RubinReports: Why The Palestinian Authority-Hamas Deal Is So Dangerous

Why The Palestinian Authority-Hamas Deal Is So Dangerous

This is published in Bitter Lemons. Their title: "Hamas has real sponsors." I have made some changes reflecting my preferences for transliteration and nomenclature.

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By Barry Rubin

The Fatah-Hamas decision to reconcile, form a joint Palestinian Authority (PA) government and hold elections seems to be a short-run maneuver that might have some very long-range consequences.

Fatah's motive seems to be to have a united front when it goes to the UN in September to seek recognition of a unilateral declaration of independence. One of the arguments used to criticize its standing to make such a move has been the fact that the PA does not rule almost half the territory it is claiming.

For Fatah, it is also a popular move. A recent poll by Near East Consulting says that 89 percent of Palestinians want the dispute settled and believe it will help the Palestinian case at the UN.

But while September is the minimum time for this agreement to last, May 2012 is the maximum timeline. That is the approximate date set for new elections and the side that expects to lose would probably pull out of the pact. Hamas has no intention of yielding control over the Gaza Strip to a Fatah-dominated PA, while Fatah feels the same way about letting Hamas extend its control over the West Bank.

Which of the two groups is more popular? Ironically, it may be true that more Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, fed up with Hamas’ repressive rule and destructive policies, would vote for Fatah candidates than last time; while West Bank Palestinians, fed up with Fatah's continuing corruption, might give more votes to Hamas.

On its side, Fatah's election slogan could be that the PA has delivered relative prosperity; Hamas offers ideological and religious fervor.

There are, however, three big problems that the merger--if it is at all applied in practice--creates for Palestinian politics and for the peace process.

First, radicalization. Hamas has more advantages for radicalizing Palestinian public opinion, the PA, and Fatah than Fatah has for moderating Hamas. Hamas is a disciplined organization with a clear ideology. It has a strong social welfare component--albeit only to build its political base--and has not been caught in high-level corruption. Moreover, it can play the card of Islam and of militancy against Israel and the West.

There is also the question of whose cadre is better. Fatah might always be linked to the word "moderate" nowadays, conjuring up the image of responsible middle class gentry, while Hamas people seem like wild-eyed fanatics. Yet in practice, the average Fatah cadre often have a thuggish, opportunistic character while Hamas' men are austerely puritanical. At least when they aren't in power--as on the West Bank--they might seem more attractive on the street level.

True, Fatah has on its side West Bank prosperity and providing the people with greater stability. But it has not delivered a state. In the past, Hamas’ talking points have done better than those of Fatah.

Yet the issue is not mainly what the people think but what the activists think. Fatah people have defected to Hamas and Islamist ideas have developed within the Fatah militias. Groups that exist to fight admire the most energetic, effective fighters. The younger generation of Fatah people has worked alongside Hamas and doesn’t bear the hatred of its elders toward a rival group.

In addition, Hamas people can now demonstrate openly in the Fatah-ruled West Bank while Fatah rallies are banned in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip

Hamas’ sponsors have done better than Fatah’s sponsors. In fact, Fatah has no real sponsors in the Middle East. In contrast, Hamas is backed by Iran, Syria, the Muslim Brotherhood, and now the Egyptian government. These forces seem to Middle Easterners on both sides to be getting stronger at the expense of the United States and the West.

The second factor is the Western perception of the PA. The PA’s image is not enhanced by bringing into the government as an equal partner an organization rejecting peace with Israel and advocating genocide while extolling and committing terrorism. On top of this, Hamas is a client of Iran, Syria, and the Muslim Brotherhood--not great strategic friends of the West. Both Hamas and Fatah representatives met with the Muslim Brotherhood's leader who told them that the winds of change blowing in Egypt placed the goal of liberating Palestine within reach.

Will Western governments be willing to give money to a regime that includes Hamas? One whose classrooms will teach that Israel should be destroyed and the Jews are subhuman? One very possibly containing a movement that continues to fire rockets and mortar shells into Israel? Already many congressional Democrats are calling for an aid cut-off.

The Obama Administration will ignore them but might there come a point when it can no longer do so?

Finally, there is a factor that exacerbates the first two points: How will this alliance affect PA policies?

A PA that has absorbed Hamas as part of the government will not be able to negotiate seriously with Israel. Indeed, set on the unilateral independence strategy, it will not want to talk seriously with Israel. On no issues--borders, security guarantees, Jerusalem, refugees--will it be able to make the tiniest compromise. It will certainly not reduce incitement to violence or terrorist attacks.

There is also the question of structural changes within the PA. Many within Fatah already want to get rid of Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, the man mainly responsible for the West Bank’s economic progress. Joined by Hamas partners, they would almost certainly succeed in forcing Fayyad out. If there are Hamas ministers, they will use their positions to bring their cadres into the government and turn the PA in a more radical and Islamist direction.

It should be stressed that for the PA to be a real partner for peace, one of the most important tasks would be to reinstall its (or, perhaps one might better say, Fatah’s) hegemony over Hamas. This is not at all what is happening now. Either the partnership will break down or it will make Hamas stronger, the PA more radical and, hence, unsuccessful in producing peace, prosperity, or progress toward an actual Palestinian state.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, and a featured columnist at PajamasMedia http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/ His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is http://www.gloria-center.org/. His PajamaMedia columns are mirrored and other articles available at http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com/.

RubinReports: Why The Palestinian Authority-Hamas Deal Is So Dangerous

RubinReports: Palestinians: Poll Shows Overwhelming Support for Islamism

Palestinians: Poll Shows Overwhelming Support for Islamism

This article is http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/2011/05/08/342/ in PajamasMedia. The full text is published here for your convenience.

