I went to an interesting discussion today. It was led by the Franco-Israeli writer Sylvain Cypel, who was talking about his recent book Walled: Israeli Society at an Impasse.
I asked him about the state of the Israeli peace movement these days, wondering aloud if it is really in such chaos and disarray as it seems to be.
His answer was interesting. He said that the essential issue that Israelis and all others need to focus on is the need to end the occupation, rather than "peace" as such. And he recalled how, growing up in France in the 1950s, those on the French left for long time had a main slogan regarding Algeria that was "peace in Algeria," and didn't make too much impact with that. But then, he said, in around 1959, they switched their slogan to "Withdraw from Algeria", and that was when the political system inside France really started to shift on the issue.
So I thought about that quite a bit afterwards. It is true, isn't it, that everyone right across the political claims that their goal is "peace" between Israel and its neighbors. Including those who specifically negate the idea that this peace needs a robust territorial basis, such as for example, those who argue that what's needed is a "peace for peace" deal, rather than a "land for peace" deal.
Cypel argued that what is required, first and foremost, is a clear Israeli statement that it will withdraw from the lands occupied in 1967, and then on the basis of that the modalities of the withdrawal, including the possibility of balanced adjustments in the final border, and the nature of the post-withdrawal relationship can all be effectively negotiated. But, he stressed, they should be negotiated in the context of a clear prior Israeli commitment to withdraw. Which is what international law requires of Israel, anyway.
(By the way, this is a principle that needs to be applied in the case of the US's current occupation of Iraq, as well.)
On a broadly related note, when I went to the panel discussion with the Anglo-Israeli peace activist Daniel Levy yesterday, one of the most striking things he said was that it is quite unreasonable to ask the occupied people to provide assurances for the security of the occupiers and even for the settlers from the occupying country.
He also said that making "absolute security" for Israel a firm precondition for the conduct or completion of any final-peace talks-- as the Annapolis process currently does, with its references to the really damaging "Road Map"-- is a recipe for sure failure. "How can the Palestinians assure the security of Israelis? They don't have a state, they don't have anything!"
Parenthetically, I'd add that the PA is quite unable to assure the security of Palestinians, so how can anyone demand that they assure the security of Israelis, as well?
Levy's bottom line was that completion and implementation of the final-status Palestinian-Israeli agreement simply cannot be held hostage to conditions placed on either side in the arena of interim measures.
This is what I've been arguing for the past 14 years. Since Oslo. It's a crazy idea, and one that gratuitously gives the whole peace negotiation over as a hostage to hardliners on either side who, when they want to torpedo it, have merely to launch yet another escalation or provocation.
Today, by the way, Cypel reminded us that the first terrorist event after Oslo was that undertaken by the American-Israeli settler extremist Baruch Goldstein, who killed 29 worshipers in Hebron's Ibrahimi Mosque, and wounded 150 more, during his February 1994 rampage there.
I was at a fascinating post-Annapolis briefing this afternoon, jointly delievered by two Israeli peaceniks (Daniel Levy and Ori Nir), two Palestinian negotiations officials (Ghaith al-Omary and Greg Khalil) and one American negotiations expert (Scott Lasensky.) It was hosted by the Foundation for Middle East Peace, whose Executive Director Phil Wilcox chaired the session, and had many other great pro-peace organizations supporting it.
All the contributions from the panelists were interesting, some very inspiring indeed. Levy, who had been a key advisor to then-FM Shimon Peres during the very hurried negotiations of the last months of Barak's premiership in 2000, is a very smart young British-Israeli. (His dad is the slightly disgraced and controversial Blair fundraiser/crony, Lord Levy. But Daniel seems smart and very thoughtful in his own right, as well as being, obviously, very well-connected.)
He reminded the hordes gathered there in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill that today is the 60th anniversary of the UN's passing of the Partition Plan for Palestine.
"That was truly an amazing day," he said.
So why would Olmert or anyone go to the Israeli people and say we need to fight for another decade or two to get to, what, 80%? What would be the point?
Levy also warned, incidentally, that the Annapolis-launched negotiations really represent Israel's last chance at retaining a Jewish state. "If they fail," he said, "Israel will become more and more like South Africa (I'm assuming he meant pre-democratic South Africa ~HC) and international support for it will fall, especially among US Jews."
Anyway, there is a lot more to write about the event. I'll have to wait a while to do that, though, as I have a bunch of other things to catch up with.
So mazel tov to all Israelis on the anniversary of the birth-certificate of your Jewish state! Do remember, though, that there was a twin brother given a birth certificate at exactly that same time, in the same incubator, but he hasn't been allowed to see the light of day yet. It strikes me that the fate of both peoples is still irrevocably intertwined.
(Note to commenters: Yes, I am well aware the Arab states rejected the Partition Plan at the time. A regrettable but in the circumstances not incomprehensible position to take. Now, they are seeking significantly less than the P.P. We have discussed the Arab rejection of the P.P. here on JWN many times and don't need to revisit it in this discussion. Let's be forward looking! What can be done to help realize the hopefulness there is in the Annapolis process-- however small it might appear as of now?)
Update, 20 mins. later:
Levy has put a thoughtful assessment of Annapolis up on his blog, here. I thought his analysis of the speeches the three principals made there was very perceptive. especially this comment:
Update, a further 30 mins later:
I have just checked my notes, and actually in making the reference to the two-state solution and South Africa, levy made clear that these were remarks that Olmert had made in a very recent interview with HaAretz. (And here it is in English.) Of course, this makes it an utterance of considerably greater political weight and impact. Sorry about the mistake.
Yet more from the Nixon tapes, which will prove to be, I think, a huge treasure trove. (The Nixon Archives link to the new releases is here.) The WaPo's Walter Pincus evidently spent time poring over them yesterday and came up with a cable to Kissinger from then-US ambassador to Saudi Arabia Jim Akins (mis-spelled by Pincus as Adkins) describing a "secret" letter Pres. Sadat wrote to King Faisal in January 1974 saying that Nixon
That was in the middle of the post-1973 War oil boycott. Pincus continues:
U.S. government archives from 1969 currently being declassified and made available to the public show that back in 1969 Nixon's national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, (1) knew that Israeli had nuclear weapons, contrary to public avowals of no such knowledge, and (2) helped to design and implement a policy whereby Israel's connivance in a scheme to keep its nuclear arsenal hidden would be rewarded by the US giving them additional, very potent, non-nuclear weapons.
Kudos to the NYT's David Stout who has been scouring the newly released documents and writing about their revelations, e.g. here. I have long argued, e.g. in this 1988 (long PDF) article here, that successive Israeli governments have used their thinly veiled possession of a powerful nuclear arsenal as much to blackmail the US as for any other purposes. For example, one of the Kissinger quotes Stout has from 1969 is that, “The Israelis, who are one of the few peoples whose survival is genuinely threatened, are probably more likely than almost any other country to actually use their nuclear weapons." I actually doubt that, under most scenarios. After all, what would happen to Israel itself if they did use them?
Maybe Kissinger actually
No time to write more now. Stout's piece has some good links to the actual documents which will certainly be worth following up.
Of course, this whole "revelation" of a matter that has in fact been public knowledge for decades now-- that Israel was indeed the first nuclear-weapons state in the Middle east and so far remains the only one-- could be seen as coming at a bit of an awkward time for the Bushites, as they continue to try to crank up opposition to Iran's nuclear program, which is still nowhere near producing any nuclear weapons at all even if (which is as yet unproven) that is where the Iranians are heading.
So it looks as though-- just as Pervez Musharraf has been stripping off his uniform in Pakistan-- in Lebanon Army Chief of Staff Michel Suleiman may be about to move into the Presidential palace in Baabdah.
Suleiman has been one of the candidates favored by Syria. For me, this immediately raises the question of whether there was a Saudi-brokered deal that involved the Syrians sending a (not high-level) representative to Annapolis, and them then getting a presidential candidate in Lebanon with whom they feel they can live?
It was a switch to Suleiman's candidacy by the Saudi-supported Saad Hariri's "Future Movement" that made Suleiman the front-runner. Some constitutional issues still persist-- namely, that a government employee of his stature is not supposed to become president. But no doubt Musharraf could teach him the dance of the seven combat boots. And anyway, many Lebanese harbor some fairly fond memories of the presidency of Fouad Chehab, who took over in 1958 after a successful, nation-building term as Chief of Staff.
