Washington Draws a Line in the Sand on Settlements -- With Palestine
By Ian Williams, February 18, 2011 FPIF
It’s tough being a naked superpower when the caterpillars munch away your fig leaf.
In real terms it makes Chamberlain at Munich look like a stickler for principle. The President and Secretary of State of the United States have been pleading and pressuring over Israeli settlements, which Washington opposes.
But who are they pleading with? Who are they cajoling and pressuring? Not the Israeli president building the settlements, but President Mahmoud Abbas of Palestine, to withdraw the Security Council resolution which expresses the sentiment of the entire world -- including the US -- that the settlements are illegal. In real terms it makes Chamberlain at Munich look like a stickler for principle.
To head off this disastrous dilemma heading to impale its Middle Eastern policy, the US had drafted an ineffectual and in any case non-binding statement that admitted to the “illegitimacy” of settlements in the West Bank, but spent more space condemning ineffectual rocket attacks from Gaza.
But Abbas had no option but to go ahead and put the resolution to the vote. It won 14 to one, with US Ambassador Susan Rice casting a veto.
The administration was scared that it would either be forced to support its own policy in the Security Council and thus risk an excreta tempest from AIPAC -- or that it would veto a resolution that it agrees with and humiliate itself in front of the rest of world, including its real allies in NATO.
“We reject in the strongest terms possible the legitimacy of the continued settlement building,” inveighed Rice, while ferociously condemning them as “folly,” bad for Israel as well. However that just reinforced the international message that the Israeli tail was wagging the American dog to vote against its own policy.
A positive vote would have sent a serious signal to Netanyahu not to trifle with his only protector and major paymaster. However, all Netanyahu has had to do is to refer to the even more crazed ideologues who surround him, who will not hear of “concessions” on settlements. But poor Abbas, beleaguered by WikiLeaks showing him trying to kill the Goldstone Report under US pressure and showing what most Palestinians regard as an overflexible, indeed supine, negotiating posture in the peace talks, is assumed not to have a domestic constituency he has to care for.
One would have thought that after Tunisia, Egypt, and Bahrain, this administration would have picked up some hints about diplomacy, not least that diktats and dollars to proxy dictators does not make for stable relationships. But the world’s rapidly attenuating super power was reduced to covering for a coalition of deranged rabbis, likudnik-inclined millionaires, Neocons and evangelical Christian Zionists in the UN Security Council.
It did so in front of a Security Council packed with most of the General Assembly members who have expressed their negative views on settlement over and over again to vote on a resolution sponsored by a wide geographical and ideological range of states -- including many EU and NATO members. The resolution was moved by Lebanon, whose ambassador eschewed inflammatory rhetoric and merely cited successive Security Council resolutions, World Court opinions and Geneva Conventions on the issue not to mention Israel’s own commitments under the Quartet’s “Road Map.”
Tip O’Neill’s dictum “All politics is local” is not always true. For a start, polls show that most American Jews oppose Netanyahu and his settlement policy. But more cogently, the masses of Arab citizens on the streets of their rapidly reforming countries bitterly oppose the settlements, and will draw their own conclusions from the Obama policy.
To stop AIPAC huffing and puffing, the Obama administration is about to lose Egypt, Tunisia and much of the rest of the Middle East and erase the last faint hopes of the region that the US can in any way give genuine support to democracy or international law. The disillusionment is going to be all the more profound because of the betrayal of the spirit of Obama’s early speeches in Istanbul and Cairo. Instead of sending serious signal to Netanyahu not to trifle with your only protector, he is now confirmed in his obduracy. And Arabs and other world citizens are even more convinced of US duplicity.
Obama also has yet another crisis coming. The UK, on behalf of France and Germany as well, promised to do all it could to welcome Palestine as a UN member by this September, thereby pushing yet another hot button for AIPAC -- and thus the administration.
Showing posts with label 1967 War Egyptians. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1967 War Egyptians. Show all posts
Friday, February 18, 2011
Friday, February 11, 2011
Word from the Sphinx
FPIF - 13 February 2010
Ordinary Egyptians Have Little to Show for U.S. Military Aid to Egypt
Ian Williams
It was fairly clear that the military would act after Mubarak’s and Suleiman’s ineptly provocative speeches. The motives for forcing him out were almost certainly multi-faceted - and indeed confused. Certainly the gnomic communiques from the Supreme Army Council could have been drafted by the Sphinx for their calculated obscurity.
