Avuncular American

It’s My Party – Israel’s Nakba Denial

It's my party, and I'll cry if I want to
Cry if I want to, cry if I want to
You would cry too if it happened to you

Lesley Gore, "It's My Party," 1963

In Europe, some countries outlaw Holocaust Denial, that despicable practice of far right parties (France’s Front National leader Jean-Marie Le Pen has insisted on calling the Holocaust “a detail of history” and has made other outrageous outbursts.  He's had to pay stiff fines).  I know of no law against Nakba Denial, though Israel would like to outlaw talking about the Nakba at the United Nations:

Israel's UN mission is seeking to outlaw use of the term Nakba, after UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon telephoned Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday night and expressed empathy with the Palestinian people in honor of Nakba Day.  Deputy head of Israel's UN mission, Daniel Carmon, complained that the word Nakba is meant to undermine the legitimacy of Israel's founding and, therefore, use of the term should be should be forbidden.

“Nakba,” or catastrophe, is the term used by Palestinians and other Arabs to describe the loss of their homes and the refugee exodus that accompanied the birth of the state of Israel.  Palestinians, whether they are among the hundreds of thousands who stayed behind in what became post-1948 Israel, or the million-plus who are now living under one sort or another of Israeli control in the Occupied Territories since 1967, or the hundreds of thousands living as refugees (most in camps) outside of historic Palestine – most of these Muslim and Christian Palestinians, whatever their passport (if they even have one) says, must have felt like crying at Israel’s party.

To get some idea of what was lost, just read or listen to the May 15 interview on Democracy Now! with Palestinian doctor and writer Ghada Karmi.  Karmi, who was eight years old when her family “went away for a couple of weeks” from violence in her West Jerusalem neighborhood in 1948, has a unique view of this period, and has written about it in “Married to Another Man: Israel’s Dilemma in Palestine.”  She explains the unusual title:

The reason it’s called that is that I’ve taken that out of an anecdote... At the end of the nineteenth century, when the Zionists in Europe ... held a very big congress, a conference in Basel in Switzerland, at which they decided ... to create a Jewish state... And they decided that that state was to be in Palestine.

Now, they didn’t know what Palestine was like ... so they sent a couple of rabbis to this place called Palestine, and they said, “Let us know if this is a suitable place.” The rabbis went, they had a look, and they sent back this message to Vienna: they said, “The bride is beautiful, but she is married to another man.” Now, of course, it’s clear what they were saying is, yes, the land is very suitable, it’s wonderful, but it’s full of other people, it’s already taken. And, of course, it was taken by my ancestors. I mean, that’s who it was. That’s who the ‘other man’ was.”

It’s worth letting that anecdote sink in a while.  Those who have read their history books know about the 1917 Balfour Declaration expressing the opinion of His Majesty’s Government that there should be a homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine, which became operative when Great Britain was given a mandate to govern the former Ottoman province at the end of the First World War.  As James Parkes, in his classic “Whose Land? A History of the Peoples of Palestine” wrote, the Balfour Declaration “recognized that there existed already a historic Jewish right, not to but in the country.”  No matter; the Declaration led eventually to the United Nations Partition Plan, and the rest is – history.

Ghada Karmi concludes with devastating logic: “Without Britain, there would be no Israel.”  She takes issue with the notion of Jews In, Arabs Out:

And if you think about it, that has been the basis of the conflict ever since, that the Zionists wanted a territory free of non-Jews in a territory full of non-Jews, and therefore, they had to get rid of the non-Jews in order to make it a territory for Jews. Now, those non-Jews, i.e. the Palestinians, of course didn’t want to be dispossessed, they resisted being dispossessed, and hence, you have a conflict.

... Married to Another Man... had the Zionists said, “This is indeed married to another man. We can’t go here, because the land is already “married.” We can’t be bigamists. We’re going to move on. We’re going to look for somewhere else”—they didn’t. They were determined to do it, and they did it at the most enormous cost to us as Palestinians, because we were dispossessed and displaced in order to make room for the Jewish state, and of course it had a tremendous effect on the whole Arab region.

So, Israel, have your birthday party.  But don’t begrudge the Palestinians their right to commemorate their nation’s tragedy.  In Lesley Gore’s big hit “It's My Party,” she’s crying about Judy taking away her Johnnie.  She lost a boyfriend.  Palestinians lost a country.

