Hillary Clinton, Gaza, and the six-state solution

Welcome, Madame Secretary.

Welcome to Israel, a country whose byzantine electoral system has managed only to elect an outgoing premier-for-life. Advertisement Welcome to a nation in which, with apologies to a former Louisiana legislator, half the country is under fire, and the other half is under indictment.

Welcome to a peace process which, in the manner of lies, damn lies, and statistics, seems determined to prove that there are impossibilities, absolute impossibilities, and Two States for Two Peoples.

Welcome, that is, to the political campaign of your life.

At this, the outset of your tenure at State, the campaign for peace in the Holy Land gives every appearance of a diplomatic offensive. Don’t be fooled. You and your president must approach this challenge for what it is: a campaign for swing states.

At stake is nothing less than the conflict the world wants most to solve.

To prevail, you will need to successfully contend with six swing states. There are, first of all, the Four States for Four Peoples located within the cramped confines of the Holy Land itself – two of them Palestinian -one in Hamas-ruled Gaza, one in the Fatah-led West Bank – and two of them Israeli – one for settlers, one for the rest of us.

Then, for good measure, there are the swing states of Syria and Iran.

These six are the keys to Middle East peace, and the reason for its absence.

The conflict is so hidebound, the sides so exhaustively jaded, that you will need every ounce of creativity, energy, sensitivity, wiles, wisdom, charm and against-the-squall optimism to make a half an ounce of headway.

Your opening moves have been useful. The hundreds of millions of dollars in aid earmarked for reconstruction in Gaza recasts the U.S. policy message in a way that will be difficult for Israel and the Palestinians to ignore. It will lend fresh impetus and urgency to solving the logjam over border crossings and the critical need to speed reconstruction aid into the Strip.

One left-field reason that U.S. the aid may actually foster movement: Americans, who have been notably understanding of wide-scale Israeli attacks on heavily populated areas, may take heightened interest in the rebuilt structures, and having them remain intact. This is, in turn, a potentially powerful incentive for Israel to seek alternatives to the devastation of the recent war, whose effectiveness inn the service of Israel’s interest has yet to be demonstrated.

Herewith an overview of the swing states.

1. EXODUS ISRAEL In essence, the nation within the pre-1967 borders of the state of Israel.

THE UPSIDE: Opinion polls have consistently shown that a majority of Israelis, Jews and Arabs alike, favor a viable independent Palestinian state in the West Bank. In fact, given Avigdor Lierberman’s explicit endorsement last week of such a state, a clear majority of 70 Knesset members in the 120-seat house may be said to favor such an eventual solution [Kadima (28 seats), Yisrael Beiteinu (15), Labor (13), Hadash (4), Ra'am-Ta'al (4), Meretz (3), and Balad (3)

THE RUB: Qassam and Grad/Katyusha rocket attacks in the wake of the 2005 disengagement from the Gaza Strip have gutted all Israeli popular support for a withdrawal in the West Bank in the foreseeable future.

THE WAY FORWARD: High energy, under-the-radar diplomacy with presumptive prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Allow him to pay domestic lip service where needed, but encouraging him to quietly but powerfully explore a peace deal with Syria and take back-channel local steps like gumming up new settlement construction in bureaucratic mire [see next].

2. THE ORANGE FREE STATE The settlement empire in Judea, Samaria [the West Bank] and East Jerusalem.

THE UPSIDE: The financial crisis along with fringe anti-government extremism on the part of a small but vocal segment of the settler population has cooled general Israeli sympathy and support for fostering settlements.

THE RUB: Despite the obvious differences in form and function, settlement construction inflames Palestinians in much the same way that Qassam rockets infuriate Israelis, placing peace that much farther from reach. Meanwhile, the rise of radical Islam among Palestinians props up the settlement enterprise, adding weight to the basic settler argument that Arabs covet Tel Aviv as part of a Palestinian state every bit as much as they claim Jenin and Nablus.

THE WAY FORWARD: Continued U.S. support for and coordination of successful Palestinian Authority police security responsibility in Arab population centers of the West Bank, fostering greater autonomy, less friction, and tangible movement toward future Palestinian sovereignty. Also, savvy U.S. encouragement of concessions to boost employment and economic growth for Palestinians in the West Bank, at the same time ensuring that this does not come at the expense of the security of settlers. Also, the U.S. should lend planning assistance toward a future two-state solution, with settlement concentrated in enclaves along the 1948-67 Green Line borders, the geographic option left open for a Palestinian state including part of Jerusalem as a capital, and free movement for Palestinians north and south in the West Bank.

3. QASSAMISTAN The Gaza Strip, more rigorously Islamic and poorer by far than the West Bank. Herein dubbed Qassamistan, and not Hamastan, in commemoration of the lethal role that the rockets have played in the death of the peace process.

