Tag: Israel/Palestine
What I said and didn’t say
I’m not much into the duelling aspect of blogging, but there has been enough misunderstanding of what I wrote yesterday about my experience in Tahrir that it may be enlightening to respond to at least a few of the criticisms.
Let me focus on Angry Arab, whose comments have been repeated elsewhere. He writes under the heading “dumbest comment of the day”:
Daniel Serwer, who is in Cairo, reckons last night’s violence at the Israeli embassy had more to do with discontent against Egypt’s military rulers than Israel. He also suggests (see 11.12am post) that many of those protesting could be regarded as football hooligans.
This is dumb, but it is not what I said. I wrote: “The predominant themes in Tahrir however had little to do with Israel.” I then went on to outline what those themes appeared to be. I’ve checked this point several times: people in Tahrir were talking, chanting and singing about mainly internal Egyptian issues.
I never suggested that Egyptians were not angry with Israel. Nor did I suggest that the attack on the Embassy had more to do with Egypt’s military than with Israel. In fact, I wrote:
Egyptians regard the Israeli killing of several Egyptian policemen in Sinai in the aftermath of a terrorist attack inside Israel as humiliating and want a more fulsome apology for it.
I went on to conclude that peace between Egypt and Israel could not be maintained unless the people are committed to it, “society to society.”
Angry Arab also suggests I said “many of those protesting could be regarded as football hooligans.” What I actually said was “some of whom were surely what would be termed football hooligans in Europe.” I might prefer today to have said “likely” rather than “surely,” but the point here is that I never said “many of those protesting” (I added the bold face) could or should be regarded as football hooligans, which is what Angry Arab said I said. In case there is any doubt: I assume most of them were Egyptians angry with Israel.
Accuracy is not Angry Arab’s strong point. Let’s take this statement: “this ‘US blogger’–whoever he is–because she holds a PhD from Oxford University and is a young academic.” Yes, I am a PhD, from Princeton not Oxford, male and not young, all of which is readily ascertainable from this website.
I don’t however expect anyone to believe me because of age, education or gender. I only expect to be quoted accurately and debated honestly. That is not what Angry Arab did. I would rate his comments dumbest of my day.
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My Tahrir experience last night
I spent yesterday evening in Tahrir square, which meant that I missed the attack on the Israeli embassy that has dominated the news from Cairo. Colleagues on their way back from the pyramids got caught in a pitched battle betweeen rock-throwers and riot police in front of the Saudi embassy, down the street from the Israelis. They got a good scare, but were uninjured.
My own contact with the would-be rock throwers was limited to their recruiting marches through Tahrir, where most people were ignoring the chants of “to the embassy!” sung out by fist-pumping small groups of young men. But they apparently managed to assemble thousands at the embassy, some of whom were surely what would be termed football hooligans in Europe. The arrival of Ahli and Zamalek (the two Cairo teams) fans in Tahrir was greeted earlier in the evening with a roar of approval.
The predominant themes in Tahrir however had little to do with Israel. A big sign denounced the media cronies of the Mubarak regime, all still in their jobs. Another called for justice for those who had resisted the revolution, noting that they are not even arrested but pro-democracy demonstrators are still being processed in military courts.
Anti-military sentiment tinged the speeches, which called on Egyptians to be like one hand, a civilian one. The crowd wanted the army to fulfill its promise to turn over power to civilians. “Liberty, social justice and bread” was a popular chant–it sounds a lot more rhythmic in Arabic. The atmosphere is a bit like Hyde Park: anyone with a microphone stands on a soap box, quickly assembles a crowd and holds forth, to the amusement and banter of the listeners, who denounce him for hogging the mic. The Communist Party was handing out leaflets that denounced human rights violations by the military and called for liberation from everything, including bachelorhood.
Women were less than a quarter of Tahrir’s population last night, many but not all covering at least their hair. “The one who governs shoud be bigger in wisdom than beard” was a popular, I am told Koranic, quotation. But neither religion nor secularism was on serious display so far I could tell.
