Friday, February 23, 2007
Jerusalem Post interview with Michael Totten
Hizbullah has now regained its strength after last summer's war, with the aid of Syria and Iran, according to Michael J. Totten, an internationally known blogger who covers the Middle East.
"Hizbullah is as strong, or at least nearly as strong, as they were last July," Totten told The Jerusalem Post this week.
Totten has lived in Beirut for a period and splits his time now between the Middle East and Portland, Oregon.
He spent time in Lebanon and Israel during and after last year's war, and has met with many of the leaders of sects and parties in Lebanon, including Hizbullah.
Totten raises money from readers and publishes dispatches from the Middle East on his Web site, michaeltotten.com.
With the financial help of his readers, Totten moved to Beirut to blog from the ground. He is distinct among bloggers in that he supports himself through blogging, and has a dedicated following across the political spectrum.
He considers himself an "American centrist," saying his views on Israel are "mainstream," even though he says "I often disagree with what Israel does." He talked with the Post about what he sees lies ahead regarding Hizbullah.
What are Hizbullah's plans with regards to Israel? Do they wish to engage Israel again anytime soon?
Hizbullah says they want to continue their "resistance" against Israel indefinitely. Most, if not all, their weapon stocks depleted from the war in July have been replenished from Iran via Syria.
Hizbullah requires an open-ended war with Israel as an excuse to exist as an illegal militia and a parallel government, a state within a state. They would have to disarm and evolve into a mainstream political party like everyone else if their war with Israel were to come to an end. So they need the war, even if the war injures them terribly, because war gives them power over other Lebanese sects and political parties. Peace with Israel is Hizbullah's worst nightmare.
Small border skirmishes don't really register in Lebanon, but medium-sized battles with Israel help Hizbullah a great deal. It gives them propaganda points. They can say "See, Israel is our enemy and only we can fight them. So we cannot give up our weapons." It's theoretically possible that Hizbullah fears Israel now more than ever and never intends to fight again. I doubt this is the case, though, because Hizbullah's headquarters are not in Lebanon.
Hizbullah's decision-makers are in Teheran and Damascus. If Israel wants to deter Hizbullah, Israel will need to deter Teheran and Damascus. No amount of damage inflicted on Beirut will deter Hizbullah. They themselves are in a state of near-war with Beirut and the Lebanese government.
Do you know anything about the kidnapped soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev?
I wish I did.
You have met with some of the Hizbullah bigwigs. What are your personal impressions of the group?
They're thugs. Hizbullah's former media relations liaison Hussein Naboulsi threatened me with violence because I cracked a joke about them on my blog. He was the same guy who led CNN's Anderson Cooper around by the nose during the war. Cooper wasn't impressed either and he explained on national television how they operate, how they maniupulate journalists.
I was detained by Hizbullah at one of their events because they suspected an American colleague of mine was Jewish. They didn't harm either of us, but they did physically detain us for over an hour. They screamed at us - mostly at him, actually - and deleted pictures from his camera. Two days later they threatened me.
Chris Allbritton, who sometimes works for Time Magazine, briefly mentioned on his blog during the war that several journalists he knows were threatened by Hizbullah because of what they were writing.
I interviewed one of Hizbullah's top officials, Muhammad Afif - who is Naboulsi's brother, by the way - but I never published the interview.
It was boring and useless. My translator told me that everything he said to me was exactly, word for word, what Hizbullah says every day on their Al Manar TV station. He was a Hizbullah robot, basically. I learned much more about how Hizbullah really thinks from talking to random civilians who support them, and by talking to Lebanese who can't stand them.
Are Syria and Iran still supplying Hizbullah? Have they recovered from the war last summer?
Absolutely. Hizbullah is as strong, or at least nearly as strong, as they were last July. Iran and Syria will continue supplying Hizbullah until they fear the consequences of continuing their support or until no one in Lebanon is willing to receive their support. Right now everyone who dies because of Syrian and Iranian support for Hizbullah is Lebanese or Israeli. They have no reason to stop until that equation is altered.
What role is Iran playing in Lebanon?
Hizbullah is a creation of and proxy for Iran's Revolutionary Guards.
The Iranian regime is Hizbullah's primary patron and armorer. Syria acts as a logistical middle man, basically, between Teheran and South Lebanon.
The Iranian regime projects military power beyond its borders more than any other state in the Middle East. Hizbullah is Iran's imperial project in Lebanon, their base so to speak in the Levant.
The Iranians are primarily interested in using Hizbullah as a weapon against Israel while the Syrians are primarily interested in using Hizbullah as a weapon against Lebanon.
How has Lebanon recovered from this summer?
It depends on which region we're talking about. The South and Beirut's southern suburbs sustained heavy damage. I recently returned from Bint Jbail, Hizbullah's de-facto capital in South Lebanon. The city center is almost completely in ruins.
The outskirts are in fine shape, but the downtown is practically gone. Rubble has been cleared out of the way, but I saw no evidence of any reconstruction there whatsover. Maroun al Ras, the first village Israel occupied during the war, is in similar condition.
Haret Hreik, Hizbullah's capital south of Beirut, looks like World War II hit the place. Whole swaths of towers are just gone. Again, rubble has been cleared but reconstruction hasn't begun. At least I didn't see any.
The rest of the country was less damaged to begin with, so rebuilding is cheaper, easier, and faster. Bombed bridges are under reconstruction along the coastal highway. Traffic is a mess because the work isn't finished, but the work will be finished soon and there will be no evidence a war even happened.
The Israel Air Force bombed Lebanon's milk factory for reasons I still don't understand. There were still severe milk shortages in Lebanon at least as recently as Christmas. I don't know if that's still the case.
The airport seemed completely undamaged. It looked and functioned exactly as it did every time I flew into and out of Beirut before the war. The terminal was reportedly destroyed by the Israeli Air Force, but as it turned out that didn't happen.
The economy is still in bad shape, but it's hard to say how much of that is because of the war and how much of it is a result of Hizbullah's ongoing siege in the capital.
You have traveled in Palestinian refugee camps and the territories, yet your writings come across as fair and at times even pro-Israel. What are your ideological views?
I'm an American, so I think in American political terms. Within the American political system I'm basically a centrist. I vote for both Democratic and Republican candidates and suspect I will do so for a very long time. Each party gets some things right and some things wrong.
A huge majority of Americans support Israel. I'm right in the mainstream when it comes to Israel, even though I often disagree with what Israel does. I thought the invasion of Lebanon was foolish, counterproductive, and a waste of money and lives in both Lebanon and Israel. But I sympathize with what Israel was trying to do, and of course with Israel's right to exist and defend itself. So my criticism wasn't the shrieking axe-grinding kind that I'm sure you're all too familiar with. If Israel would have clearly won the war last summer I would have changed my mind, admitted I was wrong, and supported it in hindsight.
Source
"Hizbullah is as strong, or at least nearly as strong, as they were last July," Totten told The Jerusalem Post this week.
Totten has lived in Beirut for a period and splits his time now between the Middle East and Portland, Oregon.
He spent time in Lebanon and Israel during and after last year's war, and has met with many of the leaders of sects and parties in Lebanon, including Hizbullah.
Totten raises money from readers and publishes dispatches from the Middle East on his Web site, michaeltotten.com.
With the financial help of his readers, Totten moved to Beirut to blog from the ground. He is distinct among bloggers in that he supports himself through blogging, and has a dedicated following across the political spectrum.
He considers himself an "American centrist," saying his views on Israel are "mainstream," even though he says "I often disagree with what Israel does." He talked with the Post about what he sees lies ahead regarding Hizbullah.
What are Hizbullah's plans with regards to Israel? Do they wish to engage Israel again anytime soon?
Hizbullah says they want to continue their "resistance" against Israel indefinitely. Most, if not all, their weapon stocks depleted from the war in July have been replenished from Iran via Syria.
Hizbullah requires an open-ended war with Israel as an excuse to exist as an illegal militia and a parallel government, a state within a state. They would have to disarm and evolve into a mainstream political party like everyone else if their war with Israel were to come to an end. So they need the war, even if the war injures them terribly, because war gives them power over other Lebanese sects and political parties. Peace with Israel is Hizbullah's worst nightmare.
Small border skirmishes don't really register in Lebanon, but medium-sized battles with Israel help Hizbullah a great deal. It gives them propaganda points. They can say "See, Israel is our enemy and only we can fight them. So we cannot give up our weapons." It's theoretically possible that Hizbullah fears Israel now more than ever and never intends to fight again. I doubt this is the case, though, because Hizbullah's headquarters are not in Lebanon.
Hizbullah's decision-makers are in Teheran and Damascus. If Israel wants to deter Hizbullah, Israel will need to deter Teheran and Damascus. No amount of damage inflicted on Beirut will deter Hizbullah. They themselves are in a state of near-war with Beirut and the Lebanese government.
