Contributors – Page 4

Patrick Seale, “The Coming Obama-Netanyahu Duel”

November 13, 2012 - Jahan Salehi

Fresh from his electoral victory and preparing to embark in January on his second term, President Barack Obama should now be planning how to rein in Israel, halt and reverse its land- grab on the West Bank and bring to birth a Palestinian state. That is what the Arab and Muslim world is expecting of him — as well as every person of goodwill concerned for peace in the Middle East.

But can he do it? The obstacles are formidable. The United States itself is profoundly divided on the issue. It has become a country where Islamophobia is rampant. Powerful Jewish financial interests, lobbies and pundits in the media and the think-tanks will surely raise hell if Obama is seen to be departing ever so slightly from the consensus of an ‘unshakable’ U.S.-Israeli alliance. Great swathes of evangelicals, fervent Christian Zionists, remain committed to Israel’s exclusive ownership of the Holy Land. Above all, the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives is very much in the Israeli camp. Obama needs to work closely with Congress to seek compromises on urgent domestic issues, not least the level of the federal debt. Would it be politic in such circumstances for him to tackle the highly contentious Israel-Palestinian question?

In Israel, Binyamin Netanyahu’s Likud has formed an alliance with Yisrael Beiteinu, Avigdor Lieberman’s nationalist political party, to fight next January’s elections. Any government emerging from this hard-line grouping will be more determined than ever to press for a ‘Greater Israel’ while denying the Palestinians any prospect of statehood. As Israel’s peace camp languishes, fanatical forces are on the rise consisting of violent and unrestrained settlers, religious nationalists and various other species of racist, died-in-the-wool right-wingers. In 1995, Yitzhak Rabin — the last Israeli prime minister seriously to consider peace with the Palestinians — was murdered by a right-wing, ultra-Orthodox Jewish fanatic. What Israeli leader — indeed what American President — would dare run the same risk?

Great as they are, these are not the only barriers to a bold American drive for a fair Arab-Israeli settlement. Also restraining any American attempt to moderate Israeli policy are the deep inter-governmental and corporate ties forged over many years between the two countries, especially in the fields of defence and intelligence. In these key areas of national security, the United States has few secrets from Israel. In addition, there are the numerous pledges which Israel and its many American friends — from Henry Kissinger to Dennis Ross — have wrung out of subsequent American administrations, such as the pledge to guarantee Israel’s military superiority over all its neighbours, near and far, together with the promise never to make any move on the peace front without first consulting Israel.

In other words, any American President proposing to promote a fair and balanced peace in the Middle East will find himself bound hand and foot before he even sets forth on such a perilous venture.

And yet… and yet there is little doubt that Obama knows what needs to be done. If Israel’s settlement expansion is not checked and if the Palestinians do not get their state in Obama’s second term, the two-state solution must finally be declared dead, releasing a tsunami of hate, frustration and a thirst for revenge which will be difficult to control — directed as much against the United States as Israel. How long can Israel continue to occupy and gobble up the West Bank without facing a third Intifada and international condemnation? This past week provided yet another reminder of the dangerous Israeli-Gaza confrontation: The tit-for-tat air bombardments and rocket attacks left many dead and wounded — mainly, as usual, on the Palestinian side. How many more times can Israel invade Gaza to destroy ‘terrorists’ who dare defend themselves? When will Israel choose to make peace with its neighbours rather than always seek to subdue them by brute force?

This is by no means only a Middle Eastern problem. Vital American interests are at stake. The ‘unshakable’ alliance with Israel has left the United States vulnerable to Arab and Muslim anger in a vast stretch of territory from Afghanistan to Yemen. The United States has never fully considered why it was attacked on 9/11. The reasons were many: They included the callous abandonment of the mujaheddin once the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in 1987 — fighters whom the United States had itself recruited and armed; the brutal punishment of Iraq during and after the first Gulf war of 1991; more generally, the militarisation of American foreign policy. But that was not all. High on the list of Arab and Muslim grievances was Palestine, as Osama bin Laden himself declared. The unresolved Palestinian conflict remains a running sore fuelling hostility to the United States and eating away at its interests and reputation.

Obama knows that the current Islamic upsurge in the Arab world poses a major challenge to the U.S. presence and influence there. The only way the United States can restore its battered reputation is to broker an Arab-Israeli peace, with a Palestinian state at its very heart. That was the thrust behind Obama’s Cairo speech of June 2009. He was defeated by Netanyahu, but he must surely try again, whatever the immense difficulties.

Israel has identified Iran as its most dangerous enemy. But Iran’s anti-Israeli militancy would be quieted down overnight if Israel were to make an honourable peace with the Palestinians. If Obama wants a ‘win-win’ deal with Iran, which will end the threat of nuclear proliferation and restore America’s relations with Tehran after thirty years of senseless hostility, the way to get there is by an Israeli-Palestinian settlement.

Why are Israel and Iran at daggers’ drawn? Primarily, because of Israel’s pitiless repression of the Palestinians, for whom Iranians, like most Muslims, have great sympathy. There are, of course, other reasons for their mutual hostility. Iran is under constant threat of Israeli attack and is the butt of violent Israeli denunciation. Israel, in turn, has faced offensive Iranian rhetoric. Yet another crucial reason is that Israel conceives of its national security in terms of weakening — or preferably destroying — any neighbour which seems, however remotely, to present a threat. Iraq was Israel’s first target, which it persuaded the United States to destroy. Now it is Iran’s turn to face an Israeli-incited American onslaught. Syria, Iran’s ally, is self-destructing. But once its destruction is complete, Israel will no doubt turn its lethal attention once more to Hamas in Gaza and Hizballah in Lebanon, who refuse to submit and lie down. Will Saudi Arabia and the Gulf be the next targets of Israeli aggression?

Obama has many pressing foreign policy problems including the ‘pivot’ of American military power to the Far East to contain the rising challenge from China. But he cannot afford to neglect the Arab and Muslim world. That is where the United States faces an immediate challenge, even more pressing than that of China. Obama’s difficult but essential task in his second term will be to bring peace to the tormented Middle East. The only way to do so is to place America above the fray, able to deal with all the various warring parties without prejudice or bias.

Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East. His latest book is The Struggle for Arab Independence: Riad el-Solh and the Makers of the Modern Middle East (Cambridge University Press).

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Released: 13 November 2012
Word Count: 1,186
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Patrick Seale, “Why the Middle East Is in Torment”

November 6, 2012 - Jahan Salehi

The Middle East is plagued by death, destruction and population displacements. A dozen different conflicts are raging. The whole region has rarely been in such torment.

In Syria, a bitter fratricidal war, largely fuelled by outsiders, threatens to reduce the country to a smouldering ruin, while consigning tens of thousands to the grave. Its neighbours are suffering from the spill-over. Turkey is struggling with a flood of Syrian refugees and a revival of Kurdish militancy. Lebanon and Jordan have been dangerously destabilised, and fear the worst.

Iraq, once a powerful Arab state, was destroyed and dismembered by America’s invasion and brutal ten-year occupation. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were killed or wounded and millions displaced. Material damage was enormous. The once united country was transformed into a far weaker federal state by the creation of an autonomous Kurdish enclave in the north. Although Iraq’s oil industry is now recovering, its society and its politics remain highly unstable.

Just as America’s invasion in 2003 was launched on the fraudulent claim that Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction, so the United States and its allies are now waging an undeclared war against Iran — a war of crippling sanctions, cyber-subversion and assassinations. The alleged aim is to force Iran to give up its development of nuclear weapons — although there is no credible evidence that Iran is doing any such thing. The real aim would seem to be ‘regime change’ in Tehran. A military attack on Iran in the New Year cannot be excluded.

After eleven years of war in Afghanistan, the United States and its allies have failed to stabilise the country, let alone devise a credible exit strategy. Their planned departure in 2014 seems likely to turn into a humiliating scuttle, while plunging the country into an even more murderous civil war. Meanwhile, Egypt and Tunisia struggle to tame their Salafists, while armed gangs in Libya vie for supremacy.

In Mali, a war is in preparation to expel militant Islamic groups which have captured the northern part of the country and threaten the stability of the whole Sahel. In Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and soon possibly in Mali as well, U.S. ‘targeted killings’ of alleged Islamic terrorists by means of pilotless drones also kill civilians and terrorise peaceful communities, driving relations between the United States and the Muslim world to new depths of misunderstanding and hostility.

Meanwhile, unchecked by either the Arab states or the Western powers, Israel continues its relentless seizure of Palestinian territory, finally burying any hope of a two-state solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and condemning itself to generations of future conflict with the Arab and Muslim world.

How has all this come about? What false moves and foolhardy decisions have brought the region to this lamentable state? In my personal opinion, the following are some of the main reasons.

• As everyone knows, America’s invasion of Iraq triggered a civil war between the Sunni minority and the Shia majority, inflaming antagonisms between these two Muslim communities right across the region. The war transformed Iraq’s regional role. Instead of acting as a counterweight to Iran — which had long been Iraq’s traditional role — Iraq under Shia leadership has become Iran’s ally.

This has overturned the balance of power in the Gulf region to the alarm of Saudi Arabia and its allies in the Gulf Cooperation Council. Fear that Iran has ambitions to dominate the Gulf region has shaped the thinking and the regional policy of Saudi Arabia and some of its GCC partners. The fear may not be wholly justified, but it is real nevertheless.

• By removing Egypt, the most powerful Arab country, from the Arab military line-up, the Egypt-Israel peace treaty of 1979 eliminated any possibility of a balance of power between Israel and its Arab neighbours. It gave Israel the freedom to attack its neighbours with impunity and fuelled its ambition for regional dominance. One need only recall Israel’s strike on Iraq’s Osirak nuclear facility in1981 and its invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Many more aggressions were to follow. In Israel itself, the rise of right-wing and ultra-religious forces hardened the country’s determination to expand its land area and prevent any expression of Palestinian statehood, while maintaining Israel’s military supremacy over the entire Greater Middle East.

• Israel’s belligerent and expansionist policy has largely been made possible by the considerable influence of American Jews on American politics. The U.S. Congress seems to have succumbed to AIPAC, the main Jewish lobby. At the same time, AIPAC’s sister organisation, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, managed to place its members in key posts in successive American administrations and generally shape American policy towards the region. Pro-Israeli neo-conservatives pushed the United States into war against Iraq — because Saddam Hussein was seen as a potential threat to Israel — and are now echoing the call of Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for war against Iran. Against this background, it is not altogether surprising that the United States has been unable to halt Israel’s land-grab of Palestinian territory, let alone persuade it to make peace with the Palestinians and the rest of the Arab world.

• Yet another factor which helps explain the present disastrous situation is the collapse of Arab nationalism and its replacement by the rise of militant Islam. Arab leaders failed to coordinate their efforts in support of joint policies. Equally, they failed in their dealings with Western powers to use their considerable financial and oil and gas resources in support of Arab causes. The Arab League, a victim of inter-Arab quarrels, remains something of a broken reed.

What needs to be done? What are the key challenges facing the leading Arab states as well as the new American Administration? A great deal will hang on the way the United States adapts to its changing position in the world. Once the world’s dominant power, it must now come to terms with a new multi-polar international system. America’s relative decline (largely brought about by its catastrophic wars and the misbehaviour of its deregulated financial institutions) has been matched by the rapid rise of China and a resurgent Russia.

The challenges are daunting. First, an urgent effort needs to be made to resolve the Arab-Israel conflict and bring to birth a Palestinian state. Nothing could better stabilise the region. Secondly, Arab leaders should work for a Sunni-Shia reconciliation, which must also require an entente with Iran. Iran should be the Arabs’ partner, not its enemy. The United States, in turn, should seek to negotiate a ‘win-win’ deal with Tehran — a perfectly feasible outcome which would at a stroke remove a major source of dangerous tension. Finally, the United States, the Arab states and the rest of the world should unite in finding a solution to the rise of Islamic violence. This must surely be done by negotiation and re-education — and by a change of state policies — rather than by force.

Is there even the slightest hope that any of this will be accomplished?

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Released: 06 November 2012
Word Count: 1,154
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Patrick Seale, “Time for National Reconciliation in Syria”

October 30, 2012 - Jahan Salehi

The swift collapse of Lakhdar Brahimi’s Syrian ceasefire is a grave disappointment for all those — such as myself — who had hoped that the time had come to stop the killing and start the difficult process of national reconciliation. But all is not lost.

Although massive obstacles remain, there are reasons to believe that Syria — a state at the very heart of the Arab political system — can still be saved from destruction and national disintegration. Brahimi, the UN and Arab League peace mediator, has certainly not given up. He remains resolved to bring the Asad regime and its opponents to the negotiating table before the whole country is reduced to rubble.

What are the obstacles to a peaceful settlement? First and foremost are the profound wounds which twenty months of savage conflict have inflicted on Syrian society. The deep mistrust, ferocious hate and thirst for revenge aroused on both sides by the pitiless fighting could take years to dispel. There is as yet no readiness for reconciliation on either side.

Another major obstacle to reconciliation is the ever greater role in the rebellion of extremist Islamist groups, such as Jabhat al-Nusra and others. These groups have no interest whatsoever in a ceasefire, still less in a negotiation with the regime. Their objective is to destroy the secular Ba‘thist state and replace it with a strict Islamic one.

Jabhat al-Nusra, described by the Swedish scholar Aron Lund as a spinoff from an Iraqi al-Qaida faction, has specialised in suicide bombings in Syria and other acts of terrorism. It is widely considered responsible for exploding a bomb in Damascus on the first day of Eid al-Adha, which effectively sabotaged Brahimi’s ceasefire. The regime had agreed to the ceasefire but had reserved the right to fight back if attacked — which it promptly did. The sad truth is that just as hard-line Islamists will not deal with the regime, so the regime will not deal with them — except with guns and bombs. The gulf between them will not easily be bridged.

Nevertheless, there are reasons for believing that negotiations must eventually take place. Most of the external actors, whichever side they are on, are increasingly worried at the prospect of regional destabilisation. The violence has already spilled over into Lebanon, is threatening Jordan, has added to Iraq’s very considerable woes, and has given Turkey an acute headache as it struggles to cope with a resurgence of Kurdish militancy as well as with a massive influx of Syrian refugees. In Ankara, voices are being raised criticising Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan for his violent and perhaps over-hasty condemnation of the Syrian regime. The latest statements coming out of Turkey suggest a softening of Erdogan’s position. More particularly, Turkey no longer seems to insist that President Bashar al-Asad quit the scene before a negotiation can take place.

The notion is also taking root in both Syrian camps that there can be no military solution to this conflict — in other words, that neither side can hope to score an outright victory. The regime has been destabilised but not toppled. The Syrian state remains more or less intact, shored up by its army and officer corps, by its powerful security services, by Ba‘th Party networks across the country, by an army of still largely loyal civil servants, by the support of minorities and of part at least of the silent majority, which does not approve of the regime but fears what might come after it.

The rebels had expected an external military intervention in their favour on the Libyan model, but have been bitterly disappointed. No one wants to intervene militarily in Syria — not the United States, nor Turkey, nor the European states, still less the Arab states. But without an external intervention the rebels cannot hope to defeat the Syrian army. The rebels would be mistaken to place their hopes in a Mitt Romney presidency in the United States. Romney is even more hostile than President Barack Obama to militant Islam, and is equally opposed to an American military intervention.

Indeed, the Syrian opposition should note that the U.S. has started to deny vehemently that it is coordinating military deliveries to the rebels or has supplied them, as some reports have claimed, with Stinger anti-aircraft missiles. Washington is worried at the prospect of Syria turning into another Afghanistan and is aghast at the thought that it might be seen to be fighting on the same side as Al-Qaida!

From the start the external onslaught on Syria has been tied to the parallel onslaught on Iran. Israel has been pushing the United States to bring down the regime in Tehran in much the same way as it pushed the U.S. to bring down Saddam Hussein in Iraq in 2003. Obama has managed to resist Israel’s war-mongering, but only by imposing unprecedented sanctions on the Islamic Republic. Although these are now crippling the economy and inflicting pain on the population the regime still appears to be reasonably solid. In 2003, Britain was misguided enough to join the U.S. in the invasion of Iraq. It has no wish to make the same mistake again. On the basis of legal advice that an attack on Iran would be unlawful, it has informed the U.S. that it will not provide access to its basis in Cyprus and Diego Garcia in the event of any such attack.

One way and another, the danger of a military attack on Iran has receded. There have even been reports that the United States and Iran have engaged in secret bilateral exchanges, which raise the prospect of more ambitious negotiations after the American elections — if, that is, Obama is re-elected. Any breakthrough of that nature would be good news for a negotiated settlement in Syria.

Two other important factors need to be noted. Egypt led by President Muhammad Morsi has reappeared on the world stage after decades of subservience to the United States and Israel. Morsi is striving to put together a regional contact group to promote a negotiated transition of power in Damascus. Perhaps even more significant is the increasingly assertive role of Russia in the Syrian crisis. It has denounced the West for its hypocrisy in calling for a ceasefire while arming the rebels and it has offered to host negotiations in Moscow.

The crisis has show that the United States, long the dominant external power in the Middle East, can no longer impose its will unilaterally on the region. It must take account of the wishes and interests of others, Russia prominent among them.

But, at the end of the day, it is up to the Syrians themselves to decide when the killing has to stop. It is Syrians who are dying; it is their homes, factories, schools and hospitals which are being shattered; it is the future of their country as a key regional player standing up for Arab interests against the ambitions of Israel and the Unites States which is being gravely compromised. It is surely time for Syrians to recognise that blind hate must be replaced by dialogue, mutual concessions and an attempt, however difficult, at reconciliation.

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Released: 30 October 2012
Word Count: 1,185
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Patrick Seale, “Is a Changed U.S. Policy Possible in the Middle East?”

October 24, 2012 - Jahan Salehi

Who will emerge victorious on November 6? Will it be the sitting President Barack Obama or his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney? In no part of the world will the outcome of the U.S. presidential election be awaited with greater anxiety than in the Middle East. Last Monday’s foreign policy debate between the two contestants was not reassuring. It did not give Arabs and Muslims any reason to believe that their fundamental problems would be addressed by whoever occupies the White House over the next four years.

The United States has for decades been the dominant external power in the Middle East, having replaced Britain and France in that role after the Second World War, and seen off the Russians after the collapse of the Soviet Empire. Yet America today is being challenged as never before. Local populations are rebelling against its policies — and with some justice. Instead of being above the fray, mediating conflicts as an honest broker, and helping spread peace and prosperity, the United States has waged hugely destructive wars, killed and wounded great numbers of innocent people, imposed punishing sanctions on alleged enemies, and — above all — put Israel at the very centre of its Middle East policies.

One of the clearest messages of the Islamic wave now unfurling across the region is that Arabs and Muslims have lost confidence in the United States. They do not want to be interfered with or bossed around by the U. S. any more, still less to be on the receiving end of America’s militarized foreign policy. This is the message coming from Cairo to Baghdad, from Gaza to Kabul, from south Beirut to Tehran, from Timbuktu to San‘a. Never has the United States been so resented and disliked — even fervently hated.

Can the United States restore its tarnished reputation? Can it change course? Any rehabilitation would require a radical revision of current policies, of which there is no sign. Few Arabs have any hope in Mitt Romney. When he declared, as he did last Monday, that “This nation is the hope of the earth,” many Arabs and Muslims must surely have burst into incredulous laughter. “If I‘m President,” he said, “America will be very strong!” That is indeed the problem the Middle East faces. Romney’s blind devotion to Israel — his repeated pledge that “There must be no daylight between the United States and Israel” — and his arrogant bluster about America’s power arouse nothing but acute anxiety. He is definitely not the man the region wants to see in the White House.

But is Obama any better? His 2009 Cairo speech, in which he pleaded for a “new beginning” with the Arab world, was soon replaced by bitter disillusion when he collapsed before Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Instead of pursuing the quest for a fair resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he has tolerated Israel’s continuing land-grab of Palestinian territory and has blocked the Palestinians’ attempt to win recognition of their state at the UN. Will he do better if re-elected? Nothing is less certain.

Although Obama has managed to extricate the United States from Iraq, he has so far failed to negotiate an honourable exit from the unwinnable Afghan war. Worse still, he has outdone his predecessor, the belligerent George W. Bush, by greatly increasing targeted killings of alleged militants by U.S. drones in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and, soon perhaps, in the Sahel. There is no more effective way to create ‘terrorists’ and inflame anti-American sentiment.

Why is the United States so wedded to being the military bully in the Middle East? The usual answer is that it wishes to control the region’s vast oil and gas resources. But experts say that shale gas is freeing the United States from dependence on Middle East oil. In any event, the figures show that last year the Middle East exported 72% of its crude to Asia — mainly to China, India, Japan and Singapore — rather than to the United States. None of these countries sees the need for military bases in the Middle East.

America’s concern to protect Israel is often given as another reason for America’s overwhelming military presence in the region. At this very moment, the United States is conducting a three-week missile-defence drill with Israel, described as “the largest exercise in the history” of their long relationship, with the aim of strengthening Israel’s comprehensive air defences.

Protecting Israel is one thing; guaranteeing its military supremacy is quite another. This is the meaning of America’s pledge to guarantee Israel’s Qualitative Military Edge (QME) — that is to say its ability to defeat any combination of its neighbours. The pro-Israeli lobby has managed to get this guarantee written into U.S. law. The U.S. tolerates, indeed assists, Israel in its attempts to destroy resistance movements like Hamas and Hizballah — movements the United States portrays as terrorists — whose crime has been to seek to protect their respective populations in Gaza and Lebanon from Israeli attack. At the same time, the United States is doing its best to bring down the Tehran-Damascus-Hizballah “resistance axis” which has tried to hold Israeli power in check in the Levant. Much of America’s current campaign to bring Iran to its knees — the unprecedented sanctions against its oil industry and central bank, the cyber-attacks against its industrial installations — seems to be driven by a wish to destroy any potential threat to Israeli dominance.

No one is allowed to relieve the besieged population of Gaza. When an unarmed Turkish ship, the Mavi Marmari, carrying peace activists, tried to breach the cruel Gaza blockade, it was attacked by Israeli commandos in international waters. Nine Turks were killed, including one activist of duel U.S.-Turkish nationality. Turkey is waiting in vain for an Israeli apology. Its once warm relations with Israel have cooled to freezing point. The United States criticised the flotilla, not Israel. The last thing the proud Turkish nation will do is acknowledge Israeli dominance.

Egypt, now under Muslim Brother leadership, is seething at the restraints its American-brokered 1979 peace treaty with Israel has put on its freedom of action in Sinai and in Gaza. Nevertheless, President Mohamed Morsi has vowed not to let the Palestine cause go by default.

Henry Kissinger, who presided over U.S. foreign policy from 1969 to 1977, used to say that the closer the United States drew to Israel, the more the Arabs would come running to Washington. This cynical view is now being challenged by the populations of the region, if not yet by all their leaders.

Instead of propping up Israel against the entire Middle East — and destroying any state or resistance movement daring to defend itself against Israeli power — the United States might be wiser to encourage the emergence of a balance of power between Israel and its neighbours. History proves that a balance of power keeps the peace, whereas an imbalance causes war, because the stronger party will always seek to impose its will by force.

This could be something the next U.S. President might care to consider if he is concerned to restore America’s influence and authority in the turbulent Middle East.

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Released: 24 October 2012
Word Count: 1,179
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Patrick Seale, “The Need to Defuse the Gaza Time-Bomb”

October 18, 2012 - Jahan Salehi

One of the most urgent tasks for the international community in 2013 must surely be to lift Israel’s cruel siege of Gaza — now entering its sixth year — and end the misguided boycott of its Hamas government. There is hardly a more flagrant example of injustice in the world today than the situation of the 1.6 million inhabitants of this hugely over-crowded Strip — many of them refugees driven out of Palestine by the new Israeli state in 1947-48. They must be allowed to live a normal life — to travel, to manufacture, to trade, to educate their children — free from the constant danger of Israeli air strikes.

French scholar Jean-Pierre Filiu, a professor at the prestigious Institute of Political Science in Paris, has published an important 400-page history of Gaza, from ancient times to the disturbed present. His Histoire de Gaza (Editions Fayard, Paris, 2012) is the most comprehensive ever written and should be required reading for all those concerned with the long agony of the Palestinians in their struggle for statehood.

It is impossible in a short article to do justice to Filiu’s sweeping narrative, meticulous research and detailed findings, but it is perhaps worth pointing out that he lays blame for the as yet unresolved and indeed worsening crisis on three main actors: first and foremost on Israel, concerned only with its own security and brutally indifferent to Palestinian life; secondly, on Fatah and Hamas, those old rivals, still locked in a fratricidal struggle as if unaware that their national cause is slipping away before their eyes; and thirdly, on the humanitarian aid provided by the international community which has kept Gaza’s population alive but has also, paradoxically, prevented Gaza’s economic development and its efforts at self-sufficiency.

Statistics about Gaza make grim reading. In the five years, June 2007 to June 2012, nearly 2,300 Palestinians were killed and 7,700 injured by Israeli forces, two thirds of them during the murderous ‘Cast Lead’ offensive of winter 2008-9. Over a quarter of Palestinian fatalities were women and children. In the same period, 37 Israelis were killed and 380 injured in attacks from Gaza, 60 % of them military personnel. Some 35% of Gaza’s farmland and 85% of its fishing waters are totally or partially inaccessible due to Israel’s siege.

Projections are equally gloomy. The UN has warned that living conditions in the Strip could become unbearable by 2020 — a mere seven years away. The Gaza population is expected to reach 2.1 million by then — a density of more than 5,800 people per square kilometre — putting an intolerable strain on supplies of drinking water and electricity. Over 90% of the water from the Gaza aquifer is unsafe for human consumption without treatment. Damage to the aquifer, the major water source, is in imminent danger of becoming irreversible. Some 90 million litres of untreated and partially treated sewage are dumped in the sea each day. The UN says there will be a demand by 2020 for 440 additional schools — 85% of schools already run on double shifts — as well as 800 hospital beds and more than 1,000 doctors.

When Hamas won the Palestinian legislative elections in January 2006, Israel closed the Erez terminal to Gazan labourers, who had made up some 70% of the Strip’s work force. When the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was captured by Palestinian militants, Israel shut down the Karni terminal, the main crossing for goods, and prevented the use of the Rafah terminal for passenger traffic. And when Hamas seized control of the Strip from Fatah in June 2007, Egypt, in turn, shut the Rafah terminal. In January 2008, having already cut food supplies in half, Israel announced a total blockade on fuel to Gaza by both land and sea. Gazans abandoned cars for donkeys. As the siege intensified, employment in Gaza manufacturing fell from 35,000 in 2006 to 860 by mid-2008.

With no electricity, no food and no water coming from outside, the Gazans built clandestine tunnels to Egypt. From a few dozen in 2005, the number of tunnels grew to at least 500 by 2008, and to some 1,500 today, becoming Gaza’s primary source of imports. But the cost in lives has been heavy. Since 2007, at least 172 Palestinian civilians, most of them child workers, have been killed in the tunnels, and 318 injured. For the latest information on Gaza’s predicament, I would recommend two remarkable articles in the Summer 2012 issue of theJournal of Palestine Studies: Nicolas Pelham’s Gaza’s Tunnel Phenomenon: the Unintended Dynamics of Israel’s Siege, and The Politics of International Aid to the Gaza Strip by Tamer Qarmout and Daniel Béland.

What is to be done about this scandalous situation? This coming year will either see Barack Obama back in the White House or his place taken by his Republican rival, Mitt Romney. One or the other will need to address the simmering Arab-Israeli conflict, which erupts periodically into violence, poisoning relations between the West and the Arab and Muslim world. As Jean-Pierre Filiu says in his final words, Gaza, “the womb of the fedayin and the cradle of theintifada,” lies at the heart of Palestinian nation-building. “Only in Gaza will peace between Israel and Palestine take on sense and substance…”

Some hope for a breakthrough lies in the coming to power of Egypt’s new President Muhammad Morsi, a leader who has already given proof of his independence and resolve. Speaking in Turkey on 15 October, Morsi pledged to keep open the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt. “Egyptians,” he declared, “can never stand by helplessly when they see the people of Gaza under siege.” There is talk of opening the Rafah crossing to two-way trade and establishing a free-trade zone straddling the border. But, for the moment, this remains little more than a project as Morsi has to balance his pledge to the Palestinians with his concern about security in Sinai, as well as with his need to avoid putting Egypt’s delicate relationship with Israel under too great strain.

Muhammad al-Baradei, an unsuccessful Egyptian presidential candidate and former director — general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, used to say that Mubarak’s collusion with Israel in enforcing the siege was a stain on the forehead of every Egyptian, indeed of every Arab. In truth it is a stain on the conscience of the international community which has allowed Israel’s blockade to continue unchallenged and unpunished.

Israel is due to hold elections next January, which Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu is widely expected to win. A fresh parliamentary mandate would give him freedom to break the stalemate of the past. It would provide a unique opportunity to free Israel from the burden of hate and guarantee its long-term future by making peace with the Palestinians — and with the entire Arab world. By demonstrating real statesmanship, Netanyahu has the chance to win a place in history next to that of the founders of the Jewish state.

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Released: 18 October 2012
Word Count: 1,151
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Patrick Seale, “Playing with Fire in Iran”

October 11, 2012 - Jahan Salehi

William Hague, Laurent Fabius and Guido Westerwelle, foreign ministers of the United Kingdom, France and Germany, are playing with fire in Iran. At the next meeting of the EU Foreign Affairs Council on 15 October, they are planning to seek agreement from foreign ministers of all member states on a new tough package of sanctions against Iran. They want the European Union to tighten still further the embargo on Iran’s oil exports; prohibit all financial transactions with Iranian banks; take joint measures to prevent Iran from circumventing restrictions on its shipping operations; and ban export to Iran of any materials which might conceivably be used for its nuclear programme.

In other words, they are planning to ratchet up still further the severe economic warfare already being waged by the United States and its allies against Tehran, which has brought painful hardship to the Iranian population in the form of hyper-inflation, galloping prices and a collapsing currency.

The calculation the three Western foreign ministers appear to have made is that, once its economy faces total collapse, Iran will meekly submit to Western — and Israeli — demands to dismantle its nuclear industry altogether. They may well be mistaken.

Why are these leading European powers pursuing this course? What has Iran done to them to merit such punishment? It would seem that they believe Iran is seeking to join the exclusive nuclear weapons club. There is, however, no convincing evidence that this is indeed Iran’s ambition. On the contrary, Iran has repeatedly declared that it is not seeking to acquire nuclear weapons and its supreme guide, Ayatollah Khamenei, has issued a fatwa, or Islamic ruling, against any such acquisition. All Western and Israeli intelligence agencies confirm that Tehran has, as yet, made no decision to build such weapons — although, in view of Israel’s relentless threats, it would not be surprising if Iran were looking for means to protect itself from any such attack.

Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has repeatedly stated — most recently at a press conference in New York last month during the annual meeting of the UN General Assembly — that Iran was ready to give up enriching uranium to 20% — a first and necessary step towards enriching uranium to over 90% for atom bomb manufacture — if it were guaranteed supplies for the Tehran research reactor which makes material for medical purposes. The Iranian President has made this pledge on several previous occasions, but the Western powers and Israel seem not to have heard him — or rather they have not wished to hear him — which raises the suspicion that their real objective is not simply to force Iran to give up enriching uranium to a high level but rather to end all uranium enrichment in Iran and, better still, to overthrow the clerical regime of the Ayatollahs.

Iran is a proud country of some 70 million people. Its history and civilisation stretch back thousands of years. Its population is fiercely patriotic, as was demonstrated during the bitter eight-year Iraq-Iran war. Iranians have not forgotten that in 1953, the intelligence services of Britain and the United States mounted a coup which overthrew the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq, because he had dared wrest Iran’s oil industry out of the hands of Britain’s Anglo-Persian Oil Company (later BP). Much of Iran’s historic hostility to the United States and Britain dates back to that arrogant imperial intervention in Iran’s internal affairs. Mossadeq spent three years in jail, and was kept under house arrest until his death in 1967. For most Iranians, he remains a great nationalist hero.

One of the reasons the Shah was toppled in 1979 was because he was seen to be subservient to the West, and especially to Britain and the United States. The Islamic Republic, which emerged after that revolution, puts great value on Iran’s sovereignty and independence. It wants Iran to be treated with the respect it deserves as a major regional power. It has hailed the mastery of the uranium fuel cycle as a triumph for Iranian modernity and scientific progress. In the words of the Iranian political scientist Homeira Moshirzadeh, “Iran’s nuclear policy has become a matter of identity.” No country will willingly or easily give up its hard-won identity.

Does Iran pose a threat to Israel and the world, as Israel and its propagandists maintain? There is certainly no evidence that it does so at present. But if brought to its knees by the West’s crippling sanctions — if pushed to the limit — Iran could well hit back in one form or another, triggering a regional war of unpredictable consequences. It is easy to see how this could be the disastrous outcome of America’s current anti-Iran campaign, driven by Israel and its American lobbyists. Instead of acting as a brake on such adventurism, the Europeans — notably Hague, Fabius and Westerwalle — are adding fuel to the fire, as if unaware that they are leading their countries into just such an historic blunder as the overthrow of Mossadeq 59 years ago.

Discussing in Foreign Policy magazine last January the reasons for America’s current massive military deployments against China, Clyde Prestowitz wrote: The U.S. “presumes a threat where none exists but where the presumption could become a self-fulfilling prophesy.” One could say the same about American and Israeli policy towards Iran. Rarely in modern times have we witnessed such political folly.

The reckless undeclared war against Iran brings to mind the disastrous Suez War of 1956 when Britain, France and Israel plotted to overthrow the Egyptian ruler, Gamal Abd al-Nasser, only to be disciplined like naughty schoolboys by the then American President Dwight Eisenhower. The Suez debacle brought Britain’s dominance of the Middle East to an end.

Closer to our own time, the undeclared war on Iran bears an alarming resemblance to the propaganda campaign which preceded the catastrophic invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, unleashed by U.S. President George Bush and Britain’s then-Prime Minister Tony Blair on the basis of phoney intelligence fabricated by America’s pro-Israeli neocons. Just as Israel and its friends pushed America and Britain into war against Iraq, so — even more shamelessly — Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has been straining every nerve to push America into war against Iran.

There is no mystery in understanding Israel’s motives: It wishes to dominate the region militarily and has recruited the United States to destroy any rival which might challenge its supremacy.

Will America’s next president be enough of a statesman to reach a negotiated compromise with Iran? Will he be prepared to recognise Iran’s legitimate right under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to enrich uranium to low levels for peaceful purposes such as electricity generation? Will he be brave enough to lift sanctions on Iran, which would mean challenging America’s ignorant, venal, brain-washed pro-Israeli Congress? Will he be strong enough to hold Israeli hawks at bay, as well as the slavish neocons?

These will be some of the challenges awaiting Barack Obama if he is re-elected next month — or possibly, heaven forbid, Mitt Romney!

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Released: 11 October 2012
Word Count: 1,164
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Patrick Seale, “Eight Dream Solutions to Middle East Conflicts”

October 5, 2012 - Jahan Salehi

This year’s session of the UN General Assembly in New York was a fiasco. Not only did it illustrate the way great power rivalries had paralysed the international organisation, but it was also marked by misleading, misguided — and sometimes simply comic — interventions by several world leaders.

For example, President François Hollande declared that France was ready to recognise a Syrian government to replace the regime of President Bashar al-Asad — although no such government seems even dimly in prospect. Meanwhile, in blatant contravention of international law, Israel’s Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu continued his campaign for a pre-emptive war against Iran — a country he fears might challenge Israel’s nuclear monopoly and put a check to its aggressions against its neighbours. The child’s cartoon of a bomb which Netanyahu displayed to make his case of an imminent Iranian threat aroused international hilarity as well as serious doubts about his sanity.

The Emir of Qatar, Shaikh Hamad, called for an Arab military intervention to put an end to the fighting in Syria, as if unaware that there was no will or capability among the Arab states to engage in such a fratricidal action. In any event, Egypt’s President Muhammad Morsi promptly shot down the Emir’s suggestion by rejecting any military intervention in Syria.

U.S. President Barack Obama did not do much better. Instead of putting American power, and his undoubted eloquence, to work in resolving problems and conflicts — such as the on-going catastrophic war in Afghanistan, the poisonous Arab-Israeli conflict, the cruel and dangerous sanctions against Iran, the Muslim rage at American policies — he contented himself with hollow rhetoric, including such gems as that Americans had “fought and died around the globe to protect the right of people to express their view.” Tell that to the oppressed and besieged Palestinians, to the tens of thousands of impoverished and displaced Iraqis, still mourning their dead, to the Afghan, Pakistani and Yemen villagers slaughtered daily by American drones.

Just imagine the world reaction if, instead of these inanities, the following dramatic events had occurred:

Imagine the cheers if Obama had announced that, after prolonged secret talks in Delhi, American and Taliban representatives had agreed to a ceasefire in Afghanistan and to the formation of a transitional national unity government pledged to bring peace at last to the war-torn country and oversee the departure of American troops.

Imagine the prolonged applause if he had announced that, if he were re-elected in November, he would put an end to the brutal — and wholly counter-productive – “war on terror,” and, as an immediate measure to protect innocent civilians, he was grounding all U.S. drones and discontinuing their missile strikes on alleged terrorists.

Imagine the excitement if he had announced a plan to phase out U.S. bases in the Gulf region and had instructed the U.S. Navy to revert instead to “over the horizon” deployments.

Imagine the relief and jubilation if he had gone on to declare that he would be ready, on re-election, to engage in comprehensive talks with Iran, in order to resolve all differences between them. The proposed guidelines for the talks would be an agreement by Iran to end all enrichment of uranium above 3.5% under strict international supervision in exchange for American guarantees of Iran’s security against military attack or subversion, the lifting of sanctions and the restoration of diplomatic relations between Tehran and Washington, thus putting an end to more than thirty years of hostility and undeclared war.

Imagine if, in the wings of the UN General Assembly, leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council and Iran had initiated a strategic dialogue aimed at concluding a pact of non-aggression and of non-interference in each other’s internal affairs, as a first step towards integrating the Islamic Republic into the security architecture of the Gulf.

Imagine if King Abdallah bin Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia and President Morsi of Egypt had issued a joint appeal to senior Sunni and Shia ulema of all persuasions and schools to attend a conference in Mecca aimed at putting an end to mutual demonization and abuse; at bridging the sectarian divide, and at uniting all Muslims against the enemies of Islam.

Imagine if Prime Minister Netanyahu had put away his crude cartoon and had instead declared that, after long reflection and much heart-searching, he had concluded that his dream of a Greater Israel was unrealisable. Instead, his great and overriding ambition was to ensure Israel’s future by making peace with the Palestinians and with the entire Arab world. Accordingly, he called on Arab leaders to appoint ministerial delegates to meet with their Israeli opposite numbers at a neutral venue such as Oslo to plan the immediate implementation of the Arab Peace Initiative, including the creation of Palestinian State.

Imagine if the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey and Iran were to issue a solemn joint declaration calling on the Syrian government and on leading opposition factions to end all fighting by 15 October, pull armed forces back from towns and villages, and send delegates to a peace conference at Medina. At the same time, Saudi Arabia and Qatar declared their readiness to create a joint fund of $15 billion to rebuild Syria, create jobs for the unemployed, and re-launch the economy once free and fair elections had been held and a national unity government had been formed.

Needless to say, it was no surprise that these dramatic developments in New York aroused intense international interest. On hearing the various statements, declarations and pledges, delegates attending the UN General Assembly and the horde of journalists covering the event were further astonished and overjoyed to see Barack Obama embrace Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov gallantly kiss the hand of Hilary Clinton, the U.S. Secretary of State; Israel’s Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu force himself to give Mahmud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority, a very brief and rather lukewarm hug; the Emir of Qatar exchange friendly salutations with the Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallim; and Egypt’s President Muhammad Morsi win long and fervent applause from all sides for his emerging role as an indispensable peace-maker on the Middle East scene.

Dear readers, dream on!

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Released: 05 October 2012
Word Count: 1,022
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Patrick Seale, “Syria’s Long War”

September 28, 2012 - Jahan Salehi

The pitiless, vengeful, blood-thirsty battle now being waged in Syria is not something new or unexpected. Nor is it a mere by-product of the Arab Spring, although events in Tunisia and Egypt have undoubtedly contributed to creating an insurrectionary atmosphere in the whole region. Rather, the Syrian uprising, as it has gradually evolved over the past eighteen months, should be seen as only the latest, if by far the most violent, episode in the long war between Islamists and Ba‘thists, which dates back to the founding of the secular Ba‘th Party in the 1940s. The struggle between them is by now little short of a death-feud.

This is not to suggest that the present rebellion is driven only by religious motives and sectarian hate. Although these are real enough, other grievances have piled up over the past decades: the ravages of youth unemployment; the brutality of Syria’s security services; the domination of key centres of economic, military and political life by the minority Alawi community; the blatant consumerism of a privileged class, grown rich on state patronage, in sharp contrast with the hardship suffered by the mass of the population, including in particular the inhabitants of the ‘poverty belt’ around Damascus, Aleppo and other cities. These deprived suburbs are largely the result of inward migration from the long-neglected countryside, which in the past decade has suffered catastrophic losses from a drought of unprecedented severity.

But beyond all this is the decades-long hostility of Islamists for Syria’s Ba‘th-dominated regime. Formed by two Damascus schoolmasters soon after the Second World War, the Ba‘th party was created as a secular and socialist movement dedicated to bringing about Arab unity and independence. Schoolboy members of the party clashed repeatedly at that time with members of the conservative Muslim Brotherhood. When the party seized power in Damascus in 1963, its clash with the Islamists burst into the open. The civilian leadership of the party had by then been largely displaced by Ba‘thist officers — including Hafiz al-Asad, father of the current President — mostly from minority backgrounds. In turn, these Ba‘thist officers had allied themselves with Akram al-Hawrani, the charismatic leader of a peasant revolt, which was challenging the great landowners of the central Syrian plain, most of them resident in Hama.

Hama is today remembered as the centre of the Muslim Brothers’ armed uprising against Hafiz al-Asad, which he crushed in blood in February 1982, leaving a bitter legacy of sectarian hostility. Few recall, however, that eighteen years earlier, in April 1964, rioting by Muslim rebels against the Ba‘thist regime had already flared into something like a religious war. Funded by the old land-owning families, enraged at being dispossessed, and egged on by the imam of the Sultan mosque in Hama, the rebels threw up roadblocks, stockpiled food and weapons, ransacked wine shops to spill the offending liquor in the gutters, and beat up any Ba‘th party man they could find.

After two days of street fighting, the regime shelled the Sultan mosque where the rebels had taken cover and from where they had been firing. The minaret collapsed, killing many of them. Many others were wounded but many more disappeared underground. The shelling of the mosque outraged Muslim opinion, igniting a fever of strikes and demonstrations across the country.

