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.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Uyghurs - cowardice confronts PRC chauvinism
Resettling Uyghurs no easy task
By Ian Williams
Asia Times June 17
The plight of the Uyghurs has had more publicity than ever before because of the United States Congress's reticence and Beijing's bluster. The 22 prisoners have served their people well, if unwillingly and unwittingly, although resettling these victims of Guantanamo has not brought out the best in people or countries elsewhere.
Almost forgotten in the recent acceptance of some of them by Bermuda and Palau is Albania stepping up to the plate to take five of them four years ago. Albania, the only Muslim-majority United Nations member in Europe, was doubtless sentimentally inclined to accept their co-religionists from the other end of the Turkic sphere of influence, but one rather suspects that the George W Bush administration offered cash and or big diplomatic favors in
return. Under Enver Hoxha, Albania had cocked a snook at China when it was its only friend in the world. It could well afford to risk the displeasure that Beijing is displaying so prominently.
In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, when the UN Security Council was setting up its anti-terrorism committee, China's ambassador kept trying to add "and secessionist activities", to its remit. The other members were politely overlooking him until he persisted and demanded to know why he was being ignored and the British ambassador, looking over his shoulder at Welsh and Scottish nationalist parties back home, told him firmly, "Because secessionist activities are not against international law, or the domestic law of many members."
Certainly nothing could have provoked Uyghur secessionist sentiment more than Beijing's chauvinistic policies there, insouciantly swamping the allegedly autonomous region with Hans and marginalizing the Turkic Uyghurs. Even their close brethren in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are not going to risk relations with China over their treatment, although many ordinary citizens are unhappy about it.
China has been demanding their repatriation, not least since they cannot tell the difference between secessionism and terrorism. Perhaps the only way the US comes out of this with a modicum of respectability is that, after kidnapping and incarcerating these Uyghur refugees, it has refused to hand them over to Beijing. Otherwise, it is shameful on grounds of equity and humanity that the US has not offered asylum to its victims, who have been cleared of any crime. In its traditional invertebrate mode, Congress, having done nothing to stop their illegal incarceration, now refuses to allow President Barack Obama to resettle them in the US.
That marginally excuses all the other nations who have refused to accept them. After all, how do you explain to your own voters that these people are harmless victims if the last country to victimize them won't allow them in?
Ironically, both countries that had the courage of their humanitarian convictions and a weather eye to as yet unspecified profit, Palau and Bermuda, are studies in how far autonomy will go.
Bermuda is still technically a British territory and London is responsible for its security and foreign policy. The island government, for unspecified returns but almost certainly more substantial than mere gratitude, is treating this as an immigration issue, although London wants to talk. It is likely that British umbrage is more with Washington's insouciance to its titular sovereignty over Bermuda than with the island government.
However, if New Labour wanted to abase itself to China by making a constitutional issue of it, it would meet outrage at home. While there may not be much enthusiasm for taking in Washington's dirty laundry, the civil rights issues would emerge noisily. In Bermuda, heavy-handed interference from London could strengthen the independence movement and possibly provoke prompt recognition of Taiwan.
Palau battled Washington for decades about the American insistence that it remove its nuclear-free clauses from its constitution before the US would accept the Compact of Free Association that eventually allowed its membership of the United Nations. By that compact, the US is totally in charge of the archipelago's defense, and effectively pays its budget. Indeed, in the Trusteeship Council at the time, yet another British diplomat mused on the record about whether Palau and its sister former UN Strategic Trust territories met traditional definitions of sovereignty. Ever-obliging Palau was one of the first of the "willing" to join the coalition of the same, although no outrigger canoes were seen paddling up the Gulf as a result. It also helps that Palau recognizes Taiwan, so Beijing's pressure would be even more ineffectual.
Indeed, one wonders why Taiwan did not step up to the plate, but then the Kuomintang has only recently accepted Mongolian sovereignty, let alone Xinjiang's. It would have been interesting if the Democratic Progressive Party, itself a secessionist organization, were still in power.
By Ian Williams
Asia Times June 17
The plight of the Uyghurs has had more publicity than ever before because of the United States Congress's reticence and Beijing's bluster. The 22 prisoners have served their people well, if unwillingly and unwittingly, although resettling these victims of Guantanamo has not brought out the best in people or countries elsewhere.
Almost forgotten in the recent acceptance of some of them by Bermuda and Palau is Albania stepping up to the plate to take five of them four years ago. Albania, the only Muslim-majority United Nations member in Europe, was doubtless sentimentally inclined to accept their co-religionists from the other end of the Turkic sphere of influence, but one rather suspects that the George W Bush administration offered cash and or big diplomatic favors in
return. Under Enver Hoxha, Albania had cocked a snook at China when it was its only friend in the world. It could well afford to risk the displeasure that Beijing is displaying so prominently.
In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, when the UN Security Council was setting up its anti-terrorism committee, China's ambassador kept trying to add "and secessionist activities", to its remit. The other members were politely overlooking him until he persisted and demanded to know why he was being ignored and the British ambassador, looking over his shoulder at Welsh and Scottish nationalist parties back home, told him firmly, "Because secessionist activities are not against international law, or the domestic law of many members."
Certainly nothing could have provoked Uyghur secessionist sentiment more than Beijing's chauvinistic policies there, insouciantly swamping the allegedly autonomous region with Hans and marginalizing the Turkic Uyghurs. Even their close brethren in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are not going to risk relations with China over their treatment, although many ordinary citizens are unhappy about it.
China has been demanding their repatriation, not least since they cannot tell the difference between secessionism and terrorism. Perhaps the only way the US comes out of this with a modicum of respectability is that, after kidnapping and incarcerating these Uyghur refugees, it has refused to hand them over to Beijing. Otherwise, it is shameful on grounds of equity and humanity that the US has not offered asylum to its victims, who have been cleared of any crime. In its traditional invertebrate mode, Congress, having done nothing to stop their illegal incarceration, now refuses to allow President Barack Obama to resettle them in the US.
That marginally excuses all the other nations who have refused to accept them. After all, how do you explain to your own voters that these people are harmless victims if the last country to victimize them won't allow them in?
Ironically, both countries that had the courage of their humanitarian convictions and a weather eye to as yet unspecified profit, Palau and Bermuda, are studies in how far autonomy will go.
Bermuda is still technically a British territory and London is responsible for its security and foreign policy. The island government, for unspecified returns but almost certainly more substantial than mere gratitude, is treating this as an immigration issue, although London wants to talk. It is likely that British umbrage is more with Washington's insouciance to its titular sovereignty over Bermuda than with the island government.
However, if New Labour wanted to abase itself to China by making a constitutional issue of it, it would meet outrage at home. While there may not be much enthusiasm for taking in Washington's dirty laundry, the civil rights issues would emerge noisily. In Bermuda, heavy-handed interference from London could strengthen the independence movement and possibly provoke prompt recognition of Taiwan.
Palau battled Washington for decades about the American insistence that it remove its nuclear-free clauses from its constitution before the US would accept the Compact of Free Association that eventually allowed its membership of the United Nations. By that compact, the US is totally in charge of the archipelago's defense, and effectively pays its budget. Indeed, in the Trusteeship Council at the time, yet another British diplomat mused on the record about whether Palau and its sister former UN Strategic Trust territories met traditional definitions of sovereignty. Ever-obliging Palau was one of the first of the "willing" to join the coalition of the same, although no outrigger canoes were seen paddling up the Gulf as a result. It also helps that Palau recognizes Taiwan, so Beijing's pressure would be even more ineffectual.
Indeed, one wonders why Taiwan did not step up to the plate, but then the Kuomintang has only recently accepted Mongolian sovereignty, let alone Xinjiang's. It would have been interesting if the Democratic Progressive Party, itself a secessionist organization, were still in power.
More Bucks. More Bangs
More bucks, more bangs
America's runaway military spending is threatening its economic security and failing to make the country safer
Ian Williams
o guardian.co.uk, Friday 12 June 2009 17.00 BST
Osama bin Laden must be crowing in his cave. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute released its latest figures last week showing that the US spent $607bn on the military in 2008 – almost as much as the rest of the world put together. And even that figure might be an understatement, according to some analysts. Indeed, the White House itself puts spending on "national defence" at over $675bn for this year.
Within weeks of the gruesomely low tech 9/11 massacres, the Bush administration rushed, successfully, to get every defence contractor's boondoggle through the budget in the same way they railroaded the Patriot Act through unread. It was treachery to quibble.
This may be al-Qaida's biggest triumph. By feeding congressional paranoia and arming the US defence industries' lobbyists, Bin Laden has been helping to bring about the economic collapse of the US, the bankruptcy of the federal government and the eventual loss of the dollar's position as the world's reserve currency. Not to mention maintaining a steady supply of weaponry for the Taliban to replace all those Stingers we used to send them.
