Partitioning Serbia: Good; Partitioning Kosova: Bad

In international law and the practice of international politics, partitioning countries is generally seen as a bad thing and something to be avoided almost always. So with Europe's newest independent country, Kosova. Some have suggested that the country should be partitioned by giving to Serbia the northernmost strip of Kosova's territory, where ethnic Serbs are in the majority. This has been rejected by Kosova's leadership, and it is unlikely that the international players who count will take up this idea.

However, partitioning Serbia by taking the province of Kosovo and letting it become an independent state seems to be less problematic, at least to the major Western powers. The idea seems to be that Serbia under Milosevic essentially alienated itself from Kosovo by systematically oppressing its people and launching a campaign of outright ethnic cleansing prior to and during the NATO bombing campaign of 1999. This looks a bit like international law being made on the hoof, and it will be interesting to see whether highly oppressed regions of the world start having their independence from their oppressors recognized. The evolving principle does at least suggest in the Kosovan case that if the new state ultimately fails to protect the civil and personal rights of its ethnic Serbs, then they will have a legal right to have their majority areas secede and reintegrate with Serbia.

The Kosovan leadership are perhaps mindful of the extent to which their state's legitimacy hangs on it managing to be a country for all its citizens. Prime Minister Hashim Thaci and President Fatmir Sejdiu have both pledged to end discrimination against ethnic Serbs; symbolically, their pledge was delivered in both Albanian and Serbo-Croat. But such talk is cheap, and plays well in Western Europe. Anecdotal evidence suggests that in much of Kosova you would be in danger of literally being killed if you were heard speaking Serbo-Croat in public. Kosova's leaders may face an uphill battle to integrate the country's Serbs into Kosovan life.

After Hubris, Nemesis

In politics, it is a good idea to know what capabilities you possess and to understand how powerful you are relative to those you interact with. A skilful player can extract far greater benefits than their initial hand promises. Generally speaking, though, it pays not to make threats to people who can brush you off.

Today, Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia. Earlier, Serbia's prime minister, Vojislav Kostunica, declared that his country would "in advance cancel out the... creation of a fictitious state". Although military action and the cutting off of Kosovo's energy supplies have been ruled out, the Serbian state is reportedly threatening to break off diplomatic relations with countries that recognise Kosovan independence. There are also reports that Kostunica's government might show the West a thing or to by suspending Serbia's EU integration process.

Timor-Leste in Crisis

Timor-Leste (better known perhaps as East Timor) has had a pretty bad time of it over the last number of years. It endured a long and brutal occupation by Indonesian forces, who showed what good losers they were by smashing the place up when they withdrew. After independence, the country's political scene was paralysed by the mutual hostility of its president and prime minister. President Xanana Gusmao had been the leader of the military struggle against Indonesia, while Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri, head of the FRETILIN party, had led the political side of the freedom movement. The destruction of the country's infrastructure and the legacy of Indonesia's thuggish rule combined with the country's political paralysis to make nation-building extremely problematic.

These issues overlaid tensions within Timor-Leste's armed forces. The members of this organisation were largely sympathetic to President Gusmao, as he had led them in the war against the occupiers, but the army had its own internal tensions, between people from the west of the country and the east, with the easterners seen as being preferred for promotions by Prime Minister Alkatiri's government. In 2006, these tensions escalated into a strike by soldiers who felt they were being unfairly treated; when Alkatiri attempted to sack the striking soldiers, they mutinied and smashed up the capital until Australian troops were deployed there. After that, most of the mutineers gave up and accepted their sacking, but a core under Major Alfredo Reinado refused to surrender and decamped to remote areas in the west of the country. Reinado was indicted for murders committed during the unrest, and it is possible that fear of prosecution was a major factor driving him to remain at large.

Timor-Leste's political troubles seemed to have been resolved by last year's elections. Nobel Laureate Jose Ramos-Horta became president, while Gusmao took the more powerful job of prime minister, leading a coalition government that relegated Alkatiri's FRETILIN to the opposition. Ramos-Horta and Gusmao are political allies, and their time in office has not been largely harmonious. What is perhaps interesting is how this new political stability seemed unable to bring social stability, with Reinado and the rebels remaining at large and uncooperative.