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By Barry Rubin

I’m always a bit wary of using public opinion polls in the Middle East because much depends on the day the poll is done; the way questions are worded; and the fact that in authoritarian societies ruled by dictatorial regimes people don't necessarily speak their mind.

In this poll, by Near East Consulting, there are some peculiar results that make it appear skewed toward Fatah and against Hamas. This may have to do with the fears of those polled. It is revealing that—I don’t think I’ve ever seen this before—the official Fatah-controlled Palestinian press agency, Wafa, distributed a story on the poll because it fits with their political line.

But that fact makes the following two points all the more remarkable, even shocking compared to past, comparable polls:

--Asked to give their primary personal identity, 57 percent said Muslim; 21 percent, Palestinian; 19 percent, human beings; and only 5 percent said Arab.

This says something important about the steep decline in Arab nationalism but brings into question Fatah-style Palestinian nationalism, too. One can see oneself primarily as a Muslim and still support Fatah and the Palestinian Authority, but this upward trend also indicates of the growth of thinking likely to lead people toward backing Hamas in future.

--Asked what government system they preferred in future, about 40 percent said they want an Islamic caliphate. In addition, 24 percent seek a system like those in Arab countries, and only 12 percent prefer one like that in European countries.

While defining what an “Arab system” means is ambiguous, it is reasonable to presume that means an Arab nationalist dictatorship since at this moment virtually no Arab country is a democracy.

When asked whether they support Fatah or Hamas the results are so overwhelmingly pro-Fatah as to make one suspicious. It is safer for someone living in a dictatorship to discuss general principles rather than oppose that government in conversation with outsiders. Yet, again, one would expect a Fatah supporter to highlight a Palestinian or Arab identity rather than a Muslim one.
What this poll, and other indications, suggests to me is that the potential constituency for Islamism (Hamas) is at least 40 percent, for Palestinian nationalism (Fatah, Palestinian Authority) just over 20 percent, and for democracy about 12 percent. Most of those who expressed no opinion would probably support the PA to give it an election victory but that cannot be assumed.

Note that there is no real organized moderate democratic party in the entire Palestinian political spectrum. The findings remind us of just how small the base is for any modern democratic state in the sense that is understand not only in the West but also in much of Asia, Africa, and the Latin America.

Remember that in most of the rest of the Third World, even where dictatorship exists, a moderate democratic state is a popular aspiration. It may not be what people have but it is what the majority wants. This really doesn't seem to be true in the Middle East.

These figures also imply that Hamas is more likely to recruit current Fatah supporters than vice-versa.

There are hints here of what would happen in completely free elections in a future Palestinian state. They do not incline Israel—or anyone with good sense—to rush to support the creation of such a state, especially now that Fatah and Hamas are once again united.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, and a featured columnist at PajamasMedia http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/ His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is http://www.gloria-center.org/. His PajamaMedia columns are mirrored and other articles available at http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com/.

RubinReports: Palestinians: Poll Shows Overwhelming Support for Islamism

RubinReports: In Trouble: No Iran Sanctions This Summer? Unstable Palestinian Leadership

In Trouble: No Iran Sanctions This Summer? Unstable Palestinian Leadership

By Barry Rubin

Vice-President Joe Biden has said that there will be a sanctions' resolution on Iran ready by next week which is now this week. Really?

In trying to sound, as usual, tough toward Iran, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton drops in the idea that the United States and other countries are working to complete an agreement on sanctions against Iran by mid-June. In other words, they hope to have a plan—not sanctions--by then. So that means no sanctions before July or so. But even this deadline can slip again. And how minimal will the sanctions have to be to get them by the UN Security Council?

The whole sanctions’ effort is turning into a demonstration of Obama Administration incompetence.

RubinReports: In Trouble: No Iran Sanctions This Summer? Unstable Palestinian Leadership

RubinReports: How Foreign Subsidies are all that's Keeping Two Palestinian Governments from Collapse

How Foreign Subsidies are all that's Keeping Two Palestinian Governments from Collapse

In a new article, "A Tale of Two Palestinian Authorities," my colleague, Jonathan Spyer, points out--in an article well worth reading--the fragility of the Palestinian Authority (PA), an entity that is hardly able, if it were willing which is also a problem, to make a comprehensive peace with Israel.

But here's the most stunning point:

"Veteran Palestinian political analyst Yezid Sayigh recently noted that both the Gaza and Ramallah governments are dependent for their economic survival on foreign assistance. The Fayyad government has an annual $2.8 billion budget, of which one half consists of direct foreign aid. The Hamas authorities, meanwhile, announced a budget of $540 million, of which $480 million is to come from outside (Iran)."

In addition, remember that, as I have noted, the Hamas regime also depends on Western aid provided through the Palestinian Authority.



Tale of Two Palestinian Authorities


By Jonathan Spyer*

April 27, 2010

RubinReports: How Foreign Subsidies are all that's Keeping Two Palestinian Governments from Collapse

RubinReports: Answering Readers' Questions and Updates: Fatah and Turkey

Answering Readers' Questions and Updates: Fatah and Turkey

Please subscribe to the blog that raises the questions--and answers them--that the media misses or mistakes

1. Fatah, the Palestinian Authority and Jordan

Question: You describe Fatah hardliners as seeking a Palestine from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean. Why don't they want to take over Jordan also? And why is a similar change of mind impossible about a permanent peace with Israel?

Answer: Historically, the PLO and Fatah have not sought to overthrow Jordan and take it over. The exception is when they were overconfident during the 1968-1970 period and even then that was more a PFLP and DFLP idea than a Fatah one. While seeking revenge through the Black September terrorist group from 1970 to 1972, Fatah and the PLO have not worked actively to subvert Jordan, in part remembering the total defeat Jordan gave them in September 1970. Actually, the fact is that Hamas has largely displaced the PLO and many Palestinian Jordanians support the Muslim Brotherhood-related Islamic Action Front today. Jordan does worry about an independent Palestinian state but doesn't see Fatah as a direct threat today.

