Elliot Abrams Defends Settlements in the Washington Post

I recently revisited an op-ed piece Elliot Abrams’ wrote in April for the Washington Post in which he argues that the settlement freeze is a red herring for Arab-Israeli peace. Abrams is a senior fellow for Middle East studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and was the deputy national security advisor for Near East and North African Affairs in the George W. Bush White House. While that last job position should be alarming to anyone who follows American involvement in the Middle East, anyone familiar with Abrams’ resume is probably already aware that he lacks much credibility. He was convicted for lying to Congress nearly 20 years ago during their Iran-Contra investigation. His track record in Central America – where he allegedly covered up atrocious violence perpetrated by right-wing Governments – apparently provided a solid foreign relations background for dealing with the Middle East.

His take on an Israeli settlement freeze is shockingly ignorant of what it’s actually like in the Occupied Territories and contains a number of falsehoods as well. He argues that while Israel hasn’t always “kept to the rules” concerning settlements (no new ones, no financial incentives to move to one, no new construction except within boundaries of pre-existing ones) it doesn’t really matter. It doesn’t matter because it won’t affect a final negotiation presumably because Palestinians would have to take land in the Negev desert in exchange for the land on which settlements have been built. He suggests that this is the deal offered to the Palestinians by Ehud Barak in 2000 and Olmert in 2009.

But Abrams shows a stunning ignorance of both history and geography. Firstly, the deals offered by Barak and Olmert for “between 94 and 98 percent” of the Occupied Territories were horrible deals that the PA had to reject. Without getting into the specifics, the territory offered to the Palestinians wasn’t contiguous, creating a series of mini-states similar to their current situation. This setup has been accurately compared to the Bantustans of South Africa. One of the reasons these Cantons would need to be created is to sustain the Israeli-only network of roads that connect Israel proper with their settlements within the Occupied Territories. To suggest that the settlements have no impact on even the idea of land swap is completely disingenuous.

Secondly, the settlements in the Occupied Territories do not have the same value to warrant a one for one land swap with Israeli territory in the Negev desert. Israeli settlements are constructed close to or on top of the few fresh water reservoirs in the region. According to Israeli Human Rights group B’Tselem, Israelis consume five and a half times more water than their Palestinian neighbors on a per capita basis making the control of water a primary driver in settlement policy. Abrams knows this but he’s hoping the average Washington Post reader doesn’t. This problem has been left out of discussions about land swaps since the Barak “offer” was made in the hope that public opinion would see the failure of such a deal as Palestinian intransigence.

Lastly, Abrams is suggests that it doesn’t matter that Israel continues to violate the “rules” that he helped create (during the Bush administration’s Road Map phase). That most settlement expansions “do not affect much Palestinian life” is another fallacy. Palestinians, and the Arab world in general, look to the settlements as an example of Israel’s unwillingness to make even the smallest of concessions. Freezing settlement expansion is literally the easiest thing Israel will have to do if they really want a peace with the Palestinians. It doesn’t involve serious existential questions about Jerusalem or the compensation and return of refugees. It’s continually cited by the UN, the Quartet and most heads of state as the single most pressing issue and yet Israel is still unwilling to stop settlement expansion. What, I wonder, will happen when they have to actually remove some settlements?

It’s a shame Abrams couldn’t have retired like his former boss. Surely his twenty plus years of screwing up other countries has left him with a nice nest egg?

"Balance"

Following Terry Cormier's statement that the resolution deploring Israeli settlement expansion was not "balanced" I wanted to post something quickly about the concept of "balance" which, in Canada at least, seems to be the the most important requirement of late when talking about the Occupation of Palestine.

I think this issue really picked up steam following the Israeli assault on Gaza in December. Media outlets were especially careful to appear "balanced" even when reporting largely of the carnage wrought by Israel. It seems - as you saw in my post about the IDF t-shirts depicting cross hairs on a pregnant Palestinian - that regardless of the story, a comment has to be made that shows "balance". The IDF can produce incredibly offensive and hateful t-shirts promoting war crimes, but as long as the reporter makes a reference to the fact that Hamas does bad things to Israelis - the newspaper is "balanced".

We really need a more fundamental understanding of just how insidious this idea of "balance" is, and what it really implies.

It implies that there are no victims. That Israeli actions (be they t-shirts or new settlements) are - despite being crimes - reactions to some sort of incitement by the Palestinians.

It implies that Palestinians somehow have as much control over their institutions as the Israelis - ignoring the 40 years of degradation to Palestinian civil society by the Occupation.

Ultimately though, and most importantly I would suggest, it implies that there can be no moral judgements. This, I think, should be the most troubling for the neoconservatives whose approach to foreign policy is Manichean at best. Conservatives are not the moral relativists that they accuse liberals of being. Yet this need for "balance" in the face of actions that are morally reprehensible bankrupts them of this position. No longer do we talk about rape victims "asking for it" - we've recognized that a crime is a crime. I can only hope that our diplomats and newspapers eventually do the same.

Those IDF T-Shirts

The Israeli Defense Forces have promised to discipline soldiers in their military who created and distributed these T-Shirts.

Although these t-shirts are reprehensible they don't really surprise me. Nor do I think that the Israelis would be alone in creating something so disgusting. I am not surprised though, that the Israelis felt so comfortable with this depiction that they made T-Shirts out of them (the IDF is big on t-shirts glorifying their military - you can buy them online and can occasionally see them in the streets in North America - a sort of anti-keffiyah for the ignorant).

Israeli society is increasingly willing to dehumanize the Arabs in their midst (see any post on Avigdor Lieberman's election success) and these t-shirts, I think, are largely symptomatic of an increasingly unspoken sentiment. Not to mention, of course, the obvious connection to the "demographic bomb" that is so often discussed in Israel (this is the increasing gap between Jewish Israeli birth rates and immigration, and Palestinian/Arab-Israeli birth rates).

After reading the article in The Star last night on my couch I was particularly bothered by one editorial move I came across. It's this paragraph:

In Gaza, Hamas spokesperson Fawzi Barhoum said it "reflects the brutal mentality among the Zionist soldiers and the Zionist society." Hamas-controlled media consistently glorify attacks on Israelis and mock Israeli suffering.

I'm disappointed with the fact that The Star feels that it needs to print a paragraph that, one presumes, was added to combat any potential claim of imbalance. There is no need for a quote from Hamas in an article about the dress habits of the IDF. Can a criticism of these t-shirts not rest on the fact that they are immoral and disgusting in and of themselves? I think it's unlikely, for instance, that in the wake of the beating death of Shidane Arone at the hands of Canadian soldiers in Somalia in 1993, that articles printed about the incident would point out that, in fact, Somalis in Belet Huen are thieves. Am I wrong about this? Does the creation of these t-shirts require a comment from Hamas at all?

http://www.thestar.com/article/607173