Wednesday January 14, 2009
© 2009 Pierre Tristam
"Mount Sannin," once wrote the great British travel writer Colin Thubron, "filled the window of the house, ascending with a massive assuredness on the shoulders of the peaks around it, a first among equals."
That sight above was, if you can believe it, the sight that greeted me every day from the windows of my grandfather's house in the Lebanese village of Hamlaya, where I spent the first three years of the Lebanese civil war--and the last three years of my life in Lebanon. (I hate to tell you what greets my sight every morning now. Two words are enough to sum up this comparative purgatory: Florida subdivision.)
That house in the mountains was safer than our apartment in Beirut's Sodeco neighborhood, on the so-called Green Line that divided Christian East Beirut from the Muslim West. We used to spend our summers there, and when the war came, it became our refuge despite the bombs that often whizzed above on their way to a larger town across the valley.
The sun would rise behind Sannin, already blasting bright yellow and hot by the time it peeked above the peaks. (Until I saw my first American sunrise in Kingsport, Tenn., of all places, where Appalachian hills are an afterthought and the sun's first light grabs at the horizon, I never knew that the sun rises as bleedingly red as it sets.) Evenings, the sun setting into the Mediterranean would splash pink on Sannin's flanks: the mountain was either blushing or flirting, depending on the day's mood. And when it veiled itself in a few clouds, there was no telling what the night would bring.
Sannin during those years of war was a lot more than a mountain. It was a companion, a visual refuge, a reassurance that certain things really are immutable, if not, in their divinity, unrivaled.
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Hillary Clinton, Secretary to the Predictable
Tuesday January 13, 2009
Not exactly the new face of American foreign policy in the Middle East. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
"For me, consultation is not a catch-word. It's a commitment." So began (after the usual formalities and mutual flatteries from ex-senator to sitting senators) Hillary Clinton's confirmation hearing before the Foreign Relations Committee this morning: with a swipe at the Bush administration. One of many, it turns out.
As Secretary of State, Clinton made clear, she intends to put policy back in foreign policy.
“Foreign policy must be based on a marriage of principles and pragmatism, not rigid ideology, on facts and evidence, not emotion or prejudice,” Clinton said. She could begin by applying those principles to Palestine and Israel. But she won't: the one ideological constant in America's foreign policy in the Middle East is the Israel-first approach (as opposed to Israel on an equal footing with her neighbors, when it comes to mediating and negotiating) that has undermined American credibility as an honest broker and parked every American peace initiative since Ronald Reagan into a dead end (usually landscaped by Israel).
Despite the bombs still falling on Gaza, despite America's virtual absence from any meaningful Arab-Israeli peace initiative of late (Turkey has been more active and effective, judging from its mediation of Syrian-Israeli talks), despite the relegation of the United States to glamorized sidelines, Clinton said nothing that suggests a break from that ideological myopia.
Don't get me wrong. Hillary Clinton blind would be a vast improvement on Condoleezza Rice's 20/20. But don't expect Clinton suddenly to log frequent-flier miles to the Middle East with a blueprint for a Palestinian-Israeli peace dangling from anything like an arsenal of carrots and sticks. The necessary blueprint is basic enough: end the Israeli settlements in the West Bank, demolish that West Bank wall, or move it back to Israeli territory, agree to a fully independent Palestinian state (no demeaning compromises, no half-way measures, no "period of autonomy" or prohibition of a military), and find a compromise on refugees. But on every single one of those conditions, Clinton (and Barack Obama) are adopting the old standard: check with Israel first.
That's not the way to a breakthrough.
Here's something else I found interesting in her opening remarks, a nearly half-hour soliloquy. She mentioned al-Qaeda just once. The Taliban: once. Pakistan: three times. Afghanistan: four times. In every case the references were general.
But terrorism? Ah, now there's a winner: seven references, back to the same old "root out terrorism" bromides we've been hearing for eight years, the bromides that have become standard fare now, whoever is in power, the way fighting communism was the lingua franca of both parties' platforms for four decades after World War II.
No surprises here. I'm fascinated by Barack Obama and the prospects of his presidency. But his foreign policy was never part of the fascination, his Middle East policy even less so. His nomination of Clinton at the Department of State confirmed it. Clinton's confirmation hearing today confirmed that confirmation, if nothing else.
