I think I feel here in Washington some new trends. First of all, there is more sensitivity to the issue of settlements. I think there is more inclination to accept our view, our point of view, that Palestinians are—should be allowed to have a national unity government, and thirdly, that we should allow Palestinian democracy to be revived. You know that Israel has slaughtered the democratic transformation in Palestine by arresting our members of parliament. And if Israel is entitled to democratic elections, then I think we, as Palestinians, are entitled to that. I believe this is just a beginning. I hope we will go in the right direction. And maybe these results of elections in Israel will show everybody the time has come for a real change in the American policy.
Every value that President Obama spoke about—values of respect of human rights, of democracy, of respect for Geneva Convention, avoiding torture, justice, equality, equal opportunity—every value of those are violated by Israel. - Dr. Mustafa Barghouti,
President-elect Obama Comments on Violence in Gaza January 07, 2009
HOPE President-elect Obama no PEACE
Why are Obama & Clinton Silent about Israel's Massacre of Palestinians in Gaza?
Obama & UN Calls For Unrestricted Gaza Access January 23, 2009
Lebanon Israel Facts the Media Isn't Telling You
http://www.un.org/unrwa/refugees/index.html
http://www.un.org/unrwa/news/statements/gaza_crisis/Gaylard_16jan09.html
bad obama peace silence
BREAKING THE SPIRAL http://www.atlanticfreepress.com
by Bernard Weiner
So is there a way out of this maelstrom of death and destruction? I think there is, but the bloodshed has spiraled for so long as to be almost unstoppable at this point. Still the effort must be made. If Northern Ireland could reach a peaceful solution to its seemingly intractable conflict after centuries of religious/class/nationalistic warfare, other bedeviled regions might be able to do the same.
In the Middle East, there are those on both sides who understand the futility of the current paths each side has chosen. We call them "Israeli moderates" and "Palestinian moderates," but, more correctly, they should be called Middle East realists in this horrific situation.
They realize that the current spiral of violence twists and turns on itself and gets them nowhere but back to where they started. There must be some way out of here, but the voices of courage and clarity are few and far-between in Israel, Palestine and even here in the U.S. Hate, rage, mistrust, slaughter -- these dominate the Middle East's politics and policies. It seems clear that there will be no significant progress toward peace and justice under the current leadership in Israel and Gaza. They are like two tarantulas locked in a death embrace; even if they wanted to separate, they no longer know how to release. It will take a "neutral" outside force to help them and guide them to a different, more hopeful reality.
CAN U.S. BE "HONEST BROKER"?
Conceivably, that outside agent could be the European Union or the United Nations or the Arab League (there already is some talk of an international peace -keeping force), working in concert with "inside" forces, meaning new leadership in Israel and Hamas. There is a strong peace faction inside Israel, but it's been marginalized lately and the hardliners seem poised to win the upcoming election. The Palestinian Authority under Abbas seems on some level to understand the futility of the current struggle and probably would be willing to settle with the Israelis,
given good-faith negotiations. Hamas seems incapable of major change at this point, which is why Israel is bent on destroying it as a viable military/political force.
But the key to any positive movement would be, would have to be, the United States. Claiming the role of an "honest broker" won't be easy for the incoming Obama Administration, given the incendiary role played by the CheneyBush regime during the past eight years in Israel/Palestine and in the Greater Middle East, in effect pouring gasoline on the embers of despair. The moral power of the U.S. is at its nadir in the region.
Then, too, Obama, during the presidential campaign, seemed to indicate little more than unquestioning approval of Israeli policies, which would not bode well for assuming the "honest broker" role. But Obama was a candidate then, he will be president now and must put America's national-security interests first. Tamping down the tension and reasons for violence and extremist terrorism in the Middle East, with its spillover effect on terrorists angry at the U.S., certainly qualifies under that charge, and polls show that most Americans agree.
