BEIRUT — Two opposing trends were affirmed in Israel and Palestine this week, and one of them must disappear. The Fateh congress in Bethlehem reaffirmed the strategic decision among a majority of Palestinians to seek a negotiated peace with Israel, while a string of senior Israeli officials said that they would continue expanding settlements in East Jerusalem and would not repeat the “mistake” of withdrawing from Gaza.

These trajectories of Palestinians seeking peace and Israelis perpetuating colonial occupation are so starkly contradictory that they clearly cannot persist as they are. Yet they both also represent failed policies that must be changed if the respective interests of Israelis and Palestinians are ever to be reconciled in a peace agreement that respects both their national rights.

The Fateh congress in Bethlehem reaffirmed what has been clear since 1988, when the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) recognized Israel’s right to exist and renounced terrorism. This decision only formalized the PLO decision of a decade earlier, to establish a Palestinian state on any part of the 1967 occupied territories that were liberated from Israeli control. For the past 40 years, during which it has dominated Palestinian national politics, Fateh has shown itself to be unable to wage either war or peace.

Consequently, Palestinians everywhere, but especially in the West Bank and Gaza, suffer the worst possible combination of political stagnation, economic stress, and widespread personal vulnerability and insecurity. After 1993, Fateh wasted the historic opportunity of the Oslo agreement to rally all Palestinians behind a state-building project, and after 2002 it again wasted the opportunity to rally the Arab world behind the Arab Peace Plan issued at the 2002 Beirut summit. Rarely in modern history has a political movement that enjoyed credibility, legitimacy and respect in its early years morphed so badly into sustained incompetence in its later years.

So for the Fateh congress now to declare again that the Palestinians choose peace with Israel, while reserving the right to engage in armed resistance to occupation, seems rather unconvincing, for the movement that once resonated widely around the Arab world has had 40 years to show that, in fact, it is unable to activate either option.

In Israel, meanwhile, on the same day, Interior Minister Eli Yishai said that Israel must go ahead with plans to expand a settlement enclave near Jerusalem despite American objections. Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin, on the same tour of Israeli settlements with Yishai, agreed, adding that, “If we don’t build here, the Palestinians will.”

Defense Minister Ehud Barak added his voice to the continued Zionist colonization of Jerusalem, when he attended the dedication of a new Torah scroll at a synagogue in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City Sunday. The prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, for his part said the withdrawal of nearly 9,000 Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip four years ago was a mistake that brought neither peace nor security, and would not be repeated. For good measure, the Israeli air force also bombed some of the tunnels that Gazans use to import essential materials from Egypt, to get around the strangulation siege that Israel has imposed on Gaza. Israel wants the right to colonize and terrorize, while demanding acquiescence from the Palestinians.

The clash between the colonialism of Israel and the incompetence of Fateh is one of the great tragedies of the modern Middle East, but like all such dynamics it does not pass unnoticed. The rise of Hamas and other militant Palestinian movements has been a direct response to both of these trajectories — an organic Palestinian determination to resist both the pain of perpetual occupation and the added pain of Palestinian complicity in perpetuating this condition.

The greatest and saddest of ironies is that Israel turned a blind eye to the growth of Hamas in the 1980s, when it saw it as a means of weakening Yasser Arafat’s Fateh movement. Today, Israel has reversed position, by giving special permission for theFateh delegates from throughout the region to enter occupied Bethlehem in order to attend the Fateh congress, as it tries to support Fateh in order to weaken Hamas. Neither strategy will work, because external manipulation to craft a Palestinian leadership to Israel’s or the United States’ liking will always fail the test of legitimacy among the Palestinian people.

The three strategies on show — Israeli colonialism, Fateh’s acquiescence, and Hamas’ resistance — all reflect short-term approaches that are unlikely to generate lasting, just solutions to this conflict, while inflicting more moral pain and physical suffering on all concerned. There are no easy exits from this corner, though the starting point for any movement to more effective and mutually beneficial policies is to accept that current approaches have been universally catastrophic for all concerned. This lesson is especially relevant for external mediators who try their hand at peace-making.

Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon.

Copyright © 2009 Rami G. Khouri – distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 12 August 2009
Word Count: 802
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BEIRUT — Is the Israeli lobby in the United States in panic mode? The Obama administration hit the ground running when it took office in January, quickly appointing George Mitchell as a special envoy to Arab-Israeli peace-making, and making it clear that President Obama himself would devote time and energy to the goal of a comprehensive peace plan.

Not surprisingly, an American-Israeli disagreement on Israel’s settlements in occupied Arab lands materialized quickly, and may well expand into a full-blown showdown. The United States says it is making equal demands of Arabs and Israelis. But Israel and its zealot-like allies and proxies in the United States argue that Washington is putting undue pressure on Israel alone.

