Friday, March 30, 2012

It'a time for a new peace plan for Syria

The current peace plan for Syria is inadequate.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has agreed to the plan negotiated by the U.N.-Arab League envoy, former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. But that plan misses a basic ingredient: a graceful exit for Assad and his system.
Annan's plan is about a cease-fire, humanitarian assistance and reform under the leadership of the current regime. But the people of Syria will not trust any reform formula sponsored by a ruler who has gone too far, and for too long, in their suppression.
For any plan to succeed, it must do one thing at its root: ease out the Assad regime, which has destroyed its credibility and undermined its legitimacy by cracking down so brutally on the yearlong revolt.
Here is a political plan for a smooth transition of power. The proposed plan sets a time limit for the Assad regime: two years. The purpose of the following two-year plan is to stop bloodshed, introduce regime change, protect vulnerable communities and avert foreign intervention.
The plan has six points.
1. Social intervention: This should be comprised of a cease-fire, the freeing of political prisoners, a withdrawal of army and opposition troops from streets, full access to humanitarian aid and the repatriation of migrants and displaced groups.
2. Reconciliation: A reconciliation council should be formed with the task of hammering out an agreement. This council should represent all political groups and receive approval of the United Nations and the Arab League.
3. Primary elections: An electoral campaign needs to be prepared to elect a body tasked with writing a constitution that protects human rights for all Syrians.
4. A national referendum should be held to approve the new constitution.
5. There needs to be an election of a four-year parliament.
6. And there has to be an election of a new president by parliament or the people, depending on the constitution.
The above sketch may look unrealistic given the military strength of the regime, a loyalist base among the minority populations, deep divisions within the opposition, confusion of priorities among Syrian ideologues, fear of a takeover by fundamentalists and Cold War-type external meddling.
But it is even more unrealistic to arm the rebels or to mount an international intervention. Both of those would play right into the hands of the Assad regime.
Annan should build on his cease-fire proposal but offer Assad a way to bow out. Only then can the Syrian people hope to taste democracy and freedom.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/03/30/4378175/its-time-for-a-new-peace-plan.html#storylink=cpy

Thursday, March 22, 2012

In striking Iran Israel would be off target

Palm Beach Gardens, Florida

With three questionable assumptions Israel drifts toward war.

The first is about privilege. Israel may be going to war with Iran to preserve the monopoly of nuclear deterrence in a region in which it feels alienated. The second is about overtaxing US-Israeli relations. Israel expects Washington to join its defense forces in a risky war, imposing the reversal of US policy of troop withdrawal from the region. The third is about Palestine. If Israel provokes Iran on the battlefield, it would be ignoring, and possibly augmenting, its real existential threat, an occupation of a people who are destined to achieve equality, if not statehood.

Israel’s monopoly of nuclear deterrence is taken for granted. The West assumes that Israel is the only rational state which can handle the atomic weapon. Iran is considered “too irrational” to be trusted with nuclear deterrence. The nuclear status quo in the region does not make sense: If unleashed, the atomic arsenal of Tel Aviv is capable of destroying the entire region.  

Linking “deterrence” to “rationality of governance” is too simplistic. Like beauty, reason is in the eye of the beholder. Balancing deterrence is an impossible task. A country’s level of insecurity, the homogeneity of its population, its partnerships with other states, its military record and its integration in the region are among many factors which complicate the authorization of deterrence. It is certainly not clear if Israel should be more trusted than Iran with the possession of an atomic bomb.

To resolve the issue of membership in the deterrence club, a Mideast nuclear-free zone policy is sensible. Israel claims that it would be willing to support a free-zone policy only after the Arab Israeli conflict is resolved. It is as if the Arabs do not want peace and Israel is rushing to the peace table.

The second Israeli assumption of going to war is anticipation of unconditional support from Washington. Israel would not confront Iran without counting on Washington to help on the battle field. Mindful of Jewish support, the US president assured Israel’s Prime Minister on March 5 that he is “serious” in stopping Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. Should Iran develop the nuclear bomb, US policy is not “containment”, he asserted; it is military intervention.

Obama’s willingness to be drawn into a new war in the Middle East is hard to fathom. He is fully aware that many Americans, particularly his own (Democrat) constituency, is sick and tired of war.

In a recent exercise of war- simulation, top US planners foresaw Washington to be drawn into a regional theater of hostility. The planners forecast “peril” in a preemptive war and predicted to “delay” Iran’s nuclear agenda for three years. ( N Y Times, “US Simulation Forecasts Perils of Strike on Iran”, By Mark Mazzetti and Thom Shanker, March 19, 2012).

By committing to stop Iran from developing the atomic bomb, Obama may have assumed that there is no longer a need to go to war. He seems confident that sanctions are “crippling”; he figures that economic unraveling is bound to tame Tehran.

A war- obsessed Israeli cabinet looks to Europe for additional help on humbling Iran. The EU recently ordered its Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, SWIFT, to forbid the banks of Iran from transferring money electronically. A European ban on transfer of money on March 17 followed an earlier ban on exporting oil. In retaliation, Iran has stopped oil export to some European countries last month.

Insecure Gulf rulers are following Washington’s plan. The Arab Gulf states are no longer conducting transactions in the Iranian currency, an important development.

How long can Iran sustain severe economic sanctions, not to mention Israeli cyber attacks on its nuclear facilities and assassination of its nuclear scientists?

Iran may be softening. A new round of talks between the Islamic Republic and the six international mediators - US, Russia, China, UK, France and Germany – is expected to take place in April.  The US has already sent a stern diplomatic message to Iran through the Russian foreign minister: Washington views April meeting as the “last chance” to settle the crisis peacefully. Obama warns: “the window of diplomacy is shrinking.”

Echoing Obama, Netanyahu repeated his threat: the strike on Iran” is not a matter of days or weeks, and not a matter of years.”

So far Iran has not blinked; its rhetoric gets more defiant. Nonetheless, assuming that Iran would soon abandon its search for the atomic weapon, would Israel achieve the security its people deserve?

The people of Israel deserve concrete and lasting national security.

And here comes the third shaky motive for Israel’s rush to war: focusing on Iran and ignoring Palestine. Israel’s prime security is in its backyard, not in a humiliated Iran.

With a no-to-Palestine policy, Zionism remains off-task in its current search for real stability.  By fragmenting one section of the West Bank, annexing the other and isolating 1.5milllion Palestinians in Gaza, Israel has lost its capacity of becoming a Jewish state and a live democracy.

To establish lasting security, Israel has two choices: either to establish defined borders to enable the formation of a viable Palestinian state or to share power with Palestinians in a new democratic, secular state.

A war on Iran may be worse than the war on Iraq. And the reasoning for this new war is as shaky as the rationale of “elimination of weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq.




Monday, March 12, 2012

The Iranian crisis should not marginalize the Palestinian question

Palm Beach Gardens,

In the landscape of Mideast politics, Palestine is central. Palestine is emotionally “owned” by most Arabs and the wider Muslim world.

In his March 5 visit to the White House, Prime Minister Netanyahu had no room for Palestine on the agenda. The encounter of the Israeli leader with Obama was largely about Iran.

Netanyahu seems to have struck a deal with President Obama: Israel will not attack Iran before the US elections; in return, with or without the use of force, the US will stop Iran from acquiring the atomic weapon.

There was a “silence” ingredient in this deal: Obama did not raise objections to Israel’s settlements; in return the US president preserved the support of the Jewish community.

But like the cactus tree, which once dotted the hundreds of villages of historic Palestine, the issue of this occupied nation is hard to eradicate.  

This past Sunday, two popular TV talk shows, MSNBC’s UP with Chris Hays and CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS Live, forcefully exposed the impact of the Palestine question on Israel’s future security.  In steering two separate weekend Palestine/Israel/Iran round table discussions, both Zakaria and Hays demonstrated great courage and mastery of subject. Their speakers were chosen for expertise and eloquence.

Among the panelists of MSCNBC, retired Israeli Major General Shlomo Gazit presented  – from Israel via a satellite-  a three-point proposal for a political Israel/Palestine settlement: 1967 borders for a two- state solution, reduction of settlement communities and compensation for settlers who would return to Israel’s 1967 borders.

In response, several Israeli panelists asserted that dismantling settlements would “cause civil war”; no Israeli government “is able” to challenge the settlers.

The three Palestinians on Hay’s panel, including a live participant from the West Bank, seem to consider General Gazit’s proposal a good starting point for negotiation. But only one of the three Israel representatives on the panel, J Street’s Jeremy Ben- Ami, showed interest in the General’s proposal.  

Gazit rightly cautioned that “both sides” are not ready for “peace”; he believed, however, that Israel and the Palestinians should be led into a “political settlement”, which would require tough reinforcement to control enemies of peace from either side.

In this two-hour program Mustapha Barghouti, the eloquent Palestinian peace activist spoke passionately. Barghouti reported with pride on a growing non violent movement for resisting the occupation.

Barghouti’s moderation is not unique. It is no more difficult to imagine the emergence of Mandela-like leadership among Palestinians. Grassroots non-violence is already present in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Still, Hamas, which governs Gaza, has resisted changing its hard line position, ironically handing Israel an additional excuse to maintain the occupation.

The CNN Middle East discussion followed the MSNBC program. In CNN’s panel, New America Foundation’s Daniel Levy was a powerful advocate for a two-state solution. But sadly Levy, a moderate, sounded extreme to the other Jewish American panel participants. Except for Levy, Jewish panelists argued that Palestinians do not want Israel to survive.  Elliot Abraham of The Council on Foreign Relations and Wall Street Journal analyst Bret Stephens sounded more Israeli than many Israelis.

Rula Jebreal, an Arab Israeli author and a contributor to Newsweek, participated in the two panels.  Jebreal pleaded for a two-state solution: we are heading into a one-state, “but it won’t be Jewish”.  

The Palestinian speakers were moderate and shunned violence. The Israeli and American Jewish speakers were divided in their opinions; but they all shared one attitude: fear of the future.

All panelists seem to agree that Israel is already in a one state scenario, with one authority ruling over the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. While most Palestinians point to a dangerous drift toward apartheid, Israelis point to the status quo as an alternative to unpredictable change.

The retired Israeli General is right: neither side is ready for peace. In the meantime a transitional political settlement is more realistic than full peace.