When Zal Speaks, Israel Should Listen

Haaretz talks to Zalmay Khalilzad about his time as President Bush's envoy to the U.N.:

"There were moments when I felt that Israel could do a little more. For example I thought that there was so much bad publicity, and I got under pressure when I was trying to explain or defend Israel's action, when Israel refused to give the maps for cluster bomb munitions that were used in Lebanon. I used to say to my Israeli friends, that it makes it very hard for me to sit there and the opponents say. 'kids are dying in Lebanon, and UN says Israel won't give information about it.'

"We need to focus on a strategic thing. It doesn't justify that Hezbollah is getting arms from Syria, smuggling of arms to the south and so on. I've always been very strong in taking them to task, but it makes difficult when you lose a moral argument with the cluster bomb munitions' maps, or the overflights that can be too frequent and very aggressive. If the purpose was intelligence, maybe you could do it from higher altitude.

Nasrallah on the Possibility of Recognizing Israel

Paging Roger Cohen.

This is a translation of an excerpt of Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah's recent speech from Qifa Nabki's blog:

Today, and tomorrow, and after one year, and one hundred years, and one thousand years, until the Hour of Judgment, we and our children and our grandchildren and our people... as long as we are Hizbullah, we will not recognize Israel. What is Israel? Israel is a plundering entity, an illegal and illegitimate state, a racist, belligerent, terrorist state. By what standard can a human being, Muslim or Arab, recognize an entity of this kind, and come and say, simply: "Yes, this is Israel," while three quarters of it or more has been given to foreigners brought from all corners of the world, and while the people who are in the right, who are the legitimate ones, the people of the land and the holy places, the Palestinians - Muslims and Christians - have to let go, and leave, and surrender, and submit! Show me that standard! What is the religious standard? What is the moral standard? What is the humanitarian standard? What is the nationalist standard? What standard is it?!

I get the sense that this guy doesn't like Israel. But maybe I'm just filtering Nasrallah's words through the prism of my Jewish paranoia. And speaking of Roger Cohen, James Taranto had this to say (third item) after reading what he called Cohen's "jaw-dropping" dialogue with Rabbi David Wolpe: "If we wish really, really hard, maybe peace will break out. Then again, maybe not. But remember, Roger Cohen wants you to think positive!"

CSIS: Israel Could Strike Iran with Missiles

It would, apparently, avoid all the hassle with overflights and refueling. Another interesting finding from the study: fallout from striking Bushehr would hit the Emirates. From the report:

• Attacking the Bushehr Nuclear Reactor would release contamination in the form of radionuclides into the air.
• Most definitely Bahrain, Qatar and the UAE will be heavily affected by the radionuclides.
• Any strike on the Bushehr Nuclear Reactor will cause the immediate death of thousands of people living in or adjacent to the site, and thousands of subsequent cancer deaths or even up to hundreds of thousands depending on the population density along the contamination plume.

JPost article here. CSIS full report (PDF) here.

Humanitarian of the Year

No comment necessary. Watch the whole thing:

What Makes Hamas Different Than the PLO?

Perceptive Goldblog reader Joe Kanter asks:

By claiming Hamas is not now, nor will ever practically be, a partner for peace, one makes the implied argument that there is something inherently different from Hamas now and the PLO of years past.  From my reading of history, I see many similarities in both the rhetoric of Hamas-now and PLO-then, as well as in the arguments made against engaging/trusting Hamas-now and PLO-then.  Do you draw some distinction here between the two groups which I'm not seeing?  It seems that, while a great deal is left to be desired, the transformation of the PLO from resistance fighters to negotiating partners has, at the very least, proven much of the critics-then wrong. 

A good question. Here's a provisional answer; I reserve the right to change my mind, or add thoughts later. It's true that many people look fondly back on the PLO days as a time when the Middle East conflict was mainly about real estate, rather than about Allah's demands, and HaShem's competing demands. I do, too. I remember Akram Haniyeh, then one of Arafat's top aides, telling me in 2001 or so that Israel should make the best deal it could with Fatah, because with Hamas there could be no compromise, and Hamas is most certainly coming.

But Kanter has a somewhat gauzy memory of the "transformation" of the PLO from resistance fighters to negotiating partners. For one thing, the "negotiating partners" failed to negotiate successfully. This was largely Arafat's fault, and Arafat's limitations were a byproduct of his mystical, Islamist side. Arafat was actually quite influenced by Muslim Brotherhood ideology, and I think this is a key reason why he would not allow himself to become the Muslim leader who acceded to Jewish control of even part of Jerusalem.

Today, the situation is somewhat different. The most important moderate Palestinian player, Salam Fayad, the prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, is an unusual character -- he is the first Palestinian leader, I think, who genuinely worries after the quotidian concerns of his people. He seems especially moderate and pragmatic when compared to the men who run Gaza, of course. I'm not suggesting that the PLO didn't contain elements of pragmatism all along (though I tend to think that even in the pragmatic circles there flourished the never-ending dream of "stages," taking Israel apart slowly, piece by piece).

I would never predict that certain leaders of Hamas couldn't evolve and leave the organization to form new, more pragmatic organizations. And I would not say that there are no differences among Hamas leaders; much of the Gaza leadership is tactically more pragmatic than the Damascus leaders. But I believe that jihadist organizations are jihadist at their core, and that it is theologically impossible for Hamas to change. The PLO was never bound by these strictures. I think the more relevant question might be: Will Israel wind up negotiating with Hamas, as it once negotiated with the PLO? This, of course, is a possibility. By the nature of Hamas, of course, I don't see much success for that route, either.