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VIVA TEL AVIV!

Viva Tel Aviv!
By Adam LeBor
June 2009
Condé Nast Traveler (Concierge.com’s Insider Guide)

Here’s the answer to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Not two but three states: Israel, Palestine, and Tel Aviv. Tel Aviv is already a world of its own. Nowhere else in Israel – in the entire Middle East – has such a hedonistic lifestyle, tolerant mentality, and spirited gay and lesbian community. No wonder its nickname, half self-ironic jest, half jealous sneer, is Ha-Buah, The Bubble. I have been visiting Tel Aviv for thirty years, since I was a teenager, and something always draws me back. Part of it is the sheer sense of wonder that this city founded on the sands in 1909, by meshuga (crazy) Zionist pioneers, not only still exists a hundred years later but crackles with energy twenty-four hours a day. In a century it’s grown from nothing to a sophisticated metropolis, home to about 390,000 people. It has an internationally renowned university, a stock exchange, a vibrant media and music scene, numerous museums and art galleries, electric nightlife, and world-class restaurants. Its inhabitants are engagingly friendly and often extremely beautiful, and love to party. Phones don’t start ringing for the night’s action until ten at the earliest, and it lasts until dawn.

That said, Israelis appreciate straight talk. The Hebrew conditional must be the world’s most underused tense. So they won’t be offended when I say that despite Tel Aviv’s many virtues, on first impression the city is hard to fall in love with. Israel’s cultural and business capital is the epicenter of an urban sprawl stretching up the coast, much of which is not beautiful. The tower-block hotels strung out along Tel Aviv’s seafront look like downtown Frankfurt. Drab parking lots punctuate the spaces between the buildings. A four-lane road, choked with traffic, runs parallel to the Tayelet, the seafront promenade. Even the city’s name is a misnomer. Tel Aviv means “Hill of Spring,” yet the city is almost completely flat, and there is no spring. Cold, wet winters jump directly to hot, humid summers.

But effort is rewarded. To turn off Allenby Street into Bialik Street, named for Israel’s national poet, is to enter a time capsule of elegant 1920s and 1930s apartment houses, merging Bauhaus and Art Deco with Mediterranean influences to make Tel Aviv’s own International Style, and ending in a tranquil circular park. The beach is a stretch of golden sand sloping gently into an azure sea. And even at midnight the Tayelet is packed. The cool sea breeze carries conversations in Hebrew and Russian, Amharic and English. The revelers run every shade of color from pink, sunburned Anglos to mahogany-hued Ethiopians. Teenagers zip by on skates and bicycles; a jeweler sells intricate silverwork; a couple canoodle on the sand, illuminated by the hotel lights.

MONTE CARLO MEETS WHITECHAPEL

Passionate ambivalence about Tel Aviv, I later discover, is a common reaction. Ever since it was founded, the city has been simultaneously entrancing and infuriating visitors. Arthur Koestler, the Hungarian author of Darkness at Noon, lived in Tel Aviv in the 1920s, when it was still surrounded by sand dunes and Arab villages. Every statement about Tel Aviv, he wrote in his autobiography, Arrow in the Blue, was true, and its opposite equally true. It looked like both Monte Carlo and Whitechapel*, a drab suburb of East London. “It was a frantic, maddening city which gripped the traveller by the buttonhole as soon as he entered it, tugged and dragged him around like a whirlpool and left him after a few days faint and limp, not knowing whether he should laugh or cry, love it or hate it.”

Plus ça change, but Tel Aviv is more than a city: It’s an idea made manifest in bricks and concrete. The city as statement is a perennial theme: Peter the Great founded St. Petersburg in 1703 as his window on the West; Brasília and Islamabad, the new capitals of Brazil and Pakistan, respectively, were built in the 1950s and 1960s as modern, inland replacements for coastal Rio de Janeiro and Karachi. But Tel Aviv had an even greater responsibility: It was the world’s first Hebrew city since the Jews’ Roman exile (the earlier Zionist settlements, such as Petach Tikva, were primarily agricultural). As Koestler wrote: “It grew in hectic jumps according to each new wave of immigration – an island of asphalt and concrete advancing over the dunes,” its inhabitants “carried by a wave of enthusiasm which had a crest and no trough.” Even now, the crests grow ever higher and there is no sign of trough, for the story of Tel Aviv is that of Israel itself.

UNESCO WORLD HERITAGE SITE

We are sitting on the terrace at Cantina, a Mediterranean bar and restaurant on Rothschild Boulevard where Tel Aviv insiders like to meet and greet. It’s 10 p.m. and I’m dining with Amnon Rechter and Shlomzion Kenan, the son and the daughter of two of Tel Aviv’s most renowned families. This is the heart of old Tel Aviv, its wide green islands flanked by International Style apartment houses. It was on this street in April 1909 that the new Jewish neighborhood, then known as Ahuzat Bayit, was founded. Plot number 43 became 16 Rothschild Boulevard, home to the city’s first mayor, Meir Dizengoff. In 1932, Dizengoff donated the house to the city, and it became the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. And there, in May 1948, David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, proclaimed the establishment of the State of Israel.

Amnon is an architect, like his father and grandfather. Ze’ev Rechter came to Palestine, as it was then called, in 1919 from Russia on the S.S. Ruslan, often dubbed Israel’s Mayflower for the number of future eminent Israelis it brought. Among them was Rosa Cohen, mother of Yitzhak Rabin, the first native-born Israeli prime minister, who was killed by a Jewish extremist in 1995 for making peace with the Palestinians. Rechter designed the layout and route of Allenby Street, the spine of the city (named for the British general who captured Palestine from the Turks), which stretches north from the seashore. Inspired by Le Corbusier, Ze’ev Rechter and his fellow modernists fought a battle with the conservative city establishment to build Bauhaus-influenced “six-sided” buildings to house the Jewish immigrants pouring in from Russia and Europe. That is, four walls but on pilotis, or columns, to open up a communal area by the entrance, with balconies and flat roofs for laundry, sunbathing, and evening socializing. This became known as the International Style.

Rechter won, and it’s partly thanks to him that Tel Aviv enjoys the largest concentration of Bauhaus-style buildings – about four thousand – in the world. Modernism was a natural choice for the early Zionist settlers. Many were strongly influenced by communism and its asceticism. Tel Aviv’s open, democratic architecture was both a statement and a reaction to the traditional closed Jewish quarters, the ghettos of Eastern Europe and the mellahs of the Middle East. The White City, as its historic heart is known, was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2003. But this was a battle about more than construction techniques: If environment shapes personalities, both of peoples and of cities, it’s also thanks to Rechter and the other modernist pioneers that Tel Aviv is Israel’s cultural capital as well as its most easygoing city. And safest: Violent crime is almost unheard of. The cityscape is now marred by brutal tower blocks, but for decades there were no buildings higher than five or six floors, giving Tel Aviv a uniquely human scale, says Amnon Rechter. “My grandfather looked around and said, We have wind and we have shade, so let’s elevate everything. We can use the space under the buildings, with a semi-public garden and a place for children to play. This makes Tel Aviv very egalitarian and very light. You are not intimidated by the buildings as you walk. The street, the gardens, even the roofs – everything is within reach.”