Do you know anything about the kidnapped soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev?
I wish I did.
You have met with some of the Hizbullah bigwigs. What are your personal impressions of the group?
They're thugs. Hizbullah's former media relations liaison Hussein Naboulsi threatened me with violence because I cracked a joke about them on my blog. He was the same guy who led CNN's Anderson Cooper around by the nose during the war. Cooper wasn't impressed either and he explained on national television how they operate, how they maniupulate journalists.
I was detained by Hizbullah at one of their events because they suspected an American colleague of mine was Jewish. They didn't harm either of us, but they did physically detain us for over an hour. They screamed at us - mostly at him, actually - and deleted pictures from his camera. Two days later they threatened me.
Chris Allbritton, who sometimes works for Time Magazine, briefly mentioned on his blog during the war that several journalists he knows were threatened by Hizbullah because of what they were writing.
I interviewed one of Hizbullah's top officials, Muhammad Afif - who is Naboulsi's brother, by the way - but I never published the interview.
It was boring and useless. My translator told me that everything he said to me was exactly, word for word, what Hizbullah says every day on their Al Manar TV station. He was a Hizbullah robot, basically. I learned much more about how Hizbullah really thinks from talking to random civilians who support them, and by talking to Lebanese who can't stand them.
Are Syria and Iran still supplying Hizbullah? Have they recovered from the war last summer?
Absolutely. Hizbullah is as strong, or at least nearly as strong, as they were last July. Iran and Syria will continue supplying Hizbullah until they fear the consequences of continuing their support or until no one in Lebanon is willing to receive their support. Right now everyone who dies because of Syrian and Iranian support for Hizbullah is Lebanese or Israeli. They have no reason to stop until that equation is altered.
What role is Iran playing in Lebanon?
Hizbullah is a creation of and proxy for Iran's Revolutionary Guards.
The Iranian regime is Hizbullah's primary patron and armorer. Syria acts as a logistical middle man, basically, between Teheran and South Lebanon.
The Iranian regime projects military power beyond its borders more than any other state in the Middle East. Hizbullah is Iran's imperial project in Lebanon, their base so to speak in the Levant.
The Iranians are primarily interested in using Hizbullah as a weapon against Israel while the Syrians are primarily interested in using Hizbullah as a weapon against Lebanon.
How has Lebanon recovered from this summer?
It depends on which region we're talking about. The South and Beirut's southern suburbs sustained heavy damage. I recently returned from Bint Jbail, Hizbullah's de-facto capital in South Lebanon. The city center is almost completely in ruins.
The outskirts are in fine shape, but the downtown is practically gone. Rubble has been cleared out of the way, but I saw no evidence of any reconstruction there whatsover. Maroun al Ras, the first village Israel occupied during the war, is in similar condition.
Haret Hreik, Hizbullah's capital south of Beirut, looks like World War II hit the place. Whole swaths of towers are just gone. Again, rubble has been cleared but reconstruction hasn't begun. At least I didn't see any.
The rest of the country was less damaged to begin with, so rebuilding is cheaper, easier, and faster. Bombed bridges are under reconstruction along the coastal highway. Traffic is a mess because the work isn't finished, but the work will be finished soon and there will be no evidence a war even happened.
The Israel Air Force bombed Lebanon's milk factory for reasons I still don't understand. There were still severe milk shortages in Lebanon at least as recently as Christmas. I don't know if that's still the case.
The airport seemed completely undamaged. It looked and functioned exactly as it did every time I flew into and out of Beirut before the war. The terminal was reportedly destroyed by the Israeli Air Force, but as it turned out that didn't happen.
The economy is still in bad shape, but it's hard to say how much of that is because of the war and how much of it is a result of Hizbullah's ongoing siege in the capital.
You have traveled in Palestinian refugee camps and the territories, yet your writings come across as fair and at times even pro-Israel. What are your ideological views?
I'm an American, so I think in American political terms. Within the American political system I'm basically a centrist. I vote for both Democratic and Republican candidates and suspect I will do so for a very long time. Each party gets some things right and some things wrong.
A huge majority of Americans support Israel. I'm right in the mainstream when it comes to Israel, even though I often disagree with what Israel does. I thought the invasion of Lebanon was foolish, counterproductive, and a waste of money and lives in both Lebanon and Israel. But I sympathize with what Israel was trying to do, and of course with Israel's right to exist and defend itself. So my criticism wasn't the shrieking axe-grinding kind that I'm sure you're all too familiar with. If Israel would have clearly won the war last summer I would have changed my mind, admitted I was wrong, and supported it in hindsight.
Source
Is Israel the Problem?
Amir Taheri - Feb 01, 2007
Commentary Magazine
Fifteen years ago, after the first defeat of Saddam Hussein and the liberation of Kuwait, President George H.W. Bush and his Secretary of State James Baker faced the question of how best to exploit the American victory as a means of stabilizing the Middle East. The obvious course would have been to deploy the immensely enhanced prestige of the United States, backed by its unprecedented military presence in the Persian Gulf, to help create new and durable security structures in a region regarded as vital to American national interests.
How might this have been done? The U.S. could have urged its Arab allies to introduce long-overdue reforms as a step toward legitimizing their regimes and broadening their domestic political support. At the very least, the U.S. might have urged the six member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council to end their decades of intramural feuding and forge a broader alliance with Jordan and Egypt. This, with American support, might have helped create a new balance of power in the region to counter the ambitions of adventurist regimes like Iran, Iraq, and Syria.
But nothing of the sort was ever considered in Washington. Instead, as Baker declared in September 1991, the administration would go for “the big thing”: that is, finding a solution to the century-old conflict between the Jews and the Arabs. The result was the Madrid conference, an impressive show of heads of state but, as the decade’s subsequent events would prove, a wholly counterproductive exercise in peacemaking.
The two key analytical assumptions that led to Madrid were, first, that the Arab-Israeli conflict was the issue, the Ur-issue, of Middle Eastern politics and, second, that all the other issues in the region were inextricably linked to it. Despite everything that has happened in the interim to disprove these two assumptions, they still underlie the thinking of diplomats today. Most recently, they were repeated almost word for word in the long-awaited report of the Iraq Study Group (ISG) headed by the very same James Baker.
Charged by the present Bush administration with finding ways to win the war in Iraq more quickly and at a lower cost in blood and treasure, the ISG found itself irresistibly drawn to the old notion of the Ur-issue. Evidently regarding the Bush Doctrine, with its diametrically opposed analysis, as too irrelevant even to merit mention, the ISG suggested instead that “solving” the Israel-Palestine dispute was the key to winning in Iraq.
In this, moreover, Baker and his team are hardly alone. Kofi Annan, the former Secretary-General of the United Nations, has long been of the same mind. So too, apparently, is his successor Ban Ki-Moon, who told a South Korean newspaper that “If the issues in the conflict between Israel and Palestine [sic] go well, other issues in the Middle East . . . are likely to follow suit.”
That Arab despots should long have sought to divert their tyrannized subjects with dreams of driving the “Zionist enemy” into the sea is no surprise. Each time the late Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt faced social and political unrest at home, he would assure his own people and the Arab “nation” at large that social and political reform had to wait until “the enemy” was dislodged from “our beloved Palestine.” For a group of American “wise men” to embrace such retrograde and easily refuted notions bespeaks a truly dangerous ignorance of reality.
In fact, far from being the root cause of instability and war in the wider Middle East, one could argue that the Arab-Israeli conflict is rather peripheral, and that the region’s deeper and much more intractable problems lie elsewhere. And one would be right. In the last years we have all become acquainted with televised images of the brutal carnage that Shiites and Sunni are capable of inflicting on each other in Iraq, the ghastly work of Baathist death squads, the steady rhythm of political assassinations, and the laying waste of civilian life. And that is just within one country. For our purposes here, however, it may be more instructive to look at the Middle East at the regional level, and to examine in particular the huge number of inter-state conflicts that have bedeviled this area in the modern era—conflicts that have nothing whatsoever to do with the struggle between Israel and the Palestinians.
Covering a vast swath of territory between the Atlantic and Indian oceans, the “arc of crisis,” as British Prime Minister Tony Blair has accurately referred to the greater Middle East, consists of 22 states, sixteen of them Arab, plus Iran, Israel, Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Few could be regarded as nation-states in classical European terms; all are remnants of various empires.
As such remnants, indeed, none of the states in the region enjoys fully defined or internationally recognized borders. Every one of them is engaged in pressing irredentist claims of one kind or another against one or more of its neighbors, and most have entered into armed battle with each other as a consequence. A brief tour of the region, proceeding roughly from east to west, yields a depressingly uniform catalog.
