Diamonds aren't for Ever
A Book Review of David De Vries: Diamonds and War: State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine (European Review of History: Revue europeenne d'histoire, Volume 19, Issue 2, 2012).
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Striker Mohammed Ghadir puts Israeli anti-racism to the test
By James M. Dorsey
Maccabi Haifa striker Mohammed Ghadir believes that he and Beitar Jerusalem, the bad boy... more
By James M. Dorsey
Maccabi Haifa striker Mohammed Ghadir believes that he and Beitar Jerusalem, the bad boy of Israeli soccer, are a perfect match.
"I am well suited to Beitar, and that team would fit me like a glove. I have no qualms about moving to play for them," Mr. Ghadir is quoted by Israeli daily Ha’aretz as saying. Beitar has a large squad, a significant fan base, wide media coverge and lacks talented strikers, he says.
There is only one hitch: Beitar doesn’t want Mr. Ghadir. Not because he’s not an upcoming star and not because they wouldn’t need a player like Mr. Ghadir but because the striker is an Israeli Palestinian. "Our team and our fans are still not ready for an Arab soccer player," Ha’aretz quotes Beitar’s management as saying. The club prides itself on being the only top league Israeli club to have never hired a Palestinian player in a country whose population is for 20 per cent Palestinian and in which Palestinians play important roles in most other top league teams.
The Beitar management may be right in its approach, not because the team has a point in picking its players on racial grounds but because it prides itself on its bad-boy racist image and is under no pressure to change its ways despite Israeli legal restrictions on discrimination in the work place, the Israel Football Association being the only Middle Eastern soccer body to have launched a campaign against racism and Palestinian tax money contributed to the funding of this year’s refurbishing of Jerusalem stadiums.
Beitar has argued that it has broken no laws by not having hired Palestinian players because no Palestinian has ever solicited at the risk of being a target of the club’s racist attitude. Mr. Ghadir’s desire to play for Beitar puts paid to that argument.
“Now an extraordinarily courageous Arab player has stood up, and fearlessly indicated that he is not afraid to play for Beitar. The Jerusalem squad did not assent to his request - not because he lacks sufficient talent, but because he is an Arab. This is a mark of Cain for Beitar Jerusalem and its fans, and also for the city of Jerusalem, the state of Israel and its legal system, the Israel Football Association and also for the media, which continues to cover this soccer team. Day by day, we reinforce and popularize this loathsome form of racism,” said Ha”aretz columnist Yoav Borowitz in a recent article entitled ‘Kick racism out of Beitar Jerusalem soccer team.’
Established in 1936 and supported by Israeli right wing leaders such as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Beitar traces its roots to a revanchist Zionist youth movement. Its founding players actively resisted the pre-state British mandate authorities. Its fans shocked Israelis when they refused to observe a moment of silence for assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who initiated the first peace negotiations with the Palestinians.
Beitar has the worst disciplinary record in Israel’s top league. Since 2005 it has faced more than 20 hearings and has received various punishments, including points deductions, fines and matches behind closed doors because of its fans’ racist behaviour. Beitar’s matches often resemble a Middle Eastern battlefield. It’s mostly Sephardic fans of Middle Eastern and North African origin, revel in their status as the bad boys of Israeli soccer. Their dislike of Ashkenazi Jews of East European extraction rivals their disdain for Palestinians.
In some ways, Mr. Ghadir’s interest in transferring from Maccabi Haifa to Beitar has an element of going from bad to worse. Israeli police said in October that it suspect militant right-wing Jewish fans of Mr. Ghadir’s own team of painting slogans reminiscent of language used by Jewish settlers on buildings in the town of Bat Yam and Muslim and Christian graves in Jaffa, the formerly Palestinian part of Tel Aviv that today is home to both Israelis and Palestinians. The slogans asserted that "Maccabi Haifa doesn't want Arabs on the team," "Death to Arabs," and "Rabbi Kahane was right," a reference to the late leader of the outlawed extreme right-wing Jewish Defence League (JDL) who was assassinated in New York in 1990. The perpetrators signed the slogans as “Haifa supporters.”
Militant soccer fan racism is encouraged by far-right wing politicians such as National Union deputy Michael Ben-Ari, a proponent of expelling all Palestinians from Israel, who this year proposed legislation that would require members of Israeli national sport teams to sing the national anthem and recognise Israel as a Jewish state. The latter demand is rooted in an Israeli desire backed by Mr. Netanyahu to impose recognition of the Jews’ historic right to settle Palestine and block recognition of Palestinian rights to return to lands within Israel’s pre-1967 borders.
Mr. Borowitz noted that “Jerusalem mayor, Nir Barkat, who cultivates an image as a tolerant, modern public servant, has yet to utter a word on this topic. He has done nothing to alter Beitar's racist, discriminatory policy. Avi Luzon, chairman of the Israel Football Association, also remains inert on this issue; and the association's court has never lifted a finger to challenge Beitar's racism. Meantime, Israel's media continues to cover the team's games, and barely addresses the racism issue. Could an English or French soccer squad get away without putting a black or Jewish player on the field throughout its history? How would its fans respond to that? Would football associations in such countries countenance such blatantly racist policy?”
