Monthly Archives: May 2010

Ibishblog readers interview Ibish on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

I receive a lot of very interesting questions through the “ask Ibish” form on the Ibishblog, and I try to answer most of them either directly via e-mail or, when warranted, through blog postings. I have a backlog of questions I think can be answered relatively briefly but deserve a public hearing, so rather than tackling each one individually, I’ve created a collective virtual interview based on a series of very recent interesting queries on matters related to Israel and the Palestinians. They are set out below in a Q&A based on the conceit that a group of Ibishblog readers is interviewing me. It seems an interesting way of answering them.

Q: What is your opinion of the pessimistic view of Mosab Hassan Yousef in his recent book “Son of Hamas” regarding the seemingly irreconcilable differences between Hamas and Fatah? How can a two state solution be negotiated with splintered factions who abhor each other? If, as he contends, the ideological core of Islam is and always will be at odds with the ideological core of Christianity and Judaism, what is the future for peace in the region?

A: I haven’t read this book, and I’m not sure I would regard it as a credible account, not because I have any illusions about Hamas, but because it seems to be mainly a commercial and ideological project, probably without a great deal of intellectual or factual integrity. We’ve seen a lot of Arab-American converts to evangelical Christianity talking an extraordinary degree of rubbish in order to make money with books, and this may or may not be another of those. I’ll be honest: zealous converts to any religion immediately have an extra burden of credibility for me because their passionate embrace of one irrational ideological perspective and rejection of another, and often the whole culture and civilization that goes along with it, strike me as a fundamentally unhealthy reaction to what admittedly may be a fundamentally unhealthy situation. It suggests not only a political but a religious agenda that could well, if not would probably, color everything with some kind of prefabricated ideas that interfere with not only sound analysis but fidelity to the truth. It just doesn’t inspire any confidence in me.

My problem with it as an account is also that there would be no way of having any sense of how much hyperbole and self-aggrandizement it represents as opposed to anything factual, and I’d note that his former Israeli employers have disputed or at least cast doubt on the veracity of key elements of his story (most notably, his own importance). Moreover, I’m very skeptical about the accuracy of any commercial projects like these that purport to tell a dramatic life story for $26.99 a pop. So because of religious, ideological and pecuniary interests that are so obvious, I’m not going to bother reading it.

That said, I don’t have any illusions about Hamas, and anyone who reads my blog or other writings will know that perfectly well, and I don’t need this somewhat dubious book to convince me. Your characterization of his view that there is something inherent in Islam there will always be at odds with Christianity and Judaism only reconfirms my lack of interest in the book. All great religions are vast social texts, equally capable of inspiring the impulse to coexistence or the impulse to conflict. In the present-day United States there is a desire to link Christianity and Judaism in an ahistorical and theologically unjustifiable manner as distinct from Islam, but in fact the three religions are completely distinct from each other and therefore equidistant. Historically, the Christian world tended to view Judaism and Islam as closer to each other than to Christianity, and now, especially in the United States, for social and political reasons, this trend has reversed with Islam seen as the outlier, Judaism rehabilitated and Christianity normative.

It’s all garbage. These are three distinct religions, although they all spring from a common source, and all three have shown the capacity to produce both coexistence and deep antipathy, and attempts to pathologize any of them in favor of the others is plainly indefensible and inadmissible. Bigots will run at you with laundry lists of arguments about why one, or two, of these three is particularly worse than one or both of the others, but neither history nor theology can sustain such claims. The only critiques worth listening to are skeptical, rationalist critiques that take a dim view of all irrational and superstitious faith-based belief systems, not those that try to pick and choose between one set of arbitrary assumptions versus another. This is the difference between rational skepticism and religious bigotry or supremacism. My irrational beliefs are better than your irrational beliefs is a pretty pathetic argument.

As to the main point, plainly Hamas and the PLO are engaged in a zero-sum contest for power among Palestinians, based on totally incompatible visions of the present situation and the future. The secular nationalists of the PLO seek a negotiated peace agreement with Israel, while Islamists led by Hamas seek armed conflict until victory or, at least, a fifty-year “hudna” (truce) followed by who knows what. Moreover, they are completely at odds on the character and nature of Palestinian society. In fact, they really don’t agree on anything at all. Now, one side or the other will win out, and one national strategy will become a consensus, and until that happens I think national reconciliation is quite impossible because there is no way to reconcile these visions.

In the meanwhile, everything Hamas does is refracted through the lens of a single goal: to marginalize, replace or take over the PLO and ensure that the Palestinian movement and society become an Islamist one. Everything else is secondary, and this explains why even though they are fully aware that independence in the occupied territories is the maximal achievable Palestinian national goal, they will not accede to the Quartet demands even though this comes at a very heavy price to them. If they did accept the Quartet’s terms and rehabilitate themselves as a legitimate actor, they would be presenting Palestinians a choice between two parties seeking the same national goal, but one of them secular and the other Islamist. Obviously, extreme religious and social conservatism alone is not a path to power among Palestinians under the present circumstances. So, Hamas has to yoke its social agenda to a nationalist one and continuously outbid everybody else in order to have any appeal beyond its base which is certainly not more than 18%, and probably not more than 15% of Palestinians in the occupied territories.

This isn’t as much of a barrier to negotiations as many people like to think since there is no question from a legal and political point of view who is authorized to represent the Palestinians in negotiations. Every single Palestinian, Arab and international document, including most notably the Letters of Mutual Recognition signed during the Oslo process with Israel, state that the PLO is the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. Even Hamas recognizes this, although they call for the restructuring of the PLO (by which they mean they should take it over). So in his capacity as Chairman of the PLO, Mahmoud Abbas is plainly authorized to lead the negotiations with Israel. The question is not about negotiations but about implementation of an agreement.

