New twist in Iran’s nuclear brinkmanship

By Kaveh Afrasiabi – Asia Times

As Iran celebrates the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, there are rays of hope that the dark clouds of a more intensified nuclear crisis may be disappearing

It is possible that by giving the go-ahead for the production of 20% enriched uranium, Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad has sufficiently jolted the other side to rethink its approach on the nuclear fuel-swap deal.

On the surface, Iran’s decision has raised alarm bells in the West and has provoked a strong response from United States President Barack Obama, who has warned that his administration is “developing a significant regime of sanctions” to impose on Iran.

Even Moscow has expressed its displeasure, in the form of a statement by a Foreign Ministry official, which said, “We are disappointed with the Iranian step, which did not allow diplomats to agree on mutually acceptable ways for the fulfillment of the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] proposal of higher-enriched uranium fuel production for the Tehran research reactor outside Iran.”

Under a proposal put forward by the IAEA last year, Iran would hand over its low-enriched uranium (LEU) to be further processed in another country before being returned for use at the Tehran reactor. On February 2, after much flip-flopping, Iran said it was now ready to send its LEU abroad. Then, on February 7, Iran announced it would itself begin enriching uranium to 20%, while saying it was still open to discussing the original proposal.

This has heightened concerns that Iran aims to build nuclear weapons, something it has consistently denied.

However, not all hope is lost for the IAEA-proposed deal, and there are emerging signs of growing activity on both sides to come to some sort of mutually satisfactory agreement.

On Iran’s part, various officials from the Atomic Energy Organization (AEO) to the Foreign Ministry have repeatedly stated that Iran is still open to the swap deal. Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of the AEO, told the Tehran daily Iran that the government was willing to suspend production of 20% uranium if there were an exchange “without preconditions” of Iran’s 3.5% LEU in return for nuclear fuel rods. According to Salehi, Iran’s LEU could be “sealed and put under the custody” of the IAEA until it received the fuel it needed for the medical research reactor.

The news from Washington on the other hand indicates that the US is now working on a new proposal aimed at salvaging the nuclear deal that was unveiled last October in Geneva. This focuses on procuring medical isotopes for Iran from the international market. An administration official told the Washington Post, “Rather than operate a reactor, this would be a more cost-effective and efficient approach.”

Not everyone agrees with that assessment, however, and some US nuclear experts have openly admitted that Iran’s home production of key ingredients (eg technetium 99) would be less costly and more efficient. (See Dangerous steps in Iran’s nuclear dance Asia Times Online, February 9, 2010).

That aside, the problem with the US’s new approach is that it apparently seeks to make the reactor redundant by the promise of delivering the reactor’s net products. That will not wash with the Iranians, who have had an earful of unfulfilled promises over the past 30 years.

Instead, what may work to everyone’s advantage is a “mixed approach”, whereby the fuel swap under set timelines and delivery of medical isotopes to Iran would be the central elements of an agreement according to which Iran would refrain from engaging in enrichment activities deemed “highly dangerous” by the West.

“It’s Iran’s version of nuclear brinksmanship,” said a Tehran foreign policy expert. “The message from Tehran is clear: take our counter-proposal seriously or face the consequence of Iran taking a giant step closer to the ‘nuclear-capable’ threshold … There is cause for a pause on the part of Washington and London in their unreasonable rejection of Iran’s proposal.”

If a deal is worked out and a modified version of the IAEA proposal accepted, it would represent a unique victory for Iran’s nuclear diplomacy, combining “soft” and “hard” power to elicit a favorable response from the “Iran Six” nations, ie the US, France, Britain, Russia, China and Germany. These countries have engaged in nuclear negotiations with Iran over the past several years.

Also, if there were a breakthrough, it would frustrate some of the hardline voices in Iran that argue in favor of Iran “deepening its nuclear capability”. To silence such voices and to agree to limit Iran’s enrichment activities to low levels (below 5%), Iran’s top decision-makers would have to show that they had struck the right bargain without selling themselves short.

As Iran celebrates the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution on Thursday, with people expected to take to the streets in their thousands across the country – although some will be protesting against the current government – there are rays of hope that the dark clouds of a more intensified nuclear crisis may be disappearing.

The Biased US Broker in the Middle East

By Khalid Amayreh – Islam Online

Ariel Sharon: “We control the United States, and the Americans know it.”

Ever since the ill-fated Rogers Plan, proposed and named after former US secretary of state William Rogers in 1969, every American administration made ostensibly exhaustive efforts to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict.

However, all these efforts failed miserably, apparently due to Israel’s adamant refusal to give up the spoils of the 1967 War.

Another key reason behind the failure of the US peace diplomacy in the Middle East is the US reluctance and consistent refusal to exert meaningful pressure on Israel to abide by international law, which further emboldened Israel and made the Jewish state bask undisturbed in its rejectionism and arrogance of power.

In 1969, Golda Meir, the former Israeli prime minister, who displayed characteristic Zionist arrogance, as well as profound pathological hatred of Arabs, flatly rejected the Rogers Plan, describing it as a “disaster” for Israel and saying that “it would be irresponsible for any Israeli government to support such a plan.”

In1969, Israel’s cabinet formally rejected the plan, and in 1970, 70 American senators and 280 representatives rejected the plan as “being too one-sided against Israel.”

That was 40 years ago; today, the Obama administration is regurgitating more or less the same ideas, centering on the concept of the land-for-peace formula. Other US administrations under presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush Sr, Bill Clinton, and George W Bush employed the same ideas in formulating their respective Middle East initiatives, but to no avail.

During these decades, Israel heavily employed diversionary tactics to distract attention from real issues. It used issues such as Arab non-recognition of Israel, Arab refusal to sit down with Israel at the negotiating table, and later the issue of “terror,” a reference to Arab resistance to Israel’s ruthless and cruel aggressions against Arab civilians in Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, as well as inside the occupied Palestine.

In addition, successive Israeli governments used the time to create facts on the ground, namely building hundreds of Jewish colonies and transferring hundreds of thousands of its Jewish citizens to live on an occupied land belonging to another people.

The United States was closely monitoring all these developments, but refused to take any pro-active step against Israel, despite the latter’s brazen violations of international law, including America’s own laws such as the prohibition of the use of American-supplied weapons against civilians.

Why?

Israel is a small country with a population of six million, while the United States is the world’s remaining super power, with a population exceeding 300 million people. Moreover, Israel relies on the United States for acquiring state-of-the-art American military technology, which enables Israel to maintain a manifestly arrogant stand vis-à-vis the Arab world, as well as clear defiance of international law, including the United Nations and its Security Council.

Therefore, at the face value, one would think that the United States, not Israel, should be in a natural position to pressure, even coerce Israel, to heed the American will.

