Syria is being asked to get Hamas to renounce violence and recognize Israel as a test of its power and good will to the Obama administration, explains Khaled Oweis, who has spoken with diplomats in Damascus.

Aaron David Miller, says naming George J. Mitchell as the new special envoy for Arab-Israeli issues shows the Obama administration at this early stage is substituting ” process for substance.” He says the administration  has “no intention of making major changes in America’s approach to the Arab-Israeli issue, because right now, the prospects of any sort of conflict-ending agreement between Israelis and Palenstinians are slim to none.” … “the truth is, because you are on the eve of a new government in Israel–the Knesset elections take place on February 10–there probably will be no visit from the new Israeli prime minister, whoever he or she is, to Washington, which is customary and traditional, until April.”… “it’s safe to assume that there will be no change–none, absolutely none–in the administration’s approach to Hamas.

Elliott Abrams is being taken on by The Council on Foreign Relations. He was the architect of the Bush administration’s Syria policy, on several occasions that I know of, sounding out foreign diplomats and politicians on the possibility of stimulating a coup in Damascus. He also urged Israel to bomb Damascus during the summer of 2006. President Bush has also appointed Abrams to be member of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council: a five-year term beginning 01/16/09.

ANALYSIS-Syria eyes strategic gains after Gaza war 26 Jan 2009 
By Khaled Yacoub Oweis, ReutersDAMASCUS,

Jan 26 (Reuters) – Syria is trying to capitalise on Israel’s failure to crush its Islamist ally Hamas to enhance its regional clout in peace talks with the Jewish state and forge good ties with the new U.S. administration.

The Syrian government, which has recently emerged from years of isolation, is now advocating a role for the Islamist group in Middle East peacemaking, Syrian officials and diplomats say.

But Damascus has to nudge the Palestinian Islamist group toward meeting international demands if it wants to further strengthen its international position as it faces risky challenges relating to two U.N. investigations, diplomats said.

“The stiff resistance in Gaza has proved that Hamas is a political force to be reckoned with. There is a new regional reality and more countries are supporting this view. Turkey is one important player,” a Syrian official said.

The official was referring to Turkey’s intervention with Hamas during the 22-day Israeli offensive on Gaza, during which 1,300 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed. Syria, which hosts the exiled leadership of the Islamist group, was a centre of international efforts to end the war.

Hamas responded to a unilateral Israeli ceasefire by holding fire after intense meetings with Turkish officials in Damascus and Egyptian officials in Cairo, while briefing Syria throughout, Palestinians sources said.

“Syria did not pressure Hamas. The Syrian position on the need to end the aggression and lift the blockade on Gaza was consistent with Hamas throughout,” one of the sources said.

“Hamas felt it was exhausted and recognised that the Palestinians in Gaza needed a respite.”

SURVIVAL

Diplomats confirm that Syria mostly avoided pressuring Hamas while its survival was at stake in Gaza. But Damascus has exerted influence on the group in the past, including by hosting a meeting between Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal and President Mahmoud Abbas that failed to halt Palestinian civil strife.

The war in Gaza raised calls in the West to engage Hamas, although the group refuses to abandon armed struggle and recognise Israel — demands placed by the four main Middle East brokers, including the United States and the European Union.

France, which played a role in halting the Gaza war, indicated last week that it might be prepared to hold talks with Hamas even if the group did not recognise Israel.

Syrian officials have indicated that the international community would need Syria’s help if it wished to engage rather than shun the group.

Damascus is also hoping for a thaw in relations with Washington, and sees President Barack Obama as more amenable to supporting Israeli-Syrian peacemaking than his predecessor George W. Bush, who imposed sanctions on Syria and expanded them during his last year in office.

Damascus suspended the indirect talks with Israel during the Gaza crisis. But neither side has ruled out a resumption of the talks which have focused on the occupied Golan Heights and Syria’s ties with Hamas, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Iran.

“Syria has benefited from the renewed international awareness that the Arab-Israeli conflict is crucial to any broader Middle East settlement. Obama will have to engage Syria if he wants to attenuate regional divisions and radicalism,” wrote Professor Joshua Landis on his Syria Comment Web site.

But Obama’s Middle East envoy’s first trip to the region will exclude Syria and recent statements by President Bashar al-Assad declaring a 2002 Arab peace initiative dead were unlikely to go down well with the new U.S. administration.

Continuing to be on the wrong side of Washington will not help Syria, with a tribunal to try suspects in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri due to start work in March and the International Atomic Energy Agency probing an alleged nuclear site bombed by Israel, the diplomats said.

“The Gaza war lowered the standing of Syria’s regional rivals a notch, but the Syrians cannot continue to get away with playing the rejectionist card while pursuing peace with Israel,” one of the diplomats said in the Syrian capital.

“At one point Damascus has to show that it can cool its relations with Iran and deliver on Hamas.”

Syria has consolidated its alliance with Iran. The two countries are the main backers of both Hamas and Hezbollah.

“Hamas has not done enough. It has to show that it can offer something new after Gaza,” another diplomat said. “Syria also has to show that it is prepared to push Hamas. Most of what the officials who descended on Damascus during the crisis got was a repetition of the Hamas line.”

For the last five years or so, I have been actively working with Jewish colleagues in the US and elsewhere to help broker a lasting reconciliation between Israel and its Arab neighbors. But in the wake of the carnage in Gaza, it is impossibly difficult to be optimistic about the future of the peace process in the region. Though Israel has apparently had its way by force of arms, it has won this so-called “victory,” at a terrible cost to itself and its neighbors.

The real legacy of the Gaza War is likely to be the further hardening and entrenching of the intense distrust of the Arab and Muslim world of the presence of the Jewish state in the heart of the Middle East in addition to a growing conviction that Israel is an inherently violent state that can not be reformed or positively influenced by any party. Is this the outcome the Israeli government and public really desire? Do they honestly think their ongoing security will be guaranteed year after year by forever brutalizing the Palestinian people? Do they think they will acquire the respect and political legitimacy in the region, they crave, by keeping the Arab people of the former Palestine “penned” like animals into their Gaza gulag without any hope of creating a viable economy, a functional political system and a future for their children. The Israelis may think so. But they are wrong.

Has Israel a right to exist? Only the most extreme and intractable elements in the Arab world now say, “No.” As almost all informed Israelis know, most of the Arab world has long ago accepted the reality of a Jewish state in the Middle East. Certainly until now. So why does the Israeli leadership compromise this pragmatic goodwill among the wider Arab community by engaging in acts of such carnage and barbarism as the world has witnessed in Gaza over the last twenty days. It is hard to fathom. It truly beggars the imagination.

Israelis, of course, justify such over-the-top military brutality because of the Hamas rockets targeted on southern Israel. Nobody in the Arab world, with any sense, would have approved Hamas’ ineffective provocations if Israel did not close Gaza’s crossings forcing Gaza’s 1.5 million inhabitants to live in hunger and. And before the Gaza campaign, Hamas was generally a marginalized political force outside of Gaza which been encouraged in the beginning by Israel to weakness the Palestinian Authority. But, in reality, what did all these Hamas missile attacks actually accomplish. Very little. A few—very few—unfortunate Israeli fatalities and a modicum of material damage. For this, Israel proceeded to flatten Gaza to the ground, leave hundreds of thousands of people homeless and destitute and over a thousand souls—half of them children—dead. There is an old phrase, “cracking a peanut with a sledgehammer.” Is there a metaphor that better describes the Israeli government’s action in Gaza? The adjective “disproportionate” has been used over and over again during the last few weeks to describe the Israeli campaign in Gaza. But disproportionate is a sadly “clinical’ world to describe the death, destruction and suffering of the Palestinian people.

So where do we go from here? Again, another ceasefire has been called between Israel and Hamas. But how long will it last? The hatred between many elements on the Arab Street against Israel is now more intense, more visceral than ever. During the course of the Gaza campaign, commentators around the world made allusions to the Holocaust, another instance of a brutal enemy, armed to the teeth, inflicting horrendous suffering on an essentially defenseless people. Obviously, the scale of the devastation is different. But spiritually how different is Gaza from Auschwitz? The lesson the Holocaust taught the Jews was seemingly this: Slaughter your enemy before they slaughter you. Is this the lesson the Israeli government wants Arabs and Palestinians to learn from Gaza? No mercy. Just kill, kill, kill.

Such a strategy is, literally, a complete dead-end for both sides—a course of action whose inevitable conclusion is an unthinkable Armageddon in the Middle East where the casualties on both sides will be in the millions, not the thousands. It is only a matter of time before “both” sides truly possess weapons of mass destruction. So how do we—Palestinian and Israeli, Arab and Jew—pull ourselves back from the brink? COMPROMISE is surely the only solution. But though both sides have been talking compromise (paying lip service to it) since the Oslo Accord, no one, on either side, has really been practicing it. For years, Israel has embraced the “two-state solution,’ at the same time as they systematically permitted hundreds of thousands of Jews to settle in the occupied Arab lands of the West Bank. So much for compromise. So much for the two-state solution. And unfortunately many Arabs today are certain that Israel doesn’t want a two states solution.

Ironically, the Gaza Holocaust occurred just days before the inauguration of the first African-American president of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama, an epochal event that is occurring just forty-one years after Martin Luther King made his famous speech, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, “dreaming” about a time when the racial divide in America would finally be bridged. Forty-one years ago, Arabs and Israelis were killing each other. They still are.

