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Iran, Syria Stress ‘Solid Ties’; Ready for any Israeli Aggression
By Hanan Awarekeh – Al Manar
The New Middle East will be a Middle East without Zionists and imperialists
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his Iranian counterpart President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Thursday publicly shrugged off US efforts to drive a wedge between the two Middle East allies. “I am surprised by their call to keep a distance between the countries … when they raise the issue of stability and peace in the Middle East, and all the other beautiful principles,” Assad said.
“We need to further reinforce relations if the true objective is stability. We do not want others to give us lessons on our region, our history,” the Syrian leader told a joint media conference with Ahmadinejad.
The Iranian president, who flew in to Damascus earlier in the day, said that the United States should pack up and leave the Middle East and stay out of regional affairs.
Ahmadinejad said, “(The Americans) want to dominate the region but they feel Iran and Syria are preventing that… We tell them that instead of interfering in the region’s affairs, to pack their things and leave.”
The Iranian president also stressed that ties between the two Muslim states were as “solid” as ever. “Relations between Syria and Iran are brotherly, deep, solid and permanent … Nothing can damage these relations,” he said.
“These ties will become deeper and develop over the years. We are brothers. We have mutual interests, as well as common goals and enemies,” said the Iranian president, adding, “The world needs a new order.”
On the eve of the visit, President Barack Obama’s administration said it has been pressing Damascus – amid steps toward a normalization of US-Syria ties – to move away from Iran and stop arming Hezbollah.
Testifying in the Senate, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was blunter than ever about Washington’s bid to drive a wedge between Damascus and Tehran.
Clinton said William Burns, the third-ranking US diplomat, “had very intense, substantive talks in Damascus” when he visited Syria last week, in the highest-level such US mission for five years.
Syria is being asked “generally to begin to move away from the relationship with Iran, which is so deeply troubling to the region as well as to the United States,” she said.
“Arab World will Usher in New Mideast without Zionists”
Al-Assad and Ahmadinejad also addressed the recent Israeli threats during their conference. “We believe we are facing an entity that is capable of aggression at any point, and we are preparing ourselves for any Israeli aggression, be it on a small or large scale. We must be prepared for any Israeli response, under any pretext,” said the Syrian leader. “Israel is directing its threats at Syria and the resistance movements. The threats are also aimed at boosting the Israeli citizens’ morale after a series of defeats.”
President Ahmadinejad said that “if the Zionist regime wants to repeat its past mistakes, this will bring about its demise and annihilation,” adding that Iran, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon will stand against Israel.
“The Zionists and their protectors have reached a dead end. The Zionist entity will eventually disappear; its existential philosophy has ended. The Zionist conquerors have reached a dead end; all of their threats against the Palestinians stem from their weakness. If the Zionists repeat their past mistakes, all of the region’s nations will uproot them,” Ahmadinejad said.
“With Allah’s help, the new Middle East will be a Middle East without Zionists and imperialists. We hope they will recognize the rights of the region’s nations, but they must realize that if they continue along their wrongful path they have no place in our region. Today the ties between the region’s nations – between Iran, Syria and the resistance movement – are very strong. We believe that developments in the world will benefit Iran, Syria and the region’s free governments,” he said.
Before leaving Tehran into Damascus, Ahmadinejad was quoted by Iran’s Fars news agency as saying that the two countries would not be deterred. “While the Zionists make permanent threats against my country and peoples of the region … Syria and Iran must consult and take decisions to confront these threats,” he said,
About two weeks ago Ahmadinejad said during a telephone conversation with al-Assad that Israel should be resisted and finished off if it launched military action in the region. “We have reliable information … that the Zionist regime is after finding a way to compensate for its ridiculous defeats from the people of Gaza and Lebanon’s Hezbollah,” he told the Syrian leader.
“If the Zionist regime should repeat its mistakes and initiate a military operation, then it must be resisted with full force to put an end to it once and for all,” Ahmadinejad said.
