Middle East- World Media

Adel Darwish On last month’s  Arab Summit in Damascus

They Came, they  saw – or pretended to see  -  talked (at each other)  and they went; half of the leaders of nations that makes  what we in the western media call ‘ the Arab World’ even though half its inhabitants are not ethnically Arab. The Arab Summit in Damascus was the summit that never was.

Read the rest of this post »

London- Adel Darwish 

Like every year on March 15^th, I went up the hill to Highgate cemetery, with two small pots of hyacinth, one about to open to white and the other purple. It is the anniversary of my late friend Farzad Bazoft, murdered by hanging on this day in 1990 by the Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein. After planting the hyacinth on the grave tray next to a pot full of roses left early in the day by Ruth Fisher, who was Farzad’s girlfriend at the time and just in front of a small lantern where a candle was still lit, I sat on the ege of the next gravestone drowning deep in my thoughts, remembering Farzad and some very sad, tens and crowded days in March 1990. I left 30 minutes later after talking a bit to Farzad’s spirit about what happened since my last year visit, including Saddam’s hanging in the same jail in Baghdad where he was murdered 18 years ago. Now home I decided not to write any thing more than what I did. Just to upload here what I wrote in 2000 nn the 10^th anniversary of Farzad’s murder.

15 March, 2000: 

Holding a pot of blue hyacinth in my hand, I visualised Farzad Bazoft wearing his cheeky smile. I almost heard his hearty laughter livening up this cold wet typical London afternoon in a calm deserted corner of Highgate cemetery where he once said, in a passing comment, he wanted to be buried. The scene was more lively ten years ago. His photographs in newspapers and carried by some mourners at the same spot where I stood drowning in my thoughts. Not only fellow Journalists who came to the funeral. But the crowd was made of a mix of humanity: Iranians from different religions, many other nationalities, just friends, neighbours and three of his girlfriends, for Farzad, to say the least, was ‘popular with women.’ I remember the Anglican dean of St. Bride’s church, the spiritual home for many generations who passed through Fleet street, was there listening, with his heart, to Koranic verses recited in a language his mind didn’t understand, as Muslims started placing earth on the freshly occupied grave. The churchman didn’t know Farzad, but a day earlier he conducted his memorial service in a crowded church. Fixing my gaze on the rain-washed headstone, and inhaling the scent of hyacinth I reheard the 10 year old sad symphony: whispers, words of comfort, sighs of grief, some soft gentle sad chanting by Muslims mourning Farzad on that sad day in 1990. British writers, and journalists, some knew him, and some didn’t, but they were united by a sense of – more anger than – grief at his murder. Many faces I remembered from the memorial service, where I recognised people belonging to at least seven different faiths, as well as atheists, singing hymns and praying, in an English Church, for Farzad’s soul. It was more of a festival of protest and solidarity than a funeral. A joint expression of love for a young man who died doing a job he loved and glamourised. We were also grieving for many fellow reporters, killed for being journalists in the wrong place at the wrong time. We were angry at Farzad’s murderers, as well as at the faceless ‘Sir Humphrys’ of an officialdom that let the whole British media down, when they deserted Farzad letting him taste a bitter lonely death in nose of the ‘Butcher of Baghdad.’ It is that chilly lonely feeling that still blows on my heart, every time I recall his smiling face, his jokes laughing during comparing notes on women and wine. I still taste his loneliness during the last days, hours and minutes of his short colourful life. Perhaps that is why I always went alone – never with any one – to visit Farzad since his funeral in 1990. His death, I remember, brought me face to face with my own loneliness, the life long companion of writers and foreign reporters. I didn’t realise then, how much the tragedy would affect me. I only met him three years earlier. Then we met many times in press conferences and in the course of covering events. I grew to like him. He was fun to be with, simply loved life and recruited his companions to the same belief. He was excited about his job, giving analysis of the region, an attractive character, a typical Middle East charmer, as well as a typical energetic reporter. He helped me in Baghdad in 1987 and 1988 when, on several occasions, he used his influence and, ironically, good contacts with Iraqi officials, succeeding to facilitate filling my story after the hotel telex-room clerk – usually in the service of Iraqi intelligence – had gone home. Farzad never believed that his ‘Iraqi friends’ would betray him. It was part of his character to trust, and be open with, everyone. He was a naive playboy who never meant to do any harm. He was looking for a good story, but he also liked to create a romantic picture of which he believed he was a central component. Even before his execution he thought, somehow, that the Iraqi dictator, in a dramatic romantic gesture would give him a last minute reprieve. I guess, looking back now, I was angry with Farzad, like your anger against your own children when they carelessly harm themselves while having fun. Farzad was a gentle soul, happy, playful, flamboyant, womanizer, who worked hard, played hard and enjoyed life to the full. He helped colleagues and strangers whenever he could. He did not deserve to be murdered that way.

