RE-THINK THE MIDDLE EAST

by Michael Lame, posted on August 3, 2010

In the Rose Garden last week, President Obama asserted that “if we’ve learned anything from the tragedy in the Gulf, it’s that our current energy policy is unsustainable.” Perhaps he meant energy practices rather than energy policy, since an energy policy would presumably be government policy which means the policy of his own administration. Obama’s Secretary of the Interior has slapped a six-month moratorium on deep-water drilling in the Gulf in order to prevent more BP-style disasters, so the “current energy policy” the president criticized is clearly not his energy policy. But whatever he was referring to, what exactly is unsustainable about it?

Oil, gas, and coal will continue to be produced and consumed for decades to come. Perhaps the global reliance on fossil fuels is not sustainable for another 50 years but only for half that. In political terms, however, even 25 years is an eternity. Given how much attention the BP spill has attracted, improved industry safety practices as well as increased government regulation will likely result in diminished risk of a Deepwater Horizon-type disaster in the future. The near-term future, then, will no doubt include more deepwater oil drilling with increased safety measures.

So why would the President call something unsustainable which probably is sustainable for a long time to come? Because “unsustainable”, as a judgment on the status quo, has become the new universal watchword among change-advocates. Why must we make a change? Because the current condition, situation, policy, or system is unsustainable. It’s a more powerful word than untenable because it conveys a sense of urgency. Time is running out. We must act now!

The term “unsustainable” has also recently surfaced in Obama administration references to the Israeli blockade of Gaza. On the day after the flotilla incident, Secretary of State Clinton proclaimed that “The situation in Gaza is unsustainable and unacceptable.” Since then, the Israeli government has announced a lifting of its restrictions on the entry into Gaza of many foodstuffs and consumer products, but the ban on other imports as well as all exports remains in place, as does a set of severe travel restrictions. The blockade has not ended.

Middle East scholar and Palestine-watcher Nathan Brown of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace recently quipped that the typical language of EU documents states that “the situation in Gaza continues to be unsustainable.” He concluded that it’s possible for an “unsustainable” program or policy to be “sustained at this unsustainable level for a long time to come.”

That even the unsustainable is sustainable should come as no surprise. Human beings, after all, have an enormous capacity to adapt, even to horrific circumstances. Tyranny, oppression, malnutrition, poverty are but a few examples of the ills we bear indefinitely as a species. Through human ingenuity and perversity, that which, morally speaking, should not continue even one more day can be made to continue ad nauseum, if not ad infinitum.

If we continue to promote that which is unsustainable, then we are clearly on the wrong road going the wrong way. According to the views of most clerics and politicians, with intellectual underpinnings provided by theologians and ideologues, there is a right road and a wrong road in life. If we choose correctly, life will be long; society will prosper; civilization will flourish. But if we choose incorrectly, woe unto us! The wrong road is characterized not only by unsustainable options but also by diminishing possibilities. “The window of opportunity for a two-state solution is rapidly closing,” we have been told for the last ten to twenty years. Some argue that the window has already slammed shut. Perhaps the closing window is a trope that should itself be finally closed and retired from future discussions of Middle East peace.

The linguistic flip side of unsustainability and the wrong road is that of inevitability and the right road. In the 1990s, Oslo promoters in Jerusalem, Ramallah, and Washington repeatedly and categorically stated that “the peace process is irreversible” and “the two-state solution is inevitable.” Neither prediction turned out to be the case, as demonstrated by the failed Arafat-Barak-Clinton negotiations at Camp David, followed shortly thereafter by the outbreak of the second intifada, the subsequent disappearance of the peace camp in Israel, and the redeployment of Israeli troops in Palestinian cities.

To call a condition “unsustainable” is to contend that it will (and must) break down. To call an outcome “inevitable” is to assert that it will (and must) occur. Both notions are presented as predictions of the future, but in political discourse often they are not really predictions based on weighing the evidence; they are projections. They project an image of the future that the speaker hopes for. The projection’s power may stem from a belief in the efficacy of affirmations: if one says it often enough and loud enough, it will become true. Sometimes matters are presented as inevitable or unsustainable not because the speaker is foolish but because he hopes to fool others. Or it may simply be a matter of wishful thinking: I want peace. Everyone wants peace. Therefore we will have peace. I want the blockade to end. All good people want it to end. Therefore it will end. But the world generally doesn’t work that way, and the Middle East definitely doesn’t.