It has certainly caused more economic damage than the destruction of the World Trade Center, and may, if you totalled up the cost of the misdirected resources away from health, education and other discretionary items, have led to more loss of life.
Somehow, when members of Congress call for tightening belts and complain about runaway federal spending, it is always about the Social Security or Medicare "entitlements" of people who have worked all their lives, rather than the entitlement of aerospace contractors to slurp at the federal trough, foisting off unsuitable and frequently unworkable military systems on Pentagon officers who look forward to post-retirement careers with their vendors.
In general, honest representatives and senators risk forfeiting defence industry campaign money, and even worse, having that money going to opponents who habitually challenge the patriotism of anyone who questions a military project, no matter how palpably useless. And then there is the indirect pressure of local employment in the industries. Of course, this too has its economic effects. While Toyota was making the Land Cruiser, the US was making the Hummer – the most vulnerable military vehicle in world.
A prime example of how the defence budget blows back is the B1 long-range bomber, which the US is using against villages in Afghanistan despite the protests of the government in Kabul. Designed as strategic nuclear bombers and of questionable use even on the drawing board, 10 years ago when they were bought, they cost $283m each.
Reportedly, to back up the lobbying efforts to keep their programme in the air, the Jack D Rippers of the US air force spread the procurement around as many congressional districts as they could to get more leverage in the representatives. The planes' main military effect when used in the totally inappropriate way for anti-insurgency operations seems to be enhancing support for the Taliban and cutting the feet from under our ally, Karzai.
But there are also more direct reasons for bin Laden to applaud the US defence budget. There is so much equipment knocking around, we could be arming enterprising terrorists worldwide the same way we inadvertently provide small arms for Mexican narco-gangs. As Gregory Kutz of the Government Accountability Office told a congressional panel:
"The lack of legal restrictions over domestic sales of these items, combined with the difficulties associated with inspecting packages and individuals leaving the United States, results in a weak control environment that does not effectively prevent terrorists and agents of foreign governments from obtaining these sensitive items."
Obama has threatened to look carefully at the defence budget. But the resistance to his attempts to pare back the biggest boondoggle of all, the Star Wars missile defence system that has cost over $100bn so far, shows the difficulties he faces. So far, the money has produced the equivalent of a system that can hit a flounder nailed to the bottom of a barrel – if it is covered in luminous paint. But he will face opposition from Democrats as well as the likes of Sarah Palin.
Of course, there are some brave souls, like congressman Barney Frank, prepared to risk accusations of treachery by calling for taking a battleaxe to the sacred cow of the Pentagon budget. With the courage one would expect from the first American politician to come out of the closet, he is also one of the few prepared to come out of the bunker. As he said, it should be easy to persuade Americans "that their well-being is far more endangered by a proposal for substantial reductions in Medicare, Social Security or other important domestic areas than it would be by cancelling weapons systems that have no justification from any threat we are likely to face."
We need more representatives like him to stop playing into Bin Laden's hands. Cut all that pork from the Pentagon budget, and there might be enough left to pay the troops better as well as to fund healthcare.
Monday, June 08, 2009
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.
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.
Friday, June 05, 2009
40 years on
Ian pundits on VOA
The U.S.-Muslim Divide: Little Change in 40 Years Since Six-Day War
By Judith Latham
Washington
05 June 2009
[insert caption here]
The Six-Day War of June 5-10, 1967 was a war between the Israeli army and the armies of the neighboring states of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria
The Six-Day War had many antecedents, but it was sparked by an order from Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser expelling the U.N. Emergency Force from the Sinai Peninsula, where it had been stationed since a British, French, and Israeli invasion ten years earlier. After the U.N. peacekeepers withdrew, Egypt amassed its tanks and soldiers on the Israeli border and closed the Straits of Tiran to all ships flying Israeli flags.
Israeli responded with a similar mobilization and on June 5th launched a pre-emptive attack against Egypt’s Air Force. The strike brought Jordan and Syria into the conflict on Egypt’s side, and they were joined by troops and arms from Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. By the war’s end, Israel had won a decisive victory, gaining control of the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights. The conflict helped to create a geo-political reality that has existed ever since.
A Western Perspective
Misconceptions and foolhardy actions invited the conflict, according to British journalist Ian Williams. “The 1967 war cemented the idea of Israel as the David facing the Goliath of the Arab world,” said Williams, who now reports from the United Nations. His comments were heard on VOA’s International Press Club with host Judith Latham. “Israeli historians now admit there was no real threat from the Egyptians who were in no position to mount an attack,” Williams adds. “The bluster and bravado of Egyptian President Nasser gave the Israelis an opportunity for a preemptive strike.”
Williams remembers an Egyptian general he interviewed in Cairo. The general recounted his experience of being in charge of a post near the Suez Canal. “I was sitting in my office listening to radio reports about our great victory when I saw all these people running towards us,” the general told Williams. “When we went out to meet them, they were our victorious soldiers running like hell from the battle front.”
Williams questions President Nasser judgment that U.N. forces be removed from the ceasefire line between Sinai and Gaza and Israel. “Nasser had every right to do so, but it was a very stupid thing to do because it meant there was not the slightest impediment to the Israeli attack,” he says. “Once Israeli forces took out the Egyptian Air Force on the ground,” he said, “there was never any real opportunity for Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and their Arab allies to recover from Israel’s presumptive strike.”
An Israeli Perspective
To this day Arabs and many Muslim communities around the world view the consequences of the Six-Day War as catastrophic. But according to Israeli journalist Nathan Guttman of the Jewish Daily Forward, most Israelis view the event with less emotion. “They were born into a Greater Israel,” Guttman observes. For many, he says, the war seems to be a matter of “fact.” Guttman says the Israeli public is more concerned with how to solve the current dilemma than with what led up to it.
The construction site of Jewish settlement of Maaleh Adumim in the West Bank, near Jerusalem, 28 May 2009
The construction site of Jewish settlement of Maaleh Adumim in the West Bank, near Jerusalem, 28 May 2009
One policy that developed after the war – and one that increasingly divides all sides – is Israel’s settlement activity in the occupied territories. At least 250,000 Jews live in settlement blocs and smaller outposts built on land captured by Israel in the 1967 war. More than 50 outposts have been erected since March 2001 and more than 100 are currently in existence. Much of the international community – including the U.N. Security Council and the International Court of Justice – view the settlements as illegal.
President Barack Obama delivers much-anticipated message to Muslim world from auditorium at Cairo University campus, 04 Jun 2009
President Obama, in his address at Cairo University, implored Americans and Muslims to abandon their mutual suspicions and do more to confront violent extremism, 04 June 2009
President Obama has made it clear he wants settlement activity to stop. He’s not the first American president to make that demand. George W. Bush won a pledge from Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to dismantle the illegal outposts in 2003. But that promise has never materialized. Today, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of the Likud Party, will only hint at the possibility of a compromise on the issue – but only on the subject of new settlement activity. He insists those settlements established in the aftermath of the Six-Day War should have the right to exist and grow.
As Nathan Guttman points out, “When we talk about illegal outposts, we should remember that previous Israeli governments agreed to remove them because they are illegal under Israeli law.” That is, he explains, they were put up without any building permits.
Prime Minister Netanyahu’s actions need to be viewed in terms of the political climate. “When he assumed power about two months ago,” says Guttman, “Israeli leaders from both Labor and Kadima camps accepted the idea of a two-state solution.” “However, Mr. Netanyahu’s position is more complicated,” he says. “It needs to be seen against the backdrop of a very difficult right-wing coalition he is trying to manage."
A Palestinian Perspective
For the Palestinians, Israel’s occupation of the territories won in the Six-Day War is a complete disaster, according to Arab journalist Nadia Bilbassy of the Middle East Broadcasting Center. “It wasn’t just the displacement of the Palestinian people from 1948 onward but also losing new territory – the West Bank and Gaza, the Golan Heights, and Sinai,” says Bilbassy. “People became refugees for a second time.”
The creation of a Palestinian state would go a long way to easing those memories. It’s something President Obama lobbied Prime Minister Netanyahu when the Israeli leader visited Washington in May. And statehood, as he re-emphasized on Thursday in Cairo, is not only in America’s national interest but also in Israel’s long-term national interest as well.
“Mr. Obama’s support for Palestinian statehood necessarily requires an end to settlement-building,” says Nadia Bilbassy. She calls progress on the settlements issue the “easy part of a final status solution.” Much more difficult, she says, will be the issues of Jerusalem, refugee return, water rights, security, and cooperation between Fatah and Hamas.
The Challenge Ahead
Some Middle East analysts suggest that eventually the solution proposed by Saudi King Abdullah will serve as a basis for resolving the current impasse. “That would mean the 1967 boundaries would become international boundaries with room for swapping land here and there,” says British journalist Ian Williams.
