by Thomas W. Lippman
To understand why Israel and Hamas keep fighting, and why Secretary of State John Kerry was unable to forge a permanent peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, it helps to do some homework. Read Volume 8 of the State Department’s “Foreign Relations of the United States” series [...]]]>
by Thomas W. Lippman
To understand why Israel and Hamas keep fighting, and why Secretary of State John Kerry was unable to forge a permanent peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, it helps to do some homework. Read Volume 8 of the State Department’s “Foreign Relations of the United States” series for 1977-80, the years of Jimmy Carter.
It is a 1,303-page compilation of declassified documents—presidential letters, intelligence assessments, memoranda of conversation—covering the 20 months of intense Middle East diplomacy between Carter’s inauguration in January 1977 to his decision to convene the famous trilateral summit at Camp David. The principal characters are Carter, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, but much of the heavy lifting is done by their foreign affairs ministers, Moshe Dayan of Israel, Ismail Fahmy of Egypt, and Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance, along with their professional staffs.
What the documents show is that despite herculean efforts, especially by Carter himself, and huge investments of time, diplomacy failed. Sadat undertook his daring trip to Jerusalem in November 1977 and Carter summoned the other two to Camp David because only extraordinary, game-changing gambles produced any real movement on the intractable issues the negotiators faced. Suspicion ran deep, antagonisms were entrenched, and history was implacable, especially for the Israelis. Not even the combined weight of the United States and Soviet Union could bring the Israelis and Egyptians—to say nothing of the Syrians—to the comprehensive, once-and-for-all regional solution that all professed to want.
The fate of the West Bank, which Israel referred to as Judea and Samaria, defied every formula offered for resolving it, just as it does today. As for Gaza, it was a stepchild of the negotiations throughout—nobody really wanted it. And while everyone agreed that peace must be based on US Security Council Resolution 242—the “land for peace” formula adopted after the 1967 war—the negotiators spent endless hours arguing about what that resolution required.
Resolution 242, which even today provides the theoretical framework upon which negotiations between Israel and the Arabs would be based, stipulated the “inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war” and recognized “the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force.” It also called for the “withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict,” but it did not say “all territories” or even “the territories.” Israel said any withdrawal from the lands it captured in 1967 was negotiable and would not necessarily apply to all of them—the Sinai Peninsula, which belonged to Egypt, the Gaza Strip, which had been under Egyptian administration, Syria’s Golan Heights, and East Jerusalem and the West Bank, which from 1948 to 1967 had been part of Jordan. The Arabs naturally argued that since 242 declared the acquisition of territory by war inadmissible, the resolution obviously applied to all the occupied lands.
Another major stumbling block at the time was the refusal of Israel, supported by the United States, to have any dealings with anyone associated with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which it regarded as a group of terrorists decided to Israel’s destruction. Israel’s view was that before 1967 the West Bank belonged to Jordan, and its inhabitants were citizens of Jordan, and therefore its future would be negotiated with Jordan alone. The problem with that was that an Arab summit conference had stripped Jordan of its claim to the West Bank and declared the PLO to be the “sole legitimate representative” of the Palestinian people.
And then there was the composition of the delegations that would negotiate at Geneva. Syria’s Hafez Assad, father of the current president, fearful that Sadat would strike a separate peace with Israel and abandon the other Arabs, wanted a single, unified Arab delegation. That was unacceptable to Sadat, who understood that nothing would be accomplished if every Arab participant had a de facto veto over decisions by the others.
Carter’s national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, who understood that Sadat was impatient but the Israelis were not, told Carter that “the priority of Israel’s policy now seems to be to make a fairly attractive offer to Egypt in order to tempt Sadat into a separate deal. This would allow Israel to put off movement on the Syrian front and to avoid the Palestinian-West Bank issues altogether.”
He was right about Israel’s negotiating strategy. Begin’s Likud Party was elected in the spring of 1977 on a platform that called for keeping the West Bank and encouraging Jewish settlements there. The Labor Party, which had run Israel since statehood in 1948, had been somewhat more forthcoming about the possibility of territorial compromise, but Begin was a hard-line Zionist who believed in Israel’s right to all the land from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River.