The unknown wild card in this is “The Lobby” — the pro-Israel lobby in the United States — a combination of American formal organizations and individual politicians who argue Israel’s case so strongly that they are often seen as putting Israeli interests ahead of their own American interests. It remains unclear how the pro-Israel lobby will kick into action to shield Israel from the increasingly vocal demands in the United States that Jewish settlements and the Zionist colonization enterprise in occupied Arab lands must stop in order to allow the peace negotiations to start.

When it used its immense firepower to stop the nomination of Chas Freeman for a senior US intelligence post a few months ago, the pro-Israel lobby showed how it can achieve its ends by a combination of public character assassination and some behind the scenes subtle blackmail of certain Congressmen and women — those who would expect to lose their position in the next election if they did not go along with the pro-Israel line. That was probably a warning signal that the pro-Israel groups remain strong, and will flex their muscles again and continue to assert their traditional control of American policy in the Middle East whenever they feel the time is right.

Then, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Washington recently, he was apparently shocked by the strong consensus in Congress supporting Obama’s demand for Israel to freeze its settlements and colonies. Congress is the key instrument and victim of the Israeli lobby, which is mostly handled by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Other pro-Israel groups in Washington, like the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, also play a role in promoting a pro-Israeli position by the US government and in the public debate.

These and other groups that comprise the pro-Israeli lobby are successful because most American public officials are too fearful to fight back — for they know from experience that they would be likely to lose their positions were they to do so. But when the American president asserts that a certain policy is in the strategic national interest of the United States, the pro-Israel lobbyists tend to lose their firepower, and find it difficult to oppose official US policy.

This may be happening now in Washington, as Obama’s team pushes ahead with its insistence on a total colonization freeze by Israel, and the traditional pro-Israeli Congressional voices are heard to be supporting the president. It is difficult for pro-Israeli forces to oppose a very popular president who defines his Middle East policy in terms of promoting a fair peace between Arabs and Israelis because this is good for both parties and is also in the national interest of the United States.

An interesting new case suggests that some pro-Israeli maniacs in Washington are losing their cool — this comes in the form of their opposition to Barack Obama bestowing the Presidential Medal of Honor on Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland and a widely respected international human rights advocate. Some Jewish groups and members of Congress feel that Robinson has shown a persistent anti-Israel bias in her work as a human rights advocate. US Representatives Eliot Engel and Shelley Berkley, among others, feel that during her days as UN human rights commissioner she was one-sided in her criticism of Israel and allowed the global debate on human rights to include anti-Israeli sentiments (such as at an anti-racism conference in Durban, South Africa, in 2001, which included widespread criticism of Israel by national delegations, causing the American and Israeli delegations to walk out).

The Anti-Defamation League and AIPAC have also criticized the award to Robinson. She told an Israeli newspaper this week that she was “surprised and dismayed” by the protests, which she called “old, recycled, untrue stuff.”

She is universally admired for her commitment to universal human rights, and her criticisms of Israelis and Arabs alike reflect her sense of an obligation to speak out whenever fundamental norms of law and decency are broken by states or non-state groups. For key elements in the pro-Israel lobby in the United States to attack such an internationally respected individual as Mary Robinson is a pretty strong sign of panic.

Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon.

Copyright © 2009 Rami G. Khouri – distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 10 August 2009
Word Count: 810
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BEIRUT — A juxtaposition of several simultaneous events this week indicates just how difficult it is going to be to achieve any meaningful progress in Arab-Israeli peace talks, when the heart of the conflict is land that Israelis and Palestinians both claim as their ancestral patrimony. The four events are:
• the American drive to secure confidence-building measures from the Arabs in return for Israel’s freezing of its settlements in occupied Arab lands;
• Israel’s demand that we Arabs recognize it as a “Jewish state”;
• the Israeli government’s forcible eviction of Arab Palestinian families from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah district of Arab east Jerusalem; and,
• the Israeli speaker of parliament attempting to show, unconvincingly, that he understands how the creation of Israel in 1948 was such a “trauma” for the Palestinians who were made homeless and exiled by the event.

These events simultaneously highlight that ever since 1947-48, this conflict has been and continues to be defined by Zionist-Jewish ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Arabs that generates sustained Arab resistance. It remains totally in the realm of fantasy to expect the Palestinians and the rest of the Arab world to formally recognize and live with Israel as a “Jewish state” when it evicts dozens of Palestinians from homes they own in Arab east Jerusalem and replaces them with Jewish settlers. Such ethnic cleansing of Arabs and implanting of Jewish settlers captures the single most sinister aspect of Zionism for the Arabs that we have fought, mostly unsuccessfully, for the past 60 years or more.

Israelis now defy the United States along with the rest of the world in continuing their settlement and colonization of Arab lands occupied in 1967. The Obama administration will soon have to make the choice that has confronted all other recent American leaderships: Does it try and force Israel to comply with international law and UN resolutions and live according to the rules that all countries are asked to honor? Or, does it succumb to Israeli obstinacy and the threats of the American pro-Israel lobby, and instead seek the easier route of demanding more concessions from the Arabs in order to placate Israel?

