I argued before once:
...There is a continuum between ceding legitimacy to the “territories” and the right of Israel proper to exist. When Obama spoke of Israel as a consequence of the Holocaust he fueled the canard that she is but a colonial-like imposition on the Palestinians by the Western powers. If an important reason for Israel’s legitimacy is Jews’ deep and long historical connection to the lands, then that reason applies to the territories as well. Deny the latter, and then the former becomes more fragile. Assert the latter, then the former gains strength…
Now for me that isn’t an argument for Israel's insistence on claiming the West Bank, though it can be the framework for an overall position under which negotiations can proceed. But it is an argument that does apply more directly to Israel's present claim to a non divided Jerusalem.
The immediate inclusion of East Jerusalem into Israel proper would be a terrible decision. It would be so unilateral and provocative as to generate immensely grave consequences. For example, stalled as the peace process is, there is still a notion of it, something that may be resurrected. One can’t hold to any idea of a two state solution without faith in that possibility. The immediate, unilateral inclusive Israelization of East Jerusalem would be the death knell of a two state solution. No, the parties, I think, will have to limp along with their stalled process including the present status of Jerusalem.
For myself, I like the sounds of this approach in principle, questions of its own timing notwithstanding: http://jta.org/news/article-print/2010/03/08/1010980/salam-fayyad-the-pa...
Also, I would in the interest of clearer thinking separate the issues of the timing of the announcement--whether snafu or intended, I do not know; the principled right of Israel to build in East (or North as Marty Peretz says) Jerusalem, I am not sure, which right Obama and Clinton affirmed in backing off their freeze position to that extent, as Barry Rubin argued; and whether this particular announced 1600 unit project is a pragmatically wise one, leaving the timing aside. For myself, for the latter pragmatic issue I need to know more about it and see an analysis of the costs against the benefits and its rationales.
Friday, March 12, 2010
Neocons Got Something Right? No, You Don't Say!
What the Neocons Got Right
Believe it or not, they made a few good calls.
BY STEVEN A. COOK MARCH 11, 2010
When the editors at FP asked me to write 1,500 words on "What the Neocons Got Right" for the launch of their Middle East Channel, I jumped at the opportunity. To be sure, the topic generated a fair number of bipartisan guffaws and lame jokes among my friends: "It will be the shortest article you ever wrote," quipped one. "They got something right?" queried another. "How about 1,500 pages on what they got wrong?" still another partisan asked.
Hilarity aside, neoconservatives have been derided by almost everyone for their misadventures in the Middle East -- and there were many -- during the George W. Bush years, but that does not mean their approach to the region was always, everywhere a total failure. The fact is, the neocons are a group of very smart people, as anyone who has ever spent some time actually reading Commentary or the Weekly Standard might know.
They happen to hold a worldview that, at the moment, is not terribly popular. Of course, the primary reasons the neocons have encountered so much criticism has everything to do with their approach to the Middle East, which is not distinguished for its grasp of the region's history, politics, and culture. Yet, a fine-grained understanding of the Middle East will not always produce superior policy, a fact all too often lost on the punditocracy.
Let me start out by saying that I do not believe the neocons got Iraq right. It may turn out right or it may not. It's too early to tell. So far, the March 7 elections look pretty good as the counting gets under way, despite 36 deaths. Analysts will likely point to the hard, messy coalition bargaining that is sure to come as evidence that Iraq is moving in the right direction. After all, Iraqis are processing their grievances through democratic institutions, which says a lot about how far the country has come since the dark days of 2006 to 2007. Perhaps it's my skeptical nature, but I am not ready to declare victory. We have seen too many "corners turned" and "watershed moments" in Iraq for me to be confident that anyone inside or outside the U.S. government actually understands Iraq.
The effort by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government to bar certain politicians from politics was one prominent warning sign that Iraq might actually be moving toward the "Arab mean" -- Middle Eastern leaders have been reverting to this tactic since Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser invented it in the early 1950s. More profoundly, there seems to be an undeniable logic to Iraqi politics that concentrates power in Baghdad, which does not bode well for democratic development. It remains an open question whether the U.S. military's almost seven-year mission in Iraq has undermined the unwritten codes, norms, and rules of behavior that governed Iraqi politics for the better part of a century before Operation Iraqi Freedom. We'll just have to wait and see.
So what did the neocons get right? Syria, Iran, and democracy.
It probably wasn't wise for George W. Bush's administration to oppose the indirect Syria-Israel negotiations that the Turkish government organized in Istanbul through 2008. If the Israelis and Syrians want to make peace, the United States should help them. Despite this bungle, which actually came well after neocon influence in the administration peaked, the neoconservatives had a healthy understanding of what Syrian President Bashar al-Assad regime's is all about: violence, repression, and duplicity. For all their faults, the neocons can read recent history pretty well, and they understood that endless shuttle diplomacy of various U.S. secretaries of state (with the exception of James Baker) brought the region no closer to peace and did nothing to alter Damascus's strategic posture.
Indeed, the Syrians have a long history of doing just enough to keep their enemies at bay, while retaining the instruments to do considerable harm. This is not to suggest that Bill Clinton's people had a Pollyannaish view of Hafez al-Assad, Bashar's father, but neither Hafez nor his son, who took power in 2000, ever demonstrated the kind of flexibility that engagement was supposed to produce. Although Clinton's first secretary of state, Warren Christopher, visited Damascus 29 times and his successor, Madeleine Albright, sipped tea with Hafez al-Assad on five occasions, the Syrians continued their support for Hamas and Hezbollah with political support as well as weaponry.
The Syrians also never exhibited any flexibility on the peace process. During the 1990s, the elder Assad sent his foreign minister and other officials to one locale or another for talks with Israelis, but his emissaries consistently demanded that the Israelis return to the June 4, 1967, line without ever spelling out the nature of the peace they were offering. And of course, Damascus has never repudiated its strategic relationship with Iran.
To be fair, the Bush team dabbled in engagement with Damascus after the September 11 attacks, but those efforts were focused on counterterrorism. The goodwill did not carry over into other areas, including Iraq. True to form, the Syrians did just enough on al Qaeda to earn plaudits in some quarters while never restricting the group's ability to injure the United States, its friends, and its interests in the region. For example, Bashar al-Assad never shut down the flow of foreign fighters into Iraq by way of Damascus International Airport.
It's hard to sign up with the folks who seem all too willing to bomb Iran, but like Syria, the neoconservatives have a well-grounded view of the Iranian regime. George H.W. Bush tried engagement (remember "Goodwill begets goodwill" in his inaugural address?), so did Bill Clinton, and now Barack Obama has offered a hand to the clerical regime.
Yet all three presidents have very little to show for their efforts. Why? Did they not engage enough? Did Bush, Clinton, and Obama engage incorrectly? Unlikely. Rather, one needs to look at the ontology -- yes, ontology, the metaphysical nature -- of the Iranian regime. The Islamic Republic was founded in many ways on opposition to the West, and in particular, the United States. A good portion of Iran's revolutionary narrative identifies the United States' perfidy in undermining the aspirations and identity of the Iranian people.
