BEIRUT — The Middle East peace gathering at Annapolis, Maryland, Tuesday was full of lofty rhetoric, some intriguing new promises, a few bold commitments, and a tantalizing cast of characters — alongside plenty of rehashed old rhetoric, rigid positions, and regurgitated failed diplomatic mechanisms. It left us with as many questions as answers about whether this is a serious Arab-Israeli peace-making endeavor, or a hoax garnished with Chesapeake Bay clam cakes.

Annapolis the-day-after looks remarkably like the-day-before, because we can only judge it once the substantive negotiations start. It was impressive to see so many leaders and officials sincerely seeking a breakthrough for permanent peace on the single most important, radicalizing and destabilizing issue in the Middle East: the Arab-Israeli conflict. A few dramatic new twists were evident — like renewed American engagement, Saudi and Syrian participation, and a pledge to work diligently to finalize a peace agreement within one year. These were largely neutralized, however, by lofty but vague rhetoric, and a slightly desperate resort to discredited diplomatic processes that have repeatedly — and catastrophically — failed in the past 16 years, since the 1991 Madrid peace conference.

The Annapolis process needs time to reveal if it will succeed or fail — with the real test yet to come in the form of the hard bargaining on the core issues of refugees, settlements, Jerusalem, borders and security. Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas offered nothing new, and suggested a minimal will to compromise on their entrenched positions. The joint understanding between the parties and President Bush’s speech are more significant, but equally problematic.

The joint statement does not specifically refer to UN resolutions as the reference points for a resolution of the conflict, which was the case in all previous serious peace-making attempts at Madrid, Oslo, Taba, and Camp David. Instead, it makes the United States the judge and arbiter of both sides’ compliance with the ‘roadmap’ requirements. The US has played this monitoring role before, and failed spectacularly. Its past failure was due to a combination of pro-Israeli bias, structural diplomatic incompetence, chronic insincerity, and weak resolve. It will be important to see if any of these conditions have changed. We should know within a few months at most.

The United States has not proved to be an impartial, persistent or effective mediator in the Middle East since the mid-1970s (unlike in Northern Ireland, where it performed brilliantly and helped bring that conflict to an end). Washington’s commitment, in the 2005 Bush letter to Ariel Sharon, supporting Israel’s views on borders, settlements and refugees would seem to disqualify it from its new self-appointed role as impartial compliance monitor, mediator and arbiter.

Bush’s references to Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people also brings the United States down on the Israeli side of the current tug-of-war about whether Israel is a Jewish nation or the state of all its people, including one-fifth of its citizens who are non-Jewish Christian and Muslim Arabs. A “Jewish state” would also seem to imply that no compromise deal could be reached on the repatriation of any Palestinian refugees, as required by UN resolutions.

Making the 2003 ‘roadmap’ a centerpiece of the diplomatic path ahead is deeply unimpressive. The roadmap — and its supervising Quartet (the United States, EU, UN, Russia) — has proven to be hollow, ineffective, and unrealistic. For the Annapolis parties to commit again to implementing moves on the ground that they have previously and repeatedly failed to implement is amateurish diplomacy.

The roadmap in any case is not a balanced and clear document. It has been interpreted in very different ways by Israelis and Palestinians on key issues, such as settlement expansion and terrorism, which partly explains why it was never implemented. If the US- and Israeli-dominated Quartet collectively was a failure, the United States as lone supervisor will almost certainly prove to be worse — especially during an American presidential election year when slightly hysterical pro-Israeli expressions are the order of the day.

The commitment to negotiate tirelessly and try to achieve a full peace accord within a year is valiant, but romantic, in view of the huge differences on core issues that have to be negotiated. Neither side has signaled any tangible willingness to make the crucial concessions needed for a full and lasting peace. They are also both constrained by serious domestic political opposition. Annapolis looks dangerously like the 2000 Camp David II negotiations all over again, when a time-pressed Bill Clinton rushed Arabs and Israelis into a negotiation they were not prepared for and were not politically able to deliver on.

A majority of Palestinians and Israelis want a negotiated peaceful resolution of their conflict, and are prepared for serious, reciprocal compromises. Sadly, Annapolis seems to confirm again, neither side has been able to generate the bold, quality leadership that is required to mobilize public support to achieve such a peace. A decisive, constructive shift in American, Arab, and European external engagement in the negotiations could rescue this precarious process.

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

—————-
Released: 28 November 2007
Word Count: 825
—————-

For rights and permissions, contact:

rights@agenceglobal.com, 1.336.686.9002 or 1.212.731.0757

BEIRUT — It is ironic, but symbolically telling, that the latest attempt to spark serious Arab-Israeli peace negotiations is physically based at an American naval military facility in Annapolis, Maryland. Whether the political anchorage of the process is similarly reliant on America’s military engagement and strategic interests in the Middle East remains to be seen. The signs are not encouraging, though, if we are to judge the players by their actions, rather than their words.

The key unanswered question about the Annapolis meeting is about the motives of the American hosts. I write this Tuesday morning as the gathering gets underway, before the outcome is clear. It is hard to be very hopeful for substantive breakthroughs when the past nine months of continuous trips by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice — and equally frequent bilateral Israeli-Palestinian high-level meetings — have been unable to generate even a simple declaration of principles to launch the Annapolis meeting.

