By James M. Dorsey
Deutsche Welle
The protests in Libya against corruption throw up the question whether the Tunisian crisis heralds the beginning of the end for autocratic Arab leaders. The West is encouraged and is hoping for lasting change.
The specter of authoritarian regimes falling like dominoes may however be overly optimistic. While there is no doubt that developments in Tunisia have emboldened the discontent across a swath of land stretching from Morocco to the Gulf, it remains to be seen, according to analysts, whether protestors in other Arab countries have the wherewithal to sustain demonstrations and casualties for weeks and to what degree Arab governments have learnt lessons from the Tunisian experience.
Demonstrations in Algeria subsided last week after authorities moved to roll back increases in prices of commodities. Protestors in Jordan have yet to show that they are cut from the same cloth as their counterparts in Tunisia.
Protests in Libya erupted three days ago, but have so far largely gone unnoticed by the international media with the exception of a few reports in the Arab press as well as statements and videos circulated on the Internet by Libyan opposition groups. The Libyan opposition website Almanara reported that demonstrators had clashed with security forces in the town of Al Bayda, 800 kilometers (500 milies) east of Tripoli, after throwing stones at government offices in the town and setting a government office on fire. The protesters were demanding "decent housing and a dignified life," Almanara said.
Libyan activists and opposition groups reported that hundreds of people had also occupied some 600 empty apartments in Beghazi, Libya's second largest city, and 800 units in Bani Walid, southeast of Tripoli. The activists said the squatters had been expecting to move into new homes promised to them under a government housing scheme, but had seen apartments they had already paid for awarded to others.
"Bani Walid has no basic services; thousands of people are without houses and the local authority is corrupted, it only delivers services with bribes. Nothing will make Bani Walid calm but freedom, justice and transparency," the opposition National Front for the Salvation of Libya said in a statement on its website. The Front reported that the lawyers in Benghazi were joining the protests of the squatters.
Lessons to be learned?
Libyan leader Col. Moammar Gaddafi appears to have drawn a lesson from President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali's failed handling of the protests in Tunisia, ordering police to avoid clashes with demonstrators while protecting government buildings. The country's Revolutionary Council said in a statement that it would investigate the complaints and promised that "all the problems will be solved soon through the legitimate authorities."
At the same time, however, Gaddafi true to his idiosyncratic eccentrism, voiced what other leaders probably believe but have kept to themselves. Describing the departure of Ben Ali as "a great loss" for Tunisia, the Libyan leader said he still considered Ben Ali the country's constitutional leader.
The United States and the European Union have so far responded cautiously to the wave of protests in the Arab world, fearing that the unrest could destabilize the volatile region and bring anti-Western forces to power. "The European Union has an interest in keeping a strong partnership. This is why countries including France, Spain and Italy have not clearly condemned what happened," Ivan Ureta, a professor of international relations at King's College in London, told Deutsche Welle.
A key concern for the US and the EU is that the protests in most Arab countries like Libya and Jordan, where thousands demonstrated over the weekend against government economic policies and called for the resignation of Prime Minister Samir Rifai, are backed by Islamist opposition forces.
"As in all cases of revolution, you must be careful what you wish for. The politics and demographics in these countries mean that what replaces the corrupt old regimes could be even worse; strengthening the hands of terrorists and radicals," says Mark Almond, a visiting professor in international relations at Ankara’s Bilkent University.
Islamist influence
Analysts note that the absence of Islamists in the Tunisian protests is because Tunisia, unlike other Arab countries, has since its independence aggressively sought to ban Islamists from public life.
"Most influential Tunisian Islamists now live abroad, while those who remain in Tunisia have been forced to form a coalition with unlikely secular and communist bedfellows. The nature of the opposition and the willingness of the Tunisian government to back down are not coincidental. If it had been clear that Islamist opposition figures were playing a large role in the current unrest, the government would likely have doubled down on repressive measures," says Michael Koplow, a doctoral candidate at Georgetown University, in a commentary in Foreign Policy.
Islamists are nonetheless certain to exploit the widespread discontent and may benefit once protesters realize that change involves a lot more than toppling a corrupt and authoritarian leader. Ben Ali's departure has thrown Tunisia into turmoil. The country, at least for now has lost tourism, one of its main sources of foreign income. With the evacuation of thousands of European tourists, it will be some time before Tunisian tourism regains lost ground.
The rise of secularism
In a first sign of the reemergence of the Islamists, Rached Ghannouchi, the 69-year old leader of Tunisia's banned Nahda or Renaissance movement, announced on Sunday that he was returning to Tunisia from his 22 years in exile in London.
Analysts say that Ghannouchi will encounter a country very different from the one he left. While he still may have supporters in Tunisia, he does not have an infrastructure and many of those Islamists that remained in the country have radicalized and are likely to see Ghannouchi as a spent force too willing to compromise.
More importantly however, Tunisia's long-standing suppression of the Islamists has allowed secularism to build roots that many Tunisians will want to preserve. Tunisian-born Israeli sociologist Claude Sitbon notes that Tunisians on the Internet joked that Ghannouchi would be met at the airport by bikini-clad women. "Women have achieved an amazing status in Tunisia. They wear jeans in the street and bikinis on the beach; women are judges and ambassadors. Tunisians won't want to lose that," Sitbon says.
Showing posts with label Jordan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jordan. Show all posts
Monday, January 17, 2011
Friday, January 14, 2011
Twin Threats of Protests and Cessation Set Stage for Change in MidEast and North Africa
By James M. Dorsey
A rare wave of protests across the Arab world against widespread economic mismanagement, unemployment, corruption and lack of civil liberties as well as the probable partition of Sudan potentially set the stage for the redrawing of the political map of the Middle East and North Africa.
The protests and referendum likely to establish oil-rich southern Sudan as an independent state spotlight the failure of most Middle Eastern and North African regimes to provide economic prospects for their populations and guarantee security and equal rights for religious and ethnic minorities. A spate of recent deadly attacks targeting Christians in Iraq and Egypt has further focused attention on inflamed religious and ethnic tensions and the region’s lack of minority rights.
Middle Eastern governments fear, according to officials and Western diplomats, that an independent southern Sudan will fuel nationalist aspirations of rebels in Darfur, secessionists in southern Yemen; Shiite rebels in northern Yemen; non-Islamist controlled parts of Somalia; Kurds in Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey; Berbers across North Africa and Azerbaijanis in northern Iran. The region’s military and security dominated regimes also worry that the protests will further embolden their populations to vent boiling anger and pent-up frustration with long-standing authoritarian, corrupt and incompetent rule. Last week’s warning by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) that record food prices are likely to increase even more as a result of erratic global weather patterns threatens to further tempers and tensions.
Several Arab states have moved to curb commodity prices in a bid to prevent the riots from spreading to their countries. Libya abolished taxes and custom duties on wheat-based products, rice, vegetable oil, sugar and infant milk. Morocco has begun subsidizing imports to ensure that the price of soft milling wheat does not rise in tunes with hikes on world markets.
Jordanian King Abdullah in a bid to prevent an escalation of mounting tension between Palestinians and East Bank Jordanians this week ordered his government to reduce prices of commodities, particularly rice and sugar, freeze plans to raise public transportation fees and accelerate initiation of job creation projects. The order came as Jordanian trade unions called for nationwide demonstrations on Friday to demand better living standards and the resignation of Prime Minister Samir Rifai. Jordan’s Islamist opposition said it had yet to decide whether it would support the protest, but warned that price hikes would spark “an unprecedented explosion” similar to the turmoil in Tunisia and Algeria.
“The government is seeking to contain mounting public resentment. Events in Tunisia and Algeria are forcing it to act because Jordanians have seen that protests produce results,” says Mohammed Masri, an analyst at the University of Jordan’s Center for Strategic Studies. Masri was referring to Algeria’s weekend decision to reduce commodity prices in response to sustained daily protests that left at least three people dead, the Tunisian government’s inability to quell a month of demonstrations in which so far up to 50 people are believed to have been killed and Tunisian President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali’s bid this week to meet some of the protestor’s demands by announcing that he would not again run for office when his term ends in 2014, firing his interior minister, promising to release detained demonstrators and launching an investigation into corruption. “Price hikes are certain to increase anger at the government’s policies,” said Zaki Bani Rsheid, a Jordanian Islamic Action Front spokesman.
While the demonstrations in Tunisia, Algeria and Egypt as well as recent soccer riots in Jordan and Iran and human rights-related protests in Kuwait are unlikely to immediately overturn governments, they signal a growing popular refusal across the region to continue to accept the status quo. Even in Saudi Arabia where public protests are particularly rare, unemployed teachers are publicly protesting government job creation policies. Tunisian trade unions have said they would continue their protests despite Ben Ali’s announced concessions.
The hardening of the region’s social and economic battle lines creates stark choices for both Middle Eastern and Western governments. Desperate to cling to power, Middle Eastern regimes are likely to increase repression coupled with window dressing measures that create the impression of responding to widespread discontent rather than opt for real political, economic and social reform. This week’s concessions by Ben Ali come after the president’s efforts to squash the protests by charging that the protesters were being manipulated by foreign terrorists failed. Ben Ali’s assertion contrasted starkly with the fact that Al Qaeda’s North African affiliate, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), has been conspicuously silent about the ongoing turmoil in its theater of operations and the fact that the protests were void of any Islamist tint.
Western diplomats say that the fact that a majority of the dead in Tunisia were killed by security forces after the Obama administration, the European Union and the United Nations called on Tunisia to exercise restraint in the use of force and respect fundamental freedoms point to a sense of alarm within the government that makes it less susceptible to US and European pressure. “It’s inconceivable that they are not worried that this is the beginning of the end,” one diplomat said.
On a visit to Qatar this week, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton nonetheless signaled that the United States and its European allies may be less persistent in their long-standing preference for stability in the Middle East and North Africa rather than democracy that could initially bring Islamic and more nationalist forces to power – a policy that has fueled anti-Western sentiment among large segments of the region’s population.
Addressing the Forum for the Future launched in 2004 by the G-8 group of industrial nations as a way to promote growth of nongovernmental civil group, Clinton bluntly challenged Middle Eastern leaders to open their political systems and economies and warned that "the region's foundations are sinking into the sand." Clinton said the region's governments need to share power with civic and volunteer groups to tackle issues like exploding populations, stagnant economies and declining natural resources. Pointing to unemployment rates of 20% and up, the secretary said "people have grown tired of corrupt institutions and a stagnant political order" and are demanding reforms, including eradication of corruption.
A rare wave of protests across the Arab world against widespread economic mismanagement, unemployment, corruption and lack of civil liberties as well as the probable partition of Sudan potentially set the stage for the redrawing of the political map of the Middle East and North Africa.
The protests and referendum likely to establish oil-rich southern Sudan as an independent state spotlight the failure of most Middle Eastern and North African regimes to provide economic prospects for their populations and guarantee security and equal rights for religious and ethnic minorities. A spate of recent deadly attacks targeting Christians in Iraq and Egypt has further focused attention on inflamed religious and ethnic tensions and the region’s lack of minority rights.
Middle Eastern governments fear, according to officials and Western diplomats, that an independent southern Sudan will fuel nationalist aspirations of rebels in Darfur, secessionists in southern Yemen; Shiite rebels in northern Yemen; non-Islamist controlled parts of Somalia; Kurds in Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey; Berbers across North Africa and Azerbaijanis in northern Iran. The region’s military and security dominated regimes also worry that the protests will further embolden their populations to vent boiling anger and pent-up frustration with long-standing authoritarian, corrupt and incompetent rule. Last week’s warning by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) that record food prices are likely to increase even more as a result of erratic global weather patterns threatens to further tempers and tensions.
Several Arab states have moved to curb commodity prices in a bid to prevent the riots from spreading to their countries. Libya abolished taxes and custom duties on wheat-based products, rice, vegetable oil, sugar and infant milk. Morocco has begun subsidizing imports to ensure that the price of soft milling wheat does not rise in tunes with hikes on world markets.
