What is Qatar's Game?

On the Middle East map, the peninsula state bordering Saudi Arabia, jutting into the Persian Gulf opposite Iran, is easy to overlook. Yet Qatar is one of the world's wealthiest countries, the dominant exporter of liquefied natural gas, and through its sponsorship of Al Jazeera, punches considerably above its weight.

On the face of it Qatar is not easy to pigeonhole. In 2022, it will host the World Cup football (soccer) games; it's already home to perhaps the first world class museum of modern art in the Arab world; and its national airline (besides inspiring some of the most creative commercials on television) has 180 planes on order including five superjumbo A380s.

Its attitude toward Jews in comparatively enlightened. In 1996, Qatar hosted the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and invited Israel to open a trade mission. In 2008, the sheikhdom allowed Israeli tennis star Shahar Pe'er to play in a WTA Tour tournament, and Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni to address its Doha “Democracy Forum." This barely raised eyebrows as Shimon Peres had made his second visit to Doha in 2007. Qatar is also considered an American ally and hosts (rent free) the US military's Central Command which oversees operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

All this development and cosmopolitanism – in a country where native Qataris, practicing "liberal" Wahhabi Islam and comprise 200,000 out of a total 1.4 million population – is attributable to Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani and family. First lady Sheikha Mosah Bint Nasser al-Missned spearheads reform and is one of the most influential women in the world. Prime Minister (and businessman) Hamed bin Jaber al-Thani's recent corporate flirtation with Israeli entrepreneurs has been interpreted in some quarters as a political overture to the Jewish state.

There is, alas, also a darker side to the equation. During Israel's 2008-2009 military campaign to stop Hamas from firing rockets into its territory from Gaza, Qatar broke relations with Israel and moreover hosted extremist Arabs, plus Iran, to mobilize support for Hamas. (The Qataris subsequently offered to resume relations in return for being allowed to funnel reconstruction money directly to the Hamas authorities.) In addition to helping bankroll Hamas, the al-Thani's have played a key role in facilitating Hezbollah's suzerainty over Lebanon. And in December 2007, Qatar invited Mahmud Ahmadinejad to address the Gulf Cooperation Council in Doha, the first Iranian leader ever to do so.

Al Jazeera, based in Doha and created by Sheikh Hamad in 1996, is a tool of Qatar's foreign policy. In an Arab world where, until recently, dissent was forbidden, the channel's readiness to criticize Arab autocrats (excluding, naturally, the ruler of Qatar) has been exhilarating. Al Jazeera has also played a critical role in setting or codifying the pan-Arab agenda. But by notoriously, over and over again, disseminating the fulminations of al-Qaida's Osama bin Laden, the station concurrently promoted violent pan-Islam. Unlike the BBC's World Service shortwave broadcasts or even of Radio Free Europe of yesteryear, Qatar's soft power exercised through Al Jazeera has too often been in the service of tyranny.

While Al-Jazeera's English-language website and television mirror the BBC's professionalism (and frostiness toward the Zionist enterprise), the Arabic service often serves as a demagogic platform for spreading the radical views of the Moslem Brotherhood. Al Jazeera has provided a bully pulpit for extremist preacher Yussuf al-Qaradawi, promoted the Hamas-Iran-Syria-Hizbullah agenda, and glorified as shahids those killed "resisting" Israel. (To be fair, Al Jazeera allows the occasional Israeli spokesperson to appear in this sea of enmity.) Al-Jazeera's championing of Hamas over Fatah led it to broadcast The Palestine Papers, purporting to expose Mahmoud Abbas's peace negotiators as Zionist collaborators. When Qatar's rulers don't know what to make of a crisis, the network can vacillate. For instance, at their outset, Al Jazeera downplayed the disturbances in Egypt, only to become the nexus of anti-Mubarak agitation.

To a Western observer, Qatar's foreign policy can seem incoherent, even duplicitous. On the one hand the ruling family professes to promote reform and democratization, yet it is also a friend of medievalism and rejectionism. It is as if Qatar wants to be an unscrupulous Switzerland of the Middle East. In return for not being targeted, Qatar has come to an arrangement with terrorist groups and has for years provided safe haven to Muslim Brothers. Since 2003, Qatar has reportedly been paying al-Qaeda to spare it from terrorist attack; members of the royal family are said to have provided safe haven for 9/11 terrorists.