Mr. Borowitz notes further that Jerusalem’s 280,000 Palestinian residents contributed to the NIS 100,000,000 ($27 million) in taxpayer’s money allocated for stadium renovations this year. “Yet this contribution does not entitle the city's Arabs to representation, even of the most minimal sort, on Jerusalem's sole team in the nation's top league,” Mr. Borowitz said.
The importance of Palestinian players to Israeli soccer was driven home to Israelis in 2005 when Abbas Suan, a devout Muslim who refused to sing the Hatikva before a game, achieved for a brief moment what politicians in more than a half-century had not: he united Israeli Jews and Arabs by securing with a last minute equalizer against Ireland Israel’s first chance in 35 years to qualify for a world cup. The game earned him the nickname The Equalizer and made him an Israeli hero; his cheery face and toothy smile featured in ads for the state lottery.
That sense of unity was short-lived. When Suan set foot on the pitch in Israel a week later as captain of Bnei Sakhnin, an Israeli Palestinian team, Jewish fans of Beitar Jerusalem, Israel’s most nationalistic club, booed him every time he touched the ball. “Suan, You Don’t Represent US,” blared a giant banner in the stadium. Fans shouted, “We hate all Arabs.”
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.
Academic Perspective: Revisiting Nasser and Palestine after the 1967 War
A closer study of Nasser’s Palestine policy after the 1967 War challenges his historical legacy as champion of... more
A closer study of Nasser’s Palestine policy after the 1967 War challenges his historical legacy as champion of Palestinian rights and calls for greater introspection and more honest debate in academic discourse.
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Mounting Israeli-Iranian Tension: Turkey in the Middle
By James M. Dorsey
Synopsis
Israeli and Iranian sabre-rattling, coupled with... more
By James M. Dorsey
Synopsis
Israeli and Iranian sabre-rattling, coupled with Turkey's determination to keep relations with Israel in deep freeze as it pressures Tel Aviv to lift its blockade of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, threaten to undermine Turkey’s influence in the Middle East and North Africa.
Commentary
THE FALLOUT from last year's killing by Israeli forces of nine Turkish nationals aboard a Turkish aid ship seeking to run Israel's blockade of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip continues to dog Ankara’s heels as it emerges as a regional leader in the Middle East and North Africa.
Senior Turkish officials reiterated at the Istanbul Forum recently their refusal to reverse their downgrading of diplomatic relations with Israel to the level of second secretary and their suspension of all military cooperation as long as Israel fails to apologise and offer compensation for the death of the Turkish activists and maintains its blockade of Gaza. The officials said that despite Israeli assistance to Turkey's earthquake-stricken eastern region, their terms for a normalisation of relations were non-negotiable.
To drive the point home, Turkey last week allowed two Irish and Canadian-flagged aid ships to set sail for Gaza from a Turkish port for a renewed attempt to run the Israeli blockade. The two ships were intercepted by Israel and escorted to the port of Ashdod. By ensuring that the two ships were flying foreign flags and had no Turkish nationals on board, Turkey sought to avoid an armed confrontation with Israel.
Israel imposed a naval blockade on Gaza after Hamas seized control of the territory in June 2007, saying it is necessary to prevent weapons being supplied to militants in the Strip. Critics of the sea and land blockade say it is collective punishment of Gaza's 1.5 million inhabitants.
Turkey had earlier vowed to have Turkish warships accompany Gaza-bound aid ships to avoid a repetition of the May 2010 attack. The nine Turks aboard the Mavi Marmara, lead ship of last year's flotilla, were killed by Israeli forces who boarded the vessel in international waters. Israel asserts that the activists were armed and that Israeli forces had acted in self-defence.
Closing doors
Turkey's harsh response to the incident has garnered it wide support across the Arab and Muslim world at a time when the Middle East and North Africa is racked by mass anti-government protests. However it has complicated Turkey’s efforts to shield itself against being drawn into the region's multiple conflicts.
As a result, Turkey has little ability to bring Israel and Iran back from the brink of a military confrontation; and the escalating conflict could damage Turkey's projection of itself as a regional Islamic, democratic, economic and military power.
Turkish concerns that its hard line towards Israel could lead it into a corner stem from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's decision to seek approval from his cabinet for a pre-emptive strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities. Netanyahu sees Iran as the foremost existential threat to the Jewish state.
His request follows Israel's successful test-firing of a long-range missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead as well as a series of Israeli Air Force long-range attack drills in cooperation with their Italian counterpart, including one late October at a NATO base in Italy. The Israeli military has also practised a mass evacuation of civilians in case of an attack in areas near Tel Aviv. The Israeli exercises were held in an advance of the expected release this week of an International Energy Agency (IEA) report on Iran’s nuclear capabilities.
Siding with Iran
Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Selahi responded defiantly to the test-firing of the Israeli missile as well as the military exercises, asserting that his country was prepared for a possible Israeli attack. Anticipating Turkey's dilemma in case of an Israeli attack, Salehi suggested that Turkey would have no choice but to support Iran against Israel.
While Turkish defence and military officials have little doubt that Israel would prevail in a military confrontation with Iran, even if it is unlikely to fully destroy Iran's decentralised and heavily fortified nuclear facilities, they worry about the effects of likely Iranian retaliatory attacks against Israel as well as US targets in the Gulf and Afghanistan, for that would escalate the confrontation with Iran.
