Throwing Away a Half Million Dollars on an Ego Trip Pretending to "Support" Palestinians

On April 15, approximately 600 activists paid about $750 each for tickets to fly to Israel to demonstrate against that country's existence. In almost all cases, they were prevented from boarding the aircraft. Airlines are legally responsible for not allowing passengers to board international flights who will be refused entry at the point of arrival. The tickets were not refunded. That means that about a half million dollars were thrown away in "supporting" the Palestinians. Imagine if that same amount had been provided for some productive purpose like improving medical care. So the activists got a thrill and did nothing but waste time and money for absolutely no return but an ego trip. 

Why Did the Arabs Suffer "Nakba" (Disaster) in 1948 and Every Day Since? The Surprising View of the Man Who Coined That Term

By Barry Rubin It's ironic how the West has adopted the narrative of the very people who caused so much disaster in the Middle East. There are two reasons: The ignorance of the Western "experts" and the domination of the radical interpretations that made the mess in the first place. Here's a example. In a paper just published by Harvard, somebody named Neil Lewis (where do they find these people to write about Middle East issues who know nothing about them?) argues that the idea the New York Times is biased against Israel is a myth. Not just a partially right or exaggerated claim. Oh, no, it's completely ridiculous! If anything, he writes, the  New York Times--as a radical-controlled British university think tank did a while ago regarding the consistently anti-Israel BBC--is really too biased in favor of Israel! No doubt Mr. Lewis is destined for a fine, well-financed career. Look for his future articles featured in...the New York Times. Ah, brave new world that has such people in it! Having written scores of specific articles documenting this bias in great detail, I know the Harvard is is one more triumph of ideology over serious scholarship. Some have pointed to the things that Lewis's paper ignored and twisted but my attention was drawn to a wonderful example of special pleading and historical ignorance so common when it comes to bashing Israel and apologizing for Palestinian intransigence. And there's a big surprise and irony here that I'll explain in a moment. Lewis writes: "The anniversary of the founding of Israel is an occasion for official joy in the country. But for many Arabs, it is instead commemorated as the `nakba'’ or catastrophe, the time when half the region’s Arab population—estimated at between 700,000 and 800,000—had fled or were driven out. Exactly what happened remains a heated debate." "'Part of the appeal of the term `nakba’ for Arabs is certainly the hope that it may provide some rhetorical and moral counterweight to the emotive terms `Holocaust' and `Shoah' (Hebrew for “catastrophe.’’). It has been in use among Arabs since 1949, according to one expert." "The word does not, however, make its first appearance in The Times until 1998 in an article that was part of a series examining Israel on its 50th anniversary. `Nakba’ which has become a familiar term on university campuses because of the considerable support in such places for the Palestinian cause, subsequently appears in The Times’s news pages only a few dozen more times." Lewis's footnote about that expert reads: "The term `nakba’ was used beginning in 1949 by Arabs after it was part of the title of a book by Constantine Zurayk, a professor at the American University of Beirut, said Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University." Thus, Lewis implies that because it didn't use the word "nakba" until 1998 that proves the Times was pro-Israel and ignored the Palestinians' plight. Like so much said about the Arab-Israeli conflict it is remarkable how absurd this argument can shown to be in less than 150 words. Here they are: Everyone who ever lost a war is unhappy about it and suffered. Does the Times discuss the "nakba" of the Confederacy, the Germans in World War One and Two, the Japanese in World War Two, and so on through every modern conflict? Should it speak of Communists' mourning at the fall of the Soviet bloc? Lewis implies that the Times never discussed the fact that the Arabs were unhappy they lost in 1948 or that there were Palestinian refugees or that they claimed all of Israel. Every week, perhaps several times a week, for a half century or more this information has been published in the Times. The only thing the Times didn't do--but has "corrected" for quite some time by using the "nakba" concept--is to present Israel's creation as a tragedy and to imply Palestinian suffering was totally due to Israeli actions.  Finally, Palestinian  "nakba" commemorations are relatively recent, designed by the PA as propaganda exercises. Why recent? Because the PLO would never seek pity from the West but rather presented itself as heroic warriors headed for victory. But the man who coined the use of the word "nakba" in this context had views quite different from Lewis, the Times, the PA, the campus anti-Israel demonstrators, and the revolutionary Islamists. To read the entire article click here

A Brief Guide to Why 1948 Was a Palestinian Arab and Arab Disaster

This article is published on PajamasMedia.

By Barry Rubin

In 1947 the UN voted to partition the British mandate of Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state. The Jews accepted partition into two states; the Arabs rejected it.

The international community offered to make Amin al-Husseini, the Palestinian Arabs' leader, head of a state despite the fact that he and his closest colleagues were the subject of a 1938 British arrest warrant for terrorist activities (not mythical but for killing lots of people), and had spent World War Two in Berlin doing pro-Nazi propaganda, recruiting for SS units, and planning a Holocaust of Jews in the Middle East.

But al-Husseini rejected partition and so did all of the Arab states. While Jordan wanted to make a deal and Egypt’s government wasn’t enthusiastic, they all had to go along with al-Husseini’s intransigence, their hysterical public opinion, and the other Arab states' pressure. The Arab League's leader, a Nazi agent during World War Two, bragged that the Jews would be massacred. The Muslim Brotherhood, which collaborated with the Nazis during the war and were subsidized by them before the war, sent volunteers to fight the Jews.

And so a Palestinian Arab army, whose three chief commanders had all fought for the Nazis during World War Two, went to war against the Jews using Nazi-supplied weapons (provided for the Palestinian Arab revolt in 1939 and for an Egyptian revolt that never happened in 1942). They lost.

Then the armies of the Arab states invaded Israel. They largely lost, though the Egyptian held onto the Gaza area while the Jordanians took east Jerusalem and what became known as the West Bank. Egypt ran Gaza; Jordan annexed the West Bank.

Everything that happened afterward was due to Arab decisions to reject both a two-state solution and Israel’s creation.

That’s the bottom line. So the disaster was due first and foremost to the Palestinian Arab leadership and secondly to the Arab states and publics.

Dealing with the “nakba” would then require that the Palestinian Arabs and the Arabic-speaking world generally would recognize that the disaster resulted from their refusal to accept Israel’s existence and to seek a genuine, compromise two-state solution.

But, instead, in the name of the 1948 disaster they are repeating the same policies that brought it about! Indeed, they are the same policies that led to the self-inflicted disasters of 1967, 2000, and others since then.

For example, as part of the preparations for the commemoration of the 1948 disaster, Palestinian Authority television played repeatedly a music video entitled "On the Way to Jerusalem" The main lines are:

"Jaffa, Acre, Haifa, and Nazareth are ours.

[ I ], Muhammad, sing about the Galilee and the Golan (Heights).
Jaffa, Acre, Haifa and Nazareth are ours."

This is precisely the one-state, wipe-Israel-off-the-map that brought on them the disaster of 1948, disaster every year since then, and more disaster into the forseeable future. Sixty-four years (counting from 1947) of failed policy has not brought wisdom.

Almost every event--Egypt's revolution, demonstrators trying to cross Israel's border, a terrorist attack, Western sympathy, and so on--is interpreted as proving that Israel's destruction is possible and so additional decades should be spent in diplomatic intransigence and the incitement of violence rather than some constructive effort. That's one reason, by the way, why the Palestinians always ultimately lose.



This has also been going on so long that much of the West has forgotten the roots and ongoing causes of this conflict, Palestinian suffering, Israeli suffering, and the terrorist violence and defamation of Israel.

Note: The use of the words “Nazi collaborator” and other mentions of pro-Nazi activities in this article are not name-calling but based on German and U.S. intelligence materials. These points will be fully and in detail documented in the forthcoming book by myself and Wolfgang Schwanitz, to be published by Yale University Press next year.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, and a featured columnist at PajamasMedia http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/ His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is http://www.gloria-center.org. His PajamaMedia columns are mirrored and other articles available at http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com/.

PS On Palestine Papers

By Barry Rubin

A reader writes that he agrees with my assessment on the Palestine Papers but then adds that he doesn't mind seeing PA leader Mahmoud Abbas and PA prime minister Salam Fayyad subjected to some heat and criticism.

My response: How would you like to see them lynched by a crazed mob and replaced by people who launch a new uprising in which hundreds or thousands of people on both sides die?

Not the most likely scenario but quite conceivable. How can anyone think this catastrophe helps the peace process? Has anybody reaching a mass audience said that it hurts any chance for peace? I haven't seen that.

How can a group of revolutionary Islamists (al-Jazira, not the most reliable source) and revolutionary leftists (Guardian, not the most reliable source) so easily and totally seize control of the world debate? Why does it seem as if not a single major newspaper in the world has any desire to independently try to authenticate the documents, analyze their bizarre contents, or question the credentials of two of the most politically motivated and tendentious news organs on the planet?

