A hotly contested parliamentary election produced an unexpectedly decisive victory for the pro-Western coalition that has led the Lebanese government for the past four years. The outcome was a sharp reverse for the Hezbollah movement and for Iran and Syria, which had hoped to establish dominion over Lebanon.

This again shows the stupidity of seeing everything in The Middle East through this myopic binary lens of pro-Western versus pro-Iranian/Syrian.  Or in Condi Rice’s language “the moderates” versus “the extremists”.  Excuse me, but when exactly did Saudi Arabia become moderate?  And what about the Shia dominated government of PM Maliki in Iraq?  Are they on the pro-Western side or the pro-Iranian side?  Answer C: Both.  Or perhaps D: Neither.  As they don’t buy into that stupid framework. This lens is just another ignorant variation on the same dumb theme of the Cold War binary of viewing the Middle East solely through the pro-American or pro-Soviet glasses.

Anyone who has ever studied Lebanese history, especially 20th century history, will know how convoluted and difficult to grasp it is.  For one it doesn’t take into account left/right political distinctions or local economic and political concerns.

Juan Cole on exactly this point:

The March 14 Alliance won because of the strength of the local economy, the desire for tourism, and anger at Hezbollah for streetfighting in 2008 that left 11 dead, more than a year of protests and sit-ins, and the Hezbollah bloc’s ultimately successful attempt to strong-arm its way to effective veto power in the government.

The key issue going forward for Lebanon is for the winners to not use this election as a cover to marginalize the other electoral side.  Because those groups, like Hezbollah and Amal, represent populations–particularly lower class Shia from the south of Lebanon.  A group that historically was left out politically.  That is, the March 14th Alliance can not use this as a way to just try and push through its own Shia-less agenda. That would end badly.  Certainly the March 14th Alliance won enough seats to do a basically 50% + 1 ram through Parliament anything it wants.  But if does so, it doesn’t take a political science master to figure out what will happen–a return to the events of 2006.  Which the WaPo editorial reminds us of in just about the most falsely leading ideological way possible:

The winning coalition of Sunni, Christian and Druze parties is no match for Hezbollah in the streets; the Islamist movement used force to seize control of most of Beirut last year, and it compelled the government to grant it veto power over its decisions.

The reason Hezbollah launched those attacks was because the Sunni groups tried to cut off their telecommunications/satellites at the airport.  Now obviously there’s a question about whether Hezbollah should have its own private surveillance capacity but this is at the same time the US was funding Saad Hariri to form a Sunni militia to counteract them.  Which of course (unsurprisingly) failed.  So it’s not like they (Hezb.) were the only milita in town; they just happened to be the best organized most disciplined one.

Fortunately since the election so far–fingers crossed–both sides have said the right things.  Hezbollah’s spokesman has stated they are waiting from a legitimate offer from the other side and if they get one they’ll join up in National Unity Coalition government and as it were “turn the page” on Lebanese politics.  By a good one they mean one that recognizes they and their coalition represent something like 40% of the country.  Similarly from the winning March 14th side, Walid Jumblatt–one of the main coalition partners (head of the Druze faction)–said that Hezbollah should be brought into the government. [Read more →]

by max socol

In the bowels of ED Kain’s most recent Israel prophecy, there’s a (pleasantly civil) debate swirling around the security implications of a West Bank withdrawal. As I mentioned there, it reminded me of speaking to Akiva Eldar, the Ha’aretz reporter and author whose anti-settlement politicking has made him a national star, of a sort.

I very much like Eldar and enjoyed his talk. He delivers a persuasive and excellent presentation on just how destructive settlements are — so good, in fact, that I dug out my old docket pad, where I scribbled the notes I took (just below, appropriately, notes from my interview with the party leader of National Union, the radical right-wing settlers’ party that wants to force Palestinians out of the West Bank.) Here they are, for those who are interested: [Read more →]

1. Benjamin Netanyahu and Tipi Livni

There is something remarkable and frightening about the fact that Avigdor Lieberman’s Party, Yisrael Beiteinu, came in third in Israel’s recent parliamentary elections, gaining 15 seats in the Knesset, only 13 fewer than Tipi Livni’s moderate Kadima Party and only 12 fewer than the Conservative Likud Party.  Yisrael Beiteinu, which translates to Israel is Our Home, campaigned on an anti-Arab ticket–denouncing Israeli Arabs as unpatriotic, and calling for their expulsion.  The Party could very well decide whether Likud or Kadima is the head of the next government, unless the two should choose to form a unity Government.

Now, every Democratic nation should be able to choose who they please to run their Government, even racially driven, extremist Parties like Yisrael Beiteinu, but the fact of that Party’s success does call to question how long Israel’s current course will be sustainable.  I am a great admirer of Israel, which I view as a a nation at odds with itself, a land of hope and tragedy, a strange mixture of redemption and defeat, startling oppression and the promise of freedom.

The birth of the State of Israel signaled the last chapter in the long Diaspora, but has led to sixty years of Palestinian existence as a homeless population–a sort of new Diaspora spread out across refugee camps, occupied territories, and Arab cities across the region; lead by terrorists, nationalists, and religious leaders; second class citizens in whatever place they have the bad luck of ending up in.  Israel, once lively with the dream of the original idealistis who founded it, has over the years become increasingly militarized, entrenched, and anti-Democratic.

