Jan 7, 2003 Op Eds

Jan 7, 2003 Opinion Editorials http://www.aljazeerah.info

This is a letter that has also been sent to the New York Times.

Dear Mr. Sulzberger and Ms. Robinson:

In the hope that you do see this email I take this opportunity to contact you regarding decisions made by the editorial staff regarding letters and op-ed pieces that Arab American Muslims and Christians frequently send to your paper on life and death issues in the Middle East and the Muslim world.

Since this is not a new issue and the usual responses I've received from your editorial staff on such questions have been the usual "we receive hundreds of letters each day"; "no there is no anti-Arab or Anti-Muslim bias in our op-ed/letter pages" etc; I took the liberty of just surveying for the
month of November the published letters ONLY dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, war on terrorism, or the Muslim world. The preponderance and overwhelming letters published were from Jewish Americans and Israeli's with hardly any from an American Muslim, this in addition to
the same finding on other issues as well. I would be happy to send you these findings, if you wish.

My letter below dealt with a horrific tragedy in Yemen, my native country, the murder of Americans whom I personally knew for decades. It was my father who persuaded the King of Yemen at that time to allow Dr. James Young, a general surgeon from Louisiana, to enter Yemen and build the
original hospital in Taiz, the capital at that time. I attended the American school at that time with his two daughters. This tragedy is a reflection of the absurdity of Bush's military policy vis a vis the Arab
world that benefits Israel and the rich. It's a reflection of the hate filled speech in our nation against Islam, in this case probably stemming from Rev. Jerry Vines, former President of the Southern Baptist Convention, calling our Holy Prophet "a demonic possessed pedophile".

Your paper has sadly taken the neutral or slightly supportive posture for the war-the usual mistaken short term policy of our govt. that's beholden to the "donor du jour" and not to our national interest or world peace.

The NYT was the first paper I ever read in my life at the age of 7. It's editorials were strong, powerful, with substance that could move governments and people. Today it's a pale image of itself competing with the tabloids and cable stations. It's tragic to read the mild mannered quasi entertaining editorials and op-ed pieces at a time when the world's future is being dictated in Washington, Tel Aviv, and London. Bush and his single minded extremists lust for oil and Muslim blood, damn our soldiers,
businesses, and citizens abroad. The paper has said nothing about the twenty billion dollars Israel will surely get while United Airlines, Veterans, Unemployed benefits, prescription drugs for the elderly are denied and our fiscally strapped states and cities are almost broke. Bush's cure for an assured re-election: Appease Israel with money, tax cuts for the wealthy businesses, like the media, and the wealthiest Americans, and pave the road to a second inauguration with worldwide Muslim blood.

Given that I neither expect to hear from you, nor will anything I as an insignificant American "Muslim" say will change anything. I will spare you and the paper my whining after this either communication either directly or in future letters. This is the first letter I've written in months given that no letter was published for me in the last 17 months. I only wrote it out of love for the murdered friends and out of a patriotic belief that our support of Israel against all logic and interest is our national shame and a
stain on our humanity. I should have left Israel out of the discussion and increased my chances to get it published.

I pray no one else will die in Israel, Palestine, Iraq, or anywhere else due to our silent conscience. I do expect to read in the next two days a deluge of angry letters against the "terrorism" of Palestinians in Tel Aviv.

A LETTER TO EDITOR

Dear Editor:
May I ask if you plan to publish my letter below? In my many talks on the Middle East, Islam, and US Foreign Policy I'm constantly asked why don't Muslims condemn acts of violence abroad, why are we so silent? It's difficult for Americans to understand that as American Muslims we can hardly
get letters published, much less op-ed pieces, or ever appear on television.

I would ask that you kindly do consider publishing this letter as its length is well within letters previously published. Thank you for your kind attention.

Dr. M. Khodr

A LETTER TO EDITOR

RE: "Yemen Arrests Gunman in Doctors' Deaths" (Dec. 30)

As an American Muslim from Yemen, I strongly condemn the innocent murders of the three American physicians and wounded Pharmacist in the Baptist Missionary Hospital in Jibla, a hospital I've known since its founding. Muslims must condemn such terrorism as foreign to Islam as strongly as they
condemn Israel's, Russia's, India's, or China's daily terrorism on Muslims or America's "crusade" on Muslim lands and oil. Unlike America's selective condemnation of "Muslim" terrorism against Jews and Christians, true Muslims must condemn the terrorism of all faiths, including of unbelieving Muslims.

Historically, all Muslim nations respected and welcomed America's presence and aid. even missionary aid. What has changed?

The schism between the U.S. and the Muslim world today only materialized with the forceful establishment of Israel in 1948 and its expansionistic acquisition by force of Arab land expelling millions of Palestinians. Since then America's foreign policy and view of Muslims has been surrendered
to Israel's interests, not America's. Israel's intransigence, America's impotence and Arab dictatorial interests have failed to enforce even one U.N. Resolution among 90 against Israel to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Saddam's megalomaniacal stupidity, reflective of most Muslim
leaders, and acquiring of WMD is pursuant to Israel's illegal nuclear weapons. Like other dictators, Saddam would rather see his people die rather than abandon power. Re-election of Sharon and Bush are ensured by the cheap flow of Arab blood and oil. With or without an Iraqi war, greater
American hegemony is ensured through more military bases in the MidEast. Peace and dialogue, beyond the media demonization and warmongering, is cheaper but requires will that neither America, Israel, nor Arab dictators possess.

My prayers go out to the families of these slain humanitarian physicians and wounded pharmacist.

* Mohamed Khodr, MD,MPH, is a contributing columnist to Al-Jazeerah.

US: Time to pursue peace with strength
By Charley Reese

I’ve always thought June 4 should be a national holiday. That’s the date of the Battle of Midway, quite probably the single most significant naval victory in American history.