I think it’s clear that Hamas’ future will be largely determined in the West Bank, and not in Gaza. It’s true that Hamas only rules in Gaza now by force of arms and its popularity across the Palestinian territories has absolutely tanked, and for good reason. In the latest opinion poll, they registered 15% total support as opposed to 53% backing for Fatah. Nonetheless, if the PLO strategy of seeking a negotiated peace agreement with Israel permanently collapses over the next 10-15 years and the PA state building enterprise in the West Bank similarly fails, I don’t think there will be much standing in the way of an Islamist takeover of the Palestinian national movement, which would be a disaster and possibly the end of the movement as such. If however the state building project proceeds apace and negotiations begin to bear fruit, I think it will be very difficult for Hamas to maintain its position of power in Gaza, and this issue can be resolved without too much difficulty one way or the other in order to implement an agreement that covers all of the occupied territories.

Of course, the only reasonable, rational and fair means for Palestinian national reconciliation is through new elections. The core problem, of course, is that there were two elections following the death of Arafat, a presidential election in 2005 won by Fatah and Mahmoud Abbas, and a parliamentary election in 2006 in which Hamas backed candidates won a majority. Government cohabitation proved impossible because of the vast differences on all issues and the present situation was initiated by Hamas’ violent takeover of Gaza in 2007. The terms of both the elected president and parliament have, by the way, expired. It’s obviously long since time for a new election, both parliamentary and presidential, but Hamas is absolutely blocking that because of the political realities and poll numbers I outlined in the last paragraph. The PA wanted to hold elections in January according to Palestinian law and Hamas refused. The Egyptians presented a national reconciliation agreement allowing for elections in July, and while Fatah signed, Hamas refused. For very good reasons the PA doesn’t want to hold national elections in the West Bank only, so as not to reify the distinction and division between the West Bank and Gaza, but they did schedule local, municipal elections, which don’t have national implications, for this July, and Hamas has again denounced this and told everyone not to participate. Obviously Hamas is profoundly opposed to elections, which they don’t believe in anyway as a matter of principle, because they know how badly they will be defeated.

Meanwhile, while its grip on power in Gaza is secured by a monopoly of arms and the indefensible and politically counterproductive blockade which it uses to consolidate its rule, Hamas is facing a political and financial crisis due to lack of money and credibility. Its leaders are openly fretting about the prospects of a popular revolt due to new onerous taxation and other unacceptable policies, and they’re being harassed by Al Qaeda style extremists on their right flank. This is a window on where things can go in the future regarding their stranglehold on Gaza. If the contrast persists between the results of their policies and those of the PA and the PLO, and if diplomacy begins to move the Palestinians meaningfully towards independence in the West Bank, Hamas will be presented with a simple choice: the train is leaving the station, are you getting on or are you staying behind? I can’t believe the people of Gaza will put up with a situation in which West Bank is visibly and seriously moving towards independence while they continue to languish under an endless siege.

Q: What is your opinion of the potential of the two state solution as outlined in the most recent Regional Peace Plan based on the original Geneva Accord?

A: As my regular readers will know, I think the two state solution is the only available option other than continued conflict and occupation, leading to increased violence and intensified warfare, which will be increasingly religious and intractable. However, I am sorry to say that I also think it is the less likely of the two. I think the two state solution is still possible because it is in everyone’s interests and majorities on both sides say they would accept it and have every reason to accept it. But it’s going to be very difficult.

I think the Geneva Accord and the subsequent Regional Peace Plan are excellent efforts at outlining some of the details of what could be possible in a two state agreement. The Accord was particularly important in that it showed at a crucial time that there were partners on both sides and that progress in good faith really could be made, even if it was only an intellectual and academic exercise rather than an actual negotiation. In full disclosure, my ATFP colleague and friend, Ghaith Al-Omari, was the lead Palestinian drafter of the Geneva Accord with Daniel Levy as his principle Israeli interlocutor. But I certainly think that document, the Clinton parameters, and many other draft plans or similar ideas all point to the same direction: a two state agreement involving an end to the occupation, a limited land swap to account for anomalies and some settlement blocs, a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem, and an agreement on refugees that provides many benefits but not the mass return of millions of Palestinians to Israel. It’s no coincidence all serious, critical thinking leads in this direction: it’s the only set of ideas that can possibly work because it addresses the minimal national requirements of both parties. As I say, I’m not an optimist and it’s going to be difficult to make it work, but our task is to find a way to make it work because it is plausibly achievable and it is the only way out of a desperately dangerous situation.

Q: How do you respond to recent polling results that indicate: residents of the West Bank and Gaza Strip are opposed to the creation of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders with some land exchange as part of a final solution to the current impasse with Israel, according to a poll by An-Najah National University. 66.7 per cent of respondents reject this notion. In addition, 77.4 per cent of respondents reject making Jerusalem the capital for both an eventual Palestinian state and Israel.

A: I’m not convinced at all about this poll, which is greatly at odds with all other polling on these questions over the past 20 years. I cited a poll above about Palestinian partisan politics, but it’s consistent with all other polling in recent months. Any individual poll is always suspect, because polling is a deeply inexact art (I hesitate to call it a science at all). The only way polling is really useful is if multiple polls done by multiple entities with multiple methodologies over an extended period of time produce a similar set of results or mark a notable trend in a similar direction. Under such circumstances we can say that the polling is giving us a real indication of what people actually think. But this poll comes at us out of left field, and doesn’t correspond with the results of almost all the other polls. So I’d say that it’s a phenomenon that’s well-known in polling: an anomaly that doesn’t disprove or even cast serious doubt on the well-established pattern of all the other polls. However, if a series of polls comes out over the next few months that reflects similar, or even remotely similar numbers on these issues, then I think we have to take note very carefully. If not, and I don’t expect it, then this poll has to be taken with the same fistful of salt any individual poll always has to be. None of them ever stand alone with any validity.

Q: What are the prospects for the Palestinian Arab towns that are located in Israel, but adjacent to the green line, to be incorporated into a future Palestinian state. As negotiations resume in the coming days, do you expect this to become an issue for discussion, perhaps as part of a settlements’ deal?