As we despair the wreckage in Gaza, let us pause to reflect on these extraordinary days in America. Barack Obama is the new 44th President of the United States and Black and White America has been reconciled. Who could have imagined just a few short years ago that the descendents of the slaves who built the White House would be living there as the “lord and master”? Why can such miracles occur in America and not in the Middle East? Well, the reason is because, one by one, Americans began to realize the absurdity of treating one’s neighbor (whether they be black or white, brown or yellow, Jew, or Christian, or Arab, gay or straight) as your enemy as opposed to your friend and colleague.

Barack Obama has often talked, and indeed written a book, about the “Audacity of Hope.” That is exactly what is missing in the Middle East. Audacity. Courage. Hope. It is time to harness HOPE in this beautiful historic part of the world, which we all share together. It is time to preach the gospel that we will all be stronger if we work together to create ONE COMMUNITY in the Middle East—Arabs, Jews and Christians, Sunni or Shia, Palestinians or Israelis. Maybe I am an idealist. But so too was the Reverend Martin Luther King who dared to say, I HAVE A DREAM. Rev. King’s dream has become a reality in the United States. Our dream can become a reality here too. All of us in the region have a choice: more Gazas. More wars. More hatred. Or work tirelessly, day by day, year by year, to make the dream of peace and compromise a reality.

But for now let us all, including our leaders, Arabs and Israelis give the Palestinian People, who are our brothers and sisters, the Audacity of Hope.

Hind Aboud Kabawat/ Damascus, Syria
Recipient of the 2007 Women’s Peace Initiative Award awarded by the Tanenbaum Centre for Interreligious Understanding of New York.

James Baker: Obama Has to Get Hamas Involved Peace Process, By Mehtap GUZEL, JTW

James A. Baker, former Secretary of State and former Treasury Secretary, told the Newsweek magazine that new American President Barack Hussein Obama must Hamas involved the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Baker said in the interview “you cannot negotiate peace with only half the Palestinian polity at the table. I would suggest an approach like we used leading up to the Madrid Conference in 1991. For the first time ever we got Israel’s Arab neighbors “all of them” to negotiate face to face with Israel. How? Back then, we nor Israel could talk to the PLO because, like Hamas, it was a terrorist organization. So we negotiated with Palestinians from within the territories whom we and Israel knew were taking their orders from [Yasir] Arafat in Tunis. But we both had deniability, and it worked!”

Baker further advised new president to engage Syria. “Syria’s marriage with Iran is one of convenience, and if we assured them they would get back the Golan and normalized relations with the U.S., we might wean them from Iran. Hamas has its offices in downtown Damascus. The Syrians claim that they can get Hamas to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist. If they can do that, you would then have 100 percent of the Palestinian polity, with whom you might negotiate a peace accord” he added.

‘Inevitable’ that U.S. Will Have to Deal with Hamas
Richard W. Murphy, Adjunct Scholar, Middle East Institute
Interviewer: Bernard Gwertzman, Consulting Editor, CFR.org
January 21, 2009

Richard W. Murphy, a veteran Middle East expert, says that just as the United States could have accomplished more in peacemaking between Israel and Palestinians if it had not banned talks with the Palestine Liberation Organization for some thirteen years, it is running the same kind of risk in not dealing at all with Hamas.

“I think we are now getting pulled into a more active position on the ground [in Gaza]. Whether this will lead to the opening of political contact with Hamas is the question. I don’t think it will happen quickly but I think it is inevitable. Hamas is, in my opinion, a legitimate representative of part of the Palestinian community.”

One of the problems, I would think, that the United States finds itself in is how to deal with Israeli-Palestinian issues when Washington will not talk to Hamas, the Palestinian group that controls Gaza. Is this problem the same as when you were in the State Department and the United States agreed with Israel not to deal at all with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)?

I do think there’s an analogy. We had explicitly pledged to the Israelis as part of the second disengagement agreement with Egypt in September 1975 not to “recognize or negotiate with the Palestine Liberation Organization as long as the Palestine Liberation Organization does not recognize Israel’s right to exist and does not accept Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338.” That was a mantra which lasted thirteen years. In that time, we had no discussions with the PLO other than on security issues affecting our embassy in Beirut.

Were there efforts to alter the ban?

Throughout those years there were individuals encouraging us to have some contact with the PLO, to explore with them what possibilities there would be to include them in peacemaking. But we stuck very faithfully to that pledge.

“When we start playing intra-Palestinian politics, I believe we’re rather quickly in over our head.”

So did that hurt American diplomacy? Could the United States have done more in that period if we had dealt directly with the PLO?

I normally don’t play the “what if game,” but this is a case in which I’ve come to feel we would have been much better off and the region could have been better off had we engaged with the PLO in those early days. It would have been very controversial with Israel; it also would have been very controversial with Jordan since King Hussein did retain, in the 1970s, the belief that he could reassert his leadership over the West Bank. And the Jordanian option was very highly preferred by the Israelis. But it didn’t work. What happened in those years was the inexorable progress of the settler movement which has hamstrung the ability of the Israelis to make a deal with Palestinians and dented their credibility with the Palestinians. You can ask if there is any Israeli leader who is ready to tackle the settler movement and work out a deal which would meet minimal Palestinian expectations for a state of their own? So I’d say that our not engaging with the PLO delayed or limited our ability to influence it.

Yasir Arafat, the PLO leader, finally did go through the “striptease,” as he called it, and in one concise statement in December 1988 made the necessary statements. Within forty-eight hours, U.S. diplomats were talking to the PLO.

How does that relate to the United States not dealing with Hamas?

On Hamas, a group which has not, to my knowledge, ever launched a deliberate blow against the United States, such as the PLO did–even though some Americans have been killed in Hamas acts of terrorism in Israel. Right now there is a cease-fire. Israelis are determined to do nothing that will allow any degree of legitimacy to Hamas. There is the same strong Israeli opposition to this movement, as there was toward the PLO. But Israel found a way to deal with the PLO. Israeli Prime Minister [Yitzhak] Shamir with great unhappiness put up with the PLO presence within the Jordanian delegation at the Madrid conference in 1992. The PLO today, in the person of President Mahmoud Abbas, has been a favored negotiator. Ironically, in the 1970s, Hamas, which was seen by Israel as a counter to the PLO since Israel believed that Hamas would never have any serious appeal. There is now a defacto cease-fire in Gaza but you have the Israeli military spokesmen saying, “Watch out because it’s not so recently their rockets could reach only twenty kilometers; now they can go forty kilometers.” Israel is going to do it’s damndest to be sure that those tunnels between Egypt and Gaza are closed, and there’s going to be a lot of discussions and movement on the ground to see who will enforce the closing. President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt does not want foreign forces on Egyptian territory, and Israel is going to be very insistent that those tunnels not become a conduit for weapons smuggling. Well, is Israel going to open the border crossing points? Is Israel going to open transit for food and medicine without restriction? Can that be done given their concerns about the weapons smuggling? I don’t know how that’s going to work out but I think we are now getting pulled into a more active position on the ground [in Gaza]. Whether this will lead to the opening of political contact with Hamas is the question. I don’t think it will happen quickly but I think it is inevitable. Hamas is, in my opinion, a legitimate representative of part of the Palestinian community.

Hamas did win the Parliamentary election in 2006.

Yes, it made us look foolish to be beating the drums for democracy and elections globally, and then to be turning our back on the Palestinian elections and endorsing a blockade that turned into a siege and forcing down the standards of living in Gaza. We fully endorsed the effort to cut Hamas off, to shut down contacts between American banks and banks in Gaza if they could be shown to be involved in getting money to Hamas. Our people were enjoined to not talk to any ministry representative in Gaza if the minister himself were from Hamas. So we endorsed the Israeli program and life got very hard for the Palestinians, and we’ll see how the story turns out on who broke the cease-fire. Was it Israel in November? What was Hamas’ intent in refusing to renew the cease-fire? They say it’s because the Israelis would not fulfill the commitment they had made last June on opening the border crossing points and allowing the food and medicines in unrestricted. And Israel said it would authorize, I believe, 15 percent of what had been flowing in a year earlier. That was not enough, and Hamas said, “We’re not going to renew the cease-fire.” And Israel said, “In that case, you’re breaking the cease-fire.” And the firing intensified and led to these last three weeks of bombardment.

Should the United States open talks with Hamas?

I don’t think we can, politically, move directly to open contacts with Hamas. What we can stop doing is endorsing a policy deliberately aimed at fighting the Palestinians and weakening Hamas. This is a delicate job because we have pledged our support to the PLO, to the Palestine Authority, we are training–and I gather the program is going quite well–Palestinian security forces in the West Bank. We’re saying Abbas should be accepted back in Gaza as the leader. Can we find a way to stop a devisive policy while not embracing Hamas? Can we manage to work through our role that’s been vilified strongly in a number of Arab states? Cairo got a cease-fire last summer, so it has the patience and it has the skills to get something again, indeed, with our support. But I think there are ways to signal that we’re not going to continue to blackball Hamas as a player in Palestinian politics.

