February 28, 2007 5:15
Condi Comes Back
Three cheers for Condi Rice. After a lot of dancing around, the U.S. and Iran are apparently finally going to talk. In a group, if not yet one-on-one.
Rice confirmed Tuesday that U.S. diplomats would take part in regional talks on Iraq with a number of countries including Iran as well as Syria, which the Bush administration has also lately been boycotting. This is a potentially important victory for pragmatists within the Bush administration against the hawks who prefer unrelenting pressure on Iran and Syria.
Special Iraq envoy David Satterfield will be present at the first round in March in Baghdad, and Rice will be there for the second round in April, probably in Istanbul. The talks with Iran and Syria will be indirect and focused on Iraq, but it's a hopeful beginning toward expanding the dialogue to other issues of critical importance to the Middle East's future. With Rice extending an olive branch, in line with a Baker-Hamilton recommendation that the White House has largely ignored until now, the onus is on Tehran and Damascus to show that they are not the spoilers.
In the run-up to the meeting that will involve Rice and her Iranian counterpart, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, all eyes will be watching whether Tehran shows conciliatory signs on issues like aiding militant groups in Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine as well as on the dispute over Iran's nuclear program. Similarly, the U.S. and its Western and Arab allies will be carefully monitoring whether Syria makes any provocations, especially pertaining to the tense standoff in Lebanon between pro-democracy forces and groups backed by Syria and Iran.
There is a large number of explosive, interrelated issues in the Middle East that require Iranian and Syrian cooperation to settle--Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict among them. Many people rightly feel that part of the problem has been Bush's refusal to engage either country through diplomacy. Last summer's war in Lebanon, essentially a geopolitical proxy war between the U.S./Israel and Iran/Syria, shows the uselessness of settling issues through the barrel of a gun. Now that there seems to be an opening for diplomacy, however tentative, it is an enormously important moment for Tehran and Damascus to show whether they want to be part of the problem or the solution.
--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo
February 28, 2007 2:45
Disappearing Beirut
Every week in my neighborhood in East Beirut, I discover that another beautiful old building has suddenly dissolved into a pile of rubble, or been replaced by an empty crater. What's going on? More Israeli air-strikes? A Syrian bombing campaign? Iranian infiltrators?
No, this is one Lebanese mess you can't blame on outsiders. The country is in the middle of a construction boom that is eating through Beirut's endangered historic housing stock.
The 15-year Lebanese civil war (1975-1990) did much to destroy Beirut's mellow Mediterranean mosaic of Ottoman villas, Arab souks, and Art-Deco apartment buildings from the French Mandate era. The country's post civil war reconstruction, with an emphasis on wannbe-Dubai glitz and bland luxury hotels, is rapidly taking care of the rest.
At first glance, it is surprising that real estate development in Beirut is continuing at such a rapacious rate. The country is in the midst of a political crisis between the Hizballah-led opposition and the US-backed ruling coalition, which (along with bouts of sectarian rioting and the possibility of another war with Israel) has already scared away many investors. But precisely because of such instability, there is now an even bigger premium on real estate in socially desirable, "safe" neighborhoods.
Sections of East Beirut like mine survived last summer's war almost totally unscathed, since the Israeli air force concentrated on Hizballah strongholds in the Shia suburbs south of the city. And the conventional wisdom is that any future sectarian squabbling between Shia and Sunni gangs will likely take place in predominantly Muslim West Beirut, not the Christian East. So the developers and their bulldozers have stormed East Beirut and are replacing some of the last and best specimens of the city's historic residential buildings with condominium towers. What weak preservation laws exist are routinely flouted.
With all the mounting mayhem in the Middle East, one might well ask what saving a few old buildings would do to hold back the forces of destruction. Perhaps nothing in the scheme of things. But at a time of rising fundamentalism and sectarianism, reminders of the polyglot past are more important than ever. A fragile young nation like Lebanon needs all the history it can hold on to.
--Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut
February 27, 2007 9:05
Questions of the Day, Part 2
The second, equally existentially unsettling question discussed here today: What to do about Iran? A huge issue in Israel, it was taken up this morning by former Prime Minister and current Knesset Member Benjamin Netanyahu at a briefing he gave for diplomats and journalists. Netanyahu is known as a hardliner. He leads the opposition against Ehud Olmert and his own ambitions of being Prime Minister again one day are plain to see. He has friends in high places in Washington. All of that, and the number of ambassadors who answered his call this morning indicate that his thoughts on the matter are not irrelevant.
With great conviction, Netanyahu asserted that Iran was the greatest threat to security in the world today, akin to Hitler in 1938 but more dangerous because of its desire to attain and, he said, use nuclear weapons. He implied the views and statements of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad were representative of the entire Iranian political establishment, which is questionable given the indications of discontent with him at street level and the amongst the ruling Ayatollahs. He said the Iran issue had to be addressed before an Israeli-Palestinian agreement could be reached, because a nuclear-armed Iran could undermine any deal made, which sounds somewhat like an excuse for not trying. He elided the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran with the threat of a nuclear-armed al Qaeda, using them interchangeably to make his points, speaking as if they were in the same camps.
The encouraging bit came when he said there was no reason to hurry into a military confrontation, that there were political and economic ways to pressure Tehran that could be pursued along with diplomatic initiatives. Specifically, he pointed to divestment campaigns, singling out the possibility that individual American states could divest pension funds from companies doing business in Iran, or companies doing business with companies doing business in Iran, and that he'd already lobbied Gov. Schwarzenegger and others about it. Those and additional measures should be explored, he said, so everyone can say that they tried, that they did not look the other way, as many did with Hitler before World War II.
One hopes that his hope for non-military measures is sincere, that it's not just part of his next Prime Ministerial campaign, trying to look authoritative and statesman-like when Olmert looks weak and is awaiting the release of a potentially damaging report on the conduct of the Lebanon war. Netanyahu has a long history of talking about the issue, so it's not as if he's just come round to it. But one also hops that what he's saying now, and talk of diplomacy in general from hardliners, is not just a gambit along the lines of sending Hans Blix to Iraq (speaking of trying to disprove something that can't be proven), cover for a hoped-for invasion, when those who favor bombing can say, "Hey, we tried everything, and it's their fault that it came to this."
It's worrisome to hear all the talk, again, about regime change without any real notion of what would happen the day after, without any real recongition that the failures to plan for the aftermath had disastrous consequences in Iraq and in Afghanistan. Netanyahu offered some thinly veiled criticism of Condoleeza Rice, who has sort of disputed the 1938 comparisons and is generally thought to prefer negotiation over military strike. He also said he was glad that there were some in the U.S.--i.e. Cheney and friends--who would consider tougher measures, i.e. bombing.
