By Rami G. Khouri

August 29, 2009

The Daily Star

BEIRUT — If you wait long enough, sensible things always happen in America, often among the armed forces’ senior command. One example was Commander of US Central Command General David Petraeus’ recent affirmation that resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict fairly is “very central” to the mission of American troops and diplomacy in the Middle East. This would create a much more favorable regional environment for the United States and its allies, dampen the appeal of militants and terrorist groups, and remove threats to American troops.

Coming from Gen. Petraeus, this sensible and rather obvious conclusion appears now to be more widely shared among top Obama administration officials — who resist the desire of Israel and its Washington lobbyist-proxies to deal with Iran, and instead focus on promoting Arab-Israeli peace.

A second, more dramatic, example of sensible analysis and courageous honesty is this week’s article in Joint Force Quarterly by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen. He sharply criticized US government efforts at “strategic communication” with the Muslim world, noting that public relations alone will never generate the credibility the United States seeks, if its foreign policy on the ground is perceived as arrogant, uncaring or insulting.

“To put it simply, we need to worry a lot less about how to communicate our actions and much more about what our actions communicate,” Mullen wrote. “Each time we fail to live up to our values or don’t follow up on a promise, we look more and more like the arrogant Americans the enemy claims we are.”

This is sensible and accurate analysis that Americans should listen to carefully, especially given its source. Since September 11, 2001, the United States as a whole — government, media, civil society, and plumbers everywhere — have been blinded by the rage they experienced due to the 9/11 terror attacks. An exaggerated focus on “Islam” and “Muslim extremists” was allowed to define intellectual analysis and foreign policy alike, stressing Islamic religion and culture over the policies practiced by all concerned, including Arabs and Islamic states as well as the United States, Europeans and Israel.

This led to two American wars that have not achieved their aims:

military wars that have killed tens of thousands in Iraq and Afghanistan without reducing terrorism threats, and “public diplomacy” campaigns that have mainly succeeded in revealing Americans’ most erratic foreign policy eccentricities, intellectual weaknesses, and ideological vulnerabilities.

The most recent example of that peculiarly American vortex — where ignorance converges with pedantic arrogance and the crass distortions of special interest lobby groups — was the recent creation of a bizarre new post in the US Department of State, the “office of the special representative to Muslim communities.” The first person to fill this position, Ms. Farah Pandith, recently addressed a special Policy Forum at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), to discuss her new role and the US’ approach to “Muslim engagement.”

WINEP is well respected in Washington circles as a mainstay of pro-Israeli thinking and a pillar of what may people refer to as “the pro-Israel lobby.” So for the US government to launch a new office that seeks to engage Muslims by a speech at a leading pro-Israeli think and lobby tank is about as sensible as launching a New York Yankees Fan Club in Fenway Park in Boston, selling Manchester United scarves in Liverpool, or promoting Israel Bonds at a Palestinian Cultural Center in Chicago. Where, oh, where does the US State Department find the wellspring of political imbecility to do this sort of thing?

Everything that Pandith said is exactly what Adm. Mullen seemed to criticize in his article. She listed an impressive list of activities to engage Muslim communities worldwide on the basis of “mutual interest and mutual respect” — break down stereotypes, work with youth at the grassroots level, and build new partnerships via education, technology, business, sports and culture.

All this sounds fine and dandy, but in reality it is splendid nonsense, reflecting a continuing, devastating American confusion about the linkages between religion, nationalism, and foreign policy. Muslims do not need engagement or happy talk from hapless American innocents using pro-Israeli platforms. Muslims — if we are going to conduct this discussion in religious terms — need simply to be treated in a manner that allows them to exercise the same personal and national rights as Jews and Christians. That’s it. Simple.

None of Pandith’s rhetoric has a chance in hell of going anywhere, while the majority of Muslims, Arabs and others in our region broadly perceive American foreign policy as being tilted towards Israeli priorities or the incumbency of Arab autocrats, as has been the case for about four decades now. Tough American patriots like Gen. Petraeus and Adm. Mullen seem to grasp this, probably because they have escaped the diversionary lunacy of American “public diplomacy” and the choke-hold of single-interest lobby groups in Washington.

Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon.

By Walter Rodgers

August 25, 2009

Christian Science Monitor

The idea that the Obama administration can advance the Middle East peace process by having Israel freeze its construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank stretches credulity.

