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Please go to the new iteration of this blog, under the name Daled Amos

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The Decline of the Arabs

by Asher Susser
Middle East Quarterly
Fall 2003
http://www.meforum.org/article/564


The Arabs ? are in a double state of decay that
boggles the minds even of those who expected a hot summer
of post-war decadence ? The [Arab] nation will be split
between those who dance to the beat of scandal and defeat,
and those who blow themselves up in what is turning into a
deafening religious ritual.
?Azmi Bishara[1]

In their half-century of independence, the Arabs have been
defeated time and again by their adversaries. Arab armies
knew humiliation in the Nakba (catastrophe) of 1948 and
the six-day defeat of 1967. They saw victory snatched from
them by Israel in 1973, and they saw the largest standing
Arab army put to flight by the United States in 1991.
Arabs have hungered for military success. This past March,
many of them thought they could smell one.

In the first few days of the war in Iraq, it appeared as
though the Iraqis were admirably holding their own against
obviously superior U.S. and British forces and might
shatter expectations of a rapid Iraqi collapse. Arab
observers lavished praise on the Iraqi forces, which would
finally redeem Arab honor. It did not matter that a
ruthless dictator ruled Iraq. A "steadfast and resisting"
dictatorship was far better than a defeated Iraqi
democracy, as one Arab commentator put it.[2]

But the euphoria did not last long. The Iraqi forces
crumbled, undermined by a lack of resolve and poor
fighting spirit. Thanks to their pompous minister of
information, Muhammad Sa?id as-Sahhaf, they also became
the target of international ridicule. Initial pride turned
into despair and shock as the Arabs, like the rest of the
world, witnessed the spectacle of relieved Iraqis
rejoicing in the overthrow of their leader by a foreign
invasion.

And the Arabs, for all their sense of shame, did nothing
to prevent this outcome. Some Arab states actually
assisted the United States; others did nothing at all.
Even the much-vaunted "Arab street" was dumbstruck. There
were bigger demonstrations against U.S. war plans in
Europe than in the Arab capitals. The Arab media
(al-Jazeera, etc.) alone bore the message of Arab
solidarity, leading one particularly cynical Arab observer
to the wry conclusion that the Arabs were "nothing more
than an acoustic phenomenon (zahira sawtiya)."[3]

This essay might have been titled, "The Decline of the
Arab World." But referring to the Arab world today seems
anachronistic. If the term is intended to suggest that the
Arab states are a functioning political collective, it is
clearly a misnomer. The Arab world, as such, no longer
exists, any more than a Latin American world does. There
are not even blocks or axes of certain Arab states
arraigned against others, as in the past. The Arab
collective has become nothing but a motley assortment of
states, each fending for itself, most in cooperation with
the United States, a few against it. As Arab diplomats
themselves concede, it is doubtful if one can refer to
anything such as a collective Arab order. The twenty-two
Arab states have very little in common other than their
language.[4]

The state of the Arab collective is not a consequence of
the defeat of Saddam. Rather it is the ignominious defeat
of Saddam that is symptomatic of the Arab condition. The
Arabs are in deep crisis, politically, socially, and
economically. Most have missed the boat of globalization;
they are suffering from a leadership vacuum; and they are
in no position to determine the regional agenda. After the
U.S.-led war against Iraq, the Arabs are in even deeper
disarray and sinking further into what Fouad Ajami
described over two decades ago as the "Arab predicament."

The Arabs, for the most part, have no illusions. Arab
intellectuals and commentators are the first to recognize
the Arab predicament, and it is they who project a mood of
profound collective despair. Arab inability to set the
region's course is readily confirmed by Arab writers, who
openly express the fear that Israel and the United States
will now redraw the map of the Middle East. The Arabs, in
their own self-image, are even more vulnerable than they
were in the midst of World War I, when Britain and France
carved up the Middle East in their secret deal of 1916,
known as the Sykes-Picot agreement.

The impotence of the Arab League is but one symptom. After
the war in Iraq, Arab foreign ministers opted not to
convene at all. After all, they had nothing to decide.
Muhammad Sid Ahmad, one of Egypt's leading intellectuals,
lamented the fact that the Arabs were now absent from the
international arena, despite the fact that the Middle East
was one of the key regions on the globe.[5]

The "Arab predicament" has only worsened since Ajami
coined the phrase. The Arabs now stand at an impasse, with
no prospect of exiting it any time soon. How they entered
it is a cumulative litany of wrong choices, beginning with
the hero of Arabism, Gamal Abdel Nasser.
Trial and Errors

The Arabs did not always feel themselves so helpless. In
the heyday of Nasser in the 1950s and 1960s, Egypt's young
and promising charismatic president shared the leadership
of the awakening third world and the non-aligned movement
with Nehru of India and Tito of Yugoslavia. Nasser
appeared on the world stage as an equal with the great
leaders of his time, and he set the regional agenda. He
put paid to the Western effort to create an anti-Soviet
defense pact in the Middle East and precipitated the Suez
debacle, coercing the French and the British into
accepting his nationalization of the Suez Canal.

As a result, Nasser became the unrivaled leader of the
Arab world. For a decade, he spread his messianic vision
of Arab unity, Arab socialism, and alliance with the
Soviet Union as the panacea for the ills of the Arab world
and for the rejuvenation of Arab power. In 1958, he forged
a union with Syria, effectively becoming ruler over that
country. Nasser's appeal was so magnetic that even the
United States seriously considered abandoning its ally
Jordan in the face of his onslaught. Washington, like just
about everyone else, was convinced that Nasser represented
the inevitable wave of the future.

Nasser's position began to come undone in 1961 when the
union with Syria broke apart. He slipped further when
Egypt became embroiled in a costly civil war in Yemen. But
the final blow came in 1967. After six days of warfare
with Israel, Nasserism was in tatters. The great promise
proved to be no more than an illusion. Since then it has
been a steady run downhill for the Arab states.

On the ruins of Nasserism, Islamists offered a supposedly
authentic route to modernity, without secularism. But the
record of the ayatollahs in Iran, the Islamist-inspired
military regime in Sudan, and the Taliban in Afghanistan
has been one of repeated failure. (In Iran, where
Islamists still rule, the younger generation detests the
regime.) The Islamists, an Arab writer observed, offered
no realistic policy alternatives other than a totalitarian
vision of their own.[6] Indeed, radical Islam, instead of
developing into an alternative route to modernity, has
degenerated into a movement of fury and revenge. It has
produced horrific acts of terrorism, but has failed to
alter the balance of power in the Arabs' favor.

In the 1970s, there were those in the Arab world and
elsewhere who believed that the oil weapon would become
the guarantor of Arab resurgence. It did not. Declining
oil prices in the 1980s sent the Arab economies reeling
into crisis from which many have yet to recover. Even the
Saudis are finding it ever more difficult to maintain
their well-greased political system, in which the loyalty
of the middle class was bought with favors bestowed by the
state.

The critical centers of power in the modern Arab East are
spent forces. Cairo, Riyadh, Baghdad, and Damascus are way
past their prime.

Egypt. Egypt, as a poor third world state, is increasingly
aware of the widening gap between its self-image as a
regional leader and its real power to shape the turn of
events in the Middle East. Recognizing that poverty and
power do not go together, the Egyptians are complaining
yet again of the unequal distribution of wealth amongst
the Arabs, on the one hand, and urging Egypt's accelerated
economic reform and privatization on the other. Egypt's
weakness makes it vulnerable to economic competition from
neighbors. Thus, for example, Egypt is concerned that, in
the new post-Saddam era, it will have to compete with
Iraqi exports of natural gas, or that a new regime in Iraq
might be convenient to Israel and thus tip the regional
scales even further against the Egyptians.

Politically, Egypt acquiesces in the U.S. will. This, too,
is a sign of its weakness. In the aftermath of the 1967
defeat, Nasser remained defiant. Under his aegis, the Arab
summit in Khartoum adopted its notorious three "nos,"
refusing to recognize, negotiate, or make peace with
Israel. Shortly thereafter, he launched what became known
as the "War of Attrition" against the Israeli forces along
the Suez Canal. But in this day and age of U.S. hegemony
and Arab lethargy, such a provocative mode of action would
be unthinkable. Instead, the Egyptians cooperate. Most
recently, they were involved in pressuring Arafat to allow
the formation of the Mahmud Abbas (Abu Mazen) government.
They have similarly done their utmost to convince the
Syrians not to provoke the United States. Generally
speaking, the name of Egypt's game is acquiescence with
the powers that be rather than confrontation.

Saudi Arabia. The Saudis are in a state of constant
anxiety, if not panic, paying protection to Islamic
extremists and suffering their attacks all the same.
Riyadh is also worried about oil prices. Strange as that
may sound, it is true, nevertheless, and a sign of the
times: rising prices might aggravate an already tense
relationship with the United States. Since the exposure of
the involvement of Saudi nationals in the attacks of
September 11, 2001, American public anger against Saudi
Arabia is rife. The Saudis would not even think of
launching another oil boycott. Instead they have hired
public relations specialists to plead the Saudi case and
improve their image through television commercials. Saudi
external debt is mounting,[7] and its strategic importance
to the United States has declined, now that Washington
controls the future of Iraqi oil. The same holds true for
Saudi territory for U.S. bases, which are being evacuated.