Re the possibility of a Suleiman-Annapolis 'deal" recall that in Point 3 of this Nov. 22 post on JWN I wrote:
On the question of why Syria cares so much about what happens in Lebanon, there are, of course, hundreds of reasons. (You'll have to read at least three of my books to find out everything I have to say on the subject.) Right now, though, Syria's Baathist rulers and their many supporters have a vivid fear that the "joint", Lebanese-international tribunal investigating the 2005 Hariri murder and a string of other political murders since then will be used by the US-dominated "international community" to in some way weaken and perhaps bring down the Baathist regime in Syria. Within Lebanon the president is one key player, but not the only one, in the decisionmaking around the tribunal.
(But since Syria did go to Bush's party in Annapolis, does that mean it can now have some assurance that the Bush administration will be easing up on the panoply of regime-needling, regime-weakening, and otherwise very destabilizing things it's been doing against Syria in recent years? We'll have to see.)
One strong illustration of the intense hostility that some Lebanese have toward the Asad regime was provided when long-time Lebanese Druze feudal leader Walid Jumblatt addressed the strongly pro-Israeli "Washington Institute for Near East Policy's annual conference last month. Walid's father was killed by the Syrians during the Lebanese civil war of 1977; and in late 2004, the Syrians (or someone) tried to blow up the car carrying Walid's close political confidante Marwan Hamadeh. So you can perhaps understand that Walid is very strongly anti-Syrian at this point. (Though for most of the period between 1977 and 2004 he was a fairly close ally of Syria. Go figure.)
Actually-- how can I say this kindly, which I want to do to since I've known him fairly well since before his father's death?-- Walid is, ahem, not the world's most stable individual.
Anyway, if you read the transcript of his presentation at WINEP, you'll discover it is full of incitement against Syria. Including this exchange, with the well-known failed diplomatist Dennis Ross:
Jumblatt: Look, I might be -- how should I say -- blunt. I might also be -- you might find my remarks quite unusual. It was not a mistake in the absolute to remove Saddam Hussein...
So back to your question, there hasn't been effective sanctions against him [Asad]. What do you want me to say? I'm speaking to a diplomat.
No, I'm not going to be a diplomat. If you could send some car bombs to Damascus, why not?
Remember, too, that he was not speaking to a collection of backwoods, powerless people there at WINEP. The place is stacked high with former and future mid- to high-level officials in administrations both Republican and Democratic. It is "revolving-door central" in the systematic effort the tough pro-Israelis in this country have mounted to put their people into positions of power and influence. All the more worrying, therefore, to me as a US citizen-- and presumably also to the Syrians?-- to see that Walid's original remark about the car-bombs was greeted by the audience with, according to the transcript: "[Laughter, applause]"
Meanwhile, back in Lebanon, it is by no means a done deal yet that Suleiman's backers can pull together all the votes they need to get parliament to elect him. But it definitely looks as though something interesting has been getting unblocked in the country's previously deadlocked political geology.
That's good news. Let's hope this trend toward de-escalation can continue.
Update, way past bed-time: I just saw Josh Landis's take on this. He writes: "If ... Suleiman becomes president of Lebanon, Syria will be a winner as a result of Annapolis. Lebanon as well." I'm not as convinced of that as he seems to be... But the general trend-line seems good.
The bicycle is going forward, over rough ground, and very shakily. It might lose momentum at any time. And then, how many of those now perched atop it will tumble to the ground?
Or, is there anything those now aboard it can do to give it some real forward momentum?
This is an interesting question. George Bush may have thought that, by succeeding in getting so many participants to come to Annapolis, he would put added pressure on the Israelis and Palestinians-- well, especially the Palestinians-- to make the concessions that would be needed for a diplomatic success.
He may have thought that by getting such a broad turnout he would succeed in increasing the diplomatic isolation of Iran.
I think, though, that with the broad turnout he succeeded mainly in creating extra pressure on his own administration to perform effectively in the diplomacy started in Annapolis. All those invitees are all now, to one degree or another, invested in the process. (In the case of the Saudis, I would say that in both cash and political terms, they are are, actually, invested very heavily in it at this point.)
But the Brits, the Russians, the Chinese (as a permanent member of the UNSC), the EU, and the UN itself are all also heavily invested in the post-Annapolis "process". And not, mainly, by virtue of their having gone to the confab itself, though that is definitely a part of it. But also by virtue of all those parties having very strong interests of their own in Middle Eastern stability, and the fact that post-Annapolis is now "the only game in town" for defusing and resolving the potentially extremely destabilizing Israeli-Palestinian crisis... And it is, as is now quite clear, a very high-stakes game indeed. As of today, the goal has been defined: a final-status agreement between Israel and Palestine before the end of 2008.
So the Bush administration, as the party that prepared, stage-managed, and hosted this gathering, is now in the hot seat. And if Washington cannot perform well in the diplomatic tasks ahead of it, then those other parties, who may have been invited along to Annapolis to play the role of Greek Chorus, may well come to the conclusion that the stage director is wrecking the play-- and is causing grievous harm to their own interests in the process-- and they, or a sub-group of them may feel they need to move in and take over the show.
This peacemaking business will certainly not be easy, whoever does it. Of course, the rifts within the Palestinian community are huge. (And so will be the rifts inside Israel if the government moves significantly towards the kind of "painful compromises" that Olmert talked about in his speech.)
One thing I really wish Bush had done that could have made a significant difference in the dynamic of the negotiation was to spell out clearly and compellingly that the goal of this process is to have an Israel that is-- finally!-- at peace with all of its neighbors... an Israel that is no longer threatened by invasion but has straightforward and constructive working relations with not just all its neighbors but also all the Arab states beyond them, too. This is, I know, a good part of the intention of the Arab Peace Plan of 2002. But it corresponds to a much older and deeper dynamic, too: the idea that an Israel that is at peace with all its Arab-state neighbors will have a lot more of the self-confidence required to make those "painful concessions" to the Palestinians who are currently lodged with their necks under the IDF's boots.
That's why I think it is a huge pity that Bush was so peremptory and dismissive of the Syrians at Annapolis. In fact, he didn't even mention Syria in his address, and neither did Olmert or Abu Mazen. [Correction, Wed. evening: Abu Mazen actually did mention the need to end the occupation of Syrian Golan, and the need for "Arab-Israeli" peace as well as Palestinian-Israeli peace. Sorry about my too-fast reading of it last night. ~HC] Olmert mentioned "normalization" with Arab states-- but he didn't mention the vital other part of that equation, which is a successfully negotiated final peace agreement with all of Israel's Arab neighbors, and Israel's withdrawal from the occupied lands in Syria and Lebanon, as well as Palestine.
If a comprehensive Israeli-Arab peace is to be reached, that requires active engagement on the Israeli-Syrian and Israeli-Lebanese tracks. And Syria is not a small or weak power. It has considerable influence inside the political communities in both Lebanon and Palestine. Bringing the Syrians fully into the process at Annapolis would have served the cause of peacemaking on all three of the remaining "tracks" and would have transformed the political dynamics of the whole Near East.
By contrast, tricking the Syrians into coming to Annapolis-- which is what it looks like right now-- and then giving them the cold shoulder once they got there will end up serving nobody's interests. Doing that may well end up riling a number of the other "big powers" who were represented at Annapolis. And it almost certainly portends further trouble down the road for the hard-pressed people of Lebanon.
I would love for someone to explain to me why the idea of a truly comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace, one that ends the state of war that has existed for decades now between Israel and all three of these Arab neighbors, was not enthusiastically embraced and proclaimed in Annapolis by Bush (or, come to that, by either Olmert or Abu Mazen). Does this idea-- which seems so inspiring and so powerful to me-- somehow induce fear in the members of the Bush administration?
I suppose some people might say, "Well, it's going to be hard enough to get a decent peace between just the Israelis and Palestinians-- but trying to get an Israeli-Syrian peace and deal with the hornet's nest of Lebanon all at the same time would make the task impossible!" But I think that reaction seriously mis-states the dynamic at work here, which I see roughly in the way I outlined above. Remember, too, that (1) the Syrians have tremendous power-- if they are thus motivated--to help bring aboard the peace train (or bike, to keep my metaphors somewhat straight here) numerous Palestinians and Lebanese who would otherwise be inclined to oppose the idea of concluding a final peace agreement with Israel. And (2) just the broad reframing of the whole peace project, by itself-- the proclamation that "the goal here is to end the state of war in this whole region and to build it up into a region in which everyone has the chance to live and to thrive in peace"-- could have a powerful political effect in communities exhausted and drained by so many decades of war. Especially if it is the whole world, except Iran, who is saying this.
The "vision thing": that's what Pres. Bush the Elder used to talk about sometimes, in fairly derisive terms. But I don't think this particular peace bicycle has any chance of moving forward without it. So if the bike collapses shakily to the ground, who will be the ones falling off?
