Egypt: A war on the press?

Update: This post has been edited for clarity, since two separate trials are mentioned.

The surprise verdict that came down this morning against the editors of four independent political tabloids is the herald of more repression to come — at least when it comes to dealing with President Hosni Mubarak, his son Gamal and other regime bigwigs. It also appears to mark the end of that the three-year window of openness to the press, which saw a multitude of new titles (including all of the ones whose editors were condemned) appear and freedom of expression widen significantly.

Let’s first focus on what happened today: Ibrahim Eissa, editor of al-Destour, Adel Hammouda, editor of al-Fagr, Wael al-Ibrashi, editor of Sawt al-Umma, and Abdel Halim Qandil, editor of al-Karama also face fines of LE20,000. Their bail to stay out of jail pending appeal was set at LE10,000. The prime target in this bunch was Eissa, who has been a thorn in the neck of the regime for over a decade (the previous incarnation of al-Destour was banned in 1997 and Eissa was blackballed from public and private newspapers and television by security interference) — and he will still face separate charges when another trial opens on October 1 for what he published on the rumors. Hammouda, who has run a series of nationalist-populist scandal rags, is a surprise target but even his al-Fagr needed to keep up with the sheer aggressivity of its competitors. al-Ibrashi was long Eissa’s second-in-command and has very much “Destourized” (the phrase is now commonly used among Egyptian journalists to mean making an article more provocative) Sawt al-Umma after he took it over from Hammouda. Finally, Qandil is a seasoned Nasserist activist who, in Fall 2004, was kidnapped by goons and told “not to write about the big people” (al-kubar) — he was one of Egypt’s first journalists to recently take on the institution of the presidency and the president himself.

Together, this group represents the core of Egypt’s political tabloids. It’s true that these newspapers don’t exactly have great journalistic standards, but they serve as (frequently impassioned and funny) pamphlets to vent political frustration. al-Destour, perhaps more than any other newspaper, appeared to specialize in not-so-subtle attacks on Mubarak, particularly in Eissa’s long front-page article that was frequently illustrated with a little cartoon of a king (who the king represented is pretty easy to figure out.) Eissa and a Destour journalist both given suspended sentences in 2006 (upon appeal) for printing an article on a lawyer’s plan to take Mubarak and his family to court for swindling foreign aid. Of course, he did not heed that warning shot. It should also be noted that in addition to the court case, the crony-run Higher Council for the Press is now urging the Journalists’ Syndicate to condemn alleged rumor-mongers, which include all the newspapers listed above.

Judging from reports that the judge praised Mubarak and his son Gamal as he read out the verdict, this crackdown appears very much related to the regime’s that any upcoming political transition, whether to Gamal or someone else, takes place in a controlled atmosphere.

These sentences are about the attacks on the NDP and the presidency that have taken place for well over a year, as if the newspapers were competing with one another in making the regime look bad. The recent furore over when Mubarak is dead, seriously ill or whatever — rumors that the newspapers stand accused of “maliciously spreading” are after all, even if they were not true this time around, plausible: Mubarak is 79 years old and sooner or later the inevitable will happen. Prosecutors are said to be arguing that the editors (more specifically, at least for now, Eissa) were responsible, because they published the rumors, of some $350 million capital flight from foreign investors worried about a chaotic transition. (I’m no Egyptian stock market expert, but surely there are all kinds of possible reasons for capital flight these days, considering high oil, high euro and the lingering malaise over the subprime mortgage business).

Yet, if there is little to no visibility on how presidential transition will take place, whose fault is that? Newspaper editors who are tempted to reprint (and add to) whatever rumor they hear because, let’s face it, the future of the country is a topic that sells? Or that of a president who has not designated a successor and refused to appoint a vice-president?

The entire past three weeks of rumors on Mubarak’s health (which we still have no idea whether they were even partly accurate) have been like an experiment in surrealism. The rumors appeared originally (in al-Badil, I believe) with a report that US Ambassador Francis Ricciardone had said Mubarak looked ill, as well as some speculation as to why Mubarak had not been in the public eye recently. Fast-forward a few weeks and you have the “nationalist” MP Mustafa Bakri calling for Ricciardone’s expulsion on grounds that he deliberately tried to destabilize the country, Ambassador Ricciardone having to categorically deny anything about the rumors a few days ago at a meeting at the American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt, Suzanne Mubarak appearing on TV to say her hubby is fine but that “as a private citizen, not the president’s wife” she feels the journalists who spread the rumors should be punished, those same journalists sentenced in a lightning trial and Gamal (who let’s remember holds no official position outside of the one in the ruling party) suddenly replacing the president in his public functions such as the annual “meeting with the students.”

