Across the Jordan

America

2008-03-09T02:00:00.003+02:00

I can’t even begin to pretend that I’m going to write here regularly, but I actually have time to kill for once so I figure what the hell.

I’m back in the US for a week to so to attend a conference. After a marathon trip of roughly 35 hours, I arrived in Davis, California. Davis is a quintessential American small town. Having lived in Jordan for more than 4 years 7 months and 15 days (but who’s counting) some things about small town America really stand out.

There is grass everywhere. It is green. It is long and it is short, but it is everywhere. You can walk on it and not feel guilty that you might kill it. It is a weed that you can’t kill even if you want to.
There is more color.
You hear song birds everywhere.
Streets have lines on them, and people driving cars pay attention to them.
Streets have lines on them, and people walking pay attention to them.
There are designated “bike” lanes, and all people pay attention to them.
People cross roads at designated “crossing” areas.
People don’t walk on the road, they walk on sidewalks.
Cars wait for people to cross the road. This sometimes leads to total paralyzation of all movement at an intersection, especially when drivers encounter people who are used to darting across the road at any random place, comfortable that 5 inches between the human body and a moving car is room to spare.
I think someone yelled at me for crossing an intersection when the light was red and the “do not walk” sign was flashing.
People wear shorts. Girls wear shorts more often. Girls wear low cut shirts that show large amounts of cleavage. People living here don’t seem to notice this. People who’ve spent a lot of time in countries where most women don’t even show their hair do.
People are generally fatter.
People are so polite I want to kill them.
You can drink the tap water.
There are many bookstores, with an enormous variety of books.
It looks like every other little town across America, with most of the same exact stores. It could be the small town on the east coast I grew up in over 3500 miles away.
Nobody smokes. The only person other than me that I’ve seen smoking was a homeless guy sitting on the sidewalk outside the liquor store. I’m not joking.

Independence from Mecca

2007-11-02T21:03:00.000+02:00

Since my last post I've changed jobs and in some ways it feels I've changed lives. Although I'm now heading a single program team that is twice the size of the entire office I used to work in, I'm out in the field a lot more and have a lot more direct contact with local communities. It's very cool.

A lot of our work is in East Amman, which is basically seen as "the other half" of Amman. I've lived in Jordan for more than four years now. I've driven through East Amman a lot, to get a better feel for the entirety of the city, but now I have real contact with this less developed part of the city.

One of the things I've recently found is the new Istiklal, or "Independence" Mall in Nuzha. Malls in Jordan are a relatively new phenomenon. There are only a couple of real malls there, and they are all in the richer West Amman. They cater more to Gulf Arabs who come to Jordan in the summer for relief from the unbelievably oppressive heat of the summer. These malls are full of designer stores with prices that almost no one in the country can possibly afford. They are also some of the few public spaces in Amman where you can go and walk around and sit and do some real people watching. Some people may make their lives there, but for a lot of people from East Amman it is a special occaision to take the family out. During holiday seasons the malls will often not even let in young single men, out of concern that they will harrass the legions of young upper class single women making their weekly shopping pilgrimage.

The Istiklal mall, in poorer East Amman, is different. It has stores where regular people might actually be able to buy things. It looks a lot more like an average American mall than any of the other high class malls of Amman. You don't feel like you should dress up in your best clothes and take a shower to go there. It's just a place to go and shop. It is suprisingly normal for fasion and image-conscious Amman. It still looks incredibly out of place in the run-down neighborhood of Nuzha, but it's a real step towards addressing a market that is hardly ever recognized in Jordan.

On some levels I hate the idea of malls. They totally destroy the small mom-and-pop stores that are often the bedrock of emerging middle classes. But it's a real pain to go to 15 different stores to try and find something decent to wear. A mall let's you scan a few isles, catch a big variety os styles, colors and prices, and do some seriously stratregic shopping. Most of my clothes come from downtown, Jabal Husssein, or the US when i manage to visit there. I definately can't afford to shop at Mecca Mall or Abdoun Mall. I'll still go there for Prime Mega Store, with excellent books and music, but for actual shopping, I think it's going to be Istiklal.

Building Walls

2007-04-24T07:42:00.000+03:00

In conflict resolution work you often hear of societal connectors and dividers.

Connectors are relationships, institutions, networks and other things that allow or promote interaction between different groups. These might be national unions, sports clubs, mixed neighborhoods, and anything else that lets people connect.

Dividers are things that do the opposite. They might be ethnically or racially seperated institutions, like clubs or schools, structural issues as political access and marginalization, or divided neighborhoods, for example.

In peace work you try to strengthen and expand the connectors, and reduce or eliminate the dividers. Walls are, without exception, dividers.

During the Irish civil war, especially during the time of "The Troubles", youth from the Catholic and Protestant communities of Belfast would often riot against each other. Someone had the brilliant idea of building "peace walls" to seperate the communities, and stop the youth from provoking each other or attacking the other community. The walls failed to stop the violence, and only deepened the animosity and isolation of these two communities from each other.

A few years ago Israel applied the same logic the the Occupied Territories, building a "security wall", ostensibly to stop suicide bombers, but much more for the purposes of defining the acceptable borders of Israel. The result has been ever greater isolation of Palestinians and Israelis, with some Palestinian villages and towns completely surrounded by a 14 meter high wall of concrete.

Now the US, in its wisdom, is applying the wall logic in Iraq, surrounding the Sunni majority district of al-Adhamiya in Bagdad with a large concrete wall, for "the protection" of the residents of this city. As Reuters reports, "Many residents in Adhamiya, a Sunni Arab area surrounded on three sides by Shi'ite communities, had complained bitterly that the concrete barriers of the 5-km (3-mile) wall would isolate them from other communities and sharpen sectarian tensions."

Despite the vicious sectarian killing that's going on in Iraq, Iraqis, by-and-large, still see themselves and act like a mixed society. In Baghdad some Shia and Sunni families are even "swapping" houses as various neighborhoods are cleansed by militias and militants. The residents of al-Adhamiya rightly refused to be penned in with concrete, and many Shia joined them in denouncing the wall. Now the Maliki government has ordered construction of the wall halted, leading some Sunni residents of al-Adhamiya to rethink their belief that Maliki and his government are intent on oppressing them, as the New York Times reports.

This is a good sign that the connectors in Iraq still outweigh the dividers, and most Iraqis don't want any more dividers. Unfortunately the US doesn't necessarily agree. Aljazeera reports that, "the new U.S. ambassador to Baghdad defended the thinking behind the Adhamiya wall.
Ryan Crocker said the U.S. would "obviously... respect the wishes of the government and the prime minister" regarding the Adhamiya wall, but added that building the barrier made "sound security sense".

US officials have stopped short of saying that construction of the wall will be permanently halted, and there are another 10 communities in Baghad that are slated to also become, "gated communties."

Which way you gonna go?

2007-03-20T08:28:00.000+02:00

The Middle East, and maybe the world, suffers from a kind of schizophrenia. This picture below epitomizes two major visions driving people in the region.

On the left side you have icons of modern Arab pop culture, such as Amr Diab, Tamer Hosny and Nancy Ajram. On the right you have Nasrallah and the symbols of Hizbollah. The thing is that these symbols and icons are often not contradictory, in that people frequently incorporate both into their beliefs and identity.

In many ways these icons are polar opposites. The pop music and video industry trades in images of a life most people can never live, of fast cars, big houses, sexy women and stylish men. The videos and stars are often accused of corrupting the minds of the society, much like the Christian right in the US says. The Nasrallah and Hizbollah images trade in the culture of resistance, pride and violence. It probably respresents a reality that people here experience much more directly, because even those who don't live under occupation, feel profoundly and directly affected by it. Christians in Lebanon will praise Nasrallah. Secular Sunni women in Syria will have Hizbollah key chains clipped on their purses.

It is much like the modern form of hijab, or the head scarf, that predominates much of the Middle East. So many girls who cover their heads, then also wear as much make-up as Tammy Fae Baker with pants, shirts or skirts as tight as you could imagine. They are doing the absolute minimum society expects of "good girls", while wearing as little or as tight as they can get away with. They want to live and look like Nancy Ajram, but still be respected by Nasrallah.

A day in Syria

2007-03-17T15:25:00.000+02:00

There is no doubt that Syria is still a police state. Joshua Landis has a good post today on how the government treats Kurds in Syria, and you can find numerous reports of other ways the government abuses the human rights of its citizens. But be that as it may, there are forces inside the government who are trying to find ways to allow more room for its citizens to organize and open up more to the outside world. It was never Saddam Hussein's Iraq, and nor is it Hafez al-Asad's Syria.

I won't belabor the rights issue here, not because it isn't important, but because others have done so much more effectively. I'm just going to talk about what I saw while I was there. So again, yes it is a police state, and yes there is torture, and yes they host and support groups like Hamas, Hizbollah and Islamic Jihad. But the country is much more diverse than the simple stereotypes most people already know from the news, and Syrians themselves deserve a much better exposition of what their country is really like.

Syria is in many ways much like any other country. It has regular people who are just trying to make a living and raise a family. Although the political opening that many Syrians hoped for when Bashar Asad took power from his father never materialized, there has been more promising developments on the economic front. The economic liberalization has largely benefited a few elite families, there is no doubt that others are doing better too, as evidenced by the large number of designer stores, sharp restaurants and the gleaming new Four Seasons hotel.

There is no end to the historical and cultural places you can visit, and just wandering the streets of Old Damascus, Baramka, Abu Rummaneh, Sha'lan and al-Maliki is pleasent enough in itself. Here's a video of a busy corner in Abu Rummaneh to give you a sense of the place. I hope to figure out how to embed these videos soon, but until then you'll have to just follow the link if you want to watch.

Some of the more interesting things I stumbled upon was a institute for teaching arts at the Ministry of Culture. The ministry building is actually really nice, done in a somewhat artistic style! I saw a couple people wandering around inside, so I walked in and started looking at the architecture. I heard bits and pieces of piano music coming from one of the window, and as I got closer started to hear voices. It seemed like there were a lot of people inside so I figured I’d go see if anything was happening.

Sure enough, when I got to the entrance the place was full of people. I tried to ask the guard what was going on, but he assumed I was talking something other than Arabic, so he asked a guy standing there to find out what I wanted. The guy started speaking in somewhat broken English, and then baby Arabic. I was like, just speak normally, but he clearly wanted to practice his English so I entertained him for a while.

Anyway, turns out this was some kind of advanced arts institute, and the fourth year students were giving the final performance of the year, a play by a Russian playwrite called the Qirmizi Island? The guy's name was too long to remember. Anyway, a couple of the second and third year students befriended me and so I joined them to watch their friends perform. The play was decent, about a theatre troupe trying to put on a play in the Soviet Union, and the fear and power of the censor at the Ministry of Oversight, or something. It was pretty good and I saw it as in part a veiled critique of the Syrian government itself, which was suprising to me.

That's all I've got time for today. I'll send some other updates as soon as I can.

Coming to Syria

2007-03-12T14:38:00.000+02:00

Syria has changed in the past 15 years. Last time I was here was 1993, and there is a noticeable difference, at least on a superficial level. As I’m here for only a few days, and most of that will be work related, my impressions will have to be superficial, but you can really feel a difference here.

The change is most apparent at the border. When I used to come the customs people were rough, rude and generally unhelpful. They fit perfectly the stereotype of what you would expect from employees of a police state. This time people smiled, joked and talked. In some offices they have music videos playing, with Nancy Ajram, Haifa, and Elisa singing and shaking as you change money or buy the ever present stamps that let you do whatever official business you have to do. No wonder these customs guys are happier.

What is with the magical stamp business in Arab countries anyway? For any official document you want processed you have to go to a little kiosk to buy stamps. Stamps are the oil on which Arab bureaucracy seems to run. Anyway it couldn’t have taken more than 20 minutes to get through the border this time, whereas in the past it seemed to take hours.

Both the Jordanian and Syrian side of the border now also have beautiful duty free shops! I don’t even think there was a duty free store in Syria before. Maybe there was, but it was so insignificant that I forgot it completely. But now it is like a huge department store, with the latest tvs, phones, appliances, designer clothes and watches. It seems that consumer society has crept into the Syrian state too. This seems to hold true somewhat for Damascus too. I think all they used to have is old Soviet-bloc style consumer goods and stores. It seems there’s a lot more variety and better quality cars and goods in Syria these days. Bashar’s economic reforms seem to be having at least some effect.

Another thing I quickly noticed is that the omnipresent pictures of Hafez al-Asad, Syria’s former president, have for the most part not been replaced by pictures of the current president, Bashar. Arab states are also known for displaying pictures of the leader in every office official building. Syria used to take this practice to an extreme. The man’s pictures were everywhere. It was oppressive. I swear. You really felt you were in a “big brother” type police state when you entered. The leader was everywhere, glowering down at you, watching you, even knowing what you thought. Bashar’s pictures are there, as are some of Hafez’s. But it’s nothing compared to how Hafez was EVERYWHERE. Bashar is there now too, but not even as much as King Abdullah's picture is in Jordan. Bashar clearly is trying to downplay the leader-worship thing.

In the center of the city another thing you quickly notice is the enormous Four Season’s hotel. Syria used to have a couple of nice hotels, but they were run like a Soviet bureaucracy too. The facilities were less then impressive and the staff also rude and unhelpful. Not that I’m staying at the Four Seasons! My employer doesn’t pay for that kind of spoiling. The neighboring streets also seem to have changed. There are numerous little stylish restaurants and cafes to go to, filled with legions of sharp and well-dressed youth of Syria’s middle class. I'm sitting in a pretty cool little cafe, with Green Day playing while I work on wireless internet. I don’t remember there being many such places before.

So again, these changes may be pretty superficial, and part of it may be because I’ve changed. When I came here before I was a student, and would go stay in flea-bag hotels and visit the historic sites I had read about during my studies. I’ve done the five-dollar a night transient worker hotel thing and I’m just not there anymore. I like to have clean sheets and don’t want to get dysentery from eating from street carts anymore. It’s really not so much fun.

But I think it’s more that some things have changed in Syria. For sure some things have not changed, and I’ll post more about that later. But at least on some levels it seems more open and modern then when I last came, and felt the ever present eyes of the state watching me. I don't doubt they're still there watching, but they take breaks to watch Haifa every once in a while.

comments!

2007-03-07T17:47:00.001+02:00

Ha ha!! I looked at my old posts and saw I had all kinds of comments I never read. I thought, "wow, people started looking at my posts, I've got fans I didn't respond to!" Turns out most of them are spam advertisements.

That never seemed to happen before, so I have to wonder if it's because I've written some posts that are mildly critical of the US and Israel. Such harrasment by their most ardent supporters comes with the territory, which is why I'm suspicious. It's no fun dealing with Middle East political issues sometimes. You feel like you have to watch every word you say for how it will be parsed by some asshole who happens to be offended and then used against you to destroy your reputation and job prospects at some future date. And then there's the routine harrasment of hate mail. They try to chase critics from the feild so they can monopolize the discussion.

So I've now restricted comments to only registered members until I can figure out how to moderate comments.

I'm back

2007-03-07T17:29:00.000+02:00

For some reason I'm reinspired to start writing again. Maybe it's because I no longer have a car 24/7. It's amazing how much difference walking around a city can make. I used to basically drive my car to work in the morning, sit at my desk almost all day and drive home. That doesn't leave a hell of a lot to write about.

It's kind of good to be out of the car, it somehow puts me more into the flow of life around me. I talk to a lot more people and notice a lot more things happening around the city. Just the other day I rode in a taxi with a guy who was reading and memorizing Quran as he drove! We got into an interesting conversation about religion, with him trying to convince me to be a more committed Muslim and me trying to convince him to get his head out of the clouds and lighten up. I haven't had one of these conversations in a long time. I got tired of them a long time ago and generally have tried to avoid them as often as possible. But this guy was interesting, and at least I could see him thinking about what I said, which is more than most of these kinds of guys do.

He was a total stereotype of a modern "Islamist". Up until 5 years ago he didn't even pray. Now he reads Quran as he drives, prays every prayer in the mosque and spends the first three hours of the day memorizing Quran in the mosque. I guess that's admirable on some level, but I know the type. They're looking for answers, they get cornored by these religious fundamentalist types who give them all the answers they're looking for and draw people into a brainless cult-like group of people who do nothing but think about religion all day. He should spend that three hours a day with his kids instead. When we were arguing about the difference between "people of the book", basically Christians and Jews, and "deniers" or kuffar, he called his friend to help him remember why people of the book are considered kuffar. I told him he shouldn't rely on his friends for answers but use his brain instead. That didn't go over so well.

Anyway, it's been about six months since I've posted anything here. There's lots of reasons for that, not least of which is I just got way too busy. Another is that I didn't really like my own blog. It was too dry and there is better analysis on the web anyway, so why would anyone want to read it. So now I'm just going to write about what I see around me more, without trying to think to much about it, because oftentimes thinking is just way over rated.

Israel: war of the generals

2006-09-01T12:44:00.000+03:00

Signs of a "war of the generals" are appearing in Israel, according to the Jordanian daily al-Ghad.

Reporting from news agencies, al-Ghad reports that generals in Israel's army reserves are leading a campaign to pressure the Israeli chief of staff Dan Halutz to acknowledge that the attack on Lebanon was a failure and calling for his resignation. Israel's Defense Minister Amir Peretz has already admited that the attack was a failure, but blamed it on his predecessor Shoal Mofaz! These efforts will increase in the coming week after a meeting of the generals to look at the running of the attack, including military planning, reports al-Ghad.

I find this unfortunate in one way. The failure wasn't that the generals or politicians planned poorly, or that the reserves were unprepared. The failure was thinking that you can defeat a broadbased and popular armed social movement through overwhelming and merciless military force. This mistaken assumption is one that is widely shared in Israeli and even American society. What the reserve generals are doing, which is supported by much of the Israeli public, is finding a convenient scapegoat for the failure in understanding the nature of the conflict Israel finds itself in.

This fact is found in the second half of the al-Ghad article, in which Jan Egeland, a UN official warns of Gaza being a ticking time bomb. As Egeland states, "You can't close an area in which 1.4 million people live, 800,000 of them youth, and drop hundreds of bombs on them daily."
Egeland and many others expect a massive "social explosion", noting the degree of instability and stress in perhaps the world's largest prison.

The most important result of failure is to learn the proper lessons from it. Isrealis apparently have not managed to do that. They can find all the excuses they want for their failure, or all the simplistic arguements about how they won. But until they recognize that peace will only come through negotiations and compromise with it's neighbors, as much as Israelis detest them, they will continue to wrack up military, moral and political failures.

And if Israelis don't learn this lesson soon, and change course, it may possibly lead them to their biggest failure of all, that of the entire Zionist project of creating a Jewish state in Palestine.

Promoting conflict through unilateral withdrawals

2006-08-29T16:06:00.000+03:00

Where to begin? War always accelerates change. Too much happening in the region and at work.

One thing you can generally count on is for the Washington Post editorials to take a decidely more conservative bent then the paper's actual coverage. I find a lot of the Post's coverage to be pretty decent, but the editorials leave a lot to be desired.

Like today's. While the general premise might be right, that now is not the time for grandiose actions in the name of peace, the following assessment couldn't be more wrong. The Post editorial board writes:

The war has probably killed the only promising prospect of a step toward Israeli-Palestinian peace, which was Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's plan to unilaterally withdraw Israeli settlements and troops from most of the West Bank.

Not only is this statement patently false (the Israeli plan does not call for a withdrawal from "most" of the West Bank), it is horribly unwise. Unilateral withdrawals are a disasterous idea, and are a major factor in the continuation of violence, not a prelude to the outbreak of peace. Israel thinks it can just divorce itself of those aspects of lands it occupies without a political settlement. That is the worst way to try to solve a problem. Have they and the Post's editors learned nothing from Lebanon and Gaza?

Israel's planned unilateral withdrawal from the West Bank was going to take the vast majority of the land of the West Bank, either for preexisting settlements or as security zones, would retain the security barriers, check points and bypass roads that criss-cross the remaining areas left for Palestinians, and would do NOTHING to solve any of the political issues at the heart of the conflict. In short, it is gauranteed to ensure that the conflict continues, if not escalates.

The Israeli withdrawal plan basically calls for the creation of three more Gaza Strip-like enclaves in the West Bank. It is nothing even close to a state much less even autonomous zones.

Israel will not have peace or security so long as it thinks it can rely on military force alone as a means to solve its differences with either its Palestinian or other neighbors. It can not force what it thinks is an acceptable settlement on it's neighbors, declare peace and then hunker down behind it's walls and military forces. Lebanon has proven that. There must be a mutally agreed upon political settlement for their to be peace.

Such a settlement is very possible, but Israel refuses to agree to it. It is present in the Arab Peace Plan of 2002, in which all states of the Arab League agree to full recognition of Israel, establishment of full diplomatic relations and other normal relations between states on the basis of a Palestinian state being founded in all the lands of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, minus minor modifications to accomodate Israel's vast settlements in these lands.

Both the PLO and Hamas have agreed to this, albeit for Hamas it has said it will abide by such an arrangement, and recognize Israel as part of a complete settlement of the issues. Even Iran has now said they will agree to this plan. So why doesn't Israel take them up on it, if it wants true and lasting peace? Because the Israeli public and Israeli politicians do not agree to giving up most of the West Bank for a Palestinian state. Yet that is the only way they will have peace, short of the creation of a binational state, which Israelis will definately never accept.

The Post also repeats the mantra about Hamas not recognizing Israel. Again, when has Israel really recognized the right of the Palestinians to establish a state. What Israel is recognizing is the right of Palestinians to live in their isolated ghettos within "Judea and Samaria", surrounded by Israeli walls, soliders, security zones and settlements. That is not recognition of the right to a state. That is admission that Israel will not accept a Palestinian state.

There's more to criticize the the Post editorial but I've said enough already.

Israel's insecurity wall

2006-08-26T07:18:00.000+03:00

I haven't posted much recently because of a lot of travel and now plannning for 4 events we are holding in the beginning of September. In the meantime here is an excellent article on the seperation wall Israel is building in Palestine.

Look at the picture below and any arguements in favor of the wall are exposed as fronts for the real purpose-- taking as much land as possible and isolating Palestinian population centers from that land.

Notice how close the wall comes to the Palestinian homes, and actually cuts off the homes from the small patch of trees? See how open the land is just a few dozen meters away? If the wall is strictly for security, as Israeli policy makers publically claim, why couldn't it be built on the vast empty space, instead of as close as possible to the Palestinian homes? Why did it have to take this meager agricultural land from the town or village?

