Monthly Archives: May 2012

Why Unilateralism Won’t Work

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/05/31/why-unilateralism-won-t-work.html

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak recently warned that if negotiations with the Palestinians do not yield results soon, Israel might consider “unilateral measures” in the occupied West Bank. He didn’t specify what those might be, but several others have suggested that Israel create “temporary” or “provisional” unilaterally-imposed new borders in the territory. This idea is simple, superficially appealing and profoundly dangerous.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is correct in warning that unilateralism runs counter to the whole framework of a negotiated agreement. Rather than calming the situation on the ground, this could greatly inflame an already tense situation. Whatever the professed or real intentions behind such a move, Palestinians and other Arabs will assume that what is enacted as “temporary” will be at least semi-permanent (if not, indeed, permanent). They will believe that Israel is imposing unilaterally, by force and fiat, what it could not get Palestinians to accept at the negotiating table.

Many intelligent and informed observers appear to labor under the illusion that because Palestinians and Israelis have made significant progress at certain stages of negotiations on borders (not including Jerusalem), there is a general consensus on “what the final borders will look like.”

This is incorrect on two major counts.

First, there is no agreement on the percentage of West Bank territory to be included in a land swap. During the last major negotiations on the issue, former prime minister Ehud Olmert reportedly suggested Israel retain something like 6.9% of the area with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas proposing 1.9%.

Secondly, many of the areas the sides cannot agree upon are strategically located. For example, the Israeli settlement of Efrata, an outlying area of the “Etzion Bloc,” cuts directly across Route 60, a crucial West Bank North-South artery. Anything the present Israeli government imposes unilaterally on questions like these will be understood by Palestinians not as constructive or helpful, but instead as a unilateral land grab that prejudices one of the most important final status issues: borders.

There are unilateral steps both sides could take that are constructive, just not those that seem to prejudice the outcome of key issues.

The Palestinian institution-building program, for instance, led by Prime Minister Salam Fayyad does not seek Israeli permission but does involve cooperation with Israeli security forces to reduce violence and ensure law and order. That’s constructive unilateralism. Any Israeli unilateral moves to dismantle “unauthorized” settlement outposts, curb settler violence, halt or slow settlement expansion, increase access and mobility for Palestinians, or similar measures would also be constructive. Such moves would ease tensions on the ground and enhance the prospects for resuming negotiations. Anything that brings us closer to a two-state solution is welcome.

But such a solution must be negotiated, not imposed. When Israel has negotiated agreements with Egypt, Jordan and, indeed, the Palestinians, both sides have had a clear interest in making them work. When Israel has acted unilaterally, such as in Gaza or southern Lebanon, no one on the other side has had a vested interest in ensuring a constructive outcome, with predictable consequences.

The lessons of this history are clear. Unilateral Israeli territorial actions in the West Bank are unlikely to promote peace; rather, they would almost certainly undermine both realities on the ground and the prospects for a real, negotiated agreement.

Egypt’s choice: The lesser of two evils

http://www.nowlebanon.com/NewsArticleDetails.aspx?ID=403176

It may have been a real blessing in disguise for Mohamed Morsi and Ahmed Shafiq to have been excluded from the TV debate between then-apparently leading candidates Amr Moussa and Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh.

There are a number of plausible reasons that the highly uncharismatic establishment candidates Morsi and Shafiq demolished these relatively more charismatic and individual politicians. But it could also well have been a factor that Moussa and Aboul Fotouh did each other in by relentlessly making powerful accusations neither was able to successfully refute: that while they pretended to have moved beyond their prior associations and to represent something “new,” in fact Moussa was still nothing more than a remnant of the overthrown regime of President Hosni Mubarak while Aboul Fotouh was not only an Islamist, but a de facto part of the Muslim Brotherhood.

If Moussa and Aboul Fotouh successfully exposed each other as simply “light” or “stealth” versions of the felloul and the Brotherhood respectively, why not go for the real thing? In the event, that’s exactly what the public did, preferring overt representatives of the former government and the traditional opposition, in almost equal numbers.

Many of the Egyptian revolutionaries instrumental in bringing down the former regime are understandably distraught. Indeed, they’re faced with an impossible choice: the representative of everything they hate from the past and everything they fear about the future.

Typically in elections, most ballots are cast more against a given party or candidate than for one. But the coming Egyptian second round election will be almost entirely a question of which of these two unpalatable options most Egyptians find least disturbing.

Few are going to vote for Shafiq based on his “stability” and “experience” arguments; they’ll be rallying around him as the only way to avoid a completely Islamist-dominated elected government.

Morsi’s 25 percent win in the first round probably demonstrates the outer limits of the Brotherhood’s present ability to secure enthusiastic votes. If he is able to create a broader coalition to win the second round, it will certainly be based on the idea that even Egyptians who are otherwise highly uncomfortable with the idea of an Islamist government should prefer such an experiment to a return to anything directly related to the former regime.

The Brotherhood is going to have to maneuver extremely quickly, and radically alter its tone, if it’s going to be able to reach out to a broad enough coalition before the second round. If they can, this might prove a humbling and moderating experience, but suspicions about their long-term intentions will, and should, linger.

Shafiq has two built-in advantages. First, any impulse to have a divided government with different political forces in control of the parliament and presidency that can check and balance each other defaults to him. Second, any widespread boycott of the election based on the idea that both candidates represent intolerable positions is more likely to pull potential votes away from Morsi.

Indeed, it is almost certainly going to be the key to a Muslim Brotherhood victory to prevent secularists, non-Islamists, and others who would never vote for a representative of the former regime from simply staying home. If there is a widespread boycott, Shafiq’s chances will be greatly enhanced, though if he wins, many will allege fraud by the ruling military government.

But if Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood are able to win by creating a broad enough coalition on the grounds that any other vote would be a final and irreversible “defeat for the revolution,” this sets up a very serious potential political crisis for the country. The constitution-redrafting process is at a total impasse and there is no mechanism currently in place for moving forward with it. If Muslim Brotherhood candidates dominate parliament and hold the presidency, there is a very real question about how the military will react.

Already in a series of edicts, decrees, extraconstitutional “principles” and other documents issued by the military leadership, powers of both the presidency and the parliament have supposedly been transferred to the military. Under these documents, the military would have control of its own budget, final say on national defense issues and numerous other extraordinary prerogatives.

It’s likely that efforts by the military to secure its own powers in independent structures parallel to those to be determined by democratic elections would intensify in the event of a Morsi victory. In other words, it’s hard to imagine the military simply walking away and handing the keys to the kingdom over entirely to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Under such circumstances, especially with no clear process under way for creating a new constitution, the military and the Brotherhood will have to either craft a deal neither of them is at all comfortable with, or begin what is likely to be a bitter, dangerous and prolonged power struggle.

People Power for Peace (with Saliba Sarsar)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/saliba-sarsar/israel-palestine-conflict_b_1545472.html

June 5, 2012 marks the 45th anniversary of the start of the Six-Day War. One of us experienced the war in Jerusalem at the age of 11, and the other in Beirut at age 4, yet it haunts us to this day. The war led to the ongoing Israeli military occupation that has come to define the conflict. It has lessened neither the fears of the triumphant Israelis, nor those of the defeated Arabs; the mindset of confrontation that produced the war still haunts the region. 

Despite the military might and economic prowess of their state, Jewish Israelis feel insecure and hesitant to trust the Arab side. They remain traumatized by a tragic history. For some, clinging on to the occupation is seen as a security necessity. For others, it is the fear of losing land that they consider a divine or historical birthright.

The Palestinians, given their historic dispossession and suffering in exile or under Israeli occupation, feel increasingly disempowered and disillusioned, and are rapidly losing hope that a two-state solution will ever be achieved. Given its immoral and indefensible system, the occupation is wrecking their livelihood and lives, and condemns them to live without basic human and national rights.

