James P. Rubin, The Washington Post

If the recent exchanges between President Bush, Barack Obama and John McCain on Hamas and terrorism are a preview of the general election, Americans are in for an ugly six months. Despite his reputation in the media as a charming maverick, McCain has shown that he is also happy to use Nixon-style dirty campaign tactics. By charging recently that Hamas is rooting for an Obama victory, McCain tried to use guilt by association to suggest that Obama is weak on national security and won’t stand up to terrorist organizations, or that, as Richard Nixon might have put it, Obama is soft on Israel.

President Bush picked up this theme Thursday. Without naming Obama during his speech Thursday night to Israel’s Knesset, Bush suggested that Democrats want to “negotiate with terrorists” while Republicans want to fight terrorists.

The Obama campaign was right to criticize the president for his remarks and for engaging in partisan politics while overseas. Many presidents have said things abroad that could be construed as violating this unwritten rule of American politics. But it is hard to remember any president abusing the prestige of his office in as crude a way as Bush did Thursday. Charging your opponents with appeasement and likening them to Neville Chamberlain in the Knesset is a brutal blow. It is bad enough that Republicans use the politics of personal destruction here at home, but to deploy that kind of political weapon at an occasion as solemn as an American president addressing the Parliament of a friendly government marks a new low.

McCain, meanwhile, is guilty of hypocrisy. I am a supporter of Hillary Clinton and believe that she was right to say, about McCain’s statement on Hamas, “I don’t think that anybody should take that seriously.” Unfortunately, the Republicans know that some people will. That’s why they say such things.

But given his own position on Hamas, McCain is the last politician who should be attacking Obama. Two years ago, just after Hamas won the Palestinian parliamentary elections, I interviewed McCain for the British network Sky News’s “World News Tonight” program. Here is the crucial part of our exchange:

I asked: “Do you think that American diplomats should be operating the way they have in the past, working with the Palestinian government if Hamas is now in charge?”

McCain answered: “They’re the government; sooner or later we are going to have to deal with them, one way or another, and I understand why this administration and previous administrations had such antipathy toward Hamas because of their dedication to violence and the things that they not only espouse but practice, so … but it’s a new reality in the Middle East. I think the lesson is people want security and a decent life and decent future, that they want democracy. Fatah was not giving them that.”

For some Europeans in Davos, Switzerland, where the interview took place, that’s a perfectly reasonable answer. But it is an unusual if not unique response for an American politician from either party. And it is most certainly not how the newly conservative presumptive Republican nominee would reply today.

Given that exchange, the new John McCain might say that Hamas should be rooting for the old John McCain to win the presidential election. The old John McCain, it appears, was ready to do business with a Hamas-led government, while both Clinton and Obama have said that Hamas must change its policies toward Israel and terrorism before it can have diplomatic relations with the United States.

Even if McCain had not favored doing business with Hamas two years ago, he had no business smearing Barack Obama. But given his stated position then, it is either the height of hypocrisy or a case of political amnesia for McCain to inject Hamas into the American election.

— James Rubin, an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s School of International Affairs, was an assistant secretary of state and the State Department’s chief spokesman during the Clinton administration.

Seth Freedman, The Guardian

In sharp contrast to last week’s Independence Day celebrations on the streets of West Jerusalem, the east side of the city took on an air of mourning Thursday, as the 60th anniversary of the Nakba (“catastrophe”) was marked. All over Gaza and the West Bank, demonstrations took place to commemorate the fate that befell the Palestinian people in 1948, and — despite their residing inside Israel proper — East Jerusalem residents were just as eager to make their voices of protest heard.

I headed to Damascus Gate on Thursday morning, to see for myself how high emotions were running amongst the demonstrators — yet before I’d even arrived I was already knee-deep in discussion about the conflict. Upon learning my reasons for crossing the divide into East Jerusalem, my Arab cab driver poured out a stream of invective against the Israeli authorities, bemoaning the situation he and his people had been forced to endure for 60 years.

Beginning with a scathing attack on George Bush — “He only cares about the Israelis; he’s not done a single thing for the Arabs in all his time as president” — he grew steadily angrier and more bitter as we circumvented the Old City walls en route to the protest. “We have no rights in our own land,” he muttered, “and even then the Israelis aren’t satisfied. It’s not enough for them to control us and humiliate us in our homes; now they want to drive us out of Jerusalem completely.”

