Palestinians Continue to Think It's 1948

by Asaf Romirowsky
Jewish Exponent
April 3, 2008
http://www.meforum.org/article/1876
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The Palestinian narrative sees Israel's 1948 War of Independence as the al Naqba -- "the catastrophe." The birth of a sovereign Jewish state is perceived to be the root of all evil because this supposedly solidified how the small Jewish community robbed the Palestinians of their land.

That is the recurring mantra found in Arab historiography -- a hypersensitive focus on discrimination and inequality. In general, Arab scholars tend to ignore the huge corpus of materials found in the archives on the war and zoom in on what are legitimate or illegitimate claims, using U.N. resolutions as the be all and end all.

Here we are, on the eve of Israel's 60th anniversary, and the Palestinians are still the only nationality that identifies and defines itself by its refugee status. Since the end of World War II, there have been approximately 140 million refugees worldwide. All have been assimilated with the exception of one -- the Palestinians. Ergo, as long the Palestinian refugee problem exists, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will continue.

And now, in order to illustrate how long the Palestinians have suffered, the Palestinian Authority has embarked on a new initiative to commemorate Israel's 60th anniversary by calling on all Palestinians living in the Diaspora to converge on Israel by land, sea and air to forcefully implement the Palestinian "right of return."

The design -- drawn by Ziad Abu Ein, a senior Fatah operative and deputy minister for prisoners' affairs in the P.A. -- states that the Palestinians have decided to implement U.N. Resolution 194, calling for a right of return for all Palestinian refugees.

The proposal of this plan now -- notwithstanding if this ever came to fruition -- is clearly geared toward embarrassing and hurting Israel during the anniversary celebrations by highlighting the right of return and, in essence, motivating Palestinians to act out against Israel by any means possible.

Article 11 of the resolution, passed in December 1948, states that "refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the governments or authorities responsible."

Path to Destruction

In reality, what is, of course, ignored is the desire to live in peace; moreover, what's not mentioned is the fact that the right of return calls for 4.25 million Palestinian Arabs -- refugees of the 1948-9 war and their descendants -- to immigrate to Israel, turning the Jewish majority in that country into a minority and ending Jewish self-determination in a sovereign state. In other words, its exercise can have only one result: the end of the Jewish state. (Talking about issues of "rights" enables academics and certain policymakers to avoid saying this in too blunt a fashion.)

Overall, this discussion on the right of return is based on a highly specific reading of history -- one that assumes an Israeli responsibility for creating the refugee problem via what they're calling "ethnic cleansing." Restitution from the allegedly guilty party involves the return of the refugees and their descendants.

Finally, the Palestinians -- 60 years after the modern State of Israel was established -- instead of searching for paths for peace, are searching for paths of destruction. Distorting empirical history to discover alleged rights manages to create an ongoing, unjustified animosity toward Israel, and continues to lead even well-meaning Palestinians down a path of false hopes built on false foundations.

Asaf Romirowsky is the manager of Israel & Middle East Affairs for the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia and an associate fellow at the Middle East Forum.

Related Topics: Arab-Israel conflict & diplomacy, Palestinians

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The Middle East Forum

Kennedy and Levin Want New Report on Iraq Released
By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 4, 2008; A11

A new intelligence report on the situation in Iraq is "essential" to upcoming debates on the war, and its judgments should be publicly released, Sens. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) and Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) said yesterday in a letter to the head of the nation's intelligence agencies.

Levin and Kennedy asked Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell to release an unclassified summary of the latest National Intelligence Estimate before Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and Ryan C. Crocker, the ambassador to Iraq, testify April 8 before the Senate Armed Services Committee, which Levin chairs.

Without the NIE, Levin and Kennedy wrote, "Congress and the American people will not have the essential information needed for an informed public debate." The document, an update of two previous assessments publicly released last year, was completed and delivered to Congress on Tuesday.

Several lawmakers familiar with its conclusions declined to provide specifics but said it contained little information beyond public accounts of recent events in Iraq. "The stuff that was positive, they emphasized. The negative, they stated, but deemphasized," said Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.). Biden chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which was briefed on the intelligence estimate early this week.

"I was discouraged" by the assessment, Biden said. "I was discouraged by the last one, too."

NIE judgments on Iraq released in February 2007 -- several weeks after President Bush announced an increase in U.S. forces there amid unprecedented levels of violence -- presented a pessimistic assessment, warning that even if security improved, deepening sectarian divides threatened to destroy the Iraqi government. In August, an NIE update cited "measurable but uneven improvements" in the security situation but painted a grim political picture, saying that "Iraq's sectarian groups remain unreconciled."

