Brattleboro, Vermont to Neo-Cons: "Enough Is Enough"

Brattleboro, Vt. will, as a result of a petition, hold a vote in
March on whether or not to indict Bush and Cheney for war crimes and perjury.

The organizer of the petition, Mr. Daims, “said the most grievous crime committed by Bush and Cheney was perjury — lying to Congress and U.S. citizens about the basis of a war in Iraq. He said the latest count showed a total of 600,000 people have died in the war. Daims also said he believed Bush and Cheney were also guilty of espionage for spying on American people and obstruction of justice, for the politically generated firings of U.S. attorneys.”

Given the spinelessness of the Democratic Party toward Bush-Cheney efforts to undermine Constitutional rights and international law as well as the pathetic lack of public support so far for any candidate who truly offers ideas for new policies (e.g., Kucinich, Richardson, Gravel, Paul), one might consider this a rather courageous stance.

Brattleboro should be careful – all options may well be on the table. We wait breathlessly to see if Washington demands that Vermont turn over every last quart of maple syrup as a precondition to negotiations. Daim risks being held without charge as an enemy combatant – one can hardly deny that he is combative and since he does not wear the uniform of a recognized army, we certainly would not want to treat him as a soldier!

This is of course a small splash in a small pond and yet…someone has to be the first to stand up.

Analyzing a Confusing World

Many problems in global affairs are either created or aggravated by the tendency to focus on personalities, ideologies, and what "we" think "they" are either doing, trying to do, or planning to do. Personality, ideology, and perception of others are clues whose value is rapidly degraded by taking them out of context. Context, unfortunately, means understanding far more about others (their perceptions, culture, history, etc.) than is usually possible without a great deal of thought - almost certainly far more thought than someone busy trying to get elected and make day-to-day decisions will have time for and almost certainly far more thought than someone busy trying to cope with the day-to-day struggle of managing family and career will have time for.

So what is a concerned person to do? Start with rational self-interest: assume that the other guy is rational (at least sort of; don't get hung up on technical issues). You may of course be wrong. The other guy may be crazy, evil, drunk, or totally obsessed. If you get persuasive evidence that such is the case, take the evidence into account, by all means. But start with the assumption that an opponent wants power, prestige, and security just as much as you do.

Then ask yourself how much light that sheds on your opponent's behavior. You will usually be much closer to understanding a puzzling adversary if you reason like this than if you assume the adversary is evil just because he has a personality that irritates you, or because he has an ideology that makes you nervous, or because you think he is trying to do something you don't like.

New Newsletter Series on Enduring Global Issues

I have started a new series of one-page newsletters on enduring issues in global politics. The newsletters are designed to provide a concise overview of what is happening on an issue that perplexes most Americans and why we should care. The level of detail and the focus on the future implications of the issue for global stability and U.S. national security should be appropriate for undergraduate university classes and members of the general public who are concerned about voting thoughtfully. The newsletters are listed in the right column, with one on Gaza being the first in the new series.

Resolving Gaza

Nothing has yet been accomplished to resolve the continuing outrage called Gaza. Whether it is:

1) the occasional ineffective but possibly lethal rocket fired by
Palestinians demanding that the world listen to their pleas for justice or

2) the barrage of Israeli military attacks or

3) the horrifyingly inhumane conditions in which Gaza residents live
or

4) simply their endless existence in what amounts to a jail,

last week’s events have so far not resolved anything.

Certainly historic events occurred that make a return to the past highly unlikely:

First, historic discussions between Hamas and Egypt occurred, were extended
to a second day, and a measure of Egyptian-Hamas joint action on the ground to
regulate the border has ensued.

Second, a Moslem Brotherhood delegation visited Gaza, with implications for
joint Palestinian-Egyptian political activism that are all too obvious to the
Egyptian dictatorship.

Third, Hamas bulldozed away the rigidity of the past, opening the doors to
compromise, should anyone else care to listen.

Nevertheless, the issue has already faded from Western media, and both sides are rapidly slipping back into old modes of behavior: military violence from both sides, refusal to talk without preconditions that should be the subject of any talks from Fatah. Aside from the moral issue of 1.5 million innocent victims being ignored, why should we care?

