Massacre in Gaza

S P SETH

Whether or not the ceasefire to stop the Israeli bombing of Gaza, and the retaliatory rockets on Israel, will hold is anybody’s guess. If the past is any guide, the prospects of any durable truce are not too bright. At the same time, all the rhetoric about terrorist rockets falling and Israel simply defending by letting leash bombs and missiles on Gaza from air, sea and land, takes one’s breath away. Israel’s so-called defensive and “precision” bombing of Gaza in eight days killed about 160 people with more than 1,000 injured, while the “terrorist” rockets killed 6 Israelis.

And why did the Hamas and its allied groups persist with their rocket throwing until the ceasefire, knowing that it would cost them dearly? Simply because if they don’t react forcefully, they will simply be forgotten by the world, as they almost already are. This is their way of keeping their cause alive on the regional (Middle East) and global map. At the same time, despite Israel’s unbearable arrogance of invincibility, even the firing of admittedly not terribly effective rockets tend to unsettle Israel psychologically, with the rockets occasionally reaching deep into the country.

Gaza is essentially a large prison camp of nearly 1.7 million people (many of them refugees from, what is now, Israel), surrounded by Israeli forces that attack and kill at will to force them into submission. Their supplies of daily provisions and needs are rationed subject to Israeli blockade of their territory. The only wonder is that that they are still able to fight for their dignity and basic human rights. And it is this ‘stubbornness’ on their part that riles Israel. Even when there is the slightest gesture of some support from any international humanitarian group, as in the case of a flotilla of peace activists in 2009 that sought to bring relief supplies into Gaza for its besieged citizens, Israel goes berserk. Israeli soldiers, at the time, killed nine Turkish citizens on board the ship carrying relief supplies to Gaza.

Any decent human being, with no political agenda, will be appalled at the Israeli inhumanity towards Gaza’s citizens, as during the 8 days bombing of the territory. Jepke Goudsmit, a Jewish citizen of Australia who might invite the label of a self-hating Jew, was so appalled to write a letter to the Sydney Morning Herald. He wrote. “…Being of Jewish descent myself, I had hoped that a people who have suffered as much as the Jews would not become perpetrators of the same wrongs done to them in the past….” Well, he is in a hopeless minority in his community.

 The killings in Gaza this time, as in the earlier bombings like the 3-week Israeli invasion in 2008-2009 when 1400 Gazans were killed, seem like a normal military excursion for the Israeli armed forces. The obvious question is: How does Israel get away with all these murders? And the simple answer is the unqualified support it receives, politically, economically and militarily, from the United States and, for the most part, from European countries that follow the US lead. The statement of the US President Barack Obama supporting Israeli bombing raids on Gaza was almost identical to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s angry outbursts rationalizing Israeli attacks.

Netanyahu said that no country could tolerate its citizens being targeted by rockets. But he forgot to mention that it was his country that started the process by killing a Hamas commander, Ahmed Jabari, travelling in his car. Jabari had earlier been instrumental in having the captured Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, released from a Gaza prison. In a cruel twist, Jabari was reportedly working to bring about an effective and durable truce between Israel and Gaza.

Regarding Obama’s support for Israeli bombing, he said, “…there’s no country on Earth that would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders”, virtually echoing Netanyahu. The Palestinians in Gaza are simply fighting for their freedom from a horrifying Israeli blockade of their territory from land, sea and air, and they are rained with bombs when they seek to exercise that right.

An important question is: why do Europeans so supinely follow the US? One simple answer is that they follow the US as part of their strategic alliance. But at a deeper level, their commitment to Israel is born of a collective guilt of treating Jewish Diaspora inhumanely through pogroms and Hitler’s Holocaust. And they want to expiate their crimes by creating a new bogeyman, the Palestinians who resist Israeli occupation. Even at the height of the killing of Jews by the Hitler regime, known in the US and Europe, the pleas from Jewish groups to bomb railway lines and trains transporting Jews to their death camps, were ignored. Not only that, those Jews seeking refuge in these countries, including the United States, were simply ignored or turned away. With this kind of record, to turn on the Palestinians by supporting Israel’s killing machine is unconscionable.

Another problem is internal to the Palestinian movement. It is divided and badly fractured giving Israel enough scope to play one group against the other. For instance, the Palestinian Authority based in West Bank and the Hamas controlling Gaza have been at each other’s throat ever since the Hamas won Palestinian elections in 2006. Since the Hamas is branded a terrorist organization by Israel, the US and the western world, it was outlawed as a legitimate government, forcing it to withdraw to Gaza where it has a powerful base.  In the ensuing infighting between the Fatah organization and Hamas in 2007, the latter succeeded in ousting the Mahmoud Abbas’s organization from Gaza.

All attempts to bring the two warring factions together have failed, principally because Israel and its international backers would not accept a unity government with Hamas as its component. In other words, Israel has plenty of scope to play politics in the Palestinian movement. Hence, Palestine continues to be the orphan child of the international community, letting Israel play havoc with their lives.

