Thursday, September 20, 2012

Gatestone Update :: Hisham Jarallah: The Peace Process: View from the West Bank, and more



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The Peace Process: View from the West Bank

by Hisham Jarallah
September 20, 2012 at 5:00 am
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Abbas's media, spokesmen and mosque imams have radicalized Palestinians to the point where many of them are no longer prepared to hear about peace. The conflict in the Middle East is not over a settlement or a checkpoint. Rather this is a conflict over the very existence of Israel.
The day the video was released containing US Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's remarks that the "Palestinians are not interested whatsoever in peace," the PLO announced that it was studying the possibility of canceling the Oslo Accords.
The PLO announcement about rescinding the Oslo Accords — in addition to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's continued refusal to resume peace talks with Israel -- came after two days of discussions headed by Abbas, and show Romney's assessment to be correct.
For the past three years, Abbas has used the issue of settlements, initiated by the current US Obama administration, as an excuse to stay away from the negotiating table with Israel. Until then, the settlements did not seem to bother Abbas or his predecessor, Yasser Arafat, who conducted peace talks with successive Israeli governments while construction in the settlements continued.
Abbas decided to suspend the peace talks with the Israeli government because he prefers to impose a solution on Israel rather than achieving one through negotiations.
Romney is also correct in assuming that Palestinians remain "committed to the destruction and elimination of Israel."
The last time Palestinians held a free and fair election, in January 2006, a majority of Palestinians voted for Hamas, the radical Islamic movement committed to the destruction of Israel.
True, many Palestinians voted for Hamas because they wanted to punish Abbas's corruption-riddled Fatah faction, but at the end of the day, the Palestinians knew that they were casting their ballots for a terror movement that does not hesitate to dispatch suicide bombers and rockets to kill innocent civilians. Many Palestinians are convinced that Hamas would score another victory if another free and fair election were held in the West Bank and Gaza Strip these days.
The Palestinian Authority's declared policy in recent years has been to promote boycotts of Israel and criminalize all forms of normalization with Israelis. Abbas and his government have also devoted tremendous efforts to depict Israel as an apartheid state that must be ostracized by the rest of the world.
Abbas's media, spokesmen and mosque imams have radicalized Palestinians to a point where many of them are no longer prepared to hear about peace with Israel.
Abbas believes that with the help of the UN and other countries, he will be able to extract more concessions from Israel than if he returned to the negotiating table. Hence his decision to resume his effort to unilaterally seek UN recognition of a Palestinian state on the pre-1967 lines.
At almost at the same time the Romney video was released, Abbas announced that he was "determined" to file another request for membership in the UN during the General Assembly session in New York later this month.
Romney's prediction that a Palestinian state would pose a threat to Israel, and his fear of Iran's increased involvement, in the Middle East are not unjustified. Once Hamas extends its control from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank, Iran, Sudan and many Islamic terror groups will start flooding the area with weapons in preparation for jihad [holy war] against the "Zionist entity."
Were it not for Iran, Hizbollah would be powerless to direct tens of thousands of rockets toward Israel. Without Iran's support, Hamas would never have been able to remain in power in the Gaza Strip and acquire thousands of missiles and rockets. In the future, the Iranians will not miss an opportunity to set foot in the West Bank.
Anti-Israel sentiments in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and the rest of the Arab and Islamic countries are so high that Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood President, Mohamed Morsi, has not had the courage to utter the word Israel even once since he came to power.
Finally, how can anyone disagree with the position Romney also espoused toward the "two-state solution"? Hasn't the two-state solution already been realized? Didn't the Palestinians end up with, not one, but two states of their own -- one in the Gaza Strip and another in the West Bank?
Was it Israel's fault that Hamas forced the PLO out of the Gaza Strip in 2007? Was it Israel's fault that a majority of Palestinians voted in favor of Hamas and its terrorist agenda a year earlier?
The actions and words of Abbas and his aides over the past three years prove beyond any doubt that they have chosen to abandon the path of peace in favor of a huge diplomatic effort to delegitimize Israel in the eyes of the international community.
Romney should be commended for understanding that the conflict in the Middle East is not over a settlement or a checkpoint. Rather, this is a conflict over the very existence of Israel. In the Arab and Islamic world, there is still a majority of people who have not come to terms with Israel's right to exist. Unlike Barack Obama, Romney appears to have understood where the real problem lies.
Related Topics:  Hisham Jarallah