First, the half-century conflict between Palestinians and Israelis is made
much more difficult to solve as long as Palestine remains split between two
Palestinian groups also fighting with each other. Whenever one tries to
compromise, that gives the other incentive to undercut the dialogue for
short-term political gain in the internal jockeying for the power to rule
Palestine. Palestinian politicians are no more immune to this disease than
Israeli or American politicians.

Second, failure to resolve the Gaza issue only raises the likelihood
that Egypt will be destabilized. Hamas and the Moslem Brotherhood are too
close--in terms of heritage, ideology, and geographic proximity--for the issue
of including Hamas in the international maneuvers over the future of Palestine
and the issue of including the Moslem Brotherhood in the Egyptian political
process to be kept apart. Whether the overthrow of the Egyptian dictatorship
would be good, as the first step toward democracy, or bad, as the first step
toward chaos and possibly an Islamic radical state, it would certainly be a
major shift in global affairs and fraught with danger.

Third, Palestinians are focused on Palestine, but the longer Washington
refuses them justice, the more they are likely to blame Washington. With al
Qua’ida eagerly waiting in the wings to exploit any shift toward further
radicalism, a new burst of Palestinian terror against the West like the one a
generation ago is likely this time to be much worse.

If morality does not move us to address the plight of Gazans, then self-interest should. It is hard to call any presidential candidate who fails to acknowledge this a serious potential leader.

U.S. National Security: Just Bombs or Also Climate?

For the kind of original thinking on fundamental national priorities that should be coming from the aspirants for national office in this election year, see this landmark new report:

The Budgets Compared: Military vs. Climate Security

B y M i r i am P emb e r ton

F o r e i g n p o l i c y i n focus

A P r o j e c t OF THE I N S T I TUTE FOR POL ICY S T U D I E S

Janua r y 2 0 0 8

The key conclusions of Pemberton's report include:

For the 2008 fiscal year, the government budgeted $647.51 billion for
military security. It budgeted $7.37 billion to slow climate change. That
means:

■■ Finding: For every dollar allocated for stabilizing the climate, the
government will spend $88 on achieving security by military force.

■■ Finding: The government is allocating 99% of combined federal spending on military and climate security to military security.

Releasing its latest report to Congress on federal climate spending, the Bush administration highlighted the fact that during the previous five years it had spent more than $37 billion for this purpose. During the same period, it spent more than $3.5 trillion on its military forces.

■■ Finding: During the last five years the ratio of military security to
climate security spending has averaged 97 to 1.

■■ Finding: In FY 2008, as well as during the past five years, the government has allocated for climate security only one percent of what it has devoted to military security.

The federal government allocates the lion’s share of spending on climate to technology development: about $3.9 billion for FY 2008. The Defense Department’s research and development (R&D) budget is $77 billion. That means:

■■ Finding: The U.S. government budgeted $20 to develop new weapons systems for every dollar it requested to develop new technologies to stabilize the climate.

Climate change is a global problem that won’t be solved except through international cooperation. The government allocates the smallest share of the current climate budget to working on the problem internationally, providing resources to assist other countries in their energy transition: $212 million. Meanwhile the federal budget’s military security assistance account allocates $9.5 billion to international military assistance.

■■ Finding: We will devote 50 times as much to arming the rest of the world as to helping it prepare for and avoid global climate catastrophe.

■■ Finding: The government allocates just 2% of the international assistance budget for both military and climate security to stabilizing climate.

The targets of U.S. foreign aid within the climate change budget are nearly as problematic as its size. Nearly half of the budget is allocated to an (unproven) strategy for mitigating the effects of existing coal-fired power generation infrastructure, rather than assisting in the transition to cleaner renewable energy sources. Most of the rest is devoted to promoting U.S. technologies that may or may not be the most suitable to the recipients’ needs. The budget allocates less than 10% of spending to adapting to climate change effects, such as droughts, floods, crop loss and disease. And an amount barely worth mentioning, less than 1% of the budget, is devoted to assisting donor countries in participating in the broad systemic, global changes that we must make to avert climate disaster.

