UK abstains on nuke vote

Ian Williams

UK Ducks with Netanyahu gestures

Tribune December 19, 2014 Last modified: December 14, 2014

In the United Nations, a flight of disarmament resolutions went through in December – and the nuclear powers, including Britain, disappeared up their diplomatic rears abstaining or voting against core principles in the treaty.

Significantly, one resolution calling for a nuclear-free Middle East passed by 161 votes, with the United States, Canada, Palau, Micronesia and, of course, Israel voting against. No fewer than 18 cowardly countries abstained, including Australia, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Britain. In contrast, the tiny Marshall Islands, totally dependent on the US Congress, had more integrity than Britain, and voted for.

The Marshall Islands has gone to the International Court of Justice in The Hague for a ruling on the failure of the nine nuclear nations to disarm, and asking the court to require them to stop maintaining and modernising their weaponry as well as take substantial steps to disarmament.

The Marshallese know whereof they speak since US exploded out no less than 23 hydrogen bombs on the itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny atoll of Bikini in the former Strategic Trust territory. Five of those nine would-be nuclear bombers, Britain, China, France, Russia and the US, are signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which bars new nations from going nuclear but which also requires the existing nuclear states to move towards complete disarmament. Among the 190 signatories is Iran. Not among them are India, Pakistan – and Israel.

So why would Britain, Germany and France vote against a resolution whose principles their countries have publicly endorsed and committed to?  The reason is that the resolution was not about North Korea, or even Iran, but specifically called on Israel to “accede to that treaty without further delay, not to develop, produce test or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons, to renounce possession of nuclear weapons” and to put its nuclear facilities under the safeguard of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

US representative Robert Wood claimed that the resolution “fails to meet the fundamental tests of fairness and balance. It confines itself to expressions of concern about the activities of a single country.” His statement epitomises the absurdities of Washington’s position. In a resolution calling for a US backed nuclear-free zone in the Middle East, is it “unfair” and “unbalanced” to mention the one nuclear state in the region?

But the US is the mover of all the resolutions in the UN Security Council, identifying Iran as the only threat to disarmament in the Middle East. Iran is not the most palatable regime in region, although on almost every human right standard, it far surpasses our Saudi allies. But the ayatollahs have declared nuclear weapons unIslamic. Iran has signed and apparently observes all the chemical and biological warfare conventions and treaties, and has not invaded any of its neighbours. Although its citation of its “inalienable right” right to civil nuclear development might sound pompous and portentous, it is lifted straight from the Non-Proliferation Treaty which it has signed and Israel hasn’t.

Indeed, the Security Council resolution against Iran was only possible because Washington won over the vote of India, a nuclear non-signatory of the NPT, by exempting it from sanctions for its own nuclear programme to get a reference from the IAEA.

In contrast, Israeli politicians have openly called for military action against Iran on the mere suspicion of possible nuclear capability – thereby violating the most fundamental core of the UN Charter. It has flouted the NPT, and has a nuclear arsenal.

The reaction of the US and the Europeans is to pour treasure, armaments and diplomatic support to Israel. Germany provides advanced nuclear-capable submarines to the world’s biggest nuclear power outside the NPT.

Sadly the more reactionary governments become, the more support they win from across the political spectrum of European leaders, who all preach to the world about respect for UN resolutions, international law, nuclear disarmament, the International Criminal Court and the Geneva Conventions – unless anyone tries to apply them to one bellicose state in the Eastern Mediterranean.

WRMEA, August 2014, Pages 11, 17

United Nations Report

No Quarter for the Quartet!

By Ian Williams

Quartet members (l-r) envoy Tony Blair, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Catherine Ashton, Secretary of State John Kerry, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at U.N. headquarters in New York, Sept. 27, 2013. (STAN HONDA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES)

The Quartet was originally set up to persuade a recalcitrant Israel to allow the United Nations to have a role in the peace process. It was also an oblique American token recognition of Russia’s vestigial Great Power status, which allowed it a squeaky wheel in the peace process, if not an actual hand on the helm. Comprising the European Union, Russian and American leaders, along with the U.N. secretary-general, the Quartet’s function was to encapsulate U.N. influence and isolate it from the corpus of decisions made by the U.N. membership. The U.N. members, even after the fall of the Berlin wall, were, of course, much less amenable to U.S. congressional pressure, and thus AIPAC’s influence.

Like any institution, the Quartet has changed over the years, but its main purpose has been to preserve the appearance of “doing something” about the Middle East, while avoiding doing anything that could produce practical results—above all putting any form of pressure on Israel.

It drew up the famous roadmap, then went along complaisantly when Israel, with American support, crumpled it into an origame finger pointed at the Palestinians. Then it watched, apparently hypnotized, as the peace process stopped proceeding. It had a brief moment after the Israeli attack on the Gaza flotilla—but even then its main function was providing some diplomatic relief for Israel, rescuing it from the international consequences of its own aggressive actions.

Throughout, the Quartet has been a classic fob off for the international public, giving the appearance of action, but none of the reality. Its unique structure of two Security Council members and two multilateral organizations gives it a permanent fudge factor. It was a fascinating display of fuzzy diplomacy, as the Quartet adopted increasingly vacuous lowest-common-denominator positions—which Washington then ignored. The other members of the Quartet did not want a public display of their impotence, so they let the Americans, and by extension the Israelis, get away with it unchallenged.

It then developed a new function—how to express U.S. gratitude to former British Prime Minister Tony Blair for his unstinting support of the illegal war on Iraq. As the Quartet’s special envoy, the oleaginous Blair, the most overtly pro-Israeli of recent British prime ministers, was allowed a prominent place on the world stage—and, according to contemporary news reports, the U.S. State Department paid his salary and expenses.

It is a measure of how ethical standards worldwide have slipped that there is little or no public outrage that a former British prime minister should be able to masquerade under quasi-U.N. auspices while being paid for by the Americans, usually to do the bidding of the Likudnik govenment of Israel. Blair’s job, in which he officially succeeded former World Bank president James Wolfensohn, is to boost the Palestinian economy. However, while Wolfensohn was occasionally outspoken when exasperated by Israeli frustration of economic growth, Blair has sedulously avoided doing anything that would inhibit his income stream from the Americans and all his sundry highly paid speaking engagments.

It is true that in June Blair declared independence of Israel by confirming support for the new Palestinian coalition goverment, but after all it is Washington that pays his bills, and Kerry also has shown considerable exasperation with Israeli inconsistencies over the peace process.

In the end, however, apart from keeping Tony Blair busy, the Quartet’s only achievement has been preservation of its own unity—a singularly useless feat. It is time to dissolve it, bury it, burn it and force the various parties to state their own positions and hold on to them.

Double Standard on Human Rights

In other news, Ban Ki-moon has just appointed Prince Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, one of the most dynamic and effective of Arab diplomats, to replace South African Navi Pillay as High Commissioner for Human Rights. Being quite effective herself explains why Pillay was reappointed for only two years instead of the usual four. Like almost every other previous incumbent, she fell foul of the U.S. for being outspoken about human rights violations around the world including, of course, Israel.

The U.S. double standard on Israel, which includes ignoring the State Department’s own reports, provides cover for many of the Arab nations’ double standards, which in turn gives Israel’s supporters cover for pointing out those double standards. While it would be difficult to claim the Hashemites as paragons of human rights, they tend to be less worse than many of their neighbors, and Prince Zeid, who represented Jordan at the U.N., has played as good a hand as he could with the constraints of representing his government. More to the point is that he has consistently supported initiatives in support of international justice, notably the International Criminal Court.

While looking at international justice, yet another report ignored by the U.S. was that of “the U.N. Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People and Other Arabs of the Occupied Territories.” It expressed grave concerns about the reported worsening health conditions of more than 75 Palestinian detainees on hunger strike now in hospital protesting Israel’s continued use of administrative detention.

The fact-finding commission called on Israel to accede to the demand of the hunger strikers to end the practice of arbitrary administrative detention of Palestinians. “It is a desperate plea by these detainees to be afforded a very basic standard of due process: to know what they are accused of and to be able to defend themselves,” said the committee. 

Compared with worldwide attention to, say, Irish hunger strikers, it is almost unreported that a first group of around 100 Palestinian administrative detainees launched a peaceful protest on April 24 and since have been joined by a couple of hundred more. The committee pointed out that “International humanitarian law only exceptionally allows for the use of administrative detention, yet the Israeli authorities have detained a large number of Palestinians for reasons not explicitly indicated.  Initial administrative detention orders of six-month periods can be renewed an indefinite number of times without producing charges.”

