Terra incognita: Coexistence partners with ourselves?

by Seth J. Frantzman

Where are the billboards in Ramallah and Nablusshowing Binyamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak asking the Palestinians to be Israel’s partners?

The shocking, but comical, news that the Palestinian Authority’s two most powerful politicians had withdrawn their support for a US-funded coexistence campaign encouraging average Israelis to be “partners” in peace is part of the larger failure of misguided coexistence projects.

The latest story goes something like this.

As a background to the peace talks now under way, USAID, a US government humanitarian and economic assistance organization, supported a Geneva Initiative ad campaign aimed at encouraging Israelis to support peace. The campaign created 30-second video clips of Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat asking Israelis, “Are you my partner” and purchased 280 billboards across the country. The billboards are modeled on Facebook and show a photo of leading Palestinians asking people to accept their “partner request.”

On September 7 it was announced that Mahmoud Abbas and Salam Fayyad had asked not to be associated with the peace partner campaign because it was “too Israeli.”

Fayyad complained that the Geneva Initiative had not gotten his consent to be used in the campaign and according to reporter Avi Issacharoff, “Fayyad also reportedly noted that it wasn’t clear to him why the campaign did not also feature Israeli figures addressing the Palestinian public.”

This is a question others have raised.

Where are the billboards in Ramallah and Nablus showing Binyamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak asking the Palestinians to be Israel’s partners? But the history of the partner initiative, which should never have been funded by the US government in the first place, is only part of the larger coexistence picture.

MANY COEXISTENCE groups seek to foster only a one-sided kind of coexistence. A list compiled by the website engageonline.org.uk proves the point. At the top is the Abraham Fund. The six “initiatives” displayed on its home page include the teaching of Arabic in Jewish schools, efforts to fight for equal opportunities for Arab citizens and “promoting the employment and integration of Arab women in the workforce.”

A fourth initiative seeks to work on relations between police and the Arab community.

The fourth initiative seems to be slightly in line with coexistence, but it seems to place all the burden on the police, encouraging them to learn “Arabic culture” for instance. The program doesn’t seem to include any discussion with the Arab community’s youth, encouraging them to cooperate with the police rather than, for instance, throwing rocks at them.

The Negev Coexistence Forum is the most egregious example of one-sided nationalism masquerading as coexistence.

Founded in 1997, it offers tours of Beduin communities and lobbies internationally on behalf of the Beduin by sending delegations to places like the UN to get them recognized as an “indigenous” people. It also claims to work in illegal Beduin villages in the Negev, renovating kindergartens, constructing roads and working on water supply initiatives. They also provide legal aid.

How is any of this “coexistence” work? There is no work on behalf of, say, impoverished Jewish communities; all the work is only for one group and it is work designed to reward that group for illegal behavior and encourage greater nationalism among it. All that is fine, but why call it “coexistence”; why not call themselves the Negev Beduin Forum? Almost all coexistence efforts in Israel and the Palestinian territories break down on a fundamental level. There is a recognition that the types of activities coexistence groups want to do are simply not acceptable in the other community, so what ends up happening is that only Jewish Israelis are exposed to coexistence initiatives, while the other side remains blithely in the dark. In some cases the coexistence work seems to achieve the opposite, by caving to pressures by one group, the coexistence group actually becomes a mouthpiece for nationalism and irredentism, fostering radical Beduin or Israeli-Arab causes, such as Nakba education or lobbying at the UN on their behalf.

There have been several initiatives that appear to have gone in a more honest direction. A Geneva Initiative-sponsored women’s circle of Shas-affiliated women and leading Palestinian women is one example, as is the program Seeds of Peace that brought together Israelis and Palestinians and sent them to summer camps abroad.

But on a fundamental level the expensive “partner” billboard program is a fiasco, and just the kind of thing that does nothing to advance peace. At the entrance to Ramallah the most visible sign is a mural of Marwan Barghouti, currently serving five life sentences for murder, and Yasser Arafat. No one will put up a sign of Israel’s prime minister seeking peace next to that mural, and that fact symbolizes that, while peace may come, coexistence certainly will not.

Seth J. Frantzman is a PhD researcher at Hebrew University and a fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies.

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Why We Don’t Have Peace

by Jennifer Rubin


Here’s how it works in the Middle East. An Israeli security guard travels through a section of the nation’s capital (no, dear liberals, East Jerusalem is not a “settlement”). Palestinians set upon him, throwing stones and Molotov cocktails. Afraid for his life, the guard shoots in self defense, killing one assailant. (”The guard, fearing for his life, allegedly opened fire with his personal firearm at a group of rock throwers and killed a resident. Police found two knives and screwdriver on the body of the victim, who had a previous criminal history and was known to police.”) The Palestinians commence a riot, injuring innocent Israelis. The world blames Israel.

Here’s the Palestinian mindset, displaying all its splendid victimology. The residents complain that the assailants should have been “warned” (before of after the Molotov cocktails rained down?) .Everyone gets into the act:

There’s going to be a huge mess in Silwan, something big will happen. They killed a man, what should I do, be quiet? What about his family, his little kids?” asked another neighbor of the victim, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of police reprisal.

