Tag: Israel/Palestine
Glad tidings
I’m counting the glad tidings today:
1. Egypt: Egyptians are staying away from the polls in an election conducted under conditions that are far from free and fair. General Sisi will be elected, but without the acclamation he had once expected. Maybe he’ll feel he has to work for popular approval, which would be a big change in Egyptian political culture.
2. Ukraine: Ukraine pulled off its presidential election and appears to be gaining an upper hand over separatists who made the mistake of seizing the Donetsk airport, where newly elected Petro Poroshenko was intending to land. While Russian President Putin is still capable of rejecting Poroshenko’s legitimacy, I doubt he’ll do it. He needs Poroshenko to garner the Western support that will enable Ukraine to pay its debts to Russia.
3. Afghanistan: President Obama has decided to leave 9800 American troops in Afghanistan at the end of this year’s withdrawal, but they too are scheduled to come out within two years (end of 2016). That’s a whole lot faster than some people feel comfortable with, but it is presumably intended to give the new Afghan government incentive either to defeat the Taliban or negotiate a political settlement with them.
4. Middle East: I don’t really expect the Pope inviting Presidents Peres and Abbas to the Vatican to bring peace, but in my book he did the right thing to pray at the separation barrier as well as at the Wailing Wall. I have no objection to the Israelis protecting themselves from suicide bombings, but the wall should be on an agreed border, not built unilaterally and all too frequently on territory the Palestinians (and most Israelis) believe belongs within their state.
5. Europe: Yes, the European parliament election returned lots of xenophobes and extreme nationalists, but not so many that the European project is at serious risk of anything more than demands to be more responsive to popular opinion and more aware of resistance to bureaucratic arrogance. Whoever tweeted that those who want change won everywhere but in Germany, which is the only country that can really change things, got it close to right. The government parties did relatively well in Italy too.
6. India/Pakistan: Pakistani Prime Minister Sharif attended Indian Prime Minister Modi’s swearing in and both came away from their meeting sounding notes of hope and conciliation. They will need a lot of both to overcome the problems that divide the two countries, but it was at least a start.
None of this good news comes even close to making the world what it should be, and much of it might be reversed tomorrow. Syria in particular haunts me. I can’t bring myself to praise the UN Secretary General for proposing humanitarian assistance be authorized by the Security Council directly into liberated areas from Turkey, knowing full well that Russia will veto any such move. But when we have a good day or two somewhere in the world, we should acknowledge it.
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The Israel we need is not the one we’ve got
Yoram Peri, an Israeli patriot who has fought in three wars for his country and now directs the University of Maryland’s new Institute for Israel Studies, gave a post-service talk Friday night at our local synagogue. His family has lived in Palestine and Israel since the 1860s. What he had to say about the collapse of the Israel/Palestine peace talks and Israel’s politics may interest readers. Here is what I remember of his impassioned presentation.*
Contrary to what has been reported, Yoram understands that Mahmoud Abbas was prepared to make major concessions in the US-sponsored negotiations. Palestine would be demilitarized. Eighty per cent of the Jewish population living beyond the wall would remain in placed. Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem would not be disturbed. Israeli troops would remain in the Jordan River valley for five years and then be replaced by American troops for another five years. Israel would decide how many displaced and refugee Palestinians would be able to return to Israel proper.
Abbas was asking in return that Israel specify within a few months exactly where the border would lie (presumably based on swaps for land in the West Bank kept by Israel). Jerusalem would be Palestine’s capital. If Yoram mentioned other important Palestinian requirements, I am not remembering them.
Netanyahu rejected this offer. His coalition has too many hardline settler supporters to allow him to accept. Nor is he himself interested in making peace. He is more comfortable talking about the Holocaust.
But when Abbas made a strong statement on the Holocaust to mark Yom HaShoah, Netanyahu rejected it as public relations. Likewise, Netanyahu has complained for years that Abbas can’t deliver on peace with Israel because the Palestinian Authority he leads does not control Gaza. Now that Hamas, which does control Gaza, has pledged to join a Palestinian Authority government consisting of “technical” ministers, Netanyahu says he won’t negotiate because then the Palestinian government will include terrorists.
Yoram thinks Hamas, as part of a unity government, will have to accept the “Quartet” (US, Russia, EU and UN) conditions for participation in the peace talks: mutual recognition, acceptance of previous agreements, and ending violence as a means of attaining goals. Abbas has also said as much. If Hamas does accept these conditions, why wouldn’t Israel negotiate with it? Yoram suggests there is no harm in talking with them to see what is possible.
