Qifa Nabki | A Lebanese Political Blog

The news out of Gaza is being covered by plenty of other able bloggers and analysts (like Steve Walt, Issandr El Amrani, Gideon Levy, and my buddy Sean over at the Human Province), so I won’t rehash what everyone’s already said except to make this very cynical point: high-visibility non-violent protests pack a disproportionately heavy punch in this age of 24 hour news, Twitter feeds, and live-streaming video.

Oops, Helena Cobban already said that. But no matter. The point is that this tragic incident is doing more to put the plight of ordinary Gazans back on the front page than any kind of military operation undertaken by Hamas. And speaking of Hamas, they’ve chosen the right moment to show their cuddly side. Khaled Meshaal recently told Charlie Rose (again) that his organization would end its resistance towards Israel if a two-state solution were adopted on the basis of the 1967 borders. Two days later, the IDF killed a bunch of humanitarian workers.

What’s the next step? Syria has called for an emergency meeting of the Arab League, and both Bashar al-Assad and Saad al-Hariri have warned that the flotilla killings could lead to a regional war. Maybe this is a naive reading, but it strikes me that beating the war drums is the wrong move. Instead of threatening to launch another intifada, why not actually launch an aid flotilla that is ten times the size of the one that was assaulted? The humanitarian non-violent strategy has clearly proved to be the winning one, so why not press it?

Your thoughts?

A reader of this blog asked me to advertise the following vacancy:

The Special Tribunal for Lebanon is looking to recruit Lebanese lawyers and jurists for its National Visiting Professionals program. The positions are relatively well paid at over 1000 euros per month and include travel costs to The Hague. This would be a great opportunity to gain exposure and training in an international court and to contribute knowledge and experience in Lebanese law at the same time.

Make sure to read the vacancy announcement on their website, and have a look at the other jobs advertised as well while you’re there.

While we’re on the subject of announcements, Nick Noe asked me to let you all know about a new program that Mideastwire is sponsoring:

Mideastwire.com, in partnership with The Syria Report, is pleased to announce that it is accepting applications for the first Damascus Exchange. The two-week program August 1-15 will engage students from around the world in a multifaceted discussion of some of the key issues facing Syria and the region.

The Damascus Exchange program rests on three tracks:

Academic – Participants will attend a series of seminars led by leading academics and public intellectuals in Syria. Topics will include: Economic reform challenges; The evolving relationship between Syria and Turkey; Syria’s role in the Middle East peace process; Arab nationalism; Hydro-politics in the Levant; and, Doing business in Syria: Barriers, opportunities and practices.

Language – Participants will have the option of attending 20 hours of Arabic language instruction. Modules will be available at different levels.

Dialogue with Leaders – Participants will have the opportunity to meet, listen and engage political, economic and religious leaders in Syria.

For more information, check out the website.

If any other readers out there want to place a Lebanon-related classified ad on this blog (goats for sale, olive oil soap, etc.), well, you can’t. Not even if you send me the text for the ad and $350 to Qifa Nabki Worldwide Headquarters, Carrel #566, Widener Library 5th Floor, Cambridge MA 02138.

A friend forwarded me the below excerpt with the subject heading: “Reza Aslan is insulting YOU!”

I won’t lie to you: until I got to the third or fourth line and realized that he wasn’t actually talking about me (but rather, my carrelmate) I couldn’t help but wonder: “What have I done to offend Reza Aslan?” Judge for yourselves:

Q: How do you think scholars can learn to take part in broader conversations?

