Rafsanjani threads the path of reconciliationIn a landmark and historic speech at Tehran University's Friday prayer, the centerist ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani carefully threaded the path of political reconciliation in post-election Iran, thus providing a timely new impetus for Iran's transition from what he termed as a "crisis."
Rafsanjani's much-anticipated speech was important for the audience it included among the thousands who flocked to hear him, former president Mohammad Khatami and the three presidential candidates, Mohsen Rezai, Mehdi Karrubi, and Mir Hossain Mousavi, as well as their supporters, who for once shared the same space, if not necessarily the same slogans, at the ceremony -- that is a hallmark of the Islamic Revolution.
Invoking comparison with the incipient post-revolutionary days when another moderate ayatollah, Taleghani, captivated the audience at the Friday prayer, Rafsanjani consciously couched his deliberation on today's political situation in the familiar language of political Islam, by dividing his speech into three parts, the first two dealing with the normative foundations of the Islamic Republic and the goals and objectives of the revolution, and the third focusing on contemporary problems.
Keen on emphasising the republic and participatory nature of the post-revolutionary order, Rafsanjani stated that the title of "Islamic Republic" is not a cliche and that Islam and republic are the two constitutive defining features of the system, drawing on a number of pertinent stories about the prophet and Shia Imams to accentuate the point about the regime's respect for popular sovereignty.
With the issue of "national unity" on top of his mind, Rafsanjani's intention was to stay above the frey of political factions and that explains his self-reference as farajenahi (above factions) -- a point cemented by his reference to his consultation with the members of the Assembly of Experts and the Expediency Council.
While praising Iran's free elections, Rafsanjani stated his regret that the post-election events prevented Iran from earning a high mark in the world community, criticising the oversight Council of Guardian for failing to utilize the extra five days alloted to it by the supreme leader to review the complaints of voting irregularities and fraud.
Still, Rafsanjani's speech was equally important for what he did not say, above all, any criticism of the election results or of the performance of the election officials. Instead, he confined himself to a criticism of the state radio and television, stating that an "environment of doubt" was cast on the elections as a result of certain activities by the state-controlled media.
What is more, by acknowledging that a large group of Iranians are adamant about the legitimacy of results, Rafsanjani actually fell just a couple of steps short of conceding the legitimacy of election results. Insisting that "we must pass through this period," Rafsanjani's aim was to be future-oriented instead of being stuck in the uncomfortable present, which is why he in a language of candor and openness talked about the importance of necessary stops to "regain people's trust" in the government. In this vein, he called for the release of those arrested after June 12th presidential elections, the restoration of free press, and respect for the rule of law.
Concerning the latter, Rafsanjani's legalist solution resonates with the sentiment of both the supreme leader, who three weeks ago advised every one to use the legal channels and not to stray from the legal bounds, as well president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who was in the holy city of Meshhed earlier this week and made a powerful speech regarding the rule of law as the only insurance against dictatorship.
Ahmadinejad has also introduced a new edict to the state-controlled media, whereby the individuals and groups who are unhappy with how they have been depicted in the media can have a chance to publicly respond. Also, there are signs that Ahmadinejad is considering revamping his cabinet by incorporating fresh faces that may appeal to the 14 million voters who did not vote for him.
Although the gaps in confidence between the Ahmadinejad camp and the Mousavi camp remains large, Rafsanjani's timely bridging the troubled waters with his bold and yet calculated reconciliatory speech, that simultaneously warned of the country's enemies who are determined to "deprive Iran of its gains in nuclear technology," represents a qualitative leap forward in terms of crisis-management in Iran.
Gaza and the language of powerNearly six months have passed since the Israeli army ceased pounding the tiny stretch of land that is the Gaza Strip. Since then, Gaza continues to appear on the news once in a while, as a recurring subject of human misery.
The tireless efforts of British MP George Galloway, and the courageous endeavors of the Free Gaza movement have managed to push Gaza back into the spotlight, even if momentarily and with political context which is lacking at best.
Aside from that, the three-week Israeli onslaught in Gaza, starting December 27 – and the catastrophic conditions endured there – have served the purpose of a footnote in many news reports. The event is generally cited as such: “Israel moved against Hamas in Gaza to quell the firing of militants’ rockets, resulting in the death of such and such number.” Hamas, according to media conventional wisdom, is the “militant group that ousted Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ forces in a bloody coup in mid 2007.”
