Ramallah vs. the "Peace Process"

by Khaled Abu Toameh
August 1, 2013 at 5:00 am

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3908/ramallah-peace-process

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Abbas may be conducting peace talks with Israel, but at the same time he is also backing campaigns that promote boycotts and hatred of Israel. What Secretary Kerry and the U.S. need to understand is that Abbas has failed to prepare his people for the possibility of peace.

If Mahmoud Abbas does not have the power or courage to allow an Israel-based clothing shop to open branch near his residence in Ramallah, how will he ever be able to make peace with Israel?
This is the question some Palestinian businessmen have been asking during the past few days in light of an organized campaign to prevent the Fox clothing chain from opening a store in the city.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry's strenuous efforts to resume peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority led two Israeli Arab businessmen to take the initiative and open the first Fox store in the West Bank.
After investing hundreds of thousands of dollars in renovations and the training of employees, the two businessmen soon found themselves at the center of a protest organized by "Anti-normalization" activists and journalists.
Facing daily threats, the two entrepreneurs decided to call off the project, which would have provided jobs to nearly 150 Palestinians.
Although the Palestinian Authority gave permission to the two businessmen to open the Ramallah Fox branch, it was yet unable to do anything to protect them against the threats, including calls for fire-bombing the store.
The opening of a clothing store in Ramallah may be a minor issue, especially compared with the major and explosive issues facing Israeli and Palestinian negotiators.
But this incident, in which a clothing shop is forced -- under threats -- to withdraw plans to open branch in a Palestinian city, is an indication of what awaits Abbas if and when he dares to reach any agreement with Israel.
The same "anti-normalization" movement which Abbas supports will be the first to turn against him if he strikes a deal with Israel.
Although Fox clothes are immensely popular among young Palestinian men and women, the fashion retailer did not have a branch in the West Bank or Gaza Strip.
While many Palestinian merchants have been quietly selling Fox clothes in several Palestinian cities, they are particularly afraid of the strong "anti-normalization" movement that prohibits any form of contact with Israelis.
Ironically, this movement is fully supported by the same Palestinian Authority and Fatah leaders whose leaders do not hesitate to conduct public meetings with Israelis, in addition to security coordination with the Israel Defense Forces in the West Bank.
Just this week, senior Fatah officials were invited to the Knesset for talks with Israeli colleagues about peace and coexistence; and earlier, Fatah leaders in Ramallah hosted scores of Israeli politicians, including members of the Likud and Shas parties, to an event organized by the joint Israeli-Palestinian Geneva Initiative group.
The campaign against the opening of a Fox store in Ramallah also coincided with the launching of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in Washington.
While Palestinian activists were busy threatening the owners of the clothing store, their representatives, Saeb Erekat and Mohamed Shtayyeh, were sitting with Israeli minister Tzipi Livni in Washington and talking about ways of achieving peace and coexistence between the two sides.
What Kerry and the U.S. Administration need to understand is that Abbas has failed to prepare his people for the possibility of peace with Israel. Abbas may be conducting peace talks with Israel, but at the same time he is also backing campaigns that promote boycotts and hatred of Israel. It is important to talk peace. But it is even more important to educate people about peace -- something that neither Yasser Arafat nor his successor, Abbas, have done for the past two decades.

Related Topics: Khaled Abu Toameh

"Radicalizing" the Muslim Brotherhood

by Shoshana Bryen
August 1, 2013 at 4:00 am

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3907/muslim-brotherhood-radicalizing

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For many people in the Arab world, "democracy" is good and people should vote only because voting can bring the undemocratic Muslim Brotherhood to power. But if voting does not bring the desired outcome -- a Muslim state wedded to Sharia law -- then back to the revolution and the caliphate.

