BOSTON — Some of history’s most memorable personalities are often un-flamboyant, low-key people who find themselves thrust into the limelight due to the circumstances of their time and place. Such people sometimes rise to the challenge thrust upon them, and achieve noteworthy deeds. They usually do so by summoning powers of persistence and clarity of focus, while always articulating a sense of what is right for their wider society.

One such person is Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, who is doing some remarkable things despite having one of the most difficult jobs in the world. He was appointed in difficult and contentious circumstances in July of last year, after the Palestinian government split into two parts in Gaza and the West Bank, controlled by Hamas and Fateh, respectively. He presides over a contested government that has control only over part of its territory (the West Bank), and must endure the constant threats and pressures of both direct and indirect Israeli occupation and control of all of the areas that comprise the Palestinian Authority (PA).

Fayyad has been able largely to shield himself from this ugly split, and the often violent confrontations that define Palestinian national politics today. Instead, he focuses on trying to make everyday life for ordinary Palestinians a little more bearable.

He made his mark when he was finance minister after 2002, and quickly restructured the entire public finances sector. Not only did he vastly reduce the corruption and waste that had marred the Palestinian governance system since the PA was established after the Oslo Accords in 1993, he also established a transparent public finance system that remains a leader in the entire Arab world, with real time budget positions posted on a website every month.

Yet the most remarkable thing about Fayyad, I sense, is not his achievements in financial sector reform, but rather his spirit of optimism and certitude in the face of so much stress and gloom in Palestinian society. He spoke last weekend in the United States about how Palestinians understandably have experienced erosion in self-esteem and self-assuredness, prompted by decades of Israeli occupation and oppression. This has often led to reactions of defeatism and belligerence among the public, he said, which offer only dead ends.

The way to overcome the obstacles and achieve Palestinian national goals, in his view, was “to rid ourselves of what four decades of Israeli occupation have precipitated by way of fear, skepticism, cynicism, self-doubt, and loss of self-esteem.”

When I met him for a chat earlier this week, he spoke again of these same themes that he raised in his public talk. He noted that Palestinians seek a full and warm peace with Israel, but will not accept a peace at any price. People will subject any agreement negotiated with Israel to a test of its inherent fairness, he said.

He also made a call to the international community to go beyond only supporting the Palestinians financially, and to hold Israel to its word when it says it wants to establish an independent, viable Palestinian state. The world mostly wags its finger at Israel when more Jewish settlements are built in occupied Palestinian land, and this clearly is not enough.

Instead, Fayyad noted, it is high time to redress the balance between, on the one hand, what international law and justice prescribe, and, on the other, what is achievable in practical terms on the basis of the relative strengths of the parties. The imbalance in power and control has meant that Palestinians have seen their position erode with every round of diplomacy that did not achieve an agreement.

Fayyad is a practical man, an economist by training, and a technocrat by mentality. He speaks of his job as assisting his people “to live just a little bit better than the day before, and to stay on their land for another day…and another,” adding that this will be achieved through constructive, non-violent means that honor the noble Palestinian cause.

In many ways Salam Fayyad represents a new style of Palestinian leader who shuns the flamboyance of nationalistic political rhetoric for the practicalities of the citizen’s need to achieve several crucial goals: to survive another day under occupation and often under siege by Israel, to remain on the land, to look forward to better days ahead, to resist and fight non-violently so that the Palestinian national struggle retains its integrity, and, most of all, to remain proud.

“Price, dignity, self-respect, and resilience” are words that he uses frequently these days in describing the key attributes of Palestinian daily life and the goals of his government. His successes in the field of financial sector reform seem to have sparked in this quiet, humble man a new sense of leadership anchored in realism across a wider spectrum of sectors, conditions and challenges.

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

Copyright © 2008 Rami G. Khouri – distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 15 October 2008
Word Count: 800
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BEIRUT — The global financial crisis has momentarily overshadowed news of the two active wars the United States is leading in Iraq and Afghanistan. The balance of political vs. military actions to stabilize those two countries remains fluid. The change in American leadership coming up in the months ahead will be an opportunity to revisit these issues, and gloomy news from Afghanistan in the past week is good reason for this matter to get much more attention.

The most recent bad news came October 9, from the top American military commander, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen, who told reporters that, “The trends across the board are not going in the right direction” in Afghanistan, and that he “would anticipate next year would be a tougher year.”

He also agreed that Afghanistan was likely to continue “a downward spiral,” as was stated by a nearly completed intelligence assessment, unless things improved suddenly and significantly. Among the problems the senior American military and intelligence leaders acknowledge these days in Afghanistan are a robust and expanding heroin trade, the limited impact of the central government in Kabul, a steady stream of militants from next door Pakistan where they enjoy safe havens and popular support, and a weak economy.

This pessimistic view follows reports that the British ambassador in Kabul has spoken privately about his sense that the war is not winnable militarily. At the same time, the top American military commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David McKiernan, has spoken about a need for up to 15,000 more troops, above and beyond the 8,000 troops that President Bush has pledged to send in the coming six months.