Much of the western media follows the Israeli-initiated habit of thinking and speaking about the issue of Golan only in (very threatening) strategic terms. But Golan is also-- like the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza-- a frequently heart-rending human story, one of dispossession, exile, oppression, and the splitting-up of families.
You can read a lot about the human dimension of Golan in Golan Days, a series of five articles that I published in Arabic in al-Hayat in 1998. They were the result of research/reporting trips I had made to Israel, occupied Golan, and Syria earlier that year.
Note that Israel unilaterally annexed Golan in 1981. But that act of Anschluss was quite illegal under international law. During the Israeli-Syrian negotiations of the early and mid-1990s, Israeli premiers Rabin and Peres promised the U.S. that, if they could win the security, economic, and political measures they desired from Syria, then Israel would be ready to withdraw from the whole of the Golan.Those negotiations failed after that Israeli offer was abruptly pulled off the table by Ehud Barak in 2000.
Meanwhile, throughout and since the 1990s Israel's policy of implanting settlers on the broad, fertile expanses of Golan's land has continued, though not with the fervor and frenzy of the settlement project in the West Bank. In 2006, there were 18,105 settlers on Golan, according to this table from the Foundation for Middle East Peace (which is an excellent source on the Israel's settlement project in the West Bank, too.)
Before Israel occupied Golan in 1967, there was a population of around 130,000 Syrians in the area, mainly farmers. This 2000 map (PDF) from FMEP shows you the ghosts of the villages and towns that they left behind them-- the empty grey circles and squares there. Tragically, in the fighting of 1967, nearly the whole of the indigenous Syrian population of Golan fled or was forced out. Their national army, which had previously held the whole of the Golan plateau, had suffered a humiliating rout.
Only a small number remained-- mainly followers of the Druze religion, who lived in winding villages clinging to the slopes of Jebel al-Sheikh (Mount Hermon). You can see their five villages in grey near the top of the map. Nowadays, they have, I think, around the same population as that of the Israeli settlements-- but living under very different circumstances from the land-pampered settlers. You can read a little about the lives of the Golan Syrians who still live in their family's ancestral homes, in Parts 1 and 2 of my Golan days series.
Also, you should go look at the two installments of an English Al-Jazeera documentary called Across the Shouting Valley, that are available on YouTube here and here. They very movingly portray the human and many other dimensions of the Golan issue. They have some interesting interviews with settlers; and they have many beautiful shots of the Golan landscape, too.
(Great job, Al-Jazeera!)
The second installment there has a short interview with an Israeli settler called Effie Eitam who is also a leader of one of Israel's rightwing parties. But in general, the political profile of most of the settlers in Golan is significantly different from that of the West Bank settlers. For starters, Golan is not generally considered by most Jews to be part of the historic "Land of Israel". So there is very little of that intense, religio-nationalist fervor that marks the activities of many West bank settlers. Secondly, putting settlements on the Golan was overwhelmingly a project of Labour governments in Israel, who put them there for reasons that-- at the time, in the late 1960s-- were much more justifiably "for security reasons" than most of the settlements in the west Bank. (Since then, of course, the development of long-distance missiles means that possession of the high ground in Golan is no longer the strategic "ace in the hole" that it once was.)
But the result is that the 18,000 Golan settlers are much more likely to be long-time Labour supporters than most of the West Bank settlers. And though many of their most vocal community leaders are staunchly on the hawkish, pro-territorial expansion wing of Labour, there are many others who are not-- including a very interesting farmer called Yigal Kipnis whom I met and talked to back in 1998, as you can see in Part 4 of the series.
Read in particular, his views on the possibility of Israel withdrawing in the context of a peace treaty:
Anyway, it has long mystified me why the Syrians have not done more to explain some of the human dimensions of the Golan issue, which are often just as heart-rending as all those "Let y people go!" campaigns that US Jewish organizations ran in favor the Soviet Jews back in the 1980s. Instead, the Syrians have allowed the Israeli narrative of Golan as "simply a strategic question-- and an Israelo-centric one, at that" to dominate all discussion of the Golan issue in the west. Human-interest-centered stories about political issues may seem trite. But still, they do have a great power to help frame the way that people think about the political issues involved... But from the way Golan is presented in the western media, you'd think that it is just a single, steep and potentially very threatening strategic escarpment and has no human dimension at all. Not true!
(You could call this the "vertical" view of Golan-- as opposed to a "horizontal" view that takes into account the fact that there's a huge expanse of lovely, fertile land up there; and that there are people from both nationalities who have histories, lives, and claims there.)
I guess in my wondering-- and discussing with a few Syrian friends-- why the Syrian government has not done more to "humanize" the issue, I concluded that could perhaps be explained by two factors: (1) a lingering sense of shame about the extent and seriousness of the collapse that the national army's whole network of positions in Golan experienced in 1967, and (2) a reluctance to do too much to empower and/or mobilize the Golani Syrians within the national political system.
By some counts, the "nazeheen" (displaced persons) from Golan and their descendants now number more than a quarter million. And of course, under international law (and human logic) they have every right to be able to return to their ancestral homes and properties there.
Unlike the Palestinians displaced in 1948 and 1967, the Syrian nazeheen did have a government that provided them with the basic services they needed to survive and to get a fairly good start in life: basic housing, health, and education services. And like many displaced persons throughout history they have actually, in general, done pretty well in the Syrian economy and professions, and in the Syrian migrant-labor community in the Gulf. But Syria's Baathist government is chronically wary of seeing any auto-mobilization of sub-groups within the society, so maybe its failure to present the wrenching human dramas of the split and dispossessed families more effectively to the outside world has something to do with that, too.
So if the Syrian-Israeli negotiations do get resumed in earnest in the days and weeks ahead, I'll probably try to follow up on some of these human interest stories.
Two fascinating pieces in today's NYT.
This one by Elisabeth Bumiller chronicles Condi rice's conversion from being a big Israeli-Arab negotio-skeptic to now being the cheerleader for Bush's extremely belated venture into peacemaking there.
After describing how derisive both Bush and Rice were back in 2001 of the whole idea of the US having an active role in israeli-Palestinian mediating, Bumiller wrote,
How many of those outcomes were foreseen or intended by Rice, I wonder?
Regarding the Palestinian elections, I think she made completely the right decision-- but she totally misjudged the outcome, which was a rout for Fateh. (In part, because of factor 'c' above.) And then, instead of swallowing hard and dealing with the outcome, she backed Olmert in his pursuit of extremely punitive policies against the Palestinians.
And then, in the summer of 2006, she (or her boss?) made decisions regarding Israel's lethal assault against Lebanon that were both ethically horrendous and very counter-productive from a policy point of view.
So we cannot at this point say that her track record as Bush's chief manager on Israeli-Arab affairs has been a good one.
Bumiller also has this description of the motivations for Condi's current activism in the cause of Israeli-Palestinian peace:
Not least, Ms. Rice’s supporters say, she is determined to fashion a legacy in the Middle East that extends beyond the war in Iraq.
(Bumiller also has a really hackneyed quote from previous longtime-- and failed-- "peace processor" Dennis Ross in which he says, “This administration has too often engaged in stagecraft, not statecraft." Like Dennis was any good at statecraft during all those years he presided over a string of failed negotiations?? Note that I exempt from that criticism the work Dennis did in helping prepare the Madrid conference of 1991-- but at that point, he was acting mainly as a gofer for Jim Baker, rather than running the show himself.)
The second interesting NYT piece is also by Bumiller. It is this short-ish exploration of Rice's relationship with Bush. Turns out she tries to be his nanny, too, not just the nanny to the whole of the rest of the world... and he sort of jokes about the extent to which she "tells" him what to do. It sounds like a bizarre and very unhealthy way to run a country.
And finally, we have this, from the president himself when he was meeting with Abu Mazen earlier today:
But in the case of Israel and the Palestinians, all Bush aspires to do is to "help facilitate" the negotiations between these two extremely mismatched parties.
If he sticks with this approach, and if the adults in the international community don't step in and take the process over from him as he falters, then this Annapolis-launched process will be going, very dangerously, nowhere.
Why can't he simply say, forthrightly and frankly, that the US has its own strong interests in the speedy attainment of a fair and sustainable final peace agreement-- all of which is true-- and will be working hard with all concerned parties to achieve that?
The very well-informed Boston University expert on Lebanon and the Middle East, Dick Norton, had a great catch on his "Speaking Truth to Power" blog yesterday: the text of the internal "Talking Points" (= spin) that the US State Dept HQ has been sending out to diplomats and consular officials around the world, regarding the imminent Annapolis meeting.
This spin-sheet is fascinating inasmuch as it can be understood as expressing a great deal of Condi Rice's current actual hopes and planning for the Annapolis and post-Annapolis "process".