Just how uncooperative the rebels were was illustrated today. The rebels descended on Dili in what seems to have been an attempt at either staging a coup or decapitating the government. Shots were fired at the residence of Prime Minister Gusmao, and the president was shot and critically wounded. Reinado himself was however killed in fighting outside the president's residence.

It's hard to know what will happen now. Maybe the death of Major Reinado will lead to his rebellion fizzling out, with his presence at the attack on Ramos-Horta indicating how paltry the rebel forces had become. Perhaps today's shocking events will prove to mark the end of Timor-Leste's chaotic years, with a new era of politics replacing the violent days of the past.

Some links:

East Timor declares emergency after president shot (Guardian)
Who are East Timor's rebel soldiers?(BBC)

Other Hunting Monsters posts on Timor-Leste

President Blair

The more I think about it, the more this Blair as EU President story sounds like something that is so not going to happen. There are a couple of EU leaders you could imagine pushing for it, noticeably his fellow Bushophile, Nicolas Sarkozy. But it is hard to imagine Gordon Brown wanting his old pal back from the Middle East. And if anyone stops to think about this at all, Blair faces an insurmountable obstacle. As UK leader, Blair so tied his country's interests to those of the United States that in world political terms the UK became little more than a US client. Could anyone really take Blair seriously as someone who would represent EU interests in trade talks with the Americans?

First Palestine, Now Europe

Having brought peace to Israel and Palestine, Tony Blair is now proposing to save the European Union. He wants to become its President, but he is demanding that the job be given powers over trade and military issues.

Yes, it is a link to an article you could have read yourself if you were paying attention: I'll be president of Europe if you give me the power - Blair

If you are interested further in the great man's work, check out the Guardian's special report on what he has been up to since resigning as UK premier. You'll have to scroll down a couple of times before you reach the three reports on his Middle Eastern achievements.

Forthcoming Attractions 2008

I know I have not really been posting enough on this blog, and that links to news articles you have already seen is not really advancing the sum total of human knowledge. Writing proper posts on Hunting Monsters is nevertheless always high on my list of things I want to do more of. Just to give you an idea of what is lurking over the horizon for when I get myself organisized, these are some things I intend to write about.

1. Ages ago I started writing about International Relations Theory. I ran aground on this one, but I hope to get started on it again soon, not least because I have not even got to the good theories yet.

2. I also want to return to writing about books on the Middle East. I have already written about two, but I have one more sure-fire winner to add to your reading list. After that I will throw out a few also-rans.

3. My greatest crazy scheme ever is to write very briefly about every piece of coursework I submitted in Spy School. I am not so hubristic as to think that the insights I gained while writing my stupid essays are actually original or anything like that, so it's not like you can expect to have your understanding of the world radically altered by what you read. It might, however, be a useful guide to what people actually do when they study International Relations at the level I have just completed. I will also use the exercise to fix what I have learned in my head, something from which I will derive great utility.

4. At some point I will tidy up all the links from here, and then write about the things I link to. Then you can go and read them.

5. A thing I have had on the backburner for ages is to write something about the crisis in Lebanon. I have been meaning to do this for, I don't know, maybe the last eighteen months. The great thing is that Lebanon has been having the same crisis all that time, with it neither being resolved nor causing the country to blow up. Pretty crazy, I am sure you will agree.

That's it for now.

JAILBREAK

Yes, this is another post about the busting down of the southern wall surrounding the Gaza Strip. The Egyptian authorities have responded to pressure from Israel, the USA, and unspecified members of the shadowy "International Community" by making ineffectual attempts to reseal the border. These attempts have failed, not least because some Palestinian scamps have used a bulldozer to knock more holes in the wall surrounding them.

One interesting thing about this is how the Palestinians have turned the tools of their enemies against them. You can see from the enclosed pictures that the bulldozer used to smash down the wall has been manufactured by Caterpillar. The Caterpillar company is often criticised for supplying the bulldozers used to destroy Palestinian homes or kill American political activists, but on this occasion its products are serving the interests of the oppressed.

Pictures from BBC articles: In pictures: Gaza border breached & Gazans make new border wall hole

BORSTAL BREAKOUT!

I mentioned recently how Gaza lost electricity as Israel cut off fuel supplies to the area's only power station. But then the Israelis relented, and released some fuel supplies to the Gaza Strip, while maintaining the general siege. Today, however, the people of Gaza were able to freely cross into Egypt, thanks to Hamas' demolition of large chunks of the wall on the Gaza-Egypt border. Palestinians in Gaza with money were able to buy things for the first time in a while.

