Israel/Gaza Cease-Fire Dynamics Breakdown

For months we have been tracking Israeli cease-fire violations in Gaza. In November of 2012, a cease-fire agreement was brokered by Egypt between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. Previous cease-fire agreements, like the one brokered by Egypt in June of 2008 were shattered by extrajudicial assassinations carried out by Israel. The biggest question after the cease-fire agreement, as I made clear here, was who would hold Israel to account for cease-fire violations? Egypt was not going to play this role. The U.S. was not going to play this role. So effectively, Israel could fire into Gaza without accountability, provoke a reaction and then claim self-defense. Of course this has been similar to what we have seen in the past as we displayed here, here, and here.

So what has been happening since the cease-fire? In anticipation of similar trends, we began tracking Israeli cease-fire violations shortly after the agreement was reached. We have an ongoing list here. The media predictably continued to ignore Israeli cease-fire violations, which is why it was even more important to catalog them. If another massive Israeli bombardment of Gaza began, Israel would surely use the pretext of "self-defense" to fend off any international criticism and the mainstream media's failure to cover these cease-fire violations would have provided and supported the Israeli narrative needed to make war. Thus, we not only tracked Israeli cease-fire violations, but we also tracked if and how these violations were being covered in the mainstream. More on that later.

The chart below depicts a few things; Israeli cease-fire violations, Palestinian projectile launches and Palestinian casualties that resulted from Israeli cease-fire violations week by week of the cease-fire through January 2014. A few notes on the data; first, we refer to "projectiles" because there are different types of projectiles that are deployed, not all are "rockets" and thus "rockets" alone, the preferred parlance of the Israeli state, isn't an accurate descriptor. Additionally, we are not focusing on each individual piece of ordinance but rather on events. So if one projectile is launched or two are launched together, these are the same event. Likewise, we don't count each individual piece of ordinance Israel deploys in an airstrike wherein it routinely drops several bombs in a singular event. If we did, the number of Israeli violations would surely be much, much higher. For example, the Israeli human rights group B'tselem, citing the Israeli Shin Bet, notes that nearly 14,000 projectiles were fired from Gaza from 2005 to 2013. UN OCHA noted that Israel fired about the same number of artillery shells into Gaza......in 2006 alone. Lastly, the Shin Bet keeps numbers on Palestinian fire from Gaza but does not differentiate between fire at Israeli targets that have entered Gaza vs. those outside it. Also, it does not have data available at the week level, only the month level. Even using their numbers for Palestinian fire though, Israeli violations outnumber them nearly two to one.

There really is no comparison between Israel's capacity to destroy and the combined capacity of all the factions in Gaza. The point here is to understand how the events relate to each other, what leads to escalation, and how this effects the durability of the cease-fire agreement.

[Click to Enlarge]

As you can see from the chart, Israeli cease-fire violations have been persistent throughout and have routinely resulted in Palestinian injuries and deaths. Palestinian launches have been rare and sporadic and occurred almost always after successive instances of Israeli cease-fire violations. You can see a steady escalation from around week 48 and onward. This corresponds with mid-December during which Israel committed several cease-fire violations resulting in multiple Palestinian casualties. There was no Palestinian projectile fire in the two weeks prior to these Israeli violations which inflicted high causalities. This means that this week was the escalation point and it was Israel doing the escalating. You can see that the following weeks continue to feature exchanges that included high Palestinian casualties. You may wonder why you don't see Israeli casualties from Palestinian projectile fire depicted on this chart, that is because as afar as I can tell, there weren't any during this period.

So how have these cease-fire dynamics been covered? We've tracked New York Times coverage of the cease-fire during this period. The New York Times is representative of the mainstream and extremely important for shaping public discourse on events and thus an important window into broader mainstream coverage. The Times also has multiple reporters covering these events including a bureau in Jerusalem and a correspondent in Gaza. Finally, we simply can't track everything so the Times, with its easily searchable history, is an effective example to use.

Of the nearly 120 Israeli cease-fire violations during this period the New York Times reported on 17 of them. Additionally, most of these stories (eleven) came either during the first week of the cease-fire, when the issue was still fresh in readers' minds, or since the escalation on December 20th. That means for the bulk of this period, during which Israel committed 87 cease-fire violations and causing some 91 Palestinian casualties over nearly a one year period there were only six stories on the topic. This represents a systematic failure to cover Israeli cease-fire violations.

Making matters worse is the way events are covered in the rare instances they are covered. In most cases, Israeli actions are described as a response to Palestinian actions. So while most Israeli cease-fire violations are not covered at all, those that are are explained as justified retaliation. Thus the reader is completely misled about the dynamics of fire, why the cease-fire is threatened and exactly what is going on in and around Gaza.

The biggest challenge to the cease-fire agreement is persistent Israeli violation and the lack of any accountability for them. The politics of the Gaza Strip are complex. Israel says it wants Hamas to control projectile fire from other factions and yet it persistently violates the truce putting Hamas in a position of having to defend Israel's violations. By targeting groups other than Hamas and by expecting Hamas to crack down on their responses, Israel is playing a dangerous and deadly game of divide and conquer in Gaza that will likely lead to the unraveling of the cease-fire. Once again, Israel has proven security is not its aim, subjugation is.

For more on this topic, I highly recommend a new report by the Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC) on Israeli fire into Gaza.

read more...

Unprincipled Demands: Time to Treat Hamas and Likud Equally

The news broke today that Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah have agreed to a reconciliation, putting an end to a 4-year divide that has paralyzed Palestinian society on top of an already devastating Israeli occupation. There are so many questions that abound about what this means, whether it will last, and how it will impact relations with Israel and the United States, if at all. These are questions that will be asked several times over the next few days and weeks, and it may take much longer than that for any answers to become apparent.

But along with the discussion about the effect of this

reconciliation agreement will co me a common talking point that will be repeated ad nauseum. After the Palestinian legislative elections in 2006 which led to a Hamas dominated Palestinian Authority, the immediate reaction from Washington was rejection. Congress moved immediately to suspend any assistance to the PA since Hamas was now in the government. The policy and talking point became "Hamas cannot be accepted until it accepts the Quartet principles." The charter of Hamas was constantly referred to by Israeli officials and their supporters in the U.S. to point out that Hamas was by constitution incompatible with the Quartet principles.

The sanctions placed on the PA debilitated the government, and pressure from Washington and Israel ultimately led to a split between Fatah and Hamas. Once Hamas and Fatah split after a bloody fight in Gaza, money from Washington began to fill the Fatah-led, Ramallah-based PA coffers again.

So it should come as no surprise that Washington and Israel aren't pleased with today's news of reconciliation, and we should be prepared to hear many of the same characters repeating the same talking points from four years ago about Hamas needing to accept the Quartet principles.

I'm not a fan of Hamas' charter, and I think it has ultimately done them more harm than good, but I also fully understand their reluctance to accept the principles their PLO counterparts accepted at the beginning of the Oslo process which has proved to be a complete failure.

What are these three magic principles anyway?

1. Accepting Israel's right to exist.

2. Renouncing Violence

3. Endorsing Prior Agreements with Israel

Set aside for a moment the obvious problem: this would put Hamas in the same boat as the Fatah-led PA -- having accepted everything Israel wants while having no leverage and receiving nothing.

What I think is more important to point out, and should be pointed out to all the talking heads that blurt out the near automated "Just look at their charter. They won't accept Israel. They want to destroy Israel," is how ridiculously biased this requirement is.

