Palestine Video & Analysis: Saeb Erekat's Speech at Birmingham (Yenidunya/Baghdady)

Ali Yenidunya and Christina Baghdady write:

On 23 March, the chief negotiator for the Palestinian Authority, Dr. Saeb Erakat spoke about the current political stalemate at the University of Birmingham. This prompted a lively and open debate, with Erakat encouraging those who attended to challenge him. The topics covered were broad, including: the Palestinian Israeli conflict, including the most recent exchange of maps between the former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and the Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas; the relationship and influence of external powers on the region; and the problem with Hamas.

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Video sections are interspersed amongst the analysis:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-g3qzellKw[/youtube]

Peace talks with Israel

Stating that the recent proximity talks should be based on a generally agreed framework consisting of core issues, in particular borders, Erakat suggested a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders with agreed swaps of territory.



[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PddtMfvZXWY[/youtube]

Erakat outlined the counter proposal, in response to the December 2008 offer of the Olmert Government in Israel, on the border swaps (part  3 of the video). Although the satellite images show that 1.2% of the West Bank is occupied by Israeli settlements, the Olmert government provided a map in December 2008 annexing 6.5% of settlement land (in return of giving 5.8%). The Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas provided a counter-map approving an annexation of 1.9% of the total land. Erekat noted that no agreement was achieved, and the problem is yet to be solved.

The questions remains:  what is the purpose of Israeli settlements and their expansion in the Palestinian territories since 1967? The term "security" is constantly reproduced by Israeli advocates. The Palestinian Authority also invokes "security", but it does so to consolidate legitimacy not just within the eyes of Palestinians but also in the international arena, since interaction with a stateless, non-territorial Palestinian group is more problematic compared to that with Israel. In the absence of a level playing field between Israel and the Palestinian territories and of Israel accepting conditions for the end of settlement construction, there is little hope for both parties to understand each other’s needs.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHrMO8PJzWo[/youtube]

Erakat pointed out the cost of war must be greater than that of peace to achieve a peace settlement. Was this a subtle hint that Israel is hoping to benefit further from a lack of peace? Following US Vice President Joe Biden’s visit to Israel, 1600 new housing units were approved by the Jerusalem municipality. Then, on 24 March, hours before the Obama-Netanyahu meeting in the White House, the Jerusalem municipality announced final approval for construction of 20 apartments in a controversial hotel in east Jerusalem.

That is where we come to the point of crisis. Despite Washington’s pressure on Israel to announce a moratorium in East Jerusalem if not a permanent freeze, the Israeli authorities are still ignoring calls to stop settlement expansion. Last week Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told  his ministers in the weekly Cabinet meeting: “As far as we are concerned, building in Jerusalem is like building in Tel Aviv.”

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLjW27mh2WI[/youtube]

This crisis came out in Erekat’s words: “If Israel does not want a two-state solution, if they want to call my home town Jericho in its Hebrew name Yeriho, if they want to call Nablus in its Hebrew Shechem, if they want to call al Quds, Yerushalayim... [it] is destroying the two-state solution.” (part 2 of video)

External influence

To achieve peace in a region of conflict, a mediator may be useful, but if the mediator is not effective or the peace process reaches a stalemate, then external influences and distant events can adversely affect the situation. Erekat commented, "When bombs are falling in Iraq and Afghanistan, bombs are falling in my home in Jerusalem....When bombs fall in Kandahar, it also falls in my home in Jerusalem."

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4Lhmxf6qnU[/youtube]

For the mediator to conduct their role effectively, they must be on good terms with the parties in conflict. The US has been that mediator with the 1993 Oslo process, but their position --- after a second intifada, the attack on Afghanistan, the invasion of Iraq, and now a potential third intifada  --- is now strained.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cABGRWvjhEg[/youtube]

Erekat noted the issue of "security" for the US,  "This is a wake up call....The US take bodies wrapped in the national flag back to the US daily... They do not need anyone to seek security for them." This "wake-up call" has arguably brought a renewed push for peace, with  talks much more regular under the Obama Presidency than under the previous Bush administration.

However, Erakat pointed out that the Palestinian government had chosen the EU for nation- building, security talks, and mediation, and it wasn’t because they "love them". According to Erekat, the EU have  credibility and can provide sufficient financial support to the Palestinian territories. In addition, the EU has relatively stable relations with the US as it faces its "wake-up call".

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTxKOFK5Bec[/youtube]

When one looks at the options available to the Palestinians, they have little choice Egypt and Jordan have arguably been effective as mediators; however, their financial contribution to nation-building as well as their credibility is on a par with the EU.

The United Nations, another option given their role in the Quartet (US-EU-UN-Russia) are not that close to Israel and the Palestinian territories. Moreover, it has failed on previous occasions to enforce the notion of the collective upon the action of a state, as in the ability to prevent the US-UK invasion of Iraq.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-iDUBxpTUA[/youtube]

Russia would be an interesting but highly unlikely choice as mediator. Russia has military links with Iran and thus with Syria and Hezbollah. That is a suspect list of alliances for the US, which would prefer the Palestinian government to choose the EU over Russian involvement.

For Erekat, democracy is the second pillar, after “just” solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, of the fight against “extremism”. He stated, "Anyone who says Arab world is not ready for democracy is a racist.”

That assertion faces the reality of governmental structures such as monarchies in Saudi Arabia and Oman, constitutional monarchies in Bahrain and Jordan; constitutional emirates in Kuwait and Qatar, a federation of emirates in United Arab Emirates, an authoritarian regime in Syria, and a “half-democracy” in Iraq.