The al-Thani clan's continual playing off the forces of enlightenment and darkness against each other might be, somehow, excusable were its ultimate goal bringing the values of modernity to the Arab world. Regrettably, there is slim evidence they have any purpose beyond self-preservation and the consequences be damned.

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Feb. 7, 2011

What Gives גלי צה"ל‎ Galei Tzahal? Why the Friedman Infatuation?

Am I the only one in Israel who wonders who at Israel's Army Radio is so infatuated with Tom Friedman of the NYTimes that they keep referencing his op-eds as if... they were something significant that we should all care about.

It seems that Old Tom has compared PM Netanyahu to Hosni Mubarak calling Netanyahu the "Mubarak of the peace process."

Standard Tom. Yawn.

Old Tom has been wrong about Israel more times than I'd care to count in this quickie posting.

He started being wrong from his college days when he was active with Breira. Sadly, from Beirut to Jerusalem (which, I'll admit is a good book with lots of bad ideas) has influenced thousands of young people to mis-perceive the Arab-Israel conflict.

So what gives Galei Tzahal?

Who is the Friedman-groupie in your news department?

Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty -- A Mistake?

Observing Egypt's current upheaval, reporter Ariel Kahane writing in the Hebrew daily Mekor Rishon opines: "Regardless of whether Mubarak falls or survives, whether the Islamists or the liberals take power, whether the riots die out or continue to rage, the lesson for Israel is clear: Arab regimes cannot be trusted." Kahane concludes that it is futile to pursue a modus vivendi with the Arabs based on Israeli territorial withdrawals.

Is he right? Should the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, signed in Washington by Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat on March 26, 1979 -- sixteen months after Sadat's extraordinary visit to Jerusalem -- be construed as a mistake?

On the eve of its signing, only two members of Begin's Likud-led cabinet, Haim Landau (1916-1981), an underground comrade of the premier's, and Ariel Sharon opposed the treaty. In a subsequent Knesset vote, Speaker Yitzhak Shamir, another Likud stalwart, abstained. These hard-liners would have preferred "peace for peace" and worried – it turns out presciently – that trading land would set a precedent in regards to the strategic Jewish heartland of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank).

In any event, their objections seemed besides the point as Israel's border with Egypt was opened, direct air-links between Tel Aviv and Cairo established and Begin left to tour the pyramids. Still, in October 1979 dissident members of his Likud, Geʾula Cohen and Moshe Shamir broke away to establish the Techiya or Renaissance party.

These secular hawks, bolstered by the theoretician Shmuel Katz (1914-2008), who in 1978 had quit the cabinet largely over Begin's peace policies, championed the Land of Israel ideology of Gush Emunim, the mostly Orthodox-led West Bank settlement movement. Techiya won three seats in the July 1981 elections and in 1982 vociferously opposed turning over the northern Sinai settlement of Yamit to Egyptian sovereignty. The party briefly realigned with Likud, went on to win five seats in the 1984 elections, before being supplanted in 1992 by a like-minded secular party, Tzomet.

As the fate of Hosni Mubarak's regime hung in the balance, came the news that Herb Zweibon, age 84, Katz's leading American disciple who had led opposition to the Egypt-Israel treaty in the US had died. Now, the old arguments raised by the Katz-Zweibon-Techiya camp against trading land for peace seem to have gained added resonance.

In truth, Israeli officials had few illusions about the nature of peace with Egypt, especially after Sadat's assassination and Mubarak's ascendency. He in effect gave Israel an ultimatum: Make "peace" on Palestinian terms or live with an Egyptian cold peace. Though wary of Egypt's profligate military build-up (fueled partly by U.S. aid), war games that could only have been intended against Israel, Mubarak’s debilitating intrigues against Israel at the United Nations, his duplicitous campaigning against Israel’s nuclear capacity, and his unwillingness or inability to stop the arms smuggling into Hamas-ruled Gaza, Israeli policymakers nevertheless preferred the cold peace to capitulation on the Palestinian front.