You would cry too if it happened to you

Lemon Trees On the Green Line

Once, when we lived in Oman on the Arabian Peninsula, we visited a village perched in the rocky hills of the interior.  We were there to see a falaj, one of the ancient irrigation canals cut into the stony hillsides, carrying precious water to small gardens and orchards.  An Omani farmer took a liking to our small children, and offered us lemons plucked from one of his dozen or so trees.  In hot, arid climates, these bright beautiful yellow fruit, standing out against the dark green leaves, are things of beauty.

And so it is in the West Bank – or more precisely, on the “Green Line” that on paper separates Israel from the Occupied Territories – where Eran Riklis’ Lemon Tree is filmed.  Never has a glass of fresh lemonade looked so inviting.  That’s what visitors to the home of lead character Salma are offered, from her father’s orchard that she has inherited.  From trees that she must protect when politics intrude into her simple life.

Riklis has visited this human terrain before, notably in his 2004 masterpiece, The Syrian Bride.  Watching Lemon Tree, you have to remind yourself that this is an Israeli film, or rather, a film made by an Israeli director.  But, as Riklis said in a Tikkun interview apropos of The Syrian Bride, when asked if it was a “political film”

First and foremost, this is a humane film. It deals with people who are caught inside politics, inside a political world. It’s a pro-people film. On the other hand, of course it contains political elements. In the Middle East in particular, almost everything that you do and refer to is political. Everything has consequences.

The same could be said of Lemon Tree, though it is “political” to a much greater degree.  When you have the “Separation Barrier,” the Supreme Court in Jerusalem, and an Israeli cabinet minister as backdrops or characters in a film, it is political.  Everything is political in Israeli-Palestinian relations.

Just as Riklis is sensitive to the nuances of the complex relationship between occupier and occupied, he is a particularly talented observer of the relationships between men and women, in both Israeli and Arab cultures.  Nazareth-born Hiam Abbass, who has already appeared in Riklis’ films, plays Salma with innate grace and intelligence.  Not only does she have to confront Israeli neighbors bent on separating her from her lemon trees, but also has to navigate a male-dominated Palestinian society.  Palestinian officialdom is shown as more troubled over matters of propriety than demonstrating any concern for this defiant widow’s attempts to protect her property.

On the Israeli side of the fence (literally), there is tension in the Minister’s household, where wife Mira (played by revelation Rona Lipaz-Michael) begins to see for herself the human costs of occupation.  Eventually they must face the question: is it better to look out onto a luscious orchard (owned, admittedly by Palestinians of unknown security credentials) or to “enjoy” the security offered by watchtowers and the Separation Barrier?

Today’s “sneak preview” of Lemon Tree was sponsored by the women of Brussels film club “Cinefemme” (whose website has an insightful interview with Riklis), and whose members have been invited by the film’s distributor to provide commentary for a DVD “bonus” segment.  They will have much to discuss.

When Is It Appeasement?

Is it appeasement (dictionary definition: “1. to bring to a state of calm; pacify: to appease an angry king”) when President George W. Bush flies from Israel to Riyadh to beg King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia (source of 79 % of 9/11 kamikazes) to lower the price of his crude oil?

2. “To satisfy; relieve: The fruit appeased his hunger.”  Does sniping at Senator Barack Obama (and then denying that he targeted the Democratic front runner) from the Israeli Knesset satisfy the Republican appetite for Swift-Boating?  Nope, it just whets it – this is an opening salvo in the next phase of a stomach-churning American election campaign.

3. “To yield to the demands of in a conciliatory effort, sometimes at the expense of one’s principles.”  It’s this last definition (courtesy of Random House Webster’s College Dictionary) that Bush presumably had in mind when he warned against “the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”

But the root of appeasement is peace, and Neville Chamberlain’s efforts to stave off World War II only gave the word a negative connotation because he failed.  Luckily, this signal failure didn’t give peacemaking a bad name forever, or else we wouldn’t have the Middle East Peace Process as an eternal source of Presidential ambition.

The notion that an American president – a President Obama, for example – would be practicing appeasement if he had an open dialogue with leaders like Iran’s Ahmadinajad and the (elected, as Senator McCain reminds us below) Hamas government in Gaza is very selective, and almost entirely a function of American politics.  President Bush’s favored Palestinian interlocutor, PA President Abbas, hails from the Palestine Liberation Organization, which was for years anathema as a terrorist organization.