The problem with demanding more Arab concessions and “confidence-building” measures in order to make Israel feel secure enough to comply with the dictates of law and morality is that this approach has failed consistently. Israel continues to kill, imprison and expel Palestinians, and colonize their land. The Arabs, not surprisingly, no longer accept to play the fool by making gestures to accept Israel while Israel keeps cleansing Jerusalem of its Arab inhabitants.

The most depressing aspect of all this, going back to the 1940s, is that Israelis refuse to acknowledge that what they see as the miracle of the birth of their state came at the expense of the indigenous Palestinian Arabs. About half the native Arab population of Palestine was exiled in 1947-48, and they and their descendants now comprise the 4.5 million Palestinian refugees who mostly reside in lands adjacent to their ancestral Palestine. Israel refuses to admit any role in the creation of the refugee issue, despite extensive documentation by Israeli, Arab and international historians of Israel’s extensive ethnic cleansing campaigns that deliberately drove out or caused over 700,000 Palestinians to flee during the 1947-48 fighting.

Israeli Knesset (parliament) Speaker Reuven Rivlin this week once again accentuated the Israeli collective blind spot when it comes to acknowledging major responsibility for the dismemberment and exile of the Palestinians. In remarks delivered August 3, according to a Haaretz newspaper account, he called for a fundamental change in relations between Jews and Arabs in Israel, urging the founding of a “true partnership” between the two sectors, based on mutual respect, absolute equality and the addressing of “the special needs and unique character of each of the sides.”

In his speech, Rivlin was reported to have said that “the establishment of Israel was accompanied by much pain and suffering and a real trauma for the Palestinians (in large part due to the shortsightedness of the Palestinian leadership). Many of Israel’s Arabs, which see themselves as part of the Palestinian population, feel the pain of their brothers across the green line — a pain they feel the state of Israel is responsible for.”

That’s it? Rivlin admits that the wholesale dismemberment, occupation and exile of Arab Palestine was something that “accompanied” the creation of Israel, but he will not admit that the two are causally linked? Perhaps similar to the Native Americans’ experience of some “trauma” when the American colonies were created and expanded into an independent country — but these were two independent and unrelated experiences?

If Israelis really want to coexist with the Arabs, they will have to summon the courage and honesty to admit how Zionism dismembered Arab Palestine in 1947-48, and Jews everywhere must finally break the ugly bond between Zionism and colonialism.

Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon.

Copyright © 2009 Rami G. Khouri – distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 05 August 2009
Word Count: 807
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BEIRUT — As if they needed another reason to wage political battle, the two leading Palestinian political groups of Fateh and Hamas are, as I write, locked in an absurd tug-of-war around whether Hamas will allow Fateh members in Gaza to travel to Bethlehem to attend their party’s sixth congress that convenes Tuesday. Hamas accuses Fateh of imprisoning Hamas members unjustly, and wants them released before it allows Fateh members to go to Bethlehem. The dominant Palestinian political movements, having hit a momentary brick wall in their struggle to regain their lands and rights, now seem to be engaged instead in a disgraceful game of intra-Palestinian hostage-taking.

This pitiful state of affairs illustrates quite accurately the depths of incompetence, mediocrity and irresponsibility to which the Palestinian national movement has plunged in recent years. This is a far cry from its heyday in the 1970s and 80s, when the Palestinian resistance movement resonated loudly with many people throughout the region, while also triggering the anger and opposition of many others, including Arab governments. Palestinian progress to regain lands and national rights, culminating in a sovereign state and a fair resolution of their refugeehood, absolutely requires national political unity, which seems very distant nowadays.

The sixth Fateh congress taking place next week is an apt reminder of much of what ails the Palestinian national movement. For starters, this is the first congress since 1989, meaning that political doctrine and leadership remain structurally immune from popular accountability — very much as is the case with political leadership throughout the rest of the Arab world. Any political movement that meets once every 20 years cannot be taken very seriously by its members, friends or adversaries — which is exactly Fateh’s situation today.

Fateh achieved significant gains for the Palestinian cause in the first 20 years of its existence after the mid-1960s, basically keeping the Palestinian cause alive and channeling Palestinian political energy towards the goal of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. In the last two decades, however, Fateh has used its dominance of Palestinian national politics irresponsibly, generating opposition from assorted Arab governments, and dealing incompetently with the challenges of making war or peace with Israel.

Part of the problem is that Fateh is still led by some men who were there at its founding in the mid-1950s, and Fateh’s calcification has seeped into the organs of other Palestinian national institutions. The challenge facing the Palestinian people today — the total revalidation and revitalization of their national political structures and leadership — is at least five-fold:

1. Fateh must modernize and democratize itself to regain its central role and mission as the movement that appeals to the plurality or even the majority of Palestinians. Its blend of resistance and political realism and accommodation clearly appeals to a majority of Palestinians who are prepared to make a reasonable compromise with the state of Israel.