Aslan: It’s often a total waste of time. You can’t be trained to speak to the media in a weekend seminar before going on Anderson Cooper. You have to be immersed in the kind of world in which there is no division between the academic and the popular. I honestly think that the best hope that we have is to foster a new kind of student, one who doesn’t spend eight years in the basement of Widener Library at Harvard poring over a thirteenth-century manuscript and writing a dissertation on the changes in the vowel markings of a sentence. That kind of scholarship has a very small role in the world we live in now. We need scholars who understand that there is no division between the world of academia and the popular world. Trying to take staid academics and teach them to use words with fewer syllables is not the way to break that wall down. (Keep reading)

I’m not sure I remember the last time I saw Anderson Cooper interview someone who even knew what an Arabic vowel marking was, let alone one who’d written a dissertation on the subject. And is Aslan seriously arguing that the current commentariat of “experts” on the Muslim world is overly dominated by linguistically-savvy philologists and historians of Islam who have the ability to study medieval manuscripts?

If you ask me, it’s the factually-stunted but media-friendly types who seem to be in such ready supply these days.

But these are surely just the grumblings of a sun-starved stacks rat who is heartbroken that he will never get the chance to meet Anderson Cooper.

There’s a new blog on the block, published by Mideastwire, the company that provides a daily digest of translated articles from the Middle Eastern press and runs the Beirut Exchange. I would highly recommend checking it out and subscribing to its RSS feed.

Nick Noe (the co-founder of Mideastwire) has assured me that they will be putting up material and translated articles on a regular basis, so it’s an easy way to get access to a great resource.  (See, for example, the translation of the Assafir interview with Bashar al-Assad, which we discussed a couple of days ago.)

Also, do check out the latest briefing on the Lebanese municipal elections, put out by IFES, which is invaluable as usual. You can download it here.

Finally, a Syrian online newsletter (tabloid?) All4Syria is claiming that the Syrian Ambassador to Canada has been summoned back to Damascus because of the launch of OneMideast, which sounds like a ludicrous claim to me (and to Josh Landis as well). Be sure to read the comment section as well, but here’s the report itself:

بعد قصة المدونين : مرسوم بعودة السفير السوري من كندا

طباعة أرسل لصديق

مراسل المحليات – كلنا شركاء

20/ 05/ 2010

صدر مرسوم بعودة السفير السوري المعتمد في اوتاوا السيد جميل صقر وذلك بعد ان انهى خدمة خمس سنوات …….وتزامن صدور المرسوم مع الضجة التي حصلت بنفس اليوم واثارتها المقالة البريطانية التي كشفت عن لقاءات وحوارات بين مدونين وشخصيات سياسية وديبلوماسية واكاديمية سورية مع نظرائهم الاسرائيليين والتي كانت مستمرة منذ اكثر من سنة حيث يقوم بتنسيقها وادارتها الشاب كميل قطرنجي المقيم في كندا .

وقد ربط البعض بين صدور قرار اعادة السفير في كندا وعدم التمديد له لمدة عام اضافي وبين هذه القضية , وقد منح السفير صقر مدة شهرين لانهاء التزاماته والعودة لدمشق

As it turns out, the Ambassador was due back in Damascus anyway because his five-year term was up, but the website’s editors were only to happy to suggest that far more nefarious forces were at work.

I’m pleased to announce the launch of OneMideast.org, a website that has been in development for about a year now. Here’s the skinny on it:

OneMideast.org is an online discussion arena intended for raising and debating ideas central to the Arab-Israeli peace process.

The project, which represents the first joint Syrian-Israeli online dialogue of its kind, was formed through the efforts of private individuals from both countries — bloggers, academics, political analysts, journalists, and businesspeople — who set out to produce an extensive list of objections to peace commonly encountered in both Syrian and Israeli societies.

Through a voting process, the group collectively settled upon two “Top Twenty Lists” of objections to peace (one Syrian, one Israeli), and then set about attempting to produce the most effective counter-arguments to each objection.

The results of the project are available for download (text and podcast) on the OneMideast.org website. During its next phase, OneMideast.org will invite experts and opinion leaders from both countries to discuss the challenges associated with the Syrian-Israeli peace process, and to submit constructive feedback for publication on the site.