THE RUB, WHICH MAY ALSO BE THE UPSIDE: Hamas, sole ruler of Gaza since bitter civil warfare with Fatah in mid-2007, is itself divided at least three ways. Once a movement with iron discipline and one voice, Hamas’ leadership is shared with varying levels of ease between the Damascus-based Political Bureau of Khaled Meshal and his deputy Musa Abu Marzuk, the founding Gaza branch of Ismail Haniyeh and Mahmoud Zahar, and Izz el-Din al-Qassam, the group’s shadowy but influential military wing. Despite an unwillingness to amend the group’s frankly and even murderously anti-Semitic charter, there have been voices within the group suggesting that Hamas would be willing to reach an accommodation with Fatah and even, on a level which allows it its own lip service, an eventual co-existence with Israel.

THE WAY FORWARD: Intelligent and largely unseen U.S. diplomacy to help forge a Palestinian unity government which Israel can suck up and live with, so that negotiations on a wide range of sub-peace-deal issues (e.g., aid distribution, prisoner exchange including Gilad Shalit, border crossing policy) can take place without one Palestinian side, or Israel, intentionally scuttling any talks between any two of the others. Key: An effective Egyptian role in mediation and in cooling cross-border attacks.

4. THE DUCHY OF UPPER PALESTINE East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Culturally and to an extent linguistically different from Gaza, and with a legacy of some condescension toward the Strip and its residents.

THE RUB: Fatah’s long history of corruption and double dealing has harmed its standing with Palestinians. Many younger residents of the West Bank have opted for radical Islam and the eventual erasure of the Jewish state.

THE UPSIDE: Successive Palestinian disappointments this decade have effectively eroded support for every Palestinian faction in existence, leading to signs of a new openness for solutions to the conflict, along with hope for economic stability.

THE WAY FORWARD: Fostering the Fatah-ruled West Bank as a new model for an eventual independent state. Convincing Israel to let Fatah-PA control security (and suppress the Islamic Jihad and armed Hamas units) in the West Bank, rather than having Israeli soldiers undermine PA authority in high-profile IDF raids.

5. SYRIA Arguably the most important swing state of them all.

THE RUB: Damascus still plays host to a range of ultra-militant Palestinian organizations. It remains allied to Iran and, as such, is crucial to the power Hezbollah holds in Lebanon.

THE UPSIDE: Syria, increasingly cash-starved as falling oil prices sap Iran’s treasury, is desperate to end its international isolation, and fervently desires Washington’s help to that end. Netanyahu has flirted with the prospect of peace with Syria in the past, knowing that only a Likud-led government could command the clout needed to give up the Golan. Were such a peace concluded, Hezbollah would lose much of its strength in Lebanon, and there would be strong Palestinian public pressure for a final peace as well.

THE WAY FORWARD: Encourage Netanyahu to pick up where he left off in the 1990s.

6. IRAN

THE RUB: Nuclear weapons research, ballistic missile research, lobbying and backing Hezbollah, Hamas, for proxy wars.

THE UPSIDE: Plummeting oil revenues, economic crisis, long-term effects of inflation and imbalance of wealth, an internet-aware younger generation. An election later this year, which could topple Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

THE WAY FORWARD: Keep back channels open to Tehran, while supporting Netanyahu, should he pick up with Syria.

Life in spite of everything – Gaza Sderot

Two cities separated by a little more than three kilometre. Millions experiencing the same fears and horrors. Violence nourishing the same hate. If you listen closely what people from both side tell you, you understand at first sight simple fact of life. Everybody wants to have to pursue happiness for her- and himself and their descendants. In conflict the most common point you can find among enemies is the way people mourn over the loss of a child. So while we are divided by race, colour, social class, sex, religion, nationality and abilities we still are the literally identical. Today such a sentence should not need to be written, at least not again. To be honest, it’s with a sad feeling that I write these lines. We are constantly reminded through the action of ourselves or through external events that it is far more natural, or at least seems, to behave violently than to overcome this impulse. It is important to note that it is through our intellect and our experiences that we overcome it. But, and this is a crucial point, we are the result of evolution, of a natural fight for survival, to put it far to simply we fight for the right to procreate, we do nothing more than to protect the future of our genes.

Arte TV followed several citizen of both cities during the month before the military incursion. It is a documentary revealing, at close observation, more about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than many well known so-called ‘experts’.

See for yourself  – http://gaza-sderot.arte.tv/

Après moi, le déluge

The ongoing violence in Gaza, the siege, the humiliation and the apathy of world leaders create the next generation of terrorists. While it seems that the blood which is currently spilled in this round of violence is mostly Palestinian, it will be the state of Israel and its citizens who will carry the final burden. However, long sightedness is not an Israeli virtue.

