The tragic shooting has spawned plenty of hysteria but little discussion about what we should do about potential Islamic terrorists in our midst.
By Jonathan Zimmerman
The Christian Science Monitor
November 6, 2009
New York - Can we talk?
That is, can Americans really communicate? The word means, literally, "To make common." And at times like this, I wonder if it's possible.
I didn't hear about the Fort Hood shootings until several hours after the news broke, but when I did, much of what I heard wasn't true. Some people told me that the suspect, Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Hasan was a "convert" to Islam; others, that he had several Muslim accomplices; still others, that he had links to Al Qaeda.
False. False. False.
I got home to find the Internet aflame with vitriol, much of it directed at Islam itself. "Hasan is a BLACK MUSLIM," read a typical blog post. "This was a sleeper Muslim cell terrorist attack ... WITH MORE TO FOLLOW.... Unite AGAINST Islam now people!"
But I also found posts defending Hasan, who was reportedly facing overseas deployment. "They wanted to send him away to kill his own brothers and sisters in Iraq," one post screamed. "I would have done the same thing!"
Finally, others argued that any discussion of Hasan's ethnic or religious background was itself a form of discrimination. "I think giving out the Middle Eastern sounding name of the perpetrator is hate speech," a blogger argued. "No doubt this will give ammunition to patriotic Americans who value national security over diversity."
But that's precisely the discussion that we need to have: how to balance security and diversity, unity and freedom. How can we keep our country safe, but still respect the cultures of its different peoples? How can we join hands as a nation, but remain free as individuals?
And it's the same debate we've been having since 1776, when a Congressional committee suggested e pluribus unum — "out of many, one" — for our new national seal. But this discussion — like any real dialogue — requires agreement on a few basic ground rules: civility, reason, and tolerance.
During wartime, to be sure, Americans have often lost sight of these values. Consider attacks on German-Americans during the World War I, when several states banned the speaking of German in schools and on the streets. Or think of the internment of Japanese-Americans — and the confiscation of their property – during World War II.
The Internet attacks on "Islam" since Thursday's tragedy lie firmly within this tradition of nativism, bigotry, and hysteria. The shooter was Muslim, and what else do you need to know? Apparently, not much.
But irrationality and bad faith are hardly exclusive to the political right. The Fort Hood shootings have also triggered bouts of left-wing hysteria.
An extreme variation takes the form of the old syllogism, "My enemy's enemy is my friend." You don't like the war in Iraq; neither did Hasan; ergo, he must be OK in your book.
Never mind that Hasan gunned down more than three dozen innocents, or that he reportedly defended suicide bombers in Web postings. He's against all the right things, so you're for him.
More commonly, left-wing posters have refused to acknowledge any tension between freedom and security — or any threat to the United States from radical Islam. Hence the bizarre attacks on news organizations for noting Hasan's ethnic and religious background, as if any such information is irrelevant.
It isn't. There are people living here who want to commit acts of terror, and more than a few of them are radical Muslims. And Texas has seen its fair share.
In 1993, Kuwaiti immigrant Eyad Ismoil was living in Dallas when he was recruited to drive a bomb-laden van into a parking garage beneath the World Trade Center. Five years later, Lebanese-born Wadih el Hage — Osama bin Laden's personal secretary – was arrested in Tarrant County, Texas, for his involvement in the bombings of two US embassies in Africa.
After 9/11, a federal jury convicted five members of a Texas-based Islamic charity of funneling money to terrorists. And just last month, authorities arrested a 19-year-old Jordanian immigrant, Hosam Smadi, for allegedly attempting to blow up a Dallas skyscraper.
None of that means that Hassan was part of a terrorist conspiracy, of course, or that we should view every Islamic immigrant with suspicion. But it does mean that we have a serious security problem on our hands. And it's simply irrational to deny it.
Indeed, by wishing the problem away, we put off the discussion that we so urgently need. What should we do about potential Islamic terrorists in our midst? How can we protect national security and individual liberty, all at the same time?
These are tough questions, as old as the republic itself. But we'll never get good answers unless we really talk about them. So far, it's not clear that we can.
Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history and education at New York University. He is the author, most recently, of "Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory."
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
The CIA’s Bureaucracy Problem (and my comments)
By Ishmael Jones
National Review
November 5, 2009
An Italian court recently sentenced 23 CIA employees in absentia for their role in the 2003 Abu Omar rendition.
We should capture terrorists anywhere, any time, but we should get the job done right and with a minimum of bureaucracy. Real spying is inexpensive and requires few people. The basic act of espionage is a single CIA officer meeting a single source — a person with access to secrets on terrorists or nuclear proliferators, for example — in a dingy hotel room in a dysfunctional country.
Any CIA operation that is revealed to the public, however, shows these telltale signs: The operation looks busy, a lot of people are involved, and large amounts of money are spent. Often you’ll hear the CIA accused of being risk averse. I agree. However, risk aversion is a complex concept. The CIA will sometimes conduct risky operations in order to achieve a more important goal: looking busy. In the Abu Omar operation, 21 Agency employees flew to Italy to abduct a single terrorist suspect — as an eminent scholar put it, “21 people to get one fat Egyptian!” — who was already under surveillance by the Italian police. The 21 people stayed in five-star hotels and chatted with headquarters on open-line cell phones, all at great expense and awful tradecraft. The number of people managing the operation from headquarters was enormous. But it was a successful operation in that it spent a lot of money, made a lot of people look active, and suggested the CIA’s willingness to take risk.
CIA officials are quick to deny that the organization is risk averse by pointing to risky operations that went wrong. This darker, more complex, passive-aggressive aspect of risk aversion seems to say: We can certainly do risky operations, but here’s what happens when you make us get off our couch and do them.
Take a look at any CIA activity that is revealed in the future and ask yourself: Was this a traditional, inexpensive intelligence operation involving a meeting between a CIA officer and a human source to gather intelligence? Or was this an operation designed to spend a lot of money, to make a lot of people look busy, and to give the appearance that the CIA is willing to take risk?
Whenever we see CIA employees released from bureaucracy, we see success. The tactical intelligence production within Iraq is excellent; the early Afghan campaign, featuring no offices and a flat chain of command, just a few guys and bags of money, was extraordinary.
“Ishmael Jones” is a former deep-cover officer with the Central Intelligence Agency. He is the author of The Human Factor: Inside the CIA’s Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture, published last year by Encounter Books.
Mark says:
I post this article for several reasons. First, I highly recommend Jones' book, referenced above. At the very least, it provides insights into the fact that that the CIA is, probably before anything else, another large bureaucratic government agency.
