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

The constellation of new national security/foreign policy appointees coalescing around President Barack Obama for his second term bears all the hallmarks of an overriding priority issue: Iran. Obama has assembled a team perfectly positioned to present itself to Iran as offering the best deal possible. Failing that, it is also the ideal group to convince the American public that—should negotiations fail and the administration decide to take some form of military action—these are precisely the policymakers who can be relied upon to have done so only as a last resort and because there are no other options.

The group is led by Senator John Kerry, nominated to be Secretary of State, and former Senator Chuck Hagel, nominated for Secretary of Defense. Both are highly decorated Vietnam War veterans, noted for their cautious approach to power projection and wariness of military conflict. They are augmented by former counterterrorism adviser John Brennan, nominated to head the Central Intelligence Agency. There will also probably be continuing roles for existing administration figures such as Dennis McDonough, who may be elevated to White House Chief of Staff, and current National Security Advisor Thomas Donilon.

Whatever the final makeup of his new national security team—which will certainly eventually have to include some women such as Susan Rice or Michele Flournoy—it will be based around the Kerry/Hagel/Brennan nexus. The message to Tehran is clear: Whatever you are offered by this group is the best deal you’re likely to get.

In his first term, Obama repeatedly laid out what appears to be a straightforward position on Iran’s nuclear weapons program. He rebuffed efforts by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to adopt as a benchmark for action Iran’s potential ability to manufacture a nuclear weapon, instead insisting the American position is that Iran must not be allowed to possess a nuclear weapon. As summarized in the New York Times, the American position is that “We have a red line, which is a nuclear weapon.”

But, as with Netanyahu’s own “red line,” Obama’s position is somewhat nebulous and subject to numerous potentially varying definitions. What does a nuclear weapon constitute? What does it mean to possess one? How far could Iran go without triggering American action? Behind the veneer of clarity, there is a great deal of deliberate ambiguity in both the Israeli and American positions, even though there is also an obvious difference between the two.

Nonetheless, Obama’s stance does lock the United States into taking action if Iran crosses a line, even though it’s not exactly clear where, precisely, that line is. So, here’s what you can expect from the next administration: intensive diplomatic efforts aimed at arriving not at a “grand bargain” with Iran on all outstanding issues, but a specific understanding about how far Tehran can go with its nuclear project without triggering an American military response.

And it will be emphasized to Iran and to the world that this is the most forthcoming, least warmongering, group of senior American policymakers that can plausibly be assembled. Indeed, Iran has already cautiously welcomed Hagel’s nomination.

The message to Tehran is clear: This group wants to make a deal, and it’s going to offer you the best terms you can possibly expect. Take it. But the administration remains committed to the broadest outlines of its continuously repeated position that Iran will not be allowed to possess a nuclear weapon. Recently Hagel has reportedly joined Obama in reiterating that the military option is by no means off the table. And the message to both Tel Aviv and Tehran is that it isn’t Israel that’s going to be taking action if necessary, it will be the United States.
Should it come to that—and given the administration’s stated positions this is an entirely plausible scenario—the American people and the rest of the world will then be told that military action against Iran is being undertaken by the last group of people who would do so recklessly or avoidably.

They are presented as informed and sophisticated realists, non-interventionists, battle-weary war skeptics and advocates of diplomacy, agreements and alliances. In the American political spectrum they have been packaged and marketed as, in effect, the “anti-neoconservatives.” As New York Times columnist Nick Kristof anticipated the argument, “How refreshing to imagine decisions about war made by brave doves rather than by chicken hawks.”

Obama’s new defense/foreign policy team is an Iran cabinet, assembled to decide and act on war or peace over the nuclear file. Tehran should understand this as both the unparalleled opportunity and significant threat that it is. Take the deal, or face the consequences of an American action led by a group perfectly positioned ideologically and politically to lead their country, with credibility, into an exceptionally dangerous and risky conflict.

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

After quietly brewing for the past year, the controversy over alleged Muslim Brotherhood efforts to infiltrate and destabilize the United Arab Emirates has now openly erupted. The most recent development is the arrest of 11 Egyptian expatriates in the UAE on charges of subversion, stealing state secrets and operating under the influence of—and sending large amounts of money to—the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. The men are accused of belonging to a “cell” seeking to overthrow the UAE government, with the intention of exporting the influence of Egypt’s new Islamist-dominated political order.

