Fly-Over Country

No one could have predicted it . . .

In a development that should surprise no one, Israel's war in Gaza is undermining any moderate Palestinian authority:

Israel hoped that the war in Gaza would not only cripple Hamas, but eventually strengthen its secular rival, the Palestinian Authority, and even allow it to claw its way back into Gaza.

But with each day, the authority, its leader, Mahmoud Abbas, and its leading party, Fatah, seem increasingly beleaguered and marginalized, even in the Palestinian cities of the West Bank, which they control. Protesters accuse Mr. Abbas of not doing enough to stop the carnage in Gaza — indeed, his own police officers have used clubs and tear gas against those same protesters.

The more bombs in Gaza, the more Hamas’s support seems to be growing at the expense of the Palestinian Authority, already considered corrupt and distant from average Palestinians.

As noted in the report, even though some Palestinians are indeed angry with Hamas, that anger pales in comparison to their rage against Israel and their contempt for Fatah.  Israel's war in Gaza will produce an even more polarized and divided Palestinian population, encourage an even more militant Hamas, and discredit the moderate factions that are amenable to persuasion.  Oh, and in the process, our support for this massive retaliation will make even more Middle Easterners hate us even more.  So much for "the birth pangs of a new Middle East".

He can't diss our President like that. Only we can diss our President like that.

Unless AFP is just making this up, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert needs to be reminded which is the dog and which is the tail:

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was left shame-faced after President George W. Bush ordered her to abstain in a key UN vote on the war, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Monday.

"She was left shamed. A resolution that she prepared and arranged, and in the end she did not vote in favour," Olmert said in a speech in the southern town of Ashkelon.

The UN Security Council passed a resolution last Thursday calling for an immediate ceasefire in the three-week-old conflict in the Gaza Strip and an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza where hundreds have been killed.

Fourteen of the council's 15 members voted in favour of the resolution, which was later rejected by both Israel and Hamas.

The United States, Israel's main ally, had initially been expected to voted in line with the other 14 but Rice later became the sole abstention.

"In the night between Thursday and Friday, when the wanted to lead the vote on a ceasefire at the Security Council, we did not want her to vote in favour," Olmert said.

"I said 'get me President Bush on the phone'. They said he was in the middle of giving a speech in Philadelphia. I said I didn't care. 'I need to talk to him now'. He got off the podium and spoke to me."I told him the United States could not vote in favour. It cannot vote in favour of such a resolution. He immediately called the secretary of state and told her not to vote in favour."

This is remarkable.  Not only did Olmert publicly humiliate the American Secretary of State, he announced that he controls the American President like a puppet -- he peremptorily jerked Bush right off the stage, and Bush obediently changed Rice's vote.  It's bad enough that this may be true, but it's intolerable that Olmert would publicly say so.  When did we become Israel's poodle?

All tactics, no strategy

As the war in Gaza grinds on, even Israel's friends are growing alarmed at the apparent lack of any strategic direction.  Israeli officials announce tactical successes (targets hit, Hamas fighters killed, etc.), but no one has plausibly explained what Israel's strategic objectives may be or how this campaign will advance those goals.  For example, here is Marc Lynch's dismayed reaction to a session with Sallai Meridor, Israel's ambassador to the United States:

Asked three times by audience members, Meridor simply could not offer any plausible explanation as to how its military campaign in Gaza would achieve its stated goals. Indeed, he at times seemed to offer this absence of strategy as a virtue, as evidence that the war had been forced upon Israel rather than chosen: "we have no grand political scheme... we were forced to defend ourselves to provide better security, period."

. . . After he failed to respond to an initial question about the end-state Israel hoped to achieve, I asked him directly about his government's strategic logic. How, precisely did Israel's government expect its military campaign to achieve its goals? His answer tellingly focused almost exclusively on body counts and targets hit: over 1000 Hamas targets hit ("not a small number"), many headquarters and tunnels and rocket production facilities destroyed. Tactics over strategy.

But as to a political strategy tied to the military campaign, nothing. No guidance as to whether Israel would re-occupy Gaza, or on what terms it would accept a cease-fire. No thoughts as to whether the campaign would cause Hamas to fall from power or help the Palestinian Authority regain political power. An absolute refusal to entertain a question about the negative effects of the images from Gaza on the wider region (the important image of the war, he nearly spat, should be that "terror is not allowed to win"). Would the military assault at least change Hamas's strategic calculus? "This is for the future, only the future will tell."

In short, Meridor quite literally offered no strategy beyond hitting Gaza hard and hoping for the best. "In terms of creating damage we are certainly on the right path," noted the Ambassador. Few would disagree with that assessment, at least. But some might hope that the bloody, battered path might actually be leading somewhere.

Israel's rudderless campaign has evoked this scathing denunciation from the typically mild-mannered Anthony Cordesman:

At least to date, the reporting from within Gaza indicates that each new Israeli air strike or advance on the ground has increased popular support for Hamas and anger against Israel in Gaza. The same is true in the West Bank and the Islamic world. Iran and Hezbollah are capitalizing on the conflict. Anti-American demonstrations over the fighting have taken place in areas as “remote” as Kabul. Even friends of Israel like Turkey see the war as unjust. The Egyptian government comes under greater pressure with every casualty. The US is seen as having done virtually nothing, focusing only on the threat from Hamas, and the President elect is getting as much blame as the President who still serves.