Gaza & the Future of the Mideast: Editorial Views

New York Times, 2005: Gaza Never a Legitimate Israeli Possession

Gaza, a 25-mile-long, 6-mile-wide strip of land, was part of Mandatory
Palestine, which was ruled by the British after the fall of the Ottoman
Empire. It was never part of the Zionist state intended by the United Nations partition plan that led to the establishment of Israel in 1948. At that point, five Arab nations immediately attacked the new nation, but Gaza wasn't even part of the territory Israel got in signing truces in 1949. It became the home of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fleeing Israel, and Israel's armistice with Egypt in 1949 put it under Egyptian rule....

In the 1967 Israeli-Arab war, Israel captured Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, along with the West Bank (from Jordan) and the Golan Heights (from Syria). Israel returned the Sinai to Egypt after making peace, but kept control of Gaza. A second agreement called for negotiating eventual Palestinian autonomy there....

Gaza represents the worst side of Israel's settlement movement. The densely populated strip is home to 1.3 million Palestinians - most of them refugees, or offspring of refugees. Each square mile of Palestinian land holds, on average, about 14,000 people.

Los Angeles Times: Impact on Egyptian Politics

It is political theater punctuated with dangerous rhetoric. Mubarak's vast
intelligence and security forces are attempting to prevent pro-Palestinian
protests from erupting into sustained nationwide anti-government rallies. But
the Muslim Brotherhood and Kifaya, Arabic for "Enough," an umbrella opposition
group of leftists and nationalists, are determined to make just that happen. The
Muslim Brotherhood has sponsored 80 demonstrations since Wednesday, when
hundreds of thousands of Gazans began pouring into Egypt through a breached
border wall.The Muslim Brotherhood, which favors a government guided by Islamic law, known as Sharia, has a platform of nonviolence but has been accused over the years of bombings and other militant acts.. Despite the arrests of hundreds of its members, the group enjoys extensive support among the poor and middle class and poses the nation's most significant political threat to Mubarak's
ruling National Democratic Party.The Palestinian cause is the crystallizing passion in the Arab world, but the Gaza border crisis has brought new urgency to a public relations battle between Islamists and secular governments, especially in Egypt. It has also demonstrated that Hamas, the militant Islamist party that controls Gaza and is ideologically linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, remains a major factor in the future Palestinian equation, contrary to the wishes of the U.S., Egypt, Israel and the Palestinian Authority….

"The regime dealt brutally with demonstrators because it is concerned about domestic stability," said Abdel Moneim Abul Fotouh, a Muslim Brotherhood leader. "The regime knows that there is public outrage for other reasons including inflation, unemployment and other accumulated problems. It fears that things will explode…."Mohammed Sayed Said, deputy head of the Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo, said support for the Palestinians is giving the Muslim Brotherhood "a great deal of legitimacy."

Boston Globe: Collective Punishment Empowers Hamas

Imposing collective punishment on the people of Gaza is not only inhumane; it is also incapable of producing results that benefit Israel or the two main rivals of Hamas: Fatah and Mubarak's Egypt. By knocking down the Rafah barrier and forcing Mubarak to tell Egyptian police to let Gazans enter Egypt, Hamas placed itself in the position of defending Palestinians under its rule from the two states, Egypt and Israel, that have turned Gaza into a shutdown prison.

Arab News: Callousness of Israel

An Israeli government official’s statement summed up so well the callousness
of Israeli policy toward the besieged people in Gaza. Responding to the flood of
people across the broken border wall into Egypt, he said, “We expect the Egyptians to solve the problem.”

Haaretz: Opportunity

The crisis in Rafah was apparently not foreseen by the best of Israel's policy makers. Now, after it has happened, it is worth using the crisis to set policies that are more creative than assassinations and starvation and to try to avoid becoming fixated on the usual, predictable responses and on laying blame in all directions. The Egyptians could now become the unwitting leaders in finding an agreed-on solution. This could be the time to assert joint responsibility for the border crossings, with the participation of the Palestinian government and international organizations. Hamas used the closure to create sympathy for the people of Gaza. The destruction of the border barrier is also perceived as a legitimate prison break. A statesmanlike response is now needed to turn the crisis into an opportunity.

