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8 September, 2011

Article 1.  Today’s Zaman
The UN report and Turkish foreign policy
Cenap Çakmak
Article 2.  The National Interest
The Turkish-Israeli Cold War
Henri J. Barkey
Article 3.  Los Angeles Times
Saeb Erekat on statehood moves at U.N.
Edmund Sanders
Article 4.  Spiegel
'What's Wrong with the Palestinians Appealing to the UN?'
An interview with Arab League Head Nabil Elaraby
Article 5.  Wall Street Journal
From 9/11 to the Arab Spring
Fouad Ajami
Article 6.  Guardian
Israel should be wary of celebrating the 'Shia crescent' setback
Jonathan Spyer
Article 7.   Daily Beast
Mideast’s Changing View of America
Randall Lane



Article 1.

Today’s Zaman

The UN's Mavi Marmara report and Turkish foreign policy
Cenap Çakmak



07 September 2011 -- The long-awaited UN report on the Mavi Marmara incident has been finally published. The report, the release of which was postponed for a while at Israel's request, was published by The New York Times before an official statement was made by the relevant UN authorities. Israel is allegedly responsible for the leak of the report.

Sources also say that shortly before the official deadline, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asked Turkey to agree to the postponement of the announcement of the report to late September. But the report was leaked, likely because it became evident that the report supports Israel's standpoint on the incident.

The report is significant for two reasons: First, the report now serves as a legal justification for Israel's Gaza policy, including the naval blockade as well as the raid Israeli forces carried out against the Mavi Marmara in May 2010. Secondly, Turkey viewed the report as a potential major asset, fortifying its case in the international arena as it pursues a cooling foreign policy towards Israel in connection with the Mavi Marmara incident. Apparently, however, it is no longer useful for Turkey to prove it has been doing the right thing. After the publication of the report, Turkey will have to expend greater effort to justify its stance and make its position acceptable to the world.

What does the report say? Briefly, the report confirms and supports everything Israel has already said about the Mavi Marmara incident. To summarize its points:

1. The use of force by Israeli defense forces during the raid was unnecessary and disproportionate. This could have been avoided, but Israeli forces chose not to.

2. It would be appropriate for Israel to pay some sort of compensation to the families of those who were killed during the raid.

3. Israel should also issue a statement of regret over the incident.

The report's recommendations fail to meet Turkey's demands. Even before the report was issued the Israeli government acknowledged that the use of force in the raid was excessive and unnecessary, albeit not publicly, so on that point the report paraphrases something already known. Payment to the families of the victims is also something Israel agreed to before the report. In respect to an official apology, central to Turkey's demands, the report adopts an evasive approach and instead of recommending an apology, puts emphasis upon a statement of regret. Turkey has said before that this will not be satisfactory.

Therefore the report as a whole makes recommendations contrary to Turkey's demands and supports Israel's position. The statements in the report that justify Israel's blockade of Gaza especially please Israel. Sadly, Turkey's legal objections to the blockade no longer bear any political significance.

As expected, following the release of the report, Turkey has toughened its stance with Israel. While Turkish foreign policy has not wavered despite the report's findings, the government has also stated that it does not recognize the report's validity. Shortly after the leak, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu announced a package of sanctions against Israel. Turkey first downgraded its diplomatic ties with Israel, and the minister also declared that Turkey would take appropriate measures for safe navigation on the high seas in the eastern Mediterranean. Military agreements between Turkey and Israel have been suspended. Turkey will not recognize the Gaza blockade and will take action at the UN General Assembly to make sure that the matter is discussed in the International Court of Justice (ICJ). And finally, Turkey will extend full support to the families of the Mavi Marmara victims in their pursuit of justice from Israel.

Some of these sanctions could be considered radical; however, some of these same actions, although with some slight differences, have been taken before in Turkey's relationship with Israel. Diplomatic ties between the two countries were severed in 1980s when Israel declared Jerusalem its capital, so this is not a first. The suspension of military agreements could be viewed as significant, but it should be noted that the two countries' military ties became stronger only in the 1990s, so it's not as though military cooperation between them has existed over a lengthy period. The emphasis upon taking measures to ensure safe navigation in the eastern Mediterranean is important because Israel assumes the right to take action in the area for its own territorial security. It is possible that the two countries could have an altercation if Turkey decides to take extreme measures in this regard. Of course, this does not necessarily mean that there will be a direct conflict, but the eastern Mediterranean could become a source of tension between the two states.

The decision to seek adjudication on the Gaza blockade from the ICJ is also new, given the history of Turkish-Israeli relations, and it should be noted that this will not be easy to do. A decision by the court in such a case will not have a binding effect, as it will be an advisory opinion. Also, requesting an advisory decision from the ICJ requires a voting session at the UN General Assembly and a qualified majority vote on the issue. Turkey will need to make a great diplomatic effort to secure that majority.

