The cost of this tri-partite handshake in Israel

Finally, after having been paid to make peace for how-many-years, the foreign ministers of Egypt and Jordan visit Israel to promote the Arab League's new peace inititive.

As the New York Times reports:

The league’s initiative would grant Israel full recognition and normal relations with its Arab neighbors in return for withdrawing to its 1967 borders and accepting the creation of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.

It also calls for “an agreed, just solution” to the issue of Palestinian refugees. The initiative was begun by Saudi Arabia and endorsed by the Arab League in 2002.

“We are extending a hand of peace on behalf of the whole region to you, and we hope that we will be able to create the momentum needed to resume fruitful and productive negotiations” among Israel, Palestinians, and the rest of the Arab world, the Jordanian foreign minister, Abdul-Ilah al-Khatib, said at a news conference with Mr. Peres, The Associated Press reported.

The Egyptian foreign minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, said he hoped Israel would respond positively to the proposal.

Egypt and Jordan are the only two Arab countries that have signed peace treaties with Israel. They have served as an official diplomatic bridge between Israel and the other Arab nations.

Israel was cool to the Arab initiative when it was first put forth in 2002, but more recently it has yielded to pressure from the United States to discuss the plan. The United States, in turn, was responding to pressure from Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

Let's hope all this works out because here's is how much the U.S. has spent on this Middle East peace business so far, not even counting the War in Iraq:

Israel: $94 billion
Eypgt: 61
Jordan: 9

Total $164 billion (and that's just up through 2005)

Source: The Greenbook

Is this what all second-term presidents do at the end of their tenure?

Try to bring about Middle East peace? President Clinton did it. As the New York Times reports, President Bush seems to be headed that way too:

President Bush announced an initiative on Monday to shore up the Palestinian president and to begin building a Palestinian state, signaling that his administration will use its remaining months to make a major push for peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

Mr. Bush called for a regional peace conference.... He exhorted Israel’s Arab neighbors to open talks with Israel and to show leadership by “ending the fiction that Israel does not exist” and “stopping the incitement of hatred in their official media.”

He also urged them to send cabinet-level visitors to Israel, a request directed implicitly at America’s closest Arab ally, Saudi Arabia, which has refused to do so...

He even took a rare jab at Israel, using the word “occupation” to refer to the Israeli presence in the West Bank.

As the Times points out, this is a "pivotal shift" in the Bush administration's previous policy:

For several years, the Bush administration has eschewed direct engagement in peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians, and has refused to press Israel to dismantle settlements or to sit down at the table with Palestinian counterparts to discuss a future Palestinian state.

But now the United States is mired in Iraq and looking for a way to build good will among Arab allies that have pushed for America to re-engage in Middle East peace talks. Administration officials also are hoping to capitalize on growing anti-Hamas sentiment among leaders in Egypt and Jordan. Both of those countries have diplomatic relations with Israel; the big question remains whether Saudi Arabia, which does not, will embrace the administration’s approach

Maybe I'm wrong that this focus on Middle East peace is limited to second-term presidents. As the Times recalls:

The most notable previous Middle East peace conference was a regional meeting held in Madrid in 1991 under the sponsorship of the Soviet Union and the United States during the administration of the first President Bush.

Anyway, let's hope this second Bush administration's late-term peace processing doesn't just lead to more violence - the end result of previous administrations' efforts.

Now this is news: Arab League to visit Israel

And the moderates just keep on snatching headlines.

CNN reports:

The 22-country Arab League will send envoys on a historic first mission to Israel this week to discuss a sweeping Arab peace initiative and how it might prop up embattled Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Israeli and Arab diplomats said Sunday.

The announcement came the same day Israel's Cabinet approved the release of 250 Palestinian prisoners, hoping to bolster Abbas in his power struggle with the Islamic militant Hamas.

An official League visit would be a diplomatic coup for Israel. The League historically has been hostile toward the Jewish state, but has grown increasingly conciliatory in response to the expanding influence of Islamic extremists in the region -- a concern underscored by Hamas' violent takeover of the Gaza Strip last month.

Jordan's foreign ministry said the Jordanian and Egyptian foreign ministers would arrive in Jerusalem on Thursday for talks with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and other Israeli officials.

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said the foreign ministers would lead an Arab League mission to Israel to discuss the Arab peace plan, which would trade full Arab recognition of Israel for an Israeli withdrawal from all lands captured in the 1967 Mideast war and the creation of a Palestinian state.

"This is the first time the Arab League is coming to Israel," Regev said. "From its inception the Arab League has been hostile to Israel. It will be the first time we'll be flying the Arab League flag."

Tzipi Livni sums up what Israelis and Palestinians need to focus on

Israel's foreign minister - and possibly next prime minister - Tzipi Livni, as quoted in today's New York Times:

We cannot solve who was right or wrong in 1948 or decide who is more just. The Palestinians can feel justice is on their side, and I can feel it is on my side. What we have to decide about is not history but the future.”