And this will continue to happen unless the new political forces unleashed by the Arab Spring put up a joint front to help Palestinians. And to some extent, this has already happened with Egypt’s President Mohammed Morsi playing an important role in bringing about the recent truce, winning plaudits from both President Obama and the Hamas leadership. Incidentally, Morsi has immediately used his enhanced status to assume unlimited powers in Egypt. He obviously hopes that his new found usefulness for the Americans will still their criticism of his “popular” dictatorship. But political developments in Egypt, following Morsi’s decree and plunging the country into political turmoil, might not be helpful for the Palestinian cause. In other words, they are likely to remain paws on international chessboard.

    

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.

Syria’s harsh reality

S P SETH

The great worry about the Syrian uprising early on was that it might develop into a brutal civil war. Which has already happened. The death toll is estimated around 30,000 and rising. The scenes of wanton destruction of entire suburbs and towns, principally by aerial attacks from an increasingly desperate Bashar al-Assad regime, are heart rending. On the battlefront between the rebels and the government, neither side has a decisive edge and the situation is stalemated.

The big danger is that the Syrian crisis might develop into a regional conflict, with even more disastrous consequences. In a way, it already has an external dimension. For instance, the rebels are getting their weapons from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey. The United States and Britain are also actively helping. The Bashar regime, on the other hand, is receiving valuable military and non-military help from Iran, including elements of its special forces. Russia continues to ship weapons.

With both the government and the rebels having powerful backers, it is not difficult to work out where it is all leading. A human tragedy in Syria is slowly transforming into a regional geopolitical disaster, and that too at a time when the situation in the Middle East, in the wake of Arab Spring, is very fragile. The first major step in this direction is Turkey’s blunt warning of armed retaliation, if Syrian artillery and mortar shells were to hit its border territory. This was in response to a recent mortar shelling of a Turkish border town killing five civilians. The Turkish Government now has parliamentary authorization to take whatever military action to deal with the situation.

Ankara is now in a blustery mood, having mobilized its armed forces for, what looks like, a major operation some time soon. In one instance, Turkish armed retaliation has already reportedly killed 14 Syrian soldiers. There has also been a forced landing of a Syrian passenger plane flying from Moscow, suspected of carrying military equipment from Russia. Which has infuriated Moscow, as the plane doesn’t appear to have been carrying much in the way of weapons. The plane was carrying 30 passengers, half of them Russians.

When the Syrian rebels rose up against the Bashar regime, Turkey sought to prevail upon Damascus to resolve its crisis peacefully through democratic reforms. But as Damascus proved obdurate, it has increasingly supported the rebels’ cause, trying to mobilize international opinion against the regime. With the recent shelling of its border town resulting in the death of five of its citizens, it is now fired up against the Bashar regime.  

At the international level, Ankara immediately took up the matter with the United Nations Security Council that has since passed a resolution condemning the attack. But it didn’t sanction any specific course of action against any such repetition. This was obviously a sop to get Russia and China to support the resolution, as they wouldn’t have agreed to a military response.

At the international level, the Syrian insurrection has seen the revival of a cold war of sorts in the Middle East between the US and its western allies on one side, and Russia and China on the other. The creeping great powers’ political and, possibly, military involvement in an already embattled country can have unpredictable consequences for the region.

Turkey’s second response to the Syrian mortar attack was to take up the matter with its NATO allies. And predictably NATO countries have come in support of Turkey, indicating that any military attack on Turkey could involve NATO as well. Turkey is going about it in a calculated and systematic way, though still maintaining that it is not angling for war. Indeed, if its military preparations are anything to go by, it is all set to strike.

Turkey’s government is keen to play a major role in the Middle East region, much of which was once a part of the Ottoman Empire. And, in Syria, it has been politically active from the onset of insurgency. Following the influx of Syrian refugees across the border into Turkey, the rebels are using the border areas for attacks inside Syria. Turkey’s tough approach to Syria has the support not only of its NATO partners, but a number of Arab countries keen to see the end of the Bashar regime.

The US and western countries have been promoting Turkey as a model democratic Islamic country. Which is adding to its confidence to talk and act tough. And if Turkey succeeds in bringing down the Assad regime, it would have earned the gratitude of the US and some of the Arab countries working hard for the same objective. This would greatly enhance Turkey’s regional status, entitling it to play a determining role in the post-Bashar era.

But it might not quite work like this for several reasons. First, while all of the Syrian rebels want to bring down the Bashar regime, their common goal ends here. There is no discernible unity among the rebels about what would and should happen after the Bashar regime is overthrown. And attempts to forge that unity by Turkey, Arab states and the US haven’t made much progress, if any. Any interventionist role by Turkey and others to shape a new political order in Syria is likely to be resisted along the way by one or more groups fighting for their respective agendas.

Second, the rebel movement has been infiltrated by al-Qaeda and other extremist elements interested only in creating greater mayhem in and outside Syria. And Turkey might not be immune to it. There is a danger, along the way, of linkages developing between Syria’s Kurdish minority and the Turkish Kurds (and other rebels), where there is an insurgency, on and off, against Turkish domination.  The Bashar regime has already relaxed their control of the country’s Kurd region. In a period of political and strategic flux, events can take dramatic turn that Turkey might not be able to control. In other words, despite Turkey’s calculated and neat strategy, the results might be the opposite of what is intended.

