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Amram Mitzna: Labour leader
Arab News, 20 November 2002

Would the election of Haifa’s Mayor Amram Mitzna as Israel’s Labour party leader make any difference to the conflict in the Middle East? The answer has to be “no”, even though most Palestinian factions see in him a “partner” with whom they can jumpstart negotiations.

 

By Mohamed Khodr

11/20/02

As an Arab American Muslim, I wholeheartedly agree with Mr. Straw's "diplomatic" yet honest assessment that the majority of the conflicts in the third world are a tragic legacy of the British Empire.  For centuries the Brits drew borders, moved populations, established ethnic minority governments more loyal to Britain than their native lands, exported the undesirables from England to Palestine and Australia, fostered Apartheid where white Christian minorities ruled over black majorities, stole national resources and archeological treasures; all of which led to the seeds of conflict and a guaranteed "clash of civilizations, cultures, and religions" from Ireland to Australia.

Britain more than any other colonial power drew the geographic, political, economic, religious, and cultural line that seemingly will be a permanent divide between the rich, white northern hemisphere and the impoverished, dark colored southern hemisphere.  British prose, poetry, and literature was
shamefully racist during much of the colonial period.  Yet, if history is prologue and if Mr. Straw's soul searching leads him to admit the culpability of British imperialism and its endless rape of land,
resources, human dignity, and human rights; it is then utterly inexplicable that Mr. Straw and Mr. Blair are blinded to the new colonial power on the world stage----Bush's Pre-emptive" American colonialism that seemingly will begin with the occupation of Iraq to "liberate its oil and people, to export a civilized democracy for the benefit of the oppressed Iraqi's, by forceful murder if necessary".  Has Mr. Straw forgotten that such a justification and responsibility of the "White Man's Burden" to civilize the dark savages and improve their desperate lives was the foundation of England's, Europe's, and Zionist colonialism?  Today, after a history of slavery, racism, and military adventurism around the world, America's wealth, power and arrogance is retracing the same tragic path of occupying and "forcefully" exporting democracy to the third world that Straw's England implemented to its eternal shame.  Such shame came centuries too late for the millions of graves "Made By England".   Bush and Blair are consumed with conceit and pride as they seek to "re-order" the world in the image of their "civilized" culture where television, not God, determines the social and moral behavior of the masses. 

Given that President Bush admittedly is not a student of history, perhaps the reawakening of Straw's guilty conscience of British colonial savagery could still avert Bush's "dead or alive" neo-imperialistic drive before it's too late.  If not, then perhaps 300 years into the future of American colonialism, an American Secretary of World States will come forward to confess America's sins against humanity.  The past is prologue, but most know it not.

******

The following is the Times article:

Times online, 11/15/02

Smallpox vaccinations and other antidotes to history's horror shows

Rami G. Khouri

Jordan Times, 11/20/02

AS I've travelled or talked with colleagues throughout the Middle East in recent weeks, I have sensed a cruel generational dilemma that plagues our region. My generation has spent its entire life addressing challenges bequeathed to us by our parents — building modern Arab countries and grappling with the Arab-Israeli conflict. Yet, we now find ourselves on the verge of a possible rough new phase of history because of three problems that continue to plague this region: deadly communal conflict among Palestinians and Israelis; political tensions, socio-economic stress, and governance distortions in every Arab country; and, the United States' apparent determination to attack Iraq and redraw the geopolitical map of the Middle East region, with unknown consequences.

The spectre of American forces attacking Iraq, administering the country in a strange form of self-mandated bidding, and consolidating American military bases throughout the Gulf region takes us back to a similar period around 1920, when the British and French did all this, and more. Most of the problems of that era remain hauntingly unresolved: Western armies that often define our sovereign configurations and political systems; foreign sources of money that sustain our economies; heavy dependence on the West for basic Arab security; lack of domestic consensus on internal governance norms, because the Arab people remain unconsulted about their preferences; friction due to lack of agreement about the appropriate balance between secular and religious ideologies; common tensions between the narrow, localised identities of tribes, regions, religious minorities and ethnic groups, and more expansive, transnational national and religious identities; strong disagreements on coexistence and cooperation between Arabism and Zionism; and Arabs passively watching Western powers plan interventions that may create a new Middle Eastern order that responds primarily to Western, rather than indigenous, priorities.

What a bitter reality that we may once again serve as convenient rest stops on Western imperial routes to exotic lands in Asia! I had always believed that moving forward to the past was something that happened only in movies, not in real life. If we in the Arab world do not urgently resolve the root causes of our intolerable modern legacy of collective political mediocrity, we will always suffer its consequences of being engulfed in an indiscriminate maelstrom of large-scale destruction.

Humiliated and frustrated people amongst us will seek refuge in the escapist furies of nihilism, which they will redefine in populist and violent forms of self-assertive religion, militarism, tribalism and nationalism. They will kill in large numbers, and they will therapeutically market the killing to their dehumanised, desperate soul mates as both legitimate self-defence and righteous vengeance. Multitudes will follow them. We have seen frightening signs of this in the past few years. It has already killed our cousins and our friends, as well as our guests and colleagues from other lands. It will kill many more, here and in other places.

These furies of militant Arab nihilism did not appear after someone rubbed a magic lamp. They were born and nurtured — from the days of our grandparents to the days of our children — by the cumulative consequences of many poor quality policies pursued by policy makers who determined our fate, including Turks, British, French, Arabs, Israelis, Americans and others, but most recently, mostly of our own doing. We've suffered faulty policies primarily because Arab and other policy makers rarely were held accountable to our wishes. Is there some way that we might pause this grotesque history movie that's running backwards and, for a change, ask the people of this region what they would like to happen?