Luckily, some elements in the US government have long thought it politic to open up discreet channels of communication.  I once worked for a Republican political appointee ambassador who, in a previous life as a Senate staffer, was a regular interlocutor with Yasir Arafat’s Fatah and the PLO when us diplomats couldn’t even be in the same room as a Palestinian official.  Those back channel contacts eventually led to Oslo and Camp David, and to the modicum of Palestinian self-rule that is allowed to exist.

Bush has been castigated for criticizing (albeit not by name, but he’s kidding no one) the Democratic presumptive candidate while traveling abroad.  From the podium of Israel’s parliament, no less.  But Israel, more than most countries, can claim a “special interest” in the outcome of the US presidential elections.  Often dubbed “the 51st state,” many Israelis hold dual Israeli-US citizenship, and the settlements in the West Bank are especially popular with transplanted American Jewish emigrants.  Bush probably felt sufficiently at home to inject a bit of partisan politics into his address.

But after blasting Obama for supposed “appeasement,” Bush then hops on a plane for Saudi Arabia, where appeasement is happenin’ big time.  You don’t have to be a Michael Moore to note that US consumers help appease Saudi Arabia every day by paying sky-high prices for its oil.  And that of all people, George W. Bush, who owed his pre-presidential oil wealth to his family’s Gulf sheikhdom connections, should now lecture Obama about kowtowing (Webster’s: “1.  To act in an obsequious manner; show servile deference”) to foreign leaders.

And what of Senator John McCain, that “clean” campaigner who touched off the latest firestorm by equating Senator Obama’s openness to discussions with pariah states and organizations with weakness against terrorism?  Today’s Washington Post carries a stinging op-ed by former Clinton Administration official James P. Rubin, who assails McCain’s “guilt by association” attack as hypocrisy of the worst sort.  He recalls a Sky News TV interview with McCain two years ago, after Hamas won freely-contested Palestinian elections, when he asked The Maverick "Do you think that American diplomats should be operating the way they have in the past, working with the Palestinian government if Hamas is now in charge?"  McCain then:

They're the government; sooner or later we are going to have to deal with them, one way or another, and I understand why this administration and previous administrations had such antipathy towards Hamas because of their dedication to violence and the things that they not only espouse but practice, so . . . but it's a new reality in the Middle East. I think the lesson is people want security and a decent life and decent future, that they want democracy.  Fatah was not giving them that.

Apparently it wasn’t appeasement then, when the Straight Talk Express was rolling.  Huffington Post has a nice video of the Rubin-McCain interview.  Now, if Michael Moore just had a video of Bush and Abdullah...

(Photo source: "House of Bush, House of Saud," by Craig Unger)

Pretend Palestinians at Israel’s Party

First I would like to – seriously – extend my best wishes to the Israel of organizations like Peace Now and B’Tselem, and of Israelis like Meron Benvenisti, Uri Avnery, and Eran Riklis.  Peace Now (photo credit) requires no explanation of its work, but here’s a blurb for the others who represent an Israel that can be a good neighbor:

• B’Tselem, The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories
• Meron Benvenisti, whose West Bank Data Project documented the metastasizing settlements over decades
• Uri Avnery, formerly of the Irgun, now a peace activist
• Eran Riklis, director of “The Syrian Bride,” a film about the human cost of love across borders.

To these and other Israelis of similar sensibilities, happy 60th anniversary, and may your vision of Israel prevail.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Now let’s play Pretend Palestinian ©, where you get to imagine what it’s like when your neighbor/occupier has a 60th birthday party all this month – but you’re not invited!

To make the “game” work, you have to put yourself in the role of resident of a semi-imaginary Washington DC surrounded by, and in some senses occupied by, a hostile Virginia and a domineering Maryland.  Where Washington’s Northwest quadrant – NW – is dotted with settlements of Virginians and Marylanders, a kind of “Area C” – the Oslo Accords term referring to that 60% of West Bank territory that is outside of Palestine Authority control.  In our “game,” it’s the place where non-Virginians or un-Marylanders are regularly evicted from their homes, to fend for themselves in SE.

You, as a resident of SE or NE Washington, have to use a slow two-lane road with traffic lights every 1,000 feet to visit your relatives in suburban Wheaton Maryland – but must make a detour via Baltimore.  The Beltway ring road, you see, is reserved for Maryland and Virginia citizens only, and allows them to bypass those parts of Washington that are run by the “DC Authority.”  The “DC Authority,” which has issued defiant “No Taxation Without Representation” vehicle registration plates, has no Senatorial representation, so its protests are largely ignored.

