LCCC NEWS BULLETIN
JANUARY 4/2006

News From the Daily Star 4.1.06
Ghassan Tueni to run for slain son's seat in Parliament
Christians: Siniora represents all of us
Commission to submit 'just' draft election law on time
Anti-Hizbullah leaflets spread concern about Sidon's unity
Thinly veiled insults greet Lahoud's statements about Hariri
Calls for Lahoud's resignation intensify
Ghassan Tueni's valor and values can serve Lebanon again
Four proposals for greater inter-religious tolerance-By Awraham Soetendorp
New from Miscellaneous sources for 4/1/06
Libya and the U.S.: The Unique Libyan Case.By Jon B. Alterman-Middle East Forum 4.1.06
States Preventing States from Rising. By: Hazem Saghieh Al-Hayat - 03/01/06
Al-Zirqawi in Lebanon?By: Abdel Wahab Badrakhan Al-Hayat - 03/01/06
Sfeir and Ignatius IV preach peace in beleaguered Mid-East-asiannews 4.1.06
Mothers remember, Lebanon tries to forget-chicagotribute 4.1.06
An insider’s view-Khaleej Times Online 4.1.0
Mofaz on Lebanon: Increased terror risk-By JPOST.COM STAFF 3/1/06
Dumping American democracy-Hard News 4.1.06
Collective punishment doesn't really work-Jerusalem Post 4.1.05
Without Vision, There Will Be No Victory.By: Manuela Paraipan, 04-Jan-06
Assad's advocates-Haaretz 4.1.06

New From Naharnet for 3.1.06
Syria Inclined to Reject U.N. Probe's Request to Meet Assad
Mubarak, King Abdullah Discuss Syrian-Lebanese Crisis
Aoun's Bloc Against Foreign Interference, Criticizes Khaddam
Saniora, Nasrallah Reach No Breakthrough in Cabinet Crisis, But Positive Signs Emerge
Hariri's Patience with Hizbullah is Waning
U.N. Commission Expands Investigation to Include Assad, Sharaa
Khaddam's Testimony Sparks a War of Words Between Lahoud and Hariri

States Preventing States from Rising
Hazem Saghieh Al-Hayat - 03/01/06//
Launching rockets from South Lebanon is becoming part of the riddles and mystery that some want the assassination crimes to get lost in. Perhaps the statement by a branch of al-Qaida was accurate, and this group was responsible for the incident. Perhaps it was Ahmad Abu Adas, who supposedly blew himself up while killing former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Or perhaps there were two parties involved, or three. Or one part prepared the way for another party, a comrade in arms, to carry out the mission.
Perhaps, perhaps . . .
Everything, like the "strange" kidnappings taking place in Palestine, involve the troubles that surround the rise of the State, in Lebanon and in Palestine.
This is taking place in the shadow of the "unity of arms" that was announced by Hassan Nasrallah, the secretary general of Hezbollah, indicating his party and weapons held by Palestinian groups in Lebanon. However, it is also taking place amid accusations made by the Palestinian official spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina against Islamic Jihad, which carried out the last suicide operation, on the Palestinian-Israeli border, causing "Israeli reactions against civilians" and harming "Palestinian interests."
What Abu Rudeina didn't say was said by another Palestinian official, who announced that "Islamic Jihad had broken the truce, serving Iran's agenda." He said that the Palestinian Authority had "security and other types of evidence about direct interference by Iran in Islamic Jihad's armed wing, especially in Tulkarm. Islamic Jihad's armed wing is behind all of the operations that have been carried out since the truce was announced, and the evidence includes telephone calls from Lebanese territory to members of these groups and email." The official told al-Hayat yesterday that "since the Intifada, Hezbollah and Iran have been providing assistance to armed groups from Fatah and Islamic Jihad. We were silent about this in the past, because that was everyone's general orientation. But now, we have a different national agenda and they should respect it. We entered a cooling-off period with Israel, we have elections, and Hamas agreed to them. What Islamic Jihad is doing is inflicting the greatest harm on the priorities of the entire Palestinian people."
The official also revealed the existence of "voice tape recordings of people from Hezbollah, including a Palestinian from inside the Green Line who works with Hezbollah in Lebanon; they make calls to activists from the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade and offer them all the requested support to continue carrying out military operations."
These comments, even if they are announcing what is known about cross-border activity, are important due to their source, in addition to the details. These comments were made after Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora refused to sign a second Cairo Agreement, the accord that allowed an armed Palestinian resistance to exist side by side with the Lebanese state (in 1969), and marked the beginning of the tremendous destruction and its ongoing sequels (?).
You'd have to be quite silly to not be convinced that creating a viable state in the small countries of the Mashreq [Levant] is prohibited. The source of the prohibition is the neighboring greater states, which use hostility to Israel and the conflict with the US to continue weakening any body that has a lively pulse in this region.
If it is true that these attempts at sabotage are based on large groups in society, whether they are deceived, taken in by their delusions, or defeated, this doesn't do away with the power to tell the difference between wrong - no matter how "popular" - and right. If such a devilish scenario continues, it is feared that we will see the victory of even more radical solutions when it comes to state-building. If it is impossible to build a state, then a state is partitioned. Democracy has nothing to do with the subject; it's something that comes after a state arises and it's being used to abort the rise of a state and keep the region in its bloody state of affairs until who knows when.

Al-Zirqawi in Lebanon?
Abdel Wahab Badrakhan Al-Hayat - 03/01/06//
Is al-Zirqawi in Lebanon now? Statements on the Internet websites can take him anywhere. Yet, announcing that his organization is responsible for launching missiles from South Lebanon toward Israeli settlements is a clear message to the Americans rather than the Israelis.
Guess who benefits from instigating such a message?
Could it be Saddam Hussein, for instance, or the Iraqi resistance, which is striving to extend its struggle to Palestine through Lebanon? Of course not. Could it be "Hezbollah" or some Palestinian groups present in Lebanon, especially "the People's Front - General Command"? The answer is also no, because these organizations cannot solely call in "Al Qaeda", welcome it, and bear its burdens. As such, if al-Zirqawi really arrived to Lebanon, the party that led him to Iraq led him to Lebanon, i.e. Syria and Iran.
It is most likely that the terrorist organization is not yet present in Lebanon; however, it is not unlikely that it has advocates therein. Did these advocates grow to have the potential to hold missiles and transpierce South Lebanon to launch them on Israel? If this is the case, the situation should alarm the Lebanese army first, and then Hezbollah. In other words, it should alarm the Lebanese government with its rift between Syrian proponents and opposers. Such transpiercing is unjustified except for mere destructive motives and has nothing to do with smart "resistance" that the Lebanese supported -despite the divergence in points of views - and still refuse to undermine its importance. As long as these suspicions swirled around the "General Command" with respect to launching the missiles, this organization has become, following the report of "al-Qaeda", either "innocent" or on the contrary linked to "al-Qaeda". In both cases, its status must be clarified, since this is not the first suspicion that it has been subjected to.
The government should be concerned because it is responsible for the army, and the army should be concerned because it is covering "Hezbollah's" operations and is not involved in the operations of "al-Qaeda" or even "the General Command", except if this Lebanese-Syrian security organization is still heedlessly operating without changing its tactics. Similarly, "Hezbollah" should be concerned because through this operation and al-Zirqawi's statement, it found out that "resistance" is no longer its sole mission. In view of the fact that it is involved in the Lebanese political act, there is no need to embarrass it with contrived and targeted strikes, which could be assigned to other organizations. But the party was in an awkward position regardless, not because it was against striking Israel, but the current political course in Lebanon summons it to be clear and transparent in words as in deeds. Thus, how can it justify its acceptance to be extensively transpierced and appear to be uncontrolling of the land from which it is waging the resistance.
