Time for some realpolitik
By Simon Tisdall, The Guardian, May 9, 2003
The US-backed UN resolution on postwar Iraq has the potential to cause an even bigger row than that which preceded the war -- Having abused and abandoned the United Nations and gone to war in Iraq without UN backing in defiance of international law, the Bush administration has returned to the Security Council this week - hoping to win UN legitimacy and legal authority for its postwar plans. Does the administration feel any sense of contradiction, or mild irony, or even slight shame in pursuing this course of action? Apparently not. Secretary of state Colin Powell and other officials are already rehearsing their arguments. No country can now reasonably argue that UN sanctions on Iraq should continue, they say. Nobody should stand in the way of a better future for Iraq. Nobody should bear grudges. Everybody should now rally round the US-directed post-conflict agenda. "Whatever happened in the past is in the past," says Powell. The White House is not now proposing a new, umbrella UN resolution on Iraq because it regrets the manner in which, before the war, it spurned the UN's collective view and undermined the UN's authority. It has not thought better of its contempt for multilateral decision-making on security issues or revoked its newly-tested doctrine of pre-emptive or preventive war-making. The White House is going back to the UN because it has to. The administration needs the UN if any new US-sponsored and US-conceived government of Iraq, interim or otherwise, is to receive international recognition. This is a practical as well as symbolic matter. It does not matter, for example, whether the US decides Ahmad Chalabi, to pluck one name from many, is Iraq's next leader if neighbouring Arab countries and the international community as a whole do not formally accept him as such. Without such recognition, Chalabi might find himself in a position not unlike that of Rauf Denktash, the "president" of northern Cyprus whose government is ignored by all but the Turks. The UN has a primary role to play in facilitating Iraq's political process.

Iraq Body Count
Iraq Body Count, May 8, 2003
Comment and Analysis: How Many Civilians Weere Killed By Cluster Bombs? The Pentagon says 1: Iraq Body Count says at least 200. It is understandable that the US government should wish to play down the damage done to Iraqi civilians by cluster bombs. The rules of war prohibit the use of inherently indiscriminate weapons. Cluster bombs are weapons which are incapable of being used in a manner that complies with the obligation to distinguish between civilians and combatants. Those who use them in civilian areas therefore open themselves to charges of war crimes. Even so, last month’s claim by the Pentagon that only one civilian has died from cluster bombing is breathtaking in its audacious distortion of reality. General Richard Myers, chairman of the military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said Friday 25th April: "Only one of the nearly 1,500 cluster bombs used by coalition forces in Iraq resulted in civilian casualties. An initial review of all cluster munitions used and the targets they were used on indicate that only 26 of those approximately 1,500 hit targets within 1,500 feet of civilian neighborhoods. And there's been only one recorded case of collateral damage from cluster munitions noted so far." But this was only part of the picture, for: [...]Myers did not mention surface-launched cluster munitions, which are believed to have caused many more civilian casualties. “To imply that cluster munitions caused virtually no harm to Iraqi civilians is highly disingenuous,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. “Instead of whitewashing the facts, the Pentagon needs to come clean about the Army's use of cluster munitions, which has been much more fatal to civilians.” Data compiled by Iraq Body Count from widely published press and media reports shows that at least 200 civilian deaths have already been reliably reported as being due to cluster bombs, with up to a further 172 less firmly linked deaths that also involved other munitions. The table below lists these 372 deaths and provides basic information for all reported incidents in which cluster bombs were involved. It reveals that 147 of the 372 deaths have been caused by detonation of unexploded or “dud” munitions, with around half this number being children.

Oslo Casts Shadow on Arab Road Map Hopes
By David Lamb, Arab News, Los Angeles Times, May 9, 2003
CAIRO, Egypt — A war-weary Arab world has greeted the Bush administration’s “road map’’ for a settlement in the Middle East with uneasy support and continued fears that it will be the Palestinians, not the Israelis, who will be forced to make concessions for peace. The subdued response, reflected in the Arab news media, stands in marked contrast to the sense of excitement and hopefulness that swept the region after the Gulf War in 1991, when an international conference in Madrid, Spain, attended by Israelis and Arabs raised expectations of a lasting breakthrough. Still, moderate Arabs — although suspicious of US intentions — are relieved that Washington has re-engaged in the peace process, and they generally see the road map as offering an acceptable solution to the 55-year-old Palestinian-Israeli conflict if it is implemented as presented, without Israeli amendments. The words Egyptian President Anwar Sadat spoke a generation ago still ring true, they believe: “The Americans hold 99 percent of the cards for peace in the Middle East.’’ “The American vision for an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement was not born in a vacuum,’’ Al-Quds, a Palestinian daily, editorialized. “It was the result of years of efforts, initiatives and negotiations that took place all over the world. “It is neither acceptable nor indeed feasible that any amendments should be introduced to the road map now, since that would mean altering points that have already been agreed upon by the two parties, and guaranteed by the Americans as well as by other countries.’’