Iraq. In this overall picture of Arab infirmity, Iraq
could have made a difference. Iraq is an extraordinary
Arab state, not over-populated, potentially wealthy, and
technologically advanced. But Saddam elected to use Iraqi
power in futile confrontations with his neighbors, first
Iran and then Kuwait. By so doing, he aroused almost the
whole world against him. In the 1991 Kuwait war, even the
Arab states sided with Washington. The United States
intervened to restore the existing regional order, the
very order that the Arab states craved.

The more recent Iraqi crisis, however, was very different.
The United States invaded Iraq not to save the existing
order but to overturn it. Generally speaking, the Arabs,
even those who were relieved to see the last of Saddam,
were deeply uncomfortable with the thought of the United
States bowling over Middle Eastern regimes at will and
possibly threatening the territorial integrity of an Arab
state. But Washington had its way, and Iraq has become its
testing ground for its theories about democracy.

Baghdad was once the capital of the magnificent caliphate
empire of the Abbasids and the center of its
Arabic-language culture under such illustrious caliphs as
al-Mansur (754-75), Harun ar-Rashid (786-809) and
al-Ma'mun (813-33). In modern times it was often the
counterweight to Egyptian dominance and an alternative
"throbbing heart" of Arabism. Until recently Baghdad was
home to Saddam's regime, the defiant hope of the radicals.
Now the United States plans to turn Baghdad into a beacon,
but that prospect is distant, and may even be receding. In
the meantime, Iraq is out of play as a force in the Arab
world.

Syria. Damascus is more isolated than ever, completely
surrounded by countries friendly to, allied with, or even
occupied by the United States (Turkey, Israel, Jordan, and
Iraq). This comes at a time when the new U.S. doctrine of
preemptive war has given rise to a pervasive sense of
uncertainty and insecurity in the Arab states in general
and in Syria in particular. On what grounds will the
United States make its assessments of imminent threat or
danger? Who might U.S. forces strike next?
Non-Arab Primacy

Even though Washington's war in Iraq, some Arabs argue,
targeted "the Arabs" as a whole, there was not much they
could do about it. They have very few levers of influence
on the United States. The United States was not compelled
to pay any real price to the Arab states in exchange for
their reluctant acquiescence in the military action
against the Saddam Hussein regime. Present U.S.
initiatives in the Middle East peace process are not a
payoff to the Arabs to whom Washington owes very little.
They are far more of a response to its own domestic
requirements and to the political concerns of its one and
only real European ally, Britain. The United States has
published the Quartet's new roadmap for a Palestinian
solution primarily because President Bush seeks broader
success in the Middle East, thus vindicating his decision
to go to war. But Washington has no apparent desire, or
capability for that matter, to impose the roadmap on the
parties.

European concern for the Arab states and seemingly
pro-Arab European policies are the consequences of Arab
weakness, not Arab power or influence. Some on the left of
the British Labor party have third-world sympathies that
tend to be far more favorable to the Arabs in general, and
to the Palestinians in particular, than to the first-world
Israelis and their occupation. This holds true for other
Europeans, too. But above and beyond the compassion is the
hovering Damocles' sword of Arab emigration to Europe. The
Europeans, as noted in a recent article by George
Papandreou and Chris Patten, seem to be convinced that if
only the Palestinian-Israeli issue were put to rest, "the
full potential of cooperation in the Mediterranean region"
could be achieved. Arab countries would be able to forge
ahead towards economic reform and eventual prosperity.
Such development would, in turn, reduce the demographic
pressure of the Middle East on Europe.[8] The Europeans
are tilting in the Arabs' favor not because of oil power
or the strength of Arab markets but because of the
wretched state of many Arab societies and the impact
emigration from there might have on the ethnic fabric of
Europe in the generations ahead.

Arab decline has enhanced the regional stature of the
non-Arab Middle Eastern states: Israel, Turkey, and Iran.
Israel, because of its military power, economic viability,
and technological prowess, is the only Middle Eastern
state in the globalized league of Western affluent
democracies. Turkey, a former imperial power, has an
enormous land mass and is a populous, militarily powerful,
geopolitically vital, Westernizing state, with
considerable economic potential. Iran, somewhat less
Westernized, has many of Turkey's geopolitical attributes
as a regional power in addition to oil wealth and a
certain influence among Arab Shi?ites who are bidding for
power in their countries.

The routing of Saddam's regime in Iraq has crushed the
traditional Sunni center of power for the first time in
the country's history, elevating the Shi?ites, the
majority in Iraq, to a position of unprecedented
prominence. This does not mean Iranian control of Iraq or
even a desire by the Iraqi Shi?ites to be governed by
Iran. But it does give the Iranians a say in Iraq the
likes of which they have not had before. In the Persian
Gulf, Iran is the only regional power of consequence. Iraq
is out for the count, and the Saudis are a broken reed.
Iran's influence in Lebanon has also increased, through a
more assertive and self-assured Hizbullah, ever since
Syria's grip on Lebanon began to loosen under the
uncertain, untrained, and indecisive hand of Bashar
al-Assad. Iran's new stature was given symbolic
recognition in mid-May 2003 when President Muhammad
Khatami made the first visit to Lebanon by an Iranian
president since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Some Arabs are talking of modernizing the Arab League
while President Bush is pushing a plan calling for a
Middle Eastern free trade zone. Nothing may come of these
notions, but both envisage the inclusion of Iran and
Turkey in new regional associations. It is worthy of note
that after the war in Iraq, in late April 2003, it was not
the Arab League that convened but a forum of Iraq's
neighbors, including Turkey and Iran, to discuss the new
situation. Along with Turkey and Iran were Iraq's Arab
neighbors (including Egypt, in a gesture of respect), but
these are all clear indications of the rising fortunes of
the non-Arabs as regional players at the expense of the
receding Arab collective.
The Self-Centered Arab State

In the annals of the modern Arab state, June 1967 is a
crucial watershed. The humiliating defeat that Israel
dealt the Arabs was more than just a military setback. The
outcome of the war signified the bankruptcy of the world
of ideas that Nasser represented at the core of which was
his messianic message of pan-Arabism. The erosion of
pan-Arabism enhanced the legitimacy of the individual Arab
territorial states and the acceptance of the regional
state order. Arab politics became more pragmatic and less
ideological as the Arab states and their ruling elites all
sought to secure their state interests in the naked and
unapologetic pursuit of their raison d'état.

So devoted was Nasser to the cause of Arabism that during
his reign even Egypt's name was sacrificed: Egypt became
one half of the United Arab Republic (UAR), which united
Syria and Egypt, and Egypt remained the UAR even after
Syria's secession in 1961. Only after Nasser's death in
1970 did his successor, Anwar Sadat, restore Egyptian
primacy by renaming the country the Arab Republic of Egypt
(in Arabic, Jumhuriyat Misr al-?Arabiya?note Misr first
and Arab second). This was not a semantic exercise but the
fundamental reorientation of Egypt's foreign policy to an
"Egypt first" mindset, at the expense of Egypt's
commitment to the overall Arab cause. It was this shift
that paved the way first to a limited war against Israel
and then to peace, all in the name of the Egyptian state
interest?not ideology, whether pan-Arab, socialist, or
otherwise.

Just as "Egypt first" became an acceptable political
orientation, so could the Palestinians follow suit in the
unabashed promotion of Palestinianness. They embarked on
the pursuit of a separate peace and then launched their
own war against Israel without consulting their Arab
brethren. Their brethren, in turn, left the Palestinians
to stew in their own juice without so much as batting an
eyelash. In this new atmosphere of particularism, the
Jordanians can espouse a "Jordan first" (al-Urdunn
awwalan) policy and wage a domestic public relations
campaign under this slogan with no need to explain and
apologize. Such behavior would have been unimaginable in
the Zeitgeist of the 1950s or early 1960s. It would have
been automatically denounced by the guardians of
pan-Arabism as "separatist" (infisali), "regionalist"
(iqlimi), or downright treason, and an abandonment of the
Arab cause.

But even the territorial state may be in some difficulty
as primordial allegiances eat at its fabric. Iraq under
the Baath is a case in point. Since 1968, Baathist Iraq
followed the regionalist trend just like all the other
Arab states. Despite the ruling party's professed pan-Arab
ideology, Iraqi nationalism predominated at home with a
dash of populist Islam thrown in for good measure. Arabism
had failed to unite Sunnis, Shi?ites (who always suspected
Arabism as a guise for Sunni dominance), and Kurds (who
are not Arabs), all lumped together by British colonial
fiat into what Elie Kedourie called the Iraqi
"make-believe kingdom."[9] The regime, in inventing an
imaginary Iraqi identity, sought to revive the ancient
heritage (turath) of pre-Islamic Mesopotamia (Babylon) and
instructed Saddam's servile intellectuals to produce
folklore, theatre, art, and literature accordingly. The
regime set an example. It established a new mouthpiece,
the daily Babil (Babylon), symbolically akin to the
Egyptian Al-Ahram (the pyramids), evoking the country's
pre-Islamic past. This was meant to offset the regime's
republican, revolutionary, pan-Arab credentials as
represented by titles of older newspapers like Ath-Thawra
(the revolution) and Al-Jumhuriyya (the republic).

