Conflict Blotter

Sometimes Wikipedia nails it. This is from the entry on the Annapolis peace conference:

Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, is organizing the event, which will be more than a photo op.

Sorry for the recent absence from blogging. I have been travelling and caught up with work and other responsibilities that have taken me away from conflictblotter. I should resume more or less regular posting from today. Here is a video out of Egypt that caught my eye. I’ll have more substantive posts later today on Hamas, the peace conference and the sudden resuscitation of the road map. And I’m off to see Fairuz in Amman tomorrow.

Egypt, facing a $200 million cut in US aid, blames Israeli soldiers for cooperating with smugglers bringing arms and military equipment into the Gaza Strip.

An Egyptian document distributed in Congress asserts that Israeli soldiers cooperate with smugglers in allowing arms and military equipment into the Gaza Strip.

The Egyptian document was circulated among congressmen by a group of Egyptian generals visiting Washington for meetings. The document was also given to legislators serving in the House Appropriations Committee. Representative Nita Lowey (D-NY), who chairs the State and Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee was the driving force behind a freezing of $200 million worth of American aid to Egypt for reasons that included Cairo’s refusal to act more forcefully to prevent smuggling. The official reason given for freezing the funds is Egypt’s human rights record. 

The Syrian envoy to the UN said two days ago during a meeting of the First Committee on Disarmament that Israel had bombed a Syrian nuclear facility, or so the UN reported in a subsequent press release:

Moreover, Israel was the fourth largest exporter of weapons of mass destruction and a violator of other nations’ airspace, and it had taken action against nuclear facilities, including the 6 July attack in Syria.

July? The strike was on September 6, not July 6. Someone had to have made a mistake. It’s going to turn out that the Syrian ambassador, speaking in Arabic, was referring to the “Tamouz” air strike against Iraq in 1981 and the interpreter got it wrong. Tamouz means July in Arabic. It’s also the Arabic term for the Osirak reactor. A potentially disastrous translation error. In any case, the UN committee meeting was a public meeting, attended by 192 delegations and the media so it shouldn’t be hard to determine the truth in this.

UPDATE: I’ve seen the full Arabic transcript of what the Syrian envoy actually said. He never mentioned a nuclear facility. Here’s the part in question:

…the [entity] that is ranking number four among the exporters of lethal weapons in the world; that which violates the airspace of sovereign states and carries out military aggression against them, like what happened on the 6th of September against my country.

Foreign policy heavyweights put in their ten cents on the Annapolis peace conference in this open letter to Condi and Bush titled “Because failure risks devastating consequences.” The parameters  suggested by the letter’s signatories have become so obvious that they hardly merit mentioning in this post and that is a testament to the fact that there has been at least this measure of progress in the past eight years. Today, both sides know what final status means. That wasn’t the case at Camp David and that is one significant step forward. The letter states the following:

• Two states, based on the lines of June 4, 1967, with minor, reciprocal, and agreed-upon modifications as expressed in a 1:1 land swap;

• Jerusalem as home to two capitals, with Jewish neighborhoods falling under Israeli sovereignty and Arab neighborhoods under Palestinian sovereignty;

• Special arrangements for the Old City, providing each side control of its respective holy places and unimpeded access by each community to them;

• A solution to the refugee problem that is consistent with the two-state solution, addresses the Palestinian refugees’ deep sense of injustice as well as provides them with meaningful financial compensation and resettlement assistance;

• Security mechanisms that address Israeli concerns while respecting Palestinian sovereignty.

The letter also recommends engagement with Hamas and Syria.

Eran Shayshon, an analyst from the influential Reut Institute, writes in today’s Maariv:

There are various radical elements that are also promoting the idea of dismantling the PA for ideological reasons. In their view, dismantling the PA would encumber Israel with the full demographic, economic and political burden of the occupation, and could lead to Israel’s collapse from within, as white South Africa collapsed. The renewal of the talks between Israel and Abu Mazen curbed these trends, for now. But if the diplomatic process collapses, these trends could gain strength, penetrate the heart of the internal Palestinian political discourse, and perhaps even mature to the point of a Palestinian strategic turnabout, in the form of a demand from Israel for full equality of civil rights.

Remember, it was demographics coupled with the early rumblings of a one-man, one-vote campaign in the West Bank that drove Sharon’s conversion from settlement architect to proponent of disengagement.