From Turkey's perspective, it could be said that the report undermines its foreign policy attitude with regard to this specific incident. The report could have provided legitimate grounds for Turkey to explain and justify its stance towards Israel. Now Turkey will have to try much harder to promote its position to the world in the absence of such support. However, this does not necessarily mean that Turkey's decision to impose sanctions against Israel is wrong. Any other decision would have meant Turkey was bowing to Israel's demands.

The report certainly undermined Turkey's position, but overall, things are not so bad in its aftermath. The policy Turkey has pursued since the Mavi Marmara incident has served its interests so far. The report could have sealed the process. The presidential statement made at the UN Security Council immediately after the incident as well as the UN Human Rights Council's decision finding the Gaza blockade illegal and Israel the culprit should be revisited. Turkey expected that this last UN report would complete the circle and drive Israel into a corner. But contrary to expectations, the report made some room for Israel to maneuver and took an opportunity away from Turkey.



Dr. Cenap Çakmak is the head of the department of international relations at Eskişehir Osmangazi University.






Article 2.

The National Interest

The Turkish-Israeli Cold War

Henri J. Barkey



September 7, 2011 -- On Friday, the Turkish government declared a Cold War on Israel. It kicked out Israel’s ambassador, downgraded diplomatic relations with Israel to the second-secretary level and canceled the military relationship. The consequences of this crisis for the stability of the eastern Mediterranean and for the Obama administration are quite severe. The Erdogan government is now saying explicitly something it had implied for the last two years—that Washington has to choose between two allies, Ankara and Jerusalem. The Arab Spring, especially events in Syria, and the planned U.S. withdrawal from Iraq have catapulted Turkey to an unprecedented level of importance. In fact, it was not a coincidence that the day they announced their Israel policy, the Turks also gave the go ahead to the installation of radars for the missile defense system Washington has been clamoring for so long.

This diplomatic crisis between Israel and Turkey had been simmering for more than a year. Ever since Israeli forces attempting to prevent a Turkish-led flotilla from breaking through the Israeli blockade of Gaza killed nine Turkish participants, the two countries have been exchanging accusations. The current impasse, however, is the culmination of a long process of deterioration and makes foes of two countries whose relationship was once heralded as groundbreaking and strategic.

The Justice and Development Party government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan had begun to sour on Israel following Israel’s incursion into Gaza in late 2008. Erdogan was miffed that the then Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert, who had visited him in Ankara only four days before the impending hostilities in Gaza, kept him in dark. As a consequence of the incursion, Israeli-Syrian negotiations that had made considerable progress under Turkish auspices fell apart, depriving Erdogan of what he thought was an important breakthrough.

After the Gaza incident at the yearly Davos meetings in Switzerland, Erdogan publicly berated Israeli Ppresident Shimon Peres, paradoxically one of Turkey’s greatest supporters. Received as a hero after Davos in Turkey, Erdogan dramatically increased the stridency of his rhetoric against Israel. The Turkish prime minister became the most popular leader in the proverbial Arab street.

Then came the Mavi Marmara flotilla incident: Israelis completely bungled the operation. They disregarded the publicly available information on the Turkish group organizing the flotilla and, more importantly, sent forces to intercede without any serious training or accurate intelligence. As a result, the Israelis landing on the ship encountered resistance and fired their weapons in panic. Cue the second terrible error in judgment: Instead of facing up to the fact that it had erred in sending unprepared soldiers into what amounted to be a trap, the Israeli government circled the wagons. Given the magnitude of the fiasco and its possible ramifications, those who were responsible should have been punished. None of that happened, of course, and no one lost his or her job as a result.

As Turkey insisted on an apology and compensation, it became clear that Israel had lost the public-opinion contest and may even be forced to relax the embargo on Gaza. Having found that it had done nothing wrong, the Netanyahu government refused. If domestic politics in both countries appeared to prevent a compromise from emerging, the fact is that there were many behind the scenes diplomatic efforts, including face-to-face discussions, to resolve the problem. The United Nations formed the Palmer Commission to come up with a face-saving way for the two countries to patch their differences. The commission’s report, leaked to the New York Times, found that the Israelis had indeed used excessive force but that the Gaza embargo was legal.

On the Israeli side, hard-line foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman at every turn tried to prevent a negotiated outcome from being finalized. Turks did not make it easier either by taking inflexible positions that made it hard for the Israelis to apologize. As I understand it, in December 2010, the two sides had come close to an agreement: Israel would apologize and provide compensation. However, Jerusalem wanted the agreement to also state that it had acted in self-defense. Turks would not agree to the latter condition, and the deal collapsed. There are many on both sides of this divide who worked desperately to prevent this turn of events, and they must feel terribly unhappy and bruised.

Significantly, it appears that Turkey’s tactics shifted considerably in the intervening year since the original crisis. Ankara thinks that it is in the driver’s seat not just with respect to Israel, but also the rest of the Middle East. This is a gambit for leadership in the region. The Turks have gone beyond the demand for an apology by conditioning a return to the status quo ante on the lifting of the Gaza embargo, something to which they know Israel cannot and will not acquiesce. That conditionality is something that no other regional government has ever contemplated, much less articulated. By doing so Erdogan has once again captured the imagination of the region.