Credit for the lion’s share of the thought and work behind this project must go to my friend Camille Otrakji, who is a true dynamo. Other folks involved include Joshua Landis of Syria Comment, Yo’av Stern of Ha’aretz and the Peres Center for Peace, and many other folks who regularly read this blog.

The site has already been profiled in The Christian Science Monitor, The Guardian and The Huffington Post, and will also be covered by a few other news outlets in the coming days. I’ll have more to say about the project as well, but for now please feel free to check it out, and come back here to comment (as I don’t think that we’ve enabled commenting yet on the actual site).

The Jerusalem Post is reporting that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has turned down an offer from Israeli President Shimon Peres, according to which Israel would return the Golan Heights to Syria in exchange for a severing of ties between Syria and its allies in the Axis of Resistance (Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, etc.)

The story in JPost was based on an interview that Assad gave to the Lebanese newspaper Assafir. Here’s the relevant portion of the Arabic article:

وكشف الاسد عن ان الرئيس الروسي ديميتري ميدفيديف نقل خلال زيارته الاخيرة الى دمشق رسالة إسرائيلية من شيمون بيريز تتضمن عرضاً بالمقايضة بين الجولان وفك علاقة سوريا بإيران وحركات المقاومة، فكان جوابنا واضحاً وهو ان الواقع يثبت ان اسرائيل لا تعمل من أجل السلام، وبالتالي فإن باقي الكلام لا يفيد.
وشدد الاسد على ان للقيادة السورية منهجية في التعامل مع الملفات المطروحة من لبنان الى ايران مروراً بفلسطين والعراق، «فنحن لا نربط الملفات بدول بل بقضايا، وقد نصحنا من يأتي لمحاورتنا بأن لا يضيّع وقته في السعي الى الربط بين هذه الملفات». وأضاف: نحن نتكلم حول كل ملف على حدة، انطلاقاً من اننا نعرف ماذا نريد والقرار في نهاية المطاف هو قرارنا.
وأكد الاسد ان سوريا دخلت في المفاوضات غير المباشرة مع اسرائيل عام 2008 من دون أوهام، «ولن يكون هناك ما نخافه عندما تكون الثوابت واضحة ونهائية وعندما يكون القرار بعدم التنازل عن أي جزء منها مهما كان صغيراً هو قرار نهائي لا يخضع الى المساومة».
غصن الزيتون.. للدبكة
وأشار الى ان المقاومة هي من أجل السلام المشرّف وليس من أجل الحرب للحرب. وتابع: إذا لم تكن قوياً، لا أحد يحترمك. الاوراق التي تمتلكها هي التي تعبر عن قوتك وتجعل الآخرين يحسبون لك حساباً، ولو اننا لم نمتلك اوراقاً ما كانوا ليقتنعوا بدورنا. وحدها عناصر القوة توصلك الى السلام الفعلي. السلام ليس غصن زيتون نلوّح به.. غصن الزيتون ينفع للدبكة، ولكن ليس للتعامل مع الواقع ولصنع موازين القوى.
وشدد الرئيس السوري على انه يرفض ممارسة الضغوط على حركة حماس او غيرها من حركات المقاومة الفلسطينية كي تتخذ مواقف مخالفة لإرادتها: «نحن لا نقبل ان نفرض رأينا على أحد من الفلسطينيين. وهذا هو سبب خلافنا مع البعض. وبرأينا ان المطلوب ان يتحمل كل طرف مسؤولياته. موضوع المصالحة الفلسطينية عند مصر، أما هل نجحت أم لا فهذا موضوع آخر».

A couple of interesting points of note:

(1) Assad did not actually “turn down” the offer, according to the interview in Assafir. He said that Peres offered him the Golan in exchange for severing his ties to Iran and various resistance groups, and responded by saying that “our answer was very clear, which was that the current reality proves that Israel is not working for peace.”