And finally, have no doubt that this whole affair is probably going to cost people their lives. How's this for a reaction from a British philosophy professor, Ted Honderich,  (thanks to Melanie Phillips) writing a letter to the Guardian:

"The revelations in detail (Report, 25 January) of the intransigent greed, the escape from decency, of Israeli governments in negotiation with our selected leaders of the Palestinians, serve one purpose among others. They provide a further part of what is now an overwhelming argument for a certain proposition. It is that the Palestinians have a moral right to their terrorism within historic Palestine against neo-Zionism. The latter, neither Zionism nor of course Jewishness, is the taking from the Palestinians of at least their autonomy in the last one-fifth of their historic homeland. Terrorism, as in this case, can as exactly be self-defence, a freedom struggle, martyrdom, the conclusion of an argument based on true humanity, etc (my emphasis)."

So we now know that Palestinians have a right to murder Israel Jewish men, women, and children by blotting out decades of previous Palestinian terrorism, Israeli peace efforts, and territorial withdrawals on the basis of--even if it were true--one offer by the PA.

Do you believe we are in an area of anti-Israel and often anti-Jewish hysteria comparable to Medieval times? Keep reading.

For as if this wasn't enough:

--A British television station is preparing a documentary by an associate of Michael Moore on how horrible settlers are.

--The BBC is reportedly preparing a drama on the 1948 war. You can just imagine.

--The Los Angeles Times has a long article about Israel as a hotbed of racism and homophobia, when it is the only country in the region where someone found to be a homosexual wouldn't be murdered (and where Palestinian gays go to live and hide out). Not to mention a country that has been airlifting and organizing escape attempts for Jews of darker hue from Ethiopia for many years.


--The release of a Turkish film, "Valley of the Wolves" that lyingly shows Israeli soldiers opening fire on helpless Gaza flotilla passengers and shooting prisoners with handcuffs. At the end, the Turkish heroes kill lots of Israelis. Thousands of ethnic Turks in Europe (it is temporarily barred in Germany) will see a movie in which Israeli Jews brutally murder their fellow countrymen and Palestinians. Then they will see vengeance defined as killing Israeli Jews.

Might this list of things and many more have some effect on someone's behavior in that respect? But of course if someone does go out and kill some Jews or attack an Israeli office will that provoke some soul-searching by those who have been assisting in the incitement? Of course not. Because a number of such murders have taken place in France, for example, without changing anything.

Actually, I have a suggestion of a motto for this new era: Kill the Jews! They Really Deserve it This Time!


So who are the new heroes? Hamas, which is of course totally against any peace. A Hamas official is given op-ed space in the Guardian to push their line that the PA leadership are traitors who should be overthrown. See a pattern here?


So, here is our conclusion: the Palestinians want peace; Israel doesn't; the mild-mannered Tsipi Livni is an aggressive warmonger; Hamas is justified for killing Jews as the only way to wipe Israel off the map (oh, excuse me, establish a permanently peaceful Palestinian state alongside Israel). Lip-service is given to the "gallant" PA but that isn't who is benefitting here.
In America now there's a big to-do about political civility. You see, people are worried that if the public is shown inflammatory television or radio talk shows, they will go out and murder people. Apparently, this doesn't apply to Jews and Israelis since there's a massive campaign--with the cooperation of much (most?) of the mass media--to demonize them.

Talk about a blood libel.

Why Does the Palestinian Authority Celebrate Those Who Turned Christianity's Holiest Shrine into a Military Bunker?

Please be subscriber 9,951. Just put your email address in the box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.

We depend on your tax-deductible contributions. To make one, please send a check to: American Friends of IDC, 116 East 16th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10003. The check should be made out to “American Friends of IDC,” with “for GLORIA Center” in the memo line.

By Barry Rubin

The Obama Administration doesn't understand this but it is signaling the Palestinian Authority (PA) that it can get away with anything, thus further dooming any hope for serious negotiations and perhaps leading to a restart of large-scale violence.

Decades ago, when Middle East experts held views closer to the region's realities rather than to its propaganda, it was well-known that one of the best ways to mobilize a big demonstration or riot in Arabic-speaking countries was to tell people: The government is with you.

Say, for example, you wanted to smash up of the British embassy in Damascus or Cairo. The trick would be to persuade the masses that their rulers wanted them to do it and thus they would be rewarded, not punished. In effect, this is the consequence of what the Obama Administration is doing inadvertently.

The PA has concluded that the U.S. government will never criticize or punish it. Indeed, Palestinian leaders know that the more intransigent they are, the more conflict they can provoke in U.S.-Israel relations.
Here's the chain of reasoning:

--The Obama Administration wants progress toward peace for which it can take credit and which supposedly will help it in Afghanistan, Iraq, and in dealing with Iran.

--If Israel doesn't make concessions, U.S.-Israel friction will result. But if the PA is intransigent, there will be no problem in bilateral relations.

--Instead, the U.S. government will say: Since the PA won't yield or accept our offers, we must put pressure on Israel to give more in order to get the PA on board.

--Indeed, in this framework, the more radical things that the PA does which encourage Israeli anger and reluctance to take risks, the more Israel gets blamed for the result.

--Conclusion: Being intransigent, creating conflict, and even inspiring violence is in the PA's interest.
Here's an example. While the Obama Administration is angry at Israel merely because a low-level committee announced one of seven stages toward building apartments perhaps in a couple of years, the PA’s very top leadership is honoring terrorists responsible for the murder of many Israeli civilians and American citizens.

By glorifying such deeds, the PA sends Palestinians the message that conciliation with Israel isn't on its agenda and moderation is equivalent to treason. By ignoring this, the U.S. government encourages more such behavior--Palestinian actions showing Israelis of all political views that the PA is not a real partner for peace and Israel should be very wary of making concessions. The effect, then, is to make both sides less willing to achieve a deal, the exact opposite of what the Obama Administration wants.

The latest step, just announced, goes beyond all previous boundaries: the naming of a street in Ramallah, the de facto PA capital, after Yahya Ayyash, the bombmaking engineer who may have been directly involved in the murder of more Israelis than any other single terrorist in the field. He was killed by Israel in 1996, setting off additional numbers of terrorist revenge attacks. At least one of his victims was an American citizen, Joan Davenny, a 46-year-old teacher from New Haven , Connecticut.

This is not the only example of PA applause for terrorists who murdered Israeli civilians. In one case, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton blamed the naming of a square after a terrorist, who killed 28 Israelis in 1978, on Hamas, even though it was done in Ramallah, the PA’s de facto capital. Indeed, that terrorist also murdered an American citizen, Gail Rubin.

While outraged about an Israeli construction announcement, the administration has never once criticized the PA’s incitement against Israel to create future terrorists or cheering on past ones. In the entire time this administration has been in office it has never once criticized the PA despite its honoring of terrorists and sabotage of negotiations.

A third terrorist being honored is also of special interest. Abdallah Daoud, former head of Palestinian intelligence in Bethlehem, was one of those who seized the Church of the Nativity in 2002 and turned it into a fortress from which to fire at Israeli soldiers. He and the others were eventually allowed by Israel to leave the country and he died recently of natural causes in Mauritania.

Why is this particularly shocking? Because it is a slap in the face of all Christians. Here’s a man who took over what might be considered the single holiest shrine of all for Christians, intimidating the monks at gunpoint.

Imagine if the world—and particularly Western governments, intellectuals, and media--was a bit saner. We live in an era in which the slightest offense to a religion (or at least some religions; ok, make that one religion) is considered just about the worst crime of all. Yet the idea that PA gunmen take over an extremely sacred Christian church and use it as a military bunker did not stir outrage or provide much understanding of what kind of people we're dealing with here.

What signal should this send to Christians around the world? Imagine if the church had been taken over by Israelis or a Muslim shrine had been the target?

This is the significance of PA leaders giving Daoud a hero's funeral, of Abbas personally visiting his family and extolling his virtues. According to the report in al-Quds, the PA's official newspaper, of March 28:

"We must maintain the way of the Shahid (Martyr) Daud, who always believed in the struggle, in love of the homeland, and in the realization of national unity." He added that Daud had been "suffering from the injustice of his expulsion."

Now this is a man involved in terrorist attacks, then taking over a Christian shrine, and making the Christian clerics there hostage. Saved from arrest and punishment, he was allowed to go abroad and live in freedom. And this is “injustice”?

Yet the basic point is the framework being set up by U.S. policy, one that will sabotage the Administration's own goals, make peace harder to achieve, encourage radical policies and forces, and possibly even lead to the outbreak of massive violence.

This is not good.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His new edited books include Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict and Crisis; Guide to Islamist Movements; Conflict and Insurgency in the Middle East; and The Muslim Brotherhood. To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books. To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.

Going Backward? Understanding and Attempts to Resolve the Israel-Palestinian Conflict

Now looking for subscriber 9,480. Please sign up and stay up to date.