"We are not just numbers": Commemorating the war victims of Iraq and Palestine
By Rosemary Sayigh, The Electronic Intifada, May 8, 2003
BEIRUT-- "We are not just numbers." This was the theme that brought together a number of independent NGOs -- predominantly women's* -- to organize a commemoration in Beirut of Iraqi and Palestinian war victims on April 30, the arba'een (40th day) from the onset of the war against Iraq. The commemoration was held in Martyrs' Square, a symbolic space of resistance in the heart of Beirut, scene of many recent demonstrations against Israeli attacks on Palestinians and the US/UK war on Iraq. A small incident just before the commemoration began had a symbolism of its own. Representatives of Solidere, the company that now owns most of downtown Beirut (including Martyrs' Square), tried to stop the proceedings. Their point was that Solidere land is a private zone outside the jurisdiction of the Ministry of the Interior and the Municipality of Beirut. The organizers wielded their permit from the Provincial Governor, and the problem was rapidly solved. But does it herald a time when citizens will be deprived of this historically significant space in which to express their feelings? The commemoration programme built on the traditional format of the condolence visit (ta'ziya). All participants were invited to wear mourning clothes, chairs were arranged in a circle, and behind the whole area hung a waraq nawi (obituary notice), an 18-foot-long banner inscribed with these words...

Delaying tactics as a strategy
Editorial, Haaretz, May 9, 2003
Since Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) assumed office as the Palestinian prime minister, Israel has hardened its official positions and has made it clear it will not take any steps to strengthen his position until he begins fighting terror. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is clinging to his doctrine that "there are no free lunches," and is demanding that Abu Mazen and his government's chief of security, Mohammed Dahlan, first prove their willingness to work to uproot terrorism, and demonstrate that they, rather than PA Chairman Yasser Arafat, are in control of the Palestinian Authority. Sharon's stance arouses the suspicion that the prime minister is once again using delaying tactics, which are liable to frustrate current efforts to calm the conflict and restart diplomatic negotiations between Israel and the PA. Sharon has so far succeeded in foiling every diplomatic plan presented to him - even without explicitly rejecting them - by presenting demands preventing progress. His demand for "seven days of quiet" as a precondition for any diplomatic progress, which foiled implementation of both the Mitchell Report and the Tenet plan, has not yet been forgotten.... As the departure date for his eighth meeting with Bush approaches, Sharon will presumably once again take steps to ease life in the territories, and may even set a date for a meeting with Abu Mazen. This, however, misses the point. Israel must aspire to an agreement with the Palestinians not merely to placate the American administration until the next crisis. It must extend a hand to Abu Mazen and hope for his success so that the moderates on the Palestinian side will be strengthened.

Arms unto the nations
By Oren Persico, Globes, May 5, 2003
In its largest export market, Israel plays by very different rules than in any other sector. -- Israel manufactures and exports a great many weapons. The subject almost never arises in public debate, and when it does, people yawn, as if the Jewish people have always been arms manufacturers and merchants. After all, a nation living under the threat of war naturally makes weapons, and a country that makes weapons naturally looks for foreign markets for them. How large is Israel’s arms industry and how much does it export? Government ministries classify this information as privileged, but it is possible to learn about the extent of exports from foreign institutes and publications that monitor the international arms market. “Defense News”, one of the world’s most respected journals covering the arms market, recently reported that Israel is now the world’s third largest arms exporter, after the US and Russia, with arms exports worth $3.7 billion in 2002. Israel’s ranking jumped from its previous position in the bottom half of the top ten arms exporters. In 2001, Israel’s arms exports totaled only $2.6 billion. Israel’s arms exports rose 40% in 2002, and the country overtook Germany, UK, and France, to become a global arms power. The nature of Israel’s arms deals in recent years can be found in the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) publications. SIPRI’s yearbooks report large-scale arms deals, among other things. Following are some prominent Israeli arms deals in the 1990s: 96 Barak air-to-ground missiles to Singapore; 100 Popeye air-to-ground missiles to the US; six Kfir jet fighters to Ecuador; 15 Kfirs to Sri Lanka for use against the Tamil Tiger rebels; ten rocket launchers to Chile; 18 radars to Singapore; 130 anti-tank missiles to Estonia; ten anti-ship missiles to Chile; 18 155-mm artillery pieces to Slovenia; 100 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to South Korea; 15 tanks to Uruguay; 600 Python air-to-air missiles to Singapore; 46 Popeye missiles to Turkey; five 155-mm towed-artillery pieces to Botswana; ten radars to Chile; 48 Python missiles Ecuador; 28 UAVs to Switzerland; eight 155-mm towed artillery pieces to Cameroon; 960 Spike anti-tank missiles to Romania; six UAVs to Finland; two UAVs to the Philippines, for use against the Abu Sayyaf and other Muslim guerillas; 54 Barak missiles to Venezuela; 84 Python missiles to Chile; a landing craft (LCT) to Eritrea; a Bell helicopter to Argentina; and four Skyhawk jets to NATO.