What is not yet apparent from the picture is the "security zone" that buffers the wall. Take a few more meters from the right side of the wall (as shown in the picture), and you'll see that the land taken will actually extend almost to the walls of some of the houses.

This is supposed to bring Israel security? I don't think so.

Hizbollah: Losing the peace?

2006-08-16T15:54:00.000+03:00

Will Hizbollah win the war in Lebanon only to then loose the peace?

It is a question that more Lebanese are asking themselves these days, as Hizbollah strikes out to capitalize on its successful stand against the Israeli army, and plough it's efforts into reconstruction of the south.

That on it's own is not what is troubling some Lebanese. It is instead the independant and sectarian nature of this effort that troubles them.

Hizbollah's leadership are not stupid in one regard at least. They have cultivated good relations with many of their Christian neighbors in the south. Many Lebanese in the south give at least nominal support to Hizbollah because of its role in forcing an Israeli withdrawal in 2000. Sunnis, Christians, Shia, secular and religious all suffered from the long Israeli occupation and credit Hizbollah for ending it. All Lebanese can and many non-Shia do sometimes benefit from the social and other services Hizbollah provides.

But now Hizbollah is talking about rebuilding southern Lebanon on it's own, and that it doesn't want help from the Lebanese government. Hizbollah is talking about it's victory, it's fighters and it's sacrifices, leaving many Lebanese to wonder what it is they were doing during the 33 months of bombing the Hizbollah cross-border attack instigated.

Hizbollah will probably be more efficient in reconstruction efforts than the national government. The national government has largely shown that it is anything if not inept, failing miserably to respond to the humanitarian disaster brought on the war with any semblence of order or effectiveness. But what troubles Lebanese is the increasingly sectarian nature of how Hizbollah and it's supporters view this war and it's aftermath.

There is a real fear that Hizbollah will use the post-war reconstruction, with funds Iran is already supplying for this purpose, to solidify both its hold on the Shia population and independence from Lebanon. Instead of speaking and acting as if the victory over Israel was a Lebense victory, they are talking about it as only a Hizbollah victory.

All Lebanese have suffered and will suffer as a result of this war, one for which there was no national consensus. If Hizbollah does not soon reconcile its own over abundance of hubris and seek to speak and act in terms inclusive to all Lebanese, it will signal yet one more step towards the renewal of serious and deep sectarian conflict. God forbid, but it may even contribute at some point to an outbreak of yet another civil war.

The non-cease fire

2006-08-13T21:18:00.000+03:00

The cease fire in Lebanon is clearly dead on arrival.

The US-French brokered UN Security Council Resolution 1701 has been accepted by everyone, and will be honored by no one.

Among the unacceptable aspects of the ceasefire are:

It calls for Hizbollah to be disarmed. No one can disarm Hizbollah but Hizbollah, and they will not give up their weapons, especially after this war.

It allows Israel to keep it's troops in Lebanon for an undetermined amount of time. What kind of cease fire is it if Israel is continuing to pour troops into Lebanon and is dropping commandos into the country?

It does nothing to settle the issue of Sheba farms, which is the pretext Hizbollah has used to keep its weapons in the first place.

It says nothing about an exchange of prisoners, which is one of the main reasons the war started in the first place.

These are certain signs that the fighting will continue well beyond the Monday deadline for a ceasefire.

Forget all the talk about the ceasefire. You can expect this war to continue, probably without much pause at all, for some time yet.

Deliberalizing Egypt

2006-08-08T16:25:00.000+03:00

This is something I wrote back in June but forgot to post. It's about America's role in retarding the growth of secular democracy in the Middle East, primarily in Egypt.

Deliberalizing Egypt

During the 2005 presidential election, 20 year incumbent Hosny Mubarak won by a landslide. This could be interpreted as, given the chance to freely elect their president, a general consensus of Egyptians favor stability and continuity during these uncertain times.

The problem is this was neither a free election nor was there consensus. Only about 20% of those eligible to vote actually turned out on Election Day, and the opposition consisted of little more than a couple of hog-tied competitors. The degree of apathy in regard to the first presidential election in Egypt shows how far the country still has to come to have a serious and active political life.

There is, however, a lot more discussion about politics these days. The run-up to the election saw unprecedented public political activity in Egypt. There was a vocal opposition, demonstrators regularly filled the streets, and many felt a new freedom to openly air their views on both the ruling National Democratic Party and President Mubarak. Neither of the two faired particularly well. So why didn't these parties do better in either the presidential or parliamentary elections that followed them closely

People frequently cite the fact that the only viable opposition to Mubarak is the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. The secular opposition, consisting mostly of socialists and communists, hardly won a seat at all in the parliamentary elections, while the Muslim Brotherhood won almost a quarter of the seats. This is not enough to change any laws, but it will change the nature of parliamentary discussions. What happened to the secular parties in Egypt, the state that was once the vanguard of secular pan-Arab socialist movement?

Secularism has been perhaps one of the biggest victims of the past 30 years of rule first by Anwar Sadat and Hosny Mubarak. Sadat was the first to lift restrictions on the Muslim Brotherhood, which was persecuted mercilessly by Gamal Abdel Nasser. Sadat used the Muslim Brotherhood to help weaken the secular parties, especially the Nasserites, and consolidate his hold on power. He called himself the Believer President, and had himself frequently photographed praying. This strategy came back to haunt him, as more extreme Islamic groups ended up assassinating him for signing a peace treaty with Israel.

Mubarak came to power and hit at the Islamic parties with a vengeance, while continuing to whittle away any support to room for maneuver by the secular parties. When faced with a growing popular Islamic resurgence in the country, Mubarak's government soon embraced much of the language of the political Islamist groups. With official government sanction for the primary role of religion in public life, politics thrived in Egypt's mosques and religious institutions, including government television stations, while the secular parties suffered under Mubarak's emergency laws and political restrictions, without any similar recourse to public activity like the Islamic groups had.

Many people I talked to, including a range of political and human rights activists, academics and a few ex-government officials, now see this as a deliberate strategy on the part of the Mubarak regime. Most observers felt that the Egyptian government has consistently thwarted the development of any secular alternative to the ruling NDP, ranging to restrictive laws concerning the establishment of non-governmental organizations to heavy-handed suppression of any public or even private dissent. While religious organizations thrived through the social services they provide and the official and unofficial mosques and religious training institutes, the secular opposition was completely eviscerated.

The logic of this was to leave the government, itself increasingly religious and illiberal, in the position of guardian of Egypt's liberal secular tradition, along with it's ties to the United States. What this meant in the recent elections was that voters and foreign supporters of Egypt, most notably the United States, were left with two real choices: the current ruling party or the largely undefined political and social platform of the Muslim Brotherhood.

This strategy has worked amazing well, according to most of the people I talked to. It is important first to highlight the role that many people give to the United States in Egypt's recent short lived political liberalization. It's amazing how many discussions of reform and democratization in Egypt center on the United States. Most people credit American pressure for both the changes to the law governing the election of the president and the parliamentary elections. In fact, it is not an exaggeration to say that most people appear to view this American pressure as the primary factor in the recent political opening in Egypt.

But this acknowledgment of the role of American pressure in cracking open political life in Egypt has turned to deep anger and disappointment at America's failure to follow through it's tough words with support for the opposition. In short, when faced with the possibility of significant gains by the Muslim Brotherhood, America got cold feet. The starkest evidence of this was the change in Condoleeza Rice's tone during her past two trips to Egypt.

In the first trip, prior to the presidential election, Rice gave a speech at the American University in Cairo in which she said,

"The Egyptian Government must fulfill the promise it has made to its people -- and to the entire world -- by giving its citizens the freedom to choose. Egypt’s elections, including the Parliamentary elections, must meet objective standards that define every free election. Opposition groups must be free to assemble, and to participate, and to speak to the media. Voting should occur without violence or intimidation. And international election monitors and observers must have unrestricted access to do their jobs. "

On a return trip Rice called Presdent Mubarak, "a wise man" and "a good friend of the United States." She spoke of "disappointments" and "setbacks" in the Egyptian reform process, but said next to nothing about the violence and intimidation that accompanied the elections, nor the of the brutal crackdown on demonstrations since the elections ended. She said next to nothing about the opposition parties, like al-Ghad, that were not free to assemble and participate in these elections, and were in fact instead targeted with legal actions and ugly smear campaigns in the semi-official press.

What happened to the American project of democracy? A good indicator of what America wants out of the Greater Middle East comes out clearly in the Administration's defense of America's strategic relationship with Egypt.

When Congress threatened to withhold American aid to Egypt in response to it's failure to reform and democratize Assistant Secretary of State David Welch said Cairo was a pivotal American partner, assisting in the American efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, pressuring Hamas and playing a leading role in the Israel-Palestine Issue and providing troops for Sudan's Darfur region. "Their role is irreplaceable and critical in many instances," Welch told a sub-committee of the House of Representatives Committee on International Relations," reported Reuters Alertnet. Alertnet reports that, Senior State Department official Michael Coulter said "military aid, which accounts for more than half of total assistance, had paid "high dividends" in many areas, including Egypt's commitment to trying to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

In other words, forced to chose between democracies that might stop the high level cooperation on a myriad of American policies in the region and dictatorships that will continue to repress their people in pursuit of American, as opposed to Arab, interests, America will chose the dictatorship.

So goes the process of reform in the Middle East.

The US and its isolated incidents

2006-08-06T15:28:00.000+03:00

Isolated incidents and bad apples. That is how American apologists explain the ever lenthening list of war crimes committed by American troops in Iraq.

Isolated incidents.

I doubt they were ordered to abuse and kill innocent people, but they understood well enough from their superiors that the "enemy" isn't human, and that all Iraqis are fair game, and that "arabs only understand brute force." The soldiers acted accordingly, they did as they were trained. They were trained to hate the enemy, and the do. Their actions show it.

I guess it's time for the Bush administration to launch another radio station to counter the ever diminished image of the United States.

For Israel, innocent civilians are fair game

2006-08-06T14:28:00.000+03:00

This article is too important to just link it.

Here's the key point, and a quote I have been trying to find for a week:

Not only has Israel failed to distinguish between military and civilian targets; its own officials suggest that they have decided any civilian still in the south is fair game. Last week, Justice Minister Haim Ramon reportedly said, "All those now in south Lebanon are terrorists who are related in some way to Hezbollah."

For Israel, innocent civilians are fair game
Peter Bouckaert International Herald Tribune
FRIDAY, AUGUST 4, 2006
TYRE, Lebanon

The voice of Mohammed Shalhoub, 61, a farmer from Qana, still quivers with shock and exhaustion. He was in a basement shelter with more than 60 relatives when two Israeli bombs hit, killing at least 28, including 16 children. As I interview him in hospital, relatives arrive with more news of the victims. A woman starts screaming as she looks at the pictures of the dead and Mohammed's eyes well up with tears.

But his voice turns cold with impotent fury when I ask if there were Hezbollah fighters near the home when the bombs fell. "If the Israelis really saw the rocket launcher, where did it go?" he asks. "We showed Israel our dead; why don't the Israelis show us the rocket launchers?"

The world doesn't seem to put much credence in the testimonies of Lebanese civilians, preferring to buy generic Israeli statements about Hezbollah using civilians as human shields, "precision strikes" at terrorist targets, and a "proportionate" bombing campaign. But after days of contradictory statements about Qana, the Israeli military was reported as saying it had no indication of rocket fire or Hezbollah presence in Qana on the day of the strike, and had bombed the area in retaliation for rockets launched days earlier.

Israel's claims about pin-point strikes and proportionate responses are pure fantasy. As a researcher for Human Rights Watch, I've documented civilian deaths from bombing campaigns in Kosovo and Chechnya, Afghanistan and Iraq. But these usually occur when there is some indication of military targeting: high-ranking members of Saddam Hussein's regime present in a house just before it is hit, for example, or an attack against militants that causes the collateral deaths of many civilians.

In Lebanon, it's a different scene. Time after time, Israel has hit civilian homes and cars in the southern border zone, killing dozens of people with no evidence of any military objective.

My notebook overflows with reports of civilian deaths. On July 15, Israeli fire killed 21 people fleeing from Marhawin, including 13 children; no weapons, no Hezbollah nearby. On July 16, an Israeli bomb killed 11 civilians in Aitaroun, including seven members of a Canadian-Lebanese family on vacation; again, no Hezbollah, no weapons. On July 19, at least 26 civilians were killed in Srifa when Israeli bombs flattened an entire neighborhood; no evidence of military targets. On July 23, at least seven civilians were killed when Israeli warplanes bombed dozens of cars trying to flee the south after receiving Israeli instructions to evacuate immediately; no indication of weapons convoys in the vicinity. The list goes on, with about 500 civilians killed so far.

Israel says the fault for the massive civilian death toll lies with Hezbollah, claiming its fighters are hiding weapons inside civilian homes and firing them from civilian areas. But even if the Israeli forces could show evidence of Hezbollah activity in some civilian areas, it could not justify the extensive use of indiscriminate force that has cost so many lives.

Not only has Israel failed to distinguish between military and civilian targets; its own officials suggest that they have decided any civilian still in the south is fair game. Last week, Justice Minister Haim Ramon reportedly said, "All those now in south Lebanon are terrorists who are related in some way to Hezbollah."

So if you are too frightened to flee southern Lebanon, or are sick, injured or too poor to pay the more than $1,000 it now costs to get out, you are a "terrorist" and eligible for attack. As for those who heeded the Israeli warnings to flee, the roads are littered with bombed civilian cars, many with white flags still attached to their windows. After all, the Israelis tell us, they could have been transporting arms. Israel is prefabricating excuses to justify killing civilians.

Tragedies happen in the fog of war, but Israel's strikes on civilians can't all be excused as accidents or mistakes. The unacceptably high death toll is the natural result of Israel's failure to distinguish between civilian and military targets, and Israel is responsible for the deaths.

Israel must target its fight on Hezbollah, not Lebanese civilians. To do otherwise is not only wrong, but may very well be criminal, and Israel's leaders, and its friends elsewhere in the world, must face up to this harsh reality.

Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director at Human Rights Watch, is co-author of the report "Fatal Strikes: Israel's Indiscriminate Attacks Against Civilians in Lebanon," released Thursday.

death, discrimination and morality

2006-08-06T09:42:00.000+03:00

Statistics are great but they hide the fact that for each of those numbers was once a human being. I don't mean to throw any of these numbers about blithely.

But but look at some of these numbers.

The Lebanese government is now stating that about 900 people have died in the bombing, counting people who may still be buried under the rubble of their homes.

That number far exceeds the number of Hizbollah fighters killed. I think Hizbollah claims 50 of it's fighters were killed, while Israel claims it was 400. Probably both are false, and we'll probably never know the real number, but still, civilians killed far outweighs the number of fighters killed.

Israel reports that seventy-nine Israelis have died, 46 soldiers and 33 civilians. Hizbollah claims Israeli military deaths as higher, but again, who knows.

So Hizbollah, firing blindly into heavily populated areas of Israel, has killed statistically fewer Israeli civilians, than Israel, using the latest technology: satellites, infrared, drones, special forces, guided missles, etc., has killed Lebanese civilians. By far.

And they claim that this strategy is designed to defeat Hizbollah and isolate it from the rest of Lebanon?

On another note, watching Tucker Carlson, an unapologetic right-wing anchor on MSNBC, almost made me sick. He was shocked and finally giving the Israeli ambassodor (or someone from the Israeli government) a hard time. Why? Because Israel had attacked bridges in a Christian area of Lebanon.

So for Tucker it's ok if Israel is killing off all those Muslims. I guess he thinks Muslims are all a bunch of murderous thugs anyway, so what does it matter. But the Christians?? The innocent sweet Christians of Lebanon?

The ignorance is astounding! In many trips to Lebanon I have heard Christians speak of their admiration for Hizbollah. Hizbollah extends much of its social work in the south to Christians in need. I've heard Christians praise Nasrallah, and say, "Why don't we have anyone like him?" This is a direct quote. And Hizbollah recently formed an alliance with the former Christian General Aoun. I've heard others say Hizbollah was driving the country to civil war. I heard Muslims say that too.

Does Tucker think that the Israeli bombs falling all over Lebanon are sparing the Christians, only killing the Muslims and Druze? I would like to ask Tucker if he thinks it's ok if the bombs are killing those innocent Muslim civilians and blowing up their neighborhoods, because that is what he clearly implied.

And why doesn't Tucker seem to care about the Christian Palestinians that Israel also beats, bombs, starve and detain. Does he know there are Christians in Gaza? Does he understand that the Christian population is rapidly dwindling because of the desperation and hopelessness of many Palestinians in general.

Such thinking as Tucker Carlson displays is disgusting. And the ignorance is just sickening, because it's smug idiots like him who help form public opinion in America.

Tucker! The world is not black and white! Christians are not always the heros and victims, Muslims aren't always the villians and perpetrators! An innocent civilian is an innocent civilian no matter what he or she believes. And bombs falling from the sky, like bombs strapped to people's waists, don't discriminate based on your criteria of good and bad.

Stop shooting, start talking

2006-08-01T16:22:00.000+03:00

I try to engage in as much cyber activism as I can, especially during major, wrenching crises. I got one letter-to-the-editor published, and interest in another.

Here's one that the San Fransisco Chronicle published:

Stop shooting, start talking in Middle East

Editor -- In response to David Biale's July 23 commentary (Insight, "Why Israeli bombing might not be enough to wipe out Hezbollah"): What Israel and its supporters seem not to understand is that cutting off the electricity and water of civilian populations, starving them and attacking government ministries is no deterrence to future attacks. Such actions will not bring security or peace, but are a sure provocation to continued conflict.

When Israel uses missiles to assassinate Hamas activists or bombs Hezbollah political headquarters in densely populated neighborhoods, it knows very well that it is also going to kill many innocent civilians. Israel's concern for civilian deaths is hardly greater than that of Hamas and Hezbollah, and it deserves no quarter in this regard.

Hamas and Hezbollah's targeting of civilians are frequently rightly condemned. So, too, should Israel's.

Enough empty justifications for careless killing of civilians in war. There is no military solution to this fundamentally political conflict. It is time to stop the shooting and start talking tough concessions.

##End##

The Washington Post contacted me about this one, but I don't think they published it.

What Jim Hoagland [Lebanon's Dividers, op-ed, July 21] fails to acknowledge is that the Lebanese government has never been in a position to disarm, remove or replace Hezbollah. I'd like for him to explain exactly how they were supposed to do this.

Has Israel, which has a much stronger army, ever been able to disarm or remove Hamas, a much weaker movement? Could Yasser Arafat or Mahmoud Abbas, weakened by years of Israeli raids on Palestinian Authority police and security forces have done so?

The idea of physically attacking, defeating and disarming militant movements is a red herring. It sounds nice but is not realistic.

The failure here is to come to a negotiated settlement that ends the conflict. Unilateral military action, whether attacks or withdrawals, only feeds conflict.

##End##

So there they are. I don't know how many of these letters I've written in the past few weeks. At a minimum I think they can sometimes help inform editorial boards on newspapers, and if they are published it reaches a significant number of people.

I've worked on small arms control issues in the Middle East for about three years. The most basic, fundamental lesson is that you cannot force a population to give up its arms. You have to start by looking at the reasons people feel they need to own weapons in the first place. If you don't address those reasons you have no chance in hell of ever removing those guns and the mulitiple dangers they pose to a community (such as accidental shootings, sectarian conflict, tribal feuds, etc).

The same goes for large well-armed popular militant movements.

Israel's secret war: Gaza

2006-07-31T10:14:00.000+03:00

Don't forget Gaza and the West Bank. As horrible as what is happening in Lebanon right now is, a similar scene unfolds in Gaza, only in slow motion.

Israel's secret war: The Humanitarian Disaster Unfolding in Palestine

Anne Penketh, Independent, 7/29/06

A 12-year-old boy dead on a stretcher. A mother in shock and disbelief after her son was shot dead for standing on their roof. A phone rings and a voice in broken Arabic orders residents to abandon their home on pain of death.

Those are snapshots of a day in Gaza where Israel is waging a hidden war, as the world looks the other way, focusing on Lebanon.It is a war of containment and control that has turned the besieged Strip into a prison with no way in or out, and no protection from a fearsome battery of drones, precision missiles, tank shells and artillery rounds.

As of last night, 29 people had been killed in the most concentrated 48 hours of violence since an Israeli soldier was abducted by Palestinian militants just more than a month ago.The operation is codenamed "Samson's Pillars", a collective punishment of the 1.4 million Gazans, subjecting them to a Lebanese-style offensive that has targeted the civilian infrastructure by destroying water mains, the main power station and bridges.

The similarities with Israel's blitz on Lebanon are striking, raising suspicions that the Gaza offensive has been the testing ground for the military strategy now unfolding on the second front in the north. (MORE)

The coming cease fire?

2006-07-30T13:53:00.000+03:00

On Friday as I was returning home from Abdoun circle, i found myself stuck in traffic as a UN convoy slowly progressed across the city.

The convoy consisted of maybe 10-12 flatbed trucks carrying shipping containers, small vehicles, light trucks and armoured vehicles, all painted white, with "UN" painted on the sides. It was being escorted by Jordanian police cars and army Humvees.

Was this going to be part of Jordan's contribution to an international force designed to seperate Israeli and Hizbollah forces? The armoured vehicles were exactly the type used by Jordanian security forces, the kind you see parked outside the US embassy 24 hours a day.

Maybe they were on their way to Iraq, but I couldn't help thinking that behind the scenes a cease-fire for Lebanon was in the works. Jordan has frequently participated in peacekeeping missions across the world, has a well-trained professional army, and has signed a peace treaty with Israel. Jordan is also a predominantly Muslim country, which may make their participation more acceptable to Hizbollah.

Rice is now back in Israel and it seems there is growing momentum for a ceasefire. Israel's war has proven a total disaster for Israel, Lebanon and the region. The initial goals of destroying or disarming Hizbollah have been vastly scaled back, and I think everyone is looking for a way out.

Was any of the killing and destruction worth it? When will countries stop engaging in these wars of choice? When will humans stop being so easily seduced by the sick allure of violence?

Moral equivalency and killing civilians

2006-07-28T09:11:00.000+03:00

A few days ago I read a quote from an Israeli defense official claiming that a strip of southern Lebanon had been cleared of civilians, and that anyone who remained was of Hizbollah and a legitimate target.

I unfortunately can't find that link, but the following stories show how untrue that was. But what the Israeli official was getting at was that Israel now has a free hand to kill anything that moves in a two mile strip of southern Lebanon. Many civilians remain in the south.

