U.S. Helps Palestinians Build Force for Security

ETHAN BRONNER
Published: February 26, 2009

JERICHO, West Bank — They rappel down a 65-foot tower, navigate obstacle courses, shoot in the firing range and sleep in pristine barracks. They eat in an air-conditioned mess where brushed aluminum glints from every kitchen surface. Rows of Land Rovers stand by. The entrance reads “The Presidential Guard, Always in Front: Strength, Sacrifice, Redemption.” One year ago, this 18-acre campus built with $10 million of American taxpayer money was another piece of Jordan Valley desert, and Palestinian guardsmen slept on flea-bitten mattresses and took meals on their laps. Along with a 35-acre, $11 million operations camp a few miles away, also American-financed, it is a real step forward in an otherwise moribund process of Palestinian state-building.

“These guys now feel like they’re on a winning team, that they are building a Palestinian state,” said Lt. Gen. Keith W. Dayton, the American who has been overseeing the training of Palestinian forces, as he watched exercises on Thursday. “And I wouldn’t stay if I didn’t think they were going to do it. I have complete confidence in the Palestinian leadership, and I’m convinced the new administration is serious about this.”

The Obama administration’s envoy to the Middle East, George J. Mitchell, arrived in the region for his second time in a month on Thursday. The secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton, will be here next week. Despite General Dayton’s optimism, no one doubts that they have their work cut out for them. Both the Israelis and the Palestinians are deeply divided, violence and settlement-building continue, and faith in the two-state solution is waning.

But for much of the past year, the Palestinian security forces have trained and increased their role as if all remained on track. Some 1,600 have been through American-financed courses in Jordan. In coordination with Israeli defense officials, Palestinian troops and police officers have taken over much of the patrolling in the West Bank cities of Jenin, Nablus, Bethlehem and parts of Hebron.

Last month, as Israel carried out a war in Hamas-ruled Gaza, some in the Muslim world called on the West Bank to stage a violent uprising in protest. But while there were demonstrations, no such uprising occurred, partly because the Palestinian Authority troops maintained tight order.

All the while, these state-of-the-art facilities were being built, employing hundreds of Palestinian workers. The Presidential Guard College here has been functioning for several weeks, while the National Security Force Operations Camp elsewhere in Jericho will open at the end of next month. Along with police training facilities here supported by the European Union, they represent a new phase in the security plan: sophisticated training under Palestinian command has begun in Palestinian territory.

General Dayton was due to end his three-year assignment, but Mr. Mitchell asked him to stay on for two more years and he has agreed. His decision has been greeted with something approaching jubilation in these camps, where the commanders have come to trust him and to view Washington, through him, as a true ally.

“We have been trained with American money and by General Dayton, and that means a lot to us,” said Brig. Gen. Munir al-Zoubi, commander of the 1,800-man Presidential Guard, the elite force that protects top officials and guests. “We are here to enforce law and order and to use all means to fight terrorism.”

He was asked whether the word “terrorism” was a delicate one.

“Two years ago, we couldn’t talk about or use the term ‘terrorism,’ ” he said. “Any Palestinian who used the term was called a collaborator. But that is no longer true. We have discovered that many people commit terrorist acts under the cover of resistance to occupation. And we are fighting that.”

The big change in those two years has been the Hamas takeover of Gaza and the Palestinian Authority’s hope to turn the West Bank into a model that will reduce the appeal of Hamas.

General Zoubi added that his forces had been trained in human rights, at their request, and in how to shoot without killing when capturing an armed suspect. There are five classrooms for 50 students each on the campus. On Thursday, one of them had a first-aid class going on.

Israeli defense officials say that the development of the Palestinian security forces is a real step forward and that the more the Palestinians do in the West Bank, the less Israel will do. But the Israelis also said that if they did not carry out their night raids on Hamas and Islamic Jihad activists in the West Bank, the area would be a lot less stable.

So there is cooperation. An Israeli officer inaugurated the firing range here, shooting a Palestinian weapon to test it and give his seal of approval. But tensions remain. General Zoubi said new uniforms and protective vests for his men were still waiting at a port in Israel because the Israelis had not released them. And the need for consultation with the Israelis to move his men around frustrates him.

General Dayton is one of the few military men who ply a path between the Palestinian and Israeli officers on a daily basis. He is diplomatic when asked about the tensions.

But his commitment to helping the Palestinians build a responsible and serious security force is enormous. He hopes to have a well-trained battalion based in each of eight West Bank cities when he is through.

He said he first became aware of the importance of this conflict beyond its borders when he was leading weapons searches in Iraq in 2003. As he and his men entered barracks of the Iraqi Republican Guards, he kept seeing drawings on the walls showing Jerusalem’s Dome of the Rock, a sacred Muslim shrine, being strangled by a cobra symbolizing Israel.

At the National Security Forces Operations Camp, still under construction, he met on Thursday with Maj. Gen. Shawki al-Safadi, who has spent his entire adult life wearing the uniform of a Palestinian soldier, starting in 1968 in Jordan, when he was part of the armed wing of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

General Safadi was asked why he turned from an approach of combat to one of coexistence with Israel.

“Anyone can call for peace,” General Safadi responded. “But like General Dayton, I have had a lot of experience. My generation understands the need for peace because we lived under conflict. We were willing to live together in one country. But the Jews want their own homeland. We have come to accept that. And we Palestinians need peace more than any people in the whole world.”

The Fight in Tehran Gets Bitterer by the Day

Amir Taheri
Asharq Alawsat

Although the Iranian presidential election campaign is not due to open until the end of May, two things are already certain. The campaign has started; and it is unusually dirty. One could expect piles of dirty laundry to be washed in public, affecting major figures of the regime. Even “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenehi, hitherto kept outside the mud hole, is being dragged in. The first shot was fired last December when the official Islamic New Agency, controlled by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, published a 5000-word article attacking Muhammad Khatami, the former president who has since declared his candidacy in next June’s election.

The article, signed by Payam Fazli-Nejad, claimed that Khatami is at the centre of an international conspiracy to bring the Khomeinist revolution to an end and transform the Islamic Republic into a secular state.

According to Fazli-Nejad, the so-called «Bilderberg Group» hatched the "conspiracy" when Khatami attended one of their annual gatherings in a Portuguese resort. According to Fazli-Nejad, the group is part of the global Freemasonry and represents financial interests and political circles that use it as a “secret government of the world.”

Although Fazli-Nejad’s claim could be dismissed as pure nonsense, they claims found an echo in Iran partly because mullahs have a long history of association with Freemasonry. The Islamist reformer Jamaleddin Asssad-Abadi, known to Arabs as al-Afghani, founded the first Freemason lodge in Iran in the 19th century. Sayyed Hassan Imami, Tehran’s Friday Prayer Leader between 1955 and 1979, presided over another Freemason lodge known as “The Brothers.”

Obviously encouraged by the Office of the Supreme Guide Ali Khamenehi, the author of the article went on to publish a whole book about what he claims are “secret plans to topple the Islamic Republic through soft subversion.”

The book, titled “Knights of the Cultural NATO”, includes a number of photographs and photocopies of supposedly confidential documents revealing the alleged “conspiracies” in which the government of the United States is supposed to have played a major part.

It names most of the active figures of the internal opposition of being involved in the “conspiracy” and, in effect, working for US and other NATO intelligence services. The list of those accused amounts to a who-is-who of politicians, journalists, lawyers and human rights activists who try to oppose the system without breaking with it.

The message of the book is clear: the so-called “reformist” camp is an American Trojan horse, brought in to destroy the Khomeinist system.

Last week, the official news agency in Tehran reported that the book, published by the Kayhan Group, which is controlled by Khamenehi, has run into its 10th edition, becoming a major best seller.

Tehran sources claim that the book’s best-seller status has been engineered by the government with the purchase of thousands of copies for free distribution among civil servants and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

In an introduction to the book, Kayhan’s Editor in Chief, Hussein Shariatmadari, claims that it contains “irrefutable evidence of contacts between the bridgeheads of this group with foreign intelligence services”. He seems to ignore that his claim raises a crucial question: if there is “irrefutable evidence”, why haven’t the authorities have brought no charges against those named in the book?

The response of the accused came last week during a meeting at the home of Ayatollah Abdallah Nuri, a former Minister of the Interior and generally considered as the regime’s most serious critic within the Khomeinist establishment. During the meeting, attended by more than 200 “reformist” figures across the board, speaker after speaker denounced the campaign of vilification orchestrated by Khamenehi’s office. One speaker, Hashem Aghjari, a hero of the war against Iraq, went further by denouncing Khamenehi by name and calling for the abolition of the post of “Supreme Guide”.

A few days later, an even graver charge against Khamenehi came a few days later in an attack by Muhammad Sazgara, a former aide to the “Supreme Guide” and one of the first generation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards. Accused of working for US intelligence, Sazgara claimed that Khamenehi himself has a history of contacts with the KGB, the former Soviet Union’s intelligence agency, and its East German branch known as Stasi.

In an open letter addressed to Khamenehi and published in “reformist” websites, Sazgara claims that his allegations are based on top-secret Stasi documents, made available by the German government for research purposes. According to Sazgara, these documents are being studied by a “young Iranian researcher”, and, once fully analysed, could show that Khamenehi acted as a Soviet agent of influence during a crucial phase in the power struggle in the early years of the revolution.

Sazgara’s allegations may be as fanciful as those of Fazli-Nejad. After all, that Khamenehi was in contact with Soviet officials was no secret at the time. As Deputy Defence Minister at the time, Khamenehi was charged with the task of securing weapons from the USSR at a time that the United States, Iran’s main arms supplier, had imposed an embargo.

