DIALOGUING:
Javier Solana, “What kind of Palestine?”
Alon Ben-Meir, “Cease Fire To What End”
Uri Avnery, ” All Quiet on the Gaza Front”
Alon Ben-Meir, “Caught in a Vicious Cycle of Violence”
Jimmy Carter, ” A Human Rights Crime: The world must stop standing idle while the people of
Gaza are treated with such cruelty”
Paul Scham, “Carter’s trip: boon or bungle?”
MJ Rosenberg, “A Ceasefire Is No Small Thing”
Nicholas D. Kristof, “Strengthening extremists”
Uri Avnery, “An Apology”
Ziad Asali, “Mideast Conflict: Need for a New Perspective”
Ghassan Rubeiz “Middle East Peace Requires Forgiveness”
Marc Gopin, “Israelis are talking to Hamas: religion at the cutting edge”
Mohammed Herzallah, “A Credible Peace Process”
Samir El-Youssef, “Should Palestinians forgive Israel”
Naomi Chazan, “The roadmap revisited”
Gershon Baskin, “Encountering peace: creating a new reality on the ground”
Amin Howeidi, “The Day After”
Ha’aretz Editorial, “Don’t be afraid of peace with Syria”
Theodore H. Kattouf, “The United States and Syria should talk (about everything)”
David R. Sands, “Israel-Syria talks hindered”
Alon Ben-Meir, “Israeli-Syrian Negotiations: The Need For A Bold Move”
Rabbi David Rosen, “Not Just Another Interfaith Parley”
What We Readers Are About
DIALOGUING
WHAT KIND OF PALESTINE?
Javier Solana*
Source: Al-Ahram (http://weekly.ahram.org), 26 June 26, 2008. Distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at http://www.commongroundnews.org. Copyright permission is granted for publication.
Israeli and Palestinian negotiators have now been talking to each other for more than six months, since the peace process was re-launched at Annapolis in November 2007, with the stated aim of reaching agreement on a Palestinian state before this year is out. The final status issues of borders, Jerusalem and refugees are back on the agenda, and the outlines of a two-state solution are visible. There have recently been some encouraging signals: Egypt has mediated a truce between Hamas and Israel in Gaza; there are signs of inter-Palestinian dialogue; and there appears to be movement on the Israeli-Syrian track. We have to grasp the opportunity for peace.
Comprehensive peace in the Middle East is the strategic goal of the European Union, and resolving the Israeli-Arab conflict on the basis of a two-state solution is the key to achieving this. Europe wants, and needs, to see the creation of an independent, democratic, and viable Palestinian state living in peace alongside Israel. For this, the foundations and the structures of a Palestinian state have to be created, which is where the European Union is playing a distinctive role. It is leading international efforts to assist the Palestinians with their state-building efforts under a major strategy adopted by the EU last year. An important part of this strategy is devoted to developing security and the rule of law, which are the cornerstones of the fledgling Palestinian state and the theme of a large international conference of foreign ministers hosted in Berlin on 24 June.
The EU is making a tangible difference on the ground. It is helping the Palestinians strengthen their civilian security capabilities not just with words or money but also with people. Our police mission, EUPOL COPPS, has been active in the Palestinian territories since November 2005, advising and mentoring the Palestinian Authority in its efforts to build up a civil police force and establish law and order. Canada, Norway and Switzerland are supporting the mission and we are working in close coordination with our US partners. We are now about to increase the mission in size and expand its scope to the broader rule of law sector, embracing in particular the penal and judiciary systems. A democratic Palestinian state needs a properly equipped, trained and disciplined civil police and it needs functioning law courts and prisons.
The EUPOL COPPS is not the only EU security mission in the Middle East. Our border assistance mission, EUBAM Rafah, established at the Rafah crossing point between Egypt and Gaza in 2005, is currently on standby and ready to deploy as soon as circumstances permit and EU member states form the backbone of the United Nations force in Lebanon (UNIFIL).
Our efforts are bearing fruit and are helping to make a real difference on the ground. In the past year alone, the EU mission has trained 800 civil police officers in public order, refurbished police stations and contributed to the communications network of the civil police. The Palestinian Authority has begun to deploy forces in major urban areas such as Nablus and is gradually taking over responsibility for security in the West Bank. Palestinian and Israeli security forces are cooperating and this cooperation must continue and increase.
These measures in the area of security and rule of law are part of a wider effort to improve conditions for the Palestinian people and revive the economy. For democracy to take root, the people must see that their lives are improving. Roadblocks must come down, trucks must be able to transport goods freely, people must be able to travel to work, to school and to hospitals unhindered, farmers must be able to grow and sell produce, investors must be encouraged to come with foreign capital, and businesses must be set up. And, of course, it is not only the Palestinians who gain from this. Israel’s security interests can only stand to gain from a peaceful, democratic, and ultimately prosperous Palestinian state. In truth, the entire region will be stabilised if the Israelis and Palestinians resolve their 60-year- old conflict. The EU is doing everything it can to help with this.
*Javier Solana is the EU’s foreign policy chief. He wrote this article on the eve of a conference in support of Palestinian civil security and rule of law in Berlin.
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CEASEFIRE: TO WHAT END?
Alon Ben-Meir*, March 11, 2008
An Egyptian brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hamas could temporarily stop the bloodshed, and if it saves the life of one Israeli or Palestinian, is still worth the effort. But a ceasefire which is not followed by a new strategy that leads to ending hostilities permanently will only play into Hamas’ hands and undermine the ultimate goal of both Israel and Palestinian moderates. Israel and the moderate Arab states must look outside Gaza to change the dynamic of the conflict. Only a major shift in American policy towards Syria could provide the impetus for a breakthrough.
The argument that if Israel takes certain steps to shore up the Abbas camp by easing the humanitarian crisis, which would demonstrate that moderation pays off while pointing out Hamas’ failure to deliver the goods, has some merit. In particular, permitting the Palestinian Authority’s security personnel to take charge of the crossings to Israel from Gaza and allow for the flow of goods in both directions will enhance Fatah and undermine Hamas in the public’s eye. But, however useful these and other measures may be, they are temporary and will not, by themselves, provide a long-term solution without some drastic action being taken concurrently to change the conflict’s entire equation. Leave it to Hamas to take credit for any improvement in the daily lives of Palestinians or to skillfully exploit their despair. Moreover, a ceasefire, whatever the circumstances, allows Hamas to recruit, retrain, as well as amass more weapons, rockets, and munitions and be better prepared for the next confrontation with Israel. This is not a scenario Israel is likely to accept. However enticing a ceasefire may appear, it will strengthen rather than weaken Hamas to the detriment of Palestinian moderates. With a strong religious conviction and determination to liquidate Israel, Hamas as a movement can be weakened but not destroyed. As long as Iran, through Syria, continues to support Hamas with money, weapons, and training, and Egypt is unable to stop the flow of weapons to Gaza, it will be beyond the Palestinian Authority’s capability to replace Hamas, and beyond Israel’s reach to completely eliminate it as a militant group.
The March 6 attack on Mercaz Harav Yeshiva, an elite religious college in the heart of Jerusalem that killed eight students is more than an act of revenge for the scores of Palestinians killed in Gaza a few days earlier. It represents an assault on a religious learning institution that supports the settlement movement and further underscores the ominous danger of the escalating religious conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Israel and the Arab states have every reason to stem the tide of such developments before they spin completely out of control.
The solution has been staring the Americans, the Israelis, and the Arab states in the face for a long time. But the Bush administration, especially, has remained stuck in its failed policy of attempting regime change in Syria instead of luring Damascus into the peace process. Syria’s support of Hezbollah and Hamas is motivated, first, by its special interest in Lebanon and its desire to regain the Golan, and, second, by the benefits, including financial assistance, it derives from Iran. The real culprit is the regime in Iran, which, committed with religious zeal to undermining the peace process will do anything to destabilize the region. Here is where the interests of Tehran and Damascus coalesce. Tehran can do little without Syria’s logistical and political support of Hezbollah and Hamas. The net result is Syria holds the key to both groups’ fortunes and will continue to agitate the situation in Lebanon and in the Palestinian territories for its own benefit. Thus Damascus and Tehran’s collaboration is tactical; it has no long-term strategic value for Syria but will endure as long as Washington insists on isolating and marginalizing Damascus.
It is not too late for the administration to change this policy, especially after the Annapolis peace conference, which Syria attended. But it remains unlikely that President Bush will do so without very strong prompting by Israel and the Arab states, especially Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf States, along with Egypt and Jordan. Their combined weight in Washington is considerable. Therefore, they must make it abundantly clear to Mr. Bush that if decisive action is not taken immediately, the current explosive situation could end catastrophically. Israel can no longer find comfort with Mr. Bush’s dead-end policy towards Syria giving the Israeli government the false hope that it can hold onto the Golan indefinitely. The Arab states know only too well that luring Syria out of Iran’s orbit is of paramount importance to both their internal security and to regional stability. They must make it crystal clear that the Bush policy thus far has only strengthened the forces of Islamic radicals, while giving Iran a free hand to undermine the interests of America and its allies. Neither the crisis in Lebanon nor the one with Hamas can be resolved unless Iran is isolated. To achieve that, the administration must deal directly with Syria. Syria is ready to dramatically modify its relations with unsavory groups and with Iran, but this comes with a high price tag. That said, Damascus’ wish list, including normalization of relations with the United States, regaining the Golan, and maintaining a special relationship with Lebanon is not extravagant and in any event, may be inevitable.
A ceasefire between Israel and Hamas will not endure unless Syria is on board. With no political backing, limited financial assistance, and reduced weapon supplies, Hamas will have no choice but to live with the ceasefire and adjust to the new reality without being challenged to violently resist Israel.
*Alon Ben-Meir is a professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at NYU. He teaches courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies, 212-600-4267, alon@alonben-meir.com, www.alonben-meir.com.
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ALL QUIET ON THE GAZA FRONT
Uri Avnery, June 21, 2008
And suddenly: quiet. No Qassams. No mortar shells. The tanks are not rolling. The aircraft are not bombing. In Sderot, sighs of relief. Children venture out. Inhabitants who have exiled themselves to other towns return home.
And the reaction? An outburst of jubilation? Dancing in the streets? Applause for the Prime Minister and the Minister of Defense, who at long last have come to their senses? Not at all. The expression on the nation’s face is a grimace of disgust. What kind of thing is that? Where is our victorious army?
The people of Sderot are really angry. OK, so there are no Qassams, but this was supposed to happen only after the army had entered Gaza and wiped it out. Haaretz headed its front page with the mendacious headline: “Israel pays with deeds – and gets promises”.
“It’s fragile,” Ehud Olmert soothes us, it can come to an end any minute. And the other Ehud, Barak, who pushed for the cease-fire, has an excuse: we have to go through the motions before starting the Big Operation in Gaza. For the sake of Israeli and international public opinion. And nobody says: Thank God, the killing has stopped!
Why? What causes this almost unanimous reaction of disappointment? Why is there a general feeling of humiliation, almost of defeat? It’s because the national ego is hurt. How wonderful it would have been to see the Israeli army in Gaza destroying Hamas, together with the entire city. But, instead of the crushing victory, we have something that smacks of a rout. And that in spite of the assertions of those now rooting for re-occupying the Gaza Strip: that at any minute, with just a little more starvation and closure, the population would have broken and rebelled against Hamas.
From the military point of view, a year of war in the Gaza Strip has ended in a draw. IDF-Hamas 1:1. But the IDF and Hamas are not two football teams of equal standing. Hamas is an armed political-religious movement, what is termed in current Western parlance “a terrorist organization”. When such an organization achieves a draw with one of the mightiest armies in the world, it can justifiably claim victory. The aim of Olmert’s war was to topple the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip and to destroy the organization itself. This has not been attained. On the contrary, according to all reports, Hamas is stronger than ever, and its hold on the Strip is solid. Even in Israel that is not questioned.