2. Fatah and the Al-Aqsa Brigade

Question The new Fatah charter refers to Al Asifa as its military wing. Is there a reason that Fatah seems to be abandoning Al Aqsa martyrs brigade? Or did Fatah itself use both names?

Answer: Al-Asifa has been the name of the PLO irregularforces (guerrilla/terrorist) since the 1960s. Al-Aqsa is not controlled by the Fatah Central Committee. One might call it a deniable terrorist force which is under the control of the West Bank local Fatah organization. Although the Western news media often falls for the trick, since Fatah has never tried to stop the group or disciplined any member for participating in it, al-Aqsa is clearly a Fatah group but, again, not necessarily one controlled from the top Fatah bureaucracy. Al-Aqsa was created by Marwan Barghouti, who is now a member of the Fatah Central Committee though in an Israeli prison for organizing the bloody second intifada--by his own admission--in 2000.

3. Turkish Regime's Plans to Take Over Army

Following the Turkish regime's attempt to intimidate me and my article about how that Islamist government is slandering the army and intimidating or throwing into jail peaceful critics, the next step in the campaign has been taken. Today's Zaman, the leading organ of the regime, now says the solution is that the armed forces reflect Turkey's diversity by admitting Islamist officers. Eventually, of course, the regime would ensure that the army is ideologically loyal to itself. So this is the plan: keep accusing the army of planning coups and terrorism (including schemes to put bombs in mosques), discredit it with the public, and blackmail it into becoming Islamist-oriented, thus completing the AKP regime's control over all Turkish institutions.

RubinReports: Answering Readers' Questions and Updates: Fatah and Turkey

RubinReports: Scoop: Fatah's New Charter Shows Why Peace Won't Happen

Scoop: Fatah's New Charter Shows Why Peace Won't Happen

Please subscribe for more scoops and good solid original analysis

By Barry Rubin

Many people seem to think that the Israel-Palestinian or Arab-Israeli conflict or the “peace process” is the world’s most important issue. So who is going to determine whether it gets resolved or not? No, not President Barak Obama; no, not Israel’s prime minister; no, not Palestinian Authority (PA) “president” Mahmoud Abbas or Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.

That choice is in the hands of Fatah, which controls the PA and rules the West Bank. Only if and when Fatah decides that it wants a two-state solution and a real end of the conflict based on compromise will that be possible. So the fact that Fatah has issued a new charter seems to be a matter of great importance.

Yet up until now nobody has noticed that such a charter emerged from the August 2009 Fatah General Congress. The document was translated by the U.S. government and has just been leaked by Secrecy News. You are now reading the first analysis of this charter.

Secrecy News remarks: “The document is not particularly conciliatory in tone or content. It is a call to revolution, confrontation with the enemy, and the liberation of Palestine, ‘free and Arab.’" But then the newsletter continues:

“But what is perhaps most significant is what is not in the document. The original Fatah charter (or constitution) http://www.mideastweb.org/fateh.htmfrom the 1960s embraced `the world-wide struggle against Zionism,’ denied Jewish historical or religious ties to the land, and called for the `eradication of Zionist economic, political, military and cultural existence.’ None of that language is carried over into the new charter, which manages not to mention Israel, Zionism, or Jews at all.”

Now here’s an important lesson for you. When a radical group is portrayed as moderate based on some position or statement there has to be a catch somewhere. Here’s the tip-off in this case, a single sentence in the new charter:

“This internal charter has been adopted within the framework of adherence to the provisions of the Basic Charter.”

In other words, every detail of the original charter still holds; nothing is repealed, no error admitted, no explicit change of course accepted.

Of course, Fatah has changed a lot from the 1960s. It is less focused on violence (though that doesn’t mean it has renounced terrorism necessarily), less explicitly militant in its demands, more willing to deal in a cooperative manner with Israel. Neither genuine moderation nor remaining intransigence should be exaggerated.

And yet offered an opportunity to become a parliamentary political party, a movement clearly dedicated to peaceful politicking and a diplomatic solution, Fatah has chosen to remain a revolutionary organization. Indeed, there is no word more used in this charter than “revolutionary.”

“Let us train ourselves to be patient and to face ordeals, bear calamities, sacrifice our souls, blood, time and effort,” says the charter. “All these are the weapons of revolutionaries.

You must know that determination, patience, secrecy, confidentiality, adherence to the principles and goals of the revolution, keep us from stumbling and shorten the path to liberation.

Go forward to revolution. Long live Palestine, free and Arab!”

At the same time, though, Fatah remains non-ideological. It sees itself as a broad nationalist movement, just as when Yasir Arafat founded it more than fifty years ago. Indeed, despite the challenge from Hamas, the word “Muslim” or “Islamic” is mentioned nowhere in the charter.

In structure, though, Fatah is still a revolutionary organization. Membership is secret; decisionmaking is supposedly based on the Marxist concept of “democratic centralism;” the Maoist phrase “criticism and self-criticism” is recommended; and the organizational structure is based on cells.

Yet while Fatah sounds like some Communist party or tightly disciplined revolutionary underground, the reality is quite different. Arafat set forth an institutional culture that can briefly be described as anarchical. Cadre are undisciplined and the command structure is anything but organized. When Hamas staged a coup in the Gaza Strip, Fatah simply collapsed and didn’t even put up much of a fight. Local bosses prevail; cadre do pretty much whatever they want; indiscipline and corruption is rife.

