BEIRUT — Mainstream Islamist political parties that win elections throughout the Middle East and Asia are often perceived in Western lands and Israel as a dire threat. Not all Arabs and Asians are happy with the victorious Islamists, either. It is important to interpret correctly why the Islamists are winning, and what they really represent.

I have had many opportunities in the past few years to participate in conferences, seminars, lectures and friendly dinner conversations with colleagues from throughout the Arab, Asian, European and North America worlds. Analysts from outside this region quickly become hopelessly confused by the synthesis of several phenomena that manifest themselves simultaneously in Islamist politics, in a way that they do not do in Western cultures. These include: religion, national identity, legitimate good governance, and resistance to foreign occupation or subjugation.

So, many analysts in the West and Israel explain Islamist victories with ideas about hopes for a revived Islamic caliphate, suicide bombers enticed by virgins in heaven, Islamo-fascism, the need for reformation and modernization in Islam, the urgency of embracing secularism in Arab-Islamic society, problems with madrasas (and education more broadly), the anti-American, anti-Israeli incitement tendencies of Arab media, and other ideas.

Such views suffer from two fundamental constraints: They reflect Western historical traditions and assume that Islamic societies must follow the same trajectory of democratic reform and modernity; and, they hear only the religious vocabulary of the Islamists, without grasping the underlying political and national issues that drive them.

In their own historical and national contexts, the Islamist movements are not a new or sudden phenomenon. In fact, the current wave of Islamist political movements winning elections in the region is the third wave of Islamism in our generation since the 1970s, and probably the most important one.

The first wave, in the late 1970s-mid 1980s, challenged Arab regimes largely as clandestine opposition movements or low-key social organizations. It was harshly suppressed politically throughout the Levant and North Africa. The second wave of Islamism in the 1990s took a violent form, in Algeria, Syria, Egypt and other places, including Bin Ladenist-style terror. This primarily targeted Arab regimes, not Israel or the United States, especially — as in Algeria and Egypt — where terror followed failed attempts at political inclusion and participation. Islamists were returning home from Afghanistan with heightened political militancy, technical training in explosives and other violent methods, and a sense of invincibility after helping to liberate Afghanistan from Russian occupation.

So we now witness the third wave of Islamism in our time, with groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hizbullah, Jamaa Islamiyya, and Justice and Development parties in several countries winning power through democratic elections. They learned the hard lessons of 1975-2001, that neither brute terror nor clandestine social activism will achieve their goals.

The significant new element in this wave of Arab-Asian electoral Islamists is that they have combined into a single force those separate elements that had previously fragmented their citizen activists and mass movements. Islamists now should be called religio-nationalists, or theo-nationalists, because they combine the twin forces of religion and nationalism.

“My god and my people” may be the two most powerful mass mobilization forces ever invented by human beings, and exploited by political minds. Islamists use religion and nationalism efficiently, having crafted a message of hope, defiance and self-assertive confidence that responds directly to the multiple complaints of their fellow citizens.

The wide extent of triumphant political Islamism provides important clues about its real meaning and impetus for those who wish to see the real world, rather than imagine a more exotic and menacing world out there. Islamists of various hues and shades have won big, or become a significant opposition force, virtually every place they have competed politically in the past few years, at municipal or national levels, from Turkey, Pakistan, and Iran, to Palestine, Egypt, Morocco, Iraq and Lebanon, to mention only the most notable.

This wave of victories is not due primarily to a longing for virgins in heaven or the end result of lousy primary schools. It is the consequence of a modern history that combines the grueling, cumulative pain of poor, often corrupt and brutal, domestic governance, with foreign military occupations and threats (mostly from Israel, the United States and the U.K. recently). Huge numbers of ordinary Arabs and Asians consequently feel they have long been denied their cultural identity, political rights, national sovereignty, personal freedoms and basic human dignity. Islamist groups have responded with a powerful package that speaks to their citizenry about religion, national identity, legitimate good governance, and resistance to foreign occupation and subjugation.

There is nothing surprising about victorious Islamists who appeal to their constituents with a religio-nationalist message, any more than a victorious George Bush who makes similar successful appeals to his voters. The best response to the triumphant Islamists, whether you like or dislike them, is to understand the political, national and personal issues that have generated their victories, and to address those real grievances, rather than to wander off into intellectual swamps and fantasylands.
Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.

Copyright ©2006 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global
—————-
Released: 15 March 2006
Word Count: 836
——————-
For rights and permissions, contact:

rights@agenceglobal.com, 1.336.686.9002 or 1.336.286.6606

BEIRUT — After a hundred years of the conflict between Zionism and Arabism in Palestine, the Palestinians and the Israelis still do not have a peace agreement — but they seem to have an agreement. The parameters of this unspoken but relatively clear understanding seem to meet the immediate needs of both sides. They were first articulated by Ariel Sharon about a year and a half ago, put in motion by his unilateral withdrawal from Gaza last year, are being consummated by the Hamas victory in Palestine, and probably will be capped by a new Israeli government headed by acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his Kadima Party.

The terms include a faster and neater separation between Israelis and Palestinians, a mutual ceasefire, steadily reversing the Israeli colonization of occupied Palestinian lands, and allowing the Palestinians to get on with the business of building their micro-state in Gaza and about half the West Bank.

This silent accord between Israelis and Palestinians will always be relatively fragile, because it is imbalanced and unilaterally imposed. Crucially, it does not resolve the core demands of both sides: recognition, security and end-of-conflict for the Israelis; and, liberation, statehood and full refugee rights for the Palestinians. But for both sides, and for a period of time, this flawed and imbalanced understanding seems preferable to their recent low-intensity war.

Israel — at least in this election month — is not the least interested in even exploring possible openings for engaging Hamas in peace negotiations. Instead, the current Israeli leadership is harnessing the mood of the Israeli people to push ahead with its unilateral disengagement from more, perhaps most, of the occupied Palestinian lands. Israel is effectively drawing what it sees as the country’s permanent borders, defined by the separation barrier it has been building for over a year.

Sharon and the Kadima Party he created, now headed by Olmert, have always seen a long-term interim agreement with the Palestinians as more realistic and preferable than another attempt to negotiate a permanent, comprehensive peace. Hamas for its part has adhered to a cease-fire with Israel during the past year. Under intense regional and international pressure to soften its position on coexisting with Israel, it is signaling that it will do so; but, only on condition that Israel make reciprocal gestures on key issues, such as refugee rights and dismantling all settlements. Israel will not agree to those terms now.

Hamas thus speaks only of extending its year-old truce into a long-term truce, thus living alongside Israel in its pre-occupation 1967 borders, if Israel makes the required reciprocal gestures on settlements, borders, and refugees.

Sharon’s long-term interim agreement and Hamas’ long-term truce sound intriguingly similar. In the best ways of the Orient, they are being implemented without being formally articulated or agreed. This is far from peace; but it is perhaps open-ended peaceful coexistence by nods and winks, achieved by terms unspoken and nasty deeds not done.

In the past few weeks, Kadima Party members have said that if elected to power they would continue withdrawing unilaterally from parts of the West Bank, while completely leaving Gaza affairs in the hands of the Palestinians. The first step, revealed this week by former Shin Beth security service director Avi Dichter, would be to dismantle more isolated settlements in the West Bank, while consolidating the large settlement blocs near the 1967 border.

This approach is said to reflect Israeli defense establishment thinking that extended settlements do not enhance Israeli security. Rather, disengagement from the Palestinians is now seen as more conducive to Israeli national interests than colonization and militarily occupation. Israelis are anxious to vacate as much of the occupied territories as possible so that they can remain a predominantly Jewish Zionist state. They also seem resigned to living next to a Palestinian proto-state ruled by Hamas or a Hamas-led coalition government.

This historic reversal of Israeli policies since 1967 is matched by developments on the Palestinian side. A Hamas-led government is poised to manage those areas vacated by Israel, move quickly on building a more secure, stable, law-governed society, and enforce an extended truce that probably has already started. Hamas will quietly watch Israel withdraw from more occupied lands, and focus on building a well governed polity in Gaza and much of the West Bank.

The unarticulated but vital operative core of this silent agreement is that both sides stop shooting and killing each other for some years, Israel steadily vacates more land, and the Palestinians enjoy more substantial sovereign rights and proceed more diligently than before with their nation-building priorities. Such mutually desirable parallel but separate national development could lead to future circumstances that would be propitious for a permanent, negotiated resolution of their conflict.

This is all treading on very thin ice. Yet both sides seem to prefer it to the certain fate of bleeding and sinking together if they maintain the recent violent course of prolonged occupation and colonization, and equally persistent militant resistance. Wink. Nod. Pass the ploughshare.

Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.

Copyright ©2006 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global
—————-
Released: 07 March 2006
Word Count: 831
——————-
For rights and permissions, contact:

rights@agenceglobal.com, 1.336.686.9002 or 1.336.286.6606

BEIRUT — The Lebanese National Dialogue that kicked off in Beirut on March 2, has generated little interest beyond the country¹s borders. That may be shortsighted. For the unprecedented local gathering of leaders of 14 major Lebanese religious, ethnic and political groups mirrors two broad national challenges that confound almost every Arab country: legitimacy and leadership.

The disinterest outside Lebanon is perhaps understandable. There is something very provincial about mostly hereditary leaders of sects and tribes of a few hundred thousand people each making a big deal of gathering in the same room and shaking hands, after, in some cases, refusing to speak to each other for years, or fighting each politically and militarily.

Overcoming the political feuds of villages and adjacent valleys is not so heroic by most people¹s calculations. It is also slightly odd to hold this special gathering when two other fully representative institutions already exist to discuss such national issues: the elected parliament, and the cabinet of ministers which is sometimes presided over by the president.

But these Lebanese democratic institutions are immobilized precisely because of severe legitimacy and leadership constraints. So something resembling a traditional Arab tribal confederal council is called in order to discuss urgent issues: the investigation of the murder of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri; the interpretation and implementation of UN Security Council resolution 1559; the contested status of President Emile Lahoud; and, broad security and sovereignty issues related to arms held by groups outside the national armed forces, including Hizbullah and some Syrian-influenced Palestinian groups.

The legitimacy deficit is both institutional and personal. Elected parliaments throughout the Arab world have little credibility because they are usually elected on the basis of deeply gerrymandered electoral districts and laws that are designed to deliver a predictably pro-government majority, which they usually do (though increasingly this is being challenged by victorious Islamist oppositions). Parliaments also are generally powerless in the face of security-backed executive branches and strongmen.

The personal legitimacy deficit is embodied in Lebanon by the incumbent but increasingly irrelevant President Lahoud. His initial 6-year term was extended for three more years in 2004, according to the dictates of Syria, which then dominated Lebanese life. The majority in parliament, and probably in the country, sees his extension as illegal, inappropriate and illegitimate. Last month it launched a campaign to remove him from office through peaceful constitutional means. This critical test of political incumbency should concern other nervous Arab leaders with a low legitimacy quotient. Never before has an Arab citizenry simultaneously used the rule of law, the provisions of its constitution, and the force of a UN Security Council resolution to dismiss a sitting president.

