Waste and Squandered Opportunity

Just about everywhere in the Middle East there has been movement — stirring, remarkable, uneven — as the region breaks old chains of despotism and seeks its slice of the modern world. But Palestinians and Israelis remain stuck in their sterile and competitive narratives of victimhood, determined, it seems, to ensure past rancor defeats promise.

It’s been a year of terrible waste,

concludes Roger Cohen in the New York Times.
The waste is staggering and the looming train wreck appalling.

Meanwhile, as 4500 Arabs and leftists marched together in Jerusalem to support Palestinian statehood, Haaretz's Yossi Verter lambasts Bibi Netanyahu for his wobbly leadership. He points out how in the Knesset, settlers now appear to be setting the agenda by passing the Boycott Law, introduced by the rightwing MK Zeev Elkin.

MK Ahmed Tibi ‏(United Arab List-Ta’al‏) asked Elkin if his passion for enacting legislation of this kind had to do with his being beaten up as a kid. The immigrants, veterans and newcomers alike, sometimes carry unpleasant memories from Mother Russia or from the torment of trying to integrate in Israel.

As the left continues to crumble and be increasingly irrelevant, the parliamentary right is becoming ever more militant against the Arab public, “the professors,” the Supreme Court, creative artists, so-called intellectuals, donors from abroad and so on.

In the past Israel’s right wing was characterized by grace and decorum, as decreed by Revisionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky, and by grace and courage, as per the Betar anthem.

These days, Benjamin Netanyahu is not ashamed to take the floor and declare that if not for his support of the problematic law, it would not have come to a vote. If so, why didn’t the government sponsor it?

IDF don't mess with Tutu on his long-blocked visit to Gaza strip

Bishop Desmond Tutu, in Gaza today, spoke to survivors of the Beit Hanoun shelling, which killed 19 civilians, 8 of them kids, in their sleep. It was a long-postponed fact-finding mission for the Human Rights council in Geneva. Israeli authorities had denied the peace envoy and Nobel laureate entry to the Gaza strip in December 2006, so he entered through Rafah, the crossing controlled by Egypt. There had been fears that security concerns cited by the Israelis, who by treaty have a say in the operation of this border, would block his entry again. Had that occurred, peace advocates had suggested that the Bishop might resort to moving from Port Said, Egypt to Gaza City port in a flotilla or even a zippy Zodiac craft (which might have been legally thwarted by Israeli naval officers.)

Tutu said he had asked Ismail Haniya, prime minister of Gaza's Hamas government: "Can you stop the firing of rockets into Israel?"

Haniya was dismissed by Mahmud Abbas, the Palestinian president, last June when Hamas seized control of Gaza from forces loyal to Abbas."The incident we are meant to investigate was a violation of human rights in the fact that civilians were targeted," Tutu said.

"We have said to the prime minister [Haniya] that equally, what happens with rockets fired at Sderot is a violation."

Tutu was referring to the town in southern Israel that has borne the brunt of rocket and mortar fire by Gaza fighters.

He also condemned the blockade that Israelis say puts pressure on the Hamas authorities to end the attacks by their gunmen and rocket launchers.

"What is happening in Gaza is unacceptable. We have already seen and heard enough to move us to tears," Tutu said after his 40-minute meeting with Haniya.

Tutu, who was a prominent anti-apartheid activist when South Africa was still under white minority rule, said it was crucial that the two sides negotiate.

"That was our experience in South Africa. Peace came when former enemies sat down to talk," he said.

On Wednesday, the team was due to visit Beit Hanoun, where the 2006 killings occurred, to interview witnesses and survivors of the attack.

They will prepare a report to present to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.

The Israeli attack on Beit Hanoun on November 8, 2006, was widely condemned by the international community for killing 19 civilians, including five women and eight children, in their homes.

In February, the Israeli army announced that no charges would be brought against Israeli soldiers over the attack.

After conducting an internal investigation, Israel concluded that the shelling of the civilians' homes was "a rare and grave technical error of the artillery radar system".

Region hotting up? Hopes meet reality

In the past few weeks, the noise from the Middle East region has intensified, reaching a crescendo with U.S. President George W. Bush’s visit and Osama Bin Laden's latest Jihadist harangue about targetting Israel. According to Strategic Forecast analyst George Friedman, whose viewpoint is excerpted below, there were four axes of activity:

/click on map, left, to enlarge/

*Talk about a deal between Israel and the Palestinians;

*Talk about a deal between the Syrians and Israelis;

*Fighting in Lebanon between Hezbollah and its enemies; and

*Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert under investigation for taking bribes.
Taken together, it would seem something is likely to happen. Whether it does remains to be seen.

