PALESTINE'S GREAT HOPE: THE EMERGENCE OF SALAM FAYYAD IS THE BEST THING TO HAPPEN TO THE MIDDLE EAST IN AGES: Salam Fayyad has completely transformed the West Bank from an immiserated backwater into a thriving, integrated society.
PALESTINIANS BUILDING REAL INSTITUTIONS ON THE WEST BANK, by Thomas Friedman, NYT: "The only thing that is important: forging a two-state solution. .. This dynamic — Palestinians building real institutions from the ground up and getting Israel to cede to them real authority — is the ballgame... The new model, pioneered in the West Bank by Abbas and Fayyad is: “Judge me by how I perform — how I generate investment and employment, deliver services and pick up the garbage. First we build transparent and effective political and security institutions. Then we declare a state. That is what the Zionists did, and it sure worked for them.”
GAZA
In Gaza, A Complex, Dysfunctional Way of Life -
ISRAEL
ISRAEL WITHOUT CLICHES, by Tony Judt: "If (Palestinians) pre-concede every Israeli demand — abjurance of violence, acceptance of Israel, acknowledgment of all their losses — what do they bring to the negotiating table? Israel has the initiative: it should exercise it...As American officials privately acknowledge, sooner or later Israel (or someone) will have to talk to Hamas. From French Algeria through South Africa to the Provisional I.R.A., the story repeats itself: the dominant power denies the legitimacy of the “terrorists,” thereby strengthening their hand; then it secretly negotiates with them; finally, it concedes power, independence or a place at the table. Israel will negotiate with Hamas: the only question is why not now."
ISRAEL'S ADVERSARIES HOPELESSLY DIVIDED: "Israel’s regional enemies are so profoundly divided among themselves and have such divergent relations with Israel that an effective coalition against Israel does not exist — and is unlikely to arise in the near future... Israel’s Arab neighbors are incapable of forming even a partial coalition against Israel... the Arab countries no longer have a military force that can challenge the Israelis, nor the will nor interest to acquire one....(Terrorist threats and bombings) are real, but...do not threaten the survival of Israel.
IN THE LONG RUN, TURKEY, EGYPT, SYRIA COULD BAND TOGETHER AND THREATEN ISRAEL: "A hostile Turkey aligned with Egypt could speed Egyptian military recovery and create a significant threat to Israel. Turkish sponsorship of Syrian military expansion would increase the pressure further. Imagine a world in which the Egyptians, Syrians and Turks formed a coalition that revived the Arab threat to Israel and the United States returned to its position of the 1950s when it did not materially support Israel, and it becomes clear that Turkey’s emerging power combined with a political shift in the Arab world could represent a profound danger to Israel...Therefore, defusing the current crisis would seem to be a long-term strategic necessity for Israel." -- Analyst George Friedman, STRATFOR. TERRORISM CAN WORK: "In the early 1940s, while Britain was at war with Nazi Germany, Menachem Begin, the leader of Irgun, and Yitzhak Shamir, the leader of Lehi, waged terrorist campaigns against the British in Palestine. In 1945, they were joined by the larger Haganah. Ninety-one people were killed when Irgun operatives blew up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. Such atrocities played a leading role in persuading the British they could not continue to exercise a mandate in Palestine. They withdrew in 1948, leaving the Palestinian Arabs to face the much better-armed and organised Jews. In the war that followed, Rogan says the "image of a Jewish David surrounded by a hostile Arab Goliath is not reflected in the relative size of Arab and Jewish forces." -- Robert Irwin, The Guardian.
EGYPTOn this trip to Egypt, the beggars were the one who gave (CSM)
Pyramids and Cairo, Egypt, 95 Years Later (Videos of Egypt)
In 1914, my grandmother and her sister made a pilgrimage to the pyramids. Ninety-five years later, her grandson and great-grandsons made the same journey. I was thinking about how the pyramids have changed in that time. When she visited, the pyramids were in a remote desert. Now they are smack dab in the largest city in Africa, Cairo, and the area around the pyramids has become highly commercial -- with even a KFC nearby. Her experience was probably more evocative of ancient times than ours was, with all the aggressive vendors hassling us. Still,we were seeing one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, the only one to survive until modern times. We were in the vicinity of the oldest buildings on the planet, constructed 4500 years ago!
IRAN
Islamic Reformation in Iran? |
A Nation of Bloggers, But What's Real? Follow Information Like a CIA Analyst
IRAQ
There is fledgling democracy in Iraq. Fareed ZaKaria in Newsweek noted that George W. Bush's reputation could be redeemed if Iraq turns out far better than predicted.
Finally, An End in Sight to the War in Iraq. Eloquent Speech By Obama
Has the U.S. Won the War in Iraq?
