Draw a Red Line at the Green Line

Crossposted at FireDogLake.

Mackubin Thomas Owens' op-ed in last Friday's Wall Street Journal The President Takes a Hard Line on Israel, July 24, offers a persuasive argument with regard to the shortcomings of President Obama's Mideast policy, yet the author's utter disregard for Palestinian and Arab aspirations for a two-state reality pushes this piece into the realm of fantasy.

Firstly, Mr. Owens overlooks the opportunity of the Arab Peace Initiative while also delegitimizing the Palestinian grievance of the Israeli occupation. Let me be frank: Israel's right to exist, while legitimate and necessary, cannot be secured without the realization of a sovereign Palestinian state-- a situation which would ensure Israel's sustainability as a democracy and Jewish homeland.

Moreover, as Owens hails the 'unilateral steps toward peace' taken by Israel, such as disengagement from Gaza, he maneuvers around the Israeli blockade of this occupied territory (or ‘disputed' in his words) which has done little to stem extremism and quite oppositely has created a mini-Somalia in Israel's backyard.

But the thrust of Owens' argument is a baseless critique of the American president. In fact, Mr. Obama is not meddling in Israel's affairs but rather he is simply asking Mr. Netanyahu to uphold commitments which are agreed to by the international community and articulated in the Clinton Parameters. If Mr. Owens is truly as pro-Israel as he purports to be then it's clear that the establishment of a Palestinian state which acknowledges Israeli security concerns while ending the occupation will only strengthen Israel's standing in the world and create new opportunities for cooperation in the Middle East.

Mr. Owens is wrong that President Obama is taking a hard line on Israel.

Obama is only asking Israel to draw a red line at the green line.

Is Mitchell Evenhanded? No, just a Pessoptimist

Crossposted at FireDogLake.

Today, the Syrian press draws an interesting parallel between US Peace Envoy Senator Mitchell, who's currently in the region, and the protagonist of Emile Habibi's book, The Secret Life of Saeed. Ibrahim Darraji, writing for the state-controlled Al-Watan makes a strong point:

"[The secret life of Saeed, the ill-fated pessoptimist] was a novel written by the late Palestinian author Emile Habibi in 1974. In it, he came up with the word “pessoptimism” to express a situation that is neither too optimistic nor too pessimistic. This seems to be the case of American envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell who is currently touring the Arab capitals to hear something that could call for optimism, such as their commitment to the peace process, their willingness to demand it, their willingness not to ask for more than what is stipulated by international law and relevant Security Council resolutions and their holding on to the Arab peace initiative which grants Israel more than what is mentioned in the international resolutions.

The Arabs placed too much hope in Mitchell, believing he will be able to force the American administration to threaten to impose sanctions on Israel to contain its wild building of settlement projects, which forced the spokesperson of the American Department of State, Philip Crowley, to anticipate Mitchell’s visit by saying: “There have been some reports that were misunderstood about the United States’ intention to place financial and economic pressures on Israel (due to the settlements dossier). This is not true and this is why Mitchell headed to the Middle East”… Amid this climate, questions are being raised about the way George Mitchell will handle the situation and his ability to succeed where others have failed throughout the past decades. However, it seems to be too soon to raise such questions as it would be wrong to show excessive optimism or pessimism since George Mitchell is known for his patience.

“The man was previously appointed by President Clinton to handle the peace negotiations dossier in Northern Ireland where he spent three years listening to the two sides involved in the conflict before he was able to secure the historical settlement between them. In our current case, George Mitchell’s patience and optimism will be as present as in his previous task, for he preceded this one with an interesting statement he delivered following his appointment as the US envoy to the Middle East. He said: “There is no conflict that cannot be resolved because conflicts do not emerge spontaneously. They are created, made and continuously fed."

“Nonetheless, Mitchell’s success this time will require more than patience, neutrality and exceptional negotiations skills. It will also require a stable and unified Arab position that would hold on to [their] rights and does not rush to offer concessions upon the first American request or allusion. If this is done, it will force the United States to direct its pressures toward Israel which would then consider the negative aspects of staying in a hostile Arab environment and facing “cold relations” with [its] ally, sponsor and partner in all its previous and current practices. Only then will it head toward peace. However, until this is secured, it seems that the state of “pessoptimism” will continue to prevail in our region.”

Faulty Tower? No, Deterioration by Design

Crossposted at FireDogLake.

While copies of Chicago-style buildings have taken foundation in all of the globe’s cosmopolitan cities, Ole Scheeren has designed a tower for Bangkok that refers to such edifices but with a twist -- built-in corrosion.

The design in question is “Krung Thep Mahanakhon,” which was featured in yesterday’s Financial Times.

