New blog links

I'm adding a couple of blog links (those to the right - no pun intended). Both are blogs from Foreign Policy Magazine.

The first is Mark Lynch's Abu Aardvark blog on the Middle East. Lynch is a professor of Political Science at George Washington University and author of Voices of the New Arab Public: Al-Jazeera, Iraq, and Middle East Politics Today.

The other blog is Harvard Prof. Stephen Walt's blog that runs with the subtitle: "A Realist in an Ideological Age". Walt and I aren't exactly on the same page politically (a topic I've been drafting a blog entry on for weeks now... more on that soon) but, as some of you may know, I'm particularly fascinated by any Realist/Conservative argument against the Israeli Occupation of Palestine. Walt's controversial book The Israel Lobby came out a couple of years ago and was, I think, particularly potent because it was written by two conservative political scientists (Walt along with John Mearsheimer from the University of Chicago).

I'll be back from vacation in two weeks!

Israel to continue settlement expansion

Israel has given a giant middle finger to Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton by announcing that they will continue to expand their illegal settlements in the Occupied Territories. This comes despite a clear demand from Obama and his Secretary of State in the last week on the suspension of construction taking place there. The Israeli government is trying to spin its policy as "natural growth" of existing settlements. This is, obviously, an attempt to distract the reality that whether its a new apartment bloc for 500 new settler families in Ariel (the largest of settlements with more than two hundred thousand residents) or a new settlement around East Jerusalem, the outcome of locating more colonists in what would ostensibly be the territory of a future independent Palestinian state is the same. That is, of course, if the Israeli government had any intention at all of seeing such a state exist.

It will be interesting to see how the US will respond to this pretty blatant incitement. Obama and Clinton made it clear well before this announcement by the Israelis, that the "natural growth" argument wasn't valid. Obama's demand of Netanyahu last week when they met in the White House was as unambiguous as you can get (ie. stop all settlement construction now). Some are saying that this might be the first true test of Obama's finesse in foreign policy (not withstanding, I guess, the calamity in AfPak - that new and ever so jargony term for Afghanistan-Pakistan). And while he has shown to be willing to take Israel to task - I suppose by making unambiguous statements on things like settlements - I'm not really convinced that he has many cards to play at this point.

Of note from the long weekend

From the weekend, AP has a lengthy piece on the overtures made by Hamas towards the West.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/18/AR2009051800933.html

Juan Cole gives a quick (yet remarkably astute) rundown of the Obama-Netanyahu meetings that took place at the White House on Monday.

Obama wants Netanyahu to commit to supporting a two-state solution to be implemented in the near future. Netanyahu absolutely refused. He did say he is willing to "talk" to the Palestinians, though it is unclear why that would be a productive thing to do if he is die-hard against giving them the only thing they want.

www.juancole.com

Of note today - May 11, 2009

"The Problem is Statelessness": Juan Cole discusses King Abdullah of Jordan's comments on a potential sweeping Obama Peace Plan for the Middle East. But what is at the root of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Jun Cole argues that it is Palestinian statelessness (and all of the things that come with it).

www.juancole.com

Here's an interesting article on Time's website about the Palestinian Christian community and the Pope's visit to the Middle East.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1897238,00.html

"Death has become like drinking water"

There's an interesting interview with Khaled Meshal in the New York Times today. Apparently this is Hamas trying to "reach out" to western audiences. Can you tell that Hamas lacks the PR skills that the Israelis have? Meshal can make a great point one minute:

Regarding recognition of Israel, Mr. Meshal said the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat and Mr. Abbas had granted such recognition, but to no avail. “Did that recognition lead to an end of the occupation? It’s just a pretext by the United States and Israel to escape dealing with the real issue and to throw the ball into the Arab and Palestinian court,” he said.

Only to also cite the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" as fact (according to the article). Or engage in a discussion over the "long-term"/10 year cease-fire (hudna) with Israel that would follow an Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 borders. Meshal is trying to make concessions ('67 borders) while simultaneously playing to his base (only a 10 year ceasefire). It doesn't come off very well and frankly, he's in a no win situation. Which makes me wonder why Hamas would want to do an interview now anyway?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/05/world/middleeast/05meshal.html?_r=1&ref=world

Yad Vashem employee fired over Holocaust/Naqba comparison

The Israeli Holocaust museum and memorial Yad Vashem has fired one of their guides for having the audacity to compare the trauma experienced by the survivors of the Holocaust with those of the Palestinians during the war of 1948. Note that it wasn't a comparison between deaths, or specific acts of atrocities, but an amorphous "trauma". A totally subjective experience.