Those Who Do Not Remember History Are Condemned to Repeat It
King Faisal, who was imposed by the British as king of an artificial nation – Iraq, in 1921 – wrote of his unloved and unloving subjects: "There is still – and I say this with a heart full of sorrow – no Iraqi people, but unimaginable masses of human beings devoid of any patriotic idea, imbued with religious traditions and absurdities, connected by no common tie, giving ear to evil, prone to anarchy, and perpetually ready to rise against any government whatsoever."
It's as if it were Iraqi President Maliki writing to Americans in 2010.
In 1918, the British who took over from the defeated Ottomans in Iraq promised a national government and self-determination, before imposing by force of arms a British mandate on the hostile Arabs and Kurds. The French behaved with even greater colonial arrogance and brutality in Morocco, Algeria and Syria. -- Robert Irwin, The Guardian.
To treat PTSD, VIRTUAL IRAQ (Details here)
Was Iraq War Worth It After All?|
What Hath Bush Wrought in Iraq? A Peek in the Crystal Ball|
What Are the Lessons of Iraq? |
Arabs View Iraqi Freedom as Imperial Sham; Lebanon Is True Model of Freedom for Arabs |
Senator Bob Graham Presented Clear Evidence of How Intelligence on Iraq was Cooked Into Propaganda |
President Clinton Hopes American Experience in Iraq Will Echo British Success in Malaysia |
A Question for Iraq War Supporters and Opponents.... |
No Parallel in Iraqi History to Reconstruction of Germany, Japan|
'Saddam had intent but no capabilities'|Bush Exaggerated Saddam's Threat, CIA Report Asserts|Bush's Key Advisors Spent Decade Pressing for Saddam's Ouster
ISRAEL
Watch CBS Videos Online
Israel's apartheid against Palestinians (60 Minutes) (above).
Palestinian Homeland Closer to Reality (Discussion of the Palestinian Question)
What You Don't Know About Gaza (NYT), by Rashid Khalidi, a professor of Arab studies at Columbia University.
Fighting to Preserve a Myth, by Gideon Lichfield, a correspondent for The Economist, and the magazine’s Jerusalem bureau chief from 2005 to 2008.
In U.S. Media Coverage and Political Positioning on Middle East, Is There Only One Side?
JORDAN
TURKEYUS-TURKEY RELATIONS
FLOTILLA DEBATE
What It Says About Current Israeli Government, by David Shulman, New York Review of Books: "The very nature and future of Israel’s society and political system are at stake, and the danger of collapse into a repressive regime run by the secret security forces is very great. Many of us would say that the line was crossed long ago. It is important to understand the depth of the change that Israel has undergone since the present government came to power in the spring of 2009. Netanyahu heads a government composed largely of settlers and their hard-core supporters on the right. Their policy toward Palestine and Palestinians rests upon two foundations: first, the prolongation, indeed, further entrenchment of the occupation, with the primary aim of absorbing more and more Palestinian land into Israel—a process we see advancing literally hour by hour and day by day in the West Bank. Second, there is the attempt to control the Palestinian civilian population by forcing them into fenced-off and discontinuous enclaves...The very idea of peace based on mutuality, compromise, and at least minimal respect for the dignity of the other side is anathema to the men and women in the Cabinet who are making the decisions."
Hope for Peace in Israel? by David Shulman, New York Review of Books: "Some ten thousand Israelis have demonstrated in Tel Aviv against the siege of Gaza...Small groups of Israeli settlers in the territories who have come to the conclusion that the current situation cannot endure, and that new modes of coexistence are called for....Moshe Arens, former minister of defense in three Likud governments and a prominent spokesman for the right (in my view, the extreme right), published a column in Haaretz arguing that an Israeli retreat from the West Bank and the evacuation of settlements are inconceivable;...the Palestinian population on the West Bank—some 1.5 million by his count, probably a little low—should be granted Israeli citizenship and integrated into the Israeli state....By far the best solution to the problem of Hamas rule in Gaza would be to cut a deal with the moderate, responsible, and by now increasingly effective Palestinian leadership in Ramallah. Such an agreement, built on Israeli withdrawal to the Green Line and the evacuation of the settlements, would put an end to the overtly colonial enterprise on the West Bank, which is incompatible with basic democratic values and human rights. All careful studies show that a large majority of Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza would support such an agreement, which would in all probability undermine Hamas’s attempts to retain power in Gaza or to expand its power to the West Bank. Instead, the Israeli right prefers to indulge in displays of impotent and self-righteous fury, as happened on the Mavi Marmara.