Another tactic is to say that they've warned civilians to leave, and that those who remain must be Hizbollah fighters. Some recent news shows that is not the case.

This is not to imply that Israel is trying to kill civilians, but it is increasingly difficult to bear the claim that Israel is somehow more moral than its enemies.

An Israeli bombing raid killed or wounded as many as 50 people in the southern Lebanese town of Qana, a day after U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice resumed Middle East talks aimed at stopping the fighting.

Israeli warplanes bombed a three-storey building in Qana, leaving 50 casualties, including 21 children, Lebanon's state-run Teleliban television reported, citing its reporters at the scene. Israel attacked Hezbollah rocket launchers in the area and the incident is being investigated, said an Israeli army spokeswoman. Civilians were warned to leave several days ago, she said.

Both belligerents are attacking indiscriminately. Hizbullah's weapons are notoriously inaccurate and more likely to kill innocent civilians than soldiers. And Israel has targeted noncombatants in southern Lebanon as though the area were a free-fire zone. Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz as much as admitted his contempt for noncombatant immunity when, according to Israeli army radio on July 24, he ordered the destruction of 10 multistory buildings in the Shiite-inhabited suburbs of Beirut for every rocket hitting Haifa.

"There are still 20,000 children trapped behind the lines of hostility, traumatized and unable to move on," said Jamie McGoldrick, a team leader from the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. "We still can't reach them."

Naila last set foot in Beirut during Israel's Grapes of Wrath campaign in 1996, and now she is desperate to escape. But there is no way out. One brother emigrated to Germany years ago; another lives in Beirut. A third brother, the last male relative in Bazuriya, managed to find a place in a car for himself, but not for his sister and mother. "We asked a lot. The people said no," she says. "We just couldn't find a car."

The Israeli army broadcast a warning on its Arabic-language radio station yesterday telling Lebanese in the south that their villages would be "totally destroyed" if rockets were fired from them.

Adnan al-Hajj, economic editor for the daily newspaper As-Safir, said Israeli bombing has razed an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 homes, and left a much higher number in partial ruin.

In Gaza, Israel has now started giving "prior warning" to people's whose homes they plan to blow up with air-to-surface missles. As the Palestinian Human Rights Committee reports, and as verified to me by friends in Gaza:

"In the Gaza Strip, on Saturday morning, 30 July 2006, IOF warplanes bombarded two houses in the north. The two houses were destroyed. The owners of the two houses received calls on their mobile phones from the IOF intelligence, in which they were informed that their houses would be attacked in 15 minutes. Thus, the number of houses destroyed by IOF in such a way in ne week has mounted to 10. "

These stories show a clear disregard for civilian casualties in pursuit of military objectives. What makes these deaths somehow more acceptable than those of a Hizbollah katyusha or Hamas qassam?

I'm sure there will be heartfelt apologies, and everyone will be deeply saddened by the loss of innocent life. There will probably even be an official investigation. And then it will happen again.

Levy reminds us there's still Gaza

2006-07-25T20:26:00.000+03:00

Here is a very good article on how misguided the Israeli response to Hamas and Hizbollah is. It's from Gideon Levy in Haaretz.

Levy says:

The painful steps taken in Gaza, which included dropping a one-ton bomb on a residential building, or killing an entire family of seven children under cover of darkness in Lebanon, killing dozens of residents, bombing an airport, cutting off electricity and water to hundreds of thousands of people for months were a response lacking any justification, legitimacy or proportion. What goal did it
serve? Was the soldier released? Did the Qassams stop? Was deterrence restored? None of that happened. Only lost honor was supposedly restored, and immediately the next evil wind showed up, this time from the north.

Interesting thoughts. It's a wonder more Israelis don't get it.

Witnesses from Lebanon

2006-07-25T11:12:00.000+03:00

A friend recently wrote from Lebanon to describe one little slice of what has happened in Lebanon.

i don't know what to say, i m really not fine...all what i can say is they destroyed my home in nabatieh, and some of my neihboors are dead and they destroyed our new souvenirs and gift shop containing for about $50000 of gadgets, so u can imagine my situation.

and where is the nice idea? it is that tomorrow the 23rd of july is my birthday and i hope it to be my death day, i hope so and i want so 2.

and that bad feeling, is that as a lebanese, i feel that all the world sold us, and for whom??? look out , we are alone but be sure that we will pass all that and we will be an honour for all the arab people, and when i say arab people i don't mean the arab
people...

any way

all my regards to all of u.

The guy who wrote this has got to be one of the nicest guys I know. He is always joking, always has a smile of his face. He's exactly what you think of and hope for in a "moderate Arab." Where do you think he stands now?

Ghassan Sharbel again writes poignently in al-Hayat:

"What you see flying through the air are the pieces of the Lebanese body. Because it is our body pieces we raise our voices. This is not a war to kill the resistence (Hizbollah). This is a war to kill Lebanon as punishment for operations of the resistence. It's not a war to put an end to Hizbollah, it is a war to put an end to Lebanon. We are shocked by those who are shocked at the barbarity of the Israeli attack. Whoever is shocked is forgetting the long black list of the Jewish state... (Israel has choosen) to bury the resistence under the rubble of Lebanon, that is, to kill Lebanon first."

Say what you will about self defense and moral equivelancy. If you want to know the impact of Israel's war on Lebanon, ask the Lebanese. If you think it will make Israel or the West safer, then you are deluded.

Hizbollah was wrong to attack those Israeli soldiers in Israel. But Israel was 10,000 times more wrong to mercilessly pummel Lebanon for the acts of an organization the Lebanese government hasn't the strength to control.

Israel could have shown restraint, could have gotten world sympathy and support to furhter isolate Hizbollah. Instead it has whipped the world up against itself and done more to harm its own security than Hizbollah or any other Arab state ever did.

Lebanon overview

2006-07-23T06:34:00.000+03:00

Come what may, one of the most likely and undesireable outcome from the current war in Lebanon is summed up nicely by Suzanne Buzzbee:

"In many ways, the biggest risk is that this sudden, violent little war will tip the balance toward extremists and away from moderates across the Middle East, including in Lebanon, where the government has been dramatically
weakened by the fighting."

Hizbollah entered the fray now for important domestic and regional reasons. If it was solidarity with the Palestinians it could have choosen to undertake such an operation on many occaisions in the past few years. Why now? Some say it was opportunism, they found a convenient target, an exposed and unprotected Israeli patrol. But the reason likely goes deeper than that. One of the most accurate depictions of what Hizbollah wants is written here

"Domestically, Hezbollah has succeeded in integrating itself into the Lebanese
political system, with its two government ministers and 14 MPs. But the party has also been keen to convince others of the importance of its resistance and of its unrivaled efficacy as a deterrent to the threat posed by Israel.

And Israel's current onslaught has unwittingly provided Hezbollah with the opportunity to demonstrate both -- that Israel remains Lebanon's gravest enemy, and that Hezbollah is the only force capable of confronting it. The Lebanese government's ineptitude in handling the crisis, coupled with the army's sitting-duck status, only underscores that point.

Hezbollah has succeeded in elevating its regional importance, positioning itself alongside Iran, Syria and Hamas -- the axis of terrorism in Israel's lexicon. In this
light, Hezbollah's face-off with Israel is not only a defensive war of survival (in response to the declared Israeli and U.S. objective of eliminating the organization), but also an attempt to shatter the myth of Israeli invincibility (which explains why Israel also views this conflict in existential terms).

Most of all, though, Hezbollah hopes to set a new precedent in the Arab world, as its leader Hasan Nasrallah revealed in his latest televised speech: He characterized his movement as a "spearhead of the [Islamic] umma" and declared the conflict as "surpassing Lebanon . . . it is the conflict of the umma," whose success or failure will reverberate in the entire region. In other words, Hezbollah is to serve as an inspiration, as an exemplar of bold action against Israel and, by extension, against Arab regimes that have allied themselves with the United States and Israel."

It seems the Israelis are following a script from American military strategy of the 1980's and 90's, which dictates that airpower alone is enough to tip the military balance on the ground. Haven't they seen the failures of such policies and how ground troops are necessary to make the differences they want. Their reliance on airpower is noted here:

"The overall aim, Israel says, is to weaken Hezbollah sufficiently so that the international community can help the Lebanese government to carry out United
Nations Security Council Resolution 1559 and exercise its sovereignty all over Lebanon, expelling any foreign fighters and disarming Hezbollah."

Haven't they seen the outcome of American efforts to fight wars with airpower alone? Airpower is seductive to states that rely on armies and expensive weapons systems, but it will do little or nothing to stop a determined guerilla force with broad popular support on the ground.

The problem is that the Lebanese government would require many years to become strong enough to take over positions from even a weakened Hizbollah. It was not even able to organize a needs assessment survey in the Lebanese capitol of Beirut. How much less able will it be to take over the Shiite villages from a population that has long viewed Hizbollah as its savior.

If Hizbollah miscalculated, it may have miscalculated in one thing only, the response of Arab governments. Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia all initially condemned the Hizbollah raid. Nasrallah probably did not expect them to support him, but he also didn't expect them to condemn him. That is a step they took that they may come to regret. In his interview on al-Jazeera, Nasrallah said that Hizbollah won't forget the political cover moderate Arab governments have given to Israeli, and warned that the movement may or may not make them pay for their actions.

An update from Lebanon

2006-07-22T20:28:00.000+03:00

I just talked with a number of people in Lebanon, and they say that although the humanitarian situation is varied and changing throughout Lebanon, there are some areas of severe crisis. Many people fled their homes with nothing but the clothes on their backs. The worst affected areas by far appear to be Beirut and southern Lebanon, south of Sidon.

So far most items are still available in local markets but that might change soon. The bigger problem is huge inflation, with prices of goods skyrocketing. There are reports that ex-pat Lebanese who've tried to send desperately needed money to their families have been prohibited from doing so, on account of anti-terrorism rules.

Of potentially greater concern is that Israel today bombed a broadcast station for LBC television, which has had perhaps the least extensive coverage of the war. This attack may signal a coming effort to knock out all Lebanese broadcasters, mobile services and internet providers. Israeli planes have also attack mobile relay stations in the south and east. If mobiles become inoperable it will make information gathering and humanitarian assistance coordination extremely difficult. Knocking out television and internet will make it extremely difficult to relay information about what is happening in the country and will worsen the growing feeling of isolation among the Lebanese. This is expected in the coming few days.

Also of concern is that many people in the south are staying in underground shelters and there is fear that the Israeli may bomb the shelter either to drive people out of the south or by accident, thinking the shelters are underground bunkers for Hizbollah. (think Amariya in 1990 Baghdad). Media interviews at some of the shelters have not named their location for fear that Israel will use the information to bomb the sites.

Finally, there is also reportedly up to 100,000 refugees on the Syrian side of the border, some in transit and others with no where else to go. The Syrian government response so far as been fairly good, but the situation there will probably get worse as the fighting increases.

Beirut

In Beirut the most affected area is the southern suburbs of al-Dhahiya. There are tens of thousands of people who've lost their homes or fled the neighborhood, putting a huge strain on other parts of the city. The government response is reported to be exceptionally inefficient and incapable, even unable to carry out a basic needs assessment survey, with only civil society providing an organized response. Civil society is better organized, but capacity is exceptionally low and totally insufficient to deal with the huge numbers of wounded and needy.

Adding to the current pressure, today refugees from the south began to arrive in Beirut in significant numbers, and those numbers are expected to rise considerably as the threat of a land invasion grows or actually happens. Of growing concern is the number of unregistered refugees, those staying in private homes who are receiving no assistance, but who have increased the needs on those with whom they are staying.

Southern Lebanon

Most refugees in the south have gone to Sidon (at least those who have not gone to the mountains), where contacts there inform us that the need is great but that civil society has been able to organize a more efficient response than Beirut. The need is still great though, and any assistance is welcomed. In Nabatiya, a small city in southern Beirut, although there are relatively few refugees (roughly 3000), there is enormous need. There is no electricity, water or fuel, hospitals are almost out of supplies, roads to the town are all bombed, and very little assistance is coming from outside. Israel is reportedly refusing to allow any aid into the south in order to force people to seek refuge further north.

Many people fleeing the southern border area are seeking refuge in the Palestinian camps. Of biggest concern are those staying in the unofficial Palestinian settlements, which are perhaps the least served places in all of Lebanon. The refugee situation is fluid and changes from hour to hour and day to day. Refugees in one area one day are moving to different areas the next, making assessment or relief efforts hard to deliver.

Some people in Lebanese feel greatly betrayed, one saying "the world has sold us." They see and sense no support or solidarity from the outside world and feel increasingly isolated. Lebanese are also extremely angry at their government's inability to respond to the disaster.

That's what they say, but who knows. The fog of war clouds everybody's eyes.

British Anger at Terror Celebration

2006-07-22T20:26:00.000+03:00

British Anger at Terror Celebration

Ned Parker and Stephen Farrell, The Times, 7/20/06

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,173-2277717,00.html

AS ISRAEL wages war against Hezbollah "terrorists" in Lebanon, Britain has protested about the celebration by right-wing Israelis of a Jewish "act of terrorism" against British rule 60 years ago this week.The rightwingers, including Binyamin Netanyahu, the former Prime Minister, are commemorating the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, the headquarters of British rule, that killed 92 people and helped to drive the British from Palestine.They have erected a plaque outside the restored building, and are holding a two-day seminar with speeches and a tour of the hotel by one of the Jewish resistance fighters involved in the attack.Simon McDonald, the British Ambassador in Tel Aviv, and John Jenkins, the Consul-General in Jerusalem, have written to the municipality, stating: "We do not think that it is right for an act of terrorism, which led to the loss of many lives, to be commemorated."

Stepping on landmines

2006-07-22T10:09:00.000+03:00

Israel and the US claim they want to disarm Hizbollah. What they fail to acknowledge is that the Lebanese government has never been in a position to disarm, remove or replace Hizbollah. Please explain exactly how they were supposed to do this?

Has Israel, with a much stronger army, ever been able to disarm or remove Hamas, a much weaker movement? Could Arafat or Abbas, weakened by years of Israeli raids on Palestinian National Authority police and security forces have done so? Can the US disarm Moqtada Sadr's Mahdi Army?

The idea of physically attacking, defeating and disarming these militant movements is a red herring. It sounds nice but it is not in the least bit realistic. The failure here is to come to a negotiated settlement that ends these conflicts. Unilateral military action, whether attacks or withdrawls, only feeds the conflicts.

In the meantime, here's what the conflicts mean:

"These people, what was their sin to die?" asked Ziad Shahadi, one of the onlookers.
"None of them was carrying a weapon. None of them was wearing a uniform. None of them were soldiers on the ground," he said. "They were all civilians. There's no military honor in this, none. How could there be? Killing the young and the old."

Civilian casualties are mounting in Lebanon. No. 37 became Sally Wahbi, a 7-year-old who died in an attack on the Civil Defense Building in Tyre on Sunday. No. 35, Alia Alaedeen, who suffered serious head injuries as she was escaping the town of Sarifa on Wednesday and died Thursday. And No. 73 became Mariam Abdullah, who along with Zahra, Hadi and Myrna was among the 23 people killed in an Israeli attack on a pickup truck escaping the town of Marwaheen last Saturday.

I'm reluctant to post this next link, it has some of the most horrific pictures I've ever seen, but this is the real meaning of war, not the pretty sanitized computer games and Hollywood-like scenes we usually see on TV. I don't mean to sponser the site by sharing it. I have no idea who put it together, but maybe it will make people less eager for war.

Forget all the extended commentary you read about the conflict in Lebanon. The average person speaks it better than anyone.

“If you speak the truth here you are called a traitor,” Mr. Abdullah said. “But we all know that this is a war between Iran and America. I am paying part of the price for it.” Then he suddenly grew pensive as he stood at the edge of the trench. “That’s my daughter, No. 9,” he said, pointing at a coffin coming out of the truck as. “It’s a nice number, don’t you think? And No. 7, it’s a nice number, too. It’s my wife. And there’s No. 10. I hope they will be lucky.”

The stupid right-wing arm chair analysts, who've never experienced a conflict in their lives, are cheering on Israel, and a friend of mine here in Jordan suggested last night that the US maybe wants this war more than Israel does. He argued that the US sees this as an opportunity to reduce Iranian influence in the region and are egging the Israelis on. Israelis are privately more torn about it then they admit in public, especially those in the military. They recognize air-power alone won't acheive thier goals and are worried about the costs of a land invasion. They recognize the limits of their power and if you look closely you can see that they don't quite know what they are doing.

Israel has already lost this war, radicalized people who just a few months ago were moderates and given a new generation of Lebanese a reason to hate them more than the last. Until people in the west understand how military defeat of one's enemy can translate into his political victory we will continue to step into fields of landmines all over the Middle East.

An old proverb aptly describes what is happening right now: "The jackal has swallowed a scythe. When it comes out the back end you will hear the howls."

teaching hate

2006-07-21T07:16:00.000+03:00

Pro-Israel forces in the United States like to tell people that Palestinians teach hate to their children. Aside from the fact that they should look more closely at the Israeli national curriculum, here are some interesting pictures they should start sending around to their friends..

I hope these little girls someday grow up to understand that their parents were really messed up in the head for bringing them to an artillery launching site in the midst of a war, and regret how they were indoctrinated to hate people they never met. Look at the second picture, where the adult person is just having a grand time!

Last night watching MSNBC's Tucker Carlson show was interesting, but not for the news it relayed. Tucker was standing in a little Israeli town (really a kibbutz) on the Lebanese-Israeli border. He noted how the town literally jutted into Lebanese territory, showing how vulnerable it is to attacks from Hizbollah.

What our friend Tucker failed to mention is that it was the policy of the Israeli state to set up kibbutzes and then settlements on areas bordering it's hostile neighbors.

Can anyone say "human shields"? Israel has been using it's civilians as human shields since before the creation of the state of Israel. Isn't there something wrong with that?

It started when....

2006-07-16T21:53:00.000+03:00

So much to say on the situation in the Middle East right now. I'll start with a couple of phrases that have been bothering me.

The first is that this recent fighting started when Hamas and Hizbollah kidnapped Israeli soldiers. That is in some ways true, but doesn't begin to tell the whole story.

You could say it started when the international community imposed a strict blockade on Gaza in response to the Hamas victory in the elections. You could say it started when Israel initiated it's policy of assassinations that has continued throughout the second Intifada. Or that it started with Hamas and others sending small home-made rockets into Sderot. Or with the break down of the Camp David talks in 1999. Or the occupuation of Gaza and the West Bank in 1967. Or the displacement and dispossession of 800,000 Palestinian refugees in 1948-49. Or the persecution of the Jews in Europe.... you get the picture.

The point is this was and still is a hot conflict. There may be quiet from time to time, but it is a lull between battles, some violent, some not. Looking at who started what and when is just about pointless. People like David Brooks in the NYTimes who are saying, for example, that Israel was trying to disengage from the Occupied Territories and give Palestinians a chance to build an independent state, but were met with rocket fire and kidnappings, are either simply unaware or deceitful. It ignores a lot of very recent history.

The other phrase that is bothering me is that the Israeli reponse is "disproportionate". It's not that the response is disproportionate. It is that the response is targeting civilians, by targeting essential civilian infrastructure. Israel is hardly even hitting those who took their soldiers, Hamas and Hizbollah. Israel is focusing much more attention on electrical stations, bridges and, in Gaza, government ministries. If Israel responded disproportionately on Hamas and Hizbollah targets I wouldn't care much. But they are hurting people who had nothing to do with these operations, and hitting them in ways that endanger their health, sanity and lives. It is de-developing these countries, making ever-weaker and failed states. It's a disaster on many different levels.

None of this does anything to Hamas or Hizbollah except strengthen them. What Israel is doing is against international law and it is just plain morally wrong. The Israelis have made it quite clear that their strategy is to make the average person hurt so bad that they turn on Hamas and Hizbollah. That is not happening. People are rallying around Hamas and Hizbollah. Some people who just a few months ago hated them now admire them.

The Israelis have done this for a long time. It seems the first time was in the 1960's when they blew up 13 Lebanese planes at the Beirut airport for a hijacking by the Palestinian PFLP. The Christian dominated government at that time detested the Palestinians. They probably would have loved an attack on the PFLP. Why did Israel strike Lebanese targets? Did it make people fear Israel or hate them even more?

Another recent occurance was in the middle of the second intifada. Hamas and Islamic Jihad would send suicide bombers into Israel, an obnoxious and despicable action itself, and Israel would respond by hitting the PLO-led Palestinian National Authority. Israel at this time didn't hit Hamas, didn't make life more unbearable for them and their supporters. No, it hit the PNA. What did that do? Destroy the PNA, especially its ability to maintain order, as strengthen Hamas for fighting Israel while the PNA spoke of peace and reconciliation.

It's not about proportionate or disproportinate. It's about hitting civilian targets and killing innocent people. It's about radicalizing populations to the point that you have no "partner for peace".

Fine, Hamas and Hizbollah kidnapped soldiers, and Israel is going to respond, it's war. But respond against those who took the soldiers, not the innocent people who are just trying to live their lives.

The latest round

2006-07-13T14:16:00.000+03:00

There are two lessons in the recent escalation in the conflict between Israel on the one hand, and Gaza and Lebanon on the other. One is that this conflict will never end through the use of violence.

The reason the tension between Israel and Gaza is so bad, and that there is still fighting with Hizbollah in Lebanon in the north, is that there still has not been a political solution to these conflicts. Israel can neither militarily defeat it's foes, nor can it build barriers and borders that will protect it's people. There must be a political solution to these conflicts.

A second lesson that should have been learned a long time ago is that attacks on civilian targets will not turn people against groups like Hizbollah and Hamas. These are popular social and political movements in Lebanon and Palestine. In Lebanon, I've heard many Christians and secularists speak admiringly about Hizbollah. One secular Christian I know once said her friends wish for a Christian Nasrallah. Others speak in glowing terms of Hizbollah's capacity to gather intelligence on Israeli troop movements on the Israeli-Lebanese border, even knowing the names and rotations of Israel's officer corps stationed on the border. In Gaza former critics of Hamas now express their support for the movement. Israeli reaction to the capture of its soldiers is only radicalizing these populations and strengthening these militant movements.

The reality is that while it may feel good for Israelis to send in its tanks, planes and ships to destroy bridges, electrical plants and homes, such actions only show the country's weakness, not its strength. Just as terrorists strike out at civilian and other "soft" targets, Israel does the same. Israel knows it cannot defeat these groups, so it lashes out at soft targets, such as civilian infrastructure and civilians.

