Sarkozy Visit to Damascus Signals Thaw in Relationsian Black, Middle East Editor s11

Thur. 9 Dec. 2010

HAARETZ  Assad to hold talks on Lebanon with Sarkozy………………1  'EU offering to okay Iran nuclear program in return for UN supervision'…………………………………………………..3

REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS  Press Release: Bashar el-Assad visit to Paris……………..…4

BPW  Wikileaks reveals Iraqi biological, chemical weapons ..……7

YEDIOTH AHRONOTH  IDF chief: Hizbullah plotted attack on envoy to Jordan………………………………………………………..8  Survey: 88% of Israelis believe nation's political parties are corrupt……………………………………………….……..10  Official: Dictionary can resolve Israel-Turkey row………..10  Fight the fire of racism……………………………….…….12

GUARDIAN  Israeli rabbis' racist decree strikes at the soul of Judaism….13  Lebanon: the greed factor…………………………………..16

DAILY TELEGRAPH  Middle East peace on the brink ……………………………18

WASHINGTON POST  Obama: On the way to a failed presidency?...... 19  U.S. hurting peace chances by giving up on Israeli settlement freeze, analysts say…………………………………...…….22 HOME PAGE Assad to hold talks on Lebanon with Sarkozy Talks between leaders of Syria and France will deal with indictments over the 2005 assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri. Haaretz (original story is By Reuters) 9 Dec. 2010,

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad flew to Paris on Wednesday to meet President Nicolas Sarkozy ahead of expected indictments by an international tribunal that could trigger new violence in Lebanon.

Diplomats said Sarkozy would present proposals at talks with Assad on Thursday on how Lebanon's politicians should deal with the indictments over the 2005 killing of Prime Minister Rafik al- Hariri. 2 "Sarkozy is desperate for a foreign policy success and he will present some ideas to Assad," one diplomat said. "The French have been keen on breaking Syria's isolation because they believe that Assad can be crucial to Lebanon's stability."

Western diplomats and Lebanese political sources say they expect the indictments to name members of the Syrian- and Iranian- backed Shi'ite movement Hezbollah.

The group, part of a fragile national unity government, denies involvement in the Hariri killing and Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has said he will not allow the arrest of any members.

He has called on Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri, Rafik's son and an ally of Saudi Arabia and the West, to repudiate the tribunal.

Sectarian rhetoric has increased in the past few months as rumors swirl about the timing of the indictments. Some Lebanese

2 politicians have warned of a possible relapse into violence when the indictments are issued.

Ali Abdul Karim, Syria's ambassador in Beirut, said Lebanon will be discussed during the Assad-Sarkozy talks.

"Lebanon certainly matters to France just as it matters to Syria and the Lebanese file will be on the agenda of talks between the two presidents," he told reporters after meeting Hariri.

Syrian and Saudi roles Syria and Saudi Arabia have set aside their rivalry in Lebanon to try to calm political tensions and avert violence there if Hezbollah members are indicted.

France stepped in after Saudi King Abdullah fell ill, diplomats said.

3 Diplomats in Damascus and Beirut expect the prosecutor of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, based in the Netherlands, to issue draft indictments as early as this week.

Their contents will not be made public, tribunal spokesman Crispin Thorold said, and a pre-trial judge will take around two months to decide whether to approve them -- at which point they may or may not be published.

Media reports of leaked U.S. diplomatic cables have also fuelled Lebanese scepticism over the tribunal's impartiality. The Daily Star newspaper on Monday quoted a UN investigator casting doubt on the legal basis for detaining four generals who were held for four years without charge.

Cables cited by the Daily Star and Al-Akhbar newspaper also revealed the investigators repeatedly sought assistance from the United States, including requests for intelligence, wire-tapping capabilities, satellite imagery and criminal analysts.

3 HOME PAGE

'EU offering to okay Iran nuclear program in return for UN supervision' Diplomatic sources tell Haaretz that EU foreign policy chief advanced compromise offer in recent round of P5+1 nuclear talks in Geneva. By Shlomo Shamir Haaretz, 8 Dec. 2010,

The European Union is proposing that Iran be allowed to continue its uranium enrichment processes if it agrees to tight United Nations supervision of its nuclear program, diplomatic sources told Haaretz on Wednesday.

The issue was reportedly discussed during the recent P5+1 talks concerning Iran's contentious nuclear program, which concluded earlier this week in Geneva. 4

According to the proposal, Tehran would be able to continue enriching uranium if it agreed to close supervision by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which would include surprise checkups.