The Alawites’ minority, now in power, is not going to simply go away. With Turkey now engaged in bringing down the Bashar regime, long memories of Ottoman (Turkish) rule are likely to find a fresh lease of life. In a recent article in the London Review of Books, Nir Rosen quotes historian Hanna Batatu who wrote, ‘Under the Ottomans they [the Alawites] were abused, reviled and ground down by exactions and, on occasion, their women and children led into captivity and disposed of by sale.’ According to Rosen, “They were practically serfs to the Sunni feudal lords put in place by the Ottomans.” And these painful memories will further firm up their determination to keep fighting for their survival.

The point is that even if the Bashar regime is overthrown, there will be a variation of it to keep up the struggle. Therefore, Syria will continue to be a battleground of all sorts of competing and contending forces and, at times, a proxy war of international and regional interests seeking dominant political, economic and strategic space in an already volatile Middle East.

Turkey, therefore, over time, might find itself subsumed into a seemingly endless game of international chess, but with blood and gore.

Note: This araticle first appeared in the Daily Times. 

Bombing Iran?

By S. P. SETH

Will he or will he not bomb Iran? The reference here is to Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who is on warpath. He wants to bomb Iran if the US wouldn’t to do it to prevent it from developing an atomic bomb. How serious he is about going it alone is not clear but obviously it has been taken seriously enough by the US and Britain to dissuade him from doing it. But this has only angered Netanyahu. He wants the US to lay down “red lines” for Iran on its nuclear program beyond which it would be open war on that country. However, Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, has reportedly said that Washington was “not setting deadlines for Iran”, obviously indicating that it would keep up the diplomatic and economic pressure on Iran to produce results.

Netanyahu hasn’t taken kindly to it announcing angrily and petulantly that: “The world tells Israel: ‘Wait, there’s still time [before Iran develops a nuclear weapon].’  And I say: ‘Wait for what? Wait until when?’ Those in the international community who refuse to put red lines before Iran don’t have a moral right to place a red light before Israel.” Netanyahu is one angry man apparently unconcerned about blowing up the Middle East where things are already inflamed enough after the Arab Spring and, now, the smouldering unrest caused by the YouTube documentary, made by some crazy guy in the US, insulting Prophet Muhammad.

The backdrop for Netanyahu’s ratcheting up the Iran issue at this particular time is the ongoing electoral contest between Obama and Romney and the leverage he might have from a strong pro-Israeli lobby in the United States. Romney is his favored candidate because he is prepared to make all sorts of promises on Iran to galvanize the Jewish interests in the United States behind his election campaign. Israel was one of the few countries that Romney recently visited where he was received with great warmth by Netanyahu to highlight his preference.

Indeed, Romney has reportedly accused Obama of  “throwing Israel under the bus”, in an apparent reference to the Iranian nuclear issue. Obama has refused Netanyahu’s request for a meeting between the two during the UN General Assembly meeting, further angering the Israeli Prime Minister. Obama is also not prepared to commit any specific deadline for US military action against Iran beyond a broad commitment, already in place, to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

Netanyahu’s interference in US’s internal politics by playing presidential favourites (Romney) seems to be hardening feelings in the United States. According one recent poll, 70 percent of American respondents were opposed to unilateral US military action against Iran. Indeed, 59 per cent reportedly said Israel should be left to fend for itself if it were to bomb Iran, and then called for US help.

The intensity and comprehensive nature of the US and western sanctions against Iran to force it into stopping enrichment of uranium is indicative of US commitment against Iran going nuclear. And it is hurting Iran. The idea is that if the pressure is maintained and kept up it will start hurting people to a point where they might want to get rid of the present regime and replace it with a new government willing to give up the nuclear path. But it doesn’t seem to be working and Israel wants a cut off point beyond which the US will bomb Iran or allow Israel to do so with its backing. Which is where the Netanyahu government and the Obama administration diverge, with Washington refusing to be dictated by Tel Aviv in this matter.

Indeed, there are now voices in the United States---though not yet powerful enough to change the US’ Iran policy---, that are starting to think the unthinkable about Iran’s nuclear issue as in a recent article in the New York Times. According to Bill Keller, a former executive editor of the New York Times, “…There are serious, thoughtful people [in the US] who are willing to contemplate a nuclear Iran, kept in check by the time-tested assurance of retaliatory destruction”, meaning a strategic balance based on the old doctrine of mutually assured destruction. The other option of bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities, he writes, “would almost certainly require major US participation to be effective, and would not be neat.” And he lists all the possible disasters that might accompany such an action.

Keller dismisses the scary scenario of Iran using its bomb (if it gets one) to exterminate Israel. He argues that, “The regime in Iran is brutal, mendacious and meddlesome…. but there is not the slightest reason to believe the mullahs themselves are suicidal” to invite nuclear retaliation from a powerful Israel backed by the United States. Therefore,”… if forced to choose, I would swallow the risks of a nuclear Iran over the gamble of a pre-emptive strike.” Such a thesis on Iran’s nuclear program is quite remarkable. It is even more remarkable that it has appeared in the New York Times, inclined sympathetically to Israel.

