Increasingly, Hamas is gaining Acceptance in the Arab World

Posted on March 9, 2011 by jonathanspyer

09/09/2008

A series of recent developments point to Hamas’s increasingly solid position in the Palestinian and broader Arab political constellations. This process is of significance both for Arab politics itself, and for the likely direction of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the coming period.

In the past week, it was announced that Jordan’s Intelligence Department, led by Gen. Muhammad Dahabi, has opened a dialogue with Hamas. The renewal of contacts between Amman and Hamas reverses a decade of Jordanian policy since the Hamas leadership were expelled from Jordan in 1999.

The fraught nature of Jordan’s relations with Hamas was compounded in April 2006 with the arrest of 20 men suspected of being Hamas operatives. Three of the detainees were charged with maintaining a Hamas cell that surveyed Israeli targets in the kingdom in order to carry out terror attacks. The three were convicted two months ago.

Analysts are assuming that Amman is hoping to secure guarantees from Hamas against the movement’s planning further operations against Israel from Jordanian soil. Jordan is also understood to fear the possible ramifications for its internal affairs of Hamas’s election victory in January 2006 and its subsequent consolidation of power. In this regard, it should be noted that the main Jordanian opposition movement – the Islamic Action Front – is Hamas’s sister Muslim Brotherhood front organization east of the Jordan River. The Front is regarded as the most popular political movement in Jordan, and it is currently led by an individual with close ties to Hamas – Sheikh Zaki Bani Irsheid.

For Hamas, of course, the Jordanian move is welcome toward dialogue, since it seems to represent the gradual acceptance by the Arab political mainstream of its growing power among the Palestinians. This acceptance derives not from ideological factors or sentiment: pragmatic, pro-Western, monarchical Jordan and Islamist Hamas with its links to Iran could not be more natural adversaries. Rather, the move points to a de facto acceptance of the fact that Hamas’s rivals in the Palestinian camp are too weak to dislodge it, and that no one else seems keen to take on this task.

In Gaza, Hamas has created a functioning Sunni Islamist enclave. Recent moves to ban Ramallah-produced Fatah literature and to round up remaining mid-level Fatah activists were further confirmation of this. The movement is also quietly maintaining its strength in the West Bank. This is despite attempts by Mahmoud Abbas’s forces to hit at Hamas’s extensive social welfare structure – the basis of its long-term support. Should a large number of Hamas political prisoners be freed in a deal for the release of St.-Sgt. Gilad Schalit, this is expected to further contribute to Hamas attempts to maintain and build its position in the West Bank.

Gaza, though armed to the teeth, is poverty stricken, and Hamas functionaries are proving by no means immune to corruption and nepotism. The situation in the Strip is hardly a shining advertisement for Palestinian Islamism. But in the simple, zero sum terms of Middle East power-brokering, there is no force currently both willing and able to deprive the movement of power. Jordan is therefore adjusting to accommodate to the facts on the ground.

The Jordanian move is reflected elsewhere. Egypt’s decision to open the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Sinai over the weekend – ostensibly as a goodwill gesture in the approach to Ramadan – may also be seen as an acknowledgment by Cairo that Hamas’s de facto power is not about to disappear.

The reverse side of Jordanian and Egyptian adjustment to new realities on the ground is the sense of the continued decline into irrelevance of Fatah and the West Bank Palestinian Authority. The Jordanians, from up close, observe the failure of the PA leadership to carry through on its promises to isolate Hamas in the West Bank. They observe with dismay the continued disarray, disunity and lack of direction within Fatah. From this point of view, the desire of the US administration and the Olmert government in their final months to attempt to reach an agreement of some kind with the Abbas administration seems detached from reality.

The cautious engagement of Jordan and Egypt with Hamas is of a piece with broader current developments in the neighborhood. The arrival of President Nicolas Sarkozy of France in Syria this week to formalize renewed ties between Paris and Damascus after three years of tension may be seen as part of the same process. There are even rumors going around that Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit met with Hizbullah representatives during a recent visit to Beirut.

From Israel’s point of view, these events signal the growing power of elements hostile to it to the north, south and east. However, they also signal an acknowledgment by regional powers of the stark realities on the ground – in contrast to the dance of the “peace process” still being performed by fading administrations in Washington, Jerusalem and Ramallah.

The old view of a closed Israeli-Palestinian system west of the Jordan is fading. Rather, Israel, Jordan and Egypt, each in their own way, are grappling with the shared reality of well-entrenched, hostile Islamist forces in their midst. Developing a coherent policy response to this reality will be a pressing task awaiting the new US and Israeli administrations expected to assume power in the first part of next year.

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No Change

Posted on March 8, 2011 by jonathanspyer

01/02/2008

The response of Israeli officials to the latest events in Gaza may in essence be divided into two halves. The initial response was one of frustration at Egyptian unwillingness to restore order on the international border. The subsequent sense is that the latest Gaza events have served to clarify, rather than significantly alter, an already existing reality.

As the news began to come in of the destruction of the southern border wall separating Gaza from Egypt, Israeli and western officials demanded that Egypt take steps to re-assert its control. And as the exodus of Gazans began, there was widespread anger at Egypt for its failure to speedily impose its authority.

