http://www.nowlebanon.com/NewsArticleDetails.aspx?ID=325811

An often overlooked irony of contemporary Middle East politics is how
deeply reminiscent the governing style of Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu is to that of the late Palestinian president,
Yasser Arafat. The mechanics of holding together a fractious national
liberation movement bear uncanny similarities to those of cobbling
together a diverse coalition within a flawed parliamentary democracy.

For most of its history under Arafat, the Palestine Liberation
Organization was not simply synonymous with Fatah. It was, rather, a
contentious coalition of diverse groups from the far left to the
moderate right.

Arafat was a master at operating a quota system in which everybody got
enough of the action to keep them on board. In more recent years under
President Mahmoud Abbas, and particularly Prime Minister Salam
Fayyad—who is not a member of either Fatah or the PLO—Palestinians
have been moving away from a quota system toward one with elements of
meritocracy and the selection of officials based on their ability to
perform rather than what faction they represent.

Coalition building in parliamentary democracies frequently involves
jockeying for positions between party leaders based on the number of
votes they can produce in the legislature. But Netanyahu has managed
to create an ideologically crazy-quilt coalition that is nonetheless
one of the most stable in Israel’s history precisely because all of
its members get exactly what they need.

Netanyahu’s governing style, therefore, has a great deal more in
common with Arafat’s than either would have been comfortable
admitting.

Netanyahu himself gets to be prime minister even though his Likud
Party has one less seat than the largest group in the Knesset, Kadima.

And this, after all, is ultimately the whole point of the exercise.

Avigdor Lieberman, head of the third-largest party in the Knesset, the
largely Russian-immigrant Yisrael Beiteinu group, gets the number-two
spot, foreign minister. He has been waging a relentless war of
attrition against Netanyahu for leadership of the Israeli right,
although Netanyahu has thus far prevailed.

Eli Yishai, leader of the ultra-Orthodox Shas Party, also gets exactly
what he wants. Shas broke the traditional taboo of ultra-Orthodox
groups by getting involved directly in Israeli politics largely in
order to secure state funding for its religiously-oriented social and
educational programs. His post as interior minister is ideal for such
purposes.

Finally, Ehud Barak continues in his personal fiefdom as defense
minister, even though he had to abandon the Labor Party. In spite of
terrible personal relations with outgoing IDF Chief of Staff Gabi
Ashkenazi and some other leading generals, the military generally
regards Barak as someone who understands their perspective.

There are still bitter memories of unbridgeable gaps in communication
when former unionist and Labor Party leader Amir Peretz served as
defense minister during the last Lebanon war. So both Barak personally
and the military also get the minimum they require, as he is one of
the few current prominent politicians who essentially “speaks their
language.”

This quota system has not only allowed Netanyahu to become prime
minister without having the largest party in the Knesset, but to
develop one of the most stable coalitions in Israel’s history and
place him on the path of being one of the longest-serving prime
ministers the country has ever had. Mastery of such quota politics is
exactly what allowed Arafat to remain the unquestioned leader of the
Palestinian national movement for most of his life as well.

Well-managed quota systems make for very good politics, particularly
when the goal is staying in power by making sure everybody has a
“taste.” But it makes bold decision-making almost impossible.

Netanyahu, even if he were inclined to make concessions on peace, is a
self-condemned hostage to this structure. It took Arafat almost 15
years, from the early 70s to the late 80s, to maneuver the PLO into
accepting the principle of a two-state solution precisely because he
had to manage his own fractious coalition.

The distortions in policy are all too obvious. The only real reason
why Israel has not apologized to Turkey over the deadly flotilla
incident is that both Netanyahu and Lieberman are perfectly ready to
condemn each other for any such move, although refusing to do so makes
absolutely no sense. And Lieberman’s vote against the recent prisoner
swap with Hamas is ammunition in his pocket should there be another
confrontation with that organization, a trump card he’s holding
against his own prime minister.

So far, these machinations are working for Netanyahu’s political
career. But they are leading Israel into a set of self-defeating
policies of subservience to the settler movement, paralysis in the
face of regional upheaval, and an utter inability to make any serious
moves toward peace with the Palestinians. As they so often do
everywhere, in Israel today, good politics are producing bad, and
possibly disastrous, policies.

https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/commentaryanalysis/occupying_wall_street_and_tahrir_

The “Occupy Wall Street” protests in the United States raise a problem familiar to the contemporary Arab world: What happens to a political movement that is leaderless and unfocused?