To say that al-Zirqawi's group reached South Lebanon and launched missiles unnoticed, neither by the Lebanese army nor by "Hezbollah" and without being at least "overlooked" or given a pass, is exactly like saying that a massive operation like the assassination of Rafik Hariri and his companions took place under the very eyes of the Syrian and Lebanese secret service. It is also similar to the recurrent assassination acts. When absolutely no one is aware, this simply means that everyone knows and does not dare to oppose, fearing from being the next target.
Despite everything, it is hard to imagine the presence of al-Zirqawi's organization in Lebanon, since the party apt to host it cannot bear his speech and sectarian fanaticism. As for the other party that is supposed to harbor him, it is in a hostile political and social mood. This does not hinder those who manipulate terrorism and destruction to use a "scarecrow" inside and outside. They could carry out, in its name, the dirtiest acts against Lebanese and foreigners. The rule of "al-Qaeda" is that it is undeterred by principles or restraints. Even if al-Zirqawi never reached Lebanon, he won't oppose meeting requests to issue statements proclaiming his responsibility for this or that. Everything is possible in the age of privatization and cloning… even in terrorism.

Dumping American democracy
The US has a plan for the Middle East. Unfortunately it is not successful
Waiel Awwad Delhi - January 2006-Hard News
Bush spin wants us to believe that the recent elections in Iraq are a major success and a step toward the path of redemption and democracy that the neo-conservatives, led by the president himself, drafted, and that they are winning the war. The Bush-led private war turned Iraq into a haven for extremists and sectarian violence which then leads to the next step in the compelling logic: Bush to argue that he will "not leave Iraq before achieving victory". The ambiguity of this statement has resulted in confusion about the common word "victory". Repeating the word "victory" in the face of the track record of the invading votaries of civilisation and human rights has not helped clarify matters. The series of disclosures is unending: the black deeds in the Abu Ghraib prison, British undercover agents masquerading as Shi'ites, white phosphorous and depleted uranium used by the US forces, the latest "renditions" of CIA suspects for torture to unspecified places, selling of pro-US articles in the Iraqi media in praise of the occupation forces fuelling sectarian conflict in Iraq by talks of annihilation of the other community. Still the war machine grinds on.
What victory is Bush talking about? Iraqis are strongly resisting American-led occupation. The US propaganda is
working overtime to equate the national resistance with foreign missionaries carrying terrorist activities. Or it must be the victory of creating a framework of civil war in Iraq. Who knows what constitutes victory for a president who publicly admits to eavesdropping on the conversations of his free constituency. Coming to the much-acclaimed elections in the cradle of civilisation, they were held under the shadow of guns and amid violence, threats and insecurities. Candidates did not feel secure in campaigning. Yet, some contestants entered the fray, some votes were dropped in the ballot boxes, and that made a historical event for the hawkish hawkers of electoral democracy.
Iraq is only a part of a larger context. Many believe that the American policy toward the Middle East is Israel-centric. The ccupation of Iraq was part of the redrawing the map of a (Greater) new Middle East to ensure the dominance of Israel politically, militarily and economically. An agreement was reached with the Likud government that Israel will deal with the Palestinians by suppressing the will of the people and eliminating the resistance to Israeli occupation by using the Israeli military arsenals after which the US will intervene. Iraq, Syria and Lebanon opposed the new American policy toward the Middle East. September 11 is the excuse for the two countries to have a common vision or rather Washington adapting the Tel Aviv visions of "Islamic terrorism". Since then US has never looked back, and carried out the policy of Israel in the region against the wishes of the vast majorities of US citizens and friendly Arab Middle East countries. This will explain the recent trends of violence in Lebanon and the plot to implicate Syria in those crimes so that to fake a case against it and then target Syria militarily followed by re-invasion of south Lebanon by Israel and the restructuring of the whole region. Syria was always the target of such forces because it is the centre of Arab Middle East nationalism and the first capital of Islamic state during the Umayyad period. It consistently rejected foreign interference in the region and called for a broad-based Arab stand to challenge the enemy of freedom and progress. It has cautioned the Arab Middle East world to not be cheated by the slogans of American-led "new democracy" executed by invading forces who divide up the Arab world so that the field can be clear for American multinationals and profiteers.
The neocons are crusading Afghanistan, Iraq and spreading to Syria, Iran and Lebanon. The Arab Middle East world is looking for something that will take it out of its history of colonialism, oppression and subjugation. It is not eager for more humiliation and destabilisation.
**Dr Waiel Awwad is a senior international correspondent based in Delhi

Mothers remember, Lebanon tries to forget
Memories of children missing since the 15-year civil war stoke cries for justice that defy the country's insistence on leaving the past behind
By Anthony Shadid-The Washington Post
Published January 3, 2006
BEIRUT -- On this morning, as on every morning since Oct. 17, 1985, Audette Salem cleaned the rooms of her son and daughter. She left his razor, toothbrush and comb as they were on the day her children were abducted from the streets of Beirut during Lebanon's civil war. She fiddled with her daughter's makeup and straightened her bed. She dusted the three guitars, the papers still on their desks and the pack that holds a 20-year-old cigarette, the artifacts of two lives interrupted.
"Everything is there as they left it," she said. "I haven't changed a thing, nothing at all. It's all still there."
At 70, quiet but determined, Salem clings to memories in a country that prefers to forget.
In the heart of downtown Beirut, ravaged by a brutal 15-year civil war, then rebuilt into a graceful, if somewhat soulless, urban hub, Salem joins other women every day in a protest demanding to know the fate of their children. Many believe they languish in jails in neighboring Syria. Others are not sure. Behind them, their children's faces stare from pictures tacked to billboards, faces with generation-old haircuts, the dates of their disappearances reading like a war memorial yet to be built.
The protest by Salem and dozens of other mothers serves as a stark reminder, organizers say, that Lebanese society has yet to confront, much less resolve, the legacy of the most cataclysmic event in its modern history--the 1975-90 civil war. Fifteen years later, that conflict is still shrouded in silence. Under a 1991 amnesty law, all but a handful of killings were placed beyond prosecution. History textbooks address nothing more recent than 1975. And many factional warlords serve in government, their portraits staring down on streets they once wrecked.
"When you discuss the truth and you know the truth--who was responsible, who prolonged the war--then you can have true reconciliation. The door to bring in a new generation is to find out what happened in Lebanon," said Ghazi Aad, who heads Solide, an acronym for Support of Lebanese in Detention and Exile, the group that has led the protest since April 11 in downtown Beirut. "Without that, you're just sweeping the dust under the rug. You cannot reconcile when you don't know what happened."
A sign of new transparency
The protest's longevity reflects the changes unleashed by the departure of Syrian troops last spring after a 29-year presence. It is a sign of new transparency in public discourse as Lebanon--still deeply fractured along the lines of its Christian and Muslim sects--struggles to craft an alternative to the old Syrian order. Under the former system, Syria exercised the last word on virtually everything in the country, and its security services, along with their Lebanese allies, enforced compliance through arrests, intimidation and patronage. But now, long-discouraged subjects--including the perhaps more than 600 Lebanese taken to Syrian jails--are now being aired as calls for accountability have mounted.
At the protest in Gibran Khalil Gibran Park, staffed 24 hours a day, women wear name tags with their relatives' pictures, next to the words "How long?"
"It's in us to hope," Salem said, sitting next to the tent, sipping bitter coffee. "That is what a mother does."
Her children, Richard and Christine, were abducted on a road in west Beirut, probably at a checkpoint, as they drove home for lunch. Their mother had prepared rice and a stew of peas, carrots and potatoes. She waited, then contacted friends, who visited hospitals, restaurants, political parties and others with connections. She kept waiting.
Last spring a former Iraqi intelligence officer released from a Syrian prison visited the Beirut protest. He gazed at the pictures, Salem said, then stopped at a photo of Richard. He said he saw him in 1992 in Tadmur, one of Syria's worst jails.
"Hope is durable," Aad said. "It's so durable because they don't have an answer."