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Monday January 12, 2009
They don't call it Red for nothing: Egypt's Red Sea is the destination of coral-reef voyeurs the world over. (Photo by Zé Eduardo, via Flickr)
Every year at the beginning of January The New York Times offers up its “Best Places To Go” that year. How well the Middle East does could be read as an indication of how safe or unsafe, how adventurous or daring, how original (or unoriginal) Americans feel about that region of the world.
In 2007, the countries between the Maghreb and Pakistan rated seven choice destinations out of 27, a better than 25% rate (if you include “ Schussing above the beaches in Cyprus.” But the feature wasn’t yet as developed as it became the following year, when it turned into an interactive Web adventure. The Times seemed pretty impressed with itself, bumping up the total number of destinations to 53. Of those, seven were in the Middle East, a respectable 13 percent ratio that I featured here in The Middle East’s Best Travel Spots.
The Times is at it again for 2009, but both the number of destinations (44) and the number of Middle East picks (four) are down. Isn’t everything else, coming out of dismal 2008? Travelers’ budgets are slim, esoteric destinations are out, old standards are in: Washington (to honor Barack Obama’s inaugural, Berlin, the Galapagos Islands, the Florida Keys, Hawaii, Vienna, Rome, Chicago, Dallas, “Castles in Britain,” Copenhagen, Cologne, and so on. The Times might as well have dusted up the itinerary of tourists in Henry James novels for this edition.
There were a few surprises, like Dakar (Senegal), marvelous Bhutan, Monument Valley (Ok, that’s not a terribly surprising one, but who doesn’t love those John Ford backdrops?), but in a typical sign of what ails all industries in general and newspapers in particular, The Times ran out of space for its “44 Places to Go” in the print edition. You’ll only find 31 of them in the slimmed down Jan. 11 travel section. The other 13 are only online.
But even though the Middle East rated just four spots, this year it also has the Number 1 spot: Beirut! Ready for the tour? See The Middle East's Best Travel Spots, 2009.
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Sunday January 11, 2009
Saturday's
front-page headline in The New York Times said it all: "Egyptians Seethe Over Gaza, and Their Leaders Feel Heat." The lead paragraphs sum it up:
Inside Al Azhar Mosque, a 1,000-year-old center of religious learning, the preacher was railing on Friday against Jews. Outside were rows of riot police officers backed by water cannons and dozens of plainclothes officers, there to prevent worshipers from charging into the street to protest against the war in Gaza.
“Muslim brothers,” said the government-appointed preacher, Sheik Eid Abdel Hamid Youssef, “God has inflicted the Muslim nation with a people whom God has become angry at and whom he cursed so he made monkeys and pigs out of them. They killed prophets and messengers and sowed corruption on Earth. They are the most evil on Earth.”
The double-face of Egyptian protest is such that the government will let it have its outbursts in controlled environment as long as it controls the pressure valves. Cue the truncheons in the streets.
Catherine Manfre (© 2009 Mohamed Boraie)
Middle East Issues contributor Catherine Manfre, a reporter based in Cairo, was in the streets earlier this week , witnessing some of those protests.
Attempted protests, we should say: she and her boyfriend (
one of whose photographs illustrated my post yesterday) themselves became embroiled in the thuggery of the Egyptian state's protest management. From Catherine's report:
We were on the roof shooting video and taking pictures for about ten minutes before someone told us we needed to leave. When we got back down to street level, Mohammed said he wanted to get closer to the protests despite my entreaties to stay. After he left, a bunch of men started running and my roommate and I ducked into a shop.
Mohammed returned, but then a plain-clothes policeman grabbed him and demanded he produce his camera. The officer began dragging him back towards the mosque and to his higher-ups, with me yelling, “I’m American, and he’s my husband.” Saying Mohammed was my husband would imply that he could have American citizenship. While the police would probably not to arrest and imprison an Egyptian for taking pictures, they would be far less eager to arresting or hold a foreigner, a westerner especially, an American even more so (the United States is Egypt's largest foreign-aid source, contributing about $3 billion a year).
While he was being half dragged down the street, the policeman kept looking back at me and telling me to leave. Of course I refused. In front of the mosque, a couple of officers questioned Mohammed and asked me in Arabic for my camera and voice recorder. I showed them my American driver's license and he showed them his American University in Cairo ID (while I pretended I didn't understand Arabic). They made us delete our pictures and my audio, then let him (and I) go.
Read Catherine's full eyewitness account,
Protesting Israel's Assault on Gaza.
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