Turkey would increasingly be seen in Tel Aviv and Washington as not only having turned on Israel –often a yardstick in the West for assessing Turkish foreign policy - but also having sided with the enemy. Turkish officials and analysts fear that this could result in covert support for Kurdish guerrillas who have stepped up their attacks on Turkish military targets in south-eastern Turkey. It could also endanger Turkish security cooperation with Iran in combatting Kurdish insurgents.
Turkey’s dilemma is heightened by the fact that increasingly it is being viewed in the Middle East and North Africa as a counterweight to Iran. Turkey has dashed Iranian hopes that it would find an ally in Erdogan’s Islamist government. Instead, Turkey’s pluralist democracy constitutes a popular alternative to Iran’s harsh, repressive regime, bolstered by Turkey’s hard line towards Israel.
Turkey and Iran have further lined up on opposing sides of the Syrian divide with Turkey supporting opposition against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Iran’s closest ally in the Arab world. In response, Iran has sought to portray Turkey as part of a US-Israeli-Saudi conspiracy to stymie the wave of popular revolts in the Middle East and North Africa in a bid to prevent them from spreading to the oil-rich Gulf.
Members of Erdogan’s ruling party have criticised him for responding emotionally to Israeli policies and have urged him to repair relations with Israel, while remaining critical of Tel Aviv. This is to ensure that Turkey is not painted into a corner by mounting tension in the region but can truly act as a bridge across the West-East divide as well as the region’s fault lines. They key to Turkey’s role may indeed lie partially in Israel but Turkey has only a limited window of opportunity to keep the door open.
James M. Dorsey is a Senior Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University. He has been a journalist covering the Middle East for over 30 years.
Israeli MP drafts legislation obliging players to recognize Israel as a Jewish state
Monday, November 7, 2011
By James M. Dorsey
Proposed legislation by extreme nationalist Israeli... more
Monday, November 7, 2011
By James M. Dorsey
Proposed legislation by extreme nationalist Israeli parliamentarian Michael Ben-Ari that would require members of Israeli national sport teams to sing the national anthem and recognise Israel as a Jewish state threatens to weaken the country’s soccer team and further isolate Israel internationally.
Mr. Ben-Ari, a member of the far-right National Union, who is widely seen as having inherited the mantle of Rabbi Meir Kahane, the assassinated racist leader of the Jewish Defence League, tabled his proposal as the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, returned from a three-month recess.
The proposed bill is part of a slew of nationalist legislation on the Knesset’s agenda that includes a draft law tabled by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel is our Home) Party that would make a commitment to Israel and its Jewish character a condition for citizenship.
An estimated 20 per cent of Israelis are Palestinians who are largely committed to the existence of the state, but feel that it discriminates against non-Jews and that emphasizing its Jewish character is intended to exclude them. Mr. Ben-Ari’s proposal as well as other draft legislation is certain to reaffirm that sense.
Mr. Ben-Ari’s proposal is in line with Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu’s demand that the Palestinians recognise Israel as a Jewish state as part of any Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement.
The demand, rooted in an Israeli desire to impose recognition of the Jews’ historic right to settle Palestine and block recognition of Palestinian rights to return to lands within Israel’s pre-1967 borders, goes far beyond earlier Israeli demands for recognition of Israel as a state. That recognition by the Palestine Liberation Organisation and the Palestine Authority formed the basis for the last two decades of failed Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
Mr. Ben-Ari’s proposal, which has sparked intense debate in Israel, would contrast starkly with accepted practice in soccer powerhouses such as Germany and France. Immigrant and foreign players in the French and German national teams often refrain from singing their team’s national anthem. German national team coach Joachim has Low noted that the players identify with Germany as much as they do with their heritage.
If adopted Mr. Ben-Ari’s law would mean that the three Israeli Palestinian members of the 21-man national soccer team – Beram Kayal, Taleb Twaitha and Ali Ottman – would withdraw.
In a stinging commentary in the liberal Israeli daily Haaretz entitled ‘Sport and Racism / Hatikva ueber alles?’ – a word play on the Israel national anthem and the German anthem at the time of the Nazis -- prominent Israeli sports writer Uzi Dann warned that Mr. Ben-Ari’s proposal “is as surreal as it is dangerous. The second part of Ben-Ari's proposal - that Israeli Arabs players be forced to sign an oath of allegiance - is the epitome of fascism.”
Mr. Dann noted that “to demand that Beram Kayal sing ‘The Land of Zion and Jerusalem’ is ridiculous; to insist that Taleb Twatiha joins in when his teammates sing about the yearning of the Jewish spirit is a cheek; and to force Ali Ottman to mumble something about being a free nation in our land is an own goal.”
The journalist went on to say that “once, we could be sure that such surreal proposals were thrown onto the parliamentary garbage heap. Today, however, anything is possible. If Ben-Ari's bill becomes law, Israel, which once took pride in the separation of sports and politics, will be the only country on earth with such a discriminatory and racist law. And soccer is one of the areas in which the authorities have made a genuine effort to inculcate equality among all Israeli citizens.”
