• This is an anonymous site, which means it has no credibility or seriousness.
• Nonetheless, the fact that they have launched vicious an highly personal attacks on an exceptionally broad range of Arab-American groups and targets shows they are opposed to any effort, from any perspective, to purposefully engage with the rest of our society.
• This range of targets precisely mimics those of most anti-Arab and Islamophobic groups, raising serious questions about the motives of these anonymous bloggers.
• Everyone has to ask who these people are and what they are hiding.
• There is the further issue of who, if anyone, pays for this site in any way, even indirectly.
• No matter how marginal Ikhras no doubt is and will remain, these questions should now be asked, especially given the absurdly wide range of Arab and Muslim American targets of their hate speech.

Ikhras and its Arab-bashing agenda

The website “Ikhras" (“shut up,” or perhaps more accurately, “muzzle yourself,” in Arabic) claims to be Arab-American, but in fact is one of the most enthusiastically and unremittingly anti-Arab-American websites on the internet. The editors and authors almost always hide behind obviously faked names designed to obscure their real identities. From this hiding place they launch vicious and highly personalized attacks on virtually all prominent Arab and Muslim American organizations including AAI, CAIR, ADC, ATFP, ISNA and other national groups, and active individuals such as Azizah al-Hibri, Raghida Dergham, Jim Zogby, Ziad Asali, Suhail Khan, yours truly, Radwan Ziadeh, Dahlia Mogahed, Omar Baddar, Yahya Basha, Sami Al-Araji, Queen Noor, Eboo Patel, David Ramadan, Mona Eltahawy, Nihad Awad, Asra Nomani, Feisal Abdul Rauf, Ray Hanania, pageant winner Rimah Fakih, and comedian Dean Obeidallah (who, they claim, is nothing less than "the Father of All House Arabs," whatever that may mean). Most recently, they have been harassing another Arab-American comedian, Maysoon Zayid, on Twitter. In effect, therefore, it is nothing other than an anti-Arab hate speech site, the targets and basic content of which can only be a source of constant delight to the anti-Arab racists and Islamophobes who wish to exclude Arab and Muslim Americans from the US social, cultural and political scene and keep them marginalized and disempowered.

The individuals and organizations attacked by Ikhras obviously cover a huge range of political, social, ideological, religious and intellectual orientations. Indeed, they have only one thing in common: in their own way, each of them is trying to engage with the rest of our society, assert their rights as citizens and advance the interests of the Arab and Muslim American communities by becoming more involved in the American political system or cultural scene. These are all individuals or groups that take their status as Americans of Arab or Muslim heritage seriously at least to some extent, rather than pointlessly and self-defeatingly defining themselves as Arabs who happen to be living in the United States. Ikhras does occasionally praise a very small number of Arab Americans, but none at all who are engaged in any national organized efforts or purposeful engagement with American society, only those like Ali Abunimah and Assad AbuKhalil who pollute the blogosphere and social media with similar messages of deliberate self-marginalization and disempowerment and who also attack those who try to achieve anything constructive. It is not only an anti-Arab-American website, it's a proudly and categorically anti-American website. And it calls on all Arab Americans to adopt a vocally anti-American stance, as if we were not citizens of this country or somehow have no stake in its success.

Since its establishment, it has become clear that the conscious and deliberate purpose of Ikhras is to attack, ridicule, denigrate and insult any and every Arab or Muslim American who tries, from whatever perspective or approach, to engage the rest of American society rather than spitting at it, and to advance one version or another of their communities' interests. If Ikhras stands for anything coherent at all, it is the categorical rejection of the very notion of any kind of purposeful engagement with American society, from whatever vantage point and orientation. With astounding shamelessness, while hiding behind pseudonyms they have repeatedly called all or most of their targets "cowards." They also had the gall to dismiss four Egyptian protesters — one of whom, Jawad Nabulsi, was shot and lost an eye during the Cairo street protests — as "not revolutionaries," simply on the grounds that they attended an AAI function.

What are the anonymous writers at Ikhras hiding?

To the writers at Ikhras, I ask a simple and direct question: who are you and what are you hiding? What are you so afraid of? What calamity would occur if you actually signed your names to your own articles? You have gone to truly extravagant lengths to hide your identities not only online, but also by word of mouth, and to conceal your authorship. Why? Everybody else involved in these debates has no problem signing their own statements, yet you launch vicious, highly personalized and often repulsive broadsides, cowering behind the veil of anonymity. That you are cowards, and despicable cowards at that, has been clearly established by the way you have conducted yourselves. But what exactly is it that you are afraid of?

What great secret, or set of secrets, is there that would be so unmanageable if your identities were revealed? What level of hypocrisy, dishonesty, corruption or other indefensible facts would be exposed if you behaved like minimally dignified, decent people and signed your own names to these miserable screeds? By refusing to admit your authorship, you have secured a dishonorable advantage over everybody else in what is, or at least should (and otherwise would) be, a legitimate debate about how the Arabs and Muslims in the United States should (or, rather, from your point of view shouldn't) pursue their interests.

Everybody else takes a public position and has to live with the consequences. You, on the other hand, won't even take responsibility for your own words! It is impossible to have a debate with a stone wall of secrecy. This is certainly a mere side effect of your stance of calculated cowardice, for no doubt there are ugly, sticky secrets that must be whitewashed with this thin veneer of false names, or else you would not use them. But those you attack are, in effect, denied the right to reply since you deny them the right to know whom they are addressing. The right to confront one's accusers in public is not only a crucial legal right, it's also a basic tenet of civilized discourse, a concept with which you are clearly either totally unfamiliar or inimically hostile.

Doesn't this pattern of obsessive secrecy, anonymous and false accusations, and smearing every opponent — all under the cover of a false claim of Arab nationalist pride — remind everyone of the outrageous conduct of autocratic Arab regimes? Isn't this exactly how, for example, the government of Syria, to name only one of the more obvious examples, is presently conducting itself? And of course it is one of the many delicious ironies of the Ikhras website that its writers assert not only their right of free speech, but anonymous free speech that is frequently slanderous, and pose as crusading leftists and liberationists, while openly declaring it is their mission to demand, like faceless despots, other people's silence. There is no pretense here of opening, expanding or enriching a debate; merely a censorious, and indeed totalitarian mentality that only one point of view is legitimate and everybody else, no matter what perspective they are coming from, needs to be silenced by any means necessary.

Who is paying for Ikhras' orgy of Arab-bashing?

Behind the simple secrets, which may be personal, familial, professional or any number of other possibilities, lurks an even more interesting question: who is paying for all of this? There is a great deal of activity on that website, and a considerable amount of work put into creating, hosting and maintaining it. Content, no matter how shoddy, must be created and webpages and databases must be designed and maintained, and this takes considerable time and at least some money. It is extremely unlikely, although remotely possible, that the writers themselves pay for all of this out of pocket, meaning there is no sugar daddy behind Ikhras. It's possible, but highly unlikely. Someone is paying for this in one way or another. Who?

Even the highly implausible "all-volunteer" scenario raises a fascinating question: if by some remote contingency that's what each and every person – including web designers and maintainers – involved in Ikhras actually are, all must then have other work. Do they fear the consequences of the revelation of their identities to their day jobs? Some way or another, the money for this project, which is not cost free, is being found. Where does it come from? If they had any dignity at all, they would admit it. Ideally they would simply do what my colleagues at the American Task Force on Palestine have done, and post signed, independently audited, financial statements for every year of its existence on its own website. But since they hide their own names, telling the truth about who is paying for them to go on this orgy of Arab-bashing may be asking too much, even though their audience has a right and a need to be told.

I wish to pose a direct question on the matter of identity to my former co-author Ali Abunimah. From the start, I have seen what I believe are obvious hallmarks of your writing style, with which, of course, I am intimately familiar, as well as your mentality and values, smeared all over this website. I cannot know for a certainty whether you are involved with it or not, and if so in what capacity. But every single individual I know who has thought about the question at all believes you are involved with Ikhras in some way or other, and this includes both those who like you and those who do not. Ali, everyone is absolutely convinced that you play some kind of significant role in this website. The time has come for you to say openly, frankly and honestly what exactly your relationship with Ikhras is and has been. A straightforward answer is required, and if you maintain a silence on the matter or are coy, it will be the most clear-cut admission possible. To all others, I'd like to suggest that Mr. Abunimah should be asked this simple, straightforward question relentlessly on social media, in media appearances, and at public talks, until he gives a simple, straightforward, and satisfactory answer.

Questions for Ikhras readers, if they actually have any

I also have a few observations for the Ikhras readership, whoever it may be. Is it not obvious that an anonymous website that attacks virtually any and every prominent Arab-American without restraint and at a deeply personal level without revealing its true identity or motivation is, by definition, not only non-credible but also malignant? You may enjoy the car-crash spectacle of the reckless and indefensible public smearing of everyone trying to do something useful for the community, but honestly, how do you know this isn't in fact the voice of the Zionist Organization of America, or some offshoot of Pamela Geller's operation? (Old-timers will remember Mark Bruzonsky, the former Washington Representative of The World Jewish Congress, who used to run a website and email list called “Middle East Realities” that specialized in outbidding and denouncing all noted Arab and Muslim American organizations, activists and individuals, exactly as Ikhras does, and in much the same language.)

I'll grant that Ikhras is probably not actually an extreme right-wing Zionist operation, but how do you know? Its relentless Arab-bashing hate speech certainly attacks their main targets and plainly serves their purpose of keeping the Arab and Muslim Americans marginalized and disempowered. Doesn't it leave a bad taste in your mouth to be told all these categorically and unrelentingly nasty (and typically false) things about a vast array of individuals and organizations who are trying to make themselves useful from a huge variety of approaches and perspectives, but not to be told who is making these accusations? Don't you wonder who they actually are and what they have to hide? Don't you wonder what they're afraid of? Don't you reflect on the character of people who would conduct themselves like this? Their postings are the equivalent of anonymous voicemail messages left during election campaigns about the “communist ties,” “sexual deviancy,” or “financial improprieties” of a given candidate left by anonymous supporters of their opponents. It's a perfect example of the classic political “dirty trick.”

Because of this inherent lack of credibility and seriousness, I deeply doubt that Ikhras has much of an audience, or impact on Arab-American thought or debate. For this reason, until now I have completely ignored this ridiculous website, but at this stage I think it has become important for somebody to have the gumption to stand up and ask the simplest, most obvious questions and point out how atrocious the intentions of this project truly are, no matter how marginal it undoubtedly has been and will remain.

It needs to be pointed out that whoever is responsible for the bile at Ikhras is deliberately taking a self-consciously destructive approach, but suggesting absolutely nothing constructive or serious as an alternative. If these individuals really think their views and opinions have any actual value or constituency, why restrict them to an anonymous website? Why not create an open, public organization and try to pursue some of these "ideas" in a proactive, purposeful manner?  Of course that's hard to do when all you stand for is the (almost always unfair) criticism of all others, and when you won't even admit who you are. Give it a shot, and see what kind of constituency and credibility you end up with.

It must be obvious that anyone who isn't willing to sign their names to their own opinions, have the minimal courage of their convictions, take responsibility for their own words, and say what they think in their own goddamn names, should be the very first to ikhras. And when and if their identities are revealed or discovered, and should they indeed prove to be Arab Americans as they claim, the community should neither forgive nor forget this outrageous and cowardly website and its perpetrators. It's obvious that these people don't sign their names to their own writings because they are afraid of the consequences to their public standings and reputations, at the very least. Let's make sure that this fear is fully justified, because no one who engages in this behavior can, once exposed, hope to be regarded as anything other than a coward, a scoundrel and an individual beneath contempt. And they may well prove to be worse besides.