Does that need a statement by the U.S.? That would really touch off a political storm in the United States and Israel, wouldn’t it?…. (Read the rest)

Hamas: Obama does not represent change: A spokesman for Hamas says he expects Obama to fail in the Mideast if he sticks with his current positions.

Obama won’t talk to Hamas – Olmert adviser

“I don’t think that this administration … will deal with Hamas or will talk with Hamas,” the adviser told reporters, a day after Olmert and Obama spoke by telephone.

The adviser, who spoke on condition of anonymity on Thursday, did not say whether Obama had told Olmert explicitly that he would not talk to the Palestinian group which rules the Gaza Strip.

“Talking to Hamas is first and foremost a Palestinian problem. If the international community start talking to Hamas, they will undermine the moderates,” the adviser said, referring to Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. “This is the fight between the moderates and the extremists in the region and I don’t think that anyone has an interest … to do it and will do it,” Olmert’s adviser said.

Obama camp ‘prepared to talk to Hamas’

Incoming administration will abandon Bush’s isolation of Islamist group to initiate low-level diplomacy, say transition sources.
Suzanne Goldenberg, Guardian, Friday 9 January

The incoming Obama administration is prepared to abandon George Bush’s ­doctrine of isolating Hamas by establishing a channel to the Islamist organisation, sources close to the transition team say.

The move to open contacts with Hamas, which could be initiated through the US intelligence services, would represent a definitive break with the Bush ­presidency’s ostracising of the group. The state department has designated Hamas a terrorist organisation, and in 2006 ­Congress passed a law banning US financial aid to the group.

The Guardian has spoken to three ­people with knowledge of the discussions in the Obama camp. There is no talk of Obama approving direct diplomatic negotiations with Hamas early on, but he is being urged by advisers to initiate low-level or clandestine approaches, and there is growing recognition in Washington that the policy of ostracising Hamas is counter-productive. A tested course would be to start ­contacts through Hamas and the US intelligence services, similar to the secret process through which the US engaged with the PLO in the 1970s. Israel did not become aware of the contacts until much later.

A UN resolution was agreed last night at the UN, calling for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire between Hamas and Israeli forces in Gaza. The resolution was passed, though the US, represented by secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, abstained.

Richard Haass, a diplomat under both Bush presidents who was named by a number of news organisations this week as Obama’s choice for Middle East envoy, supports low-level contacts with Hamas provided there is a ceasefire in place and a Hamas-Fatah reconciliation emerges.

Another potential contender for a ­foreign policy role in the Obama administration suggested that the president-elect would not be bound by the Bush doctrine of isolating Hamas.

“This is going to be an administration that is committed to negotiating with ­critical parties on critical issues,” the source said.

There are a number of options that would avoid a politically toxic scenario for Obama of seeming to give legitimacy to Hamas.

“Secret envoys, multilateral six-party talk-like approaches. The total isolation of Hamas that we promulgated under Bush is going to end,” said Steve Clemons, the director of the American Strategy ­Programme at the New America ­Foundation. “You could do something through the Europeans. You could invent a structure that is multilateral. It is going to be hard for the neocons to swallow,” he said. “I think it is going to happen.”

But one Middle East expert close to the transition team said: “It is highly unlikely that they will be public about it.”…

Syrian Leader Reaches Out To Obama, By George Baghdadi

In a congratulatory wire sent to Barack Obama, President Bashar al-Assad voiced his “hope for a constructive dialogue with the United States based on common interests and mutual respect, leading to a just and comprehensive peace in the region based on relevant U.N. resolutions.” United States Committee for a Free Lebanon Logo

Visit to Beit Sawa with Mustapha
Dispatch from Damascus 14 (17/1/09)
By Ali Khan

We have already had our first mid-term exam at the university. So far, I think that the program is very good at the lower levels but for the higher levels it is less organised and the teachers could be a bit better in their methods. A Syrian friend of mine, Mustapha invited a couple of us to his village for lunch on Friday. We left for Beit Sawa after the Friday prayers and congregated at the underpass near Shari’a al-Thawra. After waiting for while we eventually found the right servees and we headed north out of Damascus. This was the first time that I had left the city from the northern side.

After about ten minutes in the servees the urban landscape changed dramatically. When I went out of Damascus to Rami’s house in Dumaiyyara there was a gradual change as the areas became poorer. This time the change was arresting and immediate. Instead of lots of car showrooms there were innumerable number for garages and car washes. Car washes might be the wrong word for it because they were actually concrete shacks with a man and his bucket. The architecture was gloomy with concrete and stone blocks all made in a similar way and there was rubbish lying everywhere. Piles of rubbish lay by the side of the road, plastic bags were playing in the wind almost deceiving one into thinking that the more distant ones were kites. Gaunt and bare trees vied for space next to evergreen shrubs that seemed ‘everdusty’ rather than green. The sprawl continued and I began to wonder when the countryside would begin because Mustapha always used to tell us about the huge open spaces and the beauty of the area in summer. For a while, the baby on the seat in front, virtually climbing out of her mothers arms, stared at me quizzically as babies do, and we had a short but interesting conversation, of which she obviously understood much more. The servees stopped after about forty five minutes and I was nudged to get off by my friend.

To me Beit Sawa felt more like a continuation of the urban sprawl, perhaps even a suburb, than the village as I was hoping it to be. We got off to be greeted by Mustapha’s brother who took us to his friend’s shop while we waited. Obviously, the shopkeeper was eager to know about what we thought of the shop. He was keen on knowing the opinion of an American, a German and an Indian and we all nodded our heads vigorously and mumbled praises. Most of the wares displayed were toys of various sorts, various things for mobiles, key rings and other such bits and bobs. I am always surprised by the number of such shops in Damascus and elsewhere because I think and have been told that at least in the poorer areas there is not much disposable income. After a while we were assigned to a young boy who was lounging around outside the shop and he was told to take us to Mustapha’s house. On the way we dodged three motorcycles, one of which was being ridden by Mustapha’s brother. He had a huge grin on his face as he got off to say hello, completely ignoring the fact that he and his friends had blocked the road. Just as we were beginning to start walking again, a white car screeched to a halt about ten centimeters from me and before we could say anything, a familiar voice shouted ‘get in.’ It was Mustapha with a Canadian friend of his. We bundled in, thankful for getting out of the cold. The next half an hour was spent driving around the ‘village’ while Mustapha showed off his driving skills and tried to run over everyone he saw. I think this was not only because he wanted to be daring and macho but also perhaps he was trying to show us how everyone in the village knew him. After a while we drove towards the fields. Apparently, this whole area is wonderfully green in summer but to us it looked more like the bleak landscape of some parts of Eastern Europe. Christoph, while gazing out of the window, philosophically said that perhaps it looked a bit like the Serbian countryside when winter is setting in. Mustapha was keen to show us the canal, which was full of water and we followed its winding path for quite a while before he decided to stop in his field and take pictures. A group of men who were gathered around a pile of machinery briefly looked at us before going on with their work. Obviously, we were not the first foreigners to come to his farm. Everyone changed positions, while variations of the same photo were taken. I resolutely stood in the front, refusing to budge because it seemed more logical for everyone else to swap places since they were all overgrown! Hunger finally demanded to know when it was going to be appeased and we shot off from the farm towards his house. Mustapha’s house was very much in the same style as some houses in the villages I have seen in northern India. There was a sitting room as we entered and then a small courtyard with a pomegranate tree and rooms all around it. An open staircase went up to the roof. In my village people would have had a guava tree instead.

The drawing room was colourful with a large wardrobe decorated with the traditional Syrian inlay work. The couches had red rugs thrown on them. In the corner there was cabinet with the families best crockery and opposite it there was a small TV. We huddled around the electric heater and were introduced to Mustapha’s brothers. After the usual pleasantries, the conversation turned to Islam when Mustapha’s brother took it upon himself to explain to the guests his views on America, Hugo Chavez, other Arab countries and of course Islam. Meanwhile Mustapha, who has obviously spent a lot of time with people from all over the world, laughed and apologised for his brother and his mad ‘talk.’ In truth there was nothing mad about it. In fact it was interesting for me to see how he knew quite a lot about the world and some other countries, granted that some of it sounded like it was being read out of a propaganda leaflet. At the end of his talk, he said: ‘the fact is that all the Arab countries have sold out except for us Syrians. We are not cowards. We are not scared of anyone and we will not bow to anyone. I was beginning to find the whole thing rather amusing because while this serious talk was going on, I could not help but notice that Mustapha had switched on the television and was intently watching Hip Hop videos from America with troupes of the mandatory scantily clad women, fleets of expensive cars and rappers wearing more jewelry than the Maharajas of India.

