BEIRUT — Recent experience suggests that we should be very worried that US President George Bush is coming to the Middle East this week to promote peace. The last time he made such a journey — June 2003 — his legacy turned out to be an accelerated cycle of violence and ideological battle that now sees most of the Middle East region today wracked by active warfare, routine terrorism, and intense political confrontations, threats and stress.

This has been more or less  typical of what the Middle East and adjacent areas have experienced in recent days:
• major bombings of civilian and government targets in Algeria and Turkey,
• continued foreign militarism and indigenous ethnic warfare in many parts of Iraq,
• worsening mutual attacks by the Turkish army and anti-government Kurds,
• political stalemate that threatens to spill over into something worse in Lebanon,
• spreading reassertion of power by the Taliban in Afghanistan,
• assassinations and political danger in Pakistan,
• worsening and continuing clashes among nationals and invading Ethiopians in Somalia,
• accelerating tit-for-tat attacks and killings by Palestinians and Israelis, and
• assorted other smaller conflicts and localized problems.

Meanwhile, most governments — trying to keep the lid on their turbulent societies — increasingly resort to tighter authoritarianism. Policemen, armed forces personnel and undercover security agents are now the most common symbol of government on the street. In some places — central Cairo, parts of Beirut, much of Jerusalem — uniformed men with guns define the public sphere.

Consequently, the welcoming party for President Bush, as he visits the Middle East again, is a regional landscape of conflict, killing and suffering, orchestrated by local and foreign political leaders who seem totally baffled by the mess they have created. This situation has worsened in the past four and a half years since President Bush visited Egypt and Jordan, in what turned out to be a failed — perhaps an originally insincere — bid to foster Palestinian-Israeli peace. A few days after Bush was in the region, the US State Department’s senior Middle East official, David Welch, said in Aqaba, Jordan on June 9, 2003: “We are all very concerned now to move forward with implementation of the steps in the roadmap as was agreed among the leaders when they met. The summit meeting hosted in Sharm El-Sheikh by President Mubarak was an outstanding success…” He added that Arab foreign ministers conveyed their “appreciation for the role of the President of the United States and our interest in advancing peace and stability in this area.”

If the past 54 months reflect Bush’s idea of how the US can work with the people of the region to “advance peace and stability in this area,” then maybe we need a little less peace and stability for a while, and a little more rational analysis of the forces driving this region in its current self-destructive trajectory.

So why is President Bush coming to the Middle East? Ideally, a responsible leader in his position would use this visit to honestly and dispassionately assess the balance sheet of both regional trends and American policy and interests in the region. It seems self-evident that Bush administration policies in the past seven years have not achieved the peace, stability, freedom and democracy that he preaches. Instead, his policies have helped the region to become even more bogged down in a chronic and worsening maelstrom of political violence, which is sometimes directly funded, militarily supplied, and ideologically spurred by the US government.

The United States and Europe also seem to have hit some roadblocks in their campaigns to pressure the Syrian and Iranian governments, and the Hizbullah and Hamas movements. More pressure will elicit more resistance. There will be no victors in this battle, only victims. If the US-led camp and the Iranian-Syrian-led camp decide they are prepared to fight this out to the finish — mostly on other people’s lands, like Lebanon, Iraq and Palestine — the entire region will suffer escalating and, in some cases, permanent damage. This is not to mention the global ramifications, when the price of oil has already passed the $100 per barrel mark. This regional trajectory of escalating and widening conflict should be redressed and terminated, not affirmed and perpetuated.

With all due respect, President Bush might do the region and the entire world a favor by staying home — if he plans to visit the Middle East only to speed up the same American policy of blindly supporting Israel, sending arms and money to Arab authoritarian regimes, opposing mainstream Islamist groups that enjoy widespread Arab popular legitimacy, ignoring realistic democratic transitions, and actively pressuring governments and movements that defy the United States.

He will not be in office much longer, so he may not care whether 54 more months like those that have just passed are good for the Middle East, the United States and the rest of the world. Most of the world does care, though, as do most people in this region.

Rami G. Khouri is an internationally syndicated columnist, the director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, and co-laureate of the 2006 Pax Christi International Peace Award.

Copyright ©2008 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global

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Released: 07 January 2008
Word Count: 824
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BEIRUT — Four separate events in different parts of the world — Pakistan, Israel, the United States, and wherever Osama Bin Laden makes home these days –provide a gloomy but instructive start to the New Year, in the matter of the threat of Al-Qaeda-linked terrorism. The events are: the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan, a new audio tape by Osama Bin Laden, Israel telling the world that Al-Qaeda is making inroads in Palestine, and the American presidential candidates wildly riding their horse race campaigns like performing drunks and clowns at a rodeo.

Bin Laden’s new audiotape shows his resilience and durability, but also his profound political weaknesses in connecting with public opinion in the Middle East. His policy of provoking ethnic strife among Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq is widely rejected throughout the region; and his promise to strike against Israel is a desperate attempt to anchor his rejected terrorism in the more legitimate popular Arab anger against Israel and its continuing brutal, colonial policies. He and his sidekick, Dr. Ayman Zawahiri, have tried this several times before, always falling flat on their faces. In the past seven years since September 11, 2001, the overwhelming majority of Arabs and Middle Easterners have repeatedly rejected Al-Qaeda’s philosophy and tactics, especially when they see the damage it does to their own societies.

The few small groups of terrorists that have sprung up in the Arab region, Western Europe and elsewhere are just that — a few small, isolated groups of disaffected, socially marginalized, and politically confused individuals who would have found a bizarre cult to join in earlier days. Their solitary status and the deviant nature of their appeal makes them freaks, not a global movement.

Israel tries to promote a totally different and dishonest version of this truth. Its efficient disinformation and propaganda network spreads the word that Al-Qaeda is making inroads into Palestinian society, without clarifying that: a) this is part of a global dynamic; and, b) it is mostly a consequence of Israel’s own debilitating policies that have turned much of Palestine into a haven for extremism.

By continually speaking in the same breath about Al-Qaeda terrorism and the threats from Hizbullah, Hamas, and other essentially nationalist resistance movements, Israel wishes both to de-legitimize these local groups that fight it, and to exaggerate the real reach of Al-Qaeda.

Not surprisingly, most of the American presidential candidates — especially hormone-heavy Republicans — have bought this Israeli-inspired package of lies, distortion and exaggeration, and regurgitated it in their own made-in-America nonsense. A few candidates whose electoral zealotry occasionally transforms them into intellectual vagabonds on this issue — like Rudolph Giuliani and Mitt Romney — stress that Islamic terror or Islamo-fascists are the defining threat of this century, or this generation, or something equally cosmic and frightening. Most candidates avoid such dishonesty and fearmongering, and simply waddle into the more comfortable political wastewater of vacuous generalizations about how the Bhutto assassination highlights the ever-present threat of terror, the turmoil in the Middle East, and the dangerous world we live in.

These men and women are running for the American presidency? Indeed, our world is ever more dangerous, when the potentially most powerful individuals in the world address a serious global challenge with a disappointing combination of political dishonesty, lack of intellectual rigor, and an almost absolute analytical vacuum.

The truly dangerous terrain we approach is that where political-intellectual charlatanism and violent state policies generate strategies that make the Al-Qaeda threat much greater than it really is, or that promote new recruits for terror groups. Such an approach substitutes ignorance-based fearmongering for the precise, realistic, and proactive policies that could manage the terror threat as the political problem that it is, rather than the cultural, religious or societal menace that is exploited — and sometimes manufactured — by American, Israeli, Arab, and other merchants of deceit.

We now all experience the deadly consequences of the criminal combination of Western-Israeli officials who constantly harp about Islamo-fascists and Islamic terrorism, and Arab-Asian political elites who use authoritarian police methods to control and degrade their own people. Asia, Arabia, and America are equally to blame for the incremental numbers of dehumanized young men and women in Arab-Asian-Islamic societies who finally give up on honest pubic policy-making and rational discourse, and mostly turn to nonviolent Islamist, tribal and other mass movements. A very few fall off the edge and gravitate to Al-Qaeda-inspired terror.

Our collective failures in assessing and addressing the global terrorism threat become clearer every year, in a world increasingly run by political charlatans and vagabonds. We should summon the honesty and courage to address a globalized cycle of predatory extremism, militarism, and terror that nourishes itself, rather than create a simplistic world of Islamic terrorist-fascists who unilaterally assault innocent Israelis, Europeans and Americans.

If you want entertainment, stay in this political rodeo. If you want a better, safer world, get out of it as fast as you can.

Rami G. Khouri is an internationally syndicated columnist, the director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, and co-laureate of the 2006 Pax Christi International Peace Award.

Copyright ©2008 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global

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Released: 03 January 2008
Word Count: 817
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BEIRUT — Sadly, but not surprisingly, this year draws to a close with the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan as a ghastly symbol of the organized political violence that plagues many parts of the Arab World and South Asia. The advent of a new calendar year will provide only a new log for tracking the terrorist bombings, wars by invading foreign armies, local rebellions, ethnic clashes, criminal violence, and political assassinations that have become routine in this vast area that stretches from North Africa through the Middle East to South Asia.

Historians will define the grand themes and major underlying causes of the institutionalized instability and political intemperance in much of the Arab-Asian region. Surveying the scene at the end of this year, though, I am struck by two contradictory trends: the prevalence of severe violence by a small group of actors — mostly governments and their security forces, terrorists, criminal elements, and the occasional enraged mob — alongside the vast majorities of citizens in this region who live peaceful lives and daily practice nonviolent political, cultural, religious and social accommodation and tolerance in their villages and neighborhoods.

The decency and humanity of ordinary citizens are routinely overshadowed by the greater drama of spectacular murders and of organized military violence, orchestrated by local and foreign incumbent governments alike. The variety of conflicts, terror, and aggression throughout our region reflects a wide range of actors and causes.

Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Sudan, Somalia, Lebanon, Pakistan and Algeria all mirror different local and regional dynamics. Some of their brutality is the consequence of local warlords and incoherent statehood, whereby armed elements seize power in the absence of a credible, efficient government or state. Other cases are the direct consequence of invading foreign armies practicing a form of neo-colonialism, whereby American, Israeli, British and other external powers decide they have the right to use their military might to reconfigure politics and values in Arab-Asian societies.

So it is not surprising these days to witness, simultaneously, American troops killing Iraqis in Iraq, Israeli troops killing Palestinians in Palestine, someone or other killing many Lebanese in Lebanon, Osama Bin Laden and his types killing all nationalities, all over the world, and assorted Sudanese, Somalis, Pakistanis, Afghans and Algerians killing each other. The nature and culprits of political violence in the Arab-Asian region are very diverse, not monolithic.

It is not acceptable to assassinate politicians, blow up pizza parlors, attack hotels, bomb civilian neighborhoods from the air, or send an army halfway around the world to change an unpleasant regime. All these forms of violence are explainable by historical and political circumstances, though, so they are not irrational acts, even if they are criminal acts. The fact that they occur simultaneously also suggests that they are linked in some way.

The start of a new calendar year will not change the ways of the bombers, killers, and generals who orchestrate the violence that defiles our societies, whether they are holed up in a mountain cave in central Asia or a local militia base, comfortable in an Arab presidential palace or an American-European capital, or strutting in the Israeli, Turkish, Iranian or Russian defense ministry. We can, however, start a fresh year by deciding to analyze and understand the cycle of violence more comprehensively and accurately.

Some Arab and Asian countries have slipped into a debilitating cycle of violence and instability because their people and leaders refused to attempt this a decade or two ago — when the levels of violence were much lower. Israelis have repeatedly made the same mistake since 1947. Americans and Europeans made a similar mistake when they misdiagnosed the nature, causes and aims of 9/11, and successive terror attacks against Western targets.

Ending or reducing rampant violence requires understanding its full cause-and-effect cycle, especially its root causes, so that they can then be addressed with all available legitimate political, military, judicial and socio-economic means. Sermons from London, double standards and surges from Washington, bravado from Tel Aviv, and renewed Arab-Asian authoritarianism — all of which we witness again this week — are not the answer: They are the among the core of the problem.

The overwhelming majority of the over one billion people — mostly Muslims — in the Arab-Asian region did not bomb a restaurant, assassinate a politician or attack an army post last week. Most Arabs and Asians congratulated their neighbors for the religious feasts of the day, shared a felicitous greeting and probably a celebratory meal, tea or sweet, sent their children to school, and prayed hard. They especially continue to pray for more merciful and sensible leaders, in their own capitals and abroad, who could summon elusive wisdom and humility for a change, instead of only aggravating the global maelstrom of political violence they have created in our name.

Rami G. Khouri is an internationally syndicated columnist, the director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, and co-laureate of the 2006 Pax Christi International Peace Award.

Copyright ©2007 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global

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Released: 31 December 2007
Word Count: 793
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BEIRUT — The tragic assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto will engulf Pakistan in grief and turmoil. Her death symbolizes the wider calamity that envelops us all — throughout the Middle East, Asia, Europe, and the United States. The real significance of this latest killing — and the others that are sure to follow — is not their surprise, but rather how common, almost inevitable, this sort of event has become in our part of the world. If we wish to end this horror show engulfing more Arab-Asian regions and increasingly sucking in American and other Western armies, we should start getting serious about what it means and why it happens.

We should largely dismiss the many exhortations we will now hear about democracy, stability, restraint, terrorism, and patience in the face of extremism. These are increasingly vacuous appeals by leaders who willfully ignore a central, miserable reality in which they participate: Much of the vast region from North Africa and the Middle East to south Asia is now routinely defined by political violence as an everyday fact of life.

A telltale sign in Pakistan today, as it has been in Lebanon for years, and in many other similarly scarred countries, is that we can identify multiple plausible culprits because so many political people — good guys and bad guys alike — kill on the job.

Bhutto, her father, and brother have all been assassinated, as have been successive generations of other political families, in Arab and Asian countries. The lack of novelty is another telling sign that should clarify for us the wider meaning of this crime, beyond Pakistan. After grieving for one family and one country, we must react to the chronic nature of political violence by trying to understand the entire phenomenon, rather than its isolated, episodic manifestations.

An honest beginning in this direction would be to acknowledge that political violence does not occur in a historical vacuum. Lone gunmen, local militias, suicide terrorists, state armies, and even democratically elected leaders in dozens of countries have all become players in an extensive global drama. On this stage, the use of force is an everyday event — the threat of force is never off the table. It makes little difference if this is the work of democratic or dictatorial leaders: Dead children and war-ravaged societies do not value such distinctions.

When the military and political violence of democrats and dictators goes on for several generations, social values are distorted, and human values are disjointed. It does not matter if this occurs in Pakistan, Egypt, Algeria, Kazakhstan, Northern Ireland, or pre-democratic southern Europe. The absence of credible governance systems based on the rule of law and the equal rights of all citizens slowly pushes citizens and rulers alike to rely on the law of the jungle. They use death and intimidation, rather than electoral or accountable legitimacy, to make their point, to perpetuate their incumbency, and to eliminate their opponents.

When everyone uses violence and intimidation as a routine, daily expression of their political aims, when terrorists and presidents use firepower to lay down the law, the circle of culpability widens like the ripples from a pebble thrown into a pond. It is becoming harder and harder to tell the difference between gunmen, gangs, and governments — in Asia, the Middle East and parts of the West — when the chronic use of violence and lawlessness makes death and assassinations routine, and subsequently inevitable.

We will hear passionate appeals this week about courage, democracy, and terror, from presidents, kings and warlords alike. These emperors appear increasingly naked as they exhort us to higher values. It is hard to take them seriously — these Asians, Arabs, Americans, Israelis, Iranians, Turks, Europeans, Africans and anyone else who wishes to stand up and be recognized. These pontificating presidents, kings, and warlords who preach about life and democracy have spent the last generation sending their armies to war, overthrowing regimes, authorizing covert assassinations, arming gangs and militias, trading weapons for political favors, buying protection from thugs, cozying up to terrorists, lauding autocrats, making deals with dictators, imprisoning tens of thousands of foes, torturing at will, thumbing their nose at the UN Charter, buying and bullying judges, ignoring true democrats, and blindly refusing even to hear the simple demands of their own citizens for minimum decency and dignity.