The Israeli Embassy in Washington helpfully sent their allies in Washington a set of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's talking points in relation to his speech in Congress yesterday and to AIPAC at the weekend, which were published by Ben Smith of Politico. They are the following:

Netanyahu's vision of peace:

1) Mutual Recognition of the Jewish state and the Palestinian State

2) A Palestinian state that is independent and viable

3) A Palestinian state that will be fully demilitarized, with an Israeli military presence along the Jordan River.

4) The settlement blocs and areas of critical strategic and national importance will remain a part of Israel.

5) In any peace agreement, some settlements will end up outside Israel's borders.

6) The solution to the Palestinian refugees will be found outside Israel. 

7) Jerusalem will remain Israel's united sovereign capital.

First of all, it should be noted that, as is obvious and has been pointed out by Zvika Krieger of the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace, these stances are "Israel's starting offer for negotiations." The same applies to a number of the Palestinian official positions, for example on the right of refugee return. In other words, serious Israelis and Palestinians understand that major compromises will have to be made on these and other positions in any actual agreement. Second, these points and Netanyahu's substantive positions in his speech before Congress were restatements of his May 16 speech at the Knesset in which he laid out these positions and claimed that they were a “consensus” among most Jewish Israelis.

Because there is no ongoing diplomatic process between the two parties, and hasn't been one since late September, and it isn't likely to resume anytime in the near future, the diplomatic implications of these speeches are fairly limited. The speeches are both best seen as more political than diplomatic. Domestically, Netanyahu was seeking, and indeed succeeded, in establishing himself as the unquestioned leader of the Israeli center-right and far-right coalition, fending off challenges from rivals within his Likud Party and others such as Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, head of the largely Russian immigrant Yisrael Beiteinu Party, and Interior Minister Eli Yishai, head of the ultra-Orthodox Shas Party. It's become clear that a combination of factors have driven the Israeli polity seriously to the right over the past decade, and even more over the past five years. This began with the extreme reaction to the second intifada that led to the political resurgence of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, and has been further exacerbated in recent years by the growing population and political organization of right-wing oriented Russian immigrant and ultra-Orthodox communities. Sadly, there is little doubt that the current right-wing coalition government in Israel really does represent a combined majority sentiment in Jewish Israeli society that brings together the center-right, the far-right and elements of the extreme-right. The Israeli left, and even the traditional Israeli center, is marginalized to the point of being moribund, at least for now. Representing the current face of the old-school Jabotinskyite ultra-hawkish and maximalist but secular Likud orientation, through his three consistent speeches in the past two weeks at the Knesset, Congress and AIPAC, Netanyahu has strongly consolidated his position as the leader of this uneasy right-wing coalition and fended off the possibility of any serious challenge for the foreseeable future. His position as Israel's prime minister seems more secure than ever, and it's hard to imagine that a new election would leave him in a weaker rather than a stronger position vis-à-vis both his right-wing “frenemies” or any challenge from the traditional center or the left.

The second sense in which these speeches, especially the two in the United States, were political rather than diplomatic was a thinly-veiled effort to bolster the chances of Republicans unseating Pres. Obama in the upcoming 2012 elections. It's no secret that Netanyahu is deeply uncomfortable with Obama, and that the two men have a testy, if not indeed acrimonious, relationship and little regard for each other. Neither can afford an open public confrontation, but Netanyahu's public lecturing of Obama following the President's Middle East policy speech was stunning in its arrogance. Obama did not fail to indirectly communicate his exasperation during his own AIPAC speech. Netanyahu directly accused Obama of not understanding reality, while, more diplomatically, Obama said Israel (read Netanyahu) needed to face certain uncomfortable realities, in effect returning the compliment.

Obama's Middle East policy speech was essentially a recitation of familiar American positions, but he was explicit about a number of items that have usually remained implicit: that negotiations must be based on the 1967 borders with mutually agreed land swaps; that the parties should focus on borders and security understandings first; and that there would have to be a “full and phased” Israeli military withdrawal from the areas that will become a Palestinian state. He also failed to rule out dealings with a new Palestinian government arising from the “national reconciliation agreement” recently signed by Fatah and Hamas, although he said there were "profound and legitimate" questions about the deal for which Palestinians would have to provide “a credible answer.” This is clearly a reference to the Quartet conditions and the role Hamas will be playing in any new Palestinian Authority government. But it does stand in contrast to demands by Netanyahu and his American supporters that no dealings with any Palestinian government arising from the agreement are acceptable.

None of this is shocking or dramatic, and Obama's positions were unsurprising, reasonable and consistent with well-established American policies. Netanyahu's extraordinary overreaction was partly the reflection of a genuinely visceral sense that Israel's international isolation on the future of the occupied territories is growing, not only with the international community at large, but with the Obama administration and, indeed, the American foreign policy, intelligence and military establishment in general. The contrast between what Obama, the United States and the international community are envisioning as the essential elements of a two-state agreement and the talking points cited above as reflected in Netanyahu's speeches is quite stark. However, there was also a histrionic and theatrical quality to the enraged response, which I think was clearly intended to give political cover to Republican presidential hopefuls like Tim Pawlenty and Mitt Romney to issue strong denunciations of the President on Israel policy, which they immediately did. Even after Obama's AIPAC speech — in which he shifted tone and emphasized US-Israel cooperation (designed, of course, to please his audience), but did not alter any of his positions and did issue a stark warning to Israel that international (and implicitly American) impatience with the lack of progress on peace negotiations is becoming untenable — some of Netanyahu's Republican supporters like Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin continued to issue dark warnings to Jewish Americans that a second term for the President would be a disaster for Israel.

It's long been observed that Netanyahu thinks, acts, and talks more like a right wing American Republican than any version of an Israeli politician. His speech before Congress was masterful as an object lesson in how to speak to an American, and particularly congressional, audience. Given the paucity of talent in the present GOP field, it's even tempting to speculate that were he in a position to do so, Netanyahu would actually have a very good shot at winning the Republican nomination for US president in 2012. As things stand, however, it was merely a secondary goal, but an important one, of his reaction to Obama's speech, and some of the tone of his own in Congress, to help nudge Republicans towards what looks like an unlikely victory in November of next year.

Having established all of that, let's look at the talking points — the so-called “vision of peace” the Israeli Embassy released on Netanyahu's behalf — point by point, bearing in mind that these are opening bargaining positions at best and, in context, actually political positions aimed primarily at a domestic Israeli audience and secondarily at having an impact on US internal politics.

1) Mutual Recognition of the Jewish state and the Palestinian State

The question of mutual diplomatic recognition between Israel and Palestine is largely an onus on the Israeli side, since the Palestine Liberation Organization, the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, recognized Israel formally and irrevocably in the Letters of Mutual Recognition in 1993. In return, Israel merely recognized the PLO as the legitimate representative of the Palestinians. Therefore the Palestinians have recognized Israel for almost 20 years, while Israel has never recognized a Palestinian state or allowed one to be created. On the contrary, it has continued building settlements and deepening the occupation in many ways during this period, and the number of settlers since 1993 has increased from 200,000 to more than 500,000.

What this talking point refers to, however, is not mutual recognition between two states, but the new demand that first was raised at the Annapolis Conference in 2007 and has become an obsession with Netanyahu that Palestinians recognize Israel, as he usually puts it, as “the nation-state of the Jewish people.” This is therefore not a political but an ideological demand, essentially asking the Palestinians to embrace the fundamental precepts of a classical and very old-fashioned Zionism rather than agreeing to accept Israel as a neighbor with which they will live in peace and security, and as a legitimate member state of the United Nations that is free to define itself as it wishes. I have written before about how problematic this demand is for Palestinians, how unnecessary it is for peace (which is why it played absolutely no role in diplomacy or negotiations prior to 2007), and how it is an attempt to foreclose or prejudice genuine final status issues such as refugees and, by extension, Jerusalem. I will have a more detailed evaluation of this in a forthcoming article, and I've written extensively about it in the past.

2) A Palestinian state that is independent and viable

This represents a genuine reason to be hopeful and optimistic. Historically, Netanyahu and almost all Likud party leaders have been opposed to Palestinian statehood, but he is now on the record on numerous occasions in support of the concept. It is still debatable what he means exactly by the terms “state,” “independent” and “viable,” but this position is an extremely constructive one on its face. It demonstrates that while, as I noted above, the entire Israeli polity has shifted quite dramatically to the right over the past 10 years, the Israeli right itself has also shifted dramatically in its rhetoric about Palestinian independence. Many leaders and parties that absolutely ruled out Palestinian statehood, including Netanyahu, in the past now accept the concept at least in theory. This can only be regarded as progress. Absent a genuine negotiating process, it will be impossible to test Netanyahu's commitment to this principle or what he precisely means by the words cited in this talking point. It is very deeply in the Palestinian interest to try to find a formula as soon as possible to return to those negotiations so as to test these assertions and discover whether he means what he says and what it is he thinks he is describing. Until then, Netanyahu is free to make this commitment without any fear that he will actually have to participate in its realization or clarify his positions on these terms.

3) A Palestinian state that will be fully demilitarized, with an Israeli military presence along the Jordan River.

The first element here is problematic in some ways but almost certainly achievable. For many years now the Palestinian leadership has made it clear privately and implicitly that it seeks a non-militarized state of its own volition, because it recognizes that wasting money on a small army that will not be able to mount or win wars is completely pointless and that all resources should be focused on developing Palestine's infrastructure and extremely promising human capital. The wisest Palestinians look to something approximating the Costa Rican model in which the state is non-militarized, but with a strong police and border force to ensure security, and remains neutral in armed conflicts. This approach has helped to give Costa Rica a much higher standard of living than its Central American neighbors, and the Costa Ricans have managed to use their neutrality and international support for their position of non-belligerence to avoid being drawn into the many vicious conflicts and civil wars in Central America over the past decades. Palestine can and should attempt to emulate this wise approach, but it is much more politically achievable as a deliberate and independent choice that the Palestinians make in their own interests than as an Israeli demand. The Israeli leaders know that this is a Palestinian intention, and they also know that by making it an Israeli demand they make it more difficult to sell to the Palestinian constituency. It is therefore cynical and unhelpful to harp on this issue, which is best left to the Palestinian leadership that is thought to be committed to the principle on solid political and strategic grounds.

The second principle here, what Netanyahu has repeatedly referred to as a “long-term Israeli military presence along the Jordan River,” is an absolute nonstarter for the Palestinians and can only be regarded as either an opening gambit he knows full well will have to be abandoned or, if he intends to stick to this to the bitter end, as a conscious effort to sabotage a workable agreement. A Palestinian entity that does not control its own borders will not be a “state” in any meaningful sense of the term, but rather a bantustan and vassal of Israel. Palestinians will not, then, have achieved independence, but a deeply modified and attenuated form of ongoing occupation. This demand is completely at odds with Pres. Obama's terms laid out in his Middle East policy speech in which he specifically called for “the full and phased withdrawal of Israeli military forces” from the Palestinian state. Obama said “that negotiations should result in two states, with permanent Palestinian borders with Israel, Jordan, and Egypt, and permanent Israeli borders with Palestine.” Obviously, this is completely inconsistent with Netanyahu's unworkable, unreasonable and unacceptable demand that Israel would continue to control, at least on a long-term basis, the Palestinian border along the Jordan River. The Palestinians have repeatedly said that they would accept the presence, possibly over a long-term, of international peacekeepers on their borders, including Jewish troops and even commanders from other countries, but a continued Israeli military presence in or on the borders of Palestine is totally unacceptable. It is simply contradictory to the most fundamental concept of Palestinian independence, and if Netanyahu intends to insist on this till the bitter end, even as negotiations begin to approach the conclusion of a permanent status agreement, he will be deliberately and willfully sabotaging such an agreement because it will be a clear-cut negation of Palestinian independence.