Hamas speaks

And now for the Hamas side of what just happened in Gaza from Ahmed Yousef, political advisor to Ismail Haniya, the Palestinian prime minister via the New York Times:

THE events in Gaza over the last few days have been described in the West as a coup. In essence, they have been the opposite. Eighteen months ago, our Hamas Party won the Palestinian parliamentary elections and entered office under Prime Minister Ismail Haniya but never received the handover of real power from Fatah, the losing party. The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, has now tried to replace the winning Hamas government with one of his own, returning Fatah to power while many of our elected members of Parliament languish in Israeli jails. That is the real coup.

From the day Hamas won the general elections in 2006 it offered Fatah the chance of joining forces and forming a unity government. It tried to engage the international community to explain its platform for peace. It has consistently offered a 10-year cease-fire with the Israelis to try to create an atmosphere of calm in which we resolve our differences. Hamas even adhered to a unilateral cease-fire for 18 months in an effort to normalize the situation on the ground. None of these points appear to have been recognized in the press coverage of the last few days.

Nor has it been evident to many people in the West that the civil unrest in Gaza and the West Bank has been precipitated by the American and Israeli policy of arming elements of the Fatah opposition who want to attack Hamas and force us from office. For 18 months we have tried to find ways to coexist with Fatah, entering into a unity government, even conceding key positions in the cabinet to their and international demands, negotiating up until the last moment to try to provide security for all of our people on the streets of Gaza.

Sadly, it became apparent that not all officials from Fatah were negotiating in good faith. There were attempts on Mr. Haniya’s life last week, and eventually we were forced into trying to take control of a very dangerous situation in order to provide political stability and establish law and order.

Ok, so this is the Hamas view of what just happened. So how does Hamas see the way forward? What should we expect of them? Yousef continues:

We have begun disarming some of the drug dealers and the armed gangs and we hope to restore a sense of security and safety to the citizens of Gaza. We want to get children back to school, get basic services functioning again, and provide long-term economic gains for our people.

Ok, now what about this stated goal of Hamas, that its purpose is to take back all the land under Israel's control, not just the West Bank and Gaza? I quote here what they say in their 1988 Covenant:

The Islamic Resistance Movement [aka Hamas] believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up. Neither a single Arab country nor all Arab countries, neither any king or president, nor all the kings and presidents, neither any organization nor all of them, be they Palestinian or Arab, possess the right to do that. Palestine is an Islamic Waqf land consecrated for Moslem generations until Judgement Day. This being so, who could claim to have the right to represent Moslem generations till Judgement Day?

This is the law governing the land of Palestine in the Islamic Sharia (law) and the same goes for any land the Moslems have conquered by force, because during the times of (Islamic) conquests, the Moslems consecrated these lands to Moslem generations till the Day of Judgement.

Not surprisingly, the Hamas spokesman Yousef doesn't say much on this issue:

We continue to believe that there is still a chance to establish a long-term truce. But this will not happen unless the international community fully engages with Hamas.

Any further attempts to marginalize us, starve our people into submission or attack us militarily will prove that the United States and Israeli governments are not genuinely interested in seeing an end to the violence.

Unfortunately, a willingness to negotiate a long-term truce does not exactly translate into recognizing Israel's right to exist. But perhaps if Hamas really could stop the rocket launchings, suicide bombings, kidnappings, and other types of incursions into Israel, maybe there could be room for discussion, even if the end result could only be a long-term truce as opposed to full recognition.

But, suppose for a moment now that Hamas really did go this far, that it really could declare and enforce a truce?

How long do you suppose it would take for a new faction to arise? For disgruntled members to say that by virtue of such a truce, the Hamas leaders only desecrated the Waqf - that is the Hamas - covenant? This seems to me to be a real stumbling block.

Anyone have any ideas on how to solve this fundamental problem? Check out the source documents on which the Hamas Covenant portends to be based. Maybe therein lies some kind of solution.

The mood in Israel

According to the New York Times, that is. Some excerpts from today's article, "Israelis Ask, What Have We Gained Since the '67 War?"

There is a debate about what kind of country Israel is, about the impact those 40 years of development, immigration, war, settlement and occupation have had on the dreams of those who chose to make their lives here. And there is a widespread feeling that both left and right are out of answers.

The left says that Israel must reach out to the majority of Palestinians who want a two-state solution and that the right is too despairing about the possibility of reaching peace.

The right, which remains somewhat more popular, believes that the left was seduced by the dream of normality in the 1990s, after the Oslo accord with the Palestinians, and that the siren song of peace and coexistence is softening the Israeli character.

Israel, the right says, will never be like other countries both because of Jewish history and because the neighborhood is getting more threatening, not less, with radical Islam and a nuclear-ambitious Iran. Israelis cannot sit around Tel Aviv cafes and let their children avoid serious military service.

As the Times continues:

Ari Shavit, an influential columnist, is obsessed with the fear that Israel is losing not just its values in a more capitalist and corrupt era, especially in its collective caring for the poor and the disadvantaged, but also its edge in an increasingly dangerous region.

Last summer’s war with Hezbollah in Lebanon showed the increasing mediocrity of the military and the political leadership, Mr. Shavit said, while challenging the ethos of the new hedonistic, modern Israel. Many here, he said, think they are living in a poor European country like Greece, instead of in the Middle East.

