So, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has, by hook or by crook, been returned to a second term of office in the Iranian elections, albeit with a suspiciously large majority. This means that the public face of Iran will continue to be an apocalyptically minded fanatic with a fetish for Holocaust diminishment and denial. If Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does not make much of this in his major policy address tomorrow, and his allies in the United States do not make much of it in the American policy conversation, I will be very much surprised. Of course, power in Iran over foreign and military policy, among other things, as always rested squarely in the hands of the supreme leader, presently Ayatollah Khamenei. However, core diplomatic realities are exacerbated by the grotesque demagoguery to which Mr. Ahmadinejad appears in no common measure addicted. I don’t know about Iran, but in the United States and the Arab world, the war parties and clash-of-civilization types are certainly celebrating.

As for Netanyahu’s speech, there are already signs of dissatisfaction among Obama administration officials with what has been advertised in advance. Ha’aretz reports that, "The proposals to be outlined in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech on Sunday will not be enough to satisfy the Obama administration, a senior U.S. official was quoted as saying.” The same report suggests that the outcome of the Iranian election can only intensify interest in moving towards an end-of-conflict agreement between Israel and Palestinians since, "U.S. President Barack Obama says containing Iran’s nuclear aspirations — which Israel considers a major threat — would be helped by progress toward a Palestine deal.” Indeed, US Special Envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell, has continued to emphasize the seriousness of Washington’s new engagement, most recently by declaring that the US "supports the creation of a Palestinian state ‘as soon as possible.’” Meanwhile, signs are increasing that some members of Congress who have been increasingly critical of settlements and the occupation and supportive of President Obama’s peace initiative are beginning to feel the pressure from Jewish constituents in their districts. Movement by all deeply committed parties was always likely to be of the 3-steps-forward, 2-steps-backward variety, and entirely contingent upon momentum for progress.

Even though it’s very likely that Netanyahu’s speech will not fully satisfy the Obama administration, it’s also quite possible that they may cautiously welcome his remarks, in order to encourage further moves and out of an understanding that Netanyahu is constrained by his own coalition partners. It is essential that the administration not waver on the fundamentals of its position on a settlement freeze and a two state solution. However, as I noted recently, giving Netanyahu the time, space and political cover to adjust to the new American attitude is infinitely preferable to any sort of avoidable confrontation.

It is likely that Netanyahu is going to give way, at least in theory, to a Palestinian state, possibly with conditions. The conditions are not as important as they might first appear, as they represent the opening bargaining position from the present Israeli government, and not any fait accompli. The more crucial issue, and the thing to be listening for, is what language Netanyahu will be using to describe his policy on settlements. The Obama administration has been clear, consistent and extremely firm in ruling out all forms of settlement activity, although some kind of accommodation that allows for a degree of "natural growth" of structures but does not increase the size of any existing settlements in territorial terms is possible. However, it is unlikely that, over the long run, Netanyahu is going to be able to sell the administration on anything less than a real settlement freeze, no matter what kind of window dressing he can arrange for his right-wing allies.

The reason the administration is so firm on this issue is that Israeli compliance on Roadmap commitments, especially a settlement freeze, and Palestinian compliance with security commitments, sets the stage for revisiting the innovation to the Roadmap introduced in Annapolis, whereby phase 1 commitments such as settlements and security take place simultaneously as the beginning of negotiations on phase 4 permanent status issues. In other words, if a settlement freeze is achieved, and security measures are being taken by the Palestinians, it should be possible for the administration to begin to insist on convening permanent status talks and returning, at long last, to the fundamental issues. There are signs that the administration is very keen on beginning a serious negotiation on the question of borders, that being perhaps the most difficult and important of all permanent status issues.

The administration’s entire approach suggests a determination to actually achieve the outlines of an agreement, and perhaps even an agreement itself in the foreseeable future. If Netanyahu shows a willingness to go along with the essence of this by agreeing to a de facto settlement freeze with some obfuscations designed to mollify Israeli extremist sentiment, this will be a major step in the right direction, and certainly enough for the administration and the Palestinians to work with for the time being. At that point, it will be all the more important to bring the Arab states in to play a responsible role in building the conditions for peace. However, if Netanyahu falls radically short of the administration’s firm position on settlements, we will have moved one step closer to a confrontation between his government and the Obama administration, in which everyone could end up the loser. Except, perhaps, Ahmadinejad.

A reader asks, "I noticed that you’re affiliated with The American Task Force on Palestine. After googling them, I’ve come to the conclusion that they’re heavily criticized in certain Arab-American circles, but don’t understand why. Can you please explain?” Thanks for that question.

I’ll try to answer, although I agree the vehement anger directed against ATFP by some segments of the Arab-American community is difficult to explain given that most Arab-Americans agree with ATFP’s mission of advocating that an end-of-conflict agreement that allows for two states, Israel and Palestine, to live side-by-side in peace and security is in the American national interest. It should be noted at the outset that ATFP does also enjoy considerable support among the other segments of the Palestinian and Arab-American communities, has seen a steady increase in the support over its six years of existence, and has a large board of directors composed of noted and significant Palestinian-Americans. ATFP’s premier annual event, our October galas, have grown in size and stature with every succeeding year, and our website recently passed the milestone of 1 million hits in a single month. Obviously, while there are indeed vehement critics, there is also a strong bedrock of support.

Criticism of ATFP emerges mainly from the far-right and, especially, from the ultra-left of the Arab-American community. It primarily reflects the split between those who agree with ATFP’s peace-oriented mission and its dedication to the aim of ending the occupation on the one hand and those who believe that ending the occupation is either impossible or undesirable, or both. In other words, there is a constituency in the Arab-American community that simply does not accept the Palestinian national goal of seeking a negotiated agreement with Israel allowing for two states. These include one-state advocates who seek to replace Israel and Palestine with some other, as yet largely undefined, single state, by means as yet unarticulated. It also, more quietly, includes Islamists dedicated to the idea that all of historical Palestine must be dominated by Muslims. Obviously, those who adhere to these two alternative visions that abjure the only plausible means of achieving peace and an end to the occupation find ATFP’s position completely unacceptable. The feeling is mutual.