Although Prime Minister Netanyahu currently refuses to discuss such a solution, there is a precedent. Ian Williams and Nadia Bilbassy point out it was a Likud prime minister who agreed to give up Sinai in return for peace with Egypt 30 years ago.
The U.S.-Muslim Divide: Little Change in 40 Years Since Six-Day War
By Judith Latham
Washington
05 June 2009
[insert caption here]
The Six-Day War of June 5-10, 1967 was a war between the Israeli army and the armies of the neighboring states of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria
The Six-Day War had many antecedents, but it was sparked by an order from Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser expelling the U.N. Emergency Force from the Sinai Peninsula, where it had been stationed since a British, French, and Israeli invasion ten years earlier. After the U.N. peacekeepers withdrew, Egypt amassed its tanks and soldiers on the Israeli border and closed the Straits of Tiran to all ships flying Israeli flags.
Israeli responded with a similar mobilization and on June 5th launched a pre-emptive attack against Egypt’s Air Force. The strike brought Jordan and Syria into the conflict on Egypt’s side, and they were joined by troops and arms from Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. By the war’s end, Israel had won a decisive victory, gaining control of the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights. The conflict helped to create a geo-political reality that has existed ever since.
A Western Perspective
Misconceptions and foolhardy actions invited the conflict, according to British journalist Ian Williams. “The 1967 war cemented the idea of Israel as the David facing the Goliath of the Arab world,” said Williams, who now reports from the United Nations. His comments were heard on VOA’s International Press Club with host Judith Latham. “Israeli historians now admit there was no real threat from the Egyptians who were in no position to mount an attack,” Williams adds. “The bluster and bravado of Egyptian President Nasser gave the Israelis an opportunity for a preemptive strike.”
Williams remembers an Egyptian general he interviewed in Cairo. The general recounted his experience of being in charge of a post near the Suez Canal. “I was sitting in my office listening to radio reports about our great victory when I saw all these people running towards us,” the general told Williams. “When we went out to meet them, they were our victorious soldiers running like hell from the battle front.”
Williams questions President Nasser judgment that U.N. forces be removed from the ceasefire line between Sinai and Gaza and Israel. “Nasser had every right to do so, but it was a very stupid thing to do because it meant there was not the slightest impediment to the Israeli attack,” he says. “Once Israeli forces took out the Egyptian Air Force on the ground,” he said, “there was never any real opportunity for Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and their Arab allies to recover from Israel’s presumptive strike.”
An Israeli Perspective
To this day Arabs and many Muslim communities around the world view the consequences of the Six-Day War as catastrophic. But according to Israeli journalist Nathan Guttman of the Jewish Daily Forward, most Israelis view the event with less emotion. “They were born into a Greater Israel,” Guttman observes. For many, he says, the war seems to be a matter of “fact.” Guttman says the Israeli public is more concerned with how to solve the current dilemma than with what led up to it.
The construction site of Jewish settlement of Maaleh Adumim in the West Bank, near Jerusalem, 28 May 2009
The construction site of Jewish settlement of Maaleh Adumim in the West Bank, near Jerusalem, 28 May 2009
One policy that developed after the war – and one that increasingly divides all sides – is Israel’s settlement activity in the occupied territories. At least 250,000 Jews live in settlement blocs and smaller outposts built on land captured by Israel in the 1967 war. More than 50 outposts have been erected since March 2001 and more than 100 are currently in existence. Much of the international community – including the U.N. Security Council and the International Court of Justice – view the settlements as illegal.
President Barack Obama delivers much-anticipated message to Muslim world from auditorium at Cairo University campus, 04 Jun 2009
President Obama, in his address at Cairo University, implored Americans and Muslims to abandon their mutual suspicions and do more to confront violent extremism, 04 June 2009
President Obama has made it clear he wants settlement activity to stop. He’s not the first American president to make that demand. George W. Bush won a pledge from Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to dismantle the illegal outposts in 2003. But that promise has never materialized. Today, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of the Likud Party, will only hint at the possibility of a compromise on the issue – but only on the subject of new settlement activity. He insists those settlements established in the aftermath of the Six-Day War should have the right to exist and grow.
As Nathan Guttman points out, “When we talk about illegal outposts, we should remember that previous Israeli governments agreed to remove them because they are illegal under Israeli law.” That is, he explains, they were put up without any building permits.
Prime Minister Netanyahu’s actions need to be viewed in terms of the political climate. “When he assumed power about two months ago,” says Guttman, “Israeli leaders from both Labor and Kadima camps accepted the idea of a two-state solution.” “However, Mr. Netanyahu’s position is more complicated,” he says. “It needs to be seen against the backdrop of a very difficult right-wing coalition he is trying to manage."
A Palestinian Perspective
For the Palestinians, Israel’s occupation of the territories won in the Six-Day War is a complete disaster, according to Arab journalist Nadia Bilbassy of the Middle East Broadcasting Center. “It wasn’t just the displacement of the Palestinian people from 1948 onward but also losing new territory – the West Bank and Gaza, the Golan Heights, and Sinai,” says Bilbassy. “People became refugees for a second time.”
The creation of a Palestinian state would go a long way to easing those memories. It’s something President Obama lobbied Prime Minister Netanyahu when the Israeli leader visited Washington in May. And statehood, as he re-emphasized on Thursday in Cairo, is not only in America’s national interest but also in Israel’s long-term national interest as well.
“Mr. Obama’s support for Palestinian statehood necessarily requires an end to settlement-building,” says Nadia Bilbassy. She calls progress on the settlements issue the “easy part of a final status solution.” Much more difficult, she says, will be the issues of Jerusalem, refugee return, water rights, security, and cooperation between Fatah and Hamas.
The Challenge Ahead
Some Middle East analysts suggest that eventually the solution proposed by Saudi King Abdullah will serve as a basis for resolving the current impasse. “That would mean the 1967 boundaries would become international boundaries with room for swapping land here and there,” says British journalist Ian Williams.
Although Prime Minister Netanyahu currently refuses to discuss such a solution, there is a precedent. Ian Williams and Nadia Bilbassy point out it was a Likud prime minister who agreed to give up Sinai in return for peace with Egypt 30 years ago.
Thursday, June 04, 2009
Libya's UN circus
The choice of Libya to provide the next president of the general assembly does little for the reputation of the United Nations
o Ian Williams
o guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 2 June 2009 21.00 BST
In international affairs, Libya's Colonel Gaddafi makes Don Quixote seem like a Machiavellian intriguer, so at first sight, the almost certain impending "election" of Libya to provide the president of the UN general assembly for 2009-10 could be the occasion for some wry humour. In fact, it is a bad thing.
According to protocol, the president of the GA counts as a head of state, while the humble scribe who is the secretary general only ranks with foreign ministers. Officially, the Libyan nominee for the position is Ali Triki, an engaging former envoy to the UN. But there have been precedents for capitals supplanting their nominee before, as in the early 90s when the Maltese ambassador had it in the bag only to be bounced in a memorable double cross by his foreign minister, who then spent his term flying round the world getting 21-gun salutes in all the member states. It does raise the intriguing possibility of Muammar Gaddafi pitching his tent on the UN lawn and bringing his corps of Amazonian bodyguards so that he can take advantage of one of the world's most prominent pulpits – the podium of the general assembly.
Of course, since SG's tend to hang around while the presidency changes every year, there is no doubt who pulls the strings. Some previous presidents, such as the former Czech foreign minister Jan Kavan, were bluntly instructed to do as they were told by the secretariat. It may have been counterproductive to tell that to a stubborn former dissident such as Kavan, but it usually works, although the current occupant, Nicaraguan Miguel D'Escoto, has bucked the trend with forthright statements on the Middle East that contrasted sharply with the more anodyne line from the secretariat.
Most envoys want the job for the five minutes of glory, and go to great lengths to get the position, which rotates around the regional groups. This year it is the Africans' turn and they have decided to nominate Libya. It is possible that there was some vigorous canvassing. Certainly when Saudi Arabia won a contested election some years ago, many of the hands that were raised in its favour seemed to have gold Rolexes discernible on the wrists. It is exactly this type of value-blind "voting" that bedevils both the security council's temporary membership elections and the human rights council.
Interestingly, since Gaddafi paid blood money for Lockerbie, helped shop the IRA, renounced nuclear weapons, quietened down about Israel, and opened up the oil wells even more to western involvement, Washington and London seem to have overcome the visceral horror that once had them fighting to keep Libya off the security council. It is arguable that Libya got a raw deal over the Lockerbie bombing, albeit not as raw as its citizen Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrah who is dying of cancer in a Scottish prison while his appeal against a 27-year sentence is heard. The case against him and Libya was circumstantial and politically motivated.