If adopted, Israel would likely be sanctioned by world soccer body FIFA and European soccer body UEFA – Israel plays since 1994 in European competitions after it was booted out of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) several years earlier because Middle Eastern teams refused to play against it – and would likely face legal challenges in the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).
“That's all we need. But the point here … is that the national team needs its Israeli Arab players more than they need the national team. Israel depends on them and relies on them and is a far worse team without them. Not only is Ben-Ari a racist, he's damaging the national team,” Mr. Dann said.
The importance of Palestinian players was driven home to Israelis in 2005 when Abbas Suan, a devout Muslim who refused to sing the Hatikva before a game, achieved for a brief moment what politicians in more than a half-century had not: he united Israeli Jews and Arabs by securing with a last minute equalizer against Ireland Israel’s first chance in 35 years to qualify for a world cup. The game earned him the nickname The Equalizer and made him an Israeli hero; his cheery face and toothy smile featured in ads for the state lottery.
That sense of unity was short-lived. When Suan set foot on the pitch in Israel a week later as captain of Bnei Sakhnin, an Israeli Arab team, Jewish fans of Beitar Jerusalem, Israel’s most nationalistic club, booed him every time he touched the ball. “Suan, You Don’t Represent US,” blared a giant banner in the stadium. Fans shouted, “We hate all Arabs.”
Mr. Suan, an advocate of Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation, an independent Palestinian state and a solution for Palestinian demands to recover land and homes lost when Israel was founded, took the insults in his stride. “I ignore them,” he insisted. “They’re not worth my attention. They portray me as an Arab in a Jewish country. They try to put me in one group, but I represent both."
Mr. Suan’s Beit Sakhnin is a story in itself. So is that of Beitar Jerusalem. Together their stories chart the fault line between Israelis and Palestinians. Beit Sakhnin is a model of coexistence: a majority of Israeli Arabs with some Jews and foreigners.
The club, the first Israel-Arab team to become an Israeli champion, and Mr. Suan did wonders for Arab pride and self-confidence. They also spotlighted the divisions in Israeli and Arab society. "Our problem is that the Arabs say we are traitors and Israelis think we are Arabs," said Palestinian building contractor Mazen Ghaneim and former Bnei Sakhnin chairman.
Bnei Sakhnin’s success has nonetheless enabled it to build bridges where heads of state and diplomats have failed. It won the club funding from oil-rich Qatar to build its own stadium, the Arab world’s only direct investment in Israel, and prompted Arabs from countries formally at war with the Jewish state to defy bans on travel to Israel to attend the team’s matches.
Beitar Jerusalem’s matches often resemble a Middle Eastern battlefield. It’s mostly Sephardic fans of Middle Eastern and North African origin revel in their status as the bad boys of Israeli soccer. Their dislike of Ashkenazi Jews of East European extraction rivals their disdain for Palestinians.
Supported by Israeli right wing leaders such as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Beitar traces its roots to a revanchist Zionist youth movement. Its founding players actively resisted the pre-state British mandate authorities. Its fans shocked Israelis when they refused to observe a moment of silence for assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who initiated the first peace negotiations with the Palestinians.
Beitar’s war reaches a feverish pitch when the team plays Bnei Sakhnin. Fans chant racist, anti-Arab songs and denounce the Prophet Mohammed. In response, Beit Sakhnin’s predominantly Palestinian fans sing Islamic and anti-Israeli chants. The outbursts have prompted the Israeli Football Association to become the Middle East’s only governing soccer body to launch a campaign against racism and discrimination and made Israel the only nation in the region to have charged fans with shouting racist remarks.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.
Soccer: A Middle East and North African Battlefield
For much of the past three decades, soccer constituted the only major battleground that rivalled Islam in the creation... more
For much of the past three decades, soccer constituted the only major battleground that rivalled Islam in the creation of alternative public space in a swath of land stretching from the Gulf to the Atlantic coast of Africa. Away from the glare of the international media, soccer provided a venue to release pent-up anger and frustration and struggle for political, gender, economic, social, ethnic and national rights. By the time the Arab revolt erupted in December 2010, soccer had emerged as a key non-religious, non-governmental institution capable of successfully confronting security force-dominated repressive regimes and militant Islamists.
Increasingly over the past two decades, soccer became a high-stakes game, a political cat-and-mouse contest between fans and autocrats for control of the pitch and a counterbalance to jihadi employment of soccer as a bonding and recruitment tool. All participants in the game banked on the fact that only soccer could capture the deep-seated emotion, passion and commitment evoked by Islam among a majority of the population in the Middle East and North Africa.
As a result, professional soccer inevitably emerged as an early casualty when protests spilled into the streets. Suspending league matches is one of the first steps embattled Middle Eastern and North African leaders take when mass anti-government protests erupt. They understand the soccer pitch's potential as an opposition rallying point.
Syria's indefinite suspension of professional soccer in early 2011 in advance of the government's violent crackdown pushed anti-government protests back into the mosque. With soccer stadiums inaccessible to the public and serving as detention centres and staging points for security forces, protests more often than not start at a mosque, the only remaining place where people can gather in numbers.
