BEIRUT — The likelihood that Israeli-Palestinian peace talks make real progress this year is very slim, but that doesn’t keep the parties from meeting and making hopeful statements. US President George W. Bush’s planned trip to Israel in May looms for many as a critical moment when any progress towards a permanent peace accord will have to be clear.

Events on the ground suggest that Washington will continue to go through the motions of mediating a peace accord without necessarily using its full political clout in an even-handed manner to bring one about. This was suggested by its recent performance in the tripartite committee established at the Annapolis conference to monitor implementation of the “roadmap” to peace — most particularly the compliance of Israelis and Palestinians with their required political and security moves.

The committee held its first meeting in Jerusalem last week, chaired by US General William Fraser, who was immediately insulted by the Israeli decision to send mid-level defense ministry official Amos Gilad. The Palestinians sent Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. The Americans are playing their critical arbiter’s role in a very low-key manner that borders on nonchalance and guarantees failure.

Then Monday, unsurprisingly, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert repeated that his government plans to continue building and expanding settlements in the occupied East Jerusalem area. This is likely to be met soon by a stronger Palestinian reply than just protesting Israeli colonization and American nonchalance. Meanwhile, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ standing with his own people is low, and the Americans and Israelis respect him even less.

Only a more credible Palestinian negotiating position can change this dynamic, and this in turn requires that Hamas and Fateh rejoin forces in some sort of national unity government. They are holding talks indirectly in Yemen this week to achieve this goal — partly motivated by the realization that the status quo is helping Hamas consolidate and strengthen its standing in Palestinian society. One reason for this is the popular respect for a position of defiance against Israel, rather than spineless acquiescence.

The fact that Hamas — for the third time in three years — appears to have pushed Israel to the point of indirectly negotiating a cease-fire works in its favor with the Palestinian people. This is reflected in the latest poll by the respected Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, showing that in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip the last three months have brought about a significant shift in political sentiment in Hamas’ favor.

The change registered by the poll includes several important elements: greater popularity for Hamas and its leadership, rising support for its stance and legitimacy, and even greater satisfaction with Hamas’ performance — despite the continued fighting with Israel, and the political-economic boycott of Hamas by most Western states and Israel.

If new presidential elections were to take place today, the poll suggests that President Abbas and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh would be virtually tied: 46 percent for Abbas and 47 percent for Haniyeh (in December, Abbas received 56 percent and Haniyeh 37 percent).

Hamas’ rising popularity reflects several recent developments, including the continued mutual attacks and, according to the center that managed the poll, “the failure of the Annapolis process in positively affecting daily life of Palestinians in the West Bank, in stopping Israeli settlement activities, or in producing progress in final status negotiations.”

These developments, it said, “managed to present Hamas as successful in breaking the siege and as a victim of Israeli attacks. These also presented Palestinian President Abbas and his Fateh faction as impotent, unable to change the bitter reality in the West Bank or ending Israeli occupation through diplomacy.”

If a cease-fire takes hold soon in Gaza, Hamas’ popularity will rise even further, and will give it a stronger hand in any renewed Palestinian national unity government. This will create conditions that will seriously challenge the prevailing policy in Israel, Europe, and the United States of boycotting Hamas and trying to bring it down by supporting rival Fateh. The exact opposite appears to be happening: As Fateh loses credibility, support among Palestinians for Hamas grows.

President Bush is likely to ignore these realities, preferring to cling to his romantic notion of moving towards peace by supporting the current Olmert-Abbas talks — disregarding Israel’s clear message that it does not take those talks seriously, will not honor the Americans’ third party mediating and arbitrating role, and will continue to attack, kill and besiege Palestinians, and build colonial settlements anywhere it wants in occupied Palestinian lands.

A growing number of Palestinians seem to be saying that they want to resist Israel’s colonization and murder of Palestinians and force it to a truce. That would appear to be the more realistic route to fruitful progress for all, rather than the somewhat imaginary Olmert-Abbas peace talks characterized by insults and indifference.

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

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Released: 19 March 2008
Word Count: 801
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BEIRUT — At the summit of the Organization of the Islamic Conference in Dakar, Senegal, March 13, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said that the Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem, “are facing an ethnic cleansing campaign through a set of Israeli decisions such as imposing heavy taxes, banning construction and closing Palestinian institutions in addition to separating the city from the West Bank by the racist separation wall.”

The ethnic cleansing accusation is serious, but not new. It is galling to Israelis, but pivotal for Palestinians. President Abbas is Israel’s and America’s preferred peace partner, though a peculiarly inefficient one after more than 40 years in politics. Yet for him to charge Israel with ethnic cleansing at the level of a global Islamic summit suggests that the issue deserves to be examined in some depth. Peace-making and eventual coexistence require that the core claims of both sides be put on the table and examined fully.

For Palestinians, the modern conflict between Arabism and Zionism — since the birth of modern political Zionism in 1896 or so — has always centered around the expulsion of indigenous Palestinian Arabs from their ancestral lands by Jewish colonial settlers who came from abroad, threw out as many Palestinian Arabs as they could, and created the Jewish state of Israel. The land of British-mandated Palestine that had been roughly 93 percent Arab and 7 percent Jewish around 1900 has become today about 85 percent Jewish Israeli and 15 percent Palestinian Arab.

Such wholesale transformation of a society from one majority population group to another does not happen naturally or organically over such a short period of time. Resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict demands coming to grips with the Palestinian and Israeli narratives, and reconciling them as far as possible. Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestinians — via massacres, terrorism, laws and organized military action — is a serious historical accusation against the pre-state Jewish-Zionist military organizations; for many Palestinians it also remains a continuing and mortal threat.

Anyone interested in this issue should read an important but disturbing short book by the British journalist and author Jonathan Cook, who has reported from Israel and Palestine for the Guardian and other respected European newspapers for many years. He now lives in Nazareth, and knows Israeli and Palestinian societies intimately.

His book, Blood and Religion: The unmasking of the Jewish and democratic state (Pluto Press, London, 2006, 155 pp.), explores in depth, and with many detailed analyses of specific incidents, his central thesis that, “Israel is beginning a long, slow process of ethnic cleansing both of Palestinian non-citizens from parts of the occupied territories that it has long coveted for its expanded Jewish state, and of Palestinian citizens from inside its internationally recognized borders.”

Cook believes Israel’s strategy reflects its widespread sense of being subjected to two simultaneous threats: the physical threat of terror attacks from Palestinians in the occupied territories, and two demographic threats to the ‘Jewishness’ of the state — the far higher birth rate of Palestinians that will eventually make them a majority over Jews in the region, and the continuing Palestinian demand for a right of return of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who were expelled in 1947-48 — and their several million descendants.

Physical and demographic dangers are not easily distinguishable for Israelis, Cook argues, and Israel has responded with a racist ideology that emanates from the concept of Israel as a Jewish state, rather than a state of all its citizens. Israel does not treat its Palestinian citizens as full-fledged nationals with equal rights, but as “citizens without a nationality… more akin to permanent residents.”

Israeli laws, policies, police behavior, political platforms and public pronouncements — all documented in detail — indicate that Israel, “is preparing to create a phantom Palestinian state out of the space it leaves behind after disengaging from Gaza and building its series of walls and fences across the West Bank. Once this process is complete, Israel hopes to transfer the citizenship rights of its Palestinian minority to the new state.”

Cook raises important issues and makes very serious charges against the state and people of Israel, with much credible evidence to support his accusations and analyses. President Abbas’ charge this week of Israeli ethnic cleansing in East Jerusalem accentuates the Palestinian perception of being threatened by ethnic cleansing as a continuing threat, not a moot or distant historical issue.

These are existential, life-or-death matters for Palestinians and Israelis alike. They deserve dispassionate, in-depth discussion, to ascertain the truth as far as that might be possible. Jonathan Cook’s book is a good place to start — because the world should have learned by now how dangerous it is not to examine such serious charges when the matter at hand falls within the ugly realm of crimes against humanity and other such deviance, inhumanity, and criminality.

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

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Released: 14 March 2008
Word Count: 796
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BEIRUT — Out of crisis comes opportunity, which describes the current brief lull in the war between Israel and the Palestinian resistance movements in Gaza. Rather than just trying to calm things down, this is the moment to push hard diplomatically towards more serious negotiations, on the basis of a new, more credible, balance of power.

The Israeli government and the two main Palestinian Islamist resistance groups, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, have all indicated their willingness to engage in Egyptian-led indirect talks to bring about a lull in the fighting. Whether this is called a “cease-fire”, a “truce” or — as Khaled al-Batsh, an Islamic Jihad leader in Gaza called it — “a calm atmosphere” that Egypt requested as a prelude to a wider deal, is mere word-craft. The more significant political meaning of what is going on today is that parties that have declared their diehard determination to destroy each other are quietly negotiating implicit coexistence.

Neither side is comfortable with the continuing warfare, even though they can both withstand it and persevere in their attacks. Nor is either side willing now to explicitly accept a formal agreement with the other, though they both benefit from an end to the mutual attacks.

It should be the highest priority of all concerned external parties — the Americans, Arabs, Europeans, Russians and the UN — to exert heroic, unrelenting efforts in the coming week to push both sides to an agreement that achieves three things:

1) cements the long-term cease-fire and makes it an open-ended truce;
2) exchanges Israeli and Palestinian prisoners; and,
3) reopens closed border points to allow the Palestinian Gazans to live a normal life and restart their economy.

A fourth urgent goal that should be handled in parallel is an Arab-mediated attempt to revive the unity government between Fateh and Hamas in Palestine, based this time on a clearer agreement for a national internal security force.