Israel’s reluctance to accept a good deal with the Palestinians is rooted in the evolution of its politics. The weight of the ultra religious has increased enormously. And what the ultra religious want has also changed. Whereas traditionally Jews are prohibited from praying on the Temple Mount (they pray only at the Wailing Wall at its base), some ultra religious militants are demanding not only to pray there but also to destroy the Dome of the Rock mosque and rebuild the ancient temple. Only a few years ago, only fringe lunatics held such views. Now they are entering mainstream discourse.
Israel officially accepts only Jewish orthodoxy as legitimate. There are few reform synagogues. Most of Israel’s Jews are either orthodox or secular. They know nothing of the more liberal Reform Judaism practiced in the United States. What is needed is a reverse birthright program: one that brings young Israelis to the United States to learn about modern Jewish practices.
Ultimately, Yoram suggests the problem for Israel is the one John Kerry made recent reference to: if it holds on to the West Bank, it cannot remain both democratic and Jewish. The demography will require it to deny equal rights to the Arabs who live there, thus eventually meriting the appellation “apartheid.” This is an opinion many Israeli leaders have expressed, so it is hard to understand why it caused such a furor recently in the US.
Israel faces a difficult future. A third intifada is a possibility, though the Palestinians seem weary of the violence associated with the first two. A nonviolent one is possible, a well-informed Arab journalist told me recently, but only after dissolving the Palestinian Authority, so it would not be faced with the difficulty of repressing the rebellion. Yoram suggested the BDS (boycotts, disinvestment and sanctions) movement will grow. Israel will increasingly stand alone against a world that regards it as extreme and uncompromising. Rather than being a beacon of hope, it will be isolated in a hostile environment.
Asked about the future of Israel’s Arabs, Yoram suggested that its national anthem “Hatikvah” (the Hope) could be amended to be more inclusive. This is the current version:
As long as deep in the heart,
The soul of a Jew yearns,
And forward to the East
To Zion, an eye looks
Our hope will not be lost,
The hope of two thousand years,
To be a free nation in our land,
The land of Zion and Jerusalem.
I have my doubts any amendment will satisfy Israel’s more than 20% Arab citizens, but the Israel that would at least give it a try would also be one that signed up for the deal Mahmoud Abbas was offering. That unfortunately is not the Israel we’ve got. But it is the Israel we need.
*Virtually all of what Yoram said about what the Palestinians were prepared to agree has now been published, based on American sources: Inside the talks’ failure: US officials open up.
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Peace picks May 5 – 9
1. Russia in East Asia: History, Migration, and Contemporary Policy Monday, May 5 | 9 – 11am 5th Floor, Woodrow Wilson Center; 1300 Pennsylvania Ave NW REGISTER TO ATTEND This talk explores Russia’s ties with East Asia through the lens of migration and policy. Russia spans the Eurasian continent, yet its historic and present connections with East Asia are often forgotten. At the turn of the 20th century, thousands of Asian migrants arrived in the Russian Far East, spurring fears of a “yellow peril.” A century later, the recent influx of new Asian migrants to Russia has generated similar sentiments. The talk discusses Asian migration in the context of cross-regional attempts to strengthen trade ties and diplomatic relations in the 21st century. SPEAKERS Matthew Ouimet, Public Policy Scholar Senior Analyst, Office of Analysis for Russia and Eurasia, U.S. Department of State. Alyssa Park, Kennan Institute Title VIII Supported Research Scholar Assistant Professor of Modern Korean History, University of Iowa 2. The Democratic Transition in Tunisia: Moving Forward Monday, May 5 | 10 – 11:30am Kenney Auditorium, The Nitze Building, Johns Hopkins University; 1740 Massachusetts Ave NW REGISTER TO ATTEND Mustapha Ben Jaafar, president of the National Constituent Assembly of Tunisia, will discuss this topic. Sasha Toperich, senior fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations at SAIS, will moderate the event. Read more
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Triage, not retreat
I spent yesterday morning at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) annual shindig on the Middle East, “Allies, Adversaries and Enemies.” It began with a big-think panel on American foreign policy since 9/11: Robert Kagan, Walter Russell Mead and Leon Wieseltier. FDD President Cliff May moderated. The luminaries skipped any serious discussion of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Nor did they mention the drone wars in Pakistan and Yemen. The consensus was plainly and vigorously anti-Obama: he is shy of using force and leading an American retreat from the world that will get us into deeper trouble in the future. Congressman McKeon (R-CA) makes a similar argument in today’s Washington Post.
This is not my natural habitat, so I’ll try to give an account of the local fauna before launching into a tirade against them.