“Can the mall defend itself?” he asked. “The gap between the inspiring economy and society, and the dysfunction of the state is becoming impossible. There are admirable achievements in the private sphere, and in the public sphere, decay.”

Israeli society showed itself resilient in the face of Hezbollah’s rockets, he conceded, even as the cabinet and the military command seemed irresolute. But he is worried about the trend.

“Postmodern yuppies can’t deal with this region,” Mr. Shavit said. “You gain respect by understanding how the neighborhood behaves, and conducting yourself in a way the neighborhood respects.”. . .

“This idea that we could settle all the land and somehow absorb all the Arabs into Israel, it has cost us a lot, morally and politically,” he said. “You can’t have occupation as a permanent state. That’s why Israelis say: ‘No more messianic ideas. Let’s divide the land.’ ”

The other side of this, as the Times reports, is how Palestinians now feel:

For Palestinians, of course, the 1967 war was another disaster, but a secondary one to the formation of Israel in 1948, said Khalil Shikaki, a Palestinian political scientist. The year 1948 is known as Al Nakba, the catastrophe; 1967 is Al Naksa, the setback. But since it brought Israeli occupation, it helped shape the Palestinian cause.

“Ironically, it started our march toward independence and statehood,” Mr. Shikaki said. “Unfortunately the price was the occupation of our own land. Israel is seriously thinking of ending the occupation, which you couldn’t say five years ago. But is a Palestinian state closer?”

Nasser al-Kidwa, a former foreign minister for the Palestinians and a nephew of Yasir Arafat, sees fragmentation all around. The last 40 years of occupation, he said, “have seen a serious disintegration of Palestinian society.”

The middle class is emigrating, youth dreams of leaving and the economy is dying, Mr. Kidwa said. “We are clearly the weaker side, the destroyed side,” he added. “We can’t do things on our own now, and I’m ashamed to say it. There’s a grand catastrophe in the making here.”

If there were optimists to be found, the Times apparently couldn't locate them.

The case for doing nothing to advance Middle East peace

By Youssef Ibrahim in today's New York Sun as he reflects on the fortieth anniversary of the Six-Day War:

In this week's torrent of 40th anniversary recollections about the Six-Day War, one TV image cut straight to the chase: King Faisal of Saudi Arabia staring into a camera to say, "The essential point remains the total elimination of Israel.". . .

For all the noise about peace in the 40 years since, the Saudi monarch's silver bullet solution is still the basic Arab mindset, so much so that Faisal is still feted as a purist Arab — Al Arabi Al Assil.

Because of the continued pervasiveness of this view, Ibrahim argues that for now doing nothing to advance Middle East peace, "serves a higher purpose":

Regardless of the peace treaties with Israel forged by President Sadat of Egypt and King Hussein of Jordan, the overwhelming majority of Arabs need more time to dismantle their war posture.

At this point, Israel's primary antagonists in this conflict, the Palestinian Arabs, are no longer an entity that can be engaged. Having dissolved into a myriad of warring gangs, there is no one to settle with. The best offer to Israel from the "democratically elected" Palestinian leadership of Hamas is a hudna — Islamist jargon for the kind of truce the Prophet Muhammad offered his enemies, a respite during which the non-Muslim party should decide to surrender or prepare to die.

As he concludes:

It is pointless even to think about structuring new accords with Arab societies that are relentlessly marching toward various stages of radicalism, Islamic or otherwise. It would not help, it cannot stop their macabre march, and it would not hold. A look at just the two biggest countries of the Middle East — Iran and Egypt — shows that recapturing the 1970s ethos of secularism and separation of mosque and state is an iffy proposition for the near future.

As for Israel, going forward with more unilateral evacuations, as in Lebanon and Gaza, has only liberated land for terrorist operations. But reoccupying either spot is unacceptable to the Israeli public.

All that's left is time, the great healer. The Middle East has had 40 years to appreciate the meaning of the 1967 war. A few decades more may convince all the parties that this is as good as it gets.

Let's see if Indonesia can come up with a more creative solution. See post below.

Another offer to mediate Middle East peace, this time from Indonesia

Indonesia is offering to act as a peacemaker in the Middle East. Distanced as it is from the region, but still a Muslim nation, Indonesia feels it is uniquely positioned for this role.

The New York Times reports:

As a country with about 15 percent of the world’s Muslims and good relations with other Muslim nations and the West, Indonesia hopes to encourage mutual understanding and show how Islamic states can profitably embrace modernity, better government and globalization, Indonesian officials say. . .

“Countries in the Middle East have been so deeply involved in the problems of the region for so long a time that they can get too focused on some specific aspects,” Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda said in an interview.

As the Times went on to report, the message Indonesia would like to bring to its brotherly nations in the Middle East is that they ought to go down the road Indonesia has. As the Times writes:

Last year, during a visit to Saudi Arabia, [Indonesian President] Yudhoyono urged Muslims to liberate themselves from isolationism, “to be at the forefront of globalism” and to “embrace technology and modernity.”

He said Islamic countries needed to promote better governance and to build bridges with the West. His message suggested that Islamic countries would be wise to follow Indonesia down the path to liberal democracy.

