Image by Toban Black via Flickr

 Ghassan Michel Rubeiz

PALM BEACH GARDENS, FL - Thomas Friedman is emphatic that America should withdraw from the Mideast peace process until Arab and Israeli attitudes soften.
I disagree. America should deepen its involvement in peace-making and assume more responsibility than before.
In the Middle East, America is not just a broker; Washington is a part of the solution and part of the problem. Israel did not become a regional superpower on its own.
As a result, the United States has become joined at the hip to Israel. In a difficult regional environment, Washington is a guarantor of Israel’s security; reciprocally, Israel serves US strategic interests.
Thomas Friedman oversimplifies. In a 7 November, New York Times op-ed, Friedman attributes the stalemate to a deficit in seriousness of the protagonists:
“If the status quo is this tolerable for the parties, then I say, let them enjoy it. I just don’t want to subsidise it or anesthetise it anymore. We need to fix America. If and when they get serious, they’ll find us. And when they do, we should put a detailed US plan for a two-state solution, with borders, on the table”.
The popular columnist is right to look for a paradigm shift for the peace process. However, the solution is not, as he suggests, in abandoning the mediation at a moment of despair. The Middle East conflict might explode if the United States suddenly abandons the scene of conflict resolution. Things are indeed worsening, even before the United States considers disengagement.
Regional headlines are telling: President Abbas is threatening to resign. Netanyahu prevails on the settlements issue as Washington yields to the “Israel-first” lobby. Hilary Clinton regrets her praise of Netanyahu for his “unprecedented gesture” on limiting illegal construction on Palestinian land. The region’s public erupts with anger. Israel is mobilised to respond to a defiant and risk-averse Iranian regime, a provoked Hamas in Gaza and a re-mobilised Hizbullah in Lebanon.
As the peace process stalls hope starts to fade. The voice of moderation in Palestine is discouraged and the voice of anger is rewarded. Abbas feels he has no peace partners in Israel and no support in the West.
Since 1967, the Arab-Israeli conflict has gradually evolved into a complex Arab-Israeli- American problem. The United States has been involved in the Israeli occupation, its maintenance, its expansion and its rationalisation. The United States supplies Israel with phenomenal aid and military assistance. Washington protects Israel from criticism at the United Nations. Most Americans may not wish to be deeply involved in the region. But their government, business and religious leaders over the last four decades have been active in every aspect of life in Israel and in the wider Middle East. America is now also militarily involved in Iraq and Afghanistan.
This is not to say that the United States is to blame for all that has gone wrong in Israel and Palestine.
Over the last few decades, Israel has shifted from seeking national security to establishing regional dominance. Fear fuels Israeli short-sighted politics and self-fulfilling prophecies.
For their part, the Palestinians have diluted their secular approach to statehood by mixing their political struggle with religious symbols. Hamas, an “Islamic resistance” remains popular and powerful. The fundamentalist dimension in the Palestinian struggle has a growing impact on Jewish fear.
The two sides of the conflict are divided, and their differences are deepening.
Israel is split deeply on the rights of settlers. It is not clear how they can work out a Jewish state within a democratic framework. There is no plan on co-existence with Palestinians and on the viability of a Palestinian state. For Israelis, the future is not a pleasant subject.
Divisions among Palestinians are pathetic. The Palestinians have two leadership systems, two governments and two geographical administrations. They are deeply divided on the role of religion in politics and on the nature of resistance. On the future of refugees there is no consensus or a realistic vision.
It might be politically too risky for the president now to try harder than before to confront the Israel lobby. Understandably, President Obama would rather risk his re-election prospects on ambitious health reform and fixing the US economy than on twisting arms to recast the US role in the peace process.
To enhance the Mideast peace prospects, America must engage as an equal partner in the search for a solution to the conflict, with full rights and responsibilities. Israel should acknowledge that its occupation of Palestinian territories negatively impacts both its own future security and the strategic interests of the United States.
The three sides, America, Israel and the Arabs, must work out a win-win peace plan. When the United States participates in the peace process as a stake-holder, not simply as a convener, there will no more be a need to beg and cajole Israel or the Palestinians to be—as Friedman anticipates—more “serious”.

