Democracy on a leash in Jordan
By Ian Urbina, Asia Times, June 21, 2003
As most of the coverage quickly points out, recent Jordanian elections saw surprisingly few surprises. Having called off the popular vote first in 1997 and repeatedly thereafter, the Hashemite crown finally decided to roll the electoral dice and, in the end, came out all the stronger. For a politically rocky region, this was democracy at its smoothest. A clear majority of the seats went to pro-government tribal candidates, thereby diluting what few opposition voices previously resided in parliament. Voter turnout topped 58 percent - a little lower than hoped, but still more than is typical, for example, in United States presidential elections. Jordan's Islamists added credibility to the electoral process. Rather than boycotting, as is typical, they opted to join the process, and much to the relief of the King, they scored only 17 out of 110 total seats, far fewer than expected. With a brutal Israeli occupation continuing on one border, and a messy US occupation unfolding on another, Jordanian political parties might have decided to use the election season to air pent-up frustrations. But for the most part, they didn't. This was especially noteworthy since 60 percent of Jordanians are Palestinians and close to 90 percent of Jordanians opposed the US invasion of Iraq. Happiest of all is King Abdullah. In one fell swoop, he reinforced the rubber-stampers he needs, and fortified the democratizer image he so cherishes. The elections were also a step forward for women. Six of the parliamentary seats were set aside for female candidates. Though none were directly voted into office, the top six candidates will be seated in the coming weeks. From a total 776 Jordanians competing for seats in parliament, 54 female candidates ran, the most ever. These advances notwithstanding, there is another side to the story. One of the most noteworthy elements of the recent Jordanian elections was who did not show up on the ballot. Despite being a popular favorite, Toujan Faisal, the only woman in Jordanian history to be elected to a seat in the lower house of parliament, was barred from running, and the tale of her exclusion gets to the heart of certain worrisome trends inside the Hashemite kingdom.

Cops Find 'Terror' In Every Rap Sheet
By Alexander Gourevitch, AlterNet/Washington Monthly, June 19, 2003
At first blush, New Jersey's District Attorney's office seems like a model of federal law enforcement in the war against terrorism. In the year after 9/11, after all, they nabbed 62 individuals for acts of "international terrorism" – individuals who, arguably, would no longer be threatening American lives. But on closer inspection, there's less to this success story than meets the eye. Sixty of the 62 international terrorists, according to a March story in The Philadelphia Inquirer, turned out to be Middle Eastern students who had cheated on a test; specifically, they had paid others to take an English proficiency exam required for college or graduate school. Only one of the other two cases involved charges that might normally be understood as relating to an act of terrorism: Ahmad Omar Saeed Sheikh, who was indicted for his role in the kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Pakistan. With the exception of Pearl's kidnapping conspirator, in other words, none of the terrorists in question were actually terrorists. And these aren't isolated examples. Under post-9/11 rules promulgated by the Justice Department – which created a number of new terrorism-related categories by which to classify cases, but left it to district attorneys to determine which crimes fit the bill – federal prosecutors across the country are turning in creative anti-terrorism records to their superiors in Washington, who are under enormous pressure to produce results and have little incentive to double-check them. The result is an epidemic of phony reporting. According to a January report by the General Accounting Office, at least 46 percent of all terrorism-related convictions for FY 2002 were misclassified; of those cases listed as "international terrorism," at least 75 percent didn't fit the bill.

