When sectarianism and tribalism become institutionalized, it often follows that politicians become preoccupied with holding on to personal rewards of power instead of tackling national problems

by Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi
Ha’aretz
May 18, 2012

http://www.meforum.org/3234/south-sudan-chaos

When the state of South Sudan came into existence last July, with great fanfare, Israel was one of the first nations to recognize it, having provided support for South Sudanese leaders since the 1960s during the first civil war. Indeed, in late December, Salva Kiir Mayardit – the president of South Sudan – came to Jerusalem, where he discussed the unique prospect of locating the country’s embassy there. It was therefore no surprise that President Shimon Peres spoke so enthusiastically of the visit as a "moving and historic moment" for him and Israel.

Now, less than a year later, in light of Israel’s plans to deport South Sudanese refugees, it is worth taking a look at how the world’s youngest nation is faring.

Arguably, the worst problem the country faces is tribalism, despite the unity that was cultivated among South Sudanese rebels during decades of resistance to Khartoum’s aggressive campaigns of Islamization against the animists and Christians in the south, prior to independence.

Early signs of this malaise became apparent when low-level clashes between the Lou Nuer and Murle tribes in Jonglei state in the east of the country – going as far back as 2009 – suddenly intensified in August 2011. By the start of 2012, over 3,000 were dead and more than 100,000 displaced. The origins of these tensions lie in the mutual theft of cattle.

In an attempt to calm tensions, an agreement was signed early this month to end the violence, by tribal leaders representing six ethnic groups in Jonglei: the Dinka (who are regarded as politically dominant in South Sudan’s government), Kachipo, Jie, Nuer, Anyuak and Murle.

Stability in Jonglei is crucial to South Sudan’s economic future, because it offers a potential pipeline route that can go through Ethiopia to Djibouti, making it possible for the country to export its vast oil reserves without having to rely on its northern neighbor. However, Sudan has not only imposed heavy transit fees on South Sudan; it has also permitted itself the liberty of seizing part of the oil production when those fees haven’t been paid.

Yet the unilateral decision to respond to Sudan’s policies by suspending oil production before it had laid an alternative pipeline can only be described as folly on the part of the leadership in Juba, the capital.

As a confidential World Bank report recently leaked to the Sudan Tribune revealed, the shutdown of the oil industry – together with the austerity measures subsequently adopted by the government – could increase the poverty rate from 51 percent this year to 83 percent by 2013, while infant mortality is expected to double in the same period.

The reason such startling statistics could become reality is that, like post-Saddam Iraq, South Sudan is extremely dependent on petroleum, with oil exports accounting for 98 percent of government revenue. Unfortunately, Mayardit and his cabinet appear to be oblivious to the implications of their decision-making.

Meanwhile, it is not only in the rural areas of South Sudan that tribalism is evident. The phenomenon extends even to the university campus in the capital. As the Dubai newspaper The National reported, a minor incident at a soccer match on March 27 among Juba University alumni led to a square-off between 100 students the following morning. Since then, the university has been closed.

The newspaper also interviewed the president of the student union at the university, Ajang Ajang, who pointed out that "people still think about their tribes first, their nation second." Many members of the union sought to expel him after he decided to ban tribal associations on campus in February.

If such tribalism is evident on the country’s main university campus among students who will likely constitute South Sudan’s future elite, then it should come as no surprise that the president appears to be displaying authoritarian tendencies.

For when sectarianism and tribalism become institutionalized, it often follows that politicians become preoccupied with holding on to personal rewards of power instead of tackling national problems, and so a leading figure will probably emerge to assert himself as a strongman. Mayardit has been behaving in precisely this manner.

For example, The National recently highlighted the case of James Okuk, an employee of South Sudan’s foreign ministry. When he returned home from a trip to Brazil in October he was arrested by police, held at an abandoned house for four days and charged with "offending the president" simply because he wrote some articles critical of Mayardit’s tenure.

Okuk is now on trial. The case may partly have to do with the fact that Okuk’s uncle is Lam Akol, who broke away from the country’s ruling political faction – the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM ) – to form the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement: Democratic Change (SPLM-DC ) in 2009.

Akol has reportedly been resented by the Dinkas who dominate the SPLM for quite some time, but he has the support of the Shilluk people of the country’s northeast. Of course, Akol’s residing in Khartoum while his children finish their schooling there hardly helps his image.

When South Sudan declared independence, there were high hopes for a model democratic country in sub-Saharan Africa, but developments so far point to a country plagued by tribalism, government authoritarianism and disastrous economic policies that could greatly exacerbate poverty levels in the country, such that one may have to agree with the World Bank’s fears of a "state collapse." A bleak outlook indeed.

Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi is a student at Brasenose College, Oxford University, and an adjunct fellow at the Middle East Forum.

Reprinted from Daily Alert, May 16. 2012

• The Meaning of Nakba Day – Jonathan S. Tobin
  Nakba is an Arabic word which means disaster, and that is what those who participated in the protests consider the founding of the State of Israel on May 15, 1948. The focus on 1948 is significant. For those who claim the Middle East conflict is about borders or Jewish settlements in the West Bank, the prominence given Nakba commemorations ought to be an embarrassment. It highlights that the goal of the Palestinians isn’t an independent state alongside Israel. Their goal is to eradicate Israel and replace it with yet another Arab majority country.
      The Nakba narrative draws no distinction between the pre- and post-1967 borders. The Jewish presence within the internationally recognized borders of the State of Israel is treated as just as illegitimate as that of the settlers in the territories. This is not a minor point, because for the Palestinians, the desire for the descendants of the 1948 refugees to "return" to Israel is tantamount to demanding the dismantling of the Jewish state.
      The war that created the refugees was one started by Arabs whose goal was not to share the land but to prevent Jewish sovereignty on any part of it. That they and their descendants still regret this reversal of fortune may be understandable, but it is not a point on which they have any right to demand the world’s sympathy. (Commentary)
• For Jews from Arab Lands, a Different History of Displacement and Loss – Matti Friedman
  I have spent a great deal of time in the past four years interviewing people born and raised in Aleppo, Syria. Some are descended from families with roots in Aleppo going back more than two millennia, to Roman times. None of them lives there now. On November 30, 1947, a day after the UN voted to partition Palestine into two states, one for Arabs and one for Jews, mobs in Aleppo stalked Jewish neighborhoods, looting houses and burning synagogues.
      One man I interviewed remembered fleeing his home, a barefoot nine-year-old, moments before it was set on fire. Abetted by the government, the rioters burned 50 Jewish shops, five schools, 18 synagogues and an unknown number of homes. In Damascus, rioters killed 13 Jews, including eight children, in August 1948, and there were similar events in other Arab cities.
      At the time of the UN vote, there were about 10,000 Jews in Aleppo. By the mid-1950s there were 2,000, living in fear. Today there are none. Similar scripts played out across the Islamic world as some 850,000 Jews were forced from their homes. In Aleppo, Tripoli, Baghdad and elsewhere, the people who live in or around the Jews’ old homes still know who used to own them and how they left.
      Roughly half of the 6 million Jews in Israel today came from the Muslim world or are descended from people who did. The simple narrative of Nakba Day conveniently erases the uncomfortable truth that half of Israel’s Jews are there not because of the Nazis but because of the Arabs themselves. (Times of Israel)

Palestinians Riot on Nakba Day – Khaled Abu Toameh and Tovah Lazaroff
One Israeli soldier, three border policemen and 270 Palestinians were lightly hurt, mostly from tear gas inhalation, in clashes in the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem Tuesday as Palestinians marked the "Nakba," meaning "catastrophe," their loss to Israel in 1948. In Ramallah, children marched into Martyr Yasser Arafat Square beating drums and wearing black T-shirts that read "1948." PA representatives including Prime Minister Salam Fayyad led the rally. "The right of return is sacred and cannot be compromised," Fayyad told the crowd. (Jerusalem Post)

