It doesn’t really matter what any of [...]]]>
It doesn’t really matter what any of us claim about whether Gaza is occupied. Israel, like all other significant states, is a signatory of the 1949 Geneva Conventions which define this matter; and under an arrangement established in the 1870s or so, signatories to all the ‘Geneva’ and ‘Hague’ series of conventions agree that the International Committee of the Red Cross (rather than any individual, possibly flawed, state) will be the depository and ultimate arbiter regarding them. The ICRC has maintained continuously since 1967 that Gaza, the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), and Golan are occupied territories.
An additional power that Israel has continuously exercised in all these occupied territories including Gaza is– as Laila El-Haddad noted in her testimony at American Friends Service Committee’s great Capitol Hill briefing yesterday, and as she has in her book [from Helena's Just World Books] – control over the population registry: that is, over who has the right to enter and reside in these territories. Over the long haul this has been one of Israel’s most powerful weapons against the territories’ legitimate indigenous residents. It isn’t just East Jerusalemites who lose their “right to reside”– Gazans and residents of the West Bank outside of Jerusalem frequently do, too. In the immediate aftermath of 1967, there was a huge exodus of West Bank Palestinians across the bridge — the kind of flight that occurs during any war. But once they had crossed, Israel gave them no immediate permission to return; and subsequently allowed only a trickle to go back under provisions of special “Family Reunification”. Since then, over 44 years of occupation, hundreds of thousands of additional West Bankers and Gazans have lost their right to reside. This splits up families horribly. It is also — especially when tied to the strangulation of normal life and commerce in the Occupied Palestinian Territories — a means to effect a quiet but deadly form of ethnic cleansing by administrative means.
]]>My sense from afar is that Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and his friends and backers in Tehran are sending a fairly blunt message to the west [...]]]>
My sense from afar is that Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and his friends and backers in Tehran are sending a fairly blunt message to the west (whose leaders often like to describe themselves as the “international community”) that regime change is indeed a game that more than one side can play.
Could well be, but I’m not convinced this move is as contrived as that. Cobban, who I’ll readily admit knows much more about these things, notes that “(?former)” Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s major backer, Saudi Kind Abdullah, hasn’t been heard from recently and is rumored to be ill, which suggests a broader general disarray. With charges looming by a U.N.-affiliated tribunal for the assassination of Hariri’s father — which will likely indict Hezbollah members — the Shia militia and social/political organization could simply be taking cover.
Nonetheless, if Cobban’s theory is right, things look worrisome. She points to U.S. and Western weakness around the region, and offers this warning:
… If Nasrallah and his friends in Tehran (especially Supreme Leader Khamenei) indeed think the time has come to give the western house of cards in the Middle East a little nudge in Beirut to see what happens, the fallout from this could well end up extending far beyond Lebanon’s tiny confines.
This is Cobban at her best, with a trove of good contacts and broad contextual knowledge, giving informed comment from the U.S. (I think). I look forward to seeing what she writes after her scheduled trip to Beirut next month.
]]>Despite winning support from neoconservatives like Cliff May, Broder’s logic has been ripped to [...]]]>
Despite winning support from neoconservatives like Cliff May, Broder’s logic has been ripped to shreds by the commentariat, who say the idea emanates from an economic “loon tune land,” “a unique blend of moral depravity and intellectual laziness,” a “ridiculous idea” put forward by a “moral degenerate,” “ill-informed and morally bankrupt,” “intellectually lazy to the point of near-dishonesty, as well as mind-bogglingly belligerent,” “the most insane op-ed I’ve ever come across,” and “stupid enough when Elliot Abrams wrote it in August.“
Those posts, though not credited by name in the Talking Points, are from (in order): Dean Baker, Joshua Holland, Matt Duss, Steve Walt, Helena Cobban, Barry Eisler, and Marc Lynch.
Michigan Professor Juan Cole was not included in the round up simply because I had not gotten around to reading his piece yet. But he should have been.