At the two-day talks, the powers sought to put concerted pressure on Iran to agree to discuss its nuclear work, which the West suspects is aimed at producing atomic weapons. Iran denies this, claiming that it only has peaceful nuclear ambitions.

Diplomatic sources told Haaretz on Wednesday indicated that the offer would be discussed in further detail at the next round of talks, scheduled to take place in Istanbul at the beginning of next year. The initiative, which had been discussed in general terms in past nuclear talks, was led by High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Catherine Ashton during the recent two-day talks.

4 The sources told Haaretz that the U.S. administration wasn’t "thrilled" that the EU and Ashton had situated themselves at the forefront of global efforts to tackle Iran's nuclear program.

But, the sources said, the U.S. was willing to let the EU take a central role if it meant that Iran abandons its nuclear ambitions.

The Geneva round of talks did not do much to change the pessimism as to the possibility of any deal with Iran, as most UN diplomats estimating that Iran was only trying to buy more time.

Earlier this week, Iran's chief negotiator to nuclear talks said that Tehran would not consider relenting on its right for uranium enrichment.

"I am announcing openly and clearly that Iran will not discuss a uranium enrichment halt in the next meeting in Istanbul with major powers," Saeed Jalili told a news conference after the talks. 5 Underlining how far apart the two sides remain, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said negotiations with the West could work if sanctions imposed on Iran over its nuclear activities were scrapped -- a likely non-starter for major powers.

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Press Release: Bashar el-Assad visit to Paris Reporters withouth Borders, 8 Dec. 2010,

Reporters Without Borders has written to French President Nicolas Sarkozy about the deterioration in freedom of expression in Syria because he is due to meet with Syrian President Bashar el-Assad when Assad makes an official visit to France tomorrow.

President Nicolas Sarkozy Elysée Palace 55 rue Faubourg Saint Honoré 75008 Paris Paris, 7 December 2010

5 Dear President Sarkozy, In advance of your lunch with Syrian President Bashar el-Assad on 9 December, Reporters Without Borders, an international press freedom organization, would like to draw your attention to the deterioration in freedom of expression in Syria.

President Assad has often talked of political openings since taking office in 2000 but political and legislative reforms are at a standstill. A state of emergency suspending the Syrian constitution’s provisions as regards civil liberties has been in effect since 1963. The number of news media has increased but media diversity has not. The Baath Party maintains a tight grip on news and information. Syria’s return to the international stage has not changed that.

There is complete lack of transparency about social and political developments in Syria. It is extremely difficult for international human rights NGOs to gather information. The population lives in 6 constant fear of the security services, especially the Mukhabarat (the intelligence services), which have transformed Syria into a vast prison.

The repression was stepped up significantly in the second half of 2009. Encouraged by the intelligence services, the information ministry began interrogating and arresting human rights activists, lawyers and journalists. Many were questioned about articles that were said to constitute ‘”an attack on the nation” or “threat to state security.” Few dared to talk about this, even anonymously. The Syrian Centre for Media and Free Expression was closed on 13 September 2009 and its office was placed under seal. Headed by Mazen Darwish, it was the country’s only NGO that specialised in monitoring the media and the Internet.

Arrested on 17 December 2007 for signing the Damascus Declaration, writer and journalist Ali Abdallah should have been released on 16 June of this year on completing a 30-month jail sentence. But the authorities kept him in detention because of an article by him – posted online on 23 August 2009, while he was in

6 prison – that criticized Iran’s “wilayat al-faqih” doctrine, which gives the country’s clerics absolute power over political affairs.

He was initially charged with “publishing false information with the aim of harming the state” (under article 286 of the criminal code) and “intending to harm Syria’s relations with another state” (under article 276 of the criminal code). But a Damascus military court brought new charges against him that were confirmed by the country’s highest appeal court on 1 December, and he is now facing a new jail sentence. The case is particularly worrying as it shows that it is dangerous for journalists to criticise not only the government but also its allies.

Meanwhile, Tal Al-Mallouhi, a young student and blogger, has been held for nearly a year. Arrested by the intelligence services at the end of December 2009, she was finally taken before the High State Security Court, a special tribunal whose verdicts cannot be appealed, on 10 November. Reportedly accused of spying on 7 behalf of the United States, she is being held in solitary confinement in Duma prison, near Damascus.

We would also like to draw your attention to an Internet communications bill that was drafted at the behest of Prime Minister Mohammad Naji Otri and was approved by the cabinet at the end of October. It would allow the authorities to try online journalists before criminal courts and would allow the police or any other “judicial auxiliary” to enter editorial offices to arrest journalists suspected of contravening the law and to seize their computers. Despite the widespread censorship, news websites had emerged in recent years but this bill is clearly designed to impose additional restrictions on the flow of online information.

