NORMAN, Oklahoma — Egypt has always been impossible to describe. Now it is also impossible to analyze. The acquittal of former President Hosni Mubarak last weekend marks a symbolic nail in the coffin of the uprising and revolution that overthrew his government in February 2011. It is tempting but reckless to make definitive judgments about the meaning of the extraordinary stages of Egyptian political life since then.

These stages include the Mubarak ouster, the euphoric assertion of people power and citizen sovereignty, the drafting of several new constitutions, the Muslim Brotherhood victories in parliament and the presidency, the ouster of both, the election of former armed forces commander and now President Abdel Fattah Sisi, and the massive support for Sisi from oil-rich Arabian Peninsula states.

It is difficult to assess the lasting consequences of these and many other related events for many reasons. Among these are the volatile nature of an Egyptian citizenry with no prior experience in democratic pluralism; the ideological polarization that has come to dominate society; our broad lack of understanding of the inner workings of Egyptian minds that one day support a revolution, months later support a resumption of power by the armed forces, and in future could move in a different direction; and the impact of the underlying conditions that sparked the unexpected January 25, 2011 revolution in the first place.

Objective analysis would suggest that those underlying conditions are worse now than they were then. The economy, real incomes and job-creation all remain insufficient in the face of the population’s basic needs, while that population continues to grow by some 1.5 million people every year. All these citizens must be housed, fed, educated, provided with water and health care, and, eventually for most of them, jobs. The capacity of the Egyptian economy to meet these needs is about the same as my ability to jump over the moon. Massive financial support from the Gulf states, around $15 billion a year now, prevents the state from collapsing, but does not address its underlying socio-economic stresses, and probably exacerbates the political autocracy that sparked the revolution.

The main driver of that 2011 revolution is probably more severe now than it was then, but not as openly expressed in the Sisi era: citizen exasperation with military rule and political autocracy that led to severe socio-economic disparities and a massive thirst for basic human dignity. Those who openly challenge the state now do so in a more polarized environment, with Islamists and secular progressives mostly in jail, in hiding, or in hibernation, and only small numbers protesting on the streets. Many who ousted the Mubarak regime now fervently support the Sisi government, and they may opt for other saviors in a few months or years.

Tens of millions of Egyptians still suffer the indignities that drove them into the streets in January 2011, but they can do nothing about their condition of political emasculation in the face of the three forces that have now combined to run the power structure: the armed forces with their 62 years of experience in low quality governance, tens of billions of dollars of aid from the Gulf states, and a population with tens of millions of fearful citizens who crave the promise of stability under a military strongman — but may soon discover that the promise is a false one, and the stability of Arab military strongmen is an illusory figment of their desperation.

Mass indignity and home-grown dehumanization triggered the revolution that ousted Mubarak, and mass hysteria then ousted the elected President Mohammad Morsi. A frenzied craving for the end of this roller-coaster of instability, violence, social services dysfunctions and political drift elected President Sisi and eliminated any credible opposition as fiercely as did Soviet puppets like Romania’s Nicolae Ceausescu or Arab military tyrants like Saddam Hussein.

Egypt’s joining this club of police state-style governance is a sad day for the Arab region, but this is most likely a stage that we must pass through, not a permanent condition. When another five million Egyptians are born in the coming three years or so, the Gulf states tire of supporting a weak economy, and basic human needs for tens of millions of Egyptians deteriorate even further, we should expect some kind of reaction that is impossible to predict now.

Other factors that are already visible will also come into play, such as domestic security and environmental threats, regional realignments, the fate of Syria, Iraq, Libya and extremist movements like ISIS, and the responses of major world powers.

The three traditional civilizational poles of the Arab region — Baghdad, Damascus and Cairo — now all suffer massive dysfunction and uncertainty, caused primarily by the military men who for half a century or more ruled and ruined these countries. The road back to normalcy will take many years. One thing seems certain, though. What military men ruined, military men cannot repair.
Rami G. Khouri is published twice weekly in the Daily Star. He was founding director and now senior policy fellow of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. Follow him on Twitter @ramikhouri.

Copyright © 2014 Rami G. Khouri—distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 03 December 2014
Word Count: 813
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WASHINGTON, D.C. — One of the surprising aspects of following U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East from within the United States, as I have done for several months now on an extended visit, is the peculiar gap between ordinary citizens’ sentiments and the fact that the United States is actively militarily engaged in several countries in the region. This dangerous trend means that the American president — it does not matter which party he is from, because they both act similarly irresponsibly abroad — can continue to use the country’s enormous capabilities to wage war around the world at will.

The last few months have been awkward for American foreign policy in the Middle East and South Asia. President Barack Obama has energetically entered the war against the Islamic State in Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS), and earlier this week it was reported that he has decided on a more expansive American military posture and actions in Afghanistan in 2015, including direct fighting by the thousands of American troops who remain in the country. Reportedly Americans will directly participate in attacks against Taliban and other forces, while American air assets, like jets, bombers and drones, will support Afghan troops.