2. The Fateh-Hamas stand-off must end with the formation of a national unity government of some sort — either technocrats or partisan politicians — that allows the Palestinians living under Israeli occupation or siege to regain control of their basic services and life activities, and with that to enjoy again a sense of hope for a better future.

3. The fundamental coherence and validity of the institutions of the Palestinian Authority (PA) need to be re-established through new elections for parliament and president. The PA has failed as a stepping stone to statehood, but remains as a purveyor of local government services.

4. The wider spectrum of Palestinian political movements must be rejuvenated by reviving the institutions of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), thereby ensuring that all political and social forces among the Palestinian people have a role to play in national decision-making. The PA tried and failed to assume the PLO’s role as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinians in negotiations with Israel.

5. The Palestinian refugee community of over five million people that is dispersed throughout the Middle East and the world — most of them not in refugee camps, but living middle class lives — must regain its voice and role in national political strategizing and decision-making. They and their rights are the heart of the Palestinian issue, and they alone give ultimate legitimacy to the decisions of their national leadership.

The severe political fissures within the Palestinian community are due to many causes, including Israeli and Arab manipulation and foreign intervention, but the primary cause is the behavior of the Palestinians themselves. Their crisis is mainly made in Palestine, and it must be resolved in-house by more responsible leaders and activist citizens who together can reconstitute and re-legitimize political institutions that genuinely reflect the nationalist consensus that exists among the Palestinians — but that has been largely muffled by decades of increasingly incompetent leadership and marginalized citizens.

Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon.

Copyright © 2009 Rami G. Khouri – distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 03 August 2009
Word Count: 798
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BEIRUT — In traditional Arab culture, when a man wants to ask for a woman’s hand in marriage, his family undertakes a jaha — a delegation of men who visit the family of the would-be bride to request her in marriage. The jaha often includes prominent men in society from outside the groom’s family, the aim being to impress the woman’s family that she is marrying into a family with social standing and clout in society. Sending all the family males in the jaha also signals collective security and consensus — that the young lady is marrying into a family that fully welcomes her and that also displays sufficient tribal and clan solidarity to ensure that her future is safe.

A jaha delegation can include as few as ten men, and as many as a hundred or more. It is designed to impress and comfort at the same time — making the would-be bride’s family feel that they can relax and not worry about the change they are about to experience, for their daughter will make a transition into a secure and loving environment. There is also an unspoken element of subtle pressure — making the woman’s family an offer they cannot possibly refuse.

The rules of jaha culture are such that the groom’s family knows ahead of time that the bride’s family will accept the marriage proposal. It would be massively and punishingly humiliating to assemble all the males of the tribe, add on a few prominent members of society at large, make the trip to the fair damsel’s home — and then be turned down. The jaha, therefore, is partly theater, partly power politics, a non-violent shock-and-awe spectacle in the all-important matrimonial and tribal realms.

This week, President Barack Obama has made history by sending the first ever diplomatic jaha to Israel. The Obama jaha of Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Mideast peace envoy George Mitchell, National Security Adviser James Jones and White House senior adviser Dennis Ross aims simultaneously to impress, comfort, pressure and woo the Israeli government to accept the terms of engagement in the Arab-Israeli peace-making process that the United States has unilaterally put on the table.

The Obama jaha of senior tribal males is a critical manifestation of American seriousness. The variety of positions held by the Gates, Jones, Mitchell and Ross jaha is important, because it helps assure Israel that the United States understands its fears and will work to assuage them. Washington is saying it will continue to address common concerns about Iran’s nuclear plans, work for comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace agreements, and insist that Arabs and Israelis simultaneously make concessions and conciliatory gestures, and comply with past agreements and prevailing legal norms.

The need to resort to the overkill of a jaha approach reflects the enormity of the challenges the United States faces as it tries to rekindle Arab-Israeli peace-making. First is the ambitious American initiative — some would say gamble — of trying to achieve a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace, at a time when conditions for this in both Israel and Palestine are highly unpropitious. Washington has stuck its neck out rather courageously, and now has to work hard to make sure it does not lose its head in the process.

Second is Washington’s firm demand of a total and absolute freeze on Israeli settlements in occupied Arab territories. Israel has pushed back on this, and intense talks are underway to resolve the issue. Obama must get the total settlement freeze — even if it is for a short period of time, and couched in fuzzy language — because backing down now would deal a crippling blow to his own prestige and the credibility of the United States. Israel persisting in its settlements would be the diplomatic equivalent of the fair lady’s family telling the assembled jaha that their daughter is not available, and there will be no marriage. It simply cannot happen.

Third, the United States is wooing the Israeli damsel while trying simultaneously to achieve several other difficult things, including: reasserting Washington’s control of its Mideast policy and freeing it from the influence of the pro-Israeli lobbies, reviving US credibility with all parties as an impartial mediator, re-establishing trust with the Arab world, resuming serious diplomacy with Syria, addressing Iran and Arab-Israeli issues at the same time, and reassuring Israelis that their security will not be endangered — but actually will be enhanced — by the current peace-making push.

