Frittering away the freeze
By JERUSALEM POST EDITORIAL
24/08/2010
Abbas is already threatening to stop talks.
Talks between Israel and the Palestinians have not yet begun, and already Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is threatening to stop them.
In a letter sent Sunday to the Quartet – the US, the EU, the UN and Russia – Abbas warned that if construction continues anywhere beyond the Green Line, he will pull out of negotiations. “Settlements and peace are parallels that don’t meet,” Abbas wrote. “If Israel continues with settlement construction, we will withdraw from talks.”
The PA president’s letter is clearly a response to the severe criticism directed at him by Palestinian political and organizational figures for agreeing to return to direct talks without preconditions. But it also highlights a major political dilemma that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu will be forced to face very soon.
It would be political suicide for Netanyahu to agree to maintain the “once-only” 10-month new-construction freeze he instituted throughout Judea and Samaria last November, not to mention extending it to Jewish neighborhoods in parts of east Jerusalem annexed after the Six Day War, as the Palestinians demand. It would also send out the false message that Israel might be ready to evacuate all Jewish settlements beyond the 1949 Armistice lines.
Deputy Premier Dan Meridor’s suggestion to limit the freeze to areas located outside Jerusalem and outside the major settlement blocs Israel intends to retain via land swaps under a permanent accord – Ariel, Ma’aleh Adumim and the Etzion settlements – has a much better chance of receiving broad support, and is much more realistic.
Except Abbas has now made clear that it won’t be sufficient.
THE PRESENT building freeze has hit settlers hard. Most of the 492 housing unit “violations” of the freeze, as documented by Peace Now, were in consensus cities such as the haredi Modi’in Illit, which had 180 such violations. This town of 45,000, which has the highest fertility rate in the country, is located just across the Green Line.
Additional violations were in the Jerusalem suburb of Givat Ze’ev (40), and in Ariel (22), Ma’aleh Adumim (21) and Kfar Etzion (20), which are all expected to be annexed under any future two-state solution.
These exceptions have done little to alleviate the major “natural growth” housing shortage at many settlements.
At the beginning of the year 301,200 Jews lived in Judea and Samaria, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics, about two-thirds of them in the large settlement blocs.
And population growth there is running at a brisk annual rate of 5 percent, over double Israel’s general population growth rate of 1.8%.
Young families living in cramped conditions are anxiously waiting for the freeze to end so they can build homes, while veteran settlers want to expand existing homes to accommodate their growing families. And this is happening at a time when Israel proper, within the Green Line, is experiencing a major housing shortage of its own.
Ruling throughout the West Bank, which is populated by well over two million Palestinians, is not an Israeli interest. The demographic threat to a Jewish majority is obvious. And Israel has no desire to police a population that bitterly views itself as occupied.
Over four decades have transpired since Israel, pre-empting an attack by the combined armies of the Arab world in the Six Day War, ended up controlling territory, previously held by Jordan, that had enormous Jewish historical significance.
During this time, certain “facts on the ground” have been created in Jerusalem and the large settlement blocs, while the Palestinian strategic response to Israel’s presence has ranged from stubborn intransigence to murderous resistance.
Now, after 18 months of energetic US diplomacy, the Palestinian leader who claimed prime minister Ehud Olmert’s generous peace offer left gaps that were “too wide,” is finally being dragged back to talks aimed at the ostensibly shared goal of a peaceful two-state solution.
ABBAS PURPORTS to be ready for the kind of territorial swaps that would help facilitate an accord by formalizing the integration of the settlement blocs into Israel, along with the Jewish east Jerusalem neighborhoods where Israel already claims sovereignty. Yet the PA president’s demand for a blanket building moratorium that makes no distinctions between such territories and other, isolated settlements indicates ongoing intransigence.
Abbas has already frittered away nine months of the building freeze – an unprecedentedly encouraging context for a genuine attempt at peacemaking. Now he is vowing to walk away if the freeze is not merely maintained, but expanded – to the very areas Israel reasonably insists on retaining.
It’s hardly an optimistic harbinger for the talks ahead.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Handling Hamas?
August 25, 2010
How to Handle Hamas
By DANIEL BYMAN
The biggest obstacle to peace between Israelis and Palestinians is the emergence of Hamas as the de facto government of the Gaza Strip, where 1.5 million Palestinians reside. Peace talks can begin with Hamas on the sidelines, but they cannot finish if Hamas refuses to play ball.
Hamas has proved that it has the means to disrupt peace talks with rocket and mortar strikes, shootings of Israeli soldiers and agricultural workers near the Gaza border, and the kidnapping of personnel from the Israel Defense Forces. But it can also undermine peace talks without using violence.
Hamas can allow other terrorist groups to operate from Gaza and claim impotence or ignorance. It can also stymie talks politically. Hamas regularly argues that the Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas, whose power base is in the West Bank, is selling out the Palestinian cause. This makes it harder for Abbas to entertain concessions to Israel, particularly if they involve no immediate quid pro quo from Israel.
In the meantime, Israel, Egypt and the international community have put Gaza under siege to isolate and weaken Hamas, ideally leading to its overthrow or collapse. Israel, however, has tried to coerce Hamas without causing mass starvation — a difficult balance. Although Israeli policies keep Gaza near the brink, Hamas knows Israel will not let the Strip go over the cliff.
This is small comfort to Gazans. Aid agencies now put Gaza’s poverty rate at 80 percent, and the world lays the blame for this suffering at Israel’s feet. Hamas, despite its aggressive and repressive agenda, is successfully portraying itself as a victim of Israeli cruelty and violence.
The siege of Gaza has failed on another level: It has not crippled Hamas. Today, Hamas has a monopoly on the use of force in the Gaza Strip, and its political clout among Palestinians has grown at the expense of moderates such as Abbas. The siege has increased the importance of the social services that it provides and it also taxes the goods smuggled through tunnels between Gaza and Egypt. Hamas has found it easier to raise money from Iran, which is eager to attach its name to such a high-profile and popular anti-Israel group.
Some Israelis believe that the alternative to the siege is to confront Hamas head-on, removing it from power by reoccupying Gaza and forcing it underground. But that strategy would lead Israel into a quagmire. And occupying Gaza again would hurt Israel’s relations with the United States, the international community and the moderate Palestinian leadership of the West Bank.
If Hamas cannot be uprooted, it might be convinced to not disrupt peace talks with violence and tone down its rhetoric. In order for Hamas to want a lasting cease-fire, Israel and its allies must change the organization’s decision-making calculus — a process that will require both incentives and threats.
One way to go about this would be for Israel to allow the regular flow of goods into Gaza with international, rather than Israeli, monitors manning the crossing points. Israeli intelligence would still watch what goes in and out to ensure that the monitors did their job, but symbolically the switch would be important.
In exchange, Hamas would commit to a lasting cease-fire and agree to stop all attacks from the territory under its control. Hamas would also close the tunnels and end its smuggling.
Such a deal would allow Hamas to claim credit for improving the lives of Gazans, and it could use the resulting increase in the flow of goods to reward its supporters. For Israel, the regular rocket attacks would come to a complete halt and the threat of renewed attacks would diminish. A cease-fire would also free up Israel diplomatically. If the problem of Hamas receded, Israel could take more risks at the negotiating table with Abbas.
Palestinian moderates would rightly complain that Israel was rewarding violence. And if Gaza’s economy improved, the contrast between living conditions there and living conditions in the West Bank would become less stark, which would hurt Abbas politically. In order to offset any political gains Hamas might make, the international community should encourage efforts to provide law and order, reduce corruption, and otherwise build a state in the West Bank. This would help make Abbas’ government a true rival to Hamas when it came to governance.
Formalizing the cease-fire with Hamas would raise the question of whether Israel and moderate Palestinians were simply postponing an inevitable fight and allowing the enemy to get stronger. However, if the rocket attacks from Gaza resumed or if credible evidence emerged that Hamas was dramatically increasing its military capabilities, Israel would have a strong case for resuming the siege in a more comprehensive way or using force. The international community, therefore, must support not only the idea of formalizing the cease-fire but also Israel’s right to retaliate militarily if, despite Israel’s concessions, Hamas returned to violence.
Daniel Byman is a professor in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University and a senior fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. A longer version of this article will appear in the September/October issue of Foreign Affairs.
How to Handle Hamas
By DANIEL BYMAN
The biggest obstacle to peace between Israelis and Palestinians is the emergence of Hamas as the de facto government of the Gaza Strip, where 1.5 million Palestinians reside. Peace talks can begin with Hamas on the sidelines, but they cannot finish if Hamas refuses to play ball.
Hamas has proved that it has the means to disrupt peace talks with rocket and mortar strikes, shootings of Israeli soldiers and agricultural workers near the Gaza border, and the kidnapping of personnel from the Israel Defense Forces. But it can also undermine peace talks without using violence.
Hamas can allow other terrorist groups to operate from Gaza and claim impotence or ignorance. It can also stymie talks politically. Hamas regularly argues that the Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas, whose power base is in the West Bank, is selling out the Palestinian cause. This makes it harder for Abbas to entertain concessions to Israel, particularly if they involve no immediate quid pro quo from Israel.
In the meantime, Israel, Egypt and the international community have put Gaza under siege to isolate and weaken Hamas, ideally leading to its overthrow or collapse. Israel, however, has tried to coerce Hamas without causing mass starvation — a difficult balance. Although Israeli policies keep Gaza near the brink, Hamas knows Israel will not let the Strip go over the cliff.
This is small comfort to Gazans. Aid agencies now put Gaza’s poverty rate at 80 percent, and the world lays the blame for this suffering at Israel’s feet. Hamas, despite its aggressive and repressive agenda, is successfully portraying itself as a victim of Israeli cruelty and violence.
The siege of Gaza has failed on another level: It has not crippled Hamas. Today, Hamas has a monopoly on the use of force in the Gaza Strip, and its political clout among Palestinians has grown at the expense of moderates such as Abbas. The siege has increased the importance of the social services that it provides and it also taxes the goods smuggled through tunnels between Gaza and Egypt. Hamas has found it easier to raise money from Iran, which is eager to attach its name to such a high-profile and popular anti-Israel group.