THE SITUATION LOOKS BLEAK
Regardless of the difficulties involved and the fact that Obama already has a lot on his incoming plate, he should make Middle East peace a top priority. If the Israel/Palestine conundrum can be solved, many other pieces will start falling into place throughout the region. That can only be good for Israel, the Arab world, the Greater Middle East, and the U.S. itself. (And bad for Al-Qaida and extremist Islamist fanatics.)
But right now, things don't look good for any kind of settlement of the dispute. Extremist mentalities on both sides continue to repeat the mental-illness loop mentioned in the first paragraph. The Israeli government thinks its bombing and invasion of Gaza will influence the local population to abandon the Hamas leadership voted into power in the most recent election. It won't. Hamas thinks if it continues sending rockets and suicide bombers into Israel, it will dissuade the Israelis from its over-the-top military assault on Hamas. It won't. (As I write this, Israel, having run out of sites to attack from the air, is now on the ground with a massive ground force in Gaza, tasked to destroy even more of Hamas' infrastructure, tunnels, hierarchy, ability to govern. The Palestinians, remembering how Hizbullah in Lebanon bloodied the invading Israeli forces last year, may have some military surprises in store for the occupying Israeli troops, including suicide bombers in great numbers and even longer-range rockets to send deep into Israel. But Israel is the big kahuna in the region and its firepower, and willingness to use it against a vastly devastated foe, would seem to lead Israel to a short-term victory. However, as many occupying armies have discovered, it's easier to get into a country than it is to get out. And Israel, seen worldwide as a giant bully, is losing friends and supporters everywhere.)
WHAT IS REQUIRED
No, for any hope of a peaceful solution, it seems to me, a number of tumblers need to click into place:
1. A respected outside force must somehow arrange, encourage, coerce a cessation of hostilities, and probably set up some kind of peace-keeping buffer zone, using some palatable excuse: "for humanitarian reasons," or whatever. And the Palestinian Authority will have to be involved and in the room of any talks.
2. Hamas and the Israeli government must be willing to negotiate with The Other, maybe not face-to-face at first, but eventually. Such willingness to negotiate would signify an implicit recognition that the other side exists and must be talked with and listened-to. Israel says it will never negotiate with Hamas and doesn't recognize its authority over Gaza, despite its overwhelming popular electoral victory there. Israel will have to change its mind. Hamas says it will not negotiate with "Zionist criminals" since Israel has no legitimacy and should not exist. Hamas will have to alter that position.
If those two pre-requisites don't happen, there is no alternative but another generation of slaughter, endless recrimination, vengeance extracted forever. When enough blood has been spilled in the years that follow, perhaps more (probably younger) realists will emerge on both sides who are willing to face the truth of the matter: that neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis are going to disappear, that no amount of violence will accomplish that fantasy of disappearance, and that both sides are right and that both sides are wrong.
If that point ever can be reached (and it's in America's best interests to make sure that point arrives sooner rather than later), then comprehensive negotiations can take place that could eventuate in a just peace for both parties. Neither side would get everything they want, of course, but both would get enough of what they need.
THE OUTLINE FOR PEACE
It's been clear for decades what the outlines of a just peace might look like and what each side would have to do to get there:
1. Both sides would have to abandon their "I'm the true victim" and "you started it" loops. Each side has some history on its side, each side has behaved abominably, each side has some justice in its arguments. Both sides would have to stipulate, so to speak, to these recognitions and vow not to get bogged down in whose claim is the more righteous but stick to how to make living together in the same region workable and mutually beneficial.
2. Israel would have to return to its pre-1967 borders, fully end its occupation and control of the West Bank and Gaza, abandon its settlements on Palestinian land and make sure no new ones are allowed to intrude into the new viable Palestine state, which Israel would officially recognize. (In terms of Gaza and the West Bank, Israel would cease its ruthless policy of "a hundred eyes for an eye" overkill, which constantly reminds the Palestinians of their utter powerlessness.)
3. The Palestinians (both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority or, better yet, Hamas inside the Palestinian Authority) would have to officially recognize the de facto State of Israel and its right to exist within secure borders. No more rockets, no more suicide bombers inside Israel, no more calling for Israel's destruction, etc.