The accusations from both sides are important not because they might reflect the truth. They certainly don’t. Khatami is no CIA agent and Khamenehi was not working for the Soviets.

These accusations are important for two reasons.

First, they show that the power struggle may be heading into new and more dangerous directions in which the Marques of Queensbury’s rules would no longer apply.

Secondly, they show that the two camps are unable to fight on the basis of concrete political and economic plans and are using Middle Eastern style personal attacks, and charges of “betrayal” and “working for foreign intelligence” as a substitute. This campaign would see a lot of mud flying. However, what Iran needs is a serious debate about its future at what may be the most dangerous time in its contemporary history.

Amir Taheri’s new book “ The Persian Night: Iran Under The Khomeinist Revolution” has just been published by Encounter Books, New York and London.

Obama's New Pro-Saudi Spy Chief Has A Few Analytical Hiccups

Guest commentary

It's official - Chas Freeman will be in charge of filtering and evaluating the intel that President Obama sees. He'll be using the same kind of analytic nuance that led him to once declare that "Israel excels at war... it has shown no talent for peace." And in case you didn't know - that little piece of propaganda, per Soccer Dad's winning Council post from a few weeks ago, is bullshit:

I'm not sure how much of this is meant to be Abdullah's voice and how much Friedman's voice, but the term "colonial Israeli settlements" is jarring. I'm sure Abdullah feels that way, but does Freidman also? Anyway this has things exactly backwards. The most important thing is what Abdullah mentions last: the deepening ties of Iran between the terrorist organizations Hamas and Hezbollah has been made possible by the Israeli withdrawals from Gaza in 2005 and southern Lebanon in 2000. Those withdrawals, having strengthened the terrorists, emboldened them to threaten Israel ever more seriously until Israel was forced to defend its citizens. And Fatah's decline in Judea and Samaria didn't occur in a vacuum either. It was the result of Operation Defensive Shield, which, like Israel's defensive wars against Hezbollah in 2006 and Hamas last month, was launched to protect Israeli citizens from a terrorist organization that had been given freedom to operate with impunity. Another factor in Fatah's decline was that it was corrupt. Once it was no longer capable of killing Israelis, Palestinians (and the rest of the world) were shocked to learn that most of the foreign aid it had received had gone to Arafat's favored cronies, rather than to building a coutnry. Again, I don't know if the order is supposed to be Abdullah's view alone or Friedman's endorsement of Abdullah's views, but it reveals a dishonest view of recent history.

Guest Comment:I was unaware of the ice storm crisis in Kentucky, which has been ignored by the press and the President. He is so focused on his economic "catastrophe" and foreclosure "crisis" that neither he nor his federal agencies have paid any attention to what is happening to Americans in KY.

And where has the media been with this story? Read about it in the second half of the article.

Also see more about Freeman's anit-Israsel politics by scrolling down at the website:
http://www.mererhetoric.com/archives/11275488.html
Best,
Aggie

Of course Freeman is also a huge fan of Abdullah - reportedly referring to him as "Abdullah the Great" - so it makes sense that he'd echo the King's smears. Similarly relevant to Freeman's appointment: the top non-Council post by Judea Pearl, analyzing how Western apologists have allowed pure jihadi evil to become a matter-of-fact bargaining position. Contrast that with the genuine sensitivity displayed in the second-place non-Council post, a letter from an Israeli soldier to a Gaza civilian. Whatever causes people like Freeman to embrace the anti-Israel, pro-Saudi cause - it's something beyond mere poor judgment. Both Council runner up Joshua Pundit and non-Council runner up The Anchoress (there was a tie for second) dealt with the ice storm in Kentucky:

Imagine a disaster where at least a million Americans are without power in the dead of winter, 46 people have died and the president and FEMA are nowhere to be found. You've just described what's been going on in Kentucky for the last five days: Utility crews renewed work in subfreezing temperatures Saturday in their effort to put the power back on for nearly a million customers left in the dark by an ice storm that crippled parts of several states this week... Kentucky has called out its entire national guard in an effort to evacuate people to shelters where they can find some kind of respite from the cold, but in a largely rural state with no help from FEMA and the Feds, they're fighting a losing battle against time and the freezing weather. Conspicuously absent is the press,which lined up shoulder to shoulder to bash the Bush Administration for the way it handled Hurricane Katrina with much less cause. They ought to be ashamed of themselves.

I for one welcome the return of competence and compassion to the White House. References and previously after the jump...

And Off We Go To Democracy European-Style

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER | Posted Thursday, February 26, 2009 4:20 PM PT

Not a great speech, but extremely consequential. If Barack Obama succeeds, his joint address to Congress will be seen as historic — indeed as the foundational document of Obamaism.

As it stands, it constitutes the boldest social democratic manifesto ever issued by a U.S. president.

The first part of the speech, justifying his economic stabilization efforts, was mere housekeeping. The economic crisis is to Obama a technocratic puzzle that needs to be solved because otherwise he loses all popular support. Unlike most presidents, however, he doesn't covet popular support for its own sake. Some men become president to be someone, others to do something. This is what separates, say, a Ronald Reagan from a Bill Clinton. Obama, who once noted that Reagan altered the trajectory of America as Clinton had not, sees himself a Reagan.

Reagan came to office to do something: shrink government, lower taxes, rebuild American defenses. Obama made clear Tuesday night that he intends to be equally transformative. His three goals: universal health care, universal education and a new green energy economy highly funded and regulated by government.

(1) Obama wants to be to universal health care what Lyndon Johnson was to Medicare. Obama has publicly abandoned his once-stated preference for a single-payer system as in Canada and Britain. But that is for practical reasons. In America, you can't get there from here directly.

Instead, Obama will create the middle step that will lead ultimately and inevitably to single-payer. The way to do it is to establish a reformed system that retains a private health-insurance sector but offers a new government-run plan (based on benefits open to members of Congress) so relatively attractive that people voluntarily move out of the private sector, thereby starving it.

The ultimate result is a system of fully socialized medicine. This will likely not happen until long after Obama leaves office. But he will be rightly recognized as its father.

(2) Beyond cradle-to-grave health care, Obama wants cradle-to-cubicle education. He wants far more government grants, tax credits and other financial guarantees for college education — another way station to another universal federal entitlement.

He lauded the country for establishing free high school education during the Industrial Revolution; he wants to put us on the road to doing the same for college during the Information Age.

(3) Obama wants to be to green energy what John Kennedy was to the moon shot — its visionary and creator. It starts with the establishment of a government-guided, government-funded green energy sector into which the administration will pour billions of dollars from the stimulus package and billions more from budgets to come.

But just picking winners and losers is hardly sufficient for a president who sees himself as world-historical. Hence the carbon cap-and-trade system he proposed Tuesday night that will massively restructure American industry and create a highly regulated energy sector.

These revolutions in health care, education and energy are not just abstract hopes. They have already taken life in Obama's massive $787 billion stimulus package, a huge expansion of social spending constituting a down payment on Obama's plan for remaking the American social contract.

Obama sees the current economic crisis as an opportunity. He has said so openly. And now we know what opportunity he wants to seize.

Just as the Depression created the political and psychological conditions for Franklin Roosevelt's transformation of America from laissez-faireism to the beginnings of the welfare state, the current crisis gives Obama the political space to move the still (relatively) modest American welfare state toward European-style social democracy.

In the European Union, government spending has declined slightly, from 48% to 47% of GDP during the last 10 years. In the U.S., it has shot up from 34% to 40%.

Part of this explosive growth in U.S. government spending reflects the emergency private-sector interventions of a Republican administration. But the clear intent was to make the massive intrusion into the private sector temporary and to retreat as quickly as possible. Obama has radically different ambitions.

The spread between Europe and America in government-controlled GDP has already shrunk from 14% to 7%. Two terms of Obamaism and the difference will be zero.

Conservatives take a dim view of the regulation-bound, economically sclerotic, socially stagnant nanny state that is the European Union. Nonetheless, Obama is ascendant and has the personal mandate to take the country where he wishes. He has laid out boldly the Brussels-bound path he wants to take.

Let the debate begin.

© 2008 Washington Post Writers Group

Entrapping Netanyahu

Caroline Glick , THE JERUSALEM POST

Negotiations between Likud and its coalition partners toward the formation of Israel's next government have only just begun. But the campaign to undermine the government-in-formation's ability to determine Israel's future course is already well underway. Incoming Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu must understand the traps being set for him and their sources. And as he builds his government, he must appoint ministers capable of working with him to extricate Israel from those traps and discredit their sources.

On Thursday, US President Barack Obama's Middle East envoy George Mitchell arrived in Israel for his second visit. Whereas Mitchell's last visit - which took place in the last days of the electoral campaign - was touted as a "listening tour," Mitchell made clear that during his current stay, he intends to begin calling shots.

His first order of business, we are told, is to pressure the outgoing government to destroy the so-called outpost communities in Judea and Samaria and expel the hundreds of Israeli families who live in them. To defend this call for intra-Israeli instability and violence, Mitchell notes that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert gave his word to former president George W. Bush that he would destroy these communities.

Lest Israelis believe that Mitchell will drop this demand once Olmert leaves office, he has made clear that as far as he is concerned, Olmert's pledge was not his own - but Israel's. In Mitchell's view, it binds Netanyahu no less than Olmert. So if Olmert leaves office without having sent IDF soldiers to throw women and children from their homes, Mitchell, Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will feel free to pressure Netanyahu to take on the task, and to punish him if he refuses.

