AmbassadorBlog

Netanyahu 2, Abbas 1, & Obama 0

If we were keeping score on the question of negotiations between the Palestinians and Israel based on the New York meeting on Tuesday, we would have to award Prime Minister Netanyahu two points, the Palestinian President Abbas one point, and President Obama no points.  Obama certainly did not get much joy from Netanyahu in New York.  In the peace process, as an American negotiator, you can gauge how well you are doing by the number of right wing Israeli settlers protesting outside the Prime Minister's residence after a round of talks. The streets were empty today.  Of course, you can always count on the Israeli Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman to tell it like it is without the diplomatic coating that Netanyahu is so careful to preserve.  According to the Israeli press, Lieberman said on Wednesday that Netanyahu's summit with Obama was a victory because it took place even though Israel rebuffed Obama's demand on settlements. Member of Knesset Danny Danon, from Likud's right flank was obviously jubilant and, at the same time insulting to President Obama when saying that he hopes "the summit stops the Hollywood movie in which Obama lives."

We do not know what went on in private between Obama and Netanyahu.  We don't know if there were promises made.  But Dennis Ross, who was in on the meetings, went down this road with me before in negotiations with Netanyahu the last time he was Prime Minister.  So Dennis knows that what is said in private does not always occur in fact. And, to be honest, how could the Prime Minister of Israel accommodate a full settlement freeze or a serious lockdown on expansion given the government he has cobbled together.  No Israeli Prime Minister has been able to do this in a sustained way in the past, and Netanyahu is a most unlikely candidate to be the exception. Look at the numbers and tell me how Netanyahu could sustain his government if he compromises on the settlements issue.  He can't even count on the right wing of his Likud party, let alone Yisrael Beitenu, Jewish Home, or the United Torah Judaism party.  George Mitchell knows better.  He made it clear after the meeting that a settlement showdown is not a precondition for resuming negotiations.   And Netanyahu made clear that the settlements issue can only be considered in the context of the final status negotiations.  "But we have to talk in order to talk about it," Netanyahu said. 

But what will they talk about?  That is the question Obama has to face.  If the Israeli coalition government would fall over the settlements issue, would it not be more likely to fall over any compromise or even any gesture on Jerusalem?  Or on refugees?  And how are we going to negotiate borders without impinging on settlements? This is déjà vu for me.  We seem to be fighting our way back to Menahem Begin's formula for Palestinian autonomy - a Palestinian government in the mind but not on the ground.  That no doubt would satisfy Prime Minister Netanyahu and his coalition. 

But what about the Palestinians?  The pressure was not on them in this round.  They have just as many internal political problems as the Israelis do.  Only in Abu Mazen's case the costs of compromise are likely to be renewed civil war and violence and possibly even his life.  So the Palestinians probably sighed a sigh of relief that they got out of New York without having to challenge Hamas and without undercutting their relationship with President Obama while leaving Israel to take the blame. 

Perhaps President Obama will have to stop thinking about this problem in the short term and stop looking for a quick fix.  It seems clear that no progress is possible on the critical issues so long as the Israeli government continues in its current configuration.  And in all probability no progress can really be expected so long as the Palestinians are a hair's breadth away from committing mutual suicide.  So perhaps the Palestinian Prime Minister Salem Fayyed has it right.  This may be the time for the Palestinians to get their act together and form a credible government in the service of the Palestinian people.  And it may be time for Israelis to consider their future and decide whether or not they want peace to be held hostage by a rigid minority of the settler movement.  Or we can just mark time until Palestinians living on land from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean outnumber their Jewish neighbors.  Then what?

A War on Terror?

The risk of declaring a war on terror is that it is a war that can neither be defined nor won. And the problem with declaring this war based on the 9/11 threat is that it will be confused by some as a war on Islam. As a war, the emphasis in the public’s mind and the collective mind of the international community is on a military solution. This puts an unfair burden on our military and tends to disguise the steps that the international community needs to take for a cooperative effort to counter the terrorism threat and to get at its roots. Without a broader perspective, we are dealing with the symptoms and paying too little attention to the causes. Despite the promise of preemptive military attack and the military character of our efforts, we are at risk of being caught up in a defensive war and our steps are likely to be reactive. This gives the terrorists the initiative to attack and pull back at times and places of their choosing.

 

The President is right that the Iraq theater is the front line of the war on terror. But it is the front line because the terrorists have seen it as an opportunity and chosen it as the front line. They have been able to use Iraq as a recruiting device, as a training ground, and as an easy point of access to American and allied targets. They could just as easily pull out tomorrow and take their actions to other target states like Saudi Arabia, with its vulnerable oil facilities, or Jordan, with its vulnerable relationship with Israel and the United States.

Terrorism was not invented by 9/11. It was not the creation of perverted Islam. It has been around for a long time. And it is being used by groups and states around the globe. The administration tried to narrow the fight by defining our enemy as terrorist organizations with global reach. Who then does that exclude? Arguably, neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Islamic Jihad are organizations with global reach. Does that make them any less of a terrorist organization? If we are going to have this fight, and it is clear that we must, then the fight has to be about delegitimizing the terrorists’ tactics whoever they are and whatever their cause. The world must come to conclude that making innocent civilians pay for the imagined or real sins of others is unacceptable and intolerable.

 

To do this, we need the concerted help of many states, particularly those most directly threatened by terrorism. So when Egypt, or Russia, or Saudi Arabia seeks our help to terminate a group that has engaged in murder of civilians and threatens to do so again, we cannot stop to worry about the nature of the regime we are helping to defend. We have to have clear priorities.

 

At the same time, neither we nor our closest friends can afford to reward terror tactics. When terrorism works, and the terrorists achieve their tactical goals, then we all lose. When the Israelis pay the price of releasing fifty Palestinian prisoners to rescue one Israeli hostage, then the terrorists win. And then you can bet we will see more incidents of hostage taking. When the United States responds to an attack on our barracks and we are seen to be withdrawing, as we did in Lebanon and, arguably, again after the al-Khobar attack, then the terrorists win. If the French pay substantial ransoms to secure the release of their citizens in Iraq, then the terrorists win. This is possibly the most painful price we and our friends may have to pay to delegitimize terrorism.

 

There is, however, one more avenue that we will have to explore if we are to win this battle. That is the question of why normal people, regardless of nationality or religion, can be seduced into terrorism. Let’s leave aside the mentally unstable or the sociopath. As the evidence on terrorists tends to indicate, they are generally educated and from moderate means. But they feel aggrieved and they feel powerless to affect conditions. They are therefore susceptible to those who offer a purpose and a path. For those people we have to provide an alternative purpose and path. They will have to be reeducated and reeducation starts with the population at large.

 

In the Islamic communities and among national movements, this is a role for religious and civil authorities and leading personalities. We must seek such personalities and leaders out. But to succeed, we also have to listen to their concerns and the concerns of the people they represent. And we have to be responsive. If the concern is the plight of the Palestinian people, for example, then we need to do more to help them. And we will not be able to hide behind political definitions and self imposed constraints. We cannot be complacent in the face of genuine grievances and we need not be ashamed or afraid to say no, when the concerns are unjustified or unrealistic.

 

Terrorism is a mechanism to gain attention for a cause that is being ignored by the world. Before Black September and Munich the Palestinians were anonymous. As Golda Meir said in the late 60’s “there is no such thing as the Palestinian people.” After the spate of terrorist events, no one had any doubt that Palestinians existed, and they were not just refugees.

 

People need legitimate channels to express their concerns and political views. And in this context democracy can be a weapon against terrorism. But even before democracy, education is the sharpest arrow in our quiver. In the final analysis, it is education that can inoculate people against the promise of terror.   

Osama bin Who?

 

A flurry of rumors, supposedly coming out of Saudi Arabia and reported by French intelligence, indicated over the weekend that Osama bin Laden, last known to be alive in July 2006, had contracted typhoid in Pakistan and died. The rumors were immediately called into question by Saudi, French and US authorities. But what if they were true? What impact would Osama bin Laden’s death, by whatever means, have on the real world of terrorism and our war against its practitioners and supporters? We have spent enormous efforts to catch bin Laden and his operatives in Iraq while the Afghanistan experiment in democracy has begun to founder and its leader Hamed Kharzai cries out for even a portion of the $300 billion we have spent in Iraq. 

In the cold hard light of day, it is hard to see how the death of Osama, no matter how evil, would have any significant negative impact on the war in Iraq, the growth of Hezbollah in Lebanon, the position of Hamas in the Palestinian Authority, or the efforts of terrorists and terrorist wana-bes in cells located in some 60 countries around the world.

Perhaps we have given too much credit and attention to Osama bin Laden. He was described to me by Saudis who knew him as not being the brightest tack in the drawer. They also suggested that the impact of his Arab volunteers in the Afghanistan resistance to the Soviet Union was marginal. It was not until the Egyptian terrorist leader, Ayman Zawahiri and his group of terrorist operatives, hardened in battle with the Egyptian regime, joined Osama bin Laden in the 1990’s that the latter began to establish an international reputation. While I was still in government in 2000, we credited bin Laden with organizational management and financial skills that were critical to the development of the bin Laden network and to the terrorists attacks against us. But we did not credit him with the operational skills to mount sophisticated and coordinated terrorist events. That was the work, we thought, of Zawahiri and others.

 
In fact, there is no evidence that Osama bin Laden has had significant operational control over his terrorist network since shortly after we eliminated his safe haven in Afghanistan. While the Jordanian terrorist Zarqawi was still running the al-Qaeda network in Iraq, before his demise, he largely ignored the instructions and guidance coming from Zawahiri.

