Conflict Blotter

I’m up in the Golan at the moment and will have a post coming on tensions along the Syrian-Israeli border, but in the meantime, this priceless news out of Saudi Arabia, courtesy of Issandr at the Arabist, is a must read.

Israel is stepping up its military offensive in the Gaza Strip and Defense Minister Ehud Barak is warning that more is yet to come. “We are getting closer to carrying out a widespread operation in Gaza,” Barak told Israel’s Army Radio Wednesday, the Labor Party leader’s 100th day as defense minister.

As Barak readies an assault on the Gaza Strip, November peace conference and an embarassed Condi be-damned, it’s worth noting the one time peacenik’s hard turn to the right in recent months. “Competing with Bibi,” a headline in today’s Yediot said of Barak, suggesting Barak is staking out an even harder line than Likud leader Binjamin Netanyahu.

Barak has refused to move on dismantling illegal outposts, and demands a full-fledged missile defense shield before beginning a West Bank pullback. Barak has also panned Olmert’s negotiations with President Abbas, in doing so defying even his own pro-peace Labor party.

One theory has it that Barak is simply playing politics with an eye to regaining the Premiership. Thus he is seeking to revive his image which suffered a blow in 2000 after the Camp David peace talks fell apart followed by the disastrous Intifada. Writes Itamar Eichner in today’s Yediot:

The accepted answer in the political establishment is that Barak is behaving this way at the recommendation of his strategic advisers. The rationale is that Barak has to, on one hand, erase the public memory of the far-reaching concessions he offered as prime minister, which led to his removal from the post, and on the other hand, must differentiate himself from Olmert, who is proposing a political process.

A 90-page report by the New York Police department called “Radicalization in the West” breaks down the process that turns an otherwise ordinary Muslim youth into a violent jihadist. It’s nothing new or groundbreaking, but it brings together a series of eight or nine fairly detailed case studies that look at how well-known terror plots came together, and the personalities, backgrounds and ideological evolutions of the major players involved.

One of the patterns the report picks up on: apparently, Jihadis share an affinity for paintball.

The rebuttal to the report takes issue with the NYPD authors’ conflation of radical Islamic terrorism with Salafi Islam. Although there are plenty of peaceful salafists, I think it’s more than a touch disingenuous to altogether dissociate salafism from global jihad. Still, the 65-page rebuttal, called “Is the Salafist manhaj an indicator of terrorism, political violence, and radicalisation?” is a nice collection of writings by leading salafi and wahabbi thinkers who have used fundamentalist Islamic arguments to challenge Al Qaeda’s violent ideology.

First two Israeli journalists sneak into Lebanon, and now this. Israeli pundit and security commentator for Yediot Ahranot (and a Lt. Col. in the paratrooper reserves) Ron Ben Yishai has made it out to Deir al Zur in eastern Syria to hunt for the site of the Israeli air strike earlier this month. The full report will be in tomorrow’s Yediot.

Though it seems a bit premature, there’s been an uptick this week in speculation about who will succeed President Abbas. Abbas’ term isn’t up for another 18 months and early elections are off the table, but a failed November peace conference could change all that.

Marwan Barghouti is of course one of the names most often tossed around as the Palestinians’ likely next leader. Israel’s infrastructure minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer gave Barghouti’s cause a boost this week when he called on the government to release the Fatah leader from jail, where he’s serving five life sentences for masterminding Fatah’s suicide bomb wave during the second intifada.

The other name I keep seeing mentioned is that of the hardline and elderly Ahmed Ghaneim, aka Abu Maher, an aging PLO leader who stayed behind in Tunis in 1994 because he opposed the Oslo peace accords.

The Al Ahram weekly reports:

Sources within Fatah have indicated that the Palestinian president is studying the possibility of not nominating himself and that deliberations are currently in progress within the faction over an alternative candidate. One possibility, according to a recent leak from within Fatah, is Abu Maher Ghneim, head of the movement’s organisational committee. Yet the prospect of Ghneim’s candidacy is difficult to imagine, firstly because he is vehemently opposed to Oslo and secondly because he refuses to return to the West Bank as long as it is under Israeli occupation.

Pinhas Inbari, an Israeli author affiliated with the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, offers up an interesting analysis. The conflict is between the PLO’s founding generation old timers (Abu Alaa, Abu Maher, etc), the young guard affiliated with the Tanzim (Barghouti), and the independent business elite (Salam Fayad).

[Abbas ]has told the members of the old guard that he is keeping them away from Olmert’s business (ie the November peace conference) so that the “independents” bear the burnt of the failure of the conference.

