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26 May, 2011

Article 1.  The Washington Post
Where Netanyahu fails himself and Israel
Fareed Zakaria
Article 2.  NYT
Parties See Obama’s Israel Policy as Wedge for 2012
Jackie Calmes and Helene Cooper
Article 3.  Foreign Policy
Hey, Bibi: Calling Hamas the al Qaeda of Palestine isn't just wrong, it's stupid
Daniel Byman
Article 4.  Bloomberg
Why Palestinians Have Time on Their Side
Jeffrey Goldberg
Article 5.  The Daily Beast
The Palestinian Right to Dream
Peter Beinart
Article 6.  Asharq Al-Awsat
Hamas' Gaza strongman criticizes Khalid Meshal
Article 7.   Military Review
An Old Man’s Thoughts on War and Peace
Edward Bernard Glick



Article 1.

The Washington Post

Where Netanyahu fails himself and Israel

Fareed Zakaria



May 26 -- Conventional wisdom is fast congealing in Washington that President Obama was wrong to demarcate a shift in American policy toward Israel last week. In fact, it was Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu who broke with the past — in one of a series of diversions and obstacles Netanyahu has come up with anytime he is pressed. He wins in the short run, but ultimately, he is turning himself into a version of Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, “Mr. Nyet,” a man who will be bypassed by history.

Here is what Netanyahu’s immediate predecessor, Ehud Olmert, said in a widely reported speech to the Israeli Knesset in 2008: “We must give up Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem and return to the core of the territory that is the State of Israel prior to 1967, with minor corrections dictated by the reality created since then.” Olmert, a man with a reputation as a hard-liner, said that meant Israel would keep about 6 percent of the West Bank — the major settlements — and give up land elsewhere. This was also the position of Ehud Barak, Israel’s prime minister during the late 1990s.

The Bush administration did not have a different position, as statements from the president and Condoleezza Rice make clear. Here is George W. Bush in 2008: “I believe that any peace agreement between them will require mutually agreed adjustments to the armistice lines of 1949 to reflect current realities and to ensure that the Palestinian state is viable and contiguous.” (The 1949 armistice lines is another way of saying the 1967 borders.)

Or consider this statement from last November: “[T]he United States believes that through good-faith negotiations, the parties can mutually agree on an outcome which ends the conflict and reconciles the Palestinian goal of an independent and viable state, based on the 1967 lines, with agreed swaps, and the Israeli goal of a Jewish state with secure and recognized borders that reflect subsequent developments and meet Israeli security requirements.” That’s not Obama, Bush or Rice, but a statement jointly issued by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Netanyahu on Nov. 11, 2010.

Today, Netanyahu says that any discussion of the 1967 borders is treason and that new borders must reflect “dramatic changes” since then. So in three years, an Israeli prime minister’s position has gone from “minor corrections” to “dramatic changes.” Netanyahu’s quarrel, it appears, is with himself. Yet we are to think it is Obama who has shifted policy?

Why did Netanyahu turn what was at best a minor difference into a major confrontation? Does it help Israel’s security or otherwise strengthen it to stoke tensions with its strongest ally and largest benefactor? Does such behavior further the resolution of Israel’s problems? No, but it helps Netanyahu stir support at home and maintain his fragile coalition. And while Bibi might sound like Churchill, he acts like a local ward boss, far more interested in holding onto his post than using it to secure Israel’s future.

The newsworthy, and real, shift in U.S. policy was Obama publicly condemning the Palestinian strategy to seek recognition as a state from the U.N. General Assembly in September. He also questioned the accord between Fatah and Hamas. Obama endorsed the idea of a demilitarized Palestinian state, a demand Israel has made in recent years. Instead of thanking Obama for this, Netanyahu created a public confrontation to garner applause at home.

Netanyahu’s references to the “indefensible” borders of 1967 reveal him to be mired in a world that has gone away. The chief threat to Israel today is not from a Palestinian army. Israel has the region’s strongest economy and military, complete with an arsenal of nuclear weapons. The chief threats to Israel are from new technologies — rockets, biological weapons — and demography. Its physical existence is less in doubt than its democratic existence as it continues to rule millions of Palestinians in serf-like conditions — entitled to neither a vote nor a country.

