EDITOR: Countdown to war continues
Seumas Milne in the Guardian never misses. His piece today is aimed at the immoral and illegal war against Iran, which has already started covertly, and is about to become a major military campaign by Israel, Us and UK, the unholy alliance of western aggressives.
War on Iran has already begun. Act before it threatens all of us: Guardian
Escalation of the covert US-Israeli campaign against Tehran risks a global storm. Opposition has to get more serious
Iranians carry honorary coffins and pictures of a Revolutionary Guards commander killed in an explosion at the Alghadir missile base. Photograph: Reuters
They don’t give up. After a decade of blood-drenched failure in Afghanistan and Iraq, violent destabilisation of Pakistan and Yemen, the devastation of Lebanon and slaughter in Libya, you might hope the US and its friends had had their fill of invasion and intervention in the Muslim world.
It seems not. For months the evidence has been growing that a US-Israeli stealth war against Iran has already begun, backed by Britain and France. Covert support for armed opposition groups has spread into a campaign of assassinations of Iranian scientists, cyber warfare, attacks on military and missile installations, and the killing of an Iranian general, among others.
The attacks are not directly acknowledged, but accompanied by intelligence-steered nods and winks as the media are fed a stream of hostile tales – the most outlandish so far being an alleged Iranian plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to the US – and the western powers ratchet up pressure for yet more sanctions over Iran’s nuclear programme.
The British government’s decision to take the lead in imposing sanctions on all Iranian banks and pressing for an EU boycott of Iranian oil triggered the trashing of its embassy in Tehran by demonstrators last week and subsequent expulsion of Iranian diplomats from London.
It’s a taste of how the conflict can quickly escalate, as was the downing of a US spyplane over Iranian territory at the weekend. What one Israeli official has called a “new kind of war” has the potential to become a much more old-fashioned one that would threaten us all.
Last month the Guardian was told by British defence ministry officials that if the US brought forward plans to attack Iran (as they believed it might), it would “seek, and receive, UK military help”, including sea and air support and permission to use the ethnically cleansed British island colony of Diego Garcia.
Whether the officials’ motive was to soften up public opinion for war or warn against it, this was an extraordinary admission: the Britain military establishment fully expects to take part in an unprovoked US attack on Iran – just as it did against Iraq eight years ago.
What was dismissed by the former foreign secretary Jack Straw as “unthinkable”, and for David Cameron became an option not to be taken “off the table”, now turns out to be as good as a done deal if the US decides to launch a war that no one can seriously doubt would have disastrous consequences. But there has been no debate in parliament and no mainstream political challenge to what Straw’s successor, David Miliband, this week called the danger of “sleepwalking into a war with Iran”. That’s all the more shocking because the case against Iran is so spectacularly flimsy.
There is in fact no reliable evidence that Iran is engaged in a nuclear weapons programme. The latest International Atomic Energy Agency report once again failed to produce a smoking gun, despite the best efforts of its new director general, Yukiya Amano – described in a WikiLeaks cable as “solidly in the US court on every strategic decision”.
As in the runup to the invasion of Iraq, the strongest allegations are based on “secret intelligence” from western governments. But even the US national intelligence director, James Clapper, has accepted that the evidence suggests Iran suspended any weapons programme in 2003 and has not reactivated it.
The whole campaign has an Alice in Wonderland quality about it. Iran, which says it doesn’t want nuclear weapons, is surrounded by nuclear-weapon states: the US – which also has forces in neighbouring Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as military bases across the region – Israel, Russia, Pakistan and India.
Iran is of course an authoritarian state, though not as repressive as western allies such as Saudi Arabia. But it has invaded no one in 200 years. It was itself invaded by Iraq with western support in the 1980s, while the US and Israel have attacked 10 countries or territories between them in the past decade. Britain exploited, occupied and overthrew governments in Iran for over a century. So who threatens who exactly?
As Israel’s defence minister, Ehud Barak, said recently, if he were an Iranian leader he would “probably” want nuclear weapons. Claims that Iran poses an “existential threat” to Israel because President Ahmadinejad said the state “must vanish from the page of time” bear no relation to reality. Even if Iran were to achieve a nuclear threshold, as some suspect is its real ambition, it would be in no position to attack a state with upwards of 300 nuclear warheads, backed to the hilt by the world’s most powerful military force.
The real challenge posed by Iran to the US and Israel has been as an independent regional power, allied to Syria and the Lebanese Hezbollah and Palestinian Hamas movements. As US troops withdraw from Iraq, Saudi Arabia fans sectarianism, and Syrian opposition leaders promise a break with Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas, the threat of proxy wars is growing across the region.
A US or Israeli attack on Iran would turn that regional maelstrom into a global firestorm. Iran would certainly retaliate directly and through allies against Israel, the US and US Gulf client states, and block the 20% of global oil supplies shipped through the Strait of Hormuz. Quite apart from death and destruction, the global economic impact would be incalculable.