If there was any link between the general sentiment of the crowd and the violence at the Israeli embassy, it may lay in the idea of humiliation. “Keep your head up, you are Egyptian” was a strong current in the speeches. Egyptians regard the Israeli killing of several Egyptian policemen in Sinai in the aftermath of a terrorist attack inside Israel as humiliating and want a more fulsome apology for it. As Rob Satloff suggests, “a more generous statement on the unfortunate killing of Egyptian security forces might have been
both appropriate and helpful.”
That would not likely have carried much weight with last night’s rioters, who destroyed a security wall built recently in front of the embassy and injured a lot of people. But it is only by making the “cold peace” between Israel and Egypt a warmer one that politicians on both sides of the Sinai border will be able to convince their electorates that the Camp David accords are worth defending.
This is the real meaning of the Arab spring to Israel, as Satloff also notes: peace is no longer an issue that can be settled president to prime minister, or even government to government. It will have to be society to society, which is much harder, especially if your ambassador has fled from Cairo and the Egyptian one has been withdrawn from Tel Aviv as well.
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“Get up stand up for your rights…
…don’t give up the fight.” That’s what Bob Marley was singing as my cab circled Tahrir square this afternoon to deposit me at the Egyptian Museum.
I’d just come from a conversation with a leader of the revolutionary opposition. He opened by warning me sternly that the West was exaggerating the importance of the Islamists in Egypt. They would gain no more than 3-5 million votes out of 25-30 million, which is the number that can be expected to vote this fall. The revolutionary opposition, trying hard to form a broad coalition to include moderate Islamists, hopes to win a majority, or at least a plurality.
The big challenge is the proposed electoral law, which divides Egypt into large constituencies in a system that is 50/50 open and closed list. This will favor larger, better known and better organized forces, like Mubarak’s National Democratic Party (NDP) and the Muslim Brotherhood.
The revolutionary opposition favors a closed list system (with smaller constituencies or a proportional system–which or both wasn’t clear to me), with people allowed to vote from abroad. This would mean party lists fixed by party leaders with no voting for individuals. If they don’t get it, the opposition may boycott the elections, which my interlocutor thought would deny legitimacy to the results.
But most of all the revolutionary opposition wants the constitution written before elections. The September 9 demonstration is its remaining best opportunity to force this issue. It was a mistake to allow the army the role it has in the transition process, and now the opposition will have to live with its mistake. But it can still try to get the army to listen to the people–the only way to force it to do that is by returning to Tahrir.
Tahrir seemed to me mostly a construction site these days, which I guess is an apt metaphor for the situation the country is in. I prefer that to the metaphoric museum, whose extraordinary collection of treasures is so shabbily housed, labeled and cared for behind its pretty pink facade that it is hard not to wonder what their eventual fate will be.
I also had to wonder about the fate of the Camp David accords, which aren’t nearly as old and dusty as the artefacts from King Tut’s tomb. My interlocutor thought Camp David unfairly limited the development of Sinai, where Hamas is enjoying free rein and blowing up the gas pipeline that takes Egyptian gas to Israel. Islamist domination of the Sinai would be harmful. The opposition wants to know what secret agreements were made at Camp David and to exert full Egyptian sovereignty in Sinai.
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Only time will tell
I’ve been busy lately reading articles about how dumb various (but mostly American) negotiators are. If only the diplomats would do some pretty simple things, serious conflicts would be readily resolved.
A former Iranian nuclear negotiator suggests the Americans and Iranians just have to put aside the threats and pressure, then talk nicer about issues of common interest and things will improve. Ahmed Rashid wants us to listen more carefully to Taliban leader Mullah Omar, who says he does not intend to monopolize power in Afghanistan. And we could achieve peace in Israel and Palestine if the Palestinians would just recognize Israel, and Israel would provide a few factories to the Palestinians.
This last one is the easiest to debunk. There hasn’t been a problem with Palestinian recognition of Israel since Arafat did it almost twenty years ago. The problem is that Israel is now demanding recognition as a Jewish state, something that the UN General Assembly already did in its partition resolution. And of course Israel has not recognized Palestine, or allowed it to establish clear borders. The notion that economic development will satisfy the Palestinians in the absence of a political solution is nonsense.