The importance of a negotiated long-term truce between Hamas-Islamic Jihad and Israel cannot be over-stated. It would represent a historic breakthrough that could open the way for future negotiations to a permanent resolution of the conflict. It would allow both populations to live a reasonably normal life, free from fear of missile, bomb and rocket attacks from the other. This would spur economic growth, which in turn would provide a powerful base for more urgent peace negotiations — as Northern Ireland taught us. Political leaderships on both sides would enjoy enhanced credibility, at home and in the eyes of the enemy with whom they must negotiate a full peace one day.

Most significantly, a truce would mark a historic and permanent shift in the negotiating balance between Palestinians and Israelis. By entering into a truce, Israel would have acknowledged the impact of the Palestinian Islamic resistance movements, and signaled that it is prepared to engage diplomatically with them. Israel should not hesitate to do this out of an exaggerated sense of honor or political pride, or on the assumption that it is giving an inch and will soon have to concede a mile. For the Palestinians would be making the same concession in return: tacit recognition of and negotiations with the state of Israel, whose legitimacy they had always rejected. When both sides give, they both gain.

A Hamas-Fateh national unity government is inevitable. If it happens in the wake of a new Hamas-Islamic Jihad-Israel truce, such a unity government would be in a stronger negotiating position with Israel. The lesson we learn from this? Inflict enough pain on your enemy, and you open the door to a negotiated agreement to stop the mutual pain. It’s not pretty, but this is how history and nationalism work. This is also how lasting peace can be negotiated by parties of equal credibility.

The current “peace process,” to the contrary, is an embarrassing sham that takes insincerity and self-deception to the level of collective hallucination: The Palestinian leadership of President Mahmoud Abbas meaninglessly suspends and resumes peace talks and pleads shamelessly and unsuccessfully for American life-boats.

Israel continues to expand its colonial settlements in occupied East Jerusalem. The American government that named itself at Annapolis the arbiter of compliance with the “road map” peace-making requirements meekly calls continued Israeli colonization “not helpful” to the peace process; and the Arabs, Europeans, Russians and UN seem blissfully oblivious to their potential to play a constructive role in this saga.

The current Israel-Hamas-Islamic Jihad indirect contacts offer a rare opportunity to build a new, more credible diplomatic structure based on two formidable warring parties who respect each other because they have proved themselves able to kill and terrorize each other. They have an incentive to negotiate meaningfully, rather than to smoke delusional diplomatic drugs as Israel, Abbas and the Americans are doing.

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

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Released: 12 March 2008
Word Count: 789
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BEIRUT — The sharp escalation in the Palestinian-Israeli war in recent weeks is just that — escalation in a war that has been going on for decades. As terrible as it is to see civilians killed in Israel and Palestine, it is not surprising, given the context of existential defensive warfare that both sides believe defines them and their actions.

The attack Thursday against a Jewish seminary in Jerusalem is a sharp reminder that the people who choose to fight Israel have the capacity to strike inside its capital. The latest violence in Jerusalem was done in the wake of two significant recent Israeli actions: the assassination of Hizbullah special operations leader Imad Mughniyeh in Damascus, and the Israeli assault on Gaza that left over 120 people dead — many of them civilians.

The two most significant developments last week from the Palestinian perspective were the attack against Israelis inside Jerusalem and the capacity and will to keep firing small rockets against southern Israel from Gaza. This comes at a heavy cost of many Palestinians killed and severe pain inflicted on the entire civilian population of Gaza due to the Israeli blockade. Palestinians themselves — in Gaza and elsewhere — actively debate the wisdom of the armed resistance policy that says Israel must feel the pain of death and terrorized civilians in order to stop its own assaults against Palestine.

British-based humanitarian and development aid groups — comprised of Amnesty International, CARE International UK, CAFOD, Christian Aid, Médecins du Monde UK, Oxfam, Save The Children UK and Trócaire — warned in a report released this week that Israel’s blockade of Gaza is a collective punishment of the entire Gazan civilian population of 1.5 million. It concludes that the Israeli government’s policy of blockade is unacceptable, illegal and fails to deliver security for Palestinians and Israelis alike.

Their report, Gaza Strip: A Humanitarian Implosion, notes a dramatic deterioration in poverty and unemployment, and consequent drops in education and health services. It said that 75,000 of the 110,000 workers who were previously employed in the private sector are without jobs.

But the reality is that neither side feels enough pain to change its tactics. In fact, the opposite is true: Both Israelis and Palestinians feel that the armed struggle gives meaning to their lives, because in fighting they define their will to live in dignity and ability to survive as free people. A few hundred or a few thousand people will die on both sides, but tens of thousands of others will be born into a context of perpetual warfare.

The Palestinians in particular have clearly absorbed some important technical assistance from allies in the region, and are better able to protect their small rocket launchers or use automatic timers that fire rockets concealed in underground bunkers. It is not clear whether this reflects technical lessons learned from Hizbullah’s experience in Lebanon, or simply a new generation of resistance fighters who have absorbed and overcome the mistakes of their predecessors.

The attack inside Jerusalem will certainly elicit a harsh Israeli response, yet Israelis should consider that this is probably precisely what it was intended to do. For Israel to kill more Palestinians and cause greater humanitarian suffering among civilians in Gaza will not stop the attacks against Israel — as the past 40 years have amply demonstrated. It will only stimulate yet another generation of young fighters who have nothing to lose if they lose their own lives in fighting Israel.

The Palestinian-Israeli war today slowly transforms itself into a classic case of an armed resistance fighting a superior military power, which in most historical cases inevitably sees the resistance ultimately drive out the occupying power. The political talks between President Mahmoud Abbas and the Israeli government seem rather inconsequential in the face of such determined militarism by the Israeli government and the Hamas-led resistance groups.

The way to stop this, I would guess, would be to correctly acknowledge the aims of those fighting against Israel as forcing Israel to stop its attacks and inhuman punishments, and forge a new political situation in which Hamas is accepted as a legitimate political player.

The way to do this is for both sides to resume the cease-fire that they had observed for some months in 2006-07.

The long-term truce that Hamas has offered Israel should be seen in a new light, because it offers all sides meaningful gains that can halt the current deterioration, while creating a new foundation for possible political breakthroughs. And both sides should welcome that as fiercely as they now fight militarily.

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

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Released: 10 March 2008
Word Count: 754
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NEW YORK — The tragedy of the Palestinian people is not only that over and over again they get slaughtered by Israeli gunfire, dozens at a time — militants and civilians alike — while their land is encircled, choked and colonized. It is also that they must suffer the added ignominy of an increasingly bizarre American secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, who seems to live in another world where she believes her pleas can restart peace talks; and of a Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, who has transcended the political dysfunctional to historical levels of the pathetic and tragic.

It is hard to imagine a worse situation than that which now defines the Palestinians of Gaza. The world does not accept their right to use military means to resist occupation, strangulation and assault — while Israel is allowed to use any means it wishes to kill hundreds at a time, as it did last week; nor does the world accept the right of the Palestinians to democratically elect Hamas as their leadership.

When Israel attacks and causes even more suffering for the Palestinians, President Abbas suspends his peace talks with Israel. Rarely in modern diplomatic history has an elected figure acted with such well intentioned, but emphatic, meaninglessness. Hollow is too soft a description of Abbas’ gesture. He has totally abandoned any sense of moral responsibility as the elected president of the Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem, deciding instead to confront Hamas in an all-or-nothing political battle.

Hamas’ takeover of the Gaza Strip last year was a serious political challenge to Abbas, which Hamas says was done to avert a Fateh- and American-backed plan to remove it from its elected leadership position. Whatever the truth may be, the answer can only be for the Palestinians to stop fighting among themselves and resume talks to form a national unity government.

Hamas and Abbas both once enjoyed that very rare element in the Arab world: the legitimacy of incumbency following clean elections. Were they to join forces — as they did briefly last year under Saudi Arabian auspices — they would create conditions for a unified Palestinian stance that could ultimately offer hope for a serious real peace negotiation with Israel. The Palestinian negotiators would have been taken seriously because they truly represented their people.

Instead, Abbas has foolishly accepted the American and Israeli shortsighted policy of trying to smash Hamas, rather than acknowledging and grasping its legitimacy, and trying to join forces with it for shared credibility, respect and impact.

If Hamas were a rogue criminal movement or small gang, it could perhaps be confronted with force. But it is not. It was freely elected, even if something of an electoral fluke. It represents a historic, indigenous reaction to the failed policies of pleading and relying on the United States that Fateh and Abbas himself have pursued for over 40 years — policies that only saw continued Israeli colonization, assault, mass murder, imprisonment, and inhuman collective punishment of entire Palestinian communities.

Hamas’ approach, based on resistance, defiance and steadfastness until Israel treats the Palestinians with respect as equal partners, is not sure to succeed; it is very likely to see continued strife and many dead and injured — in Palestine and Israel.

It also reflects a wider trend throughout the Middle East, where many individuals and entire movements have resorted to religious-based self-assertion as the appropriate antidote to Arab docility, corruption and failure.

Abbas’ dilemma is that Israel brutalizes the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank while it talks peace with Fateh, and Israel now will also continue to brutalize the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank because Abbas has suspended the peace process. Abbas has given Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert a timely gift: the opportunity to claim that there is no Palestinian partner with whom to talk peace, so Israel can therefore continue using military means to achieve its goals.

The Palestinian president’s gesture of suspending peace talks is a cruel confirmation of his marginal status, and his utter invisibility on the Israeli, American and international scene. The fact that Condoleezza Rice is now in the region to talk to him and Olmert merely accentuates the vacuousness of this tripartite effort: a Palestinian president who does not matter, an Israeli prime minister who does not care, and an American government that is oblivious to both of these realities.

It is difficult to see how further Israeli military attacks against Gaza will achieve peace and quiet, after 40 years of assaults and many years of direct occupation did not do so, and in fact generated more fierce resistance in the form of Hamas and other militant groups.

Many more Palestinians and Israelis will die and suffer injury and losses in the days and weeks ahead, but needlessly so, because their war will not result in a victor on either side, only more and bigger losers.

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

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Released: 05 March 2008
Word Count: 812
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NEW YORK — My travels around the United States for the past two weeks, during an intense political moment leading up to two crucial presidential primaries Tuesday, have reinforced my sense of a dark hole in public political life in this country:

At a time when the United States is deeply involved militarily in the Arab-Islamic region of the world, serious, balanced and in-depth analysis or coverage of this region and its people remain elusive.

Other issues that are important for America’s well-being, such as climate change, education reform, or immigration, are covered with much more depth, accuracy and balance.

The political campaigns, especially among conservative Republicans, have aggravated an already grim situation. Republican front-runner John McCain in particular wastes no opportunity to rally his supporters with emotional commitments to use every ounce of energy in his body to fight “radical Islamic militants.” He’ll chase them to the “gates of hell,” he thunders. And the happy crowd roars approval — not quite sure who the radical Islamic militants are, or why the combined powers of the world’s mightiest democracies and allied Third World tyrannies have not even chased the rascals out of the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan, or suburban London, let alone to hell itself.

The crescendo of McCain’s simplistic appeal is always that “I’ll never surrender!” and the happy crowd roars again, secure in the knowledge that surrender is not an option — though still blissfully confused about whom exactly one might surrender to if surrender were ever an option.

Other intellectual hooligans and cultural skinheads — like Glen Beck on CNN every night — reflect a widespread tendency among conservative media commentators and hosts to replace sensibility with emotion, to act tough when that is easier than being smart and realistic.

Fox News panders to similar sentiments, simultaneously affirming a determination to fight bad Muslims and terrorists who threaten the United States, while proudly waving the American flag as an emotional symbol of one’s commitment to… something — though what that something is remains unclear.

I suspect that the emotional patriotism and macho militarism that increasingly define the conservative side of the United States — half the country, probably — have increasingly come to serve as a substitute for consistent ideology and sound foreign policy. Many scholars, religious leaders, business-men and -women, and civil society groups increasingly reflect the best of American traditions, by making the effort to grasp that a few criminal Arabs-Muslims in the world are dwarfed by the billion-plus law-abiding Muslims, and 300 million-plus Arabs who share most American values.

The political and media public space, however, is dominated by images, words and innuendo that overwhelmingly portray Arabs-Muslims who are violent, extremist, religiously fanatic, and generally alien and therefore dangerous.

In the past two weeks in the United States, I have kept my eyes and ears open for signs of news media reports about Arabs-Muslims that portray them as they really are — normal people, usually politically placid, occasionally angry, and very occasionally violent. Those images and reports are extremely rare, in a way that they are not rare in coverage of other population groups around the world or within the United States.

Sadly, more than six years after 9/11 and five years after the American-led attack on Iraq, the public debate on these issues in the United States — with only a few exceptions — remains mired in intellectual mediocrity, factual inaccuracy, analytical selectivity, cultural insensitivity and political values more worthy of a horse barn than a powerful and otherwise decent nation.

Politicians play on the ignorance and fear of their fellow citizens to rouse emotional responses in a desperate quest for votes; commercial media personalities do the same thing in pursuit of larger audience shares, in order to sell more advertising. Both appear irresponsible and uncaring that their simplistic emotionalist and reactionary chauvinism foster a fresh form of racism that can only generate new tensions and greater conflicts down the road.

There is much to admire this season in the American political system. But we also clearly see much that is repugnant — where the dark sides of American racism and xenophobia is hideously promoted in speeches — and this repulsiveness shamelessly hidden by wrapping it in the flag.

We should not fall into the same moral morass that these few racists and hucksters have adopted as their home: This sort of deliberate exploitation of racist fears and ignorance is the sickness of a small minority of Americans living in a strange and desperate world of media and political competitiveness.

We should not brand all Americans as ugly and stupid because a small minority of them choose to be so, just as Americans should not see all Arabs and Muslims as dangerous fanatics because a small minority of them choose to be so.

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

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Released: 01 March 2008
Word Count: 787
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WASHINGTON, DC — Every few years a book is published that has the potential to change perceptions of millions of people, and, by doing so, perhaps to change policies of governments for the better. I believe that just such a book is the one being published in a few weeks entitled Who Speaks for Islam, co-authored by John L. Esposito of Georgetown University, and Dalia Mogahed of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies.

This book analyzes the results of a global sample survey of one billion Muslims carried out in recent years, representing more than 90 percent of all Muslims in the world. It is published by Gallup Press, and comes out at a time when there is urgent and increasing need for more accuracy and breadth in dealing with the tensions, conflicts and misperceptions that plague relations between many in the United States and Muslim-majority societies.

The reasons for my enthusiastic advance praise for this volume are not only the depth of its contents, the clarity of its conclusions, and the fact that it is a fast and absorbing read. Its primary compelling strength is the sharp insights it offers into the thinking of Muslims around the world, painting a very different view of Muslims and Islam than the one projected in popular culture or public politics in the United States.