Gaza Bargaining

Here are the public bargaining positions as Hamas-Egyptian and Fatah-Egyptian negotiations begin over Gaza:

Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar –

Talking about a partial role contradicts reality. The reality is that there
is a legitimate government. We will not give up our legitimacy to anybody

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas—

We do not accept any new agreements. We are committed to the international
agreements as they are....Hamas has to end its coup in Gaza, accept all international obligations and accept holding early elections. After that, our hearts are open for any dialogue.

Other reports:

The UN Special Coordinator's Office for the Peace Process in the Middle East reported that Israel continues to block access. Only 32 trucks with supplies have entered Gaza from Israel since January 18, compared with 250 per day before June.

The Israeli Supreme Court upheld the right of the Israeli government to continue its economic warfare policy of collective punishment of the Gaza population by rejecting a suit by Israeli & Palestinian human rights organizations.

Egyptian diplomats said one of Cairo's proposals that could be accepted by both factions would suggest handing over the border's supervision to "neutral" Palestinian forces that belong to neither Hamas nor Fatah.

The United Nations Security Council gave up trying to adopt a non-binding statement on the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip caused by an Israel's blockade after the US alone of the 15 council members refused to support it. The statement would have both criticized Hamas rocket attacks and called on Israel to reopen the border. Alejandro Wolff, the US deputy ambassador, called the “illegal coup” by Hamas (which won a democratic election and formed the legal Palestinian government in 2006) the core issue.

Meanwhile, both sides continue? resume? shooting even as talks occur.

Israeli Historian on the Politics of Gaza

For a concise review of the political context and recent history of the Gaza issue, see this article by an Israeli historian.

This short video also summarizes the recent history of Gaza, citing U.N. data.

Exodus

If it were to be accepted as legitimate for a country to punish the whole population of an opponent because of the behavior of extremist politicians, then it would be hard to find a population on the planet that would not be vulnerable. Israel, long a rogue state violating international law and defying the U.N., has received a warning message over the past week. If it has the maturity to put up with the embarrassment and learn the right lesson, Israel's future could as a result become much more secure.

When a whole population rises up and demands freedom, it is an historic event. When they do this peacefully—smashing down walls, perhaps, but not killing, then we tend to greet the results with glee and admiration. Glee because it demonstrates the eternal truth of our own democratic ideals; admiration because such revolutions somehow seem so much more honest and unhypocritical than our own everyday version of democracy.

Now that the population of Gaza has broken down its prison walls and demanded that most basic and inalienable human right—the right to buy food, are we applauding their restraint in doing it peacefully even though they are under constant military attack by their Israeli prison guards? Are we applauding their courage in walking into Egypt, with no way of knowing whether or not they would be shot on their way to the local grocery store? (For details, this article and this one.)

No, we punish Egypt for not forcing the Palestinian people back into their jail.

In contrast, 1000 Israelis brought contributions of food and medicine to Gaza and demonstrated against their government’s economic war against the Palestinian people.

Americans should contemplate the decency of these Israeli defenders of human rights and think deeply about the shameful rush to pass judgment by Washington politicians desperate to shove the Palestinians back into their jail.

In the words of the peace activist and journalist Uri Avnery, “For a moment, the Rafah crossing was the Brandenburg Gate.” He continued: "The brutal blockade was a war crime. And worse: it was a stupid blunder. "

This “stupid blunder” has now forced the Egyptian dictatorship to offer—horror of horrors—to negotiate with the Gaza government. Some would evidently have preferred that the Egyptians massacre the Palestinians as they went about their shopping. But there is now no returning to the past; the Mideast will never be the same. The Israeli government should listen to its own people before its recklessness sets in motion an unstoppable train of events.

So far, Israel has created a situation which:

• Has put Egypt in the position of having in effect recognized the Hamas government of Gaza;


• Has made Hamas, which has accepted the offer to negotiate and has called for a truce with Israel, appear the reasonable, rational, moderate actor while Israel appears the terrorist;


• Has given Hamas nationalist credentials that seem likely to ensure its ability to win any democratic election in the near future.

Great events in a complex political context can emerge from small beginnings. It may be that as many as half the 1.5 million residents of Gaza crossed the border into Egypt this past week to do their shopping and vote with their feet for freedom. Can there be any doubt that Hamas will reap the reward of long-term popularity? That Hamas’ greatest political victory should have come through a rather peaceful effort may have interesting implications, though how Hamas leaders will see it remains uncertain. In any case, the implications of this week’s events for the hold of Hamas over Gaza are likely to be significant.

