Since I really don’t have much of a background in website maintenance and html, whenever this weblog runs into technical trouble, it may take a day or two (or a couple weeks in this recent case) for me to get the blog fixed. But I want you to always know that no matter what happens, the blog will endure. It’s good to be back and there’s so much to comment on!
You want to know why Obama is scrambling to strong-arm Abbas and his allies who have pledged to vote yes for Palestinian statehood into dropping their bid? After getting elected, Obama went to Cairo to speak about bridging the divide between the US and the Muslim world and spoke sympathetically about Palestinian statehood. Now, with re-election in mind, Obama, the politician that he is, will have to veto the resolution. He wants to avoid all that so that he can stick to his baseless rhetoric highlighting his false sympathy for the plight of the Palestinian people. In actuality, if the resolution is tabled, he will veto it and expose himself as a US president who talks a good talk, but that’s just about it when it comes to dealing with the main issue that has plagued the Middle East for decades.
Mind you, what most pro-Israelis don’t understand, is that a two-state solution based on the ’67 borders is already a major compromise. Indeed, because such a framework would effectively concede that the now-nearly 4 million Palestinians that were ethnically cleansed from Israel proper, won’t have the right of return. But what Netanyahu and his ilk want, however, is that the right of return to be scrapped for good, the annexation of occupied East Jerusalem to be recognized by the world (especially the native Palestinians), the 400,000+ Israeli settlers that have carved up the West Bank to remain exactly where they are and continue to “naturally grow” indefinitely, the Palestinians to recognize Israel as a “Jewish state” thereby preparing the ground for the eventual dispossession and possible removal of the remaining Palestinians who survived Israel’s founding ethnic cleansing operation, and, last but not least, for the Palestinian Authority to effectively serve as Israel’s proxy against groups inside the Gaza-Strip-open-air-prison and the West Bank that resist this total surrender of the Palestinian people on their own lands!
The Guardian: International efforts to forestall a showdown in the UN security council over the declaration of a Palestinian state are solidifying around a plan for the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, to submit a request for recognition but for a vote on the issue to be put on hold while a new round of peace talks is launched.
The deal is being pushed by the Middle East “Quartet” of the UN, EU, US and Russia, which is attempting to persuade Abbas to back away from a diplomatic confrontation with Washington, which says it will veto the Palestinian bid.
The US president Barack Obama is expected to meet the Palestinian leader at the UN on Wednesday as Abbas comes under intense pressure from the US and Europe to compromise.
Diplomats said the proposed compromise would see Abbas submit his letter to the security council, which would then defer action. In parallel, the Quartet would issue the framework for renewed negotiations that would include a timeline for the birth of a Palestinian state.
The deal is intended to permit Abbas to follow through on his commitment to Palestinians to seek recognition for an independent state at the security council, a pledge he could not abandon entirely without considerable damage to his already battered leadership.
If the proposals under discussion come to fruition, Abbas could claim a victory for the Palestinians by saying he has achieved his principal goal in going to the UN of breaking the deadlock that has seen no serious movement towards a Palestinian state in years.
However, diplomats warned that a number of issues remain unresolved, including a Palestinian demand that the statement include a requirement that Israel halt construction of Jewish settlements in the occupied territories.
Israel’s position is unclear. Its prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, arrives in New York on Wednesday and has appealed for immediate talks with Abbas but without preconditions.
Diplomats said negotiations were likely to come down to the wire as Abbas plans to submit the request on Friday.
“The Palestinians are open to a way out of this,” said a diplomat with knowledge of the negotiations. “But they can’t abandon the security council vote without something to show. The question is how to turn this to their advantage. If the result is that there is a serious push to make peace talks work, then that’s a win for the Palestinians. I think everyone involved in this – the Americans, the Europeans – would like to see that happen.”
Husam Zomlot, a Palestinian spokesman, said Abbas remains committed to submitting the Palestinian request to the security council but he noted that the intention behind the move was to break the deadlock in the peace process, which may now be happening.