It has been a painful experience to read this book and chat with the authors, while simultaneously following political coverage on American television during my current trip to the United States. President George W. Bush may have cooled down his wild rhetoric about “Islamofascists,” but Republican presidential contender John McCain and others have filled the vacuum with their constant references to Islamic extremism being the threat of the century and the defining issue of our times. Mainstream cable television, local newspapers, and public affairs radio make things even worse by referring to Islam and to Muslims primarily in the context of violence, warfare, fanaticism, or anti-Americanism.

So it is refreshing and useful for more sensible American relations with Muslims and their cultures that this book provides a clear, emphatic antidote to the fear, racism, and anger that still drive many Americans’ attitudes to Muslims and Islam. The need to redress the situation of imbalanced and tense US-Islamic relations was most poignantly reflected in a point the authors made when I had a chance to chat with them recently:

When Americans were polled and asked what they admired about Islam, 57 percent said “nothing” or “I don’t know,” while a majority of Muslims around the world easily named several specific things they admired about the United States, including its democracy, technology and liberty — the same things that Americans say they admire about their democracy. Muslims listed the key elements of the democracy they desired as freedom of speech, religion and assembly.

The survey and book offer a number of important insights that are based on intensive field research, not preconceptions distorted by political violence, and by politicians who deliberately play on people’s fears and ignorance. What was the single most important conclusion the authors drew from their work?

“The conflict between the Muslim and Western communities is far from inevitable. It is more about policy than principles.” They add a critical thought, though: “However, until and unless decision-makers listen directly to the people and gain an accurate understanding of this conflict, extremists on all sides will continue to gain ground.”

The book is rich in detailed findings and analyses. Here are some of its key conclusions, as summarized by the authors:

Muslims differentiate between different Western countries, criticizing or celebrating them on the basis of their politics, not their religion or culture. The vast majority of Muslims who are asked about their future dreams speak usually of getting a good job, nor engaging in jihad. Muslims and Americans are equally likely to reject attacks on civilians as morally unjustified. Those who condone acts of terrorism are a minority and are no more likely to be religious than the rest of the population. What Muslims say they least admire about the West is its perceived moral decay and breakdown of traditional values — the same responses given by Americans. Muslim women want equal rights and religion in their societies. Muslims are most offended by Western disrespect for Islam and Muslims. Majorities of Muslims want religion to be a source of laws, but they do not want religious leaders to play a direct role in governance or crafting a constitution.

This kind of polling and analysis should be tremendously important for political leaders in both Muslim and Western societies. It sketches the personal values and political sentiments of a vast majority of men and women who can be mobilized on the basis of their real sentiments anchored in justice, democracy, and respect for religious and social norms — not their imagined adherence to violence and extremism.

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

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Released: 27 February 2008
Word Count: 812
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DOHA Qatar — One of the useful new trends in the Middle East is the proliferation of weapons of mass conversation, exemplified by the non-stop international and regional conferences that are hosted in places like Doha, Dubai, Abu Dhabi and other aspiring capitals of talk. Some gatherings are useful and enlightening, including the fifth consecutive that was held in Doha this weekend, jointly sponsored by the Brookings Institution in Washington and the Qatari ministry of foreign affairs.

This gathering of several hundred engaged and activist individuals from the United States and the Islamic world, being an annual event, allows us to track evolving patterns of sentiments and attitudes in both worlds. One constant, affirmed again this year, is that most public officials in the United States are flaming cowards and prize-winning hypocrites when it comes to addressing Arab-Israeli issues honestly — given their fear of being truly even-handed, which in America’s distorted political culture means they will be branded as pro-Arab or anti-Semitic. So they fold, don their chicken feathers, and get on with the politician’s task of being expedient rather than principled. This is not surprising, just perpetually sad.

On the Arab-Islamic side, the sadness comes from immobility in the power structures that define most Muslim-majority countries. Millions of activists and ordinary decent men and women are paralyzed before their power structures — unable to prod them towards credible democracy in most places, and unsatisfied with the prevailing top-heavy control systems. Because massive political impotence defines much of the Arab-Islamic world, tens of millions of dissatisfied citizens have moved to empower themselves by joining mainstream Islamist movements: Hamas, Hizbullah, the Muslim Brotherhood, and others. They offer an alternative form of political identity, service and security delivery, and citizen action.

This is why relations between the United States and the Islamic world — broadly defined — are now stuck. Americans broadly have second thoughts about promoting democracy in our lands because they fear Islamist victories, and Arabs-Muslims see this American hesitation as confirmation of a deep streak of insincerity and hypocrisy. A fascinating theme at this year’s US-Islamic World Forum was clarity in the overall perceptions and priorities of both worlds. Some broad patterns do prevail in these widely diverse societies. The one that I found most fascinating was the divergence in Muslims’ emphasis on “respect” and Americans’ emphasis on “interests.”