Jordanian King Abdullah in a bid to prevent an escalation of mounting tension between Palestinians and East Bank Jordanians this week ordered his government to reduce prices of commodities, particularly rice and sugar, freeze plans to raise public transportation fees and accelerate initiation of job creation projects. The order came as Jordanian trade unions called for nationwide demonstrations on Friday to demand better living standards and the resignation of Prime Minister Samir Rifai. Jordan’s Islamist opposition said it had yet to decide whether it would support the protest, but warned that price hikes would spark “an unprecedented explosion” similar to the turmoil in Tunisia and Algeria.
“The government is seeking to contain mounting public resentment. Events in Tunisia and Algeria are forcing it to act because Jordanians have seen that protests produce results,” says Mohammed Masri, an analyst at the University of Jordan’s Center for Strategic Studies. Masri was referring to Algeria’s weekend decision to reduce commodity prices in response to sustained daily protests that left at least three people dead, the Tunisian government’s inability to quell a month of demonstrations in which so far up to 50 people are believed to have been killed and Tunisian President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali’s bid this week to meet some of the protestor’s demands by announcing that he would not again run for office when his term ends in 2014, firing his interior minister, promising to release detained demonstrators and launching an investigation into corruption. “Price hikes are certain to increase anger at the government’s policies,” said Zaki Bani Rsheid, a Jordanian Islamic Action Front spokesman.
While the demonstrations in Tunisia, Algeria and Egypt as well as recent soccer riots in Jordan and Iran and human rights-related protests in Kuwait are unlikely to immediately overturn governments, they signal a growing popular refusal across the region to continue to accept the status quo. Even in Saudi Arabia where public protests are particularly rare, unemployed teachers are publicly protesting government job creation policies. Tunisian trade unions have said they would continue their protests despite Ben Ali’s announced concessions.
The hardening of the region’s social and economic battle lines creates stark choices for both Middle Eastern and Western governments. Desperate to cling to power, Middle Eastern regimes are likely to increase repression coupled with window dressing measures that create the impression of responding to widespread discontent rather than opt for real political, economic and social reform. This week’s concessions by Ben Ali come after the president’s efforts to squash the protests by charging that the protesters were being manipulated by foreign terrorists failed. Ben Ali’s assertion contrasted starkly with the fact that Al Qaeda’s North African affiliate, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), has been conspicuously silent about the ongoing turmoil in its theater of operations and the fact that the protests were void of any Islamist tint.
Western diplomats say that the fact that a majority of the dead in Tunisia were killed by security forces after the Obama administration, the European Union and the United Nations called on Tunisia to exercise restraint in the use of force and respect fundamental freedoms point to a sense of alarm within the government that makes it less susceptible to US and European pressure. “It’s inconceivable that they are not worried that this is the beginning of the end,” one diplomat said.
On a visit to Qatar this week, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton nonetheless signaled that the United States and its European allies may be less persistent in their long-standing preference for stability in the Middle East and North Africa rather than democracy that could initially bring Islamic and more nationalist forces to power – a policy that has fueled anti-Western sentiment among large segments of the region’s population.
Addressing the Forum for the Future launched in 2004 by the G-8 group of industrial nations as a way to promote growth of nongovernmental civil group, Clinton bluntly challenged Middle Eastern leaders to open their political systems and economies and warned that "the region's foundations are sinking into the sand." Clinton said the region's governments need to share power with civic and volunteer groups to tackle issues like exploding populations, stagnant economies and declining natural resources. Pointing to unemployment rates of 20% and up, the secretary said "people have grown tired of corrupt institutions and a stagnant political order" and are demanding reforms, including eradication of corruption.
Monday, January 10, 2011
Middle East Heralds New Year With Winter of Discontent
By James M. Dorsey
The Middle East and North Africa welcomed the New Year with a rare phenomenon: protests in an arc stretching from Algeria to Kuwait, directed against repressive regimes at home rather than a foreign power. The protests are a rare outpouring of pent-up frustration and anger at discrimination and failed economic and social policies as well as corruption in a region that is governed by authoritarian governments intolerant of public criticism.
It is too early to conclude that the protests signal a milestone after which Middle Eastern population groups no longer quietly endure repression and economic deprivation and instead increasingly and publicly challenge their authoritarian leaders. Yet even if they are unlikely to repeat the regime-toppling successes of the velvet revolutions of Eastern Europe, the protests reflect increased chafing at disenfranchisement and lack of opportunity and good governance. Tunisia is witnessing the most-sustained demonstrations against an Arab government in recent history. The New Year's church bombing in Alexandria, Egypt, has sparked a rare public outburst of pent-up Coptic anger. Demonstrators in Algeria this week protested food-price hikes, unemployment and an alleged deterioration of government services. Riots in the southern Jordanian town of Maan erupted following a brawl in which two people were killed. And protests in Kuwait denounced the beating by police of a law professor critical of the government.
The wave of discontent follows a series of underreported economically inspired protests in recent years across North Africa -- including in Tunisia's southern Gafsa mining province in early 2008, in Morocco's impoverished port city of Sidi Ifni in the same year, and in various Egyptian towns over the past several years -- as well as ethnic and political clashes sparked in recent weeks by soccer rivalries in Jordan and Iran. A draw last week in the world's most violent soccer derby between Cairo arch-rivals Al Ahly and Zamalek sparked speculation by Egyptian sports commentators that the government had fixed the match to prevent potential soccer riots that could turn political. Algeria this weekend postponed all national soccer league matches in a bid to prevent games from turning into anti-government protests.
Read further at World Politics Review
The Middle East and North Africa welcomed the New Year with a rare phenomenon: protests in an arc stretching from Algeria to Kuwait, directed against repressive regimes at home rather than a foreign power. The protests are a rare outpouring of pent-up frustration and anger at discrimination and failed economic and social policies as well as corruption in a region that is governed by authoritarian governments intolerant of public criticism.
It is too early to conclude that the protests signal a milestone after which Middle Eastern population groups no longer quietly endure repression and economic deprivation and instead increasingly and publicly challenge their authoritarian leaders. Yet even if they are unlikely to repeat the regime-toppling successes of the velvet revolutions of Eastern Europe, the protests reflect increased chafing at disenfranchisement and lack of opportunity and good governance. Tunisia is witnessing the most-sustained demonstrations against an Arab government in recent history. The New Year's church bombing in Alexandria, Egypt, has sparked a rare public outburst of pent-up Coptic anger. Demonstrators in Algeria this week protested food-price hikes, unemployment and an alleged deterioration of government services. Riots in the southern Jordanian town of Maan erupted following a brawl in which two people were killed. And protests in Kuwait denounced the beating by police of a law professor critical of the government.
The wave of discontent follows a series of underreported economically inspired protests in recent years across North Africa -- including in Tunisia's southern Gafsa mining province in early 2008, in Morocco's impoverished port city of Sidi Ifni in the same year, and in various Egyptian towns over the past several years -- as well as ethnic and political clashes sparked in recent weeks by soccer rivalries in Jordan and Iran. A draw last week in the world's most violent soccer derby between Cairo arch-rivals Al Ahly and Zamalek sparked speculation by Egyptian sports commentators that the government had fixed the match to prevent potential soccer riots that could turn political. Algeria this weekend postponed all national soccer league matches in a bid to prevent games from turning into anti-government protests.
Read further at World Politics Review
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Israel, Jordan Rocket Attacks Raise Specter of Renewed Sinai Violence
James M. Dorsey | 12 Aug 2010
World Politics Review
A recent rocket attack on the twin Red Sea resorts of Eilat in Israel and Aqaba in Jordan raises the specter of renewed Bedouin violence in Egypt's Sinai peninsula, where security forces are struggling to fight crime, illegal immigration and terrorist threats, as well as to protect oil and gas pipelines.
In the wake of the attacks, an Egyptian security operation aimed at uprooting militant Palestinian and Bedouin groups as well as jihadist elements confirmed Israeli and Jordanian claims that the rockets had been launched from Sinai. It was the second such attack in four months. Security forces discovered evidence of a misfired Grad-type rocket during the operation that focused on the mountains near the resort of Taba as well as areas near Sinai's border with Gaza that have been declared off limits to foreigners. Days before the attacks, security forces reportedly arrested three men in a bomb-laden vehicle they intended to explode in the resort of Sharm el Sheikh.
Egypt has long had difficulty maintaining law and order in the Sinai, crucial to the country's tourism industry. Bedouin tribesmen operate an extensive smuggling network that tunnels supplies into the beleaguered Gaza Strip and sneaks African migrants across the border into Israel. Tribesmen assisted in a spate of bombings of tourism resorts in the Sinai between 2004 and 2006 in which 145 people were killed. A group believed to be linked to al-Qaida claimed responsibility in 2005 for rocket launched from Sinai at U.S. war ships docked in the port of Aqaba, and Egypt has since announced various arrests of Palestinians seeking to launch projectiles from the peninsula.
Authorities in Egypt and Israel fear that the rocket attacks signal an increase in jihadist activity in the Sinai and radicalization of Bedouin groups. The rocket attacks add to mounting tension on Israel's borders in the wake of the first clash between Israeli and Lebanese forces since Israel attacked the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah in 2006 and as Arab states seek to ensure that the imminent announcement of the results of an international inquiry into the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri does not plunge Lebanon into renewed civil strife. The inquiry is expected to conclude that Hezbollah operatives were involved in the assassination.
The rocket attacks were likely designed to maintain pressure on the Egyptian government to make good on promises to address Bedouin grievances and to reassert the Bedouin's role as suppliers to the Gaza Strip at a moment that their business is threatened by Israel's decision to significantly loosen its blockade of Gaza. Bedouin militancy stems from racial discrimination as well as a sense that the government has failed to follow through on promises to invest in economic and social development. Of the $22 billion pledged in 1994 by the government for Sinai development, only $2 billion has so far been invested, primarily in the construction of tourism facilities in the south and in securing the border with Gaza. The Bedouin say they have benefited little from those investments. Tourism is a $10.8 billion business that accounts for one in eight jobs in Egypt.
The rockets were fired barely two weeks after Egyptian Interior Minister Habib Adli met with tribal leaders in a bid to ease tension and fend off Bedouin threats to sabotage oil and gas pipelines, including a natural-gas line that supplies Israel. Adli agreed to release scores of detained Bedouins, including prominent activist and blogger Mossad Abu Fajr. Some 370 Bedouin activists are believed to be lingering in Egyptian jails. Adli also promised to rollback repressive measures and initiate development projects that would create jobs in the Sinai in return for Bedouin cooperation in apprehending terrorists and fugitive Bedouin militants.
In support of Adli's promises, the Egyptian oil ministry announced that it was establishing an oil services company in the Sinai that would create jobs by drilling wells, laying pipelines and building storage tanks across the peninsula. The ministry said half of the company's employees would be local hires. Nonetheless, more radical Bedouin leaders denounced the meeting with Adli, charging that the tribal leaders he met were government appointees who did not represent the local population.
The meeting with Adli followed an ambush of police forces in which tribesmen freed Bedouin leader Salim Lafy. Two policemen were killed in the incident. Lafy and some 30 other tribesmen remain at large and have threatened to attack government installations if security forces continue to raid their homes. The tribesmen also attacked a Gaza-bound humanitarian convoy, set fire to tires near a natural gas pipeline that supplies Syria and Jordan and disrupted trade along the border with Israel.