So candidate Obama who pledged to end American wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and indeed moved vigorously to keep that pledge, now finds he must reverse himself and expand or extend American military involvement in the region. If the American people do not weigh in with their views and openly discuss more vigorously the deployment and impact of American capabilities, the danger is that American presidents — the wise and the wild ones alike — will continue to use America’s considerable technological, logistical and manpower capabilities to wage wars that create more havoc in distant lands, and generate new dangers that did not exist previously.

The fact that the United States today is increasing its military action in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, after a decade of its intense warfare in the region, should be a reason for American officials and the public alike to ask some serious questions about how they use their military power around the world. The biggest problem that we see confirmed again this week is that American military action in distant lands usually only turns those lands into chaotic, dysfunctional, ungoverned and violent places. In the chaos that follows such warfare as we have witnessed in these countries a new danger now steps in — the militant Islamist killers such as Al-Qaeda and ISIS.

The more that the United States and other foreign countries send their armies to wage war in the Middle East, and simultaneously support dictatorial and often criminal governments that kill their own citizens in the thousands at a time, the greater is the probability that thousands of disgruntled citizens will join groups like Al-Qaeda and ISIS. Fighting and destroying these groups is a top priority for the region and the world, but the last two decades indicate that fighting them primarily through the double-barreled weapon of foreign troops and Arab security states only creates further chaos and citizen resentments that ultimately see these criminal groups expand.

Now that the United States and other countries are actively fighting ISIS, the terrifying new danger is that more and more people across the region — especially Sunni Arabs — will see their option as supporting ISIS or submitting to the proven failed legacy of American-supported Arab dictatorships. This is a cruel and ugly dichotomy but it is what we see across the region. Many disgruntled Sunni Arabs might come to view ISIS as the only successful movement that has challenged the prevailing Arab order that has been so brutal to its own citizens for the past several generations.

Equally troubling are the small militant groups in other countries in the region that have pledged their fealty to ISIS. They are small in size and few in numbers, but they are a sign that citizens in many countries have reached such a point of despair that they would even follow these killers. There are no easy answers to these issues, especially with the expansion of ISIS in the past year and its consolidation of power in the areas it controls in Syria and Iraq.

It is surprising that the consequences of American military actions in the Arab-Asian region are so rarely debated in the public sphere in the United States, where the tendency — from football games to urban subway cars — is to wave the American flag in a show of patriotism for the troops fighting far away. That is understandable, when your troops are fighting abroad. It seems to me much more sensible to support the troops by more honestly debating the policies and decisions that keep sending these troops to foreign lands, where they have to go back again and again to kill and die, in a gruesome cycle that includes Arab dictatorships and foreign, especially American, militarism as its main drivers.

Rami G. Khouri is published twice weekly in the Daily Star. He was founding director and now senior policy fellow of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. Follow him on Twitter @ramikhouri.

Copyright © 2014 Rami G. Khouri—distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 29 November 2014
Word Count: 819
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WASHINGTON, DC — This week’s extension in the negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 is a welcomed jolt of composure and realism in a process that for years has been characterized by wild allegations, emotional retorts and intemperate actions. The decision to extend talks and keep negotiating to achieve a final agreement by next summer seems to cement the decision to deal with the accusations of Iran’s alleged desire to obtain a nuclear bomb as a technical issue that has a technical solution, rather than a continuation of the tendency of the United States and Israel, primarily, to treat Iran as a hapless colonial subject.

Once the two sides started negotiating seriously last year, and placed their concerns, aspirations and rights on the table, it quickly became clear that an agreement was possible, but it would require serious mutual concessions. Two bottom line positions are absolutely non-negotiable, and reasonably so: Iran’s insistence on its right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes, short of a bomb-making capability, and the P5+1 determination to prevent Iran from being able to assemble a nuclear bomb quickly and surreptitiously. These two requirements are absolutely reconcilable, and they will both frame and seal a final agreement when one is reached next year, one hopes.

For now, the extension decision reflects welcomed wisdom and rationality on both sides, and a deeper expectation that a final permanent agreement can be reached soon. For now, the maturity, patience and seriousness on both sides are impressive, and a far cry from the almost lunatic threats, insults and deprecations that had defined Iranian-American-Israeli exchanges in recent years. The change in tone all around is probably due to two main reasons — the need to resolve this matter so as to address the dangerous situations across the Middle East, especially in Syria-Iraq, and the realization that the cost of failure is too high all around. The precarious state of the Middle East has added urgency to the matter, because both Iran and the concerned foreign powers are deeply engaged and invested in the region, and vulnerable to retaliatory punitive mischief in case of failure.

The shift from political posturing and colonial confrontations to actually looking at the technical issues related to both the Iranian nuclear industry and the sanctions on Iran has allowed for the progress of the past year. We now know that all issues of concern to both sides can be addressed seriously and dispassionately, and disagreements gradually resolved, if hysterical positions and wild accusations are ignored in favor of focusing on practical reciprocal measures that meet the needs of both sides. Simultaneity and reciprocity of concessions, it is confirmed again, are critical elements for success.