 
A National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), completed in April and reported in the New York Times by Mark Mazzetti on September 24, suggests that the “American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.” The report goes on to say that the “radical Islamic movement has expanded from a core of Qaeda operatives and affiliated groups to include a new class of “self-generating” cells inspired by Al Qaeda’s leadership but without any direct connection to Osama bin Laden or his top lieutenants.”

For all the members of the original deck of cards that we captured or killed in Iraq, the terrorist threat has actually accelerated. It is a system that does not depend on one man or even a group of men. When Saddam Hussein was captured, there was no significant drop in the level of violence in Iraq. Since Zarqawi was killed the level of violence in Iraq has escalated.

 A factor that we may be missing is the cultural gap that exists between the terrorists and most of the rest of us. Part of the idea behind this kind of Islamic perversion is a commitment to the ultimate individual self-sacrifice for the broader “good” and subsequent reward in heaven. For a suicide bomber, being evaporated is not a sign of defeat but of glorious victory. I have little doubt that the acolytes of Zarqawi are convinced he is now in heaven enjoying his reward. And if Osama dies, he is, presumably, up for an even greater reward. So the net effect from Osama’s death may be to stimulate greater effort on the part of the terrorists and emulation of the bin Laden ideal of self-sacrifice and martyrdom.

 
In the blame game that gets particularly acute around our election time, Americans are now being told that President Clinton did not do enough during his years in office to go after Osama bin Laden before 9/11. But it doesn’t appear the President Bush has been any more successful in catching Bin Laden or in curtailing the terrorism he spawned that has cost over 15,000 American casualties in Iraq so far. And if the NIE is correct, the situation is worse than it was before 9/11. Perhaps it is more difficult than our politicians think to capture a few men in the wilderness of Afghanistan and Pakistan. And perhaps even if Clinton had been successful in killing bin Laden in his 1998 air attack against their training grounds in Afghanistan, it would not have changed the targets of 9/11 or the success of the operation as other operatives took charge.

 

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al Qaeda , Iraq, Middle East, Terrorism

Jihadists' War on Abu Mazen and America

Like the elephant in the room that no one sees, the Administration has chosen to ignore the fact that Hamas is popular in the West Bank and Gaza and that its popularity may be growing.  We seem also to be ignoring the fact that the answer to Hamas is not weapons.  It is not civil war, disarmament or armed confrontation.  The answer to Hamas, lies in building up Abu Mazen’s credibility with his constituency and providing for the basic needs of the Palestinian people that today too often are provided by Hamas.

The Jihadists, like Iran, reject the existence of Israel and they reject America and its position in the region which they see as thwarting their plans.  They seek, a new Caliphate in whatever territory that can be controlled with the view toward expanding outward.  The Caliphate would be built from Islamic states, under a strict and uncompromising reading of Islamic law, and with fundamentalist Islamic leaders.  But, their primary short term agenda, on which every thing else depends, is to build their base among their Sunni Islamic constituency.

People expect governments to provide 100% of service to 100% of the people.  The Palestinian authority does not have the resources to do that whereas Hamas has the privilege of not providing 100% to 100%.  It has the luxury of providing the froth on the top of the services the PA or UNRWA provide. And thus it gets the credit for a fraction of the price while the government falls short of expectations. 

It is perhaps time for the Administration and the Palestinian Authority to stop thinking in the stock phrases, political speeches and tired policies and practices of the past and start concentrating on what will build up the political power of moderate Palestinians now so that, at a minimum, they can take on Hamas on equal terms.  Short term, short lead time civil works like public housing will create more jobs and immediate income than massive Halliburton style projects for the future.  And quick capital infusion by the international community to finance such projects can begin to turn the situation around.

A practical short term crash program for economic enhancement cannot take place in an environment where criminal gangs roam the streets.  It has to take place in tandem with a short term crash program to provide security inside Gaza and the West Bank. We and the Israelis need to recognize that the problem of Israel’s security starts with the problem of Gazan and West Bank internal security.  Give Abu Mazen the laws, courts, jails and police to enforce the law on his own streets and investment and jobs will follow. That is the only way to improve conditions and reduce the attraction of Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.      

What we need to understand is that the West Bank and Gaza are a microcosm of the war of ideologies that is taking place in the broader Middle East.  They are on the front lines of al Qaeda’s plan for a new caliphate – a caliphate that neither we nor most existing Arab or Islamic countries are going to welcome.  This is no longer just a Palestinian problem or an Israeli problem.  It is a problem that is tied to a growing effort by Jihadists to capitalize on poverty, hardship, unemployment, and loss of hope throughout the region.  We need an aggressive action program and strong partnership between Abu Mazen and President Bush to stop the erosion of moderation and modernization that is taking place in the region.

Unfortunately, we did not see such a commitment or determination in the public statements of either President Bush or Abu Mazen on October 20. This was an opportunity for the President to seize the initiative, move from his preferred position behind the pulpit, and get out into the world to put specific and concrete action behind his words.  This was a way he could have shown true leadership and begun to restore America’s image and influence in the world. Unfortunately, it appears that the President and Abu Mazen both missed opportunities in Washington.