Dr. Ghassan Rubeiz (grubeiz@comcast.net) is an Arab-American commentator on issues of development, peace and justice. He is the former secretary for the Middle East of the Geneva-based World Council of Churches. This article was written for the Common Ground News Service (CGNews).
Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), 19 November 2009, www.commongroundnews.org
Copyright permission is granted for publication.

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Image by The U.S. Army via Flickr, Press conference, Lt. Gen. Robert Cone, Commanding General III Corps and Fort Hood

                                   . 

By Paul Reickhoff
Somewhere, high atop the mountains of Afghanistan, Marine Staff Sergeant Todd Bowers is smiling. He's not thinking about Cameron Diaz or all the Jack Daniels he'll consume when he comes home. Or at least not this minute. He's reflecting on a handshake, one that launched a historic campaign to welcome new veterans home.

A year ago today, in partnership with the Ad Council, IAVA launched a nationwide Public Service Announcement (PSA) campaign to let new veterans know they aren't alone. At the campaign's core is the first and only social network exclusively for veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, IAVA's Community of Veterans. On this site, new vets can find mental health, educational, and family resources, but more importantly, peer support from their fellow veterans. Last year, Todd co-starred in the now iconic commercial featuring two veterans shaking hands on an empty New York street corner.

Today, he's in Afghanistan. On his fourth overseas tour since 9/11.

This is the reality for many who serve today, and for their families. That's why, today, IAVA and the Ad Council launched a new round of groundbreaking PSAs. We want vets like Todd to know that on Veterans Day, and every other day, "We've got your back."

Check out the powerful new television PSA "Camo" right now featuring Iraq and Afghanistan veteran Ronaldo Zueleta:

Thanks to tons of donated media, you will soon be viewing this ad and others like it, on television and radio channels, websites, bus stations, and airport terminals near you. And it will make a huge impact. In just a year, the campaign and IAVA's community of veterans has already changed the lives of countless veterans.

But don't take my word for it.

According to Afghanistan veteran and IAVA community member Laurie Emmer, "For the longest [time] I felt like I was the only one going through things, but through this community I found otherwise. No matter what our deployment jobs, service or experiences were, we still share the places we went. Whether I am having a good day or a bad day I know this is the place I can come to for encouragement and support."

Whether it's amputees, folks struggling with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Outdoor Enthusiasts, or just those looking to swap war stories, every vet can find a home in this virtual veterans' hall, and meet a group of folks that "has their back." With events like last week's unthinkable tragedy at Fort Hood, this dynamic community offers a safe place where veterans can go to find support, healing and conversations with other vets.

Please help us spread the word about this historic campaign and show new vets, like Todd Bowers, that America "has their back." On Veterans Day, sharing the ad with your friends, family members, and coworkers is an easy way for every American to do something to support our newest generation of veterans. With your help, we can make every day Veterans Day.

Paul Rieckhoff is the Executive Director and Founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), and the author of Chasing Ghosts.

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By Mark Perry
It's now official: it's impossible to talk about American foreign policy without first talking about Israel. It's astonishing when you think about it. The US can send its Saudi allies weapons, but only if they don't threaten Israel. State Department employees can visit with Palestinians, but first they have to check with Israel. US diplomats can work for Middle East peace, so long as they insist that they're doing it for Israel. And what of Iran? Never fear: we are engaging in talks with the Iranians not because they might bomb New York--but because they might bomb Israel.

