'Just World News' with Helena Cobban: January 2009 Archives

Peace Now!

The US government doesn't seem inclined to back off its all-war, all-the-time policy. It's even got some of us thinking about war too much of the time. Me, anyhow.

It's time we thought more about peace, isn't it? . . .Down By The Riverside.

refrain
I ain't gonna study war no more,
I ain't gonna study war no more,
Study war no more.
I ain't gonna study war no more,
I ain't gonna study war no more,
Study war no more.

Doing a little research, I learned that there is a United States Institute of Peace! Who knew? Perhaps you did, but I didn't. And apparently I'm not the only one, judging from the title of this NY Times article from last June: Below the Radar: A Federal Peace Agency

Here's some background on the USIP:

USIP's Mission and Goals

* Prevent and resolve violent international conflicts
* Promote post-conflict stability and development
* Increase conflict management capacity, tools, and intellectual capital worldwide

The Institute does this by empowering others with knowledge, skills, and resources, as well as by directly engaging in peacebuilding efforts around the globe.

Early Origins

Over the years, the idea of an official U.S. peace institute continued to be advocated by a wide array of prominent Americans, including Woodrow Wilson, Jennings Randolph, and Everett Dirksen. In fact, from 1935 to 1976 over 140 bills were introduced in Congress to establish various peace-related departments, agencies, bureaus, and committees of Congress.

A firm beginning:

A nonpartisan group consisting of appointees named by President Jimmy Carter and the leadership of the House and Senate, the Commission worked for over a year and half. Chaired by Senator Spark Matsunaga of Hawaii, the Matsunaga Commission, as it came to be known, conducted a wide survey and study of the theories, techniques, and institutions involved in the resolution of international conflicts. The commission met with military and government officials, leading educators, conflict resolution professionals, and representatives from various religious, ethnic, and scientific communities. In addition to these sessions, the commission heard from thousands of interested citizens through a series of public meetings held across the nation that resulted in over 6,000 pages of transcripts.

The Institute was established --

A vigorous public campaign led by Milton C. Mapes of the National Peace Academy Campaign supported these efforts. After considerable debate about the appropriate form of the new institution, the United States Institute of Peace Act was finally passed and signed into law by President Ronald Reagan in 1984.

The Institute's Board of Directors was installed in February 1986 and held its first meeting. In April of that same year, an initial staff of three people opened the Institute's first office at 730 Jackson Place NW, Washington, D.C.

The Building

I've signed up to receive periodic USIP information. You can too by going here.

There are a lot of other peace organizations around, including Jimmy Carter's and Willie Nelson's. I'll be covering some of them in subsequent Peace Now! articles.

What do you think?
-------------
Don Bacon is a retired army officer who founded the Smedley Butler Society several years ago because, as General Butler said, war is a racket.

Posted by Don Bacon at 04:19 PM | Comments (7)

My IPS analysis on Obama's Middle East policy so far

Read it here.

Posted by Helena Cobban at 07:50 PM | Comments (8)

Insight on George Mitchell

I had a really informative talk yesterday with Shelley Deane, a prof at Bowdoin College in Maine who's one of the world's leading "George Mitchell scholars." An Irish citizen, Deane wrote her doctoral dissertation at LSE on Mitchell's role in brokering Northern Ireland's "Good Friday Agreement." Right now, she has unique access to all the records of the commission he co-chaired with Warren Rudman, at the invitation of Pres. Clinton, to look into the causes of the Second Palestinian Intifada. Along the way, she has also done a lot of work on the general topic of "Paramilitaries to Parliamentaries" and other issues in complex peacemaking. (Check her publications list at the link above.)

Now, of course, Mitchell is in the hot seat as Barack Obama's quick-off-the-blocks special envoy to the Middle East. It's a task to which he brings his long experience as a US Senator (including a stint as Senate Majority Leader), his ultimately successful peace-brokering record in Northern Ireland, and the very granular experience of Israeli-Palestinian issues-- and of its interaction with US politics at the highest levels-- that he gained during his work on the Mitchell-Rudman Commission.

Deane said she's identified several key of the personal qualities that have aided Mitchell's approach to peace-brokering. The main ones are his persistence, his friendly and unflappable temperament, his commitment to building longterm relations of trust, his deep personal decency, and his very strong preference for approaches that inclusive, even-handed, and values-based. (My wording there, not always hers.)

She said that Mitchell's approach is to create a "hyperbaric chamber-- because when you're in the depths of a conflict you can't just rise to the surface immediately, or you'd 'get the bends'. So you have to create this hyperbaric chamber, hopefully including all the relevant parties, as a safe place where relationships of trust can be built over time."

She noted that he'd experienced many serious setbacks during his efforts in Northern Ireland, but had calmly persisted with the job nonetheless.

She said he places strong emphasis on trust and trustworthiness, and was upset though not thrown off balance by instances of Israeli "spoiler-leaking" that had occurred during Israeli-Palestinian discussions that had been intended to be kept quiet.

She talked quite a bit about the similarities she sees between Hamas and Northern Ireland's Sinn Fein, including the strength of their internal discipline, their lack of corruption, and the fact that both organizations, by design, refused to establish a patronage- and fiefdom-based internal structure. But she also talked about the structural differences between the Northern Ireland situation and that in Israel/Palestine, including the fact that in Northern Ireland both blocs of major protagonists-- the "Unionists" and the Sinn Fein/IRA-- had important state systems behind them; and the situation there was not exactly one in which one protagonist was running a military occupation over the other. (The role of the British Army in Northern Ireland was much more nuanced than that; and anyway, the major reconciliation that needed to occur was between the opposing local forces, not between the entire indigenous population and a foreign occupation army.)

It strikes me this question of the structural differences between the two situations is one worth quite a lot more study. But I need to run now. (I'm going to a talk Jimmy Carter;s main Middle east person, Bob Paster, is giving about Hamas.)

More on all of this, later. However, the next few days look pretty busy for me...

Posted by Helena Cobban at 12:24 PM | Comments (23)

Possible US military attack against Somalia? Not again!!

Steve Clemons and Bernhard of Moon of Alabama have both been writing about the possibility that the new Obama administration might launch some form of attack against ground targets in desperately war-torn Somalia.

Please God, no! Does no-one in this White House have a memory that stretches back to 1993, when a newly inaugurated Bill Clinton thought that-- especially as a Democrat with a previous pro-peace record-- he needed to "show some spine" and turn the US's existing aid-protection mission in Somalia into a war-fighting "compellence" mission instead?

With disastrous effect.

Wikipedia reminds us (footnotes removed) that,

During the 17-minute combat operation, U.S. Cobra attack helicopters fired 16 TOW missiles and thousands of 20-millimeter cannon rounds into the compound, killing 73 of the clan elders...

Some believe that this was a turning point in unifying Somalis against the U.S. and U.N. efforts in Somalia, as it unified many Somalis, including moderates and those opposed to the Habar Gidir.

Pres. Clinton's childish and destructive "spine-demonstration" exercise in Somalia turned out very badly indeed for Somalia. As did the "compellence by proxy" mission that Pres. George W. Bush launched against the country in December 2006, using the Ethiopian invasion army as his proxy.

Clinton's completely needless chest-baring exercise in Somalia also turned out very badly for the US. With Somali politics thrown into uproar after the July assault, by October the US military (and White House) had decided on another raid, this time to try to capture two key aides to Aidid from a house they were in, in Mogadishu. That raid, codenamed 'Operation Gothic Serpent' was a complete and embarrassing fiasco. Two US helicopters were downed and there was a very serious lack of communication and coordination between US ground and heli-borne units-- and also, between US units and the Pakistani and Malaysian troops who were supposed to be their allies in that nominally UN force. A total of 18 US servicemen-- and many, many more Somalis-- were killed. Clinton's attempt to demonstrate US military capabilities and resolve was quickly abandoned as he turned back to using much more diplomatic means to try to de-escalate the Somali situation.

That mad, destructive, and completely avoidable firefight then became the subject of the book and movie "Black Hawk Down."

Another consequence of Clinton's childish attempt to "show US muscle" in Somalia in 1993 was that the US military (and Clinton) then became extremely casualty averse. To the extent that the following April, when Gen. Romeo Dallaire, commander of the UN's small peacekeeping force in Rwanda, was crying out for reinforcements in the lead-up to and the early days of the genocide there, Clinton and Madeleine Albright worked actively at the UN to have Dallaire's force completely disbanded, instead. Their "fear" was that even if there were no US units in the UN force in Rwanda, the US would somehow get sucked into it, and US troops might end up dying as they tried to save Rwandan lives.

(Actually, people who join an all-volunteer military like that in the US do so knowing full well that they might die on the job. That's part of the deal. Also, Dallaire was able to hang onto a much-reduced skeleton force in Rwanda, which saved thousands of lives-- though not nearly as many as it could have, if he'd been sent the reinforcements he'd begged for.)

The damaging legacy of "Gothic Serpent" lived on for many years, and in many different ways... both in Somalia and far beyond.

So please, please, President Obama, don't even contemplate launching any kind of new military attack against Somalia-- whether under the pretext of "fighting piracy" or any other pretext.

There are plenty of nonviolent ways to address any problems the international community faces in (and from the shores of) Somalia. Another war is not the answer. Plus, you have absolutely no need to "prove" anything, in a chest-thumping militaristic way. We elected you to solve problems, not create new ones; and most of us who elected you did so based on your promise to find nonviolent ways to resolve tricky conflicts, to de-escalate international tensions, and to build better relations of mutual respect and respect with the other nations of the world.

We certainly did not elect you to launch another US military attack against Somalia.

Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:34 AM | Comments (6)

ElBaradei shows the way: Boycott the BBC!

IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei has cancelled two interviews he was scheduled to give to the BBC, over the Beeb's refusal to air the charity appeal for Gaza.

Excellent decision, Mr. ElBaradei. How many other decisionmakers and "news sources" around the world will now follow suit?

Lots, I hope.

I'm just trying to figure out if news consumers should also join this boycott. I think so.

Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:24 PM | Comments (7)

BBC: Land of pure lunacy!

You totally have to hand it to the BBC that they have an advanced case of the Monty Pythons... Today, they have a lengthy piece of analysis on their website titled "Who will rebuild Gaza?"

The bolded intro para says this:

Even as aid agencies struggle to meet the immediate needs of those left injured, homeless and traumatised by the Israeli operation in Gaza, concerns are growing that reconstruction efforts could become bogged down in a complex political tangle.

What, BBC? Aid to Gaza getting "bogged down in politics"?

Do you guys have no sense of self-awareness, no sense of shame at all??

The BBC Board of Governors has been busy for many days now blocking all attempts by a coalition of blue-chip UK charities to air a short fundraising video for Gaza on the Beeb's government-provided airwaves.

This latest piece of analysis makes no mention of the BBC's shameful role.

Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:08 PM | Comments (3)

If there is a viable two-state solution in Israel/Palestine...

... then my judgment is that it will lie somewhere between the cluster of 'plans' that emerged between December 2000 and mid-2003-- the 'Clinton parameters', 'Geneva Accord', and 'Nuseibeh-Ayalon Plan', which collectively we can call CGNA-- and the Arab Peace Plan proposed by Saudi Arabia and adopted by the Arab League meeting in Beirut in 2002.

Probably, closer to the Arab Peace Plan.

The Arab Peace Plan is the only one of these that has the explicit support of (in this case, a large number of) the regional governments concerned, including the Palestinian Authority. The Clinton Parameters were then-Prez Clinton's restatement of what he understood to be the points of convergence between negotiators from the then-outgoing Ehud Barak government in Israel and negotiators from Yasser Arafat's PA. The Geneva Initiative was a well-meaning and well-funded Swiss project, undertaken after Ehud Barak fell from power, to get some of Israel's out-of-government pro-peace actors to reach an agreement on details of a possible peace agreement with people very close to (still in office) Yasser Arafat. Nuseibeh-Ayalon was a similar attempt, focused on one pro-Arafat Palestinian and an Israeli figure who had previously been head of the Shin Beth.

One problem with all the CGNA projects is that they did not involve in any way either Hamas or that vast portion of the Palestinian nation (five million or more people-- a number greater than that of Palestinians now living in the land of Mandate Palestine) who now live outside Mandate Palestine. These diaspora Palestinians include around 2.5 million UNRWA-registered refugees and an equally large or larger number of Palestinian exiles who still have demonstrable claims on property and national rights inside Palestine but who are not, for various reasons, registered refugees.

Another problem with the CGNA projects is that they completely ignored the requirements of international law, which underline the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by force, the complete illegality of a country planting its own settlers in land it holds only through belligerent military occupation, and the right of refugees to return to the land of their origin.

The problem with the Arab Peace Plan is that deliberations on it did not involve Israel's seven million people, a good proportion of whom-- though by no means all-- could be expected to object to its international-law-based insistence on a complete Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines and the return of Palestinian refugees to their ancestral homes and farms.

Back in 2000, and perhaps as late as 2003, it looked plausible-- sometimes even advisable-- to many people in the US and elsewhere in the west to proceed with Israeli-Palestinian "peacemaking" according to a model that relied on US monopolization of the whole process. Given the immense power of the pro-Israel and indeed also the pro-settler lobbies within the US political system, this tipped the balance systematically against any fair and equal consideration of Palestinian rights, claims, and needs.

In April 2004, President Bush went further than any previous US president in bowing to the demands of the pro-settler lobby when he gave Israeli PM Sharon a letter saying,

Though this letter has often been seen as an important new "fact" in the Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy, it actually has no force of law whatever and is merely an exchange of views between two government leaders. Neither George W. Bush nor any other US president is, after all, the "boss of the whole world" or of the Middle East; and pronouncements by the US president have no particular force in international law, though they-- as in the case of this letter-- considerably complicate the efforts of diplomacy.

The entire US diplomacy from, or before, the time of the ill-fated Oslo Agreement of 1993 until now has also been very centrally based on "letting the two parties to this dispute work it out between themselves." This approach built on a generally attractive opposition to the idea of imposed peace settlements. On the other hand, it built on and further propagated a myth that the two parties in question were in some way "equal" in stature and power. They never have been. Israel is a long-established state with its own power in the international system and its own army. The Palestinians are not a state but a dispersed and dispossessed people, some 3.8 million of whom now live directly under Israeli military occupation in the West Bank and Gaza.

How can representatives of the prisoners "negotiate" on an equal basis with jailers who currently hold them captive, controlling their economy and their every movement, and who have repeatedly shown their readiness to use blunt force to control, punish, and impose their will on the imprisoned people?

Those were the structural problems behind all the attempts (some well-meaning, some perhaps not) to reach simply a "bilateral" agreement between the two sides, with the US government playing merely a role to "facilitate" that negotiation. A more accurate description of that version of the US role would be that it was to protect that extremely inequitable encounter between the imprisoned and his jailer from any demands for equity or international legal standards that might come from outside the closed room of their "negotiation".

Hamas and other Palestinian groups always rejected that model of negotiation. Many other actors in the Arab world, including many Arab governments, also always had strong reservations about it. The Arab Peace Initiative poses a distinct contrast to the CGNA approach, primarily because it is based on international law and makes no assumption about the special or authoritative value of highly inequitable "direct, bilateral negotiations."

Meanwhile, in the five years since George Bush's extremely arrogant letter of 2004, the US's relative position within world politics has been tumbling. There still seems to be a working assumption in much of Washington that the US can continue to monopolize Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy, and apply ground-rules very similar to those it has used since 1993; but I believe that Pres. Obama and his advisers will rapidly discover that this is no longer the case.

A more truly international, UN-based and international law-based approach is the only sure way forward. (This could also, incidentally, provide Obama a sort of "Well, the UN made me do it" argument with which to counter the storm of internal criticism he'll doubtless get from the pro-settler constituencies in both the Jewish and evangelical-Christian communities in this country, when and as he moves towards a more even-handed and law-based approach. After all, the US citizenry very evidently does need the active support of a range of other world powers at this point, if it is to avoid complete cataclysmic disasters happening to our badly over-stretched armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, or further, even worse additional disasters striking our already badly battered national economy.)

So what would an international-law-based outcome look like on the ground? Probably, something very much closer to the Arab Peace Initiative than to the CGNA plans. The 470,000 illegal settlers whom successive Israeli governments have planted into the occupied West Bank (including occupied East Jersualem) and the 17,000 it has planted into Golan will just have to deal with this. Perhaps some of them would be willing to stay where they are under Palestinian (or in Golan, Syrian) governance; and perhaps those new governments could help to arrange some sort-out for the complex property issues involved if some settlers did choose to stay. But extra-territorial civil status of any kind for these (former) settlers would be a quite unworkable can of worms. They have lived as completely privileged "Lords of the Land", lording it arrogantly over their dispossessed Palestinian neighbors for far too long to allow any "special civil status" arrangement to be viable.

The vast majority of the settlers will simply have to go back and live in Israel proper; and the Palestinian (and Syrian) governments can then decide in a fair and inclusive way how the very lovely housing stock thereby released can be allocated among the many claimants from among their respective citizenries.

Special arrangements could be made to protect the access of religious pilgrims from the Jewish and other faiths to holy sites in East Jerusalem and elsewhere in the West Bank; and perhaps some special religious institutions could be built near those sites to service those pilgrims-- but still under the national sovereignty of the rightful Palestinian government. The Muslim and Christian authorities in sovereign Palestine might also want to gain reciprocal access and facilities for pilgrims from Palestine who want to visit holy sites and graveyards inside Israel.

But one central point here is that, while claims for "pilgrimage access" and the facilities attendant thereto should always be considered with favor by national authorities, the idea that pilgrimage or any other kind of religious claims can provide any kind of property or sovereignty "right" in international law is plainly untenable... What would Rome look like now if every Catholic from anywhere who now is able to go and pray there thereby acquired a "right" to settle in Rome, instantly become an Italian citizen, and then take over Italy and make it into their own new kind of religio-national state?

Another central point: We need to be able to identify who the "primary stakeholders" to this conflict are. They are, surely, members of the following groups:

b) All Palestinians, including both those who currently residents of the occupied West Bank and Gaza and those forced into exile from mandate Palestine over the past 61 years, and the descendants of those "original" exiles.

Each person who is a member of one of these groups should count as one, and none as more than one, to use the old Benthamite definition of human equality. And though many of the rest of us-- American Christians, French Jews, Buddhists from China, or agnostics from Sweden-- may have special feelings of affection (or even religious longing) for various aspects of life or objects of devotion in that area of Israel/Palestine, we are not actually, direct stakeholders at all. We are outsiders, and have no special claims.

There are around seven million Israeli citizens. And though the counting of Palestinians-- especially those in the diaspora-- is less precise, the total of Palestinian "insiders" and "outsiders" (but excluding those 1.2 ethnic Paestinians who are citizens of Israel) doubtless comes to more than 7.5 million, perhaps a lot more.

A person does not lose his claim to be a Palestinian if he leaves his home under situations of duress and is thereafter denied the right to return to it; and nor do his children lose the rights they would otherwise have had to and in their homeland, simply because their parents were refugees. This principle of the continuation of the property and political rights of refugees is well founded in international law. In the political settlements of recent years in South Africa, Bosnia, Cambodia, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, those exiled from their homeland were included in voting and referendum processes on an equal basis with those who were never thus exiled. Palestinians are no different.

(Hence, incidentally, I find the arguments of many of those who discuss the "demographic threat" that Israel now faces as the number of Palestinians in mandate Palestine starts to overtake the number of Jews residing there quite ill-directed. Everyone who uses those arguments has already assumed the longterm disfranchisement and marginalization of that majority of the Palestinian people forced to live in complete exile from their homeland for, in many cases, the past 60 years... Some of those exiles have found citizenship and a modicum of a decent life elsewhere. A troubling number have not. But whether they have or not, nothing has happened that annuls the full citizenship rights they have as part of the Palestinian citizenry.)

... So, to return to the main topic of this post, if there is a two-state solution in Palestinian/Israel that is viable at the all-important political level, then it will be one that lies somewhere between the CGNA guidelines and those of the Arab Peace Plan-cum-international law approach, but most likely closer to the latter than to the former.

I know a lot of people who put a lot of effort into the Geneva Initiative. And I know a lot of people for whom the name "Clinton" is itself (fairly inexplicably to me) quite golden. But I think the advocates of these two approaches, and of Nuseibeh-Ayalon, need to understand that their approaches were centrally flawed because they so deeply excluded and marginalized the claims of the Palestinian exiles and of international law. I urge everyone who worked hard on behalf of any of the CGNA plans now to work just as hard promoting the Arab Plan.

My gut sense is that it will be extremely hard, if not impossible, for all, or indeed, for many at all, the claims of the Palestinian refugees to their lands and homes in Israel to be met. (And the provision of UN GA resolution 194 which detailed that right of return also prescribed that the returnees should live peaceably in their homes under the prevailing government, which might not be easy for them to accept, anyway.) But the needs of most of the refugees could surely be sufficiently met through some combination of compensation for properties lost and an expression of remorse from government authorities in Israel for the harm caused in the fighting of 1947-49.

Meantime, it is the needs and claims for political and other forms of inclusion of that vast body of the Palestinian refugees who are also exiles from historic Palestine that now need urgently to be brought back into the peacemaking agenda. If their needs and claims can be sufficiently met within the contours of a politically robust Palestinian state, then a two-state solution can still-- not without difficulty-- be salvaged.

But this needs to start happening very soon indeed. In this JWN post yesterday I outlined the seven important steps that President Obama should take, to get us on speedily on the path to this.

If a two-state solution cannot be salvaged, then the only alternative-- down the road-- will be an inclusive, South-Africa-style, one-state solution within Mandate Palestine. But that outcome will be far harder, and more damaging, for the region to get to than the presently offered road to a workable two-state outcome. It would involve, most likely, regionwide turmoil and upheaval on a scale we have not seen yet, that would directly threaten supply lines vital to the US and other world powers, and also the peace and security of the entire world system.

It would be the height of folly and recklessness for President Obama to even risk going anywhere near that road. Using the opportunity that's presently offered to work with the world community to win a viable two-state outcome may look difficult. But it is by far the wiser course. And with a substantial portion of both the world and the US citizenry urging him on, he can start to spell out visions of an Arab-Israeli theater at peace that have been literally unimagineable for most of the past 60 years.

Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:28 AM | Comments (27)

Why this American peace diplomacy is different

Many people, including Chris Toensing and Mouin Rabbani at Merip and many of the commenters here at JWN, find it hard to believe that Barack Obama's Arab-Israeli peace diplomacy will be much different than that of the US presidents who have preceded him. Look, I can understand why people who followed Obama's sometimes pander-y election campaign closely, and then watched him remain studiously silent ("one president at a time!") while the US-supplied Israeli military rained death and destruction on Gaza's people for 23 days, might find it hard to believe that the new president truly might be inclined to take up the task of returning the US to a more even-handed role in Arab-Israeli diplomacy-- and to take up this task, moreover, as one of his first and seemingly highest priorities upon coming into office.

But I think the doubters are wrong. Or, at the very least, that they don't have enough feel for the nuance of policy and the possibility-- at this time perhaps more than any other in recent decades-- of a determined and smart US president undertaking a radical realignment of the US posture back towards a fair-minded and effective peace diplomacy.

I have been following Palestinian-Israeli affairs very closely for more than 34 years now. My first book was a pretty ground-breaking study of the politics of the PLO: It came out in 1984, has been translated into several languages, and has been used as a textbook in universities in both Palestine and Israel. (Remarkably enough, it's still in print.) I've been hounded and harassed by the powerful pro-Israel groups in the US for many years because of the positions I've articulated in favor of Palestinian rights, Palestinian humanity, and fundamental fairness... And I can honestly say that I have never seen an incoming US president launch his Arab-Israeli policy with such urgency, sensitivity, and intelligence.

(I wasn't here in the US when Jimmy Carter came into office in January 1977. I saw him on last night's Jon Stewart show, talking about his new book, which is yet another tome about "Peace in the Holy Land." I think what the hugely popular Stewart is doing to rehabilitate the still much-maligned Carter in the US is great. But I don't think even Jimmy Carter came into office with a Middle East policy that was as powerful and focused as Obama's... )

To a certain degree, I think the 'troika' of Olmert, Barak, and Livni that's now ruling Israel handed Obama his present opportunity for real change on a plate, when they made their momentous decision to launch an 'exemplary punitive campaign' against Gaza back on December 27. Obama and all who work for him are notoriously tight-lipped, so we won't know for, perhaps, many years precisely what effect the events of December 27 through January 20 had on the president-elect. And remember: those events included not only the Tel Aviv troika's launching of the reckless, destructive, and ultimately counter-productive war but also the advanced state of panic that war engendered among all of Washington's allies in the Arab world, and-- perhaps equally importantly-- the vainglorious and completely arrogant comments that Olmert made publicly about Bush and Rice simply bending to his will. But it seems clear to me that those events likely did a lot to force changes in the policy decisions that Obama would otherwise have taken.

Absent the events of those 25 days we might well have had: Hillary Clinton in charge of all Middle East policy-- as had definitely been the message given, back when her appointment as Secretary of State was first announced; Dennis Ross at her right hand as premier 'interpreter' and adviser on Arab-Israeli developments for the highest decisionmaker on these issues; and thus, a far more incrementalist and one-sided approach to the diplomacy than we have seen from the Obama presidency thus far.

It's certainly significant that Obama has now taken this entire portfolio out of the hands of the woman whose main experience of the issue has been as spouse and consort of the endlessly foot-dragging and manipulative Bill Clinton and then as Senator from the deeply lobby-influenced state of New York. And I think what Obama has done with the portfolio thus far has been great: the conveying of signals of very serious intent and commitment "from Day One", with those phone calls to leaders in the region; the appointment of George Mitchell, and the strong messages of true presidential support for his mission; and most recently, yesterday's interview with Al-Arabiya.