For a year, the Israeli government has maintained a total blockade of the Strip – on land, at sea and in the air. It has enjoyed the unqualified support of Europe, which assisted in starving a population of one and a half million men and women, children and old people. The US was, of course, a full partner in this glorious enterprise. Hosni Mubarak’s Egypt, dependent on the US, collaborated, if unwillingly. All this was not enough to beat poor and crowded Gaza, a narrow strip of land 35 km (22 miles) long and 10 km (6 miles) wide, into submission. Not only did the rockets not stop, but their range increased. Their victims in Israel were few, a child could count them, but their impact on morale was immense.
The Israeli army was helpless against this primitive weapon, which costs next to nothing. The army killed wholesale and in retail, on land and from the air, with missiles, shells and infantry weapons. To no avail. Hamas has survived, but it, too, did not achieve its aim. It had no answer to the blockade. Only the pressure of international public opinion (as well as the Israeli peace forces) prevented total starvation, but in the Strip there was a shortage of everything. Unemployment was rampant, fuel disappeared, many inhabitants suffered from undernourishment, bordering on starvation. That is the nature of a draw: neither of the two sides is able to force a decision and impose its will on its opponent.
A ceasefire only comes about when both sides need it. (True, Carl von Clausewitz, the Prussian military philosopher, has said that in war it is impossible for a situation to be beneficial to both sides at the same time, that something that is good for one side is necessarily bad for the other. But in real war there are exceptions.) Indeed, the Israeli army needed the ceasefire no less than Hamas. That became clear from the comments of the “military correspondents”, almost all of whom are thinly disguised army spokesmen. Of course, not one of the cabinet members would have agreed to a ceasefire if the army brass had objected. Usually, the army bosses press for one more action, one more operation, one more war. Have they suddenly turned into doves? Not really. But they knew that they had to choose between two “bad” options: a ceasefire or the “Great Operation” – the re-conquest of the entire Gaza Strip.
The commanders did not like the first option, and that is an understatement. It means admitting failure. But the second option they liked even less – much, much less. The Great Operation, which a large part of the public yearned for, which almost all the media demanded at the top of their voices, is very problematical. Hamas has had a lot of time to prepare for it. No army likes to fight in a built-up area, among a crowded population. Every alley is a potential trap, every man – and every woman – a potential suicide bomber. Even if the army succeeded in entering and occupying the strip with only “tolerable” casualties, that would just be the beginning of the troubles. Every day soldiers would be killed. The mutual bloodletting would be endless. See: the Iraq war.
Public opinion is fickle. Every dead soldier whose smiling picture is shown on television increases the pressure to get out. Sooner or later the army would be compelled to leave – and the situation would revert to what it was before, only worse. The army chiefs know this. Olmert and Barak also know this. The lesson of the Second Lebanon War has not been forgotten. There is no mood for war.
The ceasefire has far-reaching political implications. It changes the Palestinian – and perhaps the regional – map. One can protest from here to eternity, one can shout from the rooftops that “we don’t negotiate with Hamas” and that “we have no agreement with Hamas” – every child understands that we indeed do, and indeed have.
This is an agreement between the Government of Israel and the Gaza authorities. It means a de facto recognition of the Hamas government there. In Gaza, too, every child understands that the Israeli government was compelled to agree because it was unable to break Hamas by force. In the eyes of the Palestinians, the situation is clear: Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah has not got anything from the Israelis, Hamas has. Abbas tries by peaceful means. He is the darling of the Americans and the Israelis. But since the great performance in Annapolis, not only has he not achieved any meaningful concessions at all and not freed a single prisoner, but additional prisoners are being taken every night, the settlements are being enlarged and the Israeli government announces grandiose new building projects in East Jerusalem and the entire West Bank. And the Israeli government would not dream of agreeing to a ceasefire there.
While at the same time Hamas, besieged by the whole world, losing fighters every day, has attained a significant military and political achievement: goods will flow into the Strip, cars will again bounce along the potholed roads, the Rafah crossing, which cuts off the Strip from the world, will be opened. In the coming prisoner exchange, hundreds of Palestinian prisoners will be released in return for the captured Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit.
The conclusion? Everybody can ask themselves: if I were a Palestinian, what conclusion would I draw? The ceasefire affects the balance of power within the Palestinian people. Hamas has proved that it can maintain an orderly government. Now it is proving that it can control the radical organizations, too. The wisest thing Mahmoud Abbas can do now is to form a Unity Government, based on both Hamas and Fatah.
Will the ceasefire hold? The correspondents report that nobody expects it to. When Olmert says that it is fragile, he knows what he is talking about. There is no written agreement. No orderly mechanism for settling disputes. No arbitrator to decide, in case of need, which side is responsible for a violation. If somebody in Israel wants to break the ceasefire, nothing will be easier: a squad leader opens fire on a group of Palestinians near the border fence, because he suspects that they are about to plant an explosive device. A spy helicopter pilot believes that he is being shot at and launches a missile. The army intelligence chief claims that large quantities of arms are being smuggled into the Strip.
It can be done in other ways, too. The army will kill half a dozen Islamic Jihad militants in the West Bank. In response, the organization will fire a salvo of Qassams at Sderot. The army will announce that this is a violation of the agreement and answer with an incursion into the Gaza Strip. It will even be right formally, since the ceasefire does not cover the West Bank. Every agreement holds only as long as both sides believe that it serves their interests. If one of them thinks otherwise, it will break it (and assert that the other side broke it first). In this case, the first to break it will most likely be the Israeli side.
A ceasefire is not peace (salaam), and not even an armistice or truce (hudnah). It is no more than an agreement between combatants to stop shooting for some time. In the nature of things, each side will use the ceasefire to prepare for the next round of fighting – to breathe deeply, to rest, to train, to plan, to obtain more advanced weapons. But the ceasefire can become more than that. It can lead to Palestinian unity, to Israeli re-thinking, to a practical advance towards a peaceful solution. At the very least, every day of the ceasefire saves human lives. And in the meantime the Hebrew and the international dictionaries have acquired another Arabic word: Tahdiyeh, calm.
MMMMMMM
CAUGHT IN A VICIOUS CYCLE OF VIOLENCE
Alon Ben-Meir*, March 18, 2008
The killing by Israeli undercover troops of four Palestinian militants in Bethlehem, on March 12, raises questions not as much about Israel’s right to self-defense but about the context and the circumstances under which this right is exercised. Even the right to self-defense and matters of national security must be balanced against the prevailing conditions. In this instance, Israel has made an egregious mistake by killing four individuals whose continued threat to Israel pales compared to the Palestinian rage the act has provoked and with it the potential for retaliatory violent acts against Israel.
However justified the killing may have been from the Israeli perspective, neither the targeted men nor the circumstances, or for that matter, the timing end credence to Israel’s claim of self-defense, not to speak of its commitment to a negotiated settlement. Here is why: First, the four individuals appeared to have renounced violence, they posed no imminent danger, and hoped to be included in an amnesty agreement with Israel but were refused. Second, their killing shattered the calm of Bethlehem, a city which has been the calmest of all the Palestinian cities and which was planning to host an international investor’s conference in May. Third, the Israeli raid occurred at a delicate time embarrassing the Egyptians who were hard at work trying to arrange for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. Fourth, Israel is in the midst of peace negotiations with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who now feels severely undermined by the Israeli action. Fifth, the raid came on the heels of two-weeks of intensified violence in Gaza and Jerusalem, which killed 126 Palestinians and at least 12 Israelis and shook both communities amid international calls for calm. Finally, the raid seems to defy the logic behind Israel’s peacemaking strategy, as this particular act of killing will certainly play itself out in the Palestinian streets.
It will be a mistake to ignore Israel’s legitimate concerns over the countless acts of violence perpetrated against its citizens by radical Palestinians from different political and religious affiliations. The string of suicide bombings during the second Intifadah left an indelible mark on every Israeli, and the endless barrage from Kassam rockets as well as the recent killing of eight young Yeshiva students has only reinforced Israel’s zealous concerns over the security of its citizens. Hamas’ and Islamic Jihad’s sworn commitment to destroy Israel has created a fatalistic mindset among the Israelis that has made their survival a zero-sum game against the survival of members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Moreover, the Israeli government argues that while it is committed to the peace process, it cannot afford to sit by idly, allowing known killers of Israelis to freely roam or not intervene to foil an imminent terrorist attack when the PA has failed to act. Thus, from the Israeli perspective, the four had to be killed not only because they have Jewish blood on their hands but because, given the opportunity, they would have killed Israelis again and again because they do not
accept Israel’s right to exist.
But while understanding Israeli logic and sympathizing with it, there remains one fundamental question: When will Israel’s leaders conclude that, despite the constant belligerency, there is a time when the elimination of certain individuals causes more harm than good and that targeted killing is not the answer to Palestinian resistance? However Israel explains its recent targeted killing, the government cannot avoid the perception if not the reality that this act is 1) totally inconsistent with the peace process, 2) plays into the hands of extremist Palestinians who argue against the peace negotiations, 3) perpetuates the vicious cycle of violent acts of revenge and retribution, 4) weakens the authority of Mahmoud Abbas, Israel’s main negotiating partner, 5) raises serious questions about Israel’s ultimate intentions, especially as it continues to expand existing settlements, and 6) angers many Arab states that view the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as central to their stability.
Whereas the targeted killing has been, from the Israeli vantage point, extremely effective, the Israeli defense apparatus must consider the political context under which these attacks are occurring. If peace with the Palestinians is Israel’s strategic choice, then it behooves its leaders to demonstrate not only the ability to reach every terrorist but the political skills to manage the ongoing violence without damaging the peace negotiations. The principle of killing every Palestinian fugitive with blood on his hands, regardless of the circumstances, is blindly misguided because it begs the question as to when and under what conditions should the killings end. Peace between Israel and the Palestinians requires more than cessation of hostilities; it demands a demonstration of good faith, the rebuilding of trust, and genuine efforts to reconcile. The wounds inflicted by both sides are deep, painful, and have left many ugly scars. A measure of forgiveness and forgetting on both sides, whenever the opportunity presents itself, is critical if Israelis and Palestinians wish to ever coexist in peace.
Israel will not be able to redeem every Palestinian militant, but it must give a chance to those who have forsaken violence, even if they have not embraced peaceful coexistence. Israel’s demonstrable desire for peace must not be put to question by mindless and unnecessary killings.
*Alon Ben-Meir is a professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at NYU. He teaches courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies, alon@alonben-meir.com, Web: www.alonben-meir.com.
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A HUMAN RIGHTS CRIME:
THE WORLD MUST STOP STANDING IDLE WHILE THE PEOPLE OF GAZA ARE TREATED WITH SUCH CRUELTY
Jimmy Carter
Reprinted from “The Guardian, 8/5/08, with permission to republish.
The world is witnessing a terrible human rights crime in Gaza, where a million and a half human beings are being imprisoned with almost no access to the outside world. An entire population is being brutally punished. This gross mistreatment of the Palestinians in Gaza was escalated dramatically by Israel, with United States backing, after political candidates representing Hamas won a majority of seats in the Palestinian Authority parliament in 2006. The election was unanimously judged to be honest and fair by all international observers.
Israel and the US refused to accept the right of Palestinians to form a unity government with Hamas and Fatah and now, after internal strife, Hamas alone controls Gaza. Forty-one of the 43 victorious Hamas candidates who lived in the West Bank have been imprisoned by Israel, plus an additional 10 who assumed positions in the short-lived coalition cabinet.
Regardless of one’s choice in the partisan struggle between Fatah and Hamas within occupied Palestine, we must remember that economic sanctions and restrictions on the supply of water, food, electricity and fuel are causing extreme hardship among the innocent people in Gaza, about one million of whom are refugees.
Israeli bombs and missiles periodically strike the area, causing high casualties among both militants and innocent women and children. Prior to the highly publicised killing of a woman and her four children last week, this pattern had been illustrated by a report from B’Tselem, the leading Israeli human rights organisation, which stated that 106 Palestinians were killed between February 27 and March 3. Fifty-four of them were civilians, and 25 were under 18 years of age.
On a recent trip through the Middle East, I attempted to gain a better understanding of the crisis. One of my visits was to Sderot, a community of about 20,000 in southern Israel that is frequently struck by rockets fired from nearby Gaza. I condemned these attacks as abominable acts of terrorism, since most of the 13 victims during the past seven years have been non-combatants.
