Turkey and the transition in Syria May 24, 2011
Posted by Helena Cobban in Uncategorized.Tags: arabspring, syria, turkey
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AFP and other outlets reported today that leaders of Syria’s still very inchoate opposition movement will be holding an organizing meeting in Antalya from May 31 through June 2.
Just around the same time this news came out, I made a presentation at a small panel discussion on Syria organized by the Washington, DC-based Middle East Institute. My charge was to survey the various regional dimensions of the ongoing events in Syria. I ended up focusing mainly on the role Turkey potentially might play in helping to facilitate the successful transition to a functioning and egalitarian democracy in Syria that I believe would be far and away the best outcome for the country’s 21 million people. The following are notes based on the most important things I said there…
‘Arab Spring’ heads for Palestine May 14, 2011
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It looks as if the civilian mass organizing that has been a feature of the ‘Arab Spring’ in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Syria, and elsewhere is now heading seriously for Palestine. In the AS’s early weeks, several Western commentators made a point of writing both that the AS itself hadn’t really happened much inside the OPTs, and that the content of the way the AS was being undertaken in all those other Arab countries was tightly focused on domestic affairs and somehow “proved” that the Arab masses didn’t care about Palestine any more.
And then, there was the Carl Gershmann (NED)- financed, Astroturf-like “movement” in Gaza whose actions seemed designed above all to embarrass and undermine Hamas.
Now, it looks as if the civilian mass organizing is occurring within the Palestinian body politic, and among the Palestinians’ brothers and sisters who are citizens of other Arab states, in a new and significant way. This organizing is going on inside and outside the OPTs– including in Jordan, Egypt, and Lebanon– and the main theme in it (as articulated by the activists in Lebanon) is “The people demand the return to Palestine.” (Ash-sha3b yurid al-aw3da ila filas6een.)
This is a bit of a riff on the main– and stunningly successful!– slogan of the popular movements in Tunisia and Egypt: “The people demand the overthrow of the regime.” In both Jordan and Lebanon there are many hundreds of thousands of Palestinians whose internationally recognized (Univ. Dec. of Human Rts., etc) right to return to the land of their birth has has been prevented by Israel from 1948 until this day. Indeed, over recent decades, successive Israeli governments have refused even to allow the Palestinians to place their refugees’ “right of return” on the negotiating agenda in any meaningful way: Not only they can’t implement the return; they are not even allowed to talk about it!
For the 7-8 million Palestinians around the world who are currently prevented by Israel from returning to the land that they or their immediate forebears were exiled/”cleansed” from in 1948, the right of return has always been a central focus of longing and political activism. The PLO grew up in the Palestinian diaspora, and was organized centrally around the demand of the right of return. But with the 1993 Oslo Accord, PLO leaders Yasser Arafat, Mahmoud Abbas, and Co. traded their support of that demand for something that turned out to be no better than a mess of potage: their own personal “return”– but to Ramallah, not to Jerusalem; and that of a small number of their chosen followers. And the “right”– always heavily circumscribed, and sometimes simply quashed/rescinded, by Israel– to administer a few municipal-type things in and around Ramallah.
The demands and very burning needs of the Palestinian refugees whose support had boosted Arafat, Abbas, and Co. to political prominence were simply jettisoned. As were the demands and burning needs of the broad networks of Palestinians within the OPTs whose steadfast support for the exiled PLO leaders always successfully blocked the plans the U.S. and Israel had to groom an “alternative leadership” from within the OPTs. But once Arafat and Co. returned to Ramallah, they clamped down fast and hard on the till-then semi-autonomous networks of civilian activists that had run the First Palestinian Intifada (1987-93.)
And let us remember that that intifada– and the early weeks of the Second Intifada, in Sept.- Oct. of 2000, which like the First Initfada (uprising) were also overwhelmingly nonviolent and marked by the lengthy and widespread reliance on civilian mass organizing, though by the end of 2000, Israel’s terrible and lethal counter-violence successfully drove many of the shabab into the big tactical mistake of using their own violence, too.