On the side of pragmatic self-interest, the senior commanders of the military have had a good deal out of the regime, with profits and jobs in all the military-related and controlled industries, not to mention the prestige and other perquisites of power. The senior commanders seem to have calculated that their only chance of keeping their position and privileges was to go with the flow and tell Mubarak to leave.
If they had ordered the army against the protestors they faced a real problem. Would the conscripts and junior officers follow orders and move against their fellow citizens? Mubarak’s announcement of his departure by September and his other concessions profoundly reduced the chances of the military personnel risking their lives, not to mention their honor, for a self-admitted lost cause.
So now the issue is one for delicate compromises. The opposition leaders and the military have to negotiate the proportions of power sharing. The high command will be trying to maintain its power, but their position is weakened: if they are too greedy, then they have to think of the tens of millions who took to the streets and are now confirmed in their potential power. In addition, much of the military does indeed share the sentiments of the protestors, and so their commanders are playing with a weak hand.
The transition will be difficult. Washington has seen it in terms of a move from one amenable strong leader to another more acceptable but equally amenable one. The EU and US preference for Omar Suleiman, a secret policeman in cahoots with what most Egyptians regard as inimical powers, demonstrates how out of touch they are. They have looked at opposition leaders such as Mohammed El-Baradei as potential strongmen and found them wanting.
But that is precisely their attraction. El-Baradei, or retiring Arab League ambassador Amr ElMousa, should be considered as conveners, whose absence from domestic politics and wrangling could make them impartial and consensual spokesmen. El-Baradei showed his integrity under pressure from the UN and others and gained stature, which is perhaps why some of the chattering classes in Washington, who have never forgiven him for that, have been so eager to suggest his unpopularity.
The last thing Egypt wants is a presidential system concentrating power in one person. To replace decades of autocracy will take a parliamentary consensual system that reflects the views of the disparate masses and interests who rallied to overthrow the President - and as they showed the last two days - the regime.
Anyone who knows Egyptians knows their deep interest in politics and international affairs and the evidence of the last weeks certainly indicates they will not revert to becoming passive subjects again.
What are the international repercussions? Washington and the West will now have to take account of the wishes of the Egyptian people rather than rely upon a bribed autocracy. That certainly should reduce the perennial tendency to see the region through Israeli eyes.
It is unlikely that anyone wants to rip up the peace treaty with Israel. There will be no military assault on Israel. But a government in Cairo looking over its shoulder at a newly enfranchised and staunchly patriotic people is unlikely to enforce the blockade against Gaza, or to help Western efforts to frustrate Hamas/Fateh reconciliation. That degree of security cooperation is almost certainly over and the unpopular sales of Egyptian natural gas to Israel will likely be called into question.
But even the US-Egyptian alliance will need much more work and attention than sending a large annual check to the army. Ordinary Egyptians have seen little practical benefit from alleged American friendship, which has taken the form of supporting their oppressors and to some extent impinging on their patriotism by enforcing cooperation with Israel.
In a situation of diminished American power, Washington’s best bet is to sit on the sidelines and applaud, unless it makes it clear that the money to the military stops immediately if it does not reflect the legitimacy established by the street.
One significant and practical gesture would be cooperation in tracking down and returning to the new government the money that Mubarak and his colleagues have looted over the decades.
For the future, Obama needs some more public diplomacy. In the long term, the military aid has to be diverted to civilian uses, and even expanded. But an Obama who does stand up to Netanyahu over settlements is unlikely to have much standing in front of the Arab street - as will be reinforced in the other autocratic dominoes that might topple.
Any suggestion that the US will only welcome a democratically elected regime if it hews to American preconceptions about Israel, or that its welcome will be tempered if Islamic parties are represented in the new government, is guaranteed to be counterproductive.