The two American presidential candidates both have recognized the dangers in Afghanistan and seem willing to raise the tempo and scale of the war there, perhaps in line with a slow retreat from Iraq. So this is a good moment to raise the issues in Afghanistan that were not sufficiently discussed about Iraq before the Anglo-American invasion of that country in 2003.

The basic question that needs answering is whether foreign military power is a credible, legitimate and effective means to address political violence that is anchored in local socio-political issues and historical problems of state-building.

To their credit, American military commanders in Afghanistan and Iraq have regularly spoken about the limits of military power. The problem is that their civilian leaders, and the generally mediocre and often ignorant politicians to whom they report, are not as aware of the limits of military force. The idea of sending tens of thousands of new troops to Afghanistan to break through to victory is much too simplistic a response to a situation that defies military solutions.

The problem for the United States (and other countries that send troops to Afghanistan) is that leaving the status quo as it is also unacceptable, given the power of tribal leaders and military forces that rely on income from narcotics, the limited impact of the central government, and the continued sanctuary available to Al-Qaeda and other militant groups in the Afghan-Pakistan border regions.

There is no easy solution that is going to transform Afghanistan into Belgium. Western leaders should somehow adjust to the fact that the goals of stable statehood, legitimate governance, economic prosperity and overall security will come from an indigenous process of historical evolution anchored in native priorities and interests. It will not come from forceful interventions by American, British and other foreign armies, no matter how many sophisticated ways they find and kill enemy targets.

The simple reason for this is that, in history as well as in sports, nationalism trumps imperialism, and defense trumps offense. Foreign military interventions and invasions will always spark resistance that is fierce and sustained because it blends the two indomitable elements of personal humiliation and nationalistic self-assertion. Historical factors also play a role in countries like Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan, who were born in conditions that were either traumatic or colonialist, and did not allow for a natural percolation of legitimate nation-building elements.

Introducing foreign armies into such situations only makes the underlying tensions worse, not better. The foreign armies always leave one day, and the locals resume the two dynamics that have defined their lands and people for millennia: contesting power in a national context, or negotiating coexistence in a tribal context.

As Afghanistan works itself back into the news in the months ahead, it would be useful for America’s civilian officials and military commanders to look at the bigger picture of the limits of their own military power. Since both American presidential candidates are so enamored by Israel, they might also study the lessons that their dear Israel has learned in recent years about the limits of military force in places like Lebanon and Palestine.

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

Copyright © 2008 Rami G. Khouri – distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 13 October 2008
Word Count: 795
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BEIRUT — As the scale of the global financial crisis becomes clearer, and its repercussions are felt in every corner of the world, the extent to which entire societies will suffer will depend partly on the quality of their governance systems. Those countries with governments that enjoy the respect and confidence of their citizens are likely to weather the stresses more easily than countries where politicians are viewed with disdain.

I suspect the Middle East, and its Arab countries in particular, will be hard hit by the crisis, for several reasons. The main one is that during the past 35 years since the oil boom of the early 1970s, most Arab countries have not risen to the challenge of responsible governance by developing economies based on productive industries and other economic sectors.

The energy producers have enjoyed using their vast income to develop their countries in a speedy and impressive manner, but without shifting dependence away from oil and gas exports or imported labor. The non-oil producers who account for three-quarters of the Arab population have similarly failed the economic governance test. They neglected to exploit the oil-fueled regional boom and the several hundred billion dollars in worker remittances and Arab and foreign aid they received, and thus did not move towards economies based on productive human resources, creativity, and efficiency.

The net result has been that the Arab world today comprises a sharply polarized population, with about ten percent super-wealthy people (whose global investments are dropping fast) and the rest living modestly at best, and in expanding poverty at worst.

The price of oil has dropped sharply in the recent months, by nearly 40 percent, from almost $150 to under $90 a barrel. Combined with the retreat of global stock markets where so much Arab money is invested, this means that both current income and investment income are dropping fast. This is likely to freeze one of the most promising trends in the region in the past three decades — the flow of educated young Arab men and women to assume jobs in the oil-based economies.

At the same time, regional and foreign investments in Arab countries aiming to sell to world markets through the mechanisms of trade and financial globalization are likely to slow down. This will add another constraint to the creation of new jobs for the millions of educated but unemployed young people. If the price of oil were to start rising again, that would also make life more difficult for the majority of people in the region, through the price increases that are passed on in every sector of the economy. So the Middle East today is in the vulnerable and unenviable situation in which the majority of its people will suffer economically, for different reasons, if the price of oil goes either up or down.

The problem reflects the cumulative consequences of decades of bad economic management that was camouflaged by oil income and the thrill of globalization. When the bubble burst and reality reared its head, we woke up recently to find ourselves reeling from the double hit of the global financial crisis and a thin domestic economy in the Arab region. The stresses ahead will be felt to varying degrees throughout the region, in the form of lower remittances, stagnant foreign aid, rising unemployment and weaker trade and tourism. These are the prices we pay for developing economies based heavily on oil income, foreign aid, real estate investments, and non-productive commercial trade.

