What a summer!

The summer has been very exiting for International News. Oslo bombings, News of the World, the fall of Qadhafi, Protests in Syria, Greek Bailouts, Irish Presidential Elections, and of course the Palestinian Statehood vote at the UN. Please forgive our long holiday not updating the blog, but as teenagers celebrating summer before university, we tend to slack off. Now that school is back in session (spell check isn’t working), and the Palestinian application for statehood was only introduced last Friday, let us commence there.

The New Republic published a brilliant piece by John B. Judis on why it is in the United States’ favour:

The Obama administration, after failing to head off a Palestinian request to the Security Council for United Nations membership, is prepared to use its veto against it. In an undistinguished address to the General Assembly on Wednesday, President Barack Obama advised the Palestinians to bypass the UN and to confine their campaign for statehood to negotiations with Israel. Obama’s position would have made sense if the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu had made generous offers at the negotiating table that the Palestinians have been spurning, but the Netanyahu government has not; and there is little likelihood, in the absence of a dramatic change of heart, that it will do so. By threatening a veto, Obama appeared to contradict his past support for Palestinian self-determination.

Since 1919, the United States has favored in principle, if not always in practice, the national self-determination of peoples. Bill Clinton and George W. Bush applied it to the Palestinians’ demand for a state of their own; and Obama has done so repeatedly. Given the breakdown in negotiations between the Israeli and Palestinians, and the continued Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands, the U.S. could have reaffirmed its support for Palestinian self-determination by supporting Palestinian membership in the UN—or at the least, an orderly and imminent transition toward membership. That may not have been politically expedient, but it would have been politically just.

Moreover, it would have followed an important historical precedent. Behind Obama’s current stance lurks an unpleasant irony. In 1947, the United States faced a very similar situation in the UN and took exactly the opposite position—to the benefit of Palestine’s Jewish population. After World War I, the British had maneuvered the new League of Nations into granting them a mandate to rule Palestine, but in February 1947, after having failed to get the Jews and the Arabs to agree on a future state, the British threw the question of Palestine into the hands of the newly established United Nations. In May of that year, the General Assembly established a committee to make recommendations on resolving the conflict.

At the UN, the Arabs insisted, as they had in talks with the British, on a unitary Arab majority state, but officials from the Jewish Agency, representing Palestine’s Jews, argued for a partitioned Palestine. They looked to the United States for support, but the Truman administration was initially unwilling to give it. Within the Truman administration, some White House officials backed partition, but influential State Department and Pentagon officials held out the hope of bringing the Jews and Arabs together within a federation. In September of 1947, Truman decided to back the Zionist demand for a state in part of Palestine, and American representatives were able to win support within the committee and the General Assembly for a plan that within three years would have created two states and an internationalized Jerusalem. That didn’t establish at once a Jewish majority state, but was a very important step toward doing so.

The U.S. did, I believe, the right thing. Perhaps in 1919, there was not as strong a moral case for a Jewish-controlled state in a land inhabited primarily—about 90 percent—by Arab Muslims and Christians. (A case could be made for a homeland for the persecuted from Russia’s Pale of Settlement, but not necessarily for a state, and certainly not, as Zionists of the time advocated, a state that encompassed what would be Palestine and Jordan.) But the Nazi-led genocide in Central Europe that began in the 1930s and the restrictions that Western Europe, the United States, and the British Commonwealth nations placed on Jewish immigration made Palestine the only recourse for Europe’s Jews. By the end of World War II, there was a geographical and economic basis for a divided Palestine. Jews made up about 30 percent of the population and were concentrated in Jerusalem and on the coast. The Jews, with the Arabs opposed to negotiations and to Jewish immigration into Palestine, urged the UN to agree to partition, and the United States, after some hesitation, supported them.