The room was silent for some time, while people lit their cigarettes and their attention was focused on the TV. Mustapha had gone out of the room but he returned and announced that lunch was ready. We went out of the room to a different room. The food was laid out on the floor and it seemed like his mother and sisters had prepared enough food for twice the number of guests. I strategically sat down next to the diesel heater so that I could not only be warm but also could heat my bread on it. The food was delicious and hearty and it was a treat to eat fresh vegetables. Mustapha and his brothers were superb hosts and their enthusiasm to feed us, made me eat more than I should have. Thankfully we were sitting on the floor and I simply reclined onto the mattress behind me. Conversation turned to marriage and women, as they are wont to when eight unmarried men in their twenties share a meal. Not all the brothers are married and when I asked Mustapha about his views he said there was still a lot of time. I asked if he would marry a ‘modern’ girl from Damascus or perhaps even a girl from abroad. He immediately said no no! She will have to be completely hijabi otherwise I will lose all respect in the village. I asked what completely hijabi meant and he explained that the way the hijab was worn in Damascus with the face showing was not respected in his village and that his wife would have to cover her face too with just the eyes showing. I asked him if he would be happy with this because he has lived in the city for so long and had interacted with people from all over the world. I had heard him talk nostalgically about a particular friend of his from Europe. Often he would recount stories of their travels together around Syria. He agreed with me but expressed his inability to do anything in the face of prevailing customs and traditions. After lunch I knew that the women of the family would come and eat but unfortunately some of the other guests had not thought about this and had made themselves quite comfortable next to the heater. After initially trying to be subtle and suggesting that we go and watch TV, I eventually had to tell them quite candidly why we had to move. Meanwhile Mustapha was getting ready to take the food out, insisting that we remain comfortable, but thankfully we all trouped out and went and sat in the TV room. After lunch Mustapha announced that we would go to his friends café. We were a bit reluctant as all of us had settled down next to the heater and were enjoying the conversation with his brothers. As we were leaving I asked if I could see the kitchen. His immediate reaction was one of embarrassment but I managed to calm him down and said that our houses in India were exactly like this. He reluctantly agreed and showed me the way. The kitchen was full of jars with preserved vegetables on the shelves. On one side there were four huge vats full of soaking chickpeas and flava beans. Opposite that, there were little jars full of spices and other condiments. On the floor two huge gas stoves took up most of the space. I think that his mother had cooked such large quantities of food that they had had to use bigger stoves and not the normal one.

It was nearly dark as we left the house and I saw a few splashes of orange and purple light in the sky through the spiny branches of the trees at the end of the street. The drive was somewhat saner, partly because of the dark and also because we told him that we had just eaten and would not be able to cope with any Formula 1 demonstrations. After a short drive we stopped outside a gigantic greenhouse. We got off and I asked Mustapha where the café was. He pointed to the greenhouse. The walls had been built up to about fifteen feet and some steel scaffolding supported a transparent plastic roof. As I was walking in, I felt as if I was entering a one of the marijuana plantations one often sees in films. The whole area was lit by white neon lights and burly looking men in black leather jackets sat around tables with red table-clothes smoking furiously and playing cards. Every so often someone would get upset and scream at the others for being dishonest and would threaten to do all kinds of foul things. Mustapha said that they don’t play with money. I would hate to see what would happen if they did and someone cheated. The owner came around to say hello to us, also wearing the compulsory leather jacket, and gave everyone a small cup of Arabic coffee. From previous experiences I knew that one is normally meant to down the drink and give back the cup, as there are normally only a couple of cups that are reused. Unfortunately, the Canadian found it too hot and decided to settle down with it and nurse it. Meanwhile the owner stood respectfully waiting for the cup and it was only after the Mustapha managed to talk to him, that he handed back the cup. Afterwards we all ordered tea and everyone asked for an argileh, the water-pipe, except for, predictably, the American. Mustapha insisted that I try some flavour that is only found in that area. I had only had smoked an argileh once before during my stay here and I am not a big fan but it was an interesting flavour. Gradually Mustapha’s brothers and friends wandered in and everyone ordered their favourite type of argileh. Soon the whole place was full of smoke and the owner switched on some contraption attached to the plastic roof that was meant to clear the smoke. Unfortunately it did not work very well. If we were in any western country, someone observing the smoky greenhouse, from the outside, would get very different ideas as to what was happening inside. The TV was right above our heads and was blaring out old Arabic music. The gentleman next to me gleefully pointed out Om Kulthum, Fayrooz, Sameera and other more recent musicians. After about two hours of sitting in the café, we decided to leave and we asked Mustapha to take us back to the servees stop. Thankfully this time it was not a long wait and we clambered aboard after saying goodbye to Mustapha. I think he has watched one to many Hollywood films or perhaps he has too many English friends because now, when speaking in English, he has a tendency to qualify everything by saying “f’ing” before it. Strangely I think it is rather endearing, simply because it sounds so absurd. So, after we said our ‘f’ing’ goodbyes, he got into the car and zoomed off to join his friends for more argileh.

We experienced Syrian driving at its best again, as we shot off towards Damascus. On the way the driver managed to scrape the side of another servees but he did seem to care at all. By now all of us also pay no heed to the manic driving and we continued to talk about our travels and experiences. In the background the radio was playing and someone was giving a speech about the atrocities in Gaza but the volume was not loud enough to hear exactly what he was saying. Funnily enough, in a slightly morbid way of course, that is exactly the problem at the moment. None of the countries that matter in terms of global politics are raising their voices enough against the Israeli oppression of the Palestinian people. Until next week, Ma’as Salaam!

Everyone should go to “The Syrian Independent Creative Documentary Film Festival” Click here:

DOX BOX 09 opens on the 4^th of March, in Damascus, at Al-Kindy Theatre at 6 pm, followed by a launch reception held at Fardoss Tower Hotel – Oscar sale at 8 pm. It concludes its Damascus leg with a closing party held on 11^th March at Damascus lead discotheque Marmar at 10 pm. DOX BOX travels on the morning of March 12^th to Homs and Tartous for three days. The complete list of the films and detailed program will be online on the 25 of February 2009.

Will Syria Benefit from Israel’s Invasion of Gaza?
Joshua Landis, Syria Comment, 21 Jan. 2009

Cartoon In Teshreen, Syria, January 22, 2008: Israel Attacks Gaza As U.S., Arabs, World Remains Silent

The question on the minds of many Syrians is whether Israel’s onslaught against Gaza will benefit Syria. Few speak about it because it is heartless to contemplate benefit at a time of loss for so many.

Clearly, everyone has lost because of the hatred and destruction caused by the Gaza invasion. Syria has broken off talks with Israel and set new conditions for re-engaging — the convocation of an international conference. This sets a higher bar for the resumption of talks, but there is plenty of wiggle room in such conditions. All the same, the benefits of bilateral Syrian-Israeli talks had reached their limits, making the need for broader multi-lateral talks urgent. Both Syria and Israel are demanding wider engagement. Syria wants the US involved. Israel wants to set conditions that involved both Iran, Hizbullah, and Hamas. Lebanon wants the US to guarantee that Lebanese sovereignty will not be sacrificed. Both Syria and Israel have broader regional and international conditions for peace between them. Only talks recognizing the broader implications of peace and the broader interconnections of security issues can succeed. But even if the Gaza invasion has made bridging differences between Arabs and Israel more difficult, it underlined the urgency and importance of resolving the conflict. It is not a side issue; it is central.

Syria has benefited from the renewed international awareness that the Arab-Israeli conflict is crucial to any broader Middle East settlement. Obama will have to engage Syria if he wants to attenuate regional divisions and radicalism. Many advising Obama insist that he can ill afford to waste precious political capital trying to fix the hopeless Arab-israeli conflict. They urge him to limit his efforts to Iraq and Afghanistan. In short, they want Israel to get a pass on continued settlement and the Golan. The violence in Gaza proved how dangerous this argument is. America’s allies and regional clout are badly damaged by the ongoing injustices of the Israeli occupation. There will be no winning the war on terror until the festering Palestine conflict is resolved. It is a constant source of renewed hatred, frustration and radicalism throughout the Muslim world precisely because it is an issue over which the US has great influence. Moreover, it is a daily referendum on Washington’s attitude toward Arabs and Muslims.

The war also brought home to us how Iran’s involvement in Arab divisions is derivative. Many analysts insist that Iran is the problem, not Israel. In fact, they argue that Israel is the answer to America’s regional challenges, because Israel can work with Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt in order to overpower and defeat America’s enemies allied with Iran. They bolster this argument by insisting that Hizbullah, Hamas, and Syria are Iranian surrogates. They demonize them and insist that they are warlike and terrorist by nature and not by contingency or necessity. But this argument is nonsense.

The “moderate” Arab states, Egypt and Jordan, work with the US and ally with Israel because they have resolved their conflict with the Jewish state. Saudi Arabia can do so because it never had one. In short, the “moderates” are moderate because they have no conflict with Israel. The radicals are radical because they do. Syria, the Shiites of Southern Lebanon, the Palestinians, and the broad opinion of Arabs, who  sympathize with their Palestinian cousins are radical because Israel occupies their land. Syria is compelled to fan the flames of hatred and violence because it calculates — and perhaps correctly — that only militant passions can win back their land and restore lost dignity. They are convinced that America, and increasingly the “moderate” Arab governments, want them to cede their land to Israel in the name of Arab unity and fighting Iran. They will not do this.

It is not a coincidence that the Arab World is divided along lines defined by the Arab-Israeli conflict. Iran did not create this conflict, it merely exploits it. To restore Arab unity and restore the balance between Arab states and Iran, Washington must convince Israel to abandon its occupation. It must find a way to restore land taken from neighboring states. Of course the Arab-Israeli conflict is not the only conflict in the region, but it is central.

The invasion of Gaza has laid bare once again the ugly truths of the Arab-Israeli conflict, just as it has clarified how contingent on it are America’s prestige and policies. Stability, moderation, and balance will not reign until Washington addresses this issue honestly and forcefully. Syria is the leading Arab state involved in this conflict, leaving Obama little choice but to engage it seriously and soon.