That sounds like a dodge to me. On the one hand, Assad does not want to send the message that he’s even willing to consider throwing anyone under the bus, but he also does not want to give more ammunition to those (in Washington, Tel Aviv, and elsewhere) who believe that Syria is nothing but a vassal state of Iran.

(2) Peres denied that he had offered Assad the Golan, perhaps because Bibi recently announced that no such deal was up for consideration. So both sides (Assad and Peres) have to weigh their own desires and calculations against those of some hard-line allies.

Rima Fakih: Miss America 2010, or a sign of the end times?

KHAROB-E DARVISH, Iran — The leader of a millenarian group based in this remote Middle Eastern village has claimed that the recent crowning of Miss USA is a sign of the coming Armageddon.

Moulana Fatima Darvishi, spiritual leader of the Circle of Pious Warriors and Noble Pilgrims, released a fatwa this afternoon after receiving word of the victory of Rima Faqih, a young woman from Michigan of Lebanese extraction, in the Miss USA competition.

“This is the sign that we have been waiting for,” said Ms. Darvishi to a group of assembled followers. “The rise of a faqih to rule over America is a symbol of the justice and righteousness of the Islamic Revolution.”

Ms. Darvishi was referring to the winning contestant’s surname, which means “jurist” in Arabic and Persian. As is well-known, the Islamic Republic of Iran is led by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei according to the principle of the “Rulership of the Jurist” (wilayat al-faqih).

“When this noble faqih ascends from her rulership over the USA to claim her place as ruler of all of God’s creation — as Miss Universe — then that is when the world will be filled with justice, and time will end,” Ms. Darvishi said, beaming.

When informed that Ms. Faqih had not been crowned ruler of America but had simply won a beauty pageant, Ms. Darvishi smiled enigmatically at the gathered reporters and shook her head.

“There is no point in trying to spread misinformation and propaganda. The current order has fallen! We hereby swear our allegiance to Her Supreme Majesty Rima Faqih and announce our undying loyalty to her magnificent command.”

Ms Darvishi continued: “We also call upon all heterodox feminist millenarian groups all over the world to join us in our call for a global revolution to prepare the way for Her Supreme Majesty’s eternal reign.”

When contacted, the 24 year-old Ms. Faqih — a graduate of University of Michigan-Dearborn with majors in economics and business — did not return calls for comment.

The preliminary results of the first round of Lebanon’s municipal elections are in. Predictably, all sides are claiming victory, with Michel Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement tabulating their wins at around 51% of all council seats, while Samir Geagea has confidently announced that a majority of Christians in the Mount Lebanon region support the March 14th alliance.

A dour mood prevails over in the Orange Room (the party’s online forum), strikingly reminiscent of the somber round of soul-searching that took place after the 2009 elections, when the opposition failed to win a commanding victory — as many pollsters had predicted. I often wonder whether this kind of discontent will ever bubble up from the rank-and-file and have some effect on the party’s broader political strategy. It’s hard to say, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the 2010 results create opportunities for new voices to be heard in Rabiyeh.

There are two standard narratives that one encounters when speaking to FPMers about the state of their party. The optimistic activists survey the last few years and see nothing short of a meteoric rise. Before 2005, the FPM’s leadership was in exile and its local members were consistently harrassed by the Lebanese and Syrian security forces. The party had no seats in parliament, no ministers, and only a handful of municipality members.

Today, the Syrian army has left Lebanon and the FPM is a force to be reckoned with. It oversees a 27-seat bloc in Parliament, five prominent ministries, and, as of this election, hundreds of municipality seats. Not bad for five years’ work.

The second narrative is far more cynical. The FPM, according to this reading, has become like every other Lebanese political party: corrupt, nepotistic, beholden to moneyed interests and foreign powers. The alliance with Hezbollah was viewed by some folks as a ground-breaking moment in Lebanon’s “post-sectarian” history but it was also regarded by just as many supporters as a necessary evil to make Aoun president. When this bid failed, the warm alliance with Syria became a source of disillusionment for those who viewed the relationship as purely political.