`It's a matter of the living'
At the start of the protest, Aad had the names of 280 people who had disappeared and were perhaps in Syrian jails. Since then, more families have come forward, bringing the number to 643. Hundreds of other cases remain unresolved by families who believe their relatives were detained by Israeli or allied forces in southern Lebanon during its occupation, which ended in 2000. Both numbers pale before the 17,000 still unaccounted for from the civil war. But for Aad and others, the detainees in Syria -- mostly unacknowledged by its government--remain the most pressing.
"There are people who are still alive in Syria," he said. "It's a matter of the living."
Some of the answers may rest beneath the deep brown soil of Majdal Anjar, where Syria once maintained a de facto headquarters for its presence in eastern Lebanon. There, last month, a shallow grave was unearthed on a hill overlooking the Bekaa Valley, holding up to 30 corpses.
The town's mayor, Shaaban Ajami, said he had known about the grave since 1999, "but they told me, `Don't say a word.'"
"There are still more bodies," Ajami said.
Fear of a `Pandora's box'
Amnesty International criticized the exhumation as unprofessional. On a visit after the search was finished, a reporter for the Daily Star, an English-language newspaper here, found bones strewn across the hilltop. Some activists suspect the government is wary of making too large an issue of it, willing to unearth the grave to perhaps put more pressure on Syria but not to risk more demands by victims' families to unearth civil war-era mass graves that litter the country.
"You can't just open this mass grave and say that's it," said Habib Nassar, a human-rights lawyer in Beirut. "Are you ready to open all the mass graves? You can't make a distinction between the Syrians and all the other factions involved in the war."
"I think now they'll even forget Anjar," he added. "They're afraid they'll open a Pandora's box."
Legacy remains in flux
Lebanon's civil war exacted a breathtaking toll. Official figures put the dead at more than 144,000 and the wounded at more than 184,000. Nearly 13,000 were abducted, and more than 17,000 remain missing. The task of addressing the war's legacy has fallen to a handful of intellectuals. A conference, "Memory for the Future," was organized in 2001. But its proposals--a war memorial, for instance--are overshadowed by what some activists call official amnesia.
One committee formed in 2001 to look into the missing never released a report; its chairman said he was pressured by pro-Syrian officials. A Syrian-Lebanese committee was formed last year, charged with resolving the fate of missing in each country's jails, but has yet to issue any findings.
"The reason why the problem was never solved was precisely because the perpetrators have been in power since the war and Syria was in control of the country," Nassar said. "It was not in their interest to find a solution."
Copyright © 2005, Chicago Tribune

Mofaz on Lebanon: Increased terror risk
By JPOST.COM STAFF 3/1/06
Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said Tuesday that terror infrastructure in Lebanon was supplying the Islamic Jihad and Al Qaida inside the West Bank and Gaza Strip. According to Mofaz, the reality on the ground in Syria and Lebanon had been getting increasingly complex, and the chances for terror attacks from Lebanon had heightened as a result.
Mofaz also said that Israel would respond gravely to the Al Qaida statement of responsibility for the Katyusha attack last week. "The situation [Al Qaida's statement of responsibility] requires an appropriate response, and we know how to give it, as we did in the last event [Israel's missile strike on Lebanon]," said Mofaz during a tour of a northern IDF base.
The defense minister added that there was a need for "specific changes" in Ghajar, relating to a Channel 2 report Monday night that claimed that one alternative being discussed was to move the 400 families in the northern part of the town - the Lebanese side - to the southern (Israeli) side and to complete the border fence, which is now breached by the village.
However, a statement released by the Prime Minister's Office early Tuesday morning rendered the option of a unilateral withdrawal from the town as "totally unlikely

Khaleej Times Online
An insider’s view - 3 January 2006
SYRIA’S troubles are multiplying by the day. Damascus has already been scorching under global spotlight and growing Western pressure over the Hariri assassination probe and the allegedly continuing interference in Lebanon’s affairs. The bombshell dropped by the former vice-president Abdel-Halim Khaddam therefore couldn’t have come at a more inconvenient time for the Syrian regime.
Doubtless, Khaddam’s allegation that President Bashar Al Assad had threatened former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri with reprisals months before the assassination is the most damaging incrimination of the Syrian leadership so far. More importantly, Khaddam’s accusations, made in an interview with the Al Arabiya TV, against the Syrian leadership cannot be brushed off easily for the simple reason he himself was part of the leadership until recently.
As the vice-president, senior cabinet member and a top leader of the governing Baath Party, Khaddam had been an important part of the establishment for over three decades. He was not only involved in the decision-making process at the highest level but also played a key role in evolving and implementing Syria’s policies in Lebanon.
So Khaddam obviously knows what he is talking about when he puts the Syrian leadership in the dock over Hariri assassination and for much else happening in Lebanon. He had the rare advantage of an insider who not only enjoyed a ringside view of the goings-on in Damascus and Lebanon but also influenced those decisions. Khaddam may have an old axe to grind. That however doesn’t necessarily mean Khaddam is lying in linking Damascus to the Hariri killing and the subsequent chain of events in Lebanon. He’s only begun to sing now that he is abroad, beyond the reach of the regime in Damascus.
Whatever Khaddam’s motives, there is little doubt that his damning disclosures will have serious ramifications for Syria, Lebanon and the Middle East as a whole. The Khaddam interview has turned the heat on Damascus further providing the West, especially US and France that have joined hands in the UN to orchestrate the moves against Syria, more reasons to corner the Baathist regime and possibly teach it a lesson for its alleged support to Iraqi insurgents and Palestinian groups.
The Khaddam interview is likely to speed up the UN investigation into the Hariri killing. While the interim report by Detlev Mehlis had argued that the high profile assassination couldn’t have taken place without the knowledge of top Syrian and Lebanese intelligence officials, Khaddam has suggested the killing couldn’t have been carried out without the approval from the very top. This is as bad as it gets. We only hope the UN probe will be able to sift facts from fiction and bring out the truth as soon as possible.

Sfeir and Ignatius IV preach peace in beleaguered Mid-East
By:  Youssef Hourany - January, 2006
The Maronite Patriarch drew attention to the urgent need to distance oneself from hate and the language of death, while his Greek-Orthodox counterpart in Antioch criticized those “who preach collaboration and do nothing but commit massacres and murders”.
Beirut (AsiaNews) – Peace in the Middle-East is undergoing a highly critical period in many countries, from the Holy Land to Iraq, from Syria to Lebanon. This precarious peace and the prevalent link between current problems and international interests – that “value the object more than the subject” – were at the heart of homilies given by religious leaders in Lebanon and Syria.
In Bkerke in Lebanon, the Maronite Patriarch, Nasrallah Sfeir, illustrated the significance of the Pope’s message for the World Day of Peace, insisting upon the need of living values of peace and distancing oneself from hate and the language of death. He reiterated the perennial stand taken by the Church, which preaches peace and tolerance, without forgetting the duty to safeguard those who are vulnerable and defenceless.
Meanwhile, the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch and all the East, Ignatius IV Hazim, during a homily delivered in the "Al Mariamieh" Cathedral in Damascus, criticized those who “preach collaboration and do nothing except commit massacres and murders”.
The first day of 2006 appeared different to those of previous years, because in no country of the Middle East were there any signs of that joyfulness which usually marks festivities in the region. The negative developments in many countries weigh heavy, as does the economic crisis which has affected the region for several months now.
Cardinal Sfeir was critical of the many “authorities in this world who jeopardize the future of humanity by backing rebels” and he observed with sadness the “advances in the arms trade, which is a dangerous development”.
The Patriarch also had hard words for governments which promote the spread of fundamentalist movements in many places of the region, defining them as “movements which defame the face of God”. The Patriarch appealed to all to promote dialogue and understanding among all peoples, pointing to principles to realize this dialogue: sincerity, faith in God, tolerance and welcome of the other, mercy, transparency, faithfulness, keeping one’s word, the rejection of evil and the search for good.