This is a win-win for him not just abroad but also at home. The crisis with Israel will help him change the narrative as he begins to push for a much-needed and major overhaul of the Turkish constitutional system—it must be updated to start accommodating Kurdish demands, something that will be terribly difficult as the reforms go against almost ninety years of republican history. The Israel crisis, as evidenced by the heated rhetoric, is a perfect foil that can be easily activated at a moment’s notice.

Israel, for historical, emotional and realpolitik considerations, has been one of Washington’s closest allies with great support of both aisles of the political divide. A deepening crisis could even pit the administration against Congress. This may be one of the outcomes the Turks are banking on. The Netanyahu government has much to answer for in its lack of leadership and navel gazing. But Washington did not read Turkish intentions and goals accurately and therefore could not prevent this turn of events. Whichever way one looks at it, it is a failure of U.S. diplomacy that it will now have to constantly have to act as a buffer between two of its close allies.



Henri Barkey is a visiting fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a professor of international relations at Lehigh University.


Article 3.

Los Angeles Times

Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat on statehood moves at U.N.

Edmund Sanders


September 6, 2011 -- Palestinians have everyone guessing about their next move. Defying the United States and Israel, the Palestinian Authority is expected this month to apply for full membership in the United Nations. If the Obama administration vetoes the application in the Security Council as expected, Palestinian officials are likely to turn to the General Assembly to upgrade their status from non-member "entity" to non-member "state." Gaining de facto statehood recognition from the international body could allow Palestinians to join key U.N. institutions, such as the International Criminal Court.
Palestinian leaders say they have enough votes for such a move. But with two weeks before the General Assembly convenes, they have remained vague about their exact plans, and have refused to say exactly what a U.N. membership application or General Assembly resolution might say.   Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization's executive committee, discussed with The Times what Palestinians are planning and why he thinks the U.N. bid, if unsuccessful, could spell the end of the Palestinian Authority.

There's been a flurry of last-minute pressure from the U.S. and Mideast "quartet" to convince Palestinians to shelve the U.N. membership bid. [White House envoys David Hale and Dennis Ross arrived in the region Tuesday.] Any chance of that happening?

Why? I don't see any contradiction between an effort to revive peace talks and our going to the U.N. Also, [for all practical purposes] we are already at the U.N. It's there.... And all those who support the 1967 lines [the border before Israel seized the West Bank during that year's Middle East War] with mutually agreed swap [of land] should support our endeavor.

The Obama administration doesn't support your bid, though it supports using the 1967 lines with swaps as the baseline for the border of a Palestinian state.

We urge the U.S. to see it the way it is. We are trying to preserve the two-state solution in the face of an Israeli government that is determined to destroy it. Going to the U.N. is an attempt to preserve the two-state solution so Palestinians and Israelis can live side by side in peace and security.

What's your plan if the U.S. vetoes full membership? Have Americans told you they will veto?

The U.S. told us that the U.N. is not an option they will support. I hope they will not veto. How will they explain a veto?

They say that direct negotiation with Israel is the only way to reach a deal.

What have we been doing for the past 20 years? What have we been doing since [President George H.W.] Bush told us that if we recognize Israel, accept the two-state solution and renounce violence, the U.S. will stand shoulder to shoulder with us?

Assuming there is a veto, what would you gain by upgrading your status in the General Assembly?

The advantage is that you can be a full member of UNESCO, the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, and you may be able to hold Israel accountable.

So that's the plan if you fail in the Security Council?

We haven't decided yet beyond that. We would have to come back and put the question to the leadership. There were nine ideas presented about what to do if America vetoes. Was going to the General Assembly discussed? Yes. Was throwing in the towel discussed? Yes. Maybe we'll make a decision about that in the next two weeks.

Throwing in the towel? You mean disbanding the Palestinian Authority?

The Authority was born to transfer Palestinians from occupation to independence. If Mr. [Benjamin] Netanyahu [the Israeli prime minister] thinks he can make this Authority in name only while he is the sole master and source of authority, he will sweat. If we get a [U.S.] veto and Netanyahu continues to build the settlements, I would suggest that Netanyahu study carefully the provisions of the Hague Convention of 1907 and the Geneva Convention of 1949 which specify the responsibilities of the occupying power.

If you fail in the Security Council and don't at least upgrade in the General Assembly, won't you risk looking like a failure in the eyes of Palestinians, particularly after all this buildup? Have you managed their expectations?

Palestinians know exactly what's happening. People don't have high expectations.... But maybe the Palestinian leadership should tell the people that after 20 years we don't have a partner and we cannot continue to be an authority in name only. That we should throw in the towel.

Many see that as a bluff. Wouldn't you be throwing away years of progress, institutions, security forces and putting hundreds of thousands of people out of work?