These arrests turned into a significant diplomatic incident, with Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi dispatching one of his key advisers, Essam Haddad, and several security officials to Abu Dhabi to disavow any relationship to any conspiracy and demand the release of the detained Egyptian nationals. The UAE has refused to release the suspects. Brotherhood leaders in Egypt have angrily denied any connection to the men, or any accusation that they have been involved in subversive plots against Gulf States.

The UAE and Saudi Arabia beg to differ. The arrests were a joint effort by Emirati and Saudi authorities, and led to an outcry by numerous pro-government commentators in Gulf Cooperation Council states that not enough work is being done to counter Muslim Brotherhood ambitions in the region. The latest arrests were only the most recent, and are taken by many as confirmation of suspicions raised by previous raids.

Earlier last year, Emirati officials arrested 60 members of the Al Islah movement on various charges of subversion. Al Islah denies it is the UAE branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, but former group members, including the vice chancellor of United Arab Emirates University, Ali Rashid Al Noaimi, dismiss the denials as flatly untrue. According to Noaimi, Al Islah “get their orders from outside,” and “they are not loyal to their country.” For years, the UAE government has been trying to distance Al Islah from the educational system in which they once thrived. Now, in the context of the Arab uprisings, it seems they are regarded less as an irritant than as an outright threat.

The Al-Khaleej newspaper summed up the Gulf governments’ perspectives, writing that the arrested Islamists admitted to trying to establish armed groups aimed at the overthrow of existing regimes and that the Brotherhood “gave a number of courses and lectures to members of the secret organization on elections and ways to change systems of government in Arab countries.”

The UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahayan has not minced his words, stating bluntly that “The Muslim Brotherhood does not believe in the nation state. It does not believe in the sovereignty of the state.”

Probably the most outspoken Gulf official critical of the Brotherhood is Dubai Police Chief Lieutenant General Dahi Khalfan. Beginning last March, Khalfan traded accusations with Mahmoud Ghozlan, a spokesperson for Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. Khalfan had threatened to arrest ‎Youssef El-Qaradawi—probably the most prominent regional Brotherhood spiritual leader and star of Qatar’s Al Jazeera Arabic station—after Qaradawi denounced the deportation of Syrian activists from the UAE. The Egyptian Brotherhood countered by accusing the UAE of financing subversion within Egypt.

The intermittent exchange of accusations hasn’t stopped since, and the arrests have only intensified the tensions.

If it’s the case, as seems probable, that the regional Brotherhood movement has its sights set on the UAE, this cannot surprise anyone. Lapsed senior Muslim Brotherhood member Tharwat Kherbawi’s explanation to several Arab papers that the Brotherhood, regionally, finds the present UAE government to be an impediment, and the country itself to be “a treasure” and a crucial strategic and economic prize, rings true.

Muslim Brotherhood parties operate differently, and often independently, in various countries in which they are active. But it should never be forgotten that they represent not only an ideologically unified and, to some extent, coordinated movement in the region. They are the only major, coordinated, popular and region-wide mass movement in the Arab world presently, and have a special relationship with Hamas in Gaza. It makes perfect sense that the Brotherhood would try to either gain direct control of the UAE as a springboard to further expansions, or, failing that, they would at least aim to ensure the UAE ceases to act as an impediment to the Brotherhood’s regional agenda.

Conspiratorial? Certainly. But outlandish? By no means. It’s possible that Brotherhood efforts to destabilize the UAE have been somewhat exaggerated. But they are almost certainly based on fact.

The scenario is too plausible and predictable to be considered non-credible. These tensions are more likely to intensify into the future rather than dissipate. What is ultimately at stake is the political direction and future of the Arab world, including the outcomes in such crucial battlegrounds as Syria and Palestine.

http://www.thenational.ae/thenationalconversation/comment/palestinian-cause-redefined-as-hamas-spins-pyrrhic-victories#full

A lack of clarity is typically a defining feature of political relations. But among Palestinians at the moment, this has become amplified to an unusual degree given the extraordinary number of variables in play, and the regional developments that will affect the outcome. The defining characteristic of the present Palestinian political scene is its opacity. No one knows exactly what is going to happen next, who will do what, what effect it will have, or where the thrust of events is moving.