And so it is sort of a joke to read in Article 95 that members are enjoined to be, “Undertaking their tasks enthusiastically and sparing no effort in achieving the movement's objectives and principles; exerting strenuous efforts to enhance interaction with the masses and winning their respect and confidence.”

What is intriguing, however, is that there is a detailed discussion of transgressions of Fatah rules and punishments for doing so. It might be added that no Fatah member has been ever disciplined for committing acts of terrorism against Israeli civilians or for making the most extremist statements. Indeed, it isn’t even clear that Fatah has the determination or ability to punish members for collaborating with Hamas against their own leaders.

A word should be said about the movement’s structure. Power is in the hands of a 23-member Central Committee, including control of Fatah’s military forces. As I have shown previously, the committee elected at the same Congress which formulated this new charter is quite radical. There are few members ready for real peace with Israel. When it comes to making any big decision, Abbas and Fayyad are mere figureheads.

Beneath the Central Committee is an 80-member Revolutionary Committee and, as the next level, a 350-member General Council. The Central Committee chooses a fairly large portion o both groups. Indeed it also selects the Fatah members of the Palestine National Council (the PLO’s legislature); PLO Executive Committee, which rules the PLO; Palestinian Legislative Council (the PA’s legislature); and the PA itself.

What this means is that Abbas and Fayyad do not control the PA, nor can they make peace or even conduct serious give-and-take negotiations. The Central Committee is really in control and the Central Committee is overwhelmingly hardline--16 of them, roughly three-quarters--are that way. Most are supporters of Abbas. But the main reason they back him is their conviction that Abbas is weak both in character and in political base.

He will not, he cannot, do anything they don't like. And one of the things Abbas has done to appease them has been to make Muhammad Ghaneim, perhaps the most hardline among all the committee members, his designaed successor.

These 23 committee members are in control of the fate of the Palestinians (except for Hamas’s considerable say in that matter) and the peace process. Due to their radicalism, there will be no peace or Palestinian state for many years. To find out more about who they are go here and here and especially here.

Why don’t more people study the details of Palestinian politics? For the same reason that they don’t want to look too closely about how meat is produced. It’s too unpleasant. After doing so, one could never go on naively believing that peace is within reach.

RubinReports: Scoop: Fatah's New Charter Shows Why Peace Won't Happen

RubinReports: Muslim Brotherhood Cleric Versus Palestinian "President": A Case Study of Islamism Versus Nationalism

Muslim Brotherhood Cleric Versus Palestinian "President": A Case Study of Islamism Versus Nationalism

By Barry Rubin

Forget about the moderate mythology fed the Western public by its media. Forget the comforting nonsense about reasonable masses held back from being humanitarian democrats only by manipulative dictatorships. Here’s a glimpse of what the region is really like.

Yusuf al-Qaradawi is one of the world’s most prestigious Muslim clerics and certainly the most internationally popular Islamist cleric. Some in the West like to think of him as some kind of pragmatic, modernizing moderate. As such he was welcomed in visiting Britain. But Qaradawi is a very hardline fellow indeed.

Siding with Hamas, Qaradawi, an Egyptian who lives in Qatar, gave a sermon urging Muslims to stone—in other words kill as a heretic—Palestinian Authority (PA) leader (often referred to as "president") Mahmoud Abbas. Angered by this statement, PA officials ordered West Bank imams to denounce Qaradawi for this action. One of those who did so was Raed al-Mahdawi of Ramallah who took a traditional conservative Muslim position, asking Qaradawi to apologize to Abbas and adding, "Muslim scholars should not use the podiums at their disposal to incite against any ruler or offend the feelings of any people."

But those who followed PA instructions were interrupted and forced to stop by angry worshippers; congregations walked out or chased the clerics out of the mosques altogether. In response, PA police beat up and arrested those protesting.

Thus, the PA was helpless, faced with this Islamist challenge, to keep its own people in line. And so what was their second line of defense? The Fatah Central Committee claimed that Qaradawi was acting as an Israeli stooge, objectively an ally with the Zionists.

But such anger won't be quieted by asserting that Islamism itself is an American or Zionist plot. Rather, this incident shows the strength of Islamist appeals overriding nationalist impulses in contemporary Arab politics


Thus evebt aksi once again demonstrates the horrifyingly powerful extremist impulses among the Arab, Muslim, Palestinian masses, just as one sees such sentiments in strong popular support for terrorism and rejection of compromises or of a permanent peace with Israel and two-state solution. This is the kind of attitude easily whipped up by rumors and ranters to produce anti-Christian pogroms in places like Pakistan, Iraq, and Egypt. .

Of course, many Palestinians do support Abbas, and some are genuinely moderate. Yet it is hard for such people to stand against the energetic ferocity of the radicals, their willingness to use violence, and their manipulation of religious sentiments. Incipient fanaticism, once harnessed, has a tidal wave power.

Arab regimes know this well. They don’t try to counter it with liberal reform but either with ferocious repression or try to harness this energy for their own causes. Regimes often endeavor to save themselves by diverting such forces against non-Muslims, meaning the West in general or often—as in the PA’s case here—against Israel.

It is easy to find parallels with this story in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, and so on throughout most of the Arabic-speaking and Muslim majority areas. This is what the innocent and naïve West is up against but doesn’t want to face. Instead, while this has virtually never happened, much of the elite views its own majority citizenry as fanatics on the verge of being incited into Islamophobic mobs.