The truth, however, is that Israel has been in a position to pressure, even coerce, every American administration since president Eisenhower effectively ordered Israel in November, 1956 to withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula, following the Anglo-French invasion of Egypt.

Even today, it is amply clear that President Obama is more concerned about Israeli (Jewish) pressure on his administration than Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu is concerned about the possible US pressure on Israel.

This fact allows Netanyahu to successfully challenge and defy the Obama administration on the issue of settlement expansion, effectively forcing the American president to admit that he had underestimated the obstacles impeding a possible peace settlement between Israel and Palestinians.

The unique Israeli predominance over American politics and policies is not new. It goes back to the very birth of Israel when American Jewish circles used their financial leverage and political influence to get president Truman to recognize Israel against recommendations to the contrary by the state department.

Over the years, Israel and its powerful allies at the American arena successfully consolidated and virtually perpetuated Israeli predominance over US politics. The Israeli penetration of American politics has been meticulously documented by such American intellectuals, such as Alfred Lilienthal, who in 1978 wrote his masterpiece reference “The Zionist Connection: What Price peace; and Paul Fiendly who wrote “They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel’s Lobby.”

More recently, J J Mearsheimer and S W Walt jointly wrote The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy , which, using meticulous documentation, exposed Israel’s disproportionate influence on the US foreign policy.

Unbreakable Israeli-US Bond!

In fact, thanks to this disproportionate influence, the Octopus-like Israeli-American lobby, which tightly controls the Congress, was able to obtain long-standing commitments from the United States that no other country in the world would ever receive.

These include the following:

First, the United States committed itself to Israel’s survival and security, irrespective of Israeli behavior. This iron-clad commitment is routinely and almost ritualistically repeated by every new administration and by almost every American official visiting Israel. Again, this commitment is an independent variable, a constant that is not subject to other variables. In short, United States is with Israel all along, whether aggressor or victim.

Second, the United States is committed to maintain Israel’s qualitative edge in terms of its military and strategic capabilities over all Arab states combined and other Israel’s potential enemies. This is also a constant American foreign policy not subjected to the modes of Israeli behavior. This explains the visibly aggressive American efforts against the Iranian nuclear program, although there is no unequivocal evidence that Iran is developing nuclear weapons.

In this context, the United States imposed harsh sanctions against Libya until the North African state was bullied to dismantle its nuclear program and ship its components to the United States. All of this happened while Israel continued to maintain a large nuclear arsenal made up of hundreds of nuclear bombs and warheads.

Third, there is a long-standing American-Israeli understanding, according to which the United States would nearly unconditionally support and back Israeli diplomatically whether at the United Nations or the world at large. The United States used its veto power rather liberally to shield Israel from international condemnation, even when Israel was manifestly the aggressor party.

Hence, Israel effectively has nothing to worry about in terms of the military, political,and diplomatic ramifications and repercussions of its behavior in the Middle East.

This is why Israel has been able to annex and Judaize East Al-Quds (Jerusalem), build hundreds of Jewish-only colonies, and demolish tens of thousands of Arab homes throughout occupied Palestine, with nearly total impunity, thanks to this more or less total American commitment to the Jewish state.

In 2006, the Israeli air force dropped perhaps two million cluster bomblets over Lebanon, enough to kill or maim two million children. In 2008-2009, Israel committed a virtual genocide against the thoroughly starved and thoroughly-beleaguered inhabitants of Gaza, killing and maiming thousands of civilians and utterly destroying thousands of homes, schools, mosques, and other civilian infrastructure.

Tel Aviv Controls Washington?

Far from denouncing Israel’s violence and Nazi-like brutality, both the lame-duck Bush administration and the succeeding Obama administration watched the grisly massacres as if they were taking place on a different plant.

It was rumored a few years ago that the former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, a certified war criminal by any standard of honesty and fairness, told Shimon Peres, who reportedly objected to Israeli measures in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that he (Peres) should never worry about American pressure on Israel.

Sharon told him, “We control the United States, and the Americans know it.”

Israeli circles long denied the authenticity of the statement. However, it is amply clear that Sharon, who is now lying comatose for the fourth year, did not go too far in describing the unique American-Israeli relation.

By now and in the light of more than half a century of “special relations” between Israel and the United States, it should be clear that Israel has been able to impose its will on the US government, regardless of which administration is in power.

In light, it is explicitly futile to expect the Obama administration or any other American administration to force Israel to end its occupation of the West Bank and allow the Palestinians to have a viable state with East Al-Quds as its capital.

The United States has been given more than half a century to resolve the conflict in Palestine in accordance with international law, and the net result has been a gigantic fiasco.

Now, if Mr Obama, who is probably “the last and best shot,” from the Arab vantage point, is brazenly capitulating to Israel, as is clear from his administration’s inability or perhaps unwillingness to force Israel to stop the decades-old process of devouring whatever remains of the West Bank.

It is strikingly stupid to continue to count on his administration to give justice to Palestinians.

This is not to say though that the United States cannot be influenced. It can, but first, Arabs and Muslims must first show some respect for themselves and deal with the United States using the language of mutual interests, not the language of subservience and submission.

In the winter of 1973, King Faisal of Saudi Arabia told then US secretary of state Henry Kissinger that America could not be a true friend to Arabs and Muslims and at the same time continues to embrace Israeli territorial expansion at the expense of Palestinians.

Unfortunately, very few Arab leaders have ever since dared to make the same point to Americans.

To conclude, Palestinians and their supporters must stop chasing the American mirage, because it will not ever produce water. This is why an alternative strategy ought to be sought, preferably one that would make occupied Palestine a Muslim issue first, and a nationalist one second.

The False Sacredness of the 1967 Border

By Hassan Abu Nimah – The Electronic Intifada

The 1967 border means very little while Israel continues to occupy Palestinian territory

When the United States abandoned its demand that Israel freeze settlement construction as a prelude to restarting stalled Palestinian-Israeli negotiations, the Obama administration urged both sides to move straight into discussions about a future Palestinian state “based on the 1967 borders.”

Setting the border first, it was hoped, would automatically “resolve” the issue of the settlements, and this is now the focus of the “indirect talks” that US envoy for the Middle East peace process George Mitchell is trying to broker.

Of course the settlements, built on occupied West Bank land in flagrant violation of international law, would not be removed. Rather, the border would simply be redrawn to annex the vast majority of settlers and their homes to Israel, and as if by magic, the whole issue of the settlements would disappear just like that. This charade would be covered up with a so-called “land swap” of which Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas and his Palestinian Authority often speak as a way to soften up the Palestinian public for a great surrender to Israeli diktat.

All this is based on the common, but false notion that the 4 June 1967 demarcation line separating Israel from the West Bank (then administered as part of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan), is the legitimate border of Israel and should therefore be the one along which the conflict is settled.