In the quest for the Holy Grail of Geneva, everyone traveled extensively in an endless summer of fruitless haggling over how to proceed. These were negotiations about negotiating, arguments of stupefying legalistic tedium about who would participate, under what circumstances, and what the agenda would be. Would there be a single Arab delegation, or several? If single, would there then be “working groups” for specific country-by-country issues? What would Israel accept on the subject of Palestinian refugees? Who would speak for the Palestinians? Would Jordan participate? Would Syria? What would be the role of the Soviet Union, co-chairman of the proposed conference? Should there be agreement beforehand on a “declaration of principles?” Would the specific language of 242 be the basic reference point, or would it be somehow modified? Would Geneva be a ceremonial event, at which agreements already reached would be signed, or the forum for the hard work of negotiating? If Israel were somehow to agree to pull out of the West Bank, who should take over now that Jordan had been stripped of its claim?
Carter, who had stunned everyone in March by volunteering the view that peace would require the establishment of a “homeland” for the Palestinians, soon concluded that Israel’s positions were the biggest obstacle to peace and let his feelings show in public—stirring anger in the American Jewish community and anxiety among his political advisers. Camp David was a last-ditch, high-stakes shot at a breakthrough.
Some of the roadblocks on the path to peace were removed at Camp David and in the subsequent negotiations over the peace between Israel and Egypt, a treaty that left the Palestinian issue unresolved and was achieved only when the United States and Egypt gave up on Geneva. Other issues, such as Israel’s refusal to negotiate with the PLO, were resolved years later, at Oslo.
The Arabs argue today that one of Israel’s greatest issues, the refusal of Arab nations other than Egypt or Jordan to recognize it or accept its existence, was resolved when all members of Arab League endorsed a plan offered by Saudi Arabia to offer peace and recognition in exchange for Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 lines. But Israel is no more inclined to accept that formula today than it would have been in 1977; after all, Hamas and Hezbollah are not members of the Arab League and not parties to that offer, and are supported in their intransigence by Iran. Even if Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party abandoned the “Greater Israel” policy of Begin’s time, anxieties about security would still prompt Israel to demand substantial revisions in the 1967 lines, as well as demilitarization of Palestine, including Gaza. If the proposed “two-state solution” is still viable—if it ever was viable—it is hard to see how Gaza could be part of it if Israel believes Hamas workers resume digging tunnels under the border from which they could attack Israelis.
At the end of 2011, according to the Foundation for Middle East Peace, there were 328,423 Israeli settlers in the West Bank. If future negotiations about the future of Palestine are to include Gaza as well as the West Bank, it is hard to see how Gaza’s status can be resolved until the question of those West Bank settlers has been resolved as part of some overall agreement. A far-reaching deal that would end the Gaza conflict by including it as part of a Palestinian state and linking it to the West Bank by some kind of corridor—as envisioned at the time of Oslo—seems far in the future. The Gazans would live better lives if Israel were to allow them greater access to the outside world, but they will still be living in a stateless limbo.
Photo: Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian president Anwar Sadat with US President Jimmy Carter at Camp David in 1978.
]]>by Jasmin Ramsey
Almost 1,000 Egyptians have died, according to the official count, since Aug. 14 when Egypt’s armed forces began clamping down on Muslim Brotherhood-led protests against the military ouster of President Mohamed Morsi. That number well exceeds the 846 people who officials say died during the 18 days of protest [...]]]>
by Jasmin Ramsey
Almost 1,000 Egyptians have died, according to the official count, since Aug. 14 when Egypt’s armed forces began clamping down on Muslim Brotherhood-led protests against the military ouster of President Mohamed Morsi. That number well exceeds the 846 people who officials say died during the 18 days of protest that ended Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year rule in Jan. 2011.
The democratically elected Morsi, a leading member of the MB, has not been seen in public since Jul. 3. But Mubarak has been released from prison into house arrest while he faces retrial. Egyptian media has for the most part adopted the language of the army in framing the unrest — Muslim brotherhood members are alleged “terrorists” who are trying to destroy the country.