Violence declined substantially late last year, although it leveled off during the initial months of 2008 and increased dramatically during last week's fighting between Iraqi and U.S. forces and Shiite militias in Baghdad, Basra and elsewhere in southern Iraq. Those conflicts are not substantively addressed in the new report, sources said.

There has been some recent progress on the political front, but Iraq's political groups remain deeply divided along inter- and intra-sectarian lines. Key legislation demanded by both Congress and the Bush administration has yet to be passed or has not been implemented.

NIEs represent the consensus assessment of the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies. Although about 300 have been written, only four have been released through unclassified summaries. They include the two last year on Iraq and a 2002 assessment of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that helped justify the 2003 U.S. invasion. Late last year, NIE judgments on Iran that appeared to contradict Bush administration statements about its nuclear weapons program were also released.

April 4, 2008

At its summit in Bucharest, NATO decided not to move Ukraine and Georgia into the Membership Action Plan, telling the two states that at sometime in the future they would get their invitations to membership, but just not now. Instead, NATO focused its membership drive on the Balkans, offering invitations to Albania and Croatia, a delayed invitation to Macedonia (effective once the name issue is sorted out with Greece) and offering intensified dialogue plans to Montenegro and Bosnia (and saying it would be willing to offer similar status to Serbia should the latter chose to apply).
Leading up to the summit, there was a great deal of attention focused on the issue of Ukraine and Georgia — and the showdown between the United States and Russia being fought in the halls and meeting rooms in Bucharest. Washington backed membership invitations to Kiev and Tbilisi. Russia adamantly opposed (but had no say in the decision). And ultimately Germany and France cast the deciding votes for delay. This was a small victory for Russia, which has seen its periphery eaten away since the collapse of the Soviet Union and has its eyes (and strategic position) set on returning influence to its former republics.
But despite U.S. President George W. Bush’s highly public visit to Kiev on his way to the Bucharest summit, Washington knew that a NATO consensus on Ukraine and Georgia was unlikely. The attention paid, instead, was designed to keep the pressure up on Russia — to discourage the former Cold War opponent from attempting a serious challenge to U.S. power and a return to the Cold War status quo. While Moscow breathed a sigh of relief with the ultimate NATO decision on its two former republics, it is a small victory for Russia. And Moscow made it a point to emphasize the breakaway regions in Georgia and the split population in Ukraine to remind NATO and the United States that the Russians still had leverage should NATO ever issue those invitations.
In its focus on Ukraine and Georgia, Russia failed to discourage NATO’s support of U.S. missile defense plans in Eastern Europe, something Moscow has strongly opposed as well. But perhaps more significant in the near term is NATO’s focus on the Balkans. Europe hasn’t had a very stellar track record when it comes to dealing with the volatile region, and is now using NATO as a tool to strengthen influence and political development in the region.
The new and tentative membership invitations bring nearly all of the area -– aside from Serbia and Kosovo (and NATO said it has no intention of withdrawing its existing force from Kosovo) –- under the NATO umbrella, freeing Europe from sole responsibility for security issues. It also leaves Serbia surrounded, and highlights Russia’s inability to make good on its unspoken warnings should Kosovo declare independence. Offering Serbia intensified dialogue was, perhaps, simply rubbing salt into the wound of Russian inaction.
While Russia may claim victory in keeping NATO out of Ukraine and Georgia for now, the support for missile defense and the whole-scale move into the Balkans was a clear demonstration of NATO’s challenge to Russia’s claims to influence and power. Russia could not stop the missile defense plan, and its warnings on Kosovo independence have gone unheeded (and unfulfilled). While Germany and France blocked Ukraine and Georgian membership in order to avoid a direct confrontation with Russia and protect their supplies of natural gas, the other key initiatives were no less a challenge to Russia’s resurgence –- and at minimal cost

April 4, 2008
More Than 1,000 in Iraq’s Forces Quit Basra Fight

By STEPHEN FARRELL and JAMES GLANZ
BAGHDAD — More than 1,000 Iraqi soldiers and policemen either refused to fight or simply abandoned their posts during the inconclusive assault against Shiite militias in Basra last week, a senior Iraqi government official said Thursday. Iraqi military officials said the group included dozens of officers, including at least two senior field commanders in the battle.

The desertions in the heat of a major battle cast fresh doubt on the effectiveness of the American-trained Iraqi security forces. The White House has conditioned further withdrawals of American troops on the readiness of the Iraqi military and police.