If the Obama administration believes that the presence of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria is the primary obstacle to peace, then the Hamas regime in Gaza is the second greatest obstacle to peace. As long as Hamas, a recognized terror group, is in charge, the administration will be hard-pressed to push Israel to accept a Palestinian state.

To remedy this situation, the Obama administration has opted for a political fiction. The president and his aides have decided that a Hamas-Fatah government will moderate Hamas, and that therefore such a government will not only be legitimate, it is desirable. Whereas when the first Hamas-Fatah government formed in March 2007, the Bush administration refused to have anything to do with it, today the Obama administration is actively backing its reestablishment.

As the Obama administration apparently sees it, a Hamas-Fatah government will provide cover for stepped up pressure on Israel to surrender land to the Palestinians in Judea and Samaria, because Israel will no longer be able to claim that it has no Palestinian partner. A Hamas-Fatah government will also allow the US to directly support the Palestinians in Gaza, by coercing Israel to transfer full control over its borders with Gaza to Hamas (which will be represented by Fatah), and by enabling the US to provide direct aid to Palestinian Authority agencies in Gaza.

To advance the administration's efforts to legitimize Hamas, Clinton will begin her first visit to the region at a conference in Cairo on Monday that seeks to raise some $2.8 billion for Gaza. She will pledge nearly a third of that amount - $900 million - in the name of US taxpayers.

The administration claims that none of this money, which it plans to funnel through UNRWA, will go toward funding Hamas. But this contention is demonstrably false.

UNRWA openly collaborates with Hamas. Its workers double as Hamas combatants. Its refugee camps and schools are used as Hamas training bases and missile launch sites. Its mosques are used as recruiting grounds. And as UNRWA's willingness to transfer a letter from Hamas to US Sen. John Kerry during his visit to Gaza last week demonstrated, the UN agency is also willing to act as Hamas's surrogate.

While it makes sense for Hamas to agree to join a unity government that will leave it in charge of Gaza and expand its control to Judea and Samaria as well, on the surface it makes little sense for Fatah to agree to a deal that would subordinate it to the same forces who brutally removed it from power in Gaza in 2007. But Fatah has several good reasons to be enthusiastic about the deal.

First, by joining Hamas, Fatah will be able to get its hands on a considerable portion of the international aid money expected to pour into Gaza. Second, by joining Hamas, Fatah neutralizes - at least in the short term - Hamas's interest in destroying it as a political force in Palestinian society. Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas's term in office as PA chairman expired last month. Were elections to be held today, he would lose a bid for reelection to Hamas's candidate by a wide margin. By joining a Hamas government, he will probably avoid the need to stand for reelection anytime soon.

For Israel, a US-supported Hamas-Fatah government is a hellish prospect. The political support such a government will lend to the terror war against Israel will be enormous. But beyond that, such a government, supported by the US, will likely cause Israel security nightmares.

As a goodwill gesture ahead of the opening of unity talks this week in Cairo, Fatah released the Hamas operatives its US-trained forces had arrested. Due to US pressure, over the past year, Israel allowed those forces to deploy in Jenin and Hebron, and in recent months they took some significant actions against Hamas operatives in those areas. Based on this record of achievement, Clinton and Mitchell have been pressuring Israel to transfer security control over all the Palestinian cities in Judea and Samaria to these forces.

But now that Fatah and Hamas are acting in concert, any such transfers of authority to Fatah will constitute a surrender of control to Hamas. While no Israeli government could accept such a demand, the Obama administration, which supports the Hamas-Fatah government, is likely to view Israel's refusal to continue to cooperate with Fatah as a reason to criticize Israel.

THE OBAMA administration's ability to disregard the will of the Israeli voters and the prerogatives of the incoming government owes a great debt to the legacy that the outgoing Olmert-Livni-Barak government is leaving behind.

The outgoing government set the conditions for the Obama administration's policies in three ways. First, by not defeating Hamas in Operation Cast Lead, and then agreeing to negotiate a cease-fire with the terror group, the government paved the way for Hamas's acceptance by the US and Europe as a legitimate political force.

Just as its willingness to conduct negotiations with Syria paved the way for the administration's current courtship of Iran's Arab client state, and its willingness to accept UN Security Council Resolution 1701placed Hizbullah on equal footing with Israel at the end of the Second Lebanon War, so, too, the outgoing government's willingness to negotiate with Hamas has facilitated the current US and European drive to accept the Iranian proxy as a legitimate political force in Palestinian society.

Second, since Hamas's electoral victory in January 2006, the outgoing government accepted the false narrative that the Palestinian people in Gaza, who freely voted Hamas into power and have supported its regime ever since, bear no responsibility for the consequences of their actions. This false distinction between Hamas's supporters and Hamas tied Israel's hands each time it was compelled to defend itself against Hamas's aggression. After all, if Gazans are all innocent, then Israel's primary responsibility should be to make sure that they are safe. And since its counterterror operations necessarily place them at risk, those operations are fair game for international condemnation.

Moreover, at the same time that Israel accepted the dishonest distinction between Hamas and its supporters, it willingly took on responsibility for the welfare of Gaza residents. As Hamas shelled Sderot and Ashkelon and surrounding communities, Israel bowed to international pressure to supply its enemy and its enemy's supporters with food, medicine, fuel, water and anything else that Hamas and the West could reasonable or unreasonably claim fell under the rubric of humanitarian aid. Had Israel not accepted responsibility for a population that freely chose to be led by a group dedicated to its annihilation, today Clinton would be hard pressed to pressure Israel to open its border crossings into Gaza, or to justify giving $900m. to Gaza.

Finally, through its unlimited support for Fatah, the outgoing government has made it enormously difficult for the incoming government to explain its objections to the Obama administration's policies, either to the Israeli people or to the Americans themselves. By supporting Fatah, the Olmert-Livni-Barak government set up a false distinction between supposed moderates and supposed extremists. That distinction ignored and so legitimized Fatah's continued involvement in terrorism, its political war against Israel and its refusal to accept Israel's right to exist.

If Fatah is legitimate despite its bad behavior and bellicose ideology, then two things must be true. First, abstaining from terror can no longer be viewed as a precondition for receiving international legitimacy. And second, there is no reason not to accept Hamas. Based on the latter conclusion, many European leaders and Israeli leftists now openly call for conducting negotiations with Hamas. And based on the former conclusion, the Obama administration feels comfortable escalating its demands that Israel give land, security powers and money to Fatah, even as it unifies its forces with Hamas and so expands Hamas's power from Gaza to Judea and Samaria.

DUE TO the Olmert-Livni-Barak government's legacy, when it enters office the Netanyahu government will lack the vocabulary it needs to abandon Israel's current self-defeating course with the Palestinians and defend its actions to the international community in the face of the Obama administration's use of dishonest terms like "peace processes" and "moderates" and "humanitarian aid" to constrain Israel's ability to defend itself. To surmount these challenges, Netanyahu must move immediately to change the terms of debate on the Palestinian issue.

Despite his great rhetorical gifts, Netanyahu cannot change the terms of international debate by himself. He needs two seasoned public figures who understand the nature of these challenges at his side. If Netanyahu appoints Natan Sharansky foreign minister and Moshe "Bogie" Ya'alon defense minister, he will have the top-level support he needs to overcome his predecessors' legacy and change the nature of contemporary discourse on the Palestinians and on Israel's strategic significance to the West in the face of staunch opposition from Washington.

Like Netanyahu, Sharansky and Ya'alon understand the basic dishonesty of the current international conversation relating to the Palestinians. Both men have come out publicly against the false policy paradigms that have guided both the outgoing government and the US and Europe. Both are capable of working with Netanyahu to free Israel from the policy trap being set for him.

caroline@carolineglick.com

Guest comment:In reading the article, my repeated query is awakened: If it is acceptable for 1.2 million Arabs to live in Israel with full rights of citizenship , why is it unacceptable for 300,000 or 500,000 Jews to live in Judea and Samaria? The answer is that the Palestinian Authority is worse than an apartheid regime; it will simply massacre the Jews because the two groups cannot leave in peace with each other. The international solution, however, is not to remove the hateful population of Arabs, but to transfer out the Jews. The better solution is to send the Arabs to Jordan. After all, the majority of them were born as Jordanian citizens during the time that Jordan illegally occupied Judea and Samaria. Aggie

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Livni Rejects Final Likud Offer

Maayana Miskin Livni Rejects Final Likud Offer

Likud Party Chairman Binyamin (Bibi) Netanyahu met with Kadima party head Tzipi Livni on Friday morning to make a final effort to convince her to join a Likud-led coalition. Livni rejected his offer, leaving Likud with no option but to turn to the nationalist parties and attempt to form a more narrow coalition.

Livni had rejected previous coalition offers, including an offer that would have given Kadima veto power over goverment decisions and several senior ministries.A senior Likud official explained Friday prior to the meeting that Netanyahu believes the parties share common ground and could work together. “Netanyahu thinks there's still room to negotiate... They already agree on the main issues: Iran, Hamas and Hizbullah, and the financial crisis,” he explained.

Despite the general agreement between Likud and Kadima, Netanyahu does not expect Livni to join him, the source added.

Netanyahu hoped to convince Livni that he and she hold the same opinions regarding the creation of a Palestinian Authority state in Judea and Samaria as well. Netanyahu told Livni that he hopes to advance negotiations with the PA that were begun after the Annapolis Conference in 2007, his spokesman said.

