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As always, nobody understands the Mideast conflict better than Barry Rubin.

He has written two posts about Barack Obama’s Cairo speech that are must-reads: “Speaking Flattery to Power” and “Good intentions plus misunderstanding equals failure“.

I want to print them out and nail them to the White House door. But I suppose that like anyone else, the President and his advisors have difficulty hearing voices with which they don’t already agree.

Although you really should read all of Rubin’s articles, here are a few of his comments.

On Obama’s understanding of the Palestinians and the likelihood that his approach will end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:

Turning to Palestinians, he uses an appealing image but one so wrong that it undermines Obama’s entire approach. The Palestinians, he says, have “suffered in pursuit of a homeland” for more than 60 years.

But if that were true the issue would have been solved 60 years ago (1948 through partition), 30 years ago (1979 and Anwar Sadat’s initiative) or 9 years ago (Camp David-2). What has brought Palestinian suffering is the priority on total victory and Israel’s destruction rather than merely getting a homeland. This is the reason why the conflict won’t be solved in the next week, month, or year.

On Obama’s demand that Palestinians should give up violent ‘resistance’:

“Palestinians must abandon violence. Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and it does not succeed,” citing the American civil rights’ movement as example. This sounds noble but it is silly because it ignores the social and ideological context.

Fatah believes it got control of the West Bank and leadership of the Palestinian people through violence and killing. Hamas in Gaza; Hizballah and Syria in Lebanon; and Iran’s Islamist regime as well as the Muslim Brotherhoods believe that “resistance” works.

From the standpoint of Palestinian leaders, violence and killing are not failures. Moreover, violence and killing are commensurate with the goal of the overwhelming majority of the Palestinian leadership, which is total victory. Their main alternative “peaceful” strategy is the demand—shared by Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas—that pretty much all Palestinians who wish to do so must be allowed to live in Israel. A formula for more violence and killing.

None of this is rocket science. All you need to do is listen to what the Palestinians say and watch what they do, instead of wishfully imposing liberal Western ideals on people who don’t share them. Why are our politicians incapable of doing this?

On his implication that the major onus will be on Israel:

Obama’s phrases were carefully crafted. He called on Palestinians to stop violence, show their competence in administration, and accept a two-state solution, living in peace alongside Israel. Hamas was commanded to be moderate. Yet he in no way seemed to condition Palestinians getting a state on their record. His administration may think this way but he didn’t make that clear.

Middle Eastern ears won’t hear this aspect–which is part of the reason they may cheer the speech—in the way Washington policymakers intend. Inasmuch as the United States now has more credibility for them it’s because they hope it will just force Israel to give without them having to do much. When this doesn’t happen, anger will set in, intensified by the fact that the president “said” the Palestinians are in the right and should have a state right away.

Everything specific concerning Israel’s needs and demands–an end to incitement, security for Israel, end of terrorism, resettlement of refugees in Palestine—weren’t there. While Israel was specifically said to violate previous agreements on the construction within settlements issue—an assertion that’s flat-out wrong—there was no hint that the Palestinians had done so.

This, too isn’t rocket science. Maybe the reason is just that it’s much easier to pressure Israel, a real state with responsibilities (and which is dependent on the US for essential military equipment) than to affect the behavior of non-state entities that are supported by Iran.

On the relationship of the West to the Muslim world:

The first problem is that Obama said many things factually quite untrue, some ridiculously so. Pages would be required to list all these inaccuracies. The interesting question is whether Obama consciously lied or really believes it. I’d prefer him to be lying, because if he’s that ignorant then America and the world is in very deep trouble.

If he really believes Islam’s social role is so perfect, radical Islamists are a tiny minority, Palestinians have suffered hugely through no fault of their own, and so on, then he’s living in a fantasy world. Unfortunately, we are not. The collision between reality and dream is going to be a terrible one.

The second problem is the speech’s unnecessarily extreme one-sidedness. Obama portrays the West as the guilty party. Despite a reference to September 11—even that presented as an American misdeed, unfair dislike of Islam resulting—he gave not a single example of Islamist or Muslim responsibility for anything wrong in the world… [my emphasis}

So if Muslims are always the innocent victims, isn’t [sic] Usama bin Ladin and others correct in saying that all the violence and terrorism to date has been just a “defensive Jihad” against external aggression and thus justifiable? Why should anything change simply because Obama has “admitted” this and asked to start over again?

And on Obama’s contrition:

In the Middle East if you say you’re to blame, that communicates to the other side that their cause is right and they’re entitled to everything it wants. If you apologize, you’re weak. Sure, [although] some relatively Westernized urban liberals will take what Obama said [as he intends], I doubt whether radical states and political forces, as well as the masses, will do so.

The main ingredient in the Obama speech was flattery. There is a bumper sticker that says: Don’t apologize. Your friends don’t need to hear it and your enemies don’t care.