Revisionist realities
By Abdallah El-Ashaal, Al-Ahram Weekly On-line, 19 - 25 June 2003
Are we selling the resistance down the river?  Reflections on the rhetoric of recent "peacemaking" -- There is more to the Sharm El-Sheikh and Aqaba summits than meets the eye. A new era is beginning, and a word of advice is due to our politicians, before it is too late. The future of this region belongs to its people. No one, irrespective of his power, position, or good intentions, has the right to muzzle the views of others. No vision of regional peace, however worthy the purposes behind it, can be achieved unless the parties active in the conflict are prepared to endorse it. Any approach which supports might over right is doomed, for what the region needs is a just and comprehensive peace -- not a deal that is partial and biased. Some may argue that, in Sharm El-Sheikh and Aqaba, Washington has stood by Israel while the Arabs stood by the Palestinians. What actually happened was that America asked Israel to accept the creation of a Palestinian state by 2005 and take some goodwill steps along the way. Meanwhile, the Arabs promised the Palestinians they would help them fight terrorism. In addition, the Arabs issued a statement after the Sharm El-Sheikh talks in which they said that terror is a threat to humanity and peace and can never be justified, not even by occupation. So in a sense, there was no disagreement between the Sharm and Aqaba summits. Their common conclusion was that the history of the region is one of conflict between the forces of "peace", as represented by Israel (with which certain Arab parties have belatedly sought to associate themselves), and the forces of "terrorism", as represented by those who resist Israel (militarily or politically). In other words, Israel has always been right. It has used force for a very long time, but it only did so in order to get its neighbours to see the light. And finally, they did. Of course, no one hates peace. And no one likes terror. What is at dispute is not the value of the realities, but the sense the two words have in our discourse. At both the Sharm and Aqaba summits, the definition of these terms remained unclear. For Israel, peace is what Sharon described, albeit with extreme circularity, in Aqaba on 4 June 2003, when he said that a lasting peace requires lasting security, and that this lasting security is what provides Israel with a lasting peace. Israel's view of how security and peace are interlinked is an integral part of how Israel sees the world.

Sue for Peace or Lose it All
By Ghassan Khatib, Alternative Information Center, June 20, 2003
When the two-state solution is no longer a practical possibility, we may not have the luxury of deciding what to do: there are few remaining choices. The unraveling of the two state solution is going to leave us with one state, in a variety of possible forms ranging from a government of “one person, one vote” to that of an apartheid state. Israel (and particularly this right-wing government, which is ideologically opposed to two equal and independent states) is trying to push for “autonomous” arrangements whereby Palestinians will control the smallest possible landmass, while squeezing into that area the highest number of Palestinians possible. This “autonomy” will then be rigged to be fully surrounded by Israeli sovereignty on the whole of Israel/Palestine, from the sea to the river. In other words, we Palestinians and Israelis are being offered an apartheid solution where one state will include two ethnic groups, a majority and minority, that answer to two distinct sets of! laws, are served by two levels of infrastructure and maintain two entirely disparate socio-economic levels. This end result is not going to solve anything, least of all the mutual hostility and fighting, because Palestinians will continue to demand their rights and to correct the injustice they have been done. Subsequently, Israel will never be settled as a stable and normal state in the region and will maintain its negative international reputation. At the moment, political developments are significantly advancing this prognosis. Not only due to ongoing hostilities, but also because of the current layout of settlements in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Jerusalem, a viable and contiguous Palestinian state is difficult to conceive of. As one Palestinian professor put it recently at a Birzeit University conference, “Five years ago, we were saying that if settlement expansion continues at current rates, then it would jeopardize the two state solution. Now I am saying that we are already at the point of no return, but for those in the audience with their doubts, just imagine things five years from now.”

A State Built on Terror and Larceny
BY Roger Harrison, Arab News, June 21, 2003
The continued US support to Israel and its settlement policy founded on fear and military enforcement is causing resentment throughout the Arab world. Washington ignores that it is illegal under international law for an occupying power to transfer citizens from its own territory to the occupied territory by building more and more settlements. This is the third and concluding part of our series on Israel’s expansionist policy. -- “Zionism is a colonizing adventure and therefore it stands or falls by the question of armed force. It is important to build, it is important to speak Hebrew, but, unfortunately, it is more important to be able to shoot — or else I am through with playing at colonization.” (Vladimir Jablonsky, early right-wing Zionist leader, 1923) The spread of settlements had long been reinforced by terror. Armed groups of Zionist-Irgun Zvail Leumi (IZL) and Lehi (the Stern group) provided amongst others an armed threat to Palestinians, who often abandoned their land under their pressure. This took on a new momentum in 1948 with the raid on Deir Yassin. April, May and September proved to be key points in the establishment of the Jewish state and auguries of the development of aggressive settlement policy. The villagers of Deir Yassin had signed a nonaggression pact with a nearby Jewish village. Deir Yassin was built on a hill, overlooking a main access road to Jerusalem and in an area that was proposed as an airport. However, “the clear aim was to break Arab morale and raise the morale of the Jewish community in Jerusalem, which had been hit hard for some time....,” said a senior Irgun officer after the raid.