I, for one, would like to change this movie. I feel like an idiot playing the role of a rest stop on someone else's imperial route to Kabul, and I personally know 300 million other Arabs who feel the same. I understand why imperial transport officers have never sought the opinions of my grandparents or my children; but I do not understand why our own Arab decision makers also refrain from turning to honest, open consultation at home as the most effective means of quality decision making — for this is the only effective antidote to the furies that beckon.

There is no long-term security from smallpox vaccinations, anti-missile systems, financial aid, or bountiful promises. The only real protection for life comes from delivering human dignity and injecting people with political empowerment and voice. These are the building blocks of sensible decision making, prosperity, lasting stability, real security and a guarantee against having to perform in any more horror shows of modern history.

What is happening in Palestine?

Jordan Times, 11/20/02

Nearly five months later, there is no visible sign of progress on the blocked road to peace. Violence continues to be the daily staple for innocent civilians, including children falling daily on both sides. Little, if anything, of the ambitious demands for wide ranging democratic, financial, institutional and judicial Palestinian reforms has been achieved, except for a cosmetic cabinet reshuffle which was hardly taken seriously. How could any meaningful reform be conducted under the present occupation circumstances, anyway? President Yasser Arafat, declared persona non grata by Bush in June, remains in the little still standing structure the Israeli bulldozers had spared, and the few loyal people around him in his besieged bunker wait to leap again, once circumstances change and permit. Arafat even refrained from raising any objection to the deliberate and indeed humiliating American policy of totally boycotting him and conducting business with his lieutenants instead, something he never tolerated before.

Remarkably, though, it seems that maintaining the status quo, even with its violence, is serving more than the purpose of Arafat. Ariel Sharon has clearly been comfortable with it because a virtually immobilised and all but incapacitated Palestinian National Authority president is not only rendered harmless, but his presence helps Sharon who opposes any move towards a political settlement and who can always blame lack of movement on Arafat. That provides Sharon with a handy excuse to abort any peace plan including the road map, on the basis that the PNA leader did not fulfil what is required of him, such as reform and ending violence.

Sharon can also claim a lot of credit, if not a price, from the Americans for pretending that his hands-off Arafat policy is the result of his due deference to Bush's expressed wishes that the Palestinian front remain calm until the Iraqi case is settled one way or the other. On the internal scene, Sharon should be far from unhappy as, while everything else is blocked and most attention is diverted, his army is continuing, unchecked, its systematic daily action of suppressing Palestinian resistance by collectively punishing all Palestinians and individually rounding up or eliminating its leaders and activists.

Arafat's regular condemnations of every Palestinian attack on Israeli targets can also add some legitimacy to the claims of the occupation army that its atrocities are only acts of self defence against Palestinian terror, condemned no less than by the Palestinian leadership itself. According to an account in the Christian Science Monitor (Nov. 14, by Cameron Barr), Sharon benefited a lot from the Palestinian situation which, according to Israeli analysts (Barr's conclusion), vindicated him, and secured him the Labour Party's collaboration to carry on with his settlement-building agenda.

Even in his fateful battle to save his political life over the leadership of the Likud Party, Sharon is posing as the restrained and wise statesman who refrains from touching Arafat, against the reckless and impulsive Netanyahu, the competitor who is making daily promises that his first decision once elected prime minister is to expel Arafat. By contrast, Netanyahu's, excessive drift to the right makes Sharon look like a moderate.

Much of what has already been said also applies to the American position. Apart from the well-known fact that what suits Israel suits Washington as well, it is obvious that Washington's need to keep the Palestinian-Israeli situation strictly under control at this stage requires much caution before pressing such ideas as the establishment of a Palestinian state or being more specific on other permanent status issues, to avoid any possibility of confronting, and certainly provoking, Sharon.

Therefore, the road map was designed to be for future use only, except for what Israel wants urgently, which is the immediate cessation of Palestinian “terrorism”.

“What the plan does do,” according to the Jerusalem Post (Herb Keinon, Oct. 24), “is buy the US more time.”

“It is no more than a “diplomatic initiative that gives the impression of movement even if it is really nothing more than just an impression,” Keinon adds.

The disturbing reality is, therefore, that while political leaders (mainly in Israel) are totally engaged in unprincipled opportunistic fights for their personal ambitions and short-sighted selfish interests, while world powers lack the needed political will, and indeed the moral courage, to enforce the rule of international law, and while regional powers remain largely incapacitated by their accumulated failures, innocent blood continues to be senselessly spelt and the cycle of violence continues to spiral wildly out of control.

On the one side are the Palestinians who are determined not to acquiesce to the reality of an endless occupation which is not only intolerably cruel and unbearably dehumanising, but is also steadily displacing them, annihilating their rights and threatening their very existence. After decades of endurance, patience, suffering, neglect, humiliation, pain, expulsion and despair; after being denied that little they did happily agree to settle for, the mere 22 per cent of their lawful historic land; after coming face to face with the hard reality that the oceans of hope dangled before them by the so-called peace process were no more than a distracting mirage which seven years of effortless and costly pursuit never managed to make into a reality, they decided to exercise their legitimate right to fight the occupation and seek their freedom.

On the other side are the Israelis who are equally determined to crush the Palestinian will and to deny their struggle for independence any acceptability, let alone legitimacy. They saturated the world media with the myth that the Palestinians shunned Barak's hand, which he extended to them at Camp David over two years ago, with his “generous offer” of a state of their own on 97 per cent of the West Bank and Gaza and with Jerusalem as its capital, but they opted to reject it and start a war of terror against the Israelis instead. No amount of correction and denying of that myth, from American, Israeli, Palestinian and other independent sources, has managed to dispel the vicious myth.