The path to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been clear for 20 years. Israel would cede most of the land it conquered in the 1967 war to a Palestinian state, keeping the major settlement blocks. In return, it would get a series of measures designed to protect its security. That’s why the process is called land for peace. The problem is that Netanyahu has never believed in land for peace. His strategy has been to put up obstacles, create confusion and wait it out. But one day there will be peace, along the lines that people have talked about for 20 years. And Netanyahu will be remembered only as a person before the person who made peace, a comma in history.






Article 2.

NYT

Parties See Obama’s Israel Policy as Wedge for 2012

Jackie Calmes and Helene Cooper



May 25, 2011 — Few issues in American politics are as bipartisan as support for Israel. Yet the question of whether President Obama is supportive enough is behind some of the most partisan maneuvering since the Middle East ally was born six decades ago, and that angling has potential ramifications for the 2012 elections.

The visit of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel in the past week captured just how aggressively Republicans are stoking doubts about Mr. Obama. Republican Congressional leaders and presidential aspirants lavished praise on Mr. Netanyahu as quickly as they had condemned Mr. Obama for proposing that Israel’s 1967 borders, with mutually agreed land swaps, should be a basis for negotiating peace with the Palestinians.

Republicans do not suggest that they can soon break the Democratic Party’s long hold on the loyalty of Jewish-American voters; Mr. Obama got nearly 8 of 10 such voters in 2008. But what Republicans do see is the potential in 2012 to diminish the millions of dollars, volunteer activism and ultimately the votes that Mr. Obama and his party typically get from American Jews — support that is disproportionate to their numbers.

While Jewish Americans are just 2 percent of the electorate nationally, they are “strategically concentrated,” as Mark Mellman, a Democratic pollster, put it, in several swing states that are critical in presidential elections. Those states include Florida — which in 2000 illustrated the potentially decisive power of one state — Ohio and Nevada.

A test of Mr. Obama’s support will come June 20, when he will hold a fund-raiser for about 80 Jewish donors at a private dinner.

John R. Bolton, the former United States ambassador to the United Nations and a possible Republican presidential candidate, argues that because of administration proposals, Republicans will be able to make gains not only among American Jews but also among evangelicals who are supportive of Israel on biblical grounds, and other voters.

Mr. Bolton said that he was on a cruise sponsored by the conservative magazine Weekly Standard last week in the Mediterranean, and that most of the people on the ship “reacted very strongly against” Mr. Obama’s speech outlining his Mideast vision. “As a Republican,” he said, “you can use this to show how radical the president’s policies are on a whole range of issues.”

The depth of Democrats’ worries was evident from the competition to out-applaud Republicans on Tuesday during Mr. Netanyahu’s speech to a joint meeting of Congress and from the speed with which Congressional Democrats led by Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, distanced themselves from Mr. Obama on Israel.

“Are there questions in the American-Jewish community? I think the answer is yes,” said Mr. Mellman, who is Jewish and has polled the community for Democrats in the past. “Has Obama been branded as not pro-Israel or anti-Israel? Not at all.”

“I think he is strongly pro-Israel, in fact,” he added. “But that is the political struggle in which the Republicans are engaged, which is to get him branded as not pro-Israel. And to the extent they’re successful in that, the likelihood is they would have some meaningful impact on the Jewish vote.”

J Street, the left-leaning alternative to the more established American Israel Public Affairs Committee, put out a statement of support for Mr. Obama on Wednesday. “To oppose the president without laying out a credible alternative basis for a two-state solution is to embrace a status quo leading to the eventual loss of Israel as we know and love it,” its statement said.

Mr. Obama’s proposal, the group said, is supported by many Jews in the United States and Israel. It is “the path that most of Israel’s recent prime ministers have attempted to blaze, from Rabin to Barak to Olmert.”

Republicans, however, are confident that their emphasis on unconditional support for Israel holds appeal both for many Jews and for conservative Christians.

Yet it is the Republican Party’s close identification with evangelical Christians in recent years that is perhaps its biggest hurdle to winning over significant numbers of Jewish voters and donors. On issues that are crucial to the conservative Republican base — like opposition to abortion, gay rights, liberalized immigration and much government spending — most American Jews are on the other side, and strongly so.

“If Republicans can mischaracterize this president as anti-Israel, they can distract from the fact that on every other issue their party is in disagreement with the American-Jewish community,” said David A. Harris, president of the National Jewish Democratic Council, a group of Jewish-American Democratic activists.

Mr. Netanyahu on Monday experienced first-hand the tension arising from that complaint among Democrats, and Republicans’ rejection of it, in a private meeting he held with representatives of the National Jewish Democratic Council and the Republican Jewish Coalition to underscore American Jews’ bipartisan consensus on Israel.