The Arabs understood thousands of years ago that when life-changing decisions must be made, individuals need to feel the power, safety and comfort of their wider human context, namely the family, clan and tribe. The jaha lets this happen in a manner that is part theater and part show of power, part enticing enchantment and part hammer blows. Right now, the Obama jaha to Israel is the greatest show in town.

Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon.

Copyright © 2009 Rami G. Khouri – distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 29 July 2009
Word Count: 809
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BEIRUT — It’s bad enough for ordinary Arabs to sense large gaps in their personal quality of life and widespread dysfunction in the public management of their societies. It is much more painful — though always useful — for such self-awareness to be documented in a credible report by knowledgeable and honest Arab analysts.

This is the case with the publishing this week by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) of a painful new report on the condition of the Arab world that, most importantly in my view, highlights the spectrum of interlinked deficiencies that retard meaningful and sustainable Arab development. The Arab Human Development Report 2009: Challenges to Human Security in the Arab Countries, is the fifth such UNDP text since 2004, and the best one so far, in my view.

Three key facts emerge from my reading of it: Vulnerability and insecurity for ordinary Arab citizens reflect a range of underlying factors that cut across political, economic, governance and basic services sectors; many human security indicators in the Arab world are static or even worsening; and, Arab societies have cleaved into two very different and distant worlds of affluence and order, and of poverty, need and disorder. Fortunately, the 264-page report includes a fine 16-page “report in brief” section and a striking 30-page overview of tables and graphs called “the report in numbers.” (Both are available on the UNDP website, www.arab-hdr.org)

The report asks why, seven years after the publication of the first Arab Human Development Report, the region’s fault lines have deepened and the obstacles to human development have proved so stubborn. It says the answers lie in “the fragility of the region’s political, social, economic and environmental structures, in its lack of people-centered development policies, and in its vulnerability to outside intervention.”

It identifies the following seven dimensions of threat to human security in the Arab world and treats each in a chapter:
• Pressures on environmental resources, as the Arab population of 150 million people in 1980 will reach nearly 400 million in 2015, in a context of rapid urban growth, water pollution and scarcity, desertification, and the likely severe impact of global warming.

• The performance of the state in guaranteeing or undermining human security, in terms of citizenship rights, legal norms, administration of justice, and security sector behavior In four areas — the acceptability of the state to its own citizens, state compliance with international human rights charters, the state’s monopoly of the means of force and coercion, and, whether checks and balances prevent abuses of power — the report says that, “large and frequent shortfalls often combine to turn the state into a threat to human security, instead of its chief support.”

• The personal insecurity of vulnerable groups, focusing on violence against women (mostly in the home), human trafficking, and the plight of refugees and internally displaced persons.

• Economic vulnerability, poverty and unemployment, reflecting erratic growth due to heavy reliance on oil and gas income, persistent poverty and unemployment, and weak structural economic foundations beyond the energy sector. Shockingly, but not surprisingly for anyone who honestly analyzed the Arab world in recent decades, real GDP per capita in our region grew by only 6.4 percent over the entire period from 1980 to 2004, or less than 0.5 percent annually.

• Food security and nutrition, indicating that only this region and sub-Saharan Africa have seen an increase in the number of undernourished people since the early 1990s.

• Health and human security, where broad gains have been registered, though problems persist in terms of disparities (especially for women), quality of services, and neglect of newly emerging threats.

• The systemic insecurity of occupation and foreign military intervention, which spark a cycle of violence and domestic repression, foment extremism, and displace millions of people. Worse, prospects for settling major conflicts are now largely in the hands of non-Arab parties, i.e., with a decline in human security our Arab region also suffers deterioration in its basic sovereignty.

These reports provide important overviews of Arab world conditions while revealing disparities within the region as a whole, compelling us to speak of several Arab worlds, rather than a single unit. But they are most useful for repeatedly diagnosing the underlying weaknesses that keep most Arab citizens, even in wealthy societies, living in a state of chronic fragility and vulnerability.

How we tackle the underlying causes of our mediocrity, and bring about real change anchored in solid citizenship, productive economies and stable statehood, remains the riddle that has defied three generations of Arabs. The next AHDR report should be an analysis of how change can and does happen in some parts of the Arab world, so that we seek to make the ultimate developmental leap forward: to transcend the diagnosis of our ailments and constraints, and move into a phase of overcoming them.

Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon.

Copyright © 2009 Rami G. Khouri – distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 27 July 2009
Word Count: 807
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BEIRUT — One of the most important political dynamics in the Middle East these days is the escalating war of words between the United States and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the international demand to freeze Jewish settlements and colonies in Arab lands occupied in 1967. It is surprising yet heartening that the Obama team has come out strongly demanding that Israel freeze the expansion of all settlements and colonies, with no exceptions for natural growth, pre-approved projects or anything else.

More unusual has been the American president’s public reiteration of this position, including in the presence of the Israeli prime minister in the White House. The United States took this stance one significant step forward a few days ago when it publicly called for the reversal of official Israeli approval for building a new Jewish housing project in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Arab east Jerusalem.