A powerful constellation of forces at work in Lebanon today brings together three different elements: public opinion manifested in mass street demonstrations; a determined political elite; and, international pressure channeled through the legitimacy of the UN Security Council. That same combination a year ago quickly forced a Syrian military withdrawal from Lebanon, held parliamentary elections, changed the government, launched an international investigation into the Hariri murder, and arrested four senior Lebanese security chiefs.

These forces have now focused on deposing President Lahoud, thus providing an existential litmus test of their own credibility and efficacy. If they mobilize and channel their political support effectively, and depose the president constitutionally, they would generate a rare, long overdue, example of self-generated political legitimacy in Arab public life.

This is also a test of Arab leadership. Lebanon is typical of Arab lands in having very erratic leadership qualities. Some of the best minds in the world are to be found here, but usually the political system prevents them from translating their personal brilliance into public good, or efficient, clean governance.

Poor leadership is partly a function of weak legitimacy of institutions and individuals. This in turn reflects the legacy of brittle, ill-fitting modern statehood that does not always coincide logically with the religious, ethnic or national identities of the citizenry. Most Arab countries were forged in the self-serving furies of predatory and then retreating European colonialism, in the period 1920-1960. Many of them limp into the 21st century battered and stressed, because national identity and power do not always coincide with citizen identity and rights.

Consequently, in this week¹s Lebanese National Dialogue at least three levels of leadership are being tested at once: the Saad Hariri-led ³March 14² majority in Parliament that has yet to assert itself nationally after the initial eviction of the Syrian army a year ago; the leaders of the many narrow sects, ethnicities and political tribes engaged in the dialogue; and, the overall national leadership in the cabinet, including the presidency, that must address pressing issues of reform, debt, security, corruption and governance.

This Lebanese dialogue will be historic for all Arabs if it generates a credible national decision-making process that raises leadership and legitimacy levels in Lebanon. That is why I hope it succeeds.

If it falls short, though, and comes up with vague compromises that perpetuate the status quo, it will simply be another exercise in provincial politics, with village headmen rising only to the higher status of political reality television entertainers.

Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.

Copyright ©2006 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global
—————-
Released: 04 March 2006
Word Count: 855
—————-
For rights and permissions, contact:

rights@agenceglobal.com, 1.336.686.9002 or 1.212.731.0757

BEIRUT — In the High-Intensity Wake Up Call Department, this is as shrill as it gets: The aborted terror attack against the Abqaiq oil production and refining complex in Saudi Arabia this week was followed by police action that killed five suspected Saudi terrorists and captured one. We must not get so fixated on energy and terror that we forget the third critical element in this equation: discontented young men who pursue political deviance and violence.

The important events at Abqaiq represent the intersection of three critical Middle Eastern and global phenomena:
· The continuing, expanding threat of Arab home-grown and exported terrorism, partly exacerbated by America’s military and political presence in this region;
· Arab societies and governing regimes’ continuing search for the right combination of police capabilities and political, social and economic reforms that can counter their own youth’s desperate attraction to terrorism;
· An increasingly tight global energy market vulnerable to disruptions due to natural phenomena (hurricanes) or political attacks.

The Abqaiq attack happened as I was reading through a fact-filled and illuminating new book entitled National Security in Saudi Arabia: Threats, Responses and Challenges (Praeger Security International, Westport, Connecticut and London, 2005, 426 pp, published in cooperation with CSIS). The book is by Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C. and Nawaf Obaid, a Riyadh-based Saudi author and national security consultant.

They make important and relevant points, especially in view of this week’s attack. The most important are while the country no longer faces a major threat from Iraq, and continues to study how to deal with potential threats from Iran and Yemen, “the kingdom’s most urgent security threats no longer consist of hostile military forces; these threats have been replaced by the threat of Islamic extremism and terrorism; [other regional and global security] factors interact with a longer-term set of threats to Saudi stability that are largely economic and demographic but that may well be more important than any combination of outside military threats and the threat of Islamic extremism and terrorism.”

The world rightly worries that indigenous Arab terrorism may disrupt energy flows and sharply increase prices again. Abqaiq is something of a lynchpin of an already volatile global energy picture, given existing or potential disruptions to oil production and exports in Iraq, Iran and Nigeria. Saudi Arabia accounts for 16 percent of total global oil exports (7.5 million barrels a day), and Abqaiq has the capacity to process more than 7 million barrels a day.

The world’s continuing energy supply vulnerabilities are due to two main reasons: there is no such thing as absolute security that can prevent an attack against a facility like Abqaiq (despite the 2005 Saudi security budget of $10 billion, including $1.5 billion to secure energy facilities); and, extremist and terrorist movements continue to be fuelled by local events in the Middle East.

The Saudi security establishment has made a late but significant adjustment in the past three years to fight domestic threats. Improved counter-terrorism strategy, intelligence capabilities, and internal security forces are showing results in incidents like the failed attack at Abqaiq. Cordesman and Obaid were correct to note that improved security measures around energy facilities “have significantly lessened the probability of any major attacks being carried out successfully.”

We should expect more such attempts, though, because groups such as Al-Qaeda will continue to choose targets that simultaneously hurt Arab governments, the United States, and global energy security. So, we should all pay more attention to the critical challenge that Cordesman and Obaid call “the broader priorities for security reform”.

They note that while conventional military and police forces address new challenges and adjust to changing realities, “Saudi security also requires a broad process of continuing evolutionary reform of the kingdom’s political, economic and social systems, not just reform of the Saudi military, internal security and intelligence services. The health of the Saudi economy and coming to grips with the kingdom’s problems with education, Saudization, youth employment and demographics are the true keys to security.”

They explicitly identify another key to security as “a level of political progress that expands the role ordinary Saudis can play in government and in making further reductions in sources of social unrest like corruption. Even the best counter-terrorist operations can only deal with the small fraction of the Saudi population that represents violent extremists. True internal security is based on popular support.”