“There is absolutely no contradiction whatsoever between our quest for United Nations full membership and any possible negotiations. In fact, we see them as very very complementary. We are seeking this to provide any future bilateral process with sufficient multilateral cover where we don’t waste another 20 years,” he said.
The proposals under discussion would have the Quartet statement say, at the Palestinians’ behest, that the goal is a Palestinian state based on the borders at the time of the 1967 war that led to the occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza. It will also meet an Israeli demand by saying that talks will result in two countries with Israel as a Jewish state.
A Palestinian official acknowledged the plan was a focus of discussion with the Quartet although he cautioned that the leadership is concerned to ensure there is real momentum and that Israel is not permitted to drag out negotiations.
Abbas has come under intense pressure from the US and European nations to avoid forcing Washington to wield its veto. The British foreign secretary, William Hague, and the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, met the Palestinian leader on Tuesday to press him to reopen talks.
Nabil Shaath, a senior member of Abbas’s delegation to the UN, said the US has attempted to dissuade the Palestinians from going to the security council with the threat of punitive measures. He did not say what they might be although there are demands in Congress for the $500m in US aid to the Palestinian Authority to be cut.
The Palestinians are also under pressure because it is far from certain they will win the necessary nine votes in the security council to win recognition. The US has been using its influence to get some security council members to abstain in the hope the Palestinians will lose the vote and that the US veto will not be required.
Nonetheless, Abbas can claim a diplomatic success in forcing the most serious effort to kickstart peace negotiations in years. The US insistence that it will veto the Palestinian bid for membership in the security council has strengthened the hand of European governments, which have generally be sidelined by Washington in the Middle East peace process.
Britain and France in particular, as permanent members of the security council, have attempted to use their votes as a bargaining chip in dealings with Abbas by suggesting that they could support a move to give the Palestinians greater recognition in the UN general assembly if a vote is not forced in the security council.
However, diplomats cautioned that the plan is far from complete and that obstacles remain.
Not all Palestinians are on board with this, especially since it only concerns 22% of historic Palestine and is a decision taken by some PLO factions, which do not represent all Palestinians inside the territories and outside. Here’s the informative video nonetheless.
Some more indications of the new emerging Middle East. See it here.
This one paragraph really wraps up Israel’s predicament in the region – NYTimes: With its Cairo embassy ransacked, its ambassador to Turkey expelled and the Palestinians seeking statehood recognition at the United Nations, Israel found itself on Saturday increasingly isolated and grappling with a radically transformed Middle East where it believes its options are limited and poor. The diplomatic crisis, in which winds unleashed by the Arab Spring are now casting a chill over the region, was crystallized by the scene of Israeli military jets sweeping into Cairo at dawn on Saturday to evacuate diplomats after the Israeli Embassy had been besieged by thousands of protesters. It was an image that reminded some Israelis of Iran in 1979, when Israel evacuated its embassy in Tehran after the revolution there replaced an ally with an implacable foe.
This is by far the best documentary I’ve seen on the uprising in Bahrain and the Saudi-backed regime’s counter-revolutionary onslaught. It’s a little bit less than an hour but definitely worth your time. Qatar, an ally to the Saudi and Bahraini royal families, a member of the GCC, and home to al-Jazeera, the producer of the documentary, has come under pressure to remove the documentary. Al-Jazeera, which often succumbs to the dictates of the ruling al-Thani family’s foreign policy priorities, has minimized the coverage on the Bahraini uprising from early on, yet, this documentary is a bold step in finally giving the movement there its due, albeit belated, attention. See it here.
