historic deal, because no Arab statesman could have accepted what had been presented. [my emphasis]

That position is surprising to hear from Indyk, a former US Ambassador to Israel, who has a reputation as a pro-Israeli hardliner.

Agha and Malley observe, "There is a long tradition of former US Middle East officials retroactively bemoaning the strategies they once helped shape. Retrospective hand-wringing, far from an anomaly, has become something of a job hazard."

Agha and Malley suggest that the Obama administration approach his predecessors' past efforts at US-sponsored bilateral negotiations between Israel and Palestinian representatives with a healthy skepticism. They haven't been successful in producing peace, after all. And they note some of the more recent changes affecting the conflict:

... the region into which the new president is being pressed to plunge has changed dramatically over the past decade. During recent years, the transformations include the death of Arafat, father of Palestinian nationalism, and the incapacitation of Sharon, Israel's last heroic leader; the spread and further entrenchment of Israeli settlements; Hamas's electoral triumph; Israel's withdrawal from Gaza; the Palestinian internal conflict and Hamas's seizure of Gaza; the withering away of Fatah; Israel's failure in the 2006 Lebanon war; US setbacks in Iraq and Afghanistan; Iran's increased influence; and the growing role of other regional actors like Turkey and Qatar. This is not a mere change in scenery. It is a new world. [my emphasis]

And they point out the diminishing enthusiasm among Palestinians for a two-state solution. The Israelis may have succeeded in postponing that option long enough that it is no longer viable. The alternative in the not-so-long term being a single Jewish and Palestinian state among the present-day Israel and the occupied territories. A state that would either have to cease being a Jewish state or cease being a democratic state.

Like most such advice seems to wind up being, Agha and Malley caution Obama about putting forward another two-state solution peace plan right away and try to understand the situation better. "Obama could do worse than consider some simple advice. Don't rush. Take time, take a deep breath, and take stock."

Maybe he could appoint a commission.

Fortunately for us and the world, in just about two weeks Dick Cheney and George Bush will be private citizens again. And we'll see what President Obama has in mind, on the Middle East and a lot of other things.

Tags: israel, obama administration, palestinians

Gaza offensive

Let There be Peace by Elke Behrens

Israel has greatly esclated its Gaza offensive with a ground incursion: Israel launches ground invasion of Gaza by Richard Boudreaux Los Angeles Times 01/03/09; Livni: Cease-fire in Gaza would grant Hamas legitimacy by Barak Ravid 01/01/09; Israel Looking to Silence Hamas Forever by Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler, Inter Press Service 12/31/08. As Boudreaux reports, the Israelis are apparently hoping for some sort of lighting victory:

Israeli officials said the aim in Gaza was not to overthrow Hamas or even to eliminate its capacity to fire rockets, but rather to crush its motivation for doing so. Some Israeli analysts and experts said this could be accomplished by a brief but powerful ground operation.

"Since the name of the game is killing and destruction, the ground operation has to be quick, with a lot of firepower at friction points with Hamas," Alex Fishman, military analyst of the newspaper Yediot Aharonot, wrote Friday. "The goal is to exact a high price in the early stages of the ground operation and to end it quickly."

This is a bad situation for the United States. It's a very rough issue for Obama to have to take up in the first days of his Presidency. But it's also one that could bring some high benefits in terms of his foreign policy.

The Republican Party has aligned itself with the thinking and rhetoric of Likud hardliners in Israel. Kadima and Labour are the ones prosecuting the current Gaza offensive: Likud takes even more extreme positions.

The following will sound very familiar to those of us who have been listening to our Republican war lovers justify torture, preventive war, and general contempt for the laws of war, not to mention any kind of sense of proportionality or of what constitutes just war: Gaza 2009 - To win, all Israel has to do is survive by Bradley Burston Haaretz 01/03/09. Burston's argument reflected in the title is a reflection of the general Israeli posture - which I assume is genuinely felt by a large number of Israelis - that their nation is constantly in danger of destruction. That they live in "existential danger", as the diplomats say, the danger that their country's existence is threatened.

In any reasonable military sense, that is not the case. The fact that many Israelis and Israeli leaders understand their situation that way is in itself a fact that other countries have to take into account. But there is no good reason for the United States to base its foreign policy on such an assumption. Israel has a modern army well-supplied with US weapons and it has its own nuclear arsenal. No external force, certainly not Palestinian guerrillas in Gaza or the West Bank, can militarily conquer Israel. And both their conventional war capabilities and the nuclear weapons are very strong deterrents to anyone even attempting to do so.

Burston all but revels in the deaths of civilian noncombatants. Referring to the targeted killing of Hamas leader Nizar Ghayan (or Rayyan) along with members of his family, he writes:

Something has changed in the Mideast equation, and the killing of Ghayan [pronounced like Ryan with a hard R], is a telling indication of that change.