Cordesman and Obaid note the many changes that have taken place in Saudi Arabia in recent years. They acknowledge the need for greater speed in some cases while arguing that lasting change can only reflect indigenous values and a pace of reform that has the consent of the citizenry. Their work and thoughts take on added significance in view of the Abqaiq attack this week. Their linkage of security with political, social and economic reforms is a vital message that applies to the entire Arab region.

Jordan, for example, has grappled with the issue of how to enhance security in the wake of the hotel bombings last November, using a combination of police work and political reform, without yet identifying the right combination. Finding that elusive balance between cops on the street and the consent of the governed remains the key priority for all countries in this region.

Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.

Copyright ©2006 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global
—————-
Released: 01 March 2006
Word Count: 881
——————-
For rights and permissions, contact:

rights@agenceglobal.com, 1.336.686.9002 or 1.336.286.6606

BEIRUT — Nothing better captures the great contest that now defines the Middle East than four telegenic characters who have crisscrossed the region during the past week: Condoleezza Rice, Karen Hughes, Khaled Mashaal and Moqtada Sadr.

This would seem to be a match made in heaven: two democratically elected bearded Arab politicos who wish to expand their own efficient constituencies and militias into governing systems that enhance the well-being of their fellow citizens; and, two elegant and eloquent American ladies who combine the bouncy enthusiasm of young high school democracy cheerleaders with the more daring inclination to engage in political genetic engineering, in order to enhance the well-being of Arab citizens and the security of Americans in one magical move.

This happy ideological marriage has not happened. Instead, Rice and Hughes preach democracy for Arabs in the morning, then spend the afternoon fighting the incumbency of democratically-elected Arabs. In response, elected bearded Arab politicos like Mashaal, the head of Hamas’ political bureau, and Sadr, who leads a powerful Shiite movement and militia in Iraq, increase their legitimacy and their impact through two parallel routes. They engage in electoral politics by being more responsive and accountable to the needs of their constituents, and they generate wider emotional and political appeal by defying the United States and its policies and presence in the Middle East.

This week the American ladies lost ground to the bearded Arabs. This is due to the simple reason that both the style and substance of Rice-Hughes policies run sharply counter to the sentiments of ordinary Arabs, while Mashaal-Sadr politics cater directly to ordinary people’s obvious emotional and political views.

I had the opportunity to experience the style of American diplomacy when I attended a gathering in Doha where Karen Hughes spoke. She repeated the standard Bush administration policy goals, but did so in a manner that was rather condescending and insensitive. She failed to acknowledge many legitimate Arab concerns, and preached to our region through the narrow lens of post-9/11 American hurt.

Fine for Texas barbeques, but bad news for Arabian gatherings.

My own reaction to her talk was that it was a disaster — an example of public diplomacy shooting itself in the foot, and hurting the U.S.’ image among Arabs rather than helping it. I asked perhaps 50 other Arabs, Muslims, and even some Americans at the gathering, and they all had the same view. Hughes’ aggressive, pedantic style makes us keep asking: why does Washington keep insulting us in this manner? Karen Hughes is an impressive person; her speechwriters are diplomatic nitwits.

The equally problematic substance of Washington’s policies is manifested in Rice’s trip this week to four Arab capitals. She seeks to convince Arab governments to quarantine Hamas and starve the Palestinian government of aid funds, until Hamas changes its views and actions vis-à-vis Israel. This policy will clearly be rejected by all Arab governments, and may set back the U.S.’ standing in the region more than any other action in recent years, perhaps even more than the unpopular Iraq war. This is because the American opposition to Hamas touches and sharply inflames deep nerves that already anchor widespread global skepticism about American foreign policy.

The first is the sense that the United States is neither serious nor consistent about promoting democracy. The second is that the U.S. fights mightily against Arabs or others in the region who try to manifest their identity through expressions of indigenous, mainstream political Islamism. The third is that Washington wages vigorous battles against any Arabs, Muslims or others in the world who dare to resist Israel’s occupation and subjugation of Arabs. The fourth is that Washington treats sovereign Arab governments with contempt, expecting them to ignore their own public opinion and bend to America’s desires at the snap of a finger. The fifth is that Washington reflexively parrots Israel’s neurotic views on Hamas, instead of waiting to see the policy of the new Palestinian government that Hamas will head and then defining its own policy response.

Not surprisingly, public opinion and election results throughout the Middle East now favor mainstream Islamists. These groups succeed because they simultaneously accept democratic pluralism, defy the United States, resist Israeli occupation and colonization, and demand less corruption and more efficient governance at home. Consequently, Mashaal’s and Sadr’s travels around the Middle East this week are more like a victory lap than anything else.

We must challenge some of their past behavior and future plans, to be sure. But we must also admit that these Islamist leaders have more legitimacy in the Middle East than all of Rice’s and Hughes’ copious democratic rhetoric and all the Marines in Mesopotamia put together.

What to do instead? Elected democratic incumbents in Washington, Palestine, Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Egypt and elsewhere should engage honestly, to move towards a common middle ground where Arab, Iranian, Turkish, European and American policies could happily coexist. This desired terrain would include indigenous religious and social values, universal good governance standards, global principles that assert national sovereignty and reject colonial occupation, and legitimate leaders who have both the political credibility and the managerial capacity to synchronize all these factors into sensible, sustainable policies. High-profile American officials should explore this more humane, mutually beneficial approach during their visits to our convoluted lands, rather than mainly lecture and offend us.

This week’s score: bearded Arabs 1, American ladies 0.

Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.