“It’s a systematic program to get rid of us”, he assured me, sucking furiously on his cigarette. “They make our lives hell — they give us no (municipal services); they don’t let us build in our own neighborhoods, so people are forced to move out as the population grows; and they make us feel as though we don’t belong.” As I got out of the cab, next to a phalanx of border policemen fanning out to encircle the protesters, he beckoned me back to deliver his parting thoughts: “If you think I sound angry now, wait till the 70th anniversary of the Nakba. As long as Israel carries on behaving like this, our rage is only going to get worse.”

His words rang in my ears as I watched nine- and ten-year-old children stand defiantly alongside their parents at the protest. Several of them clutched cheap plastic poles with the UN flag flying atop them in the breeze; the words “Right of Return — 194” emblazoned across them in bold black letters. The children were under no illusion about what measures had to be taken to redress the injustices suffered by their forebears, and demanding the right of return suggested the time for talk of two states had been and gone.

A local shopkeeper told me just as much, asking me not to attach his name to his words, “since this country isn’t quite as democratic as they’d like you to think”. The right of return for Palestinian refugees was, he said, “something we can never give up on, not whilst every Jew on earth is allowed to move here without hindrance. Maybe if they said ‘no more Jewish immigrants — we’re full up’, then I’d consider it, but that’s not going to happen. They let people from Europe and Africa move here, yet refuse to discuss the issue of refugees (who came from here originally).”

“Any agreement with the Palestinian Authority must include the right of return, or at least significant compensation for those expelled. I know that Jews were kicked out of Arab lands too, and they should also be compensated, but on a much smaller scale. After all, they might have lost property, but we lost an entire country.”

At this point, his eyes glazed over and his tone took a marked shift away from the here and now and into the realms of fantasy born out of years of frustration with the status quo. “The truth is, my friend, that Nasser was right. He said that ‘What’s taken by force can only be returned by force’. We’re never going to get what we deserve from the Israelis. The only way we’ll have our dignity restored is when the Arab world stands up and fights for us and our rights.”

“And it will happen”, he declared forcefully, his eyes blazing as he spoke. “It might not happen in my lifetime, but it will happen in the next 50 years. I am one of the most moderate men around here, but — believe me — if an Arab army rises up to fight the Israelis, I’d join them myself. Not the groups carrying out suicide bombings, mind you, but a real army that had the power to take on the Israelis.”

“My son gets so furious when he is humiliated at checkpoints”, he went on. “He asks me ‘why should we deal with these kind of people at all? Better to live under the occupation, sign no agreements whatsoever, and wait for the Arab world to come to our aid’”.

His sentiments were distressingly similar to those of the embattled Jews in the shtetls of Eastern Europe, who bore their oppression at the hands of the Cossacks and others by falling back on waiting for messianic redemption. By retreating into an otherworldly shell, they were able to block out the injustice and iniquities that they were dealt, and focus on a time when they would be delivered salvation by a higher power.

For the shopkeeper, the “Arab world” is the messiah; the white knight who will ride in on his trusty steed to right all the wrongs and restore to the Palestinians their dignity and honor. Despite the last 60 years of history suggesting otherwise — that the Arab world is neither powerful nor interested enough to take serious action on the Palestinians’ behalf — he clings to this belief like a shipwreck survivor to a narrow plank of wood.

As each year passes, and the Palestinians feel ever more scorned by Israel and her allies, it’s no wonder that they seek comfort in droves in the arms of the extremists. Dogmatism and fundamentalism can promise them the moon, whilst the facts on the ground remain the same, and the longer the status quo persists, the stronger groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad grow. For them not to achieve utter domination amongst their people before the 70th anniversary of Israel’s creation, much must be done to convince the Palestinians that there is an alternative — but no one on the Palestinian side is holding their breath.

A hospital worker shows journalists the bodies of four children after their house was shelled by Israeli tanks in the Beit Hanoun neighborhood of Gaza Strip on Monday [April 28 2008] while they were having their breakfast. (Reuters):

In this April 25 photo, Palestinians chant slogans against the Israeli blockade of Gaza. (AP)

Siraj Wahab, Arab News
JEDDAH, 30 April 2008 — The headlines coming out of Gaza daily stun people as women and children are slain by Israeli airstrikes and the plight of the Palestinians worsens through blockades and embargoes of food, fuel and freedom. Pick up any newspaper, turn on any news channel and the message is the same: Gaza is a war zone — a war zone with only one army and an entire population of victims, struggling to stay alive and wondering if they will be alive tomorrow.

Arab News recently gathered four young Saudis to voice their views on the current Palestinian situation, and their assessments were both brutal and often pessimistic about the future of the Middle East as long as Israel disregards human rights and seeks to isolate the Palestinians instead of reaching consensus with them.

