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.
Showing posts with label Palestinians. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Palestinians. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Thursday, October 22, 2009
No way home: The tragedy of the Palestinian diaspora
You might think Palestinian refugees would be welcomed by their Arab neighbours, yet they are denied basic rights and citizenship
A special report by Judith Miller and David Samuels
The Independent (United Kingdom)
22 October 2009
It is a cynical but time-honoured practice in Middle Eastern politics: the statesmen who decry the political and humanitarian crisis of the approximately 3.9 million Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and in Gaza ignore the plight of an estimated 4.6 million Palestinians who live in Arab countries. For decades, Arab governments have justified their decision to maintain millions of stateless Palestinians as refugees in squalid camps as a means of applying pressure to Israel. The refugee problem will be solved, they say, when Israel agrees to let the Palestinians have their own state.
Yet in the two decades since the end of the Cold War, after two Gulf wars, and the rise and fall of the Oslo peace process, not a single Palestinian refugee has returned to Israel — and only a handful of ageing political functionaries have returned from neighbouring Arab countries to the West Bank and Gaza. Instead, failed peace plans and shifting political priorities have resulted in a second Palestinian "Nakba", or catastrophe — this one at hands of the Arab governments. "Marginalised, deprived of basic political and economic rights, trapped in the camps, bereft of realistic prospects, heavily armed and standing atop multiple fault lines," a report by the International Crisis Group (ICG) in Lebanon recently observed, "the refugee population constitutes a time bomb."
The fact that the divided Palestinian political leadership is silent about the mistreatment of the refugees by Arab states does not make such behaviour any less reprehensible — or less dangerous. Some 250,000 Palestinians were chased out of Kuwait and other Gulf States to punish the Palestinian political leadership for supporting Saddam Hussein. Tens of thousands of Palestinian residents of Iraq were similarly dispossessed after the second Gulf war.
In 2001, Palestinians in Lebanon were stripped of the right to own property, or to pass on the property that they already owned to their children — and banned from working as doctors, lawyers, pharmacists or in 20 other professions. Even the Palestinian refugee community in Jordan, historically the most welcoming Arab state, has reason to feel insecure in the face of official threats to revoke their citizenship. The systematic refusal of Arab governments to grant basic human rights to Palestinians who are born and die in their countries — combined with periodic mass expulsions of entire Palestinian communities — recalls the treatment of Jews in medieval Europe. Along with dispossession and marginalisation has come a new and frightening turn away from the traditional forms of nationalism that once dominated the refugee camps towards the radical pan-Islamic ideology of al-Qa'ida.
Daniel C Kurtzer, who has served as US ambassador to both Israel and Egypt and now advises the Obama administration, says that all American governments have resisted dealing with what he calls the most sensitive issue in the conflict — the normalisation of the status of the Palestinians — through a right of return to Palestine, or citizenship in other countries. "The refugees hold the key to this conflict's settlement," he says, "and nobody knows what to do with them."
In the unlikely event that President Obama's vision of a swift and final settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict materialises, millions of Palestinians would still live in decaying refugee camps whose inhabitants are forbidden from owning land or participating in normal economic life. The only governing authority that Palestinians living in the camps have ever known is UNRWA — the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. Established by the UN on 8 December 1949 to assist 650,000 impoverished Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war, UNRWA has been battling budget cuts and strikes among its employees as it struggles to provide subsidies and services to Palestinian refugees, who are defined as "persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine between June 1946 and May 1948".
•••
The inclusion of the descendants of Palestinian refugees as refugees in UNRWA's mandate has no parallel in international humanitarian law and is responsible for the growth of the official numbers of Palestinian refugees in foreign countries from 711,000 to 4.6 million during decades when the number of ageing refugees from the 1948 Israeli war of independence in was in fact declining. UNRWA's grant of refugee status to the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the original Palestinian refugees according to the principle of patrilineal descent, with no limit on the generations that can obtain refugee status, has made it easy for host countries to flout their obligations under international law. According to Article 34 of the UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, "The Contracting States shall as far as possible facilitate the assimilation and naturalisation of refugees," and must "make every effort to expedite naturalisation proceedings" — the opposite of what happened to the Palestinians in every Arab country in which they settled, save Jordan. For all the easy criticism that can be levelled at UNRWA, it is hard to see how many Palestinian refugees would have survived without the agency's help.
The responsibility for the legal dimensions of their fate lies elsewhere, as UNRWA Commissioner-General Karen AbuZayd made clear at UNRWA's anniversary ceremony in New York on 24 September, before an audience that included Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Queen Rania of Jordan — herself a Palestinian. "The protracted exile of Palestine refugees and the dire conditions they endure, particularly in the occupied Palestinian territory, cannot be reconciled with state obligations under the UN Charter," AbuZayd said. The result for the refugees, AbuZayd said at a forum the previous afternoon at the Princeton Club, is a "suspended state of existence" for which no one seems willing to accept political responsibility. The rest of the discussion, moderated by Ambassador Kurtner, made clear that anticipated solutions to the Palestinian refugee problem had failed to emerge — leaving a community in crisis.
"You can't ignore an entire people because it's awkward or inconvenient," says Dr Karma Nabulsi, a lecturer at Oxford and a former Palestinian representative at the UN. In the period immediately after Oslo, she added, Palestinian refugees in Arab countries hoped to be repatriated to areas governed by the Palestinian Authority. Today, despair has replaced that initial optimism. "What young Palestinian would want to resettle in Gaza or in the West Bank?" she asks.
Sharing a panel with Dr Nabulsi, the doveish former Israeli foreign minister Shlomo Ben Ami, who negotiated directly with Yasser Arafat at the failed Camp David meetings in 2000, asserted that Israel has suppressed narratives that would make clear its responsibility for the Palestinian refugee crisis of 1948. Indifference to the refugees' plight, he added, was shared by Israel's negotiating partner in the Oslo years — Yasser Arafat. "He was not a refugee man," Ben Ami said flatly. "He was much more centred on the question of Jerusalem. I heard him say to [Mahmood Abbas] in my presence, 'leave me alone with your refugees'."
It is no secret that certain Arab regimes saw the Palestinians under Arafat's leadership as an unwelcome occupation that stripped Jordan bare and destroyed Lebanon. Similarly, Arafat often used the threat of destabilisation and assassination to get Arab regimes to fund the Palestinian cause. Still, the record of Arafat's Palestinian Authority in its territories during the 1990s attests to the truth of Ben Ami's observation, which applies both to Arafat's Fatah and to Hamas. Despite $10bn in foreign aid, not one refugee camp in the West Bank or Gaza has been replaced by modern housing. On the West Bank, chances for normal Palestinian communal life have been shattered by Israeli settlements, arrests, checkpoints and roadblocks, and by 15 years of abuses by Fatah. Even under the best of circumstances, an influx of refugees would further destabilise a Palestinian economy that is kept afloat by the world's highest per capita receipts of foreign aid.
Daniel Kurtzer agrees no one is likely to make a deal that includes a substantial return of the Palestinian diaspora. "Most Palestinian refugees know it, as do the settlers," he says. So rather than wait for American mediators or Arab states to impose solutions on them, the Palestinians themselves should begin to tackle the diabolically difficult issues inherent in the resolution of their political and economic future. "What we need is a refugee summit," he says. "I'm looking for a real conversation that must start internally and soon."
After 60 years of failed wars, and failed peace, it is time to put politics aside and to insist that the basic rights of the Palestinian refugees in Arab countries be respected — whether or not their children's children return to Haifa anytime soon. While Saudi Arabia may not wish to host Israeli tourists, it can easily afford to integrate the estimated 240,000 Palestinian refugees who already live in the kingdom — just as Egypt, which has received close to $60bn in US aid, and has a population of 81 million, can grant legal rights to an estimated 70,000 Palestinian refugees and their descendants. One can only imagine the outrage that the world community would rightly visit upon Israel if Israeli Arabs were subject to the vile discriminatory laws applied to Palestinians living in Arab countries. Surely, Palestinian Arabs can keep their own national dream alive in the countries where they were born, while also enjoying the freedom to work, vote and own property?
A practical solution to the crisis of the Palestinian refugees in Arab countries will focus on Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, which together play host to approximately 3 million of the estimated 4.6 million Palestinian refugees living outside the West Bank and Gaza. While each of these countries has chosen different legal and political approaches to the 1948 refugees and their descendants, they share a political desire to sublimate the rights of Palestinian residents, treating them as unwanted guests or as tools to be used in pursuing wider political interests — but rarely as fully-fledged members of society. Lebanon, where Palestinians led by Yasser Arafat are widely blamed for having sparked the 1975 civil war, is the worst offender against international norms. Yet even in Jordan, which is in many ways a model for the humane treatment of a large refugee population, Palestinians today feel markedly less secure than they did two decades ago, or even five years ago.
•••
Outside of Iraq, whose Palestinian population fled en masse after the fall of Saddam, nowhere has the situation of the Palestinian refugees worsened so dramatically as in Lebanon. Since the early Sixties, Palestinians there have been barred from working in medicine, dentistry and the law. In 2001, the Lebanese parliament adopted an amendment to the country's property laws that prohibited the acquisition of real estate by "any person not a citizen of a recognised state" — meaning the estimated 250,000 to 400,000 Palestinians living in Lebanon. Palestinians who had acquired real estate prior to 2001 were barred from bequeathing property to their children.
Right-wing Christians and Shi'ite radicals alike support discriminatory legislation that further impoverishes Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, with the stated goal of preventing them from beginning the process of naturalisation, known as tawtin. In his inaugural speech in May, 2008, Lebanese President Michel Suleiman, a Christian and former head of the country's armed forces, reaffirmed "Lebanon's categorical refusal of naturalisation", a statement echoed by the former Lebanese ambassador to the US, Nassib Lahoud, who told us recently in Beirut: "The confessional balance does not allow these things to happen ... at the moment the Palestinians are citizens of a state that does not exist." His sentiments were echoed by Hizbollah's spokesman on the Palestinian question, Hassan Hodroj. "The threat of tawtin is genuine," Hodroj explained. "It is one of the ways in which Israel, backed by the US, is endangering the region."
The fact that the living standard of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon has been deemed "catastrophic" by both UNRWA and by the Lebanese government can therefore be understood as a deliberate result of official state policy that is supported by all parties across Lebanon's divided confessional spectrum. As a member of the Lebanese parliament, Ghassan Moukheiber, explained in an interview with the ICG, "our official policy is to maintain Palestinians in a vulnerable, precarious situation to diminish prospects for their naturalisation or permanent settlement".
Yet the results of this horrifying policy may not be confined to Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. In his book Everyday Jihad, about the experience of refugees in the Ain al-Hilweh camp, home to an estimated 70,000 Palestinians, the French scholar Bernard Rougier describes the results of decades of exclusion and marginalisation which have severed the refugees from any connection to a lost homeland — or the country in which they were born. As a result, he says, many Palestinians have abandoned a failed nationalism for the radical millenarian ideas associated with al-Qa'ida. "Palestinian salafist militants have devoted themselves to defending the imaginary borders of identity," Rougier writes, "declaring themselves the protectors and guardians of the cause of Sunni Islam worldwide."
Visitors to the Ain al-Hilweh camp are immediately made aware that they have entered another world. While Lebanese army checkpoints ring the camp, the Lebanese state has no presence inside. Food, water and other basic services are provided by UNRWA, while armed factions openly display weapons in muddy alleyways and recruit generations to serve under their banners. It is easy to see why the secular promise of Palestinian nationalism has faded and why the promise of a Muslim paradise without borders might take its place. One of the 9/11 hijackers dedicated a poem to Ain al-Hilweh's most prominent jihadist in his videotaped will, and dozens of Palestinian fighters from the camp joined al-Qa'ida in Iraq.
"The situation is the camp is deteriorating," Rougier told us, when we asked about whether things were getting better or worse for the Palestinians of Lebanon. Bound by their absolute opposition to tawtin, he says, Lebanese leaders are creating a radicalised Palestinian population that will eventually have to be absorbed into Lebanon, despite having little or no allegiance to the state.
Sahar Atrache, lead author of the ICG report on the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, agrees. "Palestinians refugees in Lebanon lack means of socio-economic advancement and are bereft of hope," he says. "They are vulnerable on all counts — politically, legally and above all physically. The status quo is good neither for the refugees nor for Lebanon itself."
•••
While Palestinian refugees and their descendants inside Syria are not allowed to vote or hold Syrian passports, they are free from the overt discrimination that has turned Lebanon into a recruiting ground for al-Qa'ida. The legal status of Palestinians inside Syria is defined by a 1956 law that states that grants them "the right to employment, commerce, and national service, while preserving their original nationality". More than 100,000 of the estimated 450,000 Palestinians in Syria live in or around the Yarmouk refugee camp, which long ago became a neighbourhood of Damascus.
While Palestinians are reasonably well integrated into the Syrian socio-economic structure, according to the scholar Laurie Brand they do not have the right to vote, nor can they stand for parliament or other political offices. Palestinians are barred from buying farmland and prohibited from owning more than one house. The female descendant of a Palestinian refugee can become a Syrian citizen by marrying a Syrian man. The male descendants of Palestinian men and their children are barred from acquiring Syrian citizenship, even if they marry Syrian women.
The major focus of Syrian interest in the Palestinian refugees has long been as an extension of the Assad regime's policy towards its neighbours — Israel and Lebanon. Damascus has long hosted a variety of Palestinian terror groups that rejected the Oslo process, including Ahmad Jibril's Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC). More significantly, Damascus is also the political and logistical centre for Hamas. "Syria's support for armed Palestinian groups is key to pressuring Damascus' neighbours, most notably Israel and Lebanon," says Andrew Tabler, author of the Syria-watching blog Eighth Gate.
Syria increases its leverage inside Israel by weakening Fatah and strengthening Hamas. In Lebanon, Syrian military and political interference has turned the refugee camps into "security-free islands" (juzur amniya) where bombers can be recruited, bombs manufactured, and plots can be directed beyond the reach of the Lebanese army and police. "Life for the Palestinians was deliberately frozen for political manipulation," concludes Lebanese analyst Tony Badran. "Syria has no interest in normalising that situation."
