Palestinian Territories

Significant Developments Syria. The Friends of Syria group met in London yesterday and issued a communique that denounced Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s plan to hold elections on June 3 and agreed to increase support to the moderate opposition. Secretary of State John Kerry expressed frustration about the Syrian regime’s control over access to international humanitarian aid and said he had seen data indicating the Syrian government recent use of chlorine as a chemical weapon. He warned that “there will be consequences” if the chemical attacks are confirmed, but then added, “We’re not going to pin ourselves down to a precise date, time, manner of action.” On Tuesday, Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN envoy for Syria, announced that he will resign at the end of May. Brahimi told a press conference that “we haven’t been able to help [the Syrian people] as much as they deserve, as much as we should have.” Meanwhile, Abu Mohammed al-Adnani, the spokesperson for ISIS, released a recording on Sunday that rejected al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri’s call to leave Syria. Al-Adnani also accused Zawahiri of dividing the mujahedeen that Osama bin Laden had united. Libya. Military forces led by General Khalifa Hifter, a retired general who fought Qaddafi in 2011, launched an offensive against two Islamist militias earlier today. Libya’s army chief of staff, Mohamed al-Hejazi, said that the action had not been officially sanctioned, but army helicopters and jets reportedly participated in the operation. The Libyan government has threatened legal action against Hifter, who appeared in an online video in February calling on the military to overthrow the Libyan government in order “rescue” the country. Meanwhile, Jordanian ambassador to Libya, Fawaz al-Itan, was released and returned to Amman on Tuesday after being abducted in Tripoli last month by armed assailants. The AFP reported that Al-Itan was released in exchange for Mohammed Saeed al-Darsi, who was jailed for life in 2007 for plotting to blow up the Jordanian airport. Iran. American officials expressed concern today about the slow pace in the fourth round of negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, which began on Wednesday in Vienna. Iranian foreign minister and EU foreign policy chief Cathy Ashton reportedly began trying to write a draft final agreement, but have not made significant progress. Meanwhile, according to a Reuters report, a recent confidential UN report says that Iran has continued its development of ballistic missiles. Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Sunday that Western expectations that Iran would stop its missile program are “stupid and idiotic.” U.S. Foreign Policy Saudi Arabia-Gulf. U.S. secretary of defense Chuck Hagel met with defense ministers of the GCC in Jeddah on Wednesday to discuss P5+1 nuclear negotiations with Iran. Hagel called on the GCC to demonstrate unity, saying that “cooperation among friends is vital to their survival.” Hagel’s meeting coincides with the beginning of the fourth round of nuclear negotiations in Vienna. Meanwhile, King Abdullah announced a reshuffle of the top Saudi defense positions shortly after Hagel spoke. Deputy Defense Minister Prince Salman bin Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, who reportedly had a good relationship with Hagel, was removed and replaced by Prince Khaled bin Bandar bin Abdul Aziz, the governor of Riyadh. Israel. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel wrapped up his four day Middle East visit today in Jerusalem, where he met with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Following their meeting,  Hagel told a joint press conference, “I want to assure you of the United States’ commitment to ensuring Iran does not get a nuclear weapon — and that America will do what we must to live up to that commitment.” Netanyahu, in turn, warned that, “Iran is trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the international community.” Israel-Palestine. Secretary of State John Kerry met separately with Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli chief negotiator Tzipi Livni, this week in London in his first meetings with the negotiators since the breakdown of talks last month. According to State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki, Kerry told both Abbas and Livni that the “door remains open to peace.” Libya. Pentagon spokesperson Colonel Steve Warren said on Wednesday that nearly two hundred Marines backed with six aircraft have been temporarily moved to Sicily from Spain amidst concern over growing unrest in Libya. Warren said that the deployment follows a State Department request and is “unquestionably” focused on embassy protection. While We Were Looking Elsewhere Israel-Palestine. Violent protests erupted today in the West Bank following the funeral of two Palestinian youths who were killed yesterday in clashes with Israeli security forces during demonstrations for Nakba Day. A senior Palestinian source told an Israeli newspaper that Palestinian Authority officials are considering halting security cooperation with Israel in response. Meanwhile, Israeli construction and housing minister Uri Ariel told a Tel Aviv radio station today that he thinks the number of Jewish settlers in the West Bank could grow by 50 percent by 2019. Turkey. Mass burials were held again today as more bodies were recovered from the coal mine in Soma, while protests broke out across the country against work conditions and the prime minister’s perceived indifference. Greeted by cries of “murderer” in Soma on Wednesday, Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan allegedly punched a protestor while one of his aides kicked another protestor held down by police, an act photographed and published in Turkish newspapers yesterday. The explosion at the mine on Tuesday has resulted in the deaths of at least 284 miners confirmed so far. Egypt. The trial of three Al Jazeera journalists in Cairo was adjourned yesterday until May 22. Before adjourning, the court was told by the defendants’ lawyers that they had been asked to pay $170,000 by the prosecution in order to view five CDs that allegedly prove the journalists guilt. The three journalists have been jailed since December 29 on charges of fomenting unrest. Meanwhile, former military chief Abdel Fattah el-Sisi called on President Barack Obama to support Egypt’s fight against terrorism on Wednesday in his first international media interview. Pointing to growing unrest in Libya and the Egyptian military’s operations against militants in the Sinai, el-Sisi declared that, “The West has to pay attention to what’s going on in the world - the map of extremism and its expansion. This map will reach you inevitably.” Saudi Arabia-Iran. Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal told reporters on Tuesday that Saudi Arabia is willing to host Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif anytime he “sees fit.” Al-Faisal stressed that the kingdom hopes Iran can help to make the region “as safe as possible.” Iranian deputy foreign minister Hossein Amir Abdullahian responded on Wednesday, noting that while an official invitation has yet to be extended, a meeting is expected. Kuwait. According to the Kuwaiti state news agency KUNA, Justice and Islamic Affairs Minister Nayef al-Ajmi resigned on Monday after accusations that he promoted terrorism in Syria. In March, U.S. Treasury undersecretary David Cohen said that Ajmi “has a history of promoting jihad” and pointed out that al-Nusra Front in Syria features him on their fundraising posters. Lebanon. Trade and Economy Minister Alain Hakim said yesterday a ministerial committee for Syrian refugees agreed this week that Lebanon will set a limit on the number of Syrian refugees in the country and will establish official refugee camps. There are currently over one thousand informal settlements and over a million Syrian refugees scattered across Lebanon. Palestine. Gaza-based Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh announced last night that Hamas had agreed to all the details of security reintegration with Fatah, thereby removing a key obstacle in political reconciliation plan. Haniyeh noted that Hamas would not give up the “weapons of resistance” nor “forsake resistance.” Officials from Hamas and Fatah met in Gaza on Wednesday and reportedly agreed to form a fifteen-member interim government.

Significant Developments Syria. Regime forces took complete control of Homs today as part of a deal struck with armed rebels allowing for nearly 1,700 opposition fighters to evacuate the city with light weapons. Hundreds of Homs residents began to filter back into the battered city this morning to discover what remained of their homes. The regime-rebel pact, brokered by the Iranian and Russian ambassadors to Syria, exchanged safe passage for the release of forty Alawite women and children, an Iranian woman, and thirty-one Syrian soldiers, as well as the distribution of aid to two pro-regime villages in Aleppo province. Egypt. President Barack Obama announced that is nominating Robert Stephen Beecroft, currently the top U.S. ambassador in Baghdad, to serve as the next ambassador to Egypt. Beecroft is to fill the position that has been vacant since Anne Patterson left Cairo in August to head the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. The president also reportedly plans to send Ambassador Stu Jones, currently heading the U.S. embassy in Amman, to Baghdad. Meanwhile, in the first television interview of former military chief Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s presidential campaign, the former general  said that he had turned down a request last July from Patterson to wait a day or two before overthrowing former President Mohamed Morsi last July. When asked in the interview if the Muslim Brotherhood would cease to exist if he is elected, Sisi responded with, “Yes. That’s right.” U.S. Foreign Policy Israel. U.S. national security adviser Susan Rice today reaffirmed the Obama administration’s commitment to Israel saying that, “Every American dollar spent on Israel’s security is an investment in protecting the many interests that our nations share.” She arrived in Israel on Wednesday for talks primarily with Israeli officials on strategic matters. U.S. secretary of defense Chuck Hagel is scheduled to visit Israel next week to discuss Israel’s rocket and missile defenses. Meanwhile, U.S. peace envoy Martin Indyk provided a frank assessment of the suspended Israeli-Palestinian negotiations to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy last night. Indyk, deploring the lack of urgency on both sides, said that, “It is safe to say that if we, the U.S., are the only party that has a sense of urgency, these negotiations will not succeed.” Libya. Speaker of the House John Boehner appointed seven Republicans today to the new House select committee to examine the attack on Benghazi on September 11, 2012. The Democratic leadership has not yet decided whether to participate in the committee that was created in a vote yesterday that fell mostly along party lines. Democrats were given five seats on the committee. Syria. Secretary of State John Kerry met with Syrian Opposition Coalition president Ahmad Jarba yesterday in Washington. Jarba reportedly requested anti-tank weapons, but State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki would only say, “I have nothing to announce in terms of any change in our position.” The United States did announce some new measures to support the Syrian opposition coalition this week, included designating its offices in Washington and New York as “foreign missions” in a symbolic diplomatic upgrade. The Administration also announced its intention to work with Congress to provide an additional $27 million in non-lethal aid to Syrian rebels. While We Were Looking Elsewhere Palestine. Hamas announced on Wednesday that it is allowing Al Quds, the best-selling West Bank newspaper, to be distributed in Gaza for the first time after a six year ban. The step came two days after Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal met in Doha to discuss implementation of the deal. It was the first face-to-face meeting of the two Palestinian leaders since their January 2013 Cairo meeting. Libya. Libya’s General National Congress elected Ahmed Maetig, a businessman from Misrata, as the country’s new prime minister on Sunday after three contentious rounds of voting. Maetig was immediately sworn in and given two weeks to form a government; however he faces challenges from some members of the parliament who claim that his appointment was “invalid.” If Maetig successfully forms a government, he will become Libya’s fifth prime minister since the Muammar Qaddafi was overthrown in 2011. Saudi Arabia. Interior Ministry spokesperson Major General Mansour al-Turki said on Tuesday that Saudi security forces had dismantled a terrorist organization and arrested sixty-two suspected members of the group. Al-Turki said that the militants arrested had links with al-Qaeda in Syria and Yemen and were planning attacks in Saudi Arabia. Lebanon. Maronite patriarch Beshara Rai is reportedly trying to bring together the four main Maronite leaders to agree on one presidential candidate. Lebanese Forces leader Samir Gagea offered to withdraw from Lebanon’s presidential race yesterday, after the Lebanese parliament failed on Wednesday to elect a president for the third time. Fifty-two lawmakers affiliated with the Hezbollah-led March 8 alliance boycotted the vote, preventing the two-thirds quorum from gathering. The Lebanese constitution mandates that a new president must be in place before current president Michel Sleiman’s term ends on May 25. Yemen. Defense Minister Muhammad Nasir Ahmad escaped an assassination attempt today when his convoy was attacked by alleged al-Qaeda militants. Hours later a bomb wounded eleven Yemeni security officials in Sana’a. The attacks come in the midst of a military crack-down on al-Qaeda. On Tuesday, the defense ministry announced that it had seized two al-Qaeda strongholds in the south.

Is Islamic Jihad getting soft?  Most likely not, but last Sunday, Jodi Rudoren had an interesting piece in the New York Times about the group. For those not familiar with the details of Islamic Jihad (sometimes referred to as Palestinian Islamic Jihad), it was founded in the late 1970s by Palestinian students studying in Egypt, frustrated that, for all the rhetorical demands in the Arab world and beyond for the establishment of a Palestine state, no one was doing much about it.  As the group’s name implies, its focus was exclusively liberating Palestine—from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean—through violence. Islamic Jihad shunned the kind of social and political work that was central to the Muslim Brotherhood’s effort to Islamize Palestinian society from below. With Iranian financial support—its leaders admired the ideological zeal of Iran’s revolution— the group began attacking Israelis.  In the 1980s and the first part of the 1990s, Islamic Jihad’s fighters used knives or tried to sneak bombs on Israeli buses.  In a twisted way, those attacks seem quaint in comparison with what would come next: suicide bombs. Since 2005 with Israel’s almost total lock-down on the Gaza Strip, Islamic Jihad’s terrorists have not been able infiltrate Israel and blow themselves up so they have turned to lobbing rockets in the direction of Israel’s population centers. Two items in Rudoren’s article struck me as important:  First, she reports that Islamic Jihad has developed a robust social services network that includes “schools, clinics, and family mediation.”  My sense is that Rudoren may be overstating the case, though there does seem to be a debate within Islamic Jihad about the political value of providing these kinds of services.  These internal discussions would, in and of themselves, be a significant innovation in the way the organization’s leaders view the world.  A lot of the research on the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt during the 1980s and 1990s offered insight into how the provision of social services became a valuable mechanism of political mobilization. The same kind of dynamic may be underway in Gaza.  Still, I have my doubts about the extent to which Islamic Jihad is getting into the “up with the people” efforts that other types of Islamist groups have perfected. It seems to be too much of a departure from what has been an almost singular emphasis on violent resistance. This brings me to the second interesting piece of Rudoren’s article. In the sixth paragraph she writes: Islamic Jihad has been able to assert itself as the main military expression of Palestinian nationalism, while Hamas is partly blamed by a restive population for rampant unemployment and daily shortfalls of fuel, electricity and water. When I read this sentence, my immediate reaction was “Uh oh.”  In the 1980s, Islamic Jihad leaders derived significant political benefit at the Muslim Brotherhood’s expense because they established themselves and their organization as nationalists par excellence through violence. Hamas—that is, the Islamic Resistance Movement—was created out of the Brotherhood in the late 1980s to burnish the Brothers’ own nationalist street cred through attacks on Israelis.  Glenn E. Robinson’s excellent book, Building a Palestinian State: the Incomplete Revolution goes into this in some detail. This was also the same dynamic that led to the emergence of Fatah’s al Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade in the early days of the second intifada.  The ultimate expressions of Palestinian nationalism have become steadfastness and resistance.  The failed decade-long effort to find peace in the 1990s badly compromised Fatah’s claim to be the mantle of Palestinian nationalism, which it sought to redeem through mostly suicide bombings. If Hamas is feeling pressed because Islamic Jihad has eroded its claim to be the avatar of Palestinian nationalism and Fatah is reeling after the Israelis scuttled yet another effort to bring the conflict to an end, violence cannot be far behind.      

“My life? I don’t have one. Explosions, blast walls blocking the ways, no services. And because of all this my business has stopped.” –Firas Younis, an Iraqi retail store owner in Mosul, Iraq “They’re the same —Sissi and Sabbahi…[both men are] egoists who are obsessed with Nasser’s image.” –Reda Saad, a businessman in the Egyptian city of Fayoum “My brother had signs of torture on his body and it was clear he was beaten by those who arrested him…When he came home, he no longer had his long hair. Humiliated, he killed himself the next day.” –Khiati Bihaoui on how his brother was rounded up by police cracking down on crime in Morocco “We’ve been under pressure and under surveillance for a long time. I hope this is the beginning of something new.” –Muhammad, a Hamas supporter, on the Palestinian unity deal “Anybody who had any dealings with the Brotherhood was taken in…If you greeted a Brotherhood member ten years ago, you were arrested.” –Shabeeb, an Egyptian lawyer representing thirty of his fellow villagers who were recently sentenced to death “Slowly but surely, the economy is recovering. But overall it is going to take time.” –Ramin Rabii, director of a Tehran-based investment firm “Turkey is heading rapidly toward a totalitarian regime. One cannot speak of democracy in a country if there is no freedom of the press.” –Kemal Kilicdaroglu, leader of Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) “I love President Bashar and my whole family loves him…I don’t care about the other candidates…I don’t even know their names.” –Rania, a Syrian high school student “I’ve never seen people interested in hygiene like this before.” –A resident of Jeddah on the response to the MERS virus in Saudi Arabia “Life here is very hard. People are tired and they hate everything. If you don’t close your shop during prayer time you get lashes, if you smoke you get lashed, if you say one wrong thing you can be executed. Just like that. It’s that easy for ISIS.” –Abu Ibrahim, a member of a recently formed anti-ISIS group in Syria

Significant Developments Palestinian Unity. The Israeli cabinet voted unanimously to suspend peace talks with the Palestinian Authority today because of the unity agreement announced yesterday between Fatah and Hamas. Rejecting the notion of negotiating with a government “backed by Hamas,” prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “Whoever chooses the terrorism of Hamas does not want peace.” The deadline for the completion of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations set nine months ago by Secretary of State Kerry expires on April 29. See my analysis of the Palestinian reconciliation agreement in my blog post from yesterday. Qatar-GCC. In the first public comments by a Qatari official on last week’s agreement in Riyadh to end months of tension within the GCC, Qatari foreign minister Khalid bin Mohamed Al-Attiyah denied yesterday that Doha had made any concessions. While the details of the agreement have not been made public, there has been speculation that it included a Qatari agreement to tone down Al Jazeera’s coverage and to deport members of the Muslim Brotherhood. The dispute between Qatar and its neighbors escalated last month when Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the UAE withdrew their ambassadors from Doha. Syria.  Maher Abdul-Hafiz Hajjar, a member of Syria’s People’s Assembly, yesterday became the first candidate to register to run in the June 3 presidential election called by the Syrian government on Monday. While President Bashar al-Assad is expected to run and win, more than one candidate must be on the ballot. Hajjar’s registration comes as rebels in Homs are reportedly making one last stand against regime forces launching a full-fledged assault on the city. With Homs expected to fall, opposition activists are torn between fleeing, surrendering, or fighting; Abu Rami, an activist, said that, “We can lose an area, and we can regain it. But the most important thing is not to kneel.” Meanwhile, Ahmet Uzumcu, head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapon (OPCW) said today that he is considering an investigation into reports of a chemical weapon attack earlier this month in the village of Kfar Zeita. On Monday, White House spokesman Jay Carney announced that the United States is examining allegations that the Syrian regime was responsible for the attack and said that once the facts have been established, “we can talk about what reaction, if any, or response, if any, there would be from the international community.” Syria has pledged to hand over the remaining 7.5 percent of its chemical weapons stockpile that it has declared to the OPCW by the end of this week. U.S. Foreign Policy Egypt. The United States plans to deliver ten Apache helicopters to Egypt, thereby easing the military aid suspension imposed after the Egyptian military overthrew President Morsi in July. U.S. defense secretary Chuck Hagel informed Egyptian defense minister Sedki Sobhi of the decision in a phone call on Tuesday, April 29. The move comes after Secretary of State John Kerry certified to Congress that Egypt met key criteria, including upholding its obligations under the peace treaty with Israel, to resume some aid. While We Were Looking Elsewhere Oman-Algeria. Hackers targeted the website of Oman’s official news agency on Sunday in an attempt to criticize the opaque environment surrounding Algerian president Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s re-election last week. The hackers fabricated a news story about a letter from Sultan Qaboos of Oman to Bouteflika, describing him as a “handicapped” leader of a “dictatorship.” Oman News Agency later apologized to its clients for the hack. Last Friday, Bouteflika won a fourth term with more than 80 percent of the vote after the opposition unsuccessfully called for a general boycott of the elections. He cast his vote while sitting in a wheelchair, raising further doubts about his health status since suffering a stroke last year. Libya. Libya’s Constituent Assembly convened on Sunday to begin drafting a new constitution in Al-Baida on Monday. The special body has 120 days to draft a constitution. Meanwhile, the Libyan Parliament heard from the seven candidates on Sunday who are looking to succeed Abdullah al-Thani in his post as prime minister after he announced his resignation on April 13. The three prospective frontrunners appear to be Omar al-Hassi, from Benghazi, Mohammad Buker, former director of the civil state department, and Ahmad Miitig, a Libyan businessman. The election date has yet to be set. Kuwait. The Kuwaiti official news agency announced on Sunday that it had temporarily suspended publication of the Al Watan and Alam Al Yawm  newspapers for violating a prosecutor-ordered media blackout over an alleged coup plot. Waleed al-Jassim, the deputy editor of Al Watan, said that he is going to contest the ruling. Yemen. According to a spokesperson for the Yemeni embassy in Washington yesterday, the Yemeni government will make cash payments to the families of three civilians killed in airstrikes over the weekend. The series of strikes on Sunday and Monday reportedly targeted an al Qaeda training camp and killed fifty-five militants.

Hamas and Fatah have once again reached an agreement to overcome their split, claiming they will form a unity government within five weeks and hold general elections by December. There is little reason to believe that the unity agreement reached today in Gaza between Hamas and Fatah is any more credible, or stands any better chance of implementation, than the previous failed unity agreements between the two parties penned in Cairo and Doha. The fundamental issues that divide them remain: Hamas is interested in an Islamist agenda while Fatah opposes it. Hamas opposes a two-state peace solution to the conflict with Israel while Fatah supports it. Moreover, Hamas is loath to relinquish control of Gaza, and Fatah has no interest in sharing the West Bank with its political adversary. Both Fatah and Hamas have an interest right now in demonstrating efforts to seek unity, even if they never implement such an agreement. The idea of unity is very popular with a Palestinian public largely disenchanted with both Hamas and Fatah. That Palestinian elections have not been held since 2006 erodes both parties’ legitimacy and reinforces a popular image of Fatah and Hamas as more interested in power and its benefits than in delivering political or economic benefits to their people. For Hamas, unity efforts may give the group a political bounce at a time when the organization (and all of Gaza) is hurting from unprecedented Egyptian efforts on the ground to squeeze Hamas. Yet with Islamist parties on the defensive throughout the Middle East right now, why would Abbas agree to share power with his arch rivals and risk alienating potential Arab patrons who seek the destruction of the Muslim Brotherhood and their offshoots such as Hamas? For Abbas, talking to Hamas about unity when it is unlikely to be implemented is tactically attractive. In addition to its popularity, focusing on domestic politics right now by talking to Hamas can help deflect attention from negotiations with Israel that are likely to collapse by the end of this month. Abbas knows that moving forward on his stated intention to seek further international recognition for Palestine should the peace efforts fail could prove painful to him and the Palestinian people. Israel is likely to take punitive actions on the ground, and many international donors will probably withhold financial assistance as well as political support. Pursuing unity talks with Hamas can pivot Palestinian politics towards a domestic agenda away from the international one. When Hamas later fails to sign on to Abbas’ terms for unity or rejects allowing the PLO to retake control of Gaza, the Palestinian president can blame Hamas for thwarting efforts and Palestinian elections. At the same time, Abbas may also calculate that flirting with Hamas puts pressure on Israel to compromise in Secretary of State Kerry’s last-ditch efforts to keep negotiations going past the April 29 expiration deadline. Abbas may think that Netanyahu will want to keep the Palestinians from moving to a rejectionist stance in the absence of peace talks. If that is Abbas’ intention, it is likely to backfire. Rather than prompting Israelis to make endgame concessions to reach a deal right now, Abbas’ flirting with Hamas is more likely to provoke Netanyahu to point a finger at Abbas and say that the Palestinians are to blame for thwarting Kerry’s efforts, and that Abbas is really no partner for genuine peace. Netanyahu could choose to ignore the unity talks and diminish their significance while betting on their likely failure. But that would provide further ammunition to his political critics on the right. Moreover, Palestinian unity efforts make it all the more certain that Abbas will not budge on the one issue of primacy to Israeli negotiators—that the Palestinians recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. It remains theoretically possible, though highly unlikely, that this time will be different, and that Hamas and Fatah will both see enough benefit in making fundamental compromises that would produce a mutually acceptable interim government leading to new elections. Failing that, the ensuing talks to cobble together a unity government will likely replace one set of fruitless talks—those between Israel and the Palestinians—with another set of negotiations with similarly poor prospects for realization.

“They call it aid, but I don’t consider it aid…I consider it buying time and giving people the illusion that there is aid when really there is not.” –Brigadier General Asaad al-Zoabi, a Syrian fighter pilot who defected and joined the opposition “Businessmen in this country have sucked the blood of the people–and the one who is responsible is Abdel Fattah al-Sissi.” –Ahmed Mahmoud, head of the Cairo branch of the Independent Union for Public Transport Workers “I think that if [Palestinian political prisoner] Marwan Barghouti is released from prison and runs against Abu Fadi [Mohammed Dahlan], then Barghouti will win. This is because people are emotional, and they sympathize with pure people. They will say that he has not been stained with problems, and they will think that he is better than Abu Fadi. But when they try him, they will regret their choice.” –Jalila Dahlan, wife of former Fatah security chief Mohammed Dahlan “We want to transfer Kurdistan’s experience to the rest of Iraq, not have the Kurdistan Region separate from Iraq.” –Khamis Khanjar, a Sunni businessman who is heading a new Sunni alliance dedicated to preventing Iraqi president Nouri al-Maliki from gaining a third term “She knows the president is surrounded by wolves, and she is trying to get closer to him in order to unmask them.” –Abdelkader, an Algerian taxi driver speaking about Louisa Hanoun, the only female candidate in Algeria’s presidential election “Our cause is just. They are mercenaries from Chechnya, Yemen and Libya who want to overthrow Bashar al-Assad, who supported us enormously during the 2006 war against Israel…It’s our duty to help him.” –Mahmud, a vegetable vendor and a Hezbollah fighter recently returned from Syria “We are a movement that refuses to let Israel go unpunished when it attacks our people, and we believe that becoming part of the ruling authority would be catastrophic. That’s the secret behind why more people are supporting us.” –Khader Habib, a Palestinian Islamic Jihad official

Secretary of State John Kerry abruptly cancelled his Middle East shuttle diplomacy yesterday less than a month before his self-imposed deadline for concluding an Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty. The New York Times leads today with a quote from a senior Obama administration official saying, “Mr. Kerry’s decision not to return to the region immediately reflected a growing impatience in the White House, which believes that his mediating efforts have reached their limit and that the two sides need to work their way out of the current impasse.” If true, it would mean that the White House had cut the legs out from its lead diplomat just as he was trying to avert a complete meltdown of the U.S.-initiated high-stakes diplomatic process. It followed a dramatic day in which Kerry had thrown a diplomatic ‘Hail Mary’ designed to keep the fledgling negotiations from collapsing entirely. While the details of Kerry’s most recent proposal remain sketchy, it seems to entail a package of measures that would include an agreement by both parties to remain in negotiations, Israel to proceed with its overdue release of a batch of Palestinian prisoners promised at the onset of this recent Kerry diplomatic chapter, an additional Israeli release of Palestinian prisoners, some limit to settlement activity, a Palestinian suspension of their threat to activate their membership in the United Nations, and as the news-grabbing sweetener, the U.S. release of Jonathan Pollard, imprisoned for spying on the United States for Israel. The situation became even more complicated when Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas last night announced he was taking concrete steps to join fifteen international agencies, though U.S. officials suggested that this move was a negotiating ploy and not an effort to undermine the secretary of state’s efforts. As Kerry worked feverishly to salvage the process he initiated last summer, why would the White House turn it off lest it end in a blaze of recriminations, an absence of a back-up plan, and a distinctly possible resort to violence on the ground? One reason may be that as the day progressed, and the voices opposed to the Pollard-for-more-peace-process grew louder (both the Republican and Democratic heads of the Senate Intelligence Committee came out against it), the White House decided that the Kerry proposal was too costly to support. Had Kerry not coordinated his ideas with the White House before floating them with the parties? The White House suspension of Kerry’s efforts may simply be a tactical move designed to force Israelis and Palestinians to stew a bit and ponder the cost of a failed peace process. Such a calculation, that the two sides need to work their way out of the current impasse, is conceptually flawed. Israelis and Palestinians have repeatedly demonstrated that they cannot find a way to “work their way out” by themselves. Indeed, the whole logic of Kerry’s involvement was based on this assessment and of the need for a third-party facilitator. However justified the criticisms of Secretary of State Kerry’s approach, the Obama administration, having launched this high profile effort at comprehensive peace, cannot simply disown its own initiative just as it appears to be on the verge of collapse. In the past month, the president himself hosted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, and other Middle East officials at the White House, signaling that this peace effort was the administration’s and not simply John Kerry’s. As its patron, the United States has a responsibility, at a minimum, to find a soft landing for its fledgling effort. A free fall now would be self-imposed, and would jeopardize the serious and constructive Israeli-Palestinian economic and security cooperative efforts underway on the ground. It could rapidly lead to major diplomatic fighting in international bodies, such as the United Nations and at the International Criminal Court. The center of gravity within Palestinian circles could quickly shift towards radicals and renewed violent efforts at “resistance.” Israel would surely take punitive measures against the Palestinian Authority, withholding tax revenues that help pay salaries, limiting access and movement of Palestinians, and stepping up its military footprint in the West Bank. Having repeatedly made the argument since last summer that such moves would be catastrophic, the United States owes it to the people of the Middle East not to be the party that helps bring about this disastrous outcome.