If the principals cannot agree on a few sentences to describe why they are at Annapolis, then why are they at Annapolis?

This is very low-intensity, low expectations diplomacy. Never in recent world history have so many governments and political actors worked so hard, for so few tangible results. In many ways this is a rerun of the 1991 Madrid conference, but on tranquilizers. Yet, the presence of so many countries and officials at Annapolis is meaningful. Why did the Bush administration expend so much energy to arrange this gathering?

The answer to this riddle is crucial to determining whether we should expect any concrete or positive outcomes. The Israeli and Palestinian governments are both weak and politically constrained by serious domestic opposition. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is only quasi-legitimate, given the absence of Hamas from the process. The Arab participants, like young children dragged to an ancient history museum by their parents, are not going to win any enthusiasm awards for their presence.

This leaves the American hosts as the main drivers of the process. The intensity of the American push for Arab-Israeli negotiations in the past nine months is impressive in its mechanics, but unconvincing in its political substance. For President Bush to reaffirm yet again that he remains committed to a two-state solution comprising Israeli and Palestinian sovereign states living in peace and security is not very impressive or meaningful. He made that pledge several years ago, then got on his horse and rode away into the sunset and into the war in Iraq — instead of backing up his pledge with concrete diplomacy. Now, he’s back, galloping at high speed.

The Bush administration’s dilemma is that nobody takes it very seriously any more, largely due to its own self-inflicted wounds. Bush and Rice have spoken rhetorically of a historic American commitment to a Palestinian state, but simultaneously have pursued policies throughout the Middle East that do several things at once to discredit that goal.

Washington’s policies in the region since 2003 have
• bolstered Israeli colonization, assassination, collective punishment, and economic strangulation policies in occupied Arab lands;
• tacitly or enthusiastically backed Israel’s war and attacks against Lebanon and Syria; • ignored the worsening conditions in Palestine that generated more support for Hamas and discredited the Fateh-led government;
• supported President Abbas in his battle against Hamas, thus indirectly fostering radicalization of Palestinians and many other Arabs;
• strengthened Iran’s strategic posture throughout the region;
• weakened “moderate” Arab regimes that Washington has desperately sought to forge into an anti-Iranian alliance;
• through the Iraq war and threats against Syria and Iran, created the greatest single prevailing boost to the proliferation of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction procurement by players in the region;
• dampened native Arab enthusiasm for democratic elections, thanks to the American-Israeli-led boycott of Hamas’ election victory in 2006;
• almost totally wiped out any credible, independent European diplomatic role in the region;
• opened large spaces for Russian diplomatic re-entry into the Middle East;
• alienated a majority of Turks who should have been a major American ally; and,
• due to all this and more, largely discredited itself as an honest mediator.

Despite all this, we are asked to believe that Washington, like a born again believer and reformed alcoholic, has suddenly seen the wrongs of its ways, miraculously righted itself on the righteous path, and is anxious to lead us all towards peace and prosperity. This is a hard tale to swallow, not because I do not believe the Americans, but because the actions of the American government flatly contradict its rhetoric.

So why is Washington suddenly so committed to Arab-Israeli peace? We still do not know. A clear answer would be useful, for honesty is the first step on the road to renewed credibility. Whatever happens after Annapolis will probably see the Israelis and Arabs pursuing their same old policies, but it will offer Washington a new opportunity to show that it is genuinely committed to peacemaking. If there is a time to throw away the tranquilizers in Middle Eastern diplomacy, this is it.

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

—————-
Released: 28 November 2007
Word Count: 826
—————-

For rights and permissions, contact:

rights@agenceglobal.com, 1.336.686.9002 or 1.212.731.0757

BOSTON — Does Arab public opinion matter? Does the “Arab street”, as it is often referred to here in the United States, mean anything in real terms? Should the world pay any attention to the sentiments of ordinary Arab citizens?

I’ve had the opportunity to delve into this question during an extended visit and some academic gatherings in the United States. My conclusion is that we should all pay more attention to Arab public opinion than we have done in the past, because the nature and impact of Arab public opinion are quite different today from what they were in years past. The continuing cycle of internal tensions and regional violence, most evident in places like Lebanon, Iraq and Palestine, is due in large part to the fact that large numbers of ordinary citizens make their voices heard and demand change; they no longer accept to acquiesce in policies conducted by non-representative governments or foreign powers.

Several new dimensions of “the Arab street,” or public opinion, are worth noting. The first is simply that a tangible public opinion exists today, in a relatively new public realm in the Arab world that didn’t exist in the past half century.

The end of the Cold War removed the external and regional lids that had kept political life totally suppressed in the Middle East, releasing a wide range of sentiments, identities, and ideologies that now swirl around the region in a robust manner. Now large numbers of Arab citizens who hold assorted political views assert themselves in various ways, including occasional elections of dubious quality, public opinion polls, civil society organizations and other mass movements, and militias and other armed groups. Arab society today is rich in the voices of many different groups that assert the political, ideological, religious, cultural, and tribal sentiments of citizens who formerly could only speak in public if they cheered for the great leader and single authorized ideology of their land.