Knowing Israel (having listened to the Israeli far-right as it condemned the IDF as an army of pansies afraid to fight, and to the Israeli far-left as it sympathized only with Gaza casualties and not those in Sderot), Ghayan knew that he could surround himself with the human shields of four wives and 11 children and survive this war.

Knowing the UN and the international community, Ghayan knew that if he used mosques for Hamas armed wing headquarters and storage armories for longer-range rockets from Iran and China, Israeli military planners would not dare to attack them, fearing a grave diplomatic and public outcry.

Knowing that the Israeli Air Force (in his view, demonstrating the Jew's essential weakness) had begun warning Gazans of impending attacks, Ghayan refused to have his family take to the roof to cause Israel to call off the bombing. The human shield would suffice.

In a matter of 24 hours, two mosques serving as Hamas military bases were destroyed, and Ghayan and his family killed.

The world? The world has taken much more interest in New Years.
The Palestinians? A central fact of the Mideast equation may, at long last, be dawning on them:

To win, all that Israel has to do, is survive.

The latter being a tautology. If you define Israel's surviving as winning, then Israel will win even if the Gaza offensive turns out to be as big a disaster for Israel as the 2006 Lebanon War was.

Incidentally, the strategy of targeting individual leaders for assassination which Burston praises so highly needs to be seen for the risks as well as the opportunities involved. If we're talking about some small radical group or a street gang, knocking off the two or three key leaders may effectively cripple the group. With a larger group like Hamas that has substantial backing among the local population, individual assassinations of leaders can certainly weaken the group in the short run. But they also deprive their opponents of leaders who have the stature to make agreements that might lead to a lasting peace. The latter appears to be fine with Ehud Olmert's government, at present. Barak Ravid reports says:

[Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi] Livni told her French counterpart Bernard Kouchner that Hamas must must not be given the opportunity to gain any sort of legitimacy within a renewal of a truce. ...

Israel's offensive in the Gaza Strip has damaged Hamas and will not end until Israel no longer deems the Palestinian Islamist faction a threat, Livni told reporters in Paris. ...

On Wednesday, Israel rejected the proposal for a 48-hour humanitarian truce as unreasonable. "We did not go into the Gaza operation only to end it while rocket fire continues," Olmert told cabinet ministers during a special session.

How many times will Israel and the Palestinians - and US foreign policy - have to go through this brutal ritual? It's not pretty: U.S. Branch of Amnesty Calls on Rice to Drop "Lopsided" Stance by Jim Lobe, Inter Press Service 01/02/08.

Tags: israel, palestinians

Gaza offensive continues

There's no question that Israel's current Gaza offensive complicates matters for the United States in the Middle East. We're beginning a withdrawal of our troops from Iraq. And a critical task in that process is building a diplomatic coalition of the neighboring states to prevent any renewal of Iraqi civil war from widening into a full-blown regional war.

For Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran and probably Turkey, too, the latest Israeli operation makes forming such an diplomatic cooperation with the Americans that much more difficult.

I've linked and quoted some articles below. But first I'm going to give my general perspective on the current round of fighting, from what I know of it so far.

From the standpoint of Israel's interests, the current Gaza action looks bad. It's far disproportionate to any actual threat or even retaliation for Hamas actions. And it will make a permanent peace even more difficult to achieve.

But that's assuming, as I do, that a permanent peace based on a two-state solution, the removal of Israeli settlements from the West Bank, the recognition of something very close to the 1967 borders, and some form of guaranteed access for Jews and Muslims to the holy places in Jerusalem is a good thing.

It seems to me that since 1967, with some partial and temporary exceptions, the policy of the successive Israeli governments has been directed toward maintaining some settlements in the West Bank and keeping de facto control over both the West Bank and Gaza, as well as full Israeli control of all of Jerusalem. From that point of view of Israel's interests, repeated rounds of violence against the Palestinians that wreck the possibility of a permanent peace settlement are a rational choice. (The question of proportionality is still an important consideration even within that framework.)

Despite the size of the current offensive and the escalating rhetoric from the Israeli government about their war aims, it's worth remembering that Israel announced expansive goals in the Israel-Lebanon War of 2006. The end result was that Hizbullah was strengthened politically, its leader became the most admired person in the Middle East, and the invincible Israeli Defense Force (IDF) showed that it wasn't invincible after all. Israeli intentions and their ability to achieve them by the current offensive are different things.

My main focus in this is on American interests, most immediately the safety of our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. The best we can hope for there is that there will be no direct and immediate negative effect. But a big new round of violence like this certainly increases the risks for our soldiers, which we didn't need right now. Israel certainly has its own interests and the right and obligation to defend them. At the same time, the United States is by far the major supporter of Israel, militarily and diplomatically. And it's very much in American interests to persuade Israel not to do things that immediately increase the risk to American soldiers, if there are reasonable alternatives to such action.

Cheney's and Bush's war in Iraq made Iran the predominant power in the Middle East. Iran is calling for backing for Hamas. As Juan Cole reports, the top Iraqi Shi'a religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, has made the following appeal:

Condemning what is going on in Gaza and supporting our brothers only with words is meaningless, considering the big tragedy they are facing ... Arab and Islamic nations need to take a decisive stance, now more than ever, to end these ongoing aggressions and to break the unjust siege imposed on the brave people of Gaza ...

He's not calling here for specific action against American troops in Iraq. But Iran's and Sistani's positions calling for acts of solidarity with the predominantly Sunni Palestinians remind us how broadly the Israel-Palestine conflict resonates in the Muslim world.

It's not that the US has never had differences with Israel. During the Cheney-Bush administration, the influence of the neocons, the Protestant fundamentalist Christian Zionists, and the presumed admiration of people like Cheney and Rummy for Israel's military prowess resulted in the US pretty much reflexively supporting anything Israel did. But even then, there was a dispute with Israel that was actually a pretty tense one. It was over Israeli sales of American technology to China. Rummy raised quite a bit of a stink over that, although hardly a whisper of it seemed to reach the American traditional news.

The most dramatic difference was in the Suez Crisis of 1956. Israel, Britain and France teamed up and invaded Egypt. The Eisenhower administration objected and pressured them to pull out, which they did. That was quite a while ago and conditions were different. But back then, the Republican Party's base didn't consist of people who thought that encouraging Israel to have endless wars would bring the Second Coming of Christ closer.

The United States does have a real interest in a meaningful, permanent peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians. And it will have to be based on the elements I mentioned above: a two-state solution; removal of Israeli settlements from the West Bank; recognition of something very close to the 1967 borders; and, guaranteed access for Jews and Muslims to the holy places in Jerusalem.

If it's not already too late for that. Or if the current Israeli offensive pushes the two-state option off the historical scene for good. As Gershom Gorenberg explains in The Case for Putting a Mideast Peace Agreement First The American Prospect Online 11/14/08, "every wasted day makes a two-state solution more difficult to reach". And he writes:

No one knows when a two-state solution will become impossible - but the tipping point is approaching. Past that point, as outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warns, Palestinians will demand political rights in a single state (Olmert's era will be remembered for the strange gap between his dovish and evermore desperate rhetoric and his failure to stop settlement growth or reach a peace agreement). A binational state would teeter between Bosnian-style communal violence and Belgian-style political paralysis.

I suppose we would need to add now that Olmert will be remembered for the Gaza offensive of 2008.

And that single state, with a Palestinian birth rate that will soon enough make Palestinians the majority, will face the choice of ceasing to be the Jewish state of the original Zionist vision or of becoming a Jewish state running a nationwide apartheid system. Which is what it already runs on the West Bank.

I was very impressed by something I heard Joschka Fischer say in a 2007 speech. He said that Israel does not face any "existential" threats, meaning that no force or combination of forces in the Middle East can seriously threaten Israel's existence as a nation. As current events and Israeli leaders constantly remind us, its enemies can certainly kill Israelis with mortar and missile attacks and in suicide bombings. But there is no prospect for a repeat of the 1948 war or the 1973 war, in which Israel ran some real danger of being militarily overwhelmed. Israel has sufficient military strength to defend itself from conventional attacks. And it has nuclear weapons, maybe as many as 400.

However, Fischer explained that in his dealings with Israeli leaders, he became convinced that they see themselves as facing an existential threat. He warned that even though that is objectively not the case, the fact that Israeli leaders and a substantial part of the Israeli public believe that they face such a threat is in itself a fact of which outside nations working for a peace settlement have to take full account.

Which is part of why constant official American assurances to Israel that the US will support Israel in defending their existence makes sense to continue.

What doesn't make sense is to pretend that Israel's perceived interests and concerns as a nation are identical to American interests. They aren't. The United States needs to see a permanent peace settlement in Israel-Palestine. It's not "anti-Israel" to push for it.

Taking steps to shut off donations from American Christian fundamentalist groups that are channelled to settlement activity in the West Bank would be one of many actions the US could take that would not in any way threaten Israel's security as a nation, but would send a signal that the US wants a real peace settlement after supporting the Israeli side through what has essentially been a 41-year cycle of endless violence. With no end yet in sight.

