Category Archives: Hamas

Cables reveal Israel welcomed Hamas takeover of Gaza

If mainstream media reports and government statements could be relied upon, the Bush administration and the Israeli governments led by Ariel Sharon and then Ehud Olmert were perpetually of one mind — Washington simply mirrored Jerusalem. But newly-released cables indicate that when it came to views about Hamas’ control of Gaza, there was in 2007 a significant divergence of opinion. While a plan hatched by Elliot Abrams for a US-supported Fatah coup to unseat the democratically-elected Hamas government, was rapidly unraveling, the Israelis said they would be pleased to see Hamas assume complete control of Gaza.

A cable describing a June 12, 2007 meeting between US Ambassador Richard Jones and Israeli Military Intelligence Director Amos Yadlin indicated that Israel regarded Gaza as less of a threat than Iran, Syria or Hezbollah. At the height of the eight-day battle between Hamas and Fatah for the control of Gaza, the cable said:

The Ambassador commented that if Fatah decided it has lost Gaza, there would be calls for Abbas to set up a separate regime in the West Bank. While not necessarily reflecting a consensus GOI [Government of Israel] view, Yadlin commented that such a development would please Israel since it would enable the IDF to treat Gaza as a hostile country rather than having to deal with Hamas as a non-state actor. He added that Israel could work with a Fatah regime in the West Bank. The Ambassador asked Yadlin if he worried about a Hamas-controlled Gaza giving Iran a new opening. Yadlin replied that Iran was already present in Gaza, but Israel could handle the situation “as long as Gaza does not have a port (sea or air).” [Emphasis mine.]

Implicit in Yadlin’s remarks was the view that Hamas’ control of Gaza would make it easier for Israel to control the territory from the air with more frequent missile attacks.

As the US ambassador questioned the Israeli intelligence chief, one has to wonder whether either of them had been briefed on the Abrams plan.

In a report published by Vanity Fair in April 2008, David Rose wrote:

Vanity Fair has obtained confidential documents, since corroborated by sources in the U.S. and Palestine, which lay bare a covert initiative, approved by Bush and implemented by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams, to provoke a Palestinian civil war. The plan was for forces led by [Palestinian Authority National Security Advisor Muhammad] Dahlan, and armed with new weapons supplied at America’s behest, to give Fatah the muscle it needed to remove the democratically elected Hamas-led government from power. (The State Department declined to comment.)

But the secret plan backfired, resulting in a further setback for American foreign policy under Bush. Instead of driving its enemies out of power, the U.S.-backed Fatah fighters inadvertently provoked Hamas to seize total control of Gaza.

Some sources call the scheme “Iran-contra 2.0,” recalling that Abrams was convicted (and later pardoned) for withholding information from Congress during the original Iran-contra scandal under President Reagan. There are echoes of other past misadventures as well: the C.I.A.’s 1953 ouster of an elected prime minister in Iran, which set the stage for the 1979 Islamic revolution there; the aborted 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, which gave Fidel Castro an excuse to solidify his hold on Cuba; and the contemporary tragedy in Iraq.

Within the Bush administration, the Palestinian policy set off a furious debate. One of its critics is David Wurmser, the avowed neoconservative, who resigned as Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief Middle East adviser in July 2007, a month after the Gaza coup.

Wurmser accuses the Bush administration of “engaging in a dirty war in an effort to provide a corrupt dictatorship [led by Abbas] with victory.” He believes that Hamas had no intention of taking Gaza until Fatah forced its hand. “It looks to me that what happened wasn’t so much a coup by Hamas but an attempted coup by Fatah that was pre-empted before it could happen,” Wurmser says.

The botched plan has rendered the dream of Middle East peace more remote than ever, but what really galls neocons such as Wurmser is the hypocrisy it exposed. “There is a stunning disconnect between the president’s call for Middle East democracy and this policy,” he says. “It directly contradicts it.”

While media reports at that time described the fight between Hamas and Fatah as being a “Hamas coup”, the Israeli intelligence chief did not see Hamas’ attacks as “part of a premeditated effort to wipe out Fatah in Gaza.”

What is transparent in both the Abrams plan and also now revealed in several cables, is that when it comes to the partnerships Israel and the US have backed with the Palestinians, whether Palestinian leaders had political legitimacy or popular support was of little concern — the sole requirement was that Israel/US work with Palestinians willing to place Israel’s interests first. In other words, Israel wanted to back a Palestinian leadership which would be incapable of surviving without Israeli support.

In a June 11, 2007 meeting between the US ambassador and Yuval Diskin, the head of Israel’s internal security service, Shin Bet, the Israeli described a “very good working relationship” with a Palestinian intelligence chief, Tawfik Tirawi, who he described as “psychopathic, cruel, dangerous and prone to extreme mood swings.”

In the West Bank, Diskin said that ISA [Shin Bet] has established a very good working relationship with the Preventive Security Organization (PSO) and the General Intelligence Organization (GIO). Diskin said that the PSO shares with ISA almost all the intelligence that it collects. They understand that Israel’s security is central to their survival in the struggle with Hamas in the West Bank. [Emphasis mine.]

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West Bank turning into a police state where torture is frequently used

American officials and journalists visiting the West Bank, if they are eager to boost the credibility of its unelected political leaders, like to speak about the professionalism of the Palestinian Authority’s security services. For instance, an aide to Hillary Clinton was recently quoted by Roger Cohen, saying:

[A]s we approached Ramallah there were these troops in berets. They were so professional, we thought at first they were Israel Defense Forces. But, no, they were Palestinians, this completely professional outfit, and it was clear this was something new.

What could be more inspiring — to a visitor from Washington — than Palestinians who looked like Israelis?

The Financial Times presents a much grimmer picture in which local human rights groups warn that a brutal regime is emerging with the authoritarianism of a police state. (As a report by David Rose almost two years ago makes clear, the trend is not new — but it is getting worse.)

Naiema Abu Ayyash’s worst fears were confirmed this month when she finally managed to visit her husband in Jericho prison.

Badr Abu Ayyash, 42, a farmer and local politician in the west Bank, was arrested by the Palestinian Authority’s Preventive Security unit on September 14. Aside from two brief and apparently supervised phone calls, his family was denied all contact with him.

“He looked very different,” said Ms Abu Ayyash, a mother of four. “He could hardly walk. He had difficulty breathing and was very thin. When he shook my hand, I noticed that he had no strength at all.”

She has no doubt her husband was tortured. “I started screaming at the officer: ‘What are you doing to him?”’ Her pleas fell on deaf ears. After a few cursory exchanges, her husband was led back to his cell.

According to former inmates and activists familiar with Palestinian prisons, Ms Abu Ayyash has every reason to be worried. They say prisoners affiliated with the Islamist Hamas movement, which runs the Gaza Strip, are beaten regularly and deprived of medicine and basic comforts such as blankets and mattresses.

There is evidence that a significant number of detainees are tortured during interrogation. The most common form of abuse is known as Shabeh, in which detainees are handcuffed and bound in stress positions for long periods.

Claims of torture and abuse by members of the Palestinian security forces are not new. There has, however, been a sharp rise in reported cases, leading Human Rights Watch to remark last month that “reports of torture by Palestinian security forces keep rolling in”. The New York-based organisation also bemoaned the “rampant impunity” of officers allegedly involved in the abuses.

Many analysts and observers fear that life in the west Bank is taking on an increasingly authoritarian hue. “I feel real concern that we are reaching the level of a police state,” says Shawan Jabarin, the director of al-Haq, a Ramallah-based human rights group.

It is a concern shared by Randa Siniora, the director of the Palestinian Independent Commission for Human Rights, the ombudsman responsible for processing complaints against Palestinian officials. Her commission received more complaints about torture in the west Bank in October than in any month since mid- 2009. “We are looking at a very gloomy situation,” she said. “I am afraid that this [problem of torture and abuse] will become systematic.”

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Dubai murder suspect arrested in Canada

(Update below)
Gulf News reports:

Dubai Police Chief Tuesday confirmed the arrest in Canada of a suspect, believed to be involved in the assassination of Hamas commander Mahmoud Al Mabhouh last January.

Speaking to reporters, Lieutenant General Dahi Khalfan Tamim said Canadian authorities have arrested another suspect who is connected to the murder of Al Mabhouh that took place in a Dubai Hotel on January 19.

Lt Gen Dahi refused to give further details, but according to Al Ittihad Arabic daily, the suspect was one two people caught by the hotel’s CCTV cameras wearing tennis gears as they staked out Al Mabhouh’s room in the Bustan Rotana Hotel.

Update: Richard Silverstein reports: “Israel’s Channel 10 has revealed that the alias of the arrested Mossad agent is Eric Rassineux. His passport is displayed here. It is the first Israeli source also to confirm that Canada is holding him.”

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Might the US be holding a fugitive Mossad agent in secret detention?

Eight months after the murder of the Hamas commander, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, in Dubai, two reports in the last few days present intriguingly contradictory pictures.

First came a Wall Street Journal report on Friday with the headline, “In Global Hunt for Hit Men, Tantalizing Trail Goes Cold.”

The Journal has followed this story more closely than any other US newspaper and this report contained some interesting new information — such as that one of the key suspects, recently using the name Christopher Lockwood, had previously used the identity of a young Israeli soldier, Yehuda Lustig, who was killed during the Yom Kippur War in 1973.

Still, as the headline suggested, investigators were no closer to tracking down Lockwood or any of the other suspects widely assumed to be Israeli Mossad agents. An Israeli who had been arrested in Poland, extradited to Germany and then released on bail in August, swiftly returned to Israel.

The trail has gone cold — but not according to Lt Gen Dahi Khalfan Tamim, the Dubai chief of police. He told The National on Monday that in fact a major suspect was arrested two months ago by a Western country but authorities in that country have requested that no information about the arrest should be made public.

The Abu Dhabi newpaper reported: “The country that arrested the suspect two months ago is not believed to be European.”

So which Western countries do we already know are involved in the case? The only non-European Western country that suspects are known to have traveled to after the murder is the United States.

A suspect traveling as an Irishman, Evan Dennings, entered the US on January 21, the day after Mabhouh’s body was found. And another suspect traveling with a British passport under the name, Roy Allan Cannon, casually entered the US on February 14, right in the middle of the period when the story was receiving global media attention.

The Journal now reports on these suspects that:

Their passport details showed up in a U.S. border-control system that collects electronic manifests of international flights and screens them against passenger watch lists, according to people familiar with the probe and to investigation documents reviewed by the Journal. That suggested the suspects had boarded planes bound for the U.S. The information was passed to international investigators involved in the case, raising hopes of a capture.

But the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has since said it doesn’t have records of the two suspects in its system.

It doesn’t have the records — meaning the records have vanished? Been handed over to a different agency, such as the FBI? Or what?

Something doesn’t add up here.

If it turned out that a suspected murderer who belonged to Mossad was arrested in the US, there’s no doubt that the Obama administration would be in a quandary about how to proceed. The one thing we can sure of is that it would guard its actions with the utmost secrecy.

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An interview with Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal

Sharmine Narwani interviews Hamas political bureau chief, Khaled Meshaal (part two):

Palestinian resistance group Hamas has beaten some unusual odds to survive today: Israel’s unlawful siege of Gaza has crippled the coastal strip’s economy and left Hamas scrambling to govern a restless population living under increasingly desperate conditions. Its officials and members are targeted by Israel and the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority (PA) for detention, torture and extrajudicial killings. Pro-US Arab leaders undermine it at every turn, partly to satisfy American demands, partly because they fear the widespread popularity of any moderate Islamist resistance group among their own populations.

Classified by the US as a “terrorist” organization, Hamas has spent the past year battling armed Salafist extremists who want to enforce Islamic law in the Gaza Strip and who view the Hamas leadership as too weak-willed to challenge Israel’s occupation of Palestine.

It is ironic that Hamas today is criticized for being hardline — and liberal too. Militant — and not militant enough. Islamist — and not Islamist enough. Iranian stooges — and US pawns, both.

I expected to see some of these contradictions in Khaled Meshaal, head of Hamas’ political bureau, when I interviewed him in Damascus recently. What I discovered instead is that, like a select crop of leaders we are seeing in the Middle East today, Meshaal refuses to be seen through one lens only. A real challenge for US policymakers with their unidimensional approach to regional politics.

The former high school physics teacher convincingly argues that the New Middle East is one where nations need to keep their “options open.” He rejects a regional status-quo where countries stay in “blocs” unthinkingly, and vehemently argues against the notion that Mideast democracy and reform cannot advance unless foreign intervention ends.

Khaled Meshaal: Look at a country like Qatar – it has good relations with the United States, used to have a degree of relations with Israel until the Gaza War, and is considered to be a moderate and liberal state. Qatar’s foreign policy is being formed by the views of its leader, the Emir. The situation in the region created a belief, for a country like Qatar, that if it wants to have a role in the region, it has to open up its options in all directions. The one who keeps himself away from the relevant elements in the region, he won’t be relevant himself. In Qatar you have this leadership – someone who is smart and courageous like the Emir. He understands and realizes full well the aspirations and the mood of his own people and the people of the region. So he adopts those issues and causes which are popular among his constituencies, among those nations – which works well if those issues are already close to his own beliefs and his own interests.

Keeping in mind that other Arab countries have for decades been unable to present a successful model that is attractive for others to adopt, this new regional state model has thrived in recent years. These countries – Qatar, Iran, Syria, Sudan, Turkey – share some common elements, but they are not identical to each other. They each have their own modus operandi and interests. Something these nations do share, however, is the self-desire to develop this new trend, but at the same time to remain open – not closed or bound – to enjoying options.

Sharmine Narwani: Not dogmatic, as in the past…

KM: …ah yes, not like that. Why should we be dividing ourselves into two blocs – either being against America and the West, or acquiescing 100% to them?

The people in the region, they are looking for leadership to match their own aspirations and ambitions. In a way we need a model where democracy is there, internal reform, successful economy, justice at the social level – and at the same time, there is independence in their political decisions, away from acquiescing to the threats of Israel – and not being a proxy to foreign, American and Western policies. We do not want to wage a war against the world. Or to sever relations with countries. So the nations and the people of the region want a state model based on self respect – without any enmity with the world. [Read the rest of the interview here.]

The first part of this interview can be read here.

On Monday, Meshaal called on the Palestinian acting president Mahmoud Abbas to end talks with Israel after Prime Minister Netanyahu failed to extend the settlement slowdown which expired on Sunday. Early Monday morning, bulldozers were clearing ground to construct new homes for Jewish settlers in the West Bank.

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Who does Mahmoud Abbas represent?

Mark Perry reports on the latest incident in the West Bank which indicates that the Palestinian acting president, Mahmoud Abbas, can now only impose his authority by force.

On Aug. 25, one week prior to the opening of Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, a group of Palestinians held a conference in Ramallah to discuss – and protest — President Mahmoud Abbas’s decision to travel to Washington to attend the talks. The Ramallah gathering, to be held at Ramallah’s Protestant Club meeting house, had been meticulously planned by a prominent coalition of political activists that included Palestinian businessmen, acknowledged leaders in Palestinian civil society and respected leaders of Palestinian political parties. “This was to be an open forum, an assembly to debate and discuss,” Munib al-Masri, the founder of the Palestine Forum and one of the meeting’s organizers said in an interview from his home in Nablus. “Our intention was to exercise our right to assemble and debate. Tragically, that’s not what happened.”

As the crowd of attendees (later estimated at between 250-300 people) began to gather at noon on Aug. 25, a group of about 100 non-uniformed officers from the Palestinian General Intelligence Service entered the hall carrying placards featuring Abbas’s picture and shouting pro-Abbas slogans. Across the street, at the headquarters of Al Haq — an independent human rights organization — Shawan Jabarin, the organization’s director (who had been invited to attend the meeting), heard of the commotion and decided to walk to the meeting hall. Jabarin described the scene: “This was going to be a large and important meeting,” he said, “so there were already 200 to 300 people in the hall at noon. But it was clear they wouldn’t be allowed to speak. The security people were shouting slogans, intimidating people. I saw a sign — ‘Stop Supporting Iran.'”

Inside the hall, those disrupting the meeting (Israeli journalist Amira Hess described them in Haaretz as “young men of similar appearance — well-developed muscles, civilian clothes and stern facial expressions”) began to shout down the first speaker, Dr. Mamdouh Al Aker, the director of the Palestinian Independent Commission for Human Rights (PICCR). When Aker asked for a moment of silence “in memory of those who gave their lives for the Palestinian people and the Arab nation” he was whistled down and the crowd of young men began to shout in unison: “With our blood and our souls, we will redeem you, Abu Mazen [Mahmoud Abbas].” The young men, now a phalanx of intimidating muscle and anger, began to push and shove the attendees out of the building. “People were frightened and were pushed outside, shoved out by the security people,” Al Haq’s Jabarin remembers. “It was outrageous, so I directed my staff to take pictures.”

Mustafa Barghouti, the head of the Palestinian National Initiative (a leading and increasingly strong political movement inside Palestine) and one of the most prominent leaders scheduled to speak at the meeting was in the crowd as it was pushed out of the meeting house. He attempted to maintain order and separate the meeting’s attendees from the group disrupting the gathering. “People were pushed into the street,” he remembers, “and that’s when the beatings began. It was very violent. The General Intelligence people were pushing people to the ground.” On the street in front of the Protestant Club, meanwhile, members of the Al Haq staff began to document the incident. “We had a camera, one of my staff members had a camera,” Jabarin says, “and we were trying to take pictures. But my staff member who had the camera was pushed down and the security official attempted to take the camera, to break it. This man was beating him and when one of my other staff members tried to help him, she was pushed to the ground and beaten. They got the camera.”

Standing nearby, Bassam al-Salhi, general secretary of the Palestine Peoples’ Party (and a former candidate for president), also attempted to stop the beatings. “This was mob violence,” he says. “But I thought that if we could somehow move up the street we could stop the confrontations.” Facing continued harassment, the group decided to walk to a nearby park, but were prevented from doing so by the Ramallah police. “They didn’t participate in the violence,” Salhi says of the police, “but they didn’t try to stop it either. Eventually, we had nowhere to go – so people just ran away. They had no choice.” The leaders of the conference, meanwhile, decided to take their protest of the incident to the headquarters of Watan, a local television station. But when they appeared on camera, a vocal group of security officials shouted them down, waving their placards in front of the Watan cameras. Inevitably, perhaps, the continued intimidation of the speakers was successful – and the crowd at Watan dispersed.

Meanwhile a Hamas commander, Iyad As’ad Shelbaya, was killed by the IDF on Thursday after Israeli soldiers claimed he ran towards them in a threatening way and ignored requests to stop. The Ma’an News Agency, however, reports that Shelbaya was shot in bed.

Israeli forces entered the home of a Hamas leader in Tulkarem on Friday morning and shot him three times in the neck and chest before withdrawing, family members said.

Medics at the Thabit Thabit Hospital in Tulkarem confirmed that 38-year-old Iyad As’ad Shelbaya, a known Hamas leader, was dead, killed by three bullets to the neck and chest.

However much these two reports conflict, the one thing about which we can be reasonably sure is that Shelbaya was not carrying a weapon — had he been armed there’s no question that the IDF would have highlighted that detail.

As for their claim that the incident is now being investigated, it’s also reasonable to assume that the investigation won’t reveal anything. As a B’Tselem report revealed this week, the decision by Israeli authorities to regard the West Bank as an area of armed conflict ever since the second intifada began in 2000, “effectively grants immunity to soldiers and officers, with the result that soldiers who kill Palestinians not taking part in hostilities are almost never held accountable for their misdeeds.”

Writing from Gaza, Laila El-Haddad says:

There is very little patience in Gaza for this latest set of talks. They are not only being conducted without a national consensus by what is broadly considered an illegitimate government, but they also completely marginalise the Gaza Strip and overlook the blockade and asphyxiation it has suffered for more than four years.

“When people started to talk about negotiations and going back to the peace process and all, I thought, wait a minute, who took our opinion before going there?” said Ola Anan, 25, a computer engineer from Gaza City. “I mean, Mahmoud Abbas is now a president who’s out of his presidential term. So in whose name is he talking? In the name of Palestinians? I don’t think so.”

Abu el-Abed, a 30-year-old fisherman who sells crabs in the coastal Gaza enclave of Mawasi said: “We hear about the negotiations on television, but we don’t see them reflected on the ground. They’re not feasible. Gaza’s completely marginalised as far as negotiations go. There’s no electricity, there’s no water. There’s no movement. Living expenses are high. And the borders are all closed.”

Ultimately, Gazans know very little or care very little about what is happening in Washington, because what’s happening in Washington cares very little about them, says Nader Nabulsi, a shopkeeper in Gaza City’s Remal neighbourhood: “These negotiations don’t belong to us, and we don’t belong to them.”

Nabulsi, like many others here, feels the negotiations are farcical given the fractured nature of the Palestinian leadership, but also given the fact that most consider Abbas’s government illegitimate and his term expired.

Reza Aslan writes:

As direct talks between the Israelis and Palestinians drag on in Jerusalem, it should not surprise anyone that militants in the Gaza Strip have stepped up their rocket and mortar attacks into southern Israel. Neither should it surprise anyone that the Israeli government is holding Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since seizing control of it in 2007, responsible for the attacks, accusing the group of trying to derail the peace process.

What is surprising, however, is that it may not be Hamas who is responsible for most of the rockets that have recently been launched into Israel. Rather, a group of Palestinian militants connected to al Qaeda has been repeatedly staging attacks against Israeli targets over the last year as a means of challenging Hamas’s rule over Gaza.

A civil war is brewing in the Gaza Strip between Hamas and a new crop of more radical militant groups like Jaish al-Umma, Ansar al-Sunna, and Jund Ansar Allah, who believe Hamas is not fighting the “Jewish enemy” as aggressively as it should be. According to the Economist, these Palestinian militants have been heavily influenced by time spent in Saudi Arabia, where they apparently absorbed the Kingdom’s ultra-orthodox (sometimes called “Salafist”) brand of Islam — a particularly conservative interpretation of Islam that, until recently, had not taken root in the Palestinian territories.

A spokesman for Jaish al-Umma says his group’s purpose is “to awaken the Islamic nation from the backwardness and the ignorance the tyrant regimes in Islamic countries have caused, and to free the Muslims from the despots.”

Although the leaders of this new movement tend to be doctors and university professors, they draw their rank and file membership from Hamas militants who have grown disenchanted with the group’s attempt to moderate its ideology and accommodate Israeli demands. Unlike Hamas, which has diligently kept its distance from al Qaeda and openly rejected its global ideology, many of these so-called “Salafist” groups are fervent supporters of al Qaeda, and some have referred to Osama bin Laden as their “righteous shepherd” (though a few continue to preach loyalty to the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas).

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In asymmetric diplomacy the Palestinians are guaranteed to lose

Hussein Agha and Robert Malley write:

The status quo, though sub-optimal, presents no imminent danger to Israel. What Israelis want from an agreement is something they have learned either to live without (Palestinian recognition) or to provide for themselves (security). The demographic threat many invoke as a reason to act — the possibility that Arabs soon might outnumber Jews, forcing Israel to choose between remaining Jewish or democratic — is exaggerated. Israel already has separated itself from Gaza. In the future, it could unilaterally relinquish areas of the West Bank, further diminishing prospects of an eventual Arab majority. Because Israelis have a suitable alternative, they lack a sense of urgency. The Palestinians, by contrast, have limited options and desperately need an agreement.

In any event, Abbas will return to a fractured, fractious society. If he reaches a deal, many will ask in whose name he was bartering away Palestinian rights. If negotiations fail, most will accuse him of once more having been duped. If Netanyahu comes back with an accord, he will be hailed as a historic leader. His constituency will largely fall in line; the left will have no choice but to salute. If the talks collapse, his followers will thank him for standing firm, while his critics are likely in due course to blame the Palestinians. Abbas will be damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t. Netanyahu will thrive if he does and survive if he doesn’t. One loses even if he wins; the other wins even if he loses. There is no greater asymmetry than that.

The Ma’an news agency reports:

Videos of Palestinian leaders asking the Israeli public to join them as “partners for peace” were coordinated and co-implemented by the Palestinian arm of the Geneva Initiative, the organization’s director confirmed.

The first phase in a mass-media campaign – funded by USAID – “aims to counter the myth that there is no partner on the Palestinian side,” director of the Israeli branch Gadi Baltiansky explained.

Three clips were released on Israeli TV on Sunday featuring Palestinian members of the peace delegation to Washington, each declaring themselves a “partner for peace.”

“Shalom to you in Israel, I know we have disappointed you, I know we have been unable to deliver peace for the last 19 years,” chief PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat says in his short appearance, while Yasser Abed Rabbo warns of the “dangers for both of us” if talks fail.

Following attacks on Israeli settlers in the West Bank on Tuesday and Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported:

Mahmoud Ramahi, a Hamas lawmaker based in the West Bank, said he believes this week’s attacks were likely calculated to cause a rift between Palestinian Authority security forces and Israeli forces and show that Hamas is still a vibrant force on the ground that cannot be ignored.

“This proves that the only way to deal with Hamas is for the Palestinian Authority to sit with Hamas and make a reconciliation deal to build a common strategy. Hamas is a reality,” he said. “The United States and the Palestinian Authority have to sit and talk with it.”

Hamas’s political leaders, such as Mr. Ramahi, say they aren’t privy to discussions within the group’s military wing. That apparent division underscores the diffuse power structure the group cultivates. Hamas’s military wing claimed responsibility for both of this week’s attacks and on Thursday promised more.

The orders to carry out the attacks could have come from any number of different power centers. The group’s top leaders are based in Damascus. The leadership there tends to adopt a harder, more militant line. But it is also thought to be heavily influenced by Syria, which can, if it desires, rein the group in, according to analysts.

The group’s leadership in Gaza, which has to live with any retaliation from Israel, has tended to be more pragmatic and moderate. Just hours before Tuesday’s attack, Hamas authorities in Gaza arrested a group of militants from another faction inside the territory trying to fire rockets into Israel.

This week’s attacks could also have been ordered or carried out by a militant cell operating on its own initiative. Israeli security officials believe a small number of militants in the West Bank are directly controlled by Hezbollah or Iran. In the past, Hamas’s leadership has claimed responsibility for attacks carried out by other factions, said retired Brig. Gen. Shalom Harari, a former Israeli intelligence officer who has been studying Hamas for a quarter century.

“Hamas’s infrastructure in the West Bank has been very heavily hurt by ongoing operations by the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli army the last two or three years, and not many cells are left there that can operate,” said Gen. Harari. “If it’s really Hamas, then this is a sleeping cell that they kept for special occasions.”

Meanwhile, Reuters reported:

Hours before peace talks were set to begin in Washington, Jewish settlers defiantly announced plans on Thursday to launch new construction in their West Bank enclaves in a test of strength with Palestinian Islamists.

Naftali Bennett, director of the settlers’ YESHA council, told Reuters settlers would begin building homes and public structures in at least 80 settlements, breaking a partial government freeze on building that ends on September 26.

“The idea is that de facto it (the freeze) is over,” Bennett said, criticizing the U.S.-sponsored Israeli-Palestinian talks as aiming for a “phony peace” and rejecting Palestinian demands for a halt to settlement building on land they want for a state.

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Hamas says negotiations have already failed

If the political purpose behind this week’s attacks on Israeli settlers in the West Bank is still hard to decipher, it seems the message they sent out was directed more to Palestinians in the West Bank than to the parties currently gathered in Washington.

Nicolas Pelham considers Hamas’ resilience as a political force and notes that the recent attacks “earned plaudits not only from Hamas’ core constituency, but also from a broad swathe of Fatah and secular activists, including some senior actors, disillusioned by 19 years of negotiations based on an ever flimsier framework.”

In its attacks on settlers on two consecutive nights in different parts of the West Bank, Hamas demonstrated its reach despite a three-year, US-backed PA military campaign and exposed the fallacy of the PA’s claims to have established security control in the West Bank. “It’s not muqawama (resistance) against Israel,” says ‘Adnan Dumayri, a Fatah Revolutionary Council member and PA security force general. “It’s muqawama against Abbas.” It also enabled the Islamists to catch seeping popular disaffection across the political spectrum toward a process of negotiations that appeared to Palestinians to be leading into a blind alley of continued Israeli control. Should Abbas fail to negotiate a halt to settlement growth, Hamas in its armed attacks against settlers would emerge from its three-year political wasteland to offer Palestinians an alternative.

In contrast to the international media, where the attack was roundly condemned, in Palestine the attack earned plaudits not only from Hamas’ core constituency, but also from a broad swathe of Fatah and secular activists, including some senior actors, disillusioned by 19 years of negotiations based on an ever flimsier framework. Unlike the Annapolis process or the “road map,” the twin Bush administration initiatives that the Obama administration chose to ditch, the current negotiations lack any terms of reference or agreed-upon script. Palestinians ask why Abbas agreed to meet Netanyahu given that none of the Arab targets required to turn proximity talks into direct ones were reached prior to the Obama administration’s announcement of the meeting. When American elder statesman George Mitchell presented the parties with 16 identical questions on the core issues requiring yes or no answers, Israel responded to each with a question of its own. In his August 31 press briefing before the White House meeting, Mitchell again declined to specify if Israel had agreed even to extend its (partially honored) settlement freeze past the September 26 expiration date.

Even the architects of the new process admit their concern that time is against them. Unveiling his plans for statehood within a year at a Ramallah press conference in late August, Fayyad warned that “every day that this conflict is not resolved there are more facts on the ground that make a two-state solution less likely.” Yet public incredulity is eroding confidence not only in a future peace deal, but also in the Palestinian leadership itself. The less Fayyad and Abbas deliver, the more tenuous their legitimacy, and the more Israel’s doubts about their reliability as neighbors become self-fulfilling. (Typifying the extent to which the leadership is removed from grassroots sentiment, the PA sponsored a groveling televised address from PLO chief negotiator Saeb Erekat to Israelis on the eve of the talks, in which he assumed Palestinian responsibility for the previous peace process failures. “Shalom to you in Israel. I know we have disappointed you,” he said. “I know that we have been unable to deliver peace for the last 19 years.”) Outside Abbas’ headquarters, Fatah activists derisively draw a distinction between the Fatah of the sulta, or regime, and that of Yasser Arafat. And away from Ramallah’s cafés, in the back streets of Jenin, which Fayyad’s proclaimed economic boom has yet to reach, talk of revolution and intifada is again in the air. Without something tangible to show for his continued pursuit of negotiations, due to resume in the rosy after-dinner glow in Washington, even the president’s advisers predict that Abbas and his political institution are finished.

The London-based Saudi-owned Asharq al-Awsat newspaper interviewed the Gaza-based senior Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar who struck a conciliatory tone in his remarks about Mahmoud Abbas.

Al-Zahar, speaking by telephone to Asharq al-Awsat said: “our policy has always been to let the negotiations continue, and we have not devoted one day of our work to stopping them”. Al-Zahar added: “There is a portion of the Palestinian people [Fatah and its supporters], who are in favor of negotiations in order to impose their political program, and we are convinced that this political program will not bring what is needed. The question then is: why take responsibility for undermining something that has already failed? In relation to our program of resistance, as you can see the West Bank has buckled under overwhelming pressure. Therefore, our program’s activities relate to the level of pressure imposed on the Palestinian people in the West Bank”.

In response to a question about whether he meant what he said, that the synchronization of the terrorist attack with the launch of the negotiations was just a coincidence, he said: “Coincidence or no coincidence, it was the decision made by people in the field [Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas]. Some say [the timing of the attacks] was intentional, that is not true. When people are presented with opportunities, as well as the means and targets, they act”. He went on to say that: “any attempt to try and belittle these actions, and link them to the negotiations, is not true at all”.

Al-Zahar believes that the vision of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas regarding the negotiations is: “like our vision. The issues [that will be raised] and their results are already known. Jerusalem: Israelis are united on the issue of Jerusalem and the Palestinian negotiator will not get anything from them. Secondly: refugees, can convince the discarded refugees in Jordan, Syria or Lebanon [to accept what is being proposed]? As for the [issue of] water, there is no indication that Israel will give up the groundwater located in the West Bank”.

In response to a question regarding the reasons which prompted Mahmoud Abbas to go to Washington to negotiate, if his vision was the same as that of Hamas, al-Zahar claims that “if there is a call from Washington, he must go”. He added that “Abu Mazen [Mahmoud Abbas] will not do what Abu Ammar [Yasser Arafat at Camp David] did, in that he will not give up on the principles and the issue will be over”.

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The fountainhead of global strife

If the Obama administration had been as visionary as Obamamania promised it might be, Chas Freeman might not have merely been briefly offered the post of chair of the National Intelligence Council; he could have become a fine Secretary of State. Instead, the Israel lobby made sure he gained no position at all, but by doing so ensured that he would retain the freedom to speak with more candor than any government official ever dares.

In a speech he delivered yesterday in Norway, Freeman laid out the US role in seeking and obstructing Middle East peace, with a clarity and style rarely found in foreign policy discourse.

Islam charges rulers with the duty to defend the faithful and to uphold justice. It demands that they embody righteousness. The resentment of mostly Muslim Arabs at their governing elites’ failure to meet these standards generates sympathy for terrorism directed not just at Israel but at both the United States and Arab governments associated with it.

The perpetrators of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the United States saw it in part as reprisal for American complicity in Israeli cruelties to Palestinians and other Arabs. They justified it as a strike against Washington’s protection of Arab governments willing to overlook American contributions to Muslim suffering. Washington’s response to the attack included suspending its efforts to make peace in the Holy Land as well as invading and occupying Afghanistan and Iraq. All three actions inadvertently strengthened the terrorist case for further attacks on America and its allies. The armed struggle between Americans and Muslim radicals has already spilled over to Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and other countries. Authoritative voices in Israel now call for adding Iran to the list of countries at war with America. They are echoed by Zionist and neo-conservative spokesmen in the United States,

The widening involvement of Americans in combat in Muslim lands has inflamed anti-American passions and catalyzed a metastasis of terrorism. It has caused a growing majority of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims to see the United States as a menace to their faith, their way of life, their homelands, and their personal security. American populists and European xenophobes have meanwhile undercut liberal and centrist Muslim arguments against the intolerance that empowers terrorism by equating terrorism and its extremist advocates with Islam and its followers. The current outburst of bigoted demagoguery over the construction of an Islamic cultural center and mosque in New York is merely the most recent illustration of this. It suggests that the blatant racism and Islamophobia of contemporary Israeli politics is contagious. It rules out the global alliances against religious extremists that are essential to encompass their political defeat.

Freeman went on to say:

Vague promises of a Palestinian state within a year now waft through the air. But the “peace process” has always sneered at deadlines, even much, much firmer ones. A more definitive promise of an independent Palestine within a year was made at Annapolis three years ago. Analogous promises of Palestinian self-determination have preceded or resulted from previous meetings over the decades, beginning with the Camp David accords of 1979. Many in this audience will recall the five-year deadline fixed at Oslo. The talks about talks that begin tomorrow can yield concrete results only if the international community is prepared this time to insist on the one-year deadline put forward for recognizing a Palestinian state. Even then there will be no peace unless long-neglected issues are addressed.

Peace is a pattern of stability acceptable to those with the capacity to disturb it by violence. It is almost impossible to impose. It cannot become a reality, still less be sustained, if those who must accept it are excluded from it. This reality directs our attention to who is not at this gathering in Washington and what must be done to remedy the problems these absences create.

Obviously, the party that won the democratically expressed mandate of the Palestinian people to represent them — Hamas — is not there. Yet there can be no peace without its buy-in.

Peacemaking must engage those who are willing to use violence. Yet this assertion — whose truth is so obvious — is still being treated as a bold idea.

The narrative of peace promoted through the Bush era and still being propagated by Obama, suggests that peace is somehow produced by rallying together everyone who is willing to denounce violence — as though those who are willing to use violence will lose that capacity if they can be sufficiently marginalized. But on the contrary, political marginalization invariably has the opposite effect as those whose grievances are ignored, look for increasingly extreme means to make themselves heard.

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Terrorism is like advertising — it short-circuits the rational mind

Update below

If there’s just one lesson we can draw from the last decade it is this: utter the word “terrorism” and thought grinds to a halt, perceptions become blinkered and the power of human intelligence is suddenly put on hold.

Consider the attack near Hebron in the West Bank yesterday in which four Israelis were gunned down by Palestinian gunmen.

A report in the Jerusalem Post conveys a particularly harrowing moment in the attack’s aftermath as volunteers from Zaka, the Israeli community emergency response network, arrived at the scene of the shooting.

Zaka volunteer Momy Even-Haim was dispatched to the scene of the attack with his colleagues, when to his horror he discovered that his wife was among the dead.

“We saw a crying volunteer, and at first we did not understand what was happening — he has seen many disasters before,” Zaka volunteer Isaac Bernstein told The Jerusalem Post.

“Then he started shouting, ‘That’s my wife! That’s my wife!’ We took him away from the scene immediately,” Bernstein added. Even-Haim was taken to his home in Beit Hagai by his colleagues.

Tragedy takes infinite forms. Those in closest proximity can never be expected to respond rationally but from a distance, rationality is not only possible — it is essential.

Instead though, this attack — like so many before — has produced a series of highly predictable knee-jerk responses.

The White House issued a statement saying:

The United States condemns in the strongest possible terms the terrorist attack today perpetrated by Hamas in which four Israelis were killed in the southern West Bank. We express our condolences to the victims’ families and call for the terrorists behind this horrific act to be brought to justice. We note that the Palestinian Authority has condemned this attack. On the eve of the re-launch of direct negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians, this brutal attack underscores how far the enemies of peace will go to try to block progress. It is crucial that the parties persevere, keep moving forward even through difficult times, and continue working to achieve a just and lasting peace in the region that provides security for all peoples.

Is Washington already ahead of Israel in identifying the culprits?

That seems unlikely. Much more likely is that the White House is content to parrot press reports in which representatives of Hamas are quoted claiming responsibility for the attack. If Hamas claims responsibility, its claim will be accepted at face value; if it were to deny responsibility, it’s denial would be treated with skepticism. That’s the way the “analytical” process works.

Israeli press reports are less clear on the matter.

In Haaretz, Avi Issacharoff and Amos Harel report:

Even though no official claim of responsibility was made, the investigation by the security services of Israel and the Palestinian Authority suggest that the culprits were a cell which identifies itself, more or less, with Hamas. Fauzi Barhum, one of the spokesmen for the group in the Gaza Strip, did not openly claim responsibility for the attack, but hinted that his group was behind the shooting.

“The resistance continues everywhere,” he said.

In recent months the Hamas leadership in the Gaza Strip and Damascus has pressed West Bank-based teams of gunmen to resume the attacks in an effort to make it more difficult on the Palestinian Authority and stir up tension with Israel.

Two months ago a large Hamas network was uncovered in the southern Hebron Hills, a “sleeper cell” that was revived, whose members are suspected of murdering an Israeli policeman in a similar shooting incident, along the same route, several kilometers from the spot of last night’s terror attack.

A cell which identifies itself “more or less” with Hamas — that’s pretty vague. Moreover, a previously unknown group calling itself the Al-Haq (“Rights”) Brigades has claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s shooting, according to the Ma’an news agency.

As for Issacharoff and Harel’s claim that a Hamas cell was responsible for the June Hebron Hills shooting, that also is far from clear. When suspects were arrested by Israel’s internal security services, Shin Bet, Haaretz reported:

It is unclear… who is responsible for the establishment of this group, which is reportedly affiliated to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah movement. Israeli security sources have been examining the possibility that the gunmen behind the June 14 attack were from various Palestinian militant groups.

Whether or not Hamas had a role in yesterday’s attack it is too soon to tell. And even if some or all of the gunmen turn out to belong to the movement does not necessarily reveal a great deal about the level of command and control or political motives for the attack.

Whatever the motives, the outcome itself has opened political opportunities to each constituency that now portrays itself as a victim.

Given that the attack took place in an area controlled by the IDF, President Abbas could have taken the opportunity to point out that the attack underlines the fact that there can ultimately be no security solution to the political conflict. Instead, Palestinian security services have been quick to launch what is being described as one of the largest arrest waves of all time in the West Bank.

Hamas lawmaker Omar Abdel-Raziq said more than 150 members had been detained, and others had been summoned to police stations for questioning.

He accused Abbas of trying to please the Israelis.

“These are political arrests,” he said. “They are trying to tell the Israelis that they are capable of doing the job after the attack.”

At the funerals of the four Israelis killed, settler leaders took the opportunity to push for settlement expansion, call for vengeance (a call which has already been acted upon), deny the existence of the Palestinian people and make a thinly-veiled appeal for ethnic cleansing:

Rabbi Dov Lior of Kiryat Arba eulogized the victims saying that “this is a grave tragedy for the families, for the people of Israel and for the state. God, avenge the spilled blood of your servants.”

“There is an army, which must be used,” Rabbi Lior continued. “The mistake is to think that an agreement can be reached with these terrorists. Every Jew wants peace, but these evildoers want to destroy us. We need to give them the right of return and return them to the countries from which they came.”

When President Obama tries to press Benjamin Netanyahu to extend the so-called settlement freeze, the Israeli prime minister will no doubt tell him solemnly that in light of recent events, his hands are well and truly tied.

They shoot and we build has become the settlers’ slogan — one that is almost certainly to Netanyahu’s liking.

Update: In a conversation I just had with Hamas expert, Mark Perry, he made the point that when it comes to identifying armed militants in the West Bank, the Al Qassam Brigade (affiliated with Hamas) and the Al Aqsa Brigade (affiliated with Fatah) are virtually indistinguishable in most of the area, but particularly in Hebron. The clearest differentiation in armed groups is between those who are on the Palestinian Authority’s payroll and those who aren’t.

Mark also pointed out that if the Obama administration was not trapped inside its own terrorism rhetoric, they could point out that the attack underlines the unnecessary vulnerability that Israeli’s expose themselves to by grabbing Palestinian land and building settlements.

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Hamas: “Anyone who is awaiting change from the West today will not get any change”

On the eve of US-brokered Palestinian-Israeli peace talks which begin on Thursday, Sharmine Narwani went to Damascus to interview the Hamas political bureau chief, Khaled Meshaal.

Sharmine Narwani: There is debate about whether Hamas accepts the premise of a two-state solution — your language seems often vague and heavily nuanced. I want to ask if you could clarify, but I am also curious as to whether it is even worth accepting a two-state solution today when there has been so much land confiscation and settlement activity by Israel in the West Bank and East Jerusalem?

Khaled Meshaal: Hamas does accept a Palestinian state on the lines of 1967 — and does not accept the two-state solution.

SN: What is the difference between the two?

KM: There is big difference between these two. I am a Palestinian. I am a Palestinian leader. I am concerned with accomplishing what the Palestinian people are looking for — which is to get rid of the occupation, attain liberation and freedom, and establish the Palestinian state on the lines of 1967. Talking about Israel is not relevant to me — I am not concerned about it. It is an occupying state, and I am the victim. I am the victim of the occupation; I am not concerned with giving legitimacy to this occupying country. The international community can deal with this (Israeli) state; I am concerned with the Palestinian people. I am as a Palestinian concerned with establishing the Palestinian state only.

SN: Can you clarify further? As a Palestinian leader of the Resistance you have to give people an idea of what you aspire to — and how you expect to attain it?

KM: For us, the 20 years of experience with these peace negotiations — and the failure of it — very much convinces us today that the legitimate rights of Palestinians will be only be gained by snatching them, not by being gifted with them at the negotiating table. Neither Netanyahu nor any other Israeli leader will ever simply gift us a Palestinian state. The Palestinian Authority has watered down all its demands and is merely asking for a frame of reference to the 1967 borders in negotiations, but Netanyahu has repeatedly refused to accept even this most basic premise for peace. Nor will America or the international community gift us with a state — we have to depend on ourselves and help ourselves.

As a Palestinian leader, I tell my people that the Palestinian state and Palestinian rights will not be accomplished through this peace process — but it will be accomplished by force, and it will be accomplished by resistance. I tell them that through this bitter experience of long negotiations with the Israelis, we got nothing — we could not even get the 1967 solution. I tell them the only option in front of us today is to take this by force and by resistance. And the Palestinian people today realize this — yes, it has a steep price, but there is no other option for the Palestinian people. The Palestinian people tried the peace process option but the result was nothing.

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The 9/11 hijackers now defending Ground Zero

The opponents of Park51, the so-called “Ground Zero mosque,” have decided that the litmus test for identifying “good Muslims” is to ask them whether they regard Hamas as a terrorist organization.

Andy McCarthy, one of the lead knights in the crusade to stop “the Islamization of America,” strikes the latest blow — this time against a rather guileless Imam Dawoud Kringle. This is how McCarthy recounts the crucial part of his “debate” on the fair-and-balanced Fox News:

Then came the moment of truth: the very simple question, “Is Hamas a terrorist organization?” Have a look at the YouTube clip below. Like his friend Imam Feisal Rauf, Imam Kringle won’t answer the question. I pressed him, pointing out that it is a very simple question. And it is: Quite apart from the fact that Hamas is formally designated as a terrorist organization under U.S. law, Hamas’s own charter makes abundantly clear — indeed, wears like a badge of honor — that Hamas exists solely for the purpose of driving Israel out of Palestine by violent jihad. Yet the imam cannot bring himself to say Hamas is a terrorist organization.

Perhaps Kringle would have held surer footing if he had first addressed the reliability of the US government in identifying terrorists.

It was only two years ago that Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress were removed from the US terrorism watch list — that was 15 years after Mandela had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

The terrorism watch list — like the Nobel Peace Prize — is not in and of itself a reliable indicator of someone’s current willingness to use violence in pursuit of a political cause.

Likewise, the fact that in the 1980s the Reagan administration regarded Afghanistan’s mujahideen as “freedom fighters” — not terrorists — had everything to do with who they were fighting (the Soviets) and nothing to do with the methods they employed or the causes those particular jihadists might subsequently espouse.

Terrorism and terrorist — as everyone knew until they suddenly forgot on 9/11 — are mutable designations that more clearly specify the relationship between the designator and the designee than they say much else.

Is Hamas a terrorist organization? As far as the US government is concerned, the answer it yes. It’s on the list. Yet not all organizations listed terrorist are the same — and like most objective foreign policy analysts, the US government like every other government knows this: these organizations are as diverse in their political aims as they are in their geographical distribution.

Hamas has been presented with a set of conditions which, if fulfilled, would allow it to participate in the peace process. In other words, even from the perspective of those governments who currently describe it as a terrorist organization there is an exit ramp for Hamas to shed its “terrorist” label. In contrast, there are no conditions under which any government will enter talks with al Qaeda.

Contrary to what McCarthy and others insinuate, Hamas and al Qaeda are not two peas in the same pod. They are in fact sworn enemies.

But given that so far no one has pointed to any direct connection between Park51 and Hamas, one has to wonder why those affiliated with the proposed Islamic center are being asked their views on the Palestinian movement?

The answer has much less to do with Park51 than it does with the myth that America’s interests are indistinguishable from those of Israel.

Whether McCarthy describes himself as a Zionist, he is certainly pushing a Zionist agenda when he claims: “Hamas exists solely for the purpose of driving Israel out of Palestine by violent jihad.”

In fact, Hamas’ leadership has explicitly supported the creation of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders if Israel ends the occupation. But this politically pragmatic position is one that McCarthy and his ilk refuse to acknowledge because it conflicts with a narrative that pits Israel and its allies against an ideologically unyielding and anti-Semitic foe. Characterize the conflict that way and there is no compromise a peace-loving Israel could make which would satisfy its enemies.

Indeed, elsewhere McCarthy has made it clear that he subscribes to the right-wing Zionist school of thought which sees a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as contingent solely on the ability of Israel to crush its opponent.

As he wrote during the war on Gaza: “What Israel needs is to be allowed to win: to finish the grisly work of ‘breaking the will of the Palestinians, of Hamas, to continue to fire at Israel,’ as Israeli Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit so aptly put it.”

As for Palestinian national aspirations in general, McCarthy says: “On the political front, it is high time to acknowledge the failure of the fantasy that the Palestinians are legitimate actors worthy of statehood and its privileges.” He says: “we must halt the mindless ‘two state solution’ rhetoric.” Scorning those who he calls “democracy devotees,” McCarthy says: “Let’s be blunt: we are looking at a generation or more before the Palestinians might be prepared to assume the obligations of sovereignty. So we should stop talking about it.”

Daniel Luban in an article in which he describes Islamophobia as the “new anti-Semitism,” notes the central role that McCarthy has assumed as an ideologue now marshaling opposition to Islam in America.

The mosque furor is only the most recent and revealing demonstration of the anti-jihadists’ political influence; from the beginning of the controversy, McCarthy and his allies have dictated the terms of debate on the right. In his July 28 statement attacking the Islamic center, Newt Gingrich cited [McCarthy’s book] The Grand Jihad and framed the controversy in McCarthy’s terms of Western civilization under siege from creeping sharia. More recently, the American Family Association — a leading fundamentalist Christian group — cited the book to argue that no more mosques should be built anywhere in the United States because “each Islamic mosque is dedicated to the overthrow of the American government.” A campaign spearheaded by Pamela Geller, the right-wing blogger who was previously most notorious for publishing a lengthy piece alleging that Obama is the illegitimate child of Malcolm X, will place ads on New York City buses opposing the Islamic center. On September 11, she and Gingrich will lead a major rally against the center that will also feature [Geert] Wilders, the Islamophobic Dutch politician. What was once a lunatic fringe now appears to be running the show, aided and abetted by mainstream figures like Gingrich.

It is quite possible that the next Republican president will also be a party to what can justly be called the new McCarthyism; for that reason alone, McCarthy and his allies deserve our attention. But even more important is the impact of this steady stream of anti-Muslim vitriol on the popular consciousness. Cynical politicians like Gingrich may know that all the talk of the Islamic center as a “9/11 victory monument” and of ordinary Muslims as stealth sharia operatives is mere agitprop designed to win votes in an election year, but ordinary citizens may take them at their word and act accordingly.

Given that McCarthy and his cohorts want to associate Park51 with Hamas, it’s worth considering what Hamas has to say about the plans for the Islamic center.

In an interview on New York’s WABC radio (audio can be heard here), Mahmoud al-Zahar, a co-founder of Hamas who is in the Gaza political leadership, was asked by Aaron Klein to comment on the construction of the center.

Without addressing the question directly, Zahar chose to respond by pointing out that Muslims in America are like Muslims elsewhere, living in accordance with Islam, fasting (during Ramadan), praying and so forth. He then went on to say that Hamas is being misrepresented by those who would liken it to the Taliban and that it is recognized across the Islamic world as a moderate organization.

Klein, however, wanted to focus on the mosque controversy and returned to that question:

Klein: What do you think about the new initiative to build a mosque near the World Trade Center in New York, which is a major point of controversy on all sides?

Zahar: We have to build the mosque as you are allowed to build the church and the Israeli are building their holy places. We have to build everywhere — in every area we have muslims, we have to pray, and this mosque is the only site of prayer especially for the people when they are looking to be in the group — not individual.

Muslims should be allowed to worship in mosques, just like Christians going to church and Jews going to the synagogue.

Not much controversy there, right?

Well, the New York Post seemed eager to pour fuel on the fire by inserting a few words implying that Hamas (and Muslims in general) are engaged in territorial expansion.

A leader of the Hamas terror group yesterday jumped into the emotional debate on the plan to construct a mosque near Ground Zero — insisting Muslims “have to build” it there.

“We have to build everywhere,” said Mahmoud al-Zahar, a co-founder of Hamas and the organization’s chief on the Gaza Strip.

“In every area we have, [as] Muslim[s], we have to pray, and this mosque is the only site of prayer,” he said on “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio” on WABC.

Zahar actually said, “In every area we have Muslims, we have to pray,” which is to say, wherever Muslims live they have a religious obligation to gather for prayer and they do this in mosques.

The New York Post twisted this into: “In every area we have, [as] Muslims[s], we have to pray,” which conjures up a completely different picture. Lower Manhattan is now an area that Muslims claim as their own — at least the New York Post appears to want to promote this lie.

Those who now man the barricades in response to what they call the Islamization of America, reveal in the shadow of their fears the scope of their ambitions.

On 9/11, four groups of hijackers took control of four aircraft resulting in the horrific deaths of 3,000 people. The same day, another group of hijackers took control of the aftermath of the attacks and began a war in which hundreds of thousands have died and millions been displaced. The campaign of those hijackers continues and Park51 is merely its latest target.

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Hamas supports the right of Muslims to pray in mosques — even in New York

Hamas has leaped into the New York mosque controversy — well, actually, not so much leaped as diffidently tiptoed when pressed to express an opinion on the issue.

In an interview on New York’s WABC radio (audio can be heard here), Mahmoud al-Zahar, a co-founder of Hamas who is in the Gaza political leadership, was asked by Aaron Klein to comment on the construction of the mosque.

Without addressing the question directly, Zahar chose to respond by pointing out that Muslims in America are like Muslims elsewhere, living in accordance with Islam, fasting (during Ramadan), praying and so forth. He then went on to say that Hamas is being misrepresented by those who would liken it to the Taliban and that it is recognized across the Islamic world as a moderate organization.

Klein, however, wanted to focus on the mosque controversy and returned to that question:

Klein: What do you think about the new initiative to build a mosque near the World Trade Center in New York, which is a major point of controversy on all sides?

Zahar: We have to build the mosque as you are allowed to build the church and the Israeli are building their holy places. We have to build everywhere — in every area we have muslims, we have to pray, and this mosque is the only site of prayer especially for the people when they are looking to be in the group — not individual.

Muslims should be allowed to worship in mosques, just like Christians going to church and Jews going to the synagogue.

Not much controversy there, right?

Well, the New York Post seems eager to pour fuel on the fire by inserting a few words in order to imply that Hamas (and Muslims in general) are engaged in territorial expansion.

A leader of the Hamas terror group yesterday jumped into the emotional debate on the plan to construct a mosque near Ground Zero — insisting Muslims “have to build” it there.

“We have to build everywhere,” said Mahmoud al-Zahar, a co-founder of Hamas and the organization’s chief on the Gaza Strip.

“In every area we have, [as] Muslim[s], we have to pray, and this mosque is the only site of prayer,” he said on “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio” on WABC.

“In every area we have Muslims, we have to pray,” which is to say, wherever Muslims live they have a religious obligation to gather for prayer and they do this in mosques.

But then we get the New York Post twist: “In every area we have, [as] Muslims[s], we have to pray,” conjures up a completely different picture. Lower Manhattan is now an area that Muslims claim as their own — at least the New York Post appears to want to promote this lie.

Let’s see whether anyone in the mainstream media is willing to correct this flagrant distortion. I’m not holding my breath.

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Is Payoneer under US investigation for role in Dubai murder?

The Wall Street Journal reports:

American investigators, cooperating in a probe of the January assassination of a top Palestinian leader in Dubai, have identified a handful of U.S.-based companies believed to have been used to transfer money to suspects in the case, a finding that brings international authorities closer to identifying who funded the operation.

The findings show American authorities playing a bigger role in the investigation than previously revealed. The case is especially delicate for the U.S., because Dubai police have said their prime suspect in the case is Mossad, the intelligence service of Israel, a key U.S. ally.

International investigators see money transfers made through the U.S. companies as key clues in a globe-spanning manhunt aimed at identifying more than two dozen suspects in the case, according to officials familiar with the matter.

The U.S. companies identified by investigators include Internet-based businesses that match freelance job-seekers with employers and process payments between the two sides. Authorities have identified financial transfers from several of these intermediary businesses into prepaid, cash-card accounts used by suspects in the Dubai killing, according to international investigators.

U.S. authorities say they don’t believe the intermediary companies had any way of knowing the money would be used in the plot, according to a U.S. official familiar with the investigation.

Instead, U.S. investigators believe, suspects might have posed as freelancers in order to get money in a way that obscured their funding source, and used the money for operational expenses, such as buying plane tickets.

The next step in the investigation would be to determine who the employers were in the transactions.

Representatives of several companies identified in the probe said they hadn’t been contacted by U.S. authorities and weren’t aware of any investigation.

Note that the report says “several companies” — it does not say “all the companies” — which leaves open the possibility that Payoneer, the New York-based company run by the former IDF special ops commando, Yuval Tal, is indeed under investigation.

In March Al Jazeera reported: “The UAE central bank is investigating how 24 suspects obtained credit cards from US company, Payoneer. Although registered in the US, Payoneer’s employees are mostly in Israel, this creating a stir on the internet about possible Mossad connections.”

In March, Gulf News reported:

The Payoneer connection unveils a network of links to Israel, specifically its intelligence community.

Its CEO is Yuval Tal, an Israeli citizen who, according to media reports, described himself as a former Israeli special forces commando in a 2006 Fox News interview.

Clips of the interview on video sharing websites have been removed.

However, a person who said he met Tal a couple of times but did not want to be named told Gulf News that “there is no question in my mind that Yuval has contacts with [Israel’s spy agency] Mossad”.
He recalled a conversation Tal had with attendees of a Jewish charity event in New York, where he spoke of his connections with Mossad.

“Yuval was entertaining a small group of people with tales of his IDF [Israeli Defence Forces] exploits… Specifically, he was commending Israeli intelligence and how Mossad and [Israel’s internal security agency] Shin Bet always gave him great information on his commando raids. He said his ‘colleagues’ are tracking [Hamas leaders Khaled] Mesha’al and [Esmail] Haniyeh’s movements almost every day,” he said.

Payoneer is held by three venture capital firms: Greylock Partners, Carmel Ventures, and Crossbar Capital.
Greylock, which has offices in the US, India and Herzliya, Israel, was established by Moshe Mor, a former military intelligence captain in the Israeli army.