This assumption is wrong; the 1967 border has no legitimacy and should not be taken for granted.

UN General Assembly resolution 181 of 29 November 1947 called for the partition of Palestine into two entities: a state for the Jewish minority on 57 percent of the land, and a state for the overwhelming Arab majority on less than half the land. According to the 1947 partition, the population of the Jewish state would still have been 40 percent Arab. Jerusalem would have remained a separate international zone.

Rather than “resolve” the question of Palestine, partition made it worse: Palestinians rejected a partition they viewed as fundamentally unjust in principle and in practice, and the Zionist movement grudgingly accepted it but as a first step in an ongoing program of expansion and colonization.

Resolution 181, called for the two states to strictly guarantee equal rights for all their citizens, and to have a currency and customs union, joint railways and other aspects of shared sovereignty, and set out a specific mechanism for the states to come into being.

The resolution was never implemented, however. Immediately after it was passed, Zionist militias began their campaign to conquer territory beyond that which was allocated by the partition plan. Vastly outgunned Palestinian militias resisted as best as they could, until the belated intervention of Arab armies some six months after the war began. By that time it was too late — as hundreds of thousands of Palestinians had already been ethnically cleansed from their homes. Israel, contrary to myth, was not brought into being by the UN, but by war and conquest.

The 1949 Rhodes Armistice agreement, which ended the first ever Arab-Israeli war left Israel in control of 78 percent of historic Palestine and established a ceasefire with its neighbors Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. Until the second round — in June 1967 — Arabs had been calling for the abolition of the “illegal Zionist entity” planted by colonial powers like a dagger in the heart of the Arab nation. They also waitied for the United Nations to implement its many resolutions redressing the gross injustices inflicted hitherto. The UN never tried to enforce the law or to exert serious efforts to resolve the conflict, which kept escalating.

Israel’s June 1967 blitzkrieg surprise attack on Egypt, Syria and Jordan led to the devastating Arab defeat and to Israel tripling the area of the land it controlled. The parts of Palestine still controlled by Arabs — the West Bank including eastern Jerusalem and Gaza — as well as Syria’s Golan Heights and Egypt’s Sinai fell into Israeli hands.

Defeated, demoralized and humiliated, the Arab states involved in the “setback”, as Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser called it, accepted the painful compromise spelled out by Security Council Resolution 242 of November 1967.

It ruled that the 4 June 1967 border would have to be the recognized border of Israel provided the latter evacuated the Arab lands it had occupied that year. In other words if the Arabs wanted to recover their lands lost in that war they had to end the “state of belligerency” with Israel — a small step short of recognition — and accept Israel’s actual existence within the pre-June 1967 borders. This eventually became the so-called “land for peace” formula.

Instead of withdrawing from land in exchange for recognition and peace, Israel proceeded to colonize all the newly occupied territories; it continues to do so 43 years later in the West Bank and Golan Heights. Meanwhile it has also become uncontested that Israel has a “right” to everything to the west of the 1967 border. The only question is how much more land will it get to keep to the east.

Astonishingly, Palestinian leaders, Arab states and the so-called international community have all submitted to the lopsided concept that Israel should have this right unconditionally without evacuating the illegally occupied Arab lands. The legitimacy of the 1967 border was tightly linked to Israeli withdrawal and should remain so.

An inherent contradiction in resolution 242 is that while it affirmed “the admissibility of the acquisition of the territory by war” it in fact legitimized Israel’s conquest of 1948, including the 21 percent of Palestine that was supposed to be part of the Arab state under the partition plan.

In other words, the UN granted Israel legitimate title to its previous conquests if it would give up its later conquests. This has set a disastrous precedent that aggression can lead to irreversible facts. Encouraged by this, Israel began its settlement project with the express intention of “creating facts” that would make withdrawal impossible and force international recognition of Israeli claims to the land.

It worked; in April 2004 the United States offered Israel a written guarantee that any peace agreement would have to recognize and accept the settlements as part of Israel. The rest of the “international community” as they always do, quietly followed the American line.

The Palestinian submission to the common demand that the large settlement blocs be annexed to Israel against a fictitious land swap is another vindication of the Israeli belief that facts created are facts accepted.

If and only if Israel adheres to all aspects of UN Security Council resolution 242 and others, could the 1967 line have any legitimacy. Until then, if Israel tells the Arabs that the West Bank settlements of Ariel and Maale Adumim are part of Israel, then the Arab position can be that Haifa, Jaffa and Acre are still part of Palestine. {RB note: We all know the Israelis will never agree to that but still even if they do it will never absolve their crimes or their theft of Palestine}

Netanyahu: Israel to retain key West Bank settlement

By Barak David – Haaretz

Netanyahu vowed that Israel would retain control of a large West Bank settlement under any future "peace" deal

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Friday that Israel would retain control of a large West Bank settlement under any future arrangement with the Palestinians.

During a tree-planting ceremony in the northern West Bank settlement of Ariel on Friday, Netanyahu reaffirmed the town’s historic and strategic significance.

“Anyone who understands the geography of the Land of Israel knows how important Ariel is,” Netanyahu said. “The settlement enterprise here is the heart of our land.”

“Here is where our forefathers dwelled and here is where we will stay and build,” the prime minister said. “We want to strengthen the peace and co-existence with our neighbors but this will not stop us from continuing with our lives here, where we’ll continue to plant trees and to build.”

“Ariel, the capital of Samaria (the northern West Bank), will be an integral, inseparable part of the state of Israel in any future arrangement,” Netanyahu said.

Last week, Defense Minister Ehud Barak ordered a college in Ariel to be recognized as a “university center,” thereby winning praise from the right but an outraged response from both the political left and many academics.

The decision was vehemently opposed by the Council for Higher Education, which oversees all colleges and universities inside the Green Line. But because the Ariel University Center of Samaria is located in the West Bank, it is subordinate to a different, parallel, body, the Council for Higher Education in Judea and Samaria – which, like all Israeli institutions in the West Bank, is formally subordinate to the Israel Defense Forces’ GOC Central Command, who in turn answers to the defense minister.

The CHE-JS approved Ariel’s status upgrade back in 2007, and yesterday, Barak – who is also the Labor chairman – ordered GOC Avi Mizrahi to confirm this.

Recognition as a university center moves the college closer to full recognition as Israel’s eighth university, and Barak’s approval of this step had been part of the coalition agreement between Netanyahu’s Likud party and a third coalition member, Yisrael Beiteinu.

