"This is our first election that is not just about a family or a name,"

TO BE NOTED: From the WaPo:

"Voters Head to Polls in Lebanon

By Howard Schneider
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 7, 2009 9:26 AM

BIKFAYA, Lebanon, June 7 -- Lebanon's Metn district has formed the base for many a Christian political dynasty, a mountainous region north of Beirut where members of the Maronite, Greek Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Armenian sects compete for the spoils of office.

But as voters lined up in hillside schools and church buildings for a parliamentary election on Sunday, the main issue was less about electing their own and more about how the choices made in Christian villages will influence the fortunes of the Islamist Hezbollah party, the Shiite group whose base is far to the south. In a twist of Lebanon's sectarian politics, a split among Christian candidates into pro- and anti-Hezbollah slates has turned the campaign into a broad referendum about whether the Islamist party should have a more influential role in the country's future.

That, in turn, has prompted close interest in Washington, which considers the Iranian-backed Hezbollah a terrorist organization, antagonistic towards Israel and responsible in its early years for attacks on U.S. facilities in the country. As the Obama administration tries to push a new Middle East peace initiative, the vote in Lebanon will determine whether the country's government continues its current pro-western stance, or emphasizes its independence from Washington and its animosity towards Israel.

"This is our first election that is not just about a family or a name," said lawyer Raif Akl, referring to the heavy influence of family ties on political loyalties in the country. "It's about a political future."

Akl was helping staff the Bikfaya campaign office of Sami Gemayel, scion of one of Lebanon's main Christian political families and a backer of the so-called March 14 slate of candidates who want to curb Hezbollah's influence and maintain closer ties with Washington. The group includes the main Sunni Muslim parties, led by the son of assassinated prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri, and several smaller Christian parties. They form the current majority in the Lebanese parliament.

They are opposed by a slate that includes the Shiite Hezbollah, the Shiite Amal party, and backers of influential Maronite leader Michel Aoun, the former general whose Free Patriotic Movement has fielded candidates for the seats set aside for Christians. Aoun, exiled in France until 2005 because of a clash with neighboring Syria, formed an alliance with Hezbollah upon his return that supporters characterize as a bid to align the Christian community with what is arguably the country's most powerful single faction.

"Hezbollah is a point of strength for Lebanon," said Edward Baklini, an engineer who was campaigning for the Aoun slate in nearby Dhour Choueir. The Aoun-Hezbollah alliance "is a building block" in cementing ties among Christians, historically powerful but dwindling, with the fast-growing and increasingly influential Shiite population, he said.

The contests for many of the 128 parliamentary seats to be filled on Sunday are not considered competitive. Lebanese political analysts say the outcome in a handful of mostly Christian districts, accounting for fewer than two dozen seats, will determine whether either faction wins enough of a majority to claim a mandate.

With 8 Christian seats, the Metn is a key battleground. The streets of towns like Bikfaya and Dhour Choueir were ablaze Sunday with competing flags and the din of car horns being used for semaphore: three long beeps for "ge-ne-ral," the battle cry of Aoun's faithful.

Lebanon's parliament is organized along confessional lines, with 64 Muslim seats and 64 Christian seats, apportioned among 18 different sects.

Sunday's vote follows a wrenching few years that included a wave of assassinations against politicians opposed to Syria's influence over the country, including Hariri; a 2006 war with Israel that has divided Lebanese between those who feel Hezbollah's extensive militia provoked the conflict and those who credit it with dealing Israel a blow; and Hezbollah's armed takeover of downtown Beirut in a demand for more political power.

All of that has condensed Lebanon's usually multi-faceted and fractious politics into the two competing slates. The battle has prompted thousands of ex-patriate Lebanese to come home to vote -- the rules require voters to cast ballots in person -- and led to long lines outside of polling places in what authorities expected would be a record turnout.

Polls opened at 7 a.m. under tight security and a broad set of rules meant to limit the potential for violence or electoral abuses. Restaurants and clubs were closed early on Saturday night; motorcycles were banned from the streets on the theory that it would discourage random violence by anyone trying to take advantage of a quick means of escape. Army and police began deploying a day in advance.

Thousands of election observers from groups like the Lebanese Association for Democratic Elections were stationed to monitor polling places, with a real time text messaging system set up to report possible problems directly to a public Web site."

It may look more like a begrudging separation with hard borders, international guarantees, and even NATO forces deployed

From Daniel Levy:

"This piece appears in the new issue of The American Conservative

At this writing, the Gaza crisis continues, exacting a painful toll on the civilian population( YES ), hammering Israel’s image in ways unseen since Lebanon in the early 1980s( YES ), and relegating talk of peace to the funny pages( YES ). The working assumption is that there will be a ceasefire in which Hamas continues to be the governing address for Gaza—a political victory for the Islamic Resistance Movement (the literal translation of the acronym for Hamas). But for a ceasefire to hold, there will need to be an opening of the border crossings in an ongoing and predictable way, as well as a mechanism for preventing weapons smuggling into Gaza( TRUE )

The desire to avoid any semblance of Hamas achievement is one factor that has prolonged the fighting and encouraged alternative endgame scenarios. But the other options are even less attractive or realistic: an indefinite Israeli re-occupation of Gaza (publicly unpopular and militarily draining given anticipated resistance), handing Gaza over to Palestinian Authority/Fatah control (a killer blow for Fatah credibility when conducted on the back of an Israeli tank and likely to lead to an anti-PA insurgency in Gaza and possibly the West Bank), or stationing international forces in Gaza (just try recruiting nations willing to deploy for that mission). There is an in-between option: IDF troops remain on the Gazan side of the border with Egypt or conduct ongoing incursions, as they do in West Bank cities, creating conditions hardly conducive to a ceasefire.