In a country run like that, if I were a foreign investor I might want to divest too.

In the meantime, if 2006 (or even late 2005) saw the beginning of the crackdown on all opposition figures (jailing of Ayman Nour, campaign against the MB), 2007 appears to be dedicated to silencing the press when it comes to the president. Try as they may, that’s going to be a much tougher job.

Assorted links

In the tradition of Arab summits, let us discuss issues of mutual interest and reaffirm brotherly ties:

Shaaban Abdel Rahim has a new song on the Mubarak health rumors.

The Guardian profiles Alaa al-Aswany as the UK debut of the Yacoubian Building comes out.

Amr Khaled is a hit in America.

Stop the presses — Middle East crap at democracy, says EIU!

More coverage of Nadia Abu al-Haj, the latest academic to be on the Zionist hit-list.

Potential US presidential candidate John Edwards, in a speech on his policy towards terrorism, calls for the establishment of a king of counter-terrorism and intelligence NATO. He calls it CITO. It’s a cure acronym and a pretty good speech.

Jihad for Love — a documentary on gay Muslims. I know its maker and like to think I had a role in persuading him not to foolishly go film on this subject in Saudi Arabia, otherwise he might not have survived to make the documentary. I haven’t seen it, think the title is a bit cheesy (I declare jihad against using the word jihad), but wish him luck.

Israeli officials believe North Korea is selling nuclear materials to Syria. In other news, Israeli officials have proof that Bashar al-Assad and Hassan Nasrallah recently are small, cute puppies for lunch.

Russia unveils “the father of all bombs.” Vladimir Putin entertains me to no end. Do read the wonderful special on the KGB networks the Economist did a couple of weeks ago. I wonder if the Russians are going to start selling this kind of technology in the Middle East. And by the way, if you’re a resident of Ulyanovsk, conceive!

Naomi Klein on the privatization of Iraq, looting in Baghdad, private security firms and the exploitation of natural disasters. See also her Harpers article on “disaster capitalism,” from her new book, the the short film she made to promote it (which no matter what you think of her has cool graphics.) I like some of what Klein writes, but sometimes feel she does not completely master her topics and borrows from academic and other thinkers without attribution. But she’s an excellent vulgarizer, in the best sense of the word.

Also a good occasion to re-read this MERIP piece on the war economy of Iraq.

Joel Beinin writes a letter from al-Tuwani, near Hebron.

I still can’t quite get over the fact that people say things like “Arabic-language instruction is inevitably laden with pan-Arabist and Islamist baggage” and get away with it. Let’s not forget about the racist campaign against the Khalil Gibran International Academy in New York.

Ian Buruma on Norman Podhoretz, that sick fuck.

I am not sure whom has the most forked tongue: Christopher Hitchens or Tariq Ramadan. Ramadan, as Hitchens says, skirts too many issues in trying to make Islamism an acceptable idea (he has at least the merit of dragging it away from the populist muck.) But Hitchens, with his own jihad on Islamism (or should I say Islamo-fascism), wallows in double-entredres, as his own colleagues admit.

POMED has an interview with Sihem Bensedrine, arguably Tunisia’s most important human rights activists. It’s worth reading in contrast to this piece by Jill Caroll about attempts by MEPI to develop independent journalism in Tunisia, which has been put on hold. I wish Jill had talked a little bit more about the journalistic context in Tunisia, one of the most repressive countries in the region in terms of press (and internet) freedom.

Palestinian micro-breweries. It almost brings tears to my eyes as we enter the dry season (in Morocco, the relatively new Casablanca beer is great!). Ramadan Karim, all. And a happy new year to our dear cousins.

The Moroccan 2007 parliamentary elections did not take place

(With apologies to Jean Baudrillard)

Little by little on Saturday the results of Morocco’s parliamentary elections leaked out. First, in the morning, we heard that the PJD still felt it would come first of 33 parties but would still get less than the 60-70 it expected, compared to the 43 it had in the exiting parliament. Then, in the early afternoon, rumors started spreading that the traditionalist Istiqlal party — the grandfather of Moroccan political parties — had in fact come first, and that the PJD might only get 50. Finally, at the end of the day, we learned that the PJD had only gotten 47 seats, compared to the Istiqlal’s 52. The other surprise being that the leftist USFP only got 36 seats, slipping from second to fifth in popularity, while the mostly rural-centered “notable parties” MP and RNI made a serious advance and came in third and fourth respectively.

