BEIRUT — U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice changed her hairstyle just before her last trip to the Middle East last week, and it was very becoming on her, increasing her already graceful personal demeanor. Unfortunately, she did not similarly change her country’s foreign policy in the Middle East, particularly on the current Lebanon-Israel clashes. It remains conspicuously aligned with Israel’s goals and worldviews, which is why the cross-border fighting and attacks will go on for some time.

Fortunately, though, Rice and the United States, for all their power and boastful posturing, cannot long dictate the turn of events on the battlefield or in the diplomacy at the UN that now attempts to stop the fighting. Rice came into the Middle East on her two trips last week feeling something like the all-powerful Sultan of the Middle East. It turned out, in fact, that she was more like the eunuch of the realm — because the United States, through its all-out alignment with Israel, has effectively castrated itself diplomatically. Like the eunuchs of old, for this moment and in this conflict at least, it has power, but not much impact, and presence but not much consequence.

Washington has relegated itself to the awkward position of saying it wants a speedy cease-fire while at the same time giving Israel the diplomatic cover, time and space in which to pursue its assault on Hizbullah and Lebanon. Speaking peace while making war is not a sustainable policy. This is why the steadfast alliance of United States, Israel and Micronesia — and Tony Blair on his more incoherent days — now find themselves so badly isolated diplomatically in the world.

One point on which the United States is correct, though, is in stressing that a cease-fire alone might bring temporary calm but would only allow the protagonists to resume fighting one day. So we have the new diplomatic code words of the day: anchoring a cease-fire in a political context and achieving a sustainable cease-fire that ensures long-term calm by resolving the outstanding disputes and perhaps even wider Arab-Israeli issues.

Important signs have appeared in recent days that signal better prospects for a diplomatic accord soon. First, Israel seems to have grasped the futility or difficulty of trying to destroy Hizbullah militarily, or of causing such pain to all Lebanese that they turn against Hizbullah themselves. Israel’s military can cause great havoc in Lebanon and already has done so; it can destroy Hizbullah rocket launchers and kill some of its fighters. But it cannot achieve peace with Lebanon by making war on Lebanon. It can only achieve its goals of a calm border by addressing the underlying political issues in recent decades that caused Israel to attack Lebanon repeatedly and gave birth to Hizbullah in the first place.

The Israelis may be making subtle changes in their stated strategic goals — from wanting to destroy Hizbullah, to degrading it significantly, to pushing it back beyond the Litani River, to simply preventing attacks against Israel. Israel has a legitimate and reasonable demand in wanting to prevent attacks against it from Lebanon, though it seems to remain blind to the reality that attacks against it from Lebanon are a response to its own aggressions against Lebanon.

Equally important is the agreement between Hizbullah and the Lebanese government on the 7-point plan to implement a cease-fire and follow this up with steps to address the outstanding issues with Israel. The plan calls for a mutual release of prisoners, Israeli troops withdrawing to the demarcated frontier and allowing displaced civilians to return home, Israel’s withdrawal from the occupied Sheba Farms/Kfar Shuba Hills and placing them under temporary UN control, extending Lebanese government authority throughout all southern Lebanon, expanding the existing UN force in south Lebanon, reinvigorating the 1949 armistice agreement, and reconstructing the south. This important agreement deserves far more consideration than it seems to have received to date.

A third important sign is the American insistence on dealing with the underlying issues, not only achieving a temporary calm. Washington wants to do this primarily on its own terms and those of Israel, which will not work. But as the fulcrum of action shifts from the battlefield to the UN Security Council this week, the American-Israeli-Micronesian alliance will find itself increasingly pressured to craft a political cease-fire agreement that responds to the underlying issues that legitimately concern all sides.

A fourth significant recent development has been the active participation of French diplomats in trying to propose a balanced diplomatic path that could succeed. It is fair to assume that neither American nor Iranian proposals will generate a diplomatic consensus. French and other more impartial diplomats, including the UN’s able team of envoys who have quietly and consistently generated constructive ideas, are more likely to move this process forward.

What would help make that happen would be an Israeli-American-Micronesian plan that mirrors the Hizbullah-Lebanese government 7 points, aiming to genuinely identity the underlying issues that must be addressed, so that we do not do this whole process again some years down the road.

Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.

Copyright ©2006 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global
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Released: 01 August 2006
Word Count: 839
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BEIRUT — The Israeli attack that killed scores of elderly people and handicapped children in the southern Lebanese town of Qana early Sunday has triggered reactions that collectively may prove to be a turning point in the current fighting, and perhaps even in the 58-year-old Arab-Israeli conflict.

Television images throughout the world focused Sunday on two parallel scenes: the removal of smashed bodies in Qana, most of them children, and an angry demonstration in front of the UN building in central Beirut where a small number of enraged young Lebanese entered the facility and trashed parts of it.

Those sentiments of rage by Lebanese citizens are the core of wider political feelings that may soon be translated into novel, and potentially historic, diplomatic dynamics. This was reflected most dramatically Sunday morning when Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and Speaker of the House Nebih Berri told a press conference that, in view of the massacre at Qana, the Lebanese government has nothing to discuss except an immediate and unconditional cease-fire.

Berri, the highest Shiite figure in the government and a key link with Hizbullah, stated emphatically that all Shiites and Lebanese stand firmly with the government position. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice then announced that she was postponing her scheduled Sunday visit to Beirut to discuss how to end this crisis.
The unprecedented nature of these moves comprises the convergence of five forces in the Arab world that have never come together as they do this week:
€ impassioned public opinion,
€ sustained armed resistance by non-state actors,
€ firm government positions that align with both of these elements,
€ non-stop mass media dissemination, and
€ a sense of Israel’s military vulnerability.