To mark Condi’s seventh trip to the region this year, I’m going to jot down some thoughts on the nascent peace process and the Annapolis confererence slated for late November or December. First, people still aren’t taking this very seriously by and large, despite Condi’s warnings to journalists on Monday. Palestinians, Israelis, journalists, etc, tend to think this is going nowhere. The Israeli right has been muted. Netanyahu has been largely silent. Hamas has issued a few blase statements about the conference but doesn’t seem too concerned. It will be interesting to see what comes of an ultra-orthodox protest slated for Thursday against dividing Jerusalem. It’s the first rumblings of popular dissent against Olmert’s peace efforts.

Those who think this isn’t a serious peace push are mistaken. If they go ahead with this peace conference in Annapolis, then there will be tremendous pressure for something substantive to come out of it. If it all comes to naught and if it turns out they were all just going through the motions, it will be terribly damaging to the Bush administration, and more importantly, to the regional credibility of Egypt and Saudi, if indeed the latter comes on board. More worryingly, a failed peace conference and another round of dashed hopes will further entrench feelings of utter hopelessness among Palestinians, which some fear could trigger another wave of violence.

One recurrent tune of conventional wisdom says that Olmert’s government will collapse at the mention of a divided Jerusalem since the ultra-orthodox Shas and the ultra-nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu are certain to jump ship. Shas leader Eli Yishai told Condi as much Monday. That is absolutely not the certainty that many are suggesting. The peace process, settlements, and relations with the Palestinians have never featured high on Shas’ priority lists. The party is sitting pretty right now with four cabinet posts. Yishai will certainly think twice before toppling a government and abandoning that influential perch. At Camp David in 2000, Yishai used support for Barak’s peace bid as a bargaining chip to try and gain control over religious schools (Dennis Ross, pg 601). If that precedent is any indication, Yishai’s current tough talk is just bluster aimed at extracting the biggest possible political concession out of Olmert when the time comes.

As for Avigdor Leiberman, the Yisrael Beiteinu chairman, he was languishing in political obscurity and irrelevance before he joined Olmert’s government. Now he’s Minister of Strategic Affairs and privy to the inner sanctum of government decision making. Furthermore, this is Leiberman’s opportunity to stake out a more moderate brand of politics that can make him a national politician with appeal beyond a narrow band of ultra-nationalists. He stands to lose a lot of political clout if this government falls.

So what to make of Olmert’s decision to appoint Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni to head the negotiating team? One, Olmert is trying to bring more people into the process to broaden his support and his chance of being able to make any agreement stick. The more cynical reading of Livni’s appointment is that Olmert has put Livni atop the negotiating team because he needs a fall guy/girl in case this whole affair collapses. Olmert has surely not forgotten that Livni lead a half-assed attempt to oust him from power last Spring.

Why aren’t Hamas and the Israeli right more concerned about the prospects of intolerable concessions by both sides? The short and simple answer is that it’s still early, and both Netanyahu and Hamas are likely calculating that this push will collapse without either one of them lifting a finger. If that happens, Hamas and Netanyahu both stand to benefit politically.

It’s also possible that this is all a cynical exercise by Olmert to placate the Bush administration until next summer, and that the right knows this and thus ain’t gettin’ it’s dander up for nothin’. Once the 2008 presidential campaign hits full stride in mid-summer, the Bush team’s engagement in the peace process is going to drop to near zero. The Republican nominee is going to want Bush out of the spotlight and will be scared to death of a last minute foreign policy disaster torpedoing his campaign. If Olmert is not nearly as enthusiastic about peace as some suggest he is, he just has to do the pro-peace song and dance to the US tune for the next six to eight months and then Israel will have the US out of its hair until well into the next administration.

Although Hamas may be isolated in Gaza and on the run in the West Bank, it can still play the spoiler if it chooses to, or at the very least demand that it be reckoned with. The Islamists have a powerful PR machine that can rally the Middle East masses against any deal between Abbas and Olmert. They can no doubt quickly organize massive protest rallies in the West Bank. A sustained rocket barrage on Sderot, meanwhile, would surely trip up any nascent peace process, especially if Israel responds with disproprtionate force as is likely.

If we connect a few dots that have emerged over the past week or so, it would appear that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has begun quietly making the necessary political preparations that will allow him to make substantive concessions to the Palestinians on Jerusalem and outposts.

On October 1, the government moved the West Bank police headquarters to the contentious E1 development in the Maale Adumim settlement bloc east of Jerusalem. The transfer, as I noted then suggested the government was preparing to at last green light the building of 3,500 new housing units that the settlers movement has been demanding for years.

