Alpher answers questions about perceived stagnation in the Gilad Shalit negotiations, the announcement of a settlement freeze, and the Swiss referendum on banning the building of new minarets.
Yossi Alpher is an independent security analyst, co-founder and co-editor of the Israeli-Palestinian internet dialogue bitterlemons.org and Middle East roundtable bitterlemons-international.org. He is the former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, and a former senior official with the Mossad, Israel's national intelligence agency. His views do not necessarily reflect those of Americans for Peace Now or Peace Now.
Q. Why is there still no breakthrough regarding an exchange of prisoners with Hamas that brings Gilad Shalit home to Israel? A week or two ago there was a huge media buildup for a deal.
A. Most media in the Middle East, both Arab and Israeli, are notoriously sensationalistic and irresponsible. There are also politicians, mainly in Israel but here and there in Egypt and Gaza as well, who enjoy grabbing headlines by predicting an imminent breakthrough. In the latest instance, even the German media, possibly fed leaks by officials linked to the German mediation effort, joined in with what turned out to be unfounded predictions.
There has, in fact, been dramatic progress in narrowing down the list of Palestinian prisoners whose release by Israel is not yet agreed. There has also apparently been progress in agreeing where released prisoners would go, with Israel seemingly showing flexibility in agreeing to release certain terrorists sentenced for multiple murders of Israelis in exchange for Hamas agreement that they be sent to third countries where their activities can be monitored. But there are still gaps between the two sides' lists of Palestinians to be freed. Which side decided two weeks ago that total agreement was within reach and began the cycle of leaks is not clear.
The progress can be attributed to the German effort, which appears to be more professional and nuanced than the Egyptian mediation over the past three years, but also to the Netanyahu government's readiness, through its representative Hagai Hadass, a former senior Mossad official, to go beyond the concessions offered last year by PM Ehud Olmert. This appears to confirm the received wisdom that, in Israeli politics, right wingers can sometimes make concessions to the Arab side more readily than the Left. PM Binyamin Netanyahu knows he would have led the political attack on Olmert had the latter caved in to Hamas' demands, but that virtually no one on the Center and Left will criticize him for making an even more far-reaching prisoner exchange deal than Olmert offered.
Q. How do you read the Netanyahu government decision regarding a ten-month freeze on new settlement construction starts?
A. Seen within the context of Israeli-Palestinian relations and the Obama administration's efforts to restart a peace process, there appear to be two faces to Netanyahu's approach to settlements. On the one hand, Netanyahu has taken some steps in the right direction. He has formally accepted the need for a two-state solution. He has removed more roadblocks and checkpoints in the West Bank than did his dovish predecessor, Ehud Olmert. And now, in a display of political smarts, he has persuaded even the most right wing members of his security cabinet, Benny Begin and Moshe Yaalon, to impose a ten-month settlement freeze that has brought him into sharp confrontation with the settlers.
On, the other hand, Netanyahu is sending signals that this is not so much about enabling peace negotiations as it is about attaining a variety of other objectives, some associated with a peace process and some not. He undoubtedly knew when he undertook the freeze that if it did not comprise Jerusalem, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas would hold to his refusal to negotiate. So one purpose of the freeze is precisely to "prove" that Netanyahu wants a peace process whereas Abbas does not.
In this regard, Netanyahu realizes he must keep the Obama administration satisfied enough with his performance to avoid pinning the blame for the current stalemate exclusively on Israel, thereby enabling vital strategic coordination regarding Iran to proceed. At the Israeli political level, the freeze enables Netanyahu to keep Defense Minister Ehud Barak and the Labor party in his coalition; this is important for the government's international image as well as its stability. Finally, both Netanyahu and Barak have been reminding the settlers that 3,000 existing construction projects and all those in Jerusalem can continue. And they have been winking and nodding to the settlers that exceptions to the freeze will be made and that it won't last long.
Two current events underline the duality of the Netanyahu approach. For one, the settlers are demonstrating, at times violently, against the freeze, while the army and police are being given unambiguous orders to enforce it. This paints Netanyahu as an embattled champion of peace who is prepared to take on his own constituents to that end.
In parallel, the Swedish initiative for the European Union to endorse the concept of East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state has fortified Abbas' resolve to refuse to negotiate until the freeze includes Jerusalem. This of course renders that much harder the task of Obama administration peace emissary George Mitchell, who is trying to persuade Abbas to accept the freeze as is and start talking. Correspondingly, it strengthens Netanyahu's claim that he has done all that is necessary for peace talks to begin--while in fact he does not have to contemplate the actual demands of negotiations.
(Parenthetically, the Swedish/EU/Jerusalem issue underlines a fundamental flaw in the PLO's diplomatic world view: attributing exaggerated importance to the diplomacy of a hopelessly schismatic European Union at the expense of the American role.)
Meanwhile, the creeping and utterly counter-productive Judaization of East Jerusalem continues, to the detriment of any future chances for peace.
To better understand Netanyahu, I turned to Aluf Benn, the diplomatic editor at Haaretz, who seems to have close access to Netanyahu's thinking. Benn has been writing that Netanyahu's strategic thinking leads him to downgrade the need to remain in most of the West Bank in favor of close coordination with the United States regarding Iran. I asked Benn if this meant that Netanyahu has, like Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni, turned his back on his Revisionist background and become a true believer in the two-state solution--a question that has been preoccupying me for months as I observe Netanyahu in action.
