Enrichment and Impoverishment

Instead of grumbling about Iran's region-wide and Iraq-specific role, Arabs should wake up and think intelligently about their collective security and communal interests, writes Azmi Bishara

Washington is speaking to Tehran for the first time since the American hostage crisis when US President Jimmy Carter declared an embargo on Iran. Not only that, but it has some "tempting" offers to present to Iranian officials. Otherwise put, the US is proposing and Iran is playing coy, acting as though it is only trying to please the Europeans when it promises to study the proposals and get back to the Americans later. Some Arab governments, which have been bending over backwards to please the US, must be green with envy. The more they demonstrate how loyal and willing they are to serve, the more Washington snubs and treats them with contempt.

Iranian leaders have tried two ways of dealing with the US over the past three years. During the American war against Afghanistan, they were most cooperative, let there be no doubt about that. All they earned in return was a place of honour in the "axis of evil" and a steadily intensifying stream of American threats and imprecations. As soon as they announced that they were going to resume uranium enrichment operations and then dug in their heels against Bush's fulminations, the tables turned. European powers -- after the US failed to convince them to hold the line -- rushed in with offer after offer, which the Iranians spurned. Then, as Russia followed by other American allies rejected the option of force against Iran, the US agreed to a dialogue, and this led to some proposals with regard to cooperation, which would be very advantageous for Iran and effectively end the embargo on it.

The point is that it pays for a country to insist on its rights and hold its ground against the US -- if, that is, that country identifies its aims, assesses its sources of strength properly and deploys these well. Iran knew that the capacities it possessed were not sufficient to take on the US in war. However, it understood that it was possible to use them to avert war, especially when timed to coincide with other factors such as the growing anti- war sentiment in American public opinion and the fact that US forces are already bogged down in other areas. Making the US back down counts as no small moral victory for the region. Iran may have to give up its plans for possessing the technology to enrich uranium to weapons grade levels and it may have to submit to international inspections and the concomitant tension this denotes between national sovereignty and international commitments, but it will still retain its right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes.

During the entire first week of June, the Israeli press observed developments on the US-Iranian front via the mirror of its own dealings with the Palestinians. Commentators had practically taken for granted that the Americans would make offers that they knew in advance the Iranians would be compelled to refuse so that Washington could then claim that "there is no negotiating partner" in Iran. Then, logic dictated, the US would have an easier time rallying international support for sanctions that would ultimately culminate in military action. This globalised version of Israeli unilateralism tells us less about the situation with Iran than it does about the nature of Israeli wishful thinking.

It is not difficult to divine the vantage point of a sovereign state that sees its own economic and national security interests at stake. Iran has been weathering a Western siege amid the backdrop of a history of regional wars, one of which was waged directly against it. It sees the Americans champing at the bit to gain full control over the Gulf while an array of Arab countries, dependent upon the US for their national security, have fallen in line with American desires as another hostile power in the region possesses nuclear weapons. Equally, it is not difficult to imagine how the Arabs would behave if they were a single state, or a federated entity of any sort, instead of a motley crew of rival regimes, competing with one another for the attention of the US and at odds with each other over their relations with that hostile nuclear power in the region. They, too, would try to possess, or threaten to try to possess, a nuclear option that they could wield as a negotiating chip to realise significant achievements on the issues that concern them, including the Palestinian cause. But the Arabs are not party to a federation of any sort that applies the concept of collective national security. They are shattered fragments of an idea with a flare for applying the strategy, "divide ourselves so others can conquer."

Iran has several sources of autonomous strength. It has an army. It has oil. It even has a relatively cohesive body of public opinion, galvanised on the nuclear issue such that it has become a rallying call for the defence of national pride and dignity. Certainly, too, Iranian influence in Iraq at a time of American military involvement in that country is another major point of leverage. Arab regimes and not a small number of loyal Arab nationalists accuse Iran of following selfish, expansionist policies in Iraq, and they particularly reproach it for resorting to sectarian tactics to augment its influence there. Regretfully, they have only themselves to blame. Iran never lured the US into Iraq or even tried to goad it into war. The Arabs did that, and Iran benefited. The Arabs could do so because to them Arab national security is a concept upon whose headstone to dance if that's what it takes to please the US. Their actions towards Iraq served American interests; Iran has been serving its own interests. In between, the interests of Iraq and the Iraqi people were lost.

The Arabs helped the US step into Iraq and now they are grumbling because the US occupation has worked to Iran's advantage, rather than to theirs. But Iran is a nation state concerned with its national security and is currently trying to expand its sway in a country that had not so long ago waged a devastating war against it. That it is using a common religious bond between itself and a large segment of the Iraqi population towards this end may merit our censure. But we cannot object that Iran somehow betrayed Arab national interests. The Arabs are the ones that are supposed to defend these interests, which presumably should have included the cause of Iraq. Moreover when Iran attempts to turn sectarian tensions to its own advantage in the wake of a war that fuelled these tensions to begin with, at least Iran is acting in its own interests. When the Arabs, by contrast, elbow their way in to the same sectarian game, and try to turn it against the adherents of an entire school of Islamic jurisprudence, which regretfully has come to be termed a "sect", they are effectively destroying the fabric of their own society and broadening the scope for other countries, including Iran, to meddle in their affairs.

Iran was in a position to use its direct and indirect influence in Iraq to turn American soldiers bogged down in the war there into hostages by threatening to support a Shia-led national Iraqi resistance against the occupation. It then used this situation to hold Israel and the US off from launching a strike upon it, and then to force the US to agree to talks and make some "tempting offers". Instead of grumbling and cursing, certainly the Arabs would be better off learning from this experience. If the Iranian example tells us anything, it is that when dealing with the US and Israel, never make concessions free of charge. If the Iraqi experience tells us anything it is that the interests of Arab national security are best served when Arab national identity and equal citizenship are placed above narrow sectarian interests and that the defence of these principles and causes is a duty incumbent not upon the Iranians but upon the Arabs -- all Arabs: Muslims, both Sunni and Shia, and non-Muslims alike.

The Arabs will have every right to ask Iran to respect their national unity and sovereignty when they themselves start to respect these principles and work towards their fulfilment. One sign that the Arabs are moving in that direction will come when they no longer use the above-mentioned classifications when talking about politics; indeed, when they find it rude and distasteful to label an Arab politically merely on the basis of the accident of his birth into a family of a particular religious affiliation. At that point, the Arabs will have reached the realisation that such labels are the first step in the self-destructive game of religious identity politics, the very whiff of which lures foreign powers into readying for the pounce.

The Iranian experience surrounding uranium enrichment is, in fact, a lesson about the enrichment of political leverage. In this regard, one hopes that those Arab parties that are currently engaged in talks with Iran know better than to treat these talks as no more than a sideshow in the Iranian-US dialogue. If they do, only the US and Iran will stand to gain while they, the Arabs, walk away empty handed. The promotion of common interests between the Arabs and Iran is contingent upon developing friendly relations between the two sides, independently of how happy Washington is with Iran at this or that moment.

But, the real tragedy would be if the Arabs kept the resolution of their internal communal relations pending until Iranian-US relations improve. That would indicate that they are indeed a collection of disparate sects whose interrelationships are contingent upon outside powers, rather than an assembly of Arab citizens of diverse denominational affiliations bound together by a higher allegiance to an Arab state. In societies aspiring to a brighter and healthier future, political diversity and religious diversity are two very different things.

Return to Arab Survival

Over Iraq, Arab states lost their way, putting the survival of the Arab order subservient to external favour, and US-inspired coalitions, writes Azmi Bishara

Will the deception of historical progression -- or the irony of fate -- manifest itself in this region with the collapse of Arab nationalism, not at the hands of pan-Arab or pan-Islamic movements but by force of local kin and sectarian groupings, which had originally inspired the ideology of pan-Arab statehood in the colonialist mandate era? It seems that these forces, with the help of some petit politicians, are incapable of tearing down the edifice on their own. However strong the ambitions of their leaders are to free themselves from the constraints of ideology and to mobilise popular bases behind them, not on the basis of a political calling, but on the basis of blood ties and cries for vengeance without going so far as to exact revenge, not all countries are Somalia.

Elsewhere there are actual states, with governing institutions and national armies. It is in their interest to survive, even, perhaps, if that requires reform, and their survival instinct should have been sharpened by having been first-hand witnesses to the catastrophe that is Iraq. Yet the danger looms that the regimes of these states will ally themselves, individually or in coalitions, with the organic tribal or sectarian groupings inside each separate country, heedless of the exorbitant costs entailed in the attempt to realise their short-term and narrow political ambitions. The price will be no less than the sacrifice of any dream of national unity and all possibility of creating an overarching bond of citizenship because these will have been cast to the winds by the drive to fuel fears and to inflame ethnic and sectarian hatreds, and by the cries for blood that resound from the primitive depths of the earth.

Iraq was smashed to pieces because various Arab powers colluded with American designs and the Arabs that opposed this war were effectively isolated by force of the same collusion. Iran rose to the vanguard of the most vocal opponents to the war as a result of the official Arab stance, particularly that of the Gulf states, which could barely conceal their glee at the fall of the Iraqi regime beneath relentless bombardment and at the subsequent capture of Saddam Hussein. But what a different tune they were singing then in contrast to their recent protests against the execution of Saddam on the first day of the Feast of Sacrifice. What has happened in the interval to cause this remarkable about-face? On the one hand, the Iraqi resistance has proven its efficacy and durability. On the other, the boundaries of regional axes have gelled, and the members of one of these are pounding their chests and protesting the insult to their honour, now that they've realised that Iran was the foremost beneficiary of the dissolution of the Iraqi army and anti-Baath Party law which they had once cheered so rowdily. Not that these Arab officials went so far as to actually denounce Saddam's execution. They were just upset that it had been carried out on the first day of the feast. Which is worse. What this implies is that they actually approved of the execution and hoped for the opportunity to exploit it, themselves, to stir sectarian passions against adversaries who had nothing to do with the fall of the Saddam regime or his execution, such as Hizbullah and the Palestinian resistance.