Today, Arab public opinion also has impact especially where governance systems allow for reasonably credible elections. Lebanon and Palestine are two good examples of how groups like Hamas, Hizbullah, and Michel Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement can mobilize their supporters and take their share of power. Arab public sentiment is increasingly channeled into organized movements that matter, because they seek to define national policies, rather than merely blowing off steam with government-sanctioned street demonstrations as generally happened in the past.

A third important new element of “the Arab street” is that its popular sentiments increasingly join forces with governments that transcend traditional dividing lines of faith, ideology, or nationality. So we witness Islamist movements like Hamas and Hizbullah clearly connecting with one another, but also we see close working ties among these two groups and the Syrian and Iranian governments. This creates a loose coalition of popular and official forces that transcends Shiite-Sunni, Arab-Iranian, and religious-secular lines that had long been seen as sacred in the Middle East.

Arab public opinion is also fascinating today because its single most powerful force — a still developing combination of Islamism and Arab nationalism — probably reflects the views of a majority of Arab citizens. I say “probably” because the evidence remains erratic, though worth exploring in more depth. If a majority of Arab citizens identifies with a combination of Islamist and Arab nationalist sentiments, and this majority increasingly asserts itself and refuses to remain docile and acquiescent in the unsatisfying prevailing political order, we may only be at the beginning of a period of sustained change, and some turbulence, throughout the Middle East. Those in the world who preach the gospel of democracy, the consent of the governed, and the will of the majority are challenged to come to grips with the emerging reality of a majority of Arabs that no longer remains silent, but demands that its sentiments be acknowledged and its rights be affirmed.

Perhaps the most important aspect of this new affirmation of Arab public opinion is its tone of defiance, resistance and self-assertion. Ordinary people, large movements and a few governments in the Middle East no longer politely send protest notes or petitions to the UN, nor cower before foreign or Arab state power.

George W. Bush noted correctly a few years ago that 60 years of American support for Arab autocrats had produced neither stability nor security, and said that such policies needed to be changed in favor of promoting freedom and democracy. Not surprisingly, ordinary Arab citizens are saying the same thing.

In organizing politically and making their views heard, whether through elections or militias, these Arabs are taking the first steps towards translating their sentiments into action and policy. The pot of Arab public opinion is slowly percolating to produce something new in this region — contested power, in the form of politics.

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

—————-
Released: 26 November 2007
Word Count: 796
—————-

For rights and permissions, contact:

rights@agenceglobal.com, 1.336.686.9002 or 1.212.731.0757

NEW YORK — There is something unconvincing, even insincere, about the tentative steps and gestures being made by the parties trying to arrange the meeting in Annapolis, Maryland next week to re-launch Palestinian-Israeli peace talks. It is hard to generate any real anticipation from a process in which the principal Israeli and Palestinian parties are politically weak, the American hosts are imprecise and hesitant, the desired supporting Arab state actors are playing hard to get, and the agenda is as clear as mushroom soup.

Those are all reasons why the Arabs who are invited to go to Annapolis should accept the invitation without reservations, go with enthusiasm and confidence, and use the gathering as a stage to demonstrate the Arab will for a fair and negotiated peace. If Annapolis is a confused and murky process, the Arab world should respond to it with clarity and confidence.

Nowhere in the Annapolis process is there any decisiveness or conviction, any real sign of a burning desire the make concessions, compromises, or genuine peace. The whole process smacks of American self-serving expediency, rather than an honest mediator’s sincerity. Washington seems to be trying to compensate for the heavy price it has paid in the world for three policies in recent years: ignoring the Arab-Israel issue for the first 6 years of the Bush administrations, attacking Iraq and setting off a series of negative consequences in the region, and throwing its weight around by applying or threatening sanctions against governments it does not like.

The United States now finds itself in the unenviable position of being criticized all around the world, widely seen as a destructive power, and yet not feared. It has lost much of its capacity both to deter and to cajole other countries. The sudden 180-degree turn on getting involved in Arab-Israeli peace-making is unconvincing precisely because it is so sudden, severe and out of character — almost maniacal in its intensity.

Nothing new can be seen in the preparations for the Annapolis meeting. The principals are still dancing around the same old dynamics that have already failed several times in recent years — releasing some prisoners in Israeli jails, pledging to freeze Israeli settlement expansion, promoting Palestinian security forces and economic opportunity, and other such stalwarts and regulars of the post-Oslo attempt to make peace.

Israel has thrown in the new demand that Palestinians formally acknowledge Israel as “a Jewish state,” which complicates matters even further and makes agreement less likely. About 20 percent of Israeli citizens are Palestinian Muslim and Christian Arabs, and their status in “a Jewish state” would be unclear, as would the rights of Palestinian refugees to a redress of grievance under existing UN resolutions that say they have the right to return and/or to compensation.

Both sides are still trying to formulate statements on issues they have grappled with before, but are likely to come up with wording so vague that it is meaningless in practical terms. Annapolis is looking more and more like a jamboree of words, symbols, statements and photo opportunities that simultaneously camouflage but emphasize the fundamental discord in Arab-Israeli relations.

The Israelis will not acknowledge Palestinian rights to a viable state and a fair resolution of refugee rights, and the Palestinians in turn will not recognize Israel as “a Jewish state.”