Now the situation is reversed. After the 1967 war, Israel annexed Jerusalem, took control over the West Bank and Gaza, and began establishing settlements there in violation of the Geneva rules of war and in defiance of UN resolutions. Whatever their original purpose—and some of the earliest settlements had a rationale coming out of 1967 war—the settlements have evolved into an attempt by the Israelis to colonize land that is not theirs, to create incontrovertible facts on the ground that no treaty can contradict. There are now about 500,000 Israeli settlers in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

In 1993, the PLO, which the UN acknowledges as the sole representative of the Palestinian people, recognized the existence of Israel, and since then negotiations have taken place fitfully, with both sides stalling, equivocating, and sending mixed signals. Certainly, in retrospect, Yasser Arafat should have been more forthcoming during the Camp David talks in 2000, but the number of Israeli settlers in the West Bank and Gaza had increased by 70 percent from 1993 to 2000, sowing considerable distrust among Palestinians. Subsequently the Arabs, with Hamas and other radical Islamist groups playing an important role, conducted a disastrous Second Intifada, to which the Israeli government responded by destroying much of the Palestinian governmental infrastructure created during the 1990s.

Still, the negotiations that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas conducted from 2006 to 2008 managed to build upon the foundations that were established at Camp David and Taba in the last month of the Clinton administration, producing a basic set of proposals for a negotiated settlement. The deal would be based on the 1967 borders, the dismantling of the outposts, land swaps for Israeli settlements in the West Bank, Palestinian control of East Jerusalem, and the virtual abandonment of the Palestinian right to return.

But the Netanyahu government, which took office in March 2009, refused from the beginning to build on these negotiations. Netanyahu took three months even to utter the phrase “Palestinian state,” and leaders of his Likud party, and members of his coalition, remain opposed to a Palestinian state. He insisted that negotiations start from scratch, refusing to agree even to the 1967 boundaries as a starting point. The Obama administration asked him to accept a freeze on settlement construction as a good faith gesture to Abbas and the Palestinians. He initially refused, and then acceded to a loophole-ridden temporary ten month freeze that his government proceeded to violate. And after the moratorium expired, Netanyahu has gone on a construction binge in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, while concocting new conditions for a Palestinian state, including an Israeli military presence in the Jordan Valley.

Abbas, backed by the United States, has asked the Israelis to maintain the freeze on settlements. That’s a perfectly reasonable demand and condition for negotiations. Increasing settlement construction during negotiations for a two-state solution is the equivalent of pouring gasoline on a fire that you have promised to put out. When Netanyahu would not agree to stop construction, and when he refused to recognize the pre-1967 borders as a basis for negotiation, Abbas and the PLO gave up hope of a negotiated settlement, and sought the help of the United Nations in achieving recognition for their attempts to gain a state of their own. Whether or not this move turns out to have been tactically wise, the Palestinians were within their rights to take it.

The United Nations was founded to make good on the ideal of national self-determination. It’s in Article One of the UN Charter. It has done so at its very beginning with Indonesia and Jewish Palestine, as well as more recently in Southern Sudan. Why not Arab Palestine? And why should the United States block such an effort? I have heard some arguments for why the United States should not favor UN membership for Palestine, but they sound very much like arguments for why the United States should not favor a Palestinian state at all. Moreover, they are the sorts of arguments that easily could have been used in 1947 against UN support for a Jewish majority state.

The United States, it is said, should not assist Palestinians in gaining membership at the UN because some Palestinians still don’t recognize the right of Israel to exist. But guess what? In 1947, there were Zionists identified with the Revisionist movement (parts of which later came together to create Likud) who denied the right of Palestinians to a state. They wanted all of Palestine and even Jordan for a Jewish state; and some of them were willing to use terror and assassination to achieve their ends. And there are still many Israelis who deny the right of Palestinians to a state. That didn’t preclude our helping Palestine’s Jews achieve statehood through the UN, and it shouldn’t impede our helping the Palestinians.

By seeking to win statehood through UN recognition and assistance, the Palestinian leadership is visibly underscoring its commitment to a two-state solution; by doing that, and by rejecting a strategy based on terror and violence for one based on negotiation and multilateral assistance from the United Nations (which, again, was created to resolve exactly the kind of conflict that is occurring between the Israelis and the Palestinians), it is potentially marginalizing Hamas. By backing the Palestinians at the UN, the United States would be making good on its own commitment to a two-state solution achieved peacefully rather than through terror and violence.