The Indonesian representative to the Organization of the Islamic Conference in Mecca in December 2005, urged his fellow nations to address the notorious “democracy deficit” that exists in the Islamic world:

“The tradition of Islam has nothing to contradict participatory politics and good governance,” he told an audience that included King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. “Indeed, democracy is fully commensurate with the ethical and legal precepts of this great religion.”

Indonesia itself only recently made the transition to democracy, only having emerged from the 32-year rule of its former president, Suharto.

Adding to its bona fides as a peacemaker, Indonesia has, as the Times writes, also "had the experience of contributing to peace efforts in Cambodia and the southern Philippines, as well as solving a Muslim separatist conflict in its own Aceh Province."

“We have our own credentials,” as Indonesia's foreign minister told the Times. “Perhaps from our experience we can contribute something.”

Hey, I give them credit for even having a willingness to walk through that mine field that is the Middle East.

The anniversary of the Six Day War

On the Palestinian side, there was this reckoning, the New York Times reports:

The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, said Tuesday that the Palestinians were on the brink of civil war and that their internal battles were as dangerous to their welfare as Israeli occupation has been, if not more so.

Mr. Abbas was speaking in a televised address to mark the 40th anniversary of the start of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, which ended in a stunning military victory for Israel and a sobering defeat for the Arab armies, and began Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

And on the Israeli side:

Israeli peace activists protested against the four decades of occupation in Hebron, a tense and conservative Palestinian city with a biblical past, and tried to drown out a small counterdemonstration of local Jewish settlers with their chants. . .

Fatah and the Israeli center and left are in favor of ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by means of a negotiated two-state solution. The Israeli nationalist right wing opposes giving up territory won in 1967, while Hamas seeks Israel’s destruction.

Hebron is of particular significance to religious Jews as the burial place of the biblical patriarchs. It is also the only Palestinian city with a Jewish settlement at its heart, with about 500 Jews and an additional 250 transient yeshiva students living amid 160,000 Palestinian residents. About 7,000 Jews live in the settlement of Kiryat Arba, adjacent to Hebron.

Close to 300 Israeli anti-occupation protesters from the Peace Now movement arrived here on Tuesday morning in bulletproof buses and an army escort. They shouted “Hebron settlers, a bone in the throat,” while about 30 settlers demonstrated behind police barricades at the other end of the lot. Scores of police officers and security forces separated the two groups.

David Wilder, a spokesman for the Jewish community of Hebron, called the return of Jews to Hebron a “miracle” and termed the Peace Now demonstration a “desecration.”

“They are coming and saying it would have been preferable if we had lost the war,” he said, adding that “it was a war of survival.”

40 years after Israel's victory in the Six Day War, no sign of peace

The Economist memorializes Israel's victory in the Six Day War of 1967 with this story in which the headline reads: "Israel's Wasted Victory; Six days of war followed by 40 years of misery. How can it ever end?" From the Economist:

Is there a way out? Yes: but making peace will take courage, and too much of the energy that should have gone into peacemaking has been squandered on the blame game. There is, admittedly, plenty of blame to go round. What right had the British, in 1917, to promise the Jews a national home in Palestine? Why did the Palestinians reject partition in 1947? Why did Israel colonise the territories after 1967? Why did the Americans let Israel get away with it? Why did the Arab states leave the refugees to fester in camps? The Palestinians are terrorists, Zionism is racism, Israel's enemies are anti-Semites. Yasser Arafat should have accepted Israel's “generous offer” at Camp David in 2000. But, hang on, Israel's offer was not so generous...

So what to do? You should read the article to find out how the magazine comes to this conclusion, but here it is:

For peace to come, Israel must give up the West Bank and share Jerusalem; the Palestinians must give up the dream of return and make Israel feel secure as a Jewish state. All the rest is detail.

More "Islamic militants" under attack in the Levant

Now in Lebanon too. From the New York Times:

Fierce clashes erupted between Lebanese Army soldiers and Islamic militants in the vicinity of a Palestinian refugee camp [near Tripoli] on Sunday, leaving 22 Lebanese soldiers and 17 militants dead and dozens injured in one of the most significant challenges to the army since the end of Lebanon’s bloody civil war.

The Times reports that "the confrontation with the Islamist group, Fatah al-Islam, raised fears of a wider battle to rout militants in the rest of Lebanon’s 12 refugee camps, where radical Islam has been gaining in recent years."

But apparently not everyone would fear this "wider battle to rout militants" as the Times went on to report:

Lebanese citizens, who hold the Palestinians responsible for sparking the civil war in 1975, cheered the army on the streets of Tripoli and outside the camp.

Fatah al-Islam, the Times recalls, "subscribes to the fundamentalist precepts of Al Qaeda" and its leader was a partner in crime with the genocidal maniac and axe murderer, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the former leader of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia killed almost a year ago in Iraq. The two carried out the murder of an American diplomat, Lawrence Foley, in Jordan.

As "fighting raged throughout the afternoon at the camp, home to about 40,000 refugees, " the Times goes on to report, and "as army reinforcements rushed to the scene and tanks began shelling targets in the camp" many residents of Tripoli were seen clapping and cheering:

“This should have happened from the start,” said one man, who stood in a crowd of onlookers as the tanks fired into the camp. The crowd shouted, “God is great, and God protect the army,” with each shell fired.