RubinReports: Muslim Brotherhood Cleric Versus Palestinian "President": A Case Study of Islamism Versus Nationalism

RubinReports: The "Why Can't Everyone Just Be Friends" Narrative of the Israel-Palestinian Conflict, Evenhandedness Gone Mad

The "Why Can't Everyone Just Be Friends" Narrative of the Israel-Palestinian Conflict, Evenhandedness Gone Mad

By Barry Rubin

It’s a heartening story just made for this season and the Western media : two seriously injured children, one Israeli and one Palestinian, becoming friends together in a hospital, with an innocence that transcends the hatred of their peoples. The New York Times article is written precisely balanced, two families, two causes, absolutely identical. Oh how foolish is this unnecessary conflict. What folly drives humanity!

On one level, who can object to such a story, so fair, balanced, so humane and touching? Nowadays, to treat Israel on an equal footing with the Palestinians is rare enough and thus should be sufficient.

Yet something bothers me about this story, everything it leaves out and misleads about.

First, the basic tale. Orel was injured by a rocket fired from Gaza at Beersheva. Marya was injured in an Israeli missile which killed a terrorist leader. Both are eight.

The Times picks up the story:

“In a way, a friendship between two wounded children from opposing backgrounds is not that surprising. Neither understands the prolonged fight over land and identity that so divides people here. They are kids. They play.

“But for those who have spent time in their presence at Alyn Hospital in Jerusalem, it is almost more powerful to observe their parents, who do understand. They have developed a kinship that defies national struggle.”

Yet what does this leave out, at least in part? First, how they were injured isn’t precisely the same. Orel was hit in an unprovoked Hamas attack deliberately intended to kill Israeli civilians; Marya was hit as a regrettable accident by an Israeli attack against a terrorist who had murdered other Israeli civilians and who could only be stopped in that manner.

By the standards of the United Nations, the Hamas attack had no practical implication while the Israeli assassination of a terrorist sponsored by his local government (and hence immune from any arrest) was a war crime.

The article notes, regarding Marya and her father, that “the Israeli government, which brought him here for emergency help, wanted him and his children either to return to Gaza or to move to the West Bank.”

So is the reader being told to praise the Israeli government for bringing an entire family of what could be called “enemy citizens” to its country, supporting them financially, and giving their daughter free medical care, or criticize it for wanting them to go elsewhere? This is something remarkable, an astounding humanitarian gesture and a show of responsibility and apology, demonstrating a lack of hatred on the Israeli government’s part. Why is this passed over so lightly?
Clearly, Hamas would never so treat an Israeli. Indeed such a wounded Israeli would almost certainly be murdered or held hostage. The Palestinian Authority might turn over such an Israeli to the Israeli government but would not bother or dare to give treatment.

The article continues:

“But attention in the Israeli news media produced a bevy of volunteers to fight on his behalf. Marya would not survive in either Gaza or the West Bank. The government has backed off, supporting Mr. Aman on minimum wage and paying for Marya to go to a bilingual Arabic-Hebrew school nearby.”

In other words, after more than a half-century of conflict, terrorism, and hatred from the Palestinian side, individual Israeli citizens and the Israeli media—far from preaching hatred—demanded that a Palestinian be given free treatment, supported with their tax money, and allowed to stay in Israel as long as the family pleased to do so. How does this compare with the international slander of Israelis as monsters, haters, and war criminals? Again, the article gives the necessary facts but no hint of what this means.

There’s more:

“Volunteers who help are often religious Jews performing national service. Some ask Mr. Aman how he can live among the people whose army destroyed his family.”

This shows that even national religious Jews (Datim) who are very nationalist and whose community furnished many (most?) of the settlements and settlers hold such humanitarian views. They are conscious of what their country has done and of how the Palestinians might feel about it. That’s also remarkable.

The father responds:

“I have never felt there was a difference among people—Jews, Muslims, Christians—we are all human beings. I worked in Israel for years and so did my father. We know that it is not about what you are but who you are. And that is what I have taught my children.”

And so, of course, Palestinians can share such sentiments. Yet according to polls, this is hardly typical and what would Mr. Aman say if he were in Gaza, either out of conviction or peer pressure? In Israel the equivalent point of view can be given every day; in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, hardly ever.

Then the article plays a bit of a trick:

“But Mr. Aman has no official status and is also raising a healthy and bright son in a hospital room. He wants residency or a ticket to a Western country where his children will be safe and Marya will get the care she needs.”

Why does he want a ticket to a Western country “where his children will be safe”? Obviously, most Palestinians would love a visa to live in Europe or America; clearly the children would be safe there from the kind of war that crippled one daughter.

Of course not. If the family were to return to the Gaza Strip, they would be made to pay for having accepted Israeli hospitality and treatment, especially since Mr. Aman made such a statement to the media. Either Hamas (and their own neighbors) would harm them or he would be forced to renounce Israel as a horrible country that never did a good deed. No hint of this is offered in the article.

But the article is intent on its “evenhandedness”:

”Asher Franco, an Israeli Jew from Beit Shemesh who has been coming to the hospital for six months for his daughter’s treatments, was a recent visitor. They greeted each other warmly. A manual worker and former combat soldier, he was asked about their friendship. `I was raised as a complete Zionist rightist,’ he said. `The Arabs, we were told, were out to kill us. But I was living in some fantasy. Here in the hospital, all my friends are Arabs.’”

Notice he didn’t say we were raised to hate Arabs but only that the Arabs wanted to kill Israelis. That statement of course is quite true. Note, too, that Mr. Aman does not say that he was taught to hate Jews, even though that is the central point of Palestinian political culture.

The last word is givein to:

“Ms. Elizarov, Orel’s mother, noted that in places like Alyn Hospital, political tensions do not exist. Then she said, `Do we need to suffer in order to learn that there is no difference between Jews and Arabs?’”

Israelis don’t need to suffer because they already know that there is no difference and all are human beings. After all, Israel brought the family into Israel, supplied free medical care, paid to support the family, gave free schooling to the children, while Israeli citizens demanded that all of this be continued supported by a free Israeli media.

