Israel sinks the peace process

By S.P.SETH

The hopes raised by the Obama Presidency for a resolution of the Palestinian question have been dashed. What started with his Cairo speech extending a hand to the Muslim world, and acknowledging the centrality of the Palestinian question, has now been relegated to the hard-to-tackle basket. The Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, openly acknowledged the US’s inability to initiate direct talks between the two sides, after Israeli refusal to freeze new construction activities in West Bank and east Jerusalem. The only way open now will be indirect talks through US channeling.

When Hillary Clinton said that the US was unable to bring about a settlement of the vexed question, she was in fact acknowledging that Israel and its US lobby has a veto on the issue. Since Israel is insistent on continuing its settlements in West Bank and east Jerusalem, any continuation of the talks (direct or indirect) have no meaning. After all, what the Palestinians rightly want is their own sovereignty in the occupied territories, lost since the 1967 six-day war.

But Israel is so arrogant that it refused a generous US package for a three-month freeze on new construction activity. The package included a $3 billion worth of military aid, including 20 F-35 fighter aircraft, and a commitment to veto anti-Israeli resolutions in the United Nations. Israel is so confident of having its way with the US that its government didn’t feel obliged or coerced into heeding the US request. This is a humiliating diplomatic setback for President Obama and his administration.

The Israeli veto on the US policy concerning Palestine continues because the Jewish lobby in the United States exercises tremendous political influence. In a profile of one such powerful Jewish magnate, Haim Saban, Connie Bruck wrote in The New Yorker, “…His greatest concern, he says, is to protect Israel, by strengthening the United States-Israel relationship.” And his formula to do this is to “make donations to political parties, establish think tanks, and control media outlets.” And Saban is doing all this, as are the Jewish lobbies.

On the role of the Jewish lobbies, Peter Beinart wrote in The New York Review of Books that, “…in the United States, groups like AIPAC and the Presidents’ Conference [Jewish organizations] patrol public discourse, scolding people who contradict their vision of Israel as a state in which all leaders cherish democracy and yearn for peace”

And what exactly is this vision, as articulated by Benjamin Netanyahu (now prime minister of Israel) in his 1993 book, “A Place among the Nations”. According to Beinhart again, based on Netanyahu’s book, “…he denies that there is such a thing as a Palestinian… And the effort ‘to gouge Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] out of Israel’ resembles Hitler’s bid to wrench the German-speaking ‘Sudeten district’ from Czechoslovakia in 1938.” Indeed, according to Netanyahu, Israel has already made big territorial concessions by abandoning its claim to Jordan.

Is it any surprise then that the Netanyahu government has sabotaged the peace talks? When his government (and it includes ministers even to the right of Netanyahu) is so self-righteous about Israel’s identity and territorial expanse, all the talk about peace and two-state formula is a chimera. And it will remain that as long as Israel has the US’ unstinted support.

Indeed, some thoughtful sympathizers of Israel do worry about its future from another perspective. In his New York Times column, Thomas Friedman sums up this perspective as one of a demographic nightmare for the Jewish state with its 2.5 million Palestinians in West Bank and another 1.5 million within Israel proper. In this situation of a single state entity (Israel), “Then the only question” according to the Hebrew University philosopher Moshe Halbertal, “will be what will be the nature of this one state—it will either be apartheid or Lebanon.” And with this, “We will be confronted by two horrors.”

But Netanyahu and his ilk are not deterred. They foresee another scenario that will solve forever the Palestinian question. The overwhelming view in Israel seems to be that the creeping process of settlements and annexation will force (with draconian laws and effective apartheid) many Palestinians into leaving their country for neighboring Arab states. And those left will have no choice but to live on Israeli terms. Which will essentially “solve” the Palestinian problem.

This is delusional, of course. The idea that the Israeli occupation of Palestine is somehow morally and politically justified, being the manifest destiny of Jewish people as the inheritors of some mythical past, is not only wrong but also highly dangerous. That the Palestinians will somehow disappear to make Israeli occupation legitimate has been a cardinal article of faith with Israeli leadership, particularly after the six-day war in 1967. But the Palestinians are still resisting after more than forty years. But the delusion persists that time, and American support and security guarantees, will eventually carry the day.

But this is a gross misreading of the situation. Indeed, if anything, time and legitimacy are on the Palestinian side because Israeli occupation will increasingly be seen for what it is—a gross abuse of human rights.

Professor David Shulman says in the New York Review of Books, “ Such abuse [of human rights] is the very stuff of the occupation—a daily reality exacerbated above all by the endless hunger for more land [by Israel] and the ever expanding settlement project…” And he adds, “ For decades now, the [Israeli] courts have allowed the settlement enterprise to proceed unimpeded by significant legal constraints, despite its evident criminal nature under international law…They have let rampant violence by settlers throughout the territories… go largely unpunished…”

The lack of strong international reaction to such rampant Israeli violence in the occupied territories has only encouraged Israel to continue on its course. Assured of US support, with Europe supinely following it, Israel has never felt the need to change its course.

But this could change. Because: the US might not be able to bail out Israel economically, politically and militarily with its waning power. In an emerging multipolar world, Israel will find it increasingly difficult to influence all the levers of international power. And if the Arab countries were to energize on behalf of the Palestinians, with greater leeway in a multipolar world, Israel will find itself increasingly isolated internationally.

It might, therefore, be in Israel’s interest to accommodate the Palestinians while it still remains the strongest regional power in the Middle East. But to expect this is to credit Israel with greater sagacity than it has shown so far.

Note: This article was first printed in Daily Times

WikiLeaks Julian Assange: a hero or a villain?

By S.P.SETH

WikiLeaks will, most likely, end up as a dreaded word in the annals of diplomatic history. Nothing like this has happened before on such a scale. The disclosure of these American diplomatic cables, with comments on personalities, politics and policies of countries doing business with the United States, provides a rare insight into global politics, albeit with an American bias.

The Australian founder of the WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, is regarded either as a hero or a monstrous villain (depending on one’s viewpoint) for upsetting the staid diplomatic applecart by blowing the whistle. The Americans—across the political spectrum--- are baying for his blood for baring their diplomatic cupboard for all and sundry to see. And believe me it is not a pretty sight.

Coincidentally or otherwise, he is up against warrants for his arrest on charges of raping two Swedish women while in Sweden, where he had set up his WikiLeaks offices; hoping that he would have a more empathetic establishment in that country. Even the Interpol was alerted to his alleged crime.

The British have now got him and he is in their lock up. He will now face proceedings for extradition to Sweden

Indeed, earlier charges against him on this count had been dropped in Sweden for want of evidence. The question then is: why was the rape charge been raked up again? It certainly seems too fortuitous to be taken at face value.

