The Arab Peace Initiative: The Necessities Of Reviving The Initiative And The Risks Of Stagnation
By Shafeeq Ghabra, Al-Hayat 11/16/2003
Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah's peace initiative endorsed at the Beirut Arab League summit in March 2002 raises a number of issues and questions that the Arab world must address: Can the Arab states enter a new age of economic, political, and social development without a just peace that puts an end to the Israeli occupation of Arab lands and relieves the region of a state of war that offers only a desolate future? Can armed resistance be sustained until Israel withdraws from the occupied territories or should Palestinians and other Arabs fundamentally reevaluate the continued use of this method? Should Arab efforts concern only territories occupied by Israel in 1967 or also include the rest of historic Palestine on which Israel was established in 1948? What are the positions of the Islamic movements and the Arab street vis-à-vis peace within the framework of establishing a Palestinian state and a comprehensive Israeli withdrawal from Arab lands? Can the initiative for peace endorsed by the Arab League summit in Beirut provide the basis of a united Arab position?
The Beirut summit endorsement made official the Arab political leadership's acceptance of the idea of a comprehensive peace and normalization upon the establishment of an independent Palestinian state and an Israeli withdrawal on the Syrian front. More important, however, is the fact that the initiative indicated a readiness on behalf of the Arabs to pay the price of peace, which includes acceptance of Israel as a state within the region and transcending past tragedies and present problems in the hope of a better future. This development in the Arab position must not be overlooked. Indeed, this historic shift should be taken quite seriously.
Matrix reloaded -- yet again
By Jonathan Cook, Al-Ahram Weekly on-line 13 - 19 November 200
Israel may one day create some sort of severely circumscribed state for the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza. The question is what kind of a nation will be left to enjoy its limited fruits. -- Israeli academic Jeff Halper has coined the phrase "the matrix of control" to describe the system of settlements, outposts, bypass roads, confiscated land masquerading as national parks, military zones, checkpoints and now hundreds of kilometres of a "separation wall" that together effectively entrap the Palestinian population in ghettoes across the West Bank and Gaza.
Halper's point is to explain how Israel uses non-military tools -- planning laws, architecture and geography -- as well as military hardware to herd Palestinians into the spaces it allocates them: the "Bantustan" homelands familiar from apartheid South Africa.
The pretext may be security but the goal is to stunt the growth of a popular Palestinian leadership and emasculate resistance to the occupation. Meanwhile Israel can continue its colonial theft of vital resources like land and water. Halper and others on the extreme Israeli left have begun to understand that, despite the recent "concessions" of Israel's mainstream left in signing the Geneva Accord, there is now no hope of a two-state solution.
Israeli leaders are committed to a one-state solution, one in which it controls everything. The government is already starting to create a series of isolated Palestinian enclaves which it will duplicitously label a Palestinian state.
Why an Arab and a Jew Fought Hitler, Then Each Other, and Died as Friends
By Robert Fisk, Miftah/The Independent 11/12/2003
No one remembers the Palestine Regiment. Even this morning, on the actual day of remembrance, few will recall that Arab and Jew once fought together under the British flag against Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Even fewer will know the extraordinary story of an Arab and a Jew who fought side by side against Hitler, and then twice fought each other as enemy combatants - in 1948 and 1967 - and of how, in their declining years, they became friends. But in a Middle East in which "hawks" and "doves" and "terrorists" and "security forces" battle to the death, their story provides an extraordinary - and shaming - indictment of both Ariel Sharon and Yasser Arafat.
Hazim Khalidi was at the London School of Economics when the Second World War broke out. He volunteered to join the British Army, but was attached to the Indian army's "Palestine Battalion". "They weren't going to have an Arab as a British officer - things were somewhat racist then,'' Khalidi's son Sa'ad says today. "But he was attached to the East Kent Regiment, the 'Buffs', and posted to Syria, where he worked with the British brigadier-general Sir Edward Spears, and General Charles de Gaulle.'' Khalidi also became a good friend of a young British intelligence officer in Beirut, Quintin Hogg - later Lord Hailsham of St Marylebone - before the battalion was turned into the Palestine Regiment with 14 companies. Among its soldiers was a young Jewish Palestinian, Uzi Narkiss. Both men were posted to support the Poles and the Eighth Army in Libya, and in their battle with the Afrika Korps in 1942.