On the Fourth of July, picnicking Virginians and Marylanders gaze at fireworks on The Mall, but people in SE can only catch a distant glimpse of the “bombs bursting in air” above the Security Barrier that has been erected just east of Capitol Hill...

Okay, you can only go so far with the analogy, but you get the picture.

Palestine could have been celebrating its 60th anniversary this month along with its Israeli twin, but history got in the way.  To convey a sense of what was lost, BBC World TV has been broadcasting a poignant half hour documentary this week called “Jaffa Stories,” by Adam LeBor, author of “City of Oranges.”  Bittersweet, it shows Jewish and Arab residents of what was – and some hope might become again – a picturesque port city where peaceful coexistence ruled.  Jaffa might have remained a major Palestinian city, had the Arab residents not fled Irgun/Stern terrorism in 1948.  One Israeli Arab Jaffa resident on the BBC program hints that his father made the right decision by staying on when most of the family fled.  But that is a judgment only possible in retrospect.

To stay or to leave – that is again the question confronting Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza in 2008.  Every day, they face humiliation and frustration that would have long ago overcome other less hardy peoples.  2008: Israel’s 60th anniversary, and the 41st anniversary of the occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza (okay, Gaza is no longer “occupied,” it’s just under siege, and East Jerusalem and much surrounding West Bank land have been annexed into Israel).

Somehow, Palestinians struggle on, still striving for a few crumbs of land in the hope of constituting a rump state, a tiny remnant of what their fathers and grandfathers spurned in 1948.  By expanding settlements in the face of international opposition, by appropriating water resources vital to Palestinian existence, and by myriad daily bureaucratic “deaths of a thousand cuts” (and cutting down thousands of ancient olive trees), Israeli treatment of the people in its Occupied Territories is calculated to discourage and demoralize.  So as Israelis quaff their birthday champagne, here’s one for the persevering Palestinians.

The Ineluctable Reality of Borders

Those pesky external border posts - poof! ...they're gone

 One of the occupational hazards of being an avuncular blogger on the Brussels lecture circuit is that I now get a multiplicity of invitations to events.  Many of these are welcome, providing useful fodder for posts.  Some are eminently avoidable, such as a recent invitation to join a demonstration protesting the expulsion of undocumented immigrants ("illegal aliens," as we would say in the US).  I'll give that one a pass, because I don't agree that "Borders = Repression," as the organizers would have it.

Living in a member state - some say the "capital" - of the European Union, and one which is a proud member of the Schengen (unguarded border) Zone, it's easy to forget the function of border controls.  Now that the Euro and Schengen have been a reality for the better part of a decade, crossing from Belgium to France and back through Germany, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands can be accomplished without even showing your passport and without changing your currency.  In multinational border regions, such as the Maastricht-Aachen-Liege triangle or the Luxembourg-Lorraine-Trier-Belgian Ardennes area, commuters of several nationalities can and do live in one country, work in another, and shop in a third, all in the course of a single day.

For this benign corner of Europe, the nasty work of external land border controls has been "outsourced" or at least subcontracted to those Schengen members on the periphery (I stress land borders, since all countries are still responsible for monitoring international arrivals at their air and sea ports, as well as their coastlines).  But here's the rub: despite Schengen (or perhaps because of it), there is still a problem of undocumented immigrants in every EU country, and it presents a challenge to democratically elected governments.  Because there are parties - some of them also democratically elected - on the Flemish separatist extreme right who use the immigration issue as a wedge to gain votes and seats in the very assemblies for which they express contempt.  Which is my very long way of saying that Border Controls ≠ Repression.  They're just part of the landscape.

Uti possidetis and the importance of internal borders - especially in Belgium

According to Wikipedia, we are told that uti possidetis (Latin for "as you possess") is a concept in international law, and that "the term has historically been used to legally formalize territorial conquests."  Thanks to Dr. Christian Behrendt, writing in the Brussels daily Le Soir on April 30, we have an expert opinion (he's a professor of comparative constitutional law at the University of Liege) on why, in the next couple of days, defining internal borders will be of utmost importance as Belgium may face yet another existential confrontation between its "warring" Dutch-speaking and Francophone politicians.  "Warring" is of course figurative, but memories are still fresh of the 1970s, when the confrontations were also physical.