Of course, one has to consider whether it would have been in America’s national interest to further the formation of a Palestinian state through the UN. I have heard arguments that if the Palestinians had gained UN recognition, that would have made the Netanyahu administration very angry and less amenable to negotiations. But if you believe that the Netanyahu government is already resistant to any meaningful negotiations with the Palestinians, then support for a Palestinian state at the UN would more likely have helped than hindered negotiations: After all, it was pressure from the United States and Europe after the first Gulf War in 1991 that led to the Madrid talks, which led eventually to the negotiations in Oslo between the Israelis and Palestinians.

Moreover, America’s standing in the world could only have been improved by being on the side of a Palestinian state. It would have removed an important talking point for Islamic radicals; it would have allied the United States with the reform forces of the Arab Spring, who, as has become clear in Egypt, are very critical of the continued Israeli occupation. American support could also have helped forestall the sort of explosive reaction among Arab publics that might follow rejection of the Palestinian bid in the Security Council. And backing Palestinian statehood would have put the United States in a position to work constructively with European and Middle Eastern countries, many of whom are hoping to see an end to the century-long standoff in Palestine and now Israel. Instead, Obama’s stand has made the United States an outlier in the region. We are identified not so much with Israel (which we have rightly defended against attack from other states), but with Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and with the expansionist ambitions of the Israeli rightwing.

I recognize that it was very unlikely that the Obama administration would back the Palestinians at the UN. Well before this month, the Obama administration had begun to abandon its forthright advocacy of a Palestinian state. Its demand that the Israelis “stop” settlement activity had given way to a demand that the Netanyahu government “restrain” its expansion into the West Bank. And last February, Obama’s administration vetoed a Security Council resolution condemning the Israelis for continuing to expand settlements in occupied territory. Why has it continued to back away? Well, it might have been a genuine change of conviction, but it might have also been, as Thomas Friedman has suggested, re-election pressures on a politically embattled presidency.

As far as the Palestinians’ UN bid was concerned, there are very powerful lobbies contending for the title “pro-Israel” that have opposed the Palestinians’ efforts at the UN. They include not only AIPAC, but also J-Street, which began as a bold alternative to AIPAC, but has ended up mimicking its subservience to Israeli aims. There is also strong opposition from rightwing Christian groups who support a greater Israel. The Republican Study Committee is circulating a proposal to recognize Israeli annexation of the West Bank in response to the U.N. granting membership to a Palestinian state. Republican presidential candidates (who probably could have cared less twenty years ago) are denouncing Obama for “throwing Israel under the bus” (Romney) and “appeasement” (Perry). That bears out how crazy American politics have become—and not just on debts and the deficit.

Still, if the Obama administration had wanted to do what is right, and not what would spare it the slings and arrows of its domestic critics, it should not have rebuffed the Palestinians for appealing to the UN. The U.S. did the right thing in 1947. Why not have done it in 2011?

Feel free to disagree with his and my opinion, but is it not true? And before bringing up cheering in the streets on hearing about 9/11 by Palestinians – it was staged (forgive, the link is in German).

Stay tuned for an Irish look at News of the World

Conflict in Pakistan – The war is Spreading

The past few weeks have not been good for U.S. – Pakistan relations. Already strained because of drone strikes in Northern Pakistan meant to destroy Taliban strongholds and by U.S.’s increasing closeness to Pakistan’s longtime rival, India, U.S.-Pakistan relations have deteriorated since a CIA contractor was held for questioning by the Pakistani authorities regarding the death of two Pakistani citizens. Though he was released from prison after a “blood money” deal was made with the families of the murdered civilians, complications in relations between the two nations remain. The United States has long seen Pakistan as an ally in relations regarding the Middle East but has also grown increasingly dependent on trade and communication with India, whose economy has grown substantially in the past few years.