Whatever the details of the de-escalation, when the smoke clears there will still be Hamas, there will be more angry Palestinians and Israelis, and the 94 percent of the Occupied Palestinian Territories that is not Gaza will still be dotted with settlements and Israeli forces. The larger conflict will remain very much unresolved.( TRUE )

Some might be tempted to push on with the Annapolis process launched by President Bush in November 2007. The new Obama administration will almost certainly flirt with the idea. But doing so would mean ignoring the flaws in the existing approach that the Gaza crisis has cruelly exposed. A hesitant Israeli leadership, enfeebled Palestinian Authority, and popularly challenged Arab regimes have all found a shared comfort zone in a process that has no end and almost never requires hard choices. Except that Operation Cast Lead has shown this zone to be not so comforting after all.( YES )

The edifice upon which Annapolis and U.S. policy toward the conflict have been constructed cannot hold( TRUE ). Israel, Fatah, and America’s Arab allies are unwilling or unable (sometimes both) to take the kind of action that might constitute a robust alliance against the regional forces that challenge them—forces of change and resistance, sometimes violent, often religiously inspired. Israel is not ending the settlements and occupation. The moderate Arab states cannot openly embrace Israel absent this step. And Fatah has neither the legitimacy nor the capacity to sign or implement a reasonable deal were such an offer available. The state of contemporary Israeli-Palestinian relations is one of conflict, not partnership. Israel and Fatah cannot defy this reality without a radical reconfiguration of the landscape.

The Gaza crisis has brought all of this to the fore. The handicap that plagues the so-called “alliance of the moderates” is visible in all its debilitating deformity. Israel brings destruction on Gaza and claims it is serving the cause of moderation and peace. Enraged Palestinians disown Fatah and the PA, accusing them of complicity, and are in turn intimidated by Palestinian security forces in the West Bank. Fatah leaders fight among themselves. Certain Arab allies are quietly supportive of Israel’s move, or unwilling to counter it, and are thereby further alienated from their own publics. Egypt bears the brunt of popular regional displeasure. The regime in Cairo looks more fragile than at any time during the 17 years of Mubarak’s rule, and such frailty is no basis for regional leadership. The idea that this collection of actors holds the key to negotiating and implementing an historic peace simply does not pass muster.( TRUE )

The policy question for the new U.S. government is whether there will be an acknowledgement of the collateral damage inflicted upon the Annapolis process during this Gaza crisis. It is now a victim of friendly fire and will need to find its resting place alongside many far more innocent victims.

There is no decisive victory to be had in the Middle East against an axis that is sometimes called “Iran-Syria-Hamas-Hezbollah,” but which is far more and far less than that. Less in that the so-called extremists do not walk in lockstep. There are distinct national, movement, and religious tensions within this camp. We are often the glue that holds them together. They also represent far more, offering an alternative narrative, many elements of which have popular appeal, and a broad following in the region—not just with Islamists but with democrats, reformers, and nationalist-based oppositions. Paradoxically, these may well be the people who can most effectively counter the brand of Islamism that actually does represent an implacable and dangerous foe: al-Qaeda-style Salafi extremism.

The Bush administration’s attempt to score a decisive victory for the so-called forces of moderation has more often than not been rejected in the region as an antidemocratic, humiliating neo-imperialist project. It has of course also been used as a recruiting tool by al-Qaeda and Co.

After Gaza, all sides must take a step back from exacerbating tensions, deepening divisions, and dreaming of unequivocal victories in this destabilized Middle East. The language of moderates versus extremists must be abandoned or at least much more sparingly applied. It is relevant for the Salafi jihadists, but that is it.

A new starting place would be to differentiate and disaggregate the various actors lined up against the U.S., Israel, and the ancien regimes. A region bubbling over with conflicts that are part regional proxy, part local circumstance is not a desirable situation. Gaza is the latest example—and a particularly bloody one.

The best way forward is simultaneously to de-escalate tensions at the regional level and resolve or at least defuse specific local conflicts( YES ). For instance, at the regional level, a Syrian-Saudi reconciliation might be encouraged and a similar approach adopted for overcoming internal Palestinian divisions. More broadly, and over time, a modus vivendi will need to be found with the non-al-Qaeda reformist Islamist groups, often associated with the Muslim Brotherhood. None of this means that the excesses of the hardline narrative or the recourse to unprovoked violence should be accepted. The de-escalation formula will probably face its keenest challenge in attempts to test flexibility in Iran’s behavior. The current approach has mostly served to extend Iran’s reach well beyond its natural echo chamber.

Gaza again is an example. The Hamas-Israel conflict is primarily a local one, but if the local circumstances are not addressed, it can take on regional dimensions, as is currently the case. The local conflict and the regional equation—Syria, Iran, and the Muslim Brothers back Hamas; America and its allies are ranged against Hamas—feed off one another. De-escalation should happen in both directions, regional and local.