Dr. Behrendt explains why the brouhaha over the proposed splitting of a federal electoral district called "BHV" - currently comprising the officially bilingual but in reality largely francophone capital Brussels, with the officially Dutch-speaking (but often with francophone majorities living in their midst) towns of Halle and Vilvoorde - has to be "gotten right" this time around.  Without going into even more arcane Belgo-Belgian political trivia, suffice it to say that the Dutch-speaking Flemish majority has sufficient votes in the national parliament to push a split through, but that there are constitutional safeguards which allow the French-speaking minority to veto (or at least temporize) such a unilateral diktat.

The future of the recently-formed Leterme government (for those who are gluttons for punishment, my blog category "Brussels" has a series of background posts on the crisis which led - very painfully - to the formation of the current government - you'll have to scroll down a bit) may depend on a negotiated solution to the BHV issue.  And here's where we get to Professor Behrendt's uti possidetis, which he interprets as "you will own what you have owned."  For those in the Francophone capital and its surrounding districts, as well as the French-speaking heartland of Wallonia in the south of the country, the "borders" set by a split of the BHV electoral district could be used - by a future Dutch-speaking Flemish nationalist majority bent on independence for Flanders - to set in concrete a "linguistic border" that would cut off hundreds of thousands of French-speakers from their linguistic cousins.

Borders - they might be imperfect, but they're all you have

For Francophone interests in the - perhaps inevitable - split of BHV, the key is to negotiate a compromise that will give the Flemish parties a face-saving "victory," while extracting important concessions: the expansion of Brussels to include Francophone-majority communes on the periphery; the formal, institutional linkage between Brussels and Wallonia; the permanent safeguarding of linguistic rights in "border" zones?  All problematic, possibly unattainable.  But the stakes are extremely high: as Dr. Behrendt concludes, the solution to BHV could wind up as a key legal element in an eventual national "divorce settlement."  Today's drawing of a voting district boundary could become tomorrow's border between two countries, should the nationalists hold sway.

Anyone who thinks uti possidetis is just for the history books (who remembers "The Treaty of Tordesillas?") should read noted Africa expert Michela Wrong in The New Statesman, about the dangers of tampering with uti possidetis:

Africa as we know it is a recent invention. Quixotic and impractical, its colonial frontiers are poorly charted and easily challenged. Fear of the mayhem that would ensue if member states regarded existing boundaries as being up for debate prompted the Organisation of African Unity, in 1964, to embrace the doctrine of uti possidetis, that colonial borders should remain as they are. The Eritrea-Ethiopia debacle, which will be finalised next month [note: after she wrote this in October 2007, fighting resulted in the February 2008 UN withdrawal from the disputed border, and there have been sporadic clashes since], undermines that principle, weakening future attempts at peaceful arbitration. The message it sends is that "final and binding" frontier rulings are negotiable; and that while minnows must obey international law, large countries with friends abroad can defy it with impunity. There could be few more dangerous signals to send a fragile continent.

"Facts on the ground" are of paramount importance in the Israel-Palestine conflict, as planners of the "separation barrier" know only too well.  Today's line in the sand, though it may not have any footing in law, is still a boundary of control, and becomes a negotiating chip.

BHV is not going to cause a shooting war between rival Belgian parties, but the point is this: it is incumbent on the responsible members of Belgium's main democratic parties, Flemish and Francophone, to get BHV right, so that the lines drawn today will not become an even more intractable bone of contention should separatist nationalism reign in a not-too-distant future.

More Reading on the Syrian Peace

For further reading on the intriguing possibilities for peace between Israel and Syria, here are some links:

• bitterlemons-internatinonal - weekly bulletin of Israeli and Palestinian analysis; the current issue is devoted to Syria/Israel.  Sample quote, from Dr. Mahdi Abdul Hadi, head of PASSIA, Jerusalem: "For all the posturing of the two sides, the border between Syria and Israel has been a quiet front for the last four decades. This inaction has led the Israeli leadership to believe that in Syria it has found a partner that will be responsive and pliable, one that can be led along slowly in a process of normalization."
• The Carter Center - Jimmy Carter's NYT op-ed on his recent Mideast trip, "Pariah Diplomacy."  Sample quote: "Syria's president, Bashir al-Assad, has expressed eagerness to begin negotiations with Israel to end the impasse on the Golan Heights. He asks only that the United States be involved and that the peace talks be made public." (see below*)
• Whirled View - Cheryl Rofer, who tracks nuclear and strategic issues, speculates on motivation behind Syrian development of a nuclear facility: "A reactor could be used as a bargaining chip in at least two ways: toward the return of the Golan Heights, or toward a Middle East Nuclear Weapons Free Zone. In fact, in 2003, it was Syria that called for the formation of such a zone. Arab states have been issuing such calls for some long time, no doubt partly to show up Israel's hypocrisy and even scores. The calls are routinely rejected by Israel and the United States."