Afghanistan, to begin there, maintains a claim over neighboring Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province. This is the home of the Pathans, whose Pushtun kin form the largest ethnic bloc north of the colonial border fixed by Britain in the 19th century. In the 1960’s, the two neighbors fought a series of border wars over this province, which the Afghans call Pakhtunistan.
For its part, Pakistan has been engaged in a longstanding territorial dispute with India over the ownership of Kashmir, divided between the two in 1947 (with China snatching a portion for itself in 1960). The Indo-Pakistani conflict has led to three major wars and countless border clashes over the past half-century, and in part accounts for the determination of the two neighbors to develop their respective arsenals of nuclear weapons.
Pakistan is involved in a dispute with Iran as well—this one over territorial waters in the Arabian Sea as well as over the nationality of a number of Baluch tribes astraddle the international frontier. Iran, in turn, claims a right of supervision (droit de regard) in western Afghanistan based on the Paris Treaty of 1855. Iran and Afghanistan have likewise been in militant dispute for more than six decades over the waters of three border rivers, the Hirmand, the Parian, and the Harirud.
Then, on a much larger scale, there is the Iran-Iraq conflict. Between 1936 and 1974, these two neighbors fought a series of wars for control of the Shatt al-Arab border estuary. In 1975, they signed an accord to end the dispute, only to see the agreement declared null and void by Saddam Hussein in 1980. Invading Iran, he started a conflict that lasted eight years and claimed a million lives on both sides.
Since 2003, Iran has seized the opportunity presented by the fall of Saddam Hussein to redraw the border to its advantage. Iranian forces have gained control of Zaynalkosh, a strategic salient pointing to Baghdad like a gun. Iran has also revived a series of old accords with the former Ottoman empire, known as the Erzerum treaties, to claim a right of supervision over the Shiite holy shrines in present-day Iraq (Samara, Kazemayn, Karbala, Kufa, and Najaf).
Iran is in disputes elsewhere as well. To the south, it is trying to retain its hold over three strategically valuable islands near the Straits of Hormuz, through which passes each day half of the world’s exported oil. Iran seized these islands from Great Britain in 1971, just hours before the British ended their protectorate over the seven sheikhdoms that together form the United Arab Emirates (UAE). To its north, Iran is fighting with Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Azerbaijan over the Caspian Sea. These littoral neighbors want the territorial waters divided in accordance with the respective lengths of the five countries’ coastlines, leaving Iran with only 10 percent of the sea’s oil, gas, and fishing resources. Iran wants the Caspian to be divided equally among the five, thus doubling its share to 20 percent. Ever since 1995, it has taken action to underline its demands, creating a navy and preventing Western oil companies from exploring in Azerbaijani and Turkmen waters that Tehran regards as its own.
Iran has also acted to ensure its hold over the oil-rich province of Khuzestan, the object of a pan-Arab campaign to claim the region as part of the “Arab homeland.” This territory, which did indeed boast an ethnic Arab majority until the late 1940’s, has been steadily Persianized.
Recently, in what amounts to an administrative ethnic cleansing, several Arab tribes living in areas close to the Iraqi border have been expelled, their members replaced by new arrivals, mostly from central Iran.
That the Arabs of the Middle East have long regarded Iran as an alien power is true enough. But their preoccupation with Tehran has hardly deterred them from fighting bitterly among themselves as well. Quite the contrary.
Consider the six members of the inaptly named Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). All six are monarchies, often linked by tribal blood bonds, and four of them share a strong common interest as members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Nevertheless, in 1955, Saudi Arabia and the sultanate of Oman fought a war over the Buraimi Oasis, an area rumored to hold vast petroleum resources; decades of negotiation have failed to produce an accord. A third party in the same dispute is Abu Dhabi, the richest and most powerful of the entities forming the UAE. Last year the UAE publicly renounced a 1974 accord with Saudi Arabia over the oasis, thus opening the way for entering its own claim of sovereignty there.
Since the late 1990’s, another GCC member, Qatar, has been quarreling with Saudi Arabia over the oil-rich area of Khor al-Udaid. In 2000, the Saudis expelled the last remaining Qatari garrison and formally annexed the area, thus cutting off Qatar’s border with the UAE. Elsewhere, Qatar has been in dispute with its neighbor Bahrain, fighting a naval war in 2001 over control of the Hawar Islands. A more ancient dispute, this one over the Zibarah tribes who live in the Qatar peninsula but claim loyalty to Bahrain, remains unresolved.
Even Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, arguably the GCC members enjoying the closest ties, have not managed to sort out their differences. Although they have agreed to share the oil resources in the so-called “neutral zone,” a joint commission set up in 2006 failed to demarcate the two countries’ frontiers there.
Kuwait’s principal cause of concern, however, is not Saudi Arabia but Iraq. Although the Iraq-Kuwait border was internationally guaranteed in 1992-93 after the first Gulf war, many Kuwaitis still fear a return of the Iraqi “demons.” And not without reason. Iraq’s democratically elected parliament has yet to put aside Iraqi claims against the Kuwaiti islands of Warbah and Bubiyan as well as the southern portion of the Rumailah oilfields granted to Kuwait by the UN. The uncertainty has forced Kuwait to postpone its ambitious plans for developing Bubiyan into a free-trade zone; tourist projects in Warbah and in the nearby island of Failakah have also been frozen. To keep the Iraqis out, Kuwait has built a series of fortifications along the border, including electrified ditches, anti-tank traps, and a no-man’s land at a depth of 10 miles. Saudi Arabia is building similar structures along its own border with Iraq.
Another dormant source of tension in the region is the old claim of suzerainty maintained by the Hashemite dynasty of Jordan over the Saudi province of Hejaz, where the holy cities of Mecca and Medina are located. The Hashemites have been careful to keep up relations with families in the province who suffered losses of land, power, and prestige when the al-Saud tribes drove out the Hashemites in 1924. Whenever the Saudi royal family comes under pressure from one or another of its many enemies, including al-Qaeda terrorists and Shiite militants in the eastern province, noises from Amman about a potentially independent Hejaz climb a notch higher.
In the past five years, Saudi Arabia has succeeded in settling its oldest and potentially most dangerous border dispute with Yemen, ceding to the latter more than 8,000 square kilometers of territory annexed in a 1936 war. But Yemen still has problems elsewhere. It has failed to define its borders with Oman along the Gulf of Hauf and the Rub al-Khali (or “empty quarter”), and it fought a war against Eritrea in 1999 over the Hanish islands in the Red Sea, a strategically valuable archipelago that could create a chokepoint in one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes. As for the vicious spectacle presented by Eritrea, Somalia, and Ethiopia, that deserves an essay unto itself.
The list continues. Ever since the 1940’s, both Iraq and Syria have pursued irredentist claims against Turkey, accusing that country of denying them their fair share of the waters of the Euphrates. More importantly, both Syria and Iraq claim the Turkish province of Iskanderun, where ethnic Arabs account for some 30 percent of the population. For its part, Turkey, basing itself on the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, claims a right of supervision in northern Iraq, especially over the two oil-rich areas around Mosul and Kirkuk, and it has recruited, trained, and armed tribal Turkmen groups there. For much of the 1990’s, Turkey also intervened militarily in northern Iraq in pursuit of its war against the Marxist Kurdish guerrillas known as the PKK.
As for Syria, it most notoriously claims the entirety of Lebanon as part of “Greater Syria” (a fictitious unit that supposedly includes not only historical Palestine but also parts of what is now the kingdom of Jordan). For almost three of the five decades of Lebanon’s history as an independent state, Syria maintained an army of occupation there, and it has been involved in provoking and prolonging all three of Lebanon’s civil wars, including the longest one from 1975 to 1991. By dragging Lebanon into the broader conflicts of the region, Syria has been partly responsible for the deaths of an estimated 100,000 Lebanese and the flight of more than 2.5 million more. Last summer, Syria and its principal ally, Iran’s Islamic Republic, encouraged the Lebanese branch of Hizballah to trigger a five-week war with Israel, and then to attempt to destroy Lebanon’s democratically elected government through street agitation and political assassinations.
This brings us to Egypt, the most populous of the Arab states and one that has always vacillated between a policy of distancing itself from “the Arab mess,” as the nationalist premier Nahas Pasha liked to call it, and carving out an empire for itself in the name of pan-Arabism. For much of the 1950’s and 1960’s, Egypt under Nasser was in an empire-building mode. It created the United Arab Republic, to which Syria and, more briefly, Libya and Iraq were attached. It also did much to foment and prolong the 1958-1962 war in Algeria, partly within a grander, Soviet-backed scheme to keep the French army, the largest NATO force in Europe at the time, pinned down for as long as possible.
In the 1960’s, in the name of pan-Arabism, Egypt supported the military coup d’état in Yemen that led to a six-year civil war there. By 1962, an Egyptian expeditionary army of 60,000 men was fighting the forces of the deposed Yemeni imam. Over 200,000 people died in that war, including some 30,000 Egyptians.