Included among those imprisoned under Israeli administrative detention are no fewer than eight elected Palestinian legislators. So much for bringing democracy to the Middle East! ❑

---

Obama: Impaled on the Horns of an AIPAC

United Nations Report December Washington Report on Middle East Affairs

Washington Impaling Itself on the Horns of a Diplomatic Dilemma

By Ian Williams
In the twisted chains of events in the Middle East, one set of
links is clear. Almost 500 Palestinian prisoners—and Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit—released on Oct. 12, with a second group of 555 Palestinian prisoners to be released later, owe their freedom to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ determination to push the U.N. membership issue. Binyamin Netanyahu could have freed Shalit any time
on these same terms—but the Palestinian statehood issue, for psychopathological reasons we have discussed earlier in these columns, rattles the Israeli prime minister and his supporters so much that he was prepared to give Hamas a boost against Fatah with the release.
Those of us who savor fine hypocrisies will also relish the irony of long negotiations resulting in a political boost for a movement with which Israel says the rest of the world should have no contact. One almost looks forward to the arrest, indictment and trial of Israeli leaders on their next visit to the U.S., where people are serving long sentences for much less substantial contact and support for Hamas related organizations!
However, back to the main issue, Palestine’s application for U.N. membership is now languishing in a Security Council subcommittee, few of whose members seem eager to bring the issue to a head. No matter what the Obama administration does now, it is cruising for a diplomatic bruising. While U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice is not as pugnacious as her predecessor John Bolton, or indeed James Baker, in rounding up votes in the U.N., the Obama administration has been trying hard—despite Washington’s weakened clout—to persuade vulnerable states that it is in their best interests not to vote yes in the Security Council. If the resolution accepting Palestinian membership does not garner nine positive votes, then—in the spirit of the toddler who hides behind the drapes and can’t understand that everyone can see his feet sticking out—the U.S. hopes to escape the contumely it richly merits for vetoing a resolution fulfilling the wishes expressed by the president just a year earlier.


However, back to the main issue, Palestine’s application for U.N. membership is now languishing in a Security Council subcommittee, few of whose members seem eager to bring the issue to a head. No matter what the Obama administration does now, it is cruising for a diplomatic bruising. While U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice is not as pugnacious as her predecessor John Bolton, or indeed James Baker, in rounding up votes in the U.N., the Obama administration has been trying hard—despite Washington’s weakened clout—to persuade vulnerable states that it is in their best interests not to vote yes in the Security Council. If the resolution accepting Palestinian membership does not garner nine positive votes, then—in the spirit of the toddler who hides behind the drapes and can’t understand that everyone can see his feet sticking out—the U.S. hopes to escape the contumely it richly merits for vetoing a resolution fulfilling the wishes expressed by the president just a year earlier.
Twenty years ago, the U.S. scarcely felt the need to justify what it wanted. Now, over-extended militarily, wobbling financially, its carrots are stringy and its stick detumescent, so it has to explain why Russia is being unreasonable in blocking the membership of Kosovo, recognized by about half of the U.N., while a White House-threatened veto of membership for Palestine, recognized by more than two-thirds of U.N. members, is statesmanship of a high order.
Indeed, inquiring minds might well compare the Russian and Chinese vetoes against action in Syria to prevent repression, with those by the U.S. against any resolution that even mildly criticizes Israel for documented repression in the occupied territories—as listed by the State Department’s own annual reports on human rights and religious freedom!
And more Israel Lobby-induced mayhem was heading down the turnpike toward Washington, with UNESCO’s scheduled late fall vote on its board’s recommendation for Palestine’s full membership status in the agency’s general council. Forty of the 58 board members backed a Palestinian draft resolution proposing membership, with the U.S. among four voting against, and 14 abstentions—countries which do not really oppose it but don’t want to upset the U.S.
The Vatican Precedent
This has a double significance. Firstly, the Vatican’s convoluted route to acceptance as a non-member observer state at the U.N. began with it being “smuggled” into membership of the Universal Postal Union (UPU) by the devotee who headed the organization at the time. After all, the Vatican had its own stamps—a nice little earner—and its own radio station, which got it into the International Telecommunications (then Telegraph) Union. It was never allowed to join the League of Nations, nor for many decades would Washington countenance U.N. membership—but the Vatican had a long-term strategy, as one would expect, on how a postage stamp state with a population of a few hundred celibates could get more recognition.
The U.N. invited members of the specialized agencies to participate, but not vote, in the General Assembly and, nudged along, gave such entities, which included Switzerland for half a century, a vote in conferences.
Echoing the issue of whether President Abbas represents the PLO, Palestine, or the Palestinian Authority, it is the Vatican City which is a member of the two U.N. agencies. Half a century ago, however, it switched the name of its U.N. observer mission to the Holy See—then separated the Holy See as the Catholic Church from the Holy See as the entity holding sovereignty over the Vatican City!
In a little noticed move in 2004, the General Assembly upgraded the Vatican’s status from an entity—Palestine’s current designation—to a non-member state. The U.S., which opposes such status for the several million Palestinians, did not object.
So, under existing rules, membership in UNESCO would take Palestinian participation out of the special case situation it currently occupies as a result of 20 years of diplomatic war by attrition, and bring it under general rules that the U.S. and Israel would have no chance of overturning.
Renewed Assaults on the U.N.
But there is, of course, more. After some years of the puzzling sound of silence regarding the U.N., some of the Republican right and their Democratic allies whose hearts beat as one with the Likudnik pacemaker have been building up for a renewed assault on the U.N. and all its works. They have passed legislation that would require the U.S. to pull its funding—and membership—from any body that gives “full membership as a state to any organization or group that does not have the internationally recognized attributes of statehood.” The legislation is of course weaselly worded to mean Palestine—but not the Vatican—while interestingly leaving Taiwan in limbo.
That would present an interesting quandary for Hillary Clinton, who, visiting UNESCO headquarters in Paris this
year, declared, “I am proud to be the first secretary of state from the United States ever to come to UNESCO, and I come because I believe strongly in your mission.” That dilemma could be resolved immediately, of course, if the president and the State Department determined that in fact Palestine does have the internationally recognized attributes of statehood. After all, Kosovo, under U.S. sponsorship, has joined the World Bank and IMF—which should, if U.N. membership were the determinant, have the U.S. pulling out and defunding those organizations as well. Looking at the damage they have done worldwide, that might not be such a bad idea—but in any case, no one has brought it up hitherto.
The diplomatic dilemma on the horns of which the administration is impaling itself becomes more barbed with each passing denial of reality.
By U.N. custom, once one agency has accepted a member, all other U.N. agencies also accord it full rights, as the Vatican demonstrates. Since the World Bank and IMF are quantum U.N. agencies—in and out at the same time, depending on what suits them—Kosovo cannot yet lever membership there into other U.N. agencies. UNESCO membership, however, like the UPU, opens the doors to all the others.
So the U.S. can either pull out of all the U.N. agencies this administration holds dear—including the U.N. itself—if the General Assembly accepts the Holy See way to Palestinian participation, or it can accept Palestine as a state under international law. Washington could, of course, suggest that the case be referred to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague for an advisory opinion. That, however, would then imply accepting other ICJ judgements, such as the one against the U.S. mining of Nicaragua’s harbors—and on Israel’s occupation wall.
A Hard-Hitting Report
The latter, of course, is long overdue. On Sept. 16, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon submitted the report requested by the General Assembly on Israeli settlement activities. Citing instance after instance of violent discriminatory behavior, the hard-hitting report “seeks to underscore the discriminatory nature of the Israeli policy and practice of promoting settlements in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. While illegal settlement expansion continues to take place in the West Bank, restrictions on Palestinian construction and the demolition of Palestinian homes have been on the rise. The report also addresses settlers’ violent
acts against Palestinians and their properties during the reporting period and the discriminatory treatment of Israeli settlers and Palestinians in law enforcement. The involvement of Israel Defense Forces in acts of violence, either through their participation or inaction to prevent the acts, is discussed as a growing concern.”
But perhaps most timely for those expressing shock and horror at the Palestinians undertaking due process to secure the rights as a state that most nations grant them is the report’s conclusion: “The General Assembly and the international community should more actively seek the implementation of their decisions, resolutions and recommendations, as well as those of the Security Council, the International Court of Justice and the United Nations human rights mechanisms, including treaty bodies and special procedure mandate holders, in relation to the situation of human rights and international humanitarian law in the occupied Palestinian territory.”
It puts in perspective the U.S. threat to defund all Palestinian activities in retaliation for the statehood bid—as, indeed, does the promise to increase aid to the state that is defying not only the U.N., but U.S. pleas, and continuing to build settlements. ❑

Obama's Sound of Silence

Like many people, I expected little from Obama’s performance at AIPAC. He has to straddle parallel universes: the real one, in which most countries recognize Israel as tantamount to an international scofflaw, and the American domestic political universe in which Israel is always right. The US’s real allies and the rest of the world have long wearily resigned themselves to how, as with his speech at the State Department, the President has to pander to pro-Israeli organizations and the Congress members whose support he needs on domestic issues.

Obama congratulated himself, deservedly, for continuing to raise unpalatable issues with elections in the air, and while pandering in a traditionally nauseous way, but there was some reassurance from the sound of silence in his speech.