Syria is ranked 173rd out of 178 countries in the 2010 Reporters Without Borders press freedom index and is on our list of “Enemies of the Internet” because it has blocked hundreds of websites and because it hounds netizens. President Assad is regarded as one of the world’s 40 “Predators of press freedom.”

7 Because of your central role in the resumption of dialogue with the Syrian government as part of the promotion of the Union for the Mediterranean, you can be a particularly effective spokesman for the defence of the fundamental rights of Syrians. Reporters Without Borders would therefore like to ask you to intercede with your Syrian counterpart and request the release of these journalists and netizens and the withdrawal of legal provisions designed to criminalize online free expression. Economic relations with Syria should not be developed to the detriment of civil liberties including media freedom and free speech.

I thank you in advance for the attention you give to these requests.

Sincerely, Jean-François Julliard Secretary-General HOME PAGE

8 Wikileaks reveals Iraqi biological, chemical weapons Ted Purlain, BPW: Bio Prep Watch (American newswire provides information on biological threats) December 8, 2010

Among the trove of documents released by Julian Assange’s website WikiLeaks are several classified pieces of information showing that U.S. military intelligence in Iraq discovered weapons labs, encountered insurgents who were specialists in toxins and uncovered weapons of mass destruction.

One document, according to the Examiner, reveals that as late as 2008, U.S. troops were finding WMD in the region.

According to the latest document dump, Saddam’s arsenal, reduced after the first Gulf War, remained intact. Jihadists, insurgents and foreign fighters used these stockpiles during the conflict and may have made their own agents.

8 The documents do not reveal the existence of a massive orchestrated weapons program led by Saddam Hussein, but they do reveal that chemical weapons did not just vanish from the country.

Former Iraqi General Georges Sada, a top commander under Saddam, detailed transfers of Iraqi WMD to Syria.

"There [were] weapons of mass destruction gone out from Iraq to Syria, and they must be found and returned to safe hands," Mr. Sada said, according to the Examiner. "I am confident they were taken over."

U.S. forces fighting in Fallujah discovered a house there that appears to have been a chemical weapons factory. There was a call in the city the following day requesting that a chemical expert be called in to dispose of a weapons cache.

9 There were also incidents of U.S. forces finding artillery shells filled with chemical agents like mustard gas, the Examiner reports.

The U.S. Department of Defense is calling for the return of stolen documents in Assange’s possession. The DOD also wants Assange to delete all versions of the documents he holds that contain classified and sensitive information.

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IDF chief: Hizbullah plotted attack on envoy to Jordan WikiLeaks: In June, 2009 Hizbullah had completed plans for 3rd attack to avenge Mughniyeh; Gilad: Group a more effective fighting force than Syrian army. Yaakov Katz, Yedioth Ahronoth, 9 Dec. 2010,

Hizbullah was involved in January’s bombing attack on the convoy of Ambassador to Jordan Jacob Rosenne, Chief of General

9 Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi told a top UN official, according to a US diplomatic cable published by WikiLeaks on Wednesday.

This was the first cable that mentioned a meeting with Ashkenazi.

No one was wounded in the attack, which took place not far from the Allenby Bridge. Israeli intelligence at the time assessed the attack was likely the handiwork of Hizbullah, which was seeking to avenge the 2008 assassination of its military commander Imad Mughniyeh in Damascus, attributed to the Mossad.

The cable summarized a meeting with UN envoy to Lebanon Michael Williams at the US Embassy in Beirut during which he briefed American officials on talks he had held recently in Israel.

Williams said that in his talks with Ashkenazi and other Israeli officials he heard “repeated worries” about the possibility that Hizbullah would obtain anti-aircraft missiles or act on its threat to 10 retaliate for the assassination of Mughniyeh. Williams expressed concern that if another rocket was fired at Israel from Lebanon – whether by Palestinian terrorists or Hizbullah – Israel would respond in force and “everything we’ve worked for could go away in as little as 12 hours.”

In a cable from half a year earlier in June 2009, a top Israeli official told Fred Hof, special adviser for regional affairs in the office of US special envoy Mitchell, that Israel had already thwarted two attacks by Hizbullah designed to avenge Mughniyeh’s death and had obtained “sensitive intelligence” that the Shi’ite group had completed operational planning for a third attack outside Israel.

According to Nimrod Barkan, director of the Foreign Ministry’s Political Research Division at the time, Hizbullah chief Hassan Nasrallah had not yet decided whether to order the attack carried out, despite Iranian pressure to do so.

