Пятница, 06 Апрель 2018 01:15

April Arab Summit decisive and at critical time

The 29th Arab League Summit which will be held in Riyadh on April 15th is taking place at volatile Arab and international atmospheres, amid sharp Arab divisions and disagreements. In the midst of various dangers the Arab countries are facing due to the repercussions of the so-called “Arab Spring” in some Arab countries and political rifts regarding some regional issues, the summit is slated to draw a “road map” for the coming era.

The summit in Riyadh, which will be preceded by several preparatory meetings due as of April 9, would be different as it comes after the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman concludes his visit to the US, where Saudi Arabia is trying to push the American administration to fill the vacuum that was deepened by the failure of its previous pull-out strategy from the region. The Arab summit will be held at very delicate conditions, amid great regional and international challenges, with internal threats of some groups that are supported by foreign countries which would pose a major threat to all Arabs. In the midst of the repercussions of incidents in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Libya and Egypt, Arab leaders will have to find a way out to end their schism that hampers the solution of many pending issues.

The most important topic will be the Palestinian issue and the frantic attempts to liquidate it by some foreign powers proposing risky projects, ending the dream of Palestinians of a state with Jerusalem as its capital. This means the abolition of the right of return to Palestinians that would lead to Judaization of Jerusalem with all its religious and spiritual significance to Muslims and Christians.

The performance of the Arab League is on the table of Arab leaders as it has become a must to develop the performance to meet the aspirations of Arabs since the league has mostly failed to solve many Arab issues since its establishment on March 22, 1945.

The timing of the summit is important as it comes in the aftermath of the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman’s visit to the US and his meetings with American officials. Such a summit will pay dividends in regime gaps between Arab countries and USA regarding some regional issues to rally around against Iran.

The delay of the summit from March to April is attributed for two major reasons: Saudi Crown Prince’s visit to the US and the presidential elections in Egypt (March 26-28), 2018. Thus, since Egypt has witnessed presidential elections, it has been important to wait and see the outcome to determine the new regional approach towards many regional issues and conflicts.

After the return of the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia to Riyadh, many deliberations will start among Arab states, which would be conducive to a proposal of a different creature of the Arab League. The question is: Will there be a unified stand towards some regional issues and conflicts starting from Syria, Yemen, Libya, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict? What is the trajectory of the Arab League towards Iran?

It is not expected that Arabs will be united on all issues, especially Syria and Iran, However, the trajectory of the league coalescing around an anti-Iranian platform is growing after American President Donald Trump’s decision to re-address the nuclear deal with Iran by either adding new items that prevent Iran from producing ballistic missiles or by ripping up the deal by May 2018, with proposals to impose new sanctions on Iran for interfering in Arab affairs and posing threats to its neighbors.

The outcome of Riyadh Summit will be a continuum of the previous one held in Amman in March 2018, calling for restarting of stalled peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians on a two-state solution based on 1967 borders, with a focus on the Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Capital of Israel.

The coming summit is critical as the focus will be on means to counter terrorism, and to tackle political, economic, social issues of concern to Arab states. Beyond the veneer of sanguine statements, it is projected that the summit will bring closer the Arab countries at first hand, then bring them closer to the US to proceed with the coming regional transformation process of their societies in a bid to jointly confront extremism and terrorism and Iranians expansionism despite the fact that some Arab states would be conservative when dealing with Iran.

The leaders will advocate regional and international security. They will also focus on the hostile positions of the Iranian regime and the continued interference in Arab internal affairs in flagrant violation of international law and the principles of good-neighborliness, warning of the risk of Iranian ballistic missiles on the stability of the Middle East region. They will be calling for a joint action to protect regional waters and to combat piracy which adversely affect the commercial movement and economic growth of the region, with a call for combatting organised crime and drug smuggling

The Riyadh Summit will be an enhancement of the former Arab-Muslim-American Summit which was held May 21, 2017 in Saudi Arabia to further build a close partnership between Arab and Muslim countries and the US to achieve peace, stability and development regionally and internationally.

Observers here in Washington believe that the summit will draw up a “road map” for the leaders to consolidate relations and joint action on issues of common interest.  The summit will recommend promoting coexistence and constructive tolerance among different nations, religions and cultures, with clear rejection of any attempt to link terrorism with any religion, culture or race.

Will we witness a new form of Arab League to be formed after the coming summit to better serve Arab interests and causes? Will we see a new coalition against Iran supported by the US? These questions are almost the part of the mission of the Saudi Crown Prince in the US.

Article published in Geostrategic Media: http://geostrategicmedia.com/2018/04/03/april-arab-summit-decisive-and-at-critical-time/

Опубликовано в Tribune
Пятница, 26 Январь 2018 00:53

The Arab World: between violence and consensus

Perhaps the most significant element of the socio-political life of the region during those years, at least to the outside observer, was violence.

The Syrian Civil War has claimed between 200,000 and 500,000 lives. As many as 70,000 people have lost their lives as a result of two civil wars in Libya. And the Yemeni Civil War counts several thousand among its victims, with the humanitarian catastrophe it is leaving in its wake has affected millions.

We have worked ourselves into a situation in which an enormous region, one that stretches “from the Ocean to the Gulf” and counts hundreds of millions of people among its inhabitants, lives in never-ending fear of violence.

Terrorism has become a part of everyday life in the “calmer” countries in the region, Tunisia, Egypt and Turkey. While the number of victims of terrorist attacks in these countries is hardly comparable to the numbers of lives lost as a result of the armed conflicts mentioned above, the very threat of another attack means that people live in constant fear. And this provides the authorities with ample justification for introducing the most severe repressive measures.

We have worked ourselves into a situation in which an enormous region, one that stretches “from the Ocean to the Gulf” and counts hundreds of millions of people among its inhabitants, lives in never-ending fear of violence.

Equally damning is the fact that this is precisely how the region is beginning to be perceived by the outside world.

This perception is largely unfair.

 

Turkey, Egypt and Tunisia are not the only playgrounds for terrorists; so too are Barcelona, Nice, Paris, Berlin, Boston, St. Petersburg and many other ostensibly safe cities.

The majority of the political regimes in the Middle East are perfectly stable, and the reforms implemented in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Jordan following the events of 2011, have had a positive effect on the development of these countries, especially against the backdrop of the misfortune that has befallen the region as a whole.

Even the most problematic countries – Syria, and even Libya and Yemen – have not experienced a complete of statehood. What is more, modern mechanisms (elections, multi-party political systems, etc.) are becoming increasingly important for regulating political life in the powder keg that is Iraq, and also in Lebanon, which seems to transition endlessly from one crisis to the next.

Despite this, the feeling of all-encompassing violence remains. The problem here is not just the negative information environment, which paints a picture of the Middle East as a region of out-and-out chaos, but also the fundamental change that has taken place in the social and political mind-set of Arab societies. Perhaps for the first time in history, violence has become a problem for them.

To be sure, in modern western (and Russian) socio-political discourse, minimizing violence is a given and is barely even questioned. Nobel Prize winner Douglass North believed that reducing the level of violence is the main criterion for determining the development of social order.

Although this has not always been the case. Not by a long shot.

It is noteworthy that in European political philosophy, the problem of violence as such did not exist until the late 18th century. Plato, Aristotle, Augustine of Hippo, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke – none of these spared a thought for violence, per se, in their meditations on politics. They were more concerned with civil unrest, war, turmoil, rebellion, etc. In other words, the things that disrupt order. But not violence.

It was only with the writings of Immanuel Kant that the imperative of nonviolence started, rather tentatively, to take root in European social thought, at the same time that the diametrically opposite notion – the poetization of violence spearheaded by Hegel – began to spread.

 

While two world wars may not have been enough to put an end to such romanticism, they certainly took the sheen off for its most ardent followers. In terms of the philosophical analysis of political life, violence became almost a universal category in its own right, one that set the parameters of philosophical thinking for several generations of thinkers, starting at least with Michel Foucault. North’s theory emerged as a consequence of this process, and the requirement of nonviolence came to be seen as a natural in political science. Documents such as the Responsibility to Protect (for all its imperfections and divisiveness) were created as a projection of this this approach onto international relations.

However, this approach, generated by European experience and Western consciousness, cannot be considered universal. It has not fully taken root even in Russia, where technological breakthroughs and the victory in World War II are often cited as justifications of Stalin’s repressions.

Middle Eastern societies have never seen violence as an essential problem. We could name hundreds of works by 20th-century Arab thinkers on the problems of the nation, the state, democracy, justice, etc. But how many works are dedicated to the issue of violence? Not many.

The Iran–Iraq War took two or three times the number of lives that the Syrian Civil War has.

The growing significance of violence as a problematic issue is overlapping with another important social change that is taking place in the region, namely, the strengthening of civil society.

Nobody knows how many people suffered as a result of the repressive policies of Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi. The murder of 1270 prisoners at the Abu Salim prison in Libya in 1996 was just one episode. Nobody knows exactly how many such incidents actually took place.

The suppression of the Houthi insurgency in Yemen in 2004–2010 (i.e. before the Arab Spring) resulted in several tens of thousands of human casualties.

All this caused a barely audible murmur of discontent outside the region, but it was never a reason for the de-legitimization of regimes within the societies themselves.

Today, however, we are seeing the issue of violence becoming increasingly important in all the countries in the region. And this increases the demands on political regimes.

While there are political prisoners in many countries – in some cases tens of thousands – the authorities are being forced to spend ever greater efforts justifying the situation. Sometimes this is simply impossible.

From Violence to Consensus

 

The growing significance of violence as a problematic issue is overlapping with another important social change that is taking place in the region, namely, the strengthening of civil society.

In some countries, this is the result of reforms passed by the respective governments in response to the challenges that have appeared during the past decade. In others, it is the consequence of weakening statehood and the emerging need for socio-political self-organization of society.

The number of non-governmental organizations in Tunisia has more than doubled since 2011, and by almost 2.5 times in Morocco. The number of such organizations remains small in Jordan, but has increased by 1.5 times nevertheless, while there has only been a slight increase in Algeria, although the figure was rather high in that country to begin with. The newly established non-governmental organizations in these countries (which have managed to avoid mass violence) make it possible to involve more and people in civil. In this respect, it is not really important where they get their money – from the government (as in the case of Morocco), or from outside sources (Tunisia).

Civil society nevertheless makes itself known in states that are embroiled in armed conflicts. In Syria, the development of civil society is connected with organizations that work with refugees, as well as with numerous structures in Damascus-controlled territories and with local councils operating in the liberated territories.

In Libya, the need for self-organization among the people has forced them to form local authorities along both tribal and territorial principles.

A more active civil society, coupled with the problematic issue of violence, leads to the development of the principle of consent or compromise (taufiq), which assumes that political decisions are adopted not as the result of the victory of one side over another, but through a process in which the sides search for an agreement together.

The principle has been developed most successfully in Tunisia, where the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet was able to bring an end to the civil confrontation of the government and the opposition.

The idea of Special Representative of the UN Secretary General for Libya Ghassan Salamé to hold an inclusive National Congress and his putting forward of the Libyan municipalities as the basis for the restoration of the country is another indication of movement in the same direction.

The proposal once put forward by Turki bin Faisal Al Saud to arrange a Second Syrian National Congress was also based on a commitment to taufiq. The subsequent dynamics of the conflict prevented the idea from becoming a reality, however.

The roots of taufiq can be traced back to entirely different political traditions that existed in the region. The principle can be considered an element of democracy, one that involves the search for compromise between competing parties. However, it can just as well be seen as the embodiment of the foundations of Islamic political culture. The principle of consultation (shura); the primary role of experts in political decision-making; and the consensus of opinions (ijma) – all these principles have become part of Islamic political thought and point to the recognition of its “culture of compromise.” The origins of taufiqcan be found in the idea of a corporate state that was once very popular among Arab nationalists. They can also be found in the traditions of tribal self-government, if one so desires. This kind of universality makes the principle acceptable for all political powers operating in Arab societies.

At the same time, it is clear that in mature democracies, as well as in political systems based on Muslim law, regimes built by Arab nationalists and tribal societies, the culture of compromise has not always been followed.

Moreover, practice has shown us that it can only be successfully implemented when the sides in a political confrontation (armed or otherwise) have no reason to hope for a decisive victory, or if the risks of continuing the confrontation are seen as unacceptably high. This is why it was impossible to reach a compromise in Bahrain and Yemen, and why it has thus far been impossible to achieve a compromise in Syria.

Nevertheless, continued tensions, the development of conflicts in these countries and the weakening of the guardianship of the all-powerful political elites over society, coupled with the pervasive fear of violence, may very well act as an impetus for the formation of a political culture of consensus.

Article published in RIAC: http://russiancouncil.ru/en/analytics-and-comments/analytics/the-arab-world-between-violence-and-consensus/

Photo credit: REUTERS/Goran Tomasevic

Опубликовано в Tribune

A profound, nearly civilizational rift and continuously escalating strife in the Middle East are prodding Russia to exercise exceptional flexibility as it seeks to hold on to a foundation of friendly relations with key, if not all, regional players that have taken many decades to build. The nature of these relations is determined by historical memories, as Russia had never been a colonial power in the area, and during the Soviet era invariably supported Arab national liberation movements, helped create industrial potential in many nations in the region and backed the Palestinian cause. In more recent years, however, it has had to work to mitigate the fallout of the conflict in Chechnya in the 1990s, as a number of Middle Eastern states sympathized with the separatists, and of its policy stance regarding the ongoing Syrian conflict. With respect to the latter, regional players have been showing signs of better understanding Russia’s position.

In this context, Moscow is striving to further diversify its system of regional partnerships, relying not only on effective tools of diplomacy, but also on military-technical cooperation, an area where it has a thing or two to offer its partners. In this area, more than anywhere else, economic interests — which have grown particularly strong against the backdrop of international sanctions against Russia — are closely intertwined with political interests.

Among the more competitive offerings of the Russian defense industry are air defense systems, particularly the S-300 (S-400, S-500) surface-to-air missiles capable of upgrades. For years, Moscow has been trying to market them in the Middle East only to run up against fierce resistance from strong competitors. Even progress ostensibly made has occasionally been marred by setbacks. Russia has on two occasions had to cancel contracts to supply S-300s in the Middle East. The first occurred when a 2010 deal to provide Syria with four battalions of S-300PMU2s, worth about $1 billion, had to be put on hold for a year in 2013 after Israeli threats against the buyer. The deal eventually had to be canceled altogether. Some of the components of the SAM systems that had already been delivered had to be disposed of in situ, while others were used to meet obligations under other contracts.

 


Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/06/moscow-diplomacy-middle-east-air-defense.html#ixzz3fIEOoayF

Опубликовано в Tribune
Вторник, 10 Сентябрь 2013 00:33

Interview with Vitaly Naumkin: All around the Middle East

This publication opens series of "IMESClub Interviews". Discussion took place on the 28th of August in Moscow. Professor Vitaliy Naumkin answered several thorny questions posed by IMESClub Pesident Maria Dubovikova . 

 

Maria Dubovikova: I would like to start this conversation with a question that sums up the whole decade. How would you characterize this decade for the Middle East? Which mistakes were made by the intra- and outer-regional players, by the international community?

Vitaly Naumkin: Well, I would prefer not to talk in terms of  “mistakes”, it’s much better to talk about the positive and negative trends.  Speaking about the positive trends that took place in these last ten years, a good economic growth in most countries of the Middle East could be mentioned in particular. After all, we're not just talking about the Arab world, but about the whole Middle East, right?

M.D.: – Yes!

V.N.:  For example a considerable economic success of Turkey can be specially noted. Moreover many Arab countries have experienced economic growth, modernization, and development of modern financial and economic institutions. Somewhere this process was fast, even including some countries that have experienced the "Arab Spring," somewhere rather slow. Good results of economic development were shown, for example, by Egypt. Therefore, we can talk about different trends and shifts that were positive, not negative. Among them there are the process of shaping of the civil society which is however rather limited; spreading, not everywhere of course, of high technologies, especially information technologies. A number of countries are establishing cell-phone networks. The growth of the Internet use. Increasing number of educated youth who are getting education not only in their native countries but also abroad. There are many other trends that can be characterized as concrete steps towards a modernization, modern development and general integration into the basic matrix of global development.

Among the negative trends it is possible to mention stagnation, mainly in the political life, and a number of other processes that especially led to the “Arab Spring”. It is an absence of means of vertical social mobility for people, monopolization of all the levers of state control including financial and governmental resources by the bureaucratic elites. And, of course, high level of unemployment in some countries, poverty, etc.

The Middle East is corroded by the inner conflicts. It is the growth of interconfessional, ethnic, interstate and intraconfessional contradictions, which are often very severe. Also there are many unregulated old conflicts, primarily the Arab-Israeli.

Back to the question about the mistakes, it is possible to name the growth of religious fundamentalism, extremism, inability of the regimes to deal with the terrorism among them. All that leads to the serious deterioration of the image of people living in the region beyond its borders: in Europe, in the West in general. The intrusion of the Allied Forces to Iraq in 2003 can be undoubtedly considered as a mistake. As a result the interventionists failed to provide security, first of all – for the country’s people. In a decade more than 200 thousand people died, several millions became refugees or were displaced within the country, only 400 thousand of 1400 thousand Christians left. There was a mass exodus of Christians from Iraq. The minorities, mainly Christians are discriminated, there are non-stop terrorist acts and the hostility between the Sunni and the Shiah is periodically getting worse. Of course, the situation has partially stabilized – it has ameliorated. But generally it is possible to say that the plans of our US partners to quickly establish a modern democratic state, eliminate the internal conflicts and unite the nation have failed. I believe that Bush's interventionalism was the main mistake and it was replaced by Obama's administration milder attitude to the region and to the interventions. However, Bush's heritage still lives and it will take very long to remove its traces. That is why the interventionalism and the attempts to project their own model of liberal democracy face a severe resistance of the elites and the people. This continues to deteriorate the security in the region and to impede the mutual understanding between the Middle Eastern countries and external players.

M.D.: Speaking about the Gulf countries having the particular influence on the development of the Middle East, how would you estimate their influence? Which effect would the current policy of the two power centers – Saudi Arabia and Qatar, have on the development of Middle East, positive or negative?

V.N.: Regarding the Gulf countries, they largely represent a successful model of development, primarily because they poses huge financial resources. They can easily switch between these resources from one field to another and easily manipulate them in order to neutralize grievances and solve social problems if necessary. But at the same time, these countries do not have any immunity to the existing protest sentiments - while other countries deal with the more severe forms of such sentiments. Take the issue of Bahrain, where there was a very powerful protest movement. Although it was neutralized, the discontent of the two thirds of the population belonging to the Shia and consider themselves disadvantaged remains. There is a difficult internal situation in Saudi Arabia, which also has a grain of conflict.

It is impossible to ignore the intense rivalry between the different states of the Persian Gulf, including one in the religious and ideological sphere. Take a rather intense rivalry between Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Qatar relied on the support of the "Muslim Brotherhood" and the Saudis - on the Salafis, and as we can see by the recent Egyptian events, they supported the military coup in Egypt. While previously these countries acted together as supporters of the Islamic protest movement, and was considered that they are leading all new Islamic forces to the power, today their views diverged. Saudi Arabia, before oriented on supporting the Salafist parties, plays well with the new secular forces today, including those representing the old regimes, such as the Egyptian military. Qatar also remains committed to the "Muslim Brotherhood" which has lost ground in Egypt, and together with Turkey acts in their support.

So I am not inclined to consider all the countries of the Gulf as a single entity. For example, the United Arab Emirates sharply opposed the "Muslim Brotherhood" from the outset, limited their activities in the country and subjected their representatives to repression.

The Gulf States are playing a double role in the region. They contribute to the financing of a number of projects in the Arab countries, assist in resolving their economic problems at no charge. But at the same time, impudent aggressiveness with which these countries are trying by force to resolve the internal conflict in Syria, only exacerbates the situation in the region and does not lead the Middle East to peace and stability.

M.D.: In a way, my next question concerns the Syrian problem. As the latest trend shows, Russia has began to play a more significant role in the Middle East and in many respects its interests are in conflict with the US policy. Do you think that the Middle East is able once again to become a field of confrontation of two powers as it was during the Cold War?

V.N.: I do not think it can. Firstly, because Russia does not enter an intense rivalry with the Americans for the area of influence. And the Russian influence in the region, to be honest, is very limited. Russia's main partners are still not the Arab states. This is, for example, Turkey. Although Turkey is a NATO member and wants to be admitted to the European Union, relations with Russia are very active, and developed very well in recent years. Turkey - one of the most important economic partners of our country, and Russia does not also have any sufficient political disagreements with it. The main stumbling stone in Russian - Turkish relations is the divergence of positions on the Syrian conflict. But this difference does not prevent the two countries from moving forward in increasing the volume of trade and economic cooperation, in the implementation of new projects, etc. I'm not talking about humanitarian relationships, the number of Russian tourists in Turkey, a flurry of activity on the business, etc. During the zero-sum game Turkey would be seen as a rival, as it is an ally of the potential enemy - the United States. Today is it impossible to pose a question this way. Moreover, today Russia has sufficient understanding with the Americans in the region. Russia and the U.S. are working together within the framework of the Quartet of international mediators in the settlement of the Arab- Israeli conflict. Our positions on the settlement differ only slightly. Russia, for example, does not consider Hamas a terrorist organization and works with this movement. Russia is more critical than the United States towards the Israel's plans for the development of territories, build settlements, but, nevertheless, the overall positions of Russia and the U.S. to the resolution are very similar, there is a close cooperation. Even on the issue of Iran, where there are serious differences, Russia and the United States will still cooperate acting in the format of the dialogue between Iran and the 5+1. Our country has repeatedly voted for the resolutions related to the response to the opacity of the Iranian nuclear program in UN Security Council. Iranian node in the context of non-proliferation is one of the main areas of cooperation with the United States. The same can be said about Afghanistan, even though it probably refers to Central Asia, but the Afghan issue is impossible to ignore because it is important for the entire Islamic world. As you know, Russia is also actively cooperating with America, without getting into the conflict and the American actions in Afghanistan, it is helping to build the Afghan state, helping the Americans to resolve supply issues of their contingent and ensure its safe withdrawal, acting fairly consistent, regardless of those difficulties that arise in Russian- American relations. Therefore, I see no reason for the rivalry between Russia and the U.S. in the region. Differences will persist. But even in the most tense case - with the Syrian conflict, where Russian and the United States assessments, policy plans and mode of conduct differ radically, there are still common interests. They consist in that firstly neither party wants to allow chaos in this country. At least, I see the interests of the United that way. Another thing is that some Russian politicians today have reason to blame Washington that it wants to create a controlled chaos out there. But still, it is in the American interest, in my opinion, to establish order and stability in the country. Secondly, talking about the coincidence of interests - we do not want to have a state of the Islamic radicals who would cut his throat to everyone who does not think like them there. There are also a common interest is to halt the bloodshed, civil war, to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction. But their views significantly diverge on how to do it and how to respond to what is going on. But look, despite the radical opposition between Russia and the U.S., they still have managed to agree on joint steps for the Geneva-2, the second international conference on Syria. And the chances are not completely lost yet.

M.D.: Let's go back a little bit back, to the Arab-Israeli conflict, you mentioned, and to the role of Russia and the United States, and then return to Syria. Under present conditions, when the region is absolutely losing its stability, what are the real prospects of efficient and effective conflict resolution? Do they disappear or are they still real enough?

V.N.: It is hard to be optimistic about the Arab-Israeli peace process, although there was a shift. The peace process has been resumed a term of nine months has been set to reach a final status agreement. I honestly do not think that it is possible to do it in nine months. There are several problems, among which it is possible to mention two most painful ones - the issue of Jerusalem and the refugee problem. If it is still possible to anticipate some possibility of compromise on Jerusalem, the problem of refugees today has very aggravated, as the Palestinian self-awareness has strongly increased and it is impossible to deny the right of refugees to return. But for Israel accepting this demand means causing the condemnation by the majority of population, for which such a decision would be a tragedy. For them, the return of Palestinians, let's say, in Haifa, located in what is now Israel, which Palestinians left in 1948, is unacceptable. How can this issue be resolved? In general, it can be solved, but it requires negotiation. Some reasonable Israeli politics offer the Palestinians the option of returning the refugees only to the territory of a future Palestinian state. In this case, the Palestinians will have the right either to return to their lost homes, or the right to compensation. However, these solutions do not suit all the Palestinians. And it is very difficult to suppose that it will be possible to overcome these grave differences in nine months.

Some Israeli partners have an idea to still return to the issue of an interim solution of the problem. To sign an agreement, say, with the exception of these two items, which will be deferred to a later period. Palestinians were always against the interim agreement before. In my opinion, in order to make them do it, they should get some serious concessions from the Israeli side, say, on the territorial issue. Would it be possible to implement it?

The border issue is also not easy, but there can still be an agreement because there is already a preliminary agreement, which can be taken. The idea of swaps, the territorial exchange, is acceptable for the moderate Palestinian elite, and, I believe, it has a potential to be realized.

The question arises whether it is possible to extend the deadline for reaching a final status from a nine-month to something else. Postpone it for a year, say. But in this case, there are legitimate concerns that the period may be extended to infinity, which will bury any hopes of a full settlement.

Today, Obama needs a success. He even wants to achieve something in the Middle East. At the moment, America loses a lot. There is a growing discontent in almost all corners of the Arab world against it. Look at what happened in Egypt! The Americans committed the same mistake twice, first they supported Mubarak, and they still reproached for betting on dictators. Then they quickly passed him and displeased those who hoped that they would support him. The U.S. has long worked with the "Muslim Brotherhood", enthusiastically talked about their democratic aspirations, their moderation, then the same Egyptian masses have allowed the military to remove the «Brothers» from power – now both "Brothers" and the new authorities are dissatisfied with the Americans. Yes, they were, in fact, always dissatisfied, because the United States, in their view, are entirely on the side of Israel in the conflict with the Palestinians. Now the new government of Egypt, the military and the civilian, including even liberal organizations, accuse the Americans of their support for the "Muslim Brotherhood". As a result the image of the United States has suffered greatly, their influence waned, their ability to manage processes occurring in the region declined. In Iraq, too, not everything is going well. In Afghanistan - the same thing. Libya is in a complete breakdown, chaos. Therefore, Obama must achieve at least something. We are not gloating about it, saying that America has lost two wars, that its policy towards the "Arab Spring" has failed. Who knows what will be the outcome of the US threats to launch an air-missile attack on Syria. If they choose a military intervention, it will not lead to the implementation of their goals and will cause huge damage to the region. We are totally against it. And, I think, Russia will support Obama's desire to resolve the Middle East conflict in all circumstances.

M.D.: Returning to the question of Syria. The other day, the Arab League after its meeting has condemned the chemical attack near Damascus, but refused to take part in any operation of the West, which was the completely different reaction compared to the case of Libya. What is the reason of such a sharp turn? Failure in Libya? Or this is some different understanding of the conflict?

V.N.: I believe this is both another understanding of the conflict and the "Libyan syndrome". There is no unity among the Arab countries. But if the Arab sponsors of intervention could push through the support of U.S. intervention, it still would (and it will if they manage) lead only to more bloodshed and to the hatred of more Muslims against the United States, and the people who will do it, will be responsible for it. They will look like American's puppets willing to dump stable regimes for their own selfish purposes. Will have to answer for it. The other day, an American colonel, who participated in the operation in Kosovo, McGregor, very well mentioned for this occasion that there are no bad guys and good guys in civil wars, there are only winners and losers, and one does not need to intervene. Civil wars were everywhere. During the American Civil War more people were killed than today in Syria.  We shall not speak about the casualties during the  civil war in Russia. And we still do not know who were the bad guys and the good guys. Kappel and Kolchak forces were the most brutal punishers. Today, many consider Kolchak a hero. In the civil war there is no right or wrong. So today, if the West wants to intervene in the war and make others win with their help - it will be a disaster. It is not for the West with his limited understanding of Middle Eastern societies to judge who is right and wrong. Not to mention the fact that the Americans will actually be standing shoulder to shoulder with those who hate Americans and their main ally - Israel, with those, who tomorrow, as it has happened in history, will turn their weapons against them, I think it would be a tragic error. I'm sure Obama understands this.

M.D.: To conclude our discussion, I suggest drawing interim results of the "Arab spring": who at the moment is among the losers, and who - among the winners?

V.N.: I do not know, who is who now.

M.D.: Even in case of Tunisia, Libya, Egypt?

V.N.: Well, we see very contradictory results. On the one hand, the Arab peoples have won, because they have shown that they are legitimate citizens of their countries, they can decide their own fate. On the other hand, it turned out that they are losers the same time. Because interest groups, various elites who mainly do not express the interests of the majority of the population, pursuing their own selfish goals, took advantage of the fruits of the mass protest movements. What did, for example, "Muslim Brotherhood" do in Egypt? Taking suddenly unexpected steps towards Islamization and the monopolization of power, they repeated the mistakes of Mubarak and caused resentment among those who voted for them.

 

Опубликовано в Interviews