Second, this article illustrates how bureaucratic politics, organizational drivers (rewards and punishments), and risk aversion can be as important, if not more important, than the goals and objectives of the organization, i.e., the CIA. Or, perhaps the stated public goals and objectives of the organization do not necessarily match or coincide with the bureaucratic goals and objectives of the organization?
Third, this article stands as a retort to the conspiracy mongers who think the CIA is an all-powerful, all-knowing entity responsible for everything that happens. Then again, the fact that the article was written by a former CIA agent would just be proof that it's another example of CIA disinformation to confuse and blind the naive public. Right?
National Review
November 5, 2009
An Italian court recently sentenced 23 CIA employees in absentia for their role in the 2003 Abu Omar rendition.
We should capture terrorists anywhere, any time, but we should get the job done right and with a minimum of bureaucracy. Real spying is inexpensive and requires few people. The basic act of espionage is a single CIA officer meeting a single source — a person with access to secrets on terrorists or nuclear proliferators, for example — in a dingy hotel room in a dysfunctional country.
Any CIA operation that is revealed to the public, however, shows these telltale signs: The operation looks busy, a lot of people are involved, and large amounts of money are spent. Often you’ll hear the CIA accused of being risk averse. I agree. However, risk aversion is a complex concept. The CIA will sometimes conduct risky operations in order to achieve a more important goal: looking busy. In the Abu Omar operation, 21 Agency employees flew to Italy to abduct a single terrorist suspect — as an eminent scholar put it, “21 people to get one fat Egyptian!” — who was already under surveillance by the Italian police. The 21 people stayed in five-star hotels and chatted with headquarters on open-line cell phones, all at great expense and awful tradecraft. The number of people managing the operation from headquarters was enormous. But it was a successful operation in that it spent a lot of money, made a lot of people look active, and suggested the CIA’s willingness to take risk.
CIA officials are quick to deny that the organization is risk averse by pointing to risky operations that went wrong. This darker, more complex, passive-aggressive aspect of risk aversion seems to say: We can certainly do risky operations, but here’s what happens when you make us get off our couch and do them.
Take a look at any CIA activity that is revealed in the future and ask yourself: Was this a traditional, inexpensive intelligence operation involving a meeting between a CIA officer and a human source to gather intelligence? Or was this an operation designed to spend a lot of money, to make a lot of people look busy, and to give the appearance that the CIA is willing to take risk?
Whenever we see CIA employees released from bureaucracy, we see success. The tactical intelligence production within Iraq is excellent; the early Afghan campaign, featuring no offices and a flat chain of command, just a few guys and bags of money, was extraordinary.
“Ishmael Jones” is a former deep-cover officer with the Central Intelligence Agency. He is the author of The Human Factor: Inside the CIA’s Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture, published last year by Encounter Books.
Mark says:
I post this article for several reasons. First, I highly recommend Jones' book, referenced above. At the very least, it provides insights into the fact that that the CIA is, probably before anything else, another large bureaucratic government agency.
Second, this article illustrates how bureaucratic politics, organizational drivers (rewards and punishments), and risk aversion can be as important, if not more important, than the goals and objectives of the organization, i.e., the CIA. Or, perhaps the stated public goals and objectives of the organization do not necessarily match or coincide with the bureaucratic goals and objectives of the organization?
Third, this article stands as a retort to the conspiracy mongers who think the CIA is an all-powerful, all-knowing entity responsible for everything that happens. Then again, the fact that the article was written by a former CIA agent would just be proof that it's another example of CIA disinformation to confuse and blind the naive public. Right?
An Uncomfortable Truth (and my comments)
By Sabrina Tavernise
The New York Times "At War: Notes From the Front Lines" Blog
November 10, 2009
JURM, Afghanistan – I got a lesson on a recent reporting trip in northern Afghanistan in what not to say to a mullah.
I will admit my guard was down. I had been talking to extremely reasonable Afghans at a school in an impossibly beautiful landscape, above a blue river with mountains on all sides. I was not expecting a lecture on jihad and the sins of the West.
But there it was, shot like a rocket from the mouth of Shamsullah, a 36-year-old mullah, who had been trained in a madrasa in Karachi, Pakistan.
He began with the familiar refrain that one of my Iraqi colleagues once famously termed “the answering machine,” because the message of the hard core never varies (with some regional differences). The colonialist West is trying to enslave Islam. Pakistan is an infidel state because its day of rest is Sunday, not Friday. It calls its capital Islamabad, but its courts are not Islamic. All bad.
He asked why I was not able to speak Dari, and then he snidely remarked, “They are all like that.” He meant that colonialists like me always have minions to assist. True, sort of.
“We not only hate Americans,” he said, squinting at the sun, “We hate all foreigners.”
But he made clear his opinion that it was American imperialists who unlawfully controlled Afghanistan and propped up a puppet, President Hamid Karzai.
Fine, but who did he vote for?
“Karzai,” he said with a smile.
But wasn’t he an American puppet?
“He refused to obey the orders of America,” he said, unsure of where this was going.
The real reason, in his own words, is that he, Shamsullah, is loyal to a rich former warlord who is Mr. Karzai’s ally, and he voted exactly how that man told him. He said this with pride.
By now we were driving him home to his village in our S.U.V. Walking would normally take him two hours. We sat in silence for a while. He took the front seat. We were two women in the back, and negotiating seating arrangements would have been tricky.
Suddenly he turned around to face us and said brightly: “If they held the election tomorrow, Hekmatyar would win.”
He was referring to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the militant Afghan leader who fought the Soviets in the 1980s, a man who is a living lesson for the United States. Once an American ally — the C.I.A. funneled millions of dollars in weapons and aid to him through Pakistan’s intelligence service – he is now on American wanted lists for his support of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. He is believed to live in Peshawar, Pakistan, a city where Shamsullah lived for two years.
“Do you know who Hekmatyar is?” he asked me, grinning.
I do not know what came over me. Perhaps it was pent up frustration at having absorbed hundreds of answering machines messages over six years. The proper answer in this situation would have been: Hekmatyar is a glorious mujahedeen hero! But on this day, I said what was on my mind.
“He was an Afghan mujahedeen who took money from the C.I.A.,” I said loudly over the hum of the car’s engine.
As I spoke, Shamsullah’s face cracked. His grin vanished. He swung his head away angrily and glared out the window, his body rigid. It was as if his brain had simply rejected the information. But the process had made him very angry.
My colleagues were pinching me. Their eyes were big and alarmed. The C.I.A. is the most despised institution in this part of the world, and everybody knows that you should never utter its acronym to anyone, never mind a militant mullah.
