Israel Matzav: Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler

Monday, December 19, 2011

Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler

Here's Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler for Monday, December 19.

1) Whatever happened to Hamas?

Maybe it's wishful thinking. In early October, The Christian Science Monitor reported:
Of the many complaints in Gaza, one has become a popular refrain: the increasing taxes levied by Hamas. Fathi Abu Gamar, a gas station owner in Jabaliya refugee camp, readily joins the chorus: The Islamist movement that rules this tiny coastal territory takes more than half his revenue from gas sales, he says, leaving him with a tiny profit.
But he quickly becomes quiet when a man, whom neighbors identify as a Hamas informer, begins hovering nearby, listening intently. Above him, the green flags of Hamas flutter in the strong sea breeze. Like Hamas's popularity, they are faded and tattered.
Hamas has been steadily losing support among Gaza's 1.6 million residents after winning elections in 2006 and violently ousting its secular rival, Fatah, the following year.
Following the announcement of the exchange of prisoners for Gilad Shalit, Time Magazine reported:
Such complaints, damaging to any political party, are potentially fatal to the Islamists. Besieged by Israel and the West, which regards it as a terrorist group, and cut off from the Palestinian majority in the West Bank, Hamas has little to offer beyond its jihadist credentials — and the promise of clean government. So it's hardly surprising that the party has been rapidly losing ground in its stronghold. Recent surveys by leading pollsters conclude that if elections were held in Gaza today, Hamas, an acronym in Arabic for the Islamic Resistance Movement, would not be returned to power. A June poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research found that Hamas would get just 28% of the vote, a steep decline from the 44% plurality it won in 2006.
Especially alarming for the Islamists is a precipitous drop in support for the party among Gaza's youth: two-thirds of the population is under 25. In a March survey taken in the afterglow of the protests in Cairo's Tahrir Square that led to the ouster of Egypt's dictator, Hosni Mubarak, more than 60% of Gazans age 18 to 27 said they too would support public demonstrations demanding regime change.
Soon after that poll, 10,000 turned out at a rally to voice a more modest demand — that Hamas end the bloody rift with Fatah, the secular party it bested six years ago. Hamas sent thugs to break up the demonstration. "We came out to say the people should be united, and they attack us!" says Shadi Hassan, 22, who lives in a refugee camp and sells cigarettes. "We are suffocated, and we need regime change."
At the same time the Sydney Morning Herald reported:
Hamas's popularity has plummeted this year in Gaza and the West Bank, polls show. Palestinians criticise the group for its strong-arm rule over Gaza and confrontational stance towards the outside world, which fuelled an economic boycott by the West and rigid restrictions by Israel.
Last week Elder of Ziyon noted that there were Charges of corruption against Hamas leader Haniyeh.The source Elder of Ziyon used was from Fatah, but just because the source was an interested party doesn't necessarily mean that the charges were false. But Elder of Ziyon also points out that there is no proof of Haniyeh's corruption.

Still Hamas has been reported to smuggling lots of money over the years. Given that there's no transparency in Hamas (despite supposedly having run on a platform of good government) it's not a stretch to believe that as much of the money that goes to public purposes, also lines private pockets.

2) Making peace with tyrants

Shortly before his famous column claiming that (then) Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia was willing to promote a peace initiative to the Arab League, Thomas Friedman presented the idea in a column, Dear Arab League. Using the conceit of a memo from then President George W. Bush, Friedman wrote:
There is one thing I can guarantee, though. If you don't make this offer, nothing will change, the Israeli silent majority will continue following Sharon into a dead end, and the Arab League will fall further and further behind the rest of the world. Guys, you know that the peace process was about so much more than just Israelis and Palestinians. It was also a cover and an engine for all the progressive forces in the Arab world, that want to integrate, trade and modernize. Without the peace process, all those forces are now on the run. That's why you all need this as much as Israelis and Palestinians do. The future is in your hands -- not mine.
There's much wrong with this. Why was Israel fighting back against terror a "dead end?" But the basic idea that Friedman was promoting here is that the Arab League needed to reach out to Israel.

What's interesting, though, is how Friedman began the column:
Memo to: President Hosni Mubarak, Crown Prince Abdullah, King Abdullah, President Bashar al-Assad and the rest of the Arab League
Not a single elected leader among them. However in May of this year, Friedman wrote End of Mideast Wholesale.
Let’s start with Israel. For the last 30 years, Israel enjoyed peace with Egypt wholesale — by having peace with just one man, Hosni Mubarak. That sale is over. Today, post-Mubarak, to sustain the peace treaty with Egypt in any kind of stable manner, Israel is going to have to pay retail. It is going to have to make peace with 85 million Egyptians. The days in which one phone call by Israel to Mubarak could shut down any crisis in relations are over.
This is, of course, an oversimplification. Still his point - not ten years after he effectively told Israel, make peace with the a club of dictators - was that dictators are not reliable peace partners. Given the energy Friedman devoted to promoting the Arab peace initiative, this is a pretty big reversal. Friedman never acknowledged his change of heart. (His later opinion is closer to the truth.)

I really don't believe that Friedman thinks things out. He comes up with a cute, pithy (and usually wrong) phrase to explain a phenomenon in the news, but doesn't think through its implications for more than a few columns. He's an ADD columnist, always distracted by his next brilliant insight. Of course, when it comes to the Middle East somehow, Israel is always the problem.

A different Friedman, this time Andrew, writes in the Jerusalem Post, Uprisings opportunity for new Israeli foreign policy:
Whereas Israel has historically driven toward peace treaties with enemy states like Egypt and Jordan, Islamic countries further afield have been left to the back burner. There are good reasons for this approach: There has never been any chance of a military conflict with Indonesia, so there has never been a sense of urgency to make “peace” with the world’s largest Muslim nation.
But as the events in Egypt over the past year have shown clearly, there is a yawning gap between “non-belligerence” and peace. Three decades after Camp David, most Egyptians continue to boycott Israeli artists and shun ties with Israeli professionals, and the Egyptian press continues to be a prime source for violent, repulsive anti-Semitism in the world today. A contact in Alexandria told me recently that it would be very unwise to visit Egypt with a Jewish name like Friedman, and that walking the streets there with a kippa today is simply unthinkable.
In contrast, there is no peace deal with Indonesia. Israel does not even have formal diplomatic ties with Jakarta. All we’ve got with Indonesia is trade – $300 million in bilateral trade in 2010 – and rich, expanding cultural ties. Indonesian journalists, doctors and graduate students visit Israel freely (in this case, “freely” means that Israel welcomes them in, and they do not face repercussions upon returning home), and Israelis do the same thing in the opposite direction.
Implicitly, Andrew Friedman is arguing that the fashionable idea of negotiated peace between Israel and its neighbors is obsolete. The appeal of a negotiated peace between Israel and the Arab world was that it would bring stability to a notoriously unstable region. But perhaps peace isn't something that can be forced on societies that don't want it. What's really needed is a change or attitude in the Arab world towards Israel, and all the negotiations in the world can't change that. In fact as long as Israel is faulted for failing to make peace, it excuses those who won't accept Israel under any circumstances.

If I am to choose which Friedman is more sensible, I would choose Andrew over Tom.