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cle 1.
Jeffrey Epstein [jeeyacation@gmail.com]
2/15/2013 12:42:34 AM
Larry Summers
as you asked
The Washington Post
In State of the Union
address, Obama lays out
his second-term agenda
Editorial
February 13, 2013 -- TWO DOMESTIC
concerns towered above all others as
President Obama addressed a joint session
of Congress on Tuesday night on the state
of the union. One was stubbornly slow
economic growth. The other was the long-
term threat to prosperity posed by the
structural mismatch between the federal
government's projected revenue and its
spending commitments. A successful
second term for Mr. Obama will require
both credible proposals for overcoming
those related challenges and the
determination to carry them through.
The president addressed the deficit and
debt first, and at some length. This was
fitting, giving that the most pressing piece
of business facing Washington is what to
do about the impending $85 billion across-
the-board spending cut. He was forthright
Office of Terje Rod-Larsen
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in declaring that this so-called sequester
threatens the military as well as domestic
programs. But his plan to avoid it basically
repeated the offer of a "balanced approach"
— unspecified tax hikes and spending cuts
— which Republicans have already
rejected.
Somewhat more substantively, he called for
a larger deficit-reduction deal built around
loophole-closing tax reform and what he
called "modest" reforms to Medicare and
entitlements. In an apparent effort to rally
Democrats to this cause, he called on
"those of us who care deeply about
programs like Medicare" to "embrace"
reform.
Yet in promising the same amount of
Medicare savings as the Simpson-Bowles
commision proposed, Mr. Obama did not
mention that this would be a mere $341
billion over 10 years. All told, he envisions
shaving an additional $1.5 trillion off
projected deficits over 10 years, which
would leave the national debt at a
historically aberrant 70-odd percent of
gross domestic product. In short, he
declined to push back against the mind-set
within his party that considers acceptable
"stabilizing" the debt at this level by the
time Mr. Obama's second term ends. At
best, that would buy a respite of a few
years before the debt resumed its upward
climb.
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As for raising the economy's growth
potential, the president was more
persuasive. His emphasis on reforming the
tangled and counterproductive corporate
tax code was especially welcome, and
relatively likely to draw GOP support. He
offered several promising ideas on
education, including a promise of "high-
quality preschool" for all children, though
how that would square with his promise not
to increase the deficit by a single dime
went unexplained. He sounded a ringing
call for greater federal attention to college
cost containment. "Taxpayers can't keep on
subsidizing" spiraling tuition, he said,
candidly and correctly.
As European trading partners had hoped,
the president endorsed negotiations for a
transatlantic free-trade zone, which would
help America's export industries and the
jobs that depend on them. Coupled with an
agreement that Obama is promoting for the
Pacific region, the proposal has the
potential to make his second term fruitful
for global trade. He also suggested raising
the federal minimum wage, from $7.25 per
hour to $9 — although the precise amount
is less important, in our view, than the
president's call for annual cost-of-living
adjustments.
In keeping with Mr. Obama's theme of
nation-building at home, foreign policy
played a secondary role in his speech. He
promised to bring home half of the
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remaining U.S. troops in Afghanistan
within the next year. But officials said the
withdrawal would be weighted toward
year's end, leaving most of the troops to
partner with Afghan troops for much of this
year. The president said the United States
would support democratic transitions in the
Middle East, "keep the pressure on [the]
Syrian regime" and "do what is necessary
to prevent" Iran from obtaining a nuclear
weapon — but he offered no specifics.
Mr. Obama pressed his case for reform of
immigration laws and for action to slow
global warming — and, in especially
moving terms, tougher gun laws. In each
case, there may be measures he can take
through executive action, but new laws will
be needed for substantial progress.
Mr. Obama was right when he pointed to
the survivors and grieving relatives of gun
violence victims and insisted, "They
deserve a vote."
Article 2
Foreign Policy
The world is no longer
America's problem
Aaron David Miller
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February 13, 2013 -- If you want to know
what an American president's foreign
policy is likely to be, particularly in a
second term, don't listen to his State of the
Union speech. You'd probably have more
luck playing with Tarot cards, or reading
tea leaves or goat entrails. But not this year.
Barack Obama's fourth such address left a
trail of foreign-policy cookie crumbs that
lead directly to some pretty clear, if hardly
surprising or revolutionary, conclusions.
His first term contained no spectacular
successes (save killing Osama bin Laden),
but no spectacular failures either. And
more than likely, that's what the president
will settle for in a second, even as the Arab
world burns and rogues like Iran and North
Korea brandish new weapons. He's nothing
if not a cautious man.
Behold: I am the Extricator in Chief
Afghanistan -- the "good war" -- has been
pretty much MIA in Obama's speeches
since he became president. He's alternated
between spending a few words on the
mission there (2009) or a paragraph (2010,
2011, 2012). If his words have been brief,
the message has been stunningly clear: It's
about the leaving. And tonight was no
exception. Not more than two minutes in,
the president spoke about America's men
and women coming home from
Afghanistan.
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Obama's signature is indeed that of the
extricator. And he broke the code early (the
2009 surge was designed politically to get
in so that he could get out with a clearer
conscience). He is the president who has
wound down the longest and among the
most profitless wars in American history,
where victory was never defined by
whether we can win, but by when can we
leave. It is his legacy, and one about which
he has reason to be proud. Obama has left
himself and his military commanders
plenty of discretion about the pace of
extrication. But that's fine with the
president so long as they're heading for the
exits.
Not the Destroyer and Rebuilder of Worlds
Surprise, surprise: There was scant mention
of Syria in the president's speech -- just one
throwaway line about supporting Syria's
opposition. Obama did not disengage from
Iraq and Afghanistan only to plunge
America into new black holes in the
Middle East.
Obama isn't worried about boots on the
ground in Syria. That was never on the
table. Instead the question is this: Given the
uncertainty about the end state in Syria and
the risks of providing serious weapons to
the rebels (and a no-fly zone) that might
alter the arc of the fight against the regime,
the president saw and continues to see no
purpose in America providing arms of
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marginal utility. That course would either
expose him to be truly weak and ineffectual
or lead to calls to do more. So he's going to
provide non-lethal support and is
apparently prepared to take the hits from
critics who see the president's policy as
passive, cruel, and unforgiving, particularly
now that we know that members of his own
cabinet clearly wanted to do more. The
Iranian nuclear issue, the other potential tar
baby in the SOTU, followed a pretty
predictable rising arc of concern in the list
of presidential foreign-policy worries. In
2009, in Obama's address to a joint session
of Congress (a speech some regard as a
SOTU), Iran wasn't even mentioned. In the
2010 SOTU, Obama threatened that if Iran
ignored its international obligations, there
would be consequences; in 2011, he did the
same; and in 2012, he made it clear that he
would prevent Iran from acquiring a
nuclear weapon and take no option off the
table. Obama repeated half of what he said
in 2012 about preventing Iran from getting
a nuclear weapon, but instead of saying all
options were on the table, he spoke of the
importance of diplomacy. I suspect he'll go
to extreme lengths to avoid war, and won't
greenlight an Israeli attack either until the
arc of diplomacy has run its course. And
then Obama would likely act only if the
mullahs push the envelope by accelerating
their uranium enrichment program and
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other military aspects of the nuclear
enterprise.