Most of what is going on is not new, and we are all dancing because the Americans suddenly decided to strike up the band. Therefore we in the Arab world have nothing to lose, and much to gain, by turning Annapolis around and making it an opportunity. The Palestinians and Arabs, including Saudis and Syrians, should announce that they are delighted to go to Annapolis if invited because they see it as a moral obligation and constructive political endeavor to explore any possible means of moving towards a negotiated resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

We should go to Annapolis and use it as a powerful stage from which to speak to the whole world, including the Israeli people who will be watching closely. We should use it principally as a venue where we could articulate clearly our desire to negotiate a permanent peace, based on the 2002 Arab peace plan, and expose once again the vacuous and insincere nature of the Israeli and American positions. Or, if the Israelis-Americans are in fact sincere and committed to genuine peace-making through negotiations based on UN resolutions, then they can make that clear for their part, and we can move to our shared goal of a fair, permanent, legitimate peace accord.

Annapolis is not a serious peace-making endeavor, but it is a spectacular stage that the Arabs can use to challenge Israel, the United States, and the world to make peace sincerely, rather than through the stealth, evasion, and imprecision that defines the current mist-filled road to the gathering.

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

—————-
Released: 21 November 2007
Word Count: 803
—————-

For rights and permissions, contact:

rights@agenceglobal.com, 1.336.686.9002 or 1.212.731.0757

BOSTON — Recently, I had the pleasure of spending a morning and lunch with John P. Abizaid, when he visited Northeastern University in Boston. Now retired, General Abizaid served his country for 34 years in a long and distinguished career, culminating in his responsibility for US Central Command, when he led American forces in the Middle East and Asia during the Iraq war’s early years. Just as when he provided briefings to the US Congress and the American people on the progress of the war he led in Iraq, there is good news and bad news to report from my encounter with him.

Abizaid is no ordinary soldier or American citizen. He was the youngest four-star general in the Army, the longest-serving commander of United States Central Command, and three times worked on the Joint Staff of the armed forces, including once as director. Now president of his own international security consulting firm, he is also associated with academic projects at Stanford and Harvard universities.

The good news is that he understands the several interlocking challenges and problems that define the Middle East and the wider Arab-Asian region, especially the linkages between the Arab-Israeli conflict, ideological and religious movements, extremist organizations, the use of foreign military power, and securing energy resources.

Abizaid identifies four major strategic problems in the region, which he lists as: 1) the rise of religiously-indoctrinated extremist organizations like Al-Qaeda that are stateless but carry out attacks throughout the world, want the United States to leave the region, yet are rejected by the vast majority of people in the Middle East;
2) the rise of Shiite extremism that is attached to the state of Iran, wants to dominate the region and expel US influence, but also sometimes comes into conflict with Sunni religious extremism;
3) the corrosive effect of the Arab-Israeli conflict, which leads to hopelessness and anxiety that can spill over into extremist movements in the worst cases; and,
4) the need to secure the flow of oil and gas from the Middle East to the entire world.

He also understands the limits of military power, because he knows it intimately, and he also knows that foreign armies in the Middle East can generate a combination of resentment and resistance (which his former civilian bosses in Washington fail to grasp). He says that military force against what he calls “AQAM” (Al-Qaeda and Associated Movements) only buys time, while over the longer run a combination of diplomatic, political and economic policies is required to defeat AQAM. He recognizes that “military actions alone will not stabilize Iraq, which is one of our top priorities now,” but also that American-led military policies in the long run could inadvertently spur the expansion of extremist movements as a response.

“If Al-Qaeda and associated movements ever became mainstream in the Middle East, then we really would have a clash of civilizations. We need to confront extremism in the region now, before it strengthens and spreads as a result of our own actions,” he says. “Too many American forces in the region, in an intrusive posture, for too long a period of time, create conditions that make extremism more dangerous for the United States and for the people of the region themselves.”

Therefore, he suggests, “we must stop leading with our military and work harder at nation-building and giving the people in the region more opportunities to share in the global wealth. We need to change the current pattern of intervention, and get to the point where our engagement in this region is defined by around 20 percent military and 80 percent political-economic actions.”

His view of Iran is also refreshingly realistic. He feels the United States and allies “must do everything we can to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power,” but adds that “a nuclear Iran also does not mean war with Iran, because we’ve dealt with North Korea, the USSR, and others who had nuclear weapons. We must confront the Iranian regime and not take military force off the table as an option, but it’s not clear to me that we must fight them militarily.”

The bad news is that Abizaid’s analysis remains incomplete and superficial in places, perhaps because digging deeper into the causes of Middle Eastern tensions and violence would require more stringent analyses of the culpability of the United States, Israel and the pro-Western Arab conservative regimes. He does not seem to probe the complete reasons for the two religion-anchored Sunni and Shiite extremisms he sees as real dangers to the region and to the US, nor the historical and political drivers of Iranian nationalism. I sensed in his approach a tendency to identify only local reasons for the extremism and violence in the Middle East, without acknowledging fully the cycle of extremism, violence and fanaticism that drives policy in Arab, Iranian, Israeli and American official circles alike.