This may also be an opportunity, however, if all the Arab countries — oil producers and importers alike — learn from this moment of pain that they have much more to gain from working to develop their productive economic resources through interlocking investments in industry, agriculture, information technology and education than they do by simply riding the global financial bandwagon to wherever it may be heading.

Well, it is headed to a crash currently, and we in the Arab world find ourselves particularly weak and vulnerable, given our lack of economic and financial sovereignty. This is not a problem we can blame on anyone else, other than ourselves. It is an economic management problem at one level, but deep down it is a failure of political governance. Not surprisingly, the major movements of our time in the Middle East — Islamists, tribalists, militias, populists, ageing nationalists and others — do not have answers to this problem, either.

This is a moment of potentially historic change for courageous and honest leaders who will stand up and tell the Arab people the truth about their failures, and suggest a more rational path to national revival, security and well-being. The current global crisis will hurt, but what will hurt more is to respond to it with the same combination of technical incompetence and political irresponsibility that have guided Arab national development for many decades now.

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

Copyright © 2008 Rami G. Khouri – distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 08 October 2008
Word Count: 806
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BEIRUT — Watching the US presidential election from the Arab region is a confusing vocation. At one level, American democracy is an impressive, vibrant, often stunning, phenomenon that permits any citizen — certified idiots and genuine geniuses alike – to seek and assume public office, and control the destiny of society. It produces some of the most monumental errors and costly adventures in world history, in the military and economic fields, but it also contains the mechanisms for its own self-correction, reconfiguration, improvement and re-birth — as we witness these days in the economic arena.

At another level, America also provides a powerful argument against a totally open, unregulated democratic system, because it allows the volatile and sometimes infantile emotional psyche of a bare majority of citizens to determine the exercise of immense power.

Three specific examples of the exercise of power show how American politicians can have devastating impact all over the world: the economic crisis that has hit the financial and housing sectors most severely, the war in Iraq and its assorted regional consequences, and the wider “global war on terror” that the United States launched and has led since 2001. All three reflect decisions made by democratically elected leaders in both the White House and the legislature. In their own ways, all three have made the world a more dangerous and fragile place, adding American incompetence and criminality to the destructive work of those many thugs, thieves and killers who already haunt much of the rest of the world.

The consequences and full costs of the three policies of Iraq, the global war on terror and economic mismanagement are still unfolding. While historians will long argue the rights and wrongs of these policies, the world’s current verdict seems widely critical. The fascinating element for me is not if a specific policy is judged to be good or bad; it is that reckless and destructive decisions have been repeatedly made by the most open and vibrant democracy in the world.

At the same time, American leaders continue to preach to the rest of us that democracy and freedom are our best hope for a better future. I agree in principle. In practice though, watching American democracy at work dampens many people’s enthusiasm for that particular model. Rather, we need to temper the extravagant excesses of democratic systems that are so vulnerable to manipulation by special interests and lobbies, or that pander to mass hysteria.

Watching the current American presidential contest brings these issues to the fore once again, especially on the Republican side. The Democrats have selected a pair of candidates who pretty faithfully perpetuate that party’s traditions, with the added fact of an African-American candidate with a Muslim father. The Republican ticket of McCain and Palin, on the other hand, is a much stranger beast, especially in the vice presidential slot.

The fact that someone like Governor Sarah Palin, who lacks any national or international experience — perhaps even basic knowledge — can be a potential vice president is a sign of American democracy at its worst. In one swift, serendipitous moment, she was transformed from a moose hunter in Alaska to a global mullah hunter in a contest and a world about which she knows zilch — as she reconfirms every time she opens her mouth.

The fact that respected conservative analysts and commentators have already asked for her to be dropped from the ticket is about as damning a verdict as there can be of her qualifications. This is much more problematic, though, for what it tells us about John McCain, and the entire American political system. Clearly, something is wrong with a system that turns democratic electoral contestation into either a fantastic gambling orgy for impulsive and ambitious elderly men, or an exercise in mass psychotherapy for millions in the electorate who seek solace and emotional recovery by embracing the image of the bouncy cheerleader next door, regardless of what this could mean for the United States and the world.

The open and honest American system once again simultaneously shows us its best and worst. There is historic brilliance in designing a checks-and-balance governance system anchored in the consent of the governed, and open to every man and woman who aspires to public service, regardless of color, religion or gender. Alongside this, however, there is also bombastic buffoonery in the manner in which desperados and simpletons occasionally gravitate to control the system by offering the electorate a hybrid candidacy of cheerleading razzle-dazzle with macho emotionalism.

For now, the signals from this campaign and from the past seven years are frightening. They confirm that America’s political democracy and economic governance systems — in their current forms — are less impressive export items than its iPods, computers, popular culture or universities. May the best team win, and in the process not ruin the good name of democracy.

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

Copyright © 2008 Rami G. Khouri – distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 06 October 2008
Word Count: 810
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CAIRO — I was not surprised, during a working visit to Egypt for a few days, to read the results of the latest BBC World Service global poll showing that in 22 out of 23 countries surveyed most people feel the US-led ‘global war on terror’ has not weakened Al-Qaeda. On average, the poll showed, only 22% of respondents feel that Al-Qaeda has been weakened, while three in five believe that the war on terror has had no effect (29%) or made Al-Qaeda stronger (30%).