Maj.-Gen. (res.) Amos Gilad, head of the Defense Ministry’s Diplomatic-Security Bureau, told Hof that the Israeli defense

10 establishment assessed that Syria might be serious about detaching itself from Iran and withdrawing support for Hizbullah in exchange for reconciliation with the West, especially the US, as well as the return of the Golan Heights, Gilad said, because Iran was a marriage of convenience for Syria. “He believes Syria would much rather be close to their fellow Arabs and the rest of the international community, if given the chance,” the cable read.

Gilad warned, however, that even if it wanted to, Syria would find difficulty in extricating itself from its alliance with Iran and Hizbullah. “Hizbullah is now an integral part of Syria’s defense concept, and is a more effective fighting force than the Syrian army,” Gilad was quoted as saying in the meeting.

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Survey: 88% of Israelis believe nation's political parties are 11 corrupt Yedioth Ahronoth, 9 Dec. 2010,

The majority of the Israeli public – 88% – believes that the nation's political parties are corrupt, a survey conducted by the organization Transparency International shows.

About 82% of the participants said that the government's measures to fight corruption are ineffective. It is the highest disapproval rate of all the nations within OECD.

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Official: Dictionary can resolve Israel-Turkey row Hurriyet quotes sources as saying further talks possible in bid to resolve crisis over Gaza flotilla raid; Israeli source says reconciliation possible if different word for 'apology' can be found

11 Yedioth Ahronoth, 9 Dec. 2010,

This week's reconciliation talks between Israel and Turkey, which were held in Geneva, concluded without an agreement, but diplomatic circles are not ruling out further talks to resolve the differences, Hurriyet reported Wednesday.

The Turkish daily quoted sources as saying that the door for reconciliation remains open if the right formula can be found for an Israeli apology over the May 31 commando raid on a Gaza- bound flotilla, which left nine Turkish citizens dead.

An Israeli apology is a key Turkish condition for reconciliation.

“If Turkey and Israel want to reach an agreement, they only need to open the Webster’s Dictionary to find a different word for ‘apology,’” a senior Israeli official was quoted by Hurriyet as 12 saying.

According to the report, Israel is known to prefer to use the words “regret” or “sorry” instead of “apology” because "both its government and its people consider the dispatching of ships by the Turkish Humanitarian Relief Foundation, or ?HH, to break Israel’s blockade on the Gaza Strip to be a provocative act."

The Yedioth Ahronoth daily said Israel has agreed to pay the families of those killed during the raid $100,000 each.

On Tuesday Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said, "There is no such distinction as ‘the people’ or ‘the state.’ They (Israelis) must apologize to the Republic of Turkey."

Hurriyet further reported that Israeli Ambassador to Turley Gabby Levy has asked that his term not be extended, in part due to the publication of American cables by WikiLeaks. In a cable sent last year by then-US envoy to Ankara James Jeffrey, Levy is quoted as saying about Erdo?an: “He’s a fundamentalist. He hates us religiously.”

12 HOME PAGE

Fight the fire of racism Op-ed: After extinguishing Carmel blaze, we must turn our attention to racism in our midst Yael Gvirtz Yedioth Ahronoth, 8 Dec. 2010,

The Carmel blaze was barely extinguished, yet we are already seeing the flames of racism re-emerging. After we discovered that the disaster and suffering do not distinguish between Jews and non-Jews, and after both friends and rivals from among the “gentiles” came to our rescue, we could have hoped that the pyromaniacs of racism also internalized something of the lesson about the sin of arrogance, evasion of responsibility and loss shame. 13

We were burned and smoldered, yet the bearers of the racism torch are not letting off. Just like in a relay race, the match lit by Safed’s rabbi is now being carried by his colleagues. Some 50 municipal rabbis in Israel signed a document urging their followers not to rent apartments to Arabs, threatening the faithful with boycotts and ostracization in the name of “public sin and desecrating God’s name.”

So if the weekend’s smoke covered up the extent of the racism, and if for a moment it appeared that the identity of the dozens of casualties lying before us and the global enlistment to our cause would pour some water on the bonfire of hatred, these pyromaniacs were back to desecrating Judaism’s name and prompting public sins.

As difficult as the failures uncovered by the state comptroller’s report would be, these issues will at least be handled in retrospect. The fire exposed the recklessness that ran wild on this front, and its roots are now visible. Yet what about the other fire, the one that

13 does not have even a basic firefighting force that could contend with it as it spreads through Israeli society?