This failure was seen as of a piece with the generality of Egyptian behavior since Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza in September, 2005. In November 2005, Israel, under US pressure, handed over control of the Philadelphi corridor to Egypt, which was to administer the area, in cooperation with the Palestinian Authority, and observed by an EU monitoring force. Events since this point are well known. Hamas won PA elections in January, 2006, and completed its seizure of power with a coup in June, 2007. This led to the departure of EU monitors from the border, and its sealing by Egypt.

Throughout this period, it has been a constant complaint on Israel’s part that the Egyptians have reacted half-halfheartedly and unwillingly to the ongoing Hamas project of smuggling large quantities of weaponry into Gaza. The initial response to the chaotic scenes on the border reflected this.

The Israeli security forces were subsequently placed on increased alert along Israel’s southern border. Israeli tourists were advised to return home from Sinai. There was fear that in the absence of any control, terrorist organizations would find it easy to exit Gaza, and prepare attacks on Israeli border communities.

As the days progressed, however, a new type of Israeli response began to manifest itself. The growing sense was that the latest Hamas action changed little of substance, but confirmed an already existing – if ultimately untenable – situation: since June 2007, Hamas-run Gaza has constituted a de facto hostile entity, administered by an organization committed to Israel’s destruction.

Ineffectual Egyptian administration of the southern border has led to a large scale influx of weaponry into the Strip. The Hamas-led entity has sought to engage Israel in a roiling, ongoing war of attrition through the use of rocket attacks and support for acts of terror launched from Gaza.

For the moment, at least, it appears that the border is now to be administered through a joint effort by Hamas and the Egyptian security forces. Hamas will thus be engaged in partial control of an international frontier. But whatever the final arrangement, Israel will continue to demand that Egypt adequately police the crossings, and Egypt will continue to fail to do so. Hamas efforts to bring in weaponry will also continue, and its support for Qassam rocket attacks on western Negev communities will remain.

This process makes a major Israeli operation into Gaza, at some point in the future, a near inevitability.

Of course, the curious situation remains whereby Hamas-controlled Gaza still receives the greater part of its fuel and electricity supplies from the state to whose destruction it is committed. And the Israeli High Court today ruled that even the partial restrictions imposed on fuel supplies must now be lifted. But should Qassam rocket attacks begin again in earnest, Israel has made clear that the borders between itself and Hamas-run Gaza will be re-sealed, with only those provisions necessary to prevent a humanitarian crisis allowed to enter.

The situation between the state of Israel and the Islamist statelet of Gaza is by definition one of conflict. In the event of a major Hamas terror attack within Israel, it is likely to turn into open war, on the model of Operation Defensive Shield in 2002. Gaza is ruled by an organization committed to destroying Israel, and replacing it with a state based on Sharia Law. This was the case before Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008. It is the case after it. The events of the last days, from the Israeli point of view, have served largely to illustrate and reinforce this reality.

The final question is just how the continued existence of the Islamist statelet in Gaza can be reconciled with the hopes of the renewed peace process in which we were asked to believe following the Annapolis Conference. Peace processors of all nationalities – Israeli, Palestinian and western – have yet to offer a coherent answer. The anomalous situation in Gaza thus looks set to continue, until its contradictions play themselves out.

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Syrian Games Without Frontiers

Posted on March 8, 2011 by jonathanspyer

16/01/2008

The ongoing impasse over the appointment of the next Lebanese president, after Emil Lahoud stepped down on November 24, is the product of Syrian machinations and interference in Lebanese politics. The agreement reached on Sunday in Cairo may finally ensure the appointment of General Michel Suleiman as president, but it is unlikely to bring the crisis in Lebanon to an end. The nature and extent of Syrian involvement can only be understood in the context of the larger, region-wide rivalry between US-led and Iranian-led blocs that is shaping and defining the politics of the region.

Tiny Lebanon is one of a series of theaters in which the complex games of this rivalry – some call it a new Middle East cold war – are being played out. The overarching choice now facing the west in Lebanon is between accepting Syria’s right to foment political instability in its neighbor, and adopting vigorous counter-measures.

Syria had been expected to regard the proposed appointment of Suleiman to the Lebanese presidency as a significant achievement for its own cause. Suleiman was appointed to his position during the period of Syrian occupation of Lebanon, and is well known to the regime. Instead, the Assad regime in Damascus supported additional opposition demands for prior agreement on the structure of a government of national unity that would guarantee a third of cabinet seats to the opposition. This would give Hizbullah veto power over the governmental decision-making process. In addition, the opposition demanded a government commitment to electoral reform, and agreement on Suleiman’s successor as head of the army. Granting such demands would represent unconditional surrender on the part of the Lebanese government.

Syria has thus been pushing either for the granting of Hizbullah veto power over the Lebanese government, or for a continuation of the standoff, in which no effective central government is permitted to exist in Beirut at all. The apparent acceptance by Syria in Cairo on Sunday of a proposed compromise to settle the issue should be treated with caution. Hizbullah is known to be unhappy with the proposed Arab League plan, and may well work to torpedo it (very possibly under Syrian direction).

Underlying Syria’s stance is Damascus’s determination to prevent the emergence of the international tribunal to investigate the murder of former Lebanese prime minister, Rafiq al-Hariri. For this to be achieved, a Hizbullah-led government, or continued political stalemate, and/or general chaos will do. In support of the latter goal, Syria is the likely force behind the mysterious assassinations of a string of prominent pro-government figures in the last 18 months. The latest to die was Brigadier-General Francois al-Haj, a staunch opponent of Syrian interference in Lebanon, who had been tipped to succeed Suleiman as chief of staff.

