Asef shawkat is out of the Syrian military intelligence andl an abridged and rough English version

The draft Personal Status Law that has stirred such controversy has been rejected by the Syrian Parliament.

Haaretz

… diplomatic sources in New York reported that American officials are working behind the scenes to prevent new sanctions from being imposed against Iran. U.S. officials claimed that a tough stance toward Iran could backfire, bringing about an opposite outcome to that desired by those who support such measures.

Syria mends US, Arab ties as ally Iran in turmoil
By SAM F. GHATTAS, Associated Press Writer  Jul 3, 2009

BEIRUT – Syria’s leader sent a July 4 message full of praise to President Barack Obama on Friday and invited him to visit Syria — the latest signs Damascus is hedging its bets in Mideast politics, warming up to its rival the United States at a time when its longtime ally Iran is in turmoil.

The United States and its Arab allies have been hoping to pull Syria out of the fold of Iran and Islamic militant groups in the region.

Damascus so far appears unlikely to take such a dramatic step, but it does appear worried about Iran’s reliability and the long-term impact of that country’s postelection unrest. Also, its Lebanese ally Hezbollah suffered a setback when its coalition failed to win June parliament elections, beaten out by a pro-U.S. bloc.

Syrian President Bashar Assad has been expressing hopes for better ties with Washington for months. But the latest developments may make dialogue look even more attractive.

Assad sent a telegram to Obama on the occasion of the July 4 Independence Day holiday, saying, “The values that were adopted by President Obama during his election campaign and after he was elected president are values that the world needs today.”

“It is very important to adopt the principle of dialogue in relations with countries based on respect and mutual interest,” Assad said in the telegram, which was carried by state-run news agency SANA.

In an interview with Britain’s Sky News, Assad invited Obama to visit Damascus to discuss Mideast peace.

“We would like to welcome him in Syria, definitely. I am very clear about this,” Assad said in English. Asked whether such a visit could take place soon, Assad said: “That depends on him.”

He added with a smile, “I will ask you to convey the invitation to him.” The last time a U.S. president visited Syria was a 1994 trip by Bill Clinton.

For the U.S., even pulling Syria only partly away from Iran and its militant allies would represent a major shift and could help ease Mideast crises. The U.S.-Syrian rivalry has fueled instability in Lebanon, and the U.S. and Israel say Syria’s backing of the Palestinian Hamas undermines the Arab-Israeli peace process. Syrian cooperation could make Obama’s fresh push for a peace deal take off.

The Obama administration has stepped up its wooing of Syria. The U.S. is sending back its ambassador to Damascus after a four-year break over terrorism accusations. Obama’s special Mideast peace envoy, George Mitchell, became the highest-level U.S. administration official to visit Damascus since 2005, and he acknowledged Syria’s clout, declaring Damascus has a key role to play in forging Mideast peace.

In a separate interview with Sky News, Assad’s wife, Asma, said she believed the Syrian and American leaders could work together.

“The fact that President Obama is young — well President Assad is also very young as well — so maybe it is time for these young new leaders to make a difference in the world,” she said.

In one sign of Syrian cooperation on regional issues, Damascus is believed to have played a behind-the-scenes role in ensuring Lebanon’s elections remained peaceful.

Damascus likely won’t move away from its Iran alliance easily. Iran’s regional clout has been key to boosting Syria’s status in the Middle East, and Tehran gives considerable financial and military backing. Assad was the first Arab leader to congratulate Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for winning the disputed presidential election.

But Iran is now mired in the fallout from that election, following the widespread protests that erupted amid claims Ahmadinejad’s victory in the June election was fraudulent. A heavy crackdown has largely quelled the protests, but the show of anger has raised questions over Ahmadinejad’s long-term legitimacy.

“All the world around Syria on which it built its policy is falling apart,” said Sateh Noureddine, managing editor of the Lebanese As-Safir daily, which tilts toward Syria’s Lebanese allies.

“Hezbollah lost the election in Lebanon, Hamas is being subjected to unprecedented attrition and Iran is drowned in its internal crises,” he told The Associated Press. “All the elements of strength they (Syrians) built on their foreign policy are collapsing, so for certain they are going to reassess and look for alternatives, without abandoning their past.”

Writing in the Saudi-owned daily Al-Hayat, Saudi analyst Dawood al-Shirian urged Syria to “take this opportunity and rid itself of having to pay a price for the Iranians’ reputation.”

U.S. ally Saudi Arabia — one of the bitterest rivals of Syria in the region since 2005 — has been working in recent months to thaw ties with Damascus in hopes of drawing it away from Iran.

The oil powerhouse sent a senior envoy to Damascus on June 28. Assad and Saudi King Abdullah have twice met in recent months in Riyadh and Kuwait, and there has been persistent media speculation that Abdullah will visit Damascus in July — perhaps as early as next week — to crown the renewed relationship.

Assad and Jordan’s king have also recently exchanged visits for the first time in several years.

Syria has several long-term aims in any reconciliation with the U.S. Assad has said he wants the U.S. to mediate Syrian-Israeli negotiations, in which Damascus seeks the return of the Golan Heights, which Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war.

Syria also wants U.S. economic sanctions lifted and foreign investment, particularly Gulf Arab money for its economy. It is also wary of an international tribunal set up to try the perpetrators of the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in Beirut at a time when Syria controlled the country.

___

Associated Press writers Albert Aji in Damascus and Bassem Mroue in Beirut contributed to this report.

Incoming IAEA chief: No evidence Iran seeking nuclear weapons
By News Agencies

The incoming head of the United Nation’s nuclear watchdog said on Friday he did not see any hard evidence that Iran was trying to gain the ability to develop nuclear weapons.

“I don’t see any evidence in IAEA official documents about this,” Japan’s Yukiya Amano told Reuters in his first direct comment on Iran’s nuclear program since his election to head the International Atomic Energy Agency, when asked whether he believed Iran was seeking a nuclear weapons capability.

Current IAEA head Mohammed ElBaradei told the BBC last month it was his “gut feeling” that Iran was seeking the ability to produce nuclear arms, if it desired, as an “insurance policy” against perceived threats from neighboring countries or the United States.

“I’m not going to be a ’soft’ director general or a ‘tough’ director general,” Amano told Reuters, when asked how he would approach issues like Iran and Syria, which are both subject to IAEA probes….

Iranian carmaker SAIPA inaugurated a car assembly line in Homs, Syria, on Thursday.

Rami Makhlouf says Pearl Airline will be back in the air soon because of improving US-Syrian relations. He blames the grounding of the airline on the Spanish company which should have made sure that US sactions against the Syrian use of Airbus planes did not apply.

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02/07/2009

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Housing Minister: Spread of Arab population must be stopped

MK Ariel Atias attending the wedding of the granddaughter of Shas spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef in Jerusalem last month.

By Guy Lieberman, Haaretz

Housing Minister Ariel Atias on Thursday warned against the spread of Arab population into various parts of Israel, saying that preventing this phenomenon was no less than a national responsibility.

“I see [it] as a national duty to prevent the spread of a population that, to say the least, does not love the state of Israel,” Atias told a conference of the Israel Bar Association, which focused on a reforming Israel’s Land Administration.

The Shas minister referred to Harish, a housing project built for the Haredi community in northern Israel, saying that the Arab population from the nearby Wadi Ara was spreading into the Harish area.

Atias went on to address the issue of the Galilee, saying that “if we go on like we have until now, we will lose the Galilee. Populations that should not mix are spreading there. I don’t think that it is appropriate [for them] to live together.”

“Look at what happened in Acre,” Atias continued, referring to violent protests that broke out on the Eve of Yom Kippur last year over Jewish-Arab tensions in the mixed town.

“The mayor of Acre visited me yesterday for three hours and asked me how his town could be saved,” Atias said. “He told me ‘bring a bunch of Haredis and we’ll save the city, even if I lose my political standing.’ He told me that Arabs are living in Jewish buildings and running them out.”

Atias argued that lands should be marketed to each sector separately, in order to create segregation, not just between Jews and Arabs but also between other sectors, such as ultra-Orthodox and secular Jews. “There is a severe housing crisis among the young ultra-Orthodox couples, and in the general population. I, as an ultra-Orthodox Jew, don’t think that religious Jews should have to live in the same neighborhood as secular couples, so as to avoid unnecessary friction. And since some 5,000 to 6,000 religious couples get married every year, a problem arises because they require a certain kind of community life that goes along with their lifestyle.”

The housing minister went on to say that the problem stemmed from faulty handling of land within the Land Administration and the Housing Ministry, among other reasons. “Today there is a serious housing crisis facing all the young couples in Israel, in part because of the limited appropriation of land in recent years in the Lands Administration and the Housing Ministry, and also due to faulty decision making which resulted from the high turnover of ministers over the last decade ? 8 ministers have held the office of Housing minister in the last decade and the Land Administration wasn?t under the ministry’s authority for part of the time.”

According to Atias, the solution he is spearheading is to flood the market with available land for housing construction. Atias explained that a team of planners has already begun working on the project. “I plan to market large amounts of land to the Arab population in the Galilee in order to solve their problems, as well as land for secular and religious Jews,” he said.

A few recent scholarly articles of interest on Syria are:

• Mir H. Sadat and Daniel B. Jones, “U.S. Foreign Policy Toward Syria: Balancing Ideology and National Interests” [93-105]: MIDDLE EAST POLICY, Summer 2009 (Vol. 16, No. 2)

• Shana Marshall, “Syria and the Financial Crisis: Prospects for Reform?” [106-115] MIDDLE EAST POLICY, Summer 2009 (Vol. 16, No. 2)

• Yücel Güçlü, “Will Untapped Ottoman Archives Reshape the Armenian Debate?” [35-42] Middle East Quarterly. [Gives a Turkish slant.]

Rafida: See the following article if you have been following the recent debate in the comment section about “Rafida” or the Shiite doctrine of promoting Alid line of Caliphal succession over that prefered by Sunnis.

• Chase F. Robinson, “The Ideological Uses of Early Islam” [205-228]: PAST AND PRESENT, May 2009 (Vol. 203, No. 1)

Chase Robinson explains that all too commonly Sunnis push:

what is a crucial doctrine that belongs to the ninth century into the first half of the eighth. The doctrine is that of the ‘Four Rightly Guided Caliphs’, which posits that Ab Bakr (reigned 632–4), Umar (634–44), Uthmn (644–56) and Al (656–61), the latter two championed by implacably hostile groups, ruled in succession, all legitimate, albeit of declining merit (according to Sunnis). A narrative of just succession over the polity was superimposed upon a history of internecine conflict. The theory of ‘Four Rightly Guided Caliphs’ was thus a retrospective projection, one of the most conspicuous features of the relative ecumenism of Abbasid rule, a time that would also generate the closely related doctrine of the Prophet’s Companions. Along with the Prophet’s inerrancy, both are principal ingredients in the Islamic foundation myth.

Time for an Israeli Strike?
(By John R. Bolton, The Washington Post)

Israel must act quickly to strike the nuclear program of a resurgent regime. …

…Since there is no likelihood that diplomacy will start or finish in time, or even progress far enough to make any real difference, there is no point waiting for negotiations to play out. In fact, given the near certainty of Obama changing his definition of “success,” negotiations represent an even more dangerous trap for Israel.

Those who oppose Iran acquiring nuclear weapons are left in the near term with only the option of targeted military force against its weapons facilities. Significantly, the uprising in Iran also makes it more likely that an effective public diplomacy campaign could be waged in the country to explain to Iranians that such an attack is directed against the regime, not against the Iranian people….

Hello Syria: Obamas Offered Road To Damascus
2009-07-02, Sky News (GB):

Dominic Waghorn, Middle East correspondent Syria’s First Lady has exclusively told Sky News she would welcome the Obamas to Damascus. Asma al Assad’s comments are the latest in a series of signs US Syrian relations are improving after years of …

First lady’s interview with Sky. (4 minute video) She speaks about her efforts to get Syrian youth to participate in building the future of the country.

Syria changes “honour killing” law
By DPA, Jul 2, 2009

Damascus – Syrian President Bashar al-Assad issued a decree changing the penalty for ‘honour killing’ to at least two years in prison, Minister of Justice Minister Ahmad Hamoud Younes said in a statement Thursday.

‘The number of wife-killings has increased recently on the pretext of adultery, and the article that was abolished by the President pardoned these crimes,’ the official SANA news agency quoted Younes as saying.

The new law reads: ‘He who catches his wife, sister, daughter or mother by surprise in the act of committing adultery or having unlawful sex with another and then unintentionally kills or hurts either of them can benefit from attenuating circumstances, provided that he serves a prison term of no less than two years in the case of killing.’

Women rights groups welcomed the change with reservations.

‘This is only a small contribution to solving this problem, for in this new version too the paragraph still invites murder,’ said Women of Syria group in a statement on its website.

‘The new law still leaves a wide door open for the killers. Who gave men the right to kill women?’ the statement added.

Last May a Syrian court sentenced a man who deliberately killed his sister and her lover to only only seven and a half years in prison, as the case was considered an ‘honour killing.’

Hussein Pointed to Iranian Threat
(By Glenn Kessler, The Washington Post)

Saddam Hussein told an FBI interviewer before he was hanged that he allowed the world to believe he had weapons of mass destruction because he was worried about appearing weak to Iran, according to declassified accounts of the interviews released yesterday. The former Iraqi president also denounced…

The former Iraqi president also denounced Osama bin Laden as “a zealot” and said he had no dealings with al-Qaeda. …

At one point, Hussein dismissed as a fantasy the many intelligence reports that said he used a body double to elude assassination. “This is movie magic, not reality,” he said with a laugh. Instead, he said, he had used a phone only twice since 1990 and rarely slept in the same location two days in a row.

Hussein’s fear of Iran, which he said he considered a greater threat than the United States, featured prominently in the discussion about weapons of mass destruction. Iran and Iraq had fought a grinding eight-year war in the 1980s, and Hussein said he was convinced that Iran was trying to annex southern Iraq — which is largely Shiite. “Hussein viewed the other countries in the Middle East as weak and could not defend themselves or Iraq from an attack from Iran,” Piro recounted in his summary of a June 11, 2004, conversation.

“The threat from Iran was the major factor as to why he did not allow the return of UN inspectors,” Piro wrote. “Hussein stated he was more concerned about Iran discovering Iraq’s weaknesses and vulnerabilities than the repercussions of the United States for his refusal to allow UN inspectors back into Iraq.”

Hussein noted that Iran’s weapons capabilities had increased dramatically while Iraq’s weapons “had been eliminated by the UN sanctions,”…

When Piro noted that there were reasons why Hussein and al-Qaeda should have cooperated — they had the same enemies in the United States and Saudi Arabia — Hussein replied that the United States was not Iraq’s enemy, and that he simply opposed its policies.