Settlements expansion is only one of many core issues comprising the Palestinian-Israeli and Arab-Israeli conflict; yet it has become the litmus test of three critical dynamics that may determine whether this conflict moves towards peaceful resolution or continues to radicalize and destabilize the entire Middle East as it has for over 60 years. These three are US-Israel relations, Israeli compliance with international laws and norms, and the capacity of the Arabs to engage meaningfully in promoting a credible peace process.

President Obama has taken a very strong, public position against continued Israeli colonization probably because he understands that this position enjoys the backing of international law, American public opinion, every other country in the world, and probably a majority of Israelis themselves who would sacrifice their colonization program for a genuine, lasting, and comprehensive peace agreement with all the Arab neighbors.

If Obama runs into problems with his economic reform and health care programs, the pro-Israeli zealots in the United States could jump on the president’s vulnerability to help him inside the US if he backs off pressuring Israel on its colonization ventures. Much of this will depend on how the debate is framed, which raises the second point: Will Israel finally be forced by global pressure to comply with international law and UN resolutions, or will it forever decide where it complies and where it defies the rest of the world’s sense of right and wrong?

A few days ago, replying to Washington’s demand that Israel stop colonizing Arab east Jerusalem, Netanyahu said: “United Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish people and the state of Israel. Our sovereignty over it cannot be challenged. We cannot accept the idea that Jews will not have the right to live and purchase in all parts of Jerusalem.”

Well, the whole point of living by the rule of law is that your rights are restricted by the rights of others — in this case, Israel’s right to live in West Jerusalem is restricted by its acceptance of the rights of the Palestinian Arabs to enjoy sovereignty in East Jerusalem. Israeli settlements and colonies are an illegal, criminal activity, and even the United States now has the basic decency and courage to say this out loud. Israeli “sovereignty” over all of Jerusalem is rejected by the entire world, other than a few Christian fundamentalist nut-cases in the United States and their equally extremist Likud-run pro-Israeli lobbyists.

The third issue that must be clarified soon is whether the Arab world will watch this political drama on television as disinterested bystanders, or get serious and engage in tough diplomacy by clarifying to Israel our will to coexist on the basis of equal and simultaneous rights for Arabs and Israelis without perpetually making one-sided concessions due to our own collective weakness.

President Obama and his family touched the world earlier this month when they visited Cape Coast Castle in Ghana, the former depot of the transatlantic slave trade that reminds the world of the evils and inhumanities of the colonial era. Obama said there: “As painful as it is, I think that it helps to teach all of us that we have to do what we can to fight against the kinds of evils that sadly still exist in our world, not just on this continent but in every corner of the globe.”

One of those evils in our corner of the globe, in the view of the entire world, is Israeli colonization in occupied Arab lands that many of us see as perhaps the last, lingering remnant of the sort of 18th and 19th Century colonization that included the transatlantic slave trade.

Our common challenge is to reconcile the two legitimacies of Israeli and Arab nationalism in Palestine by creating two adjacent states and resolving the refugee issue. The twin first steps to this must be Arab acceptance of Israel — this has been offered and reiterated repeatedly since 2002 — and Israel’s reciprocal acceptance of Palestinian statehood through the proxy act of agreeing to cessation of Jewish colonization as a first step on the road to genuine peace and coexistence.

Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon.

Copyright © 2009 Rami G. Khouri – distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 22 July 2009
Word Count: 830
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BEIRUT — US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s speech on July 15, outlining the underlying principles of American foreign policy, was realistic and refreshing. We will see in the coming years if it actually relates to the conduct of foreign policy, or is merely a nice rhetorical flourish and an exercise in diplomatic double-speak and illusion.

Most of what she said was sensible and predictable, revolving around the main theme that the United States would not try to play balance-of-power politics around the world, but rather would try to build a “multi-partner world” in which governments and private groups work collectively on common global problems or threats. If translated into policy, this gesture by the Obama administration could be historic.

Two aspects of the speech and its official mindset seem significant, one clear and the other not: The clear one is her acknowledgment that governments alone cannot address global challenges; unclear is whether the United States understands that its own exercise of power around the world in an erratic manner is in fact one of the threats and problems that many people have experienced in recent years.

The United States building partnerships with other power centers around the world is an excellent idea. Critical here is Clinton’s admission that power is no longer concentrated in the hands of central governments. She said, correctly, I believe: “No nation can meet the world’s challenges alone. The issues are too complex. Too many players are competing for influence: from rising powers to corporations to criminal cartels; from NGOs to al-Qaeda; from state-controlled media to individuals using Twitter.”

