Here is your weekly JVP news roundup for June 29, 2007.
Click on the highlighted links for news articles that expand on the
summary here.
In addition to the articles linked below, you
might be interested in checking out the recent article in Middle East
Report on the "Israel Lobby." Click here for the
article by Mitchell Plitnick and Chris Toensing.
JVP News Roundup, June 29,
2007
Hamas'
establishment of their exclusive rule in Gaza has caused ripples that
are echoing throughout the region. It's clearly a major development in
the ongoing horror/tragedy story that is the Israel-Arab conflict. In
some ways, it has also turned back the clock and brought old and
generally useless ideas back to the
fore.
In The Washington Post, Robert Malley and Aaron
Miller argued that the US-Israeli strategy of
cutting off Gaza under Hamas from the world while strengthening Fatah
in the West Bank was a doomed strategy. Indeed, anyone remotely
familiar with the politics of the region would see that clearly, and
this is another indication that the Bush Administration does not have
such people at their disposal.
The UN recently
raised, albeit indirectly, the question of what is actually being left to Mahmoud Abbas
and Fatah in the West Bank. This map shows the
areas that are devoted to settlements and bypass roads and other areas
of the West Bank that are cut off from Palestinians. Many are arguing
that such an intricate network of Israeli control and development has
already rendered the two-state solution moot. The split of Gaza and the
West Bank would, in that line of thinking, be the clincher. For those
of us who believe that the point of no return has not yet been reached,
it is undeniable that it is coming and that every day that Israeli
presence is allowed to remain and expand brings it nearer
still.
Sectors of the Israeli right are certainly
thinking about reviving the idea of Jordan taking control of the
Palestinian cantons on the West Bank. The Jordanians are surely worried
about this, as was reported in the Arabic-language al-Hayat (no link
available) on June 26: "The Jordanian official said that the US
Administration and Israel must give the Palestinians their rights in
the Palestinian territories and not in Jordan. Jordanian officials warn
that the Kingdom could go to war to halt plans to adjoin the West Bank
to Jordan... For the Hashemite rule, the mere acceptance of the
principle of confederation means linkage with a people-without-land,
which the officials here consider to be 'certain political
suicide.'"
As in 1967, when Israel and the US both
failed to properly analyze the ramifications of events that seemed to
give them a big advantage but led to deeper problems in the future, the
current strategy seems to give Israel the chance to divide the
Palestinians and work only with their favored group. But that group has
lost its legitimacy among the Palestinian population. And,
while Hamas also has lost much of its popular
strength because of the Gaza takeover, among other
things, the need still exists to engage all of Palestinian society.
The point that is being missed here is that, with
Fatah and Hamas both having been proved to be failures in many eyes,
the Palestinians living under crippling economic conditions are not
going to turn to more moderate voices, but to more violent ones. The
view of Fatah was well summarized by retired General Shlomo Gazit, once
the head of Israeli military intelligence and the first military
coordinator of the Occupied Territories in Ma'ariv this week,
as quoted by the Israel Policy
Forum: "The current Israeli policy (toward Fatah)
is a failure... The Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza
Strip will not support Fatah; a movement that has passed its prime. It
will certainly not support a leadership that has the backing of Israel
and the United States. This is surely the time for Olmert and Israel to
reevaluate the situation."
While Fatah members, in
the wake of the defeat in Gaza, not openly rebelling against Mahmoud
Abbas and the old guard, the public refusal to disarm by the al-Aqsa
Martyrs' Brigade demonstrates the limits of his
authority even within his own party. The al-Aqsa Martyrs have always
been beyond the control of the Fatah leadership (a point that was
frequently misrepresented in the Western and Israeli press while Yasir
Arafat was alive), but they are still Fatah, and their refusal and more
importantly, the impotence of the Fatah leadership in the face of that
refusal speaks volumes about the amount of authority anyone in
Palestine has.
Though both contain flawed and
somewhat objectionable points,this article by Alistair
Crooke and this one from the Asia Times
offer insight into why communication with Hamas is a better option.
Danny Rubinstein, Ha'aretz's long-time reporter
on Arab and Palestinian affairs points out that:
"All the efforts to crush Hamas without undertaking a dramatic step
such as pushing for an accord along the lines of the Arab Peace
Initiative will be meaningless. The political reality and the living
conditions in the Palestinian territories since September 2000 have
prepared the ground for a Hamas victory, and without offering a genuine
alternative, Hamas will not be defeated - and may even to continue
succeed."
Put simply, if Israel continues to deny
Hamas, it gives every opportunity for al-Qaeda and similar groups to
find the purchase in the Occupied Territories that they have not had to
date. Indeed, it is the opposition of nationalist Islamist groups like
Hamas and Islamic Jihad to al-Qaeda that has prevented this from
happening. We have seen the effects in Lebanon
already. This is not mere theorizing, it is
something that is already
budding and threatens to escalate the conflict and
cause the deaths of more people on both sides.
The alternative is dealing with the Palestinians as
a whole in a genuine way, something which is absent in both its parts
right now. As Dror Etkes of Shalom Achshav (Peace Now) in
Israel points out, "The unreasonable gap between
the declarations of Israeli politicians in the past decade and a half
since Oslo and the acts of those same politicians...is the gap that
continues and will continue to feed and escalate the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict." Even the recent attempts to "bolster"
Abbas were not matched in deeds, as an Israeli raid in Nablus was a
slap in the face to the ruling Fatah party, and was called such by its
leadership.
Even beyond that
threat, the status quo is nothing less than a pressure cooker leading
to war. Both Syria and Hezbollah are girding for
the possibility of conflict and such preparations often turn into
self-fulfilling prophecies.
Hamas has been forced into a much closer
alliance with Iran, now that Arab sources of
support have thinned. While Hamas is too much of a Palestinian
nationalist organization to be as tightly linked to Iran as Hezbollah
is, the Iranian factor cannot be ignored as part of the Tehran
government's bid to widen its influence throughout the region. The
so-called "moderate" Arab states, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and the
Gulf Monarchies are increasingly finding themselves trapped between
Israel, Iran, and the fast-growing Islamist movement.
Hope is not in great supply. The appointment this
week of Tony Blair as the Quartet's special envoy for Middle East peace
shows only that the US, which pushed hard for this in the face of
opposition from Russia mostly, but also the UN, still does not
recognize the need to convince the Arab world that there is some hope
for change. Blair, widely seen as heavily inclined toward Israel and
bearing a great responsibility for the destruction of
Iraq, does nothing to enhance Arab hopes for the
immediate future.
It adds up to looking more and
more likely that the best we can hope for in the short term is for the
region to simply survive the Bush Administration and hope that
Americans can come together to pressure the next administration to
behave differently.
More articles of interest
Olmert should forget about
Saudi meeting -
Egypt
More beards, less talk about politics: Gazans
adjusting to Hamas rule in many subtle ways
ISRAEL-OPT: Some 600 villagers face prospect of
new displacement
Lebanon army kills three Palestinians near refugee
camp
Israel watchdog calls to lift West Bank
roadblocks
The latest on the
blogs
Muzzlewatch
The
Third Way
The Fall of Gaza: Can Disaster Be
Avoided?
A
Dearth of
Leadership:
The International Community Must Get
Involved
"Never Again"
Means
For
Everyone
Resolutions in
Conflict and Conflict
Resolutions
Stuart Eizenstadt: Rationality That Still Misses the Point