While Syria imposes a measure of security on its Palestinian neighbourhoods, it foments insecurity and violence in Lebanon and Gaza, splitting the Palestinian polity and fuelling the misery of Palestinians throughout the region.
•••
Jordan is the only Arab nation that has integrated large numbers of Palestinians as full-fledged citizens. This is due not only to the unification of the East Bank and West Bank of the Jordan River valley under Hashemite rule between the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 until Israel's occupation of West Bank in 1967, but also to the luck of having had an enlightened monarch committed to the compassionate treatment of the estimated 100,000 refugees who crossed the Jordan River during the nakba in 1948. Israel's occupation of the West Bank following the 1967 war triggered a second exodus of 140,000 refugees into Jordan.
Today, almost 2 million of Jordan's 6 million people are registered Palestinian refugees, the largest concentration of current and former refugees in the Palestinian diaspora — and increasingly, tensions have deepened between the Palestinians and the "East Bank" establishment. This summer in Amman, ambiguous declarations by the recently appointed minister of the interior, Nayef al-Kadi, who is widely perceived to be anti-Palestinian, led many Jordanians of Palestinian origin to fear they would be stripped of Jordanian identity numbers. Speaking to the London-based Arabic-language newspaper Al Hayat, al-Kadi confirmed that some Palestinians would be stripped of citizenship, ostensibly to counter Israeli plans to turn Jordan into Palestine. "We should be thanked for taking this measure," he said. "We are fulfilling our national duty because Israel wants to expel the Palestinians from their homeland." Panic about their status spread quickly among the Palestinian community.
In interviews this month, senior Jordanian officials sought to quell such fears, while also suggesting there was at least some substance to al-Kadi's explosive suggestion. Faisal Bakr Qadi, the director of the Interior Ministry's office of Inspections, said Palestinians in Jordan were not being systematically stripped of citizenship. Rather, he explained that the government's current review of Palestinian national status dated back to 1988, when King Hussein, in response to demands by Palestinian and Arab leaders, disengaged administratively from the West Bank. Palestinian refugees, he said, meaning those who came to Jordan in the 1948 exodus, were to remain "full Jordanian citizens". "Displaced" Palestinians, or those who had come in 1967 and afterwards, would be able to maintain their yellow identity cards and numbers and de facto citizenship, provided they returned to the West Bank to renew the Israeli passes that permit them to go back and forth between Jordan and the West Bank.
Since 1983, he said, Jordan had given the coveted yellow cards — which enable Palestinians to work without special permits, pay local tuition rates in school, and enjoy full government services — to 280,000 Palestinians, whereas it had "frozen" the cards — or downgraded their status — of only 15,856 people. So far this year, he said, 9,956 cards were upgraded, 291 downgraded.
While many diplomats doubt these numbers, Jordanians insist there is no plot or plan to expel or deny citizenship to Palestinians who have lived virtually their entire lives in Jordan. "We want to ensure that when and if the peace process succeeds in establishing an independent Palestinian state, Palestinians living in Jordan will be in a position to choose their citizenship by having their status in order in both Jordan and Palestine," said an official close to King Abdullah.
Yet the distinctions that seem meaningful in Amman are not clear to some of the almost 94,000 Palestinian residents of Baqa'a, the largest of the 10 official refugee camps run by the UN. Some Palestinians in Baqa'a complain about the "new regulations" and the lack of identity cards that enable them to work without special permits and educate their children in public schools. Anxiety about the future pervades this ramshackle suburb at the northern edge of Amman, which began as an emergency relief centre after the 1967 war and is now a sprawling mini-city with its own basic shops, shawarma (sandwich) stands, and services. Many of the people we spoke to claimed that they knew someone, or had a relative, neighbour and friend whose identity card had been revoked, or whose status had inexplicably been changed.
For many of these refugees at the bottom of Jordan's social and economic pecking order, life without papers means hiding from the police who constantly patrol their camp's streets, being too poor to send any of your eight to 10 children to college, a lifetime of menial labour, and only a threadbare dream of returning to a homeland that most of them have never seen. There is strong suspicion of the state, but also of their neighbours, who are divided into "'48 people" and "'67 people". "Some of the newcomers would give away Al Aqsa for a Jordanian identity card," says Heba, a mother of eight, mentioning Islam's celebrated mosque in Jerusalem, one of its holiest shrines.
"We're Jordanians," says her son, Mustapha, a slender, 20-year-old in a bright orange T-shirt emblazoned with meaningless words in unknown languages. "This is the best place in the world," he says, pointing around the bare living room whose worn rugs and threadbare pillows cover the floor on which he and all his siblings sleep. "We would never leave here. But I'm loyal to my country, and I would like to visit it one day."
He seems perplexed when asked which is his country — Jordan or Palestine. "We have no security here, but we are Jordanians," replies Mustapha, who lounges on a mattress in a two-storey cement house down the road while one of his five daughters offers tiny glasses of steaming herbal tea and cardamom-scented coffee. "Everything I have is here. This house. My car. My job. What would I have in Nablus or Be'ersheba?" he declares. "My children know nothing but Jordan. And we will stay here."
That determination, echoed repeatedly through the dilapidated cement homes that line Baqa'a's gravelly streets and dust-filled shops, is precisely what terrifies Jordan's East Bank establishment. Jordanians have reason to fear their Palestinian guests. Many Jordanians have not forgotten "Black September", the civil war launched by Arafat's Fatah organisation in 1970 which nearly toppled King Hussein's kingdom.
Moreover, having grown accustomed to their near monopoly on jobs provided by the government, Jordan's largest employer, Jordanians fear demands for political equality from Palestinians, most of whom would probably choose to remain in Jordan, relinquishing their "right of return' in favour of compensation. An end to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict would surely threaten Jordan's informal division of power: East Bankers dominate the army, the security services and most civil-service posts, while Palestinians are disproportionately represented in business. Palestinians may advise the king in the royal court, but there has been only one Palestinian prime minister, who served for eight months. Palestinians now comprise only 23 of Jordan's 110 MPs.
"The closer we get to a solution," says Adnan Abu Odeh, a Palestinian who was one of King Hussein's royal court chiefs and also held other important government posts, "the more anxious society becomes. We are approaching a moment of truth."
A special report by Judith Miller and David Samuels
The Independent (United Kingdom)
22 October 2009
It is a cynical but time-honoured practice in Middle Eastern politics: the statesmen who decry the political and humanitarian crisis of the approximately 3.9 million Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and in Gaza ignore the plight of an estimated 4.6 million Palestinians who live in Arab countries. For decades, Arab governments have justified their decision to maintain millions of stateless Palestinians as refugees in squalid camps as a means of applying pressure to Israel. The refugee problem will be solved, they say, when Israel agrees to let the Palestinians have their own state.
Yet in the two decades since the end of the Cold War, after two Gulf wars, and the rise and fall of the Oslo peace process, not a single Palestinian refugee has returned to Israel — and only a handful of ageing political functionaries have returned from neighbouring Arab countries to the West Bank and Gaza. Instead, failed peace plans and shifting political priorities have resulted in a second Palestinian "Nakba", or catastrophe — this one at hands of the Arab governments. "Marginalised, deprived of basic political and economic rights, trapped in the camps, bereft of realistic prospects, heavily armed and standing atop multiple fault lines," a report by the International Crisis Group (ICG) in Lebanon recently observed, "the refugee population constitutes a time bomb."
The fact that the divided Palestinian political leadership is silent about the mistreatment of the refugees by Arab states does not make such behaviour any less reprehensible — or less dangerous. Some 250,000 Palestinians were chased out of Kuwait and other Gulf States to punish the Palestinian political leadership for supporting Saddam Hussein. Tens of thousands of Palestinian residents of Iraq were similarly dispossessed after the second Gulf war.
In 2001, Palestinians in Lebanon were stripped of the right to own property, or to pass on the property that they already owned to their children — and banned from working as doctors, lawyers, pharmacists or in 20 other professions. Even the Palestinian refugee community in Jordan, historically the most welcoming Arab state, has reason to feel insecure in the face of official threats to revoke their citizenship. The systematic refusal of Arab governments to grant basic human rights to Palestinians who are born and die in their countries — combined with periodic mass expulsions of entire Palestinian communities — recalls the treatment of Jews in medieval Europe. Along with dispossession and marginalisation has come a new and frightening turn away from the traditional forms of nationalism that once dominated the refugee camps towards the radical pan-Islamic ideology of al-Qa'ida.
Daniel C Kurtzer, who has served as US ambassador to both Israel and Egypt and now advises the Obama administration, says that all American governments have resisted dealing with what he calls the most sensitive issue in the conflict — the normalisation of the status of the Palestinians — through a right of return to Palestine, or citizenship in other countries. "The refugees hold the key to this conflict's settlement," he says, "and nobody knows what to do with them."
In the unlikely event that President Obama's vision of a swift and final settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict materialises, millions of Palestinians would still live in decaying refugee camps whose inhabitants are forbidden from owning land or participating in normal economic life. The only governing authority that Palestinians living in the camps have ever known is UNRWA — the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. Established by the UN on 8 December 1949 to assist 650,000 impoverished Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war, UNRWA has been battling budget cuts and strikes among its employees as it struggles to provide subsidies and services to Palestinian refugees, who are defined as "persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine between June 1946 and May 1948".
•••
The inclusion of the descendants of Palestinian refugees as refugees in UNRWA's mandate has no parallel in international humanitarian law and is responsible for the growth of the official numbers of Palestinian refugees in foreign countries from 711,000 to 4.6 million during decades when the number of ageing refugees from the 1948 Israeli war of independence in was in fact declining. UNRWA's grant of refugee status to the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the original Palestinian refugees according to the principle of patrilineal descent, with no limit on the generations that can obtain refugee status, has made it easy for host countries to flout their obligations under international law. According to Article 34 of the UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, "The Contracting States shall as far as possible facilitate the assimilation and naturalisation of refugees," and must "make every effort to expedite naturalisation proceedings" — the opposite of what happened to the Palestinians in every Arab country in which they settled, save Jordan. For all the easy criticism that can be levelled at UNRWA, it is hard to see how many Palestinian refugees would have survived without the agency's help.
The responsibility for the legal dimensions of their fate lies elsewhere, as UNRWA Commissioner-General Karen AbuZayd made clear at UNRWA's anniversary ceremony in New York on 24 September, before an audience that included Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Queen Rania of Jordan — herself a Palestinian. "The protracted exile of Palestine refugees and the dire conditions they endure, particularly in the occupied Palestinian territory, cannot be reconciled with state obligations under the UN Charter," AbuZayd said. The result for the refugees, AbuZayd said at a forum the previous afternoon at the Princeton Club, is a "suspended state of existence" for which no one seems willing to accept political responsibility. The rest of the discussion, moderated by Ambassador Kurtner, made clear that anticipated solutions to the Palestinian refugee problem had failed to emerge — leaving a community in crisis.
"You can't ignore an entire people because it's awkward or inconvenient," says Dr Karma Nabulsi, a lecturer at Oxford and a former Palestinian representative at the UN. In the period immediately after Oslo, she added, Palestinian refugees in Arab countries hoped to be repatriated to areas governed by the Palestinian Authority. Today, despair has replaced that initial optimism. "What young Palestinian would want to resettle in Gaza or in the West Bank?" she asks.
Sharing a panel with Dr Nabulsi, the doveish former Israeli foreign minister Shlomo Ben Ami, who negotiated directly with Yasser Arafat at the failed Camp David meetings in 2000, asserted that Israel has suppressed narratives that would make clear its responsibility for the Palestinian refugee crisis of 1948. Indifference to the refugees' plight, he added, was shared by Israel's negotiating partner in the Oslo years — Yasser Arafat. "He was not a refugee man," Ben Ami said flatly. "He was much more centred on the question of Jerusalem. I heard him say to [Mahmood Abbas] in my presence, 'leave me alone with your refugees'."
It is no secret that certain Arab regimes saw the Palestinians under Arafat's leadership as an unwelcome occupation that stripped Jordan bare and destroyed Lebanon. Similarly, Arafat often used the threat of destabilisation and assassination to get Arab regimes to fund the Palestinian cause. Still, the record of Arafat's Palestinian Authority in its territories during the 1990s attests to the truth of Ben Ami's observation, which applies both to Arafat's Fatah and to Hamas. Despite $10bn in foreign aid, not one refugee camp in the West Bank or Gaza has been replaced by modern housing. On the West Bank, chances for normal Palestinian communal life have been shattered by Israeli settlements, arrests, checkpoints and roadblocks, and by 15 years of abuses by Fatah. Even under the best of circumstances, an influx of refugees would further destabilise a Palestinian economy that is kept afloat by the world's highest per capita receipts of foreign aid.
Daniel Kurtzer agrees no one is likely to make a deal that includes a substantial return of the Palestinian diaspora. "Most Palestinian refugees know it, as do the settlers," he says. So rather than wait for American mediators or Arab states to impose solutions on them, the Palestinians themselves should begin to tackle the diabolically difficult issues inherent in the resolution of their political and economic future. "What we need is a refugee summit," he says. "I'm looking for a real conversation that must start internally and soon."
After 60 years of failed wars, and failed peace, it is time to put politics aside and to insist that the basic rights of the Palestinian refugees in Arab countries be respected — whether or not their children's children return to Haifa anytime soon. While Saudi Arabia may not wish to host Israeli tourists, it can easily afford to integrate the estimated 240,000 Palestinian refugees who already live in the kingdom — just as Egypt, which has received close to $60bn in US aid, and has a population of 81 million, can grant legal rights to an estimated 70,000 Palestinian refugees and their descendants. One can only imagine the outrage that the world community would rightly visit upon Israel if Israeli Arabs were subject to the vile discriminatory laws applied to Palestinians living in Arab countries. Surely, Palestinian Arabs can keep their own national dream alive in the countries where they were born, while also enjoying the freedom to work, vote and own property?