Aside from the obvious visual symbolism of walls being torn down, the incident is interesting in terms of the pressures it puts on Middle East players. When Israel withdrew its colonists and ground forces from Gaza, they negotiated a deal with the Egyptians, whereby the latter would guard the Egypt-Gaza border. However, the deal was meant to be that the Egyptians would guard the border to orders from Israel, denying entry and exit as the Israeli state directed. This has largely broken down, partly because the Egyptian regime is unwilling to risk the opprobrium that would result from its putting the boot in on behalf of the Israelis. So, late last year, the Egyptian authorities defied Israel by allowing pilgrims from Gaza to return home after the Hajj. In some respects, though, the Egyptian leaders are making a virtue of necessity. Under the terms of their peace agreement with Israel, they can deploy only limited security forces in the Sinai peninsula; thus they would be very stretched were they to try and crack heads to rebuild the wall.

It will be interesting to see whether the Fatah government of Mahmud Abbas comes under pressure to try similar tactics against the Israeli wall on the West Bank. It is likely that the Israelis would respond to any such attempt with maximum force.

Pictures from Palestinians flood into Egypt (Guardian)

Lights Go Out In Gaza City

I've not been posting here that much lately, partly because I am lazy and partly because I have been having Internet problems. Now that I am back online, I have a packed bag of stuff I need to get around to posting here. In the meantime, here is a link to a BBC report on how the Gaza Strip's only power station has just shut down: Gaza City plunged into darkness. Senior officials in the plant report that it has run out of fuel, as a result of Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip. Despite the blockade, however, Mr Shlomo Dror of the Israeli Defence Ministry asserts that the power station's organisers are closing it down for the laugh, as they have plenty of fuel stocks; in any case, Mr Dror feels that the denial of electricity to the densely populated Gaza Strip does not constitute a humanitarian crisis.

Palestinian militants from various factions have been firing rockets across into Israeli border areas for many months now. The Israeli military has been engaged in a largely ineffectual efforts to prevent this happening. The blockade of Gaza is one of several tactics the Israelis have been pursuing, thus far without any obvious success.

Let's Not Give Peace A Chance

As you know, Hamas (an Islamist political-military movement) currently exercise day-to-day control of the Gaza Strip region of Palestine (while the Israelis control its borders and airspace). From there, Hamas and other groups have been firing Qassam rockets across into Israeli border towns. As well as killing people and damaging property, this is causing great annoyance in Israel. Israeli forces have staged incursions and bombing raids into Gaza, killing many more people and destroying much more property than the rocket attacks; they have also run a blockade of the Gaza Strip, reducing the amount of foodstuffs and so on available to people there. The Israelis have, however, been unsuccessful at preventing the rockets from flying across the border.

Recently there has been some talk from Hamas of instituting either a hudna (truce) or a taddhiyya (period of calm, in which military operations would be downscaled) with the Israeli state. This would not be unprecedented, as Hamas has operated several such hudnas and taddhiyyas in the past. There was a slightly so-what quality to them in the longer term, as they failed to achieve any breakthrough in the political morass of Palestine-Israel; crucially, the Israeli state continued to assassinate Hamas activists and carry out offensive operations, and Hamas ceasefires would typically breakdown after the killing of a Hamas leader or the butchering of some Palestinian civilians who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. From the Israeli side, the Hamas ceasefires seemed rather inconsequential, given that they did not cover other militant groups such as Islamic Jihad. Nor were they always strictly observed by Hamas cadres.

The current situation seems a bit different. The talk from Hamas of a ceasefire in Gaza was initially scoffed at by the Israeli establishment and taken as a sign that the movement was hurting as a result of Israeli military action. Then some government ministers broke ranks. Perhaps registering that military action was neither halting the Qassams nor securing the release of kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, some Israeli government ministers have suggested that a serious truce offer from Hamas should not be rejected. While these people are still placing hoops for Hamas to jump through, they are talking about concrete issues rather than the symbolic demands on which the Israeli state is traditionally fixated. It is perhaps also significant that the politicians talking about engagement with Hamas are from the mainstream of Israeli politics and not its pacifist fringes; Shaul Mofaz is from the Kadima party of Ariel Sharon and current prime minister Ehud Olmert, while Binyamin Ben-Eliezer is from the hard-nut end of Labour.