There are many voices in this debate right now and yet it's still impossible, for me anyway, to tell where it's going. I do know that the prospect of another war is terrifying, the thought of a war with Iran almost too much to imagine--How? With what troops? What would be the fallout?--particularly when many of the decision makers seem to be operating on a kind of geopolitical faith, a faith about "how the world works," believing they know the answers when the last few years has shown bountiful evidence to the contrary.
--Phil Zabriskie / Jerusalem
February 27, 2007 8:26
Questions of the Day, Part 1
Two big questions on the docket today in Jerusalem, one regarding events of long ago, one about events in the here and now (and possibly the future), both fraught with implications for millions and millions of people.
The first, as you may have heard (and many have, judging by the more than 3,000 comments on Tim's earlier post) concerns the documentary "The Lost Tomb of Jesus," which asserts that Jesus and his family, including a wife and a child, were buried in a tomb initially unearthed in 1980 in the East Talpiyot neighborhood of Jerusalem. Naturally, such claims arouse resistance, and some anger. Already a host of questions have been raised on the scientific front. The Jerusalem archaeologist who first examined the site, Prof. Amos Kloner, told The Jerusalem Post, "It makes a great story for a TV film. But it's completely impossible. It's nonsense." Others have said it's an interesting hypothesis, they'd like to see further investigations and such, but generally even the support has been lukewarm at best. It's not nearly as bad as Geraldo Rivera claiming to have located Al Capone's secret vault, and opening up an empty basement on live TV, but it seems unlikely that the rest of the world will be quite as taken with the findings as are the filmmakers.
Which is fine. They put out a theory and others can contest it, try to prove or disprove it, or ignore it. Maybe it will inspire arguments about the objectivity of science, about the nature of faith, about whether it is important that certain stories be literally true, and about how, in this region, archaeology can be at times political. All good things to discuss, especially nowadays. I tend to doubt, though, that even firmer evidence in this case would have a great deal of impact in the long run. The filmmakers are suggesting that they can disprove a miracle--the resurrection--that they can use reason and science to disprove something that many people believe occurred beyond the realms of reason and science. To put it another way, they are trying to show that something that should not be able to happen did not actually happen.
Those arguing for and against are arguing on different planes. That's not to say the questions shouldn't be asked. They should, because they inform discussions on the role of faith in a society, the nature of faith itself, and the political ramifications of both, which are on display here and in many other places, sometimes tragically. This film, the 3,000-plus comments on the earlier post, the rituals most every religion requires--these things show how individuals and societies feel that faith is something that must constantly be maintained, how for the faithful the primacy of belief must repeatedly be reasserted over science and doubt and whatever else might challenge it, how convulsive it can be to a believer or a society of believers when core elements of a faith, any faith, are questioned. Clearly this triggers something far more primal and deeply rooted in the human psyche than contemporary issues do. A fascinating post saying a Saudi diplomat is acting like a de facto American Secretary of State gets, at last count, 16 comments, and a report about a documentary that's been received primarily with skepticism gets 3,000? Something has indeed been unearthed by the documentary, just as something crucial is unearthed, and revealed, about our species by many claims, trends, or images that challenge the tenets of particular faiths and the stories those faiths tell about themselves.
--Phil Zabriskie/Jerusalem
February 27, 2007 7:54
Bin Laden: Back in Business?
It's more bad news for Bush's war on terrorism:
After the 9/11 plotters hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and missed a strike on the White House or the Capitol, Bush promised to bring in Bin Laden dead or alive. But while the U.S. seems to know little about Bin Laden's whereabouts five plus years later, Al Qaeda instead may have taken a whack at Vice President Cheney in today's suicide bombing in Afghanistan. The group's Taliban ally appeared to claim credit for the explosion outside a U.S. military base in Afghanistan that killed and wounded several U.S. and allied soldiers. Said Cheney: "I heard a loud boom."
The Afghanistan blast occurred a day after an attack on foreigners in Saudi Arabia killed four Frenchmen--the first such al Qaeda-style operation in the Kingdom in three years. The dead were part of a group of expat workers based in Riyadh who were camping in the desert and apparently visiting pre-Islamic Nabatean ruins in northwestern Saudi Arabia. Reports said that gunmen lined up the men and machine gunned them in front of women and children in the trekking party.
Both incidents are bound to reinforce criticism of Bush's war in Iraq. Many feel that Bush blundered by invading Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein in part because it diverted resources from the hunt for Bin Laden. There is a growing belief among terrorism experts that the Al Qaeda leadership is actually enjoying a resurgence. Many also feel that the war and resulting chaos in Iraq has fueled the spread of Islamic extremism beyond Iraq's borders. Al Qaeda's war inside Saudi Arabia, bin Laden's native country, began one month after the fall of Saddam and many young Saudis are believed to have gone to Iraq to fight and train. Though Al Qaeda's campaign inside Saudi Arabia was ruthlessly suppressed by the Saudi security forces, Sunday's attack on the French campers indicates that it remains a threat in the Kingdom.
--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo
February 27, 2007 4:15
The Jews of Lebanon
The beautiful Magen Abraham synagogue in Beirut was built in 1925 and is a testament to a time when Jews were a significant part of Lebanon's multi-religious mosaic. The community numbered as many as 14,000, and traced its roots in the area as far back as 1,000 BC.
The temple is now in tatters and the old Jewish quarter of Wadi Abu Jamil is practically a ghost town amid the rising skyscrapers of the central city. While Lebanon's Jewish population actually rose after the creation of Israel in 1948, Jews began leaving when the Civil War divided the country along sectarian lines in 1975. Exodus began in earnest after 1982, when Israel invaded Lebanon. Estimates of Lebanon's Jewish population vary from between 50 to 1,000. No one is certain because those who are left often keep their religious identity secret and the country itself hasn't had a census since 1936.
But a 21 year-old Lebanese-American Muslim is on a quixotic quest to turn back the tide. Late last year, Aaron-Micael Beydoun launched a website, The Jews of Lebanon, to be a forum for documenting that community's history here, and for keeping track of Lebanese Jews abroad. This year, Beydoun announced that he will start an NGO who's mission will be to revive Lebanese Jewish life in Lebanon itself, beginning with the restoration of the Magen Abraham synagogue. The goal is to remind Lebanese -- and the world -- that peaceful coexistence between religious groups is the country's norm not the exception.