Furthermore, the Pakistani government itself has grown increasingly radical since the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and the resignation of President Pervez Musharraf a few months after. In the conflict surrounding those months of protest against the Pakistani government, Asif Ali Zardari, Bhutto’s widower took power but lacked the authority of both his wife and his predecessor to truly bring stability to Pakistan. Indeed, in the past few years, Pakistan has become a hotbed for terrorist activity as the central government in Islamabad has lost control of the northern border with Afghanistan and the Taliban and other radical tribal groups have emerged as the dominant power in many regions in Pakistan.

Unfortunately, this radicalism is not confined to the northern border with Afghanistan. In the past few months, reform-minded members of the Pakistani parliament have been assassinated as government officials find it safer to side with the more radical elements of society than promote moderate reform. Indeed, in the past two weeks alone, the sole Christian member of Parliament in Pakistan was killed for his views on religious tolerance and reform within the country. What’s worse – Pakistan has a large nuclear arsenal, larger than its neighbor, India. And more importantly, the government seems to have little control of the nuclear materials in this arsenal.

In the coming months, the greatest threat to security from the Middle East will come, not from the nations already opposed to the United States but from one of the United States’ strongest allies – Pakistan.

Authoritarianism at its best

The conflict in the Middle East makes everyone nervous. The United States has failed to take a distinctive stance on what’s going on while other nations don’t seem to want to support either side. But one nation has gone further than others. In a recent report by the Washington Post, it is reveled that China, in an attempt to control its population and ensure that similar unrest doesn’t explode on its territory, has extended government control of the media. Fearful of its authority, the Chinese government has ensured that certain terms and ideas cannot be searched for on the internet. The Chinese government has taken several steps to ensure that websites that might, in some way, be inflammatory or incite rebellion have now been blocked.

Unfortunately for China, this is how all the rebellions in the Middle East began – with the banning of social media and internet communications. Only time will tell if the rebellion will spread to China and how the Chinese government will use this, whether as defense of its autocratic ways or to make China more open to outside influences.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/25/AR2011022502151.html

Historic Month for Freedom

February of 2011 truly has been a historic month for freedom. From the revolution that removed a dictator from power in Egypt to the riots that swept the Middle East and Northern Africa, across the globe, the youth are rising to fight for peace, democracy, and equal justice under law. And the United States is no different.

Equal justice under law. It’s an interesting idea. It is the phrase that adorns the Supreme Court Building in Washington D.C. and is one which most regard as the standard for judging rule of law in any nation. Today, in the United States, rule of law – especially in the idea of equal justice for all and more importantly, the separation of Church and State – has been upheld.

Certainly it is no Jasmine Revolution. The Justice Department’s declaration that it will not defend bans of same-sex marriage in federal courts does not mark the fall of a dictator or the rise of students against an autocratic regime. Most likely, in nations other than the United States, it’ll be lost amidst the chaos that has swept Libya and Bahrain in recent days. Most likely, not much will change.

But this decision is symbolic for equal rights across the country. In a nation where gay marriage has long been one of the most contested issues in a political forum, one so polarized that it has almost become taboo, the Obama Administration has taken a bold step forward in the right direction towards upholding the immortal words above the Supreme Court Building. The Obama administration and the Justice Department have reversed the tradition of marriage allowed by the state to solely be a union between a man and a woman, understanding the importance of upholding an individual’s right to marry and live a life he or she sees fit. After all, love is love and it is the duty of the United States government to protect the rights of the individual. It is the duty of the United States government to live up to its standard not only of equal rights for everyone but for true equal justice under law.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/23/AR2011022303428.html?hpid=topnews

Libya Rises

What started in Egypt has spread once again, this time to its neighbor to the west, Libya. Long ruled by the oppressive regime under Moammar Gaddafi, Libyan protesters have taken to the streets. But, as the Washington Post reports, not only have these peaceful protests turned into full out riots, Gaddafi has ordered the Libyan army to fire on its own people. While several officials, including two officers in the Air Force have refused to fire on their own people and fled the country seeking asylum in neighboring states, the situation remains dire.