I have spent my entire adult life in the Middle East — since the 1970s — watching leaders being assassinated, foreign armies topple governments, local colonels seize power, foreign occupations persist for decades, the rule of law get thrown in the garbage, constitutions being ignored, and, in the end, ordinary people finally deciding that they will not remain outside of history, or invisible in their own societies. Instead, they decide to write themselves into the violent and criminal scripts. They kill, as they have been killed. Having been dehumanized in turn, they will embrace inhumanity and brutality.

Who killed Benazir Bhutto? We all killed her, in east and west, Orient and Occident, north and south. We of the globalized beastly generation that transformed political violence from an occasional crime to an ideology and an addiction.

Rami G. Khouri is an internationally syndicated columnist, the director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, and co-laureate of the 2006 Pax Christi International Peace Award.

Copyright ©2007 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global

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Released: 28 December 2007
Word Count: 848
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CAIRO — It was in the most unexpected and unlikely of places — the passenger buses at Cairo airport — that I encountered the holiday spirit this year. It’s always hard to predict where the holiday spirit will strike every year, but it always does, an enchanting intersection where the human spirit and holiday cheer come together. We walk away from the encounter more hopeful, even more secure in the feeling that we are protected by the innate goodness of our fellow human beings, decent people whose zest for life and beauty is greater than a proclivity for suffering and death.

Finding all this in the passenger buses at Cairo airport is a tale of multiple ironies, which makes it all the more enchanting.

First, about buses. I am a lifelong bus aficionado, what in previous decades may have been called a maniac. My ideal holiday is leisurely riding urban buses in big cities like New York, Paris or Berlin, reading newspapers, watching the people and enjoying the passing cityscape. Urban buses are mobile anthropology labs, veritable miniature cities in themselves.

Most bus riders follow daily routines, making an urban bus ride a familiar and comfortable experience. Passengers often get to know drivers personally, exchanging greetings, stories, sometimes holiday cookies. Familiarity and regularity on the bus breed a comforting combination of relaxation, predictability, security — but always combined with the unpredictable thrill, and occasional extravaganza, of the bustling city outside the bus window.

Making the whole experience even more enjoyable is the technology — the bus is usually spacious, the windows are large, the loud purring-grinding sound of the engine is enchanting in its own way, and, most of all, the low-intensity rhythmic roll and bounce of the ride is always relaxing. Not since our extended ride in the maternal womb do we enjoy that rare juxtaposition of an enveloping human environment, within a safe space, moving through an enchanted urban landscape.

Next, about Cairo, and Egypt. This country and city have struck a combination of awe and panic in the human heart for thousands of years, affirming both the magnificence and mediocrity of the human adventure. The powerful, relentless humanity of Cairo’s residents today contrasts deeply with their worsening social, economic, political and environmental conditions.

My balance sheet shows that about half of all routine transactions and encounters in Cairo — ordering a taxi, using the internet at a hotel, finding what is on a restaurant menu, getting served at a bank, making an appointment with a government official — do not function smoothly. Everything gets done eventually, but with extra effort and sometimes extra payments. The single most distressing symbol of contemporary Egypt is the public sector employees who ask for money in a variety of subtle or direct ways, including various government and private security staff. This is the inevitable consequence of a low-income economy that depends heavily on international tourism.

Airport passenger buses defy all the rules that make urban buses such a pleasant and meaningful experience. They offer a totally cold and anonymous human encounter; the driver is isolated in his or her cabin; you normally have to stand, often in packed conditions; the other passengers are strangers; the landscape of the route is intriguing if you like airplanes, but lacks urban magnificence; the ride is short, jerky, unsatisfying.

When I boarded my bus at Cairo airport a few days ago to catch my plane to Amsterdam, I was struck by a delightful sight: The sides of all the buses were decorated with colored ribbons tied into the shapes of roses. I checked around and saw that all the buses were similarly decorated, with four or five decorations on each side.

Intrigued by who did this nice deed, when we reached our plane I asked a uniformed airport or airline official standing near the stairs.

“Why are these buses decorated with colored ribboned roses,” I asked the fellow.

“To greet and honor you in this holiday season!”, he replied with a big smile.

“Whose idea was this to decorate the buses?” I asked.

“The bus drivers decided to do it themselves,” he told me.

Lacking time and opportunity to verify this information, I assumed his explanation was correct. I was warmed inside, smiled outside, boarded my plane, and left Egypt reassured that the Egyptian and Arab human spirit remained strong, indomitable, generous and joyous.

Presumably the Cairo airport bus drivers were making their little gesture for the simultaneous holiday seasons of Eid el-Adha for Muslims and Christmas for Christians. The incongruity was one reason I was so touched by the decorative roses — drivers who we would never know by name or in person went to the trouble of buying or making colored ribbon roses and attaching them to their buses, adding a touch of color and holiday spirit to an otherwise overpoweringly boring and slightly dehumanizing experience.

Most things in their lives — anonymous, repetitive work, squeezed family budgets, worsening environmental conditions, stultifying political controls — would tend to prod the Cairo airport bus drivers towards indifference, perhaps even resentment at the thousands of people who had money and time to ride their buses to the planes that would take them to faraway lands. They seem to have resisted that call to antipathy, and instead reached for roses made of colored ribbons.