A practical solution to the crisis of the Palestinian refugees in Arab countries will focus on Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, which together play host to approximately 3 million of the estimated 4.6 million Palestinian refugees living outside the West Bank and Gaza. While each of these countries has chosen different legal and political approaches to the 1948 refugees and their descendants, they share a political desire to sublimate the rights of Palestinian residents, treating them as unwanted guests or as tools to be used in pursuing wider political interests — but rarely as fully-fledged members of society. Lebanon, where Palestinians led by Yasser Arafat are widely blamed for having sparked the 1975 civil war, is the worst offender against international norms. Yet even in Jordan, which is in many ways a model for the humane treatment of a large refugee population, Palestinians today feel markedly less secure than they did two decades ago, or even five years ago.
•••
Outside of Iraq, whose Palestinian population fled en masse after the fall of Saddam, nowhere has the situation of the Palestinian refugees worsened so dramatically as in Lebanon. Since the early Sixties, Palestinians there have been barred from working in medicine, dentistry and the law. In 2001, the Lebanese parliament adopted an amendment to the country's property laws that prohibited the acquisition of real estate by "any person not a citizen of a recognised state" — meaning the estimated 250,000 to 400,000 Palestinians living in Lebanon. Palestinians who had acquired real estate prior to 2001 were barred from bequeathing property to their children.
Right-wing Christians and Shi'ite radicals alike support discriminatory legislation that further impoverishes Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, with the stated goal of preventing them from beginning the process of naturalisation, known as tawtin. In his inaugural speech in May, 2008, Lebanese President Michel Suleiman, a Christian and former head of the country's armed forces, reaffirmed "Lebanon's categorical refusal of naturalisation", a statement echoed by the former Lebanese ambassador to the US, Nassib Lahoud, who told us recently in Beirut: "The confessional balance does not allow these things to happen ... at the moment the Palestinians are citizens of a state that does not exist." His sentiments were echoed by Hizbollah's spokesman on the Palestinian question, Hassan Hodroj. "The threat of tawtin is genuine," Hodroj explained. "It is one of the ways in which Israel, backed by the US, is endangering the region."
The fact that the living standard of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon has been deemed "catastrophic" by both UNRWA and by the Lebanese government can therefore be understood as a deliberate result of official state policy that is supported by all parties across Lebanon's divided confessional spectrum. As a member of the Lebanese parliament, Ghassan Moukheiber, explained in an interview with the ICG, "our official policy is to maintain Palestinians in a vulnerable, precarious situation to diminish prospects for their naturalisation or permanent settlement".
Yet the results of this horrifying policy may not be confined to Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. In his book Everyday Jihad, about the experience of refugees in the Ain al-Hilweh camp, home to an estimated 70,000 Palestinians, the French scholar Bernard Rougier describes the results of decades of exclusion and marginalisation which have severed the refugees from any connection to a lost homeland — or the country in which they were born. As a result, he says, many Palestinians have abandoned a failed nationalism for the radical millenarian ideas associated with al-Qa'ida. "Palestinian salafist militants have devoted themselves to defending the imaginary borders of identity," Rougier writes, "declaring themselves the protectors and guardians of the cause of Sunni Islam worldwide."
Visitors to the Ain al-Hilweh camp are immediately made aware that they have entered another world. While Lebanese army checkpoints ring the camp, the Lebanese state has no presence inside. Food, water and other basic services are provided by UNRWA, while armed factions openly display weapons in muddy alleyways and recruit generations to serve under their banners. It is easy to see why the secular promise of Palestinian nationalism has faded and why the promise of a Muslim paradise without borders might take its place. One of the 9/11 hijackers dedicated a poem to Ain al-Hilweh's most prominent jihadist in his videotaped will, and dozens of Palestinian fighters from the camp joined al-Qa'ida in Iraq.
"The situation is the camp is deteriorating," Rougier told us, when we asked about whether things were getting better or worse for the Palestinians of Lebanon. Bound by their absolute opposition to tawtin, he says, Lebanese leaders are creating a radicalised Palestinian population that will eventually have to be absorbed into Lebanon, despite having little or no allegiance to the state.
Sahar Atrache, lead author of the ICG report on the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, agrees. "Palestinians refugees in Lebanon lack means of socio-economic advancement and are bereft of hope," he says. "They are vulnerable on all counts — politically, legally and above all physically. The status quo is good neither for the refugees nor for Lebanon itself."
•••
While Palestinian refugees and their descendants inside Syria are not allowed to vote or hold Syrian passports, they are free from the overt discrimination that has turned Lebanon into a recruiting ground for al-Qa'ida. The legal status of Palestinians inside Syria is defined by a 1956 law that states that grants them "the right to employment, commerce, and national service, while preserving their original nationality". More than 100,000 of the estimated 450,000 Palestinians in Syria live in or around the Yarmouk refugee camp, which long ago became a neighbourhood of Damascus.
While Palestinians are reasonably well integrated into the Syrian socio-economic structure, according to the scholar Laurie Brand they do not have the right to vote, nor can they stand for parliament or other political offices. Palestinians are barred from buying farmland and prohibited from owning more than one house. The female descendant of a Palestinian refugee can become a Syrian citizen by marrying a Syrian man. The male descendants of Palestinian men and their children are barred from acquiring Syrian citizenship, even if they marry Syrian women.
The major focus of Syrian interest in the Palestinian refugees has long been as an extension of the Assad regime's policy towards its neighbours — Israel and Lebanon. Damascus has long hosted a variety of Palestinian terror groups that rejected the Oslo process, including Ahmad Jibril's Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC). More significantly, Damascus is also the political and logistical centre for Hamas. "Syria's support for armed Palestinian groups is key to pressuring Damascus' neighbours, most notably Israel and Lebanon," says Andrew Tabler, author of the Syria-watching blog Eighth Gate.
Syria increases its leverage inside Israel by weakening Fatah and strengthening Hamas. In Lebanon, Syrian military and political interference has turned the refugee camps into "security-free islands" (juzur amniya) where bombers can be recruited, bombs manufactured, and plots can be directed beyond the reach of the Lebanese army and police. "Life for the Palestinians was deliberately frozen for political manipulation," concludes Lebanese analyst Tony Badran. "Syria has no interest in normalising that situation."
While Syria imposes a measure of security on its Palestinian neighbourhoods, it foments insecurity and violence in Lebanon and Gaza, splitting the Palestinian polity and fuelling the misery of Palestinians throughout the region.
•••
Jordan is the only Arab nation that has integrated large numbers of Palestinians as full-fledged citizens. This is due not only to the unification of the East Bank and West Bank of the Jordan River valley under Hashemite rule between the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 until Israel's occupation of West Bank in 1967, but also to the luck of having had an enlightened monarch committed to the compassionate treatment of the estimated 100,000 refugees who crossed the Jordan River during the nakba in 1948. Israel's occupation of the West Bank following the 1967 war triggered a second exodus of 140,000 refugees into Jordan.
Today, almost 2 million of Jordan's 6 million people are registered Palestinian refugees, the largest concentration of current and former refugees in the Palestinian diaspora — and increasingly, tensions have deepened between the Palestinians and the "East Bank" establishment. This summer in Amman, ambiguous declarations by the recently appointed minister of the interior, Nayef al-Kadi, who is widely perceived to be anti-Palestinian, led many Jordanians of Palestinian origin to fear they would be stripped of Jordanian identity numbers. Speaking to the London-based Arabic-language newspaper Al Hayat, al-Kadi confirmed that some Palestinians would be stripped of citizenship, ostensibly to counter Israeli plans to turn Jordan into Palestine. "We should be thanked for taking this measure," he said. "We are fulfilling our national duty because Israel wants to expel the Palestinians from their homeland." Panic about their status spread quickly among the Palestinian community.
In interviews this month, senior Jordanian officials sought to quell such fears, while also suggesting there was at least some substance to al-Kadi's explosive suggestion. Faisal Bakr Qadi, the director of the Interior Ministry's office of Inspections, said Palestinians in Jordan were not being systematically stripped of citizenship. Rather, he explained that the government's current review of Palestinian national status dated back to 1988, when King Hussein, in response to demands by Palestinian and Arab leaders, disengaged administratively from the West Bank. Palestinian refugees, he said, meaning those who came to Jordan in the 1948 exodus, were to remain "full Jordanian citizens". "Displaced" Palestinians, or those who had come in 1967 and afterwards, would be able to maintain their yellow identity cards and numbers and de facto citizenship, provided they returned to the West Bank to renew the Israeli passes that permit them to go back and forth between Jordan and the West Bank.
Since 1983, he said, Jordan had given the coveted yellow cards — which enable Palestinians to work without special permits, pay local tuition rates in school, and enjoy full government services — to 280,000 Palestinians, whereas it had "frozen" the cards — or downgraded their status — of only 15,856 people. So far this year, he said, 9,956 cards were upgraded, 291 downgraded.
While many diplomats doubt these numbers, Jordanians insist there is no plot or plan to expel or deny citizenship to Palestinians who have lived virtually their entire lives in Jordan. "We want to ensure that when and if the peace process succeeds in establishing an independent Palestinian state, Palestinians living in Jordan will be in a position to choose their citizenship by having their status in order in both Jordan and Palestine," said an official close to King Abdullah.
Yet the distinctions that seem meaningful in Amman are not clear to some of the almost 94,000 Palestinian residents of Baqa'a, the largest of the 10 official refugee camps run by the UN. Some Palestinians in Baqa'a complain about the "new regulations" and the lack of identity cards that enable them to work without special permits and educate their children in public schools. Anxiety about the future pervades this ramshackle suburb at the northern edge of Amman, which began as an emergency relief centre after the 1967 war and is now a sprawling mini-city with its own basic shops, shawarma (sandwich) stands, and services. Many of the people we spoke to claimed that they knew someone, or had a relative, neighbour and friend whose identity card had been revoked, or whose status had inexplicably been changed.
For many of these refugees at the bottom of Jordan's social and economic pecking order, life without papers means hiding from the police who constantly patrol their camp's streets, being too poor to send any of your eight to 10 children to college, a lifetime of menial labour, and only a threadbare dream of returning to a homeland that most of them have never seen. There is strong suspicion of the state, but also of their neighbours, who are divided into "'48 people" and "'67 people". "Some of the newcomers would give away Al Aqsa for a Jordanian identity card," says Heba, a mother of eight, mentioning Islam's celebrated mosque in Jerusalem, one of its holiest shrines.
"We're Jordanians," says her son, Mustapha, a slender, 20-year-old in a bright orange T-shirt emblazoned with meaningless words in unknown languages. "This is the best place in the world," he says, pointing around the bare living room whose worn rugs and threadbare pillows cover the floor on which he and all his siblings sleep. "We would never leave here. But I'm loyal to my country, and I would like to visit it one day."
He seems perplexed when asked which is his country — Jordan or Palestine. "We have no security here, but we are Jordanians," replies Mustapha, who lounges on a mattress in a two-storey cement house down the road while one of his five daughters offers tiny glasses of steaming herbal tea and cardamom-scented coffee. "Everything I have is here. This house. My car. My job. What would I have in Nablus or Be'ersheba?" he declares. "My children know nothing but Jordan. And we will stay here."
That determination, echoed repeatedly through the dilapidated cement homes that line Baqa'a's gravelly streets and dust-filled shops, is precisely what terrifies Jordan's East Bank establishment. Jordanians have reason to fear their Palestinian guests. Many Jordanians have not forgotten "Black September", the civil war launched by Arafat's Fatah organisation in 1970 which nearly toppled King Hussein's kingdom.
Moreover, having grown accustomed to their near monopoly on jobs provided by the government, Jordan's largest employer, Jordanians fear demands for political equality from Palestinians, most of whom would probably choose to remain in Jordan, relinquishing their "right of return' in favour of compensation. An end to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict would surely threaten Jordan's informal division of power: East Bankers dominate the army, the security services and most civil-service posts, while Palestinians are disproportionately represented in business. Palestinians may advise the king in the royal court, but there has been only one Palestinian prime minister, who served for eight months. Palestinians now comprise only 23 of Jordan's 110 MPs.
"The closer we get to a solution," says Adnan Abu Odeh, a Palestinian who was one of King Hussein's royal court chiefs and also held other important government posts, "the more anxious society becomes. We are approaching a moment of truth."
Monday, October 19, 2009
The Truth, Not Antiques, is Buried in Nahr al Bared
By Rima Merhi
Asharq Al-Awsat (London)
October 17, 2009
When I worked with the Lebanese government two years ago, we launched a media campaign that made three promises to the Palestinians: “The reconstruction of Nahr al Bared camp is definite, displacement is temporary and return is guaranteed.”
Lebanon must deliver these promises. To every politician in my country, I say if the team of officials you sent a few years ago to the camps left in tears, what have you left for the victims of Nahr al Bared who have been shoved in prefabricated steel containers for two years?
Buried in the rubble of Nahr al Bared is the truth, not antiques. Only this truth will protect the lives of Lebanese soldiers, the victims of Nahr al Bared, and the security of Lebanon.
More than forty interviews with major stakeholders this summer left me in no doubt that there had been no real investigative reporting by the media on Nahr al Bared, especially that the Lebanese army had denied access to journalists during the crisis.
People in Lebanon still wonder who is behind Fatah al Islam. How did Shaker al Abssi, the leader of this group, escape when the Lebanese army was besieging the camp for over 100 days? Why are the testimonies of Fatah al Islam detainees still withheld from the public? Why was military commander of Nahr al Bared operations assassinated? What happened to the army spy linked to Nahr al Bared? Who was responsible for the looting of Palestinian homes and the racist graffiti written on their walls? Are there antiques in Nahr al Bared or is it another excuse to delay reconstruction?
Lawyer Nizar Saghieh believes the Lebanese government should call for a national investigation into Nahr al Bared. “At the very least, it would be an admission by the government that many questions remain unanswered,” he said.
These unanswered questions lie at the heart of deteriorating Lebanese-Palestinian relations post Nahr al Bared.
Until this day, no one can enter or leave Nahr al Bared — including over 15,000 inhabitants who live amidst the ruins — without a permit. The army continues to control all four main entry and exit points.
When I obtained a permit from the Lebanese army to visit the camp this summer, it became very clear to me why the army wanted a DVD copy of everything I recorded before publication.
I found thousands of Palestinians literally shoved in door-to-door type steel containers — initially used as emergency housing in 2007. They freeze in the winter and burn in the summer. Up to six human beings, including children, sleep on the floor, eat, and live in the same space. The tiny “bathroom” consists of a hole in the ground with no shower or bath. Beside the bathroom is a kitchenette where streams of cockroaches, ants and flies enjoy leftover food.