Ignatius IV Hazim reiterated his full adherence to principles preached by many men of goodwill – who favour peace and understanding – and he called the attention of Syrian and Lebanese leaders to the need for sincere collaboration and the urgency of starting a new journey based on the human and religious values preached by Christianity and Islam.
The Patriarch of Antioch warned against the dangers threatening the region, urging all to forget the past and to turn to the future, criticizing those people who plant mischief instead of the good that should be sought after by all.

Mubarak due in Kingdom tomorrow to discuss Arab affairs
CAIRO, Jan 2 (KUNA) -- Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is expected to travel to Saudi Arabia on Tuesday for talks with King Abdullah Bin Abdel Aziz on various regional and international issues, Cairo Radio said on Monday.
The radio said Mubarak's talks with the Saudis leaders would deal with Iraq, the Lebanese-Syrian question and means of defusing tension between the two neighboring countries over repercussions of the assassination of the former Lebanese premier, Rafic Al-Hariri, nearly a year ago.The talks will also deal with prospects of reviving fruitful peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians, in addition to promoting bilateral ties and mutual cooperation.
Mubarak's last visit to the Kingdom was on December 8.

Collective punishment doesn't really work
By GERSHON BASKIN
Talkbacks for this article: 1
When preparing for the Gaza withdrawal, the strategic planning branch of the IDF laid down two possible scenarios for the post-disengagement era. One looked at Gaza as a test of the Palestinians' ability to govern. The results of the test, as stated in the IDF's strategic thinking, would determine to what extent it would be possible to enter a negotiated process with the Palestinians or advance the road map. The alternative strategy looked at Gaza as a "pilot," which like the first scenario, would be a test. But rather than viewing it as something the Palestinians have to achieve on their own, in the pilot model Israel would do everything possible to ensure the success of the Palestinian take-over. The IDF strategic planners strongly recommended that the government adopt the pilot model; nonetheless, it is quite clear, four months down the road, that the "test" model was adopted and that, so far, the Palestinians have failed it badly.
It should also be mentioned that virtually nothing from the pilot model of assisting and ensuring success from Israel's side has been adopted and implemented. The failure of the Palestinians to govern, to assert law and order, to control security, to prevent Kassam rocket attacks on Israel, to hold free and open primaries, and more is quite evident. As if the script had been written in advance, voices from the Israeli right wing can be heard loud and clear, saying, "I told you so…."
Like in Oslo, the fate of the process has almost been predetermined by a total lack of good will (on both sides) and a failure to implement agreements and understandings in good faith. With the exception of the opening of the Rafah crossing - which was only one element of a much wider agreement - nothing has been implemented that might assist in achieving more positive test results.
IN GAZA, the main failures of both sides are clear. The Palestinians have completely failed to maintain order, to create a sense of security for their people, to impart a sense of confidence in the future. The Israeli government is continuing to maintain and enhance the policy launched at the beginning of the intifada to completely separate Gaza from the West Bank.
With the exception of keeping the Karni transportation zone open, as promised to the Americans, Israel continues to impose and enforce knee-jerk policies that punish the Palestinian public and do little to fight terrorism. Immediately after the disengagement Israel launched a program to grant work permits to Palestinian laborers and "businessman's cards" allowing holders to move freely inside Israel and even use Ben-Gurion Airport. However, after the continued Islamic Jihad attacks and Kassam launchings Israel once again imposed a full closure on Gaza and on the West Bank.
The plan to begin bus convoys between Gaza and the West Bank was canceled and, most recently, we saw the launching of Operation Blue Skies, bombing northern Gaza every night to prevent the launching of Kassams. There is little doubt that the continued deterioration of life in Gaza will lead to a clear Hamas victory in the upcoming Palestinian elections (if they are not cancelled), and it may be too late to do something that could preempt that result. Canceling or postponing the elections is almost surely going to lead to renewed Hamas violence against Israel.
FOR YEARS now, even during the Lebanon War, the IDF held firmly to the working assumption that collective punishment is effective. The basic idea is that if the local population suffers, they will pressure their government to fight terrorism.
This has never happened. Israel was greeted by the Shi'ites in south Lebanon with candies and flowers in 1982; within less than a year the Shi'ite population there joined the "resistance" that planted road side bombs and killed Israeli soldiers for 18 years. There was a direct correlation between the level of suffering the public felt as a result of Israeli actions and its willingness to take up the armed struggle against Israel.
Likewise, in Palestine, the Palestinian public has suffered enormously over the past five years. At no time during that period did it adopt the Israeli thinking and apply pressure to its leaders to fight and prevent terrorism. Instead, its hatred of Israel increased and its desire to hit Israel and Israelis increased accordingly. It is amazing that a policy which has for so many years consistently failed to achieve its stated strategic goals is applied instantaneously, without thought, as a knee-jerk reaction.
AMONG THE upper echelons of the IDF it is clear that most senior officers recognize that these policies of collective punishment against the Palestinians provide more answers to Israeli public opinion needs and concerns than to fighting and preventing terrorism.
In light of decades of failure it is time to evaluate the chances of success of a different course, of different policies. The policy recommended here is valid for the Gaza Strip only and not for the West Bank. It is based on the reality of the end of the Israeli occupation of Gaza, which is not the case in the West Bank, where Palestinians will continue to fight against it.
The recommended course is based on reciprocity and on price tags. The notion of collective punishment is that when Israeli security is violated, the Palestinian public pays the price. The policy I am now suggesting is based on a reverse logic - there is a price tag that Israel will pay for security achievements. If, for instance, the Palestinians find and close down a tunnel used for smuggling weapons, Israel will issue 2,000 closure-proof work permits. If the Palestinians discover and close down a Kassam factory, Israel will grant 1,000 closure-proof work permits. If the PA security forces begin to collect illegal weapons, each verified weapon collected will be worth X amount of work permits, or seats on the Gaza-West Bank bus, or Businessmen's Cards, etc.
Positive security performance by the Palestinian Authority would have a price tag that Israel would pay to benefit the Palestinian public. That price tag would be well known, and published. The payment would have to be immediate and visible. Israel would have to commit itself to implementing this policy consistently and over a long period of time. It would be worthwhile including third-party monitors to verify the actions of both sides - a tunnel should be identified and closed permanently and verified by a reliable third party. Israel would have to make its payment in a verifiable way. The reports of the third party would be open and visible to the public. It is time to try a new course that, rather than threatening and punishing, rewards positive actions and encourages the public to support an increasingly better reality. The alternative is more despair and hopelessness.
**The writer is the co-CEO of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information.
www.ipcri.org
 

Without Vision, There Will Be No Victory
written by: Manuela Paraipan, 02-Jan-06
http://www.worldsecuritynetwork.com/showArticle3.cfm?article_id=12345&topicID=42
Manuela Paraipan is WSN Correspondent "Broader Middle East"
In October, at a conference held in Tehran suggestively entitled "The World Without Zionism," President Ahmadinejad called for Israel to be “wiped off” the map. To make sure that his message was well understood, in December he publicly stated that the Holocaust is a "myth" and repeated his call that Israel be moved out of the region. "They have invented a myth that Jews were massacred and place this above God, religion and the prophets. The West has given more significance to the myth of the genocide of the Jews . . . If you have burnt the Jews, why don't you give a piece of Europe, the United States, Canada or Alaska to Israel . . . why should the innocent nation of Palestine pay for this crime?"
Ahmadinejad is not the first, and certainly not the last Muslim to call for Israel's destruction. Hamas has called for the same thing in its charter (go to: http://www.palestinecenter.org/cpap/documents/charter.html). Khaled Meshaal, a key leader of Hamas, opined that Ahmadinejad's public statements against Israel were "courageous." Those of us who hoped to see a more civilized, reasonable and moderate Hamas after its entrance on the political stage will have to wait longer than anticipated.