At various points along the way, most importantly when the constitution came out, certain parties called into question Iraq's Arab identity and scoffed at those who protested the refutation of this identity. Not a single voice from Arab officialdom, which is now wringing its hands over Iran's gains from the decimation of Iraq, was among the protestors. And, today, instead of responding to Iran's (and America's) sectarian tactics with calls for Arab unity, Arab officialdom is busily fuelling Sunni anti-Shia sentiments. Nothing could be further from the spirit and behaviour of the Sunnis who had once rallied and still rally behind the call to Arab nationalism and unity.

In none of the other trouble spots that flared up or that were ignited in the Arab world is there sufficient endemic cause for full-scale internecine conflict. In Lebanon, for example, the internal dynamics of Lebanese politics, the Lebanese political mentality and the Lebanese political rhetoric are, in themselves, insufficient to spark confrontation, let alone civil war. No one in Lebanon, if left to his own devices and left to face his society on his own, would dare suggest that he hopes to or can settle the conflict over power in his favour and to the exclusion of others. No one in Lebanon could look themselves in the mirror and honestly say that they are capable of governing alone. The structure of Lebanese society would not permit it; nor would the structure and history of the state, or the economy of the country, or the demands of national security, which happens to be the most crucial factor in this case.

Nothing bears this out more than the fact that the most crucial formative experience of the contemporary Lebanese national consciousness was the protracted civil war, lasting from the mid-1970s to the Taif Agreement. The civil war was about power-seeking adventurism. It was about the delusion of one side that it could settle the conflict in favour of moving Lebanon into the Soviet camp, and the delusion of the other side, allied with Israel, that it could wrest Lebanese national security out of its cultural, Arab nationalist and historical context because it refused to fathom that Lebanon had expanded from an Ottoman directorate with a Maronite majority and Druze minority into a state with a Muslim majority in the grips of an identity crisis -- or multiple identity crises -- just like all the other by-products of the Sykes-Picot Agreement. The true deterrent against internal strife is not some illusory dreamy dove of peace. Rather it resides in that new open-eyed Lebanese identity that has shed its illusions, an identity forged in the crucible of a civil war that drenched its blood with militias and warlords and their self-serving and destructive slogans.

But just as there exists no internal mechanism propelling the Lebanese to confrontation, there exists no internal mechanism to deter it. They are thus all the more vulnerable to the external dynamic that does propel towards civil strife: the conflict between regional axes. Lebanese society is still holding out against this threat that is encroaching upon it so forcefully. However, it will not be able to continue to do so for long unless it develops some mechanism for promoting and safeguarding national concord and unless the axes in question realise that it is in their mutual interest to talk with one another.

Until a short time ago, neither the Lebanese government as a whole, nor individual Lebanese leaders, had openly come out for disarming the resistance or made moves to effectively seize power with the aim of bringing Lebanon into the American fold. Undoubtedly, some of the leaders harboured this intent. But they would not have believed themselves capable of acting on it until certain tensions mounted in Saudi-Syrian and Saudi- Iranian relations and encouraged them in that direction.

This was before the war against Lebanon. After Israel attacked, the game of bisecting the region into opposing camps played itself out in the form of censuring the resistance for triggering the war and the steadily intensifying campaign to capitalise on this in Lebanon in order to tilt the balance of power towards a single player. The campaign culminated in Security Council Resolution 1701. Because the resistance leadership realised that it would wake up to an entirely different Lebanon within less than a year if it failed to act, it quickly moved to break the blockade. But the aim of its counterattack was not to seize power for itself. What the resistance seeks is a share in power, rather than a monopoly on power, the notion of which it has vehemently protested. But it insists upon real power-sharing, not power-sharing in form with actual decision-making power in the hands of an eternal "democratic minority" that has disproportionate weight in forming a government. It demands an effective say on crucial issues, especially security related ones. The problem is that the other side is pushing for a monopoly on power, not particularly because it is capable of exercising this monopoly or really wants it, but because its most extreme wing, which could be kept in check in the past, is now taking its cues from a regional axis that, for the time being, rejects talks with the other regional axis.

How do people who know they do not possess the leverage to resolve things the way they want justify trying to do that anyway? Perhaps they believe that by securing for themselves key offices and allying themselves with the mightiest military and economic power in the world they can turn the situation to their advantage and push through their plans gradually and without confrontation.

In Palestine, for example, a particular faction might contemplate changing the government in a manner that would guarantee it hold over such key authorities as the ministries of interior, foreign affairs and security. Add these to the presidency, recognised by the government, and access to various sources of money and it becomes possible to strike an agreement with Israel through secret negotiations. It's all a question of time. Afterwards, of course, the agreement can be put to general referendum, and the best way to ensure that this comes out in favour of an unjust settlement is to choke off the people's access to food, release the grip gradually to give them a taste, and then let the people use their imaginations to draw the comparison between times under economic blockade and the times to come after it is lifted.

The only alternative open to the other side, which had formed a government after attaining a parliamentary majority through a fair and transparent electoral process, is to put a stop to these tactics by refusing to cooperate and insisting on the appropriate conditions for national unity. But this is not to the liking of one of the regional axes. With the failure of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon coming on top of the unmitigated disaster in Iraq, the members of this axis, along with Israel, are desperate to revive the Palestinian-Israeli negotiating track. Towards this end they feel it necessary to propel the Palestinians towards an internal confrontation that most of the Palestinians themselves believe unnecessary and unwarranted.

But Israel is not hanging around with Christmas presents, such as Jerusalem and the Palestinian right to return, to hand out to the clever folks who ignite this confrontation. Israel is not suddenly going to turn into Santa Claus. This realisation alone should be sufficient cause for the Palestinians to reject the ploys of the extremists, known as "moderates" abroad, who are propelling the situation towards civil war at home in order to secure a settlement abroad, and to forge ahead with the creation of a national unity government that will challenge the blockade. Haste in reaching a settlement is "the devil's work," as we say, and the work of those who are heaping their destructive divide-and-conquer tactics on certain trouble spots in the region.

States that had never stepped foot in Lebanon before are now gate crashing into the country through the torn off doors and windows of Lebanese domestic politics, because suddenly they discovered that the way to America's heart is to sign up with the anti-Iran axis. Lebanon is the place to be. As for why these same parties hadn't joined the anti-Iran axis in Iraq, by supporting the Iraqi resistance, this is a question that can only be answered by someone who realises that these parties' allegiances have nothing to do with being for or against Shias or Sunnis in Iraq or elsewhere, and everything to do with being with America, in Lebanon, in Iraq and in Palestine. They tuned their attitude on Iraq to America's. They may have contributed to a small extent to altering the American attitude, here, the major determinant of the American shift in attitude was the Iraqi resistance, which they opposed and which opposed them.

The most tragic disasters are those that could have been avoided. After Iraq, the US no longer had the ability to force its confrontationist policies on anyone, and the pro-American Arab axis that coalesced during the build-up to the Iraqi war could have made the US understand that its coalition politics would lead to nothing but the collapse of Iraq and, along with it, the collapse of the regional order that had emerged from the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916. They could have told America that the ensuing chaos would sweep away everything and that, while this might please Israel and some of Israel's supporters in Washington, they would have nothing to do with bringing it on. They could have been so bold but, sadly, they passed up the chance.

The only sound alternative these powers have now is to abandon this coalition politics and pit their forces together, as sovereign governments that have in interest in a stable Iraq, following the American withdrawal. This will require an understanding between Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iran, and cooperation with Turkey. Saddam Hussein was pushed into war against Iran and then abandoned and subsequently cold-shouldered by the Gulf and barely tolerated by Iran. Syria managed to sustain good relations with both Iran and with the Gulf countries and, therefore, was able to act as a pacifying mediator between them. But rather than capitalising on this role, the partners to coalition politics are contributing to the isolation of Syria. Iran, for its part, should reassure the Arabs -- by which I mean Arab public opinion -- that it recognises the Arab identity of Iraq. It should further relinquish its vindictive policies and its collusion with vindictive practices in Iraq, the most recent manifestation of which was the disgracefully bloodthirsty execution of the president of an Arab state, beneath the axe of the occupation -- a savage act recorded and broadcast with such disgusting felicity that even Arabs who hated Saddam could not help but to feel insulted and degraded. The only way to restrain Iran is to establish a relationship with it that keeps the channels of communication and understanding over Iraq open. To do so, Arab regimes must reassure Iran that they are not colluding with the US against it, as they colluded with the US during the build-up to the war against Iraq, "on the condition that this war gets rid of Saddam."

Many fingers got burned by confrontationist coalition politics in Iraq. Entire hands will get burned from this type of politics in Lebanon and Palestine. But everything will be consumed by a confrontation with Iran. It is not just the Arab axis that will crumble from igniting sectarian tensions in a confrontation of this nature. So, too, will the entire Arab order, that is, if it has not entirely lost its instinct and will to survive.

Precious Clarity

With the roadmap dead in the water, Israel faces its most critical moment of decision ever: opt for lasting peace, or embark on perpetual war, writes Azmi Bishara

Israel's invasion of Lebanon ushered in a new regional situation that has made the choice between war and peace extremely clear. This clarity is troublesome for Israel, which is unwilling to pay the price of either choice. As a result, the US, Israel and a number of Arab governments are feverishly trying to cloud that clarity and their instrument for doing so, at least at the PR level, is the Palestinian settlement industry: that inexhaustible source of quasi-initiatives, pseudo- dialogues, confidence-building "processes" and efforts to find a way back to the roadmap. Meanwhile Palestinians wake up every morning to find that they need a new map just to get to work, so frequently does the terrain change with all the additions to the separation wall and the barricades and checkpoints that appear and prevent from one day to the next.