. . . This raises a question that every Israeli and its supporters now needs to ask. What is the strategic purpose behind the present fighting? After two weeks of combat Olmert, Livni, and Barak have still not said a word that indicates that Israel will gain strategic or grand strategic benefits, or tactical benefits much larger than the gains it made from selectively striking key Hamas facilities early in the war. In fact, their silence raises haunting questions about whether they will repeat the same massive failures made  by Israel’s top political leadership during the Israeli-Hezbollah War in 2006. Has Israel somehow blundered into a steadily escalating war without a clear strategic goal or at least one it can credibly achieve? Will Israel end in empowering an enemy in political terms that it defeated in tactical terms? Will Israel’s actions seriously damage the US position in the region, any hope of peace, as well as moderate Arab regimes and voices in the process?

To be blunt, the answer so far seems to be yes. To paraphrase a comment about the British government’s management of the British Army in World War I, lions seem to be led by donkeys. If Israel has a credible ceasefire plan that could really secure Gaza, it is not apparent. If Israel has a plan that could credibly destroy and replace Hamas, it is not apparent. If Israel has any plan to help the Gazans and move them back towards peace, it is not apparent. If Israel has any plan to use US or other friendly influence productively, it not apparent. 

As we have seen all too clearly from US mistakes, any leader can take a tough stand and claim that tactical gains are a meaningful victory. If this is all that Olmert, Livni, and Barak have for an answer, then they have disgraced themselves and damaged their country and their friends. If there is more, it is time to make such goals public and demonstrate how they can be achieved. The question is not whether the IDF learned the tactical lessons of the fighting in 2006. It is whether Israel's top political leadership has even minimal competence to lead them.

Our unquestioning support for Israel's counter-productive harms us and Israel.  If we were a real friend we'd step in to rescue Israel from this folly.  Indeed, with the Israeli elections coming up in February, it may be politically impossible for the Israeli government to propose or even accept a ceasefire.  If so, an imposed ceasefire may be exactly what the Israeli government needs.  But whatever the Olmert government thinks it needs or wants, it's in our interest to stop the bleeding.  Unfortunately, while Barack Obama says we can only have one President at a time, that's one more President than we seem to have right now.

As of this posting, we'll have nine more days with a dead hand on the wheel.  And the wreckage is still piling up.

The angry brown people aren't all the same

I've frequently complained about the tendency in this country to view everyone in the Middle East as one undifferentiated mass of angry brown people.  Among many other things, this causes us to confuse groups like Hamas (Israel's enemy) with groups like al Qaeda (our enemy).  Posting at his new Foreign Policy digs, Marc Lynch explains why the current violence is a win-win scenario for al Qaeda, then offers this helpful discussion on the distinctions between Hamas and al Qaeda, which are, in fact, bitter enemies:

The Muslim Brotherhood, from whence Hamas evolved twenty years ago, is no friend of the United States or Israel but is nevertheless one of al-Qaeda's fiercest rivals. Zawahiri himself penned one of the most famous anti-Brotherhood tracts, Bitter Harvest. Over the last few years, the doctrinal and political conflict between the Brotherhood and al-Qaeda's salafi-jihadism has become one of the most active fault-lines in Islamist politics. As ‘Abu Qandahar’ wrote on al-Qaeda's key al-Ekhlaas forum in October 2007, the "Islamic world is divided between two projects, jihad and Ikhwan [Brotherhood]."

Hamas enjoys a special place in al-Qaeda's enemies list. Al-Qaeda has long been desperate for a foothold in Palestine, but has been largely kept out because Hamas has the place locked. Jihadist forums bear a deep grudge over Hamas's crackdown on various jihadist groups which have tried to set up shop there (Jaysh al-Islam, et al). In March 2006, Zawahiri denounced Hamas's electoral victory and called on them to reject the democratic trap and pursue armed struggle. In February 2007 he attacked the Mecca Agreement between Fatah and Hamas, and in March declared that Hamas had "surrendered most of Palestine to the Jews, sold the Palestinian issue, and sold shari'a in order to retain leadership of the Palestinian government." In June 2007 he called on Hamas to "correct your path." Just last week, the leading Jordanian jihadist theoretician Abu Mohammed al-Maqdisi (thanks to Will McCants) complained that "Hamas is misleading Muslims with its glittering slogans, which blind people to their wayward goals and strategies, leading them down the path of criminals... [and] Hamas started the bloodshed in Gaza several weeks ago when it killed members of the Army of Islam organization."

From al-Qaeda's perspective, therefore, Israel's assault on Gaza is an unmitigated blessing. The images flooding the Arab and world media have already discredited moderates, fueled outrage, and pushed the center of political gravity towards more hard-line and radical positions. As in past crises, Islamists of all stripes are outbidding each other, competing to "lead" the popular outrage, while "moderates" are silent or jumping on the bandwagon. Governments are under pressure, most people are glued to al-Jazeera's coverage (and, from what anyone can tell, ignoring stations that don't offer similar coverage), the internet is flooded with horrifying images, and people are angry and mobilized against Israel, the United States, and their own governments. That's the kind of world al-Qaeda likes to see. 

