Making the obvious point that Annapolis is a joke, Dennis Ross is now angling for the “fake moderate” position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as he finds prospect of government employment looming again. Having spent his political exile with the pro-Israel, anti-peace WINEP think tank (the place where a veneer of “moderation” produces apologetics for ongoing occupation and expansion of settlements), he wants a pro-active policy of crushing Palestinians rather than the Bush administration’s passive efforts. I would rather see even Henry Kissinger hold a senior position at State/NEA than Dennis Ross.

According to Ross, the Palestinians were not given a sense that their lives would be improved by the Annapolis process, and the Israelis weren’t given a sense that the Palestinians would take responsibility for security issues. Ross, who is likely to return to the State Department if the Democrats retake the White House in November, said it was Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s fault that the peace process is being conducted outside of the public context.

[From Dennis Ross, Daniel Kurtzer slam Bush's Mideast policy - Haaretz - Israel News]

For the last week Dream TV’s interview with President Bush has been talked up in Egypt, but can you understand any of this? And can Bush get any more condescending (and wrong) when he tells the interviewer she has her job because Egypt is a “society that honors diversity and gives people a chance to realize their talents?” I suspect the standard for Middle East reform that Bush has is having the same foreign policy as the Saudis and being slightly less bigoted than the Saudis — then you pass the test.

Q Yes. My first question is, people in Egypt, sometimes they get confused — on the one hand, they hear the U.S. statements, speeches that stress on the long-lasting relationships with Egypt, the strategic importance of Egypt to the U.S. and to the Middle East, Egypt as the major player in the peace process. On the other hand, they could see indications that contradicts with this — U.S. depending on other parties in the region, your snatching visit to Sharm el Sheikh last January, the partial cutting of the U.S. aid. How would you comment on that?

THE PRESIDENT: I would comment this, that from my perspective, the Egyptian-U.S. relationship is a very important part of our Middle Eastern foreign policy, for these reasons: one, Egypt has got a proud history and a great tradition, and a lot of people look to Egypt for help.

Now, the United States can’t solve a lot of problems on our own; has to have allies be a part of it. And so on the Palestinian issue, for example, Egypt can be very constructive, and has been constructive and helpful. Egypt has got a society that honors diversity and gives people a chance to realize their talents, like you. You’re a very smart, capable, professional woman who has showed the rest of the Middle East what’s possible in the Middle East. And Egypt has been on the forefront of modernization. Egypt is strategically located.

And so our relationship is strong and good. We’ve had our differences, on elections, for example. But nevertheless, to answer your question, I would say the relationship is very solid and very important.

Q Then how would you perceive the state of democracy in Egypt?

THE PRESIDENT: I would say fits and starts; good news and bad news. In other words, there’s been some moments where it looked like Egypt was going to continue to lead the Middle East on the democracy movement, and there’s been some setbacks. But I guess that just reflects the nature of the administration and their — on the one hand, their desire for democracy, on the other hand, their concerns about different movements. My view is, is that democracy is a powerful engine for reform and change, and leads to peace.

[From Interview of the President by Mona Shazli, Dream TV, Egypt]

Links from my del.icio.us account for May 11th through May 12th:

• ‘You made it big, you jerk!’ - Haaretz profile of major Israeli-American lobbyist/funder Haim Saban
• Yemen | Anxious times | Economist.com - Rare article on under-covered north-south dispute in Yemen
• The Palestinians | The wandering Palestinian | Economist.com
  - Long essay about the Palestinians 60 years after the nakba
• ‘My daughter deserved to die for falling in love’ | World news | The Observer - "Honor killing" in Iraq goes unpunished
• AT CAIRO’S GRAND HYATT, ALCOHOL BAN MET WITH CHEER AND UNCERTAINTY - Silly Saudi prince throws LE8 million of alcohol into Nile

Links from my del.icio.us account for May 8th:

• allAfrica.com: Egypt: TV Agency Boss Facing Charges Over Food Riots, Harassed for Links With Al-Jazeera (Page 1 of 1) - Broadcaster charged over footage of 6 April riots
• Judaism is universal, by Eric Rouleau - Famed French journo on Avraham Burg's new book
• Egypt: bread riots and mill strikes, by Joel Beinin - Monde Diplomatique article on labor unrest in Egypt (subs)
• Chair (A Dream): Poetry: The New Yorker - A poem by Adonis
• Jackson Diehl - War of the Rockets - washingtonpost.com - Stupid, stupid op-ed which casts Israel as victim forced to kill children, even when Hamas rockets have not done much damage
• Where Alaa Al Aswany Is Writing From - NYT profile of bestselling Egyptian writer
• Selling the War with Iran - The Washington Note - Nir Rosen slams WaPo, Kagan, other DC wonks for so-called expertise and complete devotion to imperial thinking
• Comment nos regimes arabes modernisent… l’autoritarisme Par Hicham Ben Abdellah El Alaoui | e-Joussour - Morocco's Moulay Hisham on the modernisation of Arab authoritarianism
• An Iranian’s vision of Jesus’ life stirs debate - Los Angeles Times - Film shows Islamic version of Jesus as prophet but not Messiah
• Outrage Rises at U.N. Over Libya’s Disruptive Presence On Security Council - Forward.com” - Israel and Libya clash in UN Security Council
• We Weren’t Always United by Indissoluble Bonds - Forward.com” - Michael Oren on Jewish-Americans and Israel

Egypt is now moving in the direction of much more repressive regimes, wanting to control all communications:

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt has asked mobile phone companies to block service to anonymous subscribers as a public security measure, and at least two firms have begun efforts to comply, Egyptian officials and mobile firms said on Monday.

The move comes as Egypt tries to combat a wave of public discontent over rising prices and low wages that have sparked a series of labor and anti-government strikes, organized largely by mobile phone and over the Internet.

The move is expected to affect several hundred thousand customers who did not register their names and addresses when they acquired phone lines — still a small portion of overall subscribers in the most populous Arab country.

“Everyone who uses the telephone must be known,” Trade Minister Rachid Mohamed Rachid told a news conference, adding that the move was needed for “public security.”

[From Egypt asks mobile firms to bar anonymous users]

I found the name of this mobile phone shop in Assuit amusing.

Gary Sick, a Columbia University professor and eminent scholar of the Persian Gulf, has written a short essay on Hillary Clinton’s recent threat to “obliterate Iran” should it attack Israel for the excellent Gulf 2000 listserv he maintains. Notwithstanding the chiefly domestic US political reasons that led Clinton to engage in rather vulgar sable-rattling, Sick analyzes Clinton’s announced strategy of building an Arab security structure designed to isolate Iran, seeing in it both a continuation of Bush administration policies (they just call it the “Sunni-Shia divide”) and a revival of the Clinton administration’s “dual containment” policy towards Iran and Iraq in the 1990s, which enrolled the aid of Arab countries.

This isn’t too surprising, since the architect of dual containment was Martin Indyk, who also heads Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy team and is a contender for Secretary of State in the (now hopefully) unlikely event of her election. Sick’s essay, republished below, highlights something that has become increasingly clear to me in recent years: the continuation, despite superficial differences, between certain Clinton policies and those of the Bush White House when it comes to Middle East policy. It’s not only that the Clintons had their own group of people who favored an invasion of Iraq to depose Saddam Hussein in the late 1990s, but also an attitude of refusing negotiations with Iran (or other designated enemies) and a strategic approach to the region that tends to prioritize not only access and control of oil resources, a perennial feature of US policy, but also puts Israel first in strategic considerations. Considering Indyk’s own AIPAC background this is not surprising, but these policies have been extremely damaging to US interests and, more importantly, the people of the region (notably the Iraqis who suffered tremendously under the Clinton-backed sanctions regime).

This is not to say that Clinton and Bush are the same — over domestic issues and many international ones Hillary Clinton is light years ahead of GW Bush (although arguably not GHW Bush). But in their strategic approach to the Middle East, it’s becoming clearer to me that we are seeing basically the same policies expressed without the bravado of the Bushies. A bad policy, even if implemented with caution, is still a bad policy. Sick, a Clinton supporter, provides an excellent analysis of why one should choose Obama as the better Democratic alternative on foreign policy. Read it all.