Some Israelis believe that the alternative to the siege is to confront Hamas head-on, removing it from power by reoccupying Gaza and forcing it underground. But that strategy would lead Israel into a quagmire. And occupying Gaza again would hurt Israel’s relations with the United States, the international community and the moderate Palestinian leadership of the West Bank.
If Hamas cannot be uprooted, it might be convinced to not disrupt peace talks with violence and tone down its rhetoric. In order for Hamas to want a lasting cease-fire, Israel and its allies must change the organization’s decision-making calculus — a process that will require both incentives and threats.
One way to go about this would be for Israel to allow the regular flow of goods into Gaza with international, rather than Israeli, monitors manning the crossing points. Israeli intelligence would still watch what goes in and out to ensure that the monitors did their job, but symbolically the switch would be important.
In exchange, Hamas would commit to a lasting cease-fire and agree to stop all attacks from the territory under its control. Hamas would also close the tunnels and end its smuggling.
Such a deal would allow Hamas to claim credit for improving the lives of Gazans, and it could use the resulting increase in the flow of goods to reward its supporters. For Israel, the regular rocket attacks would come to a complete halt and the threat of renewed attacks would diminish. A cease-fire would also free up Israel diplomatically. If the problem of Hamas receded, Israel could take more risks at the negotiating table with Abbas.
Palestinian moderates would rightly complain that Israel was rewarding violence. And if Gaza’s economy improved, the contrast between living conditions there and living conditions in the West Bank would become less stark, which would hurt Abbas politically. In order to offset any political gains Hamas might make, the international community should encourage efforts to provide law and order, reduce corruption, and otherwise build a state in the West Bank. This would help make Abbas’ government a true rival to Hamas when it came to governance.
Formalizing the cease-fire with Hamas would raise the question of whether Israel and moderate Palestinians were simply postponing an inevitable fight and allowing the enemy to get stronger. However, if the rocket attacks from Gaza resumed or if credible evidence emerged that Hamas was dramatically increasing its military capabilities, Israel would have a strong case for resuming the siege in a more comprehensive way or using force. The international community, therefore, must support not only the idea of formalizing the cease-fire but also Israel’s right to retaliate militarily if, despite Israel’s concessions, Hamas returned to violence.
Daniel Byman is a professor in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University and a senior fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. A longer version of this article will appear in the September/October issue of Foreign Affairs.
Claire Berlinski on Turkey
Smile and Smile: Turkey's Feel-Good Foreign Policy
Claire Berlinski
As the First General Law of Travel tells us, every nation is its stereotype. Americans are indeed fat and overbearing, Mexicans lazy and pilfering, Germans disciplined and perverted. The Turks, as everyone knows, are insane and deceitful. I say this affectionately. I live in Turkey. On good days, I love Turkey. But I have long since learned that its people are apt to go berserk on you for no reason whatsoever, and you just can’t trust a word they say. As one Turkish friend put it (a man who has spent many years in America, and thus grasps the depth of the cultural chasm), “It’s not that they’re bad. They don’t even know they’re lying.”
My friend is right, and his comment suggests a point about Turkish culture that I doubt many Westerners grasp. People here—and, I would guess, throughout the Middle East and Mediterranean, though Turkey is the only country I know well—see “truth” as something plastic, connected more to emotions than to facts or logic. If it feels true, it is true. What’s more, feelings here tend to change very quickly—and with them, the truth.
Take, for instance, my former landlord. Last year, my apartment was burgled. Under Turkish law, if your apartment is burgled, you have the right to insist that your landlord install bars on your windows. When I put this to my landlord, he objected, screaming violently, as so often people here do for no reason any American would accept as legitimate. First, my landlord screamed, there was no risk of burglary: there had never before been a burglary in our neighborhood. (Actually, our neighborhood was notorious for it.) Second, he screamed, to install bars would create a hazard: burglars would use them to climb up to the second floor. He offered both arguments in the same sentence. He was unperturbed by the obvious problem with his line of reasoning.
Later, when I discussed the matter with Turkish friends, they explained to me that I had made a critical negotiating mistake: I had insulted his honor by telling him I would have bars installed rather than asking him. The argument, they explained, had nothing to do with the real risk of burglary, and certainly nothing to do with my rights under Turkish rental law. It was about my failure to show the man the proper respect.
I’m not sure my Turkish friends were right about that, though. They are, after all, Turkish, so they pretty much say whatever sounds good to them at the time. They tend to explain these situations ex post facto with appeals to the subtleties of Turkish culture, but the story never stays the same. I’ve been in similar situations in which these same Turkish friends have explained that my mistake was asking, rather than telling. Asking, they have assured me, is a sign of weakness, so no wonder my adversaries sought to take advantage.
Not only is truth here derived from emotion, but the emotions themselves are more intense and more transitory. Arguing a mild difference of opinion by screaming and threatening would come across to Westerners as weak at best, lunatic at worst. Not here. No shame attaches to displays of anger that in the West would result in the issuance of restraining orders. The fights dissipate as quickly as they start; everyone proceeds to drink tea and moistly proclaim their mutual love. The entire incident is then forgotten, except by the American, who is still shaking with rage and nurtures her resentment forever.
The Turkish diplomat Namik Tan put it to me this way, shortly before decamping for his new job as ambassador to the United States, then promptly being recalled to Turkey to express the nation’s diplomatic pique at an ostensible insult to Turkish honor, then returning to America again, presumably to drink tea and proclaim Turkey’s love: “The West must understand,” he said, “that in this region, two plus two doesn’t always equal four. Sometimes it equals six, sometimes ten. You cannot hope to understand this region unless you grasp this.” You might think he meant this metaphorically, but in my experience this is literal. If someone here feels very strongly that he wants two plus two to make ten (or two o’clock to be ten o’clock, in the case, say, of a promise to deliver goods or services on a deadline), then—voilà!—that’s what it means, and there is an emotional truth to it, in the mind of the speaker, that is morally more important than any literal truth.
They don’t even know they’re lying. In Turkey, it is normal and expected to say that you will do something, have done something, or agree with something when, in fact, you won’t, haven’t, or don’t. This is so common that no one thinks of it as lying, in the sense that it is not viewed as unethical. It is just being polite. They assume you know they’re not being truthful, and they expect you to be lying as well, so it all evens out. I remember precisely the moment it dawned on me that this is how things work here. I’d asked a Turkish friend to send me an e-mail before noon. I don’t remember what it was all about now, but it was business-related. Knowing that time here is also a highly plastic concept, I’d pressed the point quite firmly: Before noon. Before the big hand and the little hand are pointing straight up. I had elicited multiple, firm promises that the information would be sent before noon, and that he understood the importance of this. I communicated the reasons why, should he fail to do this, it would cause quite a number of serious problems, not just to me, but to him, because it concerned a joint business venture. (Terrible idea in the first place, but that’s another story.) He agreed at least three times that he would send it.
When he didn’t, I was vexed. “Why,” I asked, “did you say you would send it if you didn’t mean it? If I’d known you weren’t going to do it, I would have known to plan things differently.”
He took umbrage at my tone. “You should have known I didn’t mean it,” he said angrily.
“How should I have known?”
“Because,” he exploded, “I didn’t want to!” He was enraged, I think, that I could be so obtuse.
These aspects of the Turkish national character have obvious significance to anyone who doubts the world would be better off with the Persian Gulf under an Iranian nuclear shield, and all of southern Europe and the Middle East within striking distance of nuclear-tipped Iranian missiles, which is to say, anyone rational, which is to say, not the prime minister of Turkey, who is, obviously, Turkish, and says pretty much whatever sounds good to him at the time.
When I hear American officials discussing this region, I shudder. My government is obviously out of its depth. For all the talk of President Obama’s secret, traitorous sympathy with the Islamic world, or his childhood experience of the mysteries of the exotic Other, the man is—obviously—as American as a stalk of corn waving lonely on a Kansas plain. I am certain he, and everyone around him, thinks in terms of “reasons,” “logic,” “arguments,” “truth,” and “facts.” I am sure that deep down, he believes everyone does. All Americans do, just as all Turks believe the rest of the world is basically like them.
The utter irrationality of Turks—and the utter uselessness, for them, of our Western notions of truth and logic—are points Americans won’t grasp unless they’ve lived here quite some time—and even then they won’t grasp them, because they make no sense. But they’d best begin to try, because the prime minister is quite busy sending flotillas of unusually fractious Turkish humanitarians into war zones, transforming himself into the improbable hero of Hamas, and practicing nuclear diplomacy à la Turca. American negotiators were no doubt scratching their heads upon learning that Turkey had not merely abstained from voting on the Iranian sanctions package, but voted against it. An abstention, after all, would have registered Turkish misgivings more than adequately; the “no” vote manifestly obviates everything Turkey has long been saying about the role it seeks to play as a bridge between the East and the West, particularly in the wake of the Gaza flotilla fiasco. The bridge is now burnt. Turkey has taken sides, and the winner is the East.
According to its government, Turkey rejected the sanctions package because it had something better to offer, namely, the Turkish-Brazilian fuel swap. The logic of the recently negotiated deal with Iran was explained splendidly by one Professor Tolga Yarman from Okan University, in comments cited approvingly by the daily Zaman, a paper closely associated with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government. Yarman, the paper reported, “drew a similarity between Iran’s rugs and the nuclear deal, saying Iran is giving away its nuclear rope and giving up waving its nuclear carpet and in return getting a nuclear rug.” Don’t bother trying to parse that. No, nothing lost in translation either. You just have to shut your eyes and get in the mood: Iran’s getting a nuclear rug—we call this rug Shiva, destroyer of worlds—so rejoice.
What Turkey is getting from the deal is rather more unclear. If you look closely at the terms—with cold, soulless, logical, Western eyes—you’ll notice that what Turkey would appear to be getting is a very large amount of radioactive waste. In exchange, it plans to give Iran highly enriched uranium for free, having extracted no meaningful concessions. Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman, Ramin Mehmanparast, declared immediately after the announcement of the deal that of course Iran would continue its own uranium enrichment program. Turkey agreeably pronounced this a wonderful diplomatic triumph that obviated the need for sanctions. It was, Turkish diplomats insisted, just like the deal the West had tried to get from Iran six months prior but failed to obtain.
