December 9, 2002              Opinion Editorials                   http://www.aljazeerah.info                                    

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Sharon’s Qaeda
Arab News, 9 December 2002

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Reports that Al-Qaeda operatives had set up shop in Gaza show how far Israel and the United States have gone in milking the Sept. 11 attacks to maximum benefit. Ariel Sharon stated on Thursday that members of Al-Qaeda network were at work in the Gaza Strip; the next day Israeli troops swept into the Bureij refugee camp in Gaza, killing 10 people in a Eid Al-Fitr massacre which included two UN workers.

And the Bureij raid raises the question why proven calm should be limited only to Palestinians. Daniel Kurtzer, the US ambassador to Israel, said the road map was an “evolving document” that would “continue to be shaped by the views and attitudes of the parties themselves.” He could have added that Sharon would add so many of his own views that the plan would eventually be named after him.

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Israel needs a regional war
By Hassan Tahsin
12/9/02

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Since coming to power as Israel’s Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon has been relying solely on military might to solve his nation’s problems. He has rejected any return to the peace process. Backed by extremist Jewish terrorist organizations, he is headed for war, with no opposition from the moderates because their policy is based on the same expansionist racist ideology.

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Sharon's agenda

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ISRAEL AGAIN displayed its ruthlessness and disregard for the faith of the others when its occupation forces raided the Bureij refugee camp in Gaza on Friday, the second day of the Muslim Eid Al Fitr. In what was reported as an attempt to capture a "wanted Palestinian militant," Israeli soldiers killed 10 people, including two United Nations workers. And again yesterday, Israeli tanks and bulldozers moved around Bureij, raiding a farm and shooting and wounding two Palestinian boys. Also, on Sunday evening a Palestinian woman was killed by Israeli fire in the town of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. Three of the woman's children and another woman were badly wounded in this attack. For Christians, Israel maintained its 17th straight day of curfew in Bethlehem on Sunday. Reports say the siege over the town, birthplace of Jesus, is likely to last through Christmas.

At a time when the Palestinian leadership is working to discourage suicide attacks and seeking to convince Hamas and other Palestinian resistance factions to put an end to attacks on civilians, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon remains bent on sabotaging any and all sincere efforts to end the cycle of violence and the retaliatory killings. Instead of using the occasion of the end of the Holy Month of Ramadan to declare a unilateral ceasefire, the Israeli leader dismissed this religious occasion and proceeded with his bloody aggression on the Palestinian people.

While accusing the Palestinians of trying to influence the next Israeli elections and manipulate its outcome in favour of new Labour Party leader Amram Mitzna, Sharon himself is determined to engineer the agenda of the Israeli people from one that aspires for peace, which is the Labour Party's stated platform, to one that focuses on war and destruction, the hallmarks of his own programme for the future. The Israeli premier is tipped to win the next elections on Jan. 28 and is now busy plotting the agenda of his remaining years in power. With the killings of 11 Palestinians in Gaza over the Eid Al Fitr holidays, Palestinian resistance factions will again be likely to react in kind and resume their own brand of retribution. The Middle East enters this holy time of year, which this year should be holy to the three monotheistic religions, with the same cycle of violence that has marked the Holy Land since Sept. 28, 2000, thanks to Sharon.

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American plans for Iraq

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AMERICA WANTED to wage war against Iraq to change its regime and replace Saddam Hussein with a Karzai-like leader loyal to America and friendly with Israel. Later, the American plan was modified to call for Iraqi disarmament and removal of all weapons of mass destruction which Iraq claim did not make. Finally, America agreed to go through the United Nations and needed seven weeks of arm-twisting and bargaining to secure a new resolution to enforce strict disarmament and inspection, with provisions so tough that full compliance may be close to impossible.

After having the Security Council resolution it sought, America did not calm down. The president of the United States asked 50 countries to make commitments towards a possible war against Iraq should America decide that the Iraqi compliance with the Security Council Resolution 1441 was not complete. The slogan continues to be: War war war.

It is worth mentioning that articles 41 and 42 of the UN Charter forbid member nations from using force to implement resolutions unless specially authorised to do so by the Security Council.

If the US chose to ignore the UN Charter and proceeded to invade Iraq under the pretext of ensuring implementation of UN resolutions, what would prevent Greece from declaring war on Turkey, Egypt from attacking Israel, or France from declaring war on Morocco?

In an attempt to make its imminent war on Iraq seem more attractive, the US has been talking of building a democratic state in Iraq on the ruins of the current regime. But who believes these assertions?

Experience tells us that the US will turn its back on Iraq after destroying it. Washington will not worry itself with building democracy, because all that it is interested in is leaving behind a puppet regime that will ensure its control of Iraq's oil resources and reassure Israel.

America has spent the last 10 years trying to engineer a military coup in Iraq that would replace the current regime with one even less democratic.

What kind of democracy is America trying to build in cooperation with (offshore opposition Iraqi National Congress leader) Ahmed Chalabi and his group? Washington says that it is financing and backing Chalabi and his INC group because they represent American values — despite knowing that the same Chalabi robbed Jordan and fled. Tell me who are your allies and I tell you who you are.

The latest plan for Iraq involves installing an American military governor in Baghdad who would ensure the removal of weapons of mass destruction, run the country's oil industry with the help of American oil firms, oversee the civil administration and reform the army and security services. In other words, a system similar to that which ran Japan after World War II. They don't like to see the record of American intervention in Lebanon, Somalia and Afghanistan.

American occupation of Iraq and direct US military rule over a major Arab capital will constitute another humiliation to the pan-Arab nation. Such an eventuality will act as a catalyst for a new wave of terrorism in response. It will look like an application of the theory of the clash between civilisations.

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Two states or one?

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WHEN THE PLO formally recognised Israel within its internationally recognised borders and agreed to a two-state solution in 1993, most Palestinians swallowed hard, but accepted it. We believed that this unprecedented historic compromise, though bitter, was necessary to bring about peace. Those who completely rejected the creation of a state limited to the West Bank and Gaza Strip — a mere twenty-two per cent of the country in which Palestinians were an overwhelming majority just fifty years ago — were relegated to the margins of the Palestinian movement, both on the left and the Islamist right.

Israel gave everyone the impression that it would agree to a Palestinian state and that it was only a matter of working out the technical formalities. But almost 10 years later, Israel has still never recognised the Palestinian right to statehood, much less agreed to the creation of such a state. On the contrary, in practice, it has done everything to make the emergence of such a state impossible, by continuing to frenziedly build colonies all over the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. The settler population in the West Bank has more than doubled since 1993 and not a day goes by without further colonisation.

Because this policy has succeeded in solidifying Israeli control and has, as intended, rendered a rational partition of the country virtually impossible, an increasing number of Palestinians, including some representatives of the Palestinian National Authority, have started to talk once again about bi-nationalism — the creation of a single democratic state for Israelis and Palestinians — as the only viable solution to the conflict.

This idea is horrifying to many Israelis who view it as a plot to “destroy Israel”, since the vastly higher birthrate among Palestinians will soon make them a majority between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, just as they were until 1948.

None is more horrified by this prospect than Israel's traditional “peace camp”, represented by the Labour and Meretz parties. And yet, because of its liberal values, the “peace camp” is unable to embrace formal apartheid or ethnic cleansing to “solve the demographic problem”, as do Israel's right wing parties. The liberals want both the benefits of Jewish privilege that comes from living in a “Jewish state” and to be faithful to their democratic values. They have shown themselves to be entirely bankrupt morally, intellectually and politically, and to have no serious ideas whatsoever for resolving the conundrum of their hypocrisy. They embrace Palestinian statehood warmly in theory, but miss no opportunity to undermine and sabotage it in practice and to present proposals for meaningless and nominal statehood within a greater Israel.

Palestinians accepted the two-state solution (even many of those who opposed the Oslo Accords because they believed they could not lead to that goal) because it offered Palestinians and Israelis a chance at normalcy from which they could one day — like the European Union — build a future of peace and prosperity from the ashes of war and hatred. Moreover, an international legal framework already exists for the transition from the current situation to Palestinian statehood, at least in theory, making the path easier than any other solution.