Meanwhile, the reform agenda that the FPM has always championed seems to have become bogged down by its political calculations. While it made a strong bid for instituting proportional representation in the municipal elections law, the party’s alliances with former nemeses like Michel al-Murr and the Kata’eb in various municipalities in Mount Lebanon have embittered many supporters. The FPM has also backpedaled on abolishing confessionalism in Lebanon, an issue which has strong support among university students and young professionals (the source of the party’s dynamism).

Perhaps the most persistent complaint, though, is the notion that the party is turning into a “House of Aoun”. Currently, many of the FPM’s most prominent figures are directly related to Michel Aoun. Gebran Bassil, the Minister of Energy, is his son-in-law, and Alain Aoun (his nephew) is an MP in Baabda. The head of OTV, Roy al-Hashim, is another son-in-law, and Aoun’s daughter Mireille is the head of Aoun’s political bureau. Many wonder about the fate of the party after the General, who is 75 years old, goes to that big barracks in the sky. Even if the FPM is left in the hands of Aoun’s relatives, can they be expected to pursue his current political line, or will the party begin to break apart into competing factions?

In my opinion, the FPM is an important political force in Lebanon, and one which has the potential to play a major role in pushing a reform agenda. I realize that there aren’t that many FPMers who comment on this blog, but I’m hoping that some of you may elect to join a stock-taking conversation about what is next for the party.

Map of Mount Lebanon municipal districts. Click to enlarge.

Lebanon goes to the polls tomorrow (Sunday, May 2nd) for the first round of its 2010 municipal elections. There’s been a good deal of smart commentary of late; see below for a sample of relevant resources on the subject.

1. Lebanon Municipal Elections On Time, But Reform Delayed (by Karam Karam, Arab Reform Bulletin)

Lebanon will begin its municipal elections on May 2, kicking off a four-stage process that will see voting on May 2, 9, 23, and 30 in the governorates of Mount Lebanon and Beirut, the Bekaa, the south, and the north respectively. The government mandated that municipal council elections be held every six years in 1998, following a hiatus that lasted some 35 years. Since the end of the civil war in 1990 and the Taif Accord that stipulated constitutional reforms, Lebanon has held five parliamentary elections and two rounds of local elections, the latter most recently in May 2004. The structural reforms—particularly those pertaining to electoral reform and administrative decentralization—written into the Accord, however, have never been  implemented. The issue of reform has been raised before and after each of the elections held since 1990 without ever being translated into concrete measures, and the same is true this time around. (Keep reading)

2. Al-Akhbar editor Khalid Saghiyyeh weighs in with his usual delightfully cynical take…

في تقبيح البلديّات

خالد صاغية

بدأت ترتفع الأصوات متبرّمةً من الانقسامات التي تشهدها القرى والبلدات اللبنانية. ففي الانتخابات البلديّة، تسقط الشعارات السياسيّة الكبرى، ويبدأ الصراع داخل ما يسمّى احتقاراً، الزواريب. الانقسامات الطاغية اليوم لا تلائم صورة اللبناني عن نفسه. ثمّة طغيان للعصبيّات العائليّة، وولع بالوجاهة، وشجارات على اسم شارع لم يصل إليه الزفت بعد. انتقل الحديث فجأة من الخطر النووي الإيراني والمشروع الأميركي في الشرق الأوسط إلى سجال على أيّ من العائلات أشدّ عراقةً في القرية، وأحقّ تالياً برئاسة البلدية. وبدلاً من الاستشهاد بآخر التحاليل السياسية، تُفتح ملفّات العمادات والأعراس والتعازي.