Whether Lebanon is ready for a Jewish revival is open to question. Supporters of Hizballah -- the anti-Israeli Islamic militia -- say their beef is with the Jewish state not Jews themselves. But "Jew" is still an insult in the discourse of Lebanese street politics, often used to tar those suspected of collaborating with America and Israel. Presumably, the Lebanese Jews who live here keep a low profile for a reason.
Nor is it likely that many Lebanese Jews in exile will soon return to such an unstable country. Ever since the war with Israel this past summer, Lebanon's middle class has been leaving en masse. The trend has continued now that the political system and the economy have been paralyzed by an ongoing campaign led by Hizballah to topple the government. Until the dust settles in the Middle East (whenever that may be), the Jews of Lebanon might be better off staying in Montreal.
--Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut
February 26, 2007 11:56
Another Day of Life
The Middle East news, as googled in Cairo at 22h46:
--Iran: The U.S. and its allies meet to discuss tightening United Nations sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program.
--Palestinian Territories: Israeli troops raid the city of Nablus and impose a curfew on 50,000 residents as they search for Palestinian militants.
--Iraq: Iraqi President Jalal Talabani is airlifted to Jordan and hospitalized for exhaustion. An explosion inside the Public Works ministry in Baghdad injures Iraqi Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi and kills at least five people.
--Saudi Arabia: an Al Qaeda-style attack kills at least three French expat workers on a desert excursion in the first major terrorist attack in the Kingdom since 2004.
--Lebanon: Hizballah is building a new stronghold north of the U.N.-patrolled zone in southern Lebanon ahead of a possible resumption of war with Israel.
--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo
February 25, 2007 4:32
U.S. Secretary of State Bandar Bin Sultan?
Prince Bandar bin Sultan loves American culture--he's a McDonald's burger addict, among other things--so he'd appreciate the baseball analogy: with the Bush administration suffering a losing streak in the Middle East, it's called in Bandar to do some relief pitching. It may not be a stretch to say that the Saudi prince has as much influence on the direction of U.S. Middle East policy as Condi Rice.
In this week's New Yorker, Seymour Hersh's article describes a "redirection" of U.S. strategy involving covert activities that "has brought the United States closer to an open confrontation with Iran and, in parts of the region, propelled it into a widening sectarian conflict between Shiite and Sunni Muslims." Hersh says that the Saudi government has already cooperated with Bush's administration in clandestine operations against Hizballah, Iran and Syria. The key players behind the strategy redirection, Hersh adds, are Vice President Cheney, Elliott Abrams of the National Security Council, departing U.S. ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad and Bandar--Rice doesn't make the list.
What this means is murky, but here's what we know thus far:
After the Saudis succeeded spectacularly in repairing the diplomatic damage done to relations by the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration began leaning on King Abdullah to play a more active role in supporting American policies in the Middle East. The Saudis enthusiastically accepted the assignment, if it wasn't their idea to increase their pro-American activities in the first place. At the same time, Bandar left Washington after serving as Saudi ambassador for 22 years and became Abdullah's national security advisor--given Bandar's wide experience, the post makes him a de facto super foreign minister. Indeed, well after having left Washington, Bandar would return for unannounced meetings at the White House--behavior that diplomats say irked his successor as ambassador, Prince Turki al Faisal, and prompted his abrupt resignation.
It's difficult to discern Bandar's precise role within the Kingdom's fragmented political setup in its formulation, but he has been in the forefront of an uncharacteristically pro-active Saudi foreign policy. In line with Bush's diplomatic boycott of Syrian President Bashar Assad over the Hariri assassination, Riyadh has effectively frozen relations with Damascus. Apparently as part of Bush's efforts to bolster Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert after Israel's debacle in last summer's war with Hizballah, Bandar met secretly with Olmert last September in what amounted to the highest-level Saudi-Israeli meeting in the 60-odd-year history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Since the beginning of 2007, Bandar has held three meetings with his Iranian counterpart, Ali Larijani, to cool down dangerous tensions involving Hizballah and Hamas, Iran's allies in Lebanon and Palestine, and dampen Sunni-Shiite tensions spreading in Iraq and throughout the region. One of the things that makes Bandar an indispensable subcontractor to Bush is he can talk directly to Iranian officials, Hamas or Hizballah, unlike his own secretary of state, who is handcuffed by U.S. policy from doing so.
Bandar had an usual career as an ambassador in Washington. By his own reckoning, he played a role in addressing many of the world's crises, often acting as an envoy to European capitals and Moscow. He built an extraordinary array of relationships with Washington's power brokers, and considers the Bushes and Cheney as personal friends. Bandar acquired a reputation for lending a hand when Washington could use it. He played a key role, for example, in negotiating the end of the Lockerbie dispute that led Gadhafy to renounce nuclear weapons and terrorism--one of Bush's few relatively unblemished successes in the Middle East. According to Bob Woodward's 1987 book Veil, Reagan's national security advisor worked with Bandar to send covert funding worth millions to the Contras in Nicaragua. The book alleges that Reagan's CIA director enlisted Bandar for a 1985 plot to assassinate Hizballah spiritual guide Sheikh Fadlullah--a bombing that went awry, killing 80 people but missing the target. Veil also says that at the CIA's request, Bandar provided $2 million in Saudi funds to prevent Communists from coming to power in Italy.
The Saudis want to strengthen the U.S.'s hand in the region, limit Iran's emerging influence and bolster their own role as a defender of Muslim causes. But questions arise where it gets murky: Do Saudi Arabia and the U.S. share the same interests? Will they agree on methods? Who will influence the other, and will it be for better or worse? Will Bandar's counsel keep Bush out of new adventures in the Middle East? Or will the Administration's confusion about how to proceed give Bandar undue influence-and perhaps lead to some bold missteps that the U.S. will later regret? As Woodward described his relationship with CIA director William Casey 20 years ago, "Bandar had found Americans naive about the world, but here was a man with no inhibitions." Woodward adds a moment later, "Bandar knew how to have a conversation that never took place." Writing about Bandar just last week, The Washington Post's Jackson Diehl said: "Bandar's spin and dazzle make it tempting to think he can pull off almost anything."
So, is Bandar the Saudi tail that wags the American dog? His role in the recent Mecca agreement is a curious one. Condi Rice spent months beforehand arranging a summit meeting between Olmert and President Mahmoud Abbas to resume negotiations on a final settlement between Israel and the Palestinians. The move was strongly supported by many U.S. allies, notably Jordan. However, Cheney, Bandar's friend, was lukewarm to the idea, to say the least. A week before the summit, Saudi Arabia, with Iran's apparent blessing, cobbled together a Palestinian unity deal between Abbas and Hamas. That agreement, which puts Abbas's Fatah party in the same government as a group calling for Israel's destruction, took the wind out of Rice's sails.