4. Realizing that there are crazy fanatics on each side, acting out of religious zealotry or ultranationalist urgings, both sides would have to agree to crack down on those extremists and not let occasional militant violence interfere with the peace process as it unfolds and in living together after the peace treaty has been signed.
5. Jerusalem, prized for historical and religious reasons by both sides (and by Christians as well), would become an international city, administered by the U.N. and/or a tri-religious civic council agreed to by all. Both Israel and Palestine might well have their administrative capitals in the new, calmer city.
6. If Israel will not permit the "right of return" of Palestinians forced off their lands by the original establishment of the Jewish state or by the Separation Wall, they will pay fair compensation for the land and homes. Perhaps Arab nations separately and the Arab League collectively can aid in this regard as well.
7. Treaties would be worked out regarding the free-travel rights of Palestinian workers inside Israel, the fair allocation of precious water resources, sharing technological developments, etc.
IMAGINING THE FUTURE
The fact that these, and other, topics over the past decades have been widely discussed and recognized as potential solutions to the Middle East conflict suggests their viability still today. If you can imagine it, it can happen. But, as so many politicians and diplomats have discovered, the situation in the region is so explosive and tenuous that it's extremely difficult to get from here to there. But, for the sake of the future of both societies, peace in the region and the globe, and for America's future as well, President Obama must become more even-handed in the Middle East and must be willing to dive in and try once and for all to help move the crisis to its peaceful, just end point. To do otherwise is to ensure more terrorism emanating from that region, and generations of children devoid of hope and opportunity. The candidate of "change" and "hope," and love of children, simply cannot let that happen.
http://tonykaron.com/
How to Break the U.S.-Hamas Impasse
Israel and even some Arab leaders still speak fancifully about putting Fatah in charge of rebuilding Gaza, but that’s a dangerous fallacy. The reality on the ground is that no progress is possible in Palestinian political life – from Gaza’s ceasefire and reconstruction to meaningful peace negotiations with Israel – without the consent and support of Hamas. Tying progress on those fronts to efforts to marginalise Hamas gives Hamas an incentive to play the spoiler, and with the credibility of Abbas and Fatah in Palestinian eyes now at an all-time low, it simply isn’t smart politics.
Hamas has to be involved, but that requires finding a formula to deal with the prohibitions imposed by the US and its allies on engaging Hamas until the movement symbolically renounces violence, recognises Israel and embraces past peace agreements. Hamas is unlikely to make declarations that it would deem a symbolic surrender, and nor is the US likely to reverse itself on those preconditions, as President Barack Obama has now twice made clear.
The art of diplomacy, in such an instance, is to find a way for both sides to compromise without appearing to do so. And the good news is that there’s plenty of scope for closing the gap. Israel and even some Arab leaders still speak fancifully about putting Fatah in charge of rebuilding Gaza, but that’s a dangerous fallacy. The reality on the ground is that no progress is possible in Palestinian political life – from Gaza’s ceasefire and reconstruction to meaningful peace negotiations with Israel – without the consent and support of Hamas. Tying progress on those fronts to efforts to marginalise Hamas gives Hamas an incentive to play the spoiler, and with the credibility of Abbas and Fatah in Palestinian eyes now at an all-time low, it simply isn’t smart politics.
Hamas has to be involved, but that requires finding a formula to deal with the prohibitions imposed by the US and its allies on engaging Hamas until the movement symbolically renounces violence, recognises Israel and embraces past peace agreements. Hamas is unlikely to make declarations that it would deem a symbolic surrender, and nor is the US likely to reverse itself on those preconditions, as President Barack Obama has now twice made clear.
The art of diplomacy, in such an instance, is to find a way for both sides to compromise without appearing to do so. And the good news is that there’s plenty of scope for closing the gap.
Waltzing With Ariel: Will Obama, Too, Indulge Israeli Rejectionism?