However, another party source said the questions of negotiations with the PA and continuation of the Annapolis policy were one of the central sources of conflict between Likud and Kadima.

Netanyahu's expected coalition partner Avigdor Lieberman, the head of Yisrael Beiteinu, clarified this week that he also supports the creation of a PA state.

Livni expressed interest in joining with Likud only if Kadima would lead the coalition, or if the two parties would share power equally, with her and Netanyahu alternating as Prime Minister. Netanyahu rejected both ideas.

Some Kadima members are unhappy at Livni's refusal to sit in a government led by Netanyahu. Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz, who is widely considered a frontrunner for the position of Defense Minister if the parties were to unite, has publicly criticized Livni's refusal to join the coalition, as has MK Ronit Tirosh. Several other Kadima MKs have expressed anonymous criticism in various media outlets.

Nationalist parties have expressed satisfaction over Likud's failure to join with Kadima, saying the next government will be more Jewish and Zionist than the last. However, the heavily religious coalition that Netanyahu was expected to build following Kadima's rejection could be in danger, as a recent ruling by Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv could leave United Torah Judaism unable to sit with Yisrael Beiteinu.

Rabbi Elyashiv, a leading figure in the Ashkenazi hareidi-religious world, ruled that it is forbidden to compromise in any way regarding civil marriage. Civil marriage must not be allowed even between non-Jews, he said.

Yisrael Beiteinu has made civil marriage a central component of its demands. Almost 300,000 non-Jewish immigrants, most from the former Soviet Union, are unhappy with Israel's current marriage laws, which approve of marriages only under the auspices of a recognized religion. Many secular Israelis support civil marriage as well.

Averting Abuse of Universal Jurisdiction

Irit Kohn
JCPA

* Right at the outset of Israel's recent operation in Gaza, French pro-Palestinian organizations filed a lawsuit against the Israeli president, foreign minister and defense minister. Turkish prosecutors said in February 2009 that they were investigating whether Israeli leaders should be prosecuted for crimes against humanity over Israel's offensive in Gaza, after Mazlum-Der, an Islamic-oriented human rights organization, filed an official complaint in Turkey. At the same time, a Spanish judge is currently investigating the role of Israeli soldiers and security officials in a bombing in Gaza in 2002 in which a top Hamas suicide bombing planner, Salah Shehada, and 14 other people were killed. * Universal jurisdiction refers to the power of a state to legislate, adjudicate, and punish any individual for war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide committed outside its borders, even when those crimes were not committed against that country or its citizens, and even if the accused is not its citizen. The idea is that anyone who commits such atrocious, internationally condemned crimes will not be able to find shelter or hide from judgment anywhere on the globe.
* Human rights organizations all over the world have been instrumental in the implementation of universal jurisdiction. This has contributed to the entry of politics into the universal jurisdiction process, as may be seen in many actions brought by NGOs that are supported financially by special interest groups or even states for the benefit of their own agendas. In 2005, Israeli Brig.-Gen. Doron Almog was warned not to leave his plane at Heathrow Airport in London after a UK court issued a warrant for his detention.
* It is important to remember that universal jurisdiction and the International Criminal Court are applied when a country does not or cannot act to prosecute. Yet Israel is a democracy with a well-developed judicial system and does not need external intervention to conduct any investigation.
* In fact, the Israeli military police reported that between 2000 and 2007, Israel's military judicial system conducted 272 investigations of illegal firing of weapons, with 31 indictments and 17 convictions; 330 investigations of property damage, with 36 indictments and 36 convictions; 475 investigations of violence, with 37 indictments and 34 convictions; and 128 investigations of crimes in the Palestinian areas, with 20 indictments and 18 convictions. The case of Salah Shehada, mentioned above, has already been reviewed thoroughly by Israel's Supreme Court, which is widely respected in the international legal community. What would a Spanish court have to add?
* Dr. Henry Kissinger wrote that we are witnessing an unprecedented movement to turn international politics into legal proceedings. International law does not require that the prosecuting country be neutral or politically impartial in order to exercise its jurisdiction in a given case. The purpose for which universal jurisdiction was created may be a worthy and noble one. However, its current execution is problematic, to say the least.



Referral to the International Criminal Court (ICC)

A few days after the outset of Israel's three-week operation in Gaza that ended on January 18, 2009, a lawsuit was filed by several French pro-Palestinian organizations against the Israeli president, foreign minister and defense minister. The Rome Statute, the founding document of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, was cited as the legal basis for the suit.

The organizations demanded that France, which presided over the UN Security Council at the time of the filing, initiate a discussion of the suit at the council, hoping for a Security Council resolution referring the case to the International Criminal Court.

Yet the International Criminal Court has jurisdiction only over nationals of states that have signed and ratified the Rome Statute. Israel has not ratified the statute, and its citizens are therefore not subject to it. Yet Article 13(b) of the court's statute establishes the court's jurisdiction over cases referred to it by the Security Council in accordance with Chapter Seven of the UN Charter. This article was the legal foundation for the court's authority over crimes committed in Sudanese Darfur. In that case, all the members of the Security Council voted in favor of referring the case to the court, including the United States, which is also not a party to the Rome Statute.

The International Criminal Court began operating in July 2002. Since its inception, it constitutes a permanent tribunal, with supplementary authority to the states' authority to prosecute individuals for crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. Another crime mentioned in its mandate, whose definition is still under deliberation, is that of "aggression."

Since it was impossible to reach an agreement about the issue of terrorism, that subject is not within the court's purview. Many countries and organizations view the use of terror in a war of self-determination to be a legitimate act of war.

The need to create an International Criminal Court was recognized in the wake of the Second World War and the Jewish Holocaust in Europe. Following the ad hoc tribunals of Nuremberg and Tokyo, the Jewish people and the State of Israel, as part of the international community, had recognized the need for a permanent international court to deal with the recurrent phenomenon of genocide and other such serious crimes.

Israel was very active in the preparatory committee of the International Criminal Court. The former Israeli Attorney General, Judge Eli Rubinstein, spoke at a conference in Rome where he stated that Israel was strongly in favor of trying war criminals responsible for genocide and crimes against humanity. However, Rubinstein added, the inclusion of political bodies into the decision-making process was extremely problematic, and since Israel is a victim of ongoing terror assaults, it hoped that the international community would recognize terror as an international crime and concentrate on practical and effective methods for cooperation designed to bring international terrorists to justice. To this day, the court has yet to institute such measures.



Israel's Problem with the ICC

What happened? Why has Israel refrained from ratifying the statute? One article of the statue, which consolidated the politicization process of the court, is the primary cause for Israel's decision: the article that deals with the transfer of populations.

Article 8(b) 8, the section defining war crimes in the Rome Statute, discusses: "The transfer, directly or indirectly, by the Occupying Power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies, or the deportation or transfer of all or parts of the population of the occupied territory within or outside this territory."

This article was copied almost word for word from the 1977 First Protocol of the Geneva Conventions of 1949.

The article clearly emphasizes forced transfers of populations. Its intentions are even clearer when we remember it was drafted in response to the forced relocation of populations in Europe during the Second World War (e.g., the transfer of Germans into former Czechoslovakia).

In the Rome Statute this article expanded ad absurdum the Nazis' forced repopulation program, which was reasonably defined as a war crime under the Geneva Convention. The statute now defined any voluntary movement of people, either directly or indirectly, by any means, as a similar crime under the Rome Statute. But what is the connection between this distortion and the original intent of the Rome Statute, which was to establish a court to deal with horrible and intolerable trespasses against humanity? Here the intent was to have Israeli settlements in the West Bank internationally acknowledged as a most serious crime which should therefore be subject to the court.

Let us recall that, in general, violations of international law are not, ipso facto, war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide. There are many violations of international law which are not considered tantamount to these crimes. Furthermore, expanding the definition of "population transfers" in the Rome Statute even beyond that of the First Protocol of the Geneva Convention, while creating a legal construct specific to the issue of the Israeli settlements, seriously diminishes the statute on which the court was founded. Israeli sources claim that the phrasing of this article, inspired and influenced by Arab nations, specifically targets the State of Israel, and therefore is wholly unrelated in severity and content to the other flagrant acts designated by the statute as war crimes.

It is interesting to note that neither the ad-hoc tribunals for Rwanda nor Yugoslavia saw fit to expand the definition in their constituting documents beyond that of the Fourth Geneva Convention, wherein only the deportation or illegal transfer of protected persons are considered to be serious violations of the convention.

At the end of the day, the introduction of this article into the Rome Statute and the connection between the ICC and the UN left Israel no choice but to refrain from joining the statute, and consequently the ICC has no jurisdiction over it or its citizens.

The International Criminal Court isn't the only avenue for the prosecution of these crimes. There have been special UN tribunals in which individuals accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity have been prosecuted. These include the courts established by the UN Security Council to address the crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia, Sierra Leone and Cambodia. Recently, a court was established in Lebanon with regard to the murder of former Prime Minister Hariri.



Individual States Seek to Exercise Universal Jurisdiction

Yet another way to prosecute suspects for heinous violations of international law may be found in certain states that have adopted laws involving "universal jurisdiction." As noted, the Rome Statute established the primary commitment of states to exercise their jurisdiction and prosecute individuals suspected of responsibility for such crimes in national courts. The emphasis here is on a state's responsibility to bring to justice anyone responsible for such crimes, via adjusted legislation, expanded universal jurisdiction, and improved international cooperation.

