EGYPT & ISRAEL

Dear All,

"Going Fishing" -- hope to be back by the middle of next week.

Elliot




Countdown to 30

In a month's time, Egypt and Israel will mark 30 years since the signing of our peace treaty. Israel staged a phased withdrawal from the Sinai following the 1979 accord, giving up strategic depth, vital airspace, military bases, newly discovered oil fields and control of the Straits of Tiran - the gateway to Eilat. From the Israeli perspective, Israel gave - Egypt took. And peace was established.

But Egypt paid a stiff price for being the first Arab country to make peace with Israel. It was ostracized by the Arab world and vilified by Iran's newly installed Muslim fanatics. Anwar Sadat, assassinated in October 1981 by al-Qaida's precursors, didn't live to see the final Israeli pullback from Yamit in April 1982.

Israelis never fully appreciated, or perhaps wrongly discounted as lip service, the importance Sadat placed on a resolution of the Palestinian problem, linking it to progress on bilateral relations. "Even if peace between all the confrontation states and Israel were achieved," Sadat told the Knesset, "in the absence of a just solution of the Palestinian problem - never will there be that durable and just peace upon which the entire world insists…"

Sadat vaguely embraced Menachem Begin's proposal of autonomy, but the Palestinians brushed it aside, faithful to the principle of never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity. They have spared no effort since to undermine Cairo-Jerusalem relations.

Neither Begin nor Sadat set out to construct a cold peace. Perhaps, along with the disappointments on both sides, the weeks leading up to the anniversary could be used to reflect on what has been achieved - against all odds.

THERE IS much that Israelis do not understand about Egyptian policy. We never understood why, in 2000, Hosni Mubarak opposed an international administration for the Temple Mount, warning Yasser Arafat not to "give up sovereignty over Al-Haram al-Sharif."

We never really understood Egypt's lackadaisical attitude to Hamas's weapons smuggling - though by limiting the number of troops permitted along the border, the treaty does complicate Cairo's efforts to secure the Philadelphi Corridor. But even with technical support now from the US and Europe, weapons flow practically unabated.

We do not understand why Egypt is pushing a Gaza cease-fire that would further strengthen Hamas, while leaving Gilad Schalit in its clutches. But Egypt must be equally befuddled by Israel's decision to pummel Gaza for three weeks - even as Cairo explicitly blamed Hamas for instigating the violence - only to declare a unilateral cease-fire that left the Islamists emboldened.

We do not understand why Cairo refuses to allow a genuinely controlled but open border between the Strip and Sinai, stopping guns and bad guys but allowing everything else; or why it opposes port facilities in northern Sinai that could benefit Egyptians and Palestinians alike. In the long run, such a move would foster Palestinian self-determination.

Egypt is again trying to foster reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah. But Palestinian unity predicated on Hamas's maximalist demands hardly salvages what is admittedly a bad situation. Why doesn't Egypt condition its efforts on Hamas meeting the demands of the international community to renounce violence, recognize Israel and abide by agreements signed by the Palestinian leadership?

Israelis can appreciate that Egypt's frosty policy toward our country is influenced by a complex set of foreign and domestic factors. Yet we don't understand why, in international forums, Egypt occasionally leads the charge against Israel; why, at home, state-controlled media sometimes promotes stereotyping of Jews.

When a rudimentary bomb went off in Islamic Cairo on Sunday, killing a French tourist, the reverberations were felt in Jerusalem. We were troubled that some ascribed the attack to "frustration" over Egypt's supposedly ineffective response to "Israel's devastating offensive in Gaza"; and that Iran's condemnation of the bombing "as serving Zionist interests" was taken at face value.

Our criticism notwithstanding, the survivability of the regime the now-octogenarian Hosni Mubarak established is a strategic Israeli interest. Egyptian war games in the Sinai earlier this month drew little comment because Mubarak's men are in command. We were delighted by the release from prison of opposition leader Ayman Nour. Yet we know that democratization absent essential institution-building and the right kind of political socialization is catastrophic.