AIPAC’s conference is a mind-numbing experience. “My country right or wrong” is a rightly derided principle. But at AIPAC ten thousand people are assembled dedicated to the proposition that someone else’s country should be supported, right or wrong, even if it flouts every principle they support at home - and even if its civil laws on marriage and conversion deny the branches of Judaism to which most practicing American Jews adhere.

The organizations tend to be donor-driven rather than grass roots motivated. American Jews, true to their liberal roots, voted for Obama in higher proportions than any other ethnic group - even as a raucous minority of the community questioned Obama’s citizenship and Christianity. That minority is disproportionately represented in the counsels of AIPAC and many of the “official” organizations and tends to Republican, Likudnik hawkishness.

But they tend to think in slogans and catchphrases, without comparing them to reality, let alone with Robert Burn’s “giftie to see oursel’s as others see us.” They have been helped to remain in their parallel universe because Presidents and secretaries of state have pandered (with the notable exception of James Baker) for decades to AIPAC - and no one notices, As is customary, dogs are biting men.

The media attention to President Obama’s address is significant since for the first time in twenty years, there is visible crack showing between the White House and AIPAC - and Israel. It is going too far to say that Obama is biting the dog - but he is sinking his gums into the Lobby and Netanyahu. He is doing so to the background of an American Jewish community that is split more than ever before, and certainly more so than the “official” spokesmen and organizations reveal.


While admitting there are problems with a unity Palestinian government, “We will continue to demand that Hamas accept the basic responsibilities of peace: recognizing Israel’s right to exist, rejecting violence, and adhering to all existing agreements,” he did not exclude negotiations, but in effect put conditions, which Hamas has, in reality, already gone a long way to meet and is on the way to go further.

One hopes that he realizes that the key phrases he used such as the need to accept Israel’s “right to exist” were introduced by Israeli leaders precisely because they were unacceptable to Palestinians. He might even have noticed how quickly Israel switched from refusing to negotiate because the authority was divided, to refusing because it is united! It is like demanding that American Indian tribes accept that their dispossession was right and goes beyond acceptance of the obvious fact of Israel’s existence and its now nearly universal acceptance as an established state.

Such phrases have traditionally been used to in the Levantine blame game in which the purpose of negotiations is not to reach a solution but to blame the other side for failure. But there is always a way to wiggle - a phrase that would irk some Israelis would be for the Palestinians to recognize Israel’s “right to exist under UN Decisions!”

One hopes that the President is now playing this game with Netanyahu. One also hopes he harbors grudges. For the world’s most benefitted welfare queen to publicly dress down the President of its benefactor at the White House should give most Americans some frisson of indignation.

While in the real world, Obama’s insistence on the 1967 boundaries as a basis for negotiation for land swaps has been generally accepted, Palestinians irate at this admitted denial of the “inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by force,” may have missed, along with nuance-free AIPACers his endorsement of a The Palestinian people’s “right to govern themselves, and reach their potential, in a sovereign and contiguous state,” which presumably implies that in return for giving up some of the settled area, the Palestinian state will have a land bridge between Gaza and the West Bank. One can see why he might not have chosen to spell that out for AIPAC!

While he stated a fact, “No vote at the United Nations will ever create an independent Palestinian state,” he did not state a principle. He said, “The United States will stand up against efforts to single Israel out at the UN or in any international forum. Because Israel’s legitimacy is not a matter for debate.” He did not say that the US would veto a UN acceptance of Palestine as a member state.

Indeed, he challenged the sloganeers with reality, “The number of Palestinians living west of the Jordan River is growing rapidly and fundamentally reshaping the demographic realities of both Israel and the Palestinian territories. This will make it harder and harder – without a peace deal – to maintain Israel as both a Jewish state and a democratic state.” Secondly he pointed to how atavistic the old obsession with territory as security is since “technology will make it harder for Israel to defend itself in the absence of a genuine peace,” and finally, he pointed to the changes in Israel’s neighbours, so peace can no longer be bought with few local kleptocrats, “Going forward, millions of Arab citizens have to see that peace is possible for that peace to be sustained.”

If the US is retain influence in the region, it can no longer pay exclusive attention to Israeli public opinion while sending a few billion to local rulers. It, and Israel, have to show ordinary Arab citizens that they are serious about peace. Obama cannot regret the consequences to Palestinians of occupation while carrying on passing the ammunition to Israel.

It is unlikely that Netanyahu will voluntarily relinquish the not so secret Likud desire for an Arab-free state all the way to the Jordan. Obama has, perhaps deliberately and adroitly, maneuvered the Israeli Prime Minister into insulting the President of the US. He now has to follow up and show that their are consequences for Israel.

Obama baulked at his best opportunity, which was the UN resolution on the settlements. He should stop equivocating and come out plainly with a declaration that if Netanyahu continues to refuse to come to terms with reality in the region, then he cannot take a US veto in the Security Council against Palestinian membership for granted nor even a nay vote in the General Assembly against a declaration of statehood. Indeed, if he really wanted to play for high stakes, he could suggest that embattled US tax payers will no longer continue to pay for free Israeli health care and higher education when they cannot afford it at home for themselves. It would almost be worth it to watch the Tea Partiers squirm, but it would show Israeli voters that there are indeed consequences from their choices.

Why No Go for US No Fly

Tribune 11 March 2011

Ian Williams on Libyan intervention

Some people would have picketed the Normandy Landings as imperialist intervention. (The Communist Party of the USA did actually condemn the British blockade of Nazi Germany as an imperialist attempt to starve German workers!) On the other hand, when I went to the UN legal department at the time of the belated attempts to help the Kurds after the first Gulf War, they shuffled their feet, and admitted that one of the few modern precedents they could find for “humanitarian intervention,” was Hitler’s land grabs in Czechoslovakia when he claimed to be rescuing Sudeten Germans from persecution.

When Kofi Annan persuaded the governments of the world to reinterpret the UN Charter to encompass “The Responsibility to Protect,” even supporters of intervention invoked the maxim “First do no harm,” and warned of the need to consider carefully the motives, intentions and methods of those intervening. Beware of brain surgeons with grudges and hatchets.

So, even though there are good ethical reasons to help the rebels in Libya, sadly there are few candidates qualified to do it. Obama has certainly blown it with his recent veto, which regresses US standing back to the inglory days of George W. Bush. (By the way, the UK went against the Blairite tradition and supported the resolution.)

In the face of Netanyahu’s refusal even to pause building settlements which the US coyly calls “illegitimate” but which the rest of the world unequivocally condemns as “illegal,” the US stood firm - and threatened to withdraw aid to the Palestinian victims unless they withdrew the embarrassing resolution!

One consequence is that this effectively rules out any attempt at international intervention in Libya, even to enforce a no-fly zone - at least if it involves US or NATO forces. There would be too many questions in the region about whether the jets flew for democracy or Israel, which was after all invoked by Mubarak’s security forces and the Yemeni president against protestors.

Gaddafi is still in some parallel universe where he thinks invoking Al-Qaeda gets him a free pass in Washington. This sounds like he is not quite hundred dirhams to the dinar, but put in the regional context of US support for any murderous autocrat who signs on for the anti-terrorist crusade and it is not that stupid. It might work yet, but if it doesn’t and there is any Western intervention, you can guarantee that he will invoke Israeli interference.


It is an interesting exercise to compare Obama’s recent stands, (or in some cases “prones,” might be a better word) on events in the region with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, who has categorically condemned settlements as illegal, and called for Mubarak to step down long before the leaders of the free world screwed their courage to the sticking place. After making the call, he returned to New York to fierce protests from the Egyptian mission to the UN, which have one gathers, been replaced with thanks and plaudits from the new regime in Cairo.

In Libya Ban called for "an immediate halt to the government's disproportionate use of force and indiscriminate attacks on civilian targets". This is welcome change from the UN’s traditional inability to distinguish between victim and perpetrator in conflicts and reflects Ban’s unprecedentedly forthright condemnations of member governments committing crimes - and, it is worth remembering, his public support for the International Criminal Career when he was running for the office with the support of the Bush administration.

Of course, Ban has no troops of his own, even if he wanted to deploy them. The UN is now sending a fact-finding mission which could restrain regime excesses in Tripoli, and one also suspects that other countries are sending less public missions to help the rebels, which one hopes are more circumspect than the arrested British SAS team. Any help has to be hands off to be successful. And the ironic result of democracy in Libya, like in Egypt, will be an elected government more anti-Imperialist than its paid-for predecessor.

No Go for No Fly..

Middle East
Mar 5, 2011
Asia Times

To fly or not to fly?
By Ian Williams

So, there is an eccentric dictator, disliked by all his neighbors. When the chips came down with demonstrations across Libya, his only friends are similar arch-bombasts, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, President of Nicaragua Daniel Ortega and Cuban strongman Fidel Castro, and even their friendship seems based on a safe physical distance, a steady supply of cash and a presumed shared enemy in Washington.