The crisis created by the desertions and other problems with the Basra operation was serious enough that Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki hastily began funneling some 10,000 recruits from local Shiite tribes into his armed forces. That move has already generated anger among Sunni tribesmen whom Mr. Maliki has been much less eager to recruit despite their cooperation with the government in its fight against Sunni insurgents and criminal gangs.

A British military official said that Mr. Maliki had brought 6,600 reinforcements to Basra to join the 30,000 security personnel already stationed there, and a senior American military official said that he understood that 1,000 to 1,500 Iraqi forces had deserted or underperformed. That would represent a little over 4 percent of the total.

A new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq cites significant security improvements but concludes that security remains fragile, several American government officials said.

Even as officials described problems with the planning and performance of the Iraqi forces during the Basra operation, signs emerged Wednesday that tensions with Moktada al-Sadr, the radical cleric who leads the Mahdi Army militia, could flare up again. Mr. Sadr, who asked his followers to stop fighting on Sunday, called Thursday for a million Iraqis to march to the Shiite holy city of Najaf next week to protest what he called the American occupation. He also issued a veiled threat against Mr. Maliki’s forces, whom he accused of violating the terms of an agreement with the Iraqi government to stand down.

Estimates by Iraqi military officials of the number of officers who refused to fight during the Basra operation varied from several dozen to more than 100. But three officials said that among those who had been relieved of duty for refusing to fight were Col. Rahim Jabbar and Lt. Col. Shakir Khalaf, the commander and deputy commander of an entire brigade affiliated with the Interior Ministry.

A senior military official in Basra asserted that some members of Colonel Khalaf’s unit fought even though he did not. Asked why he believed Colonel Khalaf did not fight, the official said that the colonel did not believe the Iraqi security forces would be able to protect him against threats to his life that he had received for his involvement in the assault.

“If he fights today, he might be killed later,” the official said.

The senior American military official said the number of officers was “less than a couple dozen at most,” but conceded that the figure could rise as the performance of senior officers was assessed.

But most of the deserters were not officers. The American military official said, “From what we understand, the bulk of these were from fairly fresh troops who had only just gotten out of basic training and were probably pushed into the fight too soon.”

“There were obviously others who elected to not fight their fellow Shia,” the official said, but added that the coalition did not see the failures as a “major issue,” especially if the Iraqi government dealt firmly with them.

Mr. Maliki, who personally directed the Basra operation, which both American and Iraqi officials have criticized as poorly planned and executed, acknowledged the desertions without giving a specific number in public statements on Thursday.

“Everyone who was not on the side of the security forces will go into the military courts,” Mr. Maliki said in a news briefing in the Green Zone. “Joining the army or police is not a trip or a picnic, there is something that they have to pay back to commit to the interests of the state and not the party or the sect.”

“They swore on the Koran that they would not support their sect or their party, but they were lying,” he said.

On Sunday, Mr. Sadr gave the prime minister a somewhat face-saving way out of the Basra fight by ordering the Mahdi fighters to lay down their weapons after days in which government forces had made no headway.

Mr. Sadr simultaneously made a series of demands, which senior Iraqi politicians involved in the talks said they believed that Mr. Maliki had agreed to in advance. But the prime minister has since denied any involvement in the talks, and government raids on Mahdi Army units — something Mr. Sadr had said must stop — have if anything become more frequent in Basra and Baghdad.

Accordingly, Mr. Sadr’s latest statement began by quoting a section of the Koran promising doom to those who make promises and then break them. He then complained bitterly that his followers were being unjustly suppressed and arrested, and warned that nothing would force them to completely withdraw. But he did not explicitly call for new fighting.

American support for Iraqi government forces has also continued, and on Thursday the American military said it had carried out two airstrikes on Wednesday in Basra, one “to destroy an enemy structure housing a sniper engaging Iraqi security forces in Basra” and another to destroy a machine gun nest.

The Iraqi police said one of the strikes leveled a two-story house in Basra’s Kibla neighborhood, killing three people and wounding three, all in the same family. The police made no mention of hostile activity.

Ryan C. Crocker, the United States ambassador to Iraq, said Mr. Maliki took the lead in talks with Shiite tribes and said that the turnout of thousands of security applicants in Basra was testament to his success.

“It is very clear that they have moved over toward the prime minister in a very significant way,” Mr. Crocker said during a briefing in the United States Embassy in Baghdad.

“The tribal element he managed himself, as far as I can see,” he said. “You may recall he had a series of meetings with different tribal leaders, three or four of them, maybe more. That was something he focused on almost from the beginning, and pressed it hard straight through and has seen it pay off. Did he have counsel to do it, I don’t know. But he is the one who did it.”