A: I think this is an extremely dangerous idea, although it’s one dear to the heart of the current Israeli Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, who openly wishes to decrease the number of Palestinian citizens of Israel through this kind of land swap. I suppose it’s possible that a very small number of Palestinians in Israel are living in areas that might be included in a land swap, and I think in that case the maximum possible accommodation for them from both states needs to mitigate the fact that their land will change sovereignty without their explicit permission. But I think it’s very important to try to find as uninhabited areas as possible, and indeed this is possible, in order to make the land swap as smooth as possible and avoid these problems. I don’t think the Palestinian towns and villages in Israel can be compared to the settlements, and I don’t think they should be part of the negotiations either, except insofar as the necessary land swap involves places that are sparsely rather than totally uninhabited. Honestly, I don’t think this is going to be a big deal unless the Israelis try to offload some significantly populated areas, in which case I think the Palestinians would do well to insist that this is not acceptable. In any case, I don’t anticipate this eventuality.

Q: What is the official PA posture on existing Jewish villages in Yesha? On the one hand, the diplomatic track has anticipated their dismantlement. On the other hand, high ranking individuals within the PA – including Salam Fayaad – have indicated the villages will be incorporated into a Palestinian state. Still, on other days you’ll find the same Salam Fayaad burning economic products produced in the settlements. Please shed some light on Palestinians expectations and intentions in with regard to settlements outside the three or four major settlement blocks near the green line.

A: The PLO doesn’t have, as far as I know, an “official position” in writing on what the reader calls “existing Jewish villages in Yesha,” which are otherwise known as the settlements, except that this is a central permanent status issue to be negotiated. Generally speaking and historically the Palestinian expectation and PLO rhetorical demand has been for the dismantling and evacuation of all the settlements, but the reader is absolutely correct that this is not an official position and that numerous Palestinian officials including several senior PLO leaders and PA Prime Minister Fayyad have repeatedly stated that there is no reason why Jewish Israelis whose settlements are not annexed to Israel in a land swap should have to leave the new Palestinian state. This is a very important principle that I think needs to be maintained at all costs. There are Palestinian citizens of Israel, and there’s no reason why there shouldn’t be Jewish citizens of Palestine, or dual citizens of Israel and Palestine, or possibly even Jewish Israeli residents of Palestine. All of these are possible arrangements. The Palestinian state must be a pluralistic one, since it will include Muslim, Christian and other Palestinians, and must be open to complete citizenship and/or equal treatment for a Jewish minority as well. This is a matter of values and principles, and I think it has to be held onto at all costs.

However, I would think it is extremely unlikely for there to be a Jewish Israeli minority in a Palestinian state, but not because of a Palestinian position but rather because of what any Israeli government is likely to feel is necessary to maintain an agreement. It strikes me that it would be politically untenable for an Israeli government to really keep hands off if Jewish Israelis in a Palestinian state began to have extreme difficulties with their neighbors and the authorities. Given the attitudes of some of the settlers such as those in Kiryat Arba in Hebron, for example, which will certainly be part of a Palestinian state, such difficulties are almost inevitable. There are plenty of settlers who I’m sure are capable of living in a reasonable relationship with their Palestinian neighbors and the new Palestinian authorities. But there are others about whom I’m extremely skeptical, and I’m sure the Israeli government, which has had to deal with some of these people, would be skeptical as well. Indeed, it would be an obvious way for extremist settlers to sabotage the long-term viability of any agreement to provoke all kinds of confrontations with Palestinian neighbors or the Palestinian state in order to demand that Israel come to the rescue, thereby abrogating and possibly scuppering the agreement in toto. Imagine the domestic political difficulties faced by any Israeli government that refused to come to the rescue of settlers facing severe difficulties, even if it was of their own making.

I suppose it’s possible that Israeli society might ultimately turn to the settlers choosing to stay in a new Palestinian state in spite of many requests that they do not and say, in effect, “you’re on your own, good luck and don’t ask us for any help.” But I find that very hard to imagine. So my sense of things is that there actually won’t be any Jewish Israelis left in a Palestinian state at first because the Israeli government will insist on that. I think the best-case scenario is that after a peaceful period, when coexistence is well established, that Israelis could, for religious and cultural reasons, begin to take up residency in places like Hebron under Palestinian law and protection. I can imagine that, but I can’t imagine the Israeli government leaving some of the present settlers exactly where they are at the outset of a two-state agreement if they really want it to work.

Q: Please tell me why it is in Israel’s interest to negotiate and make concessions when the place they will ultimately get to is the deal made at Taba, or, even better for the Palestinians, the Olmert deal. What is the goal if even those former offers are not acceptable?

A: First of all, I’d suggest the reader look at my recent Ibishblog posting on whether or not the Palestinians made a mistake in declining the Camp David and Olmert proposals made by Israel. I don’t think the Palestinian goal is unclear at all, and I outlined it above. If both parties agree on the essential structures of informal agreements such as the Geneva Accord and international proposals such as the Clinton parameters, and then it becomes a matter of negotiating the details, and negotiators from both sides suggest that at Taba and between Abbas-Olmert it was the details and not the broad outlines that were being seriously negotiated. As I tried to demonstrate, progress has been made at every stage from Oslo to Camp David to Taba to Abbas-Olmert, and I think this demonstrates that future progress can, in fact, be made if both parties approach the talks in good faith in order to negotiate the details of the kind of arrangement cited above. I’m sure the reader understands why it’s in Israel’s interest to have a negotiated agreement, and I’ve spent a good deal of the past few years of my life repeating ad nauseum why it is in the Palestinian and American interests as well. If anybody wants more clarity on this, many of the postings on the Ibishblog deal with this question and you can also take a look, for free, at my book on the one state agenda, which also contains detailed arguments about the importance of a two-state agreement, either on the Ibishblog or on the ATFP website.

Q: When you keep talking about the siege of Gaza (and I do agree, it doesn’t help the Israelis, only Hamas), why do you and everyone else seem to forget that Egypt has a common border? If the Arab brothers of the Palestinians aren’t opening the border, why should Israel, the target of rockets and terror attacks, be expected to open their border?

A: I certainly don’t forget Egypt’s border with Gaza, and I’ve written about the problem on numerous occasions. They are two issues here: is anyone expecting Israel to simply open its border with Gaza, and why does Egypt keep the Gaza border closed? First, while I think the blockade is terrible, morally unjustifiable and politically counterproductive as you agree, I wouldn’t expect Israel to throw open its border crossings to Gaza as long as it’s under Hamas control and Hamas maintains the policies it has today. But at the same time I think it’s crucial that all the crossings, including the Egyptian border crossing, are opened as soon as possible. There is a way to do this: a return to the status quo ante at the borders, which would mean PA security forces on the Palestinian side of all the crossings with international monitoring and participation, and a renewed and intensified effort to close all the tunnels. This is undoubtedly the way to proceed and it has the added benefit of placing Hamas in the position of either agreeing to this means of allowing the Palestinians of Gaza to breathe again or being the ones responsible for taking the ultimate decision that the siege must stay in place rather than cede any power anywhere in Gaza to the PA. They probably wouldn’t accept the idea, but I think they need to be put in the position of publicly refusing it and taking full, complete and final ownership of the siege. If they did agree to it, all the better.

For all your rhetoric about “Arab brothers,” I’m sure you understand why the Egyptians don’t want to open their border to Gaza. I once counted the reasons that were obvious to me, and they went beyond 10, and I won’t bother you with all of them. Suffice it to say that the Egyptians are absolutely paranoid about the prospect of being sucked back into responsibility for Gaza again and it is without doubt the number one foreign policy priority for the Egyptian state not to have that happen. Look at the contortions they are tying themselves into and the political damage they are incurring in order to ensure that that doesn’t happen. The reasons for this are obvious, and it is a long-standing ambition of right-wing Israelis to ensure that Egypt is forced to take control of Gaza and Jordan of parts of the West Bank Israel does not wish to annex in order to foreclose Palestinian statehood and avoid any need to negotiate an end to the occupation with the Palestinians. This is very strongly against the Egyptian, the Jordanian and, above all, the Palestinian national interest and none of the three will accept it. The bottom line is that Israel is still legally, technically and in fact the occupying power in Gaza, the unilateral redeployment notwithstanding, and that therefore Israel has still has primary responsibility for the civilian population there, not Egypt. I certainly agree that Hamas has to bear its responsibility and share the blame for the present situation, but I don’t think it’s the fault of Egypt in a meaningful way.

For the Egyptians, there are many additional concerns, mostly arising from the fact that Hamas is a Muslim Brotherhood party connected and in some way subordinate to the Egyptian MB “mother party,” which is the primary opposition group seeking to overthrow the Egyptian government. The idea of Palestinian Muslim Brothers in Gaza linking up with the Egyptian Muslim Brothers is something of a national security nightmare for the present Egyptian regime. In addition, Hamas’ strong relationship with Iran provides another source of extreme anxiety for the Egyptians. It is a source of instability, potential insecurity and very grave concern, and there’s no way the Egyptians are going to allow the Israelis to manipulate them into getting sucked back into Gaza again. No way. As long as Israel is the occupying power, it’s not going to be able to pass the buck to anyone, except maybe Hamas. But since the siege only strengthens Hamas’ grip on power in Gaza, it’s high time to revisit the border crossing issue with at the very least the proposal I mention, which would be a step in so many right directions.

American Muslims and terrorism: silence or deafness?

Several years ago I decided for a number of reasons to try to cut back on the amount of television appearances I was making to concentrate on writing and other activities that allow for more thoughtful development of ideas and the communication of more serious concepts, most recently through the development of this blog. However, following the failed Times Square car bombing incident I accepted a couple of invitations because of the gravity of the situation, including from my old interlocutors at the O’Reilly Factor on Fox News. An appearance on the program invariably generates considerable response, and this time was no exception, including the following question posed to me through the Ibishblog:
"Why is it that leaders of Islam do not speak out against such anti-Koran acts as suicide and murdering innocent people?"

Indeed, the very next morning on a return visit to Fox News I got the very same question from another interviewer who also asked me whether my organization would condemn the failed Times Square car bombing or not! One hardly knows whether to laugh or cry, and also where to begin with such kind of silliness, so my answer was simply to aver that no organization I was with had condemned the act because it goes without saying and it’s a silly question. And yet it persists.

The idea that Muslims, especially Muslim leaders, in the United States and around the world, do not condemn terrorism has been one of the most persistent accusations in the post-9/11 era. Perhaps the most prominent and early of these attacks came from Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer who, in November 2001, asked
"after Sept. 11, where were the Muslim theologians and clergy, the imams and mullahs, rising around the world to declare that Sept. 11 was a crime against Islam? Where were the fatwas against Osama bin Laden? The voices of high religious authority have been scandalously still. And what of Muslim religious leaders in America?"

This alleged silence, it is implicitly or explicitly suggested, is in order to hide actual support for terrorism, and is a feature of the extremism and/or simply the lying inherent to Arab culture or built into Islam as a faith, according to Islamophobic discourse. Krauthammer‘s false accusation severed as a model for hundreds of similar tendentious questions over the following years, which remain impervious to all efforts to answer or address them, as my recent TV appearances again demonstrated.

In fact, of course, there had been a considerable outcry of condemnation around the Muslim world and particularly in the United States from the Muslim community, not only of the most recent outrage and 9/11, but of almost all the major terrorist acts in between. Yet once alleged, the question has persisted and never been resolved. The question continues to be routinely posed to Muslim-Americans: “why is your community silent about terrorism?” It has all the qualities of a trap question, in which answering invites one to accept self-defeating premises, a little like a politician being asked when he intends to stop beating his wife.

The answer, of course, is that the Muslim-American community is not silent about terrorism. Many public figures in this community, and all prominent national Muslim and Arab-American organizations, have been at great pains for many years to make this clear. All have continued to denounce terrorism, even to the point of organizing fatawa condemning terrorism in all its forms. Various websites including University of Michigan professor Juan Cole’s blog "Informed Comment” and various other websites (here, here, here and here, for example) have long ago posted lists of condemnations from Muslim religious and other institutions around the world against terrorism, and specifically the 9/11 attacks. Yet all of this has been, in some quarters at least, to little or no avail, since the myth of silence still carries tremendous weight in American political culture and is widely believed.

Many of the more hostile critics of the Muslim community, for example, rejected a fatwa organized and promoted in 2005 by numerous leading American Muslim organizations that condemned terrorism in the name of Islam on the spurious grounds that its rejection of attacks on innocent civilians was a ruse. These rejections generally claim that, “the fatwa never defines ‘innocent lives’ and condemns killing someone “unjustly,’” suggesting that the condemnation was a linguistic game and did not represent any serious effort to reject terrorism on religious grounds. Steven Emerson dismissed it as, “it is a fake fatwa designed merely to deceive the American public into believing that these groups are moderate.” Similarly, Walid Phares, among many others, critiqued a fatwa rejecting terrorism issued in 2008 by the Darool-Uloom Deoband on the grounds that, “Usama Bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri, and to some extent Hassan Nasrallah, all claim that innocence is relative.” Robert Spencer dismissed the universal condemnation by American Muslim organizations of extremist converts arrested in New York City for planning violent attacks in 2009 as little more than “a tried-and-true tactic.”

Obviously, more needs to be said and done to combat violent tendencies among Muslim extremists by religious authorities, but the refusal to acknowledge worthy efforts in this regard and dismiss positive developments as meaningless and disingenuous suggests a political and emotional investment in the idea that mainstream Muslims do not or even cannot oppose terrorism and violence. That said, I do think more could and needs to be done, especially by religious leaders. But there are very positive signs. The senior-most Saudi Ulema Council of clerics last month adopted a thoroughgoing decision descriptively defining terrorism and criminalizing its financing. Interestingly, its definition of "terrorism" was broad in a manner very reminiscent of the FBI definition, which encompasses everything from 9/11 style acts to vandalism. And in March a highly respected British Imam, Sheikh Tahir ul-Qadr, issued the longest, most detailed and most thoroughgoing fatwa against terrorism and suicide bombing yet written. So the trend is most certainly in the right direction.

What has, however, troubled me for a long time and as I have continuously been complaining since at least 2004 is that while the mainstream Muslim clergy around the world has been quite good at taking a stand against terrorism generally, although not at communicating that to the non-Muslim world, there has been a most unfortunate tendency to try to make an exception for the Palestinian case on the grounds of self-defense and lack of any other options in combating occupation. Obviously, I reject any idea that combating occupation or having limited other options for armed combat can suddenly make illegitimate tactics legitimate. This point of view is, I think, less widespread than it used to be, but making moral exceptions for one’s friends or certain exigent circumstances is, at best, a cynical political gesture and not a moral or religious position.

It’s really very similar to those liberals, neoconservatives and other moralists who will wax eloquent about human rights and democracy in all contexts except the Israeli occupation and will give Israel a pass on whatever they think it needs to do in the occupied territories, or in Lebanon for that matter, in the name of "self-defense." It may be a natural human tendency to give our friends who we perceive to be in mortal peril a carte blanche to violate otherwise strictly universal moral principles, but it’s not intellectually, morally or politically respectable or legitimate. But this rationalization is increasingly less common among Muslims globally, and by now (though this certainly wasn’t true in the past) is very hard to locate among American Muslims here in the United States where I think the point about the illegitimacy and dangers of terrorist activity, including by Palestinians in the occupied territories, has been thoroughly assimilated and understood.

What is truly puzzling is not the “silence” of Muslim-Americans on the subject of terrorism, since there has been no such silence, but the inability or unwillingness of so many of their fellow citizens to hear their voices on this issue. The subtext to this discourse about an imaginary “silence” is the suggestion, implicit or explicit, that Muslim-Americans generally are supportive of certain terrorist groups or ambivalent about the morality of political murder. But when nothing the community organizations and leadership says on the subject registers and the message that Muslim-Americans are not only opposed to terrorism but have the same reactions to it that most Americans do, then “silence” can never be replaced with moral clarity, and nothing could dispel the clouds of suspicion, since the problem is not those who are supposedly mute but those who are deliberately deaf.

It is a common occurrence for Arab and Muslim Americans who engage with the media or other public figures within the community to be confronted with an atrocity, terrorist act or other misdeed by some Muslims somewhere in the world (the victims usually themselves being also Arabs and/or Muslims), and asked why the community in general has not specifically condemned that specific act. This is, of course, a preposterous question. There are approximately 1.3 billion Muslims in the world, one out of every five people (I got an Ibishblog question the other day questioning this statistic, but of course without any research on the part of the ignorant individual who simply expressed doubts because it didn’t fit with her unresearched conceptualization of global demographics).

During the Iraq war, for example, Muslim-Americans have been frequently held to account, at least rhetorically, for crimes committed in Iraq by insurgents or terrorists opposed to the coalition or the new Iraqi governments. However, in reality every day in Iraq brings fresh horrors, and it is extremely unreasonable to expect organizations with a broad remit to react to every atrocity in a war made up mainly of atrocities. The question about why Muslim-Americans did not rush every day to condemn the daily outrages in that war – or other atrocities, especially those taking place in the Islamic world aimed at victims who are themselves Arabs and Muslims – only makes sense if one somehow identifies the community here with the killers and not with the victims, the implication being that the lack of denunciation implies sympathy with the terrorists. Why would Muslim-Americans be presumed to have a link to the Muslim killers because of presumed ethnicity or religious affiliation, but not to the Muslim victims? Condolences would seem more in order and than accusatory questions.

The discourse about denunciations and silence implicitly makes the 3-6 million or so Muslim-Americans (no one has any real clue as to the actual statistic) in some way responsible for every major crime or atrocity committed by one in five people in the entire world – at least until they say they are against it in each and every specific case. To forestall this kind of silly criticism, the community would have to hire a small team of professional denouncers, like the chorus in a Greek tragedy, to issue the daily condemnations of everything vile done by anyone of Muslim background anywhere in the world.

Sometimes silence reflects what should and must be taken for granted, not what is secretly believed. It goes without saying — and it is going to have to increasingly go without saying — that the overwhelming majority of Muslim-Americans oppose murder and terrorism in all their forms, and that they have the same values as most other Americans. Perhaps it was inevitable following a national trauma of scale of the 9/11 attacks, perpetrated by fanatics falsely claiming to be acting in the name of Islam, that Muslim-Americans would have to endure a period of undue suspicion, unfair questions and being asked to produce ritualized denunciations of horrors virtually every American opposes. But such a period cannot be open-ended and, more than eight years after the September 11 attacks, such questions and suspicions are no longer understandable. There is no excuse for being deaf to Muslim-American condemnations of terrorism, no justification for broad-based suspicion that Muslim-Americans are secretly supportive of extremism, and no need for any more rituals of denunciation on demand.

Did Palestinians err in not accepting Israel’s Camp David and Olmert proposals?

A question has been posed to the Ibishblog via the Goldblog. Jeffrey Goldberg linked to some of my recent blog postings on his own blog at the Atlantic, and received the following query from a Goldblog reader:
But could Ibish please explain the two rebuffs? Has he faced up to the two rejected offers? I’d like to know. When the Palestinians do get their state, some of their own will eventually ask why the Barak and Olmert offers were passed up.

I appreciate this question, because it is very high in the list of FAQs presented to pro-Palestinian advocates and critics of the Israeli occupation. The two “rebuffs” in question are the fact that Palestinians did not come to an agreement with Israel at Camp David in the summer of 2000 and in the more recent Abbas-Olmert negotiations. I’ll deal with them one by one, and then in a broader context.

Camp David, is one of the best examples in contemporary international relations of the Roshamon-effect. In other words it’s like that brilliant Kurosawa movie in which all the different characters have completely different perceptions and narratives about exactly the same events. Nothing was in writing, so we’ve no objective corollary at all to know what the Palestinians were, in fact, offered by Israeli negotiators. Indeed, at least three American negotiators who were involved — Dennis Ross, Aaron David Miller and Rob Malley — have all given deeply incompatible accounts of what happened, what went wrong and, especially, what was put before the Palestinians.

As for the Israelis, generally speaking they have insisted that the deal was an amazingly “generous” one, involving figures that range from 94% of the West Bank for a Palestinian state at the low end to Shimon Peres’ incredible claim that Palestinians were offered 100% of everything they ever asked for. Indeed, I remember in the aftermath of the summit watching the percentage of the occupied territories Israeli officials claimed they had offered Palestinians go up by one percentage point a week until we finally reached Peres’ laughable 100%. We were wondering if anyone would ever actually go there, and eventually he did. Of course none of this was ever backed up with any specifics or documents or any other testable evidence. The dissenting Israeli point of view came from Shlomo Ben-Ami, who observed that if he were a Palestinian he would not have accepted whatever it was that was on offer.

As far as I can tell, all the Palestinians involved found the Israeli proposal, as they understood it, unacceptable in multiple ways and so they did not accept it as a final agreement. There is every reason to think that the “generous” offer for various reasons would have amounted to a quasi-state that was a patchwork of non-contiguous territories with extremely limited sovereignty and not having anything like the normal kind of independence enjoyed by almost all member states of the United Nations. Certainly this was the universal Palestinian impression, and obviously that’s a nonstarter from their point of view. Since I wasn’t there and there isn’t any reliable, objective documentary evidence, I can’t really form an independent judgment. But I can say that it strikes me that the Palestinians probably had a very good reason for not embracing the idea in full and instead insisting on continued negotiations.

In spite of the outbreak of the second intifada in September 2000, talks did continue with significant progress. The Clinton parameters provided a framework that remains useful to this day as a model for a final status agreement, which demonstrates two things: first that there was significant progress that needed to be made beyond whatever Israel was offering at Camp David, and second that the United States had really useful, interesting ideas that they mistakenly withheld in order to support the Israeli position (Miller has described this as acting as “Israel’s lawyer”). Obviously, had the United States introduced its own ideas at Camp David, we might have been spared a great deal, although there is no way of knowing that with any certainty.

I think it’s also fair to say that one obvious Palestinian failing at Camp David was that they didn’t have any ideas of their own that constituted a systematic, creative response to the Israeli proposal. Those ideas came later, but they were badly needed at the time and had the Palestinians anything more constructive to say other than no, the debacle of Clinton going back on his word and publicly blaming the Palestinians for the failure of the talks might have been avoided. So I’d be the first to agree that there is plenty of blame to go around, and the Palestinians have to take their share, but not for having declined a specific Israeli proposal that obviously needed a great deal more work.

The talks continued at Taba in January 2001, after which most people on both sides said they had never been closer to an agreement. However, they were indefinitely postponed pending the Israeli election and were not resumed following the victory of Gen. Sharon in February. So I think that while there is plenty of blame for failure to go around, it’s hard to conclude on the basis of what is definitively known that the Palestinians made any kind of mistake in not accepting Ehud Barak’s proposal at Camp David and insisting on further negotiations which made further progress.

The Abbas-Olmert negotiations, which were more informal, may have been the most promising of all, and the Palestinian President says they came very close to an agreement, although they were taking place as the Prime Minister was under a growing cloud of suspicion and when his tenure in office was extremely tenuous. Again, not having been involved in the negotiations myself and with no official documents or maps having been released, or in my understanding even provided to the Palestinians by the Israelis (although maps were shown, they were apparently not given to the Palestinian side), it’s very hard for me to make an independent judgment about this. I think what they show is that progress is possible and that negotiations have never reached a dead end when they have been engaged in good faith by both parties. I certainly don’t think they show an unwillingness to negotiate on either side but, to the contrary, that when there is a real commitment to achieving an agreement on both sides negotiations can continuously move the ball forward.

The bottom line is that neither side has yet accepted the other’s proposals for a final status agreement. There have been lots of Palestinian proposals that have been interesting and creative at different times, not to mention the Arab Peace Initiative, and none of them have been accepted by Israel either. Therefore more negotiations in good faith are required. I think there are a lot of myths on the Israeli side about all the supposed “generosity” of various Israeli proposals, and a Palestinian point of view that the fundamental problem is that Israel has never really offered to actually end the occupation at all. As I say, the lack of documentary evidence makes it difficult to evaluate the accuracy of these views, but they are deep-seated opinions.

I think clearly both sides have an obligation to reach out as much as possible to both the leaders and the public on the other side, to make clear exactly what it is they want, how they propose to get there, and why this is in both the Israeli and the Palestinian interest. It’s obvious that most people on both sides want a negotiated agreement but believe that the other side does not. Both sides also have their “evidence” demonstrating this, and the Goldblog reader’s question is a very common Israeli version of that. There is an entire, complex and substantive Palestinian discourse that makes the same case vis-à-vis Israel. I think aggressive public diplomacy from both parties to counter these fears and suspicions is appropriate, but given the political vulnerability of the leaderships on both sides, public diplomacy is usually aimed more at a domestic political audience that really reaching out to hearts and minds on the other side.

I do think it is significant that the PLO’s aims are quite clear and the vision of the future of the mainstream Palestinian nationalists is not particularly murky even if they haven’t done a good job of communicating this, and why it’s a good idea, to the Israeli public. I don’t, however, think it’s clear at all, even to most Israelis, what the Israeli government’s aims are or what its vision for the future might be. They’ve gone to great lengths to construct considerable ambiguity and fog about their intentions and their vision, leaving Palestinians with the strong temptation to conclude that they have absolutely no intention of ending the occupation and that the present Israeli government, or at least some parts of it, views diplomacy as a time-buying measure and a cover for further deepening and entrenching the occupation and ensuring the impossibility of Palestinian independence. I don’t think anything would be more helpful diplomatically, even if it might be very difficult in terms of domestic politics, than for the Israeli government to describe clearly and unequivocally what exactly it wants in a final status agreement. This may cause serious difficulties with the Palestinians, and maybe even with the United States, but I think all parties, the world and, not least, the Israeli public deserves to know what the Israeli vision for the future and intentions are.

Why it’s a good thing that Palestinians are returning to negotiations with Israel

An Ibishblog reader asks me the following question:

For as long as I have been reading your articles, you have maintained an almost messianic belief in “negotiated settlements; road maps, etc.. etc..” and in the meantime, Israel has continued to colonize, terrorize, violate and punish. My question is: how long will you go on believing (do you really), advocating, and dreaming that your preferred approach will yield any results that any Palestinian (and most any Arab not on some payroll) can accept? Am at a loss to understand. Do you really believe in this endless charade of “negotiations”?

Now this is actually an interesting question: why do I continue to advocate that Palestinians pursue negotiations in spite of the many reasons for suspecting they probably won’t achieve anything in the immediate term and may even not ever achieve anything in the long-term? Simply, because there is no other way of ending the conflict and ending the occupation. Either we have negotiations that produce a conflict-ending agreement, or the conflict and the occupation will continue. It really is as simple as that. Unless one believes that there is some kind of military solution available to either party (and I think making the case for the Palestinian military solution is not only unrealistic but actually insane, given the asymmetry of military power at work), then the only thing that can work is a negotiated agreement. This is obvious. It’s not a messianic belief. It’s an obvious fact.

But I think it’s important for me to point out that I don’t only support negotiations, but an array of other tactics as well designed to bolster the Palestinian position in negotiations. I’ve recently been writing about the development of three additional tactics in the broader Palestinian strategy for achieving an end to the occupation that complement rather than contradict negotiations: PA state and institution building, nonviolent popular protests against the occupation, and economic measures aimed at the settlements and the occupation including boycotts and preventing Palestinian laborers from working in settlement construction. I think this is commendable and should be supported by everyone, including Israelis who have their own best interests at heart.

But even tactics that I don’t agree with such as broadbrush boycotts that target Israel generally, or tactics that I disagree with passionately like violence, armed struggle and terrorist acts would all, of necessity, have to be conceptualized as in some way strengthening the Palestinian hand in negotiations with Israel, since, given that there is no possibility of an imposed military solution, ultimately an agreement is, in fact, the only way to end the conflict. Even those committed to armed struggle like Hamas must know this if they are in rational in the least. If it’s true that negotiations are the only way out, there is no argument whatsoever for not engaging in them, even if it is very hard (and I think this is true) to imagine significant progress under the present circumstances.

It certainly can’t do any harm to negotiate with the Israelis, even if this particular Israeli cabinet is unlikely to be forthcoming on all that much, though they should be tested on that. But it’s very helpful in developing stronger relations with the United States, the Europeans and others, which are essential to achieving most vital Palestinian national goals and to sustaining and expanding the state building project which is a potential game-changer. Apart from people like the reader feeling emotionally frustrated, an affect I share but do not indulge, at the spectacle of negotiations that are not likely to yield much benefits in the coming few months, I can’t see any harm at all in them and I do see significant benefits other than actually achieving a permanent status agreement in the next few months. In particular, if Palestinian willingness to negotiate strengthens international support and protection for the state and institution building program and solidifies the international impression that Palestinians are sincere and ready for peace and that the principal obstacles come from the Israeli side, this is extremely helpful and useful, and I think that’s obvious. And consider the damage to Palestinian diplomacy if they simply refused to cooperate with talks that the US, Europeans and Arabs are urging them to engage. This would make Israel’s argument that there is no Palestinian partner suddenly sound reasonable and, in turn, provide cover for continuing and deepening the occupation.

The only alternative to understanding the usefulness of negotiations, even when they are unlikely to yield immediate-term breakthroughs, and the dangers of refusing to engage in them, is to either indulge in ridiculous fantasies about military victory or Israel suddenly somehow imploding or disappearing, or to throw up one’s hands and say, “the conflict and the occupation are going to continue for the foreseeable future and there’s nothing we can do about that, so why bother.” I’m not willing to do that, first because I find the reality of the occupation totally unacceptable and even a slim chance to end it is worth pursuing, and also because I have very grave concerns that if the conflict continues, it will further metastasize and morph into a religious conflict led by bearded fanatics on both sides over the will of God and holy places and therefore become much harder to resolve and much more dangerous for Israelis, Palestinians and all of their neighbors, if not the whole world.

I do know people who have, in fact, thrown up their hands and walked away, or who say “negotiations can’t work and neither can anything else so let’s just not bother.” Indeed, it’s a line of thinking with some influential proponents in the Washington foreign policy community. To me, however, this is the height of irresponsibility, and not just for Palestinians, but for Americans too. I think Palestinians should pursue negotiations for the reasons cited above, bolstered by the additional strategies cited above, because I don’t think they can walk away from their own struggle and, in the end, if they are to ever live decent lives, free of occupation and oppression, it’s going to require an agreement with Israel. I think measures that constructively and peacefully challenge the occupation are absolutely crucial, and I see the development of these new Palestinian tactics as an exceptionally important development because they really are confronting the occupation in quite a serious and potentially effective manner without the unbearable costs of quixotic armed struggle or completely counterproductive violence such as we saw during the second intifada.

The bottom line for the reader and everyone who shares this sentiment (and I’ll be the first to admit, you came by it honestly and I experience the same emotions but will not be ruled by them) is: what alternative do you propose? Even people who advocate a single democratic state for all in the region must know that the only means of achieving this outcome has to be a negotiated agreement, and all of their models (South Africa, Northern Ireland, etc.) point to that. Violence and political tactics deployed by the ANC and the IRA were ultimately designed to enhance their leverage during negotiations. Any tactic one can possibly imagine, if rationally deployed, would have to be intended to strengthen one’s hand in some future negotiation. I suppose one might say, “yes, but in this case these are the wrong negotiations.” That’s another story. The reader is attacking the notion of negotiations per se, and I think that is very hard to sustain. One only sensibly refuses to negotiate with those one can safely ignore or plausibly defeat. Neither of those applies in this case, and I think that’s completely obvious. Once one agrees with the principle of negotiations, it’s very difficult to critique the Palestinian decision to engage in them with Israel at this time because of the rather obvious benefits cited above. The only way to sustain this point of view is to go back to a mentality defined by the three nos of the Khartoum Declaration of 1967.

For decades based on this logic, the Arabs and the Palestinians refused to negotiate with Israel and achieved nothing. The reader points out, rightly, that 17 years of negotiations — or rather an era of negotiations since there haven’t been actual negotiations during most of that time — haven’t resulted in an end to the occupation yet. And it may never. But anyone who denounces the idea of negotiations needs to explain very clearly what their alternative is, what they seek and how, exactly, they intend to accomplish it. The PLO has a pretty clear strategy to achieve a very clear goal, and furthermore it has been rather dynamically enhanced by new tactics developed on the ground in the West Bank over the past few months. It’s perfectly reasonable to critique it, but not without proposing an alternative with which we can draw a contrast, both in terms of potential efficacy and probable outcome. We need to hear a clear goal, a coherent strategy and plausibly effective tactics in order to take any alternative seriously. The main debate among Palestinians is between nationalists led by the PLO and Islamists led by Hamas, and I think the contrast between the consequences of their two policies is extremely clear given the conditions in the West Bank and those in Gaza. So, my counter-question to the reader and everyone else who condemns negotiations is: what is your alternative precisely? And it had better be a scenario that doesn’t eventually lead back to the bargaining table, or this isn’t much of a critique.

I’m frequently accused of being an optimist or a Pollyanna, which is, of course, completely wrong. In fact I wrote an Ibishblog posting last year criticizing both optimism and pessimism as politically invalid categories because they dwell on irrational affects rather than likelihoods based on existing forces that produce outcomes. I’m not an optimist at all, and I have frequently said that the most likely scenario is continued conflict and occupation leading to an increasingly bitter, intractable and religious war that will yield no winners. Part of my passion for continuing to work on this issue is a desperate desire to prevent such a disastrous turn of events. But just because I think a negotiated agreement is less likely than an ever-deteriorating conflict doesn’t mean I’m willing to accept that situation. I’m going to do whatever I can to try to help prevent the Israelis and the Palestinians from going down this mutually suicidal path. Everyone should.

As a consequence of this approach, my colleagues and I at ATFP are always looking for what we can work with in any given situation rather than focusing on a disengaged or detached evaluation, or an emotional response. We are goal-oriented, specifically aiming to promote peace based on an end to the occupation, and for that reason we are only interested in that which will help us in promoting that goal. This is not common in Arab-American and pro-Palestinian circles, in which lamentation is the general rule and purposive, strategic politics are not usually understood. It’s therefore quite common for our goal-oriented approach which emphasizes that which is useful to our aims to be misunderstood as some kind of “optimism.” But it’s not optimism at all. It’s affect-free. Instead it simply reflects a single-minded desire to advance a single issue and to always look for the means of doing that under all circumstances and given any development, no matter how challenging it may be. This is the difference between thinking and feeling. Personally, I prefer thinking.