The single most useful thing that she and her colleagues can do for starters is to recognize how power is exercised by multiple groups within many countries, and how the fragmentation and diffusion of power reflect a parallel multiplicity of legitimate authorities within single countries. Our region — the Arab world, Turkey and Iran in the last generation — offers excellent examples of this. In the 1970s, central governments controlled almost every aspect of power inside a country, such as military and police forces, the economy, the mass media and religious systems. The dominant central government forces of the 1970s have changed considerably in some countries — Iran, Turkey, Lebanon, Palestine — while others see central governments retaining their powers and controls, but at the cost of facing more tension and/or underground or exiled opposition movements (Egypt, Libya, Syria, Algeria).

One country — any country will do, but let’s take Tunisia as an example — would capture the dilemma for the United States more precisely. The opposition forces of the past three decades, including labor movements, leftists, Islamists, Arab nationalists and democrats, have all been drive to silence, abroad, jail or underground by harsh government repression that accepts no serious democratic challenges to its total control. If the United States is serious about dealing with the range of powers in society, it should engage Tunisian private groups, NGOs and opposition movements in serious discussions about what they seek and how they imagine a future Tunisia. Yet, one reason that Tunisia suffers the strains that plague it is because its repressive autocracy has been heavily supported by the United States and other Western powers — along with the professional courtesy shown by fellow Arab autocrats.

So, if the United States plans to puts its admirable policy statement into practice — and I hope that it does — it will have to address these two contradictory issues: It should engage with all legitimate opposition forces in a country like Tunisia, while recognizing that American support for the central government is one major reason for the perpetuation of Arab autocracies and the expansion of opposition movements and non-state actors.

The new American administration has assigned itself a monumental but important and long overdue task: redefine the balance of its interactions with a range of official institutions as well as other movements or forces in a society. This is inherently destabilizing. In the past, when the United States had to choose between supporting Middle Eastern and Asian autocrats or accepting their possible removal by their own people, it chose supporting the autocrats.

Our societies will evolve according to their own priorities, needs and speeds, but the one legitimate role for the United States and other external powers is simply to meet with all forces in society and exchange views for starters. When the US truly seeks to operate on the basis of a “multi-partner” world and expand its contacts and partnerships beyond governments, this will surely help bring about changes to the status quo in many countries. This is preferable to perpetual intellectual repression, political stagnation, and national dysfunction in many sectors.

Hillary Clinton has articulated exciting new parameters for American foreign policy, and presumably she understands the full implications of her speech. We will find out soon if her actions follow suit, or if this is merely another round of junk diplomacy.

Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon.

Copyright © 2009 Rami G. Khouri – distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 20 July 2009
Word Count: 813
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BEIRUT — The call by the European Union’s foreign policy chief for the UN Security Council to recognize a Palestinian state by a certain deadline, even without any Israeli-Palestinian agreement, is intriguing and unimpressive. Javier Solana said on July 11, at a lecture in London that “after a fixed deadline, a UN Security Council resolution should proclaim the adoption of the two-state solution.” This, he said, should address border parameters, refugees, control over the city of Jerusalem, and security arrangements. The move should also accept the Palestinian state as a full member of the UN, set a calendar for implementation, look to resolve other remaining territorial disputes, and “legitimize the end of claims.”

Solana said that if the parties are not able to stick to a timetable, “then a solution backed by the international community should be put on the table.”

This intriguing approach has been gradually adopted in recent years by many serious students of the Arab-Israeli conflict who despair of ever seeing the Palestinians and Israelis moving towards a resolution of their conflict on their own. It is also probably unrealistic as a mechanism to resolve the conflict, given the limited ability of external powers to force local actors into specific modes of behavior when the locals are not convinced of the wisdom of such behavior.

Putting a solution on the table would only result in a crowded table that generates much discussion, but does not generate a workable solution that resolves the conflict. The more realistic approach would be for the major global players — the European Union, United States, Russia and the United Nations, conveniently packaged in the “Quartet” of would-be Middle East peace-makers — to use their moral, political, economic and military/peace-keeping muscle to push, prod and cajole the parties into a serious negotiation. This would require all Arabs and Israelis to end the use of violence, in return for the expectation that diplomacy would meet their bottom line needs — a la the Northern Ireland negotiations two decades ago.

Solana’s call is unimpressive, though, because it captures the self-emasculation — when it comes to Arab-Israeli issues — of that otherwise remarkable and powerful group of countries. Rather than calling on the elusive “international community,” it would be much more powerful if the EU were to take unilateral actions and show the way for others who are hobbled either structurally (the United Nations) or politically (the United States), or simply do not have the interest or punch to prod serious mediation (Russia). An important but now vacant diplomatic space that needs to be filled is about the political, legal and moral affirmation of what is the right and decent policy to pursue. This suggests three ways the EU can act.

The first is simply affirming the requirements of existing law and UN resolutions, related to settlements, land annexations, terrorism, and other such acts by both sides. The EU should have no problem playing the role of self-appointed monitor of the parties’ compliance with international legal norms. The parties and the world would welcome such a move to reclaim that crucial middle ground of law-based conflict resolution that could trigger realistic and mutual political compromises. The EU would do everyone a great service by clearly adopting a policy that, at its most simple, rewards law-abiders and punishes lawbreakers.