This Iraqi identity, however, was very artificial,
especially as compared to Egyptianism. Egyptianism
preceded Arabism by a few decades. In Egypt, the so-called
Pharaonic trend of Egyptian identity was prominent
immediately after independence in the 1920s and actively
promoted by the country's most impressive liberal
Westernizing elite. Egyptian identity was not imposed from
above as a manipulative afterthought by a ruthless
dictator after decades of failed Arabism as was the case
in Iraq. Moreover, Egypt is a homogenous society with a
strong sense of continuity since time immemorial as the
people of the Nile Valley and is not the heterogeneous
hodgepodge of Iraq. Even so, the Pharaonic trend did not
last and was soon to succumb to Arabism, superseded after
the 1967 debacle by the Egypto-Islamic mix of the present.

The triangular power structure of the Iraqi state?composed
of the party, the army, and the domestic intelligence
services?collapsed like a house of cards under the
U.S.-led onslaught. The rapid disintegration of the regime
revealed the enormous discrepancy between the power of the
modern Arab authoritarian state to pulverize its own civil
society and its concurrent incapacity to defend itself
against severe external pressure. The Iraqi state, faced
with American power, broke like glass under a hammer. Yet
despite the searing hatred among most Iraqis of the Baath
reign of terror, there is no remnant of civil society on
which to begin the building of an acceptable substitute to
the ancien régime. As an Arab commentator noted, since
independence, the Arabs have failed to build viable
nation-states. Instead they established police states that
exploited every resource to protect their regimes from the
peoples they governed. In this they succeeded, but they
remain incapable of defending themselves against external
threats.[10]

Indeed, nation-states?whose claims on the identity of
their inhabitants trump all other identities?have yet to
take root in the Arab Middle East. But as already noted,
there is an elite interest in the preservation of the
regional state system and in the promotion of a loyalty to
the territorial state. Moreover, certain other groups have
similarly acquired an interest in the existing state
order. Thus, the Shi?ites in Iraq, and their brethren in
Lebanon, have a vested interest in the preservation of
their respective states, rather than seeing them subsumed
in an Arab or Sunni Islamic union. Even an Iranian Shi?ite
take-over of Iraq, for that matter, would most probably be
seen as very disadvantageous to Iraqi Shi?ite sectarian
interests. The same kind of interests could be associated
with the Druze and the Alawis of Syria. Still, despite the
commitment to and political self-interest in the
territorial state, it has not become the focus of
emotional identity. It has not evolved into the civic
religion that supersedes other loyalties?whether
sub-national, supra-national, primordial, religious,
sectarian, ethnic, or tribal.

The looting in Iraq is a revealing case in point. The
National Museum and other public secular institutions of
the fallen regime were looted and vandalized. The
destruction did not simply reflect a profound desire for
revenge and booty. It showed an extremely low level of
popular veneration for Iraq's Mesopotamian or Babylonian
past, precisely that which the Baath regime had tried so
energetically to force-feed the Iraqi people. Simon
Jenkins, writing in The Times of London, reported on the
wanton destruction, such as the decapitation of the famous
statues of twenty-six Assyrian kings. This was in stark
contradiction, Jenkins continued, even to the Bolsheviks,
who protected the Hermitage during the Russian revolution.
After all, robbing the museum?the custodian of the
identity of a people?was akin to the seizure of the crown
jewels of collective memory. Iraqi looters were plundering
the raw material of their own history, of the Mesopotamian
culture that deepened their historical perspective. [11]

But this is where Jenkins got it wrong. For the great
majority of Iraqis, the contents of the National Museum
are not the crown jewels of their collective memory. For
the Sunnis, it would be the memories of the glorious
Abbasid caliphate and for the Shi?ites, their holy shrines
of Najaf (the tomb of Ali), Karbala (the tomb of Hussein),
and Kazimayn (the tombs of the seventh imam, Musa
al-Kazim, and the eleventh, al-Hasan al-?Askari). These
are the historical cradles of their suffering and their
faith?not the kings of Assyria or the artifacts of
Babylon. The massive outpouring of Shi?ite faith in
Karbala?disallowed under Saddam?immediately after the U.S.
occupation of Iraq, on the occasion of the commemoration
of the fortieth day of the anniversary of the death of
Imam Hussein, was as good an indication as any of the real
cultural components of Iraqi collective memory.

Religious, ethnic, and tribal heritages are the crown
jewels of collective memory, and these were left
untouched. No one probably even considered the idea of
looting the mosques at the holy shrines or anywhere else
for that matter. One can easily imagine the punishment
that would have been meted out to any such prospective
looter by the clerics and their flock. (And when Iraqis
did return some of the looted treasures of the National
Museum, it was in response to appeals from their religious
leaders.) After the disintegration of the regime, the
primordial identities have clearly emerged supreme as
religion and tribe prove to be more natural collective
sanctuaries than territorial nationalism.

Not all Arab states are the same in this respect, and one
should be cautious about sweeping generalizations. Thus,
Egyptian identity is certainly more solid than Iraqi
identity. But Jordan and the Palestinians are more
problematic. Much is said of the Jordanian-Palestinian
cleavage in Jordan. But perhaps this dichotomy has been
overstated, considering that Jordanians have more in
common with Palestinians culturally and historically than
current tensions may reveal. After all, the great majority
of them are Sunni Muslims, and the minority who are not
are, for the most part, Orthodox Christians. For Muslims
and Christians alike, Arabic is their mother tongue.
Jordanians and Palestinians mix socially and marry each
other all the time?Muslims with Muslims and Christians
with Christians. The religious fault line is crossed far
less frequently than the secular, national
Jordanian-Palestinian one. Territorial nationalism,
Jordanian and Palestinian, is sincere and very real but is
still a skin-deep modern-day veneer in comparison with the
historical depth of religious, ethnic, and tribal
identities that have their roots in the seventh century
and in some cases even well before then.

The aftermath of the Iraq war, then, represents another
instance of the self-centered Arab state acting in its own
interests. But Iraq's situation has also shown the
fragility of loyalties to the state, and the persistence
of corrosive primordial allegiances. These loyalties are
yet another source of dissent and weakness.
The Palestinians

As for the Palestinian question, like so many other
regional matters, it should be seen through the lens of
historical evolution from 1967 until the present?that is,
from the zenith of Palestinian national revival through
the fida'i (armed resistance) movement of the late 1960s
to the trough of today. For the Palestinians?defeated,
devastated economically, and with no Arab hinterland to
back them?it is almost the Nakba revisited.

If 1967 was one critical turning point, the war in Lebanon
in 1982 was another. The Palestine Liberation Organization
(PLO), which had been expelled from Jordan in 1971, lost
its last autonomous base of operations in Lebanon in 1982.
This was a severe setback, forcing the PLO onto a course
of gradual decline. The center of gravity of Palestinian
politics shifted from the Palestinian diaspora into the
West Bank and Gaza, which began to emerge as the effective
core of Palestinian political action. This process came to
fruition in the intifada that erupted in 1987 when the
people of the West Bank and Gaza led the Palestinian
struggle against Israel for the first time. The PLO
watched from the sidelines, fearing for its hitherto
unchallenged primacy in Palestinian affairs, yet reaping
the international political rewards from the struggle of
their brethren against the Israelis. But in the early
1990s, the intifada was running out of steam and other
simultaneous developments in the international and
regional arenas placed the PLO under extreme pressure.

The Cold War came to an end with the disintegration of the
Soviet Union; massive Jewish emigration from the former
Soviet Union threatened to tip the demographic scales in
the West Bank and Gaza in Israel's favor; and the United
States defeated Iraq in the 1991 Kuwait war. With the
initiation of the Madrid process in October 1991, the PLO
deeply feared marginalization as the Palestinian question
was negotiated in the corridors of international diplomacy
in an era of Palestinian and Arab weakness. Yasir Arafat,
under the impression that time was working against him and
in desperate need of an entrance ticket into the center of
gravity of Palestinian politics in the West Bank and Gaza,
decided to accept the Oslo accords in 1993. But by the end
of the 1990s, the wheels of fortune had seemingly turned
again, and Arafat's perceptions of time altered
accordingly.

Arafat was now in control of the Palestinian core. Soviet
immigration to Israel hardly affected the demographic
balance between Jews and Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza
where almost all Soviet Jews chose not to settle.
Moreover, Soviet immigration hardly affected the overall
balance between Jews and Arabs in the entire area between
the Mediterranean and the Jordan River, other than
postponing the eventual Palestinian majority there by only
a few years. By the late 1990s, Iraq appeared to be on the
verge of regaining acceptance not only into the community
of Arab states but by ever-growing segments of the
international community. Saddam defied the United States
with apparent impunity and emboldened the radicals across
the board. In the summer of 2000, Israel withdrew
unilaterally from Lebanon, giving the impression that
affluent Israel was tiring. Arafat lost his sense of
urgency for a deal with Israel and acquiesced in the use
of force to coerce Israel to accept conditions more
favorable to the Palestinians, particularly on matters
relating to Jerusalem and refugees.

