The great divide

As Israel marks its 59th Independence Day, the Arab sector insists it longs for greater inclusion in the state. A view from the Arab side of a widening gulf.
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SHABTAI GOLD, THE JERUSALEM POST

Apr. 23, 2007

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The relationship between the state and its Arab citizens is at its lowest level ever," says Jafar Fareh, of the Haifa-based rights group Mossawa, ahead of Israeli Independence Day.

Fareh is worried about the concept of separation which he feels is becoming more dominant in Israeli society. He, like other Arab citizens of Israel, is concerned that as Israel enters its 59th year, the gulf between Jews and Arabs continues to widen.

Arab intellectuals speak of the "Jewish ghetto" mentality, which, in their view, means Israel is closing itself off from all non-Jewish regional elements, including the Arab citizens. Many are worried that this trend will have negative consequences not only on Israel and its Arab citizens, but on the region as a whole.

Fareh is quick to place a fair amount of the blame for the "ghettoization" on the Left.

"The readiness to talk and negotiate [with the Palestine Liberation Organization] is part of the separation concept, based on the idea of 'We are here, and they are there,'" he says.

The talks with the PLO, he believes, have worsened the situation of Arab citizens in Israel. "Now people in Israel say to us, 'If it's not good for you here, go live in the PA,' implying that in Israel we must behave according to their terms."

Fareh points out that both the Oslo agreements and the disengagement plan went ahead because of the support of Arab MKs. He also blames the PLO, which he says forgot the Arab-Israelis, and says there is a rift between the two.

"Nabli Shaath, from the PLO, said Arabs should be loyal citizens in the Jewish state," Fareh recalls. "A dog is loyal. I want to be a partner, not loyal to Jewish masters."

Aida Touma-Sliman, from Acre, is also in favor of partnership with Israeli Jews, based on a changing of the current rules.

She, like Fareh, was a signatory of the "Future Vision" document, which is an attempt to outline a strategy for autonomy for the Arab citizens of Israel and which has alarmed many Israeli Jews with its blueprint for separatism.

She says the document, which was mainly intended to be an internal document aimed at starting a dialogue among Arabs, was translated into Hebrew because "we want to talk with the Jews. This document is not at all a sign of separatism."

Touma-Sliman, a member of the Hadash political party, notes that a recent survey shows that some 80 percent of Arabs in Israel support the concepts the document puts forward.

"This document says we want this place to be a homeland for Jews and Arabs who are here. We want equality for all citizens."

Touma-Sliman also wants recognition of the Arabs in Israel as a national collective. "The state wants to divide us into groups. However, we are not Druse, Beduin, Christian or whatever. We are all part of the Palestinian-Arab people."

Author Salman Natour traces the separation problem to the British Mandate. "The problem of separation has been around since the beginning. This goes back to the British policy of divide and conquer. In the State of Israel, the Ashkenazi elite controls, and the others are controlled."

For Natour, from Daliat al-Carmel in the Galilee, the problem of separation hits close to home. "I am Druse. We are supposed to have equal rights, according to the Israeli criteria. Most Druse serve in the army. Yet we don't have full rights or equality."

Natour sees the ruling elite of European Jews as responsible for the generally lower social status of Mizrahim, or, in his words, "Arab Jews."

"The Ashkenazi elite looks down on all things Arab. The eyes of Israel are to the West, especially culturally, and it rejects the East, to an extent."

Natour, who wrote the cultural section of the Future Vision document, views himself as an "Arab-Palestinian from the Druse community. I am not Israeli, but a citizen of Israel. Israel, as a Jewish state, prevents me from having a full Israeli identity."

Like many other signatories of the Future Vision document, he wants to break the old mold of Arab-Jew relations through dialogue with the Jews. "This is not a final document, but a basis for dialogue."

He uses his own community as an example for the change he wishes to see. In the future, "Druse can choose to serve in the army if they want, but not because they have to. After we break the mold, the old treaty, we can think about how to build a new relationship."