The litany of Tehran's complaints against Washington is long. This is precisely why the Iranian leadership cannot make a deal with the United States. To do so would undermine the reason for the revolution and the Iranian leadership's own reason for being. The neoconservatives seem to have innately understood -- perhaps for different reasons -- that the Iranians were quite unlikely to respond to U.S. overtures. This doesn't mean that engagement is bad everywhere, even when it comes to Iran.
The Obama administration may have been too sanguine about its ability to sway Iran's leadership, but the policy does serve an important purpose. Engagement demonstrates that, unlike with the run-up to the Iraq war, Washington is willing to exhaust every possible avenue to resolve its differences with Tehran before taking more punitive steps such as sanctions or even military action.
The one other area where the neocons got it right is democracy. A few caveats. First, you don't have to be a neoconservative to support democratic change in the Middle East -- it's simply the right thing to do. Second, the Freedom Agenda is all but dead, but that doesn't mean that the neocons were wrong. It has become fashionable to say that the Bush administration made "egregious" errors promoting democracy in the Arab world. Yes, invading Iraq to transform the country and the region qualifies as egregious. Still, Bush's forceful, public support for freedom and democracy in the Middle East had a profound effect on politics in the region. It did nothing less than change the terms of the debate in a way that Arab leaders could no longer control and allowed democracy activists to pursue their agendas in new ways.
Of course, democracy and reform in the Middle East did not begin when the Bush administration discovered the issue on or about September 12, 2001, or when the neoconservatives began pressing the issue. Still, with Washington watching, Arab authoritarians had to position themselves as reformers, making it more difficult for them to crack down on the real reformers. In Egypt, for example, opposition activists who were generally opposed to Bush's Middle East policy ruefully acknowledged that Washington's outspoken support for democracy provided them and their colleagues' protection from the Egyptian state. Indeed, it seems that Bush and the neocons had moved the needle on democracy in the Middle East.
The Arab Spring of 2005 was upon us, but then Hamas won the Palestinian elections in January 2006. Having never resolved the problem of what happens when nasty people are elected freely and fairly, the U.S. policy of promoting democracy in the region was left to wither. Nevertheless, the neocons were onto something.
Needless to say, Washington's position in the Middle East was far worse after the ascendance of the neoconservatives during the Bush years. The region was further from peace, stability, and prosperity than when they found it in early 2001. Still, the neocons' perspective on the nature of the Syrian and Iranian regimes were largely accurate, and their forceful advocacy of democracy and freedom in the Middle East may have grated on many, but it did much to advance those causes in a region once described as "democracy's desert." Any number of observers would surely disagree with these claims, but I suspect that has more to do with politics than a careful evaluation of what the neocons have to offer to the foreign-policy debate.
Believe it or not, they made a few good calls.
BY STEVEN A. COOK MARCH 11, 2010
When the editors at FP asked me to write 1,500 words on "What the Neocons Got Right" for the launch of their Middle East Channel, I jumped at the opportunity. To be sure, the topic generated a fair number of bipartisan guffaws and lame jokes among my friends: "It will be the shortest article you ever wrote," quipped one. "They got something right?" queried another. "How about 1,500 pages on what they got wrong?" still another partisan asked.
Hilarity aside, neoconservatives have been derided by almost everyone for their misadventures in the Middle East -- and there were many -- during the George W. Bush years, but that does not mean their approach to the region was always, everywhere a total failure. The fact is, the neocons are a group of very smart people, as anyone who has ever spent some time actually reading Commentary or the Weekly Standard might know.
They happen to hold a worldview that, at the moment, is not terribly popular. Of course, the primary reasons the neocons have encountered so much criticism has everything to do with their approach to the Middle East, which is not distinguished for its grasp of the region's history, politics, and culture. Yet, a fine-grained understanding of the Middle East will not always produce superior policy, a fact all too often lost on the punditocracy.
Let me start out by saying that I do not believe the neocons got Iraq right. It may turn out right or it may not. It's too early to tell. So far, the March 7 elections look pretty good as the counting gets under way, despite 36 deaths. Analysts will likely point to the hard, messy coalition bargaining that is sure to come as evidence that Iraq is moving in the right direction. After all, Iraqis are processing their grievances through democratic institutions, which says a lot about how far the country has come since the dark days of 2006 to 2007. Perhaps it's my skeptical nature, but I am not ready to declare victory. We have seen too many "corners turned" and "watershed moments" in Iraq for me to be confident that anyone inside or outside the U.S. government actually understands Iraq.
The effort by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government to bar certain politicians from politics was one prominent warning sign that Iraq might actually be moving toward the "Arab mean" -- Middle Eastern leaders have been reverting to this tactic since Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser invented it in the early 1950s. More profoundly, there seems to be an undeniable logic to Iraqi politics that concentrates power in Baghdad, which does not bode well for democratic development. It remains an open question whether the U.S. military's almost seven-year mission in Iraq has undermined the unwritten codes, norms, and rules of behavior that governed Iraqi politics for the better part of a century before Operation Iraqi Freedom. We'll just have to wait and see.
So what did the neocons get right? Syria, Iran, and democracy.
It probably wasn't wise for George W. Bush's administration to oppose the indirect Syria-Israel negotiations that the Turkish government organized in Istanbul through 2008. If the Israelis and Syrians want to make peace, the United States should help them. Despite this bungle, which actually came well after neocon influence in the administration peaked, the neoconservatives had a healthy understanding of what Syrian President Bashar al-Assad regime's is all about: violence, repression, and duplicity. For all their faults, the neocons can read recent history pretty well, and they understood that endless shuttle diplomacy of various U.S. secretaries of state (with the exception of James Baker) brought the region no closer to peace and did nothing to alter Damascus's strategic posture.
Indeed, the Syrians have a long history of doing just enough to keep their enemies at bay, while retaining the instruments to do considerable harm. This is not to suggest that Bill Clinton's people had a Pollyannaish view of Hafez al-Assad, Bashar's father, but neither Hafez nor his son, who took power in 2000, ever demonstrated the kind of flexibility that engagement was supposed to produce. Although Clinton's first secretary of state, Warren Christopher, visited Damascus 29 times and his successor, Madeleine Albright, sipped tea with Hafez al-Assad on five occasions, the Syrians continued their support for Hamas and Hezbollah with political support as well as weaponry.
The Syrians also never exhibited any flexibility on the peace process. During the 1990s, the elder Assad sent his foreign minister and other officials to one locale or another for talks with Israelis, but his emissaries consistently demanded that the Israelis return to the June 4, 1967, line without ever spelling out the nature of the peace they were offering. And of course, Damascus has never repudiated its strategic relationship with Iran.
To be fair, the Bush team dabbled in engagement with Damascus after the September 11 attacks, but those efforts were focused on counterterrorism. The goodwill did not carry over into other areas, including Iraq. True to form, the Syrians did just enough on al Qaeda to earn plaudits in some quarters while never restricting the group's ability to injure the United States, its friends, and its interests in the region. For example, Bashar al-Assad never shut down the flow of foreign fighters into Iraq by way of Damascus International Airport.
It's hard to sign up with the folks who seem all too willing to bomb Iran, but like Syria, the neoconservatives have a well-grounded view of the Iranian regime. George H.W. Bush tried engagement (remember "Goodwill begets goodwill" in his inaugural address?), so did Bill Clinton, and now Barack Obama has offered a hand to the clerical regime.
Yet all three presidents have very little to show for their efforts. Why? Did they not engage enough? Did Bush, Clinton, and Obama engage incorrectly? Unlikely. Rather, one needs to look at the ontology -- yes, ontology, the metaphysical nature -- of the Iranian regime. The Islamic Republic was founded in many ways on opposition to the West, and in particular, the United States. A good portion of Iran's revolutionary narrative identifies the United States' perfidy in undermining the aspirations and identity of the Iranian people.
The litany of Tehran's complaints against Washington is long. This is precisely why the Iranian leadership cannot make a deal with the United States. To do so would undermine the reason for the revolution and the Iranian leadership's own reason for being. The neoconservatives seem to have innately understood -- perhaps for different reasons -- that the Iranians were quite unlikely to respond to U.S. overtures. This doesn't mean that engagement is bad everywhere, even when it comes to Iran.
The Obama administration may have been too sanguine about its ability to sway Iran's leadership, but the policy does serve an important purpose. Engagement demonstrates that, unlike with the run-up to the Iraq war, Washington is willing to exhaust every possible avenue to resolve its differences with Tehran before taking more punitive steps such as sanctions or even military action.
The one other area where the neocons got it right is democracy. A few caveats. First, you don't have to be a neoconservative to support democratic change in the Middle East -- it's simply the right thing to do. Second, the Freedom Agenda is all but dead, but that doesn't mean that the neocons were wrong. It has become fashionable to say that the Bush administration made "egregious" errors promoting democracy in the Arab world. Yes, invading Iraq to transform the country and the region qualifies as egregious. Still, Bush's forceful, public support for freedom and democracy in the Middle East had a profound effect on politics in the region. It did nothing less than change the terms of the debate in a way that Arab leaders could no longer control and allowed democracy activists to pursue their agendas in new ways.
Of course, democracy and reform in the Middle East did not begin when the Bush administration discovered the issue on or about September 12, 2001, or when the neoconservatives began pressing the issue. Still, with Washington watching, Arab authoritarians had to position themselves as reformers, making it more difficult for them to crack down on the real reformers. In Egypt, for example, opposition activists who were generally opposed to Bush's Middle East policy ruefully acknowledged that Washington's outspoken support for democracy provided them and their colleagues' protection from the Egyptian state. Indeed, it seems that Bush and the neocons had moved the needle on democracy in the Middle East.
The Arab Spring of 2005 was upon us, but then Hamas won the Palestinian elections in January 2006. Having never resolved the problem of what happens when nasty people are elected freely and fairly, the U.S. policy of promoting democracy in the region was left to wither. Nevertheless, the neocons were onto something.
Needless to say, Washington's position in the Middle East was far worse after the ascendance of the neoconservatives during the Bush years. The region was further from peace, stability, and prosperity than when they found it in early 2001. Still, the neocons' perspective on the nature of the Syrian and Iranian regimes were largely accurate, and their forceful advocacy of democracy and freedom in the Middle East may have grated on many, but it did much to advance those causes in a region once described as "democracy's desert." Any number of observers would surely disagree with these claims, but I suspect that has more to do with politics than a careful evaluation of what the neocons have to offer to the foreign-policy debate.
The Fayyad Solution
Salam Fayyad:
The Palestinian with a plan for statehood
By Leslie Susser · March 8, 2010 JERUSALEM (JTA) --
Pundits and politicians have taken recently to comparing Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad to Israel's founding father, David Ben-Gurion. No less a figure than President Shimon Peres, one of Ben-Gurion's foremost disciples, is the latest Israeli leader to offer the accolade.
The reason is simple: Like Ben-Gurion, Fayyad is building institutions of statehood. In the 1920s, the Jews of Palestine under the single-minded Ben-Gurion established institutions for what they called the state-in-the-making: the Haganah with the idea of a single armed force; the Histadrut Trade Union, with a department for workers' rights, a sick fund, a bank and the Solel Boneh construction company; and the Jewish Agency dealing with immigration, schools and hospitals. Now Fayyad is doing something similar. Last August he announced what has come to be known as the "Fayyad Plan" under the heading: "Palestine -- Ending the Occupation, Establishing the State."
The idea is to build a de facto Palestinian state by mid-2011, with functioning government and municipal offices, police forces, a central bank, stock market, schools, hospitals, community centers, etc.
Fayyad's watchword is transparency, and his aim is institutions that are corruption-free and provide an array of modern government services. Then, in mid-2011, with all the trappings of statehood in place, he intends to make his political move: Invite Israel to recognize the well-functioning Palestinian state and withdraw from territories it still occupies, or be forced to do so by the pressure of international opinion.
In February, at the 10th Herzliya Conference, an annual forum on Israel's national security attended by top decision-makers and academics, Fayyad, the lone Palestinian, gave an articulate off-the-cuff address, leaving little doubt as to what he has in mind. "This is not about declaring a state. It is about getting ready for one," he explained. "The program we have embarked upon was not supposed to be in lieu of a political process. It was supposed to reinforce it." "The political process track," Fayyad added later, "is absolutely necessary because that is what is going to bring an end to the occupation."
Fayyad went on to speak about creating a critical mass of positive change on the ground that by mid-2011 would persuade the world that the Palestinians were ready for statehood, and that it was time for the Israeli occupation to be rolled back. "
If by then we succeed, as I hope we will,” he declared, “it's not going to be too difficult for people looking at it from any corner of the world to conclude that indeed the Palestinians do have something that looks like a well-functioning state in just about every facet of activity, and the only anomalous thing at the time would be that occupation which everyone agrees should end.” Fayyad has been working closely on the economic and institutional elements of his plan with Tony Blair, the former British prime minister and the international Quartet's special representative to the Middle East, and on the law enforcement aspects with U.S. Gen. Keith Dayton.
The results on the ground have been impressive. Palestinian security forces trained by Dayton's troops have been deployed in West Bank cities, creating new levels of law and order and enabling Israel to remove dozens of roadblocks and checkpoints.
The aim from the outset was to secure a major principle of modern statehood: a single armed force, subordinate to the elected government, with no rival militias roaming the streets. For all intents and purposes, this is the case already in the West Bank today. At the Herzliya Conference, Fayyad suggested that Israel could help further augment this facet of his state-building by handing over more West Bank territory to Palestinian security control.
The law and order and the opening up of the West Bank to free movement of people and goods has led to a dramatic change in the economic climate, which also augurs well for Fayyad's state-building project. The upturn in trade, tourism and consumer spending was reflected in economic growth of 7 percent last year, one of the highest figures anywhere in the world. Fayyad also is working on Palestinian budgetary independence. More than half of this year's Palestinian Authority budget of approximately $3 billion will be raised in taxes.
There have been significant institutional achievements as well: A functioning stock market is operating in Nablus, Fayyad has been building government and municipal offices, and the nucleus of a central bank is in place. Over the past two years, Fayyad has completed more than 1,000 communal projects, investing more than $100 million in schools, clinics, libraries and community centers.
He is starting work now on a new phase to improve existing infrastructures: roads, electricity, water and sewage. Most of the money has come from the United States, the European Union and the oil-rich Gulf States. The American-educated Fayyad, 58, was born in the village of Dir Rasun near the West Bank city of Tulkarm. After earning his doctorate in economics at the University of Texas in 1986, he conducted research at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis before joining the World Bank in Washington, where he worked from 1987 to 1995.