“Iran has the Right to Pursue Uranium Enrichment”
President al-Assad, for his part, also defended Iran’s right to pursue uranium enrichment, despite the threat of new sanctions against the Islamic republic over its nuclear program. “To forbid an independent state the right to enrichment amounts to a new colonialist process in the region,” he said.
Thursday’s visit comes after Walid Mouallem, Syria’s foreign minister, said Damascus was eager to help Iran and the West engage in a “constructive” dialogue over Tehran’s nuclear program. “Sanctions are not a solution [to the problem] between Iran and the West,” Mouallem said on Saturday. “We are trying to engage a constructive dialogue between the two parties in order to reach a peaceful solution.”
He insisted that despite Western claims “Iran does not have a nuclear military program.”
On the nuclear front, Clinton also said on Wednesday that she hoped to see a UN Security Council resolution on a fourth set of sanctions against Iran in the “next 30 to 60 days.”
Seymour Hersh Interviews Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad
By Seymour Hersh – The New Yorker
You start with the land; you do not start with peace.
I spoke to Bashar Assad, the president of Syria, this winter in Damascus. Assad assumed the presidency after his father’s death, in 2000, when he was thirty-four years old, and he expressed some empathy for President Barack Obama, who, like Assad, was confronted with a steep learning curve.
One note: a transcript of our talk, provided by Assad’s office, was generally accurate but it did not include an exchange we had about intelligence. A senior Syrian official had told me that, last year, Syria, which is on the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism, had renewed its sharing of intelligence on terrorism with the C.I.A. and with Britain’s MI6, after a request from Obama that was relayed by George Mitchell, the President’s envoy for the Middle East. (The White House declined to comment.) Assad said that he had agreed to do so, and then added that he also has warned Mitchell “that if nothing happens from the other side”—in terms of political progress—“we will stop it.”
Quotes from our conversation follow.
President Barack Obama:
Bush gave Obama this big ball of fire, and it is burning, domestically and internationally. Obama, he does not know how to catch it.
The approach has changed; no more dictations but more listening and more recognition of America’s problems around the world, especially in Afghanistan and Iraq. But at the same time there are no concrete results…. What we have is only the first step…. Maybe I am optimistic about Obama, but that does not mean that I am optimistic about other institutions that play negative or paralyzing role[s] to Obama.
If you talk about four years, you have one year to learn and the last year to work for the next elections. So, you only have two years. The problem, with these complicated problems around the world, where the United States should play a role to find a solution, is that two years is a very short time…. Is it enough for somebody like Obama?
Hillary Clinton:
Some say that even Hilary Clinton does not support Obama. Some say she still has ambition to be President some day—that is what they say.
The press conference of Hillary with [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu [in which she appeared to walk away from the Administration’s call for a freeze on settlements] was very bad, even for the image of the United States.
Israel and the United States:
To be biased and side with the Israelis, this is traditional for the United States; we do not expect them to be in the middle soon. So we can deal with this issue, and we can find a way if you want to talk about the peace process. But the vision does not seem to be clear on the U.S. side as to what they really want to happen in the Middle East.
Negotiations with Israel:
I have half a million Palestinians and they have been living here for three generations now. So, if you do not find a solution for them, then what peace you are talking about?
What, I said, is the difference between peace and a peace treaty? Peace treaty is what you sign, but peace is when you have normal relations. So, you start with a peace treaty in order to achieve peace…. If they say you can have the entire Golan back, we will have a peace treaty. But they cannot expect me to give them the peace they expect…. You start with the land; you do not start with peace.
The Israelis:
You need a special dictionary for their terms…. They do not have any of the old generation who used to know what politics means, like Rabin and the others. That is why I said they are like children fighting each other, messing with the country; they do not know what to do.
[The Israelis] wanted to destroy Hamas in the war [in December, 2008] and make Abu Mazen strong in the West Bank. Actually it is a police state, and they weakened Abu Mazen and made Hamas stronger. Now they wanted to destroy Hamas. But what is the substitute for Hamas? It is Al Qaeda, and they do not have a leader to talk to, to talk about anything. They are not ready to make dialogue. They [Al Qaeda] only want to die in the field.