With the Arab League, Organization of Islamic States, the African Union, the European Union and now even the full United Nations Security Council - including China, Russia and India - on your side against Muammar Gaddafi, surely this is a time where the


UN doctrine of "Responsibility to Protect" (R2P) adopted five years ago and American declarations of humanitarian intent should form a vector of forces all heading in the same direction?

Sudan is still sitting pretty after far more bloodshed in Darfur, showing the power of friendship and diplomacy, with the Arab League and African Union trying to pull the leash back on the International Criminal Court, while even Security Council members who do not accept ICC jurisdiction, like the US and India, voted to refer Libya's rulers.

And yet, despite, dare we say, bombast from Senator John McCain and Senator Joe Lieberman, the Barack Obama administration is correctly hesitant about letting loose the dogs of war on Gaddafi, not even to enforce a no-fly zone.

The framers of the R2P principles at the UN made a bedrock principle of "First Do No Harm", and US intervention would clearly fail that test spectacularly. This is sad. Yet the resistance in Libya deserves, and might even need support. Indeed rather than physical intervention, a clear threat that it was possible and likely would give second thoughts to small groups of Gaddafi loyalists who must already have that sinking feeling of going down with a mad captain heading straight for the White Whale.

Although the present juncture of events in the Arab world was then unthinkable, or at least unforeseen, a year ago, Obama might have been able to get away with it then. His outreach to Muslims with speeches in Cairo and Istanbul added to the general feeling of euphoria that a black American with a Muslim middle name and an African surname had been elected president was enough, and what is more, his seemed to be the first administration since George H W Bush to confront Israel on settlements and peace.

Since then a lot of water has flowed - backwards - under the bridge. While he maintained some pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about settlements, he had a chance, but the revelation that the only sanctions threatened were a cut off of aid to the victim - the Palestinians, unless they knuckled under, showed a reversion to Clintonian, indeed Bush politics.

The first veto, of a resolution actually stating US views on Israeli settlements (if we elide the weaselly distinction between "Illegitimate" and "illegal"), starkly revealed US isolation and choices. It had 130 sponsors and every US ally on the Security Council voted for it. The fervor with which Washington tried to head off the vote shows they knew the risks they were taking, but nothing explains why they thought it was worthwhile.

We can see the potential as Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh refers to the protesters in his country as American and Israeli agents. It is nonsense, but he knows that it would be a potent objection if he could make it stick. The riots across the Arab world are not about Israel and Palestine, they are about food, democracy and many other pressing domestic issues.

But polls have shown that Arabs do feel strongly about the humiliation of their Palestinian brethren by Israel. And instead of biddable and buyable kleptocrats, Washington now has to worry about the views of the Arab electorate for the first time. They might not want to go to war against Israel: but they certainly will not countenance being bases for a war for Israel, or even the US, against yet another Arab country.

Even more broadly, after Iraq, for which British premier Tony Blair claimed humanitarian reasons when the weapons of mass destruction went missing, there is no way that the US could repeat a Kosovo operation without a UN mandate - which the US is almost certainly not going to get.

In addition to traditional Russian suspicion of US motives, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has memories. He was UN ambassador when Moscow extended the hand of cooperation over the first Iraq war in 1991 - and he feels quite rightly betrayed. Russia voted for sanctions - and saw them maintained for a decade after their declared original purpose of liberating Kuwait had been achieved. He saw UN measures to help the Kurds against the Ba'athist regime expanded to include a no-fly zone over the whole country, and once again maintained for a decade with no explicit UN authorization.

Now that the US is looking and sounding like the old-style US administrations, he is not cutting them any slack. There was a sound "nyet" to any suggestion of military action in the resolution.

In fact, he is saving the US from itself. After Obama's first veto he has reverted to being just another US commander-in-chief, and there are many people in the region who would ask whether those jets were flying for democracy or Israel - a question with extra force since many of those who are advocating it were much less keen to lend support to Egyptians ousting Hosni Mubarak, let alone the king of Bahrain.

Even Gaddafi, who eccentrically blames al-Qaeda as if this will win him support from Washington, is likely to raise the Israel specter if the US Air Force flies in. Even the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as a clear US surrogate is incompatible.

However, rather than the US, a threat of Turkish, or Egyptian intervention or interdiction of the Libyan military might overcome many of the legitimate actions, and indeed would encourage the rebels while stripping Gaddafi of the last of his crew so he could go down without taking the ship with him.

Ian Williams is the author of Deserter: Bush's War on Military Families, Veterans and His Past, Nation Books, New York.

(Copyright 2011 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)


The end of the end of history
Mar 4

Ending with a Whimper

Obama Surrenders on Settlements

By Ian Williams, March 1, 2011 Foreign Policy in Focus

The recent U.S. veto of a UN Security Council resolution denouncing Israel's settlement policy is a tragicomic way for the Obama administration to abandon its claim to global leadership. But that is what Ambassador Susan Rice’s “nay” vote on February 18 signifies. The battle for a rational foreign policy in Washington has been over for some time. This veto represents surrender.

In George W. Bush’s days, such a veto would have been much less fraught. No one would have expected any better from that administration. And the erosion of U.S. economic, military, and diplomatic leverage, although underway, had not been made manifest. In those days, the United States did not pretend to care what the rest of the world thought, and there was even less that anyone else could do about it.

How things have changed! The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan might not represent defeat but they are Pyrrhic victories at best, with huge military, financial, and political costs. At the same time, the self-inflicted financial disaster has certainly dulled the luster of the U.S. economic model as the U.S. global position is crumbling BRIC by BRIC.

Across the Middle East, popular uprisings are removing the kleptocrats whose compliance with U.S. policy could be bought. They are also empowering a citizenry whose visceral reaction to U.S. support of Israel is on a par with African reaction to U.S. backing of South Africa’s former Apartheid regime. Indeed, the ouster of Mubarak removed one of the main U.S. levers on the Palestinians. Although Obama did not go to the aid of his ally, his hesitation, influenced by pro-Israeli interests, hardly garnered much street credibility in the region.

This veto also dramatically overturns the pledges that Obama made in his Cairo and Istanbul speeches about a renewed relationship with the Arabs and Muslims in the region. It not only abandons the Palestinians, it also abandons those Israelis who had been fighting for a peace settlement and the growing number of American Jews who have been combating Likudnik belligerence.
U.S. and Israel Isolated

The United States defied no fewer than 130 nations who had sponsored the resolution. Those voting for it included France, India, Germany, Brazil, the United Kingdom, and even Colombia. Given its desperate attempts to avert the resolution, the administration cannot claim ignorance of the significance of the vote or, indeed, the consequences of the veto.

The force with which UN Ambassador Rice attacked the Israeli settlement policy in her explanation of the U.S. vote was perhaps designed to mitigate the international effect of the veto. But it did nothing for U.S. standing, since it simply highlighted the surrender to Netanyahu, who ignored Rice’s stern admonitory statement with the same insouciance that he has brushed off Obama’s pleas. For U.S. friends and allies, the veto sent a strong message that Washington would ignore their wishes and interests when tweaked by a powerful domestic lobby – and that U.S. concern for democracy and international law does not extend to itself or Israel.

The veto also reveals how much the Obama administration's Middle Eastern policy reflects the influence of the former Clinton administration. At that time, the United States shifted from considering settlements “illegal” to labeling them “unhelpful.” Also under Clinton, the United States abandoned support of international law to state that the way forward for Israeli-Palestinian peace must be by “bilateral negotiations.” After such negotiations in Oslo, Israel achieved the normalization of relations with much of the Arab, Islamic, and non-aligned world, and built settlements regardless. Palestinians gave up tangible international diplomatic leverage in return for an interminable process, a road map folded into a Mobius strip that circled around endlessly.

With most Palestinians realizing the inefficacy of armed resistance, the PLO began to build its last line of defense: international law. The Palestinian mission to the UN emphasized the corpus of UN decisions and international conventions against the occupation and the settlements. The parties to the Fourth Geneva convention, the International Court of Justice, the UN General Assembly, all venues where the United States had no veto, reaffirmed the Palestinian position.

Israel was deeply concerned by such moves. That is why, prodded by Israel, the Clinton administration composed the mantra now being recited by Obama’s team, that in effect, international law could and should be disregarded, and the Palestinians should cut a deal. Palestinian leaders have consistently pretended that the United States was an honest broker, even as Washington kept strong-arming them into more and more concessions. Between the veto and the WikiLeaks revelations, they can no longer pretend that this is so.
Wider Consequences

In the wake of the UN vote, the Palestinians will likely mount a more vigorous campaign for world public opinion, which will throw Washington’s subservience to Israeli interests into greater relief. At the UN, speaker after speaker, even the British, looked forward to welcoming Palestine as a member state by this September. In a polite way, U.S. allies were throwing down the gauntlet for another confrontation with Washington.