Even if Hamas emerges weakened, as Israeli strategists hope, all the better (from al-Qaeda's point of view, that is). In general, where the MB is strong (Egypt, Jordan, and Palestine for example), AQ has had a hard time finding a point of entry despite serious efforts to do so, while where the MB is weak (Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Lebanon) it has had more success. Up to now, AQ-minded groups have had little success in penetrating Gaza, because Hamas had it locked. Now they clearly have high hopes of finding an entree with a radicalized, devastated population and a weakened Hamas.

Al-Qaeda likely can not thank Israel enough for its efforts over the last two weeks. Over the last few years, al-Qaeda has been losing ground with the mainstream Muslim public -- because of its real radicalism and fringe ideology, its killing of so many Muslim innocents in its attacks in Muslim countries, challenges from other Islamist groups and from within its own ranks, an increasingly effective strategic communications campaign by Western and Arab governments, and more. Israel's military assault against Gaza threatens to reverse that trend.

As I've argued before, Israel's actions conflict with our interests, but no one seems to know or care about that.  This massive retaliation in Gaza won't accomplish anything more than Israel's 2006 retaliation in Lebanon, but it helps our enemies and undermines our safety and our security.  That can't be answered with platitudes about Israel's right of self-defense.

How terrorists are made

I posted below on the failure of our domestic political debate to consider our own national interests in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.  Right on cue, Juan Cole sharpens the point:

In 1996, Israeli jets bombed a UN building where civilians had taken refuge at Cana/ Qana in south Lebanon, killing 102 persons; in the place where Jesus is said to have made water into wine, Israeli bombs wrought a different sort of transformation. In the distant, picturesque port of Hamburg, a young graduate student studying traditional architecture of Aleppo saw footage like this on the news [graphic]. He was consumed with anguish and the desire for revenge. He immediately wrote out a martyrdom will, pledging to die avenging the innocent victims, killed with airplanes and bombs that were a free gift from the United States. His name was Muhammad Atta. Five years later he piloted American Airlines 11 into the World Trade Center. 

On Tuesday, the Israeli military shelled a United Nations school to which terrified Gazans had fled for refuge, killing at least 42 persons and wounding 55, virtually all of them civilians, and many of them children. The Palestinian death toll rose to 660. The Israelis say they took fire from one of the schools. Was it tank fire?

You wonder if someone somewhere is writing out a will today.

. . . Michael Scheuer, who headed the CIA Bin Laden desk for some years and knows something about radical fundamentalism, concludes, "What is likely to become known across the Islamic world as the "Gaza slaughter" will ensure the continued growth of the Sunni insurgency al-Qaeda leads and inspires."

And as though on cue, Ayman al-Zawahiri came out with a video Tuesday, saying, ""We will never stop until we avenge the death of all who are killed, injured, widowed and orphaned in Palestine and throughout the Islamic world . . ." He then attacked Barack Obama, saying "These air strikes are a gift from Obama before he takes office, and from Hosni Mubarak, the traitor who is the primary partner in your siege and murder." 

Cole's point about Atta is particularly important.  As Lawrence Wright describes in The Looming Tower, Osama bin Laden had refused to authorize what became the 9/11 attacks because al Qaeda lacked someone who was both (1) willing to engage in an act of suicidal terror and (2) sufficiently Westernized that he could move without arousing suspicion inside the United States.  That key person, without whom 9/11 wouldn't have been possible, was Muhammad Atta.

So, as Cole asks, whom do you suppose is watching videos like this or this and deciding to become the next Muhammad Atta?

The Israeli tail wags the American dog

Our domestic political debate over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict focuses entirely on the morality and the justice of Israel's retaliation, without any consideration of our own interests in this conflict.  Indeed, the debaters seem incapable of comprehending that we could have any interests that diverged from Israel's.  Israel is entitled to defend itself, people say, and we must support whatever actions Israel deems necessary.  This baffles me.

After all, we're hardly a neutral observer.  Those are American bombs Israelis are dropping from American planes, and those are American vetoes that keep the UN from ordering a ceasefire.  Anyone in the world who is outraged by Israel's actions is outraged against us -- and that connection to us is entirely justified.  We are paying a very real price for Israel's actions, and we ought to be asking what it is we're buying.  But no one does.

Our affinity to Israel is blinding us to our own interests and warping our policies.  This perfectly illustrates the wisdom of George Washington's warning in his 1796 Farewell Address:

[N]othing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest. Antipathy in one nation against another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable, when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur. Hence, frequent collisions, obstinate, envenomed, and bloody contests. The nation, prompted by ill-will and resentment, sometimes impels to war the government, contrary to the best calculations of policy. The government sometimes participates in the national propensity, and adopts through passion what reason would reject; at other times it makes the animosity of the nation subservient to projects of hostility instigated by pride, ambition, and other sinister and pernicious motives. The peace often, sometimes perhaps the liberty, of nations, has been the victim.

So likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained, and by exciting jealousy, ill-will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld. And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation), facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity; gilding, with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation.

Nations have no permanent friends and no permanent enemies. They have only permanent interests. Insofar as Israel is concerned, we've completely lost sight of this. Israel is indeed our ally, but that doesn't mean that the Israeli tail should wag the American dog.