Sure, Obama has also said a lot in all these encounters that is deeply engrained boiler-plate for any US president to say: about the centrality of his commitment to the security of Israel, and so on, and on, and on. And sure, he has said absolutely nothing about trying to reach out to Hamas in any way, shape, or form.

Hey, just in case nobody noticed this, it's also important to remember that Hamas doesn't actually crave a public relationship with Washington, either. Its leaders certainly don't see that as something that's in their interests-- and in the circumstances you can see why. This fact makes them noticeably different from, say, the Yasser Arafat of 1988, who was quite happy to go down on his knees and grovel, or jump through endless hoops, if he could only win a nod of public support from Washington... But Hamas is different.

So today is the one-week "anniversary" of Barack Obama's presidency. In just these seven short days, he's already started to make a difference. Mitchell is already in Egypt, where he met with EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana. Arab League head Amr Moussa, and Egypt's foreign minister and much-beleaguered president are also on his call-list before he heads off for Israel. He is not due to meet anybody from Hamas, though this AFP report says it's possible he might travel to Gaza.

By the way, the elected (and then besieged and bombarded) Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas has sent Obama a letter congratulating him on his election, which he described as "a day of victory for the human struggle for freedom." Haniyeh also urged Obama to support the Palestinians' struggle for freedom and national independence. Interesting...

Anyway, I've been thinking through some of what Obama could and should be doing over the coming days and weeks if her really wants to push the Arab-Israeli peacemaking forward in a determined and successful way.

He should:

1. Give swift and real backing to an intra-Palestinian reconciliation between Fateh, Hamas, and the other factions.

2. Find a reliable way to communicate quietly with the Hamas leaders. This could be through a government, like the Turkish, Qatari, Swiss, or Yemeni government. It could be through the CIA (though I'm not sure Hamas would be open to that.) Or it could be through private individuals trusted by both sides. But a lot of signaling and brainstorming needs to be done.

3. Re-engage the United Nations, in particular, in high-level sponsorship of the peacemaking. For the past seven years he UN has been in the shameful role of "junior partner" in the Quartet that was established in 2002. But an Arab-Israeli peace that is fair and durable is in the interest of all the peoples of the world. The US has no compelling claim, in 2009, to be recognized as a "uniquely qualified" peace broker. Obama has called, quite rightly, for a new relationship between Washington and the UN, and has sent his closest foreign-policy aide and adviser, Susan Rice, to be his ambassador there. As part of her role, she and the president should invite the UN to bring its considerable powers and legitimacy much more centrally into the peacemaking.

4. Take speedy action to stabilize the Gaza crasefire and start to rehabilitate Gaza. The ceasefire remains very fragile, as we saw already today, and the situation of scores of thousands of Gaza's worst-hit homeless people remains dire. They must not be used any more as pawns in Israel's power games! Obama should send a strong message to Tel Aviv that he expects Israel to prolong and strengthen the ceasefire, not subvert it. Also, US and NATO ships have a big presence in the eastern Mediterranean. Why can't they or non-military US ships be used to convey large amounts of cement and other building materials to points near Gaza's shores, with final ship-to-shore delivery undertaken by non-military aid agencies in conjunction with local NGOs? The US can take many actions that underline to Israel's vengeful government that it cannot continue to hold its jackboot on Gaza's neck.

5. Make some clear and authoritative (re-)statements of American principles on peace-related issues well before Israel's February 10 elections. These should certainly include statements underlining clear US opposition to any further Israeli investment in the settlement-building project and promising serious financial and political consequences if any additional settlement housing or other infrastructure is indeed built. Other such statement might include statements of support for "land for peace", for "the non-acquisition of territory by force", for the need for a cooperative regionwide arms control regime, a shared Jerusalem open to followers of all faiths, and so on.

6. Make clear and repeated statements of the United States' own strong interest in seeing the remaining strands of the Arab-Israeli conflict resolved. For too long, Washington policy has been dominated by the dreadful Dennis Ross view that "the US can't want peace more than the parties themselves." That argument has been used as a major justification for a diplomatic quietism that has been a cover, actually, for continued, very generous US financial and military help to Israel that has completely underwritten Israel's pursuit of its illegal policy of land-grabbing settlement-building in the West Bank and Golan and its very destructive launching of periodic wars, assassination campaigns, and other acts of lethal physical violence against its neighbors. The US is absolutely not "neutral" between Israel and its Arab neighbors. And now, since the US has 140,000 troops strung out in very vulnerable positions inside Iraq, this matters a lot. The US certainly has its own strong interest in a rapid de-escalation and resolving of tensions between Israel and the Arab world.

7. Restore full diplomatic relations and a good working relationship with Syria as fast as possible. This one strikes me as a no-brainer. The US has had no ambassador in Syria since 2005, and the harsh sanctions that have been maintained on Damascus under both the anti-terrorism policy and the Syrian Accountability Act of 2003 have inflicted real pain on Syrian that the country's people, not surprisingly, resent a lot. Syria will be an essential part of any successful peace diplomacy. It withdrew all its troops from Lebanon in 2005, and maintained intriguing and constructive proximity peace talks with israel for a year until Israel decided to attack Gaza in December. George Bush and his Middle East adviser, Elliott Abrams, worked hard for many years to topple the Asad regime in Syria. It ain't going to happen. (Asad is actually a whole lot more popular with his country's citizens than the US-supported regimes in Egypt and Jordan are with theirs.) Plus Asad, unlike say his allies in Hamas, is actually very eager to have a good relationship with Washington.

Let's see how many of these steps Obama takes by, say, February 10.

All the indications from Israel are that the politicians there are very closely attuned to the signals coming out of Washington-- now, as always.

Washington really has been the central lifeline of the Jewish state for many decades now. Now, let's see how Barack Obama uses that power.

Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:47 PM | Comments (21)

Smart Power 101

WARNING: There will be a test

Goldilocks was very tired by this time, so she went upstairs to the bedroom. She lay down in the first bed, but it was too hard. Then she lay in the second bed, but it was too soft. Then she lay down in the third bed and it was just right. Goldilocks fell asleep.

That's beds. Now let's consider power that's not too hard, not too soft. It's just right. What do we call it? Call it Goldilocks power? No, that won't sell in Peoria. The new in crowd knows what to call it -- 'smart power.'

Here’s Hillary Clinton, the new Secretary of State, in her opening statement at her confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee:

Where did smart power come from? “Smart Power” was the title of an article written by Susan Nossel in a 2004 issue of Foreign Affairs magazine in reclaiming liberal internationalism from its mis-use by the necons to justify muscle-flexing militarism and arrogant unilateralism. Progressives must reclaim the legacy of Wilson, Roosevelt, Truman, and Kennedy with a foreign policy that will both bolster U.S. power and unite the world behind it.

What about the bogus 'war on terror'?

Will the rest of the world buy this? Nossel again:

What do we do about these invasions that destroy everything?

"Smart power' was picked up by Harvard’s Joe Nye and Richard Armitage, President George W. Bush’s former deputy secretary of state at their Center for Strategic and International Studies:

This will be a 'grand strategy':

A Missouri congressman likes the idea:

To China, this new concept has given rise to an additional amount of skepticism: What kind of the U.S.' China policy is contained in the "smart power"? Or how the new administration's policy towards China would differ from the preceding Bush government?

The Toronto Star likes the idea:

Smart power is the integration of hard and soft power, maintaining military strength while using persuasion and example to seed democracy, human rights and other Western ideas throughout the world.

Not everybody's crazy about it, including of course Fox News:

Frankel praised the concept but slammed the execution. "The execution is where Hillary traditionally falls on her face," he said. "And whoever is advising her should be soundly whipped."

At the country level, a problem has been that the military is not capable of reconstruction and administration in conquered lands. Democracy Arsenal:

The Progressive Policy Institute, allied with the DLC, has given us A Democratic National Security Strategy:

Too many on the left seem incapable of taking America's side in international disputes, reflexively oppose the use of force, and begrudge the resources required to keep our military strong. Viewing multilateralism as an end in itself, they lose sight of goals, such as fighting terrorism or ending gross human rights abuses, which sometimes require us to act -- if need be outside a sometimes ineffectual United Nations. . . However troubling the Bush record, the pacifist and protectionist left offers no credible alternative.

Progressive internationalism stresses the responsibilities that come with our enormous power: to use force with restraint but not to hesitate to use it when necessary.

Basically these people want to bring back the good old days of the Cold War, when Harry Truman and John Kennedy promoted the good guys against the bad guys. We won't talk about Vietnam. Smart power -- what does it mean in Afghanistan, for example? Presumably it means more force plus more help for people. Would that appeal to you if you were an Afghan? Would it work?

Questions: (I warned you)

1. The new US foreign policy will be characterized by:
a. cooperation
b. restraint
c. power

2. The new description of US power will be:
a. electrical
b. hydraulic
c. smart

3. The US will still destroy stuff in other countries and then:
a. leave
b. pay locals to rebuild the country
c. create a whole new government program to restore the country to what it was before the US destroyed it, including fat contracts to all sorts of consultants, contractors and PR agents

What do you think?

Oh -- if you guessed at or selected the answers that match one of HC's initials you maxed the test. Congratulations!

-----

Don Bacon is a retired army officer who founded the Smedley Butler Society several years ago because, as General Butler said, war is a racket.

Posted by Don Bacon at 12:35 PM | Comments (9)

Obama continues to move fast, surefootedly...

...on Arab-Israeli peacemaking. Yesterday he gave an interview to Hisham Milhem of al-Arabiya TV channel. That was in connection with the ceremony at the White House where he sent off former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell on his first "special envoy" fact-finding trip to Egypt, Israel, Jordan, France, and Britain.

The NYT wrote:

It is significant that Obama himself is taking such a high-profile interest in this mission. It seems Mitchell will report back to him more than to Hillary Clinton.

Also, though Rob Malley is quoted in the NYT piece as saying there's not much political work that can be done before Israel's Feb.10 elections, I disagree strongly with that assessment.

Obama is already doing some of the much-needed political work! He's doing it by appointing Mitchell so very early in his term and by sending him off the region so quickly, too.

What he's doing is signaling, at the very highest level possible, that the US has its own very strong interest in the Arab-israeli peace process making rapid progress at this time.

That sends exactly the right message to Israeli voters, who need to think carefully whether they want to elect a party/leader who could be expected to clash early on with this politically popular and sure-footed US president.

Of course we want more details as to what kind of a peace agreement Obama plans to work for. Probably he'll let us know more when he's heard back from Mitchell.

But to say he's not doing any political/diplomatic work on the peacemaking right now is just plain wrong.

Posted by Helena Cobban at 07:59 AM | Comments (14)

Petraeus's serious Russia mistake

Last Tuesday, the NYT reported that US Centcom chief David Petraeus announced that, to support the NATO campaign in Afghanistan, NATO now had "transit agreements for commercial goods and services in particular that include several countries in the Central Asian states and also Russia."

Turns out Wonderboy Petraeus jumped the gun badly on that. (HT: B of Moon of Alabama.) Thursday, Russian General of the Army Alexei Maslov told the news agency Itar-Tass definitively that,

Turkmenistan also denied having reached a transit agreement with NATO.

Last August, you'll recall, NATO decided to break off the "partnership"-type arrangement it had with Russia, in protest at Russia's military actions inside sovereign Georgia.

But NATO also badly needs Russia, if it is to find any kind of a viable alternative to the debilitating reliance it has on Pakistan, to get supplies in to the NATO war effort in deeply landlocked Afghanistan. (Oops, maybe Pres. Bush and his advisers should have looked at a map of Central Asia before they decided to invade and occupy Afghanistan?)

Since August, the Russians have linked the question of NATO-transit-rights-to-Afghanistan to that of restoring the NATO-Russia partnership agreement. (Russia also has several other live concerns about US military policy in the countries on its western border, including the future of the missile defense system Bush insisted on planting into Poland and the Czech Republic.) That's why Gen. Maslov and other Russian leaders were quick to deny Petraeus's claim he already had the transit agreement with them.

Today, Russia's envoy to NATO did get a meeting with the alliance's 26 member-ambassadors, after which the participants indicated that the restoration of the full former level of relationship might happen as soon as next month.

Tough luck for the reckless, pro-American Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili who actually started the war with Russia last August with, presumably, the aim of drawing NATO troops into his country in his defense.

Over at Moon of Alabama, I noted that this mistake by Petraeus is significant. I also noted that Petraeus seemed not to have much feel for the diplomatic gravitas required in his new position as head of Centcom. Previously, he was head only of the US forces in Iraq-- and that was before the US-Iraqi Withdrawal Agreement, too. So he really never had to do very much in that job to build or maintain relationships with other sovereign governments; only with the "government" of still-occupied Iraq.

Now, he does need to be much more aware of the international diplomatic/political dimensions of everything he does and says; and h can't simply take the reactions of other governments completely for granted.

I see that retired Indian Ambassador MK Badhrakumar made this same point in this lengthy and informative article on the ever-evolving diplomacy around the Afghanistan/Pakistan question.

Badhrakumar writes that Moscow's intelligence assessment is that

Badrakumar also has some additional good material on the strengthening of Moscow's interest in becoming a player in Afghanistan.

Writing about a visit President Dmitriy Medvedev made to the Uzbek capital of Tashkent last week, he wrote,

Plainly put, Moscow will not allow a replay of the US's tactic after September 11, 2002, when it sought a military presence in Central Asia as a temporary measure and then coolly proceeded to put it on a long-term footing.

He writes about Karzai, perhaps sensing a cooling of the support he's been getting from Washington, now starting to reach out to both Russia and China for support and new relationships, including through his coordination with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which unites Russia, China, and all the Central Asian countries that were once part of the Soviet Union.

Badhrakumar adds:

The current US thinking, on the other hand, is to strike "grand bargains" with regional powers bilaterally and to keep them apart from collectively coordinating with each other on the basis of shared concerns. But the regional powers see through the US game plan for what it is - a smart move of divide-and-rule.

He concludes:

Indeed.

Gen. Petraeus and everyone else who works at high levels in Washington on Afghanistan/Pakistan needs to rapidly acquire a much richer (and less arrogantly colonialist) understanding of the real geopolitics of the region in which increasing numbers of US and NATO troops will be mired for some years to come. (What a depressing thought.)

Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:26 PM | Comments (2)

Note to a young Israeli friend

One notable thing that happened at our panel discussion on Gaza, at Georgetown University Thursday night, was that a young Israeli student directed a question at me asking why I had said that "all Israelis are stupid"-- and also asserting that her country had had "no choice" but to launch the war on Gaza.

I replied that I had never said "all Israelis" are stupid-- though I had certainly pointed out the counter-productive nature, from every point of view, of the decision her country's government had made to launch the most recent war; and I'd pointed out too, with some sadness, that that decision seemed to have received high levels of support from Jewish Israelis.

But certainly not from all of them-- as I had also pointed out in my main presentation.

What I'd referred to specifically was this extremely insightful (and courageous) article, published on December 31 in the WaPo by a Jewish Israeli social-work lecturer called Julia Chaitin. Chaitin, by the way, lives in southern Israel so has a deep understanding of the concerns and fears of the people who live there.

Her whole article is worth reading and re-reading. She wrote:

And so this is an unnecessary, cruel and cynical war -- a war that could have been avoided if our leaders had shown courage during the months of the cease-fire to truly work toward creating better lives for people whose only crime is that they live in the south.

Since the Israeli air force began bombing Gaza, it has been almost impossible to speak openly against the war. It is difficult to find public forums that welcome a call for a new cease-fire and for alternative solutions to the conflict -- ones that do not rely on military strength or a siege of Gaza. When people are in the midst of war, they are not open to voices of peace; they speak (and scream) out of fear and demand retribution for the harms they have suffered. When people are in the midst of war, they forget that they can harness higher cognitive abilities, their reason and logic. Instead, they are driven by the hot structures of their brains, which lead them to respond with fear and anger in ways that are objective threats to our healthy survival. When people are in the midst of war, voices calling for restraint, dialogue and negotiations fall on deaf ears, if their expression is allowed at all...

This analysis is so true. I have seen it in many, many theaters of conflict... That people who normally have full command of their capacities for both rational thought and human empathy suddenly lose those faculties when they're thrown into a situation of great-- and often officially stoked-- mass fearfulness.

Hey, we've certainly seen that happen in the USA in the past eight years... (Thank goodness that for now, at least, we seem to have escaped from the worst of that mass fear here, though many of its effects still linger.)

Anyway, thinking a bit more about Julia Chaitin's marvelous article these past couple of days, I have also been thinking about the generally sad state of the Israeli peace movement.

Remember back in 1982 when, after the revelations of the massacres at Sabra and Shatila, some 600,000 Israelis took to the streets in utter disgust, and just about forced the downfall of the government? That was fully one-fifth of the country's entire population at the time!

Where is the Israeli peace movement today-- at a time when it's been revealed that roughly the same number of civilians as died in Sabra and Shatila were killed directly by the IDF itself in Gaza? (Whereas in S&S, Sharon's IDF had subcontracted the killing work to the Lebanese Falangist militias.)

The general weakness of Israel's peace movement is a cause for real sadness. It also means the politics of the peacemaking that's so badly needed now will be much more complex than it might otherwise have been.

However, the fact that there is no broad peace movement of the kind there was from, roughly, 1978 through 1998 means that the Jewish Israeli voices we do hear speaking out clearly in favor of ending the occupation(s), concluding fair and durable peace agreements, and building a culture of mutual respect with Israel's neighbors are more valuable than ever...

Voices like those of Julia Chaitin... or Naomi Chazan (most recently, here and here), or Uri Avnery and his colleagues at Gush Shalom...

And as for sad old argument that Israel "had no choice" but to launch the war against Gaza? There are numerous other things it could have done to defuse tensions along its border with the Strip, other than launch the "shock and awe" war of December 27- January 18.

The Israeli government could have:

2. Even though the ceasefire-extension negotiations at the end of November and the beginning of December were held in a situation of cross-border tensions, still, the Israeli government could have pushed for a successful extension and strengthening of the ceasefire. True, the Hamas negotiators made clear they would only do so if the Israelis agreed to lift the siege of Gaza. So why didn't the Israeli government make strenuous efforts to explore ways for that to happen-- even including ways to verify that the re-opened borders would not allow a significant rearming by Hamas? Those ways exist. They are being actively explored by the diplomats right now. So why-- as both Chaitin and Chazan write-- did Israel have to go through this ghastly and damaging war in order to arrive at a diplomatic place it could have reached in mid-December without launching that war at all?

3. In general, if someone is doing something that really bothers or harms you, there are always scores of ways that intelligent people can use to try to prevent them from taking those harmful acts. So maybe Israel didn't want to talk to Hamas directly? It could talk through the Egyptians or the Turks, or numerous other potential intermediaries. So Hamas had its own conditions, too? Why not? They are people, after all, and could not be expected simply to lie down under the harsh siege forever without demanding that it be lifted. (Also, a blockade/siege is, strctly speaking itself an act of war.) Besides, having a Gaza population that is busily engaged in economic development and through that development acquires an increasing socio-economic stake that it would be reluctant to put at risk in a renewal of hostilities with Israel surely makes a lot more sense, for Israelis, than having 1.5 million neighbors in Gaza who feel a deep sense of grievance and also feel they have little or nothing to lose in any new round of hostilities?

Well, now at least we have a president in Washington who has called on his supporters to "lay aside childish things"... and hopefully childish attitudes of selfishness, self-referentiality, and racism, as well.

So let's hope that the six million Jewish Israelis can now join this new global movement and grow up a bit... grow out of thinking that their needs always have to come first and that they can behave as they darn' well please in wrecking their neighbors' lives.

I'm just not sure that this can happen fast enough to change the outcome of the election in Israel February 10. When, as I've noted before, Israel's opposition Likud Party now looks very well positioned to pull of a significant victory.

(Which is, as I've also noted, yet another way in which the present Israeli government's decision to go to war looks totally stupid and counter-productive. Oh my. War and fear really do have the most amazing capacity to addle people's brains... )

Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:01 PM | Comments (10)

American weapons, Palestinian suffering, and the needs of peace

The United States is very far from a "neutral party" in the continuing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. As I've noted before, the US government not only gives Israel essential political support (e.g. by blocking resolutions at the security Council); it also provides most of the high-tech arms the Israelis use against their opponents including during the assault on Gaza.

This recent short report by Bill Hartung and Frida Berrigan shows that,

· During the Bush administration (from FY2002 through FY2009) Israel has received over $21 billion in U.S. security assistance, including $19 billion in direct military aid under the Pentagon’s Foreign Military Financing (FMF) program.

· The bulk of Israel’s current arsenal is composed of equipment supplied under U.S. assistance programs. For example, Israel has 226 U.S.-supplied F-16 fighter and attack jets, over 700 M-60 tanks, 6,000 armored personnel carriers, and scores of transport planes, attack helicopters, utility and training aircraft, bombs, and tactical missiles of all kinds.

· During 2008 alone, the United States made over $22 billion in arms sales offers to Israel, including a proposed deal for as many as 75 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters worth up to $15.2 billion; nine C-130J-30 aircraft worth up to $1.9 billion; 4 Littoral combat ships and related equipment worth as much as $1.9 billion; and up to $1.3 billion worth of gasoline and jet aviation fuel.

Hartung and Berrigan have tracked US arms transfers to Israel for some years now. Go to that link above-- and to the onward links from there-- to learn more details, including about which US military-industrial corporations won those contracts from the Pentagon, which helped yet further to boost their shareholders' profits.

I was interested to be reminded how many F-16s Israel has in its air force. 226! What on earth are they all for? Where on earth do they even park that many large hulks of metal?

The F-16s and Israel's Apache helicopters performed many deadly deeds in the recent war, including destroying a university, several schools, and the seat of the Palestinians' elected legislature. I also learned Thursday that the headquarters of the truly excellent Gaza Community Mental Health Program was badly damaged in the shelling. (More details here.)

Someone-- I forget where-- quoted a Hamas supporter as saying if the Israelis really are as terrified of the Palestinians' arsenal of extremely primitive rockets as they claim to be, then he would be happy to trade that entire arsenal for just one of Israel's F-16s. Well, the IOF would still have 225 other F-16s left, of course. But you get the general drift of the argument...

Meantime, we US citizens need to start holding our own government-- administration and congress-- accountable for the absolutely vital, multi-pronged support it has given to Israel's war on Gaza.

We should call for a total ban on all arms supplies to the Middle East pending the conclusion of final-status peace agreements between Israel and its three neighboring nations of Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon. Those peace agreements will certainly include provisions for longer-term follow-on arms control and security regimes. But we need to start implementing this arms embargo now. Perhaps it will help persuade Israelis that they need to solve their problems at the negotiating table, not by sowing death and destruction among their neighbors.

But if the US goes on arming one side to the conflict while pretending to be a "neutral mediator" in the peacemaking?? That idea is simply laughable.

Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:25 PM | Comments (2)

Swiss parliamentarians visit Gaza

Kudos to the delegation of Swiss parliamentarians who are visiting Gaza at the invitation of the duly elected Palestinian legislative Council.

That Maan news report also notes that Switzerland was,

The delegation reinforced their earlier stance during their visit, saying what they saw was evidence of war crimes.

On the assassination of de facto Minister of the Interior Sa’id Siyam, the delegation noted the illegality of assassination for political purposes under international law. They further condemned the assaults on the members of PLC, including the continued detention of PLC speaker Aziz Dweik.

On arriving to Gaza the delegation was received by PLC member Ismail Al-Ashqar of Hamas, and Head of the Committee of Security and Internal affairs in the PLC Salem Salamah. The Gazan leaders expressed their discontent over Europe’s silence over the Gaza war, adding that it “gave Israeli the justification to continue its destruction and war against the Palestinians.”

He demanded the Swiss and European parliaments pressure the international court to ensure Israeli war criminals are brought to a speedy trial.

I have thought for a while now that Switzerland, Norway, and Turkey are three countries well positioned to try to open good channels of communication with Hamas. (Qatar, China, and Russia could also provide valuable help in this.)

Those of us around the world who support national self-determination for oppressed, colonized, and occupied peoples, and the respect of democratic principles need to focus centrally on these values in the weeks and months ahead. While it is good for human-rights organizations to focus on Israel's war crimes, I worry there's a chance that too much energy will be expended in that essentially bacward-looking task rather than on the broader, forward-looking task of doing all the political things that are necessary to secure a final peace agreement between israel and all its neighbors within the shortest time possible.

At the end of the day, it is only a final peace agreement that includes ending the occupation(s) and the Palestinians winning their true national independence that can assure the ending of this situation of occupation and control by a despotic foreign military power. If the occupation isn't ended and a final peace secured, then the tragedies and atrocities of the past months will be followed by repeat performances as sure as night follows day.

Anyway, even though there is currently a situation of fragile ceasefire, this is still a situation in which the rights of the Palestinians-- in Gaza, in the West Bank, and those in exile-- are being significantly abused on a major and continuing basis.

End the occupation! Secure the final peace!

Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:35 PM | Comments (5)

Discipline -- What Good Is It?

Pat Lang has pointed out that "the IDF/IOF does not routinely have any professional cadre of well-trained sergeants capable of enforcing discipline." This factor has allegedly contributed to Israeli soldiers acting badly.

The inference is that such behavior would never occur in well-trained armies.

Or would it?

New Statesman: Conventional armies are a sledgehammer to crack a nut when it comes to fighting guerrillas.

"And you think they haven't been calling their buddies in there to tell them to shift their sorry asses?" growled Sgt Penning in disgust. By the time we rolled into the middle section of the Baghdad neighbourhood of Ghazaliya, there wasn't a single shot being fired in our direction. Any insurgents were long gone. But the hapless residents were not. They watched, almost impassively, the random violence of the searching troops, too frightened to object. Some of the houses, whose Christian or Shia owners had fled, were empty. Occupied or not, if no one quickly answered the demands to open up, gates, doors and windows were smashed down or blown open with shotguns.