A partisan argument ensued after Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, whom Mr. Obama recently named as chairman of the Democratic Party, suggested they agree not to make support for Israel an election issue. Matt Brooks, executive director of the Republican group, objected, accusing her of proposing a “gag order.”


Article 3.

Foreign Policy

Hey, Bibi: Calling Hamas the al Qaeda of Palestine isn't just wrong, it's stupid

Daniel Byman



MAY 25, 2011 -- In a rousing speech before Congress on May 24, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected peace talks with the newly unified Palestinian government because it now includes -- on paper at least -- officials from the terrorist (or, in its own eyes, "resistance") group Hamas. In a striking moment, Netanyahu defiantly declared, "Israel will not negotiate with a Palestinian government backed by the Palestinian version of al Qaeda," a statement greeted with resounding applause from the assembled members of Congress. But hold on a minute. Yes, Hamas, like al Qaeda, is an Islamist group that uses terrorism as a strategic tool to achieve political aims. Yes, Hamas, like al Qaeda, rejects Israel and has opposed the peace talks that moderate Palestinians have tried to move forward. And sure, the Hamas charter uses language that parallels the worst anti-Semitism of al Qaeda, enjoining believers to fight Jews wherever they may be found and accusing Jews of numerous conspiracies against Muslims, ranging from the drug trade to creating "sabotage" groups like, apparently, violent versions of Rotary and Lions clubs.

But the differences between Hamas and al Qaeda often outweigh the similarities. And ignoring these differences underestimates Hamas's power and influence -- and risks missing opportunities to push Hamas into accepting a peace deal.

While Congress was quick to applaud Bibi's fiery analogy, U.S. counterterrorism officials know that one of the biggest differences is that Hamas has a regional focus, while al Qaeda's is global. Hamas bears no love for the United States, but it has not deliberately targeted Americans. Al Qaeda, of course, sees the United States as its primary enemy, and it doesn't stop there. European countries, supposed enemies of Islam such as Russia and India, and Arab regimes of all stripes are on their hit list. Other components of the "Salafi-jihadist" movement (of which al Qaeda is a part) focus operations on killing Shiite Muslims, whom they view as apostates. Hamas, in contrast, does not call for the overthrow of Arab regimes and works with Shiite Iran and the Alawite-dominated secular regime in Damascus, pragmatically preferring weapons, money, and assistance in training to ideological consistency.

Hamas, like its parent organization, the Muslim Brotherhood, also devotes much of its attention to education, health care, and social services. Like it or not, by caring for the poor and teaching the next generation of Muslims about its view of the world, Hamas is fundamentally reshaping Palestinian society. Thus, many Palestinians who do not share Hamas's worldview nonetheless respect it; in part because the Palestinian moderates so beloved of the West have often failed to deliver on basic government functions. The old Arab nationalist visions of the 1950s and 1960s that animated the moderate Palestinian leader Mahmood Abbas and his mentor Yasir Arafat have less appeal to Palestinians today.

One of the greatest differences today, as the Arab spring raises the hope that democracy will take seed across the Middle East, is that Hamas accepts elections (and, in fact, took power in Gaza in part because of them) while al Qaeda vehemently rejects them. For Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Ladin's deputy and presumed heir-apparent, elections put man's (and, even worse, woman's) wishes above God's. A democratic government could allow the sale of alcohol, cooperate militarily with the United States, permit women to dress immodestly, or a condone a host of other practices that extremists see as forbidden under Islam. So yes, Hamas, like al Qaeda, talks of an Islamic government, but in practice it makes compromises, as its unity agreement with Abbas and his regime suggests. In power, Hamas has tried to Islamicize Gaza, and its rule in Gaza is notable for its repression, but it has not imposed a draconian regime as did the Taliban in Afghanistan, the only government al Qaeda ever recognized as truly Islamic.

In the end, Hamas is pragmatic. It makes compromises with rivals, cuts deals with potentially hostile foreign sponsors, and otherwise tries to strengthen its political position, even if this exposes it to the charge of hypocrisy.

Nowhere is this more apparent that in Hamas's relations with Israel. Especially since the 2008-2009 Cast Lead Operation, where Israeli forces hit Gaza hard, Hamas has often (though not always) adhered to a ceasefire with Israel. In the months following Cast Lead, only a few rockets were launched at Israel from Gaza, and Israeli officials told me those were probably from other Palestinian groups or were otherwise not an official Hamas action. Gazans did not want to go another round with Israel's army, and Hamas feared alienating them.