In a letter last month to an Egyptian newspaper, Al-Masry Al-Youm, fugitive Bedouin leader Moussa el-Dalah blamed the smuggling and violence on the government's treatment of the tribesmen as a security problem rather than as full-fledged citizens with economic and social grievances. "Bedouins are compelled to use violence to show that the use of excessive force to quell us will not work. The government has to find another way to deal with us if it genuinely believes we are part of a single nation with one common destiny," El-Dalah wrote. "We hear about social and economic development, but we hardly see meaning to it here in Sinai. . . . We are forced to use illicit methods to secure a livelihood for the government has left us with no alternative. Instead, it has chosen to shape our communities by handpicking our tribal chiefs and recruiting our younger men as undercover agents."
World Politics Review
A recent rocket attack on the twin Red Sea resorts of Eilat in Israel and Aqaba in Jordan raises the specter of renewed Bedouin violence in Egypt's Sinai peninsula, where security forces are struggling to fight crime, illegal immigration and terrorist threats, as well as to protect oil and gas pipelines.
In the wake of the attacks, an Egyptian security operation aimed at uprooting militant Palestinian and Bedouin groups as well as jihadist elements confirmed Israeli and Jordanian claims that the rockets had been launched from Sinai. It was the second such attack in four months. Security forces discovered evidence of a misfired Grad-type rocket during the operation that focused on the mountains near the resort of Taba as well as areas near Sinai's border with Gaza that have been declared off limits to foreigners. Days before the attacks, security forces reportedly arrested three men in a bomb-laden vehicle they intended to explode in the resort of Sharm el Sheikh.
Egypt has long had difficulty maintaining law and order in the Sinai, crucial to the country's tourism industry. Bedouin tribesmen operate an extensive smuggling network that tunnels supplies into the beleaguered Gaza Strip and sneaks African migrants across the border into Israel. Tribesmen assisted in a spate of bombings of tourism resorts in the Sinai between 2004 and 2006 in which 145 people were killed. A group believed to be linked to al-Qaida claimed responsibility in 2005 for rocket launched from Sinai at U.S. war ships docked in the port of Aqaba, and Egypt has since announced various arrests of Palestinians seeking to launch projectiles from the peninsula.
Authorities in Egypt and Israel fear that the rocket attacks signal an increase in jihadist activity in the Sinai and radicalization of Bedouin groups. The rocket attacks add to mounting tension on Israel's borders in the wake of the first clash between Israeli and Lebanese forces since Israel attacked the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah in 2006 and as Arab states seek to ensure that the imminent announcement of the results of an international inquiry into the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri does not plunge Lebanon into renewed civil strife. The inquiry is expected to conclude that Hezbollah operatives were involved in the assassination.
The rocket attacks were likely designed to maintain pressure on the Egyptian government to make good on promises to address Bedouin grievances and to reassert the Bedouin's role as suppliers to the Gaza Strip at a moment that their business is threatened by Israel's decision to significantly loosen its blockade of Gaza. Bedouin militancy stems from racial discrimination as well as a sense that the government has failed to follow through on promises to invest in economic and social development. Of the $22 billion pledged in 1994 by the government for Sinai development, only $2 billion has so far been invested, primarily in the construction of tourism facilities in the south and in securing the border with Gaza. The Bedouin say they have benefited little from those investments. Tourism is a $10.8 billion business that accounts for one in eight jobs in Egypt.
The rockets were fired barely two weeks after Egyptian Interior Minister Habib Adli met with tribal leaders in a bid to ease tension and fend off Bedouin threats to sabotage oil and gas pipelines, including a natural-gas line that supplies Israel. Adli agreed to release scores of detained Bedouins, including prominent activist and blogger Mossad Abu Fajr. Some 370 Bedouin activists are believed to be lingering in Egyptian jails. Adli also promised to rollback repressive measures and initiate development projects that would create jobs in the Sinai in return for Bedouin cooperation in apprehending terrorists and fugitive Bedouin militants.
In support of Adli's promises, the Egyptian oil ministry announced that it was establishing an oil services company in the Sinai that would create jobs by drilling wells, laying pipelines and building storage tanks across the peninsula. The ministry said half of the company's employees would be local hires. Nonetheless, more radical Bedouin leaders denounced the meeting with Adli, charging that the tribal leaders he met were government appointees who did not represent the local population.
The meeting with Adli followed an ambush of police forces in which tribesmen freed Bedouin leader Salim Lafy. Two policemen were killed in the incident. Lafy and some 30 other tribesmen remain at large and have threatened to attack government installations if security forces continue to raid their homes. The tribesmen also attacked a Gaza-bound humanitarian convoy, set fire to tires near a natural gas pipeline that supplies Syria and Jordan and disrupted trade along the border with Israel.
In a letter last month to an Egyptian newspaper, Al-Masry Al-Youm, fugitive Bedouin leader Moussa el-Dalah blamed the smuggling and violence on the government's treatment of the tribesmen as a security problem rather than as full-fledged citizens with economic and social grievances. "Bedouins are compelled to use violence to show that the use of excessive force to quell us will not work. The government has to find another way to deal with us if it genuinely believes we are part of a single nation with one common destiny," El-Dalah wrote. "We hear about social and economic development, but we hardly see meaning to it here in Sinai. . . . We are forced to use illicit methods to secure a livelihood for the government has left us with no alternative. Instead, it has chosen to shape our communities by handpicking our tribal chiefs and recruiting our younger men as undercover agents."
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Gaza Puts Peace in Intensive Care
Israel's offensive against Gaza has put efforts to resolve the Israeli Palestinian conflict on life support, if not buried them six feet under the ground.
World leaders, gathered in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el Sheikh on Sunday to discuss the aftermath of the Gaza war, drove yet another nail into the coffin of the peace process. They focused on ending the smuggling of arms into Gaza, a withdrawal of Israeli troops from the strip, the opening of all border crossings into Gaza and the urgent need for humanitarian aid and assistance in reconstruction. And they paid lip service to the peace process. But virtually none of the leaders, not even Palestine Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, addressed the core problem head on as seen by Palestinians and Arabs: Israel's occupation of lands designated to be part of a Palestinian state.
For many Palestinians and ordinary Arabs it will be hard to fathom that what they see as the root of the problem goes unmentioned at such a gathering less than 24 hours after a three-week war in which Israel pummeled the Gaza Strip with its military force, killed 1,300 people, many of whom were innocent men, women and children and destroyed its already feeble infrastructure. Adding insult to injury, European leaders congregated in Jerusalem immediately after the Sharm el Sheikh summit to again focus on humanitarian issues and the prevention of smuggling rather than on the fundamentals that fuel the cycle of violence. They also failed to note that reconstruction of Gaza will demand not only significant international assistance but will also have to involve a reversal of Israeli policies towards the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank that have effectively stymied economic development.
Palestinians and ordinary Arabs are likely to conclude from the meetings in Sharm el Sheikh and Jerusalem that they have little to expect from peace efforts fostered by an international community that was unable because of unwillingness by major powers, foremost among whom the United States, to impose an end to the fighting and in its aftermath shies away from addressing core issues. That perception will be reinforced by the fact that 48 hours before his inauguration and despite the carnage in Gaza, US President-elect Barack Obama has yet to publicly identify key members of his Middle East policy team. Obama said this weekend he would do so "very early on in the administration." Some analysts suggest that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wants to sound out Middle Eastern leaders before enunciating a clear policy.
The palpable sense of despair and disgust in the Middle East puts pressure on pro-American Arab leaders to bridge the gap between their adherence to a peace process aimed at establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel and widespread popular perception that peace is a pipe dream and that the ceasefire in Gaza merely allows the parties to catch their breath before the next round of death and destruction. Public opinion in most Arab countries appears to favors Hamas. "That's what is important to watch: whether Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia modify their positions towards Hamas. If they do, that would be a major indication that Hamas is 'winning,' says a blogger on Arab Media Shack
For world leaders as well as Hamas and Israel, the immediate focus is on restoring a resemblance of normal life to Gaza. But even that threatens to be thwarted by politics and could be mired in renewed bloodshed. Beyond the fact, that the silencing of the guns as the result of two separate, unilaterally declared ceasefires, one by Israel, the other by Hamas, constitutes a very shaky basis on which to build an edifice, Hamas' future may be less bright than most analysts predict. For the time being, its victory is rooted in its ability to have largely, physically survived the Israeli onslaught and its basking in the aura of its resistance.
Little so far is known whether Hamas truly put up a fight in the ground war beyond firing its primitive rockets into southern Israel. What is probable however is that more Palestinians in Gaza than meets the eyes were during the war willing to pass reliable information to Israel, which would account for Israel's ability to locate and kill three of Hamas' top leaders. "We used to hear these slogans of how strong our resistance is. I believed the slogans. But when the war started, nothing happened. I live in an area close to the border with Israel. I used to see hundreds of Hamas and other factions' gunmen waiting for Israeli troops who might storm Gaza. But, since the first day of the war, none of them appeared. And Hamas still talks about a resistance that did nothing to protect our people," 37-year old civil servant Ahmed Tawfiq was quoted by The Observer as saying.
Hamas needs to cement its claim to victory with tangible results such as the Israeli troop withdrawal from Gaza, lifting of the Israeli siege and the opening of the crossing into the strip. If it fails to do so, it is likely to be challenged by more militant Palestinian groups advocating increased violence against Israel and greater links between the global jihadi movement and the Palestinian resistance, which even in its Islamic guise, has focused until now on nationalist goals.
Hamas' unilateral ceasefire is conditional on Israel withdrawing its troops from Gaza within a week. It reserves the right to resume armed resistance if Israel maintains its presence in the strip. Reports from Gaza at the time of this writing say Israeli troops have begun to redeploy. Israel nonetheless insists that it is holding its fire rather than ending its military operation to see whether Hamas and other Palestinian groups are bent on continued military confrontation or will concentrate on badly needed humanitarian and economic reconstruction.
While humanitarian aid is already pouring in, reconstruction is likely to be dependent on progress in efforts to put Palestinians and Israelis on a course towards peace. To nudge Israelis and Palestinians toward a two-state solution, confidence building measures will be needed that go far beyond the terms of a ceasefire that ensures a continued cessation of violence. Israelis will have to signal that they are willing to enable to Palestinians to rebuild their lives and pursue the goals of happiness and prosperity their Jewish neighbors enjoy. "The world community should discourage Israel from enacting further restrictions on Palestinians that will prevent them from working inside of Israel. This has…further transformed Gaza and the West Bank into Bantustans, confining a population which used to work inside of Israel. An economic and developmental solution needs the input of all parties, in addition to the political/military situation, so that Palestinians do not live in closed areas devoid of sufficient employment, or food and goods…," says a US Army Strategic Studies Institute report published on the eve of the Israeli offensive.
As Hamas emerges strengthened from the Gaza war, efforts to reconcile the Islamists with President Mahmoud Abbas' Palestine Authority will likely see Palestinian attitudes towards peace stiffen. Already, Hamas no longer talks about a 10-year truce with Israel that would give both Israelis and Palestinians an economic stake in living and let live. Instead, they are best willing to see the unilateral silencing of the guns extend into an agreed ceasefire for a period of a year. "Not for the first time, we have a ceasefire with no understandings underpinning it…. We are back to where we were when the (Israel Hamas) ceasefire collapsed (in December) … The uncompromising war opens a new strategic chapter. The politics that will emerge from this will be equally uncompromising," Alastair Crook, a former negotiator with Hamas on behalf of the European Union and ex-British intelligence official, said on Al Jazeera.
Mouin Rabbani, a contributor to Middle East Report, listened live on Al Jazeera to the speeches of world leaders in Sharm el Sheikh, figuratively tearing his hair out. "I'm speechless that you can have in 2009 an international conference on the Israeli Pal conflict and the word occupation is not mentioned once…. This war, perhaps more than any other event in the last decade, has transformed peace into a dirty word and negotiations into an even dirtier word. Resistance that was a dirty word is now the word and concept on the lips of people in the region. … Most Palestinians believe a two state settlement is the most realistic path to national self determination. The problem is that since 1993 the peace process has nailed one nail after another in the coffin primarily through the Israeli colonization process. It is practically impossible for Israel to withdraw to the 1967 borders. So, on the one hand you no longer have a two state solution and on other hand don't have an alternative. I don't think a one -state bi-national solution is on the horizon in our life time. The prospect is increased and eventually existential conflict," Rabbani said.