Erekat says that “democracy is democracy”, regardless of how it arrives,  but that cannot guarantee social change and a political agenda for his outcome. Indeed, beyond the Arab world, does the US want this? Which country has been the closest ally of Washington? Israel or Saudi Arabia?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2exUU_IB3U[/youtube]

The Problem of Hamas

Dr. Erekat harshly criticized Hamas’s policy following its victory in the last Gazan elections. He described Hamas’s existence in the Gaza Strip as a coup d’etat and emphasized that “democracy in Palestine did not fail but Hamas failed”. Referring to the Quartet’s demands (recognition of the State of Israel, renouncing “terrorism”, and acceptance of previous agreements and obligations including the "Road Map"), Erekat blamed Hamas for not acting as a responsible government.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NnouyQA3ys[/youtube]

Yet, what is to be done? Erekat says that nations must go and tell Hamas to sign the reconciliation document. But how? In an aggressive manner? Erekat himself said that the peace talks had collapsed due to Israel’s Operation Cast Lead against Gaza in December 2008.

So, can Erekat mean that the only solution to peace is through dialogue in the region? Perhaps, given Erekat's reference to Tehran. Unlike his President, Mahmoud Abbas, who had blamed Iran for blocking reconciliation between his Fatah organization and Hamas, Erekat said that Iran should not be seen as a threat.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aF86-iuAKQ[/youtube]

How is this possible? Israel’s Deputy Ambassador to the UK, Talya Lador-Fresher, in her own speech at Birmingham in March, said Israel’s official policy is not to help the Gazans develop themselves economically. West Jersualem's position is explicit: unless there is a reconciliation agreement between Hamas and Fatah, Israel will never intervene and talk to Hamas.

At a time when both Israel and Egypt show their teeth to Hamas, who is supposed to put pressure on the Israelis to show flexibility? The EU or the US? Given Israel’s “(in)security needs”, and its claim that it has suffered since the unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, urging West Jerusalem to sit at a table with Hamas is more difficult than having Israel and the Palestinian Authority at the same table.

There is just one solution: instead of indirect pressure from Washington, the Obama Administration should start the same strategy they have pursued with Damascus to get a reconciliation agreement between Fatah and Hamas as soon as possible. This would not only help institutions produce an antidote to “insecurity requirements” but also bring an increase in the pressure on the State of Israel to reconsider the extent of its “concessions” on core issues.

Israel Special: Obama-Netanyahu Meeting and the Settlement "Surprise"

On Tuesday, President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a two-hour low-profile meeting in two separate sessions. The leaders met for 90 minutes, adjourned to talk to advisors, and then Netanyahu requested another half-hour discussion.

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Unusually, reporters were not invited to see Obama and Netanyahu shake hands and begin talks. At the end of the second meeting, the White House did not issue any statement. As for the Israelis, Netanyahu spokesman Nir Chefetz said only, "President Obama and the prime minister met privately for an hour and a half, the atmosphere was good."


Indeed, the meeting was overshadowed by another pre-emptive political strike from Israel. Netanyahu had assured Washington that there would not be another "surprise" similar to the announcement of extra 1,600 housing units made while Vice President Joe Biden was in Israel, but hours before the meeting in the White House, the Jerusalem municipality announced final approval for construction of 20 apartments in a controversial hotel in east Jerusalem. The units, located in the Shepherd Hotel purchased by American tycoon Irving Moskowitz in 1985 for $1 million, were initially approved by the local planning council in July.

So, given the timing of Netanyahu's visit and this latest defiance of US wishes for a settlement freeze, is Defense Minister Ehud Barak the only Israeli leader speaking openly and honestly? In an interview to be aired on the US Public Broadcasting Service on Wednesday, Barak has said that he cannot guarantee that there won't be any future mishaps regarding settlement building. He said:

I cannot tell you that we fully control any step or any announcement about all these dozens [of] programs which are in the pipeline, including many that are related to Arab building in Jerusalem and so on.

Viewing The Gulf States: Cadillacs, Security, and the "Gender Question" (Foley)

Sean Foley, a professor at Middle Tennessee State University  and author of The Arab Gulf States Beyond Oil and Islam, offers this essay for EA, based on a recent lecture at the American University of Beirut:

In 2002, I was in Damascus, Syria, researching the life of a leading nineteenth-century Sufi saint and scholar, Shaikh Khalid Naqshbandi. One day I was invited to visit the home of Shaikh Nazim al-Qubrusi, the most important contemporary figure in Shaikh Khalid’s Sufi order, the Naqshbandiyya. When I arrived at the home, I was introduced to the shaikh, who asked me in Arabic about my work on Shaikh Khalid. After we spoke for a few minutes, Nazim switched to English, explaining that it was the only language that everyone present could understand, since some of his followers were Asian Muslims or Western converts to Islam. As Nazim spoke, I noticed that one of his followers was videotaping my conversation with him—to be posted, as I later learned, on YouTube and on his website.1

After my conversation with Nazim, I was besieged by several men who attempted to sit next to me, touch my back or arms, or even put their arms around my shoulders. At first, I assumed that the men were enthusiastic followers of Nazim who were displaying Arab social norms, since in Arab societies, from Morocco to Kuwait, heterosexual men engage in far more direct physical interaction than their US counterparts. But when one of the men asked if Nazim had touched my backpack, I understood what was happening: the men believed that Shaikh Nazim—like Shaikh Khalid before him—was a Muslim saint who could confer baraka, or blessings from God, onto anyone who interacted with him. By touching me or anything else that had made contact with Nazim, including my bag, they believed that they could benefit from the baraka that God conferred to humanity through Nazim.2


Shortly after my encounter with Shaikh Nazim and his followers, I was seemingly touched by Nazim’s baraka. It happened at a newsstand in London’s Heathrow International Airport. I would normally have gone straight for the Economist and the Financial Times, but another magazine caught my attention, the National Geographic. The cover was of a senior Saudi prince performing his kingdom’s national dance, the ardha sword dance, to conclude a camel festival. Its caption read “Kingdom on Edge: Saudi Arabia.” Even though I had lived close to the magazine’s offices in Washington, DC when I was in graduate school, I had not read or even looked at National Geographic since I was in fifth grade. Had I not stopped at the newsstand at Heathrow, it is unlikely that I would have ever seen that particular issue.3

But the magazine caught my attention and held it. The cover highlighted Frank Viviano’s article on Saudi Arabia and discussed his recent trip there; it included interviews and photographs of both Saudis and non-Saudis from all walks of life. Men, women (both veiled and unveiled), young, old, commoners, and members of the royal family appeared in rural, urban, public, and intimate settings. There were pictures of things anyone would expect to see: oil fields, deserts, enormous mosques, and palaces. But there were also pictures of things few would expect to see: a family watching Fox News, the crowded and dilapidated homes of foreign laborers, female university students, and a man sporting a colorful Che Guevara T-shirt and jeans rather than the dishdasha, the white full-length garment worn by Saudi and other men in the Gulf.