Ordinary Egyptians Have Little to Show for U.S. Military Aid to Egypt
Ian Williams
It was fairly clear that the military would act after Mubarak’s and Suleiman’s ineptly provocative speeches. The motives for forcing him out were almost certainly multi-faceted - and indeed confused. Certainly the gnomic communiques from the Supreme Army Council could have been drafted by the Sphinx for their calculated obscurity.
On the side of pragmatic self-interest, the senior commanders of the military have had a good deal out of the regime, with profits and jobs in all the military-related and controlled industries, not to mention the prestige and other perquisites of power. The senior commanders seem to have calculated that their only chance of keeping their position and privileges was to go with the flow and tell Mubarak to leave.
If they had ordered the army against the protestors they faced a real problem. Would the conscripts and junior officers follow orders and move against their fellow citizens? Mubarak’s announcement of his departure by September and his other concessions profoundly reduced the chances of the military personnel risking their lives, not to mention their honor, for a self-admitted lost cause.
So now the issue is one for delicate compromises. The opposition leaders and the military have to negotiate the proportions of power sharing. The high command will be trying to maintain its power, but their position is weakened: if they are too greedy, then they have to think of the tens of millions who took to the streets and are now confirmed in their potential power. In addition, much of the military does indeed share the sentiments of the protestors, and so their commanders are playing with a weak hand.
The transition will be difficult. Washington has seen it in terms of a move from one amenable strong leader to another more acceptable but equally amenable one. The EU and US preference for Omar Suleiman, a secret policeman in cahoots with what most Egyptians regard as inimical powers, demonstrates how out of touch they are. They have looked at opposition leaders such as Mohammed El-Baradei as potential strongmen and found them wanting.
But that is precisely their attraction. El-Baradei, or retiring Arab League ambassador Amr ElMousa, should be considered as conveners, whose absence from domestic politics and wrangling could make them impartial and consensual spokesmen. El-Baradei showed his integrity under pressure from the UN and others and gained stature, which is perhaps why some of the chattering classes in Washington, who have never forgiven him for that, have been so eager to suggest his unpopularity.
The last thing Egypt wants is a presidential system concentrating power in one person. To replace decades of autocracy will take a parliamentary consensual system that reflects the views of the disparate masses and interests who rallied to overthrow the President - and as they showed the last two days - the regime.
Anyone who knows Egyptians knows their deep interest in politics and international affairs and the evidence of the last weeks certainly indicates they will not revert to becoming passive subjects again.
What are the international repercussions? Washington and the West will now have to take account of the wishes of the Egyptian people rather than rely upon a bribed autocracy. That certainly should reduce the perennial tendency to see the region through Israeli eyes.
It is unlikely that anyone wants to rip up the peace treaty with Israel. There will be no military assault on Israel. But a government in Cairo looking over its shoulder at a newly enfranchised and staunchly patriotic people is unlikely to enforce the blockade against Gaza, or to help Western efforts to frustrate Hamas/Fateh reconciliation. That degree of security cooperation is almost certainly over and the unpopular sales of Egyptian natural gas to Israel will likely be called into question.
But even the US-Egyptian alliance will need much more work and attention than sending a large annual check to the army. Ordinary Egyptians have seen little practical benefit from alleged American friendship, which has taken the form of supporting their oppressors and to some extent impinging on their patriotism by enforcing cooperation with Israel.
In a situation of diminished American power, Washington’s best bet is to sit on the sidelines and applaud, unless it makes it clear that the money to the military stops immediately if it does not reflect the legitimacy established by the street.
One significant and practical gesture would be cooperation in tracking down and returning to the new government the money that Mubarak and his colleagues have looted over the decades.
For the future, Obama needs some more public diplomacy. In the long term, the military aid has to be diverted to civilian uses, and even expanded. But an Obama who does stand up to Netanyahu over settlements is unlikely to have much standing in front of the Arab street - as will be reinforced in the other autocratic dominoes that might topple.
Any suggestion that the US will only welcome a democratically elected regime if it hews to American preconceptions about Israel, or that its welcome will be tempered if Islamic parties are represented in the new government, is guaranteed to be counterproductive.
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
Backward Christian Soldiers, 1967 through the eyes of the defeated
Ten years ago I was in Cairo for the thirtieth anniversary of the 1967 war. Twenty years after Camp David, and several years into the Oslo process, the peace between Israel and Egypt was still chilly. If ordinary Egyptians did not want to make war on Israel, they were still far from wanting to make love. The mood has not changed that much.
