A New England-style Boarding School Opens in Jordan
By Andrew Lee Butters/Madaba

In the popular imagination, New England boarding schools are a cloistered world where the blond-haired children of America’s blue bloods pick up the arch manners and the strange affinity for boat shoes that will mark them forever as a class apart. But not if you are a direct descendant of the prophet Muhammad and scion of the Hashemite dynasty, the erstwhile princes of Mecca who rule the Kingdom of Jordan. For Abdullah Ibn Hussein, now known as His Majesty King Abdullah II, the carefree years he spent at Deerfield Academy in western Massachusetts (class of 1980) were formative. Deerfield introduced Abdullah to a much broader range of friends than is normally available to young Arab princes; and the character-building crucible of dormitory life taught him Yankee egalitarianism, self-reliance and how to clear dishes from the dinner table.

So, after he ascended to the throne in 1999, the king began to replicate the experience for some of his own subjects, planning an elite boarding school for Jordan. In 2006, he lured Deerfield’s then headmaster Eric Widmer and several other Deerfield teachers from the green hills of New England to his semi-desert realm with a heady challenge: Create a new generation of Middle Eastern leaders from all backgrounds and faiths whose commitment to global citizenship would help transform the region. King’s Academy opened this fall with about 100 students — the first co-educational boarding school in the Middle East. (Victoria College, a boys boarding school founded by the British in Alexandra in 1902, was nationalized and effectively gutted by the Egyptian government in 1956.) Though the students now hail mainly from Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Palestine and elsewhere in the Arab Middle East, King’s hopes to eventually attract students from Israel and the West as well.

A complete campus designed for an eventual enrollment of around 600 students has sprouted, as if from dragon teeth, on the edge of Madaba, a farming town about 30 miles south of Amman, Jordan’s capital. King’s copied many ingredients of the New England boarding school recipe: family-style meals at round tables, school-wide assemblies, blue blazers and khaki pants. More importantly, it has adopted the belief shared by Deerfield and others that the classroom should be an intimate place that fosters discussion and critical thinking rather than rote memorization, which is the default teaching method in much of the region. But most importantly, the environment created by Widmer and his colleagues emphasizes learning and leadership outside of the classroom, through athletics, community service and honor codes.

But if the school’s newly turfed lawns appear to have more grass than all of the rest of Jordan, its Levantine-style white stone buildings — and the tight security at its main gate — remind visitors that they’re not in Massachusetts anymore. The founders of King’s Academy quickly grasped that building an exact replica of Deerfield in the Middle East was neither possible nor desirable; they wanted an institution that combined the best of East and West. Arabic language classes are mandatory, and humanities courses taught in English draw on the canonical works of many civilizations. Anticipating the difficulty of convincing parents in this conservative society to send their children away to school, King’s set strict rules governing relations between boys and girls: no kissing, no holding hands, and no visiting each other’s dorms.

But perhaps the biggest challenge facing King’s is beyond the control of even the most committed faculty or enlightened royal patron: the ever-turbulent Middle East. As King Abdullah likes to say, Jordan is a country caught between “Iraq and a hard place” — i.e., Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. Is an elite academy sustainable in a country that is flooded with Iraqi and Palestinian refugees? What will happen to King’s if turmoil in Iraq or tensions between the U.S. and Iran plunge the region into a new war? Safwan Masri, the Jordanian chairman of the academy’s board of trustees and a professor at Columbia Business School, is unfazed. “The one thing that almost everyone in the Middle East respects is American education,” he said. “The fact that this is a troubled region makes the case for this kind of school even stronger.”

Lebanon’s underground music scene sees its own demise in the fading promise of the ‘Cedar Revolution’

By Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut

Despite a jihadist uprising in the north, a political crisis in the capital, and rumors of war swirling all around, it’s business as usual in Beirut’s packed nightclubs. The good-looking people in this good-time town have long partied to a familiar soundtrack of popping champagne corks, clacking high-heels, and the generic beat of computer-generated dance music — whatever it takes to drown out the sound of Lebanon’s continual crises. But for a relatively small number of Beirut hipsters, there’s another soundtrack, evoking rather than denying the instability of their lives.

Many of them gathered last Thursday for a performance by Scrambled Eggs, four nerdy-cool local guys in tight jeans and high-tops who strangle their guitars and have onstage seizures as if this was Manchester in the 80’s or Seattle in the 90’s. “I was locked in a cellar but it became my shelter,” sang frontman Charbel Haber on “See You in Beirut Whatever Happens,” one of the band’s original songs that convincingly channels the post-punk era of Sonic Youth and the Cure, but which seems somehow appropriate in the current Beirut setting: a subterranean nightclub called Basement, which coined its slogan “It’s Safer Underground” during last summer’s Israeli air raids.