However, there is also some unease about ATFP’s methods even from some of those who agree with the goal of seeking an agreement with Israel to end the occupation. This is because ATFP has deliberately abandoned a deeply-rooted historical approach by the Arab-American community and other advocates of Palestinian rights in the United States that sees Palestinian-Israeli relations as a zero-sum equation in which everything good for one party is bad for the other, and vice versa. Since its inception, ATFP has been pioneering a new attitude that foregrounds the necessary role Palestinians and Israelis play for each other as indispensable partners in a potential peace agreement, and advocates not only dialogue with pro-Israel Jewish American organizations, but also a national coalition for Middle East peace with all pro-Israel organizations that agree with the aim of a genuine, reasonable two-state agreement. This has been difficult for many Arab Americans to accept because of the deep-seated suspicion the two communities have for each other, and a history of opposition, rivalry and bad blood.

The same attitude is readily to be found in some segments of the Jewish American community as well. It is an extraordinary element of the present discourse on US foreign policy towards the Middle East that Arab and Jewish American organizations that take the same positions in favor of peace are often well-regarded by the other community but viewed with suspicion within their own. This suggests that the ethnicity of any speaker is as important to the reception of what they have to say as their positions are, and that deviation from what is considered to be a normative community perspective is greeted with either approval or disdain based on the extent of this perceived deviation. This explains why some Arab Americans who are well disposed towards Jewish American groups such as Americans for Peace Now or the Israel Policy Forum are nonetheless uncomfortable with ATFP, whereas some Jewish Americans well disposed towards ATFP regard APN and IPF with suspicion. Asking people to move beyond deeply entrenched, familiar and comfortable attitudes, however dysfunctional and counterproductive they may be, is not always easy.

Another source of confusion and suspicion regarding ATFP’s methods, even among some who agree with its goals, has been the Task Force’s serious commitment to working within the political system of our country as it exists today and its determination to join the policy conversation in Washington. Many Arab Americans are used to a perspective of extreme skepticism about the potential of the community to seriously engage with the American political system and to empower itself through the normal processes of American civil society. There is an irrational and erroneous, but widespread, belief that the system is somehow closed to us and that nothing Arab Americans do will gain them greater political empowerment or a seat at the policy table on questions regarding Israel and the Palestinians. The truth, of course, is that this is a self-reinforcing and self-defeating attitude that must be overcome and defeated if Arab-American perspectives are to become more a part of the national conversation, especially on foreign policy.

Some Arab-American critics of ATFP’s methods object to its engagement with the government because they reject the American political system and believe that there is no benefit to seeking such an engagement but rather advocate what amounts to a revolutionary attitude seeking radical change that is extremely implausible. Others are simply uncomfortable with ATFP’s constructive approach to dealing with our national leadership, and our commitment to advancing the American national interest. Many Arab Americans are emotionally invested in a traditional approach to pro-Palestinian advocacy that emphasizes human rights, morality, and international law, and have yet to fully appreciate the necessity to articulate why ending the occupation is in the American national interest. To some, this smacks of instrumentalizing what, in their view, ought to be a purely moral and ethical argument that is entirely self-evident, and arguments that emphasize practical benefits to the United States of ending the occupation seem to debase what they would prefer to be a more "high-minded" approach. ATFP, on the other hand, strongly argues that it is no slight against our fellow Americans to recognize that they would, naturally, ask what the American national interest is in actively pursuing Israeli-Palestinian peace and an end to the occupation.

For a detailed response to many specific criticisms of, and calumnies against, ATFP from other Arab-Americans, please see my issue paper on the subject here.

A reader questions my assertion that ?moving quickly towards an agreement that will end the occupation by definition means moving towards a resolution of Israeli violence against Palestinians,” and notes that, ?You may have heard that the settlements in Gaza were removed some time ago and the thugs residing therein sent packing. I am not aware that these actions have relieved the citizens of Gaza of Israel’s kind attention.? The reader asks, ?Why do you suppose that a retreat from the West Bank would have a better outcome?? Thanks very much for this interesting question.

First of all, it should be noted that I am not advocating an Israeli “retreat” from the West Bank, but rather a negotiated agreement between Israel and the Palestinians which includes an end to the occupation. The unilateral redeployment of troops in Gaza and removal of settlers, in spite of frequent disingenuous claims to the contrary, was not connected to the quest for peace, but rather was a function of the continuation of the conflict. For more than a decade before it actually happened, most senior figures in the defense and military establishments in Israel had been strongly considering the move because of the serious burden attached to defending a small group of settlers in a very exposed situation and in an area generally not considered strategically, religiously or historically important to the Israeli national project. It was an action taken by the Israeli military on behalf of the Israeli military without consideration for the Palestinian people, their national aspirations or rights, or in anyway connected to peace gestures with or towards them.

The fact that the situation in Gaza degenerated to the point that it has following the redeployment is, to a very large extent, a predictable consequence of the fact that Israel’s withdrawal to the peripheries of Gaza was done unilaterally and was not pursuant to any kind of understanding with the Palestinian people. The reader doubts whether ending the occupation would really end Israeli violence against Palestinians, because of the experience of Gaza. However, this very same experience leads some Israelis to question whether ending the occupation would lead to an end to Palestinian violence towards Israel. What both of these arguments miss is that there was no agreement connected to the Gaza redeployment. It was not the function of a peace treaty, reflective of a mutual decision on the part of both Israeli and Palestinian leaderships to make a change that would benefit both peoples. It was a unilateral Israeli decision made exclusively by and for the Israeli government. And, of course, the fact is that Gaza remains under occupation until today, and under siege to boot.

I do think that ending the occupation is the key to ending both Palestinian violence against Israel, which is primarily motivated by a desire to end the occupation, and to ending Israeli violence against Palestinians, which is primarily motivated by the desire to enforce the occupation. The occupation is the context and proximate cause of most of the violence on both sides, although of course there are some extremists in both societies that conceptualize their violent acts in broader terms. Such extremists will have to be dealt with by the police of both Israel and the Palestinian state, but I do not believe they will be a major problem if there is an agreement that ends the occupation. Therefore, ending the occupation through a negotiated agreement that serves the interests of both Israel and the Palestinians would, in fact, end the cause and the context of violence, and therefore bring an end to most violence.