It is true that Asange had sexual encounters with the women in question, and he has reportedly admitted it. But this was consensual. The only disputed element is whether or not he used protection under Swedish law. It is all a murky area, having become so entangled with the WikiLeaks affair. Assange contends that he is being framed to shut him up.

The question then is: Are the Swedish authorities doing the US’ dirty work? There are no easy answers to this. But in view of the fortuitous nature of the two (rape charges, and the WikiLeaks), the suspicion is likely to persist.

At the same time, the US has been busy pressuring internet servers to deny WikiLeaks its links. Some of the prominent ones have already done it. The US is also examining all its legal books to nab him on spying, treason, terrorism and whatever else they can throw at him.

Why are the US and its partners so exercised over something they always claim to favor and espouse all over the world? Which is: transparency and freedom to disseminate information. When WikiLeaks decided to exercise this right, all hell broke loose led by the country (USA) in the forefront of spreading democracy.

The US response has been three-fold. First, Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, blasted the disclosure and dissemination of US cables not only for the damage it is doing to the United States but for the world too. She described it as an “attack on the international community.”

At the second level, the US Attorney General is examining US laws to throw the book at Julian Assange and his WikiLealks organization to snuff them out for all times--- a Herculean and probably impossible talk in today’s internet world, even in the country of its origin. Third, and the most sober response has come from the US Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates.

He disagreed with those who described “the impact of these releases on our foreign policy…as a meltdown, as a game-changer, and so on.” In his view, “those descriptions are fairly significantly overwrought.”

He said that the US’ relations with rest of the world were not based on whether it was good at keeping secrets. Elaborating, he said, “Some governments deal with us because they fear us, some because they respect us, most because they need us.” And, he maintained, “We are still essentially… the indispensable nation.”

Gates didn’t deny that the dumping of such information was embarrassing and awkward. But, in his view, its consequences for US foreign policy will be “fairly modest.”

Why then is the US establishment generally so “overwrought”, to use Gates words in another context? Or is this a case of good cop and bad cop routine within the US establishment, with Gates trying to underplay the damage? Whatever it is, Julian Assange and his WikiLeaks have exposed the netherworld of diplomatic interaction where politics and perceived national interests trump everything else.

In the meantime all the governments in the world, that have featured in the leaked cables, are trying to deal with it by denying their unsavory contents or pretending to ignore them. Not surprisingly then, the Pakistani Government too has denied and dismissed the contents of the cables relating to its nuclear policy and the risks from it, as well as the perceived involvement of ISI with the Taliban.

Here in Australia, the former prime minister (now foreign minister), Kevin Rudd, has come out as a “control freak” full of self-importance, and hence lacking in diplomatic skills. Rudd is trying to deal with it by the usual bravado of not caring for it. At the same time, Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, slammed her countryman for the illegal act of dumping all those cables, without any reference to the law(s) Assange was breaching. Again, this is not unusual because Australia is prone to follow the United States unthinkingly.

Julian Assange might have to pay a heavy personal price for his audacity (President Barack Obama’s famous word), but he has let the proverbial cat among the pigeons to unfold the high drama of international diplomacy.

Iran’s larger than life image

By S P SETH

Iran is becoming larger than life in Western imagination. It certainly is an important country for several reasons. It is a major oil producer. And with its strategic location along the Persian Gulf, straddling south and west Asia, it can’t be ignored; especially when it is seeking to influence and shape regional political and strategic environment. Which it is doing to the detriment of the USA and Western countries, and their friends and allies in the region.

Of particular worry to them is Iran’s nuclear program. They regard it as an exercise in acquiring nuclear weapons. Iran denies this, contending that its nuclear program is intended for peaceful purposes of generating energy and furthering medical research. Undoubtedly, its mastery of nuclear technology and materials will equip it to produce nuclear weapons; though deployable nuclear weapons will take quite some years to materialize, if that were the intention.

It will not be smooth sailing, though, with the US and its allies determined to stop Iran from going in that direction. However, even though the present strategy of comprehensive sanctions is hurting Iran, it has failed to dissuade it. Indeed, in some ways, it is helping the government to consolidate its position internally around a popular issue of national sovereignty and dignity. Even thought the Ahmadinejad government is not popular with the country’s urban middle class (as was shown during the last elections), but on the nuclear issue not many would abandon the country’s nuclear option.

While the world sees Iran as larger than life, its own ambitions are no less spectacular. Its clerical regime wants to become the leader of the Islamic world. Ayatollah Khomeini’s clerical revolution in 1979 was supposed to be a trailblazer for the Islamic world, having overthrown the repressive regime of the Shah. It even humiliated the mighty United States by holding hostage its embassy staff.

Much of the Middle East at the time was ruled by autocrats (still is) of various descriptions as US allies like the Shah of Iran. But these countries didn’t follow Iran’s example. First, Iran’s new religious leaders got busy with purging their real or supposed political enemies within the country, thus having very little time to foment revolutionary fervor among its neighbors. Second, and more importantly, the subsequent long war with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, with the US helping the Iraqi dictator, became a struggle for Iran’s national survival. When the war ended, Iran was exhausted.

But the regime did find a cause to project its credentials where other Muslim countries, particularly in the Arab world, were only paying lip service. The Palestinian issue transcended sectarian divisions in the Islamic world with universal sympathy for their cause. But the Arab rulers, having been defeated by Israel, weren’t going to stick their necks out again for the sake of the Palestinians. Their advocacy of the Palestinian cause was political rather than taking real risks of confronting Israel.

Iran, in a sense, has filled that gap. President Ahmadinejad has been loudly questioning Israel’s legitimacy. He has denied Holocaust, attributing it to Jewish propaganda. Iran has also highlighted the hypocrisy of the West in accepting, in effect, Israel’s nuclear credentials while targeting Iran. All this goes well with Muslims all over the world, particularly its active advocacy of the Palestinian cause. By standing up to the US pressure both on the Palestinian issue and the nuclear question, Iran becomes larger than size. By the same token it frightens Arab rulers who are largely Sunni.

Iran might not have succeeded in transcending the Sunni-Shia divide, but it has made some significant inroads into Lebanon, particularly after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 2006 virtually destroying the Hezbollah-controlled southern Lebanon. Iran provided much of the aid to rebuild a battered Lebanon. As President Ahmadinejad’s recent state visit to Lebanon showed, Iran has won kudos there. It is now a major foreign player in Lebanese politics, particularly after the Hezbollah gained the right to veto cabinet decisions that meet its disapproval. And this is of grave concern to Israel.

In Palestine, Iran is on Hamas’ side giving it a strong toehold in Palestine’s internal politics, as well as keeping Israel on notice. And its clerical regime has excellent relations with Syria, which has so far spurned all American overtures to detach it from Iran.