Seizing the Nuclear High Road with Little
to Lose
Even as he confronts a real bomb in North
Korea (very bad options there) and a
potential one in Iran (bad options there
too), Obama is trying to make good on a
longstanding commitment to reduce
America's own nuclear arsenal. Backed by
the military chiefs and likely by the public
too (getting rid of nukes equals saving
money), but opposed by Republicans in
Congress, Obama will try to work around
the political obstacles by seeking a deal
with yes ... you got it ... his old friend Vlad
Putin. It's worth a try. If Putin balks or
Republicans get in the way, the president
can always advocate unilateral cuts -- not
something he wants to do. But if he can't
have his way on nukes, he can always
blame it on the Russians and the
Republicans with little to lose. The road to
getting rid of nukes is a long one. Let the
next guy (or gal) worry about it.
A Little Leg on Palestine?
Obama hasn't mentioned the Israeli-
Palestinian conflict in a SOTU speech since
2009. And that's no coincidence. His own
poorly thought-through initial effort
crashed and burned, leaving the president
pretty frustrated and annoyed with both
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Israelis and Palestinians, particularly Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
But hey, that was then. A second-term
president has committed himself early in
2013 to a trip to Israel and has an Energizer
bunny in Secretary of State John Kerry,
who wants to do the right thing and keep
the two-state solution alive. Obama clearly
kept his distance from the issue again on
Tuesday night. He spoke of standing with
Israel to pursue peace, but didn't mention
Palestinians or the peace process. He
mentioned his own trip to the Middle East,
but missed an opportunity to give what
might be a trip to the region by his new
secretary of state higher profile. It's just as
well. The paradox of the Israeli-Palestinian
issue is that it's too complicated to
implement right now and too important to
abandon. It's in this space that Obama will
be forced to operate. And while the odds of
success are low, Obama will be tempted in
his final term to do something bold,
perhaps laying out a U.S. plan of
parameters on the key final-status issues.
It's the Middle Class, Not the Middle East
Spoiler alert: Barack Obama might still be
a consequential foreign-policy president if
he's lucky, willful, and skillful. But it's his
domestic legacy that will make or break his
presidency. Health care -- his signature
legacy issue -- will look much better if the
economy improves, driven by a revived
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housing market and rising employment,
and of course if some broader deal can be
struck on entitlements and taxes.
Immigration reform and gun-control
legislation driven by a functional
bipartisanship would cement that legacy.
He'd be an historic rather than a great
president.
Two clocks tick down in a president's
second term: the drive for legacy and the
reality of lame duckery. Obama's political
capital will diminish quickly. Where, how,
and on what he wants to spend it is critical.
The Middle East is violent and volatile and
may yet suck him in, but if he can avoid it,
he'll try. This was a State of the Union
address that stressed fixing America's
broken house, not chasing around the world
trying to fix everyone else's. The future of
America isn't Cairo or Damascus; it's
Chicago and Detroit.
Aaron David Miller is a distinguished
scholar at the Woodrow Wilson
International Center for Scholars.
Article 3.
Agence Global
Can the United States
Strike a Deal with Iran?
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Patrick Seale
12 Feb 2013 -- Negotiations with Iran are
once more on the international agenda.
After an eight-month break, the five
permanent members of the UN Security
Council plus Germany -- the so-called
P5+1 -- are due to hold a meeting with Iran
on 25 February in Kazakhstan. What are
the prospects of success? In a nutshell, that
would seem to depend more on the climate
in Washington than in Tehran. Iran is
gesturing that it wants to negotiate, but
Washington has not yet signalled any
greater flexibility than in the past.
In a major speech in Tehran last Sunday,
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
addressed the United States: "Take your
guns out of the face of the Iranian nation
and I myself will negotiate with you," he
declared. Meanwhile, the Iranian
ambassador to Paris told French officials
that, provided a work plan was agreed, Iran
was ready to allow inspectors of the
International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA) to visit Parchin, a military facility
where Iran is suspected of having done
work on atomic weapons. Ahmadinejad
himself has said repeatedly that Iran was
ready to stop enriching uranium to 20% if
the international community agreed to
supply it instead to the Tehran research
reactor for the production of isotopes
needed to treat cancer patients.
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The only recent encouraging word from the
United States was a hint by Vice-President
Joe Biden at last week's Munich security
conference that the time may have come
for bilateral U.S.-Iranian talks. Iran's
Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi
responded positively to Biden's offer,
although he added that Iran would look for
evidence that Biden's offer was 'authentic'
and not 'devious'.
The road to a U.S.-Iranian agreement is
littered with obstacles -- grave mutual
distrust being one of them. There is little
optimism among experts that a
breakthrough is imminent. For one thing,
Iran is almost certain to want to defer any
major strategic decision until a new
President is elected next June to replace the
sharp-tongued Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. To
strike a deal with Iran, the United States
would also need to assure its Arab allies in
the Gulf that they would not fall under
Iranian hegemony or lose American
protection. Guarantees would no doubt
have to be given.
Israel, America's close ally, poses a more
substantial obstacle. It is totally opposed to
any deal which would allow Iran to enrich
uranium, even at the low level of 3.5%.
Wanting no challenge to its own
formidable nuclear arsenal, Israel's long-
standing aim has been to halt Iran's nuclear
programme altogether. To this end it has
assassinated several Iranian nuclear
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scientists and joined the United States in
waging cyber warfare against Iranian
nuclear facilities. Its belligerent prime
minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, has for
years been pressing Obama to destroy
Iran's nuclear programme and -- better still
-- bring down the Islamic regime
altogether.
Faced with these obstacles, it is clear that
any U.S. deal with Iran would require
careful preparation. Obama would need to
mobilize strong domestic support if he is to
confront America's vast array of pro-Israeli
forces. They include Congressmen eager to
defend Israeli interests at all costs (as was
vividly illustrated by the recent Chuck
Hagel confirmation hearings), powerful
lobbies such as AIPAC, media barons,
high-profile Jewish financiers like Sheldon
Adelson, a phalanx of neo-con strategists in
right-wing think tanks, influential pro-
Israelis within the Administration, and
many, many others. The cost in political
capital of challenging them could be very
substantial. Nevertheless, elected for a
second term, he now has greater freedom
and authority than before.
Obama is due to visit Israel on March 20-
21, something he did not do in his first
term. This visit will be the first foreign trip
of his second term -- in itself a sign of its
importance. Although the White House is
anxious to play down suggestions that he
will announce a major initiative, either on
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the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or on Iran,
there are issues he cannot avoid. He may,
however, choose to raise them in private
talks with Israeli leaders rather than in
public. His message is expected to be
twofold: Israel should not delay in granting
statehood to the Palestinians, however
painful that choice may be, and it should be
careful not to make an eternal enemy of
Iran. Both conflicts have the potential to
isolate Israel internationally and threaten its
long-term interests, if not its actual
existence.
In his first term of office, Obama resisted
Netanyahu's pressure to wage war on Iran.