EU leaders in Brussels strongly condemned Ahmadinejad's anti-Israel comments. The United States, Canada, Australia, the Vatican and the UN publicly condemned the Iranian president's declarations. Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said: "Attempts to revise the commonly accepted facts of World War II, including with regard to the Holocaust are unacceptable.”
This time, as also was the case in October, the preferred response in Arab and Muslim countries to such alarming (to say the least) statements was not surprisingly a deafening silence. Their silence can be interpreted in two ways, none of the two being the best option:
1) Arab and Muslim leaders completely agreed with President Ahmadinejad, and in this case there is nothing they wanted to add or take away.
2) They may not completely agree with the Iranian President, but they felt compelled to side with him, either because of some sort of Islamic solidarity or simply because of their immediate interests in the region.
In an era of humane and technical development, anti-Semitism, bigotry and racism should have no place in the world. Therefore, in this particular case, silence was far from being the right answer.
However, there was a country that did respond. The response came only after few days of silence, but better late than never. The Saudi Ambassador to the United States, a former head of foreign intelligence, declared that the Holocaust was a "horrific genocide" and, "as far as Saudi Arabia is concerned, that's an historical fact, you cannot deny that, and people should move forward from that.”
The reaction of Prince Turki al-Faisal was largely ignored by media, but it is of particular interest given Saudi Arabia’s decades-old enmity toward the Jews and Israel. The ambassador’s balanced remark does not annul the extreme anti-Semitic sermons preached by some of the Saudi clerics in the Kingdom and outside it, but it is a public stance worthy of being remembered.
At a time when Iran is in need of internal reformation and modernization, Ahmadinejad lacks the answers to solving the problems and instead attracts public sympathy through his radical rhetoric against the United States and Israel. Surely, President Ahmadinejad voiced what he believes. In this respect, his words can be seriously taken as such. What still remains blurry is whether this chain of declarations will lead to precise actions against US interests in the region and against the very existence of Israel or if they were solely intended for internal consumption. It is crucial to make sure we have got the right message before taking any action against Iran.
President Ahmadinejad is believed to be devoted to the cult of the 12th Imam, the Shiite savior better known as the Mahdi, whose return would usher in an apocalyptic revolution of the oppressed over the forces of injustice. Hopefully, Ahmadinejad does not intend to create the apocalyptic momentum by using the nuclear power Iran will soon have, despite the EU3's (Germany, France and the UK) efforts to stop it.
As President, Ahmadinejad is subordinate to Ayatollah Khameini, the country's supreme ruler, and to the council of religious clerics - which controls the armed forces and the nuclear program. Basically, the radical mullahs will control Iran’s nuclear power. If their ultimate goal is to destroy Israel and rearrange the pyramid of powers in the region and the world, then the problem is deadly serious and without too many peaceful options. However, since Iran insists that its nuclear activity is only for peaceful means, why would it not be satisfied with wind or solar power technology? I am sure the EU and the US would be more than willing to assist Iran’s efforts in this respect.
In the past, Iran conducted quite a lot of back door meetings and arrangements with Israel and the US. Back then, the leadership of the country seemed more pragmatic and reasonable. Now, it’s an internal struggle between the conservatives and ultra-conservative mullahs to dominate Iran. With Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president and with deputies who were once commanders of the Revolutionary Guards, the hard-line extremists control Iran's domestic and foreign policy. It looks like the conservatives have the upper hand these days, while the reformists are sidelined but not yet defeated.
Should Israel take preemptive steps against Iran? Israel did it with Iraq in the 1980s, but this time such a strike might create more damage than actual good. Assuming that Israel would attack Iran, the Shiite worldwide would support Iran and react as violently as possible against Israel and whoever sides with it. Furthermore, countries such as Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia would hasten to produce nuclear weapons to retaliate against Israel. The world’s countries would have to choose sides - either them or us.
On the other hand, the United States is not in the position to enter into a military confrontation with Iran - at least not until it solves, one way or another, the unstable situation in Iraq and the tensioned relationship between Syria and Lebanon.
By being openly confrontational with Iraq, Iran, and Syria, the US struggle against terrorism will take the back seat, thus further endangering the Occident. Such a risky move would give Russia the opportunity of getting back in the superpower game, with good chances of winning the first place if it aligns itself with the radical Islamic world.
The leaders of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, all members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) asked for a Middle East free of nuclear weapons and called on Iran and Israel to join them. It is unlikely that Iran or Israel will respond positively to this request. However, it is important to see Arab and Muslim leaders demonstrating that they feel responsible for what happens in their region.
A high level of vision and flexibility is a must on all sides. Otherwise, we will all find ourselves in an apocalyptic situation from which there is no exit. In the end, no one will win, but all will suffer.

Assad's advocates
By Alexander Yakobson - Haaretz 3.1.06
A "support conference for Syria and the Syrian people" was recently held in Nazareth by a non-partisan committee consisting of representatives of the main camps in the Arab community, Haaretz reported on December 30.
Speakers included MKs Azmi Bishara, Abdulmalik Dehamshe and Mohammed Barakeh and the chair of the Higher Arab Monitoring Committee, Shawki Khatib.
The participants in the gathering sent a petition to the United Nations secretary-general to protest the report by the UN inquiry commission on the murder of Rafik Hariri. Barakeh stated that the murder investigation must be held by a neutral organization, not influenced by two powers "interested in maintaining tension in the region in general and between Syria and Lebanon in particular - the United States and Israel."
"The big spider United States and the little spider Israel are the two parties interested in creating a crisis between Syria and Lebanon," Barakeh said.
It is not clear why the Security Council's inquiry committee does not appear sufficiently neutral to the Israeli Arab community's leaders in order to probe the Lebanese statesman's murder. The attempt of the conference's participants to correlate between the international pressure on Syria regarding Lebanon and the war in Iraq is also completely groundless. France, which spearheaded the international objection to the war in Iraq, was also among the leaders of the international pressure that led to the end of the Syrian occupation in Lebanon and the establishment of the committee to investigate Hariri's murder. The committee is headed by a German jurist, whose state also objected to the war in Iraq.
It is natural that Arab solidarity is important to Arabs in Israel. But why shouldn't this community display solidarity with the democratic struggle in Lebanon against the Syrian occupation? Why aren't the results of this struggle seen as a source of national Arab pride? Why identify with the dark, dictatorial regime in Syria, which tramples a neighboring Arab state?
MK Bishara said in his address at the conference that the American administration desires to "erase Arab nationalism" in order to make the Arab world "divided on ethnic and religious issues." But the truth is that the national movement fighting for Lebanon's independence has proved a remarkable ability for interethnic cooperation, while the floundering dictatorship in Syria, which Bishara supports, is, among its other faults, also a regime ruled by an ethnic minority (Alawite).
Obviously, the entire Arab community in Israel does not share this support for Syria, but as long as no significant power has risen to challenge it, the picture remains very bleak.
No one was surprised by MK Bishara's participation in the conference, but some were unpleasantly surprised by the participation of Barakeh, the leader of Hadash, and the things he said there. Some people are still deluding themselves that the Israeli Communist party is a left-wing party and not an Arab national party.
Granted, this party has supported far worse dictators in the past than Bashar Assad, but the Arab Communists who believed in Stalin wanted to promote worthy humane and social causes. Their method was erroneous and distorted, but their mistake is understandable, considering the social circumstances they lived in.
Their support for the two-state, two-nation solution in 1947-1948 reflected, beyond toeing the Soviet line, a willingness to swim bravely against the murky nationalist current. In contrast, today, this is a party that appeals to the lowest common denominator of Arab nationalism. The support for Stalin was a tragedy. Supporting the second generation of the Assad dynasty is a pathetic farce. Bashar Assad and his Israeli advocates deserve each other.