The poll surveyed 23,937 adults in 23 countries in July-September, and was conducted by pollsters GlobeScan with the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the University of Maryland.

In most of the countries surveyed, people had a negative view of Al-Qaeda, except for two countries that are also very close allies of the United States: Egypt and Pakistan. In these two, those who have mixed or positive feelings towards Al-Qaeda (Egypt 40% mixed and 20% positive, Pakistan 22% mixed and 19% positive) are nearly double those who view the group negatively (Egypt 35%, Pakistan 19%).

Two aspects of this seem important to me, and should get the attention of whoever becomes the next American president. First, Egypt and Pakistan have been central suppliers of leaders, ideologists, foot soldiers and supporters for Al-Qaeda and other terror groups in the past 20 years since Al-Qaeda’s inception. Second, public sympathy for Al-Qaeda and other movements like it persists in both countries, alongside enormous American financial and military aid to their governments.

Something is very wrong if the United States and allies are spending hundreds of billions of dollars on a global war on terror, but the main terror group targeted continues to operate, spawns many imitators and allies, and in most parts of the world is seen either to be holding its own against the United States or maintaining considerable public support or sympathy.

The poll has other troubling findings:

• On average across all 23 countries, 10% think Al-Qaeda is winning, 22% think the US is winning, and 47% think neither side is winning.

• In the US itself, just 34% believe Al-Qaeda has been weakened. Fifty-nine percent believe the ‘war on terror’ has either had no effect (26%) or has made Al-Qaeda stronger (33%), and 56% believe neither side is winning the conflict.

• On average 61% of respondents had negative feelings about Al-Qaeda, with just 8% positive and 18% mixed views.

• Publics in some of the US’ closest allies had the largest numbers perceiving that the war on terror has strengthened Al-Qaeda, including France (48%), Mexico (48%), Italy (43%), Australia (41%) and the UK (40%).

GlobeScan Chairman Doug Miller noted that, “The fact that so many people in Egypt and Pakistan have mixed or even positive views of Al-Qaeda is yet another indicator that the US war on terror is not winning hearts and minds.”

What could explain the astounding reality that Al-Qaeda (and other extremist movements, like the Taliban) seem to be most firmly anchored in countries that are among the world’s top recipients of American economic aid and military support?

Several possibilities come to mind:

• Chromosomes. Perhaps Egyptians and Pakistanis are genetically predisposed to irrational and violent behavior. Some graduate student in Alaska who is not fully occupied with monitoring the Russian threat should probably get on this right away and launch a serious study.

• Domestic politics. Perhaps Egyptians and Pakistanis have been so demeaned by their own autocratic political systems for decades on end that some of them have embraced extremist views as a sort of cathartic antidote to their home-grown degradation.

• Resentment against the United States. Perhaps many people think Al-Qaeda are a bunch of despicable killer thugs, but they turn a blind eye to them because their daily lives are impacted more adversely by the double standards and destructive consequences of American policies in Palestine, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and other lands.

• Domestic and foreign policy convergence. Perhaps many Egyptians and Pakistanis feel that American support for their governments promotes dehumanizing conditions under which they feel they do not get the benefits of either their citizenship rights or the dictates of their basic human dignity. When the United States is seen as fighting a specific foe, that foe — regardless of its own record — becomes a little less menacing in view of the enormity of people’s disdain for the policies of Washington and their own governments.

Pakistan and Egypt are two very stressed and distorted societies, with great human suffering, worsening socio-economic disparities, flawed governance systems, enormous American support, and a legacy of spawning, supporting or acquiescing to Al-Qaeda-like extremism and terror. How those elements combine and relate to each other would seem worthy of deeper analysis than they seem to have enjoyed to date– from Alaska and Washington alike.

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

Copyright © 2008 Rami G. Khouri – distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 01 October 2008
Word Count: 805
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BEIRUT — One of the great hopes and subsequent disappointments in modern Middle Eastern diplomacy has been the “Quartet” of four major international players that was supposed to monitor, shepherd and promote Palestinian-Israeli peace-making during the past five years. The group – comprised of Russia, the United States, the European Union and the United Nations — has not only failed to advance the peace process since its establishment in 2002; astoundingly, it has also whittled away the political credibility and impact of two of those parties — the EU and UN.

Now, not surprisingly, a coalition of 21 respected international aid agencies working on the ground in Palestine has openly criticized the shortcomings of the Quartet for failing in its mission and leaving the diplomatic arena dangerously leaderless.

The agencies — including Oxfam, Save the Children, Care, Christian Aid and World Vision — said that in five of the ten main areas the Quartet had identified to improve Palestinians’ daily life conditions, the situation has actually deteriorated. The situation also has worsened, rather than improved, for most Palestinians since the Annapolis peace process was launched last November. It added that the Quartet has not held Israel accountable for continuing to build settlements on occupied land, and that travel restrictions on Palestinians has also increased.