So how does it work? Conspiracy theorists assume a conscious will behind every action on the international stage. If something bad happens, it must be because someone wants it to happen. There is a certain logic to such theories, but as historians like Barbara Tuchman have shown, wars can break out from mistakes, miscalculations, and misinformation, even when no one wants war. While that is generally true, it is particularly true in the armed-to-the-teeth, hair-trigger, security-minded Middle East. One act of disrespect, one misinterpreted troop movement, one leaked document can set in motion a chain of events leading to pulverized buildings and dismembered bodies. Capriciousness and happenstance cannot be overlooked as key factors in Middle East politics and warfare. They must be considered along with the more traditional strategic, demographic, and economic factors in composing plausible scenarios of potential futures.

While neither war nor peace between Jews and Arabs is inevitable, one is more likely to win a bet that calls for another round of blood-letting than for the achievement of comprehensive peace in our time. Given the odds, what is one to do?

Americans typically assume not only that problems have solutions but that the solutions will be found and implemented quickly. The idea of a catastrophic oil spill continuing to devastate the environment day after day for three months running has been an affront to the American can-do ethos. The fact that Syrian-Lebanese-Palestinian-Israeli peace has eluded president after president for several decades is sobering if not maddening.

In the search for Middle East solutions, too often a short-term fix has morphed into a long-term fixture. Deleterious conditions which should not be sustained have been allowed to continue and to sink deep roots. Who imagined that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians would still be living in refugee camps more than sixty years after the Nakba? Who thought that the occupation of the West Bank would last for more than 40 years? Who believed that the state of Israel, established in 1948, would still lack peaceful relations with most of its neighbors?

The more we assume that the Middle East’s future has already been determined, the less likely we are to take positive action to shape that future. Engagement is not required if the conclusion is foregone, while energy drains out of options that everyone “knows” will one day be implemented. The urgent question, then, is not whether an analysis is accurate, a condition unsustainable, or an outcome inevitable, but whether governments, organizations, and individuals will take timely action to alleviate human suffering and resolve the region’s conflicts.

The words people say and how they say them offer strong indications of what, if anything, people intend to do. By paying close attention to the language employed by the region’s players, we can begin to discern whether their words evoke an energetic bias for action which can make a genuine difference or rather reflect a bystander’s judgment of a pre-determined future.

Declaring Independence Without Permission

by Michael Lame, posted on July 26, 2010

Last week, on July 22nd, the International Court of Justice in the Hague issued an advisory opinion regarding Kosovo’s 2008 declaration of independence from Serbia. According to the opinion issued by the ICJ, “the Court considers that general international law contains no applicable prohibition of declarations of independence. Accordingly, it concludes that the declaration of independence [by Kosovo] did not violate general international law.”

Wow, what a momentous decision! International law does not prohibit declarations of independence. Separatist movements and freedom fighters around the world can breathe a sigh of relief knowing that their words will not get them into trouble at the Hague. Of course, if they are caught closer to home, they may still be tried and executed for treason against the governments they seek independence from.

Imagine if international law had held sway in 1776. How might an earlier version of the International Court of Justice have reckoned with Jefferson’s handiwork? “We hold these truths to be self-evident…” The court might have objected to his discourse on natural law and the rights it supposedly confers, instead insisting that positive law – in this case the law of the British Empire and English common law – was dispositive. Had it come to a court of law, our founding fathers might have lost their case for independence.

What if the court hearing the Kosovo case had ruled the other way? What if the ICJ were to conclude that declarations of independence in general or the specific declaration of independence in question constituted a violation of international law? Should the Kosovars then have rescinded their freedom charter since international law prohibited it?

This decision of the United Nations-affiliated ICJ should trouble anyone concerned with the global future of freedom and the independence of nations, not because of the particular outcome in the case but because the court dealt with the question at all. Something is wrong when a court decides whether or not oppressed peoples can declare their independence. For legal determinations to encroach on the realms of the political and the moral is nothing new, but that trend is increasingly prevalent, increasingly accepted, and I would argue, increasingly dangerous. If every controversy of international import becomes a legal question to be handled by lawyers and adjudicated in courts, humanity will be the loser.