However, though Condi and her boss might think they can control the whole of this process, I judge that it may well get beyond their control.
Back at the time of the last launch of a serious Israeli-Arab peacemaking process, in Madrid in 1991, the US stood at the height of its global power. The USSR was in the midst of long, four-year collapse into its constituent parts. The US was the Uberpower that had "won" the Cold war-- and throughout the rest of the 1990s, it was able to control every aspect of the Israeli-Arab peacemaking diplomacy. (Which, guess what, got nowhere, while Israel continued implanting hundreds of thousands of additional settlers into the West Bank.)
But 2007 ain't 1991. The US's power position in the world has eroded considerably since then. As has-- especially after summer 2006-- the strategic utility of the military dominance that Israel continues to exercise over the whole of the Mashreq (Near East.)
In 1991, the Bush-Baker team at Madrid had the USSR sitting there as some kind of co-hosts. But really, that was a nearly wholly symbolic gesture. Two years later the USSR collapsed completely.
This year, the US has the other three members of the "Quartet" along in some kind of possibly co-hosting capacity. That's Russia, the EU, and the UN. (The UN's stance as "junior partner" to Washington in this peacemaking is highly anomalous and, I would say, not sustainable for very much longer.) We should not imagine that these three "partners" will all continue to be happy just to be Condi's arm candy for very much longer. Matters for all parties, throughout the Middle East are far too serious for that; and the need to proactively pursue this chance for speedy final resolution of all the remaining strands of the Israeli-Arab conflict is correspondingly pressing.
I shall write more on this broader aspect of Annapolis in the days ahead. But for now, let's look at the main dimensions of the spin that Dick Norton has caught for our edification:
Immediate comments on this:
Imagine that! That was the vision held up at Madrid, and it is still the most compelling, and most viable, vision that we can hold up today.
2. No mention by name of the President. In the section on "U.S. commitment," the spin-sheet refers only to actions undertaken by Rice. The US stance would be a lot more convincing if the Pres had committed his full power to this process. How can we be assured that that Dick Cheney is not still busy machinating hard against it behind the scenes?
3. Ignorance and boilerplate vagueness. Okay, I know it was the Thanksgiving Day weekend and probably lots of people in Condi's spin-shop were not in the office... But look at this little sub-clause: "the stablishment [sic] of a Palestinian state for the first time in many years." How sloppy! Folks: There has never been a Palestinian state yet!
Also, look at this, for vagueness: "Much has been said over a long period of time about critical issues like border, refugees and Jerusalem." Yes? And what kind of conclusion does the US think these discussions ought to come to? How about some recognition that a lot of fine preliminary work has been done on all these issues in the years since 1991, so with good will and determination they should not be too hard to resolve?
I should note, though, that both the global and regional balances have undergone significant, though still limited, shifts since the time the Geneva and Nusseibeh-Ayalon formulas emerged back in 2003, so the US and Israel will no longer be so able to defend the interests of the Israeli settlers as they were back then. That is, a politically sustainable outcome reached in 2007-2008 would probably be closer to the "international law" position and the Green Line than Geneva or Nusseibeh-Ayalon were...
If it does, that's good for everybody. Everybody. If it doesn't, it will be certainly be bad for everyone concerned.
Two interesting articles in Monday's HaAretz. This one is headed Rightists target mainstream to fight concessions at Annapolis, and tells us the following:
The first hurdle in the paths of organizations like the New Yesha Council and One Jerusalem is the disillusionment in right-wing circles in the wake of the disengagement. Having failed to prevent the pullout from the Gaza Strip in 2005, right-wing activists and supporters are apparently less willing to come out and protest - as demonstrated in internal polls commissioned by right-wing parties...
I guess I had been wondering in my own mind what effect the heavily "dramatized" events of the summer of 2005-- when thousands of settler activists from the West Bank rushed to the Gaza settlements and staged some very determined-- and yes, nonviolent-- mass actions to try to "resist" being evicted from those settlements as per Sharon's plan of that year. (You can read some of the contemporary discussion of those events on JWN from mid-August 2005, here-- also, in many other posts in August and July 2005.)
You could also say that part of Sharon's plan then had been precisely to see and then broadly publicize those emotional scenes, as he had done earlier with the 1982 evacuation of the settlements in northern Sinai, as a way of "showing" to the world how difficult or perhaps impossible a later evacuation of the West Bank settlements would be...
But how very interesting if the lesson some of the settler leaders took from that whole episode was that even with all the efforts they undertook in 2005, they still failed to sway Israel's non-settler public opinion in their favor.
(I would note, too, that though it is evidently significant that during the Gaza events, the settlers were overwhelmingly nonviolent, that still does not in itself make their cause just. They were, after all, trying to hang onto settlements that were illegal under international law, all along.)
And the second HaAretz piece I found really interesting was this little article, headlined Study: Israelis' confidence in IDF, security services at 7-year low.
So I guess public-opinion researchers from two Israeli universities, who have used a measure of their compatriots' confidence in some public institutions since 2001, have found that the IDF in general got 3.27 points out of a possible 5.00 in this year's survey, down from 3.56 in 2001. The Mossad and Shin Bet (foreign and domestic security services) meanwhile had a combined score of 3.53 this year, down from 3.81 in 2003.
I am still not sure whether these kinds of findings are generally good the broader cause of peace, or not. I would certainly hope that-- especially after the events of summer 2006 demonstrated quite clearly that no amount of technical military superiority can on its own enable Israel to win significant strategic gains against a determined and smart opponent-- the fact that Israelis currently have a lowered confidence in their military and security services would incline them more towards finding a negotiated peace with all their neighbors.
However, it is also possible that an embattled Israeli military and political leadership-- which both of them are at this point, politically, at home-- might seek to "break out of" their sense of being besieged by launching yet another doomed but extremely harmful military adventure.
However, the momentum, for now, is in the direction of peacemaking. That is excellent! Let it be for real! And let Israel's 7 million people now-- finally-- increase their understanding that finding a sustainable, respectful peace with all their neighbors is a far, far better way to assure their security than all their 60 years'-worth of reliance on brute force, militarization, nuclear weapons, oppression, and intimidation.
Whoa there, AP! The generally well-regarded US newswire is putting out an extremely tendentious little "fact-box" today, on the situation in the Israeli-occupied Golan. Tendentious and, need I add, one-sided.
For example, here:
Guess it depends on whether we have an Israelo-centric view of the Middle East, or not?
Then, the AP has this:
Finally, the AP box gives us this:
In 1994, during the heart of the negotiations that Syria and Israel maintained from 1991 thru 1996, Israeli PM Rabin told the American mediators that in return for an array of other security measures, demilitarization, normalization of relations, economic links etc, he would be prepared to withdraw Israel's forces to the international border; and in the negotiations that continued between then and the defeat of his successor, Shimon Peres, at the Israeli polls in spring 1996, that was the basis on which the negotiations continued. (In Israel, it became known as the "Rabin deposit.") During marathon sessions at the Wye Plantation in Maryland in January 1996, the two sides came very close to concluding all the elements of a final peace agreement.
Peres's success, Bibi Netanyahu, was not interested in proceeding with those talks. The talks resumed only some months after Ehud Barak was elected in 1999. But when he inveigled Bill Clinton into presenting his "final, final offer" to Syrian president Hafez al-Asad in May 2000, the extent of the promised Israeli withdrawal had mysteriously (or not) shrunk from the Rabin Deposit. Now, Barak insisted on Israel maintaining control off a strip some 100 or so metres wide around the whole of the SoG coast-line. Not surprisingly, Asad demurred. Less than a month later he had died of a heart attack.... and a few months after that, as we know, the Palestinians' second intifada started, and then Barak lost at the polls to Ariel Sharon.
So, friends at AP: Please let's not keep that very tendentious, and indeed inaccurate, listing of "facts" up on your newswire. The way you present this material matters. It matters both to the way you are viewed around the world-- whether as fair-minded and accurate, or neither of those things. And it matters because your material affects the way many Americans (and perhaps other people elsewhere) think about these issues. If you want to make it look like the Syrians have always been wrong and the Israelis blameless, that matters.
By the way, since the Golan issue is now going to be discussed at Annapolis, people might want to take a look at this series of articles I published in Al-Hayat in 1998, on the human geography of the area.
Also, since I see that my 2000 book on the Israeli-Syrian negotiations of 1991-96 is now listed by the publisher, the US Institute of Peace, as out-of-print, you might want to get a used one from Amazon.