In the meantime, the Israelis continue with the destruction of the Palestinians and of their society and with their disintegrating the PNA. Israeli practices, such as war crimes, flagrant violations of basic human rights, violation of international law, rejection of UN resolutions, stockpiling of weapons of mass destruction, atrocities, starvation, blocking the supply of food and water to isolated villages and refugee camps, endless curfews, house demolition, destruction of farms and crops, destruction of small factories and businesses, attacking apartment buildings with gigantic missiles and heavy machinegun fire, confiscation of territory, shooting of playing children, assassinations, summary detentions, extrajudicial executions, humiliations, collective punishment, barricading, discrimination, colossal injustice, disruption of schooling, of medical care, of the right to worship, tearing off of the fabric of the society, are becoming normal daily routine. In normal times, it is enough to commit one of these atrocities to cause a loud international uproar, and probably a war, but in this case, and because Israel has always been the exception, these ugly words are no more than familiar terms which daily enrich our political lexicon.

To add to the gravity of an already grave state of affairs and to the existing deadlock, the collapse of the Israeli government will further block, for three extra months and until after the Israeli elections, any possibility of movement. By then, we would probably know more about the turn of events with respect to the Iraqi crisis. The chances that they may turn in the right direction are no more promising than the Israeli elections producing a rational government.

We have been, for decades in this region, shifting our misty hopes from waiting the results of the American presidential elections to waiting the results of Israeli parliamentary elections. The waiting intervals, on which we spent precious numerous years but brought us no more than repeated disillusionment, had not yet convinced us to abandon the practice of justifying our inaction by waiting for magic solutions to descend on us from the horizons of our fantasy.

It is astonishing that there are still many around who would warn against the grave risk of losing Sharon because the alternative could be Netanyahu, or would hope that a Labour victory would instantly remove the barricades from the way of a just, comprehensive and lasting peace; they had pinned their hopes on Barak before, but do not seem to have learned the lesson. How many more precious years do we need to spend switching from a seeming “dove” to a seeming “hawk” in a futile process of trial and error, while our people's suffering continues, before we realise that until and unless we take the initiative ourselves, we will continue to long for the mirage and count disasters.

The situation cannot be allowed to continue while we only watch and wait. The next three months are going to be crucial for our region. It is only logical that we seize the initiative, not just react helplessly to circumstances, come what may. It is necessary that the situation be reviewed and assessed at the highest possible Arab level.

The writer is former ambassador and permanent representative of Jordan to the UN. He contributed this article to The Jordan Times.

By Jim Quilty

Daily Star, 11/20/02

A young woman approaches an Israeli police paddy wagon and asks directions to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. The policeman is anxious to help, but has trouble with the tourist’s map, so he goes to the wagon and pulls out the Palestinian prisoner he has handcuffed and blindfolded in the back.
Still blindfolded, the prisoner tells the girl how to get where she wants to go, then is stuffed back into the vehicle. The girl thanks the policeman for his help, and goes on her way.
Later the camera moves to a night-time shot of a Jerusalem hospital and we hear the beep of a heart monitor as it stutters and goes dead. Then we see a patient disconnecting himself from the device so that he can take his IV bottle to the corridor. There he joins the other patients and staff in having a smoke.
Elia Suleiman’s Yadon Ilaheyya (Divine Intervention) is a political film with a healthy sense of the absurd.
Set in Jerusalem and Ramallah during the ongoing Israeli occupation, the film has less of a plot than a collection of situations that run like a series of comic sketches. Though many of these are indeed very funny, others are starkly brutal.
Part of the brilliance of the film is the success with which Suleiman balances mundane terror with visual gags to convey the absurdities of occupation.
The opening sequence sees Santa Claus, his torn bag drizzling decorative packages over the hillside, running from a gang of adolescents. How he’s earned their hostility ­ whether for something he’s done or for what he represents ­ is never entirely clear, but for his pains he gets a butcher’s knife in the chest.
After half an hour or so of such sight gags to sketch the bizarre setting of the story, we are introduced to the unnamed hero (played by Suleiman).
We find out very little about Suleiman’s character. We know he lives in Jerusalem ­ next door to an eccentric man who’s fond of vandalizing Israeli roadworks and hoards bottles on the roof of his house to pitch at the police ­ and that his father (George Ibrahim) is in hospital after collapsing in his kitchen one day.
He also has a girlfriend of sorts (Manal Khader) who lives in Ramallah. The two evidently love each other but (between the arbitrary ruthlessness of the occupation and the surreal behavior of the Palestinians) there is no space for them to express their feelings.
To pass the time, then, the couple meet every day at a parking lot next to the Hajiz al-Ram ­ the Ramallah checkpoint ­ where they sit together and watch the routine brutalities of the dim-witted Israeli military.
There is no trace of sentimentality here. The couple never speak on camera, though once Suleiman leaves a note on his window telling her that he’s insane for loving her. Their long, expressionless stares are punctuated by nothing more passionate than an intense caressing of hands.
The conflict Suleiman’s character apparently feels with expressing his feelings for his lover is balanced, and perhaps affected by, his father’s illness. At one point he visits the sleeping man, puts an ear to his chest to make sure he’s still breathing, then slips a pair of headphones over the man’s ears so he can listen to music. It is a poignant expression of the helplessness that a dying father visits upon a son.
The naturalistic sequences between Suleiman and Khader’s characters are minimalist, both in the writing and the acting. Little happens. Little is said. The sheer lack of emotion is both at odds with the violent occupation and the perfect aesthetic expression of the violence that simmers, repressed, within Palestinians.
One of the many sequences that teeters between comic and horrific finds a trio of men clubbing someone or something on the ground with long sticks.
They hammer away energetically, pause, then renew their exertions when they see it (whatever it is) is still alive. Then another man comes out of the house with a handgun and puts two or three slugs in the hapless victim. They then pour gasoline over it and set it alight. It is a snake.
This deadpan calm is set off by fantasy sequences, which evidently emanate from the imagination of Suleiman’s character. The fantasies also stand as sublimations of the repressed need to do violence.
We are introduced to Suleiman  while driving along a country highway. He pulls out an apricot, quickly devours it, then throws the pit out the window. It strikes an Israeli tank parked on the side of the road with a ping, and the tank explodes.
Most of Divine Intervention’s fantasies, though, revolve around Khader ­ her spectral role increasing as her naturalistic presence recedes. At one point she emerges from behind a target, head wrapped in a keffiyeh, to destroy a whole unit of Israeli mukhabarat while at target practice.
The target practice is itself a comic piece de resistance. First the security men fire from a standing position, then they march toward their targets while firing. They step to one side in time. They do cartwheels. They drop to their bellies, firing the whole time, their target practice transformed into a martial chorus line.
This is the other great accomplishment of the film. By pitting Khader’s startling and defiant beauty against the ugly violence of Israel’s security services, he subverts the cliche of macho violence, a cliche best embodied in the occupation itself.