“TEL AVIV SYNDROME”

Israel claims Jerusalem as its capital, but its de facto annexation of the eastern half of the city is disputed and so all embassies are located here. In some ways, Tel Aviv is defined by what it is not: its great rival, Jerusalem. The pressure cooker city that is holy to all three Abrahamic faiths – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – can even trigger a kind of clinical religious mania, known as the Jerusalem syndrome. Every summer a handful of tourists succumb, usually in the holiest of places, often believing themselves the new Messiah. Tel Aviv syndrome would be a much more relaxed affair: an addiction, perhaps, to brunch on the beach, lazy afternoons in stylish cafés, dinner in gourmet restaurants, and hopping nightlife. Just an hour’s drive down the coast, Qassam rockets fired by Hamas terrorists are smashing into the coastal cities of Sderot and Ashkelon. The sound of the detonations do not pierce the bubble.

Tel Aviv is a city of paradoxes, which makes for a productive creative tension. The first is that it is the center of modern Hebrew culture, where a new national identity was forged, but it’s also extremely internationally minded. Most young people speak English and travel as often and as far as they can. Perhaps it’s because Tel Aviv faces the ocean, and the west. And also because Israel’s Arab neighbors either don’t allow Israelis in or are considered too dangerous to visit. When the neighborhood is out of bounds, the wider world seems much more approachable. “Somehow the distance from here to New York or Berlin seems shorter than to Jerusalem or Haifa,” says my dinner companion Shlomzion Kenan. A novelist and former book critic for the daily newspapers Ha’aretz and Yediot Aharonot, Shlomzion is a veteran of the Tel Aviv literary scene. Her sister, Rona Kenan, is one of Israel’s best-known singers. “Tel Aviv is less nationalistic and more of a melting pot. It’s a really international city, a place where cultures meet and evolve.”

And do business. If Cairo, Amman, and Beirut aren’t interested in Tel Aviv, London, Moscow, and New York most definitely are, although the country has been affected by the global economic downturn. After soaring against the dollar by thirty percent, the shekel is now roughly back to 2007 exchange rates. That helps bring investors to Israel, especially to its renowned high-tech sector, known as Silicon Wadi. Direct foreign investment is expected to total about $10 billion for 2008, half of which went to the high-tech industries. It’s an impressive figure considering that neighboring Egypt, with a population of 80 million (more than ten times Israel’s) received $13.2 billion for 2007-08. Israeli GDP grew 4.1 percent in 2008 – still respectable, although slower than the 5.4 percent rate of 2007. But while the firsthalf growth was 4.9 percent in annual terms, the second half was just 1.8 percent. Financial authorities predict growth of between one and two percent for 2009. Tel Aviv property prices are also declining, although they’re still high in comparison with the country’s average wage of $23,000 a year. A three-room, 1,500-square-foot downtown apartment near the beach goes for about $700,000.

A PARADE OF TANNED, PIERCED BEAUTIES STROLL BY

The second paradox is that Tel Aviv was founded by ascetic Zionist pioneers but is now one of the world’s most pleasure-seeking cities. In its early years, there were plenty of cafés serving coffee and cakes to German and Austrian immigrants, sweating in their suits, pining for Berlin and Vienna, but few luxury restaurants. For a long time after the establishment of the state in 1948, there was little food culture. Meat and even fresh eggs were an expensive treat. Israel was virtually a one-party quasi-Socialist state. Bourgeois pleasures were frowned upon. Meals were fuel, taken quickly. No longer, I discover the next day at Orna and Ella, a restaurant on Sheinkin Street, the hub of The Bubble and Tel Aviv’s hip, sexy heart. Outside the window, a parade of tanned, pierced beauties of both sexes stroll by. “Israel is a young country – we’re not like France or Italy, where food is part of the culture and they are very proud of it. Dealing with food, and the joy of food, was considered something bad,” says gastro journalist Keren Tsur, over Orna and Ella’s legendary sweet potato pancakes.

Neighborhood places such as Orna and Ella – and Café Noir, with its trademark schnitzel – have a devoted clientele: The food is one attraction, the famously handsome waiters another. Israeli chefs are creating a mod-Med style utilizing the country’s dazzling produce and mosaic of cuisines. “Israeli cuisine is new and has developed quickly because it’s an immigrant cuisine. Israelis are adapters, they learn fast. They traveled and learned to appreciate good wines, fine cheese. They understand these things now,” says Keren.

HASSIDS AND GAYS

The third paradox is that Israel can be a macho, sexist society, yet Tel Aviv is home to a substantial gay and lesbian community. That nurtures a sexually ambiguous, charged atmosphere, especially in the summer months. Each year, tens of thousands attend the Gay Pride Parade, which lasts all day and ends in a giant beach party. All of which is another reason not all of Israel loves Tel Aviv. The spirit of The Bubble was best captured in the film of the same name directed by Eytan Fox. Much of The Bubble takes place on Sheinkin Street. Three twentysomething friends decide to hold a “rave against the occupation,” neatly dovetailing Sheinkinites’ reflexive liberal politics and love of chemical pleasures. But when Noam, a reserve soldier, falls in love with a gay Palestinian, their comfort zone, and private bubble, are soon blown to pieces. Literally. In more conservative Israeli circles, Sheinkinite is a deadly insult. But those using the word as a slur probably don’t know that Sheinkin is also home to a Hasidic community that lives peacefully with its tattooed, spaced-out neighbors.

Later that day, I walk south on Rothschild Boulevard, toward the coast and the neighboring ancient port of Jaffa, from which Tel Aviv was born. It’s a gorgeous spring afternoon freshened by the breeze blowing in from the sea. Mothers are wheeling their babies down the green islands in the middle, and the crowds are three deep at the open-air coffee bars. If the story of Tel Aviv begins anywhere, it is at numbers nine and eleven Rothschild, which once belonged to the Chelouche family, who helped found Tel Aviv. These two villas were the center of political and intellectual life in the city’s early years, where the Chelouche brothers – Yaakov, Avraham Haim, and Yosef Eliyahu – entertained diplomats and mayors, writers and musicians. Number eleven is now a trendy microbrewery.

There I meet Or Aleksandrowicz, great-great-grandson of Yosef Eliyahu Chelouche, who worked all his life for coexistence between Jews and Arabs, and lamented the Ashkenazim’s (European Jews) lack of knowledge of Arabic language and culture. The Chelouches spoke fluent Arabic and shared similar conservative social mores. They hoped to be a bridge between the two peoples but were eventually marginalized by the Ashkenazi establishment. Or Aleksandrowicz, an architect in his thirties, tells me over a glass of the BrewHouse’s trademark dark ale, “Today we see the differences between Jews and Arabs as irreconcilable, but Yosef Eliyahu had a unique approach. The Chelouches were Palestinian-born Jews who wanted to modernize their homeland not as colonizers from outside but as people born there.”

TRENDY NEVE TZEDEK

Many of the Chelouches were born in Neve Tsedek, Tel Aviv’s oldest quarter, founded in the late nineteenth century and now one of the most sought-after areas in Tel Aviv. Its social center is the Suzanne Dellal Centre for Dance and Theatre, which opens onto a sunny plaza. Until the center was established in 1989, Neve Tsedek was run-down and neglected. Then Tel Aviv discovered its history, triggering a wave of gentrification. Property prices are far out of reach for many locals: An 800-square-foot apartment with an 86-square-foot terrace recently fetched $480,000. They complain that Jewish families from France and Russia are forcing up prices by purchasing apartments that they use only a few weeks a year, during the holidays. The thirty-three-floor Neve Tsedek Tower, which stands just outside the conservation area, has triggered particular anger. The building looms over the quarter, totally out of scale with its environs. But Tel Aviv’s urban density means that skyscrapers, which offer the most profitable return for developers, are probably the future.

