OUR HUGE RESPONSIBILITY to IRAQ, PALESTINE, ISRAEL, and the ENTIRE MIDDLE EAST: We Need New Ideas and Solutions

Paul Flum, President of Goals for Americans Foundation

On any given day in the Middle East, you can find reasons for optimism, for despair, or for just plain exhaustion. July was a month that provided plenty of evidence to justify all three categories, and August promises to bring more of the same, with the stakes even higher. We need new ideas.

As always, two subjects dominate the news as August begins:

1) The ongoing war and occupation of Iraq and the security crisis enveloping the fledgling country

2) The forced withdrawal of Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip

The good-news bad-news nature of these two hot spots was fully evident in July. The uneasy but sustained truce between Palestinian militants and Israeli security forces that has held for much of the spring finally broke down, as Hamas launched attacks against settlements and security targets, and Israeli forces retaliated in kind. This is especially troubling right now, because Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is still trying to cement his legitimacy — and authority — over the citizens of Gaza on the eve of the Israeli pullout.

In Iraq, security continues to be the endless nightmare for citizens and combatants alike. The insurgency raged on in July, with a series of bombings, kidnappings, ambushes, and political assassinations that demonstrate their growing sophistication and resolve. The instability that radiates from such lawlessness continues to slow reconstruction efforts, which threatens the already overtaxed patience of the average citizen. As another scorching summer wears them down, Iraqis are once again going without electricity and fresh water on a regular basis.

August will be pivotal for both of these areas as major events unfold, for better or worse.

Ariel Sharon has staked his political life on his decision to withdraw the almost 10,000 settlers from 21 settlements in the Gaza Strip, and to turn over autonomy for this small but volatile region with its 1.3 million residents to the Palestinian Authority. He intends to carry out this evacuation within a three-week period in August. And he is ferociously opposed by his core constituency, Orthodox Jews, and the thousands of settlers in the West Bank.

Supporters of an Israeli withdrawal plan from the Gaza Strip shout during a rally in Tel Aviv 3/19/05.

For this group, Sharon’s decision is an act of brutal betrayal. But theirs is decidedly the minority opinion within Israel, and that may be the ultimate good news. For those who support him, and that includes many of his enemies, the withdrawal represents the return of sanity and salvation for the Israeli State, and the beginning of the end of the tyranny of the few — the Orthodox settlement movement. For them, the withdrawal will represent a victory for the pragmatic majority who still believe peace is possible without endless war, for those who believe that the settlements and their occupants are the greatest roadblock to such a peace.

Even though Sharon is spending a great deal of political capital on the Gaza withdrawal — and risking his life in the process, if Israeli history is any guide — his motives are not necessarily clear or purely humanitarian. One of the more practical explanations for this decision is purely economical. It costs a small fortune for the Israeli military to defend these settlements that are deep within a hostile Palestinian community, and the moderate Israeli public is tired of this money pit eating up their tax dollars and killing off their young soldiers while garnering the scorn of the international community. Many within the Bush Administration and the Palestinian Authority hope the Gaza withdrawal will be the kick-start that gets the Bush “road map” to peace back on track — many who should know better.

Sharon and his advisors have left many clues that this withdrawal from Gaza, as well as from four West Bank settlements, will be a one-time-only event, and in no way signals the beginning of the end of the settlement movement. While this withdrawal moves toward its August rendezvous with history, Sharon is busy moving forward with major settlement expansions in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, exactly where the Palestinians want to eventually locate the capital of their independent state.

The Bush Administration continues to have attention deficit disorder in this part of the Middle East. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has made a few come-and-go trips to meet with local leaders, but we have yet to see a powerful and sustained effort from this Administration on behalf of this region.

Right now, our influence is seriously needed because the withdrawal is scheduled to begin in a few weeks, and none of the major issues of security, sovereignty, travel freedom, or border concerns have been worked out. Sharon continues to obfuscate while Abbas continues to appear weak. This is a prescription for chaos. Without an orderly and organized transfer of authority, things could rapidly go from bad to worse.

Iraqi police take away the body of Mijbil Issa, a Sunni member of the constitution drafting committee who was gunned down in Iraq on 7/19/05.

In Iraq, August is also is a time of reckoning. The new permanent constitution is scheduled to be completed by the drafting committee by the 15th, to be presented to the citizens for a referendum vote in October. The committee has the option to ask for an extension on their deadline, but indications now seem to favor a delay, but not an extension on the public presentation of the first draft.

This process has been damaged by the insurgency, which threatens the legitimacy of the whole enterprise, and the ongoing issue of Sunni participation in the drafting process.

Recently, two Sunni members were gunned down in broad daylight on a Baghdad street, which promptly resulted in the withdrawal of other Sunni committee members. With increased security guarantees assured, they have returned to the work at hand, but the lingering worry continues on this and many other levels: Will the Sunni population feel involved enough in the political process to reject the home-grown elements of the insurgency? Or will they continue down the road of self-isolation, paranoia, and civil war?

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq’s Shiite spiritual leader

The Shiite spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, recently called for all Iraqis to “defend this country against mass annihilation.” At the same time, his political coalition has been making its presence known behind closed doors.

Recent news coming out of the drafting committee contains disturbing glimpses into the possible future Iraq, and it’s not good news for women! The committee, under powerful pressure from the Shiite community, is seriously flirting with the idea that civil law, specifically laws dealing with inheritance, divorce, and property rights for women, will be determined by Islamic Law, and that individual families can determine and interpret these law according to their specific religious sect.

If Koranic Law — Shariah Law — is codified into the new constitution, then we will have accomplished a foreign-policy blunder of unimaginable consequence … for women’s rights and all the many other restrictions of a Theocracy.

New US Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad

The fault lines in Iraq are becoming so dangerous and obvious that our new ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, has spoken publicly about preventing a “future civil war or warlordism.” He has called on all ethnic and religious groups to come together and work for compromise, to “accept less than their maximum aspiration.” He has called for the constitution to guarantee “equality before the law for men and women.”

At the moment, it doesn’t seem the drafters of the constitution are listening.

And it seems they are also drifting towards a “strong federalism” that would include a weak central government and powerful regional councils. This could be the “warlordism” that Khalilzad warns against. At the root of this tendency is the powerful desire of the Shiite and Kurdish communities to have greater control over the vast oil wealth beneath their territories. The Sunnis, on the other hand, are concentrated in provinces that are barren in comparison, which is one reason they oppose such a political arrangement.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld made another surprise visit to Iraq on 7/27/05.

Our hope has always been in the opposite direction, which is one reason Defense Secretary Rumsfeld just made another surprise nine-hour visit to Iraq. We desire an Iraqi democracy fashioned after our own Constitution with a stronge central government that can enforce equal rights for all citizens.

Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari (Shiite), Vice President Ghazi al-Yawer (Sunni), Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi (Shiite), and President Jalal Talabani (Kurd) at Iraq’s new National Assembly, who will write Iraq’s new constitution.

Rumsfeld’s visit seems to be working at cross-purposes. His public message is that the timetable for completion of the draft constitution must stay on schedule, yet serious reservations have come up about its evolving content. By obsessively sticking with schedules, are we not, in fact, painting ourselves into a corner, where we will be forced to accept the reality of a new Iraq that is not to our liking?

As the deadline for the constitution draws nearer, the insurgents fight on. With the recent kidnapping and execution of the Egyptian ambassador-to-be as well as two Algerian diplomats, the insurgents have successfully prevented any Arab-speaking country from sending ambassadors to Iraq. If not a military victory, this certainly represents a psychological victory of immeasurable value for them.

We are learning the hard and painful way that military might is not, nor ever has been, the most important part of the nation-building equation.

August will be an eventful month in the Middle East, and our historic fortunes will be bound up in these events as well, like it or not. We are involved and committed, and our losses continue. August will take us a little closer to either success or failure in both conflicts.

At Goals for Americans, we can’t emphasize enough how critical it is for the Bush Administration to immerse itself in the Palestinian issue immediately and to do everything in our power to see that Mahmoud Abbas succeeds in revitalizing the Palestinian Authority. The Gaza withdrawal will be a defining moment for all concerned and it is imperative that Bush applies the appropriate pressure on Sharon to communicate and cooperated. As Abbas succeeds or fails, so does Sharon.

A successful and nonviolent Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, with our visible participation, will provide much-needed proof that we’re not in the Middle East just because there’s oil beneath the sand. We’re there to help.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon

We strongly urge the Bush and Blair Administrations to convene a Middle East Peace Conference that would be hosted by the United States. Its purpose would be to gather together all of the heads of state from the entire Middle East so that they could identify and discuss the problems and challenges they all share. Its purpose would be for them to define their futures as a group, as regional partners and neighbors … and to agree on a unified plan to create a Palestinian State now — and to seal their borders with Iraq and cooperate in all ways to eliminate the insurgence so that Iraq can realize its future as a free self-governing country.

The terrorists have been effective in defining us in their terms and in their language, while our efforts to explain ourselves have been diluted by the Iraq war. A Peace Conference such as this would represent a significant achievement in positive public policy. It would represent our sincere desire for peace, justice, and reconciliation.

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