Libya and the U.S.: The Unique Libyan Case
by Jon B. Alterman
Middle East Quarterly
Winter 2006
http://www.meforum.org/article/886
At first glance, recent U.S. diplomatic success with the Libyan government seemed easy. After two decades of international pariah status, Libya committed in 2003 not only to forswear terrorism and abandon its weapons programs but also to reveal those programs to U.S. inspectors. In the process, Libya divulged secret procurement networks and allowed U.S. and British intelligence specialists to compare their analysis of Libyan proliferation against actual facts on the ground.
The operation looked like the type of success that Washington might seek to repeat with other regimes that aim to develop chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons: Syria and Iran in the Middle East, and North Korea farther afield. Paula DeSutter, assistant secretary of state for verification and compliance, expressed hope. "We only hope that states with even more advanced nuclear programs like Iran and North Korea will learn from Libya's example and agree to rejoin the community of civilized nations and give up these terrible weapons," she told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.[1] But how relevant is the Libyan model to these other cases? An understanding of the factors leading to Libya's change of policy suggests the Libyan experience is not as applicable as some would argue.
Although not obvious at the time, Libya represented an unusually attractive target for U.S. engagement. Unlike with Tehran and Damascus, Washington's grievances against Tripoli were discrete and not especially urgent. U.S. and Libyan officials could sequence resolution of their differences so as to build confidence, and the prospective rewards were large enough to create an incentive to resolve the outstanding differences. Agreement with the United States would also open the way to renewed foreign investment in Libya and a huge financial gain for the Libyan state. With regard to Damascus and Tehran, Washington's concerns are less isolated and more difficult to sequence, and the rewards less clear. In addition, significant domestic constituencies in the United States, Iran, and Syria have complex and often hostile attitudes toward these bilateral relationships. The politics surrounding rapprochement with Iran and Syria would be far more difficult to manage than were those with Libya.
From Ally to Enemy
Libya was not always considered hostile and unpredictable. After independence from Italy in 1951, the Libyan government allowed both the United States and the United Kingdom to maintain their military bases at Wheelus Field and Cyrenaica. As the Cold War developed in the Middle East, King Idris cast his lot with the Western powers rather than join the rising anti-Western, pan-Arabist tide. The discovery of large quantities of oil in the late 1950s drew the Libyan monarchy even closer to the West. Oil wealth proved a mixed blessing, though. It widened the gap between rich and poor and raised some Libyans' aspirations more than their incomes. The windfall overwhelmed the state and led to the king's downfall.[2]
On September 1, 1969, the Free Officers' Movement toppled the monarchy and installed 29-year-old Colonel Mu'ammar Qadhafi as head of a Revolutionary Command Council. The new Libyan government cast aside Libya's relationship with the West, expelled U.S. and British forces from its bases, and embraced a Nasserist path. The Libyan government declared itself neutral in superpower conflicts, pledged its support for the Palestinians, and vowed to act against any form of colonialism or imperialism at home or abroad.
Yet, it was Qadhafi's hostility to the United States rather than his neutrality that led to his isolation. Libya's loose ties to an alphabet soup of terrorist groups from around the world, as well as his government's sanction of the December 1979 attacks on the U.S. embassy in Tripoli, led the Carter administration to designate Libya as a "state-sponsor of terror" when it created the list later that month.[3] In August 1981, two Libyan jets fired at U.S. aircraft in the Mediterranean; U.S. fighters shot them down in response. In 1986, President Ronald Reagan ordered an air strike on Libya after investigators tied the Libyan government to a bombing that killed two U.S. soldiers in a Berlin nightclub.
What provided focus to the U.S.-Libyan tensions for more than a decade, though, was another, more audacious attack: the 1987 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. The attack killed 270 people, including several U.S. government employees and a student group from Syracuse University. The investigation found numerous ties to two Libyan intelligence agents, Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah.[4] International insistence that Libya accept responsibility for the bombing and hand over the two men to an international court for trial became the basis for a durable set of United Nations-imposed sanctions.[5]
Though Qadhafi later distanced himself from direct support for terrorism, he was a frequent thorn in the side of U.S. administrations. He pursued work on a range of weapons of mass destruction programs, the parameters of which remained unclear to the U.S. intelligence community. While Qadhafi claimed that Bill Clinton's 1992 electoral victory would mark a new chapter in U.S.-Libyan relations, he spoiled any rapprochement when he announced that Libyan dissidents who moved to the United States were worthy of slaughter.[6] In 1993, Libyan agents kidnapped—and presumably killed—one such oppositionist, Mansur Kikhia.[7] Qadhafi's refusal to extradite the Lockerbie suspects remained a constant irritant in its relations with the United States and Europe. Qadhafi's unrepentant and unpredictable behavior became one inspiration for the State Department's "rogue regime" moniker.
Opportunity
With so much bad blood between Washington and Tripoli, diplomatic re-engagement began slowly in the late years of the Clinton administration and resumed with renewed vigor after the 9-11 terrorist attacks. The fundamental diplomatic challenge faced by both the U.S. and Libyan sides was how to build trust. To many U.S. observers, Qadhafi was as erratic as he was dangerous, and many feared that any effort to conclude an agreement with him would only be a prelude to embarrassment. Qadhafi had his own fears. Libya had remained for two and a half decades on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terror. While the secret talks aimed at rapprochement were being held in London, senior officials such as John Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, described Libya as a "rogue state intent on acquiring weapons of mass destruction" and reiterated the President's warning, "America will do what is necessary to ensure our nation's security… I will not wait on events while dangers gather. I will not stand by as peril draws closer and closer."[8] Qadhafi's government, therefore, sought guarantees that U.S. gestures were not a trick to subvert and destroy the regime.
Yet, despite these problems, Libyan and U.S. negotiators enjoyed several advantages. By the time George W. Bush came to office, impediments in the bilateral relationship were relatively straightforward. Negotiators had already worked out a compromise whereby Libya would turn over intelligence operatives implicated in the Lockerbie bombing for an international trial. That trial had concluded. The remaining issues in that file were Libyan acceptance of responsibility for the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 and payment of compensation to the victims' families.
Other concerns revolved around Libya's illicit weapons programs. Varying reports circulated about activities at Rabta—once described as the largest chemical weapons factory in the world—and Tarhuna. Despite uncertainty about their scope, they were thought to be of sufficient scale to warrant repeated mention in Congressional testimony delivered by directors of Central Intelligence John Deutch and George Tenet.[9]
These baskets of concerns shared several attractive characteristics. First, they lent themselves to clear metrics. Paid compensation can be measured, as can weapons systems and documentation. There is little qualitative judgment involved. Secondly, they were verifiable. Libyan compliance on these issues could be judged with relative confidence by both overt and covert means. Third, the bilateral issues were discrete. Difficult though these issues were, they did not contain references to vague issues like "political openness" or human rights.
In addition, a period of relative bilateral calm also facilitated rapprochement. Libya had retreated enough from supporting acts of international terrorism that a White House official could confide to this author in the spring of 2004 that Libya had been "out of the terrorism business" for approximately a decade. Libya had ended direct support and military training for groups such as the Irish Republican Army and the Palestine Liberation Organization by the late 1990s; its relations with other groups such as Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines were harder to fathom, and therefore less objectionable to many. In any event, as Qadhafi often complained to visiting Americans, the groups he had once supported had all abandoned armed struggle, joined political processes, and made their journey to the White House while he remained internationally isolated.[10] While some aspects of Libyan behavior remained objectionable, such as meddling in African politics,[11] it never challenged U.S. strategic interests. Concerns over such activities would color ongoing diplomatic discussions, but they would not derail discussions over the strategic relationship.
Another advantage the negotiators had was the luxury of time. U.S. and Libyan negotiators could sequence the resolution of their differences, and the resolution of each distinct problem built confidence and eased agreement on the next. The issues resultant from Libya's bombing of Pan Am 103 could come first to mitigate the U.S. political environment; weapons issues could follow. Issues related to Libya's actions in the Middle East and Africa could wait longer. Libya, meanwhile, could space out its compensation payments to the Pan Am 103 victims' families to ensure that the U.S. and international community complied with their obligations as well.