Something is being born, but let's not call it empire
By Martin Woollacott, The Guardian, June 20, 2003
American power is immense, but it is built on collaboration -- Responding this week to a suggestion that it must be humiliating for the fate of his people to hang on US intervention, the Palestinian negotiator Saab Erekat said with a wry smile: "I think everybody realises that the new Rome is with us." It is easy to see how Israelis and Palestinians might think in these terms as they consider their futures, since the support of the United States is so important to one, and the hope of fair-minded American arbitration so critical to the other. But Erekat's remark also illustrates how ubiquitous the idea of empire now is, and how curiously acceptable it is becoming in a world which was supposed to have turned its back on this most unacceptable of political structures. It is true that empire never left the critical vocabulary. Concepts of neo-imperialism and informal imperialism were elaborated to account for the persisting imbalance between former colonies and former imperial centres - and, in particular, to explain the nature of American power. Long ago Arthur Schlesinger Jr, discussing what he called the American "quasi-empire", wrote: "Imperial adventures will find new forms in new eras, meet obstacles, succeed for a season, founder in time and leave havoc as well as benefit in their trail." But there is something different about the discussion of empire since the Afghan intervention and, even more, since the Iraq war. The presumption is increasingly that we, meaning all the peoples of the world, are in an empire, stuck with it, like a ship's crew and passengers on a long journey. The questions raised often have a primarily practical air, as if to ask: how are we going to make this work for us, or serve our purposes, or how are we going to survive it? American foreign policy analyst David Rieff can say in passing that he thinks George Bush is America's Octavius, and people at once understand the reference to a transition that both brought the Roman republic to an end and inaugurated a long-lived empire. Whether it is Niall Ferguson wondering whether the American empire is going to be as effective as the British, Michael Ignatieff examining whether empire can serve both moral and strategic purposes, or Eric Hobsbawm fearing the worst, there seems to be a more and more general imperial premise. This is unfortunate, because empire ought not to be an easy word, whether used with approval or disapproval. Indeed, there is a sense in which the acceptance of empire is empire. In his recent book Henry Kamen examines the extraordinary weakness of Castile, the frailest state ever to preside over a great empire, and concludes that the structure remained intact for such a long time because it served the purposes of so many societies, including some who were formally enemies of Spain.

Nothing left but the reflex
By Doron Rosenblum, Haaretz, June 21, 2003
The defense minister and the prime minister may have wrapped themselves in crafty silence after the failed attempt to assassinate the top Hamas man Abdel Aziz Rantisi, and the big suicide bus bombing in Jerusalem that immediately followed it - but it was business as usual for the chief of staff. Lieutenant General Moshe "Bogy" Ya'alon spoke more than freely. With his almost naive frankness - part of the banality of brutality - "Bogy" justified the oddly timed and botched assassination attempt, citing as his rationale, "the need to go crazy for a few days, so as not to slide down the slope."  "I am but mad north-north-west; when the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw," said Hamlet, prince of Denmark, with equal assurance. The only trouble is that the directions and dosages of Israeli security "craziness" are not always clear. On top of this, they have been continuing off and on for almost three years, accompanied by suspicions that here too there is "method" in their madness. The fact is that more than once - and more than twice too - thanks to some sort of wonderful prophetic or intelligence sense, the reprisal raids, the "targeted assassinations" and the "need to go crazy" manifested themselves before, rather than after, the revenge terrorism that came in their wake. Yet, if there is anything that spoils any conspiracy theory about a junta involving both uniformed and retired officers who are torpedoing every incipient political move, it is the absence of the element of mystery. After all the "defense establishment" makes no secret of its professional opinion of hudna-shmudna, withdrawals and the other "buzzings about agreements that are floating in the air." How is it possible to foment a conspiracy theory when everything is openly and explicitly on the table? In justification of the "craziness" - meaning forceful and exceptional military measures - we have the horrific and despair-making Palestinian-Islamic murderousness, for which a rational political response may well not exist. So perhaps, in the well-known remark by Moshe Dayan, it's natural to expect army people to be "galloping horses" that need to be reined in, rather than indolent foals that need spurring on. But here's the rub - who will rein in their galloping? Who will check them when they get a sudden urge to kick up their hind legs? Shaul Mofaz? Ariel Sharon? Leader of the opposition MK Dalia "How we envy you for not having the kind of opposition that you and your colleagues were to us" Itzik? Look where you will these days, you will not be able to find even the trace of another narrative, an alternative opinion to that of the "senior figures in the defense establishment," on the coldness of their calculations, the heat of their rage, and their gang-war approach to the conflict, including vendettas and blood revenge.