Hillary Clinton’s warning that the United States could “obliterate” Iran if that country should “foolishly consider” launching an attack on Israel is, of course, pandering to a broad American constituency that wants to hear tough rhetoric about Iran. It is also intended to appeal to a constituency that needs constant reassurance that America’s relationship with Israel is secure. And, by addressing a strategic hypothetical that would by any measure be many years in the future (”in the next ten years” in her words), it seems intended to convince doubters that a woman is tough enough - perhaps more than tough enough - to be commander in chief.

Continue reading ‘Sick on Clinton’s Arab strategy’

Links from my del.icio.us account for April 26th through May 4th:

• Critic accuses Hollywood of vilifying Arabs - Jack Shaheen's new book on Arabs in Hollywood since 9/11
• Where Every Meal Is a Sacrifice - Famine looming in Mauritania
• srael Might Have Many More Spies Here, Officials Say - Long story on Kadish case and use of Mossad spotters to identify recruits
• [Bakchich] Tunisie : Nicolas Sarkozy au royaume d'Ubu - Great dossier on Ben Ali's Tunisia by French satirical mag as Sarko visits Tunis
• Mustache Of Understanding: In Which Thomas Friedman is Hit With a Pie - The Hamster of FlatEarth got pied! Unfortunately Youtube pulled down the video for "terms of use violation"

This NYT piece on the relationship between Courageous Reformist Arab Personalities (CRAP) Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Irshad Manji seizes the non-relevance of these people to the problems of the Islamic world yet, admitting that, continues to find them enthralling.

First there is this paragraph:

Yet though they are allies on one level, their approaches to Islam are strikingly different, with one working outside the religion and one within. Neither one can be considered a spokeswoman for a significant Muslim constituency in the Middle East. (Indeed, their most sympathetic audiences are probably Western.) But their differences have implications for all the big issues the West grapples with in considering the Muslim world. How much popular support do terrorists have? Is a secular Middle East possible, and what’s the best way to promote it? Is Islam itself an enemy of the West?

But then this conclusion:

Clearly, this is a debate of importance not only to Muslims but to non-Muslims as well, and for a Westerner listening in, the best way to understand it may be to translate it into the language of European history. Irshad Manji sees herself as moving Islam into the 16th century; Ayaan Hirsi Ali wants to move it into the 18th. It’s as if Luther and Voltaire were living at the same time.

Is there anything more puerile, more annoying, more navel-gazing, more incredibly stupid than comparisons between modern Islam and European Christianity? This is the New York Times: the best way to understand its approach to the Muslim world may be to translate it into the language of American television: a combination of the faux-earnestness of 1950s family comedy and the fixation on the travails of minor celebrities seen in contemporary reality shows. It’s as if “Leave it to Beaver” and “American Idol” were being watched at the same time.

[From Muslim Rebel Sisters: At Odds With Islam and Each Other - New York Times]

Syrian Blogger and opposition activist Ammar Abdulhamid has a very different take on prospects for change in Syria, which he says will be driven by economic factors. I would not be so optimistic (I see the same kind of thinking over Egypt’s current economic crisis) because just like you can’t control a country entirely through security measures, you can’t make change happen entirely through economic disgruntlement, for which temporary fixes can always be found. Here’s the text of his address to the US Congress:

Change in Syria is not a matter of “if” anymore, but of when, how and who. Facts and factors influencing and dictating change are already in progress and are, for the most part, the product of internal dynamics rather than external influences. Although this assertion seems to fly in the face of traditional wisdom regarding the stability of the ruling regime in Syria, the facts are clear and plainly visible for all willing to see.
 
The problem has been that most experts and policymakers have always been more concerned with high-end politics to pay any real attention to what is actually taking place on the ground. Issues such as the International Tribunal established to look into the assassination of former PM Rafic al-Hariri, Iran’s growing regional influence, the Assads’ sponsorship of Hamas, Hizbullah and certain elements in the Iraqi insurgency, escalating international pressures against the regime, and the ongoing cat-and-mouse game between the regime and opposition forces continue to dominate the ongoing international debate over Syria’s present and future.
 