One week later, on October 7 Haim Ramon, the leading dove in the Olmert government, told the cabinet that Israel would have to turn over the Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem to the Palestinians as part of any peace agreement. Coming from Ramon that comment was much of a surprise. What was a surprise was when right wing hardliner Avigdor Leiberman stood up in that same cabinet meeting and said “We must make concessions on the Jerusalem issue, or transfer to Palestinian control some of the neighborhoods and refugee camp.” Leiberman’s support is going to be crucial to Olmert’s ability to make any substantive concessions and survive politically, and it seemed that the Israeli premier was succeeding in getting Leiberman on board.

It seemed, however, like the government was pursuing two tracks that were at odds with each other. On one hand they were rallying support for the idea of turning over East Jerusalem to Palestinians, while at the same time pressing ahead on a development that peace activists warn would complete the encirclement of East Jerusalem and make a contiguous Palestinian state impossible.

Two days later, on October 9, the IDF announced that it was expropriating 1,100 dunnums of land from four Arab villages to build a Palestinian road connecting East Jerusalem and Jericho. It seemed clear at that point what was going on. The government was intent on both building E1 and turning over East Jerusalem, or parts of it anyway, to the Palestinians. In this context, green lighting E1 seems a sort of payoff to the settlers, a bid by Olmert to garner some political capital ahead of a compromise on Jerusalem that is sure to raise a rumpus on the right.

But Olmert and Co. have another trick up their sleeve it seems. Just when it seemed like the government was going to push forward with E1, a massive expansion to the Maale Adumim settlement bloc, Maariv reports this in today’s paper:

The government has dramatically increased pressure on the settlers to evacuate illegal settlement outposts voluntarily. Defense Minister Ehud Barak has ordered a freeze on construction in the big settlement blocs — Gush Etzion, Ariel and Maale Adumim — even though they are regarded by most of the parties in the Knesset, and by an absolute majority of the public, as areas which will remain under Israeli sovereignty even in a peace agreement with the Palestinians.

In the framework of the negotiations which the Defense Ministry is conducting with the settlements with the purpose of reaching a new “outpost agreement,” [the Settlers Council] were told that so long as they do not sign an agreement which will lead to voluntary evacuation of illegal outposts, no new construction will be permitted even in the big settlement blocs.

The Olmert government knows it is going to have to follow through on years-old promises and start pulling down outposts as part of a peace process that will likely kick into gear with the Annapolis conference in late November. This would appear to be his bid to make that process a little less painful.

Many have long discounted Olmert’s chances of pulling off a peace deal with the Palestinians. He is too weak and too unpopular to sell the necessary concessions to a skeptical Israeli public, the thinking goes. But perhaps Olmert, whose most touted attribute is that he’s a wily political tactician, is just the man to navigate the political minefield of peace.

I took a detour through the Negev town of Dimona earlier this week to stop in and visit the Kingdom of Yah, where some 2,800 followers of Ben Ammi, 68, live in a crowded kibbutz on the city’s outskirts. The African Hebrew Israelites hail mostly from Chicago but claim to be descendants of the lost tribe of Judah, the progeny of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. Their ancestors in Israel, they say, fled the Romans in 70 AD and sought refuge in Africa.

The Judaism they practice has its own quirks. They’ve discounted 2,000 years of Jewish traditon and exegesis and pay zero heed to the Talmud or Mishna. They’ve reached their own conclusions about Judaism based on their reading of the Torah. They fast every sabbath, and celebrate Rosh Hashannah in the Spring instead of the Fall. What the rest of the Jewish world celebrates as Rosh Hashannah in the Fall, the African Hebrews celebrate merely as a day to march around and blow the shofar.

They are strict vegans because that seemed a safer bet than having to worry about avoiding the blood and forbidden fats as Jewish dietary law demands. Rigorous daily exercise is an integral tenet of their brand of Judaism. A priest leads daily weight training sessions in the gym. They are also polygamists. “A woman has the right to demand a husband even if he’s already married,” our guide explained to us, putting a sort of feminist spin on a tradition that is rarely viewed as empowering women.

The first wave of African Hebrews left the US with Ben Ammi in 1967, a migration they refer to as the Exodus, after he had a vision that African Americans were descendants of the lost tribe of Judah. They stopped first in Liberia where they were plagued by malaria, poisonous snakes and 150 inches of rainfall each winter. The Sears & Roebuck tents they were living in provided little shelter. Fortunately, Ben Ammi had a convenient second vision that perhaps it was time to move on to Israel and in 1969 they did just that.

Our guide around the Kingdom of Yah wore a massive gold lion of judah ring on his left hand and a “Yah Chai”, or Jah Lives, t-shirt. He was smoking two packs of Newports a day in inner city Chicago and sucking down Johnny Walker and sour mash by the pint, he says, before he discovered his Jewish roots and straightened out under the tutelage of the healthy living prophet Ban Ammi.