Talk of an Israeli-Palestinian Deal

Let’s begin with the talk of a deal between the Israelis and Palestinians and with the fact that this description is a misnomer. The Palestinians are split geographically between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and ideologically into two very distinct groups. The West Bank is controlled by the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), which as an institution is split between two factions, Fatah and Hamas. Fatah is stronger in the West Bank than in Gaza and controls the institutions of the PNA. It is almost fair to say that the PNA — the official Palestinian government — is in practice an instrument of Fatah and that therefore Fatah controls the West Bank while Hamas controls Gaza.

Ideologically, Fatah is a secular movement, originating in the left-wing Arabism of the 1960s and 1970s. Hamas is a religiously-driven organization originating from the Sunni religious movements of the late 1980s and 1990s. Apart from being Palestinian and supporting a Palestinian state, it has different and opposed views of what such a state should look like both internally and geographically. Fatah appears prepared to make geographical compromises with Israel to secure a state that follows its ideology. Its flexibility in part comes from its fear that Hamas could supplant it as the dominant force among the Palestinians. For its part, Hamas is not prepared to make a geographical compromise except on a temporary basis. It has made it clear that while it would accept a truce with Israel, it will not accept a permanent peace agreement nor recognize Israel’s right to exist.

Israel also is split on the question of a settlement with the Palestinians, but not as profoundly and institutionally as the Palestinians are divided. It is reasonable to say that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has become a three-way war between Hamas, Fatah and Israel, with Fatah and Israel increasingly allied against Hamas. But that is what makes the possibility of a settlement between Israel and the Palestinians impossible to imagine. There can be a settlement with the PNA, and therefore with Fatah, but Fatah does not in any way speak for Hamas. Even if Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas could generate support within Fatah for a comprehensive settlement, it would not constitute a settlement with the Palestinians, but rather only with the dominant faction of the Palestinians in the West Bank.

Given the foregoing, the Israelis have been signaling that they are prepared to move into Gaza in an attempt to crush Hamas’ leadership. Indeed, they have signaled that they expect to do so. We could dismiss this as psychological warfare, but Hamas expects Israel to move into Gaza and, in some ways, hopes Israel does so that it can draw the Israelis into counterinsurgency operations in an inhospitable environment. This would burnish Hamas’ credentials as the real anti-Israeli warriors, undercutting Fatah and the Shiite group Hezbollah in the process.

For Israel, there might be an advantage in reaching a settlement with Abbas and then launching an attack on Gaza. Abbas might himself want to see Israel crush Hamas, but it would put him and the PNA in a difficult position politically if they just stood by and watched. Second, the Israelis are under no illusions that an attack on Gaza would either be easy or even succeed in the mission of crushing Hamas’ military capability. The more rockets fired by Hamas against Israel, the more pressure there is in Israel for some sort of action. But here we have a case of swirling activity leading to paralysis. Optimistic talk of a settlement is just talk. There will be no settlement without war, and, in our opinion, war will undermine Fatah’s ability to reach a settlement — and a settlement with the PNA would solve little in any event.

(Note that an Egyptian official announced yesterday that Israel is prepared 'in principle' to accept a two-stage Gaza truce that would include lifting the siege in return for the release of corporal Gilad Shalit, held captive by Hamas for nearly two years.

Meanwhile, Israeli air strikes continue in the Gaza Strip. The photo-shopped image at left was supplied by disgruntled ex-soldiers from the IDF who despair of the toll of occupation and desire peace in their lives.)

Talk of a Syrian-Israeli Peace Agreement

There also is the ongoing discussion of a Syrian-Israeli peace agreement. Turkey is brokering these talks, driven by a desire to see a stable Syria along its border and to become a major power broker in the region. The Turks are slowly increasing their power and influence under the expectation that in due course, as the U.S. withdraws from Iraq, a power vacuum will exist that Turkey will have to — and want to — fill. Turkish involvement in Syria represents a first step in exercising diplomatic influence to Turkey’s south.

