Gilo isn't a barrier to negotiations

Barack Obama was six years old when the Jordanian army opened fire on Jerusalem in the 1967 war. Shortly after the fighting, Israel expanded the city's boundaries. Four years later it began construction the Gilo neighborhood.

Gilo made headlines early in the 2000 intifada, when Palestinians bunkered in the nearby city of Beit Jalla fired on apartments there. Israel responded by building a wall to protect the vulnerable area and proceeded to wreak more havoc in Beit Jalla and the rest of Palestine than the Palestinians could achieve against Israelis. Some 40,000 people are now living in Gilo, construction of new homes and public facilities proceeds there as elsewhere in Jerusalem, and planning authorities have recently approved the construction of an additional 900 units. 
 
The concept of a wall protecting Israel from Palestinian violence caught on, and the project continues. The security barrier generally runs close to the 1967 boundaries, but reaches to the east in order to enclose major Jewish population centers.
 
None of these developments received the blessing of the international community. However, no government has taken any steps stronger than protesting against the unilateral expansion of Jerusalem's boundaries, or other Israeli construction in the West Bank.
 
Possession is nine-tenths of the law. I probably first heard that expression as part of a dispute on a primary school play yard, years before the 1967 war. Believe it or not, it also carries weight in international law. Claims should be bolstered with control in order to win recognition.

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State Dept. bureaucrats on religious freedom

More than 40 years ago I chose public administration as my specialty in political science. I still poke at it, despite being interested in other things as well.
 
Here I will take a poke at the US State Department's 2009 Report on International Religious Freedom published by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. It was prepared for Congress in compliance with Section 102(b) of the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA) of 1998.

All that is bureaucratic folderol meaning that Congress gives the State Department a mandate, among its many other duties, to monitor and report on religious freedom throughout the world - but not in the United States. More on the exclusion later.
 
The section on Israel and the Occupied Territories is long and detailed. It will offend Jews hyper-sensitive to criticism, but is generally accurate. It describes the considerable advantages that government policy provides to Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox Judaism, and incidents of violence and property destruction attributed to individuals against non-Jewish facilities and individuals, including Messianic Jews, i.e., individuals claiming to be Jews who have accepted Christ as their messiah.
 
Critics could find additional reasons to cite Israel for its lack of conformity to what is considered acceptable among politically correct Westerners. There is no mention in the report of the restriction against a man with the surname of Cohen marrying a divorcee.
 
The section on the Occupied Territories is appended to that on Israel, and spends considerable verbiage criticizing Israeli restrictions on Palestinians, including Israel's closure of the territories during Jewish religious holidays, and the impact of the security barrier.
 
One item in the section on the Occupied Territories deals with ultra-Orthodox modesty squads that attack Jewish women on account of their behavior. Civil rights advocates may applaud the language, but it appears to be an issue among Jews in Israel. I recall one incident in the Mea She'arim neighborhood of Jerusalem. The bureaucrats in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor do not document the location attached to this allegation. Perhaps it has signed on to the Palestinian narrative that Jerusalem is Palestine. 
 
It's a stretch, but one can describe the Report on Israel and the Occupied Territories as "balanced." It's the same stretch required to conclude that BBC and CNN are "balanced" in their coverage of Israel and Palestine. One can find criticism of all sides, but the overall flavor is not friendly to Israel.

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The crippled giant

You've heard of the crippled giant? The term refers to an entity with so much power that its obligations work against one another.

Consider the United States, with President Barack Obama trying mightily to break the bonds of lethargy identified with his predecessor.

An article in The New York Times describes his handicaps in Afghanistan. President Karzai is not cooperating with American goals of development and reform. Evidence is that Karzai stole the most recent election, and has put in key positions individuals soaked with blood, drug and financial corruption. Advice from White House and military aides is to try harder. One proposal is for an additional 40,000 troops.

The trap is that Obama cannot threaten Karzai without losing face and confirming American weakness. Karzai has already promised reform, more than once, without delivering. Obama cannot pull out his troops. That would weaken the resolve of Pakistan to work with diligence against Taliban. Without that, where is the war against terror?

Obama's handicap in Afghanistan is costly in American blood. His handicap in the Middle East is measured in embarrassment.
 
The president included a major effort in the Middle East as well as in Afghanistan under his banner of Change. A few days ago, one of Israel's respected and moderate commentators called his efforts "childish" on a widely-viewed evening program.
 
