Learning About Our Neighbors

I attended this afternoon and evening a seminar organized by the Spokesperson's Office of the Benjamin Regional Council on our Arab neighbors from the historical, sociological and political aspects, both locally as well as the great regional picture from the Magrheb to Iran and even Pakistan.

Some 70 participants from most of the communities in the regional council were present:

The three speakers were Avi Issercharof (below) of Haaretz; Ze'ev Ehrlich and Shlomo Harari:

It was an excellent intellectual and informative evening.

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And Who Opposes the Pal. UN Move?

Hamas.

Hamas, however, does not support the bid for UN recognition on the grounds that it is a unilateral move by the president. Hamas official Musheer Al-Masri says the bid is an "individual step taken by President Abbas without consulting any faction."

Senior Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahhar says the Gaza Strip, which Hamas controls, has been left out of the campaign.

"Nobody has asked the people in Gaza to take to the streets showing solidarity with the so-called September bid. If the Palestinian Authority calls for that, we will oppose it because they detain people in the West Bank. How can I give them the right to demonstrate in Gaza, while they do not give us that right in the West Bank?"

Islamic Jihad also criticized the PA for launching the bid unilaterally.

"This move needs to be studied to make sure it will not ignore major issues such as the right of return, and the future of the Palestine Liberation Organization as a umbrella for the whole Palestinian people," said Islamic Jihad spokesman Dawood Shihab.

Shibab added that Islamic Jihad had reservations toward the UN bid, and that a state could not be announced under occupation.

The Islamic Jihad official said he expected the campaign to fail without Palestinian consensus.

They have two administrations, two territorial units, about a half dozen military groups - all engaged in terror, hate, incitement against Israel.

The last thing they can agree on is "two-states-for-two-peoples", unless they are referring to themselves.

To quote Aaron David Miller:

a much darker reality looms: The Palestinian national movement has become a fractured Humpty Dumpty, with grave consequences for Israeli-Palestinian peace, regional stability, and Palestinians themselves.

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I Am Not Guilty

The Arab world is in trouble but it isn't my fault.

...The convulsion is now being described in terms of a "scenario" to be avoided elsewhere in the Arab world, with commentators looking around the region, notably to Tunisia's eastern neighbour Algeria, where riots over food prices have only just subsided, and towards Egypt, where recent attacks on the Christian Copts raised the spectre of deepening sectarian violence.

What is afoot in North Africa, and will it really infect the internal dynamics of other Arab states?...strains on living standards affecting the whole region. In 2008, a sudden, 30 per cent rise in the price of imported wheat provoked widespread bread riots in Egypt, and Jordan has recently seen protests over living costs too.

And this:

Major gunbattles erupted outside the palace of Tunisia's deposed president, in the center of the capital, in front of the main opposition party headquarters and elsewhere on Sunday as authorities struggled to restore order and the world waited to see if the North African nation would continue its first steps away from autocratic rule...Syrian authorities sharply raised a key subsidy on Sunday in a reversal of policy after Tunisia's president was driven from power by unrest over soaring prices, unemployment and state repression. The government had hitherto been slashing subsidies as it lifts bans on private enterprise to try and repair decades of economic stagnation and draw back capital.

In neighboring Jordan, the state announced a $225 million package of cuts in the prices of several fuels and staple products including sugar and rice. Meanwhile, Islamists in Jordan, emboldened by protests in Tunisia called on Sunday for an end to what they called authoritarian rule in their country.

And even Libya slips in:

Gaddafi's Libya has had its own protests over the past few days. Nothing on the scale of Tunisia, but enough that his speech to Tunisians could be summarised thus: I am scared witless by what happened in your country.

I live in Israel, at a revenant community village and am Jewish.

But this isn't my fault.

The Arabs' responsibility is all their own.

And they've "earned" it.

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