Third Intifada?

BY AMOS

If the recent unrest in Jerusalem spirals out of control, the international news media will surely rush to find some symbolic spark. Perhaps, they will blame the announcement of the Ramat Shlomo expansion. Or maybe the dedication of the restored Hurva Synagogue in the eastern part of the city. They will ignore the wave of Jerusalem-related incitement in the past year, and especially in the last few months, by Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, and the Arab states, including countries allied or enjoying in-the-closet relations with Israel. The rhetoric, which includes a smear campaign alleging that Israel plans to "Judaize" Jerusalem by destroying Muslim antiquities, has been employed by the nationalists as well as the Islamists. It has gone hand-in-hand with the patently absurd efforts to deny any legitimate Jewish religious claims to Jerusalem and other sites. In all of this, Jewish attachment to places such as Hebron is dismissed as extremist political posturing by settlers - as if the religious sentiments of Jewish settlers have less legitimacy than those of Palestinian Muslims.

Maureen Dowd and the Saudi Prince

BY AMOS

From Maureen Dowd's latest op-ed in the New York Times:

"The religious institutions in Israel are stymieing every effort at peace," said the prince, wearing a black-and-gold robe and tinted glasses."

and

Israel is a secular society that some say is growing less secular with religious militants and the chief rabbinate that would like to impose a harsh and exclusive interpretation of Judaism upon the entire society. Ultra-Orthodox rabbis are fighting off the Jewish women who want to conduct their own prayer services at the Western Wall. (In Orthodox synagogues, some men still say a morning prayer thanking God for not making them women.)

Neither Prince Saud al-Faisal nor Maureen Dowd seem to have a clue about Israel. Jewish religious institutions in Israel have very little if anything to do with the lack of progress in the peace process. The morning blessing to which Dowd refers is said by nearly all men who pray at Orthodox synagogues; it is not evidence of any kind of recent trend in Israel. The only factor making Israel "less secular" is demographic. I don't think it's accurate to say that the chief rabbinate wants to impose ultra-Orthodox Judaism on Israeli society. It is more concerned with keeping ultra-Orthodox rabbis in control of religious institutions. And that, again, is completely unrelated to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It seems like the Saudi prince is projecting. He, like many Muslims today, views Israel primarily in religious terms as a challenge to Islam.

The Spin on al-Qaeda in Iraq

Baghdad. I don't know whether Jabbur, on the southern bank of the Tigris, is the
Arab Jabour cited as the operation's location (Map: Perry-Castaneda)

This morning I saw an interview with Col. Terry Ferrell, the commander of 2nd Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division of the U.S. Army, who answered questions about an operation that took place several days ago, on July 14. The operation targeted an Iraqi al-Qaeda (AQI in the military press release) leader by the name of Abu Jurah, in a suburb southeast of Baghdad. The particular brigade that he commands is the heavy brigade combat team (HBCT) "Spartan," which includes armored and artillery battalions. The latter were apparently used to full effect, firing two Excalibur rounds on Abu Jurah's safe-house.

The White House has been talking up its actions against al-Qaeda in Iraq recently. This looks like a another desperate attempt by the administration to spin the obvious failure of the surge. It has become clear that the surge has been able to score only tactical victories against the insurgents - whether al-Qaeda, Sunni, or Shi'a. Thus, once again, the White House is trying to portray the army's battles in Iraq as efforts to defend America from al-Qaeda attacks on its soil.

Interestingly enough, the CNN anchor asked the colonel several times whether he believed that this latest operation would contribute to protecting Americans from an attack "in the homeland." Both times, he avoided giving an answer that would be either blatantly misleading or blatantly subversive of the current White House press campaign.