Copyright ©2006 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global
—————-
Released: 25 February 2006
Word Count: 894
——————-
For rights and permissions, contact:

rights@agenceglobal.com, 1.336.686.9002 or 1.336.286.6606

DOHA Qatar — We are in 1992 once again: Will the victorious Islamist political party Hamas be allowed to govern in Palestine, as the triumphant Islamic Salvation Front was not allowed when it won the Algerian elections in 1992?

The denial of incumbency to the democratically elected Algerian Islamists resulted in a bitter and bloody civil war that costs thousands of lives over a decade. It set back the democratization trend in the Middle East by at least a decade, at a crucial moment after the Cold War when democracy was spreading throughout the world.

Decisions made today may be equally fateful. How the United States, Europe and Israel respond to Hamas’ assuming control of the government in Palestine may well define political trends and militant violence throughout much of the Middle East for years to come. This is because several historical factors have converged to make the success or failure of the Hamas-led Palestinian government a litmus test of broad perceptions and relations between the United States and the Arab world.

At stake here are several major issues:

* The future direction of the democratic wave that is slowly moving throughout the Middle East;
* The fate of America’s credibility with the Arab-Islamic world on promoting freedom and democracy;
* The possibility of achieving a negotiated Arab-Israeli peace in the coming years;
* The balance between, on the one hand, the majority of mainstream political Islamists such as Hamas and the Moslem Brotherhood, and, on the other hand, radical terrorists like Osama bin Laden;
* The legitimacy and staying power of most so-called “moderate” Arab regimes that are close to the United States; and,
* The U.S.’s situation in Iraq and its so-called “global war on terror.”

Not surprisingly, the American response to Hamas was a main theme at the annual U.S.-Islamic World Forum, organized by the Brookings Institution and the State of Qatar that I just attended in Doha, Qatar. The prevalent sentiment among Arabs and Muslims from other parts of the world was that Hamas should be given an opportunity to form a government and declare its policy program before it is sanctioned through aid cut-offs or other such punitive measures, as Israel has already imposed. American participants generally seemed less convinced, wanting specific assurances that Hamas would end its military resistance against Israel and recognize it.

My own sense is that the Hamas victory provides a rare historical opportunity to achieve goals that all the main parties should welcome, especially Israelis, Palestinians, Americans and Europeans. The best possible scenario would be for the U.S. to repeat its existing opposition to Hamas’ military resistance and terror against Israeli civilians, but state that it will continue to deal with a legitimately elected Palestinian government that adheres to existing agreements and aims to achieve a negotiated peace settlement based on the Israeli and Palestinian states living peacefully side-by-side. The Hamas-led Palestinian government, after intensive consultations with Arab states, should declare its acceptance of the 2002 Arab peace proposal, which offers coexistence with Israel in its 1967 borders and requires a fair resolution of the Palestine refugee problem. The Arab plan is almost identical to Hamas’ position on Israel, so it should not be difficult to accept it.

The United States can achieve several important goals by responding slowly, clearly and positively to Hamas and engaging it in a diplomatic dialogue.

It would:
* Cement the ceasefire in Israel-Palestine and nudge Palestinians and Israelis towards the negotiating table;
* Enhance Arab confidence on democracy;
* Make it easier for all Arabs to cooperate with the U.S. in other fields, including Iraq;
* Create conditions in which Islamists who govern are forced by circumstances to be increasingly moderate, pragmatic and realistic; and.
* Mobilize the silent majority in the Arab World to delegitimize and perhaps end the terrorism of Bin Laden and his ilk.

Israel and its slightly hysterical polemicists and lobbyists in Washington are in overdrive these days. They wish to prevent any possible thoughtful American response that gives Hamas time to show whether it is willing to move towards a position that accepts Israel’s existence in return for legitimate Palestinian demands of an end of the occupation, the birth of a Palestinian state, and a fair resolution of the refugee issue.

If the U.S. follows Israel by isolating and sanctioning Hamas, and punishing the Palestinians for electing it, the consequences would seem grim:
* The government in Palestine would collapse and chaos might reign again;
* Most Arabs (and people throughout the entire world) would deem the U.S. totally unreliable and non-credible in its talk of promoting democracy;
* Radical terrorists linked to Al Qaeda would win more converts from frustrated Islamists who would feel that they had followed the more moderate Hamas line to no avail;
* Anti-American sentiments and militancy would rise throughout the region;
* The exposed U.S. position in Iraq would become increasingly difficult and dangerous;
* Anti-U.S. populism championed by Syria and Iran would expand rapidly, and find grim new forms of expression; and,
* Arab regimes friendly to the U.S. would become more exposed and vulnerable to their own people’s anger.

The choice is laden with huge consequences. Washington should recognize the enormous and historic opportunity that stares it in the face, and for once adopt a Middle Eastern policy that is a win-win situation for all concerned.

Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.

Copyright ©2006 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global
—————-
Released: 21 February 2006
Word Count: 876
—————-
For rights and permissions, contact:

rights@agenceglobal.com, 1.336.686.9002 or 1.212.731.0757

BEIRUT — Two very different political reform initiatives this week may point the way to a more sensible and humane Arab political order, and thus also a more legitimate and sustainable order than the existing tabbouleh salad mixture of mild and severe police states, gangster fiefdoms, private tribal domains, and free-for-all shopping malls masquerading as sovereign states.

The two efforts worth watching:
* the decision by leading Lebanese politicians to mobilize their supporters to force the resignation of President Emile Lahoud, seen as a bitter and divisive symbol of the former Syrian dominance of the country; and
* an Arab Reform Initiative launched by half a dozen leading Arab research centers and think tanks, working closely with European and American colleagues.