Obama’s situation might be described as: Don’t grovel. It scares the hell out of your friends and convinces your enemies you owe them big time.

Obama may think he’s reversing the rhetorical mistakes of the bellicose George Bush. Unfortunately, he’s gone way too far. I needed my anti-nausea pills for some of this.

It is depressing to see that the administration’s ‘new’ approach is already doomed. It took Bill Clinton 8 years to understand that Yasser Arafat was not Mahatma Gandhi; let’s hope that Barack Obama is a quicker study.

Technorati Tags: Obama, Cairo speech, Muslims, Barry Rubin, Israel, Palestinians

By Vic Rosenthal

There’s a lot to talk about in President Obama’s long-awaited Cairo speech (the text is here). I’ll stick to the part about Israel and the Palestinians. Start with this:

Around the world, the Jewish people were persecuted for centuries, and anti-Semitism in Europe culminated in an unprecedented Holocaust…

On the other hand, it is also undeniable that the Palestinian people – Muslims and Christians – have suffered in pursuit of a homeland. For more than sixty years they have endured the pain of dislocation. Many wait in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza, and neighboring lands for a life of peace and security that they have never been able to lead. They endure the daily humiliations – large and small – that come with occupation. So let there be no doubt: the situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable.

The implied equivalence — even the mere comparison — is obscene. Nobody shot and gassed six million Palestinians to death, and European Jews did not start and lose a war against Germany. The fact that the head of the dominant Palestinian clan at the time (and the closest thing to a national leader they had), Haj Amin al-Husseini, was a friend and admirer of Hitler adds to the irony. What was Obama thinking?

Note also the discussion of “sixty years…occupation”. Of course Obama would say that he meant the occupation since 1967…wouldn’t he?

Apparently the theme of the speech is making equivalences. Here’s another:

For decades, there has been a stalemate: two peoples with legitimate aspirations, each with a painful history that makes compromise elusive. It is easy to point fingers – for Palestinians to point to the displacement brought by Israel’s founding, and for Israelis to point to the constant hostility and attacks throughout its history from within its borders as well as beyond. But if we see this conflict only from one side or the other, then we will be blind to the truth: the only resolution is for the aspirations of both sides to be met through two states, where Israelis and Palestinians each live in peace and security.

I suppose there’s no hope of getting beyond false symmetries. Politics is the art of saying “both sides, blah, blah”, someone said. But let’s look at these aspirations:

• Israel aspires to live in peace in the Middle East as a Jewish state. Its history of readiness for compromise shows that borders are less important than peace and security.

• Palestinians aspire to rule “from the river to the sea”. A Jewish state of any size in this area is unacceptable to them.

Again there is no comparison. Israel does not deny the principle of Palestinian self-determination (insofar as it can be realized without destroying Israel). But the Palestinians even deny that there is a Jewish people.

This explains why negotiations to produce a two-state solution have so far failed: Palestinians have always demanded conditions that would not allow Israel to exist as a Jewish state.

On the subject of Iranian nuclear ambitions, he said,

…any nation – including Iran – should have the right to access peaceful nuclear power if it complies with its responsibilities under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. That commitment is at the core of the Treaty, and it must be kept for all who fully abide by it. And I am hopeful that all countries in the region can share in this goal.

A hint that he would like to see Israel, too, sign the treaty and give up her nuclear deterrent? Again we see the false equivalence: as if there is any comparison between Israel’s maintaining a true deterrent force in the face of regional hostility, and Iran’s intention to create a nuclear shield for its proxies!

Here’s a final juxtaposition:

To play a role in fulfilling Palestinian aspirations, and to unify the Palestinian people, Hamas must put an end to violence, recognize past agreements, and recognize Israel’s right to exist.

At the same time, Israelis must acknowledge that just as Israel’s right to exist cannot be denied, neither can Palestine’s. The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop.

So Hamas refuses to accept Israel’s right to exist, and demonstrates that with suicide bombers and Qassam rockets. “At the same time,” Israel ‘denies Palestine’s right to exist’ by …building homes within existing settlements! And some of these ‘settlements’ are better described as neighborhoods of East Jerusalem.

This is expressed in a somewhat unfortunate way. Read literally — as the Arabs will do — this implies that any Jewish presence in the area of the 19-year Jordanian occupation is illegitimate and must ‘stop’.

But even if we understand it to refer to construction, then an addition to an existing building inside an East Jerusalem neighborhood is not distinguished from establishing a hilltop outpost in Samaria. Both must stop, according to the President.

As an aside, this is absurd. Jews lived in East Jerusalem until they were killed or expelled by the Jordanians in 1948, as part of a war of aggression and conquest waged by Jordan. After Israel retook the territory in the defensive 1967 war, Jews moved back. Now they are “illegitimate?”

