Barack Obama’s graduation speech at West Point Academy last week said much about the way the US may intend to proceed in the Middle East.
Mr Obama’s vision of force as a last resort, terrorism as the primary threat and a strikingly narrow definition of American interests does seem to sound a new tone, albeit one that elaborates on his long-standing foreign policy approach. Those most persuaded by the speech note that it’s strongly in line with American public opinion and commensurate with the US role in a world that is no longer strictly or simply monopolar.
Perhaps Richard Nixon’s landmark Lakeside Speech at the Bohemian Grove in July 1967 is an apt analogue. At this confidential meeting, Nixon first floated the logic that became the “Nixon doctrine”: that both economically and strategically the US could no longer “fight others’ wars for them.” It would provide support, funding and weapons to allies and clients, but there would be no repetition of Korea or, once it was concluded, Vietnam.
This vision held for decades. Even the First Gulf War was more of an anomaly than a repudiation of it. It was only the invasion of Iraq in 2003 that fully broke with Nixon’s Lakeside logic. And it is precisely the folly of the Iraq war, and the mishandling of the Afghan one, that most fully informed Mr Obama’s new conceptualisation, summed up in an analogy about the dangers of people with hammers seeing nails everywhere. Mr Obama, though, seemed to go even further than Nixon had in rethinking the American worldview. Arguably this is because the US is now operating even more among economic and political, if not military, equals than it was several decades ago. But his approach has significant implications for US policy in the Middle East, for its regional allies and for the area’s most volatile issues.
Mr Obama did not mention the problem of Palestine at all. This might be seen as curious, given that even a few months ago it continued to rank among his administration’s top foreign policy priorities. Nonetheless, the president has expressed scepticism in interviews with David Remnick of the New Yorker and Jeffrey Goldberg of Bloomberg about the prospects for diplomatic progress between Israel and the Palestinians. And this is hardly the first significant recent speech in which Mr Obama has avoided the topic altogether.
Still, that a major US presidential foreign policy address could go forward without even an implicit reference to the conflict and the occupation can only be alarming for Palestinians. And it should worry Israelis as well.
Palestinians have seen their issue receding from not only the world stage, but the regional agenda. Former prime minister Salam Fayyad was, perhaps, most forthright in ringing alarm bells about this towards the end of his term in office. It seems that secretary of state John Kerry, who has been courageous and resolute in pursuing the issue, may not have given up entirely. But when, and how, he intends to revisit it, is not clear. For the meanwhile, the policy appears to be to allow the parties to “stew in their own juices.”
The problem is that such a recipe will not have its desired effect if the experience feels more like a gentle candying than boiling in oil. And political leaders on both sides, particularly in Israel, may find the hiatus a relief. Palestinians have found an alternative in the national reunification project, which so far has not resulted in a profoundly negative response, even from Israel. Yet, the price that will ultimately be paid has yet to be reckoned.
The Israeli government and right-wing are probably very comfortable with the current hiatus. But if they were listening carefully to Mr Obama’s address, they should think twice. Not only does “benign neglect” of Palestine almost always end badly for everyone involved, reduced American interest in the Middle East in general, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in particular, does not suggest a bright future for Israel’s strategic position.
Indeed, the one Middle Eastern issue that seems to have genuinely captured the president’s sustained attention from the outset of his second term is Iran. Looking for some accommodation with Tehran is perfectly consistent with the rest of his stated worldview. A limited understanding preventing a confrontation over nuclear issues may indeed be achievable. But a broader rapprochement is unlikely to be attempted, and, if it were, almost certainly would create more problems than it would resolve.
Mr Obama had been expected to announce a much more robust engagement with Syrian rebels, including US training. He didn’t. That, too, may reflect both an Iran-centric agenda – with Syria policy seen as essentially a subset of that – and the generalised reduction in American power projection he described.
Syria may indicate where Mr Obama is going well beyond where Nixon had. Not only will the United States not fight others’ wars for them. Now, perhaps it might be increasingly less inclined to offer them as much support either. Everyone in the Middle East, Israelis included, should think seriously about the long-term implications of that, if this is indeed what Mr Obama was implying and if, in fact, it presages a sustained new era in American foreign policy.
Monthly Archives: May 2014
Don’t squander the Pope’s pro-Palestinian message
Palestinians should ensure the world long remembers images of Pope Francis’s recent visit
Cynics have dismissed Pope Francis’s visit to the Holy Land as a largely meaningless gesture by a religious figure that will change nothing on the ground and therefore has little, if any, significance. Idealists, on the other hand, have celebrated some of the implicit messaging as a turning point for peace, especially from a Palestinian point of view.
The truth lies somewhere in the middle. The Pope’s trip doesn’t actually transform the basic situation on the ground. But Pope Francis has, in a message aimed directly at the Israeli government and public, rather dramatically underscored the international expectation that there must and will be a Palestinian state.
His trip was characterized by competing images and recognitions of the iconography of the national narratives of both sides. But, because there isn’t a balance between the parties, there also wasn’t a balance in the significance of the images that will linger from his trip.
The Pope dutifully laid a wreath at the tomb of the founder of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, and visited Israel’s Holocaust Memorial and a memorial for victims of terrorism. These are fairly standard diplomatic gestures, though of course they take on new significance when done by the head of the Roman Catholic Church. Yet none of them should cause Palestinians any particular discomfort.
The same cannot be said for Francis’s gestures toward Palestinians. He called explicitly for recognition of what he described as “the State of Palestine.” He singled out the issue of Palestinian prisoners, which is not only dear to the heart of virtually every Palestinian family, but was also a major factor in the breakdown of recent Palestinian-Israeli negotiations.
And, most dramatically, the Pope made an unscheduled prayer stop at Israel’s separation barrier, the hideous, gigantic wall that snakes through the occupied West Bank. The most lingering image of his trip will undoubtedly be Pope Francis quietly pressing his head against one of the ugliest monuments to conflict in the world and silently praying. He did not say what he was praying for or about, but the imagery was powerful and unmistakable.
This was not lost on Israelis. There was an outcry from many on the Israeli right, and the Israeli government said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had tried to explain to the Pope that Israel believes the wall has been a great deterrent to Palestinian terrorism. That argument is belied by numerous revelations that the route of the wall has been “political” as well as strategic, and it begs the question of why Israel, if it wants a wall, doesn’t build it on its own territory but instead in areas under its occupation.
Many Israelis and their allies were reduced to blustering about aspects of the graffiti near that part of the wall where Pope Francis stopped, so dramatically, to pray. This, of course, is another effort to change the subject, which will be essential for Israel and its friends every time international attention focuses on the wall. But no one is going to remember the graffiti that the Pope almost certainly neither knew nor cared about. Everyone is going to remember the image of him stopping and praying at a structure that the Israeli government hopes all outsiders will simply pretend either doesn’t exist or somehow isn’t a gigantic monument to the cruelty of occupation.
