http://guidetotheperplexed.blogspot.com/
1 All of Israel’s main parties have shown signs of splitting after PM Netanyahu’s recent “two states” speech and Ehud Barak’s insistence upon changes to Labour’s rules.
2 Iran’s election has exposed systematic large-scale vote rigging that originated with Ahmadinejad’s first election victory in June 2005: “We did not have a revolution in order to have democracy” (Ahmadinejad; 18 May 2005).
3 President Abbas and Hamas both reveal their master plan: do nothing, or, failing that, as little as possible. Both hint, should that fail, there’s always another intifada and more rockets.
4 Some of Lebanon’s Christians have second thoughts and vote for Hariri’s coalition. Hizb’allah declare their strategy: no change.
5 President Obama’s strategy is also revealed in his Cairo speech: play it smart, cool, and straight, and do not let anyone off the hook.
6 Netanyahu has been forced to turn down the volume on the hysteria button (marked ‘Iranian threat’) by Kadima’s leader Tzipi Livni, and the head of the CIA Leon Panetta, as Israel readies itself for a regional war on all fronts. However, events may have conspired to postpone an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities until 2012-13.
· ANALYSIS
· P.M. Netanyahu’s speech won overwhelming support from 71% of Israelis as it spelt out some important truths:
1. After the Gaza experience Israel cannot risk a rocket-propelling entity a few miles from all its major urban centres, its main airport, and its main energy producing sites.
There is no guarantee Hamas will not take over the West Bank at any time in the future, so it must be demilitarised and any breaking of this agreement will be a casus belli.
2. Israel was not created as a result of the Holocaust. Israel is the Jewish people’s homeland, and has been connected to the Jewish people for over 3,500 years. To not acknowledge that is proof that the Arabs do not accept the legitimacy of “the right of the Jewish people to a state of their own, in their historic homeland.” This is evidence of a denial by the Arabs in general and the Palestinians in particular of Jewish history, culture, religion, and civilisation, that form the very foundation of an independent Jewish entity, and therefore at any point they can use their denial of the legitimacy of the Jewish connection to the land as a basis for another conflict. It follows that if they are serious about peace they will publicly recognise “this is the homeland of the Jewish people, this is where our identity was forged.” With official recognition of the Jewish state a demilitarised Palestinian state will be able to live side-by-side in peace and prosperity with Israel.
3. There is no equation between Palestinian suffering and the Holocaust. To equate or conflate the two in any way is to distort and deny both reality and the truth and is a deliberate assault on the memory of the lost six million and upon the survivors’ sensibilities towards that loss. This is not the mark of someone who wants peace.
4. If the United States is serious in believing that this conflict can be resolved quickly because to do so would suit American interests, namely their total dependence on Arab oil, they had better find the solutions to these Arab prejudices otherwise there can be no peace within their preferred timeframe. The ball is in the Arab and American court and that includes getting recognition of Israel and its right to exist, and the issue of settling the “refugees” in Arab lands. Israeli Prime Ministers have always been prepared to meet their enemies’ leaders, not the other way around. Israelis want peace, the Arab states want only to perpetuate the conflict. If it were otherwise they would simply repeat Sadat’s visit to Israel, or, for once, take up Israel's leaders’ endless offers to meet.
· Netanyahu’s baptysmal recognition of the possibility of two states opened up potential rifts within both the Kadima and Likud parties. 20 out of 27 Likud members insisted recognition of a two state solution was never part of the Likud’s election platform, the opposite in fact, and they would not vote for the creation of a Palestinian state. 3 Kadima members claimed that since Netanyahu had recognised the principle of the two state solution there was no longer any reason not to join the government of national unity. However none of the individuals who made these claims has as yet forced a split within the party or posed a threat to the leadership despite the fact that Kadima’s no.2 Shaul Mofaz was one of the 3 MKs who were prepared to go public on the pointlessness of Kadima remaining in opposition. Likud are framing legislation that will allow Kadima to split more easily, so that only 7 MKs, or, alternatively, a third of any party, would be required to form another party.
· Labour party rebels are 1 MK short of splitting the party. Knesset rules state a third of a party’s MKs are needed before a split can occur. 4 MKs want to leave Labour because they detest Barak, and do not want to be a part of a Likud-led national unity government. They are also unhappy at proposed new Labour committee rule changes including the neutering of the role of the secretary-general and at Ehud Barak’s removal of Eitan Cabel from that post. Should they finally split, Labour will be left with 8 MKs either in, or in support of, the government. The 5 potential rebels, including Cabel, intend to form part of the opposition under a social democrat party banner, although one may even go over to Kadima.
· Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei has made his first major strategic blunder by ordering the selection of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for President by blatant vote rigging. His decision has exposed the fact that Ahmedinejad did not in fact win the 2005 Presidential elections as he did not come second in the first round of those 2005 elections and so should never have been in the run-off with Ayatollah Rafsanjani.