The boldness of this strategy evidently derives from the Assad regime’s assumption that no serious response from the western and regional backers of the March 14 government is likely. There is, unfortunately, a considerable body of evidence to support this assumption.

The recent harsh criticism of Syria by Presidents Bush and Sarkozy notwithstanding, there is as yet no evidence of a major change of direction in western thinking regarding Damascus. The dominant view of Syria in western capitals is that since Damascus has invested heavily in supporting organizations fomenting instability, it must be offered incentives to induce it to abandon this investment. Thus, EU aid and technical assistance to Damascus have continued regardless of Syrian machinations in Lebanon. And the wooing of the Assad regime by parts of the US establishment is also ongoing – see Annapolis and the recent visit to the Syrian capital by senator Arlen Specter.

It would be difficult to exaggerate the depth of the political fissure that divides Lebanon. To take the two-hour drive from downtown Beirut to the border villages of the Shia south is to pass from one political universe into another. Two societies based on quite irreconcilable principles currently exist in the country. The first is a place of enormous entrepreneurial energy and verve. It is not immune to the political pathologies of the region, but ultimately, the triumph of the Cedar revolution in 2005 still represents perhaps the only unambiguous success for the project of spreading something resembling liberty to the Arabic-speaking world. The second is a closed, Islamist society, whose icons – displayed everywhere in the south – are Ayatollahs Khomeini and Khamenei, amid endless reproductions of the visages of Hizbullah fighters killed in the 2006 war with Israel.

Since Hizbullah began its push for power in November 2006, Lebanese society has been in a state of high tension, looking into the abyss of civil war between these two very different political cultures. Syria’s overt and covert promotion and support for the zero-sum demands of the opposition makes renewed violence more likely. If Lebanon falls off the knife-edge and renewed civil strife takes place, the result will be uncertain, but the process will be without doubt disastrous. The Saudis – backers of March 14 – are understood to be furious at the regional role being played by Syria. Druze leader Walid Jumblatt has rejected in the starkest terms the Hizbullah demand for veto power. Lebanon will not be handed to the Iran-Syria alliance without a fight.

There are no easy solutions. But appeasement of Syrian – and Iranian – machinations in Lebanon has produced the current situation. The EU and the US possess a wide array of options – economic and diplomatic – to put real pressure on Damascus to back off from its very dangerous stirring of the pot in Lebanon. It is time for these options to be used.

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The Dynamics of Revival

Posted on March 8, 2011 by jonathanspyer

Haaretz-24/08/2007

In a recent article in the British Guardian newspaper, Ed Husain, a former member of the radical Islamist Hizb ut Tahrir organization [which aims to bring about a worldwide Muslim state], sought to draw a parallel between Zionism and radical Islam. The movements were, Husain claimed, “both political perversions of ancient Abrahamic faiths of Judaism and Islam.” Husain’s simplistic claim was made possible by his near-total lack of knowledge of Zionism, the issue of Jewish peoplehood, the vexed issue of secular and religious Jewish identity, and so on. However, the claim is an interesting one, and closer observation of it offers clues as to the dynamics governing the current clash between Israel and radical Islamism, and the likely outcome of the contest.

Both Zionism and radical Islam are, self-consciously, movements of “revival.” They have the following aspect in common, which underlies the tremendous strength of the loyalties to which both have been able to inspire in their followers: They have been able to reach back to motifs, stories and beliefs preceding modernity, which were at the core of the identities of the people to whom they wished to appeal. Here lies the difference between these two movements and, for example, the communism and radical socialism of the 20th century on the other. The latter two preached a radical break with the past, and celebrated an unfamiliar, imagined future. Zionism and Islamism, by contrast, both draw on the deep currents of identification and loyalty felt by Jews and Muslims to their respective traditions and history.

The result of this deeper anchoring are plain to see: The movements of secular utopia produced by modernity have largely been eclipsed and disappeared. Movements of “revival,” meanwhile, have proven one of the most durable and powerful form of political gathering of the last two centuries. They are able to enlist much of what is most dear to human beings for their purpose: cultural memory, personal identity, the magic of myth, the notion of “renewing the days of old.”

Of course, it is not only Zionism and Islamism which are able, each in their respective contexts, to draw on these powerful sources. To a greater or lesser degree, all modern nationalist movements do the same. Sunni Islamism, at least in the Middle East, functions as a kind of religious nationalism, made more powerful than its secular Arab nationalist counterpart by its ability to unambiguously draw upon the markers of loyalty of a traditional, conservative and religious society.

This mobilizing ability of ancient traditions and stories is empirically irrefutable. It is also ethically neutral. It includes Winston Churchill in 1940, mining the symbols and markers of a shared sense of Englishness, to mobilize his countrymen to sacrifice in order to oppose the most evil tyranny known to history. But it also includes the Hitler tyranny itself, which knew no less well how to draw on German dreams, grievances and loyalties for a very different project. Revivalism can be the carrier of many things.