Carmel Ventures is an Israeli venture capital fund based in Herzliya. Crossbar Partners is run by Charlie Federman, who is also managing director of the BRM Group, a venture capital fund also in Herzliya that was founded by Nir and Eli Barkat, the former of whom is the mayor of occupied Jerusalem.

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Time for a free and independent Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip

Geoffrey Aronson writes at Foreign Policy:

Prime Minister David Cameron during his recent visit to Turkey warned that the Gaza Strip “cannot and must not be allowed to remain a prison camp.” Britain, however, along with the rest of the European community, and of course, Washington, are ambivalent guardians of the self-described prison camp run by Israel, with Egyptian assistance. The prisoners, of course, want their freedom. And so too it seems does Israel’s right-wing foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman, who has emerged as an unlikely proponent of ending Israel’s status as an occupying power in the Gaza Strip.

Cameron’s prison camp description gave voice among critics to uncomfortable associations with some of the worst excesses of Nazi Germany. Some apologists for Gaza’s strangulation have, certainly unintentionally, evoked similar associations. The shameful press attention paid to the appearance of a new shopping mall in Gaza and the fine fare on offer at one of the Strip’s restaurants by those anxious to give lie to the pain and suffering caused by the siege is a particularly evocative case in point. The efforts by Gaza’s besieged population to create a semblance of normality, like the orchestra of the Warsaw ghetto, is a lasting testament to the triumph of the best instincts of human spirit over those who would crush it. Did the reaffirmation of humanity by Jews staring into the abyss negate the gruesome, bestial reality of the ghetto? And so it is with Gaza.

The casualties of the “freedom flotilla” sailing out of Turkey highlighted the malign neglect of the international diplomatic community in this engineered calamity and roused Washington to demand welcome, if minor, changes in the draconian border regime. These less than half measures, however, do not offer even the hint of an end to the regime of collective punishment that Gazans are being forced to endure.

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To avert disaster, stop isolating Hamas now

Chris Patten writes in the Financial Times:

As we all know, peace will come to the Middle East when Israel and Palestine agree to a two-state solution, with a viable Palestinian state rising from the rubble of more than 60 years of turbulence to live peacefully alongside Israel within the 1967 borders as modified through negotiation. All that is required is political will, brave leadership and a following wind. However, visitors to Israel and occupied Palestine may require increasing quantities of blind faith to go on repeating this mantra. There is no other acceptable outcome. But the chances of the dynamic external interventions necessary for this to happen seem slight.

In the West Bank you see more construction of large urban developments than I have seen anywhere in Europe (apart from perhaps the southern Andalusia coast before the credit crunch). These are primarily Israeli settlements, the colonies planted illegally in Palestinian territory and now housing about half a million people. There are 149 of these colonies according to the UN’s Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs and there are a further 100 outposts – the smaller “facts on the ground” that are destined to grow.

As the Obama administration has told us there is an “unprecedented freeze” in settlement activity. Who is fooling whom?

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Israel bans parachutes from Gaza

If Hamas had plans to form a paratroopers brigade, these will now need to be put on hold.

Israel’s long-awaited release of its blacklist of items banned from importation into the strip include parachutes. How exactly parachutes might be used in Gaza, if the ban gets lifted, is hard to envisage. What’s the use of a parachute if you can’t fly?

As Israel eases its economic blockade on Gaza, the manner by which it does so exposes the multi-layered deceit with which the siege was imposed and now unravels.

In its new policy, Israel now specifies which items are banned rather than which are allowed entry. But a ban on arms and munitions and items which could be used to develop, produce or enhance the military capabilities of the Gaza militias, begs a rather obvious question: were any such items allowed into Gaza before the siege started four years ago?

Of course not. So the idea that Israel’s goal, now or ever, has simply been to stem the flow of weapons into Gaza, doesn’t add up. Indeed, if that had actually been Israel’s primary concern it would have avoided creating a situation in which the principal conduit for the flow of goods into the strip had been through an unmonitored system of tunnels. Now as always, the easiest way to regulate what comes in and out of the Palestinian enclave is through carefully controlled land crossings.

The siege has always been and still remains a method of subjugation. Its purpose is to crush the will of the population in the hope that this might drain support for the resistance.

Now, in its effort to present a softer face to the world in the wake of its brutal attack on the flotilla, Israel is letting Gazans eat chocolate. What it remains much more reluctant to do is open the economic barriers that would allow Gazans to manufacture or perhaps even export their own chocolate.

Ultimately though, this isn’t about what Palestinians can be allowed to import or export — it’s about the one thing Israel continues to withhold from Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank. It’s about freedom.

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It’s obvious, go talk to the Islamists

Rami G Khouri writes:

This nagging issue just will not go away: How do local or foreign governments best deal with leading Islamist groups in the Middle East and South Asia? Do you engage, negotiate with, ignore, or actively fight politically and militarily against Hizbullah, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Taliban and other such groups that range widely along the spectrum of cultural and political activism and occasional armed militancy?

Since the rise of this generation of Islamists, native and Western governments alike have adopted two major strategies: politically containing movements like the Muslim Brotherhood by allowing them to have limited representation in toothless parliaments; and opposing or fighting more powerful movements like Hamas, Hizbullah, the Taliban and others that use military force for various reasons.

The results have been inconclusive, indeed largely unsatisfying. The Islamist movements continue to grow in most cases, to assert their power and legitimacy and share power in some countries, or to break away and rule on their own when that is the only option left to them. Only in Turkey have they assumed power nationally through a credible democratic process.

Two intriguing reports from the United States and Afghanistan in the past few days suggest that more realism may be creeping into the toolkit used to address this issue. In Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai is reported to have approved a plan designed to reintegrate low-level Taliban foot soldiers and commanders into the government forces, while simultaneously making peace with more senior leaders and their backers in Pakistan. This effort hopes to succeed where previous ones failed, by offering community leaders jobs, education and development programs that might bring an end to local fighting. Karzai sensibly assumes that foreign military power cannot prevail against armed nationals who believe they are fighting to liberate their country from foreign occupation.

The two key elements in the new approach are the acknowledgment that the Taliban are a credible force that must be engaged in negotiations for power-sharing, and that local developmental needs must be seriously addressed. In other words, both the Afghan government and its NATO backers acknowledge the political legitimacy and core grievances of the Taliban and their supporters.

In the United States, according to Mark Perry, blogging at the Foreign Policy website, a team of senior intelligence officers at US Central Command (CENTCOM) has just issued a report titled “Managing Hizbullah and Hamas,” that questions the current US policy of isolating and marginalizing these movements, and instead suggests a variety of approaches that would integrate them into their Lebanese and Palestinian mainstreams.

Perry notes that the most controversial finding is the one stating that “[t]he US role of assistance to an integrated Lebanese defense force that includes Hizbullah; and the continued training of Palestinian security forces in a Palestinian entity that includes Hamas in its government, would be more effective than providing assistance to entities – the government of Lebanon and Fatah – that represent only a part of the Lebanese and Palestinian populace respectively.”

The report says that while Hizbullah and Hamas “embrace staunch anti-Israel rejectionist policies,” the two groups are “pragmatic and opportunistic.” Perry adds that, “there’s little question the report reflects the thinking among a significant number of senior officers at CENTCOM headquarters – and among senior CENTCOM intelligence officers and analysts serving in the Middle East.”

That such ideas are being pondered by analysts and officers who actually know the realities of the Middle East – as opposed to staunchly anti-Islamist Washington politicians and pro-Israel proxies masquerading as American think tank analysts – is an important early signal of possible policy changes. Most Islamist movements indeed are pragmatic and opportunistic, as recent decades of their evolutions have shown; they are also heavily political and nationalist in nature, rather than mainly religious.

Most importantly, Islamist groups of all kinds – from the docile reciters of holy scripture and purveyors of charity to children, to the militant resistance fighters of Hamas and Hizbullah, to the occasional Al-Qaeda-type terrorists – are deeply driven by practical, identifiable grievances. These grievances are anchored in three main spheres: national socio-economic conditions, the autocratic policies of national governments and out-of-control security agencies in the Arab-Asian region, and the policies of foreign governments and armed forces (mainly American and Israeli) in the same region.

Addressing and ultimately relieving those underlying grievances is the key to dealing with these Islamist groups, most of which will transform or wither into other, non-militant organizations in the wake of a redress of grievances. It is heartening that some people in positions of authority and power in Afghanistan, NATO and the United States armed forces are now considering this rational approach to conflict-resolution, which seeks to promote peace and stability by politically addressing basic needs of justice and dignity.

What took them so long to embrace the obvious?

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