The dynamics of daily life, however, shaped more by inflation, unemployment, poverty, imploding infrastructure, and official corruption and mismanagement might actually be rewriting the usual scenarios in this regard. For as that old adage goes: “it’s the economy stupid!”

Continue reading ‘Ammar Abdulhamid on Syria: “It’s the economy, stupid”’

Links from my del.icio.us account for April 23rd through April 26th:

• Al Kamen - The Baghdad Embassy, a W Hotel - washingtonpost.com - Scroll down to read about Doug Feith's Georgetown teaching job not being renewed
• U.S. arms sales to OPEC at risk over oil: senators
  U.S. arms sales to OPEC at risk over oil: senators
  | Reuters

  - What bullshit: US threatens to withhold subsidies to US arms industry

• FT.com / In depth - Saudis warn on oil capacity - Ali Naimi says supply is tight, US says Saudi's got to deliver
• Student To Nazif: Release Egypt - Student who heckled Nazif briefly detained after PM's speech
• Army Veteran Charged With Passing Secrets to Israel - New York Times - 20 years later, another Pollard discovered

It’s not exactly Sudan’s biggest problem, but the government there should think of getting new copy editors. On the occasion of the fifth Sudan Population and Housing Census:

Yet in some ways it works, doesn’t it?

[Thanks, Diana]

Yesterday several of the opposition-minded papers in Egypt ran with front-page stories about Bilal Diab, a Cairo University student who heckled Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif as the latter was delivering a speech to students about how great things were going in Egypt. I love this story, as does the Egyptian media, because it is reminiscent of other similar incidents well-known in political and activist circles, such as Muslim Brother Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh and Nasserist Hamdeen Sabahi’s famous harangue to Sadat in the 1970s (they were student union politicians then) or more recently (a few years ago) leftist political commentator Muhammad Said Sayyed’s osé questions about democracy to President Mubarak at the Cairo Book Fair.

Here’s more about Bilal Diab:

CAIRO: “Mr. President, Mr. President, Egypt’s youth are behind bars.”
With those words Belal Diab, a 20-year-old literature student at Cairo University, interrupted Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif as he addressed the student body on campus Monday, kicking up a media storm.

“We want you to release those detained on April 6. Mr. President those are the people you were talking about who use the internet, those are the people who stood up and defended you when you were criticized at the World Economic Forum for saying Egypt is globalizing. Mr. President I want to tell you one thing, Education is zay el fol [perfect] the university is zay el fol, there is bread, there is democracy and freedom, release Egypt Mr. President, release Egypt Mr. President!” he said as students clapped passionately.

“I was provoked [by Nazif’s speech],” Diab told Daily News Egypt. “How can he talk about information technology, the internet and how the youth has to use it to express their opinions and get their voices out there when those who did exactly that are now all behind bars,” he said, referring to students who created the Facebook group promoting the April 6 strike.

“I admit that I was out of order but I had to get my voice out there, officials have to start listening to us instead of detaining us,” he said.

When Diab had completed his outburst, Nazif had turned to him and said, “I feel sarcasm and pain in your words, but I’m telling you Egypt is alright and you have to look at everything with objectivity because there are many challenges facing this country.”

“There objective reason for detaining these people is the acts of destruction they committed and there is a thin line between expressing your opinion and encouraging destruction, striking and rioting. Many want such chaos in this country but we won’t let this happen. Egypt is not a chaotic country,” continued the Prime Minister.

Diab, however, insists that he wasn’t wasn’t being sarcastic. “I was speaking passionately and my tone was serious. As for the sarcasm he was talking about who is really being sarcastic in this country, is his cabinet … those telling people that everything is fine and were are progressing,” he said.

The incident led to an abrupt halt of the lecture. Neither the Minister of Higher Education, Hany Helal, nor the President of Cairo University, Ali Abdel Rahman, gave their scheduled speeches.

As soon as Diab had ended his impassioned speech, two security guards sat behind him, but when the lecture was over and they tried to grab him they were prevented from doing so by the crowd, which saluted him for having “the guts” to speak openly.