Ynet News, the English language outlet of the Israeli paper Yedioth Ahronoth, looks at the question of proportionality in this editorial by B. Michael, Déjà vu in Gaza 12/29/08. The opinion piece also points to the attacks on police, who would be indispensible partners in any eventual agreement between Israel, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority to control terrorism originating in Gaza:

To be honest, one is fatigued by the need to divide the seventh day of the Six-Day War into "operations," "wars," “battles,” “operations,” and “campaigns.” All of them constitute one ongoing war; one great butcher shop. The war of occupier against occupied, and the war of the occupied against the occupier.

And again we hear all the great words about courage, surprise, sophistication, and success. Yet the nature of the “surprise” we delivered against Hamas isn’t quite clear. I mean, did the group fail to deploy its airplanes? Did it fail to advance its armored corps in advance? Did it fail to deploy its Patriot missile batteries?

Moreover, and there is no need to deny this, there is not too much glory and valor involved in flying over a giant prison [the Gaza Strip] and firing at its people using helicopters and fighter jets. So far we have seen sophistication and success mostly in the excited commentary of dozens of generals (res.) who again enjoy the limelight. As always.

Yet out of all the big words, as usual, we see a small and ugly truth emerging: Our southern cities have been hit by dozens of missiles, while Gaza sustained hundreds of dead. Almost half of them are civilians; almost half of them are the graduates of a police course who have nothing to do with Qassam rockets. [my emphasis]

I don't see anything glorious about this either. Or anything that it benefits Americans to cheer. Even the most severe critics of Israel mostly don't deny that Israel has a right to strike back against military attacks. But no war is simply a matter of, "He hit me first! No, he hit me first!"

Johann Hari in The Independent, The true story behind this war is not the one Israel is telling 12/29/08, reminds us that the evacuation of the Israeli settlements from the Gaza Strip under Ariel Sharon's prime ministership was designed to block a permanent peace settlement. And the neocons can say till we're all blue in the face that poverty doesn't breed terrorism. But the conditions in Gaza do:

There will now be a war over the story of this war. The Israeli government says, "We withdrew from Gaza in 2005 and in return we got Hamas and Qassam rockets being rained on our cities. Sixteen civilians have been murdered. How many more are we supposed to sacrifice?" It is a plausible narrative, and there are shards of truth in it, but it is also filled with holes. If we want to understand the reality and really stop the rockets, we need to rewind a few years and view the run-up to this war dispassionately.

The Israeli government did indeed withdraw from the Gaza Strip in 2005 – in order to be able to intensify control of the West Bank. Ariel Sharon's senior adviser, Dov Weisglass, was unequivocal about this, explaining: "The disengagement [from Gaza] is actually formaldehyde. It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that is necessary so that there will not be a political process with the Palestinians... this whole package that is called the Palestinian state has been removed from our agenda indefinitely."

Ordinary Palestinians were horrified by this, and by the fetid corruption of their own Fatah leaders, so they voted for Hamas. It certainly wouldn't have been my choice – an Islamist party is antithetical to all my convictions - but we have to be honest. It was a free and democratic election, and it was not a rejection of a two-state solution. The most detailed polling of Palestinians, by the University of Maryland, found that 72 per cent want a two-state solution on the 1967 borders, while fewer than 20 per cent want to reclaim the whole of historic Palestine. So, partly in response to this pressure, Hamas offered Israel a long, long ceasefire and a de facto acceptance of two states, if only Israel would return to its legal borders.

Rather than seize this opportunity and test Hamas's sincerity, the Israeli government reacted by punishing the entire civilian population. It announced that it was blockading the Gaza Strip in order to "pressure" its people to reverse the democratic process. The Israelis surrounded the Strip and refused to let anyone or anything out. They let in a small trickle of food, fuel and medicine – but not enough for survival. Weisglass quipped that the Gazans were being "put on a diet". According to Oxfam, only 137 trucks of food were allowed into Gaza last month to feed 1.5 million people. The United Nations says poverty has reached an "unprecedented level." When I was last in besieged Gaza, I saw hospitals turning away the sick because their machinery and medicine was running out. I met hungry children stumbling around the streets, scavenging for food. [my emphasis]

Hari goes on to explicitly condemn the Hamas tactic of firing rockets randomly into Israeli cities. But, surprisingly, he doesn't mention to Israeli strike weeks ago on one of the supply tunnels connecting the Gaza Strip to Israel, one of the key immediate events in ending the already-fragile cease-fire.

Steven Cook of the Council on Foreign Relations gives a good analysis of the positions of the two sides in Israel-Palestinian Crisis Explodes onto Obama's Agenda CFR.org 12/29/08. He describes how Hamas is likely to benefit politically in comparison to Fatah as a result of the current offensive.