The wave of discontent in the West is directly linked to the grave economic conditions facing the middle classes in these societies. The focus on Wall Street reflects a sense of deep resentment at the continued massive profits by the same financial companies that are rightly blamed for the meltdown of 2008 and the ongoing financial crisis.

When President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party used this discontent to sweep Republicans out of the White House and both houses of Congress in a crushing 2008 victory, the reaction on the right was, literally, hysterical. It gave rise to the “Tea Party” movement that purported to be as angry at Republicans and former President George W. Bush as with the Democrats.

However, unlike the all-inclusive Occupy Wall Street movement, the Tea Party was exclusive. It repeated an essential demand outlined in Richard J. Hofstadter’s classic 1964 essay, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” to “take the country back” from a monstrous and alien conspiracy aiming to destroy it. This rage was best expressed more recently in the paranoid panic of sobbing talk-show host Glenn Beck.

Mainstream Republicans were able to mobilize the energy of the Tea Party to win back the House of Representatives in 2010, a classic example of how a spontaneous, grassroots movement can be cultivated, funded and directed by an organized political leadership. It became a movement that looked like a leaderless and spontaneous outburst of popular sentiment, but that was in effect put to work by a highly organized party in the focused service of a specific political goal.

The irony is that the intense passions released by the Tea Party have now become a liability in the next challenge facing the Republicans, namely unseating Obama and retaking the White House. For this, they will need to appeal to a broad-base of mainstream, independent and swing American voters, who are likely to regard Tea Party rhetoric as unhinged.

The Occupy Wall Street movement, by contrast, shows no signs of being mobilized by a political party or organization to create real change in politics or policy. Any movement so broad-based, leaderless (though there are some organizers who can be identified) and, frankly, unfocused runs the risk of simply fizzling out without leaving any lasting legacy.

Disappointment with Obama and the Democrats runs so high that it is hard to imagine Occupy Wall Street developing into a potent base to aid his re-election. However, the most logical consequence would be an emboldened and more aggressively reformist Obama second term. The lack of convergence between the organized liberals in the Democratic Party and the protesting leftists thus far seems complete, in contrast to the way Republicans used the Tea Party for their own purposes.

Arabs should be very familiar with this conundrum. The Egyptian experience in particular has shown the limitations of a leaderless, spontaneous movement. It creates momentum but cannot harness it. That can only be done by organized political groupings.

The Tahrir protesters sought the departure of President Hosni Mubarak and his sons, and the military arranged for that and took over. This amounts to regime decapitation but not regime change. Meanwhile, the Muslim Brotherhood is quietly and effectively preparing to become the main beneficiary of planned parliamentary elections, while professional politicians like the former Arab League secretary general, Amr Moussa, are campaigning for the presidency. For now the military rules, and it has become a criminal offense to mock these new collective pharaohs.

In other words, the ideals of the Tahrir protesters, apart from the absence of Mubarak, hardly seem to have been realized. Existing organizations, predictably, are using the momentum the protests created for their own ends. Power is in the streets, as Lenin said, just waiting to be picked up. Among those picking it up these days are Islamist mobs and army rioters attacking Coptic protesters.

There is movement toward a new system in Egypt, but what it will look like is anybody’s guess (although I did suggest a three-way power-sharing arrangement months ago, recognizing this is a highly optimistic scenario). All organized groups are jockeying to take advantage of the space and momentum created by the protesters, to the exclusion, and possibly at the expense, of most of the protesters themselves.

Another good example of a grassroots movement disconnected from organized political leadership is the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign that sometimes targets the Israeli occupation, and sometimes Israel itself. In neither case is it well coordinated with a Palestinian national leadership that can translate the momentum it produces into results. Until it is, the efforts of the so-called BDS campaign are unlikely to have a significant effect on the strategic equation. The endeavor might make people feel good, but it won’t make much of a difference.

Protest and grassroots movements, by being focused and connected to existing political institutions, can have a genuine impact. Otherwise they risk their efforts being co-opted or simply fizzling out with a whimper.