Ghaleb Majadle, the new minister of science and culture and the only Arab minister in the current government, sees things differently. He thinks the document doesn't deal with the real issues affecting the Arabs in Israel, and that the group that wrote it is not representative of the Arab sector.

He says the Arab public is too concerned with making ends meet and other basic needs, and it is not free to deal with weighty issues like those raised by the document. Those basic needs, he says, include more classrooms, more economic opportunities, better planning for houses, and a generally better quality of life.

The Jews in Israel, Majadle says, are not yet ready for the document either, noting that it lacks widespread support. More public debate of the document is needed before it can be considered for presentation to the coalition, he says.

Majadle partly blames past governments for the Arab sector's socioeconomic problems, saying the distribution of wealth was not equal, and that government policies contributed to widening social and economic gaps.

He points out that not one new Arab village was founded by the state since its inception, while it strives to create more and more Jewish towns. "Fifty percent of Arabs are below the poverty line. When we close the gaps in the Israeli society between Jews and Arabs, I am convinced that the Arab population will be free to deal with these important questions."

MK Dov Khenin (Hadash) also believes that more attention needs to be paid to issues that are of greater concern to the Arabs in Israel, like improved social services and economic opportunities, and less on symbols, like the anthem and the flag.

Khenin says the Israeli establishment focuses on symbols in order to rally the Jewish public together. "Separation is a bad characteristic of the Israeli society, dangerous to the whole society."

Because the major afflictions of the country's Arab citizens are a troubled economic situation and social discrimination, Khenin explains, the government would rather not deal with those issues.

While Khenin agrees with Majadle that the Future Vision document needs more public debate - "among all Israelis, not just Jews or Arabs" - he says that nationalist political aspirations of many Arab Israelis can exist simultaneously with the desire to improve socioeconomic levels, and one is not dependent on the other.

But Majadle's views are seen by many emerging political voices as of the older generation, one that didn't strive to fully achieve the multifaceted objectives of the Arab minority in Israel.

Haneen Zoabi, a member of the political bureau of Balad, says the Israelization process that the Arabs in Israel underwent necessitated the emergence of a more Arab-nationalist line, such as that of her party.

She talks about the older generation, the "bent generation," that lived through the 1948 war and gave in to the Israeli establishment, and the younger generation, the "upright generation," that emerged in the late 1960s with a more rebellious nature.

WHILE MOST Jewish Israelis will celebrate their victory in the 1948 war, many Arabs see it quite differently.

The 10th annual March of Return will take place this Independence Day. It is an event organized by the Association for the Defense of the Rights of the Internally Displaced. The protesters, including Jews from organizations like Zochrot, will march to the abandoned northern village of al-Lajun; most of the village's former residents live in Israeli-Arab areas like Umm el-Fahm.

About one quarter of Israeli Arabs, according to some estimates, are internal refugees. Although citizens of the state, they are not allowed to return to the land which they lost as a result of the war.

Daoud Bader is one such displaced person. He was born and raised in al-Ghabisiyya, a village with about 800 residents at the time of the 1948 war. The villagers left during the war, but were allowed to return based on a High Court of Justice decision from 1951. However, the army declared the area a closed military zone, thereby preventing their return. The village was then razed by security forces. Only the mosque, which Bader says is 230 years old, remains standing. He now lives in the village of Sheikh Dannun, near Acre.

Khenin says that Israel should recognize its part in the plight of Arabs created by the 1948 war. "It won't hurt Independence Day if we were to recognize the pain caused [to the Arabs] in 1948," he says, adding that "the day will have a positive connotation for Arabs citizens when they feel the state cares about them, and stops viewing them as a threat."

While it might be true that the politicization of the Arabs in Israel has led to a greater divide between them and the Jewish citizens, Zoabi blames the Zionist parties, from the Left and the Right, for creating the separation.