This is a big loss for the Israeli position, and its supporters and pavlovian attack dogs in the US Congress, who would not consider any serious rollback of sanctions against Iran until they guaranteed that Iran would not have any enrichment capacity that could help it produce a nuclear bomb. In part because the primacy and political prioritization of exaggerated and unrealistic Israeli concerns were not allowed to shape the diplomatic dynamic, progress happened. (This lesson is relevant to the stalled Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations, which remain moribund in large part because Israeli positions that enjoy American acquiescence dominate the negotiations, rather than a serious desire to respond to the legitimate rights of both Israelis and Palestinians. There is no more important lesson to learn in such situations than the fact that simultaneity and reciprocity rule in such negotiations.)

Decisive yet sensible leadership among those involved in the talks has been able to triumph over extremist ideological positions of domestic foes, and scare tactics of perturbed foreign parties like Israel and Saudi Arabia. In particular the continuing serious negotiations are a big blow to the power of the pro-Israel lobbies in Washington, D.C. that had argued for zero enrichment in Iran. This is another setback to the Zionist attempt to give Israel’s self-defined security concerns priority over the dictates of existing international law and conventions, whether related to nuclear proliferation, refugee rights, the Geneva conventions or other issues.

Iran also has provided an important lesson for the world on how a firm, law-and-legitimacy-anchored position on the right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes can be vindicated, if a country does not allow itself to be bullied and threatened by primarily American-Israeli-driven accusations and assumptions that are rarely supported by hard, credible evidence. Self-respect is an effective diplomatic tool when one has facts at hand to reinforce one’s case, and agrees to address the legitimate needs of both sides simultaneously.

Rami G. Khouri is published twice weekly in the Daily Star. He was founding director and now senior policy fellow of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. Follow him on Twitter @ramikhouri.

Copyright © 2014 Rami G. Khouri—distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 26 November 2014
Word Count: 762
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BOSTON — The last few weeks’ escalating cycle of tensions, Israeli settlements expansions, murderous attacks by both Israelis and Palestinians, and reprisal demolitions of Palestinian homes may well escalate into something much more vicious and terrible, but it is hard to see what such an escalation would achieve. We have witnessed such cycles many times in the past 66 years, since Israel was created and the Palestinians experienced forced exile, refugeehood and occupation.

Two main lessons can be learned — yet again — from the ongoing killings and reprisals by both Israelis and Palestinians. One is that such violence is not going to achieve anything that could help us find a peaceful resolution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that is seen to be fair by both sides. It is an expression of mutual fears, anger, and existential vulnerability, but it does not promote any serious negotiations or cause either side to reconsider its tactics.

The second is that the status quo in Palestine will never remain calm for very long while Israel continues to expropriate and steal Arab lands and build new colonies and settlements in the lands captured during the 1967 war. We have had many instances of relative calm over periods of many months, but the calm never lasts, because the underlying conditions of occupation do not allow it to last. The continuation of the Israeli settlements policy and other acts — such as the siege of Gaza or Israeli shootings of nonviolent Palestinian demonstrators — always generate tensions and anger that explodes into violent confrontations and Palestinian acts of murder and resistance.

In the past three months or so, 11 Israelis have been killed in the course of seven different attacks, most of them in Jerusalem. During that same period, 17 Palestinians were killed. Yet the cycle of fear and killing is not a symmetrical one, because Israel is the occupying and expanding party and the Palestinians are the ones living under strict colonial-style and Apartheid-like controls on travel, work, access to water, education and medical care, and most other essentials of life. Nevertheless, this cycle of death and destruction seems to have become impervious to any positive moves by political leaders on both sides, who accuse each other of “inciting” the violence by their people.

One of the ironies is that the actions the Israeli government takes to punish Palestinian perpetrators of killings of Israelis seem only to generate new kinds of fears and hatreds among Palestinians who in turn respond by new attacks against Israelis that they see as “resistance” to the Israeli occupation. The most obvious such action is the Israeli government’s decision to resume a practice that it suspended some years ago — the demolition of the homes of the families of Palestinians accused of killing Israelis. This is not merely a reprisal against Palestinian attacks, it is also a tactic that Israel has used systematically since 1967 to carry out a low-intensity ethnic cleansing operation that would slowly drive Palestinians out of their ancestral homes in Jerusalem and other parts of the occupied territories.

This complements other tactics such as withdrawing the identity cards of Palestinians who live in occupied East Jerusalem, aiming to slowly whittle down the size of the Palestinian population there, or refusing to allow Jerusalem Palestinians who marry Palestinians from outside Jerusalem to bring their spouses to live with them. Israel also seeks to Judaize all of Jerusalem by surreptitiously buying homes in Arab areas or forcibly occupying buildings in densely inhabited Arab quarters.

The house demolitions are the most paradoxical tactic that Israel uses, because their aim of deterring other Palestinian attacks against Israelis clearly is not working. Even Israeli official bodies or commissions that investigated this matter came to the conclusion that demolishing Palestinian homes does not deter Palestinian attacks.

The numbers are frightening. The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions that documents such things reports that Israel has destroyed some 27,000 Palestinian structures in the occupied territories (the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip) since 1967. This figure includes over 24,000 homes of which some 2000 were in Arab East Jerusalem.