It was no coincidence that Olmert shelved his agenda for unilateral disengagement from the West Bank as soon as the war in Lebanon ended. I say "agenda" because this scheme for dictating a permanent border intended to annex the whole of Jerusalem and large chunks of the West Bank to Israel hardly merits being ranked as a political platform, there being no others in sight as far as the Palestinians are concerned. Why was it no coincidence? Because to the Israeli mind, the withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000 was a unilateral action: it was then that it first occurred to the Israelis that unilateralism was a feasible alternative to diplomatic settlements. Coming in the wake of the collapse of negotiations with Syria, the withdrawal is -- rightfully -- regarded by Arabs as a retreat forced upon Israel by the liberation struggle. The Israelis, however, look back on it as a voluntary action undertaken independently of any settlement or peace agreement, even though they could have just as well withdrawn from Lebanon within the framework of a settlement with Syria that resolved the question of the Golan Heights. In this sense, Barak rather than Sharon was the father of unilateral withdrawal.

The unilateral disengagement from Gaza was Israel's response to the collapse of Camp David II, which took place under Barak, and the subsequent desire, under Sharon, to block off all avenues to any new initiatives, such as the Arab peace initiative or even the roadmap which Likudist Israel wanted to wriggle out of in spite of how damaging it was for the Arabs.

Israel had staged a complete withdrawal from Sinai as the price it had to pay for eliminating one of the key Arab states from the equation of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Since then, Israel's negotiating behaviour can be summed up as follows: If any of the remaining Arab negotiating parties reject Israel's conditions for a settlement and for the amount of occupied territory to be returned in exchange for peace, Israel declares that there is no "Arab negotiating partner." Then it proceeds to execute plans of its own, withdrawing from those portions of occupied territory that it regards as too much hassle because of resistance operations or too burdensome demographically.

But it's not just the unilateralism that those no longer existent negotiating partners find so irksome. It is the fact that Israel invariably leaves in its wake some nasty and intolerable problems, such as keeping one last piece of territory under occupation or transforming the territory it withdrew from into a huge ghetto-cum-concentration camp, the ports of entry of which it controls entirely and which it raids or invades with routine regularity since, after all, there was no agreement and there is no peace. In other words, Israel does exactly what it wants.

As differently as the Arabs view the situations in Gaza and in Lebanon, to Israel the reasons its unilateral policy backfired can all be reduced to the same source: the growing impetus of the resistance. If this phenomenon manifested itself in Palestine in Hamas's electoral victory, it drove itself more powerfully home through the bravery and efficacy of resistance forces in Lebanon. Add to this the fact that the Olmert government cannot afford another confrontation with the Israeli right over even the smallest withdrawal from the West Bank when the domestic atmosphere is already charged by the heated controversy over the causes of Israeli failure in Lebanon and it becomes obvious why the unilateral withdrawal plan from the West Bank has been called off.

Long before this, in Camp David II, Barak overrode the Oslo Accords concluded with Rabin and the Wye River understanding made with Netanyahu. It took only the unilateral disengagement plan to effectively dismantle all previous agreements. At Camp David, Barak declared that he did not want partial, phased agreements, but a once-and-for-all settlement. Yet when those talks collapsed all previous agreements remained frozen, after which unilateral disengagement came along to effectively bury them. Now, unilateral solutions have fallen by the wayside after having put paid to partial solutions.

But that is not all that is evident in the wake of war against Lebanon. It is also obvious that the politics of brute force has collapsed. One reason that Israel fought an American war in Lebanon was to revive that deterrent power it had long depended upon on as long as the Arabs refused to accept its dictates. Yet Israel emerged from that war with the mystique of its deterrent power more shattered than ever. No one in Israel is disputing that Israel failed in the war on Lebanon. Rather the contention revolves around why it failed and who to hold responsible. The Arabs would do well to bear this in mind, because the very fact that everyone from the far left to the far right in Israel are debating the consequences of failure implies that the war is still ongoing, if by other means. Meanwhile, in the Arab world the question of Israeli failure appears not to have been settled, suggesting a strong reluctance on the part of some to give the Lebanese resistance the credit it so fully merits.

A big question mark now hovers over the efficacy of the air force, which has not only been a major component of the Israeli deterrent principle but also a long-fabled instrument of offensive battle against a resistance that enjoys such a broad base of popular support. Israel's air force may be effective against national armies of unpopular governments, but in this short war against Lebanon (albeit long from the Israeli perspective), Israeli air power, in spite of the enormous destruction it wrought, failed to crush the will of the people.

But there's more. The resistance put paid to that fundamental corollary of the Israeli deterrent policy, which is "to export the war to enemy territory and keep it out of Israeli territory". That Israel's air force could do nothing to halt the increasingly heavier missile bombardment of northern Israeli towns and cities eventually compelled Israel to send in land forces, which only exacerbated Israel's military predicament.

Simultaneously, the war put paid to another corollary of Israeli military philosophy: the blitzkrieg principle. Before Lebanon, Israel had always been able to resort to massive tactical bombardment, the immediate destruction of the enemy's line of command, rapid incursion into enemy territory to occupy a strip of territory and whatever other tactics it took to resolve the battle quickly so as to avoid getting bogged down in an extended war of attrition. The resistance proved true to its definition; by its very nature it is the antibody to blitzkriegs. This should serve as a reminder to those who maintain that the resistance deterrent collapsed upon the Israeli attack of Lebanon.

One after the other, Israel's alternatives collapsed. The politics of force fell to the wayside in Israel's recently botched attempt to resurrect its deterrent strategy and, before this, partial solutions were shunted aside by the unilateral disengagement policy, which, too, now, has been taken off the drawing board. What choices does it have left? Only two: either a just, lasting and comprehensive peace, or political and diplomatic stagnation which can only degenerate into war and, most likely, a protracted one if its adversaries adopt the strategy of resistance. The very clarity of this choice presents Israel with its foremost strategic dilemma.

If the Arabs are to capitalise on this situation they should, at the very least, not budge one inch from their initiative for a just and lasting peace. The ball is now in the Israeli court. Any new initiatives or adjustments will merely offer Israel and others an opening to lead everyone down that garden path of diplomatic manoeuvres, dialogues over nothing, and visits intended to build up hopes, sew new illusions and obfuscate self-evident facts. These are the tactics not of dispelling illusions but of dispelling clarity.

This is not to deny that the Arab initiative was ill timed. Coming, as it did, in the post-11 September furore, it was a sign of weakness. Originating with Saudi Arabia, in deference to a hint from Washington following the wave of anti-Arab and ant-Muslim provocations in the US at the time, it was an image- enhancing initiative, as though it fell upon the Arabs to prove how peace loving they were. It was a caving- in to blackmail. No wonder it offered the opening for extracting new concessions from the Arabs, starting from their first visits to Washington after adopting this initiative, which ultimately was reduced to little more than a footnote in the roadmap.

This said, it is simultaneously important to recall Israel issued no positive response whatsoever to the Arab initiative. But, rather than emphasising this fact, and rather than sticking to the initiative so long as it was out there and, indeed, rather than making Israel's predicament so crystal clear that Israel can't help but to face it, we find Arab governments helping to disseminate new illusions.

Meanwhile, there is another fog machine operating in the region: "the Palestinian cause routine". The most obvious examples are Blair's visits to Palestine after the war against Iraq and, again, after the war against Lebanon. Whenever there is a lull between Western military campaigns in this region you know it's Palestinian cause time again. It is a fleeting season, for after a brief flurry of activity and displays of earnest concern, the cause is again put on hold until the next crisis.

These PR routines serve multiple functions. Above all, they work as a kind of antiseptic that cleanses the image of the aggressor as he rallies support for the next round and they smooth the way for Arab governments, which cannot take part in coalitions or boycotts or sanction campaigns unless some movement is being made on the Palestinian cause. The operative word, here, is movement, as opposed to solution. Movement is better than stagnation. It's all in the "process", they say. Just keep it going, and all will be fine.

According to Haaretz of 19 September, the US advised Israel to stick to goodwill initiatives towards the Palestinian president. Olmert should agree to meet Abu Mazen and, perhaps, release a few Palestinian prisoners, for example. That should be enough right now to enable Arab governments to continue to pitch into the drive to isolate and topple the elected Palestinian government. Instead of making the choices explicit to Israel, Arab governments are helping to make the choices explicit to Palestinian officials who Israel and the US have decided should not have been popularly elected. Those choices are either to recognise Israel and agreements that Israel itself no longer recognises or to remain under economic blockade.

By playing along with the Palestinian cause routine, the Arabs are helping the US and other powers to rescue Israel from the wall it has run up against. This could be a historical watershed, because if Israel were made to choose it would not opt for comprehensive war over comprehensive peace. Major developments in the region have palpably demonstrated that overturning or dismantling an Arab status quo by force produces more dangerous types of enemies for the American and Israeli projects. These types of enemies, moreover, do not offer, nor are they in a position to offer, constructive alternatives for their societies, unlike Hizbullah or Hamas and its allies. These resistance movements are working on the ground in and with their societies and, therefore, are in a position, if they summon the appropriate will and ingenuity, to promote socio-political visions that can take their societies beyond the logic and tactics of resistance to new horizons of peaceful coexistence among diverse political trends committed to national sovereignty and opposed to foreign intervention.

I am unable to recall an occasion in which Israel was so bereft of a political alternative as it is now. This has come at a time when Israel has come face to face with the most crucial decisions ever. Until now, the Israeli leadership has never asked its citizens to choose between a just and lasting peace or lasting warfare. If it were to put the choice before them so succinctly, I have no doubt that the government would be surprised by the numbers of people who voted in favour of peace and would be willing to pay the necessary price. Sadly, there is no leadership in Israel capable of rising to such a historic moment. Sadder yet are the many Arabs who are denying the results of the war against Lebanon, calling for the resurrection of a dead roadmap and doing whatever else they can to extricate Israel from one of the toughest spots it has ever been in.