The road to Bantustan
By Akiva Eldar, Ha'aretz 11/17/2003
Half a century ago, when Israel was much smaller and poorer, attacks on Jews abroad would put immigrant absorption centers around the country on high alert. In the 21st century, with the Jewish state spread far and wide and equipped with the finest weaponry, the term "immigration" is rarely heard, even in the face of terror attacks on synagogues in Turkey and the burning of a Jewish school in France.
During his last visit to Moscow, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon solved the demographic problem with a forecast of 1 million immigrants. In the meantime, thanks to some 30,000-40,000 immigrants who have since left Israel, Moscow has earned the distinction of boasting the fastest-growing Jewish community in the world.
The good news is that the Revisionists have also begun to internalize the link between the realization of the vision of a Palestinian state and the realization of the Zionist dream.....The bad news is that the right wing's separation plan vis-a-vis the Palestinians does not include an attempt to resolve the territorial dispute - the heart of the conflict - by means of the acceptable norms of a cultured society: negotiation, mediation, and the like. ....Indeed, there isn't a single Palestinian who believes that after the Israelis become accustomed over two decades to the borders of broken-up Bantustan, they will then tear down the walls and divide Jerusalem. Yes, there really is no one to talk to on the other side about a Palestinian state whose entire purpose is to save the Zionist state.
An extraordinary violation
By Jaideep Mukerji, Al-Ahram Weekly on-line 13 - 19 November 200
The plight of Canadian-Syrian Maher Arar is a disturbing example of how far the United States is prepared to go in its hunt for suspected terrorists -- On 26 September 2002, Maher Arar landed at John F Kennedy International Airport, stepped off an airplane and walked into a nightmare.
Arar, 33, was stopped by US officials during a routine layover in New York as he returned home to Canada from a vacation in Tunisia. He was subsequently detained and subjected to interrogations by US officials who accused him of having links to Al-Qa'eda. Then, using a covert procedure known as an "extraordinary rendition", US officials secretly deported Arar to Syria even though he had been travelling on a Canadian passport and had not been to Syria in over 15 years. Arar claims that once in Syria he was tortured and forced to sign false statements about his involvement with Al-Qa'eda.
The incident has once again raised serious concerns about questionable US treatment of suspected terrorists, and has also sparked outrage in Canada over why Canadian officials were unable to prevent Arar's deportation. Speaking to reporters last week, Arar gave a vivid account of his ordeal, starting with his detention in the US.
Pols Face Israel Litmus Test
By James D. Besser, The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles 10/17/2003
What is the proper pro-Israel litmus test for presidential candidates? And who gets to decide?
That recurring question has already had special relevance for former Vermont Governor Howard Dean, the surprise frontrunner in the 2004 Democratic presidential contest — the kind of relevance you get with a punch in the solar plexus.
Dean’s Democratic rivals are all acutely aware that their turn could come next if they bobble questions about Mideast policy. Not even Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.), an Orthodox Jew and avowed Zionist, gets a pass.
President George W. Bush gets a slightly more forgiving test, thanks to the reluctance of lobbyists to criticize an incumbent and the rightward tilt of the pro-Israel leadership.
Litmus test politics are this country’s latest gift to the democratic world, and pro-Israel groups are at the head of the class.
....Every candidate who wishes to get a passing grade must speak about maintaining Israel’s "qualitative" military edge, and promise to instantly move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, as President Bush did, even though everybody knows it won’t happen.
Sharon's wiles
By Graham Usher, Adalah 13 - 19 November 200
The difference between Sharon's approach to Hizbullah and the PA is more apparent than real -- On Sunday Israel gave to Hizbullah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah what it refused to give Abu Mazen: the release of 400 Palestinian prisoners, together with "dozens" of other Arab prisoners from Syria, Morocco, Sudan, Libya and Lebanon, including Mustafa Dirani, abducted from Lebanon in 1994 to secure the release of Israeli pilot Ron Arad, captured by Dirani's Amal movement eight years earlier.
Arad will not be part of the deal, though Nasrallah has said Hizbullah will seek further information about his fate. Instead Israel will receive the remains of three soldiers abducted by Hizbullah in October 2000 and the return of Elhanan Tannenbaum, an Israeli "businessman" captured by Hizbullah some months later.