Rather than plopping down a foreign structure in the heart of the Thai metropolis, Schreeren has done something completely different, writes Edwin Heathcote:

It is impossible to compete with Bangkok’s existing exotic menagerie of skyscrapers, so Scheeren proposes a monolith, an un-twin tower, the dumb, extruded box of modernist orthodoxy – but then begins to erode its perfection. It is as if a computer virus has begun to eat away at an image, pixellating it, or as if a tower of sugar cubes is dissolving away.

Not a bad reason to plan a trip to Bangkok.

How to counter inSURGEncy

Crossposted at FireDogLake/The Seminal.

Just because the word "surge" has been designed to sound like a panacea does not mean it will automatically succeed. Tom Englehardt wrote in May,

Soon enough, if the fighting in the Afghan south and along the Pakistani border doesn't go as planned, pressure for the president to send in those other 10,000 troops General McKiernan asked for may rise as well, as could pressure to apply more air power, more drone power, more of almost anything. And yet, as former CIA station chief in Kabul, Graham Fuller, wrote recently, in the region "crises have only grown worse under the U.S. military footprint."

William Astore phrases this in a slightly different way:

If your surge in Afghanistan fails, will you be able to de-escalate as quickly as you escalated? Or will the fact that you've put more troops in harm's way (with all their equipment and all the money that will go into new base and airfield and road construction), and committed more of your prestige to prevailing, make it even harder to consider leaving?

And the forecast for Waziristan doesn't look so hot either.

Settlement Freeze Policy Begins to Thaw

My first Post at FireDogLake.

According to news reports, Israel and the US have reached an understanding, or at least a backroom handshake, which would grant a limited and all-to-caveated settlement freeze.

Maya Bengal reported in the Israeli daily Ma’ariv earlier this week:

The agreement was secured after Defense Minister Ehud Barak was able to convince the Americans to allow Israel to continue and build those units whose construction had already started. In other words, the Americans gave their consent to letting the construction continue of some 700 buildings, which amount to some 2,500 housing units.

The State Department has denied reports that Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Special Envoy George Mitchell have struck a deal, but it seems to me that the settlement freeze policy has already begun to thaw. My colleague Amjad Atallah practically predicted this scenario just over two months ago:

[T]he question is what is the U.S. goal? If it is to use a settlement freeze to manage the conflict, then Washington could find itself involved in a full time and protracted negotiations over the definition of a freeze. Indeed, Netanyahu may come here in a few weeks and offer to negotiate over settlement construction and taking down a few outposts as a way of protecting his interest in retaining the West Bank and most of the settlements. Netanyahu would much prefer such negotiations to confronting a U.S. request to end the occupation and create two states.”

If stalling a long-awaited two-state deal is what Mr. Netanyahu is going for, then aye. The Israeli opposition has called it, “One hundred days, zero achievements.”

Shipwrecked, Before Reaching Gaza

Crossposted at The Washington Note.

Last week, the mainstream media only touched on the attempt by the Free Gaza Movement to reach the occupied territory by boat. Israel Defense Forces boarded their vessel, The Spirit of Humanity, which was carrying humanitarian aid. In spite of the incarceration of former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney and Nobel Peace Prize winner Mairead Maguire, along with nineteen other activists who were aboard the ship, the story has gained little traction on our side of the ocean.

Yesterday, Congresswoman McKinney arrived safely back in the US, and in an interview, she emphasized the need for a new approach to Gaza:

What happened to us pales in comparison to what happens to the people of Gaza everyday, to Palestinians everyday, and so we can't forget that we have a new administration. This new administration promised us hope and change. We expect a change in the policies that are put forward from Washington, DC. We have yet to see that. We need to press further and press harder to achieve that.

Gaza is still a taboo subject for American leadership. Even as President Obama briefly acknowledged Gaza in his Cairo University speech ("And just as it devastates Palestinian families, the continuing humanitarian crisis in Gaza does not serve Israel's security."), not enough has been done on the ground to allow the flow of humanitarian and reconstruction aid.

The UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Occupied Palestinians Territories (OCHA-oPT) recently reported that the weekly inflow of goods remains disturbingly below the needs of Gaza's people:

This week, a total of 417 truckloads of goods entered Gaza, less than 18% of the weekly average during the first five months of 2007, before the Hamas takeover. The entry of other major essential goods, including materials for reconstruction, spare parts for water and sanitation projects, and industrial and agricultural materials remain barred from entry or restricted to limited quantities.

Until Israelis, Americans, and the international community face up to the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza, the potential for escalation and another outbreak in violence hangs in the air.

when the week in review is a blast from the past

Cross-posted at The Washington Note...