Ali Abunimah: The revolution continues after Mubarak's fall / The Electronic Intifada

This fine piece by Ali Abunimah covers a lot of ground: Potential ramifications of the Egyptian revolution for other Arab countries; what it might mean for Egypt's relationship with Israel; for the Palestinians, and for US standing in the region.

The article is so full of goodlines, that it's hard for me to choose which ones to quote, but here are a few snippets:
A description of the joy erupting in Amman, when people heard the news that Mubarak left office: "The joy on the streets was something I had never experienced before." People, pouring in from all directions (many of them Egyptian laborers) -- "sang, carried each other on their shoulders and played drums..." some of the chants heard: "Long live Egypt!," "The people overthrew the regime!," "Who's next?," "Tomorrow Abbas!"

"...standing in the streets of Amman there was no mistaking that the Egyptian revolution will have a profound impact on the whole region. Arab people everywhere now imagine themselves as Tunisian or Egyptians. And every Arab ruler imagines himself as Ben Ali or Mubarak. "

I'd add that it's really not only Arabs, but that all of us have been deeply impacted. Change suddenly seems possible. I was chatting yesterday with one of my neighbors who isn't even very "political", and he said: "Hey, maybe we can do it here!"...

Racheli Gai.

The revolution continues after Mubarak's fall
Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 12 February 2011

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11799.shtml

Egyptians protest at Tahrir Square on the day Mubarak left office, 11 February. (Matthew Cassel)

Yesterday evening, after it was announced that Hosni Mubarak had met the first demand of the revolution and left office, I headed toward the Egyptian embassy in Amman. The joy on the streets was something I had never experienced before.

From all directions people came, pouring out of cars stuck in gridlocked traffic on Zahran Street and into the side street where the embassy sits. They were young and old and families with children. Egyptian laborers -- the unacknowledged back bone of much of the Jordanian economy -- sang, carried each other on their shoulders and played drums. Egyptian flags waved and signs were held high.

The chants were as varied and lively as the crowd which grew to thousands: "Long Live Egypt!," "The people overthrew the regime!," "Who's next?," "Tomorrow Abbas!" Some people showered the crowd with sweets, as fireworks burst overhead. Everyone took pictures, recording a moment of victory they felt was made by the Egyptian people on behalf of all of us.

After Tunisia, a second great pillar of oppression has been knocked down, at such great cost to hundreds who gave their lives, and many millions who saw their lives destroyed for so many years. It was a night for joy, and the celebrations continue today.

After the celebrations are over, the revolution too must go on, because it will not be complete until the Egyptian people rebuild their country as they wish it to be.

But standing in the streets of Amman there was no mistaking that the Egyptian revolution will have a profound impact on the whole region. Arab people everywhere now imagine themselves as Tunisians or Egyptians. And every Arab ruler imagines himself as Ben Ali or Mubarak.

The revolution has reawakened a sense of a common destiny for the Arab world many thought had been lost, that seemed naive when our mothers and fathers told us about it from their youth, and that Arab leaders had certainly tried to kill. The Arab dictators, who are as dead inside as Mubarak showed himself to be in his awful televised speeches, thought their peoples' spirits were dead too. The revolutions have restored a sense of limitless possibility and a desire that change should spread from country to country.

Whatever happens next, the Egyptian revolution will also have a profound effect on the regional balance of power. Undoubtedly the United States, Israel and their allies are already weaker as a result. First they lost Tunisia, and then suffered a severe setback with the collapse of the US-backed Lebanese government of Rafiq Hariri, and now Mubarak and Omar Suleiman, the closest and most enthusiastic collaborators with Israel except perhaps for Mahmoud Abbas and his cronies in Ramallah.

On many minds -- especially Israeli and American ones -- has been the question of whether a new democratic Egyptian government will tear up the 1979 peace treaty with Israel. That of course, is up to the Egyptian people, although the transitional military government confirmed in its fourth statement Egypt's adherence to "all international and regional treaties."

But the treaty is not really the issue. Even if democratic Egypt maintains the treaty, the treaty never required Egypt to join Israeli and American conspiracies against other Arabs. It never required Egypt to become the keystone in an American-led alliance with Israel and Saudi Arabia against an allegedly expansionist Iran. It never required Egypt to adopt and disseminate the vile "Sunni vs. Shia" sectarian rhetoric that was deliberately used to try to shore up this narrative of confrontation. It never required Egypt to participate in Israel's cruel siege of Gaza or collaborate closely with its intelligence services against Palestinians. It never required Egypt to become a world center of torture for the United States in its so-called "War on Terror." The treaty did not require Egypt to shoot dead migrants crossing Sinai from other parts of Africa just to spare Israelis from seeing black people in Tel Aviv. No treaty required or requires Egypt to carry on with these and so ma
ny more
shameful policies that earned Hosni Mubarak and has regime the hatred of millions of Arabs and others far beyond Egypt's borders.

There is no doubt that the United States will not give up its hegemony in Egypt easily, and will do all it can to frustrate any Egyptian move toward an independent regional policy, using as leverage its deep ties and enormous aid to the Egyptian military that now rules the country. The regional ambitions of the United States remain the main external threat to the success of Egypt's revolution.

Whatever break or continuity there is with Egypt's past policies, the calculations have changed for remaining members of the so-called "alliance of moderates," particularly Saudi Arabia -- which allegedly offered to prop Mubarak up financially if the US withdrew its aid -- Jordan and the Palestinian Authority.

For many years, these regimes, like Egypt, bet their security and survival on a virtually unconditional alliance with the United States: they abandoned all dignified, independent and principled positions and adopted America's hegemonic aspirations as their own, in exchange for assistance, and what they hoped was a guarantee that the US would come to their rescue if they got in trouble.

What the revolutions demonstrate to all Arab regimes is that the United States cannot rescue you in the end. No amount of "security assistance" (training, tear gas, weapons), financial aid, or intelligence cooperation from the United States or France can withstand a population that has decided it has had enough. These regimes' room for maneuver has shrunk even if the sorts of uprisings seen in Egypt and Tunisia are not imminent elsewhere.

After the revolutions, people's expectations have been raised and their tolerance for the old ways diminished. Whether things go on as they have for a few weeks, a few months, or even a few more years in this or that country, the pressures and demands for change will be irresistible. The remaining Arab regimes must now ask not if change will happen but how.

Will regimes that relied for so long on repression, fear and the docility of their people wait for revolution, or will they give up unearned power and undertake real democratization willingly, speedily and honestly? This will require not just a dramatic change of internal policies which regimes may or may not be capable of making voluntarily, but also a deep reexamination of external alliances and commitments that have primarily served Israel, the United States and the regimes at the expense of their people.

Jordan is now a prime case where such a reexamination is urgently due. Regardless of whether or not (and I think almost certainly not) the newly-appointed cabinet will be able to meet public expectations for democratization, fighting corruption, and ending the worst neo-liberal policies that have put so many of the country's resources and companies in unaccountable private hands, the country's foreign policy must undergo a full review.

This includes the overly dependent relationship on the United States, relations with Israel, participation in the sham "peace process," the training of the security forces used by Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank against other Palestinians, and the deeply unpopular involvement in the NATO war and occupation in Afghanistan. Up until now, these matters have all been decided without any regard to public opinion.