There was a final message on the Pope’s parting. Francis invited Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas and Israeli President Shimon Peres to come to Rome to pray with him for peace in coming weeks. He did not invite Mr. Netanyahu. This was not a “snub,” the Vatican was quick to claim, it’s just that the Pope has a particular regard for Mr. Peres, and so he invited him.
Maybe. But, again, the optics send a fairly clear message, and not one that endorses the current policies of the present Israeli government. Indeed, the implicit critique is unmistakable.
Nobody expects that prayer meeting to produce any diplomatic progress, let alone a breakthrough, particularly without Mr. Netanyahu’s presence. And the criticism that Pope Francis’s Middle East trip won’t change any realities on the ground is true, despite its numerous striking gestures in favor of Palestinian claims and aspirations.
But the “all or nothing” attitude that many Palestinians and their supporters take toward international diplomacy and politics has been, and remains, debilitating. Francis’ gestures were highly significant and meaningful. They should be pocketed, and referred to time and again.
Too often Palestinians and their allies squander diplomatic gains by dismissing important rhetorical or symbolic gestures in their direction as insufficient because they do not immediately or independently resolve any of the determinative realities on the ground. “Empty words” is a typical response. At the same time, they are quick to assign enormous significance to, and raise a hue and cry about, words that undermine their basic interests, according them even more importance than they often deserve.
Words matter, and words of support are crucial to the success of any international and diplomatic project. Palestinians just got an enormous boost from Pope Francis, who underlined – particularly for the Israelis – the strong international expectation that there will indeed be a state of Palestine in the foreseeable future. Palestinians would be well advised to embrace that message and not to allow the Pope’s visit, and its striking iconography of peace and an end to occupation, to be forgotten soon.
As Al Maliki struggles to find support, Kurds seek an exit
Although his party won the most seats in the recent Iraqi parliamentary election, it’s not easy to see how Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki can form a new governing coalition. And while attention is focused on developments in Baghdad, particularly the dynamics of a bitter inter-Shiite power struggle, events in the Kurdish north may have a more significant long-term impact.
Mr Al Maliki’s coalition has 95 seats, but 165 votes are needed to secure a majority. Where the other 7o are going to come from is distinctly unclear as Mr Al Maliki faces stiff opposition, not only from Kurdish and Sunni parties, but also from within the Shiite community.
To form a governing alliance with the Islamic Supreme Council in Iraq and the Sadrist Ahrar group – which are working in close cooperation with each other and could add 65 of the required extra votes, thereby bringing Mr Al Maliki in easy reach of a majority – the current prime minister would have to make some very significant concessions. His Shiite rivals are reportedly demanding the re-establishment of the defunct National Alliance, and in effect conditioning their cooperation with him on a relationship of equality in the government.
The trouble for Mr Al Maliki, though, is that his increasing political vulnerability appears to have created a zero-sum equation with competing Shiite groups. They resent him and sense an opportunity to cut him down to size. However, they, too, face the same dilemma: how to get to a 165 majority with even fewer seats than he has?
Mr Al Maliki knew this all along, and has been hoping to build a new governing coalition around an alliance with Kurdish parties, in particular the president of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Masoud Barzani. Mr Barzani has, in recent years, been emerging as not only the key Kurdish leader in Iraq, but regionally as well. And when it comes to Mr Al Maliki, he is playing distinctly hard to get. Indeed, both sides in the Iraqi Shiite divide are courting Kurdish support against each other.
In a recent visit to London designed to bolster Mr Barzani’s international credentials – and therefore, by implication, the KRG’s global diplomatic profile and prospects for eventual independence – the Kurdish leader launched a blistering attack on Mr Al Maliki. “The authorities in Baghdad want to control everything,” Mr Barzani complained. “It is not acceptable to us. We want to be partners; we don’t want to be subjects.” He described Mr Al Maliki’s governing style as “totalitarianism”. Mr Barzani even threatened to “boycott everything” to do with national governance in Iraq.
Erbil has several significant grievances against Baghdad in general and Mr Al Maliki in particular. The Kurds feel let down by Mr Al Maliki on the resolution of “disputed territories” especially the flashpoint city of Kirkuk. Along with many Iraqi Sunnis, Kurds have also been highly critical of the government crackdown in Anbar province.
But disputes over oil contracts and revenue-sharing are almost certainly the greatest fault line. With negotiations over a new mechanism for managing the KRG’s energy resources and 17 per cent share of Iraq’s national income at a total impasse, Baghdad has effectively frozen the capital transfers on which Erbil’s budget is deeply dependent. An enraged Mr Barzani said the withholding of this money is “as bad as the gassing of Halabja [by Saddam Hussein] – if not worse”.
Kurdish deeds have been even stronger than this hyperbolic rhetoric. Throughout 2013, the KRG worked with the Turkish government and companies in a series of unilateral agreements and contracts that theoretically required, but did not receive, the approval of the authorities in Baghdad. And last week the Iraqi Kurds began independently exporting petroleum through Turkey’s Ceyhan port via a makeshift pipeline that became practically operational last December.
Both sides accuse each other of violating the law and the constitution through these actions. But the Kurds are doing more than simply making a point. Now that they have crossed the Rubicon of unilateral, independent oil marketing and exporting, there’s likely to be no turning back, no matter what political and financial agreements are reached with Arab Iraqi leaders in Baghdad. This, of course, is why Erbil waited half a year after it became technically possible before taking this momentous step.
Mr Al Maliki’s best bet for staying in the premiership may actually be striking a deal with Kurdish leaders and enough Sunni politicians to form a majority in parliament. But that potential coalition is also theoretically available to his Shiite rivals, and it’s not clear which of them may be able to make a more effective and compelling case to these key constituencies. And, despite the profound antagonism between them, it’s still possible that Iraqi Shiites might find a formula that allows them to unite in a coalition to form a new government.
But whatever happens in Baghdad, by beginning to unilaterally market and export its own oil resources without the consultation or approval of other Iraqis, the KRG just took another major step towards independence. When he was asked about the prospect of Kurdish independent statehood during his UK trip, Mr Barzani did not mince words.