The distortion of our own perspective is perhaps best exemplified by the reaction of the Weekly Standard's Michael Goldfarb to this report:

An Israeli warplane dropped a 2,000-pound bomb on the home of one of Hamas' top five decision-makers Thursday, instantly killing him and 18 others, while the Israeli army said troops massed on the Gaza border were ready for any order to invade. The airstrike on Nizar Rayan was the first that succeeded in killing a member of Hamas' highest echelon since Israel began its offensive Saturday. The 49-year-old professor of Islamic law was known for personally participating in clashes with Israeli forces and for sending one of his sons on a 2001 suicide mission that killed two Israelis....

Eighteen other people, including all four of Rayan's wives and nine of his 12 children, also were killed, Palestinian health officials said. A man cradled the burned, limp body of a child he pulled from the rubble.

Instead of lamenting the innocent lives lost or pondering whether this "collateral damage" was appropriate, Goldfarb saw a silver lining:

The fight against Islamic radicals always seems to come around to whether or not they can, in fact, be deterred, because it's not clear that they are rational, at least not like us. But to wipe out a man's entire family, it's hard to imagine that doesn't give his colleagues at least a moment's pause. Perhaps it will make the leadership of Hamas rethink the wisdom of sparking an open confrontation with Israel under the current conditions.

From Goldfarb's perspective, the deaths of innocent women and children wasn't a bug, it was a feature.  Perhaps other radicals will be deterred if they know we'll kill their families.  Glenn Greenwald calls this what it is:

There are few concepts more elastic and subject to exploitation than "Terrorism," the all-purpose justifying and fear-mongering term.  But if it means anything, it means exactly the mindset which Goldfarb is expressing:  slaughtering innocent civilians in order to "send a message," to "deter" political actors by making them fear that continuing on the same course will result in the deaths of civilians and -- best of all, from the Terrorist's perspective -- even their own children and other family members.

To the Terrorist, by definition, that innocent civilians and even children are killed isn't a regrettable cost of taking military action.  It's not a cost at all.  It's a benefit.   It has strategic value.  Goldfarb explicitly says this:  "to wipe out a man's entire family, it's hard to imagine that doesn't give his colleagues at least a moment's pause." 

That, of course, is the very same logic that leads Hamas to send suicide bombers to slaughter Israeli teenagers in pizza parlors and on buses and to shoot rockets into their homes.  It's the logic that leads Al Qaeda to fly civilian-filled airplanes into civilian-filled office buildings.  And it's the logic that leads infinitely weak and deranged people like Goldfarb and Peretz to find value in the killing of innocent Palestinians, including -- one might say, at least in Goldfarb's case:  especially -- children.

To bring this back around to where I started, Greenwald quotes George Orwell, whose views on nationalism echo Washington's admonitions:

All nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts. A British Tory will defend self-determination in Europe and oppose it in India with no feeling of inconsistency. Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage — torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians — which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by ‘our’ side ... The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.

Goldfarb doesn't represent all or even most of those who unquestioningly support whatever actions Israel deems necessary in its self defense.  One can reluctantly conclude that civilian casualties are a necessary evil without cheerleading for them as Goldfarb does.  But Goldfarb perfectly exemplifies the consequences of our infatuation with Israel.  We wouldn't remotely condone Israel's massive retaliation if it were being undertaken by anyone else.  (Or, perhaps, in a darker vein, we wouldn't condone it if it were directed against anyone other than angry brown people.)  We see only the justice of Israel's grievances, and we empathize only with the Israeli victims of Hamas's attacks.  As Greenwald puts it:

More to the point:  for those who insist that others put themselves in the position of a resident of Sderot -- as though that will, by itself, prove the justifiability of the Israeli attack -- the idea literally never occurs to them that they ought to imagine what it's like to live under foreign occupation for 4 decades (and, despite the 2005 "withdrawal from Gaza," Israel continues to occupy and expand its settlements on Palestinian land and to control and severely restrict many key aspects of Gazan life).  No thought is given to what it is like, what emotions it generates, what horrible acts start to appear justifiable, when you have a hostile foreign army control your borders and airspace and internal affairs for 40 years, one which builds walls around you, imposes the most intensely humiliating conditions on your daily life, blockades your land so that you're barred from exiting and prevented from accessing basic nutrition and medical needs for your children to the point where a substantial portion of the underage population suffers from stunted growth. 

When it comes to Israel, we're unbalanced and irrational.  This is harmful both to Israel and to ourselves.

Catastrophic success in Gaza?

As Matt Yglesias notes, the rise of Hamas resulted in large part from Israel's determined efforts to undermine Fatah, hoping that a more accommodating partner might emerge in its place.  The alternative to Fatah, it unfortunately turned out, was the more radical Hamas faction.  Now Israel is trying to destroy Hamas, hoping it can get back to business with Fatah.  At worst, many presume, Israel will fail to destroy Hamas, and a somewhat more entrenched Hamas may emerge from the battle, like a more powerful Hezbollah emerged from Israel's 2006 assault in Lebanon.  Matt Duss explains that this presumption is baseless.  The real worst case scenario is that, just as the more radical Hamas emerged when Fatah was weakened, something worse than Hamas could emerge if Hamas is weakened:

A number of writers have noted the possibility of Hamas being politically strengthened by Israel’s bombing of Gaza, just as  Hezbollah were strengthened by Israel’s 2006 bombing of Lebanon. This would obviously be a bad outcome, but it’s important to understand that it would not be the worst. A much worse outcome would be that the bombings weaken Hamas while strengthening Salafist elements in Gaza, who consider Hamas a bunch of timid, half-stepping sellouts.