Time for George Mitchell to resign

By Stephen M. Walt – Foreign Policy

The administration's early commitment to an Israeli-Palestinian peace was either a naïve bit of bravado or a cynical charade

If Mideast special envoy George Mitchell wants to end his career with his reputation intact, it is time for him to resign. He had a distinguished tenure in the U.S. Senate — including a stint as majority leader — and his post-Senate career has been equally accomplished. He was an effective mediator of the conflict in Northern Ireland, helped shepherd the Disney Corporation through a turbulent period, and led an effective investigation of the steroids scandal afflicting major league baseball. Nobody can expect to be universally admired in the United States, but Mitchell may have come as close as any politician in recent memory.

Why should Mitchell step down now? Because he is wasting his time. The administration’s early commitment to an Israeli-Palestinian peace was either a naïve bit of bravado or a cynical charade, and if Mitchell continues to pile up frequent-flyer miles in a fruitless effort, he will be remembered as one of a long series of U.S. “mediators” who ended up complicit in Israel’s self-destructive land grab on the West Bank. Mitchell will turn 77 in August, he has already undergone treatment for prostate cancer, and he’s gotten exactly nowhere (or worse) since his mission began. However noble the goal of Israeli-Palestinian peace might be, surely he’s got better things to do.

In an interview earlier this week with Time’s Joe Klein, President Obama acknowledged that his early commitment to achieving “two states for two peoples” had failed. In his words, “this is as intractable a problem as you get … Both sides-the Israelis and the Palestinians-have found that the political environments, the nature of their coalitions or the divisions within their societies, were such that it was very hard for them to start engaging in a meaningful conversation. And I think we overestimated our ability to persuade them to do so when their politics ran contrary to that” (my emphasis).

This admission raises an obvious question: who was responsible for this gross miscalculation? It’s not as if the dysfunctional condition of Israeli and Palestinian internal politics was a dark mystery when Obama took office, or when Netanyahu formed the most hard-line government in Israeli history. Which advisors told Obama and Mitchell to proceed as they did, raising expectations sky-high in the Cairo speech, publicly insisting on a settlement freeze, and then engaging in a humiliating retreat? Did they ever ask themselves what they would do if Netanyahu dug in his heels, as anyone with a triple-digit IQ should have expected? And if Obama now realizes how badly they screwed up, why do the people who recommended this approach still have their jobs?

As for Mitchell himself, he should resign because it should be clear to him that he was hired under false pretenses. He undoubtedly believed Obama when the president said he was genuinely committed to achieving Israel-Palestinian peace in his first term. Obama probably promised to back him up, and his actions up to the Cairo speech made it look like he meant it. But his performance ever since has exposed him as another U.S. president who is unwilling to do what everyone knows it will take to achieve a just peace. Mitchell has been reduced to the same hapless role that Condoleezza Rice played in the latter stages of the Bush administration — engaged in endless “talks” and inconclusive haggling over trivialities-and he ought to be furious at having been hung out to dry in this fashion.

The point is not that Obama’s initial peace effort in the Middle East has failed; the real lesson is that he didn’t really try. The objective was admirably clear from the start — “two states for two peoples” — what was missing was a clear strategy for getting there and the political will to push it through. And notwithstanding the various difficulties on the Palestinian side, the main obstacle has been the Netanyahu government’s all-too obvious rejection of anything that might look like a viable Palestinian state, combined with its relentless effort to gobble up more land. Unless the U.S. president is willing and able to push Israel as hard as it is pushing the Palestinians (and probably harder), peace will simply not happen. Pressure on Israel is also the best way to defang Hamas, because genuine progress towards a Palestinian state in the one thing that could strengthen Abbas and other Palestinian moderates and force Hamas to move beyond its talk about a long-term hudna (truce) and accept the idea of permanent peace.

It’s not as if Obama and Co. don’t realize that this is important. National Security Advisor James Jones has made it clear that he sees the Israel-Palestinian issue as absolutely central; it’s not our only problem in the Middle East, but it tends to affect most of the others and resolving it would be an enormous boon. And there’s every sign that the president is aware of the need to do more than just talk.

Yet U.S. diplomacy in this area remains all talk and no action. When a great power identifies a key interest and is strongly committed to achieving it, it uses all the tools at its disposal to try to bring that outcome about. Needless to say, the use of U.S. leverage has been conspicuously absent over the past year, which means that Mitchell has been operating with both hands tied firmly behind his back. Thus far, the only instrument of influence that Obama has used has been presidential rhetoric, and even that weapon has been used rather sparingly.

And please don’t blame this on Congress. Yes, Congress will pander to the lobby, oppose a tougher U.S. stance, and continue to supply Israel with generous economic and military handouts, but a determined president still has many ways of bringing pressure to bear on recalcitrant clients. The problem is that Obama refused to use any of them.

When Netanyahu dug in his heels and refused a complete settlement freeze — itself a rather innocuous demand if Israel preferred peace to land — did Obama describe the settlements as “illegal” and contrary to international law? Of course not. Did he fire a warning shot by instructing the Department of Justice to crack down on tax-deductible contributions to settler organizations? Nope. Did he tell Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to signal his irritation by curtailing U.S. purchases of Israeli arms, downgrading various forms of “strategic cooperation,” or canceling a military exchange or two? Not a chance. When Israel continued to evict Palestinians from their homes and announced new settlement construction in East Jerusalem and the West Bank in August, did Obama remind Netanyahu of his dependence on U.S. support by telling U.S. officials to say a few positive things about the Goldstone Report and to use its release as an opportunity to underscore the need for a genuine peace? Hardly; instead, the administration rewarded Netanyau’s intransigence by condemning Goldstone and praising Netanyahu for “unprecedented” concessions. (The “concessions,” by the way, was an announcement that Israel would freeze settlement expansion in the West Bank “temporarily” while continuing it in East Jerusalem. In other words, they’ll just take the land a bit more slowly).

Like the Clinton and Bush administrations, in short, the idea that the United States ought to use its leverage and exert genuine pressure on Israel remains anathema to Obama, to Mitchell and his advisors, and to all those pundits who are trapped in the Washington consensus on this issue. The main organizations in the Israel lobby are of course dead-set against it — and that goes for J Street as well — even though there is no reason to expect Israel to change course in the absence of countervailing pressure.

Obama blinked — leaving Mitchell with nothing to do-because he needed to keep sixty senators on board with his health care initiative (that worked out well, didn’t it?), because he didn’t want to jeopardize the campaign coffers of the Democratic Party, and because he knew he’d be excoriated by Israel’s false friends in the U.S. media if he did the right thing. I suppose I ought to be grateful to have my thesis vindicated in such striking fashion, but there’s too much human misery involved on both sides to take any consolation in that.