By Barry Rubin

Last September, President Barack Obama said before a large audience at the UN that within two months there would be intensive, direct, final status talks between Israel and the Palestinians. Sort of a Camp David III. Now, six months later we are back in the pre-1992 era of indirect talks.

Yet reporters still ask, and write, that this might be the prelude to some grand breakthrough and a comprehensive peace deal. When will they ever learn? Never, apparently.

Note that it is important for the two sides to meet but the reason is to deal with far more immediate tasks: coordination on economic and security issues particularly. I guess I'm going to have to go on for decades saying that there won't be a comprehensive peace agreement for decades.

Before we start, though, one more point that is very important. When I say that the continuation of the conflict is mainly the fault of the Palestinian side, I'm not doing that to score political points. Who cares? The world will go on in precisely the same way whatever people think after reading articles.

You need to understand whose fault it is because it's impossible to understand what's going on without comprehending that reality. Nothing makes sense. After all, if Palestinians yearn for their own country and are suffering so horribly, why do they keep rejecting a peace agreement on the basis that they might--at worst--have to give up, say, five percent of the territory they claim?

But to return to the timeline, a simple reminder about one small point regarding Israel-Palestinian issues tell more than 100 op-eds. The Palestinian Authority (PA) will now probably engage in indirect talks with Israel and this will be hailed as a great step forward by Western media and governments, a triumph for the Obama Administration.

In fact, however, this sets the conflict back to around 1992, before direct talks began in Washington for the first time. And the PA must be dragged, kicking and screaming, into doing even that much.

Aren’t they in a hurry to get a state? No.

Here are four misunderstandings that block Western understanding of the issue:

--The importance of the Arab-Israeli conflict has fallen steadily in the Middle East. Yet it is widely viewed in the West as the central issue in the region.

--The Israel-Palestinian conflict is not solvable at present. Yet it is widely viewed in the West as easily and quickly solvable.

--The reason the conflict is not solvable at present is because of the extremism of Hamas and the intransigence of the PA. Yet it is widely viewed in the West as all being Israel’s fault.

While some Israeli positions would certainly cause problems in reaching a compromise peace agreement—most notably over small areas of east Jerusalem—the PA’s official leadership is too weak to make the necessary deals, the PA’s ruling party is too radical and has the goal of total victory, and the PA’s public has not been prepared for the necessary steps.

The best way to stop building on, and even fully remove, settlements on the West Bank would be to make a peace treaty in which all settlements would be removed from the territory of a Palestinian state. (Though, with Palestinian agreement, some could be incorporated into Israel as part of territory swaps. Indeed, the Obama Administration has accepted this idea.)

--Finally, the PA has full control over all the Palestinians in the West Bank except in about 20 percent of Hebron controlled by Israel according to an agreement made by the PA in 1997 . West Bank. While Israel still occupies part of the land and east Jerusalem, there is no occupation regarding the Palestinian population itself. Israeli soldiers and roadblocks only appear in response to periods of high terrorism. It is in the hands of the PA to avoid these problems.

Come to think of it, while the PA, and its supporters abroad, constantly complain about the arrangements on the ground as being unfair and oppressive, every aspect of these things was agreed to by the PA in exchange for other concessions in previous agreements.

If the Palestinians are so desperately oppressed by the settlements and so miserable because of the occupation, why has it taken 16 years, until March 2010, for the PA to get around to ordering 30,000 Palestinian workers not to hold jobs on the settlements and to bar settlement products from Palestinian stores?

And if the Palestinians are under such Israeli control how could it do so with no Israeli effort to block the PA from doing so?

Indeed, even this step comes only after the PA was embarrassed into doing so by internal political criticism and the fact that it has fallen behind European countries in their stance.

Incidentally, the PA will do nothing to help these additional unemployed, nor will oil-rich Arab states kick in additional money for the creation of jobs. Perhaps Western donors will support them through welfare payments. If someone is found working despite the ban he might be killed, either by the PA’s militias or after a trial for collaboration.

At any rate, these misunderstandings and realities shows the difference between the image and reality of the issues which bedevils any comprehension of what’s going on and hence any possibility of improving the situation.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His new edited books include Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict and Crisis; Guide to Islamist Movements; Conflict and Insurgency in the Middle East; and The Muslim Brotherhood. To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books. To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.

Why All the Excuses for Palestinian Intransigence Don’t Make Sense

[Please subscribe for good analysis and original stories]

By Barry Rubin

The Arab-Israeli, or Israel-Palestinian, conflict is the most misrepresented subject in the entire world. The most basic facts are often distorted and the most fantastical of narratives provided, even in college classrooms, about what has actually happened.

On the most single important issue in this framework—why isn’t there peace, who wants and doesn’t want peace, and how can peace be achieved—there is a common set of arguments against Israel. It goes like this:

How can the Palestinians make peace when they are suffering so much and when Israel builds settlements, or Israeli leaders make statements saying they want to keep some of the territory or won’t give up east Jerusalem, or do a variety of other things? The idea that the Palestinians yearn for peace, are eagerly trying to make some kind of agreement, but are only stopped by Israeli intransigence seems completely self-evident to the point that any challenge of this idea is ridiculed, ignored, or treated as some kind of dishonest manipulation.

People think that when they've made these points it constitutes some kind of devastating, unanswerable rebuttal proving why there is no peace and why Israel is responsible. In fact, these statements are all either long outdated or simply beside the point.

In addition, many of the things said are factually wrong. Israel has neither constructed new settlements nor expanded their boundaries for fifteen years. But for the moment let’s leave aside the factual issues. It is easy to show that these claims are inaccurate but either ears are shut or the columns of the publications are closed to such responses.

Still, nothing could be simpler than to answer these claims.

Here’s the answer:

If the Palestinians are so miserable, they feel their situation  intolerable, and want to get rid of settlements, they have and have had a very simple solution. Drum roll, please:

Make peace as fast as possible in a way that settles almost all their ostensible claims.

Yet they have refused to do so on numerous occasions going back for decades. In fact, this is the thirtieth anniversary of the Egypt-Israel agreement at Camp David which first opened the door to a Palestinian state. Then there was the Reagan plan and U.S.-PLO dialogue of the 1980s, followed by the peace process of the 1990s, the Camp David 2 and President Bill Clinton offers of 2000, and most recently the offer of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert (who was absolutely desperate for a deal in order to save his political career) and most recently the Israeli cabinet’s peace plan in which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu explicitly agrees to accept a Palestinian state.

If the Palestinians made a deal they would get an independent state with its capital in east Jerusalem. They would enjoy tremendous sympathy in the West to help them get the best possible terms. What wouldn’t they get? They’d have to swap, say, three or four percent of the West Bank’s territory in exchange for an equal amount of Israeli land and they wouldn’t get all of east Jerusalem.

That’s about it. Oh, and they’d also get many billions of dollars in compensation.

What else would they have to give up? They’d have to agree that a peace treaty ended the conflict, which makes sense. They’d have to resettle Palestinian refugees in Palestine, which also makes sense. They might well have to accept security guarantees for Israel and some limits on their own armaments. But, okay, they could bargain on that and get the best deal possible.

Again, though, there would be no Jewish settlements on Palestinian state soil, though some would become part of Israel due to the land swaps.

Note that right now the Palestinian Authority is refusing to negotiate at all, nominally because Israel is building a few apartments in Jerusalem. So what? That should be an incentive to negotiate faster so that the construction doesn’t go on and on, becoming ever more irreversible.

The purpose of negotiations is to offer compromises in order to get things you want. It is suspicious for a side to say that they are the desperate, suffering underdog eager for peace to say: We won't even come to the table unless we know beforehand we'll get everything we want and we won't make peace unless we get 100 percent of our demands. 95 percent? We'd rather go on fighting for decades.

Why is it so hard for people to understand these basic points? Of course, they have been misinformed and nobody’s pointed these things out to them. To some extent, the demonization of Israel has distorted their comprehension.

But the truly fundamental problem is that understanding that the solution for the Palestinians is to make a peace agreement—and that Israel isn’t blocking this outcome—is that it leaves them with a paradox for their minds to resolve:

Why if the Palestinians are suffering so much won’t they make peace?

Here’s the answer: the Palestinian leadership wants total victory and Israel’s elimination. They are willing to go on letting their people suffer for a century in pursuit of that goal. They hope that the world will give them everything they want without their having to make any concessions. They realize that saying “no” and letting the conflict continue gives them more—not less—leverage internationally because they make Israel look like the guilty party and think, consequently, it is being punished in European policies and public opinion.

So the arguments being made by Westerners who think they are being sympathetic to a suffering people just don’t make sense. In fact, they make things worse. Indeed, they are part of a Palestinian strategy to avoid making peace and encourage such intransigence.

Again, the calculation goes something like this: the longer the Palestinians refuse to make a compromise peace, the more people will blame Israel, turn away from it, and pressure it into unilateral concessions. This is a masochistic-based approach, a willingness to suffer in exchange for gain, and a gain that partly comes from many onlookers’ inability to believe that anyone could use such tactics.