Yet Hamas tries to maintain its street cred as a resistance organization. It has at times allowed other groups to launch attacks on Israel, and in recent months launched missile salvos itself, risking an end to the de facto ceasefire. Internal pressures within Gaza, particularly criticisms from Salafi-jihadists with ideologies akin to al Qaeda, as well as Israeli attacks on Hamas personnel, have at times led the group to risk further retaliation, but this careful calculation is a far cry from al Qaeda's call for constant struggle.

Hamas needs no reminder that al Qaeda is more foe than friend. Though Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas's leader in Gaza, praised bin Ladin after his death as an "Arab holy warrior," this was largely pandering to his religious base. In fact, the relationship between Hamas and al Qaeda, and between Hamas and al Qaeda-like jihadists in Gaza, is far more contentious. Zawahiri has blasted Hamas for adhering to ceasefires with Israel, not immediately implementing Islamic law in Gaza, and otherwise deviating from the pure faith of jihadism.

To prevent these ideas from eroding its support, Hamas has harshly repressed al Qaeda-inspired jihadists in Gaza, arresting and even torturing some of the individuals linked to these groups, according to Israeli sources. In 2009, one Salafi-jihadist preacher declared Gaza to be an Islamic state; Hamas stormed the mosque that was his base, killing him and over 20 others.

But the biggest difference is that Hamas is a success while al Qaeda is a failure. Hamas has gone from a small group overshadowed by Yasir Arafat's Fatah to a large and powerful organization. Whether we like it or not, Hamas is the government of Gaza -- and terrorism helped them get there. And with the fall of Mubarak and the emergence of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt as an important political actor there, Hamas may gain influence.  Al Qaeda, in contrast, is if anything farther from its goals of ending U.S. regional influence and establishing a caliphate than it was 15 years ago.

Despite Netanyahu's rhetoric, Hamas cannot simply be wished away when it comes to the peace process. It represents a large portion of Palestinian opinion, and it has repeatedly demonstrated that it can use suicide bombers, rocket attacks, or other forms of terrorism to disrupt any talks. But the group's occasional pragmatism suggests that under the right conditions it can be convinced not to play the spoiler. Such an effort may fail and involves many sticks as well as carrots, but a similar effort with al Qaeda would be a fool's errand.

Netanyahu's government may be dead-set against talking with Hamas, but treating it like al Qaeda and using this as a reason to not negotiate with moderates like Abbas only convinces skeptical Palestinians that negotiations will never work. Indeed, the failure to restart peace talks only makes Hamas stronger, making a difficult task impossible in the years to come.



Daniel Byman is a professor in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University and the research director of the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution. His book A High Price: The Triumphs and Failures of Israeli Counterterrorism will be released in June 2011.




Article 4.

Bloomberg

Why Palestinians Have Time on Their Side

Jeffrey Goldberg



May 24, 2011 -- If I were a Palestinian (and, should there be any confusion on this point, I am not), and if I were the sort of Palestinian who believed that Israel should be wiped off the map, then I would be quite pleased with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s performance before Congress this morning.

I would applaud Netanyahu for including no bold initiatives that would have suggested to the world that Israel is alive to the threat posed by its seemingly eternal occupation of the West Bank.

In fact, I would make support for Netanyahu the foundation stone of my patient campaign to dismantle the world’s only majority-Jewish country. I would support not only Netanyahu, but the far-right parties of his governing coalition, the parties that seem uninterested in democracy and obsessed with planting more Jewish settlements on the West Bank.

The settlements would have my wholehearted backing. I would encourage my brother Palestinians to help build settlements at a brisk pace. I would ask the Israelis to build an even more intricate system of bypass roads on the West Bank that would connect Jewish settlements to one another and to Israel proper. I would ask my ostensible allies among the Arab nations to provide interest-free mortgages to Israelis in Tel Aviv, so they could move out to the settlements for some fresh air and a little more yard. And, while I was at it, I would insist that my leaders abort their campaign for United Nations recognition of an independent state of Palestine.