Then, in the wake of the Oslo agreements, he was appointed International Monetary Fund representative in the Palestinian territories from 1995 to 2001. The following year, desperate for a modicum of transparency in funding for the Palestinians, the United States and other donor nations forced his appointment on Yasser Arafat as the Palestinian leader's technocrat finance minister.
Fayyad, a small but very determined and self-confident man, bravely took on the corruption rife in Palestinian affairs, sacking thousands of superfluous bureaucrats and closing down social institutions serving as fronts for terrorist activities. Unlike most of his generation of Palestinians leaders, Fayyad never joined the Palestinian resistance, never took part in terror and never spent a single day in an Israeli prison.
This accounts for the fact that despite his internationally acclaimed success, he has only a small domestic political base. He never joined the West Bank's ruling Fatah party, and when he ran in the 2006 elections, the Third Way party he founded, dedicated to fighting corruption, won only two seats. A recent survey by leading Palestinian pollster Khalil Shikaki showed that although 40 percent of Palestinians rated the Fayyad government's performance as good or very good, only 13 percent supported him as prime minister.
Fayyad was appointed prime minister by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in June 2007 after the Hamas takeover of Gaza, and was reappointed last March. Fayyad also has been serving a second term as finance minister since March 2007. Israelis on the right side of the political spectrum, who oppose Fayyad's state-building project, argue that he is not as dedicated to nonviolence as he claims.
They point to his presence at ceremonies honoring Palestinian terrorists and his active participation in a ceremonial burning of Israeli products manufactured in the West Bank. Fayyad has his critics on the Palestinian side, too, who accuse his police of being nothing more than subcontractors for the Israeli occupation.
Rather than bringing the occupation to an end, the critics argue, Fayyad's scrupulous maintenance of law and order is prolonging it. At Fayyad's address to the Herzliya Conference, among the interested spectators was Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak. As the leader of the Labor Party, Barak is Ben-Gurion's heir and, like Fayyad, is a strong advocate of the two-state solution.
For people like Barak, who see this as the key to a secure Jewish-majority state at peace with its neighbors, Fayyad could well be the man of the hour. And he also could prove the toughest opponent of those Israelis who see in an independent Palestine a recipe for disaster.
The Palestinian with a plan for statehood
By Leslie Susser · March 8, 2010 JERUSALEM (JTA) --
Pundits and politicians have taken recently to comparing Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad to Israel's founding father, David Ben-Gurion. No less a figure than President Shimon Peres, one of Ben-Gurion's foremost disciples, is the latest Israeli leader to offer the accolade.
The reason is simple: Like Ben-Gurion, Fayyad is building institutions of statehood. In the 1920s, the Jews of Palestine under the single-minded Ben-Gurion established institutions for what they called the state-in-the-making: the Haganah with the idea of a single armed force; the Histadrut Trade Union, with a department for workers' rights, a sick fund, a bank and the Solel Boneh construction company; and the Jewish Agency dealing with immigration, schools and hospitals. Now Fayyad is doing something similar. Last August he announced what has come to be known as the "Fayyad Plan" under the heading: "Palestine -- Ending the Occupation, Establishing the State."
The idea is to build a de facto Palestinian state by mid-2011, with functioning government and municipal offices, police forces, a central bank, stock market, schools, hospitals, community centers, etc.
Fayyad's watchword is transparency, and his aim is institutions that are corruption-free and provide an array of modern government services. Then, in mid-2011, with all the trappings of statehood in place, he intends to make his political move: Invite Israel to recognize the well-functioning Palestinian state and withdraw from territories it still occupies, or be forced to do so by the pressure of international opinion.
In February, at the 10th Herzliya Conference, an annual forum on Israel's national security attended by top decision-makers and academics, Fayyad, the lone Palestinian, gave an articulate off-the-cuff address, leaving little doubt as to what he has in mind. "This is not about declaring a state. It is about getting ready for one," he explained. "The program we have embarked upon was not supposed to be in lieu of a political process. It was supposed to reinforce it." "The political process track," Fayyad added later, "is absolutely necessary because that is what is going to bring an end to the occupation."
Fayyad went on to speak about creating a critical mass of positive change on the ground that by mid-2011 would persuade the world that the Palestinians were ready for statehood, and that it was time for the Israeli occupation to be rolled back. "
If by then we succeed, as I hope we will,” he declared, “it's not going to be too difficult for people looking at it from any corner of the world to conclude that indeed the Palestinians do have something that looks like a well-functioning state in just about every facet of activity, and the only anomalous thing at the time would be that occupation which everyone agrees should end.” Fayyad has been working closely on the economic and institutional elements of his plan with Tony Blair, the former British prime minister and the international Quartet's special representative to the Middle East, and on the law enforcement aspects with U.S. Gen. Keith Dayton.
The results on the ground have been impressive. Palestinian security forces trained by Dayton's troops have been deployed in West Bank cities, creating new levels of law and order and enabling Israel to remove dozens of roadblocks and checkpoints.
The aim from the outset was to secure a major principle of modern statehood: a single armed force, subordinate to the elected government, with no rival militias roaming the streets. For all intents and purposes, this is the case already in the West Bank today. At the Herzliya Conference, Fayyad suggested that Israel could help further augment this facet of his state-building by handing over more West Bank territory to Palestinian security control.
The law and order and the opening up of the West Bank to free movement of people and goods has led to a dramatic change in the economic climate, which also augurs well for Fayyad's state-building project. The upturn in trade, tourism and consumer spending was reflected in economic growth of 7 percent last year, one of the highest figures anywhere in the world. Fayyad also is working on Palestinian budgetary independence. More than half of this year's Palestinian Authority budget of approximately $3 billion will be raised in taxes.
There have been significant institutional achievements as well: A functioning stock market is operating in Nablus, Fayyad has been building government and municipal offices, and the nucleus of a central bank is in place. Over the past two years, Fayyad has completed more than 1,000 communal projects, investing more than $100 million in schools, clinics, libraries and community centers.
He is starting work now on a new phase to improve existing infrastructures: roads, electricity, water and sewage. Most of the money has come from the United States, the European Union and the oil-rich Gulf States. The American-educated Fayyad, 58, was born in the village of Dir Rasun near the West Bank city of Tulkarm. After earning his doctorate in economics at the University of Texas in 1986, he conducted research at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis before joining the World Bank in Washington, where he worked from 1987 to 1995.
Then, in the wake of the Oslo agreements, he was appointed International Monetary Fund representative in the Palestinian territories from 1995 to 2001. The following year, desperate for a modicum of transparency in funding for the Palestinians, the United States and other donor nations forced his appointment on Yasser Arafat as the Palestinian leader's technocrat finance minister.
Fayyad, a small but very determined and self-confident man, bravely took on the corruption rife in Palestinian affairs, sacking thousands of superfluous bureaucrats and closing down social institutions serving as fronts for terrorist activities. Unlike most of his generation of Palestinians leaders, Fayyad never joined the Palestinian resistance, never took part in terror and never spent a single day in an Israeli prison.