In the case of Zionism and Israel, the singular achievement, underlying success, has been the ability to combine the archaic with the ultra-modern. The Zionist movement, and the State of Israel which it established have been able to fuse the immense mobilizing power of Jewish identity, with the mechanics of modern, democratic statehood and a free economy. Radical Islam, of both Sunni and Shi’ite varieties, on the other hand, has at least for the moment proven unable to perform a similar feat. Rather, this trend, which is in itself largely a response to the failure of earlier, secular forms of political organization to deliver economic and social progress, shows no signs of being able to be the vehicle for such development.

As a revival movement, it has the ability to tap into deep-seated loyalties, and to produce large numbers of young men willing to offer their lives. But if the evidence of Islamism in power – from Sudan to Teheran to Gaza – is anything to go by, the closed dogmatic thinking of the Islamists cannot allow the freedom upon which successful development depends. The Islamic republic of Iran is the longest-living experiment in radical Islam with sovereignty now in existence. Yet for all the murderous rhetoric and chilling ambition of the Iranian regime, it should not be forgotten that the mullahs preside over a rickety, corruption-riven, dysfunctional state, and rule largely because of their ability to inspire (well-justified) fear in their own population. Regarding other experiments in Islamist rule, in Gaza, in Sudan, the case is yet clearer.

From the point of view of Israel and its western allies, this of course bodes well. We are going to have to spend a very great amount of time and blood and treasure in the foreseeable future building ramparts against the attacks of adherents of Islamic revival. But for as long as Jewish nationhood is embedded in the solid structures of economic and technological development, while its Islamist enemies can root their own ambitions only in dysfunction and failure, the results of the contest, bloody though it be, are not in doubt.

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An Empty Package

Posted on March 8, 2011 by jonathanspyer

30/05/2008

At this past Sunday’s cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert issued a public statement relating to the revived negotiations with Syria. The talks, the prime minister wished to assure us, were “serious” and would be conducted with “all due caution.” All the ingredients familiar from peace processes past were present in Olmert’s statement: the gravitas; the quiet sense that history is presenting us with a chance that must not be missed; the necessary discretion. However, in the manner now familiar from Olmert’s tenure as prime minister, what we were presented with was the form of something, without its content.

The revelation of negotiations with Syria last week came wrapped in the packaging of a diplomatic breakthrough. But it was nothing of the kind. The basic flaw relates not to Israeli domestic politics (though this may certainly be a factor). The reason why the current negotiations are almost certain to lead nowhere relates to the Syrian regime, and to its perception of its own interests. Syria should not be expected to break with Iran, for the following, central reason: The Iranians and their friends are winning. The Iran-led bloc can look around the region today, and feel a quiet sense of satisfaction. In all the various areas in which it is engaged in its long war with the West, Iran is gaining ground.

Hamas, hosted by Syria and increasingly sponsored and trained by Iran, is holding on in Gaza. In doing so, the Hamas enclave there offers living proof of the muqawama (resistance) doctrine to which the Iranian-led bloc adheres. According to this doctrine, Iran and its clients can paralyze their enemies’ decision-making ability, by making the cost of a preferred action too high. Israel knows that it ought to conduct a large-scale military operation in Gaza, in order to remove a regime that makes any peace process with the Palestinians an impossibility. But Israel doesn’t act, because of the cost in lives that such an operation would entail. For Iran and its allies, this confirms a basic dictum: namely, that the shiny outward appearance of Western and Israeli strength conceals an inner weakness – a lack of will.

Iran and its clients have just scored an additional major victory in Lebanon. This, similarly, was gained by raw intimidation. The result was that in Doha last week, Hezbollah gained the key demand for which it has been campaigning over the previous 18 months: veto power in a new cabinet.

This is of direct relevance to the Syrians. The Assad regime’s interests have been aptly described as regime survival, returning to a position of influence in Lebanon and regaining the Golan Heights – in that order. If Assad is currently interested in talking, it’s because he genuinely would like to gain the third item on this list – but not if it has implications for the other two items, which are more important. If quitting the Iran-led bloc is the price, it has direct relevance to both the stability of the regime and the Lebanese question.

Hezbollah’s new strength in Beirut will enable it to block and perhaps kill the tribunal investigating the murder of former prime minister Rafik Hariri. The tribunal has been one of the chief fears of the Assad regime since the assassination, in February 2005. More fundamentally, the rise of Hezbollah to the status of arbiter of power in Lebanon represents a very significant and clear gain for the Iran-led bloc in what has been one of the key arenas of its contest with the United States and its regional allies.

Now, if Syria were to depart the Iran-led bloc, its place in all of this would evaporate: no more blocking of the Hariri tribunal, because there would be no more backing of Hezbollah. No return to Lebanon – with its many economic opportunities – because its new American friends will want to respect Lebanese sovereignty. No more influence over the Palestinians through the support of Hamas. Instead, the Assad regime would gain the basalt plateau of the Golan Heights – the absence of which causes it no tangible discomfort – and would in return become a vulnerable, minority-led dictatorship with no immediately obvious justification for its own existence.

Why would the Syrians go for such a deal? Why would they leave the tutelage of a power that appears to be successfully defying the West over its nuclear program, and whose allies are managing to hold up well across the region? The answer is that they wouldn’t, which is why the process is packaging without substance.

Indeed, the very desire of Israel at the present time to break with American attempts to isolate Syria offers further proof that defiance works. Who is splitting whose alliance in this process, exactly?

The bottom line is that peace will become a possibility in the region only when the pro-Iranian alliance is challenged and faced down. The attempt to decouple elements of it at the moment of its ascent is worse than useless. It conveys confusion, disunity and hesitancy at a time when the precise opposites of all of these are urgently needed.