The use of force was a catastrophic mistake, the worst the
Palestinians have made since 1948. With the Arabs in
disarray, Israel effectively crushed the Palestinian armed
intifada. There can be little doubt in the minds of many
Palestinians and most Israelis that the Palestinian effort
to coerce Israel to accept the unacceptable has come to a
dead end. Israeli society has proved to be more resilient
than the Palestinians?and many Israelis, too?would have
thought. The Palestinian effort to break the Israeli
spirit through terror has failed. The Arabs have let the
Palestinians down again. If the Palestinians believed
momentarily that their war with Israel would draw the
Arabs into the fray, they were mistaken. Even financial
aid was but a pittance. Lastly, the Palestinians
desperately sought to draw the international community in
on their behalf. This did not materialize either. Arafat's
terrorist war has discredited him in the eyes of the
international community. And though it is true that the
vision of President Bush and the Quartet includes an
independent Palestinian state, what the Palestinians
wanted was not to be included in the international
community's vision but for their own vision to be imposed
on Israel. That is hardly likely. In sum, then, not one of
the major Palestinian war aims has been fully attained.
That is the definition of failure.

Arafat, by leading the Palestinians in the present war,
lost any residue of credibility he may still have had with
the Israelis. His position is reminiscent of the
predicament of the first leader of the Palestinian
national movement, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the mufti of
Jerusalem. Husseini's collaboration with the Nazis in
World War II cost him his international legitimacy. He
then made matters infinitely worse by leading his people
headlong into their 1948 disaster. Arafat has done pretty
much the same. The Palestinian war against Israel has
resulted in massive Israeli retaliation that has crippled
the Palestinian Authority (PA), disrupted the Palestinian
population's daily life, and devastated their economy.
Moreover, the war has also led to the constant rise in the
popularity of Hamas at the expense of Fatah. And the
Palestinian modus operandi of suicide bombings has earned
their struggle unprecedented international opprobrium.
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have
condemned the bombings as crimes against humanity. These
organizations regularly condemn Israel, but their
condemnation of Palestinian actions is a novelty.

The appointment of Abu Mazen (Mahmud Abbas) as the PA's
"prime minister" has been heralded as a major step toward
Palestinian political reform and the long-awaited
diminution of Arafat's political supremacy. The pressure
on Arafat to stand aside came not only from Israel, the
United States, and other members of the Quartet, but from
within the young guard of his own Fatah movement. For
quite some time there had been rumblings of disaffection
with Arafat's handling of affairs and his virtual loss of
control. The Israelis, the Americans, and the Quartet
members probably would have preferred a change of the
guard in generational terms. After all, one of the most
serious disadvantages of dealing with Arafat is the
symbolic and substantive significance of his belonging, in
the deepest historical and emotional sense, to the 1948
refugee generation. Arafat is driven by the obsession of
rectifying what Palestinians of all persuasions see as the
historical injustice of 1948, above and beyond independent
statehood.

Israelis would prefer to see "insiders," i.e., people from
the West Bank and Gaza, in the saddle, rather than the
arch-representatives of the "outsider" refugee
constituency. Israel has no real solution for the
Palestinian refugee diaspora that would satisfy
Palestinian national aspirations. Israel could, however,
accept a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza and
would therefore much prefer to negotiate with credible
representatives of this insider constituency.

But Abu Mazen is neither an insider nor a member of the
young guard. He is Arafat's veteran deputy and, in his
late sixties, is one of the PLO's old guard. Abu Mazen,
born in Safad in the mid-1930s, is (like Arafat) a
representative of the diaspora refugee constituency. Abu
Mazen is one of the founding members of Fatah, who has
also served for many years on the PLO executive committee.
Moreover, the procedure of approval of the prime minister,
first by the PLO central council and only subsequently by
the legislative council of the PA, is highly significant.
This deliberately calculated procedure is also of symbolic
and substantive importance. It maintains the PLO as the
sole legitimate representative of all Palestinians
wherever they may be and as the supreme source of
political authority of the Palestinian people, insiders
and outsiders alike. In contrast, the PA's legislative
council speaks only for the West Bank and Gaza. This is a
way of saying that not only the West Bank and Gaza are on
the table but the entire cause of historical Palestine.

On the other hand, Abu Mazen's rise to prominence
represents positive change, too. He was one of the few PLO
officials who were involved in the secret talks that led
to the Oslo accords, and despite his origins, he appears
to be a firm believer in the need for a settlement with
Israel. Perhaps most importantly in terms of the more
recent past, Abu Mazen went on record to an audience of
his own people in Gaza in November 2002, with a courageous
and scathing critique of the Palestinians' political
conduct in the two years of the latest "militarized"
intifada. "What have we achieved?" he asked. The
Palestinians were well on their way to statehood, and now
after two years, they were left with "the total
destruction" of all they had built. Instead of drawing
Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon to the negotiating
table where the Palestinians might have cornered him, they
resorted to the use of armed force where the Israelis had
the upper hand, not only over the Palestinians but also
over the Arabs as a whole. The Palestinian Authority was
in desperate need of reform and a "redirection of [its]
path," he concluded.[12]

These were the words of a sober realist, the likes of whom
the Palestinians desperately need to extricate themselves
from their sorry predicament. And while Abu Mazen does not
have an independent power base, he has the firm support of
key figures in the Fatah new guard who have had their own
differences with Arafat. With allies like these, Abu Mazen
could also serve as the bridge between the new and the old
guards and between insiders and outsiders.

But Arafat was coerced into this move by a combination of
domestic and foreign forces, and he is fighting tooth and
nail to preserve his own flagging authority. Arafat is a
tenacious, experienced, and crafty political operator. He
is not likely to succumb to those who wish to hasten his
denouement without seemingly endless maneuvers and
manipulations of mental attrition, deliberately calculated
to exasperate all contenders and external meddlers alike.
Furthermore, he has considerable popular support. There is
widespread opposition to the appointment of a prime
minister, coming as it does in the wake of external
pressure. Hamas is not happy with Abu Mazen's appointment
or with what he has done with it so far, especially his
relatively conciliatory remarks at the Aqaba summit in
early June 2003. After all, he presently stands for
everything they flatly oppose.

So long as Arafat is not incapacitated, it will be very
difficult to sideline the wily old "Mr. Palestine." Abu
Mazen, therefore, has not emerged as a serious leadership
rival to the historical Palestinian leader. His
appointment is not the end of Arafat by any means. Even if
it spells the beginning of the end, it will still be quite
a while before Israel can discuss the end of conflict with
a reliable Palestinian leadership.

In the meantime, however, the Palestinian war has lost its
psychological momentum and the Arab hinterland (Iraq) has
been defeated as well. As in 1948, the Palestinians in
particular and the Arabs in general are staring at
failure. This is why the Palestinians have accepted a
cease-fire of sorts that may stop the war, save face, and
allow them to catch their breath and regroup. The emerging
reality presents an opportunity for a new dynamic of
negotiation. But there is also the danger that, for the
radicals, this is no more than a breather. While the likes
of Abu Mazen are convinced that the Palestinians have
lost, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and segments of Fatah, too,
are in a state of denial.

Like Usama bin Ladin, they represent the rage and the
desire for revenge of a civilization in retreat. Their
rebellion against the bleak vision of the future cannot
change the world they live in. The ritual of death and
destruction can offer momentary satisfaction of the need
for retribution, but the focus on the compensations of the
next world will do nothing to alter their predicament in
this one.

Asher Susser is director and senior research fellow
of the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African
Studies, Tel Aviv University. This essay is based on a
lecture delivered in May 2003 to analysts at the Israeli
Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

[1] Al-Ahram Weekly (Cairo), May 22-28, 2003.
[2] Sultan al-Khattab, in ar-Ra'y (Amman), Mar. 28, 2003.
[3] Majid Kayyali, in al-Bayan (Dubai), Apr. 10, 2003.
[4] Al-Ahram Weekly, Apr. 24-30; May 15-21, 2003.
[5] Ibid., May 15-21, 2003.
[6] ?Isam Ikrimawi, in al-Quds al-?arabi (London), Apr.
11, 2003.
[7] Eliyahu Kanovsky, "Oil: Who's Really over a Barrel?"
Middle East Quarterly, Spring 2003, pp. 58, 60.
[8] George Papandreou and Chris Patten, "Sharing the
Benefits of EU Enlargement," Kathimerini (Athens), May 26,
2003.
[9] Elie Kedourie, "The Kingdom of Iraq: A Retrospect," in
Elie Kedourie, The Chatham House Version and Other Middle
Eastern Studies, new ed. (Hanover, N.H.: University Press
of New England for Brandeis University Press, 1984), p.
278.
[10] Ikrimawi, in al-Quds al-?arabi, Apr. 11, 2003.
[11] The Times (London), May 2, 2003.
[12] Al-Hayat (London), Nov. 26, 2002.