Remember the speech in Cairo? The president made demands on Israeli, Palestinian, Egyptian and other Arab leaders. So far there has been hemming and hawing, and assertions by one and all that they cannot take major steps without someone else moving first. While the president seemed to overlook Hamas-controlled Gaza, perhaps in the hope that it would come along if everything else worked, it remains one of the elephants in the Middle East living room.

A multi-cultural conundrum

The Fort Hood killings will reverberate. At the lower end of the military, Muslims will find their property trashed, and hear themselves called "camel jockeys" and "rag heads". The stories will differ only in detail from those told over the years by Jews, Catholics, African Americans and Hispanics. Soldiers the world over are young and the salt of the earth, not likely to be the most sensitive members of society. 
 
The killings also reflect the US problem that stems from its assumption of responsibility for wherever in the world it decides to intervene. Its most prominent enemies are now Muslims, and it has few citizens with suitable language and cultural skills. It needs American Muslims. Hasan's story illustrates the trap comprised by that need; some American Muslims will inevitably respond badly to serving against other Muslims.

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Friedman gets an A-

Thomas Friedman has written one of his better articles. 
 
As a retired professor still inclined to give grades to everything I hear or read, I'd say about 92, or A-.
 
The major theme is quite good. Friedman recognizes that there is no gas left in the peace process. It's like going to an old play, where the actors are no longer inspiring while reciting their well worn lines. As a result, the Obama administration should back off, tell the parties to call the White House when they're interested, and spend its energies fixing the many problems of the United States.
 
Why only an A-?
 
Friedman cannot refrain from giving equal responsibility to Israeli and Palestinian participants, with a nod toward the negative contributions of other Arabs, and finds no fault whatsoever with the American administration or decent governments elsewhere.

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Allahu Akbar, Praise the Lord, Hear O Israel

Allahu Akbar, Praise the Lord and Hear O Israel can elicit the best of sentiments, but also something else.

A YouTube segment from CNN shows radical Muslims, native born Americans, including one who converted from Judaism, praising Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, calling for Osama bin Laden to continue his holy war, and urging the destruction of Israel.

My link to the item came from an American who wrote, "The Revolutionary Muslim Brothers in our midst protected by the legal rights given to them by OUR COUNTRY, the country they detest so much... slowly but surely we are becoming the United States of Arabia! WATCH and WAKE UP!"

Another wrote that "Nidal Malik Hasan is [a] ... medical doctor [who] assert[s] the ... Palestinian Arab-specific version of the Hippocratic oath: do harm."
 
Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, MD, is a religious Muslim and American-born son of immigrants from Palestine. He prays daily, may have authored e-mails praising suicide bombers, and was heard saying Allahu Akbar while killing people at Fort Hood.

All this is food for thought. But we should also remember the religious Jews Baruch Goldstein, Yigal Amir, and Yaacov Teitel. Goldstein was a physician and IDF reservist who killed 29 Muslims at prayer in 1994; Amir killed Yitzhak Rabin; Teitel is accused of murder and other violence against Jewish leftists, Palestinians and homosexuals. All found justification for their actions in religious doctrine.
 
Lest Christians feel themselves secure from deadly religiosity, they should remember those believers who expressed their faith by killing abortionists.
 
And there has been no shortage of rage among individuals not affiliated with religion, shown by notable cases in post offices, McDonalds resteraunts and high schools. The same issue of The New York Times that carried stories about Fort Hood included a headline about a dismissed employee in Florida who returned to his workplace, killed one and wounded six.

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On the value of realism

What does the future hold?

Who knows? In Jewish tradition, Malachi was the last prophet, i.e., the last person to hear the word of God. He died  2,500 years ago. All else is speculation, whether colored by ideology, what the speculator would like to happen, or what is thought to be inevitable.

There are many who think that unless Israel shows more flexibility, its future will be nasty, brutal and short. It is likely that the Arabs will continue to multiply. Soon, if not already, they will be a majority between the Jordan and the Mediterranean. Their power will increase in international forums, not only because of numbers and oil, but because American and European governments will tire of Israel's stubbornness.

The settlements, in particular, are a problem. They must go, or at least be frozen, to satisfy the current demands of the Palestinians. Insofar as the Palestinian prime minister has said there will be state in two years, Israel must work hard to salvage what it can.

Dream on, those of you who forget, or who would not like to reckon with the element of power in international politics.

The Palestinians and their friends, including Americans and Europeans, have lost the Israeli Left. Meretz and Labor declined to their lowest polls ever in the previous election. Since then, the Labor leadership has coalesced with right-of-center Likud.

The Israeli government, and the dominant Jewish population, hold the keys to Israel's future. The country has a preponderance of military power in the area of conflict. It inflicted severe damage on Lebanon and Gaza in the most recent conflicts, and destroyed Syria's nuclear facility without a response. Greater powers have shown no signs of imposing their will.

Things do change, but no one knows the future. In the absence of certain knowledge, it is wise to assume that present realities will continue. Dreamers and ideologues may be right, but theirs is a risky bet.

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Has Obama done more harm than good - and does it matter?

This post is about some little details of international politics. For our understanding of the current situation we must rely on the media, which does not always get things right. And in any case, the media does not provide the nuances of private conversations, body language meant to decrease or increase the impact of what is said. Perhaps one can rely on the media's portrayal of events, without assuming that it is the whole truth.

The story begins with the Obama administration's efforts to jump-start a peace process between Israel and Palestine. Among the demands made of Israel, both by Secretary of State Clinton and Special Envoy Mitchell, was a total freeze on construction in settlements over the 1967 borders, including the new neighborhoods of Jerusalem.
 
There followed a series of meetings between Israelis and Americans, and turmoil within Israel. What emerged was an offer by Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu's government to freeze new construction for several months, not including Jerusalem, housing units already authorized or under construction, or public facilities in settlement areas.
 
Currently it seems the Americans recognize that this is the most they can get from Israel, and Clinton is saying that the US never demanded a total freeze as a precondition to negotiation.
 
Maybe yes, maybe no. We should not expect individuals with the kind of ego that goes with high office to admit failure.
 
Now Secretary Clinton is saying that the prime minister has offered a landmark concession.
 
But the Palestinians stopped listening at "full settlement freeze."

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Why the stalemate?

Headline in Friday's Ha'aretz:  "Abu Mazen [Mahmoud Abbas] is losing hope: 'I sense that Netanyahu has not changed since 1996'"
 
A headline on an inside page in the same edition: "Paralysis at the summit of coordination between the government and the territories." That story goes on to say that things are not happening in the policy to advance "economic peace" on account of the failure of Israeli government to make appointments to key positions in the program.
 
Elsewhere in the news we hear that negotiations about freeing Gilad Schalit are moving at the speed of a crippled snail. International donors are complaining that Gazans are still living amid the rubble because Israel will not open the borders to the supplies and equipment that their contributions will provide.
 
Let me offer explanations for these disparate items, summed up in some pithy epigrams:

• There is no free lunch in international relations
• You screw us, we'll screw you
• "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" may be a spiritual ideal, but the more popular norm in international politics is the simpler "Do unto others."

Israel can live well enough without solving the problem of Palestine. The Palestinians may pride themselves in their willingness to die for their national cause, but they have committed national suicide. There will be no Palestinian state as long as key factions persist with the dreams of turning back the clock to 1967, to 1947, or to the mid-19th century before Jews began coming to this area.
 
I perceive that Netanyahu has changed since 1996. He appears to be wiser, and more skilled in expressing what he demands as conditions for moving forward with a peace process.
 
Abu Mazen's problem is that he has not changed. From the information available to the public, I see no signs of flexibility in his position. No matter what Israel has offered, it is not enough.

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You want moderation? Not here

Muslim and Jewish religious leaders are competing to heat up their followers in defense of incompatible rights to the Temple Mount/Haram e-Sharif. And Ha'aretz is marking the 14th anniversary of Yitzhak Rabin's assassination with a front page story revealing that his late widow, Leah, said that Binyamin Netanyahu was corrupt.
 
Should we comment first on the madness of religion, or the madness of journalism?
 
On religion and the Temple Mount/Haram e-Sharif, one can go on forever parsing the history and the rights of Jews and Muslims. Did Moshe Dayan make a fatal mistake in 1967 when he ordered that the flag of Israel be removed from the Dome of the Rock and turned over the management of the whole site to Muslim religious authorities? Did that contribute to peace, or did it contribute to Muslim insistence on a monopoly of their rights and their denial of a historic Jewish presence, and provoke Jews to demand the right to pray on the Mount, erect a synagogue, or start construction of the Third Temple, which might entail the removal of Muslim holy sites?
 
The controversy is fascinating for its historical and political elements, but Jerusalemites content to live without solving religious mysteries are left with the effects of simmering conflict. Currently we are in the midst of what may be an escalation that, at the least, will tie up traffic in the area of the Old City.

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