Christian Aid director Daleep Mukarji noted that nearly a year after the Annapolis process was launched, “we are seeing exponential settlement growth, additional check-points and — because of this — further economic stagnation. The Quartet is losing its grip on the Middle East peace process.”

Things could have been very different had the Quartet been a truly impartial and decisive instrument of peace-making. In retrospect, the Quartet was another fig leaf designed to hide American dominance of a diplomatic process that was driven primarily by Israeli interests. This was initially visible in the Quartet’s habit of merely issuing verbal statements criticizing Israeli settlement expansion but doing nothing about it, while acting with more force against the Palestinians.

The epitome of that double standard was the Quartet’s position supporting the Israeli response to the Hamas parliamentary elections victory in early 2006. It refused to deal with Hamas until the latter accepted the conditions Israel and the United States laid down. It did nothing of equal magnitude to demand that Israel, for its part, also respect international law and UN resolutions and stop using excessive violence against Palestinians.

In recent years, I raised the issue of the Quartet’s ineffectiveness and pro-Israeli tilt several times with EU and UN officials, asking them why they did not simply withdraw from an institution that had proved ineffective. Their response was uniformly limp and unimpressive: They argued it was better to be inside the Quartet trying to influence and temper the ideological pro-Israel tilt of the United States. That goal has proven to be an illusion.

Not surprisingly, a dishonest institution like the Quartet named as its special envoy former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the Diplomatic Olympics Gold Medal Winner for Political Fraudulence.

The Quartet keeps on meeting, and doing nothing, while conditions deteriorate for most Palestinians, and Israel continues to expand its theft and colonization of Palestinian land. The EU and the UN were once trusted mediators and impartial actors who truly worked for the best interests of Israelis and Arabs alike. Today, they have lost that aura of fairness and confidence, leaving the Middle East dangerously lacking in powerful international actors who enjoy both credibility and impact.

The damning report by the 21 aid agencies should be taken seriously by the EU and the UN, who should consider the consequences of their continuing to provide cover for Israeli colonialism and its American guardian. The EU and the UN should quickly announce that the Quartet was a valiant attempt that failed, and they should withdraw immediately, to prevent any more damage to their own reputations and ability to play constructive roles in the region.

Their withdrawal would send powerful signals to all concerned that American-Israeli charades will not be allowed to define the diplomacy of all other potential actors in the region. The Quartet was a good idea in principle — a powerful body of leading global powers that would push Israelis and Palestinians alike to adhere to their commitments and move to a negotiated peace agreement. In practice, it failed because it was not sincere, serious or impartial.

International aid agencies at least have the self-respect and courage to say this out loud. The EU and the UN would do well to follow suit, and regain a modicum of their own dignity in the process. Truth and honesty still carry weight, and should be exercised now and then to counter the prevailing agents of dishonesty that try to bludgeon us with their brute force.

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

Copyright © 2008 Rami G. Khouri – distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 29 September 2008
Word Count: 794
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BEIRUT — In Israel today, the curtain opens on the new political performance of Tzipi Livni’s election as leader of the Kadima Party. It is not clear if she will dazzle or disappoint, if she will generate historic change or another hour of horror.

I am chromosomally optimistic about the world, so I hope for the best. I have immense, interminable faith in the goodness of the human spirit, among Israelis and Arabs alike, which is only slightly and momentarily tempered by the gross incompetence and occasional criminality of Arab and Israeli political leaders. Arab leaderships and strategic policies rarely change, and transitions are usually from father to son, or great leader to trusted cousin, or one colonel or security chief to another. More frequent leadership changes in Israel are often accompanied by choruses of expectations and exhortations.

Livni will try to forge a ruling coalition, and if she fails the country will hold general elections, which Likud forces led by Benjamin Netanyahu are expected to win. Many in the Arab world argue that there is no difference between any of the Israeli parties, insofar as peacemaking and coexistence with the Arabs are concerned.

Indeed, Labour, Likud, Kadima and coalitions of all of them with many smaller Israeli parties have all perpetuated a few core policies for four decades now. Arabs see successive Israeli governments Judaizing all of Jerusalem, building more colonies and settlements in the West Bank and Golan Heights, using military force against Hamas and Fateh militants and others who fight Israel with guns and rockets, waging war against Hizbullah in Lebanon, and subjecting all Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza to collective punishments, travel restrictions, land confiscations, mass jailings, and other policies that make their lives miserable.

The counter-argument is that Israel would like to disengage from the Palestinians and coexist with a Palestinian state, and its withdrawal from Gaza and the Oslo Accords attest to that desire. That argument is not very credible to most Arabs, given the actual policies Israel pursues. In the past year when Livni was a key member of the government and its chief negotiator with the Palestinians, Israeli policies on the ground suggested a desire to colonize Palestine rather than to coexist with it.

The PLO Negotiations Affairs Department just released a summary of Israeli policies in the nine months since Annapolis, highlighting a sixteen-fold increase in settlement housing units tendered and a three-fold increase in building permits in the West Bank, compared to the seven-month pre-Annapolis period. Israel also had killed 494 Palestinians, including 76 children, as of end August (more details are available at http://www.nad-plo.org/news-updates/IsraeliRoadMapViolations-FINAL.pdf).