And in the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority (PA) of Mahmoud Abbas is in a more precarious situation than ever. Its loss of legitimacy is so thorough -- especially after the revelations in the Palestine Papers -- that it exists only thanks to the protection of the Israeli occupation, US and EU training of its repressive security forces, and massive EU funding to pay the salaries of its bloated bureaucracy.

The PA's leaders are as dead to the just cause and aspirations for liberation of the Palestinian people for which so much has been sacrificed, as Mubarak was to the Egyptian people's rights and hopes. No wonder the PA relies more and more on the thuggery and police state tactics so reminiscent of Mubarak and Ben Ali.

The revolutions in the Arab have lifted our horizons. More people can now see that the liberation of Palestine from Zionist colonialism and US- and EU-funded oppression, to make it a safe, humane place for all who live in it to exist in equality, is not just a utopian slogan but is in our hands if we struggle for it and stick to our principles. Like the people power, against which the Egyptian and Tunisian police states were powerless in the end, Palestinians and their allies (particularly those supporting the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement) have the power to transform reality within the next few years.

In whatever form the revolution continues, the people are saying to their rulers: our countries, our futures, don't belong to you any more. They belong to us.

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Jewish Peace News editors:
Joel Beinin
Racheli Gai
Rela Mazali
Sarah Anne Minkin
Ofer Neiman
Lincoln Z. Shlensky
Rebecca Vilkomerson
Alistair Welchman
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Jewish Peace News archive and blog: http://jewishpeacenews.blogspot.com
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Jewish Peace News sends its news clippings only to subscribers. To subscribe, unsubscribe, or manage your subscription, go to http://www.jewishpeacenews.net

More on Egypt

Racheli Gai writes:
This short article by Glenn Greenwald provides some important information: It points out the close connections of Omar Suleiman to both the US and the Israeli government, while also highlighting the man's vile nature.
Additionally, it demonstrates how the New York Times - the alleged "newspaper of record", giveth information with one hand, while it taketh away important chunks of it with the other. It reminds us all that the New York Times is not the place to find all that we need to know, and that its interests are not completely separate from the interests of the power elites.

Lincoln Shlensky recommends
http://mitchellplitnick.com/2011/02/07/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-protests-in-egypt/

Mitchell shows how the debate on the Muslim Brotherhood is being warped by US conservatives, who inaccurately compare the Egyptian crisis to the Iranian Revolution. Mitchell also argues that this is just the first phase of the Egyptian popular rebellion, and he discusses the likely effects for the Egypt-Israel peace treaty: an even colder peace and a growing refusal by Egypt to cooperate with Israel in its siege of Gaza.

Lincoln

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/

Obama's man in Cairo
BY GLENN GREENWALD

The New York Times, today:

Vice President Omar Suleiman of Egypt says he does not think it is time to lift the 30-year-old emergency law that has been used to suppress and imprison opposition leaders. He does not think President Hosni Mubarak needs to resign before his term ends in September. And he does not think his country is yet ready for democracy.

But, lacking better options, the United States is encouraging him in negotiations in a still uncertain transition process in Egypt. . . . The result has been to feed a perception, on the streets of Cairo and elsewhere, that the United States, for now at least, is putting stability ahead of democratic ideals, and leaving hopes of nurturing peaceful, gradual change in large part in the hands of Egyptian officials -- starting with Mr. Suleiman -- who have every reason to slow the process.

Lisa Hajjar, Al Jazeera English, today:

Suleiman has long been favoured by the US government for his ardent anti-Islamism, his willingness to talk and act tough on Iran -- and he has long been the CIA's main man in Cairo. . . . In the mid-1990s, Suleiman worked closely with the Clinton administration in devising and implementing its rendition program; back then, rendition involved kidnapping suspected terrorists and transferring them to a third country for trial. . . .

Under the Bush administration, in the context of "the global war on terror", US renditions became "extraordinary", meaning the objective of kidnapping and extra-legal transfer was no longer to bring a suspect to trial -- but rather for interrogation to seek actionable intelligence. The extraordinary rendition program landed some people in CIA black sites -- and others were turned over for torture -by-proxy to other regimes. Egypt figured large as a torture destination of choice, as did Suleiman as Egypt's torturer-in-chief. At least one person extraordinarily rendered by the CIA to Egypt -- Egyptian-born Australian citizen Mamdouh Habib -- was reportedly tortured by Suleiman himself.

WikiLeaks cable, posted from U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, August 29, 2008:

[Israeli defense official David] Hacham said the Israeli delegation was "shocked" by Mubarak's aged appearance and slurred speech. Hacham was full of praise for Soliman, however, and noted that a "hot line" set up between the [Israeli Ministry of Defense] and Egyptian General Intelligence Service is now in daily use. Hacham said he sometimes speaks to Soliman's deputy Mohammed Ibrahim several times a day. Hacham noted that the Israelis believe Soliman is likely to serve as at least an interim President if Mubarak dies or is incapacitated. (Note: We defer to Embassy Cairo for analysis of Egyptian succession scenarios, but there is no question that Israel is most comfortable with the prospect of Omar Soliman.)

Given the long-obvious fact that the Obama administration has been working to install Suleiman as interim leader as a (dubious) means of placating citizen anger, the above-referenced NYT article today offers a long and detailed profile of the new Egyptian "Vice President." Unfortunately, the paper of record wasn't able to find the space to inform its readers about Suleiman's decades-long history as America's personal abducter, detainer and torturer of the Egyptian people, nor his status as Israel's most favored heir to the Mubarak tyranny (though the article did vaguely and euphemistically acknowledge that "the United States has certainly had long ties with Mr. Suleiman" and that "for years he has been an important contact for the Central Intelligence Agency").

Suleiman's repression and brutality -- on behalf of both the U.S. and Mubarak -- has been well-documented elsewhere (The New Yorker's Jane Mayer was the first to flag it after the Egyptian uprising, while ABC News recounted how he once offered to chop off the arm of a Terrorist suspect to please the CIA; see also the above-linked Al Jazeera Op-Ed, which provides additional details of Suleiman's personal taste for overseeing torture). As I noted yesterday, there's a case to be made for the Obama administration's support of Suleiman; it's the same case used to justify our 30-year active propping up of Mubarak, along with the dictators of Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Yemen, Jordan, and so many other places (and "torture-by-proxy" seems still to be an important part of U.S. policy in the region). But whatever one's views are on that conduct, no discussion of the U.S.'s current pro-Suleiman policy -- and certainly no purported media profile of Suleiman -- is complete without at least s
ome
mention of his status as Mubarak's torturer-in-chief and domestic oppressor, and of the Israelis' deep desire to see him rule Egypt. Does anyone dispute the central relevance of those facts?

Today's Times article does a decent job of conveying how unwilling Suleiman is to bring about anything resembling a real transition to democracy, how indifferent (if not supportive) the Obama administration seems to be about that unwillingness, and how dangerously that conduct is fueling anti-American sentiment among the protesters. But the fact that American policy has "changed" from imposing Mubarak on that country to imposing someone with Suleiman's vile history and character belongs at the forefront of every discussion, especially ones purporting to examine who he is. Praising Suleiman for his "valued analysis" and commitment to fighting The Terrorists while neglecting to mention these other critical facts -- as today's NYT article does -- is misleading on multiple levels.

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Jewish Peace News editors:
Joel Beinin
Racheli Gai
Rela Mazali
Sarah Anne Minkin
Ofer Neiman
Lincoln Z. Shlensky
Rebecca Vilkomerson
Alistair Welchman
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Jewish Peace News archive and blog: http://jewishpeacenews.blogspot.com
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Jewish Peace News sends its news clippings only to subscribers. To subscribe, unsubscribe, or manage your subscription, go to http://www.jewishpeacenews.net

Culture and Autarchy

The uprising in Egypt has been described by many commentators using geological metaphors as a tectonic shift, an earthquake, a breaking up of the glacial mass of autocracy that has weighed so heavily on Egypt in the 30 years of Mubarak's reign (and arguably longer). These images make sense, since the Egyptian regime, like many of its counterparts in other Arab countries (Saudi Arabia, Oman, Jordan, Syria, Yemen, and, until recently, Tunisia), has seemed agonizingly politically frozen in both the temporal and structural senses that geological metaphors suggest.

The events of the past fortnight have, in a related sense, produced a seismic wave of new thinking about the Middle East and North Africa that is transforming the relation between that region and the rest of the world permanently. Below are a few recent thought pieces on the crisis and articles of relevance.

--Lincoln Z. Shlensky

Elliott Colla, chair of the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies at Georgetown University, has written about how the events in Egypt can be understood as an intersection of cultural and political dynamics -- and he suggests some reasons why politicized cultural discourse has figured so prominently in the crisis:

http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/558/state-culture-state-anarchy

Colla also wrote this essay on the poetics of protest:

http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/506/the-poetry-of-revolt

The New York Times ran an article about Jewish Voice for Peace -- the first such article to mention the group more than in passing in the fifteen years of its existence -- that shows why JVP is succeeding in galvanizing a significant segment of Jewish Americans who feel alienated by Jewish institutional politics focused on the Middle East, and especially the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Among the notable points in the article is the comment by John Rothman, the former President of the Zionist Organization of America in San Francisco and a talk show host at KGO radio, who manages singularly well to articulate the putatively "pro-Israel" Jewish establishment's attitude toward democracy and politics in the Middle East. Speaking of Mubarak, Rothman blithely states: "He may be a barbarian, but he's our barbarian." In sharp contrast, Cecilie Surasky, of JVP, argued: "Egyptians deserve a democracy just as Americans do, just as Israelis do, just as Palestinians do." JVP is one of the few Jewish groups to have created significant links of solidarity with Arab-American activist organizations, rejecting the hand-wringing by established Jewish groups about the supposed absence of political partners.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/04/us/04bcactivists.html

In related news, extremist fanatics have targeted a JVP activist in LA with a poster that accuses her of "treason and incitement against Jews" and threateningly mentions the names of her niece and nephew:

http://mideastanalysis.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/chandler.jpg

The release of the Palestine Papers by the Al-Jazeera news network two weeks ago has been eclipsed by events in Egypt, but the connection to these events is an important one. The claim that there is no Palestinian "partner for peace" was exposed in as a lie by the Israeli negotiations intransigence -- and Palestinian willingness to compromise -- revealed in the Papers. But, just as importantly, as blogger Mitchell Plitnick has pointed out, Palestinian leaders in the West Bank were also shown to be emperors without clothes who haven't seriously engaged in a broad and public Palestinian dialogue about what can be expected (and what will have to be relinquished) in the name of a regional peace agreement.

http://mitchellplitnick.com/2011/01/24/pa-panicked-by-palestine-papers/

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Jewish Peace News editors:
Joel Beinin
Racheli Gai
Rela Mazali
Sarah Anne Minkin
Ofer Neiman
Lincoln Z. Shlensky
Rebecca Vilkomerson
Alistair Welchman
------------
Jewish Peace News archive and blog: http://jewishpeacenews.blogspot.com
------------
Jewish Peace News sends its news clippings only to subscribers. To subscribe, unsubscribe, or manage your subscription, go to http://www.jewishpeacenews.net

David H. Price: A Revolutionary Movement and the Future of Egyptian (in) dependence / counterpunch.org

A fine article by David H. Price.
Some of the important issues it touches on:
* there are efforts by apologists to claim that Mubarak isn't really hated by most Egyptians, and isn't really all that bad.
* A glimpse into life in Egyptian rural areas, and the feelings expressed by people there regarding the regime:
"The rural Egyptian farmers I came to know had little formal education, yet there was a remarkably widespread understanding that the United States exerted direct control over their government, and that their national debt and American aid was used to extort domestic and foreign policies unpopular with the Egyptian people. I had more than one farmer explain to me that if Egypt ever got to the point of revolution, then the new government (which was most often assumed to be an Islamic regime) would not be bound by the debts of the previous administration and would be free to start over with a clean economic slate."
* Egypt, under Mubarak or otherwise, is really not in a position to be independent, because it's unable to provide economically for its dense population.
So, the rest of the paragraph quoted above reads:
"This view always seemed to ignore the basic problem that Egypt's rapid population growth had exceeded the nation's capacity to grow sufficient food to meet its needs, and when I pointed out that declaring bankruptcy through revolution could lead to food shortages, I was always answered with the response that God would provide."

Racheli Gai.

http://www.counterpunch.org/price02032011.html

A Revolutionary Movement and the Future of Egyptian (In)dependence

Challenging America's Pharaoh

By DAVID H. PRICE

February 3, 2011

Anyone who has lived in Egypt for an extended period of time or has traveled there for extended stays over the past thirty years should not be surprised at the current uprising. The only surprising thing is that this uprising didn't happen years or decades sooner.

I first visited Egypt in the summer of 1982, just half a year after the assassination of Sadat. I was twenty-two years old and had little understanding of the Middle East, much less of America's role in propping up Mubarak and supporting the Egyptian brutalities of martial law. I later studied Arabic, returned for several visits, lived in rural Egypt in 1989-90 conducting anthropological research, and have been present during several bloody police riots over causes ranging from the poor payment of police and military conscripts, to forced economic adjustments mandated by the International Monetary Fund.

A post-9/11 return to Egypt found a world one of increasing hardships for the bulk of Egyptian society as Mubarak pushed neoliberal economic models that intensified poverty for the many while a shrinking elite grew richer (which led to this account of political unrest and police brutality that appeared in the print version of CounterPunch). Neoliberal economic transformations require increased policing as states struggle to protect their own powerbase and elites from the spread of poverty that these projects leave in their wake; and the collapse of the authority of the Egyptian state must be understood as a major landmark in these international struggles.

The hatred and distrust of President Mubarak is widespread among Egyptians; Cairo cosmopolitans and the rural fellaheen alike long ago grew tired of Mubarak's suppression of democratic movements, and his kowtowing to American administrations long ago undermined his domestic credibility. Mubarak's late night speech on Tuesday announcing he would not seek reelection and that he would remove laws corrupting the possibility of free and open elections will be used to placate Egyptians who are growing weary of the uprising, and the use of pro-Mubarak thugs brings new forms of violence and chaos to the protests that will be used by the regime to justify harsh oppression against the peaceful protestors. The Obama administration's disappointing response to the popular democratic Egyptian uprising demonstrates to the world that the United States is the nation that is not yet ready for democracy in the Middle East.

