Absence of Courage

A Palestinian official argues that international donors are pledging millions to Gaza and the West Bank because they hope their generosity will compensate for their lack of political will.

Aid package: A Palestinian woman receives food handouts in Jenin

By Vivian Salama | Newsweek Web Exclusive

Dec 18, 2007

Amid international skepticism and ongoing regional tensions, 87 countries and international organizations have pledged $7.4 billion in aid to help build a Palestinian state. Monday’s Paris meeting of the donors comes on the heels of last month’s Annapolis talks, a White House effort to revitalize Israeli-Palestinian negotiations before the Bush administration leaves office. The money, which is expected to pass through various channels, including international aid organizations and the Palestinian government—that is, the government of Mahmoud Abbas and not the now-defunct Hamas-led government in Gaza—was donated in response to this week’s World Bank report, which noted that “even under the most optimistic scenarios significant aid will continue to be required” to ensure the economic stability of the West Bank and Gaza. Afif Safieh, a Palestinian diplomat who heads the Palestine Liberation Organization Mission in Washington, spoke to Vivian Salama about the likely impact of the aid package and the latest political developments in the Palestinian territories. Excerpts:
 
Vivian Salama: What is your reaction to the news of the aid package?
Afif Safieh: Since the international community did not show the political courage needed in Annapolis or in the pre-Annapolis period, which necessitated some confrontation with the Israeli territorial appetite, they are now showing financial generosity because of the absence of political audacity and political courage. They feel the collapse of the Palestinian society and the Palestinian economy will generate additional chaos to a region already plagued with it, so this is the result.
 
What is the alternative and/or the lacking initiative, in your opinion?
I would have preferred the political courage and the diplomatic courage which is needed to support the Palestinian state, but this would have meant a political confrontation with the Israeli political leadership. This is what countries in the international system want to avert. They compensate the lack of political courage with financial generosity. Now, the report made by the World Bank says that if the roadblocks and strangulation of [Palestinian] society and the economy of society continues, even with external financial help, our economy will continue to shrink and decline by 2 percent every year. We have the potential of going back to levels of growth which will be double digit if you give [us] the capability.
 
Do you see Israel as a partner?
The Israelis are until now reluctant to reduce the number of roadblocks, most of which have no security value except to plunge us into economic decline. Here I invite you to explore the expression that was originally coined by Sarah Roy, a Jewish-American writer, the daughter of survivors, a Harvard scholar, who invented the concept of de-development of Palestine—meaning that the deliberate Israeli policy [was] to plunge us into economic decline, and that’s what’s happening.
 
The Bush administration—namely [Secretary of State] Condoleezza Rice—has pledged its devotion to the creation of a Palestinian state before the end of its term. Are you optimistic, and is this new aid package what is needed to get this process off the ground?
I believe in the sincerity of President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. I find the statement made by Secretary Rice that the creation of a Palestinian state is an American national interest [is] an important political statement which reflects the reality of the analysis by a growing body. I believe Bush when he told President Mahmoud Abbas in New York in September [that Bush] is growing increasingly impatient by the absence of progress. Since we have been unreasonably reasonable, I don’t think his impatience is addressed to my side of the argument. The question is will [Bush and Rice] vent their annoyance with the obstacle towards advance. Unfortunately so far there is no indication. Not only did the Israelis invest all their genius to lower expectations in the weeks that preceded Annapolis, but immediately after Annapolis they invested all their brilliance into torpedoing the modest results that emerged. Annapolis was supposed to retrigger a credible diplomatic avenue.
 
Does the aid package at least make you optimistic?
We are often asked, “Are you optimistic or pessimistic?” Even though I don’t feel we Palestinians have the luxury of pessimism, even though I believe that it’s only optimists who make history, I am often reminded that the definition of a pessimist is an informed optimist.
 
The World Bank has just released a detailed account on the dire economic conditions in Gaza and the West Bank. How would you describe the situation in [Hamas-controlled] Gaza?
A stain on the conscience of mankind. I read [the World Bank] report on Gaza: the inadmissible, the inconceivable is perpetrated on a daily basis. The Israelis withdrew out of Gaza yet besieged Gaza immediately, turning it into an open-air prison. They withdrew out of Gaza in order to improve their grip on the West Bank. [Former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon never concealed that aim.
 
Some see this aid package as a victory for the Palestinian cause.
It shows the reservoir of goodwill and the diplomatic and universal unanimity the birth of a Palestinian state enjoys. Yet I am today more worried by the political impotence that we have witnessed throughout the decades. I believe peace is desirable, possible, doable yesterday already! As is frequently said, every possible scenario alternative and their opposite have been explored ad nauseam. I always tell Israelis that a territory that was occupied in six days can also be evacuated in six days, so that they can rest on the seventh and we can engage in the fascinating journey of economic development and reconstruction. It’s the absence of the political will that is disturbing.