So now, civilian mass organizing of the kind pioneered in the 1980s by the Palestinians of the OPTs, seems to be coming in a big way to the Palestinians of the immediate diaspora– acting in alliance with their sisters and brothers from the Arab states that have hosted them nigh these many decades. As I chronicled in great detail in the study of the PLO that I published in 1984 with Cambridge U.P., the earliest impulses of those who formed the guerrilla groups that took over (and became) the PLO in 1968-69 were all for armed action against Israel. It was the Palestinians of the OPTs who really pioneered civilian mass organizing.
Anyway, what is happening now is significant, and it may well end up being huge. Citizens of the Arab states that have seen the flowering of the Arab Spring never– as Tom Friedman and others claimed– “forgot” or turned their backs on the Palestinian issue… And now, with the promise that arose as a result of the recent Fateh-Hamas agreement, there is to be a democratization of the internal governance, carried out among the entire Palestinian national community, worldwide. Stay tuned.
Moving to backup blogging here May 14, 2011
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Something (perhaps Ntrepid hacking?) has been happening to my main JWN site, so I’ve decided to do a bit of backup blogging here. Anyway, WordPress is so much easier to compose on, than venerable ol’ Movable Type. (I have plans on hold to move the whole of JWN over to a WP platform, anyway. Some day, some day… )
Bottom line: I plan to blog here till my CTO can help me fix the MT version of JWN.
Can Obama stand up to Israel? November 25, 2009
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Can Obama stand up to Israel?
It won’t be easy, but President Obama must hold Israel to account, both for the two-state solution and the safety of US troops around the world.
By Helena Cobbanfrom the November 24, 2009 edition of The Christian Science Monitor
Washington – President Obama urgently needs to distance Washington from the provocative – and illegal – actions the Israeli government has been undertaking in Jerusalem.
He needs to do this to save the two-state solution that he supports between Israelis and Palestinians. He needs to do it, too, because it will help protect US troops around the world. Jerusalem is a core concern for many of the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims, and with US forces now facing tense situations in several majority-Muslim countries, Washington has a stronger need than ever to keep the goodwill of the peoples of those lands.
This is one of the main findings from a study-tour of the region I co-led earlier this month. In Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, and the West Bank, strongly pro-US leaders underlined to us the importance of Jerusalem to their own political fortunes and those of other American allies throughout the Muslim world.
Israel took control of the eastern portion of Jerusalem, including the historic, walled “Old City,” in the 1967 war. Since then, Israeli governments have invested heavily in implanting Jewish settlers into East Jerusalem, while squeezing out the area’s indigenous Palestinians, both Muslims and Christians.
In recent months this campaign of ethnic transformation has intensified. On Nov. 16, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced plans for the construction of 900 new housing units in the southeast settlement of Gilo. He reportedly did this right after Mr. Obama’s special envoy to the region, George Mitchell, had pleaded with him not to. But aside from expressing “dismay,” have we seen any visible consequences from Washington? Not yet.
Today, Jerusalem is a tinderbox. If it ignites, American interests will be at risk, because Washington is seen as acquiescing in Israel’s harmful actions there.
In decades past, when policy differences arose between Israel and the United States, many of Israel’s supporters argued that it was on the front line against terrorism, so Americans should not second-guess its judgments or policies.
That was never a wholly convincing argument. But now, the situation has turned quite around. Today, it is American men and women who are on the front lines and it is their – and our – interests that are most at risk.
By not holding Israel to account, Washington is needlessly – and recklessly – offending hundreds of millions of Muslims on whose goodwill our troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere depend.
While in Jerusalem, we saw Israel’s destructive policies firsthand. The Jewish state is:
•Expanding the large Israeli-only settlements that ring the city to the east, north, and south.
•Supporting smaller settler “outposts” in the heart of Jerusalem’s remaining Palestinian enclaves.
•Completing the 24-foot-high Separation Wall that encloses many Palestinian portions of the city and slices through the center of others.