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Day Jobs for Terrorists

Posted on March 8, 2011 by jonathanspyer

05/12/2007

For Israelis the United Nations is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, they are fully aware of the anti-Israel sentiment that the United Nations perpetuates, but on the other hand they want to be part of it and to have their voices heard. This stance is understandable. But it produces positions which sometimes directly contradict Israel’s clear interest.

Observe: During a recent conference titled, “Hijacking Human Rights: The Demonization of Israel by the United Nations,” Daniel Carmon, Israel’s deputy permanent representative at the United Nations stated that “We [Israel] encounter hypocrisy and cynicism on the one hand, and we are all witness to that when we walk into the building, but we are also trying with relative success to identify how, within the existing mandate, [to find] parallel paths of working with the world body.” Reflecting this problematic and paradoxical Israeli stance, Mr. Carmon urged the approximately 200 conference participants to state that UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees in the Near East) was “doing a good job” providing humanitarian assistance to Palestinians in the Palestinian territories.

The matter of UNRWA perhaps above all others illustrates the difficulty of the Israeli position on the United Nations. Israeli officials well tell you that if UNRWA does not take care of Palestinian needs then these will become Israel’s responsibility. And despite UNRWA’s well-documented terrorist ties, Israel prefers not to bear this burden.

This position produces a situation in which Israel itself ends up forming one of the factors blocking the way to the dismantling of UNRWA. UNRWA, in turn, is a central factor blocking a solution to the Palestinian refugee issue — which is one of the central factors preventing the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Understanding the way that UNRWA helps perpetuate the Palestinian refugee problem requires taking a closer look at the way that the agency functions. Doing so reveals the workings of a dysfunctional bureaucracy.

While Palestinian refugees benefit materially from UNRWA, the agency benefits in return from the refugees. The refugees are the organization’s raison d’etre. And bureaucracies tend to dislike dissolving themselves. So, like any good bureaucracy, UNRWA has zero incentive to resolve the Palestinian refugee problem if it is to continue to exist. Ending the refugee problem would render UNRWA obsolete.

Instead, UNRWA finds a hundred and one ways to perpetuate Palestinian dependency. The interests of the refugees and UNRWA are fatally intertwined; UNRWA is staffed mainly by local Palestinians — more than 23,000 of them — with only about 100 international United Nations professionals. Tellingly, while the U.N. High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) and UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund) avoid employing locals who are also recipients of agency services, UNRWA does not make this distinction. Terrorism does not exclude one from being a part of UNRWA. In fact, quite the opposite is true: UNRWA-overseen hospitals and clinics routinely employ members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Employing Palestinians for decade after decade and providing them with subsistence-level food aid and rudimentary education are a far cry from giving them usable skills and a positive attitude about creating their own independent economy and viable civic institutions.

In addition, the Palestinian agenda (and sympathy for the Palestinian cause) have infiltrated every aperture at Turtle Bay. UNWRA has spent decades keeping this single issue, key to the organization’s survival, at the forefront of the U.N. agenda whether it belongs there or not. It has engendered Arab and Western support for the delegitimization of Israel, and facilitated comparisons between Nazism and Zionism — a false linkage that bolsters Palestinian claims of oppression. When former Secretary-General Kofi Annan appeared at a U.N. “Palestine Day” event which astonishingly featured a map of the Middle East that conspicuously omitted Israel, it was emblematic of the way in which the United Nations has transformed itself into a propaganda machine for such thinking. UNRWA has no parallel in the U.N. system. UNRWA is dedicated solely to providing assistance to Palestinian refugees; no other group of refugees, whatever their circumstances, warrants this much attention.

As we look toward the future of Israeli-Palestinian relations, the United Nations as a member of the Quartet has a special obligation to uphold the commitment outlined in the 2003 “road map” for Israeli-Palestinian peace to dismantle terrorist capabilities and infrastructure. In an effort to insulate good works from terrorist infiltration and exploitation, Washington should stand ready to help the United Nations live up to this obligation by funding an “Office of Competent Standards” for UNRWA and similar agencies.

It’s also in the interest of Israel to support such an initiative. As it stands, the self-perpetuating bureaucracy of UNRWA is one of the central factors offering day jobs to members of terror groups, propping up Palestinian dependency and perpetuating the myths and falsehoods about Israel which help prevent a solution to the conflict.

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Guns before Butter

Posted on March 8, 2011 by jonathanspyer

The Guardian- 21/06/2006

In the last few days, the Quartet have finalized the details for the new emergency aid mechanism to the Palestinian territories. According to its remit, the mechanism is to provide “needs-based assistance directly to the Palestinian people, including essential equipment, supplies and support for health services, support for the uninterrupted supply of fuel and utilities, and basic needs allowances to poor Palestinians.”

If the mechanism manages to alleviate hardships suffered by innocent Palestinians–as a result, of course, of their government’s refusal to accept Israel’s right to exist, commit to existing agreements and so on–then it is surely to be welcomed. One can’t help noticing, however, that the introduction of the aid mechanism creates a strange, two-tier structure of financing for the Palestinian authority (PA). According to this structure, the international community will agree to pick up the tab on mundane daily matters. This, in turn, will leave the elected Islamist rulers of the authority free to pursue matters that they find of greater interest. They will be in the enviable situation among governing authorities of being free to pursue higher, historic tasks, safe in the knowledge that someone else–in this case the generous taxpayer of Europe and North America–has taken on the job of preventing famine and societal collapse in the areas under their control.

