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.”

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}

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

PULSE

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?

A Wise Strategy by Obama

By Bouthaina Shaaban – CounterPunch

What is happening today is a clear disregard to the life and blood of Muslims

In President Obama’s remarks on strengthening aviation intelligence and security in the wake of the incomplete bomb attack on board of an American airplane on Christmas, he pointed out more than once that US intelligence had sufficient information that al-Qaeda-related elements in Yemen intended to strike at the US and they recruited elements to do that. The information was sufficient “to have uncovered this plot and potentially disrupt the Christmas Day attack. But our intelligence community failed to connect those dots, which would have placed the suspect on the no-fly list”. He then went on to talk about technical issues related to receiving information, analyzing it and then acting on the priorities, filling gaps and connecting lines from different directions.

In all that, Obama builds his remarks and treatments on two main premises whose veracity he did not question: the first is that somewhere, there are people who hate the United States and recruit people who hate it and plan to strike at its security; and those should be put on a no-fly list. The second remedy is intelligence in the seaports, airports and on the borders, and looking for more sophisticated devices and applying more strict measures against millions of travellers from 14 countries, who should be checked and screened in a manner close to humiliation in American airports.

The dangerous thing is that president Obama repeated president Bush’s words “we are at war with al-Qaeda”. I do not know if president Obama noticed that the number of countries has increased since the days of his predecessor. The war on Afghanistan was a war on al-Qaeda and the war on Iraq was a war on al-Qaeda, until they discovered that al-Qaeda has expanded to Pakistan. And today there is talk that it has expanded to Somalia, Yemen, Nigeria and may expand to other countries in the future.

Has the strategy declared by president Bush succeeded in reducing the threat of terrorism or has it spread it more widely? If it increased the spread of terrorism, as is clear from the number of the countries mentioned by the United States in its war with al-Qaeda, does that mean that there are other reasons preventing the success of this strategy, or is it the case that the strategy did not touch the core of the problem or provide the required remedy?

The question which should be put here: why do some people target the United States and recruit others, who have no relation to terrorism, against it? If the prosperity of the United States is the cause, there are other countries competing to be number one in terms of economic growth. Why do not these countries feel targeted like the United States? Nothing in Islam promotes hatred of a certain country or a certain people.

While president Obama was addressing a potential threat, he did not say a word about a cold blooded crime committed on Christmas, when Israel killed six young Palestinians in Nablus and three in Gaza, some of them in front of their wives and children; and they were all unarmed. Neither did he condemn the crimes Israel committed last year in Gaza. He has not heard of the Holocaust survivor and the demonstrators in Western countries who came to support the besieged people of Gaza but were prevented from entering Gaza. Centuries ago, Arabs said that “Justice is the foundation of all government” because the feeling of injustice and humiliation and the disregard for life and dignity will certainly generate anger and discontent. The right approach should be to focus on lifting the injustice resulting from occupation, colonial settlement and war.

How would Muslims feel when they sees one and a half million civilians besieged without food and medicine in a humiliating prison called Gaza and shelled daily by American-made warplanes, prevented from dignified life by Israel with Western support and armament. When Israel’s rulers and generals face trouble because of their crimes, the American veto is used to protect them; and sometimes or laws are changed in order to protect war criminals.

What is happening today is a clear disregard to the life and blood of Muslims, to the extent that crimes committed against them are not covered in Western media; and consequently the West does not really know what is happening in the Arab and Muslim worlds, because its sources come either from those who commit the crimes against them or from their accomplices.

Between the beginning and the middle of the 20th century, the United States was, in the minds of Arabs and Muslims, the land of freedom, human rights, democracy and the free press. That image was the product of president Wilson’s stance when in 1918 he called for an end to colonialism, and of president Eisenhower’s position when he demanded an end to the tripartite aggression (including Britain, France and Israel) against Egypt in 1956, and that of president Kennedy who denounced the wall in Berlin. So, how would the present American presidents fare if compared with such positions?

If president Obama’s remarks assume that there are those who are born to resent the United States, this assumption is wrong. But everybody knows that the United States used its veto more than 36 times in support of Israel so that it continues its crimes against Arabs in Palestine, south Lebanon and Gaza.

Whether some people like it or not, al-Aqsa mosque is the first place Muslims turned to in their prayers, and that Muslims and Christians used to go to pilgrimage to Jerusalem before the Israeli occupation; and the faithful throughout the world have been yearning, for the past forty years, to liberate it from a racist and destructive occupation. Millions of Muslims also know for sure that the countries drumming up war against Iran for the possibility of possessing nuclear weapons are the same countries which provided Israel with nuclear weapons and gave it the knowhow, equipment and uranium to become a nuclear state without signing the none proliferation treaty.

The discrepancy in the position towards a nuclear Israel compared with an Iran aspiring to possess peaceful nuclear energy is actually an expression of the different ways in which the West looks at Muslims and non-Muslims. All the wronged people see, hear and understand but are incapable of correcting the wrongs, and expect the United States to turn to deeds in order to vindicate what president Obama said on January 7, 2010, that the United States is with those looking for justice and progress.