This is not just an American problem. During her recent address to the US Congress, German Chancellor Angela Merkel condemned Iran--not because Iran is developing a nuclear weapon, but because it's led by an anti-Semite. "A nuclear weapon in the hands of an Iranian president who denies the Holocaust, threatens Israel and negates its right to exist is simply unacceptable," she said. All true: but you would have thought that Merkel would be concerned more about German than Israeli lives. Maybe the comment's unfair, but you won't find Binyamin Netanyahu condemning Iran because it's missiles might land on Berlin.

The effect of the West's Israel-centric foreign policy must have the Iranian leadership bent double in laughter: would Iran be allowed a nuclear weapon if Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad visited Auschwitz? Does the West really believe it's in its interest to shun an intellectual midget like Iran's president, while extending a hand to Kim Jong-Il? Are we so hypnotized by our friendship with Israel that we don't remember that they once covertly shipped the mullahs their missiles? Then too (if we're going to be uncomfortably honest), the attack that Washington really fears doesn't involve Iran attacking Israel, but the other way around.

The Obama administration is desperate to reshape the world's view of the Israel-American relationship--insisting that while Israel might always be our ally, it might not always be our friend. This is a good project: recasting the way the world views Israeli-American cooperation undermines the simple-minded sloganeering that stipulates a "Zionist-American project for the region" (which assumes the American government is actually capable of such a thing) and separates Washington from Israel's more reprehensible policies: like kicking a Palestinian family into a Jerusalem street.

But perceptions are hard to shake. For example: Hillary Clinton's statement praising Netanyahu's settlement policy is now widely viewed as America's way of thanking Israel for "allowing" Washington to talk to Tehran instead of being seen for what it really is: evidence that the secretary of state is out of her depth, that the Obama administration is incapable of maintaining foreign policy discipline--that eight years after 9/11, the United States remains breathtakingly tone deaf to those who view Israel's weapons as as great a threat to peace as Iran's.

When seen in this light, Clinton's gaffe is much worse than a simple slip of the tongue--or a "misstatement" that needs "clarification". It has poisonous, and potentially disastrous, ramifications for the Obama administration's dealings with Tehran. Thus, in light of America's inability to stand up to Israel on so obvious an injustice as confiscating another people's land, don't be surprised if Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei comes to the same conclusion about the Obama administration's courage as Netanyahu: That when America says it really means it, it doesn't really mean it.

Published 5/11/2009 © bitterlemons-international.org
Mark Perry is a military and political analyst living in Washington DC and the author of Partners in Command, Dwight Eisenhower and George Marshall in War and Peace. He is the author of the soon-to-be released treatment of the US war on terror: Talking To Terrorists (Basic Books, 2009).

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Image via Wikipedia, Billboard with portrait of Syrian President Bashar-al-Assad and the text Allah protects Syria on the old city wall of Damascus