This was no more than a semi-success,
however, since he managed to blunt
Netanyahu's belligerence only by imposing
on Iran a raft of sanctions of unprecedented
severity. They have halved Iran's oil
exports, caused its currency to plummet
and inflation to gallop, severed its relations
with the world's banks and inflicted severe
hardship on its population.
The key question today is this: What are
Obama's intentions? Is he seeking to bring
down Iran's Islamic regime, as Israel
would like, or is he simply seeking to limit
its nuclear ambitions? If 'regime change' is
his aim then sanctions will have to be
tightened even further and extended
indefinitely. But if Obama's aim is to strike
a deal with Iran over its nuclear programme
then he must give it at least some of what it
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wants: such as sanctions relief; acceptance
of its right under the Nuclear Non-
Proliferation Treaty to enrich uranium to a
low level for peaceful purposes;
recognition of its security interests, of the
legitimacy of its Islamic regime born out of
the 1979 revolution, and of its place in the
region as a major power.
The P5+1, which are due to meet Iran later
this month, remain so divided that they are
unlikely to improve substantially on their
previous miserly offer, which was to
provide Iran with some airplane spare parts
if it gave up uranium enrichment to 20% --
its trump card. It is the paralysis of Iran's
dealings with the P5+1 that has lent
credence to the idea that the best hope of a
breakthrough may lie in bilateral U.S.-
Iranian talks -- perhaps even a summit
meeting between President Obama and
Ayatollah Khomeini.
For such a summit to be successful the
United States would have to change its
approach. Iran's supreme leader has made
clear that Iran will not negotiate under
threat of attack. There would have to be
give and take. Above all, Iran wants to be
treated with respect. This is the challenge
facing Obama.
It is worth remembering that there is as yet
no evidence whatsoever that Iran has
decided to build nuclear weapons. Nor has
it developed a reliable delivery system.
Instead, it has focussed its efforts on
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medium-range missiles unable to reach
Israel. It has no second strike capability. As
President Ahmadinejad stressed during his
visit to Cairo last week, Iran has no
intention of attacking Israel. Its posture is
purely defensive.
If Obama were to act with boldness and
vision, he could defuse a nagging problem
which has plagued the region for years. It is
surely time for the United States to draw
Iran into the regional community of nations
and put an end to 34 years of unremitting
hostility.
Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on
the Middle East. His latest book is The
Struggle for Arab Independence: Riad el-
Solh and the Makers of the Modern Middle
East (Cambridge University Press).
Article 4.
The Washington Post
What path now for Syria?
David Ignatius
February 12, 2013 -- Syrian opposition
fighters appear to be making significant
gains on the battlefield this week,
following an offer by their top political
leader for negotiations with the regime of
President Bashar al-Assad.
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This military and diplomatic news may
appear positive. But Syrian sources caution
that the battlefield advances may accelerate
movement toward a breakup of the country,
as Alawite supporters of the regime retreat
to their ancestral homeland in the
northwestern region around Latakia. And
there's no sign that either Assad or his
Russian patrons are paying any more than
lip service to a political settlement.
One potential game-changer is a request for
U.S. help in training elite rebel units, which
has been drafted by Brig. Gen. Salim Idriss,
the new commander of the opposition Free
Syrian Army. In a letter dated Feb. 4, he
seeks U.S. assistance in "training for: (1)
special operations; (2) international
humanitarian law; and (3) ... in chemical
weapons security."
Idriss requested various supplies for these
elite units, including: "(1) combat armor;
(2) night vision goggles; (3) hand held
monocular and longer range spotting
equipment; (4) strategic communications;
(5) winterization packs; and (6) tactical
communications."
This request for assistance was made just
after the Assad regime had rebuffed an
offer by Sheik Ahmad Moaz al-Khatib, the
head of a new opposition coalition, to
negotiate with government representatives.
The rebels' recent military successes have
come mostly in northern Syria; the attacks
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were made by different battalions that
appear to operate with little central
command and control. The gains include:
*The al-Jarrah air base, about 30 miles east
of Aleppo, which appears to have been
overrun by fighters from Ahrar al-Sham, a
battalion based in Idlib. Videos posted
Tuesday by the rebels showed them
walking past derelict Syrian warplanes and
inside a fortified hangar containing what
appeared to be two Czech-built ground
assault planes. On camera, the rebels
displayed dozens of bombs racked in a
warehouse, and other ammunition and
spoils of war.
*The Thawra hydroelectric dam on the
Euphrates, which is one of Syria's biggest
power-generating facilities. Rebel sources
said the Syrian army gave up the strategic
dam after army positions there were
overrun. The rebels negotiated a surrender
with regime loyalists who remained. These
sources said the dam continues to operate
and provide power — a positive sign for
those who worry that Syria's infrastructure
would collapse if the rebels took over.
*The Aleppo International Airport,
southeast of the city, is close to falling.
Free Syrian Army sources said Tuesday
that their fighters, including allies in the
extremist al-Nusra Front, had captured an
access point near the airport known as
"Liwa 80." Syrian sources said rebels there
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had seized large amounts of ammunition,
including some shoulder-fired anti-aircraft
missiles.
*Damascus and its suburbs, where the
rebels are tightening their squeeze on
access points to the capital. Syrian sources
said fighters are converging on Damascus
from different parts of the country,
expecting a decisive battle there soon.
"Regime forces are suffering from very low
morale, whereas FSA soldiers have been
encouraged by recent positive
developments," asserts one FSA report
from Damascus.
The al-Nusra Front has been a catalyst and
beneficiary of the rebels' success.
According to Syrian sources, al-Nusra is
gaining strength in Homs, a city in central
Syria where the group was never strong.
One Syrian source told the State
Department: "They have money, they are
helping people with everything including
daily living supplies. I heard that some
fighters are leaving their [former] brigades
and joining [Al-Nusra], some of them
selling their weapons to feed their
families."
One Syrian who works closely with the
Free Syrian Army explained how creating
an elite commando force could help check
Syria's drift toward becoming a failed
state: "We still believe FSA on the ground
is still needed badly to tip the power and
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support other parallel solutions, including
the political one. But FSA [has] become a
jungle. ... My recommendation is ... to
start working on elite [forces that can] ...
initiate key attacks plus help as a buffer
from potential warlords and fights among
fragmented FSA factions. Plus, this unit
can handle other key tasks, like securing
chemical weapons."
This Syrian strategist argues in another
memo that the rebels must "speak to the
silent majority, many who did not care
about the revolution, and they want their
life back." He said that such a negotiated
settlement requires more pressure on the
United States, Russia and the United
Nations "to find a way out of the
deadlock."
Article 5
Foreign Policy
Why Does Europe
Pretend Hezbollah Has a
Good Side?
Matthew Levitt
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February 12, 2013 -- Bulgaria's interior
minister announced on Feb. 5 the result of
his country's investigation into the July
2012 bombing of a bus filled with Israeli
tourists in the city of Burgas, which killed
five Israelis and the vehicle's Bulgarian
driver. Two of the individuals who carried
out the terrorist attack, he said, "belonged
to the military formation of Hezbollah."
It was not by chance that his statement
fingered only the military wing of
Hezbollah, not the group as a whole.
Within the European Union, the findings of
the Bulgarian investigation have kicked off
a firestorm over whether to add the
Lebanese militant organization -- in whole,
or perhaps just its military or terrorist
wings -- to the EU's list of banned terrorist
groups. But are there in fact distinct wings
within the self-styled "Party of God"?
Hezbollah is many things. It is one of the
dominant political parties in Lebanon, as
well as a social and religious movement
catering first and foremost -- though not
exclusively -- to Lebanon's Shiite
community. Hezbollah is also Lebanon's
largest militia, the only one to keep its
weapons and rebrand its armed elements as
an "Islamic resistance" in response to the
terms of the 1989 Taif Accord, which
ended the Lebanese Civil War.
While the group's various elements are
intended to complement one another, the
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reality is often messier. In part, that has to
do with compartmentalization of
Hezbollah's covert activities. It is also,
however, a result of the group's multiple
identities -- Lebanese, pan-Shiite, pro-
Iranian -- and the group's multiple and
sometimes competing goals tied to these
different identities.
Hezbollah's ideological commitment to
Iranian Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's
revolutionary doctrine of velayat-e
faqih (guardianship of the jurist), which
holds that a Shiite Islamic cleric should
serve as the supreme head of government,
is a key source of conflict. The group is
thus simultaneously committed to the
decrees of Iranian clerics, the Lebanese
state, its sectarian Shiite community within
Lebanon, and fellow Shiites abroad.
The consequences of these competing
ideological drivers was clear in July 2006,
when Hezbollah dragged Israel and
Lebanon into a war neither state wanted by
crossing the U.N.-demarcated border
between the two countries, killing three
Israeli soldiers, and kidnapping two more
in an ambush. They came to the fore again
two years later, when Hezbollah took over
West Beirut by force of arms, turning its
weapons of "resistance" against fellow
Lebanese citizens. When the chips are
down, Hezbollah's commitment to Iran
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trumps its identity as a Lebanese political
movement.
The ties that bind Hezbollah's political
leadership with its international illicit
activities are also unmistakable. According
to a CIA document, even before Hassan
Nasrallah rose to the position of secretary-
general in 1992, he was "directly involved
in many Hizballah terrorist operations,
including hostage taking, airline hijackings,
and attacks against Lebanese rivals."
Time and again, Hezbollah's political
personalities have been tied to the group's
terrorist and criminal activities. Consider a
major case in the United States: In 2008,
while Hezbollah operative Ali Karaki was
planning a Hezbollah attack in Azerbaijan's
capital, Baku, his brother, Hasan Antar
Karaki, was helping lead a broad criminal
conspiracy to sell counterfeit and stolen
currency in Philadelphia. Luckily, Hasan
Antar Karaki sold his wares to an
undercover FBI informant posing as a
member of the Philadelphia criminal
underworld. Hasan Antar Karaki proved to
be a major figure in Hezbollah's forgery
operations, and he provided an FBI source
with fraudulent British and Canadian
passports.
Meanwhile, in meetings in Lebanon and
the United States, Hasan Antar Karaki's
associate, Hassan Hodroj, a Hezbollah
spokesman and the head of its Palestinian
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issues portfolio within the group's political
echelon, sought to procure a long list of
sophisticated weapons in a black-market
scheme involving Hezbollah operatives
across the globe. According to court
documents, Hodroj wanted "heavy
machinery" for the "fight against Jews and
to protect Lebanon." But move forward
with caution, Hodroj counseled an
undercover FBI source, because someone
in the United States could "go to jail for
100 years" if caught dealing with
Hezbollah.
In light of cases like this one, in which
people overtly affiliated with Hezbollah's
political activities are engaged in criminal
and terrorist activities, it becomes
increasingly difficult to separate
Hezbollah's overt activities from its covert
behavior. "Little is known about [the
Hezbollah military wing's] internal
command hierarchy," a Western
government report noted in 2012, "due to
its highly secretive nature and use of
sophisticated protective measures."
The structure and manpower of Hezbollah's
terrorist operation, which is responsible for
its financial and logistical activities as well
as its terrorist operations abroad, are
similarly opaque. We do know, however,
that Hezbollah's terrorist network, the
Islamic Jihad Organization (IJO), was
formally founded in 1983 when Hezbollah
master terrorist Imad Mughniyeh fled to
HOUSE OVERSIGHT 028698
Iran after orchestrating the October 1983
bombing of the U.S. Marine Corps and
French military barracks in Beirut with his
brother-in-law, Mustafa Badreddine.
This much is clear: Since its founding,
Hezbollah has developed a sophisticated
organizational and leadership structure.
The overall governing authority, the Majlis
al-Shura (Consultative Council), wields all
decision-making power and directs several
subordinate functional councils. Each
functional council reports directly to the
Majlis al-Shura, which, as Hezbollah
Deputy Secretary-General Naim Qassem
wrote in his book, is "in charge of drawing
the overall vision and policies, overseeing
the general strategies for the party's
function, and taking political decisions."
U.S. assessments echo Qassem's
description. "Hezbollah has a unified
leadership structure that oversees the
organization's complementary, partially
compartmentalized elements," reads a
Congressional Research Service report.
The secretary-general, currently Nasrallah,
presides over the Majlis al-Shura and
functions as the group's leader under the
authority of the "jurist theologian"
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme
leader. Five administrative bodies,
organized around thematic responsibilities,
run Hezbollah's political, military (jihad),
parliamentary, executive, and judicial
HOUSE OVERSIGHT 028699
activities. The Majlis al-Shura considers all
elements of the group's activities, including
its political and military wings, as part of
one holistic entity.
According to Hezbollah's top officials, this
unity of purpose among the group's diverse
activities is essential to its success. "If the
military wing were separated from the
political wing, this would have
repercussions, and it would reflect on the
political scene," Qassem told a Lebanese
paper in 2000. "Hezbollah's secretary-
general is the head of the Shura Council
and also the head of the Jihad Council, and
this means that we have one leadership,
with one administration."
The Jihad Council is the functional council
underneath the Majlis al-Shura responsible
for all military matters. Qassem writes that
it "comprises those in charge of resistance
activity, be that in terms of oversight,
recruitment, training, equipment, security,
or any other resistance-related endeavors."
To accomplish its mission, the council is
divided into several smaller units in charge
of protecting the leadership and carrying
out internal and external surveillance, as
well as overseas operations. The party's
security branch is further broken down into
three subgroups: central, preventive, and
overseas security. In 2000, a dedicated
counterintelligence branch was reportedly
founded as well.
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Under this structure, Hezbollah's militia
and terrorist activities, along with its
security organ, all report to the Jihad
Council. Until he was killed, Mughniyeh
was Hezbollah's top militant commander
and reportedly led the Jihad Council
himself By some accounts, he also held a
seat on the Majlis al-Shura, which would
be typical for the party's standing military
commander.
Unlike its sister councils, however, the
Jihad Council enjoys strategic ambiguity.
Neither the majority of Hezbollah officials
nor the party's elected parliamentarians are
aware of the details of their party's covert
military and terrorist activities, which are
decided on by the most senior leadership.
According to the U.S. government, these
activities are "executed" by the leadership
of Hezbollah's military apparatus, known
as the Islamic Resistance and led by
Badreddine, and by the IJO, led by Talal
Hamiyah, and they are "overseen" by
Nasrallah.
Europe's approach to Hezbollah has been
varied. Many European governments have
resisted international efforts to designate
the organization as a terrorist group by
distinguishing between Hezbollah's
political and military wings. Britain
distinguishes among Hezbollah's terrorist
wing (the Islamic Jihad Organization),
military wing, and political wing, and the
country banned the IJO in 2000 and the
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military wing in 2008. The Netherlands,
however, designated Hezbollah a terrorist
entity in 2004 without distinguishing
between the group's political and military
wings. A 2004 Dutch intelligence report
highlighted investigations that show
"Hezbollah's political and terrorist wings
are controlled by one co-ordinating
council."
The European Union has taken action
against Hezbollah's interests in the past. In
May 2002, the European Union froze the
assets of a non-European terrorist group for
the first time by adding seven Hezbollah-
affiliated individuals, including
Mughniyeh, to its financial sanctions list
for terrorism. It did not, however, sanction
Hezbollah as an organization. On March
10, 2005, the European Parliament passed a
nonbinding resolution recognizing that
"clear evidence exists of terrorist activities
on the part of Hezbollah" and calling on the
European Council to take "all necessary
steps to curtail them."
But the necessary steps did not occur.
Instead, most European countries preferred
to make convenient distinctions between
the different parts of Hezbollah, even when
the group's own leadership does not.
Today, as European leaders consider
whether to label Hezbollah a terrorist
group, they should judge the group by the
totality of its actions. Hezbollah cannot be
HOUSE OVERSIGHT 028702
forgiven its criminal, terrorist, or militant
pursuits simply because it also engages in
political or humanitarian ones. As the
Burgas bus bombing demonstrates, the
Party of God can and has mobilized
operatives for everything from criminal
enterprises to terrorist attacks well beyond
Lebanon's borders.
And though Hezbollah is composed of
multiple committees and branches, it
operates as a single entity. Hezbollah, the
U.S. intelligence community has
determined, is "a multifaceted, disciplined
organization that combines political, social,
paramilitary, and terrorist elements" and is
one in which decisions "to resort to arms or
terrorist tactics [are] carefully calibrated."
Hezbollah's Qassem, speaking in October
2012, concurred: "We don't have a military
wing and a political one; we don't have
Hezbollah on one hand and the resistance
party on the other.... Every element of
Hezbollah, from commanders to members
as well as our various capabilities, are in
the service of the resistance, and we have
nothing but the resistance as a priority," he
said.
Maybe it is time Western leaders finally
listened to him.
Matthew Levitt directs the Stein program
on Counterterrorism and Intelligence at the
Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
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He is author of "Hizballah and the Qods
Force in Iran's Shadow War with the West"
and the forthcoming book Hezbollah: The
Global Footprint of Lebanon's Party of
God.
Article 6.
The Atlantic
A Middle-Class Paradise
in Palestine?
Armin Rosen
Feb 11 2013 -- The sole outlet to Rawabi
sits off a dizzying two-lane highway
flanked by round, scraggly hills. In this part
of the West Bank, just north of where the
Jerusalem suburbs thin into a dry, granite-
gray wilderness, the mountains seem to aid
in the illusion that Israeli and Palestinian
spheres of authority can remain perfectly,
even harmoniously separate. Arabs use the
road to get to the Palestinian-controlled
cities of Bir Zeit and Ramallah, for Jewish
Israelis, the road connects the Jerusalem
HOUSE OVERSIGHT 028704
area to settlements deep inside the northern
half of the West Bank.
Ramallah's skyline is barely discernible on
a hazy day. Ateret, a red-gabled settlement
of about 90 families that sits high above the
Rawabi junction -- a community which
would likely either be vacated or
incorporated into a Palestinian state under a
future peace agreement -- flickers in and
out of view with every delirious knot in the
road. Even a concrete pillbox looming over
the highest point along the highway is
abandoned, its connection to the territory's
oddly invisible occupying army marked
only by a tattered Israeli flag that no one
has bothered to steal or replace.
Last year was the first since 1973 in which
no Israeli citizen was killed in a terrorist
attack originating from the West Bank. As
on the newly-pacified Gaza-Israel border, a
tense quiet pervades things here, although a
bright red sign at the junction reminds one
category of motorist not to feel too
complacent. "This road leads to Area 'A'
Under the Palestinian Authority," it reads
in Arabic, Hebrew, and broken English.
"The entrance for Israeli citizens is
forbidden, dangerous to your lives and is
against the Israeli law." At the Rawabi
junction these warnings of latent danger are
almost comically off-base, partly because
of the only other marker at the turnoff: a
HOUSE OVERSIGHT 028705
light-green arrow sagging off of a nearby
post.
No one lives at the end of the road, which
is every bit as wavy and disorienting as the
adjoining highway. It empties into a scene
that seems engineered for maximum
bewilderment: three high-rise cranes,
topped with fluttering Palestinian flags,
tower over massive stone and concrete
building frames. Cement-mixers, painted
the same shade of light green as the arrow
at the turnoff and marked with the project's
logo -- a wiry oval with a cute little convex
loop at the end, like a child's drawing of a
heart that could also be a tree -- line up to
receive material from a buzzing, state-of-
the-art plant. The construction site, a
couple turns up-road of the cement factory,
is swarming with workers in green
hardhats. Spotless SUVs with the Rawabi
logo on the door speed from one side of the
site to another.
Rawabi, which will be the first Palestinian
planned city in the West Bank, runs from
the top of the mountain to the valley below,
with its highest point sitting at an elevation
slightly higher than Ateret, which is now
constantly visible. In contrast, the chaos of
Ramallah, stronghold of an insolvent and
sclerotic Palestinian Authority, feels distant
in more senses than one.
Rawabi represents something totally new --
a visionary Palestinian-directed private
HOUSE OVERSIGHT 028706
sector project, with support from both
Israeli businesses and a major Arab
government. It has the potential to shift the
conversation on the region's future on both
sides of the Green Line. It could convince
Palestinians -- and the rest of the world --
that the future of the West Bank shouldn't
be shackled to Ramallah or Jerusalem's
vacillating willingness to hash out
fundamental issues. It could prove that
there's an appetite, both among Palestinian
consumers and foreign donors, for the
creation of a social and economic existence
in the West Bank that's de-coupled,
insomuch as currently possible, from the
Middle East's tense and labyrinthine
politics.
It would also help solidify the benefits of
the current cessation in hostilities. Indeed,
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas's
progress in fostering the end of violent
resistance in the West Bank in the years
after the bloody Second Intifada, coupled
with Palestinian Prime Minister Salaam
Fayyad's widely-respected institution-
building initiative, could get a crucial
private sector assist through Rawabi's
eventual success.
And Rawabi gets at something even more
fundamental. "It touches upon all of the
core issues of control and sovereignty,"
says Robert Danin, a fellow at the Council
on Foreign Relations who, as head of the
Quartet mission in Jerusalem from 2008 to
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2010, witnessed some of the political
discussions that accompanied the project's
creation. "This could be a huge, iconic
victory for the whole strategy of building
Palestine from the bottom up rather than
trying to build it at the negotiating table,"
he says.
Its success would prove just how much
power Palestinians can, and indeed already
do, have in shaping their future. And its
failure could prove the exact opposite.
I visited Rawabi two weeks ago with a
group of national security professionals, as
part of a trip organized by the Foundation
for Defense of Democracies, a Washington,
DC-based think tank. (All of the photos in
the body of the article are mine.) We were
taken around the construction site by a
young Palestinian engineer who conveyed
the vast ambition underlying the project:
When the city is completed, she said, it will
house 45,000 people in 23 distinct
neighborhoods with innocuous, nature-
based names like "Flint," and "Hard Rock".
(Rawabi is Arabic for "Hills".) There will
be eight schools -- some of them built with
the help of the U.S. Agency for
International Development -- a "huge
park," a convention center, an 850-seat
indoor theater, and a 20,000-seat
amphitheater carved into a hillside.
Most ambitiously, there will be a
commercial center that developers hope
HOUSE OVERSIGHT 028708
will bring in between 3,000 and 5,000
permanent jobs within the next five years --
hopefully, we were told, in the
informational technology sector (an
aspiration that might imply a certain
cooperation with the burgeoning tech
industry on the other side of the Green
Line). The engineer said that Rawabi had
already created 3,000 construction jobs for
West Bank Palestinians. The city is
Palestinian-designed and Palestinian-built -
- making the surfeit of Qatari flags at the
construction site somewhat puzzling at
first. And while the project does not
purchase materials from Jewish settlements
in the West Bank, the engineer was hardly
shy in explaining that Rawabi would add
an estimated $85 million to the Israeli
economy.
As we drove around the construction site,
the engineer's talk made few demands on
the imagination. The sheer scale of the
project is already obvious. Within the next
18 months, the first phase, which includes
six neighborhoods, a mosque, the
amphitheater, and two-thirds of the city's
commercial center, will be complete, and
3,000 people are scheduled will move into
Rawabi by the end of 2013. Apartment
blocks built of a local white stone --
"Rawabi stone," the engineer called it -- are
already rising out of a network of
concentric ring-roads centered on the top of
the hill. Most of these roads have already
HOUSE OVERSIGHT 028709
been paved, and there are terraced retaining
walls, built out of thick stacks of local
sandstone, running all the way to the
bottom of the valley. No bleachers have
been installed in the amphitheater yet, but
it's fairly far along, with the future seating
area fanning into a wide notch in the
mountainside. There are attractive stone
signs bearing the stylized Arabic names of
neighborhoods that haven't been built yet.
The future commercial center is also well
on its way to completion. Situated on a
shelf slightly below the summit of the hill,
the complex of office buildings, hotels,
theaters, and a convention center will
huddle around a broad outdoor plaza,
which will be connected to the lower
neighborhoods through a wide flight of
stairs. The stairs, plaza, and central
buildings are already past their skeletal
phase, and the high-rise apartments ringing
the city center look like they're almost
complete. For now, the commercial core is
a jumble of dust and brutal concrete
surfaces, but in the future, someone
lingering in the cafés near the staircase will
enjoy phenomenal views of the rugged hill
country, and perhaps even glimpses of the
Jordan River Valley on a clear day.
It is still possible to remain unconvinced of
Rawabi's reality -- doubtful as to whether
that café will ever be built, or whether any
middle class-Palestinian desirous of a
generic middle class existence will ever
HOUSE OVERSIGHT 028710
linger there. There's abundant reason for
skepticism. The project's future depends on
the Israeli authorities' willingness to allow
for the construction of access roads in
"Area C," or West Bank territory under the
direct control of Israel. The sole existing
route into the city only exists because the
Israeli government, after years of
bureaucratic and high-level diplomatic
wrangling, granted Rawabi's developers a
permit for a "temporary" road. Technically,
they will have to destroy the road when the
current permission expires. And even if the
Israelis agree to make the road permanent,
one two-lane route is hardly adequate for a
city of 45,000 people. Developers claim it
isn't even adequate to the needs of the
current construction site.
Water is another challenge. Negotiations
with Israel and the Palestinian Water
Authority are ongoing, and developers say
they have held in excess of 100 meetings
with Israeli officials on water-related issues
alone. Developers admit that they aren't
sure where the city's water resources will
eventually come from, and the construction
site only got running water two months
ago.
And they'll admit that attracting jobs to the
site is an even bigger challenge than Israel's
West Bank regime. Rawabi isn't meant to
be a bedroom community of Ramallah. It's
meant to be a self-contained city, with
office and retail space. The jobs haven't
HOUSE OVERSIGHT 028711
quite materialized yet (although the
developers have a slight head start:
between 200 and 300 call center-type jobs
currently based in Ramallah are scheduled
to move into Rawabi when the first phase
of construction is complete). If the political
or security situation seriously deteriorates -
- if the checkpoints return, if the Israelis are
forced to re-occupy urban areas ceded to
the Palestinian Authority under the Oslo
Accords, as happened during the Second
Intifada; if Hamas wages a violent takeover
of the Palestinian government -- all bets are
off The developers don't seem to be
bothered by those possibilities right now.
At the showroom, built at the very top of
the hill, the future is nothing but bright.
I chatted with another site engineer as we
walked through a scale-model mock-up of
a typical Rawabian street, where happy
families in western dress waved from little
video screens inset in plastic apartment
windows. I asked her about the Qatari flags
I had seen around the construction site.
Qatar's state investment fund is footing two
thirds of the nearly $1 billion project bill,
she said. "This is the biggest investment in
the history of Palestine," she explained as
we stepped over a fake valley in the next
room, walking past a mock-up of a
stunning hilltop view contained inside a
mock-up of a future apartment suite. The
Rawabians will apparently own large flat-
screen TVs and stylish coffee tables, and
HOUSE OVERSIGHT 028712
their living spaces will be kept mercilessly
clean.
What, of that $1 billion investment, was
going to Israel, I asked? Israeli companies
were providing cement powder and sand,
she said, and the project had consulted with
"Israeli experts." "In some cases, you have
to do that," she said, alluding to the
comparative difficulty of importing
building materials through neighboring
Jordan. In other words, working with the
Israelis was a necessary business decision
for a project this large and complex.
The fake street, fake valley, fake
apartment-display ended in a pleasant sky-
lit lobby, where representatives of the
Cairo Amman Bank, Arab Islamic Bank,
and Arab Bank sat in logoed glass cubicles,
available to discuss financing for future
purchases. And for the still-skeptical,
there's a six-minute 3-D movie, where the
city appears in its completed glory -- a
place where families picnic, men in
business dress greet each other amid
bustling plazas, and fireworks crest over
soaring apartment towers topped with solar
panels. The architecture is tasteful. These
aren't dachas plunked on fake islands off
the coast of Dubai. It's the kind of place
where I, or just about anyone in the world
with middle or even upper-middle class
aspirations, would want to live. And it
looked weirdly familiar.
HOUSE OVERSIGHT 028713
The group had a chance to visit with
Bashar Masri, the Nablus-born founder and
CEO of Massar International, the
Palestinian conglomerate financing a third
of Rawabi. Massar and Qatar Diar, the real
estate investment arm of the government of
Qatar's sovereign wealth fund, jointly
created Bayti Real Estate Investment
Company -- Palestine to build and market
Rawabi. But if two-thirds of the project's
money is coming from Qatar, the vision
behind Rawabi is Masri's.
Massar owns a private equity fund that
invests in Palestinian agriculture and
natural gas distribution. It runs travel
agencies in Jordan and brokerage firms in
Serbia. Massar invests in Harvest Export,
which sells Palestinian produce to
consumers in Russia and Western Europe --
as well as in Israel. Two years ago, Masri
made headlines when he attempted to
purchase a bankrupt Jewish housing
development in East Jerusalem. He helped
create an online trading and brokerage
platform for Palestine's stock exchange.
Masri has lived outside of Palestine for
periods of his life, and is, by all accounts,
largely untainted by connections to the
PA's notoriously rent-seeking inner circle.
He's a trim middle-aged man, smartly-
dressed, friendly and approachable. There
seemed no more appropriate a place to talk
to him one-on-one than on a wide terrace
overlooking the construction site, with
HOUSE OVERSIGHT 028714
hills, valleys, and rising apartment blocks --
the future he was in the process of building
-- stretched out in front of him.
"On a good, clear day, you can see Tel
Aviv, Ashdod, and Ashkelon," he told me.
"One-third of Palestine and Israel." Rawabi
is in the second-largest, yet most sparsely-
populated Area A in the West Bank -- from
the terrace, which faces away from Ateret,
you can see expanses of mostly-empty
hills. Perhaps in Masri's mind, they are
awaiting Rawabis of their own. When I
returned to Washington, I asked him in a
phone interview if he viewed his project as
the first of many such planned cities in
Palestine. "I always say our success is
measured not by how many homes we sell.
It is measured when a second Rawabi is
established," he told me.
Standing on the terrace, I asked him if his
willingness to undertake such a massive
project reflected any optimism about the
coming years -- no one invests this much
time, money, and energy into something if
they expect war is on the horizon. "This
project is built for today's politics," he
replied. "If it gets a little worse, or a little
better -- fine. If it gets really bad, we're in
trouble. If it doesn't, then great. We're not
waiting on a breakthrough."
He estimated that Israeli obstruction had
delayed the project by a year and a half
The bureaucratic inertia could continue:
HOUSE OVERSIGHT 028715
For instance, developers were surprised to
find out that, by a quirk in the West Bank's
notoriously Byzantine and palimpsestic
legal codes, they required the approval of a
joint Israeli-Palestinian water commission
created through the Oslo Accords to build a
sewage treatment plant in an Area A,
approval that they recently received.
There's also the still-unresolved matter of
the access road. But thus far, Rawabi had
flourished in spite of delays and
inconveniences.
Could it survive its isolation, though --
could this hilltop off of a two-lane highway
get enough water and electricity to support
45,000 people living at a middle class
standard? "There is nothing here at all.
We're out in the boondocks," he conceded.
"We're building everything from scratch."
One needed only to glance at the busy
construction site below to understand that
Masri considers this a point of pride, far
from a potential death-sentence for his
project.
I asked Masri about something that had
jumped out at me during the 3-D video.
The finished Rawabi, I'd noted, had the
same terraced garden parks, stoic, modular
apartment design, and concentric hilltop
roads that I had seen in Talpiyot Misrach, a
new neighborhood on the fringes of West
Jerusalem. His city looked very, well,
Israeli.
HOUSE OVERSIGHT 028716
"This place is influenced by Reston,
Virginia," he said -- Masri is a Virginia
Tech alumnus, and had lived in the
Washington, DC area earlier in life. It was,
he said, influenced by planned suburbs
outside of Cairo. "And it's influenced by
Modi'in," he added, explaining that the
site's engineers and designers (who were
entirely Palestinian, we had been told
earlier), had traveled to the Israeli city,
which is built around similar topography,
for inspiration.
Palestinians have long understood that a
western-style standard of living was
possible in their part of the world. They
knew that places like Rawabi already
existed minutes from their own homes, but
didn't think that the quality of life
epitomized by hilltop settlements and cities
in Israel -- places they weren't allowed to
visit without an official permit from the
military -- was accessible to them.
During our phone interview, Masri talked
about the astonishment that Palestinians
feel when they visit the construction site.
"When [Palestinians] come to Rawabi, and
they go through the showroom and they see
what we have planned for them, and they
see it actually being built, they say, 'Wow,
this can't be for us. This is not for us. This
is too high of a standard for us because we
are supposed to live miserably under the
occupation'. Then they come to the other
HOUSE OVERSIGHT 028717
side of the showroom and see the city being
built, and reality starts sinking in."
It's a type of living closely associated with
the Palestinians' neighbors in Israel. "They
know very well that just a 20-minute drive
away, there's a community with a much
higher standard of living. And that
community happened to be one
representing the occupier, quote-unquote
the 'enemy.' But they would love to live
like that. And that's why when they come
to Rawabi some of them don't believe this
is for them initially. The first thing that
goes through their mind is that this could
be for the Israelis."
But it is for them. Rawabi's significance
could lie in something more mundane than
basic issues of sovereignty and control in
the West Bank. It lies in the common,
human desire -- powerful on either side of
the Green Line -- for a comfortable and
dignified existence.
In some quarters, this idea of working
within the present and less-than-ideal
political and economic framework to
achieve this goal is nothing short of
inflammatory. The U.S.-based, anti-peace
process website Electronic Intifada has
smeared Masri as an Israeli collaborator,
and there have been scattered accusations
that the project actually legitimizes Israeli
control over the West Bank.
HOUSE OVERSIGHT 028718
Danin says that Masri is faced with a
difficult balancing act. "On the one hand
you're denying the occupation, and you're
saying you do not accept its legitimacy," he
says. "But that doesn't mean you won't
work with Israel in order to improve the
Palestinian situation with the goal of
removing the occupation. That's a difficult
message to convey successfully."
Masri rejects the notion that he abetting a
problematic status quo. "The vast majority
of Palestinians understand and know
reality," he said. "There is no home in
Palestine without Israeli cement and parts.
Every construction project in Palestine
must have components from Israel. So it's
not like I'm doing something different."
Of course, he doesn't like that Israel has so
much control over Palestinian imports, and
the West Bank economy in general. "This
is the occupation," he said. "I'm not happy
about that and that's why we strive for a
state of our own." But he likened
boycotting Israeli products to boycotting
products from the United Kingdom, the
United States, or other countries supportive
of Israel -- something he wouldn't consider.
The only people he won't buy from are the
West Bank settlers.
Luckily, Masri's vision has the backing of a
powerful regional government -- one that
does not officially recognize Israel, and
whose actions have often had the effect of
HOUSE OVERSIGHT 028719
strengthening some of the Jewish State's
sworn enemies.
The Gulf kingdom of Qatar has done more
than simply buy into the Rawabi paradigm:
It's also funding two-thirds of the project,
to the tune of over $600 million. This is
enough money to single-handedly finance
the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority
-- which is effectively broke, thanks to
penalties imposed by the Israeli and U.S.
governments after Mahmoud Abbas's
successful push for a U.N. General
Assembly vote on Palestinian U.N.
membership, and a freeze in financial aid
from Gulf State donors, most notably Saudi
Arabia -- for the better part of a year.
Instead, the Qataris have not only bypassed
the PA, but channeled money into a project
that seems to prove the PA's uselessness.
"It's like an island inside the traditional
infrastructure of the PA," says Jonathan
Schanzer, vice president of research at the
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
and author of a book on Palestinian internal
politics. "It shows everyone what you can
do if you don't go through the PA. The PA
receives $600 million a year [in foreign
aid] and they have not done something like
this."
Masri says that the leadership of the PA has
been fully supportive, but that Rawabi has
been hurt by the Palestinian government's
lack of capacity. "We should not be
HOUSE OVERSIGHT 028720
building public schools. We should not be
building a waste water treatment plant or
waste water networks or water reservoirs,"
he told me. "Unfortunately we have to do
that because the Palestinian Authority does
not have the funding and the donors let [the
PA] down."
There might be a political calculation
behind Qatar's decision to throw an amount
of money equivalent to two years of U.S.
financial aid to the PA behind a single
private-sector figure like Masri. Qatar
recently announced plans to invest nearly
$400 million in the Hamas-controlled Gaza
Strip, and in October of 2012, Qatari Emir
Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani
became the first head of state to visit the
Strip  after the Islamist militant group's
2007 takeover. Hamas politburo chief
Khaled Meshaal lives in Doha, and Qatar
Diar is financing a major development in
Sudan, whose cash-strapped government
enjoys close relations with Iran, and has
facilitated the transfer of long-range
rockets to Hamas. In short, Qatar supports
an E.U. and U.S. listed terrorist
organization bitterly opposed to both Israel
and the current PA leadership. And it also
has no problem investing in Rawabi.
According to Kamran Bokhari, vice
president of Middle Eastern and South
Asian affairs for Stratfor, Qatari support for
Hamas is part of the sheikhdom's larger,
post-Arab Spring strategy of siding with
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the Middle East's Islamists, and specifically
the Muslim brotherhood, whom the Qataris
view as the region's rising power. "The
Qatari strategy is that the situation has
changed, and we need to fend for ourselves
and ensure that the regional anarchy is not
going to impact us," says Bokhari. The
Qatari investment in Rawabi -- which feeds
an $85 million investment in the Israeli
economy, and which could not have
happened without some degree of official
Israeli approval -- is an example of this
larger geopolitical strategy, which is driven
more by perceived self-interest than by an
ideological affinity for political Islam.
"Investments in the region are about the
return on political influence," adds Gregory
Gause, a professor at the University of
Vermont and a non-resident senior fellow
at the Brookings Institution-Doha. He
noted the presence of a large American
airbase in Qatar, and the country's close
relations with the United States.
In the Palestinian territories, as in the
broader region, the Qataris are supporting
secular and religious forces in a way that
will maximize their influence and keep the
regional balance as favorable for them as
possible. In a sense, the same strategic
calculus that convinces Qatar to support
Hamas allows them to cooperate with Israel
and the West Bank private sector as well.
HOUSE OVERSIGHT 028722
"I think Qatar is going by the ground
reality," says Bokhari. "Fatah, the ruling
faction of the PA, is essentially tanking. It's
really in a state of decline because of
corruption and charges of embezzlement.
It's got an aging leadership. There's no
dynamism left in the group. There's a lot of
factionalism. It's almost like an oligarchy."
Rawabi could be Qatar's way of
encouraging the currently-calm status quo
in the West Bank, but without obviously
upgrading their ties to Israel, or throwing
their money behind a political
establishment that they don't fully trust.
"On one end they need to make sure Fatah
does not completely collapse or weaken to
the point where they're no longer coherent,"
says Bokhari, "and Hamas needs to be
shaped and contained and shepherded in a
way that it doesn't grow into anything
larger."
Though there are politics underlying
Qatar's investment in Rawabi, it is still,
inevitably, a financial decision. "You have
serious people who have a lot at risk here,"
Danin says. "Their goal is not primarily to
make a political point. Their goal is to
recoup their investment and make some
money." Even resource-rich Qatar, which
wants to diversity its holdings in order to
hedge against long-term shifts in the oil
and natural gas market, cares whether its
investment choices pay off
HOUSE OVERSIGHT 028723
Danin believes that Rawabi's Palestinian
and Qatari investors made a wise decision.
Housing in Ramallah is expensive, and
Danin says that there is a sizable and
highly-educated Palestinian middle class in
need of an alternative to the West Bank's
de-facto capital. He expressed little doubt
when I asked him if the West Bank
economy could support Rawabi. "This is a
Palestinian national project," he said. "It is
the best of what is possible in that it's
private sector-led, and it's profit-making
led."
And it has supporters in high places. When
President Barack Obama met with Israeli
officials in Washington in September of
2010, Rawabi was on the agenda.
From one perspective, Rawabi is a historic
investment in Palestine, as well as an
unusually open point of cooperation
between Israel and an Arab government. It
could improve the lives of Palestinians,
while convincing Israelis that they have
nothing to fear from their neighbors'
prosperity. But any attempts to change
the status quo in the West Bank are fraught
with difficulties.
There's Israeli bureaucracy to overcome.
"In Israel, if the Minister of Defense says I
want something, it's not that the system
thwarts it. But the system is so
decentralized that ultimately it takes a lot
of steps to get it translated into action,"
HOUSE OVERSIGHT 028724
says Danin. Israeli officials are positively
disposed towards Rawabi, but it's still taken
years to resolve sovereignty and
governance issues around necessities like
water, and a single access road. Such
Israeli inertia was apparently at the heart of
Obama's concerns back in 2010, and
sources say that the president has discussed
the issue of the access road with Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on
multiple occasions.
Back in Washington, I asked Masri if he
believed the Israelis understood the
potential importance of Rawabi. "I really
don't know," he said. "Their statements are
neutral to positive. But their actions are
neutral to negative."
And then there's the larger inertia. What
meaning does a place like Rawabi have if it
sits in the middle of a still-unresolved
conflict, or if Palestinian economic self-
improvement stands in contrast to an all-
pervading political stasis -- or even
political backsliding? Today, Rawabi is
significant because of its novelty. But if
there's a breakthrough in the Israeli-
Palestinian peace process, perhaps enabled
by a growing West Bank economy and a
permanent end in terrorism, it could take on
an importance much larger than itself
On the drive out of the valley, where the
highway swerves past the pillbox with the
HOUSE OVERSIGHT 028725
beaten Israeli flag and past the turnoff for
Ateret, the picture is still mixed.
Armin Rosen writes for and produces The
Atlantic's International Channel.
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