Anniversary   

For the so called collective Arab Peace Plan to work, it should first turn into a road map.

By Adel Darwish-

The Noble peace prizewinner, the late President Anwar Sadat of Egypt once said that 99 per-cent of  the cards to the Middle East game are held by America. Thirty years later, 99 per-cent of the cards are held by Arabs, wrote Egyptian-born American strategist Dr Mamoun Fandy in the prestigious Arabic daily Asharq al-Awsat. In the Beirut Arab summit initiatives by Saudi Arabia’s King Abduallah (then crown prince) were collectively adopted as ‘ the Arab peace initiatives.’  Six years passed and the Arab Peace Plan still hasn’t been tested but rather stuck in a typical Middle Eastern catch 22.

The Israelis, legitimately, ask ‘what is in it for us?’  Existing peace deals, although still holding,  like withdrawal from Gaza, paid Israeli tax payers little dividends. 

‘We will only recognise Israel,’  Arabs say, ‘when it returns all occupied Arab land.’ Such health warning attached to the Peace Plan could be for populist demagogic reasons, or, as many believe is born out of the traditional hostility to the Jewish state. The condition neverthless deflects popular anger, and possible revolt, away from Arab autocratic regimes. Nearly all Arab officials still reject a public handshake with Israeli officials.  

Peace packages, by their very nature, are usually subjected to the endlesshaggling by the Middle Eastern souk mentality.  The Arabs should develop their Plan into a Middle Eastern Road Map, of building confidence blocks, like officials shaking hands with their Israeli counterparts when they run into them in European capitals for example. Implementing this roadmap  will be slow, and nothing like the dramatic impact of Sadat’s 1977 bold visit to Jerusalem; but modest steps taken, will still be steps  forward on the road to peace and certainly more positive than the current static situation that breeds hatred and wastes valuable resources on arms.

In January  some Arab and American analysts were urging President George Bush and his Arab allies to devise some plan involving President Bashar Assad of Syria to help end Iran’s suffocating embrace of Damscus, which will also help stabilise Lebanon and reduce the influence of the jihadists anti peace camp.

Briefing us, British journalists covering HM  the Queen’s state visit to Morocco 27 years ago, the late King Hassan told us that a true friend of the Palestinians was the one who would invite them to dinner with the Israelis then leaves the room after drinking the first toast, limiting his role to facilitating all their needs.  That was 13 years before the Norwegians played the role leading to Oslo accords and the Israeli Palestinian first peace agreement. 

Despite their radical Pan-Arab rhetoric, all what the Syrians want is the return of the Golan Heights occupied by Israel in 1967, to which the Israelis agreed in principle during bilateral talks in Washington a decade ago. The 1967 borders were the shore of the Sea of Galilee ( Lake Tiberias in Syrian lingo).

It was Israeli Syrian skirmishes, when the latter were used earth moving equipment in an attempt to divert the headwaters of tributaries feeding the Jordan river away from Israel that lead to the Six Day war, as former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told me when I was researching my book (Water Wars: Coming Conflicts in the Middle East, London 1993).  When the late President Hafez Assad of Syria was told that historic international borders between Syria and British mandate Palestine were 11 yards north of the Sea of Galilee, he reportidly replied: ‘ but there was no Jews separating Syria from  lake Tiberias’.

International lawyers can always find more than a formula saleable by leaders to their public, but first the host envisaged by late King Hassan must be found. It is puzzling why a nation like Egypt – or Jordan- which enjoys normal diplomatic relations with all parties can’t become such a host ?

Providing it remains neutral, Cairo can host a summit between President Assad of Syria and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert ( President Bush will surely be delighted to attend?) to hammer a lasting peace deal. A forerunner could start now with a permanent joint Israel Palestinian security and coordination committee based in Sharmelsheikh or Taba.

An Arab road-map, and a role for Egypt and  Jordan, as neutral honest brokers will present the world with a peace settlement which is neither eastern nor western but authantically regional.   –

15 January 2008
 Seen in Israel as its staunchest ally, President George ‘Dubya’ Bush waited seven years before his first official visit to the Jewish in his ‘ mission impossible’.

 Adel Darwish, on President Bush’s Middle East Tour.
 

Analysts, as well as parties involved, agree on one thing: It is less clear what the President would  bring his hosts apart from gridlock. Analysts point out that every party in the troubled region had different aims and expectation from the American leader’s grand Middle East Tour.

Pessimists, a majority, expected nothing more from Mr. Bush than just nudging the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, which he re-started in Annapolis in November to move a few steps ahead ; and  to reassure himself that America’s allies can still be rallied against Iran.