Now, this is partially true: Americans did propose a similar deal. But the key to the deal they proposed was that Iran would agree to stop enriching its own nuclear material. And that was when Iran had only half as much nuclear material to swap. Iran was supposed to trade it all for fuel rods suitable for medical research. It’s true that the same amount of material is to be exchanged under the terms of this new plan as under the old one. But when the plan was last proposed, in October, the swap would have left Iran with less than the one thousand kilograms of material needed to produce weapons-grade uranium. Since then, Iran has continued to churn out low-enriched material. It now has twice as much, and it will keep more than enough to build weapons. The logic of the original plan, in other words, has been completely obviated; only the idea of a swap remains. The new deal is entirely to Iran’s advantage. But logic is not the source of this initiative: emotions are.
From the Turkish point of view, there is a good feeling, and that’s good enough. Moreover, the Turks are furious over the Israeli raid on the Mavi Marmara, and furious here is reason sufficient unto itself. No one in the Turkish press is asking why a boat with civilian women and children on board was sent to break a military blockade, or why that blockade was imposed in the first place, or how Turkey might have reacted had Israel sent a similar flotilla to deliver uninspected cargo to strongholds of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (the PKK). Nor are they asking who would be the losers in a Turkish-Israeli naval battle—only weeks ago an unreal, apocalyptic prospect, but now well within the realm of imagination. No one is noting that there is a contradiction in the Turkish position. Diplomacy, Turkish leaders insist, is the only solution to the Iranian threat, but this enthusiasm for diplomacy was hardly on display when the decision was made to challenge the Israeli military using a boat packed with agitated human shields. The Turkish government offers its arguments for diplomacy with Iran and provocation toward Israel in the same sentence. No one here seems perturbed by the obvious problem with
this line of reasoning.
Many in the West have interpreted the Turkish position as evidence that the place is under the control of Islamic crypto-fundamentalists. This is certainly part of the picture and a very important part, but do not make the mistake of thinking that’s all there is to it. The West is overlooking something both more subtle and more obvious: Emotions are running the show. The Turks have a good feeling about their recent encounters with Iran and a bad feeling about their recent encounters with Israel. Long-term, rational economic and geostrategic interests? To hell with those. The patient, subtle advancement of an Islamist agenda? To hell with that, too. This is a logic-free zone. Iran’s not a threat. No sanctions need be applied.
The only real material advantage that accrues to Turkey from the bargain is the chance to do trade with Iran—in the short term, at least. I single out Turkey for no special opprobrium in noting that its government finds it commercially advantageous to pretend there’s nothing going on in Iran requiring any urgent further attention from the world; France and Russia have long followed the same policy. But France and Russia are both nuclear powers in their own right. Should Iran acquire the Bomb, they at least have a deterrent. Turkey is not a nuclear power. Iran is a state with whom it has a very long history of enmity and quite a number of significant outstanding geostrategic and religious conflicts. The Ottoman and Persian Empires have been competing for regional hegemony since the Safavid and Qajar dynasties. As the nineteenth-century Ottoman statesman Fuad Paşa remarked, in comments no less true today,
The government of [Iran], which is in a state of continual disorder and in the grip of Shiite fanaticism, has always been at one and in agreement with our enemies. Even in the Crimean War, she came to an agreement with Russia and united her ambitions with hers. The fact that she was unable to bring her hostile calculations to fruition was due to the West’s prudent and vigilant diplomacy. Today, the Shah’s government follows in the wake of [Russia]. As long as the Ottoman government is not occupied elsewhere, the discredited Iranian government, being impotent, ignorant, and incapable of taking any initiative on its own, dares not quarrel with us. However, at the moment of our first confrontation with Russia, Iran will take her place among our most irreconcilable enemies, due to her political dependence and, more important, her blind jealousy, in spite of our cautious and well-intentioned attitude.
Russia’s fear of rising nationalism among its Turkic minorities gives it good reason to favor Iran. An Iran in possession of nuclear weapons would almost certainly cooperate with Russia to the detriment of Turkey, dominate Central Asia and the Caucasus, and put an end to Turkish aspirations to be a great power. A regional nuclear arms race would likely ensue. Iran has close diplomatic relations with Armenia; Turkey has no diplomatic relations with Armenia. Tehran has supported the Kurdish-separatist PKK, with which Turkey is at war. The Iranians are still Shiite fanatics who deplore both Sunni Islam and the Turkish secular state. There is no way whatsoever that it could be in Turkey’s long-term military or economic interests to live next door to a nuclear Iran, however impressive the short-term trade benefits of this deal might be—and they are not even that impressive.
“Long-term thinking,” however, is not really a Turkish trait. If something works for the next two hours, many a Turkish repairman has assured me, that’s good enough. Foreigners here have a word for the kind of jerry-rigged system Turks like to construct rather than building something that might still work in ten years’ time: Turknology. My apartment is full of Turknological wonders: wires that for the moment seem to be conveying electricity, even if I dare not touch them; windows that at least serve to keep the rain out, though they cannot be opened.
American policymakers know this deal makes no sense, but they’re tripped up at the logical stumbling block: Why on earth are the Turks so pleased about it? (Having never once visited Brazil, I won’t begin to try to explain what they are getting out of it, although I would note that Brazil is tough to reach with intermediate-range ballistic missiles, so it can afford to be a bit more cavalier about these things. And, of course, they haven’t offered to adopt Iran’s radioactive pets.)
What Turkey is getting out of it, hard though this is for Americans to grasp, is the feeling that a happy deal has been concluded, and even more importantly, the feeling that Turkey matters. As one commenter on the English Web site of the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet put it, “For the first time Turquey [sic] is showing to all the world that it can propose serious solutions to problems that neither US nor the West could solve it. Turquey is becoming a big and powerful nation who deserves respect and proud.” It is irrelevant, in this universe, whether the solutions are, in reality, serious. Few people here are thinking that deeply about it. Most are just thrilled that the world must now pay attention to Turkey—and tickled that the West doesn’t like it. Of course, there are some people here who are thinking deeply about the ramifications of these policies, and they’re terrified. “We’re going to lose everything we’ve worked for like this,” one acquaintance said to me. “We’ll end up back in the Stone Age.”
Critics of the deal “are envious,” Prime Minister Erdogan declared, “because Brazil and Turkey brokered and pulled off a diplomatic success that other countries had been negotiating without result for many years.” It doesn’t matter that he didn’t pull it off either, or that what other countries had been trying to achieve, in proposing similar exchanges, was a deal in which Iran agreed to stop enriching the damned stuff altogether. The emotions are the facts. Stranger still, Erdogan almost certainly truly believes that the objections are rooted in envy. He too assumes everyone lives in a world like his, one in which the emotions are the facts, and it is not an incidental point that in Turkey envy is a particularly important emotion. Envy of the West—in tandem with envy’s sibling, resentment—has certainly helped define modern Turkey, so it could truly seem plausible, in his mind, that the sentiment runs both ways.
From an anthropological point of view, this is all very interesting and curious. From a strategic point of view, it’s a disaster—for the West, of course, but much more so for Turkey, which will find out soon enough that whatever anyone might feel, two plus two does equal four, every single time, and the difference between half and all the uranium is actually quite significant.
What should the West do? Beats me. All I know is that calmly pointing this out will have absolutely no effect. I, after all, can’t even persuade a Turk to send an e-mail on time. Even when he promises.
Claire Berlinski is a novelist, journalist, and biographer. Her most recent book is There Is No Alternative: Why Margaret Thatcher Matters.
Claire Berlinski
As the First General Law of Travel tells us, every nation is its stereotype. Americans are indeed fat and overbearing, Mexicans lazy and pilfering, Germans disciplined and perverted. The Turks, as everyone knows, are insane and deceitful. I say this affectionately. I live in Turkey. On good days, I love Turkey. But I have long since learned that its people are apt to go berserk on you for no reason whatsoever, and you just can’t trust a word they say. As one Turkish friend put it (a man who has spent many years in America, and thus grasps the depth of the cultural chasm), “It’s not that they’re bad. They don’t even know they’re lying.”
My friend is right, and his comment suggests a point about Turkish culture that I doubt many Westerners grasp. People here—and, I would guess, throughout the Middle East and Mediterranean, though Turkey is the only country I know well—see “truth” as something plastic, connected more to emotions than to facts or logic. If it feels true, it is true. What’s more, feelings here tend to change very quickly—and with them, the truth.
Take, for instance, my former landlord. Last year, my apartment was burgled. Under Turkish law, if your apartment is burgled, you have the right to insist that your landlord install bars on your windows. When I put this to my landlord, he objected, screaming violently, as so often people here do for no reason any American would accept as legitimate. First, my landlord screamed, there was no risk of burglary: there had never before been a burglary in our neighborhood. (Actually, our neighborhood was notorious for it.) Second, he screamed, to install bars would create a hazard: burglars would use them to climb up to the second floor. He offered both arguments in the same sentence. He was unperturbed by the obvious problem with his line of reasoning.
Later, when I discussed the matter with Turkish friends, they explained to me that I had made a critical negotiating mistake: I had insulted his honor by telling him I would have bars installed rather than asking him. The argument, they explained, had nothing to do with the real risk of burglary, and certainly nothing to do with my rights under Turkish rental law. It was about my failure to show the man the proper respect.
I’m not sure my Turkish friends were right about that, though. They are, after all, Turkish, so they pretty much say whatever sounds good to them at the time. They tend to explain these situations ex post facto with appeals to the subtleties of Turkish culture, but the story never stays the same. I’ve been in similar situations in which these same Turkish friends have explained that my mistake was asking, rather than telling. Asking, they have assured me, is a sign of weakness, so no wonder my adversaries sought to take advantage.
Not only is truth here derived from emotion, but the emotions themselves are more intense and more transitory. Arguing a mild difference of opinion by screaming and threatening would come across to Westerners as weak at best, lunatic at worst. Not here. No shame attaches to displays of anger that in the West would result in the issuance of restraining orders. The fights dissipate as quickly as they start; everyone proceeds to drink tea and moistly proclaim their mutual love. The entire incident is then forgotten, except by the American, who is still shaking with rage and nurtures her resentment forever.