And yet the truth is right out in the open. Don’t like settlements? Don’t like “occupation.” Then make peace and get rid of these things. The continued existence of settlements or of any Israeli military presence due to the Palestinian continuation of the conflict doesn’t prove anything to the contrary.


Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books. To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.

The Window of Opportunity is Now Closed and Locked Down: Passing Goldstone Resolution Marks End of Peace Process Era

(Please subscribe and don't miss a single article!)

By Barry Rubin

The UN Human Rights Council has now endorsed the Goldstone Report. There are important implications to this decision that make it a turning point.

It means the first make or break test for Obama's foreign policy. There is no easy way out. The president must either block a disastrous UN resolution through effective diplomacy in the UN corridors, accept a bad resolution in order to avoid a confrontation, or veto such a resolution an accept the price in unpopularity. Oh, and it also marks the end of the peace process era that began in 1993, showing both sides why they don't want a compromise deal.

Of course, it says a great deal about the nature of international affairs nowadays. What does it say about the UN that it condemns Israel but says not a word and does not a deed against Hamas, which is guilty of aggression, terrorism, seizure of power by force, calls for genocide, antisemitism, indoctrination of children to become suicide bombers, oppression of women, systematic use of civilians as human shields, and a range of war crimes.

Trying to present the Goldstone report in a more favorable light, Western media overstated its “evenhandedness,” playing up a few mentions of Hamas to pretend that both sides in the conflict were condemned. The UNRC drops this pretense and only speaks of Israel, totally removing the factors that forced a reluctant Israel to launch an operation on the Gaza Strip.

This is not merely another of the many ritual condemnations of Israel but a demonization. Israel is now accused of massive war crimes on a remarkably flimsy basis. Of course it is all political but this is a step toward delegitimization. The Arabic-speaking, Muslim-majority, and left-wing governments that supported the resolution see this as a step not toward a compromise peace but an elimination of Israel altogether.

I am not saying that this is going to happen, or that the resolution will have any actual negative impact on Israel itself. Yet what is most important is that having tasted blood, these forces will not be interested in getting less. Why should they—including the Palestinian Authority—settle for a stable two-state solution when they believe they can get far more without giving up anything?

It is an accident but not a coincidence that the Palestinian Authority signed a unity agreement with Hamas in the same week that the resolution was passed. The two groups won’t actually cooperate but the document they reluctantly signed for reasons of organizational rivalry symbolizes the fact that their strategies, though not tactics, now coincide to a large degree.

This, then, is the first reason why the passage of this resolution is an important development. It marks not only the end of the peace process but the end of the peace process era. Arabic-speaking, Muslim-majority, and some states governed by left-wing governments (Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua in Latin America and others) seek a one-state solution in which Israel no longer exists. It marks a return—in thinking but not in military practice—to the pre-1993 period where there is nothing to talk about.

The most important country that voted for passing the Goldstone resolution in the UNHRC, Russia, doesn’t think that way, nor does China. European states also do not support such a development. Loud sectors in intellectual life and media do, though these do not set policy. But the point is that these countries also won’t act to stop it. The many abstentions on the vote is symbolic of the fact that most Western democracies and countries that don’t support or directly endorse this campaign are, at best, bystanders, at worst, appeasers.

The second reason why this development is so important is what it tells about U.S. policy. Remember that the Obama Administration joined the UNHRC based on the explicit argument that it could moderate the radical-dominated group. This strategy has failed.

But so, on a larger-scale, is the concept that President Barack Obama’s “popularity offensive” in which he distanced himself from Israel, lavished devotion on the Palestinian cause, extolled the glories of Islam, and apologized for past U.S. policies would have some beneficial effect.

The policy has done worse than failing it has, predictably, backfired. The question is whether this will be recognized, much less reversed, by the Obama Administration.

But there’s more. The United States now faces additional tests.

Step 1: Can it stop the progress of this resolution and report into implementation through judicial decisions and sanctions against Israel or not? Certainly, the United States will work to water down the ensuing resolutions. To do so it will need to use leverage and even threats in order to succeed. A “nice guy” strategy could fail miserably here.

Step 2: The next possible failure would be if the U.S. government accepted a resolution which was somewhat watered down but still too extreme. In other words, it would buy off immediate trouble in exchange for longer-term woes.

Step 3: If the resolution is still too far-out, the Administration may have to veto it. (European states know they can afford to be cowardly and leave it to America to stop the madness.)

If the United States does veto the resolution, it will have to brave condemnation and unpopularity. Does Obama have the guts for this?

[There is also another alternative being mentioned, to pass an anti-Israel General Assembly resolution if the United States vetoes one in the Security Council.]

Finally, there is the lesson for Israel. Let’s cut away all the obvious points about relying on itself, mistrusting the world, and so on. There is one item of overriding importance:

Israel knows that if it yields territory and is attacked from that territory, no matter how great the provocation, it cannot depend on international support but can rather know it will face international condemnation.

What does this say about a two-state solution? Israel pulls out of the West Bank, a Palestinian state is created (either on the West Bank or that plus the Gaza Strip), that state either attacks Israel or allows (and encourages) terrorists to do so across the border.

Israel has no response to defend itself that isn’t highly costly.

Bottom line: No Israeli government will make such a deal; the Israeli people will not support such a deal.

Along with myriad other reasons, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas can now argue persuasively that they enjoy broad international support for wiping out Israel altogether. They have no incentive--since both are indifferent to the welfare of their people--to make any compromise peace.

Good-bye hope for peace. I now declare the window of opportunity that had seemed to open in the late 1980s, which met and failed the test of the Oslo process, and yet which continues to inspire false hope for many people to be fully and officially closed.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books. To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.

Short History of Israel-Palestinian Conflict: 1929, 2000, 2009, Anti-Jewish Rumors over the Temple Mount Lead to Palestinian Riots

By Barry Rubin

In August 1929, wild rumors that Jews had attacked Arabs, cursed the name of Islam’s founder, and were about to seize the Temple Mount led to inflammatory sermons in mosques, followed by massive Arab riots. More than 105 Jews were killed by Arabs; not a single Arab was killed by a Jew.

The exact same thing happened—albeit with far fewer casualties—in 1996, 2000, 2009, and at several points in between. The pattern tells a great deal about why the conflict doesn’t end and in fact stays a great deal the same.

IN 1929, The worst single incident took place in Hebron, where scores of Jews were murdered or wounded. Some were saved by Arab neighbors. The remaining Jews had to flee Hebron, never to return. Their property was taken by the Arab residents.

True, there had been a right-wing Jewish demonstration at which slogans were chanted claiming ownership of the Western Wall (the surviving part of the retaining wall of the ancient Jewish Temple) but there had been no violence against Arabs.

Almost exactly 80 years later, the visit of a French tourist group to the Temple Mount set off wild rumors that Jews were going to seize the Temple Mount. Passions were inflamed by Islamic clerics who were appointees of the Palestinian Authority and organized by Fatah, Hamas, and Hizb al-Tahrir,

Again, days of rioting were set off. But no Jews were killed because they were defended by Israel’s security forces, not British police (as had been the case in 1929). No Arabs were killed because of the restraint exercised by Israeli police. One can imagine if parallel events had taken place in an Arabic-speaking country. Naturally, there will be no international praise for this restraint.

The Western Wall and the rest of the Old City of Jerusalem was captured by Jordanian forces in the 1948 war. All synagogues were torn down or turned into other facilities; all Jewish residents were expelled.

In 1967, Israeli forces captured the Old City in the Six-Day war of that year. No Arab residents were expelled; no mosques or churches were closed down. On the contrary, there was a massive Arab migration to the city which greatly increased the Muslim population there.

Even though the Temple Mount is the holiest place—I would argue the only legitimate Holy Place—for Jews, it was left under Arab Muslim supervision. Jewish prayer was forbidden up there by Israel’s authorities, both to avoid provoking Muslims and also in line with a rabbinic forbidding of doing so lest the Temple’s space be defiled.

The al-Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock were also under Arab Muslim control. The area was closed to Muslim prayer only during periods of violence and opened thereafter as soon as possible.

In 1996, the Israeli government opened a tunnel which tourists could walk through and see certain features of the ancient wall and Jerusalem. Rumors that the Jews were trying to destroy the mosques were orchestrated by the Palestinian leadership with many lives lost and the peace process placed in jeopardy. As a result, too, 85 Palestinians and 16 Israelis were killed, and more than 1,300 people--mostly Palestinians--were wounded, a terrible bloodshed for no rational reason whatsoever.

In 2000, a brief tour of the Temple Mount by Ariel Sharon—he merely walked through for about an hour, looked around, and then left—was the rationale used to set off an intifada that lasted for about five years and cost several thousand lives.

Afterward, Marwan Barghouti, leader of Fatah on the West Bank, described in detail how he used this as an excuse to set off the uprising. This violence took place about the time that President Bill Clinton, with Israeli agreement, proposed the creation of an independent Palestinian state which would, among other things, control most of east Jerusalem.

All of these things are points of fact, yet thoroughly neglected ones internationally. Both Israel and the Palestinians claim the Old City and there have been a wide variety of plans to solve this problem. Basically, however, the issue is not really closer to solution than it was in that far distant past.

The salient fact is that 80 years after the 1929 riots the same scenario has prevailed of demonization and lies about Jews, deliberately inflamed by Arab political and religious forces, has led to massive Arab violence.

If you want to know why the conflict has not been resolved over such a long time, examine the different behavior of the two sides.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books. To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.

Middle East Lunatics Run Asylum; West Hands Them The Keys

By Barry Rubin

It’s bad enough that lunatics are running the asylum but to make matters worse they’re charging us rent! UN General Assembly chaired by Libya; EU chaired by Sweden; UN Human Rights committee run by Sudan. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad received as a great statesman by the UN after stealing the election and repressing demonstrators. President Barack Obama’s speech in Cairo and at the General Assembly. Yep that about sums it up.

So let’s see what’s happening in the Middle East today….

There have been several days of Palestinian riots in Jerusalem based on a false rumor of some Jewish radical assault on the Temple Mount when it was just a group of French tourists visiting the area. Wild rumors and lies create violence and hatred.

Meanwhile, a meeting of the radical Islamist Movement in Israel was convening under the slogan “Al Aqsa Is in Danger,” rallying thousands. One of the movement’s leader—President Barack Obama take note—said in a radio interview that it was unacceptable for “an [Israeli] Ethiopian policeman, a Negro, would ask a Muslim for his identity card” at the entrance to the Temple Mount compound.

Massive criticism and protests over this racism? Muslim groups lambast the Islamists for displaying racial prejudice? Guess not. Instead, violent demonstrations were organized by Fatah, Hamas, and Hizb al-Tahrir based on an untrue rumor.

So what did Fatah do after it helped provoke riots? Why it ran to the UN and demanded it intervene to keep Israel from escalating the situation in Jerusalem. The request was made by PA “foreign minister” Riyad al-Malki, a veteran leader of the terrorist PFLP group, though he is no longer with them..

What a wonderful metaphor. First, attack Israel; then complain that Israel is aggressive and committing war crimes. Of course, that’s what Hamas did and the world has leaped to its defense, so maybe that works.

[Which reminds me, a couple of months ago I spoke at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, France. The representative of some Muslim group asked, “Why should anyone give you any more credibility [that is, the Israeli position] than to Hamas?” He was being generous. Hamas clearly has far more credibility even with the Europeans.]

Which brings us to the European Union’s endorsement of the Goldstone Commission report. LINK Note that the EU’s membership as a whole will almost certainly not support serious sanctions against Iran (even if Britain, France, and Germany do). Also note that the Swedish foreign minister, who chairs the EU, refused to condemn an article in Sweden’s largest newspaper saying Israel deliberately murdered Palestinians to steal their organs.

Incidentally, you may think the Goldstone Commission report is just being criticized by some because it condemns Israel as having committed war crimes during the war in Gaza. Actually, if one totally ignores the specific topic, it is one of the most amazingly sloppy and irresponsible international documents I’ve ever seen. It is based on the unchecked testimony of Hamas officials and Palestinians who hate Israel, plus plagiarism from various reports by NGOs that have a roughly similar position.

There was no independent investigation or verification of facts. Compared to this, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a scholarly document.

But that doesn’t mean PA and Fatah and PLO leader Mahmoud Abbas is happy. Oh, no. He has committed the dreadful sin of “moderation” in Palestinian eyes and so must repent (hence one of the reasons for his role in provoking the riots).

What did Abbas do wrong? First, he stood next to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the UN because President Barack Obama asked him to do so. And second he agreed to withdraw the PA’s being the main sponsor of the Goldstone resolution at the UN to accuse Israel of war crimes.

Why does he need to do anything? He can just let the EU do the job for him.

Not that Abbas is all “bad” from the radical standpoint that dominates Palestinian thinking. After all, he refuses to negotiate with Israel unless there is a total freeze of construction on settlements, despite the Palestinians accepting this in practice for 16 years.

And this is the man and movement that Nobel Laureate Obama would have us believe is about to make peace? He can’t even do a small favor for Obama, much less make the big compromises necessary for real peace.

So how do you win popularity? Well, Hamas knows. Firing rockets and mortars at Israel, breaking the ceasefire, and using civilians as human shields have brought it big international gains. Now, Hamas, according to a Reuters report, is “enjoying a wave of popularity” because it got 20 female prisoners released in exchange for a video showing that Israeli hostage Gilad Shalit is alive.

Get that? Minor acts of moderation make you unpopular so you must repent by organizing riots and escalating extremist rhetoric. Violence and punishing your own people makes you popular.

Welcome to the Middle East!

One government that understands this is that of Turkey, which has now canceled participation in a joint U.S.-NATO-Israel-Turkey air force exercise, after participating for 15 rounds in the past. The authorities in Washington haven’t caught on yet that the Turkish government is taking the country down the Islamist path and is bringing the armed forces there to heel as well. They still think it is a very model of a moderate Muslim government.

Ironically, the exercise was known as Anatolian Eagle but there will be no Anatolians.

The United States, however, is still participating in a big joint air defense exercise with Israel, a sign that bilateral relations continue to function smoothly.

Note also that the Turkish government has imposed a $2.5 billion fine (that is not a typographical error) on the Dogan Group, the largest company backing opposition media. This is a huge danger to freedom of the press in Turkey and a dangerous sign of where that country’s government is going.

Sorry to go on so long. Blame the news, not me.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books. To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.

The Palestinian Authority and the Goldstone Report: A Pie in Obama's Face and a Key to Understanding Their Behavior

By Barry Rubin

Should the Palestinian Authority (PA) be the main advocate pushing acceptance of the bizarre Goldstone report in order to demonize Israel at the UN or might it just stand aside and let a couple of dozen Arab and Muslim-majority states take the lead?

This is—or should be—a minor issue but it has blown up to once again push the main reality of the Arab-Israeli conflict into everyone’s face.

When the U.S. government asked the PA not to be the main sponsors of demanding UN sanctions against Israel, the Palestinian leadership agreed for a few hours. But then, unable to resist flaunting its radicalism and obstructionism, it then double-crossed the United States. This step further sabotages President Barack Obama's efforts to advance the peace process, which often seems to be his number-one international priority.

On the surface, the Palestinian leadership—PLO, Fatah, and Palestinian Authority (PA), which are all the same thing—is once again shooting itself in the foot. It is throwing away a real opportunity for a state; it is sabotaging its relationship with Western patrons.

How to explain this apparent perverseness, which Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban once called, “Never missing a chance to miss an opportunity”?

The answer is simple: When it comes down to a choice between continuing the conflict and trying to win a total victory that wipes Israel off the map or making peace and getting a state, the Palestinian leadership always chooses the former.

And when it comes to choosing between being a bit more moderate and gaining Western support or being demagogically radical and appealing to the most radical forces, the Palestinian leadership chooses the latter. The Fatah-dominated PA doesn’t want peace with Israel; it prefers peace with Hamas, its rival that not only murders and tortures Fatah people but—one more irony—is the main beneficiary of the Goldstone report.

In fact, Fatah sought unity with Hamas in this matter. Jibril Rajub, a Fatah military expert usually seen as moderate, announced:

"The Fatah leadership has decided to invite the Hamas movement as well as all other Palestinian factions to form a joint Palestinian committee....We want our joint efforts... to bring all the Israeli generals and leaders who had committed crimes against our people before the International Criminal Court in The Hague for war crimes,"

Like much of what happens in the Middle East, this would be humorous if it weren't so tragic. Obama thinks he will make peace quickly. Meanwhile, the PA refuses to meet officially with Israel, prefers to make a deal with Hamas which opposes any peace at all, and instead wants to put Israeli leaders on trial as war criminals.

President Obama, Welcome to the Middle East. Note the PA's and Arab states' refusal to cooperate with your efforts. Of course, you did try to defuse this situation. The Obama Administration said to the PA: Look, we’re getting you lots of money and diplomatic help on the basis of the idea that you want peace. No president in history has ever been more sympathetic and supportive of you. So stand aside on this issue for a few days. Do us this little favor.

But this is too much for the PA, which now faces protests and criticism at home.

Yet that is no excuse, is it? After all, if the PA cannot even refrain from sponsoring Goldstone at the request of the United States, can anyone expect it to compromise on territory, security measures, an end to the conflict, and the settlement of all Palestinian refugees in Palestine? Think about that one for five minutes please.

This is at least the fourth time in its short nine-month history where the Palestinians and Arab states did this to Obama:

--PA leader Mahmoud Abbas arrived in Washington for his first trip and said he had no intention of compromising on anything but would just wait until the United States delivered an Israel which had to give up everything.