    See also Nakba Day Defanged – Mitch Ginsburg
On May 15, "Nakba Day" demonstrations were limited to the West Bank. Bassem Eid, a Palestinian human rights worker, attributed the relative calm to the state of Palestinian society, which he described as frustrated, fractured, tired and hopeless. "The back of Palestinian society has been broken by the Hamas-Fatah separation," he said, noting that within the West Bank, the rifts within Fatah were so deep there was no hope of any coordinated uprising. "There cannot be an intifada so long as we have an intrafada," he said. (Times of Israel)

    See also Israel: Palestinians Should Direct Anger at Their Own Leaders – Herb Keinon
Rather than demonstrating against Israel, the Palestinians should be directing their "Nakba Day" anger at the extremist Palestinian leadership that 64 years ago rejected any accommodation, Prime Minister Netanyahu’s spokesman Mark Regev said Tuesday. "The Palestinian leadership in 1947 and 1948 adopted an extremist and maximalist position. Unlike the Jewish leadership, they rejected partition and refused to accept a Jewish state even in truncated borders."  (Jerusalem Post)

“People are fed up with politics and are looking how to improve their daily lives. If they have skills, they can get work.”

by Kathleen Peratis | May 15, 2012 10:01 AM EDT

Gaza City, Gaza—

Is the two state solution dead? I don’t think so but the conversation is being radically transformed into one that no longer accepts the binary “two states or bust” paradigm and begins to imagine—or live—alternatives.

I spoke to young people, officials and activists in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza over the last two weeks.  I was surprised at what I heard.

Palestinian school children do their homework on candle light during a power cut in Gaza City. (Mohammed Abed / AFP / Getty Images)

A large chunk of the Gaza economy comes from international donations, money from UNHRW and other multilateral organizations.  A pretty young blogger in Gaza City, Jehan Al Farr, told me that these governmental programs for job creation are “nothing but machines that pull people in and suck out their creativity and motivation.”  True entrepreneurship, she says, occurs outside the box, not inside a donor-welfare society. I told her she sounded like a member of the Tea Party.  Having spent a year at a Colorado high school (she speaks perfect English), she knew exactly what I meant. She laughed and told me that she is fed up with politics (she is 25) and believes she and her generation can only end the occupation when they stop caring about it and instead, try to go about a normal life of book clubs and social events.  “No more death, no more blood.  Just focus on the positive.” The siege has become “more mental and internalized,” she said.  For her, the survival technique is evading that box that is affected by borders and the siegek with blogging and other IT enterprise. Gaza City hotelier Jawdat Al Khodary said much the same thing.  “People are fed up with politics and are looking how to improve their daily lives.  If they have skills, they can get work.”

These coping strategies and this hopefulness seem to me to be a lot of whistling in the dark.  Things look worse than they did six months ago when I was here last—more garbage on the streets, more closed shops, less construction.  And while Jehan told me she didn’t feel constrained by her sex at all, the statistics tell a different story. Everything that goes wrong for women in poor and depressed places happens here too. One trivial but stark visual was the offices of the Hamas-affiliated media group Airessaiah (print, web and radio station). The editor in chief, Wasam Afifa, regaled me with his liberal values and harsh critique of Hamas and then showed me around the offices. The main reporters’ space is large, light and airy; the women reporters’ room (at least there are some) is small dark and shabby. When I told Jehan and showed her the pictures I had taken, she shrugged and said, “Well, that is the culture.”

I also asked her about the lack of any palpable reaction on the street to the hunger strikers, the settlement of which was, on the day of our conversation, two days away.  She said she blogs about it, but as for activism in the old sense, there is none.  In fact, shop owners in Gaza City had previously been asked by local activists to close up for two hours in support of the hunger strikers. Hotelier Al Khodary told me that only two agreed to do so.  He himself thought the effort fatuous. The demonstration in Gaza City—about 1000 people—on the day the settlement was announced had been carefully managed by Hamas.

The West Bank too is remarkably quiet, apart from important but small-scale nonviolent resistance to the path of the security barrier.  I asked people in the West Bank and in Israel what they make of that. Are Palestinians just ground down from oppression, knowing any protest might be (and sometimes is) met with fierce Israeli opposition?  Is the footprint of military occupation getting a bit smaller, with fewer checkpoints and fewer nighttime raids? Is increased prosperity enough to make the “struggle” not worth the candle?

Palestinian Israeli human rights activist Ghaida Renawie-Zoabi  was stunned by my question and a little shamed by what looks like Palestinian passivity. She promised me that she will give much thought to this question, so I am staying tuned.

Khaled Sabawi, a young Canadian-born Palestinian entrepreneur in Ramallah, credits both apparent prosperity and exhaustion. And, he says, sounding what was becoming a familiar theme, he just wants to get down to business. He has given up thinking about one state-two states, and believes his people will gain their freedom through economic freedom and human rights, which are “more important than the flag.” He goes further and accuses Salam Fayyad and Abu Abbas of perpetuating the illusion of a dynamic Palestinian economy, which is in fact systemically dependent on donor aid. 

Regarding the continuing struggle for a Palestinian state, Sari Nusseibeh, now president of Al Quds University in East Jerusalem, made much the same point several years ago. Forget statehood for now, he urged.  Focus on human rights and improving day-to-day life. Nusseibeh was never a nationalist, and so he was always an odd duck in the Palestinian nationalist struggle, but this thesis marginalized him even more.

Yesterday, I had a perhaps historic conversation in Gaza with nine Islamists, eight of them Hamas members or supporters, in which we spoke for over two hours about the American Jewish community. We spoke of the anti-occupation tool of massive nonviolent resistance. They told me that just as the second intifada was not launched until Arafat approved it, no mass non-violent demonstrations will be allowed anywhere in Palestine until President Abbas gives his hekhsher. Which he will not, they assured me, knowing the risk that such demonstrations could turn violent and perhaps be directed against the Palestinian Authority itself.

What about mass protests in Israel?  Activists are gearing up for another summer of social protests focusing on economic inequality.  However, no one has confidence that the protest leaders will explicitly connect social gaps with the price of occupation. And more surprising to me, plenty of traditional lefties and long-time peace activists do not condemn that strategy.

Dan Goldenblatt, new director of the Israel Palestine Center for Resarch and Information (IPCRI), told me that all his life, he had believed it the “two states or bust” paradigm.  Now, he too and a group of intellectuals he is leading are at least start imagining other alternatives, alternatives that will afford human rights and dignity to Palestinians.

I for one have not given up hope, but I believe the keys, or at least one of them, is in the hands of the Palestinians themselves, in the form of the very collective action that seems so out of reach—but is it?

My hotel in Gaza City has 80 rooms.  Eight are occupied.  There are blackouts repeatedly throughout the day and night and blocks of time with no electricity at all, due largely to the decreased fuel supplies from Egypt. A meeting I had on the twelfth floor of an office building could not be scheduled in the morning because there is no electricity until 11 AM.

Gazans, who have been tolerant of siege-related deprivation because they regard it as collective punishment from Israel, are now blaming Hamas for the current fuel crisis.  “After five years, the government has a responsibility,” Afifa, the newspaper editor, said.

If I ever heard a universal message, that was it.

©2011 The Newsweek/Daily Beast Company LLC

by Khaled Abu Toameh
April 26, 2012 at 5:00 am

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3035/pro-palestinian-anti-israel

It would also help immensely of these activists came to the West Bank and Gaza Strip to offer advice on, and help in building, proper government institutions, and in combatting administrative and financial corruption. But as far as many of the pro-Palestinian activists in the West Bank and Gaze are concerned, the interests of the Palestinians are not as important as hating Israel.

Pro-Palestinian groups and individuals in the US and Europe are doing Palestinians injustice by devoting all their energies only against Israel.

There is a feeling in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that most of these groups and individuals are more interested in campaigning against Israel than helping the Palestinians.

Being pro-Palestinian does not necessarily mean that one also has to be anti-Israel.

The pro-Palestinian camp in the West should raise its voice against violations of human rights and media freedoms under the Palestinian Authority and Hamas.