Salafism is a strict, puritanical interpretation of Islam, of which Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda are extreme exponents. One of the many tragic consequences of the Iraq war is that, not only did it contribute to  the rising popularity of this radical doctrine in the Middle East, it provided an environment for radicalized Muslims to come and train alongside their radical brethren in the latest guerrilla tactics against the world’s best military. They took very seriously President Bush’s invitation to “bring it on,” managing to turn Iraq into a killing field for several years before their Iraqi allies turned against them.

Many of these fighters are now filtering back into the region, bringing their hardened ideology and training with them. Michael Scheuer, the CIA’s former point man on bin Laden, has been examining  the penetration of the Levant by extremist factionsfacilitated by the war in Iraq. Scheuer recently reported that “the bleed-through from Iraq also is having some impact in the Palestinian territories — especially Gaza — and in Israel.”

. . . Scheuer quoted Jordanian writer Urayb al-Rintawi’s warning that “those who blockaded Gaza to take revenge on Hamas and champion Fatah could one not-too-distant day see that their reprehensible deed has only led to bring [in] al-Qaeda and draw [in] fundamentalist organizations that are more extreme than both the hawks of Hamas and the militants of Islamic jihad.”

In July, Der Speigel ran a story on the competition between Hamas and Salafist elements in Gaza:

Abu Mustafa says, he and his comrades in arms realize they need to be patient. There’s a long way to go before they can begin their struggle for global influence. First, they have to take care of an enemy closer to home: Hamas.

So far, Hamas has done what it can to keep the Salafis under control. They know the ultra-radicals are just waiting to take over Hamas’ position of leadership. “They are traitors,” Abu Mustafa says of Hamas. “Compared to us, they are Islamism lite.” […]

The group’s greatest sin, says Abu Mustafa… is its effort to bring Islam and democracy together. “Hamas represents an American style of Islam. They have tried to curry favor.” Which is not such a bad thing for Abu Mustafa and his Salafis. “Hamas is like a block of ice in the sun,” he says. “Every minute they get smaller — and we get larger.”

. . . Since 9/11, neoconservatives and other supporters of a “war on terror” have tried to conflate Israel’s war with the Palestinians with America’s war with Al Qaeda, playing upon Americans’ fear and trauma to obscure the very different issues that in fact motivate the Israel-Palestine conflict. But just as an Iraq invasion premised in part on the myth of an Iraq-Al Qaeda connection resulted in a foothold for Al Qaeda in Iraq, so a U.S.-Israel policy that admits essentially no difference between Hamas and Al Qaeda — and that continues to blindly support attempts to crush extremism without addressing the conditions that drive extremism — could very likely do the same for Al Qaeda in Palestine.

Note that the Salafist alternative to Hamas isn't merely more radical than Hamas, it has a very different goal and a very different set of enemies.  The Salafists don't just want Israel out of what once was Palestine, they want to restore the Caliphate, and just as Salafist al Qaeda considers us its enemy, so do the Salafists in Gaza.  If it succeeded, Israel's attempt to destroy Hamas could very well give birth to a brand new Palestinian al Qaeda.  Our unquestioning support for Israel's effort to destroy Hamas may therefore be repaid with a brand new terrorist movement aimed at us.

Our policies -- or at least our current policy-makers -- treat all the angry brown people as though they were one and the same.  Our failure to distinguish among Islamist groups with different goals and different enemies is helping to empower the most radical elements within the Middle East.  That's worth thinking about the next time you hear someone pounding the table about how evil Hamas is.

New books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

In "How Not to Make Peace in the Middle East", Hussein Agha and Robert Malley review books by Aaron David Miller, Daniel C. Kurtzer, Scott B. Lasensky, and Martin Indyk, all of whom have intimate personal knowledge of American policy in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  All three books "offer sharp, at times unyielding critiques of the last two presidents" as they "tell broadly similar tales of an America that, naive, overzealous, or both, lost itself in the Middle East maze, was repeatedly outfoxed by those it sought to influence, and time and again fell short of its objectives."

The authors have nothing good to say about George Bush:

For all three authors, George W. Bush provides a straightforward and relatively uncontroversial target. We are left with the portrait of a man—and an administration—who were uninterested in the peace process, inattentive to the impact of their policies, uninformed about reality, incapable of follow-through, and utterly unembarrassed by it all. Ideologically, the new Bush team was inclined to downgrade the importance of the Arab–Israeli conflict; politically it was inclined to do the exact opposite of what Clinton had done. "There's no Nobel Peace Prize to be had here," Indyk quotes Bush as saying early in his tenure.

Agha and Malley take issue, however, with the authors' assertion that the Bush administration has been "disengaged":

It is a curious charge, at once too mild and off-target. It suggests a passive, flaccid, laissez-faire attitude that could hardly be further from the historical truth and that would have been far preferable to it. Bush's policies did not reflect disengagement; they were the outcome of a uniquely ambitious, often brutal, and always intensely engaged effort to reshape the Middle East. At its core, Bush's Middle East strategy was as intrusive and interventionist as one could imagine.