Years of cool detachment also provided a window of opportunity. Libya's maintenance of a consistent negotiating team created a channel to the Libyan leadership in which confidence grew with time.[12] Both Washington and London came to understand that their Libyan interlocutors—Intelligence Chief Musa Kusa, ambassador to Rome Abdul-Ati al-Obeidi, and ambassador to London Muhammad al-Zwai[13]—enjoyed Qadhafi's support, and that the Libyan leader would abide by their commitments. Such confidence was important since U.S. negotiators had experience with insincere or impotent mediators in the 1980s in Iran and in the 1990s in the Palestinian Authority.
The Libyan leadership also enjoyed growing trust in their interlocutors. In the mid-1990s, Britain negotiated an end to Libyan support for the Irish Republican Army and won Libya's acceptance of "general responsibility" for the shooting of a British police officer in front of the Libyan embassy in London in 1984. These steps, combined with Libya's turning over the Lockerbie suspects for trial, prompted the British government to lead efforts in 1999 to suspend United Nations sanctions on Libya.[14] Throughout the negotiations between the U.S. and Libyan governments, the British government's position—and its actions—stood as a testament to the notion that adversarial relations could be reversed and as a guarantor that the U.S. would abide by its commitments.
In addition, the clear and consistent benchmarks outlined by the U.S. and British side helped convince the Libyans that demands by their negotiating partners were directed toward discrete goals, not part of a covert effort at regime change. Rewards for positive Libyan behavior built further confidence that the outcome of the negotiating process would be the positive pathway forward outlined by the governments.
Contributing to the window of opportunity for U.S.-Libyan rapprochement was the relative quiescence of U.S. domestic politics. Congress had rushed to add Libya to a 1996 bill aimed at sanctioning Iran, and until the end of their term, Clinton administration officials were fearful of the political consequences if word of their contacts leaked out.[15] Yet, through more than two years of negotiations during the Bush administration, Congress remained on the sidelines.
Much of the credit in this regard goes to Libya's success at outreach among the families of the victims of Pan Am 103. The families were a disparate group with varied interests and diverse goals. Libya won these families' acquiescence by coming forward with a generous compensation package of $10 million per victim, albeit one with a twist. The Libyan government would tie payments to diplomatic normalization: Tripoli would pay $4 million upon the lifting of U.N. sanctions, $4 million upon the lifting of U.S. sanctions, and the remainder when the U.S. State Department took Libya off its list of state sponsors of terrorism.[16] While many families remained angry, the prospect of a multi-million dollar settlement, combined with the Libyans' acceptance of responsibility, represented a form of closure that most families supported. Some families even began to lobby the U.S. government, which, while not a party to the settlement, could, nevertheless, influence how much the families were paid.[17]
Were the families to unite against rapprochement, or were they to split on the issue, it would have been hard to pursue a U.S.-Libyan track without a Congressional outcry. Instead, strong and ongoing bipartisan support for a settlement kept the broader political process on track. In point of fact, many of the families seem to consider the $8 million they have already received as adequate and are happy to keep Libya on the terrorism list as punishment for their loss.
Also contributing to an environment ripe for rapprochement was the financial value of any deal. On the financial side, Libya's pariah status was a persistent obstacle to modernizing its economy and developing its oil industry. Durable international sanctions may have cost the regime a total of $33 billion in lost revenue,[18] and rising oil prices through the early years of this decade made the opportunity costs of isolation increase steeply. Large though its $2.7 billion settlement to the Pan Am 103 families was, Libyan officials say that they will recover the full amount in just a few months of renewed economic activity.[19] Such a situation was also beneficial to the U.S. government. Washington would not have to reward Tripoli directly. The private foreign investment would be enough.
Two additional elements helped set the stage. First, a growing set of common interests drove Washington and Tripoli together. Principal among these was the global war on terrorism, in which Qadhafi felt as much of a threat from radical rejectionist groups as did Washington. Both the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group and the Islamic Martyrs' Movement sought to replace Qadhafi's regime with an Islamist state. The latter injured Qadhafi in a 1998 assassination attempt that may have been linked to Al-Qaeda.[20] It was no coincidence that the Libyan government unleashed a flurry of approaches to the Bush administration in the month following 9-11.[21] Washington and Tripoli were coming to have the same enemies.
Second, the Libyans were keenly aware of overwhelming U.S. power, both in terms of intelligence capacity and military might. The U.S. interception of a German ship carrying Malaysian-made nuclear centrifuges from Dubai to Libya in October 2003[22] was a clear indicator to the Libyans that they could not be sure of what Washington knew about their proliferation networks. In such an event, trying to "game" the United States would likely fail. U.S. military success in Iraq was a further demonstration of capabilities, and while much of the negotiation process began long before even a potential military action against Iraq, U.S. military capacity could not have been in doubt.
Is the Libyan Experience Applicable Elsewhere?
Given the success the U.S. government had resolving its most vital differences with Libya, some commentators have suggested that the Washington-Tripoli rapprochement was the result of a robust policy of force projection. Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer, for example, said, "By amazing coincidence, Qadhafi's first message to Britain—principal U.S. war ally and conduit to White House war councils—occurs just days before the invasion of Iraq. And his final capitulation to U.S.-British terms occurs just five days after Saddam Hussein is fished out of a rathole."[23] Similar force projection, they imply, would create comparable compliance from other regimes.[24] For their own part, Libyan officials have been quick to suggest that their experience could create precedent for other countries with long-strained relations with the West that might desire rapprochement.[25] Could building on the Libyan example win a similar strategic turn from longstanding foes such as Syria, Iran, and North Korea? In practice, U.S. success in each case would be far more difficult to achieve.
Syria. At first glance, Syria appears to be a good candidate for "the Libya treatment." Some advocates say that Syrian president Bashar al-Assad has the right inclinations but needs to strengthen his hand against conservative and reactionary forces in his own government.[26] While there are rumors that Washington may dangle such a deal,[27] for a variety of reasons, Syria may not be a good candidate from which to seek such a strategic turn.
First, Bashar al-Assad may not enjoy control over the breadth of government and security services to the same extent that Qadhafi does. Constantly under scrutiny for willingness to make the concessions his father was unwilling to make, it is hard to imagine the younger Assad feeling the freedom to be so bold. Indeed, the Syrians' apparent belief that they have few diplomatic cards to play leads them to act with extraordinary caution, for fear that they will waste a card with little result. Assad faces a slew of potential internal foes, from members of the domestic intelligence services to the military to members of the business elite, and keeping those forces in check appears to take most of his energies, even absent a dramatic change in policies.
Second, the U.S. agenda with Syria is far messier than its agenda with Libya. Not only are U.S. concerns tied to Syria's chemical weapons program, but they are also intertwined with infiltration of insurgents from Syria into Iraq,[28] Syria's involvement in Lebanon,[29] and Syrian involvement in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Unlike Qadhafi, the Syrian regime cannot point to a decade of relatively good behavior. Instead, critics point to Syria's daily activities endangering the lives of U.S. military personnel, Israeli civilians, and even U.S. civilians in Israel, Iraq, or beyond. Progress one month seems to yield to backsliding the next. Consequently, it would be harder to sequence a U.S.-Syrian rapprochement, especially with such strong and persistent voices in the United States and Syria calling for greater confrontation rather than reconciliation.[30]
Finally, Syrians seem to be seeking a larger payoff for a strategic reorientation than either the United States or any possible combination of countries would be willing to pay. On visits by this author, Syrian interlocutors repeatedly describe the country as "potentially America's best friend in the Middle East." But Syria is not Libya. Syrian oil reserves are a diminishing resource[31] and do not compare in magnitude to those enjoyed by Libya or other regional states. Multinational corporations, held back by U.S. policy, will not be baying for access. For a rapprochement to be lucrative to Damascus, they would probably seek a big U.S. government payout, similar to what Egypt received following the Camp David accords. It is unlikely that Washington would repeat such a deal, though.