Entanglement

My goal: To hopelessly, ineradicably, entangle the two peoples wedged between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

Then I would wait as the Israeli population on the West Bank grew, and grew some more. I would wait until 2017, 50 years after the Six Day War, which ended with Israel in control of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. I would go before the UN and say the following:

"We, the Palestinians, no longer seek a homeland of our own. We recognize the permanence of Israeli occupation, the dominion of the Israeli military and the power of the Israeli economy. So we would like to join them. In the 50 years since the beginning of the ’temporary’ occupation, we have seen hundreds of thousands of Israelis build communities near our own communities. We admire what they have built, and the system of laws that governs their lives. Unlike them, many of us live under Israeli military law but have no say in choosing the Israelis who rule us. So we no longer want statehood. We simply want the vote."

And this, of course, would bring about the end of Israel.

Apartheid State

Either the Jews of Israel would grant the Palestinians the vote, at which point their country would lose its Jewish majority and its identity as a refuge for the Jewish people, or it would deny them the vote, and become an apartheid state. The latter option is untenable, of course: Many Jewish Israelis would be repulsed by this thought; other nations that already consider Israel a pariah would now have just cause; and Israel would lose its last remaining friend, the U.S., because no American -- including and especially young American Jews -- would identify with a country reminiscent of pre-Mandela South Africa.

If Netanyahu had been thinking strategically, he might have realized this when he went before Congress this morning. And he might have done something bold: Acknowledge that the age of Jewish settlement is over. He did mention, fleetingly, that certain settlements would be set adrift in a theoretical peace deal. But he seemed unaware that he was delivering a speech that could easily have been given 10 years ago.

It is not 10 years ago. Israel is now 10 years closer to achieving full pariah status. And -- in part because the Palestinians lack the patience to pursue a strategy of gradual, irreversible entanglement -- a moment of truth for Israel is rapidly approaching.

UN Vote

The Palestinians are seeking a UN vote in September on independence. They will prevail in the General Assembly, though not in the Security Council. President Barack Obama, with whom Netanyahu just picked a fight, will have to spend a good amount of political capital to stymie the Palestinian campaign, even though he appears to have nothing but contempt for Netanyahu’s lack of vision.

But American opposition to this unilateral declaration will be in many ways immaterial. Israel will soon enough be seen by most of the world as the occupier not of disputed territory but of a foreign country. The Palestinians will wake up to find that a General Assembly vote did not, in fact, give them true independence. And then there will be an explosion.

The Palestinians who are watching Yemenis, Libyans and Syrians fighting for their freedom will soon be inspired to once again take up their own fight.

Existential Threats

Netanyahu, who understands the existential threat posed by Iran, does not seem to understand the nature of this other existential threat. His five predecessors as prime minister -- including Ariel Sharon, whose heart did not bleed for Palestinians -- understood it. President Obama understands it, too.

"The number of Palestinians living west of the Jordan River is growing rapidly and fundamentally reshaping the demographic realities of both Israel and the Palestinian territories," Obama told members of AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobbying group, on May 22. "This will make it harder and harder, without a peace deal, to maintain Israel as both a Jewish state and a democratic state."

An eternal truth of Middle East politics is that the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. Lately, though, this has become an Israeli specialty. If Israel misses the chance this year to set the Palestinians on a course toward independence, it will jeopardize its future as a Jewish democracy.

A Magnanimous Vision

Yes, it will be dangerous for Israel to return to its 1967 borders, or anything close. The potential merger between Hamas and the more moderate Fatah is cause for despair, but it should spur Netanyahu to try to split the moderates from the radicals by offering a magnanimous vision for peace. He should realize that it will be fatal for Israel to maintain control over millions of Palestinians who seek what the people of Yemen and Libya and Syria seek: freedom.

Absent any hope of progress, the Palestinians will do what they can to undermine Israel. But all they have to do is wait.









Article 5.

The Daily Beast

The Palestinian Right to Dream

Peter Beinart



May 25, 2011 -- I watched Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress with a guy named Fadi Quran. He recently graduated from Stanford, where he double-majored in physics and international relations. He lives in Ramallah, where he’s starting an alternative energy company. And he just might rock our world.

Quran is helping to coordinate a raft of Palestinian youth organizations—located in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria—all united around one goal: to create a Palestinian Tahrir Square. They organized the unity march that helped pressure Fatah and Hamas to reconcile. Ten days ago, they organized the Nakba Day protests in which refugees marched on Israel’s borders.