In Lebanon Israel killed 40 civilians yesterday. In Gaza Israel killed 23 Palestinians, many of them civilians, 10 of them children. Israel knows, and the internationial community should know, that such actions only make its position weaker, and only delays the inevitable concessions the country will have to make if it ever wants to live in the region in peace.

Peace is possible. Hamas has said it will recognize Israel if it returns to the 67 borders. In 2004 the Arab League offered full normalization of relations with Israel in exchange for the establishment of a Palestinian state in the 67 territories. Hizbollah will follow the Palestinians lead. If and when Israel gives up it's dreams of annexing much of the West Bank, it can have peace.

It's all about perspective

2006-07-01T15:12:00.000+03:00

It is not suprising that editorials in most American newspapers are supporting the current Israeli "offensive" in Gaza. When it comes to the issue of Israel, Americans seem to wear a special kind of intellectual and moral blinders, that keep the view narrow and myopic.

The Washington Post is often decent, but was incredibly sanquine about what Israel has subjected Palestinians to in the past few days.

Israel's Gaza incursion has been reluctant, slow, carefully calibrated -- and as of yesterday, casualty-free. In addition to the arrests, Israel has disrupted power supplies for slightly more than a tenth of Gaza's population, occupied an abandoned airport, rained shells down on empty fields and bombed the Hamas-controlled interior ministry while it was empty. Yesterday it again postponed a larger operation aimed at stopping the launching of rockets at Israel from northern Gaza in order to allow more time for mediation by Egypt. Meanwhile, the rocket firings continued -- another act of war that Hamas has encouraged, if not sponsored.

The Financial Times, on the other hand, not a left-wing, alternative media type of publication, had this to say.

It is just conceivable that Israel's present course of action in laying siege to the Gaza Strip could be tactically rational. It may, for instance, be aimed at turning the Palestinian people against Hamas, the Islamist movement they elected in January. What is certain, however, is that it is dangerously disproportionate.

No two conflicts are alike, in cause or in contour, but it is legitimate to compare standards of behaviour. Consider, for a moment, what would have happened if, in reaction to the IRA seizing a soldier, the British government had: invaded Northern Ireland; punished its people by destroying its electricity supply, transport links and government offices; shelled Belfast and Derry from land, sea and air; cratered the Falls Road; used the Royal Air Force to buzz the offices of the Taoiseach in Dublin; and arrested every Republican it could lay its hands on.

There would rightly have been an international outcry - and so there should be in this case.

The Post opines that the limited and restrained Israeli response, shows that "the incursion seems mainly intended to recover a soldier held hostage by Palestinian militants," while the Financial Times thinks that the taking of the Israeli soldier provided the Israeli government with the pretext to bring down what remains of the Palestinian government, stating that, "the disproportion between means and ends suggests this may be a pretext."

Talking with friends and colleagues in Gaza, I can tell you that the sterile and surgical attacks described by the Post editorial do not match the suffering and desperation of most Gazans. They have little or no electricity, there is no sleep or rest because of the bombings and sonic booms at night, and the most basic food and medical supplies are running out for many people.

Say what you want about Israel's right to defend itself, but targeting the general Palestinian population for the acts of a couple of militant groups is not defensible under any circumstances, or in any religious, moral or legal code. Bombing the electrical plants has nothing to do with Shalit, and has everything to do with making the situation as unbearable as possible for the largest number of people possible in the hopes the Palestinians somehow abandon all thoughts of resistance to Israeli policies.

When Israel fully controlled the West Bank and Gaza, it gave the Palestinians a few crumbs. When Abbas had full control Israel gave him nothing. Hamas is now in control, and Israel gives them nothing. Why would Palestinians believe anything they do will positively impact Israel and the harsh reality of living under the occupation?

It is this desperation that feeds the viciousness on the Palestinian side of the conflict. Give some hope to people and they will respond positively. What is it that feeds the viciousness on the Israeli side?

Rambling thoughts from Egypt

2006-06-18T16:40:00.000+03:00

On Politics and Reform in the Middle East

Egyptians are speaking out plainly about the trouble with their government. This is a big change from a few years ago when a talk about politics usually meant a litany of perhaps well-deserved wrongs of America in the Middle East, particularly Palestine.

The amount that people spoke of domestic corruption, dictatorship and repression was striking. It seems many people, from taxi drivers to white collar employees to development NGO representatives are completely fed up at the democratic farce that took place in Egypt this past winter. The past year has seen unprecedented public criticism of the government, and now that the government sees it has a green light to crack down, people don't want to stop criticizing. It seems it's a habit they have gotten used to.

It was surprising how little anyone, even professional political thinkers, wanted to talk about regional issues. The focus was squarely on Egypt and the changes that have occurred, or should occur in the country.

The current mobilizing factor is the effort of judges to retain and even build on their slim independence. But the coming battle over Mubarak's succession will be the real political show-down. Despite both President Mubarak's and his son Gamal's insistence there will not be a coronation, few people doubt that both have designs to have the son in someway inherit rule from his father. It may not come in the form of a formal coronation, but will instead likely come through seemingly legal and institutionally procedural processes.

While all Egyptian opposition parties, secular and religious, vociferously oppose Gamal's succession, the voice of the two most important sectors is not well known. The first is the big-business community. There is no clear way to tell what the business consensus is, you can assume they will approve of Gamal from the standpoint of an expected continuity and stability in rule, as well as the fact that he himself is a member of the big-business club.

Less clear is the consensus of the military. But similarly, the military has every reason to continue the profitable and rewarding arrangement that President Hosny has set up. Expect them to through their weight behind Mubarak the Younger. Politics in Egypt look set to heat up even more in the coming year.

Regarding the state of politics in Egypt

In the last elections, only roughly 20% of eligible voters turned out. That means that no mater who won, they are all losers. This includes the Muslim Brotherhood.

Why is political Islam so strong in places like Egypt. There is no doubt that the basic appeal to Islam draws many people to its ranks. It has provided much needed, quality services to people in great need. Since its founding in the 1920's the MB has shown both great skill in mobilizing public opinion and people for action. An observer to the recent parliamentary elections said the MB was "the most user-friendly entity" in Egypt today. They had legions of volunteers, excellent communications and outreach, and steller coordination, not just at a local level, but also nationally.

But the government's approach to the opposition also has played it's part. Since the rise of political Islam in the 1970's and 80's, the government has done little to defend the secular ideal. Instead it sought to co-opt religion, using the power of the state and especially state media to engage in a battle of who is "holier than thou." The Egyptian government has also been careful to crush any secular, especially leftist, opposition to its rule, preferring to be the only secular force in the country.

This has been convenient when the United States or others develop a fleeting interest in reform. The government is able to point to the Muslim Brotherhood as the only alternative, and, not surprisingly, outside pressure quickly begins to fade. It's worked for the past 25 years, no reason to expect it won't work now. And it is. Following the strong showing by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the Hamas victory in Palestine, Bush, et al, are beating a hasty retreat from their program for democratic transformation in the Middle East. America doesn't want democracy in the Middle East, it wants reliable allies.

But part of why the secular movement has failed is that it has not connected with people, either intellectually or practically. What does any secular organization or party in the Middle East offer to people except perhaps dry lectures and tired old rhetoric. What do secular organizations offer to the average people, another training in human rights? The same human rights that America and its friends in the Middle East regularly exploit and abuse. That feeds neither the belly, the mind or the soul. Provide something valuable and people will value you.

Zarqawi and Jordan

2006-06-15T06:37:00.000+03:00

I've been too busy to post recently, coming back to a trip from Egypt and a week of catching up on work and preparing a presenation for a conference. So much has been happening that I actually have too much to say. But in the next couple of days I'll start to dump some thoughts here and see what they look like.

I'll start with the death of Zarqawi.

For some reason I have a hard time celebrating the violent killing of anyone, even someone as wretched as Zarqawi. I'm not a pacifist, and understand that police, armies and violence are sometimes necessary for good people to survive, but I can't help but see killing, even of the worst criminal, as a fundamental failure of humanity.

That being said, it seems the killing of Zarqawi is going to set back his organization for the next few weeks, but they will doubtless rebound and continue their ruthless and brutal murders of innocent people and their stoking of sectarian conflict.

But like Lina, I'm somewhat pensive about the killing of Zarqawi. In the days after his death, I felt a bit of extra tension in the streets here in Amman. I can't point to any particular act or event, but I just felt some people were looking at me differently, behaving towards me with a deeply repressed anger.

I don't usually feel this in Jordan, and didn't expect it. It started off "what the hell is wrong with people today" kind of feeling. And I didn't feel it was directed against me particularly, but just a kind of pent up political resentment. But I felt a difference. I think a lot of people, even those who didn't support Zarqawi, still saw him as a symbol of resistence to American misbehavior in the Arab world, and don't see his death as something positive.

I wonder if the government here isn't becoming somewhat tone-deaf to it's own people as it continues to tailor its image for the sake of Western audiences.

I've been suprised at how much the Jordanian government is boasting of it's role in Zarqawi's death. I don't think most Jordanians really want to see Jordan cooperating to this degree with the United States in Iraq. The Jordanian military may want to. I was suprised once by some of the Jordanian Special Operations troops gave me two thumbs up for Blackwater, a company known in Iraq, even among other special ops people and regular American forces, as the scum at the bottom of the barrel. They are alleged to be involved in some of the worst abuses of Iraqis. Here's a little taster of what they got away with in New Orleans. Imagine what they are doing abroad.

But Zarqawi's death and the recent crackdown on vocal critics of the government is coming on top of some pretty tough neo-liberal economic reforms that are really hurting a lot of poor people. The influx of foriegn capital, especially in real estate, has also added to rapidly rising cost of living, reported at over 8% for the first half of the year. Despite Oprah showed, Jordan is a poor country, and not everybody's refrigerator is stocked to the gills. People here do eat manseef more than they eat McDonalds.

The Jordanian goverment has also reportedly started giving greater support to Fateh, to counterbalance the influence of Hamas among segments of Jordan's Palestinian population. If true, this kind of divide-and-rule strategy cannot be good for Jordan in the long-term. At the end of the day, the government is dividing its own people, leaving the country a little less stable and a little less secure. Jordan's stability is based on a finely tuned balancing act which is getting harder to maintain. Pitting it's own people against each other in this way cannot be good for the country. It also just sent a shipment of weapons to Abu Mazen's Force 17 in the Palestinian Territories. If Jordan doesn't want Palestinians interfering in its internal affairs, maybe it's best they didn't interfer too much in Palestinian internal affairs.

Which leads me to start feeling pensive about where things are going in Jordan right now. The government's response to the public reaction to Zarqawi's death has been a bit heavy handed, including detentions and intimidation of journalists and opposition figures. Granted some censure of the Islamic Action Front and others is perhaps warrented, but the government appears to be using the killing of Zarqawi as an opportunity to crack down on extremist and moderate Islamists alike.

With the combination of heavy-handedness, the close cooperation with the US in policies people here oppose, the huge gap between the few rich and the many poor, and the continuinig economic reforms that are squeezing the average person, I have to wonder where things are going, and what people are going to be thinking and feeling a year from now.

Call it intuition or a gut feeling, but I'm feeling a shift in the Jordanian private mood. Publically things may still seem fine, but privately, among the people who don't write in the newspaper columns or meet for cold drinks in Amman's tony salons, things are getting really tough.

Maybe all this will be a flash in the pan, a spike in resentment and then a return to the same old coping mechanisms that every body employs here to try to cope with what's happening in the Palestinian Territories and Iraq, and the inability to do anything about it. But I feel the heat has risen a couple of extra ticks since Zarqawi's death.

Waiting for change

2006-06-09T07:03:00.000+03:00

Walking along Talat Harb street last Thursday, I saw four large trucks filled with black-clad Egyptian security forces, stuffed maybe 25-30 to a truck, and a fifth filled with plain-clothes security agents. As I walked further along, towards the American University, and later across Tahrir Square, I saw more trucks filled with security forces, all of them parked in the sun, the guys suffering from the sweltering heat.

These security forces were deployed along the outside of Tahrir Square since last month's demonstrations shook the regime. The demonstrations were in support for calls by the Judges Syndicate to restore the independence of the judiciary, after the government began prosecuting two judges for reporting various forms of election rigging in this year’s legislative elections.

Many guys in the security forces have no idea what they are doing when they are sent to break up demonstrations. Many are half-literate peasants plucked from the country-side and dropped in the middle of Cairo. They likely don’t know what the demonstrators are doing or why they are there. But the ones who are ordering them to break up the demonstrations know what is being protested.

“People are angry and disappointed” at the past years failed reform initiatives emanating from Egypt’s ruling party, said one former government official, referring to the country’s educated and intellectual classes. They are tired of rulers who have consistently lead Egypt to underperform, both at home and abroad. Perhaps most of all, they are tired of corruption.

A lot of people took hope that Egypt’s proposed constitutional amendment to begin direct elections of the president, instead of a simple yes or no referendum on the current president, might actually initiate some change. But the amendment was “put in chains” to ensure that the only possible candidate was either the president or his hand-picked successor, says one political analyst here. The unexpectedly vigorous opposition to the president and the growth of the internet has scared guardians of the regime, says another, adding, “Egypt is a security regime, and they feel they are loosing control of the situation.” Their response, he says, “is to crack down harder and more brutally on dissent.”

Despite the very thin veneer of democracy that exists in Egypt, “the country is ruled by a dictator,” said another Egyptian, “a dictator has to rule through corruption to ensure his survival, as those who benefit will always rally around him to save their own position.” “Have you ever seen a cat leave a fish,” is how he summed up the results of the past few decades of political life in Egypt.

There was also disappointment in the United States, again. Many people felt that the constitutional amendment was in large part the result of American pressure on Egypt to show the way towards democratic reform in the region. That, in fact, it did. Weak American criticism of the presidential elections, the later parliamentary elections and the crackdown on demonstrators has shown that, “the US has decided to keep a dictator who can use a heavy hand to keep things stable.” The American democracy debate appears more and more to be just another tool to pressure governments in the region to toe the American line, rather than a real effort to let people chose who is going to rule them and how.

As I walked past the security forces on Thursday some of them smiled and waved to me from inside the metal boxes they had been cooking in for hours. What does democracy and human rights mean to these guys? Do they care about American pressure or criticism of the regime? Do they wake up the day after they’ve beaten the young men and women demonstrating for change and start to think, “enough.” Probably not yet, which is a shame, because it looks like real reform in Egypt won’t happen until they do.

It's the little things

2006-06-01T09:58:00.000+03:00

Cairo! Mother of the World, the Big Mango! I began studying Arabic in Cairo, and later spent a year living here. I end up here every couple of years or so and I know the streets and the people and the dialect.

But spending three years in Jordan has really messed up my Egyptian Arabic. Despite the fact that I basically started studying Arabic here, and spent a year more studying only Arabic here, the Jordanian dialect has basically taken over my tongue.

If people in Jordan were confused when I speak, Egyptians are even more confounded. It’s not that my Arabic is bad; I’m pretty decent in Arabic these days, but look so obviously non-Arab that most people are pretty dumbfounded when I talk. I don’t fit well into the boxes people naturally make for themselves.

The funny thing is for all the Arabic I’ve managed to learn, I have the hardest time with the simplest things. I can talk about politics, economics, human rights and just about any thing else. My decent Arabic once brought me the pleasure of a 9 hour stay in the basement of Egypt’s Ministry of Interior (don’t ask), where I sat in a dark hall with a Sudanese illegal immigrant and watched a small kitten hunt and eat cockroaches. It’s an experience I don’t suggest anyone try.

So armed with my extensive knowledge of the region and Arabic, I set out today to find an internet café. Here’s how it went:

Me: a3tek el3afiya. wen fe internet café? (Excuse me, do you know where an internet café is?)
Guy: I’m sorry, I don’t speak English
Me: Ana be7ky 3araby! (I’m speaking Arabic)
Guy: Blank stare
Me: fe internet café gareeb men hoon? (Is there an internet café near here?)
Guy: (Blank stare)
Me: (now pretending to type on a keyboard) Internet café, internet café?
Guy2: Ahhh, cyber, cyber!
Me: Ah, ah, bedy cyber café, bedy ista3mal elinternet

Pretty simple stuff, except when a white guy says this to an Egyptian he might as well be speaking Martian. It’s amazing what appearance and a couple of word changes in life’s simple daily verbal exchanges can do to years of trying to master a foreign language and culture. It’s the little stuff that always flusters me and keeps me humble. Time for a little review of Egyptian.

What makes a nation?

2006-05-29T05:59:00.000+03:00

What makes a nation? Ghassan Sharbel brings up this question when he asks:

"Is Iraq a final nation for all its sons, in which they can live equally with all their rights and obligations? Or is Iraq a tent spread about the Shia, Sunnis and Kurds, each one able to pull up stakes when they want, whenever one side feels it has a chance to gain a bigger share? Is it possible to protect a nation with the logic of a tent, ambushes and truces, or with the logic of a state and insitutions, and the principle of recoginizing the other and his right to be different and equal, without a secret program to take his rights, erase his identity and dissolve his heritage?"

Sharbel goes on to ask similar questions about Lebanon, and surely such questions can be asked of a lot of states in the region. The main reason, he points out, is the extensive resources poured into armies and secret police, with the most sophisticated devices for spying on their own citizens, instead of forming truely national institutions that would survive the vagaries of time. "That is why when the ruler falls, everything falls and we see... institutions plundered and mililtias spout like mushrooms," says Sharbel.

What makes a nation is a question that has not been sufficiently answered in a lot of countries in the Middle East. Is it just the simple prevelance of the Arabic language? Is it Islam? Is it shared culture and history? What makes a Jordanian from Salt Jordanian and not Palestinian? An Arab in Alexandretta a Turk and not a Syrian? A beduin in Kuwait a Kuwaiti and not an Iraqi? Isnt' it just the random lines drawn on a map by colonial overlords? What makes a nation in the Middle East?

A post-Intifada period?

2006-05-28T17:03:00.000+03:00

Has Palestine entered a post-Intifada period, as Muhammad Abdel Shafee' Issa claims in Saturday's al-Hayat?

I'm not sure about that, but Hamas' participation and victory in last January's elections certainly have brought about significant changes.

Among these changes is a reported internal dialogue that is taking place within the movement. This ongoing dialogue explains in parts some of the drastic turns the Islamist movement has been making in recent weeks, both in regards to Israel and the domestic situation.

According to al-Hayat, the dialogue started about the time Hamas won the election and includes a thorough discussion of the militant movement's political positions, the possibility of negotiations and it's stand in regards to international and past Arab summit agreements.

Hamas' political office has established a "red-line" of not recognizing Israel "at this stage," reports al-Hayat, even if it means that it will have to give up power and return to being a movement strictly dedicated to "resistance and political opposition." What "this stage" means is explained by another official who states that recognition of Israel now would be "giving up our position for a piece of bread" and that it would be changing the nature of the Palestinian cause from one of national liberation and self-determination to one of "food assistance and salaries."

Al-Hayat quotes a third Hamas official (all of them unfortunately unnamed) saying "In the end we'll recognize Israel, but not for free. Israel has to first recognize our right to establish an independent state on all the lands occupied in 1967, and to really withdraw from these lands. At that point (Israel) will have its recognition, and on top of it, security."

The most likely scenario is that Hamas will, in principle, soon accept the so-called Abdullah plan, named after the Saudi King who proposed it at a 2002 summit in Beirut. The Abdullah plan agrees to a complete recognition of Israel by all members of the Arab League on condition that Israel withdrawal from all of the territories it occupied in the 1967 war. Acceptance of the plan will signal Hamas' de facto acceptance of Israel, and put it firmly in the official Arab consensus camp. Israel will undoubtedly reject this position, as it did the Abdullah plan when it was announced, because it knows it can get more through force and the backing of the United States.

This would be a shame because the Abdullah plan appears to offer the best hope for real regional peace, but also because Hamas' being part of a genuine political process is moderating the movement and bringing about change. The paper quotes a high ranking member of Hamas saying, "In the past we were a political movement that enjoyed the greatest degree of freedom in setting our positions, but now we are a government, responsible for an economy, employees and domestic security." With power comes responsibility, and this responsibility forces a moderation in both ideology and behavior. Democracy does work in mitigating militancy and extremism, but you have to give it time to run it's course.

Fateh members claimed they were going to do carry out a similar introspection when they lost the election, with some Fateh members seeing it as a good opportunity to try to rebuild the party and make it both more efficient and effective. I have to wonder if such a process has really started, or if they are too busy simply planning on how to get back into power.

The best dressed vice-president

2006-05-28T06:11:00.000+03:00

In my post about royalty and the dilema of titles, I didn't bother to mention that Queen Rania was accompanied by a Sudanese government delegation. I didn't pay them too much mind, but one guy really stuck out. He came into the auditorium with the queen, sporting a casual jacket and like a small cowboy hat. I thought, "whoa, this guys looks like some kind of blues player straight from the Missisippi delta."

Turns out he's the Salva Kiir, former right hand man to John Garang and military leader of the SPLA. He replaced Garang as Sudan's Vice President after Garang died in a helicopter crash.

So he gets my vote for the most hip Vice President. Here he is.

Praying or Plotting?

2006-05-25T07:37:00.000+03:00

I'll try not to post stories from the web, but this was just too good to pass up.

Praying or Plotting?

By Mohammad Ali Salih
Sunday, May 21, 2006; B02

"May Allah guide you in whatever you do. May Allah protect you from evil. May Allah destroy your enemies."

These were the words I heard from my eightysomething father one recent morning as his frail voice came over the phone from a Sudanese village about 6,000 miles away. To each sentence I replied "Amen," and as I hung up, I felt the soothing effect of his prayer come over me at the start of another day.

But at the same time, as I readied myself for work here in the tension-filled capital of the United States, I couldn't help but wonder: What if the National Security Agency were listening to my phone calls to Sudan?

My father, who is barely able to read a newspaper and never went to a modern school, learned about Islam and basic Arabic in his village khalwa (an Islamic school or madrassa). He grew up to be the village's Sharia expert and its shaman, healing patients with religious rituals and native medicine.

His everyday conversation has always been peppered with Islamic words and phrases such as " Allahu akbar " (God is great), "jihad" and "infidels." Thirty years ago, when I married an American Christian, my father objected, saying she was an infidel.

But he mellowed a few years later and now, whenever we talk on the phone, he sends his best wishes to her and our three children (he also prays for them). But he still expects that one day I will leave "Dar al-Harb" ("the land of war," i.e., the West) and return to "Dar al-Salam" ("the land of peace," i.e., Muslim countries).