It had been widely assumed by the press and most political analysts that the PJD would see a major breakthrough, notably because of IRI polls in 2006 that gave it a ridiculous 45%. Although it’s hard to compare because of electoral redistricting and a complex new electoral law, in 2002 the PJD had only run in about half the country’s constituencies and had performed well. This time around, the PJD ran in all but one constituencies but barely got a few extra seats.

That result is probably in part due to the Machiavellian new electoral system, in which voters get to pick local and nationalist party lists, including for the 30 seats reserved to women. This electoral system, largely manufactured by former royal advisor Fouad Ali al-Himma (who since controversially left his post to run in the elections — he won, as expected), basically made it impossible for any party to win a clear cut majority. It made winning all the seats in a district (typically there were three in each of 95 districts) impossible, because to do so a party had to win almost all the votes in that district. This, in turn, ensured that even small parties with a local following (local notables, for instance) could win at least one seat.

The other product of this electoral system, especially compared to the normal first-past-the-post system used in the 1990s when Morocco’s elections were routinely rigged, is that there is an almost total absence of the concept of leadership in politics. Lists are local, and of course MPs have to campaign locally and get their constituents to like them, but there is no real nationwide sense of who a political party’s leaders are except among the educated and politically curious. In Israel, another country that uses a proportional representation system, party leadership is important and can often determine a party’s popularity over the identity of the local MK — hence the political superstars of Ariel Sharon or Benjamin Netanyahu.

Combine this absence of clear leadership-driven politics with the narrow consensus the regime has more or less forced the political parties to operate — for instance no large parties makes much of what democracy activists, serious journalists and political scientists consider to be Morocco’s priority, constitutional reform — and you have a very boring elections were the difference between party programs is hard to see and everyone campaigns on vague promises of fighting corruption and creating more jobs. No wonder the election campaign was so subdued and, well, boring.

This apathy is so pervasive that despite this being the election in which the Moroccan regime has made the most efforts to get people to register, with a huge registration campaign taking place for the past six months, only an estimated 42% of Moroccans bothered to go to vote yesterday (update: Sunday it appeared the turnout was closer to 38%). This is a historic low, much lower than the 52% participation rate of 2002. This might almost amount to a slap in the face of the political system, if not King Muhammad VI who only six weeks ago had condemned “nihilists” who thought the elections were pointless and urged his subjects to vote. In certain respects, this election was cast as a confirmation of Muhammad VI’s legitimacy, since it is only the second since he ascended to the throne in 1999. I’m not sure whether these results reduce his prestige, but they certainly raise important question about the castrated political system his advisors have carefully crafted over the last few years. As do indications that a large proportion that the votes that were cast were blank or deliberately spoiled as a form of protest.

One amusing thing is that the PJD is now complaining about vote-buying and other irregularities. I have no doubt they happened in places. But everyone I spoke to among the political class agreed that these elections would be the cleanest ever at least when it came to government action — in terms of security forces especially not intervening in favor of candidates and acting swiftly to correct fraud. This is what Lahcen Douadi, the PJD’s #2, told me a few days ago. He is now crying foul. It may be that serious fraud, with the help of the regime, took place — election observers will let us know about that, even though thus far it seems they are happy. But one has to wonder, as their Islamists opponents from the banned Adl wal Ihsan movement (with a base estimated at about four times the PJD) like to say, whether potential PJD voters were disappointed that it looked like a lot of the other parties and soft-pedaled the Islamist component of its platform. One would have thought that a low turnout would have favored the PJD and its strong grassroots presence, at least in urban areas. Lesson to Islamist parties: just because the AKP and Hamas are doing well, it doesn’t mean that you’re automatically going to perform well in your own country if you don’t have anything new to offer.

One may puzzle at the PJD’s strong performance considering the low turnout. Conventional wisdom has it that, in countries where political apathy is high, Islamist parties’ strong grassroots may actually over-represent them in election with low turnouts. From what I could see during the campaigning, the PJD’s members who were doing the campaigning were certainly dedicated believers. But they were small in numbers, and it’s not clear that they always got across the poor voters they were targeting. One lesson from this election is that, because of the regional context and a pervasive “the Islamists are coming” discourse, many may have overestimated the PJD’s actual appeal, even if only as a protest vote.