Inside, damage was done to anything breakable. Living-rooms became a jumble of furniture. Beds were overturned, cabinets thrown down, shelves emptied on to floors and beds: an orgy of destruction and arbitrary searching.

Global Policy Forum: How and Why the US Encouraged Looting in Iraq

Thousands took part in the looting in Baghdad which began April 9, the day the Hussein government ceased to function in the capital city. Not only were government ministries targeted, and the homes of the Ba’athist elite, but public institutions vital to Iraqi society, including hospitals, schools and food distribution centers. Equipment and parts were stripped from power plants, thus delaying the restoration of electricity to the city of 5 million people.

Perhaps the most devastating loss for the Iraqi people is the ransacking of the National Museum, the greatest trove of archeological and historical artifacts in the Middle East. The 28 galleries of the huge museum were picked clean by looters who made off with more than 50,000 irreplaceable artifacts, relics of past civilizations dating back 5,000 years. The museum’s entire card catalog was destroyed, making it impossible even to identify what has been lost.

The US military stood by and permitted the ransacking of the museum, an incalculable blow to Iraqi and world culture, just as they allowed and even encouraged the looting of hospitals, universities, libraries and government social service buildings. The occupation forces protected only the Ministry of Oil, with its detailed inventory of Iraqi oil reserves, as well as the Ministry of Interior, the headquarters of the ousted regime’s secret police.

Winter Soldier: 'We Have to Share This Pain'

Josh Simpson explained his work as an Army counterintelligence agent in Iraq. "We would go to houses without any evidence, arrest people, and pay our source hundreds of dollars. This was common. It was a crazy cycle."

"We were raiding houses every night in Mosul," he continued. "You ransack their stuff, then ask our officer who he wanted to detain."

The number of people detained was a measure of success for a unit, Simpson explained. "People's mothers would be grabbing me, asking me why I was taking their child away, and I never had an answer. It's terrible to push an elderly Iraqi woman away so you can take her child and load her into your Stryker vehicle, when you don't even believe they belong there."

Helena correctly observes:

We could (and should) say the same about US political and military leaders.

The inference that war might be okay if it would be conducted by disciplined troops should be rejected. War is never the answer. It brutalizes young people to the point that they enjoy killing, as shown in this video.

While we jump on the Israeli army let's also get our own house in order. There are valid reasons why, just as Gazans hate Israelis, Iraqis hate Americans and want them (their "liberators") out of their country. Ditto for Afghanistan.

---
Don Bacon is a retired army officer who founded the Smedley Butler Society several years ago because, as General Butlewr said, war is a racket.

Posted by Don Bacon at 01:34 PM | Comments (5)

Ill-disciplined IOF left its mark in Gaza

Amnesty International has a new blog carrying extracts from field reports made by its researchers. In this post, Friday, Donatella Rivera writes about the physical detritus the IOF soldiers left behind them in many of the private homes they took over and occupied in Gaza. (HT: Badger of Missing Links.)

She wrote:

Walls were defaced with crude threats written in Hebrew, such as “next time it will hurt more” and, in one house, a drawing of a naked woman...

This is very reminiscent of the traces left behind by IOF soldiers on various rampages including in West Beirut in 1982, where the excrement was often left on the belongings of city residents.

Rivera added this:

“Gazans have had their houses looted, vandalised and desecrated. As well, the Israeli soldiers have left behind not only mounds of litter and excrement but ammunition and other military equipment. It’s not the behaviour one would expect from a professional army,” he said.

No, indeed it is not. And nor are the numerous, well-reported incidents in the Gaza rampage in which IOF soldiers shot Palestinian civilians at point-blank range.

Col. Pat Lang provided a partial explanation for the IOF's lack of discipline in this early-January blog post.

Writing about the close contacts he had with Israeli military during his time as a professional US soldier, he observed that, unlike in the US when it had a mainly conscript army, the IDF/IOF does not routinely have any professional cadre of well-trained sergeants capable of enforcing discipline and standards-- including standards of keeping within the requirements of the Laws of War-- on the often poorly trained infantry brigades made up of reservists or conscripts.

Regarding the conscript units in the IOF ground forces, he wrote:

- As a result of this system of manning, the IDF's ground force is more unpredictable and volatile at the tactical (company) level than might be the case otherwise. The national government has a hard time knowing whether or not specific policies will be followed in the field. For example, the Israeli government's policy in the present action in the Gaza Strip has been to avoid civilian casualties whenever possible. [Well, its stated policy, anyway... ~HC] Based on personal experience of the behavior of IDF conscripts toward Palestinian civilians, I would say that the Israeli government has little control over what individual groups of these young Israeli soldiers may do in incidents like the one yesterday in which mortar fire was directed toward UN controlled school buildings.

... One might say that in war, s--t happens. [See above ~HC] That is true, but such behavior is indicative of an army that is not well disciplined and not a completely reliably instrument of state policy. In my travels in the west Bank in March of 2008, it was noticeable that the behavior towards Palestinian civilians of IDF troops at roadblocks was reminiscent of that of any group of post-adolescents given guns and allowed to bully the helpless in order to look tough for each other. I think the IDF would be well advised to grow some real sergeants.

I think this provides a valuable part of the explanation of what happened in Gaza. But the other part, surely, has to do with the racism that's so prevalent in Israeli society: the sense that the Palestinians-- living in Gaza or elsewhere-- are not really fully human, and certainly not deserving of the basic human decency that all fellow-humans deserve.

Back in West Beirut in 1982, my recollection is that it was some of the apartments owned by the more middle-class Palestinians there that got trashed (and excrement-dumped) the worst... As though the IOF soldiers, were so taken aback to see Palestinians living lives that looked just as clean and well-ordered as their own (or cleaner?) that they felt the need to trash all that cleanliness and good order... to drag the Palestinians down into the muck where they felt they all belonged.

(See also this account by the BBC's Jeremy Bowen of what the IOF soldiers did in the home of a little girl called Mona-- along with killing both her parents, that is.)

I am just recalling, too, that in Caroline Elkins's excellent book about the British military's colonial campaign against the Kenyan independence movement in the 1950s, one of the notable punishments meted out in the massive concentration camps the British erected was to force those stalwarts who refused to bow to their demands to run around for hours, in public, with leaking buckets of excrement on their heads. As Elkins wrote, part of the intention seemed to be to buoy up the view of the British and other soldiers there-- who might otherwise have been forced to have some grudging admiration for the steadfastness and dignity of their captives-- that the captives really were just muck-covered sub-humans, after all.

Regarding the IOF, one of the stated goals of those who launched this latest Israeli "war of choice" was to "restore the credibility of Israel's military deterrent" by demonstrating that the Israeli ground forces-- which had performed extremely poorly, from a military point of view in Lebanon in 2006-- had now been rebuilt and were "back in tip-top condition."

Militarily, well, yes perhaps that is so. But after all, what on earth use could tank battalions ever really be, militarily, within the close and crowded confines of Gaza's cities and refugee camps? And massed infantry was never sent in, lest-- presumably-- too many Israeli soldiers' lives should get lost to Palestinian fighters well dug into their very familiar and complex home terrain.

So actually, what got proven about the ground forces at the level of military capability? Not very much.

But at the moral level, a lot was proven, namely their ill-discipline (including in leaving useful military goods behind them) and the wanton brutality, arrogance, and vengefulness with which they behaved.

I am repeatedly surprised by the wilful blindness of Israeli political and military leaders who can't see that these traits and behaviors are massively counter-productive to their people's longterm wellbeing. How on earth do they think that such behaviors will help make the region in which they live more peaceful and thus provide the basis for Israel's own longterm security?

Ah well, I guess that critique is equally applicable at the "macro" level, in terms of the decision the Israeli pols made, in the first place, to launch yet another in the now-lengthy series of its wars of choice that attempt to force their neighbors to submit to their will. This was the sixth such war since 1982. And none of them has ever, from 1982 on, turned out well for Israel in the political-strategic arena.

But it's important not to lose sight of the micro level, either. For in the crucible of the micro level of the way actual human persons relate to each other a long-overdue regional peace can be significantly hastened-- or once again delayed.

Posted by Helena Cobban at 12:22 PM | Comments (6)

BBC bows shamefully to Israeli pressure...

... on airing a philanthropic appeal for aid for Gaza... while even the British government urges it not to.

Go figure.

We can note that the British government-- like the US government, the Egyptian government, and all the other governments of the world-- has connived shamefully, for the past three years, in the Israeli government's completely anti-humane campaign to starve the 1.5 million people of Gaza into submission. But now, something seems to be changing on this score-- perhaps-- in the halls of Whitehall. As well as, perhaps, in Washington.

Let's hope we can now see the world's governments all start working together to re-connect the lives and economy of Gaza properly to those of the outside world. And that Israel's brutal siege of Gaza, which has caused its people so much suffering, can now be ended.

But the BBC, meanwhile, still seems intent on going along with the Israeli-bred idea that the provision of outside aid-- even of very urgently needed emergency relief aid-- should be a political football, subject only to the whims of the Israeli occupying/besieging power.

What an outrage.

Today, the representatives of the Palestinian government that was elected in a free and fair election in January 2006 are now in Egypt, are in Cairo where tomorrow they'll conduct talks with the Egyptian government on the modalities of re-opening the Rafah crossing point between Gaza and Egypt.

An anonymous source (presumably from Hamas) told Reuters's Nidal Mughrabi that Hamas is,

So Hamas, Fateh, Israel, and Egypt have all returned to negotiating all the same issues they have been fighting about for the past year or more.

Except that this time around, the negotiating positions of both Egypt and Fateh are considerably weaker than they were a year ago.

And meantime, if the latest declarations from the British government and President Obama are anything to go by, the international consensus that Israel used to enjoy for its policy of Endless Punitive Siege against Gaza seems to be eroding significantly.

Shame on the BBC!

Anyone who wants to give support to the coalition of very mainstream British charities that has had its appeal for Gaza turned down by the BBC can do so here.

Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:10 PM | Comments (15)

IPS articles from Syria and Washington, DC

I've been really busy these past couple of weeks-- plus, figuring out too much new technology. So, to catch up a little, here are the last two pieces of News Analysis that I wrote for IPS:

Damascus, datelined January 16

-- from Washington DC, datelined today.

Read and enjoy. Or not; it's up to you.

Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:36 PM | Comments (9)

Obama moves fast on M.E. diplomacy

I just read the transcript of Pres. Obama's address at the State Department today. That's the one where he appointed former Sen. George Mitchell as Special Envoy for Middle East peace, and former Amb. Richard Holbroooke as Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Mitchell is a good choice. He has a good feel for the needs of brokering peace in tricky situations, which he helped do in Northern Ireland. And he knows quite a lot about the Israel-Palestine issue from his earlier work investigating the causes of the Second Intifada.

Plus, as a former Senate Majority Leader, he has the political stature that will be required to cajole people from both sides-- and even Israel's well-entrenched 'Amen Corner' in the US Congress-- towards the decisions that will be needed to build durable final peace agreements.

Of course, it's also a good sign that perennial "Israel-right-or-wrong" cheerleader Abe Foxman actually criticized Mitchell for being "too even-handed" between Arabs and Israelis. (I have it on good authority that there was a time when "even-handed" was thought of in Washington as a good description of what was needed in US diplomats working on Israeli-Arab issues. But it certainly hasn't generally been seen as a good thing for as long as I've lived in the country-- since 1982. Let's hope we're returning to a decent respect for even-handedness and basic fairness.)

I am seeing some excellent early actions from Obama. On the day he was inaugurated he phoned the leaders of the PA, Israel, Jordan, and Egypt-- starting with the PA's (time-expired but who's counting?) President, Mahmoud Abbas. That was one early sign of his concern for moving fast on Arab-Israeli issues. Today's appointment of Mitchell is another, even stronger one.

Plus, I think it's excellent that on his second full day in office the President went to the State Department to join Sec. Clinton in making these announcements. That's a strong signal of the value he places in the work of diplomacy that the State department's employees do.

Regarding Mitchell's appopintment, of course a lot remains to be revealed. One telling sign was that the hawkish Clinton adviser Dennis Ross, whose strongly pro-Israeli think-tank had previously announced that he would be kind of super-adviser for the whole region stretching from the Middle East to Afghanistan, reportedly wasn't even present at tofday's announcement. (Maybe, though, he'll end up working more on Iran issues? Who knows?)

Clinton said at the State Department event that "the president and I have asked [Mitchell] to be the special envoy for Middle East peace." That leaves it a little unclear who he'll report to, which is a key detail.

When Obama spoke, he said this about Mitchell's task:

No one doubts the difficulty of the road ahead, and George outlined some of those difficulties. The tragic violence in Gaza and southern Israel offers a sobering reminder of the challenges at hand and the setbacks that will inevitably come.

It must also instill in us, though, a sense of urgency, as history shows us that strong and sustained American engagement can bridge divides and build the capacity that supports progress. And that is why we will be sending George to the region as soon as possible to help the parties ensure that the cease-fire that has been achieved is made durable and sustainable.

Let me be clear: America is committed to Israel's security. And we will always support Israel's right to defend itself against legitimate threats.

For years, Hamas has launched thousands of rockets at innocent Israeli citizens. No democracy can tolerate such danger to its people, nor should the international community, and neither should the Palestinian people themselves, whose interests are only set back by acts of terror.

To be a genuine party to peace, the quartet has made it clear that Hamas must meet clear conditions: recognize Israel's right to exist; renounce violence; and abide by past agreements.

Going forward, the outline for a durable cease-fire is clear: Hamas must end its rocket fire; Israel will complete the withdrawal of its forces from Gaza; the United States and our partners will support a credible anti-smuggling and interdiction regime, so that Hamas cannot rearm.

Yesterday I spoke to President Mubarak and expressed my appreciation for the important role that Egypt played in achieving a cease-fire. And we look forward to Egypt's continued leadership and partnership in laying a foundation for a broader peace through a commitment to end smuggling from within its borders.

Now, just as the terror of rocket fire aimed at innocent Israelis is intolerable, so, too, is a future without hope for the Palestinians.

I was deeply concerned by the loss of Palestinian and Israeli life in recent days and by the substantial suffering and humanitarian needs in Gaza. Our hearts go out to Palestinian civilians who are in need of immediate food, clean water, and basic medical care, and who've faced suffocating poverty for far too long.

Now we must extend a hand of opportunity to those who seek peace. As part of a lasting cease-fire, Gaza's border crossings should be open to allow the flow of aid and commerce, with an appropriate monitoring regime, with the international and Palestinian Authority participating.

Relief efforts must be able to reach innocent Palestinians who depend on them. The United States will fully support an international donor's conference to seek short-term humanitarian assistance and long-term reconstruction for the Palestinian economy. This assistance will be provided to and guided by the Palestinian Authority.

Lasting peace requires more than a long cease-fire, and that's why I will sustain an active commitment to seek two states living side by side in peace and security.

Senator Mitchell will carry forward this commitment, as well as the effort to help Israel reach a broader peace with the Arab world that recognizes its rightful place in the community of nations.

I should add that the Arab peace initiative contains constructive elements that could help advance these efforts. Now is the time for Arab states to act on the initiative's promise by supporting the Palestinian government under President Abbas and Prime Minister Fayyad, taking steps towards normalizing relations with Israel, and by standing up to extremism that threatens us all.

Jordan's constructive role in training Palestinian security forces and nurturing its relations with Israel provide a model for these efforts. And going forward, we must make it clear to all countries in the region that external support for terrorist organizations must stop.

This is pretty good as a starting US position.

I was also interested to see that Pres. Obama went into considerably greater detail about Mitchell's task than Sec. Clinton did. So that might well indicate that Mitchell will be reporting more to him (through National Security Adviser Gen. Jim Jones) than to Clinton.

Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:05 PM | Comments (45)

Killer Jobs Programs

The economy is heading south and people are being laid off. Congress-critters and governors, and politicians in general, are being asked to come up with "shovel-ready" projects that will put people to work. But what about people that can't or won't shovel?

The Pentagon has some jobs programs too. Some of them involve getting into uniform, and enlistments are up. Others involve working for military contractors like KBR. We covered them in the piece about finding newly-unemployed George Bush a job.

There are other Pentagon jobs programs that go right into every congressional district. They include military bases and military procurement. They say all politics is local, and in this time for intensive economic recovery planning congress-critters are interested in military procurement now more than ever.

Remember the peace dividend? Forget it. War pays better dividends, and you need to buy a lot of stuff to fight a war. So if the country is at war, and it is at war thanks to some people who profit from it, and if you need even more stuff to fight wars yet uninitiated, then military procurement has to be high on the jobs program list in every US congressional district.

Call them the killer jobs programs.

In these programs there are a couple of shining stars, the F-22 Raptor fighter plane and the Virginia-class submarines. Both of them provide case-book studies on how the Pentagon rules congress and thus the country.

The Lockheed Martin/Boeing F-22 Raptor is a fighter aircraft that uses stealth technology. It is primarily an air superiority fighter, but has multiple capabilities that include ground attack, electronic warfare, and signals intelligence roles. The primary user is the US Air Force and 127 have been built. The F-22 program cost is $65 billion and the unit cost is, depending upon production rate and cost amortization, varies from $141m to $171m. The F-22 is a fifth generation fighter which can carry bombs, cannon and missiles while flying at Mach 2.25.

The F-22 was approved initially to give the Air Force a next-generation stealthy aircraft to evade ever improving enemy air defenses. But a funny thing happened: Our enemies’ air defenses stopped improving.

So, today, even a casual examination of recent air combat involving the United States (the Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq) proves that the existing fleet of about 700 F-15s and upwards of 1500 F-16s remain, undeniably, unbeatable, and will remain so well into the future. At nearly $200 million per plane (versus about $25 million for the F-16), the F-22 would be by far the most expensive fighter plane ever built.

And the F-22s that have been built need some work.

There's no need for additional aircraft and they cost a bundle -- might the program be cut by the new administration?

Boeing and Lockheed Martin are pouring money into a publicity campaign to maintain funding for the F-22 Raptor, worried the fighter-plane program may be on the chopping block of the Obama administration.

According to John M. Donnelly, when lobbyists for Lockheed Martin Corp. visited congressional offices in recent weeks to brief members or staff on the merits of their F-22 fighter, the top item on their agenda had nothing to do with the plane’s military attributes.

For the first time, “Economy/Jobs” topped the list of F-22 benefits. “F-22 Economic Impact is Significant,” said one briefing slide in the “F-22 Advocacy Briefing.” It cited the 95,000 jobs created by the program in 44 states and its more than $12 billion annual impact on the economy. Superimposed on that data was a faux newspaper clipping about the 159,000 jobs the U.S. economy had lost in September. The plane’s military benefits were now a secondary part of the case and jobs the primary focus — instead of the other way around.

This campaign has been joined by many in congress, not because there is any need for the plane, but because of the jobs (and profits) involved.

In "The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives" Nick Turse describes the diverse F-22 manufacturing base.

Global Security states an even more far-reaching contractual network.

The dispersal of the F-22 manufacturing and the publicity campaign have paid off. The manufacturers' campaign has been joined by many in congress, not because there is any need for the plane, but because of the jobs involved. Congress has stood tall for the F-22 killer jobs program.

In the House:

And in the Senate:

Deciding whether to buy more F-22s after the final aircraft on order is delivered at the end of 2011 is one of the first strategic and business decisions Obama’s Pentagon leaders will have to make after Inauguration.

A group of 44 senators — 25 Democrats and 19 Republicans — sent Obama a letter with the request. Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), a defense authorizer who represents a state where Lockheed Martin builds the fighter plane, and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), a defense appropriator whose state is home to Boeing’s operations, headlined the letter. Boeing is a subcontractor for the F-22.

“Continued F-22 production is critical to both the national security and economic interests of our country,” Murray said in a statement.

"critical to . . .the . . . economic interests of our country" -- hmmm.

Moving over to the Navy we see a similar situation with submarines, specifically the $2b per copy Virginia-class submarines with sections that are built in two different places, again to spread the jobs and double the congressional support. The Newport News Virginia facility builds the stern, habitability & machinery spaces, torpedo room, sail and bow, while Electric Boat in Connecticut builds the engine room and control room.

The central submarine sections are built in Joe Courtney's district in Connecticut, and Joe was successful in doubling submarine production from one to two.

"This is a great day for southeastern Connecticut and an important victory for our nation’s defense infrastructure. This victory seemed elusive a year ago and just a dream for many years, but I am pleased to be able to announce that this part of the fight is now over. We have set a new expedited pace in delivering the most advanced ship to our nation’s naval fleet, which will secure our defense jobs in Connecticut."

Courtney was recognized for his efforts by the local newspaper, the Hartford Courant.

Unfortunately for Joe, because the Pentagon doesn't want nor need these submarines, Courtney's plans weren't realized.

But Joe didn't give up -- his district needs jobs.

Connecticut Rep. Joe Courtney organized a joint letter with more than two dozen House members urging Obama to back doubling production to two new ships per year beginning in 2011, one year ahead of the Navy's previous schedule. The letter is to be sent Tuesday.

"As you evaluate current acquisition programs and make the tough decisions ahead, we encourage your strong support for the Virginia-class submarine program -- a platform of critical importance to our nation's current and long-term defense," the lawmakers wrote.

Joe's efforts paid off as a result of his joint letter.

In making the announcement, Rear Adm. William Hilarides, program executive officer for submarines, told a group of reporters at the Pentagon that more than 12,000 companies of all sizes located in 48 states take part in building the Virginia-class subs.

“This contract will provide good jobs not just in Connecticut, Rhode Island and Virginia, but in thousands of communities across the country as our vendors gear up for increased production on the Virginia class,” Electric Boat president John Casey said in a statement.

So these are just two examples of killer jobs programs for the production of un-needed military hardware being promoted by industry and congress.

The question arises: Is military spending actually good for the economy?

The simple answer: No.

Washington, DC: The Center for Economic and Policy Research released a report today estimating the economic impact of increased U.S. military spending comparable to the spending on the Iraq war. The report, presenting the results of a simulation from the economic forecasting company Global Insight, shows the increased level of military spending leads to fewer jobs and slower economic growth.

Just think of the contribution the workers on these military machines could make if their efforts were redirected to something useful to Americans.

What do you think?

UPDATE:
news report, Jan 23 2009:
Lawmakers may insert earmarks to buy new military equipment into a massive economic stimulus plan being pushed by the Obama White House, said Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the Senate minority leader.

"There has been talk of a military equipment portion of the economic stimulus bill," McConnell said during a Jan. 23 appearance at the National Press Club in Washington.

-----
Don Bacon is a retired army officer who founded the Smedley Butler Society several years ago because, as General Butler said, war is a racket.

Posted by Don Bacon at 01:13 PM | Comments (6)

Panel discussion Washington DC Thursday

If you're in DC Thursday evening, come along to a panel discussion on the Gaza crisis that I'm participating in, at Georgetown University, at 6:30 p.m.

The other participants are:

The discussion is organized by GU's Center for Contemporary Arab Studies and will be held in McNair Auditorium, in Old North Building on the main campus.

Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:45 PM | Comments (14)

Forging Peace With War

President Obama, Jan 20 2009:

This peace-forging, in a poor land where the US brought war over seven years ago, is social engineering at the point of a spear, and it won't work.

According to Masood Aziz, a former diplomat:

...culture is essential to development and . . . it needs to be protected in its own land and nurtured when in danger--not imposed from the outside. It is now well-recognized that development efforts only work if they are inclusive of human security, which itself embodies cultural and social norms. This "human development" approach--as elucidated by the Noble laureate Amartya Sen--has its focus on expanding human liberty and freedom and respect for the local population in defining their own needs and futures. In this sense, development is a basic human right based on a nation’s deep cultural and social character. When disturbed either by conflict, or by the imported idealism Marlowe seems to suggest, these rights are violated and disaster ensues

Not understanding what Afghans want--security, education for their children, prosperity and the preservation of dignity--and instead advocating for "greatness" to come from the outside, has grave consequences for both Afghans and the community of nations engaged in this fight..

President Obama said he'll work with others:

But when it comes to Afghanistan, mutuality and respect fly out the window in deference to ill-conceived American interests. Senator Obama, July 14, 2008, announcing his support for a "new strategy" in Afghanistan:

As president, I would pursue a new strategy, and begin by providing at least two additional combat brigades to support our effort in Afghanistan. We need more troops, more helicopters, better intelligence-gathering and more nonmilitary assistance to accomplish the mission there.

The president of Afghanistan, should anyone care, has a different strategy which he re-iterated on the same day that President Obama was talking about forging peace with war.

"This persecutes us," Karzai said of the killings. "Our international friends should know that it is a physical and mental obsession," he told the annual opening of parliament.

Nearly 2,000 civilians were killed in fighting in Afghanistan last year, security experts say. Overall, more than 5,000 people were killed in 2008 in the deadliest year of fighting since the U.S.-led invasion.

NATO and the U.S. military which have some 70,000 troops in Afghanistan must "review the military and security strategy" by coordinating operations with the Afghan government in order to cut the number of civilian casualties, Karzai said.

The speaker of the upper house of parliament, Sibghatullah Mojadidi, warned of further unrest if civilian casualties were not stopped.

"We are fed up ... this is really an important issue and I fear that, God forbid, the Afghan nation will rise up. I have told my American brothers and friends to exercise caution and if the nation does rise, the situation will be worse than Iraq," he told parliament.

Karzai called on Taliban-led insurgents to give up resistance against his government and foreign troops, and vowed to protect "the honour and property" of those who did so.

Another development is that Afghanistan [learning from Iraq?] is seeking more control of foreign troops in its country.

The draft technical agreement would establish rules of conduct for NATO-led troops and require that additional NATO troops and their locations be approved by the Afghan government.

The agreement also would prohibit NATO troops from searching Afghan homes.

Forging peace with an expanded war in Afghanistan without understanding what Afghans want -- is anyone buying this?