The State of Palestine remains an unfulfilled promise and seems a distant reality. Peace negotiations, United Nations resolutions, and accords have reached a seemingly impossible impasse. Israeli and Palestinian politicians are not listening to each other. Years of conflict and narratives of struggle and pain mean both national communities are caught up in their own visions and divisions.

A year has passed since Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas wrote an op-ed in The New York Timesabout “The Long Overdue Palestinian State.” At the same time, U.S. President Barack Obama spoke, on May 19, 2011, about the need to base future negotiations on the pre-June 5, 1967 lines with mutually agreed land swaps. But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu drew a line in the sand on May 24, regarding the border with a new Palestinian state during his address to a joint session of Congress, outlining a vision that no Palestinian leadership could accept.

The Palestinian people are beleaguered by internal divisions and Israeli oppression. Even though Fatah recently signed a deal with Hamas to hold elections and establish a new unity government for the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the rifts between them are so significant that such elections are unlikely to take place. The refusal of Hamas to recognize the goal of a two-state solution and renounce violence remains a major obstacle.

Obama is busy campaigning for a second term. Some hope that a re-elected Obama might adopt a more assertive approach to resolving the conflict. But it is hard to see what will change by then, unless a sudden crisis or opportunity emerges that cannot be ignored.

Netanyahu is now in possession of a new 94-member Knesset coalition of almost unprecedented scope. It seems unlikely that, by joining the government, the Kadima Party will create changes in Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians. Right-wing political parties — including the settler movement, which are opposed to peace with the Palestinians — remain powerful obstacles to positive change. The new government shows no signs of slowing the settlement expansion program that is threatening the viability of peace.

The United States and the other members of the Middle East Quartet — the United Nations, European Union, and Russia — have pushed for a resolution, but nothing has been realized except some continued, but much reduced, support for the crucial Palestinian institution-building program led by Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.

The Israeli occupation is a result of the conditions of the 1960s. The time for ending it is long overdue — it is right and proper for Israel’s soul and the Palestinian spirit. An independent, contiguous, and secure Palestine — democratic, pluralistic, non-militarized, and neutral in conflicts — living in peace alongside Israel is in the national interest of both Palestinians and Israelis, and the entire world. It, alone, offers a conflict-ending solution. The only alternative is more occupation and, eventually, further conflict.

There is a leadership crisis on resolving the conflict. Martin Luther King Jr. explained that “leaders only change because they either see the light or feel the heat.” If Israeli and Palestinian leaders will not “see the light” and lead, placing political power above national interests, their publics and the international community must work together to force their hands through constructive and cooperative interventions that make all of them “feel the heat.”

The growing Palestinian nonviolent protest movement, often joined by brave and principled Jewish Israelis and international activists, is one such effort. The institution-building program led by Fayyad is another, as many of its effects empower ordinary Palestinians and improves their lives while laying the groundwork for a well-functioning independent Palestine. Failing to build on these and similar efforts to push peace forward from the bottom up will only perpetuate insecurity and a historic injustice, and strengthen the forces of exclusion and extremism.

You Say You Want a Revolution?

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/05/25/you-say-you-want-a-revolution.html

It may have been democratic, but it certainly wasn’t revolutionary. As the results of round one of Egypt’s first free and fair presidential election in its modern history trickle in, it seems clear that Egyptians opted for the two most establishment candidates in the field. A formal announcement will be made on Tuesday by the Election Commission, but the outcome is no longer in any real doubt. Mohamed Morsi, the profoundly uncharismatic and second-choice candidate for the Muslim Brotherhood, will square off in the second round against Ahmad Shafik, the last prime minister in deposed president Hosni Mubarak’s government.

Egyptians are turning to the most familiar and long-standing institutions in the country—the Brotherhood as the primary traditional opposition movement, and the man most closely associated with the former regime and the military. Clearly, personality and charisma had nothing whatsoever to do with the outcome. Neither man possesses much of either. These are “safe” votes for known-quantity institutions rather than individuals; they are more conservative and cautious than revolutionary or experimental.

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Officials open a ballet box to count the votes at a polling station in Cairo on May 24, 2012 after polls closed in country’s landmark presidential election. (Mahmud Hams / AFP / Getty Images)

Candidates with Western-style individual personal appeal, who were expected to do well by many, this author included, proved surprisingly feeble. Former Foreign Minister and Arab League chief Amr Moussa, the closest thing to a Western-style politician in Egypt today and an accomplished demagogue, performed well below expectations. So did the maverick former Muslim Brotherhood self-styled “liberal Islamist,” Abdel Monem Aboul Fotouh.

Only a few weeks ago, Egypt’s first presidential debate featured those two men only, on the grounds that they were the front-runners. They were campaigning on their personal qualities and policies, rather than as formal representatives of institutions. Many associated Moussa with the former regime, of which he had been a member, and Aboul Fotouh made no bones about being an Islamist and former Muslim Brother. But both tried to distance themselves from these institutions. Their TV debate degenerated into endless accusations by each that the other did, in fact, continue to represent his former associates, answered by passionate and angry disavowals by both.

Apparently Egyptians didn’t care whether or not either of these men were sincere in their professions of having moved on. Instead, they voted for candidates who campaigned not as individuals but rather precisely and openly as representatives of the former established government and traditional opposition forces. The runoff will be between Shafik, a former high-ranking officer who represents not only the old regime, but also the interests of the military—which has been serving as interim president since the overthrow of Mubarak—and the official candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood, Morsi.

It’s noteworthy that Morsi and the Brotherhood tacked quite strongly towards the religious right in the campaign’s final stages, emphasizing sharia as a major, or even the main, source of legislation and not just an “inspiration.” He also appeared to condone female genital mutilation. For his part, Shafik focused his campaign on claims that he alone represented hope for stability, and the possibility of rescuing Egypt from the “dark forces” of Islamist rule. So the contrast for round two, as it now stands, is a fairly stark one.

The Muslim Brothers have again proven the strength of their party discipline: they apparently prevented any significant breaking of ranks by those might have been tempted to vote for Aboul Fotouh. Their organizational strength will be a huge asset in the second round runoff. On the other hand, in this first round, the anti-Islamist vote was split between four candidates, and all these forces can now rally behind Shafik, even if liberals and many others have to do so holding their noses. So neither candidate can be confident of victory, and both have a real shot at winning.

The question now facing Egyptians is whether they really want to hand democratically-elected power over entirely to the Muslim Brotherhood, or whether they would prefer to have a divided government that can lead to a rational power-sharing agreement. This could include de facto or de jure military control of national security and defense matters; a president with foreign policy and general oversight responsibilities who acts more as head of state rather than head of government; and a parliament with largely domestic powers and the right to appoint a prime minister.

Egypt currently has no mechanism in place for redrafting the constitution and or ensuring post-dictatorship stability.

But if the Muslim Brotherhood controls both the presidency and the Parliament, they will see the need for a finely crafted power-sharing agreement as much less urgent, The military will probably take a very different view and a power-struggle that could develop into a crisis is an entirely plausible consequence of a Morsi second-round victory.

The Brotherhood in power would still have to deal with other national institutions. Not only the military, but the Ministry of the Interior and its secret police remain in place, holdovers from the Mubarak era. But the Brotherhood would be able to claim, plausibly, that the Egyptian people have willingly entrusted them with their future, at least for now.

The best that can be said about these elections, at this stage at least, is that Egyptians are finally free to make their own blunders. By reflexively falling back on the two most familiar and established national institutions—the former government and traditional opposition—they have probably done just that. It may be democratic, but it’s hardly revolutionary.

Nothing is “inevitable”

http://www.nowlebanon.com/NewsArticleDetails.aspx?ID=399797

One of the most important political principles is that history is not deterministic in any sense. It is, rather, a genealogy of human choices. It is shaped by agency, intentionality and decisions that are both individual and collective.

Almost all of the most insidious contemporary political mindsets reject this. Instead they invoke some kind of determinism or historical teleology—the will of God, the hidden hand of the market, biological determinism regarding human beings or their habitat, Malthusian prognostications about population growth. These are all common variants of the theme. And all of them are totally and dangerously mistaken.

I had the pleasure of debating the Iranian-American author Reza Aslan last week at the University of California, Los Angeles regarding the future for Israel and the Palestinians. It was extremely useful in reminding me of the importance of avoiding determinism and the ethical and political imperative to reassert the primacy of human agency in shaping history and, particularly, the future.

We agreed on some key points regarding the diagnosis of the Israeli-Palestinian syndrome but differed completely on the prognosis and the prescription.

We agreed that there was much blame to go around for the fact that peace has not yet been achieved. We both noted the historically corrupt and frequently incompetent Palestinian leadership, the extremist mentality of Hamas and, above all, the ongoing Israeli settlement project as key factors in the absence of peace. But that was more or less where agreement ended.

In the second part of his diagnosis, Aslan categorically asserted that Palestinian statehood was absolutely “impossible” because of demographic and infrastructural changes enforced by the occupation. His prognosis was that a prolonged period of bloodshed, “apartheid and ethnic cleansing” is totally unavoidable. Eventually, he said, “international mediation” would enforce his prescription: a “loose confederation” akin to the Bosnian arrangement. All of this, he insisted, was “inevitable,” with an absolute certainty worthy of Nostradamus himself.

Aslan readily agreed this was not a desirable outcome and frankly conceded the extraordinary amount of violence that would be required to produce it. Perhaps unfairly, I thought I detected in him an inexplicable nonchalance about the nightmarish picture of the future, in the style of Hieronymus Bosch, that he was painting as “inevitable.”

There is, as I noted, nothing “inevitable” in the realm of the political. Outcomes are produced by political, economic, military and social forces. But all of these are expressions of human will and agency, both collective and individual. The word “impossible” is, potentially, a legitimate political category if one can convincingly demonstrate that the forces that produce outcomes, based on their own interests, cannot plausibly yield a given result. But the word “inevitable” is almost never a legitimate political category, most importantly because human agency is always the most important factor, and there are countless unforeseeable imponderables and contingencies.

In our debate, I continued to insist that a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians is indeed still possible, mostly because a majority on both sides want it and because there is a huge body of international opinion and law that requires it. I’ve always unhappily accepted that a continuation of the status quo is more likely for the foreseeable future. Aslan’s dystopian vision of a future characterized by increasingly bloody conflicts, “apartheid and ethnic cleansing” is indeed a possibility. But I see no reason to conclude that it will “inevitably” either occur or, less still, yield the outcome he predicts with such astounding confidence—especially not if “ethnic cleansing” is a factor.

Apart from asserting that while a limited number of outcomes can be reasonably defined as “impossible” for the foreseeable future, I argued that almost nothing is “inevitable.” Human beings are, in fact, not only able to decide their future, but that’s exactly what they always have done and will do, barring unforeseeable natural disasters that are rare and usually manageable.

What I was defending was a “secular” perspective on history and politics, in the way its most important contemporary champion, Edward Said, defined it. It’s a position that emphasizes human agency, intentionality and decisions, and rejects every possible form of determinism, not just religious superstition.

I told Aslan that even if I believed he were right about the likely prognosis of bloodshed, “apartheid and ethnic cleansing,” to use his precise words, I would be proud with all the conviction and passion I could muster to fight against this contingency—this set of choices—with every fiber of my being.

Precisely because Aslan’s radical dystopian vision is actually plausible, everyone who does not work against it will be complicit in the horrors he predicts. But because they will be the consequences of human choices, they are by no means inevitable. We have the ability and profound moral obligation to choose differently.

Beware “Creative Alternatives”

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/05/17/beware-creative-alternatives.html

It’s easy to understand why so many people are giving up on negotiations and a two-state solution, and instead are looking for “creative alternatives.” Israeli-Palestinian talks are at an impasse. The two sides haven’t seemed this far apart since the second intifada. The number of settlers and settlements continues to baloon relentlessly. Israel’s government appears united behind recalcitrant policies, while the Palestinians appear hopelessly divided.

But any purported “creative alternatives” to a negotiated two-state solution need to be subjected to a simple litmus test before they can be taken seriously. They have to be plausibly acceptable to all parties that would need to agree in order for them to be realized. If any such “alternatives” are by definition unacceptable to any of the parties, then they’re not serious ideas. In most cases, they quickly reveal themselves to be thinly disguised versions of long-standing maximalist fantasies.

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A man places a sticker on a car in Jerusalem. (Awad Awad / AFP / Getty Images)

Take, for instance, the perennial fantasy on the pro-Israeli right that “Jordan is Palestine” or that Egypt can somehow be induced to take responsibility for Gaza. Palestinians, Jordanians and Egyptians all categorically reject any such idea, so it can’t happen.

Similarly, in pro-Palestinian circles the idea of a South Africa-style “one-state” solution of a single entity for all Israelis and Palestinians, including refugees, based on “one-person one-vote,” is a total nonstarter for the overwhelming majority of Israelis. So that, too, simply won’t happen.

Some of the most dangerous “creative alternatives” are being increasingly floated on the pro-Israeli right, especially the idea of a greater Israel including the occupied territories but without full or equal citizenship, or voting rights, for its Palestinian population. In other words, formalized, permanent apartheid.

Recent articles advocating or describing some version of such an approach have been published by MK Danny DanonRep. Joe WalshJay Bushinsky, and Caroline Glick, among many others. This is also the clear implication of resolutions adopted by several US state legislatures and, apparently, the Republican National Committee.

There seems to be a real willingness on the pro-Israeli right to sacrifice Israel’s “democracy” in order to retain the West Bank, and reduce its “Jewish character” to despotic minority rule and unapologetic, discriminatory, ethnocracy.

Of course any effort to impose such a system would simply be to formalize what already exists, and has since 1967. It can’t possibly be anything but a recipe for further, intensified and unrelenting conflict since it deprives millions of Palestinians of their most basic human and political rights on a permanent basis.

Others have tried to elaborate alternative approaches that present themselves as more constructive and grounded in the understanding that nothing that is categorically rejected by one of the key parties can offer a conflict-ending solution.

Ami Ayalon, Orni Petruschka and Gilead Sher, writing in the New York Times, proposed another form of unilateralism, essentially proposing that Israel create provisional borders based on the West Bank separation barrier, end all settlement activity beyond those territories and in Arab parts of occupied East Jerusalem, and create a plan to relocate 100,000 settlers behind the wall. Palestinians would be tempted to see the imposition of this unilaterally-created “temporary” border as being, in effect, permanent, but the authors insist Israel should remain open to negotiating final status issues in the future.

A similar “alternative idea” has been floated in the past by the new Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz. He suggested creating “an independent, disarmed Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza” with “temporary borders” and negotiations on all final status issues as a first phase, to be followed by the implementation of agreements as a second phase.

Whatever the intentions behind such ideas, perceptions on the other side will be very difficult to manage. When the 2000 Camp David summit failed, my father asked me what I thought the Israelis would do. My response was immediate: over time, and carefully, they will seek to impose by force the borders Palestinians have rejected at the negotiating table. The creation of the separation barrier has added to widespread Arab concerns that Israel intends, and welcomes the opportunity for rationalizing, a unilaterally imposed “solution.”

But if they cannot be accepted, either immediately or over the long run, by the other side, none of these “creative alternatives” offer what a negotiated two state agreement does: a conflict-ending solution in which both sides have an equal and inescapable national imperative to uphold.

As Israel’s experiences in Gaza and southern Lebanon demonstrate, when there isn’t a party on the other side with a vested interest in making an arrangement work, unilateralism in this conflict provides no solutions whatsoever. By contrast, Israel’s peace treaties with Jordan and Egypt have been maintained by all sides, because they all have a stake in making them work.