He said he did so because the ruins of the Arab village, today a part of Jerusalem's Givat Shaul neighborhood, can be seen as one leaves Yad Vashem. "Yad Vashem talks about the Holocaust survivors' arrival in Israel and about creating a refuge here for the world's Jews. I said there were people who lived on this land and mentioned that there are other traumas that provide other nations with motivation," Shapira said. "The Holocaust moved us to establish a Jewish state and the Palestinian nation's trauma is moving it to seek self-determination, identity, land and dignity, just as Zionism sought these things," he said.

These are some pretty reasonable sentiments. There is nothing radical or anti-semitic in such statements. It's a shame that Yad Vashem is wielded as a political tool. You can read my first hand take on Yad Vashem here.

Haaretz article:

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1080456.html

George Galloway sues all sorts of jerks

The CBC is reporting that George Galloway, the British MP who was barred from entering Canada a month and a half ago is suing Canadian Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, Kenney's right hand man Alykhan Velshi, the Canadian Jewish Congress, two of the CJC's top dogs Bernie Farber and Sylvain Abitbol, and B'nai Brith Canada's CEO Frank Dimant.

"I welcome robust criticism, but the comments made about me crossed the line," Galloway, an outspoken supporter of the Palestinian cause, said in a statement Friday released by his Canadian lawyer."They are not only untrue, they are outrageous. As an elected member of the British Parliament, I am compelled to exercise my legal right to clear my name."

The only people missing from this list seems to be the Jewish Defense League. I'm curious to know why they dodged these suits. I would have loved to see the JDL's activities examined by a court.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2009/05/01/galloway-libel-suit010509.html

Do Palestinians Want a State?

Robert Kaplan writes in the Altantic Monthly that it could be likely that the Palestinians are stateless because they want to remain stateless. Citing a "brilliant essay" by Jakub Gygiel Kaplan writes:

Grygiel raises a challenging proposition. If his theory is correct, then the Palestinians may never have a state, because at a deep psychological level, enough of them—or at least the groups that speak in their name—may not really want one. Statehood would mean openly compromising with Israel, and, because of the dictates of geography, living in an intimate political and economic relationship with it. Better the glory of victimhood, combined with the power of radical abstractions! As a stateless people, Palestinians can lob rockets into Israel, but not be wholly blamed in the eyes of the international community. Statehood would, perforce, put an end to such license.

Grygiel isn't actually talking about the Palestinians per se, because if he was I would suggest that he, like Kaplan, appear to be confused about the historical circumstances of Palestinian statelessness.

Kaplan, in his article, cites Hamas and Hezbollah's unwillingness to govern Gaza and Lebanon respectively as evidence that their "power" has been derived from statelessness. That they thrive as political entities because of their statelessness, not in spite of it. This argument proves confusing to anyone with rudimentary knowledge of both Hamas' and Hezbollah's organizational history. Both groups have been responsible for governance in areas that remain ungoverned by the "state" of Kaplan's imaginings. Hamas and Hezbollah run hospitals and schools, they have set up judicial hearings and local political institutions and while you may disagree with the ideological or religious basis on which these institutions are founded, they are the institutions of governance.

Of course, this is one point of many that one could make against Kaplan's totalizing effort to ascribe a generalized psychology to as disparate a community as "the Palestinians". No doubt that there are Palestinians who have taken advantage of their statelessness, just as there were Jews who took advantage of Nazi genocide, or Tibetans aiding Beijing's occupation. but this could only be a legitimate argument if there has ever been an occasion where a fair resolution - a "peace" - between Israelis and Palestinians has been on the negotiating table. Kaplan knows this. He even states that Israel's settlement expansion has continued unabated throughout the so called "peace negotiations". But since Israel has never made a serious attempt to negotiate a peace, the Palestinians have never been given a serious opportunity to govern (in the limited way Kaplan understands governance).

So here's how we should test the thesis: End the Occupation of Palestine.
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200904u/palestinian-statelessness