She says at first, right after Oslo, Israel felt it needed peace with the Arabs to live in the region. Now, she says, Israel feels it can exist without peace with the Arabs, including the Arabs in Israel. This, she declares, will "strengthen the concept of the Jewish ghetto, the concept of separation."

Fareh, although not in full agreement with Zoabi, is also deeply concerned. His litmus test for judging the situation is a statistic that says that in the last six years, 35 Arab citizens were killed by Israeli police, while not a single Jew died at the authorities' hands. "Even during the disengagement and evacuations of settlements, when the settlers threw stones and blocks," the security forces did not respond with lethal force, he notes.

"If the Jews fail to live with the Arabs in Israel, we will pay the price in the short term. But in the long run, the whole Middle East will suffer as a result. The status of relations between the Jews and Arabs in Israel is a good measuring stick for regional peace. We are the face of the Middle East in Israel. We are the ones with the potential to make this place normal," Fareh says.

"There is a two-year window," he cautions, referring in part to the Arab Peace Initiative re-launched in Riyadh last month. "If nothing is solved by then, there will be a catastrophe.

"But I am an optimist," he adds.

A boycott by any other name ...

Last update - 07:45 13/04/2007

By James Bowen

In the late 19th century, changes in Ottoman law created a new class of large landholders, including the Sursuq family from Beirut, which acquired large tracts in northern Palestine. A similar situation had long existed in Ireland, where most land was controlled by absentee landlords, many of whom lived in Britain.

The 1880s, however, initiated dynamics that led the two lands in different directions. In 1882, the first Zionist immigrants arrived in Palestine, starting a process that subsequently led to the eviction of indigenous tenant farmers, when magnates like the Sursuqs pulled the land from under their feet, selling it to the Jewish National Fund.

In contrast, in 1880, Irish tenant farmers started a process that turned them into owner-occupiers. A former British army officer played a role in this drama, which introduced his name as a new word into many languages.

Western Ireland was again suffering near-famine conditions. The potato crop had failed for the third successive year. Captain Charles Cunningham Boycott, agent for Lord Erne, the absentee landlord of an estate in County Mayo, refused the request of tenants for a rent reduction and, instead, in September 1880, obtained eviction notices against 11 of them for failure to pay their rent.

Thirty years earlier, evictions had expelled huge numbers of Irish to North America. But times were changing: A nationwide tenants' rights movement, the Land League, had recently been formed, under the leadership of Charles Stewart Parnell, a scion of the landlord class, whose pro-tenant sympathies were inherited from his American mother, a woman whose grandfather had been one of George Washington's bodyguards. Speaking on September 19, 1880, Parnell outlined the strategy of the league:

"When a man takes a farm from which another has been evicted, you must shun him on the roadside when you meet him, you must shun him in the streets of the town, you must shun him at the shop-counter, you must shun him at the fair and at the market-place and even in the house of worship, by leaving him severely alone, by putting him into a sort of moral Coventry, by isolating him from the rest of his kind, as if he were a leper of old, you must show him your detestation."

Three days later, court officials attempted to serve Boycott's eviction notices on the tenants, and the Land League policy went into effect. Within two months, Boycott's name had become a synonym for ostracism, he had left the estate, and both landlords and government had discovered the power of ordinary people. Within a year, legislation at Westminster provided government finance for tenants wishing to purchase their farms.

For too long, Israel has been taking land from which Palestinians have been evicted, and detestation is spreading around the world. In Ireland, photos of Israeli bulldozers are placed beside those of landlords' battering rams. Even a former U.S. president has recognized hafrada ("separation" in Hebrew) as apartheid. Disgust has reached such a level that even highly conservative institutions that normally try to avoid politics are driven to express concern.