My father is not an extremist, just a product of his environment, education and age. And although some say that the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States "changed everything," they did not change my father. They did not change the way he talks.

But they did lead the NSA to begin spying on overseas phone calls and e-mail messages. The agency is reportedly using computers to search for key words to pick up and track certain phone calls. Words such as bomb, explosives, jihad and infidels.

My father uses some of those words.

I need my father's prayers (all prayers, really) to calm me down while the United States, the greatest nation in history, is caught up in a state of fear. My feelings about this fear have evolved from amazement to sadness and recently to anger. Not anger at the American people so much as at President Bush, whose strategy of endless war against an unidentified enemy has frightened everyone.

But sadly, my father's words can now raise red flags in the United States. The last time I spoke to him, he said he was going to send me a long written prayer in a letter. I said that regular mail would take too long and suggested instead that he give the prayer to one of his computer-literate grandchildren to e-mail to me.

But now I worry: Can NSA computers tell the difference between a prayer and a terrorist plot?

mohammadalisalih@yahoo.com

Mohammad Ali Salih is Washington correspondent for the London-based Arabic daily Asharq Al-Awsat and other Arabic publications.

An afternoon with royalty and the dilemas of titles

2006-05-24T08:38:00.000+03:00

Well, not really. But yesterday I attended results of a "festival of creativity" by Jordanian youth at the Royal Cultural Center, a kind of celebration of a program by the Jordanian branch of World Links. Among the distiguished guests was Queen Rania.

If you haven't ever attended one of these events it's kind of interesting. You don't actually usually meet the Queen, she is kind of whisked in and out pretty quickly as everyone is seated. Once in a while you get a handshake, and hopefully use the right term to address her.

I never remember if its supposed to be your highness or your majesty or something else. I suck at these titles, and I'm even worse at them in Arabic. Samu al-Amir, Jalalatu, 3Atoofa, Seyadtul Basha, Elma3ali, etc. I was with a mutasarref from the Ministry of Interior the other day. I still can't figure out what a mutasarref is, but its some kind of adminstrative title. These things apparently matter. It turns out I'm basically seyyid (Mr.) Jason, or, on a good day I get upgraded to ustaz.

As the Queen left the hall, we all had to stand again for the national anthem, to give her time to leave. Fair enough. So after the anthem we all shuffled to the door to go out to the reception, but were stopped by guards. Apparently the Queen was still in the vacinity. After a couple minutes two guys weasled themselves to the door, and talked their way out. I was a little annoyed. Then four Saudis went to the door, and got themselves out. I got more annoyed. Then a group of like 15 people streamed out and it was too much. I went to the door and asked the guy, "what's up, why are these guys allowed out". "Ministry of Education," came the answer.

A couple minutes later a guy comes down the steps, through the door and starts saying to some of those there, please, this way our distinguished guests (itfaddalu, itfaddalu duyoofna elkaram). When we came in we were all addressed as distinguished guests, so I wondered why the differentiation now. I started laughing and joking with the guards, saying things like, "what, weren't we distinguished guests too? We became just normal guests now?" (Sho ya3ny, mesh e7na kunna duyoof karam? ba2ayna duyoof 3am, wa khalas?) A female guard caught my eye and subtly motioned me to go. I guess she saw the comic irony of the situation too.

The Queen is actually a decent person, and does a lot for children's rights and development. A friend of mine went to school with her in Kuwait, and had a hard time not just saying, "Hey, Rania, what's up," when she saw her after she became queen. It's hard to remember sometimes that underneath the mystique of power and position all these people are just people after all. But protocol is protocol, and familiarity with royalty, even with old acquaintences, doesn't fly.

I don't envy the King and Queen. Sure being royalty has it's perks, hey, just being a dayf kareem does, but sometimes they must just want to go out and be normal people again, like they once were.

DaVinci Code reaches the Middle East (well, almost)

2006-05-23T08:32:00.000+03:00

The movie DaVinci Code has catapulted to the top of the charts, as religious controversy and big names draw people to see the movie for themselves.

The Catholic Church has condemned it, Christian groups are boycotting it, and it has been banned in a number of Arab countries.

I think I would like Divinci Code and Temptation of Christ if I read them, and one of my favorite all time films is the Life of Brian, a parody on the life of Jesus and a biting satire on religion, particularly Christianity.

I've seen a number of people here criticizing the banning of the movie DaVinci Code, and I agree with them. I don't think controversial books and movies should be banned, but should be discussed. I think governments here banned the movie to show the West that they are sensitive to their Christian minorities, and perhaps minorities that feel embattled deserve special sensitivity sometimes.

But it's funny how often religious authorities only care about their own heresies. I haven't seen the Catholic Church ever condemn Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses. I don't see al-Azhar condeming the DaVinci Code. Most religions are only senstive about their own doctrines, but could care less about the sensitivties of their rivals. Hypocrisy bothers me.

But I have a lot of questions as I follow the debates on the issue. What would happen if there was a DaVinci code-type book written that questioned the authenticity of the Quran? Or a satire on the life ofthe Prophet or the Companions? Or a movie that made fun of the Hajj or hijab, for example?

What if such works were produced by a westerner? What if such works were produced by an Arab? Does it matter?

Is there a difference between The DaVinci Code andSalman Rushdie's Satanic Verses? Do religious minorities deserve special sensitivity on these kinds of issues? Do religious majorities deserve special sensitivity?

I'm someone who doesn't trust any centers of power, and sees all religions, especially religious orthodoxy, as one of the most powerful and dangerous centers of power in any society, one that should always be criticized and analyzed constantly to be kept in check. I'm not anti-religion, but i don't trust religious authority or authorities.

I hope to see more such books and movies questioning the basic assumptions that religions are founded on. I hope they are controversial each time, and provoke wide-ranging discussion and debate (no riots, please). It's the only way to keep religious authority and the power of religion on it's heels, and off our necks.

Daily struggles under the seige

2006-05-22T16:30:00.000+03:00

Speaking with our staff in Gaza and Ramallah just now was another reminder of how bad things are in Palestine. As I was talking with the Gaza office, I could hear the gunfire of yet another clash between Hamas and the security forces. As we talked news came that the Jordanian ambassador was inadvertently hit by some of the gunfire, and his driver killed.

People's nerves are absolutely shot, one staff member said that any sound makes them jump now. They say as bad as the blockade of the Gaza Strip is, people could handle it. But what is killing them (literally and figuratively) is the internal fighting. People can't go out into the streets without fear of getting caught in between something.

Most people blame both sides for being corrupt and selfish, putting party interests above national interests, and falling into a destructive and base power struggle. People see no end to the current madness.

In the West Bank things are better, but not by much. There haven't been the same kind of clashes as are now occuring daily in Gaza, but the economic situation is dismal and crime is increasing. Our office was robbed and two computers recently taken. A couple of days ago the Jawwal telephone company offices were attacked and shot up, resulting in a 24 hour cut in the network. The al-Jazeera news office was also attacked and all the office's cars taken.

One of our staff members, who is from Ramallah, recently married a Palestinian from Jerusalem. She has been trying to get a permit so she can stay with him (which is customary, that the man provide a house for the new wife), but the Israeli High Court recently announced that the government will issue no new permissions for Palestinians from outside what Israel considers its borders, including a grossly expanded greater municipality of Jerusalem, to go to Israel. So one of her daily struggles is trying to find a way to get back to her husband and baby after work.

They are now looking for a house near the Qalandia checkpoint, which is main entry point to Ramallah, but have found it almost impossible. As there are no more permits for people married to Jerusalemites to go to their homes, many people are moving to Ramallah or the surrounding area. The result has been a severe housing shortage and housing prices that have doubled and tripled.

These are minor troubles compared to what some people there are enduring, but gives you a sense of how the situation is impacting everyone.

So it's a good thing that it is "the Israeli government policy not to punish the Palestinian people for their vote." I mean, just imagine if it was!!

Palestine unraveling

2006-05-20T06:31:00.000+03:00

All bets are off in the hopes that Hamas' participation in politics might offer a chance the effort to moderate the militant fundamentalist movement.

Recent moves show that Hamas is as bent on further Islamicizing and controling Palestinian society as its critics say it is. I still think the international community lost a chance to moderate the movement when it came to power, through a combination of political deals and compromise that would have given mulitple chances to influence the movement and begin the slow return of Palestinian society to its secular roots.

But the intense isolation of the movement since it came to power has strengthened the hand of the hard-liners and make them believe they have no choice but to fight to take full control of the Palestinian society. Friends in Gaza are saying things are not the same since Hamas came to power, that the movement is increasing its religious propaganda and that its hardline supporters are becoming increasingly bold in their attitudes and actions towards those they view as non sufficiently Muslim. The last small vestiges of Palestinian secular society are under siege.

Now Hamas has established a full-fledged government back religious militia that it has deployed like an army throughout the Gaza Strip. It's mission is ostensibly to fight crime and chaos, but it is a force designed to challenge the primacy of the secular Fatah movement, and specifically President Abbas throughout the Occupied Territories. The new force has already clashed with the established Palestinian security forces, and drive by shootings, assassination attempts and clashes between the groups increase everyday.

Again, the Washington Post has a good article on the new security force. If Hamas really had in mind doing something that was going to help Palestinians, it would instead take steps to professionalize and maybe streamline the Palestinian security forces. It would struggle, as Abbas does, to avoid a armed confrontations with its rival political movement. Instead it has taken a number of steps that indicate it wishes for an armed showdown with it's Palestinian opponents.

Palestine in starting to unravel. I really fear for the place.

Religious extremists in the political mainstream

2006-05-20T05:47:00.000+03:00

Imagine the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan or Egypt was able to establish a special university that was exceptionally well-funded, and supported politically by powerful politicians, businessmen and organizations from across the region.

Imagine that this university was established specifically for those students whose parents had raised them in a way that saw the entire society around them as corrupt, and in nead of drastic, God-inspired reform, and that there was a kind of test of belief for all those who studied, taught or worked there. The young people studying in this university would have been raised completely outside of state or other state-regulated public schools, and would have been taught a very narrow religious curriculum.

Imagine that the students in this school had been raised to believe that the only source of truth was a sacred religious text written centuries ago, and that all other sources, especially any with a hint of European enlightenment thinking or liberalism were suspect at best, probably tainted by Satan himself, if not an actual Satanic inspiration. Imagine the political and social forces supporting this school not only had occupied important local, state and national political offices, but even had the ear of the leader of the country.

In this university, these young men and women, who had been raised to see the society around them as a dangerous enemy, and to see the world outside their country as full of all kinds of other terrible people who wanted to attack their country and forcibly wreck their religion, would be given the best chances to meet powerful members of society who shared their views, or at least wanted their support, and be given choice jobs throughout government and industry.

This is not an imaginary tale. This is a reality coming from the United States and a growing slice of the American Christian right. In an article about a growing scandal at this "university" outside Washington, the Washington Post reports that:

The college has ambitions to place conservative Christian graduates in positions of influence, where they will help reshape American culture. Since the school opened six years ago, its student body has grown from 88 students to 300, and it has sent students to prized internships at the White House and on Capitol Hill.

The school has part of its mission as balancing a quality liberal arts education with the kind of narrow minded religious fundementalism I described above. The tensions inherent in its mission are what have caused the scandal, as a kind of religious puritan head has clashed with a number of teachers and employees who have suggested such scandalous ideas as salvation being possible through baptism as opposed to just belief in Jesus, or that there sources other than the bible that might be sources of useful information. The focus on liberal arts is not an admiration for liberal thought, but instead a training that allows fundamentalists to navigate the secular world around them in a way that covers their extremism and makes them seem well educated and tolerant, when basically they are not. These are not all "peace and love and turn the other cheek" kind of Christians, but those who see the need to use force to battle the forces of Satan at work in the world.

So while policy makers in the US are further impovershing Palestinians and in some cases killing them through its economic and political blockade, due to the narrow victory of Hamas at the polls, they are also cozying up to even more reactionary, illiberal and dangerous home-grown religious fundamentalists in America.

Still scared of fundamentalism in the Muslim world? That may be fair, but I find fundamentalism in America at least as threatening and dangerous a force at work in the world.

The failure of Hamas or of the West?

2006-05-19T16:34:00.000+03:00

US analysts expect the Hamas-led PA government to collapse within the next three months, reported al-Hayat newspaper last week.

I'd love to see Hamas fail, but they have to fail at the ballot box, not through an alliance of the US, Israel, Fatah and Arab states. Hamas as both a theological and national liberation movement is a disaster for the Palestinians and the larger Muslim world.

Theologically, it respresents a moderate branch of political Islam, but one that is still highly conservative and that works to implement an interpretation of religious law as the law of the state. That is bad enough on its own, because whenever a government claims its authority and laws are based on faith in a sacred text, there comes about a sacralization of the political, and a politicization of belief. You have government and laws based on a particular color of a faith, rather than on the principles of reason and public good.

But what is worse is that most modern Islamists try to implement Islamic law, Sharia, as a code of law, when it is really a judiciary process. So instead of reinventing the process, which has potential for highly liberal as well as highly conservative rulings, and a lot of ambiguity, they try to impose a legal code, rules, ahkam in Arabic, often with the most conservative and illiberal interpretation of these rules cherry-picked from a highly diverse Islamic heritage.

As a nationalist movement it has been a disaster for its role in sanctifiying the militarization of the second Intifada and of Palestinian society as a whole. So instead of arms being a means to achieve the end of liberation, they have been turned into fundemental part of a sacred duty, a new kind of fetish, or demi-god, of political empowerment. They have also legitimized the practice of suicide bombing, which is one of the most un-Islamic methods of warfare I am aware of. Suicide is prohibited in Islam, as is the random killing of civilians, yet Hamas has contributed to the growth in Muslim supporters of this practice, as disasterous to the Palestinian movement for national liberation as it has been to the Islamic faith.

But all of those working for the failure of Hamas on the backs of ordinary Palestinians ought to be ashamed of themselves, for their failure to protect and support simple humanitarian principles, as well as basic morality, and the must basic and fundemental tenats of democracy. They have essentially taken the lives of Palestinians living under occupation hostage and made a bargain with the devil to somehow justify the killing of more innocent civilians in the name of power politics. The short term result may be success, aborting the Hamas success at the polls, but a long term failure, effortst to suppor the development of democracy in the region.

Anybody who really cares about Palestinians should want to see Hamas fail, but it has to be a failure born of the failure of the ideology to deliver the goods, which it would have before long. But as it stands, those who are imposing and supporting the blockade on the Palestinians are giving Hamas and the worldwide "Islamic movement" a free pass for failure, and a trump card for the future.

Hamas will claim that it failed because the US, Israel and secular Arab regimes fear the success of the Islamic movement, not because once given a chance to rule, the Islamic Movement will show that it is a bankrupt, oppressive and close-minded ideology that does not suit people in the region. Instead the US, Israel and the neighboring Arab regimes have strengthen religious fundamentalism in the region, and did more to damage efforts at democratization than either Saddam Hussein or Osama Bin Laden ever did.

Conflict, development and security

2006-05-17T10:08:00.000+03:00

Two recent articles do a good job of highlighting the link between confict an underdevelopment. Poverty alone is not enough to push large numbers of people towards extremism or militancy, but poverty combined with political marginalization are potent recruiters for conflict and violenct.

Both articles have a similar message: When governments treat political issues as security and military issues they exacerbate the problems.

The first is an article in the Christian Science Monitor about the Lebanese government's stated desire to start addressing the horrendous situation in the country's Palestinian refugee camps. The camps have long suffered from neglect and outright ostracization by the government and many Lebanese.

AIN AL-HILWEH, LEBANON – After decades of uneasy relations, Lebanon and its
Palestinian population are set to embark on a ground-breaking dialogue to improve conditions in the Palestinian refugee camps and curb uncontrolled armed groups.

For Ibrahim Khalil, that could mean an end to the knee-deep sewage that pours into his home during winter rains.

"Our homes are all damp and humid and not fit to live in. When it rains, my home is flooded with sewage because the drains can't take it. And this is the good part of the camp," says the Palestinian resident of this squalid refugee camp on the outskirts of the southern Lebanese town of Sidon.

During a recent trip to Lebanon I met a lot of skeptics of the new government's promise to address Palestinian needs in the camp, but one long time Palestinian social activist was impressed when Layla Mouwad, Lebanon's new Minister of Social Affairs, opened a meeting with Palestinian representatives saying, "The treatment of Palestinians in Lebanon is a gross violation of human rights." That was perhaps the first time a Lebanese government official spoke in such blunt terms about the plight of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon.

Similarly, the article quotes Sultan Aynayn, head of Fatah in Lebanon as saying:

"This is a major turning point," says Sultan Abul Aynayn, the head of the Fatah movement in Lebanon. "The Lebanese have moved from treating the Palestinians as a security concern to a humanitarian concern."

But a high level representative of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine I met in February was much less optimistic. He said that Lebanese Prime Minister Sinora said there is nothing more the government can give the Palestinians right now than, "to open an office in Beirut." Curiously, the CSM article mentions that the new hopes are pinned on the opening of a new PLO office in the Lebanese capital.

The second article, from the New York Times highlights the plight of Egypt's Sinai Beduin, and looks at how government neglect and marginalization as well as the breakdown of traditional social values left many young people frustrated and susceptible to Wahhabism. With seasonal unemployment near 90% and anger high over the situation in Palestine and Iraq, some residents of the Sinai find little reason to support the government.

In the jumble of crumbling public housing clumped along unpaved, sandy lots, there is a burning resentment of the central government, in particular the security services, which have made mass arrests through the region, and there is a conviction that the people here have been ignored for too long. People are furious that they must use salt water to brush their teeth, wash their clothes and cook with because that is what comes out of their taps at home.

Again, the Egyptian government's approach is similar to the Lebanese approach to Palestinians, as a security issue.

The modern Egyptian state has dealt with the Sinai and its people the way it has confronted most domestic problems, as a security issue. Local officials, for the most part, are not from the area, and no one is allowed to own land because the entire area is considered a military zone, officials here said.

As for Jordan, the oasis of security in the Middle East, what implications does that have?

After the terrorist bombings here in Jordan in November 2005, I asked a conflict specialist here his opinion on what the government should do. The first thing he said was that the government shouldn't overreact with a "security" response to the bombings by squeezing either the Muslim Brotherhood or extremist groups harder than it already did, but that it should instead accelerate it's efforts at political development in the country.

Jordanian Prime Minister Bakhit, the head of the "security" government established after the bombings is fond of saying that "Democracy without security is chaos, while security is democracy is oppression," but so far there is little concrete change to show for the National Agenda and country's new Ministry of Political Development.

Jordan is more free and open than it's neighbors, and still has a window to address the poverty and political frustrations of many of its people, but it is only a matter of time until these two frustrations come home to roost here too. What the Prime Minister says is correct. The question is, will the government actually deliver on this little piece of wisdom before it is too late?

The difference between here and there

2006-05-17T09:50:00.000+03:00

This picture of Qalqilya, in the West Bank, tells you more about the reality in the Occupied Territories more than any story, commentary or analysis ever could.

Remembering 1948

2006-05-16T06:11:00.000+03:00

Last night the Research Centre for Refugee Studies, located here in Amman, launced a week-long rememberance of the dispossession of 700,000 Palestinians of their homes and land, an day celebrated as Independence Day in Israel, but known as "al-Nakba", or the Catastrophe, to Palestinians and in the region.

The launch included screenings of three films. The first followed the life of a female Palestinian refugee in Lebanon who was detained in Israel's notorious al-Khiam prison. Khiam was the site of horrendous war crimes by both Israelis and their Lebanese allies in the SLA. It was a prison established in 1985 by the Israelis, which was subsequently turned over to their Lebanese allies.

One of the more interesting points of this film to me was when some of the former female detainees are talking about their Lebanese gaurds at the prison, gaurds who still live in nearby villages. One of the women says, "they look you right in the eye as if you're the guilty one."

I find it amazing that the Lebanese female guards, who contributed to the torture of these Palestinian refugee women, still live in the area, and that people haven't taken revenge on them. But also the brashness and arrogance of the gaurds feel no shame for abusing fellow human beings, looking at their former prisoners with such contempt, as if anyone deserves to be tortured. Lebanon has by far the worst record for its treatment of Palestinian refugees and still has not come to terms with this issue.

Another very moving moment in the movie is described well from a Human Rights Watch report from the time:

On May 23, local residents stormed the notorious Khiam prison, which since its opening in 1985 had been a joint enterprise of Israel and the SLA. They routed the SLA jailers without violent incident and freed about 130 detainees, some of whom had been held without charge for fifteen years.

It was amazing to see the reunion of brothers, mothers and friends after all these years of seperation. The human spirit seeks freedom, and it is amazing to see it soar at the moment of its release. It should be a lesson to all those who oppress that no matter how long oppression and occupation lasts, people will never give up the struggle to be free.

A second movie was about the Israeli wall, called Three Ghettos, One Land, by the Stop the Wall campaign. The film was really depressing, as the wall and the reality of the Palestinian Territories is, but it really remined me that Israel is intending to create three more Gaza's in the West Bank, one in the north centered around Nablus, a second in the center, around Ramallah, and a third in south around Hebron. This plan has been well known for years, but given how bad things have gotten in Gaza, it just struck more a bit harder last night what this will mean for the West Bank.

I don't know if there is another word to describe it other then ghetto. They may not ghettos in an urban sense, but they most certainly are in a national sense. They will consist mostly of Palestinian population centers, cut off from as much land as possible, and enclosed and intersected by Israeli walls and bypass roads. Movement in and out of these zones will be entirely controled by Israel. Here is a map that maybe best shows how the future Palestine will look. Here is another map that shows the Israeli-only bypass roads that fully crisscross and cut these zones into even smaller isolated pieces. How is that the basis of a viable state?

Al-Hayat reports that Israeli Prime Minster Ehud Olmert is preparing for a trip to Washington to seek President Bush's assurance that the US will support his disengagement plan as setting the final borders for the Jewish state. Israeli sources are trying to downplay any high expectations, but Washington will agree eventually, and will pay for it too.

Cultural note:

The Middle East is not all conflict. There is actually a lot of life outside of conflict. So another aspect of the launch was the sale of Palestinian national and cultural items. Among the most noteworthy displays was from Azkadunya, or The Other Arabia, as they translate it. According to the site, Azkadunya is, "an alternative non-profit distribution network for the promotion, marketing, and sale of non-commercial cultural production by individuals, organizations, or educational and cultural initiatives in the Arab world or in the Arabic language."

