As a follow-up to my previous post on imperial ideology, see this characteristically “frank” averral by Marty Peretz, owner/editor of The New Republic:

“But, frankly, Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims. And among those Muslims led by the Imam Rauf there is hardly one who has raised a fuss about the routine and random bloodshed that defines their brotherhood. So, yes, I wonder whether I need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse.”

As I noted in the previous post, this trope has a long history:

“But there is an extension that’s worth noting: not only are we supposed to view ‘their’ children as latent terrorists; we’re supposed to believe that this is the only value they hold for their parents as well. Where Palestinian children are not treasured as weapons to be expended in combat, they are not valued by their families at all. Thus the claim, conventionally attributed to Golda Meir, that “[p]eace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us”. Indeed, the contention that ‘they don’t mind being killed’ is a pretty conventional imperial trope. A British commander observed, during the British occupation of Iraq during the 1920s, that Iraqi “[Sheikhs]… do not seem to resent … that women and children are accidently killed by bombs”, while Gen. Westmoreland was reassured that Vietnamese families don’t care when their children are mowed down by gunfire or incinerated by napalm, since “[t]he Oriental doesn’t put the same high price on life as does a Westerner. Life is plentiful. Life is cheap in the Orient.”

H/t for the Peretz quote to Glenn Greenwald, who comments: ‘One of the great (& most revealing) journalistic scandals is how TNR is owned/edited by a raving bigot & few care… Replace “Muslim” with “Jew” or “Christian” and imagine the furor if an editor of a major magazine said it’.

From Dar Al Hayat:

By virtue of his opportunism as well, he included a special preface in the American edition of his memoirs, which I found to be a poem praising America, its policies and its people, added to his claim in his memoirs that George W. Bush whom the whole world judged to be stupid, ignorant, and cannot speak his own English language, is intelligent, brave and a genius.

 

Imperialists on imperialism:

H/t Asa.

“Peace process? What peace process? That’s so nineties. After 18 years, don’t they feel silly…

There are only two scenarios. The optimistic one is more of the same. The pessimistic one is it’s going to get worse.” – Ahmad Aweidah, head of the Palestinian Stock Exchange

Ah, the ‘peace process’. Like Shimon Peres, Big Brother and Ernie the Giant Chicken, it just won’t fucking die already. What was particularly striking about the announcement of its latest iteration, due to kick-off next week, was how little anyone cared. In the stream of public and media consciousness, even in Israel, it barely caused a ripple. Apart from the real die-hards, no one can even muster the energy to pretend anymore. Whereas three years ago Bush officials were having to actively downplay hopes about the “Annapolis summit” – which was not a “peace conference”, you’ll recall, and which would not produce a “declaration of principles” but rather a “declaration of interests” – now US officials are having to make absurd promises, like claiming that a peace agreement will be reached within a year, just to get people to pay attention. Palestinians and Israelis are united in dismissing the talks as an irrelevency.If the ‘peace process’ is indeed redolent of a “soap opera”, it most resembles the relaunch of Crossroads, greeted with a collective shrug and an uneasy feeling that, looking back, the original wasn’t much cop either.

It’s not surprising that the Obama administration is attempting to play up the talks, given how much effort it expended in realising them. Not, as you might expect, because the Israeli government was unwilling to play ball. On the contrary: Netanyahu has been pushing for these talks for months. Rather, the weight of US power was brought to bear on the Palestinian Authority, as usual. Abbas, clinging to what scraps of nationalist dignity he had left, had insisted that no talks would take place without an agreement from Israel to extend its (non-existent) freeze on settlement construction. He also called for a predetermined schedule for negotiations, and for any future peace talks to be based on the principle of an Israeli withdrawal to its legal borders – that is, on the international political and legal consensus. As the Israeli Institute for National Security Studies reports, “renewal of the talks was made possible following heavy pressure leveled by the United States on Abbas to concede” all of these demands. Abbas has been duly attacked by Palestinians for this “surrender”, from within his own party as well as Hamas, but ultimately, the survival of the PA rests not on internal support but on international backing. Its capitulation was thus inevitable:

“In spite of opposition at home, Abbas knows that the bottom line is he could survive different opinions but not an end to economic aid.”

Ha’aretz is correct, then, to report the announcement of the talks as a victory for Netanyahu. But why was the Israeli Prime Minister so keen on them in the first place?

Negotiations about what?