One such body is Aosdana, the Irish state-sponsored academy of artists. Its annual general assembly on March 28 passed a resolution whose full text is: "Mindful of the August 4, 2006 call from Palestinian filmmakers, artists and cultural workers to end all cooperation with state-sponsored Israeli cultural events and institutions, Aosdana wishes to encourage Irish artists and cultural institutions to reflect deeply before engaging in any such cooperation, always bearing in mind the undeniable courage of those Israeli artists, writers and intellectuals who oppose their own government's illegal policies towards the Palestinians."

Although on the surface, this is a mild resolution, it is a boycott call in all but name. Its significance was not lost on Dr. Zion Evrony, the Israeli ambassador in Dublin. The very same day, he issued a press release that was replete with cliches that might have worked several decades ago, when Irish people were still unaware of the horrors that Israel has inflicted on the Palestinians.

Possibly, the alacrity of Dr. Evrony's response was due to the fact that the strength of feeling among Irish artists had been rehearsed in the Irish press. Indeed, the proposer of the motion, playwright Margaretta D'Arcy, who is Jewish, had written in The Irish Times on February 16 that, "I was reluctant to advocate a cultural boycott of Israel until I visited the country for the first time last November ... I became convinced that a cultural boycott was necessary, if only as an act of solidarity with those in Israel who seek to remove the inequality, discrimination and segregation of their society."

Continuing, she quoted from "Land Grab," by Yehezkel Lein, published by B'Tselem - the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories: "The settlement enterprise in the occupied territories has created a system of legally sanctioned separation based on discrimination that has, perhaps, no parallel anywhere in the world since the apartheid regime in South Africa."

Ms. D'arcy finished by saying: "My uncle went to live in the Holy Land in the 1920s to help set up the utopian dream of peace, justice and equality between Jew and Arab. It was only when I arrived there that I realized how mistaken he was. He would have done better to have stayed in the East End of London to struggle for peace, justice and equality in England."

Parnell finished his call to action by saying that "there will be no man so full of avarice, so lost to shame, as to dare the public opinion of all right-thinking men."

They were both right.


Prof. James Bowen is the national chairperson of the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

On Old Jerusalem: Chipping at foundations of belief

Excavations threaten mosque

Omar Ahmad

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Imagine if Iran decided to build a museum on the site of a 1,000-year-old Jewish cemetery, or if the Egyptian government threatened to destroy an ancient Jewish temple. Both scenarios would likely be met with outrage. Members of Congress might make indignant speeches decrying anti-Semitism. They might even threaten to tighten the spigot on aid to Egypt. They would be right to protest such acts.

Yet both offenses against another religion are being committed today -- by Israel. And the outrage is conspicuously missing.

The Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center has partnered with the Israeli government to build a new "Museum of Tolerance" in Jerusalem. According to former Jerusalem Deputy Mayor Meron Benvenisti, the museum site encompasses a Muslim cemetery seized by Israel in 1948 and long-since paved over. What does a shrine to tolerance mean when it is constructed -- literally -- over the dead bodies of a Palestinian population that was expelled from its homeland.

In the heart of Jerusalem's Old City, Israeli archaeological excavations threaten the foundation of the compound that houses the Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam's third holiest shrine, and the Dome of the Rock, whose golden dome is the most striking feature of the Jerusalem skyline. For Muslims worldwide, these mosques hold enormous religious significance. Muslims, in fact, first faced Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa Mosque in prayer, only later facing Mecca.

My own parents, born in a Palestinian village a mere 12 miles from Jerusalem, spoke often of their trips to Jerusalem to pray at Al-Aqsa. In 1948 when Israel was established, my family was expelled and their village was destroyed. They fled to a refugee camp in Jordan where I was born and raised. Less than an hour's drive from Jerusalem, I could only dream of praying in Al-Aqsa. The religious freedom denied me in my own homeland was granted to me as an American "tourist." I traveled to Jerusalem for the first and only time as a young man in 1991. My prayers at the magnificent Al-Aqsa Mosque are perhaps the most emotionally overwhelming and fulfilling experiences of my life.