Click here for the Newsweek.com link.

Palestinian Donors’ Conference – World Bank report

Today I interviewed Afif Safieh, head of the PLO Mission to Washington, DC regarding news out of Paris of a $7 billion pledge to support a viable Palestinian state.  The conference was the first step toward finding a solution to the on-going Palestinian-Israeli crisis following the conference in Annapolis last month. I will publish and then post the interview tomorrow.  In the meantime, I encourage all of you to read the World Bank Report, entitled Investing in Palestinian Economic Reform and Development. 

Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal Vexed Nixon

fascinating article, particularly on the heels of the Annapolis meeting:

By DAVID STOUT

Published: November 29, 2007 

WASHINGTON, Nov. 28 — In July 1969, as the world was spellbound by the Apollo 11 mission to the moon, President Richard M. Nixon and his close advisers were quietly fretting about a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. Their main worry was not a potential enemy of the United States, but one of America’s closest friends.

“The Israelis, who are one of the few peoples whose survival is genuinely threatened, are probably more likely than almost any other country to actually use their nuclear weapons,” Henry A. Kissinger, the national security adviser, warned Mr. Nixon in a memorandum dated July 19, 1969 — part of a newly released trove of documents.

Israel’s nuclear arms program, which Israel has never officially conceded exists, was believed to have begun at least several years before, but it was causing special problems for the young Nixon administration. For one thing, the president was preparing for a visit by its prime minister, Golda Meir, who was also in her first year in office and whose toughness was already legendary.

Should Washington insist that Israel rein in its development of nuclear weapons? What would the United States do if Israel refused? Perhaps the solution lay in deliberate ambiguity, or simply pretending that America did not know what Israel was up to. These were some of the options that Mr. Kissinger laid out for Mr. Nixon on that day before men first walked on the moon.

The Nixon White House’s concerns over Israel’s weapons were detailed in documents from the Nixon Presidential Library that were released on Wednesday by the National Archives under an executive order that requires that classified documents be reviewed and possibly declassified after 25 years.

The documents provide insights into America’s close, but by no means problem-free, relationship with Israel. They also serve as a reminder that concerns over nuclear arms proliferation in the Middle East, now focused on Iran, are decades old.

The papers also allude to a 1972 campaign by friends of W. Mark Felt, then the second-ranking F.B.I. official, to have him named director of the bureau after the death of J. Edgar Hoover in May of that year. Mr. Nixon, of course, did not take the advice, instead naming L. Patrick Gray. Mr. Felt later became the famous anonymous source “Deep Throat,” whose revelations during Watergate helped topple the president.

There are also snippets about Washington’s desire to manipulate relations with Saudi Arabia, so that the Saudis might help to broker a Middle East peace deal; discussion of possibly supporting a Kurdish uprising in Iraq; and a 1970 clash in which four Israeli fighters shot down four Russian MIG-21s over eastern Egypt, even though the Israelis were outnumbered by two-to-one.

But perhaps the most interesting material, and the most pertinent given the just-completed peace conference in Annapolis, Md., concerns Israel and its relations with its neighbors, as well as with the United States.

“There is circumstantial evidence that some fissionable material available for Israel’s weapons development was illegally obtained from the United States about 1965,” Mr. Kissinger noted in his long memorandum.

He also said that one problem with trying to persuade Israel to freeze its nuclear program was that inspections would be useless, conceding that “we could never cover all conceivable Israeli hiding places.”

“This is one program on which the Israelis have persistently deceived us,” Mr. Kissinger said, “and may even have stolen from us.”

Although Israel has never publicly acknowledged possessing nuclear weapons, scientists and arms experts have no doubt that it has them, and the United States’ reluctance to pressure Israel to disarm has made America vulnerable to accusations that it has a double standard when it comes to stopping the spread of weapons in the Middle East.

Mr. Kissinger’s memo, written barely two years after the 1967 Middle East war and while memories of the Holocaust were still vivid among the first Israelis, implicitly acknowledged Israel’s right to defend itself, as subsequent American administrations have done.

But Mr. Kissinger reflected at length on the quandary faced by the United States. “Israel will not take us seriously on the nuclear issue unless they believe we are prepared to withhold something they very much need,” he wrote, referring to a pending sale of Phantom fighter jets to Israel.