Israel at a Loss

Following their "failure" in Lebanon, Israel's politicians are sharpening their knives. The domestic political fallout may well be bloody, but it will miss the real targets, writes Azmi Bishara

Journalist: When the war started, you said that Nasrallah would remember the name of Amir Peretz for years to come.

Peretz: Who's Amir Peretz?

The mock interview, above, reflects how the Israeli minister of defence spoke at the outset of the war. Peretz epitomises the crisis inside the Israeli Labour Party. When he accepted the defence portfolio he fell into what he described as Olmert's trap, to make him into a caricature of a minister cowed by powerful generals. When Peretz tried to dispel the image by uttering macho-sounding threats he succeeded only in making himself a more pliable tool in the generals' hands.

Peretz's presence in government helped ensure the absence of any real opposition in Israel to the war. Even the "Zionist left" joined the pro-war "consensus". Yussi Belin called for a strike against Syria at the beginning of hostilities. It was only in the final week, with news of the circumstances on the front and the climbing death toll, that the Zionist left woke up to realise the operation had resulted in a wholesale harvest of lives. It was then that it declared its opposition to the ground offensive.

Peretz's presence in the government helped furnish a gloss of respectability at the international level. Now the Lebanese have every right to regard Peretz as responsible for the carnage and destruction in their country just as Sharon was responsible for the mass murder at Sabra and Chatila.

Peretz's election as Labour leader already revealed a crisis in the party. Peretz would not ordinarily have qualified as a leader of this party. He succeeded only because he campaigned on a social platform after Barak had bankrupted the party politically. After Peretz became minister of defence that social agenda, too, fell victim to this mad war, with the result that Labour can offer nothing to distinguish it from Kadima. Evidently Peretz has woken up to the reality that Labour now is little more than an appendage of Kadima, suddenly issuing statements calling for the need to resume negotiations with Syria. Olmert quickly gagged him. There can be no talk of negotiating with a country Washington deems part of the "Axis of Evil".

The Israeli press mobilised public opinion behind the war effort, including Ha'aretz, Yediot Aharanot and Maarev, dailies that see themselves as representing Israel's central secularist trend. The war was an opportunity to assert themselves and their Western identity. The enemy Israel faced in this war were the "forces of Islamist fascism".

Because the Israeli occupation of Lebanon ended in 2000, these newspapers not only regard Israel as the victim of an unjustified attack but the war as just. It is the war they had been looking for: Israel fighting alongside the forces of good against the forces of evil, on the side of the West against the East, no longer an occupying power but a partner alongside "moderate Arabs". The latter were among the most enthusiastic advocates of the war. For them, too, it was a chance to prove how Westernised, secularised and how unlike fundamentalists they were. Inside Israel prominent writers and journalists declared their support openly, but they were gravely disappointed. Israel failed to take advantage of the "historic moment" that the West, the US and a segment of Arab "moderates" had given it.

We didn't need Seymour Hersh's article in The New Yorker to determine this was an American war. In fact, I'm inclined to believe he tended too heavily towards the conspiratorial. What seemed reasonable and logical in his article I had already pointed out during the first week of the war. The rest was speculation. America's war against Iran and Syria would presumably take down the resistance along the way and America's war in Lebanon itself would do away with obstacles keeping Lebanon outside the American fold. But the American agenda coincided with an Israeli mission that had been kept pending, concerning the missile arsenal that Hizbullah had accumulated beneath Israel's nose. If Olmert and Peretz took a closer look they'd find it no accident that their predecessors were instrumental in keeping this mission pending despite warnings from military officials. The American agenda also coincided with Israel's desire to flex its military muscle following Gaza's rebellion against the prison created by unilateral disengagement, and with the personal agendas of politicians convinced their time had come.

Olmert's speeches since the cessation of hostilities have avoided as bald a statement as "we have won". This is important, not least because some Arab neo-liberals and neo-conservatives believe Hizbullah has effectively handed Lebanon over to Israel. Olmert may speak of "achievements," but they have been secured not on the battlefield but in the US-controlled Security Council. Were it not for Resolution 1701 Israel would have failed in all its war aims. To get a resolution passed is one thing, apply it something else entirely. It is easy to draft and vote on a resolution in the Security Council. How it is put into effect, though, depends on the balances of forces and conditions on the ground.

More significantly, the word peace has been absent from Olmert's post-war rhetoric. It is a rare day when an Israeli prime minister delivers a speech or meets the public without a heavy sprinkling of "Shalom's" and "peace's". Perhaps he felt the word would diminish the impression of resolve he wanted to project. So he replaced the usual peace-scented air freshener with tribal war paint and proclaimed that he would continue his policy of confrontation, that Israel would repeat the offensive if necessary and -- as if fearful some might have taken inspiration from the experience -- insisted the offensive should serve as a lesson to others. As for the resistance's threats to hunt and kill Israeli forces still in Lebanon, they were the roars of a wounded animal that might still be harmful if driven by its wounds to reckless adventurism. Perhaps the idea was to conjure up Operation Thunderbolt, the raid on Entebbe airport, which the Israelis had designed and knew better than Idi Amin. In all events the Israelis need to project an image. They need to shove the Lebanese resistance and its leadership into the most-wanted terrorist corner while they grace the elegant diplomatic salons of the war on terror.

Israel has no diplomatic proposals or alternatives to offer. Its policy of unilateral dictates was not so much a policy as a shutting of the door to diplomacy and negotiations. The only political party alternative on offer in Israel at the moment is the rightwing demagoguery coming from Netanyahu and Liebermann, who are railing about the government's mismanagement of its opportunity to destroy Hizbullah.

In the meantime Israel, as self-appointed inspector of the implementation of Security Council Resolution 1701 will while away time speaking about how it isn't being applied properly. Some Arabs, who initially regarded the resolution as an achievement, will try to help it out by badmouthing the resolution when they accuse Israel of not abiding by it. But Israel has nothing to offer the Arabs.

Even the Syrian president, who became the butt of everyone's rancour, especially those who couldn't criticise Hizbullah's secretary-general outright, managed a word in favour of peace. But not Olmert, who couldn't mention peace in connection with Syria because Syria is now a subject he cannot broach without the White House go-ahead. In the days of Bush Senior and Shamir the US had to drag Israel to the negotiating table with Syria; today, the age of Bush Junior, it is Israel that must get the US to see the need to negotiate with Syria.

Closer to home the Israelis will vent their frustration on the West Bank and Gaza. Their imaginary war against the defenceless occupied territories may have helped them refine the art of repression but in the process they forgot the skills of warfare. They were deceived by the arrogance of their tanks, which as they swept into Ramallah swerved to crush every car parked on the side of the road. They were duped by the three tanks that bombarded entire residential districts in Gaza.

Israel is not exulting in victory; it is putting a brave face on failure. Behind the scenes everyone in the coalition is sharpening their knives for the conflict between themselves, between the government and opposition, between parliament and the army. In the process they recite a common refrain: If we had known this would be the result we wouldn't have gone to war.

They are going to draw military lessons from this confrontation. They'll pour their efforts into detailed analyses of the operation. An official investigation will produce two reports, one public and the other confidential, as was the case following the 1973 War and the Sabra and Chatila massacres. They will study how the decision to go to war was taken and they will question why it took so long to launch the ground offensive after that decision was taken.

They will also take the occasion to ponder resuscitating the concept of exporting war to other people's land. A prime tenet of the Israeli military since the 1950s, the concept is based on the strategy of absorbing an initial blow and then pushing the battle front across the border deep into enemy territory. One of its more notorious corollaries is the notion of preemptive war, as played out in 1967 and which, more recently, had such White House realists as Cheney and Rumsfeld extolling Israel as a strategic asset, instead of a strategic burden. Be that as it may, there is no recreating the original Israeli vanguard, the farmer/fighter at the time of the founding of the state who bears no resemblance whatsoever to Israel's present day reserve army with its hybrid Western consumerist/Third World culture and whose members were tossed like logs into the battlefield in the final days of the confrontation without sufficient preparation and for the sole purpose of enhancing the positions of the military and political elites.

They will also discuss how to reestablish Israel's deterrent capacity and the possibility that other standing armies in the region might adopt the strategy of guerilla warfare. What they won't discuss is Barak's and Sharon's failures and their responsibility for having brought this situation about because of their unilateral dictates. Nor will they take a look at their racist attitudes towards Arabs or reassess the primary assumptions underlying their hostility towards the peoples of the region. Failure will remain a result of tactical shortcomings, and even this assessment will get lost in the morass of political backbiting and party politics.

They'll discuss whether or not to resume negotiations, failing to realise that the number of those in the Arab world who want to negotiate with them has dwindled considerably.

Israel had one specific war aim, which was to revive the mainstay of its security creed, its deterrent power. Not only has this not been revived, it has been further eroded. If the war made anything clear it is that Israel's dependency on its air force may wreak appalling destruction (and therefore deter societies), but it fails to deter a resistance force that has entrenched itself deep beneath the ground. This resistance, by contrast, has demonstrated not only its ability to hold its own on the ground but to revive society's confidence in itself.

General Halutz obviously took as his model for the invasion the 72-day long NATO aerial bombardment of Serbia and the intensive aerial bombardment of Iraq by American forces. In both these cases the targets were dictatorships whose people would not, or could not, sustain the costs of holding out in defence of their governments.

Israel's second declared war aim wavered between debilitating Hizbullah and driving Hizbullah forces away from the border with Israel. This converged with Washington's political aims and, ultimately, could only be made possible by a Security Council resolution. A war hadn't been needed after all, because the US could have pushed through this resolution without one, just as it and France had produced Resolution 1559.

As for America's political aims for Lebanon, the domestic conflict had not been resolved but merely transferred to the Lebanese-Israeli border. When Israel failed to resolve it the Security Council resolution tossed it back to Lebanon for another round. However, in view of the entirely new conditions that now prevail one cannot escape the conclusion that Israel has failed to accomplish its war aims. That constitutes a victory for the resistance.

The resistance had not anticipated the war; nor, for that matter, had Israel. However, the resistance had anticipated how Israel would handle a war and prepared itself accordingly. Israel, on the other hand, had no idea of the resistance's strength and was taken by surprise by the resistance's combat performance, in spite of the fact that Israel had had the offensive advantage. Such considerations are important in determining the success or failure of military leaders under given circumstances.

Hizbullah's real victory resides in its grassroots base. Just as some envy Lebanese society for its resistance movement, that movement should also be envied for its society. Specifically, I refer to the society of southern Lebanon, Dahiya and Bakaa -- that unique historical, cultural, political, literary, aesthetic blend of tobacco farmers and resistance fighters, neighbours to Palestine and Syria, on the dividing line between the acceptance and rejection of the Sykes-Picot agreement, mountain dwellers and coastal peoples from northern Galilee and southern Lebanon, theologians of the underprivileged and oppressed, advocates of ethnic-free Arabism and Lebanese authenticity and believers in communism, nationalism, pan-Arab nationalism, religious devotion and denominational pluralism, all within a small stretch of land each patch of which has its own name, its own story to tell and its own sense of identity.

Once the ceasefire went into effect the people of the south did not wait a single moment more than they had to in the public gardens and schools of Beirut. As soon as they could they headed back to their towns and villages to shoo away the Israeli army. That's the people of Lebanon for you: tougher than rock and gentler than a mother cradling her child. They are the people making the great march southward, even before the bridges are rebuilt and the roads repaired, because they are the country's roads and bridges.

Naked Tragedy

There is nothing new in Condoleezza Rice's new Middle East. It is, writes Azmi Bishara, the same old wolf dressed up

It was on 21 September 2004 that President Bush first used the term the Greater Middle East. He was speaking to the UN about America's campaign to spread freedom and democracy and, in the same breath, to fight terrorism, a campaign that, he believed, would transform Afghanistan and Iraq into models of democracy to be emulated by other countries in the region.

On 22 July 2006, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice refused to call for a ceasefire in Lebanon, thereby confirming that Israel is fighting an American war in Lebanon and will go on fighting it until the war accomplishes Washington's political aims. Washington has set the goals and will determine when it is time to stop, yet like a doctor comforting a patient Rice counsels the victim to endure the pains which are, she says, the birth pangs of a new Middle East; another admission that this is America's war. And as Israeli ground forces prepared to land in Lebanon even some Israeli ministers were beginning to ask whether Israel was actually fighting an American war.

But wait a moment. Before joining the flock of analysts and commentators who take every sentence uttered by an American official and tailor it to fit their own theories and justify their own garrulous existence, could it not just be that Rice just had to come up with some kind of excuse for her government's criminal refusal to insist on a ceasefire? Could she not have been seeking to suggest no more than that the Middle East will be a "better" place after this savage war? Had she not done so, she would have been left to defend an act of unmitigated sadism the purpose of which is death and destruction for death and destruction's sake.

There are no theories. No matter how we look at it, there is nothing new, nothing to supersede the old Israeli dream of the "New Middle East" authored long ago by Shimon Peres who, during the Oslo era, came to believe "moderate" Arabs would normalise their relations with Israel to the extent that they would have no compunction cooperating with it against other Arabs it labeled "extremist".

There is a new mood in the neo conservative administration in Washington. They have abandoned attempts to export democracy by gunboat, though only because such attempts could not withstand the Arab people's horror of the Iraqi model. As happened during the Cold War, Washington has reconciled itself to allying with non- democratic states they classify as "moderate" -- which is to say regimes that follow American dictates -- as long as the alliance serves US interests. And unlike previous administrations, they have shed any discomfort at openly and directly cooperating with Israel in targeting the Arabs, including toppling one Arab regime in order to bring in another.

It was not that long ago that Bush Senior asked Israel to hold its horses after Iraqi scud missiles struck and to leave things to the American-led coalition, because the addition of an Israeli cook would at the time have spoiled the broth. What a long way Bush Junior has come since then. After the US's plans for Lebanon fell through he had Israel start the war against the Syrian-Iranian axis, which is allied with the Palestinian and Lebanese resistance movements. Washington, meanwhile, has vowed to cover Israel internationally, not only by preventing the passage of a ceasefire resolution but also by billing Israel's brutal aggression as a drive to implement UN Security Council Resolution 1559.

Helping to make all of this possible is the fact that Arab regimes have been paralysed since the fall of Iraq. No longer can they say one thing and do another, spouting radical anti-Israeli and pro- resistance rhetoric while secretly begging the US to produce a settlement of any sort. They bargained away their official positions on Arab causes in exchange for Washington turning a blind eye to their domestic human rights abuses.

Between the Greater Middle East and the ignominious, blood-drenched return to the New Middle East, the cities of Iraq and Lebanon crumble, corpses are strewn along the sides of the roads and the groans of the wounded, screams of grieving mothers and wails of orphaned children rend the air. Such are the birth pangs of the New Middle East, as explained calmly and dispassionately by a nasty lady whose pathologically sedate, hysterically cool voice contains nothing of the ear-shattering reverberations of smart bombs and dumb bombs, the bewildered screams of the living who have had their hearts ripped out and the silence of the dead beneath the rubble. The doctor of bombardment and displacement, the minister of death and destruction, the envoy of desolation and grief speaks, without a flicker of emotion on her face and lips that barely move.

Of course, what's really going on behind all this talk about a new Middle East is a new joint US-Israeli adventure, the aim of which is to deliver a debilitating blow to the resistance, as both a domestic and a regional force and movement, and as an obstacle to the America's bid for complete hegemony over Lebanon. America and its allies were gritting their teeth as they saw a socio-political movement coalesce and stand in the way of Washington's desire to turn its embassy in Beirut into a latter-day High Commissioner's residence. Their frustration grew as the situation in Iraq reached a point where an incident is considered newsworthy only if more than 30 people are killed, and even then it merits only a brief mention, well after the other headlines.

International envoys are now scrambling to come to Lebanon. European visits, which of course preceded Arab ones, are intended to suggest that the Europeans are doing something other than America's bidding. Of course some European politicians, with electoral campaigns in mind, took advantage of the opportunity to have their pictures taken while helping to get their fellow citizens out of the country. Others came to commiserate with the Lebanese, firstly, against the resistance and, secondly, against the Israeli bombardment -- the former being the cause and the latter the effect, in their opinion.

European behaviour towards the Arabs is so depressing that it now reminds me of the observations made by left- wing political theorists at the end of World War II that Hiroshima, the Holocaust, Stalin's Gulags and the annihilation of the American Indians are no more than the flip side of enlightenment civilisation. That flipside is being acted out in Lebanon through delicate diplomatic proprieties, performed so as to avoid saying anything meaningful. The racism that underlies preconceptions about Muslims gives further cause for depression. If Israel says that Hizbullah targets civilians and threatens Israeli cities, the Europeans nod and agree that this is sufficient ground for war, regardless of the fact that, throughout its recent history, Hizbullah has refrained from targeting civilians even in retaliation for Israel's targeting of civilians in Lebanon. It makes no difference that Hamas had refrained from suicide attacks against civilians over the past year. Nor does it do Hizbullah or Hamas any good that they are as different as night and day from an organisation like Al-Qaeda. At the end of the day they will be thrown into the same terrorist basket, bracketed together in the statement of a European diplomat issued with consummate calm and self- possession. Then the camera will cut to a reporter, live from Beirut, reiterating Israeli lies and fabrications against the backdrop of bombed out buildings, seemingly unaware that he is justifying Israeli crimes, reduced, in his terminology, to the phrase disproportionate force. But contrary to the myth Israel does target civilians. It has set its sights on the murder and displacement of an entire denominational segment of Lebanese society because it believes that this segment forms Hizbullah's base. It targeted other segments of Lebanese society in order to scare them away from Hizbullah. It unleashes terror against civilians in order to achieve specific political ends.

But racist Western culture refuses to see this, which is why its diplomatic and media corps are of one mind, which is that Israel has to destroy Hizbullah, the only worry being that the "surgery" needed to remove that "cancer" might kill the patient, Lebanon.

All the scuttling back and forth of diplomats and envoys aims to create an international and Arab consensus against the resistance and so ensure that it is removed from Lebanon. While they're at it, Western diplomats will help organise a regional blockade of Syria, if it refuses to cooperate, and of Iran. Not surprisingly, Damascus and Tehran have not been invited to attend the international conference in Rome to discuss the situation in Lebanon. This is not because these two countries don't have interests at stake in Lebanon, but because the conference is another front in the US-Israeli offensive. The fruits of war, after all, are gathered politically. One of the fruits Washington wants is for Syria to end its alliance with Iran, although why Syria should believe any promises the US may make in this regard is anyone's guess. Washington has made it abundantly clear what it has in store for the regime in Damascus.

The many visits are also intended to demonstrate America's embrace of the Lebanese government -- an embrace that is really a bear hug. The aim of this embrace is to propel the Lebanese government towards an agreement with the US over a ceasefire, in accordance with which it will have to prove that it is mature enough to take matters back into its own hands. Instead of a Palestinian Authority being transformed into a sovereign state, a sovereign state is being transformed into an American-run Lebanese authority.

I believe we will soon be seeing a redrawing of boundaries in the neighbourhood of the Shebaa Farms, the purpose of which is to pull the carpet from beneath Hizbullah. Ideas are being floated to bring in an international force, preferably a NATO one, even though everyone knows that the resistance will regard it as an occupying force and behave accordingly. But the US has no problem with Lebanon erupting into civil strife -- "creative chaos" in the words of the very woman whose mention of a new Middle East precipitated the prolific scratchings of so many pens.

In the midst of this, the release of the two Israeli soldiers has been all but forgotten, as we knew it would because that was never the purpose of this assault. That is only a sideshow, a tangential incident, in the pursuit of the Israeli version of a comprehensive solution. So comprehensive is this solution that it does not address the problems of Lebanon, nor the Palestinian cause nor the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, but only the elimination of the resistance by striking sovereign states and overturning existing governments. After that, let the flood come, or creative chaos, or a new Middle East -- call it what you like, it's all the same to the pragmatists who are currently preoccupied with executing and rationalising a campaign of death and destruction.

A Monstrous Rehabilitation

Azmi Bishara is alienated by the carnival that surrounds the demise of Ariel Sharon

The latest episode in the life of Ariel Sharon, the carnival surrounding his cerebral haemorrhage, marks a new staging post in the media's march towards totalitarianism. For the blanket coverage of the Israeli prime minister's health has given that term a new meaning as, at exhaustive length, it has endeavoured not to expose the life and acts of Sharon but instead keep them shrouded.

Israeli news channels have been keeping open studio. Journalists, politicians and a rat bag of assorted experts have been taking their turns in the seats before whatever anchormen are on duty, chatting away in the intervals between the updates from in front of the hospital. The remaining airtime is filled in with interviews with officials from abroad or else documentary flashes hastily pasted together until more professionally made ones come along. Not everyone, though, is in such a hurry. I was recently approached for an interview by a journalist who told me he was making a film to be broadcast in the event of Sharon's death. There was no great urgency about the request. Apparently he, like many others, shares the conviction that this eventually is a long way off.

In the first phase of the Israeli media's extensive coverage of Sharon's illness the experts being paraded before the cameras consisted mainly of brain surgeons and neurologists. The sudden spotlight did not catch them at their best: many were shocked to discover how quickly this newfound celebrity went to their heads. Is there a single neurologist left in Israel who has not made an appearance on television in order to comment on Sharon's deteriorating health and to offer his views on what the prime minister's physicians have done and what remains for them to do? One even brought a life-size model of the brain into the studio in order to explain to viewers what has been going on inside the prime minister's head. News networks, for their part, vied with one another to keep the man billed as Israel's top neurosurgeon in their studios for ever longer stretched. Surgeons, as we know, surpass journalists in their ability to keep going without sleep.

Soon, though, news commentators began to lash out at these physicians expounding upon their diagnoses without ever having come into contact with the patient. It was a phase that lasted two days after which the decision was made to dispense with expert opinions on Sharon's condition and to replace it with comparisons to similar haemorrhage cases. These opened with a careful "if" and concluded with an even more cautious refusal to comment on whether the comparison was valid in Sharon's case.

Then came a period of mutual recrimination between medical experts and journalists over aspersions cast by the latter on the former's competence. So frenzied was the race for any scrap of information that might keep viewers riveted to their screens that journalists descended upon the home of the parents of one of Sharon's surgeons. Maybe the son had let a word slip to his parents on the condition of his patient? But no. What we learned was that the parents hailed from Argentina and that their hometown once had a Jewish community that numbered 7,000.

Naturally politicians jumped onto the open studio merry-go-round though it was as if they had agreed to an unwritten pact to adhere to certain rules. They would not to speak ill of the stroke victim; they would not rake up any unsavory altercations with him nor broach the subject of the fate of his party or the future of Israeli politics. To do so would be to admit that he might die at any moment, or that the speakers were busily jockeying to step into his shoes while he was on life-support. So assiduously did they cling to this unofficial protocol that, try as they might, interviewers were unable to pry out any hint of the manoeuverings or haggling going on behind the scenes. Journalists, along with everyone else, eventually grew bored with the endless repetition of the standard pieties to unity in times of trouble and heartfelt hopes for the prime minister's recovery.

Then suddenly programming was by a special announcement. "Tomorrow, physicians are going to try to wake the prime minister," reported the newsreader. Soon afterwards another broadcaster appeared to announce that the patient had moved his left hand. The report is almost immediately corrected: it was, instead, the right hand that moved. After each new report and each subsequent retraction yet another medical expert is hauled in front of the cameras to elucidate. Meanwhile Sharon's sons, one of whom has been charged with corruption and receiving bribes while Sharon senior remains mysteriously in the clear, play Mozart beside their father's bed. Doctors had told them the best way to help the patient was to expose him to the sounds and smells of the things of which he was most fond. More effective, perhaps, would have been recordings of the blasts of artillery fire, the rat-a-tat-tat of bullets, the screeching of missiles, the wails of orphans and the screams of the rape victims of Sabra and Shatila.

Then came the biggest surprise of all as Israel's Channel 1 reported that Sharon's sons had passed a shawerma sandwich beneath their father's nose. Among other things Sharon is a gourmet with a famously large appetite as he has himself confessed. Initially I assumed someone in the newsrooms was attempting irony at the expense of his reputation. But no, it actually happened. In a medical first a shawerma sandwich was being used to help a patient regain consciousness.

What, I wondered, would happen if the sandwich succeeded and Sharon did recover consciousness, though with partial amnesia? Rolled out of the hospital to meet the press, would he confront reporters with his customary antagonism, thinking they had swarmed around him to question him about Sabra and Shatila and the war against Lebanon? Or perhaps his mind would take him further back to 1955, when he and Moshe Dayan undermined the Sharet plan to negotiate with Nasser by provoking tensions along the Israeli-Egyptian border, or to 1967 when he took part in the generals' uprising against Eshkol to force him into waging war. What, I wondered, would be the international reaction if Sharon started again to threaten to murder Arafat or bomb Beirut?

Political leaders around the world have expressed their concern at the deterioration in Sharon's health. Arab leaders -- as is their custom -- joined in the globalised anxiety, and outdid themselves in hand-wringing: they followed the news "with concern", sometimes "with grave concern". The expressions of commiseration have continued unabated though the longer the anticipation drags and the more it appears likely that Sharon will vegetate while his vital functions are kept going by machines then the greater the prospect this solicitude will yield to tedium. Time is no great friend of concern.

For the moment Sharon's associates have set aside their concerns to pace hospital corridors waiting for the results of this battle between life and death. But a prolonged wait leads to an uncomfortable predicament in the short life, so full of embarrassing quandaries, that is ours. You cannot wish for the waiting period to end for that is tantamount to wishing that the patient would hurry up and die. But you cannot keep your daily affairs on hold indefinitely. Perhaps this is why the people who sit around the bedside have taken it upon themselves to urge others to get back to their jobs or to their studies, so that they might themselves soon follow. The living must look after themselves, they coo soothingly. As for the near-living, that, apparently, is the job of the press and in Israel journalists are paid handsomely for monitoring every breath and every tremor of the hand in the hospital room.

In the meantime, television stations around the world interrupt their scheduled programmes regularly to cut to their reporter outside the hospital. So sparse is the news that reporters now interview one another, turning the scale of the media coverage into the story. So, asks reporter from country X of reporter from country Y, what brought you here? How is this event being covered in your country? How are people from where you come taking the news about Sharon's illness? Not far beneath the lines lurks the question as to whether people are really interested in the subject. But the media imposes its agenda on spectators. It decides what audiences want to know and people take on the role of audience as scripted for them.

One of the most bloodthirsty military adventurers and most notorious war criminals of the second half of the twentieth century has been transformed into a man of peace, just as the wolf turned into Little Red Riding Hood's grandmother after having gobbled up the elderly woman and hastily donned her clothes. However, whereas the wolf exposes its voracious teeth shortly before the hunter comes to the rescue the media is busy perfecting Sharon's new mask while physicians are working on his health. The journalists and the doctors are part of a single surgical team.

Arabs and Europeans, in their weakness, yielded to the American demand that Sharon be treated as a man of peace even as he continued killing Palestinians, building settlements and constructing the racist separating wall. As Sharon unilaterally dictated Israel's conditions, unilaterally set the pace of political activity and made it abundantly clear that his purpose in doing so was to avoid having to implement the Roadmap the Arabs kept insisting that he was implementing the Roadmap and that he had changed. And when, in exchange for unilaterally disengaging from Gaza Sharon received an American pledge to support the Israeli view concerning everything pertaining to a permanent settlement, the Arabs glossed this by saying they, in turn, had received a general commitment from Washington that everything would be settled by negotiations rather than by an exchange of letters between Bush and Sharon, as though the latter could be simply shrugged off.

Every politician clinging to America's coat tails as far as affairs in the Middle East are concerned has hastened to link the fate of the peace process with the state of Sharon's health. Try as you might to explain to these people that there is no peace process because Sharon has buried it and they continue to insist that it is still there and somehow linked to Sharon's health. In short, your opinion counts for nothing. The only option is to believe that Sharon has changed and become a man of peace -- or a kindly grandmother -- and join the crowds who are waiting in silence by his bedside.

Above all you are not allowed to spoil the party. There can be no mention of Sabra and Shatila, Nahalin or Qabya, of Rafah past and present or of the ongoing targeted assassinations. And if you insist on the view that Sharon is not a man of peace and that the Arabs have simply surrendered you will stand out like a piece of wood in the media's plastic forest.

Under ordinary circumstances waiting by the deathbed can become very tedious. In Sharon's case, though, many want the vigil to continue. Even if the international media packs its bags and leaves, Sharon in his current state of suspense will remain, for he has become the Sharon that people love and for whom they light candles. If elections are held the contestants will campaign from his bedside and votes will be cast amidst expressions of commiseration and comforting embraces "at this sad and crucial hour". Delegations from the Diaspora will arrive to affirm the unity of the Jewish people gathered around a symbol beneath whose nose a shawerma sandwich has been passed that caused involuntary spasms in his face. Here is the locus for rallying sympathy and for yet another construction of Jewish identity, this time around a general and military adventurer, a figure who stands for militarisation, for combat and mistrust of Arabs, for diplomacy by force and for Jewish nationalism but who, somehow, has managed to don a meek and harmless, even a touching, guise.

The Shaping of Cultures

It was the singular character of Hizbullah that allowed it to resist the might of the Israeli military machine. It is a character that the group must not allow to be diluted, writes Azmi Bishara

When you take a look around the Arab world today, what do you see?

You see sons being groomed for monarchical succession in republics that are still caricatures of Bonapartism and Mameluke despotism. Ironically, these heirs apparent always begin their careers by condemning corruption, yet they are one of the foremost manifestations of corruption.

You see CNN's Rolf Blister questioning the Iraqi president as though he were on trial: "Do you recognise Israel or not?" Nur Al-Maliki squirms under the interrogation, unable to pluck up the courage to say that that's the last thing on his mind at a time when his country is falling apart. But recognition of Israel is what the American media thinks is important about Iraq, and will continue to think even after no walls are left standing.

There is the division into regional axes, with political leaders changing positions as though they were playing musical chairs. One day they'll deride Arab nationalism and Arab identity if it is used to promote modernism, to resist Israel or combat the American drive to partition Iraq. The next day they'll turn around and use these concepts against Iran. Just to hear a Saudi official defending Arab identity makes your head spin.

There is the Palestinian government under siege, Palestinian society being destroyed. International delegations meet the Palestinian president and snub the democratically elected Palestinian government, while in Lebanon they meet the government and snub the president. Washington could not order non-Arab countries such as Turkey or Russia not to receive elected Hamas officials but it has no problem laying down the law with Arab governments. The same governments which attacked Hizbullah because of its Shia affiliation are the same ones that attack Sunni-affiliated Hamas. Such are the inconsistencies of the pro-American axis.

You see the promotion of Resolution 1701 as an achievement even though it is much worse than 1559, and the Lebanese resistance condemned for its Syrian and Iranian connections and for having brought trouble to Lebanon. Yet when Syria and Iran celebrate the victory of this "Syrian-Iranian" resistance movement they are accused of intervening in Lebanese affairs. As for the resistance's Arab enemies, they either question whether there was a victory at all or they attribute it to the Lebanese government.

Even more worrying is the unprecedented drive to inflame sectarian discord and drive a wedge between Sunni and Shia Muslims, as though they were mutually hostile tribal groups rather than adherents to differing Islamic doctrines. In the past, non-democratic governments based their legitimacy upon a doctrine of national unity that they were uniquely poised to embody. Now we see non- democratic regimes fuelling sectarian strife and national disunity in order to perpetuate themselves.

In contrast to the foregoing, we can take heart in the Arab people's rejection of the sectarian bait. Popular support for the Lebanese resistance was widespread, proving that Arab identity is alive in spite of everything. Arab popular support for the predominantly Shia Lebanese resistance was at least as strong as it was for the Sunni Taliban at the time of the American invasion of Afghanistan. When it comes to hostility towards American and Israeli policies, Arab ties prevail over sectarian ones.

People were greatly impressed by the model the Lebanese resistance set and by its ability to deliver a stunning blow to the Israeli assault and to anti-Arab stereotypes. This impression has set in motion a fermentation that will have far-reaching effects in the long run, and this, too, is positive. It should now be clear to all that the Arab public is not interested in agreements with Israel that are prejudicial to the Arabs in general, and to the Palestinians in particular.

I demonstrated my respect and sympathy for the resistance during its ordeal and the jubilant aftermath. I stood by it when others remained silent because under such circumstances moral support must take precedence. Even now it is important to realise that the war against the resistance is not over, which is why one must bear in mind the source of any criticism. Enemies of the resistance have aired objections that could reasonably be accepted by the movement's supporters were they not obviously aimed to undermine the resistance. The following criticisms are offered by way of support of the resistance.

I believe that the Iranian-supported Lebanese party should not act towards Iran as communist parties acted towards Moscow in the days of the Soviet Union. Iran is not infallible, and it is certainly less than innocent in Iraq, where it is helping to promote sectarian strife in order to further its own regional ambitions. One can understand Hizbullah's predicament because of its material dependence on Iran. However, the party still has considerable room for manoeuvre because of the popular support it has received in the Arab world, which it can turn to its advantage without having to lose Iran's support.

Nor should we expect Hizbullah to get all worked up over Kofi Annan's visit, as if its greatest hope was for recognition from the UN secretary-general. After all, the UN official was there to put into effect a resolution that is unjust to Lebanon and its resistance movement.

Modesty, action instead of words, persistence, organisation and judgement are the qualities that have distinguished Hizbullah over the past two decades, giving the Lebanese resistance its unique character. The party's greatest success is in having developed a workable model for resistance, ending inferiority complexes and defeatist theories based on the notion that Arabs are culturally or genetically flawed.

In the wake of the recent victory, even immediately preceding it, there were some ominous signs. Not only were there displays of pictures of Iranian leaders, reminiscent of the Arab communists' displays of socialist leaders in the past, as if they were new religious icons, but kitschy portraits of the Hizbullah leader began to appear on private and public buildings, cars, in restaurants and stores. Of course there is no comparing this with the ubiquitous pictures of regime leaders that Arab governments force on their publics. The proliferation of Nasrallah images was spontaneous and reflected genuine popular admiration and widespread support for the resistance. Nevertheless, one would think that a party bearing a liberationist message would strive to minimise this type of personality cult, which has always been a product of folk faith and official encouragement. Instead the party is fostering it through its publications and media.

Generally, political movements tend to condemn this phenomenon only in others. Arab nationalists condemned the hero worship of Stalin yet these same people turned Gamal Abdel-Nasser into an icon in a similar way. The revolutionary left, which scoffed at both Stalinists and Nasserists, pinned up its pictures of Marx and Che Guevara. The problem with this is that it obviates critical thought because it voids the symbols of the ideas they are meant to embody. To personify an idea by vesting symbolic meaning in an individual is to elevate that individual beyond criticism. This immunity must inevitably alter the quality of the idea itself.

No one in the West would know the daughter of Guevara. Yet she was received in Lebanon as if she was the member of a royal dynasty in line for succession. That's how things work in Lebanon. Religious affiliations are an important part of politics and social life, but ultimately everything boils down to powerful family dynasties. Hizbullah has stood as a remarkable exception. Its leaders fought with their own sons on the field of battle and paid the price instead of sending other people's sons off to war as they groomed their own to take over. This policy has won Hizbullah respect among Lebanese and Arab forces. It would be a pity if this model was now sullied by personality cults.

Democracy is not a panacea that will solve all our problems. The history of democracy is full of attempts to falsify the popular will, to delude the people, to purchase power, to use sensationalism and mass media chicanery to turn opinion in a particular direction. Yet whatever its failings, it is difficult to imagine such leader worship in a democracy, regardless of how popular a leader is. Democracy, democratic institutions and the rule of law are inherently averse to the adulation of political leaders. Democratic societies seem to have channelled the inclination to hero worship into the alternative "religions" of mass consumer societies, which take as their temples the stage and screen and sporting arenas. The daily brass tacks of politics keep politicians far too busy to become media celebrities, apart from at campaign time. In the Arab world, by contrast, the cult of the ruler is usually pursued in inverse proportion to his political legitimacy.

Hizbullah is not the ruling party, though you would never guess given the adoration accorded to its leaders. But even if it were just a resistance movement such personality cultism is inconsistent with its function. I know that a large portion of the resistance's leadership would agree with me on this point, though they would hold that the cult comes with the territory, is a product of a process of mobilisation that draws on both political and religious sentiments. They would add that it is a healthy expression of self-respect to brandish pictures of resistance leaders in the faces of the dynastic heads of the various religious denominations who do not have to lift a finger to have their pictures posted around the country while simultaneously ridiculing the ubiquitous pictures of rulers in neighbouring countries. All this is true, but the party is still responsible for the type of culture it is disseminating.

What are we to make, for example, of such post- war declarations as "my children died as martyrs in the cause of Al-Sayid," or "this house was destroyed by the Israeli bombardment, but to those concerned the house was offered as tribute to Al-Sayid". Obviously these are expressions of sacrifice for the sake of the resistance or the national cause. They are meant to affirm the determination to remain steadfast and to challenge anyone who tries to drive a wedge between the resistance and the families that lost their homes or loved ones. That is the political message of such declarations. But it is one thing for people to say such things in private and quite another for Hizbullah to broadcast them through its media. The latter represents a conscious attempt to shape a culture favorable to the party. Such a culture may be useful when directed against foreign invaders but it cannot combat social and economic backwardness, political regression, corruption, exploitation, sectarianism and nepotism.

Some presume that the culture of the resistance offers an alternative to the general spectacle of an Arab world that has succumbed to all of the above. The phenomena I have described though, suggests the opposite. This is not because of its sectarian character, which is unavoidable given conditions in Lebanon. In fact, Hizbullah deserves credit for its openness to other political/sectarian forces and the model of religious tolerance it has presented. However, it has not presented Lebanon with a non- sectarian model. Even if Hizbullah's origins are a natural product of the Lebanese environment we could hope it might offer an alternative. The party has every right to boast of offering a model of dedication and organisation at the level of the resistance, but it has not offered an alternative vision for society. The resistance culture Hizbullah is fostering is a culture determined to reject foreign hegemony and adopt modern and rational means to organise and equip the party and its social bases towards that end. This is precisely why it is difficult to imagine a resistance leader squirming before a foreign journalist asking him whether he is going to recognise Israel. But this culture does not offer an alternative to the Arab world's prevalent political culture. Perhaps this is not Hizbullah's historic mission. Perhaps it should not be asked to perform this mission. But an alternative to the prevailing political and social culture is urgently needed throughout the Arab world. Imitating Hizbullah is not the answer, because the nature of the mission is not the same.

Ministry of Strategic Threats

Avigdor Lieberman's arrival in the Israeli cabinet is symptomatic of the degradation of the country's political system, writes Azmi Bishara

Israel will probably not adopt a presidential system now that Avigdor Lieberman's party has joined the government coalition though the acceptance of his proposed law setting up just such a system was one of his conditions for joining.

A majority of ministers, who in fact oppose the bill, voted for it knowing it will never get past the Knesset. A majority of the government voted contrary to its beliefs for tactical reasons -- that is, ministers lied when they claimed they supported a presidential system and voted for it. Lieberman himself lied when he accepted that his conditions had been met. It is a game of flagrant, mutual lies now weighing down politics and political commentary to the point of boredom.

Israel has never tried a presidential system though it has experimented with direct prime ministerial elections. Although it cancelled the system after three terms it is still suffering the consequences. The two- tiered voting system, one for the prime minister and one for members of parliament, broke large parties into medium and small entities that came to reflect identity and sect whereas the political affiliation of voters was reflected in their prime ministerial choice.

When we consider theories of democracy and its application we usually talk about two possible democratic systems, presidential and parliamentary. This is the focus of debate in the Arab world when discussing possible models to be adopted after the transition to democracy -- a transition that has been talked to death. Here I would like to leave such familiar terrain.

In our contemporary world 32 of the 80 democratic countries that exist can be described as relatively stable democracies and they include only two presidential systems. Other countries with presidential systems are the relatively untried new democracies of Latin America and Africa. European democracy favours the parliamentary system. France combines the two systems, as does India, the only enduring democracy established in the Third World directly after the colonial period.

In all the surveys, standards, and research that evaluate democratic practice, including the World Values Survey and Freedom House, parliamentary democracies are ranked higher than presidential ones. Parliamentary democracies occupy the top 20 slots out of 80 based on indicators like sovereignty of the law, efficiency, political stability, anti-corruption efforts, transparency, accountability, and respect for human rights as well as for their treatment of socioeconomic gaps. Parliamentary democracy is the type of democracy we think of first when we imagine a system that allows people to choose their representatives, and it allows citizen-based organisations a greater degree of influence.

When Israelis and others think of the presidential system, they think of the United States, an exception among the world's stable democracies. In contrast, in Latin America in the 1950s and 60s, the adoption of the US system led to disasters. The most attractive thing about the presidential system in times of crisis is the image of the strong president, untouched by corruption and corrupt party members in parliament. In fact, in domestic policy the president of the US has less power and authority than most prime ministers in parliamentary systems since most domestic issues are in the hands of individual states and their authority balances and acts as a brake on that of the president. This means that the president, in normal times, is less strong than is commonly thought. In addition the office is open to corruption in the absence of serious mechanisms for accountability, as we have seen in successive French presidencies.

The desire for a strong man, proposed by parties and the elite as a political solution to instability, does not lead to presidential or parliamentary democracy but to dictatorship. This is more of a danger in presidential systems than parliamentary democracies. More than 65 per cent of the world's presidential democracies have collapsed and been replaced by dictatorships at various times in their history, while only 36 per cent of parliamentary democracies have crumbled. Some 75 per cent of the world's parliamentary democracies are considered stable compared to only 25 per cent of presidential systems.

The Israeli system of government is a parliamentary democracy -- that at least is how it is classified by research centers who have appointed themselves the judge of such things. In recent years Israel has been placed in the lowest ranks among parliamentary democracies, its score approaching that of presidential democracies in the Third World. In Israel the parliamentary system is experiencing a real crisis. Governments stay in office for shorter times, parties sprout like wild mushrooms and the mentality of the European vanguard elite that established Israel's democracy has gone to never return. Lieberman's arrival in government is a symptom of the crisis, not a solution. Simply discussing a change in the electoral system as part of partisan efforts to lengthen the government coalition's life -- not implement its platform -- is evidence of the shallowness of the debate and the corruption of Israeli politics which is now openly about retaining one's position; ideology has been replaced by seatology, though at such a reduced level it has failed.

This is a government that has lost majority support though this should not pose a problem in a real democracy. The government is elected once every four years, not in a daily poll. But this government has abandoned the political platform, the disengagement plan, on the basis of which it was elected. The government announced after the war in Lebanon that it is not seeking peace as an alternative to disengagement. Those who listen well will realise that what Olmert is saying is that he wants peace with Syria but he doesn't want to negotiate with President Al-Assad and he doesn't want to return the Golan. He wants to negotiate with the Palestinian president but he has no programme for reaching a settlement.

Olmert opened the coalition in Lieberman's direction to stave off the right's criticism of his government after its poor performance in Lebanon. In effect it means that he has chosen confrontation, or at least escalation.

Lieberman is a militant, ideological rightist, and his project is similar to that of the neo-conservatives in its explicitness and reassessment of values. He is secular to the point of atheism. He is trying to change the balance between religion and the state not to make it more liberal or democratic but more communal and sectarian, though without distinguishing between the two. For Lieberman a Russian need only serve in the army to be treated as a converted Jew. This nationalistic, rather than religious, dimension of conversion is close to the Zionist left -- for example, to Yossi Beilin -- and it constitutes the basis of dialogue between them, but it is not the only common ground. He also shares with the left a concern with "the demographic issue" and the need to get rid of the Palestinians in the framework of an agreement in which they give up all their historic demands with the exception of a political entity, which just happens to be an Israeli demand as well. Lieberman clearly wants an entity to be an agent for Israel. He does not fear its existence -- on the contrary he distinguishes himself from the Zionist left by demanding a strip of Palestinian villages, home to some 200,000 Arabs, to live as citizens inside the Green Line. He proposes "giving" rights to those who perform their military service in the Israeli army. He is distinguished from the traditional right in his explicit talk about a territorial settlement. Like the neo-cons he encourages Israel to come to terms with its power, to be open about it in the region and ready to use it. In Lieberman we have a secular, European militant right-winger who is uninterested in quoting the Torah. He wants to see Israel with a strong capitalist system that imitates the US, and he does not fear the use of naked force. He recognises no rights for the Arabs but for demographic and security reasons he accepts a Palestinian entity that could absorb the Palestinians.

Lieberman's language is crudely simplistic. There is the constant pretense of realism and pragmatism and a directness that is attractive to the European secular right. As Lieberman says he does not seek to please the world or the Arabs. The Arab who wants to be a citizen must serve in the army; those who refuse to serve in the army must accept their status as "resident" without civil rights or the franchise. This is about the civic and legal transfer of those who remain in Israel and are not part of the territorial exchange. Lieberman's constituency of Russian immigrants come from a country in which the resettlement of millions of individuals and the extinction of entire peoples were common in the Stalin era. They are shocked to find Arabs in this country -- no one told them they were there.

It is difficult to listen to a Russian immigrant without intelligence or culture, who still does not speak acceptable Hebrew after 30 years in Israel informing you of the conditions of citizenship in your own country. It is hard to take seriously someone I saw with my own eyes, in the days when we were building the Arab student movement in Israeli universities, as a cowardly student who, immediately upon his arrival from Russia joined the militant, violent right led by Tzachi Hanegbi and began to threaten and take part in the right's violence against us, although we knew of his cowardice from experience. The problem is that he knows that we know; this is the root of his complex.

I am not always plagued by these feelings. All politicians backed up by military force and prisons have people in their past who knew them as young men. Undoubtedly George Bush has acquaintances who knew him as a drunk and a failure. It is not particularly helpful but how can I write seriously about or analyse the phenomenon of Lieberman without saying something about the man's mediocrity, his foolishness and his personal cowardice even as he advocates a never-ending war? But hasn't this always been the case with most fascist movements in history? There is no solace in this knowledge save that it gives one a personal freedom from the stupidities and lies of the famous.

The far right enters the den of opportunists and appears principled. It enters the Sodom and Gomorrah of politics and deal-making and comes out pious and righteous. Just by entering the circle Lieberman has felled two birds with one stone. First of all he has earned legitimacy; he is no longer merely a foolish immigrant who wants a strong-arm regime. He has set himself up as a national siren, warning people of the Iranian threat, but he has no strategic mind. Of all the targets in the world, in the past he threatened to blow up the Aswan Dam. Secondly, he did not demand ministerial posts for practical purposes, but asked for one tailor-made ministry that embodies the principle he upholds. In so doing he looks like the one person who has come to implement a political platform. The ministry made to order for him is the Ministry of Strategic Threats.

Only in Israel could such a thing be created. This is a country that has not yet appointed a minister of social affairs, but after coalition negotiations now has a Ministry of Strategic Threats. Perhaps in the future we will see the Security Fears Ministry, the Demographic Threat Ministry, the Non-Recognition of Israel Ministry, the World Is Against Us Ministry, the Chosen People Ministry, or the Ministry of Greater Israel. This is a ministry that embodies an ideological position; it says that the gravest danger facing Israel today is the Iranian threat and the Syrian-Iranian alliance with Hizbullah and Hamas. Fine, but standing up to this threat has always been the job of the Foreign Ministry, the Defence Ministry and the intelligence establishment. What need is there for a new ministry run by a man who has no experience in security affairs, unless you count his rumoured links to the Russian mafia, and is not distinguished by his penetrating strategic thought? This is a ministry for incitement, mobilization and conspiracy-mongering. It is a ministry made to win popularity in the Israeli street by beating the war drums against "the enemy."

Lieberman's entry to the government will weaken the Labour Party which, by agreeing to sit at the same table with him, will appear yet more opportunistic and keen to preserve its political positions. Any future internal party disagreement will be coloured by the stand taken when Lieberman joining the government. And after Labour is weakened, along with the old coalition, Lieberman may chose to leave the government at any time if in so doing he can bring about its fall. At that point he will become the star of the right.