I think I'll contact USIP and see if we can maybe have them put the final chapter of the book up on the web... (Note to certain carping commenters here: I have never had a royalty agreement with USIP for sales of this book, since they had helped fund some of the research for it. So when I mention the book here, it is certainly not from a desire to increase my earnings.)
My able tech assistant (and son) put Google Reader onto my computer as well as the Analytics last week. He said it's the best RSS reader he knows, and showed my how you can aggregate different feeds into tags and themes, etc.
That meant I needed to go through the slightly chaotic collection of blogs that I've been tagging with my "Delicious" system over the past few months, and pick out a subset to put into my Google Reader. Lots of the "usual suspects" there-- including a couple of the BBC's excellently organized RSS feeds, Juan Cole, TPM, etc, etc. Two that I put in that have given me particular pleasure reading the feeds from have been these:
Read Correspondent Hussein's recent reflection about the tragedy of Dying Alone, or Sahar IIS's post about the trouble her dental-student daughter has been having finding enough patients to practice her skills on. Or, come to think of it, any of the posts on the blog, and you'll learn a lot about what out-of-the-office life is like for-- I should imagine-- mainly middle-class Iraqis these days.
(Plus, remember that these writers are different from many Iraqis because on the one hand they have jobs, but on the other the jobs they have make many or most of them direct targets for insurgents, so their lives are often lived under tremendous pressure.)
On his sidebar, he has links to some of his more political writings. He's a Palestinian. (L&P also recently had an interesting post expressing his views on a project aimed at Israeli-Palestinian-Jordanian cooperation in seedstock improvement.)
... With both of these blogs, as with many others that I have learned a lot from in recent years, what I've found of particular value is the opportunity to read these views/posts as they were directly and thoughtfully written by the authors, and un-mediated by the editorial or story-shaping choices of corporate editors. It is truly incredible, the whole new set of windows that the internet gives us into the lives, views, and concerns of other people around the world. (Thanks, Darpa!)
I think we should also give special recognition to McClatchy, a media corporation that respects and trusts the people who work-- and risk their lives-- for it enough to allow them to write the Inside Iraq blog.
If any of you can recommend other blogs that have similar qualities of immediacy, good writing, thoughtfulness, and insight into the lives and livelihoods of people who live outside the rich portions of the world, do please send in a comment that has, obviously, the URL, and also your own short note on what you find distinctive about it. Thanks!
Just over a week ago, my son put Google Analytics onto JWN, so i now have a week's worth of their great data on who YOU, the readers, are.
I am thrilled that during the past week, readers from 107 countries (1,281 cities) visited JWN. I love the mapping gadget. I could travel from the Cape to Cairo through countries where JWN has readers. Can't quite make it right down the Pan-American Highway through central America... Laos and Myanmar are the only standouts in East Asia. We had visitors from all the states of the US except North Dakota, with California very evidently leading the pack.
I've been very interested, ever since I first started writing JWN, in developing a global readership. (Remember back when I tried to use the non-English options for the date-stamps here?) It turns out that 42% of the visits this past week came from non-US-based readers. Well, I know there are some US-citizen readers who visit us from outside the US, and some non-US readers who visit from inside the US, so maybe those two categories more or less balance each other? The top five locations among non-European-heritage locales are India, Egypt, Pakistan, China, and South Africa, all bunched together with each having around 0.6% of the total visitorship.
So it's still not a totally global forum here. But I'm really delighted to find how international it is.
I realize that over the past few months, while I've been working on this latest book of mine and doing a few other things, I haven't been as systematic or intentional-- okay, some might say "obsessive"-- as I have been at various earlier stages of publishing the blog. I was starting to feel a bit burned out with it, or feel it wasn't achieving very much, or whatever. I even thought of closing it gracefully down. (Or ungracefully. Bam! Just like that!)
But seeing the Google Analytics maps has been a real blast. And I've even started to think about various ideas for ways I could make JWN more effective. I think it will always be fairly idiosyncratic, or as the Lebanese say, "mazaji." But there are probably things I could do either with the layout or with a better organization of the content, or by trying to be a bit more intentional in planning the content, that would make it more interesting for more readers.
What do any of you think? Would you like more shorter posts? (Please don't ask for photos.) What other ideas do you have? What do you like about JWN? What might make it more interesting or useful for you? What would make it so much more interesting that you could recommend it to more of your friends?
Actually, instead of sitting here enjoying looking at the maps and thinking about the future of the blog, what I should be doing is finishing the revisions on the book manuscript. I really do need to get it done within the next two or three days....
If you put your ideas here in the form of a comment, could you just tell me your home-country as well when you do so? Thanks!
Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal said today in Cairo that he will attend the Annapolis meeting. I think this is a good decision. It will allow him to give the extremely helpful, Saudi-initiated "Arab Peace Plan of 2002" a good and serious presentation there.
That AP story by Salah Nasrawi also notes that Prince Saud said that at Annapolis he "would not take part in a 'theatrical show,' such as handshakes with Israeli officials, saying the gathering must make serious progress." That is fine, too. Under his plan, the Arab states would all engage in full normalization of relations with Israel simultaneously with Israel undertaking its withdrawal from all (or nearly all) the lands its army occupied in 1967. (Many Israelis and their friends want to have this recognition/normalization performed upfront. Of course they might want that. But I can't see why they would reasonably believe that anyone else would support that request.)
Regarding the core issues of an Israeli-Palestinian agreement, I see that Amira Hass has another piece in Haaretz today in which she explains why many Palestinians consider the PA's negotiating stance to be a weak, overly appeasing one. I think this is a further commentary on the Nov. 17th negotiating Draft (note that's a PDF there) that she had received recently-- the one in which the Israeli and Palestinian sides could not even agree whether it should be a "Joint document" or a "Joint statement." There were also, at that point, many other remaining disagreements between the two sides.
Also in today's Ha'aretz is an intriguing account by Akiva Eldar of the conclusions reached by members of something called the Aix Group, a group of Israeli, Palestinian, and "international" experts that has been trying to unravel the many economic strands that would be involved in a satisfactory resolution of the Palestinian refugee issue.
The group recommends that Palestinian refugees from 1948 should be allowed to choose their place of permanent residence, but implementation of that should be subject to the sovereign wishes of the state involved; and an alternative package of full compensation would be offered to those not returning to their original homes and properties in what is now Israel. The total amounts of compensation involved would, the group estimated, come to "between $55 and $85 billion."
Exploratory work like that-- based on updated surveys of the extent of Palestinian property claims against Israel, like those recently produced by Prof. Michael Fischbach here in the US-- is really helpful. If a Palestinian-Israeli final peace agreement is to be sustainable, it must of course be sold to a sizeable majority of the people in both national communities, and must provide a basis for the new Palestinian state that is viable in both economic and political terms.
Maybe a formula like that proposed by the Aix Group, which involves overwhelmingly compensation to the refugees rather than actual physical return, could work out. But I believe it only really has a chance of working provided the territorial base of the Palestinian state is broad enough and coherent enough to accommodate Palestinian aspirations for a viable state. That is, it cannot be eaten into in the West Bank by the massive blocs of illegal Israeli settlements, as solidifying the line of the current Israeli "security" barrier into the final state boundary would do. Most of the areas currently occupied by those settlements would therefore have to come under the authority of the Palestinian state.
In addition, a permanent passage between the West Bank and Gaza needs to be assured. Completely free interaction between Palestine and the world economy-- notably, NOT an interaction mediated always through Israel, as in the Oslo formula-- needs to be guaranteed. And of course, a workable formula needs to be found for Jerusalem.
Much of the work of brainstorming possible formulas on all these issues has already been done. You can see a survey of proposals on Jerusalem, for example, in the 2004 book on the Israeli-Palestinian question that I worked on, along with a group of fellow Quakers from around the world.
Mainly at this point, what is needed is for the leaderships on both sides to show that they really are committed to finding a robust and sustainable solution that meets the needs of all the people iinvolved-- around 8 million-plus Palestinians and 7 million-plus Israelis-- sufficiently fairly.
Given that gross population data, an outcome that ends up giving the Palestinian state a land base that is in any significant way inferior to the 23% of Mandate Palestine that makes up the West Bank and Gaza, would seem very far from able to meet this requirement.
So there's a lot of work to do at the bilateral level. And a lot of hard decisions that the US government will need to take, especially regarding the degree to which it plans to continue underwriting Israeli intransigence in this peacemaking.
There are also numerous other regional issues that need to be addressed. To see my comments on some of them, read my previous post here.
The current guessing game in the US and Israel is over "which of the Arab states will participate, and at which level."
Actually, for many ardent pro-Israelis inside and outside the two governments, those questions about Arab representation are the sole focus of their concern about Annapolis, rather than, as good sense would dictate: "What is the best way to ensure that this gathering contributes to the speedy conclusion of sustainable final-status peace agreements between Israel and all their neighbors?"