Since occupying Jerusalem in 1967, Israel has striven to solidify Jewish dominance over this city that is sacred to three faiths. Al-Aqsa stands as perhaps the most visible obstacle. In 1967, the Israeli army's chief rabbi, Shlomo Goren, urged Israeli forces commander Uzi Narkis, to use 100 kilograms of explosives to "get rid of" Al-Aqsa "once and for all." Narkis, as quoted by Israeli historian Avi Shlaim in "The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World," (W.W. Norton &Company, 2001) had the wisdom to refuse the rabbi's request.

Al-Aqsa has been set on fire, Jewish terrorists have entered the mosque and fired on worshipers, explosives have been planted and several plots to blow up the mosque have been foiled. In parallel with these unofficial acts, Israeli government excavations and construction projects continue to chip away at the mosque's foundation. In 2004, what is believed to be an ancient Muslim prayer room was discovered at the excavation site. For three years, Israel hid this spectacular finding from the world. Does this show respect for Jerusalem's Muslim heritage?

Muslim communities around the world feel the same pain and anxiety that Catholics would experience if the Vatican were being violated -- or Americans would feel if the Statue of Liberty were being systematically desecrated.

Here in the United States, American Muslims are gathering. They are asking how it is that -- after centuries of religious tolerance for all three great faiths -- respect for Islamic holy places in Jerusalem is now threatened. The Palestinians of Jerusalem, Christians and Muslims, are a living reminder that Jerusalem is a city that belongs to all.

Israel is the largest recipient of American foreign aid, yet she is violating American principles of equality for all religions. American leaders must insist that Israel's respect for Jewish religious sites extend equally to Muslim and Christian sites in Jerusalem, a city holy to billions of people around the globe.

Omar Ahmad is the founder and chairman emeritus of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). He is the CEO of a Silicon Valley technology company.

This article appeared on page B - 9 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Peace Now

Though many have denied it for years, the fact remains that engaging the Israel-Palestine issue first would greatly improve America's position in the Middle East on every other front.

Web Exclusive: 03.27.07

By Matthew Yglesias

"I don't rule out at some point that might be a useful thing to do," Condoleezza Rice told reporters late last week before flying to Egypt. "That," it turns out, is trying to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. To her credit, she's right. To her discredit, the insight comes many years too late.

But better late than never, I suppose. An entire cottage industry exists to generate commentary arguing otherwise, but the fact is that settling that conflict remains the single most important thing that can be done to improve America's position in the region. Efforts to deny the existence of a linkage between the Israel issue and other problems in the region tend to deliberately misstate the case. New Republic editor in chief Martin Peretz, for example, blogged on Thursday in full straw man mode that people pushing for American engagement in the peace process think violence in Iraq "is a result of Israeli mistreatment of the Palestinians."

That, of course, is stupid.

But here's something that isn't stupid, pertaining to Iran: Both American and Iranian interests would be better served by a U.S.-Iran bargain than by a continued conflict between the two countries. Iran would be more prosperous and more secure un-sanctioned and enjoying normal diplomatic relations with the United States. The United States would be more secure with Iran voluntarily complying with a verifiable inspections regime than with bombs wrecking some unknown portion of Iranian nuclear infrastructure. A variety of experts from different perspectives agreed as much last Wednesday at a RAND Corporation symposium on Iran policy held on Capitol Hill. As Newsweek's Michael Hirsh noted, even Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, Rice's point man on Iran, seems to have gotten religion on this topic.

But what virtually nobody mentioned that day was one major potential fly in the ointment: Due at the very least (but not solely) to domestic political considerations, it's very hard to imagine an American president normalizing relations with Iran while it is openly funding Hezbollah and Hamas. At the same time, and for the same reason, it's hard to imagine the Iranian government abandoning its longstanding support for Palestinian radicals when conditions in the occupied territories are so bleak.