Universal jurisdiction refers to the power of a state to legislate, adjudicate, and punish any individual for crimes committed outside its borders, even when those crimes were not committed against that country or its citizens, and even if the accused is not its citizen. The idea is that anyone who commits such atrocious, internationally condemned crimes will not be able to find shelter or hide from judgment anywhere on the globe.

The definition of these crimes is the result of historical processes. The constituting treaty of the Nuremberg trials, for example, established principles regarding Nazi war crimes, and mandated that individuals accused of crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity committed during the Second World War would be prosecuted in an international military court assembled by all the countries party to the treaty (the U.S.A., USSR, England and France), which would operate in Nuremberg. It was further determined that these criminals may be prosecuted by the national justice systems of all the countries party to the established international court. The treaty was ratified by 19 additional countries and in 1946 its principles were unanimously adopted by the UN General Assembly. Therefore, it was determined that crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity are crimes in all states, and all states can prosecute individuals who were responsible for committing them. As a result, Nazi war criminals were prosecuted in several countries.

In another example, the Rules of War were expanded by the 1949 Geneva Convention, and demarcate the line between "right" and "wrong" in times of war. They also define what are benign and flagrant violations. They entrust each individual state with the responsibility to locate and prosecute violators, even if the crime was committed outside its jurisdiction and was not directed against it or its citizens. The description of the flagrant violations extended the definition of war crimes beyond their Nuremberg definition and subjected them to universal jurisdiction.

It is important to note that human rights organizations all over the world have been instrumental in the implementation of universal jurisdiction, as they were, for instance, in actions filed against former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and others in the case of the massacre of Palestinians by Christian militias in Sabra and Shatila in Lebanon. This has contributed to the entry of politics into the universal jurisdiction process, as may be seen in many actions brought by NGOs that are supported financially by special interest groups or even states for the benefit of their own agendas.

In a more recent example, Turkish prosecutors said in February 2009 that they were investigating whether Israeli leaders should be prosecuted for crimes against humanity over Israel's offensive in Gaza, after Mazlum-Der, an Islamic-oriented human rights organization, filed an official complaint in Turkey. The group asked that the Israeli officials be detained if they enter Turkey.

In addition, a Spanish judge is currently investigating the role of Israeli soldiers and security officials in a bombing in Gaza in 2002 in which a top Hamas suicide bombing planner, Salah Shehada, and 14 other people were killed. In 2005, Israeli Brig.-Gen. Doron Almog was warned not to leave his plane at Heathrow Airport in London after a UK court issued a warrant for his detention.

The case which opened the floodgates of prosecution under international jurisdiction in recent years was that of Chilean General Pinochet. In 1998, England received a request from a judge in Spain to extradite Augusto Pinochet so he could stand trial in a Spanish court for crimes committed against Spaniards in the territory of Chile. Litigators who support universal jurisdiction believe Pinochet's arrest to be a turning point. Yet critics of the case argued that it was wrong to use the principle of universal jurisdiction as a tool to settle political disputes.

Contemporary implementation of universal jurisdiction is very controversial among international law experts. No public discussion as to its proper implementation and enforcement has ever taken place and, as a result, there are no universally accepted rules.

Every state exercises universal jurisdiction authority according to its own domestic laws, which are far from being international common knowledge. Nor are there any unified definitions of the crimes or certainty about the defense the accused must be afforded. The statutes of limitation differ from country to country. In addition, local trial judges are not always well versed in international law. Thus, all these factors are possible hindrances to the execution of universal jurisdiction.

This situation changes when jurisdiction is exercised by international organizations. International courts such as the ICC exercise rules agreed to by all the countries party to their founding treaties. Furthermore, when the UN Security Council appoints an ad-hoc court, it operates within the framework of international conventions and statutes designated for this purpose by the UN, sometimes even in full cooperation with the countries involved. In both cases, the crimes are clearly defined, as are the rules of evidence, available legal protection, and the like. One should also bear in mind that the judges appointed to these courts usually represent a wide spectrum of legal opinions and some of them are international law experts.



No Need for External Intervention in Cases Under Israeli Jurisdiction

It is important to remember that universal jurisdiction and the International Criminal Court are applied when a country does not or cannot act to prosecute. To my regret, since Israeli army officers have been subject to universal jurisdiction in different countries, it appears that some include Israel in the category of states that would not or cannot take action against such crimes.

Here the answer is clear. Israel is a democracy with a well-developed judicial system, as the statistics below prove. The military judicial system is separate from the civilian courts, with the ability to appeal decisions handed down in a lower court. The Israel Supreme Court, sitting as the High Court of Justice, receives complaints against the military courts and against the discretion of the military prosecution.

The military police reported that between 2000 and 2007, Israel's military judicial system conducted 272 investigations of illegal firing of weapons, with 31 indictments and 17 convictions; 330 investigations of property damage, with 36 indictments and 36 convictions; 475 investigations of violence, with 37 indictments and 34 convictions; and 128 investigations of crimes in the Palestinian areas, with 20 indictments and 18 convictions. The case of Salah Shehada, mentioned above, has already been reviewed thoroughly by Israel's Supreme Court, which is widely respected in the international legal community. What would a Spanish court have to add?

In 2008 there was a large increase in the number of complaints, investigations and convictions. This may be due to the establishment in October 2007 of a new unit - the Military Advocate for Operational Affairs. This unit deals with two types of cases: complaints involving Palestinians and training accidents.

Let us recall that during the Lebanese War in 1982, an Israeli investigative panel consisting of two sitting Supreme Court justices and a high army officer was established to investigate the actions at Sabra and Shatilla, while Lebanon pardoned all those responsible for the crimes committed there. As a result of this panel, then-Defense Minister Sharon was removed from his post. Nevertheless, Belgium decided to attempt to prosecute Sharon. Doesn't this have the ring of political influence?



Political Exploitation of Universal Jurisdiction

A particularly problematic aspect of this issue is political exploitation of universal jurisdiction. Dr. Henry Kissinger wrote in 2001 that in the course of less than ten years we have witnessed an unprecedented movement to turn international politics into legal proceedings, an argument mentioned with growing frequency.

When prosecution is initiated by a country not wholly unrelated to a case, there is always the very real possibility that it is doing so for political reasons. International law does not require that the prosecuting country be neutral or politically impartial in order to exercise its jurisdiction in a given case.

An example of this problem can be found in the attempts to prosecute former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for actions in Lebanon. When the lawsuit was first filed in Belgium, which indulges in a very broad definition of the principle of universal jurisdiction, Israel's Justice Ministry began receiving many letters describing Belgium's actions in the Congo.

Many countries are likely to find skeletons buried not so deep in the closet of their own past that qualify as crimes subject to universal jurisdiction. Are countries with such tainted pasts really fit to serve as representatives of the international community in adjudicating crimes of which they themselves may be found guilty?

It is interesting to note how some African nations view universal jurisdiction. Recently, Rose Kabuye, director general of state protocol in Rwanda, was arrested in Germany in accordance with a French extradition warrant. This is an example of why some African nations refer to universal jurisdiction as Western judicial imperialism, because they do not see cases brought by one Western nation against another Western nation. Could you envision a European state bringing action against U.S. generals and politicians for war crimes in Iraq? Belgium considered it, but was deterred by the U.S. threat to remove NATO headquarters from Brussels.

There is no doubt that the will of a country to arrest and prosecute is affected by its relationship with the country where the crimes had been committed and by its military and economic strength. For example, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's strong criticism of Pinochet's arrest was influenced by the aid he offered Great Britain during the Falklands war.

Many countries are careful to limit their view of universal jurisdiction to a demand that either the suspect or the victim be in their territorial jurisdiction for such a process to begin. The purpose for which universal jurisdiction was created may be a worthy and noble one. However, its current execution is problematic, to say the least.

* * *

Irit Kohn, Esq., joined the Israel Ministry of Justice in 1989 and from 1995 to 2005 was director of its International Affairs Department. In that position she was involved in one of the first cases involving universal jurisdiction as head of the legal team defending Prime Minister Sharon in Belgium in 2001. In 2004, she was elected Vice-President of the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists. This Jerusalem Viewpoints is based in part on her presentation on November 26, 2008, at a conference in London on "Averting Abuse of Universal Jurisdiction."

Tahadiyeh? What tahadiyeh?

Rafael Yisraeli

Until recently, armies fought deep into enemy territory, conquering or retreating from lands, taking control or loosening their grip. Ultimately, both sides would come to the negotiating table to resolve the problem until the next conflict, either through peace agreements or an armistice, border arrangements and regions of influence, POW exchanges, granting rights and exacting obligations. Yet, ever since the Muslim world launched its global terror war, there have been no more accepted rules. It is unclear who is fighting, or why. Small non-state groups engage in hostile acts against individuals, organizations and other states, kidnap hostages and make demands for their release. There is no way to bring the conflict to an end other than by playing by their rules, and since they are ensconced within - and protected by - civilian populations, there is no means to defend oneself without touching off the world's fury.

These asymmetrical groups impose their own concepts and terminology, and the world obediently follows. Hamas and Hezbollah speak of a hudna, an Islamic concept rooted in tradition and precedent, and we are dragged behind them, forgetting internationally accepted terminology like cease-fire, armistice and lull, which obligate the entire world with the exception of these groups.
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Recently, since the hudna - which is also bound by Islamic rules and historical precedents - seems too institutionalized for Hamas, and because it may, God forbid, require it to recognize Israel - albeit indirectly - its operatives have concocted a new gimmick, tahadiyeh, which connotes a temporary lull. And if anyone had any doubts, they refuse to extend it beyond one year, 18 months at the most. And then they resume hostilities after beefing up their forces, repositioning themselves and better booby-trapping the civilian populace. For us, while a lull is in and of itself an end, one that would bring relief to our border communities, for them it is the price they have to pay until they make gains.