As I returned to the article again and again over the following weeks, I was struck by the contrast between the diverse modern society that appeared in Viviano’s photographs and the conservative Arab Muslim society that I had found in my reading on Saudi Arabia and its neighbors in my classes at Berkeley and Georgetown. An especially surprising example of Saudi diversity was the name of the family watching Fox News --- Naqshbandi --- because Shaikh Nazim and the Naqshbandiyya advocate a vision of Islam that is hostile to Wahhabism, Saudi Arabia’s state-sanctioned interpretation of Islam. Indeed, adherents to the Naqshbandiyya have reportedly been persecuted in the kingdom,4 yet the Naqshbandis were presented as a typical Saudi family. They lived in Jeddah, which resembles cities in other parts of the world, with their countless automobiles and traffic congestion, office buildings, mass-produced consumer goods, and low-rise suburban houses. One nighttime picture of the Saudi capital, Riyadh, could easily have been mistaken for Phoenix or Las Vegas.

Equally striking to me was how much Viviano’s portrayal of traditional modes of authority undermined the current chief intellectual tool for understanding Gulf states, the rentier model. The rentier model emerged to explain the oil-funded socioeconomic transformation of Iran and what would become the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Scholars see these states, which had tiny indigenous populations and strong monarchies, as so exceptional that they deserved a new scholarly model—the rentier model. The model focuses on the state’s monopolies over the fees, or “rents,” that foreigners paid for the right to extract oil from Gulf nations. Scholars argue that these rents permitted monarchs in the Gulf to acquire the resources necessary to govern as police states without taxing their subjects or negotiating with the rest of society, as their counterparts must do in countries without oil. Within the rentier framework, the autonomy of a government vis-à-vis its population correlates to external rents from oil: the greater the revenues from these external rents, the greater the autonomy, and vice versa. If oil revenues decline, rentier governments must make significant concessions to their populations in order to remain in power.5

Yet events in the Gulf in recent years have challenged the rentier model in significant ways. Although the price of oil and revenues from oil sales increased with breakneck speed between 1999 and the onset of the global financial crisis in 2008, the opposite of what the standard rentier model predicts has occurred. Governments have held regular elections and permitted many groups outside of traditional Sunni Arab male elites --- groups including women, Shia, foreigners, and religious and secular opposition groups --- to take a far more visible public role than ever before. In 2008, Bahrain even appointed a Jewish woman, Huda Nono, to serve as its ambassador to the United States.6 Furthermore, most Gulf governments lack one critical element of a police state: robust police.7 The number of internal security forces per 100,000 residents in most Gulf states is analogous to states such as Portugal or Brazil—none of which are seen as autocratic police states.viii Equally strikingly, the wide local accessibility of Fox News and other foreign media suggests that Gulf governments have limited ability to shape public opinion and to control their own media—both of which are also hallmarks of authoritarian police states.

Together, these insights frame the four themes that are at the heart of my analysis of Gulf society and politics in my new book, The Arab Gulf States: Beyond Oil and Islam. First, the Arab Gulf states face many of the same political and socioeconomic problems that other states do, including those that lack oil. Second, many of the challenges that Gulf states face in the twenty-first century predate the rise of the region’s oil industry in the 1930s. Third, we cannot understand either the past or contemporary realities in the Gulf states unless we come to terms with their diversity and look at the roles of non-Arabs, non-Muslims, and women. Fourth, technological change has had and continues to have an important effect on life and on politics in the Gulf.

Above all, I ask if it is possible to think of these states without beginning and ending our discussion with Islam and oil. Indeed, neither Islam nor oil provides us with an explanation for how it is possible that a mass-circulation newspaper in Saudi Arabia regularly published schedules for satellite television programs and once employed an openly gay writer even though satellite television and homosexuality are officially illegal in the Kingdom.

Broadening our analysis beyond petroleum reveals the breadth of socio-economic and political factors and actors that shape the destiny of GCC societies. By starting our analysis in the period before the rise of the region’s oil industry, we can see important historical and institutional continuities over the past century. In particular, Gulf ruling families are unique in the Middle East: with the exception of Morocco, they are the only regimes that can claim a tradition of governing their states that predates World War I. Gulf rulers have governed by utilizing established traditions of governance, by cultivating social networks, and promoting Islamic and tribal values. At times, rulers have utilized non-Islamic calendars and beliefs—even when they contradict the religious traditions they claim to uphold. While Ibn al-Wahhab characterized astrology as sorcery and thus forbidden under Islamic law, the decree establishing Saudi Arabia announced that the date of the Kingdom’s founding was specifically timed to correspond to the first day of the ascendancy of the constellation Libra.ix

For decades, ruling families have utilized these traditions, networks, and values to maintain their position and fend off various foreign and domestic challenges to their power. In mosques, sword dances, majleseses (councils in which politicians field requests from ordinary subjects), markets, hajj pilgrimage speeches, royal visits to provincial cities, and welfare institutions, monarchs interact with ordinary subjects and are thereby confirmed as leaders. Many rulers have further reinforced their authority through a system analogous to a welfare state in which individual subjects and tribes receive generous cash subsidies, food, and clothing. Rulers have also often leveraged their international position and importance to Great Britain, the United States, and South Asian Muslims to win assistance and funds akin to the rents they would later receive from oil. In fact, Saudi Arabia’s dependence on the annual fees paid by hajj pilgrims in the 1930s and the 1940s resembled the Kingdom’s later dependence on the proceeds from the sale of oil.