In a similarly unconventional way, Kenneth Waltz argues in the American journal, Foreign Affairs, that, “It is Israel’s nuclear arsenal, not Iran’s desire for one, that has contributed most to the current crisis.” And he says of Iran’s potential nuclear status: “… Every time another country has managed to shoulder its way into the nuclear club, the other members have always changed tack and decided to live with it.”

What is worrying is Netanyahu’s advocacy of bombing Iran, even if it meant Israel going it alone.  This is not only causing disquiet in the United States and other western countries, but also in parts of the Israel’s political, security and intelligence establishment. In a long article in the New Yorker, David Remnick, its editor, explores the issue based on his conversations with relevant people. He writes, “… a growing number of leading intelligence and military officials, active and retired, have made plain their opposition to a unilateral Israeli strike.” He adds, “ They include the Army Chief of Staff, the Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force, the heads of the two main intelligence agencies, the Mossad (Israel’s C.I.A.) and Shin Bet (its F.B.I.), President Shimon Peres, and members of Netanyahu’s cabinet, including the Intelligence Minister.”

Meir Dagan, director of the Mossad from 2002 to January 2011 expressed his strong concern in an interview with Remnick. He said, “ An Israeli bombing would lead to a regional war and solve the internal problems of the Islamic Republic of Iran. It would galvanize Iranian society behind the leadership and create unity around the nuclear issue.” Furthermore: “…it would justify Iran in rebuilding its nuclear project… A bombing would be considered an act of war, and there would be an unpredictable counterattack against us…”

Considering that the United States and its allies have amassed a large naval fleet in the region to warn off Iran against blocking Strait of Hormuz or any other action they might consider provocative, the situation in the region is highly explosive, even though the culprit is Israel with its Prime Minister Netanyahu threatening to bomb Iran. But the US feels helpless when it comes to Israel’s belligerence. The point is: will Netanyahu bomb Iran before the US presidential election or after it? The world will be waiting with bated breath.   

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.