The Turkish diplomat Namik Tan put it to me this way, shortly before decamping for his new job as ambassador to the United States, then promptly being recalled to Turkey to express the nation’s diplomatic pique at an ostensible insult to Turkish honor, then returning to America again, presumably to drink tea and proclaim Turkey’s love: “The West must understand,” he said, “that in this region, two plus two doesn’t always equal four. Sometimes it equals six, sometimes ten. You cannot hope to understand this region unless you grasp this.” You might think he meant this metaphorically, but in my experience this is literal. If someone here feels very strongly that he wants two plus two to make ten (or two o’clock to be ten o’clock, in the case, say, of a promise to deliver goods or services on a deadline), then—voilà!—that’s what it means, and there is an emotional truth to it, in the mind of the speaker, that is morally more important than any literal truth.
They don’t even know they’re lying. In Turkey, it is normal and expected to say that you will do something, have done something, or agree with something when, in fact, you won’t, haven’t, or don’t. This is so common that no one thinks of it as lying, in the sense that it is not viewed as unethical. It is just being polite. They assume you know they’re not being truthful, and they expect you to be lying as well, so it all evens out. I remember precisely the moment it dawned on me that this is how things work here. I’d asked a Turkish friend to send me an e-mail before noon. I don’t remember what it was all about now, but it was business-related. Knowing that time here is also a highly plastic concept, I’d pressed the point quite firmly: Before noon. Before the big hand and the little hand are pointing straight up. I had elicited multiple, firm promises that the information would be sent before noon, and that he understood the importance of this. I communicated the reasons why, should he fail to do this, it would cause quite a number of serious problems, not just to me, but to him, because it concerned a joint business venture. (Terrible idea in the first place, but that’s another story.) He agreed at least three times that he would send it.
When he didn’t, I was vexed. “Why,” I asked, “did you say you would send it if you didn’t mean it? If I’d known you weren’t going to do it, I would have known to plan things differently.”
He took umbrage at my tone. “You should have known I didn’t mean it,” he said angrily.
“How should I have known?”
“Because,” he exploded, “I didn’t want to!” He was enraged, I think, that I could be so obtuse.
These aspects of the Turkish national character have obvious significance to anyone who doubts the world would be better off with the Persian Gulf under an Iranian nuclear shield, and all of southern Europe and the Middle East within striking distance of nuclear-tipped Iranian missiles, which is to say, anyone rational, which is to say, not the prime minister of Turkey, who is, obviously, Turkish, and says pretty much whatever sounds good to him at the time.
When I hear American officials discussing this region, I shudder. My government is obviously out of its depth. For all the talk of President Obama’s secret, traitorous sympathy with the Islamic world, or his childhood experience of the mysteries of the exotic Other, the man is—obviously—as American as a stalk of corn waving lonely on a Kansas plain. I am certain he, and everyone around him, thinks in terms of “reasons,” “logic,” “arguments,” “truth,” and “facts.” I am sure that deep down, he believes everyone does. All Americans do, just as all Turks believe the rest of the world is basically like them.
The utter irrationality of Turks—and the utter uselessness, for them, of our Western notions of truth and logic—are points Americans won’t grasp unless they’ve lived here quite some time—and even then they won’t grasp them, because they make no sense. But they’d best begin to try, because the prime minister is quite busy sending flotillas of unusually fractious Turkish humanitarians into war zones, transforming himself into the improbable hero of Hamas, and practicing nuclear diplomacy à la Turca. American negotiators were no doubt scratching their heads upon learning that Turkey had not merely abstained from voting on the Iranian sanctions package, but voted against it. An abstention, after all, would have registered Turkish misgivings more than adequately; the “no” vote manifestly obviates everything Turkey has long been saying about the role it seeks to play as a bridge between the East and the West, particularly in the wake of the Gaza flotilla fiasco. The bridge is now burnt. Turkey has taken sides, and the winner is the East.
According to its government, Turkey rejected the sanctions package because it had something better to offer, namely, the Turkish-Brazilian fuel swap. The logic of the recently negotiated deal with Iran was explained splendidly by one Professor Tolga Yarman from Okan University, in comments cited approvingly by the daily Zaman, a paper closely associated with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government. Yarman, the paper reported, “drew a similarity between Iran’s rugs and the nuclear deal, saying Iran is giving away its nuclear rope and giving up waving its nuclear carpet and in return getting a nuclear rug.” Don’t bother trying to parse that. No, nothing lost in translation either. You just have to shut your eyes and get in the mood: Iran’s getting a nuclear rug—we call this rug Shiva, destroyer of worlds—so rejoice.
What Turkey is getting from the deal is rather more unclear. If you look closely at the terms—with cold, soulless, logical, Western eyes—you’ll notice that what Turkey would appear to be getting is a very large amount of radioactive waste. In exchange, it plans to give Iran highly enriched uranium for free, having extracted no meaningful concessions. Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman, Ramin Mehmanparast, declared immediately after the announcement of the deal that of course Iran would continue its own uranium enrichment program. Turkey agreeably pronounced this a wonderful diplomatic triumph that obviated the need for sanctions. It was, Turkish diplomats insisted, just like the deal the West had tried to get from Iran six months prior but failed to obtain.
Now, this is partially true: Americans did propose a similar deal. But the key to the deal they proposed was that Iran would agree to stop enriching its own nuclear material. And that was when Iran had only half as much nuclear material to swap. Iran was supposed to trade it all for fuel rods suitable for medical research. It’s true that the same amount of material is to be exchanged under the terms of this new plan as under the old one. But when the plan was last proposed, in October, the swap would have left Iran with less than the one thousand kilograms of material needed to produce weapons-grade uranium. Since then, Iran has continued to churn out low-enriched material. It now has twice as much, and it will keep more than enough to build weapons. The logic of the original plan, in other words, has been completely obviated; only the idea of a swap remains. The new deal is entirely to Iran’s advantage. But logic is not the source of this initiative: emotions are.
From the Turkish point of view, there is a good feeling, and that’s good enough. Moreover, the Turks are furious over the Israeli raid on the Mavi Marmara, and furious here is reason sufficient unto itself. No one in the Turkish press is asking why a boat with civilian women and children on board was sent to break a military blockade, or why that blockade was imposed in the first place, or how Turkey might have reacted had Israel sent a similar flotilla to deliver uninspected cargo to strongholds of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (the PKK). Nor are they asking who would be the losers in a Turkish-Israeli naval battle—only weeks ago an unreal, apocalyptic prospect, but now well within the realm of imagination. No one is noting that there is a contradiction in the Turkish position. Diplomacy, Turkish leaders insist, is the only solution to the Iranian threat, but this enthusiasm for diplomacy was hardly on display when the decision was made to challenge the Israeli military using a boat packed with agitated human shields. The Turkish government offers its arguments for diplomacy with Iran and provocation toward Israel in the same sentence. No one here seems perturbed by the obvious problem with
this line of reasoning.
Many in the West have interpreted the Turkish position as evidence that the place is under the control of Islamic crypto-fundamentalists. This is certainly part of the picture and a very important part, but do not make the mistake of thinking that’s all there is to it. The West is overlooking something both more subtle and more obvious: Emotions are running the show. The Turks have a good feeling about their recent encounters with Iran and a bad feeling about their recent encounters with Israel. Long-term, rational economic and geostrategic interests? To hell with those. The patient, subtle advancement of an Islamist agenda? To hell with that, too. This is a logic-free zone. Iran’s not a threat. No sanctions need be applied.
The only real material advantage that accrues to Turkey from the bargain is the chance to do trade with Iran—in the short term, at least. I single out Turkey for no special opprobrium in noting that its government finds it commercially advantageous to pretend there’s nothing going on in Iran requiring any urgent further attention from the world; France and Russia have long followed the same policy. But France and Russia are both nuclear powers in their own right. Should Iran acquire the Bomb, they at least have a deterrent. Turkey is not a nuclear power. Iran is a state with whom it has a very long history of enmity and quite a number of significant outstanding geostrategic and religious conflicts. The Ottoman and Persian Empires have been competing for regional hegemony since the Safavid and Qajar dynasties. As the nineteenth-century Ottoman statesman Fuad Paşa remarked, in comments no less true today,
The government of [Iran], which is in a state of continual disorder and in the grip of Shiite fanaticism, has always been at one and in agreement with our enemies. Even in the Crimean War, she came to an agreement with Russia and united her ambitions with hers. The fact that she was unable to bring her hostile calculations to fruition was due to the West’s prudent and vigilant diplomacy. Today, the Shah’s government follows in the wake of [Russia]. As long as the Ottoman government is not occupied elsewhere, the discredited Iranian government, being impotent, ignorant, and incapable of taking any initiative on its own, dares not quarrel with us. However, at the moment of our first confrontation with Russia, Iran will take her place among our most irreconcilable enemies, due to her political dependence and, more important, her blind jealousy, in spite of our cautious and well-intentioned attitude.
Russia’s fear of rising nationalism among its Turkic minorities gives it good reason to favor Iran. An Iran in possession of nuclear weapons would almost certainly cooperate with Russia to the detriment of Turkey, dominate Central Asia and the Caucasus, and put an end to Turkish aspirations to be a great power. A regional nuclear arms race would likely ensue. Iran has close diplomatic relations with Armenia; Turkey has no diplomatic relations with Armenia. Tehran has supported the Kurdish-separatist PKK, with which Turkey is at war. The Iranians are still Shiite fanatics who deplore both Sunni Islam and the Turkish secular state. There is no way whatsoever that it could be in Turkey’s long-term military or economic interests to live next door to a nuclear Iran, however impressive the short-term trade benefits of this deal might be—and they are not even that impressive.
“Long-term thinking,” however, is not really a Turkish trait. If something works for the next two hours, many a Turkish repairman has assured me, that’s good enough. Foreigners here have a word for the kind of jerry-rigged system Turks like to construct rather than building something that might still work in ten years’ time: Turknology. My apartment is full of Turknological wonders: wires that for the moment seem to be conveying electricity, even if I dare not touch them; windows that at least serve to keep the rain out, though they cannot be opened.
