PLAIN TALK: Organized Crime in Israel

Even though I’m a news junkie, I find it hard to watch or read about organized crime in Israel.

It just disgusts me.

Back in New York, all the Jews I knew – and the Italians for that matter – either had, or aspired to, bourgeois middle class values.

Living in Israel, I’ve had to adjust (with difficulty) to the fact that some Jews are violent thugs with no redeeming values.

I was thinking about my aversion to news about organized on the way to work this morning.

What drew my attention was the Monday afternoon melee in the lobby of a Herzliya luxury hotel during a gathering of some of the Jewish State’s top hoodlums. You know, people who oversee the sale of illegal drugs, enslave women into prostitution and shake-down mom and pop businesses.

There are plenty of reasons to believe that organized crime has penetrated the police and government of the country.

It’s something I don’t want to dwell on too much.

Because if I did, I’d add that to the list of why life in Israel sometimes disappoints – why it sometimes shatters illusions about “us” all being in this together.

PLAIN TALK: Palestinian elections postponed?

So, are they on, or are they off?

It’s looking like the Palestinian parliamentary elections, scheduled for January 25, will be postponed.

Palestinian Arab politicians must be breathing a sigh of relief.

Most Israelis aren’t much bothered.

PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has been looking for a pretext to delay – what everyone expects to be – Fatah’s day of reckoning.

Abbas now says that Israel’s refusal to commit to allowing Arab residents of Jerusalem to vote by mail from Jerusalem-area post-offices is leading him to delay the elections.

Israel has been sending conflicting signals. Still, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon hasn’t explicitly announced that Israel would NOT facilitate the vote-by-mail system that has been previously used.

And I wonder if this Israeli ambiguity isn’t intended “help” Abbas.

The theory is what’s good for Hamas is bad – not just for Fatah – but for Israel and the West.

The inept Abbas been under pressure to postpone the elections – from various Palestinian quarters.

His own Fatah group is bitterly divided. Even the old guard (which came here from Tunis after the Oslo Accords in 1993) itself is fragmented with old Abu Ala off sulking.

And the young guard, led by Marwan Barghouti, Mohammed Dahlan and Jabril Rajub want to shove their way to the head of the syndicate's table.

For reasons I don’t really understand, Israel seems to be facilitating Barghouti’s involvement in the campaign. He’s sitting in an Israeli prison, convicted of multiple counts of murder, yet somehow manages to exert immense day-to-day influence.

With the Territories in turmoil and not much to show for the millions of EU and US dollars that have flowed into PA coffers, the ruling Fatah “party” feels it is in no position to face the “clean government” types from the Islamist movement Hamas.

Now it looks like Abbas has reached some kind of deal with Hamas which had been claiming all along that it opposed postponing the elections.

Maybe Hamas recognizes that the almost complete breakdown of law and order throughout the PA areas could delegitimize their predicted electoral gains.

What's the point of winning – especially if you can anyway win fair and square – in the midst of a riot?

Personally, I don’t care when the Palestinians hold their elections.

Their vote won’t contribute to a tolerant polity or moderate, representative government.

At the same time, I’m not convinced that a Hamas win would be such a bad thing.

Given that the war is destined to continue, because regardless of who wins, there really is no Palestinian partner, I'd rather do business with Hamas thugs who can at least deliver on a promise than ineffectual old terrorist in suits, or their corrupt, duplicitous younger guard.

PLAIN TALK: TRUSTEESHIP FOR ‘PALESTINE’

Today’s “news” that anarchy reigns inside the PA areas, combined with a previously embargoed report (see Chronology at LEFT) that a crude Kassam rocket was launched into Israel from northern Samaria, only reinforces the reality that the Palestinian polity is not ready for statehood.

Mahmoud Abbas has ignored repeated calls from Israel to honor his road map commitments and dismantle the infrastructure of terror.

Now it becomes clear that his refusal to do so hasn't just been bad for Israel, but also for the Palestinian Arabs themselves.

Kidnappings, armed gangs, illegal roadblocks, rampant violence, and attacks against PA institutions, are now part of the daily scene.

All this just weeks before scheduled Palestinian parliamentary elections.

Isn’t now the time for the EU and the US to take up an idea first broached by Martin Indyk -- that what is needed is a “trusteeship for Palestine.”

Palestinian society plainly needs a stage between today’s state-of-nature chaos and (presumably) desired statehood.

Such a stage would allow for a level of political socialization necessary before independence could be viable.

But are the EU and the US ready to acknowledge this need?

How would it be implemented?

What would the security implications for Israel be?

Let the discussion begin....

Ayman Nour & Middle East democracy

We Westerners are desperate to see the political systems in the Middle East evolve from authoritarian theocratic or oligarchical models to some variation of representative government.

That desire suffered another setback on Saturday when former Egyptian presidential candidate Ayman Nour, 41, was sentenced to five years in prison for (what outside observers insist are trumped-up charges of) forgery.

Up and down the region – Syria, Iran, Iraq, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority – the Western pluralist model of representative democracy has failed because broadminded, Western-oriented reformers have been driven away by the intimidation of autocratic rulers, leaving demagogic Islamists to reap the benefits.

Perhaps it is expecting too much for the Western concepts of political parties, elections and parliaments to take root in a so alien a social milieu. But there is no turning back the clock. In the modern age, tribalism is no solution; Arab (and Persian) nationalism has been tried and failed. Now the region flirts with fundamentalism which, even if it works as an organizing principle for society, poses a mortal threat to the outside world.

It is in this context that US President George Bush used his state of the union address last February to challenge Hosni Mubarak to open up Egypt’s political system: “The great and proud nation of Egypt, which showed the way toward peace in the Middle East, can now show the way toward democracy in the Middle East.”

This hoped for transition isn’t merely the mantra of neoconservatives or the Bush administration. Everyone understands that representative political regimes tend to be stable, less bellicose and centrist.

Under US pressure – Egypt receives $1.8 billion in annual aid – Mubarak did allow the country’s parliament to adopt a constitutional amendment which introduced a multi-party presidential election in September. The 77-year-old Mubarak, who first came to power with the assassination of president Anwar Sadat in 1981, was reelected. And the now imprisoned Ayman Nour won 8 percent of the vote – a very distant second.

A subsequent series of votes for parliament, spread out over three rounds and five weeks, was marked by crookedness. Supporters of the previously banned Muslim Brotherhood (the political precursor to Hamas and other Isalmist-oriented groups) were allowed to run as independents. Many of their followers were beaten by plain-clothes thugs and riot police; at least 11 people were killed at the polls.

Yet the Brotherhood won some 90 mandates in the 454-seat parliament (and nearly 40% of all votes cast). The Brotherhood could have done even better but feared contesting more than 150 seats against Mubarak’s ruling party. Some 75% of eligible voters shunned the polls because they distrusted the entire enterprise. International monitors were barred.

So how far along is Egypt today – after both a presidential and a parliamentary election – on the road toward “democracy?” Not very.

The secular opposition has been decimated at the polls. Unable to campaign vigorously thanks to various legal and political constraints, the 15 non-Islamist and non-Mubarak parties garnered less than a dozen seats. Nour himself lost the parliamentary seat he had held for 10 years to Mubarak’s well-oiled political machine.

With the Muslim Brotherhood ascendant and a state-controlled media making it virtually impossible for alternative reformist voices to be heard, chances are good that Egypt’s next leader will be Mubarak’s son Gamal.

Like the Shah of Iran back in the 1970s, Mubarak’s express ultimatum is: my autocracy or the Islamist way – nothing in between.

Closer to home, the January 25 Palestinian parliamentary elections are also in turmoil largely because a failed Palestinian establishment fears the rise of Hamas.

As is the case with Egypt, friends of freedom are forced to choose between a nascent alliance of the politically bankrupt old-guard of Mahmoud Abbas coupled with the violent “reformers” led by Marwan Barghouti, or else find themselves saddled with the Islamists of Hamas.

But for genuine democracy to evolve, it needs to be nurtured. Until the West demands reformist policies throughout the region – including a truly free press, accountable government and the kind of political socialization that could contribute to democracy’s development – it will be left to wonder why it must continuously choose between the autocrats and the Islamists.

– A December 26 Jerusalem Post editorial

Christmas in the Holy Land

Will the most memorable Holy Land image of Christmas 2005 be the siege of Manger Square in Bethlehem last week by hundreds of gunmen from the Aksa Martyrs Brigades?

And if it is, what does this foreshadow for a Christian Arab minority destined to live under a sovereign Palestinian state?

The gunmen, underscoring the lawlessness to which Bethlehem and other places in the Palestinian Authority are subjected, held up the municipality demanding jobs with the PA’s security forces.

In light of the season and international attention focused on the nearby Church of the Nativity, revered as Christ’s birthplace, the PA moved to quickly find a solution to the standoff. A short while later Bethlehem Mayor Victor Batarseh urged foreigners to visit his “peaceful city,” saying: "There’s no reason tourists shouldn’t come. Our great city depends on tourism for its economic survival.” Palestinian officials, though, need to start thinking about Christians – Palestinian Arabs as well as visiting pilgrims – not only as sources of tourist revenue, but as having a rightful connection to this shared and holy place.

The sad fact is that many Christians no longer feel at home in a city that was once over 90 percent theirs. Today Christians comprise less than a quarter of Bethlehem’s population. And their numbers are constantly dwindling. While it may be good public relations, it isn’t enough for PA officials to attend Christmas services once a year. Christians must be made to feel safe in a Palestinian political environment which is increasingly taking on Islamist overtones.

With (anticipated) Palestinian sovereignty also comes responsibility. Is the Palestinian leadership – which polls now suggest will include members of the Islamist Hamas movement – ready, as well as able, to protect minority Christian Arabs from discrimination and intimidation?

If history is any indication, there is plenty of room for concern. The Aksa Brigades who commandeered Manger Square last week had no qualms, a few years ago, about turning Beit Jala’s Christian residents into virtual human shields by firing from their homes into Jerusalem’s nearby Gilo neighborhood. In the spring of 2002, they also overran and occupied the Church of the Nativity for a month.

Paradoxically, many Christians outside the region worry that if they publicly criticize the powers that be in the Palestinian Authority, they will only be making things worse for their brethren who live there.

The situation is further complicated by those Palestinian Christians who associate themselves with fading Arab nationalism in general and the Palestinian national struggle in particular. Conveniently, key PA spokespeople such as Hanan Ashrawi are Christian. And it is in their obvious interest to spotlight Israel’s missteps vis-à-vis Arab Christians in the Holy Land even as they do their best to shield PA wrongdoing.

Yet it is not enough, particularly on this day, to point to PA transgressions. Inside Israel, Christian Arabs sometimes find themselves wedged between an indifferent Jewish majority and an increasingly assertive Muslim minority.

Though 80 percent of the approximately 150,000 Christians across the Holy Land are Arab, the community is heterogeneous. For instance, the Copt, Armenian, Ethiopian and Syrian denominations are non-Arab. And Israel’s failure to recognize Christian diversity and make affirmative efforts to reach out to non-Arab Christians remains an appalling failure.

On the bright side, Israel is one of the few countries in the region where Christian communities have grown and thrived in recent decades. Israel’s Arab Christians maintain among the highest matriculation scores of any population; proportionally, Arab Christians also produce very high numbers of university graduates.

On the other hand, across the denominational and ethnic divide, Christian leaders complain – some irately, others with understanding of our security dilemmas – that the Jewish state does not always treat them with respect or sensitivity.

Even as we express disquiet for the well-being of Christians under Palestinian jurisdiction, we must not lose sight of our own shortcomings. It is in Israel’s interest to foster the natural alliance with Christendom. But more importantly still, Judaism demands we respect the “stranger among us.”

We wish our Christian readers marking the festival of Christ’s birth (and those in the eastern tradition who observe the holiday on January 6) a Merry Christmas and a peaceful 2006.

– The Jerusalem Post Christmas Day Editorial, December 25, 2005