“On the other hand, if we withhold the Phantoms and they make this fact public in the United States, enormous political pressure will be mounted on us,” Mr. Kissinger went on. “We will be in an indefensible position if we cannot state why we are withholding the planes. Yet if we explain our position publicly, we will be the ones to make Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons public with all the international consequences this entails.”

One of those consequences might be to “spark a Soviet nuclear guarantee for the Arabs, tighten the Soviet hold on the Arabs and increase the danger of our involvement,” Mr. Kissinger wrote at another point.

After he met with Mrs. Meir at the White House in late September 1969, Mr. Nixon said: “The problems in the Mideast go back centuries. They are not susceptible to easy solution. We do not expect them to be susceptible to instant diplomacy.”

But Avner Cohen, the author of “Israel and the Bomb,” (Columbia University Press, 1998) who is a senior fellow at the United States Institute of Peace, said on Wednesday that there was enough historical evidence to indicate that the president and the prime minister had reached a secret understanding on at least one issue: Israel would keep its nuclear devices out of sight and not test them, and the United States would tolerate the situation and not press Israel to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty that has been embraced by scores of countries around the world.

“That understanding remains to this day,” Mr. Cohen said.

Can Hamas be Ignored?

by Vivian Salama

Middle East Times

Middle East author and historian Rashid Khalidi offered the following forecast for Tuesday’s peace gathering in Annapolis, “Cloudy with rain and a chance of storms.” He added, “That’s been the Middle East forecast for decades.”

The media has been criticized for its relentless skepticism of the “get together” – as one White House official described it – taking place in Maryland this week. For many, this multilateral gathering of more than two dozen delegations to discuss the Palestinian-Israeli issue is merely history repeating itself. In 2000, just as President Clinton was preparing to leave office, he invited the then-embattled Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and his beleaguered Palestinian counterpart Yasser Arafat together at Camp David to negotiate a final settlement to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Seven years later, a politically besieged President George W. Bush has invited Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas – both of whom are fighting to stay for political survival – to make long overdue concessions and revitalize final status talks. Photo-ops and cliché catch phrases like “Road Map to Peace” will not undo the decades of damage this conflict has inflicted upon both sides. Israel’s Prime Minster Olmert has lost considerable support in Israel following his futile military campaign against Hezbollah in the summer of 2006. President Abbas comes to the table representing a government that was not democratically elected by the majority of Palestinians, and so by attending the meeting – all the while further alienating Hamas which essentially rules over Gaza – he may be doing himself more harm than good.

Meanwhile, since September 11, 2001, the Bush administration has been preoccupied with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the greater War on Terrorism, all the while neglecting this conflict which continues to be a source, if not a consistent grievance for much of the Middle East and the Muslim world. The War on Terrorism ultimately amounts to a war of ideas. To win the war of ideas, the U.S. must take genuine steps toward solving the Arab-Israeli conflict. That’s where Annapolis comes in.

British-Arab historian Albert Habib Hourani wrote shortly into the Suez Crisis of 1956 that “[He] who rules the Near East rules the world; and he who has interest in the world is bound to concern itself with the Near East.” With just over one year left on the clock, the administration, led by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, has put considerable time and energy in recent months into assuring both sides that it is committed to finding a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. How the Bush administration intends to help foster the creation of a Palestinian state when neither the United States nor Israel recognize Hamas – elected democratically by the Palestinian people in January 2006 – has yet to be determined.

Much of the talk leading up to this meeting has revolved around the idea of concessions. Such a compromise would include full Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank with the exception of a few areas amounting to minor border tweaks. Control of the city of Jerusalem would be shared along ethnic lines with commitments from both sides to strive for peaceful coexistence.

A positive aspect to staging the Annapolis gathering at this particular time is that the stakes are high for all the major players involved. The Bush administration, desperate to establish any kind of credibility in the region, knows that the road to fixing the diplomatic disaster created in Iraq runs through Jerusalem. Also, many Israelis, tired of the same old tug-of-war that has dictated the conflict, are pressing for the old “land for peace” notion that has popped up repeatedly in various peace processes involving Israel. Abbas and his Fatah party understand that a failure to achieve a final settlement for the majority of Palestinians will undermine the credibility he is struggling to retain in the face of Hamas. More poignant is that the United States and Israel understand this too.

Ultimately it is not what comes out of the meeting in Annapolis that will be telling, but rather, what is to follow. If the meeting can jump start a series of talks between the Palestinians and the Israelis, then hope is not lost. However, it is unrealistic to think that anything will be accomplished so long as the parties involved continue to isolate Hamas.