Livni enters this picture as the latest Israeli leader to try her hand at achieving several things that have proved contradictory and unattainable in modern history: to ensure the absolute security of the Israeli-Jewish people, end the occupation of Palestinian lands and coexist with a sovereign Palestinian state, and make peace with the wider Arab world. Her challenge is very similar to the one that her father faced in 1938 when he joined the Irgun underground in Palestine: How to safeguard a Zionist homeland and state for Jews, in a land that had been majority owned and populated by Palestinian Arabs?

The Irgun was a movement that Jews and Zionists saw as a heroic spearhead of national salvation and miraculous rebirth. Arabs, British and many others saw it as a pioneer of modern political terrorism, ethnic cleansing and pre-state racism.

The Irgun succeeded, and with ample British assistance created a Zionist Israeli state in a predominantly Palestinian Arab land. Those Palestinians were around 1.5 million in 1948; they number around seven million today. They continue to resist and fight for their own national survival, reconstitution and rebirth, just as Livni’s father did for the Jewish people.

Tzipi Livni may not appreciate the historical irony that she negotiates today with the children and grandchildren of the Palestinians her father helped kill, expel and dispossess from their land. She must decide quickly if she wants to perpetuate the century-old war between Zionism and Arabism, or join hands with willing Arabs to resolve it in the one manner that has never been attempted seriously: equal and simultaneous national rights for Palestinians and Israelis; simultaneously ending the dynamics of occupation, colonization, resistance and terrorism by both sides; and, negotiating an equitable, realistic, legitimate and agreed resolution of all outstanding refugee issues and claims.

My genetic optimism tells me not to discount the possibility that historic, monumental change in the Middle East is possible — but only if courageous and wise leaders in several countries simultaneously rise to the challenge. The four main arenas that define Arab-Israeli diplomacy are in flux: domestic Israeli sentiments, Arab political trends, regional strategic developments, and global forces.

Once again, a constellation of individuals at a pivotal moment face an opportunity: to choose between wallowing in the perpetual pain of their past, or defining a better kind of history for their people.

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

Copyright © 2008 Rami G. Khouri – distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 24 September 2008
Word Count: 827
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BEIRUT — This week is a noteworthy occasion in Arab-Israeli history, because it commemorates two historic events, the Camp David Accords of September 1978, and the Oslo Accords of September 1993. Exactly 30 and 15 years ago, these two agreements were painstakingly negotiated between various Arabs and Israelis, with assorted external assistance, and both held out the promise of breakthroughs for permanent Arab-Israeli peace and coexistence.

History has turned out to be more complex than the promises of those two Septembers past. Arab-Israeli peace turned out to be much more erratic and cold than many had hoped. Terrible conflicts characterized by mutual brutality have persisted, with new actors joining the fray every few years. Not surprisingly, Palestinians, Syrians, Israelis and others continue to probe for possible routes to permanent peace agreements, without much success.

The peace-making legacy of Camp David and Oslo remains thin, but real. It is certain that Arabs and Israelis, with assorted eternal mediators, will try again to negotiate permanent peace agreements, perhaps starting as early as next spring. If so, it seems worthwhile trying to identify the lessons of the Camp David and Oslo experiences. Here is my list of key lessons learned:

1. Frameworks do not work very well, and precise agreements are more likely to achieve lasting peace. Framework agreements often leave the most contentious issues in a gray zone that never gets defined.

2. ‘Autonomy’ and ‘self-government’ do not work very well, and real sovereignty is more likely to lead to lasting peace. The Camp David agreement included plans for an “autonomous self-governing authority” in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, a surefire dead duck before it was born.

3. Jerusalem matters a lot to everyone, and its status cannot be excluded from any credible agreement, or deferred to later dates.

4. The principal actors must be the ones who negotiate peace, not surrogates. Camp David did not include Palestinians so the proposed framework for the Palestinian-Israeli arrangements went nowhere. Oslo did not include all major Palestinian groups, so it was not respected by all, and the process ultimately collapsed. The same thing applies to current talks, which exclude Hamas and other Palestinians, and therefore have almost zero chance of success.

5. Interim arrangements are a lousy idea, and negotiators should do the hard work to address all issues and come up with compromise agreements that respond to the bottom lines of all concerned. The Oslo Accords comprised a “Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements,” a title in which almost every word is a recipe for sure failure. “Interim arrangements” are proposed when the negotiators are unwilling or unable to tackle the tough core issues. They usually lead to slight changes in the status quo that remain vulnerable to the disruptive actions of extremists on both sides, as has happened with Palestinian military attacks against Israelis and continued Israeli colonization of Palestinian land.

6. The will to make peace must be clear on all sides. Peacemaking is a tough business that demands clarity and sincerity. Israelis and Palestinians have not provided sufficient quantities of either one in the past 30 years. Speaking on television about one’s will to coexist is not a serious sign of real peacemaking. What is needed is the ability to express unambiguously a willingness to meet the core needs of the other side — only if this is done simultaneously by both sides.