· Ayatollahs Khamenei and Rafsanjani are long time associates and rivals who have diametrically opposed views of the future of the revolution. Both have no compunction about assassinating their opponents (Rafsanjani is wanted by Interpol for his part in the bombing of the Buenos Aires Jewish Community Centre in which 87 died), and both are totally committed to the revolution, but Khamenei is obsessively concerned with both anti-Americanism and Iranian self-sufficiency. He believes confronting both the US and the current structure of international institutions like the UN, as well as clamping down on any manifestation of pro-western dress or culture, strengthens the regime and revolution.
Rafsanjani believes the regime is more likely to survive if it allows freedoms to both youth culture and women, and should compromise where necessary with the US. This he believes also strengthens his own agenda, increasing his political and financial base within the Islamic regime. Khamenei has a more austere view of revolutionary Islam and is not interested in accumulating wealth, in contrast to Rafsanjani, who is on the Forbes list as one of the richest men in the world.
Finally, and most importantly, Khamenei is determined to acquire nuclear weapons technology as soon as possible to safeguard the revolution whilst simultaneously confronting the US. Rafsanjani believes nuclear weapons can be acquired over a longer time span and to confront the US is counterproductive particularly for the economy.
· After Rafsanjani’s 2005 defeat as a result of Khamenei’s orders, Rafsanjani
committed himself to removing Ahmadinejad and if possible weakening Khamenei. Rafsanjani backed Ahmadinejad’s opponents who won a series of local elections in Tehran beating Ahmadinejad’s supporters by a margin of 2:1 (2006). Rafsanjani had also got himself elected to the Assembly of Experts and then to its Chair (2006-7), a body that in theory can deselect the Supreme Leader. Khamenei was determined to stop this threat to his position and arranged for what he believed to be the weakest team to face Ahmadinejad in the 2009 Presidential elections whilst Rafsanjani supported both of the main opposition figures Mousavi and Karrubi.
· In the 2005 first round of the Presidential race Ahmadinejad could only have come in second place by having votes taken from the other 6 candidates. The three candidates they took most votes from were Rafsanjani, who the Interior Ministry still allowed to win the first round on 21%, Mehdi Karrubi, on 17%, a moderate cleric and politician who supported dialogue with the United States and increased freedoms and protection for individuals, women, and minorities, and Dr Mostafa Moeen, on 14%, a popular reformist associate of Mousavi, who that year had been coerced into not running. Ahmadinejad was most likely between third and fifth position on 12% of the vote but because he was fighting 6 other candidates only a small percentage manipulation of the vote won him second place on 19%. Thereafter in the second round the vote was rigged even further to give Ahmadinejad a 2:1 win against Rafsanjani.
We can be almost certain of this because the other reformist candidates made up at least 56% of the first round vote, which in any case had been rigged to ensure Ahmadinejad came second. This meant that the Interior Ministry had to hand over roughly 33% of the total vote to Ahmadinejad in the second round run-off.
· Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei felt so threatened by the opposition “reformists” in 2009 that he ordered the Interior Ministry declare an outright decisive win in the first round for Ahmadinejad having picked fewer, and he assumed weaker, opposition candidates. Unfortunately for Khamenei, unlike the first round in 2005, this required a massive manipulation of the national vote and it is this blatant manipulation that not only exposed the 2009 election for a sham but also exposed how they manipulated the 2005 election as well. As Ahmadinejad put it during the 2005 campaign: “We did not have a revolution in order to have democracy (17-18 May 2005).” Ahmadinejad even won Tehran in 2009 despite his allies having lost by a 2:1 margin almost all elections there since 2006.
The 2009 fraud followed the same pattern of 2005. If a leaked Interior Ministry document is to believed, the largest percentage of the vote was once again deducted from Karrubi who instead of winning 34% of the vote won 2%, losing his own Lorestan region where in previous elections he had comfortably received 50% of the vote. This time he received 5% and Ahmadinejad 71%.
Mousavi, as the strongest candidate, had only 15% of his vote deducted, echoing what happened to Rafsanjani in the first round of 2005. This meant a total deduction of 47-48% of the national vote from the opposition to Ahmadinajad. The result: a 63% “victory” to Ahmadinejad over Mousavi’s 34%, a mirror image of the rigged 2005 second round win over Rafsanjani. The crudity of the vote manipulation was made far worse by the unexpected turnout of 80-85% and the massive vote for both Mousavi and Karrubi, requiring a crude and alarming last minute large-scale ballot stuffing process that could not escape notice. For example in Mazandarin province the number of votes cast exceeded eligible voters by 4,500.
The fraud was further confirmed by Khamenei breaking electoral rules and refusing to wait the three days necessary should any queries arise before announcing any result. He simply announced Ahmadinejad’s victory very soon after the Interior Ministry, which had announced the result 2 hours after the polls closed. The only poll that stated Ahmadinejad was leading the election by a 2:1 margin was of 1,001 people by telephone taken between 11-20 May, before the campaign got going, before the opposition were allowed access to state media, and with 27% expressing no preference. As one Iranian young woman put it: “In Iran there is an expression that the walls have mice and the mice have ears.” To express a dissenting view in a police state to a pollster on an open telephone line is a hazardous business.
· The regime has lost all legitimacy in the eyes of the vast majority of Iranians because its embodiment, The Supreme Leader Khamenei, has effectively declared ordinary Iranians’ wishes are irrelevant to the regime. And although the constitution allows the Supreme Leader to cancel “un-Islamic” election results the strategic blunder lies with the popular focus being moved from an unpopular personality to an unpopular regime. Nevertheless, despite this major blunder the regime has enormous resources at its disposal, including the Basij paramilitaries, the Revolutionary Guards, the moral police (whose Chief was arrested last year in a brothel with 6 prostitutes attending to him), the vast security apparatus, and below that elements of the army and police who would not hesitate to suppress any insurgency.
Nevertheless, the regime’s standing in the eyes of much of the free world will be diminished as the realisation dawns that this regime has no popular mandate whatsoever.
· President Abbas told the Washington Post that he would wait until PM Netanyahu and Hamas came round to his way of thinking: "I will wait ("It will take a couple of years") for Hamas to accept international commitments. I will wait for Israel to freeze settlements….Until then, in the West Bank we have a good reality . . . the people are living a normal life." Abbas’s response to why he refused Olmert’s concessions over Jerusalem, refugee resettlement, 97% of the land, and the removal of settlements was: "The gaps were wide." In the meantime other Fatah officials hinted that perhaps an intifada might move things along to their advantage.
Abbas, even by his own calculations, is up for re-election in January 2010. The assumption must be that he will stand unopposed, or will stand down. If Abbas allows Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh to stand against him he might have to rig the ballot to win.
If Fatah choose another intifada the Israelis will say Abbas has no control over the West Bank and Israel cannot make any concessions during an insurgency. Abbas’s calculation is that Obama will pressure Netanyahu’s government to give him more than Olmert offered: "They can use their weight with anyone around the world. Two years ago they used their weight on us. Now they should tell the Israelis, 'You have to comply with the conditions.' " Abbas's assumption is Israel will not be able to do so thus his calculation that within 2 years the Likud-dominated government will be replaced by Tzipi Livni. Somehow, according to his plan, she will manage to offer even more than Olmert did. This, needless to say, is pure delusion.
Even if Livni replaces Bibi, which is far from certain, she will not be able to form a government that would accept such concessions. Another opportunity will be lost, and the Palestinians will simply retort that Obama was a great disappointment or was always in the pocket of the Jews. Abbas has concocted a recipe for stalemate, and future conflict.
· The Christians, in opposition Christian leader Michel Aoun’s sector of central Lebanon, who were expected to vote for him, voted for the government’s "14 March Alliance" instead. This allowed the pro-Western coalition government of Christian and Sunni groups to retain its majority (71 of 128 seats) despite advantageous constituency changes made at the Doha Peace Conference (Qatar) to aid the opposition "8 March Alliance" comprising the Shia Hizb’allah and Amal parties and Aoun's Christian "Free Patriotic Movement" .
The election result on balance favours short-term stability in Lebanon as long as the Shia Hizb’allah party do not have to give up the independence of their militia and are allowed to continue to build their state within a state. This will change if Iran demands an attack on Israel. Israel has stated that if Hizb’allah remains part of the government, and cannot be controlled, any subsequent attack will be considered as a declaration of war by Lebanon against Israel, in which case all Lebanon’s infrastructure will be at risk from any counter-attack.
· Despite the mildly hysterical reaction in Israel to President Obama’s speech in Cairo (4 June 2009) and his demand to halt all settlement activity, his position towards violence and the Arab players was crystal clear:
1. “Hamas must put an end to violence, recognize past agreements, and recognize Israel's right to exist.”
2. “The Arab States must recognize that the Arab Peace Initiative was an important beginning, but not the end of their responsibilities. The Arab-Israeli conflict should no longer be used to distract the people of Arab nations from other problems. Instead, it must be a cause for action to help the Palestinian people develop the institutions that will sustain their state; to recognize Israel's legitimacy; and to choose progress over a self-defeating focus on the past.”
3. “Palestinians must abandon violence. Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and does not succeed…violence is a dead end. It is a sign of neither courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus. That is not how moral authority is claimed; that is how it is surrendered…Now is the time for Palestinians to focus on what they can build. The Palestinian Authority must develop its capacity to govern, with institutions that serve the needs of its people.”
Strikingly, the Israelis took the President’s comments on settlements and the two-state solution to heart. The Palestinians and Arab states have failed to even recognise his expectations of them, precisely the opposite in fact, they have cravenly ignored them.
Obama must know that only sustained pressure on all the parties will move the process forward. He will not tolerate Israeli procrastination but nor will he ignore a Palestinian return to violence, or President Abbas’s desire to do nothing for the next 2 years. Other than moral and public pressure there is little Obama can do to move the peace process forward when both parties, the Palestinians in particular, are so resolutely unwilling to accept their responsibilities.
If Obama shows leadership over the nuclear crisis in North Korea, and manages to get open or tacit Chinese and Russian support to impose and apply sanctions, and U.N. resolutions against both North Korean exports of arms, and the proliferation of nuclear related materials, progress on peace could also be made. Should China and Russia be successfully brought in to deal with N. Korea then they will have less restraint on bringing their influnce to bear on Iran, Syria, and the Palestinians. Otherwise we can expect stalemate and a countdown to another conflict whether local or regional. Russia, Ehud Barak, and the Arab states have all been advocating a regional peace conference as the next step.
· The head of the CIA visited Israel secretly (late April, early May) to discuss Israel's attitude to bombing Iran and argue for proper consultation on the issue. He advised the consequences would be so grave that Israel would need the support of its allies. He also said that the constant declarations concerning Iran’s metaphysical threat to Israel were counterproductive to US efforts to engage Iran in dialogue and was creating unnecessary tension throughout the region.
Tzipi Livni also criticised Netanyahu for creating an unnecessary sense of alarm amongst the Israeli public over the threat posed by Iran’s development of nuclear weapons. If there really was a threat he should act, and if otherwise, keep his peace.
These two interventions are symptomatic of a reassessment of Israel’s position in relation to Iran’s nuclear weapons programme. Mossad head Meir Dagan has said (16 June) Iran will not be able to launch a nuclear missile until 2014, despite having sufficient enriched uranium for several nuclear devices by 2010. Other senior intelligence chiefs and advisers have stated the case for not attacking Iran until a discernible threat appears and the United States approve an attack. It has also become clear that President Obama is prepared to give Iran several months of face-to-face engagement before calling for very severe sanctions should the talks fail, and that he believes those sanctions will need to be applied for years before they have any effect.
This means that unless there is a substantial change in the balance of power, such as delivery of Russia’s S-300 anti-aircraft system, Israel could postpone a pre-emptive strike until 2012-2013.
· If Obama can push the peace process forward, and the Iranian regime continues to implode and/or agrees to develop only civil nuclear power, the prognosis is good. If, however, things continue as they are, with Iran becoming more paranoid and belligerent, and the Palestinians and Arabs offering no serious compromises, then a regional conflict is inevitable. Israel is preparing itself for a war on all fronts but will not be truly ready for such a conflict for another year or two, and Israel's anti-missile systems will not be fully operational for at least another 2 to 3 years. This means that Israel's optimum time for a pre-emptive strike will be sometime in 2012 but pretty much any scenario can present itself between now and then, as Israel is not only more than capable of fighting a war on all fronts, but Iran, Syria, and the Palestinians, are more than capable of provoking one.
Links:
Articles on Iran:
2005 election - http://www.ccc.nps.navy.mil/si/2005/Aug/gasiorowskiAug05.asp
2009 election -
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/06/16/iran.election.questions/index.html
Khamenei profile -
http://www.carnegieendowment.org/files/sadjadpour_iran_final2.pdf
Washington Post Abbas interview:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/28/AR2009052803614.html
For the best English language news site on Israel:
http://www.jpost.com/
For a vigorous Liberal-Left position of the Israeli daily paper: http://www.haaretz.com/
For a Centre-Left view on Israel, in occasionally appalling English:
http://www.ynetnews.com/home/0,7340,L-3083,00.html
For an insight into Arab and Muslim media coverage of the Israel-Palestinian issue, anti-Semitism, and other Middle East issues see:
http://www.memri.org/
For an overview of the media coverage of Israel see the BICOM (Britain Israel Research and Communications Centre) site. Below are the sites for -News headlines with links to each site:
http://www.bicom.org.uk/news/headlines
A written summary of the news:
news:http://www.bicom.org.uk/news
The main issues behind the news:
http://www.bicom.org.uk/briefings/behind_the_news/
Extracts from editorial and article Opinion:
http://www.bicom.org.uk/news/comment-and-opinion
A small selection of Quotes:
http://www.bicom.org.uk/news/quotes
_____________________________________________
_____________________________________________
______________________________________________
______________________________________
__________________________
No comments:
Post a Comment