All reason and common sense militate against such an act of aggression. Meir Dagan, the former head of Israel’s Mossad, said last week it would be a “catastrophe”. Leon Panetta, the US defence secretary, warned that it could “consume the Middle East in confrontation and conflict that we would regret”.
There seems little doubt that the US administration is deeply wary of a direct attack on Iran. But in Israel, Barak has spoken of having less than a year to act; Binyamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, has talked about making the “right decision at the right moment”; and the prospects of drawing the US in behind an Israeli attack have been widely debated in the media.
Maybe it won’t happen. Maybe the war talk is more about destabilisation than a full-scale attack. But there are undoubtedly those in the US, Israel and Britain who think otherwise. And the threat of miscalculation and the logic of escalation could tip the balance decisively. Unless opposition to an attack on Iran gets serious, this could become the most devastating Middle East war of all.
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Iran state television displays ‘downed U.S. surveillance drone’: Haaretz
WATCH: Revolutionary Guard top officer tells Fars news agency that military experts are ‘well aware how precious the technological information of this drone is.’
Iraninan state television displayed what it said was a downed U.S. surveillance drone on Thursday, days after U.S. officials expressed concern that Tehran would be able to glean information about a classified military program.
According to the semi-official Fars news agency, in the televised segment, commander of the Revolutionary Guard’s Aerospace Forces Amir Ali Hajizadeh said that Iranian forces uncovered the aircraft as it was about “to infiltrate our country’s airspace for spying missions.”
“[A]fter it entered the Eastern parts of the country, this aircraft fell into the trap of our armed forces and was downed in Iran with minimum damage,” Hajizadeh told Fars.
According to the Iraninan military official, the drone was “equipped with highly advanced surveillance, data gathering, electronic communication and radar systems,” saying that “this kind of plane has been designed to evade radar systems and from the view point of technology it is amongst the most recent types of advanced aircraft used by the U.S.”
“The technology used in this aircraft had already been used in B2 and F35 planes,” Hajizadeh added, saying the “aircraft is controlled and guided through satellite link and land stations in Afghanistan and the United States.”
“Military experts are well aware how precious the technological information of this drone is,” Fars quoted Hajizadeh as saying.
U.S. envoy: Washington closely coordinating with Israel on Iran: Haaretz
Ambassador Dan Shapiro rebuffs previous claims by U.S. officials that Israel would not alert Washington ahead of a strike on Iran.
U.S. ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro said Thursday that Washington has been fully cooperating with Israel when it comes to the Iran and its nuclear program.
“There is no issue that we coordinate more closely than on Iran,” Shapiro said during a briefing to reporters in Tel Aviv.
Shapiro’s comments come against the backdrop of uncertainty regarding the U.S.-Israeli coordination on a possible strike on Iran.
General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last month that he did not know whether Israel would alert the United States ahead of time if it decided to take military action against Iran.
Shapiro, however, discounted these claims and asserted the close cooperation between Israel and the U.S.
“We believe Iran is pursuing a military nuclear capability and we are determined to stop it,” he added.
He also noted that Quartet envoys are due to arrive in Jerusalem next week and meet Israeli and Palestinian officials.
“We emphasize that the parties need to talk directly,” he urged.
Commenting on the recent elections in Egypt and the Muslim Brotherhood’s significant gains, Shapiro said that the U.S. expects that the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty will be respected after elections in Egypt as well.
The RQ-170 has been used in Afghanistan for several years. U.S. officials acknowledge that the military lost control of one of the stealthy drones while it was flying a mission over western Afghanistan. The official IRNA news agency has said that Iran’s armed forces shot it down.
On Monday, U.S. military officials said that they were concerned that a stealthy surveillance drone that crashed in Iran could give Tehran the opportunity to glean information about the classified program.
But experts said Monday that even if the Iranians found parts of the unmanned spy plane, they will likely get little from it. And since it probably fell from a high altitude, there may be very few large pieces to examine.
U.S. officials have rejected that claim.
EDITOR: Not good enough…
You have been forgiven for thinking that it is not possible to be more supportive of Israel than President Obama was. Well, you were wrong… read below to enjoy yourself with what Americans call politics. This is the annual festival “who is more extreme in support of mad Israel”, which is celebrated every year around this time, in the US Congress. It isa lot of fun.
U.S. presidential candidates slam Obama’s Israel, Iran policy at Republican Jewish Coalition: Haaretz
GOP presidential hopefuls accuse Obama administration of being soft on Iran and hard on Israel; Gingrich, Bachmann say would move U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Republican presidential candidates took to the stage at the Republican Jewish Coalition Presidential Candidates Forum in Washington on Wednesday, criticizing U.S. President Barack Obama’s Middle East policy, particularly his record on Israel and Iran.
Presidential hopefuls addressed the audience one by one at the Ronald Reagan building in Washington DC, presenting their views on the economy, health care, foreign policy in general and the Middle East in particular, and then answered questions from the audience.
Republican Ron Paul, not known as a supporter of Israel, was not invited.
Since the departure of Herman Cain from the race, most of the attention has been focused on former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. Romney seemed much more focused and concise in his responses – but Gingrich got much more applause from the audience.
Most of the responses were familiar to the audience from the earlier debates, and the rhetoric almost seemed to be taken from Obama administration officials’ speeches with “unshakeable commitment to Israel.” Indeed, this time, the Jewish audience got a concentrated dose of support for Israel.
Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, who recently lost some points in polls to Newt Gingrich, took time to criticize Obama’s Middle East policies.
“He visited Egypt, Syria – no, not Syria – Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Turkey. He even offered to meet with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Yet in three years in office, he hasn’t found the time or interest to visit Israel, our ally, our friend,” to which the audience replied with enthusiastic booing.
“Over the last three years President Obama has instead chastened Israel,” Romney continued.
“In his inaugural address to the United Nations, the president chastised Israel but had almost nothing to say about Hamas launching thousands of rockets into Israel’s skies. He’s publicly proposed that Israel adopt indefensible borders. He’s insulted Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. And he’s been timid and weak in the face of the existential threat that Israel faces from Iran. These actions have emboldened Palestinian hard-liners, and they’re now poised to form a unity government with terrorist Hamas. And they feel they can bypass Israel at the bargaining table,” he said.
“President Obama has immeasurably set back the prospect of peace in the Middle East,” he added.
Romney declared that his future policies “could not be more different. I will travel to Israel on my first foreign trip. I will reaffirm, as a vital national interest, Israel’s existence as a Jewish state. And I want the world to know that the bonds that exist between Israel and the United States are unshakable. I want every country in the region that harbors aggressive designs against Israel to understand that their ambition is futile and that pursuing it will cost them very dearly.”
Referring to Iran, Romney said, “I would not meet with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He should be excluded from diplomatic society. In fact, he should be indicted for the crime of incitement to genocide under Article III of the genocide convention. And on my watch, Iran’s ayatollahs will not be permitted to obtain nuclear weapons. A nuclear-armed Iran is not only a threat to Israel; it’s a threat to the entire world. Our friends must never fear that we will not stand by them in an hour of need, and our enemies should never doubt our resolve.”
Romney went on to say that the U.S., “Should treat the Iranian diplomats, business people, and leaders like the pariah they are as long as they’re pursuing nuclear weaponry.”
He asserted that the U.S. should engage in covert and overt activities to encourage voices of dissent, in Iran, adding that, “Ultimately regime change is what’s going to be necessary.” He also expressed his support for both military action and sanctions against Iran’s nuclear program.
Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich discussed the recent controversial speech given by the U.S. Ambassador to Belgium on anti-Semitism.
“This is an administration which, frankly, should be firing the ambassador to Belgium, who gave a stunningly anti-Semitic speech,” Gingrich said. “This is an administration which, frankly, should be reprimanding the Secretary of Defense for an insulting performance the other day.”
He also criticized Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s speech at the Saban forum last week, where he called on Israeli and Palestinian leaders to “get to the damn table.” Gingrich described the speech as “outrageous.”
“Panetta is a fine domestic politician, but his speech was outrageous. How about saying to Hamas, give up violence and come to the table? How about saying to the PLO, recognize Israel and come to the table? This one-sided continuing pressure that says it’s always Israel’s fault, no matter how bad the other side is, has to stop. The fact that Secretary Clinton would talk about discrimination against women in Israel, and then meet with Saudis? ” he said.
Gingrich also said that “in a Gingrich administration, on the opening day, there will be an executive order about two hours after the inaugural address. We will send the Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, as of that day.”
On Iran, Gingrich promised to fund “every dissident group” and to sabotage Iran’s oil supply, to promote the regime change which, he argued, in the long run is the only rational policy.
Texas Governor Rick Perry accused the Obama Administration of a “torrent of hostility” toward Israel. “It seems to be a natural expression of this administration’s attitude toward Israel”, he said. Perry also tried to modify his remarks in one of the previous debates on “zeroing out” foreign aid, including aid to Israel”. “Strategic defensive aid to Israel under a Perry administration will increase,” he said.
Former Pennsylvania
Senator Rick Santorum said, “We have to make it very clear to Iran that the United States – the United States, I didn’t say Israel, because it’s in our security interest – will stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, period. We cannot sit and hope to contain Iran. We need to say very clearly that we will be conducting covert activity to do everything we can to stop their nuclear program.”