It avenged Pearl Harbor and irreversibly turned the tide against the Japanese, who until that date had never known a naval defeat. From June 4, 1942, Japan was on the defensive, although there was much hard fighting ahead.

It was a costly victory in terms of naval aviators killed in the attacks. We also lost a destroyer and the carrier Yorktown, but the sinking of four Japanese carriers and the loss of their planes, pilots and some 2,200 officers and men forced the Japanese to rethink their strategy. Thanks to our intrepid Navy pilots, the gloat over Pearl Harbor was cut short.

Many of you have probably read it, but if you haven’t, “The Two-Ocean War,” by Samuel Eliot Morison is an excellent short history of the Navy during World War II. It’s still available in paperback and is published by Little, Brown and Co. The value of reading good military histories is that they remind us of the terrible price that is paid by individual men and women even for victory. Another value is to remind us of the necessity of diplomacy to avoid war and a strong defense force to fight the war diplomacy fails to avoid.

The failure of diplomacy in the 1920s and 1930s brought on the war that, during the first eight years of my life, killed 55 million people. If I sometimes sound calloused, it is because as a child I became used to deaths in large numbers. Acts of terrorism today pale in comparison with deaths in battles and routine bombing raids in World War II. Iwo Jima, a small island indeed, cost around 7,000 American and 20,000 Japanese lives. More than 16,000 Americans were wounded. The island was two and half miles wide and about four and a half miles long. Talk about blood-soaked ground.

All of this is a prelude to say that the Bush administration appears determined to pursue reckless military objectives in Iraq and equally reckless diplomacy in regard to North Korea. At the same time, little thought seems to have been given to the strategic problems we face and the kinds of forces we need to handle them. The very idea of refusing to talk to North Korea is crazy. We should talk with them, with Iraq, with Iran and with anybody else. Talk is cheap. War is terribly expensive.

For our present circumstances, we need a powerful navy and marine corps with their respective air arms. These alone could guard our legitimate national interests. Most of the army could be put on a reserve status. It is inconceivable that any sane American president would commit us to land war in either Asia or Europe. NATO should be disbanded. It has no purpose, and American forces should be brought home. They should not be errand boys for the United Nations, they should not serve as peacekeepers anywhere, they should not train foreign military forces, and they damned sure should not be used to invade Third World countries anywhere.

Our American service people take an oath to defend the United States, not to serve as legionnaires on the outposts of a global corporate empire. Whatever oil or minerals we need we can buy from whoever is sitting on them, and other than that we have no legitimate interest in what kind of government they have.

Our most immediate problem is political leaders who seem to have read little and think even less, not to mention a bulky intelligence community that is so uncoordinated it probably represents more of a risk than a safeguard. World War II and the Cold War were wars enough. It is now time to pursue peace with strength. (King Features Syndicate)

Space programs
Arab News, 7 January 2003

The Chinese deserve to be congratulated on the successful launch and recovery of an orbital space vehicle capable of carrying a crew, who will be known, not as astronauts nor cosmonauts but “taikonauts”, a derivation of the Chinese word for “space”. The first manned mission is widely expected later this year. The coolness with which China’s accomplishment has been received by the other “space powers” underlines, in its way, the reality behind space research, once hailed by PR men as the pursuit of pure knowledge. For a start, much of the technology that the Americans have already used against Iraq and more recently against Serbia and then Afghanistan was a direct spinoff of the hugely expensive NASA space program.

It is not simply the spy satellites that NASA launches for the military and the eavesdropping US National Security Agency which matter to the military. Much of the hugely complex technology that has gone into the likes of cruise missiles and smart bombs owes a great deal to the discoveries of NASA scientists.

The old space race between the Soviet Union and the United States was a matter of propaganda and national pride. For China, however, full membership of the space club has always been and will remain a matter, both of asserting its position among the great powers and developing for itself the technology that has already come to the Americans and the Russians.

Space, therefore, remains a technological battleground and a minefield which could one day become a physical battleground. Both Washington and Moscow are known to have invested in satellite destruction programs, though, hopefully, these have been put on hold in favor of the cooperative effort that is going into the international space station.

The problem is that because of the technology spinoff that have been used to create sophisticated armaments, neither of the two leading space nations is prepared to share all of their knowledge with outsiders. Therefore, whatever amity may now exist between the Russians and the Americans on matters of space is not extended to the Chinese.

In economic terms, this century is likely to close with China as a dominant, if not the dominant world player. The massive entrepreneurial and innovative potential that has been unleashed by the economic revolution that is sweeping this huge country makes it a near certainty. Therefore, behind the lack of cooperation shown by Moscow and Washington to Beijing’s space efforts lies the desire of Russian and US big business, especially the latter, to preserve for themselves as much market power as possible for as long as possible. As with so many conflicts around the world, money lies at the root. Beijing will therefore go its own way in space. Thus are being sown the seeds of future confrontation, if not conflict.

If only a fraction of the ingenuity, not to say money, that the great powers lavish on their space programs, could be deployed to bring peace, development, education and opportunities to the poor regions of the world, perhaps, it would eliminate the primary cause of human conflicts — the sense of deprivation and alienation. Then, perhaps, there would not be any need for the weapons these great powers are spending so much money on.

Uneasy military balance in the Far East
ByHassan Tahsin

In the 1980s, the United States was forced to close its bases in the Philippines. Its military bases in Japan and South Korea thus became strategically very important. The bases are considered the front line of defense against possible attack, especially from China.

Continuous changes in the region produced new dangers to the United States. North Korea, for example, produced its first nuclear bomb and long-range ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads. Japan had a mixed reaction to the North Korea nuclear program. It tried to have good relations with North Korea but failed, and Japan was left with no option but to continue its military relations with Washington. South Korea wishes to unify the divided peninsula for two reasons: to be the most powerful country in the region and to get rid of the American bases protecting South Korea from the north.

China, however, found the situation to be very critical. On one hand, it is a good ally of North Korea and an unstable neighbor to South Korea because of the American bases. China is beginning to change its policies since India and Pakistan, on its western borders, became nuclear powers. China likes the idea of a unified Korea, and does not mind that Korea is a nuclear country; they can both be strong influences in the region with common interest.

These strategic military changes forced Washington to delay steps to unify the Korean Peninsula. It put much pressure on Japan to form a front line against China and North Korea in the future. Japan found itself in a very difficult situation. The Japanese Constitution after World War II fobade the formation of an army capable of facing challenges in the region, fearing that Japan might have military ambitions.

Japan formed a very technologically developed army on paper. Despite the warnings, it was also a very strong army with a real military capability. This change in capability allowed Japan to conduct a military exercise with Japanese police and coast guard last November. Japanese forces also conducted a joint exercise with American forces off Hawaii last September. This is in addition to the logistic support for the United States military and its possible war against Iraq.

We must know that Japan might change its alliances with Washington in the near future, especially if it sensed a threat to its interests in the region and to its worldwide economic power. Japan will find itself forced to choose between full alliance with either China or United States especially since Washington is trying to restrict its economic spread.

The change in Japan’s position and the spread of its military role needs political decision and a change in the constitution. It is a complicated procedure but the local demand to change the constitution and the pressure from the Japanese people to eliminate American bases may speed things up. If this happens in the near future, we will see a strong Japanese military and this will once again change the military balance in the Far East.

Britain’s most dangerous problem
By Neil Berry

-

Tony Blair’s New Year message to his fellow countrymen was grim. Invoking the faltering world economy, looming war against Iraq and the growing threat of terrorists attacks, the British prime minister declared that he could not recall a time when Britain was faced by “so many dangerous problems”.
On New Year’s Day, London’s Daily Mail, a paper frankly contemptuous of Tony Blair and his New Labour government, gave over its front page to Blair’s dispiriting address. “We’re all doomed” ran the paper’s mocking headline.

While Britain has been lashed by torrential rain, with flooding widespread and some people forced to leave their homes, Blair and his family have been on holiday in Egypt. It was from Egypt that the prime minister sent his cheerless message. Cynical Britons have the impression that their leader nowadays spends most of his time abroad; indeed, Britain’s globe-trotting leader is widely felt to be increasingly out of touch with the shabby reality of life in his own country. The popular British satirist Rory Bremner once pictured Tony Blair jetting from capital to capital, only dimly conscious of his exact whereabouts at any given time. Squinting out of the fuselage window one day as his plane taxies to a halt in yet another airport, the prime minister gasps with horror. “God,” he exclaims. “What a frightful dump. Where the hell is this?”

An aide is obliged to explain to him that he has just arrived back in Britain.

Blair lends himself to being satirized. Much given to striking poses (he especially likes to play the grave statesman, all jutting chin and steadfast gaze), he is in many ways a theatrical figure. But then, running Britain has become a largely theatrical affair — not least where the conduct of the country’s relations with the world-at-large is concerned. For, in terms of foreign policy, London’s strategic goals are barely distinguishable any longer from those of Washington, D.C. Britons of a certain age look back in disbelief to the 1960s and 70s to the former British leaders, Harold Wilson and Edward Heath, both of whom were capable of refusing to be dictated to by the United States.

If Britain is, in all but name, a US client state, a docile American satellite, it is also a country much at the mercy of global capitalism, with “market values” now penetrating every hole and corner of society. Returning to Britain after a spell in the Far East, the journalist Martin Jacques was staggered by the extent to which commercialism has begun to permeate the whole fabric of British life. Given all this, it is hardly surprising if governing Britain has become an inescapably constrained and compromised undertaking.

Yet even a government doggedly committed to a program of national reconstruction would be hard-pressed to undo the malign effects of the chronic political mismanagement which Britain has suffered. Examples of such mismanagement are legion. Much in the news at present, as it happens, is the shambles into which Britain’s higher education policy is inexorably collapsing. Under Blair, access to university has undergone furious expansion. During the last few years more people have taken degrees in Britain than ever before. But this expansion has taken place with little reference to the country’s actual economic needs — to, for instance, the dearth of skilled artisans — such as plumbers, carpenters and electricians which the country has for some years been experiencing. The result is that at a time when plumbers in particular are in desperately short supply, the British jobs market is being swamped by graduates in inessential subjects like Media Studies.

Among the plethora of superfluous arts graduates who are finding themselves compelled to go out and acquire marketable skills, plumbing is suddenly turning into a popular career move. The news has not been slow to travel that in London plumbers can earn as much as 50,000 pounds a year. Plumbers may be in the process of attaining a status and prestige they never enjoyed before. The irony is that they might never have become so scarce in the first place but for the condescension with which, in snobbish Britain, such employment has traditionally been viewed by the graduate class.

Tony Blair came to power in 1997 in the guise of a messiah, vaunting his managerial capabilities and promising to deliver Britain from inefficiency. Now — even as he prepares to lead Britain into a war for which few can see any justification — he is portraying himself as a leader at the mercy of events. Many are bound to feel that by focusing on the “dangerous problems” by which his country is beset, he is aiming to distract public attention from the poverty of his domestic achievements — from the mounting evidence that he is going to leave Britain an even worse place than he found it.

One day the British people may become united in feeling that the most dangerous of all their national problems is Tony Blair himself.

Poll issues
Arab News Editorial 6 January 2003

Up until recently, the Israeli general election campaign was dominated by one theme — security. But there are now several issues on the agenda, and while they serve to spice up the campaign, none have managed to derail Prime Minister Ariel Sharon from his march toward a second term in office.