As the recent attempted attacks in the UK showed, Islamist terrorists inspired by al-Qaeda still pose a great threat to the world. It would be foolish to downplay the dangers posed by such groups. However, no one is served by the ongoing misinformation that casts Iraq as a front in the global war on terror. The Iraqi al-Qaeda "franchises," as a recent Stratfor report by Peter Zeihan argues, have a rather tenuous connection to the real al-Qaeda, currently holed up in Northwest Pakistan. The association between the Iraqi node and the bin Laden crew, Zeihan argues,

started with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who put himself forward as the leader of the Iraqi node of al Qaeda in 2004. While one can argue that al-Zarqawi might have been through an al Qaeda training camp or shared many of bin Laden's ideological goals, no one seriously asserts he had the training, vetting or face time with bin Laden to qualify as an inner member of the al Qaeda leadership. He was a local leader of a local militant group who claimed an association with al Qaeda as a matter of establishing local gravitas and international credibility. Other groups, such as Southeast Asia's Jemaah Islamiyah, had associations with al Qaeda long before al-Zarqawi, but al-Zarqawi was the first to claim the name "al Qaeda" as his own.

For al Qaeda, prevented by its security concerns from engaging in its own attacks, repudiating al-Zarqawi would make the "base" come across as both impotent and out of touch. Accepting "association" with al-Zarqawi was the obvious choice, and bin Laden went so far as to issue an audio communique anointing al-Zarqawi as al Qaeda's point man in Iraq.

Militants such as the late Abu Jurah are engaged in a terrorist war against the Iraqi government and U.S. forces in Iraq. However, their abilities to launch operations against America on its soil are virtually zero.

I am not sure what the current White House strategy on Iraq is. Everyone knows that the U.S. will not be involved much longer in the costly counter-insurgency that has claimed so many of its soldiers' lives for little in return. Given the failure to achieve calm in Iraq, the administration seems to be angling for dramatic victories against Iraqi al-Qaeda crews, before U.S. troops pull back to safer locations in the region. However, it is possible that the U.S. will have to redefine its mission in Iraq as war against Iraqi al-Qaeda, not in order to defend the homeland proper but to prevent Islamists from destabilizing U.S. allies in the region. The Americans would do well to observe developments in Pakistan, where al-Qaeda seems to be growing ever stronger in the frontier region of Waziristan and poised to attempt a dramatic strike against the unpopular Musharraf dictatorship.

Jimmy Carter at Berkeley

Berkeley students lining up to see President Carter (May 2, 2007)

If you put 1,500 college students in a room and make them listen to 30 minutes of canned analysis followed by some valedictory banalities from a failed ex-president, they will still give the man a standing ovation. After all, many of them waited in line for two hours to get tickets.

The funny thing is that those who have been involved in "the struggle" for years (well, semesters) probably left the room wondering about the future of the resistance ... with "friends" like him. First, President Carter denied that Israeli policies in the West Bank were racist. Then, he explained that he never claimed that "events and conditions in Israel" constitute apartheid. Why then does his book carry the subtitle Peace not Apartheid? As As'ad AbuKhalil has said, it is clear that while

Jimmy Carter gave his new book a strong title ... he lacks the courage to defend it. He always waffles when he is asked to explain it.

Instead, Carter admitted that he chose the title to provoke and to get people to pay attention. If he made an argument to the effect that Israel engages in a policy of apartheid in the West Bank, I missed it. In lieu of such an argument, he told the audience that he simply "can't think of any word that describes the situation more accurately."

I have heard many people invoke "apartheid" when describing Israel's policies in the territories. On my walk to campus, I pass by signs urging me to "boycott apartheid Israel" every day. It is also true that the term is thrown about with abandon by some on the Israeli far left. But I have never heard a rigorous argument for this, especially not one that actually makes reference to the situation in South Africa. I don't find these comparisons any more convincing than I find the equation of Israeli policies with Nazism.

Aside from the apartheid question, there isn't a whole lot to get excited about. Carter's vision of peace sounded suspiciously close to the one articulated by the Zionist left for years. In Carter's view, the Palestinian refugees should not be allowed to return to Israel proper but would be compensated by an international fund; half of the Israeli settlements should be annexed to Israel as part of a territorial exchange with the Palestinians; and guaranteeing Israel's security from terrorism is as important as the creation of a stable and prosperous Palestine alongside it.