The suspension of professional soccer when protests initially erupted in Tunisia, Egypt and Algeria meant that militant, highly politicised, violence-prone soccer fans shifted their protest from the stadium to the square. They often played a unique role in helping protesters seeking to rid themselves of the yoke of repressive rule, economic mismanagement and corruption to break through the barrier of fear erected by neo-patriarchal autocrats that had condemned them to silence and passivity until then.
Neo-patriarchy is what makes Arab authoritarianism different from dictatorships in other parts of the world. Dictatorial regimes are not simply superimposed on societies gasping for freedom. Arab autocracies may lack popular support and credibility but their repressive reflexes that create barriers of fear are internalized and reproduced at virtually every layer of society. As a result societal resistance to and fear of change contributed to their sustainability.
In a controversial book published in 1992 that is still banned in many Arab countries, Palestinian-American historian Hisham Sharabi argued that Arab society was built around the “dominance of the father (patriarch), the centre around which the national as well as the natural family are organized. Thus between ruler and ruled, between father and child, there exist only vertical relations: in both settings the paternal will is absolute will, mediated in both the society and the family by a forced consensus based on ritual and coercion.” With other words, Arab regimes franchised repression so that society, the oppressed, participated in their repression and denial of rights.
The regime is in effect the father of all fathers at the top of the pyramid. In the words of Egyptian journalist Khaled Diab, Egypt’s problem was not simply an aging president with little to show for himself after almost thirty years in power, but the fact that “Egypt has a million (president Hosni) Mubaraks.”
As a result, the patriarchal values that dominate soccer in addition to its popularity made it the perfect game for neo-patriarchs. Their values were soccer’s values: assertion of male superiority in most aspects of life, control or harnessing of female lust and a belief in a masculine God.
In breaking through the neo-patriarchal barriers of fear, militant soccer fans extended the tradition of soccer’s close association with politics across the Middle East and North Africa that is evident until today in derbies in Amman, Tehran, Riyadh and Cairo, home to the world's most violent encounter on the pitch.
Their battle on the pitch is not just about the political and economic future of the region. It is also a battle that challenges gender prejudice in asserting women's rights to play the game against the odds of legal restriction, social pressure and religious dress codes. And it is a cornerstone in efforts by the stateless -- Palestinians and Kurds -- to obtain a state of their own or by minorities like the Berbers, Iranian Azeris and Israeli Palestinians to assert their identity.
In this essay, I discuss the role of the soccer pitch as a venue for resistance to autocratic regimes and a battlefield for greater political freedom and economic opportunity, statehood, identity politics, and gender rights as well as an arena of competition with militant jihadists. This positions soccer as a platform on which multiple political battles are fought in both autocratic Middle Eastern and North African societies as well as those that enjoy some degree of political openness.
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إسرائيل والقدس وأزمة الهوية Israel, Jerusalem, and the Identity Crisis
Jurnal Antarabangsa Kajian Asia Barat
International Journal of West Asian Studies
Volume 3 No 1 2011
ISSN : 2229-8924
EISSN : 2180-4788
After more than 62 years of its formation, Israel is now facing a crisis in one of the major
aspects of its... more
After more than 62 years of its formation, Israel is now facing a crisis in one of the major
aspects of its entity, namely its identity; many of the members of Jewish-Israeli public, in
particular, are facing a crisis in identifying their character within the contemporary world,
especially with the rise of rejection of Israel in the Arab and Muslim worlds. The Israeli
people are facing a problem in defining their tie, and thus, there has been a crucial need to regather the Israelis on one symbol that represents “‘Ām Ysra’il” (i.e. the People of Israel). This
symbol is Jerusalem. Therefore, it is noted that Israel has intensified work towards Judaizing
Jerusalem and insisting on its Jewish character recently, in addition to the insist on requesting
the Palestinians and the Arab and Muslim world to admit “The Jewish Israel”, which reflects
Israel’s fear of demolishing of the whole Zionist project in that area from inside. This paper
analyzes the current identity crisis that Israel faces and the procedures taken by Israel towards
solving this problem through “bringing the symbol to life”, i.e. Jerusalem in particular, in
addition to touch upon the reaction of the PLO and the Palestinian Authority to this
challenge.
PAPER IN ARABIC LANGUAGE
البحث باللغة العربية
Middle East teeters on the brink as Palestine and protests converge
By James M. Dorsey
The Middle East and North Africa are on the brink of risky sabre rattling that could... more
By James M. Dorsey
The Middle East and North Africa are on the brink of risky sabre rattling that could erupt into armed conflict as the region's ten-month old wave of anti-government protests converges with stalled efforts to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
Mr. Abbas’s request for United Nations Security Council recognition has put Palestine back on the agenda of both the international community and anti-government protesters. It has also put US credibility, US ability to influence events in the region and Washington’s relations with its closest allies on the line.
The United States has vowed to veto recognition despite the fact that it has been unable to square the circle of a veto with President Barak Obama's public support for the creation of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel and warnings by Arab leaders that a veto would substantially undermine US credibility and could affect relations with its closest Arab allies, among whom first and foremost Saudi Arabia.
The diplomatic battle is likely to focus on buying time on the vote in a bid to allow for a revival of Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations that would justify postponing a vote until the talks produce results or agreement is reached on the terms underlying UN recognition. In effect, by formally requesting Security Council recognition, Mr. Abbas hopes to have bought the Palestinians some leverage.