Until last month, Sharon’s Likud Party, the front-runner in the polls, had been sailing smoothly until allegations of corruption surfaced. The affair has included accusations that some Likud leaders accepted money and favors in exchange for votes in the party’s primary election. No one has been charged but opinion polls showed that public support for Likud was beginning to falter. Two polls showed Sharon and Likud would have captured only 31 seats in the Knesset if the election had been held last week. Likud leaders said last month they expected to win 41 seats when Israelis go to the polls Jan. 28. Sharon needs to put together a coalition government with at least 61 seats in the 120-member Knesset to have a majority. Likud is still expected to emerge from the elections with the largest share of seats, but its lead is shrinking.

While the scandal is no Watergate, it could hamper Sharon’s chances of forming a stable coalition government. While the polls show that Sharon remains the most popular Israeli politician, the slippage raises questions about what kind of coalition government he will be able to form. It appears that if he cannot stem the Likud losses, he may have to turn to Labor or one of the centrist parties to continue with his policies in a new government. Even though Likud continues to lose popularity, the polls show that voters are not flocking to the Labor Party and its candidate for prime minister, Amram Mitzna. Labor can expect to win 22 Knesset seats in the election, unchanged from a survey a week ago.

Further controversy has broken out over a vote by the Central Elections Commission to bar an Israeli Arab party, Balad, from running in January, along with its leader, Azmi Bishara, and Ahmed Tibi, another Arab politician. Should Bishara and Tibi lose their appeals in the Supreme Court the impact on Palestinian participation in the elections could be dramatic. Arab candidates would be potential allies of Labor if January’s vote turns out to be closer than opinion polls currently suggest. Participation is crucial if only to prevent the expected Likud majority from becoming an absolute landslide.

The dire state of Israel’s economy surfaced as a potential election issue after an official report announced that last year’s growth rate was the worst in 50 years. The economy is suffering from one of the worst crises in the country’s history. The conflict with the Palestinians, together with the world economic downturn, has led to rising unemployment and falling investment. Still, Sharon’s ratings have refused to fall, neither because of economic woes nor anything else.

When Sharon has felt challenged, he has changed the subject to Iraq and has found eager listeners. The Iraqi card has done wonders whenever Sharon and Likud have begun to slide in public opinion polls. And the issue will continue to be used by Sharon, all the way to the election day.

