Wallwritings

by James M. Wall      

Israel never misses a chance to create a new road block for peace. The latest? Recognition Plus.

Of course, Bibi Netanyahu could not put this latest road block over on the U.S. public without the help and support of the people he loves, AIPAC and his media and congressional friends.

I am indebted to Philip Weiss (Mondoweiss) for the heads up on “recognition plus”–a term initially coined by Lara Ferguson, writing in the Americans for Peace Now blog.

The heads up comes from Rob Browne, writing in Daily Kos.

Rob Browne at Dailykos has an excellent piece on the evolution of the Israeli demand for “recognition-plus”– that Palestinians recognize Israel as the Jewish state, even before negotiations over land, refugees etc begin.

This “new and nonsensical” demand (which preemptively nullifies the right of return and valorizes the second-class status of Palestinian Israelis) began to show up two years ago.

And Brown demonstrates, that American groups played a crucial role in installing this language. The Jewish Council for Public Affairs, for instance. And congressional bills sponsored by Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida and Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

Most Americans believe what they see and hear about Bibi’s desire for peace in the Middle East. His June 14 speech was dripping with sincerity and his desire for peace with his Palestinian neighbors.

Those same Americans, and the mainstream media, most likely missed the latest addition to the demands. “Recognition plus” has been added.  This is not Bibi’s term, of course, but as Browne points out, “recognition plus” is a deliberate road block to peace.

Browne points to this section of Netanyahu’s speech, which the American media has ignored:

Palestinian moderates are not yet ready to say the simple words: Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people, and it will stay that way.

The Palestinian leadership must arise and say: “Enough of this conflict. We recognize the right of the Jewish people to a state of their own in this land, and we are prepared to live beside you in true peace.”

I am yearning for that moment, for when Palestinian leaders say those words to our people and to their people, then a path will be opened to resolving all the problems between our peoples, no matter how complex they may be.

Therefore, a fundamental prerequisite for ending the conflict is a public, binding and unequivocal Palestinian recognition of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people.

I have already stressed the first principle – recognition. Palestinians must clearly and unambiguously recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people.

What you are reading in Bibi’s speech is the result of carefully prepared road block, inspired by Hamas’ legislative victory over Israel’s preferred party, Fatah, in the Palestinian legislative elections in January 2006.

Faced with a possible unity government of Fatah and Hamas, Israel once again moved the goal posts down the field. After Hamas won the 2006 election, Israel added a new non-starter demand which it knew Hamas and Fatah would reject.

To the demand that the Palestinians accept the “existence” of the state of Israel, Israel added an adjective to the mix.  The Palestinians had to accept the “existence of the Jewish state of Israel”. Was “Jewish” in the earlier demands. No.

Here is Browne on earlier agreements before recognition plus was introduced by Netanyahu:

In peace agreements between Israel, Egypt, and Jordan, there was official recognition of the State of Israel. The September 1993 letter from PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat to Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin stated “The PLO recognizes the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security”. None of the parties had to recognize Israel as the official state of the Jewish people, and recognition was not a pre-condition to negotiations.

The 2006 Hamas election victory threatened to bring progress for peace with Israel.  So Israel launched a two track initiative.

Track One: Nullify the Hamas election by jailing more than 40 Hamas legislators and cutting off outside funding to Hamas.

Track Two: Give Hamas a recognition plus (a Jewish state) “poison pill” demand it was certain to refuse.

Recognition was already on the table, thanks to the Road Map agreement. Jewish state was not.

The international Quartet that created the Road Map,  the U.S. (George W. Bush), the European Union, Russia, and the United Nations, had agreed that recognition of Israel would be one of the pre-conditions placed on the Palestinians for the resumption of negotiations.

According to a Quartet statement from January 30, 2006, “all members of a future Palestinian government must be committed to nonviolence, recognition of Israel, and acceptance of previous agreements and obligations, including the Roadmap.”

OK, but still no “recognition of Israel as a Jewish state” was to be found in the Road Map mix. That little tidbit had to be added. Who better to make this happen than Israel’s staunch ally, the United States Congress, working under the direction of AIPAC.

Browne picks up the story:

Later in 2006, two Congressional Bills, H.R. 4681 (sponsored by Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R,FL-18)) and S. 2370 (sponsored by Sen. Mitch McConnell (R,KY)) added the concept of “recognition plus” to the equation.

Now, not only was there to be recognition of the state of Israel prior to any resumption of U.S. assistance, but the recongition had to include Israel as a Jewish state.

The final reconciliation bill negotiated between the House and Senate used the Senate bill’s language which required Hamas to have “publicly acknowledged the Jewish state of Israel’s right to exist”.

Thus did the U.S. Congress speak for the American people and recognize Israel as a Jewish state.  The Congress endorsed recognition plus, thereby giving its blessing to the Jewish state of Israel.

Palestinians and Arabs could not agree to Israel’s demand to be recognized as a “Jewish state” for reasons Israel fully understood, as Ghassan Khatib explains:

The first is that such recognition will undermine and further marginalize the position of the non-Jewish minorities in Israel, especially the Palestinian minority, which constitutes 20 percent of the population, but also of what appears to be a significant Christian minority among recent Russian immigrants.

The second problem is that recognizing Israel as a Jewish state will augment the Israeli position against Palestinian refugees’ right of return to the lands and homes from which they were systematically and violently ejected in 1948.

The third problem with the concept of the Jewish state is that it’s seen by many people, including Palestinians and Arabs, to be a racist concept that contradicts the modern notion of democratic political systems based on the equal and basic rights of all citizens of the state, regardless of their ethnic or religious affiliations. (emphasis added)

Lara Friedman writes in The Americans for Peace Now blog, (April 19, 2009) that “the demand for “recognition-plus” is Bibi’s new pretext for not pursuing peace”.

September 9, 1993 — the date that the PLO officially and formally recognized Israel’s right to exist in peace and security, and in return Israel recognized the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people — is a day that stands out in my memory.

As a US Foreign Service officer serving in Jerusalem during that period, I will never forget the palpable feeling of hope and anticipation that was in the air.

What is entirely absent from my memory is the recollection of any Israeli narrative at the time saying: “Sorry Mr. Arafat, but this recognition isn’t good enough.  What we actually need is your formal endorsement of Israel as a Jewish state.  If you can’t do that, then your recognition of Israel doesn’t count.”

It is absent not because my memory is faulty, but because this narrative simply didn’t exist.  Yitzhak Rabin did not say “thanks, but no thanks;” nor did Israelis.  Everyone understood that the demand of the Palestinians was and had always been: recognize Israel’s right to exist (or some slight variation thereof).

The historic September 9th declaration achieved exactly that.  The demand that the Palestinians “recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state” – or what hereafter will be known as “recognition-plus” – came much later.

Friedman asks, “Why didn’t Rabin go for “recognition-plus” in 1993?” Her answer:

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that this new condition – raised again last week [in his speech] by Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu – is nothing more than a ruse to avoid peace negotiations.  It didn’t come up in 1993 because Rabin, unlike some of his successors, wasn’t looking for such excuses. . .

If he [Bibi] can get the world to buy this new [recognition plus] demand, and then the Palestinians (predictably) refuse to meet it, he can make the case that he is ready to move forward to a peace agreement, but it is the Palestinians who are proving to be unreasonable and intransigent. . . .

Friedman calls recognition plus “a new and nonsensical demand” which “neither Egypt nor Jordan (nor the PLO) was asked to meet”.

To sell this latest road block as something it is not, Bibi Netanyahu depends on the ignorance and indifference of the American public. He relies on his AIPAC, media, and congressional friends to maintain that level of ignorance and indifference.

How’s he doing?  The evidence suggests he is doing pretty well. Have you seen recognition plus discussed in your favorite media outlet? I didn’t think so.

Meanwhile, Bibi uses recognition plus to defy the president of the United States.

Obama can overcome that defiance with a simple request to the prime minister of Israel:”Recognition plus was not in the original agreement, Bibi. Stick with the Road Map.”

Update: Iran Detaining Election Opponents

In a practice which sounds disturbingly familiar to Middle East election watchers, the Iranian government of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has “detained” leading supporters of the man who “lost” the election, Mirhossein Moussavi.

It has become increasingly obvious that the election was “stolen” (see earlier update below). Of course it was.

The familiarity comes from a reminder from Helene Cobban that the January 2006 Palestinian legislative election did not result in the ending Israel and the U.S. wanted.  So Israel and Iran took the same action to change the results, arrest the opposition.

There is a difference, however, in the sequence of their actions.  In Palestine, the Palestinian Election Commissioners, with international observers–led by Jimmy Carter–looking over their shoulders, declared the election to be above reproach.

Unlike the election in Iran, where there were no outside observers, and where the religious leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, holds the power in the country, it was easier just to jiggle the ballot boxes to produce the outcome that resulted in a 67% victory for President Ahmadinejad.

In Chicago we used to refer to that jiggling as “waiting for the river wards to come in”.

The Israeli government, which had no control over the Palestinian 2006 election, had to resort to Plan B to nullify the legitimate results.  Israel arrested the majority of the duly elected Hamas legislators and put them in Israeli jails, where they remain.

And just to make sure Hamas could not govern normally, Israel “persuaded” the U.S. and the European Union to cut off funds going into Palestine, a ban which also continues to this day.

There are more ways than one to nullify the result of an election. Both dictatorships and occupying forces agree that one of the most effective modes of nullification is to arrest the other side.

Iran is still learning.  Using both the river wards and the arrest of opponents is over doing it.  What you should do is jiggle the ballot boxes to achieve a closer race, say 53% to 47%. Then you close down the internet, especially Facebook, and let the opposition protest in the streets.

And, by the way, the power of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Iran should put to rest the belief that Ahmadinejad has his finger on the nuclear button, an instrument of mass destruction which is still a long, long way from reality. Ahmadinejad does the bidding of the religious authorities, who have shown no desire to wipe anyone off the face of the earth.

But what is reality when, like Israel,  you have the power to persuade the U.S. Congress and its media minions that Iran is a nuclear arms threat.

And what is reality when, like Iran, you have a comedic figure like Ahmadinejad to stir emotions of fear by denying the Holocaust (also an exercise in reality denial)?

We live in a culture of fear in which a substantial percentage of the American public still believes in the reality of WMDs. Controlling an election outcome is just a walk in the park in comparison to that sales job.

Update 4 p.m. Saturday; A Stolen Election?

According to today’s New York Times, Ahmadinejad won Friday’s election by a large margin.  Moussavi insists he is the winner, and speculation has begun that the election results were falsified.

Juan Cole suggests the election may be a “crime scene”.

I am aware of the difficulties of catching history on the run. Some explanation may emerge for Ahmadinejad’s upset that does not involve fraud. For instance, it is possible that he has gotten the credit for spreading around a lot of oil money in the form of favors to his constituencies, but somehow managed to escape the blame for the resultant high inflation.

But just as a first reaction, this post-election situation looks to me like a crime scene. And here is how I would reconstruct the crime.

As the real numbers started coming into the Interior Ministry late on Friday, it became clear that Mousavi was winning.Mousavi’s spokesman abroad, filmmaker Mohsen Makhbalbaf, alleges that the ministry even contacted Mousavi’s camp and said it would begin preparing the population for this victory.

The ministry must have informed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who has had a feud with Mousavi for over 30 years, who found this outcome unsupportable. And, apparently, he and other top leaders had been so confident of an Ahmadinejad win that they had made no contingency plans for what to do if he looked as though he would lose.

They therefore sent blanket instructions to the Electoral Commission to falsify the vote counts. (For more from Juan Cole, click here)

More updates to come as the story unfolds. . .

by James M. Wall

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s election four years ago as president of Iran was the gift that kept on giving to the Zionist narrative, the worldview that before the arrival of Barack Obama, dominated U.S. politics and media.

Not, I hasten to add, a gift to the Israeli people, far from it, but a gift to the Zionist zealotry that is driving the Israelis deeper and deeper into a dark future.

What zealotry? The zealotry personified by Israel’s drive-the-Arabs-into-the-desert foreign minister, the far-right Avigdor Lieberman, who resides in one of Israel’s settlements in the West Bank.

Helene Cobban’s blog, Just World News, is my inspiration for believing Mirhossein Moussavi (whose campaign colors are green; see above) will win the Iranian presidency.

Her blog carries a posting from Scott Harrop that gives ten reasons for predicting a Mousavi election.

Harrop’s posting is must reading, here.

Two reasons Harrop offers for a Mousavi victory: the enthusiasm of young voters and the “unprecedented” and “powerful” role women have played in his campaign.

Women have been energized by Musavi’s wife, Zahrah Rahnavard, a politics professor, artist, and former University chancellor.

A close finish, or a Mousavi victory, will run counter to the Zionist narrative peddled to U.S. media which describes Iran’s elections as badly flawed, echoing Israeli foreign ministry talking points.

Harrop also takes note of what he terms Ahmadinejad’s “helpers in the US Congress” who gave up on an attempt to “fast-track a punitive sanctions bill through Congress” prior to the election.

AIPAC had pushed for the bill which would have added further to Almadinejad’s image as Israel’s demon.  The bill was pulled back for “strategic reasons”.

Harrop writes that his prediction of a Mousavi victory could prove incorrect. But the race, for all the reasons he cites, will be close, which should undercut the current president’s bantam rooster cockiness.

It is really quite simple.  Without a cocky Ahmadinejad to kick around, Israel loses its rationale to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, which are still a long way away from anything but civilian use.

Assume for the moment that Ahmadinegad is defeated for reelection, or wins in a narrow finish. We can credit Zionism and its AIPAC-driven US Congress for a major assist in the outcome.

Israel’s hard-right government needs a “dangerous” Iran to divert attention from Israel’s decades-long plan to prevent the creation of a viable Palestinian state.

Fear of a  nuclear-armed Iran has been central to Zionism’s terror narrative.  This election now reveals the obvious.

Ahmadinejad is no dictator; he is not even a strong president. Regardless of who occupies the president’s office, Iran remains under the tight control of its Islamic religious authorities who want a strong Iran, not a world filled with enemies.

Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust-denying rhetoric was so irresponsible and false that he became a faux symbol of defiance.

The London Independent‘s Robert Fisk does not anticipate any change in Iran’s nuclear plans. They will just be clearer. It is not military arms the country seeks, but a nuclear capacity that burnishes its national pride, a pride in its ability to develop and possess what other major powers, especially Israel, have developed and now possess in abundance.

Fisk writes:

Whatever it is, this election is not about nuclear power. It may be about presidential arrogance and stupidity and fear, or about responsible government or unemployment or the economy. But the West should abandon hope of any real change in Iran’s nuclear strategy.

Mirhossein Mousavi may talk more sense to the Americans – if he wins – but the nuclear facilities will keep functioning. It is all a matter of pride in Iran – where pride is a special quality.

Regardless of which leader occupies the presidency, Iran wants to be a player on the world stage. And, Iran has the potential to be just that. The question will remain, what kind of player will Iran be?

Fortunately, the United States finally has a president who understands this. Barack Obama possesses the political skills to brush aside the Zionist zealotry that for decades has undercut U.S. efforts to bring peace and justice to the Middle East.

As a new president, Barack Obama must drag behind him the media-political AIPAC mentality that has made it so difficult for presidents to negotiate honestly on behalf of both Israel and a future Palestine.

The New York Times’ initial report after the Cairo speech indicates that Obama is up to the task. The Times report on the speech sent shock waves through keepers of the Zionists narrative with these opening lines:

In opening a bold overture to the Islamic world on Thursday, President Obama confronted frictions between Muslims and the West, but he reserved some of his bluntest words for Israel, as he expressed sympathy for the Palestinians and what he called the “daily humiliations, large and small, that come with occupation.”

While Mr. Obama emphasized that America’s bond with Israel was “unbreakable,” he spoke in equally powerful terms of the Palestinian people, describing their plight as “intolerable” after 60 years of statelessness, and twice referring to “Palestine” in a way that put Palestinians on parallel footing with Israelis.

Parallel footing?  With this phrase the president acknowledged Palestine’s equality to Israel, drawing an outraged response in the Jewish World Review where Anne Bayefsky writes:

President Obama’s Cairo speech was nothing short of an earthquake — a distortion of history, an insult to the Jewish people, and an abandonment of very real human-rights victims in the Arab and Muslim worlds.

It is not surprising that Arabs and Muslims in a position to speak were enthusiastic. It is more surprising that American commentators are praising the speech for its political craftiness, rather than decrying its treachery of historic proportions.

This is the Zionist narrative roaring out into the hinterlands with its cry, “the sky is falling!”

It is the same cry that followed the appearances of Meirsheimer, Walt, Carter, Finkelstein, Charles Freeman, and other advocates of peace and justice.  But this time, it is a popular and current president speaking.

The Cairo speech was “treachery of historic proportions? The President of the United States was guilty of giving a speech that was “an earthquake — a distortion of history, an insult to the Jewish people”?

To her credit, Bayefsky does acknowledge that there is such  thing as a different narrative out there. But to her, of course, it is a “fictitious” narrative. She writes further:

This parallelism amounts to the fictitious Arab narrative that the deliberate mass murder of six million Jews for the crime of being Jewish is analogous to a Jewish-driven violation of Palestinian rights.

Tony Karon sees this outrage for what it is. In his blog, Rootless Cosmopolitian, Karon puts it this way:

Those who would be threatened by Palestinians being viewed as equal human beings to Israelis may have reason to be concerned.

That’s because whatever its policy implications — and the jury is very much still out on those — Obama’s Cairo speech marked a profound conceptual shift in official Washington’s discourse on the nature and causes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and of America’s obligations to each side.

Regardless of the final winner in Iran, these recent weeks mark a turning point in the Middle East as a U.S. president shakes off the shackles of the Zionist narrative and becomes a champion of both Israelis and Palestinians.

And this same U.S. president understands that the Iranian election, regardless of the outcome, signals what the New York Times’ Roger Cohen describes as a profound change in U.S. foreign policy in the region:

Radicalism in the Bush White House bred radicalism in Iran, making life easy for Ahmadinejad. President Obama’s outreach, by contrast, has unsettled the regime.

With Lebanon denying an electoral victory to Hezbollah, the oil-driven Iranian economy in a slump, and America seeking reconciliation with Muslims, the world now looks a little different.

Photo above is from Reuters

by James M. Wall  

Reactions to Barack Obama’s Cairo speech were largely positive, with one notable caveat.  

Start with the ongoing struggle between two Washington, D.C. lobby groups, AIPAC, and its emerging challenger, J Street. 

The more moderate challenger’s rise to prominence was timely, just before Obama took off to Cairo where the President’s speech was praised worldwide.  

There remains, however, a dark cloud hovering over Obama’s rhetoric: His plans for Palestine, specifically, his failure to reverse the military assistance program George Bush gave Fatah in its attempt–backed by Israel–to defeat Hamas. 

Obama is in a position to stop favoring Fatah. He has backup at home where that struggle between two sides in the DC Lobby wars, as reported pre-Cairo by the Atlantic.com blog, is starting to tilt away from AIPAC:

AIPAC and J Street–the two major rivals in the Israel lobbying scene–each circulated a letter in Congress in May, both addressed to President Obama, both urging support for Israel and a two-state peace solution with Palestinians. 

AIPAC’s letter went out first, originally dated May 1, with House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Minority Whip Eric Cantor as major signers. They quickly had a list of 328 members taking the usual AIPAC hard line.  

J Street followed  with its letter on May 13,  with Reps. Steve Cohen (D) and Charles Boustany (R) at the top of a list of 87.

After the Cairo speech it is entirely possible that the robotic hold AIPAC has over 328 House members could decline. Before Obama’s election, it is hard to imagine that J Street could have found 87 members for its letter. 

The J Street 87 includes prominent members (Judiciary Chariman John Conyers, Ways and Means Chairman Charles Ranglel, Veterans Affairs Chairman Bob Filner, John Dingell, Barbara Lee) as well as a handful of freshmen (14 signers were elected in 2008).

Freshmen members of Congress know they are one AIPAC opponent away from a permanent return trip home.  The 14 Freshmen signers demonstrated courage. Their willingness to sign the J Street letter also offers hope that AIPAC’s fund-raising dominance is slipping. 

The differences between the two letters are highly significant. There was no difference between the two letters on AIPAC’s boiler plate goals: working closely with Israel, gaining a Palestinian promise to end violence, bringing in Arab neighbors to the discussions, and, course,  letting the sides negotiate on their own.

J Street’s letter accepted these goals. But J Street’s letter added new material: Condemning new settlement construction and a call for a buildup of the Palestinian economy and security, before any solution is reached.

Security for Palestinians? Previous AIPAC letters left the impression that its authors could not bring themselves to write the word Palestinians, and certainly they have never included the name that President Obama finally dared speak in Cairo: Palestine. 

Another major difference between the AIPAC and J Street letters came in the way each group wants to deal with  Israel.

AIPAC suggests that disagreements with Israel be kept private. J Street made no reference to that point.

That was a sticking point for Rep. Barney Frank, who sent his own letter to Obama Tuesday, endorsing all of AIPAC’s goals except for that one.

When Barney Frank starts rewriting AIPAC and sending his own letter, you can feel the techtonic shift rumbling below 

In his private letter to Obama, Frank explained:

Given the fact that we are both democracies where public policy should ultimately set with the support of the people in each country, it would be a mistake to refuse to discuss important differences on how to achieve our mutual goals in a way that the electorates in both countries could understand.

In his Cairo speech, President Obama agreed with Frank:

“America will align our policies with those who pursue peace, and say in public what we say in private to Israelis and Palestinians and Arabs,” Obama said Thursday in his address to the Muslim world–clearly siding against that part of the AIPAC letter.

Support for Obama continued to grow among U.S. religious leaders. More than 50 major religious figures sent a letter of support to President Obama. Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP) posted the letter and invites additional signatures. 

Many of the leaders also signed a similar statement after the recent Carter Center Human Rights Conference, in Atlanta. 

Writing from Dubai, where he listened to the Obama speech on his way to cover the Iran elections, Nation columnist Robert Dreyfuss was almost estatic over what the speech can mean to the Palestinians. 

For more than 60 years they’ve endured the pain of dislocation. Many wait in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza, and neighboring lands for a life of peace and secururity that they have never been able to lead. They endure the daily huiliations–large and small–that come with occupation. 

So let there be no doubt. The situation for the Palestinan people is intolerable. And America will not turn our backs on the legitimate aspiration for dignity, opporrunity, and a state of their own. . . .

. . .He even nodded to Hamas, acknowledging that Hamas has support among the Palestinians, and – amazingly – did not refer to the organization as a “terrorist group.”

Robert Fisk, writing in the London Independent, acknowledged both the brilliance of Obama’s rhetoric and the complex challenge of the task that awaits Obama.

“The situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable,” Obama said, and the US would not turn its back on the “legitimate Palestinian aspiration for a state of their own”. Israel had to take “concrete steps” to give the Palestinians progress in their daily lives as part of a road to peace. Israel needed to acknowledge Palestinian suffering and the Palestinian right to exist.

Wow. Not for a generation has Israel had to take this kind of criticism from a US President. It sounded like the end of the Zionist dream. Did George Bush ever exist?

Ay, there’s the rub. Bush did exist, and the mess he left behind will demand considerable skill to repair.  Fisk concludes:

An intelligent guy, then, Obama. Not exactly Gettysburg. Not exactly Churchill, but not bad. One could only remember Churchill’s observations: “Words are easy and many, while great deeds are difficult and rare.”

Great deeds will be needed to deal with the balancing act Obama is attempting as he reaches out to Hamas even as he allows his own military leaders to train a joint Fatah-Israeli effort against Hamas.

This is a major dark cloud that hovers over Obama’s fine rhetoric. 

That cloud is in Damascus, Syria, where Helena Cobban, former Christian Science Monitor correspondent interviewed Hamas political leader Khaled Meshaal.

The interview appeared on Cobban’s blog and was reprinted on the Foreign Policy blog. 

Meshaal found Obama’s speech both respectful of Islam and disappointing in its prescriptions for peace:

The speech was cleverly written in the way it addressed the Muslim world– using phrases from the Holy Kor’an, and referring to some historical events. And also, in the way it showed respect to the Muslim heritage. But I think it’s not enough. What’s needed are deeds, actions on the ground, and a change of policies. 

For example, if the Palestinians today don’t find a real change from the situation of siege in Gaza, there’s no point; the speech by itself doesn’t help them.

What they’re looking for is an end to the siege and an end to occupation . . such as ending Israel’s settlement activity, putting an end to Israel’s confiscation of Palestinian land and its campaign to Judaize Jerusalem; an end to its demolitions of Palestinian homes; and the removal of the 600 checkpoints that are stifling normal life in the West Bank.

Rather than sweet words from President Obama on democratization, we’d rather see the United States start to respect the results of democratic elections that have already been held. And rather than talk about democratization and human rights in the Arab world, we’d rather see the removal of General Dayton, who’s building a police state there in the West Bank.

The Hamas leader is referring, of course, to Lieutenant General Keith Dayton, U.S. Security Coordinator for the Israel-Palestinian Authority, a hold-over from the Bush administration, a U. S. military leader who continues, for the Obama administration, the Bush policy of arming Fatah to fight Hamas. 

It is in the current activities of General Dayton that a dark cloud descends over Obama’s sunny post-Cairo days. 

General Dayton recently praised P.A. [Fatah] security forces as being “founders of a Palestinian state”, a disturbing reminder of failed U.S. policies in Central America and most recently, in Dayton-trained Fatah forces’ failure to militarily overthrow the legitimately elected Hamas government in Gaza.

Khaled Meshaal is most certainly aware of the report on General Dayton recently posted on the Washington-based Israel Policy Forum blog. The report is from Israel National News. 

The American government has spent tens of millions of dollars outfitting the PA troops, which it calls “special forces,” possibly in order to avoid contradicting the Oslo Accords that limit military activities of the PA. Dayton has been overseeing their training, which takes place in Jordan and at a base built in Jericho with U.S. funds. Weapons for the “special forces” are provided by Arab countries, with Israeli approval.

As the Israel National News describes General Dayton’s understanding of his role, it is that of a military leader who is clearly training one side–Fatah– in an internal Palestinan conflict against Hamas. He refers to Fatah as the “founders of a Palestinian state” in a recent speech he gave to Fatah troops in Tulkarm, a Palestinian city in the northern section of the West Bank. 

The report continues (using Israeli nomenclature–Shechem and Hevron–for the Palestinian cities of Nablus and Hebron, and describing the Wall with the Israeli term, “Judea-Samaria seperation barrier”):

. . . the Obama administration plans to expand the training program for 1,600 troops, most of whom are deployed in large PA-controlled Arab cities, including Jenin, Shechem and Hevron. 

During his visit to Tulkarm, located almost adjacent to the Judea-Samaria seperation barrier and only a few miles east of Netanya, Dayton said:

“If it goes the way the [Obama] administration has asked for, we will accelerate dramatically what we are doing here in terms of training and equipment, and filling in the gaps in between.”

Arming Fatah against Hamas and training Fatah’s troops to fight Hamas contradicts this passage in Obama’s speech.

…Human history has often been a record of nations and tribes subjugating one another to serve their own interests. Yet in this new age, such attitudes are self-defeating. Given our interdependence, any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail.

So whatever we think of the past, we must not be prisoners of it. Our problems must be dealt with through partnership…That does not mean we should ignore sources of tension. Indeed, it suggests the opposite: we must face these tensions squarely.

If President Obama wants to face these tensions squarely, he must begin by ending General Dayton’s mission. Partnership means partnership, not partisanship, which favors one side over the other in an internal political struggle. 

by James M. Wall  

President Obama has a massive educational task on his hands. In his long-awaited Cairo speech, he addressed a world audience of more than 1.2 billion Muslims, an estimated 22% of the world’s population, second only to Christianity, which has an estimated 33% of the world’s inhabitants.

Obama chose a university campus in Cairo, Egypt to give his address, a city historically identified as a major center of Arab culture. Complicating his task is the fact that  only 12% of the world’s Muslim population is Arab.

Beirut journalist Rami Khouri notes that while The Speech will no doubt inspire, its true impact will finally be judged by how it affects Muslims who live in Gaza, Jenin, Ramallah, Beruit or Riyadh.  Can the leader of what is currently the world’s major superpower take his Cairo show on the road to Jerusalem?

Khouri is editor at large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.  He points Obama to three significant issues he must act upon and suggests a focus for his actions:

. . .  the Arab-Israeli conflict, the “resistance front” headed by Syria, Iran, Hizbullah and Hamas, and the lack of democratic, rule-of-law-based governance systems in most Arab countries. . . .

. . . As he wanders in Arab-Islamic lands this week, he should be guided less by the ghastly images of the 9/11 attacks, and more by his two seminal experiences in Chicago as a community organizer and a law professor. Law and rights, not terror and revenge, should be the lenses through which he encounters the Arab-Islamic world this week.

It will be his existential awareness of “law and rights” that will provide him with the “lenses” through which his experience as a community organizer and law professor will allow him to see the Middle East in all its Niebuhrian complexity. 

 He did not preach to south Chicagoans about the depth and wealth of African-American culture or the power of Christianity and Islam; he worked for housing loans, quality education, safe streets and other policy issues that affirm the equal rights of all Americans, and that matter to men and women who live in south Chicago.

Public speeches are not good platforms for policy-making. They are suitable for articulating one’s values, though. No offense, but nobody really cares about Obama’s ancestors or youth years, or his views on other religions. What we care about — and what he should explain clearly on this trip — is whether the United States government believes that habeas corpus and the 4th Geneva Convention, for example, apply with equal force to Arabs as to Israelis.

This weekend, Lebanon’s parliamentary election, carefully watched, by the way, by a team of monitors lead by former President Jimmy Carter, could very well produce an even larger victory for Hezbollah than it has achieved in previous elections.  

This would present President Obama with an immediate challenge: Will the United States government slavishly follow Israel’s script, branding Hezbollah and Hamas as “terrorist” organizations? 

Tony Karon is a South African-born Jewish journalist now writing for Time magazine. On his own blog, Rootless Cosmopolitan, Karon echoes Rami Khouri with this perceptive advance observation on the Obama speech:

The problem, of course, is that the breakdown between the U.S. and “the Muslim world” is not a misunderstanding of values, or a communication failure; it’s entirely about U.S. actions and policies, rather than the rhetoric in which they’re wrapped. People in Muslim countries understand American values, or the values America professes to uphold, and many are passionately attached to some of those same values.

What they expect of America is that it apply its own values when dealing with the Middle East. They would like very much, for example, the U.S. to act on that basis of Lincoln’s “self evident truth” that Palestinian men and women were created equal to Israeli men and women — an approach Obama’s own Administration has yet to demonstrate, as my friend Rami Khouri notes.

Karon also worries that the Obama White House has yet to move away from the Bush embrace of Israel’s failed policy of isolating Hamas.

Then, there are the worrying signs that he appears to have endorsed a renewed offensive by Palestinian Authority security forces against Hamas. That would be an unmitigated disaster, although the Israelis would love it — by ramping up their own assassination efforts against Hamas operatives in the West Bank, they seem to be trying to goad Hamas into relaunching its suspended rocket offensive in Gaza, knowing that a new security clash will take peace discussions entirely off the agenda.

And the problem here, of course, is that Obama’s key Arab partners — President Mahmoud Abbas and Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak — for their own domestic political reasons (neither has a democratic mandate, and both would lose free elections to their Islamist challengers), share Israel’s animus towards Hamas, and have been content until now to tacitly back its efforts to destroy the organization.

That’s not likely to happen, of course, but it leaves us contemplating a situation in which Obama is trying to build a “peace process” based on the fatally flawed foundations of a decrepit Arab (and Palestinian) political order largely at odds with its own citizenry.

Karon also points to a major article in the New York Review of Books, by Middle East analysts Hussein Agha and Robert Malley, that finds that for Obama, the starting point  . . . 

. . . .  should be recognition of some uncomfortable, brutal realities. These include the depth of inherited anti-American animus; of cynicism toward old plans and tired formulas; of popular estrangement from the regional leaders on whom Washington has come to depend; and of popular attraction to militant activists, militant behavior, and a radical worldview.

The consequence is that some well-worn recipes cannot work. Claiming eagerness to end the Arab–Israeli conflict or reach a two-state solution has become stale by dint of sterile repetition. President Bush did so, possibly more passionately and fervently than any predecessor. Yet few listened because few believed in what he said, least of all the Palestinians who were his supposed audience.

Agha and Malley conclude 

The broader point is this: a window exists, short and subject to abrupt closure, during which President Obama can radically upset Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim preconceptions and make it possible for his future plan, whatever and whenever it might be, to get a fair hearing—for American professions of seriousness to be taken seriously.

Is Obama serious? We have to believe he is.  The important thing is, can he demonstrate his seriousness to the child in Jenin and the young woman shopping in in the Old City market in Jerusalem. Can he reassure the mother in Tel Aviv that she has not been abandoned by Israel’s long time American ally?  

Not to put too much of a burden on Barack Obama, but lets face it, if he can’t do it, who could?