If the US is with those looking for justice, the Palestinian people should be top on the list. Standing with this wronged people will certainly root out Muslims’ frustration and hopelessness. The Baker report was correct when it said that justice in Palestine was at the heart of all causes; and that achieving justice there is less costly and more effective in fighting resentment, violence, anger and frustration.

What is required is strategic thinking in order to create hope in broken souls that the superpower has returned to the path of supporting those demanding justice, freedom and human dignity. The domino of violence and terrorism is moving from one country to another, and facing it does not happen through intelligence but through strategy, by adopting moral principles in support of human dignity and people’s right to live free of occupation, discrimination, oppression, or humiliation. This could be the most important indicator for the achievement of security and safety not only for the American people but for the whole world.

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.

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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?

Hassan Nasrallah: We Will Defeat Enemy, Change Region’s Face

By Hussein Assi – Al Manar

Lebanon’s strength is in the solidarity of its army, people, and resistance.

Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah said on Friday that in case of any confrontation with Israel, the Resistance will foil the aggressions’ objectives, defeat the enemy, and change the face of the region.

Sayyed Nasrallah was delivering a speech via video link before the Arab and International Forum for Supporting the Resistance at the UNESCO Palace in Beirut.

Sayyed Nasrallah started his speech by saying that Lebanon has abandoned the myth saying “Lebanon’s strength is in its weakness” to adopt the truth saying “Lebanon’s strength is in the solidarity of its army, people, and resistance.”

The Resistance leader said that Lebanon has achieved victory by kicking out the occupier from its land giving its nation and people the pride of enjoying a new and advanced position in the way towards decisive victory.

His eminence chose to highlight the bright and shining side of the current conflict in his speech and recalled that the forces of hegemony were seeking to create a settling entity that would constitute an eternal guarantee for their interests in the region. “The Zionists thought that they were achieving their scheme when the October 1973 war was launched. This war was a turning point in the conflict with Israel during which the Egyptian and Syrian armies put a limit on the Israeli dream of expansion. But a few years later, the Egyptian regime expelled Egypt from the conflict with Israel, thus marking the biggest transformation in the history of the conflict alongside the entry of Iran in it.”

“In 1982, Israel succeeded in invading Lebanon and its hopes of re-vivifying the Greater Israel project became high. But the Resistance was able to achieve Liberation in 2000, the year in which the Israeli troops withdrew from the Lebanese territories in a flagrant announcement of the failure of the theory of the Greater Israel project. Then came the Al-Aqsa Intifada that made Israel feel weak and talk about a battle for its existence but Resistant Gaza made it again and kicked out the occupation. Israel then continued its aggressive war against Lebanon and planned in 2006 to beat the Resistance but the Resistance remained. It was even strengthened.”

Sayyed Nasrallah concluded that Israel is living today a real dilemma: the dilemma of leadership and command, the dilemma of the invincible army which was defeated on the hands of the resistance fighters, and the dilemma of trusting the future. “Israel is trying to cover up its dilemmas through daily threats which scare only advocates of defeat and cowards,” his eminence added. “However, those who experienced Jihad, they are missing the confrontations to produce a new victory and a new glory for their nation.”

Hezbollah Secretary General then said that Israel is leaning today on intimidation attempts and on settlements’ building with the help of some countries, including the international community, the Security Council as well as some Arab regimes. “However, for the first time, Israel fears the military option and talks about the victory guarantees in any upcoming war.”

His eminence then noted that the Resistance overcame the most dangerous periods in the region when the United States was trying to transform the region into the so-called “New Middle East.”

While emphasizing that the resistance made its achievements amid the worst Arab situation and despite being stabbed in the back by some forces, Sayyed Nasrallah that the aim of the hegemony forces was to eliminate the Resistance movements in Lebanon and in Palestine and surrender to US and Israeli conditions. “The New Middle East was the title of the battle but the Resistance and its people were able to achieve victories. Our people held on to the culture of dignity and Jihad and rejected giving up,” his eminence said.

Hezbollah Secretary General said that it was possible to talk about a US failure and impotence. His eminence addressed the nation’s people and said: “The choice of Resistance is a true, logical and victorious one.”

His eminence, meanwhile, pointed out that the project of the Resistance and its people needs all political, legal, media and moral support to confront the psychological war waged against it. “The resistance is still facing many threats topped by defaming attempts through accusations of committing crimes, drugs trafficking, and blind submission to Iran and Syria,” Sayyed Nasrallah highlighted. “The threats also include besieging the Resistance and its voice through preventing it of attending conferences and through the bill the US working is preparing against Arab satellite networks, targeting Al-Manar and Al-Aqsa first of all.”

“If I had to address your forum with one call, I call you to support the resistance against this psychological warfare, but I assure you that this war will not shake us and that we will face it through patience and self confidence,” Sayyed Nasrallah stressed.

Hezbollah Secretary General concluded his speech by stressing that the Resistance would continue to recommend its soul to God and therefore achieve victory in any war. “I promise you, as I have always promised you. In any coming confrontation, we will foil the aggressions’ objectives, defeat the enemy, achieve a great historical victory, and change the face of the region,” his eminence said.

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