Iran. Another candidate for strategic reversal is Iran, which has had strained relations with the United States for a quarter century. But for many reasons, Iran is an even worse candidate for such a reversal in the near term than Syria.
Iranian politics have grown increasingly fragmented over the last decade. Multiple power centers in the government, combined with shifting alliances, give little confidence that a deal struck, for example, with the Foreign Ministry would carry over to the intelligence services or the Revolutionary Guards. The system of checks and balances that thwarted the will of the reformist parliament in the early part of this decade could scuttle a deal with the United States, raising fears that any bilateral agreement would represent a pact with only a single faction and invite entrepreneurial efforts by other factions to win their own gains.
Second, the U.S. agenda with Iran is far more complex than its agenda with Syria. Some specialists argue that Iran is within five to ten years of developing a nuclear weapons capacity;[32] it already has robust chemical weapons ability.[33] Claims persist that Iran supports groups that have killed U.S. and Israeli civilians.[34] Iranian assets are involved in Iraq, threatening the lives of U.S. troops and endangering a variety of U.S. strategic interests.[35] It would be near impossible to narrow the agenda and sequence a U.S.-Iranian rapprochement because of the difficulty in putting any of the vital issues aside while others are resolved. Doing so would raise charges that lives were being put at risk as a consequence. The bilateral history of mistrust makes the politics of U.S.-Iranian rapprochement a sensitive issue in both countries.
An additional issue in the Iran case is timing. If Iran is developing a nuclear capacity, its leadership would likely wait until it has such a capacity to consider a strategic reorientation, rather than bargain it away preemptively. They might reason that Pakistan and India managed to test nuclear weapons in 1998 without incurring dramatic costs, and North Korea has seen its bargaining power grow since it announced a nuclear weapons capacity in 2003. Iranian leaders feel no urgent need to negotiate. High oil prices have swelled their treasury and Asian interest in Iranian oil has mitigated the government's isolation.[36]
Conclusion
Although less clear five years ago than today, Libya may have been a kind of low-hanging fruit among regimes from which one could win a strategic reorientation. For years, the missing ingredient had been understanding regime motivation. Many Western leaders had written off Qadhafi as unfathomable and mercurial, and for that reason, had been reluctant to engage in any dialogue. Their distaste for the Libyan leadership, however, seems to have obscured the many ways in which Libya was a problem that lent itself to resolution.
The benefits of the Libyan turn have been massive. Not only has the United States won important cooperation from the Libyans on counterterrorism, eliminated uncertainty over proliferation in North Africa, and helped secure justice for the families of victims of Libyan-sponsored terrorist acts, but the discovery and subsequent disruption of proliferation networks that had been supplying the Libyan government has had ripple effects beyond North Africa to the Persian Gulf, Africa, and Asia. All together, the benefits of U.S. engagement with the Libyans have exceeded many of the expectations not only of skeptics but also of advocates. From the Libyan side, most of the benefits have come indirectly—not from the U.S. government but from corporations seeking to enter the Libyan market. Libya has shed its international pariah status, and Tripoli in five years is unlikely to bear much resemblance to its current state.
But Syria and Iran are more complex problems. While the Libyan experience suggests the possibility of positive change even with unsavory leaders, tasks must be contained and sequenced. The Libyan case holds other lessons as well. The size of carrots and sticks are not the sole factors that determine success. Regime motivation, issue complexity, and the international environment are also critical. The Libyan case demonstrates, though, that even barren diplomatic landscapes can hold the seeds of a diplomatic reorientation. Nurturing such seeds requires luck, will, and patience.
Jon B. Alterman is director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC. He wishes to thank Michael Balz for his assistance.
***[1] Paula A. DeSutter, assistant secretary of state for verification and compliance, "U.S. Relations with Libya," testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Feb. 26, 2004.
[2] See Dirk Vandewalle, Libya since Independence (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1998), ch. 3.
[3] Export Administration Control Act of 1979, as amended (Title 50, U.S.C., App. 2401 et. seq.)
[4] See, for example, Middle East Economic Digest, Apr. 17, 1992.
[5] U.N. Security Council resolutions 731, 748, and 883.
[6] Ronald Bruce St. John, Libya and the United States: Two Centuries of Strife (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), pp. 168-9, 173.
[7] Ibid., p. 173.
[8] John Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, "Beyond the Axis of Evil: Additional Threats from Weapons of Mass Destruction," remarks at the Heritage Foundation, Washington, D.C., May 6, 2002.
[9] John Deutch, "Worldwide Threat Assessment Brief to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence," Feb. 22, 1996; George Tenet, testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Feb. 5, 1997; George Tenet, "The Worldwide Threat in 2000: Global Realities to Our National Security," testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Mar. 21, 2000.
[10] Background interviews with U.S. government officials, Rome, Italy, Dec. 2004.
[11] Christian Blanchard, "CRS Issue Brief for Congress: Libya," Apr. 14, 2005, pp. 13-5.
[12] George Tenet, "The Worldwide Threat 2004: Challenges in a Changing Global Context," testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Feb. 24, 2004.
[13] Financial Times, Jan. 27, 2004.
[14] Background comments of a British government official, Rome, Italy, 2004.
[15] Iran-Libya Sanctions Act, PL 104-172, enacted Aug. 5, 1996.
[16] "Libya," Country Reports on Terrorism, Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism, U.S. Department of State, Apr. 27, 2005, chap. 5B.
[17] Background discussions with U.S. Department of State, White House, and Congressional officials, 2003-05.
[18] Ray Takeyh, "The Rogue Who Came in from the Cold," Foreign Affairs, May-June 2001, p. 64.
[19] Arik Hesseldahl, "Time to Go Back to Libya," Forbes Online, Mar. 7, 2002.
[20] Yehudit Ronen, "Qadhafi and Militant Islamism: Unprecedented Conflict?" Middle Eastern Studies, Jan. 2002, pp. 1-16.
[21] Interview with Lisa Anderson, "Qaddafi, Desperate to End Libya's Isolation, Sends a ‘Gift' to President Bush," Council on Foreign Relations, CFR.org, Dec. 22, 2003.
[22] BBC News, Feb. 12, 2004.
[23] The Washington Post, Dec. 26, 2003.
[24] Spencer Abraham, U.S. energy secretary, news briefing, Y-12 National Security Complex, Oak Ridge, Tenn., Mar. 16, 2004.
[25] Background conversations with Libyan government officials and academics, Washington, D.C. and elsewhere, 2004-05.
[26] See, for example, arguments outlined in Flynt Leverett, Inheriting Syria (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 2005).
[27] Times (London), Oct. 15, 2005.
[28] Gen. Richard Meyers, CNN Late Edition, Apr. 18, 2004.
[29] Implied by UNSC Resolution 1559, confirmed by secretary-general letter S/2005/331.
[30] Zalmay Khalilzad, U.S. ambassador to Iraq, briefing, Washington, D.C., Sept. 12, 2005; Syrian Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act of 2003, PL 108-175.
[31] Moshe Efrat, "Syria: Economic Development, Achievements, Problems and Prospects," in Moshe Maoz, Joseph Ginat, and Onn Winckler, eds., Modern Syria: From Ottoman Role to Pivotal Role in the Middle East (Portland: Susser Academic Press, 1999), p. 88.
[32] The Washington Post, Aug. 2, 2005.
[33] Patterns of Global Terrorism, 2004 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of State, Apr. 2005), pp. 88-9.
[34] Ibid., p. 89.
[35] Anthony H. Cordesman, "Iran's Evolving Military Forces," Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, D.C., July 2004, p. 15.
[36] Dan Blumenthal, "China and the Middle East: Providing Arms," Middle East Quarterly, Spring 2005, pp. 11-9.