Thus, today’s civil war – for that is what it has become — has deep roots in modern Syrian history. The rebellion has increasingly taken on an Islamist colouring, as the Swedish writer Aron Lund explains in an informative 45-page report on Syrian Jihadism, published this month by the Swedish Institute of International Affairs. It is striking, as he points out, that virtually all the members of the various armed insurgent groups are Sunni Arabs; that the fighting has been largely restricted to Sunni Arab areas only, whereas areas inhabited by Alawis, Druze or Christians have remained passive or supportive of the regime; that defections from the regime are nearly 100 per cent Sunni; that money, arms and volunteers are pouring in from Islamic states or from pro-Islamic organisations and individuals; and that religion is the insurgent movement’s most important common denominator.

In the last few months, the Syrian National Council (SNC) — that is to say the Turkey-based civilian ‘political’ opposition — has been largely up-staged by fighters on the ground. Most of these fighters are grouped into nine Military Councils (majalis askariya) of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), each Council divided into a number of brigades (kataib). But, in much the same way as these Councils have marginalised the SNC, so they also seem unwilling to take orders from the Turkey-based FSA commander, Col Riad al-As‘ad.

Aron Lund points out that, with rare exceptions, the FSA is an entirely Sunni Arab phenomenon, and that most FSA brigades use religious rhetoric and are named after heroic figures or events in Sunni Islamic history. It is thought that about 2,000 non-Syrians, some linked to al-Qaida, are now fighting in Syria, about 10 per cent of the total rebel manpower, estimated at about 20,000 (although some sources put the figure twice as high at 40,000.) Most of these fighters would seem to be active only in protecting their home areas.

Three major fighting units, among a score of others — Jabhat al-Nosra, the Ahrar al-Sham Brigades and Suqur al-Sham Division — are among the most extreme salafi groups in the Syrian rebel movement. The first has been linked to suicide and car bomb attacks in Syrian cities and to the assassination of pro-regime figures; the second carries out ambushes and uses remotely-triggered bombings and sniper fire against army patrols; and the third uses suicide bombers and frames its propaganda in jihadi rhetoric. The leaders of the last two have declared that their aim is to establish an Islamic state in Syria. All three seem to have welcomed al-Qaida fighters into their ranks.

These fighting groups have gravely destabilised the Syrian regime but, without a foreign military intervention in their favour, they seem unlikely to topple it. The regime is fighting back with air and ground attacks, evidently determined to crush all pockets of armed rebellion on Syrian territory.

This is the conundrum facing the UN peace envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi. His task is to persuade the world community to impose a ceasefire on both sides, before bringing them to the table. But only when all are persuaded that there can be no decisive win for either side might they heed his call. In the meantime, thousands more will die or be driven from their homes and the country will sink further into blood and chaos, making the divide between the Islamists and President Bashar al-Asad virtually unbridgeable.

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Released: 28 September 2012
Word Count: 1,103
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Patrick Seale, “Why Do Arabs and Muslims Hate America?”

September 19, 2012 - Jahan Salehi

Faced with a dramatic outbreak of anti-American violence by Arabs and Muslims in a score of countries — including the killing of Ambassador Chris Stevens in Benghazi — the American reaction has been one of puzzlement, outrage and a thirst for revenge. Send in the Marines! Few Americans seem to understand that their country is paying for decades of grossly mistaken policies.

Take the Palestine problem. Most Americans have long since dismissed it from their minds and consciences. But Arabs and Muslims have not. Israel’s 45-year-long oppression of the Palestinians — the cruel siege of Gaza, the relentless land-grab on the West Bank — remains a major source of humiliation and rage. The United States bears the prime responsibility because, having sustained Israel in every possible way, it has failed to persuade it to give the Palestinians a fair deal.

Some American presidents have tried to break the Arab-Israeli logjam but were defeated by domestic politics and by obdurate Israeli leaders. Jimmy Carter was defeated by Menachem Begin; George H W Bush by Itzhak Shamir; Bill Clinton almost clinched a deal before he left office but was sabotaged by pro-Israeli officials like Dennis Ross. Barack Obama’s defeat by Binyamin Netanyahu has turned the huge hopes he first aroused into bitter disappointment. The poison of the unresolved Arab-Israeli conflict continues to inflict grave damage on the United States and to threaten Israel’s long-term future. There will be no peace in the region until a fair settlement is reached. But no president has dared exert American power in this cause.

Not only has the United States failed to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict, it has also built Israel up into the regional bully, and must therefore be judged complicit in its numerous assaults against its neighbours. The origins of this policy may be traced to Israel’s comprehensive victory in 1967, which caused Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to view it as the guard-dog of America’s regional interests. Kissinger’s idea was to bolster Israel with funds and weapons in order to keep the Arabs down and the Russians out. His plan reached fruition after the 1973 October War, when he plotted to exclude the Palestinians from the post-war settlement and remove Egypt from the Arab military line up, thus laying the foundations for the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty. “Remove a wheel, and the car won’t run,” was the triumphant Israeli version.

Indeed, the Treaty guaranteed Israel’s supremacy for the next three decades, while exposing Lebanon, Syria and the Palestinians to the full force of Israeli power. Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, killing 17,000 people. It expelled the PLO and sought to turn Lebanon into an Israeli protectorate. Syria fought back; the man who was to serve as Israel’s vassal was assassinated; and the American-brokered Israel-Lebanese accord was scrapped. But not before Israel seized Beirut and presided over the horrific massacre by right-wing Christians of 800 Palestinians at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. Israel remained in occupation of south Lebanon for the next eighteen years until driven out in 2000 by Hizballah guerrillas — whom the United States still insists on calling ‘terrorists’.

Americans have rarely paused to ask themselves why they were attacked on 11 September 2001. Palestine was certainly a motive. Another was the severe punishment inflicted by the United States on Iraq in expelling it from Kuwait in 1991 and then in starving it over the next thirteen years with punitive sanctions, which are said to have resulted in the death of half a million Iraqi babies. Yet another major motive was the callous way the United States treated the tens of thousands of Arab fighters from across the region — 25,000 from Yemen alone — whom it had recruited and armed to fight the Russians in Afghanistan. Once the Russians withdrew in 1989, Washington dropped the mujaheddin. Large numbers of these ‘Afghan Arabs’, angry, alienated and battle-hardened, were let loose on the region. Some caused mayhem in their own countries; others joined Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaida.

George W Bush’s ‘global war on terror’ after 9/11 was another grotesque misuse of American power. Instead of using police methods to hunt down Al-Qaida, the United States blundered into war in Afghanistan — where, twelve years later, it is still inflicting and taking casualties. It then allowed itself to be tricked by Paul Wolfovitz and other pro-Israeli neo-cons into invading Iraq — a country which the neo-cons, after the Iran-Iraq war, saw as a possible threat to Israel’s eastern front. Some 1.4m Iraqis are estimated to have died as a result of the occupation and destruction of Iraq, together with about 4,500 Americans.

This was the heyday of the militarisation of American foreign policy — brutal wars, extraordinary rendition and routine torture, the expansion of overseas bases (including half a dozen in the Arab Gulf states), a grossly inflated military budget — still around $700bn a year!

The catalogue of blunders continues to this day. Instead of engaging with Iran as he promised to do when he came to office, Obama has waged an undeclared war against the Islamic Republic with ‘crippling sanctions’ and cyber attacks — largely, it would seem, to prevent Israel from dragging America into yet another Middle East war. The chance of a ‘win-win’ deal with Tehran — which would have allowed Iran to produce low-enriched uranium for electricity generation while giving up 20% uranium — has been thrown away because Israel insists that Iran’s nuclear industry be destroyed altogether. The United States is now attempting to bring down not just the Iranian regime but the Syrian regime as well, indeed the whole Tehran-Damascus-Hizballah axis which has dared challenge Israel’s hegemony.