So what will happen now? Israel has made it clear that it is going to keep building settlements — including the large blocs (like Ma’ale Adumim) that were consciously designed to carve up the West Bank and make creation of a viable Palestinian state impossible. Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority, and other moderate forces will be increasingly discredited as collaborators or dupes. As Israel increasingly becomes an apartheid state, its international legitimacy will face a growing challenge. Iran’s ability to exploit the Palestinian cause will be strengthened, and pro-American regimes in Egypt, Jordan, and elsewhere will be further weakened by their impotence and by their intimate association with the United States. It might even help give al Qaeda a new lease on life, at least in some places. Jews in other countries will continue to distance themselves from an Israel that they see as a poor embodiment of their own values, and one that can no longer portray itself convincingly as “a light unto the nations.” And the real tragedy is that all this might have been avoided, had the leaders of the world’s most powerful country been willing to use their influence on both sides more directly.

Looking ahead, one can see two radically different possibilities. The first option is that Israel retains control of the West Bank and Gaza and continues to deny the Palestinians full political rights or economic opportunities. (Netanyahu likes to talk about a long-term “economic peace,” but his vision of Palestinian bantustans under complete Israeli control is both a denial of the Palestinians’ legitimate aspirations and a severe obstacle to their ability to fully develop their own society. Over time, there may be another intifada, which the IDF will crush as ruthlessly as it did the last one. Perhaps the millions of remaining Palestinians will gradually leave — as hardline Israelis hope and as former House speaker Dick Armey once proposed. If so, then a country founded in the aftermath of the Holocaust — one of history’s greatest crimes-will have completed a dispossession begun in 1948 — a great crime of its own.

Alternatively, the Palestinians may remain where they are, and begin to demand equal rights in the state under whose authority they have been forced to dwell. If Israel denies them these rights, its claim to being the “only democracy in the Middle East” will be exposed as hollow. If it grants them, it will eventually cease to be a Jewish-majority state (though its culture would undoubtedly retain a heavily Jewish/Israeli character). As a long-time supporter of Israel’s existence, I would take no joy in that outcome. Moreover, transforming Israel into a post-Zionist and multinational society would be a wrenching and quite possibly violent experience for all concerned. For both reasons, I’ve continued to favor “two states for two peoples” instead.

But with the two-state solution looking less and less likely, these other possibilities begin to loom large. Through fear and fecklessness, the United States has been an active enabler of an emerging tragedy. Israelis have no one to blame but themselves for the occupation, but Americans — who like to think of themselves as a country whose foreign policy reflects deep moral commitments-will be judged harshly for our own role in this endeavor.

The United States will suffer certain consequences as a result-decreased international influence, a somewhat greater risk of anti-American terrorism, tarnished moral reputation, etc.-but it will survive. But Israel may be in the process of drafting its own suicide pact, and its false friends here in the United States have been supplying the paper and ink. By offering his resignation-and insisting that Obama accept it-George Mitchell can escape the onus of complicity in this latest sad chapter of an all-too-familiar story. Small comfort, perhaps, but better than nothing.

Hariri warns of another Israeli attack on Lebanon

Press TV

Lebanon PM Saad Hariri has expressed concerns over a possible Israeli attack on the country

Lebanon’s Prime Minister Saad Hariri has expressed concerns over a possible Israeli attack on the country, citing an escalated violation of Lebanese airspace by Israeli aircraft.

Hariri, who arrived in France on Thursday on his first official visit to a Western country since forming his government in 2009, made the remarks in an interview with the French newspaper Le Monde.

He said that Israeli aircraft violated the Lebanese airspace 25 times in one single day last week.

“I also mentioned the necessity to end the daily Israeli violations of this resolution (United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701), the escalation of the Israeli threats against Lebanon and its government,” Hariri said.

The Lebanese premier said it seems that Israel thinks hitting the southern part of Lebanon does not mean that it has attacked the whole country.

Hariri said when Israel attacked southern Lebanon in 2006 “it damaged the country’s infrastructure. I wondered if that should not be considered an attack on the whole country.”

Israel launched an attack on Lebanon in 2006, but was met with stern resistance from Hezbollah. The 33-day war resulted in a heavy defeat for Tel Aviv, after the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701 called on Israel to withdraw all of its forces from Lebanon.

“Naturally, this topic is part of a wider problem, the one of Israel’s refusal to go forward in the [Middle East] peace process, especially with the Palestinians,” Hariri was quoted by Reuters as saying.

Peace requires Ending Occupation and restoring rights; Turkey’s role is important

SANA

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.

20100120-164500.jpg

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.

Is the “New Middle East” Off the Table?

By Ali Jawad – Global Research

The “New Middle East” agenda is inherently confrontational and raises the spectre of war in the region

There has been a lot of hustling and bustling in the Middle East lately, so much so that you might be forgiven for thinking that the promised winds of “change” are firmly on their way. Not since Condi Rice’s now infamous heralding of a “New Middle East” — whilst bombs rained over Southern Lebanon in the summer of 2006 — has there been so much activity on the Middle Eastern chessboard by virtually all of its players.

Despite being trailed closely by the starkest drift to the right in Israeli politics, the election of President Obama by American voters on the declared pledge of “change” has indeed led to a changed mood of diplomacy. The recent four-way ‘mini-summit’ concluded in Riyadh involving the heads of state of Saudi Arabia, Syria, Egypt and Kuwait, and an earlier visit by John Kerry to Syria, following which, he discussed the possibility of “loosening certain sanctions” on Syria “in exchange for verifiable changes in behaviour”[1], are supposedly indicative of this new wave of diplomacy.

Given this milieu of unprecedented regional diplomacy, it is easy to be deluded into thinking that the much awaited departure of former US president Bush has not only invigorated a new dynamism into diplomatic forays, but has also changed the political set of cards in play. In this respect, an immediate threat that faces the global peace movement is precisely this self-consoling expectation of dramatic change that would at once signal an end to all the precedents set by the previous Bush administration.

If history is anything to go by, then promises of change should be viewed with a measure of suspicion. When these promises emanate from an edifice of empire, a level of mistrust given age-old historical experience to the contrary, is justified.[2] Yet, the global peace movement and wider grassroots activist circles were never informed by the subjectivity of suspicion when they rose against the failed policies of Bush and his cohorts, rather, their principled stands for justice were driven by a pursuit and appreciation of reality. It is therefore necessary to objectively analyse the conditions surrounding the “New Middle East” experiment that was openly declared in 2006, and contrast its basic frameworks against the early moves of the Obama administration.

In the summer of 1996, an Israeli thinktank, the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, issued a paper entitled: ‘A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm’.[3] Contained in it was not only the
blueprint for the invasion and overthrow of the Saddam regime, but also a more comprehensive strategy of “redrawing the map of the Middle East”. Amongst the “prominent opinion makers” who contributed to the paper were the usual hawkish neo-cons and pro-Zionism advocates in the US — Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, James Colbert, David and Meyrav Wurmser, the latter of whom was a co-founder of the MEMRI project. More significantly, there remain three markedly relevant features in the substance of the so-called ‘clean break’ strategy that have the potential to decisively influence the shaping of the current Middle East.