Following another night of violence in Cairo during which 72 people were killed, The New York Times accused the military led government of Abdul Fattah al Sisi of "radicalizing" the Muslim Brotherhood. "For all its stated commitment to democracy and nonviolence, the Brotherhood's only reliable partners now are other Islamist groups whose members may be more willing to use violent or radical tactics -- partners that would tar the Brotherhood's identity as a more pragmatic movement with a broader base."
The poor Brotherhood. It seems, according to The Times, that people it cannot control are pushing it into violence it does not want. Pardon me, but how do you "radicalize" an organization the credo of which is, "Allah is our objective; the Quran is our law, the Prophet is our leader; Jihad is our way; and death for the sake of Allah is the highest of our aspirations"? The Brotherhood was born in violence and knows the value not only of violence, but also of martyrdom. Since its ouster, its leaders have been threatening and inciting violence, hoping to provoke the secular government into killing.
The organization works much the same way Hamas -- the Brotherhood's Palestinian franchise -- does. Hamas implants its military capabilities, storehouses and launch sites in civilian neighborhoods in Gaza. From behind the captive civilians, it fires rockets and missiles at Israeli towns, putting on high alert a million people on who will have exactly 15 seconds to find shelter when the alarm goes off. When the situation becomes intolerable, Israel responds and Hamas wins: if the Israelis are cautious, and there are no civilian casualties, Hamas has terrorized Israel with no consequence. If there are civilian casualties, Hamas wins again, bewailing Israeli brutality in front of Western media.
The wailing and moaning of Cairenes over the Brotherhood dead is similarly suspect. The temporary, albeit decades-long non-violence of the Egyptian Brotherhood was the product of decades of imprisonment and persecution at the hands of secular Egyptian governments, and the knowledge that it would not come to power in Egypt by the sword. But what The Times calls the Brotherhood's "stated commitment to democracy and nonviolence," was belied by its violent and non-democratic year in power, and by its behavior since its ouster.
Coptic Christians have born the brunt of the Brotherhood's disregard for minorities in general and Christians in particular. The Morsi government denied culpability in an attack on April 4, in which four men were killed and homes, a nursery and a church were burned. But video from an April 7 attack on St. Mark's Church , in which two Copts were killed and 84 wounded, show Egyptian security forces ignoring the perpetrators. When it was over, the only people arrested were four Copts. Coptic Christians have been fleeing the country to wherever they can find asylum.
So it may have been out of an interest in self-preservation that the Coptic community supported the ouster of Morsi, and the Coptic Pope Tawadros II agreed to sit on the Interim Council. The Brotherhood, however, has been looking for scapegoats, and at least nine Copts have been killed as the Brotherhood has denounced Christian support for the al Sisi government.
Far from showing itself to be inclusive, the Muslim Brotherhood has denounced the Copts, the liberals and even the Salafists who were part of the anti-Morsi coalition of 2011-12. "These people dare to mock our religion!" shouted Safwat Hegazy, a Brotherhood leader, as reported in the New York Times. "God will punish them."
Far from being "democratic," the Brotherhood simply found the ballot box a convenient mechanism for lifting the better-organized parties to victory in what was more a referendum than an election of competing ideas and competing parties. One young man told reporters, "No more ballot boxes. We used to believe in the caliphate. The international community said we should go with ballot boxes, so we followed that path. But… if ballot boxes don't bring righteousness, we will all go back to demanding a caliphate."
And here, in a single sentence, is the problem not only of Egypt, but of the American desire to implant "democracy" in hostile territory, as if elections were the same thing as democracy instead of just one small part of many institutions, including free speech, equal justice under law, freedom from religion, property rights, and other systems that need to be implanted before elections, not after. For many people in the Arab world, though, "democracy" is good and people should vote only because voting can bring the undemocratic Muslim Brotherhood to power in a way the international community finds acceptable. But if voting does not bring the desired outcome -- a Muslim Brotherhood state wedded to Sharia law -- then back to revolution and the caliphate, "democracy" and the Western world be damned. The Muslim Brotherhood was born radical, and its relative "moderation" was at best a temporary expedient.
This leaves the Obama Administration in a difficult position. Violence by the interim government makes it harder to move Egypt toward the economic and political changes required to keep the country afloat, despite the cash infusions by Saudi Arabia and the UAE. But having lost power and with nothing more to lose, it is the Muslim Brotherhood that is provoking the government. The United States, in this event, should make it clear we will stand by the interim government. The descent of Egypt into violent chaos has to be as unacceptable to Washington as it is to Cairo.

Related Topics: Egypt | Shoshana Bryen

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