For Palestinians, giving up the seventy-eight per cent of Palestine that became Israel in 1948 is giving up a part of themselves. It is gut-wrenchingly hard, and for some impossible. It is not difficult to understand and respect that. For millions of Palestinians, this is the land from which they, their parents or grandparents were expelled, in which homes and farms, shops and factories, churches and mosques, an entire society exist and from which they were uprooted in exchange for decades of dispossession, misery in refugee camps and demonisation by Israel and its apologists. But millions of Palestinians were prepared to accept it for the sake of peace.

Although the two-state solution will soon become impracticable, if it is not already, due Israel's relentless settlement construction, it may still have a last chance if Israel is willing to embrace the following principles:

1) Recognise that the Palestinians have already made an historic compromise by accepting a state in only twenty-two per cent of their homeland, and that no further concessions can be asked of them. Israel must declare that by conquering seventy-eight per cent of Palestine in 1948, far more than was allotted to it in the 1947 UN partition plan, it has completely fulfilled its territorial ambitions and will not seek any more expansion.

2) Immediately cease all construction in the occupied territories, including “natural growth” and all the other devices that are used to disguise ongoing settlement building. Israel must immediately stop confiscating Palestinian land either for building settlements or settler roads.

3) Agree that the goal of any further negotiations is a complete end to the occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem within a fixed, early period, and agree to withdraw under neutral international supervision and guarantees.

4) Recognise an independent, sovereign Palestinian state whose borders are those of June 4, 1967, with minor, agreed-upon modifications to rectify anomalies, such as divided villages and bisecting roads. Any land ceded on one side of the line must be compensated with land of equal size, value and utility on the other side, as close as possible to the exchanged land.

5) Agree to evacuate all settlements in the occupied territories, without exception, including settlements in and around occupied East Jerusalem.

6) Jerusalem, as an open city, would be the capital of the two states. An arrangement for sharing power fairly between Palestinians and Israelis, with guaranteed access to holy places for peoples of all faiths, would replace the illegal Israeli occupation “municipality” imposed on the city since 1967. This could be accomplished by various formulas. If the Palestinians agree to allow any settlements to remain in and around Jerusalem, Israel must compensate both the state of Palestine and the private land owners for the land, and the settlers must agree to live either as Palestinian citizens or permanent residents under Palestinian laws. If Palestinians agree that some Israeli settlers can remain in East Jerusalem, Israel must agree to allow Palestinians to return to the homes from which they were expelled in West Jerusalem in 1947-48.

7) The most difficult issue is the right of return of Palestinian refugees and compensation and restitution for their property and suffering. The right to return is an individual legal right and is not negated by the two-state solution. At the same time, recognition of Israel as a sovereign state means acknowledging a political reality and interest that will have to be factored into any formula to implement the right of return. It is not difficult to imagine solutions which fall between the maximalist positions of the two sides and which simultaneously take into account Israel's concerns and provide Palestinian refugees with real choices, including return, as mandated by UN Resolution 194.

Palestinians could, for example, agree among themselves to a system of priority where those with the greatest need to return get to choose first (among the choices Palestinian refugees whose original houses no longer exist might be offered is a house in an evacuated Israeli settlement). Israel will not be able to get away with a merely symbolic recognition of Palestinian refugee rights, nor would millions of refugees suddenly flood back, as in the Israeli “nightmare” scenario. There is ground in between that can be reached through negotiations and international mediation.

Palestinian private property remains inviolable and all property seized by Israel, even of those who choose not to return, must be returned to its owners or paid for at the fair market price, including use and interest. Stuart Eizenstat, deputy treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, set out some sensible principles for dealing with property confiscated from European Jews and others by Nazi Germany and other states, which could be adopted here. The same principles should apply to any Jews who were forced to leave Arab states as a result of the Arab-Israeli conflict and who, as a result, were deprived of private property.

These conditions represent an enormous historic compromise. They call for two states, a Jewish Israel on seventy eight per cent of the territory of historic Palestine and a state of Palestine on just twenty-two per cent. They call for full recognition of Israel within secure and recognised borders, the implementation of UN resolutions, sharing of Jerusalem and a just resolution to the refugee problem that respects refugee rights as well as Israel's needs.

From this basis, Israelis, Palestinians and later perhaps Jordanians, Egyptians, Lebanese and Syrians might, after a couple of generations, feel they can join together in something like the European Union. That would be a choice made freely among sovereign peoples. This is basically what millions of Palestinians thought they were endorsing when they elected Yasser Arafat as president of the PNA, and despite Israel's determination to destroy the possibility of an independent and sovereign Palestinian state, it is the vision still on offer if Israel chooses to change course and grasp it.

The problem is that there is not one major Israeli party or leader who is willing to put such a vision to the Israeli people. Even the most “dovish” want to keep most of the settlers where they are, annex large chunks of the West Bank, keep control of most of Jerusalem, and reject categorically any discussion of the right of return. No allowance is made for the massive compromises already made by the Palestinians, and more still are demanded.

Israeli sociologist Jeff Halper argues that it is already too late and Israel's “matrix of control” in the occupied territories cannot, in effect, be dismantled. If Halper is right, then nothing any Israeli leader says will save the two-state solution. But if he is wrong, and it can be saved, time is very short and we must hear a commitment to completely end the occupation from the Israelis now. After all, they are the principal beneficiaries of this solution.

The whole world is waiting, not least the Arab world, which, again, held out its hand to Israel last March when the Arab League unanimously reaffirmed its commitment to a two-state solution. Sadly, though, the political field in Israel looks unlikely to produce anyone who will seize this golden opportunity. Israel, therefore, will likely miss the boat on the two-state solution and we will have to think about what it will be like to live together in one state and, more importantly, how to get there peacefully, because no road map exists. That is not a bad thing. No Palestinian can have any problem with the idea of living with Israelis, as long as they are all equal before the law and in practice.

The births or immigration of Jews are not a “demographic time bomb” that should be regarded with horror, nor should Palestinians be frightened of having next door neighbours who speak a different language or worship in different ways. Palestinian society, made up of Arabs, Christians, Muslims, Jews, Africans, Armenians, Circassians and others, has always embraced human and cultural diversity — something only strengthened by the Palestinian diaspora's long exile in every corner of the earth.

Palestinians should be prepared still to accept two states as a practical solution to the conflict and do everything in their power to make it work. However, the mere trappings of nationalism — flags, anthems, stately buildings and passports — mean absolutely nothing in themselves. What matters is the content: does the flag represent true independence and sovereignty? Does the anthem represent common humanist values? Do the buildings enclose genuinely democratic institutions that do justice? Does a passport give its holder the freedom to travel the world and live securely in his homeland? These are the questions that matter.

Palestine/Israel could be two countries with a border between them that may one day lose its significance, just as the border between France and Germany has lost its power to divide people. Or, it could be one country for two peoples. Both can be good solutions as long as one path is chosen quickly and the two parties stick to it, and if, in the end, Israelis and Palestinians enjoy peace, democracy and human rights together, not at each other's expense.

True peace, whatever way we choose to achieve it, has a price. The powerful must give up some of their power and share it with the weak, or conflict is inevitable. Both a genuine two-state solution and a single democratic state would require that Israelis relinquish their monopoly on power in a manner they have never seriously considered thus far. Peace only came to South Africa when whites realised this and gave up their monopoly on power. Israel is far from that point and still seems to be looking for a way to avoid the choice. That means discussion about how to live together will remain only academic, while conflict and bloodshed rage on.

The author is co-founder of ElectronicIntifada.net.