Syria Exploding
By S P SETH

Syria is in a descending spiral. Whichever way one looks at it, its present and foreseeable future is the stuff of a Greek tragedy on a national and regional scale. Bashar al-Assad and his ruling clique will hang on for a while wreaking more havoc on their unfortunate country and its people. They are, however, unlikely to reclaim their kingdom, even with all the firepower at their disposal. Being challenged in Damascus, with some of the regime’s inner circle killed by the rebels right under its noses, what is left of the Assad regime has lost its credibility.  The Syrian people no longer fear their rulers. The Assad family never had popular legitimacy. They ruled by fear, starting with Hafez al-Assad, the father, and continued under the son, Bashar al-Assad. Now that it is cornered from all sides the Assad regime might fight to the finish with their immense arsenal as is currently being done in Aleppo. The entire country, at times, looks like one large ghost town with many of its buildings destroyed, and people lost or killed in the mêlée. If and when the killing spree from the regime and the rebels ends the reconstruction will be a gigantic task. But we are running ahead of the events.
Syria was stabilized, if that is the right word, after Hafez al-Assad instilled fear into his people by killing thousands in Hams in 1982. It was peace of the grave, though, but it worked. Syria’s minorities, including the ruling Alawites, felt safe as the Muslim Brotherhood, committed to establish an Islamic state, were crushed. With memories of the past oppression and killings still fresh, Syria’s Sunnis, admittedly fragmented but newly energized, are not going to be forgiving of their Alawite rulers and their community. Which is already starting to happen with the captured pro-government militia and army soldiers executed summarily in Aleppo and elsewhere.
It is important to note that the rebels are no freedom fighters and angels, and are prepared to outdo the government in cruelty and violation of human rights when given a chance. They are reportedly starting to receive heavy weaponry from Saudi Arabia and Qatar, with the US looking on approvingly as well as providing intelligence and surveillance information. The rebels are hoping to entrench themselves in Aleppo and surrounding areas. In other words, we are looking at a protracted civil war with sectarian and religious overtones. One just have to imagine all the marauding gangs of militia and rebel groups taking law in their own hands and seeking private and sectarian revenge. In other words, it is going to be a long fight with Syria thrown into total chaos.
And the external ramifications of such free-for-all in Syria are even more nightmarish. It is increasingly reported that the rebels in Syria now include Islamic radicals of all sorts, including al-Qaeda, and affiliates from other countries. If extremists penetrate the rebel movement in Syria as is reported, its next-door neighbor, Iraq, will become even more vulnerable to al-Qaeda attacks that are already a staple of its political life. And most of these attacks have a strong sectarian edge targeting Shia suburbs and pilgrims in Iraq.
It is pertinent to note that Bashar al-Assad and his regime are anathema to Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies because of its close links with Iran. Iran, as the standard-bearer of Shia tradition, is perceived to threaten the Sunni kingdoms of Saudi Arabia and its allies in the Gulf Cooperation Council. For instance, the revolt in the majority Shia populated kingdom of Bahrain, crushed with Saudi military backing, is attributed to Iran’s wider design to destabilize Arab kingdoms by fanning trouble among their Shia minorities. In Saudi Arabia, its oil rich eastern province has majority Shia population. The recent unrest there was again seen as part of Iranian trouble making. The eastern province is just across the causeway that links Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. And if Bahrain’s Shia were to be enfranchised as a democratic force, its Sunni kingdom will be history, creating visions of impending danger for Saudi Arabia and the Gulf region. At the same time, the majority-Shia Iraq, with its Shiite government, has close links with Iran. Indeed, some of its prominent leaders were political exiles in Iran during Saddam Hussein’s rule. Therefore, Iran already has considerable influence there.
Syria and Iran have also been consistent supporter of the radical Palestinian movement, Hamas, frowned upon by Saudi Arabia and its fellow monarchs in the Gulf as dangerous precedents and practice for its people. At the same time, Syria is believed to be the link between the radical Hezbollah movement in Lebanon through which Iranian arms and money is funneled. And Hezbollah, the umbrella Shiite movement, has a veto right on political decision-making in Lebanon.
To top it all, Iran’s nuclear ambitions are said to be a grave threat to Saudi Arabia and the region by potentially changing the balance of power, and starting a nuclear race. Coincidentally, both Saudi Arabia and Israel perceive Iran’s nuclear ambitions as threatening their security. At the same time the United States and its European allies are doing everything, and threatening to do more, to stop Iran from becoming a nuclear power. In this complex geopolitical web, the fall of the Assad regime, with its close ties to Iran, will help loosen/break the chain that has so many stakeholders worried over the years.
Turkey is another regional actor getting increasingly enmeshed into the Syrian imbroglio, with Syrian refugees pouring in large numbers across the border. While it is keen to get rid of the Bashar regime and doing all it can, it also worries about the nexus between its own restive Kurdish population and Syrian Kurds who are keen to create their own autonomous region out of the ruins of the Syrian dictatorship. It is important to realize that Syria borders Iraq, Turkey, Jordan, Israel and Lebanon. Lebanon, for instance, over the years has been manipulated by the Assad regime as part of its greater Syria ambition. And in its north (Tripoli) there have already been sectarian clashes between its Alawite and the Sunni population.  In other words, all Syria’s neighbors will be sucked into this regional cauldron in a big or small way.
But by the same token, the fall of the Assad regime, brutal though it is and still killing its own people, will create a vacuum in the country with all sorts of elements and militias, including the al-Qaeda, seeking to exploit the situation for their own respective competing and contending agendas. The danger is that Syria might turn into another Afghanistan to make it a veritable hellhole. Therefore, while there is not much hope for the Assad dynasty, Syria’s future, and with it of the region, appears quite gloomy at this point of time.

Egypt: revolution stymied

S P SETH

With the former Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak dying (reported clinically dead at one point), his systemic legacy looks like continuing. Nothing much has changed so far except that the generals, appointed by Mubarak, now rule the country. The generals’ grab for power for, what might be, an indefinite period is likely to plunge Egypt into further uncertainty. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces has dissolved the recently elected parliament and arrogated to itself the task of the final approval of the constitution as and when it is drafted at their behest. They were happy to be rid of Mubarak when he became the symbol of all that was wrong with the country. In the process they (the military) became the darlings of the people with the slogan that the army and the people were one. In giving Mubarak a nudge into oblivion, they managed to save the system with their berths intact as the country’s rulers.

But it was not as simple as that as the military council was soon to find out. When the military council’s first attempts to formalize their role as the country’s arbiters brought out protesters once again into Tahrir Square, they made a tactical retreat by allowing the holding of parliamentary elections; resulting in the overwhelming victory of the Islamist parties with Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis garnering about 70 per cent of the seats.

The presidential contest that followed apparently gave Mohamed Morsi, the Brotherhood’s candidate of the Freedom and Justice Party, a narrow victory.  Ahmed Shafiq, a former air force chief and Mubarak’s last premier, did quite well at 48 per cent to about 52 per cent of Morsi, reflecting sharp polarization with a large section of the people going for the old order. Fearing that the military council might play politics with the election results by declaring Shafiq as President-elect, the Freedom and Justice Party made a pre-emptive announcement of having won the election. Whether or not Morsi is declared the official winner and the first popularly elected President of the country, the army has in any case pre-empted him of any real powers by dissolving the parliament and taking over the executive, legislative and constitutional powers for an indefinite period. Morsi, as President, will be a titular head with the military council fielding real power.

What it means is that Egypt’s revolution has been stymied. And the country is likely to be plunged into a power struggle between the Muslim Brotherhood and the army; in some ways reminiscent of the confrontation between the two since the days of the then Colonel Nasser who, with the help of some of his fellow military officers, had overthrown the monarchy in the fifties. The Muslim Brotherhood, with its roots going back to 1928 when it was founded by Hassan al-Banna, has a track record of taking on the powers that be, first in an anti-colonial role and subsequently against the military rule of Colonel Nasser and his successors, Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak. They were mercilessly persecuted, tortured and thrown into prison until Mubarak was satisfied that they were tame enough to be tolerated under strict internal security watch.

