Month: October 2008

Amira Hass double feature in Monde Diplo

The great Israeli chronicler of the occupation of Palestine has this depressing reports on how the two Palestinian governments are undermining Palestinian unity:

The intimidation and repression of Hamas in the West Bank is mirrored in Gaza, where Hamas persecutes Fatah members and their families: institutions are closed down; there are illegal arrests, torture in detention and press restrictions; the PA’s television station has been closed down; demonstrations are repressed by force.Chatting on the phone to an old friend in Gaza, a devout Muslim, I mentioned a discussion we had had about suicide bombers some years back, when I’d been staying with him in a refugee camp.

“Don’t say ‘when I stayed with you’,” he said. “Say ‘when I stayed with you and your family’. Otherwise”, he added with a laugh, “anyone listening in might think we were alone!” The security services of the “respectable” PA were kitted out from the start with sophisticated surveillance equipment (it’s not for nothing that they get their training in the United Kingdom and United States). And now Hamas is following suit.

[From Palestinians: divided we fall, by Amira Hass]

And also here a specific example looking at how parliaments (doesn’t) work:

Neither of the two governments is constitutionally legal: one has been dissolved, but continues to govern; the other is provisional, and should have organised elections a long time ago. But parliament is not completely paralysed: its Gaza half, made up mainly of Hamas members, regularly meets and drafts bills.

In theory the Legislative Council – which has 132 MPs, of whom 74 are from Hamas – has authority over both Gaza and the West Bank. In order to fulfil quorum requirements, it uses its power of attorney over the votes of the 40 or so Hamas MPs resident in the West Bank who were arrested by Israel over the past two years.

In Ramallah, parliament does not meet. The government of Salam Fayyad set up its own special department for legislating, and President Mahmoud Abbas issues presidential decrees, which serve as laws. According to Reuters, 406 laws and presidential decrees have been produced in this way since June 2007 (1). Palestinian legal experts and members of the Legislative Council warn of the risk of a dictatorial regime as a result of the non-separation between legislative and executive powers. Officials respond that it is not possible to govern without legislating, and say the laws can be annulled when the crisis is over.

[From A tale of two parliaments, by Amira Hass]

Links October 8th to October 9th

Links from my del.icio.us account for October 8th through October 9th:

  • EGYPT: Anger Approaches Boiling Point – So will there be any consequence to Egyptians' anger?

  • My Mom’s Hummus Recipe — Ralph Nader for President in 2008 – Surreal: Ralph Nader is selling his Mom's hummus recipes in exchange for campaign contributions,in reaction to the Israel-Lebanon Hummus War.

  • Arabs, Jews clash in Israel city
    (AFP)     – More silly religion: "Cars and stores were damaged as Jews and Arabs clashed in the Israeli city of Acre after an Arab man was assaulted for driving during Yom Kippur, the Haaretz newpaper reported on Thursday."

  • Arab Reform Bulletin – Carnegie Endowment for International Peace – "Has the United States Poisoned Democracy?" asks an article in this month's Arab Reform Bulletin. Also articles on Israel/Palestine and the MB in Jordan

  • Rice laments Egypt’s human rights record – Reuters.com – The short version: we will keep raising the issue and saying that we care but never actually do anything concrete. We care but not that much.

  • BBC NEWS | Middle East | Woman dies in Egypt police raid – "The woman was pushed to the ground by officers when she would not let them enter her home to look for her brother, a suspected thief, police said. She was in the last stages of pregnancy and died of internal bleeding caused by the fall, police added."

  • Al Jazeera English – Middle East – Bid to halt Egypt-Israel gas deal – "Ibrahim Yossri, 65, arrived at the court on Tuesday to call on the Egyptian government to stop exporting natural gas to its Middle East neighbour.
    Yossri, who used to work as director of international treaties in the Egyptian foreign ministry, said the deal was illegal and costing the Egyptian taxpayer $9 million a day."

  • Daily News Egypt – SAUDI SHEIKHS’ FATWAS IN THE SPOTLIGHT – To be henceforth known as the Prudish Cyclop Fatwa: "CAIRO: A Saudi Sheikh recently issued a fatwa stating that women who wear the niqab (full face veil) are only allowed to show one eye, covering the other along with the rest of their bodies." Nevermind the silly (and probably sexually depraved and small-penised) sheikh, the interesting thing in the article is about the satellite channel he's on. This kind of thing almost makes you want to like the Arab Information Ministers' Satellite Broadcasting Charter. These channels need much more scrutiny than they have received, and not just when they encourage violence.

  • Asia Times Online :: Syria plays hardball with the Saudis – Sami Moubayed says al-Hayat now banned in Syria. Remember that the very nasty indeed Assad regime psychologically brutalized the paper's correspondent (who once had cozy relationship with certain officials and has apparently now quit in protest at his paper's anti-Syrian slant). But he sees this as part of a wider Saudi-Syrian war, or at least Damascus going against part of the Saudi elite: after all senior princes still have major investments in Damascus, one of the many signs that the "isolate Syria" strategy of a few years ago is an utter failure. Incidentally, commiseration to newspaper-reading Syrians, who since both Sharq al-Awasat and al-Hayat are banned will have to live with Tishreen. (Thanks for the link, DRB)

Links for October 8th

Links from my del.icio.us account for October 8th:

  • FT.com / World – Vision of Palestine at odds with the world – "Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu grabs a green marker and jumps from his seat to sketch a map of the West Bank on a whiteboard. With vigorous strokes, the former Israeli prime minister and current leader of the rightwing Likud party outlines his plan for tackling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
    What emerges is not what the Palestinians and almost the entire international community have in mind, which is a contiguous Palestinian state that follows broadly the borders in place before the 1967 war and the Israeli occupation. Instead, Mr Netanyahu wants to see the West Bank divided into a collection of disconnected economic zones with dedicated business projects."