For the moment, all this talk about truces and engagement with Hamas is just talk. Israel's prime minister, Ehud Olmert, has rejected any kind of engagement with Hamas unless the movement formally recognises Israel, something the movement is unlikely to ever do. The military campaign against Hamas will continue indefinitely, whether Hamas declares a truce or not. Perhaps not entirely coincidentally, another Israeli government minister announced the expansion of Israeli settlements in Palestinian East Jerusalem. So maybe we are in for more of the same next year, or maybe the public position of Mofaz and Ben-Eliezer suggests that there are subterranaean movemens taking place within the Israeli body politic.

The Postmodern White House

You may recall that I was discussing theoretical approaches to International Relations. That ran into the ground a bit, sadly before I reached any of the more entertaining theories. One day I will climb back on the wagon.

In the meantime, an entertaining thing to do can be to look at real world political leaders or organisations, and try to work out what is their theoretical perspective. Take George W. Bush (please, take him*). Like most people, he probably does not think of himself as having a theoretical perspective, he just does things he reckons will advance whatever goals he happens to have at hand. Or maybe he just does things (the whole idea of people actually having clearly defined goals that they rationally work to advance is surprisingly problematic when applied to real situations). However, one can still look at what he says and does and attempt to deduce the perspectives that guide him, even if they are subconscious.

The Bush regime is sometimes seen as embodying a realist view of international relations, with all that willingness to project US power wherever they like and tell anyone who doesn't like it to shag off. But the current US administration is also often seen as being driven by liberalism, albeit a kind of crusading bad-ass liberalism far removed from the stereotypes of hand-wringing whingey liberalism. From this point of view, it is Bush's liberalism that drove him to invade loads of countries and threaten bloody war on others - he is trying to make the world a better place, and you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs.

It might be, though, that in trying to place the White House in terms of the old-school big two of International Relations theory, people are missing the point big time. We live now in the 21st century, and the Enlightenment derived certainties that drove people in the past are looking distinctly frayed around the ages. Realism and liberalism are both approaches from within the tired Enlightenment tradition... could it be that in our post-Enlightenment era, the current US administration is driven by post-modern ideas?

In 2002, some journalist fellow called Ron Suskind talked with a Senior White House Figure. The SWHF took issue with something the journalist had written, and berated him for belonging to a "reality-based community", defined as being people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality". The SWHF went on talk about how the world no longer conforms to this paradigm: ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality" (SWHF quotes from this article by Ron Suskind: Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush)

A key feature of the postmodern worldview is to repudiate the idea of objective reality. Instead, people construct a reality for themselves. Ideas and theories become more important than mere facts, and if you can get enough people to believe something you have created your own reality. Suskind's contact suggests that at least some people in the White House buy in to this kind of postmodern perspective.

The last few days have seen another example of the Bush regime's postmodern view of reality. Over the last while, the Bush administration has been talking a lot about how Iran has a nuclear weapons programme and how something needs to be done about it; that "something" is implicitly war of one sort or another. However, US intelligence officials have released a report that says that there is strong evidence to support the idea that the Iranian regime halted its nuclear weapons programme in 2003. While one could argue that this evidence supports the idea that a tough Western policy forced the Iranians away from nuclear weapons, it severely undermines the idea that Iran needs to be invaded or fucked up to stop it acquiring nuclear weapons in the very near future. President Bush, however, is determined to press ahead with his policy of ramping up sanctions against the Iranian regime, possibly as a way of building tensions that will have the way towards a US strike. Bush's response to the inconvenient, reality-based report of his intelligence community has been to ignore it - instead he has rhetorically urged Iran to come clean about its non-existent nuclear weapons programme. In doing so, he is attempting to conjure such a programme into being, at least in so far as it can be used as pretext for war.

Pictures from, in order: Wikipedia, Wikipedia, and the BBC.

* Thank you, I am here all week

The Collateral Damage of Colonialism

Here is an interesting blog post on the possible development of HIV/AIDS in the years before the 1980s: Notes towards a pre-1981 history of HIV/AIDS. Randy McDonald, the post's author, suggests that it was the social dislocation wrought be colonialism (and in particular the exploitation by France and Belgium of rubber resources in the Congo basin) that led to the virus crossing from animals and then being able to spread through the human population.