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America will pay the price for war

By Fahed Fanek

The Daily Star, 12/9/02

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AMMAN: Analysts and writers ­ this one included ­ have spent months trying to fathom the real reason the Bush’s administration is so determined to wage war on Iraq. There were many theories: oil, terrorism, Israel’s security, weapons of mass destruction, a clash of civilizations, redrawing maps.
It is obvious, however, that the war, if it takes place, will have nothing to do with terrorism since Iraq has not been shown to be involved in terrorist actions.
The war won’t be about weapons of mass destruction either, since Iraq will never be able to match US power with its pathetic arsenal ­ if it still has one, that is. And anyway, the US could deal with the threat by containing Baghdad.
The war won’t be about Israel’s security as, far from being threatened, it is the Jewish state that threatens the Arab world.
The war won’t be about Islam, because American policy doesn’t care about religion anyway. And it won’t be about maps either, since the current fragmented state of the Arab world serves America’s interests just fine.
In a recent article, Jay Bookman, deputy editorial page editor of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, wrote about a report issued in September 2000 by the Project for the New American Century, a group of conservative interventionists outraged by the thought that the United States under President Bill Clinton might be forfeiting its chance at a global empire. Those same conservative interventionists subsequently became extremely influential in the current administration, especially in the White House and the Defense Department.
In this context, Bookman mentions steps taken by the Bush administration, such as repudiation of the anti-ballistic missile treaty and a commitment to a global missile defense system, increasing defense spending by 25 percent, the “transformation” of the US military to meet its expanded obligations, and the development of small nuclear warheads “required in targeting the very deep, underground hardened bunkers that are being built by many of our potential adversaries.”
All these were recommended by the 2000 report.
The report also explains why so little has so far been mentioned about an exit strategy from Iraq once the Saddam Hussein regime is overthrown.
Quite simply, the US doesn’t intend to leave Iraq at all; rather, it plans to turn the country into a military base from which it can control the entire Middle East ­ including Iran ­ in an arrangement similar to those still prevailing in Germany and Japan 57 years following the end of World War II.
The occupation will be the first step toward the emergence of the greatest empire in history. Imperialism ­ an accusation the US used to deny ­ has become its goal in the 21st century.
This great prize was worth the price the US paid for getting the international consensus it wanted at the UN Security Council concerning Iraq. Weeks of intensive diplomatic wrangling were needed before Resolution 1441 threatening Iraq with “serious consequences” was passed. The resolution faced many difficulties because ­ quite simply ­ it opposed the will of the international community.
But the resolution was passed, with an amendment here and there to save certain parties’ faces. America succeeded in getting what it wanted, which, while not representing the will of the world community, fulfilled the interests of certain countries. In other words, the US bribed certain nations to secure their backing.
France, for example, was promised that a new regime would honor the trade and oil agreements it has with the current government.
Russia received two prizes for its cooperation: a free hand in Chechnya, and an American commitment that the future regime in Iraq will pay back its debts to Moscow, and that it will honor the oil deals signed with the government of Saddam Hussein.
China’s bribe was World Trade Organization membership on easy terms, opening the US market to Chinese imports, and an agreement to consider movements fighting to secede from Beijing as terrorist organizations.
Syria, for its part, received a promise to allow it a free hand in Lebanon, an insurance policy against Israeli attack and a commitment to breathe new life into the stalled peace process with Israel.
Mexico, another nonpermanent Security Council member, was paid an appropriate bribe too: It was promised US support for better terms from the IMF. In addition, by backing the resolution, the Mexicans avoided America’s wrath.
Iraq, which had hitherto enjoyed the support of much of the world community in its efforts to get UN sanctions lifted, suddenly found itself alone. Even Baghdad’s Arab “brethren” decided to accept the resolution, asking Iraq to cooperate with UN weapons inspectors in order to avoid the possibility of war ­ or at least to put it off.
This episode demonstrates that in politics there are no principles, only interests. Machiavelli might be dead, but his ideas are alive.
But what about the vaunted “Arab street?” Will America be made to pay a price for attacking Iraq?
The Arab street has assumed great importance in recent years; upon the expected reactions of this “street” are built many decisions made by major powers vis-a-vis the Arab world.
Where Iraq is concerned, supporters of military action say the Arab street will remain quiescent, while opponents warn of turmoil and increased terrorism. And, as is usually the case in political analysis, the truth falls somewhere between these two extremes.
The Arab street will definitely not stand idly by while an Arab capital is obliterated; on the other hand, the street cannot impose its will on regimes that believe it to be in their interests to stand ­ overtly or covertly ­ with the US.
To gauge the reactions of the Arab street, it is necessary to consider a number of factors, such as the absence of democracy, and the lack of usual channels of peaceful expression. Consequently, the only options open to the Arab street are silence or violence. Silence is meaningless, unless it is total ­ which is impossible. Violence, on the other hand, needs only a few people to be effective, especially if these people are organized.
The street is subjugated at the present time; that is why it is very problematical to rely on opinion polls to predict what its reaction would be when the time comes. The results of such polls are only significant in democratic societies where people aren’t afraid to air opinions. However, there are indications that should Iraq be attacked, wide-scale violence would erupt like it did in Palestine, Lebanon, Algeria, and Egypt in the past, and more recently in Kuwait and in Maan, Jordan.
Under normal circumstances, the regimes will prevail. Arab governments are capable of stifling dissent. Problems will arise, however, if the street rises concertedly in response to provocations, such as price hikes and foreign attack.
The stifled violence of the street is worrisome to Arab regimes; it must also be of concern to the US, whose interests in the Middle East will be threatened if it wages war on Iraq.
Perhaps the US should learn from the experience of Israel, which has to pay the price for its aggression against the Palestinians in lack of security and destabilized interests.

Fahed Fanek is Jordan’s leading economics and media consultant.

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Washington and Baghdad steer course for war

The Daily Star, 12/9/02

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It is impossible to say whether a US-led war against Iraq is imminent, but it certainly seems inevitable. The crisis is being driven by two forces which appear to have no limits. One of them is Washington’s determination to impose its usual double standards on the Middle East ­ and to do so in a manner that sharply reduces the number of avenues via which hostilities might be avoided. The other is Baghdad’s obduracy in presuming that it alone has the ability and the right to decide what is best for other Arab countries.
The knee-jerk skepticism with which the White House has greeted the revival of international weapons inspections in Iraq speaks volumes about the Bush administration’s goals. The American people have been told that their government sees war as a last resort, but their leaders are leaving little room for anything else.
But Washington has had a willing partner in this dance of death because Baghdad still has yet to realize either the extent of the danger it faces or the accelerating effect of its own counterproductive “diplomacy.” The latest evidence of this came on Sunday, when Saddam Hussein had his information minister read out a statement on television in which he issued a backhanded apology for having invaded Kuwait in 1990. In actuality, the statement showed only that even after leading his people to ruin, Iraq’s president has learned nothing.
To be sure, George W. Bush and his advisers have closed most of the doors through which the crisis might have been settled peacefully. The only one over which they had no control was the possibility that Saddam might decide to behave responsibly and so shame them into foregoing the all-out assault they crave. Luckily for the hawks in Washington, Saddam’s speech on Sunday provides just the sort of ammunition they need.
Essentially, he has apologized for occupying Kuwait but nonetheless accused the emirate’s leaders of having forced his hand by seeking closer relations with the United States. It is to be noted that Saddam was far less concerned about “foreign interference” in the Gulf when Kuwaiti oil tankers were fitted with American flags to ward off Iranian attacks. He also had no qualms about outside influence when the Soviet Union sent him massive quantities of military equipment, or when the United States and other Western countries provided all sorts of assistance for his ill-fated adventure against Iran.
Between the two of them, Bush and Saddam are probably bound to spark a full-blown war. That places a special onus on other governments in the region to do everything they can to shield their respective populations by containing the repercussions of the coming conflict. That will not be easy for Arab regimes, which have always concentrated on short-term stability instead of long-term viability. That is why they are so unresponsive to their people’s needs ­ and why disdain for them is so strong. This might be their last chance to show cause why they should not be swept aside.