After his joint project with a Mr. Tony Blair, failed to materialise his Wilsonian vision of bringing democracy to the Arabs in a domino effect starting in Iraq, Mr. Bush saw Palestine as the door left open to walk into history books. But he has little time to leave a mark comparable to his predecessors’. President Jimmy Carter’s failure to rescue American hostages from Iran, was offset by associating him self with the Egyptian Israeli 1979 historic peace treaty.

Ronald Reagan set the scene for winning the cold war without firing a shot; while George Bush Snr is admired for liberating Kuwait from Saddam Hussein and remembered fondly by less grateful Arabs for starting the peace talks and for giving ‘ naughty’ Israel a financial smack on the wrist by freezing $10bn loan facilities.

Dubya Bush took office only days after his predecessor Bill Clinton let an Israeli Palestinian peace deal slip through his fingers, in an attempt to offset his pathetic response to al-Qaeda attack on American embassies in East Africa. Instead of  uprooting the terror organisation from Afghanistan, his critics say, he comically fired a dozen or so cruise missile costing a million dollar a piece tt some Afghan terror tents worth 10 bucks.

Mr. Bush jnr, on dad’s advice, had no intention in getting his feet stuck in the ever-shifting sands of the Middle East, focusing instead on economy. But Messers Bin Laden and Zawahiri had a different idea in September 2001 forcing him into a bigger quagmire, that only a Carter like peace deal can wash its mud .
 
Nicked-named by the Economist as ‘Mr. Palestine’ , Mr. Bush was the first American President to commit  himself to establishing a ‘ viable’ Palestinian state, within his ‘two democratic states’ vision.
He Put Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on the spot by saying he expected the two sides to sign a peace treaty before the end of the year following his January 10  talks with the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah.

At the Annapolis summit  Mr. Abbas, and Israel Prime Minister Ehud promised to talk fearlessly to one another about “final status” issues such as borders, Jerusalem and refugees.  Mr. Bush, a man who in the words of an Arab diplomat ,  ‘get on and do what he has set his mind on doing, regardless of being right or wrong’; wanted to be remembered as a leader who planted the seeds of  peace in the holy land;  yet many seasoned Middle East observers say his plan was too ambitious to square the Palestinian Israeli circle in the time frame he set.

The president heard, from both sides their familiar complaints. While expressing gratitude for a big boost in foreign aid inspired by Annapolis and coordinate by Mr. Blair, Mr. Abbas told the President that Israel’s recent announcement of new tenders for housing in West Bank settlements, many seen as illegal in international law, jeopardises the fledgling talks. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice described an expansion of Har-Homa, a settlement near Jerusalem as ‘ unhelpful’.  
Mr. Olmert too made the familiar complaint about The Palestinians inability to deliver on security, which pushes Israel to take harsh measures that, in turn, makes ordinary Palestinians lives difficult, festering more hatred for Israel.

Theoretically, and in the eyes of International law, President Abbas is the lawfully elected head of what looks like a Palestinian state representing the entire nation. In reality, he only controls the West Bank while Gaza is controlled by the Islamists Hamas, who, Arabs, Israelis and Americans alike agree, backed, financed and armed by Iran and  Syria to stop the very peace settlement President Bush’s tour was trying to secure.

Hamas’s refused neither to stick to agreement signed by the Palestinian Authority with Israel, nor to a deal signed with the rival Fateh for a coalition government under Saudi auspices last year, and staged a bloody coup that drove all of Mr. Abbas’s officials out of Gaza last summer.
Rockets, fired by militants from Gaza, on almost daily bases, at Israeli towns  are seen by many as Hamas inspired. President Bush’s arrival was greeted by salvos of rockets fired from Gaza and a few fired by some previously unknown Islamic Organisation from Southern Lebanon, believed to be an arm of Hezbollah.
 Mr.  Olmert’s  rating in the polls is the lowest in Israel’s 60 years history, and musters little support from the  public for any move on settlements as demanded by the Palestinians and the Americans. 
 

Adel Darwish - 27 Dec-2007

These are the first thoughts and observations after the assasination of the Pakistan opposition Leader Benazir Bhutto. There is the usual, wrong spin from the left making the wrong conclusion, while there is real fear of what might happend next.

Read the rest of this post »

By Adel Darwish 

I read some bizarre features and columns in a couple of Egyptian newspapers on my flight returning from Cairo last Saturday ( Dec 8^th), regarding what a handful of Egyptian journalists and columnists regard as an alarming national crisis that would lead to threat to national security in the future, namely a few thousands Egyptians moved to Israel, either to work, or for good especially after marrying Israeli men/women, either Israeli Palestinians (Christians and Muslims) or Israeli Jews.

Read the rest of this post »