Category Archives: Issues

Netanyahu remains defiant

As Bill Clinton famously said about Benjamin Netanyahu in 1998, “Who the fuck does he think he is? Who’s the fucking superpower here?”

Twelve years later there is no sign that Bibi’s hubris has been tempered. In the midst of what Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, has told the country’s diplomats is the worst crisis in U.S.-Israeli relations in 35 years, what does Israel’s prime minister do? He declares that “building in Jerusalem – and in all other places – will continue in the same way as has been customary over the last 42 years.” In other words, Netanyahu reaffirms that Israel will continue on the same course that precipitated the crisis.

Meanwhile, Israel’s foreign minister today followed what appears to have now become standard diplomatic protocol in the aspiring pariah state by snubbing a visiting head of state, Brazil’s president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, because the latter declined to pay homage to Zionism.

I imagine that in fairly short order Israel’s leaders will no longer have the task of figuring out new ways of insulting their guests; they simply won’t have any guests to insult.

Even so, Netanyahu has persuaded his loyal American supporters that he has eaten enough humble pie. For that reason it seems hard to imagine that he will go very far in meeting a set of demands that Haaretz says were put on his plate when he got lectured by Hillary Clinton on Friday.

These were the demands:

1. Investigate the process that led to the announcement of the Ramat Shlomo construction plans in the middle of Biden’s visit. The Americans seek an official response from Israel on whether this was a bureaucratic mistake or a deliberate act carried out for political reasons. Already on Saturday night, Netanyahu announced the convening of a committee to look into the issue.

2. Reverse the decision by the Jerusalem District Planning and Building Committee to approve construction of 1,600 new housing units in Ramat Shlomo.

3. Make a substantial gesture toward the Palestinians enabling the renewal of peace talks. The Americans suggested that hundreds of Palestinian prisoners be released, that the Israel Defense Forces withdraw from additional areas of the West Bank and transfer them to Palestinian control, that the siege of the Gaza Strip be eased and further roadblocks in the West Bank be removed.

4. Issue an official declaration that the talks with the Palestinians, even indirect talks, will deal with all the conflict’s core issues – borders, refugees, Jerusalem, security arrangements, water and settlements.

The report continued:

Two advisers of the prime minister, Yitzhak Molcho and Ron Dermer, held marathon talks Sunday with senior White House officials in Washington and U.S. Mideast envoy George Mitchell and his staff to try to calm the situation. Mitchell will return to Israel Tuesday and expects to hear if Netanyahu intends to take the proposed steps.

At the beginning of Sunday’s cabinet meeting, Netanyahu tried to convey a message that there was no crisis in relations with the United States. But he sent precisely the opposite message to Oren in Washington.

In Oren’s Saturday conference call with the Israeli consuls general, he said that the current crisis was the most serious with the Americans since a confrontation between Henry Kissinger and Yitzhak Rabin in 1975 over an American demand for a partial withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula.

At Sunday’s cabinet meeting, Netanyahu said the matter had been blown out of proportion by the media. He added: “There was an unfortunate incident here that was innocently committed and was hurtful, and certainly should not have occurred.”

He said steps would be taken to prevent such cases in the future. “It is extremely important to understand that the State of Israel and the United States have common interests,” he said, adding that those interests “also require us to take decisions to change the situation in the country.”

Four consuls discussed the conference call with Haaretz. Some noted that in previous conference calls with Oren, the ambassador took pains to make clear that relations with the United States were excellent. This time, however, Oren sounded extremely tense and pessimistic. Oren was quoted as saying that “the crisis was very serious and we are facing a very difficult period in relations [between the two countries].”

Oren told the consuls to lobby congressmen, Jewish community leaders and the media to convey Israel’s position. He said the message to be relayed was that Israel had no intention to cause offense to Vice President Biden and that the matter had stemmed from actions by junior bureaucrats in the Interior Ministry and was caused by a lack of coordination between government offices. “It should be stressed that [our] relations with the United States are very important to us,” Oren reportedly said.

Several of the consuls suggested waiting, but Oren hinted that his approach reflected Netanyahu’s wishes. “These instructions come from the highest level in Jerusalem,” he was quoted as saying, adding that the utmost must be done to calm matters.

If only Washington could be more understanding and recognize that Israel has a dysfunctional bureaucracy. The Jewish state should be seen as a Middle Eastern version of Pakistan, then all these misunderstandings could be resolved. That at least is the counsel offered by Israel’s pre-eminent American booster, the Anti-Defamation League’s, Abe Foxman.

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Israel is putting American lives at risk

In Foreign Policy, Mark Perry describes an extraordinary Pentagon briefing on Israel’s impact on conflicts across the Middle East. Here is an excerpt and following some comments of my own, the author has provided me with additional background on his reporting.
[Important update: A senior military officer told Foreign Policy by email that one rather minor detail in Perry’s report was incorrect. A request from Gen Petraeus for the Palestinian occupied territories to be brought within CENTCOM’s region of operations was sent to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mullen, and not directly to the White House (who may or may not have subsequently been consulted). It is significant that the Pentagon made this correction, not because it was an important detail but on the contrary, because it was inconsequential to the overall narrative. In effect, the Pentagon clearly but discreetly said that there was virtually nothing in this report that could be denied.]

On January 16, two days after a killer earthquake hit Haiti, a team of senior military officers from the U.S. Central Command (responsible for overseeing American security interests in the Middle East), arrived at the Pentagon to brief JCS Chairman Michael Mullen on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The team had been dispatched by CENTCOM commander David Petraeus to underline his growing worries at the lack of progress in resolving the issue. The 33-slide 45-minute PowerPoint briefing stunned Mullen. The briefers reported that there was a growing perception among Arab leaders that the U.S. was incapable of standing up to Israel, that CENTCOM’s mostly Arab constituency was losing faith in American promises, that Israeli intransigence on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was jeopardizing U.S. standing in the region, and that Mitchell himself was (as a senior Pentagon officer later bluntly described it) “too old, too slow…and too late.”

The January Mullen briefing was unprecedented. No previous CENTCOM commander had ever expressed himself on what is essentially a political issue; which is why the briefers were careful to tell Mullen that their conclusions followed from a December 2009 tour of the region where, on Petraeus’s instructions, they spoke to senior Arab leaders. “Everywhere they went, the message was pretty humbling,” a Pentagon officer familiar with the briefing says. “America was not only viewed as weak, but its military posture in the region was eroding.” But Petraeus wasn’t finished: two days after the Mullen briefing, Petraeus sent a paper to the White House requesting that the West Bank and Gaza (which, with Israel, is a part of the European Command – or EUCOM), be made a part of his area of operations. Petraeus’s reason was straightforward: with U.S. troops deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military had to be perceived by Arab leaders as engaged in the region’s most troublesome conflict.

The Mullen briefing and Petraeus’s request hit the White House like a bombshell. While Petraeus’s request that CENTCOM be expanded to include the Palestinians was denied (“it was dead on arrival,” a Pentagon officer confirms), the Obama Administration decided it would redouble its efforts – pressing Israel once again on the settlements issue, sending Mitchell on a visit to a number of Arab capitals and dispatching Mullen for a carefully arranged meeting with Chief of the Israeli General Staff, Lt. General Gabi Ashkenazi. While the American press speculated that Mullen’s trip focused on Iran, the JCS Chairman actually carried a blunt, and tough, message on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: that Israel had to see its conflict with the Palestinians “in a larger, regional, context” – as having a direct impact on America’s status in the region. Certainly, it was thought, Israel would get the message. [Read the rest of the report here.]

In December 2006, the Iraq Study Group Report was explicit in making this linkage: “The United States cannot achieve its goals in the Middle East unless it deals directly with the Arab-Israeli conflict and regional instability.”

What Mark Perry’s report indicates is that for the Obama administration a tipping point has been crossed in its perception of Israel’s effect on the conflicts that span the region.

Until now, the necessity for a resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict has been framed in quasi-positive terms — such as that it would help defuse some of the hostility that the US now faces, or, that it would strengthen an alliance of nations attempting to curtail Iran’s nuclear program.

The shift, as expressed by Joe Biden last week and by the Petraeus briefing in January is that Israel is now being seen as a liability: the Jewish state is putting American lives at risk. “This is starting to get dangerous for us,” Biden reportedly told Netanyahu.

Such a shift marks a watershed in US-Israeli relations and so Perry’s report naturally raises questions. Indeed, the first line of defense from Israel and its supporters will be to claim that, on the contrary, recent events are nothing more than a bump in the road; that we can expect a quick resumption of business as usual between such close allies.

For this reason, I asked Mark — who I have had the privilege of working with in recent years — to provide some background to his report. This is what he said:

My piece on the briefing of Admiral Mullen by CENTCOM senior officers has occasioned a great deal of comment, as well as some skepticism: how accurate is the account? Was it told to me by direct participants in the briefing? Is there any basis for imagining that Petraeus has any kind of hidden agenda, whether that is a desire to expand CENTCOM – or even hostility towards Israel.

I won’t name my sources, even though it’s clear to people in the Pentagon – and certainly to General Petraeus – who they are. Was I told of the briefing by the briefers themselves? I will only say that there were four people in the briefing – the two briefers, Admiral Mullen, and Admiral Mullen’s primary adviser on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I know two of the people involved in the briefing. Whether or not they are my sources is something for the reader to determine. The account is not only accurate, it’s a precis of what actually happened. There is a lot more to it. The White House, State Department and Pentagon have not denied the account, and for good reason: it’s true.

Is there any basis for imagining that Petraeus has any kind of hidden agenda in ordering the briefing?

I have been reporting on the American military for thirty years. My work on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Four Stars, is the authoritative account on the subject. I have deeply rooted contacts in the military that go back thirty years. I have never met a senior military officer whom I do not admire. There is no greater insult than to believe that General Petraeus or any other senior American military officer would use the lives of American soldiers as a lever to enhance their own political future. My sense is that General Petraeus neither likes nor dislikes Israel: but he loves his country and he wants to protect our soldiers. The current crisis in American relations with Israel is not a litmus test of General Petraeus’s loyalty to Israel, but of his, and our, concern for those Americans in uniform in the Middle East.

It is, perhaps, a sign of the depth of “the Biden crisis” that every controversy of this type seems to get translated into whether or not America and its leaders are committed to Israel’s security. This isn’t about Israel’s security, it’s about our security.

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Obama gets kind of tough with Netanyahu

The Los Angeles Times says: “a dispute this week between the Obama administration and Israel has ballooned into the biggest U.S.-Israeli clash in 20 years.”

Tom Friedman says: “what the Israelis did played right into a question a lot of people are asking about the Obama team: how tough are these guys? The last thing the president needs, at a time when he is facing down Iran and China — not to mention Congress — is to look like America’s most dependent ally can push him around.”

But then Washington hit back — bam!

This is how Aluf Benn describes Obama’s get-tough approach:

Washington delivered its rebuke to Netanyahu through a number of channels. There was the extended censure by telephone from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a phone call from Biden, the summoning of Israel’s ambassador to Washington to the office of Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg, the condemnation from the Quartet and, perhaps most important, a media briefing Clinton delivered during a CNN interview which escalated private rebukes into a full-blown public reprimand.

The reproofs were reminiscent of the “low chair diplomacy” the Turkish ambassador to Jerusalem was subjected to by the Israeli Foreign Ministry at the beginning of the year. The media was informed that the conversation between Clinton and Netanyahu lasted 43 minutes, “rather than 10 minutes as usual,” and that the prime minister barely uttered a word.

Obama himself reportedly worded the message to be delivered to Netanyahu during his weekly Thursday meeting with Clinton, lest the argument be made that it was merely the secretary of state scolding the Israeli leader, and not the U.S. president himself.

A State Department spokesman described the conversation using phrases which bring to mind a teacher castigating a student, not a working discussion with the leader of a friendly country and ally.

The substance was no less damning than the form – Clinton spoke of an “insult” to the United States and of “harming bilateral ties.” She could not understand, she said, how such a thing could have been done in light of America’s strong obligation to Israel’s security. U.S. media interpreted these remarks as suggesting that Washington’s military support for Israel is hardly unconditional.

Clinton dismissed Netanyahu’s explanation that the decision to approve the housing plan was made without his knowledge, reminding him that as prime minister he is responsible for his government’s actions.

The statements from the United States were publicized Friday evening – Shabbat – while Israel was officially unable to respond, therefore affording the White House a media exclusive. The instinctive reaction from Netanyahu and his associates was to accuse Washington of a diplomatic ambush, to simply rely on the support of his backers in the United States. Indeed, Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, was the first to charge the White House with “humiliating” the Israeli prime minister.

This week presents Netanyahu with a difficult decision. He may choose to visit Washington as planned to speak at the AIPAC conference, which would embarrass the preeminent pro-Israel lobby and put it on a collision course with the Obama administration. Senior U.S. officials will likely decline meetings with him, unless he agrees to at least some of Washington’s conditions. Canceling his flight, however, will be interpreted as acknowledgment of the crisis in U.S.-Israel ties.

High drama! But will it be of any lasting consequence? I really doubt it.

To put this in perspective we should not forget that the initiative the Obama administration is in a desperate effort to salvage — so-called proximity talks — is one that virtually no one had any confidence would accomplish anything in the first place. A successful resolution to the current dispute means getting this initiative back on a track that leads nowhere.

The Jerusalem District Planning and Building committee has canceled two meetings planned for this week. Big deal. It can reschedule them in a few weeks once America and the media are suitably distracted by current events. Indeed, the closer mid-term elections come, the greater this administration’s interests will be in restoring cordial relations with Israel.

Daniel Levy, a former adviser to then-Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, says the administration is trying to “lay down a marker with [Netanyahu] that they will not allow him to make them look weak,” and no doubt that is true, but this is a marker on a movable line.

Nothing Netanyahu does or refrains from doing will reverse the perception of weakness that was Obama’s own doing when he caved on the issue of imposing a settlement freeze. To insist that this Israeli prime minister avoid doing anything to embarrass the US president merely underlines the extent to which this president is already highly susceptible to appearing weak.

As for whether the Israeli government has any interest in making meaningful gestures of reconciliation with the Palestinians, Ma’an reports on the latest indication: an order from Israeli authorities for the demolition of a mosque in Nablus, right in the heart of the West Bank.

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Washington’s cult of narcissism and Iraq

Tom Engelhardt writes:

Hubris? We’re bigger than that!

We’ve now been at war with, or in, Iraq for almost 20 years, and intermittently at war in Afghanistan for 30 years. Think of it as nearly half a century of experience, all bad. And what is it that Washington seems to have concluded? In Afghanistan, where one disaster after another has occurred, that we Americans can finally do more of the same, somewhat differently calibrated, and so much better. In Iraq, where we had, it seemed, decided that enough was enough and we should simply depart, the calls from a familiar crew for us to stay are growing louder by the week.

The Iraqis, so the argument goes, need us. After all, who would leave them alone, trusting them not to do what they’ve done best in recent years: cut one another’s throats?

Modesty in Washington? Humility? The ability to draw new lessons from long-term experience? None of the above is evidently appropriate for “the indispensable nation,” as former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright once called the United States, and to whose leaders she attributed the ability to “see further into the future.” None of the above is part of the American arsenal, not when Washington’s weapon of choice, repeatedly consigned to the scrapheap of history and repeatedly rescued, remains a deep conviction that nothing is going to go anything but truly, deeply, madly badly without us, even if, as in Iraq, things have for years gone truly, deeply, madly badly with us.

An expanding crew of Washington-based opiners are now calling for the Obama administration to alter its plans, negotiated in the last months of the Bush administration, for the departure of all American troops from Iraq by the end of 2011. They seem to have taken Albright’s belief in American foresight — even prophesy — to heart and so are basing their arguments on their ability to divine the future.

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Why did Joe Biden insult America’s friends?

In an interview on CNN, Hillary Clinton was refreshingly blunt in saying that Israel insulted the US:

But now that’s been clearly stated, why did Joe Biden have to cap the first insult by adding another when he said: “the United States has no better friend in the community of nations than Israel”?

That’s not true — and most Americans know it. Canada, Britain, Germany and Japan are all viewed more favorably by Americans than is Israel.

Is it because Israel is the most ill-mannered among America’s friends that it has to be flattered with this “best friend” status? Is it because Israel remains perpetually on the verge of throwing a tantrum that its wet nurse feels compelled to constantly sing sweet words to this troublesome infant?

At least there are a few Israelis who can see through this farce.

Akiva Eldar writes:

The apology offered by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Interior Minister Eli Yishai recalls the joke about the servant who pinched the king’s bottom. En route to the gallows, the servant apologized: He thought it was the queen’s bottom.

The statement issued by Netanyahu’s bureau said that in light of the ongoing dispute between Israel and the United States over construction in East Jerusalem, the plans for new housing in the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood should not have been approved this particular week. It also said the premier had ordered Yishai to draft procedures that would prevent a recurrence. In other words, Yishai is welcome to submit more plans for Jewish construction in East Jerusalem next week, when U.S. Vice President Joe Biden will no longer be here.

Based on Biden’s reaction, it seems that he (and, presumably, his boss) has decided that it is better to leave with a few sour grapes than to quarrel with the vineyard guard. In his speech at Tel Aviv University, he said he appreciated Netanyahu’s pledge that there would be no recurrence. But what exactly does that mean? That next time he comes, the Planning and Building Committee will be asked to defer discussion of similar plans until the honored guest has left? With the media storm dying down, Netanyahu can breathe a sigh of relief.

In a sense, the uproar actually helped him: To wipe the spit off his face, Biden had to say it was only rain. Therefore, he lauded Netanyahu’s assertion that actual construction in Ramat Shlomo would begin only in another several years.

Thus Israel essentially received an American green light for approving even more building plans in East Jerusalem.

Biden might not know it, but the Palestinians certainly remember that this is exactly how East Jerusalem’s Har Homa neighborhood began: Then, too, Netanyahu persuaded the White House that construction would begin only in another several years.

When Biden arrived, the Arab League had just recommended that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas accede to Washington’s proposal for indirect talks with Israel.

But instead of being able to leave with an announcement that the talks have officially begun, Biden is leaving with the news that the Arab League has suspended its recommendation.

Netanyahu can thus hope that the Ramat Shlomo imbroglio has deferred the moment of truth when he must reveal his interpretation of “two states for two peoples.” And just in case anyone failed to realize how impartial a mediator the U.S. is, Biden said in his Tel Aviv speech that the U.S. has “no better friend” than Israel.

For Netanyahu, the cherry on top was that the onus for advancing the negotiations has now been put on the Arab states – just two weeks before the Arab League summit in Tripoli, where the league’s 2002 peace initiative will again be up for discussion. For months, U.S. President Barack Obama has been trying to persuade Arab leaders not to disconnect this important initiative from life support. His argument is that nothing would make Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad happier than a final blow-up of the peace process and the outbreak of a third intifada. And his joy would be redoubled if the fire started in Jerusalem.

But while the U.S. may be papering over the rift for now, Western diplomats said the bill will come due once the talks with the PA begin (assuming they do). The U.S. has already said it will submit bridging proposals of its own during these talks, and its anger and frustration over the Ramat Shlomo incident are likely to make it far more sympathetic to the Palestinians’ positions, the diplomats said.

For instance, Netanyahu wants security issues to top the talks’ agenda, an Israeli source said. But the Palestinians want the first issue to be borders, including in Jerusalem.

And the European Union, which had planned to upgrade various agreements with Israel this week in honor of the resumed talks, has now postponed the upgrade until it becomes clear whether the talks will in fact take place.

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Afghan tribal rivalries bedevil a U.S. plan

The New York Times reports:

Six weeks ago, elders of the Shinwari tribe, which dominates a large area in southeastern Afghanistan, pledged that they would set aside internal differences to focus on fighting the Taliban.

This week, that commitment seemed less important as two Shinwari subtribes took up arms to fight each other over an ancient land dispute, leaving at least 13 people dead, according to local officials.

The fighting was a setback for American military officials, some of whom had hoped it would be possible to replicate the pledge elsewhere. It raised questions about how effectively the American military could use tribes as part of its counterinsurgency strategy, given the patchwork of rivalries that make up Afghanistan.

Government officials and elders from other tribes were trying to get the two sides to reconcile, but given the intensity of the fighting, some said they doubted that the effort would work. At the very least, the dispute is proving a distraction from the tribe’s commitment to fight the Taliban, not each other.

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times reports:

A growing number of Taliban militants in the Pakistani border region are refusing to collaborate with Al Qaeda fighters, declining to provide shelter or assist in attacks in Afghanistan even in return for payment, according to U.S. military and counter-terrorism officials.

The officials, citing evidence from interrogation of detainees, communications intercepts and public statements on extremist websites, say that threats to the militants’ long-term survival from Pakistani, Afghan and foreign military action are driving some Afghan Taliban away from Al Qaeda.

As a result, Al Qaeda fighters are in some cases being excluded from villages and other areas near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border where they once received sanctuary.

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Time for George Mitchell and the US to step aside

Among commentators unable to see beyond the bankrupt perspective that the United States has the indispensable role of mediating a Middle East peace agreement (if such an agreement is ever to be reached), much is being made about Joe Biden’s tough words “behind closed doors”. Laura Rozen quotes from a Yedioth Ahronoth report:

People who heard what Biden said were stunned. “This is starting to get dangerous for us,” Biden castigated his interlocutors. “What you’re doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That endangers us and it endangers regional peace.”

The vice president told his Israeli hosts that since many people in the Muslim world perceived a connection between Israel’s actions and US policy, any decision about construction that undermines Palestinian rights in East Jerusalem could have an impact on the personal safety of American troops fighting against Islamic terrorism.

Help us fight the war on terrorism, Biden admonishes his Israeli friends. But we are, they think but in this instance are too polite to say. That’s why we’re taking over East Jerusalem. We’re fortifying the front-line.

It seems to me that the crux of the issue is not the latest upset; it is that the so-called peace process has always rested on an unbalanced foundation. Which is to say, Israel will only accept the direct involvement of third parties that have a clear bias in their favor.

If President Obama wanted to do something truly radical, it might not have to take the form of applying pressure — pressure that would be fiercely and effectively resisted by the Israel lobby. On the contrary, it could be to acknowledge that American efforts have failed — not only his own but those of all his predecessors — and that there comes a point when failure has been so persistent and become so predictable, that it is time to step aside.

There is someone else waiting in the wings, eager to step in — a man who regards dialogue as the essence of politics and who can make a stronger claim to be even-handed than anyone in the United States or Europe: Brazil’s President Lula da Silva. He also happens to be the most popular political leader in the world.

Ahead of his visit to the Middle East next week, where his first stop will be in Israel, Lula was interviewed by Haaretz:

Lula was one of the first leaders to host President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad after Iran’s blood-stained election of June 2009. Brazil was also one of only five countries to abstain from an International Atomic Energy Agency vote last November on a condemnation of Iran.

He is set to visit the Islamic Republic in May, where his hosts will repay him in kind for the red carpet he laid out for them in Brasilia last November. When asked how he’ll be able to win over the Israelis, whose vantage point is related to the trauma of the Holocaust, Lula replies: “I spoke with the president of Iran and made it clear to him that he cannot go on saying that he wants Israel’s liquidation, just as it is untenable for him to deny the Holocaust, which is a legacy of all humanity. I added that the fact that he has differences with Israel does not allow him to deny or ignore history.”

In a way that will undoubtedly disturb those who will host him in Israel next week, Lula draws a direct association between the failure to advance Israeli-Palestinian peace and his planned visit to Tehran; between the need to ensure that Iran will not manufacture nuclear weapons and the need to resolve the Middle East conflict; and between the failed attempts at mediation led by international players, first and foremost the United States, and the need to bring in fresh new players – Brazilians, in all likelihood.

“I talked about Iran with many leaders, and particularly with those whose countries have a seat on the Security Council,” he explains. “The Americans, the French, the British, the Russians and the Chinese all want to advance the Middle East peace process. But I also feel that the parties to the conflict and the people involved in the process have long since grown tired of it. So, the time has come to bring into the arena players who will be able to put forward new ideas. Those players must have access to all levels of the conflict: in Israel, in Palestine, in Iran, in Syria, in Jordan and in many other countries that are associated with this conflict. This is the only way we will be able to advance Israeli-Palestinian peace, and at the same time be able to say clearly to Iran that we are against the manufacture of nuclear weapons.”

Lula does not overlook any of the elements in this comprehensive linkage when asked about the fact that Israeli patience regarding Iran seems to have worn thin. “The leaders I spoke to believe that we must act quickly, otherwise Israel will attack Iran. I do not want Israel to attack Iran, just as I do not want Iran to attack Israel. In an orderly world, people have to learn to talk to one another.” Here he seems to be alluding critically to the “proximity talks” about to get underway between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

“The appropriate partners from each country have to be found, and more serious talks conducted,” he continues. “The importance of talks between third- and fourth-rank officials [does not hold] even 1 percent of the importance of tete-a-tete talks between leaders. Politics is mainly contact. People have to look at each other, sense each other. A leader has to look into the eyes of his interlocutor instead of communicating with him through lower-level individuals.”

The Brazilian president says he is disappointed that all that remains of the Oslo Accords is “Nobel Prizes and photographs of people hugging each other,” as well as the fact that the Annapolis conference of November 2007, in which Brazil participated, did not have any follow-up. “This gives me serious doubts: Who really wants peace in the Middle East? Who has an interest in achieving a solution and who would like the conflict to continue? The impression is that someone is constantly working here as though he has hidden enemies, people who simply do not want an agreement to be reached.”

Lula describes himself as a negotiator, not an ideologue, a person who manages to get along with both Hugo Chavez and George W. Bush, with Shimon Peres and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He says he has never read a book in his life, even though everyone admires his “supreme wisdom” and “creative mind.” As a chairman of the workers union during the years of military rule in Brazil, he encountered and resolved many difficult conflicts.

“I was born into the politics of dialogue, I became president of this country through dialogue and I have conducted my entire presidency by means of dialogue. I believe that through dialogue we will succeed in solving all the conflicts which today appear to be unsolvable,” he says.

He is well aware that he will be regarded as “naive” by his Israeli interlocutors. He is also familiar with the counter-rhetoric of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – who likens Ahmadinejad to Hitler, Iran to the Nazi regime and the world of 2010 to that of 1938. Lula’s assertive response is likely to surprise even those familiar with his arguments: “Anyone who compares Ahmadinejad and modern-day Iran to Hitler and the Nazis is having the same kind of radicalism of which Iran is being accused. Anyone who takes that line is not contributing in the least to the peace process which we want to create for the sake of the future. You cannot do politics with hate and resentment. Anyone who wants to do politics with hate and resentment should get out of politics. Nobody can rule a country through the liver. You have to rule a country with your head and your heart. Other than that, it’s best to stay somewhere else other than in politics

No doubt many veterans of the peace process would scoff at the notion that the Brazilian leader might succeed where those who have made this undertaking their professions have consistently failed. But if there is one place failure should succeed it is in the cultivation of humility.

As for the Israelis, there seems little prospect that they have the stomach for a genuinely even-handed approach and if they were to decline such an offer then that is undoubtedly their prerogative. They should be given these options: fair mediation or splendid isolation.

Claudio Lottenberg, the president of Sao Paulo’s Albert Einstein Hospital and a leader of Brazil’s Jewish community notes: “Lula is an important rising player in the international arena, and Israel should take account of this. It is important for Israel to have partners and allies besides the United States.”

But not only is Lula an important figure; Brazil itself clearly has much to teach a world which must become a multicultural success if it is to have any future at all.

Lula’s ambition to make a deep imprint in the Middle East goes beyond his country’s international status, to what he describes proudly as “a long Brazilian history of peace and a life of brotherhood in a region of diverse cultures. More than 120,000 Jews live here in full harmony with 10 million Arabs. It would seem that people can learn from us.” Brazil terms itself “the world’s largest Lebanese country” (some six million of Brazil’s Arabs are of Lebanese origin), “the second-largest African country in the world” (after Nigeria), and also the second-largest Italian and Japanese countries. It is a huge blend of peoples and cultures that do not know the meaning of friction.

You’d be hard-pressed to find someone in Rio de Janeiro who hasn’t heard of Saara Street, where Jews and Arabs sell clothing, toys and other items side by side. Whenever tension in the Middle East rises, local television crews show up to film the Brazilian version of coexistence. “All Brazilians are brothers,” they say – hence their ability, in their view, to bring brotherhood to all other nations.

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Cornel West points out Obama’s hypocrisy on Israelis and Palestinians

Watch the clip above as Cornel West responds to this question:

The Obama administration talks about a new era of engagement. You spoke earlier about a “friendlier face of empire”. What does that mean? Is that just marketing? Or is there actually a change in US foreign policy these days?

Watch the whole 23-minute interview — if you live outside the U.S. in a location where Al Jazeera does not block access to its own videos.

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The peace-process masquerade falls apart

It turns out that at least when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict the difference between the Bush administration and the Obama administration is this: team Bush had better choreography.

The Guardian now reports:

The US vice-president, Joe Biden, today attempted to salvage the Middle East peace talks after the Palestinians announced they were pulling out of a new round of indirect negotiations before they had begun.

The Palestinian move was in protest against Israel’s decision to build hundreds of new homes in a Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem.

The withdrawal from negotiations, announced in Cairo by Amr Moussa, the head of the Arab League, represents a major setback to months of diplomacy by the US administration prior to Biden’s visit to the region.

The US vice-president said an agreement would be “profoundly” in Israel’s interests and appealed to the Israeli government to make a serious attempt to reach peace with the Palestinians

Even so, Biden went on to say that in Israel the US has “no better friend”.

Does the vice president, does this administration, have no dignity?

Is it so craven that in the moment of its humiliation it feels driven to ingratiate itself even further?

What Goliaths are these that never fail in turning America’s leaders into gibbering fools?

Gideon Levy offers credit where credit is due:

Here’s someone new to blame for everything: Eli Yishai. After all, Benjamin Netanyahu wanted it so much, Ehud Barak pressed so hard, Shimon Peres wielded so much influence – and along came the interior minister and ruined everything.

There we were, on the brink of another historic upheaval (almost). Proximity talks with the Palestinians were in the air, peace was knocking on the door, the occupation was nearing its end – and then a Shas rogue, who knows nothing about timing and diplomacy, came and shuffled all the proximity and peace cards.

The scoundrel appeared in the midst of the smile- and hug-fest with the vice president of the United States and disrupted the celebration. Joe Biden’s white-toothed smiles froze abruptly, the great friendship was about to disintegrate, and even the dinner with the prime minister and his wife was almost canceled, along with the entire “peace process.” And all because of Yishai.

Well, the interior minister does deserve our modest thanks. The move was perfect. The timing, which everyone is complaining about, was brilliant. It was exactly the time to call a spade a spade. As always, we need Yishai (and occasionally Avigdor Lieberman) to expose our true face, without the mask and lies, and play the enfant terrible who shouts that the emperor has no clothes.

For the emperor indeed has no clothes. Thank you, Yishai, for exposing it. Thank you for ripping the disguise off the revelers in the great ongoing peace-process masquerade in which nobody means anything or believes in anything.

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East Jerusalem in a Jewish stranglehold

Isn’t it time that the “two-state solution” be regarded as an object of the imagination no more real than the Tibetan kingdom of Shambala?

At the heart of this Middle Eastern fable is another Shangri-La: Jerusalem, capital of the Jewish state and a Palestinian state.

In reality, Jews in an unremitting march of expansion are taking over the whole city, making sure that East Jerusalem will never become a Palestinian capital.

As this report reveals:

Some 50,000 new housing units in Jerusalem neighborhoods beyond the Green Line are in various stages of planning and approval, planning officials told Haaretz. They said Jerusalem’s construction plans for the next few years, even decades, are expected to focus on East Jerusalem.

Most of the housing units will be built in predominantly Jewish neighborhoods beyond the Green Line, while a smaller number of them will be built in Arab neighborhoods. The plans for some 20,000 of the apartments are already in advanced stages of approval and implementation, while plans for the remainder have yet to be submitted to the planning committees.

When the Netanyahu government resisted pressure from the Obama administration to impose a settlement freeze, it also made it clear that it regards Jerusalem as indivisible and outside the scope of any agreement on settlements.

As for the “unprecedented” concessions that Secretary Clinton applauded in late October, this is the outcome:

Three and a half months in, the settlement freeze is turning out to be more of a slowing down. With all the exceptions being made, its effect is limited and it appears to be mainly a demonstration of Israel’s willingness to offer concessions to expedite the renewal of negotiations. The total disappearance of the settlers’ protests against the freeze, which they originally described as a disaster, testifies to the actual state of things.

Meanwhile, Jewish extremists occupying Palestinian homes in Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem have gained attention most recently as they sing the praise of the settler and mass murderer Baruch Goldstein:

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Andrew Sullivan sees “massive Israeli demonstrations” as a sign that the Goldstein supporters are a small minority. Their behavior certainly makes them an easy target for criticism but in a way they seem to serve more as a distraction than to highlight the problem.

The plans to expand the Jewish population in East Jerusalem are unlikely to mean that the putative Palestinian capital will be populated with Goldstein supporters. On the contrary, most of these Israelis are likely to move into East Jerusalem for economic rather than ideological reasons, confident that the neighborhoods in which they live will remain under the authority of the Israeli government.

Even if the majority of Israelis actually thought that the creation of a Palestinian state would be a positive development, all the evidence suggests that most Israelis simply don’t believe that such a state is ever going to exist. Israel has invested too deeply in its claim to Palestinian territory to ever let go. Indeed, the perpetuation of the two-state myth has actually served to make a two-state solution impossible.

The impasse in the peace process is not a failure to implement a two-state solution; it is a failure to confront the realities which must be grappled with once such a proposition is abandoned.

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The wrong kind of green

Johann Hari writes:

Why did America’s leading environmental groups jet to Copenhagen and lobby for policies that will lead to the faster death of the rainforests–and runaway global warming? Why are their lobbyists on Capitol Hill dismissing the only real solutions to climate change as “unworkable” and “unrealistic,” as though they were just another sooty tentacle of Big Coal?

At first glance, these questions will seem bizarre. Groups like Conservation International are among the most trusted “brands” in America, pledged to protect and defend nature. Yet as we confront the biggest ecological crisis in human history, many of the green organizations meant to be leading the fight are busy shoveling up hard cash from the world’s worst polluters–and burying science-based environmentalism in return. Sometimes the corruption is subtle; sometimes it is blatant. In the middle of a swirl of bogus climate scandals trumped up by deniers, here is the real Climategate, waiting to be exposed.

I have spent the past few years reporting on how global warming is remaking the map of the world. I have stood in half-dead villages on the coast of Bangladesh while families point to a distant place in the rising ocean and say, “Do you see that chimney sticking up? That’s where my house was… I had to [abandon it] six months ago.” I have stood on the edges of the Arctic and watched glaciers that have existed for millenniums crash into the sea. I have stood on the borders of dried-out Darfur and heard refugees explain, “The water dried up, and so we started to kill each other for what was left.”

While I witnessed these early stages of ecocide, I imagined that American green groups were on these people’s side in the corridors of Capitol Hill, trying to stop the Weather of Mass Destruction. But it is now clear that many were on a different path–one that began in the 1980s, with a financial donation.

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Jewish lobbying fails to stop EU support for Goldstone report

On Tuesday, a headline for Haaretz declared:

Jewish lobbying sways EU against support of Goldstone Gaza report

The article said:

Members of the European Parliament have backtracked from their plan to pass a resolution demanding implementation of the Goldstone report, in response to pressure from European Jewish leaders, Haaretz has learned.

After leaders of all the major EP parties had agreed on the wording of a draft demanding implementation of the controversial document – which accused Israel of war crimes in Gaza last year and proposed prosecuting Israeli officials in the International Criminal Court – the European Union’s legislative body was scheduled to vote on the measure Wednesday.

But Tuesday, leaders of the parties backed away from the draft, after the president of the European Jewish Congress, Moshe Kantor, warned them that adopting it would seriously harm EU-Israel ties.

“It appears inconceivable that while the United Nations itself hasn’t yet officially adopted this report, the European Parliament, in this motion for a resolution, calls for and demands its implementation,” he wrote in a letter sent to the heads of major EP parties.

The joint motion for the resolution was removed from the plenary session’s agenda after the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats) blocked it.

“The European Jewish Congress played an important role in blocking the legitimization of the Goldstone report,” an official from the Foreign Ministry said Tuesday.

That was Tuesday, but this is what actually happened on Wednesday:

Despite an intensive lobbying effort on the part of European Jewish groups, the European Parliament has endorsed the Goldstone report, the UN’s official investigation into the bombardment of the Gaza Strip in January 2009, a report that accuses Israel of war crimes and calls for the prosecution of Israeli officials in The Hague.

In a 335-to-287 vote splitting the house between left and right, MEPs backed a joint resolution from the centre left, far left, Greens and Liberals calling on the EU’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, and the bloc’s member states to “publicly demand the implementation of [the report’s] recommendations and accountability for all violations of international law, including alleged war crimes.”

The report also said:

On Tuesday afternoon, the level of lobbying had reached such an extent that Irish socialist MEP Proinsias de Rossa, the chair of the chamber’s Palestinian Legislative Council liaison delegation, sent around his own email encouraging deputies not to buckle under the pressure.

“You are being bombarded with mails at present seeking to undermine your support for the the Goldstone Report in the vote tomorrow,” he said.

“Tomorrow’s vote is a test of the credibility of this parliament’s commitment to human rights irrespective of political considerations,” he continued. “The joint resolution is a fair and balanced position negotiated by all the main political groups. I appeal to you to support it.”

Imagine a similar turn of events in the US Congress. Just imagine…

(I guess it’s about as easy as imagining Congress including any socialist representatives or a Palestinian liaison group.)

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Biden late for dinner

The Associated Press reports that after the Israeli government humiliated the US Vice President Joe Biden, the minister responsible says he’s sorry:

Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai, whose office announced the latest construction plans in east Jerusalem, apologized Wednesday for disrupting Biden’s visit. But he said the problem was merely about timing, not substance.

“We had no intention, no desire, to offend or taunt an important man like the vice president during his visit,” Yishai told Israel Radio. “I am very sorry for the embarrassment … Next time we need to take timing into account.”

Ministry spokeswoman Efrat Orbach said the ministry routinely issues announcements of planning decisions immediately after they are taken. But this is not the first time that such announcements have dovetailed with visits by top U.S. officials. Plans for hundreds of settlement apartments were announced during the peace mission of former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

The Israeli announcement drew an unusually harsh condemnation from Biden late Tuesday. And in an apparent snub Tuesday night, Biden pointedly arrived 90 minutes late to his scheduled dinner with Netanyahu

The Los Angeles Times reports:

Biden, who had come to try to smooth relations with a longtime ally and promote new peace talks, denounced Israel’s plans to build 1,600 housing units in traditionally Arab East Jerusalem as a threat to the search for peace.

“I condemn the decision by the government of Israel to advance planning for new housing units in East Jerusalem,” Biden said, calling it “precisely the kind of step that undermines the trust we need right now.”

