Saturday, February 10, 2018
Friday, February 9, 2018
Theresa May and the crown prince: Beware the new Saudi authoritarianism in liberal disguise
Mohammed bin Salman's embrace of moderate Islam conceals a nasty agenda that has so far resulted in the incarceration of hundreds of innocent people dubbed as radical Islamists
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Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir walks with Britain's Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson during a tour in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, 26 January 2018 (Reuters)
Saudi Arabia's King Salman and British Prime Minister Theresa May in Riyadh in 2017 (AFP)
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The controversy surrounding Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's visit to Downing Street this spring is symptomatic of the rift between a British public eager to maintain a moral foreign policy and successive British governments ignoring loud critical voices.
With the exception of the Liberal Democrats, both main political parties have always cherished close relations with the most autocratic leaders in the Arab world (although that appears to have changed under Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who has called for an end to arms sales to Saudi Arabia).
Recently, with a shaky economy and a deep nostalgia for empire that has yet to vanish among the governing elite, Prime Minister Theresa May announced plans to welcome the crown prince amidst loud protest from a wide range of British civil society groups.
She probably hopes the initial public offering of 5 percent of the Saudi oil company Aramco will take place in London. Should this happen this year, it will create a bonanza for financial and service institutions, above all banks, consultants and lawyers.
Neither ideology nor values
As a rule of thumb, with few exceptions, almost all controversial authoritarian rulers have been welcome in London. British foreign policy rests on neither ideology nor values. Common British wisdom tells us that engaging the dictators is better and more productive than shunning them.
After all one cannot expect British governments to boycott all dictators as they won't have any leaders to talk to, especially in the Arab world. For several reasons, the British government, however, should not continue to ignore the loud critical voices when it rolls out the red carpet for the crown prince's visit.
First, Britain provides Saudi Arabia with a whole range of jetfighters, surveillance technology and military training, all having been deployed in destabilising the Arab world under the leadership of Mohammed bin Salman.
One cannot expect successive British governments to boycott all dictators as the government won’t have any leaders to talk to, especially in the Arab world
In the Arabian Peninsula, Saudi military interventions have suffocated a pro-democracy movement in Bahrain and totally destroyed another poor country, Yemen.
In the ex-British colony of Bahrain, now a Saudi satellite state, the local monarch, Hamad bin Isa Al-Khalifa, can only rule by detention and repression. Direct Saudi intervention since 2011 succeeded in creating a volatile island on the verge of implosion.
In Yemen, Saudi air strikes since 2015 contributed to a serious humanitarian crisis. Under Saudi-UAE military intervention, Yemen is now even more fragmented and divided, with separatist movements in the north and south getting stronger, al-Qaeda affiliates operating under the nose of the intervening regional powers, and new unruly militia forming everywhere.
Just recently one such separatist movement supported by the UAE, the other Saudi partner in this war, raided Aden, the temporary capital of exiled Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, further eroding the authority of this government that now exists only on paper.
While British manufactured weapons are not the only ones that the Saudis use, Britain provides a large number of the jetfighters that are deployed in Yemen. Can Britain be held responsible for selling the very tools that have destroyed one of the poorest Arab countries?
Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir walks with Britain's Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson during a tour in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, 26 January 2018 (Reuters)
Can Britain be taken to the International Court of Justice for its contribution to an unjust war, fought by the Saudi crown prince under the pretext of supporting the Yemeni central government against separatist movements?
So far, it seems not. Under pressure from several anti-war and anti-armaments NGOs, a British court absolved Britain from any wrong doing. However, the controversy continues and will inevitably lead to massive protest when the prince arrives in London next month.
A new Saudi authoritarianism
Second, the British government should be wary of the new Saudi authoritarianism in liberal disguise. Allowing women to drive, promoting dancing in the streets, curbing the powers of the infamous religious police all sound good and promising. Yet, Mohammed Bin Salman is not a religious, economic, or political reformer.
The crown prince's embrace of moderate Islam conceals a nasty agenda that has so far resulted in the incarceration of hundreds of innocent people dubbed as radical, Islamists, or simply critical of his glamorous plans to break from the past and transform Saudi Arabia.
By unequivocally supporting a regimes like the Saudi one, Britain loses the moral high ground
Economically, the prince is often painted as a neoliberal crusader, a believer in free trade and a worshipper of the market, who promises to revolutionise a state capitalist economy still dependent on oil, and riddled with corruption and favouritism.