Little Israel has now turned the tables on its mighty patron: Instead of Israel being America’s guard-dog, it is the United States which has become Israel’s guard-dog, harassing, sanctioning, demonising and waging wars on Israel’s enemies on its behalf. Americans may have forgotten these facts, if they ever knew them, but the Arabs and Iranians have not.

If this were not bad enough, Obama has authorised a vast expansion of U.S. drone attacks against alleged Islamic militants in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere, inevitably causing large numbers of civilian casualties and inflaming local populations against the United States. On the receiving end of brutal American policies, it is hardly a surprise that Arabs and Muslims hit back when they can.

Has the United States given the Middle East security? Or has it spread calamitous insecurity? Does the Gulf really need the U.S. 5th Fleet, squadrons of warplanes and thousands of infantry and armour? Is the U.S. presence stabilising or destabilising? Might it not be time to disengage? The Islamic revival, which has been such a striking feature of the Arab Spring, should be seen as a rejection of Western meddling and of Western controls, and a reaffirmation of Muslim identity. It is only the latest phase in the Arabs’ long struggle for independence. The vile film about the Prophet Muhammad may have been the spark which set Arab and Muslim anger alight, but it was only able to do so because of the large quantities of highly combustible material around.

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Released: 19 September 2012
Word Count: 1,178
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Patrick Seale, “Israel’s Super-Hawk”

September 14, 2012 - Jahan Salehi

To understand Israel’s security concerns, as well as its ambitions, one needs to look into the head of Uzi Arad, Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu’s National Security Adviser. He is a veteran of Mossad, Israel’s spy agency, where he spent 20 years; he has Netanyahu’s ear; he occupies an office a step away from his and, in terms of influence over the Prime Minister, he seems to have managed to beat off competition from the heads of the armed services and from other security and intelligence chiefs. Dr Arad is Israel’s super-hawk. Some have called him Israel’s Dr Strangelove.

His over-riding goal is to put a permanent end to any ambition Iran may have to build a nuclear bomb, or even simply to acquire the means and ability to do so. He does not believe that “crippling sanctions” will do the job and deplores the lack of resolve of Western leaders in stopping Iran’s race for nuclear weapons. He is convinced, against a good deal of evidence, that Iran is determined to become a nuclear power.

Uzi Arad wants the United States and its Western allies to confront Iran with the certainty of military attack if it does not give up all uranium enrichment and plutonium production. Indeed he believes that a pre-emptive attack on Iran would be perfectly legitimate: Iran, he argues, must be stopped before it is too late. Since Netanyahu never misses an opportunity to demonise Iran as the “greatest threat to world peace” and “the world’s leading sponsor of international terrorism,” one can safely predict that his address to the 67th session of the UN General Assembly this month will be an anti-Iranian rant.

What is the root cause of Israel’s animus against Iran? Certainly, there is an element of paranoia. Having suffered genocide at the hands of Hitler, Jews are utterly determined never to risk another Holocaust. “Never again!” is the slogan. Arad has spoken of the “genocidal attributes of Iranian statements.” But, equally, there is an element of hubris — of overweening pride — in the Israeli approach. Having built up a powerful nuclear arsenal over the past 45 years — estimated at between 100 and 200 warheads, together with an array of delivery vehicles, including a “second strike” capability in the form of submarine-launched missiles — Israel wants no competition in the nuclear field. It wants to be the Middle East’s sole nuclear power — a key element in its determination to remain the region’s dominant military power.

Men like Arad and Netanyahu do not, even for a moment, think that Iran’s leaders are mad or suicidal. They are well aware that if Iran were to acquire nuclear weapons, it would never launch them against Israel — and risk immediate national annihilation. Atomic bombs are weapons of defence, not offence. They provide a deterrent capability to the country possessing them — that is to say they serve to deter a hostile nuclear power from launching an attack. No nuclear power, for example, would consider attacking nuclear-armed North Korea.

Israel does not want Iran, or any other state in the Greater Middle East, to acquire a deterrent capability in the form of nuclear weapons, since this would restrict its own ability to attack its neighbours at will. If Iran or an Arab state had a nuclear capability, Israel would not have attacked Lebanon in 2006, Syria in 2007 and Gaza in 2008.

Arad believes that the United States and its allies should address a clear ultimatum to Iran on the following lines: “Dismantle your entire nuclear industry or face attack. Don’t dare retaliate to any attack as more punishment will follow. And don’t dare restart your nuclear programme once it has been destroyed, as it will be destroyed again.”

He has expressed these brutally robust views on many occasions, among them an address last February to Canada’s annual Conference on Defence and Security. What does he recommend? First, that Iran’s oil exports should be “put in jeopardy”; and secondly, that strikes against Iran should be “surgical,” aimed initially only at its nuclear facilities and at the Revolutionary Guard Corps. Such strikes, he argues, would be far easier to conduct than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and would cause little collateral damage. He dismisses as unfounded the often-cited fear that an attack on Iran would set the whole region on fire.

Like his boss Netanyahu, Arad rejects all compromise with Iran on the nuclear issue, rejecting the widely held view that Iran, as a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, has the right to enrich uranium on its own territory for the purpose of power generation or medical purposes. He wants none of it. His whole argument is that a military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities would be far less dangerous than living with a nuclear-armed Iran. If Iran were to get the bomb, he warns, it would “enhance the clout of a militant, extremist Islamic regime,” and drive Arab states to go nuclear as well. Proliferation would make life in the Middle East a nightmare.

U.S. President Barack Obama has so far resisted Israel’s relentless pressure for war and its constant threat — in effect blackmail — that “If you won’t attack Iran, we will, and you will be forced to join in, whether you like it or not.” To counter the accusation that he is ready to “throw Israel under a bus,” Obama has showered the Jewish state with funds, with secret intelligence, with UN vetoes in its favour and with weapons, including the latest warplanes and bunker-busting bombs. He has joined with Israel in acts of state terrorism, such as cyber-warfare against Iran. But all this is still not enough for Israel’s super-hawk. He wants Iran’s nuclear industry destroyed.

So, if one were able to look into Uzi Arad’s head, what other imperatives might one note?

First, the need to maintain at all costs the vital relationship with the American super-power. More than an alliance, it is a marriage, a merger, an inter-penetration of each other’s society, to the extent that it is difficult to tell which of the two is the dominant partner.

Second, the need to ensure Israel’s military dominance over the Greater Middle East by all possible means — wars, sabotage, the dismemberment of threatening states, mobilising the United States for regime change as in Iraq in 2003, and now in Syria and Iran, the assassination of political opponents. (The long list of Israel’s victims includes the former leaders of Hizballah and Hamas as well as Iranian scientists. Palestinians figure prominently on the list, including very probably Yasser Arafat himself.)

Third, the need to prevent the emergence of a Palestinian state, since it would put an end to the dream of a Greater Israel and might even undermine the legitimacy of Israel’s own enterprise, built on the ruins of Arab Palestine.

Uzi Arad is the dangerous advisor of a dangerous prime minister. In the Greek legend, hubris leads to nemesis. Israel’s long-term survival rests on accepting, indeed encouraging, the emergence of a Palestinian state and on peaceful, cooperative relations with the whole region, not on murder, subversion, domination and war.

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Released: 14 September 2012
Word Count: 1,180
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