Hamas is a Palestinian party that would be part of the Palestinian Authority, and thus, they want it to accept the Quartet principles to have a seat at the negotiating table. But shouldn't all players at the table have to play by the same rules? While the talking heads will quote you the Hamas Charter, they don't want you to see the Likud Charter. The Likud is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanayahu's party. In fact, the Likud charter does not comply with any of the principles. Instead of recognizing Palestine's right to exist, the Likud Charter states that the party "flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan river." West of the Jordan river includes the West Bank and Gaza. In fact, when Likud and Netanyahu talk about a "two-state" solution, their charter indicates they are taking about a Palestinian state in Jordan.

And does their stance on Israeli colonies sound like it abides by these principles: "The Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza are the realization of Zionist values. Settlement of the land is a clear expression of the unassailable right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel and constitutes an important asset in the defense of the vital interests of the State of Israel. The Likud will continue to strengthen and develop these communities and will prevent their uprooting."

In fact by pledging to expand settlements, Likud pledges to violate the first phase of the Road Map whick the Knesset accepted in 2003. So it isn't keen on abiding by prior agreements either.

Is the Hamas charter a friendly document? No, not at all. But neither is Likud's charter. And the Likud Party is one of the least right-wing parties in the current Israeli government of uber-rightists. What Likud and Hamas have in common is that neither of their founding documents recognizes the other state's right to exist. The major difference between them is that Likud actually controls a government with the power and resources to act on that intention by literally creating facts on the ground like colonies and erasing what is left of Palestine.

So, will we be hearing officials in Washington threatening Israel with sanctions so long as Likud or other right wing parties are in their government? No, we won't. Instead Washington will continue to subsidize their colonization of Palestine and blame a stall in the 'peace process' on marginal actors that don't control enough power to really make a difference.

read more...

Top 10 Wikileaks Palestine Nuggets

UPDATE: Make sure to read latest post on the Wikileaks and the Arab World here.

Wikileaks, the website set up to be a clearinghouse for classified information leaked through secure online channels, has once again published thousands of leaked documents, this time pertaining to American diplomacy around the world. The leaked reports are in the form of "cables" which are diplomatic communications or reports shared between embassies and U.S. diplomatic officials. The origins of the cables vary from different U.S. embassies around the globe to the Department of State in Washington, D.C. While the communications cover relations with many different countries, a significant portion deals with nations in the Middle East.

This post will focus on the most recent leaks as they relate to Palestine, and below are 10 of the more interesting passages relating to Palestine, the Palestinians and the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Note that quotes in the text below are from the documents themselves, which may be paraphrased summaries of conversations and are not necessarily verbatim. There is very little here that should come as a surprise to those closely following the international relations of the Middle East and the politics around Palestine. These documents do, however, provide interesting context and color to these relations that were previously unavailable. Since this seems to be the first part of a large document dump by Wikileaks, I will update this post or create another one as the information becomes available.

#1. Qatar's Prime Minister met with Senator John Kerry and discussed a variety of issues including Qatar's views on the Palestinian issue. At the time, the Prime Minister suggested proximity talks which were ongoing between the Israelis and Palestinians would waste time - in his estimate 4-6 months. He also emphasized that negotiations without Hamas are unlikely to be fruitful since the "Palestinian Authority (PA) cannot sign off on an agreement on behalf of the Palestinians where open divisions exist." To no one's surprise, Qatar's PM was not keen on the role Egypt has been playing in the region. Egypt, which has "no end game" in mind when it comes to brokering Hamas-Fatah reconciliation talks, is like a doctor relying on only one patient for business: "the physician is going to keep the patient alive but in the hospital for as long as possible."

#2. Egypt's head of General Intelligence Omar Suleiman would provide little evidence to suggest the Qatari leader's criticism of their biased brokering was untrue. In a conversation with U.S. General Patreaus he stated that "Egypt's three primary objectives with the Palestinians were to maintain calm in Gaza, undermine Hamas, and build popular support for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. " Suleiman also stated that Egypt would continue to be committed to Palestinian reconciliation. "It is hard," he said, "but I am always optimistic. I consider myself a patient man, but I am loosing [sic] patience."

#3. Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu met with U.S. Senator Benjamin Cardin (D-MD) just before becoming prime minister again and forming the current Israeli coalition government. When describing "his approach to 'economic peace' with the Palestinians, Netanyahu suggested he would cut through bureaucratic obstacles to Palestinian economic development to build a 'pyramid' from the 'bottom up' that would strengthen the Palestinian Authority, and offer the Palestinians a viable alternative to radicalism." He also indicated he wasn't interested in a sovereign Palestinian state emerging in the West Bank, but rather "an agreement over territory,settlements and 'refined' Palestinian sovereignty without an army or control over air space and borders." Further evidence of Netanyahu's stance, which he states is not unlike Livni's, is described in a cable about a meeting between Netanyahu and a Congressional Delegation (CODEL) in late April 2009. He states "A Palestinian state must be demilitarized, without control over its air space and electro-magnetic field, and without the power to enter into treaties or control its borders. Netanyahu concluded that he and opposition leader Tzipi Livni 'only disagree about the name,' i.e. the two-state solution."

#4. An Israeli assessment of Palestinian leadership: "Of particular interest throughout the meetings was the subject of the Palestinian political situation. It was widely agreed that President Abbas is currently in a weakened political state, and Israeli officials generally cast a dour assessment of Abbas's future. In one exchange, Amos Gilad stated his opinion that Abbas will not survive politically past the year 2011. Gilad further stated that Abbas is facing unprecedented criticism within the Palestinian Authority over his handling of the Goldstone report, and that this, coupled with a stubborn HAMAS, has weakened Abbas considerably. The Israelis said the perception in the Arab world was that the U.S. had encouraged Abbas to take difficult positions on Goldstone and settlements only to walk away from him. ASD Vershbow queried Gilad over measures that could be taken to bolster Abbas. Gilad responded by stating that Israeli-Palestinian peace discussions need to be resumed immediately, but without preconditions, and that both parties need to seek further cooperation on a range of issues -- specifically on the security sector front. Gilad expressed optimism over the current atmosphere in the West Bank, citing improvements in the security and economic spheres, and further stated that the reduced Israeli Defense Force (IDF) footprint in the West Bank has made conditions ripe for advancing the relationship."

#5. This cable, from a 2007 meeting between U.S. Congressmen and Netanyahu, sheds light on Netanayhu's strategy vis-a-vis Hamas and Fatah: "Netanyahu said Abbas was a 'nice man who means well,' but he added that Israel and the U.S. should focus on 'bringing down Hamas' through an 'economic squeeze'...Netanyahu predicted that Palestinians would vote for Abbas if they believe that he can deliver the money. He suggested putting in place an 'economic squeeze with an address,' so that Hamas would receive the popular blame."

#6. Israel-PA consultations before Israeli assault on Gaza? According to Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak in this cable: "the GOI had consulted with Egypt and Fatah prior to Operation Cast Lead, asking if they were willing to assume control of Gaza once Israel defeated Hamas. Not surprisingly, Barak said, the GOI received negative answers from both."

#7. Europeans, particularly the French, are not pleased with their role in peace process: "A sense of frustration and ambition informs the French approach toward the Middle East peace process: they are frustrated that they must rely on the USG and on stubborn parties in the region to end a conflict whose persistence adversely affects their national interests, and they are ambitious to play a larger role in the peace process, in order to facilitate a successful outcome and to enjoy the prestige that such a role would earn them. As a case in point, last week Kouchner had to cancel a planned visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories in part because of the continuing tension there, and in part because of Israel's refusal to allow him to visit a French hospital in Gaza."