*It is worth noting that in an entire press conference devoted to "Moving Forward On The Tracks Of The Annapolis Conference" on May 3 en route to Tel Aviv, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice said nothing about the Syrian Peace.

The Syrian “Peace” and the Uses of Old News

Reams have already been written about the strange “Senior Administration Official” briefing last week on the alleged Syrian nuclear reactor apparently bombed by Israel in September 2007.  Much of what has been written in the intervening week has been speculation on the motivation to dredge up old news: this is aimed at recalcitrant North Koreans... it’s really to send a message to Iran...  Now, thanks to President Bush, we don’t have to wonder anymore: “Bush Says Syria Nuclear Disclosure Intended to Prod North Korea and Iran.” (NYT, April 30, 2008)

Since the SAO briefing was itself about old news, I feel completely justified in only getting around to blog about it a week later.  Some analysts have looked at the Syrian-Israeli angle, which really should be the place to start.  I do not want to (nor am able to) analyze the orientation of the photos or their pixel (re)arrangement, nor do I want to parse the lengthy transcript of the SAO’s briefing for telltale hints of the motivation.

I will simply look at the timing, via my admittedly selective timeline:

•    September 6, 2007: Israel hits a target in Syria but maintains media silence, ostensibly to allow Syria to save face (if nothing happened, you don’t have to retaliate)
•    November 27, 2007: Annapolis Conference, which Syrian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Fayssal Mekdad attends, and where enthusiasm runs high in certain Israeli circles (especially the army) that peace over the Golan Heights is at hand
•    January 10, 2008: President Bush's Jerusalem speech on the peace process,where he says of Syrian-Israeli peace overtures: precisely nothing
•    March 12, 2008: In The Guardian of London, Jonathan Freedland (see more below) says that Israeli PM Olmert is given intelligence briefing on Syrian rapprochement
•    April 24, 2008: As the sun rises over the Middle East, a flurry of articles appears in the world press over Turkish mediation and possibly imminent Israel-Syria deal on the Golan Heights (statements by President Bashar al-Assad and Israeli MFA confirm; Israeli rejectionists object)
•    April 24, 2008: Same day, a few hours later, Washington time, the SAO briefs a closed Congressional session, then tells the press the same thing an hour later – breathless revelations on the September 2007 incident - seven months after it occurred.

Media manipulation mission accomplished?  Now, if you Google Syria + Israel, you’ll get zillions of articles on “nuclear” “bombing” “intelligence” – while those hopeful articles about the imminent Israeli-Syrian peace deal are submerged.  Don’t know nuthin’ ‘bout no pixels, but I throw in my lot with those probing to find a peace deal saboteur somewhere in the bowels of Washington’s and/or Jerusalem’s anti-Syria camp.

Oh yes, back to that prescient March 12 Jonathan Freedland article in the Guardian, “To Rescue the Two-State Solution, Israel Must Make Peace With Syria.”  After outlining the peace overtures, and the logic that from peace with Syria flows the de-fanging of Lebanon’s Hizbullah and Palestinian Hamas, Freedland warned:

There is one last obstacle in the way of a Syrian-Israel peace. Those in the know say flatly that the Bush administration will not allow Jerusalem to talk to Damascus, which it deems an associate member of the "axis of evil".  Put it down as one more reason why the world waits, ever more impatiently, for January 20 2009 - the day George W Bush will at last be gone.

Rami Khouri in yesterday’s Daily Star (Beirut) notes the American absence from the Middle East peace scene:

The most important diplomatic process these days is the Syrian-Israeli one. Israelis and Syrians alike have made it clear that something serious is taking place behind the scenes.  It is telling of the damage that the US has done to its own role and impact in the Middle East that the potentially most important diplomatic development in the past generation seems to be taking place without any significant American role.

Was the SAO “Syria briefing” (though we are told that its target was North Korea, etc.) a not-so-back door way of killing (for reasons best known to the people who brought you “the way to Jerusalem is via Baghdad” and other wonderful hallucinations about the Middle East) the Syrian Peace?  As Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery says in Counterpunch: “War with Syria? Peace with Syria?...