London and Washington may have been attacking Libya for the wrong reasons in the past – but there were plenty of substantial reasons for holding the regime up for scrutiny and despite its more accommodating foreign policy, little has changed inside the country. Admittedly, the position of women in the colonel's idiosyncratic version of Islam is much better than staunch western ally Saudi Arabia, but there are serious grounds to question whether Libya should get a free ride into such a position in an organisation pledged to global human rights.
For a start, there is the democracy thing. Dissident Fathi al-Jahmi has just died after years of imprisonment for trying to put truth in the rumours about Libyan democracy. There are many more who have disappeared without trace into the regime's prisons, although there were substantial reports that 1,200 of them were killed in one incident in a prison. And of course the standard pseudo-left apology for dictatorial regimes is "look at the health service". Indeed. It took immense pressure, and effectively ransom money, to get Bulgarian and Palestinian medical staff out of Libyan dungeons where they had been locked up on spurious charges of spreading AIDS. But on the rule of law front, the killer of London WPC Yvonne Fletcher, shot from the Libyan embassy, which she was protecting against demonstrators, is still at large.
It does make sense to engage with Libya. Negotiations have produced some international satisfactory results – such as the colonel's realisation that he did not have the capability to produce nuclear weapons. But whether Triki or Gaddafi, the "election" of Libya will do little for the reputation of either Africa or the United Nations.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Beijing tickled by Obama's China envoy
Missionary to Middle Kingdom
Beijing tickled by Obama's China envoy
Asia Times 21 May 2009
By Ian Williams
United States President Barack Obama has shown an ability to please almost everybody, apart from the irreconcilable conservative wing of the Republican Party. His nomination of Jon Huntsman as ambassador to Beijing has not only demonstrated his bipartisanship to moderate voters and Republicans, it has removed a potential Republican rival for the 2012 elections - and perhaps more significantly has China purring with satisfaction.
The 49-year-old Utah governor is a Mormon of the Church of the Latter Day Saints, a religious group whose members have had a disproportionate representation in foreign policy circles in Washington because they are in many ways the most outward
looking group in the US.
Young Mormons have a requirement to undertake missionary activities abroad and learn the languages. Perhaps fortunately, Huntsman's mission was in Taiwan, rather than a less welcoming mainland. Even though the mission was only for one year, he learned to speak Mandarin, a skill he deployed at his press conference accepting the nomination, where he promised to look for the issues that unite the two countries.
He and his wife later adopted a Chinese girl. His relationship with the region also includes a stint as ambassador to Singapore under the George H W Bush administration and as a deputy United States trade representative for George W Bush, during which he held trade talks with China.
Beijing has responded enthusiastically to the nomination of an envoy with proven sensitivity to Chinese culture and an appreciation of the nation's importance. The People's Daily hailed the appointment of "Hong Bopei", his Chinese name, as "good steel being used where it is needed most", and noted the importance of Obama securing Republican consensus for its China policy.
Indeed, the importance of China is unchallenged in Washington, given how essential Chinese finance is for any recovery plans. However, given that in former house speaker Tip O'Neill's dictum "all politics is local", there will certainly be point-scoring politicians prepared to mount an offensive on trade and currency issues, and Huntsman should be able to help control them, not least of which due to his close ties to Republican Senator John McCain, for whom he campaigned vigorously and prominently.
Beijing expects Huntsman, as a Republican, to concentrate on issues of diplomatic and economic substance, and also to be able to keep his own party's partisan instincts under control. Beijing has somewhat exaggerated worries about Democratic Party concerns over human rights and democracy in China, which tend to be rhetorical rather than practical. In fact, on the Democratic side, Obama's lieutenants should have little difficulty curbing his own party. All it takes is a discreet reminder of the importance of Beijing's good-will to the recovery program.
While influential, an ambassador does not decide policy. That will be Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the usual suspects in Washington. But Huntsman's influence as envoy and an important politician in his own right will ensure the US avoids the gratuitous insults to Chinese dignity that characterize less sensitive and experienced American politicians.
Observers in the US expect him to be adroit in balancing friendliness with firmness. There are serious issues, from North Korea's nuclear program to the naval squabbles in the waters off China that need cooperation, and where either perceived weakness or insults could exacerbate the situation.
Obama's administration has shown signs of having the most "joined-up" foreign policy for decades, combining pragmatism with principle. It should be refreshing for China to know what they are dealing with, and Huntsman should be an able representative of a policy that he is unlikely to disagree with in any substantial way.
He also has an incentive. Success in China - certainly one of, if not the most important American diplomatic post - will play into his presidential ambitions for 2016 when, as most people expect, the defeat of an expected diehard conservative Republican in 2012 will pave the way for a moderate like Huntsman.
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.)
Beijing tickled by Obama's China envoy
Asia Times 21 May 2009
By Ian Williams
United States President Barack Obama has shown an ability to please almost everybody, apart from the irreconcilable conservative wing of the Republican Party. His nomination of Jon Huntsman as ambassador to Beijing has not only demonstrated his bipartisanship to moderate voters and Republicans, it has removed a potential Republican rival for the 2012 elections - and perhaps more significantly has China purring with satisfaction.
The 49-year-old Utah governor is a Mormon of the Church of the Latter Day Saints, a religious group whose members have had a disproportionate representation in foreign policy circles in Washington because they are in many ways the most outward
looking group in the US.
Young Mormons have a requirement to undertake missionary activities abroad and learn the languages. Perhaps fortunately, Huntsman's mission was in Taiwan, rather than a less welcoming mainland. Even though the mission was only for one year, he learned to speak Mandarin, a skill he deployed at his press conference accepting the nomination, where he promised to look for the issues that unite the two countries.
He and his wife later adopted a Chinese girl. His relationship with the region also includes a stint as ambassador to Singapore under the George H W Bush administration and as a deputy United States trade representative for George W Bush, during which he held trade talks with China.
Beijing has responded enthusiastically to the nomination of an envoy with proven sensitivity to Chinese culture and an appreciation of the nation's importance. The People's Daily hailed the appointment of "Hong Bopei", his Chinese name, as "good steel being used where it is needed most", and noted the importance of Obama securing Republican consensus for its China policy.
Indeed, the importance of China is unchallenged in Washington, given how essential Chinese finance is for any recovery plans. However, given that in former house speaker Tip O'Neill's dictum "all politics is local", there will certainly be point-scoring politicians prepared to mount an offensive on trade and currency issues, and Huntsman should be able to help control them, not least of which due to his close ties to Republican Senator John McCain, for whom he campaigned vigorously and prominently.
Beijing expects Huntsman, as a Republican, to concentrate on issues of diplomatic and economic substance, and also to be able to keep his own party's partisan instincts under control. Beijing has somewhat exaggerated worries about Democratic Party concerns over human rights and democracy in China, which tend to be rhetorical rather than practical. In fact, on the Democratic side, Obama's lieutenants should have little difficulty curbing his own party. All it takes is a discreet reminder of the importance of Beijing's good-will to the recovery program.
While influential, an ambassador does not decide policy. That will be Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the usual suspects in Washington. But Huntsman's influence as envoy and an important politician in his own right will ensure the US avoids the gratuitous insults to Chinese dignity that characterize less sensitive and experienced American politicians.
Observers in the US expect him to be adroit in balancing friendliness with firmness. There are serious issues, from North Korea's nuclear program to the naval squabbles in the waters off China that need cooperation, and where either perceived weakness or insults could exacerbate the situation.
Obama's administration has shown signs of having the most "joined-up" foreign policy for decades, combining pragmatism with principle. It should be refreshing for China to know what they are dealing with, and Huntsman should be an able representative of a policy that he is unlikely to disagree with in any substantial way.
He also has an incentive. Success in China - certainly one of, if not the most important American diplomatic post - will play into his presidential ambitions for 2016 when, as most people expect, the defeat of an expected diehard conservative Republican in 2012 will pave the way for a moderate like Huntsman.
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.)
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
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
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Ian Williams: Universal human rights can’t allow a get-out clause
Tribune May 8
IN THE end, despite the hysteria, the British delegation to the Durban II racism conference in Geneva did not boycott the event. Despite the rhetoric and the posturing, international conferences can lead to conventions enshrining basic principles for the global community. They have led to effective standard settings in human rights – as the improvements that the European conventions have made to British practice will demonstrate.
So I was more tolerant of Durban II, despite the antics of the NGOs – and some of the governments. I must also admit that, as a rule of thumb, anything hated so intemperately by the likes of Binyamin Netanyahu, John Bolton and Melanie Philips certainly deserves some sympathy.