Whatever “creative alternatives” might seem appealing during the current interregnum, remember all roads ultimately lead back to the negotiating table.

Is Israel united in obstruction?

http://www.nowlebanon.com/NewsArticleDetails.aspx?ID=396608

The new coalition government suddenly formed last week by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the new leader of the Kadima party, Shaul Mofaz, remains something of a mystery. It is essentially a deal between two men, not two parties. Only Netanyahu and Mofaz really know the terms under which they joined forces.

It’s easy to see what was in it for both. Mofaz was able to avoid an election that seemed likely to reduce his party to marginal status in the Knesset. Netanyahu got the opportunity to enjoy 16 months of uncontested power before the next legally mandated election.

Netanyahu had been in the political center of his previous coalition, but now he will be back in his usual position on the right. That doesn’t mean, however, that the new coalition will take a more constructive approach toward the Palestinians. But it does mean that Netanyahu has lost his principal excuse for not taking steps toward peace—that he was constrained from doing so by his dependence on more right-wing forces in Shas and Yisrael Beiteinu.

In scathing comments to the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz a few days before the new government was announced, former Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin said the primary cause of Netanyahu’s disinterest in peace-oriented measures was the political dynamics of his previous coalition.

Diskin said Netanyahu’s previous coalition had “no interest in solving anything with the Palestinians, that I can say with certainty… Forget the story they are selling you that [Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas] doesn’t want to talk. We are not talking with the Palestinians because this government has no interest in talking with the Palestinians.” As Diskin saw it, “The prime minister knows that if he takes the smallest step forward in that direction his solid coalition will break apart.”

Whether offered as an indictment, an excuse or an explanation, this logic plainly no longer applies. Whatever the details of his private agreement with Mofaz may be, Netanyahu now heads a huge coalition that frees him from any claims of being beholden to smaller right-wing parties that won’t stand for any conciliatory measures toward the Palestinians.

The earliest indications of where the new government may be going are hardly promising. The outgoing coalition was on a rampage of settlement activity. It expanded existing settlements and dropped the long-standing pretense that it was not creating new ones. The government was in the process of retroactively recognizing “unauthorized” settlement outposts created in violation of even Israeli law, and was trying to circumvent Supreme Court orders to evacuate some of the largest outposts.

The demolition by July 1 of one of the most egregious of these, Ulpana, has been ordered by the Israeli Supreme Court, because the outpost was built, with the full knowledge of its founders and the government, on privately owned Palestinian land. Instead of using his new coalition to obey the law and enforce the court order, Netanyahu is moving quickly to create new legislation to bypass the court’s instructions.

The Supreme Court rejected a government petition to review its finding. According to reports in the Israeli media, the State Prosecutor’s Office and the Attorney General’s Office have also objected to the idea of creating a new law to bypass the Supreme Court’s order.

One of the first meetings of the new cabinet was on this issue, and it was reportedly unable to reach any conclusion. Mofaz’s position is not yet known. A draft law would retroactively legalize all West Bank outposts constructed with governmental funds or having benefited from initial technical approvals. These are estimated to include at least 9,000 outpost housing units. Supporters have expressed confidence the draft law can pass in the Knesset with the support of the new government.

If this is one of the first measures taken by the new Netanyahu-Mofaz coalition, it would be a very disturbing indication that disinterest in peace by the previous coalition will be continued by the new one. If so, it would also mean that Diskin’s diagnosis—that this disinterest was a symptom of the fragile dynamics of the old coalition—was incorrect.

The international community will have to take careful note of how the new Israeli government handles the outposts issue. If it persists with aggressive and provocative settlement activity and attempts to bypass even Israel’s own laws on the issue, the world will have to conclude that this is a consensus Israeli policy and not political necessity.

The international community will then have to decide whether to acquiesce or take serious measures to ensure that there are real consequences for decisions that severely damage the viability of renewed negotiations and the prospects for a real conflict-ending solution.

We Need to Talk

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/05/07/we-need-to-talk.html

It’s a simple dictum, but one that many still have trouble accepting: Israelis and Palestinians have to talk to each other if they’re going to get anywhere.

A flurry of condemnation greeted the tweeting by Ha’aretz reporter Natasha Mozgovaya of a photograph of Ziad Asali, President of the American Task Force on Palestine (ATFP), at a recent “Independence Day” event held by the Israeli Embassy. ATFP’s critics’ outrage proves that, from the right and the left they eitherfail or refuse to comprehend this dictum or the basic mission of the Task Force.

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Attendees listen as US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton addresses the American Task Force on Palestine Fifth Annual Gala in 2010 (Kimihiro Hoshino / AFP / Getty Images)

ATFP was founded to advocate that it is in the American national interest to end the occupation and establish a Palestinian state alongside Israel in peace, security and dignity. It is not opposed to Israel, but it is opposed to the occupation. This is consistent with stated American, UN, Palestinian and Arab League policies.

ATFP is an American organization and works within the political system to secure a goal that is in American interests, as well as those of the Palestinians and Israel.

And in terms of gaining a real measure of influence in the policy conversation in Washington, it has been an unprecedented and unexpected success, especially by deftly advocating for Palestine with Israel as a partner, rather than a target.

The basis of this success is that serious people on all sides talk to Asali. They know that other serious people also talk to him, frankly, seriously and respectfully.

ATFP works to bring Palestinians and Americans closer together, and to maintain strong relations with Palestinian and American leaders and working relations with Israeli officials. This is the only approach that anyone based in the United States who seriously wants to achieve anything practical for peace, or to improve the lives of Palestinians, can actually take.

Mozgovaya’s photograph merely reconfirms what ATFP has always openly and frankly pursued: a public and strategic display of continued contact with the Israeli establishment to promote the goals of peace and ending the occupation. Those who think there is a military solution are welcome to pursue it. Others may hide their activities, or pander to a lowest common denominator, but ATFP has consistently and publicly maintained those relationships and contacts.

This is hardly the first Israeli or Jewish-American event attended by ATFP officials, and it won’t be the last. Israeli officials and pro-Israel Jewish-Americans have attended every ATFP annual gala, sitting alongside Palestinian activists and Arab diplomats in some of the most extraordinary Middle East policy gatherings to have ever taken place in Washington. Such meetings have always been based on mutual respect and dignity.

Asali is a trailblazer and a visionary. His approach has been controversial, but driven by the watchwords of seriousness, credibility and integrity, he has not shied away from taking bold positions and making difficult choices precisely because they are necessary for progress.

Asali’s critics need to ask themselves what the Palestinians and their allies can possibly achieve without talking to, and ultimately making an agreement with, the Israelis.

The status quo is clear: occupation. Asali’s mission is to change that status quo.

Ever since he became the President of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in 2001, and then President of ATFP, which he founded in 2003, Asali has not drawn a single penny in salary or other compensation. This extraordinary, and in my experience unparalleled, commitment, led the late Edward Said to aptly describe him as a public-spirited physician who voluntarily gave up his medical practice to run the organization on a pro bono basis. That this has continued for no less than twelve years in the face of unrelenting, and often personal and vituperative, criticism—and without any prospect or expectation of personal gain tells you all you need to know about his character and integrity.

Asali has led ATFP in reaching out not only to US officials and Arab-American organizations but also Jewish-American groups across the political spectrum. ATFP has angered many by refusing to become embroiled in political squabbles, particularly between rival Jewish-American organizations. Under Asali, it pursues its mission with scrupulous independence, and declines to serve as a prop in anyone else’s dramas.

Asali has proven that Palestinian-Americans can work within the system as first-class American citizens. Washington has paid attention.

Secretaries of State Rice from the Bush administration and Clinton from the Obama administration have addressed ATFP galas, attended by a who’s who of the Washington Middle East policy establishment. A 2009 letter from Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-CA), then Chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs,attested that Asali and ATFP “have been an important influence on my own thinking about Middle East peacemaking and that of many of my colleagues in the Congress.”