The magnitude of this effort by Israel to continue trying to transform the land of Palestine from one that was predominantly Arab a century ago to one that is predominantly Jewish sees two main consequences: The Palestinians will keep finding new ways to express their resistance to the threat of their total elimination from the land, and the confrontation between Zionism and Palestinian Arabism will remain locked in a cycle of militarism that will cause death, destruction and fear on both sides, without bringing them any closer to a peaceful resolution of the conflict.

The events of recent weeks are neither surprising nor unprecedented, but rather a natural outcome of the continuing events of the past 66 years. The surprising and depressing elements are that neither popular grassroots movements nor enlightened leaderships have emerged on either side to pull us all out of this endless cycle of death.
Rami G. Khouri is published twice weekly in the Daily Star. He was founding director and now senior policy fellow of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. Follow him on Twitter @ramikhouri.

Copyright © 2014 Rami G. Khouri—distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 22 November 2014
Word Count: 828
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BOSTON — One of the most fascinating issues that defines the Arab world today is the precarious status of half a dozen countries that run the risk of collapsing or fragmenting into smaller units. Media speculation, politicians’ comments and serious scholarly deliberations all address the possibility that countries like Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Libya could fracture and give birth to smaller statelets that are largely based on ethnic, tribal or sectarian identities, much like Yugoslavia split up into several smaller countries in the 1990s.

The prospects of such state collapses are not totally new in the Arab region, in view of events over the years in countries like Yemen, Somalia, Kuwait (when Iraq occupied it), Sudan and Iraq. If some Arab states do fragment into smaller entities, it should be considered legitimate — if it is the clear will of their citizens, expressed democratically and peacefully. The problem is that Arab citizens have never had an opportunity in the modern era (or in history, I suspect) to express their views about the nature, configuration, governance or policies of their own countries.

Consequently, Arab states during the past century, on the whole, have existed largely detached from their own citizens. The lack of a deliberate and verifiable bond between citizen and state across the Arab region reflects the absence of the fundamental democratic and republican principle of the ‘consent of the governed’. Arab countries of all different sizes and wealth levels share the common attribute of never having been credibly validated by their own citizens, neither during the period of state birth and formation nor in the subsequent decades.

The fact that so many powerful non-state organizations have emerged across the region in the past half century is one important reflection of this reality. Groups like Hizbollah, Hamas, ISIS, the Houthis in Yemen, Muqtada Sadr’s Mehdi Army in Iraq, the Muslim Brotherhood and tribal groups across the region all reflect the brittle nature of statehood and national identity in many Arab countries, forcing citizens to seek their critical needs in arenas beyond the control of the state.

Many, perhaps most, Arab citizens have a utilitarian, mercantile and pragmatic relationship with their states and governments, rather than a deeply emotional and organic one, as people tend to have with their family-clan-tribe, religion or ethnic group. The transactional nature of the citizen-state relationship sees the citizen paying allegiance to the state if the latter provides the citizen with basic services that the citizen needs. These fall into two main categories — material services such as income, jobs, education, health care, security, subsidized food, water and housing, and intangibles like political representation, cultural identity, and a sense of opportunity for the future.

Most Arab countries provided these things to their citizens during the first half century of statehood, from the 1920s to the 1970s; after that, however, most proved unable to continue providing these critical human needs, and groups of citizens looked elsewhere for them. Religious, ethnic, and secular organizations stepped in to provide what the state could not provide, creating the situation today where large swaths of some countries are beyond the reach or control of the state. In the most extreme cases, such as the Kurdish region of northern Iraq, these might seek total independence, just as happened in South Sudan three years ago.

The current turbulence in Syria, Iraq, Libya and Yemen in particular raises the specter of some of those countries collapsing into smaller units, or suffering total chaos for some period of time. That future possibility, but also the current violence and instability, fundamentally result from the dysfunctional relationship between states and their citizens over many years. Rebuilding that relationship requires something that has never happened in the Arab region in modern times — allowing citizens to play a full role in shaping the institutions and values of their statehood, and also defining and holding accountable the structures of their public authorities at local and national levels.

The steady expansion of non-state organizations over the past three decades or so was the first major sign of the flawed and fraying citizen-state relationship; the sudden uprisings and revolutions that rocked our region four years ago provided the dramatic confirmation that this relationship had collapsed and needed to be totally reconfigured, starting with the needs and values of citizens as the shapers of statehood and governance. The years ahead will be turbulent and violent in some countries, while a few others, like Tunisia so far, will correctly work to reshape and strengthen their statehood by allowing their citizens to be the arbiters and architects of that process, rather than its hapless and vulnerable victims.

Rami G. Khouri is published twice weekly in the Daily Star. He was founding director and now senior policy fellow of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. Follow him on Twitter @ramikhouri.

Copyright © 2014 Rami G. Khouri—distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 19 November 2014
Word Count: 769
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BOSTON — The escalating isolated incidents of violence between Israelis and Palestinians during the past few months have focused heavily on Jerusalem, and for good reason. The reason is not only the religious significance of the Noble Sanctuary/Temple Mount area that is holy to both people; it is that Jerusalem today is a microcosm of the whole Zionism-Arabism conflict, and a replay of the nationalist contestation that Zionism won in the period from the 1930s to 1948.