This accounts for the fact that despite his internationally acclaimed success, he has only a small domestic political base. He never joined the West Bank's ruling Fatah party, and when he ran in the 2006 elections, the Third Way party he founded, dedicated to fighting corruption, won only two seats. A recent survey by leading Palestinian pollster Khalil Shikaki showed that although 40 percent of Palestinians rated the Fayyad government's performance as good or very good, only 13 percent supported him as prime minister.
Fayyad was appointed prime minister by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in June 2007 after the Hamas takeover of Gaza, and was reappointed last March. Fayyad also has been serving a second term as finance minister since March 2007. Israelis on the right side of the political spectrum, who oppose Fayyad's state-building project, argue that he is not as dedicated to nonviolence as he claims.
They point to his presence at ceremonies honoring Palestinian terrorists and his active participation in a ceremonial burning of Israeli products manufactured in the West Bank. Fayyad has his critics on the Palestinian side, too, who accuse his police of being nothing more than subcontractors for the Israeli occupation.
Rather than bringing the occupation to an end, the critics argue, Fayyad's scrupulous maintenance of law and order is prolonging it. At Fayyad's address to the Herzliya Conference, among the interested spectators was Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak. As the leader of the Labor Party, Barak is Ben-Gurion's heir and, like Fayyad, is a strong advocate of the two-state solution.
For people like Barak, who see this as the key to a secure Jewish-majority state at peace with its neighbors, Fayyad could well be the man of the hour. And he also could prove the toughest opponent of those Israelis who see in an independent Palestine a recipe for disaster.
On the Question of the Morality of the Iraq War
Don’t be so sure invading Iraq was immoral
By Nigel Biggar Published: March 10 2010 22:09 Last updated: March 10 2010 22:09
...The Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war has run about half its course. Judging by the dominant reaction of the British press, its sole function is to prove what we all know to be true: that the invasion was immoral and Tony Blair is to blame. The surfeit of moral certainty among the commentators is suspect; the zealous clarity of their moral waters needs muddying.
For sure, the invasion and occupation of Iraq was morally flawed.
The US administration’s motivation was hubristic and preparation for postwar reconstruction was woefully inadequate. Yet most just wars are flawed. Take the war against Nazi Germany. The RAF’s indiscriminate bombing of German cities was largely driven by “Bomber” Harris’s vengeful hatred. While the destruction of Hitler’s hegemony was very good, the entrenchment of Stalin’s was very bad.
Any complex human enterprise will involve moral flaws. What needs determining is whether and how these undermine its justice as a whole. As proof of the Iraq invasion’s wickedness, critics invoke the civilian death toll, soberly reckoned at 100,000-150,000. But Europe’s liberation from Nazi domination cost the lives of 70,000 French civilians and 500,000 German ones through bombing; and, whereas this was the direct responsibility of the British and Americans, most Iraqi civilians were killed by foreign or native insurgents. Yes, the occupying powers were obliged to maintain law and order, and failed initially. But the insurgents were obliged not to send suicide bombers into crowded market places, and they have failed persistently.
Arguments about a war’s disproportion are often intractable.
If one assumes the Iraq war was unjust, then no civilian deaths were worth it. Yet in affirming the justice of the war against Hitler we imply it was worth the deaths of 30m civilians. The loss of 150,000 civilians therefore does not, of itself, make the Iraq war unjust. The invasion would be harder to defend were the country’s new regime to fail. But that has not happened yet, and those critics who care more for Iraqis than they hate the former US and UK leaders George W. Bush and Mr Blair will hope it never does.
If determining the Iraq war’s proportionality is difficult, maybe determining its legality is easier. It would seem so, given the assurance with which some lawyers have damned it before Chilcot. But such condemnations can only be opinions, since international law can be variously interpreted. However, even if we grant that the invasion was illegal, we still have to grapple with the fact that so was Nato’s 1999 intervention in Kosovo, which is now widely regarded as legitimate. The implication? That legality is not the final word.
Current international law is morally problematic. It denies the right of states to use military force unilaterally except in self-defence, while reserving the enforcement of international law for the United Nations Security Council, whose capacity to act is hamstrung by the right of veto in the service of national interests.
The decisive issue in evaluating the Iraq invasion is not whether it was morally flawed or disproportionate or illegal, but whether it was really necessary to stop or prevent a sufficiently great evil. No one disputes that Saddam Hussein’s regime was grossly atrocious. In 1988 it used chemical weapons against Kurdish civilians in what, according to Human Rights Watch, amounted to genocide; and from 1988 to 2003 it murdered at least 400,000 of its own people.
Critics of the invasion would presumably not tolerate such a regime in their own backyard; and an effective international policing authority would have changed it. Is the coalition to be condemned for filling the vacuum? Yes, there have been similar vacuums that it (and others) have failed to fill – Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Darfur. But is it not better to be inconsistently responsible than consistently irresponsible?
Now add the concern about weapons of mass destruction. This was sufficiently grave to rouse the UN to litter the period 1991-2003 with 17 resolutions calling on Saddam to disarm permanently. Given the shocking discovery in the mid-1990s of Iraq’s success in enriching uranium and coming within 24 months of nuclear armament, and given the regime’s persistent flouting of the UN’s will, there was good reason to withhold benefit of doubt and to suppose that it was developing WMDs. It was not just Messrs Bush and Blair who supposed this. So did Jacques Chirac, then French president, and Hans Blix, the UN’s chief weapons inspector.
We now know this reasonable supposition was mistaken and that the problem was less urgent than it appeared. But it was still urgent. Saddam was intent on acquiring nuclear weapons and support for containment was dissolving. David Kelly, Britain’s chief expert on Iraqi WMDs, famous for being driven to commit suicide, is less famous for being convinced that the problem’s only lasting solution was regime-change.
Maybe critics of the war view with equanimity what might have happened without the 2003 invasion, trusting that the secular rationality of Realpolitik would have prevented the rivalry between Iraq’s atrocious Saddam and Iran’s millenarian Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad from turning catastrophically nuclear. In this age of suicide bombers, however, such faith is hard to credit...
The writer is regius professor of moral and pastoral theology at the University of Oxford. He is currently writing a book on the ethics of war
By Nigel Biggar Published: March 10 2010 22:09 Last updated: March 10 2010 22:09
...The Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war has run about half its course. Judging by the dominant reaction of the British press, its sole function is to prove what we all know to be true: that the invasion was immoral and Tony Blair is to blame. The surfeit of moral certainty among the commentators is suspect; the zealous clarity of their moral waters needs muddying.
For sure, the invasion and occupation of Iraq was morally flawed.
The US administration’s motivation was hubristic and preparation for postwar reconstruction was woefully inadequate. Yet most just wars are flawed. Take the war against Nazi Germany. The RAF’s indiscriminate bombing of German cities was largely driven by “Bomber” Harris’s vengeful hatred. While the destruction of Hitler’s hegemony was very good, the entrenchment of Stalin’s was very bad.
Any complex human enterprise will involve moral flaws. What needs determining is whether and how these undermine its justice as a whole. As proof of the Iraq invasion’s wickedness, critics invoke the civilian death toll, soberly reckoned at 100,000-150,000. But Europe’s liberation from Nazi domination cost the lives of 70,000 French civilians and 500,000 German ones through bombing; and, whereas this was the direct responsibility of the British and Americans, most Iraqi civilians were killed by foreign or native insurgents. Yes, the occupying powers were obliged to maintain law and order, and failed initially. But the insurgents were obliged not to send suicide bombers into crowded market places, and they have failed persistently.