We can discount his own explanation – that the Israeli government seeks a genuine, stable peace settlement – immediately. Netanyahu’s position hasn’t changed from the one elaborated by his communications director back in 1996: Israel will retain control over the West Bank, and

Palestinians can call whatever fragments of Palestine are left to them "a state" if they like—or they can call them "fried chicken".

What this “fried chicken” will consist of is clear from Netanyahu’s pronouncements – he rejects the ‘67 borders as a basis for negotiations, insists on retaining control over the Jordan Valley, promises that a “united Jerusalem” will remain Israel’s eternal capital and has indicated that all the major ‘settlement blocs’ will remain annexed to Israel. (Netanyahu’s rejectionism is mild compared to that of some of his colleagues: the ‘spiritual leader’ of Shas, a member of Israel’s governing coalition, yesterday called for genocide against “these evil people”, the Palestinians.) More importantly, however, it is clear from Israel’s actions on the ground. July and August saw a “new peak” in the destruction of Palestinian homes – in July alone, 550 Palestinians lost their homes or livelihoods. In just one incident, the Israeli military destroyed “almost the entire Palestinian village of Al Farisiye in the Jordan Valley”, consistent with long-term Israeli objectives for the area, described above. The ‘Civil Administration’ has confirmed that it “received instructions from the Ministry of Defense to step up demolitions of Palestinian structures throughout Area C in the near future”. The Israeli government is refusing to freeze settlement expansion for the duration of the talks, and construction continues on the annexation wall, which functions as a “political fence” (Shimon Peres) with “implications” for Israel’s “future border” (Tzipi Livni).

In other words, a ‘peace settlement’ for the Israeli government would represent an acceptance by Palestinians of the plan Israel has been pushing since the occupation began, a formalisation of what it has already implemented on the ground, by force. In short,

“The gap between the positions held by most coalition members, including Netanyahu’s inner cabinet of seven, and those held by the Palestinians is evident - and nothing has happened to indicate it has narrowed”.

The Israeli government continues to reject the international consensus two-state settlement, which is the minimum any Palestinian leader – even Mahmoud Abbas – can accept. In these circumstances, one can only ask, along with (fucked clock) George Will, “negotiations about what?”

Obama

“Aha!”, supporters of the ‘peace process’ might say at this point. “You’re forgetting about the Obama factor!” Or trying to, at any rate. The ‘Obama factor’, always a somewhat mystical affair, is even less grounded in evidence here than usual. His administration’s record in Palestine differs from his predecessors in precisely two ways. First, US military aid to Israel has significantly increased and military ties have deepened. As recently as April the Pentagon agreed to sell Israel three Hercules aircraft in an arms deal worth nearly a quarter of a billion dollars. Second, it has ruled out imposing significant material pressure on Israel to reverse, or even moderate, its rejectionism. As the Washington Post reports,

“The diplomatic crisis between the U.S. and Israel has sent a tremor through their alliance, but one key part of the bond seems virtually untouchable: the roughly $3 billion a year in U.S. military aid”

—which ought to raise questions about the sincerity of said “diplomatic crisis”. “There has been no serious talk of using aid as a club”, the Post continued. This is critical, because while the US backs the occupation, Israel has no incentive to end it. As Alon Liel, director general of Israel’s Foreign Ministry while Barak was PM, explains,

“it’s not possible for the strongest kid and the weakest kid in the neighborhood to conduct talks on reconciliation and friendship when the talks are based on arm wrestling. It’s absolutely clear who will win.”

Particularly when the “strongest kid” is backed by the global military superpower.

It is true that there have been mumblings of discontent within the US establishment recently – witness, for instance, Gen. Petraeus’s averral that perceptions of US “favouritism for Israel” damage “our interests” – but this is nothing new, and they show little sign of becoming dominant.

Talks as formaldehyde

Why, then, have the US and Israel insisted on the resumption of talks, given the opposition of both to a two-state settlement? For Obama, as one Arab diplomat has noted, the announcement of talks allows him “to claim some kind of success, especially ahead of the upcoming elections and at a time when his popularity in the polls does not seem to be all that good”. One of Obama’s principle virtues for US power – what made him distinct from McCain and Bush – is his ability to put a human face on American hegemony, to consolidate the US position and try to repair some of the damage caused by Bush-era adventurism. In the Middle East that meant being seen to empathise with regional concerns, and appearing to do something to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. To that end he engaged in a highly visible campaign to pressure ‘both parties’ (in fact, the Palestinians) to resume talks – without, as discussed above, acting to ensure that there was anything substantive to talk about.