Posted by Don Bacon at 11:18 AM | Comments (24)

Inaugurating

Barack Hussein Obama was sworn in as our president at noon today-- Hurrah! ... Four hours before that, I and four (mainly Quaker) friends from Charlottesville who slept over in our apartment in Washington had finished our mammoth "survival-dressing" operation and ventured out into the sub-freezing air to start our trek to the National Mall.

As we walked along streets from which, today, all moving vehicles had been banned we merged with other groups and then converged into ever broader and broader streams of humanity. We surged across Constitution Avenue onto the National Mall at around 18th Street and turned left on the Mall so we could get as close to the Capitol Dome end of it as possible. At one point the whole river of humanity had to get over a line of yard-high concrete barricades, which we did by helping each other across.

At our "hoi polloi" end of the mall there were no security checkpoints, though I assume the police were watching people very closely from the few temporary elevated watch-towers I saw, and from the ground. Some of the streets along which we'd walked had National Guard Military Police units strung lightly along them, but the security on and around the Mall was light.

The excitement built as the crowds around us grew denser. We made our way with increasingly difficulty around the northern shoulder of the hill on which sits the vast obelisk of the Washington Monument, hoping to reach at least the east side of 14th Street. But it was not to be. The entire section of the Mall east of 14th Street was already, at 8:45, filled to capacity and they were letting no more people in there. So we were stuck back on the eastern slope of the Washington Monument's hill-- facing the Capitol Building, which gleamed light-golden around 1.3 miles away.

We had a large Jumbotron screen on which we could see the details of what was happening there... and all around us an ever-thickening crush of humanity. A large preponderance of hardy young and middle-aged adults, but several families with kids aged seven or over. (Families with younger kids, and older people, had been warned to think carefully before coming, because of the lengthy waits expected, and the cold, the cold, the cold.)

So from around 9 a.m. through 11:15 we stood there. We got to know the people standing around us a bit-- one family had come from Oregon, a young woman and her mother from Washington State. The crowd immediately around us was around 25% African-American and also contained a large group of Latinos. The Jumbotrons replayed the tape of the big concert held at the Lincoln Memorial on Sunday, which sparked sporadic waves of singing, swaying, or quasi-dancing among the crowd. A light sun peeked through. But still, it was cold, cold, cold. I pulled on my second pair of gloves and my third pair of legwear. The six layers on my upper body just sufficed.

At around 11:15 the Jumbotrons switched to showing us the things that were happening in real-time, in and around the Capitol Building. Various dignitaries arrived and were announced. A few of us raised a loud cheer for Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter. The Clintons got a louder cheer (but not from me.) The arrival of George W. Bush got deeps boos from our understandably partisan crowd. We saw the Obama daughters; Laura Bush with Michelle Obama... then out came "the President-Elect" to the delight of all.

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts flubbed the administration of the oath of office, but that didn't seem to matter. After Obama took the oath, many people in the crowd hugged each other, and there were some tears.

We then listened carefully to his Inaugural Address. He started off with a couple of quick grace notes to the man he had now replaced in office (yay!)... But just about all the rest of the speech was a pointed and powerful indictment of the value and policies pursued by Bush-- though Obama never mentioned Bush by name during the rest of the speech.

I thought it was a great speech: serious, somber, inclusive. I do still have a problem with mentions of the concept "American leadership", given the terrible straits into which this concept has led the world over the past 17 years. But it is sort of "boiler-plate" in the official rhetoric of the country at this point. But the main things I liked about the speech were the serious commitment he expressed to restoring the rule of law ("we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals") and its emphasis on fairness, mindfulness, and inclusivity ("We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus — and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth... ") He made an indirect reference to the formerly enslaved ("We were lashed by the whip"), but I wish he had made a parallel reference to the indigenous people of the country.

But what he said, directly, to the Muslim world and to the people of the world's low-income nations sounded good, respectful, and serious.

Soon after he finished the address, our group and many others turned to start to leave. Because of the crowds, it took a long while to straggle back to Constitution Avenue. As we walked we heard the chopper carrying the departing Bush fly overhead, and gave a cheer for that departure.

... Anyway, I'm pretty tired right now. I am really happy I was able to be a part of it.

Then I came back to the apartment and saw the new White House website, too. Wow, this is starting to feel real.

So if "inaugurating" is about getting the "augurs"-- the heavenly signs; the karma-- more rightly aligned, then I think that task has been achieved today. But there's still a huge amount more work to do.

Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:07 PM | Comments (14)

Marc Lynch resurrects discredited 'ripeness' theory

Marc Lynch, a generally sensible young "rising star" in the world of US Arabists, today blogged about his "four suggestions for the Obama administration." Three of his suggestions are helpful, though not terribly new. The fourth-- on the Palestinian/Gaza situation-- seems actively dangerous since in it he resurrects from what I had thought was a well-deserved death the old canard of "ripeness theory." ... As in, "Oh no, we can't possibly talk about final-status issues in the Palestinian-Israeli diplomacy right now because the situation isn't 'ripe' for resolution."

The original author of ripeness theory in this context was Richard Haass, who not long thereafter got "mugged by reality" and disavowed the whole idea. But the theory lived on, most especially in the words and works of Dennis Ross, peace "processor" extraordinaire, who for 12 long years in the Bush I and Clinton administrations used that argument-- along with a second, Cold War-derived argument about the need for lengthy "confidence building measures"-- to delay and delay the moment at which the US government or anyone else might actually get serious about promoting a final-status peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

Meanwhile, as we all know, the pro-settler forces in the Israeli political elite used those delays to their great advantage to push further and further forward their project of planting settler colonies throughout the whole of the West Bank (and throughout Syria's Golan.)

What a crock that whole theory of "ripeness" turned out to be.

But now, here was Marc Lynch today, writing about the Palestinian situation:

Well, Marc, I'm guessing that by "the current Palestinian leadership" you mean Mahmoud Abbas. (Though after the past four weeks he looks far less leaderly than Haniyeh, Meshaal, and Co.) But guess what, both Abbas and Hamas are now talking about the need for a new Palestinian national unity government... They look serious about getting their political ducks in a row in preparation for the challenges ahead.

It's on the Israeli side that it now looks far more questionable whether there is indeed a "partner for peace."

But regardless of those problems, the ghastly crisis from which we're just now emerging provides just the kind of impetus and motivation that true, far-reaching-- i.e. final-settlement-seeking-- peace diplomacy so sorely needs. There truly is no excuse for not pushing ahead... And surely the whole world community (and not just the decisionmakers here in Washington) has now vividly seen the danger of simply letting the Palestinian-Israeli situation continue to fester for any further length of time.

Ripeness theory: It's ripe for burial. Right now.

Posted by Helena Cobban at 07:19 PM | Comments (9)

Echoes from Syria

I seem to have been incredibly busy since I left Damascus last Thursday evening. I've also been on an emotional roller-coaster, torn between the mounting excitement around Barack Obama's inauguration tomorrow--Washington DC is abuzz with visitors, activities, parties, and high hopes-- and my continuing deep sadness and concern over the horrors in Gaza.

Plus, there have been significant developments in the Gaza story, which I've tried to blog here.

But I just want to write something quick now, before the experience becomes too faded, about the amazing evening we spent in Damascus last Tuesday...

The small delegation of which I was part was invited to an event at the Zeitoun Church, near the Eastern Gate of the Old City of Damascus, in which a joint Christian-Muslim choir sang hymns sacred to their two religions and some patriotic songs, accompanied by traditional Arabic instruments and, at one point, by two "whirling dervishes."

This was the Alfarah Chorale, organized by Father Elias Zahlawi. Also present was the (Sunni Muslim) Grand Mufti of Syria, Ahmed Bader Hasoun, who told us a little about the meaning of some of the dervishes' sacred gestures.

If I shut my eyes I can almost see the rhythm of the dervishes' vastly swirling white skirts. I can see the great enthusiasm in the faces of the "Christian" portion of the chorale, which stood in three lines across the back of the stage in the same kind of quasi-ecclesiastical garb a choir in a US church might wear. I can see the broad smiles of the half dozen yellow-clad, hijab-wearing women in the "Muslim" portion of the chorale. I can hear the plaintive tones of the flute, the lute, and the zither. I can feel the insistence of the hand-drums; admire the deep tones of the Muslim men singers over on the left.

The music was tremendous! Extremely accomplished and moving. The choristers seemed to be singing in six or seven parts, and they all reveled in the sound they made together. Sometimes the Christians sang alone; sometimes the Muslims. But mainly they sang together, whether it was sacred songs or more secular patriotic ballads.

Both the Mufti and Father Zahlawi spoke about the great value of the coexistence among faiths and communities that Syria has hosted for many centuries now, and how this can be a model for other nations everywhere. They spoke about how they valued their memories of the Jewish community that used to enrich their lives in Syria-- nearly all its members left for the west some years ago... And about how they would love to welcome its members back to Syria.

Mufti Hasoun smiled broadly as he gave a special shout-out to "Barack Hussein Obama" on the occasion of his imminent inauguration as president of the US, and expressed the hope that Washington's ties with Syria could rapidly be improved.

But it's the rich and soaring tones of the singers, the wide skirts of the sacred dancers, and the low voice of the hand-drums that stay with me now.

We have a ceasefire in Gaza, however fragile. And tomorrow we'll have a new president here in the US. Many things that seemed hard to imagine last Tuesday now seem much more possible.

... Just 18 hours of George Bush's presidency still to go...

Posted by Helena Cobban at 06:03 PM | Comments (0)

Kudos and hugs to Laila and her family

Palestinian journalist Laila el-Haddad has done a stupendously good job of blogging the Gaza war, despite the handicaps of (a) being the primary caregiver for her and her husband's two young children, and (b) having to deal with her enormous concern for her parents, both retired physicians, who have been in their Gaza City home throughout all this time, and for all her other relatives and friends in Gaza.

She and her kids are currently living with her husband who's doing a medical residency at Duke University in North Carolina. I know a little, from my own experience having to look after my young kids in a distant country while our former home in Beirut was being severely bombed by Israel back in 1982, how tough all aspects of that situation are. But Laila has dealt with it superbly-- for the benefit and illumination of all the rest of us.

If you haven't read Laila's blog recently, do go and do so. She has brought together so many important aspects of the war, including with the numerous updates from and about her parents.

Imagine being in the situation she was in Saturday, when she received from her father what he thought might be his last communication with his loved ones outside the Strip...

I thought to take few moments on the generator to write this email to you, It might be our last communication. The Israeli army has been heavily bombarding everything in GAZA now. They escalated their attack intensively after 4 AM. Tal El-Hawa is on fire ( I will attach photos that I took of smoke from burning buildings), they just fired a missile on one apartment in a huge apartment building in front of our house ( Borj Al-Shorook) I guess Laila knows it. Phosphorus bombs now are fired everywhere on houses and on people. UNRWA's main stores in GAZA were hit.

Hundreds of people are trapped in burning buildings in Tal El-Hawa and Al-Sabra and everywhere in GAZA. It is clear now that these people decided now to finish everyone and everything in GAZA strip. I still have faith in Allah.

Thank God for the internet. Thank God for brave and caring people like Laila and her father, Dr. Moussa (Abu Tarek) el-Haddad.

Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:39 PM | Comments (0)

Why Likud is laughing...

Because the war on Gaza has turned out to be very "good" for Labour leader Ehud Barak's popularity, boosting his chances in the Feb. 10th election... But Barak has seemingly taken most of that support away from Kadima, which previously was the main challenger to Likud's lead in the opinion polls. So now, Likud's lead is even stronger. (Despite Barak's "war boost", Labour still lags far behind the two front-runners... )

I actually predicted this, verbally, a couple of weeks ago. Wish I'd blogged it at the time.

The war was all along a win-win prospect for the ever-hawkish Likud. It strengthened and stoked the hard-line racism and bellophilia that's so widely present in (much of) Israeli society. Which strengthens Likud and the parties even further to its right. Plus, basically, there's no way that either Labour or Kadima could out-Likud Likud. So Likud was bound to do well out of their horrendous attempt to do so with the recent war...

That is the situation that now so urgently needs turning around by determined and principled action on behalf of all the international community, to rein in these murderous impulses unleashed in Israeli society. The US government, which has been Israel's main enabler, backer, and international shield through all its wars of choice from 1982 through 2008/9, needs to start taking responsibility for its actions. The US policy on Arab-Israeli issues over the past 27 years has enabled and allowed all those Israeli "wars of choice." It has also enabled and allowed the pursuit by successive Israeli governments of a colonial settlement-planting project in the occupied Palestinian and Syrian lands that has caused huge amounts of harm to the land's rightful residents and has considerably complicated the search for a sustainable final peace agreement.

The time to secure that final peace is now. Not next year, but now.

Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:08 PM | Comments (9)

Palestinian politics and the rest of the war's political endgame

This morning the time-expired PA president, Mahmoud Abbas of Fateh, called for the establishment of a Palestinian national unity government. The political endgame of Israel's 22-Day War against Gaza has begun in earnest on the Palestinian side.

(On the Israeli side, the whole war can be understood as an internal political game, with the "end" of that game being focused on the general election of February 10.)

All wars are about politics: Clausewitz 101. In Israel's 22-Day War against Gaza, one major war goal was-- as Olmert and others repeatedly said-- to "change the situation" regarding the politics of Gaza and the rest of Palestine. That was, to change it in a radically anti-Hamas and probably pro-Fateh way.

Remember that ever since Hamas's victory in the January 2006 parliamentary elections, Israel and its Bush administration backers have waged a strongly anti-Hamas campaign, including maintaining the brutal siege of Gaza, arming and training Fateh militias and police in order to set them against Hamas, attempting (but failing to bring off) a coup against Hamas in Gaza in 2007, etc, etc.

The 22-Day War was a continuation of that anti-Hamas campaign.

The IDF's violent and damaging rampage against Gaza did not, however, succeed in either crushing Hamas or forcing it to surrender. But it did considerably weaken the political situation of Mahoud Abbas and his Fateh colleagues-- both within the Palestinian public and among the broader Arab and Muslim publics.

So that is the importance of Abbas's terse call for a Palestinian national unity government.

Last night, elected Hamas PM Ismail Hanniyeh declared the outcome of the war a "victory" for the Palestinian people. He added that this victory would be,

So both major Palestinian parties are now expressing their support for, apparently, a speedy reconciliation between them. This is excellent, even though the terms of the reconciliation remain to be worked out.

The last time the two sides attempted national reconciliation it was through the (Saudi-sponsored) Mecca Agreement of February 2007. Under that agreement, Haniyeh was the PM but the crucial Foreign Affairs portfolio was given to pro-Fateh independent Ziad Abu Amr, and there was a clear understanding that Hamas would encourage the Abbas-Abu Amr team to negotiate the very best possible peace deal with Israel that should then be submitted to a Palestinian national referendum.

It was that agreement that was ripped apart by Fateh's Washington-instigated coup attempt in Gaza just four months later.

After foiling the coup attempt, the Gaza-based Haniyeh then established his own, Hamas-dominated PA government in Gaza while Abbas formed a rival, US-supported PA government in the West Bank and resumed his participation in the chronically unending "peace" negotiations with Israel.

Abbas's term as elected PA president ran out on January 9, so there are now considerable questions about the legitimacy of his claim to "represent" Palestinians.

Hamas, now relatively strengthened by its survival of Israel's assault on Gaza, now looks as though it is inclined to throw the badly weakened Abbas a political lifeline. (This would parallel the policies that Hizbullah, in Lebanon, pursued toward Lebanese PM Fouad Siniora in the aftermath of the-- politically very similar-- Israeli assault on that country in 2006.) Hamas may well now allow Abbas to "front" for a unified Palestinian participation in all the big diplomacy that lies ahead, while Hamas can focus more of its energies on the much-needed tasks of physical and social reconstruction in Palestine.

The constitutional situation within the PA is badly complicated by the fact that Israel has held in prison since 2007 either all or nearly all of the two dozen pro-Hamas parliamentarians, elected in January 2006, who were resident in the West Bank. That includes Parliament Speaker Aziz Dweik.

It strikes me that a first demand for the Palestinian national unity government-- one that democrats around the world should support unconditionally-- is that Israel should immediately release all the elected Palestinian parliamentarians whom it now holds captive. (Possibly, their release could be part of a broader detainee-release program that would also involve Israel's Hamas-held POW, Gilad Shalit.)

Meanwhile, as noted above, the political endgame of the war on the Israeli side will be continuing until February 10, and quite possibly after that, during the cumbersome coalition-forming process that follows all elections in Israel. The Likud party has been chafing in opposition in Israel as Kadima and Labour have led this highly popular (in Israel) war. Immediately after the ceasefire started, its leaders quite predictably started criticizing the Kadima-Labour team for "not having gone far enough, and not having finished the job."

It's not clear yet what effect this pressure from Likud will have on the stability of the-- tenuous, un-negotiated, and parallel-- brace of ceasefires that went into operation yesterday. But I fear it can't be a good one.

What is clear to me is that almost-President Obama should, as an early order of business very soon after his inauguration tomorrow, start laying out a specifically American vision of the urgency of securing a final peace between Israel and all its neighbors, along with some of the principles on which this peace should be based. They should include the folloowing:

Obama should, ideally, lay out these ideas in a public speech that he personally gives on the subject considerably before February 10, so that the strength of this inspiring new US president's commitment to this vision will be clear to Israeli voters before they go to the polls.

(Previously, I'd expressed some support for Naomi Chazan's argument that for the US to try to do something to "influence" Israel's voters on February 10 could well end up back-firing. Now, however, in light of the urgency of the Gaza crisis and its worldwide repurcussions, I think Obama really needs to try to do this. Every action or gesture he takes that can strengthen the hand of the pro-peace forces in Israel and the rest of the region is very urgently needed.)

Politics and diplomacy: These are what this war has been all about. Now let's see the Palestinians, the Arabs, and the US all at least get their own houses in order. As for the Israelis-- whose deep bellophilia has shocked much of the world over the past three weeks-- let's just hope that they have time to reflect, in the three weeks ahead, on the proposition that war, truly, is not the answer to their problems.

Their country's war against Gaza might have made many of them "feel good" over the past three weeks. But at what cost, at what cost? Certainly, it has not made the prospects for longterm good relations with their Palestinian neighbors any easier, at all.

Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:37 AM | Comments (6)

Ceasefire, thank God. Now to the final peace.

So now we have, finally, a ceasefire in Gaza that is reciprocal but not negotiated and not durable at all.

People and governments around the world should pay some attention to ensuring the durability of this ceasefire and also-- certainly-- to providing the massive relief effort that the survivors of the Gaza assault so desperately need.

But please let's not see people getting hung up on side-issues like "how to police the Gaza tunnels." There should be no tunnels between Gaza and Egypt, or between Gaza and anyplace else, since the tunnels were only ever a side-effect of the siege/blockade to which Gaza was subjected. Now, the emphasis must be on:

2. moving with greatest speed and seriousness to the securing of the final peace agreement between Israel and all its Arab neighbors, including the Palestinians.

Some friends have told me this is premature, dangerous, and un-doable because the state of relations between Hamas and the Fateh/PA leadership remains so tense and/or uncertain. I think that is a very dangerous argument, since it is one that-- once again!-- permits a postponing of the international effort that is needed more urgently than ever before to secure the final peace.

In many episodes in the lengthy history of British de-colonization, the withdrawing (British) power and its allies actually helped to form the coalition with which Britain negotiated the withdrawal agreement. These coalitions of nationalist forces-- many of which had previously been fighting against each other, quite often at the active instigation of the colonial power-- came together in the course of the independence negotiation, partly in response to the positive momentum that the negotiation itself generated.

All that is needed in the broad negotiation are some basic and universally applied ground-rules such as: As many parties as possible should be included, provided they agree to a ceasefire during the course of the negotiation (though disarmament prior to talking is not a necessary requirement); All parties should be willing to prove their support by participating in a peaceful election or referendum; No topics of concern are out of bounds...

So let the negotiations for all three remaining strands (Israeli-Palestinian, Israeli-Syrian, Israeli-Lebanese) of the final peace begin! Within weeks! Let's see the international community-- including the US-- commit to reaching final agreement on this comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace accord within nine months. A nice gestational period. But actually, one that is also quite doable since so much of the legwork on the details of a final peace was completed during the 1990s.

At the Annapolis summit in November 2007, President George W. Bush (remember him?) and Condi Rice promised that they would reach a final peace agreement on just the Palestinian track "within a year." They did not succeed, for a large number of reasons. Firstly, they didn't really try very hard. Secondly, they were never prepared to apply even-handed pressure to both "sides" in the negotiation. Thirdly, they were meanwhile working hard not just to exclude Hamas and its allies from the negotiation but also, indeed, to encircle and crush Hamas, despite the fact that it represents a considerable portion of the Palestinian public. Fourthly, they were trying to engage only the PA/Fateh in the negotiation while preventing any kind of parallel Syrian-Israeli negotiation from progressing. Fifthly, they really weren't serious.

But another failure of the whole post-Annapolis effort was a failure of the rest of the international community. All the other, non-US powers seemed quite content to let the US continue to monopolize the (mis-)handling of this important item on the international agenda.

The "Quartet" has only ever, up until now, been a mechanism used by Washington to harness the power of others in the international community to its own goals and policy.

Now, if it continues to exist, the Quartet must become much more effectively a coordinating body for the entire international community.

Actually, why do we need a Quartet at all? Why not just let the UN Security Council run this last, sorely needed phase of the too-long-running Israeli-Arab "peace process."

Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:21 PM | Comments (7)

Israel, deterrence, and self-referentialism

Israeli leaders and analysts have proclaimed that one of the main goals of the ghastly, extremely inhumane war on Gaza was to "restore the credibility of Israeli deterrence"-- a credibility that had, they felt, been badly damaged by the outcome of the 33-Day War against Hizbullah in 2006.

But some influential Israelis, it now turns out, have a very weird and self-referential understanding of what "deterrence" is. It turns out that their version of deterrence has much more to do with their own machismo or testosterone level than it does with the attitudes or feelings of non-Israeli others who are or might become their opponents in war.

In traditional strategic thinking, deterrence is quintessentially a phenomenon that is interactive between two parties: I succeed in deterring you from attacking me if I am able to convince you that if you should do so, the retribution I would enact on you would make you far worse off than ever; and therefore, you decide not to attack me.

It is hard to absolutely prove the existence of successful deterrence, since government decisionmakers are understandably reluctant to admit openly either that they have been deterred in the past from taking actions that they might otherwise have taken or, more importantly, that they remain susceptible to such deterrent pressure in the present and the foreseeable future. (So yes, there is an element of machismo-- or more simply, face-saving-- involved in that reluctance of the deterree to admit to having been or still being deterred.)

But the reciprocal deterrence between the world's two hyper-nuclear-armed 'superpowers' was the central strategic fact of the Cold War. During those decades it provided a degree of strategic stability to what otherwise would likely have been a chaotic, violent, and possibly speciescidal era. And luckily, as the decades of the Cold War progressed, strategic thinkers and national leaders in both the US and the USSR became increasingly able to think about, map, and even talk with each other about the-- necessarily interactive-- psychological dimensions of the whole phenomenon of strategic deterrence.

But now, inside Israeli society's extremely self-referential little bubble of a political elite, a whole new understanding of 'deterrence' seems to have been incubating. I first got wind of this when I was reading a report from Israel in The Economist in London yesterday, in which the as-always-anonymous Economist reporter wrote this about the Gaza war:

bears this out.

Excuse me? The attitudes of Israelis being used as evidence about the restoration of Israel's deterrent power? Um, Economist-people, deterrence has to do with affecting the attitudes of those others who are or might be your adversaries, not with affecting your own attitudes...

Well, I thought maybe it was just that reporter (or her or his editors) getting sloppy on a fast-moving story. And yes, there certainly seems to have been editorial sloppiness or at least deep ignorance involved there. But perhaps the reporter was picking up something significant in the Israeli zeitgeist within which she or he moves. Because today, in the NYT, Steven Erlanger wrote this:

The answer will not be known for many months, but the key to the Muslim world’s reaction is actually that of the Israeli public, said Yossi Klein Halevi, of the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies in Jerusalem. “The Arabs take their cue from Israeli responses,” he said. “Deterrence is about how Israelis feel, whether they feel they’ve won or lost.”

Mr. Halevi cited the 1973 war — which Egyptians celebrate and Israelis mourn, though it ended with a spectacular Israel counterattack — and the 2006 war against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, apologized for the 2006 war on television, “but he quickly reversed himself to declare a wonderful victory when he saw the Israeli public declaring defeat,” Mr. Halevi said.

This quote is so revealing! According to Halevi, Arabs have little agency or cognitive capability of their own, but are completely reliant on "getting their cues" from Israel... So if they see Israelis feeling downhearted and defeated, Arabs will feel strong and undeterred, whereas if they see Israelis feeling strong and self-confident they will be fearful and deterred...

It is all about Israel! It is all about Israelis being able to feel machismo, strutting their stuff as they watch the smoldering ruins of Gaza schools and mosques and watch sad Gaza families counting their dead and tending their wounded.

I shan't even dwell on the moral sickness of such attitudes. I'll just point out that if Israelis really do believe that their deterrent capability is only a matter of how they themselves feel about the world, then they are are being sorely mislead.

This business about Nasrullah "apologizing for the 2006 war" that Halevi raises is another non-trivial canard that has drifted into the Israeli discourse in recent months.

First off, it's important to note that Nasrullah was not for a moment apologizing to the Israelis for Hizbullah's actions during the war as a whole. He was apologizing to the Lebanese people for the error of tactical judgment he made when, as he said, he and his advisers had not expected that their cross-border POW-capture operation of July 12, 2006 would spark such a truly disproportionate and damaging Israeli response. But at a broader operational/strategic level, Hizbullah proved itself quite able to respond to and withstand the Israeli blitzkrieg unleashed on July 12 and emerged with its core strategic goal of preserving the organizational integrity, independence, and counter-strike capability of the Hizbullah movement well realized.