For the past ten years, Beirut has been home to a small but artistically significant rock scene, where a handful of bands with names like Soap Kills, the New Government and, of course, Scrambled Eggs, have tried to put this tiny country on the musical map for something other than sexy Arab pop divas. As such, they’ve been part of a creative subculture of artists, architects, and designers who’ve tried to reconcile Eastern and Western cultural forms, as well as tradition with modernity.

A foreign visitor might find it strange to find a rock subculture in the Middle East, but Haber, a former Catholic schoolboy, sees a similarity between rock’s golden age during the 1950s and 1960s in America, and the Middle East today — sexually repressed conservative societies dominated by religion and an ideological cold war. Interviewed last week at the band’s studio in Gemmayze, a formerly working class neighborhood of garages and crumbling townhouses that’s become ground zero for Beirut’s young and restless, Haber places the Beirut rock scene in a wider Mideast cultural context: “At the end of the day, sex, drugs, and rock and roll means freedom.”

Rock and freedom — if not necessarily sex and drugs — got a big boost in Lebanon in 2005, during what outsiders called the Cedar Revolution, when huge crowds gathered in central Beirut to demand an end to the Syrian occupation and an end to the country’s sectarian divisions. But the creative and intellectual frenzy that accompanied the Syrian withdrawal was cut short after the country’s ruling sectarian political class co-opted the Cedar Revolution, and turned Lebanon into battlefield between regional superpowers. Spurred by last summer’s war with Israel and by the current struggle between Iran and the U.S. over Lebanon’s government, talented young people have been leaving in droves. “We’re not a country that can handle big missions,” said Haber. “One side wants us to spread democracy in the Middle East, the other side says that we’re the country that’s going to bring about the downfall of the Israelis and the Americans. They have been pushing the country into a state of survival, and in a state of survival, art doesn’t survive.”

The music of Scrambled Eggs isn’t overtly political. But Haber’s lyrics, which focus on his “entourage of completely wasted people” reflect what it’s like to live in a society fraught with uncertainty and violent change. “We do everything as if the world is going to end tomorrow,” he said. “The Syrians might come back, Israel might attack, Hizballah might start another war. In a situation like this, you do a lot of self-destructive things.” One recent song, “Let It Go,” is both a rousing exhortation to ignore one’s mounting problems, but also an elegiac farewell to the city’s golden moment that followed the Cedar Revolution. Its haunting melody is meant to conjure the orange and violet melancholy of a Mediterranean sunset. “It’s an Arab thing,” explains Haber. “They always go back to the ruins and cry and remember their lovers. In Beirut, it happens every decade, the city is destroyed and then rebuilt. It disappears and then appears. That’s why it’s raw.”

By Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut

Ever wonder what it’s like inside a Hizballah bunker but not so eager to get kidnapped just to find out? Well, for a short time and a short time only, anyone in Lebanon can experience the next best thing by visiting the new Hizballah museum in the southern suburbs of Beirut, where there is no admission charged and no blindfold required.

Imagine Britain’s Imperial War museum with an Islamist militia makeover, and you’ve got the strangely-named “Spider Web” museum, built to commemorate Hizballah’s “Divine Victory” over Israel after their 34-day war last summer, which ended a year ago yesterday. Though just a temporary installation built on the rubble of a building destroyed during the war, the museum showcases the guerrilla organization’s trademark attention to detail and its fearsomeness.

Designed like a sandbag fortress rising over a garden of inert land mines, armored vehicles and the occasional palm tree, the museum contains a display of Hizballah weapons and tactics, including the scale recreation of a front-line bunker, complete with computer workstation, prayer rug and dish rack. Throw in a lava lamp and it could be a college dorm room.

Besides diagrams of the latest in Iranian and Russian anti-tank rocketry, and an ultra-violent Hizballah special forces video game, the most impressive display is a plaque listing every single Israeli warplane that bombed Lebanon during the war along with their squadron ID and home bases. Not only did Hizballah survive the bombardment, but its observers still had the presence of mind to keep score. Not bad for 3,000 regular fighters up against a regional superpower.

The Israelis portrayed in the museum are either dead (in mannequin form) war-crazed (in photos of Israeli school children writing hate messages on artillery shells) or incompetent. “We will eradicate Hizballah within three days,” trumpets a poster of former Israeli General Dan Halutz, while next to him former Defense Minister Amir Peretz looks through a pair of binoculars with the lens caps still on.