After bitterly complaining about Baghdad’s and Mr Al Maliki’s behaviour, he bluntly said: “We are going to have a referendum and ask our people.” It would be folly to dismiss these stated Kurdish intentions as bluster or brinkmanship.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this commentary incorrectly sited 174 as a majority in the new Iraqi parliament. It is here corrected to 165,
Attacks on dissenting journalists show how scared Hezbollah really is
https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/
The vicious lies about NOW editor Hanin Ghaddar are a symptom of Hezbollah’s panic
I suppose it’s completely pointless to expect gangsters to have any regard for free speech, or, for that matter, the truth. After all, their stock in trade is brute force. It’s always set up on a sliding scale: first comes “friendly advice,” then a “word to the wise” warning. Then the bullying. Then blatant threats. And the logical culmination is some sort of physical attack. Nowhere has this progressive logic of the political hoodlum been in greater evidence than in Lebanon in recent decades.
So when a nationally- and internationally-noted Lebanese journalist has clearly been dragged into the bullying and borderline blatant threat stage of attack by thugs and their henchmen in the public press, it’s essential to raise the loudest possible outcry. The only reasonable collective response is: back off and don’t you dare think about going a step further.
As it happens, Hanin Ghaddar, managing editor of this website, is facing precisely such a campaign of threats and intimidation by Hezbollah, its Lebanese allies, and the hacks and propagandists they employ. Hezbollah front or fellow traveler publications like Al-Akhbar, Al-Manar, and Tayyar all piled onto the lies that she had broken Lebanese law by appearing with Israeli officials at a conference in Washington.
The record is clear: she did no such thing. On the contrary, she stipulated that the conference she attended was structured to enable her to scrupulously abide by Lebanese law. This is confirmed by the hosting organization, all attendees, and the published schedule.
So Hanin is completely innocent of the charges leveled against her. But let’s imagine, counter-factually, that she had actually shared a stage with an Israeli. That might’ve been a violation of Lebanese law. But how would it have compared to the grossly unlawful conduct, on the daily basis, by Hezbollah and its allies?
What would that have been compared to blowing up former prime ministers in the middle of crowded streets? Assassinating journalists or rival politicians on a routine basis? Maintaining a large, well-supplied, and foreign-funded and -dominated private army? Dragging Lebanon into a devastating and pointless war with Israel in 2006?
Or how about Hezbollah’s unilateral intervention in the Syrian conflict, in direct contravention of the Baabda Declaration? And what have they done in Syria except, in effect, help ‘Amo Bashar wipe out scores of thousands of his own people, and drop sarin gas, barrel bombs, and, most recently, chlorine weapons on innocent Syrians?
The idea of such people and their propagandists concocting a campaign of vitriol and hatred against someone based on false accusations of having spoken on a stage with an Israeli, given their own conduct, is the height of effrontery. They even sank to the level of having some of her relatives issue public “denunciations” of her, a familiar tactic Hezbollah has used in the past to try to intimidate Lebanese Shiites who don’t toe the party line.
There’s no doubt why Ghaddar is being targeted so viciously. Hezbollah is sinking into a profound crisis in Lebanon generally, and within the Shiite community in particular, because of its disastrous intervention in Syria. The organization is finding it very difficult to explain to ordinary Lebanese Shiites why their sons should be dying for towns they’ve never heard of, and for a vicious dictator who has nothing to do with their daily lives.
Everything Hezbollah ever claimed about why other Lebanese, including Shiites, should find it somehow acceptable that the organization maintains a huge private army and a foreign policy that has allowed them to drag the country into calamitous conflicts with both of its immediate neighbors has been totally exposed in recent years for the lies they are. Ostensibly Hezbollah’s state-within-a-state is for “resistance” and to protect Lebanon from Israel. In reality, of course, its weapons are used mainly to enforce its domestic political agenda on other Lebanese, and in the service of its Iranian and Syrian patrons, most notably through the intervention in the Syrian conflict.
This is becoming increasingly obvious to even the most credulous of Lebanese. Hezbollah therefore feels particularly vulnerable. Cue the attack on Ghaddar, along with other vicious efforts to fend off its critics, particularly within the Shiite community. There has been a significant push-back in Lebanon against the attacks on her, but so far it’s insufficient.
And what of the media organizations that have led the charge against her? Well, the odious Ibrahim al-Amin, editor-in-chief of Al-Akhbar, has been accused of obstruction of justice for refusing to appear at a hearing of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon investigating the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. Amin is the same charmer who recently opined that the suffering of the Palestinian refugees in the Yarmouk refugee camp outside Damascus was entirely the fault of the refugees themselves.
Al-Akhbar also regularly features the gurglings of one Assad AbuKhalil, who “teaches” unfortunate students at a school called California State University, Stanislaus (no, I’ve never heard of it either). AbuKhalil is quick to condemn anyone and everyone of being a traitor, Zionist, imperialist stooge, or lackey, and every other epithet imaginable.
Yet it was recently revealed that, some years ago, the US Central Intelligence Agency paid him to do something. He issued a denial, in which he asserted that he had never been an employee of the CIA. One plausible explanation, given what’s known and what can be inferred from his own statements, is that some while back the CIA may have paid him to give one or two unclassified briefings. There is no reason to be embarrassed about that, except given what he and his newspaper would have said about anybody else who had done that makes admitting a simple and otherwise banal and straightforward truth quite impossible.
AbuKhalil threatened to sue everyone in sight, but of course he didn’t. And he won’t. Because he would have to submit to discovery and there may be something there, even though no one thinks he was a staff employee of the CIA. But given the attitudes he and Al-Akhbar peddle, is this not the very height of hypocrisy? These are the people who put themselves in the vanguard of the attack on Hanin Ghaddar for giving a public talk at an established Washington think tank on a serious topic, and carefully arranging things to remain within the confines of Lebanese law?
So everybody involved in this campaign of bullying and intimidation against Ghaddar should be on notice. First, she has an extensive national and international base of support. The world is watching. Second, she has bravely vowed to continue her journalism and commentary undaunted by these outrageous scare tactics and abuses. Third, those who are attacking Ghaddar – who did not in fact violate any laws or norms – are shills for mobsters and murderers of the first order, who are guilty of some of the worst crimes imaginable.
And fourth, and most importantly, it’s obvious that this entire outrageous attack on Ghaddar is prompted by a sense of desperation on the part of Hezbollah and its lackeys, and an intensified impulse to try to squash any dissent within the Shiite community. That’s because such dissent is growing, and the reputation of the organization, even in its main constituency, is rocked to the core for dragging the Lebanese Shiites, and the rest of the country, into by its reckless intervention in Syria.
Hezbollah is clearly scared, and with good reason. The cowardly bullying of an independent-minded and serious journalist – who, thankfully, refuses to be intimidated – could not provide a clearer sign of incipient panic in the self-appointed “Party of God.” So, back off and don’t you dare think about going a step further.
Ibishblog Interview: Richard Byrne on Pseudo Neros and his new Glam Musical
My friend Richard Byrne, author of Burn your Books, has a new play, Nero/Pseudo being performed by the WSC Avant Bard at The Shop at Fort Fringe in Washington DC. After watching Friday night’s performance, I sat down with him for the following conversation in which he discusses his “glam rock musical” about the first and most successful of the imposters who pretended to be the Emperor Nero after his death.