Many Lebanese and others in the region passionately debate Hizbullah’s ultimate aims, often mistrust its motives, and question the wisdom of its abduction of two Israeli soldiers on July 12. Yet, that abduction, the subsequent massive Israeli attacks against much of Lebanon’s civilian infrastructure, and Hizbullah’s continued resistance against Israel have now pushed the region into uncharted diplomatic territory. Hizbullah’s strategy, tactics, and capabilities are at the heart of this process.

Hizbullah’s response to the Israeli attacks includes four key elements: it has absorbed massive Israeli bombardment without its military, media or leadership capabilities being significantly diminished; it has retaliated almost daily with missile strikes, progressively ever deeper into Israel; it has inflicted relatively heavy casualties on Israeli ground troops and forced them to withdraw from the Bint Jbail area in southern Lebanon; and, it has succeeded in synchronizing its diplomatic position with that of the Siniora government, thus tempering criticisms that it acts alone against the interests of Lebanon and its government.

For the Lebanese government effectively to tell Rice to stay away, as it did Sunday, reflects a newfound resoluteness among official Arab circles that has long been absent from the scene. It is an important response to the mounting rage in Lebanon and the region to the Qana massacre. It also mirrors the deeper sense in Lebanon that the longer Hizbullah holds out and keeps retaliating against Israel’s vaunted armed forces, the more likely it is that this conflict will soon shift into a negotiated diplomatic resolution.

The elements of a diplomatic solution are obvious to all parties, though their precise order of implementation remains contested, and politically important: a cease-fire, an exchange of prisoners, an international force to separate the parties and cement the cease-fire, allowing all displaced persons to return home, ending cross-border attacks and breaches of sovereignty, negotiating the return of the Shabaa Farms area that Lebanon considers Lebanese land, and addressing reconstruction and reparations demands.

The hope on the Arab side is that the combined Hizbullah-Lebanese government diplomatic position and Hizbullah’s continued military steadfastness will channel increasingly angry Arab public opinion towards pushing Arab governments to support a negotiated solution. If this solution essentially responds to all the key demands of Hizbullah and the Beirut government, while also meeting Israeli legitimate demands, Hizbullah will emerge as a big winner.
As attention shifts to the United Nations deliberations in New York, a striking new aspect of this novel political landscape is the isolation and perhaps even the temporary impotence of the United States. Washington is feeling the pain of its own self-inflicted diplomatic castration, as a consequence of siding so strongly with Israel. It refuses to talk to key players like Hizbullah, Hamas, Iran and the Syrian government, is now cold-shouldered by the Lebanese government, and speaks only to Arab governments with increasingly less credibility and impact.

Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.

Copyright ©2006 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global
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Released: 30 July 2006
Word Count: 778
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BEIRUT — Does Arab public opinion matter? The prevalent reply for decades has been that angry Arabs don’t have much political impact on the prevailing regional order, Israel’s security, or American and other Western interests. Events this month suggest that this perception should be revised and updated.

In particular, we should heed important new sentiments expressed by two very opposite poles in Arab society — Saudi royalty, and Lebanese civilians under fire — whose attitudes reflect significant changes in the foundations of the modern Arab political order.

Arab public opinion is more angry, energized and radical this month, in the face of four parallel things that ordinary Arabs see happening in Lebanon and Israel. First is Israel’s savage attack against all of Lebanon, and not only Hizbullah and its Shiite-dominated heartland in the south, aiming to virtually destroy a country that was the pride of all Arabs. Second is Hizbullah’s strong resistance and capacity to counter-attack, two weeks into the fighting, including sending a third of the Israeli population into bomb shelters for days on end. Third is the passive role of other Arab governments, some of which (Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia) initially criticized Hizbullah for kidnapping two Israeli soldiers on July 12. Fourth is the widespread sense among Arabs, and most other people around the world, that the United States not only goes along with Israel’s attack, but also actively prods and supplies it with armaments, fuel and diplomatic protection.

Many Western analysts — especially Americans — tend to discuss the Arab world in the vocabulary and dynamics of the 1960s, when angry street demonstrators and wily colonels routinely overthrew incumbent regimes. But the nature and impact of mass Arab political anger have changed radically in recent decades. Since the late 1980s, angry Arabs have not bothered much with street demonstrations or attempting coups against the prevailing Arab political order that is seen to be subservient to the United States and acquiescent to Israeli dictates. Instead, ordinary Arabs have done something far more significant, which is just now rearing its head across the region: they have simply de-legitimized their Arab regimes and political order, and left them behind.

Arab public opinion in many places has built a parallel, more credible, order that is based on the twin pillars of resistance and affirmation, in the twin contexts of Arabism and Islamism. Hizbullah and Hamas are its two most dramatic expressions, and social and political Islamism its more widespread foundation in society.

The four simultaneous dynamics evident in this month’s Lebanon-Israel fighting capture this process better than anything else we’ve seen in recent years, even better than the Islamists’ many electoral victories around the region. Public opinion around the Arab world has reacted by strongly supporting Hizbullah and Lebanon, in the first significant clash between the forces of Islamo-Arabist resistance (also supported by Iran) and the American-Israeli combine (supported by a few Arab regimes and elites).

Two important markers of Arab public opinion emerged this week. The first is the Saudi Arabian royal court statement issued Wednesday warning against the “grave and unpredictable consequences” of the continued Israeli aggression against Lebanon. It simultaneously appealed to and warned the international community — with the USA singled out by name — that if the Arab offer to live in peace with Israel fell victim to Israel “arrogance,” only the war option remains. For the normally discreet, patient and peaceful Saudis to issue such a statement is about as strong a signal as we are ever likely to get of elite Arab concern about the consequences of the current mood among Arab publics.