7. Peace can only happen between people who treat each other as equals. The single biggest weakness of the Camp David and Oslo approaches to Palestinian-Israeli peacemaking was that it was predicated on a sense of Israeli priority to security and statehood, which the principal external player — the United States — broadly shared. Peace was to happen after the Palestinians guaranteed the absolute security of Israelis, even in Zionist colonies and settlements, after which the Palestinians could look forward to improved living conditions and rights. Peace with Egypt and Jordan, on the other hand, was more easily negotiated, smoothly implemented, and maintained for all these years, because it was based on equal relationships — on Israelis and Arabs enjoying equal and simultaneous rights to statehood, sovereignty, and security.

8. Negotiations should not proceed on the basis of what the other side will offer in an unequal power equation; they should move ahead on the basis of what is required by the legal and political reference points for the peace process, such as UN resolutions, international law and conventions, and signed agreements.

9. All sides must be prepared to make peace and coexist, but only if they can live in mutual dignity and security. Public opinion polls consistently reflect a strong willingness to negotiate peace on both sides, but mediocre and often corrupt and incompetent political leaders are unable to translate that latest peace instinct into formal agreements.

Thirty years is a long time, and time enough to learn some useful lessons in the business of negotiating peace.

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

Copyright © 2008 Rami G. Khouri – distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 22 September 2008
Word Count: 818
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BEIRUT — It was almost exactly 20 years ago this month that Al-Qaeda was born in Afghanistan, as a movement of zealous holy warriors that was prepared to fight and die to protect the Islamic umma, or community, from foreign assault. The Russian occupation of Afghanistan was the immediate catalyst that sparked its creation, though the formative motivations sending thousands of young men from Arab and Asian lands to join the jihad were usually anchored in local events and personal experiences.

The several phenomena that Al-Qaeda represents — defensive jihad, militant self-assertion, a puritanical interpretation of religious doctrine, cosmic theological battle, and political struggle to purify tainted Islamic societies — appeal to a wide variety of individuals who gravitate to its call in the same manner that zealots join any of other such movements of true believers.

Coming to grips with the phenomena it represents — especially the continuing threat of terrorism — requires grasping the combination of social, economic and political conditions in local societies from which Al-Qaeda recruits emanate — mainly in the Arab World, South Asia, and immigrant quarters of urban Europe.

Al-Qaeda’s 20th anniversary is an appropriate moment to do this, and the 20-year analytical frame is much more useful than the shorter time context commemorating the September 11, 2001 attack against the United States that has been Al-Qaeda ‘s hallmark signature event. Over the past two decades, Al-Qaeda seems to have evolved in line with trends impacting the wider world of Islamist movements, including local crackdowns in many countries, and the American-led “global war on terror” that has been defined heavily, but not exclusively, by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

These pressures to disrupt Al-Qaeda have been offset by a continuation of the stressful conditions at local and national levels in many Arab-Asian societies that nourish these Salafist jihadi movements in the first place. So a more useful question than “What is Al-Qaeda ‘s condition today?” concerns the wider trends in Arab-Asian societies that bolster Islamist radicalism by spurring five related forces:

1. The slow political fragmentation and fraying at the edges of once centralized nation-states like Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia, Lebanon, Sudan, Afghanistan and Algeria, creating vacuums of authority that Islamists and others quickly fill.

2. The continued sharp disparities in local delivery of basic social services, job opportunities and security throughout much of the Arab-Asian region, creating urgent needs that Islamists are very good at meeting.

3. The impact of major nationalist issues such as the Arab-Israeli conflict or the Anglo-American-led war on Iraq.

4. Police brutality and political oppression at the local level in many Arab-Asian countries (the birthplace of Al-Qaeda was both Afghanistan and the prisons of Egypt).

5. Occasional external and mostly Western stimuli to those who see themselves fighting a defensive jihad to protect both the honor and the physical existence of the threatened Islamic umma, such as the Danish cartoons, Pope Benedict’s speech in August 2006, virulently anti-Islamic movies and books, and a tendency by leading politicians (such as John McCain and Sarah Palin today) to repeatedly speak of an undefined “Islamic radicalism” as a great threat to Western civilization that must be fought for decades, if not lifetimes.

The combination of these five factors has slowly but persistently fomented several generations of Islamist activists who have mostly joined peaceful movements like the Muslim Brotherhood. Small numbers, though, split off and embrace fringe militant and terrorist groups.

Much debate swirls around the condition and status of Al-Qaeda these days, which has clearly suffered operational setbacks with the loss of its Afghan bases, but seems to have regrouped in the northwestern frontier areas of Pakistan where it has widespread support among Taliban-friendly communities. While Al-Qaeda has been disrupted, other similar, smaller Salafist militant groups have sprung to life in Iraq, Somalia, Lebanon, Yemen and Algeria.

An important recent development has seen some of the founding fathers of contemporary jihadist militancy (such as Karam Zuhdi, Mohammed Derbala, and Sayyed Imam Abdelaziz Al Sharif, aka Dr Fadl) recant and reject their former embrace of Al-Qaeda-type terror attacks. (Interestingly, many did so in the same Egyptian jails where they were first radicalized…hmmm, perhaps closing many Arab jails and tempering Arab autocracy would be the fastest way to fight terrorism?).