On top of that, Carter spent the first ten minutes of his speech sucking up to the Zionists. First, he highlighted his efforts on behalf of Soviet Jewry, including his interventions to help neo-liberal and hawkish refuseniks like Natan Sharansky. Then, Carter spoke proudly of his role in prohibiting U.S. companies from cooperating with the Arab League boycott of Israel by engaging in "secondary boycotts." He also talked about his role in setting up the commission that planned the construction of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. Time and again, he invoked the visions of "justice and righteousness" in the Hebrew scriptures and in the Jewish tradition; he sounded almost like Michael Lerner.

Representing

Surely, some audience members must have wondered, Carter would say something about the Zionist conspiracy to control the American discourse on Palestine. He did, sort of, but first he emphasized that he had "never believed that Jews control the media," and that "the overwhelming support for Israel comes from American Christians like [him]." Interestingly enough, a murmur went through the crowd when Carter began his sentence about "major news organizations," as if in anticipation of some lethal blow; it died down quickly as he finished the next clause.

Representing something else

According to Carter, the "powerful influence of AIPAC" constitutes only an "additional factor." And there is nothing wrong with the lobby, "which is exercising its legitimate right to pursue the goal of defending the most conservative governments of Israel."

To top it all off, Carter kept saying such nice things about ordinary Israelis, shifting the blame solely onto "the leaders of Israel, AIPAC, and most of the vocal leaders of American Jewry." Indeed, among the latter - the rabbis - Carter claimed, there were many who, in private conversation, told him that "given the American climate, it was almost impossible for them to criticize Israel."

President Carter began his talk with the claim that few people have had as many opportunities to get to know the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as he has. I am sure that Carter has done some very valuable work in the region, especially as an elections monitor (no sarcasm intended here). But I was a bit perturbed by the state of his knowledge at some points of the talk - though this was usually marginal to the argument.

For example, Carter referred twice to the "three [sic] Israeli soldiers that the Palestinians are holding." He advocated that Israel swap these for "9,800 Palestinian prisoners" held by the country. Did Carter's people never brief him on the fact that Hizbullah, not Palestinian militants, is holding two of these soldiers?

Carter was very sanguine about the prospects for peace in the region. In his view - which certainly does not lack adherents - "the growth of Islamic extremism is directly related to the continuing bloodshed between Israelis and Palestinians." He even felt it necessary to add that it is "foolish to say otherwise." Muslim animosity for the West is mostly "because of the Palestinians' plight." The notion that Iraqis will stop killing each other and that al-Qaeda will throw in the towel as soon as the Israelis leave the West Bank is ridiculous and dangerous (for Americans). It will be disproved as soon as some idiot actually tries to turn it into policy.

The former president is equally optimistic about the future of Palestine, after "the occupation" - that great metaphysical evil - has been scourged. Given the reports coming daily out of Gaza, I have to admit that I almost laughed out loud (I wasn't the only one) when Carter remarked that "the Palestinians, in their own area, have almost perfect democracy." Don't expect to find a lot of reporting on this in the Western media, but see Avi Issacharoff's article on the democratic situation in Gaza right now.

Finally, I was a little confused by the answer Carter gave to a question from the audience on what the U.S. should do about Darfur. Carter explained that he had met Bashir; "he's a devout Muslim, which is part of the cause of the war between the north and south." Was Carter really confused about the location of Darfur and the causes of the genocide there?

Globalized Islam: Watching Central Asia

Olivier Roy

Olivier Roy, lecturer at École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) and the Institut d'Etudes Politiques (Sciences-Po), gave an interesting seminar here at Berkeley on January 25. Roy is the author of several important books on contemporary Islam and Islamist movements, including, most recently, Globalized Islam: the Search for a New Ummah (Columbia University Press, 2004). In his talk here at Berkeley, he presented some of his most recent research, which compares Islamist movements in Western Europe with their counterparts in the former Soviet Union. Here, I will deal less with the comparative aspects of his scholarship and instead summarize some of his observations about the former Soviet republics of Central Asia.