Statements from Iranian officials indicate that Iran may be preparing for a post-Assad Syria. Of course, the Iranian government sees the Assad regime as a major foreign policy asset in its regional soft-power network. The Iranian government is much stronger in the Middle East than at home. For the past 30 years, Iran has tirelessly built a network of militants from the Mahdi Army and other Islamists militias in Iraq to Hizbullah in Lebanon, arguably the most powerful resistance movement in the world, and Hamas in Palestine. This is Iran’s main source of regional power that it uses to challenge any government that has contemplated attacking Iran. In other words, Iran may not be able to fight a conventional war with the US, or maybe even Israel, but it can respond to an attack with its network employing asymmetrical warfare, a method of war Iran has long mastered. Syria helps make much of that possible, especially in terms of Hizbullah. Syria provides Iran with the only viable route to provide the resistance movement with weaponry. That Iranian officials are beginning to criticize the Ba’ath regime in Syria means that Iran maybe hedging its bets. After the Ba’ath regime’s failure to curtail the 6-month-long popular revolutionary movement in Syria, Iran may now be accepting the idea that the regime will fall and could be seeking to fix its image with the opposition, which may one day come to power and is justifiably sore with Iran for its long and continued support of the regime in Damascus. Here are the relevant statements from Iranian officials:
The cracks in the Iranian government’s formerly imperturbable support for the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad continue to widen. Less than a week after Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi declared that the Assad regime had a responsibility to heed protesters’ “legitimate demands”, the semiofficial Fars News Agency quoted a member of the Majles’s National Security Commision, Ahmad Avaei (pictured), to the effect that Assad’s opposition to Israel and support for the Lebanese Hezbollah — a primary client of the Islamic Republic — no longer justified support for his embattled government. As reported in the Los Angeles Times,
“The fact is that supporting the Syrian rulers at any cost was not right, as those who staged the protests were Muslims, and their protests were legitimate,” Avaei said. […]
“Unfortunately, the Syrian leadership has realized too late the necessity of entering the reform process and should have done that much earlier to avoid the current crisis,” the lawmaker said. […]
Iranian officials’ switch to public criticism of the Syrian crackdown follows an apparently influential visit to Tehran late last month by Qatar’s emir, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani, who supports the Syrian uprising and called efforts to crush it “fruitless.”
Mashallah Shamsolvaezin, an Iranian analyst and journalist, said in an interview that Iran had sought to reach out to at least one opposition group in Syria, the Muslim Brotherhood
Ha’aretz: Sygmunt Bauman, the Jewish sociologist and one of the greatest philosophers of our time, castigated Israel harshly this week, saying it did not want peace and was afraid of it.
Bauman said Israel was “taking advantage of the Holocaust to legitimize unconscionable acts,” and compared the separation fence to the walls surrounding the Warsaw Ghetto, in which hundreds of thousands of Jews perished in the Holocaust.
In a long interview to the important Polish weekly “Politika,” Bauman said Israel was not interested in peace. “Israeli politicians are terrified of peace, they tremble with fear from the possibility of peace, because without war and without general mobilization they don’t know how to live,” he said.
“Israel does not see the missiles falling on communities along the border as a bad thing. On the contrary, they would be worried and even alarmed were it not for this fire,” the Polish-British sociologist said.
Usually when the IMF “paints a pretty picture” of any economy, you and I should be very very skeptical. But here‘s the CNN special nonetheless. It’s good food for thought.
You have to love this picture of a rebel wearing one of Qaddafi’s hats and his gold chain after raiding his Bab al-Aziziya compound in Tripoli a couple days ago.
The Guardian: Lebanon and Iran have appealed to the Libyan rebels to investigate the fate of Moussa al-Sadr, a Shia religious leader who went missing after a flight to Tripoli in August 1978.
With Gaddafi’s regime on the brink of collapse, officials in Iran and Lebanon have expressed hope that the mystery surrounding the charismatic Iranian-born Lebanese scholar might finally be brought to an end.
Sadr, a moderate philosopher who would be 83 if still alive, disappeared along with his two companions after they went to Libya for a meeting with government officials. Iran and Lebanon have long blamed Sadr’s disappearance on the Libyan leader.
Libya denied any responsibility over their disappearance and claimed that Sadr departed for Italy after the Libyan visit. Italian officials denied they ever arrived. There has been no news of Sadr since then, although his family have always believed that the Shia figure is still alive in a Libyan prison.
However, Abdel Moneim al-Houni, a former Libyan ambassador to the Arab League who joined the rebels, said in a recent interview with the London-based Arabian newspaper, Al-Hayat, that Sadr had been killed by Gaddafi’s regime and buried in southern Libya.