The second important marker is a national public opinion poll of Lebanese, conducted this week by the respected Beirut Center for Research and Information with Lebanese American University assistant professor of political science Dr. Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, measuring public attitudes to the current situation. The striking results showed 87 percent of all Lebanese support the Hizbullah resistance’s military response to the Israeli attacks (including, notably, 89 percent of Sunnis and 80 percent of Christians). And 89 percent of respondents said the United States was not an honest broker and did not respond positively to Lebanon’s concerns. Five months ago, just 58 percent supported the resistance movement’s right to remain armed.

When I asked Dr. Saad-Ghorayeb what she made of these results, she mentioned three key points: Support for Hizbullah is strong nationally across all groups, as the threat from Israel has been revived for all Lebanese, and will not diminish quickly. Strong Sunni support for the resistance and criticism of the United States suggests a revival of a sense of Arabism among many in Lebanon. And a large majority of Lebanese has lost faith in the United States, and may feel that Washington’s support for Lebanon during the past 18 months has been an insincere and expedient ruse designed to achieve America’s regional goals, rather than promote Lebanon’s well-being.

“This has gone beyond simply a sense of bias in America’s policies,” she said, “to the point where the Lebanese feel they have been used by Washington primarily to hurt Iran. Many feel that Washington’s desire to bring freedom to Lebanon has been the kiss of death, following in the wake of similar American approaches to Afghanistan, Palestine, and Iraq.”

Lebanon was the ripe apple that Washington’s drive for Arab democracy should have harvested effortlessly. Instead, today the Lebanese mistrust the United States, and the Saudi royal family publicly warns it about war in the region. The majority of Arabs ignore their regimes, and applaud or support those who actively resist Anglo-American-Israeli aggressions. The face of Arab public opinion will continue to change in these directions, until legitimate grievances are redressed and ordinary people throughout the Arab world feel they are treated like dignified human beings, rather than disposable animals.

Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.

Copyright ©2006 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global
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Released: 28 July 2006
Word Count: 960
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BEIRUT — This will be a decisive week in the current war between Israel and Hizbullah, as diplomatic efforts pick up steam and the focus shifts from fighting to negotiating. The outcome of diplomatic efforts could in turn be decisive for the wider Arab-Israeli conflict, and broad relations of the United States with the Arab world and Iran.

Lebanon is the epitome of the modern legacy in the Middle East of warriors in local battles who tend to be surrogates for larger combatants further afield. So it is important to unpack the various layers of confrontation and separate the issues at hand, in order to discern any chances of either a quick cease-fire or a lasting solution.

Several diplomatic movements are occurring, which might augur well for all concerned. First, Washington and Israel seem to have made two significant changes in their previous positions over the weekend, which open the door to many diplomatic possibilities. Washington now calls for an immediate cease-fire under certain conditions, after having told Israel publicly to ignore cease-fire calls and continue bombing Lebanon to smithereens. And Israel said it would accept an EU- or NATO-led intervention force on the Israel-Lebanon border as part of a package of measures to resolve the conflict.

Second, Syria is making intriguing noises and statements about how it can help solve this problem, while the United States for its part gropes for a way to engage the Syrians without seeming to be engaging the Syrians, so as not to lose face.

Third, intense third party diplomatic ideas and contacts are being offered by the UN, EU, France, Germany, Great Britain, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey and assorted others.

Fourth, Hizbullah seems to have absorbed the initial Israeli-American military blows along with the political criticisms hurled against it from within Lebanon and the region. It seems to be exploring routes out of this dilemma, mainly by delegating the Lebanese government to handle diplomatic negotiations to end the fighting and resolve the issues that triggered the clashes in the first place. It is not in an enviable position. Fighting Israel and holding out for weeks wins it accolades from Arab public opinion, but builds up the political retribution it will expect to receive from other Lebanese political groups when the fighting stops.

But what is it that needs to be solved to stop the clashes, and why is this war taking place? Those are rather rudimentary questions, but increasingly relevant ones given the slow shift towards diplomacy, especially with the 26 July Rome meeting of the United States, Europe and Arab parties.

Three concentric circles of confrontation are self-evident in the Lebanon-Israel situation:
* the immediate Lebanese-Israeli clash;
* the wider regional confrontations including Syria, Iran, Palestine, Israel and Arab leaders in Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, who seem to fear Shiite empowerment in the region; and,
* the global confrontation between a United States that appears to want to revamp this region to suit American-Israeli preferences, and regional governments and popular forces — Iran, Syria, Hizbullah, Hamas, Muslim Brotherhood — that resist such hegemonic aims politically and militarily.

Any successful attempt to quell the Lebanon-Israel clashes must decide which of these three is the most important problem to be resolved, or victory to be earned, at the negotiating table rather than on the field of battle. A sure recipe for failure would be to lump all three circles together and hopelessly confuse a narrow bilateral dispute with the larger regional and global confrontations.

The negotiators should focus on the bilateral Israel-Lebanon issues, but also commit to an equally serious attempt to resolve the underlying Arab-Israeli dispute in quick sequence. The two are inextricably linked as historical cause-and-effect, but they cannot be resolved together. Lebanon’s fate also should not be held hostage to Palestine, Iran, Syria, American neo-conservative ideology or any other such external factor.

The purely bilateral issues are few, and clear: Israel wants its two captured soldiers returned alive, and not to be attacked by Hizbullah rockets from southern Lebanon. Lebanon/Hizbullah wants Israel to stop bombing Lebanese targets, leave the Shabaa Farms area it still occupies, return the few Lebanese prisoners it holds, and stop menacing Lebanon and intruding on its sovereignty with over-flights by jets and drones, sonic booms, and occasional attacks.

A negotiated agreement on these points should be easy to achieve, given the several other understandings on these same issues that Hizbullah and Israel have reached and largely adhered to in recent years. An able mediator will craft an agreement that simultaneously or sequentially returns all prisoners, liberates occupied land, and stops mutual attacks and threats. The Israel-Lebanon bilateral situation would enjoy calm, but not a formal peace agreement.