Ibishblog: Let’s begin with the title, which is not Pseudo-Nero but Nero/Pseudo. And the subtitle is “Imposters Rule” which seems to me to be intimately connected to the same idea, if I’m not mistaken.
Richard Byrne: The subheader was one of our marketing tools. But that’s very much one of the things that the play is about.
Ibishblog: Okay, so what are the principal themes of the play? The basic conceit is that in Greece, a little bit remote from Rome, as with the rest of the Empire, people can’t quite believe that Nero is dead and the end of the Empire, or at least the old Augustinian empire, is at hand. The Augustinian system is gone and they can’t quite believe it. And so a guy shows up, or is discovered, and is either willing or compelled to pretend to be Nero for a time. That’s the fundamental conceit. But you’ve done it in the form of a glam rock musical. But let’s begin with the question, why did you want to write about the most successful of the pseudo-Neros?
Richard Byrne: It began when I read that little digression in Tacitus, which is the main source of information about this and which was so startling. It was profoundly jarring and I felt drawn to it immediately. This was the kind of thing that happens when there is a tremendous rupture in the system and things that normally wouldn’t happen at all are not just happening, but are normal. And that appealed to me profoundly, so I almost immediately started making notes about it and dove into it, researching it. And it was interesting to me too in that there have been a lot of portrayals of Nero, and in fact even recently there have been some theater pieces about Nero and about the family drama of Nero. Another thing that appealed to me is, how do you get at Nero without having someone try to portray Nero as such. And that challenge really appealed to me too.
Ibishblog: Well, that’s really interesting, because you actually do stage the family drama with Agrippina and Poppaea, and all that legendary horrible family drama, as a play within a play with masks. But it’s a mocking and satirical version of it. You’re making fun of it.
Richard Byrne: Yes, it’s sort of a “Behind the Music” of Nero. And that’s what I wanted to do with it. It’s such an improbable and, on some level, a profoundly oppressive story. The carnage is just so intense in the story of Nero, his whole rise to power and then his maintenance of power. And, you know, the other thing that appealed to me was that you get a sense from the historians that Nero was always being acted upon, as opposed to acting directly; that he was capricious and you didn’t want to be in his immediate orbit, but that this was not a political player in any way, shape or form. The real politics of the Empire were happening outside his orbit and people were just sort of trying to keep him in some sort of lane, and yet he was persistently veering out of his lane.
Ibishblog: Okay, so Nero was like Mao Zedong between the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution? An icon who was basically being ignored?
Richard Byrne: Exactly! There’s a lot of that in Nero.
Ibishblog: But I guess he didn’t have Mao’s political genius to destabilize and overthrow the whole system and then take it over again from within.
Richard Byrne: No, he kind of had someone else do it for him. And why that is a particularly interesting comparison is that within Mao’s personal orbit during that time you could be destroyed very easily.
Ibishblog: Many of them were.
Richard Byrne: Right, but the larger events were happening sort of outside the room at some level.
Ibishblog: Well, Mao could only get to Peng Zhen, and then one by one all the others, culminating in Liu Shaoqi, through the streets. He couldn’t get at them, especially Liu, just through committees.
Richard Byrne: It is really interesting is that that model perpetuates itself a lot, of being very personally powerful but then the larger ripples are happening somewhere else, inside rooms and meetings that you’re not really in. It’s interesting.
Ibishblog: In a sense Nero/Pseudo is about “imposters rule,” but it also might’ve been called Nero, The Sequel. What I want to sort of get at is that you frame it in terms of a set of dynamics that emerge during a time of rupture, but also it’s very much reflective of a kind of static, frozen contemporary Hollywood culture where movies are expensive to make, and really almost the only way to pitch a movie, or play even now, is nostalgia. Tell the money people they’re going to get their cash back because people will attend due to familiarity. Or it has to be explained in terms of “this movie meets this other movie meets a third movie,” or it’s got to be based on a TV show or comic book that people grow up with or something. So what’s the relationship, if any, to this in Nero/Pseudo, or is it a very different kind of repetition compulsion?
Richard Byrne: No, I think that’s right, and it’s reflected in the history of that time. The Julio-Claudian empire was doomed. It was not going to last. The question is what was ultimately going to kill it. And what’s interesting historically is that the first pseudo-Nero was such a reflective phenomenon. What happened historically was that Nero was out, and then a more responsible military guy came in, but he didn’t last 3 months before they brought in Nero’s best friend to the throne. And then Nero’s best friend ended up in a miserable Civil War that bled the Empire. And then Vespasian basically reasserted order in a different way.
What was interesting was that the first pseudo-Nero had ripples way beyond his own brief misadventure because this first pseudo-Nero was seized upon by the Jewish and Christian apocalyptic writers. The whole notion that Nero could die and then return was, well, basically the Book of Revelation on some level.
Ibishblog: Or the much older myths of all the dying and resurrected gods.
Richard Byrne: Exactly, it also plays into all of those older myths, so it was at once familiar and very disruptive, and it had immense ripple effects. Which is why again, as I started researching and wanting to write it, this was one of the things that drew it to me most powerfully. It was clearly a very desperate and misbegotten episode, but it had all of these ripples in the culture that continue, well, until now. It was a very powerful, weird thing.
Ibishblog: So the present ripples include monotheistic apocalyptic millennialist thought?
Richard Byrne: I think there’s a direct link from the sort of thing to David Koresh or directly to all the Elvis sightings. There’s all sorts of these things.
Ibishblog: Or the “bin Laden isn’t really dead” phenomenon because, yeah, we need to see the body. Show us the body! “Where is your birth certificate, President Obama?” This business of, “I won’t believe it even if I see it.” It’s that old trope of Groucho, “who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?”
Richard Byrne: I think when you’re not in it, you know, when you’re not soaking in it, it seems gullible. But the power structure and the need to buy into the power structure and maintain it is very, very powerful and it can induce what we would see objectively as gullibility. I don’t tend to reach for Freud too quickly, but it is a big concern in his writing: how do these things perpetuate themselves through time. How do these conflicts, desires and needs for structure, order etc. perpetuate themselves over time? That’s what the play’s getting at too.
Ibishblog: And so obviously that has a lot of contemporary resonance.
Richard Byrne: Definitely!
Ibishblog: So it began as a play, and then became a play with songs, and then it finally developed into a full-blown glam rock musical? Why a musical, apart from the fact that Nero was a “rock star” God-Emperor? Or is that basically it?
Richard Byrne: Honestly, I think it’s a play with music. It’s definitely flouting, and then tweaking, and at some points wreaking some havoc, with the traditional musical. But I basically call it a play with music.
Ibishblog: Here’s what it looks like from the audience: it looks like a play and a concert that oscillate back-and-forth.
Richard Byrne: Yeah and I think it’s very much what I wanted it to be and what it needed to be, because if we were going to go back a little bit to that family drama of Nero, I don’t think that that’s something that lends itself to anything interesting musically or emotionally. What’s interesting is how does the performative aspect of his rule play on the audience? What is it trying to do? How do people use it or not use it? Now that, for me, was interesting. And just knowing that he had written this epic poem about the fall of Troy, I wanted to use that.
Ibishblog: Is it true that those passages about Priam and such appear mainly at the end, because that’s how it seemed to me?
Richard Byrne: There are only three lines of it that actually survived. And they are towards the end. And again, that’s another thing that just kind of blossomed in my head, because this was probably the most famous poet of his age, and yet only three lines of his have survived. And why? Of course you can be the most famous poet of your time and still be horrible. It seems to have been doggerel on some level. Or worse than doggerel. I mean, when you read people writing about Nero there is a sense that he was competent, but not distinguished. And that it took him a hell of a lot of practice even to be competent. So, that again suggests that there was probably somebody in a monastery who thought Nero was a monster and just burned all his writings instead of transcribing them for us. And that’s a really interesting thing too.
Ibishblog: Okay, so we’ve got the musical, which is a concert playing merry havoc with the form, but specifically it’s very glam. Why?
Richard Byrne: I just thought that was the music that best reflected it. On some level it was a process of elimination, because Nero is not punk at all, and Nero is not really acid rock or anything like that. There are a lot of genres that aren’t bombastic and narcissistic enough to really lend themselves to a Neronian concert. Glam really does.
Ibishblog: Maybe there are some that are too much so, like prog? That should be bombastic enough, but maybe too much?
Richard Byrne: Yes, but also too musically subtle.
Ibishblog: Too cerebral?
Richard Byrne: Yes, too cerebral. It can’t really cow an audience.
Ibishblog: So you needed a genre that’s glamorous, bombastic and narcissistic and hard-driving but also very simple, and glam fit the bill perfectly.
Richard Byrne: Yes, exactly, that’s it. That’s why it’s perfect.
Ibishblog: And glam is also outrageous, and Nero was outrageous and flamboyant.
Richard Byrne: Yeah, and I think there is a lot of debate as to how exactly gender bending or whatever he was. But it’s very clear that he did marry this boy who looked like Poppaea. There’s a lot of debate about the other thing about him marrying his freedman, and whether that was just sort of vile gossip or whether that was part of a initiation rite into a specific cult. There’s just a lot of question about how ambisexual he was, but the historical residue about him is very ambisexual and pansexual and glam helps bring that out.
Ibishblog: Yes, you can build that into glam. There’s a lot of androgyny in glam, but also, which brings me to the other point about the genre, glam is such a broad category that there’s that saying, “it’s just rock ‘n roll with glitter.” Your musical cohort and co-author Jon Langford said it best when he pointed out, “glam covers everything from Brian Ferry to Slade.” So glam has a certain set of theatrical or modish stylistic touch points, but it doesn’t have a coherent set of musical stylistic identifiers, does it?
Richard Byrne: No, and that’s the thing, it was a mode. It was more than a fad, but it was a mode. And what’s interesting is to take just one very clear example of it. Mott the Hoople was essentially a pub rock band. They were a throwback. They were kind of an anachronistic band for 1969-70. They weren’t blazing any musical trails. But David Bowie just sort of, like Tinkerbell, gives them THE glam anthem.
Ibishblog: “All the Young Dudes.”
Richard Byrne: Exactly, and it’s the most “glam” song of all done by probably the least “glam” glam band of all. I find that very interesting. Roxy Music was much more consciously glam than Mott the Hoople. But what’s interesting is that you see groups like T. Rex and Slade who could not transcend the mode versus actual geniuses like Eno and Ferry and Bowie who transcended the mode: who went into the mode and then emerged from it again.
Ibishblog: Bowie came close to inventing it. T. Rex maybe comes first, but Bowie really solidifies what glam meant. By the time you get early Roxy Music, you’re getting at least 50% satire.
Richard Byrne: Yeah, but there’s just so much churning energy and intelligence that you know eventually it is going somewhere else.
Ibishblog: Completely, of course, you can already hear it in early Roxy Music because it’s such a bizarre mashup of styles and you’re talking about very intelligent people playing with everything they can dig out of everybody else’s dumpsters, usually making fun of it.
Richard Byrne: And take note of the way, especially after those first two Roxy Music records, how the third and fourth Roxy albums really run the gamut. There is everything there, from straight pub rock to prog rock. It’s all kind of muddled and mixed up. Like you say, it’s all there.
Ibishblog: I do think if you had to single out a specific glam band for maximal achievement artistically in that mode, it would have to be Roxy Music. With all due respect to Bowie, I think they went to a lot of different places a lot more quickly and moved beyond it really fast. Maybe they were seeing through it from the start. With Bowie, on the other hand, he simply leaves it behind.
Richard Byrne: He was bored with it, and he felt like ultimately it was both career defining and ending.
Ibishblog: It would’ve been.
Richard Byrne: It would have been, and he needed to reject it publicly and categorically.
Ibishblog: Probably the biggest difference is that he had more to say than anybody else, so he keeps on exploring, which is not quite true of Ferry. David Bowie’s the guy in that mix with the most ideas. Bowie and maybe Eno.
Richard Byrne: Ferry is comfortable now.
Ibishblog: With Bowie, you get the sense that he’ll never be comfortable. I mean he’s always going to be looking for the next thing, probably in his wheelchair.
Richard Byrne: So that’s why for me, glam was the most useful mode for this play.
Ibishblog: I have to say I think that it works spectacularly well, by the way. It’s something that makes no sense on paper, but the minute you walk into the theater, even before the play begins, as soon as the musician start playing you enter into that world very, very quickly and the glaminess of it all.
Richard Byrne: I have to give my applause to the director, Patrick Pearson, and the designers because they really did embrace the kind of anarchy and artistic anachronism that I was trying to foist on people and it really does work. They made it work, and I’m grateful to them for that.
Ibishblog: If there is a song that seems to define the mood, “Soul Love” seems to be a very strong presence.
Richard Byrne: Yes, and while I can’t speak for them, I think that when Jim Elkington and Jon Langford, who wrote the music, were looking for a way into the project that was helpful. Often you look for a touchtone first, that gives you an entry into a project. I think this was that for them. It’s a song that’s very recognizable from Ziggy Stardust, but it’s not one of the hits.
Ibishblog: Moving on from the glam stuff, at the end you have a remarkable piece of writing that’s beautifully delivered by your lead, Bradley Foster Smith, which is the decapitated head of the pseudo-Nero speaking in what would appear to be the voice of Nero himself. His voice certainly changes, and becomes contemptuous and angry and sounds embittered and imperial – whether of a monarch or a rock star. I find that passage, even though it comes at the end, to be a sort of the epicenter or the navel of the play. And most of the crucial ideas in the play, in my view, and correct me if I’m wrong, are expressed in that soliloquy. But the irony of the soliloquy is that it is in what would appear to be the voice of Nero, but coming out of the decapitated head of the pseudo-Nero, and so what is the audience to make of that, if you want to help us?
Richard Byrne: There are a couple of things, but I don’t want to tell you what to think. It’s not one thing. I tried to achieve a careful layering effect. I thought was very important that three things had to happen. One thing that had happened was that the two schemer characters of the play, the ones who make it all happen, had to see Nero for real. And I also felt that the audience needed to see Nero for real. The question is, how does that happen? And the ending is very much my attempt to, within the universe of the play, make that happen. And I do think it’s crucial, in a play about imposters, to have some nod to the real. Or at least to the author’s understanding of the real. I think the other thing that’s really important is that this was probably a very desperate and misbegotten misadventure, but it did have such powerful ripples and I wanted to acknowledge that. I felt responsible to the characters. I felt I needed to give them their due.
Ibishblog: Which character is getting his due here?
Richard Byrne: All of them. All of them are getting their due on some level. It helps to do a couple things. It gets the audience to a certain place. It recapitulates and underscores some of the earlier points. It brings the strands together. It serves a lot of functions, and the audience reaction to it has been really positive and I’m happy about that.
Ibishblog: Well, it’s a very thoughtful moment, I think without doubt the most powerful moment in the play, and anyone who thinks they’ve been watching a lark will be immediately disabused once that speech starts. I’d like to just push you a little bit more on the intersection between this ancient phenomenon and the quasi-contemporary, at least early 70s style, that you have put together here. What can we learn from this?
Richard Byrne: When you write something like this you want it to have layers, you want it to speak in different tongues, but with the unity within that difference. You want different voices that harmonize. Doing a play like this as a mere allegory on X is just not useful. I’m a little baffled by people who find it unclear. The spine of the play is an Emperor singing songs about the glory of elective war and conflagration as creative destruction as his acolytes are celebrating his divorce from the so-called reality-based community. There are definitely points of reference to our times.
Ibishblog: There is a hint of the “known unknowns” here?
Richard Byrne: There is definitely some of the “known unknowns” here, but I don’t want to give anyone answers. I really want people to use this collision of history and glam and politics and celebrity to just reflect a little bit on where we are, what do we clap for, and why do we engage or not engage with this very messy and often very narcissistic phenomenon of politics and celebrity and so forth.
Ibishblog: So what’s the future for Nero/Pseudo? This production cannot be the end of it! There is no way it’s just having this one run.
Richard Byrne: I’m talking with my musical collaborators and we will certainly be pursuing another production of it, and hopefully it will be as good as this one. I’m really proud of what we’ve done with it.
Ibishblog: You should be proud. I fully intend to see it again before it closes.
Anti-Semitism survey has the potential to mislead
Anti-Jewish rhetoric and the perception that Arabs are anti-Semitic is a blight on the contemporary Arab world, and poison for the Palestinian national movement. Palestinians must arrive at an agreement with Israel, and therefore have little hope of success if they are seen to proceed from an attitude of hatred.
That stipulated, the recent report on global anti-Semitism issued by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) – an international Jewish non-government organisation – is simultaneously illuminating and potentially misleading. Its findings are hardly surprising: it says there are high levels of anti-Semitism globally, and particularly among Palestinians and, to a lesser extent, other Arabs.
The methodology is revealing. The ADL pollsters asked a series of questions regarding Jewish power, conduct, international influence, and loyalty to Israel. In most countries, that’s probably a reasonable barometer of anti-Jewish sentiment, because it may indicate irrational suspicion of Jews and fear or exaggeration of their supposed influence.
However, for Palestinians who have lived under Israeli occupation since 1967 with no end in sight, such questions can’t and don’t mean the same thing as they do to populations in which Jews are a minority.
It’s absurd to ask Palestinians in the occupied territories about Jewish power, loyalty to Israel, influence in the United States, or placing their own ethnic interests first. After all, few Palestinians can remember a time when Israel did not control virtually every aspect of their lives, entirely in the interests of the Israeli military and Jewish settlers. Jewish settlers are privileged by the Israeli state at the expense of Palestinians in a manner that has no present-day analogue.
What answers could one rationally expect? The ripple effects of the occupation naturally flow throughout the Arab world. There is an additional wrinkle: in the Arab world the word “Jew” connotes “Israeli”, which in turn connotes the Israeli military or government.
It’s unlikely that most Palestinians being asked these questions would imagine ordinary Jewish people and families going about their daily business.
This is not to suggest the numbers are wrong or that there isn’t a dreadful, central problem for the Palestinians and Arabs to overcome. Until they do, the Palestinian ability to achieve their national goals will be badly hamstrung.
The ADL survey is potentially misleading in at least two other ways.
It did not, of course, measure Jewish or Israeli attitudes towards Arabs and Muslims, which are likely to be similarly negative if the existing survey results are any guide. Further, in many countries anti-Semitism is part of a broader constellation of chauvinism and xenophobia. In the West in particular, Jews and Muslims tend to be hated by precisely the same people in precisely the same way.
In France, other European states, and even the United States, the correlation between anti-Semitism and Islamophobia is instantaneously obvious both in its manifest and latent rhetorical content and in the perpetration of hate crimes directed against both communities by the same gangs of racists. Hatred of Muslims by others globally is unlikely to be significantly less of a problem than anti-Semitism.
Nonetheless, as Islamists have increasingly adopted classic European anti-Semitic tropes, there’s no question that anti-Semitism has been spreading among Arabs and Muslims. Some Arab-left nationalists, too, spread this poison. While they don’t have much of a political constituency, they continue to define much of the political correctness in the Arab world, with Islamists often mimicking their fundamental worldview.
All data suggest that hatred of Arabs and Muslims is also growing among Jewish Israelis and their allies around the world. What we are looking at, then, is not a decontextualised problem or a cause of the conflict. It is undeniably a consequence of the conflict.
The Zionist movement was not formed because European Jews hated Palestinians or Arabs. The Palestinian and Arab resistance to Zionism was not based on anti-Semitism, but anticolonialism, and their reaction would’ve been the same had the colonists been from Japan or Bolivia.
The most dangerous confusion surrounding the hatred between Arabs and Jews that has arisen over the past century is that it is a cause of the conflict and not an effect. Indeed, supporters of Israel, especially when they want to try to rationalise or justify the occupation, invariably speak in terms of a “culture of hate” or “terrorism” among Palestinians and other Arabs, of a refusal to accept the very concept of a Jewish state merely because of deeply ingrained anti-Semitism.
This gesture, which is the substitution of an effect for a cause, is, in fact, a familiar technique of classical rhetoric, a narrative device familiar from an ancient Greek form of metonymy known as metalepsis.
During the second intifada, at a debate at Harvard Business School, law professor Alan Dershowitz raised the “culture of hate” canard, trying to explain why there was a conflict without acknowledging the central, defining reality of the occupation. I pointed out that he was cynically substituting what was manifestly a predictable and inevitable effect of such a bitter and prolonged conflict for one of its causes.
“I guess I’m a metalepsist, then,” he quipped. I assured him that he was actually just an ordinary sophist.
Because hatred between Jews and Arabs is a direct consequence of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the occupation – and not anything deeply seated in Jewish or Arab culture or religious beliefs – the key to ending this hate is, of course, ending the occupation and the conflict.
Bassem Sabry: An appreciation
https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/commentaryanalysis/547105-bassem-sabry-an-appreciation
The untimely death of public intellectual Bassem Sabry is a blow to Egypt and the entire Arab world
One always hesitates to write a eulogy. It inevitably feels unspeakably tawdry, because nothing one can put into words can do justice to the person being remembered. Worse, it feels vaguely exploitative. It may not come across that way as a reader, but writing fondly about the departed often feels transgressive. It’s the same sickly feeling one would probably get by crashing an intimate family gathering.
Time, perhaps, ameliorates that feeling of transgression, which is probably why all of my remembrances of those who have passed away tend to come later than people would expect. I suppose I’m hoping that a “decent interval” will make the experience somehow feel less obnoxious.
I waited as long as I could before putting together my thoughts on Bassem Sabry, who passed away at the tragically young age of 31 last month. When I heard about his death, it was immediately clear to me that the Arab world in general, and Egypt in particular, had lost a major asset, someone who would certainly have made an extraordinary contribution in coming years.
Even at his young age, he had already made his mark. He was respected internationally as an activist and thinker of the first caliber. And he takes with him rare qualities that Egyptians and other Arabs have in disturbingly short supply. We simply cannot afford to lose people like him: we just don’t have enough of them.
First, he was an extraordinarily good person. Decent, right down to the core. There are a lot of people all over the world, including the Middle East, who are fundamentally good and decent. Probably most are.
But the unusual thing that Bassem was able to do was to be good and decent both in his politics as he conceptualized them, and in his dealings with those he disagreed with.
The outpouring of shock and raw emotion at his death from people on every side of a deeply divided Egyptian society is the most powerful testament. Radicals, liberals, Islamists, traditionalists, and others all expressed profound sorrow. It’s not that they all agreed with him; most of them didn’t. It’s that he had demonstrated an unusual willingness to treat them all with respect and consideration.
Bassem was a genuine liberal in the best sense of the term. He actually wanted a pluralistic society in which people with serious differences could openly and passionately disagree without being disagreeable. In the contemporary Arab world, Egypt included, there are very few people who are able to not only espouse that ideal but to demonstrate in practice how it looks. Bassem did exactly that. Through openness, patience, and a serious, practical commitment to the values of pluralism and tolerance, he was living out the principles of a decent society.
I regarded his work as crucial not only because I fundamentally agreed with his values, but even more so because, in my view, there was a powerful pedagogical element to the way he was conducting himself: modest and respectful, but unwavering on core ideals. This, his public engagement seemed to say, is how reasonable people ought to conduct themselves in a society in flux and under difficult circumstances. This is what it looks like.
What’s more, Bassem was brilliant in a region and a world that cannot spare its brilliant sons and daughters. He was initially one of a cadre of young Egyptian public intellectuals and bloggers who became known outside of their country in the course of the ouster of former President Hosni Mubarak. However, Sabry, at least in my own mind, established himself as particularly insightful when he was the first to predict, several months in advance, that Mohammed Morsi would be the next Egyptian president.
Bassem pieced together a straightforward puzzle, but one that had previously eluded everybody else. Khairat el-Shater would not be allowed to run on technicalities. The Muslim Brotherhood would nonetheless field a Freedom and Justice Party candidate. Morsi would almost certainly be that candidate, and would probably win. No sooner had he sketched out the scenario than the pieces began to fall into place, and exactly what he had anticipated happened.
But even if it hadn’t, because things can always change, it was a brilliant piece of political analysis. After that, I didn’t read Bassem occasionally: I read him religiously. And I had numerous Skype conversations and meetings with him, which I will always treasure. Particularly when discussing Egypt, he invariably managed to teach me something important.
His death was a tragic and untimely loss, not just for his friends and family, but for his country and the region. Bassem Sabry was a rare talent and a remarkable young man. Selfishly, and somewhat transgressively put, we simply do not have enough people of his caliber to spare them to the cruel caprices of fortune.
US-Egypt relationship still haunted by large divisions
Recent visits to the United States by Nabil Fahmy, the Egyptian foreign minister, and Amr Moussa, the former Arab League chief, illustrate how much work remains to be done to repair US-Egypt relations – and how uphill that battle is going to be.
Both men did their best to explain Egypt’s perspective to Washington audiences, and it’s hard to imagine any two Egyptians better suited to the task. But both faced enormous, almost overwhelming, scepticism from the American policy community and media, and neither made sufficient progress.
Public appearances by these two experienced diplomats drew questions that were not merely sceptical of their perspective but often veered into the hostile. Much of what they encountered was set against the backdrop of recent headlines, making their task all the more complex.
In particular, the two mass death sentences against alleged Muslim Brotherhood supporters were raised time and again.
Although both Mr Fahmy and Mr Moussa said the stories had been misreported, neither man provided a compelling alternative narrative that made their American interlocutors feel they had been profoundly misled.
The current approach appears to miss the mark in several ways.
First, it asks people to wait for the final verdicts without acknowledging that there is something extraordinary and improper about such preliminary mass death sentences.
It should at least be conceded that there is no history of such judicial conduct in Egypt, and that therefore there is a reasonable basis for anyone to express concern.
Messaging cannot simply be about style, but must address existing concerns as well. Not just Americans, but people around the world, especially those who care about Egypt, are concerned about what would seem to be at least one judge handing down unprecedented verdicts in exceptionally high-profile and profoundly sensitive and political cases.
Second, both men rightly emphasised the separation of powers, citing it as a reason why other branches of government cannot interfere with the judiciary.
This begs the question of why the judiciary itself isn’t acting to curb such excesses.
But more importantly, it opens the potential for an important argument. For, if this is a question of separation of powers and neither Mr Fahmy nor Mr Moussa is directly connected to the judiciary, then surely this buys space to legitimately question the conduct of another branch of government, which is responsible for and of itself.
In this instance, not only can one have it both ways, but one really ought to.
The minute separation of powers is invoked, it becomes entirely legitimate to question the conduct of a member of another branch, especially when that official is behaving in an unprecedented manner. Perhaps alarm might be overstated, but surprise and concern would easily fit into a political framework that emphasises the separation of powers and a distinction in government branches.
It’s possible that the political situation in Egypt makes it hard for even the most experienced and adroit of diplomats to publicly take such nuanced positions without facing a potential firestorm of criticism back home. But it’s likely that there is a way to make the case more effectively in Washington without alienating the mainstream in Cairo.
More importantly, such tactical messaging questions are subordinate to a much deeper problem with the strategy of Egyptian messaging aimed at Americans. And it’s a strategic problem that is consistently reflected in the approaches of many key American allies in the Arab world.
The primary takeaway from the Fahmy and Moussa trips must be that, while it is a welcome development to finally have senior Egyptian political figures making the rounds in Washington again, piecemeal or occasional messaging cannot successfully bridge the enormous gaps in perception that have emerged between Egyptians and Americans over the past year.
As many of the closest allies of the United States in the Arab world have been slow to understand, effective messaging in Washington is not conducted in crisis mode or when there are urgent, pressing questions. In that case it will always look like, and may to some extent even be, damage control. But very little headway can be made under such conditions.
Effective messaging requires constant effort, which is consistent and sustained, and that, counterintuitively, will be most effective when there is the least attention on it.
It is precisely during these times of apparent lull that real, sustainable understandings can be developed that are capable of withstanding serious jolts to the system.
And it is precisely in such a workaday environment that deeply-rooted and strategically essential partnerships, such as that between Cairo and Washington, can be reconstructed or repaired after a period of abnormal and unhealthy tensions. And, of course, it’s vital that the practitioners of such networking and advocacy aren’t hamstrung by, or expected to rationalise, indefensible realities.
There’s much the United States itself needs to do, because good relations with Egypt are undoubtedly an important American national interest.
But Egypt and its Arab allies should give serious attention to the slow and steady, low-key and high-impact, day in and day out messaging and relationship-building that will be required for Cairo’s perspective to receive a more sympathetic hearing in Washington.
Palestinian reconciliation deal is only the beginning
The recent “national unity” agreement between Hamas and Fatah has produced strong reactions in many quarters. But what actual impact it will have depends entirely on what parts, if any, are implemented, and how.
The groups agreed to form a transitional “government of national unity” in the next few weeks, hold national elections in the following six months and explore methods for Hamas to join the Palestine Liberation Organisation. This is extremely similar to previous agreements reached in Cairo and Doha, which were never implemented.
It is possible that, because of internal Palestinian politics and regional conditions, this time something might be done, although Hamas and Fatah actually agree on little more than the fact that they are all Palestinians.
The most straightforward part of the agreement – the formation of a “technocratic” government – was always theoretically achievable, and it could occur now.
It wouldn’t be entirely “non-party,” because Mahmoud Abbas would still head the Palestinian Authority, as well as the PLO. But it might be possible to select a group of unaffiliated “independents” to serve as ministers.
There are reasons to doubt whether even this can be achieved. The parties have not agreed on a prime minister, or even the general framework for selecting one. This first hurdle alone could prove a formidable obstacle.
Moreover, renewed tensions are becoming obvious. Fatah prisoners in Gaza have announced a hunger strike. And last week Hamas staged one of its largest demonstrations in Ramallah since 2007, a calculated provocation towards Fatah and the PA. The banns have been read, but the ceremony hasn’t taken place and yet the honeymoon already seems to have soured.
Nonetheless, if they find it necessary, the two sides could agree on a new cabinet in the coming weeks. But even if they did, the practical impact that would have on core realities is dubious indeed.
Palestinians have a long history of presidential authority, with the only truly empowered prime ministers being Mr Abbas himself during his brief tenure under Yasser Arafat, and, especially, Salam Fayyad.
The otherwise uninterrupted Palestinian presidential tradition would, if anything, only be strengthened if Mr Abbas continued to serve as President – and possibly prime minister as well – with a cabinet of non-party members.
With Mr Abbas still in the presidency, what would Hamas’s role in such a new government actually be? Apparently, mainly one of consent. But it’s hard to see how that, in itself, would do anything to change realities on the ground or Palestinian national policies. Even on paper it sounds like an entirely symbolic arrangement.
Yet two crucial players, Israel and the US Congress, may not see it that way.
Israel has already said that it will not negotiate with any “Hamas-backed” Palestinian government, although the exact meaning of that phrase is open to various interpretations. And Palestinians must be concerned about Israel’s ability to withhold their tax revenues. These funds constitute at least 40 per cent of the PA’s budget and mainly go to pay workers in the vast Palestinian public sector.
The PA is simply not fiscally viable without that revenue.
Some key Arab states do not appear to be particularly enthusiastic about this agreement, so a regional bailout doesn’t appear likely or sustainable as an alternative.
The Obama administration has said that any new Palestinian government must oppose violence, recognise Israel and abide by existing commitments. Mr Abbas has repeatedly stated those conditions will be met. Hamas has not contradicted him, though the group emphasises it still won’t recognise Israel.
But Israel may not accept these reasonable stipulations as sufficient. The US Congress might also cut, or even halt, American aid to the PA if Hamas is perceived to be a part of it, even informally. So, unless the formation of a new Palestinian government under this agreement is handled skilfully, it could yield only symbolic benefits while incurring real and very significant costs.
There are even greater obstacles facing the realisation of the other parts of the accord.
It’s hard to imagine elections being held, particularly given Hamas’s dreadful numbers in recent polls.
And Hamas continues to cling to rejectionist positions regarding Israel that make it impossible for it to join the PLO.
Most implausible is Hamas and the PA merging their security forces. And even if there was a reunification of uniformed Palestinian police and security officers, what about Hamas’ paramilitary force, the Qassam Brigades?
Real reconciliation requires a single national authority and armed force. The differences between the parties have not been significantly eased since the brief and unhappy period of political cohabitation ended in the violence of 2007. The necessary conditions for one side to decisively co-opt, defeat or marginalise the other do not yet exist.
Compromises are always possible, but even then the terms will inevitably favour one group over the other.
So this latest agreement almost certainly won’t, and probably couldn’t, really end the Palestinian national split. The only real questions are, will any aspect of this agreement be implemented, and, if so, at what cost?