In the past few weeks, six Palestinian journalists, bloggers and cartoonists were arrested by security forces belonging to the Palestinian government in the West Bank.

The pro-Palestinian activists around the world chose to turn a blind eye to the ongoing crackdown on freedom of expression in the West Bank.

They also failed — even refused — to condemn the Palestinian Authority government’s decision to block web sites that are critical of Palestinian leaders in the West Bank.

The pro-Palestinian activists in the West also refuse to examine what is happening under Hamas in the Gaza Strip. They apparently do not care, or do not want to see, that there are executions, arbitrary arrests, and assaults against women and torture in Hamas prisons.

The pro-Palestinian activists and organizations also do not seem to care if the Palestinian Authority and Hamas are brainwashing Palestinian children and filling their minds and hearts with hatred.

Those who care about the Palestinians should come to the Gaza Strip and work toward promoting human rights under Hamas — of children, women, and journalists.

It would help immensely if hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists came to the West Bank and Gaza Strip to teach Palestinian children English and expose them to the benefits of democracy and Western values, such as equal justice under law, free speech and a free press, and financial transparency and accountability

It would also help immensely if these activists came to the West Bank and Gaza Strip to offer advice on, and help in building, proper government institutions, and in combatting administrative and financial corruption.

But as far as many of the pro-Palestinian activists in the West are concerned, the interests of the Palestinians are not as important as hating Israel.

Anti-Israel messages and campaigns serve only the radicals in this region who do not want either peace or coexistence.

The time has come for the emergence of a genuine pro-Palestinian camp in the West that would focus less on Israel and more on helping the Palestinians.

The choice was obvious: I had to stand with Israel, with this tiny nation, free, democratic, making huge strides in medicine, research and development, yet the victim of the same lies and hatred that nearly consumed me.

Kasim Hafeez, April 25, 2012

I am a Zionist, a proud Muslim Zionist, and I love Israel, but this was not always the case. In fact, for many years I was quite the extreme opposite. I experienced the high levels of anti-Semitism and anti-Israel activity taking place on British university campuses, because I was the anti-Semitic, anti-Israel activist.

Growing up in the Muslim community in the UK I was exposed to materials and opinions at best condemning Israel, painting Jews as usurpers and murderers, and at worse calling for the wholesale destruction of the "Zionist Entity" and all Jews. In short, there was no accommodating a Jewish State in the Middle East.

See Also:  Hating Israel

The new anti-Semitism / Moshe Dann

Op-ed: Anti-Israel campaign identifies Jews as immoral, Jewish state as historical fraud

Full Story

To grow up around this constant barrage of hatred directed at Israel has a massive effect on an individual’s own opinions. More disturbingly, many of these people weren’t radical or extreme, but when it was about Israel the most vicious of rhetoric poured out, coupled with the casual anti-Semitism that seemed too prevalent, when the phrase "stop being a Jew" used as an insult.

My father, however, was much more brazen in his hatred, boasting of how Adolf Hitler was a hero, his only failing being that he didn’t kill enough Jews.

By the time I had reached 18 I was completely indoctrinated to the fold of radical Islamism. My hate for Israel and for the Jews was fuelled by images of death and destruction, set to the backdrop of Arabic melodies about Jihad and speeches of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah or Osama Bin Laden.

These views were reinforced when I attended Nakba Day rallies, where speakers predicted Israel’s demise as Hezbollah flags were waved proudly in the centre of London.

The Case for Israel

Was there a case for Israel? In my mind, of course not, there was no shadow of doubt. Even the most moderate clerics I came across refused to condemn terrorism against Israel as unjustified; the Jews must obviously deserve it, I believed.

So what changed? How could I go from all this hatred to the great love for and affinity with Israel and the Jewish people? I found myself in the Israel and Palestine section of a local bookstore and picked up a copy of Alan Dershowitz’s The Case for Israel. Given my worldview, the Jews and Americans controlled the media, so after brief look at the back, I scoffed thinking "vile Zionist propaganda."

I did, however, decide to buy it, content that I would shortly be deconstructing this propaganda piece, showing that Israel had no case and claiming my findings as a personal victory for the Palestinian cause.

Hafeez in Israel in a visit that changed his life

As I read Dershowitz’s arguments and deconstruction of many lies I saw as unquestionable truths, I searched despairingly for counter arguments, but found more hollow rhetoric that I’d believed for many years. I felt a real crisis of conscience, and thus began a period of unbiased research. Up until that point I had not been exposed to anything remotely positive about Israel.

Now, I didn’t know what to believe. I’d blindly followed others for so long, yet here I was questioning whether I had been wrong. I reached a point where I felt I had no other choice but to see Israel for myself; only that way I’d really know the truth. At the risk of sounding cliché, it was a life-changing visit.

No apartheid state

I did not encounter an apartheid racist state, but rather, quite the opposite. I was confronted by synagogues, mosques and churches, by Jews and Arabs living together, by minorities playing huge parts in all areas of Israeli life, from the military to the judiciary. It was shocking and eye-opening. This wasn’t the evil Zionist Israel that I had been told about.

After much soul searching, I knew what I had once believed was wrong. I had been confronted with the truth and had to accept it. But I had a bigger question to confront, what now? I’d for years campaigned against Israel, but now I knew the truth.

The choice was obvious: I had to stand with Israel, with this tiny nation, free, democratic, making huge strides in medicine, research and development, yet the victim of the same lies and hatred that nearly consumed me.

Doing this is not easy and that’s something that has become very obvious. I have faced hostility from my own community and even some within the Jewish community in the UK, but that’s the reality of standing up for Israel in Europe today. It is not easy, and that’s what makes it so necessary.

This isn’t about religion and politics; it’s about the truth.

When it comes to Israel, the truth is not being heard, the ranks of those filed with blind hatred continue to swell, yet many have not been exposed to the reality, away from the empty rhetoric and politically charged slogans they are so fond of.

We can change this situation but we need to be strong and united. Israel is not just a Jewish issue – it’s about freedom, human rights and democracy, all the values that Western nations cherish. It’s also about trying to be a light among nations.

Israel’s international humanitarian aid work speaks for itself, but if we don’t get the message out there, no one will. We don’t have to be head-bowed apologists leading with :Israel’s not perfect…" – we should never be afraid to say: I am a Zionist and I’m proud. I stand with Israel. Now I ask, will you do that?

Kasim Hafeez is a British Muslim and former Islamist who is now a proud Zionist and stands with Israel. He runs www.theisraelcampaign.org and has a blog on this site. He is also on the advisory board of StandWithUs in the UK and recently completed a university speaking tour

Abu Marzook Says He’s Open to a New Israel Relationship

ahmed esmaill

In an exclusive interview, Abu Marzook discussed his own political future, relations with Israel, the Hamas Charter and the impact of the Arab Spring on his organization.

By Larry Cohler-Esses

Jewish Daily Forward, Published April 19, 2012, issue of April 27, 2012.

Cairo — Any agreement reached between Israel and the Palestinian Authority will be subject to far-reaching changes if Hamas comes to power in a democratic Palestinian state, a top Hamas leader told the Forward in an exclusive and wide-ranging interview.

Mousa Abu Marzook, considered Hamas’s second-highest-ranking official, said that his group would view an agreement between Israel and the P.A. — even one ratified by a referendum of all Palestinians — as a hudna, or cease-fire, rather than as a peace treaty. In power, he said, Hamas would feel free to shift away from those provisions of the agreement that define it as a peace treaty and move instead toward a relationship of armed truce.

“We will not recognize Israel as a state,” he said emphatically. “It will be like the relationship between Lebanon and Israel or Syria and Israel.”

The exchange was but one part of an unprecedented five-and-a-half-hour discussion conducted over two days between Abu Marzook and the Forward, the first-ever in-depth exchange between a senior Hamas leader and a Jewish publication.