It is as clear as day why Hamas and Hezbollah are employing these concepts. It is less clear why we have to accept them without reservation. We can reject them, and abide strictly by accepted international terms, which have significance, are applicable by law and offer an exit ramp. When the world prods us to accept a hudna or a tahadiyeh, we should ask it if it understands what these are, and if it would accept them.

Let us recall that the American-led coalition in Iraq and Afghanistan has refused and is now refusing any cease-fire, and is even ruling out any contact or negotiation with Al-Qaida or the Taliban until they surrender. This is what the Allies did in the Second World War. Conceding the surrender of terrorists, while at the same time accepting their terminologies and conditions, was so extreme as to be inconceivable.

Even worse, how does one expect to conduct two negotiations in parallel - with the adversarial government and with that government's opposition? We are obligated by agreements with the Palestinian Authority, and these agreements are not worded in terms such as hudna and the like. There are two options: Either the PA does not represent the Palestinians, and we should thus aim for a deal with Hamas as the true Palestinian representative; or we adhere to our ties with the Palestinians and refuse to reach an agreement with Hamas, either directly or via Egypt. It goes without saying that Hosni Mubarak would unequivocally refuse to allow us to make a separate deal with the Muslim Brotherhood, which is undermining his regime.

It is impossible to abide by the terms of the Oslo Accords - whatever value they may still have - with the Palestinian Authority, while at the same time agreeing to a hudna or a cease-fire with a different faction. Are the Palestinians in Gaza not Palestinians? Do we recognize the existence of two distinct Palestinian entities?

We must put a stop to this confusion. We must decide whom we recognize and with whom we form alliances, we must return to enforcing the set of international concepts that have legal validity and staying power, and we must stop granting legitimacy to a second Palestinian entity that will force us to accept two states of Palestine in addition to Jordan, as well as Israeli Arabs' crystallizing demand for a distinct national identity.

The writer is a lecturer on Islam at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Global Economic Crisis Boosts Utility of U.S. Sanctions on Syria

Andrew J. Tabler
February 26, 2009

On February 9, the Syrian minister of transportation announced that Washington had granted a license allowing Syria to purchase spare parts for two Boeing 747s that have been grounded for years. The announcement touched off intense speculation that the Obama administration would lift U.S. sanctions against Syria that have been in place since 2004. Even as Washington appears to be softening its stance with an eye toward engaging Damascus, sanctions remain an important tool to ensure that engagement achieves U.S. policy goals. Rather than dropping sanctions, Washington should recalibrate them to leverage the economic pressure on Damascus that has been exacerbated by the global economic crisis. Syria's Economic Woes

Despite U.S. sanctions, the Syrian economy has performed relatively well in recent years. Fueled by high oil prices and increased investment from the Gulf, Syria has posted an average annual economic growth rate of about 5 percent over the past five years. There are, however, big problems: oil production -- proceeds from which account for 27 percent of state revenues -- is declining by about 9 percent per year. And Syrian industry -- accounting for 28 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) -- is struggling to compete under a flood of imports resulting from Arab and Turkish free trade agreements. Likewise, unemployment hovers around 9 percent, and a record three-year drought has devastated the Syrian agricultural sector (23 percent of GDP).

Since the global economic crisis hit, Syria's economic situation has worsened. The collapse in oil prices forced the state to revise its budget oil price downward to $51 for light crude and $42 for heavy, resulting in a record budget deficit of $4.8 billion, or roughly 10 percent of its GDP. Syria is a net importer of oil, however, and the state earns revenue from exports while the cost of importing petroleum products (largely fuel oil) is borne by consumers. In the past, the government subsidized petroleum products, but it raised prices in 2008 to a point where the government now earns revenue from domestic fuel oil sales. Therefore, a reduction in oil prices still reduces government revenue. With Syrian crude averaging $38 and $32 for light and heavy respectively, the Economist Intelligence Unit now estimates the budget deficit will swell to $5.2 billion.

Although the state usually makes up for budget shortfalls by slashing investment spending -- a line item that accounts for 40 percent of the 2009 budget -- this tactic will be more difficult now. Syrians born in the 1980s and early 1990s, when the country was among the top twenty fastest growing populations in the world, are now flooding the job market. According to Syrian deputy prime minister for economic affairs Abdullah Dardari, Syria will need $14 billion of investment over the next two years to meet the 6-7 percent economic growth targets required to create enough jobs for the growing workforce.

A recent Syrian Economy Ministry report quoted by news agency AFP stated that the crisis would result in an estimated 30 percent drop in foreign investment, which totaled $875 million in 2007. The report also estimated that expatriate remittances, which amounted to $850 million last year, would fall while prices would rise. Last year, the International Monetary Fund estimated Syrian inflation at a record 15 percent, up from 5 percent in 2007.

Impact of Sanctions

The bad economic news explains Damascus's recent shift in focus from the need for Washington to mediate peace talks to a demand for Washington to drop U.S. sanctions. In an interview with Reuters news service this month, Dardari said that "to have normal relations between Syria and the United States, sanctions should be lifted. . . . This is going to be a very important part of any dialogue. . . ." His statements echo those of Sami Moubayed, a member of the U.S.-Syria Working Group (whose Syrian members were handpicked by the Bashar al-Asad regime to participate in Track II dialogue) who first linked lifting U.S. sanctions to dialogue with Syria just two days after the election of Barack Obama.

These statements represent a reversal of the regime's standard rhetoric on sanctions. When the Syrian Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act (SALSA) was implemented in May 2004, Damascus bragged that the sanctions would have little effect due to historically small amounts of bilateral trade. Many Syria observers questioned the utility of U.S. sanctions over the last few years, as spiraling food commodity and oil prices drove the dollar amounts (but not volumes) of U.S.-Syrian trade to all-time highs.

But there is ample evidence that U.S. sanctions on Damascus are having an increasing impact. SALSA, which bans all U.S. exports to Syria (except food and medicine), has hit Syrian aviation particularly hard. State-owned Syrian Air could not obtain parts for its fleet of American-made Boeing jets or purchase new aircraft from Europe's Airbus, which uses substantial U.S. content in its planes. SALSA also complicated Syrian oil and gas production by denying companies operating in Syria the necessary U.S. technology to increase diminishing Syrian crude output. Indeed, in the summer of 2007, Damascus blamed electricity blackouts on the "knock-on effect" of U.S. sanctions; companies specializing in major high-tech projects shunned operations in Syria for fear of running afoul of U.S. law. (The only legal exceptions to the sanctions were "export licenses" for U.S. goods for certain humanitarian purposes to promote the exchange of information and to help maintain aviation safety. It was under this provision that a license was issued to repair the two Syrian Air 747s last week.)

At the same time, U.S. actions targeting the state-owned Commercial Bank of Syria (CBS) have exacerbated Damascus's financial woes by making it more difficult to repatriate critical oil revenues. The U.S. Department of Treasury's March 2006 designation of CBS -- the depository for the lion's share of Syria's estimated $18-20 billion in foreign currency reserves -- as a "primary money-laundering concern" under the USA Patriot Act led all U.S. and a number of European banks to close their correspondent accounts. In anticipation of the move, Damascus switched state foreign currency transactions from dollars to euros, and since oil, the regime's lifeline, is denominated in dollars, the switch complicates the regime's ability to fund itself. In addition, the designation scared businessmen away from the CBS and toward the country's new private-sector banks, which operate under less regime control, effectively reducing the amount of cash the regime could access.

Executive orders freezing the U.S. assets of Syrian officials have likewise made global banks and investors wary of doing business with Syrian officials and regime businessmen. Last May, two American executives of Gulfsands Petroleum -- a company contracted to boost Syrian crude output -- resigned, and the company moved its headquarters from the United States to London after one of the company's partners, business tycoon and President al-Asad's cousin Rami Makhlouf, was targeted by an Executive Order focusing on public corruption in Syria. Later, Washington successfully pressured the Turkish mobile provider Turkcell to put off its bid to buy Syriatel, another Makhlouf-owned business. The U.S. designation was hailed by Syria's business community, which views Makhlouf, according to a new International Crisis Group report, as "a symbol of crony capitalism, resented by many colleagues for having bullied them into forced partnerships or out of lucrative deals."

Smart Sanctions Key to Success

As the fiscal crisis unfolds in Syria, existing U.S. sanctions could have a powerful negative impact on the Syrian economy, prompting Damascus to reevaluate its policies -- on U.S. designated terrorist groups (Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Hizballah), Lebanon, Iraq, and weapons of mass destruction -- to obtain relief. This kind of policy review could form the core of future Syrian-U.S. dialogue. To ensure U.S. leverage, Washington should recalibrate sanctions based on a clear understanding of Syria's fiscal problems and changing socioeconomic trends, rather than lift sanctions as Damascus suggests. The resulting "smart sanctions" should be a key element of a comprehensive U.S. strategy to put Damascus into dilemmas in which its choices will clearly signal whether Syria intends to continue fanning the flames of regional militancy or to play a productive role in reinvigorated regional peacemaking.

If these targeted sanctions are effective, Damascus will be forced to choose between continuing its policies and suffering the economic consequences, or concluding clear agreements with Washington to change its policies and gain American assistance to put Syria on the road to prosperity. U.S. sanctions contain sticks and carrots to lead Damascus down this path. In the weeks and months ahead, the challenge before the Obama administration will be to assess which sanctions have been most effective, and to link -- via a process of benchmarking -- the removal of sanctions to discernible and irreversible changes in Syrian policy.