Since he went missing, Sadr, who is known as Imam Moussa Sadr in Iran and founded Lebanon’s first prominent Shia political movement, has become a revered icon for Shia communities in both Iran and Lebanon, especially among supporters of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
His family issued a statement this week on the anniversary of his disappearance. “We appeal to those who will take over in Libya after the collapse of the tyrant to give special attention to this case,” Sadr’s family said in a statement addressed to the rebels.
Lebanon’s English-language newspaper, the Daily Star, also quoted the Lebanese foreign minister as saying: “When things become clear, we will make relentless efforts with relevant people in Libya to reveal the fate of Imam Sadr and his companions.”
He added: “Lebanon has never abandoned efforts for one moment to determine his fate and that of his companions and there is a chance now to discover new things.”
Hezbollah have also issued a separate statement. It said: “We are full of hope that they will be freed by your hands and returned to their families.”
In Iran, government-sponsored media organisations and even opposition newspapers have called on Libyan rebels to uncover Sadr’s fate.
The speaker of the parliamentary committee on national security and foreign policies, Kazem Jalali, told the Iranian reformist newspaper Etemaad: “We believe that [Sadr] is still alive and is held captive by Gaddafi’s government. Gaddafi has repeatedly lied about his case to the international community … We hope to see him in good health in the next days and we hope he joins his family once again.”
I would be both shocked and ecstatic if the Imam was still alive. At the least, I hope his family and supporters finally get closure. PressTV: “The Lebanese government has decided to recognize the National Transitional Council in Libya,” read a statement released after a cabinet meeting on Tuesday. “Foreign Minister Adnan Mansur has also been delegated to submit plans for cooperation between Lebanese authorities and all relevant and emerging Libyan authorities to uncover the fate of Imam Moussa Sadr and his companions,” it added. Lebanon has never stopped searching for Sadr and his comrades and now there is a real and present opportunity to discover what became of them, Mansur added. Imam Moussa Sadr was a greatly popular and highly venerated Lebanese Shia cleric of an Iranian descent, who disappeared on Aug. 31, 1978 in a visit to Libya. Lebanon’s resistance movement Hezbollah on Monday called on Libyan fighters to help find Imam Moussa al-Sadr and two of his companions. “We are full of hope that they will be freed by your (Libyan fighters’) hands and returned to their families,†Hezbollah said in a statement.
Back when the issue of the no-fly zone was being debated, many on the left took a principled stand that war was not the solution and that NATO’s pending involvement would have served as an opening for imperialism. Although I’m usually left-of-center when it comes to most issues, I advocated for the no-fly zone. In principle, I was sympathetic to the above arguments, but I knew that the urgency of the reality on the ground left little room for such ideals. The fact of the matter is that when protests first broke out in mid-February, the Qaddafi regime responded to them with brute force that prompted an armed uprising that secured nearly 90% of Libya from the Qaddafi regime. After 2 weeks, Qaddafi consolidated what was left of his command and launched a cruel counter-offensive, capturing city after city and committing massacre after massacre until his forces reached the gates of Benghazi, the heart of the rebellion and Libya’s second largest city. He declared that no mercy would be granted to the “traitors.” To take a principled stand against foreign intervention would not only have meant that the rebellion would have collapsed, but it would have also effectively meant that a large-scale massacre was highly likely. In the wider context of the Arab Spring, Qaddafi was spearheading a counter-revolution (other branches of the counter-revolution can be found in Riyadh and later in Damascus).
Many who supported the NATO-imposed no-fly zone (me included) were not naive to think that NATO was getting involved out of the kindness of its members. The 3 main NATO members, Britain, France, and the US, have a horrible track record when it comes to foreign intervention and they have the least credibility in my book in relation to helping out other countries achieve democracy or freedom, especially in the Middle East and North Africa (they’ve more often than not worked against democracy or sustained dictatorships). But I took the NATO-rebel alliance as either a marriage of convenience or an aggregation of interests. Both had a vested interest in the removal of the Qaddafi clan.