Listening carefully to Mullah Omar is a good idea, but I confess his Eid message did not fill me with hope. Here is what he actually says about negotiation:
The Islamic Emirate considers the presence of the foreign invading troops in the country; their blind-bombardment, night raids, their brutalities; tortures and tyranny as the main cause of the current imbroglio in the country. The issue would come to an end when the said brutalities are meted out. Similarly, IE [Islamic Emirate] considers [the] establishment of an independent Islamic regime as a conducive mechanism for sustainability of religious and worldly interests of the country and the countrymen. For this purpose, every legitimate option can be considered in order to reach this goal. The contacts which have been made with some parties for the release of prisoners can’t be called as a comprehensive negotiation for the solution of the current imbroglio of the country. However, the Islamic Emirate, as an efficient political and military entity, has a specific and independent agenda in this regard which has been elucidated time and again.
Yes, he leaves the door open to future talks, but he also goes on to make it clear that the Taliban will only stop fighting when the occupation has ended. We can be certain Mullah Omar’s message was carefully parsed inside the State Department and the U.S. intelligence community, where its ambiguous character will not have excited too much enthusiasm.
As for Iran, it makes sense to reduce the trash talking and to focus on issues where there may be some common interest, but the hard kernel of disagreement is over nuclear weapons. Making nice and solving some other issues isn’t going to make that one go away, and the time delay could even make it more difficult to solve.
So yes, we do need to make sure we understand our adversaries, deal in a pragmatic way with them and leave no stone unturned in the search for peaceful resolutions of these issues. But it is a whole lot easier to kibbitz from the sidelines than to play the game for real. When the guys calling for more stridency are also the people deciding your budget, there is an inclination to go strident. When the Taliban are as ambiguous as Mullah Omar in his Eid message, listening really does get hard. And when your critics are misunderstanding the problem, it is easy to write them off.
There is one sign of hope in all these cases: the Americans are maintaining radio silence. Iran guru Dennis Ross, Afghanistan lead Marc Grossman and whoever is acting in George Mitchell’s place (Hoff? Feltman?) on Israel/Palestine are suspiciously quiet. Maybe that’s because there is nothing to say. Or maybe it’s because negotiations are quietly producing fruit. Only time will tell.
PS: I’m not the only one less impressed with Mullah Omar’s message than Ahmed Rashid.
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The rich get richer
Yesterday’s conference on investment prospects in the wake of the Arab Spring over at the World Bank’s Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) was a lively couple of hours–these economic types are briefer and more to the point than their political counterparts–but the bottom line was gloomy: the GCC states and Iraq are likely to attract the lion’s share of investment while Egypt and Tunisia (Syria, Yemen and Libya weren’t even mentioned) go begging in the short term. There was disagreement on longer-term prospects, with Ian Bremmer registering a strong minority view that the geopolitics are unfavorable, both because of Iran and the Israel/Palestine conflict.
An upbeat and indefatigible Afshin Molavi started off underlining that we live in a world of surprisingly interconnected risk, that there is a lot of diversity in what we should not really label “Arab Spring,” and that the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA) has a young population, many unable to get married because of the lack of jobs and looking for “dignity.” Growth has now slowed, hurting their prospects.
Citibank’s Hamid Biglari said investors have adopted a wait and see attitude toward the more revolutionary part of the region and are shifting their attention towards the GCC and Iraq, whose prospects are good if Baghdad can get security under control. Multinationals are not pulling out. Egypt is a larger and better known market than Tunisia, which however is more homogeneous, more secular, more middle class and better educated. Tunisia is more likely to succeed economically, but Egypt is the bigger prize. The immediate concerns of investors are about legitimacy and whether the new governments will treat the old elite decently, but it will be a decade before “equilibrium” returns.
Ian Bremmer of Eurasia Group admitted enthusiasm for the Arab Spring (“it feels good”) but noted that Ukraine and Georgia felt good at first too. Tunisia seems to be moving in the right direction, Egypt less so but will likely muddle through. Iraq is the most exciting investment opportunity in the region. U.S. influence is declining, and Saudi influence is increasing. Saudi policy objectives and conditionality will differ from those of the U.S. Overall though the immediate political risks have been overvalued. The problem is in the longer term, both because of Iran and the Israel/Palestine conflict. Europe and the U.S. will increasingly be occupied with other problems.