While the US, who the Egyptian media claims conspired with the Brotherhood, has cancelled military exercises with Egypt and urged both sides to halt violence, it has so far resisted calls for halting military aid to its strategically positioned ally.
The rapid turn of events in Egypt, from a revolution to perhaps a “counterrevolution”, has left US President Barack Obama in quandary. Having eventually supported the fall of Mubarak, the US looks hypocritical in continuing its relationship with the military as authoritarian rule is restored.
In an interview with IPS, Emile Nakhleh, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) Islamic Strategic Analysis Program, explained why repression will not prevent the Muslim Brotherhood from continuing its existence as a rooted, cultural and political force. Continued repression could also push the Brotherhood’s younger members to embrace violence as a political tool.
The US should pursue its own interests in Egypt, which “do not necessarily equate with dictatorial repressive regimes,” the Middle East expert told IPS. “In the long run, democratically elected governments will be more stable than these autocratic regimes.”
Q: There are different accounts circulating, especially in the Egyptian media, about what the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) actually is. Can you provide some background?
A: The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in 1928 as a social, religious, educational, political and partly military movement. It was founded against British colonialism and with it came the fight for Palestine, starting in the early 30s. Its main ideology is as follows: Islam is the solution. And the 3 D’s in Arabic, which translate to Islam is faith, state and society. There is to be no separation between the mosque and state in any of these.
The Muslim Brotherhood spread more than any other party in the Middle East in the last 85 years. It focused heavily on Islam, but took all those other things into consideration. And then of course they got involved in politics. That put them in conflict with the monarchy at the time. In 1948 this conflict became violent. Muslim Brotherhood members assassinated the Egyptian Prime Minister and in turn, the regime assassinated the founder of the MB in 1949.
By the mid-90′s, the Brotherhood decided to forgo violence and move toward their original mission, Da’wa, to proselytize their doctrine by Islamizing society from below. They wouldn’t allow themselves to be removed by force; they saw what happened in Algeria in 1991 and redirected their ideology to society itself, modeled after that American baseball-feed ideology, you know, you build it and they will come. So you Islamicize society from below and once society becomes Islamicized, you can establish a position in government and become a Shari’a-friendly government.
This process started in the late 80s, when the MB entered 4 or 5 parliamentary elections as independents or in alliance with other parties, such as the Wafd Party and the Labor Socialist party. Why? Because the government passed Law 100, which prohibited religious parties from participating in politics.
In the 2005 election, the MB won 88 seats in parliament, the largest ever for the MB. But they ran as independents. They emerged as the largest opposition party in parliament after Mubarak’s ruling party. In their 85-year history, the MB has been banned and repressed by regimes — from King Faruk to Mubarak; that’s why they’re not going away. They’re part and parcel of the religious foundation of Egyptian society.
With every regime Egypt has had since 1948, the relationship with the MB has always initially been good and then soured toward the end. Gamal Abdel Nasser was the same. He reached out to the Muslim Brotherhood in 1954 and by 1955-6, when a plot to assassinate him was uncovered, the Muslim Brotherhood was repressed and exiled. Then in 1966 Nasser’s government hanged one of the MB’s conservative thinkers, Sayyid Qutb.
Q: Is that what’s happening now, with the army’s arrest of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Supreme Guide, Mohamed Badie?
A: Qutb was actually more of a radical thinker than the mainstream MB. It’s also very interesting to note that a number of MB activists were exiled to Saudi Arabia where they established a more radical view of Islam. That view led Saudi Arabia to oppose Nasser’s actions in Yemen and other Arab nationalist projects.
Q: The Saudis welcomed the MB because they were Salafis?
A: The Saudis welcomed the MB with open arms because they were Salafis and because they were opposed to the secular Arab nation ideology that was preached by Nasser. The MB’s relationship with Nasser soured until 1970 when Nasser died and Anwar Sadat came to power. Sadat also began to court the MB as a countervailing force against leftist and Nasserist nationalist ideology.
The MB’s influence really began in the 1970s when they reconstituted themselves as a religious party that underpinned society. The constitution reflected Islam and allowed them freedom to preach and participate in associations, so much so that by the 1980s, the MB, through elections, controlled almost every professional association and university student council.