As the world digests, in some cases with surprise, the fact that US President Barack Obama is now a Nobel Peace Laureate, the man himself now has to go about proving that he is worthy of the mantle. It would be a shame for his legacy as a so-called peacemaker to be met with the same ridicule often handed out to Shimon Peres, who won the prize in 1994, but who subsequently did little to realize any potential. Some have suggested that it was Obama’s election, not as the first black US president, but as a man committed to ending the eight years of war in Afghanistan and later Iraq, wars triggered by the 9/11 attacks, that won him the award. These are noble ambitions that, if achieved, are sure to gladden the hearts of nations regularly who repatriate the remains of the young men sent to fight in those two countries.
Indeed, reaction to Obama’s bid to get a grip on the Iraq file – and the dawning realization that Iran might be allowed to make a nuclear device after all – took place last week when Saudi Arabian King Abdullah traveled to Damascus to meet his Syrian counterpart, President Bashar al-Assad, in what may prove to be a crucial summit and the first talks on what is expected to be a new dynamic in the Middle East. Both countries have shared interests in Iraq, the Palestinian territories, Yemen and of course Lebanon.
Yes, little old Lebanon, itself a mini-file somewhere in the state department and a country that could be so easily “sacrificed” in return for rolling out a new regional order to stand up to a nuclear Iran. Lebanon no doubt has the outward appearance of being a thriving and democratic entrepot, but the reality will see it once again in the thrall of Syrian influence with little or no social and political reform.
Maybe it is too much to ask for anything else. Maybe the reality of global realpolitik is such that something has to give if the goals of the bigger picture are to be achieved. Maybe Lebanon is just too small and too fractured to be a permanent priority.
One only has to listen to US Principal Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs and former Ambassador to Lebanon Jeffrey Feltman give his opinion on the talks in Damascus on the U.S-sponsored Al-Hurra TV network to see that the US is hardly going out on a limb for us. “We hope that Lebanese leaders consider forming the government as soon as possible in conjunction with the Lebanese Constitution and the June 7 election results.”
President Obama, if you happen, in an idle moment of web browsing and in an “I wonder what happened to Lebanon,” to fall upon these words, spare a thought for the people in the little picture. For nearly five years, pro-democracy and pro-sovereignty campaigners have fought – and in some cases died – to tie up the last loose ends of what your predecessor, President Bush, called the Cedar Revolution. Lebanon was important back then; our telegenic youth made good TV, and we were promised that in any future regional negotiations Lebanon would not be on the table.
We have not been told otherwise, but there is a sneaking suspicion things might have changed. NOW Lebanon wishes you every success President Obama in justifying your prize. Here in Lebanon, we will judge you by a different set of criteria. The devil, as they say, is in the details.

October 12, 2009 from NOW Lebanon

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Paris, 29 September 2009, Reporters Without Borders For Press Freedom

Reporters Without Borders prefers a continuation of the status quo in international Internet governance rather than the creation of an inter-governmental system to replace the existing oversight by ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), a California-based non-profit.

ICANN has until now supervised the Internet under a contract with the US government, but the contract expires tomorrow and so far no announcement has been made as to what will happen next.

Perpetuation of the ICANN status quo is vying with alternative models including one proposed by Viviane Reding, the European Commissioner for information society and media, who wants a fully privatised ICANN to be supervised by an Internet G12 that includes an independent judicial wing.

“No one underestimates the risks of maintaining an Internet governance system controlled by a single entity,” Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Jean-François Julliard said. “But, given the current lack of a better solution, we think it would be better not to meddle with this mechanism. The EU proposal to create a sort of Internet G12 strikes us as dangerous. If it were implemented, nothing would stop countries that censor the Internet domestically, such as China, Saudi Arabia and Burma, from doing everything possible to restrict online access at the world level.”

Julliard added: “It is out of the question that governments that prevent their citizens from having unrestricted Internet access should tomorrow become the big shots in a worldwide Internet system. We prefer the current system which, despite its faults and weaknesses, has never threatened the free flow of online information. We therefore urge President Barack Obama not to rush into any decision that could do considerable harm to everyone’s right to unrestricted access to online information. The utmost prudence is required in this matter.”

Created by the US government in 1998 and progressively privatised by President Bill Clinton, ICANN manages the system of Internet addresses that connects millions of computers around the world. It also oversees the top-level domain name system, the address suffixes such as .com, .org, .fr, .uk and .nk

The status quo is criticised for giving a single government too much power over a worldwide tool in which the financial and political stakes are considerable. It does represent a risk but until now it has favoured the Internet’s development. In fact, ICANN’s supervision has posed almost no problems and has worked well until now. There is no reason to think it could not continue after tomorrow.

Reporters Without Borders has expressed its view on Internet governance in the past (see thereleases http://www.rsf.org/spip.php?page=article&id_article=15564 andhttp://www.rsf.org/spip.php?page=article&id_article=24352), and has always taken the position that making no changes to a fairly good status quo – to a network that is single and indivisible, as worldwide tool should be – is preferable to imposing a dangerous new model.

The continuing neutrality, oneness and indivisibility of this worldwide network depend on its oversight. The Chinese government, for example, could create its own system of domain names and thereby prevent access to its websites from abroad and access to foreign websites from within China.