Egypt’s defeat in the 1967 war against Israel ended Nasser’s Yemeni adventure. Even so, however, he could not refrain from throwing Egypt’s weight behind the radical regime in the newly independent state of South Yemen, which was to become the only Arab country to build a thorough-going Communist system. With Egypt’s help, South Yemen became a major cold-war base for the Soviet Union, offering it naval facilities in Aden, Mukalla, and the island of Soccotra. From 1969 until the mid-1970’s, South Yemen was also a base of aggression against Oman, as Marxist rebels from the Popular Front for the Liberation of the Occupied Arab Gulf tried to seize control of the Omani province of Dhofar with the help of Cuban and East German military experts. That war claimed over 100,000 lives and produced almost a half-million refugees on both sides of the border.
More recently, Egypt has flexed its muscles against Sudan, annexing chunks of Sudanese territory known as the Halaieb, home to the trans-border Bashara tribes. On its other side, Egypt has engaged in intermittent conflict with Muammar Qaddafi’s Libya over an area of the Egyptian desert. Indeed, the great irony is that the only neighbor with whom Egypt enjoys demarcated and internationally recognized borders is Israel.
Libya, too, has been involved in territorial disputes—with Chad, Sudan, and Tunisia. In the case of Chad, Libyan claims led to a decade-long war in the 1970’s and 1980’s that at one point drew in French forces on the Chadian side. In the case of Sudan, the point at issue is Khartoum’s support for Islamist guerrillas fighting Qaddafi on his home turf of Tripoli.
Further to the west, Algeria, Morocco, and Mauritania have been locked in a triangular struggle over the former Spanish Sahara, which Morocco annexed in 1975 with financial and military help from the Shah of Iran. In retaliation, Algeria has set up and supported the Polisario front that claims to be the legitimate government of the Saharaoui people. Most Arab and African states recognize the Polisario claim, despite Morocco’s protests, and a low-intensity war that started in 1976 has continued ever since.
In 1992, the UN asked none other than James Baker to mediate an agreement on the Sahara. Eight years later, America’s “diplomatic wizard” threw in the towel, having failed to bring the disputants an inch closer to agreement. In the 1990’s, Morocco repaid Algeria for its support of the Polisario by turning a blind eye to Islamist terrorists waging a bloody campaign in Algeria that claimed over 250,000 lives.
This provides only the briefest glimpse into one aspect of reality in the “arc of crisis.” All told, in the past six decades, this region has witnessed no fewer than 22 full-scale wars over territory and resources, not one of them having anything to do with Israel and the Palestinians. And these international disputes, as I mentioned at the outset, are quite apart from the uninterrupted string of domestic clashes, military coups, acts of sectarian and ethnic vengeance, factional terrorism, and other internal conflicts that have characterized the greater Middle East, not infrequently attaining impressive heights of cruelty and despoliation. Nor is that the end of it. Underlying all of this are the unmoving facts, documented at length in the annual volumes of the Arab Human Development Report, of chronic instability, severe economic underachievement, social atrophy, and cultural backwardness. The greater Middle East is the only part of the world still largely untouched by the wave of positive change that followed the end of the cold war.
The notion that all of these problems can be waved away by “solving” the Arab-Israeli conflict is thus at best a delusion, at worst a recipe for maintaining today’s wider political, diplomatic, and social paralysis. For what is the reason behind the failure of the 1991 Madrid conference, the slow but steady death of the 1993 Oslo accords, the collapse of President Bill Clinton’s final effort to negotiate a peace deal at Camp David in 2000, and the faltering history of President George W. Bush’s “road map”? The reason is hardly the want of diplomatic efforts, especially on the part of the United States. No, the reason lies elsewhere, and is plain to see in the sorry tale we have rehearsed.
It is this: with the exception of Israel and with the partial exception of Turkey, the entire Middle East lacks a culture of conflict resolution, let alone the necessary mechanisms of meaningful compromise. Such a culture can only be shaped through a process of democratization. Only democracies habitually resolve their conflicts through diplomacy rather than war, and only popular-based regimes possess the political strength and the moral will to build peace. This is why, unless we mean to consign the Middle East back to the “swamps” from which the United States, its allies, and the region’s reformers have been seeking to extricate it, democratization remains the only credible strategy in and for the “arc of crisis,” and the only hope for its suffering inhabitants.
Source
Commentary Magazine
Fifteen years ago, after the first defeat of Saddam Hussein and the liberation of Kuwait, President George H.W. Bush and his Secretary of State James Baker faced the question of how best to exploit the American victory as a means of stabilizing the Middle East. The obvious course would have been to deploy the immensely enhanced prestige of the United States, backed by its unprecedented military presence in the Persian Gulf, to help create new and durable security structures in a region regarded as vital to American national interests.
How might this have been done? The U.S. could have urged its Arab allies to introduce long-overdue reforms as a step toward legitimizing their regimes and broadening their domestic political support. At the very least, the U.S. might have urged the six member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council to end their decades of intramural feuding and forge a broader alliance with Jordan and Egypt. This, with American support, might have helped create a new balance of power in the region to counter the ambitions of adventurist regimes like Iran, Iraq, and Syria.
But nothing of the sort was ever considered in Washington. Instead, as Baker declared in September 1991, the administration would go for “the big thing”: that is, finding a solution to the century-old conflict between the Jews and the Arabs. The result was the Madrid conference, an impressive show of heads of state but, as the decade’s subsequent events would prove, a wholly counterproductive exercise in peacemaking.
The two key analytical assumptions that led to Madrid were, first, that the Arab-Israeli conflict was the issue, the Ur-issue, of Middle Eastern politics and, second, that all the other issues in the region were inextricably linked to it. Despite everything that has happened in the interim to disprove these two assumptions, they still underlie the thinking of diplomats today. Most recently, they were repeated almost word for word in the long-awaited report of the Iraq Study Group (ISG) headed by the very same James Baker.
Charged by the present Bush administration with finding ways to win the war in Iraq more quickly and at a lower cost in blood and treasure, the ISG found itself irresistibly drawn to the old notion of the Ur-issue. Evidently regarding the Bush Doctrine, with its diametrically opposed analysis, as too irrelevant even to merit mention, the ISG suggested instead that “solving” the Israel-Palestine dispute was the key to winning in Iraq.
In this, moreover, Baker and his team are hardly alone. Kofi Annan, the former Secretary-General of the United Nations, has long been of the same mind. So too, apparently, is his successor Ban Ki-Moon, who told a South Korean newspaper that “If the issues in the conflict between Israel and Palestine [sic] go well, other issues in the Middle East . . . are likely to follow suit.”
That Arab despots should long have sought to divert their tyrannized subjects with dreams of driving the “Zionist enemy” into the sea is no surprise. Each time the late Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt faced social and political unrest at home, he would assure his own people and the Arab “nation” at large that social and political reform had to wait until “the enemy” was dislodged from “our beloved Palestine.” For a group of American “wise men” to embrace such retrograde and easily refuted notions bespeaks a truly dangerous ignorance of reality.
In fact, far from being the root cause of instability and war in the wider Middle East, one could argue that the Arab-Israeli conflict is rather peripheral, and that the region’s deeper and much more intractable problems lie elsewhere. And one would be right. In the last years we have all become acquainted with televised images of the brutal carnage that Shiites and Sunni are capable of inflicting on each other in Iraq, the ghastly work of Baathist death squads, the steady rhythm of political assassinations, and the laying waste of civilian life. And that is just within one country. For our purposes here, however, it may be more instructive to look at the Middle East at the regional level, and to examine in particular the huge number of inter-state conflicts that have bedeviled this area in the modern era—conflicts that have nothing whatsoever to do with the struggle between Israel and the Palestinians.
Covering a vast swath of territory between the Atlantic and Indian oceans, the “arc of crisis,” as British Prime Minister Tony Blair has accurately referred to the greater Middle East, consists of 22 states, sixteen of them Arab, plus Iran, Israel, Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Few could be regarded as nation-states in classical European terms; all are remnants of various empires.
As such remnants, indeed, none of the states in the region enjoys fully defined or internationally recognized borders. Every one of them is engaged in pressing irredentist claims of one kind or another against one or more of its neighbors, and most have entered into armed battle with each other as a consequence. A brief tour of the region, proceeding roughly from east to west, yields a depressingly uniform catalog.
Afghanistan, to begin there, maintains a claim over neighboring Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province. This is the home of the Pathans, whose Pushtun kin form the largest ethnic bloc north of the colonial border fixed by Britain in the 19th century. In the 1960’s, the two neighbors fought a series of border wars over this province, which the Afghans call Pakhtunistan.
For its part, Pakistan has been engaged in a longstanding territorial dispute with India over the ownership of Kashmir, divided between the two in 1947 (with China snatching a portion for itself in 1960). The Indo-Pakistani conflict has led to three major wars and countless border clashes over the past half-century, and in part accounts for the determination of the two neighbors to develop their respective arsenals of nuclear weapons.
Pakistan is involved in a dispute with Iran as well—this one over territorial waters in the Arabian Sea as well as over the nationality of a number of Baluch tribes astraddle the international frontier. Iran, in turn, claims a right of supervision (droit de regard) in western Afghanistan based on the Paris Treaty of 1855. Iran and Afghanistan have likewise been in militant dispute for more than six decades over the waters of three border rivers, the Hirmand, the Parian, and the Harirud.
Then, on a much larger scale, there is the Iran-Iraq conflict. Between 1936 and 1974, these two neighbors fought a series of wars for control of the Shatt al-Arab border estuary. In 1975, they signed an accord to end the dispute, only to see the agreement declared null and void by Saddam Hussein in 1980. Invading Iran, he started a conflict that lasted eight years and claimed a million lives on both sides.
Since 2003, Iran has seized the opportunity presented by the fall of Saddam Hussein to redraw the border to its advantage. Iranian forces have gained control of Zaynalkosh, a strategic salient pointing to Baghdad like a gun. Iran has also revived a series of old accords with the former Ottoman empire, known as the Erzerum treaties, to claim a right of supervision over the Shiite holy shrines in present-day Iraq (Samara, Kazemayn, Karbala, Kufa, and Najaf).
Iran is in disputes elsewhere as well. To the south, it is trying to retain its hold over three strategically valuable islands near the Straits of Hormuz, through which passes each day half of the world’s exported oil. Iran seized these islands from Great Britain in 1971, just hours before the British ended their protectorate over the seven sheikhdoms that together form the United Arab Emirates (UAE). To its north, Iran is fighting with Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Azerbaijan over the Caspian Sea. These littoral neighbors want the territorial waters divided in accordance with the respective lengths of the five countries’ coastlines, leaving Iran with only 10 percent of the sea’s oil, gas, and fishing resources. Iran wants the Caspian to be divided equally among the five, thus doubling its share to 20 percent. Ever since 1995, it has taken action to underline its demands, creating a navy and preventing Western oil companies from exploring in Azerbaijani and Turkmen waters that Tehran regards as its own.
Iran has also acted to ensure its hold over the oil-rich province of Khuzestan, the object of a pan-Arab campaign to claim the region as part of the “Arab homeland.” This territory, which did indeed boast an ethnic Arab majority until the late 1940’s, has been steadily Persianized.
Recently, in what amounts to an administrative ethnic cleansing, several Arab tribes living in areas close to the Iraqi border have been expelled, their members replaced by new arrivals, mostly from central Iran.
That the Arabs of the Middle East have long regarded Iran as an alien power is true enough. But their preoccupation with Tehran has hardly deterred them from fighting bitterly among themselves as well. Quite the contrary.
Consider the six members of the inaptly named Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). All six are monarchies, often linked by tribal blood bonds, and four of them share a strong common interest as members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Nevertheless, in 1955, Saudi Arabia and the sultanate of Oman fought a war over the Buraimi Oasis, an area rumored to hold vast petroleum resources; decades of negotiation have failed to produce an accord. A third party in the same dispute is Abu Dhabi, the richest and most powerful of the entities forming the UAE. Last year the UAE publicly renounced a 1974 accord with Saudi Arabia over the oasis, thus opening the way for entering its own claim of sovereignty there.
Since the late 1990’s, another GCC member, Qatar, has been quarreling with Saudi Arabia over the oil-rich area of Khor al-Udaid. In 2000, the Saudis expelled the last remaining Qatari garrison and formally annexed the area, thus cutting off Qatar’s border with the UAE. Elsewhere, Qatar has been in dispute with its neighbor Bahrain, fighting a naval war in 2001 over control of the Hawar Islands. A more ancient dispute, this one over the Zibarah tribes who live in the Qatar peninsula but claim loyalty to Bahrain, remains unresolved.
Even Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, arguably the GCC members enjoying the closest ties, have not managed to sort out their differences. Although they have agreed to share the oil resources in the so-called “neutral zone,” a joint commission set up in 2006 failed to demarcate the two countries’ frontiers there.
Kuwait’s principal cause of concern, however, is not Saudi Arabia but Iraq. Although the Iraq-Kuwait border was internationally guaranteed in 1992-93 after the first Gulf war, many Kuwaitis still fear a return of the Iraqi “demons.” And not without reason. Iraq’s democratically elected parliament has yet to put aside Iraqi claims against the Kuwaiti islands of Warbah and Bubiyan as well as the southern portion of the Rumailah oilfields granted to Kuwait by the UN. The uncertainty has forced Kuwait to postpone its ambitious plans for developing Bubiyan into a free-trade zone; tourist projects in Warbah and in the nearby island of Failakah have also been frozen. To keep the Iraqis out, Kuwait has built a series of fortifications along the border, including electrified ditches, anti-tank traps, and a no-man’s land at a depth of 10 miles. Saudi Arabia is building similar structures along its own border with Iraq.
Another dormant source of tension in the region is the old claim of suzerainty maintained by the Hashemite dynasty of Jordan over the Saudi province of Hejaz, where the holy cities of Mecca and Medina are located. The Hashemites have been careful to keep up relations with families in the province who suffered losses of land, power, and prestige when the al-Saud tribes drove out the Hashemites in 1924. Whenever the Saudi royal family comes under pressure from one or another of its many enemies, including al-Qaeda terrorists and Shiite militants in the eastern province, noises from Amman about a potentially independent Hejaz climb a notch higher.
In the past five years, Saudi Arabia has succeeded in settling its oldest and potentially most dangerous border dispute with Yemen, ceding to the latter more than 8,000 square kilometers of territory annexed in a 1936 war. But Yemen still has problems elsewhere. It has failed to define its borders with Oman along the Gulf of Hauf and the Rub al-Khali (or “empty quarter”), and it fought a war against Eritrea in 1999 over the Hanish islands in the Red Sea, a strategically valuable archipelago that could create a chokepoint in one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes. As for the vicious spectacle presented by Eritrea, Somalia, and Ethiopia, that deserves an essay unto itself.
The list continues. Ever since the 1940’s, both Iraq and Syria have pursued irredentist claims against Turkey, accusing that country of denying them their fair share of the waters of the Euphrates. More importantly, both Syria and Iraq claim the Turkish province of Iskanderun, where ethnic Arabs account for some 30 percent of the population. For its part, Turkey, basing itself on the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, claims a right of supervision in northern Iraq, especially over the two oil-rich areas around Mosul and Kirkuk, and it has recruited, trained, and armed tribal Turkmen groups there. For much of the 1990’s, Turkey also intervened militarily in northern Iraq in pursuit of its war against the Marxist Kurdish guerrillas known as the PKK.
As for Syria, it most notoriously claims the entirety of Lebanon as part of “Greater Syria” (a fictitious unit that supposedly includes not only historical Palestine but also parts of what is now the kingdom of Jordan). For almost three of the five decades of Lebanon’s history as an independent state, Syria maintained an army of occupation there, and it has been involved in provoking and prolonging all three of Lebanon’s civil wars, including the longest one from 1975 to 1991. By dragging Lebanon into the broader conflicts of the region, Syria has been partly responsible for the deaths of an estimated 100,000 Lebanese and the flight of more than 2.5 million more. Last summer, Syria and its principal ally, Iran’s Islamic Republic, encouraged the Lebanese branch of Hizballah to trigger a five-week war with Israel, and then to attempt to destroy Lebanon’s democratically elected government through street agitation and political assassinations.
This brings us to Egypt, the most populous of the Arab states and one that has always vacillated between a policy of distancing itself from “the Arab mess,” as the nationalist premier Nahas Pasha liked to call it, and carving out an empire for itself in the name of pan-Arabism. For much of the 1950’s and 1960’s, Egypt under Nasser was in an empire-building mode. It created the United Arab Republic, to which Syria and, more briefly, Libya and Iraq were attached. It also did much to foment and prolong the 1958-1962 war in Algeria, partly within a grander, Soviet-backed scheme to keep the French army, the largest NATO force in Europe at the time, pinned down for as long as possible.
In the 1960’s, in the name of pan-Arabism, Egypt supported the military coup d’état in Yemen that led to a six-year civil war there. By 1962, an Egyptian expeditionary army of 60,000 men was fighting the forces of the deposed Yemeni imam. Over 200,000 people died in that war, including some 30,000 Egyptians.
Egypt’s defeat in the 1967 war against Israel ended Nasser’s Yemeni adventure. Even so, however, he could not refrain from throwing Egypt’s weight behind the radical regime in the newly independent state of South Yemen, which was to become the only Arab country to build a thorough-going Communist system. With Egypt’s help, South Yemen became a major cold-war base for the Soviet Union, offering it naval facilities in Aden, Mukalla, and the island of Soccotra. From 1969 until the mid-1970’s, South Yemen was also a base of aggression against Oman, as Marxist rebels from the Popular Front for the Liberation of the Occupied Arab Gulf tried to seize control of the Omani province of Dhofar with the help of Cuban and East German military experts. That war claimed over 100,000 lives and produced almost a half-million refugees on both sides of the border.
More recently, Egypt has flexed its muscles against Sudan, annexing chunks of Sudanese territory known as the Halaieb, home to the trans-border Bashara tribes. On its other side, Egypt has engaged in intermittent conflict with Muammar Qaddafi’s Libya over an area of the Egyptian desert. Indeed, the great irony is that the only neighbor with whom Egypt enjoys demarcated and internationally recognized borders is Israel.
Libya, too, has been involved in territorial disputes—with Chad, Sudan, and Tunisia. In the case of Chad, Libyan claims led to a decade-long war in the 1970’s and 1980’s that at one point drew in French forces on the Chadian side. In the case of Sudan, the point at issue is Khartoum’s support for Islamist guerrillas fighting Qaddafi on his home turf of Tripoli.
Further to the west, Algeria, Morocco, and Mauritania have been locked in a triangular struggle over the former Spanish Sahara, which Morocco annexed in 1975 with financial and military help from the Shah of Iran. In retaliation, Algeria has set up and supported the Polisario front that claims to be the legitimate government of the Saharaoui people. Most Arab and African states recognize the Polisario claim, despite Morocco’s protests, and a low-intensity war that started in 1976 has continued ever since.
In 1992, the UN asked none other than James Baker to mediate an agreement on the Sahara. Eight years later, America’s “diplomatic wizard” threw in the towel, having failed to bring the disputants an inch closer to agreement. In the 1990’s, Morocco repaid Algeria for its support of the Polisario by turning a blind eye to Islamist terrorists waging a bloody campaign in Algeria that claimed over 250,000 lives.
This provides only the briefest glimpse into one aspect of reality in the “arc of crisis.” All told, in the past six decades, this region has witnessed no fewer than 22 full-scale wars over territory and resources, not one of them having anything to do with Israel and the Palestinians. And these international disputes, as I mentioned at the outset, are quite apart from the uninterrupted string of domestic clashes, military coups, acts of sectarian and ethnic vengeance, factional terrorism, and other internal conflicts that have characterized the greater Middle East, not infrequently attaining impressive heights of cruelty and despoliation. Nor is that the end of it. Underlying all of this are the unmoving facts, documented at length in the annual volumes of the Arab Human Development Report, of chronic instability, severe economic underachievement, social atrophy, and cultural backwardness. The greater Middle East is the only part of the world still largely untouched by the wave of positive change that followed the end of the cold war.
The notion that all of these problems can be waved away by “solving” the Arab-Israeli conflict is thus at best a delusion, at worst a recipe for maintaining today’s wider political, diplomatic, and social paralysis. For what is the reason behind the failure of the 1991 Madrid conference, the slow but steady death of the 1993 Oslo accords, the collapse of President Bill Clinton’s final effort to negotiate a peace deal at Camp David in 2000, and the faltering history of President George W. Bush’s “road map”? The reason is hardly the want of diplomatic efforts, especially on the part of the United States. No, the reason lies elsewhere, and is plain to see in the sorry tale we have rehearsed.
It is this: with the exception of Israel and with the partial exception of Turkey, the entire Middle East lacks a culture of conflict resolution, let alone the necessary mechanisms of meaningful compromise. Such a culture can only be shaped through a process of democratization. Only democracies habitually resolve their conflicts through diplomacy rather than war, and only popular-based regimes possess the political strength and the moral will to build peace. This is why, unless we mean to consign the Middle East back to the “swamps” from which the United States, its allies, and the region’s reformers have been seeking to extricate it, democratization remains the only credible strategy in and for the “arc of crisis,” and the only hope for its suffering inhabitants.
Source
Quartet Goes Gaga Over Gaza
By David Singer
Gaza has all the trappings of a State except declared Statehood.
The 22 members of the Arab League and the Quartet - America, Russia, the United Nations and the European Union - have allowed this farce to continue for the last 18 months.
Gaza, larger in area than Malta, has a President, a Parliament, a Prime Minister, multiple police and security forces, a burgeoning bureaucracy, observers to every United Nations Committee you can think of, delegations to countries all around the world, a flag and an anthem and most important of all - not one Jew.
The 7000 Jews living in Gaza were forcibly removed from their homes and businesses 18 months ago. That they were so evicted by other Jews, supposedly for their own safety, is shameful. However given half a chance the Gazan Arabs would have done the job willingly They even boasted that it was their campaign of terror and violence that finally forced the Jews to leave.
Ethnic cleansing is apparently acceptable in international humanitarian law where Jews are the victims.
The violence against Jews has been replaced by the killing and intimidation of Gaza's now exclusively Arab citizenry, as Hamas and Fatah each battle to assert their authority over the other in an internecine struggle that shows no signs of abating.
The people without a land who had been yearning for a land for the last 40 years was suddenly in full possession and control of part of that land but just couldn't bring itself to utter the magic words of independence.
Figuratively speaking the jilted bride was left waiting at the mosque.
The occupation had ended, the occupiers had gone but the population acted as though nothing had changed.
There was no rejoicing and dancing in the streets, no hugs embraces and tears among the populace who now found themselves in full control of their destiny and self-determination.
There have been no exciting nation building programs implemented to give new direction and vision to Gaza's population.
Destruction, not creation, has become the buzzword in Gaza.
Sadly statehood is the last thing that Gaza wanted because it would put an end to the claim of statelessness, terminate the claim to refugee status by a large proportion of its population and signal the end of the perpetual financial support received from UNWRA since 1948.
Furthermore statehood might be taken to be an abandonment of further claims to any land that was formerly comprised in the Mandate of Palestine.
The reticence of the Arab League in these circumstances was misplaced. True, Statehood for Gaza would pull the rug from under the feet of this cartel and put pressure on it to end its refusal to recognize or negotiate with the State of Israel. But the League's policy of inaction and its' failure to call for statehood has seen Gaza's population become a killing field of ever growing proportions.
The Quartet however need not have been so coy. It had a different agenda aimed at solving "the Palestinian question" which it considered to be the most intractable problem in the Middle East.
The unexpected removal of all Jews from Gaza presented the Quartet with the opening it had been desperately seeking to take a giant step forward in solving this problem. Yet the Quartet faltered dismally in failing to demand that the Parliament in Gaza declare statehood within the boundaries that separate it from Israel and Egypt.
This single act could have been the circuit breaker towards ending 130 years of conflict resulting from competing claims by Jews and Arabs over the same land.
Instead the Quartet focused its efforts on attempting to achieve an overall rather than a partial solution to Arab claims in the West Bank and Gaza in fulfilment of its' misconceived Road Map aimed at misguidedly creating a third State in Mandatory Palestine between Israel and Jordan.
The Quartet has now paid the price for its' folly.
It has created a void into which Hamas has stepped making it impossible now to achieve statehood in Gaza until Hamas is removed from power.
The frantic shuttle diplomacy and endless meetings continue to be held . They achieve no positive outcome other than the accumulation of frequent flyer points for their participants.
Meanwhile the killing and mayhem in Gaza continue to head the news bulletins.
It is now time to call on Jordan and Egypt to play a constructive role in cleaning up the mess in Gaza, which is quickly sinking into the arms smuggling tunnels it has been so busily excavating under its very foundations.
The time for playing semantic word games, holding joint press conferences and grabbing photo opportunities is surely over.
David Singer is an Australian Lawyer and Convenor of Jordan is Palestine International - an organization calling for sovereignty of the West Bank and Gaza to be allocated between Israel and Jordan as the two successor States to the Mandate for Palestine.
Source
Gaza has all the trappings of a State except declared Statehood.
The 22 members of the Arab League and the Quartet - America, Russia, the United Nations and the European Union - have allowed this farce to continue for the last 18 months.
Gaza, larger in area than Malta, has a President, a Parliament, a Prime Minister, multiple police and security forces, a burgeoning bureaucracy, observers to every United Nations Committee you can think of, delegations to countries all around the world, a flag and an anthem and most important of all - not one Jew.
The 7000 Jews living in Gaza were forcibly removed from their homes and businesses 18 months ago. That they were so evicted by other Jews, supposedly for their own safety, is shameful. However given half a chance the Gazan Arabs would have done the job willingly They even boasted that it was their campaign of terror and violence that finally forced the Jews to leave.