Divine Intervention plays Nov. 25 at 8pm at the Cinema Sofil, during the European Film Festival. At present, all tickets are sold out

Daily Star, 11/20/02

The Arab world has complained bitterly about the effects of UN sanctions on Iraq’s civilian population, and rightfully so. But what have Arab governments actually done to keep Iraqi children from going hungry? Moreover, apart from pledges of aid that are only partially honored, what steps have been taken to alleviate the suffering of Palestinians living under the tightening noose of Israeli occupation? Other people in Arab lands are also being victimized by the politics of hunger, including millions of Sudanese held hostage to a civil war that makes even less sense now than it did when it started almost two decades ago. It is laughable to hear the region’s leaders recite their tiresome refrains about “pan-Arab solidarity” when they have failed to act in concert even in the  face of such massive human tragedy.
Blaming others for Arab deprivation is no substitute for taking effective steps to alleviate it. In fact, it is sheer hypocrisy to proclaim the guilt of non-Arabs while refusing to help reverse the effects of their real or imagined offenses. Palestinians cannot eat official statements raging against Israeli depredations in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip; Iraqis who need medical treatment cannot be injected with collective condemnations of the UN embargo as an instrument of US policy designed to unseat Saddam Hussein by slowly killing his people; Sudanese orphans cannot be raised by rhetoric about how the war that killed their parents has its roots in 19th-century British colonial policy.
These needy masses have been forgotten because Arab leaders have abandoned their No. 1 responsibility: to lead. Arab capitals are filled with posters celebrating the bravery, integrity, wisdom, etc. of the local king, president or prime minister. These crude propaganda tools are an insult to the intelligence of each and every citizen who sees them, but also to people in other Arab lands who know from experience that words like “generosity,” “kindness” and “solidarity” are rapidly losing their meanings.
Whether they are wrapped up in the phony trappings of their own power or simply indifferent to the sufferings of their “brothers and sisters,” Arab regimes have become vassals. Virtually all of them obey Washington’s increasingly irrational fiats, working their respective “corners” in exchange for “protection” that comes in the form of silence when they abuse their own people. The most dangerous disease transmitted by this foul existence is official apathy toward personal calamity: It should come as no surprise, therefore, that Arab governments are no more concerned with the welfare of their neighbors than they are with the basic rights of their own constituents.
This vacuum of virtue cries out to be filled, and nongovernmental organizations cannot do it alone. The Arab private sector is a natural for the role, possessing as it does the resources and creativity to undo the damage wrought by corrupt, uncaring states. Together, companies from all Arab countries have a chance to compensate for the undiluted callousness of their governments. If and when the business community responds to this challenge, Arab civil society will finally have a chance to show its face.

