Is the UUP finally getting realistic?

The UUP held its annual conference this weekend and newly-minted leader Mike Nesbitt wanted to present a new face to the media. First, he spoke about the party going into the role of the official opposition if such a role were created within the consociational power-sharing structures that have been in place since 1999. Second, he declared the party to be non-sectarian and open to Protestants, Catholics, Buddhists, and atheists alike. This is certainly a different party than that of Lord Brookeborough who spoke of a Protestant parliament for a Protestant people. But how much of a difference is this likely to make in the short term?

Israel's leading columnist declares that a two-state solution impossible

Last month, Nahum Barnea, Israel's leading columnist for the most-circulated newspaper Yediot Aharanot, announced that the settlers had won by making the Israeli de facto annexation of the West Bank irreversible. He is only the latest in a series of Palestinian and Israeli figures who have recently come to this conclusion. First, Sari Nusseibeh, who was one of the top organizers of the first Intifada in the late 1980s and a philosophy professor, announced this conclusion in a 2011 book entitled What is a Palestinian State Worth? Then taking his cue from this, Ha'Aretz blogger Carlos Stenger, a psychoanalyst by profession, concurred in Nusseibeh's judgement.  This is to be expected from a liberal like Strenger, but Barnea has a reputation as a centrist and a solid journalist who has received a number of journalism awards. Just google him.

Their argument is that the settlement grid has advanced so much and that Israel and the settlements are so intertwined that separation will be impossible. Israeli-American academic Ami Pehazur has a book out this month, The Triumph of Israel's Radical Right, in which he argues that the Radical Right is now mainstream and a two-state settlement is no longer possible. I agree with their conclusion but come at it from a different angle. The Al-Aksa Intifada in October 2000 was the tipping point in making the two main Center-Left parties of the Oslo era of the 1990s unviable as a governing coalition. Since 1992 these two parties have lost over three-fourths of their Knesset representation. This made champions of the two-state solution pin their hopes on the Kadima Party, created in November 2005 by Ariel Sharon. The party led a Center-Left coalition from 2006 to 2009, which failed to reach a peace settlement with the Palestinians and was involved in two wars. The party is now in the process of contracting significantly. The Likud has finally replaced Mapai/Labor as the dominant party.

Among the Alawites

Here is a link to a post by Iraqi journalist Nir Rosen  that appeared in the London Review of Books on the future of the Alawites in Syria. During the Iraqi civil war he reported for Western agencies on the war. (From his name it is likely that he is a Jew, but he has never raised the issue in his reporting.) He tends to discount the idea of an Alawite enclave on the coast, an idea I've discussed here in the past. He does this for two reasons. First, the Alawites have in recent decades seen a pan-Arab/Syrian nationalist identity as their project and ticket to advancement. Second, the Mediterranean coast of western Syria populated by Alawite villages offers few employment opportunities and little infrastructure to maintain a modern state. So for Rosen the big question is what happens to the Alawites once the Assad regime is toppled and they lose a privileged place in Syrian society.  Do they go back to being the despised minority or are they allowed to integrate into the society and live like other Syrians? The answer to that depends upon the identity of the leaders that will emerge from the fighting.

Splits in Assad Regime in Syria

Israel Hayom, the free Israeli newspaper financed by Sheldon Adelson, is reporting today that Bashar al-Assad's sister Bushra has fled Syria with her children out of fear of an internal coup. According to the story she left because she feared that her family would be the target of retribution if the coup were successful. Her husband, Deputy Chief of Staff Assef Shawkat, was killed several weeks ago by the Free Syrian Army.

If true, this would indicate that this might be the beginning of the end for the Assad regime. Recent weeks have seen a successful bombing within military headquarters in Damascus, the defection of Brigadier General al-Tlas, a prominent Sunni supporter of the regime and the son of Hafiz al-Assad's defense minister, Mustafa al-Tlas, and intensified fighting within the city of Aleppo.

Dublin's role in IRA split now causing embarassment

A group of IRA victims organized by  unionist south Armagh activist Willie Frazer has been attempting, rather unsuccessfully, to get the Irish government to apologize for the the Kingsmills massacre in January 1976, when an IRA gang stopped a van full of workers and lined them up and shot them killing ten. Taoiseach Enda Kenny has said that terrible as it was, it was the work of the IRA and not Dublin. Kenny is the leader of the Fine Gael party, which never had any time for the IRA or violent republicanism. But the dominant Fianna Fail party was full of "sneaking regarders" (secret admirers) of the IRA such as former Taoiseach Charles Haughey, former Agriculture Minister (1966-70) Neil Blaney, and former Local Government Minister (1966-70) Kevin Boland who helped create the Provisional IRA in 1969-70.

The Conflicted feelings of Israeli Palestinians

Israeli Arabs aka Israeli Palestinians or Palestinian Israelis have always had a complicated identity. They are the remaining remnant of Palestinians who did not leave or were not expelled when the state of Israel was created in 1948. And for most of their existence they have been the only Arabs in the Middle East with genuine democratic rights. So it might not be much of a stretch when the Israeli Democracy Institute's annual survey for 2012 found that although 74 percent of Israeli Arabs felt that they were being discriminated against, 45 percent were still proud of being Israeli. So for many of these 45 percent--at least 19 percent--there is a perception that even with discrimination it still pays to be an Israeli. I think we can thank the Arab Spring for this realization. Incidentally, 58 percent of Israeli Jews did not think that Arabs were discriminated against in Israel.

Is Ahmedinajad another Hitler?

For several years now it has been for the Israeli government and its American supporters the contention that President Mahmoud Ahmedinajad of Iran is the reincarnation of Hitler and Iran is another Nazi Germany. Having just finished reading the initial chapters of Ian Kershaw's Hitler Nemesis 1936-45 covering the 1936-39 period, I would like to review the main traits that Hitler exhibited in 1938 in dealing with Austria and Czechoslovakia:

• Hitler was head of a great power with well-led armed forces equipped with modern weapons.
• Hitler was a dictator with no real internal opposition after late 1937.
• Hitler was convinced that he had a great personal mission of giving Germany lebensraum in the East through "the sword" and destroying the imaginary Jewish threat to Germany.
• Hitler's health in 1939 was starting to go (largely because of his self medication with quack remedies) and he was convinced that he had little time left to him.
• Hitler was a natural gambler with a high tolerance for risk.