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09/16/2008

Jealous Arabs make the best peace partners

Filed under: Israel — Tags: , — Soccerdad @ 12:00 pm

Guy Bechor writes about which Arabs Israel can hope to reach by their reaction to PM Olmert’s legal (and political) troubles:

The reformist group – Notably, most responses on the Olmert affair came from this camp. Members of this group are astonished not because of what’s happening in Israel, but rather, because the same thing will never happen in their own countries. In this group we certainly see jealousy of Israel, of its dynamic nature, and of its vitality. This group realizes that while in Israel the public controls its rulers, in the Arab world the rulers control the public. One surfer wrote: “If police in the Arab world could do what the Israel police did, then all the Arab rulers and their associates would be brought to court over bribery, corruption, and similar charges.” He added: “Transparency is the secret of Israel’s power.”

These reformists are the ones, according to Bechor, who

…will aspire to move closer to us, first and foremost in order to change its own society. It views Israel as a positive model for imitation and future cooperation. Indeed, even when it comes to such grave affair, there are still some rays of lights for Israel.

We’ll see.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

08/08/2008

An awakening

Filed under: Politics — Tags: — Soccerdad @ 10:00 am

Barry Rubin writes about the failure of the Arab/Muslim world to modernize.

This struggle between the old and new societies characterized much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, yet the trend was steady. Perhaps fascism (arguably Communism) and World War Two were, respectively, the final reactionary movements and last struggle. Yet victory required 500 years of rethinking and education.

There’s no such history in the Middle East and several additional problems block change toward moderation and democracy here. Whatever one thinks of specific Islamic doctrine as generally interpreted the big problem is that it remains so powerful and hegemonic. Arab nationalism is anti-democratic, repressive, and statist. Islamists seek a somewhat revised version of the eighth century, albeit with rockets and mass communication.

It is also worse because Middle East regimes and revolutionaries know Western history. They are aware of the fact that while pious Western philosophers and scientists sincerely believed open inquiry and democracy didn’t threaten traditional religion and the status quo they were wrong. Openness led to revolution and to modern secular-dominated society, a West with all the ills decried by those in religious, ideological and political power in the Middle East. They know what happened to Soviet bloc dictatorships that experimented with more freedom, too. And they know that accepting Western ideas makes people want to change their own societies.

Left unmentioned but also relevant is the degree to which the failure to modernize is tolerated and justified by the West by excusing the the anti-Israel stances of these countries as reasonable reactions to the Israeli / Palestinian conflict.

And yet every once in a while there are glimmers of hope.

Deja Vu re-published the thoughts of A Syrian Dreams of a day in Haifa

No doubt, it would be tempting to land in Haifa. Perhaps I would run into one of the 1948 Arabs [i.e. Israeli Arabs] – not in order to ask him whether he would prefer to live in the West Bank or Gaza rather than in the state of the artificial ‘entity,’ but to ask him whether he would prefer living in Mecca or Qom to living in Haifa…

Israel Matzav quotes from a Kuwaiti writer:

Hizbullah and Kuntar’s family should thank their maker for making Israel their neighbors rather than Hussein’s Iraq. Otherwise, Kuntar would not have come back to his homeland on his feet, at a healthy weight of 90 kg, but rather in a little plastic bag containing a few bones, as our Kuwaiti prisoners returned to us.

Elder of Ziyon highlights another Kuwaiti writer who reflects on the extremism he sees in clips from MEMRI and concludes:

When we place our very own miseries in the hands of others, we are externalizing our problems that we are not able to solve, not because we cannot with some will and desire do so. Rather, we put our problems in the hand of foreigners because as such we can allow ourselves to do nothing about it for whatever reason we wish to ascribe to such act.

And Israelly Cool! quotes from the Daily Star of Beirut:

Over the past few days the two Palestinian factions seem to be close to repeated the same disastrous mistakes. We have seen Palestinians denigrating the legitimacy of other Palestinians, Palestinians making war on other Palestinians, and Palestinians arresting other Palestinians, while the Jewish state has come to the rescue of those Palestinians who fear for their lives. Israel has never looked so good.

These essays that show a self-awareness absent from much if the thought we in the West read in articles coming from the Arab world. Are they a sign of a new openness? A sign that the governments of the Arab world may start taking responsibility for their own citizenry rather than blaming their failures on Israel?