There is very frequently a sort of "scalp-collecting" aspect to the way many Israelis, inside and outside of government, think about the possibility of encounters with Arab state nationals.
But anyway, the biggest questions right now about attendance at Annapolis are those over the responses of Syria and Saudi Arabia These two will be among the Arab states that are sending their foreign ministers to Cairo for an all-Arab confab tomorrow, at which many Arabs hope they will be able to find that long-sought Holy Grail, a "unified Arab position."
AP's Zeina Karam has a good report from Damascus today, in which she presents the evidence backing up her lead, which is "Syria is softening its refusal to attend the Annapolis peace conference and already has won dividends."
And Al-Hayat's Ibrahim Hamidi has an interesting report (in Arabic) in today's paper, explaining the various strands of analysis that have been pursued by government insiders in Damascus.
People seeking a rendering of Hamidi's article in English are strongly advised not to rely on the version presented by the usually sound young US professor Joshua Landis, who for some reason seems to have pasted in a commentary on the Hamidi report from elsewhere-- most likely, the Israeli press-- instead of presenting his English-language readers with the promised direct translation of it.
It is Thanksgiving here in the US, so I can only imagine that Landis just quickly used that commentary instead of working on his own translation of the piece. But the result is very inaccurate and misleading.
There is so much finegrained diplomacy going on around the question of the prospects for Annapolis that I don't have time to assess it all here. I will just quickly note the following:
(2) As always, the Israelis seem to be primed once again to try to "play off" the Syrians against the Palestinians. During the whole of the post-Madrid diplomacy, their use of that tactic was evident. (As noted in my 2000 book on the Syrian-Israeli negotiations of those years.) The result of the Israeli tacticians being "too clever by half" in that regard was that they ended up with neither a peace agreement with Syria nor a peace agreement with Palestine in hand... Unless that was what they had aimed for all along? Well, for some of the Israeli decisionmakers in those years, it is almost indisputable that that was their aim. For others, probably not. But the settlers in East Jerusalem, the rest of the Wset Bank, and Golan all got to continue their lovely lifestyles-- and expand!
(3) It is of course extremely relevant that poor old Lebanon is currently poised on the brink of constitutional disaster. In my work on my 2000 book, I examined the question as to whether, for this Baath Party regime in Syria, their interests in Lebanon or in Golan were weightier. And I concluded that at that time, it was their Lebanon interests. This time, of course, Syria's situation in Lebanon is very different. But as a general rule, we can say that periods of intense Israeli-Arab peace diplomacy are often accompanied by an intensification of fighting (often, foreign-power-backed fighting) inside Lebanon. Why so many Lebanese people are so happy to allow foreign powers to jerk them around in this way is a subject for more consideration, another time. It would be wonderful if this time around, all parties, both Lebanese and non-Lebanese, could at least agree that the intervention of all outsiders in Lebanon's internal politics is a no-no, and should be ended... And yes, that should most certainly include interventions from the US, Syria, Israel, and Iran.
(Neither Bill nor I have time to cook a turkey today. We're having our Thanksgiving meal at restaurant. Personally, I feel I have a lot to give thanks for this year. But the performance of the US Congress leaders we all helped elect a year ago is sadly nowhere near the top of that list.)
What will end up being the most serious indictment on the charge-sheet leveled against the Bush administration for its reckless mishandling of foreign policy since 2001? Oh my! So hard to tell. The candidates for this sad honor are legion.
But we'll have to put Somalia on the list somewhere. Somalia where, you'll remember, in November and December 2006 the Bushites plotted with the government of Ethiopia and other parties to launch a massively armed assault against the body that was just then, however tenuously, starting to bring some order to Mogadishu and other areas of the country...
That was the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), a body that-- like the Taliban in Afghanistan-- had found a unifying Islamist ideology that helped its supporters to rebuild some social solidarity within a country riven by ferocious and mega-lethal warlordism.
In late November 2006, the wise analysts of the International Crisis Group warned the US of the expected, very escalatory consequences of an impending US decision to arm and support the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia.
The Bushites went ahead anyway.
Things went violently awry from almost the very beginning of the Ethiopian occupation of much of Somalia that ensued.
Today, the NYT's Jeffrey Gettleman reported from Somalia that,
Top United Nations officials who specialize in Somalia said the country had higher malnutrition rates, more current bloodshed and fewer aid workers than Darfur, which is often publicized as the world’s most pressing humanitarian crisis and has taken clear priority in terms of getting peacekeepers and aid money.
The relentless urban combat in Mogadishu, between an unpopular transitional government — installed partially with American help — and a determined Islamist insurgency, has driven waves of desperate people up the Afgooye road, where more than 70 camps of twigs and plastic have popped up seemingly overnight.
The people here are hungry, exposed, sick and dying. And the few aid organizations willing to brave a lawless, notoriously dangerous environment cannot keep up with their needs, like providing milk to the thousands of babies with fading heartbeats and bulging eyes. “Many of these kids are going to die,” said Eric Laroche, the head of United Nations humanitarian operations in Somalia. “We don’t have the capacity to reach them.”
She added that,
These are almost unbelievably reckless and harmful operations.
Someone needs to rein in the militarists who have taken over the White House-- and also, I fear, far too much of rest of the US political elite. Mainly, it is the responsibility of the rest of the US citizenry-- the anti-militarists amongst us-- to do this. But it would be great if we could also count on a ready and capable United Nations, and a coalition of the world's other, non-US powers to help us turn the tide of history away from mindless militarism and back toward a real commitment to using non-military ways to resolve the many conflicts among the peoples of the world.
So many such ways exist! And the UN could be-- if the other powers really wanted to make it so-- a powerful vehicle for diverting the energies of governments, including my government, away from violence and back toward the really constructive work of negotiation, peacebuilding, and reconciliation.
Pray for the people of Somalia tonight. And then tomorrow, let's resume the campaign to do all we can to save the world from the forces of militarism.
By the way, this is Reliefweb's excellent portal to the latest news of the humanitarian crisis in Somalia.
I would be so happy if the planned Annapolis meeting between Israel and the Palestinians succeeded.
But succeeded at what? At orchestrating a pretty photo-opportunity? No, that would be no particular cause for joy, given the number of times such photo-ops have been staged in the past and-- crucially-- the role they have played in both substituting for any tangible progress in the peacemaking, and also masking the absence of such progress.
Succeeded at getting one side to make, unreciprocated, a declaration publicly "demanded" from it by the other side?
No, that would not constitute any meaningful success either, since it would augur so poorly for the future success of the peacemaking...
Right now, the only success that counts is the success of peacemaking: That is, visible progress toward the speedy conclusion of final peace agreement between Israel and Palestine-- and also, a final peace between Israel and Syria. That's the prize we should all keep our eyes on.
Yes, it needs to be progress towards a final peace, because both Israelis and Palestinians had the emotion-churning experience in the 1990s of seeing the strong focus on interim agreements, that were described in the deeply flawed Oslo process as being "steps on the path to a final peace," instead drain energy and momentum out of the search for that final peace.
That was the particular "contribution" to the process made by the failed diplomatist Dennis Ross, who since I first met him in the mid-1980s argued endlessly that the Israelis and Palestinians would need a long interim period in order to "build confidence" before they could muster the political will required to negotiate a final peace. Instead of which, Ross's shepherding throughout the Clinton years of the implementation of his flawed-- and, I might add, extremely self-serving and one-sided-- formula led only to the intense disillusionment of nearly a whole generation of the former "peaceniks" on both sides of the Green Line... To a rise in frustrations on both sides... To ever-tighter restrictions on the Palestinians' freedom of movement... And to the continued expansion of the illegal Israeli settlement project in the occupied West Bank.
For example, look at the post-1993 increase in the settler populations in the West Bank and East Jerusalem columns of this table. Under international law E. Jerusalem is actually a part of the West Bank, so I don't know why those folks put them in separate columns there. But if you do the math you can see that the population in both columns combined increased from 264.4K in 1993 to 443K in 2005, an increase of 68%. Lucky settlers: gobbling up all those yummy US-taxpayer-assisted subsidies along with the Palestinians' land and resources!
(Amazingly, some people have even recently been "mentioning" Dennis as a possible high-level foreign-policy official in a post-2009 democratic administration. Does no-one even look at his actual past performance?)
Oh, and the GDP per capita in Israel as a whole skyrocketed during the years after Oslo, thanks to the opening of massive new markets, especially in East Asia and especially for weapons, that was inaugurated by that agreement.