Blind to wisdom of Talmud The Carmel blaze also burned quite a few “maxims.” The culture of improvisation, the false sense of power, and the notion that “the whole world is against us” all went up in flames. Our helplessness was exposed, as was the need to cooperate with other nations rather than dwell alone.

The need to seek the world’s help also enabled us to experience a collective lesson in modesty. We could have expected that this scar would also produce a sense of truth in respect to the way our society is conducted and the discourse within it; that the lesson we learned about human nature would not also emerge within the racist-nationalist Jewish camp that veered off course.

The Carmel blaze had to be extinguished as quickly as possible. 14 Now, we must turn our attention to the Jewish ghetto winds blowing through our top government and spiritual echelons. We must not go easy on the racist fire and those who started it.

Before the fire, we were presented with a poll showing that half of Israel’s Jewish citizens would refuse to live next to Arab neighbors, and that 40% would refuse any “other” neighbor, a foreigner or a sick or disabled person. We were told that two- thirds of Jews believe that Arabs should be kept out of the government and that one-third endorse prison camps for Arabs at wartime.

Indeed, we were presented with Judaism that withdraws into itself, ignorant and intoxicated with power. The kind of Judaism that is wholly blind to the wisdom of the Talmud and of Maimonides.

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Israeli rabbis' racist decree strikes at the soul of Judaism Telling Jews not to rent houses to Arabs is religious fascism. So far, the state has failed to intervene

14 Maya Guarnieri (a Tel Aviv-based journalist and writer) Guardian, 8 Dec. 2010,

More than 50 of Israel's leading rabbis have issued a religious decree forbidding Jews from renting or selling homes or land to non-Jews – namely, Arabs, migrant workers and African refugees. The letter was signed by rabbis across the country (many of whom are employed by the state as municipal religious leaders) and urged Jews to first warn and then "ostracise" fellow Jews who disobey the edict.

It's just the latest wave in a rising tide of religious fascism.

In Safed, less than two months ago, more than a dozen rabbis urged Jewish landlords to refrain from renting to Arab college students. This summer, a group of Tel Aviv rabbis signed a letter instructing Jews not to rent to "infiltrators" – the state's word for 15 African refugees, most of whom have escaped genocide in Sudan or a brutal dictatorship in Eritrea. Ten estate agents answered the call.

And, in November, the municipality of Bnei Brak, an ultra- Orthodox suburb of Tel Aviv, launched a campaign to rid the area of migrant workers and African refugees. By the end of the month, officials – government employees – were going door to door telling foreigners they had to leave.

The latest move, first publicised on Tuesday on Ynet's Hebrew site, is the largest step that Israel's religious community has taken against non-Jews. And it is, perhaps, the most alarming. Rabbis from all over the country signed the proclamation. And they didn't try to hide their intentions. "We don't need to help Arabs set down roots in Israel," one remarked to Haaretz.

"Racism originated in the Torah," another said.

For argument's sake, let's set aside the fact that the Palestinians had roots here long before the state of Israel existed. Let's pretend

15 that they are "strangers" in this land, as these rabbis would surely claim. And let's turn to the same Torah that this group of rabbis is using as an excuse for racism and incitement. In Exodus, we are commanded not to expel others but to remember our exile in Egypt and to care for the strangers among us.

And, again for argument's sake, I'm going to set aside my many objections to Zionism and go to another root – Herzl, the founding father of the movement. What did he say about non-Jews? In his book Der Judenstaat, The Jewish State, Herzl wrote that "we should accord … honourable protection and equality" to "men of other creeds and different nationalities" because "we have learnt toleration in Europe".

Tuesday's proclamation – an act of state-sanctioned racism – shows that certain Jewish people have forgotten their history.

The decree was an open declaration of war. It's a strike against the 16 soul of Judaism. And if the religious fascists win, what will we be left with? A country that is Jewish in numbers but not in spirit.

It could be argued that those who signed the proclamation – a group of men who are distorting Judaism to the point that I refuse to acknowledge them as rabbis – are extremists, that they don't represent the majority. Even if that is true, it doesn't change the fact that many are government employees. And, so far, the state has done nothing to put them in check.

Israel is handing the reins over to religious fascists – men who say Jews shouldn't rent to Arabs, migrant workers, or African refugees; settlers who build illegally and imperil any hope for peace and Palestinian sovereignty.

It's an ominous sign for the future. What's next? Will they find a way to claim that those of us who speak out, people like me, are no longer Jews? Will we then be subject to religious decrees that ban employers from hiring us and demand that landlords evict us?