I wonder that maybe it was not the drivers alone. Maybe the airport administration bought and mounted the roses. Or Egypt Air or some consortium of organizations and individuals at Cairo Airport. It does not really matter who decorated the buses, I realized. What matters is that despite all of Egypt’s problems, all the Arab world’s tensions and violence, all of Cairo’s pressures and stresses, the passenger buses at Cairo airport are resplendent with colored roses of ribbons this Christmas and Adha season — to greet you, the visitor, the passenger, the fellow human being passing through Cairo airport, to say to you: Merry Christmas, and a Blessed Adha.

Rami G. Khouri is an internationally syndicated columnist, the director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, and co-laureate of the 2006 Pax Christi International Peace Award.

Copyright ©2007 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global

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Released: 21 December 2007
Word Count: 986
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BERLIN — It has been instructive in Germany this week, talking to Europeans involved in Middle East issues during the run-up to the Paris conference on Palestinian aid — where Monday $7.4 billion was pledged, over three years, to the Palestinian half-government headed by President Mahmoud Abbas. Europeans seem again to respond to the challenges of engaging in the Arab-Israeli conflict with their usual financial generosity and political wishful thinking.

The European Union’s 27 members and other states can and should respond to the new post-Annapolis situation by carving out a decisive policy that enhances their strengths rather than institutionalizes their weaknesses. It would be collective stupidity for Europe once again to provide billions of euros in aid to Palestinians that are wasted, physically destroyed, or totally negated by Israeli militarism, American bias, Palestinian divisions, or Arab passivity.

Europeans will provide around $2 billion of the money pledged in Paris, making them the single biggest donor to Palestine, while their political role seems to be moving in the other direction. Europe should redress this balance, and play a political-diplomatic role that is commensurate with its economic prowess. Europeans should explore how to return to their role as the guardians of the rule of law, international legitimacy, political morality and the international peace-making consensus that is enshrined in UN resolutions and global conventions — grandiose aims, I admit, but shouldn’t someone stand up for these things if the Americans, Israelis, and Arabs do not?

A German diplomat in Berlin deeply involved in these issues explained that Europeans working behind the scene, while increasing their peace-keeping and economic involvement on the ground, “are developing the tools that allow Europe to influence events,” especially by constructively prodding US policy. But I see little hard evidence for this view, however sincerely it is held. Europeans seem to ignore the reality that economic, political, and diplomatic conditions are steadily worsening, not improving, as indicated by several developments this past week.

In an unusual political statement, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has called for immediate political action to contain the “deep crisis” in the West Bank and Gaza. It charged that Israeli policies in the occupied territories have denied the Palestinians the right to live a normal and dignified life. The ICRC director of operations for the Middle East said: “In Gaza the whole Strip is being strangled, economically speaking, life there has become a nightmare,” adding that humanitarian aid will not solve this problem.

The Red Cross also issued a report, Dignity Denied, which depicts harrowing everyday conditions for Palestinians who find it increasingly difficult to access jobs, medical care, and even food. It says that only “prompt, innovative and courageous political action can change the harsh reality of this long-standing occupation, restore normal social and economic life to the Palestinian people, and allow them to live their lives in dignity.”

The World Bank last week also said that a combination of new aid pledges and Palestinian government reforms will have little impact if Israel maintains its harsh restrictions on travel and trade.

Also this past week, results of a new public opinion poll by the respected Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research suggest that supporting the Abbas-Fateh government financially is unlikely to pummel Hamas into political submission. And it discloses that a total lack of confidence in the Annapolis process is keeping Hamas’ and Fateh’s popularity stable — 31 percent support for Hamas and 49 percent for Fateh — almost identical to their respective shares last September.

These developments would suggest that throwing more money into a situation of continued occupation and resistance is not a sensible policy, but rather must be matched by political action to resolve the root causes of the conflict. Europe would do better to combine its fiscal generosity with parallel political gumption and backbone. It may not have the power to prod Arabs and Israelis into a successful negotiation, but it does have the moral force to say clearly what such a negotiated peace requires, what are the dictates of accepted law and legitimacy, and how all sides are falling short in their commitments to pursue these routes towards peace and security for Arabs and Israelis alike.

Europe should pause for a moment as it starts writing billions of euros of new aid checks for development and security projects that American-supplied Israeli fighter jets are likely to bomb into smithereens again next year — as they have in recent years.

Europe would do well to reflect on its dilemma, which the respected German think tank director Dr. Volker Perthes articulated last week: “Europe has steadily become more involved in the Middle East and Arab-Israeli issues in the arenas of economy, diplomacy, politics, security and peace-keeping, but seems less able to translate engagement into influence to change things.”

Rami G. Khouri is an internationally syndicated columnist, the director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, and co-laureate of the 2006 Pax Christi International Peace Award.

Copyright ©2007 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global

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Released: 19 December 2007
Word Count: 796
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AMMAN — It is hard to know what is significant about the Jordanian parliamentary elections that were held in Amman last month, given that pro-government deputies won 104 of the 110 seats in the elected lower house — a body that in any case is balanced, or complemented, by the upper house that the king appoints. The government’s claim that this reflects a spirited Arab-Islamic democratic example is not very credible, because there is no known normal human society on earth where 94.5 percent of elected MPs support the government.

In Amman this week I have only encountered cynicism — not anger or humiliation — among people from different walks of life, who sense that those who control the Jordanian political system do what is necessary to ensure order and full control. Jordan is neither a shining Arab democracy nor a vile police state that does the bidding of the United States or Israel. Jordan is, rather, a relatively typical modern Arab security state that absolutely assigns top priority to law and order, and makes no allowances for opposing forces to assume power or influence policy-making.

Within that framework, elections, political parties, and a more open press and civil society should be understood as mechanisms of individual expression, not instruments of political contestation. Power is not up for grabs here. The ruling elite — a combination of tribal-, corporate-, monarchy- and security-based forces — has not changed significantly in 80 years, which is one reason for Jordan’s relative successes in the turbulent modern Arab world.

Like most Arab countries — Egypt, Syria, Morocco, Kuwait, Yemen, Tunisia, take your choice, they’re very much the same — Jordan has absorbed the language and structures of democratic governance without its substance. Citizens vote, but parliament, with its built-in, predictable pro-government majority, offers no meaningful accountability of the ruling elite.

Most Jordanians accept this system, or at least do not actively resist or challenge it. The vital democratic principle of “the consent of the governed” has been adjusted to “the acquiescence of the governed” — a majority that does not take political governance too seriously, because it appreciates what it offers them in comparison with many other Arab countries. The system shuns severe abuses of citizen rights and human dignity — no mass graves have ever been found here, nobody disappears forever in the middle of the night. Unable to shape policy, citizens instead value the stability it provides — the opportunity to raise their children in safety, travel freely, work in any field they wish, educate themselves profusely, and have the chance to improve their position in life.

So we should not make the mistake of judging this election according to democratic criteria of being free and fair. Clearly, it was marred by many technical and political distortions, including vote-buying by individuals, insufficient transparency and independent oversight, some manipulation of ballots, and inconsistent participation by pro-state groups like voting soldiers.

The serious problem with the Jordanian election system — like most others in this region — is the built-in pro-government bias that comes from the way the electoral districts are drawn. Pro-state conservative rural districts have disproportionate power in cases where each MP represents less than 10,000 citizens, while in opposition strongholds like Amman and Zerqa each MP can represent 50,000 or more voters. The system is based on inequality among citizens, and is designed to return a pro-government majority every time, which it does very efficiently. Yet, about half the registered eligible voters actually voted.

The real issue is: Why do the citizenry and opposition groups like the Muslim Brotherhood accept a manipulated participatory electoral system in which there is no real chance for a transfer of power to the opposition? Why does a citizenry with many legitimate economic and political grievances not boil over into open protest or mass demonstrations and revolt, as happened in many countries around the world (Iran, Philippines, Indonesia, Ukraine, Georgia, Poland, Czechoslovakia) in our generation?

I suspect the answer is that the nature and intensity of citizen grievances in Jordan are not as strong as the sense of security and personal opportunity that most people still feel they derive from their system of governance. Ordinary citizens walk out of their home every morning to work or school and weigh the assets and liabilities in their lives. Most Jordanians still feel that the good things in their country outweigh the bad things.

So they do not revolt, but instead they complain incessantly about corruption and inflation, they rail against America and Israel, but every four years they go out and vote for a parliament that they know will do nothing to change the status quo, other than to raise fuel prices. This is not the behavior of either evil tyrants or noble democrats, but rather the mundane predictability of decent people who define their citizenship mainly in terms of meeting their material and family needs, rather than in making political history. That task is for another generation that will soon make itself heard, while this generation sticks to the business of state-formation and family improvement.

Rami G. Khouri is an internationally syndicated columnist, the director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, and co-laureate of the 2006 Pax Christi International Peace Award.

Copyright ©2007 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global

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Released: 12 December 2007
Word Count: 835
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BEIRUT — You do get a second chance in most things in life, as the United States and the Palestinian leadership are experiencing now, in the wake of the revived peace negotiations at Annapolis. The second chance to get things right has been triggered by the announcement last week that Israel plans to build over 300 new housing units in the Har Homa settlement — on occupied Palestinian Arab land in east Jerusalem, which the Arabs know as Jabal Abu Ghneim.

This is routine policy and practice for the Israeli government, which has moved several hundred thousand settlers into new colonial communities built all around Arab east Jerusalem since 1967. The novel test — and opportunity — is for the Americans and Palestinians, who must take a stand on this continuing Israeli colonization and expansion.

The Palestinian-Israeli joint statement agreed at Annapolis said that, “The United States will monitor and judge the fulfillment of the commitment of both sides of the road map. Unless otherwise agreed by the parties, implementation of the future peace treaty will be subject to the implementation of the road map, as judged by the United States.”

The American role of “monitor and judge” has always been implicit in various American mediation attempts, and is explicit now. Abdicating this role was one of the main failures of American and other external mediation in recent years, especially since the road map was launched in April 2003. A strong, impartial external mediator or facilitator is critical for success.

The United States now has a second chance to get this role right — if it wishes to do so. The motives and intent of the US remain unclear vis-à-vis brokering an Arab-Israeli peace accord. Also unclear are its capacity and will to be impartial, and to override the powerful influence of pro-Israeli domestic forces in the US. If Washington wants to be a credible, effective monitor and judge, it can and should start with a speedy, firm position on Har Homa/Jabal Abu Ghneim.

The whole world agrees that peace requires an Israeli withdrawal from all the lands occupied in 1967, in return for full Arab recognition of and coexistence with Israel in its 1967 borders, and sees Israeli settlements and colonies as illegal. The United States should openly and unambiguously reject the Israeli arguments that there is a clear distinction between the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem, and state that implementation of the first phase of the road map — including freezing settlements — indeed applies to Jerusalem.

We need to hear from the monitor and judge on whether Jerusalem is part of the 1967 occupied lands referred to in UN resolutions as having to be returned to Arab sovereignty. And we need to hear that it is subject to the settlement freeze required in the road map and at Annapolis.

How the United States responds here will reveal if the Annapolis process has any credibility. If the US remains ambiguous on the status of Jerusalem and of Israeli colonies and settlements, and betrays its role as monitor and judge, the integrity of the whole negotiating process will collapse — as it should if that is the case.

The Palestinians for their part also face a profound new test and opportunity here. Their initial reaction was typically lame. Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat sent an urgent message to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, asking her to block the new construction. He noted: “This is undermining Annapolis. Israel’s ever-expanding settlement enterprise in the occupied Palestinian territory poses the single greatest threat to the establishment of an independent, viable and contiguous Palestinian state, and hence, to a just and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians.”

Anyone who thinks that an appeal to Rice, the US government, or the world’s conscience is going to achieve anything is dreaming, because this approach has repeatedly failed. The Palestinian government has allowed itself to become a small element in the US-led global war on terror (in the form of Fateh’s political battle with Hamas), and is deeply reliant on American money, arms and hand-holding. Washington does not respect the Palestinian government, and will not respond to yet another Palestinian letter of complaint or appeal to action.

At the start of the Oslo process in 1993, the Palestinian leadership made the mistake of leaving big issues to a later date, including settlements, refugees and Jerusalem. If the Palestinian negotiators are not total fools or total American stooges, they must quickly take a firm position on the two related issues that converge here: Washington’s new role as monitor and judge, and Israel’s expansion of Har Homa/Jabal Abu Ghneim.

Palestinians should have a strong, clear response in case the United States drops the ball on its judge and monitor role, and remains ambiguous on Israeli settlements. If the US and Israel do not freeze settlement expansion, the Palestinians must respond in a more decisive manner than they have done since 1993. Or have we learned nothing from Oslo’s painful failures?

Rami G. Khouri is an internationally syndicated columnist, the director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, and co-laureate of the 2006 Pax Christi International Peace Award.

Copyright ©2007 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global

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Released: 10 December 2007
Word Count: 824
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BEIRUT — One of the most complex and confounding elements that emerged during the run-up to the Annapolis meeting was the demand by several senior Israelis, and its parallel rejection by Palestinian officials, that the Palestinians recognize Israel as “a Jewish state” as a precondition for the start of talks.

Israel’s demand that the Arabs recognize it “as a Jewish state” cannot be taken frivolously, however strongly one feels about it. It resonates with many Israelis with the same magnitude as resolving the refugees’ status does with Palestinians. It is a core, existential issue, perhaps the single most important issue for Israelis. It will come up again, forcefully, and soon.

Israelis have assumed that the Oslo accords and the PLO’s 1988 recognition of Israel’s “right to exist” recognized Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people, and a majority Jewish state. This is basically correct. Yet the Palestinian and Arab recognition of Israel has never been one-sided, one-dimensional, offered in a vacuum, or fully unconditional. The various acknowledgements of Israeli statehood, and the acceptance of the existing Jewish-majority Israeli state — including in today’s Annapolis process — have always assumed simultaneous movement towards a resolution of the statelessness of the Palestinians that resulted from the creation of Israel in 1948.

It seems obvious that Israeli and Palestinian demands for reciprocal national acknowledgement must be, above all, just that — reciprocal. Israelis cannot realistically expect the Arabs to recognize the Jewish nature of Israel in a void, unilaterally, or at the start of negotiations, without some reciprocal signals or firm gestures on the three issues that are of the same magnitude and importance for the Palestinians: the Palestinian state to be created in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem; the condition and rights of the Palestinian Arab citizens who comprise nearly one-fifth of Israeli citizens; and a resolution of the Palestinian refugees’ status.

The issue of the Jewish nature of Israel is so vital for Israelis that it cannot be left totally hanging in the air, rejected outright, or vaguely held out as an undefined goal or prize to be attained after some future negotiations. In the same way, we in the Arab world cannot be expected to become instant Zionists, proclaiming Israel as a Jewish state, while it continues to offer the Palestinians and other Arabs brutal and long-term occupation, colonization and theft of our lands, Apartheid-like segregation in the occupied territories, second class citizenship inside Israel, the jailing of over 10,000 activists and militants, routine assassinations, and collective punishment of the entire Gaza population by strangulation combined with slowly reducing its supplies of gas and electricity.

This is the reality of “the Jewish state” that several generations of Palestinians have endured. It is an ugly sight, as are the suicide bombings and missiles fired at Israel by Palestinians and Lebanese. But war is an ugly endeavor, and we remain in a wasteful state of war, occupation, resistance and mutual denial.

Israel will not recognize or talk with Palestinians who attack it, and similarly it cannot expect us to give formal recognition and the blessings of our political legitimacy to an Israeli Jewish state whose interaction with Palestinians and Arabs comprises mainly occupation, imprisonment, colonization, land expropriation, assassinations, routine assaults and beatings, daily humiliations, mass economic regression, and Apartheid-like dehumanization.

We have here the classic chicken and egg: Israel will not change its policies unless it feels secure and gets Arab acceptance, but it will never feel secure or get our acceptance while it pursues its present brutal, Apartheid-like policies. How can Palestinians, Israelis and other Arabs seek to transcend this condition of warfare and reciprocal national denial, and instead find their way towards mutual recognition and peaceful coexistence? How to get out of this dizzying, immobilizing maze?

The answer would seem to rest in mutual recognition and acknowledgement, instead of mutual denial and demonization. As that great American political philosopher Bob Dylan said in one his war protest songs in the 1960s, “I’ll let you be in my dream, if you let me be in yours.”

