On the Iranian Presidential Elections

Posted on March 9, 2011 by jonathanspyer

Jerusalem Post- 01/04/2009

Presidential elections are set to take place in Iran on June 12. One consultant to a presidential candidate billed the race the “most significant poll so far since the revolution.” The same source said that the elections “rank in significance on a global scale with November’s American election.”

But behind the rhetoric, the picture is rather different. Iran is ruled by the system devised by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini known as vilayet e-faqih, which affords supreme executive power to a Supreme Leader, or ‘rahbar,’ appointed for life.

The Supreme Leader has responsibility for foreign policy – including for the administration of the country’s nuclear program. The president has no control over such matters.

In addition, the presidential candidates are subject to a vetting process, which restricts the range of options available to the voter.

And while the office of the presidency does possess some executive power on internal affairs, the holder of this power must take account of more general trends within the ruling oligarchy.

In recent years, the trend in the regime’s organs of power has been toward the growing influence of radical conservatives. Even a victory for one of the “reformist” candidates in the June election would not have a decisive affect on this ongoing process.

Current President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad is the representative of a radical conservative element within the ruling elite, known as “Osulgarayan” (principalists) – who see their goal as reviving the flame of the 1979 revolution. This is a generational as much as an ideological group, representing those men for whom the 1979 revolution and the subsequent Iran-Iraq War were their formative experiences.

Since his election in 2005, Ahmedinejad has done his best to advance the interests of this group. He has purged suspected liberals from jobs in the diplomatic corps, in government service as a whole and in the universities – replacing them with individuals closer to the views of the principalists.

He has reintroduced harsh measures of domestic repression, jailing scores of dissidents. He has lavishly rewarded the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), a key element of the radical conservative forces, with lucrative government contracts.

Mohammad Khatami, who has withdrawn his candidacy, won the presidency in 1997 because of his ability to draw in elements of the population who might not otherwise have turned out to vote – seeing no chance of change. His subsequent failure to implement far-reaching reforms during his term in office, made it questionable as to whether he would have been able to repeat this success.

His replacement as the main “reformist” candidate, Mir Hossain Mousavi, is even less likely to be able to do so. Mousavi is a pragmatic conservative and technocrat – not the type to attempt a frontal challenge to the growing radical conservative camp.

The radical conservatives are much stronger in all organs of the state than they were in 1997 – the last time that a reformist president failed to implement reform. They now control the Majlis (legislature), as well as the security services, courts and the state broadcasting monopoly.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei has generally been seen as leaning toward this bloc, rather than toward the traditional clerical leadership. So even a victory for Mousavi or the other “reformist” candidate, former Majlis speaker Mehdi Karroubi, would not represent the breaking of the advance of the radical conservatives – but rather a modest shift in the current internal balance of power.

Among potential conservative candidates, meanwhile, Ahmedinejad and Teheran’s mayor, former IRGC air force general and National Police Commissioner Muhammad Bagher Ghalibaf, are both representatives of the advance of the principalist trend, though they differ in terms of style. Ghalibaf is considered a more sophisticated operator than Ahmedinejad, and might avoid some of the latter’s more superfluously provocative statements.

But there are no differences in terms of content. Both are for a repressive Islamic stance at home, and an aggressive drive for regional hegemony abroad – all in the name of a return to the spirit of 1979.

There is little enthusiasm among the broad mass of Iranians for this revolutionary revivalism. With inflation at 31%, a huge budget deficit exacerbated by the current president’s populist economic policies, and collapsing oil revenues, the concerns of the principalists have a slightly other-worldly feel to them.

At the same time, there is a general sense of public apathy because of the feeling that “reformist” candidates can do little to stem the advance of this trend.

The predictable result of all this is a growing indifference toward the elections, particularly in areas of natural support for reformists.

Turnout in recent polls has rarely exceeded 30% in Teheran – center of Iran’s large, educated middle class. In the rural heartlands of the conservatives, meanwhile, it regularly exceeds 60%.

Thus, no matter who wins the presidential race in June, the key results are already known: the Islamist regime will remain, the advance of the radical conservative element within it will not be broken, the Iranian nuclear drive will not be slowed, and the Iranian populace will continue, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, to acquiesce to this situation.

In short – whoever you vote for, the clerical government wins.

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An Iron Fist in a Velvet Glove

Posted on March 9, 2011 by jonathanspyer

24/10/2008

The decree by President Bashar Assad announcing the establishing of full diplomatic relations between Damascus and Beirut represents the latest stage in the emergence of Syria from diplomatic isolation.

On a symbolic level, the announcement appears to suggest Syria’s reconciliation with the fact of Lebanese independence, after 60 years of rejection. However, the move should be seen in the context of realpolitik, rather than simply in terms of its undoubted historic symbolism.

Syrian relations with Lebanon have been in the process of warming since Assad’s meeting with Lebanese President Michel Suleiman in Paris in July. The meeting was rapidly followed by the announcement in August of a joint intention to establish diplomatic ties. Assad’s announcement Wednesday is the latest move in this process.

Assad has been willing to move forward on this track because it is bringing tangible results for the Syrian interest. Last spring, a violent trial of strength between Lebanon’s pro-Western government and pro-Iranian and pro-Syrian opposition resulted in an advance for the opposition. The Doha Agreement of May 21, 2008, saw Hizbullah successfully defending its independent military capacity, while at the same time gaining its key demand of veto power over cabinet decisions.

The Doha Agreement thus gave Syria’s chief ally in Lebanon power to stop any decision by Beirut not to its liking. With this gain secured, Syria found itself offered an exit from the international isolation to which it had been consigned since the murder of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri in 2005.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy seized the initiative in reaching out to Damascus following the opening of indirect talks between Israel and Syria in Istanbul. The Syrian president found himself feted in Paris. Lucrative trade associations with the EU were dangled.

The official normalization of relations between Syria and Lebanon was clearly a key goal of the French president. Assad’s announcement indicates that the Syrian leader has looked at the situation and concluded that – given the fruits to be reaped from the current process – compliance with the French leader’s wishes was in the Syrian interest.

The question now being asked is: Does the Syrian announcement mean that ties between Damascus and Beirut will be normalized? Will the traditional Syrian attitude toward Lebanon as an arena properly dominated by Damascus be replaced by regular diplomatic relations between neighbors?

Lebanese commentators are expressing cautious optimism. However, the more likely prognosis is that Syria will continue to exercise its will in Lebanon through a combination of diplomacy and other means. Syria apparently expects that the Lebanese opposition will make significant gains in the elections scheduled for March.

Damascus is also understood to expect that a Barack Obama victory in the US presidential election will mark the end of Syrian international isolation.

The independent military capacity wielded by Hizbullah – pointed at Israel and, where necessary, at pro-Western forces in Lebanon – continues to be supplied via Damascus. This capacity holds the final word in Lebanon. Nothing can happen without its consent.

The combination of the campaign of violent subversion waged by Syria and its allies in Lebanon over the last three years, and the smooth diplomatic response to the overtures of Israel and France in the last months, is thus paying dividends. Syrian influence in Lebanon has been rebuilt, while Damascus simultaneously emerges from international isolation. The Syrians know that the iron fist works best when concealed in a velvet glove. The latest announcement by the Syrian president reflects this understanding.

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Making Mischief in Damascus

Posted on March 9, 2011 by jonathanspyer

01/10/2008

As the days pass since the car bombing in the southern suburbs of Damascus, furious speculation is continuing as to who was responsible.

No organization has taken responsibility – leaving the rumor mill free to grind on.

The Syrian authorities, following an initial attempt to point the finger at Israel, have now concluded that Sunni jihadists carried out the bombing. The Syrian al-Watan newspaper is claiming that the authorities have located and detained members of the cell responsible for the attack. According to al-Watan, none of the individuals being held are Syrian citizens.

The Syrian government may now be expected to cast itself in the role of an ally of the west in the War on Terror. We will be reminded in the coming weeks of the “secular” nature of the Syrian regime. Hafez Assad’s fight with the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1980s will be recalled.

However, the true relationship between the current Syrian regime and the forces of the Sunni jihad is as opaque and ambiguous as might be expected from the Assad regime.

A Federal District Court in Washington DC last week issued an opinion in favor of the plaintiffs in a case brought against Syria by relatives of Jack Armstrong and Jack Hensley.

Armstrong and Hensley were US civilian engineers who were kidnapped and beheaded in Iraq in 2004 by the al-Tawhid wal-Jihad organization. This group, headed at the time by the Jordanian Islamist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, is also known as “al-Qaida in Iraq.”

The court found evidence of substantial assistance given by Syria to this organization.

Syrian assistance to Zarqawi included providing him with a Syrian passport. The court found that Syria acted as a “logistical hub” for al-Qaida in Iraq, providing safe haven for training activities and facilitating the transport of fighters overland en route to Iraq.

The Zarqawi organization planned some of its most notorious operations from Syrian soil. These included the murder of American diplomat Lawrence Foley in Jordan in 2002, and a failed plot in 2004 to destroy Jordanian intelligence headquarters using a chemical weapon. The latter operation, if it had succeeded, would have resulted in tens of thousands of fatalities.

The court found that Syrian President Bashar Assad personally appointed the head of the Iraqi Ba’ath party, Fawzi al-Rawi, to meet with Zarqawi’s lieutenants to discuss operations against the Americans.

Rawi, who drew a Syrian government salary, was also responsible for channelling funds to al-Qaida in Iraq.

A Salafi preacher, Abu Qaqa’a, who was also a Syrian government employee, was permitted to conduct recruiting activities for al-Qaida in Syria. In addition, training camps were maintained in Syria, according to the testimony of al-Qaida fighters captured by US forces in Iraq.

Senior operatives of the Zarqawi group crossed to their main training camp in Rawha, Iraq, with the assistance of Syrian Military Intelligence officials.

In finding for the plaintiffs, the US District Court ordered Syria to pay them the sum of $412,909,587.

The evidence produced in this trial indicates Syria’s willingness to make alliance with jihadi terror groups in the furtherance of its policy goals. The alliance with Zarqawi, of course, was intended to bring about a defeat of the US project in Iraq.

It is also noteworthy that some of the names of the operatives recalled in the trial later surfaced in a different context.

The court notes that the individual responsible for financing the Zarqawi operation to kill US diplomat Lawrence Foley was one Shaker al-Absi, a Palestinian.

Following the murder of Foley, Absi fled to Damascus, from where Syria refused Jordanian requests for his extradition. The court notes that Syria claimed to be holding Absi in custody. In fact, he was running a training camp for fighters bound for Iraq.

Absi then re-surfaced two years later, as the head of the mysterious “Fatah al-Islam” group in the Nahr al Bared refugee camp in Lebanon. This previously unknown organization engaged in a bloody and protracted fight with the Lebanese army in 2007.

At the time, Fatah al-Islam was depicted in the western media as an independent jihadi organization. The evidence now suggests that its leader, in addition to being an operative of the global jihad, was also acting on behalf of the Syrian regime.

A number of Lebanese commentators believe that the latest bombings in Damascus are part of a larger Syrian plan to facilitate a climate whereby Syria may re-introduce its forces into Lebanon, under the pretext of acting to restore order.

It is impossible, of course, to confirm these theories. However, the bomb in Tripoli on Monday, along with the gathering of Syrian forces along the Syrian-Lebanese border indicate that such thoughts should not be dismissed out of hand.

What may be said with certainty is that Syria, which is now seeking to portray itself as the victim and target of Sunni jihadi terrorism, has been an enthusiastic sponsor and supporter of groups belonging to that trend in the very recent past.

Now, it appears, this particular golem has risen against its master. Or has it?

Middle East analyst Fouad Ajami once said that Syria’s main asset, which enabled it to play a role in regional affairs out of proportion to its size or wealth, was its “capacity for mischief.” Observation of Syrian activities in Iraq and Lebanon over the last half decade indicates that this capacity remains undiminished.

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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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