Gordon Brown and David Miliband merit applause for withstanding the tendentious fury of the Likud lobby, whose views on boycotts and embargoes in general are demonstrably, to use their favourite accusation, “one-sided”. Barack Obama’s administration did not score so well. It practiced a form of coitus interruptus, defying the calls for boycotts, engaging in face-to-face intercourse with other delegates – and then withdrawing at the last moment – giving cover to the bevy of white colonial and settler states to pull out as well. It was sadly reminiscent of Bill Clinton-era prevarication, when the United States would dilute international conventions and then still refuse to accept the result.
That so many Western countries persistently unite to give Israel a free pass in the aftermath of Gaza, after Lebanon and after its continuing defiance of international law, is shameful. And it lends support to the assorted oligarchs, ayatollahs and tyrants who can point to the West’s manifest double standards on human rights to justify their own depredations.
Political equations need to balance. If we refuse to talk to Hamas, Hizbollah or Iran because they refuse to recognise Israel’s “right to exist”, then we should also refuse aid and sustenance to those who refuse to recognise a Palestinian state or threaten an attack on Iran.
Indeed, the Islamic states did their best to aid Israel and its allies with their contrived confusion of Islamophobia and legitimate discussion of Islam and proposed ban on any criticism of the religion. Islamophobia is much more widespread than anti-Semitism in the developed world, as anyone called Muhammad who has flown recently could testify.
But fortunately the delegations which attended Geneva defeated the attempt to introduce into international law the concept of blasphemous libel that the British Government tried to get through Parliament a few years ago. Luckily, no one called for a boycott of the House of Lords, whose wisdom threw out the bill.
It is significant that the Israeli government has been lobbying across the world for countries to stay away – not to attend and resist any language or concepts it considers untenable. And this continued, even when the conference conclusions dropped any reference to Israel. Even if Israel is not explicitly mentioned, the conclusions of any international conference or convention on racism will put Israel’s behaviour in the dock. If countries that could be bullied or persuaded to stay away, if the whole event is smeared incessantly as anti-Semitic, it diminishes its force. In fact, Israel wanted a boycott of this conference precisely because its conclusions can only indict the day-to-day reality of the occupation, which is racist in both concept and application. The rest of the boycotters’ name-calling is just intended to lend verisimilitude to an otherwise entirely unconvincing argument.
Ironically, in the month of the conference, Israeli railways fired 40 Israeli citizens – because they were Arabs. Many social benefits are available only to citizens who have completed military service – which excludes most Arabs – but citizens who attend Yeshivot get a free pass. A law of return for Jews that excludes all others, even those born in the land, is unavoidably racist.
If you are an Israeli Arab citizen who demonstrates, the police may shoot to kill you, as happened in Nazareth in 2000 to 13 unarmed protestors. You would look long and hard for any reports of similar lethal violence against Jewish settlers furiously and violently attacking Israeli soldiers and police, let alone unarmed Jewish demonstrators. And, in the West Bank, we have the ultimate Bantustans, where Israel goes even beyond apartheid South Africa and manages to segregate the road system.
Those who walked out of the conference after Mahmoud Ahmedinejad’s silly speech have given succour to those who are still using the aftermath of colonialism to justify their own callous greed and incompetence. The caste discrimination, affecting millions in shamefully humiliating ways, the strictures in some Muslim countries against other religions all escaped scrutiny. The unpunished pogroms against Muslims in India went unmentioned, for example.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is not a Western concept. It is universal, as its title proclaims. It applies to Muslims, Jews, Christians, Arabs and Israelis – and atheists, for that matter.
Friday, May 08, 2009
Fossil Government in Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan mixes rich and poor
By Ian Williams
ASIA TIMES May 8
TASHKENT - Uzbekistan may have recovered somewhat from the post-dissolution economic crash that afflicted so many of the former Soviet republics, but President Islam Karimov has nothing like Beijing's pragmatic success to justify his hold on power. It is rich country with paradoxically poor people.
Replacing Vladimir Lenin with Timur (Tamerlane) as the national hero may have a certain gruesome appropriateness for those who think the Bolshevik leader a ruthless mass murderer, but the 14th century Timur empire, builder of skull pyramids and destroyer of cities, is not everyone's idea of a 21st century icon. Timur's wooden coffin is on display in the Samarkand museum - as part of a display of Uzbek woodwork!
Uzbekistan is a palimpsest of history. With mud-brick the building
material of choice until Soviet concrete came along - and even that is somewhat friable - the past eras melt into a muddy totality. The layers of fire-worshippers, Greco Bactrian deities, Buddha and Islam merge into each other. And the Soviet culture similarly has left its lasting impression.
The regime's political structure is fossilized in Soviet times, and since independence it has been more concerned about maintaining power than growing the economy. At least on paper, it maintains all the pervasive regulation of communist times, such as internal passports and registration for visitors, and exit visas for its citizens who wish to leave. But rather than being the basis for an efficient police state, these regulations are more in the nature of profit points for the government, which levies fees, or just as commonly, for the individual bureaucrat or police officer who will overlook their flouting for a bribe.
However, it has also preserved some aspects of the Soviet social net. The country has a universal health service, even if it seems generally accepted that medical staff deserve something extra from the patients and their families to supplement their abysmal salaries. Across the country the government is building new schools and universities - but once again it's taken for granted that additional payments and bribes may be necessary for teachers and professors.
The green-uniformed militiamen are everywhere, zealous in stopping drivers for real or imagined infractions, but every time one of my drivers was stopped, there was nothing that a dollar or so in bribes would not excuse.
On the main highways, especially going up towards the Ferghana Valley, where the Andijon massacre took place four years ago, the checkpoints were more substantial with police, customs and border guards checking the trunks of cars and occasionally the passports of drivers and passengers.
On the face of it, with a literate population, an infrastructure of rail and roads that is relatively well maintained and a core position in Asian landmass, at the crossroads between north and south, east and west, Uzbekistan is poised to become a Central Asian tiger for all the reasons that Tashkent was the regional center before. However, the pervasive bureaucracy and corruption are just some of the reasons why this is a highly unlikely scenario.
One of the most striking Soviet hangovers is the dependence on cotton, which is in turn dependent on massive Soviet-era irrigation works diverting rivers to the fields. The Aral Sea is now a pond, whose former seabed is being blown toxically about the region, while the irrigation techniques are causing salination of croplands.
It is not often mentioned that Karimov was a leading figure in the Uzbek Communist Party when these ecological disasters were perpetrated, but he now has to measure the immediate social and financial costs of curtailing the government's main source of revenue and the mainstay, albeit at not much above subsistence, of the rural population against the environmental costs.
The cotton industry epitomizes the handicaps of incomplete reform. While the industry was once large-scale, mechanized and industrialized, privatization led to small plots, and most cotton is now harvested by hand. But the state buys the crop at a fraction of the price it sells the cotton on the world market. In an odd hangover, schoolchildren and college students alike are forced to pick the crop, and their labor became increasingly vital as the former Soviet machinery broke down without the resources for replacement.
The state gets assured revenue, but the results do not percolate down to the farmers in an overwhelmingly rural country. This hybrid private-commandism is no way to create a modern economy.
In general, however, the regime epitomizes Jeanne Kirkpatrick's distinction between totalitarian and authoritarian. There is little sign of a personality cult for Karimov, which is just as well - he is about as charismatic as you would expect a former Leonid Brezhnev-era apparatchik to be. The government is concerned about what its citizens do, not what they think.
However, its paranoia reflects its own deep feelings of insecurity. When the citizens of Andijon dared to protest in 2005, up to 2,000 of them were gunned down - and posthumously accused of being Muslim fundamentalists.
In the context of a century of Russian domination, Islam is as much an expression of cultural identity and ethnicity as it is of deep religious fervor, as the numerous dinners I attended that began with prayers and ended with vodka might suggest.
In that context, Karimov has greatly expanded the old Soviet state-controlled mosque and madrassa (seminary) system. However, they are still under tight control - right down to the decibel level from the minarets. Karimov disallowed the electronic systems that pierce the night in so many other Middle Eastern cities. More importantly, any independent civil or religious activity attracts police attention and repression.
The bureaucracy is as leery of genuine entrepreneurial activity as it is of civil or religious activism. Foreign companies, with a few exceptions like Daewoo, British American Tobacco and several cell phone companies, have tried and given up. These survivors provide large tax revenues for the government and so have some degree of protection against the pervasive shakedowns.
At first, since the country is effectively isolated from the global financial system - no credit, no crunch - the government was being boastful about its foresight as the global crisis developed. However, much of its recent increase in prosperity had been based on revenues from commodities like cotton and gas, and above all from remittances. Uzbekistan's major export has been people. Professors cleaning dishes in Brooklyn, engineers laboring on Russian construction sites or teachers working in hotels in London are all finding their earnings dropping, along with the commodity prices.