Arguments about a war’s disproportion are often intractable.
If one assumes the Iraq war was unjust, then no civilian deaths were worth it. Yet in affirming the justice of the war against Hitler we imply it was worth the deaths of 30m civilians. The loss of 150,000 civilians therefore does not, of itself, make the Iraq war unjust. The invasion would be harder to defend were the country’s new regime to fail. But that has not happened yet, and those critics who care more for Iraqis than they hate the former US and UK leaders George W. Bush and Mr Blair will hope it never does.
If determining the Iraq war’s proportionality is difficult, maybe determining its legality is easier. It would seem so, given the assurance with which some lawyers have damned it before Chilcot. But such condemnations can only be opinions, since international law can be variously interpreted. However, even if we grant that the invasion was illegal, we still have to grapple with the fact that so was Nato’s 1999 intervention in Kosovo, which is now widely regarded as legitimate. The implication? That legality is not the final word.
Current international law is morally problematic. It denies the right of states to use military force unilaterally except in self-defence, while reserving the enforcement of international law for the United Nations Security Council, whose capacity to act is hamstrung by the right of veto in the service of national interests.
The decisive issue in evaluating the Iraq invasion is not whether it was morally flawed or disproportionate or illegal, but whether it was really necessary to stop or prevent a sufficiently great evil. No one disputes that Saddam Hussein’s regime was grossly atrocious. In 1988 it used chemical weapons against Kurdish civilians in what, according to Human Rights Watch, amounted to genocide; and from 1988 to 2003 it murdered at least 400,000 of its own people.
Critics of the invasion would presumably not tolerate such a regime in their own backyard; and an effective international policing authority would have changed it. Is the coalition to be condemned for filling the vacuum? Yes, there have been similar vacuums that it (and others) have failed to fill – Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Darfur. But is it not better to be inconsistently responsible than consistently irresponsible?
Now add the concern about weapons of mass destruction. This was sufficiently grave to rouse the UN to litter the period 1991-2003 with 17 resolutions calling on Saddam to disarm permanently. Given the shocking discovery in the mid-1990s of Iraq’s success in enriching uranium and coming within 24 months of nuclear armament, and given the regime’s persistent flouting of the UN’s will, there was good reason to withhold benefit of doubt and to suppose that it was developing WMDs. It was not just Messrs Bush and Blair who supposed this. So did Jacques Chirac, then French president, and Hans Blix, the UN’s chief weapons inspector.
We now know this reasonable supposition was mistaken and that the problem was less urgent than it appeared. But it was still urgent. Saddam was intent on acquiring nuclear weapons and support for containment was dissolving. David Kelly, Britain’s chief expert on Iraqi WMDs, famous for being driven to commit suicide, is less famous for being convinced that the problem’s only lasting solution was regime-change.
Maybe critics of the war view with equanimity what might have happened without the 2003 invasion, trusting that the secular rationality of Realpolitik would have prevented the rivalry between Iraq’s atrocious Saddam and Iran’s millenarian Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad from turning catastrophically nuclear. In this age of suicide bombers, however, such faith is hard to credit...
The writer is regius professor of moral and pastoral theology at the University of Oxford. He is currently writing a book on the ethics of war
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Climate Change: Global Warming
For a know nothing like me: this leaves me even more confused:
http://www.tvo.org/cfmx/tvoorg/theagenda/index.cfm?page_id=7&bpn=779732&ts=2010-03-09%2020:00:00.0
http://www.tvo.org/cfmx/tvoorg/theagenda/index.cfm?page_id=7&bpn=779732&ts=2010-03-09%2020:00:00.0
March 11, 2010 Barry Rubin on the 1600 Units and Other Things
Barry Rubin from March 11, 2010 Rubin Reports:
There’s been a lot of nonsense written about an Israeli government announcement that 1600 apartments will be built in east Jerusalem. The timing was stupid, of course, since Vice-President Joe Biden was in town and didn’t like the idea. Moreover, to have such an announcement just when indirect talks were about to start between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) doesn’t make Israel look helpful.
But that’s about it.
Anyone who knows Israel really well understands this to be what is called locally a “fashlan,” that is a stupid mess-up as often happens with the government there. Israel combines the candor of a First World country with the bureaucratic incompetence of a Third World one. The ministry simply didn’t think about what the impact would be nor did it consult with the prime minister’s office. It was sheer narrow-visioned incompetence.
Of course, though, Israel has announced since 1993, when the Oslo Agreement was signed, that it would continue building on existing settlements. And the government made clear all along that construction would continue in east Jerusalem. The action, if not the timing, was neither a provocation, the establishment of a “new settlement,” or proof that Israel didn’t want peace.
After all, everyone seems to have forgotten one simple fact: the U.S. government officially accepted Israel's position that it would keep building in east Jerusalem. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton praised the resulting deal. So how all of a sudden can Joe Biden and the U.S. government say they are shocked, shocked to see that construction (in east Jerusalem) is going on when they agreed to that point months ago? (Doesn't it seem rather important for the media to highlight that point rather than make it sound that--aside from the bad timing--Israel did something horrible and unexpected to the U.S. government?)
Actually, it’s sort of amusing that with the PA sabotaging negotiations for around 14 months while Israel was seeking them, the PA’s behavior isn’t taken as some proof that it doesn’t want peace while Israel’s single action demonstrates the opposite.
What this announcement really shows is that Israel doesn’t want or intend to give up all of east Jerusalem as part of a peace agreement, which is not exactly news.
Would it be better for Israel’s international position if the announcement had not been made?
Yes. Because it allows the United States—which needs excuses for the failure to succeed at peacemaking—and the PA and Arab states—which need some rationale for their own policies to blame Israel.
But does it really do any material harm to a peace process which is going nowhere due to Palestinian positions? Or does it make the PA and Arab states, which are supposedly salivating for a peace deal, change their mind?
In both cases, no.
So, stupid yes. But deliberate sabotage or proof of warmongering? No.
There’s been a lot of nonsense written about an Israeli government announcement that 1600 apartments will be built in east Jerusalem. The timing was stupid, of course, since Vice-President Joe Biden was in town and didn’t like the idea. Moreover, to have such an announcement just when indirect talks were about to start between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) doesn’t make Israel look helpful.
But that’s about it.
Anyone who knows Israel really well understands this to be what is called locally a “fashlan,” that is a stupid mess-up as often happens with the government there. Israel combines the candor of a First World country with the bureaucratic incompetence of a Third World one. The ministry simply didn’t think about what the impact would be nor did it consult with the prime minister’s office. It was sheer narrow-visioned incompetence.
Of course, though, Israel has announced since 1993, when the Oslo Agreement was signed, that it would continue building on existing settlements. And the government made clear all along that construction would continue in east Jerusalem. The action, if not the timing, was neither a provocation, the establishment of a “new settlement,” or proof that Israel didn’t want peace.