“We wish the government would destroy the whole camp and the rest of the camps,” said another in the crowd, Ahmad al-Marooq. “Nothing good comes out of the Palestinians."

The Lebanese blame the Palestinians for inciting civil war in 1975 after Palestinian militias seeking refuge in the country - after having been booted out of Jordan for trying to foment revolution there - instigated the breakdown of the military and social and political order.

This Lebanese civil war raged for sixteen years, only ending with a heavy-handed presence of Syrian peacekeeping forces. In spite of increasing international pressure, Syria only agreed to withdraw its forces in Lebanon after elements of the Syrian regime were widely suspected of orchestrating the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri in February 2005.

Palestinians once again blowing an opportunity for statehood

But it's all Israel's fault. Well maybe the Arab countries and the international community also share some of the blame.

The London Times reports:

Gaza was on the brink of civil war last night as violent clashes between Palestinian factions spiralled out of control.

Neither Hamas or Fatah which recently formed a unity government seem to be able to stop the fighting. As the Times goes on to report:

Last night Palestinian politicians cautioned that if the violence continued, it would not only trigger the collapse of the Palestinian unity Government, but could also spell the end of the Palestinian Authority itself.

President Abbas is said to have told his Cabinet on Monday night: “This is my Government and if it falls, I will fall with it.” As the Times speculates:

Such a scenario would strip the occupied territories of official Palestinian rule. Israel, as the occupying power, would then be forced to resume full control of the West Bank and Gaza.

. . . “The message is the Palestinians cannot rule themselves. This fighting will only end if a third party takes over,” said Ibrahim Abrash, a political analyst in Gaza.

Once again the Palestinians seem to be intent on proving what Israel's then foreign minister Abba Eban said back in 1973 after another failed peace agreement: "the Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.


Update: Silly me, I got this all wrong. This has nothing to do with Palestinians missing opportunities: "The Israelis are behind all these events," as Hamas' political leader Abu Marzouk told the Associated Press.

Arab countries and the international community also share some of the blame, Abu Marzouk goes on to say: "It's illogical that the Arabs stand idle watching the Palestinian arena while it's on the verge of explosion under the siege. ... This is a constant pressure that has led to a real explosion."

As the AP reports:

Abu Marzouk singled out Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign policy chief, for criticism. "He was one of the main instigator for these events because he is continuing his siege of the Palestinian people and had boycotted Palestinian elections," the Hamas official said.

Gaza

Balata School Girls 2005, originally uploaded by velvetart.

Let's hope these girls get a shot at a real life for a change. I hope their leaders finally stop regarding them as political pawns.

After 60 years, could the Palestinians finally be seizing an opportunity for statehood?

Will the Palestinians finally build their state in Gaza? Will they finally seize an opportunity and put the old adage to rest that the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity?

CNN reports:

Hundreds of Palestinian police patrolled on foot Wednesday to launch what the Palestinian Authority says is the first phase of its 100-day security plan for Gaza.

The plan is aimed at bringing an end to infighting between Hamas and Fatah militants that has plagued the region, claiming more than 300 lives in the past year.

At least 37 Palestinians were killed during a week of factional fighting in Gaza in late January and early February.

Hamas and Fatah security officers are patrolling together in teams and wearing the same uniform, Reuters reported. They are under the command of the InteriorMinistry rather than either party, according to Reuters.

As CNN goes on to say:

The two parties agreed on a coalition government in March, hoping it would end violence in Gaza and open the door to increased aid.

Otherwise known as the Mecca Accord, could this agreement finally launch Middle East Peace?

We've been waiting six decades alright already. That's sixty years. Yes 6-0. ستون.

Stay tuned.

Palestinians kill each other but Hamas leader is "not worried about anything"

The United Press International reports that:

The United States has presented Israel and the Palestinians with a new plan for enhanced security, movement and access -- but if initial reactions are any indication, its fate might be no better than previous, never-implemented plans.

This plan, drawn up my one Maj. Keith Dayton, is supposed to be pushed by Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice on her upcoming visit to the region. As to what's in this plan, UPI reports:

Its text, leaked to the Haaretz newspaper and confirmed by a knowledgeable Western source, has two essential elements, one of which is to improve Palestinian movement and access. It talks of easing Israeli restrictions on movement in the West Bank, especially in the Bethlehem, Hebron, Nablus and Jordan Valley areas.

The measures to ease Palestinian movement are said to include the opening of cargo and passenger lanes between Gaza and the West Bank, Israel, and Egypt.

For their part, the Palestinians security forces are supposed to enforce law and order, fight terrorism, and guard the border between Gaza and Egypt.

Now who is supposed to provide the Palestinian security forces with the necessary armaments to do this? The U.S.? The U.N.? The E.U.? Russia? No, Israel.

While there's no definitive word from the Israeli prime minister, according to the UPI:

A senior [Israeli] defense official indicated the defense establishment did not want to open a corridor between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. "There is a mess and chaos in Gaza. Why bring it to the West Bank?" he asked.