--Abbas refused to negotiate with Israel unless he had a total freeze of construction on all settlements with no exceptions despite Obama’s desperate efforts to get talks going.

--Arab states asked to make small confidence-building steps toward Israel to help the president said “No!”

So much for Obama’s apologies, his Cairo and UN speeches, strong words of support for the Palestinians (the people supposedly in an intolerable situation and desperate for a state), and his panegyrics for Islam. Flattery, Mr. President, will get you nowhere.

Can you get it, Mr. President: All this merely feeds the fires of radicalism. Like, in a real sense, the peace process of the 1990s and the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, more concessions breed more violence; more apologies give birth to more demands.

Remember that the peace process of the 1990s ended when PA leader Yasir Arafat refused a state along with more than $23 billion in aid both at Camp David and in the Clinton plan.

Remember that the Palestinians, handed all of the Gaza Strip, instead of making it a model for launching peace made it a launching pad for rockets aimed at Israel.

Remember that when the previous Bush Administration was trying to be supportive, the PA made a deal through Hizballah with Iran to bring in massive amounts of arms on a ship. Discovering how the PA had lied turned that administration against them.

Remember that in 1989 when the United States had initiated a dialogue with the PLO on the basis of its stopping terrorism, the organization refused to keep that pledge and instead dispatched a terrorist unit to machinegun civilians on the Tel Aviv beach. This action led to the end of the dialogue.

Wake up, people. Peace would be preferable if possible. Peace is a beautiful dream. But that dream keeps getting interrupted by nightmares, one after the other.

Those who run nations and are responsible for the lives and welfare of their people, those whose duty is to inform the people, and those who speak out publicly have a duty to cast aside wishful thinking and face the truth, as demonstrated by numerous examples and historical experience:

--Israeli-Palestinian peace is still very distant.

--The PA is unwilling and incapable of making peace.

--Weakness in dealing with this issue breeds contempt; concessions create more violence and extremism.

--A responsible policy is one that maximizes stability by keeping Hamas from taking over the West Bank and brings down its rule in the Gaza Strip; minimizes violence by supporting Israel’s right to self-defense; and does the most possible to raise the living standards of Palestinians.

As for Obama and the European leaders, you’ve had the experience now learn the lessons.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books: <http://www.gloria-center.org/>. To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports, <http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com/>.

Obama Administration and Arab-Israeli Peace Process: Grinding to a Total and Humiliating Halt

By Barry Rubin

The newly elected Fatah Central Committee—the one that was supposedly made up of young, reform-minded moderates but actually isn’t—has told Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas that he should absolutely not negotiate with Israel unless all building of apartments anywhere on the West Bank or in east Jerusalem comes to a complete halt.

That’s not going to happen.

This means there won’t be direct negotiations, totally contradicting President Barack Obama’s absolutely clear and “firm” statement at the UN that talks much, should, and will begin immediately.

It should be remembered that this whole construction on settlements freeze idea was started by Obama himself, thus giving the Palestinians an excuse not to talk. Israel refused (Pie in Face #1). Later he backed down a bit, saying that Israel should get something in exchange for the settlement freeze, but then Arab states refused (Pie in Face #2). So he backed down again, while pretending that somebody had offered to do something.

But while Israel is eager to negotiate (not because it expects anything will be achieved), the Palestinians flatly refuse (Pie in Face #3) and keep escalating their refusal.

Israel offers a compromise in which it makes real material concessions; Palestinians remain completely intransigent but merely complain that Israel hasn't given even more. Is there a pattern here?

Obama tried to solve the problem by working out some partial freeze with Israel, an idea to which the Israeli government has responded positively. But the Palestinians simply reject such a compromise. They don’t want a medium-sized unilateral Israeli concession but will only accept a very large unilateral Israeli concession, and then only as a basis for demanding more unilateral Israeli concessions.

So what are Obama’s options at this point?

Option 1: Go back to having a confrontation with Israel demanding it freeze construction and get nothing in return. That’s not going to happen.

Option 2: Criticize the Palestinian stand and pressure it (after all, the United States is providing all of its money or helping to raise it among allied countries) to go to talks. That’s not going to happen.

Option 3: Pretend everything is going well, have officials run around as if something is getting done, develop some new photo opportunities, and hope no one notices. Yep, that’s the one.

Here's how Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat put it: "There will not be Palestinian-Israeli negotiations in Washington. There will be parallel American-Israeli negotiations and Palestinian-American negotiations." That sort of sets things back to the way they were around 1990.

After nine months in office and after having declared it would hit the ground running on Israel-Palestinian issues and get peace very fast, the Obama Administration has achieved nothing. In fact, it has set back the process and is getting less done than the supposedly criminally passive Bush Administration.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books.

News Flash! Palestinian Leader Throws Pie in Obama's Face, Rejects Obama’s Attempt to Help Him Get a State

By Barry Rubin

No matter how hard President Barack Obama insists the Palestinians are in a desperate situation and are eager for a state as soon as possible, they show the opposite to be true.

No matter how hard President Barack Obama tries to help the Palestinians they throw a pie in his face.

Will he get the message and adjust accordingly?

No sooner had Obama made his UN speech insisting on an instant return to final-status negotiations did Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu say “Yes!” (Note: Will the media start reporting Netanyahu as peace-oriented and moderate?)

No sooner had Obama done so that Palestinian Authority (PA) leader Mahmoud Abbas said, “No!” (Note: Will the media start reporting Abbas as a hardliner who is blocking peace?)

And now the news: Abbas says the Palestinians cannot return to peace talks because of “fundamental disagreements” on the agenda and that it has “no common ground” with Israel’s government. (Funny, Obama said that making peace would be easy.) Even if Israel were to stop 95 percent of the construction, explains Abbas, that won’t be sufficient.

Yet Abbas has a simple way of stopping all such construction forever: be flexible and negotiate a peace agreement. Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon made this point precisely. When Israel made peace with Egypt and pulled out of Sinai it dismantled all settlements. When Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip it dismantled all the settlements. If the Palestinian Authority makes a deal with Israel all settlements on the new country's territory would be gone. So what's Abbas's problem?

Well, first he wants a pay-off from Obama for helping out the U.S. president. All the U.S. aid money wasn't enough, the distancing from Israel wasn't enough. The flattery of the Palestinians and of Islam wasn't enough. No matter what Obama does it will never be enough.

Second, he's afraid of Hamas. As the AP put it:

“If Abbas returns to talks now, without a freeze in place, he is likely to lose more credibility at home where he has been locked in a power struggle with his Islamic militant Hamas rivals. Hamas, which threw Abbas' forces out of the Gaza Strip two years ago, has derided negotiations as a waste of time and portrayed Abbas as a Western lackey.”

If this were the problem, however, Abbas has an easy solution: negotiate seriously, get a state, remove the Israeli presence, obtain lots of aid money, and prove that diplomacy worked. He'd be a hero, right?

Wrong!

Why doesn’t anyone stop to think that if Abbas were to make an actual deal with Israel he’d be called things a lot worse than lackey. If he can't even talk when one apartment is being built how is he going to give Israel full recognition, end the conflict forever, resettle all refugees in Palestine, and stop cross-border terrorist attacks on Israel?

Explain this to me, too: Obama said in Cairo that the Palestinians face an “intolerable” situation. If they’re so desperate why are they in so little hurry?

The answer to all these questions is simple: Both the PA and Hamas are ready to wait for decades and put off getting a state in hopes of wiping Israel off the map completely and getting everything. This may not make sense to the average American or European but it is nontheless the reality of the situation.

If developments keep contradicting your view of reality it is necessary to change your analysis.

When will the U.S. and Western European governments comprehend this fact?

The UN Goldstone's Report: A Victory for Terrorists and War Criminals

update: September 21: Hamas has endorsed the Goldstone report (contrary to some Western news reports that it criticized both sides equally) and seeks to use it for propaganda against Israel, as predicted in this article.

By Barry Rubin

There will be many detailed critiques of the UN’s Goldstone report, created for the purpose of bashing Israel over the Gaza war with phony claims of “war crimes.” Some brief overview, however, is required.

Imagine there's a war going on in which one side has openly declared it will commit genocide on the other, wiping if off the face of the earth. Imagine that the regime ruling this place has openly, daily, and officially referred to its enemies as sub-humans who conspire to rule the world and are responsible for everything evil in history. Imagine that this regime is a dictatorship that wins over some as passionate adherents and intimidates others in a society where conformity already reigns.

Now imagine that an outside group composed of some who are naïve and some who are dedicated collaborators with that regime’s cause come into that place and ask: Tell us how evil and terrible your enemy (i.e., would-be victim) is and we will write it all down and use it to isolate, demonize, and put on sanctions against that enemy.

What do you expect the result will be?