After all, everyone seems to have forgotten one simple fact: the U.S. government officially accepted Israel's position that it would keep building in east Jerusalem. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton praised the resulting deal. So how all of a sudden can Joe Biden and the U.S. government say they are shocked, shocked to see that construction (in east Jerusalem) is going on when they agreed to that point months ago? (Doesn't it seem rather important for the media to highlight that point rather than make it sound that--aside from the bad timing--Israel did something horrible and unexpected to the U.S. government?)
Actually, it’s sort of amusing that with the PA sabotaging negotiations for around 14 months while Israel was seeking them, the PA’s behavior isn’t taken as some proof that it doesn’t want peace while Israel’s single action demonstrates the opposite.
What this announcement really shows is that Israel doesn’t want or intend to give up all of east Jerusalem as part of a peace agreement, which is not exactly news.
Would it be better for Israel’s international position if the announcement had not been made?
Yes. Because it allows the United States—which needs excuses for the failure to succeed at peacemaking—and the PA and Arab states—which need some rationale for their own policies to blame Israel.
But does it really do any material harm to a peace process which is going nowhere due to Palestinian positions? Or does it make the PA and Arab states, which are supposedly salivating for a peace deal, change their mind?
In both cases, no.
So, stupid yes. But deliberate sabotage or proof of warmongering? No.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
March 11, 2010: Peretz on the 1600 Units and Related Issues
The Relentless Facts Of Palestine: The Tribulations Of Biden And Obama’s Ironic Fate
Marty Peretz
Everything is narrative. And the present “responsible” narrative, we are told, comes from President Obama. It’s too bad he knows very little about the intrinsic history of the dispute or about its present contours, which, after all, he--in his arrogance, vanity, and suave--has done much to make both sides more rigid rather than more amenable to compromise. (Actually it’s at least three sides if you count Hamas-controlled Gaza, which the president blithely ignores ... and more if you count the so-called “Palestinians-in-exile” and the Arab interlopers, like the Saudis, worthy of an executive genuflection, who agitate but don’t really much care. OK, this may be harsh. They do care, maybe a fig or two.)
There is some confusion in the Obama administration about its attitude toward Israel. Joe Biden’s visit to Jerusalem over the last few days actually must have focused all participants and observers on the ambiguities of the relationship. Herb Keinon, the very astute observer of U.S.-Israel relations at the Jerusalem Post, published an article today titled “Veep shows Israel some love.” And in a subhead: “In Jerusalem, Biden reiterates Washington’s ‘absolute, total unvarnished commitment to Israel’s security.’” And this was not all. Biden has his own longtime and almost maternally breastfed affections for Israel. Before meeting with the gaga president of Israel, he observed that the Jewish state “captured my heart. I make no bones about it. That does not mean I do not understand and have a great empathy for the circumstances of the Palestinians, but Israel captured heart and my imagination.”
Then the prime minister gave the vice president a certificate attesting to the fact that a ring of trees had been planted by the Jewish National Fund--for those of you who remember the blue collection box (or, as it was called, the pushke)--in memory of Biden’s mother, Catherine Eugenia Jean Finnegan Biden, who passed on at 92 in January. Biden took the certificate and said, “My love for your country was watered by this Irish lady, who was proudest of me when I was with and for the security of Israel.” This Irish lady, believe me, did not attend the Reverend John Hagee’s church.
Netanyahu’s colleagues did not reciprocate Biden’s gesture at all. The fact is that Bibi is continually undermined by several members of his cabinet and by the members of parliament who belong to their political parties. (Alas, the Israeli parliamentary system is not disciplined parliamentarianism at all.) My guess is that Netanyahu was as surprised as Biden when the interior ministry announced that it had approved construction for 1,600 apartments in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo, which already houses 18,000 (mostly) ultra-orthodox Jews. But I do not believe that Interior Minister Eli Yishai--leader of Shas, the benighted ultra-orthodox party of many Sephardic Jews--was at all surprised as he claimed in a craftily wrought “apology.”
That said, I believe that the great rabbi in the skies has not instructed Israel to force history to stand still. So let me be direct: The Palestinians have only themselves to blame on Jerusalem, as on other disputed matters. In 2000 and 2001, then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak agreed to a peace that included handing over the Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem for the Palestinian capital. (Ehud Olmert made the same offer in 2008). The Arabs always believed that time was on their side, that their reluctance to negotiate and then their reluctance to sign would somehow improve their position. But time does not stand still, and it certainly no longer stands still for the Jews. Having waited in exile for 2,000 years, having struggled over nearly a century for a Jewish commonwealth, have tried to engage its neighbors in parley for more than half a century, the Jewish polity will no longer tarry, and it is justified in not tarrying.
Indeed, the American quick fix of “indirect” negotiations (with poor self-deluded George Mitchell shuttling between Jerusalem and Ramallah) plays into the Palestinian historic habit of eluding reality. But, if they will not sit with the Israelis, how can they possibly make peace with the Israelis? So what Obama’s affinity for the Palestinian sensibility has forced is a dangerous historic retreat that puts American sanction and blessings on fantasy. I actually believe that Netanyahu should have rejected this foolish formula. It is, however, an earnest representation of his commitment to move on with whatever “peace process” there is ... and there will be a peace process. It will end in nothing.
Now, back to Biden. Given that he surely understands this Israeli narrative and doubtless sympathizes with it as well, why did he use the word “condemn” about the announcement of the far-into-the future East Jerusalem housing? After all, if a peace agreement is struck beforehand, the 1,600 units can easily be cancelled. In fact, as Jennifer Rubin aptly points out today at Commentary, “condemn” is a rather shrill word in the affairs of state and is not used casually by the Obami. Mrs. Clinton, no longer a supplicant for Jewish votes and money, has also rushed to the strident in speaking about and to Israel.
I conclude that this is actually administration policy. There is curious confirmation illuminating this in a column by Roger Cohen which has nothing to do with Israel. His piece fixes on Obama’s affinities for cultures and polities that had not been central in the minds of previous American presidents. So this president has actually played rough with our traditional allies and ideological companions. He is, as I have said a few times, a third worlder. We will see how America will do with our true friends sidelined. Perhaps the Brits will console themselves that Obama returned the bust of Winston Churchill that they lent to the White House after 9/11.
Anyway, it is increasingly clear that the president feels more connection to the Palestinians specifically and the Arabs generally than he does to the Israelis (and just possibly more connection to Muslims than to Jews, to Islam than to Judaism and Jewishness.)
So he is stuck with the allies he has chosen. In the long run, it will not matter. The Palestinians will not play even the minimal accommodating role in peace-seeking that Obama has assigned them. There are relentless facts about Palestine that even the president’s disregard for Jewish sensibility and for Israel’s security will not be able to alter.
me:
Marty Peretz
Everything is narrative. And the present “responsible” narrative, we are told, comes from President Obama. It’s too bad he knows very little about the intrinsic history of the dispute or about its present contours, which, after all, he--in his arrogance, vanity, and suave--has done much to make both sides more rigid rather than more amenable to compromise. (Actually it’s at least three sides if you count Hamas-controlled Gaza, which the president blithely ignores ... and more if you count the so-called “Palestinians-in-exile” and the Arab interlopers, like the Saudis, worthy of an executive genuflection, who agitate but don’t really much care. OK, this may be harsh. They do care, maybe a fig or two.)