Recent developments in Lebanon may be instructive. Hezbollah has not joined the Gaza confrontation, avoiding a second front with Israel (at least as of day 18 of the conflict). According to the regional dynamic, Hezbollah should be getting involved. But in this case, the local dynamic is pushing in a different direction. The power-sharing arrangement in Lebanon brokered by Qatar sees Hezbollah back in government and looking ahead to new elections in June. A local incentive has been created which causes Hezbollah, a constituency-based organization, to weigh local considerations against regional alliance ones. So far local concerns are proving more resilient.( YES )

Now apply that to Hamas, Gaza, and the Israel-Palestine situation. Insufficient local incentive has been created to affect Hamas’s calculation. Hamas is also a constituency-based organization, attentive to the needs of the Palestinian population. By maintaining the closure on Gaza, Israel and the international community gave up a potential lever for modifying Hamas’s behavior—public Gazan pressure for extending the ceasefire. Likewise, when a Palestinian power-sharing arrangement was negotiated in the Saudi-brokered Mecca deal of February 2007, it was opposed and actively undermined. An opportunity was again missed for reframing Hamas’s options. The situation is most decisively effected by paralysis in addressing the bigger issue—the need for de-occupation and Palestinian statehood alongside secure borders for Israel.( TRUE )

A post-Gaza reconfiguration of Middle East policy may not come with the hugs and handshakes of past peace deals. It may look more like a begrudging separation with hard borders, international guarantees, and even NATO forces deployed, as well as strong incentive packages for both sides. It will require local conflict-resolution and regional de-escalation components. Crucially, it will demand an American rethink and a jettisoning of the certainties of neocon dogma, support of credible mediators where possible (sometimes European, sometimes regional such as Qatar or Turkey), and finally, frank discussions between the U.S. and its regional allies—and that does not just mean Israel."( I AGREE )

Let's get going.

"I might draw a parallel between the Middle East and the India/Pakistan situation. "

Nicholas Kristof with a good post:

"The Gaza mess, and a question for readers

By Nicholas Kristof

One of the paradoxes of the Middle East is that all sides tend to be drawn to military solutions, even though they have a terrible record( TRUE ). History suggests that each side empowers its enemies when it turns to firepower( THE EXTREMES PROFIT ). Hamas’s reckless terror attacks and rocket attacks( THEY ARE WAR CRIMES ) gave strength to Israeli hard-liners, and if Bibi emerges as prime minister, it’ll be because of Hamas. Conversely, Hamas is a power in Gaza today largely because of Israeli excesses, including attacks on Fatah police infrastructure in earlier years — and of course Hezbullah was born after the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon.( HOW TRUE )

Granted, this is easy to say, and Israeli leaders feel enormous pressure to do something, anything, when their southern towns come under rocket attack( THAT'S FINE. BUT THIS RESPONSE IS WAY TOO BLUNT. ). But the first rule of government is not to make things worse, and I’m afraid that the assault on Gaza will indeed aggravate the situation( ME TOO ).

My concern is that the big losers will be Jordan, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority itself. When the Arabic cable channels are full of scenes of bloodshed from Gaza, Arab public opinion always turns against the moderates who are Israel’s best long-term hope for the future. I just wish that Israel tried as hard to bolster Abu Mazen( I BELIEVE THAT HE IS THE REAL DEAL. ) and the P.A. as it does to hurt Hamas.

I’ve been running around Cambodia, Thailand and Burma and so haven’t been able to write a column about Gaza, though I hope to soon. So let me throw out a question to blog readers. If I do write about the issue, I might draw a parallel between the Middle East and the India/Pakistan situation( I DID WHEN THIS OCCURRED. ). The idea would be that both India and Israel have suffered violent attacks that created enormous political pressure for a response, but that India — to its credit, and rather to my surprise — so far hasn’t taken military action after the Mumbai attacks because it knows that would make things worse. India has simply been a model of restraint, particularly with elections coming up in which Indian nationalists are screaming for a tougher approach, and it should get credit for that( I AGREE ). Granted, Israel has suffered tremendous provocations, and the democratic pressure for retaliation is enormous, but I wish Israel showed the same restraint as India, for the same reason( SO DO I. ). So what do you think: Is that a fair or meaningful comparison( YES. IT IS. )? Suggestions, thoughts?

"If so, that’s an outcome that could have been achieved without the killing of close to 400 people"

Rootless Cosmopolitan with a good post:

"Understanding Gaza

It’s fear of another Holocaust that has driven Israel to bomb the crap out of the Palestinians in Gaza — at least, that’s if you believe what you read on the New York Times op ed page. (Never a good idea, of course, because as I’ve previously noted, when it comes to Israel and related fear-mongering, there simply is no hysteria deemed unworthy of the Times op ed page.)

Morris, a manic fellow at the best of times prone to intellectual mood swings — having laid bare the ethnic cleansing that created modern Israel, Morris then didn’t as much recant as complain that the problem was that Ben Gurion hadn’t finished the job. And since the 2000 debacle at Camp David, of course, he’s been a de facto editorial writer for Ehud Barak, the failed former Prime Minister nicknamed “Mr. Zig-Zag” while in office because of his inconsistency — and who, of course, is the author of the current operation in Gaza.

