COMMENT The Asshole will probably fart in the UN; that will be his "bomb."
رام الله ـ «القدس العربي» ـ من علي الصالح: في حديث خصّ به «القدس العربي» تحدّث الرئيس الفلسطيني محمود عباس بصراحة عن الضغوط الأمريكية والعربية والإسرائيلية التي جعلته يفكر بالاستقالة، كما تحدث عن معارضته الشديدة لفكرة «الدولة اليهودية» باعتبارها مبررا للحروب الدينية في الشرق الأوسط وللتنظيمات المتطرفة كـ»الدولة الإسلامية». جرى اللقاء مع ابو مازن على الأرض وفي مقر الرئاسة في مدينة رام الله، وخلافا لما تردده وتسربه بعض وسائل الإعلام والأجهزة الأمنية الإسرائيلية، فإن أبو مازن الذي تجاوز الثمانين من العمر بدا خلال المقابلة حاد الذهن يتذكر أدق التفاصيل وهادئا جدا. وحول وضع القدس المتفجر قال عباس إن اسرائيل تقوم عمليا بتقسيم المسجد الأقصى زمانيا وربما مكانيا بين اليهود والمسلمين، مؤكدا أن «التقسيم الزماني والمكاني لن يمر على الإطلاق»، وأن «القدس خط أحمر ولن نسمح بالمساس بها». وعن رحلته المقبلة إلى الأمم المتحدة قال عباس إنه سيتحدث عن اوسلو والخروقات والانتهاكات الإسرائيلية متمثلة بقرارات المحكمة الإسرائيلية العليا بالسماح بهدم المنازل الفلسطينية في مناطق «أ وب»، وهما المنطقتان اللتان يفترض ان تكونا خاضعتين لسيادة السلطة الفلسطينية إداريا. ووعد عباس بأنه سيقدم مفاجأة، مؤكدا «سألقي في نهاية الخطاب قنبلة. ولن أكشف عن ماهية هذه القنبلة». وعن ملابسات استقالته أشار عباس إلى وجود «طابور داخلي يحاول منعنا من الإبقاء على جسم المنظمة». كما تحدث عن تدمير إسرائيل لاتفاقيات وممارستها الابتزاز، كما انتقد الجانب الأمريكي وألمح إلى أن العرب منشغلون بمشاكلهم، وربط فكرة استقالته بهذه الضغوط الكبيرة التي تمارس عليه. وعلى الصعيد المحلي فقد انتقد عباس حركة حماس، مؤكدا أنه لن تكون هناك مصالحة معها «إلا إذا وافقت على حكومة وحدة وطنية تنتهي بالانتخابات». وهاجم عباس فكرة «الدولة اليهودية» قائلا: «إذا أرادت إسرائيل أن تكون دولة يهودية فسيكون هناك مبرر لتنظيم «الدولة الإسلامية» وغيره أن يقيم دولة إسلامية في سوريا وغزة ومصر الى آخره». وفي الشأن السوري قال عباس إنه نصح الرئيس السوري بشار الأسد عبر وزير الخارجية الروسي سيرغي لافروف، والسوري وليد المعلم، أن يخرج إلى الشعب السوري ويناشده ويدعوه إلى كلمة سواء، مؤكدا أنه «كان سيكون لهذه الكلمة وقع السحر». (ينشر اللقاء كاملا في ملحق «القدس العربي»ليوم الأحد)
واعتبر الناطق باسم الحركة سامي أبو زهري في تصريح صحفي مساء أمس الجمعة أن الحركة تعتبر ذلك "جريمة وطنية ومساهمة في الجريمة التي يرتكبها الاحتلال في المسجد الأقصى".
واعتقلت الأجهزة الأمنية التابعة للسلطة في الضفة 17 مواطنا من مختلف المحافظات، كما قمعت العديد من المسيرات التي خرجت نصرة للأقصى ومنعتها من الوصول إلى نقاط التماس مع جنود الاحتلال.
ووقعت أكبر نسبة من الاعتقالات في مدينة نابلس حيث اعتقل الأمن الوقائي مراسل قناة الأقصى الفضائية طارق أبو زيد، ومصور شركة "رام سات" مثنى الديك، والصحفي في فضائية "فلسطين اليوم" مجاهد السعدي, بالإضافة إلى الشاب حمزة جمال عطا من مخيم العين بعد استدعائه للمقابلة.
من جهتها نددت الجبهة الشعبية لتحرير فلسطين بقمع الأجهزة الأمنية الفلسطينية للمسيرات التي خرجت في الضفة تضامناً مع المقدسيين وتنديدا بالاعتداءات الإسرائيلية على المسجد الأقصى, وخاصة الاعتداء على طفل في بيت لحم بالضرب بالهراوات والأقدام، ووصفتها بالجريمة التي تخطت كل الأعراف الوطنية.
