Could a Middle Eastern Union Cool the Isreali-Palestinian Conflict?

I contend that thinking outside the box can go a long way in getting past the stalemate on Israeli-Palestinian relations.  The key, I believe, lies in relativizing the conflict by shifting the paradigm by looking outward, at the region as a whole. If the autocracies in the Middle East are indeed on the way out--to be replaced by true republcs not in name only--then, at least according to federal theory, they could form a federal union somewhere on a spectrum with the AU, EU, and US. For example, one would not expect it to be as consolidated as the EU. Even so, Israel might just feel more comfortable with there bieng other democracies in the region, such that it might agree to join a union as long as there are strong minority rights (yet without too many areas subject to vetos, which tend to render a union impotent).  

 As in the case of the EU and US wherein avoiding conflict between the respective states is part of the rationale, the creation of a Middle Eastern Union (MEU) could mitigate conflict between Israel and its neighboring states.  Such a union would of course have its own particularities. The EU and US have theirs too.  Whereas giving each state a veto, such as in a senate or council, would eviscerate the MEU, machinery giving Israel a limited veto would be legitimate and warranted as it could fear being ganged up on by the other states. Such a limited veto concerning Israel’s security could be removed by unanimous consent once greater integration and mutual security is achieved.  The assumption that there would be one major division in the union is rather simplistic, however, as there are other divisions in the region that don’t involve Israel.  For instance, the Turks and Arabs have had their mutual distrust.  So the factions in a MEU would perhaps allow for Madison’s argument that the multiplicity of factions in a large union protects, in effect, a minority from an oppressive majority.  As an aside, a MEU with Turkey as a state would also resolve the problems around whether Turkey should become a state in the EU.

I propose a federal union of semi-sovereign states with governmental machinery including a court, legislature and president(s).  The EU has more than one president (e.g., president of the EU Commission and president of the European Council).  The MEU could arrange that each state has representation in each branch.  Furthermore, a qualified majority voting scheme could add to the protection of minority positions without hamstringing the union. In terms of the balance of power in the federal system, the MEU would doubtless not be as consolidated as is the US.  Relative to the US (nearly consolidated), the EU (the states have more power than the union) and the AU (the states are effectively sovereign in the confederation), the MEU should be between the US and EU. The MEU government would have to have enough power to resist the forces pushing the union apart, yet not so much power that an unhappy state leaves for lack of any influence.  Given the conflict, both the state governments and that of the MEU would have to have power.  In effect, this would create a system of checks and balances that would allow the contentious issues to be worked out with due regards to the interests of the region and to the rights of each state and citizen. To help maintain a viable system of such checks, the federal system would be designed such that both the state governments and that of the union would have the wherewithal to resist encroachments from the other.  Ironically, both Syria and Israel, for example, might find themselves working together in the same coalition in the senate or council (representing the state governments) in resisting a power-grab from the MEU’s executive branch.  Conflicts which seem insurmountable now may be trumped by others wherein the coalitions for and against are constantly changing.

Jerusalem would be akin to the District of Columbia in the US.  That is, it would be a federal district, with the states of Israel and Palestine being like Virginia and Maryland. I submit that this plank would be the most valuable plank in this proposal, at least immediately.  Jersualem would be a united city—the jewel of the union. In the course of time, the enhanced economic and political integration would mollify the current disagreements and prejudices as contact between now-different peoples increases.

To be sure, thinking outside the box occasions inevitable inside-the-box nay-sayers.  “It would never work.”  “Pipe-dream.”  “They would never agree to do it.”  Und so weiter …   However, true statesmen and stateswomen can rise to the occasion and look beyond their immediate interests to the greater good. Even if in incremental steps such as has been the case for the EU, Middle Eastern integration can gain a momentum of its own.  However, given the historical tendency of acts of violence in the Middle East to arrest peace-talks, I think an approach closer to that of the US would be better.  That is to say, delegates from all of the Middle Eastern states (or those interested in such a proposal) could meet in a summit (or convention) to formulate the structure of a MEU.  Theoretically, it would then have to be ratified in the states, though it is possible for a government to cede some of its governmental sovereignty (the process of amendments in the US and EU have involved both).  Given the utility here of statesmanship, determination by referendum is not necessarily advisable in this case.  The democracy purists could ponder the alternative of continued violence. Where a state’s officials are elected, the absence of a referendum is more palitable.

In summary, the principle I am invoking in this proposal to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is essentially that where countries are states in a union, it becomes less important which state one is in because all the states share some commonalities (such as some basic rights).  Whether one lived in New York or Connecticut became less important, for example, once both were part of the United Colonies (and then the United States). So too, the differences between Israel and Palestine can be contained in a common union and mitigated by establishing channels of conflict-resolution.  To be sure, no one state would always get its way.  Also, each state would be taking a risk.  However, such is the ground of statesmanship.  It is possible to rise above even one’s immediate interests and achieve an enlightened self-interest. Lest problems be seen at this level, one has only to entertain more of the status quo, ad infinitum.

Religion and Politics: Russian Orthodox Patriarch Helped Syria’s Assad Regime

In the wake of yet another Syrian massacre of civilians, including families being shot at close-range in their own houses, the New York Times published a report in 2012 that claimed that Russian priests and theologians commiserated with diplomats from Damascus at the opening of an exhibition devoted to Syrian Christianity in a cathedral near the Kremlin. While it is understandable that the Kremlin would not want to lose its “longtime partner and last firm foothold in the Middle East,” it is perhaps less palatable for Christian prelates and doctors of the Russian Orthodox Church to essentially look the other way on atrocities so the Syrian Christians, many of whom are Orthodox, won’t be pushed under the bus in a wave of Islamic fundamentalism that could be unleashed should Assad fall from power. The Syrian Christians were reluctant to join the Sunni Muslim opposition to Assad for fear of being persecuted by the Sunnis should they gain power.

 Together, the fear of the Syrian Christians and the “foreign policy” of the Moscow patriarchate were forestalling internal and external forces, respectively, from having achieving enough power to stop the human rights abuses in Syria. This is ironic because Jesus preached selflessness, or self-emptying love for one’s neighbor (agape seu benevolentia universalis). I suspect that the martyrs of the early Church would be shocked to find such self-serving provincialism in the sectarian groups, both in Syria and the Russian capital.

The following observation from Andrew Tabler, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, is telling if not poignant. “What we see now in Syria is systemic failure—it’s brutal, it’s now an insurgency—but in the end its just systemic failure. If the Christian population and those that support it want a long-term future in the region, they’re going to have to accept that hitching their wagon to this brutal killing machine doesn’t have a long-term future.” I would add that the hitching makes the Christians and their leaders into hypocrites. That is, it contradicts Christian love as preached and lived by Jesus of Nazareth. In other words, compassion when it is least convenient was being thrown under the bus in the service of a sectarian interest.

                                              Clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church             NYT

When Russian Patriarch Kirill visited Damascus in late 2011 after 3,500 Syrians had been killed by government forces and the Arab League had suspended Syria’s membership, he “made a sympathetic appearance with [Assad], praising Syria’s treatment of Christians and making no mention of the mounting death toll,” according to the New York Times. Apparently the death of thousands of people is fine as long as one’s own kind is treated well. The good of a part outweighs the good of the whole. This point applies as well to the related opposition of Putin to efforts at the UN’s Security Council to take measures against the Syrian government. That is to say, Putin’s relationships to the patriarch and to Assad are more important than a higher good, such as stopping the slaughter of hundreds if not thousands of Syrians.

It follows that the vetoes held on the Security Council can and should be questioned because the parts holding them cannot be assumed to have any regard for the “big picture” or the common good at the global level. Even if the violent acts by Assad’s men are consistent with the interests of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian government, the international system is not served by a government that gets away with violating rather than protecting its citizens’ human rights. 

Source:

Ellen Barry, “Russian Church Is a Strong Voice Opposing Intervention in Syria,” The New York Times, June 1, 2012. 

Libya and the World in 2011: A Higher Calling

On February 21, 2011, Libyan military aircraft fired live ammunition at crowds of anti-government protesters in Tripoli. "What we are witnessing today is unimaginable," said Adel Mohamed Saleh, an activist in the capital. "Warplanes and helicopters are indiscriminately bombing one area after another. There are many, many dead." Arabiya television put the number killed on that day alone at 160. Gadhafi's son had vowed on television the day before that his father and security forces would fight "until the last bullet." I suspect that few people were surprised to find that Gadhafi would mount a sustained vituperative effort against the pro-democracy movement that was sweeping through the Middle East. "These really seem to be last, desperate acts. If you're bombing your own capital, it's really hard to see how you can survive, " said Julien Barnes-Dacey, Control Risks' Middle East analyst. "But I think Gaddafi is going to put up a fight ... in Libya more than any other country in the region, there is the prospect of serious violence and outright conflict," he said. As the world received reports of the massacre, a latent question not being asked was whether the world (or even a coalition therein in case of a holdout like China) has the right or an obligation to intervene militarily to stop the offending regime against its own defenseless people. I contend that there is such a right and moral obligation--meaning that national sovereignty does not extend to crimes against humanity. Sadly, at the time of the Libyan protests and Gaddafi's retaliation, the world's government offiicals were still largely impotent and disorganized.

Even if not sufficiently for his regime to collapse, Gadhafi's obstinancy was being undercut right out from beneath him. As the the military was escalating its attack on unarmed citizens inside Libya, something else--something rather astonishing--was happening. Rather than putting up a united front to the world against the opposition, the government showed itself to consist of men whose participation in Gadhafi's government was not unconditional. Could it be that the Nuremburg verdicts against the Nazis in 1948--the ruling that blind obedience is not excuse for even government offiicals and employees being held accountable--was finally being heard?  That is to say, might it be that in addition to conscience, the emerging judicial enforcement at the International Criminal Court was having a slight (but significant) impact even as crimes against humanity were being committed?Libya's former ambassador to the Arab League in Cairo, Abdel-Moneim al-Houni, who a day earlier resigned from his post to side with protesters, issued a statement demanding Gadhafi "be put on trial along with his aides, security and military commanders over the mass killings in Libya." Were the former ambassador's warning having a real impact in real-time on government offiicals, this would evince real progress for the human race. Specifically, the realization by oificials while they are in power that they might be held accountable for their role in harming their own people could, with the help of conscience, mitigate how far a regime can go in "punishing" its people for their natural proclivity to protest injustice.  There is some evidence that government officials who might have held tough a decade earlier were having second thoughts and, crucially, acting on them.

For example, as the Libyan military was trouncing on marching mourners, Justice minister Mustafa Abdel-Jalil reportedly resigned from his post to protest the "excessive use of force against unarmed protesters." Also, at least two Libyan air force pilots defected to Malta rather than shoot on defenseless citizens. Lastly, Libyan diplomats abroad explicitly backed off supporting the country's dictator. For example, a Libyan diplomat in China, Hussein el-Sadek el-Mesrati, told Al-Jazeera, "I resigned from representing the government of Mussolini and Hitler." Even more astonishing, Libya's ambassadors at the United Nations called for Gadhafi to step down as the country's ruler. Deputy Ambassador Ibrahim Dabbashi said that if Gadhafi does not relinquish power, "the Libyan people will get rid of him." The staff of Libya's mission to the United Nations declared allegiance to the people of Libya, instead of to Gadhafi, a spokesman said on the day on which Libyan jet fighters turned on the citizens they were to protect. Traditionally, it has been thought that governments are the members of international bodies such as the UN.  That it might actually be the people of a country who are represented in a confederation would be revolutionary (this is typically thought to be in part the case in a federal government, rather than in an alliance or strictly international organization). Ambassadors representing a regime conditionally goes along with al-Houni's statement even on the day when bullets sprayed on the Libyan people from the air, "Gadhafi's regime is now in the trash of history because he betrayed his nation and his people." In other words, Gadhafi's regime had already lost its legitimacy, and thus its right to represent the people abroad (and at home). 

To be sure, autocratic regimes are not necessarily populated by people of concience or even foresight (e.g., concerning possible prosecution at the ICC or even domestically). When Gandhi was asked how non-violent non-cooperation could ever hope to work against an invading and occupying Nazi force, he acknowledged that many would be harmed for the sake of truth, but ultimately the dictators are already destined to the trash-bin of history. Progress comes by painfully slow steps in this world of flawed humanity.  One novelist on the American Civil War observed, if we are angels, then surely we are killer angels. Was it some cruel joke? one might ask God.  Why?  Yet if the pro-democracy movement in the Middle East could teach us--meaning all of us--anything, it might be that we, acting together, can push the boulder a bit further up the hill. We need no longer accept the existence of regimes that betray their people, and in February of 2011 the world realized its efficacy in making this so. It is as if in one voice we finally exclaimed, "No, we will not go softly into the night. We will stand up and they will back down!"

As the people in the Middle East were pushing up against the dead weight of history, the rest of us were with them--indeed, being transfixed and humbled by them as they marched against dazed tyrants who had not yet realized that their day had already passed quietly into the night to be replaced by the first light of another dawn. Perhaps, just perhaps, there is a progression in the eternal recurrence of night and day.

Source:

"Gadhafi: 'I'm in Tripoli, not Venezuela," February 22, 2011. NBCNews.com.

Democratic Protests in the Middle East: A Conflagration of Historic Proportions amid a Constancy in Human Nature?

Perhaps by looking back on one's own time as though it were already historical, it is possible to assess whether what one is witnessing on the global stage is truly significant from the standpoint of human history or merely of that which history is replete. In the context of the popular protests in the Middle East in early 2011, the question is perhaps whether the world was witnessing a Hegelian burst of freedom or merely more of the same in terms of political revolutions. According to The New York Times, popular movements were "transforming the political landscape of the Middle East" in the wake of the protests in Tunesia and Egypt.  For example, in Bahrain, "as in Tunisia and Egypt, modest concessions from the government [were] only raising expectations among the protesters, who by day’s end [on February 15, 2011] were talking about tearing the whole system down, monarchy and all."  The prime minister, Khalifa bin Salman al-Khalifa, the king’s uncle, had been in office for 40 years. Accordingly, the protesters were asking not only for the release of political prisoners, but also "the creation of a more representative and empowered Parliament, the establishment of a constitution written by the people and the formation of a new, more representative cabinet."

The New York Times placed the protests in Bahrain in the wider context of the protests that had recently occurred in Tunesia and Egypt. The Bahrain protests, "inspired by the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, have altered the dynamics in a nation where political expression has long been tamed by harsh police tactics and prison terms." (italics added)  However, it was not clear at the time of the protests whether the thread of inspiration was determinative to such an extent that the landscape of the Middle East itself would be transformed as a result. In allowing the protests, the king of Bahrain may have assumed that he could stay in control and thereby reduce the strength of the "inspiration" by giving the protesters some space to do their thing and presumably get it out of their system. However, Ibrahim Matar, an opposition member of Parliament who joined the crowd of protesters, said, “Now the people are the real players, not the government, not the opposition.” It is interesting that he dismissed his own movement (i.e., the opposition) rather than trying to take credit for the uprising.  If Matar was correct, the spread of protests throughout the Middle East had the wherewithal to fundamentally change the means by which people would be governed in the region. That is, the protests could have been a transformative wave wherein people finally had within their sight the possibility that government could be of and by the people. The revolutions in Tunesia and Egypt would not have been isolated incidents in a long world history of sporatic revolutions without autocratic government itself being expunged from the tired face of the earth. The question that captivated the world watching the Egyptians protest was whether something different might have been going on. 

Whereas the twentieth century had hosted technological change on many fronts, political development was not among the areas of progress. When the twenty-first century had gained enough of its own years to claim its own time, the question may have become whether the human race was  ripe then for a leap in political development. If so, the trigger would not be in the democratic nations that preach representative democracy; rather, it would be in the people themselves who had lived under autocratic rule. It is as though there were a spreading suddent awareness that they didn't have to take the abuse anymore; they could simply say no--though "simply" is the wrong word here as saying no in a state such as Iran, for example, was at the time still prompting a barrage of bullets from government soldiers. It was clear that the autocratic governments had different strategies with respect to the protests.  The question was perhaps whether the thrust of the wave had rendered the choice of strategy nugatory. In other words, was the world witnessing the beginning of the end for autocracy or dictatorship as a means of governing human beings, or merely the latest round in a series of revolutions that have been an intractable part of human history?  Did Tunesia unleash a burst of freedom that can be placed in a Hegelian progression of human history wherein human spirit comes to realize itself in greater freedom, as per its nature? That is to say, were we witnessing a Hegelian moment? Can the protests in the Middle East in 2011 be interpreted as marking a fundamental political change or even a new awareness in humanity?  I suppose the answer would depend on whether the protests spread like a forest fire across highways and byways such that no dictator would remain standing not only in the Middle East, but, moreover, in the entire world as well.

Lest we get too carried away in celebrating the salubrious evisceration of autocratic government, we should not forget that representative democracy is far from perfect. Left without any viable competitors, this system of government could be more subject to abuses from within. If representative democracy is the beneficiary of the extinction of autocracy, might democracy as an ideal be like capitalism in the wake of the demise of the USSR (and communism in China)?  In other words, might the hegemony of representative democracy ironically make it more likely that the drawbacks of such democracy gain in force, or at least become more transparent?  Just as the financial crisis of 2008 rather than the USSR demonstrated that the market mechanism itself is flawed in how it accommodates increased volatility (by freezing up rather than accommodating it), perhaps once the world is populated by republics we might come to see the internal flaws in what the U.S. Founders called "excess democracy."

The protests in the Middle East reminded the world that history is not very predictable. Similarly, history can be quite ironic, given the fixity inherent in human expectations. As we the West welcome our brothers and sisters in the Middle East into the family of free nations, let us not get too self-congratulatory, for our institutions are far from perfect.  We are all human, all too human. Yet in spite of human nature as its constant, human history may contain a progression wherein humanity the world over comes to realizations that insist upon or inevitably lead to greater self-realization. Humanity's realization in the early twenty-first century may involve political development. I suspect that the next turn will concern religion. After that turn, the world will be quite different than for those who lived before even the technological revolution in the twentieth century.  In other words, modernity may well be characterized in terms of succeeding intervals of technological, political and religious transformation--altogether evincing a huge amount of change even as human nature remains constant.  The question might be how much change is possible given the constancy of our nature, or do some change elements change human nature? In the context of the protests in the Middle East, human nature looks pretty much the same as it has been for eons.  Yet the future change may shift the basis-point in human biology and psychology such that even more change becomes possible.

Source:

Michael Slackman, "Bahrain Takes the Stage With a Raucous Protest," The New York Times, February 15, 2011.

A Syrian Offensive: Taking on International “Enforcement” of Human Rights

In Geneva on November 28, 2011, the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria presented its report, which had been requested by the UN Human Rights Council. According to the report’s summary, the “deteriorating situation in the Syrian Arab Republic prompted The Human Rights Council to establish an independent international commission of inquiry to investigate alleged violations of human rights since March 2011.” The Commission interviewed 223 victims and witnesses. The Commission was able to document “patterns of summary execution, arbitrary arrest, enforced disappearance, torture, including sexual violence, as well as violations of children’s rights.”One might suppose that the Syrian government would have been seeking to placate the international organization and other governments.

The New York Times reports instead that Sryia’s foreign minister, “(o)utraged at the Arab League’s unprecedented battery of sanctions on Syria,” denounced the Arab League’s “unprecedented sanctions” as instantiating “economic war” by “brethren states.”  Hinting at retaliation, the foreign minister, Walid al-Moallem, told reporters at a televised news conference in Damascus. “Sanctions are a two-way street. I am not warning here, but we will defend the interests of our people.” It sounds rather like he was actually defending the interests of his government (and his own job). The Commission’s report itself points to evidence that the two interests were not at the time identical.

Because a government receives its legitimacy from other governments on the basis of protecting a people, it is astonishing that officials in the Syrian government thought they were any position to push back. If anything, the international accountability had been extremely lacking. This is astonishing in itself, given the success of the UN-sanctioned NATO effort that facilitated the downfall of Qaddafi in Libya. To be sure, NATO had at the very least stretched its mandate to protect civilians by going on the offensive against Qaddafi’s compound. Even so, given the Syrian government’s documented human rights violations and its utter refusal to recognize its crimes—let alone to hold back from striking out against justified international reactions—international action with teeth was urgently needed as it was wan at best.

Within the E.U.’s “euro zone,” 2011 was a year in which state leaders were coming to grips with the necessary for “ever closer union” on fiscal matters to support the monetary union. Similarly on the international level, I suspect it was dawning on people around the world that mechanisms with teeth are needed to enforce the norm of governmental sovereignty being contingent on a given government protecting rather than attacking its citizens en masse. If it was gaining ground, such a recognition would have challenged the status quo before the downfall of Qaddafi. Specifically, it had been accepted that tyrants having power in the world is an inevitable fact of life, so it is pointless to try to remove one or two of them. This fallacy even allowed U.S. Government aid to brutal dictators. The year 2011 might have shifted the ground under this conservative plank.

In the context of the unrepentant Syrian government, people must surely have been realizing that depending on unions such as the E.U. or U.S. to have strategic interests in line with taking on an independent state or even another empire like China or Russia that is violating its mandate to rule by violating its citizens’ human rights is woefully inadequate. Indeed, looking the other way after the Libyan case could be looked at as criminal in nature. I suspect that although below the radar of the media, this realization was tacitly gaining ground at the grass-roots level around the world. The Arab Spring along with the specific case of Libya may have subtly shifted the ground even as recalcitrant rulers like Assad in Syria looked the other way. The fruit of the Spring would likely take years to mature, being in the form of new international mechanisms with teeth that represent a revised, explicitly conditional, conception of national sovereignty.

Source:

Neil MacFarquhar and Nada Bakri, “Syria Calls Arab League Sanctions ‘Economic War.’” The New York Times, November 28, 2011.