Barak, never shy about spewing utter rubbish when his audience is American and prone to be taken in by demagoguery, last weekend offered the priceless suggestion to Fox News that “expecting Israel to have a cease-fire with Hamas is like expecting you to have a cease-fire with al-Qaeda.” Presumably it would not occur to Fox’s anchors to ask why, then, had Barak maintained just such a cease-fire for the past six months? And why had he been seeking its renewal?( VERY GOOD POINT )

But when it comes to demagoguery, this crowd knows no shame. Here is Morris explaining what he wants us to believe is the current Israeli mindset:

“Many Israelis feel that the walls — and history — are closing in on their 60-year-old state, much as they felt in early June 1967, just before Israel launched the Six-Day War … the Egyptians had driven a United Nations peacekeeping force from the Sinai-Israel border, had closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping and air traffic and had deployed the equivalent of seven armored and infantry divisions on Israel’s doorstep… Arab radio stations blared messages about the coming destruction of Israel.

“Israelis, or rather, Israeli Jews, are beginning to feel much the way their parents did in those apocalyptic days. Israel is a much more powerful and prosperous state today. In 1967 there were only some 2 million Jews in the country — today there are about 5.5 million — and the military did not have nuclear weapons. But the bulk of the population looks to the future with deep foreboding.”

This “foreboding” says Morris is based on the fact that the Arab world has never truly accepted the legitimacy of Israel’s creation (well, duh! Israel’s creation for Arabs is inextricably linked to the ethnic cleansing of 700,000 Palestinian Arab refugees from its territory; a process well documented by Morris himself) and continue to oppose its existence. (The fact that the Arab world has offered a comprehensive recognition and normalization of relations with Israel in exchange for it retreating to its 1967 borders seems to have passed the historian Morris by.)( GOOD POINT )

Then, he says , there’s the fact that “public opinion in the West (and in democracies, governments can’t be far behind) is gradually reducing its support for Israel as the West looks askance at the Jewish state’s treatment of its Palestinian neighbors and wards. The Holocaust is increasingly becoming a faint and ineffectual memory and the Arab states are increasingly powerful and assertive.”

Well, actually, as Avrum Burg has said so eloquently in his new book The Holocaust is Over, We Must Rise from its Ashes, it is precisely because of the Holocaust experience and the universal message of “Never Again” that the West today is engaged with human rights abuses everywhere, no matter who the victim and perpetrator( TRUE. WE DON'T DO VERY GOOD JOB THOUGH. ) — even when the perpetrators are Jewish. Again, though, the idea that Israel is being isolated in the West would seem preposterous to any objective observer; and the idea that the Holocaust is being forgotten even more so(I DON'T ). (Clearly, historian Morris pays no attention to the Academy Awards.) This sort of silliness makes you onder if anyone actually edits the NYT’s op ed page. How can any editor even vaguely grounded in reality allow a sentence to pass that says “the Arab states are increasingly powerful and assertive.” Any examples you can provide to back this outlandish claim, Benny? Would the op ed page editors even think to ask? Benny Morris may be like your hysterical uncle making up his own facts to support unsustainable arguments, but he’s hardly the first to have done so on the NYT op ed page in the past year alone.

A little reality isn’t going to slow down Morris’ train of hysteria — Iran’s nuclear program and Ahmadinejad’s bluster about Israel disappearing “has Israel’s political and military leaders on tenterhooks,” he proclaims. Oh yeah? How come whenever they’re behind closed doors and not talking to gullible Americans, they let on that they know that even a nuclear-armed Iran represents no “existential threat” to Israel? If Israelis are on tenterhooks, it’s no the political and military leadership who understand the realities; it’s the public that has listened to its political leaders spin up an endless torrent of baseless hysteria about Iran under the absurd rubric of “1938 all over again”.

Morris’s menaces extend to Hizballah in the north with its rockets — which only seem to be fired on Israel when Lebanon is under attack by the Israelis — and then there is Hamas, armed to the teeth with rockets and ready to fight until every inch of Palestine “is under Islamic rule and law.” (Actually, Hamas has not even imposed Shariah law in that tiny patch of Palestine — Gaza — that it currently controls, so it seems to be making a poor start.)

You’d think that the 100-1 ratio of Palestinian to Israeli casualties of the first four days of the Gaza offensive would give the lie to the idea that Israel is threatened with annihilation by Hamas and its rockets.

And then there’s the “internal” menace, Israel’s Arab population, which identifies more with the Palestinians, which they essentially are, than with the Jewish population of a state that offers them a second-class citizenship. (Go figure, eh?) Morris concludes by warning that Israel is feeling closed in by these intolerable menaces, and that the Gaza bloodbath won’t be the last time it lashes out. Sounds ominously like a threat of new ethnic cleansing, actually. (Actually, the “internal” menace that Morris doesn’t mention is the fact that growing numbers of young Israelis don’t live in Morris’s echo chamber of existential threats everywhere they look; they’re evading military service in record numbers and are, increasingly, moving abroad, having seen through the fiction that the whole world is a cesspool of virulenet antisemitism( I DO BELIEVE THAT JEW HATRED IS ON THE RISE. ).)

Essentially, Morris would have us excuse the bloodbath in Gaza in light of the specter of a new Holocaust. That’s a little deranged, actually. Cynically wielding the Holocaust as a cudgel to intimidate critics into silence, as Burg points out in his book, is a well established trope of Israeli p.r. But when a vast military machine is being unleashed on a captive population under siege, whose most militant members are lightly armed and try to make up in suicidal courage for what they lack in materiel, the image most likely to spring to mind is that of the Warsaw Ghetto.