IAEA Chooses Japanese as New Head
2009-07-02 15:17:14.258 GMT

VIENNA (AP) — By GEORGE JAHN, Associated Press Writer George Jahn, Associated Press Writer – Thu Jul 2, 1:12 pm ET

VIENNA – The world’s top nuclear watchdog chose Japan’s Yukiya Amano as its next head on Thursday — and he touched on the devastation U.S. atom bombs wreaked on his country in pledging to do his utmost to prevent the spread of nuclear arms.

The decision by the 35-nation International Atomic Energy Agency board ended a tug of war on who should succeed Nobel Peace laureate Mohamed ElBaradei, who saw his agency vaulted into prominence during a high-profile 12-year tenure.

North Korea left the nonproliferation fold to develop a nuclear weapons program on ElBaradei’s watch and his agency later launched inconclusive probes on suspicions that those to nations were interested in developing nuclear weapons.

ElBaradei’s activist approach to his job often rankled with Washington — and it had a strong preference for Amano, seen by the U.S. as a technocrat amenable to pursuing a hard line on Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Amano’s allusions to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki pointed to a deep commitment to non-proliferation. And Japan, which is separated from North Korea only by a narrow body of water, keenly shares the United States’ concerns about Pyongyang’s nuclear program.

Iran, Syria push economic ties
July 2, 2009

DAMASCUS, Syria, July 2 (UPI) — Syria and Iran wrapped up meetings in Damascus to move forward with plans to develop bilateral economic ties further, officials say.

Engineering companies active in Syria have set up 11 different economic projects that have generated more than $1.3 billion in the decade since they were established.

Trade between both countries, meanwhile, stands at $350 million per year.

Mohammad Saeidikia, the Iranian housing and urban development minister, met with Syrian Trade Minister Amer Husni Lutfi for two days in Damascus to further develop those economic trends, the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting agency reports.

Saeidikia called for expansion in bilateral trade and pushed for stronger regional relations, including the establishment of free-trade agreements between Syria, Iran, Iraq and Turkey.

Damascus recently announced the opening of a rail-traffic line from Syrian ports on the Mediterranean to Basra on the Persian Gulf as part of a broader Syrian effort to increase its regional trade performance.

Growing Gulf Between U.S. And Israeli Jews on Obama
Daily News Article by Nathan Jeffay
The Jewish Daily Forward – July 2, 2009 – 12:00am

He swept to power with the support of 78% of American Jews. But has Barack Obama become the bane of Israeli Jews? A gulf between American and Israeli Jews was evident even before Obama moved into the White House. Just a third of Israelis would have endorsed him had they been allowed to vote, polling indicated, while almost half would have chosen John McCain.

Some See Extended Olive Branch For Israel In Ross Appointment to NSC
Daily News Article by Nathan Guttman
The Jewish Daily Forward – July 2, 2009 – 12:00am

The promotion of Middle East adviser Dennis Ross to a senior White House position may open the door to a more positive tone by the United States toward the Israeli government, experts believe.

Amnesty says Israel ‘wantonly’ destroyed Gaza
Daily News Article
The National – July 2, 2009 – 12:00am

Amnesty International said today that Israel inflicted “wanton destruction” in the Gaza Strip in attacks that often targeted Palestinian civilians during an offensive in December and January in the Hamas-run enclave. The London-based rights group, in a 117-page report on the 22 days of fighting, also criticised movement Hamas for rocket attacks on Israel, which it called “war crimes”.

Reports emerge of Syrian-Saudi summit
Detente between Damascus, Riyadh could include Hariri – reports
By Nicholas Kimbrell, Daily Star
Thursday, July 02, 2009

BEIRUT: Days after officials in Washington announced that a US ambassador would soon be sent to Syria, reports have emerged of an upcoming Syrian-Saudi Arabian summit to be held in Damascus that could include Lebanon. Conventional wisdom holds that any improvement in Syrian-Saudi ties generally contributes to increased stability in Lebanon, and according to experts on Levantine politics, Lebanon may already be benefiting from those nations’ thawing ties and a revamped US policy in the region.

“Any relief or stabilization in the Syrian-Saudi relationship will be positively reflected in the Lebanese political life,” Chafik Masri, an international law professor at the American University of Beirut, told The Daily Star Wednesday.

“The tension between Syria and the regional competitors and the international players now has some relief,” he added.

On Sunday, Saudi Prince Abdel-Aziz bin Abdullah and Information Minister Abdel-Aziz Khoja, a former ambassador to Beirut, visited Syrian President Bashar Assad, and regional media have report widely on a likely meeting between Assad and Saudi King Abdullah on July 16.

According to a number of sources cited in the pan-Arab press, that summit, an indication of dŽtente between Damascus and Riyadh, could also include Premier-designate Saad Hariri.

Syrian-Saudi relations appeared to publically improve following summits in Kuwait and Doha in January and March of this year, following Israel’s three-week bombardment of the Hamas-run Gaza Strip. In the wake of those summits Lebanon witnessed a relatively calm election campaigning season and peaceful parliamentary elections.

Following the elections, won handily by the March 14 coalition, Hariri, the leader of that coalition and the Future Movement was quickly tapped for the premiership and charged with forming a government.

Masri said the easing of regional tensions had given Lebanon more “flexibility” and “room for compromise” to build a new government. Ahead of the Syrian-Saudi summit, he added, many believe that a cabinet will be formed, Hariri will be invited to the Damascus meeting and the US will resume full diplomatic ties with Syria.

The US recalled its ambassador from Syria in 2005 after the assassination of Hariri’s father, Rafik Hariri, a former premier himself. His murder was widely blamed on Syria, although Damascus has denied any involvement.

Syria expert Joshua Landis, co-director of Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma and the founder of the popular Syria Comment Web site and newsletter, said the current movement in the region and its effects on Lebanon had a historical precedent.

“If we look at the 1990s as model … Saudi Arabia and Syria worked hand in glove and you got the flowering of Lebanon, under Hariri oversight with a Syrian security presence … There was an understanding. America, of course, was a part of this,” he said.

But this “triangular entente” collapsed under former US President George W. Bush, who tried “to pull Lebanon out of the Syrian sphere of influence,” he noted. “What we are seeing is the re-establishment, under [US President Barack] Obama of the triangular entente of the 1990s.” According to Landis, in the past, Syria used Lebanon as a tool or instrument to push various interests. The Bush administration, he said, tried to reverse that method and use Lebanon against Syria, with no success.

Now Syria may be more interested in the broader ramifications of Obama’s regional peace strategy.

“Syria wants to move ahead and get beyond Lebanon. So it needs to neutralize Lebanon, put Lebanon in the freezer,” Landis said, adding that in this sense Damascus wants to maintain the status quo and was satisfied with Lebanon’s election results.

The country wants to play an integral role in the Obama administration’s comprehensive Middle East peace strategy, Landis noted, and needs Saudi Arabia as a partner. “From a Syrian point of view, it’s very important that the Saudi Arabians and Syrians come together,” he said.

“Saudi Arabia needs Syria too,” Landis added. “The only strategy against Iran is one of Arab unity.”

What Lebanon’s position is in a broader push for regional peace is not entirely clear. The resumption of US-Syrian and Syrian-Saudi ties are expected to help bridge Lebanon’s internal divisions, but the country’s security could still be manipulated by foreign influences.

Without substantive action, that satisfies Syria and Saudi Arabia and is accepted by Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu, “all of this is going to be like band-aids,” Landis said.

Moreover, the rapprochement between regional powers can contribute to stability and security in Lebanon but it can’t ensure it.

Former Ambassador Abdullah Bou Habib, the executive director of the Issam Fares Center for Lebanon, noted that despite current geo-political trends, the burden of political and sectarian divisiveness ultimately rests with the Lebanese.

“There is no doubt that any agreement between Syria and Saudi Arabia would close much of the gap between the Lebanese,” he said. “But it does not close it completely.”

United Nations: Ensuring quality education among challenges for Syria
2009-06-30 20:53:50.169 GMT

Syria has made advances in achieving globally agreed development targets related to women and children, but still faces challenges in ensuring quality education, according to the head of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). “Syria is …

Barak, U.S. Envoy Discuss Settlements
(By Glenn Kessler, The Washington Post)

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak huddled for four hours yesterday with former senator George J. Mitchell, the Obama administration’s special envoy for Middle East peace, seeking to resolve an impasse between their two governments over the expansion of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank. ….

President Obama has demanded that Israel fulfill a commitment in the 2003 “road map” peace plan for a full settlement freeze, including a halt to expansion to accommodate “natural growth.” The Israeli government has responded with a series of counterproposals, including a temporary freeze with caveats, none of which the administration has accepted.

“We have not changed our position at all,” a senior administration official said yesterday after the Barak-Mitchell meeting. “Nor has the president authorized any negotiating room.”

An Israeli official who accompanied Barak to the meeting in New York characterized the talks as positive. He said a meeting between Mitchell and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, which was canceled last week, will probably take place this month. ….

U.S. Targets Firms Tied To N. Korea Arms Trade
By Glenn Kessler, Wash Post
Wednesday, July 1, 2009

The Obama administration yesterday began a campaign to curtail North Korea’s ability to finance its trade in missiles and nuclear materials, with the Treasury and State Departments announcing actions against two North Korean companies, including one allegedly connected to the building of a nuclear reactor in Syria.

Administration officials said they are determined to ramp up pressure on the North Korean government in response to a series of missile tests and the detonation of a nuclear device — its second — this year. The playbook is drawn from similar efforts in the Bush administration — and largely directed by the same person, Stuart Levey, Treasury’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence — that were abandoned by President George W. Bush in late 2006 in an effort to win North Korea’s cooperation through diplomacy.

raq contains some of the world's richest oil reserves, but low fees being offered by Baghdad kept refiners away.

Anxious Oil Giants Pass on Iraq
BAGHDAD, June 29 — Iraq’s effort to woo foreign energy companies to help resurrect its ailing oil fields fell flat Tuesday, as most companies balked at the financial terms offered by the government despite the lure of the country’s vast reserves. …

During a day-long live auction for eight 20-year service contracts, the Iraqi Oil Ministry was able to nail down just one deal — for the giant Rumaila field in southern Iraq. The Iraqi Oil Ministry reached an agreement with British Petroleum and China National Petroleum Corp. only after BP and CNPC accepted a much lower fee than they originally sought in return for raising the field’s output beyond current levels. Rumaila, Iraq’s biggest oil field, has an estimated 17 billion barrels of oil reserves, an amount equivalent to more than half the reserves of the entire United States. …

In the current bidding round, Iraq said it would reimburse companies for costs and pay them a per-barrel fee for increases in production from the country’s abundant but long-neglected fields. But it did not offer the companies an ownership stake in the crude, which would have been a more attractive type of contract. It also demanded nearly $3 billion in “signing bonus” loans for the six oil fields, which are active but underproducing, and two largely undeveloped gas fields.

BP and China’s national oil company submitted a joint bid to raise output at Rumaila from about 1 million barrels a day to 2.85 million barrels a day for a $3.99-per-barrel fee. The ministry said it would pay a maximum of $2 a barrel. In the end, the companies agreed to that price. “We’re pleased with the process so far and look forward to concluding the contract in due course,” said BP spokesman Toby Odone. …

La chaîne France 5 : le Président ASSAD a fait de la Syrie le point d’équilibre du Moyen-Orient (Tichrine du 24 juin) Thanks Syria Report

“Les opinions ici mentionnées, reprises de la presse syrienne, n’engagent que leurs auteurs et non pas le groupe sénatorial France-Syrie, ni le Sénat.”

La chaîne de télévision française France 5 a affirmé que le président Bachar AL-ASSAD a réussi à transformer la Syrie en point d’équilibre du Moyen-Orient. La chaîne a diffusé un documentaire de 50 minutes consacré au Président ASSAD et réalisé par les journalistes Christian MALAR et Bernard VAILLOT. La chaîne a qualifié de « sage, nationale et courageuse » la politique du Président ASSAD, soulignant les réformes qu’a connues la Syrie sous sa direction et les efforts qu’il déploie pour garantir la prospérité économique à son peuple.

« Le Président ASSAD a pu surmonter les tentatives de pression et de blocus visant à ébranler la stabilité politique, économique et sociale en Syrie » a affirmé la chaîne, tout en ajoutant qu’il a placé la Syrie au centre des évolutions politiques au Moyen-Orient. Le programme a également évoqué la volonté sérieuse de la Syrie d’établir une paix juste dans la région tout en s’attachant à ses principes patriotiques et à sa dignité nationale. Le programme a été suivi par un nombre important de Français résidant en Syrie et par la communauté syrienne à Paris.

Damascus Stock Exchange to Increase Trading Days, Chief Says
2009-07-0, By Nadim Issa

July 1 (Bloomberg) — The Damascus Securities Exchange will add another trading day later this month to increase the volume of transactions, said the exchange’s Chief Executive Officer Mohamad Al-Jleilati. “In 15 days from now we will have three trading days instead of two to increase volume,” Al-Jleilati said today in a telephone interview from Damascus.
Volumes traded have risen to 36.3 million Syrian pounds ($790,000) on June 29 from 11.4 million Syrian pounds on June 22, according to the daily bulletin on the exchange’s Web site. “The reason for the increased volume is the heavy activity on two stocks — Bank of Syria & Overseas and Arab Bank-Syria because investors are cashing in,” Al-Jleilati said. “These investors want to use the money to participate in the initial public offerings of Qatar National Bank-Syria and the rights issue to increase Bank Audi-Syria’s capital.” Bank Audi-Syria’s share offering started on June 24 and QNB-Syria’s is expected to offer shares on July 12. The exchange will open on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday each week instead of Monday and Thursday previously, said Al- Jleilati.

Salah Kaftaru arrested ….

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Al-Maliki’s Views of the Democracy in Iraq

It is perhaps ironic that Nouri Al-Maliki chose the U.S.-funded satellite television channel Al-Hurra on which to denounce the current political system based on consensus democracy which has catapulted him to the top. Al-Maliki said that a consensus was necessary in the early stages of transition to democracy after the fall of the Saddam region, but that if the rule by consensus should persist, it will turn into a disaster. He said “Democracy means the rule by the majority and the idea of consensus democracy is not compatible with [true] democracy and, in fact, contradicts it.”(3) He called for limiting the force of agreements that guarantee certain positions to the Kurds (the presidency of the republic), to the Sunnis (the presidency of parliament),(4) and, of course, to the Shia (the premiership). It is a system of power sharing commonly referred to in Iraq as has-hasah which, when taken to extremes, has meant that every single position in government, from the president of the republic to the office messenger, is distributed along the power-sharing principle according to a numerical formula based on a census taken decades ago.(5) This formula for distributing government positions could drastically change if the preparations for census to be conducted next year proceed on schedule.