Subsequently, I met with leaders of Hamas – a delegation from Gaza and the top officials in Damascus. I made the same condemnation to them, and urged that they declare a unilateral ceasefire or orchestrate with Israel a mutual agreement to terminate all military action in and around Gaza for an extended period.
They responded that such action by them in the past had not been reciprocated, and they reminded me that Hamas had previously insisted on a ceasefire throughout Palestine, including Gaza and the West Bank which Israel had refused. Hamas then made a public proposal of a mutual ceasefire restricted to Gaza, which the Israelis also rejected.
There are fervent arguments heard on both sides concerning blame for a lack of peace in the Holy Land. Israel has occupied and colonised the Palestinian West Bank, which is approximately a quarter the size of the nation of Israel as recognised by the international community. Some Israeli religious factions claim a right to the land on both sides of the Jordan river, others that their 205 settlements of some 500,000 people are necessary for “security”.
All Arab nations have agreed to recognise Israel fully if it will comply with key United Nations resolutions. Hamas has agreed to accept any negotiated peace settlement between the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, and Israel’s prime minister, Ehud Olmert, provided it is approved in a referendum of the Palestinian people.
This holds promise of progress, but despite the brief fanfare and positive statements at the peace conference last November in Annapolis, the process has gone backwards. Nine thousand new Israeli housing units have been announced in Palestine; the number of roadblocks within the West Bank has increased; and the stranglehold on
Gaza has been tightened.
It is one thing for other leaders to defer to the US in the crucial peace negotiations, but the world must not stand idle while innocent people are treated cruelly. It is time for strong voices in Europe, the US, Israel and elsewhere to speak out and condemn the human rights tragedy that has befallen the Palestinian people.
*Jimmy Carter, a former president of the United States, is founder of The Carter Center project-syndicate.org.
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CARTER’S TRIP: BOON OR BUNGLE
Paul Scham*
This article was written for the Common Ground News Service (http://www.commongroundnews.org)with permission for republication.
It is unclear what Jimmy Carter thought his recent meetings in the Middle East with Hamas leaders would actually accomplish. Given his political experience, he could not have believed that his trip to Damascus was likely to succeed in jumpstarting a process that would quickly include Hamas in actual peace negotiations. More probably, he decided that he was in a unique position to focus Western attention on the possibilities of engaging Hamas, concluding that provocation was his most effective tool, just as he did when he titled his 2006 book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. The furore resulting from both actions was similar. Now, he has helped provide a clearer perspective of Hamas’ current red lines, which future attempts at engagement will necessarily build on.
It is notable that few of Carter’s critics seem to be able to put forward a realistic alternative to dealing with Hamas. None seem to believe that Hamas will disappear, or that military action will destroy or tame the political organisation. In fact, some readily admit that sooner or later Israel will have to deal with Hamas ˆ that there is no choice. So why do some people attack Carter so ferociously?
The ostensible reason is that he broke ranks with the international consensus that defined Hamas as a terrorist organisation; that his trip provided Hamas with de facto international legitimacy. Carter’s laying a wreath on Yasser Arafat’s grave, and his public, physical embrace of Hamas leader Khaled Meshal, provided grist for claims that he is anti-Israel and truly supports Hamas. Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz has also alleged that money Carter’s centre receives from Arab sources is motivating his “anti-Israel” initiatives. However, a surprising number of his detractors seem only able to recycle insults based on pure dislike of the man.
What is more important is that a number of significant Israelis ˆ including former heads of the security services ˆ have been urging the government to accept the reality of Hamas and find a way to engage it. In a recent poll, 64 percent of the Israeli public indicated a willingness to engage Hamas. Only in the United States does opinion seem almost uniformly negative.
So where are we with regard to Middle East peace progress? It now seems to be a fact that Hamas will not disappear, no matter what Israel, the United States or the international community does. Hamas’ popularity is due to several factors, including Palestinian disgust with Fatah’s corruption, the rise of political Islam throughout the Middle East, the perception (shared by most observers) that the post-Annapolis process will not succeed, and a general Palestinian conviction (whether right or wrong) that Israel will never peacefully agree to a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders.
In addition, Hamas’ success in its confrontations, political and military, with Fatah and the growing international impatience with the Israeli blockade of Gaza have helped Hamas establish a role from which it cannot be easily dislodged.
Hamas has given tentative indications of wavering from its traditional insistence that formal recognition or acceptance of Israel’s legitimacy is theologically forbidden. It seems to be genuinely trying to develop theological and political mechanisms to enable it to deal with the powerful and inescapable reality that is today’s Jewish state. This constitutes progress in the current context.
The inescapable fact is that Hamas has already established its “legitimacy” in the way every new political force does: by amassing political and military power that makes it impossible to ignore. It is no longer an option to deny this; the question for Israel, the United States and the West is in what manner to come to terms with it. This is not amoral Machiavellianism; it is recognition of reality.
There are times when even the powerful must bite the bullet˜and this is one of them. While Carter’s trip continues to provoke political posturing, realities are being recognised. On 30 April, Egypt announced that Hamas and 11 smaller Palestinian factions had agreed to honour a six-month truce with Israel. It now covers only Gaza, but may expand to the West Bank. Egypt’s powerful Intelligence chief, Omar Suleiman, is currently trying to obtain Israel’s acquiescence.
If this cease-fire takes hold, then other possibilities are likely to open, even if a formal peace agreement cannot now be reached. There are significant precedents for co-existing with sworn enemies. In 1948, Israel’s four neighbours vowed to destroy it, but today two have signed peace treaties and a third insists it is ready for one. Similarly, the USSR and the United States (and their allies) faced off in the Cold War for decades and, to the surprise of many, avoided a general war. When the killing stops, possibilities open.
*Paul Scham is an adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute and co-editor of the book Shared Histories: A Palestinian-Israeli Dialogue.
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A CEASEFIRE IS NO SMALL THING
MJ Rosenberg*
Source: Israel Policy Forum (http://www.ipforum.org), June 20, 2008. Distributed by the Common Ground News Service, with permission for republication
The ceasefire is still in effect, which is something of a surprise. After all, this is a ceasefire few like˜especially in Israel. Some of the same government officials who secured it, wasted little time in saying that they did not expect it to last and that, when it did collapse, Israel would launch its long-deferred invasion of Gaza.
In essence, the critics are saying that all the ceasefire will accomplish is a delay in the deaths of dozens or hundreds of Israeli soldiers and hundreds or thousands of Palestinians. I suppose this is a classic example of the half-empty half-full syndrome. But in this particular case, it is indefensible to insist on viewing the glass as only half-empty. Another week, month, or year with the children, with parents, with friends. How much is that worth?
Now I know some readers are already thinking: “Better to fight them now. They will use the ceasefire to get ready for war.” No doubt that is true. Both sides will use the intermission to enhance their combat capacity. There probably has never been a ceasefire in history during which the combatants did not work to enhance their ability to fight. Of course, that is what Hamas and the Israelis are doing anyway. Ceasefire or no ceasefire, neither side is turning its swords into plowshares.
Nonetheless, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not going to be resolved by way of some decisive military action. Palestinian extremists are not going to achieve their goal of dismantling Israel, and Israeli extremists are not going to achieve their goal of Greater Israel˜not without committing national suicide in the process.
The Israeli novelist A.B. Yehoshua wrote in Yediot Aharonot last Thursday that the whole idea of “victory,” does not apply in the Israeli-Palestinian case. “It is important to remember one principle in the 100-year war with the Palestinians. The Israelis and the Palestinians are neighbours˜people who will live in proximity to each other forever. Therefore, the military considerations in this war are not similar to those in force between distant countries that are fighting each other. The residue of blood, both ours and theirs, remains in the region, trickling into the memory and infrastructure of the two peoples. Therefore, an immediate cessation of the bloodshed is more vital than the fantasy of complete ‘victory’ in the long term.”
A ceasefire is a start. Israel should do everything it can to make it last. That means living up to the promises it has made to the United States and to President Abbas about improving conditions for the Palestinians. That means finally adhering to a settlements freeze in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem. Every new or “thickened” settlement is a gift to Palestinian extremists who point to them as evidence that Israel will never permit establishment of a Palestinian state.
It means removing redundant and unnecessary checkpoints within the West Bank. Most checkpoints are not on the border but deep inside the West Bank. They serve no purpose except to make it difficult, or impossible, for Palestinians to move between their homes and jobs, homes and hospitals, homes and school. It means demolishing those ubiquitous unmanned earthen mounds, which are nothing but traffic bumps to prevent the movement of innocent civilian traffic. It means allowing the Palestinian Authority to have the equipment it needs to defend itself against extremists. Neither Israeli nor Palestinian interests are served by a weak Mahmoud Abbas. (It is getting tiresome to hear Israelis complain that Abbas is weak when they are denying him the wherewithal to be strong).
In Gaza, it means easing the humanitarian crisis, allowing ailing Palestinians access to medical care and those separated from family members in the West Bank freedom to travel. As for Hamas, it means maintaining the ceasefire, preventing others from breaking it, and releasing Corporal Gilad Shalit. In short, ending the violence.
That is no small thing. As Yehoshua writes, the one demand that supersedes all others is an end to bloodshed. Nothing else comes close. He dismisses the idea that Hamas’ failure to recognise Israel is paramount, “as if all the ceasefires we have made in the past 60 years, both with Arab countries and with the PLO in Lebanon, were made on the basis of ‘recognition of Israel’ and not on the basis of ‘a mutual and unconditional halt to bloodshed’.” For Yehoshua, the ceasefire is a very big deal.
“Concessions” should not be made only in response to terror. Doing so only confirms the view held by Palestinian radicals that “the only language Israelis understand is violence.” This whole Gaza debacle (including the election of Hamas and its seizure of Gaza) would have been prevented if Israel had negotiated its withdrawal from that territory with the Palestinians, rather than refusing to talk and simply leaving. Ever since Oslo in 1993 the Israelis have refused to implement a settlements freeze and have allowed settlers to terrorise the local population, especially in Hebron. It has to stop.
One thing is certain: The ceasefire will not last if both sides simply sit back and wait, taking no pro-active actions to preserve and deepen it. At this point, there is no way of knowing what will happen next. In this arena, it is always safe to be pessimistic˜safe but unproductive. There is an opening here. Seizing it with both hands is infinitely less risky than letting the moment pass.
* MJ Rosenberg, Director of Policy Analysis for Israel Policy Forum, was a long time Capitol Hill staffer and former editor of AIPAC’s Near East Report. The views expressed in IPF Friday are those of MJ Rosenberg and not necessarily of Israel Policy Forum. This article is (CGNews) and can be accessed at
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STRENGTHENING EXTREMISTS
Nicholas D. Kristof*
Source: International Herald Tribune (http://www.iht.com), June 19 2008. Distributed by the Common Ground News Service, with permission for republication.
The yearlong siege of Gaza may soon end with the new ceasefire there, marking the eclipse of one more American-backed Israeli policy that backfired by strengthening extremists. Here in Gaza, sulphurous with fumes from cars burning cooking grease because the siege has made gasoline scarce, the entire last year of the blockade feels not only morally bankrupt ˆ a case of collective punishment ˆ but also counterproductive. The fragile new truce between Hamas and Israel just might create a new opportunity to stabilise the Palestinian territories, but only if we absorb the lessons of what has gone wrong.
Consider Adham Sharif, a 26-year-old man whose only child, a baby girl named Mariam, had a tiny hole in her heart and needed surgery. Gaza hospitals were unable to perform such an operation, but doctors said that surgeons in Israel or in neighbouring countries could save her. In theory, there was an exception to the siege to let people out of Gaza in medical emergencies. But Sharif could not get the Israeli permit for Mariam to leave, and she died in November. “It’s so hard,” he told me. “You see your child dying, and you can’t save her.”
Does Sharif blame Hamas as the cause of the blockade that cost his daughter’s life? “Of course not,” he said. “I blame the ones who closed the border: Israel. And America, its ally.” Now when he hears of extremists firing rockets at southern Israeli towns like Sderot, Sharif has a warm feeling all over.
When Hamas won democratic elections in Gaza and then seized full power a year ago, there were no good choices for Israel and America. Hamas includes terrorists, Islamic fundamentalists and ideologues, and it has cultivated ties with Iran. It has decent governance by the region’s devalued standards ˆ it is not particularly corrupt; it delivers social services efficiently, and the streets are safe ˆ but it runs a police state and alarms all its neighbours.