Uzbeks do not trust banks. Not only is the official exchange rate over 20% lower than the black market rate, it is not easy to get money out of banks if you put it in - not to mention the prospect of paying taxes. The expanding retail sector works in (black market) dollars, right down to pricing of goods, but much of the expatriate remittances was going into property which, familiarly, led to a bubble. This is surely one of the crucial handicaps for Uzbek tigritude, if there is no effective way to marshal domestic capital for growth. The housing market has now plummeted as the world economic crisis grips.
Without the former Soviet subventions, the state does not have the capital for major projects, but because of its paranoia, and the rapacity of its officials, it does not allow the conditions for others to invest.
Boosting the income of the farmers, developing the financial sector so that it can marshal and harness the domestic and remittance capital would all be steps forward to stopping the export of the human capital which is, after all, one of the biggest assets the country has.
It is difficult to see how things can improve under the present government. Karimov has already overstayed his constitutional term, but is confident that his strategic position will protect him. After throwing out the Americans when they protested Andijon, Karimov is now being rewarded with overtures from Washington, not least since Kyrgyzstan has taken the Russian rouble to throw out its American base. He is under similar blandishments and pressure from Russia, while keeping close relations with China.
It is time for him to stop playing the Great Game and to pay more attention to the country's economic potential. There is more to the country than being a strategic location on a geopolitical chessboard.
Ian Williams is senior analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus. He spent most of April travelling in Uzbekistan.
Friday, May 01, 2009
Red and Blue Cats
Apr, 2009
Banking on the state
Ian Williams pokes his pink nose out
back
April Investor Relations Magazine: Speculator Column
China’s Deng Xiaoping signaled the end of statist orthodoxy when he said he didn’t care whether a cat was black or white, as long as it caught mice. Similarly, President Obama wrote the epitaph for neo-liberalism in his inaugural address, saying it is ‘not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works.’
In many countries, state ownership has certainly allowed many forms of micropolitical management. The New York Times succumbed to the prejudices of the Washington consensus by always referring to former UK premier Margaret Thatcher as the ‘privatizer of the loss-making nationalized industries.’ In fact, the firms she sold – BP, British Airways, British Gas, British Telecom – were making money, which is why investors were so eager to buy them.
Similarly, the UK’s building societies were steered obsessively toward demutualization. By the end of 2008, however, only those that had kept their mutual status had survived as independent businesses. The rest were defunct, bought out or nationalized, like much of the US banking system.
The high tide of the Washington consensus has hit like a tsunami, but the cleared landscape should allow some dogma-free discussion. And those who did the wrecking should not dictate plans for the rebuilding. For example, the privatization of Social Security should stay off the agenda for a generation, as any potential retiree would choose a government guarantee over a share in Bernie Madoff.
Still, there is room for creativity. Taiwan set up a state-run health insurance agency, but left the actual provision of healthcare to a mix of municipal, charitable and private providers. As a result its healthcare system costs one third that of the US.
But the immediate problem is government stakes in financial institutions on both sides of the Atlantic. Governments owe it to the long-suffering taxpayers not to allow any reflexive phobias about government control to stampede them into unloading their bank stakes hastily or at bargain-basement prices. They should take time to clean them up thoroughly, making banking boring again, and only sell their holdings when there is a good return for taxpayers.
The issue is as much about governance in business as it is about government. Managements have been looting shareholders and taxpayers alike, with shameless bravado and relative impunity.
Just after the inauguration, the Financial Times revealed that Merrill Lynch had rushed to pay ‘billions of dollars’ in bonuses to executives just three days before its taxpayer-financed rescue by Bank of America. Shareholders received no such largesse.
If banks can loot, they will; that is the lesson of the last few decades. The administration needs to stomp on the lobbyists and ensure shareholder rights and much stricter regulation, especially in the ruins of the financial sector. It should not let any fetish about government interference inhibit it from appointing independent directors – it needs cats that will catch the mice that have gnawed their way through the national granary.
Banking on the state
Ian Williams pokes his pink nose out
back
April Investor Relations Magazine: Speculator Column
China’s Deng Xiaoping signaled the end of statist orthodoxy when he said he didn’t care whether a cat was black or white, as long as it caught mice. Similarly, President Obama wrote the epitaph for neo-liberalism in his inaugural address, saying it is ‘not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works.’
In many countries, state ownership has certainly allowed many forms of micropolitical management. The New York Times succumbed to the prejudices of the Washington consensus by always referring to former UK premier Margaret Thatcher as the ‘privatizer of the loss-making nationalized industries.’ In fact, the firms she sold – BP, British Airways, British Gas, British Telecom – were making money, which is why investors were so eager to buy them.
Similarly, the UK’s building societies were steered obsessively toward demutualization. By the end of 2008, however, only those that had kept their mutual status had survived as independent businesses. The rest were defunct, bought out or nationalized, like much of the US banking system.
The high tide of the Washington consensus has hit like a tsunami, but the cleared landscape should allow some dogma-free discussion. And those who did the wrecking should not dictate plans for the rebuilding. For example, the privatization of Social Security should stay off the agenda for a generation, as any potential retiree would choose a government guarantee over a share in Bernie Madoff.
Still, there is room for creativity. Taiwan set up a state-run health insurance agency, but left the actual provision of healthcare to a mix of municipal, charitable and private providers. As a result its healthcare system costs one third that of the US.
But the immediate problem is government stakes in financial institutions on both sides of the Atlantic. Governments owe it to the long-suffering taxpayers not to allow any reflexive phobias about government control to stampede them into unloading their bank stakes hastily or at bargain-basement prices. They should take time to clean them up thoroughly, making banking boring again, and only sell their holdings when there is a good return for taxpayers.
The issue is as much about governance in business as it is about government. Managements have been looting shareholders and taxpayers alike, with shameless bravado and relative impunity.
Just after the inauguration, the Financial Times revealed that Merrill Lynch had rushed to pay ‘billions of dollars’ in bonuses to executives just three days before its taxpayer-financed rescue by Bank of America. Shareholders received no such largesse.
If banks can loot, they will; that is the lesson of the last few decades. The administration needs to stomp on the lobbyists and ensure shareholder rights and much stricter regulation, especially in the ruins of the financial sector. It should not let any fetish about government interference inhibit it from appointing independent directors – it needs cats that will catch the mice that have gnawed their way through the national granary.
Obama in Istanbul
Asia Times Middle East
Apr 10, 2009
COMMENT
A town hall meeting and a mosque
By Ian Williams
ISTANBUL - Istanbul has been the pivot of East-West, and indeed North-South, relations for millennia, and Turkey was an inspired, and indeed brave, choice for an early visit by United States President Barack Obama.
If former president Bill Clinton had been accused of being a crypto-Islamist, or secret adherent to Islam, there is no way that either his spin-doctors or his own timorous instincts would have allowed him with miles of a mosque. Yet Barack Hussein Obama, demonized by web-weirdos across America as a Muslim fifth columnist, goes to Turkey and visits the Blue Mosque - accompanied by Islamist party Prime Minister Recep Erdogan - and holds a town hall meeting with young Turks.
As police barriers held up Turks in the rain-swept streets of
Istanbul, there was little audible or visible resentment. They like Obama, and they liked even more that he gave Turkey so much prominence, as well as his emphasis on his own Muslim connections.
Turkish Islamism covers a wide spectrum, and is self-reliant enough to eschew the excesses of Saudi Arabian Wahhabism. The day before Obama's arrival, Sunday, is a day off in Turkey and the Eyup Mosque - allegedly the burial place of the Prophet's standard-bearer, as revealed in a dream to a sultan - swarmed with the visibly pious, men in skull caps and women in chadors pinned across their face, coming to pray. But the men and their wives walked hand in hand, and on less-solemn occasions fundamentalist fashion includes colorful figure-hugging silk attire, with chic headscarves surrounding immaculate maquillage.
Some of the more deluded Islamists might secretly hope that Obama is indeed the crypto-Muslim his loony American detractors claim, but the secularists of both left and right share with Turkey's ruling party an appreciation of Obama's greatest asset: he is not George W Bush.
The country where popular pressure stopped the traditional military and foreign policy establishment going along with the US invasion of Iraq, will naturally share an affinity with the president whose major impetus in the primaries came from his earlier opposition to the war.
But nothing is simple. Obama has not so much united as converged the Republican military/secularist wing in Turkey with the Islamists. For example, for the last two years the army command has boycotted parliament sessions in protest at the presence of Kurdish Demokratik Toplum Partisi party legislators. It does take a step back to wonder, firstly what they are doing attending parliament meetings anyway, and secondly, who do they think they are, boycotting the democratically elected legislature?