Spreading a big lie
By Ze'ev Schiff, Haaretz, May 9, 2003
The establishment of an outpost with authorization on private Arab land is clearly daylight robbery. But trying to create the impression that a portion of the outposts have something of a legal foothold, and that there are only certain anomalies in the field, the question that has to be asked is: "Legal in whose eyes?"  -- On May 31, 2001, after Palestinians killed an Israel security guard at a settlement outpost near Itamar, the Israel Defense Forces presented then-Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer with a breakdown of the outposts in Judea and Samaria. The picture showed 66 outposts, 24 of which had been established since the start of the armed intifada, and 19 of which were being guarded by the IDF. The minister's aide on settlement and infrastructure issues added that 60 of the outposts were legally flawed from various points of view. Following a review of the matter by a Defense Ministry panel, Ben-Eliezer announced that 15 outposts had to be evacuated. Some 18 months later, on October 16, 2002, a document submitted to the defense minister said that, in addition to 15 outposts evacuated in July 2001, a further 20 such sites named in the document were evacuated in July 2002. The document added that an order had been given to evacuate another 30 illegal outposts. The document again named the sites, which included six over which the settlers had petitioned the High Court of Justice. This was the report given to the defense minister and this is how the issue was covered in official documents. On the ground, however, the picture was very different. On the face of it, 65 outposts should have been evacuated but toward the end of October 2002, the office of the adviser on settlement affairs announced only 21 such sites had been dismantled. This, too, was a virtual report. The real picture bursts forth from the material released recently by the committee (an inter-ministerial one, this time) on the issue of the outposts set up by Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz. The number of outposts in existence as of May 2003 ranges from 90 to 100. In other words, despite the repeated directives to evacuate outposts, and the alleged evacuations that took place in the field, the number of such sites has increased during the period of May 2001-May 2002 from 66 to 90-100. The real picture bursts forth from the material released recently by the committee (an inter-ministerial one, this time) on the issue of the outposts set up by Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz. The number of outposts in existence as of May 2003 ranges from 90 to 100. In other words, despite the repeated directives to evacuate outposts, and the alleged evacuations that took place in the field, the number of such sites has increased during the period of May 2001-May 2002 from 66 to 90-100. All of this means that, when it comes to outposts, the issue has involved the spreading of one of the State of Israel's biggest lies - not only a lie that was told to the Americans and conveyed in semi-official announcements, but also an ongoing lie that the Israeli public is being fed.

Too much winning
By Doron Rosenblum, Haaretz, May 9, 2003 
[Skip the first two paragraphs.] ....Thus, deciding when to stop the offensive, and to let the impact of the psychological collapse do its work, was also of crucial importance. The lesson is that you not only have to know how to start wars and wage them economically but, above all, how to end them - an art that has eluded us in Israel for the past 55 years. It's not hard to imagine how the war in Iraq would have looked if it was waged by Israel. It's possible we would still be bombing Baghdad, only because "we have the ability"; our helicopters would continue to pursue every individual Iraqi fighter to the death; and we would be going from house to house in Tikrit for years with a fine-tooth comb, in order to find the cousin of a "wanted individual" with whom we have to settle accounts in connection with the firing of a rocket a decade earlier. Not to mention our friends the bulldozers, which would certainly level the alleys of Kirkuk and Baghdad from here to eternity, only because, "We have no other choice" and "This is our fate" and "What, are we just going to sit around until they organize?" (as Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon said about the "Abu Mazen bunch" in an Independence Day interview). The circumstances and conditions are different but there is, nevertheless, a lesson to be learned here by a country that has always paraded the art of victory - in other words, finding the golden mean between total withdrawals and all-out wars that are almost grotesque in terms of the use of power. In the land of overkill and "rolling operations," we never knew when to stop winning and start capitalizing on the victory for strategic profit. Instead, like the sorcerer's apprentice or the Prague Golem, we always went on defeating, pursuing, crushing, trampling, pummeling and rolling, only because, "We have to manage before the cease-fire" and "The Americans aren't yet objecting." No wonder, then, that at the end of every "war to the death," a political and strategic fiasco awaits us. That's why Hezbollah is sitting on the border and threatening the entire north of the country after all the massive wars in Lebanon; and that's why a hostile Palestinian state is emerging in the east, following the pounding of the Palestinians for two and a half years, including the use of F-16s and one-ton bombs. How ironic that our most important strategic "achievement" - the dismantlement of the "eastern front" - came about despite, or perhaps because of, the non-use of "the IDF's might."