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------------------------------------------

The Paralyzed PA - Arnon Regular

A video documenting the military parade staged by Hamas in Gaza two weeks
ago shows hundreds of members of the military wing in matching uniforms,
machine-guns mounted on Jeeps, and tens of thousands of supporters. Hamas is
generally very disciplined and well-organized, much more so than Fatah, the
PA, or other Palestinian security agencies, and it has come out a step ahead
on every parameter involving control of the Palestinian street.
Theoretically, the government of Ahmed Qurei was established a month and
a half ago, but in practice, Qurei makes almost no decisions. The
government, like other Fatah and PLO organizations, is completely paralyzed
and, above all, cut off from the street. Various Fatah factions in each city
are occupied with infighting, some of it lethal. Fatah people queried in
recent days about the reason for the total paralysis of both Fatah and the
PA say that the main reason is the confusion and helplessness that have
overcome the Palestinian leadership - all coming after Sharon's speech in
Herzliya. (Ha'aretz)

Read the entire article at
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/378321.html

------------------------------------------

Israel needn't worry about a population implosion.

BY BEN J. WATTENBERG
Saturday, May 18, 2002 12:01 a.m. EDT

Israel, we have been told, is under the demographic gun. Palestinians bear twice as many children as Israelis, therefore making Israeli settlements in the West Bank "steadily less tenable," according to New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. Historian Paul Kennedy, who specializes in wrongheaded history of the future, goes a step further, predicting a "demographic boiling-over" in the Arab world that will eventually "obliterate Israel or drive it to some desperate action."

Now, it may well be that Israel should leave the settlements, as Mr. Kristof argues. And it may well be that Israel is in for a long, drawn-out war, as Mr. Kennedy predicts. But it won't be because of a population explosion in the Arab world. Truth is, fertility rates in Arab and Muslim countries have been falling rapidly in recent decades. Indeed, it would be remarkable were they not; it's been happening everywhere else.

Read the entire article at http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110001727

------------------------------------------

Sharon's speech weakens PLO?; Hamas turnaround?


Besides the idea that Sharon's speech is causing the PLO problems, the
article below from Haaretz claims that Hamas has turned around it's fortunes by doing the
opposite of one of Arafat's techniques: they are openly talking about
fighting Israel and continuing the suicide attacks, but in actuality"in an
utterly pragmatic, if unannounced, move, the organization unilaterally
ceased its suicide missions within the Green Line and simultaneously began
directing all its efforts into the internal Palestinian sphere."

Summary from www.jcpa.org/daily

------------------------------------------

International Law Does Not Support Palestinian Right of Return

Not a legal right
By Yaffa Zilbershats

Palestinians are adamant that they possess a right to
return to the State of Israel and that no final peace
agreement may be reached with Israel without the
realization of their right of return.

In response, Israel contends that it cannot allow such a
return as it would undermine the demographic balance in
the country and jeopardize Israel's existence as a Jewish
State.

While Israel's response entails an indirect admission of
the Palestinian's right of return, in fact, the legal
situation does not support the assumption of such a right
of return.

Israeli authorities should be aware of the fact, and make
clear that Palestinians do not possess any legal right to
return to Israel. Consequently, Israel does not bear the
onus of justifying its refusal to implement the right to
return.

Read the entire article at http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/A/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1061438426688

------------------------------------------

Martin Kramer: Said's Splash


As opposed to Said's dishonesty vis-a-vis the stories
about himself and about 'Palestine', this long article
by Martin Kramer discusses his scholarship.

On the right bar, near the bottom are links to other articles
by Kramer on Said.

See the article at http://www.geocities.com/martinkramerorg/SaidSplash.htm

------------------------------------------

Edward Said--False Prohet of Palestine


THE FALSE PROPHET OF PALESTINE:
IN THE WAKE OF THE EDWARD SAID REVELATIONS
Justus Weiner

The article covers the following:


o A Mythical Childhood in Jerusalem
o Unraveling the Mystery
o An Avatar of Palestinian Suffering
o Evicting Martin Buber
o Said's Network of Friends
o The Response of Independent Journalists
o Generating a Smokescreen
o Should Intellectuals Lie?

See the complete article at http://www.jcpa.org/jl/vp422.htm

------------------------------------------

Some History on Palestinian Violence Against Americans

The following is an excerpt from Daniel Pipes' weblog. At the end of the
article in information on getting on his list.

Weblog

Don't Rely on the Media: Palestinian Authority violence against Americans.

Is there any subject that the mainstream media treats worse than the
Palestinian Authority (PA)? Case in point: placing the Oct. 15 murder of
three American security personnel in Gaza. Here is USA Today's comment
(http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20031016/5594027s.htm) , representative
of media assessments of the topic: "the killings reflected a potentially
dangerous new escalation in a conflict that for the past half-century has
largely treated U.S. officials as bystanders. Terrorist Palestinian groups
have generally avoided attacks on U.S. officials."

To find out the real situation, one has to go to such sources at the
Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA),
Palestinian Media Watch, and The Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

CAMERA's Eric Rozenman points to a long history of the PLO targeting
American officials (Ambassador to Sudan Cleo A. Noel Jr. and his colleague
George C. Moore in March 1973; U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Frances E. Meloy
and his colleague Robert O. Waring in January 1977). It notes that
approximately 103 American citizens have been killed by Palestinian
terrorists in Israel and the disputed territories since 1968; and at least
39 Americans have been murdered in the past three years. CAMERA concludes
that "reports stating that the three security guards murdered on October 15
are the first Americans killed by Palestinian terrorists, either following
September 29, 2000, or before, are simply wrong."

Palestinian Media Watch's Itamar Marcus argues
(http://www.pmw.org.il/new/Latest%20bulletin.html#fullusa) that "In its
English statements, the PA presents itself as an American ally, while its
Arabic messages incite its people to hate and kill Americans," then
documents this statement with a list of hair-raising quotes, calling on
Saddam Hussein to kill American soldiers, threats against Americans, and
promises that the United States will be destroyed. PMW concludes that the
American security personnel were murdered "by Palestinians fulfilling their
role in their war against Americans, as they have been taught by their
leaders, through years of hate-mongering and calls for violence against
Americans."

The Washington Institute for Near East Policy's Matthew Levitt provides
extensive background in his "Terrorist Attacks against Western Officials in
Gaza, The West Bank, and Israel." He quotes Palestinian threats (an al-Aqsa
Brigades leader: "Now, American targets are the same as Israeli targets"),
points to U.S. government expectations of such attacks (George Tenet in
February 2002: if Palestinian groups "feel that U.S. actions are threatening
their existence, they may begin targeting Americans directly"), and recalls
Palestinian attacks on other Western personnel (Canadian and Danish, in
particular). He concludes that the Oct. 15 incident was "neither
unprecedented nor unexpected."

Unfortunately, this means that if you read just the newspaper – never mind
only watching television – you basically don't know the score on an issue as
complex and historical fraught as Palestinian violence against Americans. To
be well informed requires reading the work of think tanks and advocacy
organizations. (October 18, 2003) Permalink
(http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/105)


To see the Daniel Pipes archive, go to http://www.DanielPipes.org

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------------------------------------------

A Brief History of Palestinian Attacks on Americans


The following information is presented as a public
service. It may be reprinted without charge -- with
attribution. If you would like to be added or removed from
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We have recently updated our list, so if you hav
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requested changes.

MYTH #117

"Palestinian terrorists only attack Israelis; they never
assault Americans."

FACT

The PLO has a long history of brutal violence against
innocent civilians of many nations, including the United
States. Palestinian Muslim terrorist groups are a more
recent phenomenon, but they have not spared Americans
either. Here are a few examples of Palestinian terrorist
incidents involving American citizens:

*More than three dozen Americans were among the
passengers who were held hostage when the Popular Front
for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) hijacked four jets
in September 1970.

*In 1972, the PLO attempted to mail letter bombs to
President Nixon, former Secretary of State William Rogers
and Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird.

*On March 2, 1973, members of the PLO murdered U.S.
Ambassador to the Sudan Cleo Noel and chargé d'affaires
George Moore. The killers were captured by Sudan and
admitted they had gotten orders directly from the PLO.
U.S. intelligence officials were believed to also have
evidence directly tying Yasser Arafat to the killings, but
for unknown reasons suppressed. All the terrorists were
released (Neil Livingstone and David Halevy. Inside the
PLO, Readers Digest Press, 1990, pp. 276-288).

*On March 11, 1978, PLO terrorists landed on
Israel's coast and murdered an American photographer
walking along the beach. The terrorists then commandeered
a bus along the coastal road, shooting and lobbing
grenades from the bus window at passersby. When Israeli
troops stopped their deadly ride, 34 civilians were dead
and another 82 wounded.

*In October 1985, a PLF terror squad commanded by
Abul Abbas hijacked the ocean liner Achille Lauro. Leon
Klinghoffer, a wheelchair-bound American passenger was
murdered.