Gaza Crisis; Mubarak-Olmert Meeting; Annapolis At Last

This is a rather moving interactive feature by Steven Erlanger, the New York Times correspondent in Israel, on the devastating economic crisis in Gaza.  I recommend it if you have a few minutes:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2007/11/18/weekinreview/20771118_GAZA_FEATURE.html

I did a story several years ago on the lack of foreign investment in Gaza.  Click here to read it. Also, just as my skepticism took on a new form, the invitations have been sent out and a date set for the Annapolis (Maryland) Palestinian-Israeli summit.  (Alas, I did not receive an invitation – it must be lost in the mail.  To find out who did, click here)  Ehud Olmert was in Egypt with President Hosni Mubarak and the two men (both of whose countries are the first and second highest recipients of US dollars, respectively) gave the thumbs-up to the conference. 

Here’s the story from the New  York Times:

Wanted: Participants for Mideast Talks

By HELENE COOPER and ISABEL KERSHNER

WASHINGTON, Nov. 20 — The Bush administration finally acknowledged publicly on Tuesday that it had issued formal invitations to 40 countries and organizations that it hopes will attend a heavily anticipated Middle East peace conference scheduled for next week in Annapolis, Md. But the long, drawn-out route that State Department officials followed before making the acknowledgment reflected the high-stakes gamble that the administration is taking, as well as the unsettled nature of the outcome. Even late Tuesday afternoon, administration officials were still in negotiations with their Arab counterparts over whether Saudi Arabia and Syria would send their foreign ministers to the conference, or make do with lower-level envoys.

President Bush telephoned King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia on Tuesday to enlist his support for the conference, and in particular to try to get an agreement from him that the Saud family would be represented at the conference by Prince Saud al-Faisal, the foreign minister, administration officials said.

The presence of Prince Saud is seen as critical to assure a certain level of Arab commitment to the peace process. But the Saudi royal family has been unwilling to give the Annapolis conference a high-level endorsement without assurances that the negotiations will be substantive, with real concessions from Israel, including a freeze on settlements that would lead to Israeli withdrawal from land that it seized in 1967.

Gordon D. Johndroe, a White House spokesman, would say only that Mr. Bush and King Abdullah had “shared their views of the process that is under way between the Israelis, Palestinians and the international community.”

C. David Welch, the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, said in a news conference on Tuesday evening that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sent an invitation to both Prince Saud and the Syrian foreign minister, Walid al-Moallem. Mr. Welch said the decision to attend was up to the individual countries, but added, “I’m hopeful and expectant of a positive response.”

An Arab official with knowledge of the negotiations said it was likely that Prince Saud would attend the Annapolis conference. The official spoke on condition of anonymity, citing diplomatic protocol.

Mr. Welch said “we won’t turn off the microphone” if Mr. Moallem, who rarely interacts with administration officials because of administration policy toward Syria, attends the conference and wishes to speak there. Israeli officials had asked that Syria be invited, and several State Department officials have said privately that it would be a mistake to exclude Syria from the meeting.

If Saudi officials sit down with the Israelis, it will be a rare event at public Israeli-Palestinian talks. Prince Bandar bin Sultan, then the Saudi ambassador to the United States, attended a peace conference in Madrid in the fall of 1991, but as an observer, not a formal participant.

Saudi Arabia does not recognize Israel, although Saudi officials have also urged the Bush administration to push hard to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli peace issue. There have been some unconfirmed reports of other contacts between Israeli and Saudi officials, including some earlier this year.

The conference, which will begin with a preliminary meeting in Washington on Nov. 26 and move to Annapolis on Nov. 27, is supposed to initiate final-status peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians to settle the long-running, seemingly intractable issues that have bedeviled peace negotiators since 1979.

“This is the holy grail of diplomacy,” a senior administration official said. “We’re trying to rally the Arab world for support of this process, and they are master fence-sitters.”

Mr. Bush is expected to begin the Annapolis conference with a substantive speech, and part of the American effort to woo Arab leaders includes assurances to them that he will lay out an ambitious agenda that will pin all sides to firm negotiations on the status of Jerusalem, the dismantling of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and the contours of a Palestinian state.

“This is the point where the rubber meets the road,” said Martin Indyk, the former United States ambassador to Israel. “The United States really wants for Arab states to turn up, to bless the process.”

Until Tuesday evening, State Department officials would not officially confirm even the date of the conference.

“My hope and desire is that we can talk to you, in the not-too-distant future, about not only the list of invitees, but the date as well as the agenda for the Annapolis conference,” Sean D. McCormack, the department spokesman, said at a briefing early in the day, in language that was opaque even by diplomatic standards. “I anticipate there’s going to be a day that all the participants are going to be at Annapolis, and there are probably going to be events the day before and the day after.”