--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo
February 25, 2007 1:53
An Ill Wind from the East
A Hamsin wind blew into Lebanon from the east yesterday, filling the air with dust from the dry hinterlands and depositing a thin layer of grit on buildings and windows and parked cars across the capital.
Unfortunately, dust isn't the only stuff turning up on Beirut's streets these days. Police this week discovered a series of bombs hidden in plain view, including a box of dynamite sitting next to a dumpster, a box of detonators nearby, and a bomb stuffed in an abandoned tire near a sports stadium.
The Lebanese have become sadly adept at reading all the elements of a bombing -- the size, the target, the location -- as if they were tea leaves, for some hint of what future awaits them. Their recent education in explosives began with the spectacular assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2005, an event that led to mass protests by those Lebanese who accused their Syrian overlords of orchestrating the hit. But even after the Syrian army left Lebanon later that year, there has been a steady trickle of bombings. For the most part, the targets were prominent anti-Syrian politicians and journalists. Then last week, two bombs loaded with metal fillings exploded in passenger buses, a sign, everyone noted, that the terror campaign would now be aimed at ordinary civilians.
For those Lebanese who think Syria is the terror culprit, the unexploded bombs discovered this week are an attempt to scare Lebanese politicians away from setting up a UN tribunal that would investigate the Hariri assassination and the others that followed. They are a warning of worse to come.
But they could also be a portend of how Syria might sneak its way back into control of Lebanon. The bomb in a tire was was found near where Sunni and Shia gangs had waged street battles last month. By fanning Lebanon's sectarian flames -- a riot here, a bombing there, maybe a burnt church or mosque for good measure -- Syria could light a fire in Lebanon that only it could put out.
--Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut
February 23, 2007 6:55
Jesus: Tales from the Crypt
Brace yourself. James Cameron, the man who brought you 'The Titanic' is back with another blockbuster. This time, the ship he's sinking is Christianity.
In a new documentary, Producer Cameron and his director, Simcha Jacobovici, make the starting claim that Jesus wasn't resurrected --the cornerstone of Christian faith-- and that his burial cave was discovered near Jerusalem. And, get this, Jesus sired a son with Mary Magdelene.
No, it's not a re-make of "The Da Vinci Codes'. It's supposed to be true.
Let's go back 27 years, when Israeli construction workers were gouging out the foundations for a new building in the industrial park in the Talpiyot, a Jerusalem suburb. of Jerusalem. The earth gave way, revealing a 2,000 year old cave with 10 stone caskets. Archologists were summoned, and the stone caskets carted away for examination. It took 20 years for experts to decipher the names on the ten tombs. They were: Jesua, son of Joseph, Mary, Mary, Mathew, Jofa and Judah, son of Jesua.
Israel's prominent archeologist Professor Amos Kloner didn't associate the crypt with the New Testament Jesus. His father, after all, was a humble carpenter who couldn't afford a luxury crypt for his family. And all were common Jewish names.
There was also this little inconvenience that a few miles away, in the old city of Jerusalem, Christians for centuries had been worshipping the empty tomb of Christ at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Christ's resurrection, after all, is the main foundation of the faith, proof that a boy born to a carpenter's wife in a manger is the Son of God.
But film-makers Cameron and Jacobovici claim to have amassed evidence through DNA tests, archeological evidence and Biblical studies, that the 10 coffins belong to Jesus and his family.
Ever the showman, (Why does this remind me of the impresario in another movie,"King Kong", whose hubris blinds him to the dangers of an angry and very large ape?) Cameron is holding a New York press conference on Monday at which he will reveal three coffins, supposedly those of Jesus of Nazareth, his mother Mary and Mary Magdalene. News about the film, which will be shown soon on Discovery Channel, Britain's Channel 4, Canada's Vision, and Israel's Channel 8, has been a hot blog topic in the Middle East (check out a personal favorite: Israelity Bites) Here in the Holy Land, Biblical Archeology is a dangerous profession. This 90-minute documentary is bound to outrage Christians and stir up a titanic debate between believers and skeptics. Stay tuned.
--Tim McGirk/Jerusalem
February 23, 2007 5:10
Heroes of the Arab Press
Despite the courage of many Arab journalists and writers, developments in the past year suggest that trends aren't very encouraging for press freedom in the Middle East. That's a very dispiriting observation to make, given how vital free speech is to the development of democracy in the Arab world. In the era of satellite television and the internet, the space for freedom has indeed expanded in the past decade. Unfortunately, enemies of freedom are intent on harassing, jailing and even killing journalists and writers, not only to silence them but as a warning to others to expect a life of uncertainty if you dare speak your mind. Those who live with the harassment and the prospect of being jailed or killed are largely unsung heroes.
For more details, check out the websites of two groups dedicated to press freedom, the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders. The latest case and one that has far-reaching implications is Thursday's sentencing of Egyptian blogger Karim Amer to four years in prison on charges of insulting Islam and President Hosni Mubarak. Karim Amer, whose real name is Abdel Karim Suleiman, had the temerity to take on two of Egypt's most powerful institutions--the presidency and the Al Azhar university of Islamic scholarship. Egyptian and indeed Arab bloggers elsewhere have been harassed before, but Karim Amer is the first Egyptian to be sentenced to a jail term. The verdict sends a chilling warning that Egyptian authorities will not tolerate the use of the internet as a means of issuing criticism that Egypt's traditional media outlets know they must refrain from making.
Last month, Egyptian security agents detained Howayda Taha Matwali, a producer for Qatar-based Al Jazeera, and confiscated footage depicting re-enactments of prison torture in Egypt. She was charged with fraud and harming Egypt's interests and faces a trial in a state security court next week. The cases of the blogger and the Jazeera producer make for an inauspicious state for Mubarak's controversial efforts to amend Egypt's constitution this year to ensure an orderly presidential succession when he retires at the end of his current term. One hopes that Mubarak will include on his agenda a vow he made three years ago to eliminate prison sentences in judicial cases against journalists.
Egypt is hardly alone. Syrian authorities have put noted Syrian journalist and commentator Michel Kilo in detention for the past nine months for apparently criticizing the Syrian regime's activities in neighboring Lebanon. He faces a possible life sentence if convicted of the charges, which include defaming President Bashar Assad. The trial is now scheduled to start March 5, but has already been postponed three times.