واعتبرت الجبهة أن "كل التبريرات والحجج وحتى اعتراف الأجهزة الأمنية بالخطأ وقولها بأنها ستحاسب من نفذ هذا الاعتداء الوحشي، هي تبريرات واهية ولا تبرر على الإطلاق تكرار هذه الاعتداءات".
وتشهد محافظات الضفة الغربية المحتلة وقطاع غزة وكذلك بلدان عربية وإسلامية مظاهرات عارمة, استجابة لدعوات النفير العام إلى نصرة المسجد الأقصى المبارك الذي يتعرض في الآونة الأخيرة لتصعيد إسرائيلي غير مسبوق في محاولة لفرض التقسيم الزماني والمكاني فيه.
New satellite images obtained by Amnesty International give a chilling new perspective on Hungary's frenzied efforts to repel refugees and asylum-seekers this week.
The organization said they serve as a warning to Croatia, Slovenia and other countries currently considering closing their borders to thousands of people seeking protection.
“The shocking scenes from the ground this week at the Horgoš-Röszke border crossing have shown the human toll of Hungary's irresponsible actions. These images give a deeper sense of the speed and scale of Hungary’s operation to seal its borders, which culminated in a dire situation for refugees and asylum-seekers left in limbo,” said Tirana Hassan, Amnesty International's Crisis Response Director, who has just returned from the border.
These images give a deeper sense of the speed and scale of Hungary’s operation to seal its borders, which culminated in a dire situation for refugees and asylum-seekers left in limbo.
One pair of images from 13 and 15 September starkly illustrate how sealing the border crossing near Horgoš in Serbia and Röszke in Hungary on 15 September quickly resulted in a bottleneck of trapped people seeking entry to Hungary and the European Union.
Within two days, a stretch of open motorway was suddenly bisected by a razor-wire fence, which Hungarian authorities have been erecting along the country’s entire southern border with Serbia. The satellite images show masses of people beginning to camp out in the open on the Serbian side. In the days after these images were taken, numbers swelled even further.
Slide the bar left/right to see how masses of people became trapped on the Serbian side when Hungary sealed the border on 15 September.
Other images show how, before the border closed, reception points just inside the Hungarian side of the border were bustling with activity on 13 September, with lots of people and queues of buses visible. By 15 September they lay empty, with refugees and asylum-seekers forced to mass outside the fence and seek safe haven in other countries.
Amnesty International is releasing the satellite imagery just hours after Croatian authorities announced the closure of seven out of eight border crossings with Serbia after thousands of refugees and asylum-seekers blocked from entering Hungary began streaming into Croatia yesterday. Croatia and Hungary are member states of the European Union, while Serbia is not.
This sudden mass movement of people into Croatia was directly prompted by the Hungarian authorities’ border closure on 15 September. Hundreds of Hungarian soldiers, riot police, dogs and helicopters have been patrolling the completed razor-wire fence, and new laws came into force to jail anyone who attempts to break through for up to three years.
Hungary’s unlawful border crackdown
As of 11am today, the Szeged Regional Court had already found 22 people guilty of “illegal entry” to Hungary since the border closure, and received 43 new cases this morning.
Hungary is violating its international obligations by its almost blanket refusal to allow anyone access to asylum. Amnesty International is calling on Hungarian authorities to repeal amendments criminalizing ‘illegal entry’ and to provide immediate access to Hungarian territory, asylum procedure and adequate reception conditions to those in need of international protection.
According to a statement by Hungary’s Prime Minister, the government has spent “more than EUR 200 million on the reinforcement of the protection of the border this year alone”. The amount spent on reception conditions pales in comparison.
An Amnesty International research team was at the Horgoš-Röszke border crossing on 16 September, a day after the closure. They gathered shocking testimony from people staying in squalid conditions with virtually no humanitarian assistance and documented the Hungarian police using teargas and water cannon to disperse refugees and asylum-seekers, including many families with children, after a brief breach of the border defences.
Amnesty International is concerned about the proportionality of the police action, which resulted in dozens of injuries. And the organization denounced how Hungarian police separated four childrenfrom their families during the incident on 16 September. Hungary's police force has since posted a video online claiming to have reunited all the families.
“Hungary’s unlawful actions should serve as a stark warning to other governments. It's perverse to treat people fleeing war and persecution as a threat to border security, and any country that follows this example is heading down a dangerous road,” said Tirana Hassan.
Hungary’s unlawful actions should serve as a stark warning to other governments. It's perverse to treat people fleeing war and persecution as a threat to border security, and any country that follows this example is heading down a dangerous road.
“This is not the time for individual countries to insulate themselves but rather to work together to find solutions.
“European countries that close borders are not finding solutions to the current crisis but creating a series of new problems at the expense of refugees and their international obligations.”
It was 33 years ago, in September 1982, that large numbers of Palestinians – estimates vary from 700 to a few thousand – were slaughtered in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps by members of the Phalange militia amid Israeli collusion and assistance.