Sami Moubayed parses Assad’s Der Spiegel interview:’Peace without Syria Is Unthinkable,‘ on 01/19/2009 in his Gulf News article: US and Syria should meet halfway. His main points are:

• The Bush team wrongly believed that the Syrians were more interested in returning to Lebanon, than in restoring the Golan. That was untrue and unfair to Syria.
• The only chances for resuming Syrian-Israeli talks would be for an international conference to be held to discuss the Middle East peace process, similar to the one that took place in Annapolis, only with a more serious US Administration.
• Since Syria and Qatar announced that the Abdullah Initiative, agreed upon at the Beirut Summit of 2002, was now dead, a new formula would have to be reached, by consensus in the Arab League that is acceptable to the Syrians.
• When confronted with the old saying, “no war without Egypt, no peace without Syria” the Syrian leader said that more than ever, that argument still stands.
• What is required today is a series of confidence building measures – and symbolic gestures between Damascus and Washington DC. One gesture would be sending a US ambassador to Damascus. Syria would reciprocate by opening the American school and the American culture centre. Progress would logically end there, however, … until the Golan Heights are returned to their rightful owners. In this respect, Syria has a major role to play in bringing about regional peace.
• Need for a de facto recognition of Hamas, similar to how Israel and the United States recognized Hezbollah through the April Understanding of 2006.
• Egypt, however, is currently trying to take credit for the ceasefire in Gaza, while noticeably; Hamas announced its acceptance of the ceasefire, neither from Gaza, nor from Cairo, but from Damascus.

Did Israel’s invasion of Gaza force the beginnings of reconciliation between the feuding Arab leaders? Many Syrians saw a ray of hope in the meeting between President Assad and Saudi King Abdullah at the Economic Summit in Kuwait.

King Abdullah and President Assad Make Up at the Kuwait Economic summit under pressure from the Arab people who were horrified at Arab divisions that prevented any Arab attempt to respond to Israel's attack on Gaza

Read al-Sharq al-Awsat, here and here

Differences persist according to Reuters.

Arab leaders agreed at a summit on Tuesday to help rebuild the battered Gaza Strip, but differences persisted over finding a united stance on the three-week Israeli offensive that killed more than 1,300 people. Differences over the strength of the wording on Gaza in the declaration delayed the summit’s concluding session…. The final declaration omitted detail on the size of a fund to rebuild Gaza. Foreign ministers meeting on Friday had adopted a resolution to establish a fund of up to $2 billion (1 billion pounds) fund that leaders were expected to back. Saudi Arabia committed $1 billion towards reconstruction on Monday.

AP’s DIANA ELIAS writes:

Earlier Tuesday, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, without naming specific countries, said leaders were unable to reach a consensus.

“Unfortunately, we didn’t reach a final result because of time limits and because some are entrenched in their positions,” Zebari told state-owned Kuwait Television.

The failure to agree came a day after Saudi King Abdullah urged Arab leaders to end their differences and warned Israel that an Arab peace initiative proposed by the kingdom would not remain on the table forever.

The king, who along with Egypt have been pressuring Hamas to be more moderate, even invited his Arab rivals — the leaders of Syria and Qatar — to lunch at his Kuwait residence. Following the meal, Qatar’s prime minister expressed optimism that both camps could work together, and local media praised the gathering as a historic “Arab reconciliation.”

But Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak took a veiled swipe at Syria by criticizing Iran’s ties with some Arab leaders — indicating that the two sides were still divided. The Persian country and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah are two of Hamas’ main backers and both have strong relations with Syria and Hamas.

Egypt and Saudi Arabia, both staunch U.S. allies, initially blamed Hamas for the Gaza crisis. Later, as the Gaza death toll increased and public pressure in the Arab world to support Hamas mounted, the two Arab powerhouses shifted their accusations toward Israel.

IC writes: “Words of kissing and making up between Bashar Al Assad and Saudi/Egyptian/Jordanian leaders. If this is true, its HUGE. I hate to be a skeptic but i wonder how long this will last. but you cannot miss the irony of this happening the day Bush leaves the White House”

Ehsani2: “By watching the speech of the Saudi King, one cannot but concede that Damascus won big this morning. It is no longer that Syria is responsible for Arab divisions. The King admitted that it was everybody’s fault “without exception”. Israel’s attack on Gaza left the Saudi King with no option but to cut his loss and redeem the little credibility that he, Egypt and Abbas have left when it comes to their silence. As usual, Damascus proves its superior understanding of the region’s geopolitical realities.

Alex writes: “Better late than never … the king should have made that speech a year or two ago, but fine. As for Syria’s choices of allies … I think one of the most valuable ones was Syria’s alliance with Qatar …. in effect Syria got Aljazeera on its side.

The Saudi King was surely aware of the damage he was sustaining on a daily basis throughout the Arab world as Aljazeera covered the Egyptian and Saudi positions on the Gaza massacre. Opinions of guests were increasingly frank and negative… and you could feel the anger mounting against the two US allies.

Mubarak still can not stand Bashar by the way. His body language was quite negative at the meeting. he kept looking to the other side (not Bashar’s side) http://www.sana.sy/servers/gallery/20090119-163937.jpg

Observer writes: “Hamas was looking beyond the campaign on the ground for a campaign to win the elections in the West Bank and undermine Fatah. I think that when Abbas is calling for a unity government he knows that he and his faction are in big trouble. He is the one who was adamant about removing Hamas from Gaza”

Read ‘Abd al-Bari ‘Atwan in alquds alarabi. If this leads to concrete unified action and Egypt follows through with SA, then my hat to Barak, Livni, and the Olmert troika for unifying the Arab fold. It is a big IF, but let us wait and see: Atwan writes:

??? ??? ???? ???? ?????? ??????? ????? ??? ???? ?? ??? ?????? ??? ???? ?????? ?????? ?? ?????? ?????? ???? ?????? ??? ??? ????? ?? ??? ???? ??? ????? ??? ?? ????? ???? ????? ??? ??? ?? ?????? ?????? ???? ????? ??? ??????? ????????? ???????? ???????? ?????????? ????????? ?????? ???? ????? ?? ?????

By the way, the number of homeless in Gaza is estimated at 50 000 and the number without water is 500 000.Uri Avnery writes: The Arab defeat in the 1948 war brought in its wake the fall of almost all the existing Arab regimes and the ascent of a new generation of nationalist leaders, exemplified by Gamal Abd-al-Nasser. The 2009 war may bring about the fall of the current crop of Arab regimes and the ascent of a new generation of leaders – Islamic fundamentalists who hate Israel and all the West..

In coming years it will become apparent that this war was sheer madness. The boss has indeed gone mad – in the original sense of the word.

Ryan Crocker: “”Major traumas have very far-reaching consequences,” he says. “The Israeli invasion of 1982 had a fundamental and ongoing impact on the entire region, and on us. It brought into being the Syria-Iran alliance, it brought into being Hezbollah — and all the second- and third-order consequences, some of which we’re arguably confronting today in Gaza.” Crocker’s innate skepticism made him wary of Bush’s decision to invade Iraq. He won’t talk about his policy views, even now, except to say: “It was all opaque to me. I couldn’t see what would happen.”

Taher al-Nunu, Hamas government spokesman:: “Israel has succeeded in killing everything except the will of  the people,” said Taher al-Nunu, the main government spokesman. “They said they were going to dismantle the resistance and demolish the rockets, but after this historic victory, the government is steadfast, we are working and they were not able to stop the rockets.”

Eyad el-Sarraj, a Gazan psychiatrist who is an opponent of Hamas: “I think Hamas is stronger now and will be stronger in the future because of this war,” said Eyad el-Sarraj, a psychiatrist here who is an opponent of Hamas. “This war has deepened the people’s feeling that it is impossible to have peace with Israel, a country that promotes death and destruction.”

In the LATimes “…The urgency in both men’s voices signaled a position of weakness, reflecting the frustration of Western-oriented Palestinians over the outcome in Gaza……..the authority has no means to reassert its presence in Gaza without the consent of Hamas. And although Hamas said it was open to a new power-sharing deal, it seemed in no hurry to strike one with Abbas, whom one Hamas official dismissed as “a full partner” in the Israeli assault…… “The people are going to hold accountable whoever failed to stand by our people in Gaza,” said Izzeddin Ibrahim, a 25-year-old engineer in Ramallah. “There is no chance left to make peace with those who kill our people. We cannot accept anyone meeting with Israelis anymore.” a large majority of Palestinians, as many as eight in 10, believe Abbas’ peace talks with Israel are pointless and should be halted….. ”

.

BEIJING: The militant Islamic group Hamas should “face reality” and join the Middle East peace process, a Chinese envoy said Monday, adding the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians cannot be resolved by war.

.

Our Heros
by Safa Joudeh (See earlier entries)

The Israeli incursion in, and invasion of the Tal el Hawa neighborhood at the end of my street on Wednesday night and Thursday morning had many devastating consequences, especially given that it is the furthest Israeli incursion into the city so far.  Many buildings in Tal el Hawa were raided, many buildings, including mine, were bombed, many civilians were killed, injured or arrested.  Thousands of families were forced to flee.  Phosphorus bombs rained down on the city and our eyes are still burning from the fumes.  The UNRWA headquarters was bombed and the fire caused by the fuel kept burning till the next day.