If hopes for a negotiated two-state solution were fading already prior to the Israeli offensive, Palestinians across the political spectrum express post-war predictions of doom and gloom. "Palestinians will continue to suffer and bleed," says Mahdi Abdul Hadi, head of the Palestinian Academic Society. That perception is likely to be strengthened in Gaza in the coming days as the death toll rises with the discovery of more bodies under the rubble and Gazans confront the devastation of their homes. "Israel started the war against Palestinians. They imposed sanctions on Palestinians. Hamas demands the world just leave the siege and break the blockade on Palestinians by opening the curtains. Hamas spent a long time helping the Palestinian people here and worked for its interests. Hamas has the authority and the legitimacy to rule Gaza. I don't think the war affected Hamas that much. They destroyed everything, but Hamas is still there. Hamas will show its power when the war is over," 38-year old bookshop owner Wael Abed Latef told The Observer.
Throughout the Israeli Palestinian conflict, Palestinian determination to achieve independence was reinforced by the way Arab countries treated refugees and an Arab failure to match rhetoric with deeds. This round in the conflict may prove no different. Palestinians being deported after having been arrested and abused in Egypt in conversation with veteran Arabic-speaking CNN correspondent Ben Wedeman expressed anger at Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and other Arab leaders as well as the United States for supplying Israel with the weapons employed against them as they returned by bus from Egypt to Gaza. “I’m surprised at how buoyant people are given the circumstances. Talking to them, I find morale high and an overall sense of defiance. At one point I saw a young boy on a donkey cart, unaware I was observing him. As an Israeli jet passed overhead, he shook a fist at the sky,” said Wedeman, one of the vast majority of journalists who was prevented by Israel and Egypt from entering Gaza until now, describing his first impressions of Gaza.
The widespread anger and despair enhances the Obama's initial statements on and moves in the Middle East. The president-elect has so far said little beyond the fact that he intends to engage in the early days of his administration, sees the need to tackle problems across the region from Pakistan to Palestine in an integrated fashion and feels the generally accepted outline of an Israeli Palestinian settlement based on a two-state solution is the way forward. For Obama to have a chance of reviving a peace process that would have any credibility, he will have to signal his willingness to be far more sensitive to Palestinian aspirations and concerns while remaining committed to Israeli security. Palestinians and Arabs will monitor his early statements closely for indications that he will take Israel to task on the issue of Jewish settlements on the West Bank and willing to seek to draw credible representatives such as Hamas into the process. "The man in the street will no longer accept the status quo," Abdul Hadi says.
The US Army study effectively argues that the very assumptions are flawed on which past Middle East peacemaking attempts were based. The study takes particular aim at the Israeli and US demand that Palestinian groups, particularly Hamas, must recognize Israel first before they can be included in the peace process. Implicitly it also suggests that peacemakers may have to lower their sights by seeking to achieve a long-term Israeli Palestinian truce rather than a full fledged peace agreement in the expectation that a prolonged period of quiet and economic develop eventually can be morphed into definitive peace.
A sudden reversal of policy along the lines suggested by the study would damage Obama domestically and jeopardize his role as a broker. However the study does provide an analytical context for subtle suggestions by several former US officials believed to be candidates for Obama's Middle East policy team that the president-elect may cautiously explore ways of engaging Hamas. One suggestion is that he may allow the Central Intelligence Agency to engage in quiet exploratory diplomacy which could rekindle Arab and Palestinian hope for a long-term arrangement that would guarantee Israeli security and allow for the emergence of a viable and independent state.
The report notes that the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) recognized Israel and that the Palestine Authority was willing to bargain for a state in less than the territories occupied by Israel in 1967 and yet "it is not clear that Israel has ever agreed to accept a Palestinian state." The study argues that recognition of Israel by Hamas as it is described in the Western media, cannot serve as a formula for peace. Hamas moderates have, however, signaled that the group implicitly recognizes Israel, and that even a tahdiya (calming, minor truce) or a hudna, a longer-term truce, obviously implies recognition." The report quotes Damascus-based Hamas Political Bureau chief Khalid Mashaal states as saying: "We are realists … There is an entity called Israel (but) realism does not mean that you have to recognize the legitimacy of the occupation. … I am concerned with the establishment of my state. … The movement (Hamas) accepts a state within the 1967 borders and a truce."
The report, which anticipated the Israeli attack, blames Israel's refusal to engage Hamas following its 2006 electoral victory in polling that was universally judged to be free and fair for the failure of the peace process. "The viability of a two-state solution rested on an Israeli acknowledgement of the Islamist movement, Hamas, and on Fatah's ceding power to it," the report says. "Hamas' political and strategic development has been both ignored and misreported in Israeli and Western sources which villainize the group, much as the PLO was once characterized as an anti-Semitic terrorist group… Israel claimed significant victories in its war against Palestinians by the use of targeted killings of leadership, boycotts, power cuts, preemptive attacks and detentions, and punishments to militant's families, relatives, and neighborhoods etc., because its counterterrorism logic is to reduce insurgents' organizational capability. This particular type of Israeli analysis rejects the idea that counterterrorist violence can spark more resistance and violence… Negotiating solely with the weaker Palestinian party—Fatah (the Palestinian group dominating the Palestine Authority)—cannot deliver the security Israel requires. This may lead Israel to re-conquer the Gaza Strip or the West Bank and continue engaging in 'preemptive deterrence' or attacks on other states in the region in the longer term," the report warns.
For a revival of the moribund peace process, the Palestinians will have to play their part. More important than whatever declarations they make with regard to Israel is their ability to bridge the gap between the Palestine Authority and Hamas to form a united front. "The way out of the crisis is a Palestinian united Front. … We need our independent state in the occupied territories. For that the united front is vital," Fatah parliament member Abdullah Abdullah told Al Jazeera. Hamas spokesman have echoed the need for Palestinian unity. The question is on what terms the Palestinians will come together. They are likely to be far stiffer than the basis on which the Palestine Authority negotiated with Israel and could include terms of reference for resistance against Israel, and possibly the United States.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Egypt Moves Centerstage
With the exception of Jordan, no Arab country has more at stake in Gaza than Egypt, the only Arab nation to share a border with Gaza. Arabs, increasingly angry about the ongoing violence and frustrated by Arab government inability to come to the aid of the Palestinians, are focusing attention on Egypt's refusal to fully open the Rafah border crossing, Gaza's only gateway to the outside world that does not go through Israel. Tens of thousands of Egyptians on Friday poured into the streets alongside their brethren across the Arab world and elsewhere to vent their anger and frustration, in many cases targeting Egyptian embassies.
(As an aside, the war of words between Israel and the Arabs at times seems surreal in its ability to deny reality. David Pollack, a senior fellow focusing on political dynamics in the Middle East at the Washington Institute of Near East Policy in an analysis released on Friday asserts that "only a handful of major street protests have occurred, and almost no tangible support for Hamas has materialized." Coming from the institute that degree of denial – one only needs to switch on television news to see the masses in the streets – is worrisome given the fact that the institute is an important player in shaping US Middle East policy. Executives and associates of the institute will serve as senior officials in the incoming Obama administration's Middle East team and have served in past administrations, Republican and Democratic.)
What happens at the Rafah crossing will in part make or break the sustainability of any ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. To call a halt to the fighting, Israel wants a viable mechanism that would close down what is left of the underground tunnels that constitute Gaza's sole supply line. Those tunnels serve(d) to break the Israeli siege and bring in vital basic supplies like food and medicine; they were also used by Hamas and other militant Palestinian groups to bring in arms and other military materials. Any mechanism will involve an increased Egyptian role, all the more so if international forces are stationed on the Egyptian side of the border. Hamas has said it would allow international monitors to operate from the Palestinian side of the divide but will not accept an international force in Palestine., Egypt too is reluctant to allow an international force to operate from its territory although less firmly opposed than Hamas.. Instead, it wants to revive the 2005 agreement on movement and access, under which EU monitors oversaw the passage of people through the Rafah crossing and vehicles through Kerem Shalom, a deal that fell through when Hamas came to power.
Egypt's role in Gaza could become even more enhanced if the hopes of some Israeli leaders and politicians that the Israeli offensive will lead to regime change in Gaza were realized. That seems a far-fetched goal as the Israeli offensive enters into its third week. Most analysts assume the war is likely to end before US President-elect Barack Obama takes office on Jan. 20. A real defeat of Hamas would mean that Israel would have to launch its third phase of the offensive – involving a virtual re-occupation of Gaza by Israeli troops moving into the centers the Strip's cities and towns -- and is able of delivering a fatal blow to Hamas within days. Israel on Saturday showered Gaza with leaflets advising residents that it was about to intensify the fighting by launching its planned third phase of the war. "Strip residents: Two days ago, the IDF dropped leaflets in Rafah, warning residents and instructing them to leave their homes for their safety. As Rafah residents complied with IDF instructions, civilians not involved in the fighting were spared any harm. In the near future, the IDF will continue to attack tunnels, arms caches, and terror activities with greater intensity all across the Strip. For your safety and the safety of your families, you are required to refrain from staying near terror elements or sites where weapons are being stored," the leaflet read.
Speaking in an interview with Sir David Frost on Al Jazeera's Frost over the World, Daniel Ayalon, a former Israeli ambassador to the US, said: "I think Egypt will have a major role in any future regime" in Gaza. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is determined to thwart any Israeli attempt to foist Gaza on Egypt, a move that could provoke a true explosion of public anger. Even before the current pro-Palestinian demonstrations, protests against the government were becoming a fixture of daily life in the country. While most protests are small and focus on local grievances, some labor actions forced the government to make concessions.
Nonetheless, the absence of a swift Israeli victory too brings Egypt's role in achieving an end to the war to the forefront. Egypt has put forward a ceasefire proposal bolstered by the UN Security Council's call for an immediate ceasefire. Neither Israel nor Hamas is implementing the UN call or has accepted the Egyptian proposal, but both have agreed to talk to the Egyptians about it. Egypt is also seeking to blow new life into talks between Hamas and Fatah in a bid to end the debilitating divisions among the Palestinians. Hamas leaders were in Egypt on Friday and Saturday to discuss the Egyptian efforts. "The situation in Gaza represents a test for the Egyptian leadership and its ability to influence any part of the Middle East, and currently it seems that it is losing its soft powers," Muhammed Hassanein Heikal, a confident of the late Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser and one of the Arab world's most prominent journalists, told Al Jazeera
Israel and Egypt refuse to fully open the Rafah border unless it is controlled by the Fatah-dominated Palestinian National Authority headed by President Mahmoud Abbas, a demand Hamas has so far rejected. The Times reported Saturday that diplomats at the United Nations were looking as part of the Egyptian plan at carving out "a triangle at the southern end of Gaza, including the Rafah crossing to Egypt and the Kerem Shalom crossing to Israel, to be policed by Turkish and French military monitors to stop arms smuggling into Gaza. The zone would nominally be controlled by the authority, the internationally recognized Government. Such a plan would allow the crossings to reopen for the first time since Hamas seized power in Gaza in June 2007." Abbas was in Cairo on Saturday for talks with Mubarak. "What Mubarak appears to want now is a ceasefire that avoids increasing Egyptian responsibility for Gaza and offers Hamas minimal concessions. Egyptian officials denied an Israeli newspaper report that Mubarak told European Union officials during a private meeting Monday that 'Hamas must not be allowed to win in Gaza,' but the comment might well reflect his thinking," says Michele Dunne, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and editor of the Arab Reform Bulletin, in an article in The National Interest.