Almost from the outset, the administration clumsily intervened in Palestinian politics, helped rewrite the Palestinian Basic Law, proclaimed Arafat a pariah, anointed its own favorite substitute leaders, insisted on Palestinian internal reform as a precondition for peace, took positions on a final agreement in a 2004 letter from Bush to then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that tilted the playing field, encouraged confrontation between the nationalist Fatah and Islamist Hamas, imposed sanctions on Syria, and discouraged the resumption of Israeli–Syrian talks. Throughout, the Bush administration misread local dynamics, ignored the toxicity of its embrace, overestimated the influence of money and military assistance, and neglected the impact of conviction, loyalty, and faith.

On the dubious premise that talking to an enemy is a reward, the administration cut itself off from, and left itself with little leverage over, the region's more dynamic actors, whether Islamist organizations, Syria, or Iran. It propped up local Palestinian and Lebanese allies, who mimic the West's language, depend upon the US for resources and support, yet lack an effective domestic base. In short, it helped them in ways that hurt. How much more the US could have achieved by doing much less.

The criticism of Bill Clinton is much more muted:

For all its positive qualities, the books argue, the Clinton approach was excessively undisciplined; it privileged process to the detriment of substance, and too often failed to hold parties accountable. Indyk argues that as Clinton's presidency came to a close, he projected his timetable on Israelis and Palestinians who lacked his sense of urgency. He assumed they were driven by the sort of American pragmatism for which they had little appetite. Kurtzer and Miller complain that the US kept potential Arab and European allies at arm's length and sought to resolve the conflict step by step rather than aim for a final resolution. They also regret the insularity of an American peace team whose insufficient balance and diversity led it to see things, according to Miller, "mainly from an Israeli perspective." Mostly, they fault the Clinton administration for lacking a coherent strategy that would have enabled it to promote its own ideas rather than be subject to the parties' will and whims.

The authors decisively refute the conventional wisdom that the Palestinians were solely responsible for failure of the 2000 Camp David talks:

They castigate Arafat and the Palestinians for excessive passivity and an inability or unwillingness to seize the moment. But they do not stop there. Miller, who attended the summit, contradicts the accepted view with a detailed account demonstrating that each party bears heavy responsibility. Barak eroded the Palestinians' confidence during the months preceding the summit by renegotiating past agreements and reneging on promises. The Israeli proposals at Camp David, says Shlomo Ben-Ami, Israel's foreign minister at the time, "fell far short of even modest Palestinian expectations." The Americans had "no sustained strategy," did not put a negotiating text on the table, and caved in when faced with the parties' objections. They did not consult with other Arab countries and, in deciding to blame Arafat at Barak's request, betrayed a prior commitment not to do so and also jeopardized hopes for a peaceful aftermath of the conference.

Likewise, Kurtzer and Lasensky describe the US as "unprepared," lacking its own positions on fundamental issues, and, eager to embrace "Barak's priorities...but also Barak's tactics," ultimately "ced[ing] effective control over US policy to the Israelis." Even Indyk, the harshest of the three toward Arafat, disputes the conventional wisdom. "Camp David," he writes, "was hardly a good laboratory" for Barak's proposition that the Palestinian leader was unwilling to reach a historic deal, because no Arab statesman could have accepted what had been presented.

Agha and Malley praise the authors' suggestions for future US policy, but warn that

these ideas, ignored when they were ripe, may now be on the verge of being accepted just as they are becoming obsolete. That is because so much of what the peace process relied upon has been transfigured. It was premised on the existence of two reasonably cohesive entities, Israeli and Palestinian, capable of reaching and implementing historic decisions, a situation that, today, is in serious doubt; continued popular faith and interest in a two-state solution, which is waning; significant US credibility, which is hemorrhaging; and a relatively stable regional landscape, which is undergoing seismic shifts.

In this context, they conclude, the path to peace is even less clear now than it was during the past two administrations -- when we were "frequently bewildered" and "almost perpetually outmaneuvered".  A sober reassessment, Agha and Malley suggest, ought to precede any bold initiatives by the incoming Obama administration:

Amid all this, the question of what ought to be done on the Arab–Israeli front remains unanswered, and that may not be a bad thing. With so much that is novel, and with so much having gone so wrong for so long, basic issues should first be addressed. Among them are the reasons for recurring failures, the effectiveness of US mediation, the wisdom and realism of seeking a comprehensive, across-the-board settlement of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, or even the centrality of that conflict to US interests and the benefits that would accrue to America from its resolution. One also might ponder reasons behind America's chronic ineffectiveness in persuading lesser powers (Arafat, Hamas, Syria, or Hezbollah) to acquiesce in its demands, a pattern that suggests incapacity to identify local political forces, understand their interests, or comprehend their appeal.

As a practical matter, the current situation in Gaza precludes any major peace initiative.  The Israeli action must take its course and something like what passes for normalcy restored before any serious peace initiative would be conceivable.  In the meantime, the Obama administration will have an opportunity to undertake the reassessment Agha and Malley suggest.  We can only hope that the new administration won't be influenced by our ill-informed and one-sided domestic debate on this topic.