Australia Censors Free Speech
Stalls Visa Application for Geert Wilders

by Soeren Kern
September 20, 2012 at 4:30 am
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A sympathizer for jihad is allowed into the country as part of the "normal" process for of British applicants, but an opponent of jihad -- a man never convicted of a crime, and a member of the Dutch parliament -- is blocked from coming.
Geert Wilders, the Dutch MP who frequently warns about the dangers of Islamic radicalism, has applied for a visa to visit and give speeches in Australia, but the application has stalled.
The official reason for the delay is that Wilders is on the Movement Alert List, a database of people of security concern to the Australian government. It means that his application is being held up at the Department of Immigration headquarters in Canberra while more thorough security checks are done.
But the real reason for the delay is that the high priests of Australian multiculturalism want to silence Wilders' warnings about the tragic failure of multiculturalism in Europe.
Some Australian politicians have effectively admitted that the visa imbroglio is all about politics and has nothing to do with security.
According to Senator Richard Di Natale, a member of the far-left Greens Party, Wilders is not welcome in Australia.
"We don't want to see Geert Wilders in this country. His views are not welcome here," Di Natale told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. "This country's got a great story when it comes to multiculturalism, it's part of my own personal story, it's something we should all be proud of and here we've got a man who is the antithesis of multiculturalism."
A recent study titled "Secret Saudi Funding of Radical Islamic Groups in Australia" found that Saudi Arabia is spending billions of dollars to promote radical Islam in the country, including through the construction of mosques, schools and Islamic cultural centers. A key Saudi objective is to prevent Muslim immigrants from integrating into Australian society in order to promote the establishment of a parallel Muslim society in the country.
As if to underscore the politically correct calculations delaying Wilders' visa application, the governing Australian Labour Party swiftly approved a visa for Taji Mustafa, the British head of the Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir, a group notorious for religious intolerance, disdain for Western values and sympathy for jihad.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard said she would not be revoking Mustafa's visa and that Hizb ut-Tahrir was not on the government's list of proscribed terrorist groups.
Wilders had been planning to visit Sydney and Melbourne from October 12 to 21. Although he applied for a visa in late August, the Australian authorities have still not granted him a visa, and his supporters now fear he may be refused entry into the country.
His speaking tour of Australia is being organized by a group called the Q Society, a national grassroots organization dedicated to raising awareness about the rise of Islamic Sharia law in Australia.
Q Society Spokesman Andrew Horwood says the organization involves "ordinary Australians who are concerned about the march of Islam into this country. We are non-political, we are a secular organization, and we've seen what's happened in Europe and we're concerned about that. Our charter is to educate the Australian population about what Australia will be like in 20 or 30 years' time with Islam if we choose not to understand it."
The Q Society wants to know why Wilders' staff and security detail had their visas approved within days, but Wilders' application is still pending.
Says Horwood: "We find it very strange that a visa is taking so long to come from a politician of a respected democracy. It should be an automatic thing. He's coming here to give the advantage of his knowledge, the advantage of what's happening in Europe, and I cannot see why it's not an automatic thing: 'yes, you're welcome here.' I cannot understand why everything has just ground to a halt."
If his visa is approved, Wilders will tell Australians that they will see the erosion of their cultural values, including freedom of speech, if they continue to follow multicultural policies that are allowing the Islamization of the country.
"Multiculturalism, I'm afraid, has been a disaster, but only because it is being used as a tool to promote Islam," Wilders recently said.
Muslim immigration to Australia has skyrocketed over the past 15 years. According to the 2011 census, there were 476,300 Muslims in Australia, the most recent year for which government census data is available. This figure is a 375% jump from 1996, when there were just over 100,000 Muslims in the country.
The rapid increase in the Muslim population in Australia has been accompanied by many of the same social and security problems faced by Europe, where the rise of Islam is transforming the continent beyond recognition.
Hizb ut-Tahrir seeks to establish a worldwide Islamic Caliphate that would be ruled by Islamic Sharia law. The group, which has an estimated one million members, is very active in efforts to promote the spread of Sharia law in Europe. Hizb ut-Tahrir is also strongly anti-Zionist and calls for Israel, which it calls an "illegal entity," to be dismantled.
Hizb ut-Tahrir's divisive leader, Taji Mustafa, was invited to Australia with open arms to address the group's annual conference, which was held in the Bankstown district of Sydney on September 16. The official title of the conference was: "Muslims Rise: Caliphate Imminent."
Hizb ut-Tahrir has been accused of inciting riots in Australia to protest the American-made anti-Islam YouTube film called Innocence of Muslims. The group's Australian chapter on September 19 issued an eight-point statement in which it justified the "praiseworthy" actions of 400 anti-Western Muslim protesters who clashed with riot police in downtown Sydney on September 15.
"It is a clear illustration that the major issue with events in Sydney is not the violence, but the anti-Islamic agenda peddled by media and politicians," the group said. "We encourage Muslims to continue in their noble work of resisting Western attacks, accounting the political establishment and media, and redoubling efforts to establish Islam and the Caliphate in the Muslim World."
Police arrested and charged eight Muslim protesters with a range of offenses including assaulting police and resisting arrest. Several police officers were injured when a protester used the timber pole of a banner to hit them on the head as they were trying to protect the U.S. consulate from being stormed.
Australian political commentators have noted the sad irony: A sympathizer for jihad is allowed into the country as part of the "normal" process of British applicants, but an opponent of jihad -- a man never convicted of a crime and a member of the Dutch parliament -- is blocked from coming.
Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute. He is also Senior Fellow for European Politics at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on Facebook.
Related Topics:  Soeren Kern