Europe and the Iranian nuclear negotiation:
This is not European but Bush’s initiative adopted by the Europeans. The Europeans are like the postman; they pretend that they are not like this but they are like a postman; they are completely passive and I told them that. I told the French when I visited France.
Iran:
Imposing sanctions [on Iran] is a problem because they will not stop the program and they will accelerate it if you are suspicious. They can make problems to the Americans more than the other way around.
If I am Ahmadinejad, I will not give all the uranium because I do not have a guarantee [in response to American and European insistence that most of Iran’s low-enriched uranium be sent abroad for further enrichment to make it usable for a research reactor, but not for a bomb]…. So, the only solution is that they can send you part and you send it back enriched, and then they send another part…. The only advice I can give to Obama: accept this Iranian proposal because this is very good and very realistic. [Note: the Iranian position appeared to be shifting this week.]
Lebanon:
The civil war in Lebanon could start in days; it does not take weeks or months; it could start just like this. One cannot feel assured about anything in Lebanon unless they change the whole system.
Cooperating with the United States in Iraq:
They [American officials] only talk about the borders; this is a very narrow-minded way. But we said yes. We said yes—and, you know, during Bush we used to say no, but when Mitchell came [as Obama’s envoy] I said O.K.… I told Mitchell by saying this is the first step and when find something positive from the American side we move to the next level…. We sent our delegation to the borders and [the Iraqis] did not come. Of course, the reason is that [Nouri] al-Maliki [the Prime Minister of Iraq] is against it. So far there is nothing, there is no cooperation about anything and even no real dialogue.
George Mitchell:
I told him, you were successful in Ireland, but this is different…. [Mitchell] is very keen to succeed. And he wants to do something good, but I compare with the situation in the United States: the Congress has not changed…. But the whole atmosphere is not positive towards the President in general. And that is why I think his envoys cannot succeed.
Criticisms of some Israeli policies at the J-Street founding conference:
Ahh … that is new!… But we should educate them that if they are worried about Israel, then the only thing that can protect Israel is peace, nothing else. No amount of airplanes or weapons could protect Israel, so they have to forget about that.
Pakistan’s government:
They supported [Afghan President Hamid] Karzai and realized he cannot deliver. I do not know why they supported him and why—nobody knows why.
American power:
Now the problem is that the United States is weaker, and the whole influential world is weak as well…. You always need power to do politics. Now nobody is doing politics…. So what you need is strong United States with good politics, not weaker United States. If you have weaker United States, it is not good for the balance of the world.
What Comes Next
Turkey and the Arabs are ending a century of mutual alienation
A strange calm prevails on the Middle Eastern surface. Occasionally a wave breaks through from beneath – the killing of an Iranian scientist, a bomb targetting Hamas’s representative to Lebanon (which instead kills three Hizbullah men), a failed attack on Israeli diplomats travelling through Jordan – and psychological warfare rages, as usual, between Israel and Hizbullah, but the high drama seems to have shifted for now to the east, to Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Arab world (with the obvious exception of Yemen) appears to be holding its breath, waiting for what comes next.
Iraq’s civil war is over. The Shia majority, after grievous provocation from takfiri terrorists, and after its own leaderhip made grievous mistakes, decisively defeated the Sunni minority. Baghdad is no longer a mixed city but one with a large Shia majority and with no-go zones for all sects. In their defeat, a large section of the Sunni resistance started working for their American enemy. They did so for reasons of self-preservation and in order to remove Wahhabi-nihilists from the fortresses which Sunni mistakes had allowed them to build.
The collapse of the national resistance into sectarian civil war was a tragedy for the region, the Arabs and the entire Muslim world. The fact that it was partly engineered by the occupier does not excuse the Arabs. Imperialists will exploit any weaknesses they find. This is in the natural way of things. It is the task of the imperialised to rectify these weaknesses in order to be victorious.