It is, of course, the Palestinian side—regimes, media, people—that need to learn this, have not done so, are not about to do so, and sustain the conflict.

The problem is that I know if a Palestinian suicide bomber got into my son’s school and blew himself up, killing and maiming dozens of children, there would be celebrations in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. The terrorist would become a hero, his picture emblazoned on posters. Candy would be handed out; mosque sermons would celebrate his accomplishment; the media would cheer. Outside of a general formal condemnation of terrorism, no Palestinian politician would utter a sincere word of criticism; no citizenry would be horrified and speak publicly against such behavior. And all this would apply throughout the Arabic-speaking world.

I also know that every day the Palestinian media pours out hatred for Israelis, extols past terrorists and urges young people to become future ones, and rejects Israel’s right to exist. Nothing comparable occurs in Israel, not from any significant political figure, not in any media, not in any synagogue or in any school.

If you have any doubts, here is the head (“president”) of the Palestinian Authority leading the celebration just last week of the fiftieth birthday of a Palestinian terrorist, Dalal Mughrabi, who killed 37 Israeli civilians, including ten children, in 1978. This event, and many more like it, receive no coverage in the Western mass media and it takes place, of course, in an atmosphere where glorifying past terrorists is encouraging future ones.

So is everything really so equal? Are both sides really teaching to hate? No, not at all. In this article, at least they are treated as being equal. In much of the media, especially outside the United States, Israel is being treated as the party responsible for all these problems. The truth, of course, is the exact opposite. When will the Western media have the courage and honesty to write that truth?

RubinReports: The "Why Can't Everyone Just Be Friends" Narrative of the Israel-Palestinian Conflict, Evenhandedness Gone Mad

RubinReports: What's Really Going on in Palestinian Politics: Springtime for Abbas

What's Really Going on in Palestinian Politics: Springtime for Abbas

[Thanks to those of you who have subscribed; please, to those of you who haven't yet done so]

By Barry Rubin


There’s a new trend worth noting in the West Bank and the Palestinian Authority (PA): a sense of satisfaction. While the Western media generally reflect the rather false-front public relations’ campaign waged by the PA—bitter, frustrated, victimized, and eager for peace—that’s not what’s really going on right now.

Mahmoud Abbas’s government has to weather some difficult politicking along the following lines:

--He has extended his own term in office indefinitely and cancelled January 2010 elections without receiving much criticism from within the PA. After all, Hamas won’t let any balloting happen in the Gaza Strip and who knows which side might win a fair vote?

--The PA has been rounding up Hamas activists and keeping security on the West Bank while—with a lot of help and some pressure from Israel—preventing cross-border attacks.

--The economy is doing well with relative prosperity on the West Bank, though this could collapse in hours if the PA let’s violence reappear.

--Abbas has contained intensive criticism from his colleagues about his being too “soft” in his dealings with President Barack Obama.

--He has worked out a way to refuse negotiations while blaming it on Israel.

--No matter what the PA does international media coverage, support from Europe, and a lack of criticism from the U.S. government seems assured.

There are plenty of things to be pleased about even though the peace process is dead, there’s no realistic prospect of a state, and Hamas looks set to govern the Gaza Strip forever.

The media angle is especially amusing. Abbas can reject Obama’s demand that negotiations resume without a single adjective of criticism while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is regularly said to be “defying” Obama because he only invoked a total freeze on non-Jerusalem construction. You can’t buy publicity like this.

But never overstate the importance of image. What’s really true—though often misunderstood in the West—is that a no war, no peace option suits the PA just fine right now. There is a question of whether hot-heads among Abbas’s colleagues, Hamas sabotage, or some accidental event will set off a new confrontation. Yet that doesn’t seem too likely in the short- to medium-run.

Finally, while Fatah and the PA can’t wean themselves—indeed, they aren’t even trying—from a basic strategy whose main goal is destroying Israel some day, that doesn’t mean they can’t get along with Israel on a current basis. Behind the scenes, things aren’t so bad.

Indeed, when Abbas speaks privately, he is likely to spend much of his time attacking Hamas and urging higher sanctions on Iran. He knows who his real enemies are, even if most Western observers take him at his (public and propagandistic) word.

RubinReports: What's Really Going on in Palestinian Politics: Springtime for Abbas

RubinReports: Palestinian Prime Minister Rejects "Mickey Mouse" State. Perhaps Prefers Donald Duck State Instead?

Palestinian Prime Minister Rejects "Mickey Mouse" State. Perhaps Prefers Donald Duck State Instead?

[Warning! Satire. Since the Middle East can be so grim, we have to laugh at it sometimes. But all of the below also happens to be true.]

By Barry Rubin

Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad complains about Israel’s offer to the Palestinians. "By all indications they have a Mickey Mouse state in mind," Fayyad said, using the Disney character's name as slang for unimportant or trivial. "It looks like it would not come close to what we have in mind."

Unfortunately, Fayyad didn’t explain what he meant. Possibly he meant that Israel sought an unmilitarized Palestinian state, as if it weren’t serious unless it had a big army? If what Fayyad has in mind is a country with a big gun perhaps he would prefer an Elmer Fudd state.

Or is the problem that Israel wants a Palestinian state which ends the conflict forever? In that case, Fayyad seems to prefer a Wiley Coyote state, which is always trying to trap Israel in order to destroy it.

After all, the Palestinian leadership is always in search of some magic weapon (from Acme Corporation?) and can never accept that it won’t wipe out Israel.

But Israel, like the Roadrunner, always avoids the trap. Like Wiley, the Palestinian leadership always ends up by catching itself in its own trap. Pretty often, it runs off a cliff only to be left standing in mid-air until it looks down and remembers gravity, then plummeting to the valley far far below. Meanwhile, the Roadrunner dashes off merrily unharmed. Beep! Beep!