In Sudan, Adil Sid Ahmed and Ahmed al Sharif of al Watan newspaper face a sedition trial after being arrested last month for publishing an interview with militants who threatened foreigners living in the country. In Tunisia a few weeks ago, authorities arrested Tahar Ben Hassine, director of an independent satellite channel broadcasting to Tunisia from Italian soil, immediately after he left the Tunis home of a prominent political dissident. Hassine was freed the next day, but the arrest is part of a pattern of harassment against his channel and other outspoken media outlets.
As I've blogged earlier, Moroccan authorities appears to have come up with a new way of silencing critical journalists. Courts strongly under the influence of the palace convicted Le Journal publisher Aboubakr Jamai in a libel case and awarded unprecedented, destructive damages to the tune of $350,000. Last month, Jamai resigned from the paper he founded and made into Morocco's most outspoken media outlet in order to prevent the state from seizing its assets and effectively closing it.
It's a little over a year now that Gebran Tueni, the chief of the influential Beirut newspaper An Nahar and one of the most courageous Arab journalists, was assassinated as he drove to work one morning. Tueni had been in the forefront of Lebanese demands for Syrian troops to withdraw and support for a U.N. investigation into the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafic Hariri.
Unfortunately, there is more. I haven't even mentioned Iraq, where CPJ says 130 journalists and support staff have been killed since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. Say a prayer for Arab journalists.
--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo
February 22, 2007 8:25
Refugee Lessons
Last week in Damascus, I accompanied a teenage Iraqi friend -- the sister-in-law of a former translator of mine -- as she enrolled in a private school for girls in the Old City. The occasion should have been cause for celebration. Zamzam and her family are refugees from Baghdad, where for over a year it's been too dangerous for her to attend school. And because they'd arrived in Syria about three weeks before, they'd missed the beginning of term. But the school we visited that day made an exception for her case, and now she might dare to think again about studying medicine and becoming a doctor. Not only that, but under Syrian law, families with a child enrolled in school are legally entitled to live in the country. So theoretically they won't have to worry about being deported.
But the day was an excruciating one for Zamzam, a 17 year-old, a refugee, a New Girl. She bristled when the headmaster lectured her from behind his grand desk in an ornate turn-of-the-century Ottoman reception room. "This is a good school," he said. "You have to do what you're told." Later, I stood with her in the school courtyard filled with a busy swirl of girls wearing gray smock-like uniforms and playing games under a mural of the Pink Panther and a portrait of Syrian President Bashar Al Assad. An unsympathetic crone, clearly the school disciplinarian, pointed at Zamzam's simple gold necklace and her bit of blush and practically cackled, "No make-up and no jewelry!" Once we had left the building, Zamzam blurted out: "I'm a smart girl, why should I have to beg to go to school? If they are mean to me I'll just bomb them."
When I told Zamzam never to say that again, she explained that all her friends in Baghdad talk that way now. Apparently, American teen-speak standards such as "Whatever!" or "Talk to the hand!" translate into Iraqi as "Shut up or I'll cut your head off!"
If this sounds as horrible to you as it does to me, think about what other options you have when are young and defenseless and Iraqi and when militias regularly dump headless bodies into your street. What else can you do but turn death and dismemberment into a sick joke? What other options do you have than to take semantic control of the situation and say "I'm going to bomb you!" or "I'm going to cut your head off!" when in fact the reality is that you are the one whose days are numbered?
Clearly Baghdad humor is going to be lost on most of us, but perhaps it is we who are tone deaf not Iraqis like Zamzam. There is an humanitarian crisis on our hands that we've done much to create and little to solve. A couple million displaced inside Iraq. A million in Syria. A million more in Jordan. More on the way every day. So what's more dangerous, raw truth or polite conversation and denial?
I'd like to think that life is going to get better for Zamzam and her family now that they've left Iraq, now that they've rented an apartment in Damascus, now that she's in school. But Zamzam's doubtful. "It's going to happen here too," she said. "Just wait."
--Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut
February 21, 2007 8:34
Construction Worker Terrorists?
Cold-blooded killers or engineering nerds? Jihad of Construction volunteers interview a family whose home was damaged by Israeli bombs last summer.
Here's another farcical US move in the so-called "War on Terror." The US Treasury has just listed the Hizballah construction organization "Jihad of Construction" as a terrorist group. I've written in the past for TIME about how Jihad of Construction engineers promised to reimburse all Lebanese whose property was damaged in last summer's war with Israel. Turns out that they are having trouble carrying through on their promises, and reconstruction is lagging in Lebanon. But c'mon, terrorists? These guys carry T-sqaures and clipboards, not Katyushas and Kalishnikovs!
True, Jihad of Construction is a wing of Hizballah, and its duties could include building the occasional bunker, but which definitely include building schools, hospitals, homes and the like.
So do they help make Hizballah popular? Of course. But the real reason Hizballah is popular is because Israel invaded Lebanon in 1984 and Hizballah drove them out in 2000. Has Hizballah continued to do nasty awful things to Israel? You bet. Has Israel done the same? Count the dead children from last summer's war. Do both countries suffer as a result? Look around: It's called a cycle of violence! It's called the Middle East!
The evil of violence directed at civilians is real and deserves condemnation whenever it occurs. Calling the actions of one side "terrorism" doesn't stop this, especially when it limits our ability to isolate those who just want to kill from those with legitimate grievances. In the past, the American government has been capable of making such distinctions -- inviting Gerry Adams of Sinn Fein to the White House while shunning the Irish Republican Army -- and no one worries about Catholics bombing London anymore. So why is the US incapable of such a balanced, clear-eyed view of the Middle East? Maybe because here, unlike in Ireland, we're part of the problem.
--Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut
February 21, 2007 2:14
What Arabs Think (2)
I'd say that the most distressing part of the 2006 Zogby/University of Maryland poll of Arab public opinion is the first section, Global Perspectives. When asked which world leader outside their own country they admired most, Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah scored highest, with 14%, among people in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. (Lebanon participants could not select Nasrallah, under the rules.) Nasrallah's highest rating of 31% was in the UAE, where Dubai is striving to be the next Singapore of globalization. Overall, the next most-admired leaders were Chirac (8%), Ahmadinejad (4%), Chavez (3%) and Bin Laden (around 2%, it seems).
These figures tell me several things:
--Arabs don't put much faith in leadership. While Nasrallah is the highest-rated, his 14% isn't a resounding endorsement. Arabs are, perhaps understandably, disillusioned about leadership-- by the political ineffectiveness of their own leaders, by their inability to change those leaders and by the relative strength of leaders like Bush whose policies mainly embitter them. Arabs need to build more positive attitudes about leadership.