As I wrote here shortly after that war, the war had been about two things: firstly, the desire of each side to "restore" the credibility of the deterrent it projected toward the other side, and secondly, the desire of the Israeli (Olmert) government to win a significant change in Hizbullah's political and organizational standing inside Lebanon. In the first of those contests, both sides won-- in that each was in fact able to reassert the credibility of the deterrent it projected toward the other. But in the second contest, Israel failed, since it had had the 'transformational' political goal in Lebanon, which it failed to realize.

The underlying durability of the mutual even though highly asymmetrical form of deterrence that was re-established between Israel and Hizbullah in 2006 is the explanation why the Israel-Lebanon front never heated up during this latest Gaza war. Both sides were presumably active and attentive, to make sure it didn't. Both sides had something of value to lose in the event that it had opened up. The mutual deterrence relationship held.

So what, now, of Gaza?

Do Israelis feel jubilant and invulnerable? Maybe so.

But is that good for peace?

Do Gazans feel extremely sad and to some extent "defeated"? I am sure they feel very, very sad. But I doubt if they feel "defeated" in the way Halevi and many other Israelis would like them to feel. There is, after all, very little evidence that any of the following has happened:

2. The Hamas leadership has surrendered.

3. Hamas's rocketing capabilities-- primitive though they are-- or its capacity to build more rockets, have been destroyed.

4. Gazans and other Palestinians have started to turn against Hamas

The latest news is that Hamas has announced that it will observe a one-week cessation in hostilities, in response to Israel's announcement yesterday of a unilateral ceasefire, and with the expectation from the Hamas side that during this coming week all the IDF troops who reinvaded Gaza during the past three weeks will withdraw.

The situation on the ground has improved somewhat today after Israel and Hamas started holding their fire, and after at least some of the IDF troops in Gaza started withdrawing.

But the Gaza situation remains very tenuous indeed. The ceasefire has been essentially un-negotiated, and as I blogged yesterday important elements of it have yet to be agreed.

Today Condi Rice, most of whose previous actions regarding this war have been extremely unhelpful, finally made a statement that looks fairly constructive.

Here's the report of what she said,

"The United States commends Egypt for its [mediating] efforts and remains deeply concerned by the suffering of innocent Palestinians," she added. "We welcome calls for immediate coordinated international action to increase assistance flows and will contribute to such efforts."

So now, let's hope the ceasefire does get made a lot more durable over the days ahead-- and that this can help pave the way not just to the "normalization" of the situation in Gaza but to the speedy securing of a final-status peace Israel and all its Arab neighbors.

Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:23 PM | Comments (4)

One Virtuous Man

Tomorrow is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

In the late 1960's a fellow officer of mine, an African-American, call him Captain Em, was quite upset that Dr. King had come out against the Vietnam War. King, Captain Em stated to me, was fully justified in seeking better civil rights but he had no business commenting upon the foreign policy of the United States, particularly the righteous campaign in Vietnam (which was to result in the deaths of 58,000 US troops, average age of 19, and millions of Vietnamese). I disagreed with Captain Em, but at the time I wasn't sure why. Now I know better.

What are the responsibilities of citizenship, after all?

Henry David Thoreau, at a time when the US was invading Mexico, wrote about the functions of good citizenship in his essay on Civil Disobedience.

Dr. King, like Tolstoy and Gandhi, was familiar with Thoreau's work, and also was particularly influenced by "Civil Disobedience." So when King decided in 1967 to oppose the Vietnam War he was prepared for the enmity that naturally came from his regular supporters such as Captain Em. Thoreau had warned him:

men,

Dr. King delivered his little-known speech "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence" on April 4, 1967, at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City.

First, Dr. King addressed the Captain Ems of the world.

Then he talked about the importance of Vietnam, and that he had seven reasons for opposing the war.

His second reason for speaking out:

He addressed the futility of violence:

The soul of America was at stake:

He had earned the Nobel Peace Prize:

He was after all a minister.

And a final reason:

Then Dr. King got to the meat of it. This madness must cease!:

It was a fairly long speech, with a lot of logical thought, and you might want to read it all. Here's how Dr. King ended his plea for sanity (which was largely disregarded):

As that noble bard of yesterday, James Russell Lowell, eloquently stated:

Though the cause of evil prosper,
Yet 'tis truth alone is strong;
Though her portion be the scaffold,
And upon the throne be wrong:
Yet that scaffold sways the future,
And behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow
Keeping watch above his own.

And that was the anti-war side of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., an honest man and a patriot, who was on that day nearly forty-two years ago (and at many other times) Thoreau's one virtuous man. I bet Captain Em now thinks so too, if he's still around. I hope he is.

Martin Luther King? He's still with us, for sure.

Posted by Don Bacon at 12:17 AM | Comments (4)

Link Gaza ceasefire details to final peace push

The need for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza becomes more urgent every day. However, even after the guns and rockets-- and Israel's warplanes, naval guns, and precision-guided missiles-- all fall silent, there will remain numerous very important details of the ceasefire agreement to be worked out.

These "modalities" constitute the difference between a "raw" ceasefire (the guns fall silent, but there is little assurance this will last) and a more robust ceasefire agreement. The modalities include items like:

2. The access agreements between Gaza and the outside world-- including both immediate access for urgent humanitarian relief and longer-term access for the rebuilding, reconstruction and hopefully also economic development programs in Gaza;

3. The need for arms control provisions;

4. Monitoring mechanisms for the ceasefire and for the above three agreements that are credible, inclusive, effective, and therefore robust;

5. Other items like the release of detainees related to the current fighting.

These are not easy items to reach agreement on quickly, even though Israel and Hamas have previously built up some level of trust and understanding around the June 2008 ceasefire. Negotiating these modalities must not stand in the way of concluding a speedy ceasefire. But we need to understand that one of the major reasons both sides continue to fight is because each wants to win the optimal terms regarding these modalities. (Another is that neither side wants to 'back down' first.)

However, looking at the above list of the ceasefire-related modalities that need to negotiated, it is clear that they provide a key segue between what needs to be done for this ceasefire and some of the continuing items on the final-peace agenda.

Besides, if a final peace agreement between Israel and all of its Arab neighbors is not secured well before the end of this year, then we can expect further extremely damaging crises in Gaza or elsewhere in the region at any time over the coming years.

The momentum of this crisis needs to be seized and exploited for a comprehensive final peace effort.

I was encouraged by the statements Obama made a number of times this week to the effect that he intends to start working for an inclusive final peace agreement "from Day One."

Day One is now three days away. Even if there's a "raw" ceasefire in Gaza before then, the modalities to make the ceasefire more robust will remain to be worked out. Obama should start spelling out the urgency-- and the huge benefits-- of a comprehensive final peace. From Day One.

(Note: Sorry that I earlier published two versions of this same post under different headlines. The vagaries of trying to blog while traveling... ~HC)

Posted by Helena Cobban at 06:12 AM | Comments (17)

Tewks: "Let the Children Dance"

I recently highlighted Gina Bennett's National Security Mom, with it's marvelous drawing from the "lessons we teach our children" to understand national security.

I've been wondering then what lessons Israel has been purporting to teach to the children of Gaza. Is this the message of the iron fist, that if you dare to mess with Israel, you will be pounded, mercilessly, until you submit? That seems to be logic of Tom Friedman's latest column, wherein he invokes the "success" of Israel's pounding of Lebanon in 2006 to explain Israel's Gaza "strategy:"

"Israel basically said that when dealing with a nonstate actor, Hezbollah, nested among civilians, the only long-term source of deterrence was to exact enough pain on the civilians — the families and employers of the militants — to restrain Hezbollah in the future....That was the education of Hezbollah."

In Gaza, Friedman can't quite tell "if Israel is trying to eradicate Hamas or trying to “educate” Hamas, by inflicting a heavy death toll on Hamas militants and heavy pain on the Gaza population."

Friedman favors "educating" those civilians who would vote for Hamas. He prefers that Israel not "obliterate" them. How magnanimous.

We're now past 1,000 Gazans dead, including over 300 children. With Gazans now properly "educated," Friedman deems the time for "diplomacy" with them is at hand

But what lessons have the surviving children learned? Are they now more likely to submit to Israel's will or turn in despair to very violent means?

As I have struggled with such madness, I came across a lyric from a rising Charlottesville singer/thinker, David Tewks: I post his blog preface and song with his permission.

In order to keep my heart from imploding with grief over the mess of the world, and especially the hopelessness of Gaza in this moment, I offer a song of hope. [H]oping for a better future is either an act of idiocy or of great faith. I have played the fool plenty of times. In this moment, I am choosing in faith to live and act in hope....
>Let the Children Dance

Out in the heart of darkness, out in the streets of pain
the world is in a harness, and creaking at the strain
see the leaders of the nations crippled with an aching doubt
yet from an ancient hillside, blameless blood is crying out
(can't you hear it shout?):

Let the children dance, let the children sing
Let them celebrate, rejoice in everything...

You do what you want to. Don't ask me what I think
But sooner than sooner, we'll either swim or sink
Just remember the children playing at your feet
They hold the precious pieces that make our lives complete
(I hear 'em say to me...)

Let the children dance, let the children sing
Let them celebrate, rejoice in everything...

Oh, there's still a light a-shining
Irresistable wind is blowing through
And even the work that was meant for evil....
has no way of stopping you!

Posted by Scott Harrop at 10:08 AM | Comments (15)

Just Do It, George

I know everyone was glued to her or his TV screen watching George Bush's farewell address, and if you were then you were no doubt struck by a line in his speech that was stolen from Jimmy Carter's farewell address 28 years ago. (h/t Heather Hurlburt)

George Bush's 2009 farewell address:

Jimmy Carter's 1981 farewell address:

Now George Bush can function as a citizen! Think about it. And there are things that George (like Jimmy) wants to do.

In March 2008, after U.S. President George W. Bush got an earful about problems and progress in Afghanistan, he said:

Well, we've got some jobs lined up for George now that he's leaving office where it will be romantic, you know, confronting danger. Afghanistan! Yes, that storied land of the Hindu Kush and the Khyber Pass can now be a reality for Georgie.

Heck, he's only 62 years old and with all that mountain-biking I'm sure that even a dummy like him he can handle the easy jobs we've found for him.

Anyhow, here's some jobs for Georgie in Aghanistan, where he can have a fantastic experience even at his age.

First, with his Commander-in Chief experience, there are some jobs working for KBR in operations:

Requirements
Coordinates with Operations project teams by developing and implementing common work processes and procedures and providing other management and administrative assistance as required. Reviews operating reports for content and report compliance. Assists management in the identification of client/customer needs and the development of appropriate work processes to meet identified needs.

Job Title: Operations Specialist

Requirements
Under general supervision, assists project teams by developing and implementing common work processes and procedures and providing other management and administrative assistance as required. Creates support organization structure for facilities operations. Reviews operating reports for content and report compliance.

Now if those don't fit, then with Georgie's executive experience there are these positions:

Requirements
Works under close supervision, with work closely defined and standardized which allows the incumbent limited opportunity to use judgment or initiative. Performs simple, routine, and repetitive administrative functions. Requires 2-3 years of experience and a high school graduate or equivalent.

Job Title: Administrative Specialist, Senior

Requirements
Under limited supervision, works within a specialized function with work verified on an as needed basis. Some independence is exercised in defining methods and procedures used to reach an end product. Requires ability to analyze and resolve problems and effectively deliver information and respond to questions from groups of managers, clients, customers, and the general public.

Okay, absent Karl Rove and Dick Cheney we might have trouble with the general/close/ limited supervision, but Georgie is motivated ("fantastic experience"). Just do it, George, and be sure to write. Thanks for everything that you'll do. And let's hope the experience will make a man of you. It's never too late.

Posted by Don Bacon at 12:13 AM | Comments (14)

Gaza Update

What are the US 'papers of record' up to?

The Washington Post has offered balanced coverage:

Israelis Push to Edge of Gaza City
Move Could Signal A Long Urban Battle

But this WaPo essay is ridiculous--
Gaza's True 'Disproportion'
Carlos Alberto Montaner

Israelis are being accused of suffering too few casualties in their confrontation with the Hamas terrorists. Those who reason thus usually speak the words "disproportion" or "asymmetry" in an indignant tone. While at this writing close to a thousand Arab Palestinians have died or been wounded as a result of the bombings, the Israeli losses amount to just over a dozen. . .Tel Aviv's critics -- from whom an anti-Semitic stench often rises -- do not say whether Israel should increase its quota of cadavers or if it must reduce the Arabs' quota to achieve the reasonable proportion of blood that will soothe the peculiar itch for parity that afflicts them. . . .This demand for "proportionality" can only be called surprising. . .Israel has not the slightest interest in causing casualties.

The New York Times:
Israelis United on War as Censure Rises Abroad

JERUSALEM — To Israel’s critics abroad, the picture could not be clearer: Israel’s war in Gaza is a wildly disproportionate response to the rockets of Hamas, causing untold human suffering and bombing an already isolated and impoverished population into the Stone Age, and it must be stopped. Yet here in Israel very few, at least among the Jewish population, see it that way.

And this Op-Ed NY Times piece by Rashid Khalidi is good.
What You Don’t Know About Gaza

NEARLY everything you’ve been led to believe about Gaza is wrong. Below are a few essential points that seem to be missing from the conversation, much of which has taken place in the press, about Israel’s attack on the Gaza Strip.

Posted by Don Bacon at 10:16 AM | Comments (13)

Get Afghanistan Right

This is "Get Afghanistan Right Week" and here is some information to look at:

We Can't Afford to Sink Deeper into the Afghan Quagmire
Let's be clear: the war in Afghanistan is not "the good war." It is not "the right war," as President-elect Obama has called it. Nor is it really Bush's war, considering how many Congressional representatives (Democrats included) initially supported it and continue to favor the Obama administration's calls for escalation. And yet it's not quite Obama's war either -- though it could be soon. Right now it's just our country's war, and as such we need to be able to discuss it frankly and freely -- with open discourse that was absent in the run up to both this war and the one in Iraq.

Taking Down Pro-Escalation Arguments
In this month’s issue of Foreign Policy, Nathaniel Fick and John Nagl lay out a detailed pro-escalation argument. Alex Thurston takes them apart.

Obama's Got One Thing Right About the Mess In Afghanistan-- It's Inexorably Connected To The Mess In Pakistan

Five Suggestions for Diplomatic Progress in South Asia
It’s not fair to criticize escalation in Afghanistan without offering alternatives, so here are the five things to do instead of escalating.

More good stuff here.

And my previous article Operation Enduring Failure

What do you think?

Posted by Don Bacon at 09:42 AM | Comments (5)

From Specialst Armer to Obama: Actions vs. Words

The WaPo today informs us that US troops are increasingly "uneasy" in Iraq. No mention is made of the carnage being inflicted on Gaza as a concern.

Instead, journo Ernesto Londoño informs us that the concern is over "the new security agreement that demands that American combat troops depend more heavily than ever on their often-bungling Iraqi counterparts." That, we are told, has left some troops feeling "vulnerable."

Londoño quotes a US Army Specialist Cory Aermer, age 23:

"We've got to walk on eggshells.... I understand you can't go out and shoot everyone and play Rambo. But war is war. We shouldn't be falling under the jurisdiction of a country we're at war with."

Excuse me? Assuming Londoño didn't put words in his mouth, somebody should explain to Specialist Armer that the US Army is not at war with the country of Iraq, but with, "the bad guys." The idea of course is to get the good people of Iraq to reject the "bad guys," to help them stand independently for themselves.

When not taking condescending swipes at Iraqi soldiers, Londoño appears to be siding with complaints about US troops being "forced" to "comply with the new requirement that bars the U.S. government from holding suspected criminals who have not been charged by Iraqi authorities." According to a US Captain Dominic Heil,

"We used to detain people for their intelligence value only.... We can't do that anymore."

One hopes the Captain comprehends that the policy shift is actually good for American interests. It's far easier to convince Iraqis of the merits of things like the rule of law when the US practices what it preaches. National Security "Mom" has it right: "Actions speak louder than words."

An all-too-sad excuse often made for US soldiers behaving badly in Iraq was their civilian leadership's winking and nodding at human rights abuses. I still have hopes for the incoming administration, but Barrack Obama's comments on Sunday explaining why he's in no apparent rush to close the Guantanamo Bay are disconcerting:

It is more difficult than I think a lot of people realize and we are going to get it done but part of the challenge that you have is that you have a bunch of folks that have been detained, many of whom who may be very dangerous who have not been put on trial or have not gone through some adjudication. And some of the evidence against them may be tainted even though it's true.

Obama apparently wants to create "a process" by which we can keep them and get around (e.g., "balance") those pesky human rights concerns that the world finds so important. Glen Greenwald draws out the implications of Obama's apparent stance here:

What he's saying is quite clear. There are detainees who the U.S. may not be able to convict in a court of law. Why not? Because the evidence that we believe establishes their guilt was obtained by torture... But Obama wants to detain them anyway.... So before he can close Guantanamo, he wants a new, special court to be created.... where evidence obtained by torture... can be used to justify someone's detention..... That's what he means when he refers to "creating a process."

Mr. President elect, say it isn't so. Please stop even implying actions that will drown out our words. In your campaign, you eloquently said that, "we will send a message to the world that we are serious about our values."

Just what message would a "process" that permits the use of evidence obtained through torture send?

Posted by Scott Harrop at 10:52 AM | Comments (43)

Gaza open thread, mid-Jan

Here's Cordesman's excellent strategic analysis to start you off.

And here's some excellent legal analysis from Shamai Leibowitz, on "Israeli Soldiers' Duty to Prevent the Commission of War Crimes".

Here, also from Shamai, is an Open Letter to Israeli Soldiers on their responsibility to do this.

... So friends, I know that many people's emotions are getting run ragged with what's happening. But please try to stay civil and respectful in your comments here. Some of them have been getting close to massive group stereotyping or even hate speech. You might want to go and re-read the JWN commenters' guidelines.

Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:53 PM | Comments (22)

Trash Talk

Reader D. Mathews has alerted us to a despicable congressman, Mark Kirk (R-IL), who said at a pro-Israel rally: "To misquote Shakespeare, something is rotten in Gaza and now it's time to take out the trash."

Here are some visuals of the "trash" that has been 'taken out of Gaza', here, here, here, here and here.

Speaking of trash, it seems to me that something is rotten in the US Congress, and judging from its 20% poll approval rating and its 71% disapproval rating I'm not the only one who thinks this way.

Posted by Don Bacon at 04:22 PM | Comments (3)

Blogging on Gaza

Some news and opinions from Middle East bloggers.

From Gaza, with Love:
8th of January -13th day of the Israeli Attack against Gaza
720 are killed
including :-
215 children
89 women
12 1st aid health workers
more than 3000 are injured many with serious injuries
11 ambulances were attacked and destroyed while on duty

a Palestinian mother:
The military offensive in the Gaza Strip is affecting civilians indiscriminately, while medical teams continue to face serious obstacles to providing assistance, the international medical humanitarian organization Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said today. The international community must not be content with a limited truce, which MSF said is largely inadequate for providing life-saving assistance.

The Gaza Blog:
'This is not like the previous invasions - this time they mean to kill us. There is no escape.'

Israeli human rights groups:
Maysa' a-Samuni, 19, tells how on 4 Jan., Israeli soldiers ordered her entire extended family to gather in one building. The next morning, as some members tried to leave, the army shelled the building, killing and wounding dozens.

from Sderot:
We all know that sometime (hopefully very soon) there will be some kind of agreement and both sides will talk. We all know that this agreement will not disarm either side and remove the treat of future hostilities. However it will be reached. Why then did so many civilians have to pay such an appalling price for the stupidity and incompetence of our leaders? I am both furious, heartbroken to see how our region has fallen so deep into this tragedy which could have been avoided in the first place.

Sabbah:
Israel is engulfed once more with righteous fury that translates into destructive policies in the Gaza Strip. This appalling self-justification for the inhumanity and impunity is not just annoying, it is a subject worth dwelling on, if one wants to understand the international immunity for the massacre that rages on in Gaza.

7iber (Jordan):
The Medical Campaign: Building on our successful 48-hour, food and clothes campaign, 7iber has decided to focus its energies on raising funds for much-needed medical supplies for Gaza, based on cooperating with people in the field. We have already raised over 15,000JDs but our goal is to double this figure in order to purchase expensive equipment, including kidney dialysis machines. At the moment, we need around 6000JDs [$85] to buy a machine by Thursday the 14th of January 2009.

foreign policy blog:
Israel’s air strikes, taking Hamas as their putative target, have highlighted a rift in the Arab world that has been evident since Hamas defeated Fatah in the 2006 Palestinian legislative elections. It is, at its root, a battle of approaches – a conflict between the negotiators and the rejectionists, between those Fatah supporters who blame Hamas for initiating conflict with Israel, and those Hamas backers who paint Fatah and its Arab allies as complicit in Israeli atrocities.

Nasir:
As the Palestinian death toll approaches 400, much of popular anger throughout the Arab world has been directed at Egypt — seen by many as complicit in the Israeli campaign. “Israel would not have hit Gaza like this without a green light from Egypt,” Hamdi Hassan, MP for the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s largest opposition movement, told IPS. “The Egyptian government allowed this assault on Gaza in hopes of finishing off Hamas.”

Yasmin:
What can we do for Ghazzeh? I have been thinking of how we can really help instead of just being passive.

Posted by Don Bacon at 01:10 PM | Comments (2)

Counter Recruitment

This is the third and final installment in the American Warrior trilogy. Previous articles were on the need and recruitment of "warriors" into the US military ground forces.

Counter-recruitment is a strategy often taken up to oppose war. Counter-recruitment is an attempt to prevent military recruiters from enlisting civilians into the military. There are several methods commonly utilized in a counter-recruitment campaign, ranging from the political speech to direct action. Such a campaign can also target entities connected to the military, such as intelligence agencies, or private corporations, especially those with defense contracts.

Military recruitment and resistance to it has historically been a significant political issue in colonies of the British Empire. This is true in Ireland especially as the campaigns for independence from the British Empire intensified. The British Army raised many regiments from English colonies to fight in conflicts such as the Crimean War, World War I, and World War II. Irish songs opposing recruitment to the British army that date from the mid 1800s provide some evidence that this colonial policy was resisted - examples include Arthur McBride, Mrs. McGrath, and Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye, which in part goes:

With your guns and drums and drums and guns, hurroo, hurroo
With your guns and drums and drums and guns, hurroo, hurroo
With your guns and drums and drums and guns
The enemy nearly slew ye
Oh my darling dear, Ye look so queer
Johnny I hardly knew ye.

Where are your eyes that were so mild, hurroo, hurroo
Where are your eyes that were so mild, hurroo, hurroo
Where are your eyes that were so mild
When my heart you so beguiled?
Why did ye skedaddle from me and the child?
Oh Johnny, I hardly knew ye.

Where are your legs that used to run, hurroo, hurroo
Where are your legs that used to run, hurroo, hurroo
Where are your legs that used to run
When you went for to carry a gun
To be sure but your dancing days are done
Oh Johnny, I hardly knew ye.

from Army of None:

However, even as these destructive efforts to militarize youth accelerate, so do the creative and powerful efforts of students, community members, and veterans to challenge them. Today, the counter recruitment movement—from counseling to poetry slams to citywide lobbying efforts—has become one of the most practical ways to tangibly resist U.S. policy that cuts funding for education and social programs while promoting war and occupation. Without enough soldiers, the U.S. cannot sustain its empire.

There are many agencies devoted to counter-recruitment and GI resistance. Most of these agencies are involved in publicizing the rights of students to opt out of the Patriot Act program, passed by the Congress and enacted into law, which requires US secondary schools to provide the military with the names, addresses and phone numbers of students. Here are some of the agencies in the US and Canada:

The American Friends Service Committee

The National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth

Canada
Operation Objection
Seeing recruiters on Canadian campuses and in our communities is becoming a much more frequent occurrence. The peace and student movements need to meet this challenge head on. And that's where counter-recruitment comes in.

CodePink4Peace
As opposition grows against the Iraq war, more forceful tactics and outright lies will be used by the military to recruit the hearts, minds and bodies of young people.With the U.S. Military’s multi-billion dollar advertising and recruitment budget, we must work to counter the false promises of military recruiters with creative, local, grassroots activism and offer real alternatives to military service.

Courage to Resist
Although the efforts of Courage to Resist are primarily focused on supporting public GI resisters, the organization also strives to provide political, emotional, and material support to all military objectors critical of our government's current policies of empire.

Grandmothers for Peace International
In most cultures around the world, grandmothers are revered as the “keepers of the peace.” We are inspired and motivated by that fact, but realize that in today's dangerous world we can no longer keep or promote peace by sitting in our rocking chairs!

Iraq Veterans Against The War
Truth in Recruiting: Every day, all across this country, there are military recruiters lying to persuade young people to sign up for the military. Proponents of the policy in Iraq are quick to point out that everyone in the military volunteered, but what does that mean if most soldiers were tricked into enlisting by the lies that recruiters tell?

LA: Coalition Against Militarism in Our Schools
CAMS is an organization of students, activists, parents and teachers.

Military Out of Our Schools
CCCO's Military Out of Our Schools Campaign works with people like you, local members of communities nationwide, to challenge recruiter's access to schools and gain equal access to talk about the realities of military life and present alternatives to military service .

ProjectYaNo.org
Young people don't have to join the military to learn valuable skills, find adventure, pay for college or serve others.

Ruckus Society
Not Your Soldier: The Not Your Soldier Project gives youth the tools they need to stop the military invasion of their schools and their communities.

Student Peace Action Network
We are a grassroots peace and justice organization working from schools across the United States. We organize for an end to the physical, social and economic violence caused by U.S. militarism.