It was these consequences that Alaa, Palestinian resistance fighters in his late 20’s, was trying to prevent.  I will not mention which of the various resistance factions he is affiliated with because that is irrelevant.  Alla and his fellow fighters were out in the battle front, facing Israeli aircrafts and tanks with their rudimental weaponry, their bodies and their faith 2 days before the invasion.

Alaa, his parents, his wife and 2 daughters live in my building compound.  Alaa’s wife is pregnant with a baby boy.  It was her husband’s wish that their unborn child and his young daughters would be given the opportunities he himself was deprived of growing up.  He was a doting father and husband, and a favorite of all among the residents in the area.  He was especially adored by Haja Na’oom, an old lady who lives alone on the fourth floor.  Alaa would buy her groceries, fix anything that needed to be fixed in her apartment, and keep her company on a regular basis.

And so as the attack of the Israeli Occupying forces on Gaza began, Alaa said goodbye to his family and disappeared to join the lines of other fearless young men who had traded in their lives to defend us.  In was understood that the risk was high, but that is by no means a deterrent for any of them.  Do you understand why we value our resistance so much?

Alaa kept in touch with his family.  Calling every night to make sure they were safe and to let them know he was still breathing.  The girls stayed up to talk to “baba” (daddy), Alaa’s wife was heartbroken, and his parents were in a constant state of panic.

It was a few nights ago that Alaa called his parents to let them know he was in Zatoun, the neighborhood right behind Tel el Hawa, and that witnessed the heaviest bombardment of all.  Alla spoke to his mother, and she immediately knew that there was something different about his voice.  It was weak, full of emotion…full of pain.  Alaa finally told her.

He had been shot in the stomach.  He was bleeding, hiding by a wall of some building.  His friends had called the Red Cross, but many injured civilians had been waiting all day too, and yet Israel denied the Red Cross entry into Zatoun.

Alaa’s wife and parents stayed up all night, calling him, talking to him on his cell phone and the cell phones of his friends.  As the son rose, Alaa’s voice got weaker and weaker.  All of a sudden he stopped responding.

His wife shrieked, his parents frantically tried dialing again, and then they got a call from Alaa’s friend.  Alaa had died, slowly, quietly and without complaint he had bled to death.

It wasn’t until 4 pm that the ambulance was able to retrieve Alaa’s body.  We saw men carrying him up the stairs, as we stood watching at the door of our apartment.  His face looked so peaceful, so picturesque, so beautiful. He had died a hero’s death, a martyr, and seeing his face you would understand that without even knowing the full story.

The funeral was held in the outside opening in front of my father’s clinic.  The men had taken our permission to hold it there and we were honored.

Today, Alaa is buried, perhaps he’ll live on in our memories for a while, but time dims such memories.  For his family, his life, his spirit, his smile, his touch will live on in their thoughts and hearts forever.  For the rest of us, he and others have given us a gift, a sense of pride and loyalty, a sense of gratefulness and unbound ability of sacrifice, a sense of connection to each other that surpasses any physical memory no matter how deeply ingrained it is in our minds.

[end]

Gazans Rally Behind Hamas
By CHARLES LEVINSON,  JANUARY 20, 2009, Wall Street Journal

GAZA CITY-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, as he announced a cease-fire in Gaza over the weekend, said Israel’s military objectives against Hamas had been met. But at least initially, the militant group appears to have gained what Israel and its Bush administration allies had long hoped they could damp: popular support.

“Hamas is now our army, the only ones fighting to defend the Palestinian people,” said Gaza resident Ahmed al-Sultan, standing outside the rubble of the north Gaza City home his family has lived in for 40 years. “I saw how they fight, their courage and their sacrifice, and so I’ve changed my opinion about them.

“Many Civilian Targets, but One Core Question Among Gazans: Why?
By SABRINA TAVERNISE in the New York Times
Published: January 19, 2009

As Gazans surveyed the destruction of the city on Monday, one question kept arising: Why had civilian institutions been hit? At lunch tables and in coffee shops, people listed the targets: the Ministry of Justice, Parliament, the central police station, the fire station, Islamic University.

“The war was not against Hamas,” said Rahmi el-Kheldi, the owner of a flower shop in central Gaza. “It was against me, my shop and my city.”

He added, “Their aim was chaos, to disrupt society.”…

For Mr. Baroud and his friends, the bombing of the science lab building, which happened in the early days of the Israeli offensive, was a frontal attack on their future. The university is prestigious, and they said they worked hard to get there. It is one of the best medical schools in the region, and Israel recognizes its degrees.

“Are we going to study in a tent?” asked Mr. Baroud’s friend, Ahmed….

Read this old article by Malley and Miller. Very prescient.

‘West Bank First’: It Won’t Work
By Robert Malley and Aaron David Miller
Tuesday, June 19, 2007; A17, Washington Post

Having embraced one illusion — that it could help isolate and defeat Hamas — the Bush administration is dangerously close to embracing another: Gaza is dead, long live the West Bank. This approach appears compelling. Flood the West Bank with money, boost Fatah security forces and create a meaningful negotiating process. The Palestinian people, drawn to a recovering West Bank and repelled by the nightmare of an impoverished Gaza, will rally around the more pragmatic of the Palestinians.

The theory is a few years late and several steps removed from reality. If the United States wanted to help President Mahmoud Abbas, the time to do so was in 2005, when he won office in a landslide, emerged as the Palestinians’ uncontested leader and was in a position to sell difficult compromises to his people. Today, Abbas is challenged by far more Palestinians and is far less capable of securing a consensus on any important decision….

[Comment by Landis] Increasingly, educated Palestinians and some Arabs are calling for a one state solution to the Jewish-Palestinian problem. I have never given much thought to this because it strikes me as impractical. Jewish Israelis have no reason to want it and the vast majority of Palestinians are nationalists who want a Palestinian state and not one that would surely be dominated by Jews, who are better organized, educated, plugged in, and richer than Palestinians. All the same, Elie Elhadj articulates an important argument.

“Why the Only Solution for Jews and Palestinians is a One State Solution”
by Elie Elhadj, author of The Islamic Shield
January 2009 for Syria Comment

For a durable solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Bible and the Quran must be de-politicized. In political terms, de-politicization means a single secular democratic state for Jews and Palestinians.

De-politicize the Bible and the Quran
The Arab Israeli conflict has become a religious war. Politicizing the Bible’s Genesis 15:18 politicized the Quran. Genesis 15:18 declares: “The Lord made a covenant with Abraham, saying, unto thy seed have I given this land from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates.”

Defeated in 1948, powerless and humiliated in every war since that time, Arabs took refuge in Islam. They invoked hostile Quranic Verses (such as chapter 2: verse 65, 2:120, 5:51, 5:60, 5:78), recounted purported stories of the Prophet Muhammad’s troubled relationship with the Jewish tribes in Medina (Banu Qurayza, Banu Al-Nadir, and Banu Qainuqa), and drew lessons from the symbolism of substituting Friday for the Sabbath and of changing the direction during prayer from Jerusalem to Mecca. Other Quranic verses urge jihad against Muslims enemies (2:191, 2:193, 8:60, 9:5, 9:29) and promise (2:82) the martyred the delights of paradise; wine (47:15), beautiful women (44:54), silk, brocade, and gold (18:31), etc… Combined, these verses made a jihadist’s career worthwhile. In the hands of jihadist leaders, these verses transformed political frustrations into religious crusades and the jihadists into walking bombs.

For thirteen centuries, however, these were non-issues. Hundreds of thousands of Jews lived harmoniously among Muslims in Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen.

Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, Britain’s first and thus far the only person of Jewish parentage to reach the premiership (1868 and 1874-1880), described in his novel Coningsby the “halcyon centuries” during the golden age of Muslim Spain in which the “children of Ishmael rewarded the children of Israel with equal rights and privileges with themselves.” Disraeli described glowingly how Muslims and Jews alike “built palaces, gardens and fountains; filled equally the highest offices of the state, competed in an extensive and enlightened commerce, and rivaled each other in renowned universities.”

In 1492 the Muslim Ottoman Sultan Bayezid-II (1481-1512) encouraged great numbers of Jews to settle in the Ottoman Empire following their expulsion from Spain and Portugal.

Islam venerates Judaism. Arabs believe they share a common ancestry with the Jewish people going back to the sons of Abraham, Ismail and Ishaq. The Quran praises Abraham as the first Muslim, describing Islam as the Religion of Abraham. The Quranic Chapter 14, with its 52 Verses is named after Abraham and to Joseph the Quran names Chapter 12, with its 111 Verses. Muslim men are allowed to marry Jewish women, without the need to convert them to Islam (the children must be Muslims). Today, Jewish-derived Arabic names like Daoud, Ibrahim, Ishaq, Mousa, Sara, Sulaiman, Yacoub, Yousef, Zakariyya are common in every Arab society.

Politicizing the Bible politicized the Quran. A vexing religious confrontation has been created pushing the moderates among Arab Muslims into orthodoxy and the orthodox into Islamism and Jihadism. The victory of Hamas in the January 25, 2006 parliamentary elections in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, as well as the popularity of Islamic Jihad, are reminders that this conflict has been delivering the Muslim masses into the hands of the Islamists. History suggests that this religious war could go on for a20thousand years. Military action alone against the Jihadists will breed more Jihadists. Experience suggests that, like its previous victories, Israel’s latest battle against Hamas in the Gaza strip that started on December 27, 2008 will strengthen jihadism.