Al-Maliki said that after the next round of national elections he “will call to put an end to the consensus.” His critics quickly claimed that a strict majority rule means a rule by the Shi’a.

Syrian population            jobs needed               jobs needed

If 2.7% growth             If 50%  labor partic.    If 66%  labor participation

2010      23,621,000            310,500                 409,860

2015      26,986,425            354,743                 468,261

2020      30,832,072            405,290                 534,983

2025      35,225,319            463,040                 611,212

2030      40,244,557            529,018                 698,304

2035      45,978,984            604,398                 797,805

2040      52,530,506            690,518                 911,484

2045      60,015,552            788,909                1,041,360

2050      68,567,138            901,321                1,189,743

The number of jobs listed in the chart above is the number required to keep Syria’s unemployment rate from rising above what it is today. In order to actually lower the current unemployment rate double digit economic growth will be needed.

Syria’s population is supposedly growing around 2.7%. If one assumes that today’s population is 23 million,
in the year 2015 it will be 26.9mm ; 2020= 30.8 mm ; 2025 = 35.2 mm ; 2030 = 40.2 mm ; 2035 = 46 mm

Since a country like Syria has close to 50% of its population under the age of 18, and a large percentage of women donnot work, the percent seeking employment (the labor force) could be as low as 50% (it is 66% in the USA).

If my 50% labor participation rate is accurate, then Syria needs to create close to 320,000 jobs a year to make sure that the unemployment rate stays the same. By 2035, this number will be 604,000 a year. The reality is that more women are/will enter the labor force going forward. Those under 18 will also move into the ranks of seeking employment as the population ages a bit from where we are today. Just in case 66% of the population seeks employment (as is the case in the U.S.) the country would need to create 420,000 jobs today and 800,000 jobs in the year 2035. The only solution is for real economic growth to exceed 8-9% ASAP………..

The following chart is from the IMF

* In Syria, youth comprise 61 percent of the total unemployed population. Of all unemployed Syrians between 15 and 29 years old, 80 percent are interested in public sector jobs while 60 percent are seeking jobs exclusively in the public sector.

Syrian-Saudi Rapprochement Imminent Amid News Hariri Received Damascus’ Blessing
by Naharnet

Regional players once again swung into action amidst reports that a Saudi envoy will soon visit Syria to discuss, apart from bilateral relations and the Middle East situation, Lebanon in light of the upcoming speakership election and formation of a new government….

As Safir said Hariri is surely to become Lebanon’s new prime minister before Monday while parliament, which is scheduled to meet Thursday, will re-elect current Speaker Nabih Berri for a fifth term in office.

The paper quoted Palestinian officials close to President Mahmoud Abbas as saying that Saudi King Abdullah has expressed during a recent summit between them his wish to visit Syria.

The officials said Abdullah conveyed his wish to the Syrian leadership.

They said the course of the birth of the new Lebanon cabinet headed by Hariri “will be a decisive point in terms of setting a date for Abdullah’s Damascus visit.”

As Safir quoted visitors coming from Syria as saying that Damascus welcomes Hariri’s nomination as Lebanon’s next premier, adding that future relations between the two neighboring countries await the new cabinet’s policy statement.

The daily Al Akhbar, meanwhile, quoted Lebanese sources as saying a summit is likely to take place between the Saudi monarch and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad “in an effort to convince Damascus to cooperate with the Hariri government.”

It also quoted Arab and Egyptian sources as saying Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak supports Hariri’s nomination for the post “in the framework of a Saudi-Egyptian consensus and non-objection from Syria.”

Al Akhbar said Mubarak encouraged Hariri to “take a goodwill gesture toward Syria.”

The regional action coincides with ongoing contacts that should culminate in a meeting between Hariri and Berri ahead of Thursday’s parliament session.

Once More the Smell of Falafel
by Zvi Bar’el (Haaretz)

Syria, like Israel or the Palestinians, gives nothing away for free. For the revival of ties with the United States it pays in hard currency at the Iraqi border, and by avoiding any involvement in the Lebanese elections, which led to the victory of Saad Hariri’s coalition. It will also require full payment for peace with Israel. ….

Last week Syrian President Bashar Assad said once more that Israel is not a partner for peace. This declaration was not intended for the Israeli people to press their government. Assad is addressing Washington when he says “take this recalcitrant player and start shaking him up.” … On this front, a relatively easy one, Washington appears to be in no hurry.

Making peace is not a bitter medicine that needs to be taken in doses. Multilateral peace talks have been held in the past; the impression is that even without a detailed plan the Mideast is preparing to give the peace process another chance. But this time Israel will find it very hard to say the Syrians and Palestinians are not “ready” for peace. The Americans have matured the Arab side quite rapidly, and Israel needs to hurry and respond in kind.

What we need is not a competition on who is a refusenik, but an Israeli diplomatic initiative. … Not a clinical evaluation of the degree to which Assad is serious, but the reestablishment of the negotiating teams, the rallying of Turkey to set up the venue, and a declaration of principles on a withdrawal from the Golan Heights. There is no other way to start the overall process, and it might spur a revolution in the Middle East…..

I thank Moran Banai for many of these links. She edits the Middle East Bulletin for the Center for American Progress in Washington. See www.middleeastprogress.org

An Ambassador to Syria and a Message to Iran —The National, Editorial

Whether Socialism: Syria Baath Party Debates Renewal —by Ayman Abalnour for Institute for War and Peace Reporting.

Edward Djerejian, former U.S. ambassador to Syria and Israel; former assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs, “Job Advice for the New Ambassador to Syria,” interview with National Public Radio, June 25, 2009:

“When I was assigned to Damascus in 1988, under President Reagan and, later, President Bush, 41, we had a very adversarial situation between the two countries, as we do today, and admittedly in a different historic context, but we had major issues: the civil war in Lebanon, the Israeli-Syrian relationship, issues involving Syrian Jewry, et cetera. … But yet, we engaged. We engaged in a very direct, very authoritative manner with the president of the United States and the secretary of state fully behind the dialogue. And we were able, in that context, to achieve results … helping to end the civil war in Lebanon, getting Syria on board our coalition against Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, getting freedom of travel of Syrian Jews. And the big prize was getting the Syrians and—especially then President Hafez al-Assad—to agree to face to face direct negotiations with Israel. So I am a very strong proponent of dialogue with our adversaries. I support President Obama’s initiatives for a dialogue with Syria and Iran, for example, but as long as that dialogue is conducted in a very authoritative and tough-minded manner.”

Israel to leave Shebaa after peace deal – UN envoy
By Patrick Galey,Daily Star staff, Monday, June 29, 2009

BEIRUT: Syria will hand back the Shebaa Farms as soon as it signs a peace deal with Israel, according to a senior UN official on Saturday. The UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon Michael Williams said that Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem personally indicated to him that Syria considers the Farms to be Lebanese territory during talks this weekend. ….

Chinese exports could crush fragile markets Financial Times
By Ben Simpfendorfer , Financial Times, 29 Jun 2009

.– Syria’s government imposed tariffs on Chinese textile imports in response to rising factory closures in Aleppo, the country’s historic centre for textile production…..

The writer is chief China economist for The Royal Bank of Scotland and author of The New Silk Road

Sami Moubayed explains why: “Michael Jackson will be missed, and forever remembered, by his Arab and Syrian fans.”

Sex Matters:Low birthrates aren’t the result of economic growth and political stability; they’re a prerequisite. BY MALCOLM POTTS, MARTHA CAMPBELL | JUNE 22, 2009 / Foreign Policy

There is a well-known story about how a society stabilizes its population. As a country transitions from poverty to affluence, birthrates plunge—from six or eight children per woman to just about two. Population growth levels off. Prosperity and education, the story goes, are just about the best form of birth control there is. But this tale gets it backward. Low birthrates aren’t a consequence of national wealth; rather, they’re needed to create it. Soaring unemployment, endemic poverty, and flailing schools are quite simply impossible to combat when every year adds more and more people…..

[Iran has reduced its birthrate dramatically and should be ready for economic growth according to this article. Read why.]

Reuters– A joint venture led by Greek engineering firm Metka (MTKr.AT) signed a deal worth more than 640 million euros to build a natural gas-fired power plant in Syria, Metka said on Monday.
The project involves the construction, engineering and procurement of a 700 megawatt plant 35 km south of Damascus. Metka has a 75 percent stake in the venture with Italy’s Ansaldo Energia, a unit of Italy’s Finmeccanica (SIFI.MI), holding 25 percent.

Have we found the body of St Paul?
By A N Wilson Last updated at 2:43 AM on 30th June 2009

Ruthless, half mad, he stoned Christians to death. He also founded modern civilisation. And until yesterday, his fate was one of history’s great mysteries…

Deeply moved, the Pope delivered the news on Sunday that fragments of bones found in the tomb traditionally considered to be that of Saint Paul did indeed date from the first or second century.

Which means that, in all likelihood, they are the bones of the Apostle Paul – bones that have lain there for 1,950 years yet, astonishingly, have only been discovered in our time….

On the subject of St. Paul, see this article by S. Farah

Also see this article [in arabic] about President Assad’s meeting with Christian religious leaders

Iraq after the US withdrawal

Anthony Shadid believes the situation in Iraq will get worse following the US withdrawal but explains that few foreign reporters will be there to report on it: “We are withdrawing, in more ways than one, even as the mud gets wetter.”

Joost Hiltermann writes:

“Much could go wrong, and much probably will. The warning signs will include flawed elections, an end to political negotiations, a return to sectarian fighting in Baghdad, and a renewed refugee flow. Or Iraqis could manage to keep talking and somehow muddle through. Either way, this week’s much-ballyhooed deadline won’t decide much of anything.”

ANDREW J. BACEVICH: Professor of history and international relations at Boston University; author of “The Limits of Power; The End of American Exceptionalism”

American interests are best served by sustaining the pretense that “the surge has worked.” By ignoring the absence of any meaningful political reconciliation among rival Iraqi factions and by pretending that Iraqis should find tolerable levels of violence that would be deemed intolerable anywhere else, the Obama administration may yet be able to extricate the United States from a war that has failed utterly: no Iraqi weapons of mass destruction found, no ties between Saddam Hussein and the jihadists established, no democratic transformation of the Islamic world set in motion, no road to peace in Jerusalem discovered in downtown Baghdad.

JOHN A. NAGL: President of the Center for a New American Security

It is time for America to take the long view. Neither Iraq’s nor America’s stake in a stable, peaceful Middle East will vanish when the last American combat brigade departs. American policymakers must advance U.S. interests in Iraq and the Middle East through a long-term, low-profile engagement to help resolve Iraq’s internal challenges, strengthen its government and economic institutions, and integrate it as a constructive partner in the region. While shaping this new relationship will be difficult, neglecting it will have serious consequences for U.S. national security.

Israel and Palestine

In the West Bank, Suburb or Settlement?

MODIIN ILLIT, West Bank, June 29 — Chaim Hanfling knows a lot about this settlement’s population boom. Six of his 11 siblings have moved here from Jerusalem in recent years to take advantage of the lower land prices, and at age 29, he has added four children of his own. (By Howard Schneider, The Washington Post)

NUCLEAR WEAPONS KEY TO ISRAELI RETENTION OF CAPTURED TERRITORY
by Grant F. Smith
June 20, 2009, OpEd News

“A newly declassified 1960 report on Israel’s nukes underscores role in foreign policy “assertiveness.”

“Possession of a nuclear weapon capability, or even the prospect of achieving it, would clearly give Israel a greater sense of security, self-confidence, and assertiveness…Israel would be less inclined than ever to make concessions…” are conclusions of a CIA Special National Intelligence Estimate released on June 5, 2009.

The December 1960 intelligence analysis, parts which are still classified, offers timely context as the Obama administration struggles to slow booming settlement activities in lands Israel captured during preemptive attacks in 1967.

Do nuclear weapons enter the calculation as Israel continues to reject pressure from the very country providing billions in yearly foreign aid, preferential treatment of exports and US charitable donations? Yes, is the clear conclusion.

For years the CIA resisted public calls to declassify files about the financing, development, deployment and strategy behind Israel’s nuclear weapons. This was in line with the policy of “strategic ambiguity.” Both the US and Israel officially refused to confirm or deny the existence of a nuclear arsenal. Such secrecy has been used to justify military aid to Israel despite explicit bans on proliferators legislated by Senators Symington and Glenn in the 1970s. Recent public confirmations of Israel’s nuclear status by US officials could enable legal challenges and new public scrutiny of taxpayer funds flowing to Israel.

The authors of the 1960s CIA estimate focus on the military deterrent nature of Israel’s nuclear capability. Nevertheless the possibility of subtle nuclear blackmail in return for diplomatic and foreign aid support was implicit. The declassified CIA report reveals that Israeli “assertiveness” and reluctance to negotiate could be empowered by nuclear weapons. Longstanding Israeli rejection of UN, US and human rights initiatives partially depend upon the influence of its secret arsenal. Success also depends on regional nuclear hegemony, explaining Israel’s ongoing drive to focus world attention on Iran’s civilian nuclear program.

Ironically, Israel may now be driving regional nuclear proliferation as it successfully demonstrates how such weapons bestow the ability to resist outside pressures and international accountability. Unlike Iran, Israel has never signed the Nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty. Recent estimates conclude Israel has deployed approximately 200 nuclear bombs and warheads.

I begin by apologizing to Howard Schweber, an Associate Professor of Political Science and Law at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who wrote me a thoughtful note explaining that I had mischaracterized his article “Iran and the Syrian Gambit,” which I excerpted in my last post.

Here is Prof. Schweber’s note, which I publish in full. I lumped his article in with a few others and should not have.:

Dear Prof. Landis,

Someone sent me a link to your blog post entitled “Why Turmoil in Iran Will not Cause Peace Between Israel and Syria.” I wanted to point out that in some cases I did not actually make the claims that you ascribed to me (and others). Specifically:

1. I never said that Iran would be weakened, or that Syria would lose confidence in Iran. What I said (I cannot speak for other commentators) was that the Obama administration appears to be reaching out to Syria, that this is a Good Thing, and that from *our* — the American — perspective having relations with Syria is important partly for its effects on limiting Iran’s reach in the Middle East. The Syrian perspective is different. I continue to believe — as I think you do, too — that Assad will be willing to go along with whatever gets him the most of what he wants, starting with the return of most of the Golan. That, and only that, would be the incentive that would lead Syria to make peace with Israel. But even absent peace with Israel, Syria’s relations with the U.S. can be improved, with beneficial effects for America’s interests.