I do sympathize with the plight of Israel.  It took a number of wars to drive them to this place.  Those misguided socialists whose ideas founded the Zionist movement have all been replaced by more realistic leaders.  Unfortunately, the reality that many of these new visionaries live by – be they Avigdor Lieberman or Tipi Livni -  is one of stubborn refusal to make the hard choices necessary to bring about a lasting peace, and in some cases a stubborn resolve to see these compromises aborted.

Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza, ostensibly a move toward peace with the Palestinians, was coupled with increased settlement of the West Bank, a region fast becoming a mini-apartheid state with an state; a three-year blockade that has severely damaged the living conditions of Gazans (who had already become a captive market for Israeli exports, and have now been made dramatically more dependent on Israeli mercy and goods through the blockade and recent war); and despite all of this, continued rocket fire out of Gaza, continued violence between IDF forces and Palestinians, assassinations, arrests, and kidnappings–essentially, for all the increased militarism on Israel’s part, it has been met only with violent reprisal and the collective suffering of Israelis and Palestinians.

And now, Israelis have voted into the Knesset fifteen seats for a Party dedicated to the expulsion of Arabs from Israel, and the continued expansion of Israeli settlers into the West Bank–a policy whose logical outcome is the total expulsion of Palestinians and Arabs from Israel altogether, or into smaller Gaza-like enclaves within the West Bank, surrounded by Israeli security forces, and utterly dependent on Israel for their continued survival. [Read more →]

The Islamic world is nothing like the Western world.  We have few, if any, of the same values and virtually no historical commonality save our shared, centuries-old conflict with one another.  The Islamic world, by and large, has none of the laws or customs necessary to develop an organic democratic society the way Western nations have.  Therefore, the only way to achieve peace with the Islamic world is for them to adopt our notions of plurality, democracy, and humanism.  They won’t do this on their own because of their lack of shared values, and so it follows that we must intervene on their behalf to impose these values, and fashion democracies for them in our image.

This is the neoconservative philosophy, at least in regards to the middle east, in a proverbial nutshell.  One would think the fallacy here too apparent, and yet it has shaped much of our foreign policy in regards to the region for the past three decades.  The very fact that the Islamic world does not have a similar body of customs and laws, or a similar canon of shared values should disqualify it even as a potential for imposed democracy.  And if this is the only means by which we can ever achieve peace with the region, then it would follow that peace with the region is simply not possible since the region is inhospitable to such imposition.

In other words, the very premise for invading countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan in order to democratize them and thereby impose peace through war, is a false premise.

Of course, bound part and parcel to this philosophy is the notion that two democracies will never war against one another.  That democracies did in fact make war on one another during World War II seems to go unnoticed.  That democratically elected Hamas and democratic Israel are in a perpetual conflict also seems to go ignored, or white-washed with the mantra of terrorism.

In any case, I wonder constantly at the acrobatics involved in composing this sort of rhetoric.  If only the Muslim world would be more like us then we could all live in peace.  They’re nothing like us and never will be, so we have to foist it upon them.   Never mind the war this causes, because in the long run, contra to all historical evidence, the defeated and subdued peoples of Iraq and Afghanistan will shed their thousands of years of historical conditioning in favor of our happy, Western traditions, brought to them with all the compassion shock and awe can muster.

In another attempt at cynicism, let me postulate that we can do more to Westernize the Middle East with McDonald’s and television sitcoms than we’ll ever achieve through democracy promotion and war.  Whether that’s the part of our culture we ought to be exporting is another question entirely, but it certainly beats killing people.  Better fat and lazy than dead.

What if the Ottoman Empire had not fallen, or crumbled rather, in the wake of World War I?  What if, on the other hand, the Turkish reforms had come sooner, watering down the rise in Arab nationalism and secessionist trends?  What if, rather than joining forces with Central Powers in WWI, the Empire had remained neutral?  Better yet, what if the Empire had chosen a less warlike course even earlier, avoiding involvement in the Crimean War?

Even had the Empire lost its Eastern European provinces, what if they had remained a significant power in the Middle East?

This is the heart of the question, because the effects of the fallen Ottoman Empire most impacted the Middle East.  In a sense, the collapse of the Empire had a very similar backlash in the Middle East as the fall of Soviet Russia had in Eastern Europe, save for two major differences: First, colonial powers temporarily filled the void left by the Ottoman collapse, essentially forcing many of the nationalist movements to bubble beneath the surface for decades; and second, the Zionist project entered into this confluence of colonialism and nationalism and religiosity.

The Ottomans had dealt rather beneficently with Jews and Christians alike over the Jerusalem question for centuries prior to the advent of Zionism.  And yet, the Zionists emerged prior to the final collapse of the Empire, but gained little traction until the period of British Mandate over Palestine and Transjordan.  How would the Ottomans have dealt with the Zionist cause?  Would Arab nationalism have played such an integral role in the inability of that movement to ever peacefully come about?  At the time, Palestine was essentially an Ottoman backwater, and Jerusalem was populated mostly by warring Christian factions.

I think much of the failure of the Zionist project, and the continued state of persistent war between Israel and her neighbors, lies in the fact that all these fires burned at once–the Arab nationalism, the Zionism, the Holocaust, the end of European colonial rule–and all these were profoundly, or inadvertently, effected by the end of Ottoman rule.  Had that rule not came to an end, how would the world, and the region, look today?