by Bea
We’ve spent a fair amount of time this week on Iraq and Iran, but overlooked two other neighboring hot spots, Lebanon and Palestine. In both, this week saw these cauldrons of malcontent nearly boil over. And in both, the US administration’s basic approach was the same. So here is an update.
In Lebanon, clashes erupted between pro- and anti-government students in a university cafeteria and then spread out to neighboring areas. The army was called in to contain them. By the time they were over, four people had died and 150 were wounded, and the clashes were called the worst since the 15-year Lebanese civil war ended in 1990. One student wryly observed, as she gazed in sadness at her smashed 6-month old car:
"It is a cursed year for cars," Naameh said. "The year 2006 look of a Lebanese car: smashed and burned."
Naameh’s car was parked in the BAU parking lot alongside 200 other vehicles that also had their windows smashed by rioters, and the few that had been set ablaze.
A night curfew was imposed in Beirut and then cautiously lifted a few days later. Schools remained closed. The standoff between the government and the opposition, however, continued without resolution. Veteran Lebanese journalist Rami Khouri warns that Lebanon risks becoming the Mogadishu or the Afghanistan of the Middle East. Another veteran Middle East correspondent, Robert Fisk warned:
This is how the 1975-90 conflict began in Lebanon. Outbreaks of sectarian hatred, appeals for restraint, promises of aid from Western and Arab nations and a total refusal to understand that this is how civil wars begin.
Meanwhile, in Paris, a donors’ conference organized by Jacques Chirac succeeded, with much fanfare, in raising $7.6 billion for the Lebanese government to help it rebuild from the devastation of Israel’s massive onslaught against it last summer, a war which the Lebanese Defense Minister had said at the time had set the country’s infrastructure back by 50 years and caused $2.6 billion in damage. Numerous governments made generous pledges of aid, including the US ($770 million). The aid was conditional upon both political stability and the government’s economic programme, the core of which is privatization and reduction of the $40 billion debt. These are goals which are, of course, cherished by the U.S. as well:
[M]ost importantly,” Rice said, “our assistance will support the Lebanese government’s own ambitious reform program, which demonstrates its commitment to reducing its debt and achieving economic and financial stability.”
She said American businesses are participating in the reconstruction, in areas such as job creation and training, computer technology and the construction of homes, schools and businesses, through public-private partnership programs such as the Overseas Public Investment Corporation.
“This government agency has partnered with Citibank to extend up to $120 million in new financing, through Lebanese banks, for loans to support Lebanese businesses and homeowners,” Rice said, and combined with the government level U.S.-Lebanon Partnership, “these loans will encourage additional private investment and contribute to economic growth.”
But as one Lebanese politician was overheard to ask on al-Jazeera, is it wise for this aid to be given conditionally? What would happen should the political situation change and the opposition come into power with a different economic programme? Would the aid still be forthcoming?
In Palestine, days of violence between Hamas and Fatah supporters in Gaza left 24 dead and hopes for any possibility of national unity in tatters. There, as you may recall, the international community, led by the U.S., had earlier imposed an embargo on aid, and Israel had also withheld Palestinian tax funds, all in an effort to force the rightfully elected Hamas government to heel and play by the rules (i.e., announce that they recognize Israel’s right to exist). Gazan blogger Laila observed this week:
It is the first time in history, according to the UN’s John Duggard, that an occupied people have been subject to international sanctions, especially sanctions of this magnitude and rigor.
She described the mood in Gaza:
The Gaza I knew only a few months earlier had changed so starkly and so quickly….
Just one year ago around this time, it was the elation that was unmistakable.
That night in January the surprise election results were announced. The looks on people’s faces will be forever seared in my memory. The looks of disbelief and astonishment and jubilation; and those, most importantly, of hope.
For arguably the first time in their history, Palestinians felt they had actively changed their lives for the better, voting out the corruption that had beleaguered them for years.
But the gritty hopefulness of those days is long gone, having since hardened into something more angry and empty and sad.
Sanctions were quick to be enforced. The borders were shut. The people encircled and became impoverished beyond precedent. Gaza was plunged into darkness.
What is most alarming is how all of this unfolded with such purpose and yet with so little protest.
Before our very eyes, global powers have colluded to create a strip of land more isolated than North Korea itself. In so doing, they have sentenced Gaza’s residents to a living death in the world’s largest internment camp.
Gaza has been cast away into the abyss, its residents left to fend for themselves. They are completely severed from their counterparts in the West Bank and Jerusalem; completely severed from the outside world.
The result is this: Gaza is gradually declining into anarchy and its entire social, political, and economic fabric is unraveling.
And it is this complete decay of whatever semblance of normalcy they had left that makes Gazans more afraid than ever before….
It is more than a mere power struggle. It is a fight for both political legitimacy and the pen that will write history. Who will continue the national historical narrative of the Palestinian struggle?
But the Hamas government has so far refused to yield, turning instead to Iran for a massive infusion of aid. When the Iranian aid was announced, Israel and the US changed their tune and began releasing funds, realizing the shortsightedness of their policy. The US began to pour money into heavy arms for the forces of Abbas to fortify them in their standoff against Hamas. According to one report:
Mr. Bush is very concerned about the destabilizing effect a full-scale conflict between the two groups could have on the region. He fears it could turn into another Iraq. One way of dealing with the concern would be for him to initiate talks with the two groups and see if there is a way forward that would protect Israel’s right to exist while at the same time eliminating the risk of civil war between Hamas and Fatah. That is impossible because the United States (and Israel for that matter) do not talk to groups that are dedicated to the destruction of Israel. Mr. Bush also doesn’t talk to countries he doesn’t like but that’s another story. Ever creative, Mr. Bush has another plan. Sell arms.
Mr. Bush is going to pour $86 million into the coffers of Fatah. That is more than the total of all the monies the United States has given the PLO since it was formed in 1994. [Note: This is an error. The PLO was not formed in 1994 but much earlier – Bea] None of this aid would be necessary if Fatah had not lost the 2006 election. The money will help it regain what it lost at the ballot box. Mr. Bush understands that kind of thinking since he had to go the Supreme Court to become president after losing at the ballot box.
According to media reports in late December, with Israel’s and the United States’s approval, 2,000 AK-47s and two million bullets were transferred to Mr. Abbas’s security forces, many of whom are loyal to Mr. Abbas and to Fatah. (Fatah’s armed wing known as Al-Aqsa fighters are hostile to Israel and some Fatah folk have launched attacks against both the U.S and Israel but Mr. Bush hopes those people won’t be given those weapons.) With $86 million it’s a sure bet there will be lots more weapons heading Fatah’s way. More arms is a surefire way to bring peace to that region.
As reported here earlier, the policy to pit one side against the other in open warfare was the brainchild of Elliot Abrams and is now bearing fruit.
There is more to report from both these places, but that is enough for now.
And ominously in neighboring Jordan, which has so far remained quiet while absorbing a number of Iraqi refugees the equivalent of 10% of its population of 6 million, there were signs of discontent as well.
In both Palestine and Lebanon, the larger tensions between Iran and the US were being played out at a local level. And the US was relying on a simplistic foreign policy of "Dollars and Guns" — paying big money locally to put its favored party in power, while failing to address, through wide and inclusive regional diplomacy, the very urgent and real grave underlying concerns and unmet needs that brought both societies to the brink of civil war in the first place. Not, in my view, a recipe for any kind of long-term stability. What do you think?