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Abu Marzook, deputy director of Hamas’s political bureau, for the most part used the opportunity to expand on long-standing Hamas positions. Contrary to some media reports, he indicated no new flexibility that would move Hamas closer to accepting conditions laid down by the so-called Quartet of the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations for his group’s participation in the now moribund Middle East peace process. Abu Marzook did not, however, foreclose the possibility of a more accommodating relationship with Israel in the future.

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Quite apart from the content of Abu Marzook’s remarks, several veteran observers of the hard-line Islamist group viewed the fact that the interview took place as a larger signal of change now roiling the organization.

“I think the mere fact of his speaking to you, independent of what he said, is almost more important than the specifics,” said Shlomi Eldar, who has reported on Hamas from Gaza for Israel TV’s Channel 10 and other media outlets since 1991. “Even granting such an interview is far away

from what he thought two or three years ago…. What [Abu Marzook] really wants is for Jewish Americans to convince the Israelis that Hamas is not like an animal.”

HOW WAS THIS HISTORIC INTERVIEW ARRANGED? FIND OUT HERE.

Gershon Baskin, an Israeli peace activist who has acted as a liaison between Hamas and senior Israeli government officials, including in the process that finally freed Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, termed the interview an “historic landmark.”

“The amount of time he gave you is amazing,” Baskin said.

But David Makovsky, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, focused more on the actual content. “Unfortunately,” he said, “it’s a validation of those who believe Hamas has a far way to go before it becomes a legitimate Palestinian interlocutor.”

In a number of cases, Abu Marzook — who is one of three prime candidates in upcoming internal elections for Hamas’s top leadership spot — offered words that differ on a practical level with the organization’s actual stance or behavior. The discrepancy could cut either way: In his call for a hudna with Israel, Abu Marzook sounded almost beseechingly dovish, even though his underlying conditions and details suggested a considerably more hard-line stance. On the other hand, his defense of Hamas’s right to launch operations targeting civilians compared with the absence of such attacks in recent years within Israel’s pre-1967 boundaries.

Over the course of the two-day discussion, amid a lunch of salmon and Nile River fish the first day and takeout pizza the second, Abu Marzook expounded on a variety of topics, ranging from the Holocaust, American Jewish solidarity with Israel, and the impact of the Arab Spring on his organization, to anti-Semitic passages in the Hamas Charter.

But Abu Marzook appeared to speak most passionately when touting his proposal for a hudna — an idea he first proposed in 1994.

“Let’s establish a relationship between the two states in the historic Palestinian land as a hudna between both sides,” he said. “It’s better than war and better than the continuous resistance against the occupation. And better than Israel occupying the West Bank and Gaza, making all these difficulties and problems on both sides.”

Pressed regarding concerns that Hamas’s goal during a hudna would remain the destruction of Israel as a state, and that a truce would give Hamas time to build up its arms toward that end, Abu Marzook said: “It’s very difficult to say after 10 years what will be on both sides. Maybe my answer right now [about recognizing Israel] is completely different to my answer after 10 years.”

But asked if, offered guarantees for his physical security, he would be prepared to go to Jerusalem to negotiate with Israel for exactly the kind of hudna he seeks, Abu Marzook replied bluntly, “No.”

Hamas has rejected negotiating with Israel directly. Abu Marzook said that under a previous understanding with Fatah, the faction controlling the P.A. in the West Bank, Hamas allows the P.A. to negotiate with Israel, despite its objections to the process. But Abu Marzook repeated his organization’s demand that any result must be approved in a referendum that includes all Palestinian refugees, not just those in the West Bank and Gaza. “All of the Palestinians should vote about this,” he said.

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He also made clear that such an agreement must include the unqualified right of Palestinians to return to land in what is now Israel.

From there, it only got more complicated. Abu Marzook described an agreement that would be treated almost as a “Rashomon” document — seen by the P.A. as a peace treaty, but by Hamas as a mere truce agreement.

“When we reach the agreement, our point of view is, it’s a hudna,” Abu Marzook emphasized.

This is not just a matter of semantics. Like the classic Akira Kurosawa film, in which each party observes the same event but sees it in radically different and ultimately irreconcilable ways, Fatah and Hamas envision radically different relationships with Israel, based on the same document.

For Fatah, a peace treaty with Israel encompasses mutual recognition, diplomatic exchange, trade, commerce, movement of peoples across borders and regional cooperation. It also includes a non-militarized Palestinian state and a limited Palestinian right of return.

And Hamas’s hudna vision?

“What’s the relationship between Israel and Syria and Lebanon right now?” Abu Marzook asked.

That answer — closed borders, barbed wire, no trade, no commerce, no diplomats, and arms build-ups on each side, to the best of each side’s respective abilities, in preparation for a possible war — might not matter much, so long as Fatah remained the party ruling a new Palestine state. But both Fatah and Hamas agree that their new state will be a democracy. So the question was unavoidable: What will become of any peace treaty Israel negotiates with the P.A. under Fatah if and when Hamas comes to power?

“Rabin signed the Oslo Accords,” Abu Marzook recalled, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s solemn ceremony with Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, on the White House lawn in 1993. “And when [Israeli opposition leader Benjamin] Netanyahu came [to power], he disagreed about the Oslo agreement,” leading to numerous changes in the accords.

Asked if a final peace treaty between Israel and a Palestinian state would not bind Hamas if it came to power later, Abu Marzook replied: “No. I don’t think any kind of treaty can ‘stuck’ anybody in the future. Just read history.”

Abu Marzook offered his views at a moment of unprecedented and far-reaching change in the Arab world, and within his own organization. The Arab Spring is one year old, and Hamas, classified as a terrorist group by the U.S. government, is today, numerous experts say, the latest stage on which the Arab world’s revolutionary drama is playing out.

The tidal wave that pitched out dictators in Tunis and Cairo has pushed the staunchly militant Palestinian group from its longtime home in Damascus, where the Spring’s surge has run blood red.

Hamas leaders have disavowed the Syrian regime’s slaughter of its own citizens and scattered across the region, some resettling in the Persian Gulf, others in Jordan and some in Gaza, where democratically elected Hamas officials rule a rump territory still under Israeli siege.

But Abu Marzook has come to Cairo — the Arab Spring’s still bubbling crucible. He has settled into a large three-story mansion some 90 minutes outside the city, in a newly developed, upper-class planned community known as New Cairo. The neighborhood’s wide, still unpaved streets look almost deserted but for construction crews, and are lined with numerous half-built homes, their scaffoldings still mounted in place and mounds of rubble piled in front of them. It’s quiet; a far cry from Cairo’s tumult. Security, a major consideration for a man in Abu Marzook’s position, is no doubt an easier proposition in this tranquil corner of a country still in midrevolution.

Inside his sparsely furnished home, with its large, airy rooms and marble floors, Abu Marzook works amid a retinue of bodyguards and aides. No women are in sight. At the end of the second day of the interview, he cheerfully offered his business card and invited follow-up questions via phone or email. But first, he wrote a new phone number at the top of the card. Disregard the four Damascus phone numbers still printed under his name, he said.

It is almost certainly not the first time he has had to improvise business cards. Abu Marzook’s has been a peripatetic life. A calm, soft-spoken man of 61, Abu Marzook struggles haltingly in rusty English — a language he once spoke daily while pursuing a master’s degree in construction management at Colorado State University; a doctorate in industrial engineering at Louisiana Tech, in Ruston, La., and living several years in Falls Church, Va., where his primary work through the early 1990s was raising millions of dollars for Hamas.

“They called him ‘the genius,’” said the journalist Eldar, whose new book, “Getting To Know Hamas,” is to be published in Israel in May. “In 1989 and 1992, he saved Hamas during periods of crisis. His fundraising built up Hamas’s infrastructure in Gaza because he had the financial connections with the Islamic funds around the world, especially in America and Europe.”