There's an argument to be made, I suppose, that the governments of both countries should just put domestic political considerations aside and make the right deal for their respective populations. Realistically, though, it's not going to happen. And on a topic like this, America's Israel lobby would not only have a lot of clout; they'd actually have a decent argument.

The solution to this predicament, however, isn't to blindly push for escalating tensions with Iran. The solution is to recognize that diplomatic progress on the Israel-Palestine front would make things much easier in dealing with Iran. It's unlikely that Hezbollah would agree to the terms of any such Isreali-Palestinian deal, but their refusal to ratify something agreed to by the legitimate representatives of the Palestinian people would provide a perfectly viable pretext for Iran to step away from supporting them.

Much the same is true of proposals for the United States to try to reach a rapprochement with Syria aimed at stabilizing the situation around Iraq. Re-establishing a proper diplomatic relationship with Damascus would be an excellent thing, but it's very hard to do with Syria backing radicals' attacks on our closest ally in the region. So why not get them to stop? It'd be a good idea! But, of course, it's much more easily done in the context of real progress being made toward the creation of a Palestinian state.

The argument I'm making needn't entail that there's any genuine concern about the Isreal-Palestine issue in Teheran or Damascus (though surely there's at least some). Rather, it mearly entails the observation that as long as that conflict remains an open sore, Muslim political leaders have every incentive to portray themselves as actively engaged in the struggle against Israel in one form or another.

What's more, this is true not just of adversaries in the region we should be talking to, but of allies we'll want to rely on in case talks fail and we need to move aggressively toward containing Iran. The Bush administration has made much hay out of Sunni Arab states' growing alarm over the seemingly rising power of Iran and Iranian allies in Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq. Less noted has been the extent to which Sunni Arab publics have been willing to embrace figures like Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah as a hero of the Arab cause. We're talking, of course, about dictatorships that are free to ignore their publics' views -- but in practice public opinion matters even in autocracies. Indeed, the most hawkish panelists at the RAND event tended to acknowledge that if we pursued this or that hard-line policy, our allies in the Gulf would back us, "but not publicly."

Private backing, however, has little value. And that the unlikeliness of public support is conceded even by people who'd hastily deny any linkages between the Israel-Palestine issue and other conflicts in the region merely shows how wrong the linkage denialists are. Israel, and America's support for it, are one of the primary lenses through which all conflicts are seen by people in the region and it's extremely difficult, in practice, to make any diplomatic headway on anything unless we're at least seen as attempting to use our relationship with Israel in a constructive way. Rice's comments indicate that this is all beginning to dawn on her. A good thing, no doubt, but we've seen too many false dawns of a return to reasonableness from this administration. I'll believe they've figured it out when they show me.

Matthew Yglesias

Matthew Yglesias is a Prospect staff writer.

Peace-loving goose chase

Israel is railing that even the mild language of the Arab peace initiative must be replaced by its own demands, writes Ramzy Baroud

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The rapid -- even hasty -- developments on the Arab-Israeli front that followed almost immediately the Saudi-sponsored Mecca Accord of 2 February should be examined in their proper context, as part and parcel of broad regional shifts, exacerbated by US failure in Iraq and the dramatic adjustment in Iran's position vis-à-vis the region and its sectarian, religious composition.

Two prevailing analyses have been offered. One is sceptical, arguing that the Arab initiative, which will be rearticulated at a coming Arab League summit in Riyadh 28 March, was brought back to the scene at the behest of the US administration: by engaging Hamas, Arabs will deny Iran opportunity to further galvanise its regional alliances -- Syria and Hizbullah -- against the US and Israel and further cementing the "Shia crescent" at the expense of the Sunni majority.

The other analysis is optimistic, from Palestinian and Arab commentators talking of "historic opportunities" to Western commentators wondering if the Arab League will finally fulfill its regional promise. "Worried by what they see as the Bush administration's failings, and the new regional power of Iran, the Arabs are struggling to take their destiny into their own hands," concluded BBC Middle East analyst Roger Hardy.