But for now at least, Neve Tsedek retains its single-story nineteenth-century pastel-colored houses, home to designer boutiques, ice-cream parlors, and antiques shops. Its narrow streets are surprisingly tranquil and retain a romantic village atmosphere.

Tel Aviv also has a hidden history. Neve Tsedek and Rothschild Boulevard were built on empty sands. But as the city spread inland and north, it swallowed up the remains of numerous Arab villages, whose inhabitants had fled or were driven out in 1948 (depending on which history books you read). Some villages were absorbed into Tel Aviv, others flattened. The Hilton Hotel is built on top of a Muslim cemetery. It is unimaginable that an Israeli hotel would be built over a Jewish cemetery. Salameh is now the Kfar Shalem neighborhood, home to poorer Jews from Arab countries, many of whom are threatened with eviction to make way for new developments. The Sumayil project, one of Tel Aviv’s largest residential developments, smack in the middle of the city, will be constructed on the site of the former Arab village of the same name. The Tayelet, the seafront promenade, is built on the remains of Manshiyyeh, Jaffa’s northernmost suburb.

The Tayelet is the best way to approach Jaffa and appreciate an ancient city of rare beauty. Old Jaffa, the heart of the city, has been turned into an artists’ quarter. The ancient sandstone buildings, piled one on top of another, have been carefully restored and glow with a subtle yellow light. Jaffa is one of the oldest ports in the world, mentioned in the Bible. Dig down and you find the layered remains of ancient empires from the Egyptians, Romans, Byzantines, and Ottomans.

JAFFA REGENTRIFIED

The center of modern Jaffa is Clock Tower Square, the heart of a multimillion-dollar renovation program launched by the Tel Aviv municipality. The improvements are steadily rippling out: Just a few years ago, the shops flanking the square were empty or derelict. As property prices soar in Tel Aviv, young couples are moving to Jaffa. The shops in Clock Tower Square now house tony boutiques and antiques vendors. The flea market is packed with tourists browsing everything from 1930s furniture to Oriental carpets. Tel Aviv municipal bureaucrats may be overkeen on skyscrapers, but they have also realized that Jaffa is an asset. “I hear the buildings talking to me,” says Eyal Ziv, the architect in charge of renovation, with a laugh. “One after another, they ask me to restore them.” Eyal grew up in Old Jaffa and has a rare passion for his work. “Restoration is like a coral reef. We start with a centerpiece building, and it spreads out around it. This is not just about buildings – it’s about people. You have to go with the vibrations, work with them and not against them. I listen to what the people want and also what the area says to me.” What was once a Turkish prison is becoming a luxury hotel, and the old train station, long unused, is being renovated with space for artists. The run-down port is being transformed into a hip seafront district.

However, the renovations are getting mixed reviews. This is not gentrification but regentrification, say Jaffa’s older Arab residents – a return of sorts to the city’s glory days before 1948, when Jaffa was the cultural capital of Arab Palestine, home to numerous newspapers, cinemas, and a radio station. But at the Yafa Café, just off Yefet Street, the talk is of developers trying to push out local Arab families to make room for new luxury beachside apartment houses. The café, founded in 2003 by Dina Lee, a Jewish Israeli, and Michel el Rahab, an Arab businessman, is a much-loved institution. Selling books in Hebrew, Arabic, and English, it’s a tiny place with barely a dozen tables but a big mission: to bring Jewish and Arab Israelis together to talk, even if they don’t agree. And talk they do, fueled by endless cups of coffee, fresh pita bread, and spicy vegetable dips.

In a way, the relationship between Jaffa and Tel Aviv is analogous to that between Israel and Palestine: Tel Aviv was born as a suburb of Jaffa, but now Jaffa is a suburb of Tel Aviv. But Tel Aviv could also be an analogue for Israel. If the modern Hebrew city can enjoy a balanced relationship with the ancient Arab port, then perhaps Jews and Arabs can find a model for living in peace in this much-contested land.

(* Tom Gross adds: Whitechapel, which is in central London, is wrongly described as a suburb in the article – a bit like describing the Lower East Side as a suburb of New York.)

FULL ARTICLES

BIBI’S CHOICE

Bibi’s Choice: Israel approaches a moment of decision on Iran’s nuclear threat
By Peter Berkowitz
The Weekly Standard
July 13, 2009 issue

Tel Aviv -- Don’t be misled by how little was said about Iran in the major speeches recently delivered by President Barack Obama at Cairo University and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Bar-Ilan University. And don’t suppose, either, that the popular upheaval precipitated by Iran’s rigged presidential election, assuming it falls short of ending the mullahs’ 30-year tyranny, will fundamentally alter regional politics. The central question for Middle East politics is still what to do about Iran’s illegal pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Nor is this a regional matter only. Iran’s determination to acquire nuclear weapons, the better to spread Islamic revolution, affects the vital national security interests not only of Israel, Arab states in and beyond the Gulf, and Turkey, but also of the United States, Europe, Russia, and indeed countries around the world that depend on stability in the international political and economic order, which is to say virtually all.

In his address to the Muslim world, President Obama identified six sources of tension between the United States and Islam. Number three was “our shared interest in the rights and responsibilities of nations on nuclear weapons.” On the campaign trail and in the presidential debates, Obama unequivocally opposed Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons. But in Cairo in late May, on his carefully constructed global stage, Obama hedged.

On the one hand, he maintained that it was crucial to begin talks with Iran without preconditions because of the importance of “preventing a nuclear arms race in the Middle East that could lead this region and the world down a hugely dangerous path.” He “strongly reaffirmed America’s commitment to seek a world in which no nations hold nuclear weapons.” And he expressed the hope that nations that were pursuing their “right to access to peaceful nuclear power” would not abuse it by violating their “responsibilities under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.” On the other hand, and watering down candidate Obama’s promise to “keep the threat of military action on the table to defend our security and our ally Israel,” he opined that “no single nation should pick and choose which nations hold nuclear weapons.” And he offered no reason to believe that the United States had any levers at its disposal other than talk to influence Iran’s decision. All in all, it would have been hard to project to a rapt world greater equivocation concerning Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons if the president had deliberately concentrated his vaunted rhetorical gifts on the task.

To be sure, in his own speech in mid-June, Prime Minister Netanyahu also trod lightly on the subject of Iran. But that was because he needed to respond to Obama’s flawed Cairo statement that Israel’s legitimacy flows from the suffering of the Jewish people in the Holocaust and the president’s erroneous suggestion that the key to peace in the Middle East is Israel’s cessation of building in existing Israeli communities beyond the Green Line. Without mentioning the president or his speech, Netanyahu stressed that the Jewish people’s historic connection to the land of Israel extends back 3,500 years. And by affirming that Palestinians should have a state of their own, Netanyahu took another step on the path he himself blazed in 1998 by signing the Wye Accords and turning over Hebron to the Palestinians, a path on which he was subsequently joined by Prime Ministers Sharon and Olmert and which has led significant segments of the Israeli right away from the commitment to ruling over the West Bank forever. The settlements certainly are an issue. But from Netanyahu’s point of view – and that of a majority of Israelis – the chief obstacles to peace are Hamas’s Iran-sponsored terrorism, Palestinian Authority political dysfunction, and the refusal of Arab rulers around the region to provide the Palestinians financial support and political leadership.