Indeed, during this earlier period, Abu Marzook was the top director of Hamas’s political bureau, not its deputy director. Within the movement, he was known as the favored protégé of Hamas’s revered founder, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. Born in Rafah, a southern Gaza city near the Egyptian border, to parents who hailed from a village near Hebron in the West Bank, Abu Marzook was picked by Yassin at an early age as a prize pupil meant for greater things. With Yassin’s support, he attended college at Ain Shams University in Cairo and went on to graduate school in the United States — in part, to gain worldly knowledge of the West that would help a movement with few in its ranks who had this background.

Ostensibly, Abu Marzook’s fundraising, based in the United States and run from his home outside Washington, went to support Hamas’s huge network of social services in Gaza and, to a lesser extent, in the West Bank. Israel alleges (and he denies) that some of his fundraising went to support terrorist actions, as well. Hamas’ sprawling enterprise of medical clinics, orphanages, schools and social service agencies made up the overwhelming bulk of the group’s work in the occupied territories, as it does today. At the time, such fundraising was not explicitly illegal. The U.S. government did not designate Hamas as a terrorist group until 1995.

The popular gratitude and deep social roots that Hamas and its precursor group accrued through years of providing such service to Palestinians made it a formidable force when it launched its first attacks against Israel, during the first intifada, in 1988. Until then, Israel had quietly encouraged the religious movement as a rival to Fatah and other militant PLO groups, then seen as the Jewish state’s primary enemies.

Citing arguments that Islamic law prohibits ceding Muslim lands to nonbelievers, Hamas resolutely opposes the Oslo Accords and the halting efforts made by its bitter rival, the PLO, and by Israel toward a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict. From the start of the Oslo process, the group backed up its opposition with terrorism, launching a campaign of bombings and eventually suicide bomb attacks, targeting civilians in cities across Israel. Since its inception, Hamas claims to have killed 1,365 “Zionist soldiers”— a statistic likely to include combatants and non-combatants, as the group has stated in the past that it views all Israeli Jews as combatants.

In 1993, Abu Marzook left the United States for Jordan, where he joined other leaders of Hamas’s “outside” wing to set up the group’s political headquarters in Amman. Jordan’s ruler, King Hussein, had long cultivated close, if careful, ties with Jordan’s affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood, and Hamas, which was established as the Islamist movement’s Palestinian branch, was offered offices in the Jordanian capital to set up its political operation right next door to Israel.

But after Jordan signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994, Israeli officials pressed Hussein hard to expel the group. The United States also pressured Jordan, and so, for that matter, did the PLO, which had come to view Hamas as the biggest internal threat to its hold on power.

In response, Hussein, who preferred to keep potential enemies close, offered a concession: He threw out Abu Marzook, who returned to the United States in 1995.

But on his arrival, Abu Marzook was instead detained when a terrorism watch list at immigration turned up his name. A search of Abu Marzook’s carry-on bags found what looked like evidence of substantial offshore and American bank accounts. And a strip search of his wife yielded an address book with hundreds of names, including several people whom American authorities regarded as Middle East extremists. Soon after his detention, Israel asked Washington to extradite Abu Marzook to stand trial in Israel on terrorism charges.

Abu Marzook eventually spent a year-and-a-half in Manhattan’s Metropolitan Correctional Center as his attorney, Stanley L. Cohen, fought a no-holds-barred, high-profile battle against his extradition. In the end, after initial decisions against him, it was Abu Marzook, weary of sitting in jail, who instructed Cohen to desist in his appeals; he’d go to Jerusalem, he decided, and face the Israelis in what promised to be a trial of the century.

Then, the government of Israel shifted. U.S. Ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk cabled Washington that the recently elected Netanyahu government was uncertain it wished to take on the case. A late-night meeting between Washington’s envoy to Amman and King Hussein produced a way out: Hussein agreed to take back Abu Marzook.

Abu Marzook returned to Jordan in 1997, expecting to be hailed as the hero of Hamas who had faced down Israel and won. Khaled Meshal, a Hamas activist with roots in Kuwait, was expected to quickly return the keys to Abu Marzook’s office as chief of Hamas’s political bureau, which Meshal had managed on an acting basis.

But then, in September 1997, Netanyahu singlehandedly, if unintentionally, upended Abu Marzook’s triumph: He approved a Mossad hit on Meshal that went terribly wrong when the Israeli hit team was captured while trying to escape. To extricate the team, Netanyahu was forced to give up some 70 Palestinian detainees, including the most prized prisoner of all: Yassin. He also had to save Meshal’s life with the antidote to the toxin the agents had administered.

Abu Marzook’s star was not just eclipsed, it was sunk. “The day they tried to kill [Meshal] was the day Meshal the leader was born,” the well-connected Amman journalist Ranya Kadri told author Paul McGeough in his book, “Kill Khalid,” a history of the botched hit. “The man who died that day was Abu Marzook. Nobody wanted to talk to Abu Marzook after that — it was Meshal, Meshal, Meshal.”

Since then, Abu Marzook, though still a top player in Hamas, has served as deputy director to Meshal. The two are colleagues and rivals. On at least three occasions, Abu Marzook has stood as a leadership candidate to retake the top position in secret elections held by the Shura Council, Hamas’s clandestine policymaking body. Meshal has emerged each time, victorious.

But in January, to widespread surprise, Meshal announced his resignation. No one knows whether the Shura Council will accept the resignation when it meets sometime soon, on a date that remains secret. There are now considered to be three top candidates for the coveted post of political director: Meshal, Abu Marzook and Ismail Haniyeh, who was elected prime minister of the P.A. in 2006 and has been the effective chief of Gaza since then. The contest comes amid signs of sharply increased tensions between Meshal, the “outside” leader, and Haniyeh, now leading his own government in Gaza.

Asked if he is, indeed, a candidate, Abu Marzook explained that the process in Hamas was not like a like a bid for the U.S. presidency, in which a candidate throws his hat into the ring.

“Nobody announces himself as a candidate,” he said. “Someone else should announce a person for a post.”

But asked if, like the Civil War general, William Tecumseh Sherman, he would refuse to run if nominated and refuse to serve if elected, Abu Marzook laughed heartily and said, “No, I’m not that man.”

For Israel’s current leaders, the question of who ends up running Hamas is deemed moot. “None of this is relevant for Israel, because the government says they don’t want to hear from Hamas,” Eldar said.

Meanwhile, Israeli officials routinely denounce efforts by the Fatah leaders who control the P.A. to consummate a reconciliation agreement with Hamas, arguing that as a terrorist organization it is an unsuitable partner. But just as routinely, Israeli hard-liners dismiss negotiating with the P.A. at all, since it controls only the West Bank while Hamas rules in Gaza, outside its orbit.

A series of meetings between Fatah and Hamas leaders has ended in repeated announcements of an imminent agreement to bring the two groups and their rump governments back together. But the agreement has yet to be implemented, and Abu Marzook indicated with a resigned air that this would not happen very soon. “There’s some difficulties in the West Bank and some difficulties in Gaza, and we are working together to solve these,” he said.

If Abu Marzook’s appeal for a hudna sounded more dovish than his plan’s actual details, his rhetoric regarding Hamas attacks on Israel tacked in the opposite direction: considerably more hawkish than the reality.

The last suicide bombing attributed to Hamas took place in August 2004, almost eight years ago — an attack on two buses in Beersheba that killed 16 people. Since then, however, Israel claims to have thwarted terrorist attacks sponsored by Hamas in Israel proper. The group has also continued to launch attacks — some fatal — against Israeli Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank.

Since Israel’s 2008–2009 military offensive in Gaza, which it dubbed Operation Cast Lead, Hamas has also ceased launching rockets from Gaza into southern Israel.

Until March, the Hamas government in Gaza had for the most part sought to stop other groups from firing such missiles, as well. Then, on March 9, Israel launched a targeted killing in Gaza of a militant from another group whom Israel charged was planning a terrorist attack against it. That provoked a fusillade of some 200 rockets fired into Israel by others, which Hamas officials did nothing to stop. This, in turn, brought on escalating Israeli retaliations, until Egypt brokered a cease-fire agreement.