But in truth, he is a populist, ready to play the xenophobic nationalist card to secure popularity among the disenfranchised and unemployed youth. History suggests that appeasing such forces comes at a high price.
The guise of fighting corruption
His latest anti-corruption campaign was planned to purge rivals and illegally appropriate funds from wealthy crony entrepreneurs such as Alwaleed bin Talal, Saleh Kamel and Waleed Al-Ibrahim among others. The Ritz Carlton detainees amassed wealth over several decades simply because they were so close to previous kings. They were connected and as such they were the financial ancien regime.
Under the guise of fighting corruption, Mohammed Bin Salman found the ideal and quick recipe to fill his coffers. Detaining old wealth and nouveaux riches in the Ritz Carlton for several months, while negotiating secret deals, then releasing several - but not all - detainees was an unusual strategy to say the least.
Certainly this is not the way to fight corruption, reassure foreign investors, or initiate long-lasting economic reforms. It is a purge, a daring coup by someone who now has all power in his hand and with no checks - moral, legal or even religious.
Saudi Arabia's King Salman and British Prime Minister Theresa May in Riyadh in 2017 (AFP)
The Ritz Carlton drama was a theatrical performance designed to intimidate and amplify the power of a young hawkish prince who has already decided to be the undisputed head of the Saudi state - rather than simply primus inter pares, as previous monarchs had led people to believe. With Mohammad bin Salman, Saudi Arabia has entered the realm of naked power.
But why should the British government worry about such devious methods of confiscating wealth, eliminating rivals and exercising power? Shouldn't this be a purely Saudi domestic issue?
Well, the problem is not only a Saudi one. A recent BBC documentary revealed the degree to which British officials and personalities are implicated in the Saudi corruption scandals. For many British viewers, it was not shocking to learn that Saudi royals are corrupt. They were shocked as they learned how successive British governments are implicated in the corruption of those princes.
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In Britain, a democratic government, a transparent political culture, and a pervasive rule of law have all failed to expose the degree to which the British establishment is implicated in dodgy deals with the Saudi regime in which bribes are common. The documentary revealed how far British officials are prepared to go to protect Saudi royals from the rule of law.
The most recent case was former prime minister Tony Blair's decision to halt the special investigation in the infamous Al-Yamama arm deal in 2008. In 2013, a quick agreement between Britain and Saudi Arabia to exchange prisoners signed immediately after a prince murdered his slave servant in a London hotel resulted in the prince being put on a plane and sent to Riyadh to serve a life sentence, perhaps in the comfort of a secret villa.
Covering up Saudi scandals
British officials may have succeeded in concealing their role in covering up Saudi scandals but for how long can they maintain their silence? No doubt the expected visit of the Saudi crown prince will open new files and inquires. British civil society is determined not to let the event pass without scoring goals against a government that has paid lip service to values it claims to cherish.
By unequivocally supporting a regimes like the Saudi one, Britain loses the moral high ground. Why should anyone listen when British politicians flaunt their so-called values in the context of new immigrants? The latter would not miss the hypocrisy and complicity of the British government. Our so-called British values have becomes a cliche.
In fact many immigrants and refugees have fled their countries because the British government and other Western countries have continuously supported the autocrats whose violence, oppression and corruption resulted in the flood of refugees and asylum-seekers that all of Europe, above all Britain, complains about.
Mohammed bin Salman's repression is already generating a new wave of dissidents seeking exile. This included a number of activists, religious minorities, princesses and students who have applied for asylum in Britain. Saudis who have recently fled the repression of bin Salman now join old Saudi dissidents who arrived in London in the 1990s.
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A new wave of so-called Saudi women runaways apply for asylum on the basis of being oppressed, forced into unwanted marriages, or prevented from living their life as they choose, all under the nose of Mohammed Bin Salman and his reformist agenda. If the state cannot protect abused women, who can?
Should all the critical voices raised over the royal visit come together in a massive demonstration and disrupt the pomp, it would be rather difficult for Prime Minister Theresa May to convince her audiences that there are merits in engaging and endearing autocrats.
Perhaps she should make at least some noise about the merit of a transparent Saudi political system and the rule of law before signing future lucrative deals with Saudi Arabia. She should at least reread George Orwell's Shooting an Elephant to understand that when a white woman endears tyrants, it is her freedom that she destroys.