Unless the Arab Israeli conflict is resolved politically and quickly, Islamism and Jihadism will continue on their march. Avraham Berg, speaker of Israel’s Knesset in 1999-2003 and former chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel, articulated in sobering terms what Israel should do in order to bring peaceful coexistence between the Jewish and Palestinian peoples.

The Bible and the Quran Must be De-politicized

For a durable solution to the Arab Israeli conflict, a single democratic and secular state for Jews and Palestinians needs to evolve. A single state promises a more durable long-term solution than the two-state solution, currently in vogue. The two-state solution is inherently unstable for four reasons:

1. First, demographically, a purely Jewish state is impossible to attain. Had Palestine been uninhabited at the time of Israel’s creation a refugee problem would not have arisen and a purely Jewish state could have been possible. However, around the time of Israel’s creation Palestine was a home to around 1.4 million Palestinian Arabs.

The Zionist dream of creating an exclusive state for the Jewish people in Palestine is unsustainable in the long-term. Presently, 1.4 million Palestinians are estimated to be citizens of Israel, or a quarter of Israel’s Jewish population. Due to their high population growth rates the Palestinian-Israelis will eventually become the majority. The Palestinian-Israelis are in addition to the 4.2 million Palestinians who live under Israel’s occupation in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Outside Palestine, 2.6 millions are registered in refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria, plus 1.5 million scattered worldwide.

Unless the Palestinian-Israelis somehow vanish, Israel’s Jewish population will eventually become the minority and the Palestinian-Israelis the majority; the population growth rate of the Palestinian-Israelis is much greater than that of Israeli Jews. The number of Palestinians in Israel in 1948 was about 150,000. If Israel would allow the future Palestinian-Israeli majority full citizenship rights, they’ll control the government. If Israel subjects the majority to an apartheid regime, the system will eventually unravel. Apartheid regimes have short lives: Witness Rhodesia and South Africa.

2. Secondly, intractable issues stand in the way of a two-state solution: Jerusalem, borders, security for Israel and for Palestine, water rights, settlements, and the refugees’ right-of-return. Since the signing of the Oslo Agreement on September 13, 1993, none of the thorny issues has been resolved. When Bill Clinton, Ehud Barak, and Yasser Arafat attempted in July 2000 to tackle these issues at Camp David, the negotiations collapsed, leading to the second intifada and to Hamas’ gains in the 2006 parliamentary elections, which culminated by the take-over by Hamas of the Gaza Strip in June 2007, and Israel’s devastating war against Hamas eighteen months later.

3. Thirdly, even if a miracle patches up a two-state agreement the extremists on both sides would undermine the agreement. The extremists believe that they are divinely ordained to keep-up the struggle until they control the entirety of the land.

4. Fourthly, the Arab masses w ill shun a Zionist state. Judging from Israel’s peace treaties with Egypt (March 26, 1979) and Jordan (October 26, 1994), relations among the Egyptian and Jordanian masses and Israelis failed to develop beyond small diplomatic missions.

Western democratic and secular ideals should inspire the development of a single, democratic, and secular state for Palestinians and Jews. There are three reasons in support of such a development:

1. First, the intractable obstacles that have bedeviled the two-state solution would disappear.

2. Secondly, a single state will commingle Palestinians and Jews into an inseparable mix. The Jewish settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, estimated at about half a million in more than 125 settlements, could become instruments of integration between Palestinians and Jews, not segregation; a mixture of Jews among Arabs as difficult to unscramble as removing the Palestinian Israelis from Israel. A single state would lead the Arab governments to recognize the new state. Muslims everywhere, Arabs especially, would no longer have an excuse to boycott their Jewish “cousins.” Economic, cultural, educational, and social interaction would follow. The two sides would quickly learn=2 0how much they could benefit from one other.

3. Thirdly, a single state solution would allow Arabs and Jews full access to the entirety of Palestine.

The secular democratic one-state solution has been gathering pace. A well attended conference by Arabs and Israelis at London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) was held on November 17-18, 2007 to address the various aspects of this concept.

Arab and Jew Can Live Together in Peace

Around the time of Israel’s creation, more than 850,000 Jews migrated from Arab countries, 600,000 going to Israel. The charge that the Jews migrated because of Arab maltreatment is an unfair political expediency. The migration happened in the course of Israel’s creation. During this period, 531 Palestinian villages were depopulated and 805,000 refugees lost their homes, according to Palestinian sources (650,000 to 700,000 refugees, according to Jewish sources).

Had Zionism adhered to the stipulation in the 1917 Balfour declaration: “Nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine,” the Muslim/Jewish conflict would not have developed.

Durable peace and the long-term prosperity of the Jewish people in the Arab World require the genuine welcome of the Arab masses. Smart bombs and nuclear weapons cannot force Arab peoples’ acceptance of a Zionist Israel. The 600,000 Jews, who had lived in Arab countries for centuries and are today a major proportion of Israel’s Jewish population, could become a positive link with the Arab World. They share with the Arab peoples many customs, habits, values, food, music, dance, and, for the older generation, the Arabic language.

Whether it would be a good bargain to exchange a partial and declining Jewish exclusivity in an unstable two-state solution for a durable single state embracing Jews and Muslims is a question Israel’s Jewish people alone can answer.

In provoking the enmity of their age-old Muslim friends, Zionism has disserved the long-term interests of the Jewish people.
Sincerely,
Elie Elhadj
* Elhadj is the author of Elie Elhadj, author of The Islamic Shield: Arab Resistance to Democratic and Religious Reforms, and many articles which can be read here:www.daringopinion.com

With both Israel and Hamas having agreed to ceasefires, the analysis has begun.

No one can doubt that Israel won. It killed more people, wounded many more, and destroyed more than did the Palestinians. Also, only a few of the poorer and more inconsequential countries in the world got worked up about the lopsided killing. Only 10 Israelis lost their lives in the operation and about half were killed by friendly fire. Israel will be able to celebrate a handy win no matter how one counts it.

All the same, one wonders where the victory leads. A few post ago, I conjectured that Israel’s long term plan must be to drive the unwanted population centers and surrounding territory of Palestine into the hands of Egypt and Jordan. It is hard to imagine a two-state solution anymore.

John Mearsheimer in an article entitled, “Another War, Another Defeat” published in theAmerican Conservative argues that Israel believes it can retain control over the territories indefinitely. He believes the Gaza campaign is a foretaste of what will become an on-going Israeli police operation to pacify Palestinians and try to break their will – “so they come to accept the fact that they are a defeated people.” He writes that the stated goals of the Gaza operation — to stop the rockets and restore Israel’s deterrence posture – are not the real objectives. He writes:

The actual purpose is connected to Israel’s long-term vision of how it intends to live with millions of Palestinians in its midst. It is part of a broader strategic goal: the creation of a “Greater Israel.” Specifically, Israel’s leaders remain determined to control all of what used to be known as Mandate Palestine, which includes Gaza and the West Bank. The Palestinians would have limited autonomy in a handful of disconnected and economically crippled enclaves, one of which is Gaza. Israel would control the borders around them, movement between them, the air above and the water below them.

The key to achieving this is to inflict massive pain on the Palestinians so that they come to accept the fact that they are a defeated people and that Israel will be largely responsible for controlling their future. This strategy, which was first articulated by Ze’ev Jabotinsky in the 1920s and has heavily influenced Israeli policy since 1948, is commonly referred to as the “Iron Wall.”

What has been happening in Gaza is fully consistent with this strategy.

If Jordan and Egypt can resist the logic of absorbing the Palestinian populations of Gaza and the West Bank, which it seems they can do, then Mearsheimer will be correct. Israel will have to teach every new generation of Palestinians to be supine. This is a difficult undertaking, but perhaps not impossible. many will point to the success the US has had in defeating its autochthonous peoples, but, of course the US was willing to absorb native Americans and permit them equal rights. Israel cannot do this, which makes it hard to see a final solution.

There are many other interesting articles in the same issue: By Avi Shlaim, How Gaza became a Palestinian prison. Operation Cast Ballot, By Tom Streithorst, Kadima seeks votes through violence. Picking Up the Peace, By Daniel Levy, What happens after the ceasefire? Unanimous Consent, By Glenn Greenwald,

See http://incoherenci.blogspot.com/ for a good overview of different analysis of Gaza.

Also read Mark Perry, “Questions for Barack Obama,” at Bitter Lemons. Mark is always smart.

Speaking in an interview with The Washington Post, Obama on Saturday sought to manage expectations of what his administration may initially be able to do in the Middle East. “Most people have a pretty good sense about what the outlines of a compromise would be, Obama said, noting that the problem is political weakness on both sides. Obama said he aimed “to provide a space where trust can be built” and pointed to former British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s suggestion “to build some concrete deliverables that people can see,” such as greater security for Israelis and economic benefits for Palestinians.”

Gaza: Grief and devastation as fighting abates

Syria’s Assad ready to cooperate with Obama
Sat Jan 17, 2009

BERLIN (Reuters) – Syria is ready to cooperate with U.S. President-elect Barack Obama and wants him to get seriously involved in the Middle East peace process, President Bashar al-Assad told a German magazine.