FLOTILLA'S LESSONS FOR MIDEAST PEACE ADVOCATES , by Jeremy Ben-Ami, president and founder of J Street and a former deputy domestic policy advisor to President Bill Clinton, based on conversations with Ami Ayalon, former Commander of the Israeli Navy and Shin Bet (Israel's internal security service). Sykes was also obsessed with fear of Jews, Fromkin writes, "whose web of dangerous international intrigue he discerned in many an obscure corner." Not the least of these was the sadly mistaken view that the Young Turks party were governed by Jews, when in fact none were privy to their inner circle. This pathetic distortion of reality was informed by oriental affairs interpreter Gerald FitzMaurice, and shared by Gilbert Clayton, an adviser to Lord Kitchener. Like too many other British misconceptions about the Middle East, it was never investigated or much less corrected... John P. Jones review: Fromkin lays much of the blame for the misunderstandings between the West and the Middle East on Kitchener. In a description true of individuals today, he said of Kitchener: "The peculiarities of his character, the deficiencies of his understanding of the Moslem world, the misinformation regularly supplied to him by his lieutenants...... and his choice of Arab politicians...." The book is replete with other ironies, such as a footnoted exchange:"... on the Arab question, shows Lord Kitchener asking, "Wahabism, does that still exist?" and Sykes answering, "I think it is a dying fire." Robert Steele review: The author sums up the roots of the Middle Eastern troubles as being directly on the heads of the English in particular, who lied, cheated, and stole without mercy. He says of Loyd George: "His political deviousness and his moral and financial laxness were never forgotten." Soren Swigart review: The system of states as we know it in the Middle East was created by Europeans around 1922 as a way to extend their empires, to carve up the fallen Ottoman Empire and establish dominance as they had done with other countries after previous wars. The process of Middle Eastern statehood is a story involving Britain, France, Russia, Greece, and on the fringes, America. The road is littered with misinformation and lies on all sides; disasterous and stupid assumptions and unwarrented mistakes, egos, and naked imperialism. Given the lack of interest of Turkey in continuing to ride herd of this region, a thankless task but one she carried off pretty well, all things considered,its hard to see how letting the Arabs settled their own affairs by force would not have been preferable to the setting up of the phony nations that make up the middle east today. So who are the bad guys in this story? Well there's plenty to go around but three stand out - Hussein bin Ali, the self proclaimed "king of all Arabs" an inverterate conniver and liar, the egotistical and greedy French and the lying double dealing and even more greedy British. Of the three the British have the most to answer for yet somehow they have escaped almost any blame in the public consciousness. The war the Americans are fighting now in Iraq, regardless of how you think we got there, is a war to make right what the British, more than any other single party, broke long ago. Garrett Wilson review: Points I found particularly interesting: Zach Ajmal review: Now there is an interesting topic for 'What if'...: "David Ben-Gurion and Itzhak Ben Zvi […] offered to organize a Palestinian Jewish army in 1914 to defend Ottoman Palestine. But, instead of accepting their offer, Djemal deported them and other Zionist leaders in 1915. Ben-Gurion and Ben Zvi went to the United States, where they continued to campaign for the creation of a pro-Ottoman Jewish army. But early in 1918 they rallied to a Jewish army formation that was to fight in Palestine on the British side against the Ottoman Empire. Nothing the wartime Ottoman government had done had given them cause to remain pro-Turk." Eric Brahm review: "Due to continually changing perceptions of global politics and domestic political coalitions, ultimately, "British policy-makers imposed a settlement upon the Middle East in 1922 in which, for the most part, they themselves no longer believed." (563) The consequence of these events, as subsequent history bears out, has been that the borders and the governments created would be in dispute with global consequences."
If the "Great Powers" after the First World War had sought to create conflict in the Middle East that would last a century or more, they couldn't have done a better job than they did. In "A Peace to End All Peace," historian David Fromkin, a professor at Boston University, shows how contemporary hostilities between Arabs and Israelis stem from the political inheritance imposed upon the region by the Allies, or colonial powers after WWI as they anticipated the breakup of the Ottoman Empire. They drew lines on an empty map that eventually became the new countries of Iraq, Israel, Jordan and Lebanon.
In the formative years of 1914 to 1922, everything -- even an alliance between Arab nationalists and Zionism -- seemed possible. But "diplomatic double-dealing, military incompetence, and political upheaval" turned the Middle East into the mess it is today.
Alyssa A. Lappen review: One major culprit can only be described as legendary British stumbling throughout World War I. At the core of Britain's Middle Eastern advisers was a group of bigoted, bumbling idiots, who could not see past the end of their noses. Sir Mark Sykes, for example, described many groups whose destiny he influenced with disgusting pejorative. Town Arabs, he described as "cowardly," "insolent yet dispicable [sic]" and "vicious as far as their feeble bodies will admit." Bedouin Arabs he called "rapacious, greedy...animals."