If such an accord offered a sense of victory for both sides — diplomacy’s ideal outcome — this would subsequently prod progress on the second circle, the Arab-Israeli conflict. Achieving an Israel-Lebanon ceasefire and permanent calm, on the basis of international law and mutual rights, implemented simultaneously, would have enormous positive implications for progress on wider regional and global issues.

This is the time for those concerned to focus sharply and narrowly on the technical issues in dispute between Lebanon and Israel, and set aside both hormone-driven egos and ideology-driven hegemonic aspirations. The bilateral issues can be resolved by humble, honest men and women, should any such folks wish to step up and identify themselves.

Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.

Copyright ©2006 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global
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Released: 26 July 2006
Word Count: 891
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BEIRUT — American officials are very good at vernacular descriptions, but lousy at history and political reality in the Middle East. As U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sets off Sunday on her short trip to a Middle East that is increasingly engulfed in violent confrontations and political turmoil, she has described the massive destruction, dislocation and human suffering in Lebanon as an inevitable part of the “birth pangs of a new Middle East”.

From my perspective here in Beirut, watching American-supplied Israeli jets smash this country to smithereens, what she describes as “birth pangs” look much more like a wicked hangover from a decades-old American orgy of diplomatic intoxication with the enticements of pro-Israeli politics.

We shall find out in the coming years if indeed a new Middle East is being born, or — as I suspect — we are witnessing the initial dying gasps of the Western-made political order that has defined this region and focused primarily on Israeli national dictates for most of the past half a century. The way to a truly new and stable Middle East is to apply policies that deliver equal rights to all concerned, not to favor Israel as having greater rights than Arabs.

Rice declared that Israel should ignore calls for a ceasefire, saying: “This is a different Middle East. It’s a new Middle East. It’s hard. We’re going through a very violent time.”

Behind the American position to support Israel’s massive attacks against Lebanon’s civilian infrastructure and Hizbullah positions is a sense — widely reported from Washington in recent days — that the Bush-Rice team wants to use this conflict to achieve short-term tactical aims and long-term strategic goals that serve the interests of America, Israel and their few allies in the region.

Short term, the United States would like Israel to wipe out Hizbullah, allow the Lebanese government to send its troops to the south of the country, ensure the safety of northern Israel, cut Syria’s influence down to size, and apply greater pressure on Hizbullah-supporter Iran. The United States opposes a ceasefire, therefore, because, Rice says, “A ceasefire would be a false promise if it simply returns us to the status quo.”

This diplomatic position to support Israel’s attacks on Lebanon, coupled with rushing sophisticated precision bombs to Israel from the U.S. arsenal, indicates that Washington seriously aims to fundamentally redraw the political and ideological map of the Middle East in the longer term. If this means yet another Arab land goes up in flames and war, so be it, Washington seems to be saying.

So we now have three Arab countries where American policies and arms have played a major role in promoting chaos, disintegration, mass death and suffering: Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon. You can watch them burn — live on your television sets.

Ironically, these were the three countries that Bush-Rice & Co. have held up as models and pioneers of the American policy to promote freedom and democracy as antidotes to Arab despotism and terrorism.

Washington’s desire to change the face of the Arab world requires removing the last vestiges of anti-American defiance and anti-Israel resistance. The problem for Bush-Rice is that such sentiments probably comprise a majority of Arab people. Most of them flock to Islamist parties and resistance groups like Hamas, Hizbullah, the Muslim Brotherhood and assorted Shiite groups in the Iraqi government.

Syria and Iran are the most problematic governments for Washington in this respect. So there is further irony and much incoherence in the latest American official desire for Arab governments to pressure Syria to reduce its support for Hizbullah and other groups who defy the United States and Israel. The numbing fact that Bush-Rice fail to acknowledge — perhaps understandably, given the alcoholic’s tendency to evade reality — is that Washington now can only speak to a few Arab governments (Saudi Arabia, Egypt and elsewhere) who are in almost no position to affect anyone other than their immediate families and many guards.

Washington is engaged almost exclusively with Arab governments whose influence with Syria is virtually nonexistent, whose credibility with Arab public opinion is zero, whose own legitimacy at home is increasingly challenged, and whose pro-U.S. policies tend to promote the growth of those militant Islamist movements that now lead the battle against American and Israeli policies. Is Rice traveling to a new Middle East, or to a diplomatic Disneyland of her own imagination?

If Rice pursues contacts in the coming five days that increase Washington’s bias towards Israel, tighten its links with isolated, increasingly impotent Arab governments, and further alienate the masses of Arab public opinion, she will exacerbate the very problem she claims she wants to fix: the spread of violence and terror, practiced simultaneously by the armies of states like the United States, Israel, and police state governments in the Middle East who live by violence as a rule, and by non-state actors like Hizbullah and others like it.

On her long flight from Washington to Palestine-Israel Sunday night, someone should give Condoleezza Rice a modern history book of the Middle East, so that she can cut through the haze of her long political drunken stupor, and finally see more clearly where the problems of this region emanate, where the solutions come from, and how her country can become a constructive rather than a destructive force.

Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.

Copyright ©2006 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global
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Released: 23 July 2006
Word Count: 881
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AMMAN, Jordan — I have carefully read and considered George W. Bush’s words to British Prime Minister Tony Blair that were inadvertently caught on an open microphone during the G-8 Summit in Russia last week: “See the irony is that what they need to do is get Syria to get Hizbullah to stop doing this shit and it’s over.”

And I respectfully conclude that George Bush doesn’t know shit about shit.