Philip Weiss reports that John Mearsheimer, although he is not optimistic about the prospects of Middle East peace, has urged Muslim Americans to form an alliance with Jewish Americans in pursuit of a two-state agreement in the Middle East. Mearsheimer notes that there is no prospect whatsoever of Israel agreeing to a single state in the foreseeable future, and that therefore a two-state agreement is the only possibility for peace and ending the occupation.

According to Weiss, Mearsheimer told his American Muslim audience in Detroit: “A two-state solution is the only good outcome for the Palestinians at this point in time. And it is also the only good outcome for Israel. Thus, I think it would make good sense for the Muslim community to rally behind the two-state solution and work hard to form alliances with those individuals and organizations in the American Jewish community who back the idea of creating a Palestinian state living side-by-side with Israel. President Obama is going to need all the allies he can get to deal with Israel and the hardliners in the lobby. This is not a magic formula by any means, but it is the best hope we have of ending the Arab-Israeli conflict.”

I couldn’t have put it better myself.

Whatever Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is going to say in his big speech on Sunday, it had better not be based on the world according to “Boogie” (also known as Vice-Premier and Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Ya’alon). In a strident and uncompromising speech at WINEP earlier this week, Boogie reiterated his opposition to a two-state approach to Middle East peace, stating flatly that, "If in two years’ time we will have a political settlement, I believe we will witness Hamastan in the West Bank, and we are not going to implement it.” He also implicitly attacked President Obama’s outreach efforts to the Arab and Muslim worlds, suggesting that conciliatory gestures, "just strengthens their conviction of victim-hood and their resolve to restore their honor." Boogie was also a main speaker at an anti-peace conference in May designed to coincide with the Prime Minister’s visit to Washington, at which he declared that the two state solution had “failed,” that there was no chance of peace in the foreseeable future, and that Israel could and would allow no Palestinian “entity” to be formed.

If this is the attitude that comes through in Netanyahu’s Sunday remarks, the path to confrontation with the Obama administration will become quite direct. There is, therefore, almost no chance that Bibi will be speaking overtly in the terms of the world according to Boogie. He is enough of a pragmatist to understand that he cannot prevail in a confrontation with the American president, and that the best he can possibly hope for is a lose-lose result. The most optimistic thing to look for would be signs of a gradual climb down. Netanyahu’s retreat from his strident positions and from the world according to Boogie has to be gradual because he otherwise risks exploding his coalition with the extreme right and either entering into new elections in which he is unlikely to do better than last time, or entering a coalition with Kadima in which he will not be the most politically powerful player (how, in such a coalition, would he remain prime minister when Livni has one more seat than he does in the Knesset?).

Speculation differs as to what kind of climbdown Netanyahu is contemplating. Americans for Peace Now reports that, "Israel’s Channel 2 Hebrew-language news just aired the story that Prime Minister Netanyahu is considering adopting a temporary freeze in settlement activity." Ha’aretz says that Netanyahu will announce "the adoption of the road map and the ‘two-state solution,’” and that "he will try to reach a tacit understanding with U.S. President Barack Obama on the suspension of construction for a specific period of time.” The report adds that, "A senior Washington source confirmed that progress had been achieved, but stressed that ‘our position on the need to cease settlement construction has not been altered at all.’”

There is no question whatsoever that Washington needs to hold firm to the settlement freeze, but give Netanyahu the time and space to develop an accommodation of this requirement that does not unseat his coalition. The last thing the quest for a settlement freeze needs is for it to be the cause of the collapse of an Israeli government, raising the issue to a proven career-killer and spooking all future Israeli prime ministers. There is a big difference, and a wide range of options, between giving way on the principle and practical necessity for a settlement freeze, which is unthinkable, and recognizing that there is a need to give Netanyahu the time, space and political cover to shift in this direction. It should be recalled that no Israeli government has ever successfully implemented a settlement freeze, and underestimating the political difficulties of such a gesture would be foolish.

Since his election, Netanyahu and his cabinet have been desperately searching for a way to get Washington to tacitly accommodate their settlement expansion inclinations while ostensibly sticking to the settlement freeze position. They have found no means of achieving this, and rather have met with a firm position that amounts to an American bottom line. As a consequence, Netanyahu is now forced to do the opposite: look for a way in which he can tacitly (or temporarily, or conditionally) but effectively accommodate the American demand for settlement freeze while ostensibly claiming that he has not done so, or at least not fully.

It would be unwise not to grant him this space, as the alternative to a certain degree of patience with Netanyahu is a de facto confrontation between the United States government and his coalition. Much as this might give emotional satisfaction to many people, it would waste badly needed time, energy, American political capital, and Obama’s own reserves of clout and credibility, on a political squabble that is best avoided so that the same resources can be applied to more constructive efforts to advance the conditions for peace. Moreover, as I already noted, if the issue of settlement freeze were the proximate cause of the collapse of Netanyahu’s government, this would hardly be an inducement to future Israeli governments and would only underscore the political dangers involved. Finally, while Netanyahu cannot prevail in a confrontation with Obama, and it is possible for Obama to prevail, the most likely scenario is that both parties suffer significant political damage in a lose-lose scenario that could potentially suck the life out of the President’s vital initiative for Middle East peace.

As a practical matter, the Israeli government position on settlements, peace and Palestinian statehood must be shifted, and there is strong evidence that President Obama is succeeding in moving Prime Minister Netanyahu’s approach, however reluctant Bibi may be. If Netanyahu’s position moves in the direction suggested by Channel 2 and Ha’aretz on Sunday, it will not be reflecting the world according to Boogie. Most probably it will also not be enough. But it certainly could and should be a start, and that will be both a significant accomplishment for President Obama and solid ground for going forward.

A reader asks: “What do you think about Noam Chomsky? I have noticed many Arabs and Muslims adore him, quote him- let him shape their world view.” Thanks so much for that question, and I will try to keep it brief, although Chomsky is, by definition a vast topic.