 When the Tunisian contagion--with its dictator Ben Ali fleeing to Saudi Arabia-- spread to Egypt and became the Arab Spring, the Brotherhood initially had difficulty believing that the anti-Mubarak upsurge was for real. They dithered before joining the Tahrir Square crowds. And at times, after Mubarak was overthrown, the Muslim Brotherhood seemed like becoming cozy with the military council to advance their political ambitions. Peter Hessler, in an article in the New Yorker, reveals this based on his conversations with Nader Omran, a spokesman for the Freedom and Justice Party, political wing of the Brotherhood. Omran told Hassler that the only problem was assuring the military council that it could make a “safe exit”. In other words, “They need to have some guarantees, but they have to first step down.” The Brotherhood felt close to gaining power on the basis of a deal with the generals.

And that is where the Brotherhood’s calculations have come unstuck, as the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces is not for retiring, with or without guarantees. The country seems set for the power struggle between the military and the Muslim Brotherhood, the latter projecting itself as the legitimately elected power centre further reinforced with the popular revolution that brought down Mubarak. But with the Ahmed Shafiq side claiming victory too, the picture is becoming murky giving the army enough scope to manipulate events to its advantage. The Muslim Brotherhood is mobilizing their supporters in Tahrir Square to continue the revolution that has been thwarted by the old system.

However, the Brotherhood made some important errors during the course of the revolution that has damaged its image of moderation and inclusiveness it sought to cultivate. For example, having promised not to field a candidate for presidential election, they went back on it, as power seemed within their reach. This has tended to polarize the Egyptian people as testified by the close presidential election results, admittedly unofficial but based on returns from polling booths. They even started to hobnob with the military council to achieve their political ambitions. Indeed, at times, they seemed keen to go out of their way to publicize their Islamic credentials. For instance, Morsi reportedly said at one point that, “ I swear before God …, regardless of what is written in the constitution, Sharia will be applied.”

There is nothing wrong with them proclaiming their Islamic credentials but it doesn’t gel with the spirit of the revolution that sought to build a broad church (to use an expression) where proponents of civil society, including women and minorities, played a lead role. The Brotherhood was a latecomer. The result is that the initial enthusiasm and fervour of the much-heralded Arab Spring might have waned; though the new crowds at Tahrir Square seem to reflect a sort of unity in diversity. But the Brotherhood, by their overweening political ambitions, managed to compromise the revolution. To take an example, the Coptics (the Egyptian Christians) who participated in the anti-Mubarak upsurge, are not too keen on the Brotherhood taking over the reins of power.  

Peter Hessler, in his New Yorker article, captures the essence of disillusionment with the Brothers. He writes, “Last fall, people often described them as honest and hardworking, but by the end of April, when the Presidential campaign officially began, it was hard to find anybody who openly supported Morsi. Comments were scathing; the Brothers were liars; they had made a mess of parliament; they cared only about their own interests…”

The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces will have quite a fight on their hands if Ahmed Shafiq is made President. But even with  Morsi as the winner, the country is likely to remain in a state of recurring strife as the elected President will have virtually no powers.

The question is: will the Brotherhood be able to forge a broad revolutionary church to carry on the revolution? That will remain to be seen because they haven’t been inclusive so far.

 Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times

Israeli occupation of Palestine

By S P SETH

A group of us, here in Sydney, were discussing a book that traces the travails of a Jewish family spread out in Austria and France during WW11. It is a very poignant story told with great sympathy, compassion and understanding by the author several generations down the family line. Luckily for this family, it escaped what many Jews suffered in a holocaust engineered by Hitler’s Germany. In the midst of this discussion, some one raised the question: has it ever bothered the successive governments in Israel that the same (Jewish) people who have been one of the most persecuted in history are now dishing it out to the Palestinians? The Palestinians have been displaced, bombed, terrorized, hunted, blocked, balkanized and what not and Israel still manages to do it all with a clear conscience as if the Palestinians were the initiator and perpetrator of all the historical pogroms, including Holocaust, that the Jews suffered; when all this happened and was done to them in Europe.

It is a cruel travesty of history that the victims (the Jews) are now the perpetrator of crimes against humanity on people (the Palestinians) who, historically, have had nothing to do with the persecution of Jews. Still, they have been deprived of their homeland. They are now living under Israeli occupation in what little is left of their homeland. And even that too is coveted by Israel, with Jewish settlements springing all around them, parceling their land into Bantustans of the South African apartheid era.

In an era when the question of human rights is sought to be made a central issue of international politics, Israel is the only country that still manages to flout them with impunity. The Israeli occupation of the West Bank, including Jerusalem, and Gaza (blockaded and bombed) are illegal under international law. But, in the case of the Israeli usurpation of Palestinian lands, international law apparently has no validity, with Israel able to interpret and twist it to its requirements. For instance, some of the European countries recently criticized another bout of occupation settlements that Israel is building which are patently illegal, but Israel simply dismissed their objection as “partial, biased and one-sided depiction of realities on the ground.”