Carnage revives debate over suicide bombings

An Arab press review, The Daily Star, 1/7/03

Palestine displaces Iraq as the top news story in the Arab press, following the twin bombings in Tel Aviv on Sunday that dominate the front-page headlines.
Anticipating fierce Israeli military retribution against the Palestinians, newspapers highlight speculation that the Israeli government may seize on the incident to try to expel Yasser Arafat from the Occupied Territories despite his Palestinian Authority’s unequivocal denunciation of the attacks and its pledge to apprehend the perpetrators.
Amid renewed debate about whether such operations do more to help or harm the Palestinian cause, especially with Israel’s Jan. 28 general elections approaching, Al-Quds al-Arabi takes issue with Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed-Rabbo’s contention that they only serve to consolidate the electoral fortunes of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his hard-line Likud Party.
“On the contrary,” the pan-Arab daily argues in its main editorial, “they provide fresh proof of the failure of Sharon’s murderous policies to achieve security for the Jewish state and its inhabitants.”
The claim that Palestinian resistance attacks play into Sharon’s hands by provoking Israeli voters to back the far right at the impending parliamentary polls is misconceived, the paper says, not least because the opinion surveys had been predicting a right-wing triumph anyway even before the latest suicide bombings.
“Israelis turned their backs on the peace process when they realized that the Palestinian people would not settle for a pseudo-state that lives off Israeli crumbs and serves as a pool of cheap labor. They chose an extreme right-wing government in the belief that it could preserve their security while bringing the Palestinians to their knees and ending their resistance. But instead of providing Israelis with security Sharon has increased their suffering, and become a burden on Israel’s friends in the West, especially in Europe, and an embarrassment for many moderate Jews around the world with his oppressive policies against the defenseless Palestinians,” the paper says.
Al-Quds al-Arabi notes that prior to the carnage in Tel Aviv, various Palestinian factions had been holding talks in Cairo under Egyptian government auspices to discuss a “binding agreement” to halt suicide bombings, and charges that Sharon deliberately set out to sabotage those meetings by ordering a fresh bout of murderous tank thrusts into Palestinian towns and refugee camps.
The paper says Sharon can now be expected to order another round of “punitive measures,” such as bombarding more neighborhoods in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. But he has done all that in the past, yet failed to put an end to Palestinian resistance. His “last remaining card” would be to expel Arafat, but that would be counterproductive for Israel, which would much rather maintain the current “indirect occupation” of the Palestinian territories than assume direct responsibility for the 3 million natives, the paper says.
The leading Saudi pan-Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat uses its editorial to bemoan the Bush administration’s evident lack of interest in reviving the Arab-Israeli peace process. It notes that Washington has backed off even from its half-hearted “road map” for a peace deal in deference to Israel, and “has done nothing” to live up to its declared intention to promote peace and security in the region.
The Saudi paper says Washington’s behavior is at odds with President George W. Bush’s avowed commitment in his new year address to seek peaceful solutions to world problems. The same “confusion and contradiction” applies to Iraq, against which Washington continues to spout warlike rhetoric while massing forces in the Gulf in preparation for a military assault, it says.
“Before Bush orders an attack on Iraq, he should conduct a complete appraisal of whether, during these troubled times when many dangers loom, war on Iraq constitutes an appropriate priority for the world in general and the United States in particular. For Washington has failed to persuade world public opinion that Iraq poses a military threat to its neighbors or to America. Moreover, the Iraqis have so far not obstructed the international arms inspections program. Neither have the arms inspectors unearthed any evidence that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction, as the warmongers and Iraq’s detractors had expected,” Asharq al-Awsat remarks.
“In short, if the US president wants to present himself as a courageous and decisive leader, he should support what the UN is doing and what Iraq’s close and distant neighbors are calling for. He should cancel the decision to wage war on Iraq and accord more importance to resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict and the other conflicts that threaten world peace,” the Saudi daily argues.
Saudi Arabia’s opposition to war against Iraq is highlighted by Talal Salman, publisher of the Lebanese daily As-Safir, who writes from Kuwait that of all the Gulf Arabs, the Saudis are the most apprehensive about America’s designs.
The Kuwaitis are less worried, Salman indicates. They remain imbued with “the spirit of revenge” against Iraq for its 1990 invasion of the emirate, and while concerned about the possible fallout from a war, they are even more fearful of the survival of Saddam’s regime, which they perceive as being strong and potentially menacing, “even if it does not have nuclear weapons.”
Salman writes that the majority of decision-makers in the Gulf region appear not to be particularly alarmed about the prospect of Iraq breaking up as a consequence of a US invasion, or fragmenting along ethnic and sectarian lines.
“Their alarm stems from the nature of the change” that is anticipated in Iraq, “and from its implications for themselves,” he argues. “The Saudis are the most alarmed, and thus the most strongly opposed to war, public declarations notwithstanding. Indeed, some interlocutors do not hesitate openly to make the seemingly surprising assertion that it is not in Saudi Arabia’s interests for the status quo in Iraq to change.”
One reason for this is that Saudi Arabia is “the biggest beneficiary of the absence of Iraqi oil from the world market,” he writes. As the biggest oil exporting country, the kingdom profits most from Iraq’s inability to produce to capacity, and badly needs the extra revenues it earns in order to deal with its domestic problems. If Iraqi oil were to come back on the market, the kingdom would lose out twice over, from lower oil prices and a diminished market share, “and its problems would worsen and could become impossible to remedy.”
Another consideration is that if Iraq is rehabilitated and returns to the Arab fold irrespective of the regime in power in Baghdad it will inevitably become a “pole of attraction” in the region. “Should it return under the banner of democracy, elections and constitutional life, the embarrassment of Saudi officials would be considerable.” The other Gulf states including Oman, Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait have “resolved this problem” by adopting some of the outward trappings of “democracy,” and by introducing parliaments or consultative councils that give the appearance of involving the public, if only “symbolically,” in their monarchical regimes.
A third cause of Saudi apprehension is the “unconcealed” way in which the Americans have been encouraging other Gulf states to stop deferring to Riyadh’s regional leadership, says Salman. “The ‘Qatari experience’ is the most glaring example of that, but not the only one. The Gulf Cooperation Council is no longer an exclusively Saudi sphere of influence, and meanwhile Yemen has started to occupy a prominent place in America’s plans for the region,” he remarks.
“Add ‘post-Saddam Iraq’ to all of this, and the Saudi role can be expected to fade, while domestic problems will inevitably rise to the surface as a consequence. These are serious social, economic and political problems, whose gravity is illustrated by the fact that unemployment among Saudi youth stands at 30 percent of the workforce,” Salman says.
In the Egyptian semi-official daily Al-Ahram, Hassan Abu Taleb of the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies argues that the Arab states can and should work closely with Turkey to try to prevent a US war on Iraq.
Writing as Turkish Prime Minister Abdullah Gul tours Arab capitals with the stated intention of promoting a peaceful settlement to the Iraq crisis, Abu Taleb challenges what he says is the “assumption” made by many Arab observers and analysts that Ankara will always do Washington’s bidding over Iraq.
He says Turkey’s eventual response to American requests that it join in, or at least provide the necessary base facilities for, an invasion of its southern neighbor, will depend on its assessment of its own national interests. Its two major priorities at present are to overcome its economic crisis and to gain admission to the European Union, and its need for US support on both counts makes it vulnerable to pressure to toe the American line with regard to Iraq.
On the other hand, the new Justice and Development Party (AKP) government in Ankara is clearly not keen on war unlike Turkey’s American and Israeli allies and would like to see it avoided if at all possible. It has already conditioned its participation in any hostilities on UN authorization, and has declined to offer the US all the military facilities it wants. To Abu Taleb’s mind, this attitude has little or nothing to do with the AKP’s supposedly Islamist roots or considerations of solidarity with a fellow Muslim country, but is motivated by its perception of Turkey’s own higher interests.
Moreover, the Turkish military and the secular establishment remain worried that war on Iraq could fuel Kurdish separatism. They are also concerned about the limitations on Turkey’s sovereignty and independence that would be caused by a large and long-term US military presence on its soil.
Abu Taleb argues that the Arabs should have been working harder with the Turks to coordinate their anti-war moves before now. Not a single Arab official visited Ankara during the weeks between the Turkish general elections and the formation of the new government, a period which saw the despatch of no less than four high-level Israeli delegations to the country, he points out.
In the Saudi-run pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat, Abdelwahhab Badrakhan wonders why the Bush administration has recently been advertising its professed interest in achieving a “peaceful” solution to the Iraq crisis even while continuing to threaten Baghdad that the “day of reckoning” is approaching.
He suggests that Washington’s newfound emphasis on “peaceful” outcomes without specifying whether it is referring to the regime’s disarmament or its removal from power could be related to purported behind-the-scenes-contacts aimed at persuading President Saddam Hussein to step down.
The US could also merely be playing psychological games with the Iraqi leader, trying to lull him into a false sense of security in order to lure him into making “mistakes” that can be invoked as justification for an attack, Badrakhan says. Saddam certainly did not submit to the UN Security Council over arms inspections with the intention of relinquishing power later on. He is bound by the terms of Resolution 1441, which makes no mention of regime change. But as the deadline for the inspectors to report on Baghdad’s compliance looms, Washington will be focused on finding shortcomings that it can use to justify military action.
Badrakhan says “the strangest thing about Bush’s desire for a peaceful solution” is that Washington’s thinking has hitherto been clearly based on the assumption that the US must not merely act to topple the regime but assume military control of the country. One cannot imagine the situation in Iraq being “normalized” in the absence of a coherent force that can uphold the authority of the state and remain equidistant from all competing factions. Yet there is no clear provision for that in any US plan, including the current suggestion that the Iraqi leadership step down, “for if it were to step down, how would it do so, in whose favor and under what circumstances?”
The failure of the US and other advocates of “change” in Iraq to do anything that could now be built upon is telling in this regard, Badrakhan says. “It’s as though everybody has been banking on the idea that no change is possible unless Washington makes up its mind and goes as far as occupying Iraq, and that appears to be what is happening now.”