Soon after, we reached his village. I tried to make up for my mistake, but he was not buying it. Somehow the exchange had felt secretly exhilarating. He got out stiffly, thanked us for the ride and walked up the hill away from us. He did not look back or wave. We drove away as fast as we could.
Militant mullahs do not have a monopoly on hypocrisy. It happens in all faiths. But in recent years the world I have inhabited has been here, and every once in a while I reserve the right to leave the script.
Mark says:
I can understand her frustrations and the feelings that were pent up for so long and the need to respond just once to puncture someone's hypocrisy in such circumstances. I've been in similar situations, though I hasten to qualify that by emphasizing that it was not in Afghanistan and it was not with people who could kidnap or kill me (or at least I didn't think so at the time on a few of those occasions back in my youth).
But I think she was lucky this time to get away with it. It made her feel better, but I'm very sure that his views were not changed one iota. If anything, he will look for an opportunity the next time he may encounter her to get his revenge for her one upmanship.
I might suggest that, rather than challenging him so directly by stating, "He was an Afghan mujahedeen who took money from the C.I.A.," she could have phrased it as a question. Then again, maybe not.
The New York Times "At War: Notes From the Front Lines" Blog
November 10, 2009
JURM, Afghanistan – I got a lesson on a recent reporting trip in northern Afghanistan in what not to say to a mullah.
I will admit my guard was down. I had been talking to extremely reasonable Afghans at a school in an impossibly beautiful landscape, above a blue river with mountains on all sides. I was not expecting a lecture on jihad and the sins of the West.
But there it was, shot like a rocket from the mouth of Shamsullah, a 36-year-old mullah, who had been trained in a madrasa in Karachi, Pakistan.
He began with the familiar refrain that one of my Iraqi colleagues once famously termed “the answering machine,” because the message of the hard core never varies (with some regional differences). The colonialist West is trying to enslave Islam. Pakistan is an infidel state because its day of rest is Sunday, not Friday. It calls its capital Islamabad, but its courts are not Islamic. All bad.
He asked why I was not able to speak Dari, and then he snidely remarked, “They are all like that.” He meant that colonialists like me always have minions to assist. True, sort of.
“We not only hate Americans,” he said, squinting at the sun, “We hate all foreigners.”
But he made clear his opinion that it was American imperialists who unlawfully controlled Afghanistan and propped up a puppet, President Hamid Karzai.
Fine, but who did he vote for?
“Karzai,” he said with a smile.
But wasn’t he an American puppet?
“He refused to obey the orders of America,” he said, unsure of where this was going.
The real reason, in his own words, is that he, Shamsullah, is loyal to a rich former warlord who is Mr. Karzai’s ally, and he voted exactly how that man told him. He said this with pride.
By now we were driving him home to his village in our S.U.V. Walking would normally take him two hours. We sat in silence for a while. He took the front seat. We were two women in the back, and negotiating seating arrangements would have been tricky.
Suddenly he turned around to face us and said brightly: “If they held the election tomorrow, Hekmatyar would win.”
He was referring to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the militant Afghan leader who fought the Soviets in the 1980s, a man who is a living lesson for the United States. Once an American ally — the C.I.A. funneled millions of dollars in weapons and aid to him through Pakistan’s intelligence service – he is now on American wanted lists for his support of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. He is believed to live in Peshawar, Pakistan, a city where Shamsullah lived for two years.
“Do you know who Hekmatyar is?” he asked me, grinning.
I do not know what came over me. Perhaps it was pent up frustration at having absorbed hundreds of answering machines messages over six years. The proper answer in this situation would have been: Hekmatyar is a glorious mujahedeen hero! But on this day, I said what was on my mind.
“He was an Afghan mujahedeen who took money from the C.I.A.,” I said loudly over the hum of the car’s engine.
As I spoke, Shamsullah’s face cracked. His grin vanished. He swung his head away angrily and glared out the window, his body rigid. It was as if his brain had simply rejected the information. But the process had made him very angry.
My colleagues were pinching me. Their eyes were big and alarmed. The C.I.A. is the most despised institution in this part of the world, and everybody knows that you should never utter its acronym to anyone, never mind a militant mullah.
Soon after, we reached his village. I tried to make up for my mistake, but he was not buying it. Somehow the exchange had felt secretly exhilarating. He got out stiffly, thanked us for the ride and walked up the hill away from us. He did not look back or wave. We drove away as fast as we could.
Militant mullahs do not have a monopoly on hypocrisy. It happens in all faiths. But in recent years the world I have inhabited has been here, and every once in a while I reserve the right to leave the script.
Mark says:
I can understand her frustrations and the feelings that were pent up for so long and the need to respond just once to puncture someone's hypocrisy in such circumstances. I've been in similar situations, though I hasten to qualify that by emphasizing that it was not in Afghanistan and it was not with people who could kidnap or kill me (or at least I didn't think so at the time on a few of those occasions back in my youth).
But I think she was lucky this time to get away with it. It made her feel better, but I'm very sure that his views were not changed one iota. If anything, he will look for an opportunity the next time he may encounter her to get his revenge for her one upmanship.
I might suggest that, rather than challenging him so directly by stating, "He was an Afghan mujahedeen who took money from the C.I.A.," she could have phrased it as a question. Then again, maybe not.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Together for peace
American Arabs and Jews, while deft at attacking each other at times, have proven they can cooperate to build a vision of a better future, writes James Zogby*
Al-Ahram Weekly (Egypt)
29 October - 4 November 2009
On Sunday, 25 October, representatives of over three dozen Arab American and American Jewish community organisations met in Washington to make clear their shared commitment to comprehensive Middle East peace. Hosted by J Street, which calls itself the US's "pro-peace, pro-Israel lobby", and the Arab American Institute, "the research and policy arm of the Arab American community", the event was joined by Tina Tchen, deputy assistant to the president and director of the White House Office of Public Engagement.
The message that the leaders and activists who gathered hoped to send, via this summit, was that despite their different starting points, both agree on the goal of a two-state solution to the Israeli- Palestinian conflict and are supportive of President Obama's peace making efforts, to date.
This is not the first time Arab Americans and American Jews have joined forces. I personally will never forget how after the September 1993 Rabin-Arafat signing ceremony on the White House lawn, president Bill Clinton and vice-president Al Gore brought together the leaders of both communities urging them to support peacemaking. Despite the euphoria of the moment, joint effort was difficult for some, requiring, as it did, a break with long-established patterns of behaviour.