Yediot Aharanot’s Roni Shaked reported on Ghaneim yesterday buried half way through an interview with Barghouti. Wrote Shaked:

About a month ago, at a meeting of the Fatah Central Committee, it was decided that Ahmed Ghanim (Abu Maher) would be his replacement.

Ever since John Bolton first leaked the North Korea nuclear connection to Israel’s air strike in Syria two weeks ago, I have been skeptical. It seemed a bit too self-serving given Bolton’s own confrontationalist approach to North Korea. I was more inclined to believe those suggesting the strike was simply meant to send a message to Iran and Syria that Israel can and will strike deep in Arab territory (regardless of Russian air defenses), can do so with impunity, and can do so with barely a squeak of international condemnation, even from other Arab states.

But it now seems that the North Korea-linked nuclear site explanation is becoming the dominant and most widely accepted narrative. There are some strong arguments as to why it makes more sense. As Bruce Reidel, from the Brookings Institution points out in the Washington Post, it seems unlikely that Israel would have taken such a bold and risky step just to send a symbolic message.

There is no question it was a major raid. It was an extremely important target. It came at a time the Israelis were very concerned about war with Syria and wanted to dampen down the prospects of war. The decision was taken despite their concerns it could produce a war. That decision reflects how important this target was to Israeli military planners.

One of the reasons myself and other skeptics were so taken aback by the North Korea angle was that it seemed so out of the blue. There have been no stark warnings or recent leaks about Syria’s burgeoning nuke program, or about new reasons to fear North Korea is again intent on diseminating its nuke know how. Syria has rarely been tagged as a nuke-seeking state by Israel or the Bush administration, and North Korea seemed to be inching in fits and starts towards a diplomatic solution over its own nuclear program.

Of course there are obvious tactical advantages to striking without any sort of forewarning in the form of diplomatic protests or leaks to the press. But the fact that Israel, no doubt with a nod from Washington, decided to go straight for the military solution to an alleged Syrian nuke program seems like one result of the failure of diplomacy in curtailing Tehran’s nuclear program. In the case of Iran, in fact, the public awarness campaign against Iran has been as empowering for the Shiite theocracy as the nuclear program itself.

The months and months of America’s, Israel’s and other’s shouting about Iran’s nukes has made Tehran even more a symbol of defiance and the standard bearer for an entire region that feels it has just as much right to the worlds’ most advanced weapons as the imperialist West. Iran’s defiant bluster in the face of American attacks has been more potent in this case than its bite. In the case of the Syrian strike, Israel hit first, not allowing any opportunity for Syria to become a symbol as Iran has. That is one of the reasons public reaction across the Arab and Muslim world has been largely muted. Given the months and years of build up, can you imagine a similarly muted reaction when and if the US or Israel decide to strike Iran?

The latest development on the Syria front is a report in Jane’s Defence Weekly reported today in the Israeli press. According to Jane’s, as relayed by Yediot Aharanot, 15 Syrian officers and dozens of Iranian experts died earlier this symmer in an explosion at a missile installation for manufacturing chemical weapons southeast of Aleppo (see As Safirah on the map). The installation reportedly manufactured chemical warfare agents, including mustard gas, VX gas and sarin nerve gas.

The looming Syria-Israel showdown has been a favorite topic of the Israeli press all summer. That has made the last couple of weeks especially difficult for Israeli journalists who been squirming anxiously after being silenced by the draconian and highly unusual military censorship regulations that were slapped on all media in Israel after the air strikes in Syria earlier this month.

A Digital Globe image, provided by Global Security, taken 30 July 2002, of the probable As Safir chemical weapons plant and SCUD base.

I was surprised while reading today’s coverage to learn that Yediot Aharanot actually hires the Digital Globe, a commercial spy satellite, to photograph Syrian and Iranian military installations. Apparently they’ve been doing this for years. And in case you want to lodge a complaint or sing the praises of Syria’s missile manufacturers, Yediot provides you an address and phone number in today’s paper:

The scientific branch in charge of missile manufacturing know-how in Syria is the Scientific Studies and Research Center (SSRC). They can be reached at POB 4470, Damascus. It is also possible to call them at 963-11-772-603 or to fax them at 963-11-222-3771.

Here’s a court case worth following. An Israeli court began hearing on Tuesday a lawsuit, filed by five Israeli soldiers who fought in Jenin refugee camp during Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, against the director of the 2002 documentary “Jenin, Jenin.”

According to the Jerusalem Post, the plaintiffs site 13 incidents of libel in the film, including the following (worth considering that all the alleged libel was made by those interviewed in the film, not by the filmmaker himself):

• An old man claimed that soldiers shot him in the arm and leg in cold blood without cause.