The panel hit President Obama hard and fast. Wieseltier criticized him for portraying all the alternatives to his policies everywhere as war. Spooked by Iraq, he trumps up phony dichotomies. The truth is he is looking for ways to pull the US out of overseas engagements, especially in the Middle East. As a result, all our friends need reassurance. His policy is one of introversion and absence. The President doesn’t see US power as a good thing and doesn’t recognize that even multilateralism requires US leadership. He wants no more land wars and is trying to ensure that with cuts at the Pentagon, an idea he admittedly inherited from Donald Rumsfeld.
Dissenting sardonically from the view that Obama is a Kenyan socialist, Mead offered a slightly more generous appraisal: Obama believes that as the US withdraws a balance of power will emerge, one that costs the US less than at present. This is a 1930s-style policy close to what most Americans want. But it won’t work, even if the limits of public opinion are real. We’ll get clobbered somehow. The president should harness pro-engagement sentiment and lead more forcefully. Only a balance of power under US hegemony can be stable and reliable.
Kagan concurred, remarking that Americans (unfortunately) have a high tolerance for a collapsing world. But the issue really is military power and America’s willingness to use force. We are on a slippery slope. The Obama doctrine is simply to avoid using force, which is undermining the world’s confidence in our ability and willingness to defend the liberal world order. That is the key objective for American foreign policy. We lost Iraq when Obama withdrew the American troops. The same thing could happen in Afghanistan. Nuclear Iran will be a big problem, but not a threat to the liberal world order, which is more threatened by the waxing military dictatorship in Egypt and the rebellion it will trigger in the future.
Doutbts about whether the US would attack Iran, or let Israel do it, wafted through the room. General Michael Hayden in the next session threw cold water on the idea that Israel either could or should undertake a military strike on its own. No one bothered to consider what would happen in the aftermath of a massive US strike on Iran. Would that stop or accelerate their nuclear program?
The only part of the panel presentations I would happily agree with is the well-established reluctance of the American public to be overly engaged abroad. It was notable that the panel offered not one example of something they thought Obama should do now to respond to the crises in Ukraine, Syria, Libya, Egypt or lots of other places. They were full of examples of what he should have done in the past, and absolutely certain he would not do the right things in the future, including decisive military action against the Iranian nuclear program.
Time and energy don’t allow me to respond to all of the points above. Let me comment on three countries I know well: Iraq, Ukraine and Syria.
The notion that it was President Obama who decided to withdraw troops from Iraq is simply wrong. Here is a first-person account from Bob Loftis, who led the failed negotiations on the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA):
[The decision to withdraw US troops] happened in mid-2008 [during the Bush Administration]. My team and I were instructed to work on an agreement that would allow a long term US military presence. At no time did the issue of withdrawal arise, even when the term “SOFA” became politically toxic in Baghdad. SOFA talks were suspended in May 2008, with the focus placed on negotiating the Strategic Framework Agreement (which would have some vague references to “pre-existing arrangements” (i.e. certain parts of CPA17). I then heard in September 2008 that…there were new SOFA talks which were about withdrawal. The “Agreement Between the United States of America and the Republic of Iraq On the Withdrawal of United States Forces from Iraq and the Organization of Their Activities during Their Temporary Presence in Iraq” was signed on 17 November 2008 by Ryan Crocker: Article 24 (1) states “All the United States Forces shall withdraw from all Iraqi territory no later than December 31, 2011.”
People will tell you that President Bush thought the agreement would be revised in the succeeding administration to allow the Americans to stay in some limited number. But that doesn’t change the fact that it was Bush, not Obama, who decided on US withdrawal. Once in office, Obama did try to negotiate permission for the Americans to stay. Prime Minister Maliki didn’t want to give up jurisdiction over crimes committed by US troops. Hard for me to fault the President for not yielding on that point, especially in light of the arbitrary arrests and detentions Maliki has indulged in since. Nor do I think US troops in the mess that is today’s Iraq would be either safe or useful.
Ukraine loomed large over this discussion. No one on the panel had a specific suggestion for what to do there, except that Kagan demurred from the President’s assertion that we have no military option. Of course we do, he said. We have absolute air superiority over Ukraine if we want it. That may be true. But it would require the use of US bases in Europe and Turkey. How long does Kagan think US leadership and the liberal world order would last after war between the US and Russia?
On Syria, I dissent from the President’s policy as much as any of the panelists. But I have specific suggestions for what he should at least consider doing: recognize the Syrian Opposition Coalition (SOC) as the legitimate government of Syria, overtly arm its affiliated fighters and destroy as much of the Syrian air force and missile inventories as possible. I suppose big thinkers like Wieseltier, Kagan and Mead don’t trade in such small beer, but those of us who treasure concreteness think they should.