Asali and ATFP have been instrumental in changing perceptions of the PA institution-building program.within the government and foreign policy establishment by persuasively arguing that is a strategic and political initiative, not just a development program. ATFP has been active and effective in helping to secure continued American aid to the PA following the UN membership bid last September.

The Palestine Liberation Organization recognized Israel in 1993. Palestinian officials meet with Israeli officials on a regular basis. It makes no sense whatsoever for Palestinian-Americans to refuse to talk with Jewish-American groups, or with Israeli officials, they do not fully agree with.

It is what we say that really counts, and ATFP expresses the same message, no matter the language, medium or interlocutor.

By condemning Asali for such meetings, his critics are attacking someone who talks the talk and walks the walk. Such critics will be taken seriously only when they do the same. If they do not like ATFP, they should establish their own organizations, rather than tear down the Task Force, a disturbing phenomenon thoroughly excavated in Said’s article cited above. They should be ashamed of their shallow, petty, and often vicious narrow-mindedness.

And, most importantly, they need to accept this inescapable reality: we need to talk.

Revolution, citizenship and democracy in transitional Arab states

http://www.demdigest.net/blog/2012/05/revolution-citizenship-and-democracy-in-transitional-arab-states/

As the Arab uprisings continue to unfold, the word “revolution” is often bandied about with complete disregard for what an actual revolution entails. A coup; a pacted or managed transition between elements of the ancien régime and opposition forces; or simple regime change do not constitute a genuine revolution.

Revolution, properly defined, means that society changes both from the top-down and bottom-up, and looks very little as it did before. Some famous revolutions are more dramatic in this context than others. It’s obvious that the Russian and French revolutions, for example, changed everything almost overnight and dramatically for the people of those countries. The revolution against British rule in the United States, on the other hand, changed a great deal but also preserved much of what was long-established. Nothing was ever the same in the United States after the revolution, but the change was more cautious, gradual and vigorously debated than the vanguardist transformations in Russia or France.

By these standards, the only Arab country which could possibly be described as having actually undergone a revolution is Libya. A principal reason for this is that Colonel Moammar Qaddafi established so few real social and governmental institutions that any alternative government, even one following his natural death, would have faced the need to build such structures from their very base. Yet even in Libya, there are real questions about how revolutionary the transformation will be.

The head of Libya’s National Transitional Council (NTC), Mustapha Abdul Jalil, after all, previously served as “the Secretary of the General People’s Committee of Justice” (essentially the minister of justice, as defined in the bizarre lexicon of Qaddafi’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya – itself a neologism reflective of his twisted thinking). There are plenty of opposition figures in the new Libyan leadership and a very different political scene, especially given the absence of Qaddafi and his sons. But even in Libya there are grounds to question whether political developments constitute a bona fide revolution.

In Egypt, there was certainly no revolution. The military was forced to perform a regime decapitation, removing former President Hosni Mubarak and his family, and some other elements of the elite as well as the ruling National Democratic Party, in order to try to save as much of the existing power structure — particularly their own prerogatives, privileges and economic holdings — as possible. Much of the former regime remains intact, including the Ministry of the Interior and its secret police. Egypt is now the scene of an intense, complex and convoluted power struggle between three established forces: the military, the remnants of the former regime (including the MOI and secret police) and the Muslim Brotherhood. The liberal street protesters who brought down the former regime serve as an unorganized and unstructured fourth factor that can be brought into play in the context of a crisis. Nothing that has happened there reflects a real political or social revolution.

Yemen’s protest movement was hijacked by a power struggle within the elite, between forces loyal to President Ali Abdallah Saleh, his son and nephews, and those aligned with the Ahmar clan and rebel generals such as Ali Mohsen Ahmar (who, in spite of his last name, is related to Saleh, not his rivals in the Ahmar clan and their de facto leader, telecommunications tycoon Hamid Al-Ahmar). Whether this power struggle between the elites in Sanaa has been resolved or not remains to be seen, but even if it has, that elite will have to deal with a revivified “Southern Movement” which seeks either radical autonomy or independence for the south; the strengthened Houthi rebellion; some other secessionist movements; numerous Salafist-Jihadist groups, including but by no means limited to Al Qaeda, which control large parts of rural territory; a drought; a Somali refugee crisis of considerable proportions; and a population that is by far the most illiterate, unemployed, under-educated and heavily armed in the entire Arab world. In other words, the factors working in Yemen’s favor for a brighter future can be listed on one hand (possibly with superfluous fingers remaining), whereas the list of challenges   is formidable. Failed statehood, or a threatened deterioration to that status, is not a revolution either.

In Bahrain, demonstrators never sought a revolution, except perhaps the fringe led by Hassan Mushaima and Al Haq that called for a republic to replace the monarchy. But most mainstream opposition groups, most notably Al-Wefaq, were not talking in terms of revolution or even regime change, but rather stronger forms of constitutionalism to produce a greater balance of power between royal and popular prerogatives, and redressing grievances specific to the long-marginalized Shiite majority. Even though the uprising, for the most part, did not seek to abolish the monarchy, it was successfully crushed by force and so by no means can we speak of revolution in Bahrain.

On the other hand, a “revolutionary situation” might be brewing because of growing tensions between the government and the opposition, particularly the Shiite community; the lack of any forum for dialogue to produce a reasonable accommodation; the splintering of leaderships on both sides; and the rise of radical fringes, including what may be the beginning of urban terrorism and sabotage by radical opposition forces, and the concurrent rise of Sunni vigilantes of a previously unknown Salafist variety, attacking Shiite villages. Revolutionary situations don’t necessarily generate genuine or stable revolutions, but rather yield open-ended conflict, which presently appears to be the direction in which Bahrain, very much in the grip of Saudi hegemony, is headed.

Syria seems not only to have a fully-fledged revolutionary situation but to be inexorably headed towards full-blown civil war, probably of a sectarian nature. The government is manifestly uninterested in and patently incapable of reform. Meanwhile the opposition is deeply divided politically, militarily weak (armed opposition is strictly at an insurgency level; unable to control and hold any territory); lacks proper coordination between disparate armed groups and divided political ones; and is unable to articulate a coherent vision for Syria’s future or inspire confidence that it constitutes a viable alternative leadership, as the NTC in Libya did. Civil wars, especially of a sectarian nature, are unlikely incubators of anything that could legitimately be described as a revolution.

This summary of why the Arab uprisings don’t qualify as revolutionary begs the question of what would.

A genuinely revolutionary transition fundamentally changes the relationship between the individual, society and state. Regime change, coups, civil wars, and similar political ruptures that maintain the pre-existing relationship between the individual and the state cannot be considered revolutionary. This is the missing element in the Arab uprisings: none can be said to have fundamentally changed the citizen-state nexus.

Revolutions need not constitute an improvement in that relationship: the Communist “new man” became a vassal of a vanguardist socialist clique; fascist revolutions aimed to produce mindless nationalist automatons; some revolutions, like the Khmer Rouge’s in Cambodia, recast individuals as enemies of the new society, marked for death. So revolutionary change is not necessarily positive, but it must be comprehensive.

While none of the Arab uprisings have transformed the relationship between the individual and the state. Libya has changed more dramatically – at least superficially – than anywhere else. But the country is too chaotic, deeply in flux, and reverting to tribal, clan and regional affiliations that predate the Qaddafi era to identify a more healthy, relationship between the individual, state and society. Indeed, across most of the Arab world, the uprisings are driving people back into more atavistic identities: sectarianism, both local and regional; tribal affiliations; clan loyalties; and subnational regional agendas have all enjoyed a terrible resurgence.

If the Arab world is ready for a new political and social consciousness that fundamentally reshapes political and social relations, it will be shaped at the level of citizenship. The concept of citizenship, with its complex, mutually reinforcing and interdependent relationships of rights and responsibilities, has been largely absent from modern Arab political discourse. Citizenship is a new idea and the struggle to define it is at the core of the most promising of these uprisings, particularly in the one transition I have not yet addressed: Tunisia.