4) The settlement blocs and areas of critical strategic and national importance will remain a part of Israel.

Everyone agrees on the principle of a land swap. There is no question that there are settlement blocs, Jewish areas of occupied East Jerusalem, and perhaps some other geographically small areas of the occupied territories that would be annexed to Israel in exchange for equivalent territory ceded to the new Palestinian state. So in that sense, this principle is noncontroversial. However, Netanyahu has been deliberately vague about what settlement blocs he has in mind, although he has said that some settlements will be outside the borders of Israel at the end of an agreement. So it is a welcome recognition on his part that Israel does not intend to annex all settlements. However, some large settlements, particularly Ariel, extend deep into the territory of the West Bank, almost bifurcating it. Netanyahu has spoken in terms of being “generous” (an extraordinary term to be applied to territories under foreign military occupation) with the size of the territory of the Palestinian state. At the same time, in his speech at Congress Netanyahu denied that Israel is a “foreign occupier” at all and referred to the occupied territories as “the Jewish Land.” This might be Zionist boilerplate, but it doesn't bode well for what he thinks reasonable land swaps might entail. This is exacerbated by his reference to other “areas of critical strategic and national importance,” whatever they may be. He may be referring to areas of supposed military importance based on an anachronistic model of warfare that has been transcended by new technologies, or more simply to religious and political irredentism regarding areas like Hebron, which are a sine qua non for a genuine Palestinian state. So on the one hand this talking point is noncontroversial and even gives ground for some hope. On the other hand it contains implications that raise the deepest possible suspicions that what Netanyahu is imagining is simply impracticable and unworkable, as well as at odds with not just Palestinian but also international and American expectations and requirements.

5) In any peace agreement, some settlements will end up outside Israel's borders.

This point was covered above. I take it as an important admission, but of course he might be referring to small, largely irrelevant settlements, unauthorized outposts and other areas of limited significance. Again, a real diplomatic process will be required to test what he thinks he means by this and Palestinians should look for every opportunity to obtain such clarification.

6) The solution to the Palestinian refugees will be found outside Israel.

This is, and has for many years, been commonly understood as the inevitable outcome of negotiations since a wide-scale implementation of the right of return is a nonstarter for almost all Jewish Israelis for obvious reasons. However, the refugee issue is a crucial Palestinian negotiating card and it is right and proper that, as they prepare their people for the necessary concessions, they also protect this vital negotiating leverage and ensure that the most that can be secured for the refugees through a workable agreement is achieved and that this brutal and politically wrenching concession is reciprocated by a similar bitter political pill that Israel must swallow. That brings us directly to Netanyahu's final talking point:

7) Jerusalem will remain Israel's united sovereign capital.

 All Israelis who are serious about peace understand that the Palestinian capital must be based in East Jerusalem, that this is a sine qua non of peace and a red line no Palestinian leadership can or will be willing to cross. In many ways it is the Israeli analogy to the Palestinian right of return issue: the deep, painful, existential concession that must be made because without it, the other side simply will not come to terms. It therefore has been for many years also commonly understood as the inevitable outcome of negotiations that the Palestinian capital will be in East Jerusalem. Now Netanyahu's language appears to be categorical in ruling out serious negotiations on Jerusalem, let alone it serving as a Palestinian as well as an Israeli capital. But parsing the language of this talking point carefully, there does appear to be some potential wiggle room for reconciling the two positions. Most parties on both sides would probably prefer not to see Jerusalem divided in any physical sense, therefore the "united" part is no dealbreaker. That Jerusalem will be Israel's “sovereign capital” does not necessarily rule out that Jerusalem can also be Palestine's “sovereign capital” as well. This sounds counterintuitive and contradictory, and may even sound like an oxymoron, but Jerusalem is a sui generis case for which a sui generis solution undoubtedly will have to be found. I do not think it is inconceivable that a united Jerusalem (that is to say without physical divisions such as roadblocks, checkpoints, customs and immigration stations, etc.) can simultaneously serve as the sovereign capital for both Israel and Palestine. It depends how one defines sovereignty, where and how that sovereignty is exercised, whether there is the possibility of separate sovereignties with joint administration or other formulas that could square this circle.

Because these were political and not diplomatic speeches, I'm sure Netanyahu intended all of his audiences to understand this as ruling out any compromise on Jerusalem, and that's how most people took it. That's certainly how it reads at first glance. But there is evidence that behind the decades of bluster about Jerusalem as the “eternal, undivided capital of the Jewish people” has always lurked a gnawing, grudging sense among serious Israelis that a compromise on the city will be necessary. Israel is often said to have annexed occupied East Jerusalem. That's not exactly correct. What Israel did was not an act of formal annexation, but the extension of Israeli civil law to all of what it defined as “Municipal Jerusalem.” In 1980, the Knesset passed the "Jerusalem Law," that declared: "Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel." The law was declared null and void on numerous occasions by the UN Security Council, in resolutions all voted for by the United States, most notably Resolution 476 which reiterated “the overriding necessity to end the prolonged occupation of Arab territories occupied by Israel since 1967, including Jerusalem.” Now that El Salvador and Costa Rica have removed their embassies from Jerusalem, all of which is still considered a “corpus separatum" under international law, Israel's international isolation on its maximalist claims regarding Jerusalem is again total.

Statements declaring or implying that Israel will make no concessions on Jerusalem and will not agree that any part of it will serve as the Palestinian capital might make for good politics in Israel or before Congress. But just as when Palestinians insist there will be no compromise on the complete implementation of the right of return for refugees, Israelis who believe in peace at all must be viewing absolutist statements about Jerusalem as vital negotiating leverage which they privately understand will require a genuinely painful but absolutely indispensable concession. It's understandable that neither party wants to undermine this kind of powerful leverage in advance of the resolution of the permanent status issues and the achievement of an end-of-conflict agreement. But it's also clear that both sides need to do more to prepare their respective publics for the compromises that, if they are at all serious about peace, they certainly know will ultimately be unavoidable.

Netanyahu's talking points contain no new ideas, but there are aspects of them that are promising and some that can be worked on in serious negotiations. Insofar as they are, as Krieger suggests, an opening gambit consciously crafted not as final positions but as starting points for a serious process, there is no reason to despair because of them, particularly given that negotiations are not presently ongoing and are unlikely to resume until after the 2012 US presidential elections. Still, Netanyahu has adopted some positions that place him very seriously at odds not just with the Palestinians, international law, and the international community, or even Obama personally. They pit him against a well-established consensus that the American national interest requires as essential and not optional the establishment of what Sec. Clinton called the “inevitable” Palestinian state and an end to the occupation that began in 1967. The apparent contradiction between American goals and interests and the vision for the future suggested by Netanyahu's talking points is going to be an increasing strain not only on the personal and political relations of the two leaders, but, in the long run, an increasing issue between the United States and its national interests on the one hand and Israel and the maximalist ambitions of some of its powerful political factions on the other. Even more ominously for Israel, as two of its most prominent and staunch supporters among the American commentariat, Thomas Friedman of the New York Times and Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic, both pointed out in hard-hitting columns today, Netanyahu's policies and positions that have done nothing to advance the peace process are leading Israel in a clear and disastrous direction: its development into what both bluntly called an "apartheid state" and therefore an international pariah.

Several readers have asked for more information on the “reformed terrorist” scam and the conman who sometimes calls himself “Walid Shoebat,” and sometimes doesn’t, and on the entire phenomenon. There are a few more interesting things worth pointing out about these sordid people and their dirty dealings that weren’t touched on in my last blog posting, which was prompted by revelations that yet again the federal government, in this case the Department of Homeland Security, had paid this man $5000 to help “train” security officials. Of course, I was only encouraged by a Tweet by a defender of “Shoebat” who produced this masterpiece: "you just stay out of the truck stop restrooms cause I know who you are and what you do I saw you. Leave Walid be you closet cas." [Sic on all that]. It could hardly have been better calculated to make me want to revisit the subject as soon as possible. The first point is to re-establish how truly dangerous unrestrained, hysterical, hate speech on the order practiced by “Shoebat” can truly be. His sentiments frequently veer towards the genocidal. For instance, he recently stated, “I would wish that the whole Muslim world would listen to Mr. Bakri and fight by the sword literally. This way the nukes will take care of the whole problem once and for all." So now that we’re all back on the same page, here’s some more about “Shoebat” and his partners in robbing credulous churches and ignorant, incompetent government agencies with the nonchalance of the most accomplished burglars.

Thom Cincotta recently authored an extremely revealing report about this hate-speech cottage industry called “Manufacturing the Muslim Menace” for the group Political Research Associates. It begins by documenting “what one official involved in homeland security said was how she understood the underlying theme of a speech by Walid Shoebat at an anti-terrorism training in Las Vegas in October 2010.” The report states, “Our investigator had turned around after Shoebat’s speech and asked the woman seated one row back what she thought was the solution offered by Shoebat. ‘Kill them…including the children…you heard him,’ was the full response.” Of course this doesn’t mean that the official was endorsing this view, but it certainly was her understanding of his message. I’m not sure I could’ve summed it up anymore neatly myself. Since “Shoebat” insists that Islam is not only evil and demonic but is itself “the devil,” such an interpretation of his message seems wholly justifiable. The report reasonably suggests that given how extreme his language tends to be, “Shoebat may be the most outlandish example of the coterie of anti-Islamic bigots and fear mongers who are training law enforcement officials and anti-terrorism agents.” The report also helpfully notes “Shoebat’s financial remuneration for his appearances is obscured in complicated financial arrangements he claims are needed to protect him from terrorism.” In other words, somebody tried to look into this and found it deliberately obscured and not worth getting to the bottom of. Suffice it to say, the man is making a living, and almost certainly a tidy one, from spreading this poison around our society.

“Shoebat” frequently partners with Zak Anani, another purveyor of particularly gigantic tales. In the most extraordinary "coincidence," this self-described “former terrorist” and former mass-murderer, claims to have killed no less than 223 people during the Lebanese civil war, “two-thirds of them by daggers.” (Exactly the same claim, word-for-word, attributed to “Walid Shoebat,” as cited in my last blog posting.)  How and why they claim to have killed exactly the same number of people, in exactly the same way, at around the same time, in two different places, and two separate wars, has never been explained. It would be interesting to know who the ghostwriter or coach behind these laughable fabrications is, since they clearly got it from the same set of fantastical talking points. I will not bother to dwell on how ridiculous these claims are, even considered in isolation from each other, in the first place.

Anani claims to have joined “an Islamist militia” in Lebanon in the early 1970s, at age 13 (naturally he does not specify which militia that was, and it is hard to think of a group that would have fit this description in Lebanon at the time). As usual with “reformed terrorists” and self-styled, for-profit “ex-Muslims,” there is a profound anachronism in his claims to have been raised in a climate of militant jihad in a place and time in the Arab world where such rhetoric was extremely rare if not completely unknown. He claims to have not only killed an astounding number of people, but also to have been subjected to extreme persecution in Lebanon, where he says he was “almost beheaded by an Islamist gang.” He ended up in Canada where “his house and car have been burnt, his family attacked.” Not surprisingly, Canadian police flatly deny these claims.

Canadian authorities and experts have also dismissed Anani’s tall tales of former terrorism, with noted expert Tom Quiggin, formerly of the RMCP, correctly observing that, “Mr. Anani is not an individual who rates the slightest degree of credibility, based on the stories that he has told.” The Windsor Star quotes Quiggin as saying that, "Anani has said he's 49 years old, which would mean he was born in 1957 or 1958.  If he joined his first militant group when he was 13, it would have been in 1970 or 1971.  But the fighting in Lebanon did not begin in earnest until 1975.  His story of having made kills shortly after he joined and having made 223 kills overall is preposterous, given the lack of fighting during most of the time period he claims to have been a fighter.  He also states he left Lebanon to go to Al-Azhar University at the age of 18, which would mean he went to Egypt in 1976. In other words, according to himself, he left Lebanon within a year of when the fighting actually started." He added, “It appears to be that Mr. Anani is nothing more than an extremist who is trying to create an imaginative history from a contemporary set of fears and stories.” In other words, just like with “Shoebat,” Anani’s account is a transparent, inane fiction that announces itself as an absurdity on first glance to anyone with the least knowledge of the subject under discussion.

As my friend Omar Baddar pointed out in response to my recent posting, the Jerusalem Post also noted that following the by-now thoroughly debunked imaginary bank bombing that “Shoebat” claims he conducted on behalf of the PLO in the late 1970s, “Asked whether word of the bombing made the news at the time, he said, ‘I don't know. I didn't read the papers because I was in hiding for the next three days.’ (In 2004, he had told Britain's Sunday Telegraph: ‘I was terribly relieved when I heard on the news later that evening that no one had been hurt or killed by my bomb.’)” So, he couldn’t even keep his stories straight about whether he was in hiding and incommunicado for three days after the fictional “attack” that never happened, or whether he was listening to the news that very evening. He recently resorted to describing the author of this damning Jerusalem Post story as the “Holocaust-denial supporter Jorg Luyken” on the basis that the author has criticized laws criminalizing Holocaust denial and urging combating it with historical facts, since “the evidence of the Holocaust is irrefutable,” rather than through laws criminalizing stupid and offensive speech of this kind.

Yet, along with a crew of other shameless frauds, these individuals are making a repulsive career out of telling lies about themselves and spreading fear and hatred against entire communities and identity groups. Naturally, there is no honor among thieves. The falling outs have been vicious and most telling. The most amusing is the apparent war between Brigitte Gabriel, the most successful and ambitious of the Arab professional Islamophobes (who I have dissected in some detail in an earlier Ibishblog post) and “Shoebat,” Anani and another huckster called Kamal Saleem. According to Franklin Lamb, as she felt these three upstarts beginning to encroach on her lucrative territory, Gabriel exploded, "Not only are these creeps Arabs, but two of them are Palestinians!" Chris Hedges — who calls the three “Curly, Larry and Mo” — says that by 2008 “Shoebat,” Anani and Saleem were telling their audiences that “the only way to deal with one-fifth of the world’s population is by converting or eradicating all Muslims.” By trying to outbid Gabriel and everybody else in their degree of Islamophobic hatred, according to Lamb, “Shoebat… recently chortled, ‘let the spoiled brat from South Lebanon top that!’ following an appearance on Tovia Singer's radio show.” But as things have played out, Gabriel has proven to have a longer reach and a wider audience on the political extreme right, by emphasizing pure anti-Arab and Islamophobic hatred and downplaying apocalyptic, dispensationalist evangelical Christianity.

“Shoebat” also had an interesting falling out with a former collaborator called Simon Altaf. According to religion writer Richard Bartholomew, the two co-authored a book called “Islam: Peace? or Beast?” which preposterously claimed that the early text of the Book of Revelation in the Codex Vaticanus reveal the “mark of the beast” not to be the Greek symbols for 666 or 616, but rather the Arabic script for Allah. Bartholomew points out that the original text of the Codex Vaticanus does not include the Book of Revelation at all, and the supplement in question was added more than 1,000 years later than the original text. Moreover, the claim is ludicrous on every possible grounds. The two also cofounded the “Abrahamic Faith” website which, when it was first launched, according to Bartholomew “as well as pushing hardline Christian Zionism, it originally attacked other Christian groups, including Evangelicals and Charismatics, Billy Graham, and the Pope.” Bartholomew also points out that the site contained “an early version of Shoebat’s conversion narrative, in which he describes himself as having been involved in anti-Israel rioting during the Intifada, but which doesn’t mention any PLO membership or bomb-planting.”

The split between the two apparently occurred when Altaf was ordained as a Rabbi by the Bnai Yahshua Synagogue in Florida, which apparently believes that “non-Jewish followers of Jesus have physical descent from Ephraim” (trust me, you don’t want to know…). “Shoebat” thundered that “Simon Altaf… turned polygamist and cultist of the first order.” An indication of how demented the whole argument was on both sides can be found here. Altaf shot back that “Shoebat’s real name is ‘Walid Salameh’” and that his “handler,” one Keith Davies, was originally employed by an ardent ex-Nazi. Altaf’s totally unverifiable tirade against “Shoebat” can be read here, on the site they originally cofounded.

The latest target of Shoebat’s avaricious wrath is Mosab Hassan Yousef, a.k.a. “Son of Hamas,” who spied on the Palestinian extremist group for Israel before moving to the United States and converting to Christianity. “Shoebat” originally endorsed Yousef, but has now written a tirade against him accusing him of being “more double agent than turncoat.” Presumably, this racket ain’t big enough for both of us, yet again. In an effort to dissuade American churches from hosting (and therefore paying) Yousef, “Shoebat” insists, “Mosab did not convert to what the West would recognize as Christianity, but to a fiery, Palestinian brand of the faith that is vehemently anti-Israel. According to Mosab, his main goal in coming to the U.S. is to infiltrate the main source of international support for Israel: the American church.” It’s about as subtle as when Shoebat’s most prominent patron and defender, Daniel Pipes, demanded I be banned from television after a series of severe drubbings I delivered him in televised debates (he later complained that he couldn’t get on television anymore because he refused to appear with me and therefore I was on and he wasn’t). Most tellingly, “Shoebat” accuses Yousef of “duping pro-Israel churches for his own personal profit.” Takes one to know one. "We are doing our best to warn the church," Shoebat’s handler, Keith Davis, explained. I’ll bet they are!

Yousef was defended by his Shin Bet handler, one Gonen ben Itzhak, who thinks, “Mr. Shoebat is playing a dirty game,” and that “Unlike Walid Shoebat, Mosab did not commit fictitious crimes against Israel,” and “Mosab served hard time in prison and paid for what he did.” Most pointedly he tells “Shoebat,” that because of his background in intelligence and experience, “I can smell a fraud and recognize a fake hero on the spot.” Yousef has also accused Keith Davis, on behalf of “Shoebat,” of trying “to recruit me [as a speaker] to use my story to raise money”.

Yousef says he didn’t respond to this e-mail and the worst that can be said of his veracity is that he has exaggerated his story — not invented it out of whole cloth like “Shoebat” — and his relationship with Israel and the Palestinian cause are complex to say the least. Whether he can be seen as an opportunist or not, even though he might be threatening to Shoebat’s racket, there isn’t any clear evidence yet that he is trying to mimic it. On the contrary, Yousef’s complex, ambivalent and often hard to reconcile and idiosyncratic stances make him far less appealing a speaker on ideological grounds to credulous pro-Israel fundamentalist churches than Larry, Curly and Moe. But clearly the fact that his story is based in fact and not fiction, and that he actually knows something about the subject he is addressing, makes him a very serious threat to the total frauds peddling complete fictions, absolute certainties and uncompromising hatred. The effort to take him out of the equation is extremely revealing about Shoebat’s motives and methods. 

When I expressed horror and incredulity at reports that the Department of Homeland Security has paid a man who sometimes calles himself “Walid Shoebat” $5,000 to give a speech at the 2011 South Dakota Homeland Security Conference in Rapid City on May 11, I was asked for details as to why it think he is a fraud, liar, conman and fanatic. It really couldn’t be easier to explain. The following is just the most cursory and perfunctory review of this loathsome character’s history as a flimflam man. There is much more to be said about him, but this ought to satisfy any reasonable person that it is a scandal and disgrace that DHS has had anything to do with him whatsoever, let alone paying him thousands of dollars to spread his poison and lies.

This individual can’t even keep a straight story as to whether his is an assumed or real name, but claims to be a “former PLO terrorist” now converted to evangelical Christianity.  Nothing about his story is verifiable. The pro-Israeli “Hasbara Fellowships” speakers‘ bureau, closely associated with honestreporting.com, even describes him as “the grandson of a Nazi ally.” Although he has often said that “Walid Shoebat” is an assumed name, adopted to avoid retribution from other Arabs, in one of his most overwrought articles, “Shoebat” insisted that this is, in fact, his actual birth name: “I even showed documents to prove that my true name is 'Walid Shoebat' and is not an assumed name as they say in the media…”   However, the biography posted on his own website, shoebat.com, once clearly stated that, “Walid is an American citizen and lives in the USA with his wife and children, under this assumed name.” It now states, "For the record, my name is Walid Shoebat."

His tale is so improbable, contradictory and unsupported by the least trace of evidence that even some passionate supporters of Israel have questioned its veracity. "Shoebat" has frequently complained about this publicly: "I get continual accusations for doing this for money, an accusation I already get from my enemies, but also from my Jewish friends." He has produced a littany of the most improbable tales of his youthful terrorist attrocities. According to a friendly article in Joseph Farah’s worldnetdaily.com: "His stated mission was "to kill as many Jews as possible." He started murdering people at 14, and within four years had accumulated "223 points" – a PLO term for 223 kills, two-thirds of them with daggers." Naturally, there is no mention of when and where these hundreds of supposed murders took place exactly. This sounds more like a sick joke than anything else, and its certainly completely untrue.

“Shoebat” has also claimed that at age 16, PLO cadres recruited him to bomb the Bank Leumi branch in Bethlehem. In 2008, the Jerusalem Post reported that this story is “is rejected by members of his family who still live in the area, and Bank Leumi says it has no record of such an attack ever taking place.” The Post concluded, “If the Bank Leumi bombing claim is unfounded, it is unclear why Shoebat would have wanted to manufacture a terrorist past. True or not, however, it has plainly brought him some prominence and provided him with a means to speak in favor of Israel and be paid for doing so.” And that last detail, clearly, is the whole point.

The New York Times reported that in 2008, along with Kamal Saleem (another evangelical self-described “former terrorist,” who has claimed to be a descendent of the entirely imaginary and preposterously named “Grand Wazir of Islam”) and the equally bizarre Zak Anani, “Shoebat” was paid $13,000 to address the Air Force Academy about their alleged recruitment and training as terrorists. These men have presented a number of talks under the title, “Why We Want to Kill You,” which is also the title of a book written by “Shoebat.”