Significantly, the oil industry that took hold in Saudi Arabia and its neighbors reflected a nexus of technological and social factors that was every bit as global as the hajj pilgrimage. To begin with, in 1912 the British Admiralty turned oil into the most prized strategic commodity in the world by transforming the fuel of the British fleet’s steam turbine engines from coal to oil. In a single stroke, Britain ensured that the Arab Gulf would play a paramount role in global affairs over the next century. Equally important were the economic and cultural factors after 1945 that intensified energy consumption while limiting the use of coal, especially in North America and Europe. These factors included shortages of coal after the war, an enormous global increase in the number of automobiles, solid economic growth, and public outcries about pollution from coal. The following statistics suggest how dramatic a shift this international transformation was. In 1950, coal provided 75 percent of the energy for the Western world, whereas oil provided 23 percent. By the 1970s, oil provided 60 percent of the West’s energy needs, whereas coal provided 22 percent. Thanks to these changes, Saudi Arabia and its neighbors grew wealthy and emerged as a key center of global economy.10

Yet the modern oil industry was not just oil rigs and tankers. It arose in a society that utilized a host of other technological advances which have had at least as important an effect as oil on politics in the Gulf. These new technologies permitted Gulf governments to build massive communities modeled on postwar US suburbs, increase foreign and native populations, and achieve rapid economic growth. Air conditioning was especially significant, since it permitted foreigners to live in the region year-round without suffering the disabling effects of prolonged exposure to extreme heat. It also reduced the incidents of illness from unimaginable levels to those on a par with those in Europe and North America.11

None of these changes were enough, however, to convince Arab Gulf nationals that the socioeconomic and political structures of their states had changed beyond all recognition. Although the outside world may have increasingly seen these states chiefly through the lens of petroleum, Arabs in the Gulf no more defined their communities by oil than did Americans, Western Europeans, or others who lived in societies in which the consumption of oil had become central to every facet of daily life since World War II.

Instead, Gulf Arabs saw the changes as part of a process that was so tentative that their societies could easily re-embrace the Bedouin lifestyle of their fathers and grandfathers. This view emerged in a saying among Gulf Arabs in the 1970s: “My father rode a camel. I ride a Cadillac. My son flies a jet. My grandson will have a supersonic plane. But my great-grandson … will be a camel driver.”12

The debate over the political structure and future of Gulf society has played out for decades in the region’s mass media. Following World War I, radios became very popular in the Gulf. They were easily transportable and provided information to people who were both semiliterate and, with rare exceptions, without access to daily newspapers and weekly magazines. Television appeared in the 1950s and became as much an aspect of daily life in the region as the call to prayer and Quran readings. From the start, Gulf states treated mass media as an aspect of sovereignty and competed fiercely with one another, as well as with private oil companies, Arab nationalists, and regional US military bases, over stations and channels. The result was that Arabs in the Gulf—much like Germans during the Cold War—had access to broadcasts in their native language from terrestrial radio and television stations based in neighboring states. Although regional governments censored domestic radio and television content whenever they could, they did not in fact control everything that was broadcast within their national borders. Instead, they were forced to compete for domestic audiences, which overwhelmingly preferred foreign television and radio broadcasts.13

After Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, the media framework in the Gulf underwent a shift as profound as was the introduction of radios. The new framework centered on the rise of satellite television networks modeled on Cable News Network. It altered which foreign and domestic groups could demand access to state resources and also ensured that government decisions respected the interests and views of those groups. The media—foreign and Gulf-based—pursued their own agendas and were sometimes funded by governments or organizations that differed considerably from the official voice of the Gulf states. The Internet and new satellite television media gave a platform to dissident Gulf and Arab voices and often employed Western-trained, Arabic-speaking journalists. Unlike European or American journalists, these journalists did not depend on local (often government appointed) guides and translators. They could follow a story wherever it naturally led without fear. If that meant interviewing Bin Laden, covering anti-US protests in Bahrain, or discussing long taboo subjects, the stories went on the air.

Fortunately for al-Jazeera and the other new Arab satellite television networks there were a plethora of local stories to cover. During the late 1990s, there were growing and tangible imbalances in many Gulf societies and, starting in 1999, a decade of steep increases in the price of oil. From the start, many of the policies Gulf states adopted to address these twin phenomena produced a host of unintended outcomes, some of which undermined the stability of the GCC societies. Although the decision of the Gulf states to maintain close ties with the United States may have deterred Iran or Iraq from attacking them, it also enraged important segments of GCC public opinion, convincing some people to support Al-Qaida and other organizations dedicated to using violence to overthrow Gulf regimes.

Initiatives designed to reduce the dependence of Gulf economies on the proceeds from exporting oil joined with an influx of expatriate labor to reopen social divisions, since few GCC nationals were qualified to work in the positions created by the booming private sector. Moreover, the private sector’s dependence on foreign investment left the GCC states open to the whims of foreign investors.

The principal beneficiaries of the reforms in the Gulf have been women, who began to fill ever more positions in the booming private sector. They benefited far more than men from the massive investments made by Gulf states in education starting in the 1970s. Since younger women on average are more literate, perform better academically, and stay in school longer than their male counterparts this gap will only widen in the future. Already women account for two thirds of the students in many Gulf universities and hold senior positions in government and business. By contrast, men are increasingly qualified for few jobs outside of family businesses and the military.

Furthermore, women are a natural ally for the Gulf’s leaders, who, since September 11, 2001, have sought to modify their region’s austere image in order to win greater foreign investment and to combat extremist groups. In the long run, extending the right to vote to women and permitting them to drive—issues that make headlines today—will look minor in comparison to those issues facing the Gulf states when women emerge as the only segment of the indigenous population qualified to work in modern economies.14

These new social pressures point to two key larger insights of my argument. First, the emerging power of Gulf women is consistent with their position historically in Gulf society. As recently as the 1930s, women traveled freely and were teachers, entrepreneurs, political leaders, religious leaders, and even led men into battle. Second, issues such as the veil and gender-separated schools are not solely women’s issues; they reflect social norms in which both women and men are expected to act modestly. The male dishdasha and accompanying headgear cover nearly as much of the body as traditional women’s garments do and are just as politically and culturally significant.

The example of Bahrain is instructive. Starting in the 1950s, Bahrainis of all ages began to wear Western clothing, and Bahraini men, as an American noted at the time, “left the Arab gown” for “foreign clothes.”15 But when Bahrain joined the GCC in 1981, many Bahraini men switched back, adopting the thobs worn by their fathers and grandfathers. It was now important for Bahrainis to look correct and to signal that they had joined the community of Gulf Arabs.16

An equally misunderstood element of Gulf life is the role of non-Sunni Muslims and expatriates in GCC states. These individuals are often referred to by Gulf scholars as a collective other, whose presence is temporary. Many scholars characterize expatriates as indicative of the decadence of Gulf society and warn of the danger if they are not replaced by indigenous workers.

In reality, the presence of these foreigners is the product of a long tradition whereby Americans and other non-Arabs and non-Muslims have gone to the Gulf and made important contributions to the region. Both before and after the rise of the oil industry in the 1930s, individuals as disparate as Italian Catholic priests, Protestant missionaries, Greek mariners, European geologists, and Indian and Jewish merchants have played important roles in the region. Missionary doctors served hundreds of thousands of patients in Saudi Arabia between the 1920s and the 1950s, while French Jews were generous philanthropists in Bahrain. Although Gulf peoples have a reputation for religious intolerance, the ruling families have readily integrated non-Muslims into their societies and granted them wide cultural freedoms and, over time, direct state protection and citizenship. While Shia Muslims sometimes faced discrimination, they also benefitted from official commercial privileges and used the oil industry to achieve rapid socioeconomic advancement.

Just as indigenous Sunni Arabs have been affected by the technological and rapid political changes in the Middle East since 1990, non-Muslims and Shia have too. These individuals can turn not only to international media and nongovernmental organizations to promote better labor practices in the Gulf but also to the Shia government in Iraq, to India, and to other states that send workers to the Gulf. Many expatriates also maintain extensive communal organizations in the Gulf and have representatives in their home country’s parliament.

The demographic presence of foreigners (as much as 70 percent of the population in some states) and their sociopolitical activities have not gone unnoticed by the indigenous Sunni Arabs. Although some fear that the expatriates will lead to the eventual extinction of indigenous Gulf society, others have sought to incorporate Indian democratic traditions into civil

How well indigenous Gulf Arabs (and expatriate workers) reconcile these issues will play an important role in the future of the region, especially given the fact that petroleum prices declined rapidly and a world financial crisis erupted in 2008. Not only did Gulf government revenues decline, but sovereign wealth funds in the Gulf were eviscerated by declining stock markets. In the past, these funds had provided a useful tool for Gulf governments to survive sustained declines in the global oil market. Many Gulf leaders do not appear to have that option at this time. Furthermore, China, the United States, and other nations sought to stimulate their economies in 2009 by investing in technologies that will decrease their use of oil, promote reusable energy sources, and reduce carbon emissions.17 In the long run, these new investments could have as significant an impact on the demand for and price of oil as the reduction of coal use did in the United States and Europe in the 1950s and 1960s.

Within this financial environment, Gulf Arabs have an opportunity to reshape their societies and to achieve an economic model more in line with that of Mexico, where petroleum is important but not the center of daily life. A potential place to start would be the investments that Gulf governments made in manufacturing, alternative energy, and service industries since the 1990s.

Another engine of change may be the new universities built in the region, especially those schools that are partnered with existing elite Western research universities.18 Because they are more research intensive than older Gulf universities, the new schools could form the types of public-private partnerships and technology transfers that have worked well in Europe, Asia, and North America. The key to such projects may be expatriates, since they are precisely the type of hard-working and industrious people who are essential to the success of contemporary economies, especially those based on knowledge industries. If expatriates remain in the Gulf, they could transform the region’s economy and spearhead an economic system not based on petroleum. Ironically, the chief dilemma posed by expatriate workers for Gulf Arabs would not be how to replace them but how to keep them from leaving.

When the Gulf states achieve a post-petroleum economy, women are well-positioned to take advantage of it but men will not be. They continue to fall further behind their female peers. Although this is not a new social problem, it has taken on greater social significance in recent years. With bleak career prospects and ample time on their hands, young men (and some older ones) have gravitated toward antisocial behavior, including truancy, petty crime, drug abuse, religious extremism, and “drifting,” a form of car racing in which drivers perform complex and dangerous maneuvers at extremely high speeds. Drifters throughout the Gulf post their performances on YouTube, where they are celebrities who are said to have their pick of young male sexual partners.19

The dangers of drifting to Gulf society have been clear for many years. In 2005, three young boys died in Jeddah in the car crash of a Saudi naval officer, Faisal al-Otabi --- better known as Abu Kab --- who wrecked his car while attempting to perform a stunt-driving maneuver. Abu Kab’s trial caused considerable public outcry, especially after it was revealed that he had more than sixty speeding tickets. There have been similar deadly accidents in other cities in the Gulf. One of the most dangerous of terrorists was a drifter: Youssef al-Ayyeri headed Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula until he died in a shootout with Saudi security forces in 2003.20

Drifting, especially when linked to other dangerous antisocial problems of young men, suggests that future “gender questions” in the Gulf will revolve around how to integrate young men (including those in their twenties and thirties) into society and make them productive individuals before they engage in behavior that is dangerous to themselves and others.

It is significant that the problems of men in Gulf societies are analogous to those faced by men in the United States and elsewhere during the current economic downturn. A white paper produced by the US state of Georgia’s Department of Labor in 2009 called for the state radically to alter how it delivers social services to men, a significant percentage of whom are in grave danger of becoming “structurally unemployed”. The report noted that men in Georgia and in other parts of the United States—much like men in the Arab Gulf states—lack basic modern skills and lag far behind women in educational achievement. The report also noted the striking statistic that the percentage of students who are female in Georgia’s universities, colleges, and technical institutes is approximately 60 percent, a number that is in line with the percentages in the Gulf.21

Just as the question of gender may increasingly be viewed very differently in the Gulf (as well as in Georgia), one may well come to see national security in different terms. The chief foreign policy question for Gulf Arabs for half a century has been how to balance their dependence on Western security guarantees and financial ties with their populations’ anger at Western policies toward Israel and the Palestinians. To achieve these almost irreconcilable goals, Gulf leaders have deployed flexible policy approaches. On the one hand, they refuse to recognize Israel, and they briefly boycotted oil shipments to Israel’s allies in the 1970s. On the other hand, they maintain ironclad links to Israel’s closest ally, the United States. Thanks to this approach, Gulf leaders have retained their credibility on the Arab-Israeli dispute, have profited from their Western investments, and have successfully repelled various external threats. In 1991, the Gulf states’ multitrack approach paid off handsomely when the United States expelled Iraq from Kuwait and initiated negotiations that set the stage for the emergence of the Oslo Peace Process.

The decline of US power in the Middle East has raised new concerns, however, for the leaders in the Gulf. Despite the fact that Washington maintains tens of thousands of troops in the Middle East, the United States has proven unable to defend the Gulf Arabs’ core interests in the Middle East or to protect their overseas wealth. In particular, Gulf governments are astonished that Washington has allowed Iran to gain unparalleled influence in Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, and the Palestinian territories since 2003 and has permitted the US dollar to fall to such a low level that it has sparked inflation in Gulf economies.22

Gulf leaders have good reasons for their fears. US power in the region will necessarily decline as the nation finally withdraws its troops from Iraq and begins to implement the deep cuts in defense spending that are needed to offset new increased domestic spending.23 Although the United States will retain a naval presence in the Gulf and remain an important source of investment for some time, it will not again maintain the web of military facilities that it had between 1991 and 2003. It is also unlikely to have the resources necessary to launch an operation similar to the 1991 Gulf War.
Consequently, in future years, Gulf governments will no longer have to make the same compromises they once did in order to secure US friendship, but they will simultaneously no longer be able to depend on overwhelming US military power in a crisis. Which nation or nations might replace the United States in the Gulf is unclear, since no other major state—aside from Iran—currently has the capabilities to project power into the region.

As difficult as these various dilemmas are, they should be weighed against the enormous advantages that Gulf Arabs currently possess. To begin with, they produce a product, oil, that is still critical to the international economy. Even if many industrialized nations reduce their use of oil and adopt alternative fuels, this does not mean that they (or any other states) will abandon petroleum altogether. Fifty years ago, Americans reduced their use of coal in favor of oil, but coal still accounts for 23 percent of all US energy needs.24

These major transitions take time. Even when global oil use inevitably declines, the Gulf states will still be able to fall back on investments in alternative fuels, education, and other non-oil industries, which have the potential to yield significant economic growth in the future.

Although the Gulf states are facing immense problems, by international standards they are doing very well. They may be angst-ridden, but they are also immensely rich. As the US songwriter Cole Porter put it, they are “down in the depths,” but they are also in rich man’s haven “on the ninetieth floor”.25

ENDNOTES

1. For more on Shaikh Nazim and his use of technology, see Sean Foley, “The Naqshbandiyya-Khalidiyya, Islamic Sainthood, and Religion in Modern Times,” Journal of World History 19, no. 4 (December 2008): 521–545.

2. Ibid.

3. Frank Viviano, “Kingdom on Edge: Saudi Arabia,” National Geographic 204, no. 4 (October 2003): 3–41.

4. U.S. Department of State, Under Secretary for Democracy and Global Affairs, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, “International Religious Freedom Report 2005: Saudi Arabia” (available at http://www.state.gov/).

5. The leading proponents of the rentier model are Hazem Beblawi, Kiren Chaudhry, Jill Crystal, Gregory Gause, and Giacomo Luciani. Even the recent work of Michael Herb, which investigates the institutional development of the states’ monarchies and compares Kuwait and the UAE, accepts the guiding assumptions of the rentier model as accurate. The same cannot be said of the Italian scholar Matteo Legrenzi, who has done the most in-depth recent work on the GCC. One scholar who has sought to move away from the rentier paradigm in regards to Saudi Arabia is Pascal Ménoret. Together, these studies have yielded important insights into the institutional constructions of GCC states, such as the political and economic dangers of state dependence on oil sales and the problems arising from weak societal institutions. For more on these works, see Hazem Beblawi and Giacomo Luciani, eds., The Rentier State (New York: Routledge, 1987); Kiren Chaudhry, The Price of Wealth: Economies and Institutions in the Middle East (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997); Jill Crystal, Oil and Politics in the Gulf: Rulers and Merchants in Qatar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Gregory Gause, Oil Monarchies: Domestic and Security Challenges in the Arab Gulf States (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1994); Michal Herb, All in the Family: Absolutism, Revolution, and Democracy in the Middle Eastern Monarchies (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999); Matteo Legrenzi, The Gulf Cooperation Council: Diplomacy, Security and Economy in a Changing Region (London: I. B. Tauris, 2008); Pascal Ménoret, The Saudi Enigma, trans. Patrick Camiller(London: Zed Books, 2005).

6. Nora Boustany, “Barrier-Breaking Bahraini Masters Diplomatic Scene: Nonoo Is First Jewish Ambassador from an Arab Nation,” Washington Post, December 19, 2008 (available at http://www.lexisnexis.com/).

7. This type of misperception is hardly unique to Gulf states. Imperial Russia, which is often portrayed as an autocratic police state, had significantly fewer police officers per capita in the first decades of the twentieth century than democratic states, such as Great Britain or France. For more on this paradox and the surprising weakness of Russia’s police forces in relation to its civil society before World War I, see Paul du Quenoy, Stage Fright: Politics and the Performing Arts in Late Imperial Russia (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009).

8. All of these statistics are approximate and based on the following: Anthony Cordesman and Khalid al-Rodhan, Gulf Military Forces in an Era of Asymmetric Wars (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies and Prager Security International, 2007); United Nations Office of Drugs and Crimes, Surveys of Criminal Trends and Operations of Criminal Justice Systems (see http://www.unodc.org/ ); the work of scholars with Vision of Humanity (see http://www.visionofhumanity.org/).

9. Astrology is still important to Saudi society, despite the fact that senior Saudi religious scholars continue to link it to sorcery and other sinful acts. The Saudi Arabian daily newspaper, The Saudi Gazette, regularly published horoscopes in the 2000s, and the characters in Raja al-Sanea’s novel, The Girls of Riyadh, discuss their horoscopes and those of potential husbands. For more on Astrology and Saudi Arabia, see Amos Peaslee, The Constitutions of Nations, 2nd ed., vol 3: Nicaragua to Yugoslavia (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1956), 276, Rajaa al-Sanea, Girls of Riyadh, trans. Rajaa al-Sanea and Marilyn Booth (New York: Penguin Press, 2007), 53-55, and Natana DeLong-Bas, Wahhabi Islam: From Revival and Reform to Global Islam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 73-75.

10. Arthur P. Clark, et al., A Land Transformed—The Arabian Peninsula, Saudi Arabia, and Aramco (Dhahran: Saudi Arabian Oil Company; Houston: ARAMCO Services Company, 2006), 253–256.

11. Sean Foley, The Arab Gulf States: Beyond Oil and Islam (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Press, 2010), 18.

12. Myron Weiner, “International Migration and Development: Indians in the Persian Gulf,” Population and Development Review 8, no. 1 (March 1982): 11. This prediction is also similar to Ibn Khaldun’s famous sociological and historical theory about the rise and fall of ruling families in four generations. For more on this issue, see Ibn Khaldun, The Muqadimah, trans. Franz Rosenthal (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1967), 105–107.

13. Foley, The Arab Gulf States, 29-42.

14. Ibid., 182-200.

15. Ida Patterson Storm, “Bahrain,” Arabia Calling 244 (Autumn 1956): 10.

16. Bruce Ingham, “Men’s Dress in the Arabian Peninsula: Historical and Present Perspectives,” in Languages of Dress in the Middle East, ed. Nancy Lindisfarne-Tapper and Bruce Ingham, 40–54 (Richmond, UK: Curzon Press, 1997).

17. Thomas Friedman, “The Great Disruption,” New York Times, March 8, 2009 (available at http://www.lexisnexis.com/).

18. For more on these schools, see Tamar Lewin, “U.S. Universities Rush to Set Up Outposts Abroad,” New York Times, February 10, 2008 (available at http://www.lexisnexis.com/).

19. Tom Whitwell, “This Week: The Arab Drift,” Times, August 16, 2008 (available at http://www.lexisnexis.com/); Robert F. Worth, “Saudi Races Roar All Night Fueled by Boredom,” New York Times, March 7, 2009 (available at http://www.lexisnexis.com/).

20. Fatima Sidya, “Verdict in Abu Kab Case Today,” Arab News, February 2, 2009 (available at http://www.arabnews.com/) and Worth, Saudi Races Roar All Night Fueled by Boredom.

21. Michael Thurmond, “Georgia Men Hit Hardest By the Recession, December 2007 to May 2009,” Georgia Department of Labor: White Paper on Georgia’s Workforce, July 2009, 7 (available at http://www.dol.state.ga.us/).

22. Iranian-Saudi tensions over Yemen became especially serious in November 2009 when Saudi Arabia deployed troops to northern Yemen to support Sana’s campaign against Shia rebels known as the Hawthis. Riyadh repeatedly accused Iran of supporting the Hawthis, a charge Tehran vehemently denied. Some Saudis compared the Hawthis to the Shia organization Hezbollah in Lebanon and portrayed them as a threat to the future of Sunnisim in the Arabian peninsula. For more on Iran-Saudi tensions over Yemen, see Donna Abu-Nasr, “Yemen conflict inflaming Saudi-Iranian rivalry,” the Associated Press, November 24, 2009 (available at http://www.lexisnexis.com); Jeffrey Fleishman, “Yemen teeters on the brink of failure,” The Los Angeles Times, December 6, 2009 (available at http://www.lexisnexis.com); and Sean Foley, “Yemen: A Beginners guide to (the perils) of intervention,” Enduring America, February 2, 2010 (/2010/02/02/yemen-a-beginners-guide-to-the-perils-of-intervention/).

23. Christopher Drew, “Drilling Down on the Budget: Defense,” New York Times, February 26, 2009 (available at http://www.lexisnexis.com/); Christopher Drew and Thom Shanker, “Pentagon Expects Cuts in Military Spending,” New York Times, November 2, 2008 (available at http://www.lexisnexis.com/); Thom Shanker, “After Stimulus Package, Pentagon Officials Are Preparing to Pare Back,” New York Times, February 17, 2009 (available at http://www.lexisnexis.com/).

24. Energy Information Administration, Renewable Energy Consumption and Electricity Preliminary 2007 Statistics (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 2008) (available at http://www.eia.doe.gov/).

25. Cole Porter, “Down in the Depths,” Red Hot and Blue, in The Complete Lyrics of Cole Porter, ed. Robert Kimball, 206–207 (New York: Vintage Books, 1984).

Middle East Analysis: Syria, Thomas Friedman, & "Why We Fail" (Narwani)

Sharmine Narwani writes in The Huffingon Post:

Nothing annoys me more about New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman than his tendency to scuttle his occasionally insightful commentary with fabricated assumptions to fit his narrative.

This makes it really hard for me to like him.

You know that irritation that grows under your skin when somebody is making a lot of sense and then suddenly -- wham -- they hit you with a doozy so ridiculous you feel disproportionately deflated?