Bush’s comment is worth analyzing because it is very telling of many things, all of them problematic for the United States and the Middle East region. In that single phrase of his, the American president compressed into two dozen words the cumulative negative consequences of Washington’s unusual capacity to forge a self-defeating and counter-productive Middle East policy on the basis of a faulty analysis, in turn built on misreading local realities and not speaking to the main actors.

Almost every part of Bush’s statement is either wrong or a consequence of bad foreign policy decisions by the United States and Israel, who operate as a single entity for all practical purposes in this respect. The first and most important problem with Bush’s thoughts is to characterize Hizbullah’s actions as “this shit.” Many people, myself included, criticize Hizbullah for certain aspects of its policies. But history will no doubt record that its actions before this month to liberate south Lebanon from Israeli occupation have largely been supported by most Lebanese and Arabs, and have been seen as legitimate by most of the world.

The consensus in Israel, the United States and parts of Lebanon and the Arab world is that Hizbullah recklessly triggered the Israeli rampage in Lebanon this month by kidnapping two Israeli soldiers, causing all the Lebanese to pay a very heavy price. This will be debated for a long time, and supporters of a more truthful picture of reality would argue that the kidnapping of the soldiers is only the latest move in a long-running war between Israel and Lebanon, not a sudden unilateral action.

However, a more compelling question is being asked now: Why do the United States, Europe and most of the Arab world allow Lebanon to be pulverized by Israeli bombs when most of those same people in the West last year held up Lebanon as a beacon of democratic change that was a model for other Arabs?

We now have two Arab countries that George W. Bush has trumpeted as models and vanguards of America’s policy of promoting freedom and democratic change in the Arab world — Iraq and Lebanon. Neither is a very comforting sight today. Not many Arabs will sign up for Bush’s democracy and freedom plan if this is what they will expect to happen to their countries.

The real irony in the global political defecation business that Bush should ponder is that American planes, bombs and tanks were directly (Iraq) or indirectly (Lebanon via Israel) responsible for bringing Iraq and Lebanon to their current state of turmoil, destruction and pain.

Hizbullah is a complex organization whose many activities respond to the needs of its core Shiite Lebanese constituency, including security, social services, economic support, local governance, and national political representation. Its leading role in resisting the Israeli occupation of south Lebanon since 1982, and ultimately driving the Israelis out in 2000, enhanced its standing among all Lebanese. It has since been criticized by many Lebanese, though, for defying the authority of the central government, and for being an arm of Iranian and Syrian foreign policy.

Some of these accusations surely are correct to some extent, and Hizbullah has grappled only meekly in the past two years with internal Lebanese and Western diplomatic pressures to integrate its resistance assets into the national armed forces. Hizbullah sees itself as a deterrent to Israeli threats against Lebanon, and the main means of maintaining the integrity of Lebanon. Many will now question this self-image after its kidnapping of the Israeli soldiers triggered the destruction of much of Lebanon.

The real irony in Bush’s statement is that he wants others to pressure Syria to pressure Hizbullah to change its policies — at a moment when the central pillar of Washington’s Middle East policies appears to be a refusal to speak to some of the most important political groups in the region. The United States has no relations or known contacts with Iran, Hamas and Hizbullah, and is not on speaking terms with Syria, which it has mildly sanctioned.

Bush ignores at his own peril the fact that Islamist political sentiments and resistance movements are the fastest growing sector of national life in the Middle East. For the United States to be squarely opposed to and unable to speak with this large part of the public spectrum is foolish enough; it is even more reflective of amateur American foreign policy-making that Washington’s policies in the region are an important contributor to the expansion of such Islamist sentiments and organizations.

Another irony is that Bush fails to grasp that Hizbullah’s rise to prominence in the past quarter century in many ways represents a reaction to the three principal causes of mass dissatisfaction, anger, fear and humiliation among Arab populations: ineffective and autocratic Arab governments, aggressive and predatory Israel, and a United States that supports both of these tormentors of ordinary Arabs. If these underlying problems are not addressed and resolved, groups like Hizbullah will continue to emerge organically from the Middle Eastern soil, regardless of what happens to Hizbullah in the coming weeks.

Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.

Copyright ©2006 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global
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Released: 22 July 2006
Word Count: 913
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AMMAN, Jordan — I must be one of the few people in the world trying to get into Beirut, rather than flee the city that is being bombarded daily by Israel, with explicit American approval. Israelis should grasp the significance of this, if they ever wish to find peace and a normal life in this region.

My wife and I were on a personal trip in Europe when the fighting broke out last week and we could not return directly to our home in Beirut. So we have returned to our previous home in Amman in order to find a reasonably safe land route back into Lebanon. I want to return mainly because steadfastness in the face of the Israeli assault is the sincerest — perhaps the only — form of resistance available to those of us who do not know how to use a gun, and prefer not to do so in any case, for there is no military solution to this conflict.

Of the many dimensions of Israel’s current fighting with Palestinians and Lebanese, the most significant in my view is the continuing, long-term evolution of Arab public attitudes to Israel. The three critical aspects of this are: a steady loss of fear by ordinary Arabs in the face of Israel’s military superiority; a determined and continuous quest for more effective means of technical and military resistance against Israeli occupation and subjugation of Palestinians and other Arabs; and, a strong political backlash against the prevailing governing elites in the Arab world who have quietly acquiesced in the face of Israeli-American dictates.

The Lebanon and Palestine situations today reveal a key political and psychological dynamic that defines several hundred million Arabs, and a few billion other like-minded folks around the world. It is that peace and quiet in the Middle East require three things: Arabs and Israelis must be treated equally; domestically and internationally the rule of law must define the actions of governments and all members of society; the core conflict between Palestine and Israel must be resolved in a fair, legal and sustainable manner.