The US is worried about Iran’s influence in Iraq, another Shia-majority state. Iran suffered enormously from the long Iran-Iraq war, and would be loath to see a strongman like Saddam Hussein (whether from the Shia or Sunni sect) emerge on the political stage. Many of Iraq’s current crop of leaders, belonging to the dominant Shia sect, were sheltering in Iran when Saddam was in power. And they had enjoyed the political patronage of Iran’s clerical regime.

Therefore, Iran has an extensive network of political connections with different factions of the Shia political establishment. And hence has the capacity to shape the post-Saddam political order in that country. They are reportedly mediating between competing Shia factions to put together a government from the chaos of the last election.

Above all, Tehran’s overwhelming interest is in keeping the US out from a determining and decisive role in Iraqi politics and from having a major military presence in that country. By the same token, the ascendance of two Shia regimes, with Iraq under Iranian influence, is causing concern among Arab rulers.

Apart from the Middle East, Iran has a special interest in Afghanistan where its interests sometimes tend to clash with that of Pakistan. Pakistan would like to have a dominant, if not exclusive, role in a post-US Afghanistan. A friendly government in Afghanistan gives Pakistan the strategic depth its military would like to have. Iran contests that by refusing to be sidelined. It has developed links with all the internal political forces in Afghanistan, including the Taliban, by doling out large cash handouts. The Karzai government is also a recipient of bags of cash from Iran, acknowledged by President Hamid Karzai himself. This allows Iran flexibility in its Afghan policy.

Pakistan has the advantage of sheltering the Taliban leadership (as reported in the press from time to time) that might, at an appropriate time, step into any political void created by the American withdrawal. Iran surely would want to exercise its own options in the period ahead.

The US anti-terror war in Afghanistan, and its invasion of Iraq in 2003, greatly increased Iranian sense of insecurity from a large US military presence on its borders. With Pakistan as the frontline state for anti-terror operations against Afghanistan, it didn’t help its relations with Iran. Besides, the targeting of the Shias and their mosques by terrorists and Sunni fanatics in Pakistan doesn’t help Pakistan’s image in the Shia-majority Iran.

This strategic profile underlines both opportunities as well as pitfalls for Iran. While Iran’s active championing of the Palestine issue has raised its profile in the Muslim world, it has also created enormous risks of a retaliatory Israeli strike, especially on its nuclear installations with implicit or explicit US support. The terrible ramifications of this for the region are hard to fathom.

Even though Iran’s clerical regime continues to project a radical image, its political credentials at home are not unchallenged as was revealed during the last elections. It was accused of stealing the elections and repressing its political opponents. However, it has re-established order by strong-arm methods. But Iran is no longer the revolutionary model of the Khomeini days.

Its urban middle class doesn’t want the perpetual motion of Islamic fervor and hysteria. With a high rate of unemployment and rising inflation, it might also be losing support among the country’s poor.

In other words, its clerical order is vulnerable, pushing it further into hyper nationalism and Islamic fervor. But it would be folly to under-estimate the strength and appeal of this in a country so proud of its religion and destiny.

Note: This article was first printed in Daily Times

Working out the Afghan riddle

By S.P.SETH

Stories about Afghanistan are flying thick and fast. One version has it that the Taliban are in retreat, following the US and allied forces’ offensive in the Kandahar province. The US surge of an extra 30,000 troops, it is said, is starting to make a difference. And that this is not the time for the participating countries to lose their nerve.

Another story doing the rounds suggests that the Quetta Shura (the Taliban high command led by Mullah Omar, believed to be sheltering in Quetta), is no longer in total command. The Taliban are weakened with the loss of a number of field commanders from American drone attacks.

The Haqqani group, on the other hand, is gaining strength, and there have reportedly been some contacts between them and the Karzai government with the help of some senior officers of the Pakistani Inter Services Intelligence agency (ISI).

According to one account, “The Quetta Shura is still important but not as much as people thought two years ago. Its prestige and impact have waned and they are increasingly less important on the battlefield. Now the military threat comes from the Haqqanis.” Pakistan is believed to wield influence with them.

At the same time, it is also reported that the US and its NATO allies had “facilitated” contacts between senior Taliban members and the “highest levels of the Afghan government” by granting safe passage to Taliban leaders traveling to Kabul to meet the Karzai government. The Taliban, though, deny any contact with Kabul. Which shows how wild is the reportage on Afghanistan.

Pakistan’s ISI is also believed to be playing an intermediary role in some or all of the reported contacts between different groups. But Pakistan is not regarded as a benign political actor from the viewpoint of the US and its allies.

In his opinion column in the Sydney Morning Herald, its international editor, Peter Hartcher, worries about Pakistan’s role in “destabilizing Afghanistan”. He writes, “Its [Pakistan’s] powerful intelligence service, the ISI, sends fighters into Afghanistan and gives them sanctuary when they return…”

Greg Sheridan, foreign editor of the Australian, makes a similar point. He thinks that Pakistan is playing a malign role. According to Sheridan: it is not possible to run a successful counter-insurgency campaign in Afghanistan when “Pakistan is sheltering, aiding and supplying the Taliban.” This is, more or less, the general view between the US and its allies.

In the midst of all this, President Karzai announced the formation of a peace council to formally initiate talks with the Taliban to join his government. He has also said that informal contacts and talks with the Taliban had been going on for some time.

The Taliban have always maintained that any talks with the Karzai government would happen only after the Americans and their allied troops have left Afghanistan. Therefore, all this Karzai-government initiated flurry of a season of negotiations seems a bit over-drawn..

One assumption is that a weakened Taliban, from the US assaults in Kandahar and the loss of some of its commanders, might now be ready to seek a way out. Though the offensive is claimed to be working, even the optimists on the US side haven’t yet claimed a victory.

The point is that there has never been any doubt that the US has the military capability to defeat the Taliban insurgents in conventional warfare. That is why the Taliban have mostly avoided set piece battles with the US forces. They just tend to disappear when they come under heavy military pressure to regroup somewhere else to create another pressure point for the over-stretched allied forces.

And they have the advantage of disappearing among the civilian population. This is not to suggest that the Taliban are popular with the Afghan people. At the same time, many Afghans, if not the majority, hate US military occupation of their country. The Taliban resistance to this occupation by an alien force with their ‘abhorrent’ religion and culture does create empathy with them among many Afghans. Which is not to deny that they are also feared.

Ever since the Americans invaded and occupied Afghanistan, most Afghans have seen them as a transient force not likely to stay long in an inhospitable country like Afghanistan. The prolonged and continuing Taliban insurgency added weight to this belief.

The US is now engaged in a counter-insurgency strategy to deal with the Taliban. While keeping up the military pressure on the Taliban, this strategy aims at training and equipping a large Afghan national army to provide security to the civilian population, thus relieving them of the constant fear of revenge attacks by the Taliban. Which means that the Taliban will increasingly find it difficult to shelter and operate among the civilian population, thus making them highly vulnerable. This new national force will take over after the Americans have left.

