Washington Just Lost the Middle East in a Big Way Wednesday, Oct 27 2010 

Middle East and Nuclear and peace process and Turkey and US Foreign Policy , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Sandboxer 1:17 pm

The end of American influence?

It’s official. There is no longer any serious “cost” for defying the United States in the global arena. Unable to win wars or deliver diplomatic coups – and struggling to maintain our economic equilibrium – Washington has lost the fundamental tools for global leadership. And no place does this impotence manifest more vividly than the modern Middle East.

Our pointless and protracted wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will be the last time we will launch a major battle in the region. That massive show of flexing brawn over brain burst a global perception bubble about our intentions, capabilities and reason.

This credibility was compromised further with our irrational support of Israel’s attacks on Lebanon and Gaza in 2006 and 2008/9 respectively. And by the double standards employed over Israel’s violations of international law and its illegal nuclear weapons stash – particularly when viewed against the backdrop of our startling rhetoric over Iran’s nuclear program.

But nothing highlights our irrelevance more than two recent developments:

1) The US’s inability today to convene even perfunctory peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians, let alone push through a negotiated solution – and this after 19 years of a “US-sponsored” peace process.

2) The US’s inability to achieve a resolution with Iran over its nuclear program. The only breakthrough in this long-winded effort to tame Iran’s nuclear aspirations was struck by Turkey and Brazil last week.

In short, the US seems incapable of resolving even a traffic dispute in the Middle East. It is Qatar that stepped in to broker a deal between Hezbollah and the Lebanese government in 2008, and is knee deep in negotiating a solution to the conflict in Darfur. Syria helped gain the release of prisoners in Iran and Gaza. And now Turkey and Brazil have cajoled Iran into accepting an agreement that the US, France, England, Germany, Russia and China could not.

We have been rendered irrelevant, despite our insistence on involving ourselves with every peep heard in the Mideast.  (more…)

 

Thomas Friedman and His Mideast Blindspots Wednesday, Oct 27 2010 

Foreign Policy and Hamas and Middle East and peace process and Politics and US Foreign Policy , , , , , , , , , Sandboxer 12:50 pm

Friedman concocting his version of the world

Nothing annoys me more about New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman than his tendency to scuttle his occasionally insightful commentary with fabricated assumptions to fit his narrative.

You know that irritation that grows under your skin when somebody is making a lot of sense and then suddenly — wham — they hit you with a doozy so ridiculous you feel disproportionately deflated?

Well, that is my Friedman experience time and time again. Not always though — sometimes I am irritated from the get-go.

In his latest column on Tuesday, Friedman shines a light on a very true Middle East reality — one that quite deliberately gets downplayed in Washington’s power centers: The Mideast is now, for the first time since the Cold War ended, largely defined by two blocs of influence and their respective worldviews.

The first, is the US-led bloc consisting of Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan — the latter three often ignominiously referred to as the “moderate” Arab states. The second, is the grouping sometimes referred to as the “resistance” bloc that consists of Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas.

Friedman’s column posits that there are five key actors in the Israeli-Palestinian equation today: Israel, America, the “moderate” Arabs, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, and the resistance bloc.

Look, I can give him that — I don’t have a fundamental problem with the fact that he only includes one key individual from the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority to represent the entire Palestinian side. Fatah, on its own, is rather irrelevant these days, except in the minds of the US bloc. And kudos to Tom for recognizing this nuance.

Friedman then makes his main thrust, which is that only two of these actors actually have clear strategies for a Palestinian-Israeli solution: Fayyad, the former World Bank economist who, peace or no peace, wants to create a de facto Palestinian state on the ground within two years — and the resistance bloc. That’s true enough. Friedman goes on to press the other three players to forge a clear, unified strategy — preferably backing Fayyad’s plan — which can foil the agenda of the resistance bloc.

And then I did my double take. Iran… Hezbollah… Hamas… Where was Syria?