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Political earthquake’s epicenter will be Egypt, not the Gulf

By Saad Mehio, The Daily Star, 12/9/02

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According to Middle East specialists, the policy America is now pursuing in the region concentrates on the perceived dangers emanating from Iraq and the Gulf region, while ignoring the real source of threat: Egypt.
At first glance though, America’s preoccupation with Saudi Arabia, Iraq and the other Gulf states seems entirely justified and logical. After all, when 15 citizens of what is supposed to be your closest ally decide to fly passenger planes into the heart of one of your greatest cities, what chance is there for cold, rational calculation? The psychological trauma caused by the Sept. 11 attacks was far more profound in its effects than any political shock. This trauma will continue to determine American behavior for a long time to come.
Yet the Americans were wrong when they chose their targets, for it is Egypt ­ rather than Saudi Arabia and the Gulf ­ that has the potential to become the “engine of history” in coming days.
This is not because Mohammed Atta, leader of the Sept. 11 hijackers, was an Egyptian, nor that Osama bin Laden’s assistant, Ayman al-Zawahiri, is an Egyptian as well. In the end, the alliance between some members of the Egyptian jihad group with bin Laden was temporary; Al-Qaeda never was a joint Egyptian-Saudi enterprise.
The issue resides elsewhere — in the dangerous and explosive chemical mix now taking place in the land of the pharaohs between two distinct types of frustration, each of which will result in profound anger and dismay. These are the frustrations of nationalist ideology and materialism.
The first frustration, a result of American-backed Israeli oppression of the Palestinian people, is reaching unprecedented heights in Egypt. There is no need for sophisticated polling techniques to gauge the level of anger Israel’s policies are causing; it is enough just to watch Arab satellite TV channels to understand the depth of feeling among ordinary Egyptians in this regard.
Egyptian intellectuals, artists and ordinary people seemingly agree on one thing: that Palestine is an Egyptian responsibility. Taken to its logical conclusion, this idea implies that Egypt (with its government, army and people) has not shouldered this responsibility.
The reasons why Egyptian opinion is so totally mobilized for Palestine are not terribly complicated to understand. The Egyptian people, who applauded Anwar Sadat and Camp David, honestly believed that peace with Israel would result in their Palestinian brethren peacefully realizing their aspirations. All that was necessary, they believed, was for the Palestinians to do as the Egyptians did.
But the Egyptians felt betrayed. Twenty-three years after it signed up to peace with Egypt, Israel is still brutalizing the Palestinians. Moreover, the Israelis are growing more hostile to the Arabs by the day.
The Egyptians understood that far from being the key that would open doors to peace in the region, Camp David turned out to be a humiliating burden that is preventing them from rescuing their Palestinian brethren.
Lebanese Muslims tried this social dynamic before the Egyptians. Because the Lebanese ruling establishment balked at participating in the Arabs’ wars against Israel, the Muslims agreed to turn Lebanon into a PLO state within a state after the Palestinians were expelled from Jordan in 1970. This state of affairs continued until the PLO was expelled from Beirut in 1982.
The Egyptians are now experiencing similar feelings of guilt, feelings that are being exacerbated because their country is still at peace with Israel even as her Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (supported by most Israelis) is escalating his attacks against the Palestinians.
What is interesting is that even senior Egyptian government officials share these sentiments. They too feel that the Americans and Israelis are trying to deprive Egypt of even mediating between the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli government.
US President George W. Bush rebuffed Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s offer to stop the intifada in exchange for American recognition of a Palestinian state by 2003. Instead of taking up Mubarak’s offer, Bush received Sharon ­ and expressed his full backing for his policies ­ as soon as Mubarak had left Washington.
Egypt also viewed Israel’s confinement of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat in his compound as constituting a major blow to its regional influence.
To this severe nationalist frustration an equally frustrating economic situation must also be taken into account:
l The Egyptian economy is in its third successive year of recession.
l Some 900,000 Egyptians graduate from universities and schools each year with no prospect of finding a job. This situation is not expected to improve unless the economy grows. No one believes the Egyptian government’s forecasts that the economy will grow by 4-5 percent this year.
l Egypt’s ambitious privatization program has reached a dead end, and negotiations with the IMF about a quick $2.1 billion loan have stalled.
l Direct foreign investments ­ vital if Egypt is to modernize its aging industrial infrastructure ­ plunged from $902 million in the first half of 2000 to $334 million in the second half of 2001.
The Financial Times of London noted that “the parlous state of the economy has the potential to ignite Egypt.” This conclusion is reinforced by the fact that half of Egypt’s population of 77 million is under the age of 25, that the overcrowded Egyptian education system can do little more than perpetuate illiteracy, and that Prime Minister Atef Obeid’s government refused to employ 170,000 new graduates as the law dictates.
Nevertheless, the coming explosion in Egypt is not expected to be triggered by the economy. That trigger was, and will be, Palestine. The economy will only be a catalyst.
It is useful to listen to what Mubarak’s foreign affairs adviser Osama al-Baz has to say about the effects the Palestine question might have on Egypt. Baz says: “We are extremely concerned because of the spillover impact of the ongoing violence. We are thinking of the future and are worried about the lack of rational thinking in Israel and the hysteria that is taking place there. They are contrary to our hopes and dreams for ending the conflict altogether and reaching a peace that would enable all of us to develop.”
That was in reply to a question about whether Egyptian leaders were depressed because of events in Palestine.
British writer Christopher Swan was absolutely right when he noted that, “the pace of change in Egypt is so slow that it is easy to be fooled into thinking that nothing is happening at all.”
But that was in the past. Change is now taking place in Egypt at an accelerating pace. However, this change is change that is leading toward an explosion.
When ideological and economic factors combine, when political and identity crises overlap, and when the concepts of life and death become the same, it is only a matter of time before history takes another of its sharp turns toward violent change.
This chemistry was an integral part of all the major revolutions in history, from the French revolution in 1789 to the Iranian revolution in 1979 ­ including Gamal Abdel Nasser’s 1952 revolution in Egypt. Should a revolution take place in Egypt, the country will change from a peaceful animal that was expected to lead the Arab world into making peace with Israel into a wild beast that would lead a wider Arab revolt that would struggle for dignity and independence.
The real battle, therefore, is not where the Americans expect it to be. If Washington continues to bury its head in the sand, it will discover soon enough that the shock it received from Saudi Arabia will count as nothing compared to that which will come from Egypt.

Saad Mehio is a Lebanese journalist and writer.

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Why is the Arab street so quiet?

By Muna Shuqair

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AMMAN: In stark contrast to the widespread demonstrations that came out in many Western cities to protest US plans for war on Iraq, the Arab street has on the whole been mute and indifferent. Arab reactions to the almost inevitable American war have not been commensurate with the seriousness of the situation, especially since such a war would not only destroy Iraq and its people, but the economies of its neighbors as well.
Not that the Palestinians have been receiving more support than the Iraqis have. They have not. While they have been single-handedly confronting the Israelis and suffering the consequences, the Arab world doesn’t seem to care. It is as if the Palestinians are not paying the heavy price for the intifada, and as if bloodthirsty Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is not leading Israel. Instead of doing all they can to mobilize world opinion against the Israeli leader because of the way he and his government have been suppressing the Palestinian uprising, the Arabs prefer to do nothing.
What is it that drives ordinary people in Australia or France or elsewhere to go out onto the streets to protest against America’s Middle East policy? On the other hand, why do Arabs, who have suffered personally from this unjust and biased policy, witnessed the horrors of the 1991 Gulf War with its destructive effects on Iraq and the Arab world, and who realize the heavy price the Palestinians seemingly oblivious of the momentous events about to be unleashed on their people?
It might well be the case that not all Arabs are oblivious of the suffering of the Palestinian and Iraqis. Ordinary Arabs might be feeling great hurt and anger at what is being done. Yet they seemingly prefer not to express these feelings, unless severely provoked.
Yet that does not answer the question of why Westerners appear to be more concerned with what is taking place in the Middle East than its people.
For the answer is related more than anything else to political, cultural, and social differences between the West and the Arab world.
Thanks to a free and open press, Westerners can form opinions about various issues that affect their lives. Arabs by contrast, who have no influence over decision-making in their countries, don’t feel the need nor the inclination to make their voices heard.
While Western political parties and civil organizations can (and do) adopt positions vis-a-vis different issues, drawing up programs to deal with them, their Arab counterparts do not on the whole concern themselves with other than local issues. Even then, Arab political parties face great difficulties in mobilizing public opinion.
Moreover, the positions adopted by individuals in the West constitute an important part of public opinion, which exerts an influence on policies. The right of individuals to demonstrate is an integral component of Western liberal political culture. Even if demonstrators clash with the police, that does not deny the people the right of free expression.
While mass action also constitutes part of public opinion in Arab countries, Arab governments do not usually take heed of what their demonstrators say. Demonstrating is not part of Arab political culture. Even those few Arab countries with a semblance of liberalism cannot tolerate mass demonstrations ­ except in so far as such expressions can defuse public frustration. To the average Arab, going out on a demonstration is an extremely hazardous enterprise that might land him in jail ­ or worse.
In the Arab world, opposition and treason are two sides of the same coin. Patriotism is confused with loyalty to the ruling regime. Opposition to that regime is therefore perceived as treason.
There are other factors of course, which are more related to the nature and development of Arab thinking and perception. Ordinary Arabs tend to react to emotionally and impulsively. Such reactions usually spread from one country to the next, as what happened when Palestinian President Yasser Arafat was blockaded in his Ramallah headquarters. Large demonstrations took to the streets in most Arab capitals. But once the demonstrators had off loaded the psychological pressure, they went home. By demonstrating, the Arab masses were absolving themselves of guilt by pretending that they were doing their duty.
At the same time, Arabs feel that mass demonstrations are useless in changing policies, since they are laid out in coordination with the US and take no account whatsoever of what ordinary Arabs think. Arabs also realize that peaceful and violent expression both lead to similar ­ unpleasant ­ consequences. Better to be safe than sorry.
Ordinary Arabs have become frustrated as a result of their realization that pressure of public opinion will never succeed in changing official policies.
Political progress, including the development of the ability of individual Arabs to adopt meaningful positions that affect their daily lives, is absent in the Arab world. Political progress cannot be achieved in a vacuum; it needs a framework of political parties and organizations that adopt political, environmental, health, and economic issues in an atmosphere of freedom and openness. The reality in the Arab world is that members of the ruling elites in individual countries usually control such organizations.
Also, political progress cannot be achieved without an independent and free press that is not under government control; a press that executes its national role independently of the interests of governments and individuals.
Whether the Arab street erupts in mass protests or not, there is no doubt that such eruptions will not succeed in achieving results, nor will they succeed in weakening any Arab regime. On the other hand, continued silence and apathy, far from indicating indifference, is actually a symptom of frustration ­ and a conviction that change is simply not possible under present circumstances.