Daily Star, 11/20/02

American and UN condemnation of the killing of Israeli soldiers and settlers in Hebron last week was both naive and potentially counterproductive.
One admits that the killing 10 days ago of five people, including two children and their mother, at Kibbutz Metzer outside the “Green Line” was as dumb an operation as the Palestinians have mounted. But the Hebron attack was different. Under the rules of the game in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, it was acceptable. Not only were the fatalities soldiers and armed settlers, but its success was a reminder of the advantages of abandoning suicide bombings inside Israel.
Last week, Fatah and Hamas organized a four-day summit in Cairo, under Egyptian patronage, to reach agreement on, among other things, a common strategy towards Israel. Notably absent from the conclave was Islamic Jihad, which carried out the Hebron attack. One of the items on the Cairo agenda was a halt to attacks inside the “Green Line.”
Reaction to the Hebron operation has been unsettling. Last Saturday, US Secretary of State Colin Powell, said: “I note that the Damascus-based Palestinian Islamic Jihad has taken credit for the attack. It is impossible to understand how any country that claims a genuine commitment to peace can harbor such groups.”
On Monday, American officials asked the Syrian leadership to close down Islamic Jihad offices in Damascus. The Syrians defended the offices as information centers. However, there have been recent reports they are quietly taking a more flexible line, possibly encouraging Islamic Jihad to approve any Hamas-Fatah agreement on ending attacks in Israel.
That the Syrians have been bending backward to avoid a confrontation with the US makes such reports credible. The vote at the Security Council on an Iraq resolution was only the most obvious illustration of this tendency. The recent detention of an alleged Al-Qaeda operative, the Canadian-Syrian Maher Arar, following on from the arrest in June of a German-Syrian, Mohammed Haydar Zammar, was another.
However, the US response to the Hebron incident confused the issue. Syria may be willing to go a long way to satisfy Washington, but it will not do so if it means challenging what it considers the minimal Palestinian right to militarily resist the Israelis in the Occupied Territories. Nor can the Palestinians give up their only strong card in a very weak political hand.
Yet, implied in Powell’s statement was that only a moratorium on all anti-Israeli attacks by Palestinians, inside the Occupied Territories and out, qualified as endorsement of peace. And, by extension, only Syria’s helping enforce this would reaffirm its own commitment to peace. The attitude is risky. Unless Palestinians see advantages in limiting their attacks to the Occupied Territories, they will have no impetus to end them inside Israel.
Whether the Americans like it or not, in the absence of a clearly defined political settlement, the best that can be achieved at this stage is for the Palestinians to restrict attacks to the area of their future state. This strategy more or less enjoys international sanction, even among some in Israel, since it is a natural outgrowth of an illegal occupation.
However, it is a priority of the Sharon government to deny Palestinians the legitimacy of armed resistance in the West Bank and Gaza. Not surprisingly, it used the condemnation of the Hebron attack as cover to expand unlawful settlement activity between Kiryat Arba and Hebron. This suggests it might try to enforce a new quid pro quo: an end to all Palestinian attacks in the territories in exchange for limiting new wildcat settlements.
If that’s Israel’s aim, it will fail. The US road map to peace invites violence, precisely because it imposes a long transitional period during which Palestinians and Israelis must bargain over their final borders. Where there is haggling there are hostilities. That is logic the Palestinian leadership, the Islamists, but also Syria and most other Arab states, accept.
That’s why they will have to reject what the Bush administration appears to be proposing ­ that the Palestinians give up armed struggle altogether. Even the Palestinians would resist this new invitation to political suicide.

Daily Star, 11/20/02

Mohammed Abdullah Al Roken

The flagrant human rights violations committed by totalitarian regimes in the Third World are often shocking. One stands open-mouthed at the cruelty visited upon defenseless people. Human rights violations have unfortunately become a habit for some Third World nations, not to mention a service they do for each other. The shock has been multiplied  after discovering the position of Bush’s administration on human rights post-Sept. 11.
Torture ­ the “art” of extracting confessions ­ and the various means of exerting physical and psychological pressure have become professions with their own experts and advisers who make a living out of the suffering of others.
But for such dubious arts to be taught in a school with its own faculty, curriculum and students is stretching the imagination a bit too far. The country running such a school must be condemned as the greatest violator of human rights.
The country in question is none other than the United States of America, the world’s most powerful nation and its foremost defender of human rights. The school is the so-called School of the Americas (SOA), funded by American taxpayers.
Founded in 1946 as a military academy for training Latin American and Caribbean army officers, the SOA was initially located in Panama. Its initial purpose was to check the rise of communism in America’s backyard.
The SOA fulfilled its role in training its students in subversion, counterinsurgency and other related skills until 1984, when it was kicked out of Panama under the terms of the Panama Canal Treaty and moved to the US Army base at Fort Benning, Georgia. The SOA (which has been given other names, including “School of Dictators,” “School of Assassins” and “Death Squads Nursery”) is funded by taxpayers to the tune of $4 million a year.
In the almost 50 years of its existence, more than 58,000 Latin American and Caribbean officers have graduated from SOA. Far from benefiting their countries, though, those graduates have visited death and destruction on their own peoples.
SOA graduates have been among the most vicious and oppressive dictators Latin America has seen. Among the school’s more prominent graduates were Panama’s Manuel Noriega, Juan Alberto Melgar Castro of Honduras, Bolivia’s Hugo Banzer, and Argentina’s Leopoldo Galtieri. During Galtieri’s rule, more than 30,000 people disappeared in Argentina. An international arrest warrant was issued in his name in 1997.
SOA was true to the adage “garbage in, garbage out.” According to international investigations and reports, graduates were among the most vicious and persistent violators of human rights in Latin America.
SOA graduates took part in liquidating an entire village in El Salvador in 1981, killing hundreds of poor peasants under the pretext of fighting terrorism. According to a UN report, 19 out of 26 soldiers accused of the murder of six Jesuit priests in El Salvador in 1989 were SOA graduates. Other graduates have also been implicated in raping and murdering nuns. An investigation in Peru showed that SOA graduates were behind the murder of university students and teachers in 1992. Guatemalan soldiers raped and tortured Sister Diana Ortiz in 1992. Investigations showed that these men were graduates as well.
It might be said that such incidents cannot be taken as proof to condemn the entire school, that it was pure coincidence that so many of the graduates turned out to be dictators, tyrants and human rights violators. But documents published recently show that the graduates were only carrying out what they were taught at SOA.
In 1996, the US Defense Department under the Clinton administration admitted that SOA teaches its students how to violate human rights. In 1997, the Defense Department published seven guidebooks used by the school. It said that these guidebooks were not used anymore, and that current curricula conform entirely to US law and US policy regarding human rights.
A glance at the contents of those seven guidebooks ­ which were taught at the SOA for almost 50 years ­ reveals detailed descriptions of techniques for kidnapping, assassination and torture. The entire curriculum was therefore based on how to violate a person’s rights to life and liberty.
After a UN investigation in 1993 exposed the dirty role played by SOA in El Salvador, the school announced that it had decided to alter its curricula to include subjects on human rights. Yet American monitoring groups later confirmed that SOA was still teaching the same subjects with only minor alterations.
Even now, the curriculum includes subjects encouraging illegal acts, such as interrogating children, using medical records and the church to obtain information about opposition figures, “neutralizing” opposition leaders and student activists, and how to infiltrate legitimate civil institutions, such as political parties and trades unions.
The school’s behavior reveals its true intentions and the reason why it was set up in the first place. Human rights studies are voluntary, and are therefore the least popular among SOA students. The main interest of the students is not how to pursue legitimate military goals within a framework of respect for human rights, but the exact opposite.
The US set an extremely bad precedent by institutionalizing the violation of human rights. While its Third World clients violate human rights as a “hobby,” the US has turned it into a profession. Israel, America’s poodle, is going down the same path, with its courts routinely torturing Palestinian suspects under the pretext of defending national security.
After successfully forming a pressure group to monitor SOA, human rights activists are calling for closing down the school as an initial symbolic step to be followed by banning US military personnel from teaching torture and assassination techniques. Yet these efforts received a setback when the right-wing Bush administration came to power.
After the communist threat receded with the collapse of the Soviet Union, there is a genuine fear that Washington might seek to turn its “educational” attentions and talents to the Arab and Muslim world.