They may be a bit unorthodox, but we showed up as curious tourists, not journalists, and found them totally friendly and welcoming and eager to give us an extensive tour of their community.

A young African Hebrew under a picture of leader Ben Ammi.

On the Kingdom of Yah kibbutz in Dimona. Homespun fabrics and a handful of touring music groups are among the top revenue earners for the African Hebrew community in Israel.

The two chefs at the Kingdom of Yah restaurant cook up some down home gluten, soya, tofu and other vegan delights. The Kingdom of Yah runs a chain of vegan restaurants all around the country.

Next Thursday Canadian rocker Bryan Adams will headline a peace concert in the West Bank city of Jericho. The concert is sponsored by One Voice, a New York-based NGO dedidcated to promoting understanding between Israelis and Palestinians. (See Dion Nissenbaum’s post on the concert for more background on OneVoice and its founder). The concert is part of the organization’s One Million Voices campaign, an ostensibly noble effort to get one million Israelis and Palestinians to sign a petition urging their leaders to conduct immediate negotiations to reach a peace deal. The concert is free, but attendees have to sign the petition.

Rosy as it all sounds, the concert, which is endorsed by Brad Pitt, Natalie Portman, Muhammad Ali, and Jordan’s Queen Noor, among numerous other Israeli and Palestinian prominents, is being targetted for boycott. Already one of the Palestinian rap groups that had agreed to perform, DAM (aka, Da Arab MCs), has reportedly pulled out.

The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) announced the boycott in an October 4 press release titled “Celebrating Peace or Camouflaging Apartheid?”. Writes PACBI:

According to the widely accepted boycott criteria advocated by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), the event falls under the category of normalization projects and violates the call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), endorsed by over 170 Palestinian civil society organizations, trade unions, political parties, and grassroots movements, for the following reasons

The group’s principal objection to the concert is that the content of the petition is too vague and “assumes equal responsibility of ‘both sides’ for the ‘conflict,’ and suspiciously fails to call for Israel’s full compliance with its obligations under international law through ending its illegal military occupation, its denial of Palestinian refugee rights (particularly the right of return), and its system of racial discrimination against its own Palestinian citizens.”

Judge for yourself. Here’s the full petition One Voice is asking people to sign:

• Recognize the right of both peoples to independence, sovereignty, freedom, justice, dignity, respect, national security, personal safety, and economic viability;
• Implement concrete confidence-building measures that will improve the lives of the Palestinian and Israeli people, including ensuring freedom of movement for ordinary civilians and fostering education against incitement on both sides.
• Immediately commence uninterrupted negotiations until reaching an agreement, no later than October 18, 2008, for a Two-State Solution, fulfilling the consistent will of the overwhelming majority of both populations.

A friend of mine who works for One Voice had this to say in response to the boycott:

The Peoples’ Summits present a real chance for Palestinians to clearly and peaceably but effectively show the world that there is a partner who agrees on the wide parameters in the mandate and who is willing to accept a solution of two states and recognize Israel when their own needs (for independence, freedom, security, and the acknowledgement of refugee suffering and rights) are also met.

On the Israeli side, the Peoples’ Summits are a clear way to show the Palestinians that while not every Israeli will pick up and go demonstrate at Bil’in, many more who consider themselves part of the mainstream want an end to the occupation and are willing to live alongside an independent Palestinian State in Gaza and the West Bank.

Personally, I’m a bit dismayed by the boycott. Across the Middle East, the hard Arab left generally suscribes to a policy of boycotting anything and everything Israeli in order, they argue, to stave off “normalization.” The group of PACBI academics and intellectuals who launched the boycott initiative in 2004 I think belong to this same school. It’s a wrongheaded policy that ignores the fact that there are a lot of Israelis who are doing substantive work on behalf of Palestinians. To paint the ISM’s Neta Golan or human rights lawyer Danny Seidemann with the same brush as you’d paint a Kiryat Arba settler is just absurd.

At the end of the day One Voice is on the right team and is working toward a noble goal that any pro-peace Israeli or Palestinian should be sympathetic with. To take umbrage with their petition because they didn’t adequately flesh out the fine print details of a final status agreement is unreasonable. Far more reasonable would be to boycott the concert because who the hell wants to sit through a freakin’ Bryan Adams show.

UPDATE: I just got word (Friday morning GMT) that the Jericho concert has been cancelled after more bands joined the boycott and Abbas dissociated himself from the event. Apparently the Israelis have made the puzzling decision to go ahead with their half of the show in Tel Aviv despite the cancellation of the Jericho concert.