We haven't made a decision. I'm not asking for the disbanding of the authority. But I'm asking: Is this the authority that will take us to independence? It's a joke.... The status quo is the worst situation for us, worse than any storm that might come. I'm not in a position to bluff or make threats. It's about choices.

It sounds like you are hoping that Israel will cry uncle.

Eighteen years ago I would have accepted this argument. But now I'm a grandpa. I used to tell my wife that I never wanted my children to go through what I went through, but then they did. And I didn't want my grandchildren to go through it, and they are.

How does any of this get Israelis and Palestinians closer to an agreement or get Palestinians closer to statehood?

At least I won't be looking in the mirror and telling myself that I'm fooling my people.

After 20 years of failed peace talks, is it possible that the two sides' positions on borders, refugees and other issues are just unbridgeable and no amount of talks will make a difference?

Peace between conflicting parties is not about Saeb Erekat waking up one morning and feeling his conscience aching for Israelis or Israelis waking up and feeling their conscience aching for my suffering. It's about the matrix of interests maturing. Once any conflicting party believes that making peace is cheaper than continuing war, he'll do it. Our matrix of interest has matured to deliver the requirement for peace, but Israel hasn't opened the door. They think maintaining the status quo is best for them. We are trying to show them that the status quo is not sustainable.







Article 4.



Spiegel

'What's Wrong with the Palestinians Appealing to the UN?'

 An interview with Arab League Head Nabil Elaraby


Pro-democracy uprisings are continuing in the Middle East and the Palestinians could soon declare statehood. SPIEGEL spoke with Arab League General Secretary Nabil Elaraby about the Syrian regime's use of violence against protesters and how the US has failed to force Israel to negotiate in good faith.


SPIEGEL: Libya has been liberated from Moammar Gadhafi's autocratic rule. Tensions in Syria, meanwhile, have already claimed more civilian lives than the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia combined, and yet the Arab League is holding back. Why are you going easy on the Syrian regime?


Elaraby: Syria isn't Libya. Libya has always been largely isolated. What happened there had little effect on neighboring countries. It's a completely different situation with Syria. The country holds a key position in the region. What happens there has a direct impact on Lebanon and Iraq. In addition, Gadhafi used heavy weapons from the start, but Assad hasn't.



SPIEGEL: Yet tanks have been deployed in Hama, Homs and Latakia for some time.


Elaraby: When I flew to Syria 10 days after taking office, they also tried to tell me that there had been no riots in Aleppo or Damascus. I was told that gun battles had only occurred in a few towns near the border, because rebels had fired on security forces there.



SPIEGEL: That, of course, is far from the truth.



Elaraby: I delivered a clear and unambiguous message to (Syrian President) Bashar Assad. I called on him to institute reforms, stop the violence and facilitate a peaceful transition into a new era.



SPIEGEL: We're hearing that for the first time.



Elaraby: It was a sensitive issue that I couldn't make public at the time. Assad promised me that he would introduce changes. But now almost two months have passed, and I don't see any reforms.



SPIEGEL: What are you asking for? Regime change?



Elaraby: That's something for the Syrian people to decide for themselves. No one can dictate to a sovereign nation how it should change.



SPIEGEL: What would have to happen for the League to take a stronger position against the Syrian regime, as it did in Libya?



Elaraby: Things are still in flux. Only the United Nations has the right to make decisions on the use of force. Even the Arab League has no mandate to bring about change by force in a member state.



SPIEGEL: Still, the Arab League has been militarily active in the past. In 1961, for example, it sent a special force to Kuwait to protect it from an imminent Iraqi invasion. Don't you need this kind of a strike force, not unlike the UN peacekeeping force?



Elaraby: Given the majorities within the League, I don't think that's realistic. But I do insist on compliance with human rights. The people, the citizens, have to be protected, and not just in Syria.



SPIEGEL: Many Arabs now feel that your institution is not very efficient.



Elaraby: The historic moment of change has gripped the entire region, and sooner or later it will change all Arab countries. The League will certainly need to adjust to that. We must be capable of reacting quickly to unexpected developments.



SPIEGEL: Surely there are a few member states, most notably Saudi Arabia, which will hardly support such changes.



Elaraby: I too have my doubts there. Nevertheless, we still have to try, and we have to take seriously the human rights established by the UN, which all countries in the League have recognized.



SPIEGEL: How does Saudi Arabia's foreign minister explain that his country supports the Syrian opposition, on the one hand, while at the same time sending troops to Bahrain?



Elaraby: I don't ask him these questions. That's your job. You're the journalists.



SPIEGEL: Do you support the Palestinian Autonomous Authority in its aspiration to have the UN General Assembly give its blessing in September to the establishment of a State of Palestine?