First of all, I’m not in a position to comment on most of Chomsky’s work as I know nothing about linguistics or the science of cognition. But in general, it’s very clear that Chomsky has a first-rate mind and a truly remarkable ability to absorb and recall data. In the political realm, Chomsky has played many different roles and I think there are two high points to his career as a public intellectual. First was his involvement in the opposition to the Vietnam War, in which he played a singular role in forcing academics, intellectuals and scientists to interrogate their own relationship to the war and to the state structures that were pursuing it. This intervention on the ethical responsibility of intellectuals continues to have an impact and influenced dozens of major public intellectuals, not least of them Edward Said. Second, Chomsky was an early and principled Jewish-American opponent of Israeli policies, especially with regard to the occupation, and a vocal critic at a time when questioning these policies was considered virtually anathema in most Jewish-American circles. Chomsky’s critique opened the space for Jewish Americans and others to think more critically about Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians. For these two contributions, if nothing else, he will be remembered in the future as someone who played an important role in American political life in the 20th century.

However, while recognizing these contributions and his extraordinary intellectual capacity, I do have my doubts about Chomsky’s whole political approach. My very strong impression, although I’m not an expert on the subject, is that Chomsky essentially operates out of a classic anarchist model, not very far removed from the 19th century anarchism of Bakunin and Kropotkin. This means that, as a bottom line, Chomsky is fundamentally opposed first and foremost to the accumulation of all forms of political, economic and social power in human relationships. Perhaps this is slightly reductive, but I do think it boils down more or less to that. My impression is that he therefore tends to view political phenomena through the simple formula of asking what outcomes tend to accumulate rather than disperse power. As a consequence, he generally speaking tends to side simply with the less powerful against the more powerful. This explains his otherwise difficult to rationalize position during the first Gulf War, in which he first sided with Kuwait against Iraq, and then with Iraq against the United States — a position that otherwise might seem somewhat inexplicable. Because of this perspective, and some other crucial attitudes, Chomsky tends to take a reflexively anti-establishment and oppositional approach towards the US government and institutions, to my mind often without sufficient reflection on the virtues of the likely outcomes of what is actually at play.

Apart from this general oppositional stance towards American society and institutions, and an ardent rejection of American "imperial" power in the developing world, Chomsky’s main influence on contemporary Arab intellectuals may well be his position on the role of the pro-Israel lobby in the United States. Like many major Jewish-American critics of Israeli policy, Chomsky does not acknowledge the full scope and power the pro-Israel lobby has wielded in shaping American policies towards the Middle East. It is perfectly understandable why some Jewish-American critics of Israeli and US government policies might nonetheless balk at a cold evaluation of the scope of the influence of the pro-Israel lobby in the United States, given the history of anti-Semitic agitation based on the specter of Jewish power in Western societies. However, as I have observed elsewhere, it is extraordinary that there are Arab-American political scientists who are willing to accept the idea that the pro-Israel lobby is merely convenient veneer for imperial interests that are produced by some sort of mysterious process that has nothing to do with the transparent give-and-take of a myriad of forces and influences in the American political scene that actually does shape policy. Steven Walt and John Mearsheimer got many of the details wrong, but their overall point about the power and influence of the pro-Israel lobby is both obvious and incontrovertible.

On the other hand, Chomsky’s stance on the one-state agenda is extremely sound. He supports it in theory, but recognizes that it is only attainable in the distant future, and by way of a two-state agreement that might, at some future date, give way to some kind of unification mutually agreed upon by Israelis and Palestinians. As for the one-state rhetoric that is currently in vogue on the US and British university campuses, Chomsky has correctly noted that, “Evidently, such stands are of only academic interest unless they are accompanied by programs of action that take into account the real world. If not, they are not advocacy in any serious sense of the term.” Since there has never been a programmatic approach for the advancement or realization of a one-state agenda between Israel and the Palestinians that indeed "takes into account the real world," mainly because it does not correspond to the fundamental national interests of Jewish Israelis as they see them today and will undoubtedly continue to see them for the foreseeable future, Chomsky’s description is absolutely apt: this is not advocacy in any serious sense of the term.

However, Chomsky’s reflexive and, in this case at least, stubbornly wrongheaded oppositional attitude towards virtually anything undertaken by the United States government has led him to completely misread the present attitude of the Obama administration towards Israeli-Palestinian peace. In spite of the President’s extraordinary early efforts to shift US policy and rhetoric, Chomsky has already concluded that, “Obama will continue in the path of unilateral U.S. rejectionism.” This strikes me as unjustifiably pessimistic and thoroughly unfair to an administration that has gone further than anyone seriously expected in shifting the American stance on issues like the settlements and the urgency and centrality of Palestinian statehood. Moreover, Chomsky claims that the President is not serious about his engagement with the Arab Peace Initiative, writing, “Obama has called on the Arab states to proceed with normalization, studiously ignoring, however, the crucial political settlement that is its precondition.” In fact, Obama’s whole strategy is based on both main aspects of the Initiative: peace predicated on Israeli withdrawal from occupied territory and a regional dimension to bolster Palestinian-Israeli peace and expand its scope. Simply put, I think Chomsky is dead wrong about the attitude of the President and his administration regarding peace and Palestinian statehood, as well as the Initiative.

In short, while I respect Chomsky’s intellect and his political contributions, I think those Arab-Americans who regard him as a guru or an oracle are making a mistake on several levels. This assumption that President Obama and his administration are simply not serious about pursuing Middle East peace and Palestinian statehood when they clearly have demonstrated that they are is wrongheaded and leads to political mistakes. Even if it turns out that the new administration is insufficiently committed to overcome obstacles, or that these obstacles simply cannot be overcome no matter what the will in Washington may be, it is still pointless to take the attitude now, in advance, that our government is not serious when it begins to pursue the policies and approaches most Arab-Americans have been strongly advocating for decades. A more sensible attitude would be to recognize, applaud and embrace these changes, and work to extend and consolidate them. Dismissing them has no value whatsoever.

Finally, I think that Chomsky’s fundamentally oppositional attitude to the US government, system and institutions is not useful at all for Arab-Americans. Our community has no options for political empowerment and the pursuit of its objectives other than serious engagement with the political system as it exists in our country today. Giving too much credence to the views of intellectual gadflies, however brilliant, who would steer Arab-Americans away from political engagement and towards the margins of American politics and society is a surefire recipe for maintaining the disempowerment and alienation from which we have been suffering for many decades. Arguments that accept the idea that the pro-Israel lobby has had little to no effect on shaping the fundamental elements of US policy towards Israel and the Palestinians feed into that alienation and self-imposed marginalization. After all, if a lobby as seemingly powerful and effective as the pro-Israel coalition has only a marginal effect and serves mainly as window dressing for other interests, then Arab-American political engagement is essentially pointless. Thankfully, this is absolutely untrue. The fact is that there is nothing stopping us from acquiring more influence in shaping policy other than our own self-defeating resistance to getting involved with the political system and the policy conversation in Washington as they actually exist today on the terms presently available. Insofar as an excessive adherence to the views of Chomsky and similar oppositional public intellectuals steers Arab-Americans away from engagement and encourages their alienation from the political structures in our society, it is to be assiduously avoided. I read Chomsky’s work with interest, but always with ample supplies of salt at hand.