The jubilation on the streets of Libya broadcast the world over vindicate that strategy. Once the rebels consolidate their revolution, the first phase of the revolution will be nearing its end and the process of post-revolutionary state-building, a process both complex and long, will begin and there’s no telling what Libya will look like in the future but that’s not for me, you, or the “west” to decide. For now, let them have their moment, they’ve certainly earned it (estimates have it that nearly 30,000 people have died in the 6-month long conflict). They’ll think about tomorrow tomorrow.
Libyans are just as smart as me and you and they used NATO to achieve what they couldn’t on their own, the removal of a 42-year ruthless dictatorship. And NATO used them for the same end goal. But I am confident that they didn’t trade the rule of the local dictator for that of imperialism. In other words, the struggle in Libya is only beginning but I remain hopeful and I consider myself blessed to have the awareness to fully appreciate the history unfolding before my eyes and I am awed by the commitment and the persistence of those people who are making that history.
p.s. the picture above reminds me of the final days of the Iranian Revolution when an armed uprising dealt the regime its coup de grace.
The past few days in Libya have been historic. All attention is now on Tripoli but I want to focus on Misrata here. When the rebellion first broke out, all of Libya’s major cities and smaller ones, with the exception of Tripoli and Sirte, Qaddafi’s city of birth, fell to the revolution. Qaddafi’s counter-offensive captured almost all the main cities in the west and moved onwards towards the rebel capital of Benghazi in the east. One city, however, held out against Qaddafi forces’ repeated onslaughts: Misrata (Libya’s 3rd largest city). Although Benghazi was the heart of the rebellion, Misrata was its inspiration, resilience, and fighting spirit. Misrata, along Libya’s coast east of Tripoli, has played a strategic role in the rebellion’s recent offensive in Tripoli. Reports indicate that 1,000 rebels in Misrata boarded a NATO-guarded ship and sailed to Tripoli and docked in a pro-revolution stronghold of Tajoura to help with a revolutionary uprising coordinated with the rebel march that has been zeroing in on Tripoli in the past couple days. The results of which are now being recorded in history before our eyes. Reports suggest that Saif al-Islam, Qaddhafi’s dirtbag son who gave the world three options (1-that his family will fight and die in Libya; 2- that his family will fight and die in Libya; 3- that his family will fight and die in Libya), has now proven that that sloganeering meant that he was willing to send soldiers to fight and die for his family’s tyrannical rule but he himself was only willing to face capture, not die fighting.
Here’s a short video of rebel advances in the last few days.
Although I definitely think Rachel Corrie should be commemorated (a city in every country should dedicate a street to her or to other martyrs who died for justice in Palestine). I think Iran has little to no credibility to exalt advocates of freedom. It would be just as hypocritical if the US, which overthrew Iran’s democracy in 1953, named a street in DC after Neda Agha Soltan. LA Times: Iran has decided to name a street in honor of Rachel Corrie, an American pro-Palestinian activist who was killed while protesting against the demolition of Palestinian homes in the Gaza strip eight years ago. It’s the first time since Iran’s Islamic Revolution in 1979 that an Iranian street has been named after an American.
On Thursday, an article published in the Iranian newspaper Hamshari, a daily close to the Tehran city council and the mayor of the capital, said the council will name a street in Tehran after Corrie, a 23-year old Olympia, Wash., native who was killed by an Israeli military bulldozer in 2003 when she tried to prevent the Israeli Defense Forces from tearing down a Palestinian home.
The report said the street sign would be put up in central Tehran, but it was not immediately clear when that would happen.
Before the 1979 revolution and ousting of the shah, several large streets in Tehran were named after U.S. presidents, including Eisenhower Street, which used to run from Tehran’s current Azadi Square to Enghelab Square. Roosevelt Street, meanwhile, ran along the eastern side of the former U.S. Embassy in Tehran.
These days, however, few streets in Iran are named after Western nationals, although there is the occasional exception.
In the 1980s, Winston Churchill Boulevard, the site of the British Embassy, was renamed Bobby Sands Street after the Irish Republican Army IRA member who went on a hunger strike and died in prison in Northern Ireland in 1981.