Israel, meanwhile, finds itself in a more fragile position. If it rejects the new Palestinian state, it will be much more vulnerable to calls for international sanctions, boycotts, and divestments. Significantly, the EU is a much more significant trading partner than the United States, and European publics are significantly more inclined to such measures. So, European politicians will find themselves squeezed between pressure from the public to further isolate Israel and pressure from the United States to back off. After the flotilla conflict with Turkey, Israel has lost whatever friends it has in the Muslim world. There is little prospect of Arab forces marching on Tel Aviv, but clearly the peace is about to get even colder, with less cooperation on policing the border between Gaza and Egypt and even more pressure for a regional nuclear free zone.

The Palestinians can, and very likely will, take up other options to isolate the United States and Israel. It could reconvene the meeting of signatories to the Geneva Convention, or more tellingly, it could reconvene the Emergency General Assembly under the Uniting for Peace resolution that the United States moved to bypass the Soviet veto during the Korean War. That session is currently adjourned, but it would once again emphasize the U.S. isolation.

The more the United States is isolated in its unqualified defense of Israel, the less amenable governments in the region will be to cooperation with Washington, except when it clearly meets their own interests. The future of U.S. military bases in the region – in Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait – will for instance become more tenuous. On a wider level, Obama has lost much of the ground for public diplomacy he had seized when he replaced George W. Bush.

The veto – combined with the tepid and belated response to Egypt, Tunisia, and Bahrain – has also complicated U.S. response to the emerging civil war in Libya. Gaddafi’s regional unpopularity would likely ensure some local cooperation in enforcing a no-fly zone, for instance. But even if it went ahead, it would leave the world with the big question: why does the United States fly to stop hundreds of Libyans being killed from the air, but supplies the planes, drones, bombs, and shells for Israel to kill a thousand Palestinians? Regional public opinion, now politically important, is as likely to assume that U.S. sorties against Libya were flown on behalf of Israel as much as to support Libyan protestors.

Pray for Democracy - But Not Just Yet...

Fear of the Muslim Brotherhood Trumps Western Wishes for Democracy in Egypt

By Ian Williams, February 3, 2011 FPIF

Muslim Brotherhood(Pictured: The Muslim Brotherhood.)

It might suit such pundits as Blair, Bolton and Netanyahu to pretend that Egyptians are too uneducated and ignorant to be trusted with democracy, but I would put my money on the political literacy of the Egyptians en masse over Americans any day.

One cannot help but suspect that what they mean by “ignorant” is that they support the Palestinians. That is not to say that they necessarily want to rush to war, but certainly the unholy tradeoffs in enforcing the blockade on Gaza are deeply unpopular. The rising was certainly inspired by domestic concerns, economic and democratic, but the delegitimizing effect of pro-Israeli support for the regime should not be underestimated, not least inside the Army, which after all has fought Israel repeatedly.

That is not to say a future regime would declare war or rip up Camp David. Rather it would probably emulate Turkey, and maintain polite but chilly relations with Israel. Cairo will be less biddable, whether from Israel or the US. While Bolton, a deep harborer of grudges, reviles Mohamed El Baradei, it is worth remembering that the present government, along with him, and indeed putative rival Amr Al-Moussa, are all on the record as wanting Israel to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Who can oppose a call for democracy? Well, John Bolton, Peres and Netanyahu can, not to mention Tony Blair, who described Mubarak as “immensely courageous, and a force for good,” even as his mercenary thugs brought blood and mayhem to the streets of Cairo. And of course the time-expired President of Palestine, Mohamed Abbas.

The outright support of Netanyahu and his friends for the alleged stability of the Mubarak regime certainly tempers the enthusiasm of many others in the chattering classes in the US, for toppling the regime in Cairo, including the Obama administration. Ironically their various pronouncements in favor of Mubarak and his anointed deputy Omar Suleiman are very effective stakes through the heart of the regime.

However, Netanyahu, Peres and Blair are following a long tradition of American policy towards Egypt that has for long time been effectively amoral, with no ethical dimension at all. It did not care what happened to Egyptians as long their government did what it was told.

Consistently, from Sandy Berger and Clinton and even before, democracy has been sidelined as a US policy in the Arab world. Originally, any Arab regime that did not threaten Israel had a free pass for torture and repression, but after 9-11, Muslims, Arabs, terrorists all became blurred in the popular mind – and even in Washington policy-making circles.

So for Egypt, democracy would all be fine, if there weren’t a strong chance that the Muslim Brothers would be elected and at least share power. People who are quite happy to respect Catholic dominated Christian Democrats across Europe, rabbi-led parties in Israel, and dare one add, Evangelical dominated Republicans in the US, confess to frissons of fear at the thought that the Muslim Brotherhood will play a large part in a new reformed Egyptian administration.

Just as everybody knows that every Catholic is an inquisitor waiting with a box of matches next to the stake, viscerally, Americans know every Muslim is a terrorist. Fortunately, the images of the peaceful, articulate and passionate demonstrators in Tahrir Square belied that.

It is an ironic comment on consistently failed US policy that if Washington had not stopped the funding for the Aswan Dam under Nasser, the total of $35 billion in military aid, which began as a bribe to wean Cairo away from the Soviets, might have been unnecessary, let alone if the US had maintained its principles. Remember, back in 1956, the US had threatened to crash the currencies of its two biggest allies, Britain and France, and Israel if the three conspirators did not pull out from the Sinai they had just occupied.

Of course the US could withhold aid to Egypt if it elected a new government that was, shall we say, less amenable to Israeli wishes. However, since most of this money is immediately recycled to American weapons makers and does not impinge on ordinary citizens, it is hardly a potent threat to the nation. But if Obama is serious about democratization, he could mention the possibility of stopping the dollars flowing to the Egyptian high command who along with Mubarak, are the major beneficiaries of this largesse.

In fact, there is some doubt whether the bulk of the Army would actually obey orders to move against the demonstrators. Its popular legitimacy derives from its wars against invaders, which is somewhat challenged when the President is endorsed by those who most Egyptians, military and civilian see as the enemy. Perhaps the most potent images which demoralized the police and security forces and deprived them and the regime of legitimacy were the water cannons deployed against praying demonstrators.

The absence of the uniformed security forces and indeed their visible reluctance to stand their ground against demonstrators suggests that demoralization has already set in, while the unleashing of paid thugs that we have seen is reminiscent of the last days of the Indonesians in East Timor, Ceausescu in Romania and other crumbling regimes.

Indeed Mubarak might want to check over the reports of the downfall of the Romanian dictator, where it was the army that decided, under cover of popular protest, the best way to calm things down was to put him in front of kangaroo court and shoot him.

Obama cannot claim non-interference. Washington’s financial, military and diplomatic support for Mubarak are already an intervention. A clear signal that it was all ending could motivate the armed forces leaders to seek a Mubarak-free accommodation with the opposition and ensure an orderly transition to democracy.

Worm Turning Time

No pushover

From Ian Williams
Passionate Detachment, Middle East International, 1 April 2010

This column’s title is a play on George Washington’s famous dictum, cited by former Secretary of State George Ball for his book on the US-Israel relationship, that “a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils.”

Comparisons are odious, albeit often effective when the rhetoric purples the air about the need for ‘no space between the US and Israel’, as it did so notably at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) rally in Washington on 21-23 March, when over 7,000 Americans applauded a foreign prime minister’s determination to rebut a polite request from the US president not to continue breaking international law.

In contrast, in the last century, for better or worse, the US and Britain have fought two world wars side-by-side. It was only a few years back that Britain finished paying off its 60-year-old loans from the US for fighting World War II. Prime Minister Clement Attlee’s post-war government jeopardised Britain’s precarious economy, and possibly cost him re-election, by going into Korea with Truman. Britain made itself a nuclear target by hosting US bases during the Cold War. Britain was first with the US into Afghanistan and British troops led the advance earlier into Kosovo. Tony Blair lost his premiership (rightly) for going with the US into Iraq. In return, this year, Washington effectively blew off London over the Falkland Islands, to which Britain has a claim accepted by much of the world. There is no British Lobby in Washington.

Now, consider the country that has never fought side-by-side with American troops, but did, within living memory, try to sink a US ship and kill all on board, and whose actions in the Occupied Territories, in the estimation of senior Pentagon officers, are jeopardising US troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. The US bankrolls its wars, regardless of whether it was consulted beforehand, and it insists that the superpower must back its every deed – with “no space between” – to retain territories to which not one other country in the world considers Israel has a valid claim.

But there are signs that the worm is finally turning: that Netanyahu’s chutzpah might get the retribution that he has been begging for. Israel had to apologise to Turkey for making its ambassador sit in a lower chair. In contrast, there have been, and will be, no apologies for Netanyahu almost being sent out through the tradesman’s entrance in the White House (with no photo-call or joint public appearance), and being left to cool his heels in an anteroom while the president went off to dine en famille elsewhere in the building.

Indeed, the massive AIPAC love-fest, with its standing ovation for Netanyahu even as he serially insulted the president and vice-president of the US, might inadvertently have really been a wake. Its attendees almost certainly swing to the Republican right and some of them probably belong to some of the lunatic fringe groups on the far right.