Firstly, the ‘clean break’ strategy was specifically formulated for implementation by the Netanyahu-led Likud government, which has now been elected by the Israeli electorate. Its major premise of throwing aside the “land for peace” track for a romantically phrased “peace for peace” paradigm effectively dovetails with Netanyahu’s vision for how ‘peace’ is to be achieved in the Occupied Territories, with Syria and the wider Arab world.

Secondly, the paper places central importance on the role and strategic position of Syria. In it, its destabilization is suggested with the aim of undoing the nation’s perceived role as a lynchpin in this connected chain of “dangerous threats” in the region stretching from Iran to Southern Lebanon. Particular detail is given to this factor so much so that the paper moves from offering a geostrategic appraisal to providing a surmised methodological framework on how to destabilize and/or overthrow nations; suggesting an assortment of military
direct/indirect strikes, using anti-Syrian proxies (both politically and militarily), embarking on a regional strategy to effectively ostracize the country, and finally launching a massive PR campaign that would demonize Syria and would thereby “remind the world of the nature of the Syrian regime”. As peace activists, it is worth storing the above points in our deeper recesses because in addition to being expressly illegal according to norms of international law — not that we are under any delusions about whether or not the neo-cons respect any law — they also outline the general methods that are employed by empires in dealing with adversaries.

Finally, the role and efficacy of regional neighbours that are allied with the US, in fostering the right conditions and pretexts for implementing this new strategy is to remain paramount in achieving the desired results. These regional players can play a significant aiding role in shaping the “strategic environment” by “weakening, containing, and even rolling back” the threats posed by the Iran-Syria-Hizbullah alliance.

Deconstructing the “New Middle East”

George W. Bush’s failed promise of a “global democratic revolution” following the “watershed event” of the “establishment of a free Iraq at the heart of the Middle East”[4] did not only fail miserably, but instead led to several inescapable eventualities that remain a symbol of this grand strategy. Firstly, the politicization of Iran’s peaceful nuclear program in order to exert pressure on Iran and to contain its’ perceived threat to the stability of the region (read: desired geopolitical order). Secondly, the saliency of sectarian and ethnic divisions on the Middle Eastern socio-political landscape. Thirdly, the formation of a so-called ‘Moderate-bloc’ of nations constituting regional players that act as a front against the Iran-Syria-Hizbullah alliance. Finally, the declaration of a “New Middle East” created an almost mythical worldview in the Israeli mindset, whether by design or accident, which believed that the Arab-Israeli question could not only be settled on unilateral terms but also decisively, once and for all, with sheer Herculean force. On all four accounts, the Obama administration has yet to hint at any significant “change” that requires the altering of these yardsticks which remain symbolic of the “New Middle East” agenda.

In spite of the deep economic crisis that has gripped world capitals, the historical ‘prerogatives’ (i. Natural resources, ii. Security of the state Israel, iii. Preservation of a certain regional geopolitical order which thereby realizes a significant chapter in wider US preponderance in the Eurasian space) held by the US for securing the strategic Middle East region remain firmly in place. The Middle East will thus remain a focal point of Obama’s foreign policy efforts. A recent talk by Zbigniew Brzezinski, a top foreign policy advisor to Obama, provides a keyhole premonition of the continuity of an age-old policy of confrontation and threat of military force against Iran.[5] Writing for the Asia Times, Pepe Escobar disclosed this new US position, contained in a letter to Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, as follows: “if you help us get rid of non-existent Iranian nuclear weapons, we’ll get rid of our missile shield”.[6]

The verbose politics of “clenched fists”[7] should not leave the peace movement under any illusions about the nature of things to come, just as much as new Secretary of State Ms. Clinton is under no illusions about the next steps on the empire’s to-do list: “We’re under no illusions. Our eyes are wide open on Iran.”[8]

Heightened sectarian saliency in Middle Eastern politics cannot be viewed independently from a strategy of isolating Iran from regional politics. Selling anti-Iranian rhetoric to Arab kingdoms necessarily determines the nature of discourse toward the sizeable and strategically positioned Shia populations across the Persian Gulf rim. When Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak pronounced in April of 2006 that “Shias are mostly always loyal to Iran and not the countries in which they live”, it was by no means a slip of the tongue but rather a well calculated move that even lead one of the ‘clean break’ strategy’s “prominent opinion makers” to label Shias in the Persian Gulf as “Iran’s Levant clients”.[9]

It is altogether not surprising on the back of this grand regional strategy, for the tiny emirate kingdom of Bahrain to accelerate a process of ‘demographic engineering’ by providing citizenship to extremist anti-Shia hotheads from Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, to undercut its majority Shia population.[10] Although the systematic marginalization of Shias reflects a deep-rooted policy of the Bahraini Al-Khalifa monarchy, nevertheless, one can neither ignore current justifications for this suppression on rationales of the “New Middle East” agenda, nor intentional American indifference to grave human rights violations which take place in a nation that hosts the central base for the Naval Command’s Fifth Fleet.

In the aftermath of recent clashes in Saudi Arabia, in which three Shia Saudi citizens were killed in the close precincts of the second-holiest site in Islam, a prominent Shia leader latched on to the occasion to highlight the deep-seated discrimination and marginalization of Shias. He also issued a resolute warning to the establishment by declaring in no uncertain terms that the “dignity” of the Shia population “is greater in worth than the unity” of the Kingdom.[11] Mai Yamani, a Saudi national and a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Middle East Center, whilst writing about these clashes notes that the suppression of Shias constitutes “part of the Kingdom’s strategy to counter Iran’s bid for regional hegemony”.[12]

With respect to rising political sectarianism, the policy of the Obama administration has thus far been virtually identical in both respects, namely; in its sustenance of a political agenda that leads to heightened sectarian tensions on the one hand, and its deliberate disregard of sectarian-motivated agendas by regional ‘allies’ on the other, which effectively cement these divisions.

Late last December, Saudi Prince Turki Al-Faisal charted out his ‘path to peace’ for the Middle East in an op-ed piece in the Washington Post.[13] The central concerns outlined in his vision for peace are not only symptomatic of those shared by the wider so-called ‘Moderate-bloc’ of Arab nations, but they in fact also provide a good indication of the changing tides in the Persian Gulf that have been the cause of much unsettling for the likes of Saudi Arabia. In particular, these concerns revolve around two core headings: i) the future of the Arab Initiative, and ii) the growing influence of Iran.