As the popular protests got under way, John Bolton and other apologists of past and present American administrations took to the airwaves, clarifying the hypocrisy of the American position: complaining that the Muslim Brotherhood was secretly behind the current protest movement, and arguing this demonstrated the need for Mubarak to stay in power. The early statements by Clinton, Biden and Obama were not much better as the US Administration held on to hopes that their man Mubarak might weather the popular uprising. They avoided any statements acknowledging the brutality of Mubarak's inefficient police state or suggestions that the United States might be entering into an era of decreased hegemonic control of Egypt.

This is not an Islamic revolution, a la-Iran-1979. This is an economic and political revolution uniting Egyptians with secular, ethnic and religious differences, rising up against the US-backed, anti-democratic regime. While the pro-democracy movement in Egypt is based on a strong coalition that transcends traditional political and ethnic categories (uniting mainstream Egyptian Muslims, Christians, Wafds, the Muslim Brotherhood, farmers, academics and governmental workers), there remains real reasons for concern over the possibility of new levels of sectarian violence in the post-Mubarak period and while the Brotherhood is not at the fore of these current rebellion, the pre-existence of a working political structure with party discipline may allow them organizational advantages should Mubarak fall. The rise in attacks on Coptic Christians in Upper and Lower Egypt during the two moths preceding these latest dramatic events provide some glimpse into the ethnic tensions that m
ay flare
in the post-Mubarak era as a new Egypt searches for solutions to the economic inequities that lie at the base of the Egyptian crisis.

If real regime change comes to Egypt, concerns about the Suez Canal, and shifts in relations with Israel may be used by U.S. policy makers to assert US military might in the region. If any protest movement were to seize the gears and levers that open and close the gates of the Suez Canal, we could expect a rapid U.S. military response that would have serious international implications. Images of U.S. Marines landing in Suez to seize control over such a key global chokepoint could set new levels of geopolitical instability.

All the anthropologists and other westerners I know from my years in Egypt share a sense that Mubarak's fall is part of a deeply popular uprising that was a long time coming, and there is widespread agreement that the Egyptian people strongly favor his end of political control. Yet, there is a push to find intellectuals who can add legitimacy to claims that the pro-democracy revolution in Egypt is actually a movement of a vocal minority. Prominent Norwegian anthropologist Unni Wikan just published claims that most Egyptians do not see Mubarak as a tyrant, and that the pro-democracy demonstrations present a distorted view of the popular Egyptian consensus. Wikan wrote in the Sunday edition of Norwegian daily, Aftenpostsen, that among the people she knows in Egypt (in a translation provided by a Norwegian friend):

"It is said further that the president himself is not particularly fond of power: it is the people around him, and his wife, who drives him. Why mention it here? Because it is no small feat in Egypt, for a man who has ruled for 30 years, to get away with such a "pure" reputation. Mubarak is no despot. He is not considered to be corrupt. Weak, weak, are the words used on Mubarak. Many feel a bit sorry for him. The sympathy he could have ridden on, he had not tried to introduce a dynasty."

In all my conversations with various Egyptians over the past thirty years, I can not think of anyone (even his rare supporters) who ever described him as "weak." Though Wikan has been working in Egypt since the late 1960s and is famous for her work studying Egypt's urban poor, her analysis is unrecognizable to me as representing the mainstream views of the Egyptians.

Wikan goes so far as to claim that Mubarak's son, Gamal, is beloved by most Egyptians and she assures her readers that "most people do not have a personal concern about his son." While there is a long literature of anthropologists finding varying views within a single society (or once famously in the same town), I have difficulty understanding how any anthropologist who could find enough people to represent such a rare Egyptian view. It is strange that Wikan gives voice to that minority of Egyptians now attacking the peaceful anti-Mubarak demonstrators in Cairo and Alexandria, yet the majority of Egyptians of lower- and (shrinking) middle-class that I have spoken with over the years would categorically reject this slanted view of their leader. We can expect Wikan's incredible claims to be paraded out by Fox News and CNN as part of a distortion campaign to support Mubarak's efforts to cling to power, all in the name of balance.

It is commonly believed by many Egyptians that their leaders have been tools of the CIA since the days of Nasser, when Kermit Roosevelt had mixed results in efforts to capture Nasser's loyalties from Soviet control. Many Egyptians understand (as was reported by the New Yorker this past week) that Mubarak's Vice Presidential appointee, Omar Suleiman, was the CIA's go-to man when running illegal extreme renditions in Egypt. That President Obama would send Frank Wisner Jr., to Cairo this week to clumsily help Mubarak negotiate his exit is just the latest installment on a long history connecting generations of American and CIA interference in repressing democratic movements. Many Americans might be surprised at how widespread such critiques are, not among the elites of Cairo and Alexandria, but among the rural peoples of Egypt.

The Fayoum Depression, where I lived in 1989-90, is a natural oasis fed by an ancient canal dug off the Nile millennia ago. It has been the home of some of the world's oldest Christian monasteries (which still ring the Fayoum close to its desert edges). The Fayoum has a strong Islamic fundamentalist presence; with local ties to the blind Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman and key members of the Islamic Brotherhood. My friendships with farmers, students, and professional peoples of the Fayoum made clear to me that the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and the power of the Muslim Brotherhood was directly related to the brutality of the US-backed Mubarak regime; a relationship with parallels to the rise of Martin Luther King's use of the church as a unique space to use Christian dictates advocating for brotherly love and social justice. In a country ruled by martial law and backed by the United States, where free speech rights are curtailed and political dissent was limited, it makes s
ense
that critiques will emerge from within religious spaces which provide a unique opportunity for limited relatively autonomous critique.

The farmers and friends I met in Egypt taught me jokes about Mubarak, jokes in which he often had a recurring role as a slow gamoosa, the Egyptian water buffalo, ubiquitous in the countryside. Out in the countryside, when in any public setting—a coffee shop, waiting at a bus stop, or walking in a public place—my Egyptian friends were careful about voicing their critiques of Mubarak or his political party, the NDP. Through our friendship, they learned that my country's international policies were not necessarily my own, and I learned just how deeply their own politics differed from the oppressive Egyptian state that Mubarak ruled, and my government propped up in place.

The events of this past week leave me thinking about how President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton's bungling support of their Egyptian client Mubarak unites me with my Egyptian friends, as I find myself in a position in my own country -- with leaders whose support for Mubarak do not represent me or my interests in ways that parallel the distance my Egyptian friends have long felt from their President. As Mubarak's career is one where his choices were limited by his Western minders, so Obama is limited by corporate interests, and long-term geopolitical forces he dares not upset and the shrill limits of Middle East possibilities imposed by America's "special relationship" with Israel.

Egypt is full of contradictions. Modernity and traditional society clash and coalesce throughout its cities and countryside. A few years ago, I spent part of an afternoon talking to a longtime member of the flourishing Cairo art and literature scene who spoke of the local hipster rebel student scene at Cairo University during the 1960s. He recounted a recent chance encounter he'd recently had with a heavily veiled woman, who revealed to him she had known him as a radical liberationist during the days of campus rebellions.

Governmental censors limit what appears on radio, newspapers and television news; but lively political debates in private homes are a core cultural trait. Simple acts of kindness and courtesies are part of the fabric of daily life even while the nation has been under martial law since Sadat's assassination, with corrupt police ruling the streets. It is not surprising that there are reports that un-uniformed police roaming as thugs wreaking havoc in Cairo's neighborhoods, and that police IDs were taken from pro-Mubarak thugs attacking peaceful demonstrators on Wednesday. A fundamental dynamic supporting the military's current decision to not fire upon anti-Mubarak protestors is that while elite forces and officers may come from educated middle-class backgrounds: the military's rank and file are villagers (who could not afford the fee to avoid mandatory conscription) whose hatred of Mubarak is often on par with the pro-democracy protestors.

While the outcome of the current struggle is unclear, deep problems will face whoever emerges to rule Egypt in the aftermath of this revolutionary moment. Democratic reforms will help, but the economic problems facing Egypt — problems exacerbated by Mubarak's economic policies — are severe and there are real dangers for the populace if there is a governmental collapse, or if foreign aid is withdrawn over disapproval of the results of free and fair elections. The importance of foreign aid for Egypt is a double edged sword: one that could be used to pressure Mubarak into a rapid resignation, but also one that can be used to manipulate whatever new government emerges.

The rural Egyptian farmers I came to know had little formal education, yet there was a remarkably widespread understanding that the United States exerted direct control over their government, and that their national debt and American aid was used to extort domestic and foreign policies unpopular with the Egyptian people. I had more than one farmer explain to me that if Egypt ever got to the point of revolution, then the new government (which was most often assumed to be an Islamic regime) would not be bound by the debts of the previous administration and would be free to start over with a clean economic slate. This view always seemed to ignore the basic problem that Egypt's rapid population growth had exceeded the nation's capacity to grow sufficient food to meet its needs, and when I pointed out that declaring bankruptcy through revolution could lead to food shortages, I was always answered with the response that God would provide.

Rapid population growth contributes to the many fiscal problems facing Egypt: with a population over 80-million people, all living along the narrow strip of arable land along the thin Nile basin and the Delta, Egypt has the highest habitable population density of any country on earth. The almost Dadaist 1950s Egyptian screwball comedies that play on Egyptian TV record un-crowded streets and sidewalks, with grassy medians and rooftops of a Cairo with less than two million people, scenes that are today crammed with squatters, bumper to bumper traffic, and overflowing with twenty-million people. This population growth achieved under a growing dependence on foreign aid and imported wheat and other foodstuffs leaves Egypt today only able to produce enough food to feed itself for only seven or eight months out of the year. If the transition of leadership after Mubarak undermines Egypt's strategic relations with the United States and other nations providing this food aid, the na
tion of
Egypt could stand a severe risk of famine.

But rapid population growth isn't Egypt's only problem: Mubarak's neo-liberal trickle-down economic policies, enacted in consultation with the International Monetary Fund and the United States, have led to increasing gaps between rich and poor and ideepening poverty. While Egypt may well break free from Mubarak, independence from the United States might be far more difficult to achieve. Egypt's dependence on foreign aid from the US, which expanded as a result of Jimmy Carter's Camp David Peace Agreement, will keep the United States as a key partner with whatever leadership emerges in post-Mubarak Egypt. Aid dependence is a powerful force, and as former economic hitman John Perkins made abundantly clear, while recipient nations come to have growing dependence on this aid, vast amounts of the aid remains in US corporate and private hands.

While the brave spirit of the Egyptian people rising up against an oppressive regime is a hopeful moment for all working for democratic reforms and justice, serious problems await whatever leadership emerges. If Mubarak is removed from power, there will be serious domestic problems ahead for whatever ruling coalition establishes itself. While a new regime will likely distance itself from Mubarak's past subservient relationship with the United States, the economic problems facing Egypt will still require it to forge economic alliances with some foreign patron state(s), and Washington (and other nations) will be eager to establish ongoing relations, and obligations, with the new regime.

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Jewish Peace News editors:
Joel Beinin
Racheli Gai
Rela Mazali
Sarah Anne Minkin
Ofer Neiman
Lincoln Z. Shlensky
Rebecca Vilkomerson
Alistair Welchman
------------
Jewish Peace News archive and blog: http://jewishpeacenews.blogspot.com
------------
Jewish Peace News sends its news clippings only to subscribers. To subscribe, unsubscribe, or manage your subscription, go to http://www.jewishpeacenews.net

EGYPT! - an urgent call to action

As of today, peaceful demonstrators in Cairo are being attacked by government thugs. The petition below, put out by Just Foreign Policy, is demanding that Obama take action on behalf of the people of Egypt. Please consider signing as well as calling the president, and if you are an American, send the petition to your representatives, too.

Thanks,
Racheli.

Demand President Obama immediately pressure the U.S.-backed Egyptian military to protect peaceful protesters in Egypt.

Add more pressure: Call the White House

Today, peaceful anti-government protesters in Cairo's Tahrir Square were attacked by a mob that anti-government protesters and some journalists say was orchestrated by the government and tolerated by the U.S.-backed Egyptian military. The U.S.-backed Egyptian military did not stop the violence, despite its earlier pledge to protect peaceful protesters, the Guardian reports. [1] Journalists were also attacked, including CNN's Anderson Cooper. [2.]

Demand that U.S. officials act immediately to stop the violence by holding the U.S.-backed Egyptian military to account, making clear that U.S. aid to the Egyptian military will be cut if the Egyptian military does not protect peaceful protesters from violence.

http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/stopegyptviolence

The security services were just sitting on their tanks watching as the violence began, the Guardian's Peter Beaumont reported. "You can't help feeling that it has all been heavily coordinated," he said. Later, Beaumont reported that supposed "pro-Mubarak supporters" were recognizably police: "There is no question in my mind that they police, they are central security forces. These are the same guys that were out in force all last week and they have filtered back in again. They are very very recognizable, they are certain kind of people." [3] "All indications are that what is happening in Tahrir Square is government-sanctioned," reported Ben Wedeman of CNN. [4]

Regardless of whether the violent pro-government mob consisted of government employees or volunteers or a mix of both, the Egyptian military was responsible for allowing the violence to proceed. The U.S. government bears responsibility for the actions of the Egyptian military due to the billions of dollars in U.S. aid that the Egyptian military has received from the U.S.

Urge U.S. officials to act immediately and decisively to stop the violence and hold the Egyptian military to account by threatening to cut U.S. military aid if the Egyptian military does not protect peaceful protesters from violence.

http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/stopegyptviolence

Thank you for all you do to help bring about a just foreign policy,

Chelsea Mozen, Sarah Burns, Megan Iorio and Robert Naiman
Just Foreign Policy

References:

1. "Egypt Protests - Live Updates", Guardian,http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2011/feb/02/egypt-protests-live-updates
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.

................................................................
--------
Jewish Peace News editors:
Joel Beinin
Racheli Gai
Rela Mazali
Sarah Anne Minkin
Ofer Neiman
Lincoln Z. Shlensky
Rebecca Vilkomerson
Alistair Welchman
------------
Jewish Peace News archive and blog: http://jewishpeacenews.blogspot.com
------------
Jewish Peace News sends its news clippings only to subscribers. To subscribe, unsubscribe, or manage your subscription, go to http://www.jewishpeacenews.net

EGYPT! - The Uprising.

The uprising in Egypt has caught most - if not all - of us by surprise.

The material provided below should give a glimpse into events on the ground; some analysis regarding who the participants are; the US role in the propping up of the Mubarak regime, and further resources and links for the reader to consult.

First, a deeply moving youtube piece: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hBV0ApIh_4&feature=player_embedded#
I thins it's important to get clued into the emotional significance of the unfolding events, and this piece does an especially good job at conveying this.