The second arena for EU action is in reminding the principals and the world that peace and security will prevail in our region only when Arabs and Israelis are treated equally, with both having the same and simultaneous rights to basic needs, such as security, sovereignty and water. The United States unfortunately has caved in to Israeli blackmail in recent decades and has tried to make conflict-resolution a matter of assuring Israeli security before any other advances. Europe can accurately reframe the conflict as two peoples’ quest for secure statehood.

The third step that Europe can take is simply to sit down and talk with all legitimate parties, and end the nonsense of boycotting groups like Hamas and others that fight Israel. A good first step is for the EU to suspend its participation in the Quartet, and then quietly let this diseased body die a merciful death. It is precisely the militants on both sides who use violence who have to be brought into the talks for peace and coexistence. The castrated American political system lacks the ability to act with conviction on the really tough issues so as to talk to all actors; Europe is not so emasculated, and should avoid at all costs following the United States’ route to impotent self-marginalization.

Europe was once respected by all in the Middle East. Today it is largely ignored by all, which is unfortunate and unhelpful. It should not look for salvation or redemption from the international community, but rather in its own heart that still beats, even if faintly.

Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon.

Copyright © 2009 Rami G. Khouri – distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 15 July 2009
Word Count: 806
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CHICAGO — It was one of those fleeting encounters — just a random, momentary connection between two strangers whose paths intersected — that reminded me of the good things in life, and the best of human nature. It happened in a great city (Chicago) and in a very special place (the #2 Hyde Park Express Bus), between two unlikely characters (the lady bus driver and me).

First, some background. The #2 Express in Chicago is one of the great bus rides of the world that I am documenting along with a few other lifelong social science research projects. For example, I am working on the important issues of identifying the best ice cream shop in Italy, and the finest smoked ribs restaurant in the United States.

It was a major stroke of luck that I quickly located the #2 Express Bus in Chicago: It stops directly in front of my hotel on Michigan Avenue in downtown Chicago, and also stops at the other end of its route right in front of the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago, where I spend time with students and faculty every day. And this particular bus belongs to the aristocracy of urban bus rides, in my expert view.

It slowly winds through the most beautiful parts of central Chicago, near Michigan Avenue and Wacker Drive, makes stops every few blocks as it rambles down State Street with its legacy of 20th Century central-city shopping districts, then cuts across to Lake Shore Drive where it turns into a non-stop express that dashes down the east side of the city near the lake — this is where you get some serious thinking, reading or napping done, given the uninterrupted, smooth, steady ride — and finally it enters the Hyde Park area of the university and reverts back to its life as a commuter bus that stops at every other block. The #2 Hyde Park Express, as it is formally known, only operates during the morning and evening rush hours, giving it an extra aura of je ne sais quoi.

Every morning and evening, I boarded my bus at 9:18 am on Michigan Avenue and enjoyed the 30-minute journey to the university. After a few days, I recognized a few regulars like myself who took the same bus every day. I nodded politely to the driver as I boarded every morning, and she acknowledged my greeting with a tacit nod of the head but no other emotion or gesture, so as not to be distracted from the serious business of keeping her eye on the road.

For two years in a row, I rode the Hyde Park Express in silent, satisfied joy. This year, the third in a row, on my fourth and last day of the daily journey, as I got off the bus from the front I turned to the driver and said something like, “Thanks for the great rides, ma’am. I look forward to doing this again next year.”

The large, heretofore rather taciturn, lady driver suddenly turned to me, beamed a smile as big as Lake Michigan, and said, “Gosh, thanks, honey, that’s sweet of you. I won’t see you for a whole year?”

“Yes,” I said, “I live overseas and visit once a year.”

“You take care of yourself, honey, and be sure to come back again next year,” she concluded, as I stepped down, and she and the bus drove away to their next stop.

I did not remember her name written on her badge. I think it was Cheryl or Chantal or something like that. She was half my age, African-American, large in size, immaculately coiffed, very authoritative-looking in her driver’s uniform. She commanded respect, even deference and obedience as she expertly drove her bus, safely, smoothly and on schedule. But when she smiled, looked me in the eye, and called me “Honey”, I was transformed — no longer a visitor, stranger or occasional commuter in Chicago, but a regular on the bus — with a friendly human being who looked forward to my return.

The conversation and gestures of appreciation and acknowledgment lasted no more than 10 seconds. But packed into that moment was a whole universe of human connectedness and warmth, immense dignity and professionalism in performing a demanding routine task, and the beguiling sense of pleasure and security that come from two strangers who transcend the gender, racial, national and age frontiers that separate them, and instead define a certain sense of solidarity.

Hmmm, I thought to myself later that day and ever since: Is this about how human beings from different worlds connect through instruments like mutual respect? Shared dignity? Common courtesies? Or simply the eternal, universal feel-good joys of a really great urban bus ride?

Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon.

Copyright © 2009 Rami G. Khouri – distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 13 July 2009
Word Count: 794
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