Former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman said that, for him, “All options are on the table. And it means that when Israel strikes up that conversation, as I believe they will, you better be prepared to remember and put in place what that relationship and what that alliance actually means.”
Rep. Michele Bachmann who spoke last concentrated mostly on criticizing Obama, saying he’s been “ambiguous with Iran,” mentioning his weakness and appeasement policies “emboldened Palestinians to seek statehood at the UN,” which she called ‘the most overrated organization in the world.”
She also promised, if elected, to move the Embassy to Jerusalem, and recognize annexation of any settlements Israel would chose to annex.
“President has delegitimized Israel by describing Israel as a 60 year old occupation”, she said. “He abandoned prior U.S. policy that Israel is entitled to defensible borders, the former Administration’s commitments who said no right of return for the Palestinian so-called ‘refugees.’ He calls them to return to the indefensible borders. I guarantee you without any reservation: I will never call for dividable Jerusalem.”
On Iran, Bachmann said “our options are diminishing by the day. The President will stand with Occupy Wall Street – but he won’t stand with Israel. We have to accelerate covert operations and cyber operations in Iran. We must order the CIA director to do every effort necessary to stop the Iranian bomb. The Pentagon must prepare a war plan.”
Republican Jewish coalition CEO Matt Brooks concluded the event saying “you’ve witnessed history today: the next president of the U.S. was on this stage.”.
The Democratic National Council quickly arranged a response call with Robert Wexler, former member of Congress from the Democratic Party and the president of the Washington-based S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East, who called the Republican presidential hopeful attacks on President Obama a “theater of the absurd,”, listing joint military joint exercises, military assistance, and help with the Israeli Embassy in Cairo crisis as examples of cooperation between the current U.S.administration and Israel.
Wexler responded also to what seemed to be the leitmotif of the Republican attacks – weak leadership of President Obama. Mentioning the killing of Osama Bin-Laden, Wexler said this and others are “examples of solid presidential leadership.”
Romney: Obama has hindered peace in the Middle East ‘immeasurably’: Guardian
Speaking at the Republican Jewish Coalition Forum, Mitt Romney blasted the president’s ‘weak’ handling of Israel
Chris McGreal in Washington
Mitt Romney, a leading Republican presidential contender, has called for regime change in Iran and said that the US should make clear to Tehran that it is “developing military options”.
Romney made the call during a scathing attack on Barack Obama at a Republican Jewish Coalition forum of presidential candidates in which he accused the president of weak support for Israel, of appeasing America’s enemies and of setting back peace in the Middle East with his fractious relationship with the Israeli leadership.
Before a hawkish, pro-Israel audience, Romney and another contender, Rick Santorum, dwelt at length on the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear programme and what they characterised as Obama’s weak response.
Romney called for “crippling sanctions” against Tehran and for Iran’s diplomats and businessmen to be treated as pariahs.
“Ultimately regime change is necessary. We should make it very clear we are developing and have developed military options,” he said.
Santorum said that on his first day in office as president he would ensure that the US and Israel are safe from Iran. But he didn’t say how.
Romney launched a broad attack on Obama’s foreign policy.
“Abroad, he’s weakening America,” he said. “He seems to be more generous to our enemies than he is to our friends. That is the natural tendency of someone who is unsure of their own strength, or of America’s rightful place as the leader of the world.”
But Romney repeatedly returned to the president’s dealings with Israel. He accused Obama of “not finding time” to visit the Jewish state, drawing some boos and hisses from the audience. Romney promised to make a trip to Jerusalem his first foreign visit as president.
The Republican contender accused Obama of “insulting” the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, and of “emboldening Palestinian hardliners”.
Obama and Netanyahu have clashed repeatedly over Israel’s continued expansion of Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, including plans for an entire new settlement and thousands of homes in others which are regarded by the Palestinians as evidence that the present Israeli government is not serious about a negotiated peace.
Romney, however, blamed Obama for the sour relations.
“President Obama has immeasurably set back the prospect of peace in the Middle East,” he said.
A third speaker on Wednesday morning, Jon Huntsman, made only a cursory reference to Israel – saying this is the time for the world to understand that America stands with the Jewish state – and instead lamented at length the decline of US manufacturing.
Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann are to speak on Wednesday afternoon.
The meeting is an opportunity for the Republicans to once again question Obama’s commitment to Israel, which has become a drum beat in recent months, particularly after the president stated the obvious in saying a two-state solution will be based on 1967 borders with land swaps.
But it is also a chance for leading Republican contenders to try and repair the damage done by a question about foreign aid at a candidates debate last month in which Perry said he wanted to scrap existing foreign aid commitments and then have each country justify assistance, including Israel. He was backed by Gingrich and Romney.
The candidates swiftly said after the debate that they expected aid to Israel to continue, but it still brought a torrent of criticism.