All this “Death to Israel” stuff is of a piece with normal Hizballah propaganda. But what’s different about the Spider Web museum as a whole is the macho, bragging tone. Hizballah was once famous for being one of the few Arab organizations that let its actions speak louder than words. The swagger shown since last summer is both a sign of newfound confidence, and of weakness. For though Hizballah may have won the war against Israel, it has not yet won the peace.

After the war, Hizballah launched a campaign to topple the current American-supported Lebanese government, which it accuses of collaborating with Israel to destroy Hizballah’s existence as a state within the Lebanese state. But the Hizballah-led opposition campaign has stalled — they’ve been stuck in protest tent camps in downtown Beirut for the last eight months — in part because many Lebanese resent the fact that Hizballah unilaterally sparked a war that ended with almost 2,000 dead and billions of dollars in damage.

Plus, the cease-fire that took effect one year ago yesterday left Hizballah vulnerable. There are now some 13,000 United Nations soldiers enforcing the peace in southern Lebanon, making it difficult for the group to rearm on its favorite turf. Moreover, a U.N. investigation into a series of political assassinations in Lebanon is closing in on Hizballah’s patron-state, Syria, and there’s talk of deploying U.N. troops along the border with Syria to prevent arms smuggling to Hizballah. To top it off, Israeli hawks say it’s just a matter of time before their army returns to Lebanon to finish the job for good.

But the only thing more dangerous than a victorious Hizballah is a weakened Hizballah. If the U.N. soldiers in Lebanon ever started to seriously cramp Hizballah’s style, the peacekeeping force would be toast. Lebanese history is littered with examples of foreign armies meeting their fate in this fractious hill country. Hizballah itself was born from the carnage of the disastrous 1982 Israeli invasion. A massive new invasion would only bring a pyrrhic victory at best. If Israel leveled half of Lebanon, some new danger would emerge from the rubble. “If you, the Zionists, are considering attacking Lebanon, I am reserving a surprise for you that will change the fate of the war and the region,” said Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah in a speech last night. Long-range missiles? A war pact with Hamas and Iran? Weapons of mass destruction? Whatever Nasrallah’s surprise, it wasn’t on display at the war museum.

By Andrew Lee Butters/Gaza City

On Patrol in Shijaiyah, the toughest neighborhood in Gaza City, Lieut. Naim Ashraf Mushtaha, 31, an officer of the Hamas Executive Force, spots a man in civilian clothes carrying an M-16 assault rifle and walking through the street suqs in broad daylight. His officers quickly encircle the suspect and demand that he identify himself and turn over the weapon. The man turns out to be a member of one of the neighborhood’s most powerful clans, and he refuses to give up his gun. “What’s my name, boys?” he shouts to the gathering crowd of curious onlookers. “Mohassi Abbas!” they shout back. “See, everyone knows who I am,” says the gunman. “I don’t care who you are,” says Mushtaha calmly, without raising his voice or his weapon. “No one is above the law.”

The rule of law has returned to Gaza. Just two months ago, this beachfront slice of sand dunes and concrete jungles, home to about 1.5 million Palestinians, was one of the most dangerous places on earth. In June, after a few days of internecine warfare, Hamas, the Palestinian militant group, took control of Gaza from its rival, Fatah. Since then, Gaza has been under siege. Almost all shipments except for basic humanitarian supplies are barred from entering, and almost nothing comes out. The blockade is part of an Israeli and American strategy to isolate Hamas in the hope that Palestinians will turn away from its Islamist leaders, who have never recognized Israel, and toward Fatah, which is willing to restart the peace process. So far, the plan isn’t working. With a free hand to govern as it pleases, Hamas is building popular support and military capability that may well outlast the international blockade.

Security is key to support for Hamas. Within a week of the takeover, crime, drug smuggling, tribal clashes and kidnappings had largely disappeared. According to human-rights groups, the ability of the Executive Force to achieve such a result is an indictment of the corruption and criminal collusion at the top of the Fatah-dominated security services that once controlled Gaza. “For the last year and a half, there has been an orchestrated escalation of chaos by some Banana Republic officers to show that Hamas does not have control of Gaza,” said Raji Sourani, director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights. “Gaza became like Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq. Thugs and gangsters were ruling, and some were supported and protected by our own security forces.”

There have been isolated cases of civil rights abuses by the Executive Force since the takeover. But Hamas hasn’t set up Shari’a courts. Without any help from the regular police, prosecutors and judges–all of whom have been barred from returning to work by the Palestinian government–Hamas is slowly trying to train itself in the administration of Palestinian law. Mushtaha and his officers spend most of their time delivering subpoenas and telling the families of wanted men to turn the suspects in. In Gazan neighborhoods, everyone knows everyone else, and there’s no place to hide: crooks certainly can’t flee to Israel.

With peace on the streets, civil society is returning to Gaza. On Friday night in downtown Gaza City, the streets are clogged with motorcades taking newlyweds and their families to seaside banquet halls. Just one thing is missing: celebratory gunfire. Gazan weddings were once as dangerous as firefights, until Hamas banned the practice of partying with firearms. Now Executive Force troops arrest anyone who gets carried away with an AK. And if Hamas wedding crashers can’t find the gunmen, they arrest the groom until the culprits turn themselves in.

Nor has been no cultural crackdown since Hamas took over. Gaza has long been more religious and conservative than the rest of Palestinian society–alcohol disappeared from public view here long ago. But secular women who walk the streets of Gaza City without headscarves or veils say they were more likely to be harassed by criminals in the old Gaza than by religious conservatives today. Rumors that Hamas is ordering barbers not to shave beards are just that. I got mine shaved off by Hossein Hussuna, the barber of Hamas leader Ismail Haniya, who told me that most of Haniya’s eight sons are clean shaven.

Gaza’s beaches may be packed and its streets safe, but its factories are shut, and its stores have almost no customers. Mohammed Telbani owns the largest factory in Gaza, making cookies and ice cream. But he can’t get his raw materials and packaging through the Israeli embargo, and he can’t send his finished products to the West Bank, where distributors have started buying cookies from Lebanon instead. “I’ve worked on creating that market for 30 years, and now it’s gone,” Telbani said. The economic damage caused by the siege is immense, with unemployment at around 44%; about 80% of the population receives food aid from U.N. agencies. Nasser el-Helou, a hotel owner and a spokesman for the Chamber of Commerce, said the Gazan economy would collapse within weeks if the siege continues.

Yet Gazan business owners like Telbani and el-Helou–practical, apolitical men–are unanimous in their criticism of Israel rather than Hamas for economic problems. “If we are free, we should control our own borders,” said el-Helou. “But we do not, so the full responsibility is on the Israeli side.” And business leaders point to a paradox of the embargo; it is destroying the only class of Palestinians who looked favorably on Israel. Most of those in commerce speak Hebrew and have–or used to have–Israeli clients, partners and friends. They had once looked forward to the day when there would be no trade barriers between an independent Palestine and an Israel with which it was at peace. “The majority of Gazans do not like Israel,” said Amassi Ghazi, the chairman of a company that imports building materials. “Until now, only the private sector had good relations with Israel. So please open the border before all Gaza will be enemies of Israel.”

Some Gazans take being Israel’s enemies seriously. At midnight, at what used to be a training ground for the Palestinian coastal police, a couple of dozen men are practicing small-arms drills. They are in the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigade, the military wing of Hamas, and ready to bolt at a moment’s notice if they get a warning that Israeli warplanes are overhead. But since Fatah was driven out of Gaza, said Abu Ahmed, the commander of the unit, there have been fewer collaborators spying on Hamas for Israel, and Israeli strikes have hence dwindled. Qassam Brigade soldiers have been able to operate with relative impunity. Later Abu Ahmed takes me to a Qassam Brigade position a couple of hundred yards from the Erez crossing into Israel. Soon an Israeli surveillance drone starts buzzing overhead, and we leave quickly, back over the sand dunes into Gaza City. On the streets patrolled by Mushtaha and his men, all may seem peaceful. But at night, the long war between Hamas and Israel continues.

By Andrew Lee Butters/Jerusalem

Has the Arab League finally broken its taboo on ties with Israel by sending a delegation to Jerusalem? Depends who you ask. The Israeli government has declared Wednesday’s visit by the foreign ministers of Egypt and Jordan a historic landmark on the road toward acceptance of Israel by the Arab world. “In the past, the Arab League has opposed dialogue, normalization and any contact with Israel, and this is the first time the Arab League has authorized a delegation to visit Israel,” said Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev. Not so fast, say the visitors. The Egyptian government released a statement on Saturday saying that the foreign ministers are not, in fact, representing the Arab League in Jerusalem, but only their own countries — Egypt and Jordan are the only Arab League countries that have full diplomatic relations with Israel, and the League’s position is that normalization of ties can only occur when Israel agrees to withdraw to its 1967 borders.

So what are Egypt’s Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit and his Jordanian counterpart, Abdulelah al-Khatib doing in Jerusalem? Well, the Arab League did, in fact, ask Jordan and Egypt to formally present its peace