Partial withdrawal is a poisoned chalice for the Palestinians
By Catherine Hunter, The Electronic Intifada, June 16, 2003
The Israeli offer to partially withdraw from Palestinian territories and let the PA takeover security in those areas is yet another poisoned chalice to be avoided by the Palestinians. On one side lays the tempting prospect of an end to Israel's arbitrary arrests and the disproportionate use of force, amply illustrated by the helicopter gunship attacks in the Gaza Strip which have killed over 60 Palestinians in the last week. On the other side lies the prospect of pitting Palestinian against Palestinian in an attempt to maintain "security" in the Gaza Strip, most likely the PA against Hamas, or in the worst scenario, the PA against all militants, including the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade -- a dream come true for the Sharon administration. Not only would Israel avoid the negative publicity of using excessive force against so-called militants and, more frequently, the civilians around them, but it could sit back and watch the last remnants of active opposition tear themselves apart, whilst winning international plaudits for its restraint. The prospect of a smug Sharon watching the fragmentation of yet another Palestinian stronghold into multiple interest groups is almost too much to bear. For a population of only around 10 million people worldwide, the Palestinians are already divided enough, not perhaps through Israeli machinations, but through the tragic events of the last 55 years which have fragmented their interests, changed their priorities and weakened their collective voice to barely a whisper against Israel's coordinated roar.

Settlements As An Example
By Azmi Bishara, Paletine Media Center/Al-Hayat, June 20, 2003
As a minister of agriculture between 1977-81, Ariel Sharon was responsible for changing the map of the Palestinian-Israeli struggle by establishing settlements. Earlier, in 1974, as the security advisor to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, he was responsible for establishing settlements in Sabastia, to the north of the West Bank. The settlements carried Sharon to the ministry of defense and to become prime minister a few years later. Sharon used the settlements issue as a tool for the advancement of his political career following his life in the military. Yet many Arabs believe that the question of settlements is the easiest, compared to the Israeli stance regarding Jerusalem and the refugees, which they believe is hopeless. They also believe that they should give up such issues even before the start of the negotiations. The fact is that not even the Israeli left is talking about dismantling all the settlements. And we still do not know which settlements the Israeli right, headed by Sharon, will be prepared to dismantle. And while Sharon is more capable of removing the settlements than the Israeli left, because it was he who implanted them, as the experience of the Sinai settlements demonstrated, I don't think he is prepared to replay the experience of the Sinai settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. Where does such position lead us? It mainly results in dividing the Palestinian position, even before the negotiations start. This situation leaves the issue of the Palestinian state and the settlements as the real issues to be discussed during the negotiations. Also, any position against the negotiations or compromise can be isolated because of its practices and political rhetoric. Still, the former position affirms the right of return through the liberation of all of Palestine. Without it, any return becomes a return to Israel by virtue of the citizenship. Consequently, the right of return is a demand within the negotiations, which is presented by groups that refuse the very idea of negotiations. Thus, we remain with negotiations without the right of return, or a right of return without negotiations or a plan for liberation.