Ah, Thomas. You did that doozy-thing.  (more…)

 

This US-Israeli Crisis Has Yet To Peak: Diverging Interests Never Clearer Tuesday, Mar 16 2010 

Israel and Middle East and peace process and Politics and US Foreign Policy , , , , , , , , , , , , , Sandboxer 9:11 pm

Jerusalem settlements

In the Mideast, only one thing is ever certain. Expect the unexpected. The smallest incident can flare up overnight and alter even God’s well-laid plans.

The latest conflagration erupted over something that Israel has been doing for 42 years. The announcement of plans for 1,600 new illegal settlement apartments in Occupied East Jerusalem — the slated capital of the future Palestinian state — would have been a mere irritant for the US in normal circumstances.

But US president Barack Obama still has egg on his face from his early failure to wrangle a settlement freeze from Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu only agreed to a meaningless 10-month halt, excluding “natural growth” and East Jerusalem builds. A loophole large enough to accommodate an elephant.

And after a year of walking a high-voltage tightrope to resuscitate peace talks — one that largely exposed the US’s inability to stand up to Israel and sent the Arab world into a spiraling depression – the Jewish state’s announcement of more settlement homes during Vice President Joe Biden’s recent visit to inaugurate a new round of peace talks hit this American administration like a ton of bricks.

Netanyahu — for all his protestation that the announcement was unintended and “innocent” — is known among world leaders as a liar bar none. And nobody bought his latest whopper.

This time Washington delivered a long overdue smack. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called the move “insulting,” Obama adviser David Axelrod called it a “calculated” plan, and once Biden found his footing, he warned Israelis:

“This is starting to get dangerous for us…what you are doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

Read full article

 

Mideast “Proximity Talks” – The Theater of the Absurd Wednesday, Mar 10 2010 

Israel and Middle East and peace process and Politics and US Foreign Policy , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Sandboxer 9:14 pm


by Sharmine Narwani

Nothing to say - Netanyahu, Obama, Abbas

After a year of grandiose declarations on Mideast peace prospects and a gazillion trips to the region by US Envoy George Mitchell, the Obama administration has come up with this?

“Proximity Talks.” Look it up in the Dictionary of Realpolitik and you will find the following: “Negotiations going nowhere fast. Wear seatbelts lest the speed of self-destruction spins you off the earth’s axis.”

Palestinians and Israelis are not even going to be at the table together. Mitchell could not even make that happen. This isn’t phase one of a longstanding conflict. These are adversaries who have sat across many tables and struck many agreements over the past 19 years.

And so this is where we are in the gruelingly endless Middle East peace process. About a dozen steps back from where we started.

False Starts

Here’s the down-low. After an upbeat set of promises to bring old foes to the Mideast negotiating table, Obama realized that Israel would not move so much as an inch on freezing illegal settlement-building activity — a fundamental necessity since there can be no land-for-peace agreement without land to cede.

The Obama presidency began just days after Israel’s three-week military devastation of Gaza concluded, putting not even the most sycophantic of Palestinian leaders in a position to be generous without a significant Israeli goodwill gesture. Then Benjamin Netanyahu emerged victorious from Israeli national elections and the die was cast.

Netanyahu’s Likud Party has never accepted a Two-State Solution, and Obama wasted much time wresting a luke-warm endorsement of this plan from the new Israeli prime minister. But while Netanyahu’s “compromise” was lauded by US officials and media pundits, the fact is that Mideast observers knew there was nothing new in his for-the-cameras acceptance of a Palestinian state minus sovereignty.

On the other side of the fence, the increasingly unpopular Fatah-led Palestinian Authority (PA) government — as corrupt and ineffectual as our Arab allies come — desperately needed an active peace process to give it a veneer of respectability. Fatah’s credibility is in serious jeopardy — it pushed for participation in peace talks with Israel almost two decades ago at the Madrid Peace Conference — and has virtually nothing to show for it.

Well, except for the fact that Jewish settlers in the West Bank have quintupled in number and that Israel has managed to divide up the West Bank to its advantage, with Jewish-only roads and checkpoints cutting off Palestinian movement and freedoms further.

But PA leader Mahmoud Abbas was unable to participate in post-Gaza peace talks without a settlement halt — he had drawn that line in the sand after Obama offered up a settlement freeze as part of his fantasy-based approach to peacemaking. Read full article

 

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