The Palestinian’s Desperate UN Gamble

Last week the Palestinian Authority’s nominal president Mahmoud Abbas defied U.S. and Israeli pressure and submitted an application to the United Nations to become a Member State of the international organization. Many people on both sides of the Israel/Palestine situation have questioned why Abbas has chosen to make this move.

The 1993 Oslo Accords established the Palestinian Authority (PA) and initiated the peace process which was envisioned to lead to a Palestinian state within five years. Instead the Oslo process has led to two decades of alternating negotiations and violence. Instead of a Palestinian state, the Oslo process has led to continued Israeli occupation, construction of a wall that divides families and confiscates land, increased blockades and road closures, more Jewish settlements on the West Bank and further Israeli land annexation

In 2008, faced with an interminable process that was going nowhere, Abbas and his nominal prime minister, Salam Fayyad, embarked on a new strategy which included the building of state institutions before sovereignty. This approach assumed that, once state institutions were in place, international pressure would force Israel to recognize Palestinian rights. This has proved to be a false hope.

Abbas and Fayyad have realized that the U.S. and Israel are satisfied with the status quo and that Obama is now in full campaign mode and unlikely to do anything that would have domestic political consequences. With the Arab Awakening going on all around him, Abbas has become desperate to change the political landscape. The move to the UN was the outcome. It is a desperate gamble with uncertain consequences

With the U.S. certain to veto the Member State application in the Security Council, the recognition of Palestine as a non-member state in the General Assembly is the most likely result. Unless the PA leadership has a strategy (strategic thinking is not their strong suit) to follow up with actions at the International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice and to capitalize on the United States’ weakened and isolated position to break the U.S. stranglehold on the peace process, they may end up with the provisional state that Netanyahu has frequently broached. This outcome will have little effect in improving the situation on the ground for ordinary Palestinians.

In the end, the outcome may rest in the hands of the Palestinian people themselves. The Arab Awakening which started in Tunisia and Egypt and has spread across the region has demonstrated the ability of the people to rise up and say “enough is enough” and overthrow their unelected leaders and demand their rights. The Arab Spring may eventually arrive in Palestine.

{Photo by UN News Center)

Technorati Tags: Palestinian Authority,UN,Palestinian State

Mission Accomplished in Libya?

As British Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Nicolas Sarkozy take a victory lap in Libya, it may be premature to declare victory. The number of nations that that have formally recognized the Transitional National Council (TNC) as the legitimate government of Libya grows every day. Mustafa Abdul Jalil, the chairman of the TNC presents a moderate face to the world which plays well in the western media. Behind the scenes of moderation and unity there are many unresolved issues that will be difficult for even the best intentioned leaders to address.

In contrast with Tunisia and Egypt where the revolutions were largely peaceful and where institutions such as political parties, NGO’s, labor unions, etc. were in place, Libya’s revolution was protracted and violent and civil society institutions had been destroyed by Qaddafi and his cronies. There are, therefore, few building blocks upon which to construct a new government structure.

We are already seeing all the societal divisions, which had been suppressed under Qaddafi, reappear even within the TNC. The most visible division is between the Islamists and the secularists. Under Qaddafi the secular elites have been the most prominent both within Libya and in the exile community. However, during the revolution, the Islamists have commanded the bulk of the fighters and the weapons. The Islamist forces are the most experienced fighters who fought in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Iraq and the Balkans. They, therefore, have assumed leadership positions. Abdul Jalil of the TNC has attempted to bridge these divides by calling for a moderate Islamic regime with a legal system based on Sharia. Within the TNC there is also rivalry between the Benghazi and Tripoli factions.

The TNC, however, is not completely in charge. Qaddafi is gone, but where is unclear. Many of his supporters have fled across the southern deserts to Niger and Chad. Will they now become the insurgents? Most of the focus has been on the populous coastal region. The huge sparsely populated desert regions of the south have long been havens for bandits and militias. It will now be an ideal place from which an insurgency of Qaddafi loyalists can operate.

Tribal factions are also competing for power and influence. Many cities were a captured from Qaddafi’s forces by local tribal militias with no allegiance to the TNC. These armed groups will need to be integrated into the new government structure.

Many of Qaddafi’s weapons stockpiles have disappeared. These included not only light weapons and machine guns, but also surface to air missiles. With al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) right across the porous border with Algeria, this raises the threat of attacks on passenger planes.

President Obama was wise to allow the British and French to be the face of the NATO operations and to avoid a premature “mission accomplished moment”. Obama said at the onset of hostilities, “Libya is not Iraq.” It does, however, look a lot like Afghanistan. It ain’t over til it’s over.

(Photo by John Moore/AP)

Technorati Tags: Libya,Qadaffi,al Qaeda,NATO

America’s Covert War with Iran

After several years of “no options are off the table” saber rattling against Iran, U.S./Israel appear to have decided that another major war in the Middle East is not politically or financially sustainable. Faced with Iran’s determination to continue its nuclear program U.S./Israel have reverted to a covert program of assassination, cyber-attacks and support of terrorist insurgent groups.

Shahram Amiri, an Iranian nuclear scientist at Malek Ashtar University, an institution affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards, was kidnapped in June 2009 and transferred to the US. In January 2010, Massoud Ali- Mohammadi, a particle physicist, was killed by a remote-controlled bomb. Recently, Majid Jamali-Fashi confessed to having been trained by the Mossad in Israel and paid $120,000 to carry out this and five other terrorist attacks. In November 2010 Majid Sahriyari, a nuclear scientist, was killed and Fereidoun Abbasi-Davini, Iran’s current nuclear chief, and his wife were wounded in similar attacks. (These stories are here and here)

In 2010 centrifuges in Iran’s nuclear program were attacked by a malware program, the so-called Stuxnet Virus. This attack damaged the centrifuges and undoubtedly delayed Iran’s uranium enrichment program. Most experts believe that this kind of sophisticated attack could only have been accomplished with “nation state support”. In interviews with media organizations, the U.S. and Israel have tacitly acknowledged their involvement. Now that Iran’s Bushehr nuclear reactor is operating, one wonders whether the US/Israel are willing to risk a nuclear disaster by attacking this facility.

For a number of years, under a program initiated in the George W. Bush administration and continued by the Obama administration, the U.S. has supported The Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK), a Kurdish separatist group, Jundallah, a Sunni fundamentalist insurgent group in Baluchistan in Pakistan and southern Iran and The People’s Mujahedin of Iran (MEK), a Iranian group, now based in Iraq. These groups have been designated as terrorist groups by most western countries, including the U.S. (This story is here)

It is unclear what effect these covert efforts are having in achieving U.S. objectives in the Middle East, but one thing is clear: they are not helping relations with the Islamic Republic. When I have talked with Iranians about U.S. – Iran relations they immediately bring up the U.S overthrow of democratically elected Prime Minister, Mohammed Mosaddegh, in 1953. It is plain that Iranians have a long memory. They also have a history of not getting mad, but getting even.

Even weak countries have a limited tolerance for ongoing U.S. efforts to assassinate their leaders and to overthrow their governments. At some point the “chickens come home to roost” and they respond. One only needs to think back to conspiracy theories of involvement of Castro’s Cuba in the assassination of John F. Kennedy to see an example. (The latest version is here

Technorati Tags: Iran Nuclear Program

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