Furthermore, the global economic downturn has led to a significant increase in the number of disputes in various sectors, and this in turn has provided an impetus behind the need to enhance the procedures applied by the various arbitration centers in the Arab world.

This development is not solely linked to the realities of modern commerce. In fact, the conciliatory approach and the notion of deferring to a neutral and objective personality for a decision, that ultimately underline all forms of ADR, are well steeped in Arabic and Islamic traditions.

There are at least two verses in the Koran that sanction the notion of arbitration and mediation. Furthermore, one of the most famous stories of the Prophet Mohammad’s early life involved him being chosen by feuding tribes, who could not agree on a vital element of the reconstruction of the Ka’aba, to resolve the dispute. The Prophet bridged the gaps between the quarreling parties by suggesting an original solution that was essentially a win-win for all. Other examples of arbitration and mediation abound in Islamic history.

At the outset, let us distinguish between mediation and arbitration. There are a number of differences between those two mechanisms.

Firstly, these methods differ in terms of the role of the appointed third party; in arbitration, an arbitrator is like a judge and his or her decision is final, whereas in mediation, the mediator works to try and bridge the differences between the parties and move them closer a settlement or conciliation. In a sense, mediation is the preferred option when the parties are still attempting to resolve their differences in a way that would allow them to continue their working relationship; whereas, arbitration is usually sought in order to reach a final determination on the overall dispute at the end of the relationship.

Secondly, the authority of an arbitrator is much wider than that of the mediator.

Thirdly, there are differences in terms of time limits, and venue considerations, between the two methods. In essence, arbitration is an attempt to replicate the judicial process but in a manner that is more specialized and streamlined. Mediation is a process whereby the parties agree to nominate a third party who would be tasked with trying to find common ground between the parties and resolve their differences, usually through the organization of meetings which are of a rather informal nature, at least in comparison with arbitration proceedings.

Finally, one of the main advantages of mediation is that it is far less costly than arbitration. In fact, it can be said that the costs of arbitration are its Achilles heel.

***

One of the most significant trends is the adoption of laws that deal specifically with mediation. In Jordan, the Law on Mediation for the Resolution of Civil Disputes was adopted in 2006. The law organizes the process of judicial mediation that takes place at the Court of First Instance. In accordance with Article 3 of the said law, the presiding judge may, upon the agreement of the parties or further to their request, refer the dispute to a mediating judge or a private mediator for the purposes of amicable resolution of the dispute. The mediator is then obliged by law to complete the mediation process within three months of the date on which the dispute was referred to him or her.

A similar development has taken place in the Emirate of Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. By virtue of Dubai’s Law No. 16 of 2009, a Mediation Centre was established. The Mediation Centre will be annexed to Dubai’s Courts. The Centre is entrusted to review types of disputes that are defined by its Chairman. Disputes will be reviewed and amicably resolved through a number of experts, under the supervision, of the concerned judge, within a period that would not exceed one month from the date of the attendance of the parties before the judge.

The creation of such centers in Jordan and the UAE, as well as the existence of various mediation mechanisms through international organizations such the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Arbitration Centre, is likely to lead to a surge in the use of mediation as a method for the amicable resolution of disputes. This would be a welcome development, as it would entail the effective resolution of so many disputes in a conciliatory and timely manner, well before the matter escalates to reach a court room or an arbitration panel.

As for arbitration, we have also seen a number of positive trends in this regard in the Arab world. On the one hand, the trend towards the effective adoption of the New York Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards (New York Arbitration Convention) has solidified. The New York Arbitration Convention mainly enshrines the principle that a properly made arbitration award in one member country must be binding and enforceable in another member country, unless the award can be rejected on the basis of certain grounds for refusal of enforcement, which are narrowly defined in the Convention. The Convention also confirms the principle that if a court is presented with a dispute which the parties had agreed to refer to arbitration, then the court must refer the matter to arbitration upon the request of one of the parties.

Historically, the rate of adoption of the New York Arbitration Convention in the Arab world has been good. Jordan was amongst the first countries to adopt the Convention, which came into effect in 1959. Almost all Arab countries have since joined, with Kuwait joining in 1978, Saudi Arabia in 1994 and, more recently, the United Arab Emirates in 2006.

The challenge is to ensure that the exceptions that would allow a member country to refuse the enforcement of an arbitral award are applied in a strict and narrow manner. Under Article V(2)(b) of the Convention, the enforcement of an arbitral award may be refused if “the recognition or enforcement of the award would be contrary to the public policy of that country.” The parameters of what a country regards as “public policy” can be wide. In Saudi Arabia, an arbitration agreement or award is respected provided that it is not contrary to the principles of Shari’a law. Such a limitation falls within the “public policy” exception, but the key lies in the way such an exception is applied.

In the UAE, Articles 235 and 236 of the Civil Procedures Law (Federal Law No. 11 of 1992) confirm the principle that foreign arbitral awards will be enforced in the country, provided a number of conditions are met. These include procedural issues such as the proper notification and representation of the parties before the arbitral tribunal that issues the decision in the foreign country. Also, UAE courts may refuse the enforcement of a foreign arbitral award if it contradicts a previous judgment already issued by a UAE court or if it includes elements that “contradict public policy or morals.”

***

While in the past “public policy” exceptions have been defined in a wide manner that allowed courts to reject a number of foreign arbitration awards in various Arab countries, there is a discernible trend towards limiting the use of this exception, and applying it only in clear cases of contravention of the country’s moral or public policies.

Furthermore, in the recent past, various Arab countries have upgraded their arbitration laws to be in line with international best practices. This is evidenced by the increasing use of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) Model Law on International Commercial Arbitration. This model law was drafted by the UNCITRAL with a view to assisting countries that seek to improve their laws in such a way as to ensure the best possible procedures for commercial arbitration.

For example, Egypt adopted Law No. 27 in 1994, the Commercial Arbitration Law, which is based on the UNCITRAL Model Law. This aimed to enhance arbitrations procedures and resolve complications that arose under the provisions that dealt with arbitrations in the Egyptian Code of Civil and Commercial Procedures and provide a law dedicated to arbitration. Also, in 1994, Bahrain adopted a new international arbitration law (Decree no. 9/1994) that was based on the UNCITRAL Model Law. In 2008, Syria issued an arbitration law that is based on the Model Law as well.

The UAE is also presently considering a new Federal arbitration law and it is widely reported that the new law would be based on the UNCITRAL Model Law. Once enacted, the new Federal arbitration Law will replace the existing provisions in the Civil Procedures Law.

Finally, there is no greater proof of the growing popularity and importance of arbitration than the increasing use of existing arbitration centers in the region, and the founding of new centers. The Dubai International Arbitration Center (DIAC), whose rules are UNCITRAL based, has proven to be an excellent success. The number of cases that the DIAC is handling has been growing at a very impressive rate. According to one report, while the number of new cases with the DIAC in 2008 was 100, there had been 180 new cases registered with DIAC by August 2009. The Cairo Regional Center for International Commercial Arbitration, which was established in 1979, continues to be a great success.

Earlier in January, Bahrain announced the launch of Bahrain Chamber of Dispute Resolution, in partnership with the American Arbitration Association. It is reported that the Chamber will operate what is being called an “arbitration free zone.”

***

In conclusion, various Arab countries have engaged in an active process of upgrading their arbitration laws and those dealing with other alternative dispute resolution mechanisms. Arab arbitration centers are growing in significance, as more parties resort to the use of their services. These important developments can only serve to facilitate the infrastructure supporting international commercial contracts in the Arab world and, in turn, this will have very positive effects on investment and business growth in our region.

Jordan and Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994, they maintain diplomatic relations, and even before the peace treaties, relations between the governments of Jordan and Israel were friendly. As far as Iraq is concerned, it is true that historically, Saddam’s Iraq had been in conflict with Israel. Iraq also supported the Palestinian resistance movements financially and politically. But since that time, and especially after 2003, Iraq has been too occupied with its own problems to have an actual conflict with Israel.

Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain and UAE don’t enjoy formal diplomatic relations with Israel, but neither have they engaged in actual conflict. The practical life of the average citizen in any of those countries is not in the slightest impacted by Israel (or vice versa). The only other countries in the Middle East that have a palpable problem with Israel today are Lebanon and Syria. On any average day, the life of a Lebanese or a Syrian is nowhere impacted by Israel, though. Existentially, it is the Palestinian’s day-to-day life, particularly in the West Bank and Gaza, that is made unnecessarily so much more difficult, if not unbearable, by the Jewish State.

Referring to this situation as the “Middle East Conflict” exaggerates the scope of the conflict, making it appear that twelve countries are at war with Israel, though only three are involved, and at best partially. The term works to draw sympathy towards the Jewish State, a lone country surrounded by hostile Arabs, where in reality Israel wields so much power that it can choose to bomb sites in other sovereign countries like it did in Iraq in 1982, and Syria in 2008, actions that amount to acts of war, without seemingly worrying about reprisals.

Naming it the “Middle East Conflict” has the added effect of diluting the Palestinians’ stake in the discord, the specificity of their suffering, and the uniqueness of their plight to protect their precarious identity.

The term “Arab Israeli Conflict” is also misleading. Again, it serves the purpose of exaggerating the discord, insinuating that all of the Arabs are out to get Israel. There are 350 million people defined as Arab. While most of them, just like many other citizens in the world, may oppose Israel because of its human rights abuses and violations of International Law, not a mere 2% of them are “officially” in conflict with Israel.

To the surprise of many in the U.S., many Jews are Arab themselves, including Egyptian, Iraqi, Yamani, Moroccan, Lebanese, Syrian and Tunisian. These Arab Jews, known as Mizrahi, mostly live in Israel today, while some also live in the U.S., some still in Syria, and many in Morocco. These Arabs are definitely not in conflict with Israel. In Israel, they have full rights, unlike the non-Jewish, Palestinian citizens of Israel.

According to Ella Habiba Shohat, an Iraqi Jew and Professor of Cultural Studies and Women’s Studies at New York University, the story of Israel and Jews only takes the European narrative into consideration, most notably the Holocaust, and assumes it for the collective memory and experience of all Jews. This story excludes the experience of Arab Jews.

Mizrahis spoke more Arabic than Yiddish, ate and looked more like Middle Easterners than Europeans, and were immersed in some of the Arab traditions. They had more in common with Muslim and Christian Arabs than with Polish or German Jews. Mizrahis largely lived in harmony (though there were times of tension) with the non-Jewish Arab communities, contrary to what some Israelis would have us believe.

According to Shohat,

“In Egypt, Morocco, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Tunisia, Jews became members of legislatures, of municipal councils, of the judiciary, and even occupied high economic positions. (The finance minister of Iraq in the ’40s was Ishak Sasson, and in Egypt, Jamas Sanua–higher positions, ironically, than those our community had generally achieved within the Jewish state until the 1990s!)”

The different communities that once co-existed were not so consumed by their religious affiliations.

Terming the Palestinian-Israeli conflict an “Arab Israeli conflict” unnecessarily invites more people to join, politicizes and segregates people further, and emphasizes our differences instead of our similarities. It pushes us to identify ourselves in terms of binarism, us versus them, good versus evil (how good and evil are determined is another story), instead of acknowledging that we are the same people and that we all demand to be treated with respect and dignity.

What if Christian Arabs formed a state and called it “X,” brought European Christians to live in it and suppressed the indigenous non-Christian population in that state? Would they call the ensuing conflict the Arab-X conflict?

Again, this naming serves to obfuscate the idea of a Palestinian identity. The main distinguishing factor is whether a citizen in Israel is Jewish or not, not if he or she is Arab or not, just as in the example of the Iraqi, Yemeni and Egyptian Jew living in Israel. The whole burden of this racist design falls crushingly on the shoulder of the Palestinian. The “Arab-Israeli” is none other than a Palestinian, hence he or she should be called a Palestinian-Israeli. Similar to the Palestinian living in Israel proper, the one in Gaza and the West Bank happens to be a Muslim or a Christian, not a Jew. Hence, the Palestinian feels the wrath of the Israeli suppression machine.

At the core of it, this conflict is about a universal fight for human rights and social justice, an oppressed-versus-oppressor conflict. This is the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

The key messages of the report are as follows. Education is at the crossroads for the future of MENA. It plays crucial role in promoting poverty alleviation and economic growth, both at national and household levels. Various stakeholders in the region regard education as their most important development challenge, and education reform is on top of the reform agenda of many regional governments.

Having succeeded in expanding the education systems to include most eligible children, boys and girls, the MENA region is now ready to travel a new road. While the exact configuration of this new road will not be the same for each country, all countries, irrespective of their initial conditions, will require a shift from “engineering inputs” to “engineering for results”, along with a combination of incentives and public accountability measures, as well as measures to improve labor market outcomes.

Finally, labor market reforms will need to be implemented hand in hand with those for the education system proper. In the case of MENA, the relevant labor market extends much farther than the confines of any country or even the region because of important migration trends and opportunities.

The report is 399-page long and is starting to stimulate quite a bit of discussions, in particular in the countries members of Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). Public authorities are reviewing the details and assessing which analyses and recommendations are relevant to their own country.

Probably the best feature of this report on education is precisely that it is not (uniquely) about education, its own internal debates and inward-looking theories.

Granted, GCC countries have achieved a tremendous growth over the past thirty years. And their transformations do not seem to slow down. It is actually hard to think of a field in which nothing has been attempted: science, media, transport, education, art, sport, infrastructure, trade, e-government, the world is hearing from projects popping out from the western side of the Persian Gulf – a palm-shaped man-made island, a one-kilometer high tower, the Louvre, a couple of Formula One Grand Prix, English Premier League teams, television networks challenging CNN, local branches of top-tier universities and research centers. We cannot wait for the Football World Cup, the Olympic Games (at least the summer Olympic Games to start with), a landing on the moon…

This accumulation has been made possible by two fundamental God-sent gifts. The first one is obviously fossil fuel reserves. Albeit at various levels, the GCC countries have had access to cheap and abundant oil and gas. The second aspect is the peace and stability that the GCC countries have enjoyed.

Now, at the risk of spoiling the fun, two issues would need highlighting.

First, the rapid stockpiling of material assets biases the focus of life away from culture and heritage. While religion plays a central role in the societies of the Gulf and in spite of the many public initiatives such as festivals, competitions and museums, people do not seem to be genuinely interested in high culture or art.

Think about fine arts in everyday life in the main capitals of the Gulf – sculpture, painting, literature, theatre, music, dance, photography, filmmaking – and it is fair to say that they are not often the main topics of interest. The occasional buzz occurs (Paris Hilton in Dubai) but even the most educated people do not seem to have a deep interest in art. If it can be used as anecdotal evidence, compare the Friday edition of the local newspapers to the Sunday issue of any European newspaper. Locally, art attracts almost no attention.

This is not to say that endless passionate debates on the latest modern art exhibition, a new novel or an art-house film are the only signs of development, but simply that exposure to culture is a source of positive inspiration. It gives a meaning to societies and personal lives.

The second missing element in the GCC landscape is a collective memory of entrepreneurship, innovation and business initiative. The history of the Gulf is filled with great traders but the current development phase has principally been about the management of an immense rent and its distribution to populations who wanted to import A/C, cars, televisions, etc.

Compared with Europe in the 19th century and many other countries around the world in the first half of the 20th century, the Gulf has not yet accumulated any significant long term industrial experience. Harvard professor and development specialist Alice Amsden argues that:

“On the eve of decolonization, manufacturing experience was greatest in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, China, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, India, Indonesia, Taiwan, Thailand and Turkey. […] While not every country with prewar manufacturing experience succeeded, no country without it could create a diversity of advanced industries in the half-century after World War II.”

Only time and continuous effort can create the required experienced elite class with large cohorts of entrepreneurs, managers, engineers, lawyers and accountants.

While experience is indeed needed, there is one prerequisite: education is the absolute requirement for society to develop peacefully. There is probably no need to reiterate the importance of knowledge acquisition – awareness is actually quite high in this area – but it seems that the public attention regarding education is crystallized on a flawed debate.

Most of what we hear or read is about the inadequacy of rote-learning and other old-fashioned methodologies. It is as if children where going to learn mathematics through a series of modern, cool student-centered learning by doing. The time has perhaps come to go over this debate, which in any case will never be closed, and reorient the education strategy towards what is missing in the region. Not enough is done to inculcate the love of art and culture and not much is even attempted to foster a culture of innovation, research and entrepreneurship.

If that is what the GCC lacks, it is more than urgent that significant resources, efforts and commitments are aligned with the real challenges of the region. The Road Not Traveled? Indeed. And the journey is going to be long…

Olivier Renard is an advisor at the Secretariat General of the Research Council of the Sultanate of Oman.

Jonathan Mok: How should the Netanyahu speech be interpreted?

Nigel Ashton: Beyond uttering the words ‘Palestinian state’ Netanyahu has not yet conceded the creation of an entity which would have genuine sovereignty. His concept of ‘demilitarisation’ is so wide ranging that any Palestinian state created under it could not be deemed to have full control over its territory and would therefore not be sovereign. Nevertheless, he has at least conceded that peace negotiations cannot proceed on the basis of his opening position which amounted to little more than a form of economic autonomy. So there has at least been some movement in his position even if so far this is limited.

JM: It appears that the Arab world has been silent in response to Bibi’s speech. How do you perceive the apparent lack of interest?

NA: I think Arab leaders are allowing the United States to make the running at present in negotiations with Israel. The Arab peace plan is on the table and I am sure that if genuine negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians resumed Egypt and Jordan would be prepared to play their part in supporting the process.

JM: What do you think about Israel’s continuing exclusion of Hamas in peace negotiations?

NA: For nearly three decades, Israel refused to deal with the PLO and termed it a terrorist organisation. Eventually it did negotiate with the organisation so these things are not set in stone. Having said that, negotiations for a final settlement with Israel as opposed to a truce would effectively contravene the Hamas charter so there would have to be considerable movement on both sides before it would be possible to bring Hamas within the framework of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Even before we can reach that stage, though, means have to be found of repairing the Fatah-Hamas schism which will be a considerable challenge.

JM: Some of the demands in the speech have been listed by other Israeli leaders, including Olmert, Sharon and Peres. The demands include Jerusalem as the permanent capital of Israel and Palestinian abandonment of the right of return. Would it be wise for Abbas to agree with the demands in order to speed up the peace negotiations with Israel?

NA: I think Netanyahu would be astounded if Abbas agreed to these conditions, particularly those in relation to Jerusalem and the right of return. They are aimed at Netanyahu’s domestic constituency and not at the Palestinian leadership. If serious negotiations begin, these issues will inevitably have to be addressed. There is no way the Palestinian leadership can be expected to concede them in advance.

JM: With the growing divide between the United States and Israel, what will be the role of other negotation partners, such as the EU?

NA: The role of other negotiating partners will continue to be insignificant. I don’t perceive a growing US-Israeli divide. What we have is an administration which for the first time in a decade is taking the question of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seriously. It’s inevitable when that happens that it will tend to put pressure on Israel to shift its position. That’s what has happened during previous phases of negotiation, most notably during Clinton’s second term in the late 1990s.

JM: Finally, how likely is it that there will there be an indepenent Palestinian state under the Obama administration?

NA: The obstacles are considerable. It will need a remarkably favourable combination of circumstances for this to happen within the next eight years, never mind four. History does not lead one to be optimistic since this conflict has proven remarkably intractable. The best one can say is that there is more of a window of opportunity now than there has been at any point during the last decade.

The area where few dare to tread is the concept of cost/waste reduction as a means of enhancing revenues or making each Dinar count. Divining cost saving methods requires relevant experience* and hard work. It does not lend itself to slogans and is not particularly glamorous. One remembers the decision of the Water Authority to fix leaking pipes throughout the city of Amman. It was estimated that fixing the pipes is tantamount to increasing the water supply by 30%!

What is required today is a handyman with cross jurisdictional ministerial authority to do the fixing wherever it is required.

A glaring example of a leakage of efficiency is the way the Ministry of Health manages its procurement policy and structures its services contracts. An investigation uncovered that the ministry has a General Supplies Department (GSD), which buys items for all the hospitals in bulk – acquiring anything from nails to equipment to meats and vegetables.

Those items are purchased by the GSD, then stored in GSD’S warehouses and cold stores, then issued, and transported to hospitals where they are stored and issued according to requirements. One can see that items are stored twice and transported twice. It is a rule of thumb that items of perishable nature lose 10% of their freshness when they are transported 10% more when they are stored and 2.50% more are pilfered due to double handling. Let’s call this the 1st Leakage.

Furthermore, GSD, much like the State Trading Agencies of a neighboring country, are famously inaccurate and inefficient in determining or meeting the needs of markets, or hospitals in this context. So, they may over-order or under-order. This is the 2nd Leakage.

Store keepers and transporters are paid employees and even with the best of intentions will not safekeep, handle and transport these itmes as if their life depended on it. This is the 3rd Leakage.

The solution to these leakages is a change of philosophy.

What does that mean?

First, we need to outsource all ancillary services to specialists in catering, housekeeping, janitorial, landscaping and maintenance services. To illustrate the importance of this shift in approach, examine the way the ministry deals with catering services:

The food is supplied to the hospital through the GSD. There may be shortages or overages because of central purchasing as mentioned before. The labor supply contracts, which MOH gives out, are drafted to be mostly concerned with the number of personnel /quantity of laborers on the job at any point of time. No serious consideration is given to the quality or quantity of food served to patients or staff (remember, freshness of food and adequacy of quantity are not the responsibility of the labor supplier).

To rectify this situation, new contracts may be drafted where the caterer is responsible for providing the food items and for serving meals according to a set menu, with measurable quantities in a hygienic and timely manner, and at a fixed price. If the job is even done by two monkeys and a guard, and all is well , who cares?

The advantages of this switch in tactic are plenty:

1. Quantity and quality are controlled by supervisors. Penalties are applied for non performance.

2. Food ordered will NOT be more than required as the caterer’s profit and loss depend on it.

3. Food is purchased, transported and stored only once.

4. Storekeepers are audited by the way they organize their inventory– FIFO (meaning that the oldest items are sold first, and not left to deteriorate) and cleanliness rule. Their jobs depend on this.

Similar contracts can be drafted for maintenance, janitorial and housekeeping fields, where performance and not body count are the true measures of contract execution. Outsourcing those services to specialists allows both cost reduction and better performance. If MOH’S hospitals suffer due to high costs or low performance, the answer is here. Not to mention the fact that outsourcing allows MOH to concentrate on its core business: Staffing the hospitals with the best doctors and nurses for the job.

Saving money means writing new contracts with new specifications and finding different ways of supervising those contracts. It may also mean eliminating or reducing the task of GSD. It involves a change in philosophy where the emphasis is on quality and not quantity. However, it is the critical area to focus on today. I don’t believe there should be a debate on that.

Note:* A person with relevant experience is someone who, while educated in the West, has acquired his experience in the East, in the area of life support services. Particularly, this would be someone familiar with the way things are done in Saudi Arabia, where ancillary services have been outsourced with a large measure of success for the past 30 years.

Alright, some of you out there will point out that a similar election exists in Iraq. But we must say that there aren’t many in the Arab world who are ready to sing the praises of a fragile democracy that literally came on the backs of hundreds of thousands of lost innocent lives, not to mention that the war in question was brought about by a certain W, whom the world is desperate to consign to the dark corners of the brain’s memory.

On the other hand, there are the details of the Lebanese elections. And in so many of those details Arabs cannot help but find signs of concern.

There is concern that the Arabs are perhaps historically and genetically unsuited to liberal democracy. While it is common to have long-lasting political dynasties in places as far and wide as Argentina, the US and India, the Lebanese have taken the art of political succession to new heights or, more accurately, unparalleled lows!

We are not talking here about one or two political dynasties. In Lebanon, it seems that a large number of the seats in Parliament have turned into family fiefdoms. Father passes on the mantle to the son, or the son to the brother, or the husband to the wife, and on and on. And we cannot help but marvel at how the Lebanese electorate is so ready to align its support in line with wherever the movement of genes takes them.

It has to be acknowledged that many of the political acts of inheritance were brought about after spates of assassinations that have marked Lebanese history since the 1950s. While the human angle to these tragedies is heartbreaking and must be condemned in the clearest terms, it should not serve as a justification for the persistence of a monarchical form of democracy. In fact, it can even be argued that a system that honours legacy over principle is the worst form of memorial for those who gave their lives for Lebanon.

Let us survey some of the leading illustrations of this democratic system of neo-feudalism:

Obviously, world famous Saad Al Hariri has inherited both the business and political leadership of the Lebanese version of Camelot. He controls the 14 March coalition, currently holding the majority of the outgoing parliament. As for the Phalangist party, also members of the 14 March coalition, political powers have been passed on vertically, horizontally and in every other possible direction. First cousins Sami Gmayel and Nadim Gmayel, both sons of former presidents, are running in Matein district and Beirut’s first district respectively. Not to mention that Sami’s father, Amine, is still the leader of the Phalangist party. After a long successful career as university students, supporters and friends, not to mention relatives, have unanimously agreed that the time for Sami and Nadim to bring change to Lebanon has come.

Without any doubt, the star of the 2009 elections is Nayla Tueini, the political child prodigy par excellence. Nayla, 26, is crowning a long and memorable 2-year career as a journalist by running the leading newspaper in Lebanon and by running to succeed her father in Beirut’s first district. If successful, she can look forward to sharing a cozy family experience in Parliament with fellow candidate and grandfather, Michel Al Mur (running in Matein district), and uncle Marwan Hamade, running in El Chouf district.

This political inheritance business is not limited to the forces of the March 14 majority, as it applies in equal measure throughout the list of candidates of the Opposition Alliance. Names such as Suleiman Frangieh (Zgharta), Omar Karami (Tripoli), Ahmad Karami (Tripoli), Raafat Ali Eid (Tripoli), Karim Al Rassi (Akkar), Prince Talal Ursulan (Aley) and Maarouf Saad (Saida) come to mind, all having inherited their political power and right to run from their families. As for Ghassan Rahbani (Matein), he is practicing the arts of asymmetrical political succession. For his authority does not stem from family members long steeped in the world of politics, but from the sound of music.

The list goes on and on. There are no guns or tanks on the streets that impose these hereditary choices on the people of Lebanon. And it is there that the heart of the deadlock lies. The people are voting, with a free will, for representatives on the basis of name and rights of succession.

However, it must also be said that the system in Lebanon has encouraged the perpetuation of such narrow choices. The electoral system, adopted in the Doha Agreement of 2008, served to limit the districts along narrower family and communal lines.

Any observer of the Lebanese political scene would agree that it seems rather utopian to foresee any change of the current status quo in the near future. In fact, any call for a white revolution à la Obama would most likely be labeled as unrealistic or naïve.

Yet history has proven that change will come as soon people will want change. Voices calling for independent choices in Lebanon have always existed. One could only hope that our cynicism will be swept away by 2013.

Mixing henna for a bride Beit Sahour, West Bank. It's traditional for the women of a village to gather for an evening of dancing, singing, and henna mixing to wish the bride well the night before her wedding.

The majority of Palestinians living in the occupied territories are young people who have spent their lives in the shadow of a war from their great-grandparents’ generation. For Palestinians, it is not simply a matter of one, singular event that drives their situation. Palestinians mark time on an altogether unique clock; major political events designate their experience in a general sense, but for each person there are smaller and more personal events that mark each family’s own timetable.

To better understand the complexity of the term “aftermath” when applied to Palestinians, here is a general rundown on the Palestinian population: First there is the post-1948 population, those who originated in the region that is now the state of Israel. Many fled as refugees to southern Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and what is now called the West Bank. Then there is the post-1967 population (which contains a large portion of the post-1948 population) that originated in the West Bank but became a mass of internal refugees during the Six Days War of 1967, as well as a population dispersed in refugee camps in Jordan and many other countries. Although separated by two decades, these two events mark the mainelements of the Palestinian Diaspora.

In the summer of 2007, I spent five weeks extensively traveling throughout the West Bank in order to photograph the daily life of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation.

Hand stands in Hebron. The city of Hebron, the oldest city in the West Bank and home to the tomb of Abraham, used to host a thriving tourist industry and economy. Since the infiltration of radical Zionist settlers, the city resembles a cross between a ghost town and a police state. These children were so excited at the site of a westerner that they performed minor acrobatics for almost thirty minutes.

As a Palestinian American, it was important to me to be able to document all aspects of Palestinian life, from the oppression and destruction, to the domestic and mundane, to the celebratory and joyful. All too often, in the United States, the only images of Palestine and Palestinians that Americans are shown are inaccurate depictions of Palestinians as uniformly violent and angry.

The reality in fact is that Palestinians are predominantly non-violent and surprisingly tenacious given the circumstances of their lives. However, this side of their story is not often depicted in mainstream media.

Despite severe human rights violations, economic strangulation, and the slow and systematic ethnic cleansing of native Palestinians from their lands, beauty still lives in occupied Palestine. The people themselves are a testament to willpower in the face of injustice, as they have developed exceptional coping mechanisms in order to survive their circumstances.

Portrait of Bassam, with this daughter Abir, who would have been this tall. Bassam stands in the village school yard, not far from where Abir was shot in the head and killed by Israeli soldier's while walking home from school. This photograph was taken about 4 months after Abir's death. The Israeli Apartheid Wall looms in the background as a reminder of Israeli dominance.

My intent in documenting Palestinian survival is to educate people on the consequences of spontaneous and unresolved wars. I want people to understand that although the wars of 1948 and 1967 are long over, Palestinians live in a continual and latent state of post-traumatic stress.

I furthermore want the beauty, complexity and perseverance of these people to be just as attention-worthy as their mistakes and their often violent deaths.

It is my hope that through this photographic education project there will be stronger international support for the creation of a Palestinian state, so that we can finally allow these people to stop living in an aftermath society, and start living anew in a nation of their own making.

File this one under Diplomatic Pipedream: “As a result of the recent Israeli elections, the West will boycott the rejectionist, quasi-racist new government of Binyamin Netanyahu and cripple the economy with punitive sanctions – just as it did with Hamas in 2006.”

Some hope this is. The appointment of Israel’s new Prime Minister hardly raised an eyebrow in Washington, despite his stated distaste for the idea of a Palestinian state on Israel’s side of the River Jordan, his torpedoing of the Oslo Accords in the 1990s and his belief that the savage bombing campaigns in Lebanon in 2006 and in Gaza this year represented the worst of lily-livered liberalism. Even support from Avigdor Lieberman, a settler-dwelling immigrant from Moldova who would rather there be no Palestinians in Israel, and no state to house them in either, has yet to provoke a diplomatic question mark.

Compare that with Hamas’s victory in Palestine three years before, which was regarded as nothing short of genocide in the making. The free and fair elections – at the height of the neo-con drive for liberal democracies in Iraq and Afghanistan, remember – were instantly delegitimised, the new government ostracised and more than four million people subject to a repressive economic blockade that came on top of an already crippling occupation.

The treatment of Hamas from January 2006 is a study in Western hypocrisy. In elections described as “honest, fair, and safe” by monitor Jimmy Carter, Hamas won 76 of 132 available seats in the Palestinian Authority’s parliament. And while the ruling Fatah party immediately resigned, Hamas extended a conciliatory hand and immediately agreed to work with President Mahmoud Abbas in a unity government. But Condoleezza Rice, American Secretary of State, confirmed that the US wouldn’t work with the new authority, and with the EU cowering behind, all institutional aid to the PA was frozen on April 7th. Israel also proceeded to withhold all tax revenues from the Occupied Territories. The figure exceeded $1 billion.

The reasons for the boycott were laid down by the Quartet: Hamas must renounce violence, recognise Israel and abide by the terms of past agreements – even though a letter from new Prime Minister Ismail Haniya to George Bush expressing Hamas’s willingness to accept a Palestinian state on 1967 borders didn’t even merit a response.

Of course, the West makes no such demands of Israel, a state that uses overwhelming violence to enforce a 40-plus year occupation as well as devastate neighbouring countries, has continued to block Palestinian self-determination while colonising more of its land, and that has decisively ripped apart the Oslo Accords in 15 years of intransigence.

Hamas motives, it seems, were more of a problem than Israel’s actions.

In what became the ultimate self-fulfilling prophecy, Gaza slipped into open civil war. When that spilled into rocket fire across the border, Israel responded with air raids that killed over 1,300 Palestinians, the overwhelming majority civilians.

As campaign poster, the January onslaught still proved insufficient for Tzipi Livni’s Kadima party, and Binyamin Netanyahu strode into power on the back of the biggest rightward shift in Israeli politics in a generation. And, true to form, the man who ran Israel between 1996 and 1998 and constantly rewrote the “bad” Oslo Accords to postpone withdrawals to less than 13 per cent of the agreed total and accelerate settlement activity – not least the massive Har Homa project in East Jerusalem – has already been setting out policies that seem to permanently postpone a Palestinian state.

At the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organisations in February, he openly stated he was putting “the surrender of land” to the Palestinian Authority “on hold”. He then added that it was “too early” to talk about a sovereign Palestinian Arab state and, in an interview with Haaretz, promised he would expand settlement activity in the West Bank.

In addition to his aggressive stance on Iran, it’s clear that he fulfils the Quartet’s anti-Hamas trifecta. He refuses to renounce violence, he refuses to accept a sovereign Palestine and refuses to abide by the commitments of Oslo – of Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert.

We look forward to an instant freeze in the $8 billion aid package any day now. No?

Dan Shvartsman: What are the big themes you take out of the Gaza conflict, and the initial days of the aftermath?

Dr. Bruce Maddy-Weitzman: This latest round is over. Just the way the (2nd) Lebanon War ended in summer of 2006, and since then the ceasefire has held almost perfectly, so too in this case I think that it’s fairly likely that we won’t see another round like we just saw any time soon.

What did each side achieve from this? Israel went into this determined not only to end the rocket fire, but to also change the “rules of the game”. That “Hamas shoots rockets, we shoot back,” and this tit-for-tat doesn’t change Hamas’s behavior. Beyond that, I think there was also a general desire for Israel to strengthen its deterrent posture. There was a feeling here that Israel’s deterrent posture over the last years has weakened.

I think a central goal of this operation was to send a clear message to the rest of the region and the world that it wasn’t going to allow an Iranian client-state to develop on its borders.

Hamas turned out to be far weaker than anticipated. In that regard, Israel has significantly improved its deterrent posture. It’s not just that they hit them hard, but also the incorporation of the diplomatic elements. At least on paper, the support for a change in the strategic parameters governing the Gaza area, the support for Israel’s desires is considerable. The French are patrolling off the shores of Gaza, the Americans signed a memorandum of understanding, they’re training Egyptian troops dealing with smuggling, they’re talking about interdicting Iranian ships in the Gulf of Aden.

The Egyptian participation in this sort of Western framework is a gain for Israel as well. It remains to be seen whether this framework will have real teeth and do what it’s supposed to do. So from that regard, one can say that Israel’s achievements in this operation were considerable.

They came at costs, obviously. Israel’s image has been damaged to a considerable extent among public opinion. There’s no question that more hate towards Israel will have been generated by this operation, which doesn’t bode well if you talk about the need for a long-term reconciliation.

You can even suggest the possibility that radical forces might become even stronger, particularly among Palestinians; there’s a possibility of splintering off from Hamas to represent even more Islamist, jihadi, Bin Laden-type radical views, which would make Hamas look like a positively moderate force in comparison.

Dan: How does Hamas come out of this?

Dr. Maddy-Weitzman: Hamas has always had a number of different viewpoints within it. Not in ideological terms, on that they’re united. In terms of how one achieves their goals, there have been different trends. One can point to pragmatic kinds of thinking, adapting to particular circumstances.

It’s clear that there were sharp differences of opinion within Hamas over the decision to tear up the ceasefire and goad Israel into an attack, which Hamas believed was going to be beneficial – that an improved set of arrangements would be established. Clearly, that wasn’t the case; they paid a horrific price.

Hamas is likely to demonstrate a greater degree of pragmatism, to seek accommodations, to present some kind of common front with Mahmoud Abbas, so that they can then move on and say, “this is how we’re going to deal with the opening of the crossing points, the passages to ease the siege.” This is an immediate issue for Hamas, so they can engage in reconstruction, and get legitimized as an interlocutor by the international community.

It is possible that they will achieve that over time, that more and more we’ll hear voices in the West: “You need to engage in dialogue. They’re an important force. You can’t just ignore them. You have to find ways.” And that’s a double-edged sword. By Hamas engaging, they may have to modify their behavior in ways which eventually threaten to clash with their principles. On the other hand, it means that they may be getting legitimized in a way that’s to their benefit, without them giving things up.

Dan: In the whole region, a lot of interesting things came up. What’s the significance of Syria’s statements in light of the indirect negotiations with Israel before the war?

Dr. Maddy-Weitzman: I was thinking about that too. On the face of it, a Syrian-Israeli agreement is much easier to achieve than a Palestinian-Israeli agreement. It’s straightforward, you deal with sovereign countries; it’s not an existential matter, per se. It’s not an inter-communal conflict on core ideological matters.

But Bashar Assad, I think, is going to be reluctant to pay the price that he has to pay for a peace treaty, which is shifting his alliance orientation: moving out of the Iranian radical camp and moving into the Western camp. I don’t think he wants to do that, I think he wants to have both: to maintain his connections with Palestinian and Lebanese forces, to maintain his connections with Iran, and to have better ties with the West, and he was trying to work through Turkey to get that.

But his militancy on these matters is very off-putting. I think it’s probably less likely also that the new Israeli government will want to pick up where the Olmert government left off. So I think we’ll probably again see a hiatus in the Israeli-Syrian track. Especially since the Turkish President has gone and alienated the Israeli political class with his behavior.

Dan: And that’s another country interesting effect of the war, Turkey’s sudden change of heart on Israel. Do you view that as a serious blow to the relationship?

Dr. Maddy-Weitzman: It’s problematic. The Israeli-Turkish relationship is based on common strategic interests. The forces in Turkey that are the guardians of those strategic interests are still there.

Politically, of course, the elected leadership is an Islamist party and an Islamist government, which has a different set of considerations. And certainly a significant segment of public opinion in Turkey identified strongly with the Palestinians and is very hostile towards Israel, and we saw that during the war. This is a cause for concern. Turkey’s stance is going to be watched very, very closely.

But in any case, it’s not at all clear that the new Israeli government will give the Syrian-Israeli track a priority. I’m not so sure the Americans are going to be so keen on renewing that track either, even though there’s been a lot of advice in Washington that’s said, “go for the Syrian-Israeli track right away, because it’s more doable.” Well, I’m not sure it is.

Dan: Are you not sure because of the new Gaza conflict and the issues that were raised now? Or do you think it was the same before?

Dr. Maddy-Weitzman: I was skeptical before. I’m more skeptical now. And I think because the Israeli government is about to change, that also is going to play a role here.

Now, if the Americans do get clear signals from the Syrians that they want to play, that they want this to go forward, which is very possible…everybody’s waiting for Obama. Bashar Assad’s going to want to find out where does Obama stand on this. And if he does send the appropriate signals, that will get America’s attention. And that in turn will get Israel’s attention.

Dan: What’s the significance on a broader scale that Israel, even before the war, was leaning towards Netanyahu? What does it say about the broader future prospects of Israel and peace if they’re swinging to the right?

Dr. Maddy-Weitzman: You’re right about Israeli public opinion becoming more right wing, and it’s something that’s been true over the last eight years. And yet, when you ask people how they outline a settlement, you’ll find a solid majority of public opinion is in favor of a two-state solution, in favor of a centrist kind of solution, not a right wing solution. There is a consensus on that.

There’s less consensus in Israel about the kind of hard steps that Israel would have to take to help the dynamics of a diplomatic effort, particularly on settlement matters. Israelis underestimate the symbolic effect that settlement expansion has on public opinion on the other side, and also on the opinion of leadership on the other side. Continuous settlement building is seen as an example of massive Israeli bad faith. And Israelis don’t appreciate that to a sufficient degree.

With regard to the likely Netanyahu government, that also depends on the nature of his coalition. It seems very likely to me that Ehud Barak will be his Defense Minister, which means the Labor party is in the coalition.

Which means you’re talking about a center-right government, but not a right wing government. That’s a big difference. It means you have a government that can engage and will engage with Washington. Netanyahu clearly will not want to be in open confrontation with Washington. He will try to balance off the competing domestic political forces and the need to be a statesman. And that’s why Barak will be very important for him to have, and Labor.

Dan: What do you view as the likely shifts on Iran’s status? It almost seems unrelated to what just happened, but obviously it’s the elephant in the room.

Dr. Maddy-Weitzman: It’s very related. I don’t know. Clearly, the U.S. administration is going to see if it can critically, and constructively, and robustly engage Iran on this matter. I think the fact that Dennis Ross has been appointed to be the point man on that, I think that’s an interesting choice, actually.

I know that Ross is a proponent of this sort of approach, robust engagement. Which means, find out what the Iranians are thinking, see what you can do, but also make sure that you have sticks as well as carrots. I think the fact that he knows the Israelis well, and the Israeli thinking well, will be an asset perhaps, to make sure the Americans understand where the Israelis are, and the Israelis understand where the Americans are.

But I don’t know where it’s going to go, and a lot of it depends on internal Iranian things, which I don’t have a good enough sense of. There’s always been a broad consensus in Iran that Iran should be a nuclear power. But that doesn’t mean that everybody’s in agreement on the path to get there, the timing, and how to respond to particular international pressures or incentives. It remains to be seen.

Dan: Would you say the same thing about the new Obama administration’s effect on the region, that it remains to be seen?

Dr. Maddy-Weitzman: I think everybody expects the Americans to take a higher profile on the Israeli-Palestinian, or Arab-Israeli tracks. Nobody doubted that they would be intimately involved with the Iranian matter, and how much continuity and how much change there will be remains to be seen.

There’s a lot of expectation out there for Obama. And undoubtedly it’s exaggerated, which can lead to disappointment. But it seems to me that a lot of people in this region understand that, and want America to play a positive role here.

Dan: On both sides.

Dr. Maddy-Weitzman: Yes, absolutely. The trick for the Obama Administration will be translating that desire and good will into something that makes sense for the regional actors, and makes sense for America’s interests. Big concepts, but then you have to have incremental steps. This is how things are done.

Then maybe you can look around in 2-3 years and say, “Wow, things have really moved.” As opposed to a sudden breakthrough on these issues, which are close to being intractable – but they need attention. And one hopes that they’ll receive the right kind of attention.

Dan: What do you think the overall trend in the region is, among all the different issues? Is it a positive one with incremental steps? Or will it be mostly disappointment?

Dr. Maddy-Weitzman: I think that there are some opportunities there for incremental improvement. As I said, I think that Hamas has been humbled by what happened, and that’s to the good. They’ve been taken off their high horse, even if they haven’t been crushed.

Obviously, peace isn’t around the corner. The Palestinian state-building project of the 1990s was a failure, and that’s one of the reasons why the peace process failed. What we have now are two de facto Palestinian entities, and they’re going to have to work mightily to bring a semblance of unity to their own camp. It’s essential if there’s going to be any progress on the big political issues.

Peace isn’t breaking out, that’s for sure. Let’s hope that we can start taking some positive steps, some incremental steps, and start repairing the damage that’s been caused over the last eight years.

The unabridged version of this interview is on Dan Shvartsman’s blog.

We in the media have, to use the obvious pun, plumbed new depths. While distillation of the news to fit the location or political inclination of the audience is hardly a new phenomenon, accelerated in the past 15 years by the rise of conservative talk radio and the infamous idiocy of Fox News, the recruitment of Joe the Plumber to report from Southern Israel during that country’s bombardment of Gaza offers a further refinement of the trend – world events presented through the filter of everyman ignorance. Bias in the media is no longer a matter of partisan affiliation but academic faculty.

Joe Wurzelbacher was, of course, the blue-collar middle American – regular, representative and conspicuously unintellectual – who confronted Barack Obama’s tax plans on his lawn during a campaign stop. With the tide of popular opinion swinging inexorably towards Obama, Wurzelbacher’s down-home, go-get-’em street corner democracy became a beacon of hope for the reactionary right; his name, if not always his bar-room-brawling face, was rarely out of the debates and stump speeches as the election date neared. Alongside the twitching imbecility of Sarah Palin, the wholesomeness of uninformed American insularity was the Republican Party’s sole remaining strategy.

It failed, and failed abysmally. But neither Palin nor Wurzelbacher appear to be any less in demand as a result. And after more run-outs on Fox – apparently Joe’s qualified to run the rule over the intricacies of the financial bailout and Obama’s CIA chief pick – the man was suddenly being flown by an outfit called Pajamas TV to Israel to cover the conflict from the town of Sderot.

Pajamas TV is a right-wing blog whose mission statement includes “exposing both bias and deception by the typically liberal Main Stream Media”. And as Roger Simon, one of their contributors, argued that as the American press – yes, the American press – was obviously an extension of Hamas, only Joe the (previously passportless) Plumber could redress this grievous imbalance for the fact hungry nation.

Leaving aside the issue that a news organisation can instruct a reporter as to the conclusions he must come to before he even arrives at his assignment, the use of someone who is neither well-versed nor remotely impartial to cover such a conflict underlines two new trends in news consumption:

Firstly, that people are less interested in being informed than they are in having existing prejudices confirmed and, secondly, that complex issues must now be boiled down to a simplistic bad-versus-good narrative by a guy you might want to sip a beer with – just so the nation can be saved from the grip of people who have a vague idea as to what they’re talking about.

Joe’s “reports” – and I confess I could only stomach two – revolve around speaking to everyday Israelis about how evil Palestinians are for not accepting their apartheid imprisonment.

He uses of the word “terrorist” every 12 seconds, avoids grammar and generally phrases questions so they induce gleeful nods from his interviewees, mostly militant rabbis and evicted Gaza settlers.

But it was off camera that he really made his mark, launching a tirade against a flock of Israeli journalists who, in his words, “should be ashamed of themselves” for reporting the mounting Palestinian civilian death toll.

He then went on to say that journalists shouldn’t even be in a war zone at all, lest they quibble over the nature of the onward march of goodness – an odd position for a newly-hired war correspondent to take.

Not that piercing truth was on the minds of the Pajamas TV web community, of course. When this columnist argued that the complexities of the Middle East deserve a more learned correspondent than someone who stated, in October, that “a vote for Obama is a vote for the death of Israel” – without actually being able to say why – the seething began. “Let me tell you,” said Michael Toledo, “that Joe the Plumber is the guy many of us have waited for. He speaks his mind, and he’s not afraid to go head to head with some of the nastiest reporters in the world… When is he running for Congress?”

And someone called Cynthia saw Joe as the moron’s messiah: “He is a guy whose opinion has not been shaped by being in New York City and Washington politics. He is more like one of us than anyone who writes or reads the New York Times.”

Is this really the news landscape of the future? Papers and networks outbidding each other in the drive to provide a version of events that not only their readers might want to hear, but in a monosyllable, smiley-studded, texting language they can be bothered to understand? Joe the Plumber might have already had his 15 minutes, but the trend of segmented, audience-centred news looks set to be around a little longer. In the internet age, “telling it like it is” really means “telling me what I want to hear”. And that is neither news nor journalism.