Andrew J. Tabler is a Soref fellow in the Program on Arab Politics at The Washington Institute, where he focuses on how to engage Syria in a way that best advances U.S. interests.


© 2009 The Washington Institute for Near East Policy/span>

Iran slams Obama government at U.N.

Louis Charbonneau

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Iran went on the offensive against the Obama administration on Thursday, accusing Washington's new U.N. ambassador of making the "same tired" accusations against Iran as the Bush administration.. In a speech to the Security Council during a session on Iraq, U.S. envoy Susan Rice reiterated charges of Iranian support for terrorism and attempts to develop nuclear weapons, saying the United States sought an end to both policies.

"It is unfortunate that, yet again, we are hearing the same tired, unwarranted and groundless allegations that used to be unjustifiably and futilely repeated by the previous administration," Iran's envoy Mohammad Khazaee said in a letter to the council's president, Japanese Ambassador Yukio Takasu.

"Instead of raising allegations against others, the United States had better take concrete and meaningful steps in correcting its past wrong policies and practices vis-a-vis other nations, including the Islamic Republic of Iran."

Khazaee's remarks were among the most critical of the new U.S. administration by a senior Iranian official. Iran is not in the Security Council and no Iranian official attended the meeting at which Rice spoke.

The comments on Iran by Rice, who sits in the cabinet of President Barack Obama, were made almost in passing during a periodic Security Council review of U.N. activities in Iraq.

U.S. policy "will seek an end to Iran's ambition to acquire an illicit nuclear capacity and its support for terrorism," Rice told the 15 council members.

Obama, Rice and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have said repeatedly that Washington would use all tools, including direct talks, to deal with Iran's nuclear program, which Tehran says is for peaceful purposes.

Iran has reacted cautiously, saying it was open to fair talks while demanding fundamental changes in U.S. policy.

"NEW COURSE" ON IRAQ

Tehran often criticized the administration of former U.S. President George W. Bush, which labeled Iran a member of an "axis of evil" with North Korea and pre-war Iraq, but has toned down its rhetoric since Obama took office five weeks ago.

Although a senior U.S. official sat at a negotiating table with an Iranian official in Geneva last year, the Bush administration balked at the idea of direct nuclear talks, preferring instead to try to isolate Iran.

Washington severed diplomatic relations with Iran in 1980 after militants stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took a group of diplomats and officials hostage.

Rice also told the council the United States will move "responsibly and safely" to reduce its military presence in Iraq under a "new course" the Obama administration will adopt.

She gave no details of steps Obama is expected to announce on Friday to begin pulling U.S. combat troops out of Iraq. Bush ordered the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

Iraq's Ambassador Hamid al-Bayati was asked by reporters about his government's plan to expel some 3,500 Iranian exiles who have been based at a camp in Iraq for two decades.

"They can't stay in Iraq anymore," he said, adding the exiles can either go back to Iran or find a third country. "The People's Mujahideen is an organization which is not welcome."

Human rights groups say forcing the Iranian exiles to return to Iran, where they could be jailed or executed, or move to a third country is a violation of their human rights. Iraq says the exile group is a terrorist organization.

(Additional reporting by Patrick Worsnip; Editing by John O'Callaghan)

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COP: Obama’s Climate Rip-off

Steven Milloy
Publisher, JunkScience.com/Co-Manager, Free Enterprise Action Fund

President Obama wants to pay you to support global warming regulation. What he isn’t saying, however, is that his enticement won’t come close to covering what the regulations will cost you. In his 10-year budget released this week, the President proposed a so-called cap-and-trade scheme to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Under the proposal, 100 percent of the permits to emit greenhouse gases would be auctioned to coal and natural gas-burning electric utilities, industrial plants and other emitters-to-be-designated. The proceeds from the auctions would then distributed to individual Americans “to help the transition to a clean energy economy,” according to his budget proposal.

But what does this proposal mean for the average person in terms of actual dollars and cents?

Maybe the economics of Obama’s cap-and-trade rip-off don’t bother you, but the fact that the rip-off will accomplish nothing should give you pause.

It’s difficult to work out the precise financial impacts, but you can get an idea by doing some back-of-the-envelop calculations with some of the facts and figures that have recently been bandied about.

Based on past global warming legislation, like the Lieberman-Warner bill that failed in the Senate last June, a cap-and-trade plan would probably cover about 80 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions — about 5.8 billion tons based on a total of 7.3 billion tons emitted during 2007.

Assuming that permits are auctioned at a price of $12 per ton — a safety valve price included in past climate bills — the Obama plan would raise about $70 billion in its first year. Given that President Obama has proposed to spend about $15 billion per year of the auction proceeds on “clean energy” projects, about $55 billion would be leftover for distribution to individuals– in other words, every American with a Social Security number. Dividing the $55 billion among more than 300 million Americans, then, works out to about $180 per person and $720 per family of four per year.

It’s not like winning the lottery, but it’s better than nothing — or is it?

The liberal think tank Center on Budget Priorities and Policy estimated this week that reducing greenhouse gas emissions would cost the poorest families in America $750 per year as higher energy prices ripple through the economy affecting all goods and services. So if the poorest families, who use far less energy than the rest of America, are in a financial hole under the president’s plan, one can easily imagine how the rest of us will end up. Consider the potential consequences on just your electric bill.

The proposed Lieberman-Warner bill would have auctioned only 25 percent of the permits — not 100 percent as President Obama is proposing. The remaining 75 percent of the credits would have been distributed for free to electric utilities and other designated greenhouse gas emitters. But even under that scheme, Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers told The New York Times last summer that electricity rates would rise by 40 percent in the first year to cover his utility’s $2 billion outlay for credits. So a 100 percent auction could increase electricity bills for Duke’s 4 million customers by 160 percent — meaning a $100 monthly electric bill becomes, perhaps, a $260 monthly bill. Based on these calculations, a family of four that pays more than $40 per month for electricity — that is, every family — is a net loser under President Obama’s plan.

And those are the potential increases for just your electric bill. Not included are other likely price hikes for goods and services — gasoline, food, travel, etc. — that will necessarily be passed along to consumers. As you can readily see, your share of President Obama’s auction proceeds don’t come close to breaking even on greenhouse gas regulation.

Maybe you’re thinking that these extra costs are worth it as they will be dwarfed by the environmental benefits of tackling the much-dreaded global warming.

Think again. There will be no detectable or tangible benefits from reduced greenhouse gas emissions.

First, carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas targeted by regulation is invisible, colorless and odorless. Since it exists in the atmosphere at levels measured in the parts per million, unless you’re a plant that needs CO2 to live, you’re not going to notice it.

Next, there is no evidence that human emissions of carbon dioxide are causing detectable changes, much less any harm, to the climate. Check out my YouTube video on this issue:

This means, of course, that there is no evidence that reducing carbon dioxide emissions will have any detectable changes on climate.

Even assuming for the sake of argument that man made carbon dioxide emissions were changing climate, Obama’s cap-and-trade bill will still have no detectable impact. First, EPA projects that a maximum clamp down on future U.S. emissions would reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide levels by about 5 percent or less — a trivial change no matter what you believe about carbon dioxide. Moreover, China and India have vowed not to harm their economies because of global warming — so their emissions can be expected to soar as they develop and more than make-up for our reductions.

Maybe the economics of Obama’s cap-and-trade rip-off don’t bother you, but the fact that the rip-off will accomplish nothing should give you pause.

Steven Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and co-manages the Free Enterprise Action Fund and is the author of the forthcoming book from Regnery Publishing, “Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them.”

A Proposed Stimulus Package for Israel

1. Israel's competitive edge in the area of intellectual property has moderated the impact of the global meltdown on Israel's economy. For example, "Globes" reported on Feb. 24, 2009 that the medical giant, Medtronics, acquired Israel's Ventor for $325MN – its 3rd Israeli acquisition following InStent ($$220MN) and Odin ($9MN). This is the third major acquisition of an Israeli company since Dec. 2008 (Johnson & Johnson - Omrix for $438MN and St. Jude – MediGuide for $300MN). 2. SunRay is constructing a $400MN solar power station in Israel's Negev. The Boston-based Denham Capital has the controlling interest in SunRay. Bill Gates and Harvard University have invested in Denham (The Marker, Feb. 26).



3. "While venture capital investment fell in the US last year, it still managed to rise in China, India and Israel, according to Dow Jones VentureSource… In Israel, venture investment increased 19 percent to $1.9BN last year, fueled by 132 information technology deals…In the fourth quarter, investment was up 22 percent to $316MN… Europe looked more like the US… Overall investment in Europe fell 15 percent in 2008… (NY Times, Feb. 18, 2009).



4. "Israel has overtaken Russia as the main defense supplier to India, after breaking the $1BN mark in new contracts signed annually over the past two years…. Russia had averaged sales of $875MN annually to India for the past 40 years. In August, India's defense ministry approved a $2.5BN joint IAI-Rafael deal to develop a new and advanced version of the Spyder surface-to-air missile system… In the past decade, the countries have signed deals reaching a whopping $9BN" (Jerusalem Post, Feb. 15, 2009).



5. The NY-based UDT Med Holdings led a $7MN round of private placement by Israel's Kamada (Globes, Feb. 25). $7MN invested in Israel's Amimon by one of its overseas clients, which include Mitsubishi, Sonny, Stryker and Hisense (Globes, Feb. 19). The Irvine,California-based Ascendiant Capital Group has extended a $6MN line of credit to Israel's Medis (Globes, Feb. 19).