Syria has an interest in a settlement with Israel. The al Assad government is composed of an ethnic minority — the Alawites, a heterodox offshoot of Shiite Islam. It is a secular government with ideological roots much closer to Fatah than to Hamas (both religious and Sunni) or Hezbollah (Shiite but religious). It presides over a majority Sunni country, and it has brutally suppressed Sunni religiosity before. At a time when the Saudis, who do not like Syria, are flush with cash and moving with confidence, the al Assad regime has increased concerns about Sunni dissatisfaction. Moreover, its interests are not in Israel, but in Lebanon, where the region’s commercial wealth is concentrated.

Syria dabbles in all the muddy waters of the region. It has sent weapons to Sunni jihadists. Hamas’ exiled central leadership is in Damascus. It supports Hezbollah in Lebanon. Syria thus rides multiple and incompatible horses in an endless balancing act designed to preserve the al Assad government. The al Assads have been skillful politicians, but in the end, their efforts have been all tactics and no strategy. The Turks, who do not want to see chaos on their southern border, are urging the Syrians to a strategic decision, or more precisely to the status quo ante 2006.

The United States has never trusted the al Assads, but the situation became particularly venomous after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, when the Syrians, for complex political reasons, decided to allow Sunni fundamentalists to transit through Syria into Iraq. The Syrian motive was to inoculate itself against Sunni fundamentalism — which opposed Damascus — by making itself useful to the Sunni fundamentalists. The United States countered the Syrian move by generating pressure that forced the Syrian army out of Lebanon.

The Israelis and Syrians have had a working understanding on Lebanon ever since the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon. Under this understanding, the Syrians would be the dominant force in Lebanon, extracting maximum economic advantage while creating a framework for stability. In return, Syria would restrain Hezbollah both from attacks on Israel and from attacks on Syrian allies in Lebanon — which include many groups opposed to Hezbollah.

The Syrian withdrawal was not greeted with joy in Israel. First, the Israelis liked the arrangement, as it secured their frontier with Lebanon. Second, the Israelis did not want anything to happen to the al Assad regime. Anything that would replace the al Assads would, in the Israeli mind, be much worse. Israel, along with the al Assads, did not want regime change in Damascus and did not want chaos in Lebanon, but did want Hezbollah to be controlled by someone other than Israel. And this was a point of tension between Israel and the United States, which was prepared to punish the al Assads for their interference in Iraq — even if the successor Syrian regime would be composed of the Sunni fundamentalists the Syrians had aided.

The Turkish argument is basically that the arrangement between Syria and Lebanon prior to 2006 was in the best interests of Israel and Syria, but that its weakness was that it was informal. Unlike the Israeli-Egyptian or Israeli-Jordanian agreements, which have been stable realities in the region, the Israeli-Syrian relationship was a wink and a nod that could not stand up under U.S. pressure. Turkey has therefore been working to restore the pre-2006 reality, this time formally.

Two entities clearly oppose this settlement. One is the United States. Another is Hezbollah.

The United States sees Syria as a destabilizing factor in the region, regardless of Syria’s history in Lebanon. In addition, as Saudi oil revenues rise and U.S. relations with Sunnis in Iraq improve, the Americans must listen very carefully to the Saudis. The Saudis view Syria — a view forged during the 1970s — as an enemy. The Saudis also consider the Alawite domination of Syrian Sunnis as unacceptable in the long run. Saudi Arabia is also extremely worried about the long-term power of Hezbollah (and Iran) and does not trust the Syrians to control the Shiite group. More precisely, the Saudis believe the Syrians will constrain Hezbollah against Israel, but not necessarily against Saudi and other Sunni interests. The United States is caught between Israeli interest in a formal deal and Saudi hostility. With its own sympathies running against Syria , the U.S. tendency is to want to gently sink the deal.

In this, U.S. interests ironically are aligned with Hezbollah and, to some extent, Iran. Hezbollah grew prosperous under Syrian domination, but it did not increase its political power. The Syrians kept the Shiite group in a box to be opened in the event of war. Hezbollah does not want to go into that box again. It is enjoying its freedom of action to pursue its own interests independent of Syria. It is in Hezbollah’s interests to break the deal. Lacking many allies, the Iranians need the Syrians, as different as the Syrians are ideologically. Iran is walking a tightrope between Syria and Hezbollah on this. But Tehran, too, would like to sink the talks.

Dimona suicide bombers - from West Bank or Gaza?

The A-plant in Dimona (above) is secure.
A suicide bomber on Monday morning blew himself up in the southern town that houses Israel's secretive nuclear reactor, killing an Israeli woman and wounding seven other people, Israeli authorities said. Police said they killed a second attacker before he had a chance to detonate his explosives belt. Both of the perpetrators were killed and there was no damage to the reactor, which was miles from the blast.
It was the first suicide attack in Israel in a year, and officials were investigating whether the attackers came in through Egypt after Palestinian militants breached the Gaza-Egypt border last month, according to the Associated Press.