These are important initiatives because they emerge from two sources in society — independent civil society groups and elected parliamentary majorities — that have been relatively docile in recent decades due to the overpowering dominance of the heavy-handed modern Arab security state. The idea that citizens of a country can initiate significant change to reform the exercise of political power, in a peaceful manner, is revolutionary in the Middle East, and long overdue.

The Lebanese case focuses on the person of President Lahoud, whose 6-year term was extended by another 3 years in 2004 by a Lebanese parliament that was directly controlled by Syria at that time. Lebanon’s forced docility changed dramatically after the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri a year ago, when waves of popular protest saw a million Lebanese in the street demand that Syria’s army leave their country. Which it did. President Lahoud remains in power, but is widely seen as both illegitimate and ineffective.

On the first anniversary of the Hariri murder February14, nearly one million Lebanese again gathered in central Beirut to demonstrate their determination to remain free and sovereign. They also insist on discovering the truth about who killed Hariri and other media and political figures who were murdered in car bombings during the past year.

The legitimate parliamentary majority’s decision to mobilize its massive public backing and focus it on ousting Lahoud and re-legitimizing the Lebanese presidency, via constitutional and political measures through parliament rather than through street rallies, is a historic test of the modern Arab political order. If it succeeds — and my sense is that it will, but perhaps not by the March 14 deadline that has been set — the Arab world will have a valuable precedent that might inspire others to re-legitimize their own political systems through peaceful, democratic, constitutional and judicial means. Freedom and democracy fans around the world should watch and quietly support this crucial political process.

The other important new effort this week was the official launching of the Arab Reform Initiative (ARI), after a year of quiet meetings and preparatory work. The ARI is a network of independent Arab research and policy institutes, with partners in the United States and Europe designed to:

mobilize Arab research capacities to generate knowledge by those who are the prime targets of reform; nurture and promote realistic and home grown agendas for democratic reform; foster collaboration between Arab non-governmental institutions; inform and engage political leaders, intellectuals and active representatives of civil society and produce policy recommendations.

That’s about as ambitious as it gets in this reform business, which has been a peculiarly ineffective but robust industry in this region for the past decade or so.

Dozens of reform initiatives, conferences and agendas have been organized, but little real reform has happened in any Arab country beyond administrative changes making it easier to get a hunting license, renew a passport, or open a restaurant. This is because incumbent Arab governments and power elites have hijacked the reform debate, and have successfully stalled any real change in the exercise of power.

If elected politicians are the engine that pulls Arab political change (such as ousting Lahoud) think tanks and civil society groups are the caboose providing essential services from the other end of the train. The two must work together in order to achieve success.

The ARI comprises credible research centers from North Africa, the Levant and the Gulf region that focus on identifying the content and modalities of a heretofore vague reform process. How to start? Which forces to mobilize? What obstacles are to be overcome? The initiative seeks to promote a comprehensive vision of reform that integrates the interaction between the political, economic, societal and cultural spheres, while recognizing the diversity of situations among countries of the region and also raising awareness in the Arab region about successful transitions to democracy in other parts of the world. It hopes to achieve these goals through collaborative activities such as policy briefs, thematic and country studies, public opinion surveys, workshops and conferences, and occasional task forces, all aiming to formulate policy recommendations that can advance reform in the Arab world.
The website has more information and is worth a visit (www.arab-reform.net).

Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.

Copyright ©2006 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global
—————-
Released: 17 February 2006
Word Count: 819
——————-
For rights and permissions, contact:

rights@agenceglobal.com, 1.336.686.9002 or 1.336.286.6606

BEIRUT — When religious blasphemy and genocide denial converge watch out: We’re in for a rough ride. This may be the case in the controversy over the offensive Danish cartoons equating the Prophet Mohammad and Islam with terrorism. One of the most unnecessary, unfortunate and dangerous aspects of this matter has been the slow introduction into the discussion of the issue of the Holocaust by various Arabs, Iranians and other Muslims, and the counter-accusations that this is simply a new form of rabid anti-Semitism.

Sadly, this is not an isolated or unusual phenomenon. It occurs often, whenever a contemporary political or religious argument in the Middle East touches on Israel. Legitimate political accusations against Israeli state policies — illegal colonial settlements, for example, or bombing civilian quarters and killing babies along with wanted militants — often become lost among either of two equally reproachable phenomena. Israelis, and slightly hysterical pro-Israeli quarters in the United States, quickly accuse Arabs and Muslims who challenge Israeli policies of being anti-Semitic, while some Arabs and Muslims are baited, or on their own degenerate into Holocaust denial.

This trajectory seems to be at work again these days in relation to the Danish cartoons, in particular in view of the announcement Monday that one of Iran’s biggest newspapers has launched a Holocaust caricature competition. The paper, Hamshahri, initiated the contest under the title, “What is the Limit of Western Freedom of Expression?”

This is a most disturbing development on the moral level, and extremely counter-productive on the political level. It will surely escalate the existing penchant of sinister polemicists and provocateurs on both sides to transform a legitimate debate about religiously offensive cartoons into a mindless, destructive mud-slinging match about whether Jews should live or die, and whether Muslims and Arabs were fully human, moral and rational.

Both parties that foment this anti-Jewish, anti-Islamic frenzy are equally despicable. It is bad enough that devious or ignorant minds in Denmark and other Western places have resorted to arguments on press freedom and secular modernity to rationalize the blasphemous, insulting cartoons about the Prophet Mohammad and Islam. It is equally regrettable that some Iranians and others in this region should respond with the same sort of gutter behavior.