Robert Fisk reports on the situation for The Independent in Leaders lie, civilians die, and lessons of history are ignored 12/29/08; and, Why bombing Ashkelon is the most tragic irony 12/30/08.

Also, several articles from Haaretz: Trying to 'teach Hamas a lesson' is fundamentally wrong by Tom Segev 12/29/08 ("Israel has also always believed that causing suffering to Palestinian civilians would make them rebel against their national leaders. This assumption has proven wrong over and over.");
Writer Amos Oz: Hamas responsible for outbreak of Gaza violence by Maya Sela 12/30/08 ("Oz told Corriere della Sera that 'Hamas is responsible' for the outbreak of violence, but 'the time has come to seek a cease-fire'."); Hamas is hoping for an IDF ground operation by Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff 12/30/08; Is Israel too imprisoned in the familiar ceremony of war? by David Grossman 12/30/08; Operation Cast Lead in Gaza is entering its problematic phase by Aluf Benn.

Tags: gaza offensive, israel, palestinians

Israel's current attacks on Gaza

A new round of violence between Israel and the Palestinians is under way. There are a lot of Americans who seem to have the idea that Israel is some kind of model for not only national defense but for dealing with terrorism. Yet 41 years after taking the West Bank and Gaza, this is where they are. And no permanent peace in sight.

Below are links to several articles providing news and background analysis.

It's especially interesting to note the Haaretz articles. Haaretz is a liberal Israeli newspaper. And the range of opinions you see expressed there is so much greater than what we hear in the American mainstream, it's amazing. Green Greenwald says with reference to the Daniel Levy column in particular, "What's most striking about it is that this scathing criticism of Israel's behavior can - and does - appear in one of Israel's leading newspapers, but not a paragraph of it could ever be uttered by any American politician, in either party, of any national prominence."

The shallowness of the American discussion about Israel and its conflict with the Palestinians is a shame.

Because regardless of the rights or wrongs of the current round of battles, this is a major problem for US foreign policy. Especially since we're very much part of the neighborhood now with the Iraq War. Irrational or not, the chronic Israel-Palestine conflict is a major issue across the Muslim world and especially in the Middle East. And a major recruiting cause for jihadists. And they tend to see the United States as completely allied with Israel and supportive of all its actions - which was close to true during the Cheney-Bush administration.

Israel threatens escalation in Gaza by Tobias Buck and Harvey Morris Financial Times12/28/08:

After a second consecutive day of air strikes, at least 285 Gazans were dead and medical agencies in the territory said that there were at least 900 wounded, of which 120 were said to be critically injured. ...

Khaled Meshal, political leader of Hamas who lives in exile in Damascus, urged Palestinians to launch a third intifada against Israel, in a reference to uprisings in 1987 and 2000. He told a television station that Hamas’s response would include suicide bombings inside Israel.

Tzipi Livni, Israel’s foreign minister and leader of the governing Kadima party, rejected international appeals to halt the attacks, and urged governments to support Israel. "I don't accept these calls. Hamas is a terror organisation and Israel is a country that is defending its ­citizens. The only possible way to cut the offensive short is to make it clear that Israel has the right to protect itself and that the international community backs Israel."

Latest bloody twist in a cycle of violence by Tobias Buck Financial Times12/28/08:

... on the night of November 4, just as Barack Obama was celebrating his victory in the US presidential elections, Israel launched an operation in Gaza aimed at destroying a tunnel dug by Hamas militants. Officials claimed the tunnel posed an immediate threat, as it was intended to facilitate the abduction of Israeli soldiers and civilians.

The incursion claimed the lives of six Hamas militants, triggering a furious response from the group and resulting in a barrage of rockets from Gaza. It marked the start of an escalating exchange of attacks that soon put paid to any hopes of prolonging the ceasefire.

Both Hamas and Israel repeatedly professed their interest in restoring calm to the border region but the reality on the ground suggested neither side was willing to show restraint over a longer period. The Islamist group – as well as international aid groups – was also angered by Israel’s decision to tighten the economic blockade of the Gaza Strip, which soon resulted in severe shortages of basic supplies such as fuel for Gaza’s only power station.

Hamas finally declared that it would not renew the truce just days before its expiry. Last week, the group and other Gaza-based militants upped the stakes again by firing an unusually large volume of rockets and mortars on Israel, in spite of repeated warnings by the government that an offensive was now only a question of time.

Israeli Attacks Shatter Gaza by Mel Frykberg, Inter Press Service 12/28/08 points to one of the grim parallels to the Israeli offensive in the West Bank in 2002, when Ariel Sharon directed attacks against Palestinian Authority police facilities, attacking the very people who would be required for Palestinian cooperation in anti-terrorism operations:

Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak rejected calls by the UN and the EU for a ceasefire, and told the international media that Israel would not rule out widening the offensive to include a ground operation.

"For us to be asked to have a ceasefire with Hamas is like asking you to have a ceasefire with Al-Qaeda," Barak said in an interview with Fox News.

"It's something we cannot really accept. Our intention is to totally change the rules of the game," he added.

Most of those killed and wounded were Hamas military and police personnel. However, dozens of Palestinian civilians are reported to be among the dead. [my emphasis]

Gaza Carnage Sets West Bank Aflame by Mel Frykberg, Inter Press Service 12/28/08:

Following the initial clash, rioting and protests spread spontaneously to all of Gaza and the West Bank, leading to a popular uprising which lasted for several years. This followed years of Palestinian resentment and bitterness towards a brutal Israeli occupation.

Israeli-Arabs, descendents [sic] of the Palestinians, clashed Saturday with Israeli police throughout Israel.

In the Bedouin village of Rahat in the Negev desert, around 400 residents protested the attacks, while mosques throughout the town broadcast prayers of mourning. Many Bedouins, descendants of a nomadic tribe, join the Israeli army, where they are valued for their tracking skills. They are regarded as traitors by fellow Palestinians.

Several hundred left-wing Israelis marched through the streets of Tel Aviv towards the Israeli defence ministry headquarters chanting "No to war, yes to peace".

The left-wing protestors [sic]carried signs saying "Israel's government is committing war crimes", "Negotiation instead of slaughter", and "Lift the siege from Gaza".

Israel's war in Gaza: Stakes and Prospects by Helena Cobban, Just World News 12/28/08:

Israel's continuing assault against Gaza is in many ways linked to the (extremely counter-productive) 33-day war that it maintained against Lebanon and Hizbullah in 2006. There are similarities and differences. In both cases, one of the over-arching war aims has been an attempt to "restore the credibility" of an Israeli military "deterrent" that had been badly eroded - in the minds of many Israeli leaders - since 2000, or before.

That, in a nutshell, is the meaning of the "shock and awe" phrase that's been widely used to describe the completely disproportionate scale of Saturday's opening salvo, which left more than 280 Gazans dead.

Disinformation, secrecy and lies: How the Gaza offensive came about by Barak Ravid 12/28/08:

Sources in the defense establishment said Defense Minister Ehud Barak instructed the Israel Defense Forces to prepare for the operation over six months ago, even as Israel was beginning to negotiate a ceasefire agreement with Hamas. According to the sources, Barak maintained that although the lull would allow Hamas to prepare for a showdown with Israel, the Israeli army needed time to prepare, as well.

Barak gave orders to carry out a comprehensive intelligence-gathering drive which sought to map out Hamas' security infrastructure, along with that of other militant organizations operating in the Strip. ...

The plan of action that was implemented in Operation Cast Lead remained only a blueprint until a month ago, when tensions soared after the IDF carried out an incursion into Gaza during the ceasefire to take out a tunnel which the army said was intended to facilitate an attack by Palestinian militants on IDF troops. [my emphasis]

Gaza: Why Israel and Hamas are trading rocket fire by Joshua Mitnick Christian Science Monitor 12/29/08:

Rather than reoccupy Gaza, a politically unpopular move, Israel may want to simply redefine the terms of engagement along the southern frontier and reach a new cease- fire. "[Israeli Prime Minister Ehud] Olmert has been chastened by the Lebanon experience," says Michael Oren, a fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem who authored a book on the 1967 war. "He talked about toppling Hezbollah and disarming Hezbollah. There are far more modest objectives for this operation – an improved status quo ante." ...

In the first wave on Sunday, the Israeli air assault targeted training camps, police stations, and a Hamas intelligence headquarters. Despite the urging of colleagues and opposition politicians, Prime Minister Olmert is not talking about regime change in Gaza.

"The operation in the Gaza Strip is designed, first and foremost, to bring about an improvement in the security reality for the residents of the south of the country," said Olmert over the weekend.

Beyond bombs and rockets in Gaza Christian Science Monitor editorial 12/29/08:

By moving so forcefully in Gaza, Israel appears to be putting immediate concerns ahead of long-term peace prospects. Elections are coming in February, and political leaders undoubtedly feel compelled to prove their security credentials.

But with politics among Palestinians also uncertain (Mr. Abbas's term may expire next month), Hamas, too, has something to prove. It may be looking to Hezbollah and calculating it can win followers' hearts and minds even if it suffers a military setback.

The neighborhood bully strikes again by Gideon Levy Haaretz 12/29/08:

Within the span of a few hours on a Saturday afternoon, the IDF sowed death and destruction on a scale that the Qassam rockets [fired by Hamas against Israel] never approached in all their years, and Operation "Cast Lead" is only in its infancy.

Once again, Israel's violent responses, even if there is justification for them, exceed all proportion and cross every red line of humaneness, morality, international law and wisdom.

What began yesterday in Gaza is a war crime and the foolishness of a country. History's bitter irony: A government that went to a futile war two months after its establishment - today nearly everyone acknowledges as much - embarks on another doomed war two months before the end of its term. ...

Israel did not exhaust the diplomatic processes before embarking yesterday on another dreadful campaign of killing and ruin. The Qassams that rained down on the communities near Gaza turned intolerable, even though they did not sow death. But the response to them needs to be fundamentally different: diplomatic efforts to restore the cease-fire - the same one that was initially breached, one should remember, by Israel when it unnecessarily bombed a tunnel - and then, if those efforts fail, a measured, gradual military response. [my emphasis]

The way out of Gaza by Akiva Eldar Haaretz 12/29/08:

... the Qana disaster of 2006 [during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon War], which killed 56 civilians, brought international pressure on Israel and disrupted the prosecution of the war.

The tremendous population density in the Gaza Strip does not allow a "surgical operation" over an extended period that would minimize damage to civilian populations. The difficult images from the Strip will soon replace those of the damage inflicted by Qassam rockets in the western Negev.

The scale of losses, which works in "favor" of the Palestinians, will return Israel to the role of Goliath. The uncensored images broadcast by Al Jazeera to hundreds of millions of homes in the Arab world do not work to the benefit of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who was photographed several days ago speaking with Livni. A single Qana-like incident would be enough to make the masses of refugees congregate at the Rafah crossing and sabotage the unwritten agreement between Israel and Egypt against Hamas.

Passing the buck to Cairo is liable to have wide-ranging regional implications that do not serve Israel's interest.

Tags: israel, palestinians

Obama and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

One of Obama's challenges, like it has been to every President since Harry Truman, is the Israeli conflict with its neighbors. And, more specifically, with the Palestinians in the occupied territories that Israel has held since the 1967 war.

The last time there was major progress on Israeli-Palestinian negotiations was in 2000, which President Clinton brokered peace talks that eventually broke down. Tzipi Livni, the Israeli foreign minister and now head of the largest party, Kadima, after the resignation of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, has been unsuccessful in her negotiations to form a new government. In Israel's parliamentary system, it means she could find acceptable conditions with enough other parties to get a majority in parliament for her new government. In the end, she was unable to come to agreement with the very religious Shas Party, and Shas opposition to any compromise over the status of Jerusalem was one of the main sticking points. It is looking very much like new elections will have to be held.

Joschka Fischer writes about some of the problems this presents in Netanjahu ante portas Die Zeit 27.10.2008. As he points out, the two main contenders for Prime Minister will be Livni and Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu. Ehud Barak's Labor Party looks to be in bad shape. A recent poll gives a good look at how the parliamentary math stacks up, with a majority of the 120 seats in the Knesset (parliament) required to form a government (Polls show Livni edging past Netanyahu for PM, Labor headed for debacle Ha'aretz 27.10.08):

A poll by the Dahaf Research Institute showed Livni's Kadima Party winning 29 of parliament's 120 seats, the same number it has now, and Netanyahu's Likud taking 26 if elections were held today. A TNS Teleseker survey gave Kadima 31 seats to Likud's 29.

Both surveys said Labor, which is now the second largest party, would win 11 seats if elections were held this week.

In the last nationwide election, held in 2006, Kadima held 29 seats, Labor 19 and the Likud 12.

Kadima, the largest party, can't come close to winning a majority on its own. Likud is the most hardline party, the one to which American neoconservatives are most aligned in their thinking on foreign policy. But even with the current Knesset composition, Kadima and Labor didn't have a majority on their own.

That means to form a government requires in practice requires the inclusion of smaller parties, which like Shas are often very religious and may have hardline views on a particular aspect of Israeli-Palestinian differences, like the status of Jerusalem. That and the fact that it takes three or more separate political parties to form a government has become a chronic problem for Israel.

And what it means in terms of peace negotiations is that it's nearly impossible to get a government that can have a stable hold on power long enough to make the kind of tough agreements that would be necessary to create a permanent framework that would bring peace, or something close to it.

It's not that there's any great mystery about what a realistic settlement would have to include. As Fischer summarizes it:

Die Grenzen von vor dem Sechs-Tage-Krieg 1967 unter Einschluss Jerusalems, ein verhandelter kleinerer Gebietsaustausch, kein Rückkehrrecht der Flüchtlinge nach Israel in den Grenzen vor 1967 mit Ausnahme humanitärer Einzelfälle.