Romney also spoke at length about the economy, repeating earlier attacks on the president’s strategy. But he did admit that Obama may not be easy to remove as an incumbent: “He will resort to anything. As you know, class warfare and demagoguery are powerful political weapons.”
Huntsman was more melancholy. He offered several warnings about the contraction of US manufacturing industry and echoed a renowned speech on American malaise by President Jimmy Carter.
Huntsman said: “We are in a deep funk as people. We are dispirited. We are dejected”.
How peace vanished from Israeli discourse: Haaretz
The hope of peace has vanished from the sky of our lives and the Palestinians’ lives, and Israel bears critical responsibility for this.
By Gideon Levy
It happens a lot. A figure once significant in our lives fades away gradually. Not with a slam of the door or a tough fight, but almost imperceptibly, a kind of slow evaporation, until one day we suddenly notice he has completely disappeared.
That’s how peace has vanished from our lives. Nobody talks about it anymore; even the negotiations about it, the longest in history, are officially dead – and we didn’t even notice. There is no peace, no negotiations, not even a dream. The only context it’s mentioned in, if at all, is the awful danger lurking within it. It doesn’t occur to anyone that there are also conditions of real peace, with few risks and the promise of another reality – that in peace there is no shooting, for example. Only in war.
Last week Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas submitted his detailed answers to the Quartet, failing to elicit even a yawn around here. Jerusalem didn’t even bother to respond. This week the prime minister gave his ambiguous speech at Ben-Gurion’s grave, and it didn’t occur to anybody he was talking about the most forgotten notion in our lives.
Benjamin Netanyahu spoke of “courageous decisions” and said “we are all here today because Ben-Gurion made the right decision.” He spoke about the founding father “who understood that that decision carried a heavy price, but realized that not making that decision had a heavier price” – and everyone knew what he meant.
“Courageous decisions” to advance a peace agreement? Decisions “we are all here because of” to end the occupation? No. Netanyahu was talking about bombing Iran. Until a few years ago we’d still have guessed he was talking about peace. Now it’s clear that when the prime minister talks about historic decisions he is talking about bombing.
Thus peace dropped out of our lives. First the Israelis lost interest in it, then their proteges the Americans did too. Their envoys have scattered in every direction. The obvious condition posed by the Palestinians to finally freeze settlement construction serves as an excuse for Netanyahu not to conduct even make-believe negotiations. The “peace-making” game is over. It may seem a good thing that this masquerade has ended, but a troublesome thought remains – if there’s no peace and no talks, what comes instead? There’s only one certain answer – this void will fill up.
If there is no peace, no dream and not even negotiations, something else will take their place. If the Palestinians’ faint hope of freedom is doomed, they will be forced again to take another path. What else can they do? Wait around doing nothing for an entire generation? Sit idly by for two generations? Of course not. This vacuum will be filled by another circle of bloodshed, more horrible than the previous ones. The first uprising was the stone-and-knife intifada, the second was the suicide bombers’ intifada. The third is likely to be even more violent.
It’s not waiting around the corner. The Palestinian people are divided, bleeding and without fighting spirit. Their lives are relatively comfortable now, but that won’t be enough for the next generation. The Arab states won’t sit idly by either. They are preoccupied with internal affairs, but when these are sorted out, maybe there will be a few free Arab states that mobilize to help their brothers who are not free.
When the storm passes, when the clouds clear, the new Middle East may be one in which the most oppressed Arabs live under “the only democracy in the Middle East.” They will not be silent then. Nor will the world. Millions of people deprived of civil rights are not a matter to be tolerated indefinitely in the new world.
Sometimes even false hopes have value. As long as there was talk of peace here, as long as negotiations were held, we had a horizon. It was deceptive, illusive and receding, but it was there, somewhere. Now it too has vanished from the sky of our lives and the Palestinians’ lives, and Israel bears critical responsibility for this.
The government appears to be pinning hopes on a bombing raid. The only courageous decision the prime minister can imagine is launching another offensive, and the thought that this could go on forever causes a shudder. It’s hard to believe I’m writing this: Where’s George Mitchell when you need him? Where’s the illusion we need now?
Full transcript of interview with Palestinian professor Rashid Khalidi: Haaretz
Following is a transcript of the interview with Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University’s Department of History.
By Chemi Shalev
THE PALESTINIANS: “We already have a one-state solution”
Q. Let’s talk about the Palestinians. Why has the Arab Spring passed them by? And do you think the two-state solution is still possible? Your detractors say that you would not be unhappy about such a development
A. Anyone who is an advocate of the two state solution has to tell me how a forty plus year old process can be reversed. That process, even since Meron Benvenisti starting talking about it in the late eighties, hasn’t changed one bit. No Israeli government has ever stopped it. I mean Rabin did a little bit, but that’s it. It’s inexorable – the bulldozers never stop.