#8. Germans suggested using Goldstone Reports at UNSC as leverage over Israel's policy of home demolition: "Heusgen said that Germany 'perceives this differently' and thought Netanyahu needed 'to do more' in order bring the Palestinians to the negotiating table. With Palestinians in East Jerusalem getting notices from Israeli authorities that their houses will be destroyed, it would be 'suicide' for President Abbas to move under the current circumstances. Heusgen said he could not fathom why Netanyahu did not understand this. He suggested pressuring Netanyahu by linking favorable UNSC treatment of the Goldstone Report to Israel committing to a complete stop in settlement activity. Gordon said that making a direct linkage between the two would almost certainly be counterproductive, but agreed that it was worth pointing out to the Israelis that their policy on settlements was making it difficult for their friends to hold the line in the UNSC. Heusgen said this certainly would be an issue when Netanyahu and 'half of his cabinet' visit Berlin on November 30 for bilateral government consultations."

#9. UAE reaction to Hamas 06 election victory: The UAE 'felt the Muslim Brotherhood rally behind Hamas' after its electoral victory in the Palestinian territories, and that the Hamas victory should be a lesson to the West. UAE Vice President and Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid sounded a note of optimism when he told Secretary Rice February 23 that Hamas, 'with some pressure,' would understand the need to respect the will of the international community."

#10. Israel loves cooperation with PA: Amos Gilad "noted that Israeli-PA security and economic cooperation in the West Bank continues to improve as Jenin and Nablus flourish, and described Palestinian security forces as the 'good guys.'"

UPDATE:

Bonus #11. French President Sarkozy "called Prime Minister Netanyahu directly on October 26, to urge him to establish an independent investigation into the actions of the Israeli Defense Forces in the Gaza conflict. Sarkozy told Netanyahu that such a step would decrease pressure on Israel and its allies stemming from the Goldstone Report, but Netanyahu responded briskly: "No way." This preceded an Israeli-French strategic dialogue which included significant discussion about the peace process. The French and the Israelis did not see eye to eye and this made an Israeli official to describe "Franco-Israeli discussions on the status of the peace process itself resembled a 'conversation of the deaf'."

UPDATE II:

Bonus #12 Ireland took issue with the US sending weapons to Israel in the past. This cable states that the Irish "Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA)" made a "oral but definitive decision during the Lebanon conflict to forbid U.S. military transits carrying munitions to Israel" the cable goes on to cite the "Irish public's overwhelming opposition to Israeli military actions in Lebanon". I wonder what they think after Gaza.

read more...

Neo-Cons and the Hamas-Fateh Split

When I read Aaron David Miller's piece in the Washington Post this week, I could already imagine what the responses would be from the neo-cons and Israel's staunchest defenders. In the piece, among other things, Miller argues that the settlements are not the main obstacle to peacemaking. The internal divisions within the Palestinian polity are going to make it difficult for any Palestinian leader to sign an agreement. There is a lot to be said for this. But for right-wingers, AIPAC-ers and Likudniks, this is a line of argument they treasure and hold dear. What good will pressuring Israel to stop settlements do, the argument goes, if the Palestinians can't get their act together. That is it. The argument ends there. They kick the can down the road and will continue to do so. They will say that settlements are bad but the Palestinians aren't ready for a deal, so why ask the Israelis to stop.

Some fine examples of this are on display by Jeff Goldberg (who wrote the Iran war anthem) and Marty Peretz. Here is Goldberg on this issue (emphasis mine):

It might be a bad idea to bring pressure on Israel on the issue of settlements before negotations [sic] even begin, for the simple reason that the U.S. would like the negotiations to succeed, but they won't have any chance of succeeding if pre-conditions sink them. I'm also suggesting that the entire peace process won't amount to much until the Palestinians resolve their civil war.

Then, here is Peretz referring to the one point he wanted to amplify in Miller piece:

Here's his most significant point: even if Israel and the Palestinian[sic] were to reach agreement on the settlements "negotiations would still confront another galactic challenge: a crisis within the Palestinian national movement, with two authorities governing two discreet areas with two different security services, two different patrons and two different visions of the Palestinian future. The upshot of the battle between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority is that without a monopoly over the forces of violence in Palestinian society -without one authority to silence the guns and rockets- no agreement can be implemented."Almost no one is saying that. But it is not only true. It is virtually a truism.

These are typical responses that we should be prepared to continue seeing from the neo-con community. Note that both writers, and this is typical of these types of arguments, simply introduce Palestinian division as a problem and stop there with little care for understanding the genesis of that problem or what prolongs it.

But isn't Palestinian division a concern? Of course it is. And resolving this issue is an integral part of any negotiated solution. I've talked about the problems of legitimacy in Palestinian leadership and the role of political repression in the division and the intentionally different treatment the US and Israel have had toward the West Bank and Gaza. But those mentioned above and others like them don't want to parse this issue. They would rather use it as a foil to say that efforts to pressure Israel now are a waste of time.

Arguing that Palestinian division is an obstacle to peace only to deflect criticism of Israel's illegal actions and without candidly discussing the reasons behind Palestinian division and the role of the US and Israel in that division, is misleading, dishonest and the purest form of pro-Israel propaganda. It takes the heat off of Israel for its settlement expansion and provides cover for continued expansion for years to come. That's why writers like Goldberg and Peretz won't take the discussion on Palestinian division to its next and logical step. If Palestinian division is a problem, well, define it, understand its causes, suggest solutions.

Perhaps one of the reasons why neo-cons won't discuss solving the problem of Palestinian division is because it highlights the hypocrisy inherent in their ideology - democracy in the Middle East unless people who don't like Israel are elected. Or maybe it's because one of the longest-lasting neo-cons in the Bush administration played a significant role in sparking civil war between Hamas and Fateh. You may recall that it was Elliot "Iran Contra" Abrams who backed sending arms to Fateh in preparation for an overthrow of Hamas in Gaza. That went terribly wrong in June of 2007.

For Israel, a divided Palestinian side is one that it can put off making peace with. That's why it furthers this division time and again, to delay having to make what would be inevitable concessions in a two-state framework. I go into that here and discuss the arrests of Hamas affiliates throughout the West Bank. The problem of political arrests has intensified again as of late, and Khalid Amayreh does a good job of spelling that out here. Surely, the divide-and-conquer-minded Israelis didn't mind hearing this morning's news:

Hamas wing threatens PA leadership

GAZA CITY (Ma'an) -- Hamas' military wing on Wednesday threatened to target Palestinian Authority officials "if PA security forces continue to detain and sue resistance activists in the West Bank."

Al-Qassam Brigades spokesman Abu Ubayda read a statement on behalf of 12 military groups in the Gaza Strip saying "we are fed up with the PA security's behavior in the West Bank. Over the past period, we have preferred to give reconciliation efforts all the time needed, however, we hereby say we will not remain silent for long."

Abu Ubayda said PA forces had "gone to the extremes, forcing us to end our silence," adding that ongoing efforts to secure a unity deal with Fatah "were not enough to prevent chasing and detaining Mujaheddin. Nobody can blame us if we go after leaders of the Fatah-run authority everywhere, and treat them equally."

We also held an event on the United States' role in the divide at the Palestine Center earlier this year. The talk by Nathan Brown, titled "US Foreign Policy and the inter-Palestinian Divide," is available in audio and video formats. Here is the important excerpt from the transcript:

Now, I’ve been talking and mentioning American policy only in the most polite and oblique terms as sort of the international context. Now let me bring that in directly. What has U.S. policy been towards this split? Here, I’m going to drop all diplomacy. I think that essentially it was to promote the split and to maintain it. I don’t think anybody would actually put it quite that way. You go back to the pre-June 2007 period in which there was first a Hamas government and then a national unity government. The United States was very clearly placing its thumb on the scale of insuring that this government not work and that the national unity government not work. The odd thing about this is that there was very little that was secret about this policy. The exact details, what policy instruments the United States was using, was not always completely clear. But even this training of Palestinian security forces under presidential command was a matter of public record. So that when this famous Vanity Fair article that revealed that the United States was going to actively promote a coup came out, what it contributed was lurid prose and a few details and leaked memos, but basically nothing else that wasn’t a more pugnacious version of what had been declared to our policy up to that point.