Morning Joe

Zbigniew Brzezinski appeared on "Morning Joe" the other day to discuss Israel's attacks in Gaza.  Scarborough disputed Brzezinski's history of the conflict, insisting that he knew as much about it as Brzezinski because he reads the New York Times and Foreign Affairs. Ezra Klein provides this video excerpt in which an exasperated Brzezinski responds, "you know, you have such a stunningly superficial knowledge of what went on that it's almost embarrassing to listen to you." 

This exchange illustrates a useful point about bloviators like Scarborough:

No, Joe, you don't know as much about it as Brzezinski.  The whole point of bringing on someone like Brzezinski is that he possesses expert knowledge of the subject.  So when he tells you that Yasser Arafat didn't just walk away from the deal Ehud Barak offered him, that negotiations continued even after Bill Clinton left office, and that the negotiations didn't fall apart until Ariel Sharon was elected, you don't laugh that off because you claim to read the New York Times and Foreign Affairs.  You're a talk show host, Joe, and not an expert on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  The inability to comprehend this obvious point largely explains why Americans who get their "news" from sources like "Morning Joe" are inevitably misinformed.

As the video demonstrates, however, Scarborough's takeaway isn't, "Boy I really need to rethink my ill-considered views on this subject."  Instead it's, "Don't try to tell me anything, Mr. Smarty-Pants, because my opinion is just as good as yours."  Well, no it isn't, Joe.  You're a chucklehead who can't see when he's out of his depth.

The argument that Israel must do "something"

As I read the commentary on Israel's retaliation in Gaza, defenders commonly make the argument that Israel must do something.  The syllogism looks like this:

(1) Israel must do something in response to the indiscriminate rocket fire from Gaza.
(2) Massive retaliation in Gaza is something.
(3) Therefore massive retaliation in Gaza is a good idea.

This is an obvious fallacy: it would be better to do nothing than to do something stupid and counterproductive that makes things worse.  For example:

(1) I must do something to get the TV working before the Super Bowl comes on.
(2) Hitting the TV with a hammer is something.
(3) Therefore hitting the TV with a hammer is a good idea.

We know this is wrong because we immediately understand that hitting the TV with a hammer will make things worse.  "Well, no, obviously you shouldn't do that," we'd say.  "You should do something sensible like call a technician or get a new TV, because that might actually work.  Your hitting-the-TV-with-a-hammer policy is just stupid."  And, of course, this is exactly right.

The form of the must-do-something argument is designed to obscure this problem.  Those who disagree with the chosen do-something policy are attacked as weak or naive.  "Oh, sure, I suppose you think Israel should just do nothing.  Obviously you don't live in the real world where indiscriminate rocket fire from Gaza is a really bad thing about which something must be done."  "But, but, but this massive retaliation will only make things worse," you might protest, and your desire for a reality-based policy only reinforces the view that you don't understand that this situation is so serious that we have to take Otter's advice from Animal House":

"We gotta take these bastards. Now we could do it with conventional weapons that could take years and cost millions of lives. No, I think we have to go all out. I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody's part."

Happily, Ezra Klein offers an excellent summary of what Israel really needs to do:

The common defense of the Israeli attacks seems to be that they "needed" to do something in response to Hamas's provocations. A legitimate government cannot allow its people to be fired upon. But this is an odd justification indeed. They didn't "need" to do anything. Not if the only options were making the situation worse. And this will make the situation worse. Hamas is an entity that feeds off of Palestinian hatred towards Israel. Can anyone seriously claim that Israel's attacks will not amplify Palestinian anger? Will they not be strengthened by pan-Arab, and even international, solidarity? As Spencer Ackerman writes, "Israel is acting astrategically to Hamas's provocations, isolating itself even further internationally, and driving the Palestinians of Gaza -- and, who knows, maybe the West Bank -- into the hands of Hamas, all in the service of unachievable military objectives and delivering unconscionable collective punishment to Palestine."

Indeed, I've actually not yet heard a compelling defense of this on strategic grounds. Hamas engages in asymmetric warfare against Israel. Israel is destroying Hamas's conventional -- which is to say, symmetric -- capacities. They are obliterating Hamas-as-governing-authority and strengthening Hamas-as-popular-terrorist-group. It's mindless. The broader aim seems to mirror that of the blockade: Cause enough pain to the Palestinian citizenry and they will eventually reject Hamas. It's a strategy that has not worked, and will not work. Ask yourself if Abbas is stronger today than he was a year ago.

Which brings us to the final justification: Israel needed to do something, and this is something, so they needed to do this, and thus we should support it. But they didn't need to do this. It was a choice. And in three months, when the retaliatory attack comes, and 87 Israelis perish, then Israel will "need" to do something again. This is why it's called a "cycle of violence." What Israel "needs" to do is break it.

For more along these lines, read Hilzoy's excellent post, "An Eye For An Eye Makes The Whole World Blind".

Deja vu all over again

In response to rocket fire from Gaza, Israel is now engaged in a large scale military response in Gaza:

 "Israel’s military operation in Gaza is aimed primarily at forcing Hamas to end its rocket barrages and military buildup. But it has another goal as well: to expunge the ghost of its flawed 2006 war against Hezbollah in Lebanon and re-establish Israeli deterrence."