يجري النقّ كلّ يوم من طغيان هذه الصغائر على الفضاء العام. وإضافة إلى كمّ من المقالات الناقمة على ضيق الأفق هذا، لخّص وليد جنبلاط الموقف برسالة ساخرة امتنع فيها عن الإدلاء بموقف أسبوعيّ إلى جريدة «الأنباء» بسبب ما سمّاه «المعارك التاريخية» الدائرة في البلديات، وأعلن أنّه عاكف حالياً على قراءة ابن خلدون لفهم أسباب التخلّف عن الدول المتحضّرة. كأنّما البيك يرفض الإدلاء بجواهره وسط انشغال العامّة بالترّهات.

ولم يخطر في باله طبعاً الربط بين جواهره السابقة وهذه الترّهات. فالزعيم لا يكتفي بتوفير الظروف الملائمة لاستمرار العصبيّات وتوالدها، إلا أنّه ـــــ على ما يبدو ـــــ يستمتع في أوقات فراغه بالتفرّج على تلك العصبيّات والسخرية منها. فهي حقيقةً لا تليق بزعيم متنوّر.

(Keep reading)

3. Consensus Prevails Before Municipal Elections (Ana Maria Luca and Matt Nash)

The atmosphere could hardly be more different. At this time last year, the country was awash in party flags, election advertisements and acrimonious language in advance of the June parliamentary elections. Today, however, on the eve of the first round of municipal elections, consensus is the buzzword.

On the streets of Beirut, it is more common to see the flags of Argentina, Brazil or Germany flying from balconies and car windows as the World Cup approaches than it is to see Future Movement, Lebanese Forces or Free Patriotic Movement banners waving, even as polling begins on Sunday.

Several of the country’s top political parties – which analysts have argued do not even want municipal elections now – announced in recent weeks that they will focus on compromise instead of contest during the polling.

If the prominent families and political parties in a municipality can agree on a list of council members, the list wins uncontested and no election takes place. On Tuesday, Interior Minister Ziad Baroud announced that nearly 20 percent of the 313 municipalities in Mount Lebanon – the first governorate to vote – will not hold polls as unity deals were hammered out. (Keep reading)

4. “Worried Lebanese” on the municipal polls: Be sure to read one of my favorite Lebanese bloggers writing on the themes of administrative decentralization and the municipal elections, here, here, and here.

5. Ghassan Karam asks the right questions: “The paradoxical thing however, is that as soon as we determined to hold these elections the major political bosses started their efforts to short circuit the democratic system and attempted to arrange for deals behind smoke filled rooms that result in coalitions and candidates whose choice is designed to achieve one goal only: rob from the citizens their right to vote. If the vote is sacred, and it is, then why do these feudal political lords wish to take away from us the chance to have our say? The answer is very clear; they do not want to diminish their total control over the political system. If we are given the chance to form our own lists of candidates then we would realize that we do not need them to run our lives.” (Keep reading)

6. E-ography on the Lebanese media’s coverage: The tone of local TV reporters covering the municipal elections in Lebanon is hilarious. You assume they are covering the war in Afghanistan or just another 9/11. The phono between studio and field reporters are the most ridiculous “Can you hear me?” is so recurrent that you suppose the reporter is under heavy shelling. “The President Michel Suleiman is now expected to arrive any moment! Yes, yes, I hear you… (pause) allo, allo.” (Keep reading)

7. I highly recommend you check out Engage Lebanon for a wealth of material on the municipal elections, including lots of high quality maps, a newswire, Twitter feed, and lots of resources in Arabic, English, and French.

Where was this organization when we were covering the parliamentary elections last year? Back then, you all had to content yourself with Qifa Nabki’s chintzy graphics and whatever the local manqousheh vendor slipped me in the way of expert analysis. Lebanon’s come a long way…

8. Finally, I hate to risk jinxing myself once again, but I’m theoretically going to be in Washington this Friday for a U.S. Institute of Peace event on the Lebanese municipal elections. The last time this was supposed to happen, my wife went into labor the night before. So I’m not making any promises… But if I do make it down, I’d love to see some of y’all there.