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Lebanon: the greed factor Massive political funding from foreign powers risks creating an enriched elite whose welfare depends on sustaining tensions Mohanad Hage Ali, Guardian, 9 Dec. 2010,

Aside from the well-known Lebanese political grievances, both internal and external, whether involving Israel, Syria or lately Iran, the recent WikiLeaks trove of diplomatic cables offers another less-known glimpse into the prolonged crisis in Lebanon: money, and lots of it.

After the assassination of the former prime minister Rafik Hariri in 2005, Lebanon witnessed an internal political crisis; it was widely portrayed as a proxy war between the United States and 17 Saudi Arabia on the one hand, and Iran and Syria on the other.

Iran, Saudi Arabia and the US provided the necessary finances to their local allies, the 8 March and 14 March coalitions (the former led by Hezbollah and the latter by Hariri's son, Saad, whose father's assassination was viewed as targeting Saudi influence in Lebanon).

Estimates of Iran's annual financial assistance to Hezbollah reach $200m. In a cable from the American embassy in Beirut, dated 18 February 2009, Hariri and his adviser allege that the Syrian regime facilitated the transfer of $50m to Michel Aoun, a Christian leader and a Hezbollah ally.

Another diplomatic cable from the US embassy in Abu Dhabi points towards the American role in funding Hezbollah's foes in Lebanon. Jeffrey Feltman, the assistant secretary of state for near eastern affairs, complains during a meeting between secretary of state Hillary Clinton and Abdullah bin Zayed, the UAE foreign

17 minister, about the Saudis' halt to financing of the 14 March coalition.

The regional and international funding seems to slow after every peace. That might explain Feltman's comment, which was made less than a year after the Doha agreement. The Saudis, it seems, lost interest in the conflict after the agreement resulted in a national unity government and a new president was elected.

Earlier this year, Feltman publicly testified before a subcommittee of the Senate committee on foreign relations. He stated that in order to "create alternatives to extremism, reduce Hezbollah's appeal to Lebanon's youth … we have contributed more than $500m to this effort since 2006".

So, if the US has paid half a billion dollars, what is the Saudi number? Or Qatar's?

18 Part of the answer can be found in the estimated spending on Lebanon's 2009 parliamentary elections. BBC's Nada Abdel- Samad reported in June last year that spending in the elections had reached unprecedented levels: a billion dollars, evenly split between both sides.

According to this report, each campaign has spent $500m dollars – which is $150m less than Barack Obama's record-breaking electoral fundraising. If this estimate is true, the spending in Lebanon's elections matches the Democrat and Republican presidential campaigns expenditures combined.

To better grasp this number, taking the population into account, Lebanon (with 4 million people) spent 77 times more on its election campaigns than the US did (with 310 million people).

Lebanon's economy recorded 9% growth that year, at the peak of the global recession, while the political crisis had been going strong since February 2005, almost non-stop, in spite of the agreements and "deals". For the Lebanese, those failed deals are reminiscent of the several shortlived attempts and efforts to

18 resolve the civil war (1975-90), a conflict that only ended with Syrian military intervention.

Do such vast funds risk creating an enriched elite whose welfare depends on sustaining the tensions and the funds, rather than accelerating the end of the crisis?

In 2002, economists Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler investigated a set of conflicts in the years 1960-99, and found that greed (finance) "considerably outperforms" grievance (ethnic and religious divisions, political repression and inequality) in prolonging conflicts. The authors of the World Bank report, titled "Greed and grievance in civil war", mentioned "primary commodity exports" and "a large diaspora" as factors that increase the risk of conflict.

In Lebanon's case, which currently falls short of a civil war, the regional and international players finance the crisis, while the 19 diaspora plays a lesser role. Would Collier and Hoeffler's model apply? In light of those massive funds (per capita), does the greed outweigh the grievances?

Lebanon is definitely facing the prospect of a prolonged crisis whose grievances seem strong and very much alive, but when considering the usually short-lived efforts to resolve the crisis, and the money that is poured in from outside, one might ask: why kill the goose that lays all the golden eggs?

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Editorial: Middle East peace on the brink Israel and Palestine must enter into direct talks, even if there is no settlement freeze. Daily Telegraph, 8 Dec. 2010,

Israel's refusal to extend its freeze on settlement construction in the West Bank has left the Middle East peace process in imminent danger of collapse. Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the

19 Palestinian Authority, yesterday declared that the talks were in "crisis", and indicated that he would press ahead with his threat to withdraw from them.