In an outrageous column in the Washington Times today, Frank Gaffney launches one of the most despicable, dishonest and underhanded attacks on President Obama following his excellent speech in Cairo last week. Many of Gaffney’s fellow ultra-right wing pro-occupation and/or Islamophobic fellow travelers have been piling on the President in a transparent effort to quell his initiative to pressure Israel on settlements as well as the Palestinians on their own Roadmap responsibilities. There has been much talk about an "unprecedented betrayal of Israel," "throwing Israel under the bus," and similar overheated rhetoric from those who would encourage Israel to continue the occupation and the settlements in spite of their own clear interest in achieving a peace agreement with the Palestinians.

Gaffney, however, takes the attack a step further by declaring that, “Barack Hussein Obama would have to be considered America’s first Muslim president.” Obviously, if President Obama actually were a Muslim, this would not be an attack, and it is not a criticism of anyone to call them a Muslim unless one is proceeding a priori from a perspective of Islamophobic bigotry. However, since the President is a devout Christian, ascribing to him a secret adherence to another faith is indeed an insult since it suggests that President Obama is dishonest, insincere and deceptive about his most deeply held beliefs.

But even this is not enough, since Gaffney feels required to claim that the President is no less than the moral and political equivalent of Adolf Hitler. According to Gaffney, President Obama has engaged in “the most consequential bait-and-switch since Adolf Hitler duped Neville Chamberlain over Czechoslovakia at Munich,” because while he objected to implicitly racist comments from Gaffney’s friends during the campaign that sought to emphasize his middle name as an effort to sow fear and doubts about his Christian faith, he is now pointing to the Muslim heritage in his own family to illustrate to Muslim audiences that Islam and the Muslim identity are not incompatible with American society or values. This, for Gaffney, is Hitlerian.

The invocation of Munich is a standard feature of hysterical pro-occupation rhetoric, with any implication that Israel needs to end its occupation in its own interests and in the interest of the United States being cast as the equivalent of Chamberlain’s shameful capitulation to Hitler’s demand for the reincorporation of the Sudetenland into Germany. But for Gaffney, even this familiar if ludicrous formulation is insufficient, and Obama must be not Chamberlain, but Hitler himself. And he is Hitler because while he objected to bigoted references to his middle name for nefarious purposes during the election, he is now willing to invoke it to improve the image of the United States among Muslims for noble purposes.

And how do we know that President Obama is secretly “a Muslim?” First, Gaffney notes that, “he not only had a Kenyan father who was Muslim, but spent his early, formative years as one in Indonesia,” as if that is evidence of anything reflecting his religious affiliation. Worse still, “Mr. Obama referred four times in his speech to ‘the Holy Koran,’” which, in Gaffney’s mind, is not respectful of his audiences’ sensitivities but rather a sly revelation of his own crypto-Islamic sentiments. Gaffney also claims that, “Mr. Obama established his firsthand knowledge of Islam,” of which there was not only no evidence, but the President’s mangled pronunciations of Arabic terms referring to Muslim practices (i.e., his reference to the hijab as “the hajeeb”) suggests that he has very limited familiarity with Islam and the most basic Islamic terminology, and no familiarity whatsoever with Arabic. Gaffney objects to the fact that President Obama referred to the greatest figures of the three monotheistic faiths with “the term ‘peace be upon them,’” which he claims is a term that, “no believing Christian — certainly not one versed, as he professes to be, in the ways of Islam — would ever make.” According to Gaffney’s “logic,” to use this Islamic term of respect is to accept the Muslim understanding of Jesus as a prophet rather than “the son of God,” an obviously preposterous leap. The entirety of Gaffney’s case is that Obama had a Muslim father (actually, Obama says his father was essentially an atheist), or at least a father from a Muslim background, that he lived in Indonesia as a child, and that he spoke to a Muslim audience using respectful terms.

It would be an understatement to suggest that Gaffney is waterboarding both the facts and the President’s words to convince an audience he hopes takes a dim view of Islam that the President is, or at least may be, a secret Muslim. Gaffney underscores this point by twice stating, “it may be beside the point whether Mr. Obama actually is a Muslim.” If it is beside the point, why engage in such elaborate political contortions, bending, twisting and mangling the facts and the President’s speech to suggest precisely this ludicrously false conclusion? In fact, Gaffney knows full well that it is not beside the point, especially not for his own intended audience which he obviously trusts is animated by a grave suspicion of Islam and the Muslims, and would be horrified to learn that the United States has actually elected a Muslim president. It is also intended to suggest that President Obama is a liar who has misrepresented not only his history but also his most deeply held religious beliefs. This is a perfectly disgusting effort to play on the very Islamophobic fears that Gaffney himself has done so much to promote and turn them on a political target who is not and never has been a Muslim for cynical ideological purposes.

Moreover, because the President pledged to fight stereotyping and discrimination against Muslim Americans, Gaffney argues he somehow promised, “to promote Islam in America,” which are obviously two completely different things. Gaffney is appalled that President Obama would state that, "I consider it part of my responsibility as president of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear,” presumably because this might interfere with the efforts of Gaffney and his friends to promote precisely these negative stereotypes, as he has tirelessly for many years. Gaffney is further enraged that the President, “vowed to ensure that women can cover their heads” (in fact he was speaking of covering their hair), and “pledged to enable Muslims to engage in zakat, their faith’s requirement for tithing.” In other words, a simple commitment to religious accommodation as required by the Constitution and upholding the principle of nondiscrimination on the basis of religion is offensive to Gaffney who prefers discrimination over American principles of equality before the law and religious freedom.