A fascinating new global poll by the Gallup organization, covering societies with one billion Muslims, clearly reaffirmed something that those of us who live in Muslim-majority societies have long recognized as a prevailing reality: Muslims most resent the West’s “disrespect of Islam,” and are critical of many American foreign policies, not American values. The commitment to democratic norms — and even the definition of democracy — are virtually identical among Americans and Muslims, the poll found. John Esposito and Dalia Mogahed have just published an important new book on the poll results, entitled Who Speaks for Islam.

Backed by massive polling data that is not so new in itself — other polls have shown similar results, but never on such a global scale — they make a critically important point that cannot be over-emphasized: Muslims’ sense that they and their religion are disrespected by the United States leads to a widespread feeling of humiliation, and also of being threatened and being controlled by others. This can spill over into radicalism in some cases.

The centrality of “respect” for Muslims, Arabs, and others, who resent American or Western double standards and mistreatment, needs to be better appreciated. This is especially true if we wish to reduce global tensions and the violence that is now routinely practiced by the American armed forces and assorted official and private armies throughout the Arab-Islamic world.

The good news is that this message is getting through to some Americans who make the effort to listen and understand, and in turn expect Arabs and Muslims to reciprocate the courtesy. One example was the concluding review of the gathering by Brookings Institution Vice President Carlos Pascual. He acknowledged the “reinforcing paranoias” in both societies, affirmed the need for law-based regional and global orders that treat all people equally, and concluded that “respect” was the elusive point of convergence that could gather together the rights and aspirations of all concerned. This “call to coexistence,” he said, requires reciprocal understanding, human capacity, good policies, and action.

While Americans and Muslims continue to meet and talk, the tensions and active conflicts between their societies seem to get worse. Responsible and sensible people who take the time to identify the basic causes of tension, however, usually find a way to overcome them by affirming the importance of mutual respect as the starting point for coexistence, security, and prosperity. It is a shame, however, that no such people hold public office in the United States or most of the Islamic world.

One day, I have no doubt, the politicians and autocrats amongst us will rediscover their own humanity, and let us assert ours as well.

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

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Released: 20 February 2008
Word Count: 827
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BEIRUT — On last Thursday, Beirut was both a sad and heroic city, as a million or more citizens braved rain and cold to mount two massive rallies for two large than life assassinated men — former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, and Hizbullah’s late special operations chief Imad Mughniyeh. Both the Saad Hariri-led pro-government forces and the Hizbullah-led opposition once again confirmed their tremendous organizational strength and popular support. Their deep legitimacy was again affirmed by their ability to put bodies on the street in very bad weather conditions.

Unfortunately for them both, this is an increasingly meaningless exercise, and a measure of their collective sadness. Beirut’s and Lebanon’s current problems — reflecting their strengths and weaknesses — were on full display last week. One of the telltale signs of the increasingly marginal nature of events in Lebanon to the rest of the world was the fact that most speakers at the two massive demonstrations were yelling much of the time. The more you have to wave your arms and raise your voice to touch your constituents, the less political substance you have to offer them.

Saad Hariri of the pro-government March 14 forces and Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah both raised the temperature and expanded the arena of conflict, to incorporate the upcoming Arab summit into domestic Lebanese politics, and to engage in a worldwide war to destroy Israel as a response to Israel’s assassination of Mughniyeh in Damascus. Such potentially cosmic and cataclysmic developments were received Thursday with surprising calm, almost nonchalance. The louder Lebanese leaders yell, and the more frequently that hundreds of thousands of their supporters take to the streets, the less seriously they are taken around the region and around the world.

The measure of their collective sadness is also the anchor of their shared heroism. It is a testament to the spirit and substance of the Lebanese people that somewhere between one and two million angry, sad and frightened people gathered in the streets of a very polarized capital and expressed their sentiments with fiery speeches, sharp slogans, dire threats, and steel-like determination — without a single incidence of violence. Partly this reflects the professionalism and responsible nationalism of the armed forces, but mainly it reflects the inherently pluralistic political character of the Lebanese people.

The heroism of Lebanon today is that its people exercise spirited, nonviolent politics in public in a manner that almost all other Arab citizens do not. The Lebanese people are widely fed up with the political stalemate that defines their governance system, but they have no way to change things, so they continue to follow their tribal, ideological and religious leaders. These leaders for the most part have proven themselves masters of incumbency and legitimacy, but amateurs at political achievement and progress. They remain incapable of resolving the important national issues that confront and threaten Lebanon, related to the economy, security, emigration, environment, debt, and relations with Arab and foreign powers.

Lebanon’s heroic political activism is diminished by the perpetual stalemate that has bogged down all sides for the past two years, reflected in the almost total dysfunction of key government institutions like the parliament, cabinet, presidency, and national dialogue committee. At the same time, though, the Lebanese clearly do not want to resume their 1975-1999 civil war. They have had many opportunities to do so in the past year, and have always emphatically rejected those openings to civil war; they will continue, though, to withstand occasional local violence and bombings, political stalemate, and massive street demonstrations.