Robert Fisk, in his own analysis, does something rarely found in the columns of U.S. news outlets: He reminds us who the Gazans are:

How easy it is to snap off the history of the Palestinians, to delete the narrative of their tragedy, to avoid a grotesque irony about Gaza which – in any other conflict – journalists would be writing about in their first reports: that the original, legal owners of the Israeli land on which Hamas rockets are detonating live in Gaza.

That is why Gaza exists: because the Palestinians who lived in Ashkelon and the fields around it – Askalaan in Arabic – were dispossessed from their lands in 1948 when Israel was created and ended up on the beaches of Gaza. They – or their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren – are among the one and a half million Palestinian refugees crammed into the cesspool of Gaza, 80 per cent of whose families once lived in what is now Israel. This, historically, is the real story: most of the people of Gaza don’t come from Gaza.

But watching the news shows, you’d think that history began yesterday, that a bunch of bearded anti-Semitic Islamist lunatics( WHICH HAMAS IS ) suddenly popped up in the slums of Gaza – a rubbish dump of destitute people of no origin – and began firing missiles into peace-loving, democratic Israel, only to meet with the righteous vengeance of the Israeli air force. The fact that the five sisters killed in Jabalya camp had grandparents who came from the very land whose more recent owners have now bombed them to death simply does not appear in the story.

Now, when it comes to understanding and responding to the crisis, we have the comments made by President-elect Barack Obama last July in Sderot, which were widely quote in response to teh weekend’s strikes:
“If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I’m going to do everything in my power to stop that. And I would expect Israelis to do the same thing.”

I suppose the question I’d like to ask Obama, in the very Jewish tradition of asking how I would experience that which I was about to do to another, is what he would do if someone had moved his grandparents out of their home and forced them into a refugee camp, where he and his daughters lived, caged in, and were now being slowly choked of any meaningful livelihood, denied access to medicines, elecricity, even basic foodstuffs sometimes. What, I wonder would he do then? (He needs to have a meaningful answer to that question if he’s to be anything other than an obstacle to progress in the Middle East, like Bush has been. He may want to take a lesson from “Mr. Zig-Zag” here: On the election campaign trail in 1999, Ehud Barak was asked what he’d have done if he’d been born Palestinian, and answered without hesitation, “Joined a fighting organization.”( I KNEW AN MAN WHO FLED ACRE. HE WAS ONE OF THE MOST PEACEFUL AND DECENT MEN I EVER KNEW. HE WAS MY ARABIC TEACHER. ). A moment of rare honesty, that.)

It will be up to Obama, more than any other world leader, to change the morbid dynamic between Israel and the Palestinians — because it is a U.S.-authored conceptual approach( DEAD END ) that undergirds the current travesty in Gaza. I wrote in the National last weekend, Israel’s attack on Gaza was closely paralleled with the murder in Marquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold:

It’s not that Israel wanted to attack Gaza; it would have us believe it had no choice.

Like the Vicario brothers in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s masterful novel Chronicle of a Death Foretold – who believed they were honour-bound to kill Santiago Nasar for sleeping with their sister, and told anyone who would listen of their intention in the unspoken hope that someone would stop them – Israel, too, had been yelling from the rooftops its intention to strike Gaza.

…Just as in the Marquez novel, what propelled the Gaza tragedy forward to its bloody conclusion was that neither the Israelis nor anyone they told of their plan were willing to confront the absurdity of the ‘rules’ that made them believe they were obliged to spill blood. Israel claimed that it had no choice but to launch a military campaign that has begun with air strikes but will probably escalate to some form of ground invasion.

The context of the renewed rocket launching, of course, was the breakdown of the ceasefire brokered by Egypt between Israel and Hamas in June, which expired last week. Israel set off the latest upsurge in rocket attacks by launching raids on Nov 5 which it said were necessary to stop Palestinians tunnelling under the boundary fence. But the ceasefire has not really worked for Hamas, because it had expected that in exchange for holding its fire, not only would Israel reciprocate but it would also begin to ease the crippling economic siege, the objective of which was the overthrow of the Hamas government. Israel insists that wasn’t what it agreed, saying it had offered only “calm for calm” – and that the same offer was still on the table.

But why would Hamas settle for a cease-fire that removed the threat of Israeli bombs, but did nothing to relax Israel’s chokehold on its economy?

…Israel has painted itself into a strategic corner – with the enthusiastic support of the Bush administration – by continuing its quest to reverse the choice of the Palestinian electorate in 2006. Even some in the Israeli security establishment recognise that the fundamental flaw in Israel’s policy over Gaza is its refusal to recognise political reality. “The state of Israel must understand that Hamas rule in Gaza is a fact, and it is with that government that we must reach a situation of calm,” Shmuel Zakai, former chief of the Israeli military’s Gaza division, told Israel Army Radio last week. Israel’s error, he said, was in failing to improve the economic situation in Gaza once the truce took hold, and instead maintaining a chokehold that worsened the situation.