--Arabs nurse too much defeatism. Notice, as I'm sure you have, that the five top vote-getters vary dramatically from one another yet hold one thing in common: their pronounced opposition to American foreign policies. This has an unpleasant echo from the Nasser era about it, when the Arab masses rallied around a dictator who talked a big military game against the U.S. and Israel. If Arabs feel better when somebody like Nasrallah stands up to Israel, or Ahmadinejad when he defies America, great. But Arabs are never going to rise from their predicament if they don't start producing and following more leaders who are "for" and not just "against." Nasrallah wins kudos for having ended Israel's occupation of southern Lebanon in 2000. Yet why should he be a bigger hero after provoking Israel's destruction in Lebanon last summer than Lebanese prime minister Fouad Siniora, who has spent the last 20 or so years of his life trying to build Lebanon? Or than Sheikh Mohammed, the builder/dreamer of Dubai? Muslims have won the Nobel Peace Prize in three of the last four years, yet neither Shirin Ebadi, Mohammed ElBaradei nor Muhammad Yunus seemed to rate. When Arabs look beyond their region, why do they choose Chavez over, say, Georgia's Mikhail Saakashvili or Ukraine's Victor Yushchenko? Or Nelson Mandela or the Dalai Lama? Or even China's Hu Jintao? Or, for the sake of argument, Malaysia's Mahathir Mohamad.
--Arabs not only view the U.S. negatively, as I mentioned in the previous post, they feel under siege by the U.S. When asked which world leader they most disliked, 38% of respondents named Bush, five times the number who named Israel's prime minister (i.e., Olmert got only 7%). When asked to identify the two countries that posed the biggest threat to them, 85% named Israel, 72% U.S. and only 11% Iran. Only 14% named the U.S. as a country that has "the most freedom and democracy for their people." Only 9% would choose the U.S. if they had to live in a foreign country.
--by Scott MacLeod/Cairo
February 20, 2007 5:20
The American Embassy in Lebanon
US Ambassador Feltman with with Lebanese-American Evacuees Last Summer
I went up to the American embassy yesterday to add more pages to my passport, and absent-minded as I am, was surprised to find it closed for Washington's Birthday. Of course, it's appropriate that State Department facilities abroad honor our first president, but all these holidays make it hard to do work. The embassy also shuts down on major events related to Lebanon's Muslim and Christian sects, and there are a lot of them. If Lebanon had many Jews, the embassy would probably never open.
Still, I don't envy the members of the foreign service who are posted to Lebanon or begrudge them their days off. What should be a dream assignment -- arguably the most beautiful and most westernized Arab country in the Middle East -- must at times feel like a white-collar prison sentence thanks to the strict security measures that govern embassy operations. While the rest of us paint Beirut red, they live and work in glorified trailer park conditions in a heavily fortified hilltop compound in a sleepy Christian suburb north of the city, which they can't leave without advanced notice and armed bodyguards.
The reason for such precaution is Hizballah, the Lebanese Shia Muslim political party which until September 11 had killed more Americans than any other non-state actor. A suicide car bomber linked to a Hizballah faction blew up the old American embassy in West Beirut back in 1983. And though the organization has matured since then, and though many American journalists and aid workers and average citizens regularly visit Hizballah territory and meet with Hizballah members without incident, officials at the American embassy say that the Party of God is actively planning to do them harm, and would if they could.
But all that security must have an effect on the embassy's ability to promote American interests and formulate policy in Lebanon. Not only is the embassy legally barred from talking to Hizballah -- perhaps the most important player in Lebanese politics -- one wonders what other parts of society they can't easily reach while they are stuck in their Green Zone Lite. The net result is that American diplomats in Lebanon, as the most visible representatives of the US, bear the blame for policies that they have less and less of a role in developing (especially under this administration.)
This was clear when the American embassy began evacuating American citizens in last summer's war with Israel, and the American press was hounding US Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman about why the State Department tried to make evacuees sign a promissory note for the cost of transportation. While it did seem strange that the American government wanted to charge money for an evacuation from a country it was helping to bomb (the US was speed delivering smart munitions to Israel at the time) the mess was hardly Feltman's fault. All the shots were being phoned in from Washington.
Today when I returned to the embassy to take care of my paperwork, I found myself again feeling sympathetic towards the embassy staff. They have been busy of late with passport applications and consular services for all the Lebanese who have or want American citizenship and who are trying to get themselves out of the country during this time of political crisis. There are about 20,000 people in the country with American citizenship, many of whom have minimal connection to any of the 50 states, who may not own or rent property or pay taxes. One suspects that there are some who've never even been to America.
If I were Lebanese, I too would be doing anything possible to get my family out of here. But as I waited in line at American Citizen Serivices, the behavior of one family irked me, that of a father who was getting passports for his three teenage children but who hadn't renewed his own since 1993. The kids were being kids, smart-aleky and self-consciously cool, the son wearing blue jeans hanging past his ass and a big smirk. I wanted to tell him to pull up his pants and take this process a little more seriously. I thought for the moment of Iraq, and of all the Iraqis who'd worked for the American Army and the American government as translators or advisors or drivers and who now faced all manner of threats and violence but who have been still been denied asylum by our government. They deserve a US passport a thousand times more than this pip-squeak, and for that matter, a thousand times more than me.
--Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut
February 20, 2007 12:20
The Palestinian Solution: One State, or Two?
A provocative question: is the two-state solution dead? Is it now too late for Israelis and Palestinians to live in peace side by side in separate nations? I'm not just talking about the lack of much progress in Condi Rice's summit in Jerusalem today.
The question has an interesting history. The Arab-Jewish struggle for Palestine dates back around a century, to the Zionist project, the Balfour Declaration, Arab opposition and rioting, etc. Various commissions studied the conflict from the 1920s to the 1940s, culminating in U.N. Resolution 181 passed in 1947, which called for the partitioning of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. The current conflict flows out of the Arab rejection of 181 and the 1948 war that established Israel as an independent state and created hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees.
It actually wasn't so long ago that Golda Meir said there were no such thing as Palestinians, or that an overwhelming majority of Israelis and Palestinians alike opposed a two-state solution. It was only in 1988 that the PLO in effect recognized Israel and accepted twin states when Yasser Arafat endorsed 181. Even the Oslo Accords of 1993 failed to explicitly spell out plans for an independent Palestine, however. Only since the 2000 intifadeh have Israeli leaders spoken openly about their support for a Palestinian state. President Bush became the first U.S. president, in 2002, to explicitly call for an independent Palestine.