American policymakers know this deal makes no sense, but they’re tripped up at the logical stumbling block: Why on earth are the Turks so pleased about it? (Having never once visited Brazil, I won’t begin to try to explain what they are getting out of it, although I would note that Brazil is tough to reach with intermediate-range ballistic missiles, so it can afford to be a bit more cavalier about these things. And, of course, they haven’t offered to adopt Iran’s radioactive pets.)
What Turkey is getting out of it, hard though this is for Americans to grasp, is the feeling that a happy deal has been concluded, and even more importantly, the feeling that Turkey matters. As one commenter on the English Web site of the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet put it, “For the first time Turquey [sic] is showing to all the world that it can propose serious solutions to problems that neither US nor the West could solve it. Turquey is becoming a big and powerful nation who deserves respect and proud.” It is irrelevant, in this universe, whether the solutions are, in reality, serious. Few people here are thinking that deeply about it. Most are just thrilled that the world must now pay attention to Turkey—and tickled that the West doesn’t like it. Of course, there are some people here who are thinking deeply about the ramifications of these policies, and they’re terrified. “We’re going to lose everything we’ve worked for like this,” one acquaintance said to me. “We’ll end up back in the Stone Age.”
Critics of the deal “are envious,” Prime Minister Erdogan declared, “because Brazil and Turkey brokered and pulled off a diplomatic success that other countries had been negotiating without result for many years.” It doesn’t matter that he didn’t pull it off either, or that what other countries had been trying to achieve, in proposing similar exchanges, was a deal in which Iran agreed to stop enriching the damned stuff altogether. The emotions are the facts. Stranger still, Erdogan almost certainly truly believes that the objections are rooted in envy. He too assumes everyone lives in a world like his, one in which the emotions are the facts, and it is not an incidental point that in Turkey envy is a particularly important emotion. Envy of the West—in tandem with envy’s sibling, resentment—has certainly helped define modern Turkey, so it could truly seem plausible, in his mind, that the sentiment runs both ways.
From an anthropological point of view, this is all very interesting and curious. From a strategic point of view, it’s a disaster—for the West, of course, but much more so for Turkey, which will find out soon enough that whatever anyone might feel, two plus two does equal four, every single time, and the difference between half and all the uranium is actually quite significant.
What should the West do? Beats me. All I know is that calmly pointing this out will have absolutely no effect. I, after all, can’t even persuade a Turk to send an e-mail on time. Even when he promises.
Claire Berlinski is a novelist, journalist, and biographer. Her most recent book is There Is No Alternative: Why Margaret Thatcher Matters.
Too True Sadly: Singling Out Israel
The Only Permissible Hatred?
Posted: 25 Aug 2010 07:56 AM PDT
By Barry Rubin
The chairman of Finland's branch of Amnesty International, Frank Johansson, wrote in his blog at a Finnish newspaper that Israel is a "scum state." It makes me recall a French ambassador who used a nastier word at a dinner party a couple of years back. And I've heard from several diplomats equivalent things over the years.
Isn't it something that in this day of Political Correctness and multiculturalism and humanitarian kindness that there is only one people and one country in the world that supposedly respectable Europeans don't hesitate to insult in the most vicious language? There is still one people to whom the alleged rules of non-stereotyping and anti-racism doesn't apply in many quarters.
Of course they would not dare to speak in this way of Iran or Sudan, Saudi Arabia or Syria, Venezuela or North Korea, Zimbabwe or Cuba, or for that matter Hamas or Hizballah, or other terrorists, torturers, murderers, and thieves in power. Greed? Fear? Support for repressive dictatorships that brandish populist and anti-Western rhetoric? Indeed, if such a person were to so criticize any other country in the world--from Albania through Zanzibar--he would be forced to resign immediately.
Might such people have some sense that this is just some new version of historic antisemitism? Well, one can only quote what Theodor Herzl wrote well over a century ago. As the twentieth century was about to begin, Herzl noted something amazing. Despite advances in technology, transportation, and communication, one thing remained as it was when the Turks conquered Byzantium, Columbus set sail, and oxcarts were the main means of travel.
That one thing was antisemitism. Indeed, Herzl mournfully pointed out, "After a short breathing space...bad times have come again...not only in the backward countries...but also in those that are called civilized."
Now, here we are at the onset of the twenty-first century, the cycle is being repeated, and groups like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the UN's human rights commission are in the vanguard.
Shame on them all.
Posted: 25 Aug 2010 07:56 AM PDT
By Barry Rubin
The chairman of Finland's branch of Amnesty International, Frank Johansson, wrote in his blog at a Finnish newspaper that Israel is a "scum state." It makes me recall a French ambassador who used a nastier word at a dinner party a couple of years back. And I've heard from several diplomats equivalent things over the years.
Isn't it something that in this day of Political Correctness and multiculturalism and humanitarian kindness that there is only one people and one country in the world that supposedly respectable Europeans don't hesitate to insult in the most vicious language? There is still one people to whom the alleged rules of non-stereotyping and anti-racism doesn't apply in many quarters.
Of course they would not dare to speak in this way of Iran or Sudan, Saudi Arabia or Syria, Venezuela or North Korea, Zimbabwe or Cuba, or for that matter Hamas or Hizballah, or other terrorists, torturers, murderers, and thieves in power. Greed? Fear? Support for repressive dictatorships that brandish populist and anti-Western rhetoric? Indeed, if such a person were to so criticize any other country in the world--from Albania through Zanzibar--he would be forced to resign immediately.
Might such people have some sense that this is just some new version of historic antisemitism? Well, one can only quote what Theodor Herzl wrote well over a century ago. As the twentieth century was about to begin, Herzl noted something amazing. Despite advances in technology, transportation, and communication, one thing remained as it was when the Turks conquered Byzantium, Columbus set sail, and oxcarts were the main means of travel.
That one thing was antisemitism. Indeed, Herzl mournfully pointed out, "After a short breathing space...bad times have come again...not only in the backward countries...but also in those that are called civilized."
Now, here we are at the onset of the twenty-first century, the cycle is being repeated, and groups like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the UN's human rights commission are in the vanguard.
Shame on them all.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Agreed as Thought Through and Well Put (On the Community Centre)
August 24, 2010
No Compromise on Mosque
By Richard Cohen/WAPO
When it comes to the mosque that's neither too close to Ground Zero for its proponents nor far enough away for its opponents, the disturbing word "compromise" is now being tossed around. It has been suggested by New York Gov. David Paterson, Catholic Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan and, in Sunday's Washington Post, Karen Hughes, once an important adviser to George W. Bush. These are all well-meaning people, but they do not understand that in this case, the difference between compromise and defeat is nonexistent.
This is not a complicated matter. If you believe that an entire religion of upward of a billion followers attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, then it is understandable that locating a mosque near the fallen World Trade Center might be upsetting. But the facts are otherwise. Islam was not in on the attack -- just a sliver of believers. That being the case, those people with legitimate hurt feelings are mistaken. They need our understanding, not our indulgence.
If, on the other hand, you do not believe that the attack was launched by an entire religion, then you have a moral duty to support the creation of the Islamic center. Lots of people fall into this category -- or say they do -- and still protest the mosque. They include Newt Gingrich, New York Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Lazio and that Twittering Twit of the Tundra, Sarah Palin. They indulge in a kind of pornography of analogy -- a bit of demagogic buffoonery that is becoming more and more obvious. They pretend that they have a solemn obligation to defend the (powerful) majority from the demands of the (powerless) minority and champion people whose emotions are based on a misreading of the facts.
Those of us who are of a certain age remember the days when African-Americans and their champions were being cautioned to go slow, compromise. They were being told to take into consideration the tender feelings of whites, no matter how ugly their racism, and protect their dewy Scarlett O'Hara way of life. Leading politicians espoused this course, President Eisenhower among them. Wrong was somehow to become a little less so, but right would be painfully postponed. What was compromise? The middle of the bus?
From that era I exhume a term: moral suasion. Repeatedly, civil rights activists urged Eisenhower to use the bully pulpit to guide the country on a moral course, to set an example. For the longest time, Ike refused to budge. The hero of Normandy somehow forgot how to lead until Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus forced the president to literally call out the troops. The era remains a huge blot on Eisenhower's otherwise exemplary record.
Now something similar is happening. It's not merely that unscrupulous politicians are demagoguing the mosque issue, it is also that most others have kept their mouths shut. The Washington Post suggested that Bush, who has always shown great leadership on interfaith issues, speak out. Hughes, who argued the case for the mosque and then advocated building it elsewhere, should have followed her own logic. And the archbishop, instead of urging compromise, should have urged his congregants to show tolerance. He's not a labor mediator. He's a moral leader.
Over the years, thousands of priests have abused many thousands of children. This is a lamentable fact. Yet no rational person can possibly believe that all priests are pedophiles and that a plan to erect a church should or could be opposed by victims of priestly pedophilia. We know the difference between the acts of individuals -- even many of them -- and the dogma or beliefs of an entire religion. I am a Jew, but do not judge me by Baruch Goldstein, who in 1994 murdered 29 Muslims in Hebron.
Appearing on ABC's "This Week with Christiane Amanpour," Daisy Khan, a founder of the mosque (and the wife of the imam), rejected any compromise. She was right to do so because to compromise is to accede, even a bit, to the arguments of bigots, demagogues or the merely uninformed. This is no longer her fight. The fight is now all of ours.
It has become something of a cliche, I know, but no one ever put this sort of thing better than William Butler Yeats in his poem "The Second Coming." "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity."
Some passionate intensity from the best is past due.
No Compromise on Mosque
By Richard Cohen/WAPO
When it comes to the mosque that's neither too close to Ground Zero for its proponents nor far enough away for its opponents, the disturbing word "compromise" is now being tossed around. It has been suggested by New York Gov. David Paterson, Catholic Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan and, in Sunday's Washington Post, Karen Hughes, once an important adviser to George W. Bush. These are all well-meaning people, but they do not understand that in this case, the difference between compromise and defeat is nonexistent.
This is not a complicated matter. If you believe that an entire religion of upward of a billion followers attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, then it is understandable that locating a mosque near the fallen World Trade Center might be upsetting. But the facts are otherwise. Islam was not in on the attack -- just a sliver of believers. That being the case, those people with legitimate hurt feelings are mistaken. They need our understanding, not our indulgence.