Legal systems are instituted to maintain the order of things and to procedurize orderly change. Revolutions, by their very nature, overturn the order of things, as do declarations of independence. Therefore, they should be illegal, and they should continue to occur – outside the legal system. What needs to be fought against is the idea that the only legitimate change to the international order is that which is sanctioned by law.

In 1988, the PLO famously and ineffectively declared the independence of Palestine. Many nations recognized the newly declared state, though on the ground nothing changed. Israel continued to control the West Bank, Gaza, and east Jerusalem, as if no declaration had occurred.

Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian Authority’s prime minister based in Ramallah, has been putting the West Bank’s house in order. Uniformed Palestinian police now patrol city streets, maintaining the peace. Ministries operate with established budgets and procedures. Transparency is the watchword of Fayyad’s financial administration, making donor nations happy, while public and private investment increases. Fayyad plans to build the infrastructure of a Palestinian state and to declare its independence (once again) by the end of 2011.

Imagine that Abu Mazen (or his successor) and Fayyad (or his successor) do indeed declare an independent state of Palestine next year. Imagine further that Israel objects and the U.N. General Assembly thereupon requests that the International Court of Justice issue an advisory opinion on the matter. Given the history of the ICJ, especially its 2004 advisory opinion about the wall or security barrier in the West Bank, odds are that it would support the Palestinian position.

But is that how Israeli-Palestinian conflict can or should be resolved – by the act of a group of judges sitting in the Hague, far removed from daily life in Rafah, Ramallah, and Rehovot? The hundred years’ war between Jews and Arabs in Palestine is not fundamentally a legal dispute to be settled by both sides getting their day in court.

Sometimes the U.S. Supreme Court refuses to adjudicate issues which are viewed as inherently political matters better addressed by the legislative and executive branches of government. Some of the dissenting opinions by ICJ members in the Kosovo case raised similar objections, but to no avail. In a lengthy concurring opinion, Judge Cançado Trindade of Brazil posited that “ours is the age of an ever-increasing attention to the advances of the rule of law at both national and international levels.” There ought to be limits, however, to the advance of the rule of law into all spheres of public life.

Law cannot resolve all conflicts, and law will not resolve the most intractable political and religious controversies of our time. To think that it can is to ignore power relationships as well as the strength of historical memory, nationalist fervor, moral and religious conviction. The cool rationality of adherence to legal reasoning and precedent does not outweigh people’s collective passions.

Kosovo’s future should be determined in the Balkans, by Kosovars and Serbs, along with their immediate neighbors, i.e., by the people who live there and are most directly affected by the conflict. Likewise, Palestine’s future should be decided upon not in Washington, New York, or the Hague, but in the Middle East, by Arabs and by Jews.

Note: Comments are moderated and generally will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive.

by Michael Lame, posted on July 2, 2010

I found the following video clip online this week, along with a story about it in Haaretz. (http://www.haaretz.com/news/international/new-hit-song-for-palestinian-children-when-we-die-as-martyrs-1.297731) Please view the clip before reading the rest of this piece.

The tune is catchy and the kids are cute, so what is wrong with this video? First of all, the blatant use of children for political propaganda purposes. Second, teaching children to value martyrdom. Third, the message that childhood has no meaning without one’s country. That’s nonsense. Children do not need to identify with a nation or a people to be happy and fulfilled.

It’s one thing to teach children to be proud of their heritage, their country, and their religion. It’s quite another to twist that pride into a morbid desire to prematurely meet one’s maker.

This video, this song, this phenomenon all should be condemned at the highest levels of Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim society. And if similar propaganda is being generated on behalf of Israel, that too should be condemned at the highest levels of Israeli and Jewish society.