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By Ghassan Michel Rubeiz
Former secretary for the Middle East of the Geneva-based World Council of Churches

The American University of Beirut (AUB), from which tens of thousands of Arab leaders have graduated over the last 140 years, is a shining example of foreign aid put to good use. What distinguishes the graduates of AUB is not only leadership and a sense of service to the Arab world; graduates of this New York-chartered university are often also strong believers in American culture and ideals.

  College Hall, American University of Beirut

But foreign aid to poor countries is not always put to such good use. Donors can reach the hearts and minds of recipients when aid creatively addresses human needs such as education, employment, gender equality or health. Unfortunately, however, aid has also been used as compensation for damage done in punitive wars, and has often been squandered through corruption on the side of the donor or recipient. In Iraq, for instance, the Center for Global Development's Commitment to Development Index (CDI) of 2008 calculates that only 11 cents of every dollar actually goes to aid because of wide scale corruption–a great disappointment for the Iraqi people.
Regrettably, in Iraq, as in many other countries in the Middle East and South Asia, the bulk of foreign assistance is military-based. Military aid encourages developing countries to depend on weapons to achieve security. Israel, Egypt, Iraq, Pakistan and Turkey receive the lion's share of US foreign assistance, mostly for defence contracts that ultimately benefit US companies and dull the sensitivity of the recipients to peace and reconciliation. Israel and Egypt alone consume over half of the US foreign aid budget.
In absolute volume–over $25 to $30 billion dollars annually–America spends the more than any other country in foreign aid. Despite the impressive quantity, however, American aid is scant in relation to its national wealth. America donates about 0.016 of its gross national product, according to Robert McMahon at the Council on Foreign Relations but, according to international standards, every donor country is expected to spend about 0.7 per cent of its gross domestic product.
Over the past decade, though–especially in light of 9/11–the United States has realised that the status quo must change. As a result, there has been serious progress reforming the process of American foreign aid delivery. New literature on state building, such as Carnegie Endowment for International Peace's foreign and humanitarian aid expert Thomas Carother's Aiding Democracy Abroad, has challenged the dominance of politics in foreign aid. Think tanks and economists that favour trade and foreign investment as strategic methods for wealth building and poverty reduction argue that foreign aid is of no real long-term value to donor or recipient countries. Development experts are also speaking up about the need to improve the level and effectiveness of humanitarian aid while improving other avenues of development.
The new US approach to foreign aid parts with the practice of linking help, first and foremost, to US "strategic" needs, which often translates to rewarding autocratic regimes with humanitarian or military assistance for political compliance.
The Millennium Challenge Corporation, a US government agency that started in 2003 under the George W. Bush Administration, ties massive foreign aid that comes from tax dollars to the competitive performance of the recipient country. Only countries that invest in human development, respect the rule of law and exercise free market principles are eligible to receive large government grants in human investment.
The popularity of the MCC has increased US commitment to development and improved the quality of empowerment initiatives. Reform-oriented countries like Mali, Senegal, Gambia, Morocco, Jordan, Malaysia and Indonesia are among the Muslim-majority countries which have received MCC support or are expected to be awarded large US grants in the future.
While America tries to improve its image in the Muslim world, it is slowly realising that providing aid for programmes that will benefit a country's people, not just the state, can help immensely.
Extricating the United States' development-oriented assistance fully from its strategic political and military objectives will take time, but US investment in agencies like the MCC–and the countries it benefits–demonstrates that it is on the right track.

###
* Dr. Ghassan Rubeiz (grubeiz@comcast.net) is an Arab American commentator on issues of development, peace and justice. He is the former secretary for the Middle East of the Geneva-based World Council of Churches. This article is part of a series analysing Western policies in the Muslim world written for the Common Ground News Service (CGNews).

Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), 29 September 2009, www.commongroundnews.org
Copyright permission is granted for publication.