Organisations in both communities knew how to oppose each other, but learning how to work together was new. However, as we were to discover, if peacemaking was our goal, then learn we must, as for peace to succeed there has to be a constituency that supports peace.
For his part, Gore launched Builders for Peace, a private sector initiative that brought together 150 Arab American and American Jewish business leaders who were given the challenge of working together in an effort to grow the Palestinian economy in support of peace. As Gore would often say, while economic progress was no substitute for peace, without improvement in the daily lives of people it would be impossible to sustain the work of peace.
To lead the effort, Gore asked former Congressman Mel Levine and myself to serve as co-chairs. In some ways we were an odd couple, since before that time we had only come together when we clashed during my testimony before his congressional committee, or when we appeared opposite one another, on Crossfire-style TV shows, debating US policy towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But as Mel would note, while he and I might not have agreed on the past, we did agree on where we needed to go in the future. And that was sufficient to build our effort and our working relationship.
Because of a myriad of problems, ranging from Israeli-imposed impediments to economic development and Palestinian problems with corruption, Builders for Peace didn't succeed as we had hoped. But what did work was the experience of joint Arab American and American Jewish cooperation. Friendships were developed that have stood the test of time.
The intervening 16 years have not been kind to peacemaking. Thousands have died. Terrorism and repression have taken a bloody toll. Settlements and new barriers to peace have been erected and Israeli and Palestinian attitudes have been hardened. Extremists on both sides have gained ground while the hopes of many for peace have been dashed.
What hasn't changed, however, is the imperative for peace and the commitment of many to make it real. No doubt, conditions today are more difficult than they were 16 years ago. But we have a new US president who appears committed, despite overwhelming odds, to unravel this knot and find a way forward. He has noted that he is mindful of the fact that advancing towards peace "is important to Arab Americans, important to American Jews, and important to me" and has added that it is "important to the national security interests of the US".
While the prospects for peace, in fact, appear dim, the Arab American and American Jewish leaders who gathered in Washington agreed that it is worth the effort. We are both cognizant of the reality that our commitment to joint action in support of the president and peacemaking is not shared by all in our communities. Given the prevailing mood, there are some on both sides who look with suspicion on such cooperation. Some of us have been called "traitors" or "sell-outs", but such rhetoric misses the point.
Those of us who come together, in fact, remain faithful to the different historical narratives told by our respective communities. But we are not willing to let the story end there. We know that a way forward must be found, in order to reconcile these competing histories and to replace the current reign of terror and oppression with peace and justice. We are unwilling to be condemned by the scourge of the past, but seek a way to create a better future. And we know that in the end, our two communities, the people of the Middle East and our country will be better served by peace than by the continuing conflict.
That is why we came together, and why we will remain together, until, God willing, there is a just and lasting peace.
* The writer is president of the Arab American Institute.
Al-Ahram Weekly (Egypt)
29 October - 4 November 2009
On Sunday, 25 October, representatives of over three dozen Arab American and American Jewish community organisations met in Washington to make clear their shared commitment to comprehensive Middle East peace. Hosted by J Street, which calls itself the US's "pro-peace, pro-Israel lobby", and the Arab American Institute, "the research and policy arm of the Arab American community", the event was joined by Tina Tchen, deputy assistant to the president and director of the White House Office of Public Engagement.
The message that the leaders and activists who gathered hoped to send, via this summit, was that despite their different starting points, both agree on the goal of a two-state solution to the Israeli- Palestinian conflict and are supportive of President Obama's peace making efforts, to date.
This is not the first time Arab Americans and American Jews have joined forces. I personally will never forget how after the September 1993 Rabin-Arafat signing ceremony on the White House lawn, president Bill Clinton and vice-president Al Gore brought together the leaders of both communities urging them to support peacemaking. Despite the euphoria of the moment, joint effort was difficult for some, requiring, as it did, a break with long-established patterns of behaviour.
Organisations in both communities knew how to oppose each other, but learning how to work together was new. However, as we were to discover, if peacemaking was our goal, then learn we must, as for peace to succeed there has to be a constituency that supports peace.
For his part, Gore launched Builders for Peace, a private sector initiative that brought together 150 Arab American and American Jewish business leaders who were given the challenge of working together in an effort to grow the Palestinian economy in support of peace. As Gore would often say, while economic progress was no substitute for peace, without improvement in the daily lives of people it would be impossible to sustain the work of peace.
To lead the effort, Gore asked former Congressman Mel Levine and myself to serve as co-chairs. In some ways we were an odd couple, since before that time we had only come together when we clashed during my testimony before his congressional committee, or when we appeared opposite one another, on Crossfire-style TV shows, debating US policy towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But as Mel would note, while he and I might not have agreed on the past, we did agree on where we needed to go in the future. And that was sufficient to build our effort and our working relationship.
Because of a myriad of problems, ranging from Israeli-imposed impediments to economic development and Palestinian problems with corruption, Builders for Peace didn't succeed as we had hoped. But what did work was the experience of joint Arab American and American Jewish cooperation. Friendships were developed that have stood the test of time.
The intervening 16 years have not been kind to peacemaking. Thousands have died. Terrorism and repression have taken a bloody toll. Settlements and new barriers to peace have been erected and Israeli and Palestinian attitudes have been hardened. Extremists on both sides have gained ground while the hopes of many for peace have been dashed.
What hasn't changed, however, is the imperative for peace and the commitment of many to make it real. No doubt, conditions today are more difficult than they were 16 years ago. But we have a new US president who appears committed, despite overwhelming odds, to unravel this knot and find a way forward. He has noted that he is mindful of the fact that advancing towards peace "is important to Arab Americans, important to American Jews, and important to me" and has added that it is "important to the national security interests of the US".
While the prospects for peace, in fact, appear dim, the Arab American and American Jewish leaders who gathered in Washington agreed that it is worth the effort. We are both cognizant of the reality that our commitment to joint action in support of the president and peacemaking is not shared by all in our communities. Given the prevailing mood, there are some on both sides who look with suspicion on such cooperation. Some of us have been called "traitors" or "sell-outs", but such rhetoric misses the point.
Those of us who come together, in fact, remain faithful to the different historical narratives told by our respective communities. But we are not willing to let the story end there. We know that a way forward must be found, in order to reconcile these competing histories and to replace the current reign of terror and oppression with peace and justice. We are unwilling to be condemned by the scourge of the past, but seek a way to create a better future. And we know that in the end, our two communities, the people of the Middle East and our country will be better served by peace than by the continuing conflict.
That is why we came together, and why we will remain together, until, God willing, there is a just and lasting peace.