Too many children have already died on both sides of Arab-Jewish conflict in the Middle East. We don’t need more martyrs. We need for there to be no more martyrs.

by Michael Lame, posted on June 22, 2010

Last week I returned home following a visit to Jerusalem, Ramallah, Tel Aviv, and Istanbul. After clearing customs at the Philadelphia international airport, I waited in the security line in order to fly back to Washington DC. Philadelphia’s domestic security screening process seemed much slower than that of other U.S. airports I have flown through recently. So, after my pat-down search (I’m still not sure to what I owed the honor; perhaps I should have shaved in Istanbul before returning to the States), I asked to speak to a supervisor, who appeared within a minute or two. I told him my impression that the Philly screening operation took considerably longer on a per-person basis than that in other airports. I asked him if the goals of the TSA included reducing the screening time per passenger. He said No, they would like to do it fast, but the TSA’s mandate is to provide security. That’s its goal.

When any entity or organization has a clear primary responsibility, no one should count on it to deliver additional benefits unless they are specifically committed to and connected to the primary area of responsibility. The Transportation Security Administration, which runs the airport security bureaucracy, is a case in point. Its central focus is stated in its name: Security. TSA’s official mission, according to its website, is that it “protects the Nation’s transportation systems to ensure freedom of movement for people and commerce.”

TSA has but a single mission, and disrupting travelers’ lives as little as possible is not part of that mission. This explains the many inconveniences and inefficiencies of the current system. Here’s one of them:

After going through security screening, I typically carry my shoes in one hand and my computer bag in the other, searching for someplace to sit down so I can put my shoes back on and tie my shoelaces. (Not everyone wears loafers.) Each time I am required to walk through an airport in my socks I experience it as a slight indignity. During the first several decades of my life, until Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, came along in December 2001, I never had to remove my shoes in an airport, and I still resent it. This new airport shoe fetish seems to be specifically American. I’m required to remove my shoes whenever I fly in, to or from the U.S., but usually not in Europe or Asia.

Almost nine years after 9/11, many U.S. airports still do not provide chairs or benches located next to the security screening areas for the specific purpose of allowing travelers to sit down while putting their shoes back on. I blame the federal government for being so inconsiderate of my tender feet.

But TSA personnel are not in the comfort biz or the let’s-get-this-done-as-quickly-and-with-as-much-dignity-intact-as-possible biz. They’re in the security biz, or at least in the security appearance biz. Why should we expect a security organization to care about anything other than security?

My encounter at the Philadelphia airport reminded me of a conversation I had a few days earlier in a popular coffee joint on Emek Refaim Street in Jerusalem. The Israeli I was meeting with gave an example of how in Israel an individual willing to push a bit can make a difference. He had noticed that the army checkpoint on the road north of Bethlehem was functioning at only 20% capacity, that is, only two of ten stations were manned for the security screening of West Bank Palestinians who wanted to enter Jerusalem.

[For my purposes here, I am setting aside the question of whether Palestinians living in the West Bank should be able to travel freely to Jerusalem without being stopped and screened by Israelis or anyone else. Nor am I addressing the very real security concerns of Palestinians.]

This Good Samaritan then monitored the checkpoint for several days to ensure that his observation was not a momentary fluke. Next, he wrote a letter to a powerful minister in the Israeli government, an acquaintance of his, and sent copies of the letter to several other ministers. Within two weeks, all ten of the checkpoint stations functioned and continued to do so thereafter, according to his periodic checks. As a result, Palestinians’ wait-time in line was significantly reduced, from hours to a matter of minutes.

His example of how one person can make a difference conveyed a different message to me, management consultant that I am. It spoke to me of a systemic problem. Who in the Israeli government, I asked, is responsible for maintaining and improving relations with Palestinians? They are, after all, Israelis’ neighbors – past, present, and future, regardless of any eventual political resolution. His answer was that the checkpoints are the responsibility of the Minister of Defense. Now it made sense to me that not all the stations had previously functioned. Why would a Minister of Defense care?

From a security perspective, the wait-time of persons being screened is largely irrelevant. Having Palestinians wait in two long lines possibly provides even better security than having them wait in ten short lines. And if there is a terrorist in the line, a long wait might cause him to become nervous and give himself away. But from a Palestinian perspective, it’s a very different story, one of indifference, disrespect, and possibly of intentional infliction of discomfort and distress.