Talking to General Talat Soliman Gallaby in 1997 gave some insight into past and future. was one of the first Egyptian officers to get the news of the scale of the Israeli victory in 1967. In Cairo, thirty years later, over a cup of coffee, he was happy to let met know how upset he still is. As a Lieutenant Colonel at a supply base at the gateway to Sinai, he met the first troops of the Egyptian Army as they fled from the Israelis. It was June 7, two days after the war started. “I was still listening to Radio Cairo, hearing about our great victories. I was very enthusiastic, and then these persons and officers came to me describing our defeat. I was very sorry for the weakness of our leaders,” he remembered lugubriously.
In retrospect, although vociferously unhappy about the results, he was not surprised at them. “I joined as an officer in King Farouk’s army - it was for parade grounds only, we were not trained to fight - unlike the Jews” he contrasted, “who the British trained to fight during the Second World War in Dashur, just outside Cairo.”
Afterwards, he said, Nasser neglected the army in favour of schools and industry, “so it was not trained well.” Its commander continued the old habits of nepotism that had made Farouk’s army such a joke. “They moved our officers around, shifted units about, we never got to train together,’ he explains. “And Nasser had one big fault. He was not a democrat. In a democracy, you can say ‘you are wrong!’”
The General was, on his own admission, “fat, and I have asthma.” But his winning smile and sense of humour could not disguise the firmness of his opposition to the peace talks with Israel, current and past. He was still serving in 1973 as well. “Ah! That was marvellous! We had good weapons and good training, and we made a victory! But then Sadat used it badly. I wasn’t pleased with anything he did. And most Egyptians think so as well. When Nasser died, there were huge crowds at his funeral. When Sadat was buried, they had just a few, and they had to bring them from outside, like Begin and Carter. Sadat’s friends were all foreigners.”
“Anwar Sadat was a traitor,” he declares roundly. “Nasser was a good man, whose good works all disappeared because he was a dictator. Sadat was a much weaker man who destroyed everything Nasser did. Three foreign ministers resigned rather than go to Jerusalem with him. Sadat spoke to Carter and Begin, but not to his own men!” He vigorously dismissed the return of territories negotiated at Camp David. “Yes, we have Sinai, but we have no troops there and the Israelis can take it back within an hour! All those millions of investment will be wasted!”
No one could accuse him of fundamentalism. He was Copt, who invoked scripture constantly, although in versions unlikely to be authorized by the Evangelical right in the USA. “No one can be rich without being a thief,” he declared, explaining his socialism, “Remember what Jesus said about a rich man going to heaven, like a camel through a small hole." Nor is his vigorous and militant version of Christianity the “turn the other cheek variety.” He sees Christ more as a proto-Palestinian prophet, declaiming, “Jesus said, Luke 22, sell your clothes and buy a sword.’”
Laughing, he summed up his forty- year military career, “I love war! War is the only solution, the way to peace, the only way to get your rights. Jesus said,' Love Justice.' Jesus does not want anything but for people to love each other.” Should that not mean he would support peace talks? He dismissed the idea firmly, “You don't talk to a serpent. You kill it!”
He had actually been on his way to Gaza when the war broke out. He had been there before. From 1954 to 1956, he was one of twenty Egyptian officers who trained Palestinian commando unit in raids across to their former homeland. “Nasser could not restrain them, so he wanted to integrate them into our forces. They were brave, firm for their rights.”
In fact, he recounted a story to show how brave and moral they were. He says that 1,700 of them, rather than be trapped and killed in Gaza, when the Israelis joined with British and French in the attack in 1956, set off to trek through Israel across the Negev and made it to Jordan several days later. "On the way," he reminisced, "we stopped and took food and water from an isolated house, and I asked whether they wanted to kill the family there. The volunteers all refused, and said we do not make war on women and children! They are good people the Palestinians!” he declared, shaking his head with admiring disbelief at their sentimentality
And the Israelis, he said, are bad people. “You cannot trust them.” Waving his arm to indicate the crowded Cairo streets, he declared, “Ask any of these people here. Sadat signed a peace treaty with Israel, but he cannot make us love them.”
Talking to General Talat Soliman Gallaby in 1997 gave some insight into past and future. was one of the first Egyptian officers to get the news of the scale of the Israeli victory in 1967. In Cairo, thirty years later, over a cup of coffee, he was happy to let met know how upset he still is. As a Lieutenant Colonel at a supply base at the gateway to Sinai, he met the first troops of the Egyptian Army as they fled from the Israelis. It was June 7, two days after the war started. “I was still listening to Radio Cairo, hearing about our great victories. I was very enthusiastic, and then these persons and officers came to me describing our defeat. I was very sorry for the weakness of our leaders,” he remembered lugubriously.
In retrospect, although vociferously unhappy about the results, he was not surprised at them. “I joined as an officer in King Farouk’s army - it was for parade grounds only, we were not trained to fight - unlike the Jews” he contrasted, “who the British trained to fight during the Second World War in Dashur, just outside Cairo.”
Afterwards, he said, Nasser neglected the army in favour of schools and industry, “so it was not trained well.” Its commander continued the old habits of nepotism that had made Farouk’s army such a joke. “They moved our officers around, shifted units about, we never got to train together,’ he explains. “And Nasser had one big fault. He was not a democrat. In a democracy, you can say ‘you are wrong!’”
The General was, on his own admission, “fat, and I have asthma.” But his winning smile and sense of humour could not disguise the firmness of his opposition to the peace talks with Israel, current and past. He was still serving in 1973 as well. “Ah! That was marvellous! We had good weapons and good training, and we made a victory! But then Sadat used it badly. I wasn’t pleased with anything he did. And most Egyptians think so as well. When Nasser died, there were huge crowds at his funeral. When Sadat was buried, they had just a few, and they had to bring them from outside, like Begin and Carter. Sadat’s friends were all foreigners.”
“Anwar Sadat was a traitor,” he declares roundly. “Nasser was a good man, whose good works all disappeared because he was a dictator. Sadat was a much weaker man who destroyed everything Nasser did. Three foreign ministers resigned rather than go to Jerusalem with him. Sadat spoke to Carter and Begin, but not to his own men!” He vigorously dismissed the return of territories negotiated at Camp David. “Yes, we have Sinai, but we have no troops there and the Israelis can take it back within an hour! All those millions of investment will be wasted!”
No one could accuse him of fundamentalism. He was Copt, who invoked scripture constantly, although in versions unlikely to be authorized by the Evangelical right in the USA. “No one can be rich without being a thief,” he declared, explaining his socialism, “Remember what Jesus said about a rich man going to heaven, like a camel through a small hole." Nor is his vigorous and militant version of Christianity the “turn the other cheek variety.” He sees Christ more as a proto-Palestinian prophet, declaiming, “Jesus said, Luke 22, sell your clothes and buy a sword.’”
Laughing, he summed up his forty- year military career, “I love war! War is the only solution, the way to peace, the only way to get your rights. Jesus said,' Love Justice.' Jesus does not want anything but for people to love each other.” Should that not mean he would support peace talks? He dismissed the idea firmly, “You don't talk to a serpent. You kill it!”
He had actually been on his way to Gaza when the war broke out. He had been there before. From 1954 to 1956, he was one of twenty Egyptian officers who trained Palestinian commando unit in raids across to their former homeland. “Nasser could not restrain them, so he wanted to integrate them into our forces. They were brave, firm for their rights.”
In fact, he recounted a story to show how brave and moral they were. He says that 1,700 of them, rather than be trapped and killed in Gaza, when the Israelis joined with British and French in the attack in 1956, set off to trek through Israel across the Negev and made it to Jordan several days later. "On the way," he reminisced, "we stopped and took food and water from an isolated house, and I asked whether they wanted to kill the family there. The volunteers all refused, and said we do not make war on women and children! They are good people the Palestinians!” he declared, shaking his head with admiring disbelief at their sentimentality
And the Israelis, he said, are bad people. “You cannot trust them.” Waving his arm to indicate the crowded Cairo streets, he declared, “Ask any of these people here. Sadat signed a peace treaty with Israel, but he cannot make us love them.”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)