Once again, I am not entirely convinced by the PJD’s accusations that there was massive fraud in the campaign — as I said, Lahcen Daoudi only a few days ago was praising the ministry of interior for taking action swiftly against fraud for the first time in Moroccan electoral history. It’s hardly surprising that, as observers noted, there was some foul-play — the important thing in my eye is that the authorities were not involved in it, as in Egypt in 2005 or previous Moroccan elections. There were even reports that relatives of candidates who were serving in the police were called back to Rabat during the elections to avoid any potential conflict of interest! The one exception to this, of course, is politics in the Western Sahara, where of course police brutality is unfortunately routine and there is a long history of building up the pro-Morocco Rguibat tribe in local politics against pro-Polisario Sahrawis. I am not sure how the election took place there, but I doubt it had the same level of cleanliness as, s
ay, Rabat. (I am surprised to learn, however, that Dakhla was the city with the highest turnout.)

Like many secular, middle class Moroccans I am rather happy that the PJD did not come first. I don’t find their cheap rhetoric about Islamic values being a kind of ISO2000 certification (as one PJDiste explained to me) appealing, and have to wonder about whether their slogan “We Are The Muslims” means that they think everyone else is a kafr. It’s a rather loaded slogan these days. On Sunday night, on a busy street in the upmarket district of Agdal in Rabat, there was a procession of cars driven by the PJD, full of people celebrating their victory. I noticed the cars were full of families, included eight year old girls wearing the hijab, which I definitely have a problem with, chanting Islamist slogans. Apparently, they were given instructions to celebrate a minor advance as a victory.

Aside from the political operators, who can be very charming, I see the movement behind the PJD (Harakat at-Tawhid wal-Islah — Monotheism and Reform — better known by its French acronym MUR) as rather a typical carrier of “globalized Salafism” — not necessarily the extreme thoughts of current mainstream Salafism (not the original Egyptian one), but a diluted and more vague version of them. Their trashy newspaper, at-Tajdid, is forever charging against windmills of sleaze and civilizational decline (more often than not represented by the ample curves of Lebanese pop tarts). It’s not Islamism as a thinking political philosophy (of the kind a few genuinely interesting Islamist thinkers entertain) but as a populist, slightly xenophobic, us-VS-them philosophy, with a good dash of moronic Gulfie values thrown in for good measures.

That being said, despite that the Fassi party won (the Fassis are Morocco’s domineering bourgeois elite that founded the Istiqlal, my family name is typically Fassi), the Istiqlal isn’t exactly exciting. First of all, it shares some of the conservative values of the PJD, which I do not. Secondly, it is an “administrative party” by excellence, looking to the palace for instructions. It may have competent individuals, but its success hardly represents a broadening of the political elite that many would like to see. Most importantly, it is cowardly and submissive (in all fairness, like most parties) on the crucial issue of constitutional reform. Whatever constitutional reform takes place over the next few years will be consensus driven — even the PJD, or at least the wing of it led by Saad Eddin Othmani, had conceded to that. This means minimal concessions from the king unless those MPs and political leaders who want these concessions (real independence of the judiciary, and end to royal ministries, parliamentary oversight of the ministry of interior) really push for them. These people are present among the intellectual elite as well as in politics (notably the USFP offshoot PSU, the hardline wing of the PJD, the far left and the banned Adl wal Ihsan Islamist movement). Whether they chose to fight for it will remain to be seen — the co-optive power of the Makhzen, that security-economic complex that has ruled Morocco for decades, is formidable.

Long story short: the 2007 Moroccan parliamentary elections did not take place. The low turnout suggests few cared about them, and their result means little will change for the next five years. These were virtual elections, taking place among largely interchangeable political parties and within the confines of an electoral system brilliantly designed to generate maximum inertia (Fouad Ali al-Himma, bravo!) The elections, apparently so squeaky clean, served their purpose of advancing a discourse of steadily improving governance in Morocco — one important for Western powers that like to see Morocco, which let’s not forget is still an absolute monarchy, as a rare ally to boast about in the region. It is yet another good case study for why, when looking at democratization, elections really matter little: they are a spectacle for public and international consumption with minimal impact on political reality.