Across the Arab world, terrifying sectarian dynamics are starting to
emerge, essentially pitting Arab Sunnis versus all religious
minorities. The elements of this have been obvious for quite a while,
but the pattern has become so pronounced and almost pervasive that it
demands to be recognized no matter how frightening the prospects.

Throughout the region, political forces are lining up time and again
along this extremely dangerous binary divide. For instance, the
ecumenism of the Egyptian revolution has given way to the most
gruesome sectarian violence between the military and Islamist mobs on
the one hand and Coptic protesters on the other hand. This was
particularly evident over the weekend, with deadly clashes and
sectarian incitement raging throughout Cairo.

The Syrian regime has done its best to cast the uprising in that
country in a sectarian light, with a disturbing degree of success.
Regional support for Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite-minority rule is now
almost entirely restricted to non-Sunni Arabs (as well as Iran),
including Lebanon’s Hezbollah, the Shia-led Iraqi government, Shia
parliamentarians and activists in Kuwait and other Gulf States, and a
significant number of Christians in Lebanon and Syria.

By contrast, Assad’s alliance with Hamas, the Palestinian branch of
the Muslim Brotherhood, has collapsed largely along sectarian lines.
Support for Assad among Arab Sunnis has dropped to virtually zero,
including all Sunni-dominated governments. Support for his rule has
also further exacerbated the already deeply-damaged reputation of
Hezbollah among Arab Sunnis.

The Sunni Arab world, meanwhile, has been largely silent about the
campaign of relentless persecution and repression against the Shia
majority in Bahrain, implicitly backing the oppressive rule of the
Sunni-minority royal family.

Sectarian tensions simmer in Kuwait but are held at bay by the
country’s wealth and small population. In Saudi Arabia, however, they
have been bubbling away for months, particularly in the country’s
oil-rich eastern provinces. Last week they boiled over in Al-Awamiyah,
as Shia rioters were fired on by security forces. Saudi spokespersons
dismissed the incident as “nonsectarian” and merely criminal in
nature, but immediately undermined their arguments by blaming Iran for
the unrest.

The narrative of the last few years of the previous decade—the
“culture of resistance” (which supposedly included both Sunni and Shia
Islamists and some Arab nationalists) versus the “culture of
accommodation” (a term of abuse for all moderate or pro-Western forces
in the Arab world)—has been completely subsumed by this emerging
sectarian narrative.

It will be rightly objected that this scattershot analysis is
superficial, and that in each society there are many detailed and
specific forces at play, particularly in countries as diverse as
Lebanon or Iraq. It will further be observed that there are many
exceptions to this pattern, such as the role of imprisoned Sunni
social democrat Ibrahim Sharif in Bahrain or the presence of
Christians, Alawites and others in the Syrian opposition.

It is absolutely true that when you look at individual groves, there
are many details that do not correspond to this narrative or dynamic;
but it’s also plainly the new shape the broader forest is taking. I’ve
been watching this pattern emerge for a long time without being
willing to clearly identify it in writing, both because there are so
many details that complicate, and even contradict, such a reading, and
in hope that other dynamics would prevent a regional sectarian divide
from becoming definitive.

I now think it’s impossible to deny that the single most important
factor shaping the Arab regional dynamic is a sectarian divide, not
between Sunnis and Shia, but between Sunnis and everybody else. On the
sidelines are also significant divisions between Arabs and ethnic
minorities such as Kurds or Berbers, but it is the sectarian split
that is the real dividing line these days. This new sectarian
consciousness has greatly assisted the rise of Turkey as a regional
power, strongly aligned with Arab Sunnis, at least for the moment.

Iran is probably the biggest single loser in the regional realignment
so far, and the mainstay of many governments trying to blame unrest on
“foreign powers” (along with al Qaeda, Israel, the United States,
Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, depending on which government is
making excuses). However, an Arab world divided along sectarian lines
will continue to provide potential openings for Iran in Shia and other
non-Sunni areas, even where they have had little or no influence in
the past.

The emerging sectarian narrative threatens to rip apart many Arab
societies, and indeed the Arab world in general. More than military
dictatorships or violent organizations that may seek to exploit these
tensions, the illusions that Sunni Arabs across the region are seeking
to impose a new and repressive order on non-Sunni Arabs, or that
non-Sunni Arabs are subversive elements or disloyal agents of Iran or
other foreign powers, pose the gravest threat to a better future in
the Middle East.

These narratives are almost always implicit, but they are on the brink
of becoming hegemonic. Counter-narratives, based on deeds as well as
words, are more urgently needed than ever. If they wish to avoid it,
Arab political and religious leaders are going to have to move quickly
to prevent this stark sectarian divide from defining the regional
landscape into the future.

http://www.nowlebanon.com/NewsArticleDetails.aspx?ID=318069&MID=0&PID=0

The elimination in a CIA drone strike of Anwar al-Awlaki, al Qaeda’s major English-language sock puppet and propagandist, has many problematic aspects. However, from an Arab- and Muslim-American perspective it can only be a very good thing.

Awlaki was not a “key leader” in al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. His death will do virtually nothing to change the political situation in Yemen. Most Yemenis are unaware of his existence and do not care about his death. AQAP is only one of a myriad of Islamist and Salafist-Jihadist groups in Yemen, and is not a major factor in the power struggle between members of the Yemeni elite. This struggle will likely determine the outcome of the battle over that country’s future.

That said, Awlaki’s death was highly significant on two counts. First, he was a key figure in al Qaeda’s current strategy (as clearly articulated by its paramount leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri) of seeking to organize terrorist attacks in the West. Zawahiri’s recent statements have emphasized the need for extremely small groups and preferably lone individuals who have self-radicalized on the basis of the kind of propaganda relentlessly issued by Awlaki through the Internet.

Zawahiri has insisted that Western al Qaeda sympathizers should operate in the greatest secrecy, preferably alone, because communications invariably lead to discovery and the collapse of terrorist plots. Most would-be “jihadists” in the West are failing to heed such advice. They are also, typically, focusing on military targets that are difficult to attack, rather than “soft targets” such as civilian areas. This tactic is largely proving to be a failure because few Western Muslims are interested in violence. And in the rare cases that they are, they have generally disregarded Zawahiri’s admonitions and have been apprehended before launching successful attacks.

However, in at least one dreadful instance, Awlaki’s propaganda helped inspire and direct a major and successful act of terrorism on American soil: the Fort Hood massacre conducted by Major Nidal Hasan. Awlaki was apparently in e-mail contact with Hasan before he embarked on his murderous rampage, and Awlaki’s insidious propaganda plainly helped inspire that outrage. Awlaki has also been linked to a plot to ship explosives in printer cartridges on commercial airliners bound for the United States, as well as to the Nigerian “underwear bomber” who failed to bring down a commercial airliner over Detroit. Neither of those plots succeeded, but both almost did.

Second, Awlaki was an American born in New Mexico and a former senior cleric at a large and important mosque just outside Washington, DC. This has been exhibit A in the claims of professional Islamophobes and anti-Arab racists that the American-Muslim community poses a significant threat to the rest of American society. Awlaki’s activities, even if they are seen mainly as “speech acts,” posed a direct and very serious threat to the wellbeing of Arab- and Muslim- Americans generally because of his identity and virulent extremism.

American officials have said that the simultaneous death of another American al Qaeda extremist, Samir Khan, who was editor of the group’s English-language propaganda publication Inspire, was a bonus and that Awlaki was the main target. However, Khan’s loss may be an even bigger blow from a practical point of view to al Qaeda, which has lost someone key in radicalizing Western Muslims.

But Khan was little-known in the United States, while Awlaki was a malignant cancer on the reputation of Arab- and Muslim-Americans. He was also frequently cited by those who would stigmatize these communities as a potentially dangerous fifth column requiring discriminatory special treatment from the government.

The bottom line is that Awlaki preached that all Americans, of whatever origin, were fair game and should be killed at every possible opportunity. That, of course, includes Arab- and Muslim-Americans. So Awlaki not only threatened the reputation of these communities, but also potentially their members as well. This man wanted us all dead, so eliminating him was, quintessentially, an act of self-defense.

There are real and important constitutional issues and due process concerns about this assassination, and they will have to be debated in the coming months. However, due process arguments need to take into consideration the practical implausibility of the capture and trial of these individuals, what such an effort would have entailed, and the real options the US government faced in dealing with them.

These concerns notwithstanding, Arab- and Muslim-Americans should welcome the elimination of a man who posed a real and serious threat to their standing and, indeed, their very lives.