In addition, the bankruptcy—not just moral but practical—of Israel’s policy of victory through strength is now pretty clear: first the lesson of Lebanon 2006 and second the lesson of Gaza 2008. Once again, as in Lebanon in 2006, Arabs with bulldozers manage to look good in comparison to Israelis with tanks. Only in the U.S. will this be hard to see. The rightwing violence-prone regime running Israel should think carefully about the long-term implications of what it is doing before it permanently weakens Israeli security by strengthening both the moral authority and nationalist credentials of its most extreme opponents.

The current Israeli regime similarly seem likely to be discredited. The Israeli nation, in contrast, could well benefit. First, this may just possibly shock the Israeli political system into serious self-reflection and lead to a more viable long-term policy. Second, if Hamas derives the lesson that ingenuity rather than brute force is the most effective way of defending the rights of the Palestinian people, and if Israel also takes away a lesson in good neighborliness, then a route to solving the Palestinian-Israeli dispute may be found as a result. Third, by virtue of the Israeli Supreme Court consideration of the petition by human rights organizations to end the Israeli blockade, the continued health of the Israeli democracy has been demonstrated: the Israeli government will bow at least momentarily before the concept of human decency. An independent judiciary with the ability and courage to stand up for human rights in the face of administration policy is a rare achievement in today’s world. Because of that, if nothing else, Israel has already gained from this week’s momentous, albeit embarrassing, events.

Many questions remain:

• Is the Israeli government taking this move only because it sees little choice for the moment or is this a sincere effort to move beyond the mindless brutality of the war on Gaza? (Israeli military attacks on the West Bank over the last two days hint at the answer.


• Will Hamas learn anything positive from this week’s events and cooperate with the efforts of the human rights organizations and the Israeli Supreme Court and the suddenly cautious Egyptian government to return the situation to a position of reason?


• Will Egypt, fearful of its own harshly suppressed democratic movement, take this opportunity to establish normal border processes with Gaza rather than going back to serving as assistant jailers to the Israeli regime?


• Will both regional and other involved actors ultimately respond with professionalism and thoughtfulness, benefiting from this experience to move away from the viciousness of the last year by offering Hamas a real alternative to renewed fighting?


• Will the illegal coup by Abbas, but engineered by Washington and Tel Aviv, against the democratically elected Hamas government of all Palestine be replaced by either new elections or a Palestine government of national consensus?
  

One way to get some clues about the answers is to graph the trend lines in behavior of each actor. To the degree that the lines go in the same direction, we may get some sense of the prospects. Two questions worth asking:

1) are the various actors flexible or rigid?

2) are they ready to compromise or ready for confrontation?

The main public acts this week of three key actors – Israel, Hamas, and Egypt – are portrayed in the graphic. Quadrant D is the worst, containing actions both confrontational and rigid. Quadrant A shows actions both flexible and prone to compromise. Quadrant B contains actions that are flexible, though still confrontational. Ingenious ways of being confrontational may lead to a breakthrough via some unexpected route but are still essentially hostile. Quadrant C contains actions that remain rigid, unoriginal despite actors’ willingness to compromise (if only they could figure out how).


So far, for a few short days, the graph clearly suggests a surprising degree of movement by all three actors away from the rigidity and confrontation of the past year toward something offering new possibilities.

Hamas' Negotiating Position on Rafah Border Crossing

Fawozi Barhum, Hamas spokesman Hamas in Gaza, said:

we in the Hamas movement have stated clearly, will not allow the Rafah
borders to be operated by the past agreements between the Palestinian Authority
and Israel, because it was unjust towards our people, thousands couldn't leave
the Gaza strip for health care, travel and studying and scores were kidnapped by
the Israeli occupation at the Rafah borders because of this
agreement.

Would anyone care to address these points?

Well, no, probably not, judging from this report:

Israeli sources reported on Monday that Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, and the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, agreed on Sunday to demand Egypt to seal the breached border with the Gaza Strip. Olmert also said that he objects to any talks between Fatah and Hamas.

You see, talking to people is really a very bad thing. Just won't do at all.