Cole emphasizes that he doesn’t believe “Broder’s generalization about war and economic expansion holds up to critical scrutiny.” He considers that any modicum of economic gain from war with Iran will be far outweighed by the negative effects of a confrontation which could result in a spike in oil prices, at the least.
Cole writes (with my emphasis):
]]>The Iranians cannot actually close the Straits of Hormuz, which are 26 miles wide. But they do not have to. All they have to do is contribute to another oil spike (which benefits them in a way that cutting off oil does not), and make covert trouble and tie us down like a hapless Gulliver tied down by the Lilliputians.
I can’t think of anything that would be worse for the US economy, or for Obama’s prospects for a second term, than going to a war footing with Iran. And, my own experience is that if you go to a war footing with a country, you have to be prepared for things spinning out of control and into actual war. Since Americans go running to their congressmen demanding a repeal of the Bill of Rights every time there is a little pipe bomb somewhere, anything that might cause terrorism on US soil is deadly to our over 200 year old Republic. My guess is that a third war right about now, for the reasons outlined above, would just about finish us off as a nation.
He writes that the U.S. is “at an unsustainable dead end with Iran.”
Freeman, who has a book of collected writings and speeches that [...]]]>
He writes that the U.S. is “at an unsustainable dead end with Iran.”
Freeman, who has a book of collected writings and speeches that was just published by Just World Books (Helena Cobban‘s new project), talks about the failures of the past decades, then goes into an illuminating passage on Iran, where there is plenty of blame to apportion on all sides of the impasse. Here’s the excerpt, with the full speech here (my emphasis below):
]]>As if this were not enough, the very same people who neo-conned us into war with Iraq seven years ago are working hard to get the United States into yet another war — this one with Iran. Their reasoning mixes bluff with blackmail. They insist that the U.S. must risk regional or even global catastrophe by launching our own war with Iran. Otherwise, Israel will drag us into an even more catastrophic one. For their part, Israel’s military planners quite rationally worry about the limits the loss of their nuclear monopoly would place on their freedom of action against Arab neighbors like Lebanon and Syria. But they know there is nothing much they can do to prevent this. Military frustration plus popular hysteria about Iran in Israel produces repeated threats by Israeli politicians to bomb Iran. Their supporters here faithfully echo these threats. This, of course, increases Iran’s perceived need to develop a nuclear deterrent to such attack. And so it goes.
Ironically, the primary strategic effect of the policies these neo-conservative warmongers advocated in the past was to eliminate Iran’s enemies in Afghanistan and Iraq, while greatly enhancing Iranian influence in Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine and cementing Iran’s alliance with Syria. As a result, while the United States remains focused on Iran’s nuclear program, it is becoming apparent to countries in the region that Iranian cooperation or acquiescence is essential to address a lengthening list of problems of concern to them. These include issues relating to Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria, as well as Palestine.
The self-defeating actions and statements of both sides over the course of the 30-year impasse in Iranian-American relations prove many basic rules of diplomacy. Unilateral suspensions of international law and comity (whether through hostage-taking or demands that rights conferred by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty regime be set aside) are quite naturally resented as inherently illegitimate by the affected side. Neither humiliation nor invective induce reflection; both inspire brooding about how to show unyielding determination, indirectly hurt the other side, or retaliate directly against it. Sanctions that are not in support of a negotiating process constitute mindless pressure rather than leverage and invite defiance rather than compromise. Offers of talks premised on the need to check the diplomatic box before proceeding to coercive measures understandably meet with rebuff. (As a case in point: why should Iran cooperate in legitimizing the use of force against it on the spurious grounds that measures short of war have been exhausted?) And so forth. (I’m tempted to go on, but this is not the occasion for a lecture on strategic self-frustration through diplomatic mis-maneuver.)
In sum, our military interventions in the greater Middle East have been both unproductive and counterproductive. And we have hardly tried diplomacy.