Appearing with the Israeli prime minister in Sharm el Sheik, Egypt, President Hosni Mubarak on Tuesday gave his full endorsement to the scheduled gathering, and raised hopes among Israeli officials of wider Arab participation at the meeting.

“Obviously we would hope that Egypt’s position will be representative of a larger Arab position,” said Mark Regev, an Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman.

At a joint news conference at Sharm el Sheik, an Egyptian Red Sea resort, both leaders billed the Annapolis meeting as a springboard for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations toward a final settlement of the conflict.

Israeli officials described Tuesday’s summit meeting as “covering bases” ahead of a meeting of Arab League foreign ministers in Cairo on Thursday. Israel sees Arab support for the budding Israel-Palestinian peace process as crucial, to give added legitimacy to the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas.

Helene Cooper reported from Washington, and Isabel Kershner from Sharm el Sheik, Egypt.

Who Can Match Israel’s Lobby?

Here’s my latest commentary in PostGlobal (washingtonpost.com)  As always, I am interested to hear your thoughts!

by Vivian Salama

The day after I returned from a three-year stint reporting in the Middle East, while war raged between Israel and Hezbollah militants, I turned on the news back here at home. It was eye-opening.

At the time I was jet-lagged, culture-shocked, and feeling seriously withdrawn from the controversy from which I had so suddenly removed myself. It was a difficult time to return. The first story I saw on TV was a pro-Israel war rally taking place here in New York. Would-be presidential candidate Hillary Clinton gave the keynote address. She told the crowd of thousands, “We will stand with Israel because Israel is standing for American values as well as Israeli ones.”

A day or two later, still glued to the television set, I caught one of Pat Buchanan’s several MSNBC appearances. With the blunt candor he is known for, Buchanan said, with regard to presidential hopefuls and the Israel-Hezbollah war, “Let’s face it: there are more people in America who will vote for you because you are pro-Israel than those who will vote for you because you are pro-Arab.”

According to Mearsheimer and Walt, authors of the controversial Israel Lobby, “we use ‘the Lobby’ as a convenient short-hand term for the loose coalition of individuals and organizations who actively work to shape U.S. foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction.” Of course, this should not be blurred with the Jewish lobby. The Israel Lobby has more influence on U.S. foreign policy because it has the support of many conservative Christian groups, which the mainstream media dubbed “Christian Zionists” in the days following September 11th. Certainly it is worth noting that Israel receives the most U.S. foreign aid per year ($2.5 billion in 2006, according to Reuters), though I hesitate to say that this is directly the result of the lobby – especially since Egypt and Colombia, the second and third highest recipients, respectfully, do not have nearly the same lobbying support as does Israel.

Rather than question the power and/or influence of the Israel lobby, I’d like to pose a related question: Is there any lobby that is nearly as influential as Israel’s? The recent decision by a U.S. Congressional panel to recognize the Armenian genocide in Ottoman Turkey was a major success for the Armenian Lobby in America – though it came after many years of lobbying. After a countermeasure supported by the Turkish Lobby, as many as eleven House members later withdrew their support for the genocide resolution. Of course, this is likely due to America’s reliance on Turkey as a strategic regional partner rather than the Turkish lobby’s pull in Washington. The Indian Lobby has been gaining ground in the U.S., particularly in light of the somewhat recent nuclear deal between the U.S. and India.

Still, none have mobilized in the way the Israel Lobby has since the days of World War II. (An interesting book documenting the earlier days of the Israel/Jewish Lobby is Arieh J. Kochavi’s “Post-Holocaust Politics”).

What about the Arab lobby? There is no cohesive Arab lobby in the U.S. Groups such as the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, the Arab American Institute (AAI) and a few Islamic groups pose as lobbyists, but it is really the oil companies (or their respective Gulf monarchs) and various donors who serve as the true supplicants. The problem is that they do not truly represent the Arab people.

There’s no telling whether recent developments, including Condoleezza Rice’s comments about the imminence of a Palestinian state or AIPAC’s legal troubles, will eventually level the lobbying playing field. For now, however, it is hard to imagine that any group will surpass the Israel lobby’s ability to win hearts and minds in Washington.

Israel’s legal adviser halts Gaza power cuts

This entire situation is so sad.  As if it is not enough that the innocent people of Gaza are forced to live in this open-air prison for so long, they have little or no sewage and now the electricity is being cut.  I wrote a story in early 2006 about the failed economy of Gaza – it was hard to believe then that things could get worse.  I always say that and they always do.  There is so much wrong with the situation – and plenty of blame to go around.  What hope is left?  I hope the UN intervenes.