Every key player now faces crucial choices that will determine their strategic and tactical posture for some time. The overall thrust of recent trends, without question, has been a rise in the political fortunes of Hamas at the expense of the Ramallah-based leadership: the Palestine Liberation Organisation and the Palestinian Authority.

However, even Hamas’s limited gains may prove Pyrrhic. Over 175 Palestinian deaths in the recent conflict aside, longer-term realities are starting to bite in Gaza. The damage to the infrastructure and the economy of the fragile, overpopulated area is significant. And the reported easing of the blockade, on both the Egyptian and Israeli sides, does not appear to be either tangible or sustained.

Yet ongoing intoxication at the quixotic “victory” over Israel is politically significant. Palestinians have been starved for anything that resembles proactive agency. They know lobbing rockets in the general direction of not only southern Israel, but now also Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, is almost entirely symbolic. Any damage done is random, unlike Israel’s relatively precise and highly damaging attacks. Yet Hamas has been able to spin the confrontation as some kind of open-ended “victory”.

At a recent gathering in Washington, Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad stated with impressive clarity, precision and unusual honesty for a political leader, that recent events constituted a “doctrinal defeat” for the Ramallah leadership.

Recent months have, time and again, delivered serious blows to the doctrines that underlie the PA and PLO strategies: state and institution building on the ground, combined with diplomatic activities at the bilateral and multilateral efforts designed to achieve statehood for the Palestinians.

The “doctrinal defeats” Mr Fayyad was referring to are not decisive. They are merely a trend, but a profoundly dangerous one that must be countered if the Palestinian national movement is to retain practical and international viability. And Hamas has significant problems of its own, both internally and with regard to its new regional sponsors.

But Mr Fayyad’s point was clear: by kidnapping an Israeli soldier, Hamas was able to engineer the release of more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners. By “pressing a few buttons,” as he put it, and launching projectiles in the general direction of Israel, Hamas was able to gain regional and international attention. The Emir of Qatar visited Gaza, as did the prime minister of Egypt and the foreign ministers of Tunisia and Turkey. Hamas, through its aggressive tactics, was able to score clear political and diplomatic points regionally and, especially, domestically.

The outcome, however, very much remains to be determined. Israel says it is withholding Palestinian tax revenues until at least March. Arab states have pledged $100 million (Dh367 million) to the PA monthly. But the PA needs $250 million every month to meet payroll and other basic expenditure commitments. Even the pledged Arab commitments, if met, wouldn’t satisfy the PA’s requirements if Israel continues to withhold tax revenues. Such a devastating shortfall can only further undermine the credibility and viability of the PA.

Palestinian national unity is going to happen one way or the other. A permanent political split between Gaza and the West Bank is extremely unlikely, given the strength of the Palestinian national identity. One vision will win out, and one approach will dominate, most probably through the future make-up and policies of the Palestine Liberation Organisation.

Which vision will prevail depends almost as much on other actors as on the Palestinians themselves. This is not to say that Palestinians lack agency. But there is a very powerful set of incentives that can push them in either direction.

Palestinians by every poll and every survey, like Israelis, want a two-state solution. But, like the Israelis, they do not believe in the other side’s sincerity, and they do not believe it will happen. As long as this is the case, quixotic militarism and maximalist demands by Hamas and other militant groups will reap domestic political dividends.

Palestinian national unity is necessary for both peace and Palestinian political coherence. The question is, on whose terms will it be? The vision of PLO diplomacy and institution building on the ground in the West Bank led by Mr Fayyad? Or the rejectionism, maximalism and “armed struggle”, articulated by Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal in his recent “victory” speech in Gaza.

Square peg meets round hole. One of them will have to reshape itself to conform with the contours of the other. Either the Palestinian national movement will continue to seek an independent state through negotiations and by building the national institutions on the ground. Or it will be defined by an open-ended “armed struggle” against Israel under an Islamist banner.

This is not simply a Palestinian choice. Israel, above all, but also the United States, the European Union, and other international actors, will have a major role to play in influencing which of these two visions predominates in the Palestinian national movement in the years to come. Regional and international incentives will be a major, if not a decisive factor, in the outcome.