An offshoot of moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement claimed responsibility, complicating recently renewed peace efforts. The attackers, they said, came from the West Bank, though the claim could not immediately be verified.
Hours after the suicide bombing, Israeli aircraft struck a car in the northern Gaza Strip, killing a top wanted man.
Israeli government officials dismissed the notion that the heavily guarded Dimona nuclear reactor was the suicide attackers' target. The explosion took place in a shopping area about 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the reactor site.
«We heard a large explosion and people started to run. I saw pieces of flesh flying in the air,» a witness identified only by her first name, Revital, told Army Radio.
Ambulances and a large contingent of soldiers, rescue workers and police rushed to the scene of the bombing, the first in the working class town of 37,000.
Police said one attacker managed to detonate his explosives belt, but the second was shot dead by police before he could set off his bomb. A police bomb squad was on the scene defusing the explosives.
Dr. Baruch Mandelzweig said he was at his clinic nearby when he heard the blast. He and his nurses rushed out to the street to see what had happened, and saw body parts «strewn around everywhere.
They spotted a critically injured man whose head was moving, and began to treat him before realizing he was the second attacker.
«We saw an explosive belt,» he said. «We ran away,» and later we heard he had been shot, Mandelzweig said.
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Arye Mekel said, «the terror organizations have shown again who they are and what they are.
«Their goal was and continues to be to kill Israeli citizens in their homes and their schools and in their shopping centers,» he added. «Israel will continue to fight against this murderous terror.
Shortly after the attack, Israeli aircraft killed a senior commander in the Hamas-affiliated Popular Resistance Committees in the Gaza Strip, the group said. The military confirmed an attack against a PRC activist in Beit Lahiya, a town Palestinian militants frequently use to fire rockets into southern Israel.
At Sunday's Cabinet meeting, Israeli security chiefs warned that because of the anarchy on the Gaza-Egypt frontier, Palestinian militants might enter Israel through Gaza's Sinai desert to attack a civilian Israeli target, a government official said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because the Cabinet meeting was closed.
Southern Israel has been on alert against militant attacks since the Gaza Strip's Islamic Hamas rulers breached the border with Egypt on Jan. 23. Egypt managed to reseal the border only on Sunday.
The breach made Israel's Negev desert, where Dimona is located, more vulnerable to penetration by Palestinian militants who could enter through Egypt's porous border. Dimona is about 60 kilometers (40 miles) northeast of Egypt.
In an e-mail to The Associated Press, the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, a Fatah offshoot, said it sent attackers from the West Bank town of Ramallah, Abbas' base, to carry out the «heroic martyrdom bombing in Dimona.
The faction said it carried out the attack with the small Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
Although Abbas' government has claimed to have dismantled Al Aqsa forces in the West Bank, a group spokesman, Abu Fouad, said Monday that «nobody has given up weapons.
The bombing came at a critical juncture. Israeli and Palestinian negotiators relaunched peace talks after a seven-year break just two months ago, and Israel has made it clear it won't implement any accord until militant groups in the West Bank and Hamas-ruled Gaza are disarmed.

Abbas' office denounced the attack. But it denied Al Aqsa was involved and linked the bombing to an Israeli raid in the West Bank that killed two Islamic Jihad militants before dawn Monday.
«The Palestinian Authority expresses its full condemnation of the Israeli operation in the northern West Bank and it condemns the attack in the commercial center in the city of Dimona, which targeted Israeli civilians,» his office said.
«Fatah has confirmed that the Al Aqsa Brigades has nothing to do with this attack,» it added, saying that a «well known group opposed to the peace process» was responsible. It did not elaborate.
In the southern Gaza town of Rafah, gunmen fired their weapons into the air to celebrate the bombing.
Hamas spokesman Ayman Taha said he did not know whether his group was involved, but praised the attack. He also rejected suggestions that the bombing would hurt Hamas' chances of reopening the border with Egypt.
«The suicide bombings were there before the closures and the resistance used every opportunity to make these glorious acts,» he said. «They show the Palestinians can respond to the enemy and their crimes.
The previous suicide bombing in Israel occurred on Jan. 29, 2007, when a Palestinian attacker entered Israel from Egypt, killing three Israelis at a bakery in the southern Israeli city of Eilat.
After Israeli-Palestinian peace talks broke down in 2000, Palestinian militants killed hundreds of people in dozens of suicide bombings.
Dimona is home to Israel's nuclear research center, and it is widely believed that atomic weapons were developed at the plant. Israel neither admits nor denies having nuclear arms.