Of all the bad choices, Israel chose perhaps the worst. Punishing everyone in Gaza radicalised the population, cast Hamas as a victim, gave its officials an excuse for failures and undermined the moderates who are the best hope of Israel and the Arab world. If the United States and Israel had formed a Joint Commission to Support Hamas Extremists and Bolster Iranian Influence, they could hardly have done a better job. The episode is the latest evidence that hard-liners in Israel, Palestine and America all reinforce each other. Arab terrorism led to the rise of Israeli hawks and to two invasions of Lebanon. The first Israeli invasion helped give birth to Hezbollah, and then the Israeli assaults on Palestinian police helped nurture Hamas. So while Israelis denounce Hezbollah and Hamas, they helped create them. And while Palestinians denounce the separation barrier, their suicide bombings built it.
“Extremists need each other, support each other,” noted Eyad el-Sarraj, a prominent psychiatrist in Gaza. He laments that the siege of Gaza has discredited pro-American voices: “Whoever is not going along with the US is a hero, even the crazy ones.” The United States and Israel devoted their energies to punishing Hamas and didn’t work to make a success of our preferred interlocutors. So moderates like Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, now come across as weak, irrelevant and ineffective, while Hamas emerges as the victor.
We should talk to Hamas, not because negotiations will necessarily get anywhere, but because a failure to negotiate will necessarily get nowhere. Israel’s decision to block Gazans from studying abroad was particularly short-sighted. Educating Gazans might help build a contingent of moderates, but Israel has continued to block three Fulbright scholars from leaving for the United States. “For Israel to have a better future, it should want neighbours with better education,” Zohair Abu Shaban, one of the Fulbright students, noted reproachfully. So far, Hamas has outmanoeuvred Israel and the United States.
Opinion polls this year show Hamas gaining over all in the West Bank and Gaza. And, when we help Hamas, we inadvertently boost its backer, Iran.
Perhaps most depressing, large Palestinian majorities – more than before ˆ now favour terror attacks.
A university student in Gaza, Rajaa Batrikhi, 20, told me she has suffered so much from the siege that she relishes the rocket attacks from Gaza on Israeli towns. “I think it’s good when we hit them with rockets,” she said defiantly. “Our rockets are nothing like the rockets they hit us with. At least they feel the fear that we feel every day.” It’s a credit to Israel that it was willing to negotiate indirectly with Hamas, and with the truce, we now have a chance to break this downward spiral. Let’s stop bolstering Hamas.
*Nicholas D. Kristof is a columnist for the New York Times and a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner. He has lived on four continents, reported on six, and traveled to 120 countries. He’s also one of the very few Americans to be at least a two-time visitor to every member of the Axis of Evil.
UUUUUUU
AN APOLOGY
Uri Avnery
Source: Arabic Media Internet Network (http://www.amin.org), 14 June 14, 2008. Distributed by the Common Ground News Service with permission for republication.
This week, the Prime Minister of Canada made a dramatic statement in Parliament: he apologised to the indigenous peoples of his country for the injustices done to them for generations by successive Canadian governments.
This way, White Canada tries to make peace with the native nations, whose country their forefathers conquered and whose culture their rulers have tried to wipe out.
Apologising for past wrongs has become a part of modern political culture. That is never an easy thing to do. Cynics might say: there is nothing to it, just words. And words, after all, are a cheap commodity. But in fact, such acts have a profound significance. A human being ˆ and even more so, a whole nation ˆ always finds it hard to admit to iniquities performed and to atrocities committed. It means a rewriting of the historical narrative that forms the basis of their national cohesion. It necessitates a drastic change in the schoolbooks and in the national outlook. In general, governments are averse to this, because of the nationalistic demagogues and hate-mongers who infest every country.
The President of France has apologised on behalf of his people for the misdeeds of the Vichy regime, which turned Jews over to the Nazi exterminators. The Czech government has apologised to the Germans for the mass expulsion of the German population at the end of World War II. Germany, of course, has apologised to the Jews for the unspeakable crimes of the Holocaust. Quite recently, the government of Australia has apologised to the Aborigines. And even in Israel, a feeble effort was made to heal a grievous domestic wound, when Ehud Barak apologised to the Oriental Jews for the discrimination they have suffered for many years.
I believe that peace between us and the Palestinian people ˆ a real peace, based on real conciliation ˆ starts with an apology. In my mind’s eye I see the President of the State or the Prime Minister addressing an extraordinary session of the Knesset and making an historic speech of apology.
Madam Speaker, Honourable Knesset, On behalf of the State of Israel and all its citizens, I address today the sons and daughters of the Palestinian people, wherever they are. We recognise the fact that we have committed against you a historic injustice, and we humbly ask your forgiveness.
The burning desire of the founding fathers of the Zionist movement was to save the Jews of Europe, where the dark clouds of hatred for the Jews were gathering. In Eastern Europe, pogroms were raging, and all over Europe there were signs of the process that would eventually lead to the terrible Holocaust, in which six million Jews perished.
All this does not justify what happened afterwards. The creation of the Jewish national home in this country has involved a profound injustice to you, the people who lived here for generations. We cannot ignore anymore the fact that in the war of 1948 ˆ which is the War of Independence for us, and the Nakba for you ˆ some 750 thousand Palestinians were compelled to leave their homes and lands. As for the precise circumstances of this tragedy I propose the establishment of a “Committee for Truth and Reconciliation”‘ composed of experts from your and from our side, whose conclusions will from then on be incorporated in the schoolbooks, yours and ours.
We owe you an apology, and I express it hereby with all my heart. I trust that our two states ˆ Israel and Palestine, living side by side in this beloved but small country, will quickly come together on the human, social, economic, technological and cultural levels, creating a relationship that will not only guarantee our security, but also rapid development and prosperity for all.
Together we will work for peace and prosperity throughout our region, based on close relations with all the countries of the area. Committed to peace and vowing to create a better future for our children and grandchildren, let us rise to our feet and bow our heads in memory of the countless victims of our conflict, Jews and Arabs, Israelis and Palestinians ˆ a conflict that has lasted far too long.
Such a speech is, to my mind, absolutely essential for opening a new chapter in the history of this country. In decades of meeting with Palestinians of all walks of life, I have come to the conclusion that the emotional aspects of the conflict are no less ˆ and perhaps even more ˆ important than the political ones. A profound sense of injustice permeates the minds and actions of all Palestinians. Unconscious or half-conscious guilt feelings are troubling the souls of the Israelis, creating a deep conviction that Arabs will never make peace with us. I do not know when such a speech will be possible. Many imponderable factors will have an impact on that. But I do know that without it, mere peace agreements, reached between haggling diplomats, will not suffice.
The public apology by the Canadian Prime Minister is not the only thing we can learn from that North American country. 43 years ago, the Canadian government took an extraordinary step in order to make peace between the English-speaking majority and the French-speaking minority among their citizens. That relationship had remained an open wound from the time the British conquered French Canada some 250 years ago. It was decided to replace the Canadian national flag, which was based on the British “Union Jack”, with a completely new national flag, featuring the maple leaf.
On this occasion, the Speaker of the Senate said: “The flag is the symbol of the nation’s unity, for it, beyond any doubt, represents all the citizens of Canada without distinction of race, language, belief or opinion.” We can learn something from that, too.
*Uri Avnery is a journalist and peace activist. He is the founder of the Gush Shalom peace movement.
MIDEAST CONFLICT: NEED FOR A NEW PERSPECTIVE
Ziad Asali*
Source: Arab News (http://www.arabnews.com), May 5, 2008.Ddistributed by the Common Ground News Service with permission for republication.
Peace is not easy. Achieving it requires summoning the deepest forms of courage. It means examining one‚s darkest prejudices that dehumanise and demonise the other. The quest for mutual recognition of humanity and dignity is an arduous task.
The question facing both Israelis and Palestinians is: Do they prefer to cling to the pain of past injuries and the suffering of their forefathers, or will they determine to move forward and build a better future for their children?
While there have been all too many shrill voices lamenting the grievances of decades and centuries between Israel and the Palestinians, there is a harmony that strums through us all. When we fight for peace, we fight not against each other, but together and for all of us. This means accepting that there are like-minded people on the other side, and identifying, making common cause, and building peace with them.
Israelis and Palestinians live in the same land with divergent national narratives, and both want and need sovereignty and self-determination. The only means to reach a reasonable accommodation is to have two states, Israel and Palestine, living side-by-side in peace. No other solution has any serious prospect of ending the conflict and creating a modus vivendi between the parties. The two-state solution, for all its faults, is the only way out of the cycle of violence and hatred that has plagued Israel and the Palestinians since 1948.
This idea enjoys the support of solid majorities of both Israelis and Palestinians, and of the international community. In many ways we have never been closer to realising this all-important goal. And yet, as I write, the only realistic hope for the future is in serious jeopardy due to the actions of extremists, driven by nationalist fantasies or religious zealotry, among both Israelis and Palestinians.
Extremists on both sides feel that time is on their side. Some Israelis delude themselves that Palestinians over time will become exhausted or new generations will forget their national identity. They believe they will win complete control of the entire area between the river and the sea. Meanwhile, some radical Palestinians are under the illusion that Israel is an artificial foreign imposition akin to the Crusader states that cannot last and will eventually collapse. They too believe that time is their greatest weapon, and that the best strategy therefore is to never compromise.
We cannot afford to sacrifice generation upon generation in order to test the validity of these competing metaphysical visions and certainties about the trajectory of history.
These dangerous delusions are most damagingly expressed in the expansion of Israeli settlements and by the use of terror by Palestinian extremist groups. Settlements threaten a peace based on two states by strengthening rather than loosening Israel‚s grip on the occupied territories˜greatly complicating the process of creating a Palestinian state. They also profoundly erode Palestinian confidence that Israel is interested in allowing a viable, contiguous state of Palestine to be born. Similarly, the use of terror by Palestinian extremist groups makes Israelis question whether Palestinians would ever accept Israel and agree to live with it in peace and security.
It is up to both peoples to decide whether they will allow themselves to be driven by extremist agendas, or to pursue what is plainly in their national interests. Their past trespasses against each other, both real and imagined, have to give way to the recognition that Israelis and Palestinians clearly now need exactly the same thing: An end of conflict based on two states.
I do not believe that the conflict should be seen any longer as pitting Israelis against Palestinians, but must be re-conceptualised as a struggle between those who are committed to ending the conflict based on two states against those on both sides who persist in clinging to hostility. Those who are prepared to recognise each other‚s dignity and self determination in two sovereign states share a common purpose, and have more in common with each other than with their compatriots who are bent on conflict for generations to come.
At 60, Israel is a technologically and politically sophisticated state with a diverse population and vibrant economy. Israelis deserve a peaceful country with security and economic progress. Palestinians deserve no less.
* Ziad Asali, MD, is president of the American Task Force on Palestine. For more information: mailto:gala@americantaskforce.org. This article was taken from a discussion on Israel-Palestine in the Rosner’s Guest column in Ha’aretz.
OOOOOOOO
MIDDLE EAST PEACE REQUIRES FORGIVENESS
Ghassan Rubeiz*
This article is distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at: http://www.commongroundnews.org.
Peace requires forgiveness. Jimmy Carter‚s meeting in Damascus last week with the leadership of Hamas has aroused strong emotions. If compromise of principles disqualifies parties from peace making, the Middle East is doomed forever. The Damascus visit involves five main parties: Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, Israel, the United States, and former President Carter. There is no uncompromised party among the five listed. Hamas compromised in violence, the Palestinian Authority in corruption, Israel in a harsh occupation, the United States in nursing erosion of justice, and Jimmy Carter in over-tolerance of Arab autocracy.
I am a strong critic of Hamas for not recognising Israel and for not exploiting non-violent resistance˜the most powerful weapon that Palestinians can muster for liberation from an oppressive Israeli occupation. But whether one supports Hamas or not, this grassroots movement did win the last parliamentary national elections. This historical election authorised Hamas to lead the government of the Palestinian communities ˆ under Israel‚s occupation ˆ in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza.