Since June 2007, since the West Bank and Gaza split, American policy has been West Bank first, as Yousef was reporting at the beginning, essentially, figuring that the divergence in policy performance between the West Bank and the Gaza governments would solve the problem. That allowing some kind of level of security improvements, economic development and/or diplomatic process and the mix of those varies a little bit on the West Bank, and squeezing Gaza hard would make Palestinians come to their senses. That had essentially been American policy. Some of the mechanics of how this was supposed to happen, that is to say that if a Palestinian in Gaza thinks, “Gosh, this government is really bad in Gaza. Let’s get rid of it.” How are they supposed to do this? I think that question was postponed. “Well, tomorrow will be another day.” There’ll be something that’ll make it clear or they’ll be elections and Hamas would be forced to run on a record of poor policy performance forgetting that the split made elections impossible. A new round of elections would not be possible unless there were some West Bank and Gaza reconciliation.

There is plenty of room for serious discussion on the inter-Palestinian divide. Scholars on this issue discuss it candidly, fully recognize the American and neo-con-led role in creating it and suggest ways to end it. But be wary of those arguments that simply conclude on the note that Palestinians are divided, therefore the US should let the Israelis do as they please. The next time you hear the argument that the United States shouldn't pressure Israel because the Palestinians are too divided to make a deal, recognize it immediately for what it is: an excuse for the continued expansion of settlements and the furtherance of Israel's colonialism probably being made by the same people that brought you the Iraq war and want to bring you the Iran war.

read more...

A Two-State Solution Requires Palestinian Politics

The Israeli raid on the flotilla of humanitarian aid headed for Gaza dealt a blow to chances for a breakthrough in the peace process. As the U.S. administration struggles to keep indirect talks alive, Michele Dunne prescribes a different approach in a special paper for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

She writes that it is clear that a two-state solution requires reconciliation between Palestinian factions and reunification of the West Bank and Gaza. Dunne recommends that the United States should support Palestinian institution building and be open to political competition, including elections.

read more...

The West Bank and Gaza: Similar or Different Governance?

Dr. Yezid Sayigh
Professor of Middle East Studies, King's College London

19 March 2010



Download Video (mp4) [right click the link and select 'save link as']

Download Audio (mp3) [right click the link and select 'save link as']

How have two distinct systems of government evolved in the West Bank and Gaza? What similarities and differences are there between the two? How have they made institutional improvements and has this effected the balance between security and liberty? How sustainable and vulnerable are these state-like systems given their significant dependence on external capital? Join us for a discussion on these questions and more.

Yezid Sayigh is Professor of Middle East Studies in the Department of War Studies at King's College London. He is currently on leave as a Visiting Scholar at the Crown Center for Middle East Studies, Brandeis University. He was an adviser and negotiator in the Palestinian-Israeli peace talks in 1991-1994, and has provided consultancy assistance on Palestinian Authority reform and on the Palestinian-Israeli ‘permanent status’ negotiations since 1998. He is the author of Armed Struggle and the Search for State: The Palestinian National Movement, 1949-1993, and most recently of Fixing Broken Windows: Security Sector Reform in Palestine, Lebanon, and Yemen, Carnegie Paper, October 2009.

read more...

Local Elections in July?

The Palestinian Authority meanwhile said Monday announced it would hold local elections in the West Bank and the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip on July 17. “The completion of this democratic process is one of the building blocks of the national authority’s program and the government’s plan to complete the building of the institutions of a state,” the government said in a statement. The last municipal elections were held in 2006 and saw Hamas win a majority in several large towns in both territories.

Hamas rejected the government’s decision. “The illegal government of Fayyad has no right to call for local municipal elections, said Gaza-based Hamas legislature Ismail Al-Ashqar in reference to the PA led by Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.

read more...

Palestinian Factions Disagree to Agree

The latest disagreement between the leading Palestinian factions, Hamas and Fateh, is over whether the current parliament could continue even though its four-year mandate has expired.

The party's traded accusations, charging each other with undermining Palestinian democracy -- a phrase uttered less frequently these days as compared to four years ago. Their positions are rooted in competing legal claims. Hamas cited the Palestinian Basic Law, which they contend ends a parliament's mandate only when its new members are sworn-in. They asserted the current parliament, which has not convened fully since 2007, should stay in place until new elections are held.

Fateh argued that the Hamas-dominated chamber's four-year term had legally ended. Only President Mahmoud Abbas, Fateh's leader, can call for a parliamentary session, they argued.

To enforce its position, the Palestinian Authority's police forces arrested six Hamas-aligned staff members of the Palestinian Legislative Council's speaker Aziz Dweik, according to another PLC member. The alleged arrests followed a conference given by Dweik, who called on Mahmoud Abbas to support a meeting with all PLC members of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

It is clear the factions are as divided as they have been since Hamas won a landslide victory in parliamentary elections on January 25, 2006. They took 74 of the 132 seats, up-ending Fateh's historic dominance in Palestinian politics. A series of events and American and Israeli pressure, led to the current political rupture in which Hamas forcefully took control of Gaza and Fateh took over the West Bank.

Egyptian mediation has failed to reconcile the parties. They have been unable to agree on a date for new elections, with the latest date of June 28 on the table, giving way to this current disagreement.

read more...

VIDEO: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Inter-Palestinian Divide

Dr. Nathan Brown, a professor of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University, spoke at the Palestine Center in Washington, DC on 14 January 2010 on the United States foreign policy towards Fateh and Hamas in Palestine.

14 January 2010

Download Video (mp4) [right click the link and select 'save link as']

Download Audio (mp3) [right click the link and select 'save link as']

TRANSCRIPTS

read more...

Today: US Foreign Policy and the Inter-Palestinian Divide

US Foreign Policy and the Inter-Palestinian Divide

with

Dr. Nathan Brown
Professor of Political Science and International Affairs,
George Washington University

Thursday, 14 January 2009
12:30 - 2:00 p.m.
The Palestine Center
Washington, DC

The talk will be webcast live on this website, starting at 1 PM EST.

Or, RSVP for the event.

Professor Nathan Brown received his B.A. in political science from the University of Chicago and his M.A. and Ph.D. in politics and Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University. He teaches courses on Middle Eastern politics, as well as more general courses on comparative politics and international relations.

He is author of Peasant Politics in Modern Egypt (1990); The Rule of Law in the Arab World: Courts in Egypt and the Gulf (1997); Constitutions in a Non-Constitutional World: Arab Basic Laws and the Prospects for Accountable Government (2001); and Palestinian Politics After the Oslo Accords: Resuming Arab Palestine (2003).

In 2009 he was selected as a Carnegie Scholar by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Under this grant, Professor Brown will analyze the impacts of increased participation by Islamist groups in electoral politics on both the movements themselves and the political systems in which they operate.

read more...

Palestinian Group Opposes Repression in Gaza

A leading Palestinian human rights group criticized the Gazan security services for repressing Fatah activists.