United For Peace
It is time to participate in counter-recruitment campaigns in order to stop the harvesting of human beings.

Veterans For Peace
Members and chapters actively participate in efforts to save VA healthcare and defend of veterans’ rights; to protect our civil liberties threatened by the “Patriot Act” and other repressive legislation; to provide counseling through the GI Rights Hotline to active duty military needing assistance; and providing alternative information to counter military recruiters in the schools.

War Resisters League
The WRL’s Youth and Counter Militarism Project, based in New York City, provides young people with the resources and training necessary to agitate against military recruitment in their schools and communities.

The last words go to Smedley Butler:

Somewhere – five thousand miles from home. Night. Darkness. Cold. A drizzling rain. The noise is terrific. All Hell has broken loose. A star shell burst in the air. Its unearthly flare lights up the muddy field. There's a lot of tangled rusty barbed wires out there and a boy hanging over them – his stomach ripped out, and he's feebly calling for help and water. His lips are white and drawn. He's in agony.

There's your boy. The same boy who's lying in bed tonight. The same boy who trusts you. . . . Are you going to run out on him? Are you going to let someone beat a drum or blow a bugle and make him chase after it? Thank God, this is a democracy and by your voice and your vote you can save your boy. (from a 1939 broadcast)

---------
Don Bacon is a retired army officer who founded the Smedley Butler Society several years ago because, as General Butler said, war is a racket.

Posted by Don Bacon at 10:12 AM | Comments (5)

Going to Syria

This afternoon I'm leaving for Syria. I'm part of a delegation of (non-governmental) US citizens-- most of whom are considerably closer to the "Establishment" here than I am-- whose goal is to explore with Syrian counterparts and colleagues the possibilities for improving the US-Syrian relationship.

After eight years in which Dick Cheney and Elliott Abrams systematically blocked any attempt to do this, I hope the time is right for some real change.

It won't be easy. The extremist pro-Israeli lobbying groups in this country still have considerable, continuing clout in Congress (as was demonstrated by this past week's "Swift-boating" of any attempts at balanced congressional resolutions on Gaza, which was orchestrated completely by AIPAC.) Regarding Syria, back in 2003 the US congress passed into law the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act (SALSRA) which sought to place considerable additional sanctions and restrictions on Syria-- additional to those that already stemmed from Syria's longstanding identification by the State Department as a State Supporter of Terrorism.

The US has not had an ambassador in Syria since 2006. There are huge numbers of issues that need to be untangled...

I'm not sure our little group can untangle them all. But I hope we can do something to improve and expand bilateral ties at all levels.

Dick Cheney and the people whom he had carefully placed throughout the Bush administration argued that Syria is both a state supporter of terrorism and a highly dictatorial state... and because of that it should not be "rewarded" in any way by being engaged with in the conduct of normal diplomacy, or even treated as a normal member of the "family of nations". Instead, it should be ostracized, excluded, and punished until such a time as either President Bashar al-Asad raised a white flag of complete surrender to US power, or he was overthrown.

Even when Israeli PM Olmert opened up his indirect final-peace negotiating channel with Asad through Turkey 18 months ago, Cheney and his supporters tried to dissuade him from doing that!

I find it highly ironic, regarding the whole "democratization" business the Bushites were-- oh-so-briefly-- enamored of in the Middle East, that actually the government of Syria reflects the will of the Syrian people in matters of national policy to a considerably greater degree than the governments of Egypt or Jordan, both of which are staunchly and generously supported by Washington. (Actually, that's a big part of why their citizens don't like those two governments. That, and the extremely repressive practices of their US-funded "security" services.)

Right now, getting a decent working relationship with Syria's government and people is more important for the true interests of the US citizenry than ever before. Syria is a key actor in all the problem/crisis areas of the region. The relationships it has with all parties in Palestine and all parties in Iraq are a considerable resource for peacemakers.

Of course, in the negotiations for a speedy and robust ceasefire for Gaza, Syria is one of the key actors.

I probably shan't be blogging here much for the next week. But who knows? Who knows what fascinating experiences I might have in Syria?

Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:44 AM | Comments (18)

At IPS: " Gaza, and Israel's Wars of Forced Regime Change"

Here is the 35-year-long purview piece on this topic I wrote for IPS this morning. I noted that the current war on Gaza is the sixth war aiming at imposing forced regime change (FRC) on its neighbors that Israel has waged since 1982. Two of the earlier ones were against Palestinian "regimes" and their associated infrastructures: Lebanon 1982 and the OPTs, 2002. Three were against Hizbullah in Lebanon in 1993, 1996, and 2006.

I concluded thus:

Also, all these wars were planned in some detail in advance, with the Israeli government just waiting for -- or even, on occasion, provoking -- some action from the other side that they could use as a launch pretext. All have received strong financial, rearming, and political support from the U.S., not least because they were waged in the name of counter-terrorism.

But the outcomes are important, too. At a purely military level, the two FRC wars against the PLO were the ones that Israel was able to "win", in terms of being largely able to dismantle the structures it targeted. But the longer term, political-strategic outcomes of both those wars were distinctly counter-productive for Israel since they paved the way for the emergence of much tougher minded and better organised movements.

By contrast, Israel was unable to win any of its three FRC wars against Hizbullah. In each, Hizbullah withstood Israel's assault long enough to force it into a ceasefire. All these wars ended up strengthening Hizbullah's position inside Lebanese politics.

So how will Israel's current attempt to inflict forced regime change on the Gaza Palestinians work out? If history is a guide, as it is, then this war will bring about either Hamas's dismantling or a ceasefire on terms that will lead to (or at least allow) Hamas's continued political strengthening.

A dismantling is unlikely, since Hamas's leadership is located outside Gaza and has links throughout the Arab and Islamic worlds that ensure that annihilation of Hamas in Gaza would have serious global consequences. But if Hamas is dismantled in Gaza, it is most likely to be replaced there -- faster or slower -- by groups that are even more militant and more Islamist than itself.

Meantime, the high human costs of the war continue to mount daily.

IPS today also carries a great piece titled Israel Rejected Hamas Ceasefire Offer in December by Gareth Porter. It gives more details of the negotiations carried out in early and mid-December over the possibility and modalities of a renewal of the six-month tahdi'eh that was due to expire December 18.

He writes about--

Pastor said he passeda Meshal's statement on to a "senior official" in the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) the day after the meeting with Meshal. According to Pastor, the Israeli official said he would get back to him, but did not.

"There was an alternative to the military approach to stopping the rockets," said Pastor. He added that Israel is unlikely to have an effective ceasefire in Gaza unless it agrees to lift the siege.

Porter has more details. Read the whole thing.

And for the final item on your reading list on the political dimensions of the ongoing tragedy in Gaza, there is this piece from the percipient Palestinian analyst Mouin Rabbani. I hope you all understand the ironic (or despairing?) reference in its title: "Birth Pangs of a New Palestine."

Rabbani made this excellent point in his essay:

In the case of Hamas, this goal has additionally meant dismantling -- with bombs and missiles launched from land, sea and air -- the network of Islamist social, religious and charitable institutions that preceded and laid the foundation for the emergence of the movement as a political and military force in the late 1980s, and have been vital to its ability to establish and maintain a support base in every sector of Palestinian society. Israel concluded that because the movement controls the PA in Gaza and has an autonomous web of institutions that can provide services independently of the government, both types of installation had to be destroyed.

He concludes:

Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:02 PM | Comments (9)

Obama's grandfather, the British in Kenya, and Gaza today

Barack Obama's Kenyan grandfather, Hussein Onyango Obama, became involved with the Kenyan independence movement while working as a cook for a British army officer after World War 2. Reporters for the London Times recently wrote about H.O. Obama's experiences in the British-ruled Kenya of those years that

“The African warders were instructed by the white soldiers to whip him every morning and evening till he confessed,” said Sarah Onyango, Hussein Onyango’s third wife, the woman Mr [president-elect] Obama refers to as “Granny Sarah”.

Mrs Onyango, 87, described how “white soldiers” visited the prison every two or three days to carry out “disciplinary action” on the inmates suspected of subversive activities.

“He said they would sometimes squeeze his testicles with parallel metallic rods. They also pierced his nails and buttocks with a sharp pin, with his hands and legs tied together with his head facing down,” she said The alleged torture was said to have left Mr Onyango permanently scarred, and bitterly antiBritish. “That was the time we realised that the British were actually not friends but, instead, enemies,” Mrs Onyango said.

Harvard historian Caroline Elkins has exhaustively documented the mass incarceration and intimidation campaign the British ran against suspected Kenyan independence activists in her recent book Imperial Reckoning. What she documented there tracked very closely with what Sarah Onyango told the Times reporters about her late husband's treatment (except that according to Elkins's documentation, around 150,000 of the Kenyan incarcerees may have ended up dead.)

Elkins also noted that life had become particularly difficult for the Kenyan indigenes, and their anti-British fervor had increased, when the British decided to plant many more white settlers into Kenya after the war, displacing hundreds of thousands of indigenous African farmers from their land and resources and confining them to "reserves" that had pitifully few natural resources that rapidly became depleted as the additional displaced Africans were all trucked in.

In my late-2006 review of Elkins's book, (PDF here), I noted that the "anti-Mau-Mau" campaign the British carried out, very brutally, in Kenya in the 1950s was a sort of "bridge experience" that linked the many equally brutal campaigns of counter-insurgency that colonial settler regimes around the world had waged for many earlier decades against the indigenous people of the lands where they settled, and some of the later COIN campaigns (Algeria, Vietnam, etc) that constituted, in effect, the "last throes" of settler colonialism.

Elkins's work was also notable because she had access both to several portions of good British archives and to some living survivors of the concentration camps whom, after learning some local languages, she was able to interview for her work.

But settler colonialism hasn't gone away, has it? It lives on in the lengthy campaign that Israel maintains to this very day to implant its settlers in occupied Arab lands, stealing the land and associated natural resources from their indigenous owners and forcing the indigenes into tightly controlled "reservations", penal areas, large open-air concentration camps, and actual prisons. This campaign involves-- just as in British Kenya or apartheid South Africa-- a ruthless effort to oppress and punish anyone who tries to make a sustained objection to the ongoing projects of settlement aggrandizement.

The London Times is making some of its archives available online these days. On this portal page, you'll find links to several (generally PDF) contemporary articles and photo-spreads about the anti-Mau-Mau campaign in the 1950s. Many of the accounts look as if they were about Israel in Gaza and the West Bank today. (You can also find a link to an even older Times story, titled, "Gandhi's Salt March: Extremist Leader in Illegal Salt Collection." No comment needed.)

President-elect Obama has written eloquently about the "Dreams of his father." I hope he also takes some time to reflect on the meaning, in today's world, of the actual experiences of his grandfather.

Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:11 PM | Comments (6)

Israel & Hamas reject ceasefire; details urgently need negotiating

Just because the Security Council calls for an immediate ceasefire, doesn't mean it happens. What it does mean is that the various portions of the international community are gearing up their capabilities to nail down the exact modalities of the ceasefire, including no doubt all or most of the six points I laid out here.

These negotiations need to be conducted with the utmost speed, given the continuation of terrible suffering among Gaza's 1.5 million people. It's a pity the US government is not an active supporter of resolution 1860, since it is the power with the greatest ability to force Israeli compliance with the will of the international community (and the demands of basic humanity.)

Hours after the Security Council passed 1860 by a vote of 14-0, an Israeli Foreign Ministry statement rejected it, saying:

With the hostilities continuing last night even after passage of the resolution, Hamas also rejected it. AFP reports their position thus:

"As a result we do not feel concerned by this resolution and when the different parties apply it they will have to deal with those who are in charge on the ground."

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri made similar comments in an interview with Qatar-based Al-Jazeera television on Friday.

"In the Hamas movement, we do not think that the battle has ended because this resolution was issued, especially after ... the continuation of the aggression in Gaza after it was issued," Abu Zuhri said.

Israel carried out more than 50 air strikes in Gaza overnight, which Palestinian emergency services said killed 12 civilians.

And so-- as in 1982 in Lebanon, as in 1996 in Lebanon, and as in 2006 in Lebanon-- the latter stages of the current war will see an intense though indirect negotiation between the two fighting parties over the precise modalities and terms of the ceasefire.

The international negotiators need to act fast and with a real commitment to preserving human life and laying the basis for a deeper peacemaking process to immediately follow. And the rest of us need to keep up our pressure for an immediate ceasefire. One good place to do that is at Avaaz. Another, for US citizens, is by contacting your congressional representatives.

The push for an urgent ceasefire is certainly an effort that, here as anywhere else, should include an international embargo on all supplies of arms to the warring parties so long as the hostilities continue.

Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:53 AM | Comments (24)

Security Council orders ceasefire; No US veto

And so, after 13 days of extremely lethal and quite inhumane Israeli attacks on Gaza, the UN Security Council has finally passed a ceasefire resolution, resolution 1860.

The vote was 14 to zero, with the US abstaining. At least the US didn't veto it. I guess we should be thankful for small mercies.

But it's notable that it was not until today that the other powers in the Security Council-- including the Europeans, Russia, China, and the Arabs (though they are less powerful)-- became so highly motivated by the continually unfolding scenes of carnage in Gaza that they pushed this resolution through to a vote.

I've been looking for an authoritative text. The best I can find thus far is the AFP news report linked to above.

It says this:

It "calls for the unimpeded provision and distribution throughout Gaza of humanitarian assistance, including of food, fuel and medical treatment" and welcomes initiatives aimed at "creating and opening humanitarian corridors and other mechanisms for the sustained delivery of humanitarian aid."

Resolution 1860 also "condemns all violence and hostilities directed against civilians and all acts of terrorism" and urged member states to intensify efforts for arrangements and guarantees in Gaza "to sustain a durable ceasefire and calm, including to prevent illicit trafficking in arms and ammunition and to ensure the reopening of the crossing points (into Gaza)."

It "welcomes the Egyptian initiative (the three-point truce proposal unveiled by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak Tuesday) and other regional and international efforts that are under way."

Mubarak invited Israel and the Palestinians to Cairo for talks on conditions for a truce, on securing Gaza borders, reopening of its crossings and lifting the Israeli blockade on the Palestinian enclave.

This looks minimally acceptable, though it has six key shortcomings that I can see:

It doesn't specify a time certain for the hostilities to cease.

2. It doesn't seem to lay down a fixed timetable for the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, but indicates only that this should follow the cessation of active hostilities. Again, if they linger on inside the Strip, or undertake only a partial withdrawal, or undertake a 'Scorched Earth' withdrawal, or sow landmines or leave UXO in the locations they vacate, any such actions would make the ceasefire very fragile indeed.

3. This ceasefire needs a verification mechanism! I can't stress this strongly enough. There needs to be some form of international monitoring presence along the border between Israel and Gaza that can monitor that neither side is aggressing or preparing to aggress against the other.

4. It is excellent-- though of course, only a bare minimum of what international humanitarian law requires-- that the resolution calls for full humanitarian access to Gaza. However, the Palestinians of Gaza do not want to be treated forever as dependent wards of the international community, entitled only to "humanitarian aid" or "emergency relief". They, like all the other peoples of the world, have a right to all the dimensions of full social and economic development. That means their territory must be re-opened fully to free interaction with the international economy, whether via Egypt, the Mediterranean, or air communications. They will certainly refuse any return to a status-quo-ante in which their small strip of land would once again be completely encircled by a punitive and very damaging Israeli siege. The AP article says the Egyptians have already started to conduct indirect negotiations between the Israelis and Hamas on re-opening the crossings and other matters. Thes manner and mo0dality of the re-opening is a key issue.

5. I understand that Israelis have strong concerns about the possibility of Gazans repairing, restoring, or even perhaps upgrading their rocket arsenal and/or starting to develop other means of attacking Israel. There are two complementary ways to meet these concerns. One is by ensuring that Gazans are able to build a new status quo in which they have a valuable and growing community self-interest, that is, by allowing full and unfettered economic and social development in the Strip. The other is by instituting some form of control regime at the entry points between Gaza and the world economy-- along the border with Egypt, along the Strip's coast, and at its rebuilt airport-- to ensure that weapons are not shipped in. A supplementary form of international-- but certainly not Israeli!-- monitoring mechanism might be helpful within Gaza, too. The EU had a role monitoring the Gaza-Egypt border in the failed 2005 withdrawal regime and has indicated a readiness to resume it. But Europeans and everyone else all need to understand that maintaining a policy of "all stick and no carrot" against Gazans is bound to fail. They desperately need an opportunity for real, Strip-wide development and reconnection with the outside world.

6. Finally, of course nothing can work just for Gaza unless it is linked to a vigorous effort to secure a comprehensive and final settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian-- and preferably also Israeli-Syria-- disputes. The Hamas leaders have given some signs they are willing to work with Abu Mazen on this (though his mandate as PA President runs out Friday.) It would have been great if Resolution 1860 could have said something about the need for the broader final peace.

Well, I imagine (and hope) there will be a rapid flurry of follow-up resolutions. The first thing is for all the guns, rockets, bomber airplanes, etc to fall completely silent, and the next thing is for the Israeli troops to pull out of the Strip and allow the humanitarian actors in to do their still-gruesome job in a situation of relevant calm.

Let's all hope and pray that this peace holds. It is a cold winter down there in Gaza. Families are starving and dying and scores of thousands of them have had their homes wrecked.

The government of Israel, which gratuitously launched and fought this war of choice, and all those in Israel and far afield who cheered them on, should all be deeply ashamed. But there are numerous points of light within Israeli society. Some of them are the human-rights organizations that have geared up an excellent effort to document the suffering the war has caused as best they can. You can read the blog they are using to compile their findings, here.

Posted by Helena Cobban at 12:07 AM | Comments (4)

U.S. Senate expresses strong support for Israel's war

The U.S. Senate is not made up of people who are monsters or idiots. But it is made up of people whose first inclination is to look out for their chances of re-election in a political system that is drenched in, and corrupted by, the influence of raw money.

The new US Senate was voted in Tuesday. Today, as Israel's assault on Gaza continues, the Senate made one of its first items of business the adoption of a strongly pro-Israeli resolution-- crafted in AIPAC's policy shop-- that expressed strong support for Israel's viewpoint on all aspects of the current war.

This, even as the UN's Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs was issuing the latest in its series of updates on the humanitarian crisis that Israel's latest war of choice has inflicted on Gaza's 1.5 million people.

It read in part:

The report recounted the ICRC's grisly story of its fieldworkers having yesterday discovered a cache of 12 bodies along with wounded people, including four young children left weak and hungry clinging the bodies of their dead mothers, who were stranded in an area of Zaitoun south of Gaza for the preceding four days. Though some of the wounded people there had called to friends outside, and the Palestinian Red Crescent, for evacuation help, the Israeli military would not allow evacuation for four days.

The OCHA report continued:

Palestinian militants continued to fire rockets and mortar shells into Israel resulting in moderate to light injuries. An IDF soldier was killed this morning.

So, 758 now-identified fatalities, of whom 313 were either women or children. We can assume that many of the men were civilians, too. (Including the police recruits mown down on the first day of the war.) I imagine it is hard, though, for the ICRC/PRCS, or any other body necessarily to tell who was a combatant actively involved in hostilites (which would make him-- or her-- a "legitimate" military target) and who was a noncombatant.

The OCHA report also said this:

The movement of the convoy had been coordinated in advance [presumably with the IDF] and the UN vehicles were clearly identified. UNRWA has announced that it is temporarily suspending its operations until real security guarantees can be ensured.

UNRWA's quite wrenching decision to suspend its long-established relief services is quite understandable, in the circumstances. But this means that the humanitarian situation can only be expected to deteriorate-- and more rapidly, now, than ever.

Information about the ever-worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza has been available for a number of days now, and has been reported on the US media. In light of that, I find the one-sided nature of the resolution passed by Congress (the AIPAC-suggested text is here-- PDF) literally nauseating.

Do the Senators have any idea how heartless and brutal they look to just about everybody else in the rest of the world when they pass such a slaveringly pro-Israeli resolution?

The House of Representatives is expected to take up a similar or concurrent resolution on the matter shortly. No doubt since all Representatives face re-election in two years and are therefore already "running" for the 2010 election, the vote there will also be an easy one for the AIPAC crowd.

It is true that in the US system, the actual conduct of foreign policy is the responsibility of the president, not congress. So these resolutions have no immediate impact on policy. But they do act as a "warning shot across the bows" of the incoming president, to show him that though some pro-peace organizations -- like the courageous and agile Jewish Voice for Peace organization-- may have emerged here in recent years, still AIPAC is the Biggest Bully on the Block and can come in like steamroller whenever it sees a chance.

It would be great if the members of the US's two houses of Congress could show even a little basic human decency in their attitude to the multiply devastated population of Gaza, instead of simply dancing to AIPAC's tune and cheering on all aspects of Israel's current war effort against Gaza.

But another thing the members of Congress should consider is the effect their resolutions have on the safety of all US citizens in many countries around the world. In Iraq, Moqtada al-Sadr has already called on his supporters to start killing US soldiers because of the US's support for Israel in the current war. But what about all the other US citizens-- soldiers, business-people, students, or just travelers-- who find themselves in every country of the world today? Why on earth would anyone in the US Senate or House of Representatives think today's resolution serves the US citizenry, at all?

It doesn't. It is just yet another chapter in the long story of the US's close alliance with Israel helping to drag down the influence of the US all around the world.

A tragic day today. For many reasons.

Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:36 PM | Comments (14)

"National Security Mom" - Gina Bennett

For too long, Americans have been intimidated by TV "experts" who tell them why being "tough" is the only way to defeat terrorism. Gina M. Bennett begs to differ in a splendid little book, entitled National Security Mom: Why "Going Soft" Will Make America Strong.

With Professor Richard Kohn's forward, I agree that "this is a book every citizen should read, and every government official ponder...." If only.

The deceptively simple premise of the book is that "everything I ever needed to know about securing our nation I learned as a child and practiced in parenting my own children." The companion educational poster for the book is quite accessible even to elementary children.

Yet this is not mere lipstick from a pit-bull "hockey mom." To the contrary, Gina Bennett doubles as a multi-tasking mother of five children and a distinguished government analyst of terrorism. As far back as 1993, Bennett was presciently warning of a growing threat from Osama Bin Laden.

More recently, she was the principal author of the 2006 National Intelligence Estimate "Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the U.S." The boldness of that report is matched by the delightful wisdom found in this slender volume.

I also am happy to note that Gina Bennett is a University of Virginia graduate, and we share the same mentor, in R.K. Ramazani, who helped instill in both of us a devotion to the principles of the University's founder, Thomas Jefferson. Mr. Jefferson and the Professor will both be impressed.

So too is Oprah. Gina was recently featured as a model "superwoman" on the Oprah Winfrey show, a much deserved accolade.

Bennett writes first to fellow parents, offering hope, encouragement, and courage to believe that the key to national security is within them. She finds much national security wisdom in the guidance good parents give to their children, such as:

"clean up your own mess," (e.g. Iraq)
"tell the truth," (no, really!)

"actions speak louder than words," (think Abu Ghuyraib, Guantanmo, torture, renditions, etc.)

"don't give in to a bully," (To defeat him, ignore him)

"choose your friends wisely," (you'll be judged by their actions... "Think for yourself.")

"learn from your mistakes," (e.g., surrendering our own values)

"think before you speak." (or don't speak at all.... )

Bennett encourages us "to think about our nation's security in very different terms from the way it is typically depicted," by de-mystifying the issues in a jargon-free manner.

For starters, her definition of "national security" encompasses physical strength as well as economic health, energy independence, and our national identity. The latter is embodied in our democratic principles and core values. Our nation's security then, is...

"not dependent upon the lack of terrorist attacks. Our security rests with the endurance of our values and principles of democracy and our commitment to them. Our strength is not the projection of power or the absence of challenge. It is the character our nation demonstrates when challenged that makes America strong and secure." (2)

To Bennett, Americans since 9/11 have been nibbling too much self-destructive chocolate cake. Out of fear, we've surrendered too many democratic rights: "Democracy can be eroded completely if we convince ourselves that taking little slices of it is okay." In so doing, we might just as well turn the keys to our country over to the terrorists.

To make our nation more secure, Bennett stresses the need for taking "time-outs" to study the background context for terrorist actions, to recognize underlying grievance, and to face unpleasant truths that our own policies, or those of our friends, may catalyze the violence directed against us.

Bennett repeatedly counters, or "pre-empts," the concern that a "soft" approach to terror will somehow aid or excuse the terrorists. With the book theme, consider the role of parents:

"As parents we do not think of ourselves as being “soft” on discipline simply because we try to see our child's point of view. If we're going to communicate effectively with our children and persuade them of something other than what they already believe, we have to understand why they believe what they believe, even if we think they are completely wrong to believe it." (42)

The same method works for analysis of terrorism.

"[W]hen security experts discuss the need to identify root causes for extremist behavior, they're not being apologists for terrorists. They are trying to find out how “it” -- the extremist ideology or behavior -- got started, so they can come up with a more permanent way of preventing “it” from happening again.... (32)
Understanding the suffering of people is not being “soft” on terrorism, even if those people's grievances are being championed by terrorist groups. Understanding is a critical step towards figuring out how to diminish the influence of terrorists." (34)

And if such empathy enables wiser policy choices, then we've enhanced, not diminished, our security.

Given a nonviolent, viable alternative, people usually choose to reject violence. When they do, they deal the deadliest blow to the terrorists.

So is this a "feminine" perspective? It doesn't have to be, in my ("dad") view. Yet Bennett is speaking to women in arguing that they don't have to sound like (most) men to have credible standing on national security.

"It is very common in national security, foreign policy, and counterterrorism for women to try to out-tough-talk men to avoid being considered soft. Anything other than belligerent speech is considered soft, which is automatically perceived to be weak."