Throughout, Obama struggles to equate Israel with ‘Palestine’, so he can justify taking from one to give to the other. Of course, ‘Palestine’ will never be satisfied until there is nothing left of Israel — but apparently he is unable to see this.

Technorati Tags: Obama, Cairo speech, Israel, Palestinians

Barack Obama in Saudi Arabia:

I thought it was very important to come to the place where Islam began and to seek his majesty’s counsel and to discuss with him many of the issues that we confront here in the Middle East. — NY Times

Pardon me while I experience another “this is why he is President and I’m not” moment, because I would probably have said something like this:

I thought it was very important to come to the place which has used its huge oil wealth, made possible by the West and particularly the US,  to promulgate its hateful jihadist form of Islam throughout the world, a version of Islam which killed thousands of Americans on 9/11, and to seek the counsel of the hereditary despot of its corrupt royal family, the ruler of one of the most racist, antisemitic and misogynist states in the world and to discuss with him how to force the only democratic state in the region to make still more concessions to its enemies, who — as you know, since you financed them for years — cynically pretend to want a peaceful state, but really want to drive the Jews out of the Mideast.

The Times article continues,

On his Middle East tour, Mr. Obama is expected to press the Arab nations to offer a gesture to the Israelis to entice them to accelerate the peace process.

But in his meetings with the Saudi king, he should be prepared for a polite but firm refusal, Saudi officials and political experts say. The Arab countries, they say, believe they have already made their best offer and that it is now up to Israel to make a gesture, perhaps by dismantling settlements in the West Bank or committing to a two-state solution.

The Arabs’ “best offer” of course is the so-called Arab (or Saudi) Initiative, a plan which suggests that if Israel will take full responsibility for the conflict, retreat to pre-1967 borders including all of East Jerusalem and its holy sites, allow millions of hostile descendants of Arab refugees into what’s left, and acquiesce in the creation of a Jew-free Palestinian state  — then and only then the Arabs might think about something called ‘normal relations’.

Earth to racist, antisemitic and misogynist hereditary despot: unconditional surrender is a non-starter.

Speaking of gestures Israel could make, does the withdrawal from Gaza count? And how did that work out?

One more point about “committing to a two-state solution” and then I’ll go away. The Arabs are making a big deal about the fact that PM Netanyahu will not say the magic formula “I accept a two-state solution”. In my opinion, here is what he should say (or what I would say if I were Prime Minister of Israel):

Someday there could be a sovereign Palestinian state alongside Israel — if the day comes when Palestinians can live alongside Israelis in peace. But today and in the foreseeable future, with these Palestinians, with the explicitly genocidal Hamas and the less out-front but equally genocidal Fatah, this can’t happen. So let’s try to find a way for the peoples to live in nonviolent proximity with economic prosperity and maybe someday there can be a sovereign state.

I know Palestinian aspirations are important to them. But we are not going to commit suicide so they can realize them.

Actually, I”ll go away after you look at the following image from the Saudi newspaper Al-Watan. It sort of puts the Saudi point of view into perspective:

A Saudi perspective on our recent election

Technorati Tags: Obama, Saudi Arabia, Israel

NGO Monitor’s Gerald Steinberg talks about the “narrative war”:

The narrative war is as old as the attacks by Arab armies and terror attacks. Following the failure of the 1948 invasion to destroy the nascent Jewish state, Arab leaders began a massive effort to rewrite these events. The process was repeated in 1967, when Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser’s moves to wipe Israel off the map were turned into a “war of occupation.” By repeating the myths and slogans enough times, and aided by the use of oil wealth, intimidation and terror, this strategy has gradually succeeded.

The narrative war, which has conquered Europe and is moving to North America, begins with the false history covering the Mandate period, from the Balfour Declaration through the 1947 UN partition plan. This version portrays Israel as a Jewish “colonization project” forced on the Arabs by European anti-Semitism and guilt after the Holocaust, as well as Jewish power and manipulation (as reflected in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion). The violent Arab rejection of the original “two states for two peoples” proposal, and the continued refusal to accept a Jewish state, regardless of borders, has been removed from these histories.

In the narrative, the Palestinians are always innocent victims – by definition – and Israel is painted as the powerful and manipulative aggressor. Refugees from wars initiated by the Arabs became the object of international sympathy, provided by an international support system with massive budgets that reinforce the narrative. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which is “commemorating 60 years” of existence, insures that the hatred is perpetuated.

In contrast, the almost equal number of Jewish refugees [actually, a greater number — ed.] who fled Arab attacks has disappeared from the history books – Jewish refugees are inconsistent with the narrative.