The making of Islamic terrorists

Dinah A. Spritzer ·

IDENTITY CRISIS: MUSLIMS IN EUROPE

BRADFORD, England (JTA) -- Ishtiaq Ahmed, who works as a spokesman for the Bradford Council for Mosques, lives with three generations of his family in a luxurious British home built by his father, a successful Pakistani-born businessman.After the July 7, 2005 public transit bombings in London, which killed 52 people, Ahmed woke up, looked around his neighborhood and was troubled by what he saw. Three of the four bombers were from nearby Leeds and, like him, they had Pakistani backgrounds.

"There is a growing section of Muslim young people 16 to 25 who are increasingly becoming alienated, disillusioned and angry about a host of issues, such as unemployment, racism and British foreign policy," Ahmed said.

Many of these young people, he said, feel that the British government is against them.

"They see the government is willing to spend millions of dollars fighting Muslims in Iraq, but not help them with their problems at home," Ahmed said.

That can make them ripe for recruitment by Islamic extremists.

"People with a pan-Islamic agenda tell these young people: All your problems are because you are Muslim" -- living in a non-Muslim country -- "so we should all unite and assert ourselves and restore the glory of Islam," he said.

Even if only an estimated 3 percent to 4 percent of Muslim youth become extremists, Ahmed said, "that is still far, far too many."

The London bombings, like the Madrid train bombings in March 2004 and foiled terrorist plots elsewhere in Europe since, have forced Europe to focus on homegrown Islamic radicalism. Beyond implementing security measures needed to prevent terrorist attacks, Europe is trying to understand the sense of fury and alienation many Muslims feel and that, in a few rare cases, might lead them to try to murder their neighbors.

"The number of individuals in Europe who have joined violent jihadi movements has increased," said Alexander Ritzmann, an expert on Islamic terrorism from the Brussels-based European Foundation for Democracy and a former member of Germany's parliament. Based on terrorist incidents and intelligence dossiers, he said, "there has been an increase of planned attacks over the last five years."

To be sure, the number of European Muslims engaged in terrorism is minuscule compared with their overall numbers. Of the roughly 17 million Muslims living in the 27-country European Union, a total of 242 were charged with terrorism-related crimes from 2001 to 2006, according to a study by the Netherlands Institute for International Relations.

But support for terrorist attacks appears to be far more widespread.

Roughly one in seven Muslims in France, Spain and Britain believe suicide bombings against civilian targets can be justified at times to defend Islam against its enemies, a 2006 Pew Research Center survey showed. And with the Iraq war, the Afghanistan campaign and Israel's recent war in Gaza, experts say al-Qaida's notion that Islam is under attack by the West is gaining currency among Muslims in Europe.

Terrorist groups like al-Qaida and militant Islamists have tried to tap into Muslim fury in Europe, with some success. Foreign policy often is cited as a key motivating factor by terrorists.

One of the 2005 London suicide bombers, Mohammad Sidique Khan, left behind a video in which he justified his attack, saying, "Your democratically elected governments continually perpetrate atrocities against my people all over the world. Your support makes you directly responsible."

The 29 bombers who carried out the 2004 Madrid attacks, which left 191 dead and 1,755 wounded, were inspired by al-Qaida's 2003 call for action against countries supportive of the U.S.-led war in Iraq, court documents show.

But the picture of Muslim fury is complicated, and it is easy to confuse the anger of European Muslims over their treatment as a disenfranchised minority in Europe -- such as the riots that rocked Paris' heavily Muslim immigrant suburbs in the autumn of 2005 -- with sympathy for anti-Western terrorism.

In the 1960s and '70s, European governments recruited manual laborers from poor, rural, mostly Muslim countries such as Pakistan, Turkey, Morocco and Algeria without paying much attention to how they might fit into European societies. Governments assumed these workers eventually would return to their countries of origin.

Instead they remained, struggling against problems such as discrimination and poverty. Many lived in substandard housing, frequently were denied jobs and homes due to their ethnic background, and scored considerably lower than native Europeans on school tests.

After the terrorist attacks this decade, European governments finally woke up and began promoting integration and equal opportunities. But the measures are so recent, it will be years before their impact can be gauged and, in some cases, felt.

Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to attribute support for Islamic terrorism to Europe's failure to integrate Muslim immigrants. Nearly half the convicted terrorists in the study by the Netherlands Institute hailed from middle-class families that appeared to be successful models of integration. So were the men who committed the London bombings in 2005.

Peter Neumann, director of the International Center for the Study of Radicalization and Political Violence at King's College in London, says an identity crisis is at the crux of sympathy for and involvement in Islamic terrorism.

"European Muslims feel torn between the culture of their parents they do not identify with and Western culture that does not really accept them," he said. "This is true for all immigrants, but the key difference is that there is no ideology for Hindus, for instance, saying that the West is at war with your religion and that there are Zionists and crusaders who want to kill you."

What emerges from interviews with former Islamic extremists is that years of alienation can give rise to radicalism, even among the middle class.

Maajid Nawaz, a former British Islamist who now runs one of Europe's leading counter-radicalism organizations, the Quilliam Foundation, talked to the U.S. Senate's Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs last July about how as a young man he felt torn, like so many second-generation Pakistani immigrants, between British culture and that of his parents.

"Despite my liberal British upbringing, I was subject to an appalling level of racist violence by a minority of thugs," he said. "Many of my white friends were stabbed before my eyes simply for associating with me."

"Whilst such a crisis of identity initially concerned only racial and ethnic dimensions, the tragic slaughter of white Muslims that was to eventually play out in Bosnia-Herzegovina brought to the fore of my mind Europe's Muslim question," he told the committee. "Through this rude awakening, and for the first time in my life, I became critically aware of a Muslim identity."

Beware the caliphate

The path to violent extremism can be found in political Islam, which views Islam not just as a religion but as a political system under which all Muslims one day will be united, Nawaz says. Al-Qaida and its offshoots preach violence as a means to this goal, while more moderate groups believe political Islam should be achieved through nonviolent means.

Britain's most successful Islamist organization, Hizb ut-Tahrir, known by the acronym HT and whose name means Party of Liberation, is banned in the Middle East and in Germany. HT holds that Muslims, if convinced by ideology, will rise up and engage in peaceful coup d'etats in Muslim countries to restore the Islamic caliphate the group claims was destroyed when Turkey became secular a century ago. HT's biennial meetings in Britain draw an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 people.

Officially, HT condemns terrorism and maintains it opposes violence of any kind in the name of Islam.

"In the West, Hizb ut-Tahrir works to cultivate a Muslim community that lives by Islam in thought and deed, whereby adhering to the rules of Islam and preserving a strong Islamic identity," says the movement's Web site. "The party does not work in the West to change the system of government, but works to project a positive image of Islam to Western society and engages in dialogue with Western thinkers, policymakers and academics."

HT officials did not return JTA's calls seeking comment.

Ishtiaq Hussain, a former member of HT who now works with the Quilliam Foundation, says the key to successful recruitment of radicals is exploiting whatever grievances extremists can find among young Muslims.

"Recruiters will say that the war in Iraq shows that Americans want to kill Muslims and we have to unite against this," Hussain said. "They will basically take any problem you have and turn it into a Muslims vs. the West issue."

HT recruits primarily at universities, where its leaders run prayer services and other events but do not necessarily identify themselves as HT members. Recruiters keep their eyes out for those who seem most receptive to their message, befriending and encouraging them to attend more and more events.

A former recruiter himself, Hussain recalls luring students away from more moderate Muslim groups by discrediting them as government stooges and enforcing the idea that only HT represents true Islam.

"All the books you read, the people you talk to," are HT, Hussain said. They "tell you not to listen to your friends or family."

Like any other cult -- or, perhaps, college fraternity -- HT gives members a sense of empowerment through belonging to a tight-knit, elite group. But unlike a fraternity, HT also sometimes encourages recruits to turn against those closest to them.

"There was that feeling of being on the cusp of a new world order which would revive the glory days of Islam," wrote another former HT member and co-founder of the Quilliam Foundation, Ed Hussein, in Britain's Independent newspaper last April. "For a 17-year-old who felt out of place in the U.K., it was very attractive. Everywhere we went, we were the brothers to be respected. It was intoxicating."

Moderate Muslims say groups such as HT distort true Islam in recruiting young people to the cause of extremism. While HT does not promote terrorism, Hussain describes it as a conveyor belt to violence.

"They never tell you to go blow yourself up, but they do not condemn it either; they leave it up to the individual," he said. "And we believe their kind of thinking can lead some people to violent acts."

An engineer and doctor who tried to blow up the Scottish airport in Glasgow in 2007 attended HT meetings. So did Omar Sharif, a Briton who tried but failed to blow himself up in Tel Aviv in 2003.

To be sure, there is no sure recipe for transforming an alienated Muslim into a terrorist.

Across Europe, there has been a resurgence in religiosity among Muslims since the launch of the so-called war on terror. Many have turned to faith in the face of anti-Muslim sentiment, and devout Muslims insist Islam is a force for good, not ill.

Activists like Ishtiaq Ahmed say Muslim leaders must make a greater effort to convey to young people that being a politically involved British citizen is compatible with being a religious Muslim.

"Islamic faith institutions have a duty to protect the young Muslim population from dangerous and violent propaganda," he said. "We can't bury our heads in the sand and pretend this is not a problem."