  • Syrian troops gather on Lebanese border – Yahoo! News – Again. Or is it ongoing?

  • McCain’sh – Moroccan play on words: McCain'sh = there isn't = No McCain. They even made a T-shirt!

  • Of Kif & Remittances – Parminedes' Fallacy on the dramatic rise of remittances in Morocco, and the continuing importance of hashish cultivation as an export-oriented cash crop

  • MB boycott Cairo and Ain Shams SU elections – "The Muslim Brothers are boycotting the student union elections in Cairo and Ain Shams Universities to protest security interference." Note that this previously led to the 2006 "martial arts demo" as clashes between thugs and MB students escalated.

  • Dar Al Hayat – Arab Pessimists – Muhammad Salah on pessimists and optimists in the Arab media

  • Egypt family attacked in sectarian dispute – Reuters.com – How terribly sad: "CAIRO, Oct 7 (Reuters) – An Egyptian Christian man angry at his sister's conversion to Islam and marriage to a Muslim broke into her Cairo apartment and sprayed gunfire on the family of three, killing the husband, security sources said on Tuesday."

On Hichem Djait

I read this Angry Arab post this morning and could not agree more:

Hichem Djait: Probably the most important and original scholar on Islam. I have been reading about the origins of the Great Fitnah in Islam. It is easy to discover that the best book there is on the subject is by the brilliant Tunisian scholar, Hichem Djait: La Grande Discorde, which appeared in an excellent Arabic translation but not in an English translation. Djait is largely unknwn in US academia although he is in my opinion one of the best contemporary scholars on Islam. This is a man who is equally fluent in German philosophy–in German–and in French historiography–in French–and in Arabic writings–in Arabic. Only one of his books is available in English, L’Europe et l’Islam. That book should be read along with Said’s Orientalism and Rodinson’s La Fascination de l’Islam as the essential readings on the subject (and Irwin’s latest Dangerous Knowledge, albeit as a critical counterpoint). In the introduction to his book on Fitnah, Djait points out (with surprise) that there are no studies about the subject, with the exception of a book by Taha Husayn which is literary in nature. Husayn (contrary to his reputation) was quite apologetic in his writings on Islam. Djait is great in being critical of Orientalist literature and critical of the early Islamic sources. Politically, Djait surprises me: this brilliant scholar has Saddamist Arab nationalist sympathies.

Hichem Djait’s Fitna is incredibly rich, detailed history and the best book on the subject I know of. Whatever you do, don’t get the book with the same main title by Kepel. Djait’s book is the real thing, and considering the creepy anti-Shiism rising in the Sunni Arab world it’s probably worth re-reading.

New York encounters

So I apologize again for my recent lack of writing…

I’ve been couch surfing and (then) moving into a new place.

The cultural highlights of my last month in New York, however, have been seeing Tariq Ali and Norman Finkelstein, among others, talk at the Brecht Forum a few weeks back about Barak Obama’s foreign policy. The general consensus was that his foreign policy, despite his hopeful rhetoric, was a continuation of self-defeating imperialist American tendencies. Also, an interesting and inevitable discussion opened up over whether one should vote, nonetheless, for Obama (the panel was split). There was also quite a bit of discussion of the situation in Pakistan. Ali said that war in Pakistan was being pursued “as an alibi for the failure of the Afghanistan war.” 

Last week, I had the thrill of meeting the great poet Adonis. Unfortunately, I didn’t hear him read his own poetry, which he did at an event in honor of Edward Said. I was told by people who attended that it was fantastic–Adonis read his long poem on New York, “قبر من اجل نيو يورك” (“A Tomb for New York”). A few days later, I attended an informal talk he gave about Islam and literature. Adonis talked about the historic divide between literature and religion, between poets that celebrated the joys of wine and caliphs who used religion to shore up their political power. He posed a few provocative questions: he asked, for example, how one can explain the fact that if Arabic is the language of God, it was nonetheless an existing language, spoken by pagans, before God’s revelation? But overall his talk was replete with simple oppositions (perhaps expecting a US audience that wasn’t that familiar with the subject)–it posited a historic separation between art and religion, and set modern Arab writers up as the descendants of rebellious, hedonist medieval poets, small creators competing with the big Creator. 

On a side note, I was shocked and dismayed by my utter failure to find a book of Adonis’ poetry in New York. I looked for his work at three or four bookstores, hoping to get a copy for him to sign, and found nothing.

Links October 5th to October 7th

Links from my del.icio.us account for October 5th through October 7th:

Eissa released by Mubarak

Boss Hosni has ordered the release of al-Destour editor Ibrahim Eissa, who was recently jailed for writing this:

The president in Egypt is a god and gods don’t get sick. Thus, President Mubarak, those surrounding him, and the hypocrites hide his illness and leave the country prey to rumors. It is not a serious illness. It’s just old age. But the Egyptian people are entitled to know if the president is down with something as minor as the flu.

But Mubarak is most misericordious and most merciful, is He not?

Links October 3rd to October 4th

Links from my del.icio.us account for October 3rd through October 4th: