The Current Discussion: With the Israeli re-invasion of Gaza, it's clear that the "Annapolis Peace Process" is collapsing. Does it matter? Who's to blame?

Who’s to blame? Nobody and everyone. The Palestinians. The Arab world. The Israelis and the Bush administration. All are to blame for showing lack of vision, willingness and readiness to compromise and achieve genuine peace.

I don't like to boast about my previous writings in the style of I TOLD YOU SO. But I did. This is what I wrote four months ago, in Nov 2007 before the Annapolis Summit was convened:

Continue »

By Yossi Melman and Dan Raviv

Last week’s funeral for the founder of Hezbollah’s military wing, Imad Mughniyah, was a grand ceremony of the kind usually reserved for heads of state, not master terrorists. The display reflects the importance and respect that Mughniyah enjoyed from senior delegates from Iran, Syria and Palestinian Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Middle East conflicts are not a zero sum game, but the death of one of the most wanted terrorists on earth is a net gain for Israel. So it’s no wonder that no one is taking seriously the Israeli government’s denial of any involvement in Mughniyah’s assassination last Tuesday in Damascus, the Syrian capitol. The successful operation demonstrates the professional skills of the various branches of Israeli intelligence and above all the Mossad. The operation has rehabilitated Mossad's reputation and prestige, which has been in decline over the last decade.

Continue »

By Yossi Melman

This afternoon, the countdown leading to a new and early election in Israel will begin – and mark the end of the peace process.

At 6pm Israeli time, the Winograd Committee will publish its final and full report on the Second Lebanon War, which Israel launched in June 2006. The report is considered to be one of Israel's most guarded secrets. But leaks by interested political and military parties, off-the-record conversations with the five members of the Committee, and the Winograd interim report all hint at the findings and their consequences. The report will undoubtedly bash both military and political leaders, as well as decision making process which led to the 33-day war.

Continue »

The Question: What was the biggest news story in your country last year [in 2007], and why?

The continued shelling of Israeli towns and rural communities near Gaza by Hamas could have been a natural choice for the most significant event in Israel in 2007. No less important and with far-reaching ramifications for the future of this country was the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), which recently stated that Iran had halted its military nuclear program in 2003. These events have generated the lion's share of local and international media. Almost like in a Pavlovian experience, Israel is always identified with and seen through the magnifying glass of foreign and security affairs.

But I’ve decided to select the impact which globalization is having on our society as the most important, the most formative event of 2007.

Continue »

The Question: After Benazir Bhutto's assassination on Thursday, what's next for Pakistan?

The most astounding aspect of Wednesday’s assassination of Benazir Bhutto is the negligence displayed by her security detail. According to reports, the assassin managed to approach Bhutto and position himself within a short distance of her, before proceeding to shoot her and detonate the explosives with which he was strapped. It seems that the assassin was not a classical suicide bomber. He wanted to kill her, not necessarily to cause collateral damage. By committing suicide he probably hoped that it would later be impossible to identify him and thus ascertain who was behind the plot.

What makes the security failure all the more startling is the fact that it comes just weeks after the first assassination attempt, which followed Bhutto's homecoming to Pakistan from a lengthy political exile. In that attempt, suicide bombers killed 150 people, although Bhutto escaped unharmed. Under these circumstances, it was chiefly incumbent on her security guards to do all in their power to prevent direct access to her, even during the course of an election campaign in which a candidate seeks to come into contact with the public.

Continue »

The Question: Is Christmas a bigger event in your country than it was ten years ago? Is this a sign of Westernization or just commercialization?

I drove today to Bethlehem. I wished to repeat my sensation of the special atmosphere, the feeling of joy that I experienced nearly thirty years ago at the Church of Nativity. It’s a short 50 miles, slightly more than an hour’s drive. But traveling from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and Bethlehem is like going into another orbit. Thirty years ago, on a very cold, subzero night, Bethlehem was an open city expressing its vividness and vitality. For me, a young Israeli Jew who had just finished his three-year compulsory military service, the visit was magical. The big square in front of the church and the surrounding streets were filled with a diverse crowd of ten of thousands of devoted worshipers and pilgrims, rubbing shoulders with young lovers and hippies from all over the world. There were no fences, no barricades and only a few Palestinian police officers were present.

Don't misunderstand me. I am not idealizing what I felt and saw then. The town, as well as the rest of the West Bank, was under Israeli occupation, which began right after the 1967 war.

Continue »

The Question: The producers of the movie "The Kite Runner" had to evacuate three boy actors from Afghanistan because they were involved in a scene portraying homosexual rape. Who's at fault here: the movie producers who exposed the boys to danger, or the Afghan culture that threatens them?

Tel Aviv - This is a sensitive topic, especially in the era of political correctness. Nevertheless it is important to address. I would rephrase the question and add another one. Why were some Muslims in Afghanistan so angered by scenes from a film depicting homosexuals in their country? Because there are no homosexuals there? Give me a break. It reminds me of the funny and absurd remark made at Columbia University a few months ago by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran: something to the same effect of "we don't have homosexuals". I tend to believe that the question, however, needs to be broadened beyond Afghanistan borders .Why are we witnessing (almost) always Muslims who show a lack of tolerance to forms of western culture?

It’s true that one can find racism, hatred, zealotry, intolerance and vengeance in the Old Testament and the New Testament as well as in the Koran (and, I assume, in the scriptures of Hinduism, Buddhism or Shinto). The writings of monotheistic and non-monotheistic religions are a wonderful mixed bag which can be used to justify any hypothesis, cause, or ideology: love and hate, social justice and exploitation, peace and war, tolerance and intolerance – and all in the name of God.

Continue »

**Editor's Note: Due to an editor's error, Mr. Melman's article was incomplete on first publication. The article now follows in its entirety.**

TEL AVIV - Would you allow a pedophile to work in a kindergarten? Iran can't be allowed to have nuclear power without thorough inspections. There are several reasons to justify such a statement. First, all nations who are signatory members of the Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and have agreements with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), known as "Safeguards Agreements," have committed themselves to declare and report their nuclear sites and allowed them to be inspected by IAEA inspectors. There is more to this issue than pure formality. Iran has broken its pledges in this regard. Iran has been cheating IAEA for nearly twenty years – building secret nuclear sites, purchasing nuclear material, conducting tests in plutonium and uranium enrichment, developing a warhead – all without declaring it. So how can Iran be trusted? How can the world believe that a permanent liar has corrected his ways?

Continue »

The only true moment of sincerity at the Annapolis Summit was in a back room of the basketball arena where hordes of journalists from all over the world were sitting on flimsy folding chairs, waiting for something to happen.

In that room, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Adel al-Jubeir – dressed in traditional robes and headdress – spoke to a select group of news people whom he had summoned. That was a kind of coded message not to admit Israeli journalists.

Nevertheless, I evaded his minders and leaned forward to hear what he had to say. It was impressive. His English is Oxford-quality eloquent. When he was asked why his boss, the foreign minister Prince Saud, had declared he would not shake hands with Israeli leaders, al-Jubeir replied that, "This is a serious event. This is not theatrics."

In a sense, he was right - but practically wrong. The Annapolis gathering was a non-event on a world scale. The earth was not shaken at the U.S. Naval Academy on Tuesday. It is more than doubtful that anything tangible will come out of the mountains of words that poured out of the conference, preaching peace.

I feel that it's too late to achieve peace before George W. Bush leaves office, as the participants promised to try to do.

But a thought did come to me: Imagine what would have happened had the Palestinian President Yasser Arafat still been alive. An even more ludicrous thought: Imagine it is now 1995 or 1996. Hamas has just launched its first lethal suicide attacks against Israeli buses. And Arafat does listen to Israeli strategists' advice to deal with Hamas with an iron fist.

Had all that happened, there might not be a need now for an Annapolis conference. Israel would probably have found a way to make peace with him. Instead, Arafat used Hamas as his back door channel to terrorism and as his hidden whip against Israel. He used "divide and rule" tactics and set his lieutenants against each other so no one would challenge him.

So when he died, of whatever disease, he left behind a divided Palestinian society. Hamas took advantage of that and eventually staged a successful coup in the Gaza Strip.

The official government, led by Mahmoud Abbas and celebrated by George Bush and most of the world, is weak and lacks the authority to reestablish its rule as sole representative of the Palestinian people.

At the same time, the government of Ehud Olmert – like most previous Israeli governments – is scared to death of initiating a dramatic, daring move to end the occupation.

The Saudi ambassador said that speeches made at the conference need to be matched by deeds. "The proof is in the pudding," he told us reporters. Once again, he was right. I don't believe that both sides (the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority) have the imagination, the vision, and the guts to deliver on the promises of Annapolis.

To make it come through, there is a need for two dramatic and probably traumatic events: a civil war among the Palestinians, in which hopefully the Abbas camp would crush the Hamas fundamentalists; and, on the Israeli side, dismantling settlements and moving 200,000 Jews now in the West Bank – probably sparking a mini-civil war.

The likely result would be fracturing of both societies.

The recipe for resolution has been around – on the table – for more than two decades. It is very simple: two states, end of occupation, dismantling of Jewish settlements, and a fierce fight against terrorism.

True leaders who are committed to the future of their nations might be ready and willing to do it for the sake of generations to come – to establish lasting peace. But Olmert and Abbas are not made of the right stuff for that.

And Big Daddy, President Bush, either does not believe in it or lacks the time and energy to force it on them.

Who’s keeping count? Since THE Camp David peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, back in 1978, there have been so many bilateral, multilateral, regional, international, and you-name-it summits and conferences to enhance peace, security, stability and tranquility in the Arab-Palestinian-Israeli conflict that only obsessed media and news freaks can recall all of them. Annapolis is probably going to be more of the same.

Like most past meetings, this one began with high expectations that were eventually shattered by its participants’ narrow-mindedness and lack of vision. Annapolis is doomed to the same fate.

In an unusual consensus, the Israeli right (Netanyahu's Likud) and the diminishing Israeli left share the same bleak analysis: It would have been better if the Israeli government had not agreed to participate. The right fears that, somehow, something positive will come out of the meeting and Israel will be asked to make territorial concessions. The left warns that the projected failure would only worsen the situation and increase the chance of war. For the left, and for many realists, it would have been better to postpone the meeting.

Another truism is that the Bush administration has shown bad management and has done a lousy job in preparing the conference. Instead of turning the gathering of representatives from forty countries into an important milestone on the road to peace, this lack of preparation will turn Annapolis into a mere photo-op.

My only consolation is the reaction of Hamas and its Iranian patrons. If Hamas’s fundamentalist terrorists and Tehran’s anti-peace warriors are both angry about the meeting, it must be a good omen for peace-seekers.