• A film segment was edited to indicate that a bulldozer drove over a group of Palestinians lined up on the ground.

• Soldiers used children as human shields and ordered them to make holes in the walls of houses so they could progress from one to the next without exposing themselves. They warned they would shoot the children if they did not obey.

• Soldiers executed a disabled and retarded man by running him over with a bulldozer.

• A doctor at a Jenin hospital accused the IDF of removing the bodies of Palestinians killed in the fighting.

• Soldiers tied up a Palestinian and shot him.

Before brushing off the $2.5 million lawsuit as absurd, consider this: two of the plaintiffs were actually pictured in photographs of soldiers accompanying advertisements for the film, which showed in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, at the Cinemateque, a well known Israeli art house. Israel’s military censors banned the film, but that ruling was overturned by the Supreme Court.

There have been a pair of reports on the woeful state of the Palestinian economy this week. A British government report released yesterday called on Israel to strike a balance between short-term security needs and Palestiniain economic development. The report argues that removing checkpoints and road blocks in the West Bank and thus freeing up Palestinian movement is in Israel’s self interest as a vibrant Palestinian economy will increase Israeli security in the long run.

The World Bank also released a report today, which it will present to the September 24 meeting of whats known as the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee, the 12 member committee that steers aid to the Palestinians on behalf of donor countries.

The 35-page report takes Israel to task for its restrictions on Palestinians. It faults the Hamas government for, among other things, attacking the crossing points into and out of Gaza which the territory’s economy depends on. It calls on the PA to restore law and order and become fiscally self-sufficient. Most interestingly, given the report’s target audience, are its litany of criticisms of the donor countries themselves.

Over 40 donors having given nearly $6 billion in aid since 2002, but that aid has largely been uncoordinated, and based on bilateral deals that suit the donor’s political needs as much as the Palestinians own local needs, the report charges.

“This has undermined aid effectiveness and created a ’shopping list’ approach to development planning where projects are more aligned with the donor’s requirements than with local priorities,” the report’s authors write.

One of the more under reported phenomena of the international aid boycott of the Hamas government, was that aid flow to the Palestinians in 2006 was $738 million, twice what it was in 2005, before the aid boycott. The problem, as the report points out, is that over 90% of those increased aid dollars was channeled away from long term development projects and instead went to simply keep society functioning, such as paying doctors’ salaries and other recurrent costs. The massive increase in redirected aid dollars are creating a Palestinian government that is increasingly dependant on aid, while doing little toward long term development goals.

In other words, donor countries are giving the Palestinians a lot more fish, but teaching a lot fewer Palestinians how to fish. You can download the full report here, but below are a handful of telling statistics:

• Since the start of the second Intifada in 2000 per capita GDP has fallen a third from $1,612 in 1999 to $1,129 in 2006.

• Public sector employment has grown by 60% since 1999 as the Palestinian Authority has tried to soften the economic blow by putting more people on the government payroll.

• Private investment declined by over 15% between 2005 and 2006.

• Chronic diseases have surged 31% since 2005.

• Chronic malnutrition among children under five jumped 3%between 2004 and 2006.

• The number of households with safe drinking water has dropped by over 8% between 2000 and 2007.

• School failure rates in mathematics and Arabic are nearly 80% and 40% respectively.

• Women participation in the labor market, at 15.2%, is amongst the lowest in the world.

• 90% of Gaza’s industrial operations have been suspended. The industrial sector employs 35,000 workers - 18,000 skilled.

• $160 million in construction projects funded by UNRWA, UNDP, and others have been suspended or cancelled due to lack of construction materials.

• Agricultural production by Gaza’s 5,000 farmers who rely on export markets was expected to be around $12 million in 2007, all of which will be lost due to border closures.

• Total agriculture production in 2007 will decline by 50% as a result of border closures which prevent the import of pesticide and fertilizer inputs.

• Finished goods are allowed to enter, but not those that would trigger commercial activity. The Israeli government has allowed finished books to enter Gaza for use by UNRWA students, but excluded paper to produce the goods in Gaza. Similarly, World Bank surveys of Gazan industrialists indicate that while soda drinks are allowed to enter Gaza, the CO2 required to produce them in Gazan factories are forbidden.

The US State Department has grown sore with Israeli airport screeners’ treatment of American citizens of Arab descent, Haaretz reports.

The State Department officials stressed that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was very perturbed by this issue and said they expected immediate improvement.

They also warned their Israeli counterparts that unless there was a change, they would update the travel warning for Americans visiting Israel to include a statement that “Israel harasses American citizens of Arab and Palestinian origin.”