Two southern tribal sheiks said that by providing recruits for the security forces, they were expressing support for the government. But the sheiks made clear that the promise of good-paying jobs for the largely unemployed young men in their tribes had also been a powerful inducement.

Sheik Kamal al-Helfi, head of the Basra branch of the Halaf tribe, said by phone that he was still bargaining to increase his tribe’s allotment of 25 jobs in the security forces. “Many people faced a bad situation since the time of Saddam, and they have no jobs,” he said.

Another southern tribal leader, Sheik Adel al-Subihawi, said larger and more powerful tribes had received quotas as high as 300 jobs.

Mr. Maliki also announced $100 million in economic assistance to Basra, to be administered by the central government in partnership with the provincial government, and said the government would create 25,000 jobs in the city over the coming year.

Citing that promise of assistance and the tribal discussions, Mr. Crocker said, “Were there deals? Like everything else, that is not an engagement you win purely by military means. The prime minister is employing the economic dimension of power right now, and good on him, I think. Money is in many respects his most important weapon and he is using it.”

Mr. Maliki said that the tribal recruits would be carefully vetted. But that was not enough to satisfy some Sunnis farther north who have been waiting for months to see comparable numbers of their tribesmen accepted into the government security forces. Tens of thousands of these Sunnis, including many former insurgents, are working alongside Iraqi and American troops in a so-called tribal awakening movement — clearly a model for the tribal outreach in Basra.

“Recruiting large number of young people in Basra to fight the JAM proves once again that the government of Nuri al-Maliki is a sectarian government, a double-standard one that favors one sect at the expense of other sects,” said Abu Othman, a senior member of Fadhil Awakening Council, referring to the Mahdi Army by its Arabic acronym.

Abu Othman said four months ago he had presented 100 Sunni names for enrollment in the Iraqi police and had received no reply.

“The Maliki government wants security forces that are controlled, manipulated and moved by them,” he said.

Reporting was contributed by Michael Gordon, Qais Mizher, Ahmad Fadam and Karim al-Hilmi from Baghdad, and Iraqi employees of The New York Times from Basra.

Rising Leader for Next Phase of Al Qaeda’s War
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By MICHAEL MOSS and SOUAD MEKHENNET
Published: April 4, 2008
On the night of July 10, 2005, an obscure militant preacher named Abu Yahya al-Libi escaped from an American prison in Afghanistan and rocketed to fame in the world of jihadists.

The breakout from the Bagram Air Base by Mr. Libi and three cellmates — they picked a lock, dodged their guards and traversed the base’s vast acreage to freedom — embarrassed American officials as deeply as it delighted the jihadist movement. In the nearly three years since then, Mr. Libi’s meteoric ascent within the leadership of Al Qaeda has proved to be even more troublesome for the authorities.

Mr. Libi, a Libyan believed to be in his late 30s, is now considered to be a top strategist for Al Qaeda, as well as one of its most effective promoters of global jihad, appearing in a dozen videos on militant Web sites in the past year, counterterrorism officials said. At a time when Al Qaeda seems more inspirational than operational, Mr. Libi stands out as a formidable star whose rise to prominence tracks the group’s growing emphasis on information in its war with the West.

“I call him a man for all seasons for A.Q.,” said Jarret Brachman, a former analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency who is now research director of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point. “He’s a warrior. He’s a poet. He’s a scholar. He’s a pundit. He’s a military commander. And he’s a very charismatic, young, brash rising star within A.Q., and I think he has become the heir apparent to Osama bin Laden in terms of taking over the entire global jihadist movement.”

The secrecy that envelops Al Qaeda’s leadership structure makes such estimates speculative, other analysts noted. But one Islamist insider said that in addition to youth and charisma, Mr. Libi possessed one skill that Al Qaeda’s leaders had been lacking: religious scholarship. Perhaps with this in mind, Al Qaeda is featuring Mr. Libi, who spent two years in Africa studying Islam, in as many of the videos as the group’s top leaders, Mr. bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri.

“Bin Laden is an engineer and Zawahri is a medical doctor,” said Dr. Muhammad al-Massari, a Saudi dissident who lives in London. “So it is important that they also present someone who has the role of scholar.”

The varied roles that Mr. Libi plays in these videos, from recruiter to ideological enforcer, also shed light on Al Qaeda’s shifting tactics. In recent months, those tactics have come to include defensive maneuvers aimed at defusing the media counteroperations of the United States and its allies.

Mr. Libi delivers his message with a preacher’s cadence. His black turban drapes down his chest, and he alternates between white Arabic robes and camouflage jackets.