Over the past decade or so, a new idea has taken root in most strains of Arab political thinking: the notion that legitimate governance requires the consent of the governed and its corollary that only regular, multiparty elections and the peaceful transfer of power can affirm that consent. The basic outlines of this idea are now accepted by almost all current strands of Arab political thought, with the notable exception of existing ruling elites and their courtiers (whether in republics or monarchies); and extreme Salafist groups, particularly Salafist-Jihadists, who reject the idea as “unIslamic.” Even illiberal organizations such as Muslim Brotherhood parties and other Islamist groups understand the centrality of this concept, at least in theory.

What is not nearly as widely understood or accepted, even in theory, is the other side of the coin of democracy: limitations on the powers of government; separation of powers between different branches (particularly the need for an independent judiciary to enforce those limitations); and, above all, the inviolable rights of minorities, women and, especially, individuals on the basis of their status as citizens. In some countries, such as Egypt, the current struggle of political ideas revolves around efforts by Islamists, probably at the peak of their influence, to assert as much as possible maximal authority for majority rule.

But throughout the Middle East, and above all in Tunisia, which is by far the furthest along in developing a constitutional post-dictatorship system, Islamists are disturbingly taking the lead in promoting and defining the concept of citizenship. This has deeply ominous implications.

Consider the harm done to the concept of secularism because of its abuse by Arab republican dictatorships that framed themselves as secular, only to use this as an excuse for radical forms of repression, including against genuine secularists as well as Islamists and other opposition groups. In other words, when the wrong people define important concepts, words can be stripped of their meaning to the point that they become unworkable and even anathema. Damaging mischaracterizations and misunderstandings of indispensable ideas thereby poison political discourse.

If the Arab uprisings are to become genuine revolutions, they will have to transform ordinary Arab individuals from mere subjects of the state — to be managed and controlled — into citizens empowered to participate freely in all aspects of society with no unreasonable limitations. The essence of citizenship is that the individual has inviolable rights, such as freedom of conscience, religion, speech, property, equal treatment under the law, and equal status, and reciprocal responsibilities, such as paying taxes, public service, abiding by the rule of law, and consent to legitimate authority. The most fundamental element of real citizenship is that individual rights cannot be compromised by democratic decisions of tyrannous majorities. Genuine democracy requires balancing the rights of majorities and majority coalitions to executive and/or legislative power, with limitations on government, and inviolable minority and individual rights protected by an independent judiciary. If citizenship is defined in any other way it will, like secularism, become a term that is poisoned in Arab political discourse and is rendered virtually useless for at least a generation.

Tunisia is central because its Islamists are the most advanced, sophisticated, imaginative and, indeed, crafty in the Arab world. It’s ironic that few Arab liberals or progressives pay as much attention to the concept (or at least the rhetoric) of citizenship as Ennahda’s spiritual guide Rashid Ghanouchi or its main spokesman Said Ferjani. Indeed, anyone looking at the rhetoric in the contemporary Arab world without any context or historical understanding might be tempted to see Ghanouchi and Ferjani as fully-developed liberal, constitutionalist Muslim Democrats, in the manner of the Christian Democratic parties of Western Europe. In reality they are nothing of the kind, at least for now. They are probably the Arab Islamists furthest along in any evolution in this direction, if in fact that is where they are going.

But, it’s important to note that citizenship as defined by Islamists like Ghanouchi and Ferjani is still framed in the context of “Islamic traditions” and “Islamic values.” Ferjani, in particular, isexceptionally eloquent on the concept of citizenship, and has correctly identified it as the key to creating genuinely pluralistic, democratic post-dictatorship Arab societies. Yet his party remains absolutely committed to an interpretation of not only Islam, but also “Islamic societies,” that claims authenticity based on socially reactionary ideals. Arab Islamists, including Ennahda, frame religious equality in interfaith terms: they would recognize, at least in theory, the right to be Sunni, Shiite, Christian, Jewish, or hold any other religious conviction. So a certain respect for this kind of freedom of religion is accepted by Islamists, insofar as they understand that there are different kinds of Muslims and others who belong to a different religion. But as recent blasphemy prosecutions in Tunisia and similar intolerant incidents elsewhere demonstrate, the idea that there might be skeptical citizens who are atheists or agnostics, and that these citizens have a right to publicly question religion, engage in blasphemy, satire, scholarly interrogation of the history of various religions (including Islam), or promote radical skepticism and rejection of religion is still totally outside their frame of reference.

Similarly, Islamist definitions of citizenship confront a major problem regarding gender. If they claim to be in favor of equal citizenship, but insist that this equality must be grounded in Islamic traditions, Islamists face an impossible conundrum. Most traditional interpretations of Islam give Muslim men more rights than Muslim women in terms of inheritance, divorce, child custody, court testimony, and many other familial and social matters. They also give Muslim men more rights than non-Muslim men. It’s absurd but symptomatic that in both Tunisia and Egypt there are huge controversies among Islamists about whether non-Muslims (inevitably defined as Jews or Christians, rather than atheists or agnostics, the latter being entirely outside their frame of reference) should be allowed to serve as president. In neither case is this a likely scenario given that both Egypt and Tunisia have over 85 percent Sunni Muslim majorities. So the question boils down to one of formalizing discrimination rather than worrying about the rise to power of a Jewish Tunisian or a Coptic Egyptian president (neither of which are conceivable given those countries’ present circumstances and political cultures).

In short, the struggle for good governance, equal rights, pluralism, tolerance, and actual democracy boils down to the question how citizenship is defined and incorporated into post-dictatorship Arab societies. If Islamists are allowed to monopolize the discourse regarding citizenship, convert it into a vehicle for simply legitimizing majority rule that that oppress the rights of women, minorities and individuals, and hijack the concept of citizenship the way former dictatorships appropriated and distorted the concept of secularism, there will be no Arab revolutions. If Islamist parties consistently win electoral majorities under such conditions, there will simply be the transfer of one form of authoritarian rule to another (albeit electorally legitimized and bolstered, but with limited separation of powers and few protections for minority and individual rights). There is reason to be deeply concerned that Islamists are dominating the conversation about citizenship at this moment in Arab political discourse. If one had any confidence that they were sincere about the rights of citizens inherent in their individual citizenship, this would be a welcome rather than a worrying development. But any such confidence would be grossly naïve.

Therefore, one of the most urgent tasks facing those who seek a genuinely revolutionary, liberating and progressive Arab post-dictatorship future is to engage in the struggle over the definition of citizenship, and ensure that Islamists are not able to hijack this ideal to defend oppressive majority rule, but rather to inculcate a sense of citizenship that defines and defends the rights of each and every individual, woman and man alike. Liberty, at its root, means maximizing the range of choices for every individual in any society while protecting the rights of others from encroachment by those choices. It’s a difficult balancing act, but it’s one that most of the rest of the world is much further along in negotiating than the Arabs.

What most Arabs, above all the Islamists but also many liberals who unwisely and indefensibly prefer the old authoritarianism over potentially Islamist, or Islamist-influenced, but limited and constitutionalist governments, should understand is that the only freedom that really counts is the freedom for others to be radically wrong in one’s own eyes. Pluralism means accepting the right of somebody else to choose to be completely wrong in your opinion, and yet defending that right in the context of freedom of conscience. This is the idea that must make headway in the Arab world if genuine citizenship, democracy, pluralism, tolerance and women’s, minority and individual rights are to be protected in post-dictatorship democracies.

That would irreversibly transform the nature of the relationship between the Arab individual and her or his state and society.

That would be a real revolution.