There is some confusion in the Obama administration about its attitude toward Israel. Joe Biden’s visit to Jerusalem over the last few days actually must have focused all participants and observers on the ambiguities of the relationship. Herb Keinon, the very astute observer of U.S.-Israel relations at the Jerusalem Post, published an article today titled “Veep shows Israel some love.” And in a subhead: “In Jerusalem, Biden reiterates Washington’s ‘absolute, total unvarnished commitment to Israel’s security.’” And this was not all. Biden has his own longtime and almost maternally breastfed affections for Israel. Before meeting with the gaga president of Israel, he observed that the Jewish state “captured my heart. I make no bones about it. That does not mean I do not understand and have a great empathy for the circumstances of the Palestinians, but Israel captured heart and my imagination.”
Then the prime minister gave the vice president a certificate attesting to the fact that a ring of trees had been planted by the Jewish National Fund--for those of you who remember the blue collection box (or, as it was called, the pushke)--in memory of Biden’s mother, Catherine Eugenia Jean Finnegan Biden, who passed on at 92 in January. Biden took the certificate and said, “My love for your country was watered by this Irish lady, who was proudest of me when I was with and for the security of Israel.” This Irish lady, believe me, did not attend the Reverend John Hagee’s church.
Netanyahu’s colleagues did not reciprocate Biden’s gesture at all. The fact is that Bibi is continually undermined by several members of his cabinet and by the members of parliament who belong to their political parties. (Alas, the Israeli parliamentary system is not disciplined parliamentarianism at all.) My guess is that Netanyahu was as surprised as Biden when the interior ministry announced that it had approved construction for 1,600 apartments in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo, which already houses 18,000 (mostly) ultra-orthodox Jews. But I do not believe that Interior Minister Eli Yishai--leader of Shas, the benighted ultra-orthodox party of many Sephardic Jews--was at all surprised as he claimed in a craftily wrought “apology.”
That said, I believe that the great rabbi in the skies has not instructed Israel to force history to stand still. So let me be direct: The Palestinians have only themselves to blame on Jerusalem, as on other disputed matters. In 2000 and 2001, then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak agreed to a peace that included handing over the Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem for the Palestinian capital. (Ehud Olmert made the same offer in 2008). The Arabs always believed that time was on their side, that their reluctance to negotiate and then their reluctance to sign would somehow improve their position. But time does not stand still, and it certainly no longer stands still for the Jews. Having waited in exile for 2,000 years, having struggled over nearly a century for a Jewish commonwealth, have tried to engage its neighbors in parley for more than half a century, the Jewish polity will no longer tarry, and it is justified in not tarrying.
Indeed, the American quick fix of “indirect” negotiations (with poor self-deluded George Mitchell shuttling between Jerusalem and Ramallah) plays into the Palestinian historic habit of eluding reality. But, if they will not sit with the Israelis, how can they possibly make peace with the Israelis? So what Obama’s affinity for the Palestinian sensibility has forced is a dangerous historic retreat that puts American sanction and blessings on fantasy. I actually believe that Netanyahu should have rejected this foolish formula. It is, however, an earnest representation of his commitment to move on with whatever “peace process” there is ... and there will be a peace process. It will end in nothing.
Now, back to Biden. Given that he surely understands this Israeli narrative and doubtless sympathizes with it as well, why did he use the word “condemn” about the announcement of the far-into-the future East Jerusalem housing? After all, if a peace agreement is struck beforehand, the 1,600 units can easily be cancelled. In fact, as Jennifer Rubin aptly points out today at Commentary, “condemn” is a rather shrill word in the affairs of state and is not used casually by the Obami. Mrs. Clinton, no longer a supplicant for Jewish votes and money, has also rushed to the strident in speaking about and to Israel.
I conclude that this is actually administration policy. There is curious confirmation illuminating this in a column by Roger Cohen which has nothing to do with Israel. His piece fixes on Obama’s affinities for cultures and polities that had not been central in the minds of previous American presidents. So this president has actually played rough with our traditional allies and ideological companions. He is, as I have said a few times, a third worlder. We will see how America will do with our true friends sidelined. Perhaps the Brits will console themselves that Obama returned the bust of Winston Churchill that they lent to the White House after 9/11.
Anyway, it is increasingly clear that the president feels more connection to the Palestinians specifically and the Arabs generally than he does to the Israelis (and just possibly more connection to Muslims than to Jews, to Islam than to Judaism and Jewishness.)
So he is stuck with the allies he has chosen. In the long run, it will not matter. The Palestinians will not play even the minimal accommodating role in peace-seeking that Obama has assigned them. There are relentless facts about Palestine that even the president’s disregard for Jewish sensibility and for Israel’s security will not be able to alter.
me:
I can't understand any pragmatic justification for the announcement nor the case for why it isn't an instance of diplomatic and political incompetence. In this case, Peretz's post is unpersuasive and attenuated. The cost of alienating Israel's closest and most urgently necessary ally outweighs any benefits accruing from this uneccssarily provocative and badly mistimed act.
Retreating and resorting to narrative--something Peretz condemns, as narrative encroaches on history--and overarching assignments of blame, even if correct, cannot explain away or justify the sheer incompetence of the announcement.
Jonathan Tobin in Contentions on March 10, 2010 (as slightly edited by me):
...However, Israel’s is right to build homes in its own capital. Netanyahu rightly opposed extending the freeze on building in the West Bank to Jerusalem. President Obama’s criticisms of Jewish building there were met with almost universal opposition on the part of Israelis, a factor that helped solidify Netanyahu’s popularity and the stability of his coalition.
But the argument is made that if Israelis expect the world to support their opposition to the Palestinians’ assertion of a so-called “right of return” to parts of the country they fled in 1948, Jews cannot at the same time claim their own right to return to property that was lost to the Arabs even in Jerusalem. Thus, according to this reasoning, the building of Jewish homes in East Jerusalem or even the reassertion of control over existing buildings that were Jewish property in 1948 across the Green Line is illegitimate and hypocritical as well as an obstacle to creating a Palestinian state with parts of Jerusalem as its capital.
The problem here is that while Arabs and their Jewish supporters assume that keeping all Jews out of East Jerusalem is a prerequisite of Palestinian independence, no one questions the right of Israeli Arabs to live in any part of Jerusalem, including the sections that were under Israeli control from 1949 to 1967.
Thus, the hypocrisy is not on the part of Israel but rather its critics. So long as Arabs are free to buy and/or build in West Jerusalem, banning Jews from doing the same in the eastern part of the city that was illegally occupied by Jordan from 1949 to 1967 is discriminatory. And even if a peace deal were ever adopted in which parts of the city were given to a Palestinian state, why would the presence of Jews there prevent such a pact, since no responsible person would expect such an agreement to also specify the eviction of Arabs from Israel?
Moreover, the idea that it is a form of colonialism for Israelis to have the chutzpah to attempt to live in parts of Jerusalem is not only wrong-headed; it is based on a historical mistake that East Jerusalem has always been off-limits to Jews. There has been a Jewish majority in Jerusalem since the mid-19th century. These areas are seeped in both ancient and modern Jewish history. Indeed, even Mackey’s own post included the information that the most controversial building site, the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, was “a Jewish enclave” until 1948. The only real tradition here is the Times’s misreporting of the situation, as well as the Arab campaign to delegitimize the Jewish presence in the city.
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