Condi Rice's talks represented a revival of discussions about a final settlement for the first time in six years. But it might be worth asking whether it is now too late, due to various developments:
--In 2000, regardless of the reasons and the blame for failure, the Israeli government and the PLO failed to agree to the terms of a two-state solution. The failure led to the outbreak of a new Palestinian uprising and the collapse of peace talks for six years.
--In 2005, the Palestinians ousted Arafat's Fatah party, which had negotiated for the two-state solution, and elected a parliament led by the fundamentalist Hamas, which favors a one-state outcome that dissolves Israel into an Arab state.
--On the Israeli side, again rightly or wrongly, it seems doubtful that any Israeli prime minister in the near future will agree to conditions allowing for a viable Palestinian state. While Olmert or his successor may speak about a state in theory, in practice they will require conditions--such as the incorporation of settlements, maintenance of security zones and control over Jerusalem--that Palestinians will see as blocking their sovereignty.
--There is now a timetable problem: as a top Arab diplomat put it to me recently, if Rice does not pull a rabbit out of her hat, it may be six years before another major diplomatic effort is made to resolve the dispute. That is assuming that American mediation is essential, and that the next U.S. president will take his/her time, as American presidents have usually done, before getting too embroiled in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. In six years, Palestinians may have tired of seeking a negotiated solution, even if Fatah is still around to argue for it. Ehud Olmert had this to say when he was deputy prime minister under Sharon: "We are approaching the point where more and more Palestinians will say: 'We have been won over. We agree with Liberman. There is no room for two states between the Jordan and the sea. All that we want is the right to vote.' The day they do that, is the day we lose everything. Even when they carry out terror, it is very difficult for us to persuade the world of the justice of our cause. We see this on a daily basis. All the more so when there is only one demand: an equal right to vote. The thought that the struggle against us will be headed by liberal Jewish organizations who shouldered the burden of the struggle against apartheid in South Africa scares me."
--The idea of reverting to a one-state solution has been broached inside Fatah circles going back to at least the first Gulf War. I recall sitting in a coffee shop in East Jerusalem with the late Faisal Husseini, whose father Abdul Khader had died leading Palestinians in the 1948 war. He mentioned to me that the PLO may have made a mistake waging an armed struggle for the "liberation" of all of Palestine. He said they may have done much better after Israel captured the West Bank in 1967 by simply agitating for the right to be Israeli citizens and vote in Israel. In time, he explained, Arabs would be in the majority and Israel would cease to exist. Mandela had just been freed in South Africa and I think Mandela's one-state approach was attracting Husseini's attention.
--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo
February 18, 2007 4:40
What Arabs Think
Some Sunday afternoon reading:
The latest poll of Arab public opinion, by Zogby International and the University of Maryland's Shibley Telhami, which covers a good range of political and social issues and is based on surveys last November in six Arab countries, is out and worth some study.
Negative views of the U.S. are still prevalent, perhaps not surprisingly: 78% said they had "very unfavorable" or "somewhat unfavorable" attitudes. Shifts in attitudes may be related to proximity to Iraq and Palestine. In Jordan, where the king is among the most pro-American of Arab leaders, his population's unfavorable rating of the U.S. is up to 90%. In Egypt it's 73% and in the United Arab Emirates it has fallen to a relative "low" of 61% (compared to 85% on the eve of the U.S.-led war in Iraq).
In a nutshell:
Egypt: favorable 13% unfavorable 73%
Jordan: favorable 5% unfavorable 90%
Lebanon: favorable 31% unfavorable 64%
Saudi Arabia: favorable 11% unfavorable 82%
UAE: favorable 35% unfavorable 61%
Among the most interesting figures, however, is that 45% said that being a Muslim was the most important part of their identity--more than the number who referred to their Arab or national identities. That's nearly double from the 2002 poll result. At www.abuaardvark.com, Marc Lynch goes so far as to say that this suggests that Al Qaeda "is succeeding at the level of spreading its basic worldview...highlighting the Islamic aspect of identity and placing that identity in confrontation with the West." That conclusion is even more sobering if you read Larry Wright's analysis on the current state of Al Qaeda, also available on Lynch's site: Bush's war in Iraq handed Al Qaeda a tremendous propaganda victory, brought it back to life after the fall of the Taliban and helped make it "stronger now than at any time since 9/11." In Wright's view--and he's written the best 9/11 book, The Looming Tower--"the prospects for long-term conflict with the U.S. and Europe are almost certain."
--by Scott MacLeod/Cairo
February 18, 2007 12:53
Loving Life in Lebanon
Political advertising in Lebanon has reached fever pitch. I've blogged before about dueling billboard campaigns. A supposedly neutral group started the silliness when it plastered the country in "I Love Life" logos to promote peace and national unity. But the Hizballah-led opposition correctly interpreted this as a critique of it's culture of martyrdom of and armed resistance to Israel. So the opposition responded with it's own knock-offs of the "I Love Life" campaign.
Just when you thought that these cliches had been rendered meaningless to the point of absurd, the original "I Love Life" people have been adding more slogans to their billboards. They include "I'm going to work. I Love Life" and "I'm going to a party. I Love Life" and "I've got a class. I Love Life." The idea is to encourage people to carry on with ordinary life in the face of intimidation from opposition blockades and strikes.
Which seems fair enough, except that the "I Love Life" people continue to be dishonest and claim that they are a politically neutral group, when in fact, they are part of the political problem. If you have any doubt that the "I Love Life" campaign is in bed with the government and its Sunni, Saudi, and American backers, just ask yourself, who in Lebanon has the money to support a massive ad campaign that's gone on for almost three months? The billboards practically smell like oil wells.
So in the spirt of too much honesty, here's a top-ten list of slogans you will never see in a Lebanese political ad campaign:
"My daughter wants me to pay for her nose job. I Love Life."
"Some of my best friends are _________ (Fill in in the blank: Shia/Sunni/Christian/Jewish). I Love Life."
"I've slept with ten of my college classmates and four Russian prostitutes, but I'll only marry a virgin. I Love Life."
"All my friends are out of work or have moved to Dubai. I Love Life."
"I'm staying here. But I'm applying for Australian citizenship just in case. I Love Life."
"I'm staying here. And so is my Sri Lankan housemaid, because I'm holding on to her passport. I Love Life."
"I'm embarrassed to be an Arab, so I say I'm Phoenician, even though that civilization ended over 2,000 years ago. I Love Life."
"My husband has three other wives. Younger wives. I Love Life."
"My family has lived in Lebanon for almost 60 years but we still don't have citizenship because we're Palestinian. I Love Life."