That scared the hell out of Hosni Mubarak, who also tried to court the MB in the beginning. It was, by the way, Mubarak who approved a change in the constitution to say Sharia is the source of legislation.
General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s game is thus very dangerous. It will fail because the MB is the most organized and the most disciplined in Egypt and because they have been used to repression from Farouk to Nasser to Sadat and to Mubarak. Sadat allowed the MB to reconstitute itself and invited MB exiles to return home, but by the late 1970s, the MB broke with Sadat because of his trip to Jerusalem and the peace treaty with Israel. At that time, the entire Arab world broke with Sadat.
Although Sadat warmed up to the MB, he never recognized them as a political party, only as a social religious element, which was great for the MB. This gave them freedom to penetrate the soft ministries, education and welfare, and establish all kinds of religious schools, alongside al-Azhar University. Because of that, religious education under their guidance began to expand tremendously.
Q: Should military aid to Egypt be stopped?
Aid should be cut off. We supported the removal of Mubarak so we can’t support the resurrection of a military dictatorship. The cut-off by itself is not enough. It should be accompanied by a high-level conversation about Egypt’s future in accordance with the ideas of Egypt’s January 2011 revolution. In Bahrain, we should make it very clear to the al-Khalifas that repression and exclusion of the Shia majority cannot continue.
Q: How much does Egypt need the US and how much does Egypt — especially the Egyptian army — need the US?
A: Don’t forget that most of Egypt’s military aid is spent in this country for weapons systems. But that’s not the main reason for the aid. U.S. military aid to Egypt has been a tool of American national interests, which are to maintain the peace treaty with Israel, give us priority over the Suez Canal and flights over Egypt, etc, and to help us with the war on terror, especially since 9/11.
There’s a side interest, too: Egypt’s role with the Palestinians and Hamas and the push for negotiations. The main interlocutor with Hamas over the years has been Egyptian intelligence folks like Omar Suleiman.
Q: Does the Egyptian military truly fear the US stopping aid?
A: The military would be devastated if the US stopped aid because of the training the US provides and also because of the prestige. All the statements by Egyptian officials contradicting this notion is just talk.
Q: What if Saudi Arabia steps in to support the military more than it is already supporting them, as it has offered to do?
A: The Egyptian military doesn’t want to be beholden to Saudi Arabia. One of Sadat’s primary goals in reaching out to the US was to reestablish relations with the US after the October 1973 War, specifically so Egypt could acquire that training and prestige. Threatening to halt aid will be met with tremendous consternation by the Egyptian army.
Q: So the US stops the aid. Then what?
A: It’s a 2-way street. Consider our national interests, but it’s also in Egypt’s interest to maintain the peace treaty, by the way. Even Morsi wasn’t going to touch it. And when there was terrorism in the Sinai, he worked with the Israelis in fighting it.
The president’s speech in Cairo in 2009 was important because, at least rhetorically, it reflected the belief that the Islamic world is diverse and there is a distinction between the majority and the minority who are the radicals. We need to engage mainstream Muslims. He believed in that and has been interested in engaging mainstream parties that have been elected through peaceful and fair processes. That’s why he accepted to work with the MB and the Freedom and Justice Party.
Q: There was an article article in the New York Times on July 10 suggesting that the ouster of Morsi was actually planned from early on. What’s your take?
A: Morsi appointed el-Sisi himself and el-Sisi turned against him. Elements of the old regime and the so-called Egyptian liberals, who never accepted the election results, plotted from day one to undo Morsi. That’s not to say that Morsi did not make mistakes. He reneged on most of his promises. He promised to include women and Egyptian minorities in the country’s decision-making processes and he did not. But the old guard and the military never forgave Morsi for finally removing Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi. So even after Morsi’s hard work, he brought in el-Sisi. Well, el-Sisi pretended that he supported Morsi but in fact he didn’t. There’s an unholy alliance between the military, the old regime and Egypt’s so-called liberals against Morsi. It’s also a fact that the revolution removed Mubarak but it did not remove the regime. So after Morsi came to power, the ministries and their bureaucrats began to torpedo his program. There were lines in Cairo after the flow of oil was restricted and somehow they disappeared shortly after Morsi was toppled.