“Israel is meting out collective punishment,” said Badria Modeer, who is studying international relations at Dar Al-Hekma Women’s College. “The whole population is being attacked. They are killing infants; they are killing children. Why? And the worst part is nobody can stop them. What has happened to the conscience of the world? Where is humanity? Do other people in the world not see what we are seeing on our television screens every day and every night?”

“The whole Gaza Strip is surrounded by Israelis,” said Ahmad Sabri, 21, who studied political science at Jeddah’s King Abdul Aziz University. “Why did they cut fuel supplies to the entire country? Why did they cut electricity? Power cuts led to dozens of patients dying in hospitals. Isn’t this a massacre? If those patients had been Israelis there would have been a flurry of condemnation led by the United States, but when it’s Palestinian patients who die quietly in the night because there’s no electricity nobody talks about them. This is mass murder.”

Most took a dim view of US foreign policy and its unflagging support for Israel and the failure of the United Nations to act effectively.

“I am not optimistic. Israel is a bully,” said Khaled Yeslam, 25, a graduate of Jeddah’s College of Business Administration who now works at a PR firm. “Israel came into being by force, and it will not listen to reason. American politicians are completely subservient to the Israeli lobby.”

“I don’t believe in the UN; it is not fair,” said Hidaya Abbas, 20, who is a student at Dar Al-Hekma College. “The UN can’t do anything. Instead of being busy putting pressure and sanctions on Iran just because it is allegedly in the process of producing nuclear energy why don’t they impose sanctions on Israel, which has 200 nuclear warheads? Iranians are not at war with anyone, but Israel has no qualms about bombing civilians. Why can’t the UN slap sanctions on Israel? It is a useless organization.”

“America is directly responsible for what is happening in Gaza today because they support the Israeli occupation morally, financially and militarily,” Sabri said. “They also support Israel in the United Nations by blocking all resolutions that condemn Israeli massacres. More specifically, the American government’s foreign policy is the problem.”

“I am for peace. I fully support King Abdullah’s peace initiative that calls for the creation of Palestine on pre-1967 borders,” Modeer said. “If we can’t have the entire cake, we can have some piece of cake — at least we have something rather than having nothing. Saudi Arabia is a rich country. It has good relations with the Americans, and if we pressure America, then Americans can pressure Israel to give up its occupation.”

Not everyone shared Modeer’s conciliatory perspective.

“I think peace can only be between two equal parties,” said Sabri. “I’m against the peace initiative, because it gives legitimacy to the occupation. It lends dignity to thieves. Yes, the Israelis are thieves. They stole our land. According to the international law, Palestinians have the right to resist occupation just like all the wars of liberation in history. Nobody can deny them the right of armed resistance. This happened everywhere.”

“Anybody who is talking about peace with Israelis does not make sense to me,” Abbas said. “Israel is occupying Palestine; how can we make peace with them? Let me simplify it. I have a house, and suddenly someone comes and tells me ‘I will take your house and then I will kill you’. So will I say: ‘OK, OK. Don’t kill me; take half of the house?’ That doesn’t make sense to me. Peace treaties are like that. If somebody wants to kill me and take my house, I don’t give him half of my house — I fight back. They are Zionists at the end of the day, and they are occupying our lands. They are taking something that doesn’t belong to them. They are killing children. So it is the right of the Palestinian people to fight back, and they are fighting. They are not terrorists — the occupiers are.”

The extreme events in Gaza are leading to worries about a conviction among some young people that the horrific situation requires a violent response.

“Islam stands strictly against killing civilians, but any occupier is not a civilian,” Sabri said. “He is stealing my land; he is stealing my water. There are five million Israelis living on my land, and there are six million Palestinian refugees all over the world. It doesn’t matter whether he is holding a gun or not. The most important fact is that most Israelis are reservists and will be called to service whenever required. So every Israeli has to be resisted.”

“This is creating a new generation of extremists,” Yeslam said. “We see blood being spilt in Palestine, and here are our people talking about business, economy and peace. So naturally, they are getting attracted to the extreme point of view: that of violence. You can’t blame the youth. They are frustrated — very, very angry at their helplessness. Remember, the Bin Ladens and the Al-Zawahiris emerged out of this chaos. They exploited the frustration of our youth. The world should wake up and tell Israel to stop its barbarity.”

All of them long for the rarest commodity in the Middle East, which is peace.

“Those Israeli settlers have the right to live in Palestine like all Christians in Palestine and like all the Jews in Iraq, like the Jews in Tunisia and Egypt and the Christians in Yemen,” Sabri said. “They have the right to live as Palestinian citizens like all the Jews and Christians living in the Islamic world. There are a lot of Christian Palestinians. They are our brothers and sisters. They are not occupiers; they are part of the country. This is what should happen. There should be coexistence. But the Israelis came as an armed force, so they are occupiers, and they need to be resisted.”