Finding common ground between Israel, Egypt and Hamas on arrangements at the Rafah crossing is no mean fete. Israel demands closure of hundreds of tunnels, which it says are Hamas' arms highway. Egypt claims that most weapons enter Gaza from the sea, although it admits that it has failed even with recent help from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to close the tunnels. While rejecting an international force, it has agreed to accept international help to install technical measures or physical barriers on the Egyptian side of the border. Hamas wants the free flow of goods to and from Gaza through Rafah restored – a move that would help it claim victory in foiling Israel's military objectives in the war. Its position may have been strengthened by the international outcry at the humanitarian consequences of the Israeli offensive. Egypt rejects the Hamas demand because it fears that a fully open Rafah crossing would allow Palestinians to flee the Strip in a mass exodus. An unidentified Egyptian official told Al-Hayat on Tuesday that Mubarak has resisted Arab and Palestinian pressure to open the crossing because he expects it would lead to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians flooding into Sinai and the inevitable reestablishment of semi-permanent refugee camps.
Complicating implementation of the Security Council ceasefire resolution is the fact that a cessation of hostilities at this moment would mean there is no clear victor. Hamas can claim survival as a victory albeit at a heavy price for the Palestinians. Continued human agony in Gaza still has some potential to score public relations points against Israel. Full opening of the crossings into Gaza would cement Hamas's claim to victory. The flip side of that coin is true for Israel. It wants to ensure that Hamas victory claims are undermined and that Hamas' capacity to fire rockets into Israel is destroyed, in part by cutting off its supply lines. Time will tell the degree to which that is possible. If Egyptian claims that Hamas gets its supplies by sea are true, there is no reason to believe that Israel and others would succeed where they haven't until now. In addition, closing down the tunnels is proving easier said than done. Also, most of Hamas' rockets are home made. Its ability to continue producing them in an environment in which the flow of goods into Gaza is even more controlled remains untested, "The (ongoing) violence is just to mark time because there's an incapacity to reach a solution and the solution is very complex. All the parties have to take into account what a ceasefire will mean for them," Chatam House fellow Nadim Shehadi told The National. Egypt too has a stake on who emerges as the perceived victor from the Gaza war. A victory by Hamas, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, would strengthen the brotherhood in Egypt, where it constitutes Mubarak's main opposition and enjoys significant popularity.
On Thursday, the brotherhood issued a detailed critique of Mubarak’s ceasefire initiative. It called on him to break relations with Israel and accused him of colluding with the United States. Egyptian opposition groups - Islamist, leftist and liberal – have found a common ground in attacking Mubarak for failing to exert leadership in the region and to respect human and civil rights at home. For Mubarak, the challenge is to manage the crisis without taking deeply unpopular steps that would force him to step up repression and crack down at home.
(As an aside, the war of words between Israel and the Arabs at times seems surreal in its ability to deny reality. David Pollack, a senior fellow focusing on political dynamics in the Middle East at the Washington Institute of Near East Policy in an analysis released on Friday asserts that "only a handful of major street protests have occurred, and almost no tangible support for Hamas has materialized." Coming from the institute that degree of denial – one only needs to switch on television news to see the masses in the streets – is worrisome given the fact that the institute is an important player in shaping US Middle East policy. Executives and associates of the institute will serve as senior officials in the incoming Obama administration's Middle East team and have served in past administrations, Republican and Democratic.)
What happens at the Rafah crossing will in part make or break the sustainability of any ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. To call a halt to the fighting, Israel wants a viable mechanism that would close down what is left of the underground tunnels that constitute Gaza's sole supply line. Those tunnels serve(d) to break the Israeli siege and bring in vital basic supplies like food and medicine; they were also used by Hamas and other militant Palestinian groups to bring in arms and other military materials. Any mechanism will involve an increased Egyptian role, all the more so if international forces are stationed on the Egyptian side of the border. Hamas has said it would allow international monitors to operate from the Palestinian side of the divide but will not accept an international force in Palestine., Egypt too is reluctant to allow an international force to operate from its territory although less firmly opposed than Hamas.. Instead, it wants to revive the 2005 agreement on movement and access, under which EU monitors oversaw the passage of people through the Rafah crossing and vehicles through Kerem Shalom, a deal that fell through when Hamas came to power.
Egypt's role in Gaza could become even more enhanced if the hopes of some Israeli leaders and politicians that the Israeli offensive will lead to regime change in Gaza were realized. That seems a far-fetched goal as the Israeli offensive enters into its third week. Most analysts assume the war is likely to end before US President-elect Barack Obama takes office on Jan. 20. A real defeat of Hamas would mean that Israel would have to launch its third phase of the offensive – involving a virtual re-occupation of Gaza by Israeli troops moving into the centers the Strip's cities and towns -- and is able of delivering a fatal blow to Hamas within days. Israel on Saturday showered Gaza with leaflets advising residents that it was about to intensify the fighting by launching its planned third phase of the war. "Strip residents: Two days ago, the IDF dropped leaflets in Rafah, warning residents and instructing them to leave their homes for their safety. As Rafah residents complied with IDF instructions, civilians not involved in the fighting were spared any harm. In the near future, the IDF will continue to attack tunnels, arms caches, and terror activities with greater intensity all across the Strip. For your safety and the safety of your families, you are required to refrain from staying near terror elements or sites where weapons are being stored," the leaflet read.
Speaking in an interview with Sir David Frost on Al Jazeera's Frost over the World, Daniel Ayalon, a former Israeli ambassador to the US, said: "I think Egypt will have a major role in any future regime" in Gaza. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is determined to thwart any Israeli attempt to foist Gaza on Egypt, a move that could provoke a true explosion of public anger. Even before the current pro-Palestinian demonstrations, protests against the government were becoming a fixture of daily life in the country. While most protests are small and focus on local grievances, some labor actions forced the government to make concessions.
Nonetheless, the absence of a swift Israeli victory too brings Egypt's role in achieving an end to the war to the forefront. Egypt has put forward a ceasefire proposal bolstered by the UN Security Council's call for an immediate ceasefire. Neither Israel nor Hamas is implementing the UN call or has accepted the Egyptian proposal, but both have agreed to talk to the Egyptians about it. Egypt is also seeking to blow new life into talks between Hamas and Fatah in a bid to end the debilitating divisions among the Palestinians. Hamas leaders were in Egypt on Friday and Saturday to discuss the Egyptian efforts. "The situation in Gaza represents a test for the Egyptian leadership and its ability to influence any part of the Middle East, and currently it seems that it is losing its soft powers," Muhammed Hassanein Heikal, a confident of the late Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser and one of the Arab world's most prominent journalists, told Al Jazeera
Israel and Egypt refuse to fully open the Rafah border unless it is controlled by the Fatah-dominated Palestinian National Authority headed by President Mahmoud Abbas, a demand Hamas has so far rejected. The Times reported Saturday that diplomats at the United Nations were looking as part of the Egyptian plan at carving out "a triangle at the southern end of Gaza, including the Rafah crossing to Egypt and the Kerem Shalom crossing to Israel, to be policed by Turkish and French military monitors to stop arms smuggling into Gaza. The zone would nominally be controlled by the authority, the internationally recognized Government. Such a plan would allow the crossings to reopen for the first time since Hamas seized power in Gaza in June 2007." Abbas was in Cairo on Saturday for talks with Mubarak. "What Mubarak appears to want now is a ceasefire that avoids increasing Egyptian responsibility for Gaza and offers Hamas minimal concessions. Egyptian officials denied an Israeli newspaper report that Mubarak told European Union officials during a private meeting Monday that 'Hamas must not be allowed to win in Gaza,' but the comment might well reflect his thinking," says Michele Dunne, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and editor of the Arab Reform Bulletin, in an article in The National Interest.
Finding common ground between Israel, Egypt and Hamas on arrangements at the Rafah crossing is no mean fete. Israel demands closure of hundreds of tunnels, which it says are Hamas' arms highway. Egypt claims that most weapons enter Gaza from the sea, although it admits that it has failed even with recent help from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to close the tunnels. While rejecting an international force, it has agreed to accept international help to install technical measures or physical barriers on the Egyptian side of the border. Hamas wants the free flow of goods to and from Gaza through Rafah restored – a move that would help it claim victory in foiling Israel's military objectives in the war. Its position may have been strengthened by the international outcry at the humanitarian consequences of the Israeli offensive. Egypt rejects the Hamas demand because it fears that a fully open Rafah crossing would allow Palestinians to flee the Strip in a mass exodus. An unidentified Egyptian official told Al-Hayat on Tuesday that Mubarak has resisted Arab and Palestinian pressure to open the crossing because he expects it would lead to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians flooding into Sinai and the inevitable reestablishment of semi-permanent refugee camps.
Complicating implementation of the Security Council ceasefire resolution is the fact that a cessation of hostilities at this moment would mean there is no clear victor. Hamas can claim survival as a victory albeit at a heavy price for the Palestinians. Continued human agony in Gaza still has some potential to score public relations points against Israel. Full opening of the crossings into Gaza would cement Hamas's claim to victory. The flip side of that coin is true for Israel. It wants to ensure that Hamas victory claims are undermined and that Hamas' capacity to fire rockets into Israel is destroyed, in part by cutting off its supply lines. Time will tell the degree to which that is possible. If Egyptian claims that Hamas gets its supplies by sea are true, there is no reason to believe that Israel and others would succeed where they haven't until now. In addition, closing down the tunnels is proving easier said than done. Also, most of Hamas' rockets are home made. Its ability to continue producing them in an environment in which the flow of goods into Gaza is even more controlled remains untested, "The (ongoing) violence is just to mark time because there's an incapacity to reach a solution and the solution is very complex. All the parties have to take into account what a ceasefire will mean for them," Chatam House fellow Nadim Shehadi told The National. Egypt too has a stake on who emerges as the perceived victor from the Gaza war. A victory by Hamas, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, would strengthen the brotherhood in Egypt, where it constitutes Mubarak's main opposition and enjoys significant popularity.
On Thursday, the brotherhood issued a detailed critique of Mubarak’s ceasefire initiative. It called on him to break relations with Israel and accused him of colluding with the United States. Egyptian opposition groups - Islamist, leftist and liberal – have found a common ground in attacking Mubarak for failing to exert leadership in the region and to respect human and civil rights at home. For Mubarak, the challenge is to manage the crisis without taking deeply unpopular steps that would force him to step up repression and crack down at home.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Talking to the Devil
While Hamas portrays a unified face to the outside world and so far appears to be surviving the Israeli offensive in Gaza severely battered but intact, it consists of multiple factions divided by differences in vision of the identity of a future Palestinian state, tactics and strategy and personal and regional rivalries. The shifting balance of power among those factions is to a significant extent determined by Israeli policies that reinforce the views of one faction and weaken those of others. Just how divided Hamas is was evident in the run-up to the Israeli offensive when some leaders rejected extension of the six-month ceasefire with Israel while others publicly advocated renewal. Ultimately Hamas rejected extension in a victory for the hardliners. The question is whether a different Israeli policy in the period preceding the rejection, including an adherence to Israel's pledge to lift the siege of Gaza as part of the ceasefire would have produced a different power of balance within Hamas.
To some analysts, Matthew Levitt, a Washington Institute for Near East Policy fellow, who publishes frequently on Hamas, seeking to engage with moderate elements with Hamas is "counterproductive." Levitt argues that differences within Hamas regarding U.S. policy are merely tactical and that engaging more moderate Islamists would undermine efforts by the U.S., Israel and conservative Arab governments to strengthen the Palestine Authority headed by President Mahmoud Abbas. Levitt's rejection assumes that the various positions taken by the different Hamas factions are cast in stone and unlikely to develop in the course of a political process that gives them a stake. It also assumes that violence rather than a political process that shows that Abbas can delivery tangible political and economic results will serve to position the Palestinian president, whose Fatah movement lost an election to Hamas, as the leader with the most credibility among Palestinians. Those are two assumptions that so far have been defeated by the history of Arab Israeli conflict and Middle East peacemaking.