A Raw Salafist Power Play

by Michael J. Totten
September 20, 2012 at 3:30 am
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We can – and certainly should – make it clear to the likes of Mohamed Morsi that we can make his job and his life a lot more difficult than the Salafists can.
It should be clear to almost everyone by now that the rampaging mob violence against American embassies and consulates in the Middle East and North Africa last week was not primarily motivated by a video uploaded to YouTube. Something offensive to Muslims (along with something offensive to just about everyone else in the world) is posted on the Internet several times every second, yet massive international uprisings against this thing or that thing break out only periodically.
Rather than a spontaneous outburst, what we saw last week was a raw play for political power by radical Salafists. We have seen things like this before, most notoriously in Tehran after the Iranian revolution.
On November 4, 1979, 52 American diplomats were taken hostage at the U.S. Embassy in Iran by young supporters of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini who belonged to the so-called Muslim Student Followers of the Imam's Line. Iran was not yet a theocracy. Khomeini had not consolidated power after the overthrow of the Shah's government; his Islamist faction still had to battle it out for control with Iran's liberals and leftists.
Khomeinei may not have orchestrated the takeover personally, but it was not long before he threw his full support behind it: he realized how popular the hostage-takers were -- Iranian anti-Americanism was at its apogee then -- while his proposal for a theocratic constitution was meeting stiff resistance from his internal enemies. By rallying the country around the cause of anti-Americanism he was able seriously to blunt criticism of the domestic agenda. All he had to do was tar his opponents as secretly pro-American. The deflection worked brilliantly.
The Salafists have just pulled a similar stunt in Egypt. They are more extreme and therefore less popular than the Muslim Brotherhood government. By ginning up an anti-American mob and forcing President Mohamed Morsi, himself a Brotherhood member, to send riot police after the demonstrators to protect the American Embassy, they were able to make him look like a tool of the West. When push came to shove, Morsi ended up siccing the cops on his fellow Egyptians to protect the interests of the hated "imperialists."
Walter Russell Mead bluntly put it this way: "Moderates who speak against violence or try to cool matters look like American puppets; this is the kind of issue the radicals love, and we can expect them to milk it for all it is worth."
Morsi did not condemn the attack on our embassy in Cairo—or attacks against us anywhere else—for two days. Nor did his police officers initially do a thing to stop belligerent rioters who tore down the American flag and replace with an Al Qaeda banner. Such things would have appeared "pro-American." Not until President Barack Obama supposedly yelled at him on the phone did Morsi do his job and order the authorities to do theirs.
Salafist preachers ginned up a similar mob in Tunisia, although this time the police responded at once and struggled to keep rioters out of the embassy. President Moncef Marzouki even sent hundreds of his own presidential guards to the embassy; unfortunately the walls were nevertheless breached by militants with Al Qaeda flags.
Salafist gangs have been running amok in Tunisia now for a year, and the police are already accustomed to battling it out with them in the streets. Unlike in Egypt where Salafists won 25 percent of the parliamentary vote, a huge majority of Tunisians finds this extremist faction repulsive, even terrifying. We shall have to wait to find out if attacking an American target instead of a local one has boosted the Salafists' popularity.
The terrorist attack against the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, however, clearly backfired -- spectacularly. Protests broke out all over the country -- not against America or the anti-Mohammad video, but against terrorism. The Libyan government purged its security chiefs in Benghazi and has already arrested dozens of suspects.
Cairo is the place where the Salafist onslaught against us was hatched, and it is the place where it was carried out most effectively. As it is likely to happen again, the United States will have to do something about it. Members of Congress are publicly questioning whether the Egyptian government deserves any more aid. This question is an excellent start. There is nothing we can do to stop radical Islamists from framing the United States when they need a wedge issue, but we can -- and certainly should -- make it clear to the likes of Mohamed Morsi that we can make his job and his life a lot more difficult than the Salafists can.
Michael J. Totten is a contributing editor at World Affairs and City Journal and is the prize-winning author of Where the West Ends and The Road to Fatima Gate.
Related Topics:  Egypt  |  Michael J. Totten