* The writer is president of the Arab American Institute.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Hussein Ibish on the Fantasy World of One-Staters
Interview by Jeffrey Goldberg
The Atlantic
November 3, 2009
Hussein Ibish, a senior fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine, which is the leading American group advocating for an independent Palestine alongside Israel, has a new book out, "What's Wrong With the One-State Agenda?" which does a comprehensive job of demolishing the arguments made by those who think that Israel should be eliminated and replaced by a single state of Jews and Palestinians. He has performed an important service with this book by noting one overwhelming truth about this debate: Virtually no one in Israel wants a single-state between the river and the sea. It's useful to remember this salient fact when listening to the ostensibly reality-based arguments of the one-staters.
I spoke to Ibish about his arguments last week, shortly after he spoke at the J Street conference. Here is an edited version of our conversation:
Jeffrey Goldberg: What were your impressions of the conference?
Hussein Ibish: It was impressive as a first step. My impression is that there's still quite a bit of message-cohesion and message-formulation to be done. It seemed to me to be an insufficiently coherent group of people. The range of people was so large.
JG: You mean on the Zionist spectrum?
HI: I mean people ranging from the sort of centrist-center left, all the way to post-Zionists, anti-Zionists, who were there, too. It's not ultimately a group that's going to form, I think, a functional coalition. Right now, they're finding their feet. This is normal, it's inevitable — but at a certain point, I think they have to clarify what they are, who their constituency is, what they stand for, who they are, who they're not. They've been more successful in creating a space for themselves as a new voice that is compelling, but at other moments it's looked like where they were simply positioning themselves as the alternative to AIPAC. And my sense of things is that, initially, that they would look too much to their rivals. But sooner rather than later, they're going to have to just move on and start to define themselves in a much more coherent and pro-active way, not just in contrast to the traditional Jewish organizations but also to distinguish themselves from people in the Jewish community whose criticism of Israel makes them anathema to the mainstream of the community. They can't go there and I think they've tried not to go there.
JG: You can't be Zionist and non-Zionist at the same time, in other words.
HI: Exactly. I think it's essential for them. For us, it's not important.
JG: Well, isn't it important to have a pro-Israel, pro-two-state organization in Washington that's credibly Jewish?
HI: It is. But I believe that all of the mainstream organizations are moving in that direction. I think begrudgingly, without enthusiasm, I think they're all getting there, because I think ultimately the only organization that I can think of that is absolutely opposed to a two-state agreement are on the far right, the Zionist Organization of America, which is in favor of the occupation without reservations and, on the left, Jewish Voices for Peace, which is a one-state group all the way and without reservation. It seems to me everybody else occupies some space in the middle without being one-staters and without being flag-waving pro-settlers.
Now, the question is, from our point of view, what's really important is that the Jewish community have a range of dynamic organizations that are effective in advocating for peace based on two states, number one. And number two, that we can work with everybody who is in favor of a two-state solution without any other preconditions. I mean, we don't want to get involved in intra-Jewish rivalries. We want to work with everyone who wants peace based on two states. It's as simple as that. We don't have a huge stake in where J Street ultimately positions itself, but I will say this: The more mainstream it can become, the more powerful and important it will be. I think they should be as mainstream as possible, they should avoid the impression they sometimes give that they're perhaps not being sensitive to fears about Israel's security. There's a real appetite for a more robust, more aggressively pro-peace organization in the Jewish community. But from our perspective, the only people we don't want to talk to are the one-staters and the pro-occupation groups.
JG: But the one-staters are a very marginal group. I think one of the interesting things you do in your book is show very coolly, calmly, the essential ridiculousness of one-state advocacy based on the simple fact that in order to have a successful one-state plan, you need Israeli Jews to want it, and today, not even one percent of Israeli Jews want it.
HI: You could put all of them in a small auditorium.
JG: I don't think you need an auditorium. Talk about these guys, the Tony Judts…
HI: I don't want to be too hard on Judt. Judt put out this argument and then he immediately admitted that it was utopian, that it wasn't serious and he was just doing a thought experiment. And since then, he basically has more or less withdrawn from the conversation Judt has not been a person who suggests that this is a realistic plan and a serious proposal for the future.
There are two fundamental flaws with pro-Palestinian strategic thinking that focuses on the idea of abandoning two states and going for a single state. The first is the question of feasibility, and it's hard to argue with that. Obviously anyone who is familiar with this sees the difficulty, and I would be the first to say that success is not assured by any means. Even a two-state agreement looks, at the moment, like something of a long shot. The difference between the two-state solution and everything else is that yes, it's a long shot, but it would work. And if we could conceivably get it, if we did get it, it would solve the conflict.
The fundamental argument that the one-staters seem to be making, which is that we can't possibly get Israel to end the occupation and relinquish their control of the 22 percent of Palestine (the West Bank and Gaza) but we will inevitably succeed in getting them to relinquish one hundred percent of the territory under their control. This is a problem of logic. The second thing is that once you've realized this, obviously what you've done is set yourself the task of convincing Jewish Israelis to voluntarily do this. The idea of coercing the Israelis into this through military force is absurd, and it could only really be done through voluntary persuasion. What the one-staters argue, actually, is that they don't have to do that. What they're going to do, they say, is bring the Israelis to their knees.
JG: South Africa style?
HI: Well, South Africa style, except we don't have a South Africa equation here.
JG: But they believe they do.
HI: They believe that through the application of what they call BDS - Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions - globally that they can crush the will of the Israelis and break the Zionist movement. To me, even if you believe that boycotts were plausible, which I don't, certainly I don't think the American government and institutions and corporations would participate.
JG: You have to move from the American consensus that supports supplying Israel with the best weaponry to not just a military cutoff but a complete cutoff and boycott. It's very hard to picture.
HI: Anyone who thinks that is plausible in the foreseeable future doesn't understand the nature of the American relationship with Israel. The commitment of the U.S., not just the government but American society, is to the survival and security of the Israeli state. And then there's another aspect, which is the extent to which Israeli institutions, organizations and corporations are interwoven at a very fundamental level with many of those in the U.S.
JG: Right, Intel and Google…
HI: I'm talking about corporate, governmental, intelligence, military, industrial, scientific ties. The point is that you can only take talk of boycott and sanctions seriously if you really don't understand any of this. And if you don't understand any of this, then you're living in a fantasy world. So here's the thing: Obviously the only real task for one-staters is to convince Jewish Israelis to agree to their solution. But instead of trying to do that, they engage in the most hyperbolic discourse about the badness of Zionism, the badness of Jewish Israelis, the rightness and primacy of not just a Palestinian narrative, but the most strident traditional Palestinian narrative, and the most tendentious Palestinian narrative, the one that places blame for the conflict entirely on the side of the Israelis, that casts Israel as the usurper and what they call in one-state circles now the "temporary racist usurping entity." These are the ones, by the way, who won't talk about my book. There's a refusal to acknowledge or read my book. I've nicknamed my book "the temporary racist usurping book."
These people are trapped in the language of the Fifties and Sixties. You're talking about a worldview is anachronistic in the most fundamental sense. It doesn't recognize any of the changes that have taken place since then. For example, the strategic situation that's emerged in the Middle East, where the Arab states and the Arabs generally have a lot of other things to worry about other than Israel. This is a world in which a lot of Gulf states are extremely concerned about Iraq, and where there are Arab states — Jordan and Egypt — that have treaties with Israel, where Syria has a motive to be civil with Israel that is unpleasant but completely stable, and where it's a very different environment than simply the Arabs and Israelis are enemies. The other thing that they've missed completely, and this is sort of the amazing thing, is the total transformation in American official policy toward the Palestinians over the past 20 years. Twenty-one years ago, there was no contact ever between the U.S. and the PLO. No contact, zero, and now Palestinian statehood is the consensus American foreign policy and it is a national security priority under Obama. People in the House, key positions like the chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Howard Berman, chair of the Subcommittee on the Middle East, Gary Ackerman, Nita Lowey on Appropriations — all of them Jewish American members of Congress, stalwart supporters of Israel, and all of them committed to peace based on two states. And all of them, by the way, who were on the host committee of the American Task Force on Palestine gala last week.
JG: You've reached the Promised Land.
HI: Except that we haven't achieved the results.
JG: Yes, there's that. But you're on the road.
HI: Exactly. The transformation in American attitudes is almost mind-boggling, an official American attitude on ending the occupation, which has been the traditional goal of the Palestinians. And at this very moment, a group of Palestinians turns around and says, 'Sorry, not good enough, we want it all. Not only is a single Palestinian state not achievable, it's not desirable, it's not acceptable, it's not enough, we want it all.'
JG: Who are the leaders of the movement?
HI: People like Ali Abunimah, Joseph Massad, Ghada Karmi, Omar Barghouti.
JG: And you think they're succumbing to fantastic dreams. This is the traditional criticism of Palestinian politics over the past sixty years, that it's very hard to separate out the dreams from…
HI: It goes back further than sixty years. It's an article of Palestinian nationalist faith that is almost one hundred years old, which is that demography is destiny, demography is power. This notion that if we just sit here, on the land, have children, are steadfast and don't agree to anything, then political power ultimately will flow to us. In the twenties, they believed if we do that, then, just by virtue of our presence in the land, our numbers, our demography, Israel will never be established. After Israel was established, it was just, "Well if we're steadfast and we don't agree, then Israel will be reversed." Then it was, "Well if we just do this, then independence will come in the occupied territories." Now the latest version is if we're just steadfast, we can create a South Africa-like model and we will reverse the war of 1948 at the ballot.
JG: But I have to tell you that for people like me, this is a real worry. This goes with the argument that the settlements are the vanguard of one-statism.
HI: Now there is some truth to this. I think it's useful for people like (Ehud) Olmert or people like yourself to point out that with the occupation going the way it is, there won't be a Palestinian state, and then Israel will be in a situation where it is neither meaningfully Jewish nor meaningfully democratic. I think you could claim that already, if you talk about the de facto Israeli state rather than Israel in its normally perceived borders, that is already the case and it will be increasingly so. Now here's the thing: The alternative, though, is not going to be a single state in the foreseeable future. It's possible we could get there, but it won't be a solution, it will be an outcome. There's a big difference. An outcome of a horrible, brutal, bloody civil conflict that drags on for generations, because even though this demographic issue and the legitimacy issues are crises for Israel, I don't think they result in the dissolution of the Israeli state.
JG: In other words, most Israeli Jews would rather have a Jewish state than a democratic state.
HI: Yes, it's obvious. And I think that what you would get is a protracted civil war that is essentially an intensification of the civil war we've had. So I do say the single state is a potential eventuality, but it would be the outcome of a horrible scenario. Look, the idea that if the current round of talks breaks down and Obama gives up and the U.S. gives up and we all give up, then the alternative is a Gandhian non-violent struggle of sanctions and boycotts that will somehow bring Israel to its knees, that is not the way it's going to go. We know the way it's going to go.
JG: Each intifada is more violent than the last.
HI: And more religious. You'll end up with two sets of bearded fanatics on both sides fighting over holy places and God. It will be a complete disaster. And I think the Israelis will end up ultimately dealing with forces not only beyond its borders, but beyond its comprehension in the long run. This has the possibility of turning into not an ethno-national war but a religious war between the Muslims and the Jews over the holy places with the whole concept of Palestine gone and the Jewish population of Israel in a very unenviable situation, protected in the end only by its nuclear weapons. It's a nightmare.
JG: So you have three scenarios. One, the one-state solution: Somehow the Jews and the Arabs decide, even though their narratives completely contradict each other, that we'll be like Belgium, where we don't have to really like each other but we'll be fine. The second alternative is the one you described of basically endless war. The third is the two-state solution. But, sorry to say it, we don't seem that close right now. You have an Israeli government who seems extremely hesitant to pull down any settlements, you have a Hamas government in Gaza, just for starters.
HI: What you do with Hamas, in my view, is you make the situation such that Hamas has to choose, and you do this by creating progress and by creating momentum — and there are two ways of creating momentum. One is diplomatically, which right now, seems difficult. The other is through the Fayyad plan, which is state building in the occupied territories. That would have a very powerful effect. It is extremely important that we use that idea as a means of gaining momentum, that the Israelis do not block it, that the U.S. protect it politically, and that the Arabs, Europeans and the Israelis support it technically and financially. This is a way of really moving forward in a manner that is complimentary and not contradictory to the diplomatic process, and I think people who suggest that this is some kind of capitulation or some kind of collaboration are dead wrong. This is a very powerful way of effectively resisting the occupation without doing anything violent. Israelis may fool themselves into thinking that this is just economic peace, but it's not; it's Palestinians preparing for independence.
Now with regard to Hamas, I definitely don't think it would be wise for the West to open up dialogue with Hamas under the present circumstances. I think that would simply reward them and it would benefit them in their competition with the PLO and there's a stark choice that Palestinians are facing between two strategies: an Islamist violent strategy and a secular nationalist negotiation strategy. I think it's very important to bolster the second and to make the first appear what it actually is: Non-functional.
The Atlantic
November 3, 2009
Hussein Ibish, a senior fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine, which is the leading American group advocating for an independent Palestine alongside Israel, has a new book out, "What's Wrong With the One-State Agenda?" which does a comprehensive job of demolishing the arguments made by those who think that Israel should be eliminated and replaced by a single state of Jews and Palestinians. He has performed an important service with this book by noting one overwhelming truth about this debate: Virtually no one in Israel wants a single-state between the river and the sea. It's useful to remember this salient fact when listening to the ostensibly reality-based arguments of the one-staters.
I spoke to Ibish about his arguments last week, shortly after he spoke at the J Street conference. Here is an edited version of our conversation:
Jeffrey Goldberg: What were your impressions of the conference?
Hussein Ibish: It was impressive as a first step. My impression is that there's still quite a bit of message-cohesion and message-formulation to be done. It seemed to me to be an insufficiently coherent group of people. The range of people was so large.
JG: You mean on the Zionist spectrum?
HI: I mean people ranging from the sort of centrist-center left, all the way to post-Zionists, anti-Zionists, who were there, too. It's not ultimately a group that's going to form, I think, a functional coalition. Right now, they're finding their feet. This is normal, it's inevitable — but at a certain point, I think they have to clarify what they are, who their constituency is, what they stand for, who they are, who they're not. They've been more successful in creating a space for themselves as a new voice that is compelling, but at other moments it's looked like where they were simply positioning themselves as the alternative to AIPAC. And my sense of things is that, initially, that they would look too much to their rivals. But sooner rather than later, they're going to have to just move on and start to define themselves in a much more coherent and pro-active way, not just in contrast to the traditional Jewish organizations but also to distinguish themselves from people in the Jewish community whose criticism of Israel makes them anathema to the mainstream of the community. They can't go there and I think they've tried not to go there.
JG: You can't be Zionist and non-Zionist at the same time, in other words.
HI: Exactly. I think it's essential for them. For us, it's not important.
JG: Well, isn't it important to have a pro-Israel, pro-two-state organization in Washington that's credibly Jewish?
HI: It is. But I believe that all of the mainstream organizations are moving in that direction. I think begrudgingly, without enthusiasm, I think they're all getting there, because I think ultimately the only organization that I can think of that is absolutely opposed to a two-state agreement are on the far right, the Zionist Organization of America, which is in favor of the occupation without reservations and, on the left, Jewish Voices for Peace, which is a one-state group all the way and without reservation. It seems to me everybody else occupies some space in the middle without being one-staters and without being flag-waving pro-settlers.
Now, the question is, from our point of view, what's really important is that the Jewish community have a range of dynamic organizations that are effective in advocating for peace based on two states, number one. And number two, that we can work with everybody who is in favor of a two-state solution without any other preconditions. I mean, we don't want to get involved in intra-Jewish rivalries. We want to work with everyone who wants peace based on two states. It's as simple as that. We don't have a huge stake in where J Street ultimately positions itself, but I will say this: The more mainstream it can become, the more powerful and important it will be. I think they should be as mainstream as possible, they should avoid the impression they sometimes give that they're perhaps not being sensitive to fears about Israel's security. There's a real appetite for a more robust, more aggressively pro-peace organization in the Jewish community. But from our perspective, the only people we don't want to talk to are the one-staters and the pro-occupation groups.
JG: But the one-staters are a very marginal group. I think one of the interesting things you do in your book is show very coolly, calmly, the essential ridiculousness of one-state advocacy based on the simple fact that in order to have a successful one-state plan, you need Israeli Jews to want it, and today, not even one percent of Israeli Jews want it.
HI: You could put all of them in a small auditorium.
JG: I don't think you need an auditorium. Talk about these guys, the Tony Judts…
HI: I don't want to be too hard on Judt. Judt put out this argument and then he immediately admitted that it was utopian, that it wasn't serious and he was just doing a thought experiment. And since then, he basically has more or less withdrawn from the conversation Judt has not been a person who suggests that this is a realistic plan and a serious proposal for the future.
There are two fundamental flaws with pro-Palestinian strategic thinking that focuses on the idea of abandoning two states and going for a single state. The first is the question of feasibility, and it's hard to argue with that. Obviously anyone who is familiar with this sees the difficulty, and I would be the first to say that success is not assured by any means. Even a two-state agreement looks, at the moment, like something of a long shot. The difference between the two-state solution and everything else is that yes, it's a long shot, but it would work. And if we could conceivably get it, if we did get it, it would solve the conflict.
The fundamental argument that the one-staters seem to be making, which is that we can't possibly get Israel to end the occupation and relinquish their control of the 22 percent of Palestine (the West Bank and Gaza) but we will inevitably succeed in getting them to relinquish one hundred percent of the territory under their control. This is a problem of logic. The second thing is that once you've realized this, obviously what you've done is set yourself the task of convincing Jewish Israelis to voluntarily do this. The idea of coercing the Israelis into this through military force is absurd, and it could only really be done through voluntary persuasion. What the one-staters argue, actually, is that they don't have to do that. What they're going to do, they say, is bring the Israelis to their knees.
JG: South Africa style?
HI: Well, South Africa style, except we don't have a South Africa equation here.
JG: But they believe they do.
HI: They believe that through the application of what they call BDS - Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions - globally that they can crush the will of the Israelis and break the Zionist movement. To me, even if you believe that boycotts were plausible, which I don't, certainly I don't think the American government and institutions and corporations would participate.
JG: You have to move from the American consensus that supports supplying Israel with the best weaponry to not just a military cutoff but a complete cutoff and boycott. It's very hard to picture.
HI: Anyone who thinks that is plausible in the foreseeable future doesn't understand the nature of the American relationship with Israel. The commitment of the U.S., not just the government but American society, is to the survival and security of the Israeli state. And then there's another aspect, which is the extent to which Israeli institutions, organizations and corporations are interwoven at a very fundamental level with many of those in the U.S.
JG: Right, Intel and Google…
HI: I'm talking about corporate, governmental, intelligence, military, industrial, scientific ties. The point is that you can only take talk of boycott and sanctions seriously if you really don't understand any of this. And if you don't understand any of this, then you're living in a fantasy world. So here's the thing: Obviously the only real task for one-staters is to convince Jewish Israelis to agree to their solution. But instead of trying to do that, they engage in the most hyperbolic discourse about the badness of Zionism, the badness of Jewish Israelis, the rightness and primacy of not just a Palestinian narrative, but the most strident traditional Palestinian narrative, and the most tendentious Palestinian narrative, the one that places blame for the conflict entirely on the side of the Israelis, that casts Israel as the usurper and what they call in one-state circles now the "temporary racist usurping entity." These are the ones, by the way, who won't talk about my book. There's a refusal to acknowledge or read my book. I've nicknamed my book "the temporary racist usurping book."