Jerusalem today is more than a major symbol of identity and sovereignty for Israelis and Palestinians. It is the place where all the key elements of conflict, identity, and national rights converge in a place where the two battling communities are most closely intertwined with one another, thus heightening the sense of vulnerability that defines both sides.

Clashes between Israeli troops and Palestinian demonstrators have occurred virtually daily in the past few months, and reached a peak in the past week after Israeli troops stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque last Wednesday. On Monday, Palestinians killed an Israeli soldier and a woman and injured two others in stabbing incidents in Tel Aviv and the occupied West Bank. Jerusalem is the emotional focal point of the Palestinian attacks against Israelis, but such incidents have occurred across Palestine, including Jerusalem, the West Bank Israeli settlement of Alon Shvut, and Tel Aviv.

Jerusalem today for Palestinians is about the battle between Israel’s attempts to Judaize the city after formally “annexing” it (which virtually the whole world does not recognize) and the Palestinian insistence on resisting the Zionist efforts to control and own the land of mandated Palestine that have been taking place for nearly a century now. Israeli settlers have been trying for years to move into Arab areas of Jerusalem, like Silwan and Sheikh Jarrah, either by buying homes surreptitiously or forcibly by inhabiting real estate that Israel declares to be state-owned. Because the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Palestine Liberation Organization (the two overlapping but moribund leadership agencies for Palestinians) are not present in Jerusalem, the Arab residents of the city are on their own in defending their homes and lands.

The absence of PA forces under the control of President Mahmoud Abbas also means that those forces cannot quell Palestinian demonstrations against Israel, as happens in all other parts of the West Bank, where PA forces more often than not act to defend Israel as much as to keep peace among Palestinians, unfortunately. Arab Jerusalemites are essentially ungoverned and unrepresented politically, because they do not fall under Palestinian authority and they are underserved by an Israeli state that also keeps building new settlements on lands surrounding the holy city. Because of this condition of living in a political vacuum, Palestinians in Jerusalem have only themselves to rely on to defend their lands and rights, and in cases of extreme threats and violence used against them, they resort to violence such as we are witnessing these days.

The intense symbolism of Jerusalem for Palestinians includes two dimensions: the holy sites of the Noble Sanctuary, especially the Dome of the Rock and Al Aqsa Mosque, but also the city as the capital of Palestine, even though a Palestinian state does not exist yet. If Jerusalem is allowed to fall to Zionist colonialism and become fully Judaized, the entire Palestinian national cause would have been dealt a fatal blow. Jerusalem has always been a central battle in the Arab war with Zionism — but for many Palestinians it is now also the last battle.

Typically, Israeli leaders misinterpret the reasons why Palestinians defend themselves by attacking Israelis who are eating up the remaining Arab parts of Jerusalem. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told parliament after the attacks against Israelis in Tel Aviv that, “Terror … is being directed at all parts of the country for a simple reason: The terrorists, the inciters, want to drive us from everywhere. As far as they are concerned, we should not be in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv or anywhere.”

This brazen lie by Israel’s top leader reflects a widespread sentiment among Israelis and some Western Jews that Palestinians are violent anti-Semites who want to drive all Jews out of Israel and Palestine, and that the Palestinian leadership under President Mahmoud Abbas incites ordinary Palestinians to attack and kill Israelis. This is a bizarre thing for Israelis to say, after they have been directly negotiating with Abbas and Yasser Arafat before him for 20 years now, to achieve a two-state solution that sees Israeli and Palestinian states living peacefully side-by-side.

The historic struggle for the land of Palestine has now symbolically boiled down to Israeli settlers and soldiers with guns, and Palestinian young men with knives, stones and cars, trying to kill, dominate or expel the other.

Rami G. Khouri is published twice weekly in the Daily Star. He was founding director and now senior policy fellow of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. Follow him on Twitter @ramikhouri.

Copyright © 2014 Rami G. Khouri—distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 12 November 2014
Word Count: 791
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BOSTON — There is nothing as exciting in the drama-filled world of domestic American politics as national elections every two years, as we just experienced last Tuesday when Republicans dramatically secured enough seats to have a majority in the two houses of Congress. Change is expected, but nobody knows exactly how policies will evolve, now that a new political balance has been created in the capital.

When I was in college decades ago, the respected conservative author William F. Buckley, Jr. once said something to the effect that on issues of public policy he would trust the first 100 names in the Boston telephone directory more than all the professors at Harvard University. I leave it to my learned friends and colleagues at Harvard (where I am a senior fellow) to debate the central point, which is that ordinary citizens can be trusted to steer public policy.