The Ambivalent US Iran Doctrine

by Yaakov Lappin
September 20, 2012 at 2:30 am
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Ironically, the less credible the threat of military force is, the more likely it is that eventually military force will have to be used.
Is Washington's refusal to set red lines over Iran's nuclear military program spurring Tehran to continue onward, towards nuclear weapons possession, at full speed?
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has issued a call for clear red lines to be defined by the international community. The idea behind the lines is simple: A breach of them by Iran in its quest for nuclear weapons will trigger action against it.
Jerusalem presumably believes that without red lines, Iran will simply not take the threat of military force seriously enough to freeze its uranium enrichment, or enter into further negotiations in any meaningful way.
Washington, saying that the only red line it abides by is the production of nuclear weapons, rejected this call. Any further red lines, President Barack Obama said earlier this month, would constrain the US's room to maneuver.
Furthermore, according to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, countries are not governed by red lines.
However, as Dr. Emily Landau, a senior arms control expert from Tel Aviv University's Institute for National Security Studies pointed out Obama himself used red lines twice this year -- and did so effectively.
In the first instance, when Iran threatened to respond to economic sanctions by closing off the Strait of Hormuz shipping lane, through which much of the world's oil passes, Obama said that doing so would constitute an unacceptable breach of a red line. Sure enough, Iran backed off, and downplayed its own threat within a few weeks.
The second use of a red line came after it emerged that Syrian dictator Basher Assad was moving deadly chemical weapons around Syria. Obama said that any further movements of the unconventional weapons, or signs that they were about to be used, would constitute a breach of a red line. There have been no further reports of chemical weapons on the move in war-torn Syria.
Iran knows that the US is being selective about its use of red lines, and that the Obama Administration is reluctant to use this same pressure mechanism on its nuclear program.
What conclusion is Iran likely to take away? One need look no farther than Iran's rapidly progressing uranium enrichment drive, its continuing refusal to allow IAEA experts access to nuclear facilities, and the fact that no serious negotiations between the P5+1 representatives (the US, Russia, China, France, Britain, and Germany) and Iran are on the horizon.
The threat of military force is supposed to be one of three critical pillars of a comprehensive policy to persuade the Iranian regime to stop its march towards atomic bombs.
The second pillar, biting sanctions, is in place, and is taking its toll on the Iranian economy. But the sanctions have utterly failed to convince Tehran to change course on its nuclear program. So long as the worsening Iranian economy does not influence the rate of uranium enrichment, sanctions cannot be considered to have worked.
The third and last pillar, diplomacy, is currently dead in the water, after three failed rounds of negotiations this year.
All three pillars are tied to each other – a structural weakness in one means the other two cannot function properly. In this instance, it is the pillar of a credible military threat that is looking weak, and a refusal to discuss red lines is contributing to that weakness.
Ironically, the less credible the threat of military force is, the more likely it is that military force will eventually have to be used.
Some in the Obama Administration, such as Defense Secretary Panetta, have pointed out that Israel too has not set red lines on Iran. But Israel is not involved in negotiations with Iran, and a red line pressure mechanism would be of no use to Israel -- a fact that makes Panetta's claim appear rather cynical in the eyes of Israeli national security analysts.
There are other factors leading Iran to confirm its belief that the international community is not serious about stopping its nuclear program.
One of them is the public spat between Netanyahu and Obama over these very issues. The open argument, which has escalated into unprecedented feuding via international media outlets, will surely give Iran more cause to trivialize international resolve and unity.
When US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, said last month that an Israeli strike would only delay Iranian nuclear progress, but not destroy the program, he seemed to be stating the obvious. Read between the lines, however, and Dempsey appeared to be hinting that a delay caused by an Israeli strike would not be significant.
The comment seemed to be part of an open US media campaign to dissuade Israel from striking. What it may have done instead was damage Israeli deterrence in Iranian eyes.
The lack of red lines, diplomatic arguments among allies, and an unconvincing threat of military force will all lead Iran to move forward on its nuclear program.
In the meantime, it seems fair to believe that Iran is quickly approaching Israel's own, unannounced red line.
Related Topics:  Iran  |  Yaakov Lappin

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