2. I certainly never said that an increase in democracy in Iran would result in a regime that is friendlier to Israel — actually, in emphasizing the Islamic element in the opposition I was trying to make the opposite point!

3. I do think that the Islamic element in the opposition offers the possibilty of an opening on the nuclear issue.

4. But this is the one that got me upset enough to write to you. “Many Americans and Israelis share a belief that they can solve the Arab-Israeli conflict by breaking the Arabs. The analysts recorded in the following articles seem to be swayed by this conviction.” I reject the suggestion that I have ever thought of “breaking the Arabs” as a path to peace. To the contrary, I consider this a despicable way of thinking that is associated with the worst Jabotinskyite tendencies of right-wing Zionism — and have spent literally decades fighting against it in my own small way.

I apologize for this intrusion, but since you are a serious observer of the Middle East I felt compelled to respond.

Respectfully, hs

Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak arrived in Washington Monday afternoon, after a forum of ministers including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided not to freeze construction in West Bank settlements. YNet.com explains that “Barak will attempt to soften the US and EU’s stance on the issue by proposing that the future of the settlements be determined during talks with the Palestinians.” The Washington Post has picked up on this.

Jackson Diehl, the Deputy Editorial Page Editor of the Washington Post, supports this strategy in his article, “End the Spat With Israel.  He attacks the State Department and Obama’s effort to stop Israel from swallowing up remaining Palestinian land that could support the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. He advises that Obama use the Iran problem as a “foreign policy opportunity” to “creep away from” ts promise to stop settlement expansion.”

He explains why Obama is pursuing a fool’s mission in trying to stop Israel’s land grab:

This absolutist position is a loser for three reasons. First, it has allowed Palestinian and Arab leaders to withhold the steps they were asked for; they claim to be waiting for the settlement “freeze” even as they quietly savor a rare public battle between Israel and the United States. Second, the administration’s objective — whatever its merits — is unobtainable. No Israeli government has ever agreed to an unconditional freeze, and no coalition could be assembled from the current parliament to impose one.

He advises the US administration to shift pressure away from Israel to also demand that Palestinians and Syria “take tangible steps toward a regional settlement.” He concludes: “It would be foolish to squander an opportunity over a handful of Israeli apartment houses.”

Ethan Bonner of the NYTimes explains how “Israel May Shift on Settlements Freeze Amid Broader Effort.” The Israelis are putting forward the notion that they will slow settlement construction for a few months if Arab countries take measurable steps to meet their efforts, thus the pace of settlement construction will become contingent on Arab concessions. This Israeli proposal is identical to the one being pushed by Diehl of the Washington Post quoted above.

Egypt: “Arab Activists Watch Iran And Wonder: ‘Why Not Us?‘” by Sudarsan Raghavan in the W. Post:

When the Iranian protests erupted, Ahmed Abd el-Fatah wrote on his blog, “We Egyptians are like youth watching pornography because they can’t practice sex. Congratulations to Iran for its democracy.”

Fatah noted that many of the Iranian protesters appear to be from the social elite. In Egypt, most people are more concerned about food and other basic necessities than politics. More than a quarter of Egypt’s 80 million people are illiterate, and only 8 percent have access to the Internet.

“The elite here are limited, and most are working in hand with the regime,” Fatah said. “And the only reason the Egyptian street has risen up is over money, salaries or prices. The minute the police arrive, there is silence.”

“We’re too passive,” El Sheikh said. “Protesters go downtown, perhaps 20 or 30 at a time. The security forces come. They beat them senseless. They detain them. And that’s as good as it gets.”….

Most of a group [of Egyptian lawyers] said they admired Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and wanted him to remain in power — chiefly because he was America’s foe. “Anyone who can stand up to the United States and force his nation’s interest forward, we’ll support him,” said Ahmed Mattar, 29.

the PULSE

“….There is no real evidence pointing to the latter other than the silence from the administration on the just-announced plan to expand the Talmon settlement by some 300 units, a provocation and a test of Obama’s resolve. Beyond that is the general fear that the Israeli government has invariably won these battles with previous administrations and the feeling that Obama will, like his predecessors, blink as the lobby quietly (or loudly) pushes back.

Only time will tell whether Obama will choose to prevail; I say “choose” because he holds all the cards in the U.S.-Israel relationship….”

Want to Stop Israeli Settlements? Follow the Dollars.
By Ronit Avni
Thursday, June 25, 2009; 6:33 PM

This month, both at Cairo University and from the Oval Office, President Obama has called on the Israeli government to stop the expansion of settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories. He should send the same message to the Americans who are funding and fueling them.

There are more than 450,000 settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, according to Peace Now, an Israeli organization that opposes the settlements. Some of them are Americans. And some of the most influential, militant figures in the settler movement have been Americans, too. Among them were Baruch Goldstein, the doctor from Brooklyn who fired 100 shots at worshiping Muslims in Hebron in 1994, killing 29; Rabbi Meir Kahane, the founder of the Kach party, which was banned in Israel in 1988 on the grounds that it was racist; and convicted terrorist Era Rapaport, a member of the Land Redemption Fund, which coordinates the acquisition of Palestinian land in areas targeted for settlement expansion.

Before the settlers were removed from Gaza in 2005, I visited a group of them while shooting my last film. Some of the settlements’ most passionate advocates spoke about their deep roots in the Gaza Strip even though they were actually Americans. Years earlier, while working as a human rights advocate, I had received reports from colleagues who had been threatened or physically attacked by young settlers as they tried to protect Palestinian farmers during harvest. The attackers often included North American Jews, my colleagues said.
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Evangelical Christians in the United States also support the settlements, raising millions of dollars for them, according to a recent National Public Radio report. The Colorado-based Christian Friends of Israeli Communities, for example, encourages churches and ministries to connect with “the pioneers of Biblical Israel” through the “adopt-a-settlement program.” Sondra Oster Baras, director of the organization’s Israeli office, estimates that more than half of the West Bank settlements receive direct or indirect support from Christians, according to the NPR report.

A handful of wealthy businessmen, including American casino magnate Irving Moskowitz, are widely reported to have donated to groups such as the Brooklyn-based not-for-profit Hebron Fund, which raises money to support residents in the West Bank city of Hebron. According to the donation page on its Web site, the organization aims to “keep Hebron Jewish for the Jewish people.” Friends of Itamar, also based in Brooklyn, engages in domestic, tax-deductible fundraising for the West Bank settlement of Itamar. All this comes at the expense of the U.S. government, which loses tax revenue by allowing these groups to operate as not-for-profit entities.

Not all support for the settlements comes through charitable organizations. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz has reported that in 2007, the settler organization Amana held “housing fairs” in New York and New Jersey to encourage American Jews to buy property in the West Bank. According to the Jewish Voice and Opinion, a self-described “politically conservative Jewish publication” in New Jersey, approximately 250 people attended and as many as 10 properties were slated for purchase.

Last year the Palestinian village of Bil’in filed suit in Canada against two Quebec-based companies that built and sold residential units in a West Bank settlement. The case is still pending, but it demonstrates that people are beginning to pay attention to non-Israeli influences on settlement growth.

If the courts can’t find a way to dissuade settlement expansion, perhaps the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control should intervene. The U.S. government has already designated Kahane’s movement a foreign terrorist organization for reasons unrelated to settlement financing, but in doing so, it has prohibited U.S. citizens from providing financial support to this group.

The First Amendment protects the right of the settlement advocates to express their views, and so it should. I am not suggesting that non-profits should lose their tax advantages simply because they are at odds with American foreign policy. But the settlements are widely considered a violation of international law. Thirty years ago, a U.S. State Department legal adviser issued an opinion that called the settlements “inconsistent” with the Fourth Geneva Convention. In recent weeks, officials at State and in the White House have declined to say whether the 1979 opinion reflects official government policy, but President Obama’s comments have hardly been ambiguous. “The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements,” he said in Cairo. “It is time for these settlements to stop.”

Maybe it’s also time for Americans to stop supporting them.

Ronit Avni, an Israeli, U.S. and Canadian citizen, is the director of the film “Encounter Point” and the executive director of Just Vision, an organization that documents Palestinian and Israeli conflict-resolution peace initiatives.

The following article explains that Syria has one of the highest population growth rates in the world, which is undermining efforts to increase per capita GDP and ruining the environment as well as causing an explosion in the size of Syria’s cities which are attracting most of the population growth.

Basketball: At just 18-years-old, Mr Hamay has size 18 feet and stands 229cm (7 feet 6 inches) high, making him the tallest player in the competition. Syria’s tallest man takes attention in his stride

Western analysts ( See the three articles excerpted below) argue that the troubles in Iran will cause the weakening of the Islamic Republic and lead to Syria’s loss of trust in Iran. They further argue that this will create an opportunity for the US to “flip” Syria,  which means getting it to cut support for Hamas and Hizbullah and sign peace with Israel.

This argument makes little sense to me. Let me offer two reasons why I fail to be convinced. 1) How will Iran be weakened by cracking down on liberals, reformers, and factional opponents? Is this something the Iranian government has not done many times before? Did Iranians believe that Iran was a liberal republic before the elections, such that everything has now changed, as some Western analysts seem to believe?  Will the Iranian government now forswear the development of nuclear power, abandon its support for Syria, or collapse into political chaos? I doubt it.

2. Will Syria decide to sacrifice claims to the Golan in order to sign a peace agreement with an Israel that refuses to trade land for peace? That is the implication of all these analysts.  What will the US or Israel offer Syria that it was not offering prior to Iran’s disputed elections to make Syria abandon its foreign policy priorities of retrieving its occupied land, not abandoning Lebanon to America’s and Israel’s sphere of influence, and supporting Palestinians in their struggle to retain ownership of their land.

Many Americans and Israelis share a belief that they can solve the Arab-Israeli conflict by breaking the Arabs. The analysts recorded in the following articles seem to be swayed by this conviction. They may turn out to be correct, but it will take many more decades of struggle before we will know. In the mean time, I doubt that the events in Iran will bring a sea change in regional attitudes toward Israel or the balance in power.

[End]

p.s. In reference to the last excellent article copied below by Yigal Schleifer which reports on the growing tensions in Turkey over the revelations that elements of the Turkish military have been hatching a plot to discredit or even topple the government of the AKP. This article underlines that rule that greater democracy in Middle Eastern countries brings greater opposition to Israel and its unjust treatment of Palestinians. Western analysts somehow seem to believe that greater democracy in the Middle East will bring greater acceptance of Israel’s expansion beyond its 1967 borders. This logic doesn’t make sense to me.

Read Basil Hakki’s review of Benny Morris, One State, Two State, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2009. Hakki does an excellent job of getting the zibdeh.

In Iran Turmoil, U.S. Sees Chance to Gain Sway in Mideast
By JAY SOLOMON and PETER SPIEGEL in Wall Street Journal

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration and its Middle East allies are looking to capitalize on Iran’s political crisis to reverse strategic gains Tehran has made across the region, said U.S. and Arab officials.

A principal early test case for that evolving U.S. strategy will be Syria, which plays a critical role in helping Tehran arm and fund militant groups Hamas in the Palestinian territories and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

U.S. strategists are assessing whether Iran’s inner turmoil will force its clerical leaders to rein in support for those organizations and focus instead on quelling domestic dissent.

Or, as some U.S. strategists fear, whether Iran’s leaders, feeling weakened at home, will seek to expand Iran’s overseas operations in order to appear strong.

President Barack Obama has long stated his desire to woo Syrian President Bashar Assad away from his military and economic alliance with Iran. That could help stabilize Lebanon and advance the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, two leading sources of conflict in the region.

The White House decision this week to return an American ambassador to Damascus after a four-year hiatus was made, in part, by heightened hopes in Washington that Iran’s internal instability could force Mr. Assad to rethink his partnership with Tehran, said U.S. officials.

U.S. diplomats and Pentagon officials have visited Damascus in recent months, in an effort to nudge Syria to break with Tehran and cooperate in promoting regional stability.

“If Syria feels the Iranian situation is unraveling, that’s a good thing from our perspective,” said a senior Obama administration official working on the Middle East. He said the U.S. has been pushing Damascus to curtail Hamas’s military activities and to pursue direct peace talks with Israel…..

Iran and the Syrian Gambit
Howard Schweber, Associate Professor of Political Science and Law at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
June 26, 2009

…..Our bigger long-term concern is with Iran’s role in Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine. This week two things were announced. First, the U.S. is sending an ambassador to Damascus. Second, Jimmy Carter — working with Egypt and Syria — may have worked out terms for the release of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier whose capture by Hamas was one of the triggering events of Israel’s invasion of Gaza. HaAretz reports that Shalit’s release will take place within a few days as part of a prisoner exchange, and that the initial proposal was floated by Carter during a visit to Damascus and Gaza last year.

These stories may very well be connected, and they point to the almost incredible possibility that the U.S. may finally be ready to have a serious foreign policy in the Middle East. For what it’s worth, I have been saying for many years that relations with Syria are the key. Here’s just one reason: if Syria can be brought on board with a peace effort, Iran no longer has direct supply lines into Lebanon. Meanwhile, Syria has itself been supporting Hamas in Gaza (hence its role in negotiating the release of Shalit) as well as meddling in Lebanon. But while Syria has been notoriously difficult to deal with in the past, there is no reason in principle why progress cannot be made. Assad is an opportunist, not a mad ideologue, and certainly not a religious fanatic. (The single stupidest neocon phrase — against some pretty tough competition! — has to be “the Shiite Crescent,” an arc of states comprising Iran, Syria and Lebanon that are supposed to represent the religiously defined threat to American interests. Since Syria is less than 5% Shiite and is ruled by an Alawite minority, it was never terribly clear what this was supposed to mean.)

What Syria wants is simple: they want the Golan Heights back. Which is where the U.S. comes in. There have been repeated points at which Israel and Syria came close to substantive negotiations on the issue of the Golan, only to see those efforts fail. But there has never been a sustained and substantive American presence in the dialogue. If Assad can be persuaded that Syria has more to gain by engagement with the West than by an alliance with Iran, that immediately improves the situation in Lebanon, improves the security of Israel’s northern border, and improves the situation in Western Iraq. Syria’s participation in arranging the release of Shalit — even if that ultimately doesn’t happen — is a powerful and positive sign that Assad is open to the possibility.

Then there is the third U.S. interest and a tantalizing possibility: that Iran might resume its cooperation with U.S. operations in Afghanistan. As this piece from Stratfor nicely explains, Iran’s 500-plus mile border with Afghanistan, strong ethnic connections to Afghan Pashtuns, and available ports make it an ideal partner. In other words, at the very same time that the U.S. has a strong interest in limiting Iran’s reach to the West beyond Iraq, we may have another strong interest in encouraging Iranian engagement to the East. The Sunni attacks against Shiites in Iraq are part of the larger conflict between Sunni radicals — think Taliban — and Shiite Iran.

So the Obama administration has had to play a very careful hand: do nothing to repeat the stupidity that helped launch Ahmadinejad to the presidency; develop the opening that Jimmy Carter has helped develop and initiate an engagement with Syria in the hope of isolating Iran to the West; and at the same time look ahead to the role that the version of the Iranian regime that emerges out of a compromise in the Assembly of Experts might play in Afghanistan. This week, Obama and his State Department have done all three brilliantly.

Laura Rosen in the CABLE

….Obama’s hand may actually have been strengthened and Iran’s weakened by some overlooked recent events. Among the factors they cite: the outcome of recent elections in Lebanon, in which a pro-western coalition won a majority over a coalition that includes the Iranian-backed Shiite militant group Hezbollah, the eagerness of Iran’s leading regional ally Syria to engage with Washington, Arab states’ generally positive response to the Obama administration’s strong push to negotiate Middle East peace and the creation of a Palestinian state. Beyond the Middle East, Obama’s aggressive non-proliferation initiatives and “reset” with Moscow could also end up increasing pressure on Iran, they said.

“From 2003 to 2009, Iran was on a roll,” one senior administration official said Friday. “Expanding its sphere of influence, benefiting from a changed balance of power in the region, and generally optimistic about its world. Many said it was not possible to engage because Iran was so strong and thus disincented to do so. ….

“The chessboard is moving demonstrably in the U.S. direction.” That is the takeaway, said Congressional Research Service Middle East analyst Kenneth Katzman, from recent assessments by administration officials. “What I heard them saying is, ‘Let’s take advantage of that now, while we have the chessboard, and try to get a nuclear deal and get that resolved, rather than the whole ball of wax.'”

Added Katzman, of the perceived trend: “The strategic picture in the Middle East has moved to the U.S. advantage. The Lebanon elections, reengagement with Syria, stability (?) in Iraq, have added up to a shifting chessboard against Iran.”But he added, while there is some optimism that regional and global trends are working to the U.S.’s advantage on Iran, there is also diminished expectation that near-term engagement is likely to occur. At the earliest, it’s not expected — if at all — until the fall. …

And indeed, not everyone is feeling optimistic. “My understanding is the president has had a much larger vision,” said one Washington Iran analyst on condition of anonymity. “He wanted a strategic dialogue with the Iranians, he gave them a pathway into the western camp that benefits the west, the people of Iran, and the larger picture: peace and stability in the Middle East…..

Byman did think Iran would be feeling uncomfortable about some regional trends, including renewed Washington engagement with Syria, as well as the U.S. drawdown in Iraq. “The Syria thing is real in terms of pressure on Iran. Iran has only one strategic ally in the Middle East: Syria. The U.S. drawdown from Iraq is real. It reduces the vulnerability of America.” …..”

Roger Cohen in the NYTimes: “We need President Obama to put engagement [with Iran] — still the right medium-term objective — on hold in the name [of Iranian women].”

Iranian Cleric Calls for ‘Ruthless’ Punishment of Protest Leaders

TEHRAN, June 26 — An influential Iranian cleric on Friday urged “ruthless” punishment, possibly including execution, for leaders of protests against a disputed presidential election, while President Obama intensified his criticism of a crackdown on the Iranian opposition and rejected President…(By Thomas Erdbrink and William Branigin, The Washington Post)

Lebanon:
BBC, Saad Hariri has become the country’s new prime-minister.

BBC Cen Asia: Paper Mulls Syrian Leader’s Failure to Visit
2009-06-27 08:18:59.933 GMT

Text of report by Armenian newspaper Haykakan Zhamanak on 18 June headlined “Unprecedented”

Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad’s visit stood out because of an unprecedented fact. His agenda did not include a visit to Tsitsernakaberd (Genocide Memorial) although it is one of the required protocol points for official visits.

Yesterday morning the Armenian president’s office announced the Syrian president’s agenda, giving details on his meetings and places of visit, but Tsisternakaberd was not among them.

Let us remind you that a visit to the Genocide Memorial is required during visit by all high level officials (beyond the level of foreign
minister) arriving in the Republic of Armenia. Actually, Al-Assad is the only visiting head of state for whom the protocol procedures have been breached.

Let us mention that a similar incident happened in 2007 during the visit of Iranian President Ahmadinezhad, although a visit to the Genocide Memorial was on his agenda. Since he left Armenia one day earlier, he did not manage to visit the memorial.

‘Coup Document’ Raises Tensions in Turkey
Yigal Schleifer | 24 Jun 2009
World Politics Review

ISTANBUL — Allegations that elements of the Turkish military may have been hatching a plot to discredit or even topple the government of the liberal Islamic Justice and Development Party (AKP) are threatening to raise military-civilian tensions in Turkey and further widen the country’s deep political divide. At the same time, the allegations are also raising questions about how the plot against the AKP fits into an ongoing investigation into another coup attempt, known as Ergenekon.

This latest Turkish political crisis was sparked when Taraf — a hard-hitting liberal daily that has been severely critical of the military in the past — published a document on June 12 entitled, “Plan to Combat Islamic Fundamentalism.” The four-page document, allegedly signed by a colonel in the military’s psychological warfare unit, outlined ways in which the AKP government could be weakened. Among them, the document suggested “mobilizing” moles within the party and stoking anti-Armenian and anti-Greek sentiments in order to strengthen the nationalist opposition.

The plan also called for discrediting the pro-government Gulen movement, Turkey’s largest and most powerful Islamic brotherhood, by planting weapons and ammunition in its members’ homes and even linking it to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

Police found the document while searching the office of a lawyer who is representing a retired colonel linked to the Ergenekon case.

The Turkish military, which has initiated an investigation into the document’s authenticity, quickly distanced itself from it. When asked during an interview in the influential Hurriyet newspaper if an order to prepare such a plan could be issued by the military command, Turkish top general Ilker Basbug replied: “I even consider this question an insult. Such an order was never given.”

In a statement issued on June 15, the military said that it wouldn’t tolerate personnel “whose behavior and thoughts were incompatible with the principles of democracy and a state of law.”

Although AKP officials have taken steps towards legal action against the military regarding the document, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan appeared to take a more reconciliatory approach after a meeting with Basbug to talk about the allegations.

“Efforts to stir up mistrust between institutions will harm . . . Turkey as a whole,” Erdogan said. “The military High Command has shown responsibility and sensitivity from the moment this story broke.”

Still, even if both sides are trying to make nice, troubling questions remain. If the document exposed by Taraf is genuine, did it originate in the upper echelons of the military — which has not hesitated to intervene in Turkish politics in the past? Or was it the product of disgruntled officers unhappy with the increasing amount of civilian control the government is exercising over the armed forces? Either way, the document could be an indication of a military that is having a hard time kicking some of its old habits: Basbug’s predecessor also had to deal with restive underlings who hatched coup plots in 2003 and 2004.

The possibility of the leaked document being a forgery has not been discounted, at least not among members of the secularist press and Turkey’s political opposition. Some observers have suggested that what’s really being played out here is not a confrontation between the military and the AKP, but rather one between the generals and the influential Gulen movement. Media outlets affiliated with the movement have been among the quickest to accuse the military of being up to no good in this current crisis.

“Let’s push aside whether the document is real and get into the deep,” Ismet Berkan, editor of Radikal, a liberal daily owned by the pro-secularist Dogan Group, recently wrote in a column. “Everything we witness is in fact a psychological war. The Turkish Armed Forces, or TSK, is on one side, and the Gulen movement on the other.”

Ultimately, regardless of who actually wrote the contested document, the affair is another reminder of how deeply polarized Turkish politics and society are right now. Opponents and supporters of the AKP are unable to find common ground on most issues, with each side quick to accuse the other of wrongdoing. As an example, several pro-government papers recently reported that investigators were almost completely certain that the document in question is genuine. Some pro-secularist papers, meanwhile, reported that investigators were almost completely certain the same document is a fake. Ultimately, this kind of split does not bode well for Turkey’s political stability.

“Look at the situation through the eyes of ordinary people now. We are living in a country of psychological wars and excessive information pollution, and we do not know whom to believe,” Radikal’s Berkan wrote in his column. “Poor us!”

Assad sent tub of hummus to Olmert
By JPOST.COM STAFF, Jun 25, 2009

In a peaceful gesture two years ago, Syrian President Bashar Assad sent a tub of hummus to then-prime minister Ehud Olmert, Channel 2 reported Thursday.

According to the report, Assad was meeting a visiting US businessman in Syria and asked what Olmert liked to eat.

The businessman said hummus particularly tickled the then-prime minster’s taste buds, and so the Syrian president sent the tub, which eventually reached Olmert via Jordan.

Hillary Is Wrong About the Settlements
The U.S. and Israel reached a clear understanding about natural growth.
By ELLIOTT ABRAMS in WSJ

Despite fervent denials by Obama administration officials, there were indeed agreements between Israel and the United States regarding the growth of Israeli settlements on the West Bank. As the Obama administration has made the settlements issue a major bone of contention between Israel and the U.S., it is necessary that we review the recent history.

In the spring of 2003, U.S. officials (including me) held wide-ranging discussions with then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in Jerusalem. The “Roadmap for Peace” between Israel and the Palestinians had been written. President George W. Bush had endorsed Palestinian statehood, but only if the Palestinians eliminated terror. He had broken with Yasser Arafat, but Arafat still ruled in the Palestinian territories. Israel had defeated the intifada, so what was next?

Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, President George W. Bush, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Jordan’s King Abdullah, June 4, 2003.

We asked Mr. Sharon about freezing the West Bank settlements. I recall him asking, by way of reply, what did that mean for the settlers? They live there, he said, they serve in elite army units, and they marry. Should he tell them to have no more children, or move?

We discussed some approaches: Could he agree there would be no additional settlements? New construction only inside settlements, without expanding them physically? Could he agree there would be no additional land taken for settlements?

As we talked several principles emerged. The father of the settlements now agreed that limits must be placed on the settlements; more fundamentally, the old foe of the Palestinians could — under certain conditions — now agree to Palestinian statehood.

In June 2003, Mr. Sharon stood alongside Mr. Bush, King Abdullah II of Jordan, and Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas at Aqaba, Jordan, and endorsed Palestinian statehood publicly: “It is in Israel’s interest not to govern the Palestinians but for the Palestinians to govern themselves in their own state. A democratic Palestinian state fully at peace with Israel will promote the long-term security and well-being of Israel as a Jewish state.” At the end of that year he announced his intention to pull out of the Gaza Strip.

The U.S. government supported all this, but asked Mr. Sharon for two more things. First, that he remove some West Bank settlements; we wanted Israel to show that removing them was not impossible. Second, we wanted him to pull out of Gaza totally — including every single settlement and the “Philadelphi Strip” separating Gaza from Egypt, even though holding on to this strip would have prevented the smuggling of weapons to Hamas that was feared and has now come to pass. Mr. Sharon agreed on both counts.

These decisions were political dynamite, as Mr. Sharon had long predicted to us. In May 2004, his Likud Party rejected his plan in a referendum, handing him a resounding political defeat. In June, the Cabinet approved the withdrawal from Gaza, but only after Mr. Sharon fired two ministers and allowed two others to resign. His majority in the Knesset was now shaky.

After completing the Gaza withdrawal in August 2005, he called in November for a dissolution of the Knesset and for early elections. He also said he would leave Likud to form a new centrist party. The political and personal strain was very great. Four weeks later he suffered the first of two strokes that have left him in a coma.

Throughout, the Bush administration gave Mr. Sharon full support for his actions against terror and on final status issues. On April 14, 2004, Mr. Bush handed Mr. Sharon a letter saying that there would be no “right of return” for Palestinian refugees. Instead, the president said, “a solution to the Palestinian refugee issue as part of any final status agreement will need to be found through the establishment of a Palestinian state, and the settling of Palestinian refugees there, rather than in Israel.”

On the major settlement blocs, Mr. Bush said, “In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949.” Several previous administrations had declared all Israeli settlements beyond the “1967 borders” to be illegal. Here Mr. Bush dropped such language, referring to the 1967 borders — correctly — as merely the lines where the fighting stopped in 1949, and saying that in any realistic peace agreement Israel would be able to negotiate keeping those major settlements.

On settlements we also agreed on principles that would permit some continuing growth. Mr. Sharon stated these clearly in a major policy speech in December 2003: “Israel will meet all its obligations with regard to construction in the settlements. There will be no construction beyond the existing construction line, no expropriation of land for construction, no special economic incentives and no construction of new settlements.”

Ariel Sharon did not invent those four principles. They emerged from discussions with American officials and were discussed by Messrs. Sharon and Bush at their Aqaba meeting in June 2003.

They were not secret, either. Four days after the president’s letter, Mr. Sharon’s Chief of Staff Dov Weissglas wrote to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that “I wish to reconfirm the following understanding, which had been reached between us: 1. Restrictions on settlement growth: within the agreed principles of settlement activities, an effort will be made in the next few days to have a better definition of the construction line of settlements in Judea & Samaria.”

Stories in the press also made it clear that there were indeed “agreed principles.” On Aug. 21, 2004 the New York Times reported that “the Bush administration . . . now supports construction of new apartments in areas already built up in some settlements, as long as the expansion does not extend outward.”

In recent weeks, American officials have denied that any agreement on settlements existed. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated on June 17 that “in looking at the history of the Bush administration, there were no informal or oral enforceable agreements. That has been verified by the official record of the administration and by the personnel in the positions of responsibility.”

These statements are incorrect. Not only were there agreements, but the prime minister of Israel relied on them in undertaking a wrenching political reorientation — the dissolution of his government, the removal of every single Israeli citizen, settlement and military position in Gaza, and the removal of four small settlements in the West Bank. This was the first time Israel had ever removed settlements outside the context of a peace treaty, and it was a major step.

It is true that there was no U.S.-Israel “memorandum of understanding,” which is presumably what Mrs. Clinton means when she suggests that the “official record of the administration” contains none. But she would do well to consult documents like the Weissglas letter, or the notes of the Aqaba meeting, before suggesting that there was no meeting of the minds.

Mrs. Clinton also said there were no “enforceable” agreements. This is a strange phrase. How exactly would Israel enforce any agreement against an American decision to renege on it? Take it to the International Court in The Hague?

Regardless of what Mrs. Clinton has said, there was a bargained-for exchange. Mr. Sharon was determined to break the deadlock, withdraw from Gaza, remove settlements — and confront his former allies on Israel’s right by abandoning the “Greater Israel” position to endorse Palestinian statehood and limits on settlement growth. He asked for our support and got it, including the agreement that we would not demand a total settlement freeze.