I would humbly add a new twist to Buckley’s comment, based on my own experience in the Boston area for the past decade. I recommend that public officials in the United States who seek sensible advise on how to govern should attend a few sessions of Professor Denise Horn’s introductory class on International Affairs and Globalization at Northeastern University in Boston. I have done this for the past few years and interacted with the 100+ students, whom I also ask to write a few questions after reading some texts on the Middle East and the involvement there of the United States. This has taught me two things: The students routinely express thoughtful, substantive ideas and values that could honorably guide American foreign policy-making; and, they are an unscientific but probably accurate barometer of the thinking of many other young Americans, as I have experienced this in lectures and meetings with students in dozens of universities and colleges across the United States.

I see the heart of the students’ attitudes and values as a deeply questioning approach to world affairs, and a desire to know more about conditions in other countries before shaping American government policies. Consistently, year after year, the students in Professor Horn’s INTL 1101 ask about both the world and the United States’ approach to the world. They ask whether existing American policies abroad, heavily militaristic in the Middle East, are the best approach to adopt; whether the American public and policy-makers are accurately informed of global realities, and how they could be better informed; and, if and how people in the Arab-Asian region want the United States. to intervene in their world.

They also ask about the micro-conditions in foreign countries, related to nationalism, ethnicity, religion, economy, gender and violence. They want to know the root causes of recurring violence in the Middle East, for example, and ask whether it is accurate to see things in a good-or-evil frame. What do Arabs and Israelis feel could be done to resolve their conflict, and how could the United States intervene more effectively in that process?

They also ask about their role as citizens, understanding that they are not passive recipients of decisions by officials far away, but active actors in a democratic process that just showed its vitality again this week. Some ask, for example, what can they and other American citizens do to combat Islamophobia in the United States.?

This class that I interact with annually reflects the most impressive aspect of my many encounters with young Americans in recent years, which is their expressed need to know more about the world, and to have their country craft policies that are in the best interests of Americans and foreign lands alike. I suspect they are more questioning and humble than most adults because of their own life experiences (and maybe also because they have a really good teacher who opens their minds).

This generation of young Americans has known only active warfare abroad since they were eight or nine years old, coupled with chronic and usually hysterical media promotion of terror threats at home. They are not foreign policy experts, but neither are they passive dummies. They feel it in their bones that something is not quite right when they are told that the United States must constantly fight terrorism abroad to defeat a new threat, while that battle seems to never end, and militancy and its dangers persist or even increase.

They want to know why this is, what can be done differently at home or abroad, and what is the most legitimate American role? They ask about these things because they are young, and university students, but also because they are good citizens who want knowledge and policy-making to achieve the best for their country. I am always humbled and impressed by these encounters, and wonder whether all the newly elected politicians in Washington, D.C. could take a cue from these students and their teachers.

Rami G. Khouri is published twice weekly in the Daily Star. He was founding director and now senior policy fellow of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. Follow him on Twitter @ramikhouri.

Copyright © 2014 Rami G. Khouri—distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 08 November 2014
Word Count: 806
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BOSTON — The Palestinian-Israeli conflict understandably has taken a back seat to other dramatic events across the Middle East in the last few years, and a lively debate continues about whether that conflict played any role in the uprisings that have overthrown or challenged half a dozen Arab regimes.

I am among those who believe that the Israeli-Palestinian and wider Arab-Israeli conflicts have consistently played a role in the condition of the Arab region, including providing an excuse for military regimes to rule many Arab states, and fueling radical or opposition movements that have often led to destabilization and polarization within Arab countries.

Therefore, in this context of the Palestine-Israel conflict influencing the condition and direction of the Arab world, it is important to note any signs of movement or hope in the central battle between Zionism and Arabism.

We witnessed just such an event last week when Israeli President Reuven Rivlin visited the town of Kafr Qassim, which was the scene of one of many massacres committed against Palestinians by the young Israeli state. On October 28, 1956, Israeli police killed 49 Palestinian civilians, including 28 women and children, who were not aware of a recently announced curfew. Ever since, the Kafr Qassim massacre has been remembered by Palestinians as an example of the pre- and post-statehood violence conducted by Zionists whose aim was to cleanse the land of Arabs in order to create their desired Jewish state. Kafr Qassim, Deir Yassin and many other massacres and acts of ethnic cleansing and expulsion against Palestinians have long captured the central grievance of the Palestinians — their forced exile and refugeehood at the hands of Zionist militants and the Israeli state. Resolving this core trauma, which Palestinians experience universally and pass on to their children organically, is a top priority for any attempt to negotiate a peaceful resolution of the conflict.

There has been no significant progress in this arena, but the visit to Kafr Qassim last week by President Rivlin is an intriguing event that deserves acknowledgment and analysis, because it is one of the few times in recent memory that a senior Israeli official makes a personal gesture that touches the core of Palestinian pain. Rivlin said he made the visit to pay tribute to Palestinian victims killed by Israeli troops, and he attended the annual memorial ceremony and placed flowers at a monument engraved with the victims’ names. “I have come here today as a member of the Jewish people and the president of the state of Israel to stand before you, the families of the slain and injured, to mourn and remember,” he said.

He went on to say, “The brutal killing in Kafr Qassim is an anomalous and sorrowful chapter in the history of relations between Arabs and Jews living here. The state of Israel has recognized the crime committed here. And rightly, and justly, has apologized for it. I too am here today to say a terrible crime was done here … the murder of innocents.”