JERUSALEM (AFP) – Israel’s state prosecutor said Monday that planned punitive cuts in the electricity supply to the Gaza Strip cannot go ahead without taking full account of the possible humanitarian consequences.

Menahem Mazouz said in a statement that “security chiefs must carry out supplementary examinations to take account of the humanitarian obligations before ordering electricity cuts”.

A spokesman for Mazouz’s office, Moshe Cohen, told AFP there was a need to “evaluate the risks that such measures could have on the civilian population”.

Mazouz published his advice following close consultations with officials from the justice, defence and foreign ministries as well as the prime minister’s office and the supreme court.

The supreme court has, meanwhile, given the government until Friday to justify the economic sanctions it is seeking to impose on the Palestinian territory, following legal action taken by 10 human rights groups.

Israel on Sunday began reducing the amount of fuel it supplies to the beleaguered Hamas-run coastal strip, just weeks after it declared the territory a “hostile entity” in response to frequent but rarely lethal rocket attacks.

Amid international criticism of the move as “collective punishment”, it said it intended to impose electricity cuts within the next few days.

Israel rejected international criticism of its decision to cut fuel supplies to the Gaza Strip, after the European Union, the United Nations and Russia condemned the sanctions.

“Israel is continuing to maintain the flow of humanitarian support for the Palestinian people in Gaza – foodstuff, medicine and energy. We do not see the Palestinian people as our enemy,” Mark Regev, a foreign ministry spokesman, told AFP.

“What we are trying to do is find ways to protect our people from these daily attacks of deadly rockets against Israel,” he added. “Our response is proportional and calculated to protect our civilians.”

The decision to cut fuel supplies brought a strong reaction from UN chief Ban Ki-moon, who called the “punitive measures” against the Gaza Strip “unacceptable” and urged the Jewish state to reconsider its actions.

Russia lodged a similar complaint, with the foreign ministry condemning the “isolation” of the Palestinian territory and insisting the measures would do little to combat extremism.

Earlier on Monday a top EU official expressed similar concerns. “I have mentioned these concerns openly in all my discussions,” External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner told a news conference following talks with top Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Jerusalem.

“There are indeed real, humanitarian concerns. We do not want the population to suffer,” she said.

1 soldier, 3 Palestinians die in clashes

Three Palestinians and an Israeli soldier were killed in clashes in the Gaza Strip on Monday, Palestinian officials and the Israeli army said.

Israeli forces operating against areas of Gaza used by Palestinians to launch rockets and mortar bombs across the border came under fire in the northern town of Beit Hanoun and near Khan Younis, a built-up refugee camp in the south.

Hamas, Gaza’s ruling Islamist group, said its fighters fired an anti-tank rocket at Israeli troops at Beit Hanoun, killing one.

The army confirmed the death, describing the soldier as a reservist, and said three soldiers were wounded in the fighting.

“We reaffirm that the enemy will never pass through our areas, except over the dead bodies of their soldiers,” Hamas’ armed wing said in a statement.

Israeli tanks and helicopters shelled Beit Hanoun during the clash, killing a gunman and a civilian, Hamas and hospital officials said. At least 12 other Palestinians were wounded.

Hamas said one of its gunmen was killed while fighting Israeli troops in Khan Younis. The Israeli army said its forces there shot two gunmen but had no word on their condition.

Israel quit Gaza in 2005 after 38 years of occupation but has regularly staged commando raids and air strikes against suspected fighter bases and rocket crews.

The soldier killed on Monday was Israel’s third combat fatality in Gaza this year.

In the occupied West Bank, an Israeli soldier was wounded when his patrol was attacked by Palestinian gunmen, the army said.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a small leftist group, claimed responsibility for the ambush. Troops detained three Nablus residents.

Palestinian Census First in Decade

Call me a skeptic.  I guess I should be hopeful that a census will be the flame needed to reignite the Middle East peace process – particularly after Condoleeza Rice’s visit last weekend where she told Mahmoud Abbas “It’s time for a Palestinian State.”  Great (huge, sarcastic sigh).  I am currently reading Dennis Ross’s “The Missing Peace.”  It is a detailed account of the build up — and eventual crash and burn — of the Oslo Accords in 1993.  I haven’t gotten very far yet, but judging by the fact that the first chapter is called “The End,” I’m guessing I know how this story ends.

I tend to worry that a census actually exaggerates fault lines within societies.  Consider the situation in Rwanda earlier in the 20^th Century.  Various tribes lived as neighbors harmoniously for several centuries.  When the colonial powers imposed the census, suddenly people were aware of the groups (and their numbers) around them.  They were conscious of their majority/minority status.  Colonial powers teamed up and empowered the minority groups because those were the groups that needed their colonial friends in order to maintain authority.  Majority groups were oppressed.  The rest, if you know anything about the Rwandan genocide, is history.

 Is it a coincidence that the neo-colonial powers are teaming up with Israel?  Israel’s Jewish population stands at approximately 6.5 million.  The UN estimates the number of Palestinians worldwide to be at 10.5 million.  Of course, the majority are refugees living in the Diaspora.  In fact, there are only about 3 million Palestinians living in Israel/Palestinian territories in total (that includes the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem)  But let’s be honest – does it matter how many Palestinians are living in Gaza?  It is the most densely populated area in the WORLD.  Sewage systems are barely functional.  Violence is frequent.  Sonic booms and shellings from the Israeli military are almost an everyday occurrence.  Is a census really going to make that much of a difference?  They are still the minority group and will remain so.    These poor people don’t need a census; they need a miracle. 

By DALIA NAMMARI

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — The Palestinians are preparing to conduct their first census in a decade, with hopes the results will help them in future peace talks with Israel.

Demographics play a central role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Rapid Palestinian growth would bolster Palestinian territorial demands, while Israelis’ fear of being outnumbered in areas they now control might make them more willing to consider a West Bank withdrawal.

Later this week, some 5,000 census-takers will fan out across the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, first to count buildings, and, in December, to count people. Results are expected by February.

“We hope we can use these statistics in the negotiations,” said Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, a supporter of moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his Ramallah-based administration. “It’s not only important for the political process, but also for building the institutions of the state.”

The militant group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, has also said the census results are important and that it will cooperate.

The first Palestinian census, conducted in 1997, counted 2.89 million Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem, the territories Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast War. According to estimates by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, the figure now stands at 3.9 million.

Some Israeli critics have dismissed the 1997 figures and the current projections as inflated, a charge denied by Palestinian census officials, who say the counts are being conducted under international scrutiny.

Palestinians have one of the highest birth rates in the world, forcing Israel to consider the possibility that Jews, despite ongoing Jewish immigration, will one day be a minority in historic Palestine, the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean.

In December 2006, Israel’s population included 5.4 million Jews, 1.4 million Arabs and 310,000 others, according to Israeli government figures.

Demographic concerns are often cited by those in Israel who want to withdraw from some of the lands Israel occupied in the 1967 Mideast War. It also was a key factor in former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s decision to withdraw from Gaza in 2005.

The census will cost $8.6 million, with the Palestinian Authority paying 20 percent. The rest comes from a U.N. agency, Saudi Arabia, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, the Netherlands and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, census officials said.

Hafedh Chkeir, an official with the U.N. Population Fund, said his agency trusts the work of the Palestinian census agency. He also said the U.N. is trying to bring in some Arab experts based in Jordan, but they have not yet received visas from Israel.

On Saturday, census-takers will start affixing numbers to homes, business and other buildings. In radio and TV ads, Palestinians are being urged to cooperate and not to remove the numbers.

Israeli-Palestinian peace talks have been frozen since a failed summit in 2000, but new momentum has been building. Negotiating teams from both sides are trying to draft a joint statement of principles that is to be presented to a U.S.-hosted peace conference later this fall, possibly the launching pad for new talks.

The first census was conducted at a relatively quiet time, with hopes still running high that the two sides were on their way to a final peace deal. However, since then, years of bloody fighting have reshaped the area.

The Palestinians now have two rival governments, one run by Hamas in Gaza and the other by Western-backed moderates in the West Bank.

During the last census, Israel did not permit a head count in the Arab neighborhoods of east Jerusalem, claimed by the Palestinians as a future capital, prompting census-takers to draw estimates for that area using 1995 Israeli figures. Israel said at the time that a Palestinian census there was a challenge to its sovereignty in the city.

It was not clear whether Israel would permit a census in east Jerusalem this year. Israeli officials did not return repeated messages seeking comment on the matter.

Give and Take Can Strengthen Moderates

Washington Post/Newsweek – PostGlobal   

by Vivian Salama

The question facing the South Korean government, like many governments before it, is simple: does negotiating with terrorists excuse – or even encourage – violence?

(Above: South Korean hostages released by Taliban)

It is very difficult to call any negotiation “insensible” if it spares hostages’ lives, but the circumstances vary drastically in each case. To consolidate this response, I will treat all “terrorists” as one – though we can certainly break down the meaning of “terrorist” and further complicate a complex matter.

Western democracies’ logic is essentially never to bow down to violence, nor to reward terrorists for using it. But this is easier said than done. Governments have historically turned to terrorist organizations to further their political agendas. Israel signed the 1993 Oslo Accords with the Palestinian Liberation Organization even though the PLO was considered a terrorist organization and refused to recognize Israel’s right to exist. Years earlier, the Jewish State also allowed Hamas to operate unhindered during the first Intifada in hopes that it would challenge, and weaken, the authority of Yasser Arafat. As a result, Israel faced a stronger Hamas during the Second Intifada.

More recently, Israel and the West have been criticized for resisting any kind of negotiation with Hamas after the group won an unprecedented victory in the January 2006 elections. This is a government democratically elected by the people of the Palestinian territories and East Jerusalem. By refusing categorically to negotiate with that government, Western governments and Israel risk undermining the democratic process that they – particularly the Bush Administration – have worked to establish in the region.

Refusing any and all negotiation eliminates the chance of finding common ground. On the other hand, agreeing to negotiate is often a bargaining tool, one that can stem violence and will often lead to a ceasefire. A classic example of such fruitful negotiation is the IRA’s 2005 pledge to end violence in its fight for a united Ireland. It was a lesson in persistence and persuasion by a government actor – in this case, the British government – in helping a terrorist organization consider peaceful alternatives.

Such an option may seem overly optimistic given the current climate in the “War Against Terror.” But a categorical refusal to negotiate can cloud the real issues at hand, leaving room for terrorists and their supporters to accuse the opposing government of undemocratic, oppressive or dictatorial practices.

Agreeing to negotiate often means taking the much longer view toward the immediate issue. In a 1998 interview with the Paris-based news magazine Le Nouvel Observateur, former U.S. National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski insisted that the Carter Administration should not regret supporting Afghanistan’s Islamic fundamentalists in the late 1970s. He asked, “What is more important to the history of the world – the Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?”

Or consider North Korea, which is reportedly coming off the list of “terrorist” countries. It will be interesting to see what effect that has on North Koreans’ attitudes toward the United States, and whether it helps to speed up denuclearization. Of course, none of this would have happened without negotiation.

There’s no question that negotiations are give-and-take; nothing is guaranteed. In Hamas’ case, there was no way to tell whether, given Hamas’ political inexperience, negotiating with Western leaders might have strengthened the group’s moderate wing. These terrorist groups often lack internal cohesion. Given the opportunity, governments that are willing to negotiate may make considerably more progress by getting a foot in the door than by completely shutting terrorists groups out.

Israel hails US military aid rise

The news below is interesting.  I can’t say that I am at all surprised by this development given the close ties between Israel and the United States.  Israel is already the top recipient of military and economic aid from the United States (Egypt is second). What is particularly interesting is that the deal is purportedly in response to a rumored arms deal between the United States and Saudi Arabia.  This is similar to how the nuclear race is playing out in the Middle East and South Asia.  There are concerns that Iran has nukes.  Egypt is dabbling in nukes for civilian use.  Israel – while it has never been confirmed – is more than likely involved in the nuclear race.  With arms, everyone wants the best, the strongest, the most sophisticated, and the most – particularly in the Middle East where more often than not, these arms are more than just a precaution.  What is interesting is the way the United States government caters to Israel’s apprehension.  Even more interesting is the lengths to which the United States will go to maintain the Sunni stronghold in the region.  I’ve written about this subject extensively.

BBC: Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has confirmed that the United States is planning a significant increase in military and defence aid to Israel.

The package would reportedly amount to more than $30bn (£14.8bn) over the next 10 years.

Mr Olmert described it as an important element for the security of Israel.

Washington is reportedly preparing a package of major arms sales to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states because of concerns over Iran’s nuclear programme.

US defence aid to Israel currently stands at $2.4bn a year – the new package would amount to a 25% increase.

Mr Olmert said the aid had been agreed at a meeting with US President George W Bush in Washington last month.

Saudi arms deal

The BBC’s Bethany Bell in Jerusalem says the package is seen as an attempt to allay Israeli concerns over the planned arms deal with Saudi Arabia, reportedly worth $20bn (£9.8bn) over the next decade.

Defence officials quoted by US media said the sales would include advanced weaponry, missile guidance systems, upgraded fighter jets and naval ships.

Mr Olmert said the increased support was a sign of US commitment to maintain Israel’s military “advantage over the Arab states”.

“We understand the need of the US to assist the moderate Arab states which are in one front with the US and us in the fight against Iran, and on the other hand we appreciate the renewed and re-emphasised support for Israel’s military and security advantage,” he said.