For Israel, meanwhile, the talks represent the latest manifestation of “the most spectacular deception in modern diplomatic history”, a “fiction that has served primarily to provide cover for its systematic confiscation of Palestinian land”. As the Financial Times chief international affairs correspondent writes,

“the Middle East peace process long ago turned into a tortured charade of pure process while events on the ground – in particular the relentless and strategic Israeli colonisation of occupied Palestinian land – pull in the opposite direction to peace. “We have all been colluding in a gigantic confidence trick,” is how one Arab minister puts it, “and here we go again”.

As with the “road map”, an agreement signed with much fanfare in 2003 and then obliterated a day later, when the Israeli government entered 14 “reservations” that rendered the entire process meaningless, and as with the more recent ‘Annapolis process’, which proceeded in tandem with a 60% increase in settlement construction, the point is simply to ensure that “we are forever engaged in some negotiations”. This strategy is nothing new. As Yossi Sarid recalls, “they used to say about Yitzhak Shamir that he conducted peace negotiations with our neighbors as long as they never ended”. “There are no sacred dates”, insisted Rabin. As veteran diplomatic correspondent Aluf Benn wrote of the ‘Annapolis process’,

“Conducting high-level talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority; Israel’s willingness to discuss the principles for ending the conflict; and gestures such as the release of prisoners are in themselves sufficient to remove international pressure on Israel to withdraw from the territories and to end the occupation.

At the same time, as long as it’s all talk and there are no agreements or decisions that involve the evacuation of territories and the settlements, there is no internal pressure on the government either”.

Israel’s typical strategy, once a new round of fraudulent negotiations commences, is to declare that “security” and “institutional” issues must be agreed upon (and even implemented) before any ‘final status’ issues – borders, Jerusalem, the refugees – are discussed, and to focus on red herring issues like demanding recognition of Israel as a “Jewish state”. This explains the convoluted structure of Oslo and the Road Map, for instance. The effect of this is to bog the whole process down in minutiae and defer discussion of Palestinian political claims to an unspecified point in the distant future. And sure enough, right on cue:

“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that Palestinian recognition of Israel as the Jewish homeland is chief among essential components for a peace deal, days ahead of renewed negotiations.”

and

“Netanyahu says he plans to focus on security arrangements before addressing final borders … Netanyahu said during his meetings he wants to discuss security issues with the Palestinians first; only then would the two sides focus on borders of a future Palestinian state.”

This strategy of endlessly drawn-out negotiations recalls Dov Weisglass’s account of the objectives behind the Gaza “disengagement”, which was designed, he explained, to put the ‘peace process’ in “formaldehyde”. This formulation isn’t quite accurate, since the ‘peace process’ is itself a form of formaldehyde, intended to maintain the diplomatic status quo while enabling continued entrenchment of the occupation on the ground.

Netanyahu’s desire to launch a new round of ‘peace talks’, then, is explicable as a continuation of a long-running Israeli strategy to reduce the diplomatic costs of continued occupation, and as a response to the unusual level of international criticism directed at Israel following the Gaza massacre and the attack on the Gaza Freedom flotilla. “So what is Israel actually trying to achieve?”, asks Avi Issacharoff.

“Basically, nothing. There is a superficial peace process which is going nowhere but eases international pressure on Israel to reach a deal with the Palestinians”.

Better than nothing?

Despite widespread cynicism about this latest round of talks, there is an attitude, particularly prevalent among liberal Obama supporters, that despite their low probability of success they are nonetheless worth supporting on the basis that they are, after all, ‘better than nothing’. As an Economist article puts it,

“Whether Mr Obama is trying to solve the conflict or simply to manage it is hard to say, since the secret of “managing” is to maintain the pretence that the peace process will indeed one day produce. Either way, it cannot be a bad thing to get old enemies to talk”.

This approach is misguided, for reasons that should already be clear. The ‘peace process’ should be understood as an attempt to consolidate and facilitate, rather than end, Israeli occupation. It “allows Israel to pose as a willing peacemaker while carrying on with business as usual”. Participating in the charade does indeed improve the chances that the ‘peace talks’ will “succeed”, but “success” in this context represents a setback for anyone seeking a genuine negotiated settlement to the conflict.

Furthermore, as Gideon Levy points out, there is always the risk (a small one, in my view, but certainly not one worth being complacent about) that a collapse in negotiations will herald another round of bloodshed. Moreover, launching another diplomatic process from which Hamas is pointedly excluded “spells the demise of any serious dialogue between Fatah and Hamas”. Reuters reports that

“Western diplomats believe efforts to reconcile Hamas and Fatah will be off the agenda entirely for the 12-month duration of negotiations.”