…The US-Israeli strategy on Hamas in Gaza has been a spectacular failure because it is fatally flawed (by its inability to relinquish the goal of reversing the results of the 2006 Palestinian election by anti-democratic means). So when, in the coming days, you hear Israeli leaders claiming they “had no choice” but to go to war in Gaza, remember the Vicario brothers of Gabriel Garcia’s novel, who also believed they had no choice. And also remember that Marquez, in his book, blamed the whole town and its anachronistic codes for failing to stop a tragedy that unfolded in slow motion and in plain sight.

Many Israelis are questioning the old fictions about military action being able to solve Israel’s problems. The ever-excellent Tom Segev offers the following:

Israel is striking at the Palestinians to “teach them a lesson.” That is a basic assumption that has accompanied the Zionist enterprise since its inception: We are the representatives of progress and enlightenment, sophisticated rationality and morality, while the Arabs are a primitive, violent rabble, ignorant children who must be educated and taught wisdom - via, of course, the carrot-and-stick method, just as the drover does with his donkey.

The bombing of Gaza is also supposed to “liquidate the Hamas regime,” in line with another assumption that has accompanied the Zionist movement since its inception: that it is possible to impose a “moderate” leadership on the Palestinians, one that will abandon their national aspirations.

As a corollary, Israel has also always believed that causing suffering to Palestinian civilians would make them rebel against their national leaders. This assumption has proven wrong over and over.

All of Israel’s wars have been based on yet another assumption that has been with us from the start: that we are only defending ourselves. “Half a million Israelis are under fire,” screamed the banner headline of Sunday’s Yedioth Ahronoth - just as if the Gaza Strip had not been subjected to a lengthy siege that destroyed an entire generation’s chances of living lives worth living.

It is admittedly impossible to live with daily missile fire, even if virtually no place in the world today enjoys a situation of zero terror. But Hamas is not a terrorist organization holding Gaza residents hostage: It is a religious nationalist movement, and a majority of Gaza residents believe in its path. One can certainly attack it, and with Knesset elections in the offing, this attack might even produce some kind of cease-fire. But there is another historical truth worth recalling in this context: Since the dawn of the Zionist presence in the Land of Israel, no military operation has ever advanced dialogue with the Palestinians.

Indeed, soon enough, this bloody mess will end in another cease-fire, having hardly changed the political equation in Gaza at all ( I AGREE )— much to the chagrin of the Bush Administration, the Israeli government and the regimes in Cairo and Ramallah who are quietly cheering Israel’s assault in the hope that it fatally weakens Hamas. That cease-fire will end rocket fire on Israel, but will also likely require the opening of the border crossings into Gaza. If so, that’s an outcome that could have been achieved without the killing of close to 400 people( I AGREE ). And my money says that this cynical show of force by Barak and Tzipi Livni won’t even stop Bibi Netanyahu from winning Israel’s February election. The killing in Gaza, in other words, even by the most cynical measure, has been utterly senseless( I AGREE )."

"But in no cases did the Israeli attack deter further attack and in many cases it unleashed unanticipated violence"

Bernard Avishai on his excellent blog:

"Teaching A Lesson (Appendix)

The indispensable Tom Segev, on teaching miltary lessons as a way to establish deterrence.

And here are some past examples of lessons taught and learned: Qibya, 1953, Samu'a, 1966, "Security borders," 1967-73, Aerial bombing of Lebanon, 1974-5, Litani Operation, 1978, Lebanon War, 1982, "Iron Fist" suppression of Intifada, 1988, Operations Grapes of Wrath, 1995, Defensive Shield, 2002, Second Lebanon War, 2005.

ALL OF THESE operations have in common serious provocations from Palestinian and, after the extension of occupation to South Lebanon, Islamist insurgents; provocations including the loss of Israeli lives. The response of Israeli military professionals, in all cases, was that Israel's response would have to be disproportionate; that the attack was coming because Israel was perceived as weak and needed to improve its deterrent power.

But in no cases did the Israeli attack deter further attack and in many cases it unleashed unanticipated violence, prompting new alliances against Israel which then led to new, more complex attacks, along with increasing diplomatic isolation. ( A PROVEN METHOD FOR DISASTER )

This morning, another Israeli was killed, as 57 rockets were launched from Gaza. Hezbollah is threatening to be drawn in. Israeli radio is reporting that Israel's ambassador to Jordan is being asked to leave "for his safety," and four Israelis were stabbed in Modiin. Meretz leader Haim Oron is arguing that Israel must immediately work to establish a new cease-fire, that if the shock of this attack leads to a firmer, better calm, Israel should accept this( I AGREE ); that there is no military solution to Palestinian insurgency. ( TRUE )

But can Israel's military leaders accept a cease-fire, after all this carnage, when 57 missiles have just fallen? When you are a hammer, is not every problem a nail?"

Good question.

"For many people, what has happened today between Gaza and Israel may have all too familiar a ring to it "

Daniel Levy on Prospects For Peace about the situation in Gaza:

"For many people, what has happened today between Gaza and Israel may have all too familiar a ring to it – Israel warns and then retaliates to an alleged or real Palestinian escalation of violence, there is Arab condemnation and international exasperation, eventually things de-escalate but according to Israel’s timetable as the U.S. prevents effective early international mediation, and we’re back to where we started - with the addition of more blood and death (many innocent, some less so), more wounded and more shattered families.