But soon enough, the same security guards, accompanied this time by a police officer and a university professor, caught up with him. The professor asked for Diab’s university ID. It was then that the guards took hold of him in front of the crowd and escourted him to the office of the head of the university’s security.

What’s neat about this story, and some of the more recent similar episodes, is that you have people who are not really political activists standing up for themselves and their country. The same could be said of Esraa Abdel Fattah, the woman who is said to have started the Facebook campaign for a general strike on April 6, and who was arrested and charged with inciting unrest. Interestingly, both Diab and Abdel Fattah are young members of the al-Ghad party, the vehicle for Ayman Nour’s brief but spectacular entry into national politics in 2005. Nour, you will remember, is still in jail on trumped up forgery charges as punishment for his temerity. But obviously the spirit of dissent and contestation that Nour and many others (notably Kifaya) pioneered in 2005 is still alive and well, even if those movements and parties aren’t.

On a completely different note: this week the pro-government magazine Rose al-Youssef had a 32-page special on Facebook, including everything from its use for activism to the different groups Egyptians have formed there (such as, apparently, “Egyptians who love Israel” and “Egyptians who love George W. Bush” as well as, of course, the many sexual opportunities a Facebook account provides. Much of this “special” is complete bullshit, but I do like the cartoons.

Links from my del.icio.us account for April 22nd:

• TelQuel : L?incroyable évasion - Detailed story on Islamist jailbreak in Morocco
• Al Hayat - Three Arab Oil Phenomena in 2008 - Walid Khadduri on developments in Arab petroleum market
• Jackson Diehl - Hunger Pains for Mubarak - washingtonpost.com - Diehl as back at Mubarak-bashing
• The Daily Star - Arts & Culture - Bringing Arab literature to an Anglophone audience - More on London Book Fair
• Ilot de résistance - Excellent story on Egyptian military's takeover of Qursaya island in Cairo
• Syria tunes in the West on Madina FM - Los Angeles Times - I don't like the East-meets-West theme of this story on radio show "Good Morning Syria," but other parts are neat

Links from my del.icio.us account for April 21st through April 22nd:

• Maghreb : qui sont les hommes d'influence ? : Portraits des vrais maîtres du sérail - Algérie - Egypte - Libye - Maroc - Tunisie - Afrique - The strongmen of North Africa: who's who in the corridors of power
• FT.com /Egypt grapples with pressures on food subsidy system - YBG says more taxes to pay for subsidies, but not ones that will hurt business
• Exodus Exegesis - New York Times - Bill Kristol, McCain informal advisor, on McCain as the true Zionist candidate
• Le Monde.fr : Au Caire, l'Egypte d'en bas survit en haut - Afrique - Nice article on poverty, rooftop living in Cairo, bird flu and illegal pigeon-raising
• Tibet: The Peace of the Graveyard - The New York Review of Books - The only thing (?) a Bin Talal and Andre Glucksmann will agree on: Free Tibet

From Electronic Intifada:

A pro-Israel pressure group is orchestrating a secret, long-term campaign to infiltrate the popular online encyclopedia Wikipedia to rewrite Palestinian history, pass off crude propaganda as fact, and take over Wikipedia administrative structures to ensure these changes go either undetected or unchallenged.

A series of emails by members and associates of the pro-Israel group CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America), provided to The Electronic Intifada (EI), indicate the group is engaged in what one activist termed a “war” on Wikipedia.

A 13 March action alert signed by Gilead Ini, a “Senior Research Analyst” at CAMERA, calls for “volunteers who can work as ‘editors’ to ensure” that Israel-related articles on Wikipedia are “free of bias and error, and include necessary facts and context.” However, subsequent communications indicate that the group not only wanted to keep the effort secret from the media, the public, and Wikipedia administrators, but that the material they intended to introduce included discredited claims that could smear Palestinians and Muslims and conceal Israel’s true history.