The decision was passed with a one-vote majority after a gruelling seven-and-a-half hour debate in the Israeli cabinet. Ministers were given a free vote, divided over whether the imperative of saving a Jewish life trumped giving Hizbullah its most important political achievement since Israel's precipitous withdrawal from Lebanon in May 2000. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon threw his weight behind acceptance. "You must vote for this deal in order to save a living Israeli," he told his government. "To leave him there is to let him die."
Quite surprisingly - some optimism
By Danny Rubinstein, Ha'aretz 11/17/2003
Against the backdrop of the terrorist attack in Istanbul, the terrorism in Saudi Arabia and the continued bloodletting in Iraq, surprisingly some optimistic expressions are being heard from Palestinian spokesmen. They hope a cease-fire with Israel will soon be achieved. According to associates of Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat, General Omar Suleiman, head of Egyptian intelligence, is to arrive in Ramallah today. After speaking with Arafat and with newly elected prime minister, Ahmed Qureia (Abu Ala), he will meet with senior Israeli officials, and he may go to Gaza for talks with the heads of Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
His visit is a clear sign that in Egypt they believe that conditions have been created that make it possible to reach a new hudna (cease-fire). The Egyptians are in regular contact with Palestinian delegates, including the heads of Hamas, and they regularly consult with American diplomats - so it is very possible that a serious attempt will be made.
On the Palestinian side, there has been a certain easing of the crises in the top echelons with the formation of the new government, which last week received the vote of confidence of the Palestine Legislative Committee (the parliament) and was sworn in, in Arafat's office. The Palestinian Authority now looks more organized, and the prime minister is speaking about a fruitful dialogue with the various factions, and about holding general elections in about another eight months.
Who Will Be The Next Victims Of Bush’s "Freedom Strategy?"
By Patrick Seale, Al-Hayat 11/16/2003
President George W. Bush's 'democracy' speech of 6 November is still reverberating round the world. It has aroused as much puzzlement as hostility. What can he possibly mean by saying that 'the United States has adopted a new policy, a forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East'? Is the U.S. preparing to administer a dose of its Iraqi medicine to other states in the area? Has the neo-con agenda of softening up the area to make it comply with U.S. and Israeli demands been given a new lease of life? Should Damascus and Tehran, the butt of Bush's particular insults, now fear attack?
Or, as many suspect, was Bush's speech mere empty rhetoric, simply the latest illustration of his own mediocrity and of the moral and political bankruptcy of his Administration?
There is an especial irony in Bush criticizing Syria and Iran as illegitimate dictatorships, seeing that it was the United States which destroyed Syria's young parliamentary democracy in 1949, when it lent a hand to Colonel Husni Al Zaim's coup d'état, and it was the United States again (with help from Britain) which overthrew Iran's elected prime minister Mohamad Musaddiq in 1953 and restored the Shah to power as an American puppet. 'I owe my throne to God, my people, my army - and to you,' sobbed the grateful potentate to Kermit Roosevelt, the CIA man who organized the coup.
Bush and Blair - the betrayal
By Sidney Blumenthal, The Guardian 11/14/2003
America's first loyalty was to Ariel Sharon, not the prime minister -- Tony Blair, about to welcome George Bush to London with pomp and circumstance, has assumed the mantle of tutor to the unlearned president.
Bush originally came to Blair determined to go to war in Iraq, but without a strategy. Blair instructed him that the casus belli was Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, urged him to make the case before the UN, and - when the effort to obtain a UN resolution failed - convinced him to revive the Middle East peace process, which the president had abandoned. The road map for peace was the principal concession Blair wrested from him.
The prime minister argued that renewing the negotiations was essential to the long-term credibility of the coalition goals in Iraq and the whole region. But within the Bush administration that initiative was systematically undermined. Now Blair welcomes a president who has taught him a lesson in statecraft that he refuses to acknowledge.
Flynt Leverett, a former CIA analyst, revealed to me that the text of the road map was ready to be made public before the end of 2002: "We had made commitments to key European and Arab allies. The White House lost its nerve. It took Blair to get Bush to put it out."...