There is a method behind this madness. It is two fold. First, it is meant to create new ground realties as a fait accompli. Second is to make existence for the Palestinians so miserable and horrible that they might have no option but to leave to create more ghettos in neighboring Arab countries. After all, Israel denied for quite a long time (some still do) the existence of a Palestinian entity and identity. They wanted to squeeze them out (it still remains the ultimate goal) to seek a ghettoized existence in other Arab lands.

But so far it has worked only partially.  The underlying policy though remains the same, with the Israeli Arabs also coming under a tightening regime of a discriminatory legal dispensation for them. Indeed, the siege mentality enveloping the Israeli state, despite being the strongest country in the Middle East and enjoying the protection of the world’s most powerful country (the United States) is such that it sees enemies everywhere. As David Shulman, Professor of Humanistic Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, writes in an article titled, Israel in Peril, “… Like many Israelis, he [Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu] inhabits a world where evil forces are always just about to annihilate the Jews, who must strike back in daring and heroic ways in order to snatch life from the jaws of death.” And he adds, “I think that, like many other Israelis, he is in love with such a world and would reinvent it even if there were no serious threat from outside.”

Shulman is spot on about this enveloping psychology of the state of Israel where the existence of the country and the Jewish people is always on the line, requiring preventive and pre-emptive action. Commenting on the policy of Jewish settlements in the occupied territory, Shulman says, “ By now, a huge portion of the West Bank has, in effect, been annexed, perhaps irreversibly, to Israel. No state can be constituted on the little that remains…” Still, the Netanyahu Government continues to invite the Palestinian Authority for “unconditional” talks on the two-state solution. It is a cruel joke that Israel keeps playing on the Palestinians, knowing that a two-state solution in truncated Palestine with non-contiguous territory, and under overall Israeli control, is an insult to the Palestinian people.

Tony Judt, historian and essayist, characterized as a self-hating Jew, and once a great admirer of the kibbutz-loving Israeli experiment as a “social-democratic paradise of peace-loving, farm-dwelling Jews…” was later turned off by his experiences in the country. And he came to see in Israel “ a Middle Eastern country that despised its neigbours and was about to open a catastrophic, generation-long rift with them by seizing and occupying their land.”  How true it is and getting worse by the day, with the Palestinians copping the lot with graffiti in some places calling “Death to the Arabs”, and “Arabs to the gas chambers” as reported in a recent article in the New York Review of Books by Jonathan Freedland.

The question is: how long will Israel be allowed to exercise their sense of entitlement and perpetual victimhood at the expense of the Palestinians? The answer obviously is: as long as the United States and its European allies will continue to indulge Israel. The United States’ political system is held hostage to the Jewish lobby in that country. So much so that Netanyahu has had the temerity to lecture, snub and demand answers from President Barack Obama because of the political and economic weight of the Jewish lobby.

As for Israeli society, according to Peter Beinhart, “… the Netanyahu coalition [and its social foundation] is the product of frightening, long-term trends in Israeli society: an ultra-Orthodox population that is increasing dramatically, a settler movement that is growing more radical and more entrenched in the Israeli bureaucracy and army, and a Russian immigrant community that is particularly prone to anti-Arab racism.”

It is a depressing picture for the Palestinians and the only way for things to change is, one, by pressure from the United States and, two, for the Arab world to unite on the issue of justice and freedom for the Palestinians. On both counts; there is not any significant movement. And such impotence and indifference on the part of world tends to simply reinforce the Israeli view that, if they continue on their course, the fait accompli of their occupation will acquire the stamp of legality.

 David Shulman writes in the New York Review of Books that the system that underpins Palestinian Bantustans “… someday, as happened in South Africa…will inevitably breakdown.”  Furthermore, “To prolong the occupation is to ensure the emergence of a single polity [with] necessary progression to a system of one person, one vote.” In that case, Israel must face the likelihood that “unless the Occupation ends, there will also, in the not so distant future, be no Jewish state.”

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times 

Carnage in Syria

By S P SETH

The carnage in Syria looks like never ending. The recent grisly scenes of battered corpses posted on the internet is the worst of its kind since the uprising began March last year. The deaths of over 100 civilians, including 49 children and 32 women, add to the mounting death toll of over 10,000 and rising. It all happened in Houla, a township in Homs province. Apparently, the military was trying to wrest control of this town from the rebels. After doing their bit of pounding the town with heavy artillery, the pro-regime militia was left to finish the job. And they went about it with their customary brutality.  The army seems to be forgetting, though, that, despite the heavy price they are paying, the rebels are not deterred. Therefore what worked for Bashar al-Assad’s father, Hafez al-Assad, in 1982 when he unleashed unrestrained brutality in Hama killing upwards of 10,000 people, is not working in 2012.