Cairo-based Walid Bakr of Riyada Enterprise Development, Abraaj Capital, was more optimistic in the medium and long term. Egypt’s big market and tourist attractions are not going away. Half the population is under 24, well educated and internet savvy, with lots of entrepreneurial spirit. The revolution has unleashed strong feelings of national pride and dignity. Youth is the engine of growth and can contribute to the all-important creation of small and medium enterprises so vital to job creation and wealth distribution.
Dubai-based Yasar Jarrar of PwC Middle East underlined that we are still at the beginning of the changes in the Middle East, which suffered a long period of stagnation (not real stability). The GCC countries are moving well to kickstart job creation for youth, major infrastructure investments and dialogue between their governments and the citizens. But it is going to be a long spring in a region that really does matter. Philip Haddad of Mubadala Infrastructure Partners agreed that we need to take the long view, but in the meanwhile as much as $38 billion is being invested in infrastructure, which is not bad.
The Omani ambassador, Hunaina Sultan Ahmed al-Mughairy, led off with a very upbeat assessment of the Sultanate’s prospects. The message was “yes, we can” reform ourselves, if we put our minds to it. Jean Francois Seznec of Georgetown said he was very pessimistic about Bahrain, where the basic issue is governance. In recent weeks, only 5% of the hotel rooms in Bahrain have been occupied.
There was a good deal of agreement that the issue everywhere is at least in part governance. Citizens did not feel they were benefiting under the old regimes, because of a lack of accountability. Political and economic reform need to go together, but it is not clear that new parliamentary democracies will credit competence and choose economic reform, which is discredited because it is associated with the old regimes.
Wrapping up, Ravi Vish of MIGA confirmed the importance of governance, addressing social inequality and the income gap, and job creation, mainly through a stronger and more entrepreneurial private sector. He also reviewed MIGA’s portfolio of political insurance products, for which demand is naturally rising in the region.
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Avoiding a September Israel/Palestine train wreck
Doom and gloom over at Woodrow Wilson this morning: Shai Feldman and Aaron David Miller in particular foresee no prospect of agreement under current conditions. Train wreck is more likely, Feldman believes: what happens in New York will trigger youth demonstrations in Palestine. This will threaten the Palestinian establishment (Fatah especially) and force it into a more radical posture. Politics in both Palestine and Israel militate against a conflict-ending settlement. In the absence of some unexpected event, or act of unusual statesmanship, prospects are not good.
Nevertheless, Hussein Ibish suggests that there is some possibility of incremental progress in the fall at the General Assembly. Palestine will not become a member of the UN, because the U.S. will veto. What is important, according to Ibish, is that Palestinian progress in state-building be preserved and sustained. He believes there are real possibilities for avoiding a counter-productive clash at the UN. The Palestinians will not press a General Assembly resolution if negotiations are restarted, and they can accept something less than UN membership in order to back off.
Palestinian unity is not really on the horizon, Ibish suggests. The Hamas/Palestine Liberation Organization agreement is nothing more than an agreement to agree, but in fact there is still no agreement on anything important. They can’t even agree on who should be prime minister, much less on things more important than that, like how to deal with Israel.
Jackson Diehl suggests the U.S. has a good deal to lose from vetoing Palestinian membership in the UN. The Saudis have already warned that they will react. Aaron David Miller asks if there is a way to avoid Washington being put in this position? Is this sufficient reason for Obama to launch a grand initiative to solve the Israel/Palestine conflict? Or, Shai Feldman asks, is there something more modest that could be done, like adopting the Obama parameters (from his speech in May) as the basis for future negotiations? Aaron David Miller suggests this is a real possibility, with the Obama speech (including 1967 borders) as a common frame of reference.
But how close are they to a deal, Diehl asks? Shai Feldman thinks Netanyahu may be focused on demographic trends, which have been presented recently to the Israeli cabinet. The issue for him is not Palestine, whose population he envisages in a separate state, but rather the Arab population of Israel. This is the issue that may pull Netanyahu toward the center, as it has other Israeli leaders, and push him into serious negotiations.
Hussein Ibish thinks the sides are far apart on the issues. There will be no quick breakthrough. But once gaps start closing, they could close quickly. Nothing will happen without restarting the negotiations, so that is the way out of the September train wreck, even if Aaron David Miller suggests though there is nothing worse than another failed negotiation effort.
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