Unfortunately, the site is only available in Arabic, because people in the West are in desperate need of better outlets to Arab culture. Hopefully the set up an English-language mirror site. But they had a number of CDs for sale produced by the National Conservatory of Music, at Birzeit University in Palestine, which does have a good English language site. I'll be adding both to my "cultural links" space in the right sidebar.

Manageing change in the Middle East

2006-05-14T14:06:00.001+03:00

Anthony Shadid, veteran reporter for the Washington Post, has an interesting article on his return to his ancestral home in Lebanon, Marjayoun. It says a lot about the changes that have happened in the Middle East in the last century, and goes a long way towards explaining why the region has so much trouble overcoming the legacy of colonialism.

Colonialism alone is not enough to explain why the region remains torn by conflict and underdevelopment. Poor governance on the part of local rulers and military leaders has a huge part to play in that. But to understand why it has been so hard for so many communities in the region to flourish in the post colonial period, you have to understand the deep changes that occured in the Middle East. I lost the original link from the Washington Post, but found a link to the story here.

As Shadid writes:

When Beirut was a provincial capital at the turn of the century, Marjayoun was said to rival it in size. It once had four newspapers, and its schools -- with instruction in English and French -- remain the region's envy. For much of its history, it looked beyond modern-day Lebanon to Palestine, Jordan and Syria. Beirut was an afterthought; life revolved around trading with less-remote towns such as Haifa, Damascus and Quneitra nestled in the Golan Heights.

Dictated by the French in 1923, Lebanon's modern-day borders changed that. Even more disruptive was the creation of Israel in 1948. New borders were drawn with Syria's loss of the Golan Heights to Israel in 1967. Centuries-old trade routes were severed, and land holdings were arbitrarily partitioned. During Lebanon's civil war, which began in 1975, Marjayoun was run by a local militia, somewhat vaingloriously named the South Lebanon Army; Israel later occupied it, turning it into a battlefield with Hezbollah.

Local political elites who got control of the new states in the region also played a huge part in making the impact of such divisions greater, and in pursuing a narrow ethnic Arab nationalism that destroyed much of the long practiced tolerance and diversity of the region. Ask people where their families came from and you find Yemeni roots in families in Jordan, Iranian roots of some families in Syria, Turkish roots in people who are now Egyptian, and so on. In the creation of modern nation states in the Middle East the region lost a lot of its Greek, Jewish, Turkish and Armenian populations, and lost something of itself.

Modernity has not been kind to the Middle East on lot of levels, and the region is still struggling to cope with and adapt to the changes it brought about. The change has not always been well managed, but it was not helped by so much outside intervention.

Hamas and Jordan

2006-05-12T06:43:00.000+03:00

Al-Hayat today published a picture of the weapons and explosives the Jordanian government seized which it says Hamas smuggled into the country for use in attacks on Jordanian and western targets there.

Apparently members of a Hamas cell have admitted to receiving training in Syria and smuggling the weapons on behalf of the militant movement. Jordan has arrested 20 people in relation to the smuggling charges, three of them Jordanians of Palestinian descent, at least one of whom had fought in Iraq. It also arrested 15 members of the Islamic Action Front, the political branch of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan.

Hamas has denied it is involved in the operation and refused to send representatives to Jordan as part of an official Palestinian Authority delegation investigating the allegations. Representatives of President Mahmoud Abbass did participate. Hamas leader Ismail Haniya has denounced the Jordanian government's "media escalation" of the issue.

The three primary suspects have admitted to working with Hamas representatives in Syria, and in purchasing the weapons in al-Qa'im, in Iraq, as well as in Jordan, then moving them among various locations in Jordan. They have also admitted to casing various targets, including the home of an intelligence service officer in the city of Salt "who had harmed Hamas", General Security targets in the city of Zarqa and tourist locations in the city of Aqaba.

It is no secret that Hamas smuggles arms through Jordan. A lietenant in the army told me in an informal conversation that they frequently caught people bringing arms through the southern part of the country on their way to the Negev, and from there to the Palestinian territories. The arms mostly came from Iraq but some also came from Saudi Arabia, not the governments, but the territories. The Jordanian government, according to the lietenant, has sophisticated sensors all along the border and puts a lot of resources in stopping such smuggling, but that because of the rough terrain some smugglers manage to avoid detection.

He also complained that while the Jordanian government puts enormous efforts into stopping smuggling both in and out of Jordan, his Israeli counterparts "do nothing" to stop smuggling from Israel into Jordan and that, "they only care about what is going into Israel". The lietenant stated that the most common items smuggled into Jordan from Israel included weapons and drugs. He was frustrated by this because he felt that the Israel's causualness about smuggling from Israel "doubled" the work of Jordanian border guards.

I still find these charges a bit hard to swallow. For Hamas to start attacking Jordanian targets just doesn't make sense. but a trusted high-level former Jordanian government official (of Palestinian descent) says that while he can not say for sure what the arms were intended for, he knows some of the Jordanian officials involved in the issue and that they are "honest and good people" whom he trusts.

If the story is true, which I'm starting to believe that somehow it is, it must signal a significant split between some of the political leadership in Syria and that in the Palestinian territories, or even more significantly, a splintering of the group among various factions. It would be disasterous for Hamas to attack sites in Jordan and common sense would seem to dictate that Hamas' self-interest would not at all be served from attacking Jordanian targets.

On a side note, there is increasingly depressing news from the Palestinian Territories. Hamas is not suprisingly using its power of government to further Islamize Palestinian society. Islamize is not accurate, as it has nothing to do with religion, and a lot more to do with the narrow-minded fundamentalist and highly politicized version of Islam that the Muslim Brotherhood and most other Islamic parties in the Middle East espouse. Regarding Hamas, this now includes using government media and changing the curriculum in schools "to further inculcate their message into the minds of people", as one friend put it.

On fuel and salaries and peace

2006-05-11T09:23:00.000+03:00

The impact of the Israeli decision to cut fuel shipments to the Palestinian territories is already unfolding.

Throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip, fuel supplies are running out. The AP reports long lines forming at gas stations and rationing of what meager supplies remain.

In the West Bank, the situation was even more dire. Many stations said they were out of fuel, in some cases laying their dry nozzles on the ground.

“The only thing I've been doing for the past day is tell drivers that I don't have any gas,” said Awad Dabous, who works at a gas station in the West Bank town of Jenin.

A sign at the station said simply: “Sorry, no gas.” In Nablus, a line of taxi drivers said they had stopped working because they had no fuel. One driver, Mahmoud Tourabi, said he would try to drive to a nearby Jewish settlement in hopes of filling his tank.

“They may kill me there, so I will be the martyr of the gas,” he quipped.

Taxi drivers and others in the transport business are already being affected, and the AP also reports that the impact will soon be felt throughout the Palestinian territories, affecting almost everyone, not just government employees or members of the Hamas movement. As the AP reports,

"An end to fuel supplies could cripple hospitals, halt food deliveries and keep people home from work — a devastating scenario for an economy already ravaged by Israeli and international sanctions."

An example of what will soon happen to the health sector is,

Moaiya Hassanain, a top health ministry official in Gaza, warned that the area's hospitals, already suffering from a shortage of medicines, would cease to function without fuel.

He said ambulances would stop running, employees wouldn't be able to get to work and gas generators — used to compensate for ongoing electric outages — would be hobbled.

“It's going to be a disaster for us in the medical profession,” he said, speaking at a Gaza City gas station where he helped fill the gas tanks of several ambulances.

The Washington Post reports that a European Commission report noted that, "the key underlying factor" to the economic crisis "is the continued freeze in Israeli transfers of PA fiscal revenue and the strict Israeli policy on closures and other restrictions."

Yet the Israeli government remains adament in its stance that it will not relent on releasing fuel supplies or paying the Palestinians fuel bill out of the Palestinian funds it is seizing. The Post reports, "Israel has no intention whatsoever of punishing the Palestinian people," said Gideon Meir, a senior Foreign Ministry official. "Nor do we have any intention of giving money to the Palestinian Authority, including paying salaries."

The two are incompatable. If you don't pay the salaries, you are punishing the Palestinian people. It's not like once Hamas was elected all of the government employees became Hamas supporters. Most are actually Fatah supporters. How do you think they got government jobs in the first place?!

Here's the hard, cold truth. Israel has absolutely no intention of ever allowing anything resembling an independent Palestinian state. It wants the complete destruction of the Palestinian Authority under any government, and wants chaos and anarchy in the Palestinian territories so it can say it has no partner for peace, and can proceed as it wants to, annexing land and increasing the number of Israeli colonists in the West Bank. It wants economic and social conditions to be so bad that Palestinians will be compelled to leave what little land they have left, because for Israel, the biggest threat is the demographic threat.

It would be nice if everybody could all stop playing along with the fiction that there is a peace process, or that there is an Israeli partner for peace.

BBC's Middle East Coverage Faulted

2006-05-11T09:10:00.000+03:00

Here's a short blurb from a Washington Post blog, about uneven treatment in the BBC's Middle East coverage. Funny, they are faulted for not portraying the Palestinian experience sufficiently, while a pro-Israeli lobby in the UK has been bashing them for years on fine points of minutiae that did not satisfy them.

I wish we had an independent commission with the guts to come out with that conclusion about US media. US papers still have to maintain the fiction that the US "allegedly" favors Israel!

BBC's Middle East Coverage Faulted

The BBC is failing to cover the Israeli-Palestinian conflict well, says an independent report. The British television network's coverage is inconsistent, incomplete and misleading, but there is "no deliberate or systematic bias" in its reporting of the Middle East.

The report, written by a panel headed by former government official Sir Quentin Thomas, highlights the challenges faced by even the best news organizations in a region where the news media is part of the battleground.

It cites at least three specific shortcomings, according to The Independent,which obtained a copy:

* "There was little reporting of the difficulties faced by the Palestinians in their daily lives," the report said.

* In the months preceding the Palestinian elections "there was little hard questioning of their leaders."

* The BBC fails to to convey the "asymmetry" of the conflict.

"When the Israelis suffer it is usually from a terrorist attack ... which necessarily constitutes a newsworthy event. ... In recent years, many more Palestinians have been killed but usually in circumstances which are less dramatic and give rise to less striking images," the report said.

Television news, the report said, should not be "dazzled by striking, and available pictures." That will be a difficult injunction to enforce.

Additional humanitarian assistance to the Palestinians

2006-05-10T16:34:00.000+03:00

In case anyone was thinking that the undefined mechanism to provide additional humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people was going to bring relief, the sole supplier of fuel to the Palestinians, an Israeli company, in Gaza has announced it will stop fuel shipments.

As the Associated Press reports, "The Israeli company that provides fuel to the Palestinian areas is cutting off supplies due to growing debts, Israeli and Palestinian officials said Wednesday, a move that could deepen a humanitarian crisis in the West and Gaza Strip' "

That's right, no fuel. Think about that for a while. No fuel to run cars, no fuel for taxis, no fuel for generators, no fuel for businesses or factories. Think about how dependent any economy is on fuel and what a fuel stoppage would mean in your life. Basically a return to pre-modern living. And that's on top of the closure of the only commercial crossing Gaza has with the outside world, during the hieght of the agricultural season.

This is not about a business dropping a customer because he can't pay its bills. According to the AP, the Israelis have so far paid the Israeli company that supplies Gaza out of the roughly $55 million in customs duties it has withheld from the Palestinian Authority in since Hamas was elected to power. But, "a spokesman for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, said Israel would "absolutely not" bail out the Palestinians this time."

This is not "bailing them out." This is paying the Israeli company with Palestinian money.

Is there any way that this move can be construed as aimed at Hamas, or the Palestinian Authority, and not the Palestinian people, who are now supposed to receive additional humanitarian assistance. Is that going to include firewood and matches?

There are so many simple steps that could advance a peace process between the Israelis and Palestinians. One of them is letting Palestinians have a chance to live. Is there really a wonder that so many are ready to die? The wonder is that so many more of them struggle daily to live.

Taking the bait

2006-05-10T11:40:00.000+03:00

Iran has chosen the North Korean strategy of in-your-face nuclear development, part bluff, part bluster and part retreat to buy time. Either way it wins, through defiance to the US, development of nuclear weapons, or, under attack, increased influence as another Muslim victim of American aggression. The US took the bait again.

The Iran nuclear issue needs to be understood as part of a larger US-Iranian battle for influence in the Middle East. Both see the issue as a way to increase their power, control and influence over the Arab world, Iran through confrontation with the West and Israel, the US and Israel by knocking down the main ideological opponent to their policies and presence in the region. The Islamic Republic of Iran defined itself as an alternative and in opposition to the West, and specifically America. The US has now defined itself in opposition to political Islam and claims to be pursuing democratic models that provide alternatives to political Islam.

This is not a battle that will be won with military power. It is a battle for hearts and minds, call it political fundamentalist Islam vs. MEPI (Bush's Middle East Partnership Initiative). Being on the side of political fundamentalist Islam does not mean someone is a fundamentalist or even anti-American, as resentment of the US is high enough now that even many secular liberal Arabs and Muslims will sympathize with Iran over the US if it comes down to another military attack on the region.

In this game Iran by far holds the best cards. While its relations with most neighboring states are "not fruitful" as one diplomat told me, Iran has street credibility among a lot of people for its tough rhetoric regarding Israeli and US policies in the region, and for its strong ties with Shiite communities in many neighboring countries. Any attack on Iran may succeed in slowing down Iran's nuclear program, (see here for a view of the fallout on the much celebrated attack on Iraq's Osirak nuclear plant in 1981) but it won't humiliate the Iranian government or lead to regime change. It will inflame people's anger at the US and likely lead to both an increase in religious extremism and anti-Americanism. The region is already not short of both.

The wildcard in all of this is Sunni-Shiite relations in the region. A growing number of Sunnis are voicing concerns about the rise of the "Shiite Crescent", ranging from Iran to Lebanon. While most people here are loathe to make much of a distinction between the two groups, a growing number of high level figures have given voice to this issue, among them King Abdullah II of Jordan and Hosny Mubarak of Egypt. A lot of ordinary Saudis detest the Shiites, estimated at about 20% of the population there, and others fear that Shiites form a "fifth column" in their countries, more loyal to Tehran (or Qom) then they are to their own state. I doubt this question of displaced loyalty, but I'm hearing it more and more.

I say the US took the bait again because even though I think this administration is eager to strike Iran, I think America will be the loser in any confrontation with Iran. But an attack on Iran will certainly lead Iran to counter with all means at its disposal. That means some conventional responses in the region, but more worryingly an increase in its reliance on asymmetrical warfare, otherwise known as terrorism. So while Arabs and Muslims will be furious at westerners for another attack on a Muslim country, Americans will be furious at "Muslims" for all the new terrorist attacks.

The Bush administration argues that Iran is destabilizing the region. That maybe so, but the Bush administration is destabilizing it a whole lot more. Either way, it is people who are the big losers no mater what happens, through money wasted on weapons, lives lost in wars, and hatreds fed by the misguided priorities of power politics.

If the Bush administration is concerned about nuclear weapons in the region, it should spearhead a global effort to create a world free of nuclear weapons, not talk about developing new battle-field useable nuclear weapons. It should hold further talks with the major nuclear powers about further cuts in their own stocks, as a step towards full disarmament, and pressure the minor nuclear powers like India, Pakistan and Israel, to give up their weapons too. With its focus on Iran alone, it just plays directly into the hands of those in the region who make a living off of xenophobic pseudo-religious nationalism.

But then again, that's exactly what the conservative movement in the US does.

Aid for Palestinians, or a fig leaf for the US?

2006-05-10T05:54:00.000+03:00

The Associated Press reports that, "...the United States agreed to support a new program to temporarily funnel additional humanitarian aid directly to the Palestinian people. A statement by Mideast peacemakers did not say how much or what kind of aid they would provide."

"The thrust of this is the international community is still trying to respond to the needs of the Palestinian people," Secretary of State Condeleeza Rice said."

Don't bet on it. US and Isaeli policy makers have made it clear that both the artillery attacks on norther Gaza Strip and the withholding of assistance to the PA, including money for salaries, is part of a policy designed to pressure the Palestinian people to oust Hamas. Not only is the international community not going to seriously address the needs of the Palestinian people, the program to "funnel additional humanitarian aid directly to the Palestinian people" is going to be a fig leaf.

All the international community is trying to do here is take public pressure off of themselves for creating a massive humanitarian crisis in Gaza. The crisis will continue and it will get worse. Maybe some extra bags of rice and some extra boxes of aspirin will get through to Gaza, but it's not going to address the issue of unpaid salaries, agricultural produce that is blocked from markets or stop the shelling of northern Gaza.

The story will drop from the news for the next couple of weeks, maybe even a month or two, until another "study" shows that the aid hasn't had much of an impact at all. Then it will be a few more months while the international community "studies" ways to solve the problem, and a few more months to find more ways to "funnel additional humanitarian aid directly to the Palestinian people", or another fig leaf to cover the international community's lack of consciences on humanitarian issues.

And on and on this deadly shadow dance goes. Yes I'm very cynical. I've seen this dance too many times.

Targeting the innocent in Palestine

2006-05-09T08:50:00.000+03:00

The fact that the US and European countries can just watch so much suffering in Palestine and not feel some tinge of sympathy the consciences is extremely depressing. People are suffering tremendously in Gaza right now because of the Western-led international boycott.

Western governments know full well that the boycott is going to hurt average people, and not the Hamas movement. They are betting that people will get so fed up that they will toss Hamas out of power. As a commentator said last night on CNN, it is not only a question of whether or not Hamas recognizes Israel, the US is drawing a line in the sand on fundamentalist parties, out of fear that Hamas' victory is a harbinger of what is to come in other countries. The US can not let Hamas have any degree of success, and it is holding the Palestinian people as hostages to enforce this policy.

All this talk about suspending aid to the government and increasing aid to the people is rubbish. Not only does it plain not work, no banks will touch money going to Gaza right now for fear of breaking some unknown or future US law. As for the 165,000 government employees, like secretaries, janitors, teachers, doctors, health inspectors and everything else, it is now three months since they've been paid. Workers can't go to Israel. Farmers can't get their produce out because Israel has closed the Karni commerical crossing. These are not terrorists or extremists the West is punishing. These are just average people, from all political and social stripes.

This is exactly the point, to hurt average people in order to put pressure on Hamas. As Arabonline reports:

To ease the crisis while bypassing the Hamas-led government, European powers
Britain and France have backed the creation of a special trust fund to help pay
salaries to at least health and education workers. But Western diplomats say the
United States has been trying to block the proposal on the grounds that paying
salaries would take pressure off Hamas.

This is what we did in Iraq for ten years. Policy makers know that sanctioning governments so severely only hurts people. It was not just the immediate suffering of hunger and lack of medicines that have contributed to Iraq being a shambles. It was the increase in malnutrition which stunted children's growth, physical and intellectual. It was the severity of the suffering that increase extremism. It was the lost wages and weakened middle class that broke the society's ability to deal with differences.

There are literally hundreds of reports from all across the political spectrum about the impact of sanctions on Iraq. Here is just an excerpt from one UN report:

The effects of the economic embargo have reached into all spheres of life,
obstructing the course of progress and development in all domains. It could be said that the Iraqi people are today facing destruction and genocide by the agency of a weapon no less deadly than weapons of mass destruction, except that it is an economic embargo. What follows is a summary of the principal effects of the economic embargo imposed upon Iraq.

Yet the West is happy to do it again, at least when Arabs are involved. Has the dehumanization of Arabs and particularly Palestinians reached the point that people will watch babies die for lack of medicine, and whole families go destitute under the claim that such policies are punishment ot a government or a political party?

Sanctions on Iraq did not moderate or even hurt Saddam Hussein, in fact they strengthened him. It did not convince Iraqis to rise up and drive out the Ba'th Party, sanctions killed and radicalized them.

The US and other western countries have dealt with worse people than Hamas. We sold Saddam the chemicals he used to gas Kurds and Iranians. We funded death squads in Guatamala. We have long lists of dictators who prosecuted wars on their neighbors and slaughtered their own people. We befriended them, and we never targeted the populations they terrorized. I don't like Hamas, but why impose sanctions that target first and foremost innocent people?

If you want to go after Hamas, go after them. But don't do it on the souls of innocent bystanders and the future viability of Palestinian society. All the sanctions are doing now is killing innocent people and strengthening Hamas. Strengthen Palestinian society by letting the democratic process develop, weaken Hamas by forcing it to deal with the already overwhelming problems facing Palestine tody. Stop the sanctions!

The coming end of the CIA

2006-05-08T08:59:00.000+03:00

In case you've been following American political news lately, you know that the former director of the CIA, Peter Goss, was fired last week. He stayed at the CIA only one year, a year that was characterized by a massive drain of many of the CIA's top managers as well as fights with Rumsfield's Department of Defense and National Intelligence Director Negroponte.

But Goss' firing has a lot less to do with his performance, and almost everything to do with Washington ideological and turf wars.

The first candidate to replace Goss is a military man. Now this is a very bad thing for a couple of reasons. First is that, in all honesty, it is important that government institutions, even those that deal with intelligence, be run by civilians. Maybe it's a bit of a fig leaf, but there are just some walls between civilians and the military that should be strong. I think this is one of them. This was a pretty basic founding principle of our government, and the more it is erroded the more the door opens on greater militarization of our public life.

The other is that Hayden is going to be a patsy at the CIA, and continue to wipe the place clean of people who disagree with the neo-cons. He will not have the strength to resist the dismantling of the agency that told Rumsfield, Bush and Rove that there was no proof of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, that in 2004 the Iraqi insurgency was a serious homegrown movement, not just the work of "jihadists and deadenders", and that now says Iran is probably 5-10 years from developing a nuclear weapon and therefore not an imminent threat.

I wouldn't be surpised in a few years to see the CIA completely shut down. The right-wing considers the CIA to be filled with a bunch of left-wing aparatchiks afraid of the conservative's Brave New World. Now the CIA has problems, no doubt about it. But the constant shuffling is not meant to reform the agency, it is meant to destroy it.

So Hayden will likely be confirmed, and he will fail, as the others before him have, because he is meant to fail. In a few more years conservatives will say the agency is beyond reform and redundant because of all the other new intelligence departments and agencies that popping up in Washington.

Where in the world?

2006-05-07T16:54:00.000+03:00

For those of you who wonder why American foriegn policy in the Middle East is so incomprehensible, a 2002 National Geographic survey of 18-24 year-olds has part of the answer.