For reasons that remain unclear, the Obama administration has decided to abandon the understandings about settlements reached by the previous administration with the Israeli government. We may be abandoning the deal now, but we cannot rewrite history and make believe it did not exist.

Mr. Abrams, a senior fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, handled Middle East affairs at the National Security Council from 2001 to 2009.
Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A15

Deconstructing the Popular Vote by Qifa Nabki

Lebanon’s parliament Thursday elected Nabih Berri as speaker for the coming four years, extending his 17-year leadership of the chamber in a vote that underlined improved ties between rival politicians….

Hariri, 39, is a frontrunner to head the new government. His decision to back Berri is seen as supportive of Lebanon’s stability and a further sign of improved ties between Syria and Saudi Arabia, whose rivalry was viewed as a major cause of the country’s crises in recent years.

“Obama on the road to Damascus” by Sami Moubayed

….The Syrians like Obama, and this raises the chances of a successful Syrian-US summit. They don’t want him to fail in the Middle East, in sharp contrast to what they wanted for Bush. In late May, Foreign Minister Walid al-Mouallem best put it when he said, “We approve of President Obama, a lot.”…

The Syrians want Obama to pressure the Israeli Prime Minister to change course, then chair an international conference, bringing all parties to roundtable peace talks with Israel. Obama needs to prove to the Arabs that he can put the words of June 4 – mainly on Israeli settlements and rights of the Palestinians – into action…..

In Iraq, a Different Struggle for Power – Anthony Shadid in the Post argues that Maliki is emerging as a strong man, building a network of patronage and security forces similar to the regimes elsewhere in the Middle East. “Maliki’s Message on January Election Is Clear: Cooperate or Risk His Wrath.” A friend of mine in Centcom argues that Maliki cannot consolidate power as a dictator “so long as US troops are sitting on him.” What happens in the long term is not clear.

“US, Syria, Iran, Hamas” via FLC
Helena Cobban at JWN

” ….As the mullahs’ grip on power weakens, there are new opportunities to peel away some of their allies. The United States is moving quickly to normalize relations with Syria, and there’s talk of working with the Saudis to draw elements of the radical Palestinian group Hamas away from its Iranian patrons, toward a coalition government that would be prepared to negotiate with Israel. Observes a White House official: “Iran’s allies in the region have to be wondering, ‘Why should we hitch our wagon to their starship?’ ”

…It has, of course, long been a dream of some Israelis and allies of Israel that they could “flip” Syria away from its sturdy, 30-year alliance with Iran. “Peeling them away” is a less crude and possibly more nuanced version of the same idea.
Ignatius links the administration’s current overture toward Syria, and its consideration of an overture toward Hamas, centrally to its desire to take maximum advantage of the current political problems in Tehran. I would note, however, that these moves have been under active consideration in the administration since considerably before the hotly disputed June 12 election in Iran.

Relations syro-irakiennes : Augmentation de 58% du quota de l’Irak en eau de l’Euphrate
Dans le but d’aider l’Irak à surmontehttps://joshualandis.com/blog/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&post=3415&message=4r la sécheresse dont il souffre actuellement, la Syrie a décidé d’augmenter de 58% le quota de ce pays [dans leur partage] des eaux de l’Euphrate suite

Syria: Economy Easing
Oxford Business Group, 24 June 2009

Indicating Syria’s economy may not be as immune to the global downturn as initially thought, the IMF lowered its assessment for growth, while exogenous factors are affecting output in the vital agriculture sector, putting an extra strain on the budget.

In mid-May, the IMF revised its growth predictions for Syria, for both this year and the next. In its latest projections, the organisation said that Syria’s GDP should rise by a still very respectable 3% in 2009, higher than the regional average of 2.6%, but lower than its previous estimates of 5.2% made late last year and 3.9% in early April.

Along with more modest growth, the IMF also predicted a slight rise in national debt, from 30.8% of GDP as of the end of 2008, to 32.6% by the close of this year. The rise in debt can be attributed to a number of factors, including increased spending on imported foods to make up shortfalls, having to import oil as local reserves can no longer meet domestic demand and the state raising expenditure to fund economic stimulation.

On a more positive note, the report said that inflation should drop significantly to almost half its 2008 level of 14.5%, to 7.5%, easing the burden on the general public of any economic slowdown.

While the IMF is revisiting its initial estimates, Damascus still expects robust growth ahead. The government foresees GDP growing by 6% this year and a further fall in inflation, which according to a report issued at the end of May by the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) was 5.4% in 2008.

Although the government is looking confidently forward to growth across the board, the CBS did highlight the perilous state of Syrian agriculture, with the sector recording a 22.5% decline in its contribution to GDP and the farming industry’s input dropping to just 14.7% of the national total.

Much of this dramatic fall was due to drought conditions that have blighted the sector since 2006 and look set to continue in 2009. On June 8, officials announced emergency measures were being taken in some drought-stricken regions in the north-east of the country, including the distribution of food aid in some of the worst-affected areas. It appears that, for the second year running, Syria will be forced to import wheat, with the harvest expected to fall short of the 4m tonnes required to meet domestic requirements.

Total wheat production will be about 3.2m tonnes instead of the planned yield of 4.7m tonnes, Hassan Katana, the head of the Syrian Agriculture Ministry’s Statistics and Planning Division, told Reuters in late May.

Not only does it seem likely that Syria will have to resort to the international market to bridge its wheat gap, but it may also have to dip into the state coffers to provide support to the rural community, deepening the $5.3bn deficit forecast by the government in this year’s budget.

While no longer the driving force of the Syrian economy, having been supplanted decades ago by oil production, agriculture has remained an economic pillar, both through its contribution to GDP and to employment, with some 30% of the national workforce, and another 20% indirectly dependent on the sector.

Improved trade relations may help offset the agricultural slowdown, following signs that one long-standing hurdle for the Syrian economy, the trade sanctions imposed by Washington in 2004 during the George Bush administration, may be removed in the near future. While the main topic of discussions during a visit to Damascus in mid-June by President Barack Obama’s Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, was reinvigorating the stalled peace process, US-Syrian relations were also canvassed.

Though few details of the talks were made public, Mitchell said he had held what he called “substantive discussions” with President Bashar Al Assad. The envoy also said that the US was looking establish a relationship based on mutual respect and interests.

Though there is little that the Syrian government can do to reverse the effects of the drought, its continuing rapprochement with the US could see the sanctions lifted in the near future, which could serve as a spring for other sectors of the economy and further strengthen its growth rate.

The Mountebanks & The Apostates
by Fawaz A. Gerges, 06.23.2009
From the July/August 2009 issue of The National Interest.

Reza Aslan, How to Win a Cosmic War: God, Globalization, and the End of the War on Terror (New York: Random House, 2009), 256 pp., $26.00.

Juan Cole, Engaging the Muslim World (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 288 pp., $26.95.

Emile Nakhleh, A Necessary Engagement: Reinventing America’s Relations with the Muslim World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008), 184 pp., $26.95.

AMERICA’S BLOODY encounter with Islam is a failure. At heart there is an inability to understand the context and dynamics of Arab and Muslim politics; the conceptual differences and boundaries between moderate Islamists, nonviolent radical activists, local jihadists and global jihadists like al-Qaeda. For eight years, the dominant U.S. narrative blurred the lines between “Islamist,” “radical,” “militant,” “extremist,” “jihadist” and “terrorist.” The United States equated Islamists’ offensive speech with jihadists’ violent action. But there are stark differences between locally and regionally based political groups like Palestinian Hamas and Lebanese Hezbollah and borderless, transnational and globalized jihadist groups like al-Qaeda that have been waging war against the United States and its close allies since the mid-1990s.

Scholars of the Greater Middle East like Georgetown’s John Esposito and Michael Hudson, Harvard’s Roger Owen, Richard Norton at Boston University, Richard Bulliet and Rashid Khalidi at Columbia, along with Mohammed Ayoob of Michigan State and many others were systematically marginalized from decision making, replaced by a motley gang of irresponsible ideologues, security types and other mountebanks.

Terrorism experts and crusading commentators—including Rohan Gunaratna, best-selling author of Inside Al Qaeda; counterterrorism consultant Evan F. Kohlmann; investigative journalist Steven Emerson; academic Daniel Pipes and others—are partly to blame. Instead of adopting a more constructive approach—one that draws distinctions between the many faces of political Islam—they took the easier, reductionist approach of lumping all Islamists together. They looked backward and pigeonholed mainstream and militant Islamists through the prism of al-Qaeda. These observers, wittingly or unwittingly, endorsed the official agenda by portraying Islamism not just as jihadism, a borderless, transnational violent fringe, but also as a mortal threat to the West, an aggressive and totalitarian ideology dedicated to random destruction and global subjugation. Still others advocated an all-out war against any manifestations of political Islam.

Building on this consensus of uninformed pundits and social engineers, President Bush ratcheted up the rhetoric, grouping all mainstream and militant Islamists together under the phrase “Islamofascists.” He called on Americans to be prepared for a global war on terror, the “inescapable calling of our generation.”…….

Documents Back Saudi Link to Extremists
BY: ERIC LICHTBLAU | THE NEW YORK TIMES

Saudis Tried to Pin Khobar Bombing on Iran (Via t_desco)
by Gareth Porter, June 23, 2009

Immediately after the blast, more than 125 agents from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) were ordered to the site to sift for clues and begin the investigation of who was responsible. But when two U.S. embassy officers arrived at the scene of the devastation early the next morning, they found a bulldozer beginning to dig up the entire crime scene. (…)

U.S. intelligence then intercepted communications from the highest levels of the Saudi government, including interior minister Prince Nayef, to the governor and other officials of Eastern Province instructing them to go through the motions of cooperating with U.S. officials on their investigation but to obstruct it at every turn.

That was the beginning of what interviews with more than a dozen sources familiar with the investigation and other information now available reveal was a systematic effort by the Saudis to obstruct any U.S. investigation of the bombing and to deceive the United States about who was responsible for the bombing.

The Saudi regime steered the FBI investigation toward Iran and its Saudi Shi’ite allies with the apparent intention of keeping U.S. officials away from a trail of evidence that would have led to Osama bin Laden and a complex set of ties between the regime and the Saudi terrorist organizer. (…)
(Inter Press Service, June 23, 2009)

PART 2: Saudi Account of Khobar Bore Telltale Signs of Fraud By Gareth Porter*
(…)

Further undermining the Shi’a explosives smuggling and bomb plot story is the fact that the Saudis had secretly detained and tortured a number of veteran Sunni jihadists with ties to Osama bin Laden after the bombing.

The Sunni detainees over Khobar included Yusuf al-Uyayri, who was later revealed to have been the actual head of al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia. In 2003, al-Uyayri confirmed in al Qaeda’s regular publication that he had been arrested and tortured after the Khobar bombing.

A report published in mid-August 1996 by the London-based Palestinian newspaper Al Qods al-Arabi, based on sources with ties to the jihadi movement in Saudi Arabia, said that six Sunni veterans of the Afghan war had confessed to the Khobar bombing under torture. That was followed two days later by a report in the New York Times that the Saudi officials now believed that Afghan war veterans had carried out the Khobar bombing.

A few weeks later, however, the Saudi regime apparently made a firm decision to blame the bombing on the Saudi Shi’a.

According to a Norwegian specialist on the Saudi jihadi movement, Thomas Hegghammer, in 2003 – shortly before al-Uyayri was killed in a shoot-out in Riyadh in late May 2003 – an article by the al Qaeda leader in the al Qaeda periodical blamed Shi’a for the Khobar bombing.

In a paper for the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, Hegghammer cites that statement as evidence that al Qaeda wasn’t involved in Khobar. But one of al-Uyayri’s main objectives at that point would have been to stay out of prison, so his endorsement of the Saudi regime’s position is hardly surprising.

Al-Uyayri had been released from prison in mid-1998, by his own account. But he was arrested again in late 2002 or early 2003, by which time the CIA had come to believe that he was a very important figure in al Qaeda, even though it didn’t know he was the leader of al Qaeda in the peninsula, according to Ron Suskind’s book “The One Percent Doctrine”. (…) IPS

Both Yusef al-Ayer and his successor, Abdel Aziz al-Muqrin, would fall into the category of “martyrs who were killed by security forces of the Saudi regime in the land of the two holy mosques” (Nicholas Blanford, Killing Mr Lebanon, London, Tauris 2006, p. 141). Once again, a transcript of the statement read (?) by Ahmed Abu Adas would be most useful.

PART 5: Freeh Became “Defence Lawyer” for Saudis on Khobar
By Gareth Porter

… Highly credible evidence soon showed, however, that the Mabahith, the Saudi secret police, did indeed use torture and coercion to get detainees to tell the stories demanded by the Saudi regime – even in front of foreign observers – and that they did so to protect al Qaeda from investigation by the United States. (…)

The Saudis even coached Sampson on what to say when he was visited by Canadian embassy personnel, threatening him with further torture if he told the embassy officials the truth. When the embassy personnel came to talk with him, Sampson’s two torturers were present for the entire interview, just as they were presumably present at the questioning of the Shi’a detainees observed by the FBI team.

The other foreigners told similar stories of coerced confessions under torture. Sampson and the five foreigners were released only after a May 2003 suicide bombing by al Qaeda on a Riyadh compound housing 900 expatriates forced Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef to acknowledge al Qaeda as a terrorist threat in Saudi Arabia. (…)
IPS

Morningstar: UN Lebanon Tribunal Sets Up Secure Website For Tip
2009-06-25

A U.N. court investigating the 2005 assassination of Rafiq Hariri, former prime minister of Lebanon, launched a secure Web site Thursday for people to supply information on the case. The page was specifically for people ‘who have valuable …

Travel Bans Imposed on Syrian Dissidents
2009-06-26 10:36:44.786 GMT

Syrian authorities are introducing restrictions as a form of pressure, say activists, IWPR reports. By IWPR staff in Damascus for IWPR Mazen Darwish is not exactly a political prisoner. But for more than two years, this human rights activist has …

Obama State Dept. intervenes to block Free Gaza aid voyage
By Free Gaza Team
June 25, 2009

LARNACA – This is not the statement we in the Free Gaza Movement
intended to release today. We had hoped to announce that our two ships, the Free Gaza and the Spirit of Humanity, departed from Larnaca Port on a 30-hour voyage to besieged Gaza, carrying human rights activists who have travelled to Cyprus from all across the world for this journey, 3 tons of medical supplies, and 15 tons of badly needed concrete and reconstruction supplies. […]

The American consulate in Nicosia warned us not to go to Gaza…

U.S. sees Syria as key player for Mideast peace
By Akiva Eldar, Haaretz Correspondent
25/06/2009

U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration is examining a proposed Israeli-Syrian peace plan that is based on demilitarizing the Golan Heights and transforming it, along with a strip of the Jordan Valley, into a nature preserve, or “peace park,” that would be open to visitors during the day.