* On April 9, 1995, a Hamas suicide bomber blew up an
Israeli bus killing eight people, including 20-year-old
Brandeis University student Alisa Flatow.

*August 9, 2001, Shoshana Yehudit Greenbaum, 31, was
among 15 people killed in a suicide bombing at the Sbarro
pizzeria in downtown Jerusalem. Hamas and the Islamic
Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack.

*July 31, 2002, a bomb exploded at the Hebrew
University cafeteria killing seven and wounding 80. Five
Americans were among the dead.

*June 11, 2003, a bus bombing in Jerusalem killed
one American and inured the daughter of New Jersey State
Senator Robert Singer.

*June 20, 2003, a shooting attack on a car driving
through the West Bank killed Tzvi Goldstein, 47 and
injured his father, mother, and wife.

*August 19, 2003, suicide bombing on a bus in
Jerusalem killed five Americans, including children aged
9, 3, and 3 months, an 11-year-old American was injured.

*October 15, 2003, Palestinian terrorists ambushed
an American convoy in the Gaza Strip killing three U.S.
citizens on contract to the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv.

Source: Myths & Facts Online -- A Guide to the
Arab-Israeli Conflict by Mitchell G. Bard,
http://www.JewishVirtualLibrary.org. To order a copy of
the paperback edition of Myths and Facts, click HERE.

Dr. Bard is available for speaking engagements and
interviews on this and other topics.

You can help AICE continue this work by becoming a sponsor
of the Jewish Virtual Library. Click here for more
information.

------------------------------------------

For those that argue that Israel gets a free ride.


U.S. charges Israel 7% on loan guarantees

By Yoram Gavison for Ha'Aretz

The U.S. is charging Israel a fee of 7 percent on its
bonds issued under the loan guarantee program. The charges
were discovered in a Bank of Israel report on
macroeconomic and political developments released last
week.

According to the report, 7 percent of the receipts from
the Israeli government's bond issues is to be transferred
to U.S. treasury in order to compensate it for the risk of
the issue (known as scoring). This is considered to be a
relatively high rate for bond issues.

The value of the total bond issue is $3 billion or NIS
13.575 billion, which brings the fees to some NIS 1
billion, representing an additional 0.3 percent in annual
interest costs for Israel.

The treasury publicized the results of its bond issue in
the middle of September, and stated that it was pleased
that the interest rate for the 30 year issue was 5.58
percent, only 38 basis points (0.38 percent) over the
interest on U.S. government bonds. The 20 year bonds,
which raised most of the funds - $1.15 billion out of a
total of $1.6 billion raised on the issue to date - were
sold at an interest rate of 5.53 percent, representing a
premium of only 33 basis points over U.S. government rates
for similar notes. However, the effective interest rate
premium for the bonds including the fees paid to the U.S.
treasury comes to 70 basis points.

The report also reveals how these fees were accounted for
in the budget.

(the entire article can be read at
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/361807.html)

------------------------------------------

All of the Middle East Peace Plans and Initiatives

A practical guide to Middle East peace plans and grassroots initiatives
By Ellis Shuman November 28, 2003

PM Ariel Sharon's son MK Omri Sharon traveled to London this week for talks
with Palestinian officials aimed at advancing the "road map" peace
initiative. Sharon hinted he would take "unilateral steps" if no agreement
with the Palestinians was reached. Next week the unofficial "Geneva Accord"
will be signed in a star-studded ceremony. U.S. Secretary of State Colin
Powell angered Israel by announcing his willingness to meet with the
"architects" of the Geneva Accord, and possibly with the initiators of the
Peoples' Voice as well.

A plethora of peace plans and grassroots initiatives makes it hard to
understand the Middle East peace process. Here's a guide.

Read outlines of all of the plans at http://tinyurl.com/x1wa

------------------------------------------

The Real History of the Crusades


Since the aggressive proselytizing of Islam is known, as is its history of
Imperialsim ( "The policy of extending a nation's authority by territorial
acquisition or by the establishment of economic and political hegemony over
other nations.http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=imperialism), an article like this should not come as
a surprise.

The Real History of the Crusades
By Thomas F. Madden

With the possible exception of Umberto Eco, medieval scholars are not used
to getting much media attention. We tend to be a quiet lot (except during
the annual bacchanalia we call the International Congress on Medieval
Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan, of all places), poring over musty chronicles
and writing dull yet meticulous studies that few will read. Imagine, then,
my surprise when within days of the September 11 attacks, the Middle Ages
suddenly became relevant.

As a Crusade historian, I found the tranquil solitude of the ivory tower
shattered by journalists, editors, and talk-show hosts on tight deadlines
eager to get the real scoop. What were the Crusades?, they asked. When were
they? Just how insensitive was President George W. Bush for using the word
"crusade" in his remarks? With a few of my callers I had the distinct
impression that they already knew the answers to their questions, or at
least thought they did. What they really wanted was an expert to say it all
back to them. For example, I was frequently asked to comment on the fact
that the Islamic world has a just grievance against the West. Doesn’t the
present violence, they persisted, have its roots in the Crusades’ brutal and
unprovoked attacks against a sophisticated and tolerant Muslim world? In
other words, aren’t the Crusades really to blame?

Osama bin Laden certainly thinks so. In his various video performances, he
never fails to describe the American war against terrorism as a new Crusade
against Islam. Ex-president Bill Clinton has also fingered the Crusades as
the root cause of the present conflict. In a speech at Georgetown
University, he recounted (and embellished) a massacre of Jews after the
Crusader conquest of Jerusalem in 1099 and informed his audience that the
episode was still bitterly remembered in the Middle East. (Why Islamist
terrorists should be upset about the killing of Jews was not explained.)
Clinton took a beating on the nation’s editorial pages for wanting so much
to blame the United States that he was willing to reach back to the Middle
Ages. Yet no one disputed the ex-president’s fundamental premise.

Well, almost no one. Many historians had been trying to set the record
straight on the Crusades long before Clinton discovered them. They are not
revisionists, like the American historians who manufactured the Enola Gay
exhibit, but mainstream scholars offering the fruit of several decades of
very careful, very serious scholarship. For them, this is a "teaching
moment," an opportunity to explain the Crusades while people are actually
listening. It won’t last long, so here goes.

Misconceptions about the Crusades are all too common. The Crusades are
generally portrayed as a series of holy wars against Islam led by power-mad
popes and fought by religious fanatics. They are supposed to have been the
epitome of self-righteousness and intolerance, a black stain on the history
of the Catholic Church in particular and Western civilization in general. A
breed of proto-imperialists, the Crusaders introduced Western aggression to
the peaceful Middle East and then deformed the enlightened Muslim culture,
leaving it in ruins. For variations on this theme, one need not look far.
See, for example, Steven Runciman’s famous three-volume epic, History of the
Crusades, or the BBC/A&E documentary, The Crusades, hosted by Terry Jones.
Both are terrible history yet wonderfully entertaining.

So what is the truth about the Crusades? Scholars are still working some of
that out. But much can already be said with certainty. For starters, the
Crusades to the East were in every way defensive wars. They were a direct
response to Muslim aggression—an attempt to turn back or defend against
Muslim conquests of Christian lands.

Read the whole article at http://www.crisismagazine.com/april2002/cover.htm

------------------------------------------

A Moderate Moslem: Interview with Shaykh Prof Abdul Hadi Palazzi

IsraPundit interviews Shaykh Prof Abdul Hadi Palazzi

Introduction

This post is devoted to an e-interview with Shaykh Prof Abdul Hadi Palazzi,
the remarkable Italian-Moslem cleric, whose support for Israel has been the
subject of many articles.

The object of the interview was to solicit Prof Palazzi's views on a variety
of topics not covered elsewhere, ranging from the recent peace plans
floated, to the Koranic passages which appear anti-Semitic.

In contrast to many published interviews, where Prof Palazzi's responses are
paraphrased and quoted in third person, the text given here quotes Prof
Palazzi's responses verbatim.

Biographical notes about Prof. Palazzi, as well as a selected list of links
to relevant articles, are given at the end of the interview.


E-Interview with Sheikh Prof. Abdul Hadi Palazzi, Director, Cultural
Institute of the Italian Islamic Community

IsraPundit: Professor Palazzi, from reading the web, IsraPundit readers are
familiar with your biography, your writings and some of your views. We are,
therefore, aware that you oppose terrorism, that you consider the Islamists'
terrorism to be an aberration of Islam, and that you support Israel and her
claim to Judea, Samaria and Gaza and Jerusalem.

Similarly, Your pronouncements against the Oslo Accords are well-known, and
I assume that you also oppose the "Roadmap", which is even worse. However, I
have been unable to find any statement to that effect. What is your position
about the "Roadmap" and what would be your advice to the current government
of Israel?

Prof Palazzi: My position is opposing every solution which involves the
withdraw of Israel from Judea, Samaria and Gaza, and the creation of a
so-called "Palestinian state".