This would constitute a serious setback for the prospects of peace in the region and would be a blow to President Obama, who has made achieving a lasting settlement between Israelis and Palestinians one of his key foreign policy objectives. Mr Obama must, however, accept some of the blame for the impasse because he insisted on making settlement construction the main focus of Washington's diplomatic effort. This played into the hands of Israel's intransigent Right-wing coalition government, which nurtures a deep, ideological commitment to the settlements. It was always unlikely to agree to another freeze, even when Mr Obama offered Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu $3 billion worth of fighter jets to do exactly that.

Without the extension to the moratorium on settlement 20 construction, the Palestinians and their backers in the Arab League have made it clear they will withdraw from the negotiating process and will seek to persuade the UN to recognise an independent Palestinian state. Such a move, though, would simply inflame matters, as Israel controls much of the territory the Palestinians would want for their new state. Israel would be unwilling to relinquish control without first obtaining concessions from the Palestinians, particularly those relating to Israel's security. It is therefore vital that both parties enter into direct talks, even if the settlement freeze is not forthcoming.

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Obama: On the way to a failed presidency? By Katrina vanden Heuvel Washington Post, Tuesday, December 7, 2010;

Ronald Reagan famously quipped that the Democratic Party left him before he left the party. Like many progressive supporters of

20 Barack Obama, I'm beginning to have the same feeling about this president.

Consider what we've seen since the shellacking Democrats took in the fall elections.

On Afghanistan, the administration has intimated that the 2011 pullout date is "inoperable," with the White House talking 2014 and Gen. David H. Petraeus suggesting decades of occupation. On bipartisanship, the president seems to think that cooperation requires self-abasement. He apologized to the obstructionist Republican leadership for not reaching out, a gesture reciprocated with another poke in the eye. He chose to meet with the hyper- partisan Chamber of Commerce after it ran one of the most dishonest independent campaigns in memory. He appears to be courting Roger Altman, a former investment banker, for his economic team, leavening the Goldman Sachs flavor of his administration with a salty Lehman Brothers veteran. 21 On the economy, the president has abandoned what Americans are focused on - jobs - to embrace what the Beltway elites care about - deficits. His freeze of federal workers' pay, of more symbolic than deficit-reducing value, only reinforced right-wing tripe: that federal employees are overpaid; that overspending is our problem, as opposed to inane tax cuts for the top end; that we should impose austerity now, instead of working to get the economy going.

Now the not-so-subtle retreats are turning into a rout. The president is touting a NAFTA-like corporate trade deal with South Korea. He appears to be headed toward supporting cuts in Social Security and Medicare and irresponsible reductions in domestic investment. And he's on the verge of kowtowing to Republican bluster and cutting a deal to extend George W. Bush's tax cuts for the rich in exchange (one hopes) for extending unemployment insurance and possibly getting a vote on the New START treaty.

This is political self-immolation. Blue-collar workers abandoned Democrats in large numbers in the fall; wait until they learn what

21 the trade deal means for them. Seniors went south, probably because of Republican lies about cuts in Medicare; wait until anyone over 40 who's lost their savings hears about Alan Simpson's plan to take it to the "greedy geezers." The $60 billion each year in Bush tax cuts for the richest Americans could pay for universal preschool for America's children, or tuition and board for half of America's college students.

The stakes are much higher than the distant election. The president has suggested unconvincingly that he'd prefer to be a successful one-term president than a two-term president who didn't get anything done. But there are other alternatives. If the president continues on his current course, we're looking at a failed one-term presidency that the nation cannot afford.

Forget about electoral mandates or campaign promises. This president has a historic mandate. Just as Abraham Lincoln had to lead the nation from slavery and Franklin Roosevelt from the 22 Depression, this president must lead the nation from the calamitous failures of three decades of conservative dominance. This requires beginning to reverse the perverse tax policies that have contributed to gilded-age inequality and starved the government of resources needed for vital investments. This demands correcting destabilizing global imbalances, laying a new foundation for reviving American manufacturing and shackling financial speculation. It means ensuring the United States leads rather than lags in the green industrial revolution. And it requires unwinding the self-destructive military adventures abroad. The president must strengthen America's basic social contract in a global economy, not weaken it.

This daunting project is not a matter of ambition or appetite - or even unconscious Kenyan socialism. It is the necessary function of a progressive president elected in the wake of calamitous conservative misrule. Every entrenched corporate and financial interest stands in the way; it is easier to take a less confrontational path. President Bill Clinton, for example, found it convenient to join in the conservative project of corporately defined trade, financial deregulation and social welfare constriction. From

22 NAFTA to the repeal of welfare and the failure of labor law reform, to deregulating derivatives and repealing Glass-Steagall, he got his agenda wrong. He was seduced far more by Wall Street's Robert Rubin than by Monica Lewinsky.