Perhaps we knew that already. But Muhammad VI cannot benefit from the novelty that he is not Hassan II forever. No one can contest many things have improved markedly since he became king. But you have to wonder, beyond new highways, ports and tourism projects that Sidna is forever inaugurating, where this country is heading. Banking on economic growth and technocratic savvy may work for a while, but it does not a democracy make.

Some good links:

  • Your Majesty, one is free to comment – RSF slams king in open letter for repression of the press
  • Ibn Kafka – Great French-language blog (I had the pleasure of dining with its author) with tons of election coverage, lately also in English on Aqoul.
  • What the nihilists think – An English-language Moroccan bloggers answers Muhammad VI’s accusations that those who doubt the usefulness of these elections in such a tightly controlled system are “nihilists.” It includes some good discussion of the constitutional reform issue.
  • Brian Ulrich links to a profile of Maguy Kakan, a Jewish candidate on the national lists for women.
  • Gloom grips Morocco slum as election approaches – good Reuters story on Sidi Moumen, the slum where 16 May 2003 terrorists came from.
  • The king still runs the show – The Economist
  • Al Miraat, another good Moroccan blog that has this great recording of a BBC “World Have Your Say” discussion with none other than the Red Prince himself, Moulay Hisham.

US lying about violence in Iraq!? Say it ain’t so.

Experts Doubt Drop In Violence in Iraq – washingtonpost.com:

The U.S. military’s claim that violence has decreased sharply in Iraq in recent months has come under scrutiny from many experts within and outside the government, who contend that some of the underlying statistics are questionable and selectively ignore negative trends.

Reductions in violence form the centerpiece of the Bush administration’s claim that its war strategy is working. In congressional testimony Monday, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, is expected to cite a 75 percent decrease in sectarian attacks. According to senior U.S. military officials in Baghdad, overall attacks in Iraq were down to 960 a week in August, compared with 1,700 a week in June, and civilian casualties had fallen 17 percent between December 2006 and last month. Unofficial Iraqi figures show a similar decrease.

Others who have looked at the full range of U.S. government statistics on violence, however, accuse the military of cherry-picking positive indicators and caution that the numbers — most of which are classified — are often confusing and contradictory. “Let’s just say that there are several different sources within the administration on violence, and those sources do not agree,” Comptroller General David Walker told Congress on Tuesday in releasing a new Government Accountability Office report on Iraq.

Via Scott Horton, who wrote a letter to the editor of the Washington Post for burying this important story on numbers manipulation in deep inside the newspaper just as whether the US stays in Iraq is the dominant political issue of the day. Walker also notes, as I did with some alarm a few days ago, that the Post appears to be going to its bad old 2003 ways with regards to Iran, notably by publishing this attack on Mohamed al-Baradei several days ago.

For a more general take on Iraq, George Packer has a long piece in the current New Yorker that touches on how compliant the media continues to be:

This week, Ryan Crocker, the U.S. Ambassador in Baghdad, and General David Petraeus, the commander of the multinational forces in Iraq, will give their assessment of the surge to Congress—an event that, in Washington, has taken on the aura of a make-or-break moment for the Administration’s policy. But their testimony is likely to be unremarkable. Administration officials, military officers, and members of Congress described their expectations of it in strikingly similar terms, and a few said that they could write it in advance: military progress, a political stalemate among Iraqis, more time needed.

The Petraeus-Crocker testimony is the kind of short-lived event on which the Administration has relied to shore up support for the war: the “Mission Accomplished” declaration, the deaths of Uday and Qusay Hussein, Saddam’s capture, the transfer of sovereignty, the three rounds of voting, the Plan for Victory, the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Every new milestone, however illusory, allows the Administration to avoid thinking ahead, to the years when the mistakes of Iraq will continue to haunt the U.S.

The media have largely followed the Administration’s myopic approach to the war, and there is likely to be intense coverage of the congressional testimony. But the inadequacy of the surge is already clear, if one honestly assesses the daily lives of Iraqis. Though the streets of Baghdad are marginally less lethal than they were during 2006, sixty thousand Iraqis a month continue to leave their homes, according to the International Organization for Migration, joining the two million who have become refugees and the two million others displaced inside Iraq. The militias, which have become less conspicuous as they wait out the surge, are nevertheless growing in strength, as they extend their control over neighborhoods like Ahmed’s. In the backstreets, the local markets, the university classrooms, and other realms beyond the reach of American observers or American troops, there is no rule of law, only the rule of the gun.

The Packer piece also looks at some suggestions, from an American perspective, of long term strategic issues that will have to be dealt with as a consequence of the Iraqi civil war. One of the more pessimistic views:

Toby Dodge, an Iraq expert at Queen Mary College of the University of London, who also served on the strategic-assessment team, told me, “What has defeated America in Iraq, apart from the failure of the state and its own incompetence, are a bunch of radicals with nothing more sophisticated than reëngineered artillery shells and rocket-propelled grenades. That is a loss of cataclysmic proportions.”
Dodge comes out of the British left and vehemently opposed the war. But this summer, when we met at his London office, he spoke of withdrawal as a prelude to catastrophe. “What are the U.S. troops going to leave?” he said. “They’re going to leave behind a free-for-all where everyone will be fighting everyone else—a civil war that no one actor or organization will be strong enough to win. So that war will go on and on. What will result in the end is the solidification of pockets of geographical coherence. So if you and I were mad enough to jump in a car in Basra—pick a date, 2015—and we tried to drive to Mosul, what we’d be doing is hopping through islands of comparative stability dominated by warlords who, through their own organizational brilliance, or more likely through external support, have managed to set up fiefdoms. Those fiefdoms will be surrounded by ongoing violence and chaos. That looks a lot to me like Afghanistan before the rise of the Taliban. Or Somalia. That’s where Iraq goes when Americans pull out.”

One thing that I would like to see is some local Arab perspective on the long-term impact of the invasion of Iraq. Do Syrians, Jordanians, Saudis, etc. believe it can be contained? Will a country like Egypt, that is not a neighbor of Iraq but an important regional player, also have to suffer the consequences (perhaps losing strategic importance compared to powerful players in Iraq such as Saudi Arabia and Iran)? Will the regional focus shift eastward? Will we have to deal with, from Syria to Morocco, with continuing jihadist agitation and recruitment to fight Americans, or Shias, in Iraq? And, if Iraq today is turning into the Afghanistan of the 1990s, what happens when the veterans of Iraq come back to their countries of origin?

Maryland bans Israel junkets

Ban on Political Junkets to Israel Deals Blow to Lobbying Efforts – Forward.com:

Washington – In a challenge to one of the most powerful lobbying tactics used by the Jewish community, a county in Maryland decided last week that local legislators could no longer go on sponsored trips to Israel.

Montgomery County’s ethics commission decided last month that council members are prohibited from traveling at the expense of the local Jewish community, even when funding is indirectly provided by a private foundation. A trip planned months in advance was subsequently canceled.

“We were stunned by the commission’s decision,” said Ron Halber, executive director of the Greater Washington Jewish Community Relations Council, which organized the trip.

In an e-mail to a Montgomery County legislator, the ethics commission wrote that “the routing of monies through a lobbyist organization to provide travel services makes the gift unacceptable.”

The decision has such weight because sponsored trips to Israel are widely used by Jewish groups both nationally and locally to build support for Israel among non-Jewish leaders and to cultivate one-to-one relationships between American and Israeli leaders. On a national level, the trips have recently come under scrutiny amid the scandals surrounding Washington lobbyists and their relationships with lawmakers. The Montgomery County decision now brings the dilemma to the local level, as communities face the need to adjust to the changing winds in Washington and growing concerns about the power of lobbyists.

Someone needs to campaign to make the ban nationwide.

Israel’s cost to the Arabs

Israel’s cost to the Arabs – Le Monde Diplomatique:

The damage done to the Arabs by Israel’s creation is an untold story in the West. To understand it, you have to set aside the Israeli narrative and the idea of Arabs as fanatical, backward warmongers irrationally bent on destroying a modern, democratic and peaceable state.

For the Arabs, Israel’s presence in their midst has been disastrous. It has led to six major wars, forced them to militarise when they could not afford it, distorted their development, split their ranks and encouraged their fragmentation into ethnic and religious minorities, provoked the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and reared generations of young Arabs on conflict, hatred and hostility. It has forced them to host a state which dominated them and ensured continued western hegemony in their region. A disproportionate amount of damage was borne by the frontline states of Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt. But now Iraq and the rest of the Arab world are affected, as is Arab society in general.

On each visit to the Arab world I am struck by its immense resources and its varied geography, history and customs, from Yemen to the Levant, sweeping through Egypt and Sudan to its westernmost point in Morocco. Such diversity could have made this the wonder of the world, physically beautiful, self-sufficient and wealthy. Instead, it is backward, poor and divided. This is not all Israel’s fault, but its existence has contributed significantly to the Arabs’ decline, and ignoring Israel’s role in the story would be misleading.

This essay is going to be quite controversial, I’m sure, but there are some good points in there. The article is actually an argument in favor of recognizing the Beirut Declaration of 2002 / King Abdullah peace plan as the landmark proposal it is but is rarely recognized as such (all my hostility to the Saudis put aside.) It concludes:

This does not mean that without Israel, the Arab world would have had an untroubled history; Israel often only aggravated or exploited what was already there. The ground for the divisions in the Arab world had been prepared by the major European powers at the end of the world war one. By creating borders and nation-states where none existed, they sowed the seeds of future discord. The imposition of Israel in this setting was just the most flagrant example of the same imperialist policy.

Israel’s powerful western sponsors are committed to its security, irrespective of the cost to the Arabs, who are hamstrung by political weakness and dependence on western favour. How can that be dealt with? Neither war nor peace has solved this predicament, and the Arabs have ended with unsatisfactory and uneven arrangements, characterised by resignation and impotence. The Saudi peace plan represents an acknowledgment of this reality, but also of Israel’s stunning success in imposing its own terms without having compromised. However the plan fares, it is a landmark in the historical evolution of the Arab world from outrage and hostility to accommodation and acceptance, even if grudging. Whether it will be the end of the story remains to be seen.

Some of these themes, on a Palestinian scale, are explored in Rashid Khalidi’s excellent and moving “The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood”, which I just read. But more on that later.

It was for love

The prince, the waitress … and ‘a fairytale come true’:

It is an unlikely setting for romance. And when Sheikh Sayyid bin Maktoum al-Maktoum arrived in Belarus last month for a clay pigeon shooting competition, his only thought was how to win a medal.

But soon after checking into the presidential suite of the Hotel Minsk the Sheikh’s gaze fell on an attractive 19-year-old waitress. Her name was Natasha. The prince liked what he saw.

So much so that instead of leaving for a tournament in Russia the sheikh prolonged his stay in Minsk, wooing Natasha and, last week, marrying her.

Yesterday hotel staff confirmed the prince – a member of Dubai’s ruling royal family – had taken Natasha Muslimorova to be his wife. She only began work in the hotel’s restaurant two months ago, they said. They also expressed bafflement over the courtship, pointing out it would have been hard for the sheikh to meet Natasha since he ate in his room.

. . .

The sheikh, 30, already has a wife and five children, the paper reported. “I can’t say anything without my husband’s permission… But for me life has become a fairytale,” Natasha told the tabloid: “I really love this man.”

Awwww….

al-Saud family feud?

Saudi prince criticises monopoly of power at the heart of kingdom:

A prominent prince plans to form a political party in Saudi Arabia and invite jailed reformists to join. The rare call for reform from within the royal family is likely to anger the kingdom, which bans political parties.

Prince Talal bin Abdul-Aziz, a half-brother of King Abdullah and the father of Saudi Arabia’s richest private business tycoon, also criticised what he termed an alleged monopoly on Saudi power by one faction within the Saudi royal family.

Without wanting to be entirely dismissive of this “reformist” call for a new party, can we really take it really seriously if it’s just about one side of the al-Saud family (may they be cursed to eternal damnation!) not being very happy with the other? Hopefully this will at least destabilize the Saudi regime and it will then be too busy to ruin other countries.

To give him some credit, this princeling is asking for some positive developments:

Prince Talal pointed to neighbouring Gulf nations, such as Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman, which have already opened up their conservative political systems and held elections.

“Saudis are asking why these small countries have followed this direction and not us?” he said.

In the past, Prince Talal has called for an elected assembly to enact legislation, question officials and protect public wealth. In the interview, he also called on the kingdom’s powerful Wahhabi religious establishment to make changes. “We have signed international conventions on women’s rights and we should respect them,” he said.

The group of Saudi activists that Prince Talal cited have been in jail for months for advocating reform. The prince called them “prisoners of conscience, not criminals”.

Prince Talal also called for an independent Anglo-Saudi inquiry into claims that some Saudi royals received kickbacks from oil and arms deals. The US justice department is currently investigating a 1985 arms deal with BAE Systems.

The last of which is more than you can say for the United Kingdom, where not only Labour but the Tories seem quite happy to accept Tony Blair’s closure of the BAE investigation.