“This was a calculated, violent act with political goals,” Dimitri Diliani, the head of Fatah’s Social Development Committee, told the Jerusalem Post as he was standing with mourners outside the family’s house. “We view it as a right-wing Israeli effort to undermine the peace process and to draw Palestinians into violent action so that the right-wing government will be provided with a window of opportunity to escape into national pressure regarding illegal settlement activities.”

Not sure if the “calculated” maneuver he refers to is meant to suggest that Israelis deployed the rock throwers, but then the facts are utterly irrelevant here.

Meanwhile the rioters — calculated and violent, one would say — injured ten (including “a 35-year-old Israeli in moderate condition who was stabbed in the back near the Mount of Olives”) and destroyed vehicles.

This certainly highlights the delusional nature of the peace process. The Israelis can only make peace with those who want it and are prepared to put down the guns, the stones, the knives, the rocks, and the Molotov cocktails to build a civil (in both senses of the word) society. Peace won’t come from any conference room. We’ll have peace, as a commentator elegantly described it, when and if Palestinians “can renounce once and for all the creeping Islamism that would sooner see them suffering the miseries and oppression of twelfth-century religious and cultural practice than thriving in a modern society; if they can cast off at last the self-strangling mythology of their own victimhood; and if they can shed their century-old yearning to set the blood of their Jewish neighbors flowing in the streets.” No sign of that so far.

Jennifer Rubin

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BC wilfully violates own charter in blatant display of bias over UN report slating Israel

by Robin Shepherd


In one of the most disgraceful displays of wilful bias that you will ever have the misfortune to witness, the BBC today covers a UN Human Rights Council report which castigates Israel over the Mavi Marmara flotilla incident in the Mediterranean Sea earlier this year.

The incident left nine pro-terror activists dead after they attacked Israeli soldiers in a bid for martyrdom. Gleefully, the BBC quotes the report as accusing Israel in the following terms:

“There is clear evidence to support prosecutions of the following crimes within the terms of article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention: wilful killing; torture or inhuman treatment; wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health”.

As good propagandists the reporters and editors are careful to relate Israel’s rejection of the report. But since any country accused of such crimes would instantly issue a rebuttal, the effect on the reader can safely be assumed to be minimal. What the BBC does is to censor out any of the relevant details, both about the incident itself and about the UN rights council. Here is a list of what they (quite deliberately) do not tell the reader:

1. The UN Human Rights Council is dominated by dictatorships, many with appalling human rights records. For example, members include China, Cuba and Saudi Arabia. This is crucial information since it goes to the credibility of anything that the Council does or says. Any trained journalist would know that such information must be included in any fair report. To omit it must, therefore, be a matter of deliberate choice. In this case, the BBC must have known that to relate such information would nullify the report’s impact as a device for defaming Israel. And that is why they omitted it.

2. The activists on the Mavi Marmara openly (on camera, and in newspaper interviews) courted martyrdom before even setting sail. This is vital information since it allows the reader to understand the mindset of the people Israel was confronting. It would provide clear evidence contradicting the thrust of the UN report. Again, not to provide such information must be deliberate.

3. According to the testimony of the ship’s captain and his deputy, the activists hijacked the ship several hours before the incident took place. This is more evidence that the activists were looking for confrontation. But to provide such information would contradict the favoured narrative that Israeli soldiers massacred a group of peace activists. Therefore, the BBC does not mention it.

4. There is video evidence (it’s on youtube for goodness sake!) that activists armed with steel bars, clubs, and knives mobbed the Israeli soldiers the moment they landed on the ship in an attempt to maim or kill them. No professional journalist would omit such information. And since anyone with even a cursory knowledge of what happened would be aware of such facts their omission must have been deliberate and part of a clear policy of promoting an anti-Israeli agenda.

There is just no way out of this for the BBC. This isn’t journalism, it’s political propaganda. And since that violates the BBC’s own charter, the journalists and editors should be held to account.

Robin Shepherd

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Al-Qaeda on Capitol Hill: Congressional Muslim Staffers Association Embraces Islamic Radicals and Terrorists

by Patrick S. Poole


When a report challenging our national security policy of ignoring Islamic supremacism through Islamic law, “Shariah: The Threat to America,” was released during a Capitol Hill press conference on Wednesday (disclosure: I was one of the co-authors of the report), among the chief critics were representatives from the Congressional Muslim Staffers Association (CMSA). This group, which has been briefing both Democrat and Republican congressional leadership in recent months that there is nothing inherently violent in Islamic law, has a very poor history of embracing Islamic radicals and even Al-Qaeda terrorists.

Immediately after 9/11, the CMSA [Congressional Muslim Staffers Association] began holding Friday afternoon prayer services on Capitol Hill. Who did they choose to lead them in their prayers? Al-Qaeda sheikh Anwar al-Aulaqi, who is currently subject to a kill or capture order issued by President Obama. In fact, video of Aulaqi preaching to the CMSA was included in the 2002 documentary, “Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet.” That video clip is available to view by the Investigative Project on Terrorism.