What they’re doing isn’t exactly new. Palestinians in the West Bank have been conducting regular nonviolent protests for many years now, often against the separation barrier that stands between them and their fields. But Egypt and Tunisia made Quran and his colleagues realize that nonviolence was possible on a much larger scale. Not everyone in his movement believes in peaceful resistance as a matter of principle, he admitted sheepishly. But they all believe it represents the right strategy. They’ve been studying the civil rights movement and Gandhi’s struggle against the British and the movement that peacefully brought down Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia. No one wants a second intifada, he insisted. “It hurt us much more than the Israelis.”

When I asked Quran what his movement believes, I expected to hear about borders and refugees and Jerusalem. Instead, he began talking about John Rawls and John Locke, a social contract between the government and the governed. A Palestinian government that denies his rights, he insisted, is as offensive as an Israeli one. When I pressed him on whether his colleagues want two states—one Palestinian, one Jewish—or a secular binational one, he seemed strangely agnostic. He said that in an ideal world one democratic state would be better, before adding that of course such a state would have to guarantee the safety and cultural autonomy of Jews. (One of his inspirations, he said, was Martin Buber, the Jewish philosopher who advocated a binational state in the 1920s and 1930s). When I said I didn’t consider a binational state very realistic, he conceded the point, before noting that in the age of Netanyahu and Lieberman, most Palestinians don’t consider a two-state solution very realistic either. After a while, it hit me: This is what Israelis and American Jews have been demanding all along. Didn’t we always say, during the bloody Arafat years, that when the Palestinians produced Gandhis everything would change? We’d never be able to resist; our Jewish hearts would melt. Now that it’s starting to happen, I suspect the response will be exactly the opposite: Yes, there’s something admirable about young people like Fadi Quran, but who are they kidding. This is the Middle East, not Palo Alto. It’s no place for dreamers; they’ll get eaten for lunch.

Privately, many in Congress consider settlement expansion a catastrophe and the occupation a disgrace.

Maybe so. But watching over Fadi’s shoulder as members of Congress robotically rose to applaud Netanyahu, I couldn’t help thinking of the contrast. Anyone who has spent any time around Congress knows that many of the people who applauded Netanyahu—the Jewish Democrats in particular—don’t actually support his policies. Privately, many consider settlement expansion a catastrophe and the occupation a disgrace. But they don’t want to create headaches for themselves. Could they say what they really believe and get reelected? Probably—after all, incumbents are very hard to beat. But who needs the hassle?

“What we want to do next,” Fadi added, “is freedom rides, like in the South. We’ll board settler-only buses and make them arrest us or beat us up.” He mentioned that many American Jews had participated in the civil rights movement. “So how will American Jews react if we do this,” he asked? “Do you think we’ll get any support, given your history?” I started to talk about the way American Jewish politics actually works, about the gap between what people believe and what they say, about the way people wall themselves off from unpleasant realities, and then I stopped. It was too depressing to explain. Fadi Quran has the right to dream.



Peter Beinart is associate professor of journalism and political science at City University of New York and a senior fellow at the New America Foundation.










Article 6.

Asharq Al-Awsat

Hamas' Gaza strongman criticizes Khalid Meshal


25 May 2011 -- Differences and clashes within the Hamas movement have come to light for the first time, with Hamas senior figures verbally sparring and exchanging criticism in the media. This is particularly surprising as Hamas is known for the discipline of its cadres and members.
In an interview carried by the Lebanese Al-Akhbar newspaper on Tuesday, Zahar criticized the statements made by Hamas leader Khalid Meshal on 4 May in Cairo during the signing of the reconciliation agreement between Fatah and Hamas. Zahar said that Khalid Meshal did not have any right to say that Hamas would give Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas another chance to try to negotiate a peace deal with Israel.
In the interview, Zahar reportedly said "we didn't know and were not consulted about the position of Khalid Meshal, and this is not the correct position." He added "we haven't given any chance for negotiations on behalf of us or the Palestinian people. Our program is against negotiations in this way, because they are a waste of time."
Zahar was also quoted as saying that the Hamas power structure should be re-assessed as "the leadership is here [in the Gaza Strip], and the part (of Hamas) that is abroad is just a part of that."
Speaking to Asharq Al-Awsat, Hamas political bureau member Izzat al-Rashaq, commented on the criticisms put forward by Dr. Zahar, stressed that these statements do not represent the position of the Hamas movement.
Al-Rashaq told Asharq Al-Awsat that "the statements made by brother Zahar are wrong, and do not represent the position of the Hamas movement or any of its institutions. They represent a violation of the organizational traditions followed by Hamas, and are not worthy of being issued against the leader or leadership of the Hamas movement." He added that "Dr. Zahar is not authorized to comment on the statements made by the leader of the Hamas movement…the political bureau is the only institution that is authorized to issue any clarification or explanation on the statements issued by the leadership."
Despite his strong statements, Izzat al-Rashaq denied that Zahar's statements reflect a state of disagreement or division within Hamas, stressing that "there is no disagreement within Hamas, the movement is highly united, and its decisions are one."
Senior Hamas official Dr. Salah al-Bardawil confirmed to Asharq Al-Awsat that the Hamas movement is united, saying that some media outlets are trying to convince the public that there is division within the ranks of Hamas. Al-Bardawil also stressed that Hamas figures have the right to issue their statements using whatever language they wish so long as they are expressing their own views and ideas, and this does not mean that there is a split in the Hamas movement's decision.
Dr. Bardawil also stressed to Asharq Al-Awsat that Hamas is under the leadership of Khalid Meshal, adding that Hamas is a resistance movement that believes that resistance is the means of liberating Palestine, especially after it has became clear to everybody that "it would be a terrible gamble to bet on these futile negotiations."