Preliminary judgment: Thirty years of fraught relations trumps the previous 30 years of bellicosity.

Amnesty International & Israel's destruction

Tuesday -- No pardon for Amnesty


Yesterday, Amnesty International, the world's premier "human rights" brand, called for the destruction of Israel. We're overdramatizing? Were AI to get its way, the UN Security Council would impose a comprehensive arms embargo on the world's only Jewish state - but not on any of the 22 member states of the Arab League, or on Iran. Over time, Israel would find it impossible to defend itself against conventional or WMD threats stemming from hostile states or Palestinian and Islamist terror organizations.

The pretext for the embargo call was the IDF's campaign in Gaza to compel Hamas to end its bombardment of southern Israel and cross-border aggression. Over the years, Hamas has killed hundreds of Israelis in terror attacks. Apparently spearheading AI's anti-Israel crusade is the group's "principal researcher on Israel/Occupied Palestine," the London-based Donatella Rovera.

Though Israel purchases arms from dozens of sources, AI's boycott call is really aimed at the Obama administration: "Israel's military offensive in Gaza was carried out [largely] with weapons, munitions and military equipment supplied by the USA and paid for with US taxpayers' money," claimed Malcolm Smart, AI's director for the Middle East.

Either to simulate evenhandedness, or perhaps because it really is blinded by moral relativism, AI perfunctorily called for a weapons embargo against Hamas. It thus appears incapable of distinguishing between Israel and Hamas, between victim and aggressor - between an albeit imperfect Western nation which values tolerance, representative government, rule of law and respect for minority rights, and a medieval-oriented Islamist movement which mobilizes Palestinian masses to hate, teaches its young to glorify suicide bombers, and inculcates a political culture wallowing in self-inflicted victimization.

AMNESTY DOES much good work. Many of its rank-and-file members and contributors are sincerely motivated by a desire to make the world a better place. Yet beyond this good-hearted circle stands a professional cadre backed by agenda-driven money, which, we suspect, is exploiting Amnesty's good name. This cadre relies on world-class public relations and advertising firms to leverage AI's human rights brand for blatantly partisan purposes.

AI has long been under internal pressure to champion an arms embargo against Israel. Some have intimated that Jews in the organization were standing in the way. Francis Boyle, a law professor and pro-PLO activist: "You have… the very powerful role played by the Israel lobby on Amnesty International USA… Amnesty pretty much kowtows to them…" Plainly, Boyle's "very powerful" Jews have been sidelined.

AI is not some amorphous, beatific entity; it's comprised of personalities with all the usual human foibles. Everyone connected to AI needs to say whether they really oppose Israel's right to self-defense. Are we to assume that AI's International Secretariat - Irene Zubaida Khan, Paul Hoffman, Tony Klug, Susan Waltz, Jan Egeland, Menno Kamminga, Jaap Jacobson, Margaret Bedggood, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Neil Sammonds, Melvin Coleman - all support an anti-Israel arms embargo?

AI gets money from foundations such as the Sigrid Rausing Trust (which also funds B'Tselem). Does Sigrid Rausing personally want Israel to stand defenseless against Iran, Hizbullah and Hamas? Do board members Josh Mailman, Susan Hitch, Andrew Puddephat and Geoffrey Budlender?

The MacArthur Foundation, better known for its "genius awards," also funds AI. We have no idea whether its board - Robert E. Denham, Lloyd Axworthy, John Seely Brown, Jonathan F. Fanton, Jack Fuller, Jamie Gorelick, Mary Graham, Donald R. Hopkins, Will Miller, Mario J. Molina, Marjorie M. Scardino and Claude M. Steele - appreciate what could happen to six million Israeli Jews were AI to get its embargo. Does the actor Nicolas Cage, another major AI benefactor, stand behind the embargo call?

A good chunk of AI money comes from its American board - Steve Abrams, Jeff Bachman, Simon Billenness, Jessica Morris Carvalho, Mayra Gomez, Rick Halperin, Theresa Harris, Shahram Hashemi, Bill Jones, Frank Kendall, Carole Nagengast, Christianna Nichols Leahy, Dennis Nurkse, Phyllis Pautrat, Aniket Shah, Barbara Sproul, Bret Thiele and Diego Zavala. Which of them will be first to speak out against this immoral embargo call?