Well, that is my Friedman experience time and time again. Not always though -- sometimes I am irritated from the get-go.



In his latest column on Tuesday, Friedman shines a light on a very true Middle East reality -- one that quite deliberately gets downplayed in Washington's power centers: The Mideast is now, for the first time since the Cold War ended, largely defined by two blocs of influence and their respective worldviews.

The first, is the US-led bloc consisting of Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan -- the latter three often ignominiously referred to as the "moderate" Arab states. The second, is the grouping sometimes referred to as the "resistance" bloc that consists of Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas.

Friedman's column posits that there are five key actors in the Israeli-Palestinian equation today: Israel, America, the "moderate" Arabs, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, and the resistance bloc.

Look, I can give him that -- I don't have a fundamental problem with the fact that he only includes one key individual from the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority to represent the entire Palestinian side. Fatah, on its own, is rather irrelevant these days, except in the minds of the US bloc. And kudos to Tom for recognizing this nuance.

Friedman then makes his main thrust, which is that only two of these actors actually have clear strategies for a Palestinian-Israeli solution:  Fayyad, the former World Bank economist who, peace or no peace, wants to create a de facto Palestinian state on the ground within two years -- and the resistance bloc. That's true enough. Friedman goes on to press the other three players to forge a clear, unified strategy -- preferably backing Fayyad's plan -- which can foil the agenda of the resistance bloc.

And then I did my double take. Iran... Hezbollah... Hamas... Where was Syria?

Ah, Thomas. You did that doozy-thing.

The Alliance of Syria, Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas

It is more than abundantly clear that in Washington, Tel Aviv, Riyadh and Cairo, all efforts are being made to wrest the reluctant Syria from this "resistance" bloc. It is equally obvious for those who live in the real world, that Syria has no intention of parting ways with its longtime friends.

When US President Barack Obama moved ahead with plans to reinstate an American ambassador in Damascus in 2009, the gleeful thinking in Washington was that Syria would prostrate itself in gratitude, jump at bilateral peace talks with Israel and walk into the US bloc's fold. Increasingly, however, even US analysts are grumpily acknowledging that the chances of this now happening are akin to Sarah Palin embracing a vegetarian diet.

But not our Thomas. He decided that this is how he wanted things to be, and so -- voila -- it just was.

As an opinion writer, Friedman still has the responsibility to convey the facts as they are - he can always spin his analysis around them or not include them in his deliberations if he wants to produce substandard commentary. But to just unilaterally change the facts? That isn't just wishful thinking -Friedman is trying to create the facts. And here is why his exclusion of Syria from this bloc is so completely disingenuous:

Syria Makes Its Position Clear

Renewed Syrian-US relations, rapprochement between Damascus and Riyadh, and Syria's disengagement from Lebanon brought hopes last year that the government of Bashar Al-Assad would take a more independent regional stance. When speculation reached a fevered pitch, Assad decided to nip it in the bud by staging a photo op worth a thousand words.

Last month, he convened a high-profile meeting with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejadand Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah just to underline the cohesiveness of this bloc and quash all speculation of potential rifts.

The message, according to savvy, Damascus-based political analyst, journalist and author Sami Moubayed, was two-fold. Firstly, it was a warning for Israel to abandon all thoughts of launching another war in the region -- as in Gaza in 2008/9 and Lebanon in 2006: "The meeting de-escalated tension in the region and served as a deterrent by reminding all parties that the amount of destruction that would result from any war would be too much to bear."

Secondly, the meeting represented a clear signal to the US that this alliance will stand firm and cannot be ruptured because of the will of external players. Moubayed explains:

You don't sever relations just because another party wants you to -- you only do so when you have been wronged or there is a state of war, and those conditions don't apply at all to Syrian-Iranian relations.

In fact, throughout the 1990s Syria enjoyed relationships with Iran, Saudi Arabia and the US -- relationships with one party never precluded relations with another. That is not the way of diplomacy.

London-based Syrian diplomat Jihad Makdissi concurs: "We have always enjoyed good relations with both Iran and the West, so why is there suddenly a necessity to break links? This Iranian-Syrian relationship is devoted to the stability and security of the region, and the West should take advantage of this friendship instead of antagonizing both countries."

Invest, Not Divide

What does this mean? In the world of realpolitik, far, far away from Friedman's Mideast musings, this means that the US and others can "use the leverage that Syria has within this group to moderate them", says Moubayed.

He believes that after over a year of active engagement with Syria, the US bloc has in effect tacitly surrendered to the notion that "if they can't break this alliance, the best possible alternative is to invest in it instead."

There is evidence of this "investment" already: in the past two years, Syrian backdoor diplomacy has gained the release of high-profile Western captives in both Iran and Gaza. And recognition of Syria's role has come from the highest quarters in European capitals.

As Moubayed notes, the departure of US troops in 2012 will leave a vacuum in Iraq, which Iran and Saudi Arabia will compete to fill. Secular Syria is in the enviable position of enjoying a "cross-confessional network of allies (read Shiites and Sunnis) which it can use to stablilize and normalize Iraq - to the collective benefit of Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United States".

Even if the Syrians and Israelis struck a deal to swap the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights for peace -- highly unlikely given the make-up of the current, right-wing Israeli government -- Jihad Makdissi insists that nothing would fundamentally change in relation to an alliance with Iran:

In Syria's view, for normality to prevail in the Middle East, Israel needs to withdraw from all occupied Arab land. The occupation is the problem in the region, not Iran.

So, Tom -- peace talks or not, nuke talks or not -- Syria is an active adherent of the increasingly popular regional worldview that includes Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas. All the wishful thinking in the world won't alter a relationship that has outlasted five US presidents, and provides vital strategic value to its participants.

In all fairness, Friedman is just doing something that has been a hallmark of US policy in the Middle East for decades. Denying inconvenient facts that have left us deaf, dumb and blind to the realities we face in the region. It is no wonder we cannot claim any lasting victories.

Blind spots everywhere, and then we wonder why we fail.