What, then, are the other interests which the Hamas rulers of the PA are likely to use their increased leisure time to engage in? Well, recent events offer a series of clues. On May 19, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu-Zahri was apprehended at the Rafah Crossing by PA security forces, while trying to smuggle in between 650-900,000 euros in cash. Abu-Zahri, one of the senior Hamas leaders in Gaza, at first refused to leave without the cash, and a tense stand-off ensued between PA (Fatah-controlled) security forces and Hamas gunmen at the scene. Abu-Zahri’s indiscretion was only the first of a number to have come to light. Thus, on June 15, the PA foreign minister, Mahmoud al-Zahar, was caught trying to smuggle in the sum of $20m in cash, in 12 separate suitcases.

Now if these were two occasions when the intrepid smugglers were caught, there were probably other occasions when they or their colleagues were not. Israel considers that the smuggling tunnels between Gaza and Egypt, a favored route for bringing in weapons to the Strip, are also being used to bring in cash.

But since Hamas dominates the elected government of the PA, why, then, is there a need to smuggle these funds past the PA’s own security forces? Why, in fact, was the PA foreign minister, al-Zahar, trying to bring money past security guards who, at least nominally, are under his own command?

There’s a simple answer. It’s the two-tier funding structure. The official coffers–meant for all the boring stuff like doctors’ and nurses’ salaries and medical equipment and drugs–were empty at the same moment that Hamas officials were smuggling in bagfuls of cash. And the fact that the money wasn’t to be declared to the PA indicates that those official coffers were going to stay empty. This, of course, could be blamed on the wicked Israelis, and could wait until the Quartet chose to intervene. No hurry. Not the PA government’s problem. The bagfuls of cash, meanwhile, were going to be spent on the exciting, important stuff. Like feeding, training and equipping a brand new 3,000 strong militia to face off against the parallel militias founded by one’s political opponents. And financing the production and launching of rockets at the towns of the western Negev.

What is interesting about this process is that it captures in miniature one of the basic developmental problems of many of the states of the Arabic-speaking world. It casts light on one of the processes that has kept well-funded countries poor and lagging behind in development. For as long as the ruling elites–nationalist and Islamist–of the Arab world consider that marching about in military uniforms and producing blood-curdling rhetoric are the real business of politics–with health care and living standards a minor concern unworthy of serious attention–the Arab world is going to stay poor and undeveloped–and real democratization remain a distant, receding hope. Alleviating hardship is of course a worthy goal. But the current system of aid to the PA plays the additional role of propping up dysfunctionality.

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Osirak Revisited

Posted on March 8, 2011 by jonathanspyer

11/11/2007

The possible emergence of a nuclear-armed, Islamist Iran committed to the destruction of the Jewish state is the key security issue currently occupying the attention of Israel’s political and security elite. It is one of the few issues upon which there is near (but not total) consensus. Israel has watched the growing power of radical elements within the Iranian ruling elite in the last half-decade with concern. These elements, of which President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad is the most prominent representative, openly reject Israel’s right to exist. Ahmedinejad’s comments advocating Israel’s destruction and denying the Holocaust are part of a larger project to recover the original fervour of the 1979 Islamic revolution. The expansion of Iran’s regional role is also part of this, and Israeli strategists note that the influence of Iran in all areas of key strategic concern to Israel is being felt, in a negative way. Iran’s alliance with Syria underwrites Damascus’s increasingly bellicose stance. Iran’s creation and sponsorship of Hizbullah has enabled it to come to constitute the powerful militia opponent seen in last year’s war. Iranian assistance to Hamas and Islamic jihad may be in the process of turning these organizations into analogous forces.

Iran’s active policy of subversion toward Israel, and stated desire for its destruction, make the possibility of a nuclear Iran inconceivable to Israeli policymakers. It is not only the scenario of an Iranian nuclear attack that is focusing concerns. Rather, there is concern that a nuclear Iran would use the “immunity” purchased by a nuclear capability to increase its support for countries and organizations hostile to Israel. Some Israeli policymakers, such as the deputy defense minister, Efraim Sneh, regard this as itself an existential issue. Sneh has stressed that a nuclear Iran could render life in Israel untenable – through support for terror groups, and the possibility that all determined Israeli attempts to oppose Iranian aggression would lead to immediate nuclear crisis.
An alternative, minority viewpoint exists within the Israeli policy elite, according to which Israel could successfully deter a nuclear Iran, and therefore the problem, while acute, is of less existential dimensions. Former Mossad Head Efraim Halevy is understood to support this view.

Israel’s response so far on the Iranian nuclear issue has been to support the imposition of tougher sanctions. Senior officials have been involved in recent weeks in an international campaign to bring home to European states the common danger posed by a nuclear Iran.
Nevertheless, should it become apparent that all attempts to reverse Iran’s progress toward a nuclear capability have failed, and Iran indeed stands on the cusp of a nuclear weapons capability, then the possibility of unilateral Israeli military action to prevent a nuclear Iran would come onto the agenda.

It should not be assumed from Ahmedinejad’s claims this week that Iran has begun to operate 3,000 centrifuges to enrich uranium at Natanz, that Israel will now conclude that this moment has been reached. Ahmedinejad made a similar claim in April, and Israel suspects that the Iranian regime is keen to give the impression of greater progress than has in fact been made.

For the moment, therefore, efforts toward further sanctions are likely to continue. But the consensus in the Israeli intelligence community is that Iran may be as close as two years away from a nuclear weapons capability. So if Tehran cannot be brought to abandon its nuclear ambitions through strengthened sanctions and international pressure – then pre-emptive Israeli action to prevent the emergence of a nuclear-powered Islamic Republic of Iran is an increasing possibility.
Regarding the likely results, should such action take place: to some degree, a precedent exists in Israel’s destruction of Iraq’s nuclear program at Osirak in 1981. The Israeli move then was universally condemned in public, and in private, at least retrospectively, was quietly welcomed as having prevented the need for the world to confront a nuclear-armed Saddam Hussein. Once again, it’s important to note that Israel’s hopes regarding the possibilities of toughened sanctions are genuine. But one may also discern in recent statements by President Bush and President Sarkozy a commitment to the prevention of a nuclear Iran of similar firmness to that of Israel. As such, should the moment of decision arrive, and a consensus be reached that sanctions have failed, it is likely that action by Israel will have no major effect on Israel’s relations with its allies.

Regarding the likely Iranian response: the Iranians may choose to increase their already existing aid to insurgents in Iraq, they may seek to strike at Israel through proxy and client organizations such as Hizbullah and Hamas, they may seek to hit at western, Gulf and Jewish targets through terrorism. The fallout in terms of regional anger and protests will no doubt be immense. Israeli strategists conjecturing such issues, however, may well consider that an angry, vengeful but non-nuclear Iran is a more preferable prospect than a nuclear-armed Islamic Republic, triumphant and filled with the ambition for regional hegemony which possession of nuclear weapons would bring.

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The Root Cause of Confrontation

Posted on March 8, 2011 by jonathanspyer

07/07/2006

The kidnapping of two IDF soldiers by Hizballah on the Israel-Lebanese border adds fuel to the flames of the already fraught situation between Israel and the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority in Gaza. The talk in Israel is now of wide-ranging ground and air operations into Lebanon. In order to understand the dynamics which have led to this renewed crisis, it is crucial to recall the events which preceded it, and to understand the strategic thinking underlying those events.

The Disengagement from Gaza last September was undertaken by Israel because of its conviction that no credible partner for negotiation existed on the Palestinian side. Nevertheless, embedded in Israel’s strategy of unilateralism was an assumption of a sort of base-line rationality among the Palestinian leadership. It was assumed that whatever the details, the absence of Israeli soldiers and civilians in the Strip would enable the beginnings of the construction of normal life for its residents. This in turn would lead to an obvious interest among the PA leadership, regardless of the larger differences over the diplomatic process, in preventing the escalation of tension with Israel. This assumption now appears flawed.

A massive increase in Palestinian paramilitary activity of all kinds took place immediately following the Disengagement. The increase preceded the election of Hamas on January 25th, though this development further intensified it. In the first three months of 2006, 500 Qassam rockets were fired from post-Disengagement Gaza onto the towns of the Western Negev. Israeli security officials estimated that if prior to Disengagement, perhaps 200-300 rifles were smuggled in, in the course of a month, the figure by early 2006 was probably closer to 3,000. 277 attempted attacks were recorded emanating from the Gaza Strip in December, 2005, compared to 48 in October, 2005. The Hamas-led PA openly defended the April 17 terror attack in Tel Aviv. Its spokesman referred to the bombing as a “natural result of the continued Israeli crimes.” The infiltration into Israel, and the kidnapping of Corporal Gilad Shalit should thus be understood as the culmination of a process, rather than the single causal factor precipitating Israel’s incursion into Gaza.

This decision by the various Palestinian armed factions in Gaza to busily set about turning the Strip into an armed camp at first seems counter-intuitive. It has brought no tangible gains whatsoever for the Palestinian people. Instead, the long-suffering residents of the Strip are now caught between the attacks of the armed organizations and the response of the IDF.

The actions of the PA government become comprehensible, however, when they are considered from within the framework of the strategy of the Hamas leaders of the PA. The strategic outlook of Hamas is shared by the Lebanese Hizballah organization, which has now entered the fray. The backers of this movement, in Damascus and Teheran, hold to similar views.

According to well-connected Egyptian sources, during a recent meeting between Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal and a senior Egyptian official, the latter berated the Hamas leader for the apparent nihilism of Palestinian strategy. He listed the collapse in international aid following Hamas’ refusal to accept international norms regarding Israel’s existence, the suffering of the Palestinian population following Israeli reprisals for attacks, and the collapse of any hopes for reviving the infrastructure of Gaza.

The official concluded by stating exasperatedly that time was not on the side of the Palestinians. Mashaal, unmoved, calmly replied that this was not true–time was on the Palestinians’ side, and the final victory would be theirs. The final victory to which Mashaal refers is Hamas’ openly-stated strategic goal of the destruction of Israel.

This is of course the well-known view of Hizballah chairman Hassan Nasrallah, whose forces on July 12th entered the fight, and who believes that Palestine is “an occupied land from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River, and this is the right of the entire Palestinian people, this land.” Such a statement also accurately reflects the views of the Assad regime in Damascus, which provides a home for Hamas’ leadership, and backs and finances Hizballah.

Of course, the fire-eating rhetoric of Mashaal, Nasrallah and their backers is offset by the relative feebleness of their abilities. Their intransigence can prevent a fair resolution, or even a rational managing of the conflict. But while they can inflict bloody wounds on Israel, their main victims will always be their own people, who will bear the brunt of Israel’s inevitable reprisals for attacks upon it. This coalition of rejectionist states and organizations can neither successfully develop societies nor build the militaries necessary for the realization of their strategic goals.

They can however, endeavor to keep their own side mired in poverty, failure and a culture of romanticized killing. So in the end, it is not only three unfortunate IDF soldiers who are the hostages of these men. Rather, any chance of progress toward peaceful development in the Middle East is hostage, and has been hostage too long, to their fantasies of destruction, and their continued incumbency in positions of power.

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Democratic Converts in Borrowed Array

Posted on March 8, 2011 by jonathanspyer

Haaretz-11/03/2005

Euphoria is back. Democracy, it appears, is about to experience a late birth in our region. The Berlin Wall of the Arabs has fallen, and all will shortly be transformed. But the new and emerging political language in the Middle East contains the potential for manipulation by forces with a quite different agenda from that of the true reformers in the Arab world. Israel would do well to pay close attention – both to what is being said and to who is saying it.

 

A strange and strangely familiar bunch, the latest converts to democracy. Walid Jumblatt, for example, of the Druze Progressive Socialist Party, who declares that he knew, when witnessing the Iraqi elections of January 30, that “it was the start of a new Arab world.” Lauding the push for reform in Lebanon, Mr. Jumblatt notes that it started “because of the American invasion of Iraq.” He goes on to scold himself for his former cynicism, of which he has now been cured. Is this the same Jumblatt who, a little more than a year ago, declared that the United States is run by an evil “axis of oil and Jews” and referred to Donald Rumsfeld’s deputy as a “filthy son of a harlot of Zion?” Apparently so.

 

In another corner, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, who after a quarter of a century in power, has now decided to allow opposition candidates to run against him (though not, apparently, to campaign freely while doing so.) And closer to home, of course, Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, with his own indigenous democratic system, which includes a place, he told Time magazine this week, for the well-known Jeffersonians of the Hamas movement.

 

We are encouraged not to be cynical. And it is certainly not my contention that certain regions of the world must remain forever mysteriously inaccessible to democracy. At the same time, a healthy dose of skepticism is unavoidable regarding some of the new enthusiasts. Because all this is not without precedent. It is no longer controversial to maintain that the old ideas of Arab nationalism, and the corrupt, sclerotic political structures they have produced, bear the primary responsibility for the stagnation of the region in general, and the intractability of the Arab-Israeli conflict in particular. But it is interesting to note that one of the secrets of the survival of this discredited idea and its adherents is their ability to clothe themselves in borrowed array when the political climate demands it.

 

A glance at history confirms this. One need not go as far back as those young pro-German activists of the Young Egypt movement, miraculously transformed into champions of pro-Soviet anti-colonialism in their later incarnation as Egyptian Free Officers. More recent examples are at hand. Think, for example, of the right-wing Arab nationalist George Habash, who reemerged after 1967 as the leading mouthpiece for the pro-Soviet position among the Palestinians. Or even the former Muslim Brother Yasser Arafat, who also tried on the fashionable pose of Third World radicalism in the 1970s, before exchanging it for the equally unlikely role of conflict resolver in the 1990s.

 

What all these transformations had in common was one simple fact: that they were not transformations at all. Rather, allegiance to the same basic, authoritarian orientation remained throughout: Overheated nationalism and chauvinism, hostility to independent institutions – and, centrally, hatred of Israel as the endlessly returned to, endlessly warmed-over centerpiece of the whole construct – were the inner core, around which various other costumes were fitted.

 

It was these ideas, the stagnant systems they produced, and the militant Islamism that arose to fill the vacuum left by their failures, which bear the primary responsibility for the absence of regional progress and conflict resolution. The ability of some of their adherents to learn the political language of the moment should surprise no one. It is in the pattern of the past.

 

As far as Israel is concerned, however, this mastery of successive political languages on the part of its adversaries should be a matter for concern. Israel tends to perform well on the battlefield, and less well in the diplomatic maneuvers that follow armed conflict. The performance of the security forces, and the public, over the last four years of strife are generally acknowledged to have been impressive. In his recent interview with Time, Palestinian Authority Chairman Abbas, apart from declaring his allegiance to democracy, also found space to blame Israel and its security fence for the recent terror bombing in Tel Aviv.

 

He also reiterated his view of Hamas as a legitimate part of the Palestinian political map and expressed his desire for rapid progress to final-status negotiations. He has expressed nothing of substance to suggest that his views regarding final status differ from those of earlier Palestinian leaders. In form, however, he differs considerably, and fluently repeating the phrases of the moment, he is building up the legitimacy he will need to produce the eventual external pressure on Israel, which is his aim.

 

Meanwhile, in another world, the militants of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, untroubled by the security forces of Mahmoud Abbas, berate their leader for what they already regard as his excessive concessions to Israel. The contradiction is a basic one. As the region has learned in the past, words and reality, if not brought into some harmony with one another, will eventually collide head-on, with unforeseen results.

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