Karl Marx informs us that shame is a revolutionary sentiment. Jean Paul Sartre encourages us to inform ourselves so to feel that sentiment. The first time I really understood this idea was in 2002. At that time I was still soldier in the IDF. When I was off duty I lived in Tel Aviv.

We, that is a bunch of new immigrants, shared a single room flat plus a roof top. Two (Palestinian) friends of us had lost their jobs and flats due to the intifada and we, as friends do, invited them to stay with us. This were uneasy days for them. They had to hide constantly. Every small excursion turned into an adventure. Countless times did we have to go to the Abu Kabir jail in Holon to pick up our friends after they had been arrested. It was also a time of intense discussions and mutual understanding. I wouldn’t want you to think that this was some kind of ‘humanitarian’ action. We were friends, first and foremost.

One Saturday in spring Adel’s cousin Abed came from Nablus looking for work. He had just turned 20 and had never left Nablus before. We accommodated ourselves to make one more sleeping spot. In the afternoon then we thought to go to the beach.  Avoiding the patrolling police squads we reached the sea. While I was walking into the water, someone grabbed my hand. I looked up. It was Adel’s cousin. With tears in his eyes he confessed to me that he saw the sea every day from his home but had never sat a foot into it. He was afraid. In this moment, for the first time I understood what the occupation meant. It meant to have a world full of possibilities untouchable, right behind a glass wall. In this very moment I felt ashamed like I’ve never did before.

People like Abed are an exception. While he felt the humiliation of the occupation every single day as a young man unable to provide for his family, he did not fall into blind hatred. This in itself is not an accomplishment. However, separation leads to ignorance and ignorance to hate. Many others chose another path. The path of resistance and violence. They fill the cells of our prisons, planning their revenges.

In the streets of Gaza, somewhere there is a boy. He grew up in eternal violence. Violence against Israel, but also between rival palestinian factions. On the one hand he recognizes the limits of the Palestinian resistance movements to face the IDF. On the other he sees the incapacity of Arab leaders to unite in the face of the attacks on Gaza. He observes the sly smiles of senior Fatah members, stating that Hamas has brought this upon itself. He hears the helpless UN security council stumbling. He knows, only through more violence, more resistance will he one day be free. Free to travel, free to educate himself and his children, free to pursue happiness.

The price tag for our security is his freedom.

Tahadiye Now!

Divide et Impera

In 169-170 Flavius Josephus informs us about Gabiniuses’ efforts to divide the Jewish Nation into smaller fractions, which ultimately lead, a century earlier, to the destruction of Jerusalem and the defeat of the Judean Revolts. Flavius was referring to Maxim’s ‘Divide et Impera’ (Divide and Rule) which stipulated that in order to gain and maintain economic, military and political power, weakening the enemy by dividing it into opposing or at least conflicting interests was and remains to be a valid and successful strategy.

The current events in the Palestinian Authority are just another example. Israel would be satisfied to implement a ceasefire on its terms, the Fatah hopes to regain the public trust by showing how Hamas failed. In fact it is the international isolation of the Hamas government that is to be blamed for the current situation. Since month the peace movements have stopped calling for peace, but for ceasefire instead. So should the new grass-root organizations be called ‘Tahadiye Now!’. Hopefully not.

Since the rift between Hamas and Fatah took such dimensions Israel and Egypt, but also the EU and the US, have tried to isolate the Hamas government. It is of outmost importance to understand that Hamas, especially in Gaza, is not some sort of marginal group. It is a strong social movement supported by, first and foremost, the people.  Only few seem to remember that Israel ’supported’ Hamas in the early 1970s. It was seen as a sound counterweight movement to the PLO.

The blindness of the war hawks

If we are to promote democracy as a desirable value and the ideal form of social organization, we in no manner can approve a coup d’état of democratically elected governments. The EU and the incoming Obama administration should remove the Hamas from the list of terror organizations for some diplomatic achievement. I’m aware that this is a highly sensible issue. But we have to understand that it is only by upholding values of freedom of speech and of thought that we live up to our own expectations.

While the military removal of the Hamas government would lead to short term reduction of violence, similar to the wall in the West Bank, in the long term it will create more readiness for violence and escalation and a further incentive to acquire more and better military equipment. Examples are to be found all over the world. Weak ‘puppet’ governments are toppled sooner or later by an ‘authentic’ national movement. The resurrection of the Taliban in Afghanistan is just a last example.

Currently both sides are preparing for a ground offensive. The IDF knows that it won’t be able to stop the rocket launching without it. Hamas was well aware that this day would come and has prepared accordingly. Should it come to a ground offensive there will be a lot of causalities on both sides, however, most likely less civilians will be injured.