The Arab peace initiative, offering full normalisation with Israel in simultaneous exchange for Israel's withdrawal to pre-1967 borders, was made public in the 2002 Arab League summit in Beirut. It came at the height of the Palestinian uprising. The initiative was immediately rejected by the Israeli government and accepted by Arafat. Its release was a cause of a slight discomfort for Israel, however, principally because the Bush administration viewed it in positive terms -- at the beginning at least -- before disowning it under incessant Israeli pressure.

In the weeks preceding the official announcement of the Arab peace initiative, Israel had assassinated Raed Al-Karmi, Fatah leader in Tulkarm in the West Bank, prompting fresh Palestinian suicide bombings. "Karmi's assassination led to the scuttling of the truce that had lasted since December 16, 2001," Akiva Aldar in Haaretz quoted Mati Steinberg, advisor on Palestinian affairs to the head of the Shin Bet security service, as saying. "It also led to Operation Defensive Shield, which pushed the Arab initiative to the margins and eliminated the opportunity to put the diplomatic track with the Palestinians on a route of direct connection with the Arab peace initiative for the first time."

The Middle East of those days is in many ways different from today's regional reality. Although Israel's colonial project is being pursued with the same level of determination (the apartheid wall, the settlements, the collective punishments, and so forth), Israel's regional reputation as a formidable military power received a significant blow when its army couldn't advance more than a few miles before confronting stiff Lebanese resistance, led by Hizbullah, in the 33-day war of July-August 2007. Neither Israel nor the US were willing to concede that that ferocious fight put up by the Lebanese had much to do with the people's strong belief in a just case. Their fingers pointed to Iran: the head of the snake as far as America's neoconservatives' clique are concerned.

Iran understood that Hizbullah's victory would discourage, slow down, or completely repeal any American military adventure against its own domain. Naturally, a defeat for Hizbullah, relying mostly on Iranian arms, would eliminate the first line of Iran's defences and inspire Washington's hawks, in constant coordination with Israel, to prepare the American public and government for war against Iran.

Not that a war against Iran is no longer on the agenda; on the contrary, something will be done to confront the Iranian "threat". But one has to understand that Israel cannot possibly allow for a regional bully aside from itself to emerge.

It was this logic, as articulated by Richard Pearle in a set of recommendations made to then Likud leader Benyamin Netanyahu in the infamous "Clean Break" memo that envisaged the Iraq war as a strategic Israeli imperative. Iraq or Iran, Sunni or Shia, are all irrelevant semantics, in Israel's view. The failure, however, to "contain" Iran, coupled with America's disastrous war strategy in Iraq, which has given rise to powerful Shia groups with direct links, and in some cases allegiance, to Tehran is sending Israel's military and policy planners to the table, once more, to study their future options.

Israel and its supporters in America are obsessed with Iran. In the well-attended American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference -- drawing 6000 participants including half of the Senate and a large portion of the House along with numerous ambassadors and officials -- Israel's many friends underlined the synergy between Israeli strategic interests and US regional concerns, placing the latter largely subservient to the former. When House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio addressed the conference, defending the current war strategy, he received a standing ovation. But when Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi -- unequalled fan of the Israeli regime -- dared to spell out a strategy for withdrawal from Iraq, she was booed, according to The San Francisco Chronicle.

The power of the Israeli lobby and the persisting influence of the neocons have reached new heights when Democratic leaders were obliged to strip from a military spending bill a requirement that the president must gain the approval of Congress before moving against Iran. Pelosi and others agreed to such a removal "after conservative Democrats as well as other lawmakers worried about its possible impact on Israel," reported ABC News.