Explain to me how a two state solution is compatible with the continuation of that dynamic. Your newspaper chronicles better than most the rise of that ideology and how it has taken over institutions of the state, one by one, including the army, how the imperatives of this movement, which used to be Harav Kook and a few people in the Revisionist movement who had never been in power – you could count them on the fingers of your hand in 1967 – are now sitting on top of a bulldozer that will never stop, unless somebody stops it. Anyone who’s interested in a two state solution – an Israeli, an American, a Palestinian or an Arab – has to explain to me how that process can be reversed, or how the continuation of that process indefinitely into the future is compatible with what anyone would call a “state” can come about in the occupied territories. This is a value-free assessment.
Q. Well people will tell you that with a five per cent swap, with a ten percent swap – it is still feasible. But obviously they are not going to stop it while…you know there was an attempt by the Obama administration..
A. I’m not talking about a settlement freeze. That’s not what’s at issue. I’m talking about how you uproot what I call “the settlement-industrial complex”, which is not 500 or 600 hundred thousand in the occupied West Bank and in Occupied Arab East Jerusalem, it’s the hundreds of thousands in government and in the private sector whose livelihoods and bureaucratic interests are linked to the maintenance of control over the Palestinians, in the finance ministry, collecting taxes, the people who work for these companies that control these data bases, every Palestinian is on these multiple data bases, four million people, how many entries, how many highly paid software engineers, how many programmers, how many consultants, how many executives – we’re talking hundreds of thousands of people. Most of them live prosperous lives right near the Mediterranean and wouldn’t go near the occupied territories if their lives depended on it. But their lives and their livelihoods are utterly bound up with the people who live on the West Bank and, to the extent possible, with those who live in Gaza.
I’d love to see an Israeli politician with the courage to deal with those issues. I haven’t seen one. So I’m not saying it can’t happen – the late Tony Judt once said “anything that one politician has done another politician can undo” – I can see it’s conceivable to have a two state solution, but I also see a dynamic…this is not a dynamic that depends on this American president, this is a wider dynamic.
Q. Do you personally support a two state solution?
A. If it was possible? I think it would be a real way station towards a just resolution of this conflict.
Q. You say a way station. That is a codeword, you know. So it would not mean the end of conflict.
A. It’s a way station, because a two-state solution will not resolve the problem because there are not just four million Palestinians in the occupied territories and another million or million and a half inside Israel, there are several million other Palestinians. Now some of those Palestinians are perfectly integrated into where they live, and all they might want is a passport and a vacation home or a burial plot – but they have rights, and they have aspirations and they have weight in Palestinian politics. I don’t see how a two-state solution that is the final and sole resolution according to Israel’s vision, in which nobody comes back to Israel proper – is going to solve all of this.
Another problem is – how do you address the growing problem that is constituted by this large indigenous minority inside Israel. The two-state solution doesn’t address this. That’s part of the Palestine problem. It’s an Israeli problem. Transfer is not the solution. Ethnic cleansing is not the solution.
Q. Our foreign minister has a solution….
A. Why are we talking about this but for the fact that the United Nations gave 55% of a country that was two-thirds occupied by Palestinians? 35% of the population, who owned 7% of the land, and who in the Jewish state laid out by the UN Partition Plan would have had to deal with a 50% Arab minority. This was resolved by “dumping” the Palestinians, so dumping more Palestinians won’t solve the problem.
Q. You know that what you say is playing into the hands of people who oppose a diplomatic solution who will cite this as proof that you’re not going to make do with an independent Palestinian state, but you will continue to demand the right of return as well as a solution to the Israeli Arab minority.
Q. They are not an Israeli Arab minority alone; they are also part of the Palestinian people. So no solution to the Palestine question which is final, which is just, which is agreed – can act as if this was an internal Israeli problem and the Israelis can treat the Palestinians inside Israel exactly as they please. It won’t work.
A. So what – they will be extra-territorial citizens? Extra judicial?
Q. No. Israelis have to figure out a way to reunderstand their own citizenship so that these people can be Israelis and they can be Palestinians at the same time. They are more indigenous than anyone else there, except for a few people whose great-great-great-great grandparents were also there. They have more rights, in a certain way of understanding rights, than anybody else, and they certainly have the right to be citizens of the state they live in, an Israeli state, and that has to be squared with the idea of Jewish nationhood, of Jewish people, of Israel as the national home of the Jewish people and those things could probably be solved – but it’s not an external thing, that’s not “we’ve solved the borders now shut up and let us deal with our Arabs”. The Israelis are free to do it. They have the power to do it. But it won’t work. In fact, one of the things that Palestinians resent is that the PLO leadership ignored this issue in the 1990’s. That won’t be possible in the future.
At the same time, a two-state solution is part of a larger solution and it also requires the Palestinians to reimagine what a Palestinian state can be. I think they have a very impoverished way of thinking. Why not have a Palestinian state in which Jews live? What’s wrong with that? Why shouldn’t a Palestinian state be a binational state, or a state which has two nationalities? It would be the national home of the Palestinian people, just as Israel is the national home….No Israeli thinks of only the 1947 or the 1949 borders as a place to which the national imagination of the Jewish people is restricted – nor should the Palestinians. And that’s not incompatible with a two-state solution. As far as Palestinians are concerned, all of Palestine is Palestine, just as in the eyes of Israelis, all of that country is Eretz Yisrael. And that has to be part of the solution as well.
So, my problem is not with the two-state solution, because partition is problematic but it may be the least bad solution. My main issue with the two state solution is that I don’t see the current dynamic being reversed. I don’t think we need to talk about how many states can dance on the head of a pin before we deal with that.
Q. So you think we’re headed for a one-state solution?
A. We already have a one-state solution. There is only one state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. There are two or three levels of citizenship or non-citizenship within the borders of that one sovereign state that’s in control, or at least the state that decides everything that is important. When I go in, I don’t go into a Palestinian state, I cross Israeli borders, whether it’s at the river or at Ben Gurion airport. So we have a one state solution, and that’s what we’re going to have for the foreseeable future, unless the Israelis or people who have the ability will persuade the Israelis to reverse the dynamic that has made a two-state solution virtually impossible. You have to spend a lot of time in the occupied territories to understand what Amira Hass described as “the matrix of control” – how is that going to be extirpate? It’s not percentages. It’s much more complicated than that. You can control the entire West Bank with three or five or ten per cent – and I don’t think it’s as small that, by the way, because it doesn’t include Jerusalem and it doesn’t include the Jordan River and it doesn’t encompass the issue of jurisdiction. When we were negotiating between 1991 and 1993 with Elyakim Rubinstein we came up against this complex issue of jurisdiction. It’s not just a question of geography. Talking about percentages you sort of fudge it and get away from the situation that has been created during the past forty years.
Q. What is the situation of the Palestinian leadership at this time? The UN recognition appears to have fallen flat.
A. I think both Palestinian leaderships, the Ramallah PA and the Hamas in Gaza, cannot seem to change what they’ve been doing. That’s, I think, why Abbas went to the UN and that’s why he’s been so stubborn in his dealings with the US and Israel, and that’s why Khaled Mashal seems to be willing to contemplate some form of reconciliation. It’s partly the changes in the Arab world and it’s partly their own unpopularity with their people. Nobody believes that firing rockets and getting 1400 people killed in response is “resistance” that is going to liberate Palestine, and nobody believes that talking with the US with Dennis Ross putting his thumb on the scales in favor of Israel, which is already overwhelmingly superior, is going to produce an equitable and just and lasting solution of the Palestine question. If you still believe that you have to have your head examined.
So, both leaderships are actually in a state of crisis, internally – there is a succession crisis inside the Fatah, inside the PLO, there’s a legitimacy crisis, there’s a hollowing out of institutions and Hamas, as you may know, is not terribly popular now that it’s controlled the place for five or six years.
But I don’t know if this will eventuate. Israel and the US have interfered in order to prevent any kind of reconciliation. And there is strong resistance to it internally.
Q. You support it.
A. I think that if the Palestinians cannot get their act together, they have no hope of resolving their problems. Palestinian problems are caused, in the first instance, by Palestinians. You can blame Israel, or the United States or the Arabs – and they have their share.
Q. But there is a danger that the end result will be that Hamas will rule both Gaza and the West Bank
A. I’m not as worried about that as other people, because firstly I don’t think that Hamas has the popularity that other people think it has. Secondly because I don’t think either of the two sides is going to give up control of what they already control. And thirdly because I think a continuation of the status quo is disastrous for both of them – but mainly for the Palestinian people.
In addition, what they’re talking about is integrating Hamas into the PLO – which necessitates all kinds of changes in the public positions of Hamas, vis-a-vis Israel and vis-a-vis agreements entered into by the PLO and vis-a-vis resolutions of the Palestinian National Council. I don’t know if they’ll be able to do this. This is what they say they’re going to do. They say they will have elections for the PNC. They say you’ll then have a completely different makeup of the PLO and changes in the makeup of the Palestinian Authority. I wonder whether they will ever fully integrate the Gaza and the West Bank PA, but there’s no particular reason that the police and the fire departments and so on shouldn’t. The real security services probably not but the other services – there’s no reason why not. There’s no reason why a real PA administration of the border with Egypt couldn’t lead to a fundamental change in the status of Gaza. That would be to everybody’s advantage.
I think Palestinian reconciliation as a precondition for the Palestinians to get out of the run they’re in. It doesn’t solve the problem but it allows the Palestinians to address the problem in a unified manner.
Q. And what should be their strategy?
A. One thing they should be doing is renouncing violence. It’s something they’ve renounced in principle – but they have to do it in practice. Violence has brought nothing but catastrophe to them. Secondly, they should understand the impact of violence on Israel – it strengthens the worst forces in Israel. Thirdly they should understand that they have to operate within the framework of the international legal framework, which prohibits violence against civilians. If you demand those standards to be upheld against your opponents, you have to uphold those standards yourself. Not because the Israelis want it or because the United States demand it, but because it’s the right thing, it’s the smart thing, it’s the strategic thing to do.
The second thing they have to figure out is that allowing the United States to dominate the negotiations is worse than dealing with Israel directly. I was in negotiations where the American diplomat offered a bridging proposal that was worse than the Israeli position. America is more Israeli than the Israelis – why do you need them? Of course Israel wants them because its doubles Israel’s power and strength – but from a Palestinian perspective? Anybody or nobody is better.
Finally, the whole structure that was imposed in Madrid, Oslo and Washington is designed to perpetuate the status quo. That is not a peace process, it is a process to manage the conflict in America’s and Israel’s interest. You have to completely jettison that. Negotiations have to be strategic and deal with the real problems – not another interim solution. And you have to be able to put pressure on the other side, and if you can’t use violence, you have to use other forms of pressure. There are ways to do that, but you have to first mobilize your people, you have to get them out their expensive Audis and Mercedes, out of the bubble in Ramallah where everybody is prosperous and there is no unemployment and there are bars and nobody knows what’s happening ten kilometers away, outside the bubble.
Q. They used to say that about Tel Aviv..
A. Israel is a huge prosperous economy, Israelis can deal with that themselves, that’s something for Israeli protestors to deal with, Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Dizengoff, whatever. That’s their issue. People who are living off the fat of the land in Gaza and off the much more fat in Ramallah – that’s their issue.
There are strategies – public relations for example. No Israeli delegation comes to New York without spending seventy five per cent of their time talking to Congress, talking to the media. No Palestinian delegation that has come to New York has ever spent serious time doing public diplomacy.
Q. There’s Hanan Ashrawi, Nabil Sha’ath
A. They still talk perfectly good English, but you don’t see them. But I’m not talking specifically about them, but about a failure that goes back to the twenties and thirties, a failure to understand the international environment, a failure to understand both the Israeli and the American domestic environment. It was never true in Europe and in the rest of the world – the Palestinians are fairly good at making their case there – but they have this huge blind spot when it comes to the US and Israel, which are the most important countries.
U.S. PRESIDENT OBAMA: “He’s done considerably worse than I would have expected”
Q. Finally, on the issue of your relations with President Obama
A. I don’t talk about that
Q. Are you disappointed with him?
A. I had low expectations and my low expectations were more than fulfilled. He’s done considerably worse than I would have expected. But I never assumed that this would be someone who would be able to break the whole mold of American politics. And he didn’t. Quite the contrary. This has been an Administration that on certain key issues has been almost as bad as and sometimes even worse than the Bush Administration. In its first two years, when they still controlled Congress, they frittered away the opportunity to do things when they still could have. And then since they lost Congress, Benjamin Netanyahu has more influence over these issues than the president does. Because he has a House and a Senate that will carry him on their shoulders as far as they want to go. The President can’t do that.
You actually had two Obama Administrations: in the first two years when they thought they could do certain things and didn’t, and in the last year and a half….
Q. Even peace-loving Israelis will tell you that they were mistaken in demanding a settlement freeze.
A. Yes, well, whatever. I frankly think the whole process was broken. This is a corpse that has had formaldehyde pumped into its veins for over a decade. The problems go back to the nineties. It’s not what Obama did or what Clinton did in 2000 or Bush in 2004. Those are serious failures, but this is basically a failure to understand that a process that is rooted in Menachem Begin’s idea of autonomy is not going to lead to a two-state solution. It will lead to what Begin wanted it to lead to, which is more settlements, Israeli control of Jerusalem, and Israeli control overall. That’s what the “interim self-governing authority” laid out in 1978 was meant to achieve, that’s what Yitzhak Shamir was insisting on, that’s what Dennis Ross and all those people including American presidents have bought into ever since. That’s the problem, not that Obama didn’t say this or that in 2010.
Q. Still, if you compare Obama to the Republican candidates, with the exception of Ron Paul, I would assume that Obama is more agreeable to you.
A. There are structural issues that are much more important. In any case, it is the economy that will determine who will be elected. If Europe goes down and the economy slows, Obama will lose no matter what, but if there is even a modest revival, he will win, no matter who the Republican candidate will be.
To read the last third of the interview, please use the link above.