There are two reasons why it is not working. First: the rebellion is much more widespread this time. The military is, therefore, overstretched. Second: the Arab Spring, that has overwhelmed much of the Arab world, inspires the rebel movement in Syria. Its success in Tunisia and Egypt had its contagion effect in Syria. The Bashar regime might, therefore, need to rethink its strategy of violent repression as the only course before the upsurge in Syria reaches a point of no return, if it is not already happened.

Not surprisingly, the killings in Houla have created even greater outrage internationally, leading the UN Security Council to condemn the “outrageous use of force against the civilian population”; calling on both the government and the rebels to end violence. The Security Council statement was issued after Russia was accommodated in not apportioning all the blame on the Assad regime. According to the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, both sides in the Syrian conflict “had a hand” in the deaths. He maintained that, “The guilt has to be determined objectively. No one is saying that the government is not guilty, and no one is saying that the armed militants are not guilty.” Which the British Foreign Secretary, William Hague, then visiting Moscow, didn’t dispute though he made the point that “… it [the regime] has the primary responsibility for such violence.” In other words, Russia and China stand in the way of a Security Council resolution for international intervention in Syria to stop killings.

Of course, the US and its allies might decide to intervene without a UN resolution but this seems unlikely. Even though they are vociferous in their condemnation of the Syrian atrocities, none has so far shown any appetite for armed intervention. Calling it a “vicious assault… on a residential neighborhood” the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, said that: “… the United States will work with the international community to intensify our pressure on Assad and his cronies, whose rule by murder and fear must come to an end.” France is simply making plans to host a Friends of Syria meeting, while Britain said it was in urgent talks with allied countries on “a strong international response.”

In the US, President Obama is in the midst of an election campaign for another term. One of the selling points of his campaign is that, under him, the US is disengaging from its military commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan. That advantage will be nullified if the US were back in another bloody conflict, this time in Syria. And this could even be bloodier than Iraq and Afghanistan.

Another reason is that President Obama only recently made an important decision to shift the focus of US strategic policy to the Asia-Pacific region. During the last decade when the US has been preoccupied with Iraq and Afghanistan, China has made important inroads into Asia-Pacific region to the detriment of US power and interests. Another US shift to the Middle East, this time in Syria, will only further fortify China’s strategic advantage. Third: the US global overreach in the last decade, if not before, has significantly contributed to the country’s indebtedness, thus making another military adventure an unlikely proposition. The US’ European allies are in an even worse situation economically.

Obviously, the Bashar regime is aware of these constraints of the western countries that gives it some leverage in a very tight situation.

Therefore, as long as Russia and China do not join the US in the Security Council for concerted international action  (a combination of armed de-stabilization and comprehensive sanctions), the regime might be able to prolong its life. So far, Moscow is proving a tough nut to crack with its considerable economic and strategic stakes in Syria.

There is some suggestion that Russia might be persuaded to buy a Yemen-like compromise where its unpopular president was sent into exile, leaving the rump of his government intact. In Yemen, though, both Saudi Arabia and the United States had considerable political and economic leverage to swing the deal. But this is not the case in Syria. If applied to Syria, this would mean that Bashar and his cronies will go into exile leaving rest of the system and structure unchanged. Russia will thus continue to have strategic primacy in the country, where it will be business as usual minus Bashar and few of his close cohorts.

Will Russia fall for it? It seems unlikely except as part of a wider strategic deal in which Russian political, strategic and economic interests worldwide, seen as threatened by the US and NATO, are assured. For instance, Russia is very angry over the stationing of US missiles in its strategic backyard, in Poland and elsewhere, as part of a defense system against a perceived Iranian nuclear threat. It also fears that the United States and its allies are seeking to politically destabilize the Putin regime by fomenting and encouraging anti-Putin rallies in Russia. Russia has also incorporated parts of the neighboring Georgian territory following a border war between the two countries some time ago. It would like legitimization of that from the US. Moscow also wants to join the World Trade Organization to reap trade benefits, and the list goes on. And it probably would also want some assurances against military attack on Iran by Israel and/or the US. It is a long list and hence difficult to be tied down to the Syrian situation.

Despite all the humane concern for carnage in Syria, the international power brokers have their own agenda. The US, for instance, would like to break the close links between Iran and Syria, and their perceived disruptive role in the region.

As for a Yemen-like solution for Syria, it will be difficult to sustain even if it were feasible. The two situations are quite different. First: Syria is much more diverse in terms of its ethnic, cultural and religious diversity. And the Bashar regime, though unpopular with the Sunni majority, has the support of the minorities, and a good section of its trading and middle class.

Its Christian population, though not enamored of the Bashar family dictatorship, are still thankful for its social and religious liberalism. They are free to practice their rituals and social modes.  And they are afraid of the alternative of the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood, as they see it.

Second: the regime is not subject to outside dictates, perhaps not even from Russia. Its power base in the army and the country’s Alawite political class remains intact. Therefore, it might still have enough life to keep going. However, unless the Bashar regime relents on its policy of killing its own people, it might only be a matter of time before it too becomes history. But that doesn’t mean the country’s mysery will be over any time soon. A prolonged civil war might make it even messier and bloodier.

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times