There were only two such attacks between April 2006 and now, the last being in January 2007 when a bomber blew himself up in a bakery in Eilat, killing three people.

The Dimona suicide bomb attack is also the first since renewed efforts to come to an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal were launched with US support late in November.

Israel argues that its blockade of about four million Palestinians in Gaza and large parts of the occupied West Bank prevents such attacks. Intelligence officers suspect that the breach of the Rafah border between the Gaza strip and Egpt, which was resealed only yesterday after a dozen days without regulation, is likely to have played a role in this incident.

Jordan's role as Palestine's pal is evolving

For a way out of their impasse, some Palestinians now look to Jordan, according to the International Herald Tribune. It's not the kind of two-state solution that once was envisioned.

Inside a drab cellphone shop, in the sprawling Baqaa refugee camp on the outskirts of Amman, Muhammad Khalil and his friends were as gloomy as the fluorescent lights that flickered on the ceiling."Everything has been ruined for us - we've been fighting for 60 years and nothing is left," Khalil said, speaking of the Palestinian cause. Just weeks earlier, he might have been speaking enthusiastically to his friends here, in their usual hangout, about resistance, of fighting for his rights as a Palestinian and of one day returning to a Palestinian state. Last Wednesday, however, he spoke of what he saw as a less satisfying goal for the Palestinians here, and one that raises concerns for many other Jordanians: Palestinian union with Jordan. "It would be better if Jordan ran things in Palestine, if King Abdullah could take control of the West Bank," Khalil said, as his friends nodded. "The issue would be over if Jordan just took control."

That's why some Israelis are troubled that Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is mulling whether to allow Jordanian forces to enter the West Bank.
Mahmoud Abbas is expected to ask Olmert to approve entry of Palestinian Bader Division forces of the Jordanian army to preserve his control over the West Bank. The Palestinian chief will also request Israel’s permission to transfer dozens of armored vehicles from Egypt to Palestinian territories. The two leaders are expected to discuss the matter on Monday during their meeting in Jerusalem.
One of Abbas's concerns is that Hamas keeps torturing and killing Fatah supporters, according to recent a wire report

Adham Mustafa's bullet-riddled and mutilated body, filmed in a morgue two days after he was taken alive by Hamas, belied the Islamic militant group's promises not to harm its Fatah rivals. So did Tarek Asfour's legs, punctured with marks from nails Hamas gunmen banged into him. Hamas declared a general amnesty for members of the vanquished Fatah movement of moderate President Mahmoud Abbas after sweeping to power in the Gaza Strip on June 15, following a week of fighting. But since then, at least nine Fatah loyalists have been killed, according to Mezan, an independent Gaza-based human rights group, which posted the names of the dead on its website.

IDF takes aim at Gaza while the Strip self-destructs and blood flows

How can cooler heads possibly prevail when the blood-soaked region is on the verge of all-out war?

According to a UN envoy the entire Middle East is set to flare into pitched combat on at least four fronts and get engulfed in war. All the usual suspects, alas. Already in Gaza, the bodycount increases daily, even though analysts say that fighting has yet to peak. The BBC reports today that Hamas are countering an assassination attempt against Prime Minister Ismail Haniya with an assault on Fatah bases. They may try a power grab, fears the weak Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas; so far 19 Gazans have been killed in the past 24 hours. Gunbattles inside Gaza's hospital wards, where rival factions executed the wounded, are a new low point. Elsewhere in the brutalized Gaza Strip, militants have resorted to hurling handcuffed prisoners to their deaths from high rise buildings. Lately, the internecine bloodletting tends to lull as soon as militants rocket Israeli towns in the Negev and provoke a military response from the IDF. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has pledged that airstrikes will continue until the Qassam rocket barrages stop and infiltrators are thwarted. Outrage over a report that Palestinian militants posed as journalists and attempted an attack on Israelis at a checkpoint by using a white jeep labelled with "TV" markings has been met with cynicism. Senior correspondents point out that journalists never are waived through without credentials being scrutinized; it is just as likely that the shot-up jeep was taped up as a TV vehicle after the fact in order to make the point that journos should lie low. Meanwhile, Gaza implodes.
Nasty.