Mr. Abbas has an interest in stepping up pressure on the United States to put its money where its mouth is but he like President Barak Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu does not want to see US credibility undermined to the degree that it no longer can act as the accepted mediator of an Israeli-Palestinian peace. By seeking Security Council recognition, Mr. Abbas has also earned brownie points by having put his Hamas rivals, who opposed his UN initiative, on the defensive – a fact that US and Israeli officials privately acknowledge but do not want to publicly acknowledge.
Mr. Abbas’ strategy has already put efforts to break the stalemate in Israeli-Palestinian peace into high gear. The Middle East Quartet – the United States, the European Union Russia and the UN – called Friday for Israel and Palestine to meet within a month agree on an agenda for peace talks, table comprehensive peace proposals within three months, achieve substantial progress within six months and reach agreement by the end of next year.
Nonetheless, Mr. Abbas’ strategy is not without risks. Mr. Abbas has yet to accept the Quartet’s proposal, which would effectively put his UN recognition bid on hold. He is likely to question the Quartet’s ability to enforce its timetable with Mr. Obama 13 months away from US presidential elections. Mr. Abbas has moreover said that he would only return to the negotiating table if Israel freezes the building of Jewish settlements on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem and agrees to the borders of the Palestinian state being based on the borders prior to the 1967 war in which Israel captured the two territories as well as the Gaza Strip. Israel is demanding talks without pre-conditions.
The US elections mean that Mr. Obama is in no position to engage in the banging of heads needed to force Israelis and Palestinians into genuine negotiations that do not amount to a mere going through the motions and that would entail a bruising domestic battle with supporters of Israel. Mr. Abbas does not have 13 months. He will soon have to show some result to meet public expectations created by his request for recognition and prevent Hamas from being able to justify its rejection of his strategy.
Mr. Abbas’ battle cry is likely to reverberate on the streets of Arab capitals where for much of the past ten months Palestine did not figure in mass anti-government protests but were never far from the surface. Protesters in Egypt, one of two Arab states that maintain diplomatic relations with Israel, earlier this month stormed the Israeli embassy in Cairo forcing diplomatic staff to be evacuated back to Israel.
The pending Security Council vote coupled with a continued Israeli-Palestinian stalemate or peace talks that amount to motion without movement; deteriorating relations between Israel and its closest Muslim ally, Turkey; strains in the ties between the United States and Saudi Arabia; and the fact that embattled Arab leaders in Syria and Yemen would welcome a foreign policy distraction from popular demands for their resignation offers a perfect recipe for increased brinkmanship that could get out of control.
Embattled presidents Bashar al Assad and Ali Abdullah Saleh, who this week returned to Yemen after months of treatment in Saudi Arabia for severe wounds he suffered in an attack on his presidential compound, have both accused foreign forces of instigating the protests that are rocking their regimes. Mr. Saleh’s surprise return to Yemen followed warnings by a prominent member of the Saudi royal family, former intelligence chief Prince Turk al-Faisal, that a US veto of UN recognition of Palestine could trigger reduced cooperation with the United States on resolving the crisis in Yemen and ensuring stability in Iraq.
Messrs. Abbas and Netanyahu steered well clear of brinkmanship in their addresses on Friday to the UN General Assembly offering each other a hand or an olive branch. Yet, the likelihood that Security Council will not recognize Palestinian statehood any time soon coupled with an increasingly defiant and defensive mood in Israel hardly bodes well for the future. The sooner rather than later realization on the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip that Mr. Abbas’ UN initiative is not producing results could well signal the spread of the region’s protests to Palestine, pitting Palestinian demonstrators against Israeli security forces.
Israel is already on alert in advance of the Jewish holiday season and a perceived threat from the Sinai that Jerusalem sees as an increasingly lawless territory where crime gangs, Palestinians and Al Qaeda sympathizers are able to operate with relative impunity. The storming of the Israeli embassy in Cairo was sparked by an incident earlier this month in which Israeli accidentally killed five Egyptian soldiers.
Tension is also building on the high seas of the Eastern Mediterranean with Turkey warning that its navy will challenge Israel if it seeks to stop Gaza-bound aid ships in violation of Israel’s unilateral blockade of the Hamas-controlled strip. It has also warned Cyprus if it goes ahead with Israeli-backed oil exploration in disputed waters. Turkey earlier this month expelled the Israeli ambassador and froze all military cooperation after Israel refused to apologize for its stopping last year of a Turkish aid ship during which eight Turks and a Turkish-American national were killed. Turkey has further threatened to freeze relations with the European Union if Cyprus next year assumes as scheduled the EU presidency for a period of six months.
All in all, there is no lack of flashpoints and sufficient interest across the region in escalating tension. To prevent increased brinkmanship from getting out of hand, progress in Israel-Palestinian peace talks is a sine qua non. The Quartet’s initiative may be a first step but with doubts that its tight timetable can be achieved it may at best temporarily delay escalation of tension in the Middle East but unlikely to pull it back from the brink.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University's S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer
Playing with fire: Gulf Arabs and Israelis tacitly explore cooperation amid Israeli diplomatic tsunam
Sunday, September 1, 2011
i
By James M. Dorsey
Amid the diplomatic tsunami hitting Israel with... more
Sunday, September 1, 2011
i
By James M. Dorsey
Amid the diplomatic tsunami hitting Israel with its embassy in Cairo stormed by protesters, its relations with Turkey at an all-time low, the United Nations set to recognize Palestinian statehood and the influence of the United States, its closest ally, substantially diminished, conservative Gulf states and Israel are quietly exploring common ground.