Sadly, ones worse fears have actualized, where the post-Gaza massacre world and the one which existed prior are exactly the same. Israel is trying to prove that political and military might overpower all human rights reports combined, and that public opinion - which turned against Israel as it wantonly killed and wounded thousands – will eventually turn back in Israel’s favor. One does not need to be an expert in the art of propaganda to predict the public relations model that would allow Israel to deceive millions into believing that the belligerent state is in fact a victim in a sea of hostile Arabs hell-bent on subjugating the Jewish State. Thus it was hardly a deviation from the script when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used a most shrewd term to depict his governments’ refusal to respect international law regarding the dismantling of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, all considered illegal under international law, specifically the Fourth Geneva Convention. He said during his recent trip to Germany that the West Bank will never be “Judenrein” a Nazi term meaning “cleansed of Jews”.
And once again, Israel is resorting to its traditional propaganda (such as equating Palestinians with Nazis), drawing on people’s historical sympathies, guilt and ignorance of false analogies.
More, Israel’s National Security Advisor Uzi Arad is in fact reviving the discredited Israeli rhetoric that Israel has no partner in peace, in comments made to Israeli newspaper Haaretz on Friday, July 10. He questioned whether there is in fact a Palestinian leadership that is capable of delivering peace with Israel. If such a Palestinian state would exist, say in 2015 – according to Arad – it would be a “fragile structure. A house of cards.” But he chose to omit that Israel purposely besieged and weakened the democratically elected Palestinian leadership in Gaza, while painstakingly propping and legitimizing Abbas. using with astounding mastery, the carrot and the stick metaphor.
Only Israel can cleverly spawn a dependent, weak leadership, and accuse the Palestinians of not being a worthy peace partner; only Israel can murder thousands of Palestinians and demand security from its very victims; only Israel can caution of a Nazi past, yet cage Palestinians in concentration camps, punish them for recklessly subscribing to the wrong God, or foolishly falling into the wrong race.
It has six months since the unprecedented and savage war against Palestinians in Gaza, and here we are making the same argument, referencing the same deceit and quoting the same outrageous claims. During those same months, unsubstantiated Israeli accounts were countered with carefully composed reports by highly regarded organizations, such as the Red Cross, among others. Bombarded Gaza neighborhoods “look like the epicenter of a massive earthquake,” said a recent Red Cross report, entitled: “Gaza: 1.5 million trapped in despair.”
UN human rights envoy, Richard Falk summed up Israeli behavior in more direct terms, on Thursday, July 9. “There will be no peace between these two peoples, until Israel shows respect for Palestinian rights under international law,” Professor Falk said.
Israeli leaders however pay no heed to international law. In fact there is little evidence that Israel’s history was shaped, in any respect, by international standards, neither those pertaining to war nor peace. Israel only understands the language of politics and power. It is a state that has been constructed, and sustained upon Machiavellian wisdom. Advisor Arad is perhaps the most visible manifestation of the logic that propels the Israeli state. In his recent interview, he demanded that once a state deal is reached with the Palestinians, Israel should be granted a NATO membership as a “quid pro quo”. To counter nuclear threats by others, he said, Israel must have “tremendously powerful weapons”. Considering that Israel already has nuclear arms, one has to wonder to what other “tremendously powerful weapons” Arad is referring. Arad must’ve been encouraged by US Vice President Joe Biden who said in a recent interview with ABC’s “This Week” that “If the Netanyahu government decides to take a course of action different than the one being pursed now (by the US and its allies), that is their sovereign right to do that.”
Once again, it is the brute logic that “might makes right” pursued by those with the bigger guns, that continues to menace the Middle East, with Gaza being the most devastating example.
One must remember that Israel never heeds to statements, and is hardly moved by reports and random condemnations. Only pressure, constant and focused, will grab the attention of Israeli policymakers. Only the language of an international campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions will translate in Tel Aviv to a legible political language. As for Gaza, civil society must not wait for President Obama or any other to save the slowly starving population, but must take every possible and urgent effort to help an oppressed yet proud community to redeem its basic rights and freedom.
Netanyahu’s substitute for sovereigntyThe reality of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s promises of “economic peace” for the Palestinians is nowhere under greater scrutiny than in Jenin, the northern West Bank city being aggressively promoted as a potential model of co-operation with Israel.
Once known as the City of Martyrs for the high number of human bombers it despatched into Israel, Jenin was the site of a savage battle in 2002 as the Israeli army reoccupied much of the West Bank.
Israelis find it hard to forget that this was where they suffered the biggest loss of life in a single battle – 23 soldiers killed retaking the city. Palestinians find it hard to forgive the bulldozing of Jenin’s large refugee camp, and the killing of 56 inhabitants in a few days.
But today Jenin, the first Palestinian city to be sealed behind Israel’s separation wall, is being feted – at least by Israel – as a successful experiment in peacemaking.
The Palestinian gunmen who once roamed the streets are gone, replaced, by day, by lightly armed Palestinian security forces trained in Jordan by a U.S. general, Keith Dayton.