It’s possible but even Barry Rubin expresses some skepticism.

In comparison, while there are courageous individual liberals, there’s no real liberal party anywhere in the Middle East, no liberal-controlled media or liberal proselytizing university. In Egypt the liberal organization has been taken over by the Muslim Brotherhood.

And Daniel Pipes, reflecting on recent titles that appeared in a Cairo book fair, writes:

While risible to the foreign eye, these books and their covers must be taken seriously, for they define the mental world of monolingual Egyptians.

While there may be some indiviiduals who see the need for the Arab world to progress, there is no sustained movement with that as its goal right now. Modernization, it seems, must wait.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

07/28/2008

Arab states don’t fulfill their commitments to the Palestinians

Filed under: Hamas, Israel, Israel Derangement Syndrome — Tags: — Soccerdad @ 9:30 am

The Washington Post reports Arab Aid to Palestinians Often Doesn’t Fulfill Pledges.

In 2002, when oil prices were hovering around $21 a barrel, nearly two dozen Arab nations joined to pledge yearly contributions of $660 million to support the Palestinian Authority’s annual budget. Now, even with oil prices more than six times higher and the Palestinian Authority bordering on financial ruin, only a handful of Arab countries are sending even a small portion of the money they promised, according to data examined

Out of 22 Arab nations that made pledges, only three — Algeria, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — have contributed funds this year, while oil-rich countries such as Libya, Kuwait and Qatar have sent nothing and still owe the Palestinian government more than $700 million in past-due pledges.

The Palestinian Authority uses the contributions to help pay salaries for civil servants, health-care specialists and other workers in the Palestinian territories. European governments, the World Bank and the United States have provided more than three times as much money as Arab countries this year to keep the government afloat, but officials said the Europeans and the World Bank have virtually depleted their resources, leaving a funding gap of about $800 million for the rest of 2008.

First of all, it’s questionable whether this aid even helps the Palestinians. Or does it have the effect of making their government less accountable to its citizens – leading to massive corruption.

Corruption seems to the number one answer why Arab states have not contributed more.

Arab diplomats, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said there is little trust that the Palestinian Authority will use their contributions wisely, even though Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad is a veteran of the International Monetary Fund and, during his time as finance minister, introduced new standards of accountability and financial management. Arab diplomats said they also resent the tight grip that Israel has maintained on the Palestinian territories during the peace talks.

And of course no explanation would do without some gratuitous Israel bashing.

“Most of them make the pledges reluctantly, on the basis that the United States wanted them to do it,” said Shibley Telhami, the Anwar Sadat professor for peace and development at the University of Maryland. “There is frustration that nothing is happening in the peace process, and so they would be throwing good money after bad.”

Telhami professes all kinds of excuses for Arab intransigence against Israel. He does not profess peace, so his title is really deceptive. He doesn’t even consider Palestinian responsibility for the lack of contributions.

The Post provides an interesting graphic accompanying the article. It notes that a number of the countries that pledged support for the Palestinians actually accelerated payment of the aid between 2006 and 2007 after Hamas won the legislative elections. So if they were comfortable making payments that would strengthen Hamas, that undermines their claim that the lack of progress on the peace process is a reason that they’re withholding funds. Clearly they had no problem funding a party opposed to the peace process dedicated to the destruction of Israel. (Aside from that, Fatah funds Hamas.)

According to this table, Arab commitments to the Palestinians since 1999 have just as good a chance of still being commitments as being fully paid. This isn’t really new. (You can go to the ReliefWeb website and put together your own table.)

One of the specific commitments of Saudi Arabia from 2001 was for:
“…supporting the Jerusalem uprising fund.” In other words this aid was designated for funding the so-called “Aqsa intifada.” (It does not indicate if this pledge was fulfilled.) This is one more indication that funding for the Palestinians is often not about nation building or peacemaking but about continuing the fight against Israel.

But if the idea that funding the Palestinian Authority would bring peace suffers from scrutiny of what’s actually given by the Arab world to the Palestinians, another myth is also undermined.

We regularly hear about how the United States is not sufficiently committed to the Palestinian cause; but the United States contributes huge amounts to the Palestinians. It is, of course, a bad investment. But the Americans are backing up their words about supporting a Palestinian state with money. Which is more than what the Arab world is doing.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

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