Recall candidate Hillary Clinton's bluster about "obliterating" Iran. Think Anne Coulter.

By contrast, Bennett confidently approaches "national security from a different point of view." If that is soft, "then I am as proud to be “soft” as I am of my 20 years working in the 'harder side' in intelligence. Balancing the two is critical."

And she's "hard" in sticking to her definition of strength, the one she wishes to pass on to her children, to fellow moms - and even dads.:

"I believe that to resolve problems, we have to understand them first. I prefer to accept that American policies have had bad results in some places rather than sticking my head in the sand. I do not believe a war of attrition can defeat terrorism. I believe it demonstrates more character to allow people whose beliefs you reject have their say; it takes more integrity to admit you've made mistakes; and it takes far more courage to refuse to change in the face of a threat. I'm a mother and that is the strength I know."

Curiously, nowhere in the book do the words Israel, Hamas, or Gaza appear, at least not explicitly. Bennett does have much to suggest about lessons derivable from Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt, and India. In the 2006 NIE "Trends in Global Terrorism" report, (Bennett as lead author), "The Iraq conflict has become the "cause celebre" for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of US involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement.." And in her book, she writes, "Bin Laden himself could not have been more convincing than many of the images produced in Iraq." (79)

Regarding Gaza today, the thinking mom taking Bennett's family principles to heart will be empowered to consider that our presumed ally's present "hard" approach to Gaza is incomplete at best, and counterproductive folly at worst. Far from draining the terrorist's swamp, the images, the realities of the awful carnage, risk creating more despair and anguish, more breeding grounds for those to take up extreme violence, and causes greater anger towards America.

Willfully ignoring such dangers afoot is the easy, comfortable life of the ostrich. Recognizing such realities, as an independent analyst and a mom, requires courage.

**************************

Obviously, I like this book; it truly deserves wide consideration, from the White House to the day-care center. Even though it's a quick read, I subsequently prepared ten single spaced pages of memorable passages. Here's just three more:

The baby wipe cleans far more things in my house than it was ever intended to, but it sure does not do the laundry. A single set of policy options cannot magically clean up the world. (78)
Parenting a teenager can feel like navigating a difficult foreign relations crisis. You often feel you need a translator and a team of trained negotiators. Ignoring the communication challenge does not make it go away. Similarly, turning a blind eye to another population’s hostility toward America does not lessen the anger. It only guarantees the people will not listen to anything we have to say. (43)

We know the secret to keeping the world going is never surrendering to “I can't do it” or “I hate you.” Moms hope when everyone else has given up. (153)

If Leon Panetta should decide to defer to an "inside professional" to lead the CIA, wouldn't it be great to have a "national security mom" at the helm?

Posted by Scott Harrop at 10:10 AM | Comments (9)

Israel's story about the war continues to unravel

When the Olmert government announced the start of the current war against Gaza on December 27, government officials said Israel "was forced" to act because Hamas had broken (or at least, gratuitously ended) the ceasefire that existed from June 19 through December 18. Therefore, in some convoluted way, Hamas "started" the present war and is thus responsible for everything that has ensued within it.

These charges have been regularly repeated by government spokesmen since then, and repeated or further amplified by their entire echo chamber of Stepford supporters in the US ever since. (Including the WaPo's dreadful Richard Cohen, yesterday.)

The charges against Hamas have been further amplified into many forms: "Hamas always wants to hit and kill civilians", "Hamas always breaks ceasefires", "The Hamas leaders are men of violence, pure and simple, with no real political agenda except to kill Israelis", "In their lust for the blood of Israeli and others, Hamas is willing or even eager to see Palestinian suffer and die," etc, etc.

But in fact, there is no truth to the original charge about how the 2008 ceasefire ended. And diligent researchers have now been going back to look at the entire history of Israel-Gaza violence over the past eight years, and have reached strong conclusions that completely refute the Israeli government's war-talk.

Yesterday, MIT prof Nancy Kanwisher published, in the Huffington Post, her analysis of the figures the Israeli consulate in New York itself has posted on its "Israel Politik" web site. She underscored that in the four months July-October, Israel recorded the landing of only eleven rockets from Gaza.

Not stated there were:

But even without those important pieces of comparative evidence, Kanwisher shows clearly that the tahdi'eh of June resulted in a generally effective cessation of rocket fire from Gaza-- down from the levels of 257 rockets in February, 196 in March, 149 in May...

But what happened after the end of October? On November 4, Israel significantly violated the tahdi'eh by killing a Palestinian in Gaza, and from that point on the tahdi'eh started to unravel. Given that it was scheduled to end on December 18 anyway, urgent negotiations were anyway underway about the terms on which it might (or might not) be renewed.

Those negotiations failed.

Kanwisher also took the important step of going back over the entire history of Palestinian-Israel hostilities since the outbreak of the Second Intifada in September 2000. She looked at how pauses in the hostilities got broken in those years, looking at any pauses that were one day long or longer. Her basic data set was the casualty listings and statistics that have been systematically kept by the Israeli human-rights organization B'tselem.

She presented her findings on this in Figure 2 of the HuffPo piece. (It's not optimally presented. I think the label that's now at the top belongs on the left-hand side. And there should be a label along the bottom saying these are the respective lengths, in days, of the pauses considered? At least, that's the only logical way I could read it.)

But her findings were important:

Certainly, these findings seem quite consistent with my own recllection of various incidents over these same years. Right back at the beginning of the Second Intifada, there were several weeks during which the Palestinians used overwhelmingly nonviolent means of confronting the Israeli soldiers in the OPTs, who struck back hundreds of times with live fire. I think there were more than 200 or 300 fatalities among Palestinians in those early weeks, before their resistance groups made the decision to use weapons in the intifada.

(Which of course was not how the matter was portrayed in the western media.)

Other pages on the Btselem website underline that the entire history of Israeli-Palestinian hostilities since September 2000 is one of stark asymmetry regarding casualties. This compilation page (with hyperlinks to details) shows that 4,781 Palestinians were killed by Israeli security forces in the OPTs between September 2000 and the end of November 2008, and a further 69 were killed inside Israel, while 727 Israeli civilians were killed by Palestinians in Israel and the OPTs in that time, along with 335 members of the Israeli security forces, for an Israeli total of 1,062 Israelis.

By the way, this page tells you that from the beginning of the 2008 tahdi'eh until the end of November 2008, only one Israeli civilian was killed by ordnance coming from, quite possibly, Gaza, which is near Kibbutz Nir Oaz. But no Israeli civilians died from rocket fire in that period.

Kanwisher draws these very reasonable conclusions from her analysis:

Second, if Israel wants to reduce rocket fire from Gaza, it should cherish and preserve the peace when it starts to break out, not be the first to kill.

Thanks for that great work, Prof. Kanwisher!

Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:00 PM | Comments (36)

US rearming Israel from Greece?

On Dec. 31, the US Military Sealift Command published a solicitation for bids from shipping companies to ship two boats, each containing 168 TEU's (twenty-foot equivalent container units) of ammunition, from Greece to Israel.

(HT: Danger Room.)

That's a considerable amount of ammunition. Its type was not stated.

If the international community is serious about a ceasefire this must involve credible efforts to impose an arms embargo on both sides until the ceasefire is concluded.

US arms shipments to Israel are sent (free of cost to Israel) for the express purpose of "self defense." There is no way Israel's current war against Gaza could be described as self-defense without a truly Orwellian effort to bend the meaning of the term completely out of any logic or acceptability.

Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:25 PM | Comments (4)

Gaza: Diplomacy gains momentum

President Bush has been trying to delay calls for a Gaza ceasefire as long as possible, but today there were more signs that other international actors were trying to push the conflict-termination diplomacy ahead with or without him. This on a day when at least 40 double-refugees* in Gaza were killed, and tens more wounded, when an Israeli tank fired on a UN-run school in Gaza, and when president-elect Obama made his first semi-substantive comments on the continuing Gaza-Israeli crisis.

Obama expressed deep concern about civilian deaths in both Gaza and Israel. On the politics of conflict-termination, he said,

resolve

"Resolve the conflict in the Middle East" is a good and encouraging goal in this context. It implies aiming for something considerably deeper, more far-reaching, and more durable than merely a ceasefire!

Of course, as I've noted before, a ceasefire in the immediate round of fighting between Israel and Gaza can, if it is well planned and well implemented, be used as a constructive segue into a broader effort speedily to secure an overall Palestinian-Israeli (and hopefully also pan-Arab-Israeli) peace.

That this might be what's on Obama's schedule is possibly indicated by the still unconfirmed reports-- here from Jim Lobe-- that the chief envoy Obama will name on Arab-Israeli (but not Iranian) issues will be Richard Haass.** Richard was, in an earlier incarnation, the author of the dreadful "ripeness" theory in Arab-Israeli diplomacy-- an approach that turned out merely to excuse the endless prolongation of the search for peace and thus to allow Israel additional years and decades in which to pursue its settlement-construction program. However, sometime in the late 1980s he disavowed that idea. He was the first head of the State Department's influential policy planning unit in the first George W. Bush administration, but resigned early on, quite possibly because he disagreed with the decision to invade Iraq. He is a cautious realist in the Brent SCowcroft mold, and therefore far from the worst choice Obama might make for Arab-Israeli envoy.

Of course, we should also recall that during the election campaign, another thing Obama said was that he completely understood Israel's desire to hit back at Gaza in response to the rockets that fell on southern Israel. But it's interesting that that was not the statement from the campaign that he chose to recall today.

... Meanwhile, Sarkozy has been in Syria and Egypt, and Rice has been working the UN crowd in New York. Unclear if the thrust of her intervention there is to explore or to block possibilities for a speedy ceasefire. But Sarkozy's intense involvement-- which is mirrored in some but by no means all other European capitals-- calls to mind the role that Jacques Chirac played in 1996 in activating the diplomacy that ended the Israeli assault on Lebanon of that year.

There are many intriguing similarities between these two situations:

2. In both cases, the war was launched after the breakdown of a shaky previous ceasefire between Israel and a locally rooted, Iranian-allied organization that had been labeled and quarantined by western powers as "terrorist."

3. In both cases, Israel killed hugely disproportionate numbers of Arab civilians in the country targeted, including in incidents of mega-lethality. (Today's casualties on a UN-run school call to mind the massacre at Qana in April 1996, when Israel killed 106 civilians who had sought refuge in a UN base in south Lebanon.)

So the way things turned out at the end of the 1996 Israel-Lebanon war was very interesting. The hostilities were brought to an end through the conclusion of a formal international agreement to which the governments of Israel, Lebanon, Syria, the US, and France were all party, with the governments of Lebanon and Syria informally undertaking to ensure that Lebanon's Hizbullah was on board it and would observe it.

During the negotiations then, those two governments acted as the channel to include Hizbullah in the negotiation. The governments of Israel, the US, and France refused point-blank to negotiate directly with Hizbullah, but recognized that they needed to ensure Hizbullah's agreement to the ceasefire if it was to succeed. (The western powers had an exactly similar approach to Hizbullah during the negotiations that ended Israel's 2006 assault against Lebanon.)

So what made the 1996 ceasefire between (in effect) Israel and Hizbullah much more durable and effective than the one that had preceded it in 1993 were that it was a formal international agreement, with its terms clearly written down and understood by all parties-- plus it had an international verification mechanism, in the form of a five-power monitoring committee-- that, yes, included Syria along with the other four negotiating governments-- that was able over the years that followed to investigate any charges from any side about infractions of others. The 1996 ceasefire was a notable diplomatic achievement for Hizbullah.

... Fascinating if that might be where we're headed in Palestine, now.

(More later.)

---

* "Double-refugees" because, since the school was in the Jabaliya refugee camp it is most likely these poor individuals were among the 80% of Gaza's population who are, or are descended from, Palestinians who fled or were forced out of what is now Israel, back in 1948.

** Much less encouraging than the reports about R. Haass were those that Dennis Ross would be named the Obama administration's special envoy on Iranian affairs. Ross has been a visible hawk on Iran for a long time now.

Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:12 PM | Comments (35)

Crisis Group on Gaza-Israel: Okay, not great

I've just read the executive summary of the Crisis Groups latest paper on the Israel-Gaza war. There are some good things in it but I'm quite disappointed at how tame it is. Not least because the CG acts as a sort of unified "Policy Planning Staff" for most of the West European governments. So if this is the advice the EU governments and countries like Australia and Canada are getting, then I think it's far too incremental and wimpy. Crucially, it makes no mention of linking attainment of a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas organically to a determined new international push to secure a final-status peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

Here are the CG's main policy prescriptions:

To be sustainable, cessation of hostilities must be directly followed by steps addressing both sides’ core concerns:

An indefinite ceasefire pursuant to which:
* Hamas would halt all rocket launches, keep armed militants at 500 metres from Israel’s border and make other armed organisations comply; and
* Israel would halt all military attacks on and withdraw all troops from Gaza;

Real efforts to end arms smuggling into Gaza, led by Egypt in coordination with regional and international actors;

Dispatch of a multinational monitoring presence to verify adherence to the ceasefire, serve as liaison between the two sides and defuse potential crises; countries like France, Turkey and Qatar, as well as organisations such as the UN, could play an important part in this; and

Opening of Gaza’s crossings with Israel and Egypt, together with:
* return of an EU presence at the Rafah crossing and its extension to Gaza’s crossings with Israel; and
* coordination between Hamas authorities and the (Ramallah-based) PA at the crossings.

But, as noted above, this prescription makes no mention whatsoever of the urgent need to re-start the negotiations for a final Israeli-Palestinian peace, on a completely new basis.

Why should Hamas, or Israel, or any other party be happy with a return to a slightly improved version of the status-quo-ante if the big issues of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinian remain unresolved and there is no big hope held out for an imminent future in which a clear basis has been laid out and agreed upon for a speedy resolution of all the outstanding claims between the two peoples?

If the present horrendous crisis is not enough to force a jump-restarting of international efforts to secure a final-status peace, then I can't imagine what kind of a crisis this would require! But meanwhile, why should we assume that a continuation of the interminable peace-processing efforts of the past 15 years would bring an outcome, two or five or ten years down the pike that would be any different from today's?

I'm also a little uncertain about the timing of what the CG is advocating. They say there should be a cessation of hostilities that is "followed by ... an indefinitie ceasefire pursuant to which ... Hamas would halt all rocket launches, etc., and ....Israel would halt all military attacks on and withdraw all troops from Gaza."

But wouldn't the cessation of hostilities itself directly mandate the halting of all hostilities and (hopefully) the complete withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, rather than these ceasefire steps "following" a cessation of hostilities?

I think their wording could be a lot clearer on those issues.

I note that the CG is not calling for the disarming of Hamas, but only for limitations on its deployment of "armed militants." And it's calling for the dispatch of a multinational presence to monitor the ceasefire. Both of these are realistic steps that could be expected make the ceasefire more politically palatable to Hamas than the status-quo-ante. But by the same token we could expect them to be strongly resisted by Israel, which would presumably strongly prefer to see the ceasefire agreement mandate the disarming of Hamas, and which has steadfastly maintained its opposition to any new international truce-monitoring presence in the OPTs for 41 years now.

So even these fairly cautious steps advocated by the Crisis Group would be politically hard to attain. Given that that's the case, why not go whole hog and actually "use" this crisis to take some bold new steps toward the attainment of a final Israel-Palestinian peace? After all, if the "international community" is going to have to confront and rile this present belligerent government of Israel quite a bit even to get a workable ceasefire, why not rile them just a bitmore and go for the final peace?

Any kind of a ceasefire is going to necessarily include some steps that the citizens of both countries find hared to stomach or unsatisfactory. But least if there is also a meaningful new effort to secure a final peace, Israelis and Palestinians can all look forward to an imminent future in which the armed conflict is definitively past, the terms of future coexistence have been laid down, and people can start to rebuild their lives on a longterm basis and plan for a productive future. Yes it will involve "painful comproimises" (to use Ariel Sharon's term.) But there will be better future in sight.

This conflict is not more intractable than that between France and Germany, or that between Whites and Blacks in South Africa. For many decades, people thought those other conflicts could "never" be resolved. But they were. This one can be, too.

Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:02 PM | Comments (6)

Israel's pathetic psy-ops

It is a revealing measure of the paucity or non-existence of Israel's actual, on-the-ground intelligence network inside Gaza today (as in Lebanon in 2006) that the IDF's psy-ops department feels obliged to launch thousands of leaflets and undertake frantic robo-calling and robo-texting in order to beg anyone-- anyone at all!-- in Gaza to become an informer.

Yesterday, Electronic Intifada spoofed into the IDF's "Report-a-Terrorist' hot-line system and had a hilarious conversation with the Israeli Shin Bet officer who answered the call. (HT: Laila al-H.)

Read (or listen to) the whole thing. The way the Shin Bet manipulator guy responded once he figured he'd been spoofed (took him a while... ) is pretty revealing. Basically, he let loose with a stream of Zionist hate-propaganda to the effect that there never was a Palestinian nation, etc etc.

So here are the ways to contact the hotline: By phone: +972-2-583-9749. By email: helpgaza2008@gmail.com. I'm sure they have operators are standing by to help.

Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:16 PM | Comments (2)

Not a war but a bloodbath

Read Dion Nissenbaum on the "lawn-chair war" being waged (or, more precisely, ogled) by residents of the Israeli town of Sderot:

They don't seem to be bothered by the occasional Qassam rockets and mortar rounds that explode in the surrounding fields.

They have come to watch the war.

They come from Sderot, the southern Israeli town hardest hit years of persistent Palestinian rocket attacks that are the casus belli for the Israeli military campaign to destabilize Hamas.

The journalists have come too.

Also, look at the second photo in the photo gallery on this WaPo page (also published in the print edition.) The caption reads: "Israeli children in the southern town of Sderot collect fragments of a Palestinian Qassam rocket that landed outside their neighbor's house. "

Now, I assume that Israeli parents are no less concerned for the wellbeing of their children than Palestinian parents or any other parents. So I conclude that these kids' parents thought the risk involved in their kids going outdoors to do this was very low. (And the kids don't seem to be collecting their fragments in any kind of rushed or scared manner. More, they are just sauntering along a street-lamp street.)

Street lamps? Children sauntering in the street? Residents sitting on lawn-chairs watching the crump of artillery shells a mile or two away?

Does this sound like a war?

And just a couple of miles away, Palestinians are living through hell on earth. There are many excellent, first-person accounts available on the web. Including this from Dr. Said Abdel-Wahad yesterday:

This is not a war, it's a bloodbath. Certainly, under the definitions in international humanitarian law, a series of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

International humanitarian law places on any military commander a positive duty to use force only with both discrimination (that is, discriminating between military persons and facilities and those that are non-combatant; and minimizing to the maximum degree possible any harm to the latter) and proportionality (that is, the nature of the attack must be proportionate to its military aim.)

Israel's military is observing none of these restrictions.

The number of deaths in Gaza from bloodbath that started December 27 is now rising ever higher into the 500's, and there have been thousands of serious injuries.

Proportional to the population of the US, 500 dead in Gaza translates into 100,000 dead in the US. That, in just ten days. (How would Americans feel?)

UN workers say that at least a quarter of the Palestinian deaths have been of civilians. In the past couple of days, the proportion of civilian deaths seems to have risen considerably.

In Israel, there have been five confirmed deaths, four of them civilians. (Updated, 3 p.m. 1/5/09.)

No wonder it's lawn-chair time in Sderot! A time for kids to roam the street "collecting rocket fragments" as a hobby or a curiosity.

Please not that in making the above observations I am not calling for any increase in the number of Israeli casualties. I am calling for an immediate end to all casualties. I am calling for an immediate and ruable ceasefire that I hope will segue directly into a definitive international effort to define and implement a final-status peace between these two peoples, who have suffered for too long.

But meanwhile, no-one can credibly claim that the present fighting is a defensive "war of no choice" for Israel that has been forced upon it. On the contrary, it was not.

We can recall that back in February, when there was an earlier round of escalation between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, Israel's deputy defense minister threatened to unleash "a new Shoah" (Holocaust) in Gaza if Hamas should continue firing and upgrading its rockets.

Israel never followed through completely on that threat at that time, and in June its government reached a six-month ceasefire deal with Hamas. There were infractions of that ceasefire from both sides (including, by Israel, a number of major ground incursions, artillery attacks and, most importantly, a complete failure on commitments to lift the siege of Gaza.) But it did provide a welcome measure of relative calm to both peoples. When its six-month term expired, Hamas decided not to renew it because of Israel's non-compliance with the six-monther.

So now, is Israel following through on Vailnai's threatened Shoah?

In international law, a finding of genocide requires a finding of mass killings plus a finding of "genocidal intent." I don't think, in the present circumstances-- Vilani's threats notwithstanding-- that such intent could be proven.

However, genocide is not necessarily always the worst of international crimes (despite what many western liberals seem to believe.) "Crimes against humanity" can have lethal and society-destruction effects that are just as grave as those from genocides, even in cases where genocidal intent cannot be proven. As, for example, in the many mass killings that have been plaguing Congo or the Central African Republic in recent years. And as in Gaza, today.

End the killing! Let Palestinians live a life of lawn-chairs and confidence in their future!

Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:12 PM | Comments (23)

A negotiated ceasefire: The best Israel can expect

Israel’s leaders have given contradictory signals about how they want the current war to end. Some say they want to force Hamas to bend to their will. Some have said they want to break the organization completely. But now that Israel has sent ground forces deep into Gaza it is clearer than ever before that it will be unable to bring about either of these outcomes.

At the end of the day, to extricate itself from the uber-quagmire that Gaza represents, both physically in itself and politically throughout the region and the world, Israel will still have to engage in a negotiation with Hamas. Here's why.

1. Hamas's leaders have shown that they cannot be "broken" to the extent that they will bow to Israel's will. Israel may be able to kill or capture most or all of Hamas's leaders in Gaza-- and it is possible, though unlikely, that some of those men may break under torture and give an appearance of bowing to Israel's will. But Hamas's overall leadership structure remains outside Gaza Through an intentional decision of Hamas in the 1990s, the overall leadership was vested in leaders not subject to any direct Israeli pressure. Hamas's overall leader, Khaled Meshaal, lives and works in Damascus. Beyond him, Hamas has an extensive network of leaders distributed throughout the Arab states and further afield. (And contrary to US-Israeli hasbara attempts, Hamas has supportive relations with a number of Gulf Arab states.)

2. But Hamas's structures inside Gaza are steely and resilient, too. They have been honed through 20 years of confrontation with Israel, in the course of which Israel has assassinated more than 100 Hamas leaders, including the highest layers of its leaders in Gaza. Also, for 38 years ending in 2005, the IDF had direct control over all of Gaza, which it exercised using very repressive means, including very intrusive house searches, mass arrests, torture and other means of intimidation, and extensive systems of movement controls. But Hamas in Gaza (which, ironically, had in an earlier era been incubated by the Israeli occupation forces as an alternative to the secular nationalists of the PLO) overcame all those measures taken against it prior to 2005, regenerating capable new layers of leadership to replace those annihilated by Israel. As I've noted previously, each new generation of leadership emerged steelier than the last one.

3. Many Israelis close to the government have suggested that Abu Mazen's US-trained Fateh forces could be brought into Gaza from the West Bank and help Israel both to police Gaza and to impose a political endgame on a defeated Hamas. That is impossible, for two reasons. First, Hamas is not about to be defeated-- so if Fateh forces do come into Gaza, it will be through a negotiated agreement between the two Palestinian movements, not through the imposition of Israeli-Fateh force on Hamas. Second, the Fateh forces are already coming under considerable pressure in the West Bank, where opinion has shifted sharply in favor of Hamas since Israel began this war December 27. The rising tide of criticism that Abu Mazen faces in his comfortable Ramallah home-base will not allow him to enter Gaza as an Israeli proxy. If he did, he might lose Ramallah and the rest of the West Bank to Hamas. Today, Abu Mazen has made clear that he won't accept a role as Israeli cat's-paw in Gaza.

4. Might Israel seek to impose a solution on Hamas by bringing in Arab or international forces to replace the IDF as it withdraws? This, too, is a quite illusory goal. No country is going to send forces into Gaza to replace (or even more, supplement) the IDF presence there unless it has credible guarantees that this deployment will not expose it to Hamas's opposition both within Gaza and possibly far beyond. Every country recognizes that the desperate situation of the population in Gaza means that any security system that is imposed on them will be harshly resisted. Also, no country is going to deploy forces there without guarantees that Gaza can simultaneously be opened back up to the world economy. No country wants to openly collaborate with Israel in maintaining the siege on Gaza's people.

5. Israelis and its backers in Washington and elsewhere also need to understand the region-wide and global implications of any prolongation of the infantry (and air and naval) actions against Gaza's people. The longer this war goes on, the higher the regional stakes rise. At some point-- in Gaza as in Lebanon in 2006-- Israel's leaders themselves will start crying out for a way out. So will the United States, which has its own very extensive interests in the region and whose forces are noticeably more over-stretched than they were in 2006. The terms on which Israel is able to extricate itself from the mess it has created in Gaza will become more unfavorable for it with every day the war continues. Better for Israel to nail down the exit/end-game now, rather than wait any more days. (So they may hope to kill another two dozen Hamas leaders if they can just carry on fighting-- possibly including the elected Prime Minister and Foreign Minister? It would change nothing, see #2 above. But killing Haniyeh or Zahhar would certainly have broad political/security consequences throughout the region.)

6. All the above proves that the only way for Israel to minimize the damage it ends up suffering from the present, very ill-chosen war of choice is by winning the agreement of the Hamas leadership to the terms of a negotiated ceasefire for Gaza. Hamas leader Meshaal, who has been calling for a renewed ceasefire throughout the war, has clearly laid out the movement's terms for it. It must be, he said, a ceasefire that is reciprocally binding on both parties (as the previous six-month ceasefire was.) But this time, unlike in the previous ceasefire, Israel must be obligated to follow through on the commitment to lift the siege of Gaza.