The sectarian horror has taken the wind out of Iraqi resistance. Those who fought the Americans in the past and who choose not to collaborate now have gone quiet. Moqtada Sadr, for instance, having lost control of the more thuggish elements of his Jaish al-Mahdi and therefore much of his mass popularity, has disappeared into the Qom seminaries. He will emerge at some point with Ayatullah status. What he does then will depend on what comes next, which is not at all clear.
Will the monthly round of bomb attacks reignite civil war? Will resistance mount again as Iraqis move against the permanent US megabases on their land? Will there be a further American withdrawal? And if so, what happens then? Might Saudi Arabia be committed to preventing a Shia-majority government from functioning, at any price? Would it fund and arm an anti-Shia militia more fully than it has done in the past? Its attempts to defeat the Iraqi Shia would fail, but they could spark a new war in which the Saudis face Iran by proxy or even, by a chain of mismanagement, directly. This could satisfy perverse American and Israeli strategists as much as the Iraq-Iran conflict did in the 80s.
The Saudis and Iranians may already be fighting by proxy in Yemen. Saudi military involvement in its southern neighbour is a public fact (the kingdom is heroically bombarding poverty-stricken villagers with its expensive American bombs). Its enemy is the rebellious Houthi tribe, Shias. The president of collapsing Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh, preposterously tells us that the Houthis are armed by both Iran and al-Qa’ida. Saudi media describes the enemy as ‘Shia’. Iranian media describes ‘Wahhabi’ massacres. Meanwhile, Iranian pilgrims have stopped visiting Mecca until such time as the Saudi authorities guarantee their protection from intolerable Wahhabi mistreatment.
In Palestine nothing is resolved and nothing is in sight of resolution. With the cleavage between Gaza and the West Bank successfully engineered, with Gaza walled, starved and bombed, with the West Bank warned that it will suffer Gaza’s fate if it removes its collaborator government, the Palestinian liberation project is in desperate straits. For now the West Bank enjoys a somewhat improved economy and freedom of movement, quietly realises the two state dream is over, and waits. For now Gaza does its best to survive, and waits. For now.
The Gaza model applies to Lebanon too. The general message is that a future Israel-Hizbullah conflict will be ‘a hundred times worse’ in its effects on Lebanese civilians than the atrocious 2006 assault. Hizbullah is careful and quiet, but by most accounts even better dug in than it was four years ago. Lebanon, meanwhile, is more stable than it has been since the assassination of Rafiq Hariri. After Hizbullah called the bluff of Hariri junior and his Saudi-US-backed militia, and with the mediation of Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the US have retreated to their traditional positions of influence in Lebanon. Saad Hariri has visited Damascus.
Syria has regained its strength. The Obama administration will continue to back Zionist expansion, has kept Bush-era anti-Syrian sanctions in place, and only yesterday appointed an ambassador to Damascus, but ‘regime change’ is no longer an American fantasy and, as noted above, a natural, non-militarised Syrian influence in Lebanon has been accepted. Syria’s position is again what it was under the late president Hafez al-Asad: Syria can not change the region on its own, but nobody can change the region without it.
The good news, and perhaps the what-comes-next, is Turkey.
When I lived in Turkey in the early nineties the country was surrounded by enemies. Now all of its neighbours are friends. Internal relations between Turks and Kurds are also much better than they were a few years ago. Both developments stem from a long-overdue dilution of Kemalist national chauvinism brought about by new social forces. These are the upwardly mobile Anatolian Islamic-democrats represented by Prime Minister Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party. They aim to build an inclusive post-Ottoman society, and their economy is flourishing.
An intellectual associated with the Justice and Development Party told a friend of mine that the best things to happen to Middle Eastern Muslims in the 20th century had been Ataturk and Wahhabism, because both challenges – the militantly secularist and the sectarian literalist – had forced (and are forcing) Muslims to rethink their core values. Turkey’s Sufi-based Sunnism is an attractive model which could sap the appeal of Salafism in the ex-Ottoman Arab world. But the Turkish-led alliance that is emerging inludes the Shia world too. Turkey has defended Iran’s right to nuclear energy and, against American orders, is investing enthusiastically in the Iranian economy.