The election of Hamas in January 2006 was a remarkable event in Arab democracy-building. It is rare that a corrupt Arab regime, the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority, is ousted through ballots rather than bullets. However, since the surprise victory of Hamas, Israel and the United States have been working with the (rival secular) Palestinian Authority and its artificially formed government in the West Bank. In contrast, Hamas, which now controls Gaza by force, is being isolated, pauperised, and targeted militarily to force it to accept Washington and Tel Aviv‚s recipe for peace. Although it has shown subtle signs of moderation, Hamas refuses to yield.
The news this week that Israel and Syria have started a new round of indirect peace talks (mediated by Turkey) is too good to be true. Similarly the news that President Bush is confident about „defining‰ the contours of a viable Palestinian state before he leaves office remains a trip to the land of fantasy. But fantasy is all we have got to live for in an increasingly gloomy Middle East. Why is Carter‚s attempt to open dialogue with the most important segment of Palestinian leadership perceived in some quarters as a threat to peace in a region that is hard to reach with understanding but easy to manipulate with force?
Carter is trying to help Israel by softening Hamas‚ hard line position, but, regrettably, many in the Jewish community and outside it do not trust the former US president anymore. They brush aside the Nobel laureate‚s breakthrough peace work of the late seventies.
Not many in Israel realise that their state can not achieve peace without creative compromise with Hamas, without political reconciliation within the leadership of the Palestinian community. Hamas is a grassroots movement that is bound to gain power through martyrdom; as a policy to restrain violent rebellion, the Israeli occupation continues to make living condition for all Palestinians unbearable. In conditions of extreme deprivation Hamas thrives politically, a David and Goliath phenomenon.
The peace process has been deadlocked for eight years and needs innovation to be revived. Former President Jimmy Carter is morally compelled to continue his mission of peacemaking. He initiated the progress toward peace in the Middle East four decades ago. His initial role in conflict resolution should not be forgotten as he marches onward in trying to break barriers between Arabs and Israelis.
Carter met with Hamas leaders last week defying a US government ban on formal negotiations with the Islamic Resistant Movement, better known as Hamas. Even in his capacity as a private citizen, Carter has antagonised the US congress by his meeting with the leaders of Hamas. This latest Carter mission follows his controversial 2006 book entitled: Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.
The book is about the erosion of justice in the Occupied Territories. Carter‚s comparison of Israel‚s occupation of the Palestinian Territories with the former South African apartheid regime was considered unfair and inflammatory by many Israelis and friends of Zionism. Some members of the US Congress are upset with Carter for what they consider unauthorised „presidential‰ behaviour. As a punitive measure, a group of congressmen is considering legislation to cut funding for the Carter Center.
Before critics lose patience with Carter they should realise that he is a man of faith, and that he is applying his biblical principles in peacemaking. The former President is against the militant resistance strategy of Hamas. In fact, he is opposed to any form of resistance that exposes civilians to violence. Carter remains a true friend of Israel. His talks with Hamas were an attempt to jump-start a dying peace process. The visit should be commended, not condemned. The former president is reminding the world that there is no short road to peace. Hamas has to be included in a democratic march toward peace.
*Dr. Ghassan Rubeiz (mailto:grubeiz@comcast.net) is a Lebanese-American Middle East analyst. He was previously the secretary of the Geneva-based World Council of Churches for the Middle East.
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ISRAELIS ARE TALKING TO HAMAS: RELIGION AT THE CUTTING EDGE
Marc Gopin*
Source: Common Ground News Service, May 15, 2008, http://www.commongroundnews.org, with permission for publication.
There are Israeli Jews who have been talking to Hamas for years, especially Rabbi Menahem Frohman. In fact, there are more Israeli Jews, official and un-official, who would be talking not only to Hamas, but also to Syria and Iran were the White House not pressuring them against dialogue with enemies of Israel. This is unprecedented: a third party, supposedly mediating for peace, that forbids two parties from talking to each other.
Sober intelligence analysts at the highest levels in Israel have been arguing the virtue of negotiation and a process of offers and counter-offers˜not because they are nonviolence activists, but because they are realists seeking the path of least resistance to a more stable and safe Middle East. They have every intention of confronting the military threat from Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran, but through a subtle combination of approaches, not the least of which is negotiation. They understand very well that an offer to an inveterate enemy that does not recognise your existence is not a capitulation, but rather a test. It is a test that will put constructive pressure on radicals to come to the table, or split among themselves. All good news for realists.
There are also religious Israeli Jews who have honed their negotiation skills with Hamas over many years now. Rabbi Frohman, along with Khaled Amayreh, a Hebron Journalist close to Hamas, have come up with a ceasefire that is realistic, but also appealing to the religious frame in which Hamas exclusively operates. This was not an official document, but it has been followed by important statements released by Hamas leader Khaled Meshal in Syria, regarding interest in an agreement between Hamas and Israel to not target civilians, which would mean an end to suicide attacks. In addition, Meshal has come out with a statement that appears to accept Israel‚s existence within the 1967 borders, which appears to meet a major criterion for Western acceptance of Hamas. These are all positive signs, and yet it comes in the midst of military moves by Israel and Syria that are making everyone nervous about a coming confrontation.
This is all the more reason for an aggressive embrace of an agreement with Hamas that would prevent another unnecessary war or outbreak of hostilities. Here are excerpts from the ceasefire, or hudna, treaty that demonstrate a path toward uniting a cultural and realistic path away from violent solutions to the conflict between Hamas and Israel. The text is framed by quotes that honour the Koran and the Bible:
God is great, and he alone is able to bring a solution to the problems standing between the noble Palestinian people and the venerable people of Israel in the Holy Land∑.It is possible, based on Jewish and Muslim law alike, to present solutions that will bring divine providence to both noble peoples, since the blessed Lord has bestowed upon them the grace of residing in the Holy Land∑.Starting from this premise, we seek to establish a truce agreement (hudna) between the Palestinians and the Israelis, based on what we have learned from the Prophets and the Messengers∑.
According to the agreement, Israel and the Palestinian authorities in Gaza undertake the following:
To end and abolish the sanctions imposed on the Gaza Strip in all forms, effective immediately, including the following: Permitting normal economic ties between the Gaza Strip and the outside world; Opening all crossing points between Gaza and the outside world; this includes permitting free movement and flow of goods and services to and from the Gaza Strip∑.
Undertakings of the Palestinian side: The authorities in the Gaza Strip must take all necessary steps for putting a complete stop to the attacks against Israel∑.Halting indefinitely all attacks and rocket fire against Israel… stop any attacks against Israeli soldiers and civilians… halting suicide attacks aimed at Israeli soldiers or civilians∑.
The purpose of a parallel process of establishing a Jewish/Muslim ceasefire is not to undermine the secular processes of negotiation, indirect or otherwise, but to build a better atmosphere of trust, and an understanding of what enemies want from each other. This will strengthen moderates in Hamas, like the Minister of Health, and weaken the more extreme voices. It will create confusion among those who are convinced that Jews and Israel will never compromise. With Hezbollah’s victory in Lebanon in recent days we simply cannot ignore such groups anymore if we are to deescalate the dangerous trends of the region. They are facts on the ground, and a hudna will help neutralise the atmosphere of complete war.
Political Islam is a nonnegotiable feature of the Middle Eastern landscape for the time being, but undermining its violent appeal by pursuing a ceasefire and substantive change in the lives of Palestinians is the only rational path to shared safety. This approach respects religious partisans on both sides of the divide, and also provides a practical way out of the current interminable cycle of violence.
*Marc Gopin is the James Laue Professor at the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, George Mason University.
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A CREDIBLE PEACE PROCESS
Mohammed Herzallah*
Source: Al-Ahram (http://weekly.ahram.org.eg), May 8, 2008. Distributed by the Common Ground News Service with permission for republication.
Hamas just offered Israel a 10-year long truce. This is an important opening that could allow Israel and the United States to start engaging Hamas in the political process, either directly or through Arab allies, because the isolation of Hamas undermines the policy objectives of all parties presently involved.
Mahmoud Abbas is the elected president of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, but he cannot be expected to reach a credible and lasting political settlement with the Israeli government unless and until he secures Hamas’ consent and blessing. The Islamist movement maintains broad support in the occupied Palestinian territories and has demonstrated time and again that it has the necessary capacity to subvert negotiations with Israel. Discord in the Gaza Strip and the resultant security unrest in adjacent Israeli communities substantiate the claim that Palestinian national consensus is indispensable to the peace process.
Regrettably, the task of cultivating this consensus is becoming progressively more difficult. In the past, disagreements between Fatah and Hamas, the two political pillars of Palestinian politics, had always subsisted on their ideological differences. Now, the competing preferences of intrusive external powers have distorted Palestinian politics and have rendered factional differences more irreconcilable.
Fatah’s decision to retract its official consent to the Yemeni accord – a national reconciliation proposal for Palestinians sponsored by President Saleh of Yemen – late March is just one example. Fatah and Hamas spent weeks negotiating the terms for reviving a Palestinian national unity government and restoring the PA’s control over Gaza. Hours after the accord was signed by representatives from both parties, Fatah officials in Ramallah announced that there had been a “mix up” and subsequently withdrew their endorsement of the accord. Their announcement followed Vice-President Dick Cheney’s brief visit to Ramallah, in the course of which he relayed the message that the United States will not support reconciliation with Hamas unless the Islamist movement fundamentally changes. Israel also expressed strong objections to the deal. Putting it in blunt terms, an Israeli official told Ha’aretz that Fatah can “have a peace process and dialogue with Israel or a coalition with Hamas. But it’s clear that you can’t have both.”
The experience of the past year has proven that military and economic pressure cannot compel Hamas to discontinue showering Israel with homemade rockets. Worse, these strains are pushing Hamas closer to Tehran, which in turn is helping crystallise Iranian influence in the Palestinian-Israeli realm.
The fate of moderate Palestinian officials is also at stake. If truth were told, the very existence of a credible leadership, capable of advancing Palestinian interests through the political process, is in question. President Abbas is in a critical spot, and the United States and Israel expect him to continue negotiating with them regardless of Israel’s actions against Gaza. Collective punishment policies, that include depriving Gaza’s civilians of food and energy, are creating considerable popular resentment. The PA is commonly reproached by its people for not actively protesting against these violations and not doing enough to alleviate the suffering of Gazans. Some even wonder whether the PA is actually complicit in suffocating Gaza. Regardless of whether there is merit to such claims, the persistence of this perception in the Palestinian street is likely to have a long-term negative effect on the credibility of the PA among its own people. In all likelihood, this consequence will be particularly palpable when the PA is about to sign, presumably on behalf of the Palestinian people everywhere, a final peace deal with Israel.
The current approach that dominates American and Israeli policies towards Hamas might be defensible if it made Israel more secure. But this approach is only creating desperate living conditions in Gaza, which in turn are facilitating the emergence of a fiercer brand of militants such as the Army of Islam and the Army of Believers, two rogue groups that have claimed connections to Al-Qaeda and have carried out various operations in Gaza in the past year.
The launching of a credible peace process between Palestinians and Israelis ˆ one that could lead eventually to an enduring political settlement ˆ requires that all major players on both sides be brought to the negotiation table. Taking Hamas’ 10-year truce offer seriously would be a step in the right direction. The current policy towards Hamas, which aims to extract concessions through the interposition of sanctions and use of military force, always had a high propensity to backfire, and it did.
*Mohammed Herzallah is a research fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and former president of the Palestine Solidarity Committee at Harvard University.
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SHOULD PALESTINIANS FORGIVE ISRAEL
Samir El-Youssef*
Source: The Guardian, “Comment is Free” (http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk), May 14, 2008. Distributed by the Common Ground News Service with permission for republication.
In the first chapter of Amos Oz‚s novel My Michael, the protagonist Hannah recalls her childhood friends, Khalil and Aziz, two Palestinians who in 1948 disappeared along with 800,000 of their people. In the last chapter she imagines her two friends coming back to blow everything up. By then Hannah has descended into madness.
Hannah, like Oz and his generation of Israelis, knows that before the war of 1948 there was another, older and larger society than her own, and that that society was destroyed and its traces erased; the population was forced to leave, villages were razed to the ground and cities, neighbourhoods and streets were renamed. She must also know that the destruction of the Palestinian society was necessary for the creation of Israel. Unlike her generation, however, Hannah is willing to admit what she knows; but that‚s only because she is mad.