General Abizaid is a man worth listening to, despite weaknesses and gaps in his worldview. Good news and bad news together from a former high-ranking American general are a step forward from the mostly bad news, blinkered militarism and pro-Israeli extremism that broadly define American policy in the Middle East as it has been crafted by civilian zealots in recent years.

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

—————-
Released: 07 November 2007
Word Count: 871
—————-

For rights and permissions, contact:

rights@agenceglobal.com, 1.336.686.9002 or 1.212.731.0757

BOSTON — I could not help but notice that Karen Hughes announced her resignation as US public diplomacy chief last Wednesday — on Halloween day — here in the United States. This was an apt moment for her to hit the airwaves: when monsters, ghosts, goblins and witches roam the land for the night, then disappear for another year, all in a make-believe fantasyland that enchants us briefly, and frightens us occasionally, but that we never take seriously.

Her resignation has been greeted in the American press as reflecting mixed results in her two years as Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy — with progress on institutionally raising the profile of her office in Washington, but no real achievements in improving America’s image abroad. That is too kind, in my view, and misses the point of her professional and official calamity.

From the start, Karen Hughes’ office and mission — not her personally — were a political catastrophe in all respects. She should not simply resign. If she were a real diplomat and a true American, with honesty and courage to match her Texan bravado, she should apologize for subjecting her own country, and we who were the objects of her mission, to what can only be described as a monumental and insulting hoax.

She will not apologize, of course. So the next best thing is for those whom she leaves behind in Washington — a credibility-shattered and intellectually depleted bureaucracy — to undertake the patriotic mission that she always refused to do: to analyze honestly why the United States is universally criticized and increasingly widely feared as a dangerous menace around the world, and to determine what can be done to turn this situation by adopting better policies, rather than subjecting the world to deceitful political hucksters and naïve storytellers.

Her office had no appreciable impact on improving global perceptions of the United States, and in some situations made things worse, especially when she and some of her colleagues spoke to audiences in the Middle East with a combination of political condescension, cultural arrogance, and aggressive moralizing. I had the chance to see her perform in person a few times, and it was always a painful experience. Those left behind in her wake should analyze the last two years honestly, and come up with policies and strategies that shed the sort of racism, fantasy communication, and self-delusional political and moral evasion of responsibility that the hapless Hughes and her colleagues practiced with a gusto that was matched by their obvious irrelevance and failure.

I am harsh on her and her work because it reflects the absolute worst in American political culture and America’s engagement with the world. What she has done in her two years as public diplomacy chief is not only ineffective and probably counter-productive; it is also very un-American. She rejected the honesty, humility and realism that define the values of most Americans, and instead opted to live in a dream world in which America was perfect, and foreigners who thought badly of it needed to be lectured about American values and policies.

The core, devastating flaw in her entire mission was to completely separate the world’s critical views of the US government from the conduct of American foreign policy itself. She assumed that the problem was that foreigners misunderstood American values or foreign policy goals — but she never tried to understand Arab-Muslims in the same way she asked them to understand her country and its policies.

She never understood that her brand of moralizing and arrogant cultural cheerleading — “Go, Muslims, go! Reach for the sky! You can be modern and democratic, if you really try!” — was part of the problem, not part of the solution. She failed to grasp that she was handicapped from the start by trying to make us love a country whose pro-Israeli, pro-Arab autocrats foreign policy — and now the Iraq fiasco — has devastated our lands and cultures for nearly half a century.

By any standards, she failed miserably and totally — but to be fair to her, she never really had a chance, given the enormous handicap of her country’s foreign policy in the Middle East. We should criticize her personally only for accepting to be part of this charade, and playing the fool on a global stage that increasingly came to see her as a strange combination of a comedy and horror show rolled into one. We should instead remind Americans that this is a moment for them to reconsider this whole silly episode, stop wasting hundreds of millions of dollars on vacuous public diplomacy programs, and stop insulting several billion people around the world who do not need any prompting to enjoy American values, education, business, technology, sports, and other offerings — including Halloween night, with its bags of Tootsie-Rolls, and the fantasy of defeated wicked witches — who get on their brooms and disappear into the night sky, to reappear only in our future nightmares.

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

—————-
Released: 05 November 2007
Word Count: 815
—————-

For rights and permissions, contact:

rights@agenceglobal.com, 1.336.686.9002 or 1.212.731.0757

BOSTON — A year and a half after they published their ground-breaking article “The Israel Lobby” in the London Review of Books, distinguished American academics John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt have now published their book entitled The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy.

The venerable American publishers, Farrar Straus and Giroux, proved far more courageous in publishing the book than The Atlantic Monthly magazine, which had commissioned the original article, then refused to publish it — presumably because The Atlantic did not want to handle the consequences they anticipated would follow such an open analysis of the influence of the powerful pro-Israel lobby in the United States.

Mearsheimer and Walt argue the basic point that this influence is bad for the United States, Israel, and everyone else in the Middle East, given the way events have been unfolding there in recent years.

During a stay at Harvard University this week I contacted Professor Walt, whom I have known for a few years since speaking together on a panel here, to find out if the public reception of their book had been any different from what they had been subjected to after the original article appeared last year: hostile attacks, discrediting attempts, and deeply personal character assassination campaigns.