Mohammed Abdullah Al Roken is an academic and analyst who teaches public law at UAE University.

Daily Star, 11/20/02

The victory scored by the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the Turkish general election did not come as a surprise. The AKP has since been variously described as “Islamist,” “fundamentalist,” “democratic Islamist,” “conservative,” and a “centrist party with Islamic roots.”
AKP leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan was not exactly an obscure politician. In fact, he was so famous that the Turkish Army went to great lengths to prevent him from contesting the Nov. 3 general elections by having the courts ban him for having at one time recited a poem deemed “religiously provocative” by the military. The army had already succeeded in banning the AKP’s predecessor in the first “post-modern” coup in history. Yet like the proverbial phoenix rising from the ashes, Turkey’s Islamists managed to bounce back. Changing their name and program, the Islamists returned to legitimate politics.
Despite the fact that the party was facing a new court case that could result in a ban, the AKP won more than a third of the vote in the general elections. Thanks to Turkey’s voting system in which parties have to win at least 10 percent of the vote to be represented in Parliament, the AKP secured more than two-thirds of the total number of seats.
The election result was inevitable. The Islamist current in Turkey was strong, and had already succeeded in propelling one of its leaders (Necmettin Erbakan) to power at the head of a coalition. Islamist leaders had scored good results in municipal elections, including in Ankara. Erdogan also benefited from a strong protest vote against a corrupt government that had bankrupted the nation, and against an opposition tainted by corruption.
The economic crisis pushed millions of Turks to the edge of poverty. It affected the lower and middle classes of Turkish society, and injured national pride by forcing Turkey to go cap in hand to the IMF. It was clear the electorate were looking for a radical party.
Yet the AKP didn’t win on protest votes alone. There was more to the Islamist phenomenon than that. Turkey’s extreme brand of secularism ­ like extreme Iranian fundamentalism ­ has always been provocative to ordinary Turks wanting to exercise their faith quietly. Moreover, the European Union’s unwillingness to accept Turkey in its ranks strengthened feelings of insularity. “As long as we are being treated as Muslims,” Turks figured, “why not be Muslims?” Many Turks have also adopted Islam as a solution to the country’s severe identity problem.
What has to be said at this point though is that Turkish secularism has stamped an indelible mark on the country’s Islamist current. Islamist ideologues recognize that the majority of Turks have crossed the Rubicon, and that there is no going back to old-style Islamist policies ­ not with the army there to oversee things. Turkey’s Islamists realized their only option was to reform their policies and make them different to those pursued by Islamists in other Muslim countries.
It was not strange therefore that people started wondering whether the already moderate AKP had grown even more moderate after the election, or whether it was only feigning moderation. In the first few days after the election, Erdogan was keen to reassure Turks that the Islamists had indeed changed. He sent clear signals to the army, pledged his respect to the country’s secular constitution, opened up to Greece, and declared his readiness to do whatever it takes to secure Turkey’s accession to the EU. Erdogan also avoided provoking the Americans by saying that Turkey would not oppose war against Iraq so long as there was a UN Security Council resolution sanctioning such action.
The Europeans seem confused as to how to deal with this phenomenon. The EU had put forward conditions for Turkey to fulfill before accession talks could begin. One of these is that the army has to respect the will of Turkish voters. It did, and the result was an Islamist win. That embarrassed the Europeans, putting their position on the line.
European disarray vis-a-vis Turkey was not helped by former French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing’s assertion that Turkey does not belong in Europe. While only some agreed, all felt the former president had a point worth discussing. Where are the limits of the EU project? Are they geographical, political, ideological, or religious?
Europe aside, all eyes were trained on Washington to gauge its reaction. For decades, the US has been Turkey’s main Western backer. The Iraq question adds to Turkey’s importance. By dealing negatively with Erdogan, ­ who has been keen to demonstrate his allegiance to the West ­ Washington would emphasize that its “war on terror” was actually a clash of civilizations and a new crusade against the Muslim world.
The Americans played it cool. In fact, Washington has been edging toward eventually adopting the AKP as “its kind of Islamists.”
After the Cold War, Washington tried to promote Turkish secularism in Central Asia as an alternative to fundamentalism. Sept. 11 changed that. The issue was no longer secularism vs. fundamentalism, but Islam vs. Islam. The most obvious example of that was the unprecedented tension between the US and Saudi Arabia over perceived fundamentalism in the kingdom.
The Americans may adopt the Turkish brand of Islam (a NATO member, cooperating with the IMF, respectful of the state’s secular nature) in their arguments against conservative political Islam. In this case, Erdogan’s victory can be seen as a gift to the Americans, enabling them to distinguish between their real battle and that against Islam that they are accused of waging.