Israeli soldiers, meanwhile, have unfettered access to the city between midnight and dawn, though nowadays, say local people, the army rarely makes incursions.
For Mr Netanyahu, Jenin represents his best hope of persuading Washington that an “economic and diplomatic peace”, as he referred to it at the cabinet meeting on Sunday, rather than full statehood, will satisfy the Palestinians.
The process of easing restrictions began before Mr Netanyahu’s tenure in March. Last year, Ehud Barak, then as now the defence minister, called Jenin a “great success” in what was widely interpreted as a test of Palestinian readiness for limited statehood on Israeli terms.
Palestinian security forces were allowed into the city in May last year. Since then Israel has removed several of the checkpoints that cut Jenin off from the rest of the West Bank in a bid to boost trade.
Last week, Israel extended that policy by announcing that the King Hussein Bridge, the Palestinians’ only connection to Jordan and the Arab world, would be open 24 hours a day.
In addition, the Israeli government has backed the creation of a German-sponsored industrial park next to Jenin that could one day provide thousands of jobs. Four more such parks, all foreign funded, are planned for other West Bank cities, which are supposed to follow Jenin’s lead.
And a few hundred men from Jenin are being given permits to work inside Israel, most of them as manual labourers, while a handful of entrepreneurs have permission to do business in Israel.
But the most immediate effect on Jenin’s economy – even if a relatively minor one – has been felt from the decision to allow Israel’s own Palestinian citizens to cross into the West Bank on day trips.
Israeli estimates suggest that on Fridays and Saturdays, when Jewish towns are closed for business, hundreds of Palestinian citizens of Israel – or Israeli Arabs as they are called by the government – make the journey through Jalameh crossing to Jenin.
Nonetheless, business is not exactly booming, concedes Khaled Rabaya, the sales manager of Herbawi, a five-storey department store that opened in May on the hopes of an improved economy.
“Jenin is not being suffocated like it was before,” he said. “Things are getting better slowly and we hope they will get better still.”
But even Mr Rabaya had to admit that the number of shoppers wandering the aisles of European imported goods, from sofas to dinner plates, were easily outnumbered by the sales assistants.
Most people in Jenin cannot afford luxury items, while Israel’s Palestinian citizens, even if attracted by cheaper prices, are constrained by restrictions that allow them to enter only on foot.
Ali Kmaid, a taxi driver shuttling Israeli Arabs the two kilometres from Jalameh to Jenin, said the city was desperately hoping that the crossing would be open to cars from October, as has been promised.
The most obvious change in Jenin is to the refugee camp, which is no longer the devastated space of a few years ago. It has been rebuilt with funds from the Gulf, though the Israeli army insisted on planning constraints: the roads are wide enough for a tank to navigate them.
If few of Jenin’s inhabitants question the financial benefits of Israel’s more liberal policy, there is a widespread belief that “economic peace” is being tailor-made for Israel’s benefit in much the same manner as the rebuilt camp.
“If Netanyahu thinks we’ll be satisfied with a few more Israeli shoppers, he’s kidding himself,” said Mohammed Larool, a melon seller. “Our rights as a nation are more important than my selling a few extra melons.”
Khaled Hamour, 26, who runs the Mankal restaurant in Jenin, said the prosperity felt by businesses was relative. “Things have been so dire here that just a little relief feels like a major change.”
But “as long as the settlements are still here, our farmers are being shot at, and we have no control over our borders, then economic peace is hollow”.
Shir Hever, an Israeli economist based in Jerusalem, said he was sceptical Jenin’s industrial park would ever open, or that the fruits of economic peace would be more than temporary.
“Netanyahu has no long-term plan for peace,” he said. “This is a delaying tactic and an attempt to improve Israel’s image internationally without making significant concessions.”
One decade ago, Jenin was packed on weekends with thousands of Israeli Arabs and Jews. But the long waits, intrusive security checks and need to pass through endless metal turnstiles – all too reminiscent of Israel’s treatment of Palestinian workers in the days when they were able to leave Gaza – may be putting off many Palestinian citizens.
“Israel is counting on Palestinians inside Israel being prepared to help Palestinians in the occupied territories,” said Tareq Shehadeh, a tourism official in Nazareth who has been invited to Nablus this week to lecture on co-operation across the Green Line.
“But they won’t go into the West Bank if they are treated like terrorists every time they do so.”
Samia Ziadat, from the Israeli Arab village of Mqeibleh, was waiting her turn to pass through the security checks with her five young children, after a brief visit to see her sick husband in Jenin.
“I have no choice but to go to Jenin, but it surprises me anyone is willing to endure this humiliation unless they have to.”
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