The Gazans are more prone to violence, the situation in the West Bank is already "problematic ... delicate," and if Gazans reach the West Bank "within a week there will be terrorist attacks here."

..."The Americans are quite naive," the official continued. Dayton "thinks this is the Mexican border. It is something totally different."

Palestinian President Abbas was reported as indicating to Fatah leaders in Gaza that the proposal was worth considering. However, Hamas' Gaza spokesman, Fawzi Barhoum, as the UPI put it, "minced no words about the Dayton plan":

"The American plan is rejected and we will work to make it fail by any means," he declared according to the State Information Service.

Meanwhile, as the UPI went on to report, Palestinians now face a threat from each other greater than any threat they currently face from Israel:

Two of the latest incidents show how bad the situation is.

Monday morning gunmen from one of Gaza's clans broke into the al-Aqsa University's campus chasing two young men, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights reported.

"The gunmen opened fire inside the campus ... captured one of the young men ... and attacked him with sharp tools. He was injured in the face, the neck and the hands. When the guards of the campus attempted to stop the gunmen, those gunmen kidnapped one of the guards."

Sunday another group attacked a festival that the United Nations Relief and Works Agency organized in Rafah. "Members of the Group shot machine guns and threw grenades toward participants in the festival under the pretext of the groups' mixing of men and women," the Palestine Times reported.

"Members of the group raised placards calling for boycotting the festival and shouted slogans through loudspeakers claiming that Islam prohibited such things," the newspaper said. In the attack a 45-year-old guard was killed and seven others, including three children, were wounded, PCHR reported.

In spite of these new conditions on the ground, Hamas' political leader-in-exile-in-Syria, Khaled Meshal, remains committed to the belief that the internecine violence in Palestine should not be blamed on the Palestinians themselves. As he told Newsweek:

What does the world expect from the Palestinian people if the current conditions continue, if the economic siege continues, even after we formed the national unity government? Indicators [also suggest] that Israel is preparing for another [act of] aggression during the coming period, either against Lebanon, or in Gaza, or maybe in other theaters in the region.

Nevertheless, Meshal went on to tell Newsweek that he has no worries - as he doesn't think Syria will cave into international pressure and stop harboring terrorists such as himself:

The American administration should know that we are confident of the Syrian position, and that any additional pressures on Hamas, inside or outside [the territories], will not be useful. We're not worried about anything.

If Meshal's remarks seem, well, cavalier, coming as they do from the leader of Hamas given the situation of his people, at least we have to give him credit for being honest.

Not to mention logical - as why should Meshal be worried? Again, he and his family live comfortably in Damascus. Neither he nor his kids have had to grow up in one of those dismal Palestinian refugee camps.

I doubt that even his parents ever lived in one: His family moved to Kuwait when he was a child. There he received a first-class education , eventually earning a bachelor's degree in Physics, in the wealthy Gulf monarchy.

Even after he decided to devote himself full-time to the liberation of Palestine, Meshal still didn't have to deal with the pathos of refugee life. Meshal ran Hamas' "political" organization from the peaceful confines of Jordan, until he realized that the local authorities would no longer protect him. Only then did he flee to Syria, where he has lived comfortably ever since.

So it's not surprsing that Meshal, the Hamas leader in exile, is not, as he boasted, "worried about anything" these days. He doesn't have to live among the chaos in Gaza, he doesn't have to see his co-Palestinian-nationalists waste the opportunity of creating their first semblance of a state and instead kill each other for not being sufficiently Islamic.

After all, someone has to live on to carry out the battle against the "real enemies" of the Palestinians - you know, the ones who give them money, and now arms - the United States and Israel.

Are the Saudis now being used to bash Condoleeza Rice?

Speaking about how messages can be misinterpreted (see post below), here's what seems to me to be an example of how garbled things can get when one has an agenda.

Now you are going to have to bore down somewhat in agreements that may seem, well, irrelevant, but actually, I don't think they are as if you understand this background, you'll have an easier time following the news coming from Egypt this week. So try to bear with me here.

First recall the Mecca accord, the February letter agreement from President Mahmoud Abbas, of Fatah, to Prime Minister Ismail Haniya, of Hamas, at long last authorizing him to form the government. Here was the translation of that letter as provided by the Associated Press via the International Herald Tribune:

In my capacity as the head of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the president of the Palestinian Authority, and after reading the Basic Law, and in accordance with my authorities:

a) I designate you to form the upcoming Palestinian government within the time specified under the Basic Law (five weeks).
b) After forming the government and presenting it to us, it should be presented to the Palestinian Legislative Council for a vote of confidence.
c) I call upon you as the head of the upcoming Palestinian government to commit to the higher interests of the Palestinian people, to preserve its rights and to preserve its achievements and to develop them, and to work in order to achieve its national goals as were approved by the Palestine National Council, the clauses of the Basic Law and the National Reconciliation Document and the decisions of the Arab summit.