The exchange resulted in the deaths of 25 Palestinians, most of them militants but several civilians; no Israelis died.

Abu Marzook was at pains to knock down suggestions in numerous media outlets that Hamas is preparing to abandon armed resistance against Israel in favor of mass popular resistance against Israeli rule.

HOW WAS THIS HISTORIC INTERVIEW ARRANGED? FIND OUT HERE.

A February 6 article by Time magazine correspondent Karl Vick about the “mainstreaming” of Hamas was one object of his disdain. In it, Vick played up comments by Meshal, who, at a November reconciliation meeting with Fatah leaders, praised the popular protests of the Arab Spring last year in Egypt and Tunisia as packing “the power of a tsunami.”

“The new government emerging in Cairo may be dominated by Islamists,” Vick wrote hopefully, “but it has pushed both sides to make up and adopt the nonviolent strategy against Israel, complete with negotiations.”

For Abu Marzook, the November meeting in Cairo meant something “completely different.” At the meeting, he said, the groups involved asked, “What kind of [activities] between us we can share together?” And mass civil resistance, it was decided, was one in which all could participate.

“We accept that,” he said. “[It] can now make reconciliation easier.” But giving up both the right and the opportunity to conduct military operations? “It doesn’t mean that,” Abu Marzook stated flatly.

Indeed, a careful look at the original Agence France Presse report from which Vick drew Meshal’s comments reveals some important remarks the Time correspondent left out. “Now we have a common ground that we can work on,” Meshal said then. But he added, “As long as there is an occupation on our land, we have the right to defend our land by all means, including military resistance.”

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“Hamas is not going to voluntarily surrender what they see as a strategic and tactical option,” Baskin, the Israeli peace activist, said. “That would be in their eyes like surrender. So they say the option remains on the table. But what they tell people in the West who are engaging them is, ‘Watch what we do, not what we say.’”

Speaking in a different context, about the effects of the Arab Spring, Abu Marzook himself offered an additional consideration.

“Hamas before the [2006] election is not the same as after they are elected,” he said, “because as an opposition party, you can say anything, but no one expects you to do anything. But after election, you have to implement on the ground. And there are many, many difficulties when you implement anything on the ground.”

Still, in a long exchange about terrorism, the Hamas leader resolutely defended his organization’s past acts of violence targeting civilians. He asserted that Israel, under the rubric of collateral damage, had killed thousands more Palestinian civilians than vice versa. He dismissed the notion that it made some moral difference that Israel generally issues statements of public regret for the deaths of civilians it hits in pursuing what it characterized as military targets, while Hamas leaders often publicly celebrated the group’s successful actions targeting civilians.

“You cannot compare between the civilians killed by Israel and the civilians killed by the resistance,” Abu Marzook said. The Israeli numbers, he stressed, “were huge, really huge…. The action’s the action. You killed 17 children here. And there are 16 civilians killed in Israel. If you evaluate what the Israelis said or what the resistance said — okay, you can compare between just the talk. But in reality, the Israelis killed more than 1,000, and they said, ‘We are sorry.’… The killing is killing.”

At some points, Abu Marzook seemed to claim that the Hamas leaders who publicly celebrated such killings — who have included Meshal himself — were not speaking for the organization, or that Hamas had not itself directed and planned the actions or, at least, had not planned them as civilian hits.

“There’s no one speaker [within] the resistance,” he said. “Everybody talks about their actions, and you can make what you want of those speakers. They make it as [if this is] the policy of the resistance. And this is not right. Our policy is… against targeting any civilian.”

On those occasions when civilians die in such actions, “there is no planning” for this, he claimed, “because it’s very difficult to make something like this to be perfect…. When you killed his brother or his [fellow Palestinian] civilians, he wants to retaliate. It’s very difficult to say anything bad to him.”

Mouin Rabbani, a Jordan-based Middle East contributing editor to Middle East Report who follows Hamas closely, expressed surprise at such distancing remarks.

“I’m surprised he didn’t repeat their traditional justifications,” he said.

In the past, Rabbani said, Hamas had expressed interest in reaching an understanding with Israel whereby each side would undertake to avoid hitting civilians or civilian infrastructure targets. “In the past, among other arguments, they’ve justified their actions by claiming every Israeli is a soldier. It’s very uncommon for them to basically disavow these actions.”

‘Why am I here?”

This was not an existential plea to the cosmos. It was, rather, the first question I put to Abu Marzook at the start of the interview: Why had he agreed to a request by a Jewish news organization to talk with him in-depth in a lengthy and probing exchange?

“We don’t have originally something against the Jew as a religion or against the Jew as a human being,” he said. “The problem is that the Israelis kicked out my family. They have occupied my land and injured thousands of Palestinians…. I have to differentiate between the Jew who did this problem to my people and [American] Jews like you, who never did anything bad to my people.”

Abu Marzook waved away the contention that, in fact, most American Jews strongly support Israel as a Jewish state — in many cases, quite actively — and sympathize with their fellow Jews there. Speaking of Americans in general, he said, “Those people who have sympathy for the Jews [in Israel], it’s because of their history with the Jews. If you look carefully at what happened to the Jews in Moscow or Madrid, in Spain or in Germany or Poland, that’s very bad…. Anyone who historically his father or grandfather did something like that [to the Jews], he should be ashamed.”

This made Abu Marzook’s comments the next day in defense of the Hamas Charter all the more surprising. The charter, a lengthy, multi-part founding document composed in 1988, contains several sections that have been widely condemned as anti-Semitic.

The first such section cites a hadith, or saying of the Prophet Muhammad:

“The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.”

The second section cites passages from “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” an early 20th-century forgery now widely attributed to the czar of Russia’s secret police, that depict world Jewry as a nefarious international force through Western history. The passages cited hold “world Zionism” as responsible for, among other things, the French and communist revolutions, the control of media and finance worldwide, and the machinations of “secret societies,” including the “Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, the Lions in different parts of the world” that have been formed “for the purpose of sabotaging societies and achieving Zionist interests.”

Abu Marzook said that the charter does not govern his organization.

“We have many, many policies that are not going with the charter,” he said. “But when you talk about ‘change the charter,’ there are many Hamas people talking about changing the charter. That’s a debate inside Hamas, because there are many, many policies against what’s written in the charter.”

Asked specifically about changing the passages on Jews, Abu Marzook acknowledged no such amendments existed. But he defended the hadith as being taken out of context. The passage, he said, did not apply to all Jews — just those in Palestine.

As for the Protocols, “The Zionists wrote it, and they said, ‘No, we didn’t.‘ [It’s] linked to Zionists,” he said.

Informed that the document was, in fact, a forgery, Abu Marzook appeared nonplussed. “Really? This is the first time I know [about this],” he said.

For a Hamas leader who had lived and studied in the West to respond in such a manner seemed a stunning reflection of a movement that remains deeply insular and parochial, even as it now seeks wider legitimacy.

Abu Marzook spoke hopefully of the influence of the Arab Spring as a boon to his movement. The rise of fellow Islamist groups in Egypt and elsewhere could help bring the issue of the Palestinians to the fore, he said, even if, in the short term, Muslim Brotherhood groups, now responsible for governing, emphasized domestic concerns.

He alluded to the debate that the Arab Spring has sparked within Hamas itself, including discussion of converting the group fully into a political party that eschewed its own separate militia or guerilla arm, as has occurred with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. “There are some people in Hamas thinking [that] way,” he said. “But personally, I’m against any kind of political party, because Hamas is a political party and a resistance. You can’t divide this.”

But asked how the Arab Spring’s themes of civil resistance and demands for openness, transparency and democracy might influence Hamas, Abu Marzook looked puzzled. His group operates in areas, such as the occupied West Bank, in which it remains an illegal organization, he noted. And its status in several Arab countries also makes open operations impractical. He declined even to offer a dollar figure for its operating budget.

Might Hamas, for example, consider opening a window on debate within the secretive Shura Council, a body that will soon select a new leader even though no one, including its purported constituents, knows who its members are and how they will vote?