Most of those involved, often including Israel, tend to regret things not coming to a halt sooner. The Israel Defense Forces with their modern weaponry try to pinpoint targets but invariably, predictably, and painfully there are plenty of “misses”; the Palestinians – well their weaponry is by definition more crude, they use what is available and the results are correspondingly messy and indiscriminate. Bottom line – Arabs and Jews are killing each other – so what’s new? And why on earth would America want to be involved?

Here’s the bad news folks – America is involved, up to its eyeballs actually. Today, after Israeli air-strikes that killed over 200 Palestinians in Gaza, the Middle East is again seething with rage. Recruiters to the most radical of causes are again cashing in. If Osama Bin Laden is indeed a cave-dweller these days then U.S. intel should be listening out for a booming echo of laughter. Demonstrations across the Arab world and contributors to the ever-proliferating Arabic language news media and blogosphere hold the U.S., and not just Israel, responsible for what happened today (and that is a position taken, for good reasons, by sensible folk, not hard-liners). America’s allies in the region are again running for cover. America’s standing, its interests and security are all deeply affected. The U.S.-Israel relationship per se is not to blame (that is something I support), the unresolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict is – and thankfully we can do something about that.( I AGREE )

Why did today’s events occur? The list of causes is a long one and of course depends who you are asking. Here are five of the most salient factors as I see them:

(1) Never forget the basics – the core issue is still an unresolved conflict about ending an occupation and establishing an independent Palestinian state – everything has to start from here to be serious (this is true also for Hamas who continue to heavily hint that they will accept the 1967 borders).( I AGREE )

(2) The immediate backdrop begins with the Israeli disengagement from Gaza of summer 2005, ostensibly a good move, except one that left more issues open than it resolved. It was a unilateral initiative, so there was no coordinating the ‘what happens next’ with the Palestinians. Gaza was closed off to the world, the West Bank remained under occupation and what had the potential to be a constructive move towards peace became a source of new tensions – something many of us pointed out at the time (supporting withdrawal from Gaza, opposing how it was done).( I AGREE )

(3) U.S., Israeli and international policy towards Hamas has greatly exacerbated the situation. Hamas participated in and won democratic elections to the Palestinian Legislative Council in January 2006. Rather than test the Hamas capacity to govern responsibly and nurture Hamas further into the political arena and away from armed struggle, the U.S.-led international response was to hermetically seal-off Hamas, besiege Gaza, work to undemocratically overthrow the Hamas government and thereby allow Hamas to credibly claim that a hypocritical standard was being applied to the American democracy agenda.

American, Israeli and Quartet policy towards Hamas has been a litany of largely unforced errors and missed opportunities. Hamas poses a serious policy challenge and direct early U.S. or Israeli engagement let alone financial support was certainly not the way forward, but in testing Hamas, a division of labor within the Quartet would have made sense (European and U.N. engagement, for instance, should have been encouraged, not the opposite). Every wrong turn was taken – Hamas were seen through the GWOT prism not as a liberation struggle, when the Saudi’s delivered a Palestinian National Unity Government in March 2007 the U.S. worked to unravel it, Palestinian reconciliation is still vetoed which encourages the least credible trends within Fatah, and unbelievably Egypt is given an exclusive mediation role with Hamas (Egypt naturally sees the Hamas issue first through its own domestic prism of concern at the growth of the Muslim Brothers, progress is often held hostage to ongoing Hamas-Egypt squabbles).( I AGREE )

(4) Failure to build on the ceasefire. Israel is of course duty bound to defend and protect its citizens, so as the intensity of rocket fire in 2007-8 increased, Israel stepped up its actions against Gaza. But there was never much Israeli military or government enthusiasm for a full-scale conflict or ground invasion and eventually a practical working solution was found when both sides agreed to a six-month ceasefire on June 19th 2008. Neither side loved it. Both drew just enough benefit to keep going. That equation though was always delicately balanced. For the communities of southern Israel which bore the brunt of the rocket attacks, notably Sderot, the ceasefire led to a dramatic improvement in daily life, and there were no Israeli fatalities during the entire period (only today, following the IDF strikes did a rocket hit the town of Netivot and kill one Israeli). Israel was though concerned about a Hamas arms build up and the entrenching of Hamas rule (which its policies have actually encouraged). For Gaza the calm meant less of an ongoing military threat but supplies of basic necessities into Gaza were kept to a minimum – just above starvation and humanitarian crisis levels – an ongoing provocation to Hamas and collective punishment for Gazans. The ceasefire needed to be solidified, nurtured, taken to the next level. None of this was done – the Quartet was busy with the deeply flawed Annapolis effort.( I AGREE )

(5) A disaster was waiting to happen, and no-one was doing much about it. There was of course a date for the end of the ceasefire – December 19th. As that date approached both sides sought to improve their relative positions, to test some new rules of the game. Israel conducted a military operation on November 4th (yes, you had other things on your mind that day), apparently to destroy a tunnel from which an attack on Israel could be launched, Hamas responded with rocket-fire on southern Israeli towns. That initiated a period of intense Israeli-Hamas dialogue, albeit an untraditional one, largely conducted via mutual military jabs, occasional public messaging and back-channels. Again though the main reliance was on Egypt – by now in an intense struggle of its own with Hamas. When Hamas pushed the envelop with over 60 rockets on a single day (December 24th), albeit causing no serious injuries and mostly landing in open fields (probably by design), Israel decided that it was time for an escalation. That happened today – on a massive scale - with an unprecedented death toll.

Israel clearly felt it was time to make a point, there was pressure (often self-generated) to act, and don’t forget that Israel is in an election campaign (the vote is on Feb 10th). Hamas too had scores to settle – not only with Israel, but it was also time to pressure Egypt, Fatah, and Arab actors who had done little to address the blockade of Gaza.

So here we are, in a dangerous escalatory cycle that is already sweeping the region, with scores of Palestinian dead, horrific images, a highly-charged blame-game and no obvious exit-strategy. Both Israel and Hamas are looking to emerge with a better deal than what previously prevailed – both are preparing their publics to take harsh hits over the coming days, weeks or even longer, and over 200 families in Gaza and one family in Israel already know what that means, first-hand. ( I AGREE )

So, what needs to happen next?

Sadly it is too late for preventive action but there is an urgent need for a de-escalation that can lead to a new ceasefire( YES ) – and that will not be easy.

Useful lessons can be drawn from some very recent, and ugly, Middle East history – though it seems that to its dying day the Bush Administration is refusing to learn (today the White House called on Israel only to avoid civilian casualties as it attacks Hamas – not to cease the strikes, Secretary Rice was more measured).

In the summer of 2006 an escalation between Israel and Hezbollah led to a Lebanon war whose echoes still reverberate around the region. There were well over one thousand civilian casualties (1,035 Lebanese according to AP, 43 Israelis), thousands more injured, and other fatalities including the Israeli government which never recovered its poise, what little American credibility remained in the region (Secretary Rice was literally forced to return to Foggy Bottom as allied Arab capitals were too embarrassed to receive her) and much Lebanese infrastructure. That time it took 33 days for diplomacy to move and for a U.N. Security Council Resolution (1701) to deliver an end to fighting. The U.S. actively blocked diplomacy, Rice famously called this conflict “the birth pangs of a new Middle East” – it was no such thing, and the Middle East itself did not know whether to laugh or cry (the latter prevailed).

Just as in 2006, Israel needs the international community to be its exit strategy - and there is no time to waste. Even what appears as a short-term Israeli success is likely to prove self-defeating over a longer time horizon and that effect will intensify as the fighting continues. Over time, immense pressure will also grow on the PA in Ramallah, on Jordan, Egypt and others to act and their governments will be increasingly uneasy. Demonstrations across the West Bank are calling for a halt to all Israeli-Palestinian talks and for Palestinian unity.

If the U.S. is indifferent or still under the neocon ideological spell then Europe, the rest of the Quartet, Arab States and other internationals must act – with a variety of players using leverage with Israel and Hamas to de-escalate. Escalation poses dangers at a humanitarian and regional-political level. International leaders should head to the region before the new year, even if the warring parties discourage it, and for some of them Gaza must be on the itinerary, the boycott (anyway unwise) is a secondary matter now. High-level visits in themselves can create a de-escalatory dynamic. ( I AGREE )

Both sides will want to land the final big punch and both will need a dignified narrative for home consumption – any ceasefire deal will have to take this into account (and this during an Israeli election campaign, with violence usually helping the right, and the centrist government desperate for an image make-over after that Lebanon 2006 debacle). ( I AGREE )

The obvious ingredients will have to be creatively re-configured for this to be possible, including ending rocket fire at Israel and removing the blockade on Gaza. New ingredients may also be necessary and while extending the ceasefire to the West Bank is (unfortunately) probably out of the question, it might be possible this time to establish a monitoring mechanism for the ceasefire. Such a mechanism could serve both sides’ interests (Israel gets a more solid guarantee, Hamas gets more recognition). There is a precedent for this – after the April 1996 Israel-Hezbollah conflict a formal Ceasefire Understanding was reached that included the establishment of a Monitoring Group consisting of the U.S., France, Syria, Lebanon, and Israel (with Syria basically acting as guarantor for Hezbollah). That mechanism proved useful and met with constructive IDF cooperation – something similar might be needed now.( I AGREE )

In addition efforts need to be revived for achieving Palestinian national reconciliation (which itself could ease the management of the Gaza situation) and for allowing Gaza greater access to the outside world through Egypt via the Rafah border crossing.( YES )

But there is a bigger picture – and it is staring at the incoming Obama administration. Today’s events should be ‘exhibit A’ in why the next U.S. Government cannot leave the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to fester or try to ‘manage’ it – as long as it remains unresolved, it has a nasty habit of forcing itself onto the agenda. That can happen on terms dictated to the U.S. by the region (bad) or the U.S. can seek to set its own terms (far preferable). The new administration needs to embark upon a course of forceful regional diplomacy that breaks fundamentally from past efforts. A consensus of sorts is emerging in the U.S. foreign policy establishment that this conflict needs to be resolved – evidenced in the findings of a recent Brookings/Council of Foreign Relations Report or the powerful statements coming from elder statesmen like Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft, themselves building on the findings of the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group. It will require tenacity and bold ideas – in framing the solution, bringing in previously excluded actors, creating mechanisms to implement a deal (such as international forces) and utilizing the Saudi-led Arab Peace Initiative – but the alternative is far worse, its what we see today and it guarantees ongoing instability in a region of paramount importance to the United States."

I agree with this post.