“We must build an atmosphere to support negotiations, not complicate them,” Biden said.

The sharp turn of events abruptly changed the tenor of the trip in its second day, coming just hours after the vice president proclaimed his love for Israel and declared enduring U.S. support. Biden’s visit followed a year of tension brought on by Israel’s defiance of the Obama administration’s admonitions on precisely the same issue: housing settlements in disputed areas.

Obama administration cheerleaders like J Street might get a kick out of hearing Biden being harshly critical of the Israeli government, but what’s a denunciation like this really worth?

The administration either needs to threaten to apply real pressure on the Israeli government, or, if it wants to confine itself to diplomatic gestures then it should do so under the tutelage of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

In response to Israel’s latest contemptuous behavior, Biden could — he really could — have turned around and said adiós. He does after all belong to an administration that less than a year ago was advising Netanyahu to complete his “homework” on freezing settlements before it would be worth arranging a meeting.

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The price tag for Israeli intransigence

The day before Vice President Joe Biden arrived in Israel — supposedly on a mission to help kick-start peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians — the Netanyahu government made its contempt for the Obama administration clear by approving new settlement construction.

They were quick to take offense — they being the Israelis!

“While we welcome Vice President Biden, a longtime friend and supporter of Israel,” Danny Danon, the deputy speaker of the Knesset, told the Washington Post, “we see it as nothing short of an insult that President Obama himself is not coming.”

Washington on the other hand had no interest in creating a fuss about settlement growth — its impotence on that particular issue has already been amply demonstrated. Pushing for a real settlement freeze is passé. The new game is proximity talks and shuttle diplomacy.

After 17 years of direct talks it’s now time to talk from a distance and have George Mitchell like an Energizer bunny going back and forth between Jerusalem and Ramallah. Irrespective of how much life there might be in his batteries, the Arab League has thankfully imposed a four-month deadline on this charade.

If the latest “initiative” seems like an exercise in atmospherics, an Israeli official was straightforward enough to confirm the fact when he told Ynet that resuming talks with the Palestinians “would create an atmosphere in the Arab world and the international community that would allow the world to focus on the real threat – Iran.”

George Mitchell is going to allow the Israelis to talk to the Palestinians so that the world can focus on Iran.

It’s not a novel idea. It came up three-and-a-half years ago in Washington when Philip Zelikow, Special Counselor to then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, caused a stir by making a similar linkage between the threat from Iran and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The controversy in Zelikow’s suggestion was that it hinted that the Bush administration might defy Tel Aviv and remove the peace process from its preservative, but Zelikow’s concern was the same as that of the Israelis now: how to mount pressure on Iran. This depended, he said, on strengthening an anti-Iran coalition.

What would bind that coalition and help keep them together is a sense that the Arab-Israeli issues are being addressed, that they see a common determination to sustain an active policy that tries to deal with the problems of Israel and the Palestinians. We don’t want this issue … [to] have the real corrosive effects that it has, or the symbolic corrosive effects that it causes in undermining some of the friends we need [as] friends to confront some of the serious dangers we must face together.

Note that Zelikow was not pushing for anything so grand as a resolution to the conflict, merely that an effort be made to create “a sense” that the issues were being addressed.

Initiatives, summits, and dark-suited earnestness with a liberal sprinkling of handshakes — we all know the routine. “What will they ask Israel to do? Meet with Abu Mazen? – so you’ll meet with Abu Mazen,” one Washington hand told Haaretz at the time.

That was 2006. Now in 2010 the Israelis don’t even need to inconvenience themselves by sitting in the same room as the Palestinians, even though Netanyahu would be happy to be granted the photo-op of face-to-face talks — talks that he can be confident will be fruitless.

The anti-Iran coalition might still be rather shaky but there is another coalition that has proved to be durable and near universal: the coalition of states who remain content to pay lip-service to the Palestinian issue; the political leaders who gladly shake hands with Mahmoud Abbas as though having Ramallah’s jaded political leaders received in global capitals was all the Palestinians could ever have aspired for.

But when it comes to dealing with the Israelis no one has a better understanding than the Israelis themselves. Jewish settlers in the West Bank insist that if they are uprooted, others will be forced to pay the “price tag.”

President Obama on the other hand insists that for Israel “the status quo is unsustainable” but neither he nor any of the other political leaders who profess some level of concern for the Palestinians have been willing to exact a price for Israeli intransigence. Until a price tag is applied effectively, Israel can remain confident in the durability of the status quo.

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The Marjah mirage

Gareth Porter writes:

For weeks, the U.S. public followed the biggest offensive of the Afghanistan War against what it was told was a “city of 80,000 people” as well as the logistical hub of the Taliban in that part of Helmand. That idea was a central element in the overall impression built up in February that Marjah was a major strategic objective, more important than other district centers in Helmand.

It turns out, however, that the picture of Marjah presented by military officials and obediently reported by major news media is one of the clearest and most dramatic pieces of misinformation of the entire war, apparently aimed at hyping the offensive as a historic turning point in the conflict.

Marjah is not a city or even a real town, but either a few clusters of farmers’ homes or a large agricultural area covering much of the southern Helmand River Valley.

“It’s not urban at all,” an official of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), who asked not to be identified, admitted to IPS Sunday. He called Marjah a “rural community.”

Not surprisingly, it’s hard to find photographs of Marjah’s “city center”. Even so, it’s reasonable to infer that the flag-raising ceremony that took place on February 25 when the Afghan central government reclaimed control of Marjah would have taken place at some sort of center, near some sort of prominent civic building.

This is the occasion:

Two days earlier, while US Marines were conducting counterinsurgency operations “through a residential area of the city” one soldier found time to pet goats:

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