... A big military operation against Hamas in the Gaza strip? A cease-fire with Hamas?  Our media discuss these questions dispassionately, as if they were equivalent options. Like a person in a showroom making a choice between two cars. This one is good, and so is the other one. So which should one buy?

Beware of the used car salesman who, five years ago today, tried to sell us “Mission Accomplished.”

A Film To Watch On World Water Day

Whether you're marking World Water Day today, or if you already "celebrated" it on March 20, I recommend watching a clip from the Rima Essa + Peter Snowdon film "Drying Up Palestine."  As I wrote in an earlier post, "It should be essential viewing for all Middle East Peace Processors, because without water, there cannot be life, let alone a two state solution."

In honor of World Water Day, Peter Snowdon has decided to "serialize" the film, and it's now on three places on the web:

• "Drying Up Palestine, the film's website
• Through "Blip.tv" and Gourna films
• And on "The Hub" (be sure to look for screening dates in Chicago, New Orleans, and London)

As you watch the film, consider the remarks of Gareth Thomas, the UK International Development minister, quoted in today's Independent:

"If we do not act, the reality is that water supplies may become the subject of international conflict in the years ahead," said Mr Thomas. "We need to invest now to prevent us having to pay that price in the future."

How about taking the Minister's notion of investment to the next American administration, which may be amenable to the notion of "preemptive investment," to attack problems at their core?  Happy Water Day, and Happy Easter.

Water - Wastewater - Everywhere...

Clean Farming, Clean Water

World Water Day, whether you mark it today March 20 or on Saturday March 22, has sanitation as its theme this year.  Among readers in the developed world, I can hear the yawns already.  You take a shower, and the water flows down the drain.  You flush the toilet, and the sewers take the effluent to that round concrete plant in some forgotten part of town.  Out of sight, out of mind.

But even for those of us fortunate enough to live in places with such infrastructure and plentiful water supplies, today should be a day to pause and reflect on how safe our water really is.  And at what cost.

Today's "Ouest-France" (France's largest regional newspaper, read by rural and small town people in Brittany, which we're currently visiting) carries an article in its Agriculture section that I hope lots of farmers (and politicians) will read.  "How the Germans Are Getting Their Pure Water Back," by Anne-Francoise Roger, recounts how the introduction of organic farming techniques in a part of Bavaria in 1991 has led to dramatic improvements in water quality for the city of Munich.  Not only are nitrate and pesticide pollution down by significant levels (the former by some 43%), but the cost to the city of Munich - which purchases the organic produce for use in its city administration and school cafeterias - is a fraction of what French towns must pay to rid their water of nitrates.  Water costs have risen so much after years of privatization that recent electoral gains by Socialists (notably in Paris) have led to calls for returning to municipally-owned public utilities.

Brittany, with its rolling green countryside, also has a smelly underside: with its intensive industrial poultry and porcine production, its water is among France's (and Europe's) most polluted.  This time of year, liquid manure is sprayed over fields in huge quantities - I swear we smelled it as we were driving into Brittany yesterday.  What settles on the fields is absorbed by the crops, and the excess flows into the streams, and to the sea.  Finistere's wonderful coastline, rocky and rugged with miles-wide beaches appreciated by tourists, is at risk from the slimy green algae that thrives in the nitrate-rich waters.  And whatever treatment those sewage and water plants perform, you still want to reach for bottled mineral water during mealtime.

War & Peace and Water

With their plentiful rain, Bretons may be excused if they are not as conscious as they should be of the quality of their water.  Not the case with Israelis and Palestinians, whose populations crowd into a seemingly arid corner of the world.  Peter Snowdon, a documentary film maker friend whose "Drying Up Palestine" should be World Water Day essential viewing, sent me a recent article about a German hydro geologist active in Israel-Palestine water issues, Clemens Messerschmid.  Amira Hass' article in Haaretz is worth reading for this factoid alone:

In Berlin and Paris, he notes, annual rainfall is less than in Jerusalem and Ramallah, respectively: 550 millimeters in Berlin compared to 564 millimeters in Jerusalem. Paris gets an average of 630 millimeters, while the yearly average in Ramallah was 689.6 millimeters.

But Messerschmid documents how wasteful practices (using sprinklers for agriculture, allowing wastewater to flow into the sea, "making Israel one of the biggest polluters of the Mediterranean") negate these natural advantages.  And then you add the political aspect:

"Wherever Israel is located downriver, it uses military force to ensure that most of the water that flows in that river will reach Israel. It takes over the Golan, it threatens wars, and in the West Bank it uses military orders to prohibit the drilling of wells. What's going on here is not cooperation, but the dictation of an unequal division. Just imagine if Holland were to force Germany not to use the waters of the Rhine."