The broad outlines are clear. But with so much uncertainty and instability, and so many key factors in motion, the political challenges and immediate choices facing all Palestinian political actors are unusually opaque and exceptionally significant.

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

As the Syrian conflict reaches its crucial turning point, with the defeat of the government in the country’s major cities now virtually inevitable, the war has almost completely descended into the gruesome logic of tit-for-tat atrocities.

The war has divided Syrian society along sectarian and political lines simultaneously. All sides seem convinced they are in such mortal, existential peril that almost nothing is off-limits.

Government forces have been committing massacre after massacre, including, apparently, residents of a “disloyal” Alawite village. International fecklessness has, predictably and inevitably, led to the rise in the opposition of extreme “Jihadists,” who have brought their own brand of inimitable brutality with them from their last stomping grounds in Iraq.

The video of a young child apparently being tutored in the art of beheading captured “enemies” in the self-styled Salafist-Jihadist manner only demonstrates the extent to which the situation in Syria has deteriorated. At this stage, is mass communal “cleansing” of key areas really still simply a remote possibility?

This is the way the regime wanted to shape the battle from the very start. When, at the outset, they faced nonviolent protests, the Damascus propaganda machine immediately invented a fiction, fully intended to become a self-fulfilling prophecy: The infiltration of al-Qaeda-style terrorists into Syria and a mortal threat to sectarian minorities.

The government was determined that this must be a sectarian war, even though some of its core Alawite constituents have resisted and rejected that narrative.

But almost everything has helped the Assad regime make its once fictional scenario into a terrifying reality. The Salafist-Jihadist element of the armed Syrian opposition is numerically small but hyper-empowered by its extensive support network, while more moderate factions have been inexcusably neglected by the West.

The latest to be drawn into the gruesome logic of massacre are the typically forsaken Palestinian refugees in the Yarmouk camp in Damascus. At least 25 Palestinians sheltering in a mosque were killed by regime military bombardment.

It’s reported that at least half of the population of the camp, which is where most of the Palestinian refugees in Syria lived, have fled, many to Lebanon. The villainous Ahmad Jibril—head of the so-called Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), a small but notorious movement for the Assad regime—has also left.

It’s instructive that Jibril has reportedly fled to Tartous, a strategic port city that houses a major Russian military base in the coastal Alawite stronghold area.

Prospects of a last-ditch effort by the regime and its constituency to create an ethnic enclave in the Alawite mountain villages, connected to the outside world through the Tartous port and Latakia—the site of an airport that has been turned into a military base with Iranian support—have been transformed from remote to much more plausible.

There’s almost no chance the regime of Bashar al-Assad can survive, as even its Russian sponsors are beginning to publicly admit. The de facto resurrection of some version of the Alawite mini-state of the 1920s and 30s seemed a deeply implausible option at the outset of the conflict. But as the government has enforced the logic of sectarian and communal massacre, atrocities and fanaticism, prospects for such an outcome are no longer so far-fetched.

If such an arrangement could preserve Russia’s military base in Tartous and other interests, it could well get Moscow’s support. If the Syrian conflict continues to degenerate into ever-deeper bestiality, the idea might even be sold to the West as the only way to avoid Balkan-style communal slaughter and save the Alawite community from revenge massacres.

However, there is still a Sunni majority in Latakia, which would surely be the de facto capital of such a mini-state. This demographic reality was one of the key reasons why, unlike Lebanon, the Alawite mini-state wasn’t able to achieve independence under the French mandate, and was reincorporated into Syria in the 1930s.

This means that if the current Alawite power structure does resort to trying to impose such a Plan B, it will almost certainly involve significant atrocities and communal cleansing, particularly in Latakia and its surroundings.

There are precedents for the West, including the United States, turning a blind eye to such actions if they are quick, and perceived as decisive measures that are considered the only way of avoiding continued conflict and massacres. The West ignored what was possibly the largest single act of ethnic cleansing during the Yugoslav War: the systematic displacement of virtually the entire Serbian population of Krajina over a few days in August, 1995.

Nothing the international community has done thus far during the Syrian conflict suggests it is inconceivable it might react to a mass displacement of Sunnis from an Alawite enclave with anything more than a similar shrugging of shoulders, shaking of heads and clucking of tongues.

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

“Morsi giveth, and Morsi taketh away; blessed be the name of the Morsi.”
With extravagant exercises in bait and switch over the past few weeks, Egyptian President Mohammad Morsi has demonstrated a crude but effective technique of political manipulation.

There is no subtlety at work here at all. In the great poker game of post-dictatorship Egyptian politics, it’s all in for an Islamist takeover. The Muslim Brotherhood clearly thinks it’s now or never, and they’re probably right.

And now we know what Morsi’s bizarre Constitutional Declaration of November 22—Articles II and VI giving him monarchical powers—was all about. It was designed to create a crisis for which Morsi and his allies had a ready-made solution: a new draft constitution, to be suddenly rammed through with almost no non-Islamist consent and voted on immediately by the Egyptian people.

With everyone, especially the disempowered judiciary, in an inevitable tizzy about this outrageous declaration of presidential authority, the Constitutional Assembly has drafted a proposed constitution that could hardly be worse from any perspective.

It preserves almost all of the existing presidential authorities that have defined Egypt’s dictatorships in the past. In addition, it adds significant layers for repressive “Islamic” legislation, and outlines an ill-defined political role for Al-Azhar clerics.

This identifies “sharia” as both the main source of law and specifically Sunni. It has already unleashed a battle for control of the prestigious religious institution, as Al-Azhar appears poised for a major political role.

Until another election for the lower house can be conducted, the new constitution conveniently invests the previously toothless upper house, for which virtually no Egyptians bothered to vote, with total legislative authority. The drafters of the constitution were well aware fellow Islamists hold an 83 percent majority in this body.

And, of course, all of the existing powers, prerogatives and independent authority belonging to the military are preserved in the constitution. This is, obviously, very well calculated from the point of view of the Islamists: They don’t want to get into a fight with the men with the guns.

And, besides, the army doesn’t seem to have much interest in governing Egypt directly, while the Islamists don’t have any well-defined ideas about most of the military’s sphere of influence. So they’re splitting the difference, at the expense of the ordinary Egyptian people, and the health and well-being of the state.

The November 22 Constitutional Declaration was designed to infuriate the judiciary by robbing it of all of its oversight powers. But once the draft constitution was prepared for the almost immediate referendum, scheduled to begin on December 15, the declaration had served its purpose.

Having taken away, it was time for Morsi Almighty to give again.

On December 9, the president rescinded the declaration, although leaving everything he had decided under it intact, in particular the replacement of the prosecutor-general.

While maintaining that none of the decisions he took in the interim can be challenged by any court, the new declaration does restore some judicial authority. This overture is obviously designed to scupper any efforts by judges to refuse to oversee the referendum.

And there are enough pro-Brotherhood or neutral judges that an extended period of voting throughout the country should be able to overcome any boycott.

Most of the political opposition says it intends to boycott voting on the referendum as well. None of this boycotting is likely to do any good.

The Islamists are well-organized and are already campaigning for a yes vote. The military is issuing vague warnings about public unrest after Brotherhood-supporting thugs attacked and killed numerous protesters who took to the streets in outrage. But the military seems, for now at least, content with both the status quo and the details of the draft constitution.

In another extraordinary bait and switch, on Monday the government announced sweeping tax hikes, only to reverse course on Tuesday morning rescinding almost all of them. Morsi and his Brotherhood allies are using government power in what looks like a wild and haphazard way, but there is a certain abusive logic in their relentless and seemingly arbitrary giving and taking away.

At this point the stability-starved Egyptian people are undoubtedly desperate enough to approve even a constitution this repugnant. The vote may be disrupted by protests and extended by judicial boycott, but it will almost certainly pass.

And Egyptians will then have adopted the least revolutionary, most retrograde, constitution imaginable: one that combines the worst elements of the Mubarak era with a new larding of Islamist social conservatism.

In the unlikely event this constitution is somehow voted down, Morsi has left himself a neat little option: He can order the selection of another constitution-drafting body three months later.

And then Egypt will go through the whole elaborate giving and taking process again, until Morsi finally gets his way.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/12/10/meshaal-s-speech-mish-ma-ool.html

http://www.nowlebanon.com/NewsArticleDetails.aspx?ID=463385

You can’t say Israel and United States didn’t warn each other, or that they didn’t see this coming.

The Americans anticipated a potential Israeli overreaction to the Palestinian United Nations status upgrade to “nonmember observer state.” And there was one measure they particularly wanted to prevent: new Israeli settlement construction in the hypersensitive E1 corridor near Jerusalem.

So a few days before the UN vote, Washington specifically warned Israel not to “retaliate” by building in E1. What was Israel’s immediate reaction to the vote? Why, to announce at least 3,000 new settler housing units, including, of course, in E1. And to add, for good measure, that any commitments to the United States not to build there were “no longer relevant.”

Building in E1 is among the most damaging steps Israel could take to undermine a two-state solution. E1 threatens to almost cut the West Bank in half. It will completely split occupied East Jerusalem off from the rest of the territory.

All serious observers agree with Jerusalem expert Danny Seidemann, who explains, “E-1 is a binary settlement,” because “a Palestinian state must be territorially contiguous, with a link to Jerusalem. That is why this is the decisive battle over the feasibility of ‘two states for two peoples.'”

That is precisely why every American administration has opposed the project since it was first announced in 1999: It’s among the few decisive actions either side could take that could finally lead people around the world, especially Israelis and Palestinians, to finally abandon any hope for a two-state solution.

More than the withholding of Palestinian tax revenues, which Israel has also decided to do, or even annexing territory (which wouldn’t be recognized internationally anyway), building in E1 is among the most aggressive and harmful measures Israel could take in response to the Palestinians’ symbolic UN upgrade. E1 construction is anything but symbolic. It transforms the strategic reality very dramatically away from a two-state solution.

The reason so many European states shifted their votes at the UN last week in the Palestinian direction is that they have become increasingly concerned the Israeli government isn’t interested in a genuine two-state solution. Israel’s E1 construction announcement can only serve to heighten these fears. So does the election of an annexationist slate of leaders of the ruling Likud party.

The international reaction has been strong. Britain, France and Sweden are reportedly considering withdrawing their ambassadors from Tel Aviv if building goes ahead. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called the plan a potentially “fatal blow” to a two-state solution, because Palestinians will not sign to a peace agreement that does not allow East Jerusalem to serve as their capital.

The New York Times reported that the announcement came as a “rude shock” to the Obama administration, particularly since they had specifically warned Israel in advance against precisely this form of “retaliation.”

The State Department noted E1 construction would be “especially damaging to efforts to achieve a two-state solution.” The White House went further, with spokesman Jay Carney saying, “We urge Israeli leaders to reconsider these actions.” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton herself observed, “These activities set back the cause of a negotiated peace.” And former Obama White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel bluntly said the president had been “betrayed” after supporting Israel in its recent conflict with Hamas and at the UN.

This strong international response prompted some Israeli pullback. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attempted to reassure the international community by explicitly telling his cabinet that approval only applies to planning and zoning, not actual construction activity.

The Jerusalem Post interpreted Netanyahu’s comments as likely intended signals to the Palestinians that actual building would only proceed if they took further action at multilateral institutions, presumably particularly the International Criminal Court. If it’s a threat, that’s one thing. If Israel really intends to go ahead with construction, that’s something else altogether.

Stopping the construction of the E1 project is essential to at least preserve the viability of a two-state solution, which, in turn, is a necessary first step to actively pursuing its realization.

Thus far, international pressure has been sufficient to keep E1 basically on the drawing board. With strong American leadership—not waiting for Israel’s election to act, but understanding there can be stronger commitments after it is over—the international community must drag Israel back from the brink.

Israeli leaders are in a fit of rage, and an election campaign with all its incitement to pandering. It’s leading them to flirt with a measure that could foreclose for this and future Israeli generations a peace agreement with the Palestinians and a future of security and acceptance in the region.

E1 construction is a crucial test for all parties that claim to be committed to a two-state solution. Stop this construction. Stop it, or just drop the pretense.

http://www.thenational.ae/thenationalconversation/comment/no-victory-at-un-unless-palestinian-unity-is-the-result#full

The recent conflict between Israel and Hamas significantly recontextualised the request by the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) for an upgrade from the United Nations General Assembly to “non-member observer state” status. How all parties react to the upgrade will have a significant effect on the balance of power within Palestinian society, and strongly influence future regional developments.

The PLO had left itself – and was offered by Israel and the United States – few options. With Hamas riding a wave of popularity, PLO leaders became even more determined to seek a UN upgrade. They calculate a largely symbolic diplomatic victory can offset Hamas’s illusory victory on the battlefield.

Hamas has meanwhile achieved diplomatic breakthroughs of its own, with visits from the emir of Qatar, the prime minister of Egypt, the foreign ministers of Tunisia and Turkey, and more to come. Hamas is so flush with “victory” that it even reversed its position opposing the UN initiative, hoping to take some of the credit.

Now, more than ever, it makes no sense for Israel and the West to “punish the PLO” by making it harder for the Palestinian Authority to govern in the West Bank and handing Hamas yet another unearned and undeserved victory.

Hamas has undoubtedly gained, as it always does, a bump in popularity based on the euphoria produced by any conflict with Israel. In 2009, the bump deflated quickly because the PA was moving forward with Prime Minister Salam Fayyad’s highly successful institution-building programme while the people of Gaza began to soberly assess the massive and lasting damage done by “Operation Cast Lead”.

The PA requires at least $1 billion annually to augment its budget and cannot perform its most basic functions without such aid. The most fundamental is meeting the public employee payroll in both the West Bank and Gaza. A huge percentage of the Palestinian population is directly dependent on these salaries.

But following the 2011 UN bid, aid from the two biggest PA donors – the United States and the European Union – was reduced to about half of its previous levels. And for 2012, the American half of that half – $200 million – remains on congressional holds. And the Arab states that have encouraged the PLO in all their UN initiatives have failed to make up that shortfall.

This time, however, the PA cannot respond by pointing to gains created by its strategy of institution building. The cupboard is bare. And that creates the opportunity for Hamas to build much more sustained political gains among Palestinians everywhere, even though they yet again recklessly brought calamity, or near calamity, to the hapless people of Gaza.

The “breakthroughs” in easing the blockade Hamas says Israel agreed to, but which Israel denies – extending fishing access from three to six nautical miles off the coast, and easing passage through crossings and access to the “barrier area” – are minor and may never even materialise. They certainly don’t change the fundamental situation for the people of Gaza.

It ought to be easy for the PA and the PLO to make the case for diplomacy and institution-building. However, the confrontations at the UN and elsewhere have left the PA with little to point to other than deferred salary payments.

It seems that all parties understood that the new situation called for restraint. There is nothing in the resolution that specifically precludes the PLO from seeking membership in various multilateral agencies. But PLO diplomats have reportedly assured the West that they will not move to join the Assembly of States Parties at the International Criminal Court, which could be a prelude for seeking charges against Israeli officials, or other sensitive multilateral bodies.

The PLO appears to have been successful in winning over several swing European Union states, including, France and Spain. This support should help reassure Israel. Israel must recognise that, unless it prefers dealing with Hamas militarily, it also has a huge stake in rescuing the PA from the political and financial doldrums.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas ought to vigorously pursue his offer of resuming negotiations with Israel without preconditions, which means dropping the settlement-freeze demand. The West should reciprocate by restoring financial aid to the PA and other efforts aimed at improving the situation on the ground in the West Bank. And Israel should cooperate in those efforts and abandon the policy of punishing the PLO by degrading the ability of the PA to effectively govern in the West Bank.

Washington warned Israel not to “retaliate” against the Palestinians, for example by building in the hypersensitive E-1 corridor in the occupied West Bank or withholding Palestinian revenues. Israel is apparently prepared to heed such warnings and understands the political context in which any of its actions will be perceived.

All of Hamas’s purported rivals and antagonists must work together to restore the formerly obvious contrast between the positive benefits of Ramallah’s approaches with the dire consequences of Hamas’s bellicose policies in Gaza.

Otherwise, they will be wittingly or unwittingly conspiring to move Hamas far closer to the realisation of its actual primary goal: uncontested dominance of the Palestinian national movement.

This is obviously not in the interests of the West or Israel. For the Palestinians it would be an unmitigated disaster. The conflict in Gaza, and its political aftermath, should serve as a clear wake-up call for everyone who does not want a Hamas-dominated Palestinian national agenda to act urgently and cooperate to prevent that from emerging.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/11/29/the-death-of-israel-s-qualitative-minority.html

http://www.nowlebanon.com/NewsArticleDetails.aspx?ID=460765

“Article VI: The President may take the necessary actions and measures to protect the country and the goals of the revolution.” Read that aloud slowly, and let the words roll around your tongue as they ooze out like dark, thick molasses.

It’s the centerpiece of Egyptian President Mohammad Morsi’s recent “Constitutional Declaration,” accruing to himself powers and authority—at least on paper—undreamt of by his autocratic predecessors Gamal Abdel Nasser, Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak.

Anyone surprised by this naked and extremely aggressive power grab by the Muslim Brotherhood was either woefully naïve or grossly misinformed about its deep-seated authoritarian orientation and agenda. It is inevitable that it will attempt, if it can, to impose a dictatorship in Egypt more oppressive and thoroughgoing than anything in the past, as the declaration demonstrates.

Brokering the cease-fire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza gave Morsi the domestic and international space to act decisively. He has proven, if nothing else, a ruthless political butcher, wasting no opportunity to bring the knife down whenever he can.

The Brotherhood is trying to mollify Egyptians with two extremely unconvincing sleights of hand.

First, attention is being directed to other, far more specific, articles. Some measures will be popular, such as replacing the widely reviled prosecutor-general and reopening or retrying cases involving abuses by members of the former regime despite the double jeopardy involved.

More alarm was caused by Article II, which makes all of Morsi’s decisions since he took office “final and binding.” It forbids any form of judicial review or legal challenge, including retroactively annulling any rulings already issued against them.

It is Article VI, however, that really establishes a new and unprecedentedly arbitrary dictatorship in Egypt, giving Morsi virtually unfettered powers. It’s hard to imagine any executive action or decree whatsoever that couldn’t be justified as “protecting the country and the goals of the revolution.” At least in his own opinion, and that’s the only one that counts, because, remember, his decisions are not subject to any checks, balances, lawsuits or other form of challenge whatsoever.

His word, quite literally, is law. In Egypt now, at least according to his declaration, there is no recourse at all.

The second sleight-of-hand the Brotherhood is using to try to mollify Egyptians is the idea that this is all simply “temporary,” to be rescinded once there is a new Constitution in place and a new parliament elected. CK MacLeod reminded me of Carl Schmitt’s observation that emergency decrees or temporary suspensions of the law are often the norm in political modernity, not the exception. Hitler, for example, never rescinded the Weimar Republic Constitution. He merely suspended it every four years following the Reichstag fire, until the Soviet army overran Berlin.

It’s an apt point. Almost every autocratic Arab state has used “temporary” or “emergency” laws to justify dictatorial rule and human rights abuses. Israel, too, relies on “emergency” laws promulgated by the British mandatory authorities in 1945, particularly in the occupied Palestinian territories. So why should Muslim Brotherhood-ruled Egypt be any different? The tediously predictable answer is, left on its own, it won’t be. It will be, if anything, more oppressive than the (also “temporary”) nationalist one-party dictatorship that preceded it.

Morsy and the Muslim Brotherhood will not relinquish these unprecedented dictatorial powers unless they are forced to. Even then, they will cling onto as much as possible. It’s going to be up to the Egyptian opposition to unite and force their hands. It will be very difficult — but the way things are going not impossible and possibly even not neccessary — for Morsi’s government to block new parliamentary and presidential elections supposed to take place in the foreseeable future.

If the Egyptian people are to avoid new and even worse dictatorship than they just overthrew, they must avoid political domination by the Muslim Brotherhood. But in order to achieve that, the opposition is going to have to unite and provide an alternative which they can support, not a morass of bickering.

The government and the Brotherhood have reacted to the protests against the declaration with a combination of violence and nonchalance. They clearly think this is a temporary storm they can weather, with the already secured support of their Salafist “frienemies.” In terms of the fundamental state stability, they’re probably right. Street protests probably won’t be enough at this stage to undo the damage.

Protests and criticism at all levels, and as much litigation as possible, should be focused on discrediting or even undoing Morsi’s declaration of dictatorship. But real hopes for Egyptian democracy in the long run depend on removing from power, presumably by the ballot box, the person and party brazen, power-mad and tyrannical enough to promulgate Article VI.

Assuming, of course, that there ever is another election in Egypt.