The decision to send an American ambassador to Damascus after a four-year absence, along with the recent visit to the Syrian capital by U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell, were meant to prepare the ground for a resumption of Israeli-Syrian talks under American auspices.

A senior diplomatic source told Haaretz yesterday that Washington has concluded that including Syria in the peace process is key to the effort to bring about an internal Palestinian reconciliation, without which the chances of progress on the Israeli-Palestinian track are small.

The Americans believe the crisis in Iran has created an opportunity for the United States to draw Syria closer and resume Israel-Syria negotiations, the source added. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has encouraged Obama to recruit Syrian President Bashar Assad’s support for Egypt’s efforts to achieve reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas by July 7. Under the Egyptian proposal, all the various Palestinian factions would set up a joint committee, answerable to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, to govern the Gaza Strip. The main obstacle to this proposal is Khaled Meshal, the Hamas politburo chief, who is based in the Syrian capital.

Uri Saguy, who headed Israel’s negotiating team with Syria during Ehud Barak’s term as prime minister, said in a lecture in Jerusalem several days ago that Assad is not exaggerating when he says it is possible to consider 80 percent of the differences between Israel and Syria as having already been resolved.

Saguy pointed out that the main obstacle was not water rights or security arrangements, but where the border would pass. He said the Syrians’ attitude changed when they realized that the June 4, 1967 lines are less advantageous to them than the international border in certain important respects. It was at that point, he said, that they agreed to discuss proposals for bridging the gaps on the border issue, including the notion of a “peace park.”

Fred Hoff, who serves as Mitchell’s deputy and is charged with the Syrian and Lebanese files, put forth a proposal under which much of the Golan Heights would be turned into a nature reserve open to visitors from both Israel and Syria during the day. The demilitarized area would be under international supervision, led by U.S. officers, while the pullout and dismantlement of Israeli settlements on the Golan would be carried out over several years, in parallel with a normalization of ties between Syria and Israel.

Fictions on the Ground
By TONY JUDT
June 22, 2009, Op-Ed Contributor

….. Despite all the diplomatic talk of disbanding the settlements as a condition for peace, no one seriously believes that these communities — with their half a million residents, their urban installations, their privileged access to fertile land and water — will ever be removed. The Israeli authorities, whether left, right or center, have no intention of removing them, and neither Palestinians nor informed Americans harbor illusions on this score.

To be sure, it suits almost everyone to pretend otherwise — to point to the 2003 “road map” and speak of a final accord based on the 1967 frontiers. But such feigned obliviousness is the small change of political hypocrisy, the lubricant of diplomatic exchange that facilitates communication and compromise.

There are occasions, however, when political hypocrisy is its own nemesis, and this is one of them. Because the settlements will never go, and yet almost everyone likes to pretend otherwise, we have resolutely ignored the implications of what Israelis have long been proud to call “the facts on the ground.”

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, knows this better than most. On June 14 he gave a much-anticipated speech in which he artfully blew smoke in the eyes of his American interlocutors. While offering to acknowledge the hypothetical existence of an eventual Palestinian state — on the explicit understanding that it exercise no control over its airspace and have no means of defending itself against aggression — he reiterated the only Israeli position that really matters: we won’t build illegal settlements but we reserve the right to expand “legal” ones according to their natural rate of growth. (It is not by chance that he chose to deliver this speech at Bar-Ilan University, the heartland of rabbinical intransigence where Yigal Amir learned to hate Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin before heading off to assassinate him in 1995.)

THE reassurances Mr. Netanyahu offered the settlers and their political constituency were as well received as ever, despite being couched in honeyed clichés directed at nervous American listeners. And the American news media, predictably, took the bait — uniformly emphasizing Mr. Netanyahu’s “support” for a Palestinian state and playing down everything else…..

POLITICS: US to Name Ambassador to Damascus after Four Years
Inter Press Service

to hear,” said Oklahoma University professor Joshua Landis, who authors the widely-read Syria Comment blog and returned from a trip to Syria on Tuesday.

Syria And Iraq Revive Business Ties
by Deborah Amos
Listen Now [5 min 4 sec]

All Things Considered, June 24, 2009 · Syria’s border with Iraq has long been a line of tension. The U.S. and the Iraqi government have accused Syria of allowing foreign fighters to cross into Iraq. But these days, the border is a potential business asset, as Syria looks to Iraq to help improve its economy….

On the Iraqi side, consumer demand is high, says Joshua Landis, an American academic who writes an influential blog on Syria, SyriaComment.com.

“Syrians are shoveling all sorts of things across to Iraq, because Iraq doesn’t have any factories; it doesn’t have electricity. Nothing is working in Iraq, and there are 24 million people. … [The Syrians] see the potential for real, new trade,” Landis says…..

Landis, the U.S. academic and blogger, says this could be a business partnership with political consequences.

“Syria is the natural route for taking oil out of northern Iraq because it’s just flat desert. There are plans to build a big new toll road. This means a lot of things. It means that Syria wants to work with the United States on stabilizing Iraq,” Landis says.

The partnership would also help stabilize Syria’s economic prospects.

By reopening Syria embassy, Obama mends more fences with Arabs

The controversial move reverses the Bush administration’s decision to withdraw its ambassador from Damascus in 2005.
By Howard LaFranchi | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor, june 24, 2009

Washington – The Obama administration’s decision to return an ambassador to Syria after a four-year absence reflects the president’s desire to start making good on a pledge to broaden American diplomacy to include dialogue with adversaries.

The move, announced formally to the Syrians Tuesday night, also hints at how seriously Obama takes both his initiative to spur Israeli-Palestinian peace and his intention to mend US relations with the Arab world.

“We’ve heard a lot of good language from Obama about our relations with Arab countries, most recently in Cairo, but he’s actually done very little in terms of concrete steps,” says Joshua Landis, a Syria expert at the University of Oklahoma and author of the SyriaComment blog. “So normalizing relations with Syria is a small demonstration that we really are changing our approach to the region.”

Out, the move suggests, is the Bush administration’s preference for ostracizing problematic countries and openly advocating regime change.

In, on the other hand, is a more pragmatic approach that sees US interests served by garnering information and intelligence from prickly or even adversarial relationships.

“This is a decision that was in the works for a long time and that is based on reality,” says Aaron David Miller, a Middle East scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington and the author of various books on the region. “This is not a transformative event in US foreign policy, but it comes out of the perspective that diplomacy is learning more about what your interlocutor or opponent is doing.”

President Bush removed the US ambassador from Damascus in 2005 over Syrian involvement in Lebanon, including a suspected Syrian role in the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri. The move sent a clear signal to the regime of President Bashar al-Assad that the US found Syrian actions unacceptable, but it also complicated US efforts at eliciting Syrian cooperation in neighboring Iraq.

Obama’s decision reflects US recognition that Syria will be a key factor if a comprehensive peace is to be reached in the Middle East, State Department officials say. That sentiment was reflected by Obama Middle East envoy George Mitchell’s recent visit to Damascus, and in particular by Mr. Mitchell’s statement that Syria plays an “integral role” in the quest for “comprehensive peace” in the region.

“Those were the magic words for the Syrians,” says Mr. Landis, who returned Tuesday from Damascus. The Syrians were anxious to see a US ambassador return, Landis says, but not without reassurances of a new tone and recognition of Syria’s interests, particularly with regard to Israel.

“‘The Americans can’t cherry-pick,’ is what I heard,” says Landis, “‘They can’t have what they want on Lebanon and Iraq without helping us get the Golan [Heights] back and reaching a peace deal with Israel.'”

Still, Landis says he expects the announcement to encounter objections from some forces on Capitol Hill who will see it as rewarding bad behavior and as putting Arab interests above Israel. “Washington has been split on this, and there are still a lot of people who are not eager to see this happen,” he says.

Syria also has a strategic relationship with Iran, something the US would like to see weakened or even severed. Yet while the recent political turmoil in Iran may have played some role in the timing of the announcement, the Wilson Center’s Mr. Miller says that the move would have come anyway.

“The Syrians have to be thinking about what the events of June 12 [Iran’s contested presidential election] mean for their relationship, so this would seem an opportune time to move on what was already coming,” he says. At the same time, “with Iran hot right now and given the ties between the two, it’s critical we have a mission in Damascus that is up to speed.”

President Obama has decided to send an ambassador to Syria. He is doing the right thing. Indeed, relations with Syria should have been normalized long ago as Baker and Hamilton advised. The Bush administration’s policy of conquering Iraq  while insisting that it’s neighbors would be next in line for regime-change was unsound and born of arrogance. Washington gave Syria and Iran little choice but to fan the flames of the Iraq insurgency. It didn’t have to be. Both countries could have been reassured about US plans in Iraq had Washington limited its objectives. There was no reason for either country not to want the end of Saddam’s rule. After all, Saddam had done so much to make the lives of Syrians and Iranians miserable over the years.

On an immediate level, the announcement to return an ambassador is tied to Syria’s agreement on Iraq security and intelligence sharing. Twice Secretary of State Rice met with her Syrian counterparts and tried to jumpstart an agreement on Iraq. At Sharm al-Shaykh in May 2007, she had proposed sending two generals to Damascus, but refused to normalize relations with Syria or send an ambassador, which ultimately scotched attempts to improve US-Syrian cooperation under the last administration. The end result of Bush’s refusal to compromise with Syria was the cross-border raid to kill Iraqi resistance facilitators. Eight Syrians were murdered, Syria claims, as collateral damage during the Abu Kamal raid that took place only weeks before the presidential elections. General Petraeus had sought to avoid such bloodshed by going to Damascus himself in order to broker a political deal that might have induced the Syrians arrest the facilitators when Americans asked them to.  V.P. Cheney forbade any attempt to broker such a deal, I was told by good sources in the anti-terrorism community.

Syria has worked hard to improve relations with Washington. It scrupulously kept out of the Lebanon election process, even as the US sent one senior statesman after another to warn Lebanese not to vote for enemies of the US and as Saudi money was lavishly spent on getting pro-March 14 Lebanese to fly home to vote. Syrian authorities have entertained a series of military envoys to work out guidelines on Iraq border issues; and they have pushed the Palestinians to form a government of national union in order to pave the way for US engagement with Gazans.

Obama Will Send Envoy to Syria, Officials Say
By MARK LANDLER
Published: June 24, 2009

WASHINGTON — President Obama has decided to send an ambassador to Syria after a four-year hiatus, two senior administration officials said on Tuesday evening, in a sign of the deepening engagement between the Obama administration and the Syrian government.

The State Department informed Syria’s ambassador to the United States, Imad Moustapha, of the decision on Tuesday, said one official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because it had not yet been announced. Mr. Obama has not yet chosen a person for the post, he said.

The administration’s decision was first reported on CNN’s Web site. The State Department’s spokesman, Ian C. Kelly, declined to comment on the report, but other officials said it was a logical step in Mr. Obama’s pursuit of normal relations with Syria.

“It’s a reflection of Syria being a pivotal country in terms of achieving a comprehensive peace in the region,” one senior official said. “There is a lot of work to do in the region for which Syria can play a role. For that, it helps to have a fully staffed embassy.”

The State Department has twice dispatched Jeffrey D. Feltman, the assistant secretary for the Near East, and Daniel Shapiro, a National Security Council official, to Damascus for exploratory meetings.

Two weeks ago, the administration’s special envoy for the Middle East, George J. Mitchell, met with Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, for what Mr. Mitchell later said were “serious and productive discussions.”

Just before Mr. Mitchell’s visit, an American military delegation visited Damascus for talks about how Syria could contribute to the stabilization of its neighbor Iraq. American officials are worried about foreign insurgents flowing into Iraq from Syria.

The Bush administration withdrew the ambassador to Syria in 2005 to protest the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri of Lebanon. Washington suspects Syria of being involved in the attack, which it denies.

Since then, a chargé d’affaires has been the highest-ranking American diplomat in Damascus. The new ambassador would have to be confirmed by the Senate.

And as is customary, the Syrians could register objections to a candidate.

MEMRI:

“The Lebanese daily Al-Diyar has reports that Prince ‘Abd Al-‘Aziz, the son of the Saudi king, met with Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad in Damascus on June 20, 2009, in preparation for a meeting between Assad and the king.

The daily also reports that Saudi Information Minister ‘Abd Al-Aziz Al-Khoja has likewise visited Syria for a meeting with his Syrian counterpart, Mushen Bilal. According to the daily, the ongoing rapprochement between Syria and Saudi Arabia may affect the political atmosphere in Lebanon and the establishment of its new government.

Assad no longer stands in his father’s shadow
By Yoav Stern, Haaretz

There are large billboards on the road leading to Damascus from the Jordanian border. Once they featured portraits of former Syrian president Hafez Assad. Even after his death, he continued to exist on the billboards, alongside his two sons, Basil (who died before him) and Bashar, who was appointed president in his place. Today Bashar alone is on the billboards. The new “lion of Damascus” no longer stands in anyone’s shadow.

This month marks the ninth anniversary of Hafez Assad’s death. Next month will mark nine years of Bashar’s tenure. A different Syria and a different Assad. The young man (34 years old at the time) who lacked confidence and experience has become an experienced president with tested ability to overcome crises and even to be strengthened by them. The Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies in Cairo recently awarded him the title of “the most popular leader” in the Middle East.

Prof. David Lesch, a Middle Eastern scholar at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas and the author of “The New Lion of Damascus: Bashar al-Assad and Modern Syria,” visited here last week. At the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University he related an incident he witnessed at the Damascus Opera House (which is named after Bashar’s father). At the end of the performance Bashar and his wife Asma held a reception. They stood in the large square outside, and the audience leaving the hall found itself facing the presidential couple. To help the audience overcome their embarrassment, the ushers took action and simply pushed those present toward the couple. A handshake, a smile, a glance, a short conversation. It’s important for their image.
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Lesch sees this incident as an example of the way in which Bashar Assad establishes his rule in Damascus. No longer is there the distance his father favored, no more residence in the military ivory tower. The president and his wife are said to go out, by private car, to eat in a restaurant or a cafe. That did, in fact, happen once or twice, far less often than the Syrians tend to talk about.

In an interview with Haaretz Lesch said Assad had “clearly evolved as a leader. When I first met with him in 2004, he was still a bit unsure. He was not totally in control domestically.”