This simpleminded dichotomy – Palestinian victims and Jewish aggressors – works well with Western (particularly but not only European) academics, intellectuals, journalists, diplomats, NGO human rights campaigners and political leaders – particularly from the liberal end of the spectrum. And European governments, including the carefully hidden mechanisms of the European Commission, fund the narrative wars through anti-Israel NGOs that receive money under the misleading headlines of “human rights” and “peace partnerships.” On the basis of these images, whenever Israel responds to attacks, the flood of condemnations follow – including false claims of “war crimes,” “collective punishment” and “humanitarian crisis.”

In Jerusalem, the narrative war has adopted the Arab version, which eliminates 3,000 years of Jewish history as well as the [Jordanian] occupation and systematic desecration of the 1948-1967 period. The EU gives large sums to organizations like Ir Amim and B’Tselem that produce their tendentious reports which are copied and published by the European Commission in order to further demonize Israel. This is the political equivalent of a Ponzi scheme – money is provided to generate anti-Israel reports that justify providing more money, without any external checks or accountability. [my emphasis]

There are also North American sources of money for the campaign, such as the New Israel Fund (NIF), etc.

We know that the first step toward the elimination of Israel is its delegitimization.  Although Europeans and other sophisticated actors will not (at least publicly) call for the annihilation of the Jews in Palestine by Hezbollah rockets or Iranian nukes, the atmosphere created by the falsification of history and current events may very well prevent international action to forestall these possibilities.

There is also a degradation of the quality of life in Israel caused by reduced physical security as a result of concessions forced by international pressure, economic and social effects of the boycott/divestiture movements, etc. Israel’s enemies are thinking long term: it’s common to hear Arabs say “it took 200 years to get the crusaders out of Palestine”.

The so-called ‘nakba law’ to forbid Israeli citizens from observing the birth of Israel as a catastrophe is a response to the popularity of the Arab narrative. Such a law would be very difficult to enforce and probably on balance have negative PR consequences without affecting attitudes; but one can understand the motivation of its supporters.

The NGO campaign is just another front in the broader information war. Israel should not abandon the field in this area either.

• Israel should publicly call out the EU, document the campaign and trace out the money flows. It should demand a UN resolution condemning it and insisting that it be stopped. Of course, no such resolution would pass, but silence is not an option.

• Israel should take serious steps to set up a world-class news and information facility, comparable to Al-Jazeera. As I’ve said countless times, a country with the world’s best air force and a superb high-tech sector can do this. All that’s needed is the will.

Technorati Tags: Israel, NGOs, information war

What’s the big deal about freezing “settlement activity”? Israel is only talking about building within the boundaries of existing settlements, and most of these ‘settlements’ are in East Jerusalem or right on the Green Line. It’s hard to imagine how this can be a practical impediment to a peace agreement.

Yet the Palestinians are insisting that there can be no discussion until such activity stops, and multiple American spokespersons have made it clear that the US also takes this issue very seriously. Why?

From the Palestinian point of view it’s simple. First, it’s a great talking point. They can say “Israel refuses to stop building settlements, so they are not serious about peace”. The distinction between building homes in Gilo (between West Jerusalem and Bethlehem) and colonizing a hilltop in Samaria is lost on the media, but they are more than ready to conclude that Israel is the real obstacle to peace if given an excuse.

Second, if the Americans can be persuaded to go along it could be a weapon against the Netanyahu government:

Abbas and his team fully expect that Netanyahu will never agree to the full settlement freeze — if he did, his center-right coalition would almost certainly collapse. So they plan to sit back and watch while U.S. pressure slowly squeezes the Israeli prime minister from office. “It will take a couple of years,” one official breezily predicted. — Jackson Diehl, Washington Post

Netanyahu was pushed from power in a similar way during his first term as Prime Minister (1996-1999), when American demands  led him to concede control of Hebron and to sign the Wye River Agreement promising further concessions to the Palestinians. The consequent erosion in support from his base was part of the reason he was defeated by Ehud Barak.

But the interesting question is “why are the Americans pushing so hard?” Some possible answers:

• They also want Netanyahu out. But Obama can’t wait the interminable months for a new Israeli government to be up and running, so I doubt this.

• They want to put pressure on Netanyahu short of bringing him down. They know he can’t accept a freeze so they can use it as a bargaining point to get something else.

• They have promised other Arab nations — Saudi Arabia comes to mind — that they will make ‘progress’ on the settlement issue.

What is frustrating to me is the energy being expended by the US over the non-issue of a settlement between Israel and the increasingly irrelevant Palestinian Authority.

The real issues in the Israeli-Arab conflict are the huge military threats from the Hezbollah and Syrian rocket stockpiles, the popularity of Hamas among Palestinians, and of course the ever-spinning Iranian centrifuges.

All of these come down to one: Iran’s project to eliminate the Jewish state.

Technorati Tags: Israel, settlements, Palestinians, Iran