When crises overlap
By Mohamed Sid-Ahmed, Al-Ahram Weekly on-line 13 - 19 November 200
Mohamed Sid-Ahmed asks whether water shortage in the Middle East is likely to further aggravate the political crises in the region, or help do the opposite -- I was invited this week by former French Minister of Foreign Affairs Herve de Charette to take part in a symposium in Paris on the issue of scarcity of water which now affects many countries around the world and is particularly critical in the Middle East. What is of great importance for us, Arabs, is how to deal with water shortage in the context of a number of crises occurring concomitantly; some man-made such as the Arab-Israeli conflict, the US occupation of Iraq, etc, and others the product of nature, notably, water shortage.
Apparently, no direct link relates the water crisis to man-made conflicts in the area. But the combination of all these crises together marks a continuous deterioration of the situation as a whole. Can a reshuffle of the factors that bring about this grim picture produce a better outcome, circumscribing violence rather than contributing to intensify it? Can a conscious and concerted effort be made in such a direction?
....I have often written throughout the last decade on the issue of water shortage in the Middle East and how this crisis could be used as a political weapon in the Arab- Israeli conflict. I have argued that the Arab side should use its financial assets -- in particular its oil revenues -- to build desalination plants on a wide scale; an endeavour that will bring prices down, encourage new discoveries, and thus deprive Israel of its present supremacy in this field. But what in the past was a choice that Arab parties could adopt or not, is now becoming an imperative -- if the balance of power between protagonists is to be improved. With water shortage reaching unprecedented heights, the future of Arab-Israeli relations could depend on this critical factor.
Ya’alon’s 70 Virgins
By Uri Avnery, Palestine Chronicle 11/16/2003
What has happened to the Chief-of-Staff, Lieutenant-General Moshe (“Bogie”) Ya’alon?
Until recently, he was the most aggressive hawk in the army, perhaps in the whole country. Suddenly he is almost turning into a dove.
Has he had a divine revelation like Rabbi Saul of Tarsus, who went to Damascus to persecute the Christians and arrived there as an apostle of Jesus?
Up to now, Ya’alon’s gospel was far from the teachings of the gentle Jewish preacher from Nazareth. His doctrine was: Hit the Arabs on the head and they will give in. If that isn’t enough, hit them harder. Make the life of every single Palestinian unbearable, prevent him from leaving his village or town, destroy the livelihood of his family, take his land away.
This was an almost mathematical formula: when one blow follows the other, the lives of the Palestinians will reach breaking point. They will not be able to resist. They will raise their hands, lower their heads and accept everything the government of Israel is good enough to offer them. They will turn over their fighters (“terrorists” in the parlance of the occupation, “national heroes” in the parlance of the occupied.) They will live in the enclaves Israel allows them, or look for a better life in another country.
Lessons in moral dignity
By Azmi Bishara, Al-Ahram Weekly on-line 13 - 19 November 200
For justice to be reunited with history, liberal and democratic forces in Palestine and the Arab world must be capable of reaching, and changing, the minds of Israelis -- The current trend in the relationship between Palestinians and public opinion ultimately gives the "balanced European stance" considerable leverage over the Palestinians. The same does not apply in the case of Israel. This, in effect, puts the European role in the current spate of Israeli-Palestinian dialogues taking place in Europe in a nutshell. Official European policies do not reflect the growing belief among European public opinion in the justice of the Palestinian cause. If European public opinion tends to trace American confrontational policies at the global level to a first cause or a single original sin -- its absolute and unconditional support for Israel -- official Europe rejects such a premise. One consequence of this is that official Europe finds itself apologising to Israel for popular European attitudes and opinions, which Israel regards -- as it is in its interest to do so -- as latter-day manifestations of European anti- Semitism. Who knows? Perhaps this recent turbulence may prove so awkward for European officialdom that it will stimulate a renewed process of European introspection. That Europeans have taken the Palestinian flag as an emblem in their protest movement against the war on Iraq is a major indicator of the moral stature the Palestinian cause has attained in Europe.
Certainly, ultraconservative, anti-Semitic forces continue to exist. However, not all anti-Semites are anti- Israel; indeed, there are many instances of the reverse. In all events, the most rabid form of racism in the West at present is that directed against Arabs and Muslims. One also finds that European conservatives often sympathise with conservative Arab regimes, whether out of conservative fellow-feeling or the nostalgia for Europe's erstwhile colonies.
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