Elaraby: UN Resolution 181, adopted in 1947, is the birth certificate for two nations, Israel and Palestine. What's wrong with the Palestinians appealing directly to the UN after 20 years of negotiations with Israel? They could spend another 20 years negotiating without results, because the Israeli government doesn't even want to put an end to the conflict. The Israelis are only serious about gaining more land and expanding the settlements.



SPIEGEL: So you support the Palestinian initiative?



Elaraby: Support? We are doing everything in our power to back it.



SPIEGEL: The Americans have threatened tough consequences…



Elaraby: That's an unacceptable position for us! The strongest and richest country in the world is incapable of making a commitment. Instead, someone from Tel Aviv or Jerusalem is telling them what to do.



SPIEGEL: Won't this stance lead to tensions between the Arab League and the United States?



Elaraby: I hope it doesn't come to that. If the Americans had fulfilled the promises they made many years ago and had forced the Israelis to engage in serious negotiations, the problem would have been solved already.



SPIEGEL: The German government has also announced that it will not support the Palestinians' plan.



Elaraby: I heard what (German Chancellor) Angela Merkel said. She cited the Germans' unique responsibility to the Jews. But the Germans also have a responsibility to the Palestinians.



SPIEGEL: The radical Islamic group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, also doesn't recognize Israel.



Elaraby: Has Israel recognized Hamas? That sort of thing is based on reciprocity.



SPIEGEL: But the Islamists in the Gaza Strip are the ones firing rockets at Israeli cities.



Elaraby: That shouldn't be happening. It's wrong, and we do say that to them. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas constantly implores them to stop condoning the firing of rockets. The fact is that there are extremists on both sides.



SPIEGEL: Will there ever be another war between an Arab country and Israel over Palestine?


Elaraby: Completely out of the question.



SPIEGEL: You took the position of secretary-general two months ago, during a turbulent time. Do you think it's possible that you will resign if the pressure becomes unbearable?


Elaraby: Yes, absolutely. It's in my nature. Indeed, I'm not sure that I can stand it much longer.









Article 5.

Wall Street Journal

From 9/11 to the Arab Spring

Fouad Ajami



September 8, 2011 -- The Arabic word shamata has its own power. The closest approximation to it is the German schadenfreude—glee at another's misfortune. And when the Twin Towers fell 10 years ago this week, there was plenty of glee in Arab lands—a sense of wonder, bordering on pride, that a band of young Arabs had brought soot and ruin onto American soil.

The symbols of this mighty American republic—the commercial empire in New York, the military power embodied by the Pentagon—had been hit. Sweets were handed out in East Jerusalem, there were no tears shed in Cairo for the Americans, more than three decades of U.S. aid notwithstanding. Everywhere in that Arab world—among the Western-educated elite as among the Islamists—there was unmistakable satisfaction that the Americans had gotten their comeuppance.

There were sympathetic vigils in Iran—America's most determined enemy in the region—and anti-American belligerence in the Arab countries most closely allied with the United States. This occasioned the observation of the noted historian Bernard Lewis that there were pro-American regimes with anti-American populations, and anti-American regimes with pro-American populations.

I traveled to Jeddah and Cairo in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. In the splendid homes of wealthy American-educated businessmen, in the salons of perfectly polished men and women of letters, there was no small measure of admiration for Osama bin Laden. He was the avenger, the Arabs had been at the receiving end of Western power, and now the scales were righted. "Yes, but . . . ," said the Arab intellectual class, almost in unison. Those death pilots may have been zealous, but now the Americans know, and for the first time, what it means to be at the receiving end of power.

Very few Arabs believed that the landscape all around them—the tyrannical states, the growing poverty, the destruction of what little grace their old cities once possessed, the war across the generations between secular fathers and Islamist children—was the harvest of their own history. It was easier to believe that the Americans had willed those outcomes.

In truth, in the decade prior to 9/11, America had paid the Arab world scant attention. We had taken a holiday from history's exertions. But the Arabs had hung onto their belief that a willful America disposed of their fate. The Arab regimes possessed their own sources of power—fearsome security apparatuses, money in the oil states, official custodians of religion who gave repression their seal of approval. But it was more convenient to trace the trail across the ocean, to the United States. Mohammed Atta, who led the death pilots, was a child of the Egyptian middle class, a lawyer's son, formed by the disappointments of Egypt and its inequities. But there was little of him said in Egypt. The official press looked away.

There was to be no way of getting politically conscious Arabs to accept responsibility for what had taken place on 9/11. Set aside those steeped in conspiracy who thought that these attacks were the work of Americans themselves, that thousands of Jews had not shown up at work in the Twin Towers on 9/11. The pathology that mattered was that of otherwise reasonable men and women who were glad for America's torment. The Americans had might, but were far away. Now the terrorism, like a magnet, drew them into Arab and Muslim lands. Now they were near, and they would be entangled in the great civil war raging over the course of Arab and Muslim history.

The masters and preachers of terror had told their foot soldiers, and the great mass on the fence, that the Americans would make a run for it—as they had in Lebanon and Somalia, that they didn't have the stomach for a fight. The Arabs barely took notice when America struck the Taliban in Kabul. What was Afghanistan to them? It was a blighted and miserable land at a safe distance.