Turkey is engaging not only with Arabs but with Arab and Muslim interests too
Turkey and the Arabs are ending a century of mutual alienation. The late Ottoman state degenerated from a multicultural Muslim dominion into an empire on the European model in which nationalist Turks oppressed the Arab territories into stagnation. Arab nationalism flared in response. In what was a historical mistake – but perhaps a necessary one – in 1917 the Arabs accepted the help of the British to rid themselves of Turkish rule. The British promised an independent Arab state; what the Arabs got was the Sykes-Picot dismemberment of their homeland and the resulting irrevocably corrupt states system. Palestine was lost.
Ataturk defended the Turkish homeland from dismemberment and constructed a functioning European-style nation-state, but one run by the army. The governing ideology was fervently ethno-nationalist, precluding cooperation with non-Turks. Greeks fled to Greece while Greek Turks fled to Turkey. The Armenians had already been cleansed. Ataturk considered Turkey’s Arab and Persian neighbours to be degenerate oriental races. Official mythology taught that Turks had invented language and civilisation, that the ancient Sumerians were Turks, and that Turks had colonised India when the Indians lived in trees. Across the border in Syria, Baathist myths repeated these ideas in an Arab mirror.
The practical contention between the two countries was over Wilayat Iskenderoon, or Hatay in Turkish, which the French Mandate (mandated to guard Syria’s territorial unity) gave to Turkey in 1938 in return for a promise not to join Germany in a future war. Arab nationalists in Syria and elsewhere were outraged by the loss of ancient Antioch, of Iskenderoon, Syria’s major port, and of the green lands and markets around these cities. Syrian maps still show Wilayat Iskenderoon as part of Syria, although Syrians don’t resent the Turks like they resent the Israelis occupying the Golan. The Turks are old neighbours and they do not seek to drive out the Arabs. Now that the border is wide open, now that Syrians, Lebanese and Jordanians can enter Turkey without a visa, now that Turkish-Syrian trade is burgeoning, Iskenderoon does not even feel so lost any more.
Syria gave up the Kurdish separatist leader Abdullah Ocalan in 1999, greatly reducing Turkish hostility. Syrian president Bashaar al-Asad and his wife Asma al-Akhras are popular figures in Turkey, and Turkish prime minister Erdogan is wildly popular in the Arab world, particularly after his public rebukes of Israel during the Gaza massacre.
The friendship with Syria shows that Turkey is engaging not only with Arabs but with Arab and Muslim interests too. Its hardening position in support of the Palestinians allows a voice of Muslim conscience to be heard in the international arena. This marks a change. The regional US-client regimes seem suddenly much less relevant, and the age of the ‘moderate camp’ versus ‘resistance front’ duality, which reigned a couple of years ago, has already passed.
Turkey has democratic stability on its side. Another military coup is highly unlikely, firstly because the miltary itself contains representatives of the new Turkish mood, and secondly because the army’s secularist hard-core would dash its hopes of moving further into the European Union’s embrace if it were to seize power. But it is Turkey’s slow realisation that the EU will never allow it to be a full member that has encouraged it to claim its place in Asia, where it belongs. In Asia it is admirably placed as the conduit of Iraqi, Iranian and Caspian Sea oil, as the bridge to Europe and Europe’s Muslims, and as a potential shield for the region against American attacks.
The Turkish-led alliance could prevent a fresh outbreak of war in Iraq. Turkey would make a sounder sponsor of Iraqi Sunni interests than Saudi Arabia, and could moderate Iranian influence in the country. An alliance is also essential for cross-border cooperation over water and fuel distribution as climate change and resource shortages loom across the region.