This is precisely what happened in the Gaza Strip. The witnesses made propaganda against Israel; the UN collated, endorsed, and broadcast it. Yet amazingly little hard evidence was presented and generally the more the specific the allegations, the easier it is to refute.

I have deliberately chosen here the man who was almost certainly the most moderate, rational and even liberal Palestinian witness who appeared before the commission. I do not say this lightly. Dr. Iyyad El-Sarraji [I use the report's transliteration, which is terrible] has been celebrated in the New York Times, he was critical of Yasir Arafat, and he is from the left, not an Islamist or even an Arafat follower.

But what is not reported in the Western media about Sarraji is that he has publicly spoken out against the 1993 Oslo Accords and argued that the Palestinians should never have abandoned armed struggle which, to put it most charitably, has always included—and Sarraji knows this—a huge component of anti-civilian terrorism.

[I will bet that virtually not a single Palestinian interviewed in the investigation supports a two-state solution. Virtually every single one of them wants Israel destroyed and saw this commission as a wonderful opportunity to further that goal.]

Here’s a sample of Sarraji’s testimony and to give you the flavor I must quote at some length:

“The Palestinian in the eyes of the Israeli soldier is not an equal human being. Sometimes this Palestinian even becomes a demon in their eyes. Therefore it is a state of demonization. This is unfortunately, uh, what can be seen in the behavior of the Israeli soldier not only killing children or fathers before the eyes of children….This is the base of everything and then there is the fact that there is no restraint, no discipline within the army and, uh, uh, even there’s an encouragement. This is part of the Israeli military institution and previously we have seen many stories of how the Palestinians are being killed either at the hand of soldiers or settlers and then the accused or the, uh, responsible is, uh, found innocent, sometimes even a statute is put up for him as a hero.”
Each point of this testimony is demonstrably a lie. The reference to a statue has a grain of truth that demonstrated my point. Some settlers put up a statue of the Jewish terrorist Baruch Goldstein. It was torn down by the Israeli army within 24 hours.
Goldstone asked Sarraji don’t the Palestinians demonize Israelis?

After two sentences of agreement that the Palestinians also demonize Israelis, Sarraji continues:

“But we, the Palestinians have a greater capacity, in my view, to deal with the Israelis as equal human beings, as a whole human being…. Inside Israel there is an identification with the aggressor, the Nazi. Once a mayor of one of the settlements, he said, `I do not want the Palestinians in my farm and if they come we must put signs on their shoulders.’ This is what was done by the Nazis to the Jews. Chief of Staff Eitan in Israel, he also once said, `The Palestinians are cockroaches, grasshoppers. We must put them in a bottle close the bottle and throw them away.’ This was his view of the Palestinians. These were some Nazi expressions used against the Jews. Some of the Israeli generals had the same uniforms as the Nazis.”

So this is the statement of the most moderate person who testified on the Palestinian side. Any honest person who heard this would conclude:

Such individuals as this are incapable of representing the situation fairly. They make up things and are unreliable witnesses intent only on further their side’s interests without any limit. The quote from Eitan and the remarks on the statue, lack of punishment for Israeli soldiers who act wrongly, the claim Israeli soldiers are encouraged to murder Palestinians, and the uniforms is false, t the alleged statement of the mayor is undocumented (indeed, on many settlements Palestinians have been employed to do much of the construction and agricultural work).

Instead, the commission concluded that everything the witnesses said was true, and on that basis they have condemned an entire nation.

Aside from a campaign to put sanctions on Israel, what will be the effect of this report?

First, damage to the cause of peace.

--If Israelis are such monsters why should the Arabs or Palestinians make peace with them?

--If Israel is being portrayed as such monsters why shouldn’t the Arab and Palestinian side deliberately avoid peace since the tide is on their side? Just do nothing and wait for the world to force Israel to give up everything, even to assist in the destruction of the state of Israel?

--If attacks from Hamas, no matter how much material damage it inflicts on Palestinians, bring material advantages to it, isn't this the strategy to follow?

Second, it encourages of repression, aggression, and real war crimes.

--If the Hamas strategy of attacking Israel with rockets, mortars, and cross-border raids along with tearing up a ceasefire and then make gains by portraying itself as a victim works, why not attack Israel and others in similar conflicts?

--If antisemitic propaganda and genocidal goals bring no negative reaction from the world, why should one not use these themes and seek this outcome?

--If Hamas can use civilians as human shields, intimidate people into supporting its line, use hospitals or mosques or schools as military positions and then turn this into a political victory by having their enemy branded as a war criminal for attacking these places even a few times, this is a splendid strategy that others should use. We will be seeing more of it in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, and many other places in the world.

Completely aside from the individual lies and nonsense—for example, counting Hamas police and hundreds of men whose obituaries praised them for being brave militia fighters as civilians—this report is a disaster for human rights and peace.

It will legitimate one of the world’s most war-provoking, repressive regimes and validate a strategy that uses civilian suffering and war crimes as central features.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books; To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports

Meet the Palestinians’ Next Leader, Muhammad (Abu al-Mahir) Ghaneim: The Man Who Will Make Comprehensive Peace Impossible

By Barry Rubin

There’s nothing written about more often—and inaccurately—than the Palestinians, yet there is curiously little interest about the politics and ideology which governs their behavior. The same situation applies to the man s slated to become that movement's next leader, only the third to hold that post in 50 years, after Yasir Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas.

The fact that an issue that is supposedly the most important, high-priority question in the Middle East, or even the world, is so little studied in depth has a simple answer. The contemporary narrative is that the Palestinian leadership yearns for a state, an end to the conflict, and peace, while the failure to achieve can be blamed on Israel. Yet even the slightest real examination shows the exact opposite is true.

This point is only underlined by looking at the current candidate for next leader, Muhammad Ghaneim, often known as Abu Mahir. Of all those who might credibly have been considered for the leadership of Fatah—and hence of the PLO and Palestinian Authority (PA)—he is probably the most hardline one.

Ironically, while media coverage of the 2009 Fatah Congress stressed the accession of young and more flexible leaders, the 72-year-old Ghaneim certainly does not fit that description.

Born in Jerusalem on August 29, 1937. His first political involvement was with the Muslim Brotherhood but he became a founding member of the Fatah movement in 1959 and active ever after, involved mainly in recruitment and organizational matters.

It is difficult to say to what extent Ghaneim’s early involvement with radical Islamism has shaped his thinking and whether it would make it easier for him to reconcile with the even more radical Hamas. Most Fatah and PLO people came out of more secular Arab nationalist or leftist movements. The only prominent leader who blended an Islamist background with nationalism was Arafat himself, and this certainly remained a prominent theme in his worldview during his entire career.

Ghaneim’s big career break came in 1968 when at the age of just 30 Arafat appointed him commander of Fatah’s forces in Jordan. And later that year, at age 31, he was put by Arafat on Fatah’s Central Committee in charge of the organization and recruitment department.

It is impossible to overstate the importance of these two jobs. At that time, Jordan was a Fatah stronghold and the group constituted a dual government alongside that of King Hussein, the country’s nominal ruler. Fatah guerrillas—and shortly after Arafat took over the whole PLO—had military bases from which they launched attacks on Israel across the Jordan River. Arafat must have had an extraordinarily high opinion of Ghaneim to appoint him to such a sensitive post.

Since so much of this task was involved with military matters, Ghaneim took a short officers’ course in China. On his return, in 1969, Arafat gave Ghaneim still a third chore, as is deputy for military issues. While the details aren’t clear this means Ghaneim must have played a central role in planning and implementing scores of guerrilla and terrorist attacks.

The other job was just as important. Ghaneim played a central role in selecting those to be given key jobs and just how much authority each had. Of course, everyone was far below Arafat in power but Ghaneim was about as essential as a second-tier figure could be. That job is also useful in making contacts with those who would continue to be top people in the movement in ensuing decades.

In 1970, Fatah overplayed its hand, was defeated by Jordan’s army, and had to flee to Lebanon. Ghaneim continued his organizational and military duties there. When the PLO and Fatah were forced out of Lebanon in 1982, Ghaneim accompanied Arafat to Tunis. From 1982 to mid-2009 he remained living there, though as early as July 2007 he may have begun visiting the PA-ruled territories in the West Bank.

Ghaneim didn’t return with Arafat in 1994 because, despite serving Arafat closely and loyally for 35 years, Ghaneim rejected the Oslo accords of 1993 as too moderate. Only continued armed struggle, total victory, and Israel’s destruction were worthy goals in his eyes.

While Arafat’s strategy sought these things covertly, the compromises involved in such a pretense were too much for Ghaneim, who openly criticized his old chief. He stayed in Tunisia despite numerous invitations from Arafat, starting in October 1994, to join the PA and instead insisted Arafat cease all negotiations with Israel.

Ghaneim moved closer to the popular Farouq Qaddumi, often referred to as the second most powerful man in Fatah and PLO or as the PLO’s “foreign minister.” Qaddumi rejected the Oslo agreement and kept up a close connection with Syria. Arafat undercut him but Qaddumi was so strong in the movement that he could never be fired altogether.