Benn's answer is that Netanyahu appears to consider a Palestinian state a necessity only in the sense that he understands that Washington will no longer tolerate the West Bank status quo. While the Israeli prime minister has no special attachment to the settlements, it is significant that he has not yet formulated a genuine Israeli-Palestinian peace plan.
This seeming "peace vacuum" in Netanyahu's camp does not appear to reassure the settlers. But it does reinforce Palestinians' doubts. And it leaves room for consideration of a broad spectrum of unilateral, "coordinated unilateral" and phased programs for executing additional withdrawals from the West Bank that are currently being presented to the Israeli public by think tanks, security-minded peace movements and even President Shimon Peres. Few of these plans, however, take into account Abbas' stubborn refusal under present circumstances to negotiate, his problematic internal-Palestinian political status or his lack of control over the Gaza Strip.
Q. Swiss voters decided in a referendum to ban the building of minarets on mosques. What is the significance of this decision against the broader backdrop of large-scale Muslim immigration to Europe?
A. "The result of the Swiss referendum on banning the building of minarets reveals a deeply racist hostility to Islam and Muslims in Europe," states the London-based radical pan-Arab al-Quds al-Arabi. "It will only bolster the argument of Islamic extremists who claim that Europe and the West are intrinsically hostile to Islam. It will therefore help their efforts to recruit Muslim youths to their ranks."
That Arab response is clearly one ramification of last week's decision by the Swiss public. But of course it ignores the contribution of European Muslims themselves to the growing divide that separates many of them from the European mainstream.
The Swiss decision can only be seen as spiteful and provocative. Five percent of the Swiss population are Muslim--a low figure by French, British, Dutch and German standards. They are still allowed to build mosques, but without minarets. In any case, throughout Europe mosque minarets (which are usually attractive structures) are not used for broadcasting public calls to prayer as in Muslim countries. The Swiss public can be ultra-conservative. It was the last in Europe to allow women to vote. And its suspicions regarding non-Christians extend to Jews as well: Kosher ritual slaughter of animals is banned in Switzerland. Now the Swiss have once again used their referendum system to take a retrograde step.
And yet, the Swiss rejection of minarets bespeaks more than just backwardness or street-level bigotry. All over Europe, right-wing anti-Muslim political parties are registering gains and Christian-Muslim tensions are rising. In part this is a reaction to home-grown militant Islamist movements in the UK, France, Germany, Holland and Italy, that provocatively preach the ultimate Islamization of Europe and have spawned terrorist cells. In part it reflects a refusal to integrate and accept European societal norms by North African Muslims who remain close to their countries of origin not only geographically. The Dutch now require Muslims requesting citizenship to watch and approve a film in which gay men hold hands, i.e., to accept the tolerant Dutch way of life. Meanwhile the European right is disseminating (exaggerated) scare forecasts of a Muslim Europe within decades. And in some places European politicians tilt against Israel because they have so many Muslim constituents.
At the demographic level, the Europeans with their startlingly low birthrates (around one child per couple) have only themselves to blame for the mass immigration of recent decades. As long as the European economy grows, Europe and North Africa will live in a north-south relationship similar to that between the United States and Latin America. But American society is far better adapted to the needs of immigrant absorption than Europe.
The Swiss minaret referendum must be understood as a harbinger of ugly things to come.
Tweet
Email a friend
feed
twitter
facebook
The Swiss referendum deliberately picked an easy target. Minarets are not fundamental to or an essential part of the practice of Islam, but they are a symbol of Islamic civilization. The Swiss are beginning to make a wise demand: cultural assimilation into the dominant culture while allowing for religious differences. This is basically what the United States has traditionally required of its immigrants, at least until the model of a multinational mosaic replaced that of the melting pot. The U.S. should return to the melting pot and Europe should adopt this model.
Boy oh boy!
Does Dr. Mitchell have it right or what?
In order to insure the 'melting pot' idea works to its fullest advantage, I suggest that all religious symbols (other than those of the Christian founders of current American culture, of course) be removed from casual view. Thus, to insure 'cultural assimilation into the dominant culture' all synagogues should immediately remove any mogen Davids, images of Torah scrolls, Hebrew lettering, mezuzahs, or anything else that might smack of resistance to 'cultural assimilation'. The religious differences can be easily tolerated as long as they're behind closed doors and away from delicate, easily-offended, eyes.
Clearly such Jewish religious symbols on the outsides of syangogues are not fundamental to, or an essential part, of the practice of... which religion was it? Oh, yeah... Judaism.
I'm certain that with appropriate guidance we can define a list of religious symbols & constructs that fail to demonstrate suitable cultural assimilation for all the other non-dominant religions too. I'm sure Dr. Mitchell could provide guidance... along with Rev. Hagee and a few other representatives of the dominant culture .
What a load of unadulterated ethnocentric, Muslim denigrating crapola! And from a Ph.D. no less.
After a long absence, it is nice to hear from Tom Mitchell. But please,(and pardon my ignorance) what happened to Leonard Fein?