Joseph Samaha is the editor in chief of the Beirut daily As-Safir. 

Daily Star, 11/20/02

The months before Israel’s general election will be fraught with danger but they also offer hope for peace.
Everything rests with the Israeli electorate. If opinion polls in the next few weeks show ordinary Israelis preferring a just, peaceful settlement with the Palestinians, Likud will have to accommodate the Palestinian Authority (PA) to maximize its chances for re-election.
Yet if the electorate seems satisfied with current military measures, then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz will escalate the cycle of violence to maintain public backing.
The hard line adopted by both sides over the last few years will make it tough to achieve a settlement soon. Trust has all but evaporated, and Sharon clearly rejects the Oslo Accords.
While Sharon is unprepared to negotiate with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, the Palestinians seem determined to hang on to their embattled leader.
From an electoral view, Sharon needs an agreement with the Palestinians to win the center and isolate the left. Yet he will likely maintain his policy of pretending to want peace while provoking the Palestinians into more violence so that he can respond in kind. The serious aspect of this is that Sharon will soon feel military action is useless against Palestinians, and he might decide to provoke Syria and Lebanon to foster an atmosphere of threat ­ and win more votes. War is thus a possibility, especially with an American attack on Iraq looming.
Not that Labor is much different from Likud. The Palestinians have a problem with Labor, which has taken part alongside Sharon in the oppression and state terrorism exercised by Israel. But the Palestinians are prepared to reconsider their position if Labor (which has seemingly not learned from Yitzhak Rabin that a military solution is impossible) changes course.
Labor might well choose a new leader in Haifa Mayor Amram Mitzna, who has adopted an unambiguous position in support of a peaceful solution and Palestinian rights. It would be relatively easy for such a leadership to come to an agreement with the Palestinians.
If the new Labor leaders succeed in their efforts to lead the party, it would do them no harm at the ballot box to meet and come to an understanding with the Palestinian leadership. Such an understanding could be presented ­ within the party’s electoral manifesto ­ so as to win more votes and do away with the philosophy of violence and oppression.
In this case, the Palestinian leadership would be well advised to show flexibility ­ or accept a temporary solution designed to regain the confidence of both sides. But in all cases, the Palestinian leadership must agree beforehand with other Palestinian factions to stop attacks on Israeli civilians, and perhaps declare a limited truce to allow time for an agreement to take hold.
It is in the interests of all parties in such circumstances to allow the Palestinians to hold elections on schedule next January, which will precede the Israeli general election by several weeks. If Arafat succeeds in coming to an agreement with a new Labor leadership before then, the matter would be left to the Palestinian and Israeli electorates to decide.
It will then not be easy for either government to evade its responsibilities.
This offers the best hope for peace, since both peoples will vote for a fair and balanced settlement that provides peace and security for all.
If, on the other hand, either Arafat or the new Labor leadership feels wary of such an agreement, they can still propose their individual visions for peace to their electorates. But such a course will offer nothing new. In the end, differences will remain, which will lead to slow negotiations, more resistance operations on the part of the Palestinians, leading to more violent reactions from the Israelis. In other words, the situation would go back to square one. It is consequently much better to include a settlement in the election manifestoes of both sides, and let the voters decide.
On the whole, however, the lack of prior understanding between the two sides will not absolve the Palestinian leadership of the responsibility to define its position clearly and unambiguously.
There are two reasons for this: First, the Palestinian leadership can then fight the election on an unambiguous program and win a mandate to proceed with the settlement as laid out in the manifesto. This will restrict the influence of factions opposed to a settlement ­ or conceivably might restrict Arafat’s influence. At any rate, it should be left to the electorate.
Second, it would deliver a clear message to the Israeli voting public about the shape and price of a solution, and leave it for them
to decide.
The Israelis have tried all methods to settle the problem save the one guaranteed to achieve peace, security, and prosperity for all. War and occupation failed to wipe out the issue, and in fact further complicated it with the passage of time. Nuclear superiority can never ensure Israel’s unjust interests, especially if the Israelis really want to coexist with their Arab neighbors.
Israel has lost its way by thinking that misleading American and world opinion can ensure security and continuing support. Israel has already lost the support of European opinion.
More importantly, the issue is not how to convince an American congressman or two, but how to arrive at an accommodation with one’s neighbors.
The policies pursued by the Israeli right over the last several years have failed miserably. This policy was premeditated to separate between Palestinians and Jews, but at the same time called for continuing occupation and settlement building. It was the latter point that led to the collapse of Sharon’s government. These contradictions can only be explained by a desire to transfer the Palestinians from their homeland ­ a goal rejected on moral as well as practical grounds.
One must question whether the Israeli right wants Israel to remain isolated in the midst of a region dominated by Arabs. All recent Israeli actions have been calculated to foment hatred and complicate
the prospects for peace in the future.
The coming days require courageous leadership on the part of the Palestinians and Israel’s center left. Both must make use of past mistakes, and strive to achieve a peaceful political agreement that guarantees the rights and security of both sides. Such an agreement should then be put before the two peoples to decide upon.
Otherwise, more death and destruction will be the lot of both Israelis and Palestinians.