Israelis know that, within the ongoing conflict, making this acknowledgement could, as the novel concludes, be an act of madness and a call for self-destruction. For such an acknowledgement endorses the basic and uncompromising Palestinian claims. Practically every single Palestinian believes that before the Nakba – or ‘catastrophe’ – there was a Palestinian society similar to Arab societies in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt; that if it hadn‚t been for Jewish migration to Palestine, with the intention and means of creating a Jewish state, Palestine would have progressed into a sovereign Palestinian state.
Were the Israelis to endorse such claims they would have to admit that the creation of the State of Israel has blocked the natural birth of the Palestinian state; they would, therefore, risk facing the call to stand up to their responsibilities and correct the wrong they have done. But how could they do that without undoing their own nation and agreeing to become citizens of the long delayed Palestinian state? Could the Israelis ˜ as a nation whose ancestors suffered a long history of discrimination, prosecution and genocide ˜ take such a risk without being absolutely mad?
Madness, however, doesn’t always lead to the risk of self-destruction. Indeed, some of it could be so benign as to be the only hope. Let‚s imagine a Palestinian protagonist, a Palestinian Hannah who could understand the position of the Israelis ˜ that they have no choice but to evade or postpone admitting the embarrassing facts of pre-1948; that at best they could try to skip these facts by supporting a half-baked solution, such as the so-called two-state solution, by which Palestinians are offered a compensatory miniature state. A Palestinian Hannah would also acknowledge that the damage has been done and attempts to undo Israel could only lead to further damage˜and that Palestinians must forgive Israelis.
Forgiveness is good, and a decent society must do the good thing; it might also be the only hope to save present and future Palestinian generations from the curse of a damaged past. But surely one can‚t expect a stateless people, who for the past 60 years have been condemned to the life of refugees or, at best, second-rate citizens, to forgive? It would be a pure submission to eternal misfortune.
Well, Palestinian forgiveness would be a risk, one that would require the courage of the mad, hence Hannah. For Israelis could see this as an act of surrender, an incentive not for peace but for more seizure of Palestinian land and total suffocation of Palestinian life. If Israelis were to misuse Palestinian forgiveness then the act of forgiveness would be nullified. Forgiveness addresses past injustices only. By forgiving Israelis, Palestinians would exempt them from past responsibility, but not give them license to commit further injustice. On the other hand, Israelis might appreciate what they are offered; forgiveness would mean an end to violence motivated by past grievance, and if this didn‚t bring about a peaceful solution it would probably lead to a state of calm, in which Israeli restrictive measures would be removed and Palestinians could resume normal daily life.
For the Palestinians who are prepared to forgive the hope is that the majority of Israelis, out of decency or out of sheer desire for a quiet life, don‚t want any more war. Realising that Palestinian forgiveness meant that their national existence was no longer threatened, Israelis would want their government to seize the chance, not to confiscate more Palestinian land, but to consolidate the state of quiet and calmness, and do their best to rescue Palestinians from military occupation and second-rate citizenship.
This is probably a mad dream; a Palestinian Hannah might not exist, not in the near future, and if she existed she might be failed by the Israelis. The alternative, however, is the greater madness of a conflict that would go on for the next 60 years.
*Samir El-Youssef is a Palestinian writer and critic.
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THE ROADMAP REVISITED
Naomi Chazan*
Source: Bitterlemons.org (http://www.bitterlemons.org), May 5, 2008. Distributed by the Common Ground News Service with permission for republication.
The “Performance-Based Road Map to a Permanent Two-State Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict” highlights both the good intentions and the misplaced conceptions of its promulgators. Five years after its adoption, it lingers not as a tool for the achievement of a sustainable agreement but as a burdensome impediment to its realisation.
The roadmap was construed as a decidedly goal-oriented document. Substantively, it corrected the most glaring lacuna of the Oslo process by explicitly defining the destination of diplomatic efforts: “the emergence of an independent, democratic, and viable Palestinian state [that]…will resolve the Israel-Palestinian conflict, and end the occupation that began in 1967.”
Strategically, however, it was flawed from the outset. It sought to correct, but not to diverge from, the step-by-step approach undertaken in Oslo by setting out distinct phases, compressed timetables, clear benchmarks and visible monitoring mechanisms (overseen by the international community in the form of the Quartet). The built-in conditionalities on progress, coupled with the loose dependence on “the good faith of the parties,” meant that it was doubtful ˆ if not thoroughly unrealistic ˆ to expect that the chosen route could lead to the desired destination. Despite the shift in the locus of decision-making from the parties themselves to global actors, the reluctance of Israeli and Palestinian officials to agree to the roadmap’s main provisions, along with the numerous reservations they attached, is testimony to the unease with which it was greeted.
Since its inception, the roadmap has been stuck in its first phase, ostensibly aimed at enhancing security, improving the humanitarian situation, fortifying Palestinian institutions and halting all settlement activity. Indeed, the obstacles strewn on the tortuous path to the two-state objective have become increasingly daunting, effectively transforming the task of overcoming them into an aim in itself rather than a means to its attainment.
Conceptually, then, the phased approach has, for the second time since 1993, failed to stand the test of time. Its underlying logic is inherently faulty. First, it assumes symmetry in Palestinian and Israeli capacities when the formal standing of the two sides differs dramatically and asymmetry reigns. Second, it presumes that the creation of a supportive environment is conducive to diplomatic progress when in all probability amelioration of conditions on the ground is an outcome rather than a prerequisite of successful talks. Third, it relies on stringent verification and oversight mechanisms when the willingness of international actors to employ these tools has been consistently lacking. Fourth, it hopelessly conflates objectives and means, making forward movement on a pre-set trajectory more important than the fulfilment of its ultimate purpose. Finally, and most seriously, it holds final-status negotiations hostage to the purveyors of violence by granting them veto power over the diplomatic process.
Thus, ironically, the phased strategy ingrained in the roadmap – precisely because it dictated a series of steps necessary for the commencement of permanent settlement talks – enabled the pursuit of unilateral measures fundamentally antithetical to a negotiated resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. PM Ariel Sharon’s one-sided disengagement from Gaza was undertaken within this rubric; so, too, was the construction of the security barrier. The roadmap, in sharp contrast to its declared brief, gradually became an unconscious instrument for the legitimation of unilateralism.
The striking drawbacks of the roadmap did not, however, lead to its abandonment. The Annapolis meeting in November 2007 not only resurrected the outdated document; it embraced its weakest component. The bilateral permanent settlement talks were (much in line with the third phase of the roadmap) detached from its confining framework, as were the accompanying multilateral economic and institution-enhancing measures. But the implementation of the initial phase of the roadmap was reincorporated into the three-track package under the direct supervision of the United States. It was thus relegated not only to a secondary ˆ facilitating ˆ role; it was also stripped of its stated purpose.
The remnants of the impracticable course charted by the roadmap, far from being jettisoned in the last-ditch effort to bring about a two-state solution by agreement, may yet lay the foundation for the achievement of a long-term ceasefire. Thus, should this endeavour survive, it would do so as an exercise in conflict management, in direct contradiction to its professed aim of resolving the conflict.
The roadmap, in retrospect, stands as a monument to the inadequacies of incrementalism. Designed as a guiding compass leading to a two-state outcome, it has been increasingly utilised as a diversion from this goal, rendering it palpably self-defeating. This transmutation offers further testimony ˆ if such is still needed ˆ to the strategic misconceptions that have accompanied Israeli-Palestinian initiatives to date.
Clearly, no interim measures, no consecutive phases, no step-by-step approach can act as a substitute for full-scale negotiations on all outstanding issues. Without a substantial conceptual shift, along with the reverse engineering it entails, the promise embedded in the roadmap may become the victim of its pitfalls.
*Naomi Chazan is professor emerita of political science at the Hebrew University and a former member of Knesset (Meretz). (CGNews) and can be accessed at <http://www.commongroundnews.org>www.commongroundnews.org.
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ENCOUNTERING PEACE: CREATING A NEW REALITY ON TH GROUND
Gershon Baskin*
Source: Jerusalem Post (http://www.jpost.com), Augustv 4, 2008. Distributed by the Common Ground News with permission for re publication.
Danny Atar and Kaddoura Mousa, two relatively unknown people, have made great strides on the road to peace and could go much further if their governments would only stop interfering. Atar is the head of the Gilboa Regional Council, elected by the residents of the kibbutzim, moshavim and Arab villages in the Gilboa area; Mousa is the governor of the Jenin District, appointed by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. They have been working together quietly for the past years to create a new reality on the ground whose success is now being called “Jenin first.”
In this area, the most northern part of the West Bank, the Green Line and the separation barrier are on the same line. The absence of conflict on the territorial issue has enabled these two local leaders to march forward with ambitious plans that if brought to fruition will provide the best chance for prosperity, stability and security for Palestinians and Israelis on both sides of the line.
What they have achieved so far is mainly the building of a relationship of trust which is the most basic necessary ingredient in a recipe for peacemaking. In the Israeli-Palestinian reality, the almost total absence of trust is one of the main reasons why progress in negotiations between the leaders is so slow and tedious. In this conflict, which is so filled with rhetoric and hyper-verbosity, the absence of empty words and high politics is refreshing, especially when it is replaced by actions that build confidence and stability.
In the Gilboa-Jenin area, trust has been built by deeds, not by words. Mousa has diligently worked to bring law and order back to the Jenin area. He is a no-nonsense man who has zero tolerance for Palestinians who believe that they have the right and obligation to attack and kill Israelis. As governor, Mousa has direct authority over the Palestinian police and security forces in his area. With determination, the support of Abbas and PA Prime Minister Salaam Fayad, and support from the local communities, he succeeded in turning the area once controlled by Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants into the quietest in the West Bank.
Atar’s part in building trust has been achieved by his personal commitment and determination toward the economic and social development plans that are based on creating a new cross-boundary reality. The center of those plans is an industrial zone that will be built on the Palestinian side of the border. A logistical center and a medical center are planned on the Israeli side, and there are talks about cross-boundary projects in higher education and vocational training as well.
The connecting point is the Jelama crossing, which will probably have to be moved and expanded to accommodate the new plans. The plans are ambitious and visionary, and if Atar and Mousa are allowed to move forward without the interference of their governments, Jenin-Gilboa will become a model for moving from conflict to cooperation.
A key element in the success so far is the bridge-building role being played by Eid Salim, the representative of Mukeibila, a small Arab village and a member of the Gilboa Regional Council. Salim is an Israeli-Arab˜that is his definition. He has no conflicts regarding his identity. His amazingly rich fluency in both Hebrew and Arabic is only one small indication of his ability to stride both sides of the border and earn the full trust of both Israelis and Palestinians.
Eid’s Jewish colleagues on the council have no questions about his loyalty to Israel. They see him as a vital member, colleague and true friend. When Eid speaks about “our state,” he is only referring to Israel. The Atar-Eid partnership is a model of friendship and leadership based on a joint vision and, perhaps most importantly, on deeds and not words. This powerful duo together with Mousa can transform the northern West Bank into a real success story in Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking and perhaps lay a new cornerstone in building peace from the bottom-up.
The Gilboa-Jenin development plans will move forward if the local leaders have their way. The central governments have only to facilitate their work. To begin the physical work on the industrial zone, they need final agreements on technical issues concerning electricity, water and access roads. The plans have been advanced; financing is available from Germany and elsewhere. Groundbreaking could take place by January and the process of creating thousands of new jobs on both sides of the border could begin. A meeting of these local leaders and others from both sides took place this past weekend in the Konrad Adenauer Foundation Center in Lake Como, Italy, sponsored by the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information and the Adenauer Foundation in Jerusalem.
The process could also be stopped by the national governments and by high politics. The Jenin-Gilboa plans will not end the occupation. The Palestinian state will not come into being as a result of cross-boundary cooperation in the North. The situation in Gaza will not be affected by the creation of thousands of new jobs in Jenin. Nor are the plans fostered by Atar and Mousa a blueprint for a more humane or benign occupation.