I am an impatient fellow. I hate to wait in lines of any kind – at movie theaters, banks, and especially at airports. I dislike the TSA not only for its inefficiency and thoughtlessness regarding travelers but also for what I believe to be bogus security measures designed to show that the agency is doing something to respond to previous security failures. And all of that slows down the process and lengthens the wait. But as much as I dislike the TSA in practice, I recognize the legitimacy of its purpose. It was set up ostensibly to protect Americans like me. And if it succeeds in stopping or dissuading even one would-be suicide bomber from boarding a plane, I will applaud that result.

But imagine being a West Bank Palestinian stuck in a long checkpoint line which was not at all set up for your benefit. In fact, Palestinians are the suspects at such checkpoints. Any minor indignity I might suffer walking through an airport in my stocking feet is truly insignificant compared to what routinely occurs in the security checks that thousands of Palestinians are subjected to on a daily basis on their way to and from work, school, or shopping.

To make people wait indefinitely, to treat them disrespectfully, to lord it over those who have no power – these are all likely outcomes of any long-term occupation, though they are not inevitable outcomes.

Security checks exist for a reason, a valid reason, and that must always be kept in mind. But how the checks are conducted is only partly a matter of security. Other factors play important roles – the personality of those doing the checking, their attitude towards the people being checked, the humanity and the efficiency of the security process, and perhaps most importantly of all, how those supervising the process are evaluated. If the totality of the evaluation depends on not letting a single potential threat go undetected, then even extreme measures like strip-searching everyone in line, from the five-year-old to the ninety-five-year-old, can be justified on security grounds. To refrain from employing such extreme measures involves considerations other than security. Since not everyone is strip-searched, additional factors must be involved.

Note: there is already much evidence of recent improvement in the daily life of Palestinians within their population centers in the West Bank. [See, for example, http://www.jpost.com/Features/FrontLines/Article.aspx?id=178097.] That improvement results from a combination of factors, including the work of the Abbas-Fayyad government, foreign aid, U.S. training, and Netanyahu’s interest in “economic peace”. The bulk of that internal development, however, is distinct from the day-to-day interactions between organs of the state of Israel and West Bank Palestinians. These interactions include requests for permits of all kinds – entrance permits, travel permits, vehicle travel permits, work permits, building permits, etc. Other issues fraught with political implications include house demolitions, water usage, sewage, import-export, and access to health care. Numerous Israelis, both in and out of uniform, hold the power to grant or deny benefits, goods and services to the Palestinian population. Some Israelis wield that power benignly. Others wield it maliciously.

Yet as long as the Ministry of Defense remains the Israeli government agency responsible for most official interactions with individual West Bank Palestinians, there is little hope of systemic improvement in how Israelis treat Palestinians. This is so not because Defense Ministry officials and IDF soldiers are uniformly hostile to Palestinians – some are; some are not – but rather for the simple organizational imperative that in cases of conflict among goals, an organization’s primary goal undercuts all others. “The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are responsible for safeguarding Israel’s existence, security, and sovereign rights,” according to an Israeli government website. The business of the Israel Defense Forces is defense, not customer relations. True to its mission, the IDF will look at Palestinians more in terms of assessing and managing risk than in terms of facilitating the activities of civilians.

A carefully formulated mission statement that no one reads is worthless, but a clear mission that someone is accountable for delivering on can make a huge difference. Absent a clear TSA mission to reduce airport wait time, we should not expect increased efficiencies. Absent a clear mission to improve relations with the civilian population, we should not expect a Palestinian-friendly Israeli security presence along the green line, at checkpoints or elsewhere in the West Bank.

Thirty government ministers now sit in Israel’s largest-ever cabinet, yet there is no Minister for Palestinian Affairs. Since 1967, when Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza, the Palestinian population in those areas has increased to more than 3½ million people. Although they are not citizens of Israel, their lives are circumscribed by Israeli decisions. Yet there has never been an Israeli Ministry of Palestinian Relations. To appoint a minister without a budget, a staff, and real power would only be window-dressing in any case. But who knows what might be accomplished if a senior Israeli politician was provided with a staffed and funded ministry, a proactive mission and a mandate to improve Israeli-Palestinian relations on the ground?

So long as a pathway to ending the conflict remains elusive and obscure, we might do well to examine ways of improving life under occupation. If that is indeed what Netanyahu wants, then let him designate a point-person and announce a clear mission. And please, don’t make people walk around in their socks.