Identified in that clip listening to the Al-Qaeda cleric are Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR); then-CAIR Communications specialist Randall “Ismail” Royer, who is currently serving a 20-year federal prison sentence on terrorism charges; and sitting directly beside Royer is CMSA founder and former president Jameel Alim Johnson.

The invitation to an Al-Qaeda cleric who already had been tied to two of the 9/11 hijackers (as reported in the 9/11 Commission Report) to lead CMSA prayers is not the only troubling aspect of Jameel Johnson’s congressional record. In December 2007, I reported on an Islamic conference on Capitol Hill that had been scheduled by Johnson as chief of staff from Congressman Gregory Meeks. The conference was canceled at the last minute by the House of Representatives Sergeant-at-Arms when it was discovered that the conference scheduled by Johnson was to feature a long list of Islamic radicals, some of whom were known to be on the terror watch list.

So when the CMSA leadership squeal to the media about anyone offering an alternative view to our failed foreign and domestic policy of submitting to Islamic radicalism, we only need look at the record of CMSA as an organization, and its leadership as individuals, giving radicals and terrorists, such as Anwar Al-Aulaqi, their voice on Capitol Hill.

But the infiltration of our highest government institutions is not limited to the CMSA. In 1991, the first Muslim cleric to deliver opening prayers for Congress was Siraj Wahhaj, who two years later was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing trial, and who also served as a character witness for the defense of terrorist leader Omar Abdel Rahman. Wahhaj has openly called for the destruction of American democracy to be replaced by an Islamic state governed by shariah.

Another regular fixture on Capitol Hill for more than a decade was Abdurahman Alamoudi, friend to Democrats and Republicans alike, and arguably the most prominent Islamic leader in America. As president of the American Muslim Council, he advised US presidents and was courted by a number of presidential candidates, established the Muslim chaplain program for the Department of Defense, worked with Republican activist Grover Norquist to establish the Islamic Institute lobbying organization, and served on the advisory board for CAIR.

Today, Abdurahman Alamoudi is no longer roaming the halls of Congress or having lunch at the White House. He was arrested in 2003 and is currently serving a 23-year prison sentence for his role in a plot to assassinate Saudi King Abdullah at the request of Libyan intelligence. In July 2005, the US Treasury Department publicly admitted that Alamoudi, while he was the most influential Islamic leader in Washington D.C., was also the top Al-Qaeda fundraiser in the US. Treasury officials stated that Alamoudi’s arrest was “a severe blow to Al-Qaeda”.

This is precisely the kind of infiltration and willful blindness to the threat to America posed by Muslim Brotherhood front organizations we cited in our report issued this week. Continuing to ignore this threat, as urged by the Congressional Muslim Staffers Association and the Council on American-Islamic Relations, will only lead us further into submission to the advocates of a global Islamic state and the imposition of shariah.

Patrick S. Poole

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"Rushdie Rules" Reach Florida

by Daniel Pipes


Pastor Terry Jones' plan to burn copies of the Koran at his church in Gainesville, Florida, let it be emphasized, is a distasteful act that fits an ugly tradition. That said, two other points need be noted: Buying books and then burning them is an entirely legal act in the United States. Second, David Petraeus, Robert Gates, Eric Holder, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama pressured Jones to cancel only because they feared Muslim violence against Americans if he proceeded. Indeed, despite Mr. Jones calling off the Koran burning, 5 Afghans and 14 Kashmiris died in protests against his plans.

Palestinians desecrated the Tomb of Joseph in October 2000.
That violence stems from Islamic law, the Shariah, which insists that Islam, and the Koran in particular, enjoy a privileged status. Islam ferociously punishes anyone, Muslim or non-Muslim, who trespasses against Islam's sanctity. Codes in Muslim-majority states generally reflect this privilege; for example, Pakistan's blasphemy law, 295-C, punishes derogatory remarks about Muhammad with execution.

No less important, Shariah denigrates the sanctities of other religions, a tradition manifested in recent years by the destruction of the Buddhist Bamiyan statues and the desecration of the Jewish Tomb of Joseph and the Christian Church of the Nativity. A 2003 decree ruled the Bible suitable for use by Muslims when cleaning after defecation. Iranian authorities reportedly burned hundreds of Bibles in May. This imbalance, whereby Islam enjoys immunity and other religions are disparaged, has long prevailed in Muslim-majority countries.

Then, in 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini abruptly extended this double standard to the West when he decreed that British novelist Salman Rushdie be executed on account of the blasphemies in his book, The Satanic Verses. With this, Khomeini established the Rushdie Rules, which still remain in place. They hold that whoever opposes "Islam, the Prophet, and the Koran" may be put to death; that anyone connected to the blasphemer must also be executed; and that all Muslims should participate in an informal intelligence network to carry out this threat.

Self-evidently, these rules contradict a fundamental premise of Western life, freedom of speech. As summed up by the dictum, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it," that freedom assures protection for the right to make mistakes, to insult, to be disagreeable, and to blaspheme.