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) condemns measures taken by the security services in Gaza against activists of Fatah Movement in the Gaza Strip to prevent them from commemorating the 45th anniversary of the establishment on the movement on the 1st of January. Security services in Gaza arrested dozens of activists of Fatah movement during the last week of December 2009. A number of detainees were violently beaten and were subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment. Security services also prevented private celebrations in closed places, took down flags of Fatah Movement from houses and summoned a number of people who flamed candles. The most serious of such violations was the death of Nazira al-Swairki, from Gaza City, when she was being transported in a police vehicle to a detention center.

Read More

read more...

BRIEF: A Tale of Two Cities...in Palestine

Palestine Center Brief No. 189 (5 January 2010)

By Yousef Munayyer

While most would point out the differences between Gaza City, the impoverished and destitute administrative center of the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, and Ramallah, the burgeoning administrative center of the Fateh-run West Bank, there are important commonalities between what seem to be diametrically opposite poles.

A common misconception, which has gained considerable attention as of late, is that management or governing styles of different parties are responsible for the stark differences in the realities on the ground. This certainly plays into the narrative that we often hear emanating from Washington about engaging one Palestinian party and not the other. However, the fact of the matter is that the most important thing both Palestinian locales have in common is the underlying reason for their differences: the role of external factors in their economic conditions.

Gaza City, the largest city in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, is home to about 400,000 Palestinians. The densely populated strip of land that surrounds the city and takes its name, is home to over 1.5 million Palestinians. Eighty percent of the inhabitants of Gaza are refugees and a similar number rely directly on food aid for daily sustenance. While this number has historically been high since the creation of the refugees by the state of Israel in 1948, it has never been that high.

The plight of Palestinians in Gaza has been exacerbated in recent years due to Israeli restrictions on the Strip. This began after the election of a Hamas government in the Palestinian Legislative Elections in 2006 and accelerated in 2007. The immediate Israeli and international response was to cut off funds to the Palestinian Authority (PA). International players dried up aid and the state of Israel froze Palestinian tax revenue, preventing it from reaching the Palestinian governing body.

Imports and exports were likewise severely curtailed because of the siege. The Palestinian National Trade and Development Organization, PalTrade, reported that "imports into and exports from the Gaza Strip before the closure in 2007 reached a monthly average of 10,400 and 1,380 truckloads, respectively. This declined to about 2,834 truckloads of imports and no exports after the recent military operations. Immediately after the operations, there was only one isolated instance in which exports of flowers were allowed from the Gaza Strip in March 2009. Some 134 truckloads of cash crops were exported in total between June 2007 and May 2009."

As the siege tightened, we began to see more dramatic numbers and facts reported by a wide range of international organizations and NGOs. In 2007, the International Committee of the Red Cross called on Israel to "lift the retaliatory measures which are paralyzing life in Gaza". In 2008, Amnesty International reported that "Gaza's fragile economy, already battered by years of restrictions and destruction, has collapsed. …some 90 percent of industry has shut down."

Then the brutal 22-day campaign termed "Cast Lead", which required hearts of cold steel to perpetuate, further decimated Gaza. Along with the significant number of Palestinians killed, over 1,400 most of whom were civilians, the attacks leveled a devastating blow to an economy that was already in tatters. The attacks partially or completely destroyed 700 private sector establishments.

In 2005, for example, the furniture, garment and processed food industries in Gaza employed 6,500, 25,000 and 2,500 people respectively and included 600, 660, and 100 businesses respectively. After "Cast Lead," the employment figures dropped to 70,110 and 144, while the number of businesses dropped to 26, 10, and 16. Exports from these industries which were all triple-digit numbers in 2005 dropped to zeros across the board after last winter's attacks.

Yet just as Gaza's economic woes can be credited to the Israeli siege and the destruction levied during "Cast Lead," Ramallah is also indebted to external factors for its apparent successes.

Today, Ramallah has become known for its bars, nightclubs and cosmopolitan feel. Internationals and locals, working for outfits funded by hordes of donor dollars (many from the U.S.), are pouring the shekels they earn into nights on the town.

It wasn't always like this in Ramallah. Just a few years ago, after Hamas was elected to the PA, Palestinian civil servants, teachers and bureaucrats in the West Bank and Gaza were equally out of luck and out of money, as Washington-led sanctions prevented the PA from meeting payroll for months on end. Things started to change in mid-2007, however, when the Hamas-led PA dissolved and Fateh took control of the PA's institutions in the West Bank.

In mid-2007, to “avert a serious and immediate financial crisis” President Bush wanted to send funds to the now Fatah-led PA, but he needed to assure Congressional hawks that the funds would not end up used for violence or in the hands of Hamas or lining the pockets of officials often blamed for corruption. A trusted caretaker was needed and one with an accounting background was preferred.

Enter Salam Fayyad. The western educated former World Bank and IMF man, with no discernible political experience, took over as the newly appointed Prime Minister of the PA. In Washington, few things say “passivity” like a clean-shaven be-speckled accountant. Presidential waivers began to be issued to circumvent the sanctions levied against the PA by AIPAC-sponsored Congressional legislation . Every 6-months, a waiver; every 6-months an injection of funds to the new PA based in Ramallah, and till today President Obama continues this trend. Every donor dollar coming into the PA goes through Ramallah, and Ramallah, more than any other town in the West Bank, has felt the effects of this.

But despite the growth that donor dollars have produced, one can't help but notice how artificial the growth is. Economic studies on this issue tend to come up with the same conclusions. Yes, there has been growth in the West Bank, but (and this is a big but) that growth is due largely to an economy kept afloat by donor dollars and a relaxation of Israeli closures.

A recent IMF report indicates that expenditures in the PA budget for 2010 is $2.9 billion, $1.9 billion of which would not be covered by domestic revenue and would be financed by external support. The report also states that there has been an increase of 6 percent in real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the first quarter of 2009 as compared to the first quarter in 2008.

In the U.S., many have clung to bits and pieces of reports like this, and declared victory for the policy of propping up one Palestinian party and sidelining the other. Headlines of articles on the issue declare unprecedented economic growth. Realistically, however, this would be like declaring unprecedented drops, from the previous year, in the number of homeless in New Orleans two years after Hurricane Katrina. Without controlling for the drastic conditions that existed beforehand, it's hard to call this growth. Years of occupation, restrictions, closure and high unemployment have left Palestinians below zero. But I guess going from negative 20 to negative 15 is still growth.

A finer reading of the economic reports reveals the truth behind the numbers in the West Bank. Assumptions of future growth are based on "a continuation of the process of lifting restrictions on movement in the West Bank and the blockade on Gaza".

Perhaps the bias in reporting on the economic realities is in part based on a western desire to have their 'secular' partner in Palestine succeed. Washington is, after all, more likely to cooperate with the pole where one can make time for happy hour, than the one where the most important time is the call to prayer.

Yet, regardless to the perceptions from Washington, Ramallah, Gaza or elsewhere about the parties involved, the reality is that both administrative centers are not in control of their destinies. Rather, what happens to the people of Palestine today, as in the past, remains in the hands of others.

In sum, the successes or failures of both Gaza and Ramallah, like all occupied Palestinian locales, are overwhelmingly determined by Israeli or American actions and intentions and not the actions of the respective regimes. This is not to absolve Hamas or Fateh of their responsibilities to the people they govern, but rather this puts their apparent successes and failures in the proper context: that is, the context of an ongoing illegal Israeli occupation that ultimately has more control over the daily lives of Palestinians than any of their representatives.

Yousef Munayyer is Executive Director of the Palestine Center. This policy brief may be used without permission but with proper attribution to the Center.

The views in this brief are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Jerusalem Fund.

read more...

Mixed Signals on Israel-Hamas Prisoner Swap

There has been a rise in recent speculation that a prisoner swap between Hamas and Israel is going to happen soon.

Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, Israel's industry and trade minister, told Israeli Army radio, "I am very happy that this deal is moving toward completion in the very near future." Ben-Eliezer, an ex-general, is not a member of the inner security cabinet deliberating over the prisoner swap.

After President Shimon Peres held talks with his Egyptian counterpart Hosni Mubarak in Cairo on Sunday, he spoke of "real progress" in the negotiations.

On the other side, Hamas delegations were in Cairo talking to Egyptian intelligence and are said to be heading for Damascus to consult the exiled political leadership -- giving further fuel for the speculation.

However, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said today an Israeli prisoner exchange with Hamas has not yet been agreed and might not happen.

"There is still no deal, and I do not know if there will be one."

While many hope for a deal soon, Netanyahu indicated more process is necessary: "Should there be such (a swap) we will not be sparing with a public discussion. We will not do it as a fait accompli. We will allow the cabinet ministers, and the public in general, to discuss the issue."

Hamas accused Israel of stirring up such speculation in a bid to generate Palestinian popular pressure on the movement to speed up a deal.

A Hamas statement said:

The brouhaha in the media talking about being close to reach an agreement on prisoner exchange deal is purely Israeli leaks designed to influence the feelings of our children, prisoners and their families and to try to pressure and influence on the process of indirect negotiations carried out through the German intermediary. Hamas will continue its efforts through the competent authority to overcome the obstacles set by the Israeli enemy in the way of completion of exchange … Although we hope to reach an honorable deal for our people as soon as possible, would like to emphasize that it is premature to talk about specific results … or close a deal.

It could be a bargaining move since there is likely disagreement between the two parties about releasing certain individuals.

The release of prisoners is a very important issue for Palestinians. Nearly 11,000 are held in Israeli jails.

Hamas would gain from such a swap; it would boost its credibility and legitimacy. The Guardian suggests:

Israel is likely to try to lessen the impact of that by also freeing prisoners from the mainstream Fatah movement, which has been badly weakened by the failure to make any progress in peace talks and the threat by Mahmoud Abbas, the Fatah leader and Palestinian president, to leave the political stage.

Israel tends to hold so many Palestinians that prisoner swaps tend to be disproportionate. In 1985 Israel freed 1,150 prisoners in exchange for three soldiers captured during the Lebanon war.

In early October Israel released 20 Palestinian female prisoners in exchange for a minute-long "proof of life" tape video of Gilad Shalit.

read more...

The Cyclical Nature of Israeli Airstrikes in Gaza

[Image from Maan News Agency]

Earlier today, there were Israeli airstrikes near Rafah and in the Khan Younis area of the Gaza Strip.

An Israeli military spokesperson said the strikes targeted a “weapons manufacturing facility in the southern Gaza Strip and two smuggling tunnels in the Rafah border area.”

Officials of the Palestinian group Hamas said two other strikes hit a military training facility close to Khan Younis in the central Gaza Strip.

There is not clarity about the number of injuries. Some reports say the attacks injured three Palestinians, according to medical sources. However, medics at Abu Yousef An-Najjar Hospital in Rafah, and the larger Nasser Hospital in the city of Khan Younis said that no one was injured in the attacks, according to Maan News Agency.

The attacks followed the launch of a rocket from Gaza into the western Negev desert on Wednesday morning. The rocket hit no one. The Qassam rocket attack came hours after Israeli forces killed and 18-year-old Palestinian.

The teenager was among a group of young men seen near the border wall between Israel and the Gaza Strip.

Israeli forces said they had been planting an explosive device, but family members said the group had been hunting birds, local media reported.

Overall, there has been a decline in rocket attacks from Gaza. An Israeli general pointed out that Hamas was curbing Gaza rocket fire.

"For now, at least, I can say that the Hamas movement is holding back, and is holding back the others," Lieutenant-General Gabi Ashkenazi said in a speech last week in the southern Israeli town of Beersheba. "Now and then, here and there, there is firing, but overall the situation is quiet."

Why then did Israel bomb a facility said to be operated by Hamas’ armed wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades?

The rocket attacks may be carried out then by groups seeking to weaken Hamas's rule in Gaza. However, Israel then struck back at Hamas in order to foment more internal strife. Hamas, seeking to legitimize its rule, is happy to use these attacks to cement its control in Gaza. Everyone wins in this tactical cycle -- except the people.

Of course, such low-level violence can easily turn to higher levels of brinkmanship and then full military engagements. It is important to remember that one year ago, in the lead up to Israel's devastating three-week assault on Gaza, Israel escalated their attacks to effectively end the ceasefire and create the pretext for the invasion. Like now, Hamas was trying to demonstrate its rule by curbing rocket-fire. Israel's provocation took place on November 4, 2008: Israel attacked a Hamas-dug tunnel near the Israel-Gaza border, killing six Hamas fighters. Hamas rocket-fire resumed the following day, as they launched thirty-five. Israel later used this as a reason to reject a return to the cease-fire.

read more...

VIDEO: Moving Forward: Palestinian Political Parties & Reconciliation

Download as mp3

Nadia Bilbassy-Charters
Middle East Broadcasting Corporation.

Palestine Center
Washington, DC

This lecture discussed the current efforts by Fateh, Hamas and other Palestinian parties to reach a national reconciliation and possible unity government. She highlighted the major points of contention and disagreement and the prospects for success.

Nadia Bilbassy-Charters is the chief news correspondent for the Middle East Broadcasting Center in Washington, D.C. where she covers the White House and the State Department. On MBC, she has a weekly popular segment which deals with feature stories about America to the Arab world. For almost 20 years, Ms. Bilbassy covered regions of the world including Africa, Asia, Europe and the U.S. She has interviewed high profile world leaders including former President George W. Bush, Tony Blair, Yasser Arafat, Nelson Mandela, Queen Noor and others.

This is the first lecture in the Summer Intern Lecture Series.

Views expressed on this post or on linked web pages do not represent the Palestine Center, the educational program of the Jerusalem Fund for Education and Community Development. All content is for educational purposes only.

read more...

Hamas' Choice: Recognition or Resistance in the Age of Obama

Palestine Center Brief No. 179 (6 July 2009)

Policy Brief

By Ali Abunimah

In a major policy speech on 25 June 2009, Khaled Meshaal, the head of Hamas' political bureau, tried to do what may be impossible: present the Islamist Palestinian resistance organization as a willing partner in a U.S.-led peace process, while holding on to his movement's political principles and base [1].

This is the dilemma that every Palestinian leadership, and perhaps almost every liberation movement, has eventually had to confront. It is a choice, as political scientist Tamim Barghouti has pointed out, between recognition and legitimacy [2]. According to Barghouti, the old-guard Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) leadership, when confronted with the same dilemma, chose recognition and forfeited its legitimacy, opening the way for Hamas to emerge. Now, it is the turn of Hamas: the price demanded by the United States and its allies for Hamas to be taken as an interlocutor is the abandonment of the very principles on which the movement built its mass support.

Meshaal's nearly hour-long "address to the Palestinian people and the world" was billed as a response to the speeches of U.S. President Barack Obama in Cairo and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier in June.

In his Cairo speech, Obama called for Americans and Muslims to engage in a "sustained effort to listen to each other; to learn from each other; to respect one another; and to seek common ground." If he is serious about that, he--and others--should pay close attention to what Hamas is saying to domestic, regional and international audiences. Meshaal's goals--very much in tension--were to show that his movement is ready to do business with the United States, set out political red lines, reassure the movements supporters and Palestinians generally and deal with internal Palestinian divisions.

To begin with, the speech sought to present Hamas as a nationalist movement whose Islamism fits within a mainstream Palestinian consensus. Meshaal used an explicitly ecumenical message to counter Netanyahu's exclusivist Jewish claims to the land of Palestine. According to Meshaal, Palestinians roots stretched back thousands of years "in this blessed land of prophets and messages, of [Muhammad's] night ascension, of Muslim and Christian holy sites al-Aqsa Mosque, the Dome of the Rock, the Nativity Church and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre."

More generally, he sought to portray Muslims as representing the very values Westerners claim to cherish most and dissociating Hamas from lurid and false comparisons to such groups as the Taliban. "We [Muslims] are the ones who introduced the world and humanity to science, civilization, culture and lofty humanitarian values," Meshaal declared, "values such as justice, freedom, equality, compassion and tolerance, and the values of interaction between civilizations and not a confrontation between them."

Meshaal welcomed a "change of tone" from President Obama but emphasized repeatedly that only a change of policy would matter. He nevertheless claimed the new tone as the fruit of the "stubborn steadfastness of the people of the region, while resisting in Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan." Such resistance, according to Meshaal, frustrated the former U.S. President George W. Bush administration's plans for regional domination, prompting American voters to seek a different path to extricate their country from mounting crises and quagmires.

He chided regional leaders who had "marketed and promoted" Bushs policies. "Had the people of the region listened to them," Meshaal said, "the policy of Bush and the neoconservatives might have succeeded and the region's situation would be worse than imaginable." Meshaal voiced the widespread skepticism and perhaps hopes that Obama's promises amounted to more than the similar words about Palestine heard from the Bush administration.

Responding to Obama's recital of history, Meshaal did not seek to deny the Nazi Holocaust but to appropriate it. He took Obama to task for dwelling in detail on the "suffering of the Jews and their holocaust in Europe, while ignoring our present suffering and Israel's holocaust against our Palestinian people that has been continuing for decades."

Meshaal emphasized that even though Palestinians have heard only words, they were prepared to judge the U.S. by its actions, which would have to "begin with reconstruction of Gaza and the lifting of the blockade, lifting the oppression and security pressure in the West Bank, and allowing Palestinian reconciliation to take its course without external pressures or interference."

The "only thing" that can convince Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims, Meshaal stated, "is genuine American and international will and efforts to end the occupation and lift the oppression from our people, to allow them to exercise their right to self-determination and the fulfillment of their national rights." When the Obama administration makes such an initiative, Meshaal said, "then we and all our people's forces will be ready to cooperate with it and with any international effort in that direction."

Obama's "new language toward Hamas," Meshaal underlined, "is the first step in the right direction towards direct dialogue without conditions." And that is the crux of the matter. Dealing with Hamas, Meshaal said, must be based on the recognition of its democratic mandate and not via the imposition of arbitrary conditions such as those of the Quartet which call on the movement to recognize Israel, abandon violence and commit by previously signed agreements.

Meshaal reasserted Hamas' political red lines while maintaining a sense of flexibility. In particular, Meshaal:

Rejected the Palestinian state envisaged by the Israeli leader as a "deformed entity, a large prison for detention and suffering, and not the national home a great people deserves."

Rejected Israel's demand to be recognized as a "Jewish state"--and warned against any Arab or Palestinian acquiescence--"because it means canceling the right to return to their homes of six million refugees, and the forced expulsion of our people in the 1948 areas [Palestinian citizens of Israel] from their cities and villages." Israel's demand, according to Meshaal, is no different than racist demands made by fascist Italy and the Nazis.

Reaffirmed Hamas previous acceptance of the program that represents the minimum demands of our people, for the establishment of a Palestinian state whose capital is Jerusalem with complete sovereignty on the borders of June 4, 1967, after the withdrawal of the occupation forces, and the dismantling of all the settlements, and the realization of the Right of Return.

Reaffirmed that "the refugees' Right of Return to the homes from which they were expelled in 1948 is a national right and an individual right held personally" by the refugees "and no leader or negotiator can waive it or compromise on it."

Meshaal also offered a nuanced response to Obama's call on Palestinians to abandon "dead end" violence in favor of nonviolent resistance. "We reaffirm our adherence to resistance as a strategic choice to liberate the homeland and restore our rights," Meshaal said, citing armed European resistance to Nazi Germany, American resistance to British rule and the Vietnamese and South African anti-colonial struggles as precedents for Palestinians.

"Nonviolent resistance is appropriate in a struggle for civil rights," Meshaal argued, "But when it comes to a military occupation using conventional and nonconventional weapons, such an occupation can only be confronted with armed resistance." Palestinians were forced to take up arms, Meshaal said. He could also have been implying that if Palestinians changed the definition of their struggle as being one for civil rights then the appropriate means of resistance would also change.

"Resistance is a means and not an end," Meshaal said, "and it is not blind. Indeed it perceives the changes underway." Yet, while staunchly defending the right to armed resistance--and even threatening new operations to take Israeli soldiers prisoner if it was the only way to free Palestinians prisoners--Meshaal also recognized other forms of struggle. He called for increased Palestinian, Arab and international solidarity efforts, including ongoing efforts to break the siege on Gaza, to resist the apartheid Wall and settlements and to prevent home demolitions and "Judaiziation" in Jerusalem.

For Hamas leaders, the dangers of submitting to western preconditions can be seen merely by looking at the trajectory of the PLO leadership which recognized Israel in 1993, renounced armed struggle and signed the Oslo accords. Since that time, Meshaal argued, the occupation and its oppression deepened as the number of Israeli settlements and Palestinian prisoners grew.

As Meshaal put it, "These conditions do not end; as soon as the Palestinian negotiator commits to one, more conditions are imposed. For example, first the condition was to recognize Israel, now it is to recognize the Jewishness of Israel. Then, that Jerusalem is its eternal capital, giving up the Right of Return, accepting that settlement blocks will remain. Then [Palestinians] must not only abandon resistance, but themselves work to oppress, pursue and disarm the resistance."

The latter point was a reference to the arrest campaign in the West Bank and what Meshaal called other "oppressive measures undertaken by the [Palestinian] Authority and the government of Salam Fayyad and its security forces under the supervision of the American General [Keith] Dayton." Meshaal presented this ongoing cooperation between the Ramallah security forces, Israel and the U.S. as the biggest obstacle to Palestinian reconciliation talks in Cairo aimed at restoring a unified national leadership.

After Hamas won the 2006 legislative election, the Bush administration began a program overseen by Dayton to arm and train anti-Hamas militias nominally loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. The campaign has been accompanied by what Hamas and some human rights groups have described as a systematic crackdown on politicians, professors, charities and journalists suspected of sympathy or links with Hamas. Hamas has often retaliated by arresting Fateh-linked individuals in the Gaza Strip. In recent weeks, the Dayton-supervised militias have killed several members of Hamas in the West Bank ostensibly while trying to arrest them. Meshaal cleverly drew attention to the external role in fuelling Palestinian divisions--and how little has actually changed from the Bush administration--by "calling on Obama to withdraw Dayton from the West Bank and return him to the United States, in keeping with the new spirit of change."

Throughout the speech, Meshaal sought to reassure Palestinians that Hamas would not abandon its core principles in pursuit of recognition and power. "The land is more important than authority, and liberation before a state," he said at one point, and "no Palestinian leadership has the right to waive Palestinian national rights and interests as the price for recognition."