Next, links to two pieces by Joel Beinin. The first provides a short history of US-Egypt relations, and the second elaborates on Obama's position, so far, in regards to the the ongoing events in Egypt:
http://www.salon.com/news/egyptian_protests/index.html?story=/politics/war_room/2011/01/29/egypt_america_alliance
http://www.salon.com/news/egyptian_protests/?story=%2Fpolitics%2Fwar_room%2F2011%2F01%2F30%2Fobama_military_aid

We received permission to post an email from Shana Minkin, a professor of Middle East history at Swarthmore College. Shana wrote the email to family and friends the day before yesterday. Since she wrote it, a number of things have changed, including: opposition groups including the Muslim Brotherhood have come together in support of Mohamed El Baradei as the leader of a transition government; protests have spread to the south of Egypt; there have been reports of prison breaks, some of which suggest that political prisoners are being released (members of the Muslim Brotherhood) and others that the regime is opening up the prisons to generate chaos, so that people think their only choice is between chaos or Mubarak's iron fist; there's been looting, and reports suggest that a lot (most?) of it has been done by the thugs (the baltagiah, literally "thugs" who are plainclothes police) - again, so that people think that their choice is either chaos (looting and lawlessness) or Mub
arak,
and
people have organized neighborhood patrols in response; the US continues to equivocate; and the protests are just getting stronger. Air force jets flew over Tahrir Square today, but Al Jazeera reports that hundreds of thousands of people are still out protesting.

In a situation that will undoubtedly continue to change, we think this email is very useful in providing historical and political context for the revolution we're witnessing.

Racheli Gai.

Shana Minkin writes:

Many of you have asked me for some of my thoughts about Egypt. I am going to address a few things here – and would be happy to answer specific questions – and attach a few links. There is much more where this is coming from, but I didn't want to overwhelm with too many articles. For any of you on facebook, I have been purposefully filling my facebook page with articles and photos (and some videos) about Egypt. If you can't read everything I've piled on here, I would recommend you at least read some of the overviews of the situation from the newspaper of your choice – and that you read the Merip piece about the US administration. It is an incredibly important piece of journalism for understanding our role as American citizens (those of us who are).

So, a few of my thoughts: The Egyptian people have been under a state of emergency law for 30 years now, with increasing oppression and decreasing quality of life. The state is complete chaos and a completely unreliable and random bureaucracy. A good, if very old, movie about how Egypt functions is called "Terrorism and Kabab." The Mugamma, or government building, in this movie is on Midan Tahrir, or Liberation Square, which has been the focal point of so many of the protests.

Several factors have led up to these protests. The terrible conditions have been around – and deteriorating – for years, but this past year has marked some major events.

1. The killing of Khaled Said. The police killed Khaled Said in June 2010. (See http://www.arabist.net/blog/2010/6/14/the-murder-of-khaled-said.html for more information - the Arabist is also a good blog in general about what is going on). He was beaten to death in Alexandria when police tried to extort him and he refused (or had no money). The police then tried to paint him as a drug user/dealer at various moments.
2. The spectacularly corrupt elections in December. The regime didn't even try to pretend these weren't rigged. See http://www.merip.org/mero/mero122910.html.
3. The new years eve bombing in Alexandria. There has been increasing sectarian violence in Egypt in the last year, and the government refuses to recognize it as such. Instead the government claims its al-Qaeda working in Egypt. See http://www.merip.org/mero/mero011111.html. It is worth noting that following these bombings, many Muslims went to surround churches on Coptic Christmas a few days later. And unconfirmed reports had Coptic Christians surrounding Muslims at prayer yesterday in the same sign of solidarity. Who knows what will come of sectarian relations should the revolution succeed???
4. Tunisia. Tunisia is an inspiration, undoubtedly.

The protests began on January 25, or National Police Day. The Great Cairo Fire was Jan 26, 1952, but the National Police Day was set the day before. The fire is seen as one of the first steps leading to the ousting of the King and the British in 1952 and thus a worthy celebration. The protest of the police is particularly poignant because the police are the regime's internal army. There is a strict split between the police and the army, with the army focused on external only. The police, on the other hand, are known to be especially brutal and nasty towards Egyptian citizens. They are the ones who torture political dissidents and others, who are the general on-the-street repressors. No one in Egypt goes to a police for anything – I never even asked a police for directions; it was known the police would leer at you and wouldn't protect you. Also, a note: there is within the police the battalion of thugs – literally, their name means thugs in Arabic. They are the plai
n
clothes
police who travel with batons and spiked sticks and who are responsible for general mayhem in a way that the regular police don't want to be connected to – it was the Thugs who molested several women during the round of democracy protests in 2005. They would corner women protesters, rip off their clothes, fondle them, and then announce to everyone that these women were now "used sluts." A very close friend of mine was one of the women fondled and later interviewed on CNN. You can probably find it archived if you're interested. Point is, the Thugs have been around for years, doing the things that allow the regime to claim a need for emergency law.

But you don't need to go that far back to see what the thugs do. Many reports on the ground currently claim that the thugs are setting fires to cars, looting, and causing general mayhem, allowing the regime to blame it on the protesters. See this blog for some details: http://inanities.org/.

Another note about the protesters – these are NOT the Islamists. They are not the Brotherhood. They are representative of all the people of Egypt. Or, I should say, the people of Northern Egypt. For some reason – and I neither know why nor have I found anyone writing about it – the protests haven't spread south. It is a leaderless protest for the most part – meaning there are some natural leaders of the opposition, such as el-Baradei. But el-Baradei smartly said, when he returned Thursday, that he was there as an ordinary citizen and not to lead. Ayman Nour, the last prominent opponent of Mubarak's (see articles about the 2005 elections – www.merip.org is a good place to start) was smashed in the back of his head yesterday and is in the hospital in critical condition. No one knows his update. See also a really interesting article that just came out about why this is NOT an Islamic revolution:
http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/guest_bloggers/4133/4_reasons_why_egypt's_revolution_is_not_islamic/.

Returning to the protesters, equating them with the regime's violence is wrong and dangerous. It allows for a continuation of the notion of Arabs as violent and irrational. The protests have been for the most part violence-free and the protesters are loudly chanting that they are there for peaceful purposes. Equating the regime and the protests is one of many mistakes – serious, dangerous mistakes in my opinion – of the American government. See the analysis I've attached below for more information. It is worth noting that during the burning of the National Democratic Party headquarters threatened the Egyptian Museum of Antiquities last night, throngs of Egyptians protected it, putting their bodies between the museum and fires and the museum and would-be looters.

Speaking of the Brotherhood, although they joined Friday, they are clearly NOT in charge. Their chants weren't heard, 350 of their leadership was arrested before the protests began. They are the best-organized opposition, but they aren't the only one. And they certainly are but a fraction of what we see going on in the streets. I don't believe that they will be able to simply take over Egypt in the event of a vacuum – for starters; they have no relationship with the military. But I also don't believe they are an ultimate evil. (Merip also has a series of wonderful articles on the Brotherhood by Samer Shahata and Joshua Stacher dating from a few years back – again, itswww.merip.org).

The latest news, by the way, as of 8am EST is that some of the police have entered the political prisons where the Brotherhood leaders are being held and have started to shoot randomly. Its thought that between 40-70 are dead, but this is unconfirmed.