Based on this, I call upon you to respect international resolutions and the agreements signed by the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Note in particular this last line - and clause c). This was how the Saudi King, who brokered this agreement, was able to get Hamas to implicitly recognize Israel's right to exist. This is because on September 9, 1993, for example, Yasser Arafat, then chairman of the PLO, stated the following to the Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin (via The Jewish Virtual Library):

The signing of the Declaration of Principles marks a new era in the history of the Middle East. In firm conviction thereof, I would like to confirm the following PLO commitments:

The PLO recognizes the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security.

But now see how David Samuels at the Atlantic Monthly bungles what was actually agreed upon in the Mecca accord:

This past February, King Abdullah, tired of seeing Palestinians fighting Palestinians (and concerned that Hamas was drifting toward Iran, which had been providing Hamas with money, weapons, and military training), invited Hamas and Fatah to Saudi Arabia, where he brokered a power-sharing deal known as the Mecca agreement. Saudi Arabia also promised to deliver $1 billion to keep the new Palestinian government afloat. The Saudi deal is widely seen as a defeat for Rice, because it created a Palestinian unity government that does not recognize past agreements with Israel and whose prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, a member of Hamas, proclaims the Palestinian “right” to “resistance in all its forms, including popular resistance to occupation,” which extends to suicide attacks against Israeli civilians. [Emphasis added.]

Now how could Samuels - not to mention the venerable Atlantic Monthly - have so botched the reporting here? Allow me to speculate.

I think Samuel's real intent was to undercut the Secretary of State. I say this because early on in the piece, he quotes Richard Armitage (and others), who essentially characterize her as a lightweight.

“I didn’t know that she had any strong views,” Armitage, Powell’s deputy, is quoted as saying. Then after describing him as someone "who did not think highly of her performance," Samuels allows Armitage to deliver the knock-out punch: “I mean, she was an expert in one country that no longer exists."

So to facilitate his storyline that Secretary Rice doesn't know what she is doing in the Middle East, I think Samuels thought he could mischaracterize the efforts of the Saudi king. This is a reasonable tact as very few people are eager to defend the Saudi monarchy after 9/11. In this way, he could demonstrate that the Secretary was naive for having been silly enough to trust King Abdullah's good faith.

This you see would reinforce Samuel's personal view which he divulges in a subsequent interview posted on the Atlantic Online. In response to the question: "You seem to like and respect the Secretary of State. Do you have confidence in her ability to bring stability to the Middle East?" this is what he says:

No. I do not. I don’t think that America can bring stability to other places in the world, any more than we can bring democracy. We are not Prometheus, bringing the gift of fire to man. We are a nation, with a particular history and a system of government that has worked well for us, so far, despite some pretty big bumps along the road. To say anything more than that strikes me as a kind of insane arrogance for which the Gods will have their revenge.

I don’t believe for a minute that humanity is moving towards a future global order of liberal states that will practice American-style democracy, and in which Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Chinaman and Jew will live in harmony with their neighbors. I don’t think the future of the planet will look like Bethpage, Long Island, on a global scale. I think it’s more likely that someone will wake up tomorrow morning and turn his neighbor into cat food.

Whether or not he's right or wrong about this cat food business, Samuels is by no means the first person to have thought of using the Saudis to bash the Bush administration. In fact, it's a fairly well established tactic, as this blogger reported earlier (again, scroll down for details).

Could this bridge over "troubled waters" be the bridge to Middle East Peace?

Bear with me while I indulge in some wishful thinking here (it's my natural bent - I can't always suppress it.)

First some background. The London Times reports "Bride over troubled waters gets go-ahead":

Saudi Arabia and Egypt are putting the final touches to an ambitious transcontinental project to span the Gulf of Aqaba, creating a direct link between Africa and Arabia.

King Abdullah, the Saudi monarch, is expected to lay the foundation stone for the causeway when he visits the northern province of Tabuk next week. The project, which has been discussed for the past 20 years but never acted on, would involve the construction of two bridges across the Tiran Strait spanning a total distance of about 15 miles (25km).

Why close this gap? As the Times writes:

For Egyptians, the prospect of being able to travel overland to Saudi Arabia is particularly welcome. The tens of thousands who travel for work or on the haj pilgrimage to Mecca rely on a ferry service. Last year 1,000 people were killed when an overcrowded ferry sank in the Red Sea. Since then the service has been reduced.

...[Now] the only land link between Egypt and the Arabian Peninsula is via Israel, which most Arab states do not recognise.

The bridge would also enable Saudi tourists to flock to Sharm el-Sheikh, the relaxed Egyptian beach resort, a favourite of European holidaymakers.

But as the Times goes on to point out, serious issues have to be dealt with first:

The Gulf of Aqaba is home to unspoilt coral reefs and some of the best scuba diving waters in the world. Any big construction project in the area could seriously damage the delicate maritime environment.

Shipping could also pose a problem. The bridge would cut across a busy channel through which commercial shipping passes to Eilat, in Israel, and Aqaba, in Jordan.

Israel may have strong objections to the causeway if it were not satisfied that the security of its ships could be guaranteed by the Saudis and Egyptians. Saudi Arabia still does not have any formal ties with the Jewish State.

Could this bridge be the opportunity to close the psychological gap too?