Any militant movement that endures for 20 years and spurs dozens of smaller clones is not only a consequence of its own organizational prowess. It reflects the persistence of enabling conditions that breed militants and militancy. If we don’t want to go through this again 20 years from now, we would do well to grasp and change the wider degrading conditions that feed recruits into terror movements, including Arab jails, socio-economic disparity and abuse of power, Israeli occupations, Anglo-American wars, and Western Islamophobia.

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

Copyright © 2008 Rami G. Khouri – distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 17 September 2008
Word Count: 790
—————-

BEIRUT — It was almost exactly 20 years ago this month that Al-Qaeda was born in Afghanistan, as a movement of zealous holy warriors that was prepared to fight and die to protect the Islamic umma, or community, from foreign assault. The Russian occupation of Afghanistan was the immediate catalyst that sparked its creation, though the formative motivations sending thousands of young men from Arab and Asian lands to join the jihad were usually anchored in local events and personal experiences.

The several phenomena that Al-Qaeda represents — defensive jihad, militant self-assertion, a puritanical interpretation of religious doctrine, cosmic theological battle, and political struggle to purify tainted Islamic societies — appeal to a wide variety of individuals who gravitate to its call in the same manner that zealots join any of other such movements of true believers.

Coming to grips with the phenomena it represents — especially the continuing threat of terrorism — requires grasping the combination of social, economic and political conditions in local societies from which Al-Qaeda recruits emanate — mainly in the Arab World, South Asia, and immigrant quarters of urban Europe.

Al-Qaeda’s 20th anniversary is an appropriate moment to do this, and the 20-year analytical frame is much more useful than the shorter time context commemorating the September 11, 2001 attack against the United States that has been Al-Qaeda ’s hallmark signature event. Over the past two decades, Al-Qaeda seems to have evolved in line with trends impacting the wider world of Islamist movements, including local crackdowns in many countries, and the American-led “global war on terror” that has been defined heavily, but not exclusively, by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

These pressures to disrupt Al-Qaeda have been offset by a continuation of the stressful conditions at local and national levels in many Arab-Asian societies that nourish these Salafist jihadi movements in the first place. So a more useful question than “What is Al-Qaeda ’s condition today?” concerns the wider trends in Arab-Asian societies that bolster Islamist radicalism by spurring five related forces:

1. The slow political fragmentation and fraying at the edges of once centralized nation-states like Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia, Lebanon, Sudan, Afghanistan and Algeria, creating vacuums of authority that Islamists and others quickly fill.

2. The continued sharp disparities in local delivery of basic social services, job opportunities and security throughout much of the Arab-Asian region, creating urgent needs that Islamists are very good at meeting.

3. The impact of major nationalist issues such as the Arab-Israeli conflict or the Anglo-American-led war on Iraq.

4. Police brutality and political oppression at the local level in many Arab-Asian countries (the birthplace of Al-Qaeda was both Afghanistan and the prisons of Egypt).

5. Occasional external and mostly Western stimuli to those who see themselves fighting a defensive jihad to protect both the honor and the physical existence of the threatened Islamic umma, such as the Danish cartoons, Pope Benedict’s speech in August 2006, virulently anti-Islamic movies and books, and a tendency by leading politicians (such as John McCain and Sarah Palin today) to repeatedly speak of an undefined “Islamic radicalism” as a great threat to Western civilization that must be fought for decades, if not lifetimes.

The combination of these five factors has slowly but persistently fomented several generations of Islamist activists who have mostly joined peaceful movements like the Muslim Brotherhood. Small numbers, though, split off and embrace fringe militant and terrorist groups.

Much debate swirls around the condition and status of Al-Qaeda these days, which has clearly suffered operational setbacks with the loss of its Afghan bases, but seems to have regrouped in the northwestern frontier areas of Pakistan where it has widespread support among Taliban-friendly communities. While Al-Qaeda has been disrupted, other similar, smaller Salafist militant groups have sprung to life in Iraq, Somalia, Lebanon, Yemen and Algeria.

An important recent development has seen some of the founding fathers of contemporary jihadist militancy (such as Karam Zuhdi, Mohammed Derbala, and Sayyed Imam Abdelaziz Al Sharif, aka Dr Fadl) recant and reject their former embrace of Al-Qaeda-type terror attacks. (Interestingly, many did so in the same Egyptian jails where they were first radicalized…hmmm, perhaps closing many Arab jails and tempering Arab autocracy would be the fastest way to fight terrorism?).

Any militant movement that endures for 20 years and spurs dozens of smaller clones is not only a consequence of its own organizational prowess. It reflects the persistence of enabling conditions that breed militants and militancy. If we don’t want to go through this again 20 years from now, we would do well to grasp and change the wider degrading conditions that feed recruits into terror movements, including Arab jails, socio-economic disparity and abuse of power, Israeli occupations, Anglo-American wars, and Western Islamophobia.

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

Copyright © 2008 Rami G. Khouri – distributed by Agence Global

—————
Released: 17 September 2008
Word Count: 790
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