In my opinion, the area of Palestine is already divided into a Jewish
Palestinian State (Israel) and an Arab Palestinian State (Jordan). Creating
a third Palestinian state for the PLO in neither in the interest of Israel,
nor in the interest of Jordan, and even less in the interests of those Arabs
who would be compelled to live under that kind of barbaric regime. Moreover,
accepting the creation of such a state would mean that terror works, and
must be rewarded; it would represent a defeat of legality and an undue
encouragement to terrorist groups.

I think that a valid alternative to both Oslo and the Road Map is the one
proposed by the Israeli Tourism Minister Benny Elon: annexation of Judea,
Samaria and Gaza, while those Arabs who continue to live in those areas will
be citizens of Jordan, administered by a local government.

You can read the entire interview at
http://israpundit.com/archives/003433.html

------------------------------------------

The Fence and International Law

Brief to the Security Council
By EVELYN GORDON

The following is an attempt to summarize Evelyn Gordon's article. Her article can be read in entirety at:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1066025344818

According to Evelyn Gordon, there are supposedly 3 aspects of international law that are contravened by the separation fence:

o The fence--which involves the expropriation of property in the West Bank--is not consistent with international law.

o Israel is building the fence on land that belongs to the Palestinian state-to-be

o Construction of the fence would "prejudge subsequent negotiations" over the borders of a Palestinian state.

The Fence IS Consistent with International Law

According to the international community, the aspect of international law that governs the West Bank is the Fourth Geneva Convention. However, instead of a blanket ban on the expropriating of land in occupied territory, the convention only bans "xtensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity." The Fourth Geneva Convention actually states the the occupying power may "subject the population of the occupied territory to provisions which are essential to ensure the security of the Occupying Power, of the members and property of the occupying forces or administration, and likewise of the establishments and lines of communication used by them."

Assuming that international community is not suggesting applying a double standard to Israel, protecting one's civilian population from terrorist attacks is no less a right of Israel than the other countries currently the target of Islamist terrorism. This is especially important given that one of the 'encroachments' of the fence is designed to protect the Ben Gurion airport which handles 99% of Israel's air traffic, and is intended to keep the airport out of the reach of terrorists with shoulder-launced missiles.

The Land Israel is Building on DOES NOT belong to the Palestinian state-to-be

There is no binding document that assigns the area to the Palestinian Arabs. Instead, there is only one binding international document that deals with sovereignty in Palestine and that is the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine--and that assigns the West Bank area to the future State of Israel. The 1947 Partition Resolution did call for a Palestinian state in that area for the Arabs, however it was a General Assembly resolution--not a Security Council resolution--and was non-binding. More importantly, at the time the Palestinians themselves rejected the partition plan in toto, thus making null and void. Security Council Resolution 242, passed after Israel conquered the West Bank in 1967, called for Israel to withdraw "from territories occupied in the recent conflict" while not from 'the' territories--with the intent that Israel keep part of the land under a future peace agreement.

If indeed the international community is interested in international law, then it is important to note that that Resolution 242 does not indicate who would get sovereignty over whatever part of the West Bank Israel would withdraw from. The West Bank had no recognized sovereignty at the time, since before Israel conquered it, the West Bank had been illegally occupied by Jordan--only Britain and Pakistan ever recognized Jordan's occupation as legal; according to the international community, Jordan's occupation of the West Bank was illegal.

There is no basis under international law to say that the West Bank has ever been recognized under international law.

Construction of the fence DOES NOT prejudge subsequent negotiations over the borders of a Palestinian state

To say that the construction of the fence would prejudice subsequent negotiations over the borders of a Palestinian state would only be valid if the entire world not already prejudged the negotiations by declaring this land to be Palestinian. However, with both Europe and Powell insisting that the West Bank is Palestinian territory--to stop building the fence would be to acknowledge that Israel accepts their definition of these areas as part of the future Palestinian state.

Instead, building the fence, prejudges nothing, since it can always be moved pursuant to a peace agreement. Israel has proven this in the past when it dismantled its Sinai settlements following the agreement with Egypt.

Ironically, the world has created a situation in which not building the fence would prejudge the negotiations' outcome far more than its construction would.

------------------------------------------

Dispelling Misconceptions both political and economic

Column one: The myth of impotent Israel
By CAROLINE GLICK

...Until Netanyahu began his economic revolution, Israel's political and
economic policies stemmed from the same swamp. In both cases, our inability
to solve our problems is the result of our unquestioning acceptance of
inaccurate strategic assumptions. In the case of our economy, the notion has
been that only the PLO can solve our economic problems. In the case of our
political debate, the notion has been that only the PLO can solve our
demographic and security woes.

A precondition to entree into the world of political discourse in Israel has
over the past decade become one's acceptance of the Leftist determinist view
that if Israel does not allow the PLO to establish a terrorist state in our
country's heartland, we will not be able to retain our identity as a
sovereign Jewish democracy.

All of our leaders and most of us have accepted this completely baseless
strategic assumption. Our extremists, on both sides of the ideological
divide, push us ever more feverishly to this conclusion. Our extremists on
the right tell us that given the axiomatic fact that we cannot sustain our
status as Jewish and democratic state we must chuck democracy. Our
extremists on the left exhort us we have to quit being a Jewish state. And
standing between the two extremities are our leaders whose answer to the
quandary is to build the Great Wall of China and pretend that if we can't
see our enemies, they will magically disappear.

In truth, the notion that our ability to remain a Jewish democracy is in
question is a total fallacy. Over the past 55 years, the demographic balance
between Jews and Muslims in Israel has remained more or less static. The
Muslim birthrate has declined from three times the Jewish birth rate in 1967
to two times the Jewish birthrate in 2002. The rest of the difference has
been made up by immigration of Jews to Israel.

There has been a major Muslim population increase in Israel as well as in
Gaza, Judea, and Samaria over the past decade (although Jewish immigration
from the former Soviet Union kept the balance steady). This increase in
Muslim immigration is a direct consequence of the Oslo process which
empowered the PLO to bring tens of thousands of Jordanians and Egyptians
into the Palestinian Authority while encouraging Palestinian women to view
their wombs as weapons and to have as many babies as possible.

Those who think that establishing a PLO terror state in Judea, Samaria, and
Gaza is necessary to maintain Israel's Jewish majority must ask themselves
the following questions: Do they really believe that such a state will curb
Muslim immigration to the area? Do they believe that somehow, when the PLO
has attained sovereignty it will suddenly encourage its women to join the
work force instead of the maternity wards? On Sunday, Shin Bet head Avi
Dichter extolled the separation fence. The presence of the fence, he said,
is responsible for the drop in the level of terrorism inside of Israel. But
the day after Dichter made the announcement it was reported that the PA has
test fired a Kassam rocket with a range of 17 kilometers....

This is an excerpt from near the end of the article. You can read the whole
thing at
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull%26c
id=1069906932271

------------------------------------------

Honest Reporting: Security Fence Distortions

From HonestReporting.com
You can subscribe to receive emails such as this one by
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SECURITY FENCE DISTORTIONS

Dear HonestReporting Subscriber,

Photos portraying the Israeli security fence as a massive
wall, towering over hapless Palestinians, are in news
outlets everywhere these days ― these are from AP
and Reuters this week:

This wave of pictures distorts the physical reality of the
security fence. While nearly all news photos show an
enormous concrete structure, in fact only 3% of the
security fence will be constructed from concrete. Such
sections are in high terror-risk locations such as eastern
Jerusalem (above) and adjacent to Kalkilya, where in June
Palestinian snipers burrowed under the fence, shot and
killed 7-year old Noam Leibovitch in her family car.

Fully 97% of the barrier will be a chain-link fence:

The fence ― necessitated by three years of
relentless Palestinian terror ― is a temporary,
defensive measure, supported by 80% of Israelis. Death at
the hands of terrorists is permanent and irreversible. The
inconvenience caused to Palestinians by the security fence
will end once terrorism stops and peace is achieved.

Meanwhile, the media is falsely presenting the fence as a
new "Berlin wall" ― which makes for a far more
dramatic news photo.

* * *

In print, such distortions are sometimes exacerbated by
outright factual errors: On December 3, the Boston Globe
(http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2003/12/03/israels_unholy_wall/)
published an op-ed by Tom Wallace entitled "Israel's
Unholy Wall," a completely one-sided screed against the
security fence that contains this claim:

If built according to current maps, the wall will
confiscate 55 percent of the Palestinian West Bank,
including eight critical water wells.

Whose map is Wallace using? The map pictured here,
courtesy of the left-wing B'Tzelem, is based on the
Israeli Ministry of Defense's operative plan and places
the fence very close to the "Green Line":

As illustrated here, no more than 10-15% of the West Bank
will be on the western side of the security fence. It's
also important to remember that the West Bank's "Green
Line" has never represented an international boundary
― the 1949 armistice agreements specifically refer
to this fact. And there's never been a recognized
sovereign entity in the West Bank.

So on what basis did Wallace make his exaggerated claim of
"55 percent of the Palestinian West Bank"?