And then el-Sisi called on people to go to the streets and give him a “mandate” to act in the national interest and remove Morsi. In January 2011, people went into the streets to remove Mubarak, and in 2013, by el-Sisi’s request, they removed Morsi. Very soon they are going to discover that this is a military dictatorship and they’re going to go into the streets again.
Q: Why is the military so revered in Egypt?
A: In addition to everything else, they have a first-rate propaganda machine. They have a tremendous public relations operation. They are masters at what we call strategic communication with the public. They probably control more than 30% of the Egyptian economy, much like China, Pakistan and Iran
The military claimed during the Nasser regime and then under Sadat that it did a great job in its wars with Israel and it was the politicians who actually undermined their missions. They are always blaming someone else. So it has emerged as symbol of national sovereignty. Nasser gave that impression when he took over the Suez Canal in 1956.
Every president since the end of the monarchy in Egypt has come from the ranks of the military. So they remove their military uniform, don a suit and become president. Morsi was the first president since 1954 who didn’t come from the military and the military didn’t trust him. I’m not a defender of Morsi, he made many mistakes, but this was the first freely, fairly, democratically elected leader since Egyptian independence. All the others were selected through sham elections with a lack of viable political opposition.
Q: What do Saudi Arabia’s explicit calls to back up the Egyptian military financially in battling the Muslim Brotherhood say about US-Saudi relations?
A: The Saudis are terrified of the MB as a reform movement. Now Saudi Arabia is also playing a dangerous game. A coalition of Arab autocrats is trying to stifle democracy because they do not like these revolutionary movements and are terrified of seeing them in their own countries. That’s why the Saudis sent troops to Bahrain to control the Shia, they said. When no one bought this argument, they said they were battling terrorism. And they say they are trying to kill it in Egypt, which is the main Arab country. If it’s killed there, they will feel more comfortable in their rule.
But this is not about the MB in Egypt or the Shia in Bahrain. Its about reform movements and opposition to repressive regimes in those countries.
Q: What options does President Obama have at this point?
A: The president had to face a new reality with the Arab Spring. He decided on going with the pro-democracy movements and that’s why he supported the removal of dictators in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt. Now, he has been a bit silent on Bahrain, even though the American ambassador has spoken out. I think the United States has got to create a clear balance between national security and our democratic values and it has to communicate such a balance to the American people and to peoples in the region clearly.
We should still pursue our own interests, but they do not necessarily equate with dictatorial repressive regimes. In the long run, democratically elected governments will be more stable than these autocratic regimes.
Q: Which means the US should be willing to make some sacrifices in the short-term?
A: I think so, yes. You can’t have a cookie-cutter approach to the whole region. For Bahrain, you should emphasize that if the ruling family wants to maintain its rule, they should seriously engage in dialogue with the opposition, should stop human rights abuses, release political prisoners from jail and provide the Shia majority equal access to employment in government sectors, including the military and security services.
Q: Won’t these autocratic regimes worry that implementing reforms will present more challenges to their rule?
A: They believe that they can maintain power through repression, but they should know by now that staying in power can’t be guaranteed without popular support. Look at what we’re seeing in Egypt, in Syria, in Libya…
What concerns me is that in Bahrain and Egypt, our personnel are being threatened; our ambassadors are being vilified in the media, which in Egypt and in Bahrain are the mouthpieces of the regime. The autocratic regimes in both countries run sophisticated PR campaigns. The al-Khalifa in Bahrain believe the US supports Bahrain’s Shia! The Egyptian military and some liberals believe the US supports the MB and Morsi.
So this lack of clarity in our positions is generating personal threats to our diplomatic personnel, journalists and private citizens in those countries.
Q: Is Egypt becoming a military state?
The military regime is making it clearly so. Arresting the General Guide of the MB, at el-Sisi’s instructions, which no previous regime has done, signals that the military regime is here to stay.
I worry about Egypt. I really think by moving to reinstate military rule, the el-Sisi regime is inviting more violence.
Something worries me more. In the last 20 years, the MB and other mainstream Islamic political parties have supported man-made democracy and rejected al-Qaeda’s calls, including its calls against participating in this election. And now, with democracy being torpedoed by the military, this is something that the younger generation is going to tell the older leadership within the MB — that we tried democracy and it failed and the only alternative is violence.
We might see the rise of a youthful generation in the MB that no longer believes in democracy as a viable political system.
Q: Where is the Egyptian revolution heading?
A: El-Sisi has presented himself as a guardian of national sovereignty, not a new Mubarak. It’s going to be a while before the so-called liberal and mainstream Egyptians begin to see the reality of the new military regime in Egypt. And in the meantime, the youthful members of the Muslim Brotherhood are going to turn to violence if their peaceful protests continue to be violently repressed.
Q: So far the only country where the so-called Arab Spring has had seemingly stable results is Tunisia, where a moderate Islamic government remains in place. What do you see in Egypt’s future?
The toppling of Morsi in Egypt doesn’t mean the failure of Islam or Islamic politics. It represents the failure of a particular leader in a particular country at a particular time. In Tunisia, Moncef Marzouki and Rachid Ghannouchi avoided the mistakes that Morsi made. The ruling party, Ennahda, has tried to be more inclusive and consult with other groups and parties and be more open. That’s why by comparison, Tunisia has succeeded despite the killing of two senior opposition members.
To be fair, the MB and Morsi inherited a very dysfunctional economy. The economy in Tunisia was much better by comparison. And frankly, there’s no way in hell that any party in Egypt would have been able to address Egypt’s economic issues in 1 year. If the military stays in government in the next year and they also don’t address Egypt’s severe economic problems, including unemployment and tourism, people are going to ask again, what have you done for us? That’s why I argued earlier this year that if they had just waited for Morsi to finish his term, he would have never been re-elected. We should never worry about the first election; we always should look at the 2nd and 3rd elections.
Photo Credit: Charles Roffey
]]>by Henry Precht
When General Amr Ibn al-As captured Egypt for Islam in 640, he sent this message to his commander:
I give you Egypt, its fields are ever green, its Nile is ever flowing and its people are the slaves of whoever would rule them.
That description held true for the [...]]]>
by Henry Precht
When General Amr Ibn al-As captured Egypt for Islam in 640, he sent this message to his commander:
I give you Egypt, its fields are ever green, its Nile is ever flowing and its people are the slaves of whoever would rule them.
That description held true for the centuries when Egypt was ruled by Arabs, Mamelukes, Turks, the French and British and even after Col. Gamal Abdel Nasser — the first native-born Egyptian ruler since Cleopatra — took over in 1952. Army rule became much like the control exercised by a superior foreign power.
That is, until two years ago when Egyptians defied their ruler Hosni Mubarak and, with anti-historic defiance, tossed him out. Now the army has reasserted itself, demanding with heavy loss of life that the slaves return to their customary place in the pharaonic hierarchy. Hosni Mubarak, their former protector, is to be released from his prison cell.
Over a thousand men and women were killed by the army in a few weeks. Will the slaves submit? On the answer to that question rests the future of the Middle East and the US role therein.
In the past when Egyptians have violently demonstrated their ire — as against the British pre-Nasser — the impulse has not lasted long. When I was a vice consul in Alexandria in the 1960s, a mob burned our library in Cairo after Patrice Lumumba was assassinated. When the US was accused of aiding Israel in the 1967 war, youth attacked our consulate. In both cases, Egyptians came back in a few days to check out a book or apply for a visa. A dozen years later, those who had seethed with anger at Israel and the US made peace and welcomed the visiting American president.
The same flaring and then fading of anger happened when Anwar Sadat raised the price of bread in the 1970s and when security police rioted over low pay under Mubarak. In both cases, the regime bought off the discontented. But no Egyptian regime has ever felt comfortably secure with its people. After Sadat was assassinated in 1981, army troops manned sandbagged position on Cairo street corners for weeks. Coincidently, the nation’s huge police force was an important way of alleviating the problem of youth unemployment.
Washington should see its declining fortunes and lack of influence — both in the disdainful eyes of the people in the streets and the men shooting them — as yet another Egyptian rising against foreign masters. The Russians in the 1970s, Americans now.
Still, 1000 dead — almost all of them unarmed youth, demanding justice, dignity and the democracy they had been promised. All their demands made in the name of religion. Will revenge for the martyrs outbid the army’s appeals to nationalism and the crowds’ fear of deadly reprisals? With many of their leaders locked up without charges and the media under tight regime control, it seems possible widespread revolt can be quieted and prevented. But outbursts of al Qaeda-style violence and sporadic displays of anger in demonstrations also seem quite probable in the months ahead if no army-Muslim Brotherhood deal is achieved. None is now in prospect.
A deal — implicit if not explicit — might be reached if the MB called off future mass demonstrations and if the army responded by downing their weapons. A few “reliable” MB prisoners might be released and they would quietly drop the call for Mohamed Morsi’s return to the presidency. Step by unadvertised step, ever so gradually, normality might, just might, return to Egypt.
This scenario depends on the outcome of a looming disaster: the predictable collapse of Egypt’s economy unless outside help arrives. Even — especially — the angry must eat. Who will feed them? Russia? China? Saudi Arabia? Bread riots, driven by a revolutionary and religious sense of wrong can again set the nation and perhaps the region aflame.
Or maybe the legacy of centuries of slavery will re-emerge to restore peace. If not, the ever-flowing Nile will be red with blood.
Photo: Graffiti sprayed by protesters on an army tank in Tahrir Square on Feb. 3, 2011: “Long live the revolution, and down with Mubarak.” Credit: Hossam el-Hamalawy
]]>by Robert E. Hunter
The stakes in President Barak Obama’s impending visit to Israel, the West Bank and Jordan have risen steadily in recent days. It is taking take place, after all, almost immediately following Secretary of State John Kerry’s trip around the region — but not to the same stops [...]]]>
by Robert E. Hunter
The stakes in President Barak Obama’s impending visit to Israel, the West Bank and Jordan have risen steadily in recent days. It is taking take place, after all, almost immediately following Secretary of State John Kerry’s trip around the region — but not to the same stops on the President’s tour — which, coming so soon after Kerry assumed office, almost inevitably can do little to advance America’s regional agenda. This agenda includes fostering regime change in Syria and ending its civil war; promoting political stability in Egypt and reinforcing its relationship with Israel; gaining Iran’s compliance on the nuclear issue; and setting the stage for a more salubrious course for the so-called Arab spring than has been seen so far, at least in the Near East. On top of that, Kerry had to deal with a complicating comment by the Turkish prime minister: “It is necessary that we must consider — just like Zionism, or anti-Semitism, or fascism — Islamophobia as a crime against humanity.” That slur did nothing to increase Israel’s confidence regarding its neighborhood.
Also inevitably, an unavoidable linkage between President Obama’s trip and the issue of the Iranian nuclear program was reinforced by the administration’s obligatory recitation of its policies before the annual meeting in Washington of AIPAC, “America’s pro-Israel lobby.” Vice President Biden was most dramatic: “President Barack Obama is not bluffing. He is not bluffing. We are not looking for war. We are looking to and ready to negotiate peacefully, but all options, including military force, are on the table.” That is nothing more than Obama has already said, in one way or another. But it comes immediately after the resumption of talks in Kazakhstan between Iran and the so-called “P5+1” countries — the permanent members of the UN Security Council and the European Union. These talks, containing at most a sliver of hope of future progress, were probably just a “time buyer” in any event — especially to get both sides past the Iranian presidential elections in June. But, now, “confidence-building,” assuming that it’s possible, will have to wait for another day.
President Obama’s trip thus does not begin on an upbeat note for America’s overall ambitions in the region. But on one level, that is almost beside the point. This is, after all, the first time he has been to Israel, more than four years into his presidency. The very fact of his going is thus important. A neat parallel was President Anwar Sadat’s almost-hectoring speech to the Israeli Knesset in 1978. At the time, I asked a leading Israeli whether Sadat’s words undercut his message of peace. “The fact that he was standing there in the Knesset,” my interlocutor said, “spoke so loudly I couldn’t hear what he was saying.”
So Obama will be there, underscoring by his presence not just that the US “has Israel’s back,” but also, made necessary by the fact of his trip, that Israel-Palestine negotiations are on his agenda. But what else?
Certainly, given the administration’s declared objective of restarting the moribund Israeli-Palestinian “peace process” — where Kerry has characterized failure as a “catastrophe” — Obama has to address the subject, and do so in more than pro forma terms. Most important is providing a sense of his own personal commitment, assuming that that is his intent, to seeing the process move forward, a highly-elastic term. One observer with about as much experience as anyone, Ambassador Dennis Ross, laid out his own 14 steps for confidence-building in last Sunday’s New York Times. While quite possibly realistic in terms of confidence-building, they are far from confidence-inspiring and are devoid of significant concrete goals, much less an end point, the so-called “final status.” Notably, Ross did not mention the so-called “Clinton Parameters,” of December 2000, which can be viewed here, and which are widely understood to be the only realistic basis for peace and the “two-state solution.”
While nothing is easy in Arab-Israeli peacemaking, the Clinton Parameters compete for the prize: land-swaps would incorporate most West Bank Jewish settlements into Israel; Jerusalem would be the capital of both Israel and a Palestinian state; Palestine would be essentially demilitarized, with Israel retaining some residual rights of defense; outside peacekeepers (probably NATO) would be introduced; and arrangements would be made for Palestinian refugees, certainly better than their current circumstances. But 12 years after these sensible ideas were put forward — and 33 years since negotiations began — success is not now even remotely in sight.
Obama’s peace mission — if that is how he sees his Near East trip — will be complicated by Israel’s deep security concerns, most immediately the civil war in Syria. Jerusalem and Damascus have had a tacit agreement since the mid-1970s to prevent a breakdown in their uneasy truce, but that is now in jeopardy. And although Egypt’s continuing commitment to its treaty with Israel, the latter’s geopolitical linchpin, will probably hold, this is not something on which Israel can bet the farm.
And then there is Iran and the nuclear conundrum. Of necessity, Obama will have to repeat, and perhaps even reinforce, what Vice President Biden said to AIPAC. He can express hopes for a peaceful outcome, but he will have to underline, and underline again, the military consequences if Iran does not respond in terms that the US, with Israel at its elbow, has set. This will not be the time or place for the US president to lay out a comprehensive strategy for dealing with Iran, including one essential element that has so far been missing: that the security needs not just of the US and Israel, but also of Iran, must all be on the table. Instead, Obama’s trip will be a time primarily to provide, and provide again, reassurances to Israel, the sine qua non for everything else.
This, of course, will do little to move forward efforts to defuse the time-bomb with Iran. But with those efforts necessarily being on hold until after its June elections, nothing should be expected from the US president, other than some reference to giving diplomacy a chance. But what of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process?
An old rule of thumb, based on both the facts and appearance of power, is that US presidents don’t do “fact-finding” or go on “listening tours.” They have mid-level officials to do that. What American presidents are expected to do by both friend (with hope) and foe (with fear), is to lead. Words will not suffice: Obama has already done that in Cairo, Ankara, and Accra with three essays in eloquence that advanced the proposition that hope buttressed by hard work can triumph over experience. Now the world waits to see his Act Two.
There is one thing to do: be bold. Not baby-steps, like those suggested by Dennis Ross — as well as by others over the years — and which have yielded so little for so long. The place to start consists of two steps that go directly to “final status.” First, to endorse in clear-cut terms the Clinton Parameters as the United States’ bottom-line, a formal commitment to a two-state solution — full stop; and second, to promise the diplomatic and other efforts needed to see them through to completion, whatever it takes. I have already argued for the appointment of Bill Clinton as Special Negotiator. Or perhaps the Secretary of State would want to do it, though that would necessarily take him away from the rest of his global duties. But the principle is clear: if the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians is ever to succeed — a huge “if” — the US president has to enunciate a concrete, simple, and unambiguous plan, set his seal to it, and be a bull terrier in carrying it through.
Be bold, Mr. President, or it would be better that you stay home.
Official White House Photo by Pete Souza
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