If, on the other hand, you do not believe that the attack was launched by an entire religion, then you have a moral duty to support the creation of the Islamic center. Lots of people fall into this category -- or say they do -- and still protest the mosque. They include Newt Gingrich, New York Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Lazio and that Twittering Twit of the Tundra, Sarah Palin. They indulge in a kind of pornography of analogy -- a bit of demagogic buffoonery that is becoming more and more obvious. They pretend that they have a solemn obligation to defend the (powerful) majority from the demands of the (powerless) minority and champion people whose emotions are based on a misreading of the facts.
Those of us who are of a certain age remember the days when African-Americans and their champions were being cautioned to go slow, compromise. They were being told to take into consideration the tender feelings of whites, no matter how ugly their racism, and protect their dewy Scarlett O'Hara way of life. Leading politicians espoused this course, President Eisenhower among them. Wrong was somehow to become a little less so, but right would be painfully postponed. What was compromise? The middle of the bus?
From that era I exhume a term: moral suasion. Repeatedly, civil rights activists urged Eisenhower to use the bully pulpit to guide the country on a moral course, to set an example. For the longest time, Ike refused to budge. The hero of Normandy somehow forgot how to lead until Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus forced the president to literally call out the troops. The era remains a huge blot on Eisenhower's otherwise exemplary record.
Now something similar is happening. It's not merely that unscrupulous politicians are demagoguing the mosque issue, it is also that most others have kept their mouths shut. The Washington Post suggested that Bush, who has always shown great leadership on interfaith issues, speak out. Hughes, who argued the case for the mosque and then advocated building it elsewhere, should have followed her own logic. And the archbishop, instead of urging compromise, should have urged his congregants to show tolerance. He's not a labor mediator. He's a moral leader.
Over the years, thousands of priests have abused many thousands of children. This is a lamentable fact. Yet no rational person can possibly believe that all priests are pedophiles and that a plan to erect a church should or could be opposed by victims of priestly pedophilia. We know the difference between the acts of individuals -- even many of them -- and the dogma or beliefs of an entire religion. I am a Jew, but do not judge me by Baruch Goldstein, who in 1994 murdered 29 Muslims in Hebron.
Appearing on ABC's "This Week with Christiane Amanpour," Daisy Khan, a founder of the mosque (and the wife of the imam), rejected any compromise. She was right to do so because to compromise is to accede, even a bit, to the arguments of bigots, demagogues or the merely uninformed. This is no longer her fight. The fight is now all of ours.
It has become something of a cliche, I know, but no one ever put this sort of thing better than William Butler Yeats in his poem "The Second Coming." "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity."
Some passionate intensity from the best is past due.
Reading Frank Kermode's The End of Days
Willjames7:
The gist of Kermode's argument is that while we fear the end of days, we are also titillated by the notion. Dreadful as it may appear at first glance, the idea that we, of all people, are the ones destined to live the final chapter of the human story gives great meaning and nobility to our present time. The more plausible alternative, that we are living somewhere at an unknown point in a very long unfolding story, is actually much more difficult for us to come to terms with.
Jdyer:
The biggest problem I had with “The Sense of an Ending” (and it was written in the heyday of Existentialism) is the confusion between text and referent.
Kermode took Norman Cohn’s millenarian thesis and applied it to modern literature. To make it work Kermode quotes from a diverse series of incommensurable texts and critics. Hence he moves too easily from Eliot’s The Wasteland to Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. The literary texts are chosen for thematic reasons to make a single point and he doesn’t leave open the possibility that those texts could be read differently.
The book is fun to read if you are familiar with the texts he quotes, and it did thrill me when I read it. However, over the years the book didn’t stay with me as did Auerbach’s “Mimesis” or Curtius’s “European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages" among others.
Me:
I stated reading Kermode’s The End of Days and am about half way through the first lecture. I find it a little heady and the references way beyond, in the main, what I know and have read. What I was thinking when I looked at it over 40 years ago, I do not know. But proceed I shall; and, regardless, I sense I’m detecting the spine of the beginning of an argument which I’d provisionally paraphrase as follows:
… People want order. That has them wanting to construct patterns. (Kermode uses the phrase “coherent patterns”. But I don’t know what an incoherent pattern is.) Such construction is an act of mind, an act of the imagination, involving wanting to see things whole. By those patterns disclosing endings, how things end, they—the patterns and the endings— allow for a working back to “consonance”—a key word for Kermode, “consonance”—amongst the endings and beginnings and with what comes along, along the way. That internal coherence imports validity. It sustains the truth of the pattern the way a closed system of thought is eternally self validating. But at the same time rational people must take account of reality and give facts their due. So emerges a central tension: the need for order as manifest in patterns accounting for the meaning of things as against the intrusions of a disruptive reality, which must be respected, mitigating against, and indeed threatening and encroaching upon, meaning giving constructions…
But Kermode has a lot more to say and I have a lot more to read.
willjames7:
Basman, your beautifully stated summation of the argument has inspired me to go back and read the damn text again. What stuck with me originally was the argument about the need to give meaning to history by positing an ending toward which all things tend. But the implication of what you've written is that the End of Days theme is really a just a special case, a subset of the larger issue; namely: how can we create explanatory frameworks that give coherence to events without becoming entrapped by those same frameworks? How can we create models of reality that satisfy our need for meaningful order in the universe without shutting out everything that is dissonant? It's intriguing to try to imagine a version of Marxism or Freudianism or Islam that would have its virtues without entrapping its adherents.
The gist of Kermode's argument is that while we fear the end of days, we are also titillated by the notion. Dreadful as it may appear at first glance, the idea that we, of all people, are the ones destined to live the final chapter of the human story gives great meaning and nobility to our present time. The more plausible alternative, that we are living somewhere at an unknown point in a very long unfolding story, is actually much more difficult for us to come to terms with.
Jdyer:
The biggest problem I had with “The Sense of an Ending” (and it was written in the heyday of Existentialism) is the confusion between text and referent.
Kermode took Norman Cohn’s millenarian thesis and applied it to modern literature. To make it work Kermode quotes from a diverse series of incommensurable texts and critics. Hence he moves too easily from Eliot’s The Wasteland to Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. The literary texts are chosen for thematic reasons to make a single point and he doesn’t leave open the possibility that those texts could be read differently.
The book is fun to read if you are familiar with the texts he quotes, and it did thrill me when I read it. However, over the years the book didn’t stay with me as did Auerbach’s “Mimesis” or Curtius’s “European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages" among others.
Me:
I stated reading Kermode’s The End of Days and am about half way through the first lecture. I find it a little heady and the references way beyond, in the main, what I know and have read. What I was thinking when I looked at it over 40 years ago, I do not know. But proceed I shall; and, regardless, I sense I’m detecting the spine of the beginning of an argument which I’d provisionally paraphrase as follows:
… People want order. That has them wanting to construct patterns. (Kermode uses the phrase “coherent patterns”. But I don’t know what an incoherent pattern is.) Such construction is an act of mind, an act of the imagination, involving wanting to see things whole. By those patterns disclosing endings, how things end, they—the patterns and the endings— allow for a working back to “consonance”—a key word for Kermode, “consonance”—amongst the endings and beginnings and with what comes along, along the way. That internal coherence imports validity. It sustains the truth of the pattern the way a closed system of thought is eternally self validating. But at the same time rational people must take account of reality and give facts their due. So emerges a central tension: the need for order as manifest in patterns accounting for the meaning of things as against the intrusions of a disruptive reality, which must be respected, mitigating against, and indeed threatening and encroaching upon, meaning giving constructions…
But Kermode has a lot more to say and I have a lot more to read.
willjames7:
Basman, your beautifully stated summation of the argument has inspired me to go back and read the damn text again. What stuck with me originally was the argument about the need to give meaning to history by positing an ending toward which all things tend. But the implication of what you've written is that the End of Days theme is really a just a special case, a subset of the larger issue; namely: how can we create explanatory frameworks that give coherence to events without becoming entrapped by those same frameworks? How can we create models of reality that satisfy our need for meaningful order in the universe without shutting out everything that is dissonant? It's intriguing to try to imagine a version of Marxism or Freudianism or Islam that would have its virtues without entrapping its adherents.
Sunday, August 22, 2010
More Excellent Direct Talk on Direct Talks
Competing World Views Tear A "Peace Process" to Pieces
Posted: 22 Aug 2010 04:12 AM PDT
By Barry Rubin
The U.S. announcement inviting Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) for direct talks shows quite clearly, though unintentionally, why the talks will fail.
Special Envoy George Mitchell explains:
“We are all well aware that there remains mistrust between the parties, a residue of hostility developed over many decades of conflict, many previous efforts that have been made to resolve the conflict that had not succeeded, all of which takes a very heavy toll on both societies and their leaders. In addition, we all know that, as with all societies, there are differences of opinion on both sides on how best to proceed, and as a result, this conflict has remained unresolved over many decades and through many efforts. We don’t expect all of those differences to disappear when talks begin. Indeed, we expect that they will be presented, debated, discussed, and that differences are not going to be resolved immediately.”
This is a good explanation that the administration knows how hard it is to bring peace, though it does not jibe well with his saying a few minutes later: “We believe that if those negotiations are conducted seriously and in good faith, they can produce such an agreement within 12 months. And that is our objective.”
Of course, Mitchell is right that the task's difficulty shouldn't preclude an attempt to negotiate and that understanding the difficulty is essential to doing a decent job. The one-year thing, though, is nonsense. If negotiations would be conducted seriously an agreement could be reached in a month but there are reasons this has never happened and won’t happen for a long time.
As an analyst not a diplomat, I can point out that the problem is not just “mistrust,” “residue of hostility,” and “differences of opinion,” but rather structural impediments to success. Western media and leaders are all too eager to point out alleged problems on the Israeli side—domestic politics—but never really discuss the same thing on the Palestinian side.
I have pointed out HERE that the problems posed by Israeli politics and public opinion for peacemaking are greatly exaggerated, sometimes due to ignorance and sometimes due to a malicious effort to make things seem Israel’s fault.
What is lacking, as I’ve pointed out HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE, is that there is a huge problem on the Palestinian side. This includes:
--Hardline views by the overwhelming majority of Fatah leaders, who do after all control the PA.
--The belief that it is not necessary to negotiate peace because in the shorter-run the PA can get the West to hand them a state on a silver platter and in the longer-run the Palestinians can win the conflict and destroy Israel entirely.
--The almost 100 percent lack of any effort to prepare and moderate Palestinian public opinion by its own leadership, clergy, media, and politicians. There has been an extensive debate in Israel and there is a great willingness to compromise, something simply not there on the Palestinian side. Israelis have empathy and even often sympathy for Palestinians; the reverse is simply not true. It is a cultural and political issue that lies beyond the bounds of any “Politically Correct” “Multicultural” mentality to understand but can be easily demonstrated.
Incidentally, here's one of many such tricks used to avoid understanding these things. Fatah issues a new charter and Western media articles and experts gushed at how moderate it was, including not repeating material from the old charter that called for the use of violence. The only problem is that the new document explicitly stated that all of the old document was still in effect.
--The wooly mammoth, “elephant” is not an adequate description, in the room of a Hamas regime dedicated to warfare, terrorism, and genocide. There is no conceivable mechanism for dealing with this issue.
On that last point here is how Mitchell (didn’t) address it:
QUESTION: So you expect Hamas to accept any decision made by President Abbas at these negotiations?
MR. MITCHELL: It is not for me to make decisions for others….With respect to Hamas, let’s be clear. Hamas won a legislative election. They acknowledge the continued executive authority of President Abbas and his team, and it is entirely appropriate that we negotiate with the executive head of that government. When Democrats regained control of the Congress in 2006, that didn’t end President Bush’s tenure as president, and others who wanted to negotiate with the United States negotiated with the legally elected and then-chief of our executive branch of government. And that is the situation here.
Again, Mitchell says what he needs to say, but of course he omits the Hamas violent coup against the PA. Indeed, his statement jibes with the false history of Hamas and its supporters and is rather a mess factually. Abbas’s turn came to an end almost two years ago and Hamas could easily argue—and it sure will do so--that he is in office illegally and thus that any agreement he reached with Israel was not valid. By the way, Mitchell states that Hamas does “acknowledge the continued executive authority of President Abbas and his team.” I believe that this is false.
In short, Mitchell lays the basis in theory for an Israel-Palestinian treaty leading to a Palestinian state, then Hamas overthrowing the regime to seize control of that state, tossing out the treaty and calling in Iranian and Syrian troops to “protect” Palestine. True, this is leaping ahead in time but this is the kind of thing negotiators need to take into account.
Instead of Mitchell’s facile Democrats/Bush analogy, here’s a more accurate one: The Democrats regain control of Congress, the two sides reach an agreement, the Democrats than stage an armed coup and murder Republicans by the score then throw the Republicans out of the regions they conquer, and the United States has two governments that are in effect at war with each other. Bush doesn’t hold any elections but just keeps extending his term in office.
Would other countries then be able to rely on agreements made with Bush and consider him “legally elected?” Of course not.
Moreover, Mitchell's comparison of Hamas to the Democratic Party reveals the silly habit of making parallels among widely disparate Western and Middle Eastern ideas, institutions, and groups. Hamas is a genocidal, terrorist, revolutionary Islamist group dedicated to wiping out Israel and the Jews, overthrowing all existing Arabic-speaking governments, and creating a totalitarian state ruled by a caliph.
Is this a group Mitchell wants to compare to the Democrats, who are not known for throwing opponents off tall buildings, machine-gunning the enemy wounded in hospital beds, and teaching children to be suicide bombers.
And consider this, too: By forcing Israel to end the high level of sanctions against the Gaza Strip, the West has in effect recognized the Hamas regime as an independent entity that can stay in office for decades. Certainly, it has ceased any effective attempt to bring down that regime. So what is Hamas’s incentive to accept a PA-Israel negotiation process that it has denounced as treasonous?
I don’t want to spend so much time on this single issue but it is worth reviewing as an example, one of the more obvious cases where the real world and the fantasy world of Washington’s Middle East come into collision.
Mitchell also states:
"But we do believe that peace in the Middle East, comprehensive peace, including, but not limited to, an end to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, is very much in the interests of Israelis and Palestinians, of all people in the region; it’s in the national security interests of the United States, and therefore, we are going to continue to pursue that objective with patience, perseverance, and determination.”
Trying to promote negotiations is certainly in the U.S. national security interest. Yet the strategy and tactics used cannot ignore regional realities.
Here’s one of them: Is “comprehensive peace” in the interest “of all people in the region?” On one level that seems obvious but on the level of actual reality it is completely false. Consider this: having peace in Europe was arguably in the interests of everyone at all times between, say, between 1337 (start of the Hundred Year’s War between England and France) and 1990 (the Cold War's end), yet nonetheless there wasn’t peace much of the time.
Why is that? Because there were ideologies, nations, and leaders who thought there was something more important than peace: gains, victories, land, glory, the will of the Creator of the Universe, and other things. Moreover, they perceived that triumph was easy and that they could have everything they wanted. This worldview does not characterize the position today of, at most, more than 10 percent of Israelis (or Americans and Europeans for that matter) but does characterize the position of more than 95 percent of Arabs, Middle East Muslims, and Palestinians.
An element of this doctrinaire, deterministic "even-handedness" and "mirror-imaging" practices by Western governments today is to misunderstand much about the Middle East (and Israel as well) to the point that they fail in their efforts and stumble into crises. This point also applies to their understandings of Islamism, Iran's ambitions, the internal problems of Iraq and Afghanistan, and much more. These mistakes cost lives and produce strategic disasters.
Iran, Syria, Hamas, Hizballah, and most of the PA’s own Fatah rulers don’t think a “comprehensive peace” is in the interests of Palestinians, much less all the peoples of the region. They believe that anyone who does think so should be murdred. They are certain that the elimination of Israel, which they do not number among the “peoples of the region” is in everyone’s interest.
Certainly, from the standpoint of 2010, the relatively moderate regimes aren’t going to do much to make that happen and there are a number of Arab governments that behind-the-scenes understand the value to Israel for them. But they are generally going to avoid being much help because of their own interests. For them, the conflict with Israel--as long as it is carried out mainly or only on a rhetorical level--is tremendously profitable. The regimes use it to distract from domestic problems and to display their Arab nationalist and Islamic credentials.
These points are just not understood in the West. A typical example: the United States invites the Egyptian and Jordanian governments to observe the new direct talks believing they will pressure the PA and reassure the Israelis into making peace. A far more likely outcome is that they will simply back PA positions, making Israel feel the dice are loaded against it and convincing the PA that it can avoid making peace by using the usual Arab and Muslim levers to guarantee regionwide support for intransigence.
This kind of miscalculation is the problem when people like Mitchell conclude, in his words, that opposition cannot, deter leaders “who…recognize that the interests of their people, the future of their societies rests upon resolving this conflict and achieving the kind of peace and stability and security from which they will all benefit.”
But of course it can! Not understanding why is the mistake that has repeatedly led Western leaders and experts to predict diplomacy will succeed only to find, to their puzzlement, that it fails.
Indeed, this factor has been the centerpiece of Middle East history for the last sixty years. Fear of public opinion, fear of Islamists and hardline clerics, fear of rivals taking advantage of their concessions, fear of assassination, fear of political destruction, and other such things have deterred leaders. And those not deterred—King Abdallah of Jordan, Bashir Gemayel of Lebanon, Anwar al-Sadat of Egypt (and, yes, Yitzhak Rabin of Israel, too)--have been eliminated as a result.
There is a rather sharp gap between the reality of PA “President” Mahmoud Abbas’s political position (hardline) and thinking (scared to an extent which usually brings in a bad word at this point) and what Mitchell portrays it as being.
Again, this does not mean the West should not try to negotiate. It does, however, mean that the West should maintain its own credibility in fighting the radicals (in part, to encourage the relative moderates) and support Israel strongly to show that maximal aims cannot be achieved. The lack of these pillars helps to cripple any peace process.
To summarize, these negotiations are based on a set of false premises:
A. That Abbas is clearly the legitimate leader of the Palestinians who is empowered to make a deal. Mitchell bases this on a false claim that Hamas recognizes the Abbas government as legitimate and by not mentioning Abbas is ruling without elections and beyond the end of his term.
B. The idea that Hamas is not a real problem and will just go away. Wrong again.
C. The belief that Abbas and his colleagues view a formal peace agreement with Israel to be in their interests. Again wrong. They view such an agreement as dangerous for themselves and involving concessions they don't want to make.
D. The concept that everyone in the region views peace with Israel as in their interests. Again wrong. The revolutionaries view the active and violent continuation of the conflict to be in their interests while the relative moderates like having the conflict around for their political benefit, especially if they don't have to fight Israel or give money to the Palestinians.
E. The mistaken assumption that a treaty would be the end of the conflict and increase regional stability. In fact, desirable as peace would be, it would provoke a major radical upsurge to stop or destroy the agreement and would mark only the beginning of a struggle over Palestine and policies by the government of Palestine that would probably reignite the conflict.
The text is, “Transcript: Clinton, Special Envoy Mitchell on Push for Middle East Peace, U.S. Department of State, Office of the Spokesman, August 20, 2010.
Posted: 22 Aug 2010 04:12 AM PDT
By Barry Rubin
The U.S. announcement inviting Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) for direct talks shows quite clearly, though unintentionally, why the talks will fail.
Special Envoy George Mitchell explains:
“We are all well aware that there remains mistrust between the parties, a residue of hostility developed over many decades of conflict, many previous efforts that have been made to resolve the conflict that had not succeeded, all of which takes a very heavy toll on both societies and their leaders. In addition, we all know that, as with all societies, there are differences of opinion on both sides on how best to proceed, and as a result, this conflict has remained unresolved over many decades and through many efforts. We don’t expect all of those differences to disappear when talks begin. Indeed, we expect that they will be presented, debated, discussed, and that differences are not going to be resolved immediately.”
This is a good explanation that the administration knows how hard it is to bring peace, though it does not jibe well with his saying a few minutes later: “We believe that if those negotiations are conducted seriously and in good faith, they can produce such an agreement within 12 months. And that is our objective.”
Of course, Mitchell is right that the task's difficulty shouldn't preclude an attempt to negotiate and that understanding the difficulty is essential to doing a decent job. The one-year thing, though, is nonsense. If negotiations would be conducted seriously an agreement could be reached in a month but there are reasons this has never happened and won’t happen for a long time.
As an analyst not a diplomat, I can point out that the problem is not just “mistrust,” “residue of hostility,” and “differences of opinion,” but rather structural impediments to success. Western media and leaders are all too eager to point out alleged problems on the Israeli side—domestic politics—but never really discuss the same thing on the Palestinian side.
I have pointed out HERE that the problems posed by Israeli politics and public opinion for peacemaking are greatly exaggerated, sometimes due to ignorance and sometimes due to a malicious effort to make things seem Israel’s fault.
What is lacking, as I’ve pointed out HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE, is that there is a huge problem on the Palestinian side. This includes:
--Hardline views by the overwhelming majority of Fatah leaders, who do after all control the PA.
--The belief that it is not necessary to negotiate peace because in the shorter-run the PA can get the West to hand them a state on a silver platter and in the longer-run the Palestinians can win the conflict and destroy Israel entirely.
--The almost 100 percent lack of any effort to prepare and moderate Palestinian public opinion by its own leadership, clergy, media, and politicians. There has been an extensive debate in Israel and there is a great willingness to compromise, something simply not there on the Palestinian side. Israelis have empathy and even often sympathy for Palestinians; the reverse is simply not true. It is a cultural and political issue that lies beyond the bounds of any “Politically Correct” “Multicultural” mentality to understand but can be easily demonstrated.
Incidentally, here's one of many such tricks used to avoid understanding these things. Fatah issues a new charter and Western media articles and experts gushed at how moderate it was, including not repeating material from the old charter that called for the use of violence. The only problem is that the new document explicitly stated that all of the old document was still in effect.
--The wooly mammoth, “elephant” is not an adequate description, in the room of a Hamas regime dedicated to warfare, terrorism, and genocide. There is no conceivable mechanism for dealing with this issue.
On that last point here is how Mitchell (didn’t) address it:
QUESTION: So you expect Hamas to accept any decision made by President Abbas at these negotiations?
MR. MITCHELL: It is not for me to make decisions for others….With respect to Hamas, let’s be clear. Hamas won a legislative election. They acknowledge the continued executive authority of President Abbas and his team, and it is entirely appropriate that we negotiate with the executive head of that government. When Democrats regained control of the Congress in 2006, that didn’t end President Bush’s tenure as president, and others who wanted to negotiate with the United States negotiated with the legally elected and then-chief of our executive branch of government. And that is the situation here.
Again, Mitchell says what he needs to say, but of course he omits the Hamas violent coup against the PA. Indeed, his statement jibes with the false history of Hamas and its supporters and is rather a mess factually. Abbas’s turn came to an end almost two years ago and Hamas could easily argue—and it sure will do so--that he is in office illegally and thus that any agreement he reached with Israel was not valid. By the way, Mitchell states that Hamas does “acknowledge the continued executive authority of President Abbas and his team.” I believe that this is false.
In short, Mitchell lays the basis in theory for an Israel-Palestinian treaty leading to a Palestinian state, then Hamas overthrowing the regime to seize control of that state, tossing out the treaty and calling in Iranian and Syrian troops to “protect” Palestine. True, this is leaping ahead in time but this is the kind of thing negotiators need to take into account.
Instead of Mitchell’s facile Democrats/Bush analogy, here’s a more accurate one: The Democrats regain control of Congress, the two sides reach an agreement, the Democrats than stage an armed coup and murder Republicans by the score then throw the Republicans out of the regions they conquer, and the United States has two governments that are in effect at war with each other. Bush doesn’t hold any elections but just keeps extending his term in office.
Would other countries then be able to rely on agreements made with Bush and consider him “legally elected?” Of course not.
Moreover, Mitchell's comparison of Hamas to the Democratic Party reveals the silly habit of making parallels among widely disparate Western and Middle Eastern ideas, institutions, and groups. Hamas is a genocidal, terrorist, revolutionary Islamist group dedicated to wiping out Israel and the Jews, overthrowing all existing Arabic-speaking governments, and creating a totalitarian state ruled by a caliph.
Is this a group Mitchell wants to compare to the Democrats, who are not known for throwing opponents off tall buildings, machine-gunning the enemy wounded in hospital beds, and teaching children to be suicide bombers.
And consider this, too: By forcing Israel to end the high level of sanctions against the Gaza Strip, the West has in effect recognized the Hamas regime as an independent entity that can stay in office for decades. Certainly, it has ceased any effective attempt to bring down that regime. So what is Hamas’s incentive to accept a PA-Israel negotiation process that it has denounced as treasonous?
I don’t want to spend so much time on this single issue but it is worth reviewing as an example, one of the more obvious cases where the real world and the fantasy world of Washington’s Middle East come into collision.
Mitchell also states:
"But we do believe that peace in the Middle East, comprehensive peace, including, but not limited to, an end to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, is very much in the interests of Israelis and Palestinians, of all people in the region; it’s in the national security interests of the United States, and therefore, we are going to continue to pursue that objective with patience, perseverance, and determination.”
Trying to promote negotiations is certainly in the U.S. national security interest. Yet the strategy and tactics used cannot ignore regional realities.
Here’s one of them: Is “comprehensive peace” in the interest “of all people in the region?” On one level that seems obvious but on the level of actual reality it is completely false. Consider this: having peace in Europe was arguably in the interests of everyone at all times between, say, between 1337 (start of the Hundred Year’s War between England and France) and 1990 (the Cold War's end), yet nonetheless there wasn’t peace much of the time.
Why is that? Because there were ideologies, nations, and leaders who thought there was something more important than peace: gains, victories, land, glory, the will of the Creator of the Universe, and other things. Moreover, they perceived that triumph was easy and that they could have everything they wanted. This worldview does not characterize the position today of, at most, more than 10 percent of Israelis (or Americans and Europeans for that matter) but does characterize the position of more than 95 percent of Arabs, Middle East Muslims, and Palestinians.
An element of this doctrinaire, deterministic "even-handedness" and "mirror-imaging" practices by Western governments today is to misunderstand much about the Middle East (and Israel as well) to the point that they fail in their efforts and stumble into crises. This point also applies to their understandings of Islamism, Iran's ambitions, the internal problems of Iraq and Afghanistan, and much more. These mistakes cost lives and produce strategic disasters.
Iran, Syria, Hamas, Hizballah, and most of the PA’s own Fatah rulers don’t think a “comprehensive peace” is in the interests of Palestinians, much less all the peoples of the region. They believe that anyone who does think so should be murdred. They are certain that the elimination of Israel, which they do not number among the “peoples of the region” is in everyone’s interest.
Certainly, from the standpoint of 2010, the relatively moderate regimes aren’t going to do much to make that happen and there are a number of Arab governments that behind-the-scenes understand the value to Israel for them. But they are generally going to avoid being much help because of their own interests. For them, the conflict with Israel--as long as it is carried out mainly or only on a rhetorical level--is tremendously profitable. The regimes use it to distract from domestic problems and to display their Arab nationalist and Islamic credentials.
These points are just not understood in the West. A typical example: the United States invites the Egyptian and Jordanian governments to observe the new direct talks believing they will pressure the PA and reassure the Israelis into making peace. A far more likely outcome is that they will simply back PA positions, making Israel feel the dice are loaded against it and convincing the PA that it can avoid making peace by using the usual Arab and Muslim levers to guarantee regionwide support for intransigence.
This kind of miscalculation is the problem when people like Mitchell conclude, in his words, that opposition cannot, deter leaders “who…recognize that the interests of their people, the future of their societies rests upon resolving this conflict and achieving the kind of peace and stability and security from which they will all benefit.”
But of course it can! Not understanding why is the mistake that has repeatedly led Western leaders and experts to predict diplomacy will succeed only to find, to their puzzlement, that it fails.
Indeed, this factor has been the centerpiece of Middle East history for the last sixty years. Fear of public opinion, fear of Islamists and hardline clerics, fear of rivals taking advantage of their concessions, fear of assassination, fear of political destruction, and other such things have deterred leaders. And those not deterred—King Abdallah of Jordan, Bashir Gemayel of Lebanon, Anwar al-Sadat of Egypt (and, yes, Yitzhak Rabin of Israel, too)--have been eliminated as a result.
There is a rather sharp gap between the reality of PA “President” Mahmoud Abbas’s political position (hardline) and thinking (scared to an extent which usually brings in a bad word at this point) and what Mitchell portrays it as being.
Again, this does not mean the West should not try to negotiate. It does, however, mean that the West should maintain its own credibility in fighting the radicals (in part, to encourage the relative moderates) and support Israel strongly to show that maximal aims cannot be achieved. The lack of these pillars helps to cripple any peace process.
To summarize, these negotiations are based on a set of false premises:
A. That Abbas is clearly the legitimate leader of the Palestinians who is empowered to make a deal. Mitchell bases this on a false claim that Hamas recognizes the Abbas government as legitimate and by not mentioning Abbas is ruling without elections and beyond the end of his term.
B. The idea that Hamas is not a real problem and will just go away. Wrong again.
C. The belief that Abbas and his colleagues view a formal peace agreement with Israel to be in their interests. Again wrong. They view such an agreement as dangerous for themselves and involving concessions they don't want to make.
D. The concept that everyone in the region views peace with Israel as in their interests. Again wrong. The revolutionaries view the active and violent continuation of the conflict to be in their interests while the relative moderates like having the conflict around for their political benefit, especially if they don't have to fight Israel or give money to the Palestinians.
E. The mistaken assumption that a treaty would be the end of the conflict and increase regional stability. In fact, desirable as peace would be, it would provoke a major radical upsurge to stop or destroy the agreement and would mark only the beginning of a struggle over Palestine and policies by the government of Palestine that would probably reignite the conflict.
The text is, “Transcript: Clinton, Special Envoy Mitchell on Push for Middle East Peace, U.S. Department of State, Office of the Spokesman, August 20, 2010.
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