Rivlin was the first Israeli president to attend the annual commemoration ceremony, though his predecessor Shimon Peres visited the town in 2007 and apologized to the residents for the 1956 massacre.

Rivlin also said that future generations must be educated about the tragic events that occurred there, and the lessons that must be learned, while noting that Arabs and Israelis have no option but to learn to trust each other in order to live together on this land.

Of course, Israelis have a very different notion from Palestinians of how the two communities can coexist, as we have learned from the second-class status of Palestinians inside Israel since 1948, and the Apartheid-like power structures in the West Bank and Gaza regions that Israel occupied and has colonized since 1967. Nevertheless, President Rivlin’s gesture is potentially significant because it reveals that some Israelis are capable of appreciating the significance of events like the Kafr Qassim massacre to Palestinians, and going a step further and making a very basic human gesture of visiting the site and acknowledging the crimes that were committed there by Israelis.

Much more needs to occur for the two sides to fully acknowledge the deeds they committed against each other in the past century, and acknowledge the core legitimate demands that each sees as existential needs.

President Rivlin’s visit and words on their own do not achieve this, but they are an important sign of what Israelis can do to acknowledge their role in the subjugation and exile of the Palestinians. Such acts are essential small first steps towards a much more complex negotiation that must happen in the future if this deadly conflict is ever to be resolved, which is essential for calming down the entire region.

Rami G. Khouri is published twice weekly in the Daily Star. He was founding director and now senior policy fellow of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. Follow him on Twitter @ramikhouri.

Copyright © 2014 Rami G. Khouri—distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 05 November 2014
Word Count: 790
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BOSTON — One of the most troubling aspects of the phenomenon of militant Salafist-takfiri groups like ISIS is the appearance of smaller groups across the Arab world that share ISIS’ ideology and methods, and in several cases have sworn allegiance to it. This is no surprise. In the past 70 years or so we have often seen similar local conditions and grievances in different countries lead to the same kinds of reactions among local populations who often use Islam as a motivating, legitimizing and mobilizing force. This happened with Muslim Brotherhood-like groups since the 1950s, nationalist military resistance movements like Hamas and Hizbullah, non-violent Salafists in the last decade, and now the violent Salafist-takfiris like ISIS.

So today a combination of regional and international countries fight ISIS in Syria-Iraq, while smaller militant groups elsewhere are being fought by individual countries. These include the Salafist-takfiris targeted in Lebanon by the armed forces and Hizbullah, the Yemeni armed forces chasing down Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the Egyptian government’s operations against Ansar Beit el-Maqdis, and similar situations in Tunisia, Mali, Somalia and other countries.

The situation in Egypt is particularly significant, because of the influence across the region that Egypt has always had. Ansar Beit el-Maqdis (ABEM) came into being in Sinai and started military operations against the government in 2010, after its members broke off from Al-Qaeda. It has repeatedly attacked government and infrastructural facilities, like natural gas export pipelines and military garrisons, and since the military takeover of rule in Egypt last year it has attacked targets in and near Cairo.

Last week ABEM killed 33 Egyptian soldiers and officers in north Sinai. The government of President Abdel Fattah Sisi has tried several times to hit and weaken the militants in their home territory in northern Sinai, without much success. The latest operation against ABEM during the past 13 months includes heavy-handed actions against Sinai residents such as many arrests and air strikes, collective punishment like curfews, and also alleged incidents of kidnapping and torture that have resulted in the deaths of civilians. This week, in response to the killing of the 33 troops, the Sisi government has launched a tougher new strategy that includes creating a buffer zone along the Sinai-Gaza border that aims to reduce assumed links between ABEM and sympathizers in Gaza.

The zone will be 500 meters wide and will run along the entire 13-kilometer-long Gaza border with the northern Sinai. To do this, the Egyptian government a few days ago ordered hundreds of families to leave their homes and relocate elsewhere, so that the homes could be destroyed and the buffer zone established.

Human rights activists and others charge that the Egyptian government is abusing its own citizens and denying them their basic rights in forcing them to move without much notice and then blowing up their homes. But a bigger issue also needs to be addressed in this matter. This is whether such strategies and behavior by the Egyptian government will achieve the goal of reducing or eliminating ABEM and its terror attacks, or instead will only make the problem worse.

This is a very localized version of a much wider dilemma that is evident in the multi-national fight against ISIS, and has also always been one of the problematic dimensions of George W. Bush’s “global war on terror” against Al-Qaeda. The Israelis also have tried using buffer zones or even occupying border regions in Gaza and Lebanon to reduce resistance strikes by Lebanese and Palestinians against Israeli occupiers, but usually without success.

The troubling aspect of this phenomenon for Americans, Israelis and now Egyptians also is that a legitimate desire to protect one’s citizens from terror attacks leads to greater anger and resentment among citizens who were never part of the target groups like ABEM or Al-Qaeda. When heavy-handed anti-terror actions demean, kill, injure or ruin the lives of civilians, some of these civilians end up joining the militant groups, simply to exact revenge against those who attacked them.