I have great hopes for the development of this alliance despite the potential weakness of Iran in the short to medium term (it is to be hoped that the Islamic Republic shows enough flexibility to adapt to some of the demands of its alienated portion), and despite the differences in the ruling ideologies – democratic-Islamist, theocratic, and Arabist – of its member states. In fact these differences are a good thing. They will discourage hasty leaps at union of the unthought type that Syria tried with Egypt in 1958.
What is necessary for the alliance’s growth is the long term stability of the relationship and an ongoing interchange of ideas along with people and goods. The alliance will represent Turks, Aryans and Arabs, and may eventually erase the imported nationalism which has so cursed us. It could be the first serious regional axis of the modern period, the first axis not organised by an imperial sponsor. Russia and China would be natural partners. A confident and informed power to ensure Middle Eastern rights and responsibilities would of course be in Europe’s interest too. Is it too much to hope that the emerging alliance will mark the end of Western dominance in the region? Could the alliance begin to fill the gaping hole left by the disappearance of the Caliphate?
Peace requires Ending Occupation and restoring rights; Turkey’s role is important
Establishing peace requires ending the occupation and restoring the rights, stressing the important role of Turkey
President Bashar al-Assad discussed on Wednesday with US Special Envoy for Middle East Peace George Mitchell bilateral relations, prospects of peace and the situations in the region.
Mitchell briefed President al-Assad on the US efforts to move the peace process, stressing that his country is seeking to move it on all tracks.
President al-Assad reiterated Syria’s principled stance which calls for achieving just and comprehensive peace, adding that a government that publicly announces its unwillingness to achieve peace cannot be considered a real partner in it.
His Excellency maintained that establishing peace requires ending the occupation and restoring the rights, stressing the important role of Turkey in the peace process.
Both sides affirmed that peace contributes to solving a lot of the thorny issues in the Middle East, and that delaying the resolution of these issues further complicates them.
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For his part, Mitchell stressed that his country is looking forward to the achievement of progress in Syrian-American relations and in the peace process.
The meeting was attended by foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem, Presidential Political and Media Advisor Bouthaina Shaaban, Deputy Foreign Minister Fayssal Mikdad and the delegation accompanying Mitchell.
In this regard, Foreign Minister al-Moallem held a meeting with Mitchell.
In a statement to reporters, Mitchell said he is looking forward to a positive relationship between the two countries in order to achieve tangible progress in the peace process and the bilateral relations between the US and Syria.
He pointed out that his talks with President al-Assad touched upon a wide spectrum of important issues related to the bilateral relations between the two countries, saying “President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton are committed to comprehensive peace in the Middle East on the Palestinian, Syrian and Lebanese tracks.”
Mitchell also affirmed Syria’s important role in peace efforts, as do the U.S. and international community, noting that this issue was at the core of his talks with President al-Assad. He added he is looking forward to coming back to Damascus in the near future.
This is Mitchell’s third visit to Syria, with his latest visit in July 2009.
In this context, several US delegations from the Congress and the Department of State visited Damascus recently.
Egypt riled by Syria’s increasing role in the region
By Zvi Bar’el – Haaretz
Instead of Syria being isolated, Egypt may find itself pushed to the side
What happened to the reconciliation between Syria and Egypt supposedly in the works? There had been widespread speculation in the Arab media in anticipation of the Syrian-Saudi summit meeting last Wednesday, that the Egyptian president would go to Riyadh for the Syrian-Saudi summit meeting last Wednesday, to ease the four years of bad blood (starting from the Second Lebanon War) between the two.
The rift in relations between Syria and Saudi Arabia had lasted longer than that: five years. It began after the assassination of the Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri in February 2005, and ended only last October when Saudi King Abdullah mended ties with Syrian President Bashar Assad and agreed to visit Damascus.
Since then, Abdullah has been trying to persuade Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to bury the hatchet with Assad, but has been unsuccessful thus far.
As the summit approached, it seemed as if the warring sides would shake hands in the Saudi capital, but then Mubarak learned that on the eve of his departure, Assad had held a telephone conversation with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Tehran and explained to him that “Egypt would have no choice but to recognize that opposition (such as that espoused by Hamas and Hezbollah) is the only way to get things done.”