[The borders of before the Six Day War of 1967 including Jerusalem, a smaller negotiated exchange of territory, no "right of return" for refugees to go back to Israel within the borders of 1967 with the exception of particular humanitarian cases. [my translation]]

Fischer does not specifically mention another essential element, the removal of the Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

Achieving those goals, though, and tying down all the loose ends of the details, will be very difficult. Since 2000, Palestinian politics have become deeply divided between Fatah and and Hamas, to the point of an intra-Palestinian civil war. That situation in itself is a victory of sorts for Israeli policies of the past. Israel encouraged the development of the radical Islamic Hamas in its early days to divide the Palestinians away from support for the the sucular Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), of which Fatah was the leading group.

But now Hamas is the leading party among Palestinians. And Fischer expects that once the presidential mandate of Fatah's Mahmud Abbas in the Palestinian Authority (PA) expires this coming January, that he and Fatah will be in an even weaker position. Though Hamas is more radical than Fatah at this point, it's not that Hamas would never make a deal. But, as Fischer puts it, "Mit einem gespaltenen Palästina aber kann es kaum einen ernst gemeinten Friedensvertrag geben." ("With a Palestine that is split, there can hardly be a peace treaty that can be taken seriously.")

On Israel's side, Livni is regarded as being open to a serious peace initiative. And Olmert was moving in that direction. Fischer notes that Likud's Netanyahu in his previous term as Prime Minister proved to be "ultra-flexible" once in power. But Likud and its backers are hardline against a meaningful peace settlement. And even after the election, Livni will still have difficulty putting together a governing coalition that could hold together to push through a meaningful peace treaty, even if political conditions for it on the Palestinian side should dramatically improve.

Fischer describes a prospect that has been discussed more in recent months. Which is that if Israel cannot agree on a two-state solution soon, time may soon run out for that to be a practical option any longer:

Damit aber droht die Zwei-Staaten-Lösung, der einzig denkbare Kompromiss, endgültig verloren zu gehen. Und diese Gefahr ist bereits heute überaus real. Für Israel ist dies eine deprimierende Aussicht, denn die Alternative zu den zwei Staaten ist die Fortsetzung der Okkupation palästinensischer Gebiete durch Israel und als Ergebnis de facto ein binationaler Staat.

Genau diese Entwicklung wäre aber die größte strategische Bedrohung für den jüdischen und demokratischen Charakter des Staates Israel, denn die Mehrheiten in dem Gebiet zwischen dem Jordangraben und dem Mittelmeer werden sich in den kommenden Jahren zugunsten der arabischen Bevölkerung verschieben. Für die Palästinenser hieße dies weitere Jahrzehnte der Okkupation und eines Lebens in immer schlimmer werdendem Elend.

[Thereby the two-state solution, the only compromise thinkable, threats to be lost forever. And this danger is already very real. For Israel this is a depressing prospect, because the alternative to two states is the continuation of the occupatio of Palestinian territories by Israel and as the de facto result, a binational state.

Precisely this development would be the greatest strategic threat for the Jewish and democratic character of the State of Israel, because the majority in the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterreanean would shift in the coming years to the benefit of the Arab population. For the Palestinians, this means further decades of occupation and life in an ever-worsoning despair.[my translation]]

For an additional angle on the politics of raising the danger of the one-state option becoming the only remaining one, see Daniel Levy, The Alternative to Paralysis Prospects for Peace blog 10/03/08. (I should also note that the particular word Fischer uses for the Jordan River, "Jordangraben", which more literally would be "Jordan Ditch", may have some special intended meaning. But I don't know what that might be.)

It's not an encouraging picture. But an Obama administration would still need to make a very serious effort to keep the peace process moving forward. The United States is currently involved in two wars in the Islamic world, in both Iraq and Afghanistan that also is spilling over into Pakistan, Syria and even Somalia. The Islamic world needs to see the United States being serious about the peace process. It won't make "Al Qa'ida" types stop hating us. But it will ratchet down the general hostility to the United States. Because the Israel-Palestine conflict remains an intense general grievance of the Muslim world against "the West".

The fact that the Israel-Palestine problem has proven to be so intractable shouldn't be an excuse for inaction on the part of the United States. On the contrary, it should lend a sense of urgency. But it's also important to recognize that the problem is a serious one, not at all easily solved. Fischer concludes by observing that if the United States is successful in reducing tensions through regional diplomacy among the Muslim state in the Middle East - which will have to be a major component of the process of withdrawing troops from Iraq - that would have a positive effect on the Israel-Palestine peace process. "Gelöst wäre er damit aber noch lange nicht." ("But even then it won't be solved for a long time".)

I'm guessing that Fischer would be happy to be proven wrong on that point.

Tags: israel, joschka fischer, palestinians