Muna Shuqair is a Jordanian political writer

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Why should Saudi Arabia stop halfway up the stairs?

Jamal Ahmad Khashoggi

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Is Saudi Arabia really an intolerant country? Such a question might be taken as an affront by Saudi Justice Minister Abdullah bin Mohammed Ibrahim al-Sheikh and Abdullah bin Abdulmohsen al-Turki, secretary-general of the World Muslim League (and a member of the Kingdom’s Council of the Assembly of Senior Ulema) ­ both of whom can respond robustly to such a accusation.
But how can the two Saudi officials explain the fact that a website preaching religious tolerance is blocked by the webmaster at King Abdulaziz Science and Technology City, who is entrusted with the dubious task of censoring internet access in Saudi Arabia?
Blocking this particular site might have been the result of overzealousness by a minor official who acted on his own initiative without referring to official guidelines. But by doing so, he caused the kingdom great embarrassment, and undermined its efforts to portray itself as open to various cultures ­  a country that respects other faiths and believes “there is no compulsion in religion.”
Contrary to what has recently been written about Saudi Arabia in the Western press, our country is not closed and bigoted, but open and tolerant of other civilizations ­ although there are Saudis who fit the former description.
Earlier this month, New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof visited Saudi Arabia ­ as hundreds of Western journalists have done since Sept. 11. Kristof is one of the most prominent American journalists and a Pulitzer Prize winner. But it seems he came to Saudi Arabia with preconceived notions he wanted to prove. He came to our country believing that Saudi Arabia is religiously intolerant, anti-Semitic and violates human and women’s rights.
Trying to prove his point, Kristof sat down at a computer terminal to see how the internet works in Saudi Arabia. He randomly typed in the address women.org, a women’s empowerment site, only to discover it was blocked.
He then tried religioustolerance.org, a site, in its own words, “promoting religious tolerance as a human right,” and found that was blocked as well. So were informational pages on Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Hinduism, as well as sites calling for love and respect among faiths.
Saudi Arabia, Kristof discovered, even bans the home page for the Anne Frank House. Anne Frank was a Jewish child who recorded her suffering ­ and that of her family ­ at the hands of the Nazis in a diary that subsequently became a world best-seller. The Zionist movement exploited the suffering of this innocent child for its own ends.
I can safely declare that had the Jews not turned from victims into oppressors, Anne Frank’s book would have been a bestseller in the Arab world as well.
It is easy to accuse someone blocking the Anne Frank site of anti-Semitism, and this was the most important message Kristof wanted to convey to his readers. God forgive the Saudi censor who gave him the ammunition to attack us with.
Personally, I began to question whatever New York Times columnists ­ especially Pulitzer Prize winners ­ write about Saudi Arabia ever since William Safire wrote an article that contained an embarrassing number of factual errors. In his Sept. 12 article “The Split in the Saudi Royal Family,” Safire referred to Prince Abdulaziz bin Fahd as “Abdullah al-Aziz bin Fahd,” and describing him as a 60-year-old.
As a result, I visited all the sites Kristof mentioned with great skepticism, However, I soon found out he was right. The sites he mentioned were indeed blocked for no apparent reason. Funnily enough, dozens of other websites covering the same subjects Kristof mentioned ­ religious tolerance, other religions ­ are not blocked and neither are sites with obvious titles such as bible.org.
Moreover, a wide selection of Anne Frank-related sites are available to Saudi surfers, even though I suspect the average Saudi is far too preoccupied with the suffering of his Palestinian brethren to bother much about them.
This doesn’t mean that we should not translate Frank’s diary into Arabic; her suffering was real as was the Nazi persecution of the Jews. But it must also be realized that the Jews themselves disregard the fact that 80 percent of the Israeli Army’s victims have been Palestinian children since Israel imposed a curfew on Palestinian areas a few months ago. These are independent figures cited by organizations such as B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group whose work gives hope that Arabs and Jews can coexist despite the efforts of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
It is obvious that internet censorship in Saudi Arabia doesn’t follow clear guidelines, but is based on the preferences of individual censors. As a father, I applaud the censor’s efforts in blocking porn sites. I also can appreciate why “politically mischievous” sites are blocked. But we must not be carried away ­ and in fact we cannot for technical reasons.
The internet is full of sites we don’t like. Many sites contain ideas and opinions hostile to us. But that is the nature of the internet; we should not worry too much about its evils to the exclusion of its many benefits. Censorship has to follow strict rules, and these rules must be as unobtrusive as possible.
I visited the sites Kristof mentioned (there are ways of bypassing the censor), and found nothing to justify blocking them compared with similar unblocked sites. There is no logic in blocking one Anne Frank site and not others, or one site about religious tolerance and not all.
We should not stop in the middle of the staircase: We must either go down and close all doors and windows (as the intolerant minority among us want), or else climb to the roof where we can join with other peoples in breathing in the exhilarating air of liberty and drink from the shared font of human civilization.
Those of our people who want to climb with us are most welcome to do so; the rest can stay where they are if they so choose.

Jamal Ahmad Khashoggi is a Saudi political analyst and the deputy editor in chief of Saudi Arabia’s English-language Arab News

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Cyprus, Iraq and Europe: Can the conflicts be resolved?

Patrick Seale

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Last week, Paul Wolfowitz, US Deputy Defense Secretary, was in Ankara to pressure the Turks into joining America’s war against Baghdad. Wolfowitz, a hard-line Zionist close to Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, has been the chief American advocate for war against Iraq since the attacks of Sept. 11.
Although UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has confirmed that Iraq has been cooperating fully with the weapons inspectors, Wolfowitz and other hawks in Washington have not lost hope that Saddam Hussein will give them a pretext to smash him and gain control of Iraq. Meanwhile, the US military buildup in the region continues at a feverish pace.
Wolfowitz’s mission to Ankara, however, was only partially successful: Turkey agreed to provide the US with logistical support ­ in particular the use of its air bases ­ but, in return, it demanded guarantees of financial compensation as well as reiterating the essentially European view that any recourse to force against Iraq could not be automatic but would require a second Security Council resolution.
Turkey finds itself in a difficult situation. The new government of Islamic moderates, formed by the Justice and Development Party (AKP) which won the recent elections, wants to trade with Iraq, not make war on it. Turkey claims to have lost $38 billion because of the last 12 years of sanctions against Iraq. Acutely aware of the sufferings of the Iraqi people, Turkish public opinion is opposed to war.
But Turkey cannot refuse American requests. As a longtime NATO member, it is an integral part of US defense plans. Moreover, the Turkish general staff has developed close ties with Israel’s defense industries over the past six years, and is aware of Israel’s eagerness for an American war against Iraq. Wrestling with an economic crisis, Turkey depends heavily on financial aid from the International Monetary Fund. It is also indebted to the Bush administration for its intense lobbying in favor of Turkey’s EU membership. So Turkey has to walk a tight-rope between conflicting pressures.
EU membership is the No. 1 policy objective of Turkey’s new government. It fervently hopes that this week’s EU summit in Copenhagen will set a date for the start of negotiations. Officially, the summit’s main task will be to endorse the accession of 10 new members to the European Union, increasing its membership from 15 to 25 by 2004. But the still unresolved question of Turkey’s candidacy has moved to the top of the European political agenda. AKP leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been on a whirlwind tour of European capitals to press his case. He has managed to convince European leaders that his election victory marks a new beginning for Turkey. A growing consensus has emerged in Turkey of businessmen, labor unions and civil society organizations anxious to press ahead with economic and political reforms in preparation for EU membership. The state of emergency in place for the last several years has been lifted and greater freedom allowed to Turks of Kurdish origin. But if Turkey is rebuffed by the EU, nationalist forces will re-emerge and Erdogan’s reformist task will be far more difficult.
Turkey is aware that it may have to wait 10 or even 15 years for full EU membership, but it wants the Europeans to establish a clear timetable for negotiations so as to assure Turkey that it will eventually be admitted. This is a legitimate aspiration as the European Commission agreed three years ago to accept Turkey as an EU candidate member.
But Erdogan also knows that Turkey is swimming against a tide of opposition. It has recently suffered a smack in the face. In an interview on Nov. 7 with the French newspaper Le Monde, a former French President, Valery Giscard d’Estaing, declared bluntly that Turkey “is not a European country! It is a country close to Europe, an important country with a genuine elite, but it not European. Its capital is not in Europe, and 95 per cent of its population lives outside Europe. The moment negotiations start with Turkey, Morocco will ask to join. If you want my opinion, it will be the end of the European Union.”
Giscard d’Estaing’s opinions carry weight because he now heads a convention which is drafting a constitution for Europe. He has emerged as Europe’s leading elder statesman and a key figure in the enlargement process. Several European governments, including the French, have challenged his views, but he nevertheless represents a current of European opinion, frightened of being swamped by Turkey’s rapidly growing population, already close to 70 million ­ and frightened also, perhaps, of its Islamic identity.
In Copenhagen this week, Turkey may have to content itself with expressions of support from European leaders, but without securing a firm commitment to a date for the start of negotiations. A great deal hangs on the EU’s decision.
First, stability in Turkey will undoubtedly suffer if there is any setback to its internal reform process.
Second, instability could spread to Turkish-Greek relations, which have recently been on the mend, but which are still far from solidly based. Hopes for security in the eastern Mediterranean rest, at least in part, on a strong and trusting working relationship between Greece and Turkey ­ which have twice been on the brink of war in the past decade.
Third, if Turkey is rejected by Europe, it will not be able to serve as a bridge between Islam and the West. This would be regrettable because Erdogan and his colleagues, sensitive to inter-cultural and civilizational conflicts, are well placed to calm tensions which have arisen since the Sept. 11 attacks.
Perhaps most important of all, there is a clear link between Turkey’s relationship with the EU and the resolution of the Cyprus problem. Without a clear timetable for accession negotiations, Turkey will find it extremely difficult to persuade the Turkish Cypriot community, and its veteran leader Rauf Denktash, to accept Kofi Annan’s recently published compromise plan for the divided island.
Annan’s plan, which has been accepted somewhat reluctantly by all parties as a basis for negotiation, promotes a solution somewhere between federation and confederation for the Greek and Turkish communities on Cyprus. It provides for a “common state” made up of two “constituent states.” In other words, it seeks to satisfy the Greek Cypriots’ ambition for a unitary state, in which they would be the clear majority, and at the same time address the preference for separation of the Turkish Cypriots, who fear that their minority status might otherwise lay them open to domination, oppression or worse.
The EU is ready to admit the Republic of Cyprus ­ that is to say Greek Cyprus under President Glafkos Clerides ­ into the Union, seeing that it satisfies all the criteria for membership. Greece has made clear that it will oppose all EU enlargement if Cyprus is not admitted. But Turkey’s reaction is likely to be extremely hostile if the Cyprus problem is not first resolved and if Turkey’s own EU candidature is rejected. These fears are uppermost in everyone’s mind.
Rarely have diplomats and political leaders had to wrestle with such a tangle of inter-linked problems: America’s aggressive intentions toward Iraq, Turkey’s hopes for EU membership, Europe’s ambitious enlargement process and its debate about its final frontiers ­ and above all the unresolved relationship between Greek and Turkish Cypriots, marred by half a century of conflict and mutual massacres.
Britain leased the island from the Ottoman empire in 1878 and turned it into a crown colony in 1914. But when the British empire declined after World War II, Greece in 1955 raised the claim of enosis, or union of Cyprus with Greece, while Turks wanted the island returned to Turkish sovereignty.
In Istanbul, mobs attacked Greek-owned buildings, causing tens of thousands of Greeks to flee. In 1963 it was the turn of Turkish Cypriots to be massacred. A decade later in 1974, following a coup in Nicosia in the name of enosis backed by the military junta then ruling Greece, Turkey invaded the island and carved out a Turkish “republic” in the North. There was great loss of life on both sides. Such is today’s stalemate.
Can the European Union now help to heal these ancient wounds?

Patrick Seale, a veteran Middle East analyst.

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Entrapment: Sharon's stupid mistake
Gulf News, 09-12-2002

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   It will surprise no one to learn that the Israeli secret service attempted to set up fake Al Qaida cells in the Gaza Strip. It will surprise no one to learn that the Israeli government has denied such accusations as being "sheer nonsense" - for they would be obliged to say so, regardless of the truth. But the fact that such deviousness was undertaken by Mossad - the Israeli secret service - is yet more evidence of the extremes they are prepared to go to discredit the Palestinians and seek an excuse - any excuse - to kill Palestinians and destroy their homes.

   Perhaps it was inevitable that Israel should take advantage of the present alarums that are scaring the world community, especially those in connection with Al Qaida and Osama bin Laden. It was easy, therefore, for Mossad to set up a false "cell" and entice extremists to join their "cause" - all the while monitoring who were enrolling, so they could be "eliminated" - killed - later.

   In legal parlance, it is known as entrapment. But for the Israelis, it is one trap that did not work. The Palestinian security forces were equal to the task and able to disclose and discredit the disreputable ploy before it had taken effect.

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Baghdad’s declaration and apology ‘will not stop the war’

Arab Press review, By The Daily Star, 12/9/02

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Here is how the Arab press headlines news of Iraq’s handover of its declaration on weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to the United Nations and President Saddam Hussein’s apology to Kuwaitis for his August 1990 invasion:
• Lebanon’s An-Nahar: “Saddam apologizes for the invasion but Kuwait deems the apology seditious.”
• Syria’s Tishrin: “Saddam Hussein expresses regret to the people of Kuwait, urging them not to lend a hand to backers of a blitz on Iraq.”
• Jordan’s Al-Dustour: “Iraq apologizes to Kuwait and files WMD dossier with UN; Kuwaiti government rejects Saddam’s apology, saying it incites attacks on American forces.”
• Palestine’s Al-Quds: “UN takes delivery of Iraqi arms declaration, inspectors resume work and US keeps massing troops in Gulf Arab countries.”
• Egypt’s Al-Ahram: “New face-off between Iraq and America after Baghdad files its WMD report denying it has doomsday weapons.”
• Yemen’s Al-Thawra: “Iraq says sorry to Kuwait and describes foreign presence as occupation.”
• Saudi Arabia’s Asharq al-Awsat: “Saddam apologizes for the first time since the invasion and attacks the Kuwaiti leadership; Kuwait’s (Speaker Jassem) al-Khorafi: the Iraqi leader is desperate; Baghdad: we handed over the required document; Washington: it’s a telephone directory.”
• Oman’s Al-Watan: “On the day Iraq presents its 12,000-page arms dossier to the UN, Saddam Hussein apologizes to his Kuwait ‘brethren’ for 1990 walkover.”
• Bahrain’s Al-Ayyam: “Saddam apologizes for invasion and slams Kuwait’s leaders.”
• Iraq’s Al-Thawra: “His excellency the president conveys important message to the people in Kuwait.”
• Kuwait’s Al-Rai al-Aam: “Saddam after 12 years: an apology worse than a wrongdoing.”
• Kuwait’s Al-Siyassa: “Kuwait rejects Saddam’s apology as suspect, manipulative and inciting terror; parliamentarians and political and popular leaders condemn Baghdad regime’s attempt to undermine national unity and stoke flames of sedition.”
• Qatar’s Al-Sharq: “Saddam makes an apology to the Kuwaitis and incites them against their leadership.”
Editorially, the Qatari daily Al-Sharq expresses guarded and qualified optimism about Saddam’s apology. It suggests that Iraq’s admission of guilt ought to be seen by its Gulf Arab neighbors in a positive light and that Iraq should follow up on its regret by making further positive gestures to Kuwait.
Signs of an imminent US-led blitz on Iraq should prompt the peoples and leaders of the Arab world to do their utmost to enhance Arab solidarity by “turning over painful pages” in some of their relations “to avoid the possibility of war and destructive catastrophes, which will not only affect Iraq.”
Seen in that context, the paper says that the Iraqi apology “amounts to a positive step, despite its circuitousness and its discomfited nature.” The fact that it was read on national television by Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf on the Iraqi president’s behalf gave the impression that the apology was half-hearted.
But Al-Sharq expresses “shock” and disappointment at the Iraqi charges accompanying the regret, “which went as far as accusing Kuwait’s leadership of treason.” The timing of such finger pointing is unfortunate, because the ripple effects of the Iraqi crisis throughout the region call for easing Kuwaiti-Iraqi relations and for Iraq to seek Arab solidarity, instead of “churning up resentment and hatred and reopening old wounds.”
The speech’s warnings to Kuwait against military cooperation with America and incitement of Kuwaiti young men “to resort to jihad against the US presence there” and its praise of recent attacks against US forces in Kuwait “take the shine off the apology’s value and negate it,” writes the Qatari daily.
But the apology should nevertheless be welcomed in the hope that Iraq’s leadership will follow it up “with more transparent steps” by reconsidering some of the outstanding issues between Iraq and Kuwait, particularly those pertaining to missing Kuwaiti prisoners of war (POWs), which Kuwait says Baghdad is still holding.
But there is no such acceptance of the apology by the Kuwaiti press, which rejects it out of hand.
In a scathing leader entitled “God hath given, and God hath taken away, O Saddam,” Ahmed Jarallah, the publisher/editor of Kuwait’s leading daily Al-Siyassa, expresses outrage at Baghdad’s claim that his 1990 invasion was
an act of self-defense against US-Kuwaiti plots against Iraq, and describes the claim as a “figment of his imagination.”
Jarallah felt “it would have behooved Saddam not to resort to his famed heresies in his apology speech because the world is well aware of them and cannot be misled.”
Saddam’s “professed apology,” he continues, bore the hallmarks of “his false pride, empty arrogance and the false information he has often repeated since 1991.” Assuming for the sake of argument that the 1990 invasion was indeed an Iraqi act of self-defense, reasons Jarallah, international convention dictates that Baghdad should have penalized Kuwait in proportion to any damage it had inflicted on Iraq. However, the Iraqi president did not stop at “punishing Kuwait according to this theory of self-defense, but invaded and occupied it, declaring it as Iraq’s 19th province after destroying its infrastructure, killing its people, and taking its young men prisoner.”
Iraqi contentions that the US has designs on the region and plans to invade or destabilize Arab countries that joined the 1991 US-led war “is joy to those maniacs who think
the world is theirs to control, and that they will grab and rule it with their insanity.”
Implicitly likening Saddam to tyrants such as Hitler and Mussolini, Jarallah says: “Saddam’s speech could have been effective and useful had it been restricted to apologizing to the Kuwaiti people and their legitimate leadership instead of attacking it.”
Another Kuwaiti daily, Al-Rai Al-Aam, quotes Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Secretary-General Abderrahman al-Atiyyah as also dismissing the apology as being “disappointing.”
“The speech contained nothing new, reiterated the justifications for invading Kuwait that we have become used to hearing, and did not conform to the usual concept of an apology,” he says. It did not express peaceful intentions and a spirit of conciliation and was “out of step with the resolutions of the Arab summit in Beirut regarding the security, sovereignty and independence of the state of Kuwait.”
Atiyyah also faults Baghdad for not announcing a release of Kuwaiti prisoners of war, “which is not only a Kuwaiti priority, but also an international priority.”
He says the trigger for the speech was the “Iraqi regime’s desperate situation.” But instead of “apologizing in such a fashion,” Baghdad should “speedily take serious steps to free (Kuwaiti) POWs, fully return Kuwaiti property and implement international resolutions relating to its invasion of Kuwait.”
The GCC, Atiyyah adds, rejects the “incitement contained in the speech and its encouragement of the recent terrorist actions (against US forces) in Kuwait,” which the emirate has condemned.
The UAE daily Al-Khaleej turns its attention to Iraq’s weapons declaration and describes Baghdad’s submission of the 12,000-page document to the UN Security Council as a “new positive step” motivated by the knowledge that “Washington will not spare a pretext or a way to implement its aggressive plan.”
Because Iraq realizes that Washington’s reasons for targeting it “go further than the issue of weapons of mass destruction and beyond what sort of regime rules Iraq, and beyond even the issue of human rights and democracy,” it is “painstakingly showing good will every day and facilitating the smooth implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1441.” Baghdad has even gone as far as announcing plans for a new constitution that will “guarantee political freedoms, pluralism and the other requisites of democratic governance.”
Despite all Iraq’s efforts to accommodate the UN and meet the requirements of Resolution 1441, anyone monitoring the US position realizes that the Bush administration has reached the point of no return.
According to Al-Khaleej, the Bush administration is bent on exploiting the international situation “to impose its imperialist hegemony on the region, appropriate its wealth and subjugate it to US-Zionist control.” Such risks should spur the Arab leaders to meet and “take a historic decision that matches those dangers, not only for Iraq’s sake, but for the sake of all the Arab states, because they are all being targeted, in one way or another,” it warns.
In East Jerusalem, the Palestinian daily Al-Quds says the essence of Iraq’s massive weapons declaration can be summed up “in one sentence: We do not have any doomsday weapons.” The fact that Baghdad has given UN inspectors unfettered access to all sites, allowing them to “roam as they please, without objection or hindrance as they intrude on Iraqi political sites, including presidential palaces, in total disregard for the sovereignty of the Iraqi state” is “evidence that Iraq has nothing to hide.”
The paper disputes the US claim that it has “material evidence” of Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction that will be made available to the arms inspectors “in due time.” Implicitly suggesting that no such convincing evidence exists, Al-Quds suggests that the Iraqi report will do no more than “provoke an international media storm between those who trust its contents and those who refute them,” which will allow the Bush administration to ratchet up its “campaign of threats against Iraq” and “get an international green light to invade it.” The report will consequently turn from being a means of trying to prevent a war from breaking out into a pretext fabricated to initiate such a war without justification.
In the month that followed Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, publisher/editor Abdelbari Atwan recalls in pan-Arab Al-Quds al-Arabi, the US administration of Bush senior cited top-secret satellite images to estimate that up to 250,000 Iraqi troops and 1,500 tanks had congregated on the border with Saudi Arabia, threatening to take control of the Saudi oil fields before marching on Riyadh. The satellite images, which then US Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney presented to King Fahd, were phony. No one questioned their authenticity, except an American journalist ­ Jean Heller ­ working for the St. Petersburg Times in Florida.
Heller succeeded in convincing her editor to acquire two images of the same area taken at the same time by Soyuz Karta, a Soviet commercial satellite agency, but showing no sign of Iraqi troops near the Saudi border ­ just empty desert.
This week, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer has not stopped repeating that President George W. Bush has evidence that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction despite its insistent denials and the failure of inspectors  to find them.
The simple question is this: If Bush has proof, why doesn’t he present the evidence, including the technical support or intelligence, to the inspectors?
The Bush administration is simply laying the groundwork to declare war, much as the previous Bush administration used the invented “babies in incubators” story to “sell the war.”
Atwan recounts how the American PR firm Hill & Knowlton, headed by Craig Fuller, who was the senior Bush’s chief of staff when he served as vice-president under Ronald Reagan, coached a young woman named Nayirah to appear in front of a congressional committee, telling the panel: “I saw the Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns, and go into the room where 15 babies were in incubators. They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators and left the babies on the cold floor to die.”
It is interesting that no one ­ not the congressmen in the hearing, or any journalist present­ bothered to find out her identity. She was the daughter of Kuwait’s Ambassador to Washington, and hadn’t seen the “atrocities.” (When later confronted she said she hadn’t been in the hospital herself, but that a friend who had been there had told her about it.)
The new propaganda war on Iraq kicked off in earnest when Britain released a “dossier” supposedly containing evidence that Baghdad is continuing to develop and stockpile weapons of mass destruction and is pursuing efforts to build nuclear weapons, Atwan writes.
The UN arms inspectors have substantiated nothing in the dossier.
And, he continues, each time that UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan praises Iraq’s cooperation with the inspectors, Bush hastens to cast doubt on Baghdad’s intentions and to step up the intimidation of friends and allies as well as the buildup of troops in the region in preparation for the invasion of Iraq.
Saddam has called on his people to remain resilient as he tries to facilitate the arms inspections and expose America’s lies. If war is waged nevertheless, Iraq will lose it. But, says Atwan, this doesn’t mean that America will win it. America’s problems will begin with the entry of US forces to Baghdad, just as the fall of the Taleban and the entry of US forces into Kabul did not finish off Al-Qaeda or Osama bin Laden.