Revolution, Citizenship and Democracy in Post-Dictatorship Arab Societies

As the Arab uprisings continue to unfold, the word “revolution” is often bandied about with complete disregard for what an actual revolution entails. A coup; a pacted or managed transition between elements of the ancien régime and opposition forces; or even simple regime change do not constitute a genuine revolution. Revolution, properly defined, means that society changes both from the top-down and bottom-up, and looks very little as it did before. Some famous revolutions are more dramatic in this context than others. It’s obvious that the Russian and French revolutions, for example, changed everything almost overnight and dramatically for the people of those countries. The revolution against British rule in the United States, on the other hand, changed a great deal but also preserved much of what had been long-established, but was being challenged by the Parliament in London against the will of the American colonists. Nothing was ever the same in the United States after the revolution, for truly it was revolutionary, but the change was more cautious, gradual and heavily debated than the vanguardist transformations in Russia or France.

 

By these standards, the only Arab country which could possibly be described as having actually undergone a “revolution” is Libya, and one of the reasons for this is that Col. Moammar Qaddafi created so few real social and governmental institutions that any alternative government, even one following his natural death, would have been faced with the need to build such institutions from their very base. And yet even in Libya, there are real questions about how “revolutionary” the transformation will really be. The head of Libya’s National Transitional Council (NTC), Mustapha Abdul Jalil, after all, previously served as “the Secretary of the General People’s Committee of Justice” (essentially the minister of justice, as defined in the bizarre lexicon of Qaddafi’s Libyan Arab “Jamahiriya” – itself a neologism reflective of his twisted thinking). There are plenty of opposition figures in the new Libyan leadership, such as it is, and a very different political scene, especially given the absence of Qaddafi and his sons. But even in Libya there are solid grounds to question whether what is taking place actually constitutes a “revolution” in its proper sense.

 

In Egypt, there was certainly no revolution. The military was forced to perform a regime decapitation, removing former President Hosni Mubarak and his family, and some other elements of the elite as well as the ruling National Democratic Party, in order to try to save as much of the existing power structure — particularly their own prerogatives, privileges and economic holdings — as possible. Much of the former regime remains intact, including the Ministry of the Interior and its secret police. Egypt is now the scene of an intense, complex and convoluted power struggle between three established forces: the military, the remnants of the former regime (including the MOI and secret police) and the Muslim Brotherhood, with the liberal street protesters who brought down the former regime serving as an unorganized and unstructured fourth factor that can be brought into play in the context of a crisis. Nothing that has happened there reflects a real political or social “revolution.”

 

In Yemen, the street protests were hijacked by a power struggle between forces loyal to Pres. Ali Abdallah Saleh, his son and nephews, and those aligned with the Ahmar clan and rebel generals such as Ali Mohsen Ahmar (who, in spite of his last name, is related to Saleh, not his rivals in the Ahmar clan and their de facto leader, telecommunications tycoon Hamid Al-Ahmar). Whether this power struggle between the elites in Sanaa has been resolved or not remains to be seen, but even if it has, that elite will then have to deal with a revivified “Southern Movement” which seeks either radical autonomy or independence for the south; the strengthened Houthi rebellion; some other secessionist movements; numerous Salafist-Jihadist groups, including but by no means limited to Al Qaeda, which control large parts of rural territory; a drought; a Somali refugee crisis of considerable proportions; and a population that is by far the most illiterate, unemployed, under-educated and heavily armed in the entire Arab world. In other words, the factors working in Yemen’s favor for a brighter future can be listed on one hand (possibly with superfluous fingers remaining), whereas the list of challenges — only touched upon above — are virtually endless. Failed statehood, or a situation always threatening to deteriorate into that status, is not a revolution either.

 

In Bahrain, demonstrators never sought a revolution, except perhaps the fringe led by Hassan Mushaima and Al Haq that called for “a republic” instead of the monarchy. But most of the mainstream opposition groups, most notably Al-Wefaq, were not talking in terms of revolution or even regime change, but rather stronger forms of constitutionalism to produce a greater balance of power between royal and popular prerogatives, and redressing grievances specific to the long-marginalized Shiite majority. Even though the uprising, for the main part, did not seek to remove the monarchy, it was successfully crushed by force and therefore by no means can anyone speak of “revolution” in Bahrain. A “revolutionary situation” might be brewing because of growing tensions between the opposition, particularly the Shiite community, and the government; the lack of any forum for dialogue to find a reasonable accommodation; and the splintering of leaderships on both sides and the rise of radical fringes, including what appears to be the beginning of urban terrorism and sabotage by radical opposition forces and the simultaneous rise of Sunni vigilante gangs, particularly of a previously unknown Salafist variety, that have been attacking Shiite villages. But revolutionary situations frequently don’t produce genuine or stable revolutions, but rather yield open-ended conflict, which presently appears to be the direction in which Bahrain, which also finds itself very much in the grip of Saudi hegemony, is headed.

 

Syria seems not only to have a fully-fledged “revolutionary situation” but also to be inexorably headed towards full-blown civil war, probably of a sectarian nature. The government is manifestly uninterested in and patently incapable of, reforming itself. Meanwhile the opposition is deeply divided politically, militarily weak (armed opposition is strictly at an insurgency level; unable to control and hold any territory); lacks proper coordination between disparate armed groups and divided political ones; and has not been able to articulate a coherent alternative vision for the future of the country or inspire confidence that it constitutes a viable alternative leadership, as the NTC in Libya did. Civil wars, especially of a sectarian nature, are unlikely incubators of anything that could legitimately be described as a “revolution.”

 

This rather long-winded summary of why the most dramatic Arab uprisings don’t really qualify as revolutionary begs the question of what would. The essence of what is genuinely revolutionary is a transition that fundamentally changes the nature of the relationship between the individual on the one hand and the society and/or the state on the other hand. Regime changes, coups, civil wars, etc. that maintain the same fundamental relationship between the individual and the state that existed before cannot be described as revolutionary. This is the missing element in all of the Arab uprisings: none of them can yet be said to have fundamentally changed the nature of the relationship between the individual and the state. Revolutions, it should be added, need not constitute an improvement in that relationship: the Leninist “new man” became essentially a slave of a vanguardist socialist clique; fascist revolutions aimed to produce mindless nationalist automatons; some revolutions, like the Khmer Rouge’s in Cambodia, recast many if not most, individuals as enemies of the new society, marked for death. So revolution and the change that it brings is not necessarily positive, but it must be comprehensive.

 

In none of the Arab uprisings cited above, have the essential relationship between the individual and the state been yet transformed. At a superficial level, more has changed in Libya more dramatically than anywhere else. But the country is too chaotic, deeply in flux, and reverting to tribal, clan and regional affiliations that actually predate the Qaddafi era to clearly identify a new, more healthy, relationship between the individual and the state or society. Indeed, throughout the Arab world, the uprisings are driving people back into more atavistic identities: sectarianism, both local and regional; tribal affiliations; clan loyalties; subnational regional agendas, etc. have all enjoyed a terrible resurgence.

 

It remains an open question whether or not the Arab world is really ready for a new political and social consciousness that fundamentally reshapes the relationship between the individual and the society. If so, that must be at the level of citizenship. The concept of citizenship, with its complex, interlocking and mutually reinforcing and interdependent relationships of rights and responsibilities, has been almost entirely absent from every element of modern Arab political discourse. Citizenship is a new idea, and the struggle to define it is at the core of where the most promising of these uprisings might lead, particularly in the one country whose uprising I have not yet dealt with: Tunisia.

 

Over the past decade or so, a new idea has taken root in most strains of Arab political thinking: the notion that legitimate governance requires the consent of the governed and its corollary that only regular, multiparty elections and the peaceful transfer of power can demonstrate that consent. As far as I can tell, the basic outlines of this idea are now accepted by almost all current strands of Arab political thought with a few notable exceptions: existing ruling elites and their courtiers (whether in republics or monarchies), although some in such circles do seem to appreciate this principle more than others; and extreme Salafist groups, particularly Salafist-Jihadists, who reject the whole idea as “unIslamic.” Even illiberal organizations such as Muslim Brotherhood parties and many other Islamist groups seem to understand the centrality of this concept, at least in theory. So, most of contemporary Arab political thought accepts the right of the majority to exercise power through the ballot box. Again, at least in theory.