7. There are many channels through which this indirect negotiation can take place. The mediation effort of Turkish prime minister Rejep Teyip Erdogan may be the most effective. The UN Security Council could play a role in the negotiation (if the US weren't blocking this). But it will certainly need to play a role in helping orchestrate and perhaps monitor the implementation of the ceasefire.

8. Since the world is now in a crisis over Gaza, the leaders of the P-5 nations at the security Council should all seriously consider the benefits of "using" this crisis as a springboard directly into an authoritative, international peace conference at which the terms of final peace agreements between Israel and the Palestinians, Israel and Syria, and Israel and Lebanon are finally hammered out. The peoples of the region and the security of the world have suffered far too much already from the endless ineffectuality of the efforts the US has made over the past 15 years to exercize complete control over the peacemaking. It is the failure of those efforts that have brought us where we are.

Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:11 AM | Comments (49)

Good resources on Israel's continuing Gaza assault

I've spent quite a bit of time following the Gaza tragedy on Twitter today. If you're a member, my name there is helenacobban (strange, but true.) Twitter has this good aggregating facility, so to find everything that anyone there has tagged as "#gaza" go here.

If you're a Twitter member and you want your contribs on Gaza to show up in the aggregator, just insert "#gaza" into the message.

From the #gaza channel there I learned from Laila el-Haddad that she and her dad are both scheduled to be on CNN at 10 p.m. and 10:30 tonight, EST. Her dad, Dr. Mousa el-Haddad, is a retired pediatrician born and raised in Gaza, now back living there. (Laila's in the US right now.)

Also from her "tweets" there I got a link to this excellent article by veteran Gaza psychiatrist Eyad Sarraj, which conveys just a little what it's like to be living in Gaza City right now.

I guess Twitter is one of the places where the new Israeli hasbara effort is trying to have an impact. So far, it seems to be incredibly heavy-handed. English Al-Jazeera is also using Twitter very helpfully-- check it out here.

The Egyptian leftists seem to be using something called Jaiku as much as Twitter, but I simply can't follow too many of these new things all at one time.

If any of you has other good resources to share on the continuing #Gaza crisis, please post them there.

Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:53 PM | Comments (16)

Israel sends ground forces into Gaza

The ground war has begun. Pray for the peoples of Gaza and Israel, especially the hardest hit and most vulnerable among them.

Work for a ceasefire now!

Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:48 PM | Comments (3)

Discourse suppression is hazardous to your health

... whether it occurs in the field of economics, or in analysis of Arab-Israeli issues.

All US citizens (along with billions of other people around the world) are currently suffering greatly because the group of "market fundamentalists" who had taken over both the decisionmaking in, and nearly all the commentary about, US economic policy had succeeded to such a great degree, until very recently, in their campaign to muzzle economists who raised questions about their free-market model.

This post-- on, interestingly, a blog run by the Wall Street Journal sketches out some of those earlier discourse-suppression attempts. (HT: Krugman.)

It includes this quote from University of Chicago economist (but also, periodic critic of market fundamentalism) Luigi Zingales:

In this field, the "toxic" accusation was that a certain economist-- Zingales, or his colleague Raghuram Rajan, or Nouriel Roubini, or whoever-- was "anti-market."

In the field of Middle East studies, a parallel role is played by the accusation that someone is "anti-Semitic" or "anti-Israel."

In both fields, well-funded and powerful interest groups have worked for years to suppress free discussion that is based on an open-ended, fair-minded examination of the facts at hand. Now, in the wake of the September-October financial collapse, there is some attempt to rehabilitate the analysis of those stalwart economists who over the years have worked to try to challenge the assumptions of the market fundamentalists. (Though I note that the WSJ blogger reports that Larry Summers was a notable belittler of the critics at one key 2005 Fed conference... Summers is, of course, one of the key members of Obama's incoming economics team. Not good news.)

And then, there's the Arab-Israeli field-- one where discourse suppression campaigns and the systematic attempt to exclude, marginalize, or belittle anyone who challenges the "Israel is always right" orthodoxy continue unabated in the US. See, for example, all the cases documented by Muzzlewatch, which still represent only the tip of a much, much deeper iceberg of the discourse suppression practices by the pro-Israel hasbaristas.

This is not only completely unjust, and a serious violation of any rules of fair discourse. It is also extremely hazardous to the longterm interests of the US citizenry. It is certainly not in our interest as citizens to have our elected government give such strong and uncritical support to the actions of the government of Israel-- even when, as now, these actions completely violate all the "laws of war" requirements regarding the need for proportionality and discrimination in the conduct of military operations.

Our country needs to have a full and fair discussion both of what is going on the current Israel-Gaza war, and of our government's policy regarding it, which has been marked by:

2. Our government acting vigorously in the international scene, right now, to prevent the conclusion of the speedy ceasefire that the peoples of Gaza, Israel-- and the US-- all so desperately need.

The risks that accrue to us from not having this discussion on a full, fair, and fact-derived basis, and on not making the kinds of changes in our government's policy that would minimize the hazard to all concerned, are large indeed. (Quite apart from the raw morality of the issues involved.)

If we do not have this discussion, and do not make the requisite policy changes in an urgent way, then we can expect our country's real power and influence around the world to continue plunging just as surely as the financial markets crashed in the latter parts of 2008.

Wilfull ignorance is the worst kind. Wilfull suppression of free, fact-based discourse is no less bad. And in Arab-Israeli affairs as in a discussion of national economic policies, discourse suppression is extremely hazardous to our country's health.

Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:29 AM | Comments (10)

The roots of Hamas resilience

Yesterday, the Israeli air force dropped a large (and most likely US-supplied) bomb on the apartment-building home of Nizar Rayyan, one of the top five leaders of Hamas in Gaza, killing him and 15 family members, including children, and wounding numerous neighbors. The Hamas website reported the killing, and gave a brief eulogy for Rayyan, here.

The "strategy" of the Israeli government, if it can even be called that, now seems to have shifted from "taming" Hamas to decapitating or even completely dismantling Hamas. As I noted here last Monday, a dismantling/decapitating war, which was then being advocated by Ehud Barak, implies a very different approach to both operations and diplomacy than a "taming" war.

Today, Israel attacked the homes of other Hamas leaders. Many of the heavily populated areas of Gaza City, Rafah, and Jabaliya now look, from the photos, very similar to Beirut's southern "Dahiyeh" suburbs after the US-supplied Israeli warplanes started blasting into it in July 2006. But at least the residents of the Dahiyeh had places elsewhere in Beirut and Lebanon that they were able to flee to (and they found that Lebanese of all stripes including previous critics of Hzibullah, were very eager to help give them emergency shelter and emergency aid.)

Now, where can the residents of blasted areas inside Gaza flee to? And remember: the winters can get very cold in that corner of the Mediterranean.

And yet... this is what AP is reporting today: Hamas resilient despite Israeli onslaught.

Reporters Ibrahim Barzak and Karin Laub write this:

Israel says Hamas still has thousands of rockets. Hamas TV and radio remain on the air, broadcasting morale-boosting battle reports. Hamas' political and military leaders communicate from hiding places by walkie-talkie. Police patrol streets to prevent price gouging and looting.

"Israel has destroyed the buildings, but Hamas is still here," Ahmed Yousef, a Hamas spokesman, said Thursday, the sixth day of the bombing campaign. "There is no anxiety over the existence of Hamas — even if they destroy all of Gaza — because we are among the people."

The rest of that informative article is also worth reading. Including this:

Policemen direct traffic and run checkpoints near bombed-out government buildings to prevent scavenging. They tour gas stations, bakeries and groceries to make sure owners don't take advantage of growing shortages to hike prices.

On Tuesday, two Hamas plainclothes police officers drove up to a small gas station in Gaza City and learned from customers that the price for diesel fuel had tripled. They approached the owner who swiftly lowered the price.

Hamas inspectors with scales visit bakers, making sure that the government-fixed price for bread — 55 pitas for 7 shekels, about $2 — is being honored.

I note there is a key difference between the situation of Hamas under Israel's assault in Gaza today and the PLO when it came under a very similar Israeli assault in Lebanon, in 1982. On that earlier occasion, the Palestinians received considerable help from a portion of Lebanon's population. But as the assault-- and particularly the seven-week siege of West Beirut-- dragged on, many of the PLO's Lebanese allies became very depressed because of the continued battering their city was taking. (In Lebanon, too, there was always a large chunk of the populace that hated the Palestinians and was working very actively indeed to support Israel's attacks against them.)

Finally, after eight weeks of that war, Lebanese PM Shafiq Wazzan, who had been a long-time, if never very enthusiastic, supporter of the PLO presence in Lebanon, persuaded Yasser Arafat to negotiate a ceasefire that saved some of his forces but sent them sailing off to some very distant Arab countries. (Sharon's massacres of Palestinians at Sabra and Shatila ensued.)

This time, by contrast, Gaza's defenders are fighting to defend a small portion of their own country. Adding to their current determination are these other facts about them:

(2) Though Gaza is a part of Palestine, some 80% of its people are refugees from other parts of Palestine. So though many Gazans do have a deep concern for the physical infrastructure of the Strip, still, many of them also harbor very long-held and deep claims against Israel, including very large property claims, along with a correspondingly deep sense of resentment that these claims have never been seriously addressed in the many rounds of alleged "peace diplomacy" that have occurred over recent decades.

But all these socioeconomic facts about Gaza's population would count for nothing if Hamas and its antecedent movements had not also been working hard for the past 25-30 years to organize their supporters in such a way as to build and rebuild the resilience of their constituency.

In the west, too many people think that Hamas is "only" the "terrorist organization" that it's designated to be by the US State Department. They imagine it is made up of wild-eyed, implacable Islamist radicals who have much more in common with the Afghan Taliban than with any movement that is considered "civilized" in the west.

Not so. Hamas's founder, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, always placed a lot of emphasis on the need for education, self-restraint, and the need to rebuild the social fabric of Palestinian constituencies torn apart by years of Israeli attacks, occupation (including the heinous divide-and-rule tactics of the Shin Bet), and physical and social dispersal. Gaza Islamic University (badly bombed by Israel earlier this week) was just one of an entire network of educational and social-welfare institutions with which Hamas sought to rebuild Gazan society. Those institutions preceded the creation of Hamas as an armed political movement, which happened in 1987; and they have continued to operate alongside Hamas ever since. (You can read a lot more about Hamas's history here or here.)

Another indicator of the resilience of Hamas is that the movement has suffered numerous rounds of extremely serious decapitating attacks in the past 15 years-- including the assassinations of Ahmed Yassin and numerous other top leaders in 2004-- but still, its systems for educating successive generations of youth and for cultivating leadership skills in a broad array of skill-sets, not just the military, means that those leaders were replaced by others of considerable experience. Those assassinations never resulted in the breaking up of the movement. Indeed, the leaders who have survived-- and their followers-- now have an even flintier sense of dedication to their nationalist/Islamist cause because of the fires they've lived through and the colleagues and former mentors whom they've lost.

As of now, this intriguing article from Radio Netherlands tells us a bit about how Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and his colleagues in the top leadership have been surviving Israel's attacks: Literally, by going underground. I had kind of suspected as much.

... In related news, the "international community" is still showing that it is marked by a devastating vacuum of power at the leadership level. None of the non-US powers seem to have the will (or perhaps the inclination?) to try to force the desperately needed immediate and binding ceasefire resolution through the Security Council. Or at least, to force the US to cast a veto against this ceasefire, which would clarify Washington's role in world affairs considerably right now. The EU has just turned the presidency over from France to the Czech Republic, whose leaders are still in fairly deep kowtow mode to Washington. And neither the Chinese nor the Russians seem eager to confront Washington at this time.

White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe today stressed that any decision on whether to launch an infantry invasion of Gaza would be "Israel's" to make. Condi Rice said that though the administration does favor a ceasefire, the administration is working to attain one "that would not allow a re-establishment of the status quo ante where Hamas can continue to launch rockets out of Gaza... It is obvious that that ceasefire should take place as soon as possible, but we need a ceasefire that is durable and sustainable."

Right. No-one wants a return to the status-quo-ante. The big remaining question though, is in which direction will it end getting tipped? That is precisely what the two sides are fighting about.

... And at the Arab/regional level, both Egypt and Jordan had to deploy riot police today to beat back crowds of pro-Gaza demonstrators that gathered after Friday prayers. Both these increasingly repressive states receive considerable backing--including for their police forces-- from the US, and both have peace treaties with Israel. In Amman, the crowd was reported as 60,000 strong. There were other anti-Israeli demonstrations in other Muslim countries. In the West Bank, pro-Hamas protesters were beaten back by (US-trained) Fateh police units.

Two useful sources for learning about what's happening in Egypt are the blog of the leftist activist Arabawy, part of a network that's making some excellent use of the new media (including Jaiku), and the website of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.

Ceasefire now! And link that directly to a speedy UN effort to define and implement a durable and fair final peace between these two deeply troubled peoples.

Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:16 PM | Comments (10)

Debate in Israeli cabinet over Gaza

In my earlier post, I was looking at the public debate among non-official Israelis over the course of the Gaza war. The more important debate, of course, is that inside the Israeli cabinet.

A Haaretz reporting team writes today that officials in the defense ministry, which is headed by Labour Party leader Ehud Barak favor ending the war via,

She reportedly believes that it might be better to aim for a situation in which there is no clearly set-out agreement, but Israel would make clear beforehand that it would respond forcefully to any firing from Gaza after hostilities ended.

[PM Ehud] Olmert, for his part, has conditioned any future truce between Israel and Hamas on the establishment of an international mechanism to monitor the cease-fire.

These are fascinating differences-- if the Haaretz report is based on accurate reporting, as I assume is probably the case.

The cabinet contains, obviously, some non-trivial internal political tensions, given that Israelis have a general election February 10 in which Barak is leading a party that will be running against Kadima, the party led by Livni-- as well as against Likud, which keeps up strong pressure on both Labour and Kadima from the rightwing/hardline direction.

Hence, I'm assuming, the resistance both Barak and Livni evince to the idea of any written-down agreement that would also involve Hamas signing onto it, directly or indirectly, and therefore involve some prior negotiations with Hamas.

This is starting to look more and more like Shimon Peres's ill-fated war venture of 1996. He felt he needed to launch that war-- which was against Hizbullah in Lebanon-- in March of 1996, because he faced elections within a short number of weeks. He knew he was under a lot of pressure from Likud (then as now led by "Bibi" Netanyahu), and he felt he needed somehow to "burnish" his militaristic credentials to the generally bellophilic Israeli voting public.

That war was a disaster-- for Peres; for Israel's strategic project of using military coercion to get its way in Lebanon; and for the whole broader strategic "credibility" of Israel's power of deterrence. Read the details, here.

Long story short: Israel's public, by and large, just "loved" that war, especially at the beginning; but Peres and his commanders fatally overshot their military mark, couldn't figure out how or when to end the war; the IDF ended up killing hundreds or thousands of Lebanese civilians, including in Qana; and Israel finally had to succumb to international pressure that forced them to enter into a negotiated ceasefire with Hizbullah that for the first time ever would be monitored by an international monitoring team-- a facet of the agreement that helped assure the stability of the ceasefire but also considerably restricted Israel's "freedom of action" inside Lebanon over the years that followed.

Oh, and Peres lost that election to Netanyahu, anyway. Not least because the Palestinian Israeli voters whom he could otherwise have fairly strongly relied upon were so disgusted by his war that they stayed home from the polls in droves.

(In Lebanon, four years later, a completely depleted and demoralized Israeli occupation force slunk out of the country altogether in June 2000, under a new plan for "unilateral", i.e. un-negotiated, Israeli troop withdrawals that was hatched by-- yes, none other than Ehud Barak. Hizbullah has increased its power and influence in Lebanon in the eight years since then...)

In the current war, Olmert's reported position of favoring some form of international monitoring mechanism seems the most constructive to me. And remember, there is no way you could get any such mechanism into place without involving Hamas in the negotiation over its deployment and terms of reference. Also, as noted above, a third-party monitoring mechanism can help assure the stability that both citizenries so desperately need.

Olmert, of course, is not running as head of any of the parties in the election, so he perhaps feels he can afford for his position to be more "statesman-like" and less unredeemedly belligerent than those of either Livni or Barak? Also, he is the current prime minister, so he should be able to wield executive power over Barak if they came to a serious disagreement over how to end this war?

But no, I don't think it would be that easy for him to do that...

Oops, maybe these three highly competitive people should have had all these discussions and figured out a joint plan on how to end the war before they got into it?

The internal politics within Israel's cabinet may well end up making the termination of this conflict very complex and long-drawn-out indeed.

Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:56 PM | Comments (22)

A beautiful but tragic story from Syria

Syria has been host to 450,000 Palestinian refugees for decades. (Their families found refugee there from the fighting when Israel was founded in 1948.) More recently, Syria has been host to some 700,000 refugees from the fighting in US-occupied Iraq.

This photo is from a lovely story from Syria about a project in which two choirs-- one made up of Iraqi refugee children and non-refugee Syrian children, and the other of Palestinian refugee children-- came together to sing a program that included Palestinian, Syrian, and Iraqi music.

photo by Ibrahim Malla

Too often, people in the international community think of refugees as, at best, "a problem" to be solved through merely technocratic means, or at worst a "menace", and a potential source of instability. People forget that people who are refugees are every bit as human as those of us who are not (yet) refugees. They have amazing capacities and capabilities that can be either nurtured or stifled by the way they are treated. They have agency, resilience, and amazing capacities to love, to be kind, or to experience the whole range of other human emotions. And they have rights, codified in international law but "honored", too often, only in the breach.

I look at the photo of these children-- who seem to be part of the Iraqi portion of the choir. I imagine the work it took for their parents or older siblings to get them looking so neat and beautiful, even though many of them probably have horrible living conditions. I see the range of ways they're engaging with the task at hand (or looking mischievously around). I look at their joy in artistic creation and in working together. I notice that they're reading words and perhaps also reading music.

Imagine where any one of these children might be in another two, or 20, years time! Will they have returned to their respective homelands and be living a peaceful and productive life there? Might one or more of these children turn out to have real musical talent, now being well nurtured, and end up a Barenboim or a Yo-Yo Ma? Where else might this experience of musical education, group activity, and the nurturing hands of adults lead these kids?

A Happy New Year to people everywhere. And especially, in our conflict-riven times, to all people everywhere who are refugees.

Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:11 PM | Comments (1)

Israelis debate how (more than whether) to continue war

Brushing aside the many calls from the "international community" for an immediate and permanent ceasefire with Gaza, the Israeli government has vowed to continue its assault against the Strip, and some Israeli citizens are now openly debating whether the war effort should be continued more or less "as-is", i.e. mainly an assault from the air force and other stand-off weapons platforms, or whether its should be expanded to include some form of a major ground incursion.

This debate is presumably being held all over the country. A Haaretz poll reported today that 52% of Israeli respondents favored continuing the war as-is, and 19% favored launching a ground push. Only 20% favored negotiating a truce as soon as possible. (Unclear from that poll: when it was taken exactly, and-- even more importantly-- whether it included the Israeli citizens who are of Palestinian-Arab ethnicity or was restricted, as many Israeli opinion polls are, only to Jewish Israelis. If the former, then they most likely occupied just about all the slots of those who favored a speedy truce.)

Also, in today's Haaretz, Yossi Melman lays out seven possible courses of military action for Israel regarding Gaza, including the "as-is" and the two versions of the "introduce ground forces" option. Two of his other options (numbers 5 and 7) involve concluding a ceasefire with Hamas: one more limited, and the other more extensive; and he notes that both these options have significant advantages. But he also argues that they have the "disadvantage" that they would entrench Hamas's power to a significant degree. Altogether, though, his is a fairly realistic and reasonable assessment.

Haaretz also, as always, opens its pages to several voices from the hard right. Among these are, today, Ari Shavit and the longtime settler activist Israel Harel.

Harel seems to be a big proponent of using ground forces, and much of what he writes is very informative. First, he simply assumes-- as do, I suppose, most Israelis-- that the main decisionmaking "brain" behind Israel's Gaza policy since last spring has been that of defense Minister Ehud Barak. He strongly criticizes Barak's decision to accept the tahdi'eh of last June, which he says allowed Hamas to regroup and strengthen its positions in Gaza. (The tahdi'eh also-- though it has been Israeli writers other than Harel who have noted this-- allowed Barak to complete his preparations for the present war.)

Harel writes this about the current war effort:

reveals Israel's unwillingness to fight for a long-term resolution

What is worse, the way the battle is being waged after the impressive air strikes raises concerns that the operation's leaders do not intend to achieve even its modest aims, among other reasons because Israel once again blinked first.

The blinking did not begin on Tuesday with Barak's announcement that Israel was considering a "humanitarian" 48-hour cease-fire. It began when the first air strikes were not immediately accompanied by a ground operation. Israel showed, as in Lebanon, that it does not want to reach a strategic resolution and does not have the will, determination or self-confidence to lead a military operation beyond reprisal and punitive action.

This is a major and painful operation, but despite its ambitious intentions it is not a military action that will end the eight-year nightmare of the people of the Negev.

The more days go by with the main component aerial bombardment, which, like in Lebanon, cannot stop the rockets, the public begins to feel (our leaders' arguments show this) that the operation is losing momentum. A sense is growing that something has been missed, especially in the Negev communities.

The national mood, which rallied last Saturday, is beginning to sag, and disappointment is beginning to seep in. The pubic does not want to make do with a situation in which a sovereign country with significant military capabilities - certainly vis-a-vis Hamas - once again signals that it is willing to stop a battle at its height, before a real response to the problem that led the Israel Defense Forces into the fight in the first place...

Harel argues, though, that it is still not too late to launch the significant ground operation he favors. But he warns that this should not be "hesitant", like the one launched in the last two days of the 2006 Lebanon. Instead, it should be just as decisive as "Operation Defensive Shield", the large-scale infantry push into West Bank cities that Ariel Sharon launched in April 2002 which was, Harel argues, successful in meeting its goal of "rooting out terror."

He adds:

At the end of the operation Israel withdrew from big cities like Nablus, Ramallah and Jenin. But the destruction of terror infrastructure and the psychological shock the terror groups experienced made it possible for the IDF to sharply reduce its number of attacks to this day. This is mainly because the army can, if need be, enter the cities almost unhindered to stop anyone planning a suicide attack or making rockets intended for the Tel Aviv region's population centers.

Harel's argument here is more than a little disingenuous. First of all, "Defensive Shield" was deployed against targets in Gaza, as well as in the West Bank. But iut didn't seem to "work" as well there as Harel claims it did in the West Bank, did it?

Secondly, it was not only Sharon's horrible assault of 2002 that reduced the numbers of anti-Israeli armed actions emanating from the West Bank. It was also, most durably of all (until now), the Barrier/Wall that was built there thereafter and the extensive system of associated movement-control mechanisms that quadrillaged the whole West Bank into a series of easily isolatable, open-air prisons; and the rebuilding, under tight US-Israeli supervision, of a PA "security force" there that would work from inside Palestinian society to self-police it on behalf of the US and Israeli paymasters.

If an Israeli ground force went back into Gaza now, would it end up quadrillaging the whole Strip (once again) into smaller and more "manageable chunks of open-air prison? Would it end up trying to install a pro-Israeli (Dahlanist) quisling force there to self-police the Palestinian community? Neither of those strategies looks feasible in today's Gaza. And regarding a Barrier/Wall-- Israel already has a very high one that separates it completely from Gaza. It has prevented the infiltration of armed Palestinians. But its heights have, of course, been easily scaleable by the militant Palestinians' rockets.

Meantime, Harel makes zero mention at all of the regional political reverberations of any continued-- let alone expanded-- Israeli action against Gaza. The costs that Israel's assault is imposing on the stability of the US-dominated order throughout the Middle East continue to mount, inexorably, with every day the war continues.

Of course, as a longtime settler activist, Harel is quite accustomed to simply brushing aside the feeble objections he might from time to time hear from Washington to the kinds of (actually, internationally criminal) actions that he and his ilk take all the time, in the West Bank and formerly also in Gaza. But other Israelis-- and even more so Americans-- need to be a lot more attentive to the regional political dynamics of Israel's actions than he is.

The Israeli hasbara people in the US have been working overtime to try to spread the notion that "the Arabs" as a whole, or at least "the Arab governments" secretly or perhaps not so secretly "really" want Israel to finish off Hamas for good and all at this time. That has also been linked to a hasbara campaign to say that these Arab governments were "fearful of Hamas's close ties with Iran", etc, etc.

In the first couple of days of the war, the hasbaristas were able to find some little shreds of evidence for their wishful-thinking type of claims. Now, even those shreds of evidence have evaporated. Read the UN's account of the statements made by various Arab ambassadors at last night's emergency session of the Security Council, and you will not find one of them who expresses any criticism of Hamas for the current crisis. Remember, too, that the SC session was held at the urgent request of the Arab League.

If these Arab governments-- all of whose leaders would strongly prefer to be able to rest easy in their antecedent position of not antagonizing the US in any way at all-- are already this "mobilized" by the mounting tide of pro-Gaza, pro-Hamas public opinion in their own countries... and Israel hasn't even started launching a ground operation into Gaza yet... Imagine how much stronger the political positions of the Arab governments and of other governments around the world would become if an Israeli ground assault were to be launched!

But Israel Harel doesn't care one whit about that. He and his colleagues in the settler movement have, after all, been defying international law and the "international community" with complete impunity for many decades now.

Of course, if we had a responsible, fair-minded government here in the US, it could cut off this debate right now, by throwing its whole weight behind the international calls for a ceasefire and taking the actions needed to get Israel into line with that.

But in Israel, too many commentators and analysts seem quite happy to continue their grisly public debate over the best way to inflict more death and suffering on their neighbors...

Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:33 PM | Comments (4)

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