Both Israel and the Gulf states are eager to curb the ten month-old wave of anti-government protests sweeping the Middle East and North Africa that have already toppled the leaders of Tunisia, Egypt and Libya and are shaking the fundaments of autocratic regimes in Syria and Yemen.
Similarly, the storming this weekend of the Israeli embassy in Cairo by protesters led by militant soccer fans raises the specter of the rule of the street, sending chills down the spine of Israeli and Gulf leaders. If Israel’s ambassador to Turkey was last week expelled by the government, Israel’s ambassador to Egypt was driven out of the country by protesters against the will of their rulers.
Israel and the Gulf states are also worried about the emergence of Egypt’s Sinai desert as a largely abandoned frontier for weapons smuggling and human trafficking that could become a launching pad for attacks on Israel alongside the Gaza Strip that is controlled by Hamas, the militant Palestinian Islamist group. This weekend’s storming of the Israeli embassy followed last month’s killing of five Egyptian soldiers in a border skirmish sparked by a cross-border attack on an Israeli bus.
Lost in the focus on the storming of the Israeli embassy with its potential implications for the prospects of Israeli-Palestinian peace was the fact that the nearby Saudi embassy was targeted too. The protesters vented their anger at the treatment of Egyptian pilgrims returning from the holy city of Mecca, who had been delayed at Jeddah airport for days and insulted by Saudi airport officials for putting ousted President Mubarak on trial for responsibility for the deaths of hundreds killed in the protests early this year that forced him out of office. In a telltale sign, Gulf television stations, including Al Jazeera, initially offered limited coverage of the protests in front of the embassies and launched into live coverage only when the extent of the demonstrations could no longer be ignored.
Finally, Israel and the Gulf states both see Iran as a major threat to regional stability and do not want to see the Islamic republic succeed in its alleged efforts to develop a nuclear weapons capability.
If the protests against the Israeli and Saudi embassies complicate the feelers being put out by Gulf states and Israel, it benefits, in a perverse twist of logic, Egypt’s ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) despite the protesters chanting of slogans that demanded an end to military rule and compared SCAF head Field Marshal Mohamed Tantawi to Mr. Mubarak.
The storming of the Israeli embassy in particular shifts the focus of attention to Israel and away from mounting discontent with the continued use of military tribunals for civilians, the convolutions in the trial against Mr. Mubarak trial, the complex negotiations to draft an electoral law and the military’s failure to set dates for parliamentary elections. The embassy incidents further weaken anti-military opposition by driving a wedge among the protesters with liberals warning that the popular revolt was reeling out of control.
In many ways, Turkey’s tough stance on Israel – lowering of diplomatic relations, suspending military ties and pledging to have Turkish warships escort future aid ships attempting to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza – has put Egypt and other Arab states on the line. It is likely to complicate any Gulf effort to tacitly cooperate with Israel in furthering perceived common interests. Egypt, the Gulf leaders and other Arab rulers will find it difficult to be seen as taking a less firm stand against Israel than non-Arab Turkey and fear that failure to do so could fuel public discontent.
Nonetheless, Dubai’s Khaleej Times published days after the announcement of Turkey’s tougher stance towards Israel and on the day that Israeli embassy staff fled Egypt a relatively rare op-ed piece written by an Israeli businesswoman and former foreign ministry official that described the lack of commercial, economic and technical cooperation between Israel and its Arab neighbors as a “lose-lose situation for everyone.”
Naava Mashiah argued that “Israel has been spearheading research and innovation to overcome a harsh climate and water scarcity. But there is very little knowledge sharing between Israel and other countries in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region. Although food security would best be addressed in the framework of a regional peace, the absence of such peace between Israel and its neighbors should not get in the way of cooperation on this issue, given how critical the situation facing the region is.”
Ms. Mashiah’s comments played on Arab concerns that rising food prices were a key factor in prompting Arabs across the region to take to the streets. She noted that the Arab world imports 50 per cent of its food requirements and need to become self-sufficient and less dependent on volatile world markets despite the fact that they have limited arable land and a shortage of water supplies.
“Israel, for its part, has made much progress in crop yields, green houses technologies, seed acclimatization, drip irrigation, dew collectors, waste-water management and other unique water technology innovations. Shouldn’t the successful results of high crop yields in arid climates be shared amongst other countries in the region? Time is a big factor. R&D investment is time consuming and starting research from scratch is not the same as benefitting from previous discoveries. De-nationalizing technologies and sharing knowledge is the way forward. The sooner we realize this, the better we can deal with the urgent challenge that all countries of this region share,” Ms. Mashiah wrote.