In the decade following the collapse of the Soviet Union, many observers imagined that the Central Asian republics would opt for neo-Communism and/or a strict secularism along the lines of Turkey. There was and remains a consensus that the ex-Soviet -stans would fight radical Islam. At first glance, this is indeed what appears to have happened, with some success. The local Islamist movements that emerged immediately after the USSR's collapse have been largely defeated. But Roy pointed to two separate phenomena which suggest that these societies are increasingly being drawn into the orbits of Saudi Salafism, on the one hand, and Western-exported political Islam on the other. Let me begin with the latter.

By political Islam, Roy means ideologies which advocate the establishment of a pan-Islamic caliphate with borders that might range from Europe to the far East. The main group aiming for this goal in Central Asia is the Hizb-ut-Tahrir (Party of Liberation), which is today an illegal mass youth movement in Uzbekistan, where it boasts several thousand members. Hizb was founded in the 1950s and once had its base in Beirut. However, it now has a center in London, where its members have tried to avoid overt political activity. There is also a significant base in Australia. Roy believes that the Uzbek branch of the movement came from London sometime in 1996 or 1997. It achieved a breakthrough in Uzbekistan, spreading primarily among secondary school students. Unlike the Western European Hizb organizations, it is possible to talk to members of the party in Uzbekistan, whereas in the UK and elsewhere they have gone completely underground and do not publicize their headquarters. However, the movement faces repression from the authorities - repression which often attracts further adherents as family members of jailed or killed members join the party.

The other phenomenon, which is, at least for now, antagonistic to Hizb-ut-Tahrir is that of increasing numbers of Saudi-trained imams and teachers entering state institutions. All of the Central Asian republics kept the muftiat system of the Soviet period, i.e., an official clergy granted a religious monopoly by the state. (In fact, this is actually not all that different from the situation in much of Europe, most notably in France and Germany, where only official "churches" receive state-funding and the right to build houses of worship, while other groups are often classified as "cults").

Ten years ago, Roy says, it was a common place that the Central Asian dictators would want to employ only low-level clergy with relatively little knowledge, basically to maintain a rural Islam untouched by radical ideas - he referred to it as "folkloric Islam." But this is not what has happened at all. Rather, a slew of young, sophisticated, Salafi (or Wahabi) clergy, who speak Arabic fluently after years of study in Saudi Arabia, have entered the official religious institutions. Furthermore, all the money coming to train future Muslim leaders in Uzbekistan is coming from the Saudis. And the Central Asian governments are entirely unconcerned about this. On the contrary, leaders such as the Uzbek Islam Karimov are leaning more and more on Islam as a bulwark against democratization and reform, which they see as their real enemies. Karimov sees the social views of the Salafi clerics as congruent with his own. He is marshaling Islam to promote "authentic, traditional Uzbek values," according to which women should stay at home while men go to work. In Tajikistan, the president Emomali Rahmonov and the state clergy are even discouraging women from going to the mosque.

These two different groups - Hizb-ut-Tahrir and the Salafi clerics - are antagonistic as they basically compete for the same target group. Ideologically, too, Roy explained, the Salafis actually reject Hizb-ut-Tahrir and political Islam as "innovation": "The Prophet does not speak of ideologies" they might say in response to Hizb which describes itself as "a political party whose ideology is Islam." So far, the clerics have also stayed away from activity that might challenge the state. They are not political Islamists but conservative religious leaders. Ironically, according to Roy, a similar tendency can be observed in Western Europe. Here too most of those appointed to the official clergy have been the most conservative and orthodox clerics who are close to the Muslim Brotherhood or to authoritarian Middle Eastern regimes. It is obvious that Roy believes that this amounts to playing with fire - both in Europe and in Central Asia. While a ruler such as Karimov might think that he is co-opting the fundamentalists, he might soon find himself co-opted by them.

In a future post, I hope to describe another tendency antagonistic to both of these - the inroads made in Central Asia (and the rest of the former USSR) by various Christian groups, ranging from Witnesses to Korean Baptists; this phenomenon finds its counterpart in the conversions to (Salafi) Islam in Western and Eastern Europe. By next year, you should be able to read all about it in Roy's forthcoming book.

Contra Appeasement

Barry Rubin has an interesting piece on "the new era" in the Middle East, which he sees, perhaps in line with Marx's famous dictum, as Nasserism in a new guise. The popular support generated throughout the Arab world by such figures as Osama bin Laden and now Hassan Nasrallah certainly invites such a comparison. Rubin's main claim is that

After the war in Lebanon, the Middle East entered a new era, which was already on the way for a half-dozen years and in which radical Islamism sets the ideological and political agenda. It marks the end of hope for peace or democracy.

This trend, Rubin argues, goes back to the Palestinian leadership's rejection of the Barak offer (whether you think it was generous or not). A consensus has emerged that Israel and the West are weak, and that now a

violent struggle in pursuit of total victory rather than pragmatism, democracy, compromise, and economic construction

can cure all the problems afflicting the Arabs and the Muslim world more generally.

For Rubin, appeasing this new "resistance axis," is the biggest mistake that that West could make (and is making):

If only Iran, Syria, or Hizballah is offered concessions, [those who favor appeasement] argue, the threat will go away. This view actually feeds the problem. The radicals have far-reaching goals (including genocide in Israel) and powerful ideologies that make them not so eager to make any deal.

It is often argued that Israeli actions weaken moderate forces. Thus, the bombing of Beirut rallied the entire Lebanese population to fight Israel and to support Hizbullah. Likewise, many argue that Israel's actions in the territories incite Arabs in Egypt and Jordan against the West and democracy. But few of these critics consider the effects of appeasement on local pro-democracy forces who see the incitement against Israel for what it is. Appeasement bolsters the most intransigent and fundamentalis forces, because

they [the extremists] think they are winning. Western efforts to achieve understandings are consistently viewed as weakness inviting escalation. This is clear in any reading of the radical leaders' speeches. Why should Arab governments, reformers, or Lebanese factions oppose the extremists if they believe--correctly in general--that the West will not help them?

Apologies for not writing earlier. Temporary time pressures conspired against us, and someone on Kishkushim got married this week (it wasn't me).

The Home-Grown Terrorists

Nada Farooq

The Globe and Mail in a story titled Hateful chatter behind the veil reports on blogs and online forums run by Nada Farooq and other Muslim Canadian women, discovered by the newspaper. Farooq is the wife of Zakaria Amara, one of the “Toronto 17” arrested in early June (see Anti-Terror Raid in Canada Leads to Arrest of 17 Suspects, and The Motivations of Terror). The posts were made over a 20-month period , mostly in 2004, long before the arrests. The posts of these young women, almost all of whom were raised in Canada, provide a window onto the self-fuelled rage of Islamist extremists in the West. They provide further evidence against the view that such factors as discrimination against Muslims, on the one hand, or American foreign policy, on the other, are primarily responsible for the hatred preached and practiced by Muslim fundamentalists in the east and west.

Most jarring is the posters’ contempt for Canada: “Ms. Farooq's hatred for the country is palpable,” the reporters write,

She hardly ever calls Canada by its name, rather repeatedly referring to it as "this filthy country." It's a sentiment shared by many of her friends, one of whom states that the laws of the country are irrelevant because they are not the laws of God.

In late April of 2004, a poster asks the forum members to share their impressions of what makes Canada unique. Nada's answer is straightforward. "Who cares? We hate Canada."

Farooq rails against democratic institutions and secular governments:

"Are you accepting a system that separates religion and state?" she asks. "Are you gonna [sic] give your pledge of allegiance to a party that puts secular laws above the laws of Allah? Are you gonna [sic] worship that which they worship? Are you going to throw away the most important thing that makes you a muslim [sic]?"

Her views on Jews are hardly surprising:

May Allah crush these jews, [sic] bring them down to their kneees, humuliate [sic] them. Ya Allah make their women widows and their children orphans.