Some Palestinians worry that despite such assurances, Hamas has already set off down the very path Meshaal warned about and risks squandering the sacrifices Palestinians made, especially in Gaza. Haidar Eid, an independent analyst in Gaza, wrote before Meshaal's speech that some of the early enthusiastic Hamas responses to Obama's Cairo speech, as well as acceptance of the two-state solution, indicated "the beginning of a process of deterioration--even Osloization--not only in rhetoric, but also in action" [3]. This writer has heard similar fears voiced by Palestinians from the West Bank and recently in Amman. Given that many Palestinians consider that a previous generation of resistance leaders turn their backs on their peoples most fundamental interests and rights--all the while claiming to uphold them--such fears are far from irrational or uncommon.

Another analysis of Hamas' shift currently circulating argues that Hamas has accepted the Palestinian "consensus" position of a two-state solution on every inch of the 1967 occupied territories with removal of all settlements and with the Right of Return. But it knows that no potential peace deal coming from the Obama initiative will ever reach even these minimal conditions, and that if Abbas and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert could not reach even the outlines of an agreement after two years of negotiations, the chances of any deal with a Netanyahu-Lieberman government are even tinier. In this scenario, Hamas need not stand in the way of a two-state solution because it will fail anyway. But by saying it would accept that minimalist outcome, it would avoid blame for the failure and its adherence to resistance would be vindicated.

What we do know is that Hamas' leaders, and the Palestinians generally, have been placed under intense pressure, occupation, blockades, starvation sieges and recurrent Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity, and the vast majority so far has not submitted to Israeli conditions. But while emphasizing the role of resistance and struggle to achieve liberation, Hamas has not offered a clear vision of what liberation looks like other than the unconvincing and increasingly unrealistic two-state vision (leaving aside its long, outdated, though much-cited charter that offers no guide to the movements current thinking).

Meshaal's speech confirms Hamas' long-term shift away from Islamist rhetoric toward mainstream Palestinian nationalist discourse. It indicates that Hamas is highly sensitive to international and Palestinian public opinion and is aware that Palestinians need to build real international solidarity as part of a strategy to level the glaring power imbalance with Israel. But it is not prepared to seek recognition at any price. All this has implications for the movement's message and methods.

This leaves the field open for an urgent debate among Palestinians about what that future vision should be and what role resistance in all its legitimate forms should play. No group of leaders, whether from Hamas or any other organization, could or should carry the burden of restoring Palestinian rights by itself. Hamas, like other Palestinian organizations, can only be a guardian of fundamental rights to the extent that it is embedded in a broader movement mobilized in Palestine and globally to defend those rights.

And if Hamas' potential interlocutors are sincerely seeking ways to recognize the democratic mandate of the movement without trying to force it to forfeit its legitimacy, there are precedents. South Africa's African National Congress (ANC) and the Irish Republican Army (IRA) were both able to take part in successful political negotiations that got their respective countries out of disastrous political and military stalemates without being required to submit to unacceptable preconditions. That took a measure of leadership, foresight and political courage by others that has been notably absent in international dealings with Hamas.

Ali Abunimah is an expert on Palestine, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and is the author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse. Abunimah also co-founded The Electronic Intifada, an online publication about Palestine and the Palestine-Israeli conflict, Electronic Iraq and Electronic Lebanon.

Notes:

[1] The speech is in Arabic. All excerpts quoted in this article are the author’s translation. A transcript and recording of the speech were made available by the Palestinian Information Center, a Hamas-affiliated website. See: http://bit.ly/mK7kS.
[2] In a paper given at the Annual Symposium of the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at the School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University on the theme: “Palestine and the Palestinians Today,” April 2-3, 2009, Washington, DC.
[3] Eid, Haidar, “Hamas’ political immaturity,” The Electronic Intifada, 25 June 2009, (http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10620.shtml).


The views expressed in this information brief are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Jerusalem Fund.

read more...

Hamas Withdraws from Conciliation Committee talks

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas announced the impending release of all Hamas members from PA jails. However, Hamas’ West Bank representatives to the Conciliation Committee announced the party’s withdrawal from the committee to protest what they said was Fateh’s refusal to release the prisoners.

At the same time Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum released a list of 64 Hamas affiliates arrested by the Palestinian Authority overnight.

Dr Omar Abdul Raziq, Hamas’ delegate to the committee, accused his Fateh counterparts of trying to pass off the responsibility for the arrests to caretaker Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, "despite the fact that the government is controlled by Abbas who is the general commander of Fateh."

The Conciliation Committee was set up on the back of the national unity talks that aim to bring together the main Palestinian political parties, Fatah and Hamas, after two years of division. The split was sparked by Hamas’ 2006 legislative election victory. The ensuing power struggle and subsequent internal violence led to Fateh being routed in the Gaza Strip and its heavy crackdown on Hamas in the West Bank.

The talks are being brokered by Egypt.

The withdrawal will be the latest in a series of impediments that have been dogging the talks, with the topic of political prisoners held by either side being an especially thorny issue. The PA has promised to release its prisoners in the past, and Hamas has used the issue as a basis for boycotting previous rounds of dialogue. However, such boycotts tend to be acts of temporary protest, with both sides expected to return to the table soon.

Views expressed on this post or on linked web pages do not represent the Palestine Center, the educational program of the Jerusalem Fund for Education and Community Development. All content is for educational purposes only.

read more...

Prisoner Exchange for Schalit Expected Soon

Israeli Noam Schalit walks in front
of a picture of his captured son
The deadline for a deal releasing 1000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Israeli Corporal Gilad Schalit passed uneventfully on Sunday. However, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert extended the deadline 24 hours. Israeli negotiators returned to Jerusalem late Monday night and headed immediately for a closed door meeting with PM Olmert. Rumors have stated that a deal has been reached, and these reports have been strengthened by the presence of Hamas military leader Ahmed Al-Jaabari in Cairo. Al-Jaabari has been responsible for Cpl. Schalit since his capture over two years ago and is rarely seen in public.

The specifics of the deal remain unclear, but the Associated Press reported over 1,000 Palestinian prisoners would be released by Israel in return for Schalit. The details of which prisoners are to be released have not been leaked, though several high-profile prisoners are expected. The battle has raged over which prisoners would be released and where they would be released. Israel has fought to release the prisoners outside Palestinian territory, in Syria, while Hamas has argued they must be freed in Gaza and the West Bank. Additionally, the potential deal has evoked a fiery debate in Israel as to how many prisoners are just for the return of one, Cpl. Gilad Schalit.

A successful prisoner exchange would serve as a huge victory in the waning days of Olmert’s premiership and would set the stage for further talks of a long-term ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. There is much speculation in the media that Israel will loosen its siege upon Gaza in response to a return of Schalit, however on the Palestinian side there is suspicion as to whether this will be the case. The prisoner exchange would also function as a victory for Hamas, bettering their support among the Palestinian people, but it remains to be seen if they will achieve all their demands for prisoners.

read more...

Interview with Dr. Robert Pastor: Israeli Elections

Palestine Center intern Nicolas Kabat interviewed Dr. Robert Pastor about the recent Israeli elections. Dr. Pastor is the Vice President of International Affairs and Professor of International Relations, American University; Senior Adviser on Conflict Resolution in the Middle East, The Carter Center.



Download mp3

read more...

Audio: Pastor and Atallah on Coexistence with Hamas

A Palestine Center panel on 29 January, 2009 discussed the political staying power of Hamas after weeks of Israel's offensive on the Gaza Strip earlier in the month. The Center is offering audio files of the "The Requirements for Co-Existence with Hamas" for you to listen to now or download for later (or you can view video of the event).

Amjad Atallah - Director, Middle East Task Force, New America Foundation.



[Download mp3]

Dr. Robert Pastor - Vice President of International Affairs and Professor of International Relations, American University; Senior Advisor on Conflict Resolution in the Middle East, The Carter Center.



[Download mp3]

[READ the TRANSCRIPTS]

read more...