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N. Korea: Emulating the Chinese model
By Abdullah Al Madani, Gulf News, 08-12-2002

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It seems from the reports coming from North Korea that its enigmatic dictator Kim Jong Il has decided to implement an idea often discussed as a solution for North Korea's economic crisis, bleak isolation and disregard for values and norms established globally in the post-Cold War era.

What is meant by the idea is simply borrowing the Chinese model for initiating gradual economic reforms to ultimately abandon the hard-line socialist policies and replace them with a market economy.

Such a model has proved successful and achieved for China most of what it dreamt of, let alone that this model comes from one of North Korea's very few allies. China is actually the only country today that plays host to the North Korean leaders and provides them with political and economic support.

Reports also say that Pyongyang decided from last September to go ahead with converting the Sinuiju region on the eastern bank of the Yalu River, opposite the Chinese territories, into a special economic zone, to be a trial ground as a preliminary step before converting to a market economy and introducing the concept on a wider scale.

This is exactly what China did some 20 years ago during the rule of its reformist leader Deng Xiaoping, when the country dedicated a zone along the borders with Hong Kong for free economic activities for which special laws and mechanisms, that were not common in other parts of China, were introduced.

Unlike China, which initiated its economic reforms depending on its own capabilities and organisations and employing its diverse diplomatic relations, North Korea begins the reform while suffering international isolation and wretched economic conditions.

In addition, it is suffering from grave poverty in terms of expert personnel, scientific development and the necessary infrastructure needed for making the first step in the right direction.

Therefore, it has not been surprising to hear that the Dear Leader Kim Jong Il has given the leadership of the special economic zone to a non-North Korean citizen, namely the Chinese tycoon Yang Bin (39).

While this is a reflection of the North Korean leader's desire to benefit from the Chinese experience, it is also a reflection of the lack of any national mind capable of meeting the needs of open-door economic policy and understanding of its dimensions, as a result of some 50 years of brainwashing and anti-capitalist slogans in schools and institutions of the ruling Communist Workers Party.

It can also be said that one of the reasons for the appointment of a Chinese figure to fill this position is to encourage Chinese businessmen exclusively to invest their funds and expertise in the newly emerging economic zone.

The fears and caution that dominate Pyongyang's leaders prompted them to restrict the new policy of openness to dealing with China, at the beginning at least. This is also similar to what China did when they started their economic open-door policy. The Chinese focused at the beginning on co-operation with the Hong Kong businessmen and financiers.

Yang Bin is considered as a model of the young entrepreneur who has been able within a record period of time to create a business empire with overseas links through benefiting from his country's economic openness.

Yang was orphaned at five, graduated from the Chinese naval academy and won a scholarship to study in the Netherlands before coming back to China to involve in business. His fortune is rooted in an orchid seedling business.  According to Forbes magazine, he is now the second wealthiest man in China with a personal fortune of about $900 million.

At the ceremony held in Pyongyang in September under the patronage of the second-most powerful man in the North Korean leadership, Kim Yong Nam, to hand over the special zone's authority to Yang, the latter seemed confident that Pyongyang was serious this time about adopting the Chinese model for solving North Korea's chronic ills.

According to him, the North Koreans are now determined to slowly open up the country's windows for benefiting from the positive aspects of capitalism.

In his explanation of what had been agreed upon with the Korean leadership, he said that the special economic zone in Sinuiju would not have anything to do with the laws and rules prevailing in North Korea and that it would be run by special new regulations drawn up by a 15-member council headed by himself.

He added that he planned within two years to make members of the council, whom half of them non-Koreans, be directly elected by the zone's residents. He also revealed that Pyongyang had agreed to take no revenues from the zone for 50 years. This probably shows how desperate the North Korean regime is for the venture to succeed.  

However, this is not the view held by many observers who maintain that the nature of the North Korean regime is totally different from that of China, arguing that the Chinese success through a gradual economic openness is difficult to realise in North Korea.

These observers hold that there are no guarantees that Kim Jong Il's regime, which is based upon worship of the individual and moodiness, will not suddenly cancel the whole arrangements, causing great damage for foreign investors in Sinuiju.

Evidence in this context is available in abundance, the most significant of which are the reckless acts of espionage and warfare against South Korea and Japan shortly after the arrangements agreed upon at the historic Koreas' summit to normalise relations between the two countries and establish bases of co-operation and confidence between them.

In September relations between Pyongyang and Tokyo were about to enter broader scopes of co-operation following a visit by the Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to North Korea and the latter's formal acknowledgement and apology in public for the first time of the kidnapping and detention of 13 Japanese citizens.

However, Pyongyang blew up everything within a short time through bragging about its nuclear might and determination to continue its threats, hence ignoring the sensitive nature of this matter to Japan. 

However, this is not everything when we talk about the difficulty of applying the Chinese model in North Korea. North Korea is simply a country that is short of nearly everything an economic hub needs to work such as decent roads, modern transport facilities, communications network and power plants.

Thus, there is little or no incentive for any investor to come to the country no matter what the opportunities are. This in particular, applies to Sinuiju, which is presumed to have been selected for leading the economic openness due to special specifications other than its proximity to China. Of course, the picture was not so bleak in China when it initiated its economic openness process.

In confirmation of what we have already said, let us review the conclusions of Michael Schuman, a journalist specialised in North Korean affairs, following a field visit to Sinuiju. 

According to him, Sinuiju's buildings are dull, its roads are wide but dusty with only few old cars and buses, its department stores are big but without goods other than a meagre selection of basic packaged food, its schools are equipped with computers but without having connection to sites other than the local library's site, and its student learn English but as much as needed to praise their communist regime and translate their leader's speeches.

At night the city becomes shrouded in total darkness except for some floodlights pointed at a statue of the country's founder, Kin Il Sung, under which students get together to read their books and to do their homework. 

The journalist adds that the picture is the exact opposite on the other bank of the Yalu River where the Chinese city of Dandong is situated with its high rise white buildings, huge neon billboards, crowded streets, and pedestrian traffic that never comes to an end. 

Now that arrangements have been made to establish the special economic zone, the 500,000 people of Sinuiju look forward to ending their current state of despair through involving in the zone's businesses.

However, they also fear being deported en masse to another region in order to be replaced by 200,000 skilled technicians and model workers with the aim of convincing the Chinese investors that there are trained, qualified and cheap workers who can meet their needs.

Should this take place, the original residents of Sinuiju will not be able to return to the region to enjoy the fruits of the new experiment because of a yet-to-be-built wall erected to keep illegal migrants out.

The writer is a Gulf researcher and an expert in Asian affairs.

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