Though devoting only one paragraph to it at Bar-Ilan, Netanyahu declared that “the Iranian threat still is before us in full force.” And he proclaimed that “the greatest danger to Israel, to the Middle East, and to all of humanity, is the encounter between extremist Islam and nuclear weapons.” Although he did not elaborate Israel’s plan of action, he said nothing to retreat from his well-known position that Iran must not be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons, stated that he had discussed Iran with Obama, would take it up the following week with Europeans, and had been “working tirelessly for many years to form an international front against Iran arming itself with nuclear armaments.”

Meanwhile, for many onlookers in the United States and elsewhere, the popular uprising in Iran has encouraged the hope that internal reform might dispose of the menace posed by the mullahs. Unfortunately, as much as the leader of the Iranian opposition, former Prime Minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi, may have been radicalized by Tehran’s election fraud, the people’s protests, and the government’s violent crackdown, and as much as these dramatic events may have opened up a rift not merely between the people and the regime but within the regime, Mousavi is still a child of the Islamic Revolution and a creature of the establishment and remains unlikely anytime soon to lead a revolutionary overthrow of either. Yet with thousands of centrifuges spinning away to produce highly enriched uranium, and, on an entirely separate track, its development of technology for the production of plutonium proceeding apace, Iran gets closer with every day to owning nuclear weapons.

Given the dangerousness of the neighborhood in which they live and the immediacy of the threat, it is no surprise that for Israelis Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons remains front and center. Ordinary citizens regard a nuclear-armed Iran as a game changer, the greatest threat they have ever faced. In previous decades, no matter how grim their circumstances, Israelis could console themselves that they had an ace in the hole. They counted on their sizable stockpile of nuclear weapons – never officially declared though never officially denied and not subject to the slightest doubt among Israelis – to create a line in the sand beyond which no enemy would dare venture. A nuclear Iran, they now reasonably fear, would nullify this enormous technological advantage and would embolden Hezbollah, Hamas, and the array of other transnational Islamist terrorist networks beginning with the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic Jihad that proliferate in the Middle East.

Conversations over the last few weeks with more than a dozen members of Israel’s larger national security community – right and left, scholars and military men and women, some coming out of the army and others the air force, some with decades of experience in military intelligence and others in clandestine operations, some former Knesset members and others former, current, and soon-to-be advisers to prime ministers – suggest it is fair to conclude that the professionals agree with the public that Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons is a game changer. Among them, there is a consensus that Israel has the technological capacity to undertake a military strike that would inflict heavy damage on Iran’s nuclear program. Such a strike, they also believe, would involve unprecedented challenges and risks, including the likelihood of a significant military response by Iran and its allies. Accordingly, an urgent internal debate is well underway in Israel concerning the circumstances in which the country should strike, alternative options, and, in the event that Iran does acquire nuclear weapons, the structure of an effective containment regime.

Israel being Israel, for every three experts you talk to on any particular issue you will hear at least four aggressively argued opinions. Nevertheless, a fairly consistent picture emerges, if not of a single proper Iran policy, then of the constellation of factors that Israel must consider in forming one.

Most countries are reluctant to discuss the details of their offensive capabilities because they don’t want to provide useful information to their enemies. Israel is no different. Nonetheless, the experts with whom I spoke were willing to discuss in broad outline Israel’s capacity to destroy or substantially degrade Iran’s nuclear facilities. All would be delighted to see engagement, diplomacy, or sanctions succeed. All emphasized that a military strike must be the last resort, chosen only after every other option has been fully exploited. All believe that a green light from the United States, or at least a yellow light, would be indispensable. And they seem convinced that Israel has good intelligence about vital Iranian targets and could, if necessary, with a combination of aircraft and ballistic missiles, bring enough firepower to bear to set the Iranian program back far enough to justify the substantial risks.

Certainly this is the view, in broad outline, of Isaac Ben-Israel, and he should know. After graduating from high school in 1967, he joined the Israeli Air Force and served for more than 35 years. Now a Tel Aviv University professor teaching strategic studies and the history and philosophy of science, Ben-Israel helped plan the attack in 1981 on Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor, rose to the rank of major general, holding positions as head of the operations research branch of the air force and as head of research and development in the Israel Defense Forces and the ministry of defense, and served in the Knesset as a member of the centrist Kadima party. He continues to advise defense industries in Israel and abroad about technological and strategic issues.

Ben-Israel went so far as to characterize as “very reasonable” Center for Strategic and International Studies scholars Abdullah Toukan and Anthony H. Cordesman’s “Study on a Possible Israeli Strike on Iran’s Nuclear Development Facilities” published in March. Relying on open source intelligence, Toukan and Cordesman analyze in formidable technical detail Iranian nuclear targets, Israeli mission capabilities, Iranian defenses, Israeli defenses, and the military and political consequences of an Israeli attack. They conclude that an Israeli strike force would involve about 80 F-15s and F-16s (almost a fifth of their fighter aircraft); all 9 Israeli aerial tankers to refuel the fighters on their way to and from Iran; a likely flight route north over the Mediterranean, then east along the Syria-Turkey border, crossing briefly over Iraq, before heading into Iran. The strike would probably concentrate on three “critical nodes in Iran’s nuclear infrastructure”: the Natanz uranium enrichment facility, the Esfahan nuclear research center and uranium conversion facility, and the Arak heavy water plant and future plutonium production reactors. The authors stress that the mission would be complex, high-risk, and without solid assurance of success.

Another possibility is that Israel could attack Natanz, Esfahan, and Arak with approximately 50 Jericho III land-based long range ballistic missiles. This option has received relatively little attention even though, as Toukan and Cordesman point out, it may be “much more feasible than using combat aircraft” and certainly poses less risk to Israeli pilots and hardware. Still another possibility for attacking Iranian nuclear targets, though not discussed by Toukan and Cordesman, is some combination of combat aircraft and Jericho III missiles.

Even on the heroic assumption that the attack went exactly as planned, Israelis evaded Iranian air defenses and kept their losses to a minimum, and Iran’s nuclear program was set back substantially, Israel would face considerable costs, both military and political.

The military costs might be serious but would be manageable, Israeli experts believe. They envisage six possible responses to an Israeli attack.

First, Iran, lacking a capable air force, might launch Shahab-3 long range ballistic missiles at Israeli cities and probably at Dimona, Israel’s nuclear facility in the Negev. Israeli experts are confident that their Arrow anti-ballistic missile defense system, which has performed superbly in tests, would destroy most incoming Iranian missiles. Those that got through would have no more explosive power than Iraq’s 1991 Scud missiles, which killed only one Israeli and did little damage to infrastructure. Missiles tipped with biological or chemical weapons are a different story and would provoke a massive and remorseless Israeli response.

At the same time, it is by no means certain that Iran would launch a retaliatory missile strike. Some Israeli experts believe that Israel’s capacity to attack decisively nonnuclear Iranian targets, including the power grid and oil refineries, might deter Iran.

Second, Iran might order Hezbollah into action. Since the 2006 Lebanon war, in which Israel killed one third of Hezbollah’s fighters, that group has rearmed and upgraded. It has enlarged its arsenal of rockets and missiles from about 12,000 at the outset of hostilities in July 2006 (4,000 of which Hezbollah fired at Israel that summer) to roughly 40,000. In sufficient quantities, these can cause suffering in Israel. But in determining whether to attack, Hezbollah might take into account that Israel learned lessons from 2006 and that, in anticipation of another round of fighting, it has prepared to deliver a knockout blow.

Third, Iran might demand that Syria attack Israel. But given that Syria’s conventional forces are no match for Israel’s and that it did not respond militarily when Israel destroyed its partly constructed nuclear facility at Deir al-Zour in 2007, there is a good chance that Syria will decline to get involved.

Fourth, Iran might order terrorist cells around the world to attack synagogues, Israeli embassies, and similar targets. This would have the disadvantage for Iran of shifting the focus of international attention from Israel’s preemptive air strike to Iran’s criminality.

Fifth, Iran might attack American targets in Iraq and foment unrest among Iraqi Shia. This too might backfire, both because it would bring America into the fight and because the community of interests between Arab Iraqi Shia and Persian Iranian Shia is limited.

Sixth, Iran might attack Persian Gulf shipping. But the fragile Iranian economy is at least as reliant as that of any Gulf country on the free flow of oil. And American firepower would end Iran’s ability to threaten shipping within days.

The political costs could prove greater for Israel. Whether an Israeli military attack failed or succeeded, and particularly if it succeeded, Iran and the forces of radical Islam around the world would vehemently argue that Israel’s unprovoked aggression provided irrefutable proof that nuclear weapons are critical for Iran and for radical Islam, if only for purely defensive purposes. Europeans, moreover, would ramp up their condemnatory rhetoric, proclaiming Israel the paramount threat to international order and demanding that Israel, which took it upon itself to disarm Iran, itself submit to international inspections of its nuclear facilities.

Toukan and Cordesman stumble in asserting that Israel would pay a heavy cost among Arab states. It’s true, as they write, that Arab states “will not condone any attack on Iran.” Indeed, the Gulf Arabs would probably condemn Israel harshly. Egypt might mobilize troops and send some into the Sinai. And all Arab states would join the rest of the world in calling for the imposition of international sanctions. But that would be for popular consumption. Israeli experts are as convinced as they are of anything that behind closed doors, Sunni Arab rulers would breathe a huge sigh of relief at the destruction of what they regard as the principal strategic threat to their security, a nuclear armed Shiite Iran seeking hegemony in the Gulf and exporting Shiite-style Islamic revolution around the world.

Still, after the costs and benefits are weighed and the enigmas and imponderables are given their due, the Israeli experts come back to where they begin: Only after every other option has been exhausted should a military strike be launched. No one else went as far as former Mossad head Efraim Halevy, who warned that an Israeli attack would “change the whole configuration of the Middle East,” producing “a chasm between Israel and the rest of the region” that would have “effects that would last 100 years.” By far the dominant view in Israel is the view espoused by John McCain: The only thing worse than the consequences of an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities would be the consequences of a nuclear Iran.

Short of a full-scale military strike, Israel also has a clandestine option involving the use of unmanned aerial vehicles, sabotage of Iranian facilities, and targeted killings. Nor would this represent a new policy. As Ben-Israel, choosing his words carefully, pointed out, Israeli national security experts have been warning that Iran was 5 years away from producing a nuclear weapon for the last 20. Why do you suppose, he asked, it has taken Iran so long? After all, he observed, 60 years ago in the middle of World War II, it took the United States only a few years to produce the first atomic bomb, and no country that has set its mind to it has taken more than 5 to 10 years. Leaving me to draw the proper inference, Ben-Israel emphasized that clandestine operations can delay but will not destroy Iran’s nuclear program. And the experts agree that time is running out: Absent dramatic action – by the United States, the international community, Israel, or some combination – Iran is on track to join the nuclear club sometime between 2011 and 2014.

For a variety of reasons – President Obama’s attempt to engage Iran may prove futile, the international community may be unable to maintain effective sanctions, the mullahs may hang on to power, an Israeli attack might fail, Israel might elect not to attack Iran – Israelis are compelled to contemplate the structure of an effective containment regime. The challenges are immense. Realists argue that containment based upon the doctrine of mutual assured destruction worked for the 40-year Cold War and will work in the Middle East. But they overlook that in the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 it almost failed.

The realists also rely on a facile analogy. The distinctive variables that Iran and the Middle East add to the mix cast grave doubts on any easy application of Cold War logic. Iran speaks explicitly about wiping out Israel; the Soviet Union never so spoke about the United States. Iran is inspired by a religious faith that celebrates martyrdom and contemplates apocalypse; the Soviet Union was driven by a secular ideology that sought satisfaction in this world. And Iran has no dialogue with Israel; the Soviet Union maintained constant communication with the United States.

These complicating factors make it all the more imperative for Israel, if it wants to construct a successful containment regime, to convey to Iran that it has a devastating second strike capability and is prepared to use it. In addition, it would be useful from the Israeli point of view if the United States were to make Iran understand that America would treat an attack on Israel as an attack on it. And it would provide greater assurance still if Russia were to deliver a similar message.

But because, as Ben-Israel observed, “a guarantee from another nation is not a reliable deterrence policy,” the critical element in a successful containment regime would be Israel’s own unambiguous and compelling promise of swift and devastating retaliation. The mullahs may reasonably think that if they detonate a bomb over Tel Aviv while possessing nuclear-tipped missiles that can reach London, the Americans might hesitate to attack Iran on Israel’s behalf. Therefore, should Iran obtain the bomb, an effective Israeli deterrent, according to Ben-Israel, would require Israel to demonstrate publicly its ability to inflict catastrophic damage on Iran and at the same time remove any doubt about Israel’s willingness, in the event of a first strike by Iran, to do so.

But deterring an attack by nuclear-tipped Iranian missiles is only the beginning of the challenges that a containment regime would face. What would be a proportional response if the Iranians or their Hezbollah fighters slipped a small boat within a mile of Haifa and detonated a small nuclear device killing 10,000 Israelis?

And how ought Israel respond to – and containment work against – the myriad other dangers spawned by a nuclear Iran? The moment that Iran announces its possession of nuclear weapons, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and perhaps Kuwait, taking to heart Iran’s declared hostility to Sunni Islam and determination to obtain hegemony in the Gulf, will go shopping for their own. Egypt and Turkey will not be far behind. As if a nuclear-armed Pakistan were not worry enough, the vulnerability of these regimes to overthrow by the forces of radical Islam heightens the possibility of the world’s most dangerous weapons falling into the hands of many of the world’s most dangerous actors.

Furthermore, once the Middle East went poly-nuclear, it would be only a matter of time until a suitcase nuclear bomb fell, leaked, or was placed into terrorists’ hands. Even before that, radical Islamists throughout the Middle East – particularly Hezbollah and Hamas – would receive a tremendous psychological boost from a nuclear Iran and be emboldened by their patron’s nuclear umbrella. A nuclear Iran would further undermine the chance for peace between Israel and the Palestinians and Israel and Syria by tempting waverers in the region, those who had begun to abandon the idea that Israel might someday disappear, to once again contemplate an Israel-free Middle East.

In sum, containment is a grim option. So is a military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. And relying on prayer for Mousavi and the Iranian people to overthrow the mullahs is no option at all, at least not for the state of Israel, the front line in Islamic radicalism’s war against the West. Thus, in the short time left before Israel is compelled by an Iran fast closing in on a nuclear capability to choose between two grim options, Israel’s highest priority will be to persuade an equivocating United States, a dithering Europe, and an obstructionist Russia that a nuclear Iran is not just an Israeli problem or a Middle Eastern problem but a problem for the United States and the world.

THE WEST’S SILENCE HAS CONSEQUENCES FOR IRAN

Silence has consequences for Iran: The less we protest, the more people will die
By Jose Maria Aznar
The Wall Street Journal
June 27, 2009

If there hadn’t been dissidents in the Soviet Union, the Communist regime never would have crumbled. And if the West hadn’t been concerned about their fate, Soviet leaders would have ruthlessly done away with them. They didn’t because the Kremlin feared the response of the Free World.

Just like the Soviet dissidents who resisted communism, those who dare to march through the streets of Tehran and stand up against the Islamic regime founded by the Ayatollah Khomeini 30 years ago represent the greatest hope for change in a country built on the repression of its people. At stake is nothing less than the legitimacy of a system incompatible with respect for individual rights. Also at stake is the survival of a theocratic regime that seeks to be the dominant power in the region, the indisputable spiritual leader of the Muslim world, and the enemy of the West.

The Islamic Republic that the ayatollahs have created is not just any power. To defend a strict interpretation of the Quran, Khomeini created the Pasdaran, the Revolutionary Guard, which today is a true army. To expand its ideology and influence Iran has not hesitated to create, sustain and use proxy terrorist groups like Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza. And to impose its fundamentalist vision beyond its borders, Iran is working frantically to obtain nuclear weapons.

Those who protest against the blatant electoral fraud that handed victory to the fanatical Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are in reality demanding a change of regime. Thus, the regime has resorted to beating and shooting its citizens in a desperate attempt to squash the pro-democracy movement.

This is no time for hesitation on the part of the West. If, as part of an attempt to reach an agreement on the Iranian nuclear program, the leaders of democratic nations turn their backs on the dissidents they will be making a terrible mistake.

President Obama has said he refuses to “meddle” in Iran’s internal affairs, but this is a poor excuse for passivity. If the international community is not able to stop, or at least set limits on, the repressive violence of the Islamic regime, the protesters will end up as so many have in the past – in exile, in prison, or in the cemetery. And with them, all hope for change will be gone.

To be clear: Nobody in the circles of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei or Ahmadinejad is going to reward us for silence or inaction. On the contrary, failing to support the regime’s critics will leave us with an emboldened Ahmadinejad, an atomic Iran, and dissidents that are disenchanted and critical of us. We cannot talk about freedom and democracy if we abandon our own principles.

Some do not want to recognize the spread of freedom in the Middle East. But it is clear that after decades of repression – religious and secular – the region is changing.

The recent elections in Lebanon are a clear example. The progressive normalization of Iraq is another. It would be a shame, particularly in the face of such regional progress, if our passivity gave carte blanche to a tyrannical regime to finish off the dissidents and persist with its revolutionary plans.

Delayed public displays of indignation may be good for internal political consumption. But the consequences of Western inaction have already materialized. Watching videos of innocent Iranians being brutalized, it’s hard to defend silence.

MEALY-MOUTHED STRATEGIC DITHERING

Iran and the Tragedy of Bad Ideas: The lesson of ‘The Stoning of Soraya M.’
By Andrew Klavan
The Wall Street Journal
June 23, 2009

There are times when wrestling with the mysteries of storytelling can be revelatory. I recently saw the film “The Stoning of Soraya M.,” and, as a professional storyteller, found myself puzzled by how compelling a tale it was.

Based on actual events recounted in a book by expatriate Iranian journalist Freidoune Sahebjam, the movie tells of the brutal 1986 judicial murder of a woman falsely accused of adultery in the Islamic slave state of Iran. Having, as a woman, no right to defend herself, she was horrifically stoned to death in accordance with Shariah law – one of an untold number of Iranian women to suffer such a fate.

It’s a very well-made film, passionate, powerful and beautifully acted. But by rights, the story shouldn’t work. The plot is too inevitable to qualify as a drama, and it is not concerned enough with individual character to rank as classical tragedy. It does derive some power from the sheer awfulness of its central event, but stories with nothing but awfulness to recommend them usually fail.

Yet this one grips you, haunts you – and for a long time after I saw it, I couldn’t figure out why.

The events now unfolding in Iran, some 23 years after Soraya’s death, provide the answer. The movie’s detailed and unflinching depiction of a world and a worldview make “The Stoning of Soraya M.” a different kind of tragedy, what you might call a tragedy of culture or a tragedy of bad ideas.

The tragedy of bad ideas unfolds from a moral flaw in a worldview or philosophy as inevitably as classical tragedy unfolds from a flaw in individual character. Tragedies of bad ideas are the most common, pervasive and destructive man-made mass disasters. Yet our thinking class has become powerless to oppose them or even recognize them for what they are.

The reason is that too many of our intellectuals are themselves ensnared in a bad idea. That idea is multiculturalism – the notion that no system or government is inherently better than any other, that the rules of morality are just a doctrine written by history’s winners. Thus there are no enduring human truths, only “narratives” by which almost any beastliness can be explained away if committed by a people with a claim to having been victimized by a dominant culture.

This bad idea has all but silenced our nation at a moment when the world most needs our voice. Thousands of people in Iran are marching in the streets, protesting a sham election, heroically risking life and limb to try to tear some little breathing space in the smothering shroud of theocracy. Yet President Barack Obama, the leader of the most powerful free nation on earth, responds with mealy-mouthed strategic dithering. The man who in his recent speech in Cairo drew an absurd moral equivalence between Western errors and Islam’s unstinting history of oppression has condemned the Iranian government’s violent reaction to the demonstrations but remains canny and vague in his support of the protestors.

This is too shrewd by half. There comes a time in the affairs of men when bad ideas can be – and therefore must be – powerfully opposed by good ones.

Compare, if you can bear it, President Ronald Reagan’s response to the 1982 crackdown on the Polish union Solidarity by the Soviet Union: “The struggle in the world today for the hearts and minds of mankind is based on one simple question: Is man born to be free, or slave? In country after country, people have long known the answer to that question. We are free by divine right.” In less than a decade, in startlingly large measure because this one idea found so mighty a voice, the Soviet Union was gone.

The “Stoning of Soraya M.” is a compelling story because it puts into one life and death a nation’s suffering – a region’s suffering – in the snares of a philosophy antithetical to individual liberty. If this were a world of narratives instead of truths, that would be just one more narrative to pile on the others. In fact, it’s a tragedy, as every heart must know.

FULL ARTICLES

WASHINGTON POST: OBAMA’S “ABSOLUTIST POSITION IS A LOSER”

End the spat with Israel
By Jackson Diehl
The Washington Post
June 29, 2009

The upheaval in Iran offers the Obama administration a host of fresh foreign policy opportunities. Not the least of them is a chance to creep away from the corner into which it has painted itself in the Arab-Israeli peace process.

President Obama began with a broad strategy of simultaneously pressing Israel, the Palestinians and Arab states to take concrete steps toward peace. By the time Iranians took to the streets, it had allowed that broad front to be narrowed to a single point: a standoff with the Israeli government of Binyamin Netanyahu over whether “natural growth” would be allowed in Jewish settlements outside Israel’s 1967 borders.

Pressuring Israel made sense, at first. The administration correctly understood that Netanyahu, a right-winger who took office with the clear intention of indefinitely postponing any Israeli-Palestinian settlement, needed to feel some public heat from Washington to change his position – and that the show of muscle would add credibility to the administration’s demands that Arab leaders offer their own gestures. But, starting with a statement by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in May, the administration made the mistake of insisting that an Israeli settlement “freeze” – a term the past three administrations agreed to define loosely – must mean a total stop to all construction in the West Bank and even East Jerusalem.

This absolutist position is a loser for three reasons. First, it has allowed Palestinian and Arab leaders to withhold the steps they were asked for; they claim to be waiting for the settlement “freeze” even as they quietly savor a rare public battle between Israel and the United States. Second, the administration’s objective – whatever its merits – is unobtainable. No Israeli government has ever agreed to an unconditional freeze, and no coalition could be assembled from the current parliament to impose one.

Finally, the extraction of a freeze from Netanyahu is, as a practical matter, unnecessary. While further settlement expansion needs to be curbed, both the Palestinian Authority and Arab governments have gone along with previous U.S.-Israeli deals by which construction was to be limited to inside the periphery of settlements near Israel – since everyone knows those areas will be annexed to Israel in a final settlement. Before the 2007 Annapolis peace conference organized by the Bush administration, Saudi Arabia and other Arab participants agreed to what one former senior official called “the Google Earth test”; if the settlements did not visibly expand, that was good enough.

Netanyahu, whose poor relations with Washington contributed to his ouster from office during a previous stint as prime minister, has been relatively quick to come around. In recent weeks he has delivered a speech in which he agreed for the first time to Palestinian statehood. In the West Bank Israel is removing military roadblocks, turning four more towns over to Palestinian security forces and taking the first steps to remove settlements it deems illegal. Meanwhile, government envoys – led by Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who will be in Washington today – have been offering various compromise formulas.

Curiously, though, the administration – led by the State Department – keeps raising the stakes. Clinton went out of her way on June 17 to disavow any agreements between the second Bush administration and Israel over “natural growth” in some settlements. In a press briefing last Monday, State Department spokesman Ian Kelly responded to a question by saying the administration opposed new construction in all areas “across the [green] line” in Jerusalem – a definition that would prohibit Israeli building in such areas as the Jewish Quarter of the Old City.

The result of such posturing is that the administration now faces a choice between a protracted confrontation with Israel – an odd adventure given the pressing challenges from Iran and in Iraq, not to mention the disarray of the Palestinian camp – or a compromise, which might make Obama look weak and provide Arab states further cause to refuse cooperation. The White House, I’m told, still hopes Netanyahu will accept a construction moratorium, with a time limit and perhaps a waiver for some buildings under construction. But at this point some damage is probably unavoidable: If Barak and Middle East envoy George J. Mitchell agree on any formula short of that spelled out by Clinton and her spokesman, Arab media will trumpet it as an Obama cave-in.

The best course nevertheless lies in striking a quick deal with the left-leaning Barak this week under cover of the tumult in Tehran. The administration could then return to doing what it intended to do all along: press Palestinians as well as Israelis, friendly Arab governments and not-so-friendly Iranian clients such as Syria to take tangible steps toward a regional settlement. Such movement would be the perfect complement to the cause of change in Iran; how foolish it would be to squander it over a handful of Israeli apartment houses.

“WE CANNOT REWRITE HISTORY AND MAKE BELIEVE IT DID NOT EXIST”

Hillary is wrong about the settlements
The U.S. and Israel reached a clear understanding about natural growth.
By Elliott Abrams
The Wall Street Journal
June 25, 2009

Despite fervent denials by Obama administration officials, there were indeed agreements between Israel and the United States regarding the growth of Israeli settlements on the West Bank. As the Obama administration has made the settlements issue a major bone of contention between Israel and the U.S., it is necessary that we review the recent history.

In the spring of 2003, U.S. officials (including me) held wide-ranging discussions with then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in Jerusalem. The “Roadmap for Peace” between Israel and the Palestinians had been written. President George W. Bush had endorsed Palestinian statehood, but only if the Palestinians eliminated terror. He had broken with Yasser Arafat, but Arafat still ruled in the Palestinian territories. Israel had defeated the intifada, so what was next?

Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, President George W. Bush, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Jordan’s King Abdullah, June 4, 2003.

We asked Mr. Sharon about freezing the West Bank settlements. I recall him asking, by way of reply, what did that mean for the settlers? They live there, he said, they serve in elite army units, and they marry. Should he tell them to have no more children, or move?

We discussed some approaches: Could he agree there would be no additional settlements? New construction only inside settlements, without expanding them physically? Could he agree there would be no additional land taken for settlements?

As we talked several principles emerged. The father of the settlements now agreed that limits must be placed on the settlements; more fundamentally, the old foe of the Palestinians could – under certain conditions – now agree to Palestinian statehood.

In June 2003, Mr. Sharon stood alongside Mr. Bush, King Abdullah II of Jordan, and Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas at Aqaba, Jordan, and endorsed Palestinian statehood publicly: “It is in Israel’s interest not to govern the Palestinians but for the Palestinians to govern themselves in their own state. A democratic Palestinian state fully at peace with Israel will promote the long-term security and well-being of Israel as a Jewish state.” At the end of that year he announced his intention to pull out of the Gaza Strip.

The U.S. government supported all this, but asked Mr. Sharon for two more things. First, that he remove some West Bank settlements; we wanted Israel to show that removing them was not impossible. Second, we wanted him to pull out of Gaza totally – including every single settlement and the “Philadelphi Strip” separating Gaza from Egypt, even though holding on to this strip would have prevented the smuggling of weapons to Hamas that was feared and has now come to pass. Mr. Sharon agreed on both counts.

These decisions were political dynamite, as Mr. Sharon had long predicted to us. In May 2004, his Likud Party rejected his plan in a referendum, handing him a resounding political defeat. In June, the Cabinet approved the withdrawal from Gaza, but only after Mr. Sharon fired two ministers and allowed two others to resign. His majority in the Knesset was now shaky.

After completing the Gaza withdrawal in August 2005, he called in November for a dissolution of the Knesset and for early elections. He also said he would leave Likud to form a new centrist party. The political and personal strain was very great. Four weeks later he suffered the first of two strokes that have left him in a coma.

Throughout, the Bush administration gave Mr. Sharon full support for his actions against terror and on final status issues. On April 14, 2004, Mr. Bush handed Mr. Sharon a letter saying that there would be no “right of return” for Palestinian refugees. Instead, the president said, “a solution to the Palestinian refugee issue as part of any final status agreement will need to be found through the establishment of a Palestinian state, and the settling of Palestinian refugees there, rather than in Israel.”