This is not the point where we point a finger at the UNRWA. It’s unfair to blame the organization for all the ailments of Palestinian society in Lebanon, especially that some UNRWA staff died on the job attending to the needs of Palestinians in the crisis. The refugees remain the primary responsibility of the international community at large. In collaboration with the Lebanese government, UNRWA remains accountable and committed to improving living standards, but the needs of refugees are many times beyond available resources.
At a time when swine flu cases have been reported in Lebanon and winter is approaching, this situation also poses a potential health hazard, especially given the number of Lebanese and foreign social workers who walk in and out of the camp everyday.
Alarmed, I went searching for a hospital and came across a 24-hour emergency unit — the Palestinian Red Crescent. I walked past it four times before I realized the roof made of zinc and covered with stones was it! I found two beds, frequently used by the doctors due to housing shortages, and a small “lab.” I stood motionless as thirsty flies from the window nearby took a dive in the blood samples being tested.
I was petrified of catching a virus or disease that I would bring back home to my family and friends. But I had to have deep respect for the doctor who risked his life everyday and burned in the heat without AC, consoled by the mere fact that he could drive critical patients to neighboring hospitals around the clock.
Clearly, the reconstruction of hospitals and clinics, access to healthcare, education and proper personal hygiene is critical in Nahr al Bared.
With the help of the international community, many shops in Nahr al Bared have opened including bakeries, grocery stores, pharmacies, and even a place offering internet access and a mobile phone shop among others.
But army checkpoints are killing economic revival at a time when Nahr al Bared was known to have excellent trade and social relations with its surrounding area. The emotional damage is also so severe that some Palestinians have referred to Nahr al Bared as another “Nakba”.
Surely, we owe these Palestinians an explanation for what really happened in Nahr al Bared. And we owe an explanation to the families of almost 200 soldiers who were killed in this battle.
The quest for the truth must not die, and Nahr al Bared shall rise again. You can put a price on an antique, but the hopes and dreams of thousands of refugees living in despair are priceless. The truth, which will foster transparency and accountability so we can build Lebanon, is priceless.
Rima Merhi is the first Lebanese to win the Gebran Tueni fellowship at Harvard. Rima participated in the media and relief committees presided by Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora to manage the Nahr al Bared crisis in 2007.
Asharq Al-Awsat (London)
October 17, 2009
When I worked with the Lebanese government two years ago, we launched a media campaign that made three promises to the Palestinians: “The reconstruction of Nahr al Bared camp is definite, displacement is temporary and return is guaranteed.”
Lebanon must deliver these promises. To every politician in my country, I say if the team of officials you sent a few years ago to the camps left in tears, what have you left for the victims of Nahr al Bared who have been shoved in prefabricated steel containers for two years?
Buried in the rubble of Nahr al Bared is the truth, not antiques. Only this truth will protect the lives of Lebanese soldiers, the victims of Nahr al Bared, and the security of Lebanon.
More than forty interviews with major stakeholders this summer left me in no doubt that there had been no real investigative reporting by the media on Nahr al Bared, especially that the Lebanese army had denied access to journalists during the crisis.
People in Lebanon still wonder who is behind Fatah al Islam. How did Shaker al Abssi, the leader of this group, escape when the Lebanese army was besieging the camp for over 100 days? Why are the testimonies of Fatah al Islam detainees still withheld from the public? Why was military commander of Nahr al Bared operations assassinated? What happened to the army spy linked to Nahr al Bared? Who was responsible for the looting of Palestinian homes and the racist graffiti written on their walls? Are there antiques in Nahr al Bared or is it another excuse to delay reconstruction?
Lawyer Nizar Saghieh believes the Lebanese government should call for a national investigation into Nahr al Bared. “At the very least, it would be an admission by the government that many questions remain unanswered,” he said.
These unanswered questions lie at the heart of deteriorating Lebanese-Palestinian relations post Nahr al Bared.
Until this day, no one can enter or leave Nahr al Bared — including over 15,000 inhabitants who live amidst the ruins — without a permit. The army continues to control all four main entry and exit points.
When I obtained a permit from the Lebanese army to visit the camp this summer, it became very clear to me why the army wanted a DVD copy of everything I recorded before publication.
I found thousands of Palestinians literally shoved in door-to-door type steel containers — initially used as emergency housing in 2007. They freeze in the winter and burn in the summer. Up to six human beings, including children, sleep on the floor, eat, and live in the same space. The tiny “bathroom” consists of a hole in the ground with no shower or bath. Beside the bathroom is a kitchenette where streams of cockroaches, ants and flies enjoy leftover food.
This is not the point where we point a finger at the UNRWA. It’s unfair to blame the organization for all the ailments of Palestinian society in Lebanon, especially that some UNRWA staff died on the job attending to the needs of Palestinians in the crisis. The refugees remain the primary responsibility of the international community at large. In collaboration with the Lebanese government, UNRWA remains accountable and committed to improving living standards, but the needs of refugees are many times beyond available resources.
At a time when swine flu cases have been reported in Lebanon and winter is approaching, this situation also poses a potential health hazard, especially given the number of Lebanese and foreign social workers who walk in and out of the camp everyday.
Alarmed, I went searching for a hospital and came across a 24-hour emergency unit — the Palestinian Red Crescent. I walked past it four times before I realized the roof made of zinc and covered with stones was it! I found two beds, frequently used by the doctors due to housing shortages, and a small “lab.” I stood motionless as thirsty flies from the window nearby took a dive in the blood samples being tested.
I was petrified of catching a virus or disease that I would bring back home to my family and friends. But I had to have deep respect for the doctor who risked his life everyday and burned in the heat without AC, consoled by the mere fact that he could drive critical patients to neighboring hospitals around the clock.
Clearly, the reconstruction of hospitals and clinics, access to healthcare, education and proper personal hygiene is critical in Nahr al Bared.
With the help of the international community, many shops in Nahr al Bared have opened including bakeries, grocery stores, pharmacies, and even a place offering internet access and a mobile phone shop among others.
But army checkpoints are killing economic revival at a time when Nahr al Bared was known to have excellent trade and social relations with its surrounding area. The emotional damage is also so severe that some Palestinians have referred to Nahr al Bared as another “Nakba”.
Surely, we owe these Palestinians an explanation for what really happened in Nahr al Bared. And we owe an explanation to the families of almost 200 soldiers who were killed in this battle.
The quest for the truth must not die, and Nahr al Bared shall rise again. You can put a price on an antique, but the hopes and dreams of thousands of refugees living in despair are priceless. The truth, which will foster transparency and accountability so we can build Lebanon, is priceless.
Rima Merhi is the first Lebanese to win the Gebran Tueni fellowship at Harvard. Rima participated in the media and relief committees presided by Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora to manage the Nahr al Bared crisis in 2007.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Israeli Government: Iran Not A Threat (and my comments)
By M.J. Rosenberg
Huffington Post
September 17, 2009
The AIPAC crowd is going to have a hard time with this. Israel's uber-hawk Defense Minister (and the most highly decorated soldier in its history), Ehud Barak, says that an Iranian nuclear weapon would not pose an existential threat to Israel.
Today's New York Times reports that Barak told Israel's largest paper Yedioth Ahronoth that "Iran does not constitute an existential threat against Israel." Asked specifically about a nuclear armed Iran, Barak said, "I am not among those who believe Iran is an existential issue for Israel."
Barak concluded: "Israel is strong, I don't see anyone who could pose an existential threat."
The threat, of course, is not to Israel's existence but to Israel's status as the region's only superpower, able to do whatever it wants whenever it wants to.
But don't expect this to mean that the "Bomb Iran" crowd here — which is the lobby and its cutouts — is going to shut up.
Contrary to what many believe, the lobby does not always follow the Israel line.
That is why Prime Minister Rabin tried so hard (unsuccessfully) to curb AIPAC. Upon his election as prime minister in 1992, he met with its leadership to tell AIPAC to butt the hell out. He intended to come to terms with the Palestinians and did not want AIPAC to get in his way. He also insisted on dealing with the US government directly and not through a surly intermediary. (His top aides specifically told AIPAC to fire Steve Rosen who, he knew, would use his dark powers to kill any Israeli-Palestinian agreement).
AIPAC ignored Rabin and continued its sabotage efforts.
In fact, a few years ago the Israeli government worked with the Palestinian Authority to devise an aid package for the Palestinian Authority that would help it withstand the threat from Hamas. This was before Hamas took over Gaza and the package was designed to gird the PA against the threat.
The Bush administration supported the package and thought it was urgent to keep Gaza under PA (not Hamas) control.
AIPAC, on the other hand, did not like the idea and its lobbyists went directly to the House Appropriations Commitee and demanded it be cut in half. The Israelis also went to the Hill to tell the same appropriators that Israel's own security needs dictated that the full package be delivered quickly to check Hamas. Of course AIPAC prevailed. And AIPAC celebrated that it could beat the White House, the Palestinian Authority and even the Israeli government. Kings of the Hill!
Only to a degree does the lobby operate in support of Israel. Mostly it is about preserving and extending its own power.
The Iran issue is its latest ticket. It will use it to raise money — it just built an eight story building in Washington complete with a gym and catering facilities — and, best of all, to make the United States government do what it wants.
As someone who worked at AIPAC for four years (before I came to my senses), I can personally attest to the fact that the organization is most decidely not about Israel. It is about AIPAC.
I wonder if Barak will back down after AIPAC calls to chew him out. Regardless, Barak's statement is now on the record.
Iran is not an existential threat to Israel. But the lobby might be.
M.J. Rosenberg is Senior Foreign Policy Fellow at Media Matters Action Network. Previously, he worked on Capitol Hill for various Democratic members of the House and Senate for 15 years. He was also a Clinton political appointee at USAID. In the early 1980s, he was editor of AIPAC's weekly newsletter Near East Report. From 1998-2009, he was director of policy at Israel Policy Forum.
Mark says:
Well, I get the point that Rosenberg has an ax to grind about AIPAC, which may account for the over-the-top language that AIPAC might be an "existential threat" to Israel. I don't think that's going to win him friends and influence people among most of the people he's ostensibly trying to convince. Even if true, most people do not like to admit that they've been wrong about something about which they feel deeply and to which they've contributed blood, sweat, tears, and money. In any case, saying that AIPAC "is most decidedly not about Israel. It is about AIPAC" could be said about many other lobbying organizations in Washington if you just change the name and the cause. Pardon my cynicism, but that's business as usual in Washington, regardless of political affiliation or passion.
The more interesting issue, in my humble view, is the discussion about Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak's statement that Iran didn't pose an existential threat to Israel, even if it possessed a nuclear weapons. This raises some "interesting" questions: If, according to the Israel defense minister and the Israel prime minister (who later backed up Barak's statement), a nuclear-armed Iran does not pose an existential threat to Israel, then does that mean that a conventionally-armed Iran does not pose an existential threat to Israel? And if Iran, with a population of 66 million people and a large conventional military does not pose an existential threat to Israel then how would an effectively demilitarized tiny Palestinian state with a population of five or even six million pose an existential threat to Israel?
Now, I realize that just because the Israeli defense minister and prime minister say something does not make it correct. See, for example, the hubristic statements made by Israeli defense minister Moshe Dayan and Israeli prime minister Golda Meir about the political situation in the Middle East just a week before the October 1973 Yom Kippur War broke out. But if they are correct, what does that say about the current and future situation, particularly when discussing the possibility of Israel attacking Iran's nuclear facilities?
I am not saying that a nuclear-armed Iran is a good thing or that the United States shouldn't be very concerned about Iran getting the bomb. And if there's anyone reading this who thinks that Iranian president Ahmedinajad is being truthful when he says that Iran's nuclear program is strictly for peaceful purposes then I have some prime swampland in Florida I'd like to sell you.
The real issue about Iran is that, as someone suggested recently, the Iranian leadership has not decided yet whether they want Iran to be a nation or a cause. So far they appear to lean towards wanting to be a cause (when the leaders aren't busy with their nepotistic money-skimming and money-laundering business activities). Add to that notion the fact that Iran — or at least the Iranian leadership — has at least one and probably two big chips on its shoulder and we have a less than promising horizon to contemplate.
What are those chips? Well, aside from the usual conspiracy theories, they're wounded pride and humiliation because the land now known as Iran, formerly Persia, already contained great and gifted civilizations when Europeans went around in animal skins and Mecca and Medina in Arabia were backwater oasis towns. How did mighty and civilized Persia come to be conquered by the uncivilized Arabs and fall behind the West?
In addition, given its existing record of supporting the adventures of Hizbullah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip for Iranian purposes and not out of altruistic concern for the Lebanese or the Palestinians, the thought of the Iranian leadership having nuclear weapons does not give me warm and fuzzy feelings.
Huffington Post
September 17, 2009
The AIPAC crowd is going to have a hard time with this. Israel's uber-hawk Defense Minister (and the most highly decorated soldier in its history), Ehud Barak, says that an Iranian nuclear weapon would not pose an existential threat to Israel.
Today's New York Times reports that Barak told Israel's largest paper Yedioth Ahronoth that "Iran does not constitute an existential threat against Israel." Asked specifically about a nuclear armed Iran, Barak said, "I am not among those who believe Iran is an existential issue for Israel."
Barak concluded: "Israel is strong, I don't see anyone who could pose an existential threat."
The threat, of course, is not to Israel's existence but to Israel's status as the region's only superpower, able to do whatever it wants whenever it wants to.
But don't expect this to mean that the "Bomb Iran" crowd here — which is the lobby and its cutouts — is going to shut up.
Contrary to what many believe, the lobby does not always follow the Israel line.
That is why Prime Minister Rabin tried so hard (unsuccessfully) to curb AIPAC. Upon his election as prime minister in 1992, he met with its leadership to tell AIPAC to butt the hell out. He intended to come to terms with the Palestinians and did not want AIPAC to get in his way. He also insisted on dealing with the US government directly and not through a surly intermediary. (His top aides specifically told AIPAC to fire Steve Rosen who, he knew, would use his dark powers to kill any Israeli-Palestinian agreement).
AIPAC ignored Rabin and continued its sabotage efforts.
In fact, a few years ago the Israeli government worked with the Palestinian Authority to devise an aid package for the Palestinian Authority that would help it withstand the threat from Hamas. This was before Hamas took over Gaza and the package was designed to gird the PA against the threat.
The Bush administration supported the package and thought it was urgent to keep Gaza under PA (not Hamas) control.
AIPAC, on the other hand, did not like the idea and its lobbyists went directly to the House Appropriations Commitee and demanded it be cut in half. The Israelis also went to the Hill to tell the same appropriators that Israel's own security needs dictated that the full package be delivered quickly to check Hamas. Of course AIPAC prevailed. And AIPAC celebrated that it could beat the White House, the Palestinian Authority and even the Israeli government. Kings of the Hill!
Only to a degree does the lobby operate in support of Israel. Mostly it is about preserving and extending its own power.
The Iran issue is its latest ticket. It will use it to raise money — it just built an eight story building in Washington complete with a gym and catering facilities — and, best of all, to make the United States government do what it wants.
As someone who worked at AIPAC for four years (before I came to my senses), I can personally attest to the fact that the organization is most decidely not about Israel. It is about AIPAC.
I wonder if Barak will back down after AIPAC calls to chew him out. Regardless, Barak's statement is now on the record.
Iran is not an existential threat to Israel. But the lobby might be.
M.J. Rosenberg is Senior Foreign Policy Fellow at Media Matters Action Network. Previously, he worked on Capitol Hill for various Democratic members of the House and Senate for 15 years. He was also a Clinton political appointee at USAID. In the early 1980s, he was editor of AIPAC's weekly newsletter Near East Report. From 1998-2009, he was director of policy at Israel Policy Forum.
Mark says:
Well, I get the point that Rosenberg has an ax to grind about AIPAC, which may account for the over-the-top language that AIPAC might be an "existential threat" to Israel. I don't think that's going to win him friends and influence people among most of the people he's ostensibly trying to convince. Even if true, most people do not like to admit that they've been wrong about something about which they feel deeply and to which they've contributed blood, sweat, tears, and money. In any case, saying that AIPAC "is most decidedly not about Israel. It is about AIPAC" could be said about many other lobbying organizations in Washington if you just change the name and the cause. Pardon my cynicism, but that's business as usual in Washington, regardless of political affiliation or passion.
The more interesting issue, in my humble view, is the discussion about Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak's statement that Iran didn't pose an existential threat to Israel, even if it possessed a nuclear weapons. This raises some "interesting" questions: If, according to the Israel defense minister and the Israel prime minister (who later backed up Barak's statement), a nuclear-armed Iran does not pose an existential threat to Israel, then does that mean that a conventionally-armed Iran does not pose an existential threat to Israel? And if Iran, with a population of 66 million people and a large conventional military does not pose an existential threat to Israel then how would an effectively demilitarized tiny Palestinian state with a population of five or even six million pose an existential threat to Israel?
Now, I realize that just because the Israeli defense minister and prime minister say something does not make it correct. See, for example, the hubristic statements made by Israeli defense minister Moshe Dayan and Israeli prime minister Golda Meir about the political situation in the Middle East just a week before the October 1973 Yom Kippur War broke out. But if they are correct, what does that say about the current and future situation, particularly when discussing the possibility of Israel attacking Iran's nuclear facilities?
I am not saying that a nuclear-armed Iran is a good thing or that the United States shouldn't be very concerned about Iran getting the bomb. And if there's anyone reading this who thinks that Iranian president Ahmedinajad is being truthful when he says that Iran's nuclear program is strictly for peaceful purposes then I have some prime swampland in Florida I'd like to sell you.
The real issue about Iran is that, as someone suggested recently, the Iranian leadership has not decided yet whether they want Iran to be a nation or a cause. So far they appear to lean towards wanting to be a cause (when the leaders aren't busy with their nepotistic money-skimming and money-laundering business activities). Add to that notion the fact that Iran — or at least the Iranian leadership — has at least one and probably two big chips on its shoulder and we have a less than promising horizon to contemplate.
What are those chips? Well, aside from the usual conspiracy theories, they're wounded pride and humiliation because the land now known as Iran, formerly Persia, already contained great and gifted civilizations when Europeans went around in animal skins and Mecca and Medina in Arabia were backwater oasis towns. How did mighty and civilized Persia come to be conquered by the uncivilized Arabs and fall behind the West?
In addition, given its existing record of supporting the adventures of Hizbullah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip for Iranian purposes and not out of altruistic concern for the Lebanese or the Palestinians, the thought of the Iranian leadership having nuclear weapons does not give me warm and fuzzy feelings.
Palestine's Jewish minority
By Bill Glucroft
Common Ground News Service
September 17, 2009
COPENHAGEN - If we are to believe the pundits and partisans, relations between Israel and the United States have never been worse. The Barack Obama administration appears to be taking the toughest tone of any in recent memory. The Cairo speech didn’t help, leaving an already vulnerable-feeling Israel with the sense that it's getting thrown under the bus.
A major division is settlements. President Obama wants an immediate halt, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will agree at most to a partial pause. Even left-leaning Israelis feel the American demand is too much too soon; a 35-year problem shouldn’t be hurried.
There are now more than 285,000 settlers in the West Bank beyond East Jerusalem. Though many might be coaxed back to Israel proper following an agreement with the Palestinians, a menacing minority has made clear its intention of preventing peace at any price, while simultaneously claiming to be a non-issue. However this minority can become a non-issue if Israeli, Palestinian and international negotiators re-think the path to peace.
In every attempt, those involved in cutting deals between Israel and the Palestinians have always tried going through the settlers, a self-defeating tactic because doing so only gives them more power. A new approach is to outmanoeuvre them — set a border that’s defensible for Israel and functional for Palestine, and urge the settlers to either get behind that border, with government assistance, or become a Jewish minority in the Palestinian state.
That may seem unthinkable. Settlement expansion has been de facto Israeli policy for nearly as long as Israel has controlled the territory. To now hand them over to a Palestinian state would be to punish people for doing what their leaders encouraged them to do.
Except, while politicking postponed any clear decision-making on what should be done with land captured in 1967, the settlers were gaining numbers, and with numbers, strength which they use to promote interests detrimental to the whole. They demanded services at a huge expense to the treasury, they exposed soldiers to unnecessary danger and they defied court orders to cease and desist. The more extreme settlers use violence, leading a soldier-friend of mine to remark, “Hebron is the only place in the West Bank where a soldier feels safer around Palestinians than around Jews.” This is not behaviour a democracy should tolerate, nor tacitly condone.
An ultimatum to settlers would force them to choose between the modern state of Israel and its biblical promise, possibly encouraging many to acquiesce without major incident. Those who remain could retain their Israeli citizenship, with an open invitation to return, but would become Palestinian citizens. Living no differently from other Diaspora Jews, they would be subject to the laws and values of their state.
At first blush, a Palestinian Jew may sound like an oxymoron, but no more than Israeli Arabs — Palestinians living as Israeli citizens, who comprise more than 20 percent of the Jewish state's population. Since Palestine would have to resemble a democracy, as Israel does, there is no reason minorities could not live there. In fact, it could help Palestine feel like a normal country.
The idea of withdrawing Israel but leaving Israelis has yet to go mainstream, but there have been hints. Palestinian National Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said as much at the Aspen Ideas Festival in July, when he declared that Jews would be welcomed in a future Palestinian state. Gershon Baskin, co-director of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information, suggested in a recent Jerusalem Post column to “link the rights, privileges and obligations of Palestinians in Israel to those of Jews in Palestine ... to close the gaps of discrimination against Palestinians in Israel and prevent the discrimination against Jews in Palestine.”
That’s a good idea, and should go further to require that Jewish holy sites that fall outside Israel be protected and accessible to non-Palestinians. This would ensure spiritual sovereignty over the land regardless of political jurisdiction.
The hard part would be getting the current Israeli government, which includes settler allies, to agree. The good news is that Prime Minister Netanyahu, though hawkish, is a pragmatist, whose relationship to ideologues remains one of convenience. He already believes in building the Palestinian economy, something hard to do with Israel’s security apparatus stifling the flow of goods, services and labour.
Netanyahu will pursue the most politically and financially expedient course and will only go so far in alienating Israel from the American administration. The influential foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, may have little compassion for Palestinians, but he cares deeply that Israel remains a Jewish state — more so than the particulars of the boundaries that come to define it.
Though a settler himself, Lieberman could be counted among those who might return to Israel under the right conditions, as evidenced by his decision to distance himself from the settlement issue when it became clear that it posed a conflict of interest.
Given their savvy, Netanyahu and Lieberman can find a way to circumvent the most ardent elements of the settler community, thereby minimising their political weight. If Israelis can see a Palestinian state as beneficial to them as it is for Palestinians, the settlers would become exactly what they say they are: a non-issue.
Bill Glucroft is a writer who has worked in Israel for both Zionist and Israeli-Arab organisations. He blogs at mediabard.org. This article was written for the Common Ground News Service (CGNews).
Common Ground News Service
September 17, 2009
COPENHAGEN - If we are to believe the pundits and partisans, relations between Israel and the United States have never been worse. The Barack Obama administration appears to be taking the toughest tone of any in recent memory. The Cairo speech didn’t help, leaving an already vulnerable-feeling Israel with the sense that it's getting thrown under the bus.
A major division is settlements. President Obama wants an immediate halt, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will agree at most to a partial pause. Even left-leaning Israelis feel the American demand is too much too soon; a 35-year problem shouldn’t be hurried.
There are now more than 285,000 settlers in the West Bank beyond East Jerusalem. Though many might be coaxed back to Israel proper following an agreement with the Palestinians, a menacing minority has made clear its intention of preventing peace at any price, while simultaneously claiming to be a non-issue. However this minority can become a non-issue if Israeli, Palestinian and international negotiators re-think the path to peace.
In every attempt, those involved in cutting deals between Israel and the Palestinians have always tried going through the settlers, a self-defeating tactic because doing so only gives them more power. A new approach is to outmanoeuvre them — set a border that’s defensible for Israel and functional for Palestine, and urge the settlers to either get behind that border, with government assistance, or become a Jewish minority in the Palestinian state.
That may seem unthinkable. Settlement expansion has been de facto Israeli policy for nearly as long as Israel has controlled the territory. To now hand them over to a Palestinian state would be to punish people for doing what their leaders encouraged them to do.
Except, while politicking postponed any clear decision-making on what should be done with land captured in 1967, the settlers were gaining numbers, and with numbers, strength which they use to promote interests detrimental to the whole. They demanded services at a huge expense to the treasury, they exposed soldiers to unnecessary danger and they defied court orders to cease and desist. The more extreme settlers use violence, leading a soldier-friend of mine to remark, “Hebron is the only place in the West Bank where a soldier feels safer around Palestinians than around Jews.” This is not behaviour a democracy should tolerate, nor tacitly condone.
An ultimatum to settlers would force them to choose between the modern state of Israel and its biblical promise, possibly encouraging many to acquiesce without major incident. Those who remain could retain their Israeli citizenship, with an open invitation to return, but would become Palestinian citizens. Living no differently from other Diaspora Jews, they would be subject to the laws and values of their state.
At first blush, a Palestinian Jew may sound like an oxymoron, but no more than Israeli Arabs — Palestinians living as Israeli citizens, who comprise more than 20 percent of the Jewish state's population. Since Palestine would have to resemble a democracy, as Israel does, there is no reason minorities could not live there. In fact, it could help Palestine feel like a normal country.
The idea of withdrawing Israel but leaving Israelis has yet to go mainstream, but there have been hints. Palestinian National Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said as much at the Aspen Ideas Festival in July, when he declared that Jews would be welcomed in a future Palestinian state. Gershon Baskin, co-director of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information, suggested in a recent Jerusalem Post column to “link the rights, privileges and obligations of Palestinians in Israel to those of Jews in Palestine ... to close the gaps of discrimination against Palestinians in Israel and prevent the discrimination against Jews in Palestine.”
That’s a good idea, and should go further to require that Jewish holy sites that fall outside Israel be protected and accessible to non-Palestinians. This would ensure spiritual sovereignty over the land regardless of political jurisdiction.
The hard part would be getting the current Israeli government, which includes settler allies, to agree. The good news is that Prime Minister Netanyahu, though hawkish, is a pragmatist, whose relationship to ideologues remains one of convenience. He already believes in building the Palestinian economy, something hard to do with Israel’s security apparatus stifling the flow of goods, services and labour.
Netanyahu will pursue the most politically and financially expedient course and will only go so far in alienating Israel from the American administration. The influential foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, may have little compassion for Palestinians, but he cares deeply that Israel remains a Jewish state — more so than the particulars of the boundaries that come to define it.
Though a settler himself, Lieberman could be counted among those who might return to Israel under the right conditions, as evidenced by his decision to distance himself from the settlement issue when it became clear that it posed a conflict of interest.
Given their savvy, Netanyahu and Lieberman can find a way to circumvent the most ardent elements of the settler community, thereby minimising their political weight. If Israelis can see a Palestinian state as beneficial to them as it is for Palestinians, the settlers would become exactly what they say they are: a non-issue.
Bill Glucroft is a writer who has worked in Israel for both Zionist and Israeli-Arab organisations. He blogs at mediabard.org. This article was written for the Common Ground News Service (CGNews).
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Israel's Gaza Vindication
By Jackson Diehl
The Washington Post
September 21, 2009
When it was launched last December, Israel's invasion of the Gaza Strip looked to most people in Washington to be risky, counterproductive and doomed to futility. Not only pundits like me but senior officials of the Bush administration predicted that the Israeli army would not succeed either in toppling Gaza's Hamas government or in eliminating its capacity to launch missiles at Israeli cities. Instead it would subject the Jewish state to another tidal wave of international opprobrium and risk its relations with West Bank Palestinians and Egypt.
Mostly, we were right. But today, Operation Cast Lead, as the three-week operation is known in Israel, is generally regarded by the country's military and political elite as a success. The reasons for that are worth examining now that a new and even more hawkish Israeli government is weighing whether to flout Washington's prevailing opposition to a military attack on Iran.