- Professor Madawi al-Rasheed is a visiting professor at the Middle East Centre at the London School of Economics. She has written extensively about the Arabian Peninsula, Arab migration, globalisation, religious transnationalism and gender. On Twitter: @MadawiDr
Thursday, February 8, 2018
From father to son: How the Palestinian struggle is passed from one generation to the next
Only when occupation ends and justice is addressed will the Israel-Palestine conflict be resolved
By David Hearst
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A Palestinian man gives bread to a boy in the remains of their destroyed home in Jenin refugee camp April 20, 2002 (REUTERS)
A Palestinian woman argues with an Israeli soldier in the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank April 16, 2002 (REUTERS)
By David Hearst
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In August 2002, two years into the Second Intifada, Israeli forces closed in on a local Hamas leader in the West Bank village of Tubas near Jenin.
Nasser Jarrar was in a wheel-chair having lost both legs and an arm in an explosion. A 19-year-old neighbour of Jarrar, Nidal Abu M'Khisan was given a flak jacket and forced at gunpoint to act as a human shield for troops storming the house.
Jarrar opened fire and killed the youth, before himself being buried alive when the Israeli troops bulldozed the house.
A war crime
Before he died, Nasser gave a Quran to his son Ahmad who was seven at the time. The inscription written with his remaining left hand read: "A gift to my dear son Ahmad."
Four months earlier, a notorious Israel military operation took place when their forces surrounded and sealed off Jenin refugee camp. What followed was a 12-day battle in which infantry, commando forces, assault helicopters and armoured bulldozers were used to clear the camp, regarded by Israel as the suicide-bomb capital of the West Bank.
A closely packed residential area a third of a mile wide was reduced to dust; an Israeli infantry column walked into an ambush and Palestinian eyewitnesses claimed hundreds of bodies were buried in the rubble and were disposed of before international aid organisations were allowed in.
The Jarrars of this world can be killed. The Jenins of this world can be bulldozed and rebuilt. But one thing will not happen. The fire of this conflict will not be put out
When it was all over, an equally ferocious war of words began over what had happened in the refugee camp.
The Independent, Guardian, and the Times called it a war crime, a massacre, and Israel's September 11. Haaretz and the New York Times claimed the number of dead was limited and suggested most of them were militants.
Six weeks later, Yediot Aharonot published an interview with an operator of an armoured D 9 bulldozer who took part in the operation. Moshe Nissim said: "I didn't see, with my own eyes, people dying under the blade of the D-9 and I didn't see house[s] falling down on live people. But if there were any, I wouldn't care at all …
A Palestinian man gives bread to a boy in the remains of their destroyed home in Jenin refugee camp April 20, 2002 (REUTERS)
"But the real thing started the day 13 of our soldiers were killed up that alley in the Jenin refugee camp. If we had moved into the building where they were ambushed, we would have buried all those Palestinians alive."
The Israeli army chief of staff at the time was Shaul Mofaz who urged officers to speed the operation up, instructing them to fire five anti-tank missiles at every house before entering. Mofaz, a former leader of the centrist Kadima party, is today regarded as a liberal on the spectrum of Israeli politics, and especially in comparison to the hawks in the cabinet.
A UN fact-finding mission found that at least 52 Palestinians had been killed, half of them civilians.
Smile and Hope
When the Second Intifada was over, a huge effort was put into rehabilitating Jenin. The former stronghold of suicide bombers was turned into "the quietest town in the West Bank" - or that is how it was written up.
Jenin, with its "special Palestinian economic and security zone" became a laboratory for a plan to be rolled out in the rest of the West Bank. It would be transformed.
Under what was called the Jenin pilot security project launched in 2008, Israeli soldiers would be withdrawn from the streets and the PA would reestablish control by deploying security units trained by the Americans. It was called "Smile and Hope".
The Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad, called it the "Jenin model". Tony Blair, the international envoy, unveiled a package of measures to boost the economy of the West Bank including an industrial park in the Jenin area, with 30 factories, employing 25,000 people.
The burning embers of this struggle will be passed from one generation to another
In fact, the plan to put an industrial park near Jenin dated back to 1995 when Israelis flocked to the border town, where prices were low, and when a peace deal seemed to be around the corner. Jenin's industrial park has been re-announced and relaunched ever since.
Jenin's American University became the only Palestinian university whose degrees were recognised in Israel, and attracted some 3,500 Palestinian students with Israeli citizenship. One of those students was Ahmad Jarrar.
Jenin's governor at the time, Qadura Mousa, told the Portland Trust in November 2008 that security and the economy went hand in hand. It all depended on the number of customers that Israel allowed into Jenin through the Jalame border crossing.
Some saw in this an economic boost, others a form of bondage which would ultimately give Israel more control over the Palestinian economy and jobs. Jenin would be turned into a northern Palestinian gateway to Israel.
A Palestinian woman argues with an Israeli soldier in the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank April 16, 2002 (REUTERS)
Blair said that Jenin would act as a "model for development, as well as political and economic stability". Blair was awarded $1m for "leadership" at a ceremony at Tel Aviv University.
In 2009, Jenin's governor hosted Blair and the then US secretary of state, Condoleeza Rice, saying the industrial park could be a model, while also warning that security and economics were not enough.
"Society cannot settle only with security or economic changes. It also needs a political angle. These checkpoints, this constant talk of excessive security, this makes us think that there is no Israeli partner for peace," Mousa said.
Lots of smiles, but little hope. I checked on the status of this much-heralded industrial park, which has been about to open for 28 years. Kamal Abu Alarab, deputy governor of Jenin, said that a land dispute has been settled and they expect work on the park to continue. The park itself still has not started.
Job done?
This week another part of this story came to end. Ahmad, now 22 years old, was cornered by the Shabak and Israeli army units in the village of Yamoun, nine kilometres from Jenin. Wanted for being behind the drive-by shooting of a settler rabbi, Raziel Shevah, near an illegal outpost near Nablus on 9 January, Jarrar had spent almost a month on the run.
Everyone around him seemed surprised that this gregarious 22-year-old with a beaming smile and a large circle of friends, and who had graduated with a marketing degree from the university in Jenin, had chosen the same path that his father had 15 years ago.
After A month
of the chase and the incursions
The martyrdom of the young#Ahmed_Nasr_Jarrar
the son of martyr Nasr Jarrar#RIP
Amer, a cousin, said: "We learned of his death this morning from the Israeli media ...We are stunned. None of us had any idea about his whereabouts."
Ahmad even died a similar death to his father's. The trail of destruction of the Israeli manhunt was large. On 28 January, his cousin Ahmad Ismail Jarrar was killed in a 10-hour operation in Wadi Burqin. Three houses belonging to the Jarrar family were demolished.
On Sunday Wadi Burqi was raided again and a 19-year-old Palestinian shot in the head. According to residents quoted by Al Jazeera, Israeli soldiers threatened to demolish the village house by house, until Ahmad turned himself in. Jarrar died in a hail of gunfire, surrounded by magazine clips.
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Jarrar's body was taken by the Israelis. His relatives found a pile of bloodied clothes and a torn copy of the Quran his father had given him all those years ago. That, too, had been shot through.
The moral of this tale is stark: the Jarrars of this world can be killed. The Jenins of this world can be bulldozed, rebuilt, rehabilitated. Millions of dollars of EU money can be spent to transform Jenin.
But one thing will not happen. The fire of this conflict will never be put out. That will only come when the occupation ends, when justice is addressed, when Palestinians enjoy the same civil, property and political rights that Israelis do.
Until then, the burning embers of this struggle will be passed from one generation to another. Ahmad Jarrar has, in his turn, become a symbol. Hamas called him the pride of Palestine.
The leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine ( PFLP) called him an "influential national symbol Palestinians will be proud of".
Another symbol of Palestinian resistance, Ahed Tamimi, 16, faces months in prison for slapping an Israeli soldier in protests in the West Bank. She too had grown up in the relatively prosperous district around Ramallah.
On Tuesday, the Israeli Defence Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, tweeted in praise of the Israeli operation: "The score has been settled." Job done, Lieberman boasted.
Is it, really?
- David Hearst is editor-in-chief of Middle East Eye. He was chief foreign leader writer of The Guardian, former Associate Foreign Editor, European Editor, Moscow Bureau Chief, European Correspondent, and Ireland Correspondent. He joined The Guardian from The Scotsman, where he was education correspondent.
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