Ariel Sharon still sleeps peacefully on life-support three years after suffering a massive stroke, but you could be forgiven for thinking he was still at the helm in Israel — because today, the Israeli government appears to have only tactics to fight the next battle, but no strategy beyond an improvisational combination of expanding the occupation of the West Bank, cynically chanting the benedictions of a two-state divorce that will come, one day (like the moshiach) while getting on with the “iron wall” business of creating expansive “facts on the ground” and trying to crush Palestinian resistance. There’s no “peace process” at work in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, nor as there been for the past eight years.
Perhaps Benjamin Netanyahu’s victory in next weekend’s Israeli election will provide what George W. Bush liked to call a “moment of clarity”, by making it unmistakably clear that Israel’s leaders are not, in any meaningful sense, a “partner” for a credible two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. (Then again, you’re more likely to hear more wishful spin about how Bibi, precisely because he’s so hawkish, is a better bet for making peace — which sort of dodges the inconvenient truth that Bibi has no intention of doing so.)
So, what’s Obama to do?
Obama’s Administration could argue that the U.S. may have its preferences, but it can’t choose Israel’s leaders; it has to work with whomever Israel elects. Indeed. But the same is true for the Palestinians. And a major reason for the steady deterioration of the Israeli-Palestinian situation over the past eight years has been Washington’s efforts to choose the Palestinians’ leaders for them, with increasingly disastrous effects.
Change Gaza Can Believe In
The catastrophe in Gaza has, counterintuitively enough, presented President Barack Obama with an opportunity to restart the peace process — precisely because it has demonstrated the catastrophic failure of the approach adopted by the Bush Administration…. …The Gaza debacle has made one thing perfectly clear: any peace process that seeks to marginalize, not integrate, Hamas is doomed to fail — and with catastrophic consequences.
The People Have Reclaimed Their Flag
Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen welcome Obama with Woodie Guthrie’s lyrics to “This Land is Your Land” — the, uh, suppressed verses…
The War Isn’t Over, But Israel Has Lost
Haven’t we been here before?
I. The Last Waltz?
Repeating behaviors that have produced catastrophic failures and expecting a different result is insane; and when a person’s psychotic behavior puts himself those around him in immediate physical danger, the responsibility of those who claim to be his friends is to restrain him. But even as Waltz With Bashir shows in multiplexes across the world as a grim reminder of the precedent for Israel’s brutal march of folly in Gaza, the U.S. (and the editors of the New York Times and Washington Post) insist that there is a sanity and rationality to sending one of the world’s most powerful armies into a giant refugee camp to rend the flesh and crush the bones of those who stand in its way — whether in defiance or by being unlucky enough to have been born of the wrong tribe and be huddling in the wrong place. By fighting its way to their citadel, they would have us believe, Israel can destroy Hamas and usher in a golden age of peace. Or, to borrow from the casual callousness of Condi Rice during the last such display of futile brutality, we are witnessing, again, the “birth pangs of a new Middle East.” Israel failed in 2006, just as in 2002 and 1982. This time, they tell us, will be different.
And then the horror unfolds, as it always does — the hundreds of civilians accidentally massacred as they cowered in what they were told were places of safety, mocking the Israel’s torrent of self congratulation over its restraint and its brilliant intelligence — and the hopelessly out-gunned enemy manages to survive, as he does every time. And by surviving, grows stronger politically. No matter how many are killed, the leaders targeted by Israel’s military are endlessly regenerated in the fertile soil of grievance and resentment born of the circumstances Israel has created. Circumstances it has created, but which it, and its most fervent backers refuse to acknowledge, much less redress.
Understanding Gaza
Soon enough, the bloody mess in Gaza will end in another cease-fire, having hardly changed the political equation in Gaza — much as the opposite might have been hoped for by the Bush Administration, the Israeli government and the regimes in Cairo and Ramallah who are quietly cheering Israel’s assault in the hope that it fatally weakens Hamas. The cease-fire, when it comes, will end rocket fire on Israel, but will also likely require the opening of the border crossings into Gaza (Hamas’ basic demand for a renewed truce). If so, that’s an outcome that could have been achieved without the killing of close to 400 people. And my money says that this cynical show of force by Barak and Tzipi Livni won’t even stop Bibi Netanyahu from winning Israel’s February election. The killing in Gaza, in other words, has been utterly senseless by even the most cynical measure.