"Foreigners keep screwing up our country, but we keep taking their money. I Love Life."
--Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut
February 16, 2007 8:59
The Cost of War
So here's a productive argument: On Thursday, Hizballah officials claimed that the Lebanese government is overestimating the cost of damage caused by last summer's war with Israel.
The government has estimated the Jewish state bombed Lebanon $2.8 billion into the red. Hizballah said the war cost a mere $1.5 billion. It accused the government of purposely exaggerating the costs of the war in order to embarrass the Islamic resistance group.
Perhaps that's true. I'm actually inclined to believe that Hizballah's corps of engineers and accountants have kept better track of the task at hand than the government.
But, excuse me, before the penny-pinchers at the Party of God start pointing fingers, don't they have some explaining to do? Like why the country get sucked into a war with the region's most advanced military-state in the first place?
If Hizballah apologizes for unilaterally kidnapping those Israeli solders -- the covert operation that started the war -- then they might sound more credible when quibbling about the price tag. And if the damage was over a billion less than the government claimed, Hizballah should have no problem paying the country back, right?
--Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut
February 16, 2007 7:23
Dennis Ross's Mythology (4)
Dennis Ross, the former U.S. peace negotiator, has some advice for Condi Rice's landmark talks next week with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert: don't worry too much about a final deal, concentrate on a cease-fire. While Ross's Washington Post Op-Ed Thursday sounds perfectly reasonable, it shows the anti-Palestinian bias that contributed to his own notable lack of success.
After six years of American lip service to peace during the Bush administration, Rice deserves credit for bringing Abbas and Olmert together for exploratory talks on what she calls the political horizon--the core issues like Jerusalem, Israeli settlements, Palestinian refugees and acceptable borders that stand in the way of a final deal. Pity that Rice wasn't dealt the royal flush that Ross picked up when the Israelis and Palestinians secretly negotiated the Oslo Accords with the help of a Norwegian mediator. That interim agreement was signed at the White House in 1993, and it was left to Ross to negotiate its implementation. Instead of working the parties through to a comprehensive agreement that established a Palestinian state at peace with Israel, Ross's efforts crashed and burned in his final months as peace negotiator.
As Rice picks up where Ross left off, he warns her that "in Middle Eastern terms," it is not logical or possible these days to push for anything more than an end to Palestinian infighting and calm between Israelis and Palestinians. Driving for a final deal that involves major Palestinian concessions to Israel, he explains, will surely "threaten intra-Palestinian peace." Ross wants Rice to focus instead on a cease-fire, which Hamas as a partner in the Palestinian government would be sworn to enforce despite its commitment to wage an armed struggle until Israel is eliminated.
Ross's real game here is not to negotiate peace but use American diplomacy against the tremendous political gains of Hamas, the fundamentalist, death-to-Israel party, which, incidentally, has soared in popularity since the collapse of the Ross-brokered peace negotiations in 2000. What Ross seems really worried about is last week's Mecca agreement on a national unity government between Hamas and Abbas's Fatah group. That pact may produce a more united, harder Palestinian line for future negotiations, which will make it more difficult for Israel to win the concessions it seeks from the Palestinians. As Ross puts it, "For the Israelis, an intra-Palestinian peace that entails accommodating Hamas (and that does not require Hamas to change its hostile posture toward Israel) is hardly a basis for reaching out to Palestinians..."
Ross doesn't explain how Rice ever gets from his envisioned cease-fire to her serious negotiations on the core issues of the conflict. But he has some additional advice in that regard. Ross says that talks on core issues should be "designed to pursue the vision that Olmert originally campaigned on"--no matter that that vision, though proposing a substantial withdrawal, is vague in its terms and unilateral in its approach. Ross tells Rice that she will need to get Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan "to publicly embrace basic trade-offs" because "Olmert must show that the Arab world has adopted unprecedented compromises."
As in his career as a mediator, Ross the Op-Ed writer shows comparatively little interest in the Arab side of the equation. It is noteworthy, for example, that Ross expects negotiations to be based not merely on Israel's vision but on that of a prime minister whose miscalculations--notably Olmert's disastrous war in Lebanon that ended with Hizballah's "divine victory"--as well as his legal problems have raised questions of how long he'll even be around to lead the country let alone a negotiating team. In contrast, Ross makes no mention of the 2002 initiative by 22 Arab governments, derived from U.N. Resolutions 242 and 338, that calls for a full comprehensive peace with Israel in exchange for Israel's withdrawal from Arab territories. In his Op-Ed, Ross expresses no concern for what Palestinian and Arab leaders "must show" their constituencies by way of Israeli "unprecedented compromises"--like a freeze on illegal Israeli settlements.
Rice will have no easy time bringing peace to the Holy Land. The Palestinian unity government may not work out; Olmert may refuse to negotiate with it. It would be vastly preferable if Hamas would just recognize Israel, renounce violence and get on with it. In or out of elected office, Hamas can be expected to oppose any final deal that Abbas eventually manages to reach. Abbas can make it stick if it is supported by the Palestinian people, the Israeli government, all Arab governments and the international community. It's sure a long shot to get there, but that's the hand that Rice was dealt.
Yet at this critical juncture, Ross advises against tackling the core issues, preferring that Rice trade the prestige of her office for a cease-fire that can be broken at any time by an Tehran-backed splinter faction, or a trigger-happy gunman. If she did that, nobody in the region would take her efforts very seriously. As Ross might recall from his own bitter experiences, cease-fires eventually break down in the absence of a political agreement or at least meaningful progress on the basic issues. Ross's idea for focusing on a cease-fire is a way of putting the onus in Rice's peace process all on the Palestinians-- and making Hamas the easy culprit if anything goes wrong.
Why would an experienced ex-negotiator suggest setting up the Palestinians to fail? Recall Ross's simple explanation for his own lack of success in brokering Israeli-Palestinian peace: "Yasser Arafat."
--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo
February 15, 2007 10:58
Talking to Tehran
The big question everyone's been asking is, Is Bush going to war with Iran? This week, the President said that new U.S. allegations about Iranian meddling in Iraq were not meant as "a pretext for war." Bush's new defense secretary Robert Gates said two weeks ago that the Pentagon, despite sending two aircraft carriers to the Gulf, is not planning an attack on the Islamic Republic.
To my mind, the more urgent question is, Why isn't Bush talking to Iran? Let's remember up front that this is a mainstream concept, clearly so since December, when the report of the Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan panel of former cabinet secretaries, congressmen, an ex-Supreme Court justice and other distinguished Americans, recommended to Bush that the U.S. "should engage