The most useful thing about Gaffney’s article is not just that it demonstrates how deranged some of the President’s ultra-right wing detractors have become, but that he also is forthright about his own motivation for condemning the President’s outreach to the Muslim world. Gaffney’s main problem with Obama is that the President is pushing forward with a major initiative to secure a reasonable end-of-conflict agreement between Israel and the Palestinians that involves ending the Israeli occupation. A strong supporter of both the occupation and the settlements, Gaffney derides what he calls “the hallowed two-state solution,” and insists that, “Abu Mazen’s Fatah remain[s] determined to achieve a one-state solution, whereby the Jews will be driven ‘into the sea.’" In English, we call this a lie. Gaffney knows perfectly well that the PLO recognized the state of Israel in the late 1980s, engaged in many agreements with Israel predicated on a two state, and not a one state, principle for peace, and that President Abbas has never wavered from his pursuit of a peace agreement that would allow a Palestinian state to emerge to live alongside Israel in peace and security. It is not Abu Mazen who is opposed to a two state agreement, but Gaffney and his friends who support the occupation. In their frantic anti-peace efforts, they find it necessary to systematically misrepresent the Palestinian position, falsely suggesting that most Palestinians and their national leadership are not seeking an agreement with Israel, but rather its destruction.

Although Gaffney does not mention it, I have no doubt that the line in President Obama’s speech that caused him the most heartburn was his frank statement that, “Israelis must acknowledge that just as Israel’s right to exist cannot be denied, neither can Palestine’s.” This is precisely what Gaffney has done, what he will continue to do, and what he wishes the United States would do: deny Palestine’s right to exist, and insist on maximalist Israeli ambitions, preferring conflict and occupation over peace and reconciliation. Gaffney is precisely the kind of fanatical extremist – and a deeply cynical and dishonest one at that – who must be marginalized, ignored and dismissed if there is any chance of achieving peace in the Middle East in the interests of the Palestinians, Israel and the United States. President Obama is not a secret Muslim, but Frank Gaffney most certainly is an open and shameless extremist, fanatic and liar.

Most observers welcomed President Obama’s speech in Cairo last week, but some pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian commentators have taken issue with the President’s emphasis on ending Israeli settlement activity and Palestinian violence, respectively, as crucial measures in laying the groundwork for a successful peace agreement. These choices were not arbitrary. They reflect the principal commitments and obligations of both parties under Phase One of the Roadmap. The reason the Roadmap emphasizes early action on settlement activity and violence is that these are the most important elements to the political psychology of both parties and their perceptions of each other’s intentions. Obviously, their effects go far beyond the psychological, and have significant negative political, practical and, in the case of settlements, topographical and infrastructural consequences. However, understanding why both the Roadmap and the President’s speech place such emphasis on these two responsibilities requires honestly evaluating and taking seriously both Palestinian and Israeli perceptions of each other’s intentions.

Some supporters of the settler movement argue simply that any objection to Israeli settlement activity is invalid. David Horowitz sees the entire thing as motivated by anti-Semitism, writing: “The worst aspect of the speech, the remarks about settlements is a bad policy the Obama Administration has been pushing for weeks. If settlements are unacceptable then the 1.2 million Arab Muslims settled in Israel should be removed to the West Bank or Jordan or Gaza. The only reason Jewish settlements are regarded as unacceptable is because the Muslim Arab states are bigoted racist regimes that can’t tolerate non-Arabs and non-Muslims.”

It is hard to know where to begin with any formulation as wrongheaded and mendacious as this. But obviously, it’s preposterous to describe the Palestinian citizens of Israel (who are Christian as well as Muslim, as Horowitz should know) as “settlers” since they are living in their own homes in their own villages in their own country. They have not been brought to Israel by an occupying foreign army in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention and a mountain of international law. They are the lucky remnants of those Palestinians who escaped the wholesale dispossession experienced by the overwhelming majority of Palestinians in what became Israel during the 1947-1948 war. In the past, Horowitz has argued that Israel should have annexed all the territories conquered in 1967 and expelled its Palestinian inhabitants. Obviously, the idea of further ethnic cleansing in Israel proper continues to carry some kind of twisted appeal for him. Moreover, the spectacle of the proprietor of frontpagemagazine.com daring to describe anyone else as “bigoted racist” is more chutzpah than anyone should be asked to endure.

The actual reasons that Israeli settlements are regarded as unacceptable is first and foremost that they are in absolute violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention’s Article 49 prohibition on the transfer of populations into territories under foreign military occupation. That Israel is indeed a foreign military occupier in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip has been established beyond debate by countless UN Security Council resolutions (voted for and many drafted by the United States). The argument advanced by supporters of the settler movement that the use of the word “transfer” in Article 49 implies involuntary resettlement and therefore does not apply to the Israeli settlement project in the occupied territories is completely specious. Other articles in the Convention already prohibit forcible resettlement of populations, making Article 49 redundant and unnecessary if this is its meaning. In fact, it plainly and obviously refers to the practice of foreign occupiers attempting to settle external populations in conquered territory, precisely as Israel has been doing in the occupied Palestinian territories since 1967.

The Fourth Geneva Convention is a human rights instrument that pertains to the rights of civilians in time of war and under military occupation. The reason that the Convention bans settlement activity of the kind that Israel has engaged in is that it inevitably involves the displacement of civilians living under foreign military occupation, the usurpation of land by occupiers and an attempt by occupying forces to consolidate occupation and make it permanent by introducing new populations into the occupied territory (in explicit violation of the UN Charter’s prohibition on the acquisition of territory by war, as acknowledged in the preamble to UN Security Resolution 242 and numerous other resolutions pertaining to the Israeli occupation). In other words, settlement activity is framed as both a violation of the laws of war and occupation by the Convention, and as a human rights abuse against civilians living under occupation. Therefore, while Palestinians had every right not to be ethnically cleansed and to remain in their homes and villages during the 1947-1948 war, Israel has no right to violate the Convention and introduce Israeli settlers into occupied Palestinian territory. Observing that Israeli settlement activity is illegal, immoral and in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention is not anti-Semitic and does not reflect on the rights of Palestinians in Israel to continue to live in their homes and villages as they always have.

Other defenders of the Israeli position make a more complex argument, that has been floated recently by the Israeli Foreign Ministry and many Israeli diplomats, and repeated by their supporters in the United States and elsewhere, to the effect that because some settlements will undoubtedly be retained by Israel in any final status agreement with the Palestinians involving a land swap, concern about settlement expansion is therefore irrelevant. This argument was recently advanced by Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post, who argues, “No ‘natural growth’ means strangling to death the thriving towns close to the 1949 armistice line, many of them suburbs of Jerusalem, that every negotiation over the past decade has envisioned Israel retaining. It means no increase in population. Which means no babies.” He continues, “why expel people from their homes and turn their towns to rubble when, instead, Arabs and Jews can stay in their homes if the 1949 armistice line is shifted slightly into the Palestinian side to capture the major close-in Jewish settlements, and then shifted into Israeli territory to capture Israeli land to give to the Palestinians?” The Washington Post itself made a similar argument in a lead editorial last Sunday.

Apart from this silliness of suggesting that President Obama was saying that Israeli settlers should have “no babies,” this argument fails to recognize the serious political harm settlement expansion of all kinds does to the prospects for peace. It is the single most significant element of Israeli behavior that undermines Palestinian and Arab confidence that the Israelis are interested in any kind of reasonable final status agreement. It raises fears that Israel is simply trying to buy time to increase settlements until the day when Palestinian statehood is no longer a viable prospect. Obviously, every increase in settlements and settlement size makes the final border more difficult to draw. Therefore, it undermines both the credibility and the viability of peace negotiations. This is the political and psychological reality with which Israelis have to contend, whether they like it or not. In addition, settlement activity expands the rather belligerent constituency among Israelis that militates against necessary territorial compromises. This is not to say that all settlers are opposed to peace, but rather that increasing the size of settlements and the power of the ideological, political and financial interests invested in the settlement project makes overcoming resistance to a reasonable agreement within the Israeli society more complicated. Simply put, it is digging the hole deeper rather than moving towards climbing out of a very dangerous situation that puts Israelis, Palestinians, Arabs and all others involved at considerable risk.

The bottom line is that, whether Israelis like it or not, settlements are the main issue on the Palestinian agenda since they strike at the heart of potential Palestinian statehood. For whatever set of reasons, many Israelis and their supporters may prefer to see the issue as “irrelevant” or as a “myth,” but the political realities are quite clear. Continued settlement activity is perceived by Palestinians and other Arabs as quite incompatible with an Israeli intention to achieve a reasonable peace agreement. This is also the perception of the United States government. Secretary of State Clinton has made it quite clear that despite claims to the contrary, the United States government never entered into any “secret agreement” under the Bush administration that Israel could continue settlement activity. Its obligation under the Roadmap is clear, logical and indispensable.

The same significance applies to the question of Palestinian violence, which is likewise dismissed by some pro-Palestinian voices, citing the fact that at almost every stage in history, more Palestinian civilians have been killed by Israel than vice versa. Generally speaking, this is true, and obviously Palestinians have as much of a right to and an interest in security as Israelis or any other people. However, the political significance of Palestinian violence to Israeli perceptions of Palestinian intentions means that violence and efforts to curb it play the same role for Israel as a litmus test of Palestinian commitment to peace as settlement activity does for the Palestinians.

The reasons for this are not particularly mysterious, but understanding this distinction requires seriously appreciating the political psychology of both parties. Palestinian concerns about Israeli violence are part and parcel of the whole opposition to occupation, which is the principal source and the main context for violence. Violence is an unavoidable and inherent element of any occupation, particularly one that includes ongoing aggressive settlement activity. Resolving the occupation will remove both the context and the need for all varieties of Israeli military violence against Palestinians. Therefore, for Palestinians, a settlement freeze and moving quickly towards an agreement that will end the occupation by definition means moving towards a resolution of Israeli violence against Palestinians.

For Israelis, the perception is somewhat different. For many Israelis, including some who are otherwise well disposed towards ending the occupation, the principal fear is that this will not in fact resolve the conflict, and that Palestinian violent opposition to the continuation of Israel as a Jewish state would continue even after an end-of-conflict agreement is signed and ratified. There are concerns that the Palestinian state would be either unwilling or unable to contain attacks against Israel or Israelis. There is also a deep-seated anxiety that the formation of a Palestinian state would be the first step in a “plan of phases” that would sooner rather than later result in renewed conflict aimed at the eventual elimination of the Israeli state. Therefore, the continuation of Palestinian violence, and perceptions that the Palestinian Authority is doing less than everything it can to quell such violence undermines Israeli confidence that Palestinians really intend to reach a permanent reconciliation with Israel.

Many of the Palestinians and their supporters who were critical of President Obama’s speech in Cairo cited his emphasis on Palestinian violence at the exclusion of any consideration of Israeli violence as a major flaw in the address. Writing in the Saudi newspaper the Arab News, Samar Fatany summarized this perspective writing, “Obama lost many of us when he chose to stress that ‘the Palestinians must abandon violence,’ but omitted to show any condemnation of Israeli atrocities and war crimes. Instead he described Palestinians’ legitimate resistance as violence, which he thinks would lead to a dead end… What about Israeli use of lethal weapons and the destruction of Palestinian homes and schools?” Most critics of the speech on all sides took issue with what was supposedly missing in it, although one can hardly mention every possible issue in a 60 minute address. What President Obama was doing, and rightly so, was focusing on the most important political issues. That he placed emphasis on Israeli settlement activity and Palestinian violence was politically and diplomatically appropriate as it addresses the main concerns the two parties have about each other’s behavior

Moreover, Palestinian violence undermines the authority of the PA, and undercuts its ability to govern effectively. This is not to mention its corrosive effect on Palestinian society and culture, which is something to which friends of Palestine ought to give serious consideration. In his recent statements, President Obama has also emphasized the need to combat incitement, and this too goes to the health and well-being of Palestinian society and culture, and the character of the future Palestinian state. In other words, it is in the Palestinian interest to take seriously their commitment to combat violence and curtail incitement. Pointing towards Israeli violence and incitement is, in this context, politically and diplomatically pointless, and changes the subject from what ought to be the principal consideration: what effect are violence and incitement having on the fortunes of the Palestinian national movement and its legitimate ambitions, and the character of Palestinian society?

It is therefore pointless and even counterproductive for Israelis and their supporters to dismiss the settlement issue as irrelevant or a myth. All well-intentioned and serious friends of Israel should recognize the profound political damage done to the long-term future of Israel by settlement activity, not least by making an end-of-conflict agreement with the Palestinians less likely and undermining Palestinian and Arab perceptions of Israeli intentions. All responsible and constructive friends of Palestine should recognize that it is not strategically useful to counter critiques of Palestinian violence by focusing on Israeli violence against Palestinians, or even pointing to the Jewish terrorism that was a significant feature of the struggle for Israeli statehood in the 1940s, and instead think clearly about how Palestinian violence affects Palestinian interests and the perceptions of Israelis about Palestinian intentions.

These are not minor matters, irrelevancies, sideshows or red herrings. They go to the heart of the willingness of both peoples to see the other as sincere, legitimate partners for a peace agreement. This is not a game of one-upsmanship or a debate to be won or lost a scoring rhetorical points. It is a delicate process of balancing the core interests, fundamental requirements and deeply-rooted perceptions of two national societies that have been at odds for at least 100 years. The fact that there are readily available arguments that can be deployed to dismiss or downplay the centrality of settlements and violence is not the point. The only question worth asking is, how does this help us get towards a peace agreement and an end to the conflict and the occupation? Anyone who thinks about these questions in that context, with a due regard for the perceptions and interests of both Israelis and Palestinians, will no longer have to wonder why President Obama emphasized settlements and violence in his Cairo speech, and will not see any utility in dismissing them as irrelevancies or myths.

Lebanese politics invariably gives rise to the most baroque conspiracy theories and the most ludicrous political spin. Yesterday’s election has proven no exception, with both Israelis and Hezbollah-supporters racing to try to flip defeats into victories.

Amir Peretz, who was Israel’s Defense Minister in 2006 during the disastrous Israel-Hezbollah war, preposterously claims that, “The election results in Lebanon mark the culmination of a process that matured with the breakout of the Second Lebanon War." In other words, Peretz is trying to take credit for the Lebanese election, arguing that it is some kind of delayed effect of Israel’s ill-conceived, botched and brutal Lebanon adventure three years ago. Obviously, you can’t blame this guy for trying to find some justification for miscalculations and indefensible actions that visited a tremendous amount of death and devastation on innocent Lebanese, greatly strengthened the political hand of Hezbollah and plainly backfired badly against Israel. But this idea that the 2009 Lebanese election is the culmination of a brilliant strategy put into place by Israel in the summer of 2006 is frankly comical.

As I noted in my posting several days before the election, the whole thing hinged not on Hezbollah’s performance as such, since all its candidates won their seats, but on the performance of its quasi-fascist Maronite allies led by the “eccentric” General Michel Aoun. His party was not able to pull their weight, instead dragging the Hezbollah-led March 8 coalition to defeat.

Some Hezbollah fans in the United States, most notably Assad AbuKhalil of the Hezbollah Support Network of Stanislaus, are trying to spin the March 8 defeat as a deliberate dive. The Angry Idiot had been predicting, along with everyone else, that Hezbollah’s coalition would not do very well in the election, but has been intimating on his blog that this is in fact a deliberate strategy. In the face of the defeat he asks: “So did Hizbullah deliberately work to ensure the defeat of the opposition? If that was the case, I have to say that they have done a magnificant job.” [sic] This has all the qualities of the most maudlin and machista ranchera (“te vas por que yo quiero que te vayas,” so to speak), rationalizing defeat as a kind of self-imposed renunciation. It’s a ludicrous conspiracy theory, especially since all of Hezbollah’s own candidates actually won. But saying, in effect, “we were defeated, because we wanted to lose” (Jose Alfredo Jimenez could not have put it better himself), sounds better than admitting that, “we have been defeated at the polls.”

As in all complex political phenomena, this election result is obviously overdetermined, and can’t be attributed to a simple and discrete set of causes. However, plainly crucial factors included serious overreaching on the part of Hezbollah last summer and their use of their militia for domestic political power which significantly weakened the arguments of its main Maronite allies. In addition, it is likely that many Lebanese voters understood that international isolation would be a disaster for the country and that therefore a Hezbollah-dominated government had to be avoided.

One final thought – one of the most consistent patterns in Lebanese political history is that whenever any organization, sectarian grouping or force gains too much power in the country and threatens to emerge as a defining interest, everyone else gangs up on them and makes sure that they are not able to assert control. The Lebanese, having no majority grouping and defining themselves in terms of a plethora of subnational identity orientations, appeared to possess a political default that ensures that any power that threatens to become dominant in the country is suppressed by coalition of most other forces.

Although this is hardly any kind of “brilliant” Israeli scheme, it’s certainly true that Hezbollah’s demonstration in 2006 that it possessed an independent foreign policy and was able, willing and ready to plunge the country into an avoidable war on its own and for its own purposes was a very important step in convincing many other Lebanese that they had simply acquired too much power. The tipping point, however, was probably its use of its militia for domestic political purposes in the summer of 2008, violating every assurance it had ever even anyone about its arms simply being for the purposes of “the resistance.” Having demonstrated that its militia was now primarily for the enforcement of its domestic political interests, and that its military power was at least equal to that of all other armed forces in the country combined, the eventual coalescing of a strong backlash against this kind of accumulation of domestic political power by one sectarian force was virtually guaranteed. It is further likely that this election is only one element of the backlash and that the process will continue, although as long as Hezbollah remains a major armed power, its extent will be limited to constraining the party’s ability to dominate the Lebanese national scene.

Reuters reports that, “Hezbollah and its allies in Lebanon’s pro-Syria alliance lost a parliamentary election on Sunday pitting them against a U.S.-backed coalition, a senior politician close to them said.” If this is true, the Lebanon’s voters have ensured that the country has dodged a bullet here. A clear March 8 coalition victory and a new government that is internationally perceived as dominated by Hezbollah could result in a major degree of international isolation, which the country can ill afford. Every aspect of its economy from tourism to international banking and financial services depends on other economies and remaining engaged with the world. Politically, both from a domestic and, even more significantly, from an international standpoint, a perceived Hezbollah victory would have been disastrous. The result predicted by the Reuters story is not terribly surprising, but for all those with the interests of Lebanon at heart, if it is confirmed it will come as a considerable relief.