The second element is to fund and assist with important development projects to provide infrastructure and employment, particularly at the local levels. Which also means developing connections with local tribal and community leaders.

All this sounds quite logical as a blueprint, but is difficult to execute at the ground level. The underlying problem is that Americans are not local actors and once they are gone (which inevitably they would), the country would revert to its tribal and religious mores. And the newly trained Afghan forces might become a lethal mix in a subsequent civil war.

But, in the meantime, even with the Americans around, Afghanistan is a virtual anarchy. The Karzai government has no popular credentials, and is regarded as a US creation. In other words, it is seen as an instrument of the occupying foreign forces. And the Karzai government hasn’t done much to establish its credentials.

Indeed. It is a family (and friends) oligarchy that exists to enrich their small clique. The New York Times’ reporter James Risen recently compiled for his newspaper a detailed profile of the Karzai dynasty with their business ventures including drug trade, shady business dealings, political patronage and so on.

Karzai knows that the US is not going be around for long to keep bolstering him up, as the Obama administration looks for an exit strategy. There is a tug-of-war of sorts between the highest levels of the administration and the top military brass ,as portrayed in Bob Woodward’s book, Obama’s Wars.

President Obama doesn’t want to be bogged down in Afghanistan and would like to get out of there as soon as possible, with a semblance of order and honor. The generals, though, want to dig in for prolonged action as generals always do, like they did in Vietnam with disastrous results.

Sensing American exit from Afghanistan in the not-too-distant future, Karzai is trying to play politics with all the actors in the Afghan scenario from the Taliban to local warlords. As Ronald Neumann, US ambassador to Afghanistan from 2005 to 2007, has reportedly said, “Karzai is convinced that we are going to abandon him. And what’s his answer? To create a web of loyalties and militia commanders and corrupt families all knitted together.” He adds, “This network is part of his survival mechanism.”

This is hardly a workable solution for a government or, for that matter, Afghanistan. What will emerge out of it? Only time will tell, because Afghanistan is not given to logical reasoning.

Note: This article was first published in Daily Times.

Is there a death wish in Pakistan?

By S.P.SETH

At times one wonders if Pakistani state has a death wish! To be more precise: if its ruling elites (of all descriptions) are vying with each other to bring down their country. The question arises from the unseemly and potentially destructive tug-of-war between its government (representing the parliament, in a sense) and the country’s highest judiciary, compounded further by the perceived threat of a military coup.

The judiciary apparently wants to reopen the corruption cases in Switzerland against Asif Ali Zardari (where he allegedly put away his ill gotten wealth in his earlier incarnation as a minister in his wife’s government). However, as President of the country, he has immunity under law from prosecution. But the court inclines to the view that it is for the judiciary to interpret the law.

Therefore, the issue basically is: which of the two institutions, (government symbolizing the parliament) or the Supreme Court, has the ultimate say in interpreting the country’s laws. Generally speaking, it is the parliament of a country that enacts the law. And as long as the law is straightforward, there is no problem. Because, the courts will simply go about their business of dispensing justice with reference to relevant laws.

The problem arises when the law is not so straightforward and might tend to go outside the spirit of the constitution. Which brings us to the present controversy. Though the judge in this case hasn’t spelled it out, he might think that the provision of immunity for President Zardari for his allegedly corrupt conduct, doesn’t square with the spirit of the constitution. In other words, the parliament might sometimes tend to pass a law for political reasons. But it is for the Supreme Court to uphold the spirit of the constitution that might be at stake.

The court, therefore, might have a cogent point to make here. Which is that until and unless the primacy of law (both in its letter and spirit) is respected, the country’s democracy will have a false start and a cloudy future.

However, Pakistan is in all sorts of troubles. And, on top of it, to plunge the country into a constitutional crisis is a recipe for greater disaster. With the country’s Supreme Court unhappy with the government’s stand on the issue, the opposition might be feeling virtuous.

All this brings us to the role of the military. Altaf Hussein, MQM’s leader in exile, has already called on the military to intervene. According to a report appearing in the New York Times, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani has read, what seems like, the riot’s act to the government for its incompetence in the handling of the country’s devastating floods and the perilous state of the economy. And he wants a radical overhaul of the government, which might even include removal of President Zardari.

It is true that that the government has failed to perform, even during the country’s worst floods. Which has made people very unhappy and furious. In such a situation people can throw out their government at the time of the next election. The democratic process, however faulty, should be allowed to work itself out.

In some quarters (mostly for political reasons), there is a naïve belief in the military’s capacity to solve all the country’s problems when going becomes tough with the political institutions. But it should be clear by now from long spells of military rule in the country that the generals haven’t done any better in governing the country than the political class. Indeed, it might even be argued that the political generals are a problem rather than a solution for Pakistan’s myriad travails. In some ways, the idea of a back up system in the military for failures of the political class is a cop out. In any case, the generals end up co-opting the politicians in a subsidiary role. And the rot goes on.

So far, the generals only seem keen to give the government a good shake up. The armed forces are overstretched dealing with the Taliban insurgency, and terrorist attacks. Which should be a sufficient disincentive for the army against taking over civilian governance. In any case, it is not a good image for the country’s elected government to be told by the military how to govern. The government will be performing under the gaze of the military, with the generals deciding when to step in directly.

Therefore, the Pakistani government is in an invidious situation, wedged in by both the judiciary and the military, and an opposition keen to exploit the situation to its advantage. On the face of it, there is no deliberateness between the judiciary and the military against the government. But the coincidence doesn’t look too good.

Not long ago, General (President) Musharraf sought to deal with the judiciary by removing the recalcitrant Chief Justice and putting him under house arrest. Which led to large demonstrations, involving many lawyers and other middle class professionals. This, in turn, led to the restoration of democracy with Asif Ali Zardari taking over as President of the country in the aftermaths of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination.

It is ironic that Pakistan’s highest court, which created the trigger for the restoration of democracy, might now become instrumental in its demise, not because it is their intention but because of a contested position on law. And, as with General Musharraf at the time, the Zardari government is very unpopular. It is seen as corrupt, self-serving, unable or unwilling to deliver even under the direst national emergency of natural disaster. And if the judiciary holds to, what they regard as their, lawful position and the country is thrown into a constitutional crisis, it has the potential of rallying people against the government.

Which, in turn, might bring the generals into power once again because in Pakistan its political class is reviled more than the generals. The army is seen as the last bastion of institutional authority. If the crisis comes to a point where the armed forces seem to be the last resort, it will attract to its political banner all sorts of groups and factions of dubious or not so dubious credentials. And the only ultimate winner will be the Taliban and other militant groups with gun in one hand and the Quran in the other.