Article 7.

Military Review

An Old Man’s Thoughts on War and Peace

Edward Bernard Glick



May-June 2011 -- WHEN I WAS a young man in graduate school, two books impressed me mightily. They still do. One is Konrad Lorenz’s On Aggression. An M.D. and a Ph.D. and a 1973 Nobel laureate in medicine and physiology, Lorenz established the field of ethology, the study of the behavior of animals within their natural environment. In his prologue to On Aggression, Lorenz wrote, “The subject of this book is aggression, that is to say the fighting instinct in beast and man, which is directed against members of the same species.” According to him, animals, particularly males, are biologically programmed to fight over resources and turf, and this behavior is part of natural selection. In short, to a great degree, aggressive behavior is innate.

The other book that influenced me mightily as a young man was Robert Ardrey’s The Territorial Imperative. Ardrey popularized and expanded on Lorenz’s ideas. After reading Ardrey, a Book-of-the-Month Club reviewer asked, “Are we a territorial species? Do we defend ourselves, whether by war or other means, because we have learned to do so—or because, as animals, we must?”

Reading Lorenz and Ardrey provides a good reason for believing the Roman proverb Si vis pacem para bellum, “He who wishes peace should prepare for war.” (The full text of the proverb goes on to say, “He who desires victory should carefully train his soldiers; he who wants favorable results should fight relying on skill, not chance.”)

War is no longer limited to soldiers in uniform battling each other. War now includes terrorists who do not wear uniforms, do not represent a sovereign state, and use civilian airplanes and motor vehicles to crash into buildings in order to kill their enemies.

Despite these changes in war, many pacifists who cling to the notion that war is immoral continue to forget that soldiers, not sermons, stopped Islam from advancing into Christian Europe at the Battle of Vienna in 1683. It was not sermons, but soldiers, who freed the American colonists from Great Britain’s rule in 1781, and soldiers, not sermons, truly emancipated America’s slaves in 1865 and liberated the survivors of the Nazi death camps in 1945.

Counterterrorism is the predominant form of contemporary war. One might say that, after the attack on New York’s World Trade Center on 11 September 2001, Americans divided themselves into the September 10th people, the September 12th people, and the September 13th people. The September 13th people blame the United States for the events of September 11th and think that the proper U.S. response is to abandon American “arrogance” and American support of Israel. The September 10th people reject these notions, but think that terrorist acts are crimes that should be countered only by our law-enforcement and intelligence communities. The September 12th people believe that today’s terrorists want to destroy Western civilization, and that acts of terrorism are acts of war that we must counter with mainly military responses.

When it comes to terrorism beyond our borders, passages from an article I published in 1979 about the Iran hostage crisis come to my mind:

The essential question—and it will cause us great pain in every sense if any of the hostages are harmed or are still being held when these words are printed—is the extent to which the Western world in general, the Third World in particular, and the United States especially, are themselves responsible for this governmentally condoned terrorism.

In its most recurring form, modern terrorism has manifested itself in the confrontation between the Arabs and the Israelis. . . Decades ago, Israel warned the world, particularly the Western nations, that internationally tolerated terrorism is a political virus that knows no boundaries. If left unchecked it would spread to other causes, continents, and countries.

So long as they thought they were immune from the terrorist virus, aloof bystanders could adopt this kind of logic and base their actions and inactions on it. But there are no aloof bystanders. The Tehran terrorists have proven that once and for all. If the countries of the West do not band together against terrorism, whatever the short-term economic sacrifices, their long-term future as truly sovereign states is quite problematical.