If Egypt and Saudi Arabia could really demonstrate they are up to the task of protecting Israeli shipments, that would be pretty impressive. Not to mention how well it would bode for the region.

Oh, if only the children of Abraham would make a real and lasting peace...I have to say, forging a genuine peace treaty would seem to me to be more, well, a part of God's plan than, say, what is laid out in the Hadith people like Osama Bin Laden and Hamas like to quote:

The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews." (related by al-Bukhari and Moslem).

Now I'm not being insulting here. I'm just suggesting that there might be another interpretation of what the Prophet actually said here than the one bin Laden and the Hamas folks seem to be operating on.

Self-criticism: A sign of weakness or strength?

Is the Winograd report that criticizes Israel's performance during the early part of this summer's Hezbollah War, the definitive evidence that Israel lost this latest Israeli-Arab battle?

Gaza correspondent for the Jerusalem Post, Khaled Abu Toameh, has an interesting perspective here:

While most Arabs viewed the scathing report as a sign of Israel's "defeat," a few took a different stance by looking at the positive aspects of Israel's democratic system.

"By establishing commissions of inquiry after wars and holding those responsible for failure accountable, Israel is showing how strong it is," said newspaper columnist Hassan Khader. "We in Palestine and the Arab world are weak because we have failed to stop our governments, establish commissions of inquiry, point a blaming finger at our leaders and draw conclusions from our mistakes."

He said that had the Palestinians established a mechanism of supervision in the past decade, they would have been in a much better situation today.

"We failed to establish commissions of inquiry into the way decisions were being made or the way money was being wasted," Khader said. "That's why we have reached a stage where gangs and militias are popping up as fast as mushrooms and are hijacking our cause."

Are we getting any closer to Middle East Peace?

Israel-based blogger M.J. Rosenberg discusses The Saudi Plan at TPM Cafe.

First his summary of what the plan offers:

In exchange for Israel's withdrawal from the occupied territories, the entire Arab world would establish normalized relations with Israel. This is a far better deal than the original "land for peace" idea because it establishes peace not only with the Palestinians but with every single Arab country. And not just peace either, but fully normalized relations.

So what does this really mean? As Rosenberg writes:

Israeli and Palestinians negotiate a deal based on United Nations Resolutions 242 and 338, the Roadmap, etc., and, as soon as the two sides reach agreement, Israeli will be granted recognition and normalization by the entire Arab world.

Since the Israelis and the Palestinians have to forge the first agreement in the peace plan, Rosenberg suggests that the parties begin as soon as possible - they don't need Saudi involvement to start this process.

Rosenberg says Israel also doesn't have to hammer out the details with Hamas present (which is fortunate as it is still calling for the destruction of Israel) because under the Mecca Agreement (also brokered by the Saudis), Hamas agreed to allow President Abbas to be the representative of the Palestinians.

While Rosenberg acknowledges that there are plenty of, as he says, "skeptics [who] insist that the plan is a take-it-or-leave-it offer," in his view, "the Arabs intend there be negotiations over the plan and that it is not some kind of diktat."

To make his case he cites the argument put forth by a former Shin Bet expert on the Palestinians, Mati Steinberg. As he writes:

It is hard for Steinberg to understand how serious people can argue that anyone is expecting Israel to withdraw from the territories without conducting detailed negotiations on borders, security arrangements, the holy sites and so on. According to him, the absence of a demand to evacuate the Jewish settlements in the territories, for example, is not by chance. It is clear to the Arabs that the way to an agreement passes through the negotiating table.

Then he quotes no less an authority than King Abdullah of Jordan seems:

That is precisely what King Abdullah of Jordan told IPF at a meeting at his Amman palace this week. He told us that arguing about the details of the plan is pointless because, essentially, there are no details. The plan is simply a framework, every aspect of it is negotiable. The point, he said, is to get to serious negotiations.

You should read the article to see what he says about the sticky right to return issue, but I'll post his conclusion here:

Any agreement Israel reaches with the Palestinians (or any other Arabs) will be just that: an agreement mutually agreed upon. Claiming to object to negotiations because they might produce an unacceptable result is a bogeyman. It takes two signatures to make an agreement and one of them will have to be Israel's.

Those who oppose any agreement between Israelis and Palestinians should just say so. These tired excuses have become utterly transparent.

Promises, promises...Now is the time for all good men...

The Jerusalem Post reports that despite Saudi promises to end its boycott of Israeli-made products, Saudi Arabia has yet to fulfill its pledge - and one of the conditions of its being granted membership to the World Trade Organization in 2005.
As the Post notes:

The WTO, which aims to promote free trade, prohibits members from engaging in discriminatory practices such as boycotts or embargoes.

..."Goods made in Israel are not allowed here in Saudi Arabia," Khaled A-Sharif, assistant manager of the Saudi Customs Department at King Abdul Aziz Airport outside Jidda, told the Post by phone. "Of course it is not permitted," he said.

Given that Saudi Arabia is trying to lead a Middle East peace process whereby in exchange for concessions from Israel, the 22 Arab nations promise to normalize relations with the Jewish state, it would seem that Saudi Arabia should be eager to demonstrate its good faith by carrying out promises that it has already made, would it not?