Neocons dance a Strauss waltz
By Jim Lobe, Asia Times, May  8, 2003
WASHINGTON - Is United States foreign policy being run by followers of an obscure German Jewish political philosopher whose views were elitist, amoral and hostile to democratic government? Suddenly, political Washington is abuzz about Leo Strauss, who arrived in the US in 1938 and taught at several major universities before his death in 1973. Following recent articles in the US press, and as reported in Asia Times Online This war is brought to you by ... in March, the cognoscenti are becoming aware that key neoconservative strategists behind the Bush administration's aggressive foreign and military policy consider themselves to be followers of Strauss, although the philosopher - an expert on Plato and Aristotle - rarely addressed current events in his writings. The most prominent is Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, now widely known as "Wolfowitz of Arabia" for his obsession with ousting Iraq's Saddam Hussein as the first step in transforming the entire Arab Middle East. Wolfowitz is also seen as the chief architect of Washington's post-September 11 global strategy, including its controversial preemption policy. Two other very influential Straussians include Weekly Standard chief editor William Kristol and Gary Schmitt, founder, chairman and director of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a six-year-old neoconservative group whose alumni include Vice President Dick Cheney and Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, as well as a number of other senior foreign policy officials. PNAC's early prescriptions and subsequent open letters to President George W Bush on how to fight the war on terrorism have anticipated to an uncanny extent precisely what the administration has done. Kristol's father Irving, the godfather of neoconservatism who sits on the board of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where a number of prominent hawks, including former defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle, are based, has also credited Strauss with being one of the main influences on his thinking. While a New York Times article introduced readers to Strauss and his disciples in Washington, interest was further piqued this week by a lengthy article by The New Yorker's legendary investigative reporter, Seymour Hersh, who noted that Abram Shulsky, a close Perle associate who has run a special intelligence unit in Rumsfeld's office, is also a Straussian.

Alive and kicking, but not in Israel
By Ze'ev Sternhell, Haaretz, May 9, 2003
In Europe, there is a civil and political culture upon which one can rely. Here, everything has to be started from the beginning. A daily ideological effort is needed to demolish the notion that there is no alternative to the market economy and unbridled liberalism, and a political party is needed that will be able not only to demand more equality and a lot more justice, but also to translate these demands into terms of national policy. Perhaps in this way it will be possible to contain to some extent the social destruction that is going on before our very eyes. -- There is no more appropriate and interesting day than May 1 for examining the Israeli left. In Israel, nothing remains of this day, which for 100 years has symbolized throughout Europe the workingman's struggle for his fair share of the social wealth. However, on the continent where the Industrial Revolution began, as the struggle to preserve the achievements of the welfare state increases, the First of May and the red flag are attracting wider participation. About 50,000 people, organized into phalanxes by trade and party affiliation, gave up the long weekend vacation and marched in Paris along the traditional route of the left-wing demonstrations that began at the turn of the last century. The symbolism of the long tradition has been maintained continuously, despite all the changes brought about by time. This symbolism is an integral part of the self-confidence afforded to the average wage-earner by the reliance not only on the current collective strength but also on a rich past laden with memories. In Paris, they do not think this past is no longer relevant. In Israel, all this does not exist and the reasons are not adventitious. The swiftness and ease with which all the centers of power on the left have been dissolved, coupled with the huge social gaps that have made Israel one of the most unequal societies in the western world, the cynicism and scorn for every call for solidarity with the weaker strata and the refusal to recognize the right to a decent life as the natural right of every human being, even those bringing no economic benefit, all testify to the shallowness of the "workers'" tradition in Israel. Indeed, the workers' movement was built up first of all as a system of power and control, the main purpose of which was to conquer the land and establish the state. As a result, it was unable to see to the emotional and cultural integration of all the mass immigrations. The health services dispensed in the transit camps by the Histadrut health scheme could not cover up the great blunder: The labor movement did not set up a true welfare state, it did not legislate the basic social laws that were taken for granted in Europe in the 1940s, even though Europe had just begun to rise from its ruins. Therefore, no natural trajectories for integration and advancement were opened here.