Finally, Ghaneim decided to return and support Mahmoud Abbas. While the details are not clear, this coincided with Abbas naming him as successor, which was certainly a great incentive for changing sides. Despite some analysts claiming that Ghaneim has moderated his positions, there is absolutely no evidence that he has done so.

On the contrary, it is likely that he joined the PA and Abbas because he felt that they were closer to his long-held views in many respects.

Ghaneim has a definite appeal for Abbas as ally and successor. He is one of the few remaining original founders of Fatah and has wide contacts throughout the movement.

On the one hand, he possesses Arafat’s seal of approval historically but on the other hand he is so hard-line as to appeal to that powerful tendency in Fatah. In addition, as someone who has been outside the PA politics for 15 years he was seen as a neutral figure in many petty and personal disputes.

But this is not the man to choose if your top priorities were making peace with Israel and maintaining good relations with the West. He is the man you would choose if you intended to reject compromise, rebuild links to Syria and Hamas, and perhaps return to armed struggle in future.

On arrival at the Allenby Bridge crossing from Jordan on July 29, 2009, just before the Fatah Congress, Ghaneim was picked up by Abbas’ personal limousine, taken to his office, and welcomed in a ceremony.

At the reception, Ghaneim stated: "The struggle will continue until victory" and that if political means did not win Palestinian demands the movement would return to armed struggle. (Al-Hayat al-Jadida, July 30, 2009). It is clear how Ghaneim defines victory and it is not a West Bank-Gaza state with its capital in east Jerusalem living alongside Israel in perfect harmony.

That Ghaneim would give up demands that all Palestinian refugees and their offspring must be allowed to live in Israel or that he would make any territorial compromise, or that he would end the conflict permanently in any peace agreement is extremely unlikely. These are things—all necessary for peace—that even the less extreme Abbas has rejected.

Thereafter, Abbas promoted Ghaneim among the delegates to the meeting. He finished first in the Central Committee elections with 1338 votes, about two-thirds of those participating and far ahead of every other candidate.

Ghaneim’s success, and the others elected, show that the old Arafat crowd is still in control rather than any transition, youth cohort, moderate, or reformist group. Given the fact that there are virtually no real moderates in the leadership, having the tired, corrupt old guard in charge is better than having younger, more extreme elements running things.

Yet the hardline parts of the old guard have a large portion of power even among this group. If Ghaneim becomes leader of Fatah the PA and PLO, then you can forget about peace. Violent conflict becomes far more likely. Yet Ghaneim will not take over by a coup but because the current elite wants precisely the policy he represents.

No one should say a word about the Palestinian issue, the peace process, or Israeli policy without analyzing these factors. Unfortunately, there isn’t at present a Palestinian partner for peace. Fortunately, there is a Palestinian partner for maintaining a relatively peaceful status quo. But if and when Ghaneim takes over, even this consolation might be gone.

(For more detailed discussions of contemporary Palestinian leadership and politics read two articles by me here and here as well as my books Revolution Until Victory? and Yasir Arafat: A Political Biography which can be ordered here.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books. To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.

How the West's Enemies Are Saving It

By Barry Rubin

When people are very pessimistic, I say to them: Don’t worry our enemies will save us.

By that I mean that the enemies of peace, progress, and democracy—Islamists and radical Arab nationalists, terrorists and silly people in the West alike—are so intransigent, obviously lying, and dangerously wrong about society that they will convince and force most people to reject and combat them.

Even when thrown lifelines, even when confronted with naiveté, they reject concessions, turn up their nose at compromise, go too far, and make their nonsense so illogical and apparent, as to either teach the naïve in political and intellectual power or persuade others push them aside in order to survive.

Today offers some examples of this idea:

The presidency of Barack Obama and the relatively soft stands of European states have given Iran a great opportunity. Tehran could have made a show of flexibility, a strong pretense about being cooperative, and met with Obama. This would have forestalled a higher level of Western sanctions, while Iran could still work secretly on nuclear weapons.

After all, even after a virtual coup by the most hardline faction, the stolen election, the strong repression, the show trials of dissidents, and the appointment of a wanted terrorist as defense minister [that’s a pretty amazing list, isn’t it?], the West was still willing to deal with the regime.

Instead, Iran produced an “offer” to negotiate so minimal that even the Europeans rejected it. While this doesn’t mean all is well—Russia and China will block and sabotage even moderate sanctions; the West Europeans will oppose really strong ones—at least Iran’s last-minute effort to derail the process altogether will fail.

Imagine what the Iranian regime could have done if the ruling establishment had let someone less extreme than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad get elected, then claimed this showed what a moderate and democratic state they were running. A charm offensive could have defused the nuclear controversy and the sanctions would have fallen away. Iran would have been set loose and a few years from now could have finished its nuclear program in a relaxed manner.

But no!

Turn to Lebanon. The Syrians were riding high. A new government was going to be set up in Lebanon with their clients have both thirty percent of the cabinet seats and veto power over all government policies. But when the March 14 coalition, which won the recent elections, presented its own list of ministers, the Syrians and their Hizballah allies rejected it: not subservient enough. March 14, which has been giving ground steadily, was pushed so hard that it dug in its heels and rejected the Syrian demands. The negotiations will now have to start all over again.

Syria could have gotten back around 80 percent of its former total power over Lebanon in one day, but that wasn’t enough for Damascus.

The same applies to U.S. attempts to engage Syria. The Obama Administration was eager for progress, but the Bashar al-Assad dictatorship would even give an inch to gain a yard. The talks have been frustrating for Washington. The Syrians weren’t willing even to deescalate the terrorism in Iraq for a while.

Syria could have gotten out from under U.S. sanctions, reestablished normal relations with Washington, and have the Obama Administration turn a blind eye to its sponsorship of terrorism and subversion throughout the region.

But no!

The same applies to Hamas. It tried a little to pretend to moderate and already Western suckers were swallowing the bait, but it couldn’t—and wouldn’t –sustain the pretense very long. It couldn’t resist going back to its super-hardline statements and actions.

But the Palestinian Authority (PA) offers an even clearer example. Imagine how much it could have obtained if it played along with the U.S. president’s eagerness to help. A show of flexibility, an eagerness to negotiate, and an effort to get a Palestinian state on something approaching reasonable terms real fast probably would have brought success.

Atmost, there could have been a Palestinian state within 18 months on pretty favorable terms for the Palestinians. Or should one say, at most the PA could easily—and I mean easily—engineered a U.S.-Israel conflict unseen in the history of the Jewish state. But from the start PA leader Mahmoud Abbas made it clear that he was asking for everything and giving nothing. His best chance is already past.

And similar things can be said about various Arab countries regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict specifically and also getting in good with the president.generally. They could have rushed to make minor, meaingless gestures toward Israel in exchange for U.S. support on their broader demands.

Can I have a “But no!”?

One more, historic example: Remember Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein? In late 1990 or early 1991 he could have cut a very favorable deal which would have left his country with part of Kuwait, billions of dollars, and the Saudis trembling at his every command. Instead, he refused any deal, kept his army in Kuwait, and suffered a military defeat.

He did the same in the 2000-2003 period when he could have made some kind of bargain for stopping his nuclear program in exchange for all sorts of concessions. Instead, he did the opposite: he pretended to keep up the program even when he cut it back.

It is very important to understand why this kind of thing happens repeatedly and, though ultimately disastrous for Saddam, usually works out pretty well for the dictators or the leaders of powerful opposition movements.

First, all these forces really are radical and extremist. They don’t want a deal; they want total victory, all the disputed land, total rule, complete dictatorship, the expulsion or extinction of their adversaries. And they can also rightly argue: these methods got me this far.

Second, they really believe their own propaganda. They think they can win and assume that those on the other side—whether Israel, the West, or other regimes they want to overthrow-- are weak and doomed. And, in turn, their enemies give them enough signals to this effect to make them continue to believe this is true.

Third, they are wedded to brutal methods. Terrorism is no accident; it is the tool of people who exult in deliberate violence against civilians. And in such political groups the gunmen and their values rise to the top.

Fourth, they are afraid of internal rivals and their own followers. They know that the people have been so conditioned by extremism as to reject moderates as traitors. This is obviously less true in Iranian but more true in Palestinian politics.

But the other part of this factor is even if a given leader, say from Hamas, wanted to follow a more moderate policy he knows that this would be used against him by rival leaders to destroy his power and maybe even kill him. They must continue to ride the tiger or be eaten. And the fact that they helped give birth to the tiger in the first place won’t save them.

Finally, this is the region’s political style, which to some extent mirrors Western history. Toughness counts; fear is better than popularity.

Many Western leaders and much of the Western intelligentsia are like someone sleeping through a burglary. But not only their friends are trying to wake them up, so are—however inadvertently—their enemies.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books. To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.