Ethnic cleansing is apparently acceptable in international humanitarian law where Jews are the victims.
The violence against Jews has been replaced by the killing and intimidation of Gaza's now exclusively Arab citizenry, as Hamas and Fatah each battle to assert their authority over the other in an internecine struggle that shows no signs of abating.
The people without a land who had been yearning for a land for the last 40 years was suddenly in full possession and control of part of that land but just couldn't bring itself to utter the magic words of independence.
Figuratively speaking the jilted bride was left waiting at the mosque.
The occupation had ended, the occupiers had gone but the population acted as though nothing had changed.
There was no rejoicing and dancing in the streets, no hugs embraces and tears among the populace who now found themselves in full control of their destiny and self-determination.
There have been no exciting nation building programs implemented to give new direction and vision to Gaza's population.
Destruction, not creation, has become the buzzword in Gaza.
Sadly statehood is the last thing that Gaza wanted because it would put an end to the claim of statelessness, terminate the claim to refugee status by a large proportion of its population and signal the end of the perpetual financial support received from UNWRA since 1948.
Furthermore statehood might be taken to be an abandonment of further claims to any land that was formerly comprised in the Mandate of Palestine.
The reticence of the Arab League in these circumstances was misplaced. True, Statehood for Gaza would pull the rug from under the feet of this cartel and put pressure on it to end its refusal to recognize or negotiate with the State of Israel. But the League's policy of inaction and its' failure to call for statehood has seen Gaza's population become a killing field of ever growing proportions.
The Quartet however need not have been so coy. It had a different agenda aimed at solving "the Palestinian question" which it considered to be the most intractable problem in the Middle East.
The unexpected removal of all Jews from Gaza presented the Quartet with the opening it had been desperately seeking to take a giant step forward in solving this problem. Yet the Quartet faltered dismally in failing to demand that the Parliament in Gaza declare statehood within the boundaries that separate it from Israel and Egypt.
This single act could have been the circuit breaker towards ending 130 years of conflict resulting from competing claims by Jews and Arabs over the same land.
Instead the Quartet focused its efforts on attempting to achieve an overall rather than a partial solution to Arab claims in the West Bank and Gaza in fulfilment of its' misconceived Road Map aimed at misguidedly creating a third State in Mandatory Palestine between Israel and Jordan.
The Quartet has now paid the price for its' folly.
It has created a void into which Hamas has stepped making it impossible now to achieve statehood in Gaza until Hamas is removed from power.
The frantic shuttle diplomacy and endless meetings continue to be held . They achieve no positive outcome other than the accumulation of frequent flyer points for their participants.
Meanwhile the killing and mayhem in Gaza continue to head the news bulletins.
It is now time to call on Jordan and Egypt to play a constructive role in cleaning up the mess in Gaza, which is quickly sinking into the arms smuggling tunnels it has been so busily excavating under its very foundations.
The time for playing semantic word games, holding joint press conferences and grabbing photo opportunities is surely over.
David Singer is an Australian Lawyer and Convenor of Jordan is Palestine International - an organization calling for sovereignty of the West Bank and Gaza to be allocated between Israel and Jordan as the two successor States to the Mandate for Palestine.
Source
John Rambo on vacation
A tour bus of US senior citizens defended themselves against a group of alleged muggers, sending two of them fleeing and killing a third in the Atlantic coast city of Limon, Costa Rica police said on Thursday.
One of the tourists - a retired member of the US military - put assailant Warner Segura in a head lock and broke his clavicle after the 20-year-old and two other men armed with a knife and gun held up their tour bus Wednesday, said Luis Hernandez, the police chief of Limon, 130 kilometers (80 miles) east of San Jose.
The two other men fled when the 12 senior citizens started defending themselves. The tourists then drove Segura to the Red Cross where the man was declared dead. The Red Cross also treated one of the tourists for an anxiety attack, Hernandez said.
Source
One of the tourists - a retired member of the US military - put assailant Warner Segura in a head lock and broke his clavicle after the 20-year-old and two other men armed with a knife and gun held up their tour bus Wednesday, said Luis Hernandez, the police chief of Limon, 130 kilometers (80 miles) east of San Jose.
The two other men fled when the 12 senior citizens started defending themselves. The tourists then drove Segura to the Red Cross where the man was declared dead. The Red Cross also treated one of the tourists for an anxiety attack, Hernandez said.
Source
Have they sentenced themselves to death?
By Roni Singer Heruti
The murder of Hamda Abu-Ghanem, whose bullet-riddled body was found in mid-January at her parents' house in Ramle, surprised nobody.
As police set about their investigation, everyone was aware that the victim's brother had been threatening to kill her, and that long before the murder, she had taken refuge in a battered women's shelter.
It was a typical "honor killing," meant to remove some perceived stain on the family's reputation.
The perpetrators of most honor killings in the Arab community are not apprehended. Hamda's murder, however, was one too many for the women in the Abu-Ghanem family. She was the eighth woman to be murdered in the extended family in the last six and a half years. All her predecessors also lost their lives in "honor killings."
This time, instead of keeping mum when the police questioned them, the Abu- Ghanem women gave detailed testimonies of everything they knew. One said she had seen Rashad enter the house where Hamda was. Shortly afterward she heard shots and seconds later saw Rashad, the key suspect, fleeing from the building.
The victim's mother told the police that Rashad had forbidden his sister to leave
the house after some men had called her a "prostitute."
"It was a women's revolt against the men of the family. While the men refused to cooperate with the police and forbade the women to speak, the women revealed all. They decided to put an end to the bloody circle of silence," Chief Inspector Haim Shreibhand, who was in charge of the investigation, told Haaretz.
The detectives gathered testimonies from 20 Abu-Ghanem women and assembled the pieces of the puzzle together into an indictment, he said.
Kamal Rashad Abu-Ghanem, 30, was arraigned in Tel Aviv's District Court yesterday for murder. His cousin Mahmoud, who was also arrested, was released for lack of sufficient evidence to file charges.
Rashad Abu-Ghanem was charged with entering the family's home, in Ramle's Juarish neighborhood. His sister was alone in the house, lying on her bed. She probably knew she was about to die. He went up the stairs with a loaded 9-mm. handgun, entered his sister's room and fired nine bullets at her.
Before Hamda, the other women of the Abu-Ghanem family who lost their lives for honor were Naifa, Suzan, Zinat, Sabrin, Amira, Reem and Shirihan.
Like some of the other victims, Hamda had spent the last few years in a shelter, hiding from her brother. Her "crime" was apparently her numerous telephone conversations, and being seen talking to her cousin once.
About a year ago, she asked to move back to her parents' house in Ramle. A few months later, she filed a police complaint against her brother, who had assaulted her. He was arrested, but later released by the court.
"The hardest thing at these murder scenes is the awful silence," said Yifrah Duchovny, Coastal Plain police commander. "Nobody cries, nobody speaks."
"We held everyone who was in the neighborhood at the time of the murder for questioning, and started collecting testimonies. The first one who cooperated with us, perhaps without meaning to, was a relative who said the murder wasn't justified, that Hamda had not breached any honor. Then a female relative agreed with him," Shreibhand said.
The detectives told Hamda's mother, sisters and cousins what the first two relatives had said and asked for their opinion. "Gradually they started to speak. Each one started by saying she had had enough, that she didn't want this situation to continue. The mother, who had first stood behind her son, suddenly started speaking against him, sharing things she knew with us. She said she was angry that he had murdered her daughter."
Hamda's sisters went further. When they confronted Rashad at the police station they spat out at him: "You're a dog," and "Sit in prison for life, murderer." One of them asked him, "Why don't you try to murder me too? I'm not scared of you any more."
The men, on the other hand, hardly said a word to the police. "After the women began to talk, they found themselves receiving threats," said Shreibhand.
The witnesses have been put in safe houses, for fear the men would try to harm them. However, several women were not comfortable in the safe houses and are returning to the neighborhood. "The relations between the men and women in the family have become really tense. We've had special meetings about how to protect the women after they testify and we have a plan," the inspector said.
However, Aida Touma-Suleiman, director of the Women Against Violence group in the Arab sector, said she has grave fears for the women's lives. "I support these brave women. They finally broke the circle of blood and silence. But I'm also afraid they will be hurt. As long as there is no witness protection program, these women will be abandoned after they testify. They may have been courageous, but they have also sentenced themselves to death," she said.
Rashad Abu-Ghanem is represented by Attorney Giora Zilberstein.
Source
The murder of Hamda Abu-Ghanem, whose bullet-riddled body was found in mid-January at her parents' house in Ramle, surprised nobody.
As police set about their investigation, everyone was aware that the victim's brother had been threatening to kill her, and that long before the murder, she had taken refuge in a battered women's shelter.