Israel’s Kahan commission, tasked with investigating the massacre, found that Israel’s defense minister at the time, Ariel Sharon, bore personal responsibility for allowing the Phalangists into the camps without taking any measures to prevent the massacre. He was forced to resign as defense minister but was later elected prime minister. Sharon died in 2014 without ever facing justice, despite sustained but ultimately unsuccessful efforts to prosecute him in Belgium under the country’s universal jurisdiction laws.
Amos Yaron, who commanded the Israeli army’s forward post on the roof of a building 200 meters from Shatila, was disciplined by being moved out of operational roles for three years after the Kahan report but in 1999 ended up director-general of Israel’s Defense Ministry.
While Israel never held its officials accountable, Lebanon has done even less to shed light on the role of the Lebanese perpetrators. The Kahan commission – in the absence of a Lebanese investigation – found that the Phalange unit that entered the camp was an intelligence unit headed by Elie Hobeika. Yaron told the Kahan commission that Hobeika himself did not go into the camps but was on the roof of the forward command post during the night. One of the Israeli soldiers who was on the roof told the commission that he heard a Phalangist officer inside the camps tell Hobeika over the radio that there were 50 women and children, and ask what should he do. Hobeika’s reported reply over the radio was: “This is the last time you’re going to ask me a question like that. You know exactly what to do.”
Nevertheless, after the war, Hobeika was elected to Parliament for two terms and served as a government minister multiple times. His crimes – particularly his role in Sabra and Shatila – were never investigated in Lebanon or elsewhere. He was assassinated in 2002. A day before his murder, Hobeika had told two visiting Belgian senators that he was willing to go to Brussels to testify in the Belgian court case against Sharon. The identity of the killers of Hobeika – a man with many enemies – was never established.
Hobeika is not the only one who evaded justice in Lebanon. Like him, Lebanon’s warlords benefitted from a general amnesty at the end of the conflict in 1990, as he did, and traded their military fatigues for fancy suits and ministerial portfolios. Attempts to overturn Lebanon’s legacy of impunity since the end of the war have generally failed to generate momentum.
There are still no national monuments for civilian victims of the war, no national commission to provide the families of the disappeared with answers about the fate of their loved ones, and no prosecution for the multiple massacres that took place. One of the few serious judicial efforts to prosecute militia members for wartime kidnappings – the case of Mahieldeen Hashisho, who disappeared over 30 years ago – was dismissed by a Lebanese court for lack of evidence in September 2013.
Some activists and intellectuals have tried to challenge this collective amnesia through their artistic production. For example, a 2005 documentary by Monika Borgman and Lokman Slim told the story of the Sabra and Shatila massacres through the testimony of six former Phalange militiamen who participated. Yet, these important efforts have generally remained solitary cries in the wilderness.
Part of the challenge in Lebanon has been how to deal with the violent legacy of the past while confronting an ever-violent present. How to hold past perpetrators accountable when more recent crimes – the new rounds of political fighting in May 2008 or more recently in Tripoli, for example – go unpunished.
And yet, it may be that the only way out of Lebanon’s never-ending cycle of violence and impunity, is to finally deal head-on with the past. It is too late to hold Hobeika accountable, but it is not too late to ask questions about his role and that of his men in the massacre. Such questions about the past are the essential first step to end the rampant impunity and complacency in the country.
Up until a few weeks ago it seemed almost hopeless to expect any popular mobilization around such issues in Lebanon’s fragmented politics. Yet, the recent citizenship movement around the garbage crisis with its strong undercurrent of demands for accountability and transparency from a corrupt political class sends a strong signal that all is not lost. War criminals who killed with impunity in the past cannot be expected to govern responsibly in the present.
On Wednesday, I appeared on Al Jazeera’s news magazine Inside Story to discuss Israel’s assault on Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque compound.
The other guests were Akiva Eldar, senior columnist at Al-Monitor, and Matthew Duss, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace.
Today, dozens of members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud Party entered the compound accompanied by occupation forces.
This provocation came after days of violent Israeli assaults on worshippers and journalists in and around the mosque.
Palestinians view these incursions as part of an increasingly aggressive strategy aimed at an eventual takeover of the compound by Israeli groups intent on bringing down the mosque and building a Jewish temple in its place.
One child shook the conscience of Europe but how many children must die for the Arabs’ conscience to wake up? The image of Aylan Kurdi, three years old, sounded an alarm, which is still echoing all over the world, when his little body was thrown up by the sea on a Turkish beach. His death opened people’s eyes to the hideous crimes committed against the Syrian people for more than four years. The image actually communicated to everyone what news bulletins failed to do about the killing of more than one quarter of a million Syrians and the displacement of 12 million others, of whom four million are registered with the UNHCR.