“Shoebat” claims that after a youth devoted to violent anti-Israel activity, “In 1993, Walid studied the Tanach (Jewish Bible) in a challenge to convert his wife to Islam. Six months later, after intense study, Walid realized that everything he had been taught about Jews was a lie. Convinced he was on the side of evil, he became an advocate for his former enemy.” The only thing that outstrips his passionate love of the Israeli state is his even more passionate hatred of the Arabs, Muslims, Palestinians and Islam, claiming “The so called ‘Israeli occupation‘ is currently the only real freedom any Arab has had in any part of the Middle East in the 56 years of Israel's existence.”  He encourages Israeli violence against Palestinians and has urged Israel to “take back the holy Temple Mount.” He condemns the majority of Jewish Americans for being too weak on pro-Israel issues: “If I was a Jew I would be ashamed to call myself one,” since, “The Jews are not up to the task and no matter what we say, Jews will continue to fight Brit Zedak [sic], Norman Finklestein [sic] and Naom Chomsky [sic] et al. What we need is the support of a handful of people, and not the majority belly-achers.”

”Shoebat” is an extremist Christian fundamentalist who yearns for the apocalypse and the battle of Armageddon, is passionately anti-Islam and anti-Muslim.  He has frequently called Islam ”the anti-Christ” and has written that ”both the Antichrist and the revived beast empire will very likely be Muslim.” (Why I Left Jihad, Top Executive Media, 2005, p. 369) He also claimed during the 2008 election campaign that then-Democratic presidential candidate and now President Barack Obama is a secret Muslim saying that simply because of his name, “it is very clear that Barack Hussein Obama is definitely a Muslim.” And, according to “Shoebat,” Islam is not merely linked to demonic forces, “Islam is not the religion of God — Islam is the devil.” Just what we need officials at a DHS conference to hear, of course, and what American taxpayer dollars should be paying for.

UPDATE:

A follow-up posting is now on the Ibishblog: More on “Walid Shoebat” and his allies and competitors in the “reformed terrorists” scam

 On Thursday US President Barack Obama will give what will probably be the most difficult foreign policy speech of his presidency thus far. Obama will seek to define an overall US approach to the Arab Spring. However, given the extreme complications facing US policy, it will be extremely difficult for him to articulate clear principles that can be consistently implemented.

Obama is likely to begin by focusing on the welcome death of terrorist leader Osama bin Laden. In spite of the undoubted importance of this achievement and the ongoing threat posed by his small but deadly group of followers, Al Qaeda is playing almost no role in the emergence of the new Middle East.

Instead, the regional order and the Arab state system are being challenged by pro-democracy protests that threaten American friends and foes alike. In his well-calibrated speech on the Libyan intervention, Obama focused on what he identified as a convergence between “values” and “interests.”

In other instances, these imperatives are at odds, creating what are likely to be ongoing policy conundrums into the foreseeable future. The most obvious example is Bahrain, where the United States disapproved of the government crackdown and Gulf Cooperation Council intervention, but has been ignored. Because it is the home of the US Fifth Fleet, and concerns about Iranian designs on the island, the United States cannot walk away from Bahrain and is left with few options other than muted protests.

The administration quickly came to the correct approach in Egypt, urging the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak and a managed transition toward greater democracy. But this exacerbated situations in which American allies elsewhere staunchly refused to consider reform and began to look upon Washington as unreliable, thereby placing values and interests in a tension that was difficult to reconcile.

The perception that the Americans abandoned a loyal ally in Mubarak has deeply shaken some long-standing US partners, especially Saudi Arabia. The Saudis have reacted in part by moving to expand the GCC to include Jordan and Morocco, potentially creating a broader status quo-oriented alliance of Sunni monarchies. A striking commentary by Nawaf Obaid in The Washington Post suggests the development of a much more independent Saudi foreign policy that finds itself increasingly at odds with American perceptions.

An opposite but related conundrum has emerged in Syria, where the United States has been deeply reluctant to clearly call for the removal of President Bashar al-Assad, a long-time foe. Concerns about chaos and civil war, the anxieties of US allies – particularly Israel – and strong suspicions that the Syrian regime will survive the uprising have prompted a noticeably muted American response.

The United States is a status quo power in a Middle East wracked by the forces of change, but whose regional influence and power is perceived, rightly or wrongly, to be waning. No doubt the Americans would prefer orderly transitions to greater democracy without upsetting the regional system, but few, if any, Arab governments, pro- or anti-American, are willing to engage in serious reform. This makes a clear American statement that it will unequivocally support pro-democracy demands by Arab citizens difficult to fulfill, and highlights the extent to which US values and interests will frequently be difficult to reconcile in the coming months.

Obama will also have to deal with the Palestinian issue under conditions of extreme uncertainty. The all-important details of the Hamas-Fatah agreement remain entirely unclear, as does the Israeli vision for the future. The resignation of the American special envoy, George Mitchell, indicates the extent to which negotiations are on hold for the foreseeable future. Moreover, last weekend’s violent suppression of protesters in numerous border areas by Israel, in which at least a dozen unarmed Palestinians were killed, reinforces the issue’s volatility and regional significance.

Obama is likely to reaffirm the US commitment to a two-state solution, but more detailed comments are unlikely. It would appear a stronger intervention is being tabled until at least the summer and that another major diplomatic initiative will probably not emerge until after the next American election.

This decoupling may be forced, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing. There can be no questioning the importance of the Palestinian issue to the Arab uprisings, but there is also a clear logic to treating the two as parallel but distinct tracks. There are at least as many risks in lumping them together as dealing with them separately.

For Obama to resolve the clear tension between American interests and values regarding demands for radical change in Washington’s relations with allied Arab states is an extraordinary challenge. Coming up with an actionable formula that can place the US on the side of the aspirations of the Arab people, which is essential, without further antagonizing and alarming its already skittish – and, in some important cases, alienated – allies will be the greatest foreign policy challenge this young president has yet faced.

 Earlier this year I wrote a column about the growing crisis of Islamophobia in American culture. The depth of this crisis was brought home to me this week in a very powerful, albeit anecdotal, experience I had on a radio call-in show in Missoula, Montana. I’ve been appearing on radio and television programs in the United States at the national level on such controversial topics since 1998, and I’ve never experienced such a stained barrage of bigoted, irrational and implacably hostile sentiments. It was much worse, taken as a whole, than any experience I had in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and is yet another indication that a subculture of hatred in the US is growing completely independent of any political developments or objective facts.

It was all the more shocking as I had spent a couple of days in Missoula in February giving a number of talks on various aspects of US-Arab relations to large and sophisticated audiences that were extremely receptive. My hosts were the local World Affairs Council, a group of well-meaning and very well-informed individuals. Nothing prepared me for what I encountered on the radio. Call after call was hostile, irrational, bigoted and reflected different strands of what is becoming, in certain parts of American cultural and political life, and hegemonic narrative of fear and hatred against Islam and Muslims.

One caller was absolutely convinced and insistent that “they” wanted to “kill all of us.” After a tooth-pulling exercise in demanding to know who, precisely, this murderous “they” might be (I couldn't shake that immortal dialogue from the madcap film noir Kiss Me Deadly: “And who are they? They're the nameless ones who kill people for the great whatsit") it became clear that what she meant was that the world's Muslims in general (they) “just want to kill us” (everybody else, especially white, middle-class Americans). Eventually, she agreed that's exactly what she meant. When challenged, she cited the Crusades as her primary evidence. She also suggested that President Bush, not President Obama, deserves the credit for in the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, another example of the degree to which we were in the sovereign realm of the enemies of reason.

Another caller was completely convinced there is a growing campaign to impose sharia law in the United States through the civil court system, and to teach it in American public schools. She was totally unimpressed by my pointing out that such things are quite impossible given the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, and that in fact there is no such campaign, or at least not one that can possibly have any traction. Didn't I know a conspiracy is afoot? The clear implication is that I'm undoubtedly a part of it anyway.

A third demanded to know if I “denounce Hamas, Hezbollah and the actions of the Syrian government against its people.” He asked the question in an interrogatory and accusative tone that clearly suggested I was guilty until proven innocent of being pro-Hamas, pro-Hezbollah and in favor of the Syrian government crackdown, even though earlier in the program a quote from one of my recent articles that was harshly critical of Hamas and its Western supporters had been read out by one of the hosts. Another caller suggested that everyone who wants to learn about Islam watch the outrageous propaganda film “The Third Jihad.” He seemed unable to tell the difference between the categories Islamist and Muslim. And on it went.

There are a couple of very important points to be made from this experience. First, we can see in these comments reflections of various parts of the Islamlophobic narrative as received wisdom. Sharia law is being imposed in the United States, and it's a conspiracy. In other words, “they're trying to take over our country.” Muslims want to kill non-Muslims and are prepared to lie about it. In other words, “they are an existential menace, at war with Western civilization and bent on mass murder.” “They all support terrorism, and if they deny it they're probably lying.” “If you want to find out about Islam and the Muslims, watch crude Israeli-funded propaganda movies like The Third Jihad and other Islamlophobic hate speech.” It all boils down to the idea that Muslims are a menacing, dangerous presence in the United States seeking to subvert “our culture” and "our civilization" in the name of a hostile and alien God and that there is indeed a clash of civilizations. As I've noted before, it's all anti-Semitism from the 1920s defrosted and barely warmed over for 15 seconds in a microwave.

What all of these elements also reflect is that over the past 10 years, as I've argued before, Islamlophobic narrative has become first relatively coherent, bringing together numerous strands of intolerant attitudes in one ugly web of fear and hatred that holds together about as well as any irrational conspiracy theory, especially anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, might. Second, that there has been a very successful campaign to not only gather these ideas together into a semi-coherent narrative but a concerted, coordinated and well-funded attempt to insert it into the mainstream American cultural and political life, especially on the political right, and drum it into the heads of millions of Americans through talk radio, cable news, the Internet and the blogosphere, and well-selling books all preaching pure Islamlophobic vitriol and conspiracy theories. It's clearly had a profound impact, as I noted earlier this year, and I've never seen it as dramatically in action as I did on that radio program in Missoula earlier this week.

One of the callers also raised a long-standing tactical conundrum for Arab-American advocates, even dating back before 2001: how to respond to demands to condemn this or that organization or action by some Arabs somewhere. It might even be arguable that in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, such questions were inevitable and possibly even understandable. But given the amount of time that has passed, my own copious track record on these issues (relevant only because I was the person being interrogated by this ignorant nitwit), and the fact that extremely harsh criticism I wrote about Hamas and its supporters was read out on the air early in the program by the hosts as part of a question, the assumption of the right to interrogate me simply because I’m an Arab-American was not only offensive, it was insidious. Not only did it assume certain negative attitudes on my part based solely on my identity, it also ascribed the authority to interrogate me about them to the caller based on his identity. There is a hierarchy of prerogatives implicit in all of this, such that I have to prove myself, as an American, to him because I am an Arab-American and he, presumably, is not.

There can be no question that had my name been “Bob Smith, Professor from Brown University” and I had said exactly what I had said on that program, no such question would have been asked and none of the hostile calls would have been placed. The whole thing was a reaction purely to my identity, based on my name and my affiliation with the American Task Force on Palestine, with the two words “Hussein” and “Palestine” ringing Pavolian alarm bells.