In a sense, though, Fayyad is right that Israel wants a Palestinian state to be like Mickey. After all, Mickey is a nice guy, never aggressive or violent, always trying to get along with neighbors.
No wonder that role model is so upsetting for Fayyad!

Nevertheless, the mouse metaphor seems to have a powerful hold on the Palestinians and Islamists, too. The Saudi Shaykh, Muhammad Al-Munajid, stated on Al-Majd TV on August 27, 2008, that mice were Satan's soldiers and that "according to Islamic law, Mickey Mouse should be killed.”

Is Fayyad's mouse reference a subtle hint from him that he thinks Israel wants Hamas and its friends to finish him off by demanding he make risky compromises? (Note, in the Arabic-speaking world, any compromise is considered risky, no matter how much you get for making it.)
Or maybe Fayyad has in mind Farfour, the Hamas children’s show character based on Mickey Mouse, who calls for genocide against the Jews but is later killed by the Israelis and thus, as a martyr have to be revenged. Hamas wants a Farfour state.

Farfour once made a mistake of praising the English language, only to be criticized by Sara, the show's cute little suicide-bomber-in-training human co-host: "No, Farfour, you are wrong," she explained, "because you don't know that the Muslims are the basis of civilization. If not for the Muslims, the world wouldn't have gotten to where it is today."

Is that a double-entendre?

But Fayyad has evidently forgotten old Yasir Arafat who when once asked if he watched television answered that he only liked the Tom and Jerry cartoons because he enjoyed the way the mouse always fooled the cat.

So perhaps it is a question of whether the state be based on Mickey Mouse or Jerry the Mouse or Farfour the Mouse.

Personally, though, I think Fayyad should ask for a Donald Duck state, a far more appropriate choice. Here’s what a Disney site says about Donald. While Disney (which believes that everyone is naturally good, a nice idea for a children's entertainment company but not for a U.S. president) attributes good intentions to Donald, it continues (please allow me to quote as length as it is too perfect):

"But by the time they surface Donald's already off and running in the wrong direction. He refuses to let anyone or anything stand in his way. It doesn't matter how much humiliation the world dishes out to him, Donald will take it and come back for more. He's a loser, not a quitter, and he'll go down fighting. This is a duck with one short fuse, and...when things don't go right, he goes ballistic. Yet after the storm is over and the tantrum is through, when faithful Daisy [one of the heavenly virgins?] soothes his brow or his conscience finally catches up with him, even Donald can admit that there must be a better way. If only he could figure out what it is.

"Hot-headed Donald is a little man in a big world that's trying to keep him down. Call it fate, or call it lack of self-control, nothing goes right for this duck: even his best intentions often go awry. Of course, by the time his best intentions surface he's probably already chasing after less noble pursuits. As stubborn as he is temperamental, he won't give in, even when he's up to his beak in trouble. Then watch out. Like a lot of people with a temper problem, he's blind to his own faults but quick to see them in others. He can't understand why life seems so much easier for pals Mickey and easy-going Goofy. It's not fair. Still, Donald will keep struggling to get what he deserves in the world."

Now if Fayyad admits that Donald Duck is the perfect symbol for the Palestinian movement and the state he wants to create, the casting will be perfect. Moreover, the Saudis can be Scrooge McDuck, Donald’s wealthy uncle who never helps him despite having mountains of money in his vault.

And to this I can only add: That's all, Folks!

RubinReports: Palestinian Prime Minister Rejects "Mickey Mouse" State. Perhaps Prefers Donald Duck State Instead?

RubinReports: How the Palestinian Authority is Killing Even the Charade of a Peace Process

How the Palestinian Authority is Killing Even the Charade of a Peace Process

By Barry Rubin

Let’s take a careful look at this AP dispatch on an October 12 Fatah internal memorandum. The official Fatah document charges the Obama Administration with disappointing the Palestinians and being mainly responsive—like presumably all previous presidents—to the pro-Israel lobby.

It states:

"All hopes placed in the new U.S. administration and President Obama have evaporated. Obama couldn't withstand the pressure of the Zionist lobby, which led to a retreat from his previous positions on halting settlement construction and defining an agenda for the negotiations and peace."

Now if the Palestinian Authority and Fatah aren’t happy with Obama they are going to have a very difficult time ever finding a U.S. government they like.

And even given this attitude, their “job” is to court the U.S. government, give it incentives to help them, show they are compromising in order to win its favor, and prove they can deliver benefits for American interest. But they have no concept of such a strategy.

Instead, they basically demand what they want and view anyone who doesn’t give it to them—without their doing anything to earn it—as an enemy.

Note carefully this passage in the AP dispatch about the memorandum:

“Obama raised Palestinian hopes further with his repeated calls for Israel to halt all construction in settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem--areas the Palestinians claim for a future state.”

What the mass media won’t tell you is that Obama himself introduced this divisive idea of a freeze—which the Palestinians had never made a precondition for talks—thus leading the Palestinians to raise their demands and, consequently, wrecking even talks being held, much less them achieving any progress.

And here, indirectly, is the proof:

“The last round of Israel-Palestinian negotiations broke down late last year with no apparent breakthroughs on the main issues dividing the two sides: final borders, the status of Jerusalem and a solution for Palestinians who lost homes and other property in Israel after it achieved statehood in 1948.”

No mention of construction freeze here, right? Just borders, Jerusalem, and the Palestinian demand (a rather strange one for real nationalists but not for those who put the priority on destroying Israel) that Palestinians go to live in Israel rather than Palestine.