But she is equally intolerant of homosexuals, and of Muslims who do not share her embrace of terrorism and her disdain for Canada and the west. Alongside a photograph of a rally held by a Canadian support group for gay Muslims she writes:

Look at these pathetic people ... They should all be sent to Saudi, where these sickos are executed or crushed by a wall, in public.

All this is combined with the most self-serving paranoia, which insists that Muslims are the perpetual victims of conspiracies and persecution at the hands of non-Muslims:

"You don't know that the Muslims in Canada will never be rounded up and put into internment camps like the Japanese were in WWII!" [another woman] writes in one 2004 post. This is a time when Muslims "are being systematically cleansed from the earth," she adds.

Hamas and its National Liberation Rhetoric

Noah hinted at something really interesting in his April 1 post on the Isma'il Haniyye piece in the Guardian. Haniyye was using national freedom fighter rhetoric, tailored for European readers. He really stuck to the standard Palestinian narrative associated with the P.L.O. and Fatah:

"No plan will ever work without a guarantee, in exchange for an end to hostilities by both sides, of a total Israeli withdrawal from all the land occupied in 1967, including East Jerusalem; the release of all our prisoners; the removal of all settlers from all settlements; and recognition of the right of all refugees to return."

[...]

"Little will change for the Palestinians under Olmert's plan. Our land will still be occupied and our people enslaved and oppressed by the occupying power. So we will remain committed to our struggle to get back our lands and our freedom."

Haniyye's piece is devoid of the Hamas rhetoric about Palestine being Islamic holy land! There are no references to jihad and or to God-sanctioned resistance. Hamas, short for harikat al-muqawama al-islamiyya (the Islamic Resistance Movement) might as well change its name to Fatah.

What makes Haniyye's editorial especially disingenuous is that Hamas is trying to play victim. Thus, we find Haniyye bitching about European and U.S.'s policy-makers' "double-standards" vis-a-vis his government. After basically killing the Oslo process, a process underwritten by EU and US financial and political support, with its bloody terrorist attacks, Hamas suddenly wants them to kiss and make-up. How different would things have looked if Hamas had adopted its new "enlightened" stance in 1993?

The one thing that I do think is worth thinking about is Hamas's past commitment to the tahadiyya (تهادية) - a kind of lull in fighting agreed upon by most of the Palestinian factions, except for the Islamic Jihad- which it really appears to have enforced for a long period last year. This agreement was reciprocated by the IDF until it began to unravel in the run-up to the Palestinian elections, I believe. In any case, it has to be looked at carefully so that potential opportunities are not missed. I am not saying pressure should be taken off of Hamas. Recognition of the Hamas government by a few governments here and there will only make things more difficult, in the same way that dissension between European governments and the US on Iraq might well have led to Saddam Hussein believing that there would not be a war. But, I do think that Israel can't afford to miss an opportunity.

Just as important is that the post-Camp David (2001) "no-partner" narrative be re-examined. The fact that Israelis now view the idea of Palestinian partners in future peace negotiations as a complete joke and as absurd is not some natural, spontaneous outcome of the events of the intifada. The terrorist attacks certainly contributed to it, but the fact that the Palestinians, including very moderate voices among them, have become irrelevant to most Israelis and the fact that any talk of negotiations is greeted with guffaws by the average Israeli, also has to do with the spin put on Camp David by Barak to cover his ass. We can't lose sight of the fact that an agreement was very close at hand at Camp David.

There's a lot more to be said on this matter. Anyone interested should read Yoram Meital's book Peace in Tatters (2006, Lynne Rienner). The Hebrew edition is called שלום שבור - "Broken Peace". Yoram is a prof at Ben-Gurion University's Middle Eastern Studies department and current head of the Chaim Herzog Center for Middle Eastern Studies and Diplomacy. They have some really good conferences and frequently get speakers from Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinian territories. Not long ago, before the Palestinian elections, we had a Fatah politician from the Gaza Strip here -a real moderate who spent a lot of time in Israeli prisons in the 1980s and came out speaking fluent Hebrew and with a very nuanced, intelligent view of Israeli society.