Israel and the Gulf states no doubt share a host of common political and economic interests. Yet, the opportunity to capitalize on that communality is shrinking at the very moment that they would benefit most from increased cooperation. Nonetheless, the risks involved in taking those feelers a step further grow by the day as the fallout of Turkey’s move becomes increasingly apparent and emotions take a front seat as the Palestinians gear up in the United Nation for recognition of their statehood in what is likely be a largely symbolic victory, but one that could dramatically change the legal playing field on which Israelis and Palestinians fight their battles.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University's S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.
13. "Wide Electorates for Chief Rabbis at the Return to the Land of Israel (1893-1921): A Comparative Revision in the Thoughts of Rabbi Ya'akov Shaul Elyashar and Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak HaCohen Kook"
Y. Stern & S. Friedman (eds.), HaRav (forthcoming). [Hebrew]
Trauma Construction and Moral Restriction: The Ambiguity of the Holocaust for Israel
by Shai Dromi
Co-authored with Jeffrey C. Alexander. Published in Narrating Trauma: On the Impact of Collective Suffering, edited by Ron Eyerman, Jeffrey C. Alexander and Elisabeth Butler Breese, 107-132. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2011
*Reprinted as “Holocaust and Trauma: Moral Restriction in Israel” in Alexander, Jeffrey C., Trauma: A Social Theory.... more
*Reprinted as “Holocaust and Trauma: Moral Restriction in Israel” in Alexander, Jeffrey C., Trauma: A Social Theory. London: Polity (Forthcoming July 2012).
http://www.amazon.com/Trauma-Social-Theory-Jeffrey-Alexander/dp/0745649122/ref=tmm_pap_title_0
*Translation to Greek appeared in the journal Science and Society (Επιστήμη και Κοινωνία), 28 (March 2012).
http://www2.media.uoa.gr/sas/issues/28_issue/02.html
Orde Wingate and Anglo-Jewish Military Cooperation in Palestine - Myth versus Reality
by Simon Anglim
An unpublished paper based on one I gave at a conference at King's College in 2008.
Captain (later Major General) Orde Charles Wingate was engaged in training young Jewish men in counter-insurgency in... more Captain (later Major General) Orde Charles Wingate was engaged in training young Jewish men in counter-insurgency in Palestine for a number of months in 1938, during the Arab uprising of 1936-1939. From this, he is viewed as one of the founding fathers of the Israeli military tradition. The popular view is that he did this broadly against the wishes of his superiors in the British Army, and, indeed, was virtually the only friend the Jews had in that organisation: this view has been perpetuated in the literature. This paper demonstrates that this was not the case: Wingate’s actions in Palestine formed part of a coherent counter-insurgency strategy devised by the British Army in which Jewish involvement – overt in the case of the uniformed police, covert in the form of the Haganah – was welcomed and integrated and continued after Wingate’s departure. Moreover, there were other pro-Zionist officers serving in the British forces in Palestine at the time.
(2011) El islam político en la minoría palestina en Israel
Revista CIDOB d’Afers Internacionals, núm. 93-94, p. 179-200
El islam político forma paarte del escenario político de la minoría palestina en Israel, junto a comunistas,... more El islam político forma paarte del escenario político de la minoría palestina en Israel, junto a comunistas, nacionalistas árabes y formaciones tradicionalistas locales. Tiene raíces comunes con las orga- nizaciones islamistas de Cisjordania y Gaza y, al igual que ellas, combina una doctrina tradicionalista con reivindicaciones nacionales que, a su vez, comparte con las demás fuerzas palestinas. Tras una década de experiencia en la política municipal, desde 1996 una rama del Movimiento Islámico (MI) concurre a las elecciones legislativas y participa en las instituciones estatales (Parlamento) israelíes, mientras que otra se ha decantado por limitar su acción en la política extraparlamentaria. La primera se ha convertido en la opción más votada entre los palestinos israelíes desde 2006, la segunda es una de las más activas en la reivindicación de los derechos de los palestinos y en la defensa de lo musulmán en la Palestina histórica
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(2006) “Las elecciones israelíes: la legitimación democrática del anexionismo”
en InfoCIP, 12, Israel y Palestina. Elecciones, conflicto y la nueva configuración regional, 25 de abril de 2006.
(in English) “Israeli elections: the democratic legitimization of annexation”
(2006) “Elecciones en Israel: en busca de la legitimación del unilateralismo”
ARI, Real Instituto Elcano, 16/05/2006
Tras cinco años sin negociaciones y de decisiones unilaterales, Israel se ha visto abocado a abordar una nueva fase... more Tras cinco años sin negociaciones y de decisiones unilaterales, Israel se ha visto abocado a abordar una nueva fase en la ocupación de Cisjordania y en sus relaciones con los palestinos. Sin que suponga una propuesta de resolución del conflicto, pretende emprender una transformación de la ocupación, retirándose de algunas áreas, evacuando una pequeña parte de los colonos, haciendo del muro de separación la nueva frontera y anexionándose otras áreas. Para ello ha presentado los resultados de las elecciones del pasado 28 de marzo como la legitimación democrática de tal plan. Ahora espera contar con la aquiescencia tácita de la comunidad internacional.
Arab Nonvoting in Israeli Elections: To Vote or Not?
Draft: To be presented at the Annual Meeting of the Southern Political Science Association, January 6-9, 2010, Atlanta, GA
