Syria Analysis: A New American Approach?

Last Wednesday, President Barak Obama appointed Robert Ford as the first U.S. ambassador to Syria since 2005. Since Ford is a recess appointment, he can serve only until the end of the next session of Congress, which will likely be in December 2011.

On Sunday, the Kuwaiti al-Rai newspaper reported that Washington has been in secret contact with Syrian officials in the hope for reaching a comprehensive peace agreement between Israel and Damascus. Sources quoted Obama adviser Dennis Ross as saying that "Syria is ready to move away from Iran and reduce relations with Hezbollah and Hamas, and work with the United States in the fight against terrorism".

If this is true, then is the White House trying to undertake the new track as an alternative to the deadlocked Israeli-Palestinian peace process? The approach is not new --- this has been evaluated since Obama became President --- but it never reached the top of the agenda.

So the Administration may now be using Damascus to bring fresh blood to the "hopeless Middle East", amidst an analysis that a new Middle East war could emerge if Obama cannot break the deadlock between Israelis and Palestinians. But will Washington be ready to persist with the new approach?

Israel Snapshot: A Happy (Secure) New Year?

The Israeli international security sevice Shin Bet, in its annual report , says 2010 witnessed the lowest number of terror attacks and victims in Israel in a decade.

In 2010, nine civilians and soldiers were killed in 798 terror-related incidents in Israel and the territories, compared with 15 deaths in 1,354 incidents in 2009. The height of violence came in 2002, when 452 Israelis were killed..

Only 150 rockets were fired from the Hamas-ruled Gaza territory, versus 569 in 2009. The oft-made assertion by the Israeli Government is that this indicates "success" in the 2008/2009 war in Gaza.

Yet, amidst these markers of reduced violence, the political discourse from Israeli is still one of insecurity. There is the continuing clash with Hamas and the deadlocked peace process with the Palestinian Authority. There are repeated declarations that Hamas is stockpiling arms, including "quality" weapons smuggled into Gaza from Egypt.

And there is always the omnipotent, "existential threat" of Iran, with its ever-imminent Bomb and its label of primary sponsor of Hezbollah and Hamas.

Happy New Year?

Israel-Palestine Video and Transcript: Hillary Clinton "The Parties Have a Long Way to Go"

On Friday, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke at the Saban Center in Washington DC. The video is in three parts throughout the transcript.

PART 1 OF 3

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Lebanon Special: Queries over the Special Tribunal, Hariri, and the Accusation against Hezbollah

Claudio Gallo writes for EA:

The search for truth about the Hariri case has once more sunk into a poisonous marsh threatening another Lebanese civil war. Hezbollah continues to maintain that there is Israeli hand behind the attack and that the Tribunal is politicised. In August, the Hezbollah leader Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah introduced TV footage, apparently stolen from an Israeli drone, which seemed to show surveillance by Israeli intelligence of the route of  Hariri’s car. The issue now is whether Hezbollah goes beyond accusation to launch a political move pressuring or even taking control of the Lebanese Government.

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Lebanon Special: Justice or A Death Blow for Beirut? (Narwani)

This Tribunal is no longer about justice. To weigh one man's death against the lives of four million Lebanese and countless other millions who could be caught up in a regional conflagration is sheer madness.

Imagine the trauma of this Levantine nation as the trial draws out, day after day, week after week, month after month - creating divisions, frictions, suspicions to the detriment of Lebanon's fledgling government which has made admirable strides in maintaining its equilibrium and learning the art of compromise this past year.

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Lebanon Special: The CBC Video and Article "Who Killed Rafik Hariri?"

Evidence gathered by Lebanese police and, much later, the UN, points overwhelmingly to the fact that the assassins were from Hezbollah, the militant Party of God that is largely sponsored by Syria and Iran. CBC News has obtained cellphone and other telecommunications evidence that is at the core of the case.

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Lebanon: Hezbollah and the "Zombie Tribunal" (Lynch)

The Special Tribunal for Lebanon is reportedly set to soon indict several top Hezbollah leaders for the 2005 assassination of Rafik Hariri. The expected indictments have brought Lebanon to the brink of crisis, while the Obama administration has rushed to express its support for the STL and to deliver an additional $10 million to its investigation. Most of the commentary thus far has focused on the potential impact of its anticipated anti-Hezbollah ruling, whether it might lead to war or how it might affect Hezbollah's participation in the government. But lost in that admittedly quite important shuffle is a more basic question: Does the STL have any credibility at this point? If not, how does that lack of credibility shape the likely political fallout of its indictment? And should the Obama administration really be hitching its wagon to a Bush-era zombie which might drag Lebanon into an unnecessary crisis?

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Israel Analysis: Netanyahu in New Orleans on Iran, De-Legitimisation, and a "Secure Peace"

On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke at the General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America in New Orleans. His issues were simple: the greatest threat of Iran and the attempt to "de-legitimise" Israel.

Netanyahu first set out the menace of Tehran:

The greatest danger facing Israel and the world is the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran. Iran threatens to annihilate Israel. It denies the Holocaust. It sponsors terror.  It confronts America in Afghanistan and Iraq.  It dominates Lebanon and Gaza. It establishes beachheads in Arabia and in Africa. It even spreads its influence into this hemisphere, into South America.  

Now, this is what Iran is doing without nuclear weapons. Imagine what it would do with them. Imagine the devastation that its terror proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas and others, would wreak under an Iranian nuclear umbrella.

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Lebanon Interview: State Department's Feltman Plays with Beirut as a Pawn

A depressing interview in The Washington Post with the Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, Jeffrey D. Feltman.

It's depressing because almost none of Feltman's words --- and thus, I presume, the State Department's attention --- are about Lebanon. There's no recognition here of the concerns of the Lebanese people, of the relationship amongst Shia, Sunni, Christian, and Druze communities, of the economic, social, and religious issues in the country, of the initiatives to bring some agreement amongst factions and thus some progress. Indeed, the only Lebanese whom Feltman specifically notes --- apart from a fleeting reference to President Michel Suleiman (not even a mention for Prime Minister Saad Hariri) --- are "Hezbollah".

That is because Feltman's concern is not about Lebanon but about Syria and Iran, to the point where he drops all pretence of "Lebanon" at one point and talks about the situation in Iraq. The interviewer is no better: note the concluding question, "So you don't think Lebanon is about to fall into Iran's hands?":

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Lebanon: Hezbollah, the Special Tribunal, and the Power of the Multitude (Khatib)

On Wednesday, two male Special Tribunal for Lebanon investigators --- an Australian and a Frenchman --- visited the office of gynecologist Iman Sharara in Southern Beirut, a Hezbollah stronghold, after making an appointment with the purpose of examining the records of at least 14 people who had visited her clinic since 2003. The investigators, accompanied by a female translator, were subsequently mobbed by 150 women who surrounded them, violently attacked them, and snatched a briefcase that one of them was carrying which contained a laptop and official STL documents.

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