Because these principles are ignored, we continue to suffer outbreaks of military savagery by Israelis and Arabs alike, for the sixth decade in a row. The flurry of international diplomacy this week to calm things down was impressive for its range and energy. But it will fail if it only aims to place an international buffer force between Hizbullah and Israel, and leave the rest of the Arab-Israeli situation as it is.

Protecting Israel has long been the primary focus and aim of Western diplomacy, which is why it has not succeeded. For decades now Israel has established buffer zones, occupation zones, red lines, blue lines, green lines, interdiction zones, killing fields, surrogate army zones, scorched earth, and every other conceivable kind of zone between it and Arabs who fight its occupation and colonial policies — all without success. Here is why: Protecting Israelis while leaving Arabs to a fate of humiliation, occupation, degradation and subservient acquiescence to Israeli-American dictates only guarantees that those Arabs will regroup, plan a resistance strategy, and come back one day to fight for their land, their humanity, their dignity and the prospect that their children can have a normal life one day.

In the past two decades, with every diplomatic move to protect Israel’s borders and drive back Arab foes, the response has been a common quest to strike Israel from afar — because the core dispute in Palestine remains unresolved. Three Arab parties to date developed missiles of various sorts that can strike Israel from greater and greater distances. Iraq, Hamas and Hizbullah have all fired rockets and missiles at Israel, making the concept of buffer zones militarily obsolete and politically irrelevant. New buffer zones imposed by the international community to protect Israel, while leaving Arab grievances to rot, will only prompt a greater determination by the next generation of young Arab men and women to develop the means to fight back, some day, in some way that we cannot now predict.

Piecemeal solutions and stopgap measures will not work any more. Ending these kinds of military eruptions requires a more determined effort to resolve the core conflict between Israel and Palestine. This would then make it easier to address equally pressing issues within Arab countries, such as Hizbullah’s status as an armed resistance group or militia inside Lebanon, which itself is a consequence of Israeli attacks against Lebanon and the unresolved Palestine issue.

In Israel’s determination to protect itself and the parallel Arab determination to fight back, we have the makings of perpetual war — or, for those willing to be even-handed for once, an opening for a diplomatic solution that responds simultaneously to the legitimate rights of both sides.

In the meantime, I keep looking for a reasonably safe route back to our home in Beirut. Standing with the people of Lebanon in their moment of pain is the highest form of solidarity I can think of, and also the only meaningful form of defiance and resistance to Israel that I — and several hundred million other Arabs — can practice at the moment.

Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.

Copyright ©2006 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global
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Released: 19 July 2006
Word Count: 852
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rights@agenceglobal.com, 1.336.686.9002 or 1.212.731.0757

You need to understand the relationship among four pairs of actors to grasp the meaning of the escalating attacks by Hamas, Hizbullah and Israel in recent days. The four pairs are: Hamas and Hizbullah; the Palestinian and Lebanese governments; Syria and Iran; and, Israel and the United States.

Simplistically, President George W. Bush has depicted this latest round of war as a clash between good and evil, while the Israeli government has tried to blame Palestinians and Lebanese who only want to make war against a peace-loving Israel. The more nuanced and complex reality is that, collectively, these four pairs of actors play roles in the ongoing fighting, as we witness the culmination of four decades of failed policies that have kept the Middle East tense, angry and violent.

Hizbullah and Hamas emerged in the past decade as the main Arab political forces that resist Israeli occupations in Lebanon and Palestine. They enjoy substantial popular support in their respective countries, while at the same time eliciting criticisms for their militant policies that inevitably draw harsh Israeli responses. We see this in Lebanon today as the Lebanese people broadly direct their anger at Israel for its brutal attacks against Lebanese civilian installations, and fault Palestinians, other Arabs, Syria, and Iran for perpetually making Lebanon the battleground for other conflicts — but more softly question Hizbullah’s decision to trigger this latest calamity.

It is no coincidence that Israel is now simultaneously bombing and destroying the civilian infrastructure in Palestine and Lebanon, including airports, bridges, roads, power plants, and government offices. It claims to do this in order to stop terror attacks against Israelis, but in fact the past four decades have shown that its policies generate exactly the opposite effect: They have given birth, power, credibility and now political incumbency to the Hamas and Hizbullah groups whose raison d’etre has been to fight the Israeli occupation of their lands. Israeli destruction of normal life for Palestinians and Lebanese also results in the destruction of the credibility, efficacy and, in some cases, the legitimacy of routine government systems, making the Lebanese and Palestinian governments key actors in current events — or non-actors in most cases.

The Lebanese and Palestinians have responded to Israel’s persistent and increasingly savage attacks against entire civilian populations by creating parallel or alternative leaderships that could protect them and deliver essential services. With every new Israeli attack against the Hamas and Hizbullah leaderships or the civilian populations, four important things happen, and will probably happen during this round of war: The Lebanese and Palestinian governments lose power and impact; Hamas and Hizbullah garner greater popular support, which enhances their effectiveness in guerrilla and resistance warfare; they expand their military technical capabilities (mainly longer range missiles and better improvised explosive devices); and, the anti-Israel, anti-U.S. resistance campaign led by Hamas and Hizbullah generates widespread political and popular support throughout the Middle East and much of the world.

This is linked to the third pair of actors, Syria and Iran, who have carefully and patiently positioned themselves as allies, patrons, hosts, financiers, armorers and ideological brothers of Hamas and Hizbullah. While these two Islamist groups are primarily driven by local resistance to Israel, and are Palestinian and Lebanese in their basic identity, they both play important roles in the foreign policies of Iran and Syria. We now witness strong convergence between two parallel but linked trends: The sovereign state actors, Iran and Syria, are fighting deadly political battles against Israel, the United States and, increasingly, Europe, while Hamas and Hizbullah fight similar battles against the same foes. It makes eminent sense, from the perspective of Damascus and Tehran, to foment greater troubles now for the United States and Israel along the Lebanon-Israel border. This is an opportune time to strike because Israel is deeply perplexed about how to handle Hamas’ resistance in Palestine, and the United States seems unable to offer any policy other than to support Israel’s right to defend itself while withholding the same right from Lebanese and Palestinian civilians.