More Lolcrime

And again, not so funny if you are the person on trial.

In Iran, Mehrnoushe Solouki, a French-Iranian national resident in Canada, is in custody awaiting trial. She is a documentary film-maker, and is accused not of actually doing anything, but of intending to make a film critical of the Iranian regime (it was thought that she might be intending to include footage of mass graves of people massacared by the regime in 1988. She has received one piece of good news while in jail awaiting trial - the prison authorities have said that they probably will not torture her to death, like in 2003 they did Zahra Kazemi, a Canadian-Iranian journalist. Thanks to Randy McDonald for alerting me to this disturbing story.

Meanwhile, in Sudan, Gillian Gibbons has been jailed for letting her pupils vote to name a teddy bear Mohammed. She was apparently lucky to escape receiving 40 lashes. The people who run Sudan are pretty funny guys - I remember reading some years ago that they were planning to deploy Jinn against the rebels in the country's south (I really wish I had a source for this, other than "I read it somewhere").

Infrastructure Diplomacy

I was talking to a guy at a conference yesterday. He was telling me that the EU is slashing the amount of money it spends on health and education in Africa; instead, the money is going to be focussed on infrastructure projects. There might be sound reasoning behind this, with some sort of calculations leading to the conclusion that spending on infrastructure is a more effective way of moving African countries towards sustainable development and self-reliance. However, it is widely believed that the real reason for the change in spending priorities is political. China has over the last couple of years earned itself a lot of kudos with African regimes by building roads and bridges for them. The EU now feels the need to compete – it is important that when an African looks at a bridge, they know it was built by the EU and not by China.

Russians Can't Get Enough of Vladimir Putin

The BBC reports that a petition calling for Vladimir Putin to remain "national leader" has been signed by 30 million Russians; this is more than a fifth of the country's total population. The constitution currently prevents Putin from seeking re-election when his current presidential term expires next March. However, Vladimir Voronin of the For Putin group points out that constitutions can be changed, as only God's law is immutable. Putin has always said that he would not seek re-election, but as previously noted, there is nothing to prevent him becoming the country's prime minister and transforming that office into the country's main leadership position.

ME AM BRANE

I am officially book smart.

Pakistan: Lolcountry

Just over a week ago, Pervez Musharraf decided to once more tear up Pakistan's consitution. Even before that I had been pondering why Pakistan is such an unsuccessful country, largely triggered by discussions of its progress since independence in articles commenting on it being 50 years since the British left it and India. India, on the other hand, seems to have done pretty well, at least when compared to Pakistan. OK, so India does have its problems (grinding poverty and communal tensions spring to mind), but Pakistan has these problems and a load of crazy other ones as well. I am thinking of things like Pakistan's inability to embed democratic rule, and its having an army that sees itself as having a divine right to intervene politically whenever it feels like it. Or the country's venal and shortsighted political elite. Or the country's secret service (the ISI), who seem to run their own separate foreign policy only tangentially related to the official policies of the state's notional leaders. Or the state's general inability to see its writ run through large tracts of the country.

And so on. Pakistan seems particularly unsuccessful in the world of high international politics, managing to get stuffed out of it in at least two wars with its larger neighbour. One might, of course, see these outcomes as being largely inevitable, given the balance of resources between the two countries, but the Pakistani military went into both of these struggles expecting to triumph. Failure in the second of these saw Pakistan lose more than half of its population to Bangladesh.

In contrast, India has actual achievements to point to since it became independent. It has managed to run itself constitutionally, with its army never intruding itself into politics in the manner of Pakistan's generals. In recent years it has even become a major force in the world economy, and I think it has managed to make progress in the area of poverty reduction. The state as an institution suffers from a lot of the problems that afflict states elsewhere, but it does not seem from this distance to be so completely chaotic as that of Pakistan.

So, why has India succeeded, albeit modestly, while Pakistan has failed? The two countries would have had similar starting conditions, being both large heavily populated multi-ethnic societies. Perhaps the organising principles of the two countries are significant, with India being set up as a secular country containing people of various religions and cultural backgrounds, while Pakistan was intended as a Muslim state (or a state for Muslims). One could argue that shared religion is actually a weak glue with which to hold a society together, contrary to what the likes of Samuel Huntington would say. Or maybe there are other material factors of which I am unaware.

On current events in particular… before Musharraf's latest autogolpe, there was an interesting article in the London Review of Books on Pakistan by Tariq Ali ("Pakistan at Sixty"). Ali is the kind of leftist writer whose work you have to be careful with, but I was very struck by some of the points he made. Over the last year, the Pakistani regime has had some face-offs with Jihadi Islamists, and also with members of the legal profession, following an earlier attempt to remove the Chief Justice from office. Contrary to what you might assume, however, it was the attempt to crack down on judicial freedom that excited the most public reaction in Pakistan, with the legal profession spearheading mass demonstrations in many Pakistani cities. The lawyers have been at the forefront of attempts to stop Musharraf's latest plot, with Pakistan's lazy politicians largely following in the rear but nevertheless finding themselves swept into the strugge by public outrage. This is perhaps a hopeful sign, in a country where lawyers have previously been only too happy to roll over whenever it suited their military rulers.

Shooting the Messenger

Shaul Mofaz, Deputy Prime Minister of Israel, has called for the sacking of International Atomic Energy Agency head, Mohammed ElBaradei . Mr ElBaradei has reported that there is no immediate prospect of Iran developing a nuclear weapon or evidence that it is trying to do so. The Israeli leadership would like Mr ElBaradei to report that Iran is close to building nuclear weapons, as this could trigger US military action against the Islamic Republic.

Mr ElBaradei is no stranger to controversy. Prior to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, he was criticised for reporting that the Iraqi nuclear weapons programme was non-existent. No evidence for Saddam Hussein possessing a nuclear weapons programme has yet been found by Iraq's occupiers.

Unlike Iran, Israel is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Israel is the only nuclear-armed state in the Middle East.

Fascists are rubbish

Every so often fascists from across Europe try to get together to promote shared ultra-right wing values. One factor that bedevils such projects is constant argument over which of Europe's nations is the actual master race. I recall reading anecdotally of some gathering of Fascist meatheads that descended into an all-in swedgefest in which the various master races attempted to settle the issue with their fists.

More recently, various far rightist parties have managed to gain more than no support at the ballot box. As well as having some representation at the national level in several European countries, they have managed to get some people elected to the European Parliament. The rules of that body give extra privileges to parliamentary groups whose members are drawn from several EU states. Thus the Identity, Tradition, and Sovereignty group was formed, as various far-right nutjobs came together to campaign against immigrants and various groups they consider reprehensible.

Unfortunately, this attempt at far-right trans-national cooperation has foundered. One big problem it faces is that the European Union is so big now that many people in the older member states now hold unsavoury racist attitudes towards people from the newer states, with far-right parties reflecting these opinions. In Italy, there is a bit of a flap on about immigrants from Romania, as a person from Romania living there recently committed a crime (Italian nationals never commit crimes). Prominent Italian fascist MEP Alessandra Mussolini has caused dismay among her Romanian colleagues by proclaiming that Romanians were "habitual law-breakers". She also caused great offence to her allies in the Greater Romania Party by saying that Italians see little difference between Romanians and members of the Roma community.

Mussolini's comments have led the Romanian MEPs threatening to withdraw from the Identity, Tradition, and Sovereignty group, leaving it below the level that would allow it to qualify as a European Parliament group.

Alessandra Mussolini is no stranger to controversy. The former topless model resigned from the allegedly post-fascist Alleanza Nazionale in 2003, after its leader visited Israel, described Fascism as "the absolute evil", and denounced the racial laws introduced by her grandfather. She had previously ran unsuccessfully for leadership of the party, when its leader had declared himself no longer a supporter of Benito Mussolini's rubbish dictatorship.

The picture comes from the BBC News article "EU far-right bloc faces collapse"

BOOKS ABOUT THE MIDDLE EAST: "The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World" by Avi Shlaim

Before discussing the book itself, I need to quickly talk about the Israeli New Historians. These fellows set themselves the task of approaching their country's history the way historians are meant to – by looking at documents and the historical record to establish what had actually occurred in the past, rather than by simply regurgitating self-serving national myths. In a young country like Israel, with a carefully cultivated narrative around its founding, this kind of approach proved rather contentious, uncovering as it did events and counter-narratives that many would prefer to see forever buried.