It was clear from the outset that with caller after caller, I was in the presence of that form of irrationality which is not only impervious to correction but which sees all contradictory evidence as confirmation of the paranoid fantasy. On the question of whether or not I support Hamas and Hezbollah, for example, a clear answer of no makes no impact. It’s assumed that there’s a good chance that I’m lying or practicing “taqiyyah,” a term that’s been systematically misrepresented in American Islamophobic discourse as authorizing Muslims (as if I were one instead of being an agnostic) to lie freely in the service of Islam. The game is called “gotcha,” and the only thing that can register is an apparent effort not to answer the question directly.

However, answering the question — which in my case is easy because as I have a very strong objection to the policies and actions of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Syrian regime (the three entities in question) – implicitly acknowledges the right of the questioner to interrogate Arab-Americans on such matters in an inquisitorial and accusatory manner. The tone clearly indicates that the only response that will register is one that confirms the stated fears of the earlier caller that “they [including me] just want to kill us [not including me] all.” Attacking the question, which is the dignified and intellectually sound thing to do, falls into one trap: it will be taken by the questioner and much of the audience as confirmation of the inherent extremism in the Arab-American subject (namely me), and “prove” the inquisitorial point, reinforcing the paranoid fantasy. Answering the question falls into another trap: not only doesn’t dispel fantasy for many of its adherents, it submits to the indefensible process of interrogation based on ethnicity.

My response was to do both simultaneously. I attacked the question as unfair, unjust, accusatory and inquisitorial (and, implicitly, racist), and pointed out that I had a very large body of writing and speaking that made the question preposterous and based on bigoted and irrational assumptions about what someone with my name and affiliation probably thinks. Guilty until proven innocent. But of course given the Islamophobic narrative about Muslims being religiously authorized to lie to non-Muslims in the service of Islam, proof of innocence can never be achieved. I also answered the question, contemptuously of course, but I did say that I had a long track record of criticism for Hamas, Hezbollah and Syrian regime. I also pointed out that if the caller had bothered to listen to my comments or read my writings, he wouldn’t have to have such a stupid question. Nonetheless, by answering the question I very consciously and reluctantly fell into the trap of tacitly accepting its legitimacy, vigorous protests notwithstanding.

In the gotcha game, none of this makes a dent in the paranoid fantasy, of course. Suspicions will persist no matter what is said or done, and only evidence that reinforces the fantasy will be accepted. Contradictory evidence will be either dismissed or, in the final stages of paranoid delusion, serve as further confirmation of the paranoid fantasy. This dilemma has placed almost every Arab-American public figure between the Scylla of not answering the question out of righteous and fully justified indignation and the Charybdis of actually answering it. The dilemma wouldn’t be as acute if a clear answer actually resolved the matter. But since it doesn’t, there seems to be genuinely no satisfactory tactical response. My method of handling the problem – answering the question while simultaneously vigorously objecting to it – seems entirely unsatisfactory to me, but I can’t think of a more effective alternative either. Clearly this problem demands more sustained collective thought, and I'd strongly welcome any serious intervention on the problem.

My default is to view such challenging experiences as pedagogical opportunities or, as they say, “teachable moments.” In most instances, dealing with most of our fellow Americans, this is the norm. Slow and patient explanation usually pays off at some point. But the depth of paranoia in the Islamophobic fantasy is such that pedagogy and any appeal to reason is hopeless. The narrative has constructed a series of virtually impregnable barriers to any kind of corrective: huge webs of false facts about what Arab and Muslim Americans want and are doing; virtually unshakable and hostile assumptions about Arab-American opinions and attitudes that boil down to a conspiracy theory akin to classical anti-Semitism; and, above all, the deep-seated belief that Islam permits and encourages wholesale lying to the “infidels,” such that nothing one says will be credited unless it overtly confirms the worst fears. Everything else will be dismissed out of hand, or taken as confirmation.

In other words, one of the greatest strengths of the Islamophobic narrative, like its anti-Semitic predecessor, is that it is impervious to rational challenge. It reminds one of the adage about anti-Semites in which someone is railing against the Jews, and another objects that he knows a very fine Jewish family up the street. “Aha,” comes the retort, “you see how clever they are: they’re fooling even you.” Paranoid fantasies have a particularly insidious way of refusing to be dispelled. The old joke has it that a patient goes to a psychiatrist believing himself to be a grain of corn being pursued by a giant chicken. After much intensive therapy, the psychiatrist agrees with the patient that he is in no sense a grain of corn but a human being. The patient leaves the doctor’s office in high spirits, only to immediately return in a full-fledged panic. “But,” the doctor observes, “didn’t we agree that you are a human being and not a grain of corn?” “I know that and you know that,” says the patient, “but does the giant chicken know that?” In other words, paranoid delusions based on a coherent narrative, no matter how preposterous, are uncannily resistant to rational correctives or appeals to logic.

Is it necessary to write off those who have swallowed narratives of Islamophobia as irredeemable bigots in the grip of a paranoid delusion? Certainly there is nothing that can be done on a radio call-in program with people who take such attitudes. But in the long run, public awareness campaigns, especially those led by mainstream American social, cultural and political leaders and opinion-makers, to counteract Islamophobic ideology can and should be effective, just as other campaigns against bigotry, most notably the fight against anti-Semitism (Islamophobia’s close cousin and immediate predecessor) have been. It’s understood that a fringe in any society will adhere to bigoted perspectives, and that when an energized and empowered group of ideologues push hatred in many media over an extended period of time, such views will begin to penetrate a culture in the most damaging manner. We have been witnessing this happening in terms of Islamophobia in the West generally, including the United States, over the past decade, and it’s only getting worse. (The shameless, dangerous and hyper-aggressive Dutch racist and Islamophobe Geert Wilders is currently touring North America and on Monday I flew to Canada for a TV program, only to be confronted on the airplane by a front-page story in the Globe and Mail newspaper praising him for his bold and reasonable stances.)

It is striking that Islamophobic sentiment should reach such a crescendo in American and Western culture of full decade after the 9/11 attacks during which there has been no repetition of any similar act on American soil and during which the overwhelming majority of Arabs and Muslims have made their opposition to bin Laden’s ideology crystal clear. It’s even more distressing that the events of the “Arab Spring,” particularly nonviolent protests in Egypt succeeded in ousting Pres. Mubarak in the name not of Islam or Islamism, but in the name of democracy, pluralism, accountability and good governance (all-American values) should have made no impression whatsoever on these callers in Montana. When I tried to invoke the Arab Spring, yet another caller vehemently objected that the sexual assault on the journalist Laura Logan proves that the protests were not nonviolent and that there is something deeply pathological with Arab and Muslim culture (she assumed the attackers were Muslims, although that is certainly not known for a fact since there were many Christians and others in Tahrir square). I expressed my indignation at the outrage, but pointed out that sexual assaults on women, by both individuals and mobs, happen on a daily basis in all societies, including our own. The caller, a woman as it happens, indignantly rejected this idea. I don’t know what world she lives in (okay, well I suppose rural Montana is the answer to that), but the willingness to take what was clearly a very ugly but isolated incident, deny that such incidents occur in the United States, and see in it confirmation of the worst stereotypes of a pathological Arab culture again points to the irrational animus driving so much of this thinking.

A decade ago, it was clear we had our work cut out for us to combat the growth of hatred against Arabs and Muslims post-9/11. Not only have we failed to make progress, the situation is markedly and obviously much worse. Meanwhile, the Arab and Muslim American communities are content to watch their organizations die, atrophy or marginalize themselves without exception, without stepping in to support them and without creating alternative groups that could better challenge these narratives of fear and hatred. I do not here offer a prescription, merely another barometer of how grim the prognosis is becoming. This is a generational and mass cultural crisis that will require a generational and mass cultural solution. Ultimately, the only answer is the promotion of responsibility and the shunning and shaming of those who promote fear and hatred, thereby blunting their message and driving it back into the fringes where it used to be, and where it most certainly belongs.

Overcoming political obstacles in implementing the Palestinian state-building program

Presented at the UNITED NATIONS SEMINAR ON ASSISTANCE TO THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE: "Mobilizing international efforts in support of the Palestinian Government’s State-building program"

Helsinki, 28 and 29 April 2011

Hussein Ibish, Senior Research Fellow, American Task Force on Palestine (ATFP)

Introduction

Since the theme of this UN seminar is “mobilizing international efforts in support of the Palestinian Government’s state-building program" I will not take any time to recapitulate what that program entails, except to note that it was a conscious decision in August 2009 by the Palestinian Authority government headed by Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, and under the leadership of President Mahmoud Abbas, to build the economic, institutional and infrastructural framework of a future Palestinian state in spite of the occupation and in order to end the occupation. As such, it represents a remarkable paradigm shift in the Palestinian approach towards seeking freedom and independence. In considering obstacles to this program, we must begin by noting that, since negotiations with Israel are stalled with few immediate prospects for resumption in the near term, state-building is now the main practicable vehicle for momentum towards a two-state solution. Therefore its strategic and political importance to the entire international community — which is committed to the two-state outcome — cannot be overestimated. As well as laying the practical foundations on the ground for Palestinian independence, the state-building program is also capable of filling a vacuum when negotiations are either stalled or proceeding too slowly, as they have been for many months now. Therefore, now is the time to take advantage of it so that it can fulfill this element of its purpose. Simply put, there is no other ongoing and systematic program for advancing the realization of a viable, practicable two-state solution and therefore it must be supported in the most vigorous and robust manner possible by all parties. I've been asked to address the topic of “overcoming political obstacles in implementing the state-building program,” and I will to review those obstacles coming from Israel, within Palestinian society, in the United States and in the rest of the international community, in that order.

1) Political obstacles from Israel

The most significant practical and political obstacles to the implementation of this project come from the government of Israel and other elements of Israeli society, because Israel is the occupying power in the territory in which Palestinian state institutions are being built. Since its inauguration, literally dozens of reports from multilateral institutions and NGOs have favorably assessed progress of state-building in the West Bank, but every one of them has recognized that the occupation poses a long-term threat to the viability and success of the project. In early April of this year, for example, the World Bank issued a report strongly praising state-building progress, repeating its 2010 assessment that Palestinians are now "well-positioned for the establishment of a state at any point in the near future.” However, it noted that “sustainable economic growth" would be difficult to maintain "while Israeli restrictions on access to natural resources and markets remain in place.”

The Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has welcomed and supported some aspects of the project, but often under the unhelpful and illusory rubric of "economic peace.” Since this conflict is not an economic but a political one, it can only be resolved in terms of a political rather than economic solution and there is no conceivable scenario of “economic peace.” All segments of Palestinian society, including the leaders of the state-building program, strongly reject this formula and would abandon the project if it became strictly a matter of economic development rather than a political project aimed at independence and statehood.

Security is the sine qua non of governance, and the new Palestinian security services have been the key predicate for most of what state-building has accomplished since 2009. Law and order has been restored to formerly lawless or chaotic cities such as Jenin and Nablus, which has encouraged investment. Israel was initially skeptical about the new security forces but military and national security officials in Israel are now almost unanimous in praising their performance, and particularly their security cooperation with Israel's own forces. This cooperation has facilitated the lifting of some significant checkpoints and roadblocks, thereby easing restrictions on access and mobility and further contributing to economic growth. However, ongoing Israeli incursions into areas supposedly under Palestinian security control pose a serious threat to the credibility of the new security forces and open the entire PA government to spurious charges of “collaboration.” Evidence suggests that many of these incursions are conducted for political rather than genuine security reasons, and the rate at which they continue to occur poses a significant immediate-term obstacle to the state-building project and to its political credibility and viability. It is therefore vital that they are kept to a minimum if they must occur at all, are only conducted for the most serious security reasons, and insofar as possible are coordinated with Palestinian authorities. In the long run, of course, they need to end entirely.

While Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and many other Israeli leaders have welcomed economic development and the establishment of law and order in “Area A” as defined by the Oslo Agreements — which covers approximately 17 percent of the territory of the West Bank but includes about 55 percent of its Palestinian population — they have strongly resisted state building efforts outside this zone, particularly in “Area C,” which is approximately 55% of the West Bank and includes almost all Israeli settlements. We should note that these designations were agreed to last for a five-year transition period  and yet continue, more than a decade later, to define the political status of different parts of the occupied Palestinian territories.  These restrictions, that amount to serious and, in the long run possibly even fatal, obstacles to the state-building program must be overcome, and Israel must understand the need to move past this anachronistic framework that is rooted in the politics and policies of a different era.

Charges that state-building is a form of “collaboration” are strongly refuted by consistent efforts by the PA government to expand the reach of the project beyond “Area A,” efforts that have been rejected, blocked and undone by Israel. Perhaps the most interesting example is the struggle over the road to the village of Qarawat Bani Hassan. Israel would not grant its residents a permit to build a paved road, so quietly the PA paid for the small road to be created last year. Israeli forces destroyed the road last fall. It was then rebuilt, again with PA funding, and in March was again destroyed by occupation troops. Ultimately the state-building project, if it is to be meaningful, cannot be restricted to Area A, or even B, but must operate also in Area C, since the overwhelming majority of that territory will be an essential part of the state of Palestine. Through such efforts, along with school projects in occupied East Jerusalem and other measures, the state-building project poses a simple question to Israel: is this territory going to be part of our state, or part of yours? If it's not going to be part of our state, then what kind of "Palestinian state" are we talking about and what future are we really envisioning? State-building calls everyone's bluff: it asks the Israelis if they are serious about Palestinian independence and will really allow it to be built; it asks the Palestinians whether or not they want to devote most of their energies to building their own society; and it asks the international community how serious it is about the two-state solution. The question of Area C, in this regard, is a crucial test for all three.

Two additional obstacles to Palestinian state-building from the Israeli side need mentioning. There is an atmosphere that suggests increased Israeli skepticism about the state-building project and some of its key leaders, and an apparent reduction in cooperation from the Israeli side in recent months. There many factors that may have contributed to this unhelpful shift in attitudes, including stalled diplomacy and the kind of challenges to the status quo cited above. But there is also significant Israelidomestic opposition to the concept of Palestinian statehood, including within the current coalition cabinet. These significant Israeli political forces are deeply threatened by the project and have worked, and will continue to work, to undermine or block it at every stage. They may well have taken advantage of the difficulties that have emerged in the negotiations to unfairly cast doubt on the intentions behind, and the possible impact of, the Palestinian state-building program.

2) Political obstacles within Palestinian society

Generally speaking the state-building program has been supported by the Palestinian public, and it has grown in stature and credibility due to its significant record of achievement in a short period of time and under very difficult circumstances. Apathy, defeatism and skepticism among the general public are being overcome by tangible, palpable results on the ground. However, there are three key sources of political opposition to state-building within Palestinian society. Hamas totally rejects the project and spares no opportunity to condemn it and its leaders in the harshest terms. There has also been a dismaying tendency on the part of some figures on the Palestinian secular left to dismiss the project as window dressing for the status quo, or even “collaboration.” Sometimes this criticism is presented as skepticism about the practicability and viability of the project, but sometimes intense and deeply unfair personal attacks, particularly against Fayyad, have been part of these critiques. There are Palestinian political actors and factions on both the secular left and the religious right that are in opposition to the very aim of the two-state solution, and aspire instead to more ambitious, and impracticable, agendas. They therefore tend to view state-building as deeply threatening since they recognize that it promises to succeed in laying the groundwork for statehood. Finally, there are some entrenched political interests in the West Bank that feel threatened by aspects of the state-building project, particularly when it comes to well-established networks of patronage, as well as traditionalists who simply feel uncomfortable with a new and radically different approach to seeking independence. It is essential, however, that the success of the project demonstrates its indispensability for the secular-national Palestinian cause and the future of all moderates in the Palestinian political landscape.

3) Political obstacles in the United States

For those of us working in the United States in support of state-building, as well as Palestinian human and national rights generally, there is a constant battle to ensure that the project is not viewed essentially as a development program and a matter of humanitarian foreign assistance. From the outset in the summer of 2009, the American Task Force on Palestine played a leading role in insisting that state-building is not, and cannot be, merely a development program but is political and strategic par excellence. There is a culture in some elements of the "development community" in the United States that rejects and resists political implications for what are seen as development projects. It was therefore vital that Palestinian state-building not be framed as a development project but as a strategic and political intervention of the utmost importance. This view has been penetrating American thinking at the highest levels, as reflected in comments by US President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton that have increasingly accorded the project its due importance.

A further problem with viewing state-building as simply a development project is that support for it is then framed essentially as a “gift” to the Palestinians, which can be taken away in the event of diplomatic disputes or political disagreements. Yet since its success is vital for the realization of a two-state solution, its fortunes are intimately tied to the most fundamental American national interests. Obama, Clinton and many other officials have stated very clearly that Israeli-Palestinian peace is essential and not optional for the United States, with the Secretary of State recently calling Palestinian statehood “inevitable.” Obviously, it is in the interests of all parties that an inevitable state be successful, and this is the purpose of the state-building enterprise. It therefore is an imperative for the United States and the international community to support the program and not a "gift" to the Palestinians or an expression of altruism, but a vital matter of policy and national interest.

Finally, there remains some political opposition from those in the United States who are not yet fully reconciled to Palestinian statehood, including elements of the extreme American-Jewish right, some evangelical Christians who adhere to a dispensationalist theology, and others who continue to oppose, or at least not fully support, ending the occupation that began in 1967. Like some of their Israeli counterparts, these American voices are at best tolerant of economic development in Area A, but profoundly opposed to the broader political aims of the state-building project and either openly attack or subtly undermine it and seek ways of limiting or ending US government support for the program.

4) Political obstacles in the rest of the international community

The rest of the international community also has a vital role to play in supporting the state-building project financially, technically and politically. Many multilateral institutions have been of great assistance to the program and given serious, credible and almost entirely positive reviews of its progress. Governments around the world have provided generous support, although some important pledges remain unfulfilled. Particularly in the context of the global economic recession, donor fatigue is a significant concern. Palestinian state-building is not at the point where it can do without major foreign aid, even though Fayyad and his government have been successful in significantly reducing both the amount and percentage of foreign aid in the PA budget steadily over the past three years. Yet the recent World Bank report I cited above noted the importance of donor aid to the economic development that has been achieved in the West Bank over the past two years.

The error of perceiving the project as essentially a development program is not restricted to the United States and needs to be combated globally so that all parties understand its profound political and strategic implications and how much is at stake in its success or failure. Some elements of the international community have not yet understood that even though diplomacy will ultimately determine a successful outcome, and an end to the conflict and the occupation, state-building is essential for improving the prospects for renewed negotiations and their eventual success. It is also crucial in ensuring that the future Palestinian state is robust rather than brittle. More can and should be done not only in terms of financial support for the project but also greater technical assistance, partnering and twinning between Western and other international institutions and Palestinian ones, and in providing diplomatic and political support to the project and its aims over the long run.

Conclusion

The most significant political obstacles to implementing the state-building program are born of four main factors. The first is donor fatigue or lack of resources, which by definition fails to understand the stakes at hand because any failure to create a two-state solution, which presently depends on successful state-building more than any other factor, will be far more costly. The second is a persistent misrecognition of the state-building program as essentially a social and economic development agenda missing its fundamentally strategic and political nature. The third, and perhaps most significant, obstacle is opposition in some quarters to a two-state solution in practice. This opposition expresses itself in two separate phenomena occurring in many societies: those who are opposed to a two-state solution in theory, and those who are for it in theory but against the actual compromises that would be required to produce it as a reality. Neither of these perspectives promote support for state-building. In addition it should be recognized that there are domestic Palestinian political forces that are in favor of a two-state solution but for narrow reasons not supportive of the state-building program, and that this is a serious political obstacle on the ground. The best way to overcome domestic Palestinian obstacles, and almost all political opposition, is through the success of the program itself. Again I stress, the answer to almost all of the political obstacles to the implementation of the state-building program is the success of the program itself. In its success lies its credibility, effectuality, and domestic and international base of support.

Therefore, the role of the international community should be to focus as much as possible on supporting state-building in anticipation of the resumption of a robust diplomatic process some time in the future. Renewed negotiations do not appear to be imminent given the domestic political circumstances within Israel, the United States and among the Palestinians. The international community is therefore faced with a conundrum, for which the Palestinians have a solution. The world cannot walk away from this conflict because of its unique political and symbolic resonance and its strategic importance. As ordinary citizens around the Arab world are rising to assert their rights and demand transparency, accountability and good governance, it is remarkable that perhaps the most ambitious Arab political reform project is being conducted by a people living under occupation and without citizenship of any kind. Freedom and democracy cannot come to the Middle East without resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and ending the occupation that began in 1967 by creating a viable, sovereign and independent Palestinian state to live alongside Israel in peace and security. It is exceptionally important that it is the Palestinians themselves who are leading the way in laying the groundwork for this solution by building the framework of their state in spite of the occupation, but they require significant international support in order to succeed. The political obstacles to implementing the state-building project I have outlined here need to be clearly recognized and systematically overcome in order to defend the real, practical viability of the realization of a two-state solution in the foreseeable future. The answer to this is precisely the success of the state-building program in practice, which requires international assistance. What is at stake in supporting the state-building program may well be nothing less than the fate of the two-state solution, which is the only plausible means of ending the conflict and achieving peace.

I can't believe I have to ask this question, but everyone is skirting around it and somebody has to point out the obvious: between the increasingly hardline demands of some of the more extreme opposition groups and, above all, the campaign of political repression launched by the government of Bahrain and its Gulf Cooperation Council allies, what began as a manageable political situation is at the brink of no return. This has become obvious over the past week in particular, and it had been my intention to begin a grim posting of this nature with a timeline and summary of how the situation has deteriorated to the point where the question I posed in my title has become unavoidable. But the outstanding Marina Ottaway of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has written a flawless, pitch-perfect summary and analysis of these developments, published on Carnegie's website on April 4, and there is no point my retracing it in such detail. I recommend reading her acute diagnosis not only for its precise factual content but also as a textbook example of how to perform a timeline/summary of the development of a crisis, interspersed with wise and insightful analysis. For me, this is political writing at its very finest, and the narrative she outlines with such precision forms the essential background of my deep concern about where things are going in Bahrain.

The bottom line is that under Saudi Arabian and other GCC “guidance” and influence, the government and royal family of Bahrain has responded to the protest and reform movement with a program of total political repression. This was completely avoidable, as initially the protest movement was not strictly sectarian nor initially aimed at removing the royal family or completely overhauling the political system in the country. There's no doubt that the government's violent response, starting on February 17, to what had been peaceful protests at the Pearl Roundabout began the pattern of overreaction between extremists on both sides that has utterly foreclosed the obvious solution of a partial opening up of political space and the beginning of a process of moving towards a truly constitutional monarchy. It also began the process of ensuring that the protest movement in Bahrain became increasingly and is now almost entirely sectarian.