If the Rushdie Rules initially shocked the West, they since have become the new norm. When Islam is the subject, freedom of speech is but a pre-1989 memory. Writers, artists, and editors readily acknowledge that criticizing Islam can endanger their lives.

British Muslims burned "The Satanic Verses" in January 1989.
Western leaders occasionally stand with those who insult Islam. British prime minister Margaret Thatcher resisted pressure from Tehran in 1989 and stated that "there are no grounds on which the government could consider banning" The Satanic Verses. Other governments reinforced this stalwart position; for example, the U.S. Senate unanimously resolved "to protect the right of any person to write, publish, sell, buy and read books without fear of violence."

Likewise, Danish prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen stood strong in 2006 when disrespectful cartoons of Muhammad in a Copenhagen newspaper led to storms of protest: "This is a matter of principle," he stated. "As prime minister, I have no power whatsoever to limit the press – nor do I want such a power."

Both those incidents led to costly boycotts and violence, yet principle trumped expedience. Other Western leaders have faltered in defense of free expression. The governments of Australia, Austria, Canada, Finland, France, Great Britain, Israel, and the Netherlands have all attempted to or succeeded in jailing Rushdie-Rule offenders.

The Obama administration has now joined this ignominious list. Its pressure on Mr. Jones further eroded freedom of speech about Islam and implicitly established Islam's privileged status in the United States, whereby Muslims may insult others but not be insulted. This moved the country toward dhimmitude, a condition whereby non-Muslims acknowledge the superiority of Islam. Finally, Mr. Obama in effect enforced Islamic law, a precedent that could lead to other forms of compulsory Shariah compliance.

Mr. Obama should have followed Mr. Rasmussen's lead and asserted the principle of free speech. His failure to do so means Americans must recognize and resist further U.S. governmental application of the Rushdie Rules or other aspects of Shariah.

Mr. Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. His article, "Two Decades of the Rushdie Rules" will appear in the October issue of Commentary magazine.

Daniel Pipes

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Say no to Hamas takeover

by Martin Sherman

Guy Bechor is a well-informed analyst of Middle East affairs. As a journalist his articles normally reflect a far more down-to-earth comprehension of regional realities than many of his mainstream media colleagues. This is perhaps what makes his recent column Is Hamas takeover so bad? - in which he advocates letting the "West Bank" fall to the Hamas - so disturbing.

Uncharacteristic of Bechor's usually sober assessments, it is a piece that is marred by unrealistic optimism, astonishing short-sightedness and highly-constricted tunnel-vision.

Bechor is of course correct in noting that "Israel would never be able to live with the Palestinian Authority’s demands" and that today the "Palestinian Authority…is perceived as the 'good guys'…(while) Hamas is considered a terrorist and part of the 'bad guys'.”

However, virtually all subsequent inferences he makes and conclusions he draws from this observation are wildly off-track.

Thus, when Bechor claims that if the Hamas took over Judea and Samaria "The international pressure exerted on Israel would be eased and even disappear, as nobody wishes to grant a state to terrorists,” one can only wonder whether he has succumbed to terminal amnesia or has merely neglected to follow the news.

Indeed, in the case of the Palestinians, the pejorative designation of "terrorist" is alarmingly transitory. After all, the entire Oslo process was launched with "terrorists." The PLO was formally designated as a terror organization until the early ‘90s, and only permitted to open a Mission Office in Washington in 1994 after the signature of Declaration of Principles on the White House Lawn - despite the fact that it had merely outsourced its murderous activities to its violent affiliates.

This clearly indicates that widespread international reticence in dealing with "terrorists" is not something that can be taken for granted - certainly not for any length of time. Indeed, the PLO was "sanitized" largely due to efforts by prominent Israelis. Bechor would do well to keep this in mind, for familiar-sounding voices are being raised today by a growing chorus of influential figures in the US, in the EU…and in Israel, calling for "engagement" with the Hamas.

The trouble with Gaza

Moreover, given the severe worldwide censure that Israel has been subjected to over its policy toward Hamas-governed Gaza, one can only wonder on what Bechor bases his astonishing claim that if Hamas was to govern Judea and Samaria "international pressure exerted on Israel would be eased and even disappear."

No less astounding is Bechor's rhetorical question:" What’s so bad about the new situation created in the Gaza Strip...?"Well, setting aside the "small detail" of the lasting damage to the moral fiber of the nation and the grotesque degradation of the Zionist ethos involved in the senseless and futile uprooting any vestige of Jewish presence, how about this for starters: Thousands of rockets and mortar shells that have rained down on civilian population centers for years!?


Indeed only poor aim on the part of the Palestinians and the sparse target-density in the arid expanses bordering the Gaza Strip have prevented these bombardments from being catastrophic.

Bechor's facile formula for dealing with this future possibility is: "If they fire at us from there, we fire back at them." Well, last time we "fired back at them" - after eight years of them firing at us - in Operation Cast Lead, the result was the Goldstone Report and enormous damage to Israel's international standing, making future retaliation far more problematic and international punitive measures more likely. Can all of this have escaped Bechor's attention?

But even if Israel decided to shrug off international condemnation and risk global censure and sanction, there are huge differences - in terms of geographical extent, topographical structure and strategic significance - between the ramifications of a Hamas takeover of Judea and Samaria, and those of a Hamas-ruled Gaza:

• The length of Israel's frontier with the Gaza Strip is a little over 50 kilometers; that of the "West Bank is about 300 kilometers long (and longer if it is to include the large settlement blocs as Bechor envisages.)

• The Gaza border abuts a relatively remote and sparsely-populated portion of the country. The "West Bank" frontier would run barely a mile from the national parliament, along the very fringes of Israel's most populous areas in the coastal metropolis, adjacent to the perimeter of Ben Gurion Airport and to large sections of the Trans-Israel highway.

• While the Gaza strip is generally low-lying flatlands and contains no water resources that impact on Israeli supply, the "West Bank" is an elevated mountain ridge that commands much of Israel's vital infrastructures (both civilian and military), crucial water resources, major urban population centers and commercial hubs.


Radical Islamic state

Hamas would not have to rain down hundreds of rockets on Israel to paralyze the nation's social and economic routine. A few sporadic firings every now and then would be sufficient for that. In fact, the mere threat of bombardment (even if inaccurate) would bring about a disastrous disruption of air traffic to Israel and catastrophic cessation of tourism.

However, this would hardly constitute an internationally credible "smoking gun" to justify massive Israel retaliation along a front several hundred kilometers long in difficult terrain - especially if the Hamas regime could claim plausible deniability by placing the blame on radical renegades.

According to Bechor, ensconcing the Hamas in will ensure "there is a master of the house there that can be presented with demands." Well, we saw how splendidly that worked in Gaza - especially with Gilad Shalit.

But perhaps the most worrying aspect of Bechor's analysis is the illusion that his suggested scenario would somehow exempt Israel from the burden of securing the nation. He proposes that "Israel would…allow free passage between the Hamas principality and Jordan. This would provide the Islamic principality with an outlet to the world, via Jordan, which would have to assume the burden just as Egypt did in Gaza."

So Bechor finds the situation in Gaza - which has been flooded by weapons since the disengagement - a model to emulate? It should be remembered that unlike Egypt, Jordan has a Palestinian majority. Thus, being perceived as the "Zionist's warder" of a "Palestinian prison" may destabilize the current regime, either forcing it into far-reaching concessions to the Islamist elements or even surrendering power completely. So rather than an isolated "principality," what we may get is a radical Islamist state stretching from the Iraqi border in the east to suburban Israel in the west.

Martin Sherman

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US finishes review, but holds on LAF funds remain

by Matt Nash


Members of the Lebanese army hold a military exercise in South Lebanon after a deadly clash with the IDF. The US Congress has put on hold $100 million in funding for the LAF. (AFP photo/Joseph Eid)

The Obama administration completed an inter-agency review of funding for the Lebanese Armed Forces launched last month after several members of Congress expressed fear of collusion between the LAF and Hezbollah, Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs Philip J. Crowley announced Thursday during a press briefing in Washington.

Crowley, who has consistently defended US funding for the LAF since a deadly border clash between Lebanon’s army and the Israel Defense Forces on August 3, would not reveal details of the review’s findings, but said, “We are in the process of consultations with members of Congress regarding our findings. We’ll have more to say with that when the consultations are done.”

Two holds on $100 million in funding for the LAF approved in the 2010 US budget, however, are still in place. Matt Denis, a spokesman for Representative Nita Lowy – who heads a subcommittee on the House Committee on Appropriations and who placed one of the holds – told the Associated Press Thursday that Lowy “appreciates the administration’s efforts to keep appraised of findings, and the conversations will continue about the path forward, [however] no resolution on this matter was reached. Her hold remains in place.”

Also Thursday, the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Rai reported that Chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs Howard Berman lifted his hold, placed the day before the August firefight. There is no news of lifting the hold on either Berman’s or the committee’s websites, and a source on Capitol Hill familiar with the issue, who spoke anonymously because he is not authorized to talk to the press, told NOW Lebanon via email that the Al-Rai report is “not true.”

The US ramped up long-dormant funding for the LAF in the wake of the 2005 Syrian withdrawal and the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel, “to bolster the government of Lebanon’s ability to exert control over its territory and reduce the operational space of militias such as Hezbollah,” the Pentagon argued in 2006.

Since the holds were placed, Lebanese lobbying groups in Washington and Lebanese politicians have been trying to convince Congress to continue funding the LAF.

“We have personally communicated with senior staff on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,” George Cody, executive director of the American Task Force for Lebanon’s Legislative Council (ATFL), told NOW Lebanon in an e-mail sent Thursday. “We have been in communication with senior policy makers at the US Department of State, Department of Defense, and the National Security Council to support their effort and to work with them.”

The ATFL also joined with seven other Lebanese lobby groups and issued a joint statement to Congress asking for the continuation of funding.

Prime Minister Saad Hariri and Defense Minister Elias al-Murr travelled to DC in early September to make their case for the money.

“Prime Minister Hariri stressed that the cost of funding the LAF is much lower than the cost of not funding it, especially for the US,” Okab Sakr, a Lebanon First bloc MP who is close to Hariri, told NOW Lebanon. Hariri argued that the LAF fights terrorist groups – such as Fatah al-Islam – and with a weak national army those groups could threaten US interests both in Lebanon and abroad, Sakr said.

“The US was assured that the army takes orders from the Lebanese political authorities only and that it is not penetrated [by Hezbollah]. When facing Israel, it is facing Israel’s aggressions, and when firing to defend itself, it is firing upon orders given by army officials whose loyalty lies with the state,” he said.

Immediately after the border clash, Israeli officials called for the US to stop funding the LAF because the relationship between Hezbollah and the army has become “cloudy,” as Israel’s Ambassador to the US Michael Oren put it.

The day after the border incident, a Lebanese lobbyist in Washington who spoke anonymously because he was not authorized to talk to the press, told NOW Lebanon that his group was contacted by “the highest levels at the State Department,” who wanted funding to continue.

“They said, ‘We need you to be working on this. We need all the support we can get on [Capitol] Hill. AIPAC and others are out to extract a pound of flesh for what happened on that border,’ ” the lobbyist said, referring to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a powerful lobbying group.

While both Cody and the anonymous lobbyist said they are hopeful the holds will be removed by September 30, political considerations in the US could complicate the issue. Both Berman and Lowy are Democrats, and the party faces tough electoral battles in early November.

Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen – the ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who would take Berman’s job as chairperson if her party takes control of the House, as is currently expected – said in a press release Thursday that she is “deeply concerned that US assistance to the LAF may be finding its way into the hands of violent militants, including Hezbollah.”

Ros-Lehtinen issued her statement after a meeting with Israel’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Daniel Ayalon. Other Republicans in the House, such as Republican Whip Eric Cantor, have also criticized the aid. If the administration’s review findings convince Democrats that the $100 million should be released, but fail to assure Republicans who have generally fought the administration at every turn since Obama came to power, lifting the holds before the election could open Democrats up to criticism they would likely rather avoid before the electoral showdown.

Matt Nash

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Smackdown: Convoy vs. Flotilla

by J. E. Dyer

Perhaps the biggest recent news in Gaza-blockade busting is the lack of enthusiasm for it shown by some regional governments. Beirut delayed the departure of the Lebanese “women’s flotilla” flagship, M/V Maryam, for much of July. After Maryam was finally allowed to leave Lebanon, the authorities in Greek Cyprus, the staging point for Maryam to pick up additional passengers, denied the ship permission to depart for Gaza. The flotilla organizers have so far been unable to mount the effort by any other means. A separate aid ship departing from Syria this past weekend simply headed for the Egyptian port of El-Arish, near the Rafah border crossing from Egypt into Gaza, rather than attempting to break the naval blockade.

Three vehicle convoys are now preparing to converge on Gaza, but they, like the Syrian ship, will assemble near Rafah in Egypt. One convoy, arranged by the Hamas-linked Viva Palestina activist group, left from London this weekend. Departures are planned from Morocco and Qatar as well. Reporting suggests that the convoys from Europe and Africa will be composed largely of passenger vehicles, reinforcing their character as publicity stunts rather than humanitarian aid missions.

The convoy from Casablanca has already hit a snag, however, and some elements of it are currently delayed in Morocco. Algeria has granted permission to cross its territory only provisionally and unofficially, a posture that Moroccan factions consider unsatisfactory. The Egyptians, meanwhile, refused to allow a Viva Palestina convoy to use the Rafah border crossing in January 2010, deporting British activist George Galloway and banning him from further activities in Egypt. Cairo’s foreign ministry has reiterated the ban this week, emphasizing that aid-convoy vehicles will not be allowed to use the border crossing. Any cargo they bring will have to be reloaded on an Egyptian-managed official convoy.

The refusal of Greece and Egypt to collude in blockade-running attempts is encouraging. By making order a priority, they eliminate the convenience third-party territory represents for activists originating from Turkey, Syria, or Lebanon. Other European authorities could take a lesson from them.

An interesting development thousands of miles away merits a mention as well. The New Zealand-based organization Kia Ora Gaza, while fundraising at a university in Hamilton last week, was startled to encounter push-back against its vituperative anti-Israel appeal (“one non-Jewish student … described [it] as ‘hate-preaching’”). Kia Ora Gaza activists were reportedly “told by Iraqi and Iranian students that they ‘were playing straight into Hamas’s hands.’” After an hour of being challenged by attendees, the Kia Ora Gaza group cut its event short and left, having taken in very few donations (one attendee counted a total of three).

No single event should be regarded as definitive, of course, but the trend here is positive — and very different from the narrative adhered to by the mainstream media. At times it seems as though the only ones who don’t “get it,” when it comes to Hamas, Islamism, and the cause-célèbre of Gaza, are the Western leftist elites.

J. E. Dyer

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A Future History of Palestine: You Want a Two-State Solution? Then Do It Right.

by Barry Rubin


The following article isn’t intended to reject a two-state solution but to point out issues that would inevitably arise if one ever came about. Recently, a once-major American magazine ran a cover story saying Israelis aren’t desperately eager for “peace” without ever mentioning the real reasons why that's so:

It's simple: Rather reasonably, Israelis want to know whether they would be better or worse off after making a deal to get a promise of peace in exchange for accepting a fully independent Palestinian state.

Making a strategy requires figuring out where things can go wrong and working to avoid or reduce the consequences. Pretending problems won't happen is the best way to engender catastrophes. So let's look at what would happen:

A gala celebration marks Palestine’s day of independence. Some world leaders come bearing promises of financial aid. Arab leaders attending offer little money and, except for Egypt’s president and Jordan’s king, avoid contact with Israel’s delegation.

These celebrations are marred by the absence of leaders from countries--including Iran, Syria, Libya, Sudan, and Yemen. refusing to recognize the new state.

Hamas, ruling the Gaza Strip, along with Islamic Jihad and other Palestinian groups, also reject the “traitorous entity.” Gaza’s rulers mark the occasion by firing rockets into Israel. Palestine's president boasts hollowly that his country includes all of the Gaza Strip but controls nothing there.

Hardly any of the Western media cover statements by some leaders of Palestine’s ruling Fatah group that the new country's independence is not the conflict's end but the first step toward total victory and conquest of Israel.

Nor do many note statements of Islamist and Palestinian nationalist Arab groups among Israel’s citizens that they now seek to dismantle the Zionist nature of the Israeli state, a goal several European newspapers endorse.

Nor is it widely highlighted in the Western media that the new country officially proclaims itself an Arab and Muslim state while ridiculing the idea of accepting Israel as a Jewish state.

Within a few weeks, infiltrators--some from Hamas, some from Fatah--cross the Palestine-Israel border to attack Israeli motorists and farming villages, set fires, and engage in sabotage. Palestine's government loudly condemns the attacks and claims it is trying to stop them. But the attacks continue even though a few Hamas supporters are rounded up, beaten up, and briefly imprisoned.

Soon, the official Museum of Palestinian History opens with exhibits claiming all of Israel as rightfully part of Palestine. Visiting schoolchildren are told that Tel Aviv, Haifa, Beersheva, and the rest of Israel belong to them and will some day be part of Palestine. Big displays show alleged Israeli atrocities and extol heroes who'd blown themselves up killing many Israeli civilians.

Yet these things, along with anti-Israel incitement in the Palestinian media, mosques, and textbooks, attract little foreign attention. The conflict is over, isn’t it? And to publicize such facts, journalists tell each other, would only “play into the hands of Israeli hardliners” and “undermine peace.”

Israel, of course, protests the incitement and armed attacks to the UN and Western governments, but those diplomatic efforts bring no response. Israel steps up defenses and builds a border fence at great expense, which helps somewhat. Yet every time Israeli patrols fire on infiltrators trying to get across, Palestine protests--backed by Muslim-majority states—that this is unprovoked Israeli aggression.

In the Middle East, the peace agreement brings little change. True, in some countries hatred toward Israel diminishes a bit. But Syria is still uninterested in peace. Moreover, growing fear of a nuclear Iran, Syria, and revolutionary Islamist groups intimidates other Arab states from making peace with Israel. After all, they say, now that there's a state of Palestine they don't need to do so.

Islamist groups rally against the “treasonous” Palestinian regime and “sell-out” of Palestine to recruit new members. America is no more popular for having fathered a Palestinian state since that birth required concessions and didn't bring all the land under Muslim rule. Violent attacks against U.S., European, and occasionally Palestinian institutions take place in a half-dozen countries.

From this point, we can envision several likely scenarios:

--Growing border tension and cross-border attacks lead to Israeli incursions to fight terrorists against whom the Palestinian government doesn’t act effectively. This sets off a crisis in which Israel is branded as the aggressor that is threatening peace and some call for sanctions against it.

--A coup takes place turning Palestine into a military-run regime which might be either more militant, wanting to fight Israel, or more cautious, seeking to crush Hamas.

--As a result of tensions with Israel, internal conflicts, a radical regime, or coup, the Palestinian government obtains military equipment, including advanced anti-aircraft missiles, violating the peace agreement. What’s the world going to do to enforce that treaty? Probably very little.

--As a result of the list of scenarios given in the previous paragraph, the Palestinian government calls in foreign troops, possibly Syrian or Iranian. What’s the world going to do about that? How would the world respond to Israel taking military action against such threats and treaty violations?

--A Hamas coup, far more likely to happen than the Palestinian government conquering the Gaza Strip, produces a pro-Tehran Hamas regime which, perhaps partnered with militant Fatah leaders, tears up the peace agreement and announces an alliance with Iran, making Israel and Western strategic interests worse off than ever.

Of course, we can also assume everything goes well and everyone lives happily ever after, that Palestinians become interested only in raising their living standards and keeping things quiet. That might happen.

But while the above scenarios are speculative they are better rooted in experience and reality than is the "best-case" alternative. At any rate, betting the lives of millions of people, Israel's future, and Western strategic interests must be based on something better than wishful thinking and refusing to acknowledge the threats involved.

Tell me, if you can, how the above predictions are ridiculously unlikely or impossible. The only likely response is: Shut up! You are endangering the possibility of peace!

Have you ever seen serious discussion of any of these points from Western experts, media, or governments?

Is there any sign of steps being taken to avoid such outcomes in the Western approach to the issue?

O course, this is all hypothetical. In practice, the Palestinian Authority isn’t going to make peace for many years to come.

While many would read this article as reason to oppose any two-state solution altogether. I, like most Israelis, favor a two-state solution if done properly. Yet if no one takes these dangers seriously, why should Israel make concessions, take risks, and rush into such a situation where it would be very likely worse off than it is now?

All we are saying is to give peace a chance. But only if it is likely to be a peace that is lasting and better than the status quo for all concerned.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal.

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Hamas Looming

by Elliot Jager


Mahmoud Zahhar, a senior Hamas figure, was being ever so slightly disingenuous when he told the BBC that his movement would not attempt to halt the talks between Mahmoud Abbas and Benjamin Netanyahu because in any case they are bound to die a natural death on their own.

Enemies of Peace Khaled Abu Toameh, Hudson Institute. The major threat to the negotiating process is not some new housing project in the West Bank but the evil forces in the Gaza Strip and their foreign sponsors.

Hamas's Dilemma Yaakov Katz, Jerusalem Post. The terrorists want to torpedo the Israel-Palestinian peace talks but also to avoid a punishing reprise of Operation Cast Lead.
Hamas has in fact reacted with its habitual brutality to the latest sign, however tentative, of Palestinian willingness to reach an accommodation with Israel. And in the event that, despite the PLO's political impotence and long-standing obduracy, the talks do not peter out as predicted, Hamas knows what to do. Like every Palestinian rejectionist movement dating back to 1917, it routinely disposes of Arabs whom it accuses of "collaboration" with Zionism; and it surely has Abbas, whom it has declared "not authorized to negotiate on behalf of the Palestinian people," in its sights.

Historically, of course, Hamas has found it efficacious to slaughter not only moderate Arabs but civilian Israeli Jews, thereby instigating IDF retaliations that in turn engender Palestinian casualties and thus insure that no one will be in the mood to talk peace. Between the signing of the Oslo Accords in September 1993 and the PLO's launching of the second intifada in September 2000, Hamas carried out dozens of suicide bombings. Earlier this month, it claimed "credit" for the drive-by murders of four Israelis in the West Bank. Since the talks have gotten under way, it has subcontracted Gaza-initiated terror to the so-called Popular Resistance Committees, which have escalated the number of rockets being lobbed into Israel. To the degree that the Abbas-Netanyahu talks create a perception of optimism, the peril of Hamas terrorism will increase exponentially.

What does Hamas want? Precisely what it says it wants: to establish the point that it and not the Fatah faction led by Abbas speaks for the Palestinian polity, and that it will not be obligated by any deal Abbas may strike with Netanyahu. As far back as 1974, the Islamists vehemently opposed the plan, adopted at Yasir Arafat's initiative, authorizing the PLO leadership to use tactical flexibility in its approach to liberating Palestine. As far as Hamas was concerned, Arafat's chosen means—destroying Israel through a combination of guile, negotiations, and episodic violence—was both too chancy and an affront to Muslim pride.

For his part, Abbas insists that his own faction, the PLO, is fully committed to the twin demands that Israel withdraw to the 1949 armistice lines and that millions of Arab refugees be allowed to "return" to Israel proper, and is fully adamant in its rejection of Israel's legitimacy as a Jewish state. But for Hamas, all this is beside the point. Unlike the PLO, Hamas is sworn never to become or to behave solely as a political movement, never to lose sight of the religio-political nature of the conflict, never to diminish the role of jihad in taking Palestine back for the Muslims, and never to abjure anti-Semitic incitement in its "battle against the Jews."

To be sure, Hamas is not a monolithic movement. Some of its Gaza-based leaders want to avoid another Operation Cast Lead and the concomitant possibility, albeit remote, of an outright IDF takeover that could result in a re-imposition of Palestinian Authority rule in Gaza. Ideologically, however, Hamas remains of one mind, seeing itself as the Islamist vanguard in Palestine and an integral component of the greater Muslim ummah. It is in line with this ideology that the movement denigrates women, indoctrinates religious fanaticism in youngsters, and haughtily casts aside such frills as elementary civil liberties.

None of this has deflected Western media from their fixation on the "real" threat to peace: namely, the September 26 expiration of Israel's self-imposed moratorium on West Bank housing construction. Regardless of how that issue is finessed in order to keep the negotiations ambling along, the actual looming threat lies elsewhere: in well-founded doubts as to the genuineness of the PLO's moderation, and in the bedrock certainty of Hamas's violent rejectionism.

Elliot Jager

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.