Note: This article was first published in Daily Times

Understanding Islamophobia in the U.S.

By S.P.SETH

Will he or will he not? Apparently, he won’t. We are talking here about the American pastor Terry Jones who first threatened, and has now suspended/called off his call for the burning of copies of Koran to coincide with the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3000 people in the United States.

In a highly polarized world, even a loony pastor with 30 followers can attract international attention for saying or advocating something outrageous. And this is what the small town pastor Terry Jones of Gainesville in Florida, United States, did by advocating the burning of Koran. His reason, if one might call it that, is “to expose Islam” as a “violent and oppressive religion.”

This raises an important question. Which is: why did the media, politicians and almost everyone else make him a celebrity of sorts? Simply: because his advocacy touched the raw nerves of many in the US who might share his belief that Islam is a “violent and oppressive religion”, but wouldn’t go so far as burning the copies of Koran.

The US Government, as well as its military brass, feared that it might create some uncontrollable mayhem, putting the lives of US soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq at risk, and much more. Which led American leaders from President Obama to Defense Secretary Robert Games and General Petraeus to highlight the danger, and call on Jones to desist from his act of dangerous stupidity.

His timing was perfect---from his point of view. Of course, there was the fortuitous coincidence of the festival of Eid falling on the same day as the 9^th anniversary of the World Trade Centre carnage. At the same time, the United States is in the midst of an anti-Muslim frenzy on the question of building a mosque, a couple of blocs from the old World Trade Centre in New York.

Many Americans regard it an outrage that an Islamic house of worship should be built near where so many Americans died in a terrorist attack perpetrated in the name of Islam. As it is, according to a recent American poll, 49 per cent of the Americans disapprove of Islam. But the opposition to the building of the mosque, on the basis of media coverage of the issue in the US, appears much higher.

It is not just the proposed mosque near the World Trade Center that Americans have aversion to. Indeed, Americans, by and large, don’t want any new mosque near where they live. The anti-Muslim frenzy is further highlighted by the reported figure that about 20 per cent of Americans (one in five) believe that President Obama is a Muslim, making him somehow a suspect figure. And, among the Republican voters, the proportion is reportedly as high as 41 percent.

The core issue is that in the minds of many Americans, the 9/11 terrorists and the Muslim community at large have somehow become inextricably linked. The racial profiling at security checkouts at airports and in other places is an example of it.

Even before 9/11, Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations thesis (articulated in the nineties in an article in Foreign Affairs journal and developed later in a book), involving broadly Islam and Christianity, had given it an intellectual underpinning.

In the Muslim world, the Israeli-Palestinian issue was already seen as reflecting not only bias but also active American support of the Israeli cause. The security of Israel, its ever-expanding national boundaries, as well its legitimacy as a state, united almost all significant parties and groups in the United States, with the powerful Jewish lobby leaving nothing to chance.

As Peter Beinart writes in the New York Review of Books, “… in the United States, groups like AIPAC [American Israel Public Affairs Committee] and the Presidents’ [of the Jewish groups] patrol public discourse, scolding people who contradict their vision of Israel as a state in which all leaders cherish democracy and yearn for peace.” Therefore, any significant public criticism of Israel’s Palestinian policy in the United States can bring about retribution.

However, when people in the Islamic world (and elsewhere) see images of Palestinians being routinely attacked by the Israeli army with helicopter gunships, phosphorous bombs, heavy artillery and so on, the reaction among the Muslims all over the world is one of popular outrage combined with utter helplessness. This is reflected as much towards the Israelis as the United States, being the superpower that is underwriting Israel and its actions.

There was some hope that under President Obama, the United States might reach out to the Islamic world. And his Cairo speech was a good start. Recognizing Palestine as a major issue clouding the US image in the Islamic world, he was keen to get started.

But the Israeli side was not used to dealing with an American President with ideas of his own, and they started crying foul. Which initially created some difficulties in Israel’s relations with the Obama administration. The new Israeli-Palestinian peace talks are likely to go the same way as in the past. If so, Israeli intransigence on Palestine is likely to remain a crucial issue in the US relations with the Islamic world.

The US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, further fuelled hostility between the US (the West) and the Islamic world, particularly at the popular level. Talking of popular level, the US involvement with Arab monarchies and its authoritarian regimes has often put it at odds with the people in these countries. Indeed, it has been one blunder after the other in the US policy.

At another level, many Muslim societies have sought to project their collective frustrations on the Western world for their own inability to make much headway in dealing with their own internal problems. They (their governments) have, by and large, failed to make a dent into their society’s problems of hunger, employment, education, social welfare, political reform and so on.

And where they have received foreign aid, it has been squandered and/or gone to fill the pockets of a hopelessly corrupt governing elite.

Since the existing order is failing or has failed, the al-Qaeda, Taliban, al Shabab and other militant groups in different Muslim countries are filling the gap. And they are the storm troopers of militant movements that are targeting their internal and external enemies. Among the latter, the US is top of the list.

At the same time, for the United States, used as it has been to dealing with enemy states, it has found it difficult to prevail on an amorphous enemy that is neither here nor there. And this so-called asymmetrical force, which has managed to paralyze the US military machine in hot spots like Afghanistan and Iraq and is mushrooming in Somalia, Yemen and elsewhere (Pakistan, for instance), is frustrating many Americans.

The 9/11 attacks were the first on US homeland after World War 11, and continue to traumatize the nation. And since its perpetrators acted in the name of Islam, many people in the US find the juxtaposition of terrorism and Islam as the easiest and the most convenient explanation for the 9/11 tragedies.

Against this backdrop, it is not difficult to see how loonies like pastor Terry Jones and his ilk can find ready audience in the United States.

Note: This article was first published in Daily Times

Understanding Islamophobia in the U.S.

By S.P.SETH

Will he or will he not? Apparently, he won’t. We are talking here about the American pastor Terry Jones who first threatened, and has now suspended/called off his call for the burning of copies of Koran to coincide with the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3000 people in the United States.

In a highly polarized world, even a loony pastor with 30 followers can attract international attention for saying or advocating something outrageous. And this is what the small town pastor Terry Jones of Gainesville in Florida, United States, did by advocating the burning of Koran. His reason, if one might call it that, is “to expose Islam” as a “violent and oppressive religion.”

This raises an important question. Which is: why did the media, politicians and almost everyone else make him a celebrity of sorts? Simply: because his advocacy touched the raw nerves of many in the US who might share his belief that Islam is a “violent and oppressive religion”, but wouldn’t go so far as burning the copies of Koran.

The US Government, as well as its military brass, feared that it might create some uncontrollable mayhem, putting the lives of US soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq at risk, and much more. Which led American leaders from President Obama to Defense Secretary Robert Games and General Petraeus to highlight the danger, and call on Jones to desist from his act of dangerous stupidity.