On that premise, an analysis of the shifting balances within Hamas points to potentially lost opportunities to bring at least parts of the Palestinian Islamist movement to the negotiating table. If successful that could have significantly altered the balance of power within the movement, to a break-up of Hamas into various groups and a segmentation of public support. The most significant fault line in Hamas is between those whose priority is to solve the Palestinian problem and those motivated by religious zeal. Proposals by the more nationalist faction, which garnered much of its support from the West Bank and the Palestinian business community, to halt military action and focus exclusively in line with the path followed by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Jordan on political and social activity constituted one opportunity for Israel and others to draw parts of the Islamist movement into the peace process. Those proposals culminated in the fall of 2004 in an internal memorandum drafted by a senior Hamas leader to dismantle its underground military apparatus. The proposal was defeated by the Hamas leadership in Gaza as well as the exile leadership in Damascus.
The move to call a halt to military activity came months after Israel had killed Gaza-based Hamas founders Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi in separate operations. The killings prompted splits within the Gaza leadership. Hamas' Gaza political wing was inherited by deposed Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniya and Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahar. Haniya has not been seen in public since the Israeli offensive began but Hamas' Al Aqsa television aqsatv.ps earlier this week broadcast a taped defiant statement read by Zahar. Supporters of Al-Rantissi joined Muhammed Diaf, head of the group's military wing, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades. Haniya's willingness to cease attacks on Israel in response to pressure from the business community were denounced by another Rantissi supporter Nizar Rayyan, who is the most senior Hamas leader to have been killed in the current Israeli offensive. In a bid to thwart Haniya's move, Rayyan paraded armed through the streets of the Jabalya refugee camp. Flanked by masked Qassem Brigade fighters, he dismissed Haniya's plan, distributed pamphlets describing Hamas' military operations and announced that the group was developing Qassem rockets capable of reaching deeper into Israel.
Hamas' 2006 victory in Palestinian elections on the West Bank and in Gaza strengthened the position of the leadership in Palestine versus the exile leaders in Damascus, whose influence stems from their control of Hamas' finances and relations with Syria and Iran, and initially appeared to reinforce more moderate forces within the group. That began to change with the split between Hamas and Fatah, the Palestinian group defeated in the election, and Hamas takeover of Gaza. The Israeli and Western boycott of Gaza imposed after the takeover shifted power led by Zahar and Said Siam, a proponent of suicide attacks who served as interior minister in the unified government, through control of the group's Executive Force and Qassem Brigades. Last summer, the position of the radicals was reinforced when hardliners emerged from secret balloting dominant in Hamas' Gaza Consultative Council or Shura Council on a slate dominated by younger members of the Qassem Brigades and headed by Hamas military leader Ahmed Jabari. The Gaza council answers to is Hamas' highest decision-making body, the Majlis a Shura, which incorporates representatives from all Hamas constituencies: Gaza, the West Bank, Israeli prisons and Damascus. The slate, many of whose members opposed reconciliation with Fatah because they feared it would lead to an end of the armed struggle and acceptance of a two-state solution, prompted more moderate figures like Ghazi Hamad – a Hamas veteran who served as spokesman and editor of Hamas weekly Ar-Risala and was imprisoned by both Israel and the Palestine Authority -- and Ahmad Yusuf, a political advisor to Haniya, not to stand in the election. The Shura Council victory is believed to have undermined the position of moderates like Haniya. It is reasonable to assume that the tightening siege of Gaza played into the hardliner's hands.
If the Gaza leadership is divided, so are their rivals in Damascus split between Gazans led by second-in-command Mousa Mohammed Abu Marzouk, who was sentenced in the United States on charges of financing Hamas, and political bureau chief Khaled Mashaal, whose supporters hail from the West Bank and studied or worked in Kuwait. Their differences result from competition for influence rather than ideology. The Gazans views the Kuwaitis as too dominant. Palestine Authority officials say internal Hamas correspondence that they seized in November shows that the Damascus leadership together with Hamas leaders on the West Bank favored continued dialogue with Fatah and was critical of the hard line Gaza leadership's moves to thwart Egyptian mediation efforts.
It is ironic that Israeli and Western policies towards Gaza appear to have reversed the traditional relationship between exiles and those that have remained in the homeland with the exiles usually able to afford a more radical position because they run less personal risk and are less exposed to the pressures of circumstance that forced them into exile. By the same token, for all its bluster against the failure of Arab states to intervene, Hizbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militia and the only Arab military force that could be expected to come to the aid of Hamas, has restricted itself to words rather than deeds. Speaking in Beirut on the occasion of Ashura, the Shiite commemoration of the death of Imam Hussein some 1,400 years ago and amid mounting fears in Lebanon that Israel mat strike at Hizbollah, the militia's leader, Sheikh Hassan Narallah, vowed that his men were prepared to counter any Israeli regression. The 2006 "Lebanon war was just a walk in the park compared to what we have in store for you," Nasrallah said. In what has become a tat-for-tat spat between Nasrallah and Egypt following the militia leader's call last week on Egyptian to revolt against their government for not opening the Rafah Gaza Egypt border crossing, Nasrallah today again singled Egypt out. "Yesterday (Tuesday) a senior Egyptian official asked the Security Council if it needed to see more than 650 Palestinians killed and 2,500 injured in order to act responsibly. I ask that same official – does the Egyptian government need more than that in order to open the Rafah crossing for the sake of Gaza's inhabitants and their firm resistance and triumph? All you are required to do is open the crossing, not to declare war," Nasrallah said.
Israel's conduct of the Gaza war is increasingly drawing criticism not just from the usual suspects but also from those that have traditionally supported its policies, particularly with regard to taking a hard line towards Iranian ambitions in the Middle East. "Tehran has been aiding Hamas for years with the aim of radicalizing politics across the entire Arab Middle East. Now Israel's response to thousands of Hamas rocket provocations appears to be doing just that," writes Reuel Mark Gerecht, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer and Foundation for Defense of Democracies fellow in The Wall Street Journal. Gerecht, arguing that Sunni Hamas far more than Hizbollah, offers Iran the opportunity to train its sights on stirring the pot in Egypt, in his words 'the ultimate prize' in the geo-political power chess game playing out in the Middle East, notes that Iran has been careful never to respond to conservative Sunni anti-Shiite rhetoric. For starters, Iran's support for Hamas positions the Islamic Republic as a more reliable supporter of the Palestinians than the conservative Arab states. Egypt, the Arab world's most populous nation straddling Asia and Africa that was once ruled by a Shiite dynasty, may be potentially volatile than it has been since the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981. Gerecht points to the fact that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is aging and questions exist about the state of his health, but that it is unclear who will succeed him. The grip of Egypt's security forces is pervasive but whoever succeeds Mubarak, his jet-setting son or a military officer, is unlikely to resuscitate the regime's credibility and weaken the Muslim Brotherhood which most likely would win with a landslide in a free and fair election. "A turbulent Gaza where devout Muslims are in a protracted, televised fight with the cursed Jews could add sufficient heat to make Egyptian politics really interesting. The odds of Egypt cracking could be very small…but they are now certainly enough to keep the Iranians playing," Gerecht writes.
Marc Lynch, a George Washington University political science professor better known by his nom de plume Abu Aardvark, argues that irrespective whether Hamas wins or loses, Al Qaeda is certain to emerge a winner from the Gaza crisis. If Hamas wins, it benefits from the setback for the West and its Arab allies, if it loses, one of its major rivals is seriously weakened. “Either way, the Gaza crisis guarantees that a far more radicalized Islamic world will face the incoming Obama administration”, Lynch says. He notes that the way the crisis is developing demonstrates “the bankruptcy and strategic dangers of trying to simply reduce Hamas to part of an undifferentiated ‘global terrorist front.’” In fact, Hamas, an affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood, a major Al Qaeda rival, played a key role in preventing the Jihadis from getting a real foot on the ground in Palestine. “…the doctrinal and political conflict between the Brotherhood and al-Qaeda's salafi-jihadism has become one of the most active fault-lines in Islamist politics. As Abu Qandahar’ wrote on al-Qaeda's key al-Ekhlaas forum in October 2007, the ‘Islamic world is divided between two projects, jihad and Ikhwan [Brotherhood],’” Lynch says. “From al-Qaeda's perspective, therefore, Israel's assault on Gaza is an unmitigated blessing. The images flooding the Arab and world media have already discredited moderates, fueled outrage, and pushed the center of political gravity towards more hard-line and radical positions… Governments are under pressure, most people are glued to al-Jazeera's coverage..., the internet is flooded with horrifying images, and people are angry and mobilized against Israel, the United States, and their own governments. That's the kind of world al-Qaeda likes to see.”
To some analysts, Matthew Levitt, a Washington Institute for Near East Policy fellow, who publishes frequently on Hamas, seeking to engage with moderate elements with Hamas is "counterproductive." Levitt argues that differences within Hamas regarding U.S. policy are merely tactical and that engaging more moderate Islamists would undermine efforts by the U.S., Israel and conservative Arab governments to strengthen the Palestine Authority headed by President Mahmoud Abbas. Levitt's rejection assumes that the various positions taken by the different Hamas factions are cast in stone and unlikely to develop in the course of a political process that gives them a stake. It also assumes that violence rather than a political process that shows that Abbas can delivery tangible political and economic results will serve to position the Palestinian president, whose Fatah movement lost an election to Hamas, as the leader with the most credibility among Palestinians. Those are two assumptions that so far have been defeated by the history of Arab Israeli conflict and Middle East peacemaking.
On that premise, an analysis of the shifting balances within Hamas points to potentially lost opportunities to bring at least parts of the Palestinian Islamist movement to the negotiating table. If successful that could have significantly altered the balance of power within the movement, to a break-up of Hamas into various groups and a segmentation of public support. The most significant fault line in Hamas is between those whose priority is to solve the Palestinian problem and those motivated by religious zeal. Proposals by the more nationalist faction, which garnered much of its support from the West Bank and the Palestinian business community, to halt military action and focus exclusively in line with the path followed by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Jordan on political and social activity constituted one opportunity for Israel and others to draw parts of the Islamist movement into the peace process. Those proposals culminated in the fall of 2004 in an internal memorandum drafted by a senior Hamas leader to dismantle its underground military apparatus. The proposal was defeated by the Hamas leadership in Gaza as well as the exile leadership in Damascus.
The move to call a halt to military activity came months after Israel had killed Gaza-based Hamas founders Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi in separate operations. The killings prompted splits within the Gaza leadership. Hamas' Gaza political wing was inherited by deposed Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniya and Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahar. Haniya has not been seen in public since the Israeli offensive began but Hamas' Al Aqsa television aqsatv.ps earlier this week broadcast a taped defiant statement read by Zahar. Supporters of Al-Rantissi joined Muhammed Diaf, head of the group's military wing, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades. Haniya's willingness to cease attacks on Israel in response to pressure from the business community were denounced by another Rantissi supporter Nizar Rayyan, who is the most senior Hamas leader to have been killed in the current Israeli offensive. In a bid to thwart Haniya's move, Rayyan paraded armed through the streets of the Jabalya refugee camp. Flanked by masked Qassem Brigade fighters, he dismissed Haniya's plan, distributed pamphlets describing Hamas' military operations and announced that the group was developing Qassem rockets capable of reaching deeper into Israel.