The many linkages between domestic Lebanese politics, regional forces and international powers mean that Lebanon will remain in the news, but domestic politics will increasingly be seen as a byproduct of regional and global politics. Millions will march peacefully, occasional violence will occur, wars will happen now and then, tensions will rise and ebb, but most of the world will watch this with decreasing interest and concern. The heroism and sadness of the Lebanese people and political system mean that the impact of their chronic local feuds on other countries will remain small.

This mirrors the same pattern of events that defined Palestine in the past quarter century or so. The low-intensity war between some Palestinians and Israel is one that the region and the world find manageable, if regrettable. It elicits their humanitarian support, but little else. If the highest symbol of global acknowledgement of the seriousness of the Palestinian situation is to send Tony Blair as a special envoy, this is a pretty clear sign of the world’s broad indifference. The Palestinians and Israelis are as much to blame as the world.

Lebanon seems to be moving to a similar situation, fortified by the deep heroism and substance of its able people, yet crippled and increasingly marginalized by an antiquated political system managed by a broadly incompetent political elite.

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

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Released: 18 February 2008
Word Count: 803
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AMMAN — The Annapolis peace process seems to be moving in slow gear, and on the ground Israelis and Palestinians are back to the routine of daily clashes, rockets, assassinations, and threats of more to come. Few people seem to have any idea about how to get out of this stalemate and move towards a permanent, comprehensive, fair resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict. One man who offers some intriguing fresh thinking, though, is Adnan Abu Odeh, a Jordanian-Palestinian who has remained loyal to both dimensions of his Palestinian and Jordanian identity.

Abu Odeh, a former minister, ambassador, and chief of the royal court in Jordan, is among the smartest and most insightful analysts in the Arab World. I always make it a point to sound him out when I am in Amman, as I did a few days ago. To get to the point: Abu Odeh suggests that Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas should seriously consider unilaterally dissolving the PA, because it no longer serves a useful function for Palestinians, and instead assists Israel in its long-term designs on the Palestinians’ land.

His analysis is compelling, and should be considered by the Arab League Summit in Damascus next month. It starts from the principle that Israel’s “occupation” of Palestinian land 40 years after the 1967 war is actually a process of colonization or annexation, both aimed at cementing Israeli control of the land and uprooting the indigenous people. He says that “Israel has consistently implemented this strategy since 1967, which by definition requires time, and Israel’s strategy is to buy time.”

One of the best tools to buy time for Israel, he adds, was the Palestinian Authority, which the Palestinians and the world at large saw as a prelude to an independent Palestinian state. After 15 years of Oslo, statehood is a mirage, marred by more Israeli expansion and grabbing Arab lands via new and expanding settlements and the separation wall.

Israel’s occupation and aggression in Palestine are not being stopped by the body that is globally mandated to restore security — the United Nations Security Council. Abu Odeh says the UN has become only one — and the weakest — of the four members of the Quartet (along with the United States, the European Union, and Russia) that is supposed to shepherd Arab-Israeli peace-making. Two other potential external sources of pressure on Israel to relinquish the occupied lands and agree on a negotiated peace have also failed to materialize, he says: The United States has become more of a structural ally to Israel and less a mediator between Israel and the Palestinians, while the Arab governments have effectively stopped thinking about it and apply no pressure whatsoever.

So we have to look for a source of pressure on Israel from within the conflict, and one important source for this comes from the Zionist idea itself, which is based on land and demography. Zionism’s demographic strategy is two-pronged, he notes: Squeeze out and expel as many Palestinians as possible, and bring in as many Israelis as possible. Since 1967, says Abu Odeh, Israel has secured the land, and now it is working on the demography issue, to make sure that its state be as purely Jewish as possible, with the least number of Palestinians.

“Demography is our only available indigenous pressure source,” he explains. “We should tell Israel to take all the Palestinians along with the land, because the two cannot be separated. Take me with the land should be our message to Israel, which would naturally lead to a single bi-national state of Israelis and Palestinians. Israel does not want this, but we have to force it to choose between a two-state solution or a single bi-national state.”

How to do this? Abu Odeh says that to be serious about this, “You have to eliminate the tool that Israel has been using to buy time, squeeze out Palestinians, annex more territory and cement its control of occupied lands. You have to remove the PA instrument that has played the role of sustaining the illusion of a Palestinian state, which is clearly not emerging. President Abbas and the Palestinian leadership should think seriously of unilaterally dismantling the PA.”

They should do this while collecting all weapons in the hands of the Palestinian police and telling the Israelis to come and take the weapons from designated collection points. This would end the fiction of the PA leading to a sovereign state, force the Israelis to resume their obligations as an occupying power, and drive home the point that a bi-national Israeli-Palestinian state is a real option.

The point Abu Odeh makes, basically, is that, “We have options. We are not without power and options.”

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

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Released: 13 February 2008
Word Count: 784
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