 

What is not nearly as widely understood, even in theory, is the other side of the coin of democracy: limitations on the powers of government; separation of powers between different branches of government (particularly the need for an independent judiciary to enforce those limitations); and, above all, the inviolable rights of minorities, women and, especially, individuals on the basis of their status as citizens. In some countries, such as Egypt, the current struggle of political ideas essentially revolves around efforts by Islamists, who are probably at the peak of their influence, to try to assert as much as possible maximal authority for “majority rule.”

 

But throughout the Middle East, and above all in Tunisia, the Arab country which is by far the furthest along in developing a constitutional and, possibly, democratic post-dictatorship system, Islamists are disturbingly taking the lead in promoting and defining the concept of “citizenship.” This has deeply ominous implications: consider, for example, the harm done to the concept of “secularism” because of its abuse by Arab republican dictatorships that framed themselves as “secular,” only to use this as an excuse for radical forms of repression at all levels of society, including against real secularists as well as Islamists or any other opposition groups whatsoever. In other words, when the wrong people define important concepts, words can be stripped of their meaning to the point that they become unworkable and even anathema. Damaging mischaracterizations and misunderstandings of indispensable ideas thereby poison healthy political dialogue.

 

If the Arab uprisings are to be genuine revolutions, they will have to transform ordinary Arab individuals from subjects (or, indeed, objects) of the state — to be managed and controlled — into citizens who define that state, fully empowered to participate freely in all aspects of society with no unreasonable limitations. The essence of citizenship is that the individual has inviolable rights — freedom of conscience, religion, speech, property, equal treatment under the law, equal status with all other citizens, etc. — and also unavoidable responsibilities — paying taxes, public service, abiding by the rule of law, cooperating with legitimate authorities, etc. The most fundamental element of real citizenship is that individual rights cannot be compromised by “democratic” decisions of tyrannous majorities. Genuine democracy requires balancing the rights of majorities and majority coalitions to executive and/or legislative power, with limitations on government, and inviolable minority and individual rights protected by an independent judiciary. If citizenship is defined in any other way, it, like secularism, will become a term that becomes poisoned in the Arab political discourse and rendered virtually useless for at least a generation.

 

Tunisia is central because the Islamists in that country are the most advanced, sophisticated, imaginative and, indeed, crafty in the Arab world. It’s ironic that few Arab liberals or progressives pay as much attention to the concept (or at least the rhetoric) of citizenship as Ennahda’s spiritual guide Rashid Ghanouchi or its main spokesman Said Ferjani. Indeed, anyone looking at the rhetoric in the contemporary Arab world without any context or historical understanding might be tempted to see Ghanouchi and Ferjani as fully-developed liberal, constitutionalist Muslim Democrats, in the manner of the Christian Democratic parties of Western Europe. Obviously, in reality they are nothing of the kind, at least for now. They are probably the Arab Islamists furthest along in any evolution in this direction, if in fact that is where they are going. But, it’s important to note that “citizenship” as defined by Islamists like Ghanouchi and Ferjani is still framed in the context of “Islamic traditions” and “Islamic values.”

 

Ferjani, in particular, is exceptionally eloquent on the concept of “citizenship,” and has correctly identified it as the key to creating genuinely pluralistic, democratic post-dictatorship Arab societies. Yet his party remains absolutely committed to an interpretation of not only Islam, but also “Islamic societies,” that claims authenticity based on socially reactionary ideals. Arab Islamists, including Ennahda, frame religious equality in interfaith terms: they would recognize, in other words, (again at least in theory) the right to be Sunni, Shiite, Christian, Jewish, etc. So, a certain respect for this kind of “freedom of religion” may be accepted by such Islamist parties, insofar as they understand that there are different kinds of Muslims and also people who are not Muslims but belong to a different religion. But the idea that there might be citizens who have no faith at all, who are atheists, agnostics or skeptics, and that these citizens might not only want, but have a right, to publicly question religion, engage in blasphemy, satire, scholarly interrogation of the history of various religions (including Islam), or promote radical skepticism and rejection of religion seems outside of their frame of reference altogether.

 

Similarly, Islamists who promote “citizenship” have a major gender issue problem. If, as they try to do, they say simultaneously they are in favor of equal citizenship for all, but at the same time claim that all of this equality will be grounded in “Islamic traditions,” they face an impossible conundrum. Most traditional interpretations of Islam give Muslim men more rights than Muslim women in terms of inheritance, divorce, child custody, court testimony, and many other matters, both familial and social. They also give Muslim men more rights than non-Muslim men, in some of the same contexts. It’s absurd but symptomatic that in both Tunisia and Egypt there are huge controversies among Islamists about whether non-Muslims (inevitably defined as Jews or Christians, rather than atheists or agnostics, the second pair being entirely outside their frame of reference as noted above) should legally be allowed to potentially serve as president of the republic. In neither case is this a likely scenario given that both Egypt and Tunisia have over 85 percent Sunni Muslim majorities. So the whole question boils down to one of formalizing discrimination rather than really worrying about the rise to power of a Jewish Tunisian or a Coptic Egyptian president (neither of which are conceivable under the present circumstances and political cultures of those countries).

 

The point is that the struggle for good governance, equal rights, pluralism, tolerance, and actual democracy boils down to the question of citizenship, and how it is defined and incorporated into post-dictatorship Arab societies. If Islamists are allowed to monopolize the discourse regarding citizenship, turn it into a vehicle for an all-powerful majority rule that sets the stage for tyrannous majorities that oppress the rights of women, minorities and individuals, and hijack the concept of citizenship the way the former dictatorships hijacked the concept of secularism, distorting it beyond recognition, there will be no Arab revolutions at all. There will simply be the transfer of one form of authoritarian rule (republican or monarchical, but not Islamist) to another (Islamist or Islamist-influenced, possibly bolstered by consistently strong electoral results with limited separation of powers and very few protections for the rights of individuals, women and minorities). There is every reason to be deeply concerned that Islamists are dominating the conversation about citizenship at the moment in Arab political discourse. If one had any confidence that they were sincere, or even capable of being sincere, about the rights of citizens inherent in their individual citizenship, this would be a welcome rather than a worrying development. But any such confidence would be grossly naïve.

 

Therefore, one of the most urgent tasks facing those who seek an actually revolutionary, genuinely liberatory, and practically progressive Arab post-dictatorship future is to immediately get involved in the struggle over the definition of the concept of citizenship, and ensuring that Islamists are not able to hijack this ideal to defend oppressive majority rule, but rather to inculcate a sense that citizenship is about defining and defending the rights of each and every individual, woman and man, alike. Liberty, at its root, means maximizing the range of choices for every individual in any society while protecting the rights of others from encroachment by those choices. It’s a difficult balancing act, but it’s one that most of the rest of the world is much further along in negotiating than the Arabs are.

 

What most Arabs, above all the Islamists, but also many “liberals” who would unwisely and indefensibly prefer the old or re-jiggered dictatorships over potentially Islamist-dominated but genuinely limited and constitutionalist governments, need to understand is that real freedom — the only freedom that really counts — is the freedom for others to be radically wrong in one’s own eyes. Of course, in acting out such “mistakes,” citizens cannot violate other’s inviolable rights either. But if the Islamists cannot understand why one would be secular, agnostic or atheist, and if atheists, agnostics and secularists cannot understand why anyone would be an Islamist, that’s the whole point of freedom. Pluralism means accepting the right of somebody else to choose to be, in your opinion, completely wrong, and defending that right in the context of freedom of conscience. This, now, is the idea that must quickly make headway in the Arab world if real citizenship, genuine democracy, pluralism, tolerance and women’s, minority and individual rights will actually be protected in post-dictatorship democracies. That would transform, irreversibly, the nature of the relationship between the Arab individual and her or his state and society. That would be a REAL revolution.