Europe seems to have received the message that publishing the offensive cartoons is inappropriate and unacceptable, on the grounds of basic human decency, at least. The many, mostly peaceful, popular demonstrations by Islamic communities around the world, combined with diplomatic, media and religious expressions, seem to have sparked a genuine sense of regret about the cartoons among many Danes and others in the West. This is likely to lead to more constructive engagements with Muslims and others around the world on the many important issues involved. These include: secularism, religiosity, identity, modernity, press freedom and responsibility, and religious pluralism, tolerance and respect.

The last thing we need now is for an Iranian newspaper to sponsor a contest on Holocaust cartoons, or for websites in Europe to publish cartoons that slander Jews or ridicule the Holocaust. These are grotesque examples of precisely what we should not do. Arabs, Iranians, Muslims and all people who value faith and human decency must not stoop to the same sort of degenerate racism that some in Europe have practiced in their relaxed attitude to blaspheming Islamic dignity, identity and religious sanctity.

The appropriate antidote to Western Islamophobia and racism against Arabs and Muslims is not counter-racism, anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial. If some Iranians and Arabs want to fight back against the illegal and inhuman policies and assorted crimes of the state of Israel against Palestinians, I would suggest a better way would be to pick from the following options:

* Start a worldwide drive to support Palestinian universities under Israeli occupation.
* Promote a global support system for Palestinians in occupied Jerusalem.
* Mobilize the lawyers and judges of the world to challenge Israeli practices in credible courts of law.
* Build a thousand new nursery schools for Palestinian children.
* Launch a high-profile campaign for the whole world to engage peacefully with the newly democratically elected Palestinian government to be formed soon.
* Sponsor institutions that allow Christians, Muslims and Jews in Israel and Palestine to collectively discuss and manifest their shared moral and religious heritage, which affirms life and dignity, rather than death and insults.
* Start a serious international academic program that would study the parallels between the Israeli colonization and control of the occupied territories with the parallel Apartheid system that ultimately collapsed in South Africa.
* Demand diplomatic action to ensure free export lanes for Palestinian agricultural produce.
* Match a well-off family in the world with a needy Palestinian family in occupied lands or in Palestinian refugee camps, to ensure that every Palestinian boy and girl has enough money to complete secondary education, and has a chance to go to college or post-secondary vocational school.

We should respond to the inhumanity of the insulting cartoons and the ugly emotions behind them by affirming our commitment to life, truth, and positive human values.

Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.

Copyright ©2006 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global
—————-
Released: 14 February 2006
Word Count: 843
——————-
For rights and permissions, contact:

rights@agenceglobal.com, 1.336.686.9002 or 1.336.286.6606

BEIRUT — I had the opportunity 09 February to explore first-hand the implications of the victory of Hamas in last month’s Palestinian parliamentary elections. I went to talk to Hamas leaders at the Palestinian refugee camp of Burj al-Barajneh in Beirut, where poor, disenfranchised Palestinian refugees live in rather atrocious material conditions.

After two and a half hours of discussions among Hamas, other Palestinian parties and an Anglo-American visiting delegation, I now know better why Hamas swept the Palestinian elections. The human contact also reveals what the news does not convey: This exiled, marginalized, downtrodden and vulnerable refugee community walks today with its head held higher than any other group of people in the entire Middle East, because of their unique combination of self-confidence, perseverance, success and legitimacy. They are the only Arabs who enjoy an authentic mandate from their people, genuinely manifested through victory in two free elections at the municipal and national levels.

What does one learn from such encounters? The two most significant themes that emerge from discussions with Hamas officials, and from their many statements, are a commitment to national principles and a clear dose of political pragmatism. Both dimensions are important, and cannot be separated.

It is not very helpful to focus (as so many pro-Israeli American apologists do) mainly on Hamas’ theology or its 1987 founding charter, any more than one should deal with Israeli parties that base their claim to all of Palestine/Eretz Yisrael on the Book of Genesis account of God’s land patrimony to the Jewish people. Political theologians and collectors of historical ideologies, please go home for a while.

Now that Hamas will share or hold power, they are likely to persist in both their principled and pragmatic ways. They will assert rather than drop their existing principles related to domestic governance, resisting Israel and liberating the Israeli-occupied territories, and potentially coexisting with an Israeli state under certain conditions. It is foolhardy to expect Hamas to reverse its principles at the moment when it has achieved a historic victory precisely because it has adhered to them. At the same time, it will surely continue its three-year-old slow shift towards more pragmatism and realism, because it is now politically accountable to the entire Palestinian population, and to world public opinion. Incumbency means responsibility and accountability, which inevitably nurture practicality and reasonable compromises.

Here is where Hamas’ experience is instructive, and why it is so important to speak with them to understand how they are likely to behave. My sense from such discussions, along with 35 years of watching Islamists at work, is that they do make compromises and practical concessions. But they only do so on four conditions:

* They talk and compromise in a political context of negotiations between two equal parties;

* they give only when they get something of equal value in return;

* they respond emphatically to the consensus position of their national constituency; and,

* they do not compromise on what they identify as core national rights of equality, dignity, liberty and sovereignty.

One more vital point to remember: Hamas and Hizbullah are the only two Arab groups that have ever forced Israel’s fabled military to withdraw involuntarily from occupied Arab land (south Lebanon and Gaza). American presidents and other purveyors of fantasy are free to call this sort of unilateralism a “courageous initiative for peace”, as George Bush said of Ariel Sharon. The rest of the rational world calls this what it is: a retreat, and a tacit admission of defeat. Hamas will build on the policies that achieved this, not repudiate them

Hamas lives in the real world, not in fantasyland. It and its supporters are not so impressed with having tea in the White House. They are much more focused on bringing back a degree of personal dignity, communal self-respect, and national integrity to Palestinian life. They also know that the majority of Palestinians, other Arabs and world nations wish to coexist in negotiated peace with the state of Israel, if Israel in turn reciprocates the sentiment to the Palestinians and other Arabs whose lands it has occupied. How to reconcile these realities is a priority issue for them in the coming months.