Comments to: letter@globe.com

Here is a succinct response to the security fence's
critics, by Israel's ambassador to the US, Daniel Ayalon
(http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/opinion/article/0,1299,DRMN_38_2441915,00.html):

Those who oppose the fence say it's really a land grab,
that we are prejudging any political outcome and making
life harsher for the Palestinians. But we say no, it's not
any of these. Categorically, this is a buffer zone. It's
certainly not a political border because it can be removed
at any time. If the Palestinians stop terrorism, we won't
need a fence. By stopping terrorism I mean dismantling
their infrastructure, collecting illegal weapons and
closing the explosives labs. We can't allow them to
regroup; the leaders must be arrested. Do this and we
won't need a fence.

More excellent background material on the security fence
is online at the Israeli Foreign Ministry
(http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/go.asp?MFAH0o170), which
contains information like this:

Israel has made the use of public lands a priority in
building the security fence, in order to avoid, as much as
possible, the use of private lands. If this is not
possible, then private land is requisitioned, not
confiscated, and it remains the property of the owner.
Legal procedures allow every owner to file an objection to
the use of their land. When private lands are used, owners
are offered full compensation, in accordance with the law;
this compensation is offered both as a lump sum and also
on a monthly basis.

Also, see the explanatory site of the Israeli Defense
Ministry
(http://www.seamzone.mod.gov.il/Pages/ENG/default.htm).

HonestReporting encourages subscribers to respond to
distorted and inaccurate portrayals of Israel's security
fence in your local media.

Thank you for your ongoing involvement in the battle
against media bias.

HonestReporting.com

------------------------------------------

Online Version of the Suppressed EU Anti-Semitism Report

There is a version of the report online at Internet
Haganah that is divided up and interlinked to make it
easier to read:

http://haganah.us/hmedia/euasr-00.html

It is broken down into the following sections:

[One country not mentioned is Australia; however there have been recent attacks
on Jews there too. See
http://www.gravett.org/dailyjames/archives/2003_12.html#013385]

Preface
Executive Summary
Introduction
Analysis
Recommendations
Country Reports
Belgium
Denmark
Germany
Ireland
Greece
Spain
France
Italy
Luxembourg
The Netherlands
Austria
Portugal
Finland
Sweden
United Kingdom
Annex

------------------------------------------

The Legal Obstacles to Uprooting Settlements

Legal Commentator: Heavy Legal Obstacles On The Road To
Uprooting Communities
17:08 Dec 23, '03 / 28 Kislev 5764

"It's not impossible, but it requires special legislation
- a very long legal process." So says left-wing Israel
Broadcasting Authority legal commentator Moshe Negbi
regarding the possibility of expelling Jewish residents
from their homes in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. All in all,
Negbi was not very "optimistic" about the chances for
doing so. Excerpts from his interview on Israel Radio this
past Thursday:

"It's important to emphasize, if we're talking about
relocating communities, it must be remembered that this
has a legal aspect that is bound, of course, with the
residents' rights. Relocating towns is not an impossible
mission - we remember that it happened before in Sinai
following the peace agreement with Egypt - but it is a
very hard mission [in that it] requires legislation -
possibly even legislation that requires a special majority
of 61 MKs. This is a very very long legal process. Let's
remember that the evacuation of the towns in Sinai took
five years, more or less. And this time it's more
complex."

Read the entire article at
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=54946

------------------------------------------

Holocaust Denial: A Global Survey - 2003
by Alex Grobman & Rafael Medoff


The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies
On the campus of Gratz College
7605 Old York Road
Melrose Park, PA 19027
tel (215) 635-5622 / fax (215) 635-5644
www.WymanInstitute.org

Table of Contents

North America
Europe
Middle East
Australia
Malaysia
New Zealand

Executive Summary: Holocaust Denial - A Global Survey:
2003

Holocaust denial activity decreased in the United States
during 2003, but continued full force in
government-sponsored media in Arab countries and the
Palestinian Authority.

The decrease in the United States was due to the ongoing
legal conflicts between the two major U.S. promoters of
Holocaust denial, the Institute for Historical Review and
Liberty Lobby founder Willis Carto. At the same time,
British Holocaust-denier David Irving maintained an active
presence on the U.S. lecture circuit throughout the year,
speaking in at least twenty-five cities.

Other notable developments in 2003:

* For the first time ever, a Holocaust denier was
invited to the White House. Palestinian Authority prime
minister Mahmoud Abbas, author of a book denying the
Holocaust, visited the White House in July 2003.
* A prominent former United States Senator, Mike
Gravel (D-Alaska), appeared as a speaker at the June 2003
conference of a Holocaust-deniers' publication, The Barnes
Review.
* The leader of a major Muslim country, Malaysian
prime minister Mahathir Mohammed, publicly affirmed that
the Holocaust occurred. However, he did so in a speech
alleging Jewish control of the world, and it was that
theme, not his acknowledgment of the Holocaust, which
attracted attention.

About the Authors

Alex Grobman, Ph.D., president of the Institute for
Contemporary Jewish Life and the Brenn Institute, is
co-author (with Michael Sherman) of Denying History: Who
Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It?
and author of Rekindling the Flame: Jewish Chaplains in
the U.S. Army and the Survivors of the Holocaust. He was
the founding director of the St. Louis Holocaust Museum
and Learning Center , and served as director of the Simon
Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles where he was the founding
editor-in chief of the Simon Wiesenthal Annual. He edited
Genocide: Critical Issues of the Holocaust; Anne Frank in
Historical Perspective; and Those Who Dared: Rescuers and
Rescued.

Rafael Medoff, Ph.D., is director of The David S. Wyman
Institute for Holocaust Studies. He is associate editor of
the scholarly journal American Jewish History and Visiting
Scholar at Purchase College - The State University of New
York. He is the author of seven books on the Holocaust,
Zionism, and the history of American Jewry, the most
recent of which (co-authored with David S. Wyman) is A
Race Against Death: Peter Bergson, America, and the
Holocaust. His essays have appeared in numerous scholarly
journals, encyclopedias, and other reference volumes,
including Holocaust & Genocide Studies, the Journal of
Genocide Research, and Holocaust Studies Annual.

The entire survey can be viewed at
http://www.wymaninstitute.org/denialreport/2003.php

------------------------------------------

Official Web Site for the Security Fence


The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs now has a site dedicated to the
Security Fence at

http://securityfence.mfa.gov.il/mfm/web/main/missionhome.asp?MissionID=45187

The site describes itself as follows:

This website covers the various aspects of the security fence project. Here
you will find comprehensive information on the Israeli point of view,
answers to Palestinian claims, background material and analyses which will
help you get to the root of this complex issue and to understand the true
nature of this fence: a temporary and reversible line of defense - not a
"Berlin wall"; a necessary life-saving fence that takes into account
humanitarian considerations - not an "apartheid wall".
In addition to the following web pages, we invite you to watch a Power-Point
presentation on the security fence issue.

------------------------------------------

Diplomatic and Legal Aspects of the Settlement Issue

Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
Institute for Contemporary Affairs


JERUSALEM ISSUE BRIEF Vol. 2, No. 16 19 January 2003


Diplomatic and Legal Aspects
of the Settlement Issue
Jeffrey Helmreich

One may legitimately support or challenge Israeli settlements in the
disputed territories, but they are not illegal, and they have neither the
size, the population, nor the placement to seriously impact upon the future
status of the disputed territories and their Palestinian population centers.
The outbreak of the Al Aqsa Intifada in the fall of 2000 began to erode the
orthodoxy that settlements were driving Palestinian anger and blocking
peace. New York Times foreign affairs analyst Thomas L. Friedman wrote in
October 2000: "This war is sick but it has exposed some basic truths." In
particular, Friedman wrote, "To think that the Palestinians are only enraged
about settlements is also fatuous nonsense. Talk to the 15-year-olds. Their
grievance is not just with Israeli settlements, but with Israel. Most
Palestinians simply do not accept that the Jews have any authentic right to
be here. For this reason, any Palestinian state that comes into being should
never be permitted to have any heavy weapons, because if the Palestinian had
them today, their extremists would be using them on Tel Aviv."

In recent months, however, the settlements have re-emerged as an explanation
for the failure of nearly every ceasefire and diplomatic effort to quell the
conflict. The Mitchell Report in 2001 and recent remarks by visiting U.S.
senators have raised the question of settlements (though not directly
blaming them for the conflict), and the UN General Assembly concluded its
2002 session with over 15 agenda items condemning "illegal" Israeli
settlements. Settlements have also become a focal point in the Quartet's
December 2002 "road map."

In fact, since their establishment nearly three decades ago, settlements
have been the cause celebre of critics seeking to attribute the persistence
of the conflict to Israeli policy. The criticism falls into two categories:
moral/political arguments that settlements are "obstacles to peace," and
legal claims that settlements are illegitimate or a violation of
international norms. The pervasiveness of these claims masks the fact that,
upon closer scrutiny, they are false, and they hide the true source of
grievances and ideological fervor that fuel this conflict.

Read the entire article at http://www.jcpa.org/brief/brief2-16.htm