In 1907 Yitzhak Epstein wrote an article entitled ‘The hidden question’. In this article he mentioned the incapacity of the Zionist movements to understand the other national movement present, namely the Palestinian one. The article was largely ignored, as it would be today too. But it remains valid. The eternal problem lies in the incapacity to accept that there are two, and for now even three, national movements in Israel/Palestine which demand and won’t stop until they determine their lives themselves. In this sense the Hamas movement today is nothing else than the Irgun. Not a terror group but a paramilitary national movement.

Israel attacks Gaza – Goliath vs. David Round 13

by Raif Azoulay

Round 13 or Operation ‘Solid Lead’

The sirens haul anew throughout Gaza. Identical to the bell of a box match,  its sound marks the beginning of hostilities and unleashes the fighters from their respective corners. The sirens  seem to shout, ‘and here we go…Round 13′.

Suddenly the sirens mute and are replaced by the mind-numbing noise of fighter jet drones. Fighter jets are nothing new in Gaza. Ramy, an old friend, used to tell me that they were an integral part of the landscape. But this time it is different. With unprecedented strength today over sixty jets hit fifty targets killing over 200 Palestinians and injuring many more. According to Israel, the attacks came as a response to the ongoing rocket shelling on southern Israel, killing one and injuring four today.

Numbers don’t talk. However, those creating them do. In an interview with the Israeli Broadcasting Chanel Yossi Levy the Foreign Ministry’s spokesman for the Israeli media explained that Hamas was to face the responsibility for the many dead. He maintained that Israel was promoting human rights, which Hamas violated, and in an unprecedented effort (Annapolis) reached out to the Palestinians. Asked for a reaction to the numbers of casualities, he calmly replied that Gaza ‘is the densest place on earth’, carefully avoiding to reflect on how it became it. He further failed to mention that Gaza resembles rather a refugee camp than a city or region. The central point of his message was the need to promote a coherent message across the globe of an Israel fighting on behalf of the Palestinian and their rights – against the democratically elected tyrant which he sees in Hamas. Later in his speech to the nation, Olmert reiterated the points Levy made. Explicitly pointing out that he does not intend to fight the Palestinian people. The public was prepared for a prolonged fight. It seems Levy’s message already reached Olmert.

It is interesting to observe the media in the early hours of a conflict. The message that it is not Israels choice to fight and that Hamas brought this wrath upon themselves was repeated time after time. Ridicule examples were brought up, incoherent arguments, falsifications, omissions and possibly even lies.

A new reality and an ever newer one

Since the second Intifada only sporadic and local incursions have occurred in Gaza by the IDF. Hamas used this time effectively. Entering this round of clashes, the IDF is not fighting a terror organization anymore, but a well structured and disciplined para-military guerrilla. In the light of the events in Lebanon from 2006, Hamas improved its training facilities and has turned Gaza into a deadly mining field should Israeli ground forces decide to enter the strip. Hamas forces count fifteen thousand soldiers. Among them some thousand soldiers belonging to the Iz al-Din al-Qassam, the Palestinian ‘revolutionary guards’. It is predictable that Fatah, Hamas and the other factions will put their differences aside during the escalation.

Any violent military conflict entails tragedies. Nothing new under the sun.

However, the reasons why we fight are determinant. A deeper look at Israeli domestic politics could help shed some light on this incursion. While Prime Minister Olmert is preparing his suitcases, disconnected from reality, his possible successors all fall into strategic role games. According to any poll, at the current moment, opposition leader Netanyahu is set to win the elections. The disintegration of Ariel Sharon’s Kadima party seems inevitable, leaving two main protagonists of Israeli politics once again face to face. Labour vs. Likud.

It does not look good for Ehud Barak’s Labour party. These days he is exposed to a lot of pressure. In my opinion, Barak sees a crucial opportunity for himself in this conflict. He believes that he can show the public that he is a military mastermind and can provide the so cherished security to the Israeli society. The only chance for him to become PM again is to change reality in Gaza and southern Israel and he needs to do this quickly. I guess in his wildest dreams in two or three days he sees himself parading with the newly freed soldier Gilad Shalit. The timing of the ‘response’, in my opinion, reflects the understanding that with the presidential inauguration of Barack Obama pressure on Israel will rise. Change has come, and change scares Israel.

After all, no matter

One of the deadliest day in Gaza in 60 years of conflict

who the Israeli PM may be, Washington will set the tone for the future in the Middle East. While Netanyahu is hailed as a hard-liner able to defend Israel, people forgot that he was the PM who actually returned the biggest percentage of the occupied land. In any case, further escalation won’t bring the expected security. Not in the short-run and much less in the long-run.

As always, this conflict remains unpredictable. Whether Hizbollah will try to open a second front in the north and whether the sporadic uprises in the West Bank will turn into new large-scale revolts creating a third Intifada remains to be seen. In any case, the current events reveal once more the enormous disparities. During an entire month of shelling one Israeli was killed. In two hours over two hundred Palestinians. Truly, Goliath vs. David. The question therefore is; why does David keep standing up again?