It was a typical "honor killing," meant to remove some perceived stain on the family's reputation.
The perpetrators of most honor killings in the Arab community are not apprehended. Hamda's murder, however, was one too many for the women in the Abu-Ghanem family. She was the eighth woman to be murdered in the extended family in the last six and a half years. All her predecessors also lost their lives in "honor killings."
This time, instead of keeping mum when the police questioned them, the Abu- Ghanem women gave detailed testimonies of everything they knew. One said she had seen Rashad enter the house where Hamda was. Shortly afterward she heard shots and seconds later saw Rashad, the key suspect, fleeing from the building.
The victim's mother told the police that Rashad had forbidden his sister to leave
the house after some men had called her a "prostitute."
"It was a women's revolt against the men of the family. While the men refused to cooperate with the police and forbade the women to speak, the women revealed all. They decided to put an end to the bloody circle of silence," Chief Inspector Haim Shreibhand, who was in charge of the investigation, told Haaretz.
The detectives gathered testimonies from 20 Abu-Ghanem women and assembled the pieces of the puzzle together into an indictment, he said.
Kamal Rashad Abu-Ghanem, 30, was arraigned in Tel Aviv's District Court yesterday for murder. His cousin Mahmoud, who was also arrested, was released for lack of sufficient evidence to file charges.
Rashad Abu-Ghanem was charged with entering the family's home, in Ramle's Juarish neighborhood. His sister was alone in the house, lying on her bed. She probably knew she was about to die. He went up the stairs with a loaded 9-mm. handgun, entered his sister's room and fired nine bullets at her.
Before Hamda, the other women of the Abu-Ghanem family who lost their lives for honor were Naifa, Suzan, Zinat, Sabrin, Amira, Reem and Shirihan.
Like some of the other victims, Hamda had spent the last few years in a shelter, hiding from her brother. Her "crime" was apparently her numerous telephone conversations, and being seen talking to her cousin once.
About a year ago, she asked to move back to her parents' house in Ramle. A few months later, she filed a police complaint against her brother, who had assaulted her. He was arrested, but later released by the court.
"The hardest thing at these murder scenes is the awful silence," said Yifrah Duchovny, Coastal Plain police commander. "Nobody cries, nobody speaks."
"We held everyone who was in the neighborhood at the time of the murder for questioning, and started collecting testimonies. The first one who cooperated with us, perhaps without meaning to, was a relative who said the murder wasn't justified, that Hamda had not breached any honor. Then a female relative agreed with him," Shreibhand said.
The detectives told Hamda's mother, sisters and cousins what the first two relatives had said and asked for their opinion. "Gradually they started to speak. Each one started by saying she had had enough, that she didn't want this situation to continue. The mother, who had first stood behind her son, suddenly started speaking against him, sharing things she knew with us. She said she was angry that he had murdered her daughter."
Hamda's sisters went further. When they confronted Rashad at the police station they spat out at him: "You're a dog," and "Sit in prison for life, murderer." One of them asked him, "Why don't you try to murder me too? I'm not scared of you any more."
The men, on the other hand, hardly said a word to the police. "After the women began to talk, they found themselves receiving threats," said Shreibhand.
The witnesses have been put in safe houses, for fear the men would try to harm them. However, several women were not comfortable in the safe houses and are returning to the neighborhood. "The relations between the men and women in the family have become really tense. We've had special meetings about how to protect the women after they testify and we have a plan," the inspector said.
However, Aida Touma-Suleiman, director of the Women Against Violence group in the Arab sector, said she has grave fears for the women's lives. "I support these brave women. They finally broke the circle of blood and silence. But I'm also afraid they will be hurt. As long as there is no witness protection program, these women will be abandoned after they testify. They may have been courageous, but they have also sentenced themselves to death," she said.
Rashad Abu-Ghanem is represented by Attorney Giora Zilberstein.
Source
Say no to condoms, say yes to brit mila
LONDON - In an "extraordinary development" in the fight against
AIDS, a medical journal article published Friday says that conclusive data shows there is no question circumcision reduces men's chances of catching
HIV by up to 60 percent.
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The question now is how to put that fact to work to combat AIDS across Africa.
The findings were first announced in December, when initial results from two major trials — in Kenya and Uganda — showed promising links between circumcision and HIV transmission. However, those trials were deemed so definitive that the tests were halted early.
The full data from the trials, carried out by the U.S.
National Institutes of Health, were published Friday in The Lancet.
"This is an extraordinary development," said Dr. Kevin de Cock, director of the
World Health Organization's AIDS department. "Circumcision is the most potent intervention in HIV prevention that has been described."
Circumcision has long been suspected of reducing men's susceptibility to HIV infection because the cells in the foreskin of the penis are especially vulnerable to the virus.
A modeling study last year projected that in the next decade, male circumcision could prevent 2 million AIDS infections and 300,000 deaths. Last year, 2.8 million people in sub-Saharan Africa became infected with HIV, and 2.1 million people died.
Experts say the breakthrough's significance is on par with the identification of the virus and the use of lifesaving combination drug therapy.
The two U.S. studies confirm similar results from an earlier trial in South Africa.
But experts warn that solid evidence is not justification for mass circumcisions, noting that African health systems are already overburdened, and circumcision requires more planning than, for example, an immunization campaign.
"It's a tricky one, but it's something we're going to have to move on," said Dr. Catherine Hankins, a scientific adviser at
UNAIDS. "Male circumcision is such a sensitive religious and cultural issue that we need to be careful."
Several African countries have met with U.N. agencies to explore strategies for increasing circumcision.
Together with the
United Nations AIDS agency, WHO is convening a meeting in Switzerland in March to evaluate the data and decide the next steps in slowing the AIDS pandemic.
In the Kenyan study, 1,391 circumcised men were compared to 1,393 who were not. And in Uganda, 2,474 circumcised men were compared to 2,522 men who were not. Scientists tracked the men for two years and found that those who were circumcised were 51-60 percent less likely to contract HIV.
Source
AIDS, a medical journal article published Friday says that conclusive data shows there is no question circumcision reduces men's chances of catching
HIV by up to 60 percent.
ADVERTISEMENT
The question now is how to put that fact to work to combat AIDS across Africa.
The findings were first announced in December, when initial results from two major trials — in Kenya and Uganda — showed promising links between circumcision and HIV transmission. However, those trials were deemed so definitive that the tests were halted early.
The full data from the trials, carried out by the U.S.
National Institutes of Health, were published Friday in The Lancet.
"This is an extraordinary development," said Dr. Kevin de Cock, director of the
World Health Organization's AIDS department. "Circumcision is the most potent intervention in HIV prevention that has been described."
Circumcision has long been suspected of reducing men's susceptibility to HIV infection because the cells in the foreskin of the penis are especially vulnerable to the virus.
A modeling study last year projected that in the next decade, male circumcision could prevent 2 million AIDS infections and 300,000 deaths. Last year, 2.8 million people in sub-Saharan Africa became infected with HIV, and 2.1 million people died.
Experts say the breakthrough's significance is on par with the identification of the virus and the use of lifesaving combination drug therapy.
The two U.S. studies confirm similar results from an earlier trial in South Africa.
But experts warn that solid evidence is not justification for mass circumcisions, noting that African health systems are already overburdened, and circumcision requires more planning than, for example, an immunization campaign.
"It's a tricky one, but it's something we're going to have to move on," said Dr. Catherine Hankins, a scientific adviser at
UNAIDS. "Male circumcision is such a sensitive religious and cultural issue that we need to be careful."
Several African countries have met with U.N. agencies to explore strategies for increasing circumcision.
Together with the
United Nations AIDS agency, WHO is convening a meeting in Switzerland in March to evaluate the data and decide the next steps in slowing the AIDS pandemic.
In the Kenyan study, 1,391 circumcised men were compared to 1,393 who were not. And in Uganda, 2,474 circumcised men were compared to 2,522 men who were not. Scientists tracked the men for two years and found that those who were circumcised were 51-60 percent less likely to contract HIV.
Source
Nasrallah: thank Allah for Amir Peretz
Israeli newspapers have printed photos of Defence Minister Amir Peretz trying to watch military manoeuvres through binoculars with the lens caps still on.
Mr Peretz was inspecting troops in the Golan Heights with the Israeli army's new chief of staff, Gen Gabi Ashkenazi.
According to the photographer, Mr Peretz looked through the capped binoculars three times, nodding as Gen Ashkenazi explained what was in view.
Analysts say it is a new blow for the embattled defence minister.
Mr Peretz's popularity has fallen in the wake of last year's war against Hezbollah militants in Lebanon.
But one Israeli paper pointed out that he is not the first prominent official to make this mistake.
According to daily Yediot Ahronot, US President George W Bush and former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon have both done the same thing.
Source
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