Both of these local leaders fully support the two-state solution. But these are men of action. They understand that they can achieve nothing through political debates and arguments. They have the tools of local government at their disposal, and they plan to use those tools to build a piece of the peace that we all hope for.
In the absence of real hope that the heads of the Israeli and Palestinian negotiating teams might actually reach an agreement, it is people like Atar and Mousa who provide the real hope that peace is reachable and not solely a vision on the horizon that continually moves away from us.
*Gershon Baskin is co-CEO of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information.
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THE DAY AFTER
Amin Howeidi*
Distributed by the Common Ground News Service with permission for republication.
Barring any unexpected developments, the Palestinians may have a state before the end of 2008. It will not be the best of states in the best of worlds. It will not match the historic realities of the region, nor will it reflect the true interests of all those involved. But it will give everyone something they wanted. It will leave much undecided, but it is the ambiguity that will make it possible, and we’ll have to get used to living with the ambiguities and contradictions. That will be the easy part.
Some would be pleased to see the name of Palestine put on the map once again. Some will be less excited about it. But that’s not what matters really. States do not live on promises or guarantees alone, but on the wisdom of their leaders and the hard work of their citizens.
Theodor Herzl didn’t like the Balfour Declaration at first. In his memoirs, Herzl admitted that he was disappointed because the declaration spoke of a national homeland rather than a state. But the newborn state managed to grow and became a power to contend with. This happened because its inhabitants managed to turn the promise into reality.
Following the Evian Agreement that gave Algeria its independence, Karim Belgacem, member of the Algerian Revolutionary Command Council, stopped by to see me. Following a quick dinner, he said, “the easy part is over now and the hard part is just beginning.” We were never to meet again. He was killed briefly afterwards in Europe; assassinated in the power struggle that followed.
The biggest challenge for the new state would be to hold together. See how Lebanon had to endure months without a head of state. See how Palestine is divided ahead of becoming a state. Once the Palestinians have a country to run, things may get harder than they already are.
Before Israel became a state, it had multiple of terrorist outfits running their separate shows. Then the Haganah, Zvai Leumi and Irgun became political parties and elected a terrorist, David Ben-Gurion, as prime minister and minister of defence. For a while, the paramilitary outfits of the gangs continued to co-exist. Then Ben-Gurion called a conference in April 1948 and had everyone agree to disband the militias. A state needs to have one army, he said.
Irgun had second thoughts about it. Ben-Gurion had banned all arms shipments ordered by the paramilitary outfits and Menachem Begin didn’t exactly see the point. So he ordered his militia to unload a shipment of military hardware from the ship Altalina. Without blinking, Ben-Gurion ordered the ship sunk. Dozens of Israelis died in the attack and hundreds of Irgun members were rounded up and thrown in prison. This action arguably saved Israel.
I am recalling this episode for the benefit of our Palestinian brothers. The hard part is what comes after the creation of the state. You cannot run a state in the same way you run a militia. A newborn state can be forever traumatised by a power struggle. For the new state to survive, the Palestinians must have one army. And that army should take orders from one political leadership and from that leadership alone.
*Amin Howeidi is former Egyptian minister of defense and chief of general intelligence. Source: Al Ahram Weekly (http://www.weekly.ahram.org),July31- August 6. 2008.
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DON’T BE AFRAID OF PEACE WITH SYRIA
Ha’aretz Editorial “
Source: Ha’aretz (http://www.haaretz.com), 28 April 28. 2008. Distributed by the Common Ground News Service with permission for republication
Peace with Syria is once again knocking at our door, and it even seems to be meeting with a less-frosty reception on the Israeli side. The time is ripe for negotiations with Syria, especially since US President George W. Bush’s reign is drawing to a close, and among his potential successors, whether Democrat or Republican, there is a willingness to negotiate with Bashar Assad instead of boycotting him.
John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama all see a peace agreement between Israel and Syria as a recipe for relieving tension in the region. Removing Syria from the axis of evil might shuffle the Middle Eastern deck once again, breaking alliances and creating new interests. Israel can reap greater security from a new situation of that kind.
There seems to be a need to repeat, over and over, this basic fact: Nothing contributes to Israel’s security more than a peace accord. Before the protests of solidarity with the Golan Heights begin, it should be emphasised that withdrawal from the Golan in exchange for peace is endorsed not only by bleeding hearts, but by distinctly security-minded figures. The supporters of the Golan are West Bank settlers, like Golan resident Effi Eitam, who see any withdrawal as a national catastrophe; parties that gain strength by sowing security-related fears, such as Israel Beiteinu; those with economic interests in the region, hikers, bird-watchers, wine connoisseurs and winemakers; and mainly the people of the past, who still consider the lookout point on Mount Hermon to be “Israel’s eyes,” even though those eyes did not prove a very effective source of warning in 1973. Today, neither advance warning nor deterrence rely on the “Alpinists” (the elite IDF unit trained for snow operations), and the missile war expected in the future is not affected by natural boundaries, whether of the flowing or the ascending kind.
Yitzhak Rabin, Ehud Barak and Benjamin Netanyahu have all supported withdrawing from the Golan Heights in exchange for peace and security arrangements, and they all worked to obtain such an agreement. Whether or not the current government is capable of carrying out an historical move that entails territorial concessions is a question of leadership ability. Peace is not a commodity in high demand when the border is quiet, but peace with Syria might open up the possibility of regional peace by changing the balance of interests in the area.
If there is truth in recent reports that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert sent Assad, through the Turkish prime minister, a message concerning his willingness to withdraw from all of the Golan Heights in exchange for peace, it is clear that most of the negotiations will not involve the withdrawal itself, but rather the attendant security arrangements.
In an article in the newspaper al-Hayat, published in London, Dr. Fawzi Shoaibi, head of the Data and Strategic Studies Centre in Syria and a close consultant of Assad, writes, “The time has come to break through the Syrian-Israeli channel.” Assad himself said in July 2007 that he was waiting for Israel to make an official and public announcement of its willingness to withdraw from the entire Golan Heights, so that the talks could focus only on the security arrangements.
The cost of peace with Syria has been known for years, and there is no reason to be alarmed by it. The security advantages of peace are greater than the strategic value of the Golan Heights. The problem is that even within Kadima, Olmert’s party, it is hard to locate sufficient support for this welcome move by the prime minister.
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THE UNITED STATES AND SYRIA SHOULD TALK (ABOUT EVERYTHING)
Theodore H. Kattouf
Source: Common Ground News (http://www.commongroundnews.org), July 10, 2008, Copyright permission is granted for publication.
The recent compromise on power sharing in Lebanon spares the country further bloodshed, and allows its people to return to a modicum of normalcy. However, the underlying causes of the conflict remain, and Lebanon continues to be an arena where external powers play out their rivalries. Unless and until Syria and the United States reach a grand bargain, the Lebanese will continue to pay the price.
It should now be clear to the most casual observer that Syria’s military withdrawal from Lebanon was hardly the end of their influence there. Iran and Syria are in an alliance to thwart US and Israeli objectives in the region whenever and wherever they can. Despite the overwhelming military advantages the United States and Israel enjoy over their adversaries, Iran and Syria have been particularly adept at playing the spoiler through proxies such as Hezbollah, Hamas, Iraqi tribal groups, and Shi’a militias.
Through much of its second term, the administration of US President George W. Bush has been loath to engage in a prolonged and serious dialogue with Syria, instead preferring attempts to isolate and marginalise its leadership. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, for his part, has borrowed pages from his late father’s playbook to demonstrate that there are no lasting solutions to regional problems without Syria. Yet even Turkish-brokered negotiations between Israel and Syria have not enticed the United States away from its policy of ignoring Syria diplomatically while throwing verbal jabs at the regime whenever it can.
The Israelis have been by far more pragmatic in dealing with Syria than has the Bush administration. The current Israeli government and its military/security leadership have concluded that they are ‘better off with the devil they know than the devil they don’t.’ This reasoning helps to explain why Israel went to great lengths in the summer of 2006 to assure Syria that it was not the target of Israel’s war with Hezbollah. It also helps to explain the lack of Israeli leaks after the bombing of an alleged nuclear reactor in Syria. Meanwhile, even after the Bush administration tried to discourage indirect Israeli talks with Syria about the Golan, Israel cautiously went ahead.
Both Israel and Syria recently concluded that making these talks known is advantageous to them. In the Israeli case, they can pressure the Palestinians for more concessions by suggesting they have another option for peacemaking. The more strategic reason is of course the hope that Syria can be weaned from its 30-year alliance with a nuclear ambitious Iran. For its part, Syria wants to ensure its relevance and better position itself with the next US administration while the clock runs out on the current one. However, both leaderships know that even if they can agree on the terms of peace, the US government’s role is indispensable to concluding, supporting, and enforcing a treaty.
All of this leaves Lebanon in limbo. Hezbollah has demonstrated that there is no combination of other forces in Lebanon that can challenge its military predominance. Hezbollah’s leader, Sheikh Nasrallah, has left no doubt that his spiritual guide (Marje) is Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. As its influence with the group diminishes, Syria can no longer promise to disarm Hezbollah’s militia in the context of a peace treaty with Israel and a positive new relationship with the United States. It can, however, shut down the Iranian resupply pipeline to Hezbollah through Syrian territory. Syria could be even more Machiavellian and work with the United States and others to strengthen the more secular elements in Lebanese society in the context of full peace.
The Syrian regime cares first and foremost for its survival. If ushering in a new relationship with the United States and signing a peace treaty with Israel enhances its prospects for longevity, it will go that route˜even at the expense of Iran and Hezbollah. If such a deal is not forthcoming, Syria will continue to play the spoiler role to the best of its considerable abilities.
It is therefore important that a new US administration work with Israel and our Arab allies to concoct a strategy that can pry Syria away from Iran. Despite the longevity of their alliance, the two regimes ˆ one secular, the other theocratic ˆ have little philosophically in common other than their shared insecurities concerning Israel and the West.
Thankfully, Syria appears open to a grand bargain, including perhaps one that could stabilise Lebanon without compromising that country’s sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity.
*Theodore H. Kattouf is a former US ambassador to the United Arab Emirates and Syria. He is currently the president and CEO of AMIDEAST (www.amideast.org), and serves on Search for Common Ground’s MidEast Advisory Board.
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ISRAEL-SYRIA TALKS HINDERED
David R. Sands, “Israel-Syria talks hindered”
Source: Washington Times (http://www.washingtontimes.com), July 25, 2008. Distributed by the Common Ground News Service with permission for republication.
An Israeli-Syrian peace deal could be signed by the end of this year, but that requires Bush administration involvement that has not been forthcoming, the head of a high-profile Syrian delegation visiting Washington said last Thursday.
“If the political will is there, we could achieve an agreement within three or four months,” said delegation lead spokesman Samir al-Taki, director of a leading Damascus think-tank and an adviser to Syrian Prime Minister Naji al-Otari, during a luncheon with editors and reporters at The Washington Times. “The security issues involved in an agreement I would say are about 95 percent finalised,” he added.
Using Turkey as an intermediary, Israel and Syria acknowledged this spring they conducted “indirect” talks on a peace accord after a break of nearly a decade. Syria seeks to reclaim the Golan Heights, lost to Israel in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, and sees an Israeli settlement as a pre-condition for better ties with the United States. Israel, for its part, hopes an agreement would weaken Syria’s alliance with Iran and would pressure Damascus to end its support for militant groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas, which are hostile to Israel.
The Bush administration, which accused Syria of trying to undermine US allies and interests in Lebanon, Iraq and Israel, has been cool to the talks, fearing in part they will erode an American push for an Israeli-Palestinian settlement.
The administration has been harshly critical of the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad because of its inability or refusal to stop foreign fighters from entering Iraq, and its policies toward Lebanon. The Syrian government has been accused of involvement in the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri.
The Syrian team, brought to Washington by the private group Search for Common Ground, earned some unexpected publicity when the State Department on Wednesday abruptly cancelled plans for a previously announced meeting by a top US diplomat with the delegation. “We were not very disappointed,” Mr. al-Taki said, “for, to tell the truth, we were not expecting with the current situation in Washington a real change.” He said no reason was given for the withdrawn invitation, but “it may be that the publicity about our presence here made too many people nervous.”