According to the survey:

roughly 85 percent of young Americans could not find Afghanistan, Iraq, or Israel on a map

87 percent could not find Iran on a map

76 percent could not find Saudi Arabia

nearly 30 percent of those surveyed could not find the Pacific Ocean, the world’s largest body of water

more than half—56 percent—were unable to locate India, home to 17 percent of people on Earth

only 19 percent could name four countries that officially acknowledge having nuclear weapons

11 percent could not find the United States

Lebanon and Iranian nukes

2006-05-07T09:39:00.000+03:00

Here are some interesting statistics on Lebanese public opinion regarding the Iranian nuclear program and US efforts to confront it. It is likely that if similar polls were conducted in other Arab countries the numbers would be even more lopsided.

In a recent poll, 90.7% of Lebanese support Iran's right to own nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

79.3% believe the driving force behind the Iranian nuclear program is achieving a nuclear balance with Israel, while only 20.7% think it isn't.

In case of US military action against Iran, 76.4% of Lebanese would support Iran, while 22% would wish to remain neutral. Only 1.6% would support the US.

79.1% of Lebanese think Iranian nuclear arms pose a threat to the US and Israel. Only 11.8% see it as a threat to Arab countries, and 9.1% as a threat to all.

76.9% of Lebanese (and 80% of Shiites) think that Hizbollah will participate in any war between the US and Iran.

78.1% of Lebanese believe that Iran's entry into the nuclear club will help the Palestinians in their conflict with Israel.

(source: al-Hayat, Tuesday, May 2, p 16)

I'm not sure why the US is pushing this issue so hard right now. The nuclear issue is not critical. It is only part of the broader struggle between the US and Iran for influence in the region. Most people see Israeli nukes as a much greater threat than Iranian nukes, but Israeli nukes are not on the table.

Apparently US policy makers still haven't figured out that it is a battle for hearts and minds. The Bush administration has again chosen a losing battle. No matter the outcome, Iran wins, either through increased influence from confronting the US and Israel, through actual development of nuclear weapons, or by drawing the US even further into a bloody quagmire that Americans will tire of and lose.

The only way to address the nuclear issue in the region is to work towards a region free of nuclear weapons, as part of a broader global program of nuclear disarmament that eliminates this terrible weapon from the possession of all.

Migration and mobility

2006-05-02T18:36:00.000+03:00

One of the most common stories you encounter in the Middle East is that of migration.

Yesterday I met a guy named Boulous, who is originally from Akkar, a city in the north of Lebanon. Like Jean and Mahmoud from yesterday’s post, he lives in Beirut because there is no work in the north. On the road to Jouneih today we also encountered a number of Syrians wading through traffic selling pirated CDs, cologne, perfume and assorted knick-knacks. You see this kind of thing everywhere in the Arab world.

It’s hard to believe that a Syrian can make more selling pirated CDs on the street in Beirut than he can doing something in his own country. But clearly he, like Mahmoud, leaves his home and family in search of a better life somewhere else, or, more likely, in search of a means of survival.

I heard a figure that every day nearly one million Syrians travel to Lebanon to work. This figure was from before the Syrian withdrawal, and may or may not be accurate, but clearly the number is large. This figure was for day workers, people who commute to Lebanon and then return to their homes in Syria at the end of the day. Some Lebanese complain that these Syrians don’t give anything back to Lebanon, that they even pack their lunches to avoid spending money in Lebanon.

Like everywhere else, immigrants are blamed for the problems by their host communities. This happens a lot in Jordan too, where a lot of people complain about the large number of Iraqis who have taken refuge in the desert kingdom. In the US the immigration issue is coming to a head, where there are currently major demonstrations for and against stricter controls on immigration and tougher penalties on illegal immigrants.

Back to the Middle East, labor migration and mobility are huge issues in the region, and show both the impact of colonialism as well as misrule by local governments in the development in the region.

For colonialism, the region is still suffering from the random borders that Britain and France drew in the 1920’s. For example, many Lebanese in the south had relatives and close relations with Palestinians in what is now northern Israel. With the creation of Israel this normal traffic was cut. Aleppo, the second largest city in Syria and historically a rival city to the current capital Damascus, lost a large part of it’s economic hinterland by the creation of the modern states of Turkey and Syria. Aleppo has had a hard time recovering from the lost markets in what is now Turkey.

In terms of mismanagement and poor governance of local leaders, it is shameful the restrictions and difficulties Arab states sometimes place on the travel of citizens of neighboring Arab countries and the poor job most have done in managing their economies. More than 50 years after the creation of the Arab League, many Arabs still have trouble traveling between Arab states. It is often easier for me with my American passport to travel between Arab countries than it is for Arabs to do so. Once in their “brotherly” Arab countries, many of these migrant workers face the same random and occasionally poor treatment that Arab governments often met out on their own citizens. Among the worst affected are Palestinians for political reasons. In close second are probably now Egyptians for economic reasons, with Iraqis possibly soon to follow suit for “security” reasons as they flee the violence and chaos of post-Saddam Iraq.

At some point Arab states will have to address the issue of migration and mobility in order to better address the challenge of economic development in the region. They have made improvements over the past 15 years, but they can do more. And like everywhere else, and here you can point to America first, a good first step is to stop blaming and punishing immigrant workers who come and do the tough jobs that locals find either uneconomical or unworthy.

Introducing the Middle East

2006-05-02T08:28:00.000+03:00

I’m in Lebanon for a few days with my parents. I wanted them to see a little bit more of the Middle East than Jordan while they’re visiting. Last night we were walking around the downtown and came across the grave of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. As we walked through the memorial area my mom and dad both asked me at separate times, “How was Hariri killed?”

I was pretty surprised by the question. My parents follow the news regularly. They are not like a lot of Americans who neither read newspapers nor watch TV. I didn’t expect them to know a lot of the details about it, but I figured they knew the basic story. It did lead to a political earthquake in Lebanon and the eventual withdrawal of Syrian troops, which had occupied the country and controlled its political life for the past 15 years.

For those who may not know, Hariri was assassinated in a massive car bomb February 14, 2005.

I don’t blame them for not knowing how Hariri was killed, but it really opened my eyes to the fact that earth shattering events in the Middle East can hardly make a ripple in the US. The fact that even people who do follow the news don’t know big, important details of major events shows exactly how hard it is to get people in the US to understand what happens in the Middle East.

It is hard enough to get people to understand what happens in the Middle East, even harder still to convey what people are like. So I’m going to start introducing readers to some of the people I meet here.

Jean is a Lebanese Christian from the Shouf Mountains. He lives in Beirut because during the civil war the Druze and Christians viciously fought each other. There were a lot of massacres at the hands of both sides, and thousands fled their ancestral villages.

Most of those who fled to Beirut have not returned to their villages. Many of the villages, which relied primarily on agricultural production, were totally destroyed. Those who grew up during and after the civil war have no knowledge of farming, and social services like schools and health care are weak to non-existent. They got used to city life and wouldn’t know what to do in a small village in the mountains, so they remain in the cities where most have trouble finding decent work. Rural development remains one of Lebanon's biggest economic challenges.

Mahmoud is an Egyptian who works as a waiter in Beirut’s newly renovated downtown pedestrian mall. He comes from a small village located in the Egyptian Delta, between Cairo and Tanta. The economic situation in Egypt is generally bleak, forcing thousands to Egyptians to find work abroad.

Mahmoud does better working as a waiter in Lebanon than he would working in Egypt. He has been here for about 6 years. He says the work is best between June and October when a lot of tourists come, especially from the Arab Gulf states and Saudi Arabia. Every year he goes home for about two months.

He says he’s happy here, but wants to return to Egypt. He says the Lebanese are a lot like Egyptians because they are friendly, talk a lot and like politics. He figures he’ll work here for a few more years until he’s saved enough money to go back to Egypt and start his own business, probably some kind of small shop and try to settle down and get married. But in the meantime, he is young, and doesn't mind spending his summers in Lebanon!

A word about Arabs

2006-04-30T05:53:00.000+03:00

It's never a good idea to generalize, but sometimes you can't help it. I'm going to generalize now and say that Arabs absolutely adore little kids.

We live in Jordan with three small kids, a 7 year old girl, a 2-and-a-half year old girl and a 7 month old boy. Anytime we go out, we end up running into people who tease, joke with, talk and generally fall over themselves entertaining our kids. A couple of weeks ago in Jerash, a site of old Roman ruins about 45 minutes outside of Amman, a group of five or six young women, all conservatively dressed, went crazy over the little baby, eventually asking us to take their cameras and take pictures of them, each one holding the baby.

Yesterday, at Umm Qays, another site of Roman ruins in the north of Jordan, on the border of Syria and Israel, one of the tourist police was so taken by the 2-and-half year old's insistance that a horse a boy uses to give tourists rides was HER horse, that he in turn insisted on taking her to the horse, which was about 150 yards away, down a steep set of stairs and dirt path, to ride the horse again. My daughter, Mai, was reluctant at first. We've given her and theothers a healthy dose of skepticism about the intentions of strangers, but i said, "It's okay Mai, uncle's a a good guy, he's a friend, it's ok," and so she happily relented. He also insisted that I stay and enjoy my lunch, so i watched from the steps as he carefully led her down the steps and over to the horse. Within 15 minutes she was surrounded by a group of about 10 kids, like 10-12 years old, who were talking with her, joking with her, asking her questions and generally just having a great time.

This is something I've never seen happen in the US or most other countries I visited, yet it happens here almost daily. Anytime we go to a restaurant or store, the waiters, custumers or store owners end up having conversations with the kids, sometimes taking them to their friends who then also engage the kids in the most beautiful way. In the US I don't think I would let some waiter take my kid out of my sight for one second, but here it is totally normal.

If you haven't experienced this it must seem absolutely crazy. I mean who lets a stranger walk off with their kid, even for a minute? The first time I really saw this happen was back in 1993. I was travelling overland from Turkey to Egypt, and was waiting in Amman for a bus to Aqaba. Most of the others waiting were Egyptians, and it didn't take long to strike up a converstain with a young guy who was there waiting too. He was also talking and joking with an Egyptian couple with a little baby, and after a while he said something to them I didn't understand, took the baby on his shoulders and walked away. I mean pretty far away too. While he was gone I asked the father of the small child if the young man was a relative. He shook his head no. I was floored. This guy let a complete stranger walk off with his kid. How could he do that?!? But sure enough the guy came back in a few moments with the happiest little girl riding on his shoulders.

I've seen and experienced this kind of thing a hundred times in the Arab world. Maybe we're made paranoid in the US by news stories of murderers and pedofiles. Or maybe extended families are still a lot closer here than in the US or other Western countries so people are more comfortable dealing with others across generations. In the US I think sometimes people are afraid to talk to kids for fear of giving the wrong impression. But here it seems generations just interact in a much more healthy and natural way.

Either way, someone plays with the kids I always keep one eye on them, at least. I'm still a parent and I'm not naive about what could happen. But it's nice to have a feeling that the kids don't have to grow up completely fearful of every stranger they see.

Iraq: a pillar of stability in the Middle East

2006-04-28T05:39:00.000+03:00

US Secretary of State Condaleeza Rice yesterday said that differences in Iraq were, "being overcome by politics and compromise, not by violence and not by repression," making Iraq "a tremendous pillar of stability through the Middle East."

That's ironic, seeing as every report I've come across and plain common sense shows that Iraq has become a major destabilizing force in the region. Among the major destabilizing factors are the proliferation of sectarian, criminal and private militias in Iraq, that al-Qaida is using the conflict in Iraq to gain new members and spread their activities into countries like Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, that the sectarian violence in Iraq is worsening relations between Sunnis and Shittes throughout the Middle East and South East Asia, that the chaos in Iraq has helped in the spread of small arms to all of Iraq's neighbors and that the US has lost what remaining shreds of credibility it had in the region.

It's nice to know that differences in Iraq are being overcome by politics and not violence. I mean, watching US raids and bombing campaigns, the sectarian killings, the Badr-led death squads of the Interior Ministry, the kidnappings, murders, assassinations and extortion, I thought that a lot of differences were being dealt with through violence. I guess I just wasn't looking at the positive like Condi does.

Now it looks like the US is going to help bring even greater stability to the region by bombing Iran. I mean, organizing riots of Iran's southern ethnic Arab minorities has not stablized the country enough, so it looks like we'll have to bomb Iran to make sure and stabilize it like we've done in Iraq.

As for Palestine, those nasty Hamas and PLO guys have really caused so much destabilization through their open, fair and free democratic elections that the US and Israel have decided they must starve and mutilate the whole Palestinian population through almost total restriction of movement, occaisional airstrikes and assassinations of political leaders and broad punitive sanctions that are already leading to higher levels of disease, malnutrition and underdevelopment in the Occupied Territories.

I mean, having Hamas moderate through its participation in mainstream politics was really undermining the peace and stability of the whole Muslim world, so the US will just have to let Israel kill them all. Clearly that will bring some much needed balance and stability to the region.

Egyptian police attack protesters

2006-04-27T15:57:00.000+03:00

Egypt appears to have one of the most active pro-democracy movements. It is small and does not have good grass roots support, but it shows great promise.

Here is a report from Egypt on a police attack on a peaceful demonstration in Cairo. This is my first attempt to post a picture and format block quotes, so bear with me if the formating isn't so nice.

The source is Aida Seif El Dawla, chairperson of the Egyptian Association Against Torture. Human Rights Watch honored Ms. El Dawla in 2003 for her long struggle against torture and human rights abuses in Egypt.

On the 24th of April Egyptian police authorities attacked a peaceful sit in opposite the Egyptian judges club in down town Cairo, which started a week ago in solidarity with the protest sit in of Egyptian judges who demand their independence, and an impartial investigation in the violations committed by the Egyptian executive and police authorities during the last parliamentary elections.
15 of our colleagues were arrested and a judge was beaten so brutally he had to be taken to hospital.

Yesterday, the Egyptian prosecution, almost totally controlled by the Egyptian Ministry of Interior, has ordered a 15 days extension of the imprisonment of our colleagues charging them of disturbing public peace and order.

Still the sit in continues and is expected to increase as we approach Thursday the 27th of April when two judges will be summoned for interrogation because they exposed the rigging in the last parliamentary elections and are among the leaders of a strong movement for the independence of Egyptian judiciary."
In another post, Ms. El Dawla sent this update the judge who was beaten.
Judge Mahmoud Mohamed Abdel Latif Hamza, Chief judge of the North Cairo Court lying in Cleopatra Hospital in Cairo after being subject of police violence in the early hours of the 24th of April 2006 by Mubarak’s security forces.

Judge Hamza was beaten up, dragged across the asphalt of Abdel Khalek Tharwat street from the gate of the judges club to the police trucks. When he started bleeding they threw him into a taxi which drove him to the hospital.

Impact of cutting aid to the Palestinian Authority.

2006-04-26T16:10:00.000+03:00

Israel, the US and Europe all claim that they are bending over backwards to ensure that Palestinains are protected from the impact of their decision to cut funding to the Palestinian Authority. Here's a taste of how they are faring.

I don't think people fully understand the enormity of the financial crisis and how it's impacting ordinary Palestinians. I thought the international community at least learned the lesson of total economic blockades on countries through the experience of Iraq sanctions.

If democracy is forcfully aborted in Palestine, what other choice will Palestinains have left? The US and Israel talked about democracy in the territories for years, and then when they finally have fair and free elections, ordinary Palestinians are ground into the dirt for it.

If you want democracy in the Middle East, this is what you're going to get, at least in the short term. It will take years for a credible secular political opposition to develop, and in the meantime people will have to learn what political Islam really means for them. But this has to happen through the policy failures of their elected leaders, not destructive outside intervention.

If the US and Israel cause Hamas' failure, Hamas can continue to sit back and say "Islam is the solution", only the West won't let us solve our problems.

So here are the reports on the humanitarian situation. Read 'em and weap. Really.

Gaza Hospital Fights for Life After International Aid Cuts
Mail & Guardian

In the al-Shifa hospital, the walls are decrepit and dirty. The elevators are broken. It is a sign of the times in Gaza City, brought to its knees by the international community's refusal to do business with a Hamas-led government. "If this continues, the majority of our services will cease to operate in two weeks' time," said Dr Jumaa al-Saqqa, the spokesperson at the impoverished Gaza Strip's main hospital.

Al-Shifa has effectively served as a combat hospital, saving thousands of lives over the course of the five-year Palestinian uprising. But now the medical facility faces its toughest challenge yet. Its staff are struggling to provide health care to the Gaza Strip's 1,3-million people in the wake of the Palestinians' sudden international isolation. "Our reserve supply of 200 medicines is almost depleted. We lack the most basic things like bandages and oxygen," al-Saqqa said. Dwindling supplies include antibiotics, anti-cancer treatments and replacements parts for scanners and dialysis equipment.

The World Health Organisation warned on April 6 of serious consequences for Palestinian public health services because of Israeli economic sanctions and cuts in international aid. It begins politically correctly by saying the crisis is because of the election of Hamas

Here's a report from the United Nations OCHA.

Impact of Cutting Aid on Essential Services and Poverty

Essential services such as medical treatment, water, sewage and security will be cut by stoppages in donor aid and tax payments to the Palestinian Authority ordered in the wake of Hamas's election victory, a UN report warns. Israel has halted its monthly remittance of $60m (£34.3m) in duties it collects on behalf of the PA but the report calls into question its contention that humanitarian aid to the Palestinians can be sustained if the ministries in a Hamas-dominated Authority are bypassed.

The report from the UN's Office of Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) came as the Israeli Foreign Minister told Le Figaro newspaper that Israel was cutting contact with the PA and that "the survival of the Palestinian Authority as an entity is less important than the future of the peace process". The report warns that non-payment of salaries to 153,000 PA employees will increase levels of poverty, risk basic services like health and education and, in the case of 73,000 officers in security services, cause a "rise in criminality, kidnapping and protection rackets". According to the report, half of the Palestinian Ministry of Health's budget is financed by international aid and cuts in this funding "will hamper service delivery and prevention activities including immunisation and mother and child care." - Independent, 02/03/06

Looking at occupations

2006-04-25T21:19:00.000+03:00

I've been thinking about the occupations in Iraq and the Palestinian territories lately. It's a funny thing how occupiers always think they are helping the people they go to occupy, while those under occupation think quite differently.

This is part of the discourse of domination and occupation. Occupiers always say they are not enemies of the people they plan to occupy, only the governments, as if the two could be somehow kept completely seperate from each other. For every dictator or "undesirable" government that exists, there are thousands of teachers, health workers, and other kinds of civil servents who have little to do with the foriegn policies of these countries, but who are really just trying to put food on the table.

A friend recently told me about the situation at Augusta Victoria hospital in East Jerusalem. The Augusta Victoria hospital is supported by funds from the Palestinian Authority. The hospital has had to lay off workers, close its emergency room and cut other services to people because of Israeli, American and European efforts to "isolate Hamas". Why is it that when the west doesn't like a certain government, it ends up hurting and killing the people "who are not its enemies?"

US policy makers know that the funds they are withholding will have no impact on the policies of the governments they don't like. They know full well how much harm will come to ordinary people. As Madeline Albright said about sanctions in Iraq, it is a calculation that such policy makers, sitting in their comfortably dull offices in Washington and other western capitals, think are "worth it".

Whether you like Hamas or not, you have to admit they were elected. So again we are in the business of collapsing democratically elected governments we don't like. And yet the cornerstone of American foriegn policy in the Middle East is "democratization." And when the stupid talking heads of American TV ask why support for the US is at an all time low, they blame the Arab media, instead of the immorality and hypocrisy of our own policies. The US government now spends millions of dollars on bad radio stations, slick magazines and irrelevant Arabic language news shows to fool Americans into thinking that it is actually trying to improve our image abroad. Americans ask why countries in the Middle East don't democratize, when western governments have been aborting democracy in the region for the past 150 years. No wonder people are skeptical of our motives here.

In Iraq and Palestine the west has willfully created disasters and then pointed to the destroyed communities with a pointed finger and a disparaging tsk tsk look on their face, as if people here wanted to live in collapsed states and societies, or as if it is just the natural state of Arabs. Yes governments in the region are corrupt, venal and often brutal to their own people. But maybe, just maybe, these disasters also have something to do with war, conflict and occupation.

I hate to rant, but when you step back for a second and look at what's happening here, and even worse at what's coming, it's hard to not get really depressed.

Mashal's discourse of failure

2006-04-24T05:23:00.000+03:00

Is Hamas already showing signs of failure?

Manar al-Rashwani, writing in al-Ghad thinks so. He points to Hamas' political leader Khalid Mashal's recent actions and statements as a sign that Hamas has already begun to signal defeat.

Among these signs is Mashal's reliance on rhetoric that reverts to is based upon the movment's opposition to Israel, such as visiting and praising Iran's president not just for its nuclear program but also for threatening to wipe Israel off the map. Rather than strengthening Hamas' efforts to show it is and can moderate itself, these actions play directly into the hands of those who are trying to isolate and break Hamas.

More importantly though, are Mashal's statements about the Palestinian Authority. In a recent speech he asserted that it is he himself who is the leader of the Palestinian people, and went on to criticize every non-Hamas aspect of the Palestinian Authority, according to Rashwani.

This, Rashwani says, signals Hamas frustration and failure to deliver on its promises to do a better job in power than the secular PLO.

It also most likely a signal that Mashal is feeling marginalized and threatened by the rise of other leaders within Hamas, who are getting both the attention and credit for leading the organization. This is what happened to the PLO, when local leaders in the West Bank and Gaza emerged and threatened to asurp the authority of the exiled leadership of Arafat and company.

Hamas figures inside the territories tried to distance themselves from Mashal's statements. Haaretz reports that, "Nasser a-Din Shaar, PA Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh's deputy, tried Saturday to calm things down by releasing a statement that Meshal's declarations "do not necessarily reflect the position of the Hamas government but rather only of the Hamas organization."

Haaretz also reported that the Palestinian Interior Ministry is trying to downplay the recent announcement of a new security branch by stating that "the security force was not a new one but was based on the Palestinian Police and would operate under its authority."

What Mashal's little tirade did, however, is to spark factional fighting withing the Palestinian territories between Fatah and Hamas supporters, raising both tensions and the stakes within Palestinian society. Rather than trying to maintain and build on the slim consensus that brought it to power, some Hamas leaders are instead asserting themselves to the detriment of Palestinian interests.