With Iran in focus, coupled with serious worries amongst some Arab countries regarding its possible destabilising role in the region, Israel has agreed to a conditional arrangement: contain Iran to Israel's benefit; stabilise Iraq to the Bush administration's benefit; and introduce a new horizon of peace with the Palestinians to appease the Arabs.

The new horizon of peace -- a new term invoked by Condoleezza Rice in her recent visit to the region -- is basically the old "peace process": significant enough insofar as it yields a sense of hope, but clever enough in guaranteeing nothing, since Israel, assured of unprecedented clout in the corridors of power in Washington, will neither give up its grand plans of territorial expansion and annexation, halt its construction of the gigantic apartheid wall, nor surrender an inch of the illegally-annexed East Jerusalem -- all, predictably, key Arab and Palestinian demands.

Meanwhile, the Arab initiative always seemed vague on the issue of Palestinians made refugees by Israel in 1948 and 1967 and whose plight is as urgent as ever (especially considering their systematic targeting in Iraq, including 500 murdered to date, and Libya's decision to deport its cache of Palestinian refugees to Gaza, as callous as this seems). In order to remove any remaining ambiguity, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni is "demanding that the leaders of the 22 Arab states excise the right of return from [the Palestinians]," reports Haaretz.

By crossing out the "controversial" elements contained in the Arab initiative and then opening it up for negotiations, Palestinians -- now browbeaten with a year of embargo and near starvation -- will be taken on another peace-loving goose chase, during which Israeli army bulldozers will hardly cease their determined colonial project. My fear is that Arabs will play along, willingly or not, and Palestinians will be forced to partake in the charade, for their reliance on international handouts for mere survival will make it impossible to defy US-Israeli regional designs forever.

* The writer is an Arab American journalist

© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved

Al-Ahram Weekly Online

The Bottom Line ... : Jimmy Carter

By Jimmy Carter

April - May 2007
The Link - Volume 40, Issue 2

“The bottom line is this:

“Peace will come to Israel and the Middle East only when the Israeli government is willing to comply with international law, with the Roadmap for Peace, with official American policy, with the wishes of a majority of its own citizens—and honor its previous commitments—by accepting its legal borders. All Arab neighbors must pledge to honor Israel’s right to live in peace under these conditions. The United States is squandering international prestige and goodwill and intensifying global anti-American terrorism by unofficially condoning or abetting the Israeli confiscation of Palestinian territory. It will be a tragedy—for the Israelis, the Palestinians, and the world—if peace is rejected and a system of oppression, apartheid, and sustained violence is permitted to prevail.”—President Jimmy Carter, “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid,” p. 216.

Israel As a Strategic Liability

1945-1956

By Harry F. Clark

March 2007

Abstract

The present catastrophic partnership of the United States and Israel in the Middle East is the opposite of conditions that existed during Israel’s founding, sixty years ago. The US foreign policy establishment opposed sponsorship of a Jewish state during the military and diplomatic struggle over Palestine after World War II. The State Department expected the US to inherit a position of leadership in the region, based on decades of good will, antipathy toward the British and French empires and qualified sympathy for the nationalism of their subaltern peoples. The region was valued for its oil reserves and communications links, including the Suez Canal, and was to be secured behind the "northern tier" of Greece, Turkey and Iran, where the Cold War began in 1945-6.

Zionism was opposed because it antagonized the Arabs, and US support for a Jewish state after the war was due to the nascent Israel lobby, which overwhelmed the government’s diplomatic and military expertise. This complemented the Zionist struggle against British rule in Palestine, which ended in the conquest of most of Palestine and exile of 750,000 Arab Palestinians, and introduced a force more inimical to Arab interests than British imperialism. Once Israel was established, US diplomats and strategists accepted it and acknowledged its military prowess, but kept it at a distance, limiting arms sales and excluding it from military alliances. The US feared political instability and radicalism from the desperate plight of the Palestinian refugees, the precarious Arab-Israeli armistice, and the rising force of Arab nationalism.

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