There was an initial move away from total repression. The King himself apologized for the first deaths, and his son, Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa made many of the right noises and apparently attempted to initiate a productive dialogue with the opposition. Some opposition groups such as the leading moderate but sectarian Shiite political association al-Wifaq undoubtedly did place some onerous conditions on the opening of a dialogue, and bear their share of the blame for the rapid breakdown of the possibility of a reform dialogue. But in the end whatever influence the Crown Prince and his apparent moderate faction within the regime had, hard-liners centered around his uncle, the Prime Minister Khalifa Bin Salman al-Khalifa, clearly won out. So did extremists among the protesters, most notably the more militant Shiite organization al-Haq, led by Hassan Mushaima, who, along with other Shiite opposition groups, proclaimed the intention of founding a “republic” in place of the Island Kingdom. It was assumed that al-Haq at least, if not the other two organizations in the "Coalition for a Bahraini Republic" which was announced on March 8, had left the word “Islamic” — in the manner of the “Islamic Republic of Iran” — implicit but clearly discernible in their call. Hardliners on both sides by that point had drawn red lines neither could tolerate. The process by which extremists on both sides seized the momentum was neatly summarized in an excellent analysis in The National by Caryle Murphy, also published on April 4.

Violent repression continued, and culminated in the invitation to GCC armed forces to intervene, led by 1,200 Saudi forces that crossed the causeway into Bahrain on March 14. On March 17, Mushaima and four other leading Shiite opposition figures were arrested. So was the social democrat reformist Dr. Ibrahim Sharif of the al-Wa'ad organization, a moderate, non-sectarian group (I spoke at their headquarters in Manama the week before the last US presidential election, and if they are radicals, then there are no moderate opposition figures in Bahrain). Bahraini security forces, GCC troops and un-uniformed armed gangs have instituted what amounts to a reign of terror in Manama, largely focused on the Shiite community. All political space for opposition, particularly Shiite opposition or dissent of any kind, in Bahrain is now completely closed. Opposition newspapers are shut. Leaders, both moderate and extreme, are in prison. Medical services have been targeted, injured patients rounded up in hospitals and often denied medical care, and doctors arrested. The Pearl monument, the focal point of the protests and the main landmark of the city, has been demolished by the government. A draconian emergency law put in place. At least 300 people arrested. 25 people killed. A widescale crackdown on various professional sectors, including public employees, professional organizations and unions is underway. One could go on, but the big picture is extremely clear: there is no political space for dissent of any kind in Bahrain anymore.

The sectarian character of this crisis has become undisguised and unmistakable. This has been driven by the government's attitude, influenced by its GCC allies, which holds that the entire affair is an Iranian plot. It has also been shaped by some of the more hardline protesters who have made clear their attitude that the royal family, which originates from Qatar, and much of the Sunni community, is a foreign presence whose rule, and perhaps even residency, in the island is coming to an end. What should have been a manageable negotiation over the opening of political space and moves to end discrimination and marginalization against the Shiite majority has become an existential struggle. Since the protests began in February, it's been de rigueur to say it's not too late to pull back from the brink, and I've said so many times. In fact, my initial attitude — which was misguidedly based on the logic of the political situation rather than the sectarian hysteria, ideology and total irrationality which has bizarrely won out on both sides of the equation (although it should be noted that the government holds most of the cards and therefore bears most of the blame) — was to describe “the drama in Manama” as a “sideshow” to the broader “Arab Spring.” That's probably still true: what's happening in Bahrain is only tangentially connected to the wider Arab reform process and anti-government protest movements, precisely because it is more a function of a long-standing sectarian conflict between a Sunni ruling minority and a disenfranchised Shiite majority. But we may really be reaching the point of no return.

The facts speak for themselves: there is no political space left at all for dialogue or dissent; the conflict has become entirely sectarian; extremists on both sides have all the momentum; and the situation is totally untenable. Also on April 4 (which has all the hallmarks of a turning point in perceptions), the Saudi cabinet issued a statement touching on many subjects, but claiming that, "Peace and stability returned to Bahrain as a result of the wisdom of its leadership in dealing with its internal matters and because of its people giving priority to national interests.” I don't know how one could possibly tweak this sentence to make it any more incorrect. Even though the crackdown is total, and at this stage weapons are being almost entirely held, or certainly used, by only one side (the Bahraini government, its GCC allies and its armed gangs), the idea that “peace and stability have returned to Bahrain” is utterly delusional. To the contrary, what we have is a classic formula for the emergence of the most dangerous of political phenomena: a campaign of urban terrorism, in this case by extremist Shiites.

In my view the question is probably more one of when and how, rather than if, such a campaign begins, and what its character, scope and effects will be. Just as al-Haq operates to the political and sectarian right of the traditionally larger and more mainstream al-Wifaq organization, are there not now or will there not soon inevitably be those to the right of al-Haq? Is it really conceivable that among a disenfranchised and marginalized majority of between 60-70 percent of a country, however small, facing a situation of total crackdown and violent repression with a complete closing down of all political space, there will not be those who conclude that "fire must be met with fire?" I can't think of a parallel situation in which that hasn't eventually happened.

The United States might have been able to play a moderating role, but was unable to do so (it apparently tried without any success). Ultimately its interests, driven by the hosting of its Fifth Fleet in a huge naval base in Bahrain and concerns about Iranian designs on the island and the Gulf region as a whole, lie with the continuation of the ruling family, especially if the alternative is its overthrow by Shiite Islamists or other opposition movements unfriendly to the United States. Therefore, no matter how much it disapproved of the government's reaction and the GCC intervention, which it publicly criticized, the Obama administration has not been able to prevent the deterioration I've described.

The wildcard here of course is Iran. There are strong cultural, familial and other connections, beyond simply Shiite religious affiliation, between large sections of the Bahraini Shiite community and Iran, and a subsection of it is directly Persian in origin. There isn't any strong evidence of major Iranian involvement in the Bahraini uprising to date, but without doubt the Bahraini royal family and, possibly even more strongly, Saudi Arabia and other GCC countries have seen the entire opposition movement as either directly an Iranian plot or inevitably accruing to the benefit of Tehran. Iran has a long-standing territorial claim on Bahrain, which caused major tensions with Britain and Arab Gulf states in the 50s and 60s, and which has been downplayed but probably not abandoned during the era of the “Islamic Republic.” In all Arab states with large Shiite populations, the influence of Iran is a hotly debated topic. In Lebanon, for example, strong ties between Hezbollah and Iran and its Revolutionary Guards are beyond question, but the degree of independence the organization has from Tehran is not really known and hasn't been tested in many years. The relationship between Iran and Shiite political parties in Iraq has proven extremely complex. Some of those that were very close to, and indeed based in, Iran during the Saddam Hussein era, but have risen to national political prominence since the US invasion, have distanced themselves from Iran as they have had to assume responsibility for governing a country that does not have a Shiite majority and has its own independent culture and national interests. On the other hand, the organization led by Muqtada Sadr, which was originally more nationalistic and skeptical of Iranian intentions, appears to have been strongly drawn into the Iranian orbit, and Sadr himself relocated to Iran, ostensibly for purposes of religious higher education and clerical advancement.

In the 90s, the Bahraini government accused Iran of having established a “Hezbollah Bahrain” to organize a coup against the royal family, but the evidence was scant and, although there was a serious uprising, the real existence of such a plot — let alone a Bahraini version of Hezbollah or a campaign of terrorism by such an organization — remained highly questionable. Bahraini Shiites have launched protests and uprisings, including rioting, on numerous occasions throughout the 20th century, notably in the 1950s and 1990s, but never turned to a campaign of urban terrorism. I'm certainly not arguing that it's inevitable that such a phenomenon will develop now, but I think the strong possibility can only be discounted by people who are not paying attention or thinking critically. By totally closing down all political space in the manner they have, the Bahraini government and its GCC allies, especially Saudi Arabia, have presented a golden opportunity for any extremists within the Bahraini Shiite community inclined to conclude that there is no other way forward.

Assuming there are extremist Bahraini Shiites who are beginning to consider this option seriously, given that all other alternatives appear to be most unwisely and foolishly foreclosed by the government's extraordinary overreaction, the question of Iran's influence and role becomes exceptionally important. If such a group were to approach Tehran with a request for support for this kind of campaign, would the Iranians find it in their strategic interests to help in any way, including indirectly through the Lebanese Hezbollah? Would they give it a wink and nod, but ask not to be involved directly or indirectly? Would they strongly warn against any such move for their own purposes? It's impossible to answer these questions. More importantly, would all Bahraini Shiites considering this extreme option abandon the idea of a campaign of urban sabotage and/or terrorism if strongly discouraged, for whatever reason, by Tehran? The biggest problem with modern urban terrorism is that it only requires a tiny handful of people with rudimentary knowledge, armed with a combination of readily available household items and both deep ruthlessness and extreme recklessness to begin the process.

History suggests that the beginning of such a movement need not be spectacular or particularly ambitious in its destructive acts. A handful of people with Molotov cocktails or other crude devices taking to the streets around the same time on a given evening in strategic locations are capable of stoking extreme panic under such circumstances. The government and its allies have already overreacted to peaceful protests and arrested moderate and extremist opposition figures alike, shutting down all political space. The goal of even a modest opening salvo of urban terrorism or sabotage is typically to provoke an overreaction on the part of the authorities being targeted, and in this case that seems virtually guaranteed. The calculus would then be that the overreaction would seem to justify the sabotage or terrorism in the eyes of many people who otherwise might have been disapproving, allowing the movement to grow, gain strength and develop over time to the point that it becomes a real threat to national security and political stability. In other words, it requires a wise and calm government to defuse a modest outbreak of urban terrorism by small groups of extremists, but an overreaction generally plays precisely into their hands and turns a manageable security situation into an unmanageable one. The Bahraini government and its allies have already succeeded in turning a manageable political situation into an unmanageable one. Why should they be expected to react in a more rational, constructive and prudent manner to a violent security threat, however limited and symbolic?

What I'm suggesting is that all the conditions for a campaign of urban terrorism and sabotage are in place right now in Manama. It may or may not gain the support or even approval of Iran, the Lebanese Hezbollah, or any other outside forces. But that wouldn't necessarily stop it from launching itself in a modest, limited manner. This then has the capacity, and under the present circumstances I fear even the likelihood, of spiraling out of control if there are unwise overreactions by the authorities.

Thankfully at this stage such a scenario is entirely speculative. Indeed, I've rarely engaged in a piece of speculation I more heartily hoped would prove to be misinformed or misguided, or more strongly wished for events to move in a very different direction. It's hard to imagine anything more frightening in the Gulf at this stage, but it's also very easy to imagine it happening. The political opportunity is there. Given an extremist mindset, which some, especially aggrieved, people all over the world have, the logic presents itself ineluctably. It doesn't require external support and wouldn't necessarily acquiesce to external prohibitions. It doesn't require a large group or sophisticated knowledge or equipment either. The door for just such a scenario has been opened wide, and — I'm deeply pained to say — when a political space like this is presented over an extended period of time, eventually somebody usually ends up walking through that door and taking possession of that space.