Does any serious observer of the region believe that Israel’s appetite for land – owned and occupied for generations by Palestinians – is going to abate?

The Israeli land grab has continued for four decades, in defiance of international law and most US presidents. US Middle East envoy George Mitchell has been trying to secure a halt, but his efforts follow a well-worn path that typically ends in charade.

Just weeks ago, the Israeli government evicted two extended Palestinian families from their homes in East Jerusalem, clearing the way for more houses for Jews in traditionally Palestinian neighborhoods.

Israeli settlements have become a kind of concrete kudzu to Palestinians. The Fatah party recently renewed its commitment to resisting them, holding that “the Palestinians have the right to resist the Israeli occupation by all possible means.”

But for the Jewish state, the settlements are eminently sensible and their growth is almost certain to continue, either openly or stealthily. As Interior Minister Eli Yishai put it Aug. 10, expanding settlements near Jerusalem is vital for “security, national interests, and is just and necessary.”

Every new Jewish apartment complex enlarges and deepens the Jewish footprint on occupied land. The California-style townhouses atop the hills of ancient Samaria and Judea are seen as security buffers for an Israeli island in a hostile Islamic sea. Israel’s feeling of vulnerability is intensified by the growing Arab population already within its borders.

The settlements have become affordable suburbs for Israelis otherwise priced out of the metropolitan markets. More than 300,000 Jewish settlers now call the West Bank home.

Further, religious and ultrareligious Jewish settlers insist they have divinely bestowed title to the land. Few passages in the Bible are more frightening to Arabs than Deuteronomy 11:24:

“Every place whereon the soles of your feet shall tread shall be yours: from the wilderness and Lebanon, from the river, the river Euphrates, even unto the uttermost sea shall your coast be.”

Palestinian Arabs are too weak to legally or militarily challenge the Jewish state’s internal expansion. An Israeli court recently ruled that Israel can now confiscate land belonging to Palestinians who once resided in an area but are now refugees pending final settlement.

Having lived in Jerusalem for five years during the salad days of the peace process in the 1990s, I watched settlement builders nibble away at what were once Palestinian homes, villages, and pastures.

From Jerusalem southward, the construction of the Har Homa settlement crabs outward to the doorsteps of Palestinian Bethlehem. From the air, these settlements appear a terrestrial octopus, extending out to ultimately link up with the more militant Jewish settlements farther south in Hebron, another city with a large Palestinian majority.

Settlement building resembles military flanking and encirclement maneuvers, isolating Palestinian population centers. In Jerusalem, there are at least half a dozen Arab neighborhoods, including the Mount of Olives, threatened by Israel’s voracious hunger for land. Quoted in the newspaper Haaretz, Sarah Kreimer of Ir Amim, a group specializing in Israeli-Palestinian relations, says, “In each of these places, plans are being advanced for construction whose ultimate purpose is to disconnect the Old City from Palestinian Jerusalem.”

Israelis have brilliantly created a sense of inevitability to all this. Yet, the moral difficulties of moving indigenous peoples off the land by subterfuge or force are obvious. When in the past I’ve raised the ethical implications of these land appropriations, Israelis have dismissed me, saying, “Hey, you Americans did it to the Indians.”

American presidents have often quietly nudged Israel to freeze the settlements, but their actual leverage has been minimal. Israelis have elected both doves and hawks as prime minister, but virtually all Israeli governments supported settlement expansion in varying degrees.

Jewish political clout in America ought not be underestimated. A former chairman of the American Israel Political Action Committee once boasted to me, “We got [Sen.] Chuck Percy [an Illinois Republican who was narrowly defeated in 1984] when he crossed us on the Palestinians.” President Obama will face a similar threat at election time if he defies Israel’s expansionist instincts.

US presidents have so frequently pledged unshakable support for Israel that it’s created the illusion that US and Israeli interests are identical. It might be useful for Mr. Obama and his Middle East team to publicly point to serious differences with Israel when they arise. If the US can have public disagreements with its allies, including Britain, why should Israel be exempted from what could be a healthy debate?

Jewish settlement construction may temporarily downshift into neutral. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton may hail “a building freeze.” But if the past is prologue, the first time Obama is distracted by another domestic or international crisis, and Washington isn’t looking, the Israeli bulldozers will be back at work.