So please, 14 years after Oslo, let's have no more talk of "interim" agreements.
I am slightly reassured by the fact that the Bushites seem not to have given way to that temptation (yet.) On the other hand, they have not yet projected anything like the degree of vision and commitment that they'll need if they really want to bring about the signing of the final peace agreement before Bush leave office in January 2009.
So yes, I would be extremely happy if a meeting in Annapolis, Maryland could bring closer the conclusion of a sustainable, that is, "fair enough", final peace agreement between Israel and Palestine.
(Okay, I'm a little troubled by the symbolism of Annapolis itself, which after all is the location of the officers' academy for the major instrument of US armed power around the world; but apart from that, I guess it's a nice enough seaside location...)
I would be happy if Annapolis truly succeeded, because I know how badly the parties to the dispute-- but most especially, at this point, the Palestinians-- have been suffering. I would be happy because I know that military occupation is always an extremely oppressive and unjust situation, and Israel's occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and Golan has gone for more than 40 years now: far, far too long. I would be happy because the prolongation of the state of occupation has sown fear and violence in far too many hearts both sides of the line. Large proportions of the people on both sides live in a state of fearfulness that is itself injurious to them, and that also leads to their support for continuing acts of violence. All those wounds need to be healed, and they cannot be healed so long as the inequitable situation of one country ruling over the other is ended.
However, like the vast majority of my Israeli and Palestinian friends, I have harbored high hopes of imminent diplomatic success before-- and on every previous occasion I've seen those hopes dashed. For many people, that can even be a worse experience than not having any hopes at all. To be honest, regarding Annapolis, despite the intensity of my desire that this might-- finally!-- be the turning point on the road to real success, I also struggle with the analytical side of me that, looking as coolly and objectively as I can at the facts on the ground (including here), does not really see them pointing in a hopeful direction.
Yet.
I am still waiting to be pleasantly surprised and am open to the possibility that might happen.
Among some of the disturbing pieces of recent evidence:
* Olmert's continued insistence that, for the peace process to proceed, the Palestinians have first to recognize not just "Israel's right to exist", which is a long-held Israeli position, but also, now, Israel's "right to exist as a Jewish state."
Anyway, for Olmert to require Mahmoud Abbas to jump through this recently introduced hoop even before serious negotiations can start, is not a good sign. And why do we hear nothing from the party that seeks to present itself as a "neutral" mediator in these talks, telling Olmert and the Israelis that the introduction of this hoop is very unhelpful indeed?
(I wonder what would happen if Abbas stated publicly that he would require Israel to recognize Palestine's "right to exist as a Muslim state" before he would even negotiate?)
Anyway, a mediator in such a situation could, if truly committed to moving rapidly toward a sustainable final peace agreement, certainly find ways to "mediate" and find creative ways to sequence and link all the cross-cutting demands and concerns voiced by the two sides.
And I guess that is the final, and perhaps biggest, cause for my current concern: I am not yet seeing anything from the Bush administration that indicates any such degree of commitment.
I realize the "structure" of this negotiation would be hard for any mediator to deal with. There is one very strong party currently sitting on the neck of a very weak party. Both the contending parties, moreover, have considerable bodies of supporters elsewhere... But the particular challenge for Washington is that the weak party's main external supporters are in a part of the world that is very important to the US-- while the strong party's main external supporters are within the US political system itself.
And this, in a US election year in which, though George W. Bush himself is not a candidate, still his party will presumably not want him to gratuitously diminish their chances of success.
So maybe, as I've argued for a long time now, the US really is just about the most unsuitable choice one could imagine for a successful "mediator" in this situation. In which case, the decent thing to do would be to resign from the task and hand it over to a party that can get the job done both speedily and sustainably.
But so long as they hang onto the task, I guess I shall just have to wait for them to prove me wrong...
... This time it comes from veteran warmonger Fred Kagan and (imho, sadly) Brookings's Michael O'Hanlon, writing in today's NYT.
In a sense, the title of their op-ed says it all:
No hint of that in the K&O'H text.
But also, no hint that a collapse of government power in Pakistan-- a country that has a nuclear arsenal estimated to contain 24-48 HEU warheads and perhaps 3-5 plutonium warheads-- would pose a massive challenge to everyone in the world. And most especially those sizeable and well-armed nations that are its neighbors. Like India. Like Russia. Like China. Not to mention Afghanistan and a host of other very vulnerable countries in that region...
The US homeland is, by contrast, located almost exactly on the other side of the world.
What on earth is it with the hubris of so many US "strategic analysts"? That they think that US is in some way "uniquely" threatened by developments in distant Pakistan? That those developments are therefore somehow "uniquely" a problem for the US. And therefore, that it is the US, alone, that needs to figure out how to "respond"?
K&O'H lead their piece thus:
Similarly, there is no recognition that any other power, apart from the US, might be part of a pro-stability political-diplomatic process/solution in Pakistan. This, though the two authors go to great lengths to game-plan out various scenarios for-- you guessed it-- unilateral US military action aimed at securing, at the very least, Pakistan's nuclear facilities.
Reading the piece, I was amazed and saddened to see the degree to which such authors-- okay, well specifically, Michael O'Hanlon, whose expertise and judgment in military-strategic matters I had until recently held in quite a degree of respect-- can just simply assume that the prospect of internal collapse is a problem only for the US.
And why would the op-ed page editors of the NYT publish a piece expressing such an amazingly Americo-myopic worldview? Wouldn't a smart and informed editor insist on asking the question, "Hey guys, maybe you should put in something about a few other actors and not just the US?"
But no. Apparently, all of them now live inside this incredibly self-bounded, self-referential, and provincial little Americo-bubble whose inhabitants don't even really grasp, let alone give any public acknowledgment of, the idea that there are many other countries and people in the world who all also have their own interests and capabilities... And that, indeed, on a world scale, the US makes up less than 5% of the world's people, and has no valid claim whatsoever to act "on behalf of" the whole world community in a matter of truly global concern such as this one.
I guess 15-plus years of drumbeating rhetoric about US "leadership" in the world has left as an effect a lot of US people who think that the unexamined "fact" of US leadership gives the US an equally unexamined "right" to act on behalf of the world community whenever and wherever it pleases around the world.
Sad. And very, very shortsighted.
I guess I find O'Hanlon's descent into this very childish kind of Americo-myopia particularly discouraging since, as I noted, until recently I saw him as much more realistic and objective an analyst than the sad old (or young-old) warmonger Fred Kagan.
So yes, we really do need to have a serious, globe-circling discussion of the very destabilizing situation that several decades of bad US policy-- along with other factors-- have brought both Afghanistan and Pakistan to today. But please, let that not be a discussion based on the childish, "me"-centered assumptions of Americo-myopia.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has told reporters in Saudi Arabia that he will be discussing with the Gulf Arab countries a plan (that they had proposed earlier) enrich uranium for their projected nuclear power program in a neutral country "such as Switzerland."
The plan earlier proposed by the six (all-Arab) members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) was for the establishment of a consortium for this purpose that could provide nuclear fuel to Iran and any other Middle East states (though perhaps not including Israel?), who might be planning their own nuclear power programs.
Ahmadinejad's confirmation of interest in the GCC proposal, and his naming of Switzerland as the possible location for this project, are both very significant. Earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin had suggested that his country could provide uranium-enrichment services for Iran, but that proposal got nowhere. As I recall, that was due in good part to the opposition of Washington; but Ahmadinejad was only lukewarm about it, too.
Interesting if this time around, he is signaling a much greater degree of interest in this outsourcing proposal...
Switzerland's involvement in the current plan is interesting. On its face, it would seem not to portend the formation of a potentially hostile anti-US bloc, as the idea of Russian involvement did for many people. Also, I imagine the GCC countries would be a lot happier to have Switzerland host the enrichment project (and to put their money into the project there), than to have that all happen in Russia.
Also this weekend, Swiss President Micheline Calmy-Rey confirmed that her country is actively pursuing a plan to engage the US and Iran in direct negotiations. According to that link, which is to an AP story in the IHT, Calmy-Rey told a Swiss weekly paper that her country's long-held tradition of neutrality in international relations,
"It is a fact that the ... big powers have so far been unable to prevent Iran from pursuing uranium enrichment," she said in an interview published Sunday, her first public comments about Switzerland's role.
All power to her!
The AP story also notes that Calmy-Rey,
If the fuel enrichment for Iran's nuclear power program can be done outside Iran, that makes the "conversion/diversion" danger much, much smaller.
Ahmadinejad's apparently strong expression of interest in the GCC proposal looks remarkably statesmanly. It is also some pretty smart diplomacy. Especially at a time when the US has been rushing around trying to enroll all the Arab states into its drum-beating, anti-Iran "crusade" (oops, sorry, make that "campaign.")