Hamas' 2006 victory in Palestinian elections on the West Bank and in Gaza strengthened the position of the leadership in Palestine versus the exile leaders in Damascus, whose influence stems from their control of Hamas' finances and relations with Syria and Iran, and initially appeared to reinforce more moderate forces within the group. That began to change with the split between Hamas and Fatah, the Palestinian group defeated in the election, and Hamas takeover of Gaza. The Israeli and Western boycott of Gaza imposed after the takeover shifted power led by Zahar and Said Siam, a proponent of suicide attacks who served as interior minister in the unified government, through control of the group's Executive Force and Qassem Brigades. Last summer, the position of the radicals was reinforced when hardliners emerged from secret balloting dominant in Hamas' Gaza Consultative Council or Shura Council on a slate dominated by younger members of the Qassem Brigades and headed by Hamas military leader Ahmed Jabari. The Gaza council answers to is Hamas' highest decision-making body, the Majlis a Shura, which incorporates representatives from all Hamas constituencies: Gaza, the West Bank, Israeli prisons and Damascus. The slate, many of whose members opposed reconciliation with Fatah because they feared it would lead to an end of the armed struggle and acceptance of a two-state solution, prompted more moderate figures like Ghazi Hamad – a Hamas veteran who served as spokesman and editor of Hamas weekly Ar-Risala and was imprisoned by both Israel and the Palestine Authority -- and Ahmad Yusuf, a political advisor to Haniya, not to stand in the election. The Shura Council victory is believed to have undermined the position of moderates like Haniya. It is reasonable to assume that the tightening siege of Gaza played into the hardliner's hands.
If the Gaza leadership is divided, so are their rivals in Damascus split between Gazans led by second-in-command Mousa Mohammed Abu Marzouk, who was sentenced in the United States on charges of financing Hamas, and political bureau chief Khaled Mashaal, whose supporters hail from the West Bank and studied or worked in Kuwait. Their differences result from competition for influence rather than ideology. The Gazans views the Kuwaitis as too dominant. Palestine Authority officials say internal Hamas correspondence that they seized in November shows that the Damascus leadership together with Hamas leaders on the West Bank favored continued dialogue with Fatah and was critical of the hard line Gaza leadership's moves to thwart Egyptian mediation efforts.
It is ironic that Israeli and Western policies towards Gaza appear to have reversed the traditional relationship between exiles and those that have remained in the homeland with the exiles usually able to afford a more radical position because they run less personal risk and are less exposed to the pressures of circumstance that forced them into exile. By the same token, for all its bluster against the failure of Arab states to intervene, Hizbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militia and the only Arab military force that could be expected to come to the aid of Hamas, has restricted itself to words rather than deeds. Speaking in Beirut on the occasion of Ashura, the Shiite commemoration of the death of Imam Hussein some 1,400 years ago and amid mounting fears in Lebanon that Israel mat strike at Hizbollah, the militia's leader, Sheikh Hassan Narallah, vowed that his men were prepared to counter any Israeli regression. The 2006 "Lebanon war was just a walk in the park compared to what we have in store for you," Nasrallah said. In what has become a tat-for-tat spat between Nasrallah and Egypt following the militia leader's call last week on Egyptian to revolt against their government for not opening the Rafah Gaza Egypt border crossing, Nasrallah today again singled Egypt out. "Yesterday (Tuesday) a senior Egyptian official asked the Security Council if it needed to see more than 650 Palestinians killed and 2,500 injured in order to act responsibly. I ask that same official – does the Egyptian government need more than that in order to open the Rafah crossing for the sake of Gaza's inhabitants and their firm resistance and triumph? All you are required to do is open the crossing, not to declare war," Nasrallah said.
Israel's conduct of the Gaza war is increasingly drawing criticism not just from the usual suspects but also from those that have traditionally supported its policies, particularly with regard to taking a hard line towards Iranian ambitions in the Middle East. "Tehran has been aiding Hamas for years with the aim of radicalizing politics across the entire Arab Middle East. Now Israel's response to thousands of Hamas rocket provocations appears to be doing just that," writes Reuel Mark Gerecht, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer and Foundation for Defense of Democracies fellow in The Wall Street Journal. Gerecht, arguing that Sunni Hamas far more than Hizbollah, offers Iran the opportunity to train its sights on stirring the pot in Egypt, in his words 'the ultimate prize' in the geo-political power chess game playing out in the Middle East, notes that Iran has been careful never to respond to conservative Sunni anti-Shiite rhetoric. For starters, Iran's support for Hamas positions the Islamic Republic as a more reliable supporter of the Palestinians than the conservative Arab states. Egypt, the Arab world's most populous nation straddling Asia and Africa that was once ruled by a Shiite dynasty, may be potentially volatile than it has been since the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981. Gerecht points to the fact that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is aging and questions exist about the state of his health, but that it is unclear who will succeed him. The grip of Egypt's security forces is pervasive but whoever succeeds Mubarak, his jet-setting son or a military officer, is unlikely to resuscitate the regime's credibility and weaken the Muslim Brotherhood which most likely would win with a landslide in a free and fair election. "A turbulent Gaza where devout Muslims are in a protracted, televised fight with the cursed Jews could add sufficient heat to make Egyptian politics really interesting. The odds of Egypt cracking could be very small…but they are now certainly enough to keep the Iranians playing," Gerecht writes.
Marc Lynch, a George Washington University political science professor better known by his nom de plume Abu Aardvark, argues that irrespective whether Hamas wins or loses, Al Qaeda is certain to emerge a winner from the Gaza crisis. If Hamas wins, it benefits from the setback for the West and its Arab allies, if it loses, one of its major rivals is seriously weakened. “Either way, the Gaza crisis guarantees that a far more radicalized Islamic world will face the incoming Obama administration”, Lynch says. He notes that the way the crisis is developing demonstrates “the bankruptcy and strategic dangers of trying to simply reduce Hamas to part of an undifferentiated ‘global terrorist front.’” In fact, Hamas, an affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood, a major Al Qaeda rival, played a key role in preventing the Jihadis from getting a real foot on the ground in Palestine. “…the doctrinal and political conflict between the Brotherhood and al-Qaeda's salafi-jihadism has become one of the most active fault-lines in Islamist politics. As Abu Qandahar’ wrote on al-Qaeda's key al-Ekhlaas forum in October 2007, the ‘Islamic world is divided between two projects, jihad and Ikhwan [Brotherhood],’” Lynch says. “From al-Qaeda's perspective, therefore, Israel's assault on Gaza is an unmitigated blessing. The images flooding the Arab and world media have already discredited moderates, fueled outrage, and pushed the center of political gravity towards more hard-line and radical positions… Governments are under pressure, most people are glued to al-Jazeera's coverage..., the internet is flooded with horrifying images, and people are angry and mobilized against Israel, the United States, and their own governments. That's the kind of world al-Qaeda likes to see.”
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Hizbollah: Putting Its Money Where Its Mouth Is
For the past two years, Lebanon's Hizbollah Party of God has basked in its status as the only Arab military force to have stood up to Israeli military superiority and foiled Israeli military attempts to defeat it on the battle field. This week Hizbollah exploited its status to organize the Arab world's largest protest against the Israeli attacks on Gaza. Hizbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah urged Muslims across the Arab and Islamic world to rise in support of the Palestinians.
Yet, as Israeli air strikes on Gaza continue and Israeli ground troops mass along Israel's border with the Strip, Nasrallah risks looking like other Arab leaders unable and/or unwilling to do more for the Palestinians than employ rhetoric and verbal protests and organize political rallies. Recent studies have concluded that Hizbollah remains a considerable military force capable of pouring rockets and missiles into northern Israel. Al Hayat newspaper reports that Egypt and Turkey have decided to warn Israel that a ground assualt could provoke Hizbullah in attacking Israel from southern Lebanon.
It cannot be very long before Hizbollah will have to explain what makes it different from Arab states fearful that the confrontation in Gaza could escalate into wider regional conflict and therefore unwilling to grant Palestinians more than moral and humanitarian support? Hizbollah's dilemma is likely to be increasingly highlighted as Arab leaders fail to effectively respond to the Gaza crisis. Arab foreign ministers are scheduled to meet tomorrow in emergency session in Cairo, five days after Israel launched its assault on Hamas. Plans for a possible Arab summit in Doha on Friday that would produce only one more statement are politically risky. "Staging an Arab summit could be dangerous and subject to criticism, especially if it does not result in practical measures," news reports quoted Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit as saying. Yet, continuing to be seen as impotent is equally risky. Just how great those risks are perceived is reflected in Jordan King Abdullah's decision to fire in the middle of a regional crisis his head of intelligence, Mohammed al-Thahbi. Al-Thahbi had led in recent months Jordan's rapprochement with Hamas as well as the Jordanian wing of the Muslim Brotherhood.
The potentially explosive mix of anger at Israel and frustration with glaring Arab impotence coupled with criticism of authoritarian governments unwilling to grant greater freedom was evident at yesterday's demonstration in Cairo, the largest since the 2006 Lebanon war. Egyptian President Hosni Mobarak alongside his foreign Minister Aboul Gheit and Arab leaders in general were targets of the crowds anger. "The blood of the martyrs will remain a disgrace on the forehead of (Arab) leaders," read one banner. Protesters shouted: "Aboul Gheit, you are a coward, just shut up." In a rare public appearance, Muslim Brotherhood supreme leader Mohammed Mahdi Akef told the crowd of several thousand: "It's needless to say that the Zionist enemy, which is occupying Palestine, the Arab and Islamic land, wouldn't have been able to conduct these horrific criminal massacres without scandalous international complicity, humiliating silence, shameful impotence and disgraceful Arab collaboration."
Egypt, one of two Arab countries to have signed a peace treaty with Israel, risks being pressured by more radical Arab nations to break off relations with the Jewish state. More level headed leaders are unlikely to want to jeopardize Egypt's role as a mediator between Hamas, Israel and the Palestine Authority. Meanwhile, 81 of the 135 members of Jordan's parliament have urged the government to reconsider its ties with Israel. As pressures on Arab leaders mount, eyes will also be on what Hizbollah does. Al Hayat quoted Turkish sources as saying that Egypt and Turkey would put forward a plan for a ceasefire that would involve opening Gaza crossings, lifting of the siege of Gaza and regional and international guarantees to ensure the ceasefire is honored.
Obviously, neither Lebanon, Hizbollah's home base, nor Syria, together with Iran Hizbollah's main backer, want to be drawn into military confrontation with Israel and Hizbollah may not want to risk being blamed for an all-out regional war. Moreover, Syria, for much of this year, has been engaged in indirect peace talks with Israel mediated by Turkey. Already, Gaza puts those talks in jeopardy. Syria nonetheless is also not spared ridicule. "Whenever Arab governments call for peace, the Assad regime, which has not fired a bullet to liberate its (Israeli-) occupied Golan Heights since 1974, wages its fictional war on Israel through its state-owned media and its proteges in Lebanon, who accuse Arab governments of letting down the Palestinians by not marching to war with Israel.... Perhaps it is the time now for the former strong man of Lebanon, ths Syrian intelligence officer Rustum Ghazaleh, to use the 'Rifle of Resistance' that Mr. Nasrallah bestowed on him in 2005," wrote Hussain Abdul-Hussain, a visiting fellow at London's Chatham House.
Iran like many Arab states is not holding its breath for a substantial change in US policy when President-elect Barak Obama takes office next month, but may hope that Obama will be more inclined to lower tensions and seek a resolution to the region's multiple conflicts. So far Iran's response has been at best symbolic, only outdoing the Arabs in the shrillness of its rhetoric. Iran's semi-official Fars news agency reported that hard line clerics were signing up volunteers to fight in Gaza. But with Israel and Egypt controlling all access to Gaza, those volunteers were unlikely to see action any time soon. Hizbollah leader Nasrallah seemed to suggest in his speech to the Beirut rally that his organization had no immediate intention of becoming embroiled in renewed military confrontation with Israel. Nasrallah went out of his way to deny knowledge of eight rockets aimed at Israel that were discovered in southern Lebanon last week.