And speaking of the US, I believe that our government is on the side of wrong here. Standing with the regime delegitimizes anything America may want from the Arab world in the future and further delegitimizes America in the eyes of many Arab citizens. Telling the protesters that they have a fundamental right to twitter – and that they have the fundamental right to twitter complaints about their dictator – is not an answer from our administration. We don't know what's going on behind the scenes, of course, but perception is a large part of any political battle – and the Obama administration has certainly lost the perception battle in this one. See the merip article attached below for more on this. However, it is worth noting that Marc Lynch, a preeminent analyst at Foreign Policy, thinks the administration is doing a great job on the policy/governance/government level. You can read his latest analysis, "Obama's handling Egypt Pretty Well," at
http://lynch.foreignpolicy.com/.

A note about Israel, as well - the assumption that keeping 80 million people under a "state of emergency" with no civil or political rights for 30 years will keep Israel safer suggests that some people are less equal, or less human. It may be rationalized as a harsh realist stance, but it is a counterproductive one. Not only do I politically disagree, but also I think it's an untenable solution. Those who approach the Middle East from the point of view of what's good for Israel should be focused on democracy and freedom for all peoples. And this is not a revolt about Israel. It's about Egypt alone.

As of now, reports have at least 50,000 people in Midan Tahrir. There are still protests in Alexandria, Suez and several other cities despite a 4pm curfew (9am EST) throughout the country. The business leadership (whatever that means) has left the country on private jets. Gamal Mubarak's closest confidante has quit the National Democratic Party. Mubarak's shallow, arrogant, irrelevant offer to force a puppet government to resign and replace it with a new puppet government has been rejected by all but the US administration (publicly – again, who knows what is happening privately). People apparently literally laughed at it – well, Egyptians have always been known for their sense of humor! (Joke that went around yesterday: Why was the speech by Mubarak so delayed? He sent an aide out for more black hair dye and the aide joined the protests). Omar Suleiman is the new Vice President but is thought of as a regime man. Ahmed Shafiq is the new Prime Minister. We haven't see
n the
end
of this one; that was just the end of the beginning of this revolution in my estimation.

So I hope this helps. I have written this quickly and apologize for any ambiguity or unanswered questions – please let me know if you have any more questions or what your thoughts/reactions to Egypt are. Unfortunately I can't spend another day watching only al-Jazeera and twitter as I have to get some other work done (lectures about the Ottoman Empire unfortunately don't write themselves), but I will try to get back to you asap.

I want to leave by saying that I am so incredibly proud of the courageous people of Egypt. I don't think it's easy for us as Americans to understand protests like this – our lives have simply been too cushy and lucky from the get-go. I am exhilarated and scared, wanting to cry with joy and throw up with fear. I have been calling and emailing my representative, senators, the President and Secretary Clinton repeatedly. I hope you will, too.

White House: 202-456-1111 (whitehouse.gov – click "contact us")
Secretary of State: 202-647-4000

Overviews of Jan 28th:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/28/AR2011012806404.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/robert-fisk-a-people-defies-its-dictator-and-a-nations-future-is-in-the-balance-2197769.html

http://www.newsweek.com/2011/01/28/egypt-revolution-inside-a-cairo-street-protest.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/ (The Guardian has been amazing. See the audio from their correspondent, Jack Shenker, from Jan 25th. Shenker was arrested and beaten and managed to get most of the long ride in the police van and subsequent escape on his Dictaphone.)

And of course www.nytimes.com - (the NYTimes has been very good as well, considering. Look for articles with either a byline or reporting by Liam Stack). I happen to especially like this one:http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/29/world/middleeast/29alexandria.html (I appreciate the father's explanation of why he is protesting).

About the army:
http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/494/why-mubarak-won't-go

Very important piece about the administration:
http://www.merip.org/mero/mero012911.html

Another good commentary on Biden:
http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/01/27/biden_on_mubarak_i_would_not_refer_to_him_as_a_dictator?sms_ss=facebook&at_xt=4d422618e6fba16b%2C0
And speaking of Foreign Policy, I would watch for commentaries from Blake Hounshell and Marc Lynch. Both are very good.

Photographs of Jan 28th:
http://blogs.sacbee.com/photos/2011/01/rioting-and-chaos-engulfs-egyp.html#mi_rss=The%20Frame%23storylink=scinlineshare

Videos of Jan 25th and 28th:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHBzdLSneDc (the boy is yelling a very popular chant – one that I have heard countless times – which rhymes in Arabic and translates to: Freedom, Freedom, Where are you? Where are you? Hosni Mubarak is between you and me)

http://www.euronews.net/2011/01/25/from-tiananmen-square-to-cairo/ This has been called the Tiananmen Square moment – men taking the water cannon for themselves to try to stop the truck. It's from Jan 25th.

Finally, for the best continual coverage, try Al Jazeera English live on line. No one can touch them on this one – this is their moment in news-speak.

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Jewish Peace News editors:
Joel Beinin
Racheli Gai
Rela Mazali
Sarah Anne Minkin
Ofer Neiman
Lincoln Z. Shlensky
Rebecca Vilkomerson
Alistair Welchman
------------
Jewish Peace News archive and blog: http://jewishpeacenews.blogspot.com
------------
Jewish Peace News sends its news clippings only to subscribers. To subscribe, unsubscribe, or manage your subscription, go to http://www.jewishpeacenews.net

Ali Abunimah: A dangerous shift on 1967 lines / english.aljazeera.net

This is an article of major importance. Ali Abunimah has been given access to the "Palestine Papers" - a trove of documents
Al Jazeera has gotten hold of by way of a leak. In this piece he examines and analyses the way the US position in regards to the 1967 border
has shifted in an ominous way under the leadership of Obama.

By effectively repudiating the Road Map "which has formed the basis of the "peace process" since 2003", writes Abunimah, the US under Obama "has backed away even from commitments made by the George W. Bush administration, and blown an irreparable hole in the already threadbare "two state solution".
The article demonstrates US refusal to stand by the international consensus regarding the 1967 border, and thereby opens the door to Israel's less-than-hidden ambitions to re-draw the border in such a way that many of its own Palestinian citizens will find themselves removed to "Palestine", so that Israel can keep its mission of creating an ethnically pure "Jewish State". Needless to say, the subjects of this ethnic cleansing are not to be consulted in the matter.

Abunimah concludes by saying: "This is not only catastrophic for Palestinian rights and the prospects for justice, but represents a return to nineteenth century notions, banished in the wake of two world wars, that population groups can be traded between states without their consent as if they were mere pieces on a chess board."

Racheli Gai.

http://english.aljazeera.net/palestinepapers/2011/01/201112411450358613.html

The Palestine Papers

Ali Abunimah: A dangerous shift on 1967 lines.

One of the more astonishing revelations in The Palestine Papers -- detailed records and minutes of the Middle East peace process leaked to Al Jazeera -- is that the administration of US President Barack Obama effectively repudiated the Road Map, which has formed the basis of the "peace process" since 2003. In doing so it has backed away even from commitments made by the George W. Bush administration and blown an irreparable hole in the already threadbare "two-state solution."

But even worse, the US position perhaps unwittingly opens the door to dangerous Israeli ambitions to transfer -- or ethnically cleanse -- non-Jewish Palestinian citizens of Israel in order to create an ethnically pure "Jewish state."