No wonder. For the past 30 years Egypt had been neutralized as a confrontation state. While Israel defended itself against two violent Palestinian uprisings, two Lebanon wars, against Hamas's aggression from Gaza and Iran's drive for the atomic bomb, Jerusalem did not have to divert resources to the southern front. To be sure there were also diplomatic and economic positives to the relationship, one being that fact that forty percent of the natural gas used by Israel is imported from Egypt.

Israelis are more anxious than most about Mubarak's fate. Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has reportedly instructed the country's emissaries to make the case that while democratic change in Egypt is desirable violent revolutionary mayhem undermines the security of the region. Maintaining the peace – with all its flaws – between Israel and Egypt is Jerusalem's paramount goal. As President Shimon Peres forthrightly put it, having a fanatic Islamist regime in Egypt would not be better than the current lack of democracy.

In his previous incarnation, Peres had proclaimed a new Middle East modeled after Scandinavia. And Israeli doves, including late-in-life converts such as Ehud Olmert, not to mention an assortment of Palestinian leaders and European diplomats have preached that "peace brings security." Clearly, events in Egypt show this is not the case.

Providentially, Begin's treaty with Egypt was emphatically anchored in the strategic depth and demilitarization of the Sinai Peninsula, not in Egypt's hoped for durable good intentions. It was designed for the possibility "a new king would arise in Egypt who knew not Begin."

No matter who will rule Egypt – Mubarak until new elections, Omar Suleiman, Mohamed ElBarade or, perish the thought, the benighted Muslim Brotherhood, the treaty with Egypt was designed precisely for worst case scenarios.

So the lesson is not that Israeli leaders should abandon the possibility of reaching an accommodation with the Palestinians or Syrians. Instead, it is that the cornerstones of any deal needs to take into account the possibility that their successors might reject peace with Israel.

For now, Mahmoud Abbas's intransigence along with the fractious nature of Palestinian politics and Syria's Bashar Assad's fidelity to the Iranian-led axis mean that Israel has no genuine peace partner. Yet the Egypt-Israel treaty, providing demilitarization, strategic depth, and early warning plus verification procedures remains the template for future accords.

That Arab commitments to peace could be rickety was hardly lost on Begin. It has, however, been blatantly, serially, and irresponsibly disregarded by critics of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Bar-Ilan peace proposal which emphasized precisely the security parameters essential for peace. As a result, too little serious thinking has been devoted to the complex security arrangements Israel will need in the West Bank and on the Golan should genuine Arab peace partners emerge Sadat-like.
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--Feb 1

IN MEMORY OF HERBERT ZWEIBON

A true freedom fighter for Israel.

We did not always agree, yet I never questioned his sincerity, commitment and loyalty to Eretz Israel.

May his memory be for a blessing.


See:

http://shmuelkatz.com/wordpress/?p=558#comment-4701


http://www.afsi.org/index.shtml

My Two cents on PaliLeak

1. The theoretical concessions made – and none are real since the deal was/is that "nothing is agreed until everything is agreed" – by the Palestinians led by Mahmoud Abbas, fall far short of any deal acceptable to the Israeli mainstream.

Yet the liberal media paints any semblance of negotiating reasonableness as if Abbas gave away the store.

2. Though Israelis tended to yawn at Palestinian/Al-Jazeera/Guardian intrigues and dissimulations, what fascinates nonetheless is that positions Israelis assumed had been agreed to, namely strategic settlements blocs including Ma'ale Adummim have not been agreed to at all.

Wonder why it took PaliLeaks for us to know this…

3. Key for me is what happened afterwards.

Abu Mazen denied making any concessions. He simply lied to his people – again. He led them in chants about shaids and Jerusalem outside his Ramallah palace.

So long as "moderate" Pal leaders don't prepare their people for the idea that painful concessions will be needed on both sides – negotiations remain a farce and there is no Palestinian partner.

Have a look at this summary:

http://us.mg6.mail.yahoo.com/dc/launch?.gx=1&.rand=4tbv5fuhh1itg