That was enough for Mubarak to cancel his trip to Riyadh.
Egypt can continue being annoyed with Syria but it cannot ignore the new role Damascus has recently taken on for itself in the region. One example of this is Assad’s proposal to the Saudis to mediate between them and Iran with the aim of reaching “regional reconciliation” and not merely “Arab reconciliation,” which is King Abdullah’s goal.
The Egyptians are scrutinizing Assad’s moves warily in other arenas as well. His close relations with Turkey, declarations about establishing an Iran-Syria-Iraq-Turkey axis, strengthening of ties between Syria and Europe, particularly France, Assad’s control of Hamas’ decisions about Palestinian reconciliation, and the “historic reconciliation” with Lebanon which removed the threat of an international commission of inquiry into the murder of Hariri have complicated matters in Mubarak’s eyes.
Instead of Syria being isolated, Egypt may find itself pushed to the side.
At the end of March, when the Arab League summit convenes in Tripoli, the heads of state will have to turn their attention to the issue of how to advance the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Should the Arab initiative be left on the table, will they have the power to bring about Palestinian reconciliation.
Is the Arab summit even still relevant, or will certain states like Saudi Arabia and Egypt continue to lead pan-Arabic policies as they have in recent years?
When Syria becomes one of the states that serves as an anchor, then Egypt’s problems will become more complicated.
Egypt also returned empty handed from a recent trip to Washington. Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit, and the head of intelligence, Omar Suleiman, returned some two weeks ago from the American capital without succeeding in persuading the administration there to demand a total freeze of construction in the Israeli settlements.
The Egyptian emissaries were likewise not successful in getting agreements with regard to the guarantees the Arab states are asking of the Americans.
Egypt became involved in an embarrassing public argument over this issue with Qatar of all countries. While Aboul Gheit claimed he had no idea about an Arab decision demanding American guarantees that Israel would carry out its commitments, the Qatari foreign minister declared that “everyone knows that the Arab committee that is following up the political process demanded American guarantees as far back as September.”
A copy of this demand was given to every foreign minister and Qatar was “amazed” at Egypt’s response, he said.
Al-Jazeera under fire
Egypt has been peeved for some time now about broadcasts from al-Jazeera which portray it as collaborating with Israel in the blockade of Gaza. According to Saudi Arabia, which has meanwhile made peace with Qatar – whose ruling family controls the TV station – al-Jazeera is presenting Riyadh as if it is fighting a war in Yemen in which it should not be involved.
The attempts in 2008 by Saudi Arabia and Egypt, together with a number of other Arab states, to formulate a binding covenant of ethics to be adopted by satellite TV channels did not succeed.
The covenant was left to die when Qatar voiced its opposition. This week, Anas el-Fiqi, the Egyptian information minister, decided to launch another initiative. Known as the Satellite Stations Authority, the new plan is meant to censor broadcasts by stations considered to be inciting against the Arab interest or against states, or to be abetting terrorism.
Syria, Qatar and Lebanon have already announced that they oppose the initiative and that they believe no TV station should be under political censorship. The opposition on the part of these three states ensures that the discussion that is supposed to take place in Cairo on January 24 between all the information ministers of the Arab states will produce a lot of hot air but few decisions.
Egypt and Saudi Arabia base their initiative on the draft law that was passed in the U.S. House of Representatives but has not yet become law, according to which the owners of satellite stations, and not merely editors and reporters, will be prosecuted if their stations help spread terrorism.
It is not clear what the definition of “spreading terrorism” or anti-American incitement will be, but the draft law mentions several possible actions that could fall under the law.
The problem is that the United States can indeed impose sanctions on the owners of such stations, but what will the Arab states do? Impose sanctions on one another? Boycott Hezbollah, which owns the al-Manaar station, or ostracize Hamas, which owns the al-Aqsa station?
