Friday's posting a bit late

Been moving apartments so this is being posted a bit late. Hope to be back at work on Monday.

Arab hearts & minds


Another day, another massacre in Iraq. Sunni fanatics bombed a Baghdad street market on Thursday, slaughtering 70 Shi'ites. The latest bloodletting comes just as 133,000 US combat forces are to be withdrawn from Iraqi population centers, on Tuesday. The troops will be out of the country altogether in two years.

While world attention has been focused on Iran, Iraqis have continued to kill each other and Americans. In Mosul, the coach of the national karate team was killed; a spate of violence earlier in the week claimed dozens of victims in Baghdad. A truck-bombing in Kirkuk on Saturday took 70 lives. Nor is the situation stable even in Fallujah, pacified at great cost in American lives and treasure.

The Sunnis responsible for recent attacks are mostly locals, not jihadis from abroad, and American intelligence believes that the chances of renewed sectarian warfare are receding. The official US line is that the war in Iraq is winding down and American forces there will be reassigned to Afghanistan.

US DEFENSE Secretary Robert Gates called on a Washington gathering of top military officers from friendly Arab countries to help stabilize Iraq and Afghanistan. He said that Washington's overtures to Iran notwithstanding, America would stick by its Arab allies.

America's dependency on imported petroleum, along with other geostrategic considerations, makes the need for good relations with the Arabs perfectly understandable. Still, isn't the administration curious about why it must work so hard to convince them to do what is in their own interest? After all, were Iraq (with its Shi'ite Arab majority) to fall completely into Iran's (Persian Shi'ite) orbit, this would be a bad thing for the predominantly Sunni Arab states. Likewise, a nuclear-armed Iran would most immediately threaten the Arabs.

On Thursday, Jerusalem Post diplomatic reporter Herb Keinon analyzed the approach Washington has been taking to bolster its credentials with the Arabs. By driving the settlement issue to the forefront, wrote Keinon, President Barack Obama has, paradoxically, made it next to impossible to resume Palestinian-Israeli peace talks.

The Palestinians insist they will not negotiate without a settlement freeze. And the Obama administration seems to have bought the assertion, reiterated at Wednesday's Arab League meeting in Cairo, that if only Jewish life over the Green Line was placed in suspended animation, Palestinian moderates would make a dash for peace.

There are some 550,000 Jews living beyond the Green Line: 300,000 in 120 communities in Judea and Samaria, the rest in metro-Jerusalem. Notwithstanding the shared Israeli and American desire to create a climate conducive to productive negotiations, it makes little sense to many Israelis that the US is demanding a freeze inside the strategic settlement blocs Israel is consensually insistent on retaining, and the extension of that demand to Jewish neighborhoods in post-'67 Jerusalem is still more problematic. Furthermore, all Israeli communities on the Palestinian side of a permanently agreed border would be relocated under the terms of a final status deal.

We suspect the Palestinians do not want to negotiate in good faith - otherwise why did they reject an offer by Ehud Olmert that would have given them the equivalent of 100 percent of the West Bank, plus Israel's agreement to international oversight of Jerusalem's holy basin? And why is Mahmoud Abbas still insisting on Israel agreeing to absorb millions of Palestinian "refugees" - thereby asking us to commit demographic suicide?

In Jordan this week, Saeb Erekat crowed that it was Palestinian negotiating obstinacy that had impelled Olmert's generous offer. The longer we hold out, he said, the better the offers get. In that context, American pressure for a complete Israeli settlement freeze seems likely to deepen Palestinian obduracy, not reduce it.

Fixating on settlements gladdens Arab hearts, no doubt. It will not, however, bring stability to Fallujah or Kabul.

What will? Perhaps a sense of certainty that America will not waver in its determination to lead. Even then, though, Arab collaboration on Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran will still be influenced by factors beyond Washington's control, such as the internecine struggle between Islamists and relative modernizers.

When the Arabs study Washington's handling of Iran's post-election upheaval, or how it's responding to the mullahs' quest for atomic weapons and to North Korea's brinkmanship, will they take heart from Obama's commitment to multilateralism and his dexterous employment of soft power and suasion? Or will they, looking at the results, hedge their bets and disingenuously attribute their vacillation to Jewish settlements on the West Bank?
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Gilad Shalit -- Still Waiting for a Red Cross Visit , Three Years In Captivity

Three long years


Something may be afoot in efforts to bring Cpl. Gilad Schalit home. Thursday marks three years since Palestinian infiltrators tunneled into Israel from the Gaza Strip, killed Lt. Hanan Barak and St.-Sgt. Pavel Slutsker and dragged our young soldier into captivity.

Hamas had recently defeated Fatah in Palestinian parliamentary elections and the international community was trying to figure out how to reconcile the will of the Palestinian majority with its need for the Islamist movement to recognize Israel, end violence and abide by the PLO's signed agreements.

Fatah and Hamas did eventually form a unity government, though it ended brutally in June 2007 with the ouster from Gaza of forces loyal to Mahmoud Abbas.

WHILE the strategic challenge Israel faces is not Hamas's custody of Schalit but its suzerainty over Gaza, it's been a long three years.

Hamas has held Schalit incommunicado. Violating international law and human decency, and although Hamas prisoners in Israel are permitted visitors, Gaza's rulers have refused to allow even the Red Cross to see their Israeli hostage.

Meanwhile, Fatah and Hamas unity talks are back on, and showing signs of "progress." And because the Islamists have held firm in their intransigence, the international community is fudging its original requirements of Hamas.

Hamas's rocket attacks on Israel together with its refusal to renew a de-facto cease-fire led the IDF to launch Operation Cast Lead last year. Since then, the Kassam firings have been sporadic, though a major attack was thwarted earlier this month and arms smuggling continues despite improved Egyptian vigilance along the Philadelphi Corridor.

Hamas's relentless bellicosity and Schalit's unlawful imprisonment notwithstanding, the Palestinians are aggrieved over Israel's restrictions on the types of goods it permits into the Strip (food, medicine, fuel and commodities go in; dual-use materials such as concrete and iron for making bunkers and rockets are kept out). Yesterday, in solidarity with Schalit, hundreds of Israelis blocked the shipment of goods into Gaza.

Europe and the US side with the Palestinians in demanding that the crossing points be unconditionally opened, with international monitors supposedly ensuring that Hamas plays by the rules. And if it doesn't? No doubt the rules will be "adjusted."

NEGOTIATIONS under Egyptian auspices for Schalit's release are accelerating. Defense Minister Ehud Barak was in Cairo this week, and a top Egyptian intelligence operative was said to have been in Tel Aviv yesterday on Schalit-related business.

Schalit's parents have not known a day of tranquility in three years and Israel must strive to bring him safely home - but not at any cost: Hamas has been insisting on the release of 1,000 prisoners in exchange for their Israeli hostage.

This newspaper raises no objection to freeing a modest number of prisoners, provided their release won't jeopardize more Israeli lives - though we regret the release yesterday of West Bank Hamas politician Aziz Dweik, while Schalit remains a prisoner.

However, we remain adamantly opposed to trading Schalit for mass-murderers such as Abdullah Barghouti, who has the blood of 66 Israelis on his hands (Sbarro, etc.); Ibrahim Hamed, who murdered 36 (Moment café, etc); Abbas Sayad (Netanya massacre, Pessah 2006).

It is not surprising that just as talk of an imminent deal on Schalit is circulating, so too is news of a blue-ribbon Defense Ministry panel shortly submitting its proposed guidelines governing future prisoner exchanges. These would constrain decision-makers in making obscenely lopsided exchanges: There would reportedly be no more releases of vast numbers of enemy prisoners for one or two Israeli soldiers, and only terrorist corpses - not live prisoners - could be traded for fallen Israelis.

These guidelines are eminently reasonable, and should - but won't - be applied to the Schalit case.

Once the wrenching Schalit affair is ended, we urge an efficient commission of inquiry into why there was no attempt to rescue the soldier over three years. Israelis have the right to know why the risks to the civilian population in releasing busloads of terrorists were deemed to trump those of a rescue mission.

If the government miscalculates the Schalit endgame, it could inadvertently fortify Hamas, endanger Israeli civilians and set the stage for the next hostage ordeal.

Netanyahu on the way to Paris

How France can help


When Nicolas Sarkozy moved into the Elysée Palais in 2007, France-Israel relations took a dramatic turn for the better.

It would be difficult to imagine Jacques Chirac or François Mitterrand telling the Knesset, as Sarkozy did, last June: "The French people will always be [there] when your existence is threatened." Likewise, it would be surprising to hear Sarkozy refer publicly to Jews as "arrogant" and "domineering," as Charles de Gaulle did. And Israelis would be genuinely taken aback if a French ambassador were nowadays to refer to us as "that shitty little country."

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is scheduled to leave today for France, where he is to meet with Sarkozy on Wednesday to discuss Iran's quest for nuclear weapons, upgrading relations with the European Union, and how to convince the Palestinian Authority to return to the negotiating table. Sarkozy and Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner will welcome Netanyahu with warmth. In recent years, not only have diplomatic relations improved; economic ties have strengthened, cultural ties have blossomed, and France has become a popular destination for vacationing Israelis.

WHILE French foreign policy and public sentiment is no longer unthinkingly pro-Arab, neither is it yet where we would wish it to be. A recent poll by The Israel Project confirmed that the French public remains generally more sympathetic toward the Palestinians than to Israel, with only 21 percent viewing us favorably.

France's policymakers remain under the erroneous impression that they facilitate peacemaking by pressing Israel to make concessions while basically giving the Palestinians a free ride.

Earlier this month, when Kouchner met with Defense Minister Ehud Barak in Paris, he offered faint praise for Netanyahu's seminal June 14 Bar-Ilan University address, but did not speak to the substance of our premier's speech. Yet he repeated France's long-standing opposition to "settlements" without distinguishing between Jewish neighborhoods in metro-Jerusalem, strategic settlements blocs along the Green Line, and settlements elsewhere in Judea and Samaria.

Of course, were France to press the Palestinians to accept Netanyahu's offer for talks - had it, indeed, pressed them to accept Ehud Olmert's generous peace offer in 2008 (or Barak's in 2001) - the settlement issue would have become moot.

The French complain that settlements make a contiguous Palestinian state unviable. But if the Palestinians were to negotiate in good faith, ways would be found to ensure Palestinian contiguity in the West Bank - notwithstanding strategic settlements.

Does France realistically expect that Israel will take a wrecking ball to Ma'aleh Adumim, or delink this Jerusalem suburb from the capital? Haven't previous Israeli governments made it clear that once final borders are negotiated, settlements on the Palestinian side will be removed? And, by the way, wouldn't a permanent accord necessitate connecting the West Bank to Gaza - across the sovereign territory of Israel? That's a formidable challenge, but one that Israel has not ducked.

France's backtracking on Hamas is also troubling. In March 2009, at Sharm e-Sheikh, Sarkozy urged Hamas to abandon violence, recognize Israel and embrace previous Palestinian commitments - the Quartet's conditions for its participation in the international community.

Hamas remained intransigent. Yet, oddly, when Kouchner addressed the UN last month, he spoke passionately about rebuilding Gaza and called for crossing points to be "permanently opened to all goods" - without once mentioning Hamas.

Worse, on June 15, when EU foreign ministers met to adopt a European Council policy approach to Palestinian-Israeli conflict issues, it was France that reportedly led in keeping the Quartet's three conditions from being included in the document.

On the threat of Iranian nuclear weapons, Sarkozy favors an "arsenal" of negotiations, sanctions and "firmness." But he says he doesn't "want to hear anything else" - meaning talk of keeping the military option on the table. This would sound far more credible if France wasn't one of Iran's main trade partners in 2008.

Netanyahu arrives in Paris having articulated a position that reflects an Israeli consensus: Yes to a two-state solution, so long as one of those states is recognized as the national state of the Jewish people and the other is demilitarized.

France's settlement obsession is misplaced. It can best help resolve our conflict by urging the Palestinians to internalize Israel's legitimacy and to adopt positions, now championed by Netanyahu, that meet both peoples' essential needs.

Iran as seen from Jerusalem - Monday

Turning point for Iran?


His arm out-thrust, Ali Khamenei, Iran's paramount leader, told thousands of Friday worshipers at Teheran University that post-election unrest in his country was traceable to the machinations of the evil Zionist-owned media and the BBC Persian-language service.

Iran's June 12 elections, the ayatollah declared, were pure, honest - epic even. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's triumph was a political earthquake for Iran's enemies, but a celebration for its friends. As the multitude chanted, "Death to Israel," Khamenei indignantly declared that "the Islamic Republic would not cheat, and would not betray the vote of the people." How, he asked, could 11 million votes be stolen?

Clumsily, it would appear. State television has been airing confessions of plotters purportedly paid to destabilize the regime.

Apologists for the regime said Iran's elections were meaningful even if all the candidates had been handpicked. It turns out, however, that they were far more meaningful than the regime had intended.

Whatever his original intentions, Mir Hossein Mousavi now represents something bigger than a "soft" alternative to Ahmadinejad. His ascendency would most likely be a good thing for Iran and the world, even if no one really understands the intentions of the powerful counter-elite behind him. In challenging Khamenei after he sanctified the election results, these counter-elites are exposing a serious split in the political system, undermining its legitimacy. They might still want to reform, rather than overturn the system. But the people may have their own ideas.

No one knows if there is any turning back after Mousavi put out the word that his followers should hold a general strike in case of his arrest. Plainly, the regime hopes that tear gas and bullets will dampen down the protesters' fervor. We shall see.

TRYING TO understand what's really happening inside Iran's leadership elite recalls the difficulties encountered by Kremlinologists endeavoring to decipher the inner workings of the Soviet politburo. Can it be that Khamenei, having initially sanctioned his presidential challenge, took a second look at Mousavi and saw the image of Mikhail Gorbachev, someone who would "reform" the Islamic Revolution beyond recognition - and therefore chose the safer path of Ahmadinejad? Khamenei was said to fear that a Mousavi victory would mean loss of control over the nomenklatura - the most influential jobs in the country.

Even Israeli intelligence appears somewhat at a loss. Mossad chief Meir Dagan predicted that the anti-Ahmadinejad protests would fizzle out before the weekend. In fact, at least 13 protesters were killed in clashes on Saturday; demonstrations were continuing yesterday, and popular sentiment had escalated into blatant, opposition to the entire regime.

(Dagan also reportedly predicted that Iran would not have an atom bomb to hurl at Israel until 2014 - significantly later than other Israeli forecasts. What he didn't say is that Iran could achieve the very same, worrying capabilities as North Korea - detonating an underground nuclear device - far, far sooner.)

Given its geography, resources and culture, Iran will remain a regional player no matter what. But when all this is over, will it still be a patron of Hizbullah and Hamas; the state champion of Islamic extremism, and the prime demonizer of Israel?

PRESIDENT BARACK Obama came into office pledging to rectify the dysfunctional Iranian-US relationship. But Iran's post-election turmoil may have upended his plans to do business with Khamenei. He must now be wondering what good it would do to negotiate with a leadership so brazen as to steal an already rigged "election."

Over the weekend, Obama warned the regime that the world was watching, and urged it "to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people." But for all his declared commitment in Cairo to reform and democracy, Obama has refrained from overt support of the courageous Iranian citizenry protesting - and dying - for precisely these things.

If Iranians prove ready to persist, their terrible sacrifices notwithstanding, the US and EU will have little choice but to press for new, internationally monitored elections - and, if this demand goes unanswered, to hold out the possibility of "de-recognizing" the regime.

That would place Iran in the same position as Ukraine in 2004, during the Orange Revolution. That regime was isolated and, ultimately, forced from power.

Gilad Shalit, the Red Cross and what we can expect from the international community

Litmus test


Hamas is practically throwing itself at Barack Obama, viewing him as more "sensitive" than his predecessors. Ahmed Yussef, the movement's coquettish liaison to the West, said this week the Islamists will "do anything" for the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Well, not quite anything.

Unlike the PLO, Hamas will not support a two-state solution. Apart from that, its stance is indistinguishable from Mahmoud Abbas's. Hamas and the PLO agree that Israel must withdraw to the 1949 Armistice Lines; and that Israel must grant four million or so descendants of the 650,000 Palestinian Arab refugees from Israel's War of Independence the right to "return" to Israel proper.

Where they part company is over what to offer Israel. Abbas proposes accepting Israel's existence; Hamas offers a period of extended "quiet." Neither acknowledges any Jewish civilizational connection to this land, both seeing us as temporary interlopers.

Hamas is following in the footsteps of the Palestinian National Council, the PLO's ruling body, which on June 9, 1974 adopted a plank - known as the "phased plan" - which authorized Palestinian leaders to take custody of "any territory from which the occupation withdraws."

Like the PLO, when it was shedding its image of absolute rejectionism, Hamas is making inroads toward greater international acceptability.

On Monday, EU foreign ministers, led by France, steered clear of reiterating the Quartet's principles - that Hamas forswear violence, recognize Israel and accept previous PLO agreements with Israel.

And on Tuesday, former US president Jimmy Carter was in Gaza claiming to be carrying a message from Obama. Flanked by American and Palestinian flags, he held a news conference with Ismail Haniyeh during which the Hamas premier received Carter's backing for lifting the "siege" of Gaza. Israel was treating Gazans "more like animals than human beings," the ex-president lamented. Turning the Quartet's principles on their head, Carter told The New York Times that "first of all, Hamas has to be accepted by the international community as a legitimate player... and that is what I am trying to do today." Carter said he was shattered by what Israel had done to Gaza with warplanes "made in my country."

The Obama administration is, reportedly, also leaning hard on Israel to lift the blockade, which limits the type of supplies permitted into the Strip - cement and iron, for instance, which have civilian and military uses. The US and EU are confident of international monitors effectively guaranteeing that Hamas does not use these materials for its war machine; experience suggests the confidence is sadly misplaced.

Israel routinely channels in tons of food and commodities - even cash to keep the local economy afloat. Yesterday, it allowed in 115 truckloads of aid and commercial goods.

Clearly, this kind of "siege" won't break Hamas. So the Netanyahu government needs to rethink whether the security and deterrence benefits of our limp-wristed blockade are worth the diplomatic costs.

ISRAEL has demonstrated innumerable goodwill measures in the West Bank to "help Abu Mazen." But the claim that capitulating to Hamas in Gaza, out of exasperation over their intransigence, will facilitate the prospects of genuine peace is unconvincing.

Gaza is a test case for what Israelis can expect should Hamas win next January's tentatively scheduled Palestinian elections. The lesson so far is that the Islamists are apt to choose belligerency over coexistence, even if it causes their own people to suffer; and that the international community will side with the Palestinians on the grounds that the people should not be punished for the policies of its elected leaders.

Having been clobbered during Operation Cast Lead, Hamas has for now stopped firing rockets into Israel, though it seems curiously unable to prevent infiltration attempts by other groups. Meanwhile, it continues to rearm, even if fewer weapons may be making it through the Philadelphi Corridor tunnels, thanks to enhanced Egyptian vigilance.

On Thursday, the Red Cross asked to see IDF soldier Gilad Schalit, now three years in Hamas captivity.

If the international community cannot influence Hamas to comply with so basic a humanitarian request, how can it credibly guarantee Hamas's behavior once sanctions are lifted?