In the case of Iraq, once again there was an element of convergence. The liberal secularists opposed the invasion for the same reasons as everyone else in the world, the Islamists for obvious reasons. The military saw the operation through their obsession with Kurdistan, tempering their usual fervent connections to Washington and Israel.
On the occasion of Obama's speech to the parliament, the military establishment decided that their affection for the American connection outweighed any distaste they had for his mentions of the Greek Orthodox Ecumenical patriarchate or Armenian charges of genocide.
This being Turkey, the mere suggestion that the Armenian charges of genocide should not necessarily be dismissed out of hand, had some of the nationalists up in arms. However, Obama's initiatives seemed to have been carefully choreographed in advance. He treaded lightly with the adroit Erdogan, who has already suggested a commission of historians to study the alleged Armenian Holocaust of 1915, and who also knows that one very definite barrier to entry of the European Union (EU) is allowing the Orthodox Patriarchate to re-open its seminary on the island of Haliki.
Obama's public pressure may well be just what the Turkish prime minister needs and wants to overcome the traditional security establishment's resistance to necessary reforms. Any rational government would see the Ecumenical Patriarchate as a huge asset to the prestige of the country, a suitable adornment to Istanbul's tenure as European Capital of Culture next year.
Most cities and countries would fight for the chance of opening an Orthodox Vatican with the huge potential for prestige and profits from pilgrims and prophets. However, Turkey has traditionally insisted that the incumbent must be a Turkish citizen, drawn from the shrinking Phanariot Greek community, which in fairness would continue an age-old tradition that the secular power must have a say in the appointment. However, Ankara closed the only seminary in the country that could provide a native priesthood from which to recruit one, which falls foul of EU aspirations for both religious freedom and minority rights.
The new Israeli government, if it were not deaf to everybody who disagreed with it, should be watching and listening carefully. Erdogan, of course, gained immense popularity across the Muslim world, and indeed much further afield, for having the courage to dress down Israeli President Shimon Perez at the World Economic Forum in Davos, when so many others prevaricated or supported Israel's attack on Gaza.
Interestingly, the tidal wave of obloquy that would normally have deluged over him was muted - and then almost silenced. The Turkish armed forces are Israel's only ally in the area. Israeli planes practice in Turkish airspace, while Ankara is a major customer for Israeli military hardware. The Generals may have their own disagreements with Erdogan, but let their Israeli counterparts know that they would be unhappy with others attacking the Turkish government. The message was acted upon, hence the rapid silence which overcame the initial vociferous pro-Israeli indignation.
Hence also Obama's emphasis on Turkey as a democracy with a majority Muslim culture which could be a bridge to the Islamic world and a possible partner in winning a Middle Eastern peace process. An essential part of which is to persuade Muslims that the US is not irredeemably Islamophobic, or for that matter, irredeemably Israelophilic.
Erdogan is using US leverage to get what he wants. Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu government shows no signs of such adroitness. In his Turkish speech, Obama, yet again, sent a message to Israel's leadership that "The United States strongly supports the goal of two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security. That is a goal shared by Palestinians, Israelis and people of good will around the world. That is a goal that that the parties agreed to in the roadmap and at Annapolis. And that is a goal that I will actively pursue as president."
Erdogan is shooting into the same goal posts as the US president, while the Israeli cabinet is separately and collectively limbering up for a series of fouls and penalties.
Maybe Erdogan's generals can speak to Netanyahu's, or maybe not. But Obama's visit to Turkey before Israel shows his basic understanding that foreign policy is about dealing with foreigners, not domestic lobbies.
Ian Williams is the author of Deserter: Bush's War on Military Families, Veterans and His Past, Nation Books, New York.
Apr 10, 2009
COMMENT
A town hall meeting and a mosque
By Ian Williams
ISTANBUL - Istanbul has been the pivot of East-West, and indeed North-South, relations for millennia, and Turkey was an inspired, and indeed brave, choice for an early visit by United States President Barack Obama.
If former president Bill Clinton had been accused of being a crypto-Islamist, or secret adherent to Islam, there is no way that either his spin-doctors or his own timorous instincts would have allowed him with miles of a mosque. Yet Barack Hussein Obama, demonized by web-weirdos across America as a Muslim fifth columnist, goes to Turkey and visits the Blue Mosque - accompanied by Islamist party Prime Minister Recep Erdogan - and holds a town hall meeting with young Turks.
As police barriers held up Turks in the rain-swept streets of
Istanbul, there was little audible or visible resentment. They like Obama, and they liked even more that he gave Turkey so much prominence, as well as his emphasis on his own Muslim connections.
Turkish Islamism covers a wide spectrum, and is self-reliant enough to eschew the excesses of Saudi Arabian Wahhabism. The day before Obama's arrival, Sunday, is a day off in Turkey and the Eyup Mosque - allegedly the burial place of the Prophet's standard-bearer, as revealed in a dream to a sultan - swarmed with the visibly pious, men in skull caps and women in chadors pinned across their face, coming to pray. But the men and their wives walked hand in hand, and on less-solemn occasions fundamentalist fashion includes colorful figure-hugging silk attire, with chic headscarves surrounding immaculate maquillage.
Some of the more deluded Islamists might secretly hope that Obama is indeed the crypto-Muslim his loony American detractors claim, but the secularists of both left and right share with Turkey's ruling party an appreciation of Obama's greatest asset: he is not George W Bush.
The country where popular pressure stopped the traditional military and foreign policy establishment going along with the US invasion of Iraq, will naturally share an affinity with the president whose major impetus in the primaries came from his earlier opposition to the war.
But nothing is simple. Obama has not so much united as converged the Republican military/secularist wing in Turkey with the Islamists. For example, for the last two years the army command has boycotted parliament sessions in protest at the presence of Kurdish Demokratik Toplum Partisi party legislators. It does take a step back to wonder, firstly what they are doing attending parliament meetings anyway, and secondly, who do they think they are, boycotting the democratically elected legislature?
In the case of Iraq, once again there was an element of convergence. The liberal secularists opposed the invasion for the same reasons as everyone else in the world, the Islamists for obvious reasons. The military saw the operation through their obsession with Kurdistan, tempering their usual fervent connections to Washington and Israel.
On the occasion of Obama's speech to the parliament, the military establishment decided that their affection for the American connection outweighed any distaste they had for his mentions of the Greek Orthodox Ecumenical patriarchate or Armenian charges of genocide.
This being Turkey, the mere suggestion that the Armenian charges of genocide should not necessarily be dismissed out of hand, had some of the nationalists up in arms. However, Obama's initiatives seemed to have been carefully choreographed in advance. He treaded lightly with the adroit Erdogan, who has already suggested a commission of historians to study the alleged Armenian Holocaust of 1915, and who also knows that one very definite barrier to entry of the European Union (EU) is allowing the Orthodox Patriarchate to re-open its seminary on the island of Haliki.
Obama's public pressure may well be just what the Turkish prime minister needs and wants to overcome the traditional security establishment's resistance to necessary reforms. Any rational government would see the Ecumenical Patriarchate as a huge asset to the prestige of the country, a suitable adornment to Istanbul's tenure as European Capital of Culture next year.
Most cities and countries would fight for the chance of opening an Orthodox Vatican with the huge potential for prestige and profits from pilgrims and prophets. However, Turkey has traditionally insisted that the incumbent must be a Turkish citizen, drawn from the shrinking Phanariot Greek community, which in fairness would continue an age-old tradition that the secular power must have a say in the appointment. However, Ankara closed the only seminary in the country that could provide a native priesthood from which to recruit one, which falls foul of EU aspirations for both religious freedom and minority rights.
The new Israeli government, if it were not deaf to everybody who disagreed with it, should be watching and listening carefully. Erdogan, of course, gained immense popularity across the Muslim world, and indeed much further afield, for having the courage to dress down Israeli President Shimon Perez at the World Economic Forum in Davos, when so many others prevaricated or supported Israel's attack on Gaza.
Interestingly, the tidal wave of obloquy that would normally have deluged over him was muted - and then almost silenced. The Turkish armed forces are Israel's only ally in the area. Israeli planes practice in Turkish airspace, while Ankara is a major customer for Israeli military hardware. The Generals may have their own disagreements with Erdogan, but let their Israeli counterparts know that they would be unhappy with others attacking the Turkish government. The message was acted upon, hence the rapid silence which overcame the initial vociferous pro-Israeli indignation.
Hence also Obama's emphasis on Turkey as a democracy with a majority Muslim culture which could be a bridge to the Islamic world and a possible partner in winning a Middle Eastern peace process. An essential part of which is to persuade Muslims that the US is not irredeemably Islamophobic, or for that matter, irredeemably Israelophilic.