On World Water Day, which this year coincides with Easter Weekend, let's consider the importance of water - how it's safeguarded and who controls it - as one of the most crucial war & peace issues of this century.  What better place to get it right than in the crucible of "The Holy Land," where equitable access to water will make all the difference to Palestinian and Israeli peaceful (or not) coexistence.

Mideast Medical Tourism Guide

From "Welcoming The World's Ills" by Ronny Linder-Ganz, Haaretz, 14 February 2008:

Israel is emerging as a popular destination for medical tourists. In recent years, many thousands of visitors have come to Israel to undergo medical procedures.  "It's a branch of tourism in its own right, and a trigger for bringing many more tourists, because a person who travels to Israel for surgery and is treated warmly and meets nice, helpful Israelis goes back home and becomes an ambassador for Israel," says Nir Crystal, head of marketing at the Herzliya Medical Center.

Meanwhile, today's BBC on the latest ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross) report on Iraq:

Millions of Iraqis have little or no access to clean water, sanitation and healthcare, five years after the US-led invasion, according to the Red Cross.  The Swiss-based agency says Iraq's humanitarian situation is "among the most critical in the world".  Some families spend a third of their average monthly wage of $150 just buying clean water. (italics added)

The entire 15-page report is available here.

Finally, from Saturday's BBC World Service radio program "From Our Own Correspondent," where reporter Aleem Maqbool visits 21 year old Nael al Kurdi, terminally ill cancer patient, a week before he died:

I went to talk about his case with a spokesman for the Israeli government who pointed out that the border closures were for security reasons.

And when we got on to the subject of seriously ill patients being allowed out of Gaza for treatment, he told me that, while some patients had been let out, it was his view that terminally ill ones posed a potential danger to Israel.

They had nothing to live for, he suggested, so they might blow themselves up and become suicide bombers.

No medical "tourism" for dying Gazans.

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I don't begrudge Israel's desire to show off its shining hospitals and earn hard currency from wealthy foreigners.  The Haaretz article speaks of the Indian example, which has set a national target of $1.2 billion annually by 2012.  I do think that Israel - ever concerned about its image and desire for medical "goodwill ambassadors" - might consider the PR value of treating (or at least allowing to escape the "open air prison" of Gaza) some sick Palestinians.  And the propaganda cost of denying treatment.

But my outraged citizen ire is more directed at the situation in my native country - perhaps no surprise to regular readers.  Ever alert to irony, here's one from the Haaretz article:

"Then there are the Americans [says Amitai Rotem, director of marketing at Hadassah], who come here because they can get first-rate health care for a fraction of what it would cost them in the U.S. For example, an American with no health insurance would pay $120,000 for bypass surgery in the U.S. At Hadassah the procedure costs $35,000, and that includes all the necessary arrangements, such as airfare, accommodations and food for both patient and family. This means that ultimately, even with all the added expenses, the patient pays less than one-third of what the same operation would cost in the U.S."

"An American with no health insurance... ."  Presumably this means wealthy Americans without health insurance, probably an oxymoron and certainly a tiny minority.  Okay, let me get this right: the United States, which has no national health insurance program and which allows millions of Americans to languish without health coverage, become paupers, and die -  subsidizes Israel to the tune of $100 billion over the last 40 years and permits Israel to develop its own world-class health system - which in turn allows "Americans with no health insurance..."  I give up.

The National Health Insurance Law (in effect since January 1995) provides a standardized basket of medical services, including hospitalization, for all residents of Israel.

Of course, "all residents of Israel" gets into that thorny question of definitions: who is a resident? what is "Israel?" where are the boundaries?  It's all so complicated - but very simple when it comes to Nael al Kurdi.

And then there's Iraq.  I guess some of the two million Iraqis who have fled their country after the US invasion might be considered "medical tourists," in the sense that their country's medical infrastructure has largely vanished.  Says Pascal Olle, the ICRC's health coordinator for Iraq: "In the 70's, the country offered one of the best health services in the region."

Medical "tourism."  What a concept.  Great - if you can afford it.  Or if your country doesn't offer it at home.

(Images: Emblems of Magen David Adom, Red Cross, and Red Crescent)