“This is not the interest of people in any way,” Abu Marzook replied.

Contact Larry Cohler-Esses at cohleresses@forward.com

Read more: http://www.forward.com/articles/155054/hamas-wouldn-t-honor-a-treaty-top-leader-says/?p=all#ixzz1sa6DlSSE

Posted By Margaret Griffis, On April 19, 2012

Iraq suffered significant bomb attacks in multiple cities today, leaving at least 69 dead and 176 more wounded. The multiple large-scale attacks were apparently coordinated, took place mostly during a 75-minute span, and focused on security personnel. In stark contrast, recent violence has largely resulted in only one or two deaths at a time.

Hamid Mutlaq, a Sunni member of parliament, blamed Baghdad for the slaughter, noting that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s office has been stoking political tensions in recent weeks and causing several groups to call for an end to Maliki’s budding "dictatorship." Among the most aggrieved parties is Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi who fled to Iraqi Kurdistan. He fears that Maliki’s machinations are tearing the country apart.

The carnage cut short a relatively quiet period for Iraq. According to the Interior Ministry, March saw the lowest death toll since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. Their figures came up to 112 killed. The deadliest day last month left 63 dead and 257 wounded.

The gravest single attack today took place near Kirkuk in Malhaa/Dibis, where a multiple bomb attack killed nine people and wounded 24 more.

In Baghdad, a bomb targeted Health Minister Majeed Hamad Amin but instead killed two bodyguards and wounded six others on Palestine Street. Three people were killed and 20 more were injured in a blast in Kadhimiya. A bomb in Amil killed two construction workers and wounded 18 more. Two people were killed as they allegedly tried to plant a bomb in Ghazaliya. Five civilians were wounded in a Zaafaraniya blast. A judge was assassinated in Saidiya. Two civilians were killed in a blast in Harthiya.

A car bomber exploded his cargo at a Sahwa checkpoint in Samarra, killing five militia members and wounding eight more. Nearby, another bomb killed two people and wounded a Sahwa member. Three policemen were killed in a third but separate blast.

Eight civilians were killed in two separate bombing in Ramadi. As many as 10 others were also wounded.

A suicide bomber in Taji killed five people and wounded nine more. Two more bombs killed a civilian and wounded five others.

Two bombs in Kirkuk itself left four dead and 19 wounded. The police chief from Muqdadiya was among the wounded.

In Mosul, a suicide bomber was killed by security personnel before he could pull off his attack. A blast near a college left two dead and three wounded. A separate blast left three dead and two wounded at a restaurant.

One person was killed and 13 more were wounded in a blast, the first attack in the series, in Baquba.

In Tarmiya, a bomb targeting police killed one civilian and wounded six others, including three policemen.

Four policemen were killed when a roadside bomb exploded near Falluja.

Last night, a bomb in Amiriyat al-Fallujah killed a policeman and wounded another.

Gunmen attacked a checkpoint in Khales, killing one person and wounding three more.

Gunmen stormed a home in Mansouriyat al-Jabal where they killed a Sahwa member.

A car bomb exploded in Dujail, but only killed the driver of the car.

A roadside bomb killed a soldier in Ishaqi.

Gunmen killed a man in Mussayab.

The body of a four-year-old who had been shot was found in Imam Weis.

Six oil policemen were wounded in a blast near Jalawla.

At least five more people were wounded across Diyala province.

A blast in Hawija wounded three soldiers. Gunmen wounded a policeman.

In Kanaan, an I.E.D. blast wounded five people at a stadium.

In Jurf al-Sakhar, three people were wounded when the bomb they were allegedly planting exploded prematurely.

Mortars were launched into Balad and Tikrit, but no casualties were reported.

A car bomb was defused in Mafraq.

Read more by Margaret Griffis

• Kurdistan’s Barzani To Meet With Iraq’s Hashemi While in Turkey – April 18th, 2012
• Scattered Violence Leaves 13 Killed in Iraq – April 17th, 2012
• Iraqiya Seeks Confidence Withdrawal for Maliki – April 16th, 2012
• Iraq Election Officials Out on Bail; 13 Killed in Attacks – April 15th, 2012
• Iraq: Sadrists And Kurds Denounce Election Commission Arrests – April 14th, 2012

Article printed from Antiwar.com Original: http://original.antiwar.com

URL to article: http://original.antiwar.com/updates/2012/04/19/iraq-carnage-69-killed-176-wounded/

Palestinians want state instead of Israel

The bottom line is that the current Palestinian leadership (never mind the Hamas leadership) has no intention of truly entering realistic peace talks that involve compromise with Israel, or ever signing a piece of paper that recognizes the legitimacy of a Jewish state and therefore end the conflict for all time.

David M. Weinberg, April 17, 2012

Palestinian obstructionism

The letter that Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad is expected to hand Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today is a prime example of everything wrong with the current Palestinian leadership. The letter (according to the drafts leaked to Haaretz and Times of Israel) mixes fact with fiction, is maximalist and threatening, and indicates no real desire to negotiate, only to place Israel in the international dock of criminality.

The little bit of truth in the letter occurs when Fayyad reiterates Palestinian commitment to "a policy of zero tolerance against violence." That’s nice and indeed important, and Israel acknowledges that for the most part Palestinian Authority forces in the West Bank have refrained from terror and quietly helped in ferreting out Hamas cells. But Fayyad says nothing about Hamas rocket fire on Israel or kidnapping attempts and the like.

What the letter has in spades is a lot of bogus diplomatic history. Fayyad lists every Israeli-Palestinian agreement since 1993 (Oslo I and II, Wye, Hebron, Taba, Camp David, Annapolis, etc.) as if these were Palestinian concessions to Israel, but fails to mention that the Palestinians turned down offers from Israel in 2000, 2001, and 2008 that would have given them a state in virtually all of the West Bank, Gaza and eastern Jerusalem.

As has been their wont for the past three years (ever since Obama took office), the Palestinians in this letter yet again set impossible and outrageous preconditions for entering real peace talks with Israel. Basically, they want Israel to concede every point of contention such as borders and settlements in advance of the talks. Otherwise, no talks.

Furthermore, the letter expresses Palestinian maximalism. This includes a state on all of the pre-1967 territories, with only "possible minor and mutually agreed upon land swaps of equal size and value." Note the new phraseology "possible" and "minor." And of course, the "right" of return to Israel for refugees "as specified in the Arab Peace Initiative," and so forth and so on. There is no preparation of the Palestinian people for "painful compromises," as every Israeli leader is expected to repeatedly warn the Israeli public.

The letter falsely claims that the Palestinians have honored all their obligations, including the "reactivation of the trilateral anti-incitement committee." This, from an "authority" that names streets after arch-terrorists and broadcasts anti-Semitic and virulently anti-Israel sermons on its official television station. (It is also an "authority" which imprisons journalists and Facebook bloggers who write favorably of Israel and unfavorably about Palestinian leaders).

Fayyad’s propaganda missive claims Palestinian ownership and responsibility over the West Bank and Gaza "as a single territorial unit," but amazingly fails to mention a slight problem named Hamas. As if Hamas didn’t exist; as if Hamas control of Gaza wasn’t a problem; as if Fayyad and Abbas had control over Hamas. What a joke!

The bottom line is that the current Palestinian leadership (never mind the Hamas leadership) has no intention of truly entering realistic peace talks that involve compromise with Israel, or ever signing a piece of paper that recognizes the legitimacy of a Jewish state and therefore end the conflict for all time.

Instead, Abbas and Fayyad know how to threaten: That unless Israel bows to their demands, the Palesitnian Authroity "will seek the full and complete implementation of international law" to criminalize and penalize Israel’s presence "as an occupying power in all of the occupied Palestinian territory." To seek to further isolate Israel internationally.

In truth, this is what the Palestinian national movement has always been about: the delegitimization of the Jewish state. I would say that the Fayyad letter constitutes another missed Palestinian opportunity to gain their own state, but clearly and unfortunately, that is not what today’s Palestinian leaders are after.

by Khaled Abu Toameh
April 17, 2012 at 4:45 am

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3019/jordan-palestinian-refugees

Jordan’s treatment of Palestinian refugees is not uncommon for an Arab country. In the past, Palestinians have also been denied entry into Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and Libya. Palestinians are being held in tents, with poor sanitary conditions.

More than 1,000 Palestinians who fled from the violence in Syria and were hoping to find temporary shelter in Jordan, have been stranded along the border between Syria and Jordan for the past few weeks. The Jordanian authorities have been refusing to allow them into the kingdom.

The Jordanian authorities have set up a makeshift refugee camp along the border with Syria, where the Palestinians are being held in tents, with poor sanitary conditions.

Jordan’s treatment of Palestinian refugees is not uncommon for an Arab country. Lebanon and Egypt have also refused to grant asylum to the fleeing Palestinians. This is also not the first time that an Arab country keeps Palestinians waiting on the border. In the past, Palestinians have also been denied entry into Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and Libya.

Arab support for the Palestinians has been largely rhetorical over the past two decades, forcing the Palestinians to become almost entirely dependent on American and EU taxpayers’ money.

Meanwhile, an additional 100,000 Syrians, who have fled their country in the past year, have been permitted to enter Jordan.

The Jordanians are worried that if they allow a few hundred Palestinians to settle in the kingdom, that would create a precedent and pave the way for 500,000 Palestinians living in Syria to run away to Jordan.

As Jordan’s King Abdullah already has a problem with the 80% Palestinian majority in his kingdom, he does not want the Palestinians in the kingdom. They pose a demographic threat to the Jordanians.

The decision to ban the Palestinian refugees from entering Jordan coincided with reports that the Jordanian authorities have begun revoking the Jordanian citizenship of Palestinians which they had previously been given.

Because the Palestinians pose a demographic threat to the Jordanians, hundreds of thousands of them living in Jordan will lose their status as Jordanian citizens.

The Jordanian government, according to sources in Amman, has even decided to revoke the Jordanian citizenship of Palestinian Authority leaders, including Mahmoud Abbas.

King Abdullah this week dispatched a high level delegation to Ramallah to discuss the new measures against the Palestinians with the Palestinian leadership. Headed by Jordan’s interior minister, the delegation informed the Palestinians that the kingdom would not be able to help the Palestinians who fled from Syria.

King Abdullah is so worried about the talk, mainly in Israel, about the need to establish a Palestinian state in Jordan that he has just instructed his government to come up with a new electoral law that would keep Palestinians away from parliament and most government institutions altogether.

Sorry about that, Palestinian Arabs, but you have turned into a boring non-issue. Even the Israeli left and Israeli Arabs have moved on. That leaves only one recourse for your activities, unfortunately.

From Ron Jager, April 16, 2012

In an almost desperate bid to counter the emerging historical trend, pro-Palestinian Arab elements recently attempted to change direction and bring the Palestinian Arab issue back to the forefront of the world’s agenda.

For the Palestinian leadership, the Arab world has once again abandoned and left the Palestinian Arabs high and dry.

The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction (BDS) movement coupled with the on-going de- legitimization efforts against Israel have little if any concrete successes over recent years.

The Arab Spring has cut off most of the Palestinian Authority’s political support and its funding from Arab sources.

The recent minimal "million man March on Jerusalem", and the failed "fly-in flotilla" to Israel in which thousands of activists and wanna be terrorists were supposed to attempt to invade Israel are only the latest examples of the failure of the Palestinian Arab movement to generate attention and bring its interests to the center of world attention.

Even the  recent scandal concerning Günter Grass, the German author and ex-SS Waffen soldier who has gone public with a vocal and unrestrained attack on Israel, accusing her of being the greatest threat to world peace, ended up only with Grass being  accused by the world media of being a latent anti-Semite who recently came out of the Nazi closet.

Nothing will change the current drift and historical trend from sending the Palestinian Arabs ("the invented people") to the dust bin of political movements that have self-destructed.

For dozens of years, Arab regimes dealt with Israel by using the Palestinian Arabs in order to hide what went on in their own countries and divert the attention of the Arab masses outwardly. Yet today there is no longer a need for this, as the Arab world’s real problems have emerged in force for the world to see.

The Arab Spring has revealed for all to see that they the Arab masses living outside of Israel are the real victims of gender Apartheid, lack of human rights, and lack of political freedoms. So, from being a major issue, and possibly the main political issue in the Middle East for the past two generations, the Palestinians were pushed down to the bottom of the priority list; their Land Day did not receive any substantial coverage, neither in the Arab world nor in the Western world.

Recently, the Palestinian leadership has been jumping from capital to capital like schnorrers {beggars, ed.] hoping to get some serious donations, only to be ignored by all – except of course President Obama – who can never, not even in an election year, not have a soft spot in his heart for those who do not recognize Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people.

Today, when the Muslim Middle East is disintegrating into religions, ethnic groups, minorities and tribes, when the slaughter in Syria is merely intensifying (the number of fatalities has already passed 10,000,) when Libya’s militias are killing each other, Yemen is crumbling, Egypt is facing deep trouble, and Iran marches on in its development of a nuclear arsenal, it turns out that – relatively speaking – the Palestinian issue is the least pressing and currently most stable conflict in the Mideast.

The Palestinians have encountered another grave "calamity": Israel’s public opinion has lost interest in them. For dozens of years, Israel’s leftist camp turned the Palestinians into its defining issue.

Yet suddenly, the Left discovered that Israel has moved on – the Gazan rockets had a good hand in the loss of the Israeli public’s expectations  – and that the issue is no longer on its agenda. When the Left also discovered that the Palestinians have no interest in peace or negotiations, just like Syria’s Assad, it replaced the Palestinian agenda with a new one, premised on social issues like cottage cheese and the social protests.

Arab Spring has revealed for all to see that they the Arab masses living outside of Israel are the real victims of gender Apartheid, lack of human rights, and lack of political freedoms.
This does not mean that the Israeli left won’t make any and every effort to support the enemies of Israel, but for the most part, the Left in Israel is moving on to its latest cause and making in roads into what it terms social and economic justice.

Even the Arabs living in Israel have abandoned the Palestinian movement and essentially moved on.

One of the givens of the Middle East peace process is that Palestinians are eager to be free of rule by Israel and to live in a state of their own. Yet in a recent poll of the Arabs of East Jerusalem, It shows that more of those Arabs actually would prefer to be citizens of Israel than of a Palestinian state.

The poll, conducted in November, may be something of an embarrassment to Palestinian political leaders, who lately have been insisting that Israel should stop expanding settlements in the eastern half of Jerusalem. The awkward fact is that the 270,000 Arabs who live in East Jerusalem may not be very enthusiastic about joining the Palestinian Arabs.

The survey, designed and supervised by former State Department Middle East researcher David Pollock, found that only 30 percent said they would prefer to be citizens of Palestine in a two-state solution, while 35 percent said they would choose Israeli citizenship. (The rest said they didn’t know or refused to answer.) Forty percent said they would consider moving to another neighborhood in order to become a citizen of Israel rather than Palestine, and 54 percent said that if their neighborhood were assigned to Israel, they would not move to Palestine.

Arabs say they prefer Israel’s jobs, schools, health care and welfare benefits to those of a Palestinian state — and their nationalism is not strong enough for them to set aside these advantages in order to live in an Arab country.

So what can we expect in the near future? The Palestinian Arabs when in doubt, when down on their luck, have always reverted more intensively to what they do best, inflicting terror on Jews. In recent months we have witnessed a marked increase in violence in East Jerusalem, and on the roads of Judea and Samaria. The Palestinian Arabs will most likely turn up the level of terror as we approach the November elections in the hope that when nothing else works, provoking Israel to unleash the powerful Israel Defense Forces will help them regain their role as the eternal victims, and the renewed attention of the World.