Gaddafi’s government has long been condemned for its human rights violations and has been in power since a coup d’etat launched against King Idris in 1969. Since then, Gaddafi has faced criticism for his harsh and oppressive rule. Indeed, under Gaddafi, Libya became a haven for terrorists and extremists, all of whom found it easy to procure the weapons and support they needed. Today, protesters, inspired by the events in Egypt, hope to launch a similar popular uprising in Libya against the government to build the foundation of a truly democratic system. However, unlike Egypt, the Libyan government maintains firm control over its people.

And yet we as a nation seem to be doing little to stop the autocracies taking place. The United States has yet to make any motion either in support of or condemning Gaddafi’s refusal to step down and the situation in the nation continues to get worse. Already, violence in Libya has reached a new high and has become the norm rather than the exception, something that failed to happen in both Egypt and Tunisia. Yet the international community still has done nothing. The United States has refused to follow through on one of its fundamental goals in international politics – promoting democracy. Instead, we have evacuated our embassy staff but done nothing to protect the people of Libya, begging the question – what is the point of being the world’s sole superpower if we allow innocent people to be killed on a daily basis while doing nothing?

Up in Flames – Protests in the Middle East

from al-Jazeera

2011 has been the year of revolution. It started in Tunisia in the middle of January, spread to Egypt and then across the Middle East. Last week, Algeria in Northern Africa was up in arms against an oppressive regime and now, it’s the nations in the Middle East that the United States has long relied on for oil and support. Today, it’s Bahrain, long been hailed as one of the more open and certainly more stable of the Arab states. In the past few days, Bahrain has been up in arms, reflecting the tensions in the region. The capital is under military lockdown. In nearby Yemen, violence has broken out between protestors and the government. In Iran, protests have led to the assembly calling for the death of all opposition leaders, a sure path to despotism.

So….what can the U.S. do? Certainly this drastic decline in stability is going to affect us. With the Suez Canal closed and the Middle East up in arms, the United States finds itself in a precarious position. We have long supported autocratic regimes which bring stability, even if they don’t promote true democracy. And we have long ensured that our interests are best served in the region, even at the expense of the freedoms of others. From our support of the Shah of Iran to our promotion of extremism in Afghanistan if only to combat the Soviets, the United States has a long history of supporting oppressive governments to ensure that our own economic stability.

In the Middle East, what’s happening is a popular uprising. It is a movement of the people to overthrow a government that no longer holds their allegiance and to establish a truly democratic system, not unlike what Marx predicted would happen with the communist revolt in the late 1800s. Unfortunately, what the United States is most wary of is this revolution itself. We fear the rise of dictatorships that are equally autocratic but that support the organizations that have moved against us. In Lebanon, we fear that the rise of Hezbollah will threaten our allies. In Egypt, we fear the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood, which we widely regard as an extremist group.

So what can we do? If we are to uphold the ideals on which this country was founded, we would support the popular uprisings as the people of the world worked towards a better future. If we uphold our economic interests, we would support stability and a government willing to engage in trade to get us access to the resources we so desperately desire.

For now, the United States can only wait and watch. For now, all we can do is urge governments to meet the demands of their citizens, become more liberal and ensure that democracy can truly take root in the Middle East.

On a related note, an interesting commentary by Al Jazeera on the problem in Bahrain.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/02/20112184122210251.html#

Calls for Death to Opposition in Iran

Since Hosni Mubarak resigned from the Egyptian presidency on Friday, protests have erupted in Algeria, Yemen, Jordan, and Iran. In Tehran, thousands of supporters of the opposition went to the streets Monday to show solidarity with the revolutionaries. Within hours, police shot tear gas and two people were killed. Conservative MP’s later on Tuesday went on demanding the trial and execution of the opposition leaders, Mir Hossein Mousair and Mehdi Karroubi for the charges of “Corrupt on Earth,” which is similar to a charge of treason, but carries the death penalty.

From the United States, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton came out and declared American support for the protestors, saying they deserve “the same rights that they saw being played out in Egypt.” The US has not bad diplomatic ties with Iran since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.