Indeed, the Obama admin apparently views the talks as a method of weakening and isolating Hamas, a continuation of a Bush administration approach that produced (deliberately) internal Palestinian conflict, the administrative separation of Gaza and the West Bank and a divided, weakened Palestinian polity. All serious observers of the conflict recognise that a minimum level of cooperation between Hamas and Fatah is a prerequisite to any serious attempt at peace. The fact that the Obama admin continues to oppose this is telling.

Some people will inevitably continue to believe that Obama, despite all the evidence and historical precedents to the contrary, genuinely intends to force Israel to end its rejectionism. Fine. I won’t attempt to fight the persuasive power of that smile. Instead of disputing whether Obama – or European governments – will act on their words, what we should be doing is organising to ensure that they do. As Stephen Walt puts it, “if you think I’m being too gloomy, then do the world a favor and prove me wrong”. ‘Better than nothing’ assumes that ‘nothing’ is the only alternative. On the eve of the ‘Oslo process’ Haider Abdel-Shafi, head of the Palestinian delegation to the 1991 Madrid Conference, dismissed official “negotiations” as “not worth fighting about”. “The critical issue”, he continued,

“is transforming our own society… We must decide amongst ourselves to use all our strength and resources to develop our collective leadership and the democratic institutions which will achieve our goals and guide us in the future.” (cit. Chomsky, Fateful Triangle, pp. 539-40

Words worth paying attention to, and not only by Palestinians.

In the FT earlier this week there was a piece by their chief economics commentator, Martin Wolf, looking back at “the conservative economic counter-revolution associated with the names of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher” that “began some three decades ago” and “assess the broad economic consequences of that revolution”.

Focusing on GDP per head, which economists use to allow comparisons of countries’ relative wealth irrespective of how large or small their economies are, “at first glance,” Wolf notes “the conservative revolution seems to have achieved some improvements in the previously lagging US and UK economies” . This is something that is often asserted by mainstream political commentators - that the Thatcherite programme was “painful but necessary” (see Andrew Marr’s History of Modern Britain for example) – a brilliant propaganda coup for those wishing to advance the idea that these policies which are beneficial to their interests are actually of benefit to all. However, as Wolf goes on to mention “the magic potion started to lose effectiveness in the 2000s, particularly in the US” and he goes on to predict that even “this improved performance of the US and UK will turn out to have been a blip”. Therefore, even just measured on crude material gain, it would seem that the Thatcher/Reagan “conservative economic counter-revolution” was a failure.

At the start of the column Wolf mentions that he is ignoring “distribution of income”, although he acknowledges that it is “of crucial importance, especially for the US, where a very large proportion of additional income seems to have accrued to the wealthiest”.

If we look at this graph of income inequality published last year by UCL Berkley Economics Professor Emmanuel Saez (receiving very little attention at the time), we can see that whenever there has been a “conservative economic counter-revolution”, income seems to have accrued to the wealthiest. So much for “trickle down” programmes.

Curiously Wolf mentions that what he calls “The Great Recession” has almost certainly marked the end of this ideology, which seems somewhat odd in light of current government policy. “What follows”, he writes “will be something different, though how different it will is still unclear”… I’m guessing it will not be that different at all.

Noam Chomsky speaking earlier this year at Brown University on neoliberalism, NAFTA, and Arizona’s racist immigration law:

via Chomsky Watch.

why MK Haneen Zoabi is totally badass:

“During the visit by leaders of the Palestinian community to Libya a few months ago, MK Hanin Zuabi (Balad ) stood out in particular - the only woman in the “Arabs of 1948” delegation invited to visit Muammar Gadhafi. When we met with Gadhafi in his tent in the town of Sert, this remarkable woman showed courage that is rare in these parts.

The leader preached to us and advised us to practice one of the tenets of Islam - marry four women and bring many children into the world to fight the Israelis. Zuabi, who is known for her struggle for the rights of Palestinian women in Israel, did not hesitate and pointed out to Gadhafi that his philosophy was not acceptable to her because it oppresses women. The tent went silent. It’s not customary to interrupt the leader, we had been told in the briefing before the meeting. Gadhafi listened and simply went on with his speech.

This story proves that Zuabi is cut from tough and unyielding cloth - an uncompromising fighter for her party’s principles both domestically and abroad.”

For previous installments, see here and here.

Security analyst Johan Bergenäs has an article for the Guardian’s Comment is Free website on the Iran nuclear issue which is reasonably typical of the genre, in that it both asks the wrong questions and looks in the wrong place for the answers.