But instead of expunging the ghost of Lebanon, this seems very likely to recall it.  As in Lebanon, it's unclear what Israel's actions in Gaza can reasonably be expected to accomplish.  Hamas won't be crushed, and its rockets can easily be resupplied.  Meanwhile, an Israeli occupation of Gaza is unsustainable (that's why Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza in the first place), and as the severity of Israel's reaction increases international pressure will rise.  Ultimately Israel will bring its operation to an end, and as in Lebanon, it's unlikely to have achieved any of its nominal objectives.  Hamas will "win" merely by surviving, and the most extreme elements will be strengthened.  It's delusional to imagine that Israeli arms can restore the power Fatah lost to Hamas in free and fair elections.

Certainly Israel was provoked, and it is undoubtedly entitled to defend itself.  The real issue, however, isn't whether Israel's response is legitimate, but whether it is likely to be productive.  If not, it can't be defended on the grounds that Israel had to do something.   Zvi Barel underscores this point in Haaretz:

According to the government, Israel has full legitimacy to take action against those who threaten its citizens. That is the reason the state was created and no other country would tolerate such attacks on its towns. It's a nice slogan, identical to that of Hamas: Why should Gazan citizens tolerate such a long and severe siege for so long? Can its leadership tolerate a succession of targeted killing against its leaders? And what of the killing of innocent civilians in air strikes? Hamas agreed to a cease-fire to end the violent dialogue. 

It should be remembered that Israel chanted the same slogans when the Second Lebanon War began, from which it came back badly bruised. The optimistic scenario did not materialize then and it is hard to believe it will now in Gaza. The legitimacy of the Lebanon war triumphed just as the war was lost.

So, what to do?  Daniel Levy explains that we should begin by not repeating our 2006 mistakes:

In the summer of 2006 an escalation between Israel and Hezbollah led to a Lebanon war whose echoes still reverberate around the region. There were well over one thousand civilian casualties (1,035 Lebanese according to AP, 43 Israelis), thousands more injured, and other fatalities including the Israeli government which never recovered its poise, what little American credibility remained in the region (Secretary Rice was literally forced to return to Foggy Bottom as allied Arab capitals were too embarrassed to receive her) and much Lebanese infrastructure. That time it took 33 days for diplomacy to move and for a U.N. Security Council Resolution (1701) to deliver an end to fighting. The U.S. actively blocked diplomacy, Rice famously called this conflict “the birth pangs of a new Middle East” – it was no such thing, and the Middle East itself did not know whether to laugh or cry (the latter prevailed). 

Just as in 2006, Israel needs the international community to be its exit strategy - and there is no time to waste. Even what appears as a short-term Israeli success is likely to prove self-defeating over a longer time horizon and that effect will intensify as the fighting continues. Over time, immense pressure will also grow on the PA in Ramallah, on Jordan, Egypt and others to act and their governments will be increasingly uneasy. Demonstrations across the West Bank are calling for a halt to all Israeli-Palestinian talks and for Palestinian unity. 

. . . Both sides will want to land the final big punch and both will need a dignified narrative for home consumption – any ceasefire deal will have to take this into account (and this during an Israeli election campaign, with violence usually helping the right, and the centrist government desperate for an image make-over after that Lebanon 2006 debacle). 
 
The obvious ingredients will have to be creatively re-configured for this to be possible, including ending rocket fire at Israel and removing the blockade on Gaza. New ingredients may also be necessary and while extending the ceasefire to the West Bank is (unfortunately) probably out of the question, it might be possible this time to establish a monitoring mechanism for the ceasefire. Such a mechanism could serve both sides’ interests (Israel gets a more solid guarantee, Hamas gets more recognition). There is a precedent for this – after the April 1996 Israel-Hezbollah conflict a formal Ceasefire Understanding was reached that included the establishment of a Monitoring Group consisting of the U.S., France, Syria, Lebanon, and Israel (with Syria basically acting as guarantor for Hezbollah). That mechanism proved useful and met with constructive IDF cooperation – something similar might be needed now.

In addition efforts need to be revived for achieving Palestinian national reconciliation (which itself could ease the management of the Gaza situation) and for allowing Gaza greater access to the outside world through Egypt via the Rafah border crossing.

But there is a bigger picture – and it is staring at the incoming Obama administration. Today’s events should be ‘exhibit A’ in why the next U.S. Government cannot leave the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to fester or try to ‘manage’ it – as long as it remains unresolved, it has a nasty habit of forcing itself onto the agenda. That can happen on terms dictated to the U.S. by the region (bad) or the U.S. can seek to set its own terms (far preferable). The new administration needs to embark upon a course of forceful regional diplomacy that breaks fundamentally from past efforts. A consensus of sorts is emerging in the U.S. foreign policy establishment that this conflict needs to be resolved – evidenced in the findings of a recent Brookings/Council of Foreign Relations Report or the powerful statements coming from elder statesmen like Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft, themselves building on the findings of the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group. It will require tenacity and bold ideas – in framing the solution, bringing in previously excluded actors, creating mechanisms to implement a deal (such as international forces) and utilizing the Saudi-led Arab Peace Initiative – but the alternative is far worse, its what we see today and it guarantees ongoing instability in a region of paramount importance to the United States.

None of that is as immediately satisfying as air attacks, but unlike the air attacks, it might actually work.