Avi Shlaim is one of these New Historian people. His back academic work was the book "Collusion Across The Jordan", about the then largely obscured negotiations between the Israeli leaders and King Abdullah of Jordan around the time of the Israeli state's founding. "The Iron Wall" is a more general work, covering the relationship between the Israeli state and the Arab World; in this context, the Arab World includes both the various Arab states as well as the Palestinian people living inside what became Israel and in the territories it came to occupy. In time, the book covers the period from the foundation of the Zionist community in Palestine in the early 20th century to the election of Ehud Barak as prime minister in 1999. At this stage of the game the book cries out for a second edition, given subsequent events and the rather naïve note of optimism on which the book ends.

Shlaim's book takes its title from an article written in 1923 by Ze'ev Jabotinsky. Jabotinsky was committed to the establishment of a Jewish state in what was then Palestine, but he acknowledged a key obstacle to the project – the Arab majority population in Palestine (and, the Arabs generally beyond the territory's borders). Other Zionist leaders had fudged the issue of what to do with these people and how the emerging Jewish state would deal with them. Jabotinsky called a spade a spade, and foresaw that as the Israeli project advanced the Arabs would increasingly resist their expropriation. Jabotinsky argued that attempts to conciliate or negotiate with the Arabs were pointless, at least initially, as their wish would be to destroy the Zionist colonies and re-establish their authority in the country. Jabotinsky proposed instead to erect a metaphorical "Iron Wall" of military might around the Zionist project. Eventually the Arabs would realise that this Iron Wall was unbreakable, that the Israelis could not be defeated, and then it would be possible for the Zionists to negotiate with them and reach some sort of accommodation (that would presumably see them permanently reduced to second class citizenship or some such status).

Jabotinsky remained an oppositional figure within Zionism, but Shlaim's assertion is that his Iron Wall doctrine became the established model on the Israeli side for dealing with the Arabs. Shlaim sees this in the tendency of the Israeli state for much of its history to make early resorts to force and to happily choose escalation over the defusing of tensions. Part of Shlaim's argument, though, is that successive Israeli leaders have had a less sophisticated understanding of the idea than Jabotinsky himself, in that they have failed to register that the Iron Wall has done its job and convinced the Arab World of Israeli permanence, in that the Israeli state has been slow to pick up on opportunities to pursue negotiations and non-violent options with its neighbours.

OK, so that is the theoretical underpinning of the book. What you actually get when you read it is an account of Arab-Israeli relations based on documentary research and interviews with many leading figures. The story is mostly told from the Israeli point of view, probably because of the difficulties an Israeli researcher (or indeed anyone) would have consulting archives or conducting serious research in most Arab states. It is basically an account of interstate politics in the Middle East, from an Israeli point of view. The Israeli point of view is one of perspective rather than sympathy, however, in that Shlaim is not an apologist for his government's actions. He does not gloss over situations where Israel appears to be in the wrong, and where he feels the situation warrants it he is happy to criticise Israeli actions (one criticism sometimes made of this book is that it is too critical of Israel).

The section of this book I found most interesting was the one dealing with Israel in the 1950s, perhaps because I am more familiar with the later periods. In this period, after Israel had won the war that led to its formation, the Israeli state is generally seen as being surrounded by enemies hell-bent on its destruction, but Shlaim argues that this perspective is somewhat illusory and one deliberately cultivated. He suggests that this period was one in which Israeli leaders, wedded to the militarist ideas of Jabotinsky, missed numerous opportunities to move Middle Eastern politics onto a more pacific course. He talks in particular about various back-door negotiation channels open in the early 1950s with Nasser and about how countries, ultimately buried by an Israeli raid against an Egyptian military position (in retaliation against an attack on Israelis by Palestinians). He also asserts that Jordanian and Syrian posturing against Israel was reactive, whereas Israel was always keen to escalate any encounters.

And so it goes. While the section on the 1950s was the most interesting to me, I reckon that anyone with a beginner's interest to the Middle East would find all of this book very interesting. One thing, though, that I would like to read is a more pro-Israel book, albeit one written subsequent to this and to the work of the New Historians – that is to say, a book which is still putting a pro-Israel slant on events, even if, unlike earlier books, it is not just ignoring or explaining away events that do not fit its narrative. Can anyone recommend me such a work?

The Iron Wall also features a fascinating photo of Kissinger leering at Leah Rabin.