Mideast Media Sampler 07/07/2011

From DG:

1) A man, a plan ... maybe not

Fareed Zakaria, who, along with Thomas Friedman, is reported by the New York Times as being a source of foreign policy expertise for President Obama, defends the Obama doctrine.

In all these cases, what marks administration policy is a careful calculation of costs and benefits. The great temptation of modern American foreign policy, from Versailles to Vietnam to Iraq, has been to make grand declarations — enunciate doctrines — that then produce huge commitments and costs. We are coming off a decade of such rhetoric and interventions and are still paying the price: more than $2 trillion, not to mention the massive cost in human lives. In that context, a foreign policy that emphasizes strategic restraint is appropriate and wise.

Barry Rubin, though, demonstrates that there isn't a consistent policy, but a mass of conflicting impulses.

As one listens to this, however, it seems as if even Obama doesn’t believe what his teleprompter is saying. The arguments are ridiculously transparent and if the media wanted to be critical they could tear Obama apart on the issue. First, Qadhafi was not a threat to U.S. interests at the time a decision was made to intervene. The reason why is important to remember. Whether or not the war in Iraq was a good idea, the fate of his fellow dictator, Saddam Hussein, scared Qadhafi badly. He was quick to play nice and turn over information on his nuclear program to the United States. 

The Americans then accepted his “repentance.” It would be strange to put much moral commitment into a deal with Qadhafi. But for the record, the U.S. government did in a sense betray a promise to leave him alone if he left U.S. interests alone and didn’t subvert his neighbors or sponsor terrorism. Combined with the U.S. treatment of Husni Mubarak, dictators aren’t going to put much faith in the Obama Administration’s promises. That’s one more reason why it seems to make more sense to be America’s enemy than its friend nowadays.

Second, while Qadhafi is a brutal dictator, rulers in Algeria, Sudan, Syria, Yemen, and other countries are equally willing to kill and torture their citizens. what the U.S. government must justify is why human rights’ violations in some countries deserve intervention and the same thing or worse in others don’t. Usually, the distinction is made on the basis of national interest. The regimes in Iran and Syria are enemies of America and thus helping their oppositions and subverting them should be of higher priority. An exception can be made in countries–like Rwanda or Uganda under Idi Amin being two examples–when the repression is so bloody and horrendous that it should not be ignored.

2) UN condemns Israel again

On May 24, 2000 Israeli forces withdrew from southern Lebanon. The United Nations certified that the withdrawal had conformed to the requirements of resolution 425 a few weeks later. Yet on October 7, 2000, three Israeli soldiers were kidnapped and killed by Hezbollah violating the international border and no UN action was taken against Hezbollah. In fact it was later discovered that UN troops had done nothing to prevent the attack, and that the UN had covered up this failure.

Now the UN is accusing Israel for using excessive force when approximately 1000 "protesters" approached the border on May 15.

The secretary-general said both the Israelis and the Lebanese demonstrators, mostly Palestinian refugees, violated Security Council resolution 1701 that ended the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict, but he was especially critical of the Israeli use of live ammunition.

Ban said the U.N. peacekeeping force, known as UNIFIL, estimated that around 8,000-10,000 demonstrators participated in the protest, the majority peacefully, but around 1,000 left the main gathering, crossed through a mine field, and moved toward an Israeli fence and the Blue Line, the U.N.-drawn boundary between the two countries.

“The firing of live ammunition by the Israeli Defense Forces across the Blue Line against the demonstrators, which resulted in the loss of civilian life and a significant number of casualties, constituted a violation of resolution 1701 and was not commensurate to the threat to Israeli soldiers,” Ban said.

In recent years there have been reports of arms being smuggled to Hezbollah in violation of 1701, which are unmentioned by the UN. At the end of the article though we read:

Ban also said there has been no progress in reaching a permanent ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel, in marking Lebanon’s border with Syria, or in disarming Hezbollah and Palestinian militias, as called for in resolution 1701.

In other words the parties to 1701 continue to violate it with impunity. And while the news story mentioned UNIFIL, it doesn't explain why UNIFIL didn't stop the protesters from approaching the Israeli border. Ya Libnan in a apparent editorial observes:

Syria may be distracted and preoccupied by events inside the country, but so much that it could not have prevented the Golan incident if it had wanted it not to happen?

The real power in southern Lebanon is Hezbollah, the militant Shia movement that was created in the early 1980s by Iran and Syria to counter Israel’s invasion of Lebanon.

If Hezbollah had not wanted the display of Palestinian refugee militancy at Maroun al-Ras on the south Lebanon border with Israel to happen, it would not have happened.

Damascus and Tehran retain extremely strong ties with Hezbollah, so by extension, the same is true of them. 

So the UN has no power in southern Lebanon. It won't interfere with Hezbollah. It won't protect the Israeli border. But if Israel defends itself, the UN condemns it. 


3) Strained and cooled

The New York Times reports on the upcoming UN report on last year's flotilla.

The seizure of the flotilla soured already strained relations between Israel and Turkey, which was once Israel’s closest Muslim ally. Turkey recalled its ambassador from Israel and demanded an apology, a step Israel has refused to take. The friction also heightened alarm in the United States and Europe that Turkey, a major NATO member, was shifting its allegiance from the West toward the Arab world. 

If as the report concluded, the blockade is legal then sending the flotilla was a hostile act. Isn't that what strained relations? Why is the Israeli reaction the cause of the strain.

But diplomats from both sides said Wednesday that the shifting relations in the Middle East had altered the geopolitical calculations of both countries and had prompted them to try to find a way out of the impasse. Israel’s relations with Egypt have cooled, as have Turkey’s with Libya and Syria, leaving both countries in search of more reliable allies. Turkey’s ability to play a mediating role in the region has been undermined by the tensions. 

"[R]elations with Egypt have cooled." No mention that it was the ousting of Mubarak and the growing Islamist influence that played a role. And also no mention that with Turkey's shift away from Israel, Israel has strengthened relations with Greece.


4) Jews and Obama

Yid with Lid analyzes Gallup's polling data and concludes that despite strong support for Obama in the Jewish community, Jewish support for Obama has dropped morethan it has in the general population. I wish the poll had asked respondents whether they were critical of the President's policies towards Israel - even if they still generally supported him.

Related observations at Daled Amos.


5) "All or nothing"

Elder of Ziyon critiques a recent essay by Robert Lifton in Huffington Post. I have not read Lifton's piece, but Elder makes an excellent point well worth emphasizing:

Lifton uses the straw man that Thomas Friedman, Jeffrey Goldberg and others use: that the only choice is between Israel annexing the entire West Bank and Israel giving up the entire West Bank (with minor land swaps.) Yet this is not even close to true.

The concept of a Palestinian Arab state is not identical to the demand that Israel withdraw from all the crucial lands needed for defensible borders and to to maintain a Jewish presense in historically and religiously significant areas. 

When Palestinian Arabs insist that the two are congruent, the Western reaction should be that, in that case, the demand for an independent state must not be all that important to the Palestinian Arabs.

But what this view means is that there's no real point to negotiations. It's the "everyone knows" what a peace agreement will look like. But if the final agreement is foreordained, what penalty is there for bad faith on the part of the Palestinians?

But the worst part is that this makes Israel's legitimacy dependent on the say so of the Palestinians. As long as the Palestinians claim that they're "legitimate aspirations" are not fulfilled by Israeli concessions, Israel's legitimacy is questionable. The idea that any nation's legitimacy should be dependent on the whims of its enemy is beyond absurd.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Middle East.