Updates

Update from AIJAC

October 31, 2011
Number 10/11 #06

This Update features some comment on the outcome of the Tunisian elections last week, and their wider implications.

First up is the Jerusalem Post arguing in an editorial that Tunisia demonstrated why it is the most promising candidate for democracy in the Arab world – as shown by the fair and violence-free elections. Yet the country also gave a plurality to an Islamist party, Ennahda, albeit one often described as “soft Islamist”. The paper notes, however, that the head of Ennadha is not only violently anti-Israel, but his comparison of his party to Turkey’s AKP is not as positive as some seem to imagine.  For more on why Ennadha’s victory in Tunisia has worrying wider implications, CLICK HERE. Also questioning the moderation of Ennadha, based on what Tunisian secularists say, is peripatetic Middle East journalist Michael Totten.

Next up is academic expert Barry Rubin who explores the implications of Tunisia’s election more widely. He says that Ennadha will not radicalise or Islamise society over the next year or two – not because they are moderate but because they are smart. He reviews the ways in which Islamists can radicalise society gradually over time, as occurred in Turkey, involving control over religious affairs, education, over banking, etc, and compares this to Stalin’s takeover of the Soviet Union. He also reviews some worrying new information from Libya, suggesting Islamism may be the only way to unite the western and eastern halves of that country. For all that he has to say, CLICK HERE. Some history of the Ennadha party leader Sheikh Rached Al-Ghannouchi’s problematic past statements on Jews and Israel is here.

Finally, former US official Elliot Abrams reports and comments on a reported interesting new American attempt to broker an Israeli-Palestinian deal on settlements. He notes that this new proposal, essentially banning building outside the built-up areas of existing settlements, is exactly what the Bush Administration and previous Israeli Governments agreed on. He says that it is a sensible idea, but it is three years too late, so the Palestinians are unlikely to agree. For Abrams’ full analysis of what the Obama Administration has been doing wrong on Israeli settlements, CLICK HERE.

Readers may also be interested in:

• Veteran British foreign affairs journalist Con Coughlin argues that the Tunisian example suggests the whole Arab Spring is becoming an Islamist takeover.
• Some more analysis on the new Libyan leadership’s inclination toward Islamism from Israeli Jonathan Halevi.
• Qatar admits its troops helped overthrow Gaddafi in Libya. Meanwhile, there are reports that nuclear material has just been found in Libya.
• A breakdown in military unity appears to be making Syria’s Assad regime shakier. See also here.
• Some examples from the many stories and comments now appearing at AIJAC’s daily “Fresh AIR” blog:
  • An AIJAC press release on Ilan Grapel, the Israeli-American student just released by Egypt after four months in detention, who once served as a fellow at AIJAC. More details on Grapel’s AIJAC connection, as well as why Egypt apparently held him on bogus spying charges, is here. 
  • A Somali-American Islamist who just became a suicide bomber called for attacks on Australia.
  • A look at the last resort options on Iran’s nuclear program.

Editorial: Democracy in Tunisia

Jerusalem Post, 10/25/2011

It would be a tragedy if the democratic process ended up bringing to power an Islamist party that uses its mandate to roll back reforms.

In his 1991 book The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century, political scientist Samuel Huntington argued that Tunisia was a prime candidate for democracy. Since Huntington’s book was published this became even more true.

The country’s impressive economic growth, educated middle class, high rate of female literacy, strong sense of a unified national identity, non-politicized military, and relatively active civil culture of labor unions and Bar association seemed to position the Maghreb country particularly well for a democratic system of government.

Huntington’s assessment now seems to have been vindicated.

Starting December of last year, Tunisia became the first Arab country to rebel against and then overthrow its autocratic leadership, without any significant outside intervention.

In the process, Tunisia’s masses set in motion the Arab Spring. Grassroots uprisings that took the world by surprise swept through Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen and Syria.

On Sunday, Tunisia became the very first of the Arab Spring nations to hold a free, democratic election. Yet, while voting was remarkably well organized and turnout was exceedingly high, the victory of the Islamist Ennahda, or “Renaissance” party, which garnered a plurality of about 40 percent, according to preliminary vote tallies, is a worrying sign.

If Islamists have succeeded in Tunisia, a country widely considered to be the most secularised and democracy-inclined Arab country, the prospects for Egypt and Libya, both preparing for their own elections, are far from promising.

Admittedly, in comparison to other Islamists parties, such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, which stands a good chance of coming to power in Egypt’s upcoming elections, or Hamas, which in 2006 took advantage of a hastily implemented democratic election among Palestinians to rise to power, Ennahda, can, and has, been referred to as “soft Islamist” in its approach.

Rachid Ghannouchi, Ennahda’s head, said in an interview with Al Jazeera after returning to Tunisia from exile that Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party was closest to Ennahda’s in its outlook. Though he was attempting to point to Ennahda’s relatively moderate political approach, Ghannushi’s analogy was hardly comforting.

Turkey regularly represses the press and intimidates secular military and business figures at home, while forming an anti-Western axis in the region with the likes of Iran and Egypt’s up-and-coming Islamists.

Ghannouchi is also rabidly anti-Israel. Following the end of the Gaza War in January 2009, for instance, Ghannouchi praised Allah who “routed the Zionist Jews,” and labeled the Israeli withdrawal/disengagement from Gaza in 2005 as “the first step in the complete victory of all of Palestine and the holy places of the Muslims.”

Living under former president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali’s autocratic regime was undoubtedly unpleasant for most Tunisians. The man was regularly reelected, sometimes getting more than 90 percent of the vote – a sure sign that human beings’ natural propensity for dissent had been either bypassed by ballot fraud or repressed by intimidation. Security forces regularly patrolled Internet cafes and other supposed hotbeds of sedition. The reason cited for the state’s intrusive policing was the need to counter Islamic extremists.

However, it was abundantly clear that once suppression of dissent was condoned for one group it became unruly and imperfect and metastasized, though it never reached the maniacal extremes witnessed in, say, neighboring Libya.

Ben Ali’s regime was not all bad, however. When the ancient synagogue on Djerba Island was truck-bombed by al-Qaida in April 2002, for instance, the government rushed to express solidarity and to rebuild.

It has been two decades since Huntington accurately assessed Tunisia’s potential for developing a democratic regime. His prediction has come true. It would be a tragedy and a sober lesson about the dangers of democracy if the very democratic process envisioned for Tunisia by Huntington ended up bringing to power an Islamist political party that will use its democratic mandate to roll back the positive reforms implemented under Ben Ali’s autocratic regime.

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Out of Tune in Tunisia:

What’s Really Going on There and Throughout the Arab World

 by Barry Rubin

Pajamas Media, October 28, 2011    
 
Let’s step back, keep an open mind, avoid stereotypes and preconceptions, and ask: What is the current political situation in Tunisia? Simple. The Islamists aren’t ready for the concert. They are just tuning up. Still, they’ve handed out programs so we should know what’s going to be played.

First and foremost, let’s remember that Tunisia is not going to become a radical Islamist state within the next year. The whole revolution in the Islamist revolution is the understanding—learned largely from Turkey—that the movement can operate by stealth, one step at a time, winning elections, taking over institutions, and only emerging fully at the end of that process.

This does not prove they are moderate; it proves that they are smart. And you know what that proves about those gullible enough to be taken in by the trickery.

Remember what happened with Communism. Karl Marx started by proclaiming that the Communists disdained to conceal their aims and the next thing you know they are all wearing costumes labeled “agrarian reformers,” “progressives,” and moderates.

So far I have not seen a single analyst quoted in any “mainstream” publication warning about the Tunisian Islamists possibly not being moderate. The unanimity of opinions, the lack of doubt, and the censoring out of evidence to the contrary is astonishing. We can’t even get a story that says most people say they are okay while others warn that this isn’t true. If  these elements in the Western elite were fish, all anglers wouldn’t need bait, they’d just put a note on the hook saying, “This is not a hook.”

With this kind of start, the fact that the Ennahda party doesn’t start cutting off heads next week will be used by Western governments, experts, and media to “prove” that it’s moderate. And it doesn’t matter if the party’s leader said a few months ago:  “Gaza, like Hanoi in the 1960s and Cuba and Algeria, is the model of freedom today”–(Thanks to Martin Kramer for pointing this out.)–because it was in Arabic and no Western media will report it.

That party received 90 of 217 seats in the assembly, just over 40 percent. Therefore, they are short of a majority. Remember that this is just a one-year body to write a new Constitution and to appoint an interim president and government until the real elections. So the party’s strategy is to get as much as possible but not to scare people. Businesses, foreign aid donors, tourists, and others must be kept calm. All the while, the Islamists will work to elect a president and get a parliamentary majority in the future.

Who will they have to work with in the mean time? The Congress for the Republic (CPR) won 30 seats and the Ettakatol won 21 seats. (I cannot resist the temptation to remark that when the Islamists are through with it, Tunisia will definitely need CPR!) These are leftist parties and Ennahda’s coalition partners.

What does this tell us? On social issues, the Islamists will have to be careful but they can find more common ground with the leftists on economic and foreign policy issues. By building the power of the state and weakening the business sector—which the leftists want—Ennahda lays the basis for its future domination of the society through controlling a strong state.

On foreign policy, the left shares the Islamists’ desire to take a tougher line toward the West and against Israel. In the shorter run, they will not want to antagonize Europe or the United States. But this lays a foundation for a longer-term turn of public opinion against the West and toward other Islamist states. As we saw in Turkey, a stealth Islamist government can turn around public opinion with surprising speed using patriotism and religious fervor.

There’s another hugely important point here: the inability of the anti-Islamist or even non-Islamist parties to unite. The incompetence and divisions among the secular parties in Turkey was a major factor in the Islamists’ triumph. In the Palestinian elections, Fatah candidates ran against each other, split the vote, and ensured the victory of Hamas. In Egypt, three major “liberal” parties are running against each other, ensuring that the Muslim Brotherhood will come in first.

The four main left and liberal parties combined received the same number of seats as the Islamists. Imagine how many they would have won if they could have formed a united front. And, of course, preventing such a front is one of the main incentives for the Islamists to portray themselves as moderates.

As anyone who has ever studied Communism knows, maintaining discipline and ensuring that there is one “party line” is a major reason why anti-democratic political movements can do so well in playing the democratic game.

Now, what party was most militantly anti-Islamist? The Petition for Justice and Development Party, financed by a London-based businessman named Hechmi Haamdi. It gained 19 seats. So this party must be discredited.

How? By charging that it has links to the old regime (which might be true) and disqualifying some of its candidates for “financial irregularities” (which might also be true). But the law can be used disproportionately against the anti-Islamists. Haamdi has since said that his party will withdraw from the assembly which, if true, would strengthen the Islamists’ hand. Another liberal secularist party, the Progressive Democratic Party, came in fourth with 17 seats. Both of the liberal parties refused to join an Islamist-led coalition, which tells you something important about their assessment of “moderate Islamism.”

Watch what happens to the anti-Islamists in Egypt. The Free Egyptians Party, which enjoys Christian support and is running third in the poll, will face serious pressure while the other two “liberal” parties—the opportunistic Wafd and the left-leaning Justice Party—will be invited into a coalition with the Muslim Brotherhood.

Back to Tunisia. Note also that 40 of the 217 seats—more than 20 percent—are held by very small parties or independents. It will be easier for the Islamists to make deals with some of these. Indeed, it could have gone for a majority that way but wisely preferred to remain cautious.

And when the real elections are held the Islamists can also use this technique (as they have in Turkey) by taking non-Islamists onto their election lists or by bribing them with power and money.

The Ennahda party’s leader, Rached Ghannouchi (a really radical Islamist who has disguised himself well enough to fool those who want to be fooled) announced that he is proposing his number-two man, Hamadi Jebali, to be prime minister. This is a smart move since by staying out of direct office, the controversial Ghannouchi signals his supposed moderation and lack of ambition.

This reminds me of something that happened in Turkey. Abdullah Gul, a leader of the Justice and Development Party, played radical “bad cop” compared to then-“good cop” Erdogan. When the party proposed Gul for president a few years ago there was a widespread outcry. What did the Islamists do? Gul said he would not run for president. Then there was a parliamentary election, Justice and Development won, and within hours it named Gul to be president and installed him in that job.

In the meantime, there will be an (“moderate”) Islamist prime minister and an (moderate) Islamist majority in the cabinet. The (moderate) interim minister for religious affairs will, for example, put his movement’s men into key positions and carefully select religious instructors and imams for mosques in tune with the party’s stance.

Perhaps there will be an (moderate) Islamist minister of education reshaping how Tunisians are taught. Maybe there will be an (moderate) Islamist foreign minister, forcing alliances with equivalent governments or an (moderate) Islamist finance minister setting up Islamic banking. What’s important with the banking reform is not so much the lack of interest but the funneling of money into pro-Islamist institutions rather than traditional banks. And so on.

In the 1920s, Joe Stalin took over the boring tasks of administration for the Soviet Communist Party that all the glittering Bolshevik intellectual stars didn’t want.  Soon he controlled everything. In the 1950s Juan Peron took the lowly job of minister of labor. How the other officers in the junta laughed! Until Peron used his power acquired over the trade union to kick them out. More recently we’ve seen what the Islamists did in Turkey, hiring their own people, changing regulations, quietly carrying out fundamental transformation.

And that’s how it works. Revolution in this approach isn’t built in a day. The Islamists are moderate until the moment that they can install radical policies while also keeping public support.  Then the dragon emerges from the egg, spraying fire in all directions.

By the way, here is an interesting first-hand account in an Italian magazine about the al-Qaida flag flying over the courthouse of Benghazi, Libya, and new examples of al-Qaida and terrorist links among Libyan military leaders.  A telling detail: a slogan of the revolution is that only Islam is important, neither east nor west, but this is not a reference to Europe or America but the importance of Islam in uniting a country whose eastern and western region are often at odds. This is another motive for the Libyans to turn toward being an Islamist state. There might not be anything else to unite Libya.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, and Middle East editor and featured columnist at PJMedia http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). GLORIA Center site is http://www.gloria-center.org.His articles published originally outside of PajamasMedia are at

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Israeli Settlements: Back to the Future

by Elliott Abrams

Council on Foreign Relations
 Tuesday, October 25, 2011

According to news reports, the Obama Administration has a new proposal to cope with the issue of construction in Israeli settlements. Israel would “halt the construction of new neighborhoods but could continue building in existing settlements….” The idea is that Israel would refrain from any construction outside current settlement boundaries. If there is construction only within existing settlements, there would be no American condemnations.

If this is a good idea, a decent compromise, one can only wonder why it took the Obama White House nearly three years to get there. For this policy was precisely what the Bush Administration agreed with prime ministers Sharon and Olmert.

In the early months of the Obama Administration, officials flatly denied such a deal had ever existed. In June, 2009 I wrote about this Obama error in the Wall Street Journal.

And error it was: in December 2003, prime minister Sharon stated that “Israel will meet all its obligations with regard to construction in the settlements. There will be no construction beyond the existing construction line….” Had the Obama Administration realized the value of what had been achieved by its predecessors and continued the policy, we would not have endured nearly three years without any Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Nor would the administration have tried instead to impose a total construction freeze, a condition that no Israeli government could meet and that thus created a new and insuperable obstacle to negotiations.

Now, if this news story is true, the administration is moving back to the Bush position. Well, better late than never. But it is likely that the Palestinians will now call such a deal too little too late, and reject it. Perhaps, if  the Palestinian rejection is made very strongly in private, administration spokesmen will deny that any such proposal was ever made. But it ought to be made, because these terms are sensible: as long as there is construction only within built-up areas, there is no harm to Palestinians, no use of additional land, and no additional burden in future negotiations.

It would be nice if administration officials admitted that after nearly three years they had come to understand all of this, but I guess that is asking for too much. It will be quite enough if they abandon their “construction freeze” mania and move to a more practical and realistic view.

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