…

A veteran Wikipedia editor, known as “Zeq,” who according to the emails is colluding with CAMERA, also provided advice to CAMERA volunteers on how they could disguise their agenda. In a 20 March email often in misspelled English, Zeq writes, “You don’t want to be precived [sic] as a ‘CAMERA’ defender’ on wikipedia [sic] that is for sure.” One strategy to avoid that is to “edit articles at random, make friends not enemies — we will need them later on. This is a marathon not a sprint.”

Zeq also identifies, in a 25 March email, another Wikipedia editor, “Jayjg,” whom he views as an effective and independent pro-Israel advocate. Zeq instructs CAMERA operatives to work with and learn from Jayjg, but not to reveal the existence of their group even to him fearing “it would place him in a bind” since “[h]e is very loyal to the wikipedia [sic] system” and might object to CAMERA’s underhanded tactics

Search around Project Guttenberg, the excellent repository of free ebooks, and you’re bound to find dozens of books that in some way have to do with Egypt. One thing most of these have in common — particularly those from the 19th and early 20th century, when the Victorian fad was to write travel diaries — is that they are mostly dreadfully dull. They also appear to be written by the same person who writes the scripts for the sound and light show at the Pyramids (O Nile, Father of Time…)

Here’s one I found today, The Spell of Egypt by Robert Smythe Hichens (otherwise a relatively capable early fantastic/mystery writer). These are the first two paragraphs:

Why do you come to Egypt? Do you come to gain a dream, or to regain lost dreams of old; to gild your life with the drowsy gold of romance, to lose a creeping sorrow, to forget that too many of your hours are sullen, grey, bereft? What do you wish of Egypt?

The Sphinx will not ask you, will not care. The Pyramids, lifting their unnumbered stones to the clear and wonderful skies, have held, still hold, their secrets; but they do not seek for yours. The terrific temples, the hot, mysterious tombs, odorous of the dead desires of men, crouching in and under the immeasurable sands, will muck you with their brooding silence, with their dim and sombre repose. The brown children of the Nile, the toilers who sing their antique songs by the shadoof and the sakieh, the dragomans, the smiling goblin merchants, the Bedouins who lead your camel into the pale recesses of the dunes—these will not trouble themselves about your deep desires, your perhaps yearning hunger of the heart and the imagination.

Yikes!

Links from my del.icio.us account for April 18th through April 20th:

• Strikes in Egypt: Female Workers on the Frontline | Mediterranean | Culture et politique en Méditerranée: information et identité Méditerranéennes avec Babelmed - Our Eman on the role of women in Egypt's strikes
• The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict - Carnegie Endowment for International Peace - Stiglitz and more on cost of war
• Weekly Standard: Egypt Builds a Wall And changes its tune on Israel's barrier.
  Egypt Builds a Wall - Ya David Schenker of WINEP, one is a wall and the other a barrier?
• New Statesman - The lives of others - Review of Hugh Miles new book, "Playing Cards in Cairo"
• Iraq wants neighbours to forgive debts: report - Yahoo! News - So it goes back to Saddam's position before he invaded Kuwait
• From Our Own Correspondent | The Moroccan jailed by three kings - The life of Mohammed Bougrine, veteran Moroccan political dissident
• EU tightens anti-terrorism laws - "European Union justice ministers agree that inciting terrorism through the internet should be a crime."
• Aaron David Miller Tackles Arab-Israeli Diplomacy in ?The Much Too Promised Land? - New York Times - "While Mr. Miller does not prescribe a revolutionary remaking of the peace process, he does devote much of this volume to puncturing what he considers American illusions in the hope that the next round of diplomacy will be more successful. Like his collea

Links from my del.icio.us account for April 16th through April 17th:

• The Bwog: Lisa Anderson, former SIPA Dean, named Provost of American University in Cairo - Top Middle East Studies academic moves to AUC
• Egypt grapples with Palestinian dilemma - Guardian look at Omar Suleiman and Egypt's Palestine problem
• J Street - New US Israel lobby says it's pro-peace. At least it acknowledges the others aren't.
• Palestine 47 : un partage avorté - Alain Gresh & Dominique Vidal have a new book on the negotiations that led to the partition of Palestine
• The Unknown Known - Granta - Martin Amis' (in?)famous short story