The answer is, yes and no. I was also able to witness this that same evening, when I attended a public panel discussion the authors gave at the respected Cambridge Forum (available on the web at www.cambridgeforum.org). The pro-Israel lobby that they analyze diligently in their book obviously learned that these two established scholars could not be intimidated or hounded out of town by the lobby’s usual accusations of anti-semitism, or, in this case even more astoundingly, of sloppy research. You do not become tenured professors at the University of Chicago and Harvard University by doing sloppy research or practicing racism.

Those accusations rolled off Mearsheimer and Walt’s backs like water off a duck because they were so patently false, and because the authors did not cower before the attacks against them — but mainly because they knew that their basic argument was factually correct, however politically controversial they werein the United States.

As the authors explain in their book and public talks, such personal attacks are how the lobby intimidates and usually silences people in the United States — politicians, journalists, academics and others — whose views it disagrees with. Their core argument is that the Israel lobby does this regardless of the impact on US or Israeli interests.

“Many policies pursued on Israel’s behalf now jeopardize US national security,” they write. “This situation, which has no equal in American history, is due primarily to the activities of the Israel lobby. By making it difficult to impossible for the U.S. government to criticize Israel’s conduct and press it to change some of its counterproductive policies, the lobby may even be jeopardizing the long-term prospects of the Jewish state.”

The many elements that comprise the Israel lobby may have realized that continuing to attack the authors was only giving their work more publicity, and stoking the policy debate they wished to instigate in the first place.

“This is an important policy subject that reasonable people should be able to discuss openly in this country,” Walt notes. “The impact of the lobby’s discrediting, marginalizing and silencing critics is that little serious debate takes place on the lobby’s impact on US foreign policy, even though it is obvious to all that this policy has badly gone off the rails in recent years.”

They argue that the Israel lobby is perfectly legitimate and normal in the context of American policy-making. The problem is in the foreign policy that Israel and its lobby end up advocating for the United States, and that the US dutifully pursues.

The authors are making extensive book promotion tours in the United States and soon embark on a long European trip. They have also been invited to Israel, where — they note — their book has been reviewed much more thoughtfully and honesty than in the United States. The book is now also being translated into 16 languages.

The issues they raise are all the more relevant these days because of the crescendo of calls for American and/or Israeli military attacks to halt Iran’s nuclear industry development. They see troubling parallels between the lobby’s push for the US attack against Iraq — “one of the greatest strategic blunders in American history,” Mearsheimer calls it — and the current drive by Israel and the pro-Israel lobby to nudge Washington to do something similar against Iran.

If their analysis is correct — and I believe it is — their cautionary warnings deserve open, thorough, and honest debate, before the confluence of zealots in the White House, neo-conservative radicals in their retinues, and the Israel lobby and other special interest groups combine again to propel the United States and the world into another reckless and dangerous adventure.

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

—————-
Released: 31 October 2007
Word Count: 811
—————-

For rights and permissions, contact:

rights@agenceglobal.com, 1.336.686.9002 or 1.212.731.0757

BOSTON — The main Middle Eastern issue being discussed in the United States these days is not Iraq, Arab-Israeli peace-making, or Turkish-Kurdish-Iraqi tensions, but rather what to do about Iran and its perceived threat to the region, the United States and the world. The Bush administration sets a shrill and aggressive tone on this and is taking action, including this week’s new sanctions against the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, its Quds force, and several banks.

Possible American moves against Iran should be considered in light of the 2001-2007 lessons of US-led wars to change regimes and remake national governance systems in Afghanistan and Iraq — and indirectly in Palestine and Lebanon. This is not just a Bush-Cheney problem: This is an all-American problem, since most presidential candidates in both parties do not stray far from the administration’s aggressive policy options.

The post-2001 experience suggests that American military attacks against Iran would probably result in more turmoil in the Middle East and Asia, and greater anti-American sentiments and actions around the world. The American-led wars and aggressive diplomatic stances vis-à-vis Iran, Hamas, Hizbullah and Syria have already generated two specific phenomena: widespread criticism of the United States in public opinion around the entire world (see the recent BBC and Pew polls); and, a determination by many Middle Eastern actors to actively resist and defy the United States, and to militarily combat it (or its Arab and Israeli proxies) when such an opportunity arises in Lebanon and Iraq, rather than to react with the expected acquiescence and compliance.

The six-year-old US-led “global war on terror” has expanded terror networks and their threats, hastened weapons of mass destruction proliferation by assorted regimes, bolstered Arab-Asian dictators, weakened indigenous democracy movements, mangled nascent rule of law traditions, badly isolated and weakened the United States diplomatically, and virtually nullified the deterrent power of American-Israeli military might. Attacking Iran will only exacerbate these trends in the short term.

Americans should grasp precisely why a US-led war on global terror has backfired and isolated the United States as much as the terrorists. The main reason, simply, is that every aspect of Washington’s “global war on terror” is perceived by the majority of people in the Arab-Asian region as reviving, reaffirming, expanding, and accelerating all the negative Western policies that have devastated the people of the Middle East for nearly a century.