•Delegating responsibility for archaeological excavations in sensitive areas to settler organizations that have worked feverishly – and quite unscientifically – to push tunnels right under the historic “Muslim Quarter” of the walled Old City.
•Making it almost impossible for the city’s Palestinians to expand their housing stock, and conducting regular demolitions of Palestinian housing it deems “illegal.”
All these Israeli actions are themselves illegal under international law, since Israel controls East Jerusalem and the surrounding West Bank only as a military occupying power, not a rightful sovereign government.
Imagine if, when the US military occupied Baghdad after 2003, Washington had taken steps like these! Fortunately, it didn’t. Instead, it steadily delegated authority back to Iraqis themselves.
The US is far and away Israel’s biggest external supporter. The aid America gives to her allies should not be unconditional but used to uphold US interests. In the Middle East, that means US dollars and diplomacy should support a fair and sustainable peace between Israelis and Palestinians and the rule of law in an otherwise chaotic world.
It’s true that over the years many Americans have become persuaded that Greater Jerusalem has been “unified,” that it all belongs to Israel, and indeed is “Israel’s eternal capital.”
The rest of the world – and international law – doesn’t agree. What people in other countries see is Israel thumbing its nose at international law as it works to transform the city’s ethnic composition.
This is disastrous for Washington’s peace diplomacy, which has always been based on the principle that the city’s final disposition should be negotiated, rather than unilaterally determined through the creation of new facts on the ground.
In his landmark Cairo speech to Muslims in June, Obama said he would “personally pursue” a two-state solution “with all the patience and dedication that the task requires.” Today, Obama may feel that the political price of standing up to Israel – which few US presidents have done – is too high. It is high – but the risk that continued acquiescence to Israel’s policies in Jerusalem poses to American lives (and those of Palestinians and Israelis) is now even higher. This is Obama’s chance to set a new, just course for the Middle East on a firmly pro-American basis.
He can do this by linking US aid to Israel to its compliance with international law in the city, by supporting action by the UN Security Council to uphold international standards there, and in other ways.
The 250,000 remaining Palestinians of Jerusalem desperately need this action. So does Obama’s peace diplomacy.
And so, too, do the 200,000-plus US service members deployed today in tense, majority-Muslim lands.
Helena Cobban, a longtime correspondent and columnist for the Monitor, was recently appointed executive director of the Washington-based Council for the National Interest.
IRAQ: U.S. Diplomatic Adviser’s Troubling Role in Oil Politics October 17, 2009
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WASHINGTON, Oct 17 (IPS) – In 2003, U.S. diplomatist Peter Galbraith resigned at the end of a distinguished, 24-year government career. Over the years that followed, he worked as a contract-based adviser to leaders in Iraq’s Kurdish community, while also arguing passionately in public media that Iraq’s Kurds should be given maximum independence from Baghdad – including full control over any new sources of oil.
But in June 2004, more quietly, Galbraith also established a small, U.S.-registered company, Porcupine, that held a five percent stake in a newly exploited oilfield in Iraqi Kurdistan, a Norwegian daily revealed last Saturday.
The daily, Dagens Næringsliv, had been investigating the increasingly troubled relationship between Porcupine and a privately-owned Norwegian firm, DNO, which partnered with Porcupine in the Kurdish-Iraqi oil project. Journalists at the daily said that discovering that Porcupine’s hitherto secretive owner was Galbraith came as a complete surprise.
U.S. Strategy in Doubt as Abbas Loses Popular Support October 11, 2009
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WASHINGTON, Oct 9 (IPS) – Just two months ago, many western commentators were jubilant that Mahmoud Abbas, the U.S.-supported head of both the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and the interim Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority (PA), was making a comeback and reducing the influence in Palestinian society of the Islamist movement Hamas.
But a series of events in recent weeks has sent Abbas’s level of support from his people into a nosedive. The most serious has been the reaction among Palestinians to a decision Abbas or someone close to him made to postpone any further U.N. action on the recommendations of the Goldstone Report into the atrocities committed during last winter’s Israel-Gaza war.