The urgent emphasis provided to the Arab Initiative reflects the success of Resistance

Viewed from another angle, the apparent urgent emphasis provided to the Arab Initiative and the closing window of ‘opportunity’ for its implementation, reveals an interesting reality that reflects the successes achieved by the path of Resistance; a path that evidently stands starkly at odds with the gifted job-roles given to the so-called ‘Moderates’ in the region. The highly agitated Saudi-Jordanian-Egyptian alliance views a resistance that has forced concessions upon a hereunto invincible Israeli adversary as a major threat to their own thrones. These realities are not hidden from the Arab street, and the growing grassroots support for Hizbullah and Hamas are a testament of this shift.

The second concern i.e., the growing influence of Iran or what Prince Turki Al-Faisal conveniently terms ‘Iranian obstructionism’, bears many commonalities with the first but transcends it in one vital respect: Iran symbolizes the possibility of the success of the ‘alternate path’. In the Arab consciousness, Iran provides a successful paradigm of a state that is self-dependent and stands up to imperialism in spite of long years of imposed wars and backbreaking sanctions. The findings in last year’s poll carried out by the University of Maryland and Zogby International hardly come as a surprise in this regard.[14] Additionally, Iran has not been shy to recognize the path of resistance and in showing its’ unreserved support for it, whereas the standard position of the so-called ‘Moderate-bloc’ of Arab nations has been to undermine the path of resistance. This factor has also played a major contributory role in developing a positive view of Iran on the Arab street.

On the basis of this outlook, the geostrategic importance of Syria as a nation that stands by the side of the resistance, as well as an Arab state that positions itself outside of the so-called ‘Moderate-bloc’ and its chosen political agenda, becomes not only apparent but very significant. When President Bashar Al-Assad announced in the Doha Summit (during the height of the brutal war on Gaza) that the Arab Initiative was “dead” and all that remained was to “transfer the registry of this Initiative from the registry of the living to that of the dead”[15], it left the likes of Saudi Arabia shuffling their cards as they weighed their next options.

In very crude terms, the death of the Arab Initiative would at once spell the exclusion of the Saudi-Jordanian-Egyptian alliance from the Middle Eastern chessboard or at least mark their modest insignificance. The recent overtures made to Syria by the US and the Saudi-Jordanian-Egyptian alliance thus need to be viewed against this context. From the standpoint of the US and its Arab allies, the popular ‘public anarchy’ on the Arab street — in support of resistance movements — can no longer be contained except by fragmenting the Iran-Syria-Hizbullah alliance, even if this were to require swallowing bitter pills.

The victory of the Netanyahu-Liebermann coalition in Israel presents an immense challenge to the Arab coalition’s attempts to effectively sell this façade of a viable ‘peace track’ to Syria and to the Arab world in general. Even by the shoddy standards of truth that we have become accustomed to in our times, the sudden metamorphosis of a racist-bigot like Liebermann, whose comments about the ‘transfer’ of Arabs are not concealed from the Arab world[16], into a ‘kingmaker’ for a track of peace comes across as simply ridiculous. In this respect, one of the salient but less spoken about roles that is presently being played out by the Saudi-Jordanian-Egyptian alliance, is its transformation into a mouthpiece replacement for Israeli silence.

Nevertheless, it is important to underline the mounting support within Israel for engaging in Syrian peace talks as evinced by the recent advice offered to Netanyahu by a panel consisting of “prominent figures who formerly served in key posts in the defense establishment, government and the business community”.[17] Writing in a Ha’aretz op-ed, diplomatic editor Aluf Benn emphasised the need for Netanyahu’s government to accede to the track of the Arab initiative — a stance that is antithetical to the classical Likud position — by noting: “Netanyahu can go further than previous prime ministers and announce that the Arab initiative is an unprecedented opportunity for closing ranks against the threat of Iran and the extremists in the region…”[18]

At any rate, selling an image of Israel as the sincere peacemaker at times and expansionist war-monger on others does little to straighten out any ‘path to peace’. On March 2nd 2009, the Israeli advocacy group Peace Now released a report saying that the Israeli Ministry of Construction and Housing had plans to build 73,302 housing units in the Occupied West Bank — of which 15,000 units have already been approved. The report noted that if all the plans are realized “the number of settlers in the Territories will be doubled”.[19] In a confidential EU report leaked to the Guardian, Israel was noted to be “actively pursuing the illegal annexation” of East Jerusalem with present settlements expansion progressing at a “rapid pace”.[20] In the face of these terminal threats to the two-state solution, the Obama administration has responded with a timid and pathetic characterisation of Israel’s actions as “unhelpful”.[21]

The Challenges Ahead

Activists cannot afford to ignore this agenda which is the origin of all ills

Whether this geopolitical tug of war to redraw the battle lines in the sands of the Middle East will end up in the favour of the US, Israel and their Arab allies is yet to be seen. Recent comments by Syrian top officials indicate that Damascus is not about to be moved by mere words and promises of change. Foreign Minister Walid Moallem underlined that Damascus would not accept any less than a complete return to the 1967 borders and respect for the natural rights of Palestine: “Syria would be willing to renew only indirect talks, on two conditions: Israel’s commitment to withdraw to the 1967 borders, as well as its commitment that the Syrian channel will not be used to harm the Palestinians.”[22] Muhsin Bilal, the Syrian Information Minister, was less reserved with his choice of words when he declared that the victories exacted by the Lebanese and Palestinian resistances against the “Zionist” entity had botched the “New Middle East” agenda.[23]

Regional developments such as the growing mediating role of a pragmatic Qatar and increasing Turkish buoyancy, have also worked in the favour of the Iran-Syria-Hizbullah alliance by somewhat distorting the traditional ‘power blocs’. In addition to these regional changes, a sense of Syrian ‘realism’ in dealing with a ‘defeated’ Israel, augmented by the natural dynamism and unequal grassroots support for Iran and resistance movements in the region, present a formidable and hitherto undefeated opponent.

To peace activists, the success or failure of this political squabbling is insignificant when placed against the grave human price that is almost certain to result from the pursuit of such a political agenda. For Western politicians who still value rational strategic planning; the analysis of ‘facts’ — and not engineered ‘truths’ – and their synthesis in forming a balanced perspective of reality, the inescapable calamities that would be the necessary resultant of adopting this aggressive, confrontational political agenda cannot be overlooked.

At this juncture, it is important to highlight a common fallacy that is epidemic in the Western media and unfortunately, one that has also trickled into the discourse of certain sections of the peace movement. Neo-con and pro-Zionist voices were quick to highlight that any sort of engagement with the likes of Iran, Hizbullah and Hamas (collectively homogenized as radical ‘Islamists’) poses a high-risk to the ‘civilized world’. These radical Islamists, we were told, can simply not be engaged with; talks with Iran would run parallel to the building of the ‘bomb’, talks with Hizbullah would create a ‘state within a state’, engaging with Hamas would signal the exclusion of (the illegitimate) president Mahmoud Abbas.[24] Although the truth is far distant from these sensationally irrational spurts, unfortunately, the ‘radical Islamist’ tag has remained firmly embedded in building perspectives towards the likes of Hizbullah and Hamas within some quarters of the peace movement.