At the time, said Lesch, Assad had limited knowledge of the Arab-Israeli conflict and lacked basic information about U.S. foreign policy. Meetings with him were held in the presence of advisers and interpreters, who made sure he would not blurt out anything stupid. Now during meetings with interviewers, Assad sits by himself, relaxed.

The turning point that Lesch saw was the election of 2007, when he was “re-elected’ in a referendum. The word “elected” does not quite fit the procedure in which the citizens of Syria can say “yes” or “no” to the continued tenure of the president. To ensure the outcome, the answer is written in sight of everyone in the room where the ballot box is located.

In those days Assad was recovering from two major crises: the murder of Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri and the Second Lebanon War. Hariri’s murder forced the Syrians to withdraw its forces from Lebanon. A Syrian friend of Lesch told him: “We lost Beirut at the time, but we gained Damascus,” because as a result of the crisis, Assad strengthened his hold in the corridors of power and ousted those who did not accept his policy. A year later, in 2006, Syria turned out to be one of the big winners of the Second Lebanon War. Assad was euphoric. His tough policy, his opposition to the American occupation in Iraq and the price he had paid for that in international isolation – all increased his popularity. In Damascus, people took to the city squares and cheered their president.

The 2007 elections were accompanied by demonstrations of support organized by the regime, and yet, said Lesch, they contained a degree of authenticity. Assad went out on the balcony of the modest house that serves as the presidential residence, pointed to families who were standing in the street and cheering him and hosted them for a few minutes on his balcony.

“I met with him just after he was elected,” said Lesch, “and for the first time I really saw in him this level of self-satisfaction that I hadn’t seen before. He has always been very modest and humble, self-deprecating even. This time he was … in a cathartic expression of gratification that the people really liked him.”

The meetings with Assad also provided Lesch with a rare glimpse into the manner in which the regime is run. “It is very interesting to see him work around the system,” said Lesch. Assad once said to him, for example: “You know, I’ve signed 1,000 decrees, only four were implemented. Many times I have to work around the system to get anything done.”

Assad is aware of the corruption and the opposition to change,” and according to Lesch “it’s very frustrating for him over the years to get any kind of serious reform.” He knows that changes that go too far are liable to lose him the support of those who benefit from the corruption and from the existing situation. Lesch said that once, in a conversation about a project in which he is involved in Syria, “Bashar leaned over to me and said, ‘How can we do this? We need to implement this. How do we get around these groups?'”

Assad is leading a policy of rapprochement with Israel, and Lesch said that “since it was the first time [he was] doing this, he cannot afford to fail. He has made his decision and he has an array of people around him who agree with him in terms of the idea of the negotiations with Israel. This is still a strategic choice. But there are elements who do not agree with this. This indicates to me that Bashar feels he has one shot at this, and he’d better get it right or he’ll be forced to retrench from this foreign policy path he’d like to follow.”

That’s why, said Lesch, the president will agree to direct talks with Israel only if there is a good chance they will succeed.

Lesch described the atmosphere in Damascus as “sour.” U.S. President Barack Obama did not mention Syria in his policy speech in Cairo. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked only to visit Damascus. In the wake of the speech, the Syrian press agency issued an official statement to the effect that Syria saw it as proof of “an absence of genuine Israeli desire to make peace in the region.”

The West is still suspicious of the Syrian regime. The transfer of weapons to Hezbollah continues, and Hamas receives refuge in Damascus. Iran is a strategic ally. Is Bashar secretly promoting a nuclear program? Bashar denies it, Lesch doesn’t know.

He quotes Assad as saying “that would be monumentally stupid for the Syrians to do, to develop a nuclear capability … history is full of regimes who made monumentally stupid decisions.”

When it comes to internal Syrian affairs Assad projects greater confidence. He is not paying a price for imprisoning human rights activists, there is no real threat to his regime and the opposition in exile is of no real importance. In the area of foreign relations he has not succeeded in totally breaking out of the isolation imposed on him years ago. He just went with his wife to the Republic of Georgia and earlier visited Qatar and France. His schedule is fuller than in the past, and he entertains many diplomats and foreign ministers who come to Damascus. But that is not enough. Assad is disturbed mainly by the continued coldness of the U.S. administration.

the PULSE

“…Shimon Shiffer reports in Yediot Acharonoth: In messages relayed in the last few days to Ankara by figures close to Netanyahu it was said: “Israel is willing to renew the talks with the Syrians.” However, it was made clear that the Netanyahu government would not withdraw from the Golan Heights and would not reply in the affirmative to the Syrian demand to begin the talks from the point they were left off by the Olmert government.

How to Achieve Israeli-Palestinian Peace
Hosni Mubarak
The Wall Street Journal, June 19, 2009 – 12:00am

Abbas talks Palestinian unity with Syria’s Assad
Sat Jun 20, 2009

DAMASCUS (Reuters) – Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas discussed on Saturday efforts to achieve Palestinian reconciliation with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

“We agree with Syria that the dialogue should succeed,” Abbas’s aide Nabil Abu Rdainah told reporters.

He was referring to Egyptian mediation between Abbas’s Fatah faction and Hamas, which is supported by Syria and Iran. Egypt has set July 7 as a deadline to find a solution for divisions between the two groups.

Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal, who lives in exile in Syria, cancelled a speech he was due to make later on Saturday shortly after Abbas met Assad. No explanation was given.

Abbas’s visit to Syria is the second since May. His aides said Abbas would not be meeting any Palestinian factions in Syria before leaving for Saudi Arabia for talks with King Abdullah on Sunday.

Map of Palestine as an Island Paradise

Simon Halabi’s Companies Default on $1.9 Billion Debt
2009-06-19, By Chris Bourke

June 19 (Bloomberg) — Billionaire investor Simon Halabi’s real estate companies defaulted on 1.15 billion pounds ($1.9 billion) of bonds backed by nine London office buildings as the recession cut the value of the properties by about 50 percent. Halabi started as a director of real estate investment company Property Trust in the 1980s. The Syrian-born investor is worth about $4 billion, according to Forbes magazine. He bought health chain Esporta for around 460 million pounds in 2006, using 330 million pounds of debt from Societe Generale, according to Eurohypo AG research.

Luxury Travel: New to the Syrian coast: Afamia Rotana Resort,
2009-06-19

The doors have been opened to the Afamia Rotana Resort, Latakia. Located on a sandy peninsula, two kilometres from Latakia city centre, the new five-star resort brings a new level of comfort and a host of leisure activities to the city.

Freih al Rawi, originally from Syria, is one of the thousands recruited to Bahrain to serve in its security forces in exchange for citizenship there.

U.S. Navy Fleet’s Mideast Home Is Facing Rise in Sectarian Strife
By YAROSLAV TROFIMOV, in WSJ

MADINAT HAMAD, Bahrain — On a recent evening, Issa al Jibb climbed the roof of his home and started hurling Molotov cocktails into the adjoining property of the Rawi clan. By the time Bahraini police shot him down with a rubber bullet, Mr. Jibb had managed to burn three cars and part of the building, and inflicted serious burns on two Rawi teenagers.

This was no ordinary feud among neighbors. Mr. Jibb, 46 years old, is a native of this small Persian Gulf kingdom. The Rawis are originally from Syria, were recruited along with thousands of other Arabs and Pakistanis to serve in Bahrain’s security forces and eventually rewarded with Bahraini citizenship for their loyalty to the crown.

Hostility between these two communities is on the rise, with several other clashes, car torchings and beatings reported in recent months. “Bahrainis think that we just don’t belong, that we’re aliens to this area and to this state,” says a Syrian-born army officer who lives nearby.

Once hailed for its democratic reforms, Bahrain — a strategic island-state that serves as headquarters of the U.S. Navy Fifth Fleet — is increasingly rocked by sectarian and ethnic strife. Though the majority of Bahrain’s 530,000 citizens are Shiites, power remains in the hands of a Sunni royal family, the only such minority regime in the Arab world since the downfall of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Suspecting its Shiite citizens of loyalty to nearby Iran, the island’s former master, Bahrain’s royal family has long relied on Sunni mercenaries from countries such as Syria, Jordan, Yemen and Pakistan to staff Bahrain’s army, police and security service.

Earlier this decade, as Washington pushed for democratization in the region, Bahrain’s King Hamad freed political prisoners and established an elected parliament with limited powers. However, opposition leaders and some independent analysts charge, a parallel program began at the same time, largely ignored by Western nations that depend on Bahrain’s valuable naval facilities. The regime, they say, has sharply accelerated its policy of naturalizing Sunni mercenaries, aiming to inflate the size of the Sunni electorate — and to defuse Iran’s growing influence.

“There seems to be a clear political strategy to alter the country’s demographic balance in order to counter the Shiite voting power,” says Toby C. Jones, professor of Middle East studies at Rutgers University and a former Bahrain-based analyst at the International Crisis Group think tank. “This naturalization stuff is a time bomb.”

Bahraini officials deny any such policy exists, and insist there is no discrimination against the country’s Shiites. According to Bahrain’s interior minister, Sheik Rashid bin Abdullah al Khalifa, only about 7,000 people were naturalized in the past five years. Opposition politicians, however, calculate the naturalization’s true pace at some 10,000 people a year, based on voter registration statistics — a big number in such a small country.

People picked for this naturalization “aren’t just Sunnis,” but religious fundamentalists “who share the hatred of the Shiites,” asserts Hassan Mushaima, leader of Bahrain’s Haq Shiite movement who was imprisoned for three months this year for his role in violent street protests.

Not just Bahraini Shiites oppose the naturalization. Initially, the island’s Sunnis welcomed fellow Sunni newcomers, says Ebrahim Sharif Alsayed, secretary- general of the Waad secularist movement and a Sunni himself. “But today, most Sunnis are strongly against the naturalization,” he says. “It’s not about balancing the Shiites anymore — it’s about protecting the indigenous Sunni population from being invaded by foreigners.”

Mr. Jibb, the Bahraini who threw Molotov cocktails into his neighbors’ home in Madinat Hamad last month, is a Sunni, too. The conflict began in December, when Mr. Jibb witnessed the beating of a Bahraini neighbor by the Rawis and other naturalized Syrians, according to his sister Leila. “The Syrians, they’re like a gang trying to control the whole area, bullying the whole street just to show who’s the boss,” she says.

A few days later, the Rawis attacked Mr. Jibb with a hammer blow on the head, prompting a hospitalization, she says. Members of the Rawi household, headed by retired Bahraini army sergeant Freih al Rawi, and comprising some 40 people, deny they instigated the clash. “We know; there’s bad feeling for foreign people here,” says one of Mr. Rawi’s sons, an army officer.

The night of May 29, Ms. Jibb says, her brother — who suffered psychiatric problems after the December hammer blow to the head — found himself the target of taunts by the Rawis again, and simply “lost his mind,” unleashing the volley of Molotov cocktails. Ms. Jibb has since fled her house, fearing revenge from the Syrian-born neighbors.

“How can it be?” she wondered indignantly. “I, a pure Bahraini lady, am now homeless in my own country!”

Which Iran would Israel bomb?
Zvi Bar’el, in Haaretz, ( thanks to “friday-lunch-club”)

“… Israel is now gaining a more intimate, accurate familiarity with the Iranian public. The demonstrations have made quite clear that there is not one Iran or even two, but rather a number of Irans. There is the Iran that belongs to those who screamed, “Death to America and to Israel,” and there is the Iran that screams, “Down with the dictator.”….

It is still too early to predict how the demonstrators will act and in what fashion the Revolutionary Guards will respond, but this past week’s events will leave a historic mark in post-revolutionary Iran. It is a mark that should also be seared into the minds of the West in general, and the United States and Israel in particular. All in all, 30 years have passed since the Khomeini revolution, and the Iranian public is now rebelling against the system. True, this constituency has twice elected a reformist president who disappointed, and this time it does not appear that it is ready to give up, at least not easily. But hundreds of thousands of demonstrators did not pour into the streets due to American intervention or threats from Israel. They want a better Iran for themselves, not for Obama or Benjamin Netanyahu. They will be the ones to determine what qualifies as a better Iran.

This is the crux of the confusion that we have stumbled upon. The grand enemy that was neatly packaged into a nuclear, Shi’ite-religious container has come apart at the seams. On the one hand, it threatens, while on the other hand it demonstrates for democracy. On one street, it raises a fist against America, and in another alley, streams of protesters march for human rights. For goodness’ sake, who is left to bomb? Until one week ago, the path was well-lit.

An Israeli decision to strike depends on American policy, which depends on the outcome of the dialogue that President Obama seeks to begin with Iran. And, as military jargon so succinctly teaches us, the prescribed plan of action can be interrupted by unforeseen events. This is a segment of the Iranian population that is beginning to give rise to new questions. If there is a chance to change the system of rule – perhaps not now, but in the next Iranian election in four years – if there is a chance that Obama will gain greater leverage because the Iranian leader understands that he must compromise with his people, this will be a route that must be tried anew.

All the more so when one gets the sneaky suspicion that the military challenge from a nuclear Iran does not pose as menacing a threat as we were warned to believe. If the head of the Mossad pushes the threat back to 2014, and since we place trust in our defense leaders whether they say the threat will be realized in another year or within a few months, and if the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency says it is impossible to prevent a state from acquiring know-how in the field of nuclear technology, there is no alternative but to explore the path that will weaken the motivation to use a nuclear weapon. And that is to speak with Iran through the Iranians.”

Guardian (GB): You can take the man out of Damascus…
2009-06-20

This sprawling novel of life and death in Damascus, by German-Syrian writer Rafik Schami, is a 1001 Nights of the mid-20th century. It begins with a straightforward murder mystery. In 1969, the body of a Muslim army officer is discovered in a basket …

Iraq war inquiry could reveal secrets, lies and the rush to war
Gaby Hinsliff, Paul Harris and Jamie Doward
The Observer, Sunday 21 June 2009

When Tony Blair told the Commons that he hoped conflict with Iraq could be averted, he already knew the White House had picked 1,500 targets for its bombers. Gaby Hinsliff, Paul Harris and Jamie Doward report on the gaps between what the public were told and what politicians were discussing in private, as the government prepares for a closed inquiry

The drumbeats of war were growing louder, and opposition to them louder still. But on that Monday afternoon six years ago, just off a plane from a critical Washington summit, Tony Blair insisted an invasion of Iraq was still not inevitable. “No one wants conflict… Even now, I hope that conflict with Iraq can be avoided,” he told the House of Commons on 3 February 2003. “Even now, I hope that Saddam can come to his senses, co-operate fully and disarm peacefully, as the UN has demanded.” Nonetheless, he admitted, if Saddam rejected that route, “he must be disarmed by force”. What the MPs listening intently to him did not know, however, was that the decision had already been made….