“O Muslim youth in the East and West, who listen to God calling you: ‘Go forth to war, whether it be easy or difficult for you, and strive hard in God’s cause with your possessions and your lives,’ ” he said in a video sermon released this year.

But increasingly, Mr. Libi uses his videos not to expand Al Qaeda’s base, but to shore it up. He has lashed out at moderate Muslim scholars who accuse Al Qaeda of using false interpretations of the Koran to justify jihad. He has mocked Saudi Arabia’s efforts to persuade jailed militants to give up the fight.

In a 93-minute speech released last fall, Mr. Libi urged supporters to brace themselves for a surge in psychological warfare loaded with false propaganda. He cited a rumor that Al Qaeda’s constitution calls for killing anyone who breaks from the group: “Al Qaeda and its leaders are too noble and pure to descend to the rotten level of such nonsense.”

These and other frank communications by Mr. Libi have led intelligence analysts at the West Point center and elsewhere to pore over his videos like Kremlinologists looking for operational clues to Soviet intentions.

Mr. Libi began as a militant on a scholarly path, according to a Libyan man who says he knew him. His older brother, now imprisoned in Libya, had been a crucial figure in the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, whose members went to Afghanistan to help defeat the Soviet Union.

Mr. Libi, who went to Afghanistan in the early 1990s, was sent back to northern Africa to study Islam in Mauritania. When he returned two years later, Afghanistan was no longer a battleground for militant Libyans, but rather a haven: the Taliban controlled most of the country.

Mr. Libi’s training in warfare was minimal, and his early work as a preacher rarely touched on militant action, according to the Libyan man who said he had met Mr. Libi in Afghanistan, and who spoke on condition of anonymity out of security concerns. “He started to visit training camps and talk about Shariah,” or Islamic law, this man said in a telephone interview, about “morals, etiquette, how to act.”

Then a year after 9/11, Mr. Libi was seized by Pakistani authorities and turned over to American authorities, who eventually put him in the Bagram prison.

In one video produced after their escape in 2005, Mr. Libi and his fellow fugitives recounted their breakout, crediting God with distracting their captors. A new version now circulating on jihadist Web sites re-enacts some of the escape with dramatic flair.

Mr. Libi, who has also used the names Hasan Qaiid and Yunis al-Sahrawi, is assumed to be in the Afghan-Pakistani border area.

He appears to have worked his way quickly into Al Qaeda’s inner circle. He was among the leaders who sent letters of rebuke to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the militant leader who was killed in Iraq in 2006, who they felt was undermining the group’s global strategy by killing too many civilians.

“I share with you your great jihad,” he wrote in a letter dated Nov. 20, 2005, according to a translation obtained from the West Point group. “I hope that you will lay open your heart for the acceptance of what I say.”

In subsequent video appearances, Mr. Libi cast himself as a utility man for Al Qaeda. He rebutted Muslim scholars who criticized suicide bombers in Algeria; he urged Muslims to carry out attacks in Europe in revenge for the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

Asked to assess Mr. Libi’s stature, the State Department’s counterterrorism chief, Dell L. Dailey, who retired from the Army as a lieutenant general, said in an e-mail message, “Abu Yahya is a senior Al Qaeda member, a top strategist for the group, and trusted and presented as one of the group’s most effective promoters of jihad.”

He has also become the leader of a Libyan contingent of fighters in the Afghanistan and Pakistan region, particularly after the death this year of another key militant who went by the name of Abu Laith al-Libi, said Evan F. Kohlmann, an analyst who testifies as a government witness in terrorism trials. (The two Mr. Libis were not related.)

Abu Yahya al-Libi’s most frank discussion of Al Qaeda’s information war with the West came in the video released last fall, “Dots of the Letters.”

In assessing the state of Islamic militancy worldwide, Mr. Libi dwelled on “defectors” who have denounced violence, internal spats among militants and fatwas or Islamic legal pronouncements, from moderate Muslims who seek to criminalize jihadists. He went so far as to specify six ways that the United States and its allies might try to exploit this disharmony through psychological warfare.

Efforts by the Pentagon to undermine Al Qaeda have intensified in recent months in Iraq, said military officials in Baghdad, including using imams to meet with American-held detainees for religious talks before they are released and publicizing militants who disavow their violent ways.

In his video last fall, Mr. Libi sought to brace Al Qaeda’s adherents for tactics like this, which he said would fail. The retractions of captured militants would be particularly ineffective, given their prisoner status, he argued.

“Tell me,” Mr. Libi said, “what do you expect from someone who sees the sword above him, the rug in front of him and the sheik dictating to him the proof and evidence for the obligation of obeying the ruler?”

Margot Williams contributed reporting