In calling on the US and UN to rob Israel of its ability to defend itself, Amnesty International is speaking in the name of its leaders and benefactors. Silence is acquiescence. Or they can dissociate themselves from one of Amnesty's biggest errors in judgment.

Iran, the Bomb and Obama

Monday - Obama's Plan B?


According to UN officials and arms-control experts, as of last Thursday, which of the following was true?

(a) Iran has enough nuclear fuel to build a bomb if it violates its international treaty obligations, kicks out inspectors and further refines its supply, as The Los Angeles Times reported;

(b) "Iran has slowed its uranium enrichment program," as Xinhua, the Chinese news agency reported; or

(c), "Iran has slowed the expansion of its uranium enrichment plant, but has built up a stockpile of nuclear fuel…," as Reuters reported.

Confused? That's probably what Iran and its international enablers want.

Experts deduce Iran has amassed 1,010 kilograms of reactor-grade nuclear fuel. It needs, give or take, 1,700. The Financial Times quoted UN officials as saying that "Iran has built up a stockpile of enough enriched uranium for one nuclear bomb" and has "produced more nuclear material than previously thought."

Are we months or several years away from a nuclear armed Iran? We can only speculate - about how much weapons-grade uranium Iran possesses; about possible clandestine bomb-making facilities; about whether Iran has built, or purchased, nuclear trigger mechanisms. There are no certainties about Iran's capabilities or intentions.

We know only that its continued enrichment of uranium is in contravention of multiple Security Council resolutions from 2006-2008.

We know, too, that Iran is guilty, under the "1949 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide," of "direct and public incitement" to commit genocide.

Iran's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, has called Israel "a cancerous bacterium" and "a stain of disgrace" on the garment of Islam. While attention focuses on the hate speech of the uncouth Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, it was actually the former president, Hashemi Rafsanjani, who tied Iran's genocidal intentions to its nuclear ambitions: "The employment of even one atomic bomb inside Israel will wipe it off the face of the earth..."

IT REALLY isn't fair that Europe, Russia and China not only abdicated their responsibilities to stop Iran, but also stoked its economy and military. The international community did not muster the collective will to impose the kind of biting sanctions that could have by now compelled Iran to abandon its nuclear weapons ambitions. The world failed to exploit the leverage created by Iran's declining oil production and its need to import refined petroleum.

It isn't fair that the Bush administration bogged America down in Iraq and took its eye off Afghanistan-Pakistan. Still, this is the state of affairs President Barack Obama has inherited, and this appalling situation will get exponentially worse if Iran gets its bomb.

Only 35 days into his administration, Obama appears to have less time than anyone imagined to stop Teheran.

With meaningful sanctions seemingly dead in the water, the administration is pledged to "engagement." For this, it may wait until after Iran's presidential elections in June in the hope that Ahmadinejad will lose. It will take yet additional months to acknowledge that Ahmadinejad wasn't the problem, that the mullahs will not abandon their quest.

Could it be that Obama and his advisers know this and have already given up on preventing Teheran from getting the bomb, that their fallback position is to "contain" a nuclear-armed Iran? But an America that lacked the stomach to stop Iran in the first place will have small credibility in containing its rapacious ambitions in the region and beyond.

As part of a policy of containment, there is talk of a US declaration that an attack on the Jewish state would be viewed as an attack against the United States. How credible would that be? To undermine just such a pledge, Iran could surreptitiously transfer a nuclear device to Hizbullah-controlled Lebanon or to Hamastan. Pakistan, the only other Muslim state to go nuclear, proliferated to Iran. Teheran could be expected to carry on the tradition.

In fact, containment may simply not apply to an apocalyptic messianic regime. It is certainly not a viable "Plan B" to the prospect of a failed engagement policy. And engagement, while arguably worth a try, is no substitute for the kind of sanctions - a complete blockade, for instance - that could yet prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapons capacity that threatens far more than the Middle East.

Dubai, Qatar & Israel

Dear All,
Shabbat shalom. And thanks for checking the site.
Elliot


Friday -- Foul play in the Gulf


In yet another egregious instance of Arab men cutting off their noses to spite their faces, copies of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue featuring Israel's stunning Bar Refaeli on the cover have been removed from Dubai magazine racks.

And, after intense pressure from the Association of Tennis Professionals, Dubai has reluctantly granted an entry visa to Andy Ram to play in next week's Barclays Dubai Tennis Championships - after barring Shahar Pe'er from playing in the Women's Tennis Association tournament, affecting her earnings, if not her ranking.

International response to such anti-Israelism by the United Arab Emirates (of which Dubai is the commercial center and a self-governing city-state) has been understated. The Washington Post and Wall Street Journal were critical, and the Tennis Channel cancelled plans to broadcast the Dubai women's tournament. Pe'er's fellow players, hearing about her exclusion at the 11th hour, were sympathetic but decided to go ahead and compete rather than forfeit millions of dollars in sponsors' support.

Sadly, anti-Israel frenzy has reached such proportions that in Malmö, Sweden, where Muslim immigrants comprise 25 percent of the population, the Davis Cup tennis first round tie against Israel next month will be played in an empty stadium.

Back in the UAE, the first ever "Emirates Airline International Festival of Literature," set for next week, is becoming a real page-turner owing to official censorship of Geraldine Bedell's novel The Gulf Between Us featuring a homosexual relationship set in a fictional Gulf emirate.

The Emirates, where fewer than 20 percent of the 4.4 million residents are citizens, likes to be perceived as a tolerant, pro-Western oasis. And, to be fair, the Saudi-controlled, Dubai-based satellite news channel Al-Arabiya makes a stab at modifying Al-Jazeera's radicalism. Still, public antagonism toward Israel and Western values is getting ever harder to cloak.

QATAR plays an even more duplicitous game, presenting itself as cosmopolitan while shilling for the Islamists. Back in 1996, it hosted the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and seemed to be moving incrementally toward staking out a moderate position in Arab affairs. Indeed, as late as last year, Qatar allowed Pe'er to play in a WTA Tour tournament.

But at this week's three-day annual US-Islamic World Forum in Doha, co-hosted with the Brookings Institution's Saban Center, some Arab participants echoed a refrain commonly heard from Indonesia - where US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton just visited - to the Gulf States: If the US really wants to move closer to the Arab world, it will have to abandon its "near-blind" support for Israel and "overcome the veto power" of the Zionists on Washington's decision-making.

Qatar, which has the highest per-capita income in the world, has lately adopted a radically pro-Hamas foreign policy; in January, it suspended low-level diplomatic ties with Israel. Controlled by the family of Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, Qatar has the peculiar distinction of being 75-percent male thanks to its outsized expatriate workforce.

Sheikh Hamad is the main financial backer of the Doha-based Al-Jazeera. While Al-Jazeera's English-language website and television take a mild tone, the main, Arabic, enterprise aligns itself with the Hamas-Iran-Syria-Hizbullah bloc. For instance, it identifies those killed in the Gaza fighting as shahids. The Muslim Brotherhood has long been a presence in Qatar, and Al-Jazeera serves as a popular, attractive platform for spreading its extremist views throughout the region.

During Operation Cast Lead, Qatar hosted a meeting of radical Arab states, plus Iran, to mobilize support for Hamas and also pledged millions of dollars for Gaza's reconstruction. The al-Thani family also played a key role in facilitating Hizbullah's incremental ascendency in Lebanon.

But Qatar is shrewd enough to hedge its bets by hosting bases of the US military's Central Command, which oversees American operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The State Department considers both Qatar and the UAE - two of the world's richest countries - as friendly states.

HOW HAS Qatar, which promotes the Muslim Brotherhood and bankrolls the poisonous al-Jazeera station, succeeded in maintaining its image as a friend of the West? And how is Dubai, with its on-off boycott of Israel, able to sustain its own moderate image?

The answer is money. Lots of it. To win friends, influence people, and manipulate perceptions.

Pakistan

Wednesday - Shari'a-for-peace


The government of Pakistan signed an agreement on Monday with Taliban rebels to trade "Shari'a-for-peace." The arrangement comes after Pakistani authorities essentially lost control of the once-idyllic Swat Valley - the "Switzerland of Pakistan" - in the Northwest frontier province.

Under pressure from Washington, Pakistan dispatched 12,000 troops in what turned out to be a failed campaign to pacify a region terrorized by 3,000 Taliban fighters. The Islamists had destroyed hundreds of schools (where girls were being educated or boys were learning secular subjects); intimidated foreign teachers, beheaded policemen and murdered journalists. Hundreds of thousands of civilians fled the province.

There are disturbing, though unsubstantiated, reports that India may be supporting the Taliban in both Pakistan and Afghanistan - another example, if true, of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" aphorism.

Most of Swat, roughly 100 miles from Islamabad, is in Taliban hands. Authorities also hold little sway in the tribal areas of North and South Waziristan. In short, while Pakistan is a nuclear power and has a seat in the UN, it is arguable whether it is a genuinely sovereign state.

The Shari'a-for-peace accord was reached between authorities and Taliban "moderates" led by Sufi Mohamed. What impact the deal will have on his more radical son-in-law, Maulana Fazlullah, remains to be seen.

In theory, the deal bolsters "moderate" Taliban and removes Shari'a law as the battle cry of the extremists. The theocratic rules to go into effect, authorities insist, will be a gentler, kinder version of Shari'a, compared to the Afghanistan strain.

The most positive spin on the deal is that it will end lawlessness and replace an unresponsive civil court system. Outlawing television, public entertainment and shaving would be a small price to pay.

President Asif Ali Zardari, whose wife Benazir Bhutto was probably assassinated by Taliban types in December 2007, has approved the Shari'a-for-peace deal. So, reportedly, did the Awami National Party, a secular Pashtun grouping. The Pashtun ethnic group comprises 15 percent of Pakistan's population, and 42% (a plurality) of Afghanistan's. The Taliban is predominantly Pashtun.

BUT MANY Pakistani modernizing elites are distressed. "This deal shows that the Pakistan military has in fact been defeated by the militants; that we are now incapable of retaining control of vast tracts of our own territory," commented a News of Pakistan editorial.

The decision to trade Sharia-for-peace appears to reflect a bad trend in the Muslim (and Arab) world whereby radicals stick to their guns, and moderates capitulate. Even if the Taliban could be satiated with "just" Afghanistan and Pakistan, these vast lands would become - even more than they already are - safe havens and launching pads for terrorism against "the infidels."

Indeed, reports claim that Osama bin Laden is currently not in some cave but in the village of Parachinar, near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, in an area that's seen Sunni-Shi'ite strife.

US envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan Richard Holbrooke, who is just completing a tour of the region, called the Swat deal proof that India, the United States and Pakistan "all have a common threat now."

If only that were true. If only matters were that clear-cut.

The US is doing its best to keep up appearances. Anne W. Patterson, America's ambassador to Pakistan (who sometimes appears in public wearing a head covering), oversees the delivery of millions of dollars in US aid. At the same time, the US military (starting in the last months of the Bush administration) is employing unmanned aircraft to strike at terrorist targets inside the country, with the tacit approval of Pakistani authorities.

WHEN Pakistan's top general. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani - the man who controls Islamabad's nuclear arsenal and presumably still makes the final call in the shadowy Inter-Services Intelligence Agency - arrives in Washington next week to meet Obama administration officials, there will be much to talk about: the release from house arrest of A.Q. Khan, and the serious proliferation risk he continues to be; the Shari'a-for-peace deal; and Pakistan's culpability in the Mumbai attacks.

Between Iran's quest for nuclear weapons, the power vacuum in Pakistan-Afghanistan, and the need to preserve relative stability in Iraq, the administration will, no doubt, want to prioritize its Middle East agenda accordingly.