Two other points are worth noting. First, the Western media virtually never mention Israeli demands when discussing the peace process. Nothing about security guarantees, that any peace agreement ends the conflict forever (which is a rather normal thing to request), plus demilitarization and the barring of any foreign forces from entering the state. Only Palestinian demands are ever brought up.

(To be fair, one could imply that Israel wants border modifications, east Jerusalem, and Palestinians going to live in Palestine, but in other articles these are mentioned far less than Palestinian demands.)

Second, the AP articles states:

“The Palestinians want talks to resume from the point they broke down last year under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's predecessor, Ehud Olmert. Netanyahu says he is not bound by any concessions Olmert may have made.”

This is a common misstatement, rationalizing a ridiculously sleazy bargaining technique. Imagine you are in negotiation with someone over the sale of a house. You offer him a higher price if he makes certain concessions like helping on financing, including the furnishings, etc. He says: “No, I won’t give you any of those things. Now remember where we left off? You offered me a higher price in exchange for nothing.”

If the Palestinians had accepted Olmert’s offer and made their own concessions to get more, Netanyahu would view himself as bound by any concessions Olmert made. But since the Palestinians rejected Olmert’s proposal and refused to give the concessions he asked of them, no Israeli government is bound. As Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin once said in an identical situation: Nothing is decided until everything is decided.

And finally here’s my favorite line about the memorandum:

“The document, dated October 12, was issued by Fatah's Office of Mobilization and Organization. The office is headed by the party's No. 2, Mohammed Ghneim.”

Do an Internet search—allowing for variations for the transliteration of this name, example, Muhammad Ghaneim—and you will find that I’m just about the only one who has written about this gentleman and his role as the number-two man in Fatah, the Palestinian Authority, and the PLO. Everyone else has ignored it.

I wrote that Ghaneim is a hardliner who rejected the 1993 Oslo agreement and would pull the Palestinian leadership in a more radical direction, making peace even more impossible and increasing the movement’s anti-Americanism.

This is precisely what’s happening.

RubinReports: How the Palestinian Authority is Killing Even the Charade of a Peace Process

RubinReports: Meet the Palestinians’ Next Leader, Muhammad (Abu al-Mahir) Ghaneim: The Man Who Will Make Comprehensive Peace Impossible

Meet the Palestinians’ Next Leader, Muhammad (Abu al-Mahir) Ghaneim: The Man Who Will Make Comprehensive Peace Impossible

By Barry Rubin

There’s nothing written about more often—and inaccurately—than the Palestinians, yet there is curiously little interest about the politics and ideology which governs their behavior. The same situation applies to the man s slated to become that movement's next leader, only the third to hold that post in 50 years, after Yasir Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas.

The fact that an issue that is supposedly the most important, high-priority question in the Middle East, or even the world, is so little studied in depth has a simple answer. The contemporary narrative is that the Palestinian leadership yearns for a state, an end to the conflict, and peace, while the failure to achieve can be blamed on Israel. Yet even the slightest real examination shows the exact opposite is true.

This point is only underlined by looking at the current candidate for next leader, Muhammad Ghaneim, often known as Abu Mahir. Of all those who might credibly have been considered for the leadership of Fatah—and hence of the PLO and Palestinian Authority (PA)—he is probably the most hardline one.

Ironically, while media coverage of the 2009 Fatah Congress stressed the accession of young and more flexible leaders, the 72-year-old Ghaneim certainly does not fit that description.

Born in Jerusalem on August 29, 1937. His first political involvement was with the Muslim Brotherhood but he became a founding member of the Fatah movement in 1959 and active ever after, involved mainly in recruitment and organizational matters.

It is difficult to say to what extent Ghaneim’s early involvement with radical Islamism has shaped his thinking and whether it would make it easier for him to reconcile with the even more radical Hamas. Most Fatah and PLO people came out of more secular Arab nationalist or leftist movements. The only prominent leader who blended an Islamist background with nationalism was Arafat himself, and this certainly remained a prominent theme in his worldview during his entire career.

Ghaneim’s big career break came in 1968 when at the age of just 30 Arafat appointed him commander of Fatah’s forces in Jordan. And later that year, at age 31, he was put by Arafat on Fatah’s Central Committee in charge of the organization and recruitment department.

It is impossible to overstate the importance of these two jobs. At that time, Jordan was a Fatah stronghold and the group constituted a dual government alongside that of King Hussein, the country’s nominal ruler. Fatah guerrillas—and shortly after Arafat took over the whole PLO—had military bases from which they launched attacks on Israel across the Jordan River. Arafat must have had an extraordinarily high opinion of Ghaneim to appoint him to such a sensitive post.

Since so much of this task was involved with military matters, Ghaneim took a short officers’ course in China. On his return, in 1969, Arafat gave Ghaneim still a third chore, as is deputy for military issues. While the details aren’t clear this means Ghaneim must have played a central role in planning and implementing scores of guerrilla and terrorist attacks.

The other job was just as important. Ghaneim played a central role in selecting those to be given key jobs and just how much authority each had. Of course, everyone was far below Arafat in power but Ghaneim was about as essential as a second-tier figure could be. That job is also useful in making contacts with those who would continue to be top people in the movement in ensuing decades.

In 1970, Fatah overplayed its hand, was defeated by Jordan’s army, and had to flee to Lebanon. Ghaneim continued his organizational and military duties there. When the PLO and Fatah were forced out of Lebanon in 1982, Ghaneim accompanied Arafat to Tunis. From 1982 to mid-2009 he remained living there, though as early as July 2007 he may have begun visiting the PA-ruled territories in the West Bank.

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RubinReports: Meet the Palestinians’ Next Leader, Muhammad (Abu al-Mahir) Ghaneim: The Man Who Will Make Comprehensive Peace Impossible