Shortly after it took office in January 2009, the Obama administration publicly called on Israel to freeze all settlement construction in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. After months of grueling shuttle diplomacy by US envoy George Mitchell, Obama eventually made do with an Israeli promise of a ten-month partial settlement moratorium excluding Jerusalem.

While those talks were ongoing, frustrated Palestinian negotiators tried repeatedly to wrestle a commitment from Mitchell that the terms of reference for US-brokered peace negotiations that were to begin once the settlement moratorium was in place would be for the establishment of a Palestinian state on the 1967 line with minor, agreed land swaps between the Israeli and Palestinian sides. This, the Palestinians argued, was the position the Bush administration had endorsed and was contained in the Road Map peace plan adopted by the Quartet (US, EU, Russia and the UN) in 2003.

But in apparently contentious meetings between Mitchell and Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat and their respective teams in September and October 2009 -- whose detailed contents have been revealed for the first time -- Mitchell claimed the Bush administration position was nonbinding. He pressed the Palestinians to accept terms of reference that acquiesced to Israel's refusal to recognize the 1967 line which separates Israel as it was established in 1948 from the West Bank and Gaza Strip where Palestinians hoped to have their state.

Dropping the 1967 border

On 23 September 2009, Obama told the UN General Assembly that his goal was for "Two states living side by side in peace and security -- a Jewish state of Israel, with true security for all Israelis; and a viable, independent Palestinian state with contiguous territory that ends the occupation that began in 1967, and realizes the potential of the Palestinian people."

Related

Expelling Israel's Arabs, without their consent

In 2008, Israeli negotiators - including then-foreign minister Tzipi Livni - proposed "swapping" some of Israel's Arab villages into a future Palestinian state, even though a vast majority of Israeli Arabs oppose such a plan.

But this did not satisfy the Palestinians. The next day during a meeting at the US Mission to the United Nations in New York, Erekat refused an American request to adopt Obama's speech as the terms of reference for negotiations. Erekat asked Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs David Hale why the Obama administration would not explicitly state that the intended outcome of negotiations would be a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders with a third party security role and a staged Israeli withdrawal. Hale responded, "You ask why? How would it help you if we state something so specific and then not be able to deliver?" according to Palestinian minutes of the meeting.

At the same meeting, which Mitchell himself later joined, Erekat challenged the US envoy on how Obama could publicly endorse Israel as a "Jewish state" but not commit to the 1967 borders. Mitchell, according to the minutes, told Erekat "You can't negotiate detailed ToRs [terms of reference for the negotiations]" so the Palestinians might as well be "positive" and proceed directly to negotiations. Erekat viewed Mitchell's position as a US abandonment of the Road Map.

On 2 October 2009 Mitchell met with Erekat at the State Department and again attempted to persuade the Palestinian team to return to negotiations. Despite Erekat's entreaties that the US should stand by its earlier positions, Mitchell responded, "If you think Obama will force the option you've described, you are seriously misreading him. I am begging you to take this opportunity."

Erekat replied, according to the minutes, "All I ask is to say two states on 67 border with agreed modifications. This protects me against Israeli greed and land grab – it allows Israel to keep some realities on the ground" (a reference to Palestinian willingness to allow Israel to annex some West Bank settlements as part of minor land swaps). Erekat argued that this position had been explicitly endorsed by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice under the Bush administration.

"Again I tell you that President Obama does not accept prior decisions by Bush. Don't use this because it can hurt you. Countries are bound by agreements – not discussions or statements," Mitchell reportedly said.

The US envoy was firm that if the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not agree to language in the terms of reference the US would not try to force it. Yet Mitchell continued to pressure the Palestinian side to adopt formulas the Palestinians feared would give Israel leeway to annex large parts of the occupied West Bank without providing any compensation.

At a critical 21 October 2009 meeting, Mitchell read out proposed language for terms of reference:

"The US believes that through good faith negotiations the parties can mutually agree on an outcome that achieves both the Palestinian goal of an independent and viable state encompassing all the territory occupied in 1967 or its equivalent in value, and the Israeli goal of secure and recognized borders that reflect subsequent developments and meets Israeli security requirements."

Erekat's response was blunt: "So no Road Map?" The implication of the words "or equivalent in value" is that the US would only commit to Palestinians receiving a specific amount of territory -- 6258 square kilometers, or the equivalent area of the West Bank and Gaza Strip -- but not to any specific borders.

"Two states for two peoples"

This is an earthquake. It not only up-ends the two-state solution as it is conventionally understood, but opens the door to possible future American acceptance of Israeli aspirations to create an ethnically-pure Jewish state by "exchanging" territories where many of Israel's 1.4 million Palestinian citizens are concentrated. This would be a violation of these Palestinians' most fundamental rights and a repudiation of the universally-accepted self-determination principles established at the Versailles Conference after World War I. It potentially replaces the two-state solution with what Israeli officials call the "two states for two peoples solution."

Then Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni elaborated what this would look like during a November 13, 2007 negotiating session with Palestinian officials, confidential minutes of which were also revealed among The Palestine Papers:

"Our idea is to refer to two states for two peoples. Or two nation states, Palestine and Israel living side by side in peace and security with each state constituting the homeland for its people and the fulfillment of their national aspirations and self determination."

Livni stressed, "Israel [is] the state of the Jewish people -- and I would like to emphasize the meaning of 'its people' is the Jewish people -- with Jerusalem the united and undivided capital of Israel and of the Jewish people for 3007 years."

Livni thus makes clear that only Jews are guaranteed citizenship in Israel and that Palestinian citizens do not really belong even though they are natives who have lived on the land since before Israel existed. It negates Palestinian refugee rights and raises the spectre of the expulsion or "exchange" of Palestinians already in the country. Yet Livni's troubling statement appears to reflect more than just her personal opinion.

A 29 October 2008 internal Palestinian memorandum titled "Progress Report on Territory Negotiations" states that Palestinian negotiators rejected the notion that Palestinians could be included in land swaps. But, according to the document, "the Israelis continued to raise the prospect of including Palestinian citizens of Israel" in such swaps, during negotiations between Palestinian officials and the government of former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

In September last year, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman presented a plan the UN General Assembly in which Israel would keep West Bank settlements and cede to a future Palestinian state some lands with highly concentrated populations of non-Jewish citizens. "A final agreement between Israel and the Palestinians," Lieberman said, "has to be based on a program of exchange of territory and populations."

While Lieberman heads the ultranationalist Yisrael Beitenu party, and Livni the Kadima opposition (often inaccurately perceived as more "moderate" than Israel's current government), the two politicians' views are symptomatic of increasingly overt racism within Israeli society.

The Obama administration's failure to press Israel to accept the international consensus that the Palestinian state would be established on all the territories Israel occupied in 1967, except for minor adjustments, dooms the two-state solution. It may well be that a US administration that came to office promising unparalleled efforts to bring peace, ends up clearing the path for Lieberman's and Livni's abhorrent ideas to enter the mainstream.

This is not only catastrophic for Palestinian rights and the prospects for justice, but represents a return to nineteenth century notions, banished in the wake of two world wars, that population groups can be traded between states without their consent as if they were mere pieces on a chess board.

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Jewish Peace News editors:
Joel Beinin
Racheli Gai
Rela Mazali
Sarah Anne Minkin
Ofer Neiman
Lincoln Z. Shlensky
Rebecca Vilkomerson
Alistair Welchman
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