I expect that Hamas will combine its legacy of both principles and pragmatism in slowly making important decisions on key issues in coming months. These will include sharing power in Palestine, reforming corrupt and mediocre national institutions, galvanizing an effective national Palestinian leadership representing all Palestinians in the world, negotiating peace with Israel while resisting its occupation, and fostering the development of a society that is not necessarily ruled by Islamic law.

A Hamas-led Palestinian government and the new Israeli government to be elected next month face a historic opportunity, if they are prepared to see each other as representing peoples and nations with equal rights. Hamas has reached this triumphant moment precisely because it has insisted on such equality, rather than pander to Israeli-American promises as other Palestinian leaders did without success.

Hamas can be pragmatic only because its resistance and consistent principles have brought it success. Understanding the dynamic relationship between these factors is the key to movement forward to a win-win situation for all, including Palestinians, Israelis and the slightly dazed denizens of fantasylands far away.

Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.

Copyright ©2006 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global
—————-
Released: 11 February 2006
Word Count: 876
——————-
For rights and permissions, contact:

rights@agenceglobal.com, 1.336.686.9002 or 1.336.286.6606

BEIRUT — The whole world has been surprised by the scope and intensity of angry crowds throughout the Islamic realm that are demonstrating against the offensive cartoons about the Prophet Mohammad that were published last year in a small, rightwing Danish newspaper. It is perhaps time that we stopped being surprised by a phenomenon that has become routine: the affirmation of Islamic identity as the dominant form of national self-assertion in developing societies whose citizens suffer major grievances against the quality of their own statehood and governance as well as against Western and Israeli policies.

The cartoons, including one depicting the prophet’s headdress as a bomb, are only the fuse that set off a combustible mixture of pressures and tensions anchored in a much wider array of problems. These include the cartoons themselves; provocative and arrogant European disdain for Muslim sensitivities about the Prophet Mohammad; attempts by some Islamist extremists and criminal-political elements to stir up troubles; the Europeans’ clear message that their values count more than the values of Muslims; and, a wider sense by many citizens of Islamic societies that the West in general seeks to weaken and subjugate the Muslim world.

The Danish cartoons only sparked some mild complaints when they first appeared last September. The current wave of intense protests was sparked when half a dozen other newspapers throughout Europe provocatively reprinted the cartoons last month. This was coupled with European political and press leaders flat out telling the Islamic world that Western freedom of press was a higher moral value and a greater political priority than Muslims’ concern that their leading prophet not be subjected to blasphemy and insult.

Clearly, some troublemakers in Europe and the Islamic world stirred up Muslims’ anger and provoked some of the destructive protests, especially burning embassies and offices in Damascus and Beirut. This is the political equivalent of football hooliganism in Europe — a small minority of unruly criminal thugs that preys on the legitimate sentiments of otherwise peaceful crowds that take to the streets in orderly if lively protests. It would be a huge mistake to focus mainly on the few violent political skinheads, and to ignore the meaning of the vast majority of hundreds of thousands of protestors who marched in earnest and in an orderly way.

This occurs at a time when Islamist political movements throughout the region are winning election after election. Islamist identity repeatedly triumphs where traditional ruling elites have had to open up and make space for others to contest political power democratically and peacefully, including in Arab states, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan and elsewhere. The most consistent source of Arab-Islamic angst in the past two centuries, Western colonialism, has now run up against the resistance of the single most consistent form of indigenous identity and anti-imperial opposition: cultural and political Islamism.

It is too simplistic and easy to categorize this as a clash of civilizations, a very Western perspective that explains political tensions primarily through the lens of cultural and values differences. Most Muslims (and non-Muslim Middle Easterners such as several million Christian Arabs) probably see the current tensions as a political battle, not a cultural one. This is not primarily an argument about freedom of press in Europe, much as our dashing European friends would like to believe it is. It is about Arab-Islamic societies’ desire to enjoy freedom from Western and Israeli subjugation, diplomatic double standards and predatory neo-colonial policies.

This is no mere clash of cultures. It is a new form of the colonial struggle that defined European-Arab/Asian relations in the 19th Century. The difference this time is that the natives in the south are not helpless and quiescent in the face of the West’s large guns, disdainful rhetoric, or insulting cartoons. Muslims, Arabs, Asians and others today are much more aware of the policies of Western states, concerned about their goals, angry about Western double standards, able to resist through the use of mass media, political, and other channels, and willing to stand up, fight back, and assert their right to live in freedom and dignity. The message from the Arab-Islamic heartland is that the 19th Century has officially ended.

Muslims have been deeply insulted by much of Europe’s behavior regarding the Danish cartoons, but not only the cartoons, because our concerns and fears are much wider and deeper than that. Many ordinary citizens in the Arab-Asian region see the European position on Iran’s nuclear industry and the victorious Hamas party in Palestine as moving closer to American-Israeli positions that grossly discriminate against Arabs or Muslims.

Coming after the American-led assault on Iraq, this explains why large majorities of people polled in Arab countries just three months ago believe that the main motives of American policies in the Middle East are “oil, protecting Israel, dominating the region, and weakening the Muslim world.”

Editorial cartoons by nature send a message by symbolizing much larger political and social issues. Similarly, the current protests by many Muslims should be understood as reflecting much deeper concerns than only the insulting, blasphemous cartoons in an obscure Danish newspaper.

Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.

Copyright ©2006 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global
—————-
Released: 08 February 2006
Word Count: 842
——————-
For rights and permissions, contact:

rights@agenceglobal.com, 1.336.686.9002 or 1.336.286.6606