The fourth pair of actors, the United States and Israel, find themselves in the bizarre position of repeating policies that have consistently failed for the past 40 years. Israel has this to show for its track record of being tough: It is now surrounded by two robust Islamist resistance movements with greater striking power and popular support; Arab populations around the region that increasingly vote for Islamist political movements whenever elections are held; immobilized and virtually irrelevant Arab governments in many nearby lands; and, determined, increasingly defiant, ideological foes in Tehran and Damascus who do not hesitate to use all weapons at their means however damaging these may be to civilians and sovereignty in Lebanon and Palestine.

The United States for its part is strangely marginal. Its chosen policies have lined it up squarely with Israel. It has sanctioned and thus cannot even talk to Iran, Hizbullah and Hamas, and it has pressured and threatened Syria for years without any real success. The world’s sole superpower is peculiarly powerless in the current crisis in the Middle East.

As long as these four pairs of main actors persist in their intemperate policies, the consequences will remain grim. The way to break this cycle is for all actors to negotiate a political solution that responds to their legitimate grievances and demands. Everyone involved seems prepared to do this, except for Israel and the United States, who rely on military force, prolonged occupations, and diplomatic sanctions and threats. What will Israel and the United States do when there are no more Arab airports, bridges and power stations to destroy? The futility of such policies should be clear by now, and therefore a diplomatic solution should be sought seriously for the first time.

Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.

Copyright ©2006 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global
—————-
Released: 14 July 2006
Word Count: 958
——————-
For rights and permissions, contact:

rights@agenceglobal.com, 1.336.686.9002 or 1.212.731.0757

You need to understand the relationship among four pairs of actors to grasp the meaning of the escalating attacks by Hamas, Hizbullah and Israel in recent days. The four pairs are: Hamas and Hizbullah; the Palestinian and Lebanese governments; Syria and Iran; and, Israel and the United States.

Simplistically, President George W. Bush has depicted this latest round of war as a clash between good and evil, while the Israeli government has tried to blame Palestinians and Lebanese who only want to make war against a peace-loving Israel. The more nuanced and complex reality is that, collectively, these four pairs of actors play roles in the ongoing fighting, as we witness the culmination of four decades of failed policies that have kept the Middle East tense, angry and violent.

Hizbullah and Hamas emerged in the past decade as the main Arab political forces that resist Israeli occupations in Lebanon and Palestine. They enjoy substantial popular support in their respective countries, while at the same time eliciting criticisms for their militant policies that inevitably draw harsh Israeli responses. We see this in Lebanon today as the Lebanese people broadly direct their anger at Israel for its brutal attacks against Lebanese civilian installations, and fault Palestinians, other Arabs, Syria, and Iran for perpetually making Lebanon the battleground for other conflicts — but more softly question Hizbullah’s decision to trigger this latest calamity.

It is no coincidence that Israel is now simultaneously bombing and destroying the civilian infrastructure in Palestine and Lebanon, including airports, bridges, roads, power plants, and government offices. It claims to do this in order to stop terror attacks against Israelis, but in fact the past four decades have shown that its policies generate exactly the opposite effect: They have given birth, power, credibility and now political incumbency to the Hamas and Hizbullah groups whose raison d’etre has been to fight the Israeli occupation of their lands. Israeli destruction of normal life for Palestinians and Lebanese also results in the destruction of the credibility, efficacy and, in some cases, the legitimacy of routine government systems, making the Lebanese and Palestinian governments key actors in current events — or non-actors in most cases.

The Lebanese and Palestinians have responded to Israel’s persistent and increasingly savage attacks against entire civilian populations by creating parallel or alternative leaderships that could protect them and deliver essential services. With every new Israeli attack against the Hamas and Hizbullah leaderships or the civilian populations, four important things happen, and will probably happen during this round of war: The Lebanese and Palestinian governments lose power and impact; Hamas and Hizbullah garner greater popular support, which enhances their effectiveness in guerrilla and resistance warfare; they expand their military technical capabilities (mainly longer range missiles and better improvised explosive devices); and, the anti-Israel, anti-U.S. resistance campaign led by Hamas and Hizbullah generates widespread political and popular support throughout the Middle East and much of the world.

This is linked to the third pair of actors, Syria and Iran, who have carefully and patiently positioned themselves as allies, patrons, hosts, financiers, armorers and ideological brothers of Hamas and Hizbullah. While these two Islamist groups are primarily driven by local resistance to Israel, and are Palestinian and Lebanese in their basic identity, they both play important roles in the foreign policies of Iran and Syria. We now witness strong convergence between two parallel but linked trends: The sovereign state actors, Iran and Syria, are fighting deadly political battles against Israel, the United States and, increasingly, Europe, while Hamas and Hizbullah fight similar battles against the same foes. It makes eminent sense, from the perspective of Damascus and Tehran, to foment greater troubles now for the United States and Israel along the Lebanon-Israel border. This is an opportune time to strike because Israel is deeply perplexed about how to handle Hamas’ resistance in Palestine, and the United States seems unable to offer any policy other than to support Israel’s right to defend itself while withholding the same right from Lebanese and Palestinian civilians.

The fourth pair of actors, the United States and Israel, find themselves in the bizarre position of repeating policies that have consistently failed for the past 40 years. Israel has this to show for its track record of being tough: It is now surrounded by two robust Islamist resistance movements with greater striking power and popular support; Arab populations around the region that increasingly vote for Islamist political movements whenever elections are held; immobilized and virtually irrelevant Arab governments in many nearby lands; and, determined, increasingly defiant, ideological foes in Tehran and Damascus who do not hesitate to use all weapons at their means however damaging these may be to civilians and sovereignty in Lebanon and Palestine.