It is very troubling to see the Egyptian government carry out such policies, for it shows a total lack of understanding about how harsh Egyptian state crackdowns, imprisonment and torture used against mainstream Muslim Brothers in recent decades ended up radicalizing some prisoners and pushing them to join or to create more militant groups like Gamaa Islamiya, Al-Qaeda and now ABEM. The thousands of jailed Muslim Brotherhood members and civilians from northern Sinai are likely to repeat this pattern of militant reactions to aggressive and often excessive state security actions. It is bad news for the entire Arab world that Egypt is copying the American and Israeli strategies that try to quell political violence, but use such harsh tactics that they end up expanding and radicalizing the universe of local groups that use political violence and terrorism.

Rami G. Khouri is published twice weekly in the Daily Star. He was founding director and now senior policy fellow of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. Follow him on Twitter @ramikhouri.

Copyright © 2014 Rami G. Khouri—distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 01 November 2014
Word Count: 802
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BOSTON — I suspect that the Tunisian parliamentary elections Sunday were the most significant domestic and national political development in the history of the modern Arab world since its creation a century ago. Here is why I say this, and also what I believe we learn from the elections.

Never in ancient or modern Arab history has a citizenry of a country debated, written, validated and then put into action a constitution that reflects national values and also defines the organization of political life, the exercise of public authority, and the rights of citizens. Tunisians experienced some serious bumps in their transition to a constitutional democracy since they overthrew the tyranny of President Zein el-Abedeen Ben Ali in early 2011.

Tunisians accomplished this while suffering from serious economic pressures and social services disparities— especially among marginalized provincial populations — which confirms their commitment to addressing their socio-economic challenges through the participatory mechanisms of a pluralistic democracy. This is in sharp contrast with the hysteria and hallucinatory emotional excesses and fears that many Egyptians resorted to last year when they called in the armed forces to remove Mohammad Mursi, the elected president from the Muslim Brotherhood.

So the Tunisian experience since February 2011 offers evidence of three critical phenomena: the capacity of the Tunisian people to peacefully overthrow their former dictatorship, to affirm their desire to live in a pluralistic democracy, and to manage their vulnerable transition without succumbing to fear, greed, panic or chaos. Tunisians proved they were able to put their democratic values into practice, according to their own priorities and particularities.

The election victory of the new Nidaa Tounes party reflects a relatively sophisticated response by those smaller parties and political groupings who came together to form this alliance of former officials, secularists, progressives and leftists. This contrasted with the dozens of smaller groups that splintered the centrist-secular votes and allowed Ennahda to triumph in the 2012 elections and lead the coalition government.

This suggests — like the South African transition to democracy did — that members of the former regimes could be allowed to engage in political activity in the new democratic era, but they have to play by the new rules of democratic accountability and public legitimacy. It also indicates that politicians with somewhat different legacies and values could work together for a greater purpose than their own selfish incumbency on their own. That greater purpose that has achieved the triumph of Nidaa Tounes seems to have been the desire to defeat Ennahda, and to form a government that could reflect a degree of consensus among different groups, rather than a winner-take-all mentality.

The performance of Ennahda is an important historical marker: An Islamist party that won free democratic elections was allowed to rule at the head of a coalition government, largely failed to achieve the important goals that voters expected from it (jobs, economic expansion, security, social justice) then gave in to popular demand and stepped down in favor of a transitional government. This important precedent teaches Ennahda a valuable lesson about the realities of democratic accountability — if you do not deliver on your promises, the voters send you home. It also clarifies to the entire citizenry that Islamists can participate in pluralistic democratic practices and live to compete electorally another day after they lose a free and fair political contest.

Incumbent Islamists in Arab democracies were a novel sight in 2012 in Egypt and Tunisia. In 2013, they both also revealed their amateurism in governance, as they were unable to go beyond their sloganeering about Islam offering solutions to society’s challenges and citizens’ aspirations. The incumbency, failures and subsequent booting out of the Islamists democratically in Tunisia is the first time that Arab citizens electorally achieved a core principle of established Western democracies — to “throw the bums out” of office when the incumbents do not deliver on citizen expectations.

So this Tunisian experience is also a historic inaugural implementation of the principle of the consent of the governed, which has never pertained in Arab societies in an organized, democratic, constitutional and civil manner. We can be certain that the next prime minister — to be appointed only after the presidential election next month — will pay much more attention than in previous years to choosing an effective cabinet and prioritizing policies that respond to genuine citizen needs.

The democratic transition in Tunisia remains young and vulnerable, but it is indeed the first democratic transition in modern Arab history that has taken root in an environment of sustained citizen activism. I and millions of others hold out the hope that just as Tunisia sparked the series of Arab uprisings and revolutions in the past nearly four years, so will this brave little country lead the way again in prodding other Arabs to achieve a democratic transition, rather than only to yearn for it.

Rami G. Khouri is published twice weekly in the Daily Star. He was founding director and now senior policy fellow of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. Follow him on Twitter @ramikhouri.

Copyright © 2014 Rami G. Khouri—distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 29 October 2014
Word Count: 802
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