Now Obama faces the same challenge. This isn't about conventional politics. This is simply about the fate and future of our country. This president has a clear and imperative historic mandate. If he shirks it, he risks more than failing to get reelected. He risks a failed presidency.

Katrina vanden Heuvel is editor and publisher of the Nation and writes a weekly online column for The Post.

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U.S. hurting peace chances by giving up on Israeli settlement freeze, analysts say 23 By Janine Zacharia Washington Post, Wednesday, December 8, 2010;

JERUSALEM - The Obama administration's decision to stop seeking a new Israeli settlement freeze as a way back into talks with the Palestinians has diminished prospects of achieving a peace accord within a year and eroded U.S. credibility in the region, analysts said Wednesday.

The decision also represented a belated recognition that even if they had persuaded Israel to renew a construction moratorium in the West Bank for three months, U.S. officials would have faced an even more difficult problem after that expired.

President Obama understood "that after three months of a second settlement freeze, he would have found himself without any kind of agreement and facing repeated demands to extend the freeze again, necessitating another exhausting bargaining session with

23 [Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin] Netanyahu,'' Haaretz newspaper political commentator Akiva Eldar wrote Wednesday.

Israelis and Palestinians traded blame Wednesday over who was responsible for the U.S. decision, which has left both sides perplexed about the way forward and hoping for clarity from a speech on the Middle East that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will deliver in Washington on Friday.

Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, said the U.S. decision would have "grave consequences in the region.''

"If you cannot have him stop settlements for a few months, what do you expect get out of him on Jerusalem or the 1967 borders,'' Erekat said of Netanyahu in an interview Wednesday. "I think Mr. Netanyahu knows the consequences for the American administration's credibility in the region.''

24 Israeli officials, who always were cool to extending a settlement freeze as a precursor to talks, said the Palestinians were to blame for insisting on including Jerusalem in the freeze. Still, the officials portrayed the change in American tactic as an opportunity for progress.

"That mechanism proved not to be effective and now we have to find an alternative mechanism to move this process forward,'' said an Israeli official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the discussions. "As we go into this next stage of the peace process, we think the chances of it succeeding are even greater because of the close coordination with the United States.''

The administration, which in September set a one-year deadline for negotiations, expended enormous political capital over nearly two years by making a settlement freeze a priority. The effort rankled relations with Israel and inflated hopes in the Arab world that the United States could persuade Israel to halt construction in the West Bank and win further Israeli concessions down the road. Instead, the U.S. ended up spending more time haggling with

24 Israel over a settlement freeze than negotiating between Israelis and Palestinians over the core issues that divide them, analysts said.

"Trying to get a freeze . . . was always the wrong focus,'' said Aaron David Miller, a former U.S. peace negotiator. "It forced the Obama team to either pummel the Israelis into one or bribe them. Neither worked. And now 20 months in, we have no freeze, no direct talks, no process, and no prospect of a quick agreement. Plus, our street credibility is now much diminished and our options are bad.''

After the 10-month Israeli partial moratorium expired in September, the Obama administration developed a package of incentives, including billions of dollars' worth advanced fighter jets, to entice Israel into extending the freeze for three more months. But talks on the extension collapsed, including over whether the United States would accept Israeli construction in 25 parts of East Jerusalem that Israel occupied in the 1967 Middle East war.

"The significance of the U.S. decision to stop pushing for a moratorium . . . is that Obama is refusing to give Netanyahu a seal of approval to build in Jerusalem,'' Eldar wrote. A Palestinian delegation, which was invited to Washington, won't travel there before Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas consults in the coming days with the Palestine Liberation Organization's executive committee and Abbas's Fatah Party's central committee, Erekat said. Erekat also said in light of the breakdown and decisions by Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay this week to unilaterally recognize Palestine as an independent state , the Palestinians would formally appeal to the U.S. to do the same.

As for West Bank construction, the Israeli official said Israel will continue to build in existing settlements in the West Bank but will not expropriate more land for new settlements.

25 Israel's security cabinet on Wednesday also decided to allow for expanded exports out of the Gaza Strip. An Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the matter, said the policy would be fleshed out in the coming days, but that in principle, exports of agricultural produce, textiles and manufactured furniture would be among the items that Palestinians in Gaza would be permitted to export abroad or to the West Bank.

Israel has limited Gaza's exports as part of a blockade of the Gaza Strip that is designed in part to put pressure on the Hamas-led government that seized power there in 2007. The international community has pressured Israel to allow the resumption of exports.

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