Bergenäs considers what the United States and nations broadly sympathetic to its concerns can do about Iran’s nuclear program. He contends that sanctions are working, and must now be followed up by a new round of diplomacy, including the offer of security guarantees to Iran by the United States. While the US should beware the “Iranian nuclear playbook of delay and deception”, it should also welcome any new “flexibility” on the part of the miscreant nation. A “combination of carrots and sticks ... has brought Iran back to talks”, holding out the promise of “a nuclear weapons-free Iran”.

Obviously its important to acknowledge the fact that Iran has many legitimate security concerns which need to be addressed in order to diffuse the tensions between it and the United States. However, Bergenäs like so many other commentators fails to think through the more fundamental implications that this point has for how we understand the Iranian nuclear issue.

Any attempt by Iran to aquire nuclear weapons (though this is still far from proven) is obviously a major problem. But it is not the problem. If Iran is pursuing weapons - or, more likely, seeking to establish the capacity to create a weapons capability in short order should that be deemed necessary by the leadership - then it is clear that this is in response to the threat posed to it by the world’s leading military power, and the latter’s long-term project to impose its will on the resource-rich Middle East.

Iran has had its government overthrown by a CIA-backed coup, had devastating war waged upon it by a US ally (Saddam), and is now surrounded by US bases and US-occupied nations. Three of its near neighbours - India, Pakistan and Israel - are able to maintain nuclear weapons outside the NPT regime in no small part due to tacit US approval. The ever-present US military itself represents a fourth nuclear threat.

Iran’s government is able to cynically exploit the plight of the Palestinians by posing as their principled defenders because the US underwrites the illegal colonisation of Palestinian land by its Israeli client, helping to block a two state solution, which obviously contributes significantly to regional tension, including between Iran and Israel.

(See my earlier article here for more on the historical and current regional context).

In short, the real underlying problem here is not the dangerous behaviour of a relatively small rogue state - Iran - but the far more dangerous behaviour of a massive rogue state, the US. We may wish to see “a nuclear-free Iran”, or at least a nuclear-weapons-free Iran, but this is unlikely to be secured in any sustainable fashion in the absence of a broader agreement on a nuclear-weapons-free Middle East, as Noam Chomsky points out here. Chomsky also notes that UN Security Council resolution 687, which the US and UK appealed to as justification for their 2003 invasion of Iraq, calls for the establishment of such a nuclear-weapons-free-zone, albeit the Western allies have done nothing to achieve this, and a good deal to undermine it. Beyond the nuclear question, we may wish to see a Middle East free from confrontations such as that between Iran and the US and its allies, but this is unlikely to come about so long as the world’s sole superpower seeks to bend the region to its will irrespective of the wishes of the people who live there. 

Key to the misconceptualisation of the Iran nuclear issue is the unexamined concept of “stability”, rarely questioned by the journalists, experts and commentators that use it in respect of security issues. The US and its allies are seen as agents of and promoters of “stability”, which assumption imbues the West with an air of intrinsic beneficence, fatally undermining the journalistic and academic aspiration to detached objectivity. Almost never discussed is the question of whether there is something inherently destabilising and dangerous to human security in attempts by the world’s most powerful nations to impose their will on foreign lands. The question of what “stability” is for - whether a neutral “stability” for the general good (which the West is assumed to value), or the “stability” of an order conducive to Western power, however grievous the effect on the people of the region - is a question that also goes undiscussed.

In this discourse, what are taken to count as “security issues” are issues defined and placed on the agenda by Western power. Thus the unproven nuclear weapons program of Iran (military expenditure in 2009, $9bn) is taken as a grave threat to the security of the actually nuclear armed United States (military expenditure in 2009 $663bn). The fact that the allegedly feared Iranian attack on nuclear armed Israel could only occur in the context of the Tehran regime, after decades of dogged survival in the face of internal and external pressure, suddenly aquiring a death wish out of thin air and to no discernable purpose, is another absurdity of the current debate that remains conspicuous by its absence.

In short, commentaries that take as their focus the question of what Washington and its allies can do to deal with the Iranian nuclear issue are fundamentally missing the point. They are examining symptoms rather than root causes. The more pertinant question is the dangerous and destabilising effect of US imperialism. Commentaries that reflexively assume US power to be the potential source of solutions to regional tensions find themselves sharing a very small windowless room with a very large elephant.

David Wearing is a PhD researcher in Political Science at the School of Public Policy, University College, London. He writes for the Guardian’s Comment Is Free website and is a co-editor of the New Left Project