Richard Goldstone, a very distinguished South African jurist and war-crimes prosecutor, presented his report to the U.N. Human Rights Council (HRC) in Geneva on Sep. 29. It contained a recommendation that the HRC forward the report’s lengthy and detailed findings regarding wrongdoing by both sides to the Security Council for possible further action.
IRAN: Non-Western Big Powers Enjoy Growing Influence October 2, 2009
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WASHINGTON, Oct 2 (IPS) – Thursday’s seven-party talks in Geneva on Iran’s nuclear programme resulted in a breakthrough agreement on Russian enrichment of materials Tehran needs for nuclear-medical work.
Proponents say that step considerably reduces western fears that Tehran was heading for nuclear weapons, and is a good move toward rebuilding the long-broken confidence between Tehran and most western governments.
It also reveals the degree to which western governments now find they must take due account of non-western powers like Russia and China, rather than continuing to allow their policies to be dictated by the more hawkish tendencies among their own citizenries.
A Week of Dimming Peace Prospects September 26, 2009
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WASHINGTON, Sep 25 (IPS) – Eight months after Barack Obama launched his presidency by promising a speedy push for Palestinian-Israeli peace, that effort has stalled badly. And there are now growing fears that the top levels of Obama’s peace team are torn by internal disagreements that may undermine the whole peace effort.
Some of these problems were on view during two high-level appearances Obama made in New York this week.
On Tuesday, speaking to the media after the three-way meeting he held with the Israeli and Palestinian leaders, Obama notably avoided saying anything about the failure of the high-profile campaign he and his chief peace envoy, George Mitchell, have pursued to “persuade” the Israeli government to stop building settlement housing in the occupied West Bank.
Obama instead announced a new project: the resumption of the long-suspended negotiations between the parties over the terms of their final peace.
Most observers – in Palestine, Israel, and the U.S. – interpreted Tuesday’s events as marking two distinct victories for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Obama and Netanyahu Still Tussling over Priorities September 18, 2009
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NEW YORK , Sep 18 (IPS) – As world leaders prepare to gather here for the all-star “general debate” at the U.N. General Assembly on Sep. 23, two of them – U.S. Pres. Barack Obama and Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu – are still tussling over whether to prioritise their anti-Iran campaign or the push for a Palestinian-Israeli peace.
In recent days, there have been big developments in both areas. On Sep. 11, the Obama administration announced that it will take part, along with the other members of the “P5+1″ group, in a major round of nuclear talks with Iran scheduled for Oct. 1.
Then on Tuesday, Judge Richard Goldstone presented to the U.N. Human Rights Council a painstakingly investigated report that accused both Israel and some Palestinian armed groups of having committed war crimes during Israel’s assault on Gaza last winter.
That development, along with Netanyahu’s recent announcement of yet more housing starts for West Bank settlers, increased the international pressure on Obama to announce long-awaited new steps in the Palestinian-Israeli peace diplomacy.
NGO Reports on Gaza War Belie Israeli Claims September 11, 2009
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Analysis by Helena Cobban*
WASHINGTON, Sep 11 (IPS) – This week, two respected human rights organisations – one Palestinian, one Israeli – each came out with very full reports into the extent of the damage caused by the assault Israel waged against Gaza last winter.
According to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), which is based in Gaza, 1,419 Palestinians were killed during the fighting, of whom 252 were combatants and the rest noncombatants, including members of the civilian police. Three hundred and eighteen of those killed were, it said, children.
The Israeli group B’Tselem (“In the Image”) tallied 1,387 Gazans killed by the Israelis, including 320 minors. It assessed that 330 of those killed had taken part in the hostilities. B’Tselem also noted that three Israeli civilians and nine soldiers were killed during the fighting.
The Israeli government earlier claimed that 1,166 Palestinians were killed in the fighting, of whom only 89 were minors under the age of 16, while 60 percent were “members of Hamas and other armed groups”.