Jews should fear Sharon much as Arabs do

The Daily Star, 1/7/03

It is still too early to know precisely what Ariel Sharon intends to do about the impasse gripping his people and the Palestinians, but not to discern the broad out-lines of some act or other of Homeric villainy. Israel’s prime minister reacted to Sunday night’s suicide bombing with steps guaranteed to produce more the same, a practice which has become his trademark.
Rather than trying to calm the tensions that inevitably to additional littering of Israel’s streets with the internal organs of Israel’s citizens, he and government have sought to increase them.Then express mock outrage when their diabolical plans come to fruition with appalling efficacy.
Sharon’s immediate answer was three-pronged.obligatory ejaculation, fountainous but impotent, firepower came in the form of tank and helicopter strikes in the Gaza Strip.Then the Jewish state’s inner security Cabinet banned a Palestinian delegation from traveling to London for talks with British leaders on how to reform the Palestinian Authority. Final-ly, the Jewish state ordered the closure of universities in the Occupied Territories.
The pulverization of a few more buildings will deter suicide bombers. The isolation of mainstream Palestinian leaders will neither enhance their ability nor increase their willingness to rein in extremist groups.The foisting of idle time on already restive students will make them more radical, not less. Sharon’s riposte can have only two consequences: an expansion in the number of people willing to become suicide bombers and a reduction in the ability of their leaders to stop them.
Ariel Sharon is not Menachem Begin, a man cried real tears at the shedding of Jewish blood.
Begin’s love for his people came unfortunately at price of utter disregard for the inconvenient "oth-ers," but it was genuine nonetheless. Sharon, on other hand, seems actually to revel in the taking Jewish lives at Arab hands.What else could equip so bounteously with pretexts to kill more Arabs, more Arab land, and destroy more Arab property?
Why else would he have the broken bodies of his people lined up as a backdrop for his ghoulish preening before television cameras?
What can be the eventual goal of a political leader who consistently seeks to intensify the chaos produces bloodshed among his own people? If pattern of Sharon’s behavior were a recent phenom-enon, one might suggest very reasonably that it an election strategy based on the notion that helps his candidacy. But in fact the trend has typified his approach to the intifada since Sept. 28, 2000, day he set it off by joining 1,000 troops for a delib-erately provocative jaunt through the Jerusalem site known to Muslims as Al-Haram al-Sharif and Jews as the Temple Mount.
Presumably, Sharon is not so pathological that regards killing Arabs as an end in itself and is therefore happy to have Israelis die in the service of quenching his insatiable appetite. It is also safe to assume that orgy of violence over which he has presided is not precursor to a sweeping peace offer that will follow likely re-election on Jan. 28. So why does he persist a campaign that produces only chaos and pain?
There is ample reason to fear that Sharon’s "grand plan" is to finish what was started in 1948 addended in 1967: the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
His enthusiasm for policies that steadily expose people to more violence becomes easily understand-able if the entire process is designed to justify wholesale expulsion of Palestinians from the West Bank and/or Gaza.
Reasonable people know that such an act would saddle Jewry with something akin to the burden Germans have had to carry since 1945. They also know that it would only lead to incalculably greater danger for Israelis and Jews around the world. Whatever his intentions are this time, however, Sharon never allowed reason to interfere with the baser instincts that guide his conduct. That is why his status as an enemy of Arabs has attained mythical proportions – and why Jews everywhere should tremble at what he has in store for them.

US media is an accomplice in the war on Iraq

By Fahed Fanek

The Daily Star, 1/7/03

Very few people believe that America is going to destroy a major Arab country like Iraq just in order to launch democracy, build a free market economy system and make Iraq into an example to be emulated by other Arab countries Syria, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf especially.
Even fewer people believe that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Vice-President Dick Cheney and their ilk are impatient to go to war out of concern for the Iraqi people, or to protect the country’s neighbors from Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, which no one not even the CIA is really sure exist at all.
Facts are what people believe. And the facts in this case say that the war America is about to wage on Iraq (using weapons of mass destruction, by the way) is just another step in a new American strategy designed to dominate the entire globe and build the greatest colonial empire the world has ever seen. Far from seeking to promote democracy in Iraq, what the Americans are really planning to do is lay their hands on Iraq’s oil reserves, help Israel control the Middle East on their behalf, and subdue Arabism and Islam, which threaten Israel’s and America’s security.
One does not need to be a genius to figure out that Iraq’s neighbors are trembling in fear not of Iraq, but of the war America is threatening to launch on Baghdad. All of Iraq’s neighbors have expressed opposition to America’s plans.
The Arabs don’t see America as their savior. According to recent opinion polls, 75 percent of Jordanians, for example, oppose America, 82 percent are against America’s attempts to spread its values by force, and 85 percent expressed reservations regarding what the US is doing in the name of the “war on terror.”
No one, not even America itself, knows what dire consequences a war on Iraq might bring. The region will be plunged into chaos and the peoples of the Middle East will perceive the war as a clash of civilizations. Instead of securing American interests, a war would do the opposite, threatening American lives and interests and leading to even more terror.
Wars seldom achieve the aims of those who wage them. One has only to look at the results of World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Suez campaign, Vietnam, and the Iran-Iraq War. Even Israel’s war of 1967 failed in its objective of achieving security for the Jewish state, turning it into an occupying power whose future existence is constantly challenged.
The peoples of the Middle East, who have had more than their fair share of wars and upheavals, are familiar with the adverse effects of conflict. Unfortunately, American public opinion has not drawn similar lessons, thanks to the efforts of the American media that has been blindly following the lead of administration hawks. President George W. Bush knows this; even if he is ignorant, there are those who can illuminate him on these historical facts. Yet he is busy preparing the American people for war a process that has taken more than a year. Having invested so much time, effort and prestige in this project, Bush can no longer go back.
The Americans are a good and peace-loving people, and that’s why it is extremely difficult to convince them of the viability of war. The American media, however, is working overtime to facilitate this task. Americans are being brainwashed into supporting war on Iraq. They have been persuaded that a small and beleaguered Third World nation like Iraq poses such a threat to the United States and its interests that it is worth spending billions of dollars and sacrificing thousands of American lives besides opposing world opinion in order to defeat it.
Is the American media up to the job? How independent are American journalists? And how committed are they to the ethics of the profession?
Credibility is a journalist’s most important asset. It is a journalist’s job to give his or her audience a true picture of events in order to help them understand these events and form an opinion regarding them. If the picture conveyed by a journalist was distorted or truncated, then he or she would have misled rather than informed his or her audience. In an article he wrote for the Dec. 18 edition of London’s The Independent, Robert Fisk described how some major American news organizations have become mouthpieces for the Pentagon and the White House both in choosing what to broadcast or publish and when.
Fisk wrote that Roger Ailes, chairman of Fox News, who urged Bush to take the sternest possible measures against the perpetrators of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, turned out to be a faithful servant of Israel’s interests. Uri Dan, Fox’s correspondent in Jerusalem, turned out to be a personal friend of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon who had tried to exonerate him of responsibility for the murder of 1,700 Palestinian civilians at Sabra and Shatila in 1982.
In fact, Nightline’s Ted Koppel, one of America’s most respected anchormen, has gone on record to say that it is the duty of newsmen not to reveal facts until ordered to do so by the military. What are we to expect of Koppel and others like him if war was to break out in Iraq?
ABC admitted that it had known about the killing last November by the CIA of five Al-Qaeda suspects in Yemen four days before it broadcast the news because it was asked by the Pentagon to wait. So now we know for whom ABC works. The network delayed broadcasting the news to give the Pentagon time to concoct a story about the victims being important Al-Qaeda activists and thus justify the Israeli-style assassination. At the time they were killed, the Americans were not sure whom they were targeting.
Years ago, when Bilal Hassan al-Tall was director of publications in Jordan, the country’s journalists were angered by his call that they act as battalions in the service of the government. It now appears that Tall was only acting in the best traditions of the most democratic nation on earth the United States.
For a journalist to be worthy of the name, he or she must be independent and critical. He or she must convey the truth as it is without antagonizing anyone or falling foul of the law.

Fahed Fanek is a Jordanian economics and media consultant.

The regime change syndrome

By Rosemary Hollis

Jordan Times, 1/7/03

TAKING THE political temperature in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Ramallah and Amman over the holiday period, the unavoidable verdict has to be that the region is gearing up for an American-led war on Iraq. With this prospect taking centre stage, Palestinian statehood must wait, apparently, but not just until Iraq has been remade. Palestine too is on notice to change regime or languish indefinitely under occupation.

The Israeli press is reporting claims that the Iraqis may be channelling arms to Hizbollah and that Al Qaeda cells have infiltrated Gaza. One recent newspaper article even suggested that while the United States takes on Iraq, Israel's task will be to deliver a decisive blow to Hizbollah forces in south Lebanon and militants in Gaza. This unhappy prospect is not wholly dispelled by claims from the Israeli Labour Party that the Sharon government is capitalising on public anxieties to boost Likud election prospects.

On the subject of the forthcoming Israeli elections, a theory is circulating that a triumphant Sharon will succeed in persuading Labour leader Amram Mitzna to join a secular coalition to marginalise the religious parties which have held sway in recent Israeli governments. Among the traditional supporters of Labour who have moved to the right during the course of the Intifada there is also hope that Sharon will emerge as head of a government prepared to countenance Palestinian statehood, albeit on terms that fall well short of those mooted under Ehud Barak.

The precondition a new Sharon government is expected to require, however, is the departure of Yasser Arafat from the scene. Some speak darkly of the possibility of an assassination, others of deportation. The speculation is uncomfortably similar to that surrounding US calls for regime change in Baghdad. Can the build up of pressure persuade someone close to the president to undertake a coup d'Ètat, or will it be necessary for outside forces to bring about his demise?

In the Palestinian case, an alternative way to effect regime change, by sidelining rather than toppling the president, was posited as long ago as last May, through the device of creating the office of prime minister. According to some Palestinians, Arafat was so unnerved by the experience of coming under siege in his muqata during the crisis which also saw militants besieged in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, that he was ready to concede on this and other reforms to the Palestinian National Authority (PNA).

However, what was then a primarily internal push for reform was derailed when President George W. Bush made his speech on June 24, making Palestinian statehood dependent on a change of leadership. This and Israel's subsequent demolition of the muqata around Arafat's office caused such a popular backlash in favour of Arafat, the symbol of the Palestinian cause, that no one on the inside dared confront him again.

Even so, since June, the International Task Force has tried to work with the PNA on constructive reform measures designed to counter criticism from all quarters of the president's managerial style, corrupt practices and unaccountability. From the perspective of both European and Palestinian advocates of reform, however, such efforts cannot go very far and cannot yield tangible benefits for the population while Israel remains in occupation, the PNA has virtually no fund to administer and no practical capacity to deliver services or uphold the law.

Meanwhile, the Quartet (the EU, UN, US and Russia), with Arab and in particular Jordanian input, has been working on the so-called road map for arriving at a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Embodied in this is a requirement for the Palestinians to come up with a new constitution based on a parliamentary, rather than a presidential, system, with executive power in the hands of a prime minister. In other words, a constitutional regime change, as well as a cessation of violence by the Palestinians, is a precondition for progress.

For those who see Arafat as an obstacle to reform, and thence perhaps to peace, this is positive. Some figures in the Palestinian NGO community apparently deem it so. However, they and others, Jordan included, have been deprived of the chance to use this internationally backed plan for rejuvenating the peace process by the US decision to postpone formal release of the road map until after the Israeli elections. By then, of course, everyone assumes the prospective war on Iraq will be imminent and the road map could be shelved indefinitely.

No doubt this prospect suits the Israelis and those in the US administration who believe that the road map is too ambitious on statehood and too vague on the question of Arafat. A change of constitution that would allow the veteran Palestinian leader a chance to pass gracefully from centre stage is apparently not acceptable. In any case, the Palestinians are suspicious of US motives. In the words of one, if the United States could get Arafat replaced by someone else prepared to deliver on Israeli security, Washington would forget about promoting democracy. Another echo of the US quest for regime change in Iraq!

What is clear is that all the parties engaged in devising the road map and working on Palestinian reform have been working at cross purposes. The Europeans, as well as the Jordanians, Egyptians and some Palestinians, have been trying to capitalise on the US, UN and Arab endorsements of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to take the US president at his word, deliver a reformed Palestinian political system and then place the onus on the Israelis to do their part. On the face of it, too, the London conference on Palestinian reform is designed to showcase Palestinian efforts and thereby challenge those Israelis who claim there is no partner for peace.

For their part, the Israeli and US governments are pushing for the Palestinian leadership to take measures that would constitute capitulation. When warned by the Europeans, for example, that the Palestinian reform effort is in danger of collapsing unless the Israelis facilitate it, the Israelis say the security situation forbids this. One can only assume that the Israelis would prefer the PNA to fail so that they can be rid of it. The Americans, meanwhile, are busy with Iraq and sticking to their line that the time is not ripe for a breakthrough on the Arab-Israeli front.

If present trends continue, therefore, the PNA will not survive and competing factions within the Palestinian community will argue over the debris. Meanwhile, Israeli fence, road and settlement building continue. In the wake of a war on Iraq, the Americans will have their hands full rebuilding that country, so it may take them some time to come around to looking at Palestine. Ultimately, therefore, it could be that the regional and international community will end up having to pick up the pieces not only in Iraq, but also in Palestine, once the Americans have grown disenchanted with their quest for regime change.

Cracks: Sharon's vision for peace

Jordan Times, 1/7/03

ISRAELI PRIME Minister Ariel Sharon gave his people as well as the entire international community a glimpse of his inner thoughts on his country's conflict with the Palestinians when he said a few days ago that "there are cracks on the Palestinian side and I see a real opportunity for beginning a political process." The Israeli leader went on to add: "I will not let this opportunity slip from our hands because of the mistakes rooted in the inexperience of (Amram) Mitzna," the Labour leader.

These remarks by Sharon came on the occasion of the start of election campaigns by Israeli political parties in preparation for parliamentary elections scheduled to take place on Jan. 28. They reveal a good deal about what the Israeli prime minister has up his sleeve when it comes to dealing with the Palestinians and their 27-month-old uprising against Israeli aggression and occupation of their lands. In depicting his main opponent for the seat of prime minister, Mitzna, as a novice and inexperienced because of his open-mindedness on negotiating with the Palestinian leadership, Sharon has in effect shed more light than ever on what the Palestinians and the Arab world can expect from him and his Likud-led government if, as expected, they are voted into office in the upcoming elections.

By interpreting the internal Palestinian dialogue and soul-searching about the course of their Intifada as cracks that can be exploited, Sharon is missing the point. The various views that are emerging from the Palestinian national dialogue on the future course of their struggle for freedom and independence are not cracks but the expression of democratically developed ideas on the part of the Palestinian people. They are part and parcel of the stocktaking that the Palestinian people are engaged in in a bid to crystallise a new Palestinian thought on how to proceed in the future. The strengthening of Palestinian democracy should be encouraged, not exploited. True many sober Palestinians are taking another look at the way their Intifada has been conducted especially after it became all too clear that suicide bombings are counterproductive tactics that can only provide ammunition to Israeli extremism. Sharon should be more careful in dealing with the new level of political sophistication that is being delicately nurtured among the Palestinian ranks. If Israel still entertains hope that Palestinians would turn against each other and bleed to death, then it is time that the Israelis reconsider this assessment and also move in a new direction that would take into consideration not only the thoughts of Israeli hardliners but also of those who are tired of conflict and bloodletting and yearn for peace. As the division of opinion among Israelis are not cracks neither are the Palestinian divisions of political thought.

http://www.aljazeerah.info

Opinions expressed in various sections are the sole responsibility of their authors and they may not represent Al-Jazeerah's.