The United States for its part is strangely marginal. Its chosen policies have lined it up squarely with Israel. It has sanctioned and thus cannot even talk to Iran, Hizbullah and Hamas, and it has pressured and threatened Syria for years without any real success. The world’s sole superpower is peculiarly powerless in the current crisis in the Middle East.

As long as these four pairs of main actors persist in their intemperate policies, the consequences will remain grim. The way to break this cycle is for all actors to negotiate a political solution that responds to their legitimate grievances and demands. Everyone involved seems prepared to do this, except for Israel and the United States, who rely on military force, prolonged occupations, and diplomatic sanctions and threats. What will Israel and the United States do when there are no more Arab airports, bridges and power stations to destroy? The futility of such policies should be clear by now, and therefore a diplomatic solution should be sought seriously for the first time.

Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.

Copyright ©2006 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global
—————-
Released: 14 July 2006
Word Count: 958
——————-
For rights and permissions, contact:

rights@agenceglobal.com, 1.336.686.9002 or 1.212.731.0757

SKOPJE, Macedonia — The news from Iraq has been particularly bad this week, as militiamen from assorted communities within the country have started killing fellow Iraqis only on the basis of their names and religious affiliation. Blowing up mosques by rival Sunnis and Shiites has become almost routine, as has the understandable response by many families who are fleeing their ancestral homes and communities to find refuge among people of their own religious or ethnic identity.

This is neither new to the Middle East nor unexpected in Iraq in the wake of the Anglo-American removal of the former governance system. The deeper question it raises is about whether the powerful, ancient identities of religion, sect, ethnicity and tribe can be easily accommodated in the nation-state structure that has defined the world for the past few centuries.

I am following the Iraq situation this week from Macedonia and Kosovo, two Balkan areas in south-east Europe that have suffered the same sorts of ethnic and religious tensions that plague many parts of the Middle East. These areas within the former Yugoslavia represent a modern tradition of nationalist-ethnic-religious discord that has made the Balkans synonymous with political strife and violent conflict. Macedonia last suffered a round of tension and fighting in 2001, following somewhat similar confrontations in Kosovo, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia before that, in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the state of Yugoslavia. Tensions still persist in parts of this region, as (typically)religious or ethnic minorities seek to escape their status as second class citizens and form their own countries. Kosovo remains a lively example of this phenomenon that remains to be resolved.

When the Middle East and the Balkans are viewed side-by-side, with their similar problems of ethnic-religious and national strife, two particular issues arise: What is needed to allow multi-ethnic communities to survive and even to flourish? Is the sovereign, independent nation-state the most appropriate way for people in such societies to configure themselves politically? These are universal issues, not just problems for war-torn societies in the Balkans and the Middle East. Wealthy and stable Spain is going through its own exploration of how to mesh regional nationalisms like Catalan and Basque identities with the larger Spanish idea, and Canada has similarly grappled in recent decades with the most appropriate blend of Quebecois nationalism with the federal Canadian identity.

The events in Iraq will spill over into other parts of the Middle East in due course, whether in positive or negative forms. The positive outcome in Iraq would be a stable, peaceful and democratic country in which sub-identities of religion and ethnicity would be accommodated within the unified Iraqi state. The negative outcome would be continued sectarian strife, leading to all-out civil war and an eventual break-up of the country into smaller units based primarily on ethnic or religious identity. Iraq could go in either direction, as most of its citizens and leaders valiantly try to achieve the positive result, while others succumb to sectarian fears and the instincts of revenge and self-defense and carry the fight to their neighbors who are different from themselves.

There are no easy or universal solutions to the question of how to mesh diverse ethnicity-religiosity with the concept of a single national identity. Countries respond to this challenge in different ways. The situation is always easier when socio-economic conditions are good. The Swiss and Belgians, for example, have developed wealthy and stable societies that also include a variety of religious and other identities, while avoiding major strife. Most parts of the Balkans and the Arab world that face similar challenges do so at a time of socio-economic stress, which tends to promote fear and violence. When ordinary people feel that their basic material needs are not met and they also feel insecure in the face of threats to their communal identity, the door is open to two widespread phenomena: firebrand demagogues who play on nationalist feelings, and militia leaders who organize the community to defend itself and attack its perceived opponents.

Both of these phenomena have appeared in the Middle East and the Balkans in recent years, and they will continue to do so until the people in these areas figure out the appropriate relationship between their narrow communal identities and their larger national or nation-state identities. Foreign countries and global powers usually cannot do very much or intervene in any meaningful way in such situations. Sending in troops provides only temporary relief and quiet. Kosovo today is something of an international protectorate, but foreign troops cannot be expected to remain there forever. Iraq also reveals powerful local communal sentiments that will fully assert themselves once the foreign troops go home, and a more natural local and regional power balance reigns.

It is dangerous to generalize, but some trends do seem universal. Perhaps the most basic is that individual human beings who do not feel that their rights, needs and identities are adequately affirmed by the institutions of the modern secular nation-state will revert easily and happily to the older forms of protection and self-affirmation that come from their narrow communal, religious and ethnic identities. Ethnic cleansing and killing people on the basis of their identity cards are two common consequences. Such savagery, whether in Europe or the Middle East, will not go away easily. It requires a much more diligent review of the institutions of the modern nation-state that Western Europe bequeathed the world in the second half of the second millennium. Modernity may be in need of an overhaul, or at least some serious tinkering.

Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.

Copyright ©2006 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global
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Released: 12 July 2006
Word Count: 926
——————-
For rights and permissions, contact:

rights@agenceglobal.com, 1.336.686.9002 or 1.212.731.0757