Riad Daoudi, a lead Syrian negotiator at the Turkish negotiations, was originally to accompany the delegation to Washington, but remained in Syria to prepare for the next round of talks. Issues in the talks include border demarcation, water rights, security guarantees and the normalisation of diplomatic relations. Mr. al-Taki said diplomatic and military reverses for Israel and the United States in recent years have left the Middle East in “a very dangerous situation.”
Israel, he said, failed to impose a political settlement in the Palestinian territories and failed to break Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant organisation in the summer war of 2006.
The US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 has not sparked Mr. Bush’s hoped-for political revolution in the region, and the Syrian said recent security gains in Iraq remain “very, very fragile” while the Bush administration tries to keep Syria and other regional powers from having a say in Iraq’s future. Mr. al-Taki said attempts to pressure or isolate Syria, in the end, hurt America’s own interests in the Middle East. “We are unhappy to see ourselves demonised whatever we do,” he said. “At the end of the game, you cannot succeed in Syria if the perception is you are not trying to change our behaviour but change our regime.”
Still, he argued Syrian officials recognise they need the United States to be active in the region, as a guarantor of any deal with Israel and as the only power capable of filling the security gap in the region’s interlocking crises from Iraq and Iran to Lebanon and the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. Mr. al-Taki said the prospect of a new US president next year was grounds for some optimism.
“Whether it is Obama or McCain, the good news is that no one can pursue the policies that President Bush tried first. It’s already a stuck policy,” he said. “Anyone who comes next will have to have a different approach.”
*David Sands is Diplomatic Correspondent for the Washington Times.
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ISRAELI-SYRIAN NEGOTIATIONS: THE NEED FOR A BOLD MOVE
Alon Ben-Meir,* July 9, 2008
By all accounts, the Israeli-Syrian indirect negotiations through Turkish mediation are going well, and the fact that a fourth round of talks is scheduled for the end of July suggests that both sides expect to make further progress. The reports from Damascus and Ankara, however, indicating that Syria will not enter into direct negotiations with Israel before the advent of new American administration show an obstructive apprehension on the part of the Syrian government. Indeed, Damascus should not only agree to direct negotiations with Israel–as Turkish officials strongly recommend–but time has come for it to make a bold move toward the Israelis. A high level meeting, for example, between Israel and Syria can change overnight the dynamic of their negotiations and dramatically increase the Bush administration’s stakes in its successful outcome.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s effort to write off the Bush administration, however antagonistic it may be toward Damascus, is ultimately a mistake because it fails to take into account what Bush’s attitude would be toward the prospect of an Israeli-Syrian peace under his watch. Assad knows that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert would not have entered any negotiations, directly or indirectly without, at a minimum, the acquiescence of the Bush administration. Having failed to demonstrate a clear-cut foreign policy achievement in Iraq, Iran or with the Palestinians, Mr. Bush is more than eager to capitalize on any potential breakthrough that may come his way during his waning days in the White House. Having just returned from an extended visit to Turkey and Israel where I met with officials from both sides, the sentiment is clear: while the negotiations are going well, something dramatic and bold is needed to secure the durability of the negotiations and ensure a successful outcome. We know that Israel and Syria have a clear understanding of each others requirements to make peace. Otherwise, Syria in particular, would have not entered into any peace talks, let alone made them public.
Despite the White House statements indicating that the US will not participate in talks with Syria, reaching an agreement between Israel and Syria will have a dramatically positive ripple effect throughout the Middle East. It will improve the conditions in Iraq, help to undermine Iran, weaken Hamas and give Lebanon breathing room to achieve political stability. This is what the Bush administration wants and needs more than ever at this time. Now that Israel has the potential to open Washington’s door for Damascus, Assad has a golden opportunity to capitalize on Bush’s desire to claim one important foreign policy achievement, all while enhancing his own international standing. Moreover, regardless of who is the next President of the United States, Barack Obama or John McCain, they will feel politically and morally inclined to engage Syria directly which is precisely what Damascus wants. If Bush can help broker an agreement even in principle between the two countries, it will drastically influence the decisions the next US administration will have to make in the Middle East. The upcoming Mediterranean Union Partnership conference held in Paris under the auspices of the French government offers President Assad a momentous opportunity to achieve an historic breakthrough. He must seize it.
A bold move by Syria will also have an incredibly wide appeal throughout Israel. For one thing, most Israelis remain skeptical about Syria’s ultimate intentions. They are looking for a credible gesture that only a bold move such as an official meeting between Olmert and Assad could validate. Many Israelis still feel nostalgic about the visit of the late President of Egypt Anwar Al-Sadat to Israel in 1977 and the profound impact it has had on the Israelis’ public opinion regarding the exchange of territory for peace. Moreover, Olmert is politically beleaguered and he may not survive but a few more months in office. What such a gesture can accomplish will transcend Olmert’s tenure in office as it will shift the Israeli public opinion which currently favors keeping the Golan Heights as a measure of safety. Regardless of who may succeed Olmert–including the Likud’s party leader Netanyahu who opposes the return of land–the public will be on the side of peace-making, even in exchange for the Golan Heights, and will demand the continuation of the peace process.
Surely President Assad has his own people he must consider first. There are no indications that the Syrian public will frown over such a gesture, knowing full well that their president is committed to regaining the Golan without the use of force but with tough diplomacy and negotiations. For the past two years President Assad has repeatedly called for peace negotiations with Israel and prepared the public for such eventuality. Many Syrians received with satisfaction the news about the Israeli-Syrian peace talks and understand the critical value of normalizing relations with the United States. Assad stated clearly in an interview on Monday that “The most important thing in direct
negotiations is who sponsors them…Perhaps we could give some trump cards to the new [US] administration to get it more involved.” Even if in the end a peace agreement with Israel is not fully materialized during the Bush administration, President Assad’s gestures now will position Syria in the best possible light for continued negotiations with the next US president, which he has made a top priority.
Turkey’s facilitation of any gestures leading to an agreement would certainly consolidate its leadership position in the Middle East as an international peace maker. At a time when Turkey is vying heavily for EU membership, every contribution to stability and peaceful developments between its neighbors will enhance its prospects favorably.
Both President Bush and Prime Minister Olmert are politically weak, and although they are not likely to make reckless moves to cover for their weaknesses, they are certainly more inclined to be accommodating if the prospect of real peace avails itself. What Damascus needs to understand is that for President Bush and Prime Minister Olmert, time is of the essence. Assad must therefore act with deliberation and do every thing in his power to seize a unique opportunity consistent with his bold move to make the Israeli-Syrian peace negotiations public.
Alon Ben-Meir is a professor of international relations at the Center fo Global Affairs at NYU. He teaches courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies, alon@alonben-meir.com, www.alonben-meir.com.
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NOT JUST ANOTHER INTERFAITH PARLEY
Rabbi David Rosen*
This article is part of a series on Jewish-Muslim relations written for the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at: http://www.commongroundnews.org. Copyright permission is granted for publication byCGNews.
Last week, an amazingly colourful array of Arab princes and Muslim clerics came together with representatives of the world’s major faiths in the Spanish Royal El Prado Palace in Madrid. While the Western media generally failed to appreciate the magnitude of the event, the Arab media understood how important it really was. Not only was this the first international multi-faith conference ever initiated by an Arab Muslim leader, it was inaugurated by the king of the Muslim world’s heartland, Saudi Arabia, where the most conservative Muslim outlook prevails.
At the opening event, King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud emphasised his conviction that authentic religion is expressed in a spirit of moderation and tolerance, that concord must be elevated above conflict. In order to address the global challenges of our time, he called for cooperation and collaboration between the different religions.
This green light for interfaith dialogue and collaboration opened the gates for the curious but cautious. As a member of the Jewish delegation ˆ composed of some 15 rabbis and scholars ˆ we seemed most affected by his “permission.”
The Arab media interviewed us incessantly, and prominent Arab figures approached us, many of whom had never before met a Jew – let alone a rabbi. The encounter ignited a humanising flame that began to burn away the demonised image of the other. For this alone it was worthwhile.
As is often the case at conferences, conversations outside the formal proceedings offered far greater opportunity for meaningful exchange˜especially at meal times. (I should point out that the Muslim organisers had specially ordered kosher food for the Jewish participants, a testament to the consideration and respect shown by our hosts).
At one meal, our Saudi interlocutors were at pains to emphasise the 85-year-old king’s courage. King Abdullah’s desire, said one of them, was not only for Saudi Arabia to play a more engaged role in the world and with the world’s religions, but also to open Saudi Arabia itself to the world.
The World Muslim League (WML), which reflects a very conservative religious ideology, was given responsibility for organising the conference so that the initiative had significant religious “cover.” At the same time, it was patently clear that for the WML, these were uncharted waters. The preparations, list of invitees, invitations, the programme itself˜all betrayed a lack of familiarity with the interfaith territory, and with specific religious communities in particular. But that too highlighted the remarkable novelty, and thus significance, of King Abdullah’s decision to sponsor this event.
While I had been invited not as an Israeli, but as a Jewish leader in the inter-religious field, the fact that I am an Israeli citizen had been excitedly reported in the media. In the highly choreographed proceedings, there was a moment of some passion and heat. It came in the wake of an almost inevitable mantra expressed by a panellist in the penultimate session: while dialogue with Jews was permissible (and perhaps even desirable), he said, dialogue with Israel was not. The panellist called on me to respond to his comment.
I replied that an authentic dialogue is not one in which one side defines the character of the other, but rather it seeks genuinely to understand others as they see themselves. Judaism has always been inextricably connected to the land of Israel. While this must not be used to justify actions or policies that conflict with Judaism’s ethical foundation, to deny or try to separate this bond is to fail to acknowledge, let alone respect, the way most Jews define themselves. Moreover, because of the centrality of the land of Israel to Jewish life, without Israeli religious representation, no claim to full and genuine dialogue can ever be credible.
While a few reacted negatively, alleging that the irenic discussion had now been politicised, there were also constructive Muslim responses emphasising that by extension of this principle, Jews need to appreciate what Jerusalem means for Muslims, as well as Muslim solidarity with their Palestinian brothers and sisters.
Perhaps most notable of all was the respectful spirit in which the discussion took place. Many noted that it had actually served as something of a release. The absence of any mention of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict had created the feeling that there was an elephant in the room. The opportunity to refer to it in the context of respectful debate actually helped clear the air.
While the concluding statement was an anticipated pious declaration of all things good, it does reflect the expressed Saudi intention to continue this newly embarked upon process. This should not be underestimated: the highest authority in the very heartland of Islam has taken a lead in interfaith outreach with the declared intention of addressing contemporary challenges and resolving conflict. I believe we will look back on the gathering convened on 16 July 2008 in Madrid as a very significant development, both for the Middle East and for the world at large.
*Rabbi David Rosen is international director of inter-religious affairs for the American Jewish Committee and interfaith advisor to the Chief Rabbinate of Israel.
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WHAT WE READERS ARE ABOUT?
Please share with us what you are doing relating to nonviolent change. If you send us a short report of your doings, learnings, ideas, concerns, reactions, queries,… we will print them here. Responses can be published in the next issue.
Steve Sachs: I continue to be concerned that governments around the world enact and fully apply the very considerable public policies that are urgently needed to be fully operating in the next two to four years, if the world is to limit global warning, the climate change it brings, and related environmental degradation, to be only very damaging, preventing it from becoming an overwhelming world wide catastrophe. I have been writing and speaking at length on the topic, in various issues of NCJ, and in Indigenous Policy (www.indigenouspolicy.org). Several of my articles are posted on the web site of the UN NGO Climate Change Caucus (http://climatecaucus.net) under the Tipping Point [consciousness change], and Indigenous Working Groups (I serve as junior coordinator for the latter working group).
I am also considerably disturbed by the considerable amount of blatant lying and innuendo in political campaigns in the United States, Unfortunately this is being done mostly by those supporting Republican candidates and so called “conservative” issues, largely on the internet, but also in other venues. This spreading of untruth, relying heavily upon appealing to fear, undermines democracy and all reasonable discussion of real issues. A major national effort is needed to achieve an honest politics. One requirement for this is an even handed media, that actively seeks out misstatement in politics.
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