But the American war, and the sense of righteous violation, soon hit the Arab world itself. Saddam Hussein may not have been the Arab idol he was a decade earlier, but he was still a favored son of that Arab nation, its self-appointed defender. The toppling of his regime, some 18 months or so after 9/11, had brought the war closer to the Arabs. The spectacle of the Iraqi despot flushed out of his spider hole by American soldiers was a lesson to the Arabs as to the falseness and futility of radicalism.

It is said that "the east" is a land given to long memory, that there the past is never forgotten. But a decade on, the Arab world has little to say about 9/11—at least not directly. In the course of that Arab Spring, young people in Tunisia and Egypt brought down the dreaded dictators. And in Libya, there is the thrill of liberty, delivered, in part, by Western powers. In the slaughter-grounds of Syria, the rage is not directed against foreign demons, but against the cruel rulers who have robbed that population of a chance at a decent life.

America held the line in the aftermath of 9/11. It wasn't brilliant at everything it attempted in Arab lands. But a chance was given the Arabs to come face to face, and truly for the first time, with the harvest of their own history. Now their world is what they make of it.



Mr. Ajami is a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and co-chair of the Working Group on Islamism and the International Order.




Article 6.

Guardian

Israel should be wary of celebrating the 'Shia crescent' setback

Jonathan Spyer



7 September 2011 -- Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's backing of the Syrian regime during the recent upheaval has damaged his standing in the Middle East. Photograph: Abedin Taherkenareh/EPA

In recent years, Israeli strategists have identified an Iran-led regional alliance as representing the main strategic challenge to the Jewish state. This alliance looks to be emerging as one of the net losers of the Arab upheavals of 2011. This, however, should be cause for neither satisfaction nor complacency for Israel. The forces moving in to replace or compete with Iran and its allies are largely no less hostile.  The Iran-led regional alliance, sometimes called the muqawama ("resistance") bloc, consisted of a coalition of states and movements led by Tehran and committed to altering the US-led dispensation that pertained since the end of the cold war.

It included, in addition to Iran itself, the Hezbollah movement in Lebanon, the Sadrist movement and other Shia Islamist currents in Iraq, Syria's Assad regime, and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad organisation. It appeared in recent years also to be absorbing Hamas.

The muqawama bloc presented itself as the representative of authentic Islamic currents in the Middle East, and as locked in combat until the end with the west and its clients. These included Saudi Arabia, Hosni Mubarak's Egypt, and above all, Israel.

However, the alliance always had a rather obvious flaw: while presenting itself as an inclusive, representative camp, it was an almost exclusively Shia Muslim club, in a largely Sunni Muslim Middle East. The Iranians evidently hoped that militancy against the west, above all on behalf of the Palestinians, could counteract the league-of-outsiders aspect of their alliance.  For a while, this project appeared to be working. The Iran-created and sponsored Hezbollah movement managed to precipitate Israeli withdrawal from south Lebanon in 2000, and then avoided defeat in a subsequent round of fighting in 2006. In a poll of Arab public opinion taken in 2008, the three most popular leaders were Hassan Nasrallah, Bashar al-Assad and Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, in that order.  But this sense of inexorable ascendancy in which the Iran-led bloc liked to cloak itself has fallen victim to the Arab spring. First, the Saudis crushed a largely Shia uprising in Bahrain which the Iranians backed. But more importantly, Iran's tooth and nail defence of the brutal Assad regime in Syria is progressively destroying its already shallow support Sunni Muslims.   Thus, a recent poll by the Arab-American Institute asked more than 4,000 Arabs their view of Iran. In Saudi Arabia, 6% had a positive view – down from 89% in 2006. In Jordan, the positive rating fell from 75% to 23%, in Egypt from 89% to 37% in the same period.The uprising in Syria placed Iran in an impossible position. Maintaining its ally in Damascus formed an essential strategic interest. Iran hoped, following the US departure from Iraq, to achieve a contiguous line of pro-Iranian, Shia states stretching from Iran itself to the Mediterranean. But keeping this ambition alive in recent months required offering very visible support to a non-Sunni regime engaged in the energetic slaughter of its own, largely Sunni people. This has led to the drastic decline in the standing of the Iranians and their friends.  Such a decline was probably inevitable. Outside the core areas of Shia Arab population, Iran's support was broad but shallow. It is noteworthy that since the Arab Spring, Hamas appears to have distanced itself both from Assad and from the Iranians. According to some reports, this has led to Iranian anger and a cessation of the flow of funds to the Hamas enclave in Gaza.

These setbacks do not mean the end of Iran and its allies as a regional power bloc. Assad has not yet fallen. The Iranian nuclear programme is proceeding apace. Tehran's Hezbollah client is in effective control of Lebanon. But it does mean that in future the Iranian appeal is likely to be more decisively limited to areas of Shia population.

The less good news, from Israel's point of view, is that the new forces on the rise in the region consist largely of one or another variant of Sunni Islamism. AKP-led Turkey has emerged as a key facilitator of the Syrian opposition, in which Sunni Islamist elements play a prominent role. Turkey appears to be in the process of making a bid for the regional leadership also sought by Iran.  In Egypt, too, the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist forces look set to reap an electoral dividend in November. The Sinai area has already become a zone of activity for Islamist terror directed against Israel, because of the breakdown in law and order in recent months. The attacks on the pipeline bringing Egyptian gas to Israel, and the recent terror attack in Eilat, are testimony to this.  So while the "Shia crescent" may have suffered a strategic setback as a result of the upheavals in the Arab world, the space left by the fall of regional leaders looks to be filled largely by new, Sunni Islamist forces.   Israel remains capable of defending itself against a strategic threat posed by any constellation of these elements. But the current flux in the region is likely to produce a more volatile, complex Middle East, consisting of an Iran-led camp and perhaps a number of Sunni competitors, rather than the two-bloc contest of pro-US and pro-Iranian elements which preceded 2011.



Jonathan Spyer is a senior research fellow at the Global Research in International Affairs Center.


Article 7.

Daily Beast

Mideast’s Changing View of America

Randall Lane



September 8, 2011  -- Among the findings:


- An exclusive Newsweek–Daily Beast poll of 1,000 Egyptians reveals that a majority (53 percent) doesn’t believe that al Qaeda was responsible for the Twin Tower attacks—instead affixing blame to Israel, the U.S. government, or an unknown entity.
- In the same survey, 62 percent either don’t believe the U.S. killed Osama bin Laden or they aren’t sure.
- Only 11 percent of Egyptians think America cares about their interests.



To understand America’s current standing in the Arab world 10 years after 9/11, it’s instructive to visit Obros, a coffeehouse-cum-nightclub in Beirut. The place is a tribute to Kennedy-era “American kitsch,” and its 35-year-old proprietor Joulan El Aschkar displays a sophisticated touch, from Pierre Cardin–period wallpaper to Mad Men–worthy vintage furniture and electronics to 100 gigabytes of forgotten '60s hits like B. J. Thomas’s “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head,” rotating with fully intended irony.

I’m merely there for free Wi-Fi, but when El Aschkar notices an actual American in his shrine to America, he eagerly engages me in conversation, then directs my laptop to his family’s website—solely devoted to the idea that the World Trade Center attack was an inside job perpetrated by U.S. neocons. “I just ask questions,” he shrugs mischievously. “The American version isn’t credible.”

This duality—desperate need for love entwined with either willful ignorance or even nuanced hate—has underlain the Arab view of America for a generation, unchanged even by the collapse of the Twin Towers. But based on my recent trip across the region, a confluence—Arab Spring and the technology that empowered it—has provided the U.S. a new chance to push reset with a half-billion Arabs, as long as it can shout louder than increasingly sophisticated bunk merchants like El Aschkar.

Ask about basic political facts—al Qaeda’s responsibility for 9/11, or the death of Osama bin Laden—and even the most educated will start popping off inanities.

I’ve been dealing with this frustrating relationship for much of the past decade. Shortly after 9/11, in an effort to win Arab “hearts and minds” in the mold of the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, the State Department poured hundreds of millions into a new public-diplomacy initiative, overseen by former ad executive Charlotte Beers and then Bush communications czar Karen Hughes. In short order came Radio Sawa (“together”), television’s Alhurra (“the free one”) and Hi Magazine (named for the one English word the whole world knows), which, inspired by the post-9/11 call to service, I steered editorially in print and online in 2003 and 2004.

Hi, sold on newsstands in 20 Arab countries, was charged with providing a window into, and dialogue with, the U.S. for Arabs between 18 and 35. To maximize the project’s efficacy, I conducted perhaps the most extensive qualitative study of Arab sentiment about America in the post-9/11 era. With two colleagues, I traveled across the Arab world—the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Lebanon, and Morocco—for two weeks on what we called a “listening research tour,” interviewing scores of young Arabs individually, in focus groups and at giant roundtables, using Hi as proxy for the region’s perpetual question: what do you think about the U.S.? While the magazine’s scope was strictly cultural, the answer eight years ago, on the heels of the Iraq invasion, usually came down to some combination of the words “America," “Bush,” and local expletives.

Curious about whether that had changed, I repeated that itinerary this summer, conducting a dozen panels in those same four countries, with subjects representing the diversity of the Arab World, from fully covered Persian Gulf oil heiresses to skirt-donning Beirut Christians to democracy-minded Tahrir Square veterans to Casablanca slum kids fending off suicide-bomber entreaties. Their viewpoint again proved surprisingly consistent—and had shifted dramatically from my last go-round.

That background narrative, it turns out, drives everything. It’s hard to overstate the Iraq War’s effect on brand America: it fed into Arab insecurities, exploited in turn by regional demagogues, that outsiders are at fault for whatever ails them. At one raucous meeting at a university in Casablanca, which we later dubbed “The Pinata Session,” 120 students eager to tee off on an American, any American, swarmed what was supposed to be a meet-and-greet with two dozen journalism majors, showering us with two hours of prewritten diatribes.

Contrast that with my recent visit to Casablanca, where I happened upon a parade of 20,000 protesters, stretched across a half mile, calling for democratic reforms from the autocratic King Mohammed VI. For two hours, the placard-raising marchers chanted in unison—The people of Libya and Syria keep getting killed—they’re not afraid!.... Shakira got a million! (a reference to the singer’s fee at a royal event)...Look, see, the people are scary!—and precisely zero had anything to do with America (or Israel, for that matter). “The consensus is this: it’s a Moroccan problem,” Reda Oulamine, a top opposition leader, told me during the march, “and it’s being decided by the Moroccan street.”

This attitude shift proved universal across the region. Iraq was almost never mentioned, nor was 9/11 or al Qaeda, and rather than rail at what America had imposed on them, the young Arabs instead criticized how America reacted to them. (President Obama’s failure to support Egyptian revolutionaries until after Mubarak was clearly a goner, and his inconsistency helping Libya’s rebels, but not Syria’s, were both widely criticized.) By taking control of their own fates, in reality and perception—highly important in this prideful culture—the conversation has become more respectful and adult.

So it was that in 2011 I found myself having the kind of dialogue that Hi, whose funding was pulled in 2005, had always aspired to have. Over lunch in the dark basement of Tabouleh, a restaurant in Cairo’s Garden City, seven Egyptian bloggers, including many of the digital heroes of the Tahrir Square Facebook revolution, debated U.S. subsidies to Egypt. “We don’t want money,” says one blogger, Safa. “We want to make sure we go the right way.” No, counters Ahmad, “we need the money, but it must be with no strings attached.” Eventually, the talk turns to nuts-and-bolts democracy, the real Jefferson-Hamilton stuff (one of the bloggers, Karim, had already requested a translated copy of the Constitution): federalism, the role of the military, and, above all, the peaceful transfer of power that inspires quadrennial awe worldwide.

Such technology-fueled enlightenment comes with an equally perilous downside, as evidenced by my conspiracy-minded Beirut coffee-shop friend. Ask this group, or any others about basic political facts—al Qaeda’s responsibility for 9/11, or the death of Osama bin Laden—and even the most educated, whether blogger or student or lawyer, will start popping off inanities. “Aw, they’re sick about plots,” Gibran Tueni, the Western-oriented editor of Beirut’s Al-Nahar had warned me on my first trip to the region, less than two years before he was killed by a car bomb. “Whenever they see something that isn’t there, they say, ahhh.” And that was before YouTube, Google, and WikiLeaks.

Indeed, an exclusive Newsweek–Daily Beast poll of 1,000 Egyptians reveals that, with the 10th anniversary of 9/11 approaching, a majority (53 percent) don’t believe that al Qaeda was responsible for the Twin Tower attacks, instead affixing blame to Israel, the U.S. government or an unknown entity. This kind of dangerous misinformation carries into even the most recent current events. In the same survey, 62 percent either don’t believe the U.S. killed Osama bin Laden, or they aren’t sure.

Even among the friendliest audience that could be assembled—a class at an American-run English-language school—skepticism reigns, and a random YouTube video carries as much weight as a New York Times front-page story.

“We haven’t seen any proof that he’s actually dead—or even existed,” says 17-year-old Manal Maatiri.

“We need to see it to trust it,” Houda Biyad, a 28-year-old medical assistant, chimes in.

“We need evidence,” adds 17-year-old Buhary El-Quasamy. When I point out that both Obama and al Qaeda agree on the basic facts that the U.S. killed bin Laden, she shrugs. “Well, I can say anything I want, too.”

Such are the responses when the region’s leaders—and the press they controlled—have systematically lied to their citizens for 30 years, ingraining a distrust in what leaders or the media says that borders on absolute.

But perhaps there’s also a dividend from such cynicism. Every survey shows widespread Arab antipathy for American policy—the Newsweek–Daily Beast poll found that only 11 percent of Egyptians think America cares about their interests. But when you pull back the layers, cutting through the decades of institutional demagoguery, the qualities America inspires would warm the heart of any marketing manager.

As an ice-breaking exercise, I asked everyone I interviewed on my trip to free-associate the first word they thought about when they hear “America.” There were numerous cynics (“greedy,” “consumerism,” “McDonald’s”) and the occasional outlier (“Sex and the City”), but a majority repeated affirmative terms like melting pot, power, democracy, modernity. Even a majority of jaded Newsweek–Daily Beast poll respondents said that the U.S. had a positive effect on the world—the highest of any nation we asked about. Blend it all together, and that’s an image of America well positioned for the new Arab World.





























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