Daily Star, 11/20/02

The armed clashes that erupted recently in the southern Jordanian town of Maan were extremely significant.
Despite being located in a very tense and volatile region, Jordan has been known for its political stability. A strong government that managed to consolidate its hold on power ­ despite successive crises ­ by relying on a modern army and an efficient security service ensured security and stability.
Yet in spite of the iron grip maintained by various security agencies, they nevertheless managed to keep out of ordinary people’s lives. The Jordanian security services did not impose themselves in such a way as to cause fear and terror among the populace. That is why Jordan continues to enjoy a (limited) margin of freedom that enables its citizens to express nonradical views and positions.
Admittedly, this margin of freedom varied according to circumstances; at worst, however, it never got so narrow as to terrorize the public. On the other hand, it never widened ­ even in the best of times ­ to rival the freedoms of opinion and expression prevalent in democratic countries.
The events that took place in Maan were significant in many ways. A desert town of 40,000-50,000 inhabitants, Maan lies near Saudi Arabia’s northwestern border. Its people are predominantly Transjordanians, with scarcely any citizens of Palestinian extraction among them. Maan has historical connections to the Hashemite Dynasty as has always been fiercely loyal to the crown. It was the first town to welcome Prince Abdullah on his northward trek from Hejaz to found the Emirate of Transjordan in 1921 ­ which subsequently became the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in 1950.
Lying on the main road linking the capital, Amman, to the country’s only seaport at Aqaba, as well as on the highway linking Jordan to Saudi Arabia, Maan became an important hub for transport. Many of its inhabitants work in the transport industry, which made the town sensitive to political and economic developments in surrounding regions.
But Maan is also one of the poorest of Jordan’s provinces, with high rates of unemployment. The economic and development projects carried out by the government in Maan did not result in any tangible improvement to the lives of its inhabitants. This made them ready and eager to embrace any protest ­ or rebellion ­ against the central government.
Perhaps deservedly therefore, Maan has acquired a reputation for political unrest. The town has earned the dubious distinction of being a hotbed of rebellion, reacting rapidly to events in faraway Amman.
The fall in the value of the Jordanian dinar in 1988 sparked violent clashes in Maan. When then-Crown Prince Hassan visited the town in an attempt to calm down the situation, his car was stoned by angry mobs. The Maan uprising of 1988 eventually led to the fall of the Cabinet. Those events ­ still remembered in Jordan as the “April Uprising” ­ turned into a movement of mass protest against the government’s failed economic policies and corruption.
Since then, Maan has witnessed sporadic outbreaks of violence that the security service deals with in secrecy in order to conceal them from the public.
News of the recent outbreak of violence ­ described as a confrontation between the security forces and the Abu Sayyaf group ­ spread among ordinary Jordanians three weeks before the satellite TV channels picked them up.
Government claims that the operation was aimed at bandits, thieves and drug traffickers did not convince the majority of Jordanians, for Maan ­ thanks to its proximity to Saudi Arabia and its position as a hub for road transport ­ is ideally placed to become a haven for extreme fundamentalist groups.
Maan, moreover, is sufficiently distant from the capital to be unaffected by the modernization process that changed the face of Amman and other major Jordanian towns, and thus remained predominantly tribal and conservative. Unlike the northern town of Irbid, where the establishment of Yarmouk University led to more openness and tolerance, the establishment of King Hussein University in Maan failed to weaken the town’s extremely conservative character.
The important question as far as the recent events are concerned is whether the Abu Sayyaf group (the nom de guerre for the armed group led by Mohammed Chalabi) is merely a criminal gang engaged in robbery and drug trafficking. If that is the case, why did the security forces fail to apprehend its members earlier?
Why did the security forces wait all this time, allowing the “gang” to grow in strength, and ignoring (as the government’s story goes) continuous complaints from Maan’s citizens?
It is quite certain that the Abu Sayyaf group is no ordinary criminal gang. It is a fundamentalist political group that has found refuge in Maan, not because of the town’s geographic location, but because of the protection afforded to the group by some Maanites. That was why government attempts to apprehend the group quickly turned into confrontations with the inhabitants of at least some of Maan’s neighborhoods.
If the group really did possess all the captured weaponry the government showed on television, that would mean that Abu Sayyaf is a group with definite political objectives, supported by domestic or foreign backers in order to destabilize the Jordanian government.
The fact that the Jordanian authorities chose to go after the group in the immediate aftermath of the assassination in Amman of an American diplomat hints at the possibility that the authorities were forced to act by US security agencies.
The Abu Sayyaf group might turn out to be an Islamist cell belonging to groups such as Islamic Jihad, Al-Takfir wal-Hijrah (Redemption and Flight), Jaysh Mohammed, or Al-Qaeda. It might even be affiliated with all of those. But in all cases, Abu Sayyaf adopts a hostile attitude vis-a-vis the government and its foreign policy.
In fact, Jordanian foreign policy has been the subject of harsh criticism from the political opposition ­ and especially from the Islamists. While the government succeeded in coopting more moderate Islamists (represented by the Moslem Brotherhood), many other Islamist groups implacably opposed to Jordan’s 1994 peace treaty with Israel remained. These Islamist groups are angry at the regime, not only because of the Wadi Araba peace treaty with Israel, but also because of the historical ties between the Hashemite Dynasty and the Jewish state. Another source of Islamist anger is the government’s close relationship with the United States.
It is highly unlikely that the Abu Sayyaf (or any other Islamist group) can achieve their aims in undermining the Jordanian regime, although they might well succeed in causing chaos. The Jordanian security forces will be able to quell the unrest in Maan ­ but Jordan’s stability will continue to be targeted.
Jordan will continue to be closely affected by events in the wider Arab and Muslim world. That is why it so difficult to foresee what political, social, and cultural upheavals are bubbling under the surface.

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