But outside in the real world, Obama’s victory in the healthcare bill re-fired the overwhelming support he has consistently maintained among American Jews. Their backing for Obama belies any claims AIPAC has to be the Jewish lobby. Rather, AIPAC reflects the apparent realisation of Israeli Jews that Obama might be tough with their government. In contrast, the upstart J-Street lobby group that wants to close settlements and advocates a two-state solution is far more representative of American Jewry and is creating political space for sanity, even in the pro-Israeli camp. Almost as much space, one might add, as the Netanyahu government’s arrogance.

From the beginning, I have alternated between the suspicion and the hope that Obama and his colleagues have been giving Netanyahu enough rope to hang himself while they attend to the more pressing domestic issues. Until now, Obama’s White House has had to cope with the very real possibility that some diehard pro-Israeli legislators would be single-minded enough to derail the healthcare reform that the president has made his signature domestic issue. Now he can devote more attention to his signature foreign policy issue. There could hardly be a better time.

Israel’s international standing has for some time been much higher than it has deserved to be. But the past year has deservedly been a watershed, as incident after incident suggests that it is a rogue state with an overweening sense of entitlement. Forged passports for murderers, defiance of Goldstone, diplomatic spats with Turkey, casual insults to the US administration, are all underlain with the perennial finger up the global nostrils represented by Avigdor Lieberman as foreign minister.

The Israeli electorate would prefer a rubber-stamp administration in Washington, but is realistic enough to frown at a prime minister and a coalition who alienate the only country that can or would defend them if their sedulously-fed paranoid fears were realised. Israelis watched Obama’s White House snubs with interest, not least since most of them already suspected that the president was not the complaisant Clintonesque pushover they wanted. If Obama is serious about a lasting peace accord, Netanyahu’s maladministration is offering him a dual carriageway: domestic US support for financial or diplomatic sanctions against Israel, and a consequent collapse of the Israeli prime minister’s coalition.

Let us hope he follows through with some determination.

A Dog and Tail Tale

Washington lobbies' Israel-Turkey reality check

From Ian Williams
Passionate Detachment column Middle East International 22 January 2010

It might not be a change of the tide, but the ham-fisted Israeli foreign ministerial team has certainly revealed the shift in the currents of regional and international politics.
The petty triumph of calling in Ambassador Oğuz Çelikkol for a reprimand, as if he or the Turkish government controlled programming on Turkish TV, might have played well for the right in Israel, but the affair also said much about Ankara’s changing relationship with both Israel and the United States.

The brusque Turkish demand for an Israeli apology, following Ankara’s refusal to assist in the US invasion of Iraq or to countenance operations through its airspace to Iran, is the latest indication of a coming of age for Turkey and a new climate in global relations. The government in Ankara can base policies on popular support without worrying too much about uppity allies like the US, let alone Israel – or for that matter those parts of its own military with too much invested in those alliances.

For many years, Turkey needed Washington: as a military backstop against the Soviets, and indeed the Syrians and Iraqis, with whom there were old border issues. The US connection also helped to restrain the Greeks, for whom politics was, all too often, about how to annoy their eastern neighbour. A military relationship with Israel was strategically useful for Turkey when Syria or Iraq were a threat, but possibly more useful was the prospect of using the leverage of the Israel lobby in Washington.

In the peculiar Washington waltz of lobbies, Israel’s efforts on behalf of Turkey were countered by the Armenian expatriate lobby, the Greek lobby and a range of human rights organisations who generally took a dim view of Ankara’s policies. That was apparent when AIPAC had a clutch of Senators ‘unsign’ Bob Dole’s resolution on the 75th anniversary of the ‘Armenian Genocide’.

That was an earlier and possibly slightly more sophisticated version of Israel getting above itself than the current situation. It was because of this overreach that Dole became a firm and dedicated supporter of Bush and Baker’s campaign to stop Israel getting the $10 billion loan guarantees that Shamir wanted to resettle Russian immigrants – such as Lieberman and Ayalon.

On this occasion, who needs whom more? Turkey is a growing regional power, military and economic. It is on friendly terms with its neighbours and has gone some way to smooth over some of its more intractable problems – like teaming up with Russia to sign a peace treaty with Armenia. It has tried to broker peace between Syria and Israel – and finds the latter more at fault for the failure.

Turkey’s relationship with the EU is growing more important economically and politically than its ties to the US, whose shrinking superpower status has become more visible than ever. Neo-con overreach has made obvious the limitations of American military power, while the economic crisis has reduced US financial clout to its lowest ebb since 1945. Israel had some significance in its own right, but not nearly as much as it had as a means of influence in Washington. If Turkey does not have as much need of the US as before, it follows that there are fewer advantages to courting Israel than before.

Lieberman and Ayalon should be congratulated for their part in bursting the bubble. Not only is the US less important to Turkey and the Israel lobby less important than it was, but the two clowns have given a clear indication of why, with diehard exceptions like Joseph Lieberman, Israel supporters in Washington will no longer take their line verbatim from the Israeli government.

In real terms, the US has more to gain from a relationship with a regional power such as Turkey than with an Israel, for which support comes at such a heavy financial and diplomatic price across the world. Obama won’t rush to do an Erdoğan just yet, but even Washington lobbies can’t keep reality at bay forever.

Goldstone, Touchstone for Obama ME Peace Plan

Goldstone as a touchstone for Obama
By Ian Williams

Asia Times 20 October 2009

NEW YORK - The heavy pressure put on Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas last week by the United States and Israel to defer consideration of the Goldstone report, which was on Friday approved by the Human Rights Council, backfired. It not only made the US and Israel look like bullies, but also destroyed the credibility of Abbas and reinforced the image of Hamas among Palestinians. The attempt has also eroded US President Barack Obama's recently improved status among Arabs and Muslims, with the prospect of more damage to come.

International and domestic pressure was fierce enough for Abbas to ask for a reconvened meeting of the Human Rights Council last Thursday and Friday, but despite the outcome of the vote, this has done little to enhance his reputation. The 47-member Human Rights Council approved by 25-6 a resolution on Friday that endorsed the war crimes charges against Israel and Hamas as spelled out in the report.

Compiled by a four-member international fact-finding mission headed by Justice Richard Goldstone, the report covered war crimes during Operation Cast Lead, the 22-day Israeli military offensive on the Gaza Strip in December-January during which an estimated 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis died. The report recommends that Israel and the Gaza authorities investigate alleged war crimes and, should that not happen within six months, that the UN Security Council should pursue prosecutions.

Israel and its allies have launched a tide of vituperation against Goldstone since the release of the report in September, but it risks splashing back in their faces. They have accused Goldstone, a Jewish pro-Israeli judge whose daughter made Aliyah to settle in Israel, of anti-Semitism. This charge stretches credulity almost as far as their accusation of bias against Goldstone, a judge who is the West's favorite legal maven at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

Some of that embarrassment was evident in the statements made by American and other Western allies at the Security Council and at the Human Rights Council. For example, the US and UK's statements at the October 14 Security Council meeting, which considered the Middle East without voting on the report, were carefully worded to suggest that the mandate was biased - but without impugning Goldstone's integrity. Indeed, the mandate had been biased, but Goldstone only accepted the position on the condition, accepted by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, that he would expand it and investigate all sides.

The statements from the Western allies were clearly thrown in as a sop to Israel and its supporters, but only an extraordinarily blinkered Likud politician would draw much comfort from the persistent calls from the US, the UK, France and others that Israel and Hamas should indeed investigate the allegations of war crimes in a transparent and impartial way. Even UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, who came into office as a close friend of Israel, joined the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in calling for an impartial investigation - not to mention Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and other respected non-governmental organizations.

Much of the strongest vilification comes from commentators who have clearly not read the report. The fact-finding mission found that there was a serious case to answer - not guilt - so even as they damned the report with faint praise, the US and its allies were implicitly endorsing its major conclusion - the need for a credible and independent investigation by both Israelis and Palestinians.

The report calls for a referral to the International Criminal Court only if after six months neither Israel nor Hamas have carried out the investigations. As with Sudan, the ICC does not have jurisdiction against a state such as Israel, unless the Security Council refers it. The ICC's convention actually provides that it only has jurisdiction where the states concerned have failed to investigate and initiate due process where warranted.

Well aware of the type of pressure that would be brought to bear, the Goldstone report also calls for referral to the United Nations General Assembly, which even if it does not have legal teeth, could continue to embroil Israel in unwelcome legal attention. Hot on the tails of the report's release, in early October, Israeli Vice Premier and Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Ya'alon cancelled a trip to Britain in November for fear of arrest on war crimes - the latest in a series of such cancellations. More can be expected.

Interestingly, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Knesset (parliament) in September, "We will not allow [former prime minister] Ehud Olmert, [opposition leader] Tzipi Livni and [Defense Minister] Ehud Barak, who sent our sons to war, to arrive at the international court in the Hague." One cannot help suspecting that this statement was a reminder to the White House that despite the Israeli prime minister's vigorous defense of Operation Cast Lead, that it was in fact the Labor/Kadima coalition that planned and initiated it.

There are some calmer voices in Israel, even among supporters of Cast Lead, who think that an investigation is a reasonable price to ward off increasing international isolation. After all, if no crimes were committed, why the noisy reluctance to look into them? In the minds of others, however, is the damning Israeli Kahan Commission report into the massacres at Sabra and Shatila during the 1982 Lebanon War, even though many believe it soft-pedaled on direct Israeli involvement and more particularly on former prime minister Ariel Sharon's role.

Perhaps the most intriguing aspect is how the report will play out in relation to Obama's Middle East peace plans. Will he earn that Nobel Prize? His credibility in the region is already suffering from the seeming impunity with which Netanyahu is scorning the US insistence on the settlement freeze that Israel was already committed to.

The US attempt to kill the Goldstone report at the Human Rights Council certainly makes Obama's job more difficult. It will become even more so if the report comes to the Security Council and the US ambassador vetoes a referral to the ICC if Israel did not institute an inquiry.

Indeed, the statements by the US, the UK and France calling for just such an inquiry could have added to the embarrassment of refusing to vote for a call for Israel to do what they all consider to be the right thing. Of course the Palestinians and their allies, one presumes, inadvertently, gave the US and others some excuses, since their resolution was not a straight yea or nay on the report. Even Goldstone himself complained that the actual resolution adopted by the council, while endorsing his report, did not mention Hamas and his call for it to also have an investigation. The resolution also included condemnations of Israeli behavior in East Jerusalem, which, even if justified, fogged the otherwise clear message of Goldstone's more balanced report on Gaza.

Despite heated discussions between Netanyahu and UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Britain joined France in not voting at all, so they were not recorded as the abstentions which had been their original declared intent. With their close involvement in the Balkan wars and the subsequent tribunal, it would have been difficult to repudiate the former prosecutor of Balkan war criminals, quite apart from their expressed disquiet about Israeli actions in Gaza. The usual suspects, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Slovakia and Ukraine went along with the US in voting against, while the equally predictable non-aligned majority joined by China and Russia went with it.

The report now goes to the United Nations General Assembly and recommends a report back from Ban Ki-moon with his recommendations, which would then be referred back to the Human Rights Council. If Israel does not carry out the investigation mandated by the report, it will almost certainly be referred to the Security Council for action.

An American abstention there would be an act of courage. Indeed, the long process offers multiple opportunities for the White House to let Netanyahu's government know that there are limits to how many slights Obama can tolerate.

If the US cannot persuade its most favored aid beneficiary not to evict Palestinians in Jerusalem, how can it persuade Israel to investigate allegations against its armed forces? And can it trade diplomatic cover in Geneva and New York against Israeli cooperation in the peace process? Indeed the US could take hints from Brown, who reportedly was trying to extract concessions from Netanyahu on the Gaza blockade with the British and French vote in Geneva.

Used in that way, the White House's preferred strategy of procrastination could appear more pragmatic and less pusillanimous.

Ian Williams is the author of Deserter: Bush's War on Military Families, Veterans and His Past, (Nation Books, New York).

(Copyright 2009 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)

Deadlining for Netanyahu

President Obama Pushes Israel to Halt Settlements While Israeli Leaders Push Back
By Judith Latham
Washington
26 June 2009
Voice of America


Israeli Prime Minister Benhamin Netanyahu, left, meets with US President Barack Obama at White House, 19 May 2009 (Israeli Govt handout photo)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with President Barack Obama at the White House, 19 May 2009
For years progress toward a two-state solution in the Middle East has been hung up on so-called “final status issues.” Israelis and Palestinians have not been able to agree on borders, Jerusalem, settlements, or refugee return. But U.S. President Barack Obama has recently reframed the struggle for an eventual peace agreement around the issue of halting Israeli settlements on land occupied after the June War of 1967.

An Arab Perspective

Arab journalist Nadia Bilbassy, senior correspondent for the Middle East Broadcasting Center, says a close examination of the history of Israel reveals that it was not right-wing Israeli leaders or the Likud Party that established settlement policy in the occupied territories.

Speaking with host Judith Latham of VOA’s International Press Club, Bilbassy says it was the policy of left-wing governments as well because Israelis believed that, if they continued to annex parts of a future Palestinian state, it would prevent the formation of a viable state.

Palestinian farmer Aisha Jaber, 47, wails in front of her olive grove which was cut by Israeli settlers as Israeli security men stand close to her, 11 June 2006
A Palestinian farmer grieves in her olive grove, which was cut down by Israeli settlers, as Israeli security men stand close by
But, as Palestinians and other Arabs view the current situation, Bilbassy argues, the distinction between so-called “legal” – and “illegal” – settlements is an artificial one. According to Bilbassy, the position of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “defies logic because every settlement activity is illegal under international law, under the Fourth Geneva Convention, and in some cases even under Israeli law.”

Nadia Bilbassy says there are about 450,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. That includes the major settlements of Maale Adumim, Ariel, Gush Etzion, and Gilo. Bilbassy asks, “What are you going to do about these settlers?” She suggests that the emergence of a Palestinian state may need to take a part of these four major settlements into consideration. “There is no illusion that Israel under any kind of peace deal will evict half-a-million people and move them somewhere else entirely,” she adds.

In negotiations, Bilbassy says, neither side – the Palestinians nor the Israelis – can realistically be expected to start with their final position. She says, “There is no way that five million Palestinian refugees can return.” Nonetheless, she poses the question faced by the negotiators, “If you give up their rights, then how will you end up at the end?” Bilbassy notes that even the Arab Peace Plan clearly states that, for the Arab world to have peace and normalized relations with Israel, Israel will have to withdraw to the 1967 borders, which implies evicting all settlers in the West Bank. She suggests it is not going to happen because neither the Arabs nor the Israelis, and neither the Americans nor the Europeans really expect Israel to remove all the settlers.

Nadia Bilbassy says most Arabs believe that, if the Obama administration is unable to move the peace process forward, nobody can. She says, “This is the last realistic chance for peace.” Bilbassy notes that President Obama took a strong stand on halting settlements, but he did not say that all settlers have to be evicted. “The bottom line is that we’re talking about a viable Palestinian state.”

An Israeli Perspective

Israeli police scuffle with young women supporting the Jewish settler movement during the evacuation of a disputed house in the West Bank city of Hebron, Thursday, 04 Dec 2008
Israeli police scuffle with young women supporting the Jewish settler movement during the evacuation of a disputed house in the West Bank city of Hebron
But Israeli journalist Nathan Guttman of the Jewish Daily Forward, says although the Netanyahu government has taken a strong position on the expansion of settlements in the West Bank – namely, that provision needs to made for the “natural growth” of Israeli-government approved settlements - the Israeli media reflect more closely what most Israelis think.

According to Guttman, there are two separate issues. One of them is the settlements, and the other is American pressure on Israel to decrease settlement activity. He says, “There is a consensus, which is reflected in the Israeli press, that there needs to be a stop to settlement activity and that eventually Israel is going toward a two-state solution.” That means outposts and settlements way deep the Palestinian territories will not be able to remain.

Nathan Guttman says, “There is also a consensus there needs to be a solution that includes large Jewish settlement blocs as part of the state of Israel with some kind of land swap.” However, when it comes to the question of pressuring Israel, that’s where there is a split in the Israeli public. “People who support the Netanyahu government – even those who agree that there should be a two-state solution – would not like to see it as the result of external pressure, Guttman explains.

A British Perspective

British journalist Ian Williams, who reports from the United Nations in New York, says Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has told a succession of visiting Israeli ministers over the past few weeks that all settlements are illegal under international law. That was also the view the U.S. State Department held when the settlement program began, Williams says.

“The signatories to the Geneva Convention agreed that the occupied territories were occupied in violation of the Geneva Convention,” Ian Williams adds. However, the White House has changed its view on settlements over the years, he notes. “The settlements moved from being illegal to being an obstacle to peace to being unhelpful,” Williams observes.

According to Ian Williams, President Netanyahu is not citing the United Nations, but previous Israeli understandings with Washington. “As part of the Oslo accords, there was an agreement there should be no attempt to alter facts on the ground,” Williams says. Nonetheless, since Oslo, the number of settlers has doubled, he notes.

Furthermore, the Israelis agreed under the terms of the so-called “road map” there would be no expansion of existing settlements. “But what happened during the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations was that this Israeli government commitment was winked at,” Williams says, “and the United States agreed not to make any fuss about it.”

According to Ian Williams, settlements represent a key issue for the Obama administration, and in fact the President’s credibility hangs on it. “Behind him he has international law, but most effective in dealing with domestic pressure inside the United States, he also has the Israeli government’s own commitment that they will not expand settlements as part of the road map,” Williams notes.

British journalist Ian Williams says that, because Israel and the Middle East represent such a “hot-button issue,” the Obama administration needs to move very carefully. “By holding Israel to its own commitments,” he adds, “it weakens the position of domestic opponents in Congress.”

Current Dilemma

However, this week, reports said the Israeli government had authorized the construction of 300 homes at a Jewish settlement in the West Bank, defying U.S. calls for a halt to settlement growth. Officials said 60 houses in the Talmon settlement have already been built, but they denied that approval was given for the other 240 houses.

A meeting between Prime Minister Netanayu and U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell, originally scheduled to take in Paris on Thursday was postponed, but Mr. Mitchell will meet with Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak next week in Washington. Israeli officials have denied media reports that the original meeting was called off because of a disagreement over Israeli settlement activity.

Width and quality of Barack Obama’s peace commitments

Ian Williams: Tribune
June 8, 2009 12:00

Reversing Bill Clinton’s election dictum, Barack Obama shows an admirable attention span. “It’s not just the economy, stupid.” No one can accuse him of neglecting the economy, but one of the lessons being reinforced is that he needs to pull the political process with him. This is particularly important when the Democratic Party in Congress has a vociferous and disloyal group of rightists who will vote with the Republicans at the drop of a hat in the name of moderation.

That is one of the explanations for Obama’s incremental strategy on the Middle East. Faced with the most obtuse and self-centred set of Israeli leaders, he has to cover his rear carefully and so far the Likud-led coalition of zealots is playing into his hands.

Readers of a certain age may remember David Kossof on television playing a Jewish tailor whose watchword was “Never mind the quality – feel the width.” He seems to have written the script for recent Israeli diplomacy, which has been predicated on talking to politicians who truly and sincerely want the wool pulled over their eyes.

Things have changed. Binyamin Netanyahu came to see Obama and wanted a quick deadline for an attack on Iran. Despite his crowing, he got a promise of open-ended negotiations with Tehran and a warning that the Americans thought that settlement building was a more urgent problem. He and Ehud Barak came to the United States and talked fiercely about how they were going to close a few dozen “illegal outposts” by hook or by crook in the hope that the continuing settlement building would go unremarked.

Obama and his inner circle, well aware that some of these “illegal” outposts had been “closed” repeatedly and that in any case were provided with water, roads, electricity and security by the various government departments, were less impressed. They all sang from the same hymn sheet: no building in the Occupied Territories.

It is a measure of how much Israeli governments have got away with that this one is indignant about US “diktats”, when one of the Israeli commitments in the famous road map is a halt to settlement building.

Netanyahu and his government wanted to talk about alleged Palestinian failures to follow road map commitments. Obama’s officials keep reminding them that the US supports the two-state solution. Netanyahu and most of his cabinet have consistently opposed a Palestinian state, which somewhat devalues their complaints about Palestinian reluctance to admit it was a good thing they were thrown out of their homes. Obama even had the chutzpah to remind Israel of its repeated promises to open the gates to Gaza.

Equally, on the quality versus width dimension, Israeli complaints about the potential for Iran to become a nuclear power are disingenuous. Iran does not have nuclear weapons while Israel has several hundred of them and refuses to sign the NPT. Imagine the shock when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton – of all people – suggested that they should sign up.
In all of this, Israeli indignation is necessarily forced and strained. All they are being asked to do is to abide by their own promises, let alone by international law.

Obama’s cautious and non-confrontational strategy of attrition is also paying off domestically. Netanyahu spoke to the AIPAC conference, but the Israel lobby’s traditional posture went into reverse. In times past, its guiding principle was to follow whatever policy the Israeli government wanted. Now the lobby endorsed the two-state solution that the Israeli Prime Minister abhors and, after many years of swinging rightwards, thinks a liberal Democrat Congress and White House may be a good excuse for a change of tack.

One factor in this may be that there is now an alternative Israel lobby. J-Street, only recently founded, has made great inroads. Despite the lack of funding from conservative Zionists and Christian evangelists, it actually represents the much more nuanced, progressive and peace-tending views of most American Jews, whose support for Obama among ethnic groups is only matched by Arabs and blacks.

Administration sources are even suggesting it may be possible that, the next time the United Nations Security Council considers Israeli behaviour, Netanyahu will lose the protection of the automatic American veto that Israel has enjoyed for four presidential terms.

Such a course of action would send a message to the Israeli electorate that there are serious consequences to having a racist government. With a few exceptions, Israelis know their country’s existence, and their living standards have depended on American financial and military support.

With bills in the Knesset from cabinet members threatening to disenfranchise non-Jews, Netanyahu’s guaranteed combative statements, Congressional support for Likud will fade.
And the economic crisis even offers opportunity. If Obama, more in sorrow than in anger, is forced to threaten cuts in US aid to Israel, he simply has to ask embattled voters whether they really want to send taxpayers’ money to an ungrateful nation that refuses to live up to its commitments and flies in the face of accepted US and international policies. Never mind the quantity, just watch the width of the gap.

Fly Whiskers

When Bibi met Barack

Don't be fooled by the friendly act - Netanyahu's tone-deaf response to Obama's overtures will hurt him in the long run

o Ian Williams
o guardian.co.uk, Monday 18 May 2009 22.00 BST


Binyamin Netanyahu and his Likudnik friends do not do listening. They are like the fly in the La Fontaine fable, which buzzes around the horses' muzzles and thinks it is moving the coach. Flies with ideas above their station risk being swatted.

Israeli leaks suggested that at his first meeting with President Obama in Washington DC today, Netanyahu hoped, and maybe even expected, that if he just kept talking about Iran he could ignore recent Obama administration strictures. No one can say that he was not warned. Incremental signals from Washington have been building the case for the fly-whisk to come into operation.

Instead he was told firmly that there would be talks with Iran, rather than bombs, with "no artificial deadline," and that the Palestine issue is crucial, with a two state solution, and: "That means that all the parties involved have to take seriously obligations that they have previously agreed to," which is diplomatic-speak for Washington's expectation that Netanyahu will abide by the agreements that Israel has undertaken – for example on settlements, opening the Gaza crossings, and so on.

Netanyahu's studied refusal to mention a Palestinian state, and his anodyne prescription of two peoples living side by side, was an overtly meaningless evasion. The Bantu and the Afrikaaners lived side by side in. The issue was the unequal relationship between them. Similarly, any demand that the Palestinians accept a Jewish state is a calculated attempt to halt negotiations even before they start.

Netanyahu will play up a spurious agreement between the parties on Iran. But it will only wash for those amnesiacs who forget Israel's furious opposition to the diplomatic path and its impatience to send in the bombers – now overturned by Obama.

Any talk about Iran, when the two men met behind closed doors, probably featured the baneful effects of any Israeli attempt to bomb its way to a solution on the several hundred thousand US personnel in the region.

Despite Israeli claims that "the Arabs" are behind any attempts to attack Iran, Obama's team must know while some unelected Arab regimes may wish that if "'twere done, then 't twere best it were done quickly", neither they nor Turkey can call on any popular support for such a deal nor would they in any way want to be associated with such an attack. If they flew over Iraq, in defiance of Baghdad's majority Shia government, then the US's attempts to withdraw from the country could be either precipitately accelerated or bogged down interminably

This was just the opening bout of the Netanyahu v Obama match-up, but we can expect more to come. It is possible that Obama and his administration are lulling Netanyahu into a false sense of security and complacency, giving him enough time to reveal that he has no intention of listening to US policy.

To begin with, a more sensitive ear than Netanyahu's might have registered the shock-horror of Washington's assumption of an independent American foreign policy, so that Middle East statements have not been cleared with Israel first. That was apparent in the content of those various statements, warning about settlement building, nuclear non-proliferation, about house demolitions, about the two state solution, the border closures in Gaza and indeed Washington's warning against unilateral attacks on Iran.

In the domestic US context, Netanyahu is acting as if he puts full credence in the rumours about the infallibility of Israel's much-vaunted "lobby". But the question is, which lobby? The peace lobby, such as J-Street and its associates, has close ties with the administration. Aipac, the core of the Israel US lobby, has changed its leadership to include longtime supporters of Obama, and Vice President Joe Biden, a veteran pro-Israeli politician, reads Aipac the riot act. Even Rahm Emanuel – Israeli by descent - looks as if he will be the president's enforcer if there is any attempt by Netanyahu to turn Obama's policies round.

A popular US president, newly elected, with a financial crisis to hand, could soon persuade American voters that there good reasons not to send scarce cash to a foreign government set on ignoring the wishes of its benefactor. Serious signals like that would soon introduce term limits for Netanyahu's shaky coalition. Israeli voters tend to punish prime ministers who alienate the Americans too much. Netanyahu brought nothing to the table – and he is leaving with nothing even if, at this stage he did not get the public dressing down that is coming his way eventually.

Perversely, having the pugnacious Netanyahu as Israel's prime minister could burnish American credentials with everyone else in the region. There will be a visible difference between Obama and Netanyahu, in contrast to the Clinton and Bush era negotiations – when at best the US played good cop to Israel's bad cop, while both were actually torturing the Palestinians.

* Print this