These people are trapped in the language of the Fifties and Sixties. You're talking about a worldview is anachronistic in the most fundamental sense. It doesn't recognize any of the changes that have taken place since then. For example, the strategic situation that's emerged in the Middle East, where the Arab states and the Arabs generally have a lot of other things to worry about other than Israel. This is a world in which a lot of Gulf states are extremely concerned about Iraq, and where there are Arab states — Jordan and Egypt — that have treaties with Israel, where Syria has a motive to be civil with Israel that is unpleasant but completely stable, and where it's a very different environment than simply the Arabs and Israelis are enemies. The other thing that they've missed completely, and this is sort of the amazing thing, is the total transformation in American official policy toward the Palestinians over the past 20 years. Twenty-one years ago, there was no contact ever between the U.S. and the PLO. No contact, zero, and now Palestinian statehood is the consensus American foreign policy and it is a national security priority under Obama. People in the House, key positions like the chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Howard Berman, chair of the Subcommittee on the Middle East, Gary Ackerman, Nita Lowey on Appropriations — all of them Jewish American members of Congress, stalwart supporters of Israel, and all of them committed to peace based on two states. And all of them, by the way, who were on the host committee of the American Task Force on Palestine gala last week.
JG: You've reached the Promised Land.
HI: Except that we haven't achieved the results.
JG: Yes, there's that. But you're on the road.
HI: Exactly. The transformation in American attitudes is almost mind-boggling, an official American attitude on ending the occupation, which has been the traditional goal of the Palestinians. And at this very moment, a group of Palestinians turns around and says, 'Sorry, not good enough, we want it all. Not only is a single Palestinian state not achievable, it's not desirable, it's not acceptable, it's not enough, we want it all.'
JG: Who are the leaders of the movement?
HI: People like Ali Abunimah, Joseph Massad, Ghada Karmi, Omar Barghouti.
JG: And you think they're succumbing to fantastic dreams. This is the traditional criticism of Palestinian politics over the past sixty years, that it's very hard to separate out the dreams from…
HI: It goes back further than sixty years. It's an article of Palestinian nationalist faith that is almost one hundred years old, which is that demography is destiny, demography is power. This notion that if we just sit here, on the land, have children, are steadfast and don't agree to anything, then political power ultimately will flow to us. In the twenties, they believed if we do that, then, just by virtue of our presence in the land, our numbers, our demography, Israel will never be established. After Israel was established, it was just, "Well if we're steadfast and we don't agree, then Israel will be reversed." Then it was, "Well if we just do this, then independence will come in the occupied territories." Now the latest version is if we're just steadfast, we can create a South Africa-like model and we will reverse the war of 1948 at the ballot.
JG: But I have to tell you that for people like me, this is a real worry. This goes with the argument that the settlements are the vanguard of one-statism.
HI: Now there is some truth to this. I think it's useful for people like (Ehud) Olmert or people like yourself to point out that with the occupation going the way it is, there won't be a Palestinian state, and then Israel will be in a situation where it is neither meaningfully Jewish nor meaningfully democratic. I think you could claim that already, if you talk about the de facto Israeli state rather than Israel in its normally perceived borders, that is already the case and it will be increasingly so. Now here's the thing: The alternative, though, is not going to be a single state in the foreseeable future. It's possible we could get there, but it won't be a solution, it will be an outcome. There's a big difference. An outcome of a horrible, brutal, bloody civil conflict that drags on for generations, because even though this demographic issue and the legitimacy issues are crises for Israel, I don't think they result in the dissolution of the Israeli state.
JG: In other words, most Israeli Jews would rather have a Jewish state than a democratic state.
HI: Yes, it's obvious. And I think that what you would get is a protracted civil war that is essentially an intensification of the civil war we've had. So I do say the single state is a potential eventuality, but it would be the outcome of a horrible scenario. Look, the idea that if the current round of talks breaks down and Obama gives up and the U.S. gives up and we all give up, then the alternative is a Gandhian non-violent struggle of sanctions and boycotts that will somehow bring Israel to its knees, that is not the way it's going to go. We know the way it's going to go.
JG: Each intifada is more violent than the last.
HI: And more religious. You'll end up with two sets of bearded fanatics on both sides fighting over holy places and God. It will be a complete disaster. And I think the Israelis will end up ultimately dealing with forces not only beyond its borders, but beyond its comprehension in the long run. This has the possibility of turning into not an ethno-national war but a religious war between the Muslims and the Jews over the holy places with the whole concept of Palestine gone and the Jewish population of Israel in a very unenviable situation, protected in the end only by its nuclear weapons. It's a nightmare.
JG: So you have three scenarios. One, the one-state solution: Somehow the Jews and the Arabs decide, even though their narratives completely contradict each other, that we'll be like Belgium, where we don't have to really like each other but we'll be fine. The second alternative is the one you described of basically endless war. The third is the two-state solution. But, sorry to say it, we don't seem that close right now. You have an Israeli government who seems extremely hesitant to pull down any settlements, you have a Hamas government in Gaza, just for starters.
HI: What you do with Hamas, in my view, is you make the situation such that Hamas has to choose, and you do this by creating progress and by creating momentum — and there are two ways of creating momentum. One is diplomatically, which right now, seems difficult. The other is through the Fayyad plan, which is state building in the occupied territories. That would have a very powerful effect. It is extremely important that we use that idea as a means of gaining momentum, that the Israelis do not block it, that the U.S. protect it politically, and that the Arabs, Europeans and the Israelis support it technically and financially. This is a way of really moving forward in a manner that is complimentary and not contradictory to the diplomatic process, and I think people who suggest that this is some kind of capitulation or some kind of collaboration are dead wrong. This is a very powerful way of effectively resisting the occupation without doing anything violent. Israelis may fool themselves into thinking that this is just economic peace, but it's not; it's Palestinians preparing for independence.
Now with regard to Hamas, I definitely don't think it would be wise for the West to open up dialogue with Hamas under the present circumstances. I think that would simply reward them and it would benefit them in their competition with the PLO and there's a stark choice that Palestinians are facing between two strategies: an Islamist violent strategy and a secular nationalist negotiation strategy. I think it's very important to bolster the second and to make the first appear what it actually is: Non-functional.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