Palestinians who live under occupation tend to be much more reasonable than those who live outside. Those under occupation have to deal with the reality of Israel in a much more concrete way, both literally and figuratively. They are much more accepting of the idea of some degree of coexistence if Israel would just end the occupation. Those on the outside have the luxury of not having to really face the impact of the linkages of the Israeli and Palestinian economies, or of dealing with Israelis in dozens of little ways just to negotiate their daily lives.

If Hamas has any hope of surviving past the next six months, they better get their act together, both internally and externally. For Rashwani, this means that exiled leaders like Mashal out to basically keep quiet, no matter their political weight or significance in Hamas.

Hamas' biggest mistake yet

2006-04-22T06:02:00.000+03:00

Hamas has made an enormous mistake in appointing a wanted militant as head of a new security force in the Palestinian territories.

The new force will add yet another layer of security forces to the already bloated forces supposedly under charge of the Palestinian Authority.

The move is part of an intense power struggle within the PA. Fatah, the former ruling party, still controls the security forces, most of whom are from within Fatah and other parties in the Palestine Liberation Organization. Not only they, but also President Abbas have resisted efforts by Hamas to exert its control over the security forces.

So instead of working for developing an approach that would strengthen the idea of the government as an institution that controls security forces, Hamas has taken a shortcut and will set up a new rival force, made up of its own loyalists.

Instead of institutional reform, Hamas has opted to create yet another little militia. This will greatly increase tensions within the territories and increases the liklihood that there will be armed clashes between members of the different forces.

Instead of trying to find ways to pay the thousands of unpaid police and other security forces members, some of whom are leading the armed chaos in the territories, Hamas has opted to set up a rival force, which will only increase the financial burden on the already bankrupt and indebted PA.

With this move Hamas shows it is not going to be any different from Fatah on the issue of security. Instead of building institutions and working to develop a democratic process, they are taking the road of setting up rival militias. This is in large part why Palestinian security forces are currently such a disaster. Hamas is going for a quick and easy fix, and the results are likely to be disasterous.

The appointment of a known militant is also one of the politically more stupid moves Hamas has made recently. I wrote earlier of the need for Israel to find a way to accomodate Hamas pragmatists. But Hamas also needs to find a better way combat charges that it is a terrorist government and to reach out to the secular center. This new appointment has the opposite effect.

American whistleblower fired over CIA leak

2006-04-22T05:53:00.000+03:00

The Associated Press reports that the CIA has fired one of its employees for leaking classified information about secret CIA prisons in Eastern European countries.

The employee who was fired, Mary McCarthy, was looking into allegations the CIA was involved in torture at Iraqi prisons.

The AP reports CIA director Peter Goss saying, "The damage has been very severe to our capabilities to carry out our mission."

Translation: The lead made it harder for the CIA and the US government to hide and deny that it is kidnapping and torturing people across the globe under the pretext of the war on terrorism.

Good for you Mary McCarthy. Sorry you got fired, but maybe at least you can live out your retirement with a clearer conscience. You've done a great service to us all by not allowing American torture to go unreported.

Maybe someone can set up a small fund for people to make donations to in order to offset the loss of Mary's salary. Whistleblowers should be rewarded, not fired.

Jordan accuses Hamas of smuggling arms

2006-04-20T10:19:00.000+03:00

The Jordanian government announced that it has seized weapons and explosive that Hamas elements have allegedly tried to smuggle into the country, reports the Jordanian daily al-Ghad.

The materials were seized after Jordanian security services observed a number of Hamas elements trying to smuggle and store such weapons into Jordan on several occasions. Al-Ghad also reports that Hamas members were observed casing several locations in Jordan, actions that a government statement said conflicted with repeated statements by the new government not to use Jordan for any goals that would threaten the security of the kingdom. The Jordanian government accused Hamas of using “two languages” in it’s dealings with Jordan.

It is not surprising that Hamas is active in and hopes to build wider support in Jordan, but attempts to smuggle and store weapons in the country would be a blunder of the highest degree. Hamas, to my knowledge, has never attacked any site outside of Israel or the Occupied Palestinian territories and they have repeatedly stated they do not intend to do so.

This development raises many questions. There is no doubt that Hamas does not intend to attack the Jordanian government. They know this would have disastrous consequences for themselves and for the Palestinian cause. Look at what happened to the popularity of al-Qaida in Jordan after the November attacks here. Even in militant Islamist circles the attacks were widely criticized and I doubt even al-Qa'ida will attempt such an attack here again. Any future attacks are much more likely to be aimed at individuals, to ensure that ordinary Jordanians are not killed.

Turning back to Hamas, it has always been a strictly national movement. Certainly, they have different relations with other militant Islamic movements, but they have never shown any inclination to use violence beyond the field of their struggle for national liberation and islamization in Palestine. A spokesperson for the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood has questioned the lack of evidence in the Jordanian government charge and said that the accusations "do not add up". A western friend here also questioned the timing of the charge.

Does this mean there is already a radicalization of militants within the Hamas movement, and that the leadership is losing control of its traditionally well-disciplined members? Are some elements of Hamas preparing for a confrontation with other Palestinian factions in Jordan?

There have been growing reports of increased efforts by al-Qa’ida to expand its field of operations into the Palestinian territories, and al-Qa’ida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri sharply criticized Hamas for participating in Palestinian elections. Are there rouge elements within Hamas, who maybe have been influenced by the broader pan-Islamic ideology of al-Qa’ida? Or is the Hamas leadership actually foolish enough to expand the conflict as the West continues to pressure and isolate the movement and the Palestinian Authority it now heads? Any one of these scenarios is possible, but not likely.

No matter the reason for the weapons smuggling charge, this development bodes ill for both Hamas and Palestinians in general, and will likely increase tensions between Jordanians and Jordanian-Palestinians. Jordan has a vested interest in making sure that Hamas, a shoot off of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine does not succeed in Palestine, for fear it would bolster support for the Muslim Brotherhood here in Jordan.

I agree that having the Muslim Brotherhood come to power would be a social, political and economic disaster for any country in the region, but I think this is something that is better determined by people, not those currently holding power. This is unfortunately how democracy works. People have to learn the mistakes of their choices. It is the fact that they've not had choices that has helped feed extremism and militancy in the region.

elections and national character

2006-04-17T06:53:00.000+03:00

Opps, this one got lost as a draft. I forgot to post it.

In Jordan, Abd al-Khalil Mu'aytah says that any new election law that counters the "Jordanian national character" will be refused, alluding to Jordan's moderating and pivotal role in regional and international conflicts .

What exactly is the Jordanian national character and what kind of election law might threaten it? The current election law gives unfair representation to tribal and west Jordanian interests, so what is he talking about?

The election law is currently the most contentious issue in an effort at widespread and comprehensive reform in Jordan. The country recently published an ambitious national agenda that seeks reform in a number of key sectors of Jordanian social, economic and political life. A number of activists, even skeptics, say the national agenda has a lot of good points in it. The main concern is the election law, which remains the most significant outstanding issue.

Words like national character are usually used to describe a sitution where one group doesn't want to some degree of power to another group. The most recent use of the term was in Iraq, where Kurdish hopes for independence were called a threat to the Arab character of Iraq. Maybe if past governments acknowledged that there is also a significant Kurdish character to Iraq they would be so eager to split off and form their own country.

I'll take a guess here that what Mu'aytah's talking about is a law that allows a more accurate representation of the population, roughly 70% of which are from Palestinian refugees that have come to Jordan in successive waves since the creation of the state of Israel. Jordan has done the best of all Arab countries in assimilating Palestinian refugees, giving them citizenship and other full national rights. But many western Jordanians still don't accept Palestinians as anything more than inconvenient guests.

Jordan is stable and you can't knock it for security, but this identity crisis remains unresolved. Someday it's going to rear its ugly head. I hope people are ready to deal with it responsibly. But citing national character is a pretty way of saying you don't want to acknowledge the fact that your vision of national identity might not be the only one.

Political participation

2006-04-16T06:19:00.000+03:00

Another reminder that a big part of what drives extremism in general and al-Qaida in particular is political marginalization comes from an article in yesterday's Washington Post. It provides a stark reminder as to why Israel and the international community should cautiously work with groups like Hamas in Palestine and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, rather than try to hound them out existence.

Let's be clear: Hamas and the MB have social and political programs that are often very conservative. I would hate to see either gain control of their respective governments. They would likely use the power of the state to slowly and gradually enforce a religious conservatism on their societies that majorities would reject. Many people in the Arab world are religiously conservative. But that doesn't mean they want religion shoved down their throats or would chose to shove it down other people's throats.

Two countries best show what happens when religous movements who want to impose religion through the state become powerful or major partners in political life. The first is Iran and the second is Hizbollah in Lebanon. In Iran, you have a government that imposes a particular interpretation of religion on the country, and the people hate it. For example, it's one thing to believe that a Muslim woman should cover her hair and that male/female relationships outside of marriage should be restricted, and it's another thing to have the government enforcing such social mores. It's one thing to think that people shouldn't drink alcohol, and another thing to have the state prohibit and punish those who choose to do so. It's one thing to rant about the evils of capitalism, another thing to punish small businesses that have to operate by the basic laws of supply and demand. You get the idea.

The other example is in Lebanon, where Hizbollah started off as a movement talking about establishing an Islamic state, but now recognizes that such a goal in a multi-confessional state is not possible. Hizbollah participates in the political system, it airs the greivences and concerns of its supporters, but it has to accomodate the many different views that exist in Lebanon. They've stopped trying to create an Islamic state because they've had to deal with real world politics, not some utopian fantasy world that they think they can impose through religion. Would I want to live in Hizbollah controlled territory? No way..and when enough Lebanese decide they don't either the movement will lose political power. Threatening to take its weapons away, on the other hand, only makes them stronger.

Even Jordan offers a good example. The Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan participates in the political system, so people there know its good and bad points. In an open and free election, the Jordanian MB is not likely to take a majority, but maybe only 15-20% of the vote.

But where these movements are isolated, oppressed, hounded and harrassed, especially in autocratic countries like Egypt, they are strengthened and have greater credibility with people. They are also free from the kind of scrutiny that comes from open political participation. The MB and other Islamic political movements use the slogan "Islam is the solution." If they are prevented from showing what they actually mean by that they can continue to sit on the sidelines and complain without ever having to show what it is they would do or how disaterous their policies, like interest-free banking, would be on thier respective countries.

So if you want to diminish Hamas' or the MB's popularity, let it participate as a true competitor in the political system. Let there be a full public discussion of what their politicies would be, what the possible impacts are, and make it have to be accountable for the policies it wants to apply, rather than letting them stand on the side and claim without proof that all things would be better if they were just free to apply Sharia.

Much of the craziness of the religious right in America comes from exactly the same marginalization and isolation that Islamic parties experience in the Arab world, although for American religious conservatives it was self-imposed. They withdrew from politics near the beginning of the century, built up parallel insitutions and value systems that saw everything in the political and cultural estabishment as immoral and destructive. Now that they've returned to power they have ideas of imposing their own religious values on society, and using government to enforce their morals on the rest of the country. By coming to power, and having to share their ideas and suffer the consequencces for their policies, they are being discredited, even among their supporters. For example, conservatives recently complained about the liberals' "war on Christmas", and the majorty of people saw how absolutely nuts they are. Shine some light on these freaks and let people recognize them for what they are.

So you want to weaken the religious parties? Let them participate, let their own societies reward their good ideas and punish their bad ones. This is what is happening now to the Christian right in the US. Yeah, we suffer some bad policies for a while, but it at least shows the reality of the crazy ideas they've been cooking up for the past decades. People are slowly wising up and will likely punish them in the polls this Fall. Stop letting religious conservatives have a free ride and harbor their stupid ideologies behind rhetoric. Make them accountable, then they will be responsible.

How sanctions are impacting Palestinians

2006-04-13T06:36:00.000+03:00

For more information on the impact of American and European decisions to cut aid to the Palestinian Authority, read the following statement from Oxfam.

While western governments claim they are taking steps to isolate the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority, the impact is falling largely on average Palestinians. Those most vulnerable are the ones who are worst hit by such actions.

The reasons given for the sanctions are refusal to support Hamas until it recognizes Israel, but the reality is a policy of collective punishment of all Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories.

Oxfam criticizes EU decision to suspend aid to Palestinian Authority Report, Oxfam, 10 April 2006
EU foreign ministers have agreed on a freeze of EU aid to the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority, according to newswire reports. Ministers meeting in Luxembourg on Monday (10 April) decided to continue the European Commission’s temporary suspension of payments to the Hamas-led government in the Palestinian territories. The commission announced the suspension on Friday (7 April). In a letter to the Middle East Quartet, Oxfam warned that Palestinians are on the edge of survival. It said that "one in four people depend on aid. Three in four live on 2 dollars a day. Their plight will worsen, if donors stop giving aid to the Palestinian Authority."

Open letter to the Members of the Quartet and international donors Oxfam International, the international confederation of development organizations, is deeply concerned that the already serious humanitarian situation facing the Palestinians may become far more acute with some donors considering cutting funding to a Hamas-led Palestinian Authority, and with the impact of continuing Israeli restrictions on social services and economic activity.

Oxfam International believes that international aid should be provided through the Palestinian institutions and local authorities charged with delivering essential services, including health and education, regardless of which party is in power. The Palestinian Authority was created by the international community to meet the needs of Palestinian civilians and is a legitimate channel for humanitarian funds.

We believe that this is the worst possible time to cut funding. The recent elections in both the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Israel represent significant changes in the political context and therefore an opportunity to move the peace process forward, one that the international community should seize. To cut funding risks squandering the positive potential that may exist in the new governments and risks making an already fragile situation more dangerous. Whatever the politics of such a decision, it would be ordinary people who would suffer the consequences.

Donor aid to the Palestinian Authority accounted in 2005 for about one quarter of Palestinian gross disposable income and pays the salaries of 152,000 employees, providing vital support to almost one million people, or one in four of the Palestinian population. Stopping this aid would clearly have a major impact on ordinary people.

Palestinians are already on the edge of survival, with over 60 per cent of the population living on less than $2.10 per day. Their plight will now worsen if international donors withhold aid to the Palestinian Authority. Such a step would weaken the Palestinian Authority and deprive Palestinians of critically needed health and education services at a time when the Palestinian economy is suffering a serious reversal of development because of Israel’s occupation and the ongoing conflict.

Suggestions that, in response to the Hamas election victory, international donors channel humanitarian assistance through international non-government organizations are not the answer. This would further undermine Palestinian institutions that are vital to both immediate assistance and any prospects for longer-term development. Moreover, few international NGOs have the capacity to channel such funds and essential services would suffer.

Other vital measures are also needed to ensure the capacity of the Palestinian Authority to provide essential services and also keep the Palestinian economy afloat. Palestinian tax revenues, which last year totaled approximately half of the Palestinian Authority revenue, have been withheld by Israel in violation of the internationally agreed Oslo Accords and the Paris Protocol. They should be transferred by Israel without delay.

Palestinian livelihoods are threatened because farmers are prevented from reaching their fields, water supplies or sources of inputs and from selling their produce in nearby markets, as a result of the Separation Wall and restrictions on movement under occupation. In addition, Israel’s repeated and often lengthy closures of the Karni crossing into the Gaza Strip, amounting to two out of every three days so far this year, have had a devastating impact on Gaza’s 1.3 million people. Essential food supplies including bread, sugar and yogurt have become extremely scarce.
The Karni closures have also been catastrophic for Palestinian agriculture, costing Palestinians up to $500,000 a day, according to UNOCHA estimates, and coinciding with the main growing season for cucumbers, tomatoes and peppers for the European market. It is vital that Israel allows Palestinians free access to markets, in line with obligations under the Paris Protocol.

Civilians suffer the most from conflict and urgently need protection under International Law. The protection of civilians will only come through a just peace for Palestinians and Israelis. Any framework for negotiations must include UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, which call for Israeli withdrawal from lands occupied since 1967, and reaffirm the right of Israel and a future Palestinian state to exist within secure borders.

Israel, as the occupying power, has legal responsibility under the 4th Geneva Convention to ensure access to basic services for Palestinian civilians. The international community also has the legal responsibility to hold Israel accountable for any violations against the Palestinians under International Law.

While the Quartet discusses the status of the new elected Palestinian representatives, the current and growing pressure on Palestinian civilians demands urgent action by the international community to bring all actors to the conference table to seek a durable solution to the conflict in accordance with International Law. Oxfam has consistently called on all parties to pursue a negotiated peace settlement.

With the worsening humanitarian crisis facing Palestinians and the potential opportunity offered by new governments in both Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, we urge you not to cut funding to the Palestinian Authority and to redouble your diplomatic efforts to address the humanitarian situation so that civilians are protected.

Ministerial delegation postpones visit to Ein Elhelweh

2006-04-13T05:54:00.000+03:00

A Lebanese ministerial delegation was forced to postpone its visit to Ein Elhelweh refugee camp in southern Lebnon due to divisions among the Palestinian factions that excercise influence in the camps. These divisions highlight the lack of a single authority to speak in the name of Palestinians or to control the different factions.

The main problem was disagreements over who would represent the Palestinians in discussions with the Lebanese delegatoin, including differences within the PLO, and particularly among different factions within Fatah, the largest party within the PLO.

Other nationalist and Islamist factions include the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the PFLP-General Command, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Palestinian Liberation Front, Rangers, Fatah-Central Command, the Islamic Struggle Movement (not Hamas), the Ansar Group, and Ansar Allah.

There have recently been visits to other Palestinian camps in Lebnon, including Sabra and Chatilla in Beirut and Rashidiya and Shimali in Tyre, but the differences within Ein Elhelweh, the largest camp, and home to roughly 50,000 refugees, appear to be more severe. The political problems of Ein Elhelweh are something of a microcosom of differences in the West Bank and Gaza, and show how difficult it is for any Palestinian leader to control the situation.

In short, there is no one single Palestinian authority.

Returning to Lebanon, there was also strong disagreement over the role that Ahmed Jabril, head of the PFLP General Command played in earlier stages of the dialogue. Jabril is important because his group is one of the main Syrian supported factions and is responsible for many of the Palestinian weapons held outside of the refugee camps. This is the main crux of the Lebanese call for Palestinians to disarm, but other factions are upset at his taking such a prominent role in the Lebanese-Palestinian dialogue.

The main concern is that the talks with Jabril and the link between Paletinian arms and Lebanese-Syrian relations would overshadow the many other serious issues that poison Lebanese-Palestinian relations, such as Lebanese restrictions on construction in the camps, restrictions on employment and property ownership on Palestinians, and other forms of discrimination that all Palestinians in Lebanon face.

An UNRWA report on conditions in the camps states the following:

They do not have social and civil rights, and have very limited access to the government's public health or educational facilities and no access to public social services. The majority rely entirely on UNRWA as the sole provider of education, health and relief and social services. Considered as foreigners, Palestine refugees are prohibited by law from working in more than 70 trades and professions. This has led to a very high rate of unemployment amongst the refugee population.

Click here for a Norweigian People's Aid report on conditions of Palestinians living in refugee camps in Lebanon.

Hamas...Israel's best chance for peace?

2006-04-12T13:30:00.000+03:00

Hamas now faces the biggest existential crisis in its history, the coming reckoning with its political base. How Israel and the international community deal with it may well determine chances for peace for the next ten to 15 years.

Despite Hamas' strong showing in last winter's elections, observers estimate actual support for the movement at between 25-30% of Palestinians. Its strong election showing did not reflect the actual weight of the movement, as it also included protest voters who do not support Hamas' total agenda but instead voted for more capable and effective managers of public affairs.

The leadership of Hamas recognized that they needed swing voters to succeed at the polls, and so downplayed its militant rhetoric and conservative social program during the elections. Hamas instead focused on corruption and the movement's intention to appoint qualified technocrats to run government agencies.

For Hamas, deciding to participate in the elections was a gamble that it lost when it won. Instead of simply winning a significant portion of the vote, and getting control over government ministries responsible for social services, Hamas actually won a majority. Instead of just being a powerful critic that delivers efficient social services, Hamas must now formulate all government policies, including the relationship with Israel.

This is where Hamas' dilemma lies. Hamas must continue to prove to its hardcore base that it will be true to its militant and conservative past, while showing Hamas pragmatists and the Palestinian secular center that it is a responsible steward for all Palestinians. Evidence of this rift shows in the growing contradiction between hints that the movement will recognize Israel if certain conditions are met, and hasty retreats the leadership makes when asked to elaborate.

This schizophrenia is not intended to fool Israel or the international community. It is a real split between pragmatists willing to compromise and make concessions, and militants who oppose efforts to compromise. Hamas faces enormous international pressure to recognize Israel and renounce violence, but it also faces pressure not to compromise from the militants within the movement. This dilemma is exposing fault lines that cuts across Palestinian society. It is also an opportunity to moderate Hamas, and build a strong Palestinian consensus for peace.

A similar split within Fatah, the largest party of the Palestine Liberation Orgaization, contributed in part to Fatah's loss at the polls. Many Palestinians in the territories believe that the old-guard of the PLO, with Arafat at it's head, made too many concessions to Israel, and that concessions were met with expanding settlements and Israeli brute force. The younger leadership that grew up in the territories is much less compromising. They see that compromise achieved nothing for Palestinians, and so they have chosen to fight. The PLO is now also split into moderate center and militant minority bloc.

This split in both the right and left of Palestinian society also creates a dilemma for Israel and the Bush Administration. Played right, the US and Israel can contribute to the creation of a large pragmatic Palestinian center that includes center-right conservatives and center-left secularists who will make tough concessions for peace. Played wrong, it will contribute to a further radicalization of Palestinian society, ensuring decades more conflict.

The dilemma for the US and Israel is to give enough concessions to the Hamas and Fatah pragmatists to encourage their continued moderation and democratization, while finding the right tools to distinguish between them and the militants, both religious and secular. The best way to show that democratization and moderation will be rewarded is to stop the economic blockade and shelling barrage of the Gaza Strip and halt construction of the separation wall.

ReliefWeb, a United Nations news agency reports that Israel has lobbed more than 2200 artillery shells at northern Gaza in the past two weeks, killing 11 Palestinian bystanders, including several children, and wounding dozens more. The Associated Press reports military analysts believe the Israeli barrage is largely driven by the army's frustration and has no direct military purpose. AP says reserve officers in the artillery said the idea behind the massive shelling is to pressure Palestinian civilians.

With John Jing, the head of UNRWA warning about the impact of the shelling on children, and WHO warning of a massive health crisis due to shortages in medicine and basic foodstuffs caused by persistent Israeli closures of the Karni border crossing, Palestinians are unlikely to blame Hamas for their predicament. The blame will fall squarely on the shoulders of Israel and the international community.