On Negotiating With Iran

Every successful negotiation involves give and take. The trick is to create a Bargaining Zone wherein the horse-trade may take place. So, at the outset of the negotiation, the seeker must ask for more than they are willing to settle for and the giver must propose less than are actually able to give. Then, the seeker can reduce his demand while the giver can increase his giving. Now, when representative personnel lacks knowledge and is poorly trained, being too na•ve, kind, gentle, giving, etc., he is likely to blow the negotiation and end up with an impasse or worse. None should reveal their bottom line first because they cannot go back and resubmit their revised proposal because that would be Bad Faith negotiation regardless of whether there are legal barriers to such moves.

So, negotiation may fail owing to a failure of process when Labor fails to start with a demand above its minimum acceptable point, or when Management counters with an offer above its maximum tolerable point. Additionally, negotiation may also fail because one or both parties are playing a game.

There are still two other insidious ways a negotiation may fail. One, this happens when the negotiation is simply a show toward some other end. Two, when non-negotiability becomes one of the conditions of negotiation. The latter is an oxymoronic position to hold while looking to negotiate. Perhaps both these "failures" may be grouped under the concept of Bad Faith negotiation.

In successfully concluded negotiations, parties may meet half way, split the difference as it were. From a position of strength or with a capacity to impose, the exchange may be very lopsided. It may give temporary victory to one party, but it is likely to be unsavory in the long run. The Treaty of Versailles post the WWI is such a case in point.

Today, in the pivotal negotiation between the West (China and Russia are really incidental players) and Iran, we hear about Iran's intransigence. But for the past thirty years we have been hearing the same accusation. Were they real or propaganda? Very few western news agencies and journalists have been intrepid enough to go that far to investigate. In fact they have perpetuated it. The reporting alternatively has been that they were Iran's undoing, Islam's flaw, a Shia-Sunni thing, or Iranian leadership's blather - arrogance and overreach. Given the expansive borders of the West and the limited reach of fair journalism, somewhere or another debate kept being reignited. So, the argument kept changing and recycling, thereby no debate was really defined and no dialogue closed. It has been a methodically managed chain link of hearsays and innuendos.

Now, if these negotiations have been designed as instruments of proxy war, they will not succeed. A real war will have to be fought for that. Of course, several advance elements of that war is already at play for some time now. To the extent Iran feels them as warlike, and that is exactly what we in the West intended for the sanctions to feel, then Iran has two options: Enter negotiation submissively as a defeated party or about to be defeated party by even stiffer and violent means, or ask that these non-negotiation matters go away before undertaking to exchange meaningfully at the negotiation table.

So, what should Iran do: Do the bidding or do the negotiating? Is Iran negotiating for its existence or is it negotiating for its rights to nuclear technology?

For all of West's academic and diplomatic knowhow and skill brought to bear repeatedly in Istanbul, Baghdad and Moscow, the intellectual merit rings hollow. Why else would a war be disguised as a negotiation and be expected to succeed? But Machiavelli never intended to be intellectual in a fair, kind way. He wanted the intellectualism of craftiness and dominance. But in these negotiations, the P5 + 1 are faced with Iran and Islam. The latter combination is not going to wilt. For the West, the gains from getting its biddings done are enormous. By breaking Iran, it will break the current modern reincarnation of Islam even if it has been made lame and limp, a shadow and a clown of its real self - with the 'potent' being subtracted from her potential, through decades of hounding and outright evisceration. Iran, like many other thoughtful, fair-minded people around the world without fancy degrees and manicured lawns, realizes what the West is after: what it has been after all along.

In recent decades, two rules have emerged to undertake unpopular wars (unpopularity defined by count of American deaths, as I have argued before and as has MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, presumably, in her new book, The Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power) - create facts on ground and insulate yourself by having many nations in the bellicose nation's corner. In my short historic memory brought on by plain sight rather than by erudition, we saw facts on ground created with ever enlarging settlements in occupied Palestine or by the Serbians when they dug into large chunks of Bosnia. When President Clinton tried to negotiate "Peace" in Palestine, he wanted to mimic the oft-bitten, discolored pear solution that he "helped" to win freedom which is today's inoperable Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Palestinians were expected to overlook, bypass and allow room for these settlements. Somehow the kindly and badly cornered Israeli government lacked the political will to deal with settlements it had ceremoniously and religiously created. Instead of a temporary reality to be negotiated away, they expected the negotiations to take place as if the settlements were of no consequence and that they were there to stay. Next, Israel worked hard to make this option US' position, also.

In fact, the feather in her cap came when the US took Israel's position vis-a-vis Iraq. Even the Congress spoke with voice of the Knesset. Then, the US used its position to swing over the UN. The economic weaknesses of China and Russia - their dependency on the US for either trade or finance - made the US agenda secure in the Security Council. The fact on the ground to vilify Iraq was the "proof" of yellow cake purchase from Niger and search for the holy grail of WMD was on!

Now, what is the "fact" on the ground for immolating Iran? There are two, in fact! Supposedly, Iran's President is set to wipe out Israel. That rhetoric is the first strike. It does not matter how many times the West has spoken about regime change in Iran and how many times it has tried to do that directly and indirectly. Secondly, that Iran has undertaken purification of uranium. It does not matter that there are other facts on the ground: By some accounts, Israel possesses about 130 nuclear weapons. It has delivery means by air and by sea. It is fortified by the US' willingness and agreement to stand by it by all necessary means. That by bombing Israel not only will Iran face massive retaliation, it will also have killed the very people in whose defense it has stood up. It is Israel that has occupied Palestine since 1967 (ignoring 1948, etc.) and has killed and incarcerated thousands upon thousands of defenseless Palestinians. It is the West that has introduced nuclear weapon use in the Middle East through the two Gulf Wars by littering the area with 300 tons of carcinogenic, spent nuclear fuel based armories, a waste product no state wants to house for thousands of years. It is the West that inflicted 500,000 deaths on Iraq through 10 years of embargo. It is the US' undocumented war methods that ravaged Fallujah, Iraq. Now, it is haunted with countless cancers and innumerous aborted, premature and disfigured births. It is an Islamic state, for which Iran has taken decades of put down. At the same time, Islam educates Iran not to go nuclear for there are limits to the form of Jihad Islam allows. Yet, to the West, this simply does not register. The West has never bothered to understand Iran or Islam. It is still debating whether Islam is a cult and whether the Prophet was a petty brigand and a profligate? It does not matter how recently Israel has threatened Turkey with Armenian resolutions in the US Congress and France and how that matter was inserted as a foreign policy question during the recent presidential debate of the Republican Party. As I wrote earlier, "In fact, Rick Perry's name-calling of Turkey in South Carolina's Republican debate held on MLK Day was not in response to a real international relations question. It was a masked threat from AIPAC to Turkey. If it did not watch out, Turkey could be reduced to next Iraq or Iran by the irascible Israel. Perhaps it could even instigate Kurdish rebel forces from Northern Iraq to attack Turkey's military as it is capable of feeding and fomenting others from that region to punish Iran."

Now, Israel has worked very hard and long to make sure the Palestinians have no voice of their own or any that is a proxy. Egypt has been long co-opted. It is hard to imagine that by unilaterally signing a peace treaty with Israel, the late and much beloved to the West, President Anwar Sadat was giving up the rights of the Palestinians. Perhaps he just wanted it to be handled differently. But whatever his intent may have been, they were overtaken by his assassination. However, it is not clear that Israel had wanted this miserable state for the Palestinians all along as it signed the peace treaty or it stumbled on to this option upon Sadat's assassination. So, for three decades, Iran has been the lone proxy voice for the disenfranchised and disemboweled Palestinians. Turkey could be another voice, too. But compared to Iran, it is a new kid on the block. For Israel's long run strategy about Palestine, Iran's talkativeness has been the bane. Having systematically eliminated the Iraqi voice and sapped its physical capacity whatsoever, Israel would love to see Iran likewise disposed. Facts have been created, nurtured and propagated and votes counted toward this end.

Believe it or not!

So, here we are negotiating with Iran. We hardly possess a green thumb to make good things grow out of this conversation. We are so ulterior motive bound; we can view this negotiation period as an interlude to war. We are following up an untruth with an astonishing demand - Iran is not to be trusted followed by telling it that because of this mistrust, which is solely its making, it must agree to forgo any technological ambition in this field whatsoever ad infinitum.

Now, while all this was percolating, the West may have learned a thing or two from Israel. Therein I pin a little hope that perhaps some good will come from this exercise. You see nobody can now stand up to Israel. Owing to this, a reverse UN had to be cobbled together by the US. The first formal type of UN was made to shut out the likes of North Korea, Iraq and Iran. The newer ad hoc version, with the addition of Germany (Japan, Sweden, Brazil, Poland, India, etc. should have been added), has been put together to stand up to Israel. However, it does not bode well for my theory that the US ambassador to P5 + 1, Wendy Sherman, shuttles to Israel before even going to DC after the close of negotiation sessions.

*****

Dr. Shafi A. Khaled is a freelance writer. He teaches and does research in Business & Economics.

Via: "Iviews"

The Elephant In The Room

Excluding Hamas From Current and Future Palestinian-Israeli Peace Negotiations Is An Exercise In Futility.

By Larbi Sadiki
Last Modified: 05 Sep 2010 11:39 GMT
Courtesy Of "Al-Jazeera"

Sidelining Hamas in any process to craft genuine peace between Israelis and Palestinians is a glaring omission tantamount to ignoring an elephant in the room. Whether it is Obama's or the UN's negotiating room, pretending something of that size absent is an exercise in futility. Hamas is definitely an elephant with many tales. Telling some of these tales recounts the Islamist movement's rise to power against all odds.

A Movement Under ‘Siege’

Like Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas exists in a world that does not want it and in which it is 'wanted', a world some might argue it does not also want. It is lumped with the bogeymen and 'demons' of world politics on whom are blamed 'terror' and the state of 'structured chaos' in the Middle East, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, amongst other hotspots. Hamas is no angel and there are no angels in politics. Indeed, part of the problem lies not only in the political strategies Hamas occasionally deploys, but also in the excessive secrecy surrounding most of the movement's activities.

Understandably, Hamas's siege mentality is owed to it being consistently the target of Arab, Israeli and Palestinian espionage activities as well as serious attempts to eliminate it from the political stage and liquidate its military and political commanders.

However, because of secrecy the world knows little about the movement's internal institution-building, diversity of opinion, consultative processes, and voting procedures. Along with neo-Orientalist depictions making it reducible to a 'militia' or 'terrorist' organisation, Hamas's own secrecy and miscommunication have solidified in Western public opinion stereotypes of hostility to peace and embrace of violence for the sake of violence.

Deconstructing Hamas

Hamas is oversimplified. It is no exaggeration to note that Hamas is made up of several sets of Hamas - 'mini Hamases' - whose diverse trends of thought are all integrated into an overarching cohesive organisation. Its wide political spectrum has 'peaceniks' and 'refuseniks', 'soft' and 'hard' ideologues, 'extremist' and 'centrist' positions.

These tendencies and currents are all guided by internal discipline, consultative and democratic procedures for resolving differences and disagreements within the organisation, and, above all else, commitment to the organisation's ideals of independent statehood within a Muslim Brotherhood frame of reference.

May be the world does not want to know Hamas but it should care to know that there are those inside Hamas who would readily speak directly with Israel. Their reasoning is that it is better to get it directly from the horse's mouth, as it were, rather than hear from Israel through third parties. This is neither absolute or yet crystal-clear outside Hamas, nor a solid or uncontested position within Hamas.

However it is a trend conditioned by the specific context of Egyptian-Palestinian relations. At its core is the stalemate in Egypt-Hamas relations. Cairo's pro-Fatah leaning and clearly anti-Hamas stance has cast a shadow over the utility of Egypt’s role as an honest or positive mediator.

Mirroring its hostility to and standoff with its own Muslim Brotherhood inside, Egypt has tended to do all it can to undermine and downsize Hamas. Hamas is denied the taste of political triumphs no matter how insignificant. The Islamist movement points the finger at Egypt for the failure of the swap of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, kidnapped in 2006, for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.

The Israeli embargo has crippled Gaza mostly because Egypt maintains a partial blockade of its own on the Rafah border. Like Israel, Egypt is building its own US-funded barrier locking up one-and-a-half million Gazans into inhumane internment in conditions of abject poverty, uncertainty, and food and cash-starved economy. If it were not for the tunnels, paradoxically partly operated with Egyptian tacit complicity, Gaza would starve.

Obama and Hamas

Much hope was pinned on the hype created by Obama's arrival into the White House and the appointment of George Mitchell to oversee the peace process. That hope is today fading. Like Bush, Obama speaks to Mahmoud Abbas and ignores Ismail Haniya who is equally elected and his movement commands the loyalty of nearly half of the Palestinian constituency.

He is considering to engage with extremists in Afghanistan and Iraq and yet his administration's foreign policy-makers, under the spell of a powerful pro-Israel lobby, seems loth to contemplate the creation of mechanisms for engaging with Hamas's elected leaders and cadres. Ignoring the elephant in the room happens at the perils of credible and productive peacemaking.

Perhaps Hamas is not the only party suffering from a siege mentality. Peace-brokers, Arab and Western, display symptoms of the same pathology.

Resilience: Hamas In The Political Process

Hamas is not about to disappear. Until this simple axiom of Middle Eastern politics is firmly grasped, talking and making peace without the Palestinian Islamist movement will remain noted by continuous absence rather than presence. Metaphorically, the elephant in the room may have 'bad manners' and may be 'dangerous' and 'clumsy'.

Nonetheless, it exists. This existence is borne out not only of its internal diversity and discipline, but also of the very various phases of its evolution into a resilient, and steadfast organisation. Three factors call for special attention: leadership renewal, message, and political resourcefulness.

Not many organisations lose a number of leaders in a short time of span and yet keep their coherence. Part of the phalanx of Hamas's founding fathers was wiped out by Israeli assassinations in a matter of a few years.

In March and April 2004 Hamas had to absorb devastating blows to its leadership and morale following the killing of two of its charismatic icons: respectively, Shaykh Ahmad Yassine and Abd Al-Aziz al-Rantissi. The organisation's demography is dynamic and varied, having at any time four generations of leaders. The loss of individuals does not make a difference to Hamas. Arafat left a huge vacuum within Fatah and the PLO. The death of Yassine or Al-Rantissi did not.

There is a wider base from which to recruit leaders who upgrade into leadership roles through long years and ongoing trials and responsibilities. Assassinations and detention, today jointly carried out by Fatah and Israel, deplete Hamas's human resources.

However demography has always been on the side of Palestinians at the microcosmic and macrocosmic levels. Hamas boasts one of the most youthful leaderships anywhere as far as Islamic movements are concerned.

Hamas is resolute in its commitment to a set of political ideals. Topping these ideals is resistance by various means, including militarily, to keep up psychological pressure against a fierce adversary that is superior and equally resolute in the use of force, at times disproportionately such as during the December 2008-January 2009 massive bombing and ground deployment against Gaza.

Since the kidnapping of Shalit no serious armed operations or suicide bombings have taken place. Hamas has observed a unilateral armistice (hudnah) for a number of years, punctuated by intermittent firing of rockets from Gaza but not necessarily by its own military arm, the Qassam Brigades.

The recent Hebron killings by the brigades interrupted the hudnah. Generally, however, there are doubts over Hamas's striking capability deep inside Israel such as in the late 1980s during the first intifada, and up to the time of the second intifada in the 2000s.

Even within Fatah there are those who remain committed to resistance but these are increasingly being co-opted, contained or isolated. Arafat himself tried to combine a political modus operandi with a form of military resistance. This was most probably what eventually sealed his fate.

Hamas vs Arafat and Heirs

Of course, it was also Arafat who dealt a blow to Hamas whose members were rounded in the hundreds. One of key security chiefs, the notorious Muhammad Dahlan, applied his own 'iron fist' in his prisons against Hamas. The torture that military commanders meted out to Hamas's members was at the core of Hamas's second birth after Arafat's Ramallah-based authority released most in the late 1990s and early 2000.

The same torture in prisons that led to the creation of the violent Islamic groups in Egypt in the 1980s and 1990s, reinvented Hamas. It made its commanders and leaders adamant and resolute in the pursuit of military parity with Fatah. In a matter of years that parity was achieved, and on June 14, 2007 it proved to be Dahlan's nemesis, overthrowing the security apparatus that was itself geared and committed to eliminating Hamas.

That military feat, in its turn, may have compromised if not put in jeopardy Hamas's short and embattled experiment in government. Haniya's forming of the 10th government following the January 2006 Oslo-Accords-mandated elections was already conspired against internally, regionally and internationally. The quartet insisted on Israeli recognition, recognition of previous agreements with Israel, and renouncing of violence, all of which were unacceptable to Hamas not having concrete incentives and decolonising measures on the ground.

So post the June 2007 take-over (or so-called hasm), the boycott of Hamas's rule in Gaza deepened. However it is a moot point whether Hamas should have engaged with politics altogether, but failure of the political experiment validates voices which favour political disengagement and military engagement. These voices remain in check for the foreseeable future.

Hamas Between Dogmatism and Pragmatism

Hamas's steadfast message has meant that it is not a pliant client in any negotiations either regarding Palestinian-Palestinian reconciliation or Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. The Egyptian-sponsored reconciliation talks have come to a stand still. The so-called Egyptian Paper (al-waraqah al-misriyyah) of 2009 gathers dust on Omar Sulayman's desk.

Egypt's chief mediator told Mahmud Al-Zahhar, one of Hamas's Gaza-based supremos, in response to the Islamist movement's refusal to rubber-stamp it, 'take it, or leave it'. To which Zahhar replied, 'I'll leave it'. Again, the Egyptians diluted the final draft agreed by Hamas, altering meaning. Terms that originally read (in relation to a set of reforms) 'through agreement' were changed to 'through consultation', making it easier for the National Palestinian Authority to rig the Palestinian factions 'common will'. The same with the meaning, insisting on reform of the security apparatus in Gaza and the West Bank, was altered to exclude the West Bank from the reforms.

Finally, Hamas's political resourcefulness is that it is by nature not only a diverse movement within, but is also four-tiered system: Gaza, West Bank, diaspora and prisons. Each one of these is a field of action with its own resources and consultative processes. In the diaspora the Politburo run from Damascus has been a sounding board and a second 'chamber' where big decisions are discussed and made.

There is an abundance of politics within Hamas. The February 2007 Saudi-sponsored Mecca Agreement gave hints of the full potential of Hamas as a dynamic player capable of pragmatic decisions in the political process. Zahhar, Haniyya, Khaled Meshaal, amongst others, rubbed shoulders, discussed, prayed and ate with their morbid enemies.

Zahhar never forgave Fatah for the humiliating torture he was subjected to under its 'reign of terror'. Yet all seemed to work. However that was only for some time before the coalition government agreed crumbled to the dismay of the Saudis. Without Palestinian-Palestinian reconciliation peacemaking may not come to any logical fruition. Hamas has reached to willing interlocutors overseas from Moscow to Oslo.

The Swiss are sympathetic too. So are other states which prefer to remain unnamed. Hamas receives all kinds of support from Iran, Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Qatar is ready to rebuild Gaza, and contributed generously to bailing out the Gaza economy under siege. So would Turkey. Algeria says it would provide free oil.

However, no amount of political resourcefulness is sufficient if it is not translated into palpable political dividends that speed up reconciliation with Fatah, with the international community, especially the key peace brokers, and even Egypt with whom borders are not alterable.

Similarly, there is a challenge for the US, and Mitchell and Obama in particular, to think the unthinkable and draw Hamas to the negotiating table. Without this investment in partial talks where the full gamut of Palestinian's will and choice is demonstrable, peace in the Middle East will embody the elephant in the living room.

Dr Larbi Sadiki is a Senior Lecturer in Middle East Politics at the University of Exeter, and author of Arab Democratization: Elections without Democracy (Oxford University Press, 2009) and The Search for Arab Democracy: Discourses and Counter-Discourses (Columbia University Press, 2004), forthcoming Hamas and the Political Process (2011).

'Very Active' Efforts To Reach Settlement With Taliban

Sen. Kerry

By Jordan Fabian
08/20/10 07:27 PM ET
Courtesy Of "The Hill"

Sen. John Kerry, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Friday that there is a "very active" effort under way to reach a negotiated political settlement with the Taliban in Afghanistan. 

Kerry (D-Mass.) acknowledged that "efforts" have begun after visiting Afghanistan and Pakistan this week, meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and other officials. 

"I can report without being specific that there are efforts under way. They are serious and I completely agree with that fundamental premise — and so does General [David] Petraeus and so does President Obama — there is no military solution," he told NPR. "And there are very active efforts now to seek an appropriate kind of political settlement."

U.S. officials have acknowledged that some sort of political settlement must be reached with the Taliban -- a loosely affiliated group of Islamic insurgents that control large swaths of territory in Afghanistan -- in order to bring an end to the almost nine-year-long U.S. war there. 

The beginning of settlement negotiations represents a significant development in terms of Western involvement there. 

The announcement also comes at a time when a growing number of U.S. politicians and the public are becoming war weary and want a quick end to it. 

Kerry was asked if negotiations are underway between either between the Afghan government or NATO and a specific portion of the Taliban.

Allied forces in Afghanistan have fought Taliban insurgents since 2001, when the war began. The group, which once governed the mountainous Central Asian nation, was booted from power, but has since regained control of several key areas of the country. 

Kerry said that any "appropriate" settlement would have to include "a renunciation of al-Qaeda," a "reduction of violence," a "recognition of the constitutional rights of both Pakistan and Afghanistan and greater efforts to reduce sanctuaries for insurgency."

Petraeus, commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan, said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press" that he thought "there is a prospect for reconciliation with some of the groups," specifically citing HIG (Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin) insurgents who have squabbled with the Taliban and have made overtures to the Afghan government to agree to the conditions laid out.

"It doesn't mean that Mullah Omar is about to stroll down main street in Kabul any time soon and raise his hand and swear an oath on the constitution of Afghanistan," Petraeus said, citing the Taliban leader.

"But every possibility, I think, that there can be low- and mid-level reintegration, and indeed, some fracturing of the senior leadership that could be really defined as reconciliation."

Negotiations Under False Pretenses

Can the weight of responsibility and the small window of opportunity enable these two men to go where they have never gone before?

By GERSHON BASKIN
08/17/2010 03:30
Courtesy Of "The Jerusalem Post"

Direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations are likely to begin in the near future. The international community under the conductor’s wand of the Obama Administration has applied considerable pressure to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to withdraw from all of his demands for setting the conditions for his participation in the negotiations.

Abbas’s demands were not without logic. His main concern is that negotiations are not the problem – decision making is. After so many years of Israeli-Palestinian bilateral negotiations it is quite clear where the gaps are, or more correctly, where they were each time the negotiations reached their breaking point. The only way, according to Abbas, to ensure that there would be a chance of progress is to make sure that the talks begin from the point they arrived to in the last round. Why should the talks have to begin from the zero point, as if nothing has happened in the past 20 years?

In times gone by this would have been called “constructive ambiguity,” a diplomatic term devised by Henry Kissinger which enabled previous Israeli-Arab talks and understandings. Since that time, much water has flowed in the Jordan and one of the lessons learned from the Oslo process is that there is no such thing – there is no such thing as constructive ambiguity in the Israeli-Palestinian process; it often has had deadly consequences.

The main point of concern of the Palestinians remains the continued building of settlements and their expansion. During the Oslo process the number of settlers more than doubled in the same territory that the Palestinians believe must be part of their state, so how can Israel be negotiating in good faith if the settlement drive continues? This point is shared by the international community. However, no one has been able to apply significant pressure on the Israeli government to continue the full settlement building freeze beyond the initial 10 months. It appears that it is much easier to apply pressure on the Palestinian side.

The apparent compromise or “fudging” that the international community has connived is the issuing of a statement by the Quartet which will indicate the basic parameters of the negotiations without Israel having to state out loud that it accepts them. This, it is believed, will satisfy Abbas’s need to turn to his people with a victory before he sits at the very table that he has refused to sit at since the election of the Netanyahu government. The main problem with this is that both parties are essentially entering into negotiations under false pretenses.

ABBAS PROBABLY didn’t have a choice. He was surely told that the only way that the international community could persuade Netanyahu into continuing the settlement freeze, even partially, is if real negotiations were taking place. But soon the reality will sink in when the two sides are sitting at the table and there is no agreed starting point.

I had advised the Mitchell team to use the proximity talks in a very different way than they did. Proximity talks could have been intensive, they could have been held in the United States continuously. The proximity talks created the position of mediator which has not existed until now in the process. The process could have empowered the mediator to conduct the talks on the basis of “single text negotiations” where the mediator is the author of the text and the point of reference in the negotiations is that text. The proximity talks could have been used to advance agreement on issues of substance and not on process.

From the outset of the proximity talks, “success” was defined as getting to direct negotiations. So, we can declare that we have success, but what now?

The direct talks must have a place at the table for the US mediator – direct talks, yes, but with Senator Mitchell there guiding the process, like he did in Northern Ireland. The mediator must be the one setting the agenda and when necessary, which will be from the very outset, offering the bridging proposals.

The mediator must be frank and direct with both sides, both when sitting together and when in private. Neither side has a BATNA (a term used in negotiations theory which stands for “the best alternative to a negotiated agreement”). Both parties might live in some kind of delusionary reality which feels like the status quo is alright. There may not be any sense of urgency on the ground in Israel and Palestine, as public opinion research demonstrates on both sides of the conflict line. But reality is significantly more complex. Failure to reach a permanent status agreement in this round is dangerous for both peoples. Leading us to another dead-end in this process is no less than criminal negligence and an abuse of power and responsibility by both leaders.

NETANYAHU AND Abbas are the obstacle and the key to an agreement at the same time. Senator Mitchell and the Obama Administration will be there to help, but the agreement must be reached between the Israeli and Palestinian leaders.

Can the weight of responsibility and the small window of opportunity enable these two men to go where they have never gone before? Will Abbas be able to make the deal that will liberate his people and enable them to be free in their own land? Will Netanyahu be able to let go of the dream of greater Israel and let loose the shackles of control over the Palestinians that Israel has held since 1967?

The answer is yes if the two will stop lying to their people and face up to the reality that the mutual survival of both peoples resides in an agreement that partitions the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean sea into two states, for two peoples, on the basis of the 1967 lines, with Jerusalem as the capitals of both states, and the right of return for both peoples to their own nation-states.

The writer is co-CEO of IPCRI, the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information (www.ipcri.org) and an elected member of the Leadership of Israel’s Green Movement Political Party.

Iran Accepts Nuclear-Fuel Swap Deal

BREAKING

UPDATED ON: Monday, May 17, 2010
14:57 Mecca time, 11:57 GMT
Courtesy Of "Al-Jazeera"

Monday's deal was agreed after 18 hours of negotations [AFP]

Iran has signed an agreement brokered by Brazil to ship low-enriched uranium to Turkey in exchange for nuclear fuel for its power plant, according to official media.

The deal agreed on Monday would oblige Iran to send Turkey 1.2 tonnes of uranium under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), beginning next month.

In exchange, Iran would receive - within a year's time - 120kg of highly-enriched nuclear fuel rods through a still to be negotiated agreement with the so-called Vienna Group.

The Vienna Group refers to the four parties of the United States, Russia, France and the IAEA.

Iran would then - as per the terms of the agreement- use the nuclear fuel rods for its Tehran medical research reactor.

The move aims to ease Western concerns over Iran's nuclear programme, and stave off a possible new round of sanctions by the United Nations.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, signed the deal on Monday following a breakfast with his Brazilian counterpart Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister.

After the deal's announcement, Ahmadinejad called on the permanent members of the UN Security Council, as well as Germany, to relaunch dialogue over Iran's nuclear programe.

"It is time for the 5+1 countries to enter talks with Iran based on honesty, justice and mutual respect," he said.

'Constructive Path'

It was not immediately clear whether the terms of the deal would fully satisfy the demands made by the Security Council members.

Ahmet Davutoglu, Turkey's foreign minister, first announced a breakthrough in the talks late on Sunday, after what he said was "almost 18 hours of negotiations".

In depth

Full text: The Iran, Turkey, Brazil declaration Video: World leaders 'must engage Iran' Empire: BRIC: The new world order

Speaking after Monday's formal signing, Davutoglu said there was no longer any justification for more UN sanctions on Iran.

"The swap deal, signed by Iran today, shows that Tehran wants to open a constructive path ... There is no more ground for new sanctions and pressures," he said.

The plan calls for Turkey to be the conduit for the fuel swap, but as Iran's neighbour doesn't possess the technology to enrich uranium, it would instead hold the material as a guarantee.

John Large, an independent nuclear consultant, said that guarantee may not be enough reassurance for the international community to agree to hand over fuel rods to Iran.

"Turkey has no facilities whatsoever. It is not a nuclear country, so it has no enrichment facilities, and of course, it doesn't really have any storage facilities," he said.

"This deal has to be guaranteed in terms of storage security and transportation security."

The IAEA, the UN's nuclear watchdog group, would also insist on carrying out various tests on the transferred material in order "to make sure that it is low enriched uranium of the quality required for exchange," Large said.

Manouchehr Mottaki, the Iranian foreign minister, said in the event the deal is not implemented, Iran's uranium would have to be returned straight away.

"Based on the agreement signed this morning, if the swap does not take place, then Turkey will be obliged to send back our dispatched uranium immediately and unconditionally," he said.

Iran has also not agreed to halt its low-level uranium enrichment, and confirmed plans to continue.

Brazil Mediation

Lula had flown in to broker the deal, in what was called a last-ditch mediation attemptbefore new sanctions were imposed.

The US and Russia had warned that the chances of success were weak but on Sunday, Erdogan postponed a trip to Azerbaijan to join the negotiations.

Iran has previously been reluctant to allow its stockpile of uranium to leave the country before receiving the nuclear fuel, saying that the exchange must take place simultaneously inside the country.

Last week, however, Mohsen Shaterzadeh, Iran's ambassador to Brazil, said that an exchange in another country might be acceptable.

Brazil and Turkey, both non-permanent members of the UN Security Council, have resisted US-led efforts to push through new sanctions against Iran over its failure to accept repeated ultimatums to stop uranium enrichment activity.

The US and its allies say that Iran wants highly enriched uranium to make an atomic weapon, but Tehran says its programme is simply designed to meet its civilian energy needs.

Lula has in the past defended Iran's nuclear activities, saying Tehran has the right to atomic energy, and has repeatedly said sanctions would be counter-productive and ineffective.

Source:

Al Jazeera and agencies

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A US Sanctioned Meeting With Hamas In Doha

Confirmed

By Clayton Swisher
In The Middle East
On April 2nd, 2010
Courtesy Of Al-Jazeera

.

Photo courtesy of Mohamed Nanabhay

I've been scooped on a story I should have owned.

On February 23rd a US foreign service officer named Rachel Schneller appeared on a panel with Hamas spokesman Osama Hamdan, right here in Doha, at a Forum I attended that was hosted by the Al Jazeera Cente for Strategic Studies.

According to today's Wall Street Journal, she acknowledged sitting with Hamdan afterwards for a friendly cup of tea, in a meeting that had the blessing of her superiors back at the US state department.

Now that is news.

Below is what I submitted that night from Dubai (I had to travel from Doha that afternoon on business and could not finish the discussion).

But first, a quick explanation on why I asked our web editors not to run it that night.

A good friend, rich in contacts and very helpful to me in the past, was also in Doha to participate with Rachel in the Forum. When I called him to fact check something he very strongly urged me by phone to kill the story, even though Schneller's panel with Hamdan was televised live on Al Jazeera Arabic Mubashar (the CSPAN equivalent). I did so in the interests of preserving both my friendship and contact, and also to avoid upsetting the good offices and hospitality of the Jazeera Centre and their gutsy guest. That's just the way it goes sometimes.

Here is what I originally submitted, which I cautiously titled with a question mark. (The WSJ confirmed that Foggy Bottom formally approved the meet, so no grammatical caveats needed).

February 23rd:

A US diplomat sits with Hamas?

I could not believe my eyes this morning at the Al Jazeera Centre for Strategic Studies conference on Political Islam. Perusing the programme I noticed a panel that included Hamas politburo member and spokesman Osama Hamdan alongside my friend and fellow blogger Steve Clemons.

But what made my eyes pop out was the panel's inclusion of Rachel Schneller, an international affairs fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations AND commissioned US Foreign Service Officer.

I had to travel and did not make their debate but heard from colleagues that it was quite impressive.

Rachel is on loan to CFR but maintains her US government affiliation while onsecondment to America's premier foreign policy NGO. US diplomats frequently go on loan to such quirky posts like the Multinational Force Observers (MFO) Sinai, touniversities, or for 1-year assignments at other institutions like the United Nations. While foreign service officers sometimes are required to technicaly "resign," these programmes are typically seen as career enhancing, with the understanding by all parties that your desk (and security clearances) await you upon return.

I can't imagine she would have attended this conference without thinking through all of these things. Hamdan was not a surprise guest.

The optic of a quasi-active US diplomat sharing a most public platform with a Hamas official was striking.

I can only imagine the buzz back at CFR's watercooler when she returns. Former Bush administration hardliner and fellow CFR scholar Elliot Abrams may want to sit when he learns the news. Es tu Brute?

It was Abrams mission during 2000-2008 period to see the Hamas movement decimated, embargoed--even overthrown. But still they remain, with the same credibilty and legitimacy that many Islamist groups enjoy in the region.

Rachel must be worrying about the stigma. Therepy is close at hand. Steve Clemonsand Robert Malley are both in Doha to participate in the Al Jazeera Centre's 3-day forum. Clemons did a fantastic interview with Hamas Leader Khalid Mishaal recently, and did not seem to suffer as his access to Washington's political establishment remains legendary.

Robert Malley, who also spoke at the Al Jazeera forum, might have some pointers too onhow to mitigate the "reputational" costs, though they're not as high as they used to be. Malley was an extremely trusted aide of then President Bill Clinton when he advised him on Arab-Israeli matters at the White House. Pity that Rob was thrown under the busas an Obama campaign foreign policy adviser for his willingness to meet with Hamas as senior director of the International Crisis Group NGO. Malley is still a player on Arab-Israeli policy in Washington and many believe his contacts will be vindicated in the future.

Many in Washington and Tel Aviv have advocated meeting with Hamas, includingColin Powell and former Mossad chief Efram Halevy, and then of course they've also gained company with former US President Jimmy Carter.

I'm curious to see if higher-level, less ambiguous contacts will follow this important, baby step.

Bravo to the Al Jazeera Centre for Strategic Studies for making history. And it all happened in sunny Doha.

Note on photograph at the top of this story: Schneller sits on the far right, Hamdan on the far left

Negotiating With The Four Hardliners

If those who currently mistrust Syria, Iran, Hamas and Hizbullah were to actually embrace serious diplomatic negotiations based on the normal diplomatic toolkit of incentives and disincentives, progress is likely to happen

By Rami G. Khouri
First Published 2010-02-22
Courtesy Of Middle-East-Online

BEIRUT - Amidst the day-to-day and week-to-week waves of diplomatic activity that wash over the Middle East, a fascinating sub-theme continues to define some of the most important relationships involving key actors: How does one deal with countries like Syria and Iran, or with powerful movements like Hamas and Hizbullah? These four represent a semi-formal alliance that is defined primarily by common opposition and active resistance to American and Israeli positions in the region, and challenging some of the positions of conservative Arab regimes. They are usually seen among the American and Israeli mainstream as dangerous trouble-makers who have to be treated with force and threats, yet they consistently survive or ignore such pressure and hold their ground as pivotal actors who have to be dealt with.

The last decade has witnessed a series of American and European moves towards these four parties that includes the two opposite poles of engagement and isolation. The sanctions, threats and pressures that have been used by parties like the United States, the European Union, the UN Security Council and the International Atomic Energy Agency seem not to have achieved their main purpose of bringing about significant changes in the behavior of these Middle Eastern players (the only exception probably being a greater caution by Hizbullah and Hamas in purposely or inadvertently triggering new wars with Israel, given the massive destruction that ensued from the last two wars).

Several developments these days suggest that the old ways of sanctions and threats have not worked, and must be modified, particularly with Syria, whose true position, role and importance in the region are widely debated, and have been since the 3rd Millennium BC. Syria is the critical lynchpin among those who defy and resist the United States and Israel, but simultaneously the leaders in Damascus miss no opportunity to say they want a fair peace with Israel and good ties with the US.

Among the intriguing new developments these days are that the United States is sending its ambassador back to Damascus and has approved the sale of some aircraft spare parts to the Syrian national airline; the French are sending a high-level official delegation to Syria that is headed by the Prime Minister and includes dozens of business leaders eager to make deals; and, the reconfigured nature of Lebanese-Syrian rhetoric, if not relations. (Last week’s speeches at the fifth anniversary commemoration of the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik were remarkable for mentioning Syria almost exclusively in the rhetoric of wanting close and normal ties between sovereign neighbors.)

These and other developments indicate to many that Syria is no longer isolated but rather has regained its pivotal role in regional diplomacy. That is true to a large extent, but Syria also remains frustratingly unable to fully achieve most of its foreign policy goals, including resolving its conflict with Israel, restoring fully normal ties with major Western leaders, assuaging many Arab concerns that it consorts dangerously with Iran, and removing the suspicions of many in Lebanon and elsewhere that Syrians at some level had a hand in the Hariri murder.

The pivotal question that emerges from this situation is whether one continues to pressure Syria or negotiate seriously with it. Usually ignorant voices in the United States, mostly linked to pro-Israeli think tanks that are proxies for rightwing Israeli extremists, continue to call for sanctions and threats that would aim to keep Syria in a corner and thus force it to change its policies. The American administration seems more sensible, and has decided to resume full diplomatic interaction with Syria in order to be in a position to negotiate issues seriously, instead of using the child-like diplomatic equivalent of the playground bully who shoves around others or takes the ball and goes home if everyone else does not play by his rules.

The reason that we still have a serious debate about whether one “engages” or pressures actors like Iran, Syria, Hizbullah and Hamas is that this issue is usually addressed in isolation of the bigger conflict in which these four parties live their daily lives. This bigger conflict is not only about whether Arabs and Iranians are being asked to adhere to rules that Israel is exempt from, but -- in the eyes of many in this region -- whether the larger aim is to preserve American- and Israeli-led hegemonic dominance of the Middle East. Wild sentiments define both sides of this debate.

If pressure aims to change the policies of these four regional actors, without addressing the core issues that matter to them, it will inevitably fail, as it has for decades. If, on the other hand, those who mistrust these four regional hardliners actually embrace serious diplomatic negotiations based on the normal diplomatic toolkit of incentives and disincentives, progress that suits all is more likely to happen.

Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon.

Copyright © 2010 Rami G. Khouri – distributed by Agence Global

The Need To Engage 'Terrorists'

Talking To Terrorists

By Mark Perry
Reviewed by Allen Quicke
February 13, 2010
Courtesy Of Asia Times Online

"They are Nazis!" - Paul Wolfowitz, deputy secretary of defense, referring to Iraq's Sunni tribes.

"Every Sunni is a Ba'athist, every Ba'athist is a Saddamist, and every Saddamist is a Nazi." - L Paul Bremer, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, 2003-4

The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names, says a Chinese proverb that doubtless derives from Confucius: "If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success."

This book is in large part the stories of a handful of people who managed to break the shackles of official terminology and learn the right names of things. Some of them were able to use the knowledge to carry their affairs "on to success"; some, like Mark Perry, the author of this book, are trying to pass on to others the right names. In the case of Perry, this is clearly no dry academic exercise but an urgent mission, for the cost of calling things by the wrong names has been measured in flesh and blood since September 11, 2001, and the body count is rising. Perry performs his task with understated, but obvious, passion.

The second half of this book charts Perry's own voyage of discovery as he investigates "political Islam", as he calls it, and talks with the "terrorists", as Washington calls them. Much of this material was originally published by Asia Times Online in a 2006 series, How to lose the 'war on terror'. There is much to be learnt from Perry's discussions with leaders of groups like Hezbollah and Hamas - much that one can only hope Western leaders learn very soon, because if they don't, they will continue to play directly into the hands of Osama bin Laden and the "war on terror" is lost.

The first half of the book demonstrates how such wisdom, put to practical use in Iraq, turned the tide of war. It is a brutal yet wonderful irony that it was the soldiers in the field, boots on the ground, who cottoned on first while the "grunts" in Washington - the soldiers' political masters, so-called statesmen and women, policymakers and strategists - were sending them to die while they chanted their meaningless mantra, "We don't talk to terrorists," and drooled over their dreams of remaking the Middle East.

Early in his quest, in 2005, Perry meets someone he has been told has "close ties to the Sunni-led Iraqi insurgency". Perry asks his interlocutor about rumors that senior US military officers had quietly met with Iraqi insurgents, led by "a sheikh", in Jordan the previous year. The question is avoided and the discussion moves on to other topics, until it finally dawns on Perry that he is talking to a "terrorist":

"You're the sheikh," I said.
"That's right." "You're with the Iraqi insurgency," I said. "You're the political wing of the Iraqi insurgency." "Yes, that's so."
I hesitated for only a moment. "I don't think I can be in this room," I said.
This was followed by silence, as a smile spread across his face.
"Why not?" he asked.
"Because you're killing Americans," I said.
"Yes, that's right," he said, "but don't worry. I've been meeting with American military officers in this room for the last eighteen months ..."

Sheikh al-Gaood is a central figure in this part of the book, which is a blow-by-blow account of how Iraq's el-Anbar province, in 2005 a vast killing field for American soldiers and Iraqis alike, was redeemed. The unlikely heroes of the story are the "terrorists" - or Nazis, as Wolfowitz would have it - and the US Marine officers who were pitted against them until they learned to call things by their right names.

In al-Anbar, these marine officers began to understand that the people they were fighting - the Sunni resistance - were neither terrorists, Nazis nor even Saddamists. They were simply people who had been thrown out of their jobs, civilian and military, as the US imposed its policy - a tragic blunder - of "de-Ba'athification", and installed Shi'ite lackeys in Baghdad to rule them. In fact, the "enemy" was only the enemy because Washington had decreed it so - and this on the flimsiest of rationales.

Perry describes how Iraq became conflated with Germany and the Allied policy of de-Nazification at the end of World War II:

Wolfowitz was also taking cues from Ahmed Chalabi's ideas about de-Ba'athification. Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress, had provided Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of defense forpolicy, with a paper on German de-Nazification at the end of World War II. The paper emphasized Chalabi's view that the successful American occupation of Germany had been due to the wholesale removal of Nazi officials in the German government, a highly suspect and controversial claim. "No one checked to see if it was true," an army colonel who reviewed the study said. "Feith and his crew just took it on faith."

Chalabi had insisted that "Iraq needs a comprehensive program of de-Ba'athification even more extensive than the de-Nazification effort in Germany," adding, bewilderingly, "You cannot cut off the viper's head and leave the body festering." (You can't?)

As for Wolfowitz, whose "They are Nazis!" was jotted in the margin of a memo from his boss at the Pentagon, former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, exploring the possibility of engaging with the Sunni resistance:

[O]ne of Rumsfeld's senior assistants later characterized it [thus]: "Wolfowitz was almost unbalanced about this. He thought that Sunni resistance wasn't even a resistance. You couldn't deal with them. He always described them as 'Nazis'. The word was almost a personal tic. When anyone talked about this he would get so angry he would start shaking. It was a little weird."

While Wolfowitz was doing his shaking in the Pentagon and American soldiers were dying in Iraq, the marines in al-Anbar, with officers from 3rd Civil Affairs Group, 1 Marine Expeditionary Force, in the vanguard, were quietly making contact with members of the resistance. They learned from one resistance leader:

"We are not your enemy ... al-Qaeda is your enemy. If you let us, we will get rid of them. But you can't fight us at the same time. We're different. We will stop shooting and take care of the real terrorists. We're not terrorists, we're the insurgents. There's a difference."

As one American involved in this early engagement put it:

"We did not teach the Iraqis; they taught us. We abandoned our prejudices; we questioned what we were told; we rejected the easy language of terrorism. We listened. We learned."

Gradually and with many setbacks, the two sides learnt to work together for the good of al-Anbar. One such setback came when Washington ordered an assault on Fallujah to punish insurgents for the deaths of four employees of Blackwater, the private contractor. When Lieutenant General James Conway, the marine commander in al-Anbar, received the order, he was first dumbfounded and then enraged: "What the hell are they thinking? We shouldn't be doing this. It'll only make things worse, a lot worse," he yelled as he kicked his hat around the room.

Other setbacks were provided by the "dead-enders" in Washington who insisted that the insurgency could and would be defeated by the force of arms. On one occasion, Colonel John Coleman, Conway's chief of staff, arrived in Amman, Jordan, for a conference with resistance leaders, only to be turned back at the airport. The US State Department had got wind of the conference and had had Coleman declared persona non grata in Jordan.

Nevertheless, al-Anbar was eventually stabilized. Many have attempted to take the credit, from then secretary of stateCondoleezza Rice, who has claimed she supported engagement in al-Anbar from the beginning, to proponents of the troop "surge" that has become the accepted explanation for the American "victory" in Iraq. Perry, however, writes that America's success there "had to do not with a surge in troops but with a surge in thinking ... The real gamble in Iraq was not in deploying more troops to kill terrorists; the real gamble in Iraq was in sending marines to talk to them."

Today's Washington, it seems, remains somewhat unclear on the concept as it attempts to simultaneously "surge" and engage with the Taliban in Afghanistan. There is apparently a new mantra: "First we hit them, then we talk to them" - as if this makes for more effective dialogue aimed at lasting peace and stability.

American statesmen and policymakers should read this book, urgently. For it is not in terrorist dens that the villains of the al-Anbar story are found, but in Washington's corridors of power - civilians all, but with countless wasted lives to answer for. "Chickenhawk" is the right name for them.

Talking to Terrorists: Why America must Engage with its Enemies by Mark Perry. Basic Books, New York, 2009. ISBN-10: 0465011179. Price US$26.95, 240 pages.

Allen Quicke is Editor of atimes.net.

(Copyright 2010 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved.)