Israel's satisfaction starts with a simple set of facts. Between April 2001 and the end of 2008, 4,246 rockets and 4,180 mortar shells were fired into Israel from Gaza, killing 14 Israelis, wounding more than 400 and making life in southern Israel intolerable. During what was supposed to be a cease-fire during the last half of 2008, 362 rockets and shells landed. Meanwhile, between late 2000 and the end of 2008, Israeli forces killed some 3,000 Gazans.
Since April there have been just over two dozen rocket and mortar strikes — or less than on many single days before the war. No one has been seriously injured, and life in the Israeli town of Sderot and the area around it has returned almost to normal. Israeli attacks in Gaza have almost ceased, too: Since the end of the mini-war, 29 Palestinians, two of whom were civilians, have been killed by Israeli action.
Hamas, of course, remains in power and unmoved in its refusal to recognize Israel. It is still holding an Israeli soldier who was abducted in 2006. It is still smuggling material for weapons through tunnels under the Egyptian border and, if it chose to, could resume rocket attacks on Israel at any time.
The point, however, is that Israel has bought itself a stretch of relative peace with Hamas, just as its costly 2006 invasion of Lebanon has produced three years of quiet on that front. From the Israeli perspective, a respite from conflict is the most that can be expected from either group — or from their mutual sponsor, Iran.
"They will never change their ideology of destroying Israel," a senior government official told me last week. "But you can deter them if they are convinced you are not afraid of fighting a war."
But what of the grievous Palestinian suffering in the invasion — Israel itself counted 1,166 dead Gazans, including more than 450 civilians — and the international backlash that has caused? Just last week a U.N. commission headed by South African jurist Richard Goldstone condemned what it called "a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population," and suggested that responsible Israelis be hauled before the International Criminal Court on war crimes charges.
Israel's leaders worried a lot about losing the war that way. But as they see it, they suffered only scratches. Egypt, which quietly collaborates with Israel's blockade of Gaza, came under pressure to change its policy but held firm. No Arab country toughened its stance toward Israel: According to the Obama administration, as many as five may be willing to offer diplomatic and economic concessions if Israel freezes its West Bank settlement construction.
Perhaps most significant, Hamas's rival for Palestinian leadership, the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, is considerably stronger than it was before the war. Probably it will renew peace talks with Israel within weeks. As for the Goldstone report, the heat it briefly produced last week will quickly dissipate; the panel was discredited from the outset because of its appointment by the grotesquely politicized U.N. Human Rights Council.
The Gaza invasion was the second military operation Israel embarked on in less than 18 months despite disapproval from Washington. The other was its bombing of a nuclear reactor under construction in Syria in September 2007. Then, too, officials in Washington feared a dire diplomatic backlash or even a war between Israel and Syria. Nothing happened.
As they quietly debate the pros and cons of launching a military attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, Israel's political and military leaders no doubt will be thinking about that history. That doesn't mean they will discount American objections — Iran would be a far harder and more complex target, with direct repercussions for U.S. troops and critical interests in the region. But, as with Gaza, even a partial and short-term reversal of the Iranian nuclear program may look to Israelis like a reasonable benefit — and the potential blowback overblown.
The Washington Post
September 21, 2009
When it was launched last December, Israel's invasion of the Gaza Strip looked to most people in Washington to be risky, counterproductive and doomed to futility. Not only pundits like me but senior officials of the Bush administration predicted that the Israeli army would not succeed either in toppling Gaza's Hamas government or in eliminating its capacity to launch missiles at Israeli cities. Instead it would subject the Jewish state to another tidal wave of international opprobrium and risk its relations with West Bank Palestinians and Egypt.
Mostly, we were right. But today, Operation Cast Lead, as the three-week operation is known in Israel, is generally regarded by the country's military and political elite as a success. The reasons for that are worth examining now that a new and even more hawkish Israeli government is weighing whether to flout Washington's prevailing opposition to a military attack on Iran.
Israel's satisfaction starts with a simple set of facts. Between April 2001 and the end of 2008, 4,246 rockets and 4,180 mortar shells were fired into Israel from Gaza, killing 14 Israelis, wounding more than 400 and making life in southern Israel intolerable. During what was supposed to be a cease-fire during the last half of 2008, 362 rockets and shells landed. Meanwhile, between late 2000 and the end of 2008, Israeli forces killed some 3,000 Gazans.
Since April there have been just over two dozen rocket and mortar strikes — or less than on many single days before the war. No one has been seriously injured, and life in the Israeli town of Sderot and the area around it has returned almost to normal. Israeli attacks in Gaza have almost ceased, too: Since the end of the mini-war, 29 Palestinians, two of whom were civilians, have been killed by Israeli action.
Hamas, of course, remains in power and unmoved in its refusal to recognize Israel. It is still holding an Israeli soldier who was abducted in 2006. It is still smuggling material for weapons through tunnels under the Egyptian border and, if it chose to, could resume rocket attacks on Israel at any time.
The point, however, is that Israel has bought itself a stretch of relative peace with Hamas, just as its costly 2006 invasion of Lebanon has produced three years of quiet on that front. From the Israeli perspective, a respite from conflict is the most that can be expected from either group — or from their mutual sponsor, Iran.
"They will never change their ideology of destroying Israel," a senior government official told me last week. "But you can deter them if they are convinced you are not afraid of fighting a war."
But what of the grievous Palestinian suffering in the invasion — Israel itself counted 1,166 dead Gazans, including more than 450 civilians — and the international backlash that has caused? Just last week a U.N. commission headed by South African jurist Richard Goldstone condemned what it called "a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population," and suggested that responsible Israelis be hauled before the International Criminal Court on war crimes charges.
Israel's leaders worried a lot about losing the war that way. But as they see it, they suffered only scratches. Egypt, which quietly collaborates with Israel's blockade of Gaza, came under pressure to change its policy but held firm. No Arab country toughened its stance toward Israel: According to the Obama administration, as many as five may be willing to offer diplomatic and economic concessions if Israel freezes its West Bank settlement construction.
Perhaps most significant, Hamas's rival for Palestinian leadership, the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, is considerably stronger than it was before the war. Probably it will renew peace talks with Israel within weeks. As for the Goldstone report, the heat it briefly produced last week will quickly dissipate; the panel was discredited from the outset because of its appointment by the grotesquely politicized U.N. Human Rights Council.
The Gaza invasion was the second military operation Israel embarked on in less than 18 months despite disapproval from Washington. The other was its bombing of a nuclear reactor under construction in Syria in September 2007. Then, too, officials in Washington feared a dire diplomatic backlash or even a war between Israel and Syria. Nothing happened.
As they quietly debate the pros and cons of launching a military attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, Israel's political and military leaders no doubt will be thinking about that history. That doesn't mean they will discount American objections — Iran would be a far harder and more complex target, with direct repercussions for U.S. troops and critical interests in the region. But, as with Gaza, even a partial and short-term reversal of the Iranian nuclear program may look to Israelis like a reasonable benefit — and the potential blowback overblown.
The Gaza Report’s Wasted Opportunity
By David Landau
The New York Times
September 20, 2009
Jerusalem - Israel intentionally went after civilians in Gaza — and wrapped its intention in lies.
That chilling — and misguided — accusation is the key conclusion of the United Nations investigation, led by Richard Goldstone, into the three-week war last winter. “While the Israeli government has sought to portray its operations as essentially a response to rocket attacks in the exercises of its right to self-defense,” the report said, “the mission considers the plan to have been directed, at least in part, at a different target: the people of Gaza as a whole.”
The report has produced a storm of outraged rejection in Israel. Politicians fulminate about double standards and anti-Semitism. Judge Goldstone, an eminent South African jurist and a Jew, is widely excoriated as an enemy of his people.
The report stunned even seasoned Israeli diplomats who expected no quarter from an inquiry set up by the United Nations Human Rights Council, which they believe to be deeply biased against Israel. They expected the military operation to be condemned as grossly disproportionate. They expected Israel to be lambasted for not taking sufficient care to avoid civilian casualties. But they never imagined that the report would accuse the Jewish state of intentionally aiming at civilians.
Israelis believe that their army did not deliberately kill the hundreds of Palestinian civilians, including children, who died during “Operation Cast Lead.” They believe, therefore, that Israel is not culpable, morally or criminally, for these civilian deaths, which were collateral to the true aim of the operation — killing Hamas gunmen.
It is, some would argue, a form of self-deception.
When does negligence become recklessness, and when does recklessness slip into wanton callousness, and then into deliberate disregard for innocent human life?
But that is the point — and it should have been the focus of the investigation. Judge Goldstone’s real mandate was, or should have been, to bring Israel to confront this fundamental question, a question inherent in the waging of war by all civilized societies against irregular armed groups. Are widespread civilian casualties inevitable when a modern army pounds terrorist targets in a heavily populated area with purportedly smart ordnance? Are they acceptable? Does the enemy’s deployment in the heart of the civilian area shift the line between right and wrong, in morality and in law?
These were precisely the questions that Israeli politicians and generals wrestled with in Gaza, as others do today in Afghanistan.
It is possible, and certainly arguable, that the Israeli policymakers, or individual Israeli field commanders in isolated instances, pushed the line out too far.
But Judge Goldstone has thwarted any such honest debate — within Israel or concerning Israel. His fundamental premise, that the Israelis went after civilians, shut down the argument before it began.
This is regrettable, for the report could have stirred the conscience of the nation. Many Israelis were dismayed at the war’s casualty figures, at the disparity between the dozen deaths on the Israeli side and the thousand-plus deaths, many of them of noncombatants, in Gaza.
Many Israelis were profoundly troubled by this arithmetic even though they supported Israel’s resort to arms in the face of incessant violation of their sovereign border by Hamas’s rain of rockets.
Judge Goldstone could have contended that just as Israeli leaders themselves have frequently called off pinpoint assassinations of terrorists because civilians were in the line of fire, so too they should have refrained from bombing and shelling Hamas targets in Gaza when that bombing and shelling was bound to exact a large civilian toll.
By approaching the Gaza war, and his report, from this perspective, Judge Goldstone could have opened debate and prompted reflection in Israel. Instead, by accusing Israel — its government, its army, its ethos — of deliberately seeking out civilians, he has achieved the opposite effect.
David Landau was the editor in chief of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz from 2004 to 2008.
The New York Times
September 20, 2009
Jerusalem - Israel intentionally went after civilians in Gaza — and wrapped its intention in lies.
That chilling — and misguided — accusation is the key conclusion of the United Nations investigation, led by Richard Goldstone, into the three-week war last winter. “While the Israeli government has sought to portray its operations as essentially a response to rocket attacks in the exercises of its right to self-defense,” the report said, “the mission considers the plan to have been directed, at least in part, at a different target: the people of Gaza as a whole.”
The report has produced a storm of outraged rejection in Israel. Politicians fulminate about double standards and anti-Semitism. Judge Goldstone, an eminent South African jurist and a Jew, is widely excoriated as an enemy of his people.
The report stunned even seasoned Israeli diplomats who expected no quarter from an inquiry set up by the United Nations Human Rights Council, which they believe to be deeply biased against Israel. They expected the military operation to be condemned as grossly disproportionate. They expected Israel to be lambasted for not taking sufficient care to avoid civilian casualties. But they never imagined that the report would accuse the Jewish state of intentionally aiming at civilians.
Israelis believe that their army did not deliberately kill the hundreds of Palestinian civilians, including children, who died during “Operation Cast Lead.” They believe, therefore, that Israel is not culpable, morally or criminally, for these civilian deaths, which were collateral to the true aim of the operation — killing Hamas gunmen.
It is, some would argue, a form of self-deception.
When does negligence become recklessness, and when does recklessness slip into wanton callousness, and then into deliberate disregard for innocent human life?
But that is the point — and it should have been the focus of the investigation. Judge Goldstone’s real mandate was, or should have been, to bring Israel to confront this fundamental question, a question inherent in the waging of war by all civilized societies against irregular armed groups. Are widespread civilian casualties inevitable when a modern army pounds terrorist targets in a heavily populated area with purportedly smart ordnance? Are they acceptable? Does the enemy’s deployment in the heart of the civilian area shift the line between right and wrong, in morality and in law?
These were precisely the questions that Israeli politicians and generals wrestled with in Gaza, as others do today in Afghanistan.
It is possible, and certainly arguable, that the Israeli policymakers, or individual Israeli field commanders in isolated instances, pushed the line out too far.
But Judge Goldstone has thwarted any such honest debate — within Israel or concerning Israel. His fundamental premise, that the Israelis went after civilians, shut down the argument before it began.
This is regrettable, for the report could have stirred the conscience of the nation. Many Israelis were dismayed at the war’s casualty figures, at the disparity between the dozen deaths on the Israeli side and the thousand-plus deaths, many of them of noncombatants, in Gaza.
Many Israelis were profoundly troubled by this arithmetic even though they supported Israel’s resort to arms in the face of incessant violation of their sovereign border by Hamas’s rain of rockets.
Judge Goldstone could have contended that just as Israeli leaders themselves have frequently called off pinpoint assassinations of terrorists because civilians were in the line of fire, so too they should have refrained from bombing and shelling Hamas targets in Gaza when that bombing and shelling was bound to exact a large civilian toll.
By approaching the Gaza war, and his report, from this perspective, Judge Goldstone could have opened debate and prompted reflection in Israel. Instead, by accusing Israel — its government, its army, its ethos — of deliberately seeking out civilians, he has achieved the opposite effect.
David Landau was the editor in chief of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz from 2004 to 2008.
Monday, September 14, 2009
Normalisation
By Nermeen Murad
The Jordan Times
September 14, 2009
I don’t know exactly when and how the word “normalisation” came to signify visiting occupied Palestinian land or dealing with Palestinians.
Ever since I can remember I have heard or read statements from professional associations lambasting one party or another for “normalising”. Of course I have yet to hear these professional associations lead a campaign on anything that has to do with their mandate as unions representing the rights of professionals, but that is another story for another day.
Back to normalisation. A trip by Jordanian journalists to the Israeli occupied West Bank has somehow been categorised as normalisation. The Jordan national football team holding friendly games with its Palestinian counterpart has also been apparently lodged under the heading of normalisation. A planned trip of Jordanian engineers to a conference in the West Bank in support of Palestinian engineering is being held contingent on the issuing of visas from the Palestinian Authority and not the Israeli embassy.
It really bothers me that the anti-normalisation camp has been allowed to indoctrinate the Jordanian people into believing that it would somehow be treason if we interacted with Palestinian institutions and attended or held events on their land.
Even if the price of maintaining that interaction and consolidating Arab presence in the West Bank does mean that we allow Israeli stamps on our passport, it is a small price to pay in return for lifting the isolation imposed on Palestinians by their occupier and now, it seems, perpetuated by, I believe, the well-meaning anti-normalisation camp in Jordan.
Why can’t Jordanian journalists visit the territories occupied by Israel and reiterate their Arab identity, and refuse to bow to the Israeli occupiers or give them the leeway to corner the Palestinians on their own without our support?
Why don’t our journalists regularly go and report on the atrocities committed against the Palestinians in the name of occupation? Why can’t our football, basketball, tennis and all other sports teams regularly visit and train with their Palestinian counterparts?
I also want to understand what would happen if instead of going to Sharm El Sheikh for the Eid holiday we went to Jerusalem and got to know exactly what is going on there and to our relatives, friends, family friends, ex-family friends, colleagues’ families and friends.
Why can’t we continue to cross over regularly and stay in their hotels, eat in their restaurants, buy their products, spend our money for them and in their support? Every single one of us, regardless of our origin, has a connection to someone who lives on Palestinian land and who would appreciate our support, whether moral or financial.
Under the headline of avoiding normalisation, we have left the Palestinians to fend for themselves for decades and have given them very little tangible moral support to help them stand fast in the face of an intimidating, racist and prolonged occupation.
We have to understand that the Palestinians are feeling strangled, isolated, shunned and alone in their struggle with Israel. It isn’t enough to maintain slogans denying Israel’s existence while burying our head in the sand so as not to see that it really does exist. Not only does it exist, it is also systematically building walls around the subjugated Palestinians to keep them apart from the rest of the world; and we appear to aid its objective by building “anti-normalisation” walls which further institutionalise their isolation.
The only way that people who want to see Palestine liberated can really contribute to the cause is by helping the Palestinians not only withstand the occupation but also flourish, morally and economically, despite the occupation. Palestinian businesses must profit, Palestinian schools and universities must educate and produce new generations of well educated and forward-looking individuals, and the Palestinian labour market must find outlets for work in Arab-owned factories and construction projects.
Palestinians must be given hope for a better future. Arabs must be the ones who give them that hope but not through a jihad that massacres more Palestinians than Israelis or by staying away from the occupied lands for fear of a stamp on our passports. We must normalise our relations with the Palestinians and their institutions.
The Jordan Times
September 14, 2009
I don’t know exactly when and how the word “normalisation” came to signify visiting occupied Palestinian land or dealing with Palestinians.
Ever since I can remember I have heard or read statements from professional associations lambasting one party or another for “normalising”. Of course I have yet to hear these professional associations lead a campaign on anything that has to do with their mandate as unions representing the rights of professionals, but that is another story for another day.
Back to normalisation. A trip by Jordanian journalists to the Israeli occupied West Bank has somehow been categorised as normalisation. The Jordan national football team holding friendly games with its Palestinian counterpart has also been apparently lodged under the heading of normalisation. A planned trip of Jordanian engineers to a conference in the West Bank in support of Palestinian engineering is being held contingent on the issuing of visas from the Palestinian Authority and not the Israeli embassy.
It really bothers me that the anti-normalisation camp has been allowed to indoctrinate the Jordanian people into believing that it would somehow be treason if we interacted with Palestinian institutions and attended or held events on their land.
Even if the price of maintaining that interaction and consolidating Arab presence in the West Bank does mean that we allow Israeli stamps on our passport, it is a small price to pay in return for lifting the isolation imposed on Palestinians by their occupier and now, it seems, perpetuated by, I believe, the well-meaning anti-normalisation camp in Jordan.
Why can’t Jordanian journalists visit the territories occupied by Israel and reiterate their Arab identity, and refuse to bow to the Israeli occupiers or give them the leeway to corner the Palestinians on their own without our support?
Why don’t our journalists regularly go and report on the atrocities committed against the Palestinians in the name of occupation? Why can’t our football, basketball, tennis and all other sports teams regularly visit and train with their Palestinian counterparts?
I also want to understand what would happen if instead of going to Sharm El Sheikh for the Eid holiday we went to Jerusalem and got to know exactly what is going on there and to our relatives, friends, family friends, ex-family friends, colleagues’ families and friends.
Why can’t we continue to cross over regularly and stay in their hotels, eat in their restaurants, buy their products, spend our money for them and in their support? Every single one of us, regardless of our origin, has a connection to someone who lives on Palestinian land and who would appreciate our support, whether moral or financial.
Under the headline of avoiding normalisation, we have left the Palestinians to fend for themselves for decades and have given them very little tangible moral support to help them stand fast in the face of an intimidating, racist and prolonged occupation.
We have to understand that the Palestinians are feeling strangled, isolated, shunned and alone in their struggle with Israel. It isn’t enough to maintain slogans denying Israel’s existence while burying our head in the sand so as not to see that it really does exist. Not only does it exist, it is also systematically building walls around the subjugated Palestinians to keep them apart from the rest of the world; and we appear to aid its objective by building “anti-normalisation” walls which further institutionalise their isolation.
The only way that people who want to see Palestine liberated can really contribute to the cause is by helping the Palestinians not only withstand the occupation but also flourish, morally and economically, despite the occupation. Palestinian businesses must profit, Palestinian schools and universities must educate and produce new generations of well educated and forward-looking individuals, and the Palestinian labour market must find outlets for work in Arab-owned factories and construction projects.
Palestinians must be given hope for a better future. Arabs must be the ones who give them that hope but not through a jihad that massacres more Palestinians than Israelis or by staying away from the occupied lands for fear of a stamp on our passports. We must normalise our relations with the Palestinians and their institutions.
Monday, September 7, 2009
How come we don't have more colorful leaders?
By Ray Hanania
The Jerusalem Post (Israel)
September 7, 2009
In spite of all the news Palestinians and Israelis produce each day, we really are pretty boring people. I mean, we have nothing on the Japanese.
The big news in Japan last week is that Miyuki Hatoyama, wife of incoming Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, says she traveled to Venus in the 1970s in a UFO. She's talking about the planet, not a 'happy place' or the local beauty spa.
Mrs. Hatoyama detailed the unusual trip in her book called Most Bizarre Things I've Encountered.
I have racked my brain to think of anything that even comes close to that in the many stories about Palestinians and Israelis.
There was a rumor once that during the peace process (remember that?), Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin wagered at the roulette table at the Jericho casino. Arafat offered Rabin double or nothing on "returning" the West Bank.
IN TRUTH, most of the stories about Palestinians and Israelis are about tragedies, missed opportunities, name-calling, the blame game and, sadly, continued violence.
I did read an Israeli press release reporting that a Palestinian prisoner in one of the country's many prisons had been killed by a "nonlethal weapon." I could only imagine what might have happened had the weapon been lethal.
On another occasion, Hamas leaders tried to explain that Martyr Mouse was merely an orphaned cartoon character whose family had been blown up by Israeli cartoon characters during a siege at a cartoon checkpoint near a cartoon settlement. And the mouse suffered from a slight lisp that distorted everything it said.
When Martyr Mouse urged kiddies to "do their best to kill the Jews," all it was trying to tell young Palestinians who watch Hamas television was to "do their best to fill the news." It must work, because Hamas does "fill the news."
Still, it would be kind of cool if we could get Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to set aside all the heavy problems and talk about some of his own unusual experiences.
I can see Netanyahu, cold and calculating as only a prime minister could be, playing a wildly romantic character in a Hollywood movie. For all his hard-lining, some Palestinian women have compared him to the late Paul Newman.
The same Palestinian women have told me they think Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas reminds then of Mahatma Gandhi, the fearless and nonviolent leader of India. Of course, there isn't any salt to fight over in Palestine like there is in India. And while Gandhi used to gum his own leather into soft shirts and wraps, Abbas leaves all the cooking to the women.
Still, neither has ever taken a trip to another planet. Nor have they been kidnapped by aliens.
Although come to think of it, I wonder how Palestinians and Israelis might react if a UFO landed atop the wall (fence, barricade, whatever) and declared that the Holy Land belonged to them and they wanted it back.
DO YOU think that might be enough to push Palestinians and Israelis to join together against someone besides each other? Everyone says that if Palestinians and Israelis could just resolve their conflict, they could become the most powerful combined force in the Middle East.
Sadly, Palestinians and Israelis are not as lucky. All we have is run-of-the-mill conflict. Anger. Hatred. Violence.
Nothing unusual, strange or hard to believe, like visiting Venus in a spaceship.
We can only hope, though.
The writer is a columnist, stand-up comedian and Chicago radio talk show host. You can hear his program every afternoon at 16:00pm Israel time on-line at www.RadioChicagoland.com.
The Jerusalem Post (Israel)
September 7, 2009
In spite of all the news Palestinians and Israelis produce each day, we really are pretty boring people. I mean, we have nothing on the Japanese.
The big news in Japan last week is that Miyuki Hatoyama, wife of incoming Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, says she traveled to Venus in the 1970s in a UFO. She's talking about the planet, not a 'happy place' or the local beauty spa.
Mrs. Hatoyama detailed the unusual trip in her book called Most Bizarre Things I've Encountered.
I have racked my brain to think of anything that even comes close to that in the many stories about Palestinians and Israelis.
There was a rumor once that during the peace process (remember that?), Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin wagered at the roulette table at the Jericho casino. Arafat offered Rabin double or nothing on "returning" the West Bank.
IN TRUTH, most of the stories about Palestinians and Israelis are about tragedies, missed opportunities, name-calling, the blame game and, sadly, continued violence.
I did read an Israeli press release reporting that a Palestinian prisoner in one of the country's many prisons had been killed by a "nonlethal weapon." I could only imagine what might have happened had the weapon been lethal.
On another occasion, Hamas leaders tried to explain that Martyr Mouse was merely an orphaned cartoon character whose family had been blown up by Israeli cartoon characters during a siege at a cartoon checkpoint near a cartoon settlement. And the mouse suffered from a slight lisp that distorted everything it said.
When Martyr Mouse urged kiddies to "do their best to kill the Jews," all it was trying to tell young Palestinians who watch Hamas television was to "do their best to fill the news." It must work, because Hamas does "fill the news."
Still, it would be kind of cool if we could get Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to set aside all the heavy problems and talk about some of his own unusual experiences.
I can see Netanyahu, cold and calculating as only a prime minister could be, playing a wildly romantic character in a Hollywood movie. For all his hard-lining, some Palestinian women have compared him to the late Paul Newman.
The same Palestinian women have told me they think Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas reminds then of Mahatma Gandhi, the fearless and nonviolent leader of India. Of course, there isn't any salt to fight over in Palestine like there is in India. And while Gandhi used to gum his own leather into soft shirts and wraps, Abbas leaves all the cooking to the women.
Still, neither has ever taken a trip to another planet. Nor have they been kidnapped by aliens.
Although come to think of it, I wonder how Palestinians and Israelis might react if a UFO landed atop the wall (fence, barricade, whatever) and declared that the Holy Land belonged to them and they wanted it back.
DO YOU think that might be enough to push Palestinians and Israelis to join together against someone besides each other? Everyone says that if Palestinians and Israelis could just resolve their conflict, they could become the most powerful combined force in the Middle East.
Sadly, Palestinians and Israelis are not as lucky. All we have is run-of-the-mill conflict. Anger. Hatred. Violence.
Nothing unusual, strange or hard to believe, like visiting Venus in a spaceship.
We can only hope, though.
The writer is a columnist, stand-up comedian and Chicago radio talk show host. You can hear his program every afternoon at 16:00pm Israel time on-line at www.RadioChicagoland.com.
The hollowness of the one-state agenda
By Hussein Ibish
The Daily Star (Lebanon)
September 8, 2009
On college campuses in the United States and the United Kingdom, and increasingly among grassroots activists in the West generally, the cause of ending the Israeli occupation and securing independence for a Palestinian state is being abandoned in favor of a much more far-reaching goal of replacing Israel with a single, democratic state for all Israelis and Palestinians, including all of the refugees. Until now, this rhetoric has been largely unchallenged from a pro-Palestinian perspective, which has probably been a significant factor in its appeal.
My new book, “What’s Wrong with the One-State Agenda?”, traces the development of this agenda and interrogates its assumptions and claims.
The outbreak of the second intifada in September 2000, which inflicted profound suffering and created deep ill-will on both the sides of the Palestinian-Israeli divide, bolstered stridently nationalist perspectives among Israelis and Palestinians. For many, it prompted a negative re-evaluation of what kind of peace was possible and desirable.
In Israel, this was manifested in the collapse of the “peace camp,” a radical shift to the political right and the election of Ariel Sharon, who became prime minister. Among the Palestinians, Islamists, especially Hamas, gained significant ground. In the Palestinian diaspora, where support for Hamas is limited and, especially in the United States, politically untenable and even legally risky, this same disillusionment and radicalization was largely expressed through the rise of the one-state agenda.
More generally, the one-state agenda reflects the conclusion that Israel will never agree to seriously end the occupation and allow for the creation of a fully sovereign, viable Palestinian state, therefore that negotiations and diplomacy are pointless. At the end of Part One of my book I pose a series of pointed questions that are not usually addressed to, or have been insufficiently answered by, one-state advocates, and that in many cases their sympathizers have not adequately considered. Here are the six of them:
First, if Israel will not agree to end the occupation, what makes anyone think that it will possibly agree to dissolve itself? If Israel cannot be compelled or convinced to surrender 22 percent of the territory it holds, how can it be compelled or convinced to surrender or share 100 percent of it?
Second, what, as a practical matter, does this vision of a single, democratic state offer to Jewish Israelis?
Third, what efforts have Palestinian and pro-Palestinian one-state advocates made in reaching out to mainstream Jews and Israelis and to incorporating their national narrative into this vision?
Fourth, how do one-state advocates propose to supersede or transcend Palestinian national identity and ambitions? Why is it that no significant Palestinian political party or faction has adopted the one-state goal?
Fifth, how, apart from empty slogans about largely nonexistent and highly implausible boycotts, do one-state advocates propose to realize or advance their vision? What practical steps do they imagine and what is their road map for success?
And sixth, since they reject both Palestinian independence and the ongoing agenda of infrastructural and institutional development presently defining the strategy of what they consider the “quisling” Palestinian Authority, what do one-state advocates, as a practical matter, offer those living under occupation other than expressions of solidarity and interminable decades of continued struggle and suffering?
It is striking that the most ardent and tenacious one-state advocates seem to be taking a great deal of their time in even starting to formulate answers to these questions. Assad AbuKhalil, who comments on anything and everything on his blog, has remained strangely silent. Ali Abunimah, who is surely the most ardent and prolific one-state proponent in the United States, and who also runs a well-read blog, also appears at a loss for words. Even the overgrown juvenile delinquents at the Kabobfest blog, who have exhibited signs of suffering from a cybersphere version of Tourette’s syndrome, are also strangely passing up what would seem to be a golden opportunity to repeat their usual accusations about “traitors” and “collaborators.”
I have no doubt that sooner or later a response, and hopefully a calm and thoughtful one, will be forthcoming from some of the committed one-state advocates. But the amount of time it is taking for them to offer any sort of answer to these extremely relevant questions suggests, perhaps, that they are proving difficult to formulate and quite possibly were not anticipated.
But there surely must be a considerable burden of proof on those proposing that the Palestinian national movement abandon its long-standing goal of ending the occupation, which is based on a huge body of international law and reflects a regional and international consensus, in favor of a grand experiment in almost entirely uncharted waters that poses significant risks and offers uncertain benefits. One-state proponents have an obligation to explain how exactly they think they can achieve the extraordinary task of compelling or convincing Israel to effectively dissolve itself.
Unless it offers answers to simple, clear and obvious questions such as these, the one-state rhetoric will be an agenda for accomplishing very little if anything. Rather it will merely be a convenient vehicle for rejecting any and all things Israeli and adopting a position of uncompromising confrontation.
This is not an abstract intellectual exercise. Those seeking to liberate the Palestinian people cannot allow themselves to be beguiled by the narcissistic thrill of “winning” an academic debate on campuses while contributing nothing, even doing harm, to the causes of peace and Palestine.
Hussein Ibish is a senior fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine in Washington, DC. His book is available for free download or purchase on the website of the American Task Force on Palestine (americantaskforce.org). He wrote this commentary for The Daily Star.
The Daily Star (Lebanon)
September 8, 2009
On college campuses in the United States and the United Kingdom, and increasingly among grassroots activists in the West generally, the cause of ending the Israeli occupation and securing independence for a Palestinian state is being abandoned in favor of a much more far-reaching goal of replacing Israel with a single, democratic state for all Israelis and Palestinians, including all of the refugees. Until now, this rhetoric has been largely unchallenged from a pro-Palestinian perspective, which has probably been a significant factor in its appeal.
My new book, “What’s Wrong with the One-State Agenda?”, traces the development of this agenda and interrogates its assumptions and claims.
The outbreak of the second intifada in September 2000, which inflicted profound suffering and created deep ill-will on both the sides of the Palestinian-Israeli divide, bolstered stridently nationalist perspectives among Israelis and Palestinians. For many, it prompted a negative re-evaluation of what kind of peace was possible and desirable.
In Israel, this was manifested in the collapse of the “peace camp,” a radical shift to the political right and the election of Ariel Sharon, who became prime minister. Among the Palestinians, Islamists, especially Hamas, gained significant ground. In the Palestinian diaspora, where support for Hamas is limited and, especially in the United States, politically untenable and even legally risky, this same disillusionment and radicalization was largely expressed through the rise of the one-state agenda.
More generally, the one-state agenda reflects the conclusion that Israel will never agree to seriously end the occupation and allow for the creation of a fully sovereign, viable Palestinian state, therefore that negotiations and diplomacy are pointless. At the end of Part One of my book I pose a series of pointed questions that are not usually addressed to, or have been insufficiently answered by, one-state advocates, and that in many cases their sympathizers have not adequately considered. Here are the six of them:
First, if Israel will not agree to end the occupation, what makes anyone think that it will possibly agree to dissolve itself? If Israel cannot be compelled or convinced to surrender 22 percent of the territory it holds, how can it be compelled or convinced to surrender or share 100 percent of it?
Second, what, as a practical matter, does this vision of a single, democratic state offer to Jewish Israelis?
Third, what efforts have Palestinian and pro-Palestinian one-state advocates made in reaching out to mainstream Jews and Israelis and to incorporating their national narrative into this vision?
Fourth, how do one-state advocates propose to supersede or transcend Palestinian national identity and ambitions? Why is it that no significant Palestinian political party or faction has adopted the one-state goal?
Fifth, how, apart from empty slogans about largely nonexistent and highly implausible boycotts, do one-state advocates propose to realize or advance their vision? What practical steps do they imagine and what is their road map for success?
And sixth, since they reject both Palestinian independence and the ongoing agenda of infrastructural and institutional development presently defining the strategy of what they consider the “quisling” Palestinian Authority, what do one-state advocates, as a practical matter, offer those living under occupation other than expressions of solidarity and interminable decades of continued struggle and suffering?
It is striking that the most ardent and tenacious one-state advocates seem to be taking a great deal of their time in even starting to formulate answers to these questions. Assad AbuKhalil, who comments on anything and everything on his blog, has remained strangely silent. Ali Abunimah, who is surely the most ardent and prolific one-state proponent in the United States, and who also runs a well-read blog, also appears at a loss for words. Even the overgrown juvenile delinquents at the Kabobfest blog, who have exhibited signs of suffering from a cybersphere version of Tourette’s syndrome, are also strangely passing up what would seem to be a golden opportunity to repeat their usual accusations about “traitors” and “collaborators.”
I have no doubt that sooner or later a response, and hopefully a calm and thoughtful one, will be forthcoming from some of the committed one-state advocates. But the amount of time it is taking for them to offer any sort of answer to these extremely relevant questions suggests, perhaps, that they are proving difficult to formulate and quite possibly were not anticipated.
But there surely must be a considerable burden of proof on those proposing that the Palestinian national movement abandon its long-standing goal of ending the occupation, which is based on a huge body of international law and reflects a regional and international consensus, in favor of a grand experiment in almost entirely uncharted waters that poses significant risks and offers uncertain benefits. One-state proponents have an obligation to explain how exactly they think they can achieve the extraordinary task of compelling or convincing Israel to effectively dissolve itself.
Unless it offers answers to simple, clear and obvious questions such as these, the one-state rhetoric will be an agenda for accomplishing very little if anything. Rather it will merely be a convenient vehicle for rejecting any and all things Israeli and adopting a position of uncompromising confrontation.
This is not an abstract intellectual exercise. Those seeking to liberate the Palestinian people cannot allow themselves to be beguiled by the narcissistic thrill of “winning” an academic debate on campuses while contributing nothing, even doing harm, to the causes of peace and Palestine.
Hussein Ibish is a senior fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine in Washington, DC. His book is available for free download or purchase on the website of the American Task Force on Palestine (americantaskforce.org). He wrote this commentary for The Daily Star.
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Eliminating that rallying cry
By Sherri Muzher
Arab News (Saudi Arabia)
August 31, 2009
All Islamic groups are allied with Al-Qaeda, right?
That has certainly been the wisdom accepted by so many in the post-9/11 years.
And though I am an American-Palestinian Christian, it is assumed that I am Muslim and therefore a Hamas supporter. This was made clear to me by a Detroit-area talk show host earlier this year when he chastised me for not knowing the names of the Hamas leadership. The producer later told me that it “was just hard to believe you didn’t know the names.”
I resented the implication but my guess was that they were not the only people to make this assumption. So I’d like to answer by default... no, not all Islamic groups share al Al-Qaeda’s vision or tactics.
When Hamas ruthlessly shut down an Al-Qaeda-inspired faction in Gaza recently, you can bet that most Palestinians were content with this result. Even when Hamas was elected in 2006, they won because the people wanted to punish the ruling Fatah for their corruption, not because they embraced a Taleban-like atmosphere.
I’m not saying there aren’t pangs of religious zealousness by Hamas. There are and it alarms the secular majority. The silver lining is that Hamas keeps tabs on the people’s pulse and has reversed itself, on occasion. An example of this was when Hamas tried to ban a Palestinian book of folktales, “Speak Bird, Speak Again” in 2007 for “sexual expression.” Palestinians were outraged and the ban was reversed after “re-examining” the book. And now there is the recent “urging” to Muslim women to wear head scarves. This has now been greeted with concern. It is safe to say that Al-Qaeda would disregard public opinion.
So why are there Al-Qaeda-inspired players now in Gaza?
The phrase, “oppression breeds extremism” is not psychobabble. It’s the reality. As the vice keeps tightening on Gaza and as the alienation from the rest of the world increases, so does the desperation and turning toward religious extremists. This happens everywhere; Gaza is no exception.
Supporters of Israel who have been gleeful at the Palestinian internal chaos ought to consider two points.
One, Hamas’ earliest support came from Israel in an effort to counter the secular and nationalist PLO. According to former State Department counter-terrorism official Larry Johnson, “the Israelis are their own worst enemies when it comes to fighting terrorism.”
“The Israelis are like a guy who sets fire to his hair and then tries to put it out by hitting it with a hammer. They do more to incite and sustain terrorism than curb it,” he said.
Second, mischief does not lead to good things and with Al-Qaeda growing in influence in Gaza, Israel needs to do some serious soul-searching. Using humanitarian goods against 1.5 million Gazans as a weapon, be it food or fuel, is unconscionable and illegal. If “security” is the name of the game, how does it help having Al-Qaeda next door in Gaza?
And what can we do as the superpower of the world?
Well, it would help if we leave the two powerful Palestinian factions (Fatah and Hamas) alone to work out a national unity government, which the Palestinian public and diaspora have demanded. The factions actually agree on the principle of forming a state side by side with Israel on the 1967 Green Line.
Yet, unity has remained elusive. There is a bizarre notion that marginalizing Hamas and discouraging Palestinian unity somehow works in our interests or those of the regions.
It obviously doesn’t.
Finally, I’d like to end on a hopeful note. People understandably tire of the Mideast conflict. Nobody can “ditto” that more than family and friends. But with the increased “oomph” to solving the Palestine vs. Israel conflict, we are also one step closer to removing the biggest rallying cry for Al-Qaeda-like extremist groups. These groups often use the Palestinian cause to increase their memberships and then threaten the world.
Think about it.
What better way to serve US and world interests than by eliminating that rallying cry?
Sherri Muzher, JD is director of Michigan Media Watch, Michigan, US.
Arab News (Saudi Arabia)
August 31, 2009
All Islamic groups are allied with Al-Qaeda, right?
That has certainly been the wisdom accepted by so many in the post-9/11 years.
And though I am an American-Palestinian Christian, it is assumed that I am Muslim and therefore a Hamas supporter. This was made clear to me by a Detroit-area talk show host earlier this year when he chastised me for not knowing the names of the Hamas leadership. The producer later told me that it “was just hard to believe you didn’t know the names.”
I resented the implication but my guess was that they were not the only people to make this assumption. So I’d like to answer by default... no, not all Islamic groups share al Al-Qaeda’s vision or tactics.
When Hamas ruthlessly shut down an Al-Qaeda-inspired faction in Gaza recently, you can bet that most Palestinians were content with this result. Even when Hamas was elected in 2006, they won because the people wanted to punish the ruling Fatah for their corruption, not because they embraced a Taleban-like atmosphere.
I’m not saying there aren’t pangs of religious zealousness by Hamas. There are and it alarms the secular majority. The silver lining is that Hamas keeps tabs on the people’s pulse and has reversed itself, on occasion. An example of this was when Hamas tried to ban a Palestinian book of folktales, “Speak Bird, Speak Again” in 2007 for “sexual expression.” Palestinians were outraged and the ban was reversed after “re-examining” the book. And now there is the recent “urging” to Muslim women to wear head scarves. This has now been greeted with concern. It is safe to say that Al-Qaeda would disregard public opinion.
So why are there Al-Qaeda-inspired players now in Gaza?
The phrase, “oppression breeds extremism” is not psychobabble. It’s the reality. As the vice keeps tightening on Gaza and as the alienation from the rest of the world increases, so does the desperation and turning toward religious extremists. This happens everywhere; Gaza is no exception.
Supporters of Israel who have been gleeful at the Palestinian internal chaos ought to consider two points.
One, Hamas’ earliest support came from Israel in an effort to counter the secular and nationalist PLO. According to former State Department counter-terrorism official Larry Johnson, “the Israelis are their own worst enemies when it comes to fighting terrorism.”
“The Israelis are like a guy who sets fire to his hair and then tries to put it out by hitting it with a hammer. They do more to incite and sustain terrorism than curb it,” he said.
Second, mischief does not lead to good things and with Al-Qaeda growing in influence in Gaza, Israel needs to do some serious soul-searching. Using humanitarian goods against 1.5 million Gazans as a weapon, be it food or fuel, is unconscionable and illegal. If “security” is the name of the game, how does it help having Al-Qaeda next door in Gaza?
And what can we do as the superpower of the world?
Well, it would help if we leave the two powerful Palestinian factions (Fatah and Hamas) alone to work out a national unity government, which the Palestinian public and diaspora have demanded. The factions actually agree on the principle of forming a state side by side with Israel on the 1967 Green Line.
Yet, unity has remained elusive. There is a bizarre notion that marginalizing Hamas and discouraging Palestinian unity somehow works in our interests or those of the regions.
It obviously doesn’t.
Finally, I’d like to end on a hopeful note. People understandably tire of the Mideast conflict. Nobody can “ditto” that more than family and friends. But with the increased “oomph” to solving the Palestine vs. Israel conflict, we are also one step closer to removing the biggest rallying cry for Al-Qaeda-like extremist groups. These groups often use the Palestinian cause to increase their memberships and then threaten the world.
Think about it.
What better way to serve US and world interests than by eliminating that rallying cry?
Sherri Muzher, JD is director of Michigan Media Watch, Michigan, US.
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