In this case, Israeli and Palestinian national narratives must make room for the other, if either wishes to be acknowledged and legitimized. Mutual denial will only get us to where we are today — perpetual warfare, and chronic mutual national rejection.

Israel ultimately must recognize the crimes it and others committed against the Palestinians, and the unstable conditions created by Palestinian national statelessness must be redressed by statehood and a just, negotiated resolution of the refugee issue. Israel, in the same vein, ultimately must be recognized as a state of the Jewish people, as it defines itself, but this can only be formally done as part and consequence of serious negotiations for a comprehensive, permanent peace that resolves fairly the Palestinian national shattering.

Both sides would do well to make these positions crystal clear, so that a Jewish Israel and a reconstituted, healed, wholesome Palestinian state and national community can live normal lives, side-by-side, with equal rights.

Rami G. Khouri is an internationally syndicated columnist, the director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, and co-laureate of the 2006 Pax Christi International Peace Award.

Copyright ©2007 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global

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Released: 05 December 2007
Word Count: 830
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BEIRUT — Almost every conversation I have had with friends and colleagues over the past few weeks on overall issues in the Middle East — Lebanon, the implications of Annapolis, Iraq, Iran and Palestine — has invariably led to a discussion about Syria and a slightly dizzying combination of hypothetical scenarios of its role in the region. The latest milestone on Syria’s road back from its marginalization in recent years was its invitation to, and presence at, the Annapolis meeting.

Typically, the Syrians played hard to get, demanded that the occupied Golan Heights and overall Arab-Israeli peace-making (not just bilateral Palestine-Israel issues) be included on the agenda, and, when these goals were achieved, sent a deputy foreign minister rather than the foreign minister that all other parties sent. The signal sent was vintage Syrian diplomacy: We are willing to play ball, but we also want to play a role in writing the rules of the game, and not merely respond to American-Israeli summonses, dictates, threats.

The Syria’s transformation — from an isolated gangster state in the eyes of many two years ago, to a cog in any Middle Eastern conversation or diplomatic endeavor today — is a reflection of Syria’s policies, but also of the interconnected nature of the Middle East’s many conflicts and tensions. Whether one likes or dislikes Syrian policies — there are valid reasons for both — Damascus today is a player in every single major contentious issue and active conflict in the region, including: Iraq, Iran, Palestine, Israel, Lebanon, the war on terror, Russia’s continuing re-entry into the Middle East, and weapons of mass destruction proliferation. Its close working ties and medium-intensity alliances with Iran, Hamas and Hizbullah, in particular, give it strategic leverage vis-à-vis Israel, Palestine, Lebanon and Iran.

How Syria plays its cards will determine if it carves out for itself a major role in the region and propels itself onto the path of sustainable national development, or messes up badly and descends into a suicidal spiral of self-destructive militarism and rejectionism. That Syria was invited to the American party at Annapolis, and attended, is a strong sign that it prefers to engage with the West and reap the benefits of such a move — primarily regime continuity and stability — rather than perpetually play the role of isolated Arab spoiler, Iran’s only Arab state ally, and American-designated state supporter of terrorism. Unlike most other Arab governments, it has been prepared to resist and defy American and other Western pressures and threats, including low-key unilateral American sanctions, while repositioning itself in the region to give itself assets and cards to play.

President Bashar Assad has completed his initial years of learning and consolidating power after succeeding his father seven years ago, and appears to have started playing some of the cards and assets he has accumulated, especially in Iraq and Arab-Israeli peace-making. On both counts, Syria has legitimate national security concerns, and much to gain from successful diplomacy that lets it maneuver into a win-win position of its own national self-interest with the strategic goals of the United States, other Western powers, major Arab states, and Israel. The era of smashing heads may soon be replaced with a time to make deals.

We will see a more significant focus on the prospects for Syrian-Israeli negotiations when the proposed follow-up to Annapolis convenes in Moscow in early 2008. The big question that comes up in every conversation about Syria these days remains intriguingly unanswered: Would Damascus abandon or significantly downplay its alliances with Iran, Hamas, and Hizbullah, in exchange for a fair peace with Israel, an end to threats by the United States, normalization with the West, and major economic development boosts?

Many Lebanon are concerned that Syria wants to regain its dominance over Lebanon through its Lebanese allies and proxies, and might get Western approval for this in any big regional bargain. Another looming issue is the fate of the UN-mandated investigation and tribunal on the assassinations of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and 22 others in Lebanon since February 2005. Many Lebanese are worried that the US-led West would downgrade the tribunal’s penetration into the upper echelons of the Syrian regime — if the evidence points that way, as many suspect it does — in exchange for Syrian cooperation on other issues where it can deliver, especially Iraq, Iran, and Israel-Palestine.

The art and beauty of the negotiated commercial or political deal in Middle Eastern history has always been two-fold: the bargaining process itself, and the outcome that must satisfy both sides, or all sides if more than two players are involved. Syria, the United States, Lebanon, Israel, Iran, Palestine, Israel, Saudi Arabia, France, Russia and a few others have now embarked on one of the biggest deal-making enterprises in modern Middle East history. To understand and enjoy this spectacle, keep in mind that making a deal in the ancient bazaars of the Middle East — and Damascus has the oldest one around — includes a combination of showmanship, brinksmanship, threats, enticements, resistance, realism, pragmatism, and, above all, patience to wait out the other side.

Rami G. Khouri is an internationally syndicated columnist, the director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, and co-laureate of the 2006 Pax Christi International Peace Award.

Copyright ©2007 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global

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Released: 03 December 2007
Word Count: 840
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