Those who hate America like to discuss war within the framework of American imperialism and colonialism. Yes, the United States took land from the native peoples of North America. But so, too, did the French, British, and Canadians. So did the Spaniards and Portuguese in Latin America. So did the Australians and New Zealanders in the South Seas. So did the Russians, Chinese, and Japanese in Asia and Europe. Did the Scots, Welsh, and Catholics of Northern Island want to be a part of Great Britain? Do the Tibetans want to be part of Communist China?

Yes, the United States conquered the Philippines and Puerto Rico in the 1898 Spanish-American War and remained in de facto control of Cuba until 1934. But this country gave the Filipinos independence in 1946, and it has promised statehood or independence to the Puerto Ricans whenever they want to have it.

Yes, President Theodore Roosevelt, influenced by U.S. Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan’s sea-power theories, took advantage of a revolt against Colombia to acquire what became the Panama Canal Zone in 1903. The new Panamanian government gave the United States the French concession to construct the Canal, which the United States completed in 1914. But President Jimmy Carter returned both the Zone and the Canal to the Panamanians in 1977.

Yes, in 1945, President Harry Truman ordered the U.S. Army Air Force to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, thus ending Japan’s participation in World War II. Yes, for a few years, the United States was the only power with nuclear

weapons on this planet, but we blackmailed no one. Nor did we take anyone’s land. By contrast, the Soviet Union incorporated huge swaths of post-war Poland and Germany.

If we compare the United States to Assyria, Babylonia, Persia, Greece, and Rome—or for that matter, Ottoman Turkey, Spain, Portugal, Japan, Russia, Britain, and France—we can only conclude that the United States was and is the least warlike and least imperialistic super power in history.

Of course, there is the question of war within the context of a nuclear-armed Iran. A few years ago, Thomas Friedman of the New York Times wrote, “I’d rather live with a nuclear Iran because it is

the wisest thing under the circumstances.” Thomas Friedman may feel this way, but for the leaders of Israel, an Iranian nuclear bomb and its associated delivery systems raise existential questions.

Can the Jewish state live with an Iran that possesses nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them? Can it ignore an Iranian leader who labels the country “a fake regime” that ought to “be wiped off the face of the Earth?” How should it react to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s plans for a second Holocaust, even as he denies that the first one ever happened? Millions of Israelis are descendants of those who died in the Holocaust. In 1981, when Iraq threatened Israel, Israel’s then prime minister, Menachem Begin, ordered the Israeli Air Force to destroy Iraq’s nuclear reactor and then declared that “Israel has nothing to apologize for. In simple logic, we decided to act now, before it is too late. We shall defend our people with all the means at our disposal.”

One sometimes hears the argument that if Iran can live with an Israeli bomb, why can’t Israel live with an Iranian bomb? The answer is that no Israeli leader has ever threatened to eradicate Iran.

Iran is a large country, but Israel is a tiny one, smaller than New Jersey. At its narrowest point, it is only nine miles wide. Israel’s nuclear arsenal can deter its enemies only if they have the wisdom and the sanity to be deterred. During the Cold War, the Russians and the Americans operated under a political and military doctrine known as MAD, for mutual assured destruction. The doctrine assumed that no matter how bad things got between the Soviet Union and the United States—the 1962 Cuban missile crisis being a case in point—neither side would risk annihilation. The leaders of Iran do not think that way. They reason as follows: “We have 70 million people, and Israel has 7 million. If we attack the Zionists with nuclear bombs, they will respond in kind. If they are lucky, they will kill half of us, but if Allah wills it, we shall kill all of them, and there will still be 35 million of us left.”

We humans may enjoy periods of peace—sometimes for a long time—but we shall never entirely rid ourselves of war because we are “wired” to fight over pieces of land. Konrad Lorenz, Robert Ardrey, and Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus (the man who coined the Latin phrase Si vis pacem para bellum) are correct. So, too, is Max Boot, the American author and military historian. He rejects the “sunny, if ahistorical, Enlightenment faith that peace is the natural order of things and war a temporary aberration.”

Like it or not, this is the world in which we have lived in the past. This is the world in which we live now. And this is the world in which we shall live in the future.



Edward Bernard Glick is professor emeritus of political science at Temple University in Philadelphia, where he specialized in civil-military relations.



























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