Islamist leaders meanwhile walk a tightrope, seeking to exploit the Gaza conflict to their political advantage, while not upsetting a fragile political balance. While Muslim Brotherhood leaders in Cairo called yesterday for continued peaceful demonstrations in support of the Palestinians, but many in the crowd demanded that Arab armies come to the aid of the Palestinians. Hizbollah, with the exception of Palestinian Islamists like Hamas, is the region's only non-state actor with a military capability of its own. Channeling and exploiting public anger while doing little to put its money where its mouth is, could well put a dent in its claim to the mantle of resistance against the Israelis, a mantle that now could well be inherited by Hamas. If anything, Hizbollah's caution proves that Islamists like all political players are mindful of circumstance and operate within the parameters of political realities.
These realities are compounded by facts on the ground. While Nasrallah's and Akef's calls for continued protests are likely to raise temperatures and increase public pressures, little will change on the ground. Ibrahim Eissa, editor of Al Destour, an Egyptian opposition daily told The National there was little hope that millions of Egyptians would heed Nasrallah's call for demonstrations to force Mubarak to fully open the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt. "The truth is that the Egyptian people are exhausted and besieged by thousands of security officers who managed to scare the Egyptians. Therefore, no one will respond to Nasrallah's appeal because the nation who can't confront despotism won't be able to combat its enemy or support its brothers," The Nation quoted Eissa as saying.
Yet, as Israeli air strikes on Gaza continue and Israeli ground troops mass along Israel's border with the Strip, Nasrallah risks looking like other Arab leaders unable and/or unwilling to do more for the Palestinians than employ rhetoric and verbal protests and organize political rallies. Recent studies have concluded that Hizbollah remains a considerable military force capable of pouring rockets and missiles into northern Israel. Al Hayat newspaper reports that Egypt and Turkey have decided to warn Israel that a ground assualt could provoke Hizbullah in attacking Israel from southern Lebanon.
It cannot be very long before Hizbollah will have to explain what makes it different from Arab states fearful that the confrontation in Gaza could escalate into wider regional conflict and therefore unwilling to grant Palestinians more than moral and humanitarian support? Hizbollah's dilemma is likely to be increasingly highlighted as Arab leaders fail to effectively respond to the Gaza crisis. Arab foreign ministers are scheduled to meet tomorrow in emergency session in Cairo, five days after Israel launched its assault on Hamas. Plans for a possible Arab summit in Doha on Friday that would produce only one more statement are politically risky. "Staging an Arab summit could be dangerous and subject to criticism, especially if it does not result in practical measures," news reports quoted Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit as saying. Yet, continuing to be seen as impotent is equally risky. Just how great those risks are perceived is reflected in Jordan King Abdullah's decision to fire in the middle of a regional crisis his head of intelligence, Mohammed al-Thahbi. Al-Thahbi had led in recent months Jordan's rapprochement with Hamas as well as the Jordanian wing of the Muslim Brotherhood.
The potentially explosive mix of anger at Israel and frustration with glaring Arab impotence coupled with criticism of authoritarian governments unwilling to grant greater freedom was evident at yesterday's demonstration in Cairo, the largest since the 2006 Lebanon war. Egyptian President Hosni Mobarak alongside his foreign Minister Aboul Gheit and Arab leaders in general were targets of the crowds anger. "The blood of the martyrs will remain a disgrace on the forehead of (Arab) leaders," read one banner. Protesters shouted: "Aboul Gheit, you are a coward, just shut up." In a rare public appearance, Muslim Brotherhood supreme leader Mohammed Mahdi Akef told the crowd of several thousand: "It's needless to say that the Zionist enemy, which is occupying Palestine, the Arab and Islamic land, wouldn't have been able to conduct these horrific criminal massacres without scandalous international complicity, humiliating silence, shameful impotence and disgraceful Arab collaboration."
Egypt, one of two Arab countries to have signed a peace treaty with Israel, risks being pressured by more radical Arab nations to break off relations with the Jewish state. More level headed leaders are unlikely to want to jeopardize Egypt's role as a mediator between Hamas, Israel and the Palestine Authority. Meanwhile, 81 of the 135 members of Jordan's parliament have urged the government to reconsider its ties with Israel. As pressures on Arab leaders mount, eyes will also be on what Hizbollah does. Al Hayat quoted Turkish sources as saying that Egypt and Turkey would put forward a plan for a ceasefire that would involve opening Gaza crossings, lifting of the siege of Gaza and regional and international guarantees to ensure the ceasefire is honored.
Obviously, neither Lebanon, Hizbollah's home base, nor Syria, together with Iran Hizbollah's main backer, want to be drawn into military confrontation with Israel and Hizbollah may not want to risk being blamed for an all-out regional war. Moreover, Syria, for much of this year, has been engaged in indirect peace talks with Israel mediated by Turkey. Already, Gaza puts those talks in jeopardy. Syria nonetheless is also not spared ridicule. "Whenever Arab governments call for peace, the Assad regime, which has not fired a bullet to liberate its (Israeli-) occupied Golan Heights since 1974, wages its fictional war on Israel through its state-owned media and its proteges in Lebanon, who accuse Arab governments of letting down the Palestinians by not marching to war with Israel.... Perhaps it is the time now for the former strong man of Lebanon, ths Syrian intelligence officer Rustum Ghazaleh, to use the 'Rifle of Resistance' that Mr. Nasrallah bestowed on him in 2005," wrote Hussain Abdul-Hussain, a visiting fellow at London's Chatham House.
Iran like many Arab states is not holding its breath for a substantial change in US policy when President-elect Barak Obama takes office next month, but may hope that Obama will be more inclined to lower tensions and seek a resolution to the region's multiple conflicts. So far Iran's response has been at best symbolic, only outdoing the Arabs in the shrillness of its rhetoric. Iran's semi-official Fars news agency reported that hard line clerics were signing up volunteers to fight in Gaza. But with Israel and Egypt controlling all access to Gaza, those volunteers were unlikely to see action any time soon. Hizbollah leader Nasrallah seemed to suggest in his speech to the Beirut rally that his organization had no immediate intention of becoming embroiled in renewed military confrontation with Israel. Nasrallah went out of his way to deny knowledge of eight rockets aimed at Israel that were discovered in southern Lebanon last week.
Islamist leaders meanwhile walk a tightrope, seeking to exploit the Gaza conflict to their political advantage, while not upsetting a fragile political balance. While Muslim Brotherhood leaders in Cairo called yesterday for continued peaceful demonstrations in support of the Palestinians, but many in the crowd demanded that Arab armies come to the aid of the Palestinians. Hizbollah, with the exception of Palestinian Islamists like Hamas, is the region's only non-state actor with a military capability of its own. Channeling and exploiting public anger while doing little to put its money where its mouth is, could well put a dent in its claim to the mantle of resistance against the Israelis, a mantle that now could well be inherited by Hamas. If anything, Hizbollah's caution proves that Islamists like all political players are mindful of circumstance and operate within the parameters of political realities.
These realities are compounded by facts on the ground. While Nasrallah's and Akef's calls for continued protests are likely to raise temperatures and increase public pressures, little will change on the ground. Ibrahim Eissa, editor of Al Destour, an Egyptian opposition daily told The National there was little hope that millions of Egyptians would heed Nasrallah's call for demonstrations to force Mubarak to fully open the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt. "The truth is that the Egyptian people are exhausted and besieged by thousands of security officers who managed to scare the Egyptians. Therefore, no one will respond to Nasrallah's appeal because the nation who can't confront despotism won't be able to combat its enemy or support its brothers," The Nation quoted Eissa as saying.
Monday, December 22, 2008
Gulf Benefits from Media Crisis in the West
Global economic turndown is accelerating an already painful transition in the Western media. While journalists and media professionals grapple with the fallout and debate the fate of the mainstream media as we know it, for many of the more than 15,000 who this year alone lost a job in journalism in the US, the issues are existential. Many are looking for salvation in the Middle East where despite economic doom and gloom, the media industry is still expanding.
Recruiters report a more than 50% increase in the number of western journalists looking for jobs in the region. For Middle Eastern media this means the ability to choose from a larger and more qualified pool than before, a development that started with Abu Dhabi’s launch earlier this year of The National, an English-language daily, that recruited from some of the West’s greatest brand names, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The Daily Telegraph.
The National constitutes in many was a breath of fresh air, producing in layout and content one of the region’s journalistically most professional publications. Yet even it has had to tome down its aspirations to be a hard-hitting, investigative product that lets the chips fall where they may and acts as the force that holds the powers to be accountable. For those that find employment in a region and an environment they know little about, the transition may prove more difficult than expected. Those that preceded them and have encountered the boundaries of a free press in the region can tell the story. This is not to say that press freedom in parts of the region have not come a long way. Qatar’s Al Jazeera and The National are undeniable proof. Yet, it remains a far cry from the freedoms the Western press enjoys as a result of legal restrictions, informal red lines and the lack of a culture in which sources see the media as more than mere scribes.
Often the issue is that governments have yet to go beyond simply talking the talk. The UAE is currently discussing a new media law to pass the existing one that was enacted 28 years ago. Dubai kicked off the development of media free zones and has become with Dubai Media City a regional hub. Similar initiatives are underway in Abu Dhabi, Qatar, Jordan and Egypt, the later two certainly being locations with degrees of media control. In September, UAE Vice President and Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, suggested that the new law should no longer allow for journalists to risk imprisonment for carrying out their duties. An appeals court in Dubai within weeks of Sheikh Mohammed’s statement overturned the conviction of two journalists on libel charges.
International press organization Reporters Without Borders ranks the UAE as one of the region’s most liberal media environments. It sees the main problem for press freedom in the emirates as self-censorship practised by media, which eschew criticism of the government in order to avoid repercussions. Putting a legal framework in place that allows journalists to fulfil their role as part of the fourth estate is a key ingredient for nurturing a free press. Encouraging a culture receptive to critical reporting without red lines is another. Sheikh Mohammed’s statement and the obvious effect it had on the appeals court is an important step in shaping an environment conducive to independent investigative reporting.
Recruiters report a more than 50% increase in the number of western journalists looking for jobs in the region. For Middle Eastern media this means the ability to choose from a larger and more qualified pool than before, a development that started with Abu Dhabi’s launch earlier this year of The National, an English-language daily, that recruited from some of the West’s greatest brand names, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The Daily Telegraph.
The National constitutes in many was a breath of fresh air, producing in layout and content one of the region’s journalistically most professional publications. Yet even it has had to tome down its aspirations to be a hard-hitting, investigative product that lets the chips fall where they may and acts as the force that holds the powers to be accountable. For those that find employment in a region and an environment they know little about, the transition may prove more difficult than expected. Those that preceded them and have encountered the boundaries of a free press in the region can tell the story. This is not to say that press freedom in parts of the region have not come a long way. Qatar’s Al Jazeera and The National are undeniable proof. Yet, it remains a far cry from the freedoms the Western press enjoys as a result of legal restrictions, informal red lines and the lack of a culture in which sources see the media as more than mere scribes.
Often the issue is that governments have yet to go beyond simply talking the talk. The UAE is currently discussing a new media law to pass the existing one that was enacted 28 years ago. Dubai kicked off the development of media free zones and has become with Dubai Media City a regional hub. Similar initiatives are underway in Abu Dhabi, Qatar, Jordan and Egypt, the later two certainly being locations with degrees of media control. In September, UAE Vice President and Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, suggested that the new law should no longer allow for journalists to risk imprisonment for carrying out their duties. An appeals court in Dubai within weeks of Sheikh Mohammed’s statement overturned the conviction of two journalists on libel charges.
International press organization Reporters Without Borders ranks the UAE as one of the region’s most liberal media environments. It sees the main problem for press freedom in the emirates as self-censorship practised by media, which eschew criticism of the government in order to avoid repercussions. Putting a legal framework in place that allows journalists to fulfil their role as part of the fourth estate is a key ingredient for nurturing a free press. Encouraging a culture receptive to critical reporting without red lines is another. Sheikh Mohammed’s statement and the obvious effect it had on the appeals court is an important step in shaping an environment conducive to independent investigative reporting.
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