On the major settlement blocs, Mr. Bush said, “In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949.” Several previous administrations had declared all Israeli settlements beyond the “1967 borders” to be illegal. Here Mr. Bush dropped such language, referring to the 1967 borders – correctly – as merely the lines where the fighting stopped in 1949, and saying that in any realistic peace agreement Israel would be able to negotiate keeping those major settlements.

On settlements we also agreed on principles that would permit some continuing growth. Mr. Sharon stated these clearly in a major policy speech in December 2003: “Israel will meet all its obligations with regard to construction in the settlements. There will be no construction beyond the existing construction line, no expropriation of land for construction, no special economic incentives and no construction of new settlements.”

Ariel Sharon did not invent those four principles. They emerged from discussions with American officials and were discussed by Messrs. Sharon and Bush at their Aqaba meeting in June 2003.

They were not secret, either. Four days after the president’s letter, Mr. Sharon’s Chief of Staff Dov Weissglas wrote to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that “I wish to reconfirm the following understanding, which had been reached between us: 1. Restrictions on settlement growth: within the agreed principles of settlement activities, an effort will be made in the next few days to have a better definition of the construction line of settlements in Judea & Samaria.”

Stories in the press also made it clear that there were indeed “agreed principles.” On Aug. 21, 2004 the New York Times reported that “the Bush administration . . . now supports construction of new apartments in areas already built up in some settlements, as long as the expansion does not extend outward.”

In recent weeks, American officials have denied that any agreement on settlements existed. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated on June 17 that “in looking at the history of the Bush administration, there were no informal or oral enforceable agreements. That has been verified by the official record of the administration and by the personnel in the positions of responsibility.”

These statements are incorrect. Not only were there agreements, but the prime minister of Israel relied on them in undertaking a wrenching political reorientation – the dissolution of his government, the removal of every single Israeli citizen, settlement and military position in Gaza, and the removal of four small settlements in the West Bank. This was the first time Israel had ever removed settlements outside the context of a peace treaty, and it was a major step.

It is true that there was no U.S.-Israel “memorandum of understanding,” which is presumably what Mrs. Clinton means when she suggests that the “official record of the administration” contains none. But she would do well to consult documents like the Weissglas letter, or the notes of the Aqaba meeting, before suggesting that there was no meeting of the minds.

Mrs. Clinton also said there were no “enforceable” agreements. This is a strange phrase. How exactly would Israel enforce any agreement against an American decision to renege on it? Take it to the International Court in The Hague?

Regardless of what Mrs. Clinton has said, there was a bargained-for exchange. Mr. Sharon was determined to break the deadlock, withdraw from Gaza, remove settlements – and confront his former allies on Israel’s right by abandoning the “Greater Israel” position to endorse Palestinian statehood and limits on settlement growth. He asked for our support and got it, including the agreement that we would not demand a total settlement freeze.

For reasons that remain unclear, the Obama administration has decided to abandon the understandings about settlements reached by the previous administration with the Israeli government. We may be abandoning the deal now, but we cannot rewrite history and make believe it did not exist.

PALESTINIAN HUMAN RIGHTS MONITORING GROUP DIRECTOR: ISRAELI CHECKPOINTS BETTER THAN PA SECURITY ALTERNATIVE

Jericho’s Stasi
By Bassem Eid
The Jerusalem Post
June 24, 2009

Between 1950 and 1989 in East Germany, the Stasi persecuted individuals, journalists and intellectuals who were suspected of operating against the regime. The majority of the methods focused on eavesdropping, spying, operating agents (with one agent for every 66 people), stalking and torture. The Stasi also spied on school children, high-school students and ordinary civilians to learn about their relations with West Germany. I can assume that the Stasi didn’t receive training from the same Dayton that trains the Palestinian security forces in the West Bank.

However, it is very possible that Lt.-Gen. Keith W. Dayton, the US security coordinator for Israel and the Palestinian Authority, is interested in the Stasi’s methods, its success in gathering information and recruiting citizens. The PLO had been a good friend to the Stasi. I dare to assume the PLO even operated concurrent training sessions in East Germany, and accordingly later introduced and employed these methods in Arab countries where it was based.

I’D LIKE to divulge some of the methods the agents of the Palestinian security forces use in Jericho, where I live. For instance, many taxi drivers have become agents. When in Jericho, there is no need to give the driver the address of the person you want to visit; the name is enough. While dropping off someone at a certain address, the driver contacts his operator and report driving person A or B to C’s location. Vegetable merchants and farmers have also become agents to protect their own personal interests (working on lots without permission, continuing to drive a taxi without a license, etc.). These people are forced to pay the “cheap” price of becoming an agent to secure their narrow personal interests.

A decade ago, on my first visit to Egypt, the citizens of Cairo warned me about the shoe polishers in the street, who are also in the employ of the Egyptian Security Agency. I believe that is the only thing Jericho lacks today: shoe polishers. There are several high-ranking officers who have between four and six bodyguards each. Those bodyguards act aggressively and violently, as if they constituted the government itself. Embarrassingly, in my eyes, the rule of law doesn’t apply to them, but vice versa.

Once, I ran into an interrogator while driving and didn’t notice I had been asked to pull over. He requested that I follow him to the station. My interrogator claimed to have known me for several years, after seeing me in a show on Israeli television in 1995, where I presented a harsh criticism of the Palestinian Authority. I asked him how old he had been then, and he answered 11. His vindictive behavior gave me the feeling that he has been pursuing me ever since. I decided to infuriate him even further: when he asked if I was proud to be a Palestinian, I answered “No.”

THE MAIN problem with such agents, all of whom have adopted the name Abu al-Abed, is that they’re the lowest form of humanity. They intimidate the common people through curses and beatings. Not satisfied with that, they spread rumors about everything they hear or see.

Jericho lives with this reality daily. Each morning you hear about the girls who ran away from their West Bank homes to Jericho, traditionally considered a city of refuge, only to have the Security Agency look for them – or about girls who stayed in X’s house and now the Security Agency has found them. Agents and bodyguards will often mention that they haven’t receive their salaries, subtly suggesting the need for a quick bribe.

When Israel removed the checkpoint at the southern entrance to Jericho, the Palestinian Security Agency started to work harder and began to despise the local people even more. It claims that Israel has given them too much work by removing the checkpoint. I, as a Palestinian, in consideration of the Palestinian Security Agency’s need to take some tasks off its shoulders, request that Israelis put back the checkpoint. But of course that is left to the judgment of Ehud Barak and not me.

After saying good-bye to one friend I met in the streets of Jericho, another would arrive and warn me that the first was under “a question mark,” meaning he was apparently a security agent. Events of this sort bring me back to the 1970s, several years after the beginning of the occupation, when people in the streets of Palestine feared each other.

I would like to suggest that Gen. Dayton not just train agents in the use of weapons, beating and torture (eight prisoners have been tortured to death in Palestinian prisons so far this year: five in Gaza, three in the West Bank), but also train them how to behave among their own people. However, I don’t believe that ranks high on Dayton’s list of priorities.

Whenever someone is beaten or tortured, the justification given is that the person either “opposed the peace process” or “belonged to Hamas.”

At the end of the day, people return to their routines and shut their eyes to the reality around them.

(The writer is the founder and director or the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group based in east Jerusalem.)