The echo of the shock exceeded what had happened when the Israelis killed Palestinian child Mohammed Al-Dura as his dad tried to shield him in 2000. Despite the horror of that crime, Israel’s media machine rushed to contain the issue and minimise its effects, using the weak memory of Arabs and their weak systems to do the trick. This is also what happened when settlers burnt alive baby Ali Dawabsheh at the beginning of August; his mother died this week of her injuries sustained in the same arson attack, following his father who died earlier. This child was murdered in the dark so there was no one there to take his photograph.
This has also been the bad fortune of Yemeni children who are killed and buried under the rubble every day, with mutilated bodies similar to those which our eyes have got used to seeing in Iraq and other conflict zones which are distributing death all over the Arab world with no exceptions.
The European panic surprised us, as we have become so familiar with death and adapted to murder to the point where funerals have become an almost daily ritual in our capitals. It was exciting to see how our media paid more attention to the European reaction than it paid to the original crime, and followed up with the victims and their suffering but forgot about the killer who is still dropping explosive barrels on other victims. The result was that we became more worried about the European concerns than our own regional concerns, be it a catastrophic collapse of an Arab regime, bloodshed in Yemen, a disintegrating state in Libya or a homeland that is getting swallowed in Palestine.
I was surprised to read a headline published in one of the Egyptian newspapers, which said, “The image of drowned Syrian child embarrasses Europe”, and I felt ashamed when I read that the leader of the Israeli opposition, Isaac Herzog, called upon his government to open its borders to Syrian refugees. I also felt shame when Pope Francis called on monasteries in Europe to host refugees.
I remained ashamed when I read the list of Western celebrities who announced their solidarity with the refugees, including French singer Charles Aznavour, who called for the transfer of oppressed people in the Middle East to abandoned French villages; Lionel Messi, Argentina and FC Barcelona footballer, who condemned the situation and announced the support of his charity for refugees; Harry Potter author JK Rowling echoed the call for solidarity with refugees; John Green, American writer and novelist, donated $20,000 for the relief of refugees, and then collected half a million pounds in 24 hours. And then we had Bayern Munich Football Club, which donated one million euros to set up places to house refugees; the International Olympic Committee which donated $2 million; and Real Madrid Football Club, which donated $1 million, as well as others.
In Helsinki, the Prime Minister of Finland put his private home in the north of the country at the disposal of asylum seekers, and called on his fellow citizens to follow suit and open their homes to those seeking shelter. In London, Prime Minister David Cameron was criticised strongly when he stated that he would not allow hordes of refugees to enter Britain; Amnesty International described his words as "disgraceful" while the Guardian said that his position was not only a mistake but also a shame on the country.
In this atmosphere, German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s position stood out when she led the call to embrace the refugees and agreed with Austria for the two countries to open their borders to receive them. Along with French President François Hollande she issued a call to deal with the refugee issue with integrity and responsibility, so that people are spread around EU countries according to mandatory quotas.
This news and similar events were highlighted by Arab newspapers, which dealt with the issue as a European problem caused by strange hordes coming from another planet.
The statistics of all of this are shocking. According to the UN refugee agency, more than 300,000 people have crossed the Mediterranean this year; between 2,500 and 3,500 were drowned before they could reach their intended destination.
With regards to registered Syrian refugees, UNHCR said that the largest number headed to Lebanon (more than one million), followed by Turkey (800,000) then Jordan (300,000), Iraq (250,000) and Egypt (132,000).
The statement showed that the UNHCR and its partners called for $5.5 billion for refugee relief. By the end of June, just a quarter of the required amount was made available, which means a reduction in nutritional support for refugees and the difficulty of providing them with humanitarian aid or sending their children to schools. As for the conditions in which the refugees are existing, some countries are better than others, but most are miserable.
It is true that not all refugees are Syrians, but because of the huge disaster there, Syria has become the main source. There are also Sudanese, Palestinians, Iraqis and people from North Africa. Although the majority are victims of conflicts in the Arab region, there are others heading for Europe for economic reasons due to very difficult conditions in their home countries.
The normal procedure for asylum seekers is that the country where they land in the EU has the responsibility to process their applications. However, Italy and Greece have been facing the brunt of the numbers of heading for Europe and so it has been suggested that countries across the EU take their fair share of refugees to ease the burden on the Mediterranean states. North European countries — with the exception of Germany and Sweden — have generally called for the existing rules to be followed. The Czechs and Slovaks have refused to receive any refugees. Hungary's government has ordered the construction of a high fence along the border with Serbia (175 kilometres long) to prevent the entry of refugees. Poland announced that it will only accept Christian refugees coming from the Middle East.
Although the German government has been more courageous when, along with Austria, it called for the suspension of the Dublin Regulation on asylum requests, this has not just been down to enlightened politicians. There is also support among the people to help the refugees, but right-wing groups have seized on the issue to tap into nationalist emotions and mobilise public opinion against what they call the "new invaders" and attempts to "Islamise" Europe.
In this context, press reports claimed that Merkel’s popularity declined due to her sympathy with the refugees, while extremists attacked refugee centres and tried to set them on fire. In Italy, the Northern League used the regional and municipal elections as an opportunity to call for immigrants to be arrested and sent back to where they came from.
In legislative elections in Denmark, the People's Party won 21 per cent of the votes, which is double its share at the 2010 elections, possibly because it called for the tightening of the law to reduce immigration. The media has reported the rise of the right-wing across Germany, Britain and France, as more voices warn about terrorism by the refugees and the "Islamisation" of the continent and the threat to European unity.
The one element that is largely absent from the scene is the Arab world, and the biggest failure in this test is the Arab League, which has become a model that represents the collapse of the Arab regimes and their bankruptcy. Thus, if we consider the crises of the region to be at the heart of the refugee file, we shall see that the UN is trying to sort things out, with the Arab League out of the picture completely.
Envoys of the UN Secretary-General are trying to mediate in the search for solutions in Syria, Libya and Yemen. Prior to that, the Arab regimes had abandoned the Palestinian issue and left it for international efforts and negotiations between the aggressor and the victim. This gives the strong impression that the future of the Arab world is no longer one of the concerns of the Arab League or even Arab governments.
The thing that is no less surprising is that Arab civil society and the elite with their various orientations are among the absentees in this matter. When our newspapers published the names of celebrities who expressed their solidarity or contributed with their symbolic donations towards the relief of refugees, there was, apart from a few noble exceptions, few Arab names amongst them.
One exception was Egypt’s Al-Ahly Football Club, which agreed to have a match with Bayern Munich and donate the takings for refugee aid. There was also the invitation from Al-Ahli player Walid Soliman to support refugees following his own donation of fifty thousand Egyptian pounds to kick-start the campaign, as well as the announcement by businessman Naguib Sawiris that he would like to buy an island in the Mediterranean to accommodate the refugees. It is still not clear whether he is talking about an investment or a humanitarian project.
The Gulf States received their share of admonition about their absence from the fray; it was mentioned that they had opened their doors to Kuwaitis fleeing from Saddam Hussain’s invasion of their country in 1990. Well-known British journalist Robert Fisk, writing in theIndependent on 4 September, asked why Arabs come to the land of the "infidels" seeking survival, rather than going to the Gulf States. The answers varied between those who backed his scorn and others who reminded us that the Gulf has not fallen short in supporting communities in the conflict zones where refugees come from; no one, it has been argued, can deny the role that the Gulf has played in supporting their Arab brothers.
Fisk’s question was merited, and the Gulf States need to cover the serious lack of financial resources necessary for the relief of the refugees. However, I believe that the problem is more widely Arab rather than simply Gulf-related. When we see that "major first-tier countries" are absent and are keeping away due to their domestic conflicts, and that the Arab League no longer has a presence capable of making an impact in the various Arab issues, we cannot single out the Gulf States for blame.
There is no escape from admitting that the refugee crisis has helped to reveal the truth about the Arab position, exposing for what they are — largely meaningless — all the claims of solidarity and joint action. The current campaign in Lebanon is that the “stench” of the conviction of politicians in Beirut and despair at their behaviour, is all-pervading. I would add that the “stench” of rottenness is seeping out not only from Lebanon but also the rest of the Arab world.
قال الأمين العام الأسبق لـ"حزب الله اللبناني"، صبحي الطفيلي، في مقابلة لـ"شبكة التلفزيون العربي"، يوم الخميس، إن الطريق الذي تحدث عنه حسن نصرالله، للوصول إلى القدس يمر على أطفال وبيوت المسلمين.
وفي معرض إشارته إلى حديث زعيم "حزب الله اللبناني"، حسن نصرالله، بأن "طريق القدس يمر من الزبداني وحلب". وقال: "هذا الطريق يمر من كل الدول الإسلامية ولا يمر بفلسطين".
ووصف كلام نصرالله، بالجهنمي، واتهم "حزب الله" بالمساهمة في "تمزيق سورية عبر الدمار الهائل الذي يحل بالبلد". ورأى صبحي الطفيلي، أن نظام الأسد و"حزب الله"، يعملان لتقسيم البلد و"تحويله إلى دويلة طائفية، لتخرج سورية من التاريخ والجغرافيا". وتطرق إلى تفاقم الأزمة وضراوة القتال في سورية، قائلاً إن "الوضع الراهن، جعل سورية بعيدة عن الأمة، حيث أصبحت أمور مثل القضية الفلسطينية بعيدة من اهتمامات النظام السوري". وأردف: إن كلمة الممانعة كاذبة جداً، وإن دخول حزب الله في سورية ليس للممانعة كما يروّجون له".
تونس ـ «القدس العربي» من حسن سلمان: طالب الرئيس التونسي السابق منصف المرزوقي بحل الجامعة العربية لأنها «ماتت إكلينيكيا»، كما حذر النظام المصري من مصير مشابه لجنرالات أمريكا اللاتينية، وقال إن أي محاولة لإعادة الديكتاتورية لتونس لن تدوم أكثر من بضع سنوات.