Erdogan is using US leverage to get what he wants. Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu government shows no signs of such adroitness. In his Turkish speech, Obama, yet again, sent a message to Israel's leadership that "The United States strongly supports the goal of two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security. That is a goal shared by Palestinians, Israelis and people of good will around the world. That is a goal that that the parties agreed to in the roadmap and at Annapolis. And that is a goal that I will actively pursue as president."
Erdogan is shooting into the same goal posts as the US president, while the Israeli cabinet is separately and collectively limbering up for a series of fouls and penalties.
Maybe Erdogan's generals can speak to Netanyahu's, or maybe not. But Obama's visit to Turkey before Israel shows his basic understanding that foreign policy is about dealing with foreigners, not domestic lobbies.
Ian Williams is the author of Deserter: Bush's War on Military Families, Veterans and His Past, Nation Books, New York.
Back on the Web
I've just returned from a long trip to Turkey and Central Asia, where I had very limited web contact. Normal service will now be resumed!
Thanks for the concerned emails.. we had not fallen off the edge of the world. Even thought it felt like it on occasion!
Ian
Thanks for the concerned emails.. we had not fallen off the edge of the world. Even thought it felt like it on occasion!
Ian
Lemming time
Ian Williams: Don’t bank on lemmings – their dogma has had its day
Tribune April 13, 2009
THE current economic crisis demands metaphors, similes, and similar poetic tropes. It is just too complicated for simple rationality.
The election of Barack Obama as President of the United States has been like changing the captain on the Titanic – after it had hit the iceberg. This is still good news. It will still be a chilling experience when we hit the icy water in our lifejackets and watch the rescue vessels pick up the first-class lifeboats first. However, before we would have been locked below decks as the water rose, but passengers in steerage might now have access to the lifeboats the previous skipper would surely have denied us.
Obama has implemented an impressive array of reforms since he took office. He has shown ingenuity, in trying to stop the ship of state from sinking. Nevertheless, on some issues, such as healthcare, the financial industry and the Middle East, he has been patching up rather than reforming.
The global and US economies are currently running under some world version of a clunky Windows programme: in time, the patches such as those that Obama and the G20 are downloading overwhelm rather than repair the already wobbly underlying structure. There really comes a time when the umpteenth crash should persuade you to buy an Apple Mac.
However, not unlike some sections of the Labour Party, Bill Clinton-era officials on the financial side of his administration work on the assumption that the way out of the crisis is to gain the “confidence” of bankers. Since these are the bankers whose Panglossian optimism led them to stampede over the cliff during the Savings and Loans scandal, and then the property boom and credit crunch, one would have thought that confidence was easily engendered in a breed so susceptible to its more extreme forms.
But while neo-liberals see a “moral hazard” in over-generous unemployment pay, their “moderate” and “rational” wings – the likes of “new” Labour and the “new” Democrats – see the only way to get the lemmings back up the cliff is to stuff their ravenous maws with taxpayers’ money. From a banking background themselves or reflexively responsive to bankers, they see those lemmings as an essential part of the process – and their huge greed as an essential cost of keeping the economy moving. In contrast, frothing conservatives are now mounting an assault on Obama and his policies for fighting the crisis and shamelessly blaming him for the financial meltdown that he inherited.
Even more shamelessly, conservatives are among the most intemperate complainers about the US administration giving money to institutions whose executives have been rewarding themselves in the manner to which they had become accustomed for the past 20 years under both Republican and Democratic governments.
It is clear that, with their customary unconcern for what would pass for patriotism anywhere else, the rabid conservatives would rather Obama failed than succeeded. If we were charitable – as they never are – we might allow that some of them may really have genuine concerns about government interference and deficits. However, many such liberal impulses are over-ridden by the way that conservatives managed for eight years to mute their indignation of an administration that ripped up the constitution and bankrupted the country in a war of aggression.
Forget the unparalleled tax handouts to the rich under George Bush and let amnesia descend on the scrapping of effective regulation of businesses, whether on financial, health and safety or environmental grounds, the Republicans sense the popular mood and want to ride with it to re-election. If this seems implausible, remember that one sitting Republican Senator owed his election seven years ago to a campaign branding his paraplegic war veteran Democratic opponent as anti-military.
Apart from Obama’s immediate advisors, the cloth ears of a significant proportion of Democrats are restraining attempts at the root-and-branch reforms that events so clearly demand. So-called “moderate” legislators have learnt nothing. Dependent on business donations, they are fighting to defend corporate malpractice and oligarchic greed against the upsurge of popular anger that the Republicans are exploiting.
This has led to the bizarre consequence that Obama administration finance experts consider it more acceptable to throw $1 trillion of taxpayers’ cash at bankers with a recidivist record of running off with clients’ and shareholders’ money than to take the banks into effective public control, let alone, horror of horrors, public ownership. Nationalisation is not a panacea – but neither is it guaranteed poison as, in the British context, the failure to take the railways back into public ownership has been. On a large scale, faced with the chaos achieved by the visible hand of the market in the collective till, Obama should not deprive himself of any potential weapon for his arsenal – certainly not on ideological grounds dictated by those whose dogma caused the debacle.
Tribune April 13, 2009
THE current economic crisis demands metaphors, similes, and similar poetic tropes. It is just too complicated for simple rationality.
The election of Barack Obama as President of the United States has been like changing the captain on the Titanic – after it had hit the iceberg. This is still good news. It will still be a chilling experience when we hit the icy water in our lifejackets and watch the rescue vessels pick up the first-class lifeboats first. However, before we would have been locked below decks as the water rose, but passengers in steerage might now have access to the lifeboats the previous skipper would surely have denied us.
Obama has implemented an impressive array of reforms since he took office. He has shown ingenuity, in trying to stop the ship of state from sinking. Nevertheless, on some issues, such as healthcare, the financial industry and the Middle East, he has been patching up rather than reforming.
The global and US economies are currently running under some world version of a clunky Windows programme: in time, the patches such as those that Obama and the G20 are downloading overwhelm rather than repair the already wobbly underlying structure. There really comes a time when the umpteenth crash should persuade you to buy an Apple Mac.
However, not unlike some sections of the Labour Party, Bill Clinton-era officials on the financial side of his administration work on the assumption that the way out of the crisis is to gain the “confidence” of bankers. Since these are the bankers whose Panglossian optimism led them to stampede over the cliff during the Savings and Loans scandal, and then the property boom and credit crunch, one would have thought that confidence was easily engendered in a breed so susceptible to its more extreme forms.
But while neo-liberals see a “moral hazard” in over-generous unemployment pay, their “moderate” and “rational” wings – the likes of “new” Labour and the “new” Democrats – see the only way to get the lemmings back up the cliff is to stuff their ravenous maws with taxpayers’ money. From a banking background themselves or reflexively responsive to bankers, they see those lemmings as an essential part of the process – and their huge greed as an essential cost of keeping the economy moving. In contrast, frothing conservatives are now mounting an assault on Obama and his policies for fighting the crisis and shamelessly blaming him for the financial meltdown that he inherited.
Even more shamelessly, conservatives are among the most intemperate complainers about the US administration giving money to institutions whose executives have been rewarding themselves in the manner to which they had become accustomed for the past 20 years under both Republican and Democratic governments.
It is clear that, with their customary unconcern for what would pass for patriotism anywhere else, the rabid conservatives would rather Obama failed than succeeded. If we were charitable – as they never are – we might allow that some of them may really have genuine concerns about government interference and deficits. However, many such liberal impulses are over-ridden by the way that conservatives managed for eight years to mute their indignation of an administration that ripped up the constitution and bankrupted the country in a war of aggression.
Forget the unparalleled tax handouts to the rich under George Bush and let amnesia descend on the scrapping of effective regulation of businesses, whether on financial, health and safety or environmental grounds, the Republicans sense the popular mood and want to ride with it to re-election. If this seems implausible, remember that one sitting Republican Senator owed his election seven years ago to a campaign branding his paraplegic war veteran Democratic opponent as anti-military.
Apart from Obama’s immediate advisors, the cloth ears of a significant proportion of Democrats are restraining attempts at the root-and-branch reforms that events so clearly demand. So-called “moderate” legislators have learnt nothing. Dependent on business donations, they are fighting to defend corporate malpractice and oligarchic greed against the upsurge of popular anger that the Republicans are exploiting.
This has led to the bizarre consequence that Obama administration finance experts consider it more acceptable to throw $1 trillion of taxpayers’ cash at bankers with a recidivist record of running off with clients’ and shareholders’ money than to take the banks into effective public control, let alone, horror of horrors, public ownership. Nationalisation is not a panacea – but neither is it guaranteed poison as, in the British context, the failure to take the railways back into public ownership has been. On a large scale, faced with the chaos achieved by the visible hand of the market in the collective till, Obama should not deprive himself of any potential weapon for his arsenal – certainly not on ideological grounds dictated by those whose dogma caused the debacle.
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