It seems to me what the President is up to is not retreat but triage: he is focusing on Iran’s nuclear weapons and the Asia Pacific because he thinks the issues there threaten vital US interests. Syria for him falls below the line. For me it is above: the threat to neighboring states in the Levant and the growth of extremism put it there. But that simple and entirely understandable distinction would not inspire the kind of disdain that the panelists indulged in and the audience applauded at yesterday’s event.
PS, May 6: For the skeptical masochists among you, here is video of the event, which arrived today:
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Fig leaf?
Nabil Fahmy, Egypt’s Foreign Minister, spoke today at CSIS. He was all sweetness and light: civil liberties, transparency, accountability, participation, inclusivity. He snarled, politely, on only two subjects:
- relations with Turkey and Qatar are “not good” because of their interference in internal Egyptian politics (read their support for the Muslim Brotherhood), and
- Egypt will seek to improve relations with Russia, which he averred will be possible without hurting relations with the US.
I might even say he relished using improved relations with Russia as a means of keeping the United States on the hook, but that would be reading between his lines.
The questioners were not so placid. Three or four asked about abuses by Egyptian courts: in condemning hundreds of people to death after show trials, in trying and convicting American and Egyptian democracy advocates, and in jailing journalists. Fahmy hid behind independence of the judiciary, reluctance to speak on any cases still before the courts, rule of law, and insistence that the death sentences were merely recommendations to the Mufti.
I’d have asked about the three-year sentence handed down (and confirmed on appeal) against activists of the April 6 movement, which has now been banned as well, for “tarnishing the image” of Egypt. But I didn’t get the chance. I admit the case seems small in comparison with some of the others raised, much as I am personally committed to trying to free the April 6 prisoners.
Fahmy said the justice system will evolve, like the rest of Egypt, in an open and democratic direction, but like all other countries it needs to deal with terrorism. The Egyptian embassy provided a handy fact sheet on “Terrorism in Egypt” to underline this point. They also provided a fact sheet on “Democratic Elections for a New Government.” Egypt, we are asked to believe, is headed for democracy at its May 26-27 election, despite the strain of the fight against terrorism. Note to the embassy: please post these fact sheets so I can link them!
I wish it were so. But there is a counter-narrative that appears much more likely. Egypt is using the courts to squelch any serious political competition (from the Muslim Brotherhood or secularists) while it cracks down in ways that spawn terrorism and conducts a sham election guaranteed to coronate Field Marshall Sisi as the “civilian” leader of a restored autocracy.
Fahmy, in this alternate narrative, is not the smooth-talking vanguard of eventual democracy all his friends in Washington (he served many years here as ambassador) would like him to be, but rather the urbane fig leaf hiding the ugly reality of a return to military rule. I don’t doubt Fahmy’s sincerity in wanting Egypt to be democratic. That’s not the issue. The issue is whether the military is using him and his sincerity to smooth relations with the US, attract diaspora and foreign investment, and avoid the wrath of those in Congress who think we should end aid to a military coup.
I’ll be very glad to see the latter narrative disproven. But I doubt it will be. A year from now, I expect to see the Field Marshall enthroned and an elected parliament firmly in his grip. The Muslim Brotherhood will no doubt still be banned as a terrorist organization. April 6 will be under lock and key. Democracy advocates will be allowed only if they are tame and obedient. Journalists will have to toe the line, or end up in prison.
What will the Americans do? Most likely nothing. Contrary to universal Egyptian belief, Washington has been consistent throughout Egypt’s various twists and turns: it supports whoever gains power. Its overriding priorities in Egypt are maintenance of the peace treaty with Israel, the fight against terrorists and military overflight rights and access to the Suez canal. Whoever helps America with those objectives will be considered acceptable, or better. How Egypt governs itself will be a secondary consideration, rising again in our priorities only if someone new turns up at the top.
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Peace picks April 28 – May 2
1. American Energy Prowess in a Strategic Foreign Policy Perspective
Monday, April 28 | 12 – 4:30pm
12th floor, The Atlantic Council; 1030 15th Street NW
The Atlantic Council and the Hungarian Presidency of the Visegrad Group invite you to an upcoming two-day conference titled American Energy Prowess in a Strategic Foreign Policy Perspective. The aim of the conference is to discuss and debate the strategic foreign policy aspects of the American shale gas revolution and its effect on the transatlantic relationship and the Central and Eastern European region. The Ukraine crisis has brought European energy security back into the forefront. The conference will bring together leaders from the US government, Central and Eastern Europe, and the energy industry to determine ways to strengthen European energy security and the transatlantic alliance through reinforced energy ties.
The conference begins with a luncheon discussion on Monday, April 28 at the Atlantic Council. The following day, participants will continue over breakfast on Capitol Hill to engage with key congressional decision-makers.
A full agenda of the event can be found here
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