In an interview with Der Spiegel released on Saturday, Assad also expressed some caution about future relations and said he preferred to talk about hopes rather than expectations.

Ties between the West and Syria have been strained by U.S. accusations that Syria turned a blind eye to Islamist fighters infiltrating Iraq and in 2004 Washington imposed sanctions on Syria for backing anti-American groups in the region.

Syria has, however, regained a degree of approval in Europe after supporting a peace pact for Lebanon and forging diplomatic ties with its neighbor after years of dominating it.

Asked if he expected cooperation to be easier with Obama, Assad said:

“I would talk more about hope than expectation. The Bush government has bestowed two wars on us. The world situation has deteriorated in the last eight years in every way, everything has got worse, including economic developments.”

“The new U.S. government must get seriously involved in the peace process. We must help, together with the Europeans.”

Responding to a comment from Der Spiegel that Obama might ask Syria to stop Iran building a nuclear bomb, Assad said:

“We would like to contribute to the stabilization of the region. But we must be included, not isolated, as we have been until now. We are ready for any kind of cooperation.”

He added, however, that Syria would put its own interests first. “Good relations with Washington should not mean bad relations with Tehran,” he said.

Assad also said in the interview, which was conducted on Thursday, that he had been active in making suggestions to help end the conflict in Gaza.

Arab and Muslim states on Friday called on Arab countries to review their ties with Israel over its offensivein Gaza which has killed more than 1,200 Palestinians and to suspend an Arab peace initiative.

Assad also said many European officials had tried to communicate with Hamas. “The Europeans have learned. That is why they are talking to the Hamas leadership here in Damascus — of course not publicly. I won’t name names. But some are people who denounce Hamas,” said Assad.

(Reporting by Madeline Chambers)

Syria Makes Its Mark on Regional Politics
Analysis by Helena Cobban*

DAMASCUS, Jan 16 (IPS) – The main artery of Damascus’s famous covered souk (market) sports a giant red banner expressing — in Arabic and English — the disgust and anguish of a nearby private business for the Israeli military’s attacks on Gaza.

In restaurants and other businesses, large-screen televisions that usually play sports are instead tuned to Al-Jazeera’s 24-hour coverage from Gaza. Syrians of all social groups voice sadness — and considerable anger — about Israel’s war on Gaza and the George W. Bush administration’s refusal to press for a speedy ceasefire.

But even amid these emotions, Syrians close to and outside the government expressed some confidence that their country might soon be able to realise two long-held national goals: The resumption of a serious, comprehensive peace process in which all the remaining tracks of the Arab-Israeli conflict — including their own — could finally be resolved, and their escape from the encirclement and multi-faceted pressure that Washington has subjected them to for many years.

On Jan. 14, President Bashar al-Assad told the BBC that he hoped for greatly improved relations with Washington following the inauguration of Barack Obama as president on Jan. 20. He urged the president-elect to work for the speedy resumption of Arab-Israeli peace negotiations.

On that very same day, Obama told CBS News said that he is going to work toward a comprehensive peace in the Middle East “on day one” of his presidency, and that this would include Iran and Syria. “We’re going to have to take a regional approach,” he said. “We’re going to have to involve Syria in discussions. We’re going to have to engage Iran.”…….

…The pro-Israel lobby in Washington and its many powerful allies in the U.S. Congress and the executive branch were at the forefront of the anti-Syria campaign. Syria has been subject since 1979 to stiff economic sanctions because of its place on the State Department’s — highly politicised — list of “state sponsors of terrorism”……

…Though President Assad does face some criticisms from his country’s citizens, on the core issues of the Arab-Israeli conflict and social equity he represents their views much more accurately than do the leaders of U.S.-backed Arab countries like Egypt or Jordan.

Many Syrians have also said in recent years that the mayhem and mass killings that flowed from the U.S. invasion of neighbouring Iraq made them appreciate the social and political stability of their own country much more than they had before. (Syria has been a generous host to some 700,000 refugees from post-2003 Iraq.)…

….So now — as the tragic events in Gaza drag on and the Bush administration enters its last hours — many influential Syrians are starting to feel cautiously optimistic. “There is a feeling that we backed the right horses in international politics,” one political scientist here said. “In 2005, a ’six-month scenario’ for the Assad government was openly talked of in the west. But now, there’s a good feeling here that we’ve overcome that… Those who bet against Syria did not win.”

He and a number of his colleagues in the political elite here pointed out that Syria, which has good relations with a broad range of actors in the Palestinian, Iraqi and Lebanese political scenes, could contribute a lot to any international push to build a stable peace in the region.

“But don’t ask us to break our relations with Hamas, Hizbullah or Iran,” one think-tank head warned. “Those relations are strategic ones for us. And anyway, we can use them to help broaden the base for peace throughout the region.”

If Barack Obama, once inaugurated, does push for a speedy and serious resumption of Middle East peacemaking, he will likely find a willing partner in Damascus.

*Helena Cobban is a veteran Middle East analyst and author. She blogs at http://www.JustWorldNews.org

London Times

“…If it is launched as a deliberate incendiary weapon aimed at burning civilians and homes, a war crimes case can be made on the basis that its use violates Protocol 111 of the 1980 Convention on Conventional Weapons.

Despite growing evidence, first revealed by The Times , that white phosphorus was being used by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) during attacks on Gaza, Israel’s military has denied firing shells with the chemical as a payload. Spokesmen for the IDF haverepeatedly stated that Israel has used only weapons that meet international rules on warfare, and that it has not resorted to any system that other countries, including Nato members, have not deployed in past battles. The evidence that white phosphorus shells have been fired into a densely packed urban is so compelling that the denials have increasingly lacked credibility…”

An ICG Report
Engaging Syria? Lessons from the French Experience

“However, President-elect Obama’steam can already garner important lessons from France’s always energetic, often impulsive and at times contradictory approach:

* To begin, in the wake of a long hiatus in bilateral relations – a feature of President Chirac’sand President Bush’s tenures – both sides likely will require a significant period of mutual observation and trust-building. Quick results, in other words, ought not to be anticipated. Next, any successful relationship must be based on clear and steady objectives rather than an endless list of demands.

* Patience during negotiations is as important as swiftness when opportunity strikes. Haste, when Sarkozy displayed overenthusiasm, at best was futile, at worst encouraged Damascus to harden its position and play for time. But by immediately welcoming and rewarding Syria’s first positive gestures, France bolstered its credibility while nudging Damascus to move. There should be no hesitation to halt dialogue if events warrant, while maintaining informalcommunication to allow quick reaction at the appropriate moment. For Washington’s new team, this entails immediately acknowledging and reciprocating positivesteps and penalising negative ones.

*Finally, there are lessons for those in the U.S. who bank on a Syrian-Iranian split. This will not occur, at least under current circumstances. However, the willingness to normalise relations with France suggests the regime wishes to diversify its strategic alliances. Washington should promote such a trend, which inevitably would dilute Iran’s importance in Syria’s eyes and facilitate a gradual reconfiguration of its regional alliances…”

Sunday morning, ICRC teams and ambulances of the Palestine Red Crescent Society rushed to areas that had previously been difficult or even impossible to get to because of the fighting.

By midday, approximately 100 badly decayed bodies had been retrieved from under the rubble.

Sadly, no survivors were found, raising fears that the actual death toll could climb in coming days.

Many people who had fled went to extract their own dead loved ones from what had once been their home.

Some were transporting bodies by whatever means they could find for immediate burial in the cemeteries.

“We saw the bodies of two old women being taken away by family members on a donkey cart.

Both had head wounds,” said Iyad Nasr, the ICRC’s spokesman in Gaza.

“It is almost impossible to describe the grief and devastation in that particular place.” A number of areas, including parts of Beit Lahiya, looked like the aftermath of a strong earthquake – entire neighbourhoods were beyond recognition.

Some houses had been completely levelled; others were still standing but were so badly damaged by shelling that it would be too dangerous to move back in.

Roads were completely destroyed, making it almost impossible for vehicles to move through them.

Friends and neighbours who had not seen one another for weeks hugged as they returned to their homes.

Others sifted through the rubble, looking for pieces of furniture or kitchen utensils that could still be used.

As the fighting largely came to a halt and civilians no longer had to concentrate on simple survival, they now tried to come to terms with their loss.

“An old man approached me as I was assessing destruction in a neighbourhood,” said Nasr.

“He told me that everything he had worked for all his life, everything he had achieved, had been destroyed: his house, his orchards of olive, citrus and palm trees.

Everything.

Then he wept….

Israel’s Barak gains in polls, Netanyahu stays ahead
18 Jan 2009, Reuters
(Adds fresh poll data, edits) By Ari Rabinovitch JERUSALEM, Jan 18 (Reuters) – Just before Israel launched its surprise offensive in the Gaza Strip, Defence Minister Ehud Barak appeared on a top- …

Hamas’s Gaza leader declares “victory” over Israel
18 Jan 2009, Reuters
GAZA, Jan 18 (Reuters) – A Hamas leader said on Sunday Israel’s three-week offensive in the Gaza Strip was a failure and had not cowed the Palestinians. “The enemy has failed to achieve its …