Here is a quick summary list of these issues:

• From the days of Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt two centuries ago to the birth of the modern Middle East state system at Euro-colonial hands a century ago, a steady stream of Western armies invade, occupy and seek to remake the Middle East to suit Western strategic aims.
• European — and now American — policies blatantly favor Israel at the expense of Arab rights, and turn a blind eye to Israel’s continued colonization of Palestinian land.
• Persistence in marginalizing Palestinian rights, and collusion in barbaric Israeli policies against the Palestinians, such as this week’s move to cut electricity supplies to civilians in Gaza.
• Supporting autocratic Arab regimes and police states, and showing chronic disdain for the democratic aspirations of Arab citizens.
• Promoting the ethnic and sectarian division of the region in order to enhance American hegemony and Israeli control. (E.g., why is the United States today the only source of apparently serious proposals to divide Iraq into three smaller units?)
• Demonizing Islam and Islamic values, to the point that 75 percent of Arabs and Muslims surveyed recently express an astounding fear that the United States actually wants to dominate or destroy Islam itself.
• Attacking any Arab or Islamic power or mass popular force that rises in the region, such as Nasser’s Egypt, Baathist Iraq, Iran, Hizbullah, the Muslim Brotherhood, and others.
• Dictating economic, political, social, educational, and religious norms and values that should define Arab-Asian societies, and trying to enforce those values through military power and political force.
• Pursuing blatant double standards in implementing UN resolutions and international law, such as relating to Israeli occupation and colonization of Arab land, Iran’s nuclear industry, recognizing or rejecting democratic elections, and other issues.
• Exploiting local leaders and movements to suit Western policies, then dropping these erstwhile allies and friends when they are no longer needed.
• Controlling Arab-Asian natural resources, such as oil, gas and strategic geography.

This is what ordinary Arabs, Iranians, and other Middle Easterners see when they hear about American plans possibly to attack Iran. This is not because people in the Middle East have fertile imaginations, but rather because this is the actual history that they have experienced for the past century at the hands of once colonial masters who have now turned into post-colonial and neo-colonial nightmares. They see America’s “global war on terror” as a frightening renewal and continuation of foreign threats and predatory intrusions at the hands of powerful Western armies and political demagogues.

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

—————-
Released: 29 October 2007
Word Count: 804
—————-

For rights and permissions, contact:

rights@agenceglobal.com, 1.336.686.9002 or 1.212.731.0757

AMMAN, Jordan — Some things move slowly in life, including transitions to democracy and getting governments to treat their citizens decently. I mention these two because they cropped up again and again this week during a working visit to Jordan, where, among other things, I had to twice engage the menacing Ottoman-era bureaucracy: to renew my driver’s license and complete a power of attorney procedure with my brother.

The procedures turned out to be far less demeaning or frustrating than they used to be in years past, when such routine bureaucratic transactions often required half a day of work. We finished the power of attorney form in under thirty minutes, and the driving license was in my hands in 46 minutes.

Bottom line: The streamlining of the bureaucracy and the state serving its citizens in an efficient, dignified manner is probably more important right now for the future of Arab countries than holding elections for parliament.

In Jordan these days, there is some, but not intense, anticipation of the upcoming parliamentary elections. Most citizens are more concerned about things like the cost of living and worsening traffic jams. This will be the fifth parliamentary election that Jordan will hold since the procedure was resumed in 1989. Yet there is little excitement about the process, because it is now recognized — in all Arab countries — that parliaments and their elections are only adjunct institutions in a power structure that makes key policy decisions through other mechanisms, both formal and informal.

Parliamentary elections offer insights into popular sentiments and provide a means for ordinary citizens to feel they are engaged in the business of statehood. Yet parliaments do not generate passion because the results of elections can be accurately predicted ahead of time — not by good polling, but by the rigorous drawing and gerrymandering of electoral districts that the power structure uses as the primary instrument of ensuring chronic parliamentary majorities that side with the government.

The bureaucracy, on the other hand, is far more meaningful to ordinary people’s lives. So when we walked into the Justice Ministry and took a number from a machine — for a moment I thought I was in a Swiss bakery — then sat down in unusually unbroken chairs, I knew that change was in the air in the modern Arab security state. A young man walked around selling coffee in clean plastic cups, and a special office for photocopying documents was available down the hall.

When our number flashed on the screens (and an announcement was made in Arabic and English) we took our forms to the designated desk manned by a very pleasant fellow, did the bureaucratic deed, complete with stamps and signatures, paid the fees at the adjacent window, and walked out in under thirty minutes (of which around 20 were waiting our turn on a particularly busy day).

The driving license renewal was equally impressive, if more complex. I filled in the required form and handed it into the first desk, after which I had to make nine different stops in four adjacent buildings, and walked out with my new license in 46 minutes. In years past, this procedure would have taken half a day or so, if you were not turned away and told to return the next day for not having all the required forms that the Ottoman bureaucracy demanded to be fed.

The transformation of a once cumbersome bureaucracy that humiliated ordinary citizens into a rather impressive client-friendly service deliverer that now routinely sees citizens walking away satisfied and emotionally undamaged is an ongoing process that has significant political implications. In a world of top-heavy, security-controlled Arab states that offer no possible opportunity for opposition movements democratically to gain more than about 25 percent of parliaments (which they now do routinely) the center-of-gravity of political stability continues to shift: It moves from the formulation of state policy and the control of military means, to economic conditions and the exercise of power between state and citizen.

Arab governments no longer fear mass demonstrations or coups. The biggest danger they face is mass radicalization due to discontent sparked by daily petty humiliations endured by citizens who encounter their state bureaucracy or security system, along with tensions over making ends meet at the family level. A state that serves its citizens efficiently, swiftly and fairly is a state that has largely neutralized a major potential force of discontent and turbulence.

This gains time for the Arab state. In due course, though, we are likely to see citizens all over the Arab world enquiring about why they cannot be treated with the same sense of fair play and dignity in parliamentary elections, in civilian oversight of security services, in fiscal transparency, and other “big sticker” items.

Most Arab citizens feel that those are issues to be raised on another day — but they will not go away. Like the tamed and humanized bureaucracy, the Arab political power structure can and must be modified to serve its constituents more efficiently and with dignity. For this year, a clean waiting seat and coffee are a refreshing and welcomed change.

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

—————-
Released: 22 October 2007
Word Count: 849
—————-

For rights and permissions, contact:

rights@agenceglobal.com, 1.336.686.9002 or 1.212.731.0757

BEIRUT — What does it mean when US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says it is time to establish a Palestinian state within a year, for the sake of Palestinian, Israeli and US national interests, and that, “We are not going to tire until I have given my last ounce of energy and my last moment in office [to working for a two-state solution]”?

There is an unreal yet intriguing quality to America’s newfound enthusiasm for an instant Palestinian state. That is a welcomed goal — if it were sincere. Rice’s first big problem is that few people in the Middle East believe the United States is sincere, because every aspect of Washington’s policy during the past seven years flatly contradicts everything Bush-Rice have stated rhetorically in recent months about their commitment to creating a Palestinian state.

They seem not to realize that they are now finally paying the price for years of policies of disdain and neglect of Palestinian and Arab rights, in favor of broadly supporting Israeli positions. The United States haughtily gambled on getting away with pursuing a policy of nice words that gravely contradicts its actual destructive policies on the ground. Consequently, most people in the Middle East no longer believe the United States, respect its policies, or fear its power. Anyone who cares to live in the real world can observe this in the defiant behavior of Iran, Syria, Turkey, Hizbullah, Hamas and many other states and popular mass movements that probably comprise 75 percent of the people of this region.

This is not the first time that American presidents and Israeli prime ministers have tried to salvage their damaged reputations by pulling an Arab-Israeli peace rabbit out of the hat at the last minute. It will not work, just as it did not work in the past.

Negotiated, durable peace accords and Palestinian states cannot be ordered like a late night pizza to meet an urgent physical or emotional craving by slightly disoriented fraternity boys. If the United States suddenly decides it needs Arab partners to help it get out of its messes throughout the Middle East, it will not get them by a change of rhetoric without a change in policy that sheds its years of contempt and disregard for Palestinian and Arab rights alongside Israeli rights.

Washington would be more convincing if it were to commit to the known elements of a negotiated peace that are firmly grounded in UN resolutions and international law. A consistent American affirmation of the illegal and destructive nature of Israeli colonies, settlements and land expropriations, for example, would be a much more effective way to secure Arab respect and diplomatic cooperation than the Bush-Rice policy of supporting in writing Ariel Sharon’s colonial policies on settlements and refugees, and then standing by Ehud Olmert’s perpetuation of those positions.

The Arab people, and perhaps even a few leaders, are totally fed up with being asked to play the role of the rabbit that is pulled out of the hat by American illusionists. Remarkably, Washington and others still have not grasped perhaps the single most important strategic change that has occurred in the Arab world in the past generation: Many — perhaps most — ordinary Arabs and their political movements have crossed the threshold of fear and passive acquiescence to the power of the United States, Israel and entrenched Arab regimes. The United States is happy to recognize, laud and ride this phenomenon when, say, Lebanese citizens rally against Syria; but it refuses to see the same defiant, fearless spirit among many more Arabs who rally against the US itself.

Through a combination of resistances — Islamist, nationalist, tribal, sectarian, ethnic, revivalist, democratic and other indigenous movements — most ordinary Arab men and women now behave in a totally different manner than the previous three generations, since the birth of the modern Arab world around 1920: They refuse to bow to foreign ultimatums and threats; refuse to cringe in fear of American, Israeli or British military attacks; refuse to waste time sending petitions to Western leaders asking them to adhere to global rights norms; and, they refuse to play smoke-and-mirror deception games designed in Washington and Tel Aviv — or in Tony Blair’s wandering mind.

The Arabs will no longer be treated like rabbits to be pulled out of American conjurers’ hats on demand, as late night curatives for ideological hangovers, to get through the next day — or the last year in office. Grasping this fact, and designing a peace process that is equitable and anchored in law, rather than illusionary and driven by colonial mindsets and power imbalances, is the right way to get to both a Palestinian state and Israel’s secure acceptance in the Middle East.

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

—————-
Released: 17 October 2007
Word Count: 790
—————-

For rights and permissions, contact:

rights@agenceglobal.com, 1.336.686.9002 or 1.212.731.0757