I should just reiterate at this point the judgment I have held to for a long time now, that though many Arab states have misgivings-- some of them quite strong ones-- about Iran's growing influence in the Middle East, still, they all without exception fear the fallout from any possible US-Israeli military attack against Iran much, much more, and are willing to work hard to avert such an attack.
So maybe the Switzerland-GCC plan is a good way in which the tension over Iran's nuclear program can be de-escalated, and relations between Teheran and Washington returned to a much more even and less globally destabilizing a tone.
Let's hope so!
However, many of those who have been agitating hardest for a US (and/or US-Israeli) military strike against Iran can be expected to be upset about this. This is particularly the case of all those who urged such a strike not, basically, because of their fears about Iran's nuclear program, but because they sought regime change in Tehran and have been prepared to rack up and use the issue of the Iranian nuclear program in order to "justify" the military attack.
But if the GCC-Swiss proposal can verifiably meet people's concerns regarding the Iranian nuclear program, it should be welcomed by everyone.
Meanwhile, Calmy-Rey is 1,000% correct to continue to push her campaign for the opening of serious direct talks between the US and Iran. Only through the direct contacts between these two parties, and the concomitant establishment of an all-party, Iraq-plus-all-its neighbors-plus-the-UN-and-the-US negotiation can the US ever hope for an orderly withdrawal of its troops from the continuing quagmire in Iraq.
All the rest of the world also desperately needs the US-Iran relationship to stabilize.
The rate of desertions from the US army "skyrocketed" during the 12-month period ending September 30, according to this report in the semi-official Army Times. Reporter William McMichael noted that 4,698 soldiers were declared deserters during that year (which, in US government parlance is known as "Fiscal Year 2007".)
He wrote that that was a 42.3% increase over FY2006-- and "More disturbingly, the pace of Army desertions appears to have increased even during fiscal 2007: 63.6 percent of the year’s 4,698 desertions were recorded from April through September, according to Army data."
He added this:
Troops in mobilized, deployed and deploying units who have reached the end of their enlistment contracts fall under the ongoing “stop-loss” program and cannot be discharged.
That strain largely explains the rise in desertions, said Lawrence Korb, formerly a senior Pentagon personnel official in the Reagan administration and now a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. “It’s a combination of not enough dwell time, and having to go back [to the war] as well as the type of people you’re taking in,” Korb said.
The increased rate of desertions in fiscal 2007’s second half, he said, coincided with the surge of troops sent to Iraq. “A lot of them probably didn’t want to go back,” Korb said. “And don’t forget, you’ve lowered your standards of people you’re taking in.”
In an effort to boost recruiting, the Army granted moral waivers for past criminal behavior to 11.6 percent of new recruits in fiscal 2007, and accepted more recruits who dropped out of high school or scored low on entrance tests.
... Desertion is a felony, punishable by death under military law if committed in wartime.
While it’s still treated seriously, that maximum punishment may be a thing of the past. The last service member executed for desertion was Pvt. Eddie Slovik, who was shot by a firing squad in France on Jan. 31, 1945, following his conviction for desertion under fire.
... A death penalty for desertion “obviously has struck [military] convening authorities and juries as excessive,” said Eugene Fidell, an attorney specializing in military law who is president of the National Institute of Military Justice. “We rely more on positive incentives for our personnel to remain with their units, rather than fear of death.”
Including the numbers for the "G.I. Rights Hotline": +1-877-447-4487 (toll-free) and +1-919-663-7122.
One of the cases Quaker House worked on was the application of Jeremy Hinzman for asylum in Canada, on the grounds that he would face persecution in the US on account of his (mid-service) application for CO status in 2002 and his subsequent refusal to be shipped to Iraq. Yesterday, however, the relevant court in Canada turned down the asylum applications from Hinzman and fellow CO, Brandon Hughey, and today the Candian Supreme Court refused to hear the two men's appeal against that judgment.
These are tragic stories that involve serious issues of principle as well as families bing torn apart and men being punished for trying to follow the dictates of their conscience.
All the more reason, then, to strengthen the campaign to bring the troops home now and-- most certainly-- not to launch the US military into yet another (quite avoidable) military maelstrom any time soon, or indeed ever. War wreaks terrible things on everyone who is involved in it, whichever end of the gun barrel they stand.
So here's the deal: The Bush administration, which until recently has been pushing Pakistan's Prez Musharraf very hard to "take off his uniform" and rule as a civilian, has become frustrated with his unwillingness to do that to order. So now they are moving a lot closer to trying to topple him-- with a military coup.
Go figure.
A gang of three NYT reporters are currently the administration's leakees of choice in this campaign. Is the goal to use these always-anonymous leaks to put additional pressure on Musharraf-- or, to encourage their chosen successor-general to him, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, to finally launch this posited coup against him? Hard to tell.
But not hard to tell that there is a concerted campaign of leaks on this subject to these NYT reporters, who use a three-headed byline on today's story-- "This article is by Helene Cooper, Mark Mazzetti and David Rohde." How's that for diluting the responsibility of the individual reporter? Just like the sleaziest practices of Time magazine, etc..
This reporting, I should note, looks a near-total reprise of some of Judith Miller's wildest days of anonymous Cheney-channeling over there at the NYT.
The story leads thus:
Then, there is the question of whether this tricephalous reportorial unit has its own "point of view" regarding the complex political judgments that their piece purports to "report". The NYT has a separate category of articles that, though they appear on the "news" pages also contain the authors' analytical judgments. Those pieces are clearly titled "News Analysis." This piece is not titled thus. Therefore, it is supposed to contain only reporting. (And good, thorough, reporting, too; which this piece notably does not.)
Buried one-third way down in the piece we have this:
Well, the unintentionally revelatory writing style of these three reporters is only a secondary aspect of this story, with its main aspect being that there evidently does seem to be an increasingly strong tendency in the Bush administration that's urging a military coup in Pakistan.
Here is the scenario laid out by the Gang of Three, citing, presumably, some or all of their "dozen" anonymous administration sources:
Many Western diplomats in Islamabad said they believed that even a flawed arrangement like that one was ultimately better than an oppressive and unpopular military dictatorship under General Musharraf.
Such a scenario would be a return to the diffuse and sometimes unwieldy democracy that Pakistan had in the 1990s before General Musharraf seized power in a bloodless coup.
What effect might the publication of this "news" report be expected to have on Kayani? H'mm. Maybe increase his reluctance?
Meanwhile, I'd like to also note that nearly all the US MSM is continuing to report the Pakistan crisis as one that, among non-Pakistani powers, involves only the US. Given Pakistan's lengthy history of close relations with China, and it position in Southwest Asia between Afghanistan and India, this is a very myopic view of the matter, indeed.
China Hand has had another couple of good posts on her/his blog, about Pakistan. Here and here.
Definitely always worth reading CH's non-US-centric commentary.
This past weekend was the annual conference of the Friends Committee on National Legislation. Veteran Quaker activists on peace issues and other issues of intense social concern had come to a conference center in Washington DC from all around the US. I have gotten to know quite a few members of FCNL's national headquarters staff in the months I've had the affiliation of "Friend in Washington" with them; and of course, from my home Quaker meeting (congregation) back home in Charlottesville Virginia, I've had one small grassroots view of how FCNL operates. But what was new and energizing this weekend was to experience this critical mass of engaged social-activist energy all in one place at one time.
I heard many great stories of what FCNL's mainly-- but by no means
exclusively-- Quaker supporters have been doing around the country:
contacting their members of Congress; writing to local papers;
organizing peace vigils; working on pro-green projects; delving deep
into the challenges of peacemaking and peacebuilding; etc, etc.
The keynote speaker, on Saturday night, was Congressman John Lewis
(D- Georgia), who was honored with FCNL's Edward F. Snyder Award for
National Legislative Leadership in Advancing Disarmament and Building
Peace. Lewis was born in 1940 in Troy, Alabama, the son of
African-American sharecroppers. At a young age he became one of
the historic leaders of the US civil rights movement. When he was
23 he was the head of the Student Nonviolence Coordinating Committee
(SNCC), and in that capacity he was one of the speakers at the
important "March on Washington" along with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
He told us that he had been just 17 when, as a student at the
historically Black Fisk University in Knoxville, Tennessee, he first
made the acquaintance of Quakers, who were organizing workshops on
nonviolent social action in a nearby church. He started
participating in the workshops which, he said, moved him very deeply.
Soon enough, he and his colleagues from Fisk and elsewhere in the
still-segregated south started a campaign of going to sit down at
"Whites Only" lunch counters:
