Arab News Blog

AP – Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Friday that the Mideast peace process will get back on track next week, though not the U.S.-brokered direct talks involving Israeli and Palestinians that the Obama administration wants to see.

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Laura Rosen’ on Aaron Miller/ here

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AP – Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Friday delivered a stinging rebuke to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for his government’s announcement this week of new Jewish housing in east Jerusalem, calling it “a deeply negative signal” for the Mideast peace process and ties with the U.S.

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Last week, there was considerable fuss in much of the U.S. media because, just a couple of days after the Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Bill Burns, visited Damascus and announced that after a five-year absence Washington would finally be returning an ambassador to Syria, President Bashar al-Asad turned to hosting some other political figures important to him, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and the heads of Hamas and Hizbullah.

Various U.S. commentators (many of whom were anyway just primed to pounce on anything the Obama administration does) became apoplectic in their fury, arguing that Asad’s meetings with his other allies just “proved” that Burns, Secretary Clinton, and Pres. Obama had all been taken royally for a ride.

So I’m glad that we can now read the calm voices of Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett on the subject. The Leveretts were actually in Damascus, and had a meeting there with Pres. Asad, shortly before Aasad’s meeting with Ahmadinejad and the rest of the Jabhat al-Mumana’a (though maybe I should find a better name for the Jabha… That one, which means “Blocking Front” is very Bush-era-ish… Anyway, I guess readers will know whom I refer to.)

The Leveretts:

A week before Ahmadinejad’s arrival in Damascus, we had our own conversation with President Assad—a conversation that came one day after… William Burns met with the Syrian leader. In our session with him, Assad expressed satisfaction over his meeting with Undersecretary Burns. However, Assad also made clear that Syria’s relations with Iran, as well as its ties to Hizballah and HAMAS, are not on the table.

They note that, also shortly before Ahmadinejad’s visit to Damascus, Hillary Clinton had told the Senate Appropriations Foreign Operations subcommittee that,

“We have laid out for the Syrians the need for greater cooperation with respect to Iraq, the end to interference in Lebanon and the transport or provision of weapons to Hezbollah, a resumption of the Israeli/Syrian track on the peace process which had been proceeding through the offices of the Turks last years, and generally to begin to move away from the relationship with Iran which is so deeply troubling to the region as well as to the United States.”

So, there goes Hillary, in the fine nanny-ish tradition established by Condi Rice before her, of trying to publicly dictate to other sovereign governments what their policies should be.

Asad’s laconic response was to say,

“We must have understood Clinton wrong because of bad translation or our limited understanding… I find it strange that they [Americans] talks about Middle East stability and peace and the other beautiful principles and call for two countries to move away from each other.”

I do think that Clinton (like everyone else from both party leaderships here in the U.S.) has a pronounced and very worrying tendency to continue to see every actor in the Middle East as being “either with us or against us” on the question that continues to preoccupy most of official Washington, that of Israel vs. Iran.

But matters aren’t as simple as that in the region, any more. At least two very significant actors in the region can no longer be clearly categorized as being in either the “pro-Iranian” or “pro-Israel/western” camp. They are Turkey and Saudi Arabia, both of which have many close ties to the west as such, but a lot of reservations about Israel; and both of which believe that negotiating in good faith with Iran is greatly preferable to continuing to saber-rattle and escalate the tensions against it.

Significantly, both these governments now have good relations with Syria. In the case of Turkey, these relations are of some years’ standing at this point. In the case of Saudi Arabia, they are more recent, dating from the landmark visit that King Abdullah made to Damascus last year. Prior to that, for several years– and most especially since the February 2005 assassination of Rafiq Hariri, which has been widely but not categorically blamed on Syria– Riyadh’s relations with Damascus were extremely hostile. (Though prior to that, too, the present Saudi King, Abdullah, also had a long history of friendliness to Syria’s rulers; so go figure that.)

All of this provides some background for the judgment the Leveretts make in their blog post about their meeting with Asad, that,

the perceived value in Damascus of strategic realignment with the United States through a carefully conditioned peace deal with Israel is slowly declining as America’s hegemonic standing and influence erode.

They go on to write,

Certainly, the Syrian leadership was relieved by President George W. Bush’s departure from office and his replacement by President Obama. But, with a right-leaning coalition headed by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in power in Israel, expectations in Damascus for what Syria would see as major improvements in America’s Middle East policy are not high. And, as President Assad noted to us, poor policy choices in the Middle East by the United States over the last decade have created “vacuums” which “others [Iran and Turkey] filled”. (In this context, Assad argued that Iran’s evolving regional role does not represent “new ambitions” on Tehran’s part.) This has expanded Syria’s strategic optionality. In this context, Assad underscored that the rise of Iran and Turkey to new levels of regional influence has not come at Syria’s expense; rather, all three states have been able to improve their own relations and bolster their regional influence.

This is not to say that Hafiz al-Assad’s preferred strategic option of realignment toward the West through a “principled” peace with Israel does not remain deeply attractive to his son and successor. But, the longer that Damascus must wait for the United States to deliver on its end of the peace process, the more time that Bashar and his advisers have to internalize what they see as the reality of America’s slow decline. And that has a palpable effect on the price they are willing to pay for realizing Hafiz al-Assad’s preferred strategic option.

I see that the well-informed Syrian analyst Sami Moubayed also focuses a little on King Abullah’s role in this recent article on Syria’s diplomacy.

I’m not quite sure how Moubayed manages the feat of “reading” King Abdullah’s mind… But what he writes here is nonetheless very interesting:

King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia shares this view [that Syrian-Iranian relations are in the best interest of the international community, and should be seen as a blessing in disguise for the United States], believing that Syria can indeed walk the tightrope between the so-called moderate and radical camps in the Middle East, helping influence and moderate the behaviour of Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran. Syria has repeatedly used its influence with these players in meetings like the ones that just took place in Damascus (which perhaps were not as high profile) to get Hamas to accept the Arab Peace Initiative, for example, or to get Hezbollah more involved in the political process in Lebanon. In Iran, Syria used its influence to free 17 British sailors captured in 2007, as well as a French prisoner in the summer of 2009. Syria, after all, doesn’t have a history of anti-Americanism, and has proven since 1990 that it is a credible peace partner, with whom the West can do business.

The Damascus Summit [with Ahmadinejad, Nasrallah, and Meshaal] by no means indicates that engagement has come to an end between Syria and the US. Far from it; the meeting is a reminder of how helpful Syria can be in dealing with these non-state players. Nevertheless, it sends another strong message: Think twice before waging another war on Lebanon, because neither Syria nor Iran will allow it. Rather than escalate the conflict, the tripartite meeting in Damascus actually forced Israel to recalculate, thereby minimising the chances of war next summer. The leaders assembled in Damascus are clearly very confident of their abilities, and feel that neither Israel nor the US can deal with them as they have in the past. Much has changed since Obama came to power in 2009, but much remains the same, given that the Syria-Iran-Hezbollah alliance has outlived five US administrations since that of Ronald Reagan, and will likely outlive the Obama administration as well. Persuading the US to pressure Israel into seeking peace is high on Syria’s agenda, and this explains the recent Damascus Summit.

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AP/ here

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I don’t know if the Cirque du Soleil is accepting new applicants for starring roles, but Hillary Clinton certainly seems to have been going through great contortions in the arguments she’s been trying to make about Iran in recent days.

In the “Townterview” (!) that she held in Qatar yesterday, she was very evidently trying to build a case for U.S. intervention– quite possibly, including forced regime change– in Iran, based on the allegedly anti-democratic nature of recent developments in that country.

This was a supplement to the arguments the U.S. government has made for many years now, that it must “keep on the table” the “option” of launching a war against Iran based on the Tehran government’s alleged violations of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT.)

Sound familiar?

Of course it is. This kind of slippery bait-and-switch regarding the casus belli on the basis of which Washington plans to launch a war of aggression against another sovereign country is exactly what we saw from George W. Bush (and his dreadful poodle, Tony Blair), in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq.

Then, as now, when it seemed that the arguments about the alleged “necessity” of going to war based solely on the arguments made about WMDs seemed unconvincing to many around the world (including the U.S.’s own citizens), the U.S. administration used feats of rhetorical legerdemain to try to claim that, well, just in case the WMDs arguments weren’t convincing enough, well then, how about those arguments concerning democratization and human rights?

What did Hillary actually say in Qatar?

She said,

on the nuclear front we see Iran being exposed for having a secret facility at Qom. We see Iran refusing an offer from Russia, the United States, and France to help it get the enriched uranium it needed to run something called the Tehran Research Reactor, which makes medical isotopes, something that we are willing to support Iran to do, for medical purposes. We see the president of Iran ordering the nuclear program to do its own enriching, and to begin to move toward the level of enrichment that certainly is troubling to us, because of what it well could be, with respect to nuclear weapons. We hear a lot of very negative language coming out of Iran.

And we are deeply concerned about the way Iran is treating its own people, and the way that it has executed demonstrators, imprisoned hundreds and hundreds of people whose only offense was peacefully protesting the outcome of the elections. Sitting here in this extraordinary campus, where you are encouraged to think and speak freely, it is hard to imagine what it must be like now to a young person in Iran, who wishes to have the same opportunities.

So, we are still hoping that Iran will decide to forgo any nuclear ambitions for nuclear weapons, and begin to respect its own people more on a daily basis, provide opportunities that the young students of Iran deserve to have for their future. But we cannot just keep hoping for that. We have to work to take action to try to convince the Iranian government not to pursue nuclear weapons.

Notice the mishmash of arguments she was using there; and the way she tried to weave them together into one single fabric that would be stronger than either of its components would be, separately.

Notice the many strong parallels with the way GWB and Blair worked extra-hard in the weeks leading up to March 19, 2003, to create a whole thick fabric of different casi belli against Iraq. Or, to use a better metaphor, how they created an entire smorgasbord of different reasons to launch a war just in case one of the options should turn out not, on its own, to be convincing enough.

But then, notice these two incredible contradictions/ironies in Hillary Clinton’s latest resort to the smorgasbord approach:

1. The “description” she gave in Qatar of the way the Obama administration sees current political developments in Iran was this:
We see that the Government of Iran, the supreme leader, the president, the parliament, is being supplanted, and that Iran is moving toward a military dictatorship [run by the revolutionary Guards].

So presumably, the only honorable way forward for a lover of democracy would be to defend the Supreme Leader, the president, and parliament against this onslaught??

2. The location where she gave this address. Qatar, after all, may have many of the appurtenances of an ultra-”modern” state in the world, with conference centers, Brookings Institution offices, etc etc. But it is notably not a country whose citizens enjoy much political freedom at all. Even the neoliberal U.S. organization Freedom House recognizes this, giving Qatar a 6-5 ranking this year on its assessment of political rights and civil liberties, in which ’7′ is the worst possible’ and ’1′ is the best possible.

Freedom House gave Iran a 6-6 assessment this year. Saudi Arabia, the country Sec. Clinton visited right after Qatar, got a 7-6. So who’s being a little misleading here?

(Also, she seems completely unaware that, ever since the viciously anti-democratic campaign Washington waged against the elected Palestinian leadership in 2006, its judgments on all matters of democracy and political accountability in the Middle East are themselves extremely suspect.)

Hillary’s contortions on this issue are important. They are a crucial part of a broad, AIPAC-fueled campaign that the Obama administration is now ramping up, to try to win public support in the U.S. and further afield for a U.S. war of forced regime change against Iran.

We have to call this campaign for what it is, and all work together to halt it in its tracks.

From this point of view, the kinds of questions that Clinton got from her host in the Qatar “townterview”, Al-Jazeera’s Abder-Rahim Foukara, and from most of her other questioners there, showed that her anti-Iranian campaign wasn’t winning many converts at all.

Foukara and many of the questioners from the floor wanted to ask her about Israel’s nuclear arsenal (a question that she ducked and wove to avoid giving a straight answer to.) They wanted to ask her about Washington’s policies on a broad range of Palestinian rights issues. (More ducking and weaving.) And they notably unswayed by her arguments over Iran.

It was a similar story in the remarks Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, made during the joint press appearance the two of them had in Riyadh, later in the day.

According to the U.S. State department, on Palestine Saud said,

Within the framework of considering regional and international issues, the peace process received particular attention… The Kingdom believes in the importance of launching the peace process comprehensively to treat all the main issues of the conflict simultaneously, according to specific terms of reference and a clear-cut time schedule taking into account that the step-by-step policy and the confidence-building (inaudible) strategy have failed to accomplish their objectives. This is mostly evidenced by the current Israeli Government’s refusal to resume negotiations starting from the negotiations steps that were taken by the previous government.

And on the nuclear weapons question he said,

Our talks also considered the Iranian nuclear issue. The Kingdom reiterates its support of the P-1+5 or the 1+5 group to solve the crisis peacefully through dialogue, and we call for a continuation of those efforts. We also call upon Iran to respond to these efforts to remove regional and international suspicions towards its nuclear program…

The Kingdom also stresses the importance of regional and international efforts being focused on having the Middle East and the Gulf region being totally free from all weapons of mass destruction, notably nuclear weapons. It also stresses the criteria that the standards must apply to all states in the region without exception, including Israel’s nuclear program. History testifies that any weapon that enter the region has been used.

It’s really a pity that the WaPo’s's Glenn Kessler spent so little time in the despatches he published today actually exploring and explaining the Saudi Foreign Minister’s positions on these matters, and ways too much time drooling over the lavishness of the dinner King Abdullah laid on for Sec. Clinton.

Including in this gem of out-of-place reporting: “The food selection was worthy of an elaborate wedding, a Hollywood opening or a fancy bar mitzvah.”

In this piece of more political reporting, I think Kessler quite possibly misinterpreted what Prince Saud said about China and its role in the whole diplomatic effort over Iran.

In the State Department transcript of Saud’s remarks (which is all I can find, since they don’t appear to have been covered by the Saudi Press Agency), a questioner asked this of him:

there’s been a lot of talk about the role that Saudi Arabia could play by reassuring the Chinese that it will guarantee a reliable supply of oil in the event that there were some disruptions in the global oil supply. I wonder whether you have conveyed that message to the Chinese Government. And if you haven’t conveyed it, do you think it makes sense for Saudi Arabia to take that step?

And he replied,

Saudi Arabia and its relations with China, of course, are a close relationship, and especially the economic sphere (inaudible) produces of oil that is exported to China. But it is not a matter of just Saudi Arabia and China; we have to come with a real plan to prevent the proliferation of atomic weapons in the region. This is why we put our proposal that the region be free, declared free of atomic weapons and weapons of mass destruction. We believe that is the right approach…

I am sure the Chinese carry their responsibility as one of the five permanent members of the United Nations very seriously and they need no suggestion from Saudi Arabia to do what they ought to do according to their responsibility.

To me, this looks most like a polite brush-off to the whole idea– which was peddled by ‘Washington insiders’ quite heavily in the lead-up to Hillary’s trip– that strongarming China would be something Saudi Arabia could contribute to the anti-Iran campaign. Saud was quite right to note that China, “need[s] no suggestion from Saudi Arabia to do what they ought to do according to their responsibility.”

Kessler, however, interpreted Saud’s reply as signaling “impatience with China’s reluctance to embrace tough action against Tehran.” I’m not sure it was signaling that, at all.

I need to underline that the lousy, lazy, and Washington-bubble-bound way that Kessler and other MSM journos report on attitudes in the Arab world just feeds into the idea that one hears a lot here, namely that Iran’s Arab neighbors really “want” the U.S. to become assertive against Iran. (Also, that they really don’t give a damn about Palestine.)

It ain’t so. And a close reading of Prince Saud’s very polite comments, or of the interactions with the townterview participants in Qatar would clearly indicate that.

But Kessler and the rest of the MSM journos seem not to have learned anything from the history of the past years. They never heard a Washington war-drum that they didn’t want to help beat.

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There’s been quite a bit of talk in the conference here about the way that George Mitchell has either been sidelined or has for other reasons faded from the scene. Of course, it’s not just Mitchell that has been sidelined, it’s the whole justice-based and vigorous U.S. pursuit of peace that his appointment back in January 2009 seemed to promise.

So today the NYT tells us that Sec. Clinton and three of her top aides are fanning out to the Middle East in a concerted campaign to–

…make a push for Palestinian-Israeli peace? No!

Rather, they’re trekking out to try to line regional leaders up behind the latest step in the (AIPAC- and Likud-driven) campaign to ratchet the pressure up inexorably against Iran.

And who are these envoys?

Well, there’s Hillary herself, who’s going to Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

Then, there’s her Under-Secretary for political affairs, Bill Burns, who’s going to Syria.

And there are her two Deputy Secretaries, for Policy and Administration… James Steinberg (Policy) will be going to Israel, and Jacob Lew (Administration) will be going to Israel, Egypt, and Jordan.

And when was the last time we heard any major news about George Mitchell? (Yawn.)

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AP – Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Thursday that former British Prime Minister Tony Blair is going to play a bigger role in efforts to get Israel and the Palestinians back to peace talks by intensifying his partnership with special U.S. Mideast envoy George Mitchell.

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Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas says he wants to stand down and he declines to run in the upcoming Palestine Authority elections. The decision came in the wake of the US failure to convince the Israelis to halt colonization of the West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem. It also followed a series of embarrassing flip-flops by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who praised hard line right wing PM Netanyahu for his efforts in favor of the peace process. Even for a diplomatic statement, this tack is is a little embarrassing in its obsequiousness toward Netanyahu, who has undermined the peace process at every turn and rejects out of hand the US demand that he freeze settlements. Reactions of Arab allies of the US were sharp.

The USG Open Source Center paraphrase an article in al-Ray (Jordan) reacting to the Obama administration letting Netanyahu off the hook with regard to settling Jews in East Jerusalem (which often means expelling Palestinians from their homes):

‘Amman Al-Ra’y in Arabic, a Jordanian daily of widest circulation; partially owned by the government, publishes an article by columnist and former Jordanian information minister Salih al-Qallab on page 48, in which Al-Qallab first quotes the statements made by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Morocco about the partial freeze of settlement activity [i.e. not frozen in Jerusalem.] Al-Qallab says that the Americans should understand that “no Palestinian official, either now or in the future, can enter into any negotiations while Jerusalem is excluded from these negotiations, especially since it is no longer possible to repeat the previous formulas of negotiation. The aim this time is the final-status issues, which have been delayed for more than 15 years and cannot be delayed now for a single emoment.” Al-Qallab adds: “What the Americans do not know while dealing with this extremely sensitive issue is that Palestine, for the Arabs and Muslims, is Jerusalem, and that Jerusalem is the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. This is what makes Mahmud Abbas adopt this hard-line stand.” ‘

Aljazeera English reports on Israeli confiscation of Palestinians’ homes. The evictions are carried out with the full cooperation and encouragement of the Israeli government.

Aljazeera English reports on Mahmoud Abbas’s refusal to run for the presidency of the Palestine Authority

in 2010.

Aljazeera English points out that the stance of Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration, that the Palestinians had to negotiate with the Israelis while the Israelis were stealing their land, lead Abbas to step down.

The USG Open Source Center translated remarks of chief PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat, Abbas’s colleague:

‘ Erekat Critical of Clinton’s Remarks on Settlements, Rejects US Guarantees
“Erekat Says: President Abbas Does Not Cling to Power, has Options — Ma’an headline
Ma’an News Agency
Friday, November 6, 2009
Document Type: OSC Translated Text

Bethlehem, 5 November (Ma’an)– Dr Saeb Erekat, head of the PLO Negotiations Affairs Department, has warnedthat the entire peace process is at a critical juncture and that the Palestineside is not short of options. He emphasized that there will be no negotiationswithout a cessation of settlement construction.

On statements that President Mahmud Abbas will not run for presidential elections, Erekat said: “The issueis not Abu-Mazin (Mahmud Abbas). The President is an ordinary citizen. The President makes every effort to achieve the hopes of his people. However, underthe present circumstances, if Israel continues its settlement activity and theUnited States does not compel Israel to stop settlement construction and resume the negotiations where they left off, the President does not cling to power. The president has options. Perhaps a moment will come when he speaks frankly to the people and questions the usefulness of elections and other things.”

At a press conference at the premises of the PLO Negotiations Affairs Department in Al-Birah today, Erekat stressed that there are no compromise solutions when it comes to settlements. He considered US Secretary of State Hillary’s backpedaling on her statement praising Israel for making “unprecedented” concessions on settlement construction as “not enough.”

Erekat said: “If the US administration cannot compel Israel to stop settlements for natural growth in Jerusalem, the commitment to the establishment of a Palestinian state within 24 months remains mere talk.” He stressed that the US administration must declare Israel the obstructionist side if it does not commit to the road map obligations. He pointed out that the negotiations did not start this year,but reached a very advanced stage in December 2008 between Abbas and Olmert. He added: “We demand that the negotiations resume where they left off.” He continued: “The US administration calls for the restart of the negotiations because it knows it cannot obtain a commitment from Netanyahu that the negotiations will resume where they left off.”

Erekat expressed surprise by Netanyahu’s statement that a cessation of settlement construction is a new Palestinian condition, saying this shows Netanyahu’s disregard for the roadmap.

Erekat explained that Netanyahu’s plan to build 3,000 new settlement housing units, the exclusion of Jerusalem (from a settlement freeze), and the continuation of public buildings and infrastructure projects, means for those who say that Netanyahu’s stance is”unprecedented” that in 2010 and 2011 the size of settlements will be more than in 2008 and 2009 because the size of settlements in Jerusalem is 37 percent of the size of settlements in the rest of the West Bank.

Erekat said: “Exclusion of Jerusalem (from a settlement freeze) means the continuing political pillaging of Jerusalem and the continuing settlement construction in it to achieve Netanyahu’s goal of increasing the number of settlers in East Jerusalem to 28,000 by 2011.” He pointed out there is an Israeli plan to reduce the number of Arabs in Jerusalem, who now constitute 32 percent of the number of the population in Jerusalem, to 12 percent by 2020. He also pointed out that a temporary freeze on settlement construction, a la Netanyahu, willincrease the number of settlements by 2.8 percent and will increase the number of settlement housing units in the West Bank and Jerusalem by 28 percent.

Erekat held the Israeli government responsible for the non-resumption of negotiations, even if tries to twist facts, as usual.

Erekat called on the Arabs who want US guarantees (before Israel and the PA resume negotiations) “not to search for a fig leaf because we do not need a fig leaf. The US administration offered us guarantees in which it says that settlements are illegal and that itrejects the annexation of Jerusalem. In spite of the moral importance of these guarantees, from the practical point of view they are not cashable. We want the US administration to compel the Israeli government to implement its obligations because the Palestinian side has implemented its obligations.” . . .

On elections, Erekat emphasized that the Palestinians have other options. He pointed out that Israel is obstructing the peace process and HAMAS is opposing elections. Hecalled on HAMAS and all those who stand behind it to side with the interests of the Palestinian people and to sign the reconciliation paper without conditions.He said: “We are not short of options. If the two-state option is excluded, there is the option of a one-state, as happened in South Africa. The situation in the West Bank is worse than it was in South Africa.”

(Description of Source: Bethlehem Ma’an News Agency in Arabic — Website of independent, leading Palestinian news agency; funded by the Dutch and Danish Foreign Ministries; URL: http://www.maannews.net/)

End/ (Not Continued)

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Politico, here

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