وفند المرزوقي في حوار مع فضائية «الشروق» المصرية المعارضة، ما ذكره بعض وسائل الإعلام حول قيامه بعدة مساعٍ لنيل منصب أمين عام جامعة الدول العربية، مؤكدا أنه يجب حل هذا الكيان الذي قال إنه «مات إكلينيكيا» واستبداله بـ»اتحاد» على غرار الاتحادين الأوروبي والأفريقي.
وأضاف «نحن (كشعوب عربية) في وضع لا نحسد عليه حاليا، لكن بعد أن تتحرر هذه الشعوب وتصبح حرة وديمقراطية عليها أن تبحث عن صيغة أخرى للتواصل في إطار الخلق والإبداع المستقبلي لتحل مكان الجامعة العربية التي عمرها أكثر من سبعين سنة، فنحن في عصر جديد ونريد بناء شعوب حرة ودول ديمقراطية ثم بناء فضاء عربي مشترك تتحرك فيه السلع والأفكار». واقترح المرزوقي تأسيس «اتحاد عربي» يقوم على عدة مناطق جهوية كالاتحاد الأفريقي، من قبيل «الاتحاد المغاربي» و»الاتحاد الخليجي» وغيرهما.
وأضاف «يجب أن نكوّن هذا الفضاء العربي بين شعوب حرة ودول مستقلة ولا نعود إلى قصة البعثية والناصرية والزعيم الأوحد والحزب الأوحد والعاصمة الواحدة، فهذا حلم آبائنا وأجدادنا في الخمسينيات وقد انتهى الآن».
من جهة أخرى، دعا المرزقي نظام الرئيس المصري عبد الفتاح السيسي إلى قراءة تاريخ الانقلابات العسكرية في أمريكا اللاتينية، مشيرا إلى أن «ما وقع في الأرجنتين وتشيلي في السبعينيات يقع الآن في مصر، وما سيحدث في مصر في الثلاثين سنة المقبلة هو ما حدث في الأرجنتين منذ السبعينيات وحتى الآن، بمعنى أنه سيتم في النهاية تصفية الديكتاتورية».
وأضاف «عندما تقارن حدة العنف الذي يمارسه النظام المصري على المصريين ستجد له النمط نفسه من العنف الأقصى الذي مارسته الديكتاتورية الأرجنتينية على الشعب، فجنرالات الأرجنتين كانوا يرمون أحيانا المعارضين من الطائرات لبث الرعب، لكن في آخر المطاف الجنرالات الذين مارسوا العنف يقفون أمام المحاكم».
ودعا الديكتاتوريين العرب إلى قراءة التاريخ، مؤكدا أن «سرعة دوران الزمن باتت أسرع بكثير، فبن علي حكم تونس لثلاث وعشرين سنة، لكن اليوم أي محاولة في تونس لعودة الاستبداد لن تدوم أكثر من ثلاث سنوات، وهذا العنف الممارس على المجتمع يقوده لاختزاله ومن ثم العودة بقوة لمربع التحرك، وبالتالي هذه القضية محسومة».
A large convoy of Russian vehicles was reportedly on the move through central Syria on Wednesday, sparking new claims that renewed Russian support for the ailing Assad regime could lead to Moscow effectively running the war.
Syrian opposition groups claimed the convoy contained Russian troops who were heading for the outskirts of the country’s third city, Hama.
The armoured trucks and personnel carriers had moved south from Latakia, on the Mediterranean coast, where Russian forces have expanded the city’s airport runway and built additional hangars to house jets and transport planes that had begun arriving in early August.
“They were heading south around mid-morning. There were lots of trucks,” an opposition source said.
Separately, the citizen journalism project Bellingcat said on Wednesday that photographs of a Russian communications-jamming vehicle in Latakia region proved that a military buildup was under way.
“Newly published images showing a Russian R-166-0.5 (ultra) high-frequency signals (HF/VHF) vehicle driving through Syria’s coastal region now leaves little to no doubt on Russia’s intentions in Syria,” the report said. “The R-166-0.5 provides jam-resistant voice and data communications over a long range, enabling Russian troops to communicate with their bases in the coastal strongholds of Tartus and Latakia while operating far inland.”
The moves have come at a critical time for Syria’s leader, Bashar al-Assad, whose forces have, since early 2013, increasingly ceded control to its regional allies, led by Iran and Hezbollah. While Russia has been a strong political ally of the Syrian regime, its military support had mostly been limited to selling weapons and sending advisers.
“The west has been expecting players such as Russia to one day see the light and to change their posture,” said regional analyst for the International Crisis Group, Peter Harling. “But their stance has been consistent. They have been gradually escalating their support for the regime for some time.But with Syrian forces now in control of around a quarter of the country and unable to claw back losses at the hands of opposition groups and jihadists, the regime’s patrons have sharply stepped up their roles in recent months. In Damascus and in neighbouring Beirut, the boosted Russian role is seen as fortifying a swathe of the country from Latakia to the Golan Heights, which is labelled “the Useful Syria”.
“Politically, their support has been there from the beginning, but they have come to do more in the security and military sphere because the regime is eroding and this is showing increasingly. Iran don’t want to step things up further at a sensitive phase with the Americans. Hezbollah is in full deployment mode and can hardly do more.”
Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group, whose stated goal is to oppose Israel, has sent an estimated several thousand fighters into Syria, where they are leading the Syrian army in numerous parts of the country. It is heavily deployed in the town of Zabadani, between the Lebanese border and Damascus, where the Islamist group Ahrar al-Sham, a powerful arm of the Syrian opposition, is trying to hold its ground.
Russia’s increased activity comes amid a flurry of diplomatic moves surrounding the future of Syria and international efforts to tackle the Islamic State jihadist group, which controls much of the country’s east, as well as western Iraq. In recent weeks, Moscow has hosted Saudi leaders and sent its own officials to Riyadh, while at the same time trying to rally Iran, Europe and the US to its cause.
On Wednesday, US secretary of state John Kerry said that his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, had proposed talks between Russian and US military commanders to minimise potential clashes in a region where both forces are operating.
“The whole package is being presented by Putin as part of a global and regional endeavour to stop IS,” said Middle East analyst and associate fellow at Chatham House, David Butter. “And, as such, it should provide the basis for cooperation between Russia, the US, the Europeans and the Arabs.
“Putin has been talking a lot to Arab leaders (Sisi, Mohammed bin Zayed, and King Abdullah in Jordan), perhaps dangling the idea that Russia and the Arabs can work together to dilute Iran’s interest and destroy IS, while keeping the Assad issue vague. The Saudis have made clear they are not buying this.”
“They are doing more than supplementing the Syrians,” said a senior western official in London. “They are taking over the air war for them. The Syrians are not good at attacking ground forces.”Moscow, in July, sent six fighter jets to the Syrian government, which it said would replace Syrian air force jets shot down during the war. However, US and British officials say there is strong evidence that the revamped Latakia base will be used to ready Russian fighters for combat over Syrian skies.
The Russian intervention comes at an especially complicated time in Syria’s civil war. Battle lines between the regime and a largely homegrown opposition have remained mostly static around Damascus and Aleppo, but have been fluid elsewhere.
At the same time, Isis has continued to make inroads in the west and centre, Syria’s Kurds have seized much ground in the north as they have battled the jihadists, and Turkey has launched a bombing campaign inside Syria against both groups. Meanwhile, Britain and France are mooting joining a US-led air coalition inside Syria.
Meanwhile, Syrian opposition groups have been pushing towards the Latakia coast. “(Russia’s) first task is to make sure that the Idlib-based rebels do not make it to Latakia,” said Butter. “If rebels make it to Latakia, Tartus would come under pressure, and Russia would probably have to give up its naval access/base/facilities there.”
Russia has maintained a naval base and intelligence post in Tartus, north of Latakia, for almost 50 years. Its existence has been seen as a raison d’etre for Moscow’s staunch support of the Assad regime throughout the war.
However, senior Russian officials have repeatedly told counterparts in the Arab world that their stance stems largely from the US-led intervention in Libya in 2011, which Moscow saw as a trick and a threat to its influence.
“They are very much disrespectful of the regime as a partner and an ally,” said Harling. “But they completely share its view of the war’s cause and structure. They are anti-Islamist, anti-west and anti-democratic.
“They have been fighting a Cold War on their own, which naturally they have been winning in different ways. It plays well at home, where people have nothing but nostalgia to cling on to. They position themselves as standing up to western designs, as exemplified by Syria, and are saying to the region itself that [they] are a power to be contended with.”
There are sprawling industries and self-proclaimed career “terrorism experts” in the U.S. that profit greatly by deliberately exaggerating the threat of Terrorism and keeping Americans in a state of abject fear of “radical Islam.” There are all sorts of polemicists who build their public platforms by demonizing Muslims and scoffing at concerns over “Islamaphobia,” with the most toxic ones insisting that such a thing does not even exist, even as the mere presence of mosques is opposed across the country, or even as they are physically attacked.
The U.S. government just formally renewed the “State of Emergency” it declared in the aftermath of 9/11 for the 14th time since that attack occurred, ensuring that the country remains in a state of permanent, endless war, subjected to powers that are still classified as “extraordinary” even though they have become entirely normalized. As a result of all of this, a minority group of close to 3 million people is routinely targeted with bigotry and legal persecution in the Home of the Free, while fear and hysteria reign supreme in the Land of the Brave.
What happened in Irving, Texas, yesterday to a 14-year-old Muslim high school freshman is far from the worst instance, but it is highly illustrative of the rotted fruit of this sustained climate of cultivated fear and demonization. The Dallas Morning News reports that “Ahmed Mohamed — who makes his own radios and repairs his own go-kart — hoped to impress his teachers when he brought a homemade clock to MacArthur High,” but “instead, the school phoned police.”
Despite insisting that he made the clock to impress his engineering teacher, consistent with his long-time interest in “inventing stuff,” Ahmed wasarrested by the police and led out of school with his hands cuffed behind him. When he was brought into the room to be questioned by the four police officers who had been dispatched to the school, one of them — who had never previously seen him — said: “Yup. That’s who I thought it was.” As a result, he “felt suddenly conscious of his brown skin and his name — one of the most common in the Muslim religion.”
On Twitter, Anil Dash published a photo, provided by the boy’s family, taken as he was led out in cuffs. Note that he’s wearing a NASA shirt:
Photo: Anil Dash/Twitter
There’s absolutely no evidence that this was anything more than a clock, nor any indication of any kind that the talented and inventive freshman built it as anything other than a school project. But even now, “police say they may yet charge him with making a hoax bomb — though they acknowledge he told everyone who would listen that it’s a clock.” According to the BBC, “police spokesman James McLellan said that, throughout the interview, Ahmed had maintained that he built only a clock, but said the boy was unable to give a ‘broader explanation’ as to what it would be used for.”
The Dallas Morning News let Ahmed speak for himself by posting a video of him recounting what happened. Behold the Terrorist Mastermind:
The behavior here is nothing short of demented. And it’s easy to mock, which in turn has the effect of belittling it and casting it as some sort of bizarre aberration. But it’s not that. It’s the opposite of aberrational. It’s the natural, inevitable byproduct of the culture of fear and demonization that has festered and been continuously inflamed for many years. The circumstances that led to this are systemic and cultural, not aberrational.
The mayor of Irving, Beth Van Duyne, became a beloved national heroto America’s anti-Muslim fanatics when, last February, she seized on a fraudulent online chain letter, which claimed that area imams had created a special court based on sharia law. In response, Mayor Van Duyne posted a Facebook rant in which she vowed to “fight with every fiber of my being” the nonexistent “sharia court.” One anti-Muslim website gushed that Irving “is being called ‘ground zero’ in the battle to prevent Islamic law from gaining a foothold, no matter how small, in the U.S. legal system” and hailed her as “the mayor who stood up to the Muslim Brotherhood.”
That led to support for a bill introduced in the Texas State Legislature banning the use of foreign law, which its sponsor made clear was targeted at least in part at these “sharia courts.” The Irving City Council went out of its way to enact a resolution supporting the state bill. It was enacted in June. One of the City Council members who opposed the bill — William “Bill” Mahone, who “denounced the vote and urged Irving to ’embrace the Muslims'” — then lost his seat in the city election “by a wide margin.” I’ve spoken to Muslim groups in Irving and there is a small but thriving community there, which in turn has produced intense anti-Muslim animus.
People participate in a rally against a proposed mosque and Islamic community center near ground zero in New York, Aug. 22, 2010.
Photo: Seth Wenig/AP
Just like Ahmed’s arrest, Irving is representative of the U.S. broadly, not aberrational. The U.S. just a few years ago went into a shameful fit of mass hysteria over a proposed Islamic community center near Ground Zero — as though Muslims generally were guilty of that attack — but since then, in obscurity, ordinary mosques have faced all sorts of opposition from their mere existence, or once they do exist, physical menacing and violence. A 2014 Pew Poll found that Americans feel more negatively toward Muslims than any other religious group in the country.
There are all sorts of obvious, extreme harms that come from being a nation at permanent war. Your country ends up killing huge numbers of innocent people all over the world. Vast resources are drained away from individuals and programs of social good into the pockets of weapons manufacturers. Core freedoms are inexorably and inevitably eroded — seized — in its name. The groups being targeted are marginalized and demonized in order to maximize fear levels and tolerance for violence.
But perhaps the worst of all harms is how endless war degrades the culture and populace of the country that perpetrates it. You can’t have a government that has spent decades waging various forms of war against predominantly Muslim countries — bombing seven of them in the last six years alone — and then act surprised when a Muslim 14-year-old triggers vindictive fear and persecution because he makes a clock for school. That’s no more surprising than watching carrots sprout after you plant carrot seeds in fertile ground and then carefully water them. It’s natural and inevitable, not surprising or at all difficult to understand.
Just like Ahmed’s arrest, Irving is representative of the U.S. broadly, not aberrational. The U.S. just a few years ago went into a shameful fit of mass hysteria over a proposed Islamic community center near Ground Zero — as though Muslims generally were guilty of that attack — but since then, in obscurity, ordinary mosques have faced all sorts of opposition from their mere existence, or once they do exist, physical menacing and violence. A 2014 Pew Poll found that Americans feel more negatively toward Muslims than any other religious group in the country.