In addition to being a classical tactic to ‘otherize’ the enemy if a process to ‘dehumanize’ it fails, we should note that despite adhering to a different kind of politics, these entities are neither irrational political players nor is their existence qualified by a ‘culture of death’. For the sake of example, the Hizbullah resistance movement overlooks an extensive social programs network that is virtually unequalled throughout the entire Middle East. Its longstanding record of peaceful coexistence and a highly-advanced integration paradigm (infitah) within the public sphere of a multi-sectarian Lebanese topography are doubted by none. The same however, cannot be said of US-Saudi sponsored Salafist client groups in Lebanon for whom the tag ‘Islamist’ fits rather well.[25] All in all, resistance movements like Hizbullah and Hamas enjoy a great deal of popular support on the Arab streets. They have also shown a great degree of tolerance towards the West in spite of the long list of grievances that have resulted from negative Western interference in their countries. Here, it is highly beneficial to refer to a speech delivered by Nadine Rosa-Rosso at the ‘International Forum for Resistance, Anti-Imperialism, Solidarity between Peoples and Alternatives’ that was held earlier this year in Beirut.[26]

In summary, the politicization of the Iranian nuclear programme and the recycling of false pretexts by Israel to launch regional wars should not be viewed as haphazard aberrations, but rather as logical consequences of a grand regional geopolitical strategy. The “New Middle East” agenda is the infrastructure upon which an imperial superstructure of hegemony, sustained by the disregard of law and rule of brute force, is raised to control this region.

Human rights activists and lawyers who advocate against the innumerable abuses that have occurred so far in this “War on Terror” cannot ignore this political agenda which is in fact the origin of all ills.

One cannot speak of dealing with the looming threat of military strikes against Iran without first dealing with the “New Middle East” agenda. Similarly, one cannot speak of a post-Bush era or lavishly mark “new beginnings” without first doing away with the lasting remnants of a policy that has brought on so much suffering to the region, and continues to leave it on a knife’s edge. Strangely — most would say criminally — the experiences of the failures in Afghanistan and Iraq appear to have done little to develop a more informed US foreign policy in its dealings with this region. If there is any special disgust within the global peace movement with respect to these failed wars, it lies in the fear that a repeat is as likely to occur.

With the proclaimed advent of a “new beginning” by the Obama administration, there is a pressing need for the peace movement to engage in a comprehensive study of the “New Middle East” agenda in its different aspects and dimensions. Our collective failure to critically examine this agenda on the one hand, and to circulate its underlying assumptions and necessary consequences to the Western public on the other, will inevitably expose the peace movement to accusations of adherence to an outdated, dogmatic discourse.

The “New Middle East” agenda is inherently confrontational and raises the spectre of war in the region. For as long as it remains on the table, the whole Middle East will teeter on the brink of unspeakable calamities.

Notes:

1. ‘Kerry calls for easing US sanctions against Syria’, The Boston Globe, March 5th
2009

http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2009/03/05/kerry_calls_for_easing_us_sanctions_against_syria/

2. ‘Generic Invader Nonsense – Obama on Iraq’, Media Lens, March 5th 2009

http://www.medialens.org/alerts/09/090305_generic_invader_nonsense.php

3. ‘A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm’, Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies,
June 1996

http://www.iasps.org/strat1.htm

4. ‘Bush demands Mid-East democracy’, BBC News, November 6th 2003

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3248119.stm

5. ‘US-Russian partnership will end shield row’, Press TV, March 16th 2009

http://www.presstv.com/Detail.aspx?id=88807&sectionid=3510203

6. ‘The Obama-Medvedev Turbo Shuffle’, Asia Times Online, March 5th 2009

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/KC05Ag02.html

7. ‘From ‘axis of evil’ to ‘clenched fist’’, Asia Times Online, February 28th 2009

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/KB28Ak02.html

8. ‘Hillary Clinton offers handshake of friendship to Syria’, The Times, March 3rd 2009

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article5834205.ece

9. ‘The Iran-Hamas Alliance’, Hudson Institute, October 4th 2007

http://www.hudson.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=publication_details&id=5167

10. ‘Bahraini rulers importing extremism’, Press TV, February 15th 2009

http://www.presstv.com/Detail.aspx?id=85729&sectionid=3510302

11. ‘Thank Sheikh al-Nimr instead of imprisoning him’, Rasid News Service, March 17th
2009

http://www.rasid.com/artc.php?id=27640

12. ‘Saudi Arabia’s Shias Stand Up’, Project Syndicate, March 2009

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/yamani20

13. ‘Peace for the Middle East’, Washington Post, December 26th 2008

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/12/25/ST2008122500712.html

14. ‘Nasrallah most admired Arab leader’, Press TV, April 17th 2008

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=51921&sectionid=351020203

15. ‘President al-Assad at Gaza Summit: Gaza Destiny is ours, Arab Peace Initiative Dead,
Standing by our People and Resistance in Gaza with all Available Means’,
Syrian Arab News Agency, January 18th 2009

http://www.sana.sy/eng/22/2009/01/18/208817.htm

16. ‘Liebermann, Avigdor – Israeli politician and deputy prime minister’, Electronic Intifada

http://electronicintifada.net/bytopic/people/658.shtml

17. ‘Netanyahu advisors tell him to push ahead with Syria track’, Ha’aretz, March 16th 2009

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1071427.html

18. ‘A way out for Netanyahu’, Ha’aretz

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1071949.html

19. ‘The Ministry of Construction and Housing is planning to construct at least 73,300
housing units in the West Bank’, Peace Now, 3rd March 2009

http://peacenow.org/updates.asp?rid=0&cid=5991

20. ‘Israel annexing East Jerusalem’, says EU, Guardian, 7th March 2009

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/07/israel-palestine-eu-report-jerusalem

21. ‘Criminal Unhelpfulness’, Agence Global, 18th March 2009

http://www.agenceglobal.com/Article.asp?Id=1941

22. ‘Syrian FM: Still at war with Israel’, Ynet News, 22nd March 2009

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3689931,00.html

23. ‘Bilal: Arab solidarity in confronting challenges’, Syrian Arab News Agency, 18th
March 2009

http://www.sana.sy/ara/2/2009/03/18/217601.htm

24. ‘What do the financial crisis and US Middle East policy have in common?’,
Jerusalem Post, 6th December 2008

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?apage=1&cid=1227702450421&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull

25. ‘The Redirection’, The New Yorker, 5th March 2007

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/03/05/070305fa_fact_hersh

26. ‘The Left And Support For Anti-Imperialist Islamist Resistance’, Counter
Currents, 11th February 2009

http://www.countercurrents.org/rosso110209.htm