“Every European and every Americans should log onto IfAmericansKnew.org website to know what is happening in Palestine,” Abbas said. “All of us would stop thinking in a selfish way. This earth belongs to all people. We are all brothers and sisters in this world and share this world, and it is important that we find solutions for our grandchildren.”

“Israel should lift the siege immediately,” Modeer said. “Commit to the peace deal — open the borders. Let there be free trade. Let the Palestinians live in peace.”

Barack Obama said Friday, April 11, 2008 he would not meet with representatives of Hamas but declined to criticize former U.S. president Jimmy Carter’s reported planned meeting with the head of the radical Palestinian group. “I’ve said consistently that I would not meet with Hamas, given that it’s a terrorist organization,” the Illinois senator, who is locked in a bitter battle for the Democratic presidential nomination with rival Hillary Clinton, said at a press briefing in Indianapolis. “It’s not a state, and until Hamas clearly recognizes Israel, renounces terrorism, and abides or believes that the Palestinians should abide by previous agreements that have been entered into, I don’t think conversations with them would be fruitful.” (Reference for text: AFP)

Caren Bohan

Barack Obama will take a hands-on approach to Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking if elected US president but without pressuring Israel any more than his rivals for the White House, advisers say.

Obama’s advisers assail US President George W. Bush for taking a low-profile approach during the first seven years in office and for not following up more vigorously on the Annapolis peace summit he launched in November. “What is true is that (Obama) is undeniably and openly committed to putting his own presidential power in the service of trying to help the Israelis achieve a two-state solution with the Palestinians,” said a close Obama adviser who was not authorized by the campaign to speak for attribution. “That doesn’t equate to pressure. It does equate to a sustained commitment.”

The Democrat, who would be the first black American president if elected in November, has yet to fully outline a detailed approach to Middle East peacemaking. Casting himself as the candidate of change, he has vowed not to change the unflinching support of Israel that is a cornerstone of US Middle East policy. Critics have raised doubts about his commitment to the Jewish state, floating rumors that Obama is a Muslim and linking him to Louis Farrakhan, a US political figure known for his anti-Israel rhetoric. Obama is a Christian and has denounced Farrakhan. His campaign is upset by what they see as scurrilous attacks by those seeking to erode his support with US Jewish voters. “The tenets of Sen. Obama’s Middle East policy are that he is a staunch supporter of Israel and strongly supports Israel’s right to self-defense,” said Rep. Robert Wexler, a Florida Democrat who the senator consults on Middle East issues.

Some foreign policy conservatives have openly questioned Obama’s approach on the Middle East, criticizing his call for direct talks with states like Iran and suggesting he would be more inclined than other presidential candidates to pressure Israel to make concessions toward the Palestinians. “There is no evidence to that,” said Daniel Kurtzer, former ambassador to Israel and Egypt, recently recruited to advise Obama on the Middle East and reach out to Jewish voters. The senior adviser said Obama is highly sensitive to the dilemma many Israelis face, on the one hand wanting peace but worrying about the ability of divided Palestinians to follow through on any promises made in talks. “The Israelis have every reason to be cautious and skeptical as they evaluate whether they have a Palestinian partner that is not only committed to peace but also capable of delivering on that,” the adviser said.

In the Arab world, where many view US policy as biased toward Israel, there is intense interest in whether Obama’s approach to the Middle East would be different. Some Muslim commentators closely following the US election find little indication of that in his rhetoric or Senate record, which includes his co-sponsorship of a resolution during the 2006 Lebanon war that strongly backed Israel’s right to defend itself.

Hussain Abdul-Hussain, a US-based journalist for the Daily Star of Lebanon wrote: “Even from a Lebanese viewpoint, there is no reason to believe that Obama would be better than Bush on Israel.” While in sync with Bush’s policy of championing Israel’s right to defend itself, Obama also backs the administration’s policy of shunning Hamas, which seized control of the Gaza Strip last June, in favor of talks with rival Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Obama is facing greater difficulty in defining for voters his views on the Middle East than has New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, his rival for the Democratic nomination and a former first lady, or Arizona Sen. John McCain, the Republican nominee who has been a prominent voice on foreign policy for years. On Israel, McCain is likely to be as staunch an ally as fellow Republican Bush. Clinton benefits from the reputation that her husband, Bill Clinton, had of rock-solid support for the Jewish state.