Rambo III and the Mumbai Massacre
This from my latest in the National:
If Condoleezza Rice had been looking for some in-flight movies pertinent to her mission in South Asia over the past few days, she ought to have considered Rambo III. Or Pinocchio. Or Frankenstein. Aladdin, even.
All four could help explain the background to the Mumbai massacre that has brought India and Pakistan to the brink of confrontation. Pinocchio and Frankenstein, after all, are cautionary tales about how those who fabricate creatures to do their bidding are often forced to reckon with the often vindictive impulses of their creations. Aladdin unleashes a genie who has his own agenda. And Rambo III, in which Sylvester Stallone’s action-hero joins up with the Afghan mujahideen to fight the Soviets (just like a certain Mr Bin Laden) should serve as a timely reminder that support for holy warriors waging jihad had been an article of faith in Ronald Reagan’s Washington.
Pakistan’s intelligence service, the ISI, had served as the conduit for Washington to use the Afghan mujahideen and the Arab volunteers who joined them, to wage a proxy war on the Soviets. And from the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 to the 9/11 attacks, the monster created by assembling an Islamist International for combat and training in Afghanistan turned on its erstwhile patron to deadly effect.
But after the US walked away when the Soviets limped out of Afghanistan, the Pakistanis used the proxy war model to pursue their own regional agenda.
Mumbai Massacre May Sink Bush-Obama Strategy
Secretary of State Condi Rice, with the blessing of Barack Obama,
has flown off to South Asia charged with the mission of preventing tensions between India and Pakistan from escalating in the wake of the Mumbai massacre. Both the current and the incoming U.S. Administrations consider that a matter of urgency in light of their shared Afghanistan outlook: Both are well aware that the key to stabilizing Afghanistan is not sending more Western troops (although both are committed to doing so anyway), but resolving the conflict between India and Pakistan, of which Afghanistan has lately emerged as a primary theater. And so, the U.S. is putting pressure on the Pakistani government to cooperate with India in investigating the Mumbai outrage that very probably originated on Pakistani soil. The problem is that the Pakistani government doesn’t control the Pakistani military, which doesn’t share the political leadership’s enthusiasm for the “war on terror” — or for making nice with India.
Call Me Ishmael…
Strategic threat or law enforcement problem?
The suggestion that al Qa’eda poses more danger to the well-being of ordinary Americans than a tanking economy that threatens the jobs and homes of millions seems preposterous to any sober observer: al Qa’eda is a small conspiratorial organisation that once, seven years ago, managed to pull off a spectacular attack on US soil, and has over the same period pulled off a few more such grisly stunts in London, Madrid, Casablanca and Bali. It controls no territory and is incapable of disrupting the defences of even the weakest states on the planet, much less the most powerful. To suggest it poses a greater risk than the most profound slump in three generations made a good Halloween story, nothing more.
But if McCain was simply trying to scare people into voting for him, he was inadvertently laying bare the fallacy at the heart of the Bush administration’s “War on Terror”, which made the organising principle of US foreign policy a campaign against a handful of extreme jihadists.
McCain regularly repeats the preposterous mantra that the struggle against Islamist radicalism is the “transcendent challenge of the 21st century,” but make no mistake, Barack Obama falls victim to the same flawed logic when he proclaims Afghanistan “the right war” and promises to get out of Iraq in order to free up more troops to send to “stamp out the Taliban”, as he put it one of the presidential debates.
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Iraq: Why the End is in Sight
The war in Iraq is drawing to a close — and hardly on the terms of those who initiated it. It’s end is being hastened by Iraqi democracy, and by the retrenchment of U.S. power globally, accelerated by the sharp economic downturn
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