His timing was perfect---from his point of view. Of course, there was the fortuitous coincidence of the festival of Eid falling on the same day as the 9^th anniversary of the World Trade Centre carnage. At the same time, the United States is in the midst of an anti-Muslim frenzy on the question of building a mosque, a couple of blocs from the old World Trade Centre in New York.

Many Americans regard it an outrage that an Islamic house of worship should be built near where so many Americans died in a terrorist attack perpetrated in the name of Islam. As it is, according to a recent American poll, 49 per cent of the Americans disapprove of Islam. But the opposition to the building of the mosque, on the basis of media coverage of the issue in the US, appears much higher.

It is not just the proposed mosque near the World Trade Center that Americans have aversion to. Indeed, Americans, by and large, don’t want any new mosque near where they live. The anti-Muslim frenzy is further highlighted by the reported figure that about 20 per cent of Americans (one in five) believe that President Obama is a Muslim, making him somehow a suspect figure. And, among the Republican voters, the proportion is reportedly as high as 41 percent.

The core issue is that in the minds of many Americans, the 9/11 terrorists and the Muslim community at large have somehow become inextricably linked. The racial profiling at security checkouts at airports and in other places is an example of it.

Even before 9/11, Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations thesis (articulated in the nineties in an article in Foreign Affairs journal and developed later in a book), involving broadly Islam and Christianity, had given it an intellectual underpinning.

In the Muslim world, the Israeli-Palestinian issue was already seen as reflecting not only bias but also active American support of the Israeli cause. The security of Israel, its ever-expanding national boundaries, as well its legitimacy as a state, united almost all significant parties and groups in the United States, with the powerful Jewish lobby leaving nothing to chance.

As Peter Beinart writes in the New York Review of Books, “… in the United States, groups like AIPAC [American Israel Public Affairs Committee] and the Presidents’ [of the Jewish groups] patrol public discourse, scolding people who contradict their vision of Israel as a state in which all leaders cherish democracy and yearn for peace.” Therefore, any significant public criticism of Israel’s Palestinian policy in the United States can bring about retribution.

However, when people in the Islamic world (and elsewhere) see images of Palestinians being routinely attacked by the Israeli army with helicopter gunships, phosphorous bombs, heavy artillery and so on, the reaction among the Muslims all over the world is one of popular outrage combined with utter helplessness. This is reflected as much towards the Israelis as the United States, being the superpower that is underwriting Israel and its actions.

There was some hope that under President Obama, the United States might reach out to the Islamic world. And his Cairo speech was a good start. Recognizing Palestine as a major issue clouding the US image in the Islamic world, he was keen to get started.

But the Israeli side was not used to dealing with an American President with ideas of his own, and they started crying foul. Which initially created some difficulties in Israel’s relations with the Obama administration. The new Israeli-Palestinian peace talks are likely to go the same way as in the past. If so, Israeli intransigence on Palestine is likely to remain a crucial issue in the US relations with the Islamic world.

The US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, further fuelled hostility between the US (the West) and the Islamic world, particularly at the popular level. Talking of popular level, the US involvement with Arab monarchies and its authoritarian regimes has often put it at odds with the people in these countries. Indeed, it has been one blunder after the other in the US policy.

At another level, many Muslim societies have sought to project their collective frustrations on the Western world for their own inability to make much headway in dealing with their own internal problems. They (their governments) have, by and large, failed to make a dent into their society’s problems of hunger, employment, education, social welfare, political reform and so on.

And where they have received foreign aid, it has been squandered and/or gone to fill the pockets of a hopelessly corrupt governing elite.

Since the existing order is failing or has failed, the al-Qaeda, Taliban, al Shabab and other militant groups in different Muslim countries are filling the gap. And they are the storm troopers of militant movements that are targeting their internal and external enemies. Among the latter, the US is top of the list.

At the same time, for the United States, used as it has been to dealing with enemy states, it has found it difficult to prevail on an amorphous enemy that is neither here nor there. And this so-called asymmetrical force, which has managed to paralyze the US military machine in hot spots like Afghanistan and Iraq and is mushrooming in Somalia, Yemen and elsewhere (Pakistan, for instance), is frustrating many Americans.

The 9/11 attacks were the first on US homeland after World War 11, and continue to traumatize the nation. And since its perpetrators acted in the name of Islam, many people in the US find the juxtaposition of terrorism and Islam as the easiest and the most convenient explanation for the 9/11 tragedies.

Against this backdrop, it is not difficult to see how loonies like pastor Terry Jones and his ilk can find ready audience in the United States.

Israeli-Palestinian negotiations

By S.P.SETH

One thing can be said about the Israeli-Palestinian talks that they are not going to advance the peace process in any meaningful way. In the first place, these are being held under US pressure, with Israel unwilling to concede any ground. The Palestinians have already lost much of their homeland, first with the creation of the state of Israel and, secondly, with the Israeli occupation of West Bank, Gaza (blockaded and pounded by the Israeli forces at will), East Jerusalem and much more.

Israel continues to create new “realities” on ground by building new settlements and demolishing Palestinian homes, as well as creating an apartheid state with Palestinian territories surrounded and blockaded by the Israeli army. And there is the long so-called security wall Israel has built, poaching more Palestinian land and dividing families.

What it means is that Palestine has nothing to negotiate with, except to reclaim their land. They have already been stripped of much of their homeland and resources. Therefore, they have nothing more to give Israel. In any case, Israel has never felt the need to ask the Palestinians, as and when they have felt like grabbing whatever. They have always taken by force whatever they needed and more, and there is no end to it.

The pertinent question then is: why has the world turned a blind eye to Israel’s rapacious plunder of the Palestinian people and their homeland? More recently: why is the world so de-sensitized to the sufferings of the Palestinian people so graphically and inhumanly portrayed by the photos posted on the internet regarding the treatment of blindfolded Palestinian prisoners, with an Israeli woman soldier posing nearby triumphantly in a state of utter satisfaction with her work.

To further compound the humiliation of the Palestinian people, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, spiritual leader of Israel’s powerful ultra-orthodox political movement, Shas, a constiutuent of Prime Minister Banjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government, has declared the Palestinians “evil people who should perish from this earth.” He has called upon God to “strike them with a plague…these evil-doers and Israel-haters.”

Rabbi Yosef is a former chief rabbi of Israel. Such hatred spewed by a man of God, and that too by a representative of the Jewish people who historically suffered so much persecution, including holocaust, is beyond comprehension.

Prime Minister Netanyahu, who will be in Washington for negotiations with the Palestinians, refused to condemn the Rabbi’s remarks invoking God’s wrath on the Palestinians, although he did say that it didn’t reflect his government’s views. The point, though, is that with such extreme and incendiary views held by the spiritual leader of an important segment of the Israeli government, what hope is there for any satisfactory outcome of the talks in Washington.

Rabbi Yosef is not the only one holding such views in Israel. Take the case of Effi Eitam, a former cabinet minister, war hero, and Netanyahu’s special emissary. He reportedly said in 2006, “We’ll have to expel the overwhelming majority of West Bank Arabs [Palestinians] from here [West Bank] and remove Israeli Arabs from [our] political system.”

Israel’s foreign minister, Avigdor Leiberman is, pushing measures to strip Palestinians, living in Israel, of their citizenship for all sorts of supposed infractions.

In other words, many Israelis regard Palestinians as sub-human and hence not deserving of human rights. The sad thing is that the Jews were also caricatured in Europe and the United States as people who somehow lacked values and qualities of the majority Christian populations, and were not entitled to full rights.

Against this backdrop, it is hard to comprehend the hatred and inhumanity of Rabi Yosef and others in Israel. One would expect that Israelis, of all the people, should know better, as their ancestors suffered the kind of cruelty they are now hurling at the Palestinians.

The question then is: why is Israel getting away with it? The answer simply is that Israel is coddled and protected by the United States and its European allies. As an instance, while the United States and allies are set against nuclear proliferation, targeting North Korea and Iran, Israel’s nuclear arsenal somehow never features in any such discussion and sanctions. As a victim of holocaust, Israel is treated as a special state, not subject to normal international rules and conventions. As a result, it has never felt the kind of pressure to conform to international norms that other states might feel obliged to do.

Therefore, there is no reason for Israel to be conciliatory and accommodative of Palestinian aspirations, as it goes into a new round of talks with the Palestinians. The Israeli side insists on negotiations without pre-conditions. Which means that they are not going to entertain the Palestinians’ basic demand for a state based on the 1967 borders, before the Israelis annexed West Bank and other Palestinian territories. They are, in effect, asking the Palestinians to accept a formal surrender of their homeland in favor, at best, of a few local councils under Israeli supervision and control. The Israelis simply want their mythical (Biblical) state of Judea and Samaria.

In his article in a recent issue of the New York Review of Books, Peter Beinart says that, “…Netanyahu not only rejects the idea of a Palestinian state, he denies that there is such a thing as a Palestinian…” Indeed, according to Netanyahu, Israel has already made big concessions by abandoning its claim to Jordan that should be part of the Jewish state. With such strong views about Israel’s territoriality, it is difficult o believe that Netanyahu will suddenly turn into a believer on the way to Washington.

Peter Beinart’s long-term prognosis is equally, if not more, frightening because of, “…an ultra-Orthodox population that is increasing dramatically, a settler movement that is growing more radical and more entrenched in the Israeli bureaucracy and army, and a Russian immigrant community that is particularly prone to anti-Arab racism.”

While one wishes the Washington Israeli-Palestinian negotiations all the success, but the realities on the ground do point in the other direction.

Note: This article was first published in Daily Times

Will the Pakistani state prevail?

By S.P.SETH

Things are happening thick and fast in Pakistan, though not for the good of its people. The recent bombing in Lahore at a religious shine was heart-rending. The Sufi steam is the most heartening feature of Islam with a consensual sub-continental culture. To see this being attacked with such ferocity leaves one with a sense of utter helplessness. And coming as it does after senseless attacks on the Ahmediya community, it is felt as a terrible tragedy.

The question then is: what is the agenda of these extremist elements? These are obviously disparate elements united in their common hatred of all those branded as the enemy of Islam. And these include domestic as well as foreign “enemies”. These “enemies” are seen everywhere by the militants.

Inside the country, they constitute the majority of the people who have, by and large, stayed away from political parties aligned to religious extremism. The electoral history of Pakistan would show that these parties have always been in minority when it comes to voting, though they lately gained some traction because of the volatility of the situation within Pakistan.

If that is the case, why haven’t they been isolated and dealt with accordingly? This has to do with the country’s political and economic development since its creation. Although Pakistan has made some economic progress, it hasn’t filtered down in any appreciable way, if at all, to the mass of the people who need it the most. The feudal class still wields political power, with an added layer of industrial barons.

Indeed, a symbiotic nexus developed between them, with the new industrial class at times wielding the baton both as feudal lords, and industrial barons. And on top are the military brass at times sharing power and, most often, sidelining the civilian political elite.

What it means is that the clerical establishment of the country has often felt left out of the political equation. That wasn’t a bad thing since their electoral weight was minimal. But as self-appointed guardians of the country’s Islamic character, the clerical establishment believes that Pakistan has lost its way. The Islamist parties have hammered this message all through.

As Pakistan made its way into the eighties, two things happened. First: having got rid of Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in the late-seventies, General Zia-ul-Haq made his political base among the country’s religious orthodoxy. He promulgated ordinances to legitimize some outdated laws, and won favor with the clerical establishment and many ordinary people who believe in the sanctity of old Islamic injunctions. It changed the character of Pakistan’s polity. It also started to introduce a certain religious fervor in the lower and middle ranks of the military.

These internal developments coincided with Pakistan’s induction as a US ally to beef up the Afghan Mujahidin’s armed struggle to expel the Soviet troops from Afghanistan. Pakistan became the conduit for funneling US arms into Afghanistan. Apart from being a national struggle, the Afghan Mujahidin’s military campaign was also a crusade of sorts against the godless Soviet Union. And the Americans found its religious overtones quite useful as a motivating factor in its Cold War with the Soviet Union.

Zia-ul-Haq’s attempts to make Pakistan into a crypto religious state mingled with the US anti-Soviet strategy in Afghanistan. With the US as Pakistan’s major ally and the source of its large military and economic aid, such intermingling of their interests gave Zia great latitude within the country. In other words, Zia’s internal and external policy was greatly influenced by the dictates of US prescriptions for Afghanistan.

The Mujahidin’s armed struggle against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan seemed too successful, with the Soviet Union forced to withdraw. It emphasized that it was possible to defeat a powerful enemy by the deployment of irregular and highly motivated (especially with religious overtones) forces. Which would have consequences later in terms of the terrorist threat.

For Pakistan the results of the Afghan war, and the subsequent civil war in the country, were mixed. On the positive side, the Pakistani establishment was happy to have a friendly Taliban government in power. This was supposed to give Pakistan defense in depth against a military threat from India.

Pakistani intelligence had also established close contacts with the Taliban at different levels, as well as (presumably) with foreign (mostly Arab) elements that had thronged to fight with the Afghan Mujahidin against the Soviet Union. Another important segment of these volunteers were some Pakistani nationals fighting on the Afghan side. With the Soviets out of the picture and the Cold War coming to an end, all these elements suddenly found themselves out of their moral crusade.

Not long after, the Arab volunteers (with Osama bin Laden at the helm) found refuge with the new Taliban government in Afghanistan. And they started planning a global crusade against the United States, encouraged by their successes against the Soviet Union. Which led to the spectacular attack on the World Trade Centre in New York by ramming aircraft into the multi-storey building and killing about 3000 people. It was a dramatic announcement of a global terror campaign against the United States and its allies, with the avowed purpose of eventually creating an Islamic Caliphate.

Instead of providing strategic depth in Afghanistan under a friendly Taliban government, Pakistan ended up being a frontline state of the US war against the Afghan Taliban. Where it still is.

However, the most insidious result of all this for Pakistan has been the outgrowth of its own Taliban movement which seeks to subvert the Pakistani state and replace it with a Pakistani-version of the Taliban government in Afghanistan. Apparently, there are close links between the Afghan Taliban and the Pakistani Taliban, as a good number of them have been the product of the madrassas in Pakistan.

By encouraging extremist religious elements as a strategic tool in Afghanistan, and against India, Pakistan spawned the Taliban (both in Afghanistan and within Pakistan) and other extremist elements. When the Pakistani state sought to dissociate itself from these elements and then turned against them under US pressure, the intricate linkages between them and some state and military instrumentalities were already too deeply embedded to make a clean break. There is a sense that these elements might still be useful after the US withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The point though is that these forces (now extending their sway into Punjab and its capital, Lahore) have acquired their own momentum. Through terror they seem determined to make the state do their bidding than the other way around. In this tug of war, Pakistani people are increasingly becoming a hostage of both sides.

Will the state prevail? The problem is that the Pakistani establishment is not only fractious, but is given to adhocism. And though many people would like some semblance of security and economic opportunities, they are not enamored of their rulers. Indeed, many people regard them as self-serving and corrupt, engaged in their own power games. There is, therefore, widely prevailing apathy. Against this backdrop, the Taliban alternative, invoking a state based on Islamic precepts and doctrines, might not seem all that bad to the common man with deep faith in his religion.

Pakistan thus finds itself in a state of flux. And the state, such as it is, lacks the will power and the unity of purpose to go after the militants.

Israel remains smug and arrogant

By S.P.SETH

Israel’s response to the international outcry over the killing of nine Turkish peace activists aboard Mavi Marmara, carrying relief supplies for the besieged Gaza Strip, has been a combination of tactical flexibility while maintaining strategic rigidity. Tactically, it has agreed to modify the blockade to allow in essential civilian items into the city. But strategically, the blockade will remain in place “to prevent the inflow of weapons and war material.”

Because, otherwise, according to Prime Minister Netanyahu, Hamas would turn Gaza into an “Iranian port”. The message to the Western world is that Israel is the sentinel of the Western world against the dreaded ‘nuclear’ Iran, which might soon rain missiles not only on Israel but on Europe as well.

In effect, Israeli action doesn’t mean much because the Gaza city will still be at its mercy. It might at any time choke off its supplies at its whim. Israel will still be the sole determinant of what goes in and what goes out. For instance, all the essential supplies for Gaza will only be routed through Israel. Not surprisingly, the Hamas didn’t find Israeli-announced partial lifting of the blockade satisfying. They “want a real lifting of the siege, not window dressing.”

At another level, Israel has sought to befuddle the issue of an international investigation into raiding the peace flotilla, and killing nine Turkish peace activists. It has announced an internal investigation, with two international observers. But the observers will have no say in the conduct of the inquiry by a panel of three Israelis. And it gets worse. This investigation will also look into the conduct of peace activists, though they alone are the victims of fatalities by Israeli commandos.

In the circumstances, one might as well predict the conclusions of the Israeli investigation. It is likely to blame the peace activists for breaching the blockade against prior warnings and following it up with attacks on the commandos, forcing them to act in self-defense. The internal inquiry, therefore, makes Israel both a judge as well as jury. This, by any standards of jurisprudence, is unacceptable.

One lesson Israel has learnt from the international outcry over its piracy on the high seas is that in its dealings with the Obama administration, it must try to harmonize its actions with the United States. In the past, whenever Israel has come under international criticism, particularly in the United Nations, the United States has shielded it from censure or sanctions. But this time its arrogant cowboy syndrome of running amuck wasn’t appreciated in Washington. The US made two observations on the raid and the Gaza blockade. First, it said that an investigation was warranted in the killings of the peace activists. Second: it observed that the blockade of Gaza was unsustainable.

Even though Israel has generally been dismissive of international opinion rubbishing it as biased and anti-Semitic, it couldn’t do the same with mild criticism from the United States. That would leave them with no political cover. Hence, the Netanyahu government went around hysterically to elicit Washington’s approval of its remedial action to somehow deal with the situation. And the US was on course to provide political cover by approving the inclusion of two observers as fulfilling its international dimension. However, this hasn’t silenced the critics. Turkey, for instance, is insistent on an international investigation.

At another level, more and more activists in other countries are reportedly planning their own flotillas to break Israeli blockade. There are reports that an all-female boat, named Virgin Mary, might be heading toward Gaza. The Guardian newspaper reported some days ago that another aid ship named after Naji al-Ali, a murdered Palestinian cartoonist, might soon be taking relief supplies with 50 journalists and 25 European volunteers, including members of the European parliament. A heartening feature is that the peace activists come from all backgrounds, nationalities and religions, a heartening example of common humanity that we all share.

The international outcry over the killing of nine Turkish activists had Israel spooked. One retired army general opined in an Israeli newspaper that, “The long-term goal of this war [by a coalition of disparate media outlets and other civilian organizations] is to remove the state of Israel from the map of the world, or at least, to cause the state of Israel to cease to be a sovereign Jewish state.” How this will be achieved by a bunch of peace volunteers and their supporters is left unclear!

However, since drumming up some support for the partial lifting of blockade of Gaza, Netanyahu is feeling a bit more confident. We had the spectacle of the politically dead Tony Blair resurrected as the special Middle East envoy for the quartet of the United Nations, the United States, Russia and the European Union, to legitimize Israel’s action. The British Foreign Secretary, William Hague, said that it was a step in the right direction, while still safeguarding Israel’s legitimate security needs.

The most welcome for Israel has been the US endorsement, with President Obama now likely to grant Netanyahu a White House meeting to push the Israeli-Palestinian peace process (without, of course, the Hamas). It will most likely also include a photo opportunity to show that Netanyahu is no longer on the outer with the White House.

Netanyahu indeed seems to think that Israel’s partial lifting of the blockade would rob Hamas of its ability to accuse Israel of harming Gaza’s civilian population. He believes that, “Our friends around the world are standing behind our decision and providing international legitimacy for the continuation of military blockade on Hamas.”

This is the kind of smugness and arrogance that has characterized Israeli policy over the years. Will they get away with more of the same? Not if the Palestinians can build on the humanitarian support they have received lately.