May 2012

I added my thoughts to a thread at Tiny Revolution on recent foreign realist op-eds in the WaPo and NYtimes:

As someone who works on this issue full time, I’ll throw in my two cents. There is a certain irony in the fact that the new foreign ‘realism’ play of the day is about disengaging from the Abbas-centric, West Bank only plan the West is undergoing, while the typical Palestinian & Arab voice are distinctly against both groups. And I’m not speaking in uncertain terms of our view of political disconnect (apathy and laying around stoned, shooting the breeze about political hegemony continued by certain social groups), but serious anger at both Fatah and Hamas. At Fatah for being a bunch of worthless old fucks who turning a Palestine-first movement into a kleptocracy, and Hamas for hijacking Palestinian nationalism and turning into a serious derka-derka jihad idiocracy. That latter view was shared by the cosmopolitan Jerusalemites in the 90′s and has spread to most middle-class Palestinians and Arabs since. Common man resentment has also really surfaced against Hamas for making things worse (if possible) in the Palestinian territories by turning some vendetta killings into a geographical political coup. If you don’t believe me, there are oodles of articles and videos for your viewing pleasure of recent mass protests in Gaza City and Ramallah against the unity government. My favorite video coincidentally to come out of all of this was a Gaza resident chasing an automatic-rifle touting Hamas militant down a street with his shoe.

And on cue, the Jerusalem Fund released an information briefing this morning entitled Palestinians Say Hamas and Fateh Equally Responsible for the Infighting:

Overview: Fifty-nine percent of Palestinians surveyed in a 21 June 2007 poll blame Fateh and Hamas for last weeks intra-Palestinian fighting and 71 percent said they consider both groups to be the “loser.” The survey, conducted by the Ramallah-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR), found that while 75 percent want early presidential and parliamentary elections, 40 percent said they would not participate if the race was between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Ismail Haniyeh. Abbas would slightly edge out Hanyieh with 49 percent of the vote compared to Hanyieh’s 42 percent. The numbers change dramatically if imprisoned Fateh leader Marwan Barghouthi replaced Abbas in the race. The percentage of voter nonparticipation decreases to 31 percent and 59 percent of West Bank respondents said they would vote for Barghouthi compared to 35 percent for Haniyeh. In Gaza, 55 percent of respondents said Barghouthi was their choice compared to 41 percent who said they prefer Haniyeh. The 1270 randomly selected respondents from the West Bank and Gaza Strip were interviewed between 14 and 20 June 2007. The margin of error is 3 percent.

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“In the excitement over the unfolding of his scientific and technical powers, modern man has built a system of production that ravishes nature and a type of society that mutilates man. If only there were more and more wealth, everything else, it is thought, would fall into place. Money is considered to be all-powerful; if it could not actually buy non-material values, such as justice, harmony, beauty, or even health, it could circumvent the need for them or compensate for their loss. The development of production and the acquisition of wealth have thus become the highest goals of the modern world in relation to which all other goals, no matter how much lip-service may still be paid to them, have come to take second place. The highest goals require no justification; all secondary goals have finally to justify themselves in terms of the service their attainment renders to the attainment of the highest.”

E. F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful

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The Article: Whither Palestine? by Daoud Kuttab in the American Prospect.

The Text: Since 1967, and before, the aspirations of Palestinians to liberty and independence have repeatedly hit one snag after another. There is plenty of room to place the blame on Palestinians themselves, Arabs, and the international community. Palestinians have failed to measure accurately their own powers in comparison to the Israelis. The Arab states gave plenty of lip service to the Palestinian cause and the international community spent more on weapons to the region rather than efforts to encourage all sides to a peaceful resolution.

But while Palestinians and others could have done more to try to enable their own independence, the biggest single power that actually was causing the continuation of the occupation was Israel. As an occupying power with military control over the land, Israel has given lip service to peace but in reality hesitated in ending its illegal occupation. Despite their legal and political spin, this Israeli refusal to leave the occupied territories was in direct contravention to what the preamble to the Security Council Resolution 242 termed the “inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war.”

This year, 40 years after the passing of that resolution, many felt that the Palestinian cause was finally on the verge of a political resolution. The Arab peace plan, which calls for normalization by all 23 Arab countries with Israel in return for its withdrawal to the ’67 borders (reiterated with more zeal this year), responds to the deepest Israeli aspiration of being accepted in the Middle East.

The current American president and his secretary of state seemed focused on seeing the birth of the state of Palestine alongside Israel on the ground, and not just in words. This spring Jordan’s King Abdullah gave the strongest pro-Palestinian speeches ever made to the joint sessions of Congress. He argued that a breakthrough is needed quickly before the Americans get bogged down with the ’08 presidential elections and another window of opportunity is closed. The Israelis, while reeling from an unsuccessful war in Lebanon, also seem ready to make what Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert called “painful compromises.”

With all this potential — or possibly because of it — the Gaza strip erupted in internal violence last week, which ended in Hamas militants taking over Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas’s security offices. That left the Palestinian president no choice but to declare a state of emergency, dismiss the Hamas-led government, and appoint an independent former banker (who is close to Condoleezza Rice) as interim prime minister.

Many today feel that the situation in the Gaza strip threatens to evaporate the dream of Palestinian statehood. But does it really?

Forty years after the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank (including Jerusalem) Palestinians have failed to find the magic formula for their liberation. They have attempted cross border violence, Arab and international diplomacy, secret talks, nonviolent resistance, suicide attacks, cross-border rockets, regional Arab initiatives, and international peace envoys, but nothing has succeeded in cracking this difficult nut called the Israel occupation.

After the initial small guerrilla attacks across the Jordan River in the late 1960s, highlighted by the battle of al Karameh (the name means “pride” in Arabic), the Palestinian Liberation Organization quickly assumed the role of representing the Palestinian people fighting both inter-Arab and international battles of legitimacy.

While the Palestinian intifada in 1987 refocused attention to the occupied territories, it also succeeded in toning down the PLO’s rhetoric, ultimately resulting in Yasser Arafat declaring a Palestinian state on the ’67 borders. And thus the Palestinians adopted the two-state solution which has now become an international mantra.

The blind rejection by Israel of the PLO in the 1970s paralleled the feeling of impotence from dependence on pan-Arab nationalism, and gave birth to an Islamic movement that worked for some time on building its grassroots institutions and concentrating on social welfare.

The failure of the Palestinian national movement played into the hands of Islamists who felt, as their logo states, that “Islam is the solution.” The Islamic Resistance Movement (its acronym in Arabic is Hamas) entered the anti-Israeli arena during the first intifada in 1987, but grew more powerful after the return of Arafat and the creation of the Palestinian Authority. The Authority, which came about as a result of the Oslo Accords (rejected immediately by Hamas), was considered to be yet another failure because it didn’t produce the coveted end to the Israeli occupation — or even the end of the illegal Jewish settlement activities. Some argue that, unlike secular Palestinian nationalists who were looking for a speedy resolution based on the two-state solution, Hamas Islamists were in no such rush. They were still looking for a change of Palestinian society along with the aspiration that all Palestinian refugees be allowed to return to the state of Israel.

When the Al Aqsa Intifada erupted in 2000, enough light weapons had entered the Palestinian territories to ensure that this uprising would be violent. For its part ,Hamas, which saw in the failure of the Barak-Arafat-Clinton Camp David plan the death of Oslo, became more daring in its attacks, causing more civilian Israeli fatalities and provoking a strident Israeli response.

Not only did the second Palestinian intifada push farther away the possibility of a compromise settlement, it reintroduced the Israeli fear that any deal was unlikely to stick. With mistrust ruling the day, the aspiration of a truly independent, viable Palestinian state with territorial integrity has become increasingly remote.

On the ground, the die was set for a split between Gaza and the West Bank when Hamas suicide attacks became more common. Since then, movement between the two sectors of Palestine (separated from each other by Israeli territory) became extremely difficult and the idea of a large Gaza prison began to take shape.

The Israeli withdrawal from Gaza two years ago, and the nearly full sealing of the Erez checkpoint between Gaza and Israel, meant that the Rafah crossing point was the only point of entry or exit for Gazans to the rest of the world. With Rafah being closed many more days than open, the national claustrophobia of Gazans began to grow. The physically encircled Gaza strip also had to deal with the unjust economic siege that was placed on the elected Palestinian government. The Hamas lead government was internationally ostracized for a position on recognition of Israel similar to that of the Saudis and many other Arab countries.

While Hamas calls for an Islamic state in all of mandatory Palestine, in the recent Mecca agreement they accepted that the PLO negotiate so long as the outcome is put to a referendum. Hamas has accepted the concept of a Palestinian state on the ’67 borders without explicitly mentioning Israel or agreeing to formally recognize it. Saudi Arabia and many Arab states have similarly refused to recognize Israel until it withdraws to the ’67 borders.

The latest violence in Gaza has created a de facto Islamic (i.e. Hamas) security control over Gaza and a nationalist (i.e. PLO) control — along with a new emergency government — in the West Bank. The international community will quickly open up the money faucet to the non-Hamas government, and Gaza will be left to burn and starve under the rule of the Palestinian Islamists. George Bush has called President Abbas and pledged a renewal of diplomatic and financial support to the emergency government in the West Bank. International aid will most likely also come to UN agencies serving in Gaza to alleviate the human suffering, but it is unlikely that anyone will support the de facto government there.

Ironically as a result of the current emergency situation, Palestinian statehood is a very serious possibility today in parts of the West Bank without the old city of Jerusalem and without a corridor to Gaza. But is it the contiguous territory and viable independent state that Palestinians have dreamed of? That seems unlikely. A Palestinian state is therefore either a real possibility or next-to-impossible depending on what shape and borders such a state would have.

The Analysis: This article is well formulated but a little too smooth on the edges. In the words of a person I respect, the recent internal crisis in Palestine has inspired some of the “greatest shit journalism in recent times.” The reality is that Palestinians feel a lot more strongly towards Palestine than they do to the political parties. I don’t expect this to be blown up into a full-out confrontation — there just isn’t any support within the Palestinian populace for this to occur. This is not a mass uprising against one or the other, rather vendettas being settled in the strongholds for the respective parties (Hamas in Gaza and Fatah in the West Bank). The reason why the battle between Fatah and Hamas has been a civil strife rather than a civil war is we are basically seeing a political struggle carried out in the streets by local armed militias.

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This isn’t in my usual style to write a serious rant where my ‘truthiness’ isn’t slathered with a thick layer of disdain and sarcasm. But here goes:

I am really fed up with the idea that if you discuss the origins of 9/11, you are somehow a coward, not a patriot, not an American, a terrorist sympathizer, or somewhere else between bottom feeding scum and social pariah who thinks too much for one’s own good. I’ll be honest, I’ve never been the biggest fan of the Ron Paul Phenomena and I didn’t watch the majority of the Republican debate. In fact, I only was able to watch the part of the debate with the most significance — where Ron Paul and Rudy Giuliani exchange words over the origins of (Watch the exchange and read a more extensive briefing of the exchange at the Nation).

Now, the basis of the argument that occurred is the following: Ron Paul had the fucking audacity to say that September 11th and the rising Islamic/Jihadist movement may have some origins in America’s less than stellar record in the Middle East. Never mind that the 9/11 Commission reported on the blowback from American involvement in the Middle East as a contributing factor and that anyone with a functioning frontal lobe could connect the dots between September 11th, and say, a couple century’s worth of outside interference by the West. After Paul stated the case between these connections, Giuliani quickly stepped in and said in so many words, you are one anti-American fuck and twisted Ron Paul’s words around to make it seem like he insinuated we deserved the attack. And with that, a crowd of overweight arm-chair bullies started hooting and hollering at the South Carolina Republican Debate.

All I could think about when I watched this was these are the people were interested enough in politics to attend a debate and this is their appropriate level of discourse. All that has to be done or said is September 11th and suddenly everyone feels very coy and shy about their beliefs. The sacred cow is also the most profitable one: I never thought Rudy “September 1tth” Giuliani could win the nomination simply by talking about September 11th until my mind explodes, but it’s seemingly working. Despite being a social liberal, Rudy is pretty much coasting through the polls as the Republican front runner because his speeches are jingo games of ‘terrorism’, ‘9/11?, ‘jihadists’, and ‘Islamo-Fascists’. And sadly enough, people eat this shit up. Well, not quite people, but Republicans, but my sense is this would play out in a similar method in the general election as well.

Anyway, I’ve digressed. My point being is that September 11th was not an event in which upon reflection should cause us to curl into a ball and cry for Rudy Giuliani or George Bush to save us. I’m not saying that America deserved to be attacked by a bunch of crazed religious zealots or that we brought this upon ourselves. I am saying that September 11th should have woken us up to the fact that America’s foreign policy has been seriously misguided since the start of the Cold War. We’d do a tremendous favor to ourselves if we realized the cost of an invasive, military-dependent foreign policy bent on serving our short term interests.

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From Salon: Now comes a paper by two European economists arguing that globalization is also responsible for astonishing price drops for hard drugs over the past two decades… At first glance, the laws of supply and demand seem to be seriously out of whack. Since 1990, trends in the worldwide supply and demand for cocaine and heroin have been more or less flat, but prices have dropped 50 to 80 percent. In “Globalization and the Price Decline of Illicit Drugs,” Claudia Costa Storti and Paul de Grauwe explain: The “intermediation margin” — the difference between producer prices and retail prices, has collapsed. The cost of getting the product from Afghanistan or Colombia to New York or London has plunged.

And you can thank the awesome efficiency of global markets for that:

Transport costs have been reduced and the use of the new [information technology] IT has allowed to dramatically improve the efficiency of the distribution of drugs and made it possible to cut on the number of intermediaries. This new IT has also made the communication between demand and supply safer and quicker, leading to better stock management, and has much improved communication among dealers. In addition, the explosion in the size of international trade flows has made it possible to better conceal the transport and the distribution of drugs. Finally, the sophistication of the international financial markets has greatly increased the scope for money laundering to remain undetected. All this has led to a decline in the cost of distributing drugs.

The authors also suggest that the “risk premium” — the danger associated with getting involved in the drug business, and which consequently results in high prices, has declined because of the flood of new participants in the global economy as a result of the opening up of the economies of China, India and Russia.

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