Israel Cries Foul at United Nations
Israel announced today that it would block any effort by the U.N. to investigate its 2008 military “offensive” in the Gaza Stip or to try Israel soldiers before an international war crimes tribunal.
South African jurist Richard Goldstone, who heads the UN report, said that Israel used disproportionate force which resulted in the death of hundreds of civilians and caused widespread damage to the area. The report is largely grounded in the mass of human rights reports released in 2009.
The Associated Press reports, “But the U.N. report could carry much more weight, both because it was authored by a widely respected former war crimes prosecutor and because it could ultimately lead to charges against Israel before the International Criminal Court.”
Pundits suspects that the United States, which is known for playing the veto card for Israel in the Security Council, would block the prosecution of Israeli officials in the ICC. Rather, political actors here are awaiting the result of the Palestinian Authority’s request to join the ICC. If its membership is approved, the prosecution will bypass the Security Council.
In Israel, the report produced an uproar, with President Shimon Peres calling it a “mockery of history,” and many officials eliciting barbs about Anti-Semitism.
The AP reports,
Goldstone is a former South African judge who prosecuted war crimes in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. Goldstone, who is Jewish and has close ties to Israel, was well aware that his work would draw fire. As a condition for heading the inquiry, he insisted that the panel look at the actions of Palestinian militants.
… Israel launched the three-week war in late December to quash Palestinian militants in Gaza who had bombarded southern Israel for years with rocket and mortar fire.
Some 1,400 Palestinians were killed in the conflict, including hundreds of civilians, and thousands more were wounded. Thirteen Israelis also died, including four civilians.
Peres, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for helping craft an interim 1993 peace agreement with the Palestinians, said the Goldstone report “makes a mockery of history.”
“It draws no distinction between the attacker and the attacked,” Peres said. “The report essentially grants legitimacy to acts of terrorism, shooting and killing, and ignores the right and duty of any country to self defense, as outlined in the U.N. charter.”
In his statement, however, Peres, founder of one of the first settlements in the West Bank, ignores the phrase “disproportionate use of force,” which grants legitimacy to the offensive.
At this time, both Hamas and Israel are citing self-defense for their actions December 2008 and onward.
The U.N. investigators recommended the Security Council require both sides to launch credible probes into the conflict within three months, and to follow that up with action in their courts.
If either side refuses, it said the U.N. should refer the evidence for prosecution by the International Criminal Court, a permanent war crimes tribunal, within six months.
Deputy Foreign Minister David Ayalon told the American Jewish Committee in New York, “The Goldstone Report should be treated like the UN General Assembly Resolution 3379 equating Zionism with racism, thus we must mobilize and act with all force against the report in order to remove it.”
According to Haa’retz, Ayalon plans to meet with Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the UN to discuss ways to minimize the report’s damage to Israel’s reputation.
– Tina Carter, Trinity ‘10What worries authorities in Jerusalem is that many European countries are signatories to a Geneva Convention that allows their courts to arrest and prosecute individuals accused of committing war crimes in other countries. Such legal options, Israel fears, may be used to bring politically motivated charges against its citizens. The daily Yedioth Ahronoth reported Wednesday that Israel’s Foreign and Justice ministries have begun drawing up lists of law firms in different European countries that could be enlisted to defend Israelis in any future cases.
Ship Seized On Its Way to Iran
The United Arab Emirates seized a cargo ship bound for Iran with a cache of banned weaponry. The UAE, which is a hub for Iranian goods, reported the find in a confidential letter to the council’s sanctions committee for North Korea.
Although the ship contained rockets rather than nukes, the discovery does not bode well for the international reputation of either North Korea or Iran.
North Korea has only recently developed a more conciliatory stance towards South Korea and the U.S., the Associated Press reports, and Iran has only just begun to produce nuclear fuel at a slower rate and has increased U.N. access to its main nuclear complex in Natanz and Arak.
Still, contention between Iran and the U.S. rages.
Iran’s chief representative to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh told the AP, “America alleges that Iran has a Manhattan Project” to build a bomb, Soltanieh said. “This is ridiculous. This game is enough. It should be over. … We have tried to take a very logical and pragmatic approach.”
The fate of a nuclear Iran will be decided after September 2nd during a meeting of the IAEA’s 35-nation board. President Obama has said that sanctions will be tightened if Iran does not stop enriching uranium. However, if Iran does end it’s nuclear program, Obama has promised trade and commercial benefits.
It is doubtful whether an economically-based ultimatum can address an issue that is largely ideological. Can commerce and trade substitute national (and regional) pride? That remains to be seen, but it is just as unlikely that Iran can bear the weight of the “severe” sanctions that Europe hopes to put forth after September 2nd.
– Tina Carter, Trinity ‘10Resurgence of Violence in Iraq Worries Region, Not U.S. Gen.
In July, some senior defense officials attributed the spike in violence in Iraq to a last push by Sunni extremist groups.
“We knew that if al-Qaeda in Iraq had only five bombs left, they were going to use them all as the last of our forces left the cities,” said a senior defense official who follows Iraq. “They wanted to create the narrative that they had driven us from Iraq. Next, they’ll want to build the narrative that the Iraqi security forces can’t protect the people.”
Indeed, two months after the withdrawal of American troops, a series of attacks have all but convinced Iraqis that the security troops cannot quell the violence.
A string of coordinated attacks on government ministries and a number of deadly bombings in the north, have rapidly chipped away at the legitimacy of the troops.
“Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari says the security forces are partly responsible for allowing the worst attack to happen outside his ministry,” reported the BBC.
Iraqis name corruption as the reason why the bombers have been able to get through the checkpoints. Bribes and other underhanded dealings take the place of inspection, undermining security measures. One of the organizers of the 19 August truck bombing that killed 68 spoke of paying $10,000 to get a truck laden with explosives into the center of the capital.
Nevertheless, U.S. army chief of staff General George Casey said the U.S. military is pushing ahead with its schedule to reduce the 130,000 American troops.
Advisers expect sectarian tensions to flare by the January elections.
BBC LIST OF KEY ATTACKS SINCE US PULLBACK
19 Aug: At least 95 killed in wave of attacks in central Baghdad
31 July: Bombs outside five Baghdad mosques kill 27
9 July: 50 die in bombs at Talafar (near Mosul), Baghdad, elsewhere
30 June: US troops withdraw from Iraqi towns and cities. Car bomb in Kirkuk kills at least 27
Update:
A bomb attack on a cafe in a remote Iraqi village in northern Iraq today killed 18. The visiting Iranian foreign minister said that instability in Iraq affects the region, reports the AP.
The Iranian foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki called on neighboring countries to help stabilize Iraq. Since the U.S. pull-out, bombers have been exploiting the vulnerability of small remote villages. These attacks allegedly target ethnic minorities especially, including Kurdish Yazidis and Sunni Azamiyah.
According to the AP, the Iraqi government has blamed an alliance of al-Qaeda in Iraq and Saddam loyalists based in Syria for the truck bombings.
The Economist States The Age-Old
BarackBeat will soon feature regular updates, and I have decided to mark the occasion with the Economist’s explanation of why and how the Arab world has gone to rack and ruin.
On July 23, The Economist printed two articles entitled “Waking from its sleep.”
The special report hits the sore spot almost immediately,
To revisit the Arab world two decades later is to find that in many ways history continues to pass the Arabs by. Freedom? The Arabs are ruled now, as they were then, by a cartel of authoritarian regimes practised in the arts of oppression. Unity? As elusive as ever. Although the fault lines have changed since Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait 19 years ago, inter-Arab divisions are bitter. Egypt, the biggest Arab country, refused even to attend April’s Arab League summit meeting in Doha. Israel? Punctuated by bouts of violence and fitful interludes of diplomacy, the deadly stalemate continues. Neither George H. Bush at Madrid in 1991 nor Bill Clinton at Camp David in 2000 nor George W. Bush at Annapolis in 2007 succeeded in making peace or even bringing it visibly closer.
These articles make no new pronouncements. Their greatest indictments– the anti-Israeli attitude, oil and corrupt leadership– are among the most well-known hindrances to development in the region (see the Arab Human Development Report). The real power in these articles lie in their pointed (even frustrated) condemnation of the region’s leadership. They make no bones about the fact that it is the ravenous scramble for power in the Arab world that has brought it to its ruinous state. It is not Islam or even the legacy of imperialism.
Not one ruler in today’s Arab League got his job through a free election. Whatever legitimacy these regimes enjoy derives mainly from tradition, fear, or an unwritten contract between ruler and ruled: in return for your loyalty I will meet your basic economic and social needs. That may be a splendid contract in times of plenty. But a bursting population is already making it hard for governments to keep their side of the bargain.
“Waking from its sleep” say that a social bargain of co-optation does not endure, and that political change is not a nicety but a necessity for economic and social progress. One gets the feeling that the Economist is not just addressing the Arab world, but is using its story as a parable, an example for much of the Third World.
– Tina Carter, Trinity ‘10Israel Makes Little Progress with Palestine and Its Neighbors
In June, Hamas and Fatah wholly rejected Netanyahu’s stipulated version of a two-state solution, and violence has since escalated at the 500-mile “barrier” that separates the West Bank from Israel.
The Associated Press reports,
Palestinians have been staging weekly demonstrations at both sites to protest the barrier’s route, which crosses through the villages and cuts farmers off from hundreds of acres of agricultural fields.
Israel says the barrier–a mix of towering concrete walls and electronic fences–is needed to stop Palestinian militants from crossing into Israel to carry out attacks. Palestinians call it a land grab because parts of it jut deep into the West Bank, cutting them off from territory they claim for a future state.
Israel has classified the protest areas as closed military zones and troops have clashed frequently and increasingly violently with protesters, some of whom hurl rocks at the soldiers.
In May, Israel’s Justice Ministry opened a criminal investigation into the firing of tear gas shells at the demonstrations. Tear gas shells struck one of the two Palestinian demonstrators killed recently and injured the American.
The AP reported Saturday that Israeli Defense Forces sprayed a “putrid” substance on protesting Palestinians and sent plainclothed Palestinians across the border.
Confrontations over the barrier have become increasingly violent, with two Palestinian demonstrators killed in recent months and an American supporter seriously injured.
Video footage of one incident at the West Bank village of Naalin showed three masked undercover agents surrounding a shirtless Palestinian demonstrator, throwing him to the ground and then calling for backup by uniformed soldiers.
Several rocks hurled by protesters struck the ground near the troops and one of them pulled a pistol and fired in the air as Palestinians fled the scene. Two Palestinians were arrested, the military said.
In his June 4th address in Cairo, President Obama said the Palestinian experience has been defined by “the daily humiliations…that come with occupation,” and he has since pressured Israel to neogitate with Fatah and Hamas. Under these conditions, the failure of negotiations is lamentable and is fortified by ongoing violence on the ground and by Israel’s seizure of humanitarian aid groups, including the “Spirit of Humanity,” which carried US Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney.
Prospects for peace have also been wrecked by Israel’s diplomatic relations with neighboring Arab states. In recent months, both the U.S. and Saudi Arabia have sent an ambassador to Syria. The former after five years and the latter following a lengthier inter-country contention from the 2005 assassination of Lebanese prime minister Rafiki Al-Hariri to disparate support from Hamas and Hizbollah.
According to the Obama administration, establishing diplomatic relations with Syria may weaken its support of Hizbollah and unabashed support of Iran. However, Israel has instead preferred to mobilize military against Iran and has refused to send an Israeli ambassador to Syria because of Syria’s singular demand for Israel to withdraw form the Golan Heights. According to the AP, Syria has refused peace talks with Israel since the latter annexed the area in 1981.
The Associated Press reports,
Syrian forces used the strategic plateau to shell nearby Israeli communities before 1967, and Israel fears those communities will once again become vulnerable should the Heights be ceded. Israeli officials also argue that holding the area gives Israel early warning of Syrian military moves and a buffer zone in case of attack.
The area is also home to crucial water sources, a profitable Israeli winery, and Israeli settlements with about 18,000 residents. About 17,000 Druse Arabs loyal to Syria also live there.
Senior adviser to the Middle East envoy George Mitchell and U.S. diplomat Frederick Hoff went to Israel this week, ostensibly, to shore up talks between Israel and Syria. Hoff will meet with Defense Minister Ehud Barack and other senior military advisers.
Ha’aretz writes, “The Americans believe the crisis in Iran has created an opportunity for the United States to draw Syria closer and resume Israel-Syria negotiations.”
– Tina Carter, Trinity ‘10Abbas Turns Down Netanyahu’s Overture
Israeli prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu invited Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas to discuss peace today, but was refused for his failure to halt the settlements under the 2003 U.S.-initiated “roadmap” to peace.
Abbas said last month and again on Sunday in a letter to President Obama that he will not discuss “key issues” unless Israel stops the growth of settlements in the West Bank.
Reuters reports,
[Palestinian chief of the PLO Saeb] Erekat was responding to reports that Israel and the United States were discussing a compromise that would allow some building in existing settlements under what Israel terms “natural growth” to accommodate expanding families.
A U.S. official denied on Wednesday a report in the Israeli daily Maariv that the Obama administration agreed work could continue on 2,500 housing units whose construction had begun, despite its call for a total freeze to spur peace efforts.
The report followed talks in London last week between George Mitchell, Obama’s special Middle East envoy, and Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak aimed at healing a rift over continued settlement activity.
… 500,000 Israelis live in the West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem, areas Israel captured in a 1967 war. Palestinians say Jewish settlements, deemed illegal by the World Court, would deny them a viable and contiguous state.
Western officials said the United States was moving in the direction of making allowances so Israel could finish off at least some existing projects which are close to completion or bound by private contracts that cannot be broken.
Israel estimates that 2,500 units are in the process of being built and cannot be stopped under Israeli law.
In an interview with Ha’aretz, Netanyahu’s national security adviser called the Palestinian government a stooge, or rather a “disorderly constellation of forces and factions.” Of Abbas he said, “But even with him I don’t see a real interest and desire to arrive at the end of the conflict with Israel. On the contrary, he is preserving eternal claims against us and inflaming them.”
– Tina Carter, Trinity ‘10Iran Has Deals in the Works
Iranian foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki said today that the government will prepare a package of deals on issues of economy, security and international affairs.
The omission of nuclear activity is not a smart one. Prior to the G-8 summit this week, Israel was successful in pushing three European superpowers to back a military amendment to the IAEA on Iran in September, and despite President Obama’s decision to refrain from military action, he has warned Iran of the September “deadline” for nuclear talks.
In April, the West presented its own package to Iran in which it provided incentives for nuclear non-proliferation, and it was well-received by President Mahmoud Ahmadenijad who said that it respected the nation’s sovereignty. Unfortunately, diplomatic relations have all but severed in the post-election backdrop, and the president has accused the West of trying to undercut Iran and of even inciting the street protests.
– Tina Carter, Trinity ‘10Israel Elbows US as Iran Does Things the Hard Way
The Obama administration has always preferred bilateral diplomacy, but the administration is tightening its breeches. Iran continues to advance its nuclear program and its post-election crackdown, including its prosecution of citizens who cooperate with satellite news programs.
In recent weeks, President Obama has threatened American companies that service the Iranian government and rescinded invitations to Independence Day celebrations from Iranian diplomats. Now, according to Haa’retz, Israel is pushing its superpower allies to take on a more forceful Plan B.
According to the rationale of Israeli senior officials, the unrest in Iran permits “harsher steps” in the form of stiffer sanctions.
Israel has also been communicating with Germany, France, Russia and Japan on Washington’s persistence with the current path and on securing a military appendix to the International Atomic Energy Agency on Iran.
The news follows London’s Sunday Times allegations that Saudi Arabia will allow Israel to use its airspace in military assault against Iran and American vice president Joe Biden said that military action against Iran is within Israel’s right as a sovereign power.
Ha’aretz reports,
In an interview with ABC television, Biden said: “Israel can determine for itself – it’s a sovereign nation – what’s in their interest and what they decide to do relative to Iran and anyone else. Whether we agree or not. They’re entitled to do that. Any sovereign nation is entitled to do that.”
Biden insisted that pressure from Israel or other countries would not affect American’s planned dialogue with Iran. “There is no pressure from any nation that is going to alter our behavior as to how to proceed,” he said, adding that Washington believes this dialogue serves America’s interests, as well as those of Israel and the rest of the world.
Biden’s sentiment was only slightly undercut by President Obama’s insistence Tuesday that Israel does not have a green light to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities.
The Jerusalem Post reports,
– Tina Carter, Trinity ‘10The president said that Biden had simply been stating the “categorical fact” that “we can’t dictate to other countries what their security interests are. What is also true is that it is the policy of the United States to resolve the issue of Iran’s nuclear capabilities in a peaceful way through diplomatic channels,” he said.
… Nevertheless, the IDF has taken into consideration the possibility that it will not receive US permission to fly over Iraq on the way to Iran, and has drawn up an operational plan for this contingency. While its preference is to coordinate with the US, defense officials have said in the past that Israel was preparing a wide range of options for such an operation.
Duke Senior’s Crib Sheet on Obama’s Initial Reception in the Middle East
Edith Chen, now a senior, studied and lived in Amman, Jordan from February until early May of this year. Jordan is the primary US ally in the region, and the close relationship between the governments have made the royal family’s legitimacy more tenuous.
The upper middle class is generally more skeptical about Obama’s ability to change US policies in the Middle East (Christian, Muslim, and Palestinian Jordanians alike).
A man in a Palestinian refugee camp in Amman watches the US President's address to the Middle East and Muslims June 4th. The Guardian
The prevailing issue to Amman’s Jordanians has always been Israel-Palestine, which is unsurprising given the large Palestinian urban and refugee population. Thus Obama’s silence during the Israeli air attacks on Gaza really set back Obama’s credibility as the “anti-Bush” (at least when I first arrived, and Gaza was still a fresh topic of discussion). I think whether Obama can follow up his support for a Palestinian state in speech with actions (and exert pressure on Israel) will be critical if he wants to reach out to Jordanians.
There is also some privately expressed skepticism towards the Jordanian monarchy, which is seen as too cozy with the US government. This feeling is even stronger for Palestinian-Jordanians. It’s noteworthy, however, that skepticism towards governments is common in the Middle East, since during my time there, I has also encountered complaints about the governments of the Gulf states, Egypt, Iran, and even Turkey, trying to inject their influence and ideology in regional affairs.
Regarding whether Obama’s message can effectively reach the people, it is a matter of local consciousness than the effectiveness of his message. Something I noticed in my family was that the nightly Turkish musalsal seems to have priority instead of the news. I don’t think I ever saw our TV tuned into a news channel during my 3 month stay, except during the Pope’s visit, and I’ve never seen a newspaper in the home; so I am not certain how or if they keep up with political developments. I don’t know if this apathy towards politics is common to the urban upper class. The inertia of cynicism–that the more things change the more they stay the same–is a challenge Obama will have to beat if he wants a more receptive and enthusiastic urban audience in the Middle East.
Working class Transjordanians, or Jordanians without Palestinian lineage, (such as taxi drivers, store keepers) have expressed more positive attitudes towards Obama. But I believe these responses may be due to a self-selective sample. The ones who aren’t keen on Americans are unlikely to engage in conversations with us. At another time, a Palestinian driver (originally from Kuwait before the first Iraq war) was outraged that he was stuck living in Jordan and complained about the country and its shortcomings relative to life in a Gulf state. His outburst was so intense that we didn’t want to bring up the fact that America is the reason he was forced to evacuate Kuwait.
Bedouin Transjordanians seem to have a positive attitude towards Obama, but not the US government. As tribal Transjordanians, they have a higher esteem towards the monarchy and respect the king’s traditional ties to the US. For instance, my host family’s Bedouin grandfather used to travel with King Hussein and named his sons after the princes. For the Bedouins I believe the Iraq war was a major factor that hurt their perception of the American administration, since there was a time before Iraq’s sanction that they helped the Jordanian economy by providing subsidized oil. Hence, many other students were also surprised to find their Bedouin households decorated with portraits of Saddam Hussein. Likewise, my Bedouin grandfather said Obama was a good man and so was Saddam, while Bush was majnun (so in the twist of analogy meant he approved of Obama on some level). How Obama handles the Iraq situation might be important in changing their perception about the US. A continued perception of the US as an aggressor and an occupying force will hit the traditional tribal sensibilities the wrong way.
As senator, Obama toured the Middle East to engender enthusiasm for a new era of US-Arab relations. Handout/Getty Images Europe
Satellite television beams in 24-hour global news into most households, even in the remote Badia where the Bedouins lived and herded. Therefore, Obama’s approach of giving direct speeches would be an asset in winning his case with those in the Middle East. Unlike my Amman host family, my Bedouin family kept up to date with news development and frequently watched CNN and al-Jazeera. Bedouins also have more political leverage on a per-capital level, since the electoral districting system was designed to give more power to the tribes. More than this, social and political connections, or wasta, awards Transjordanians with priority for government jobs. As a result, how they perceive the situation will be influential. But the Jordanian tribal political system is so complex and I’m uncertain as to what this might mean.
In short, what Obama decides to do about a Palestinian state will be the foremost determining factor in how he will be received by Jordanians. The diversity of actors in Jordan could also create numerous problems in the country that is one of America’s most helpful allies in the Middle East: exacerbated tension between Palestinian-Jordanians and Transjordanians; diversion of resources and support from other areas of social development and modernization. These issues of contention could possibly jeopardize Jordan’s national stability and generate support for opposition political parties. The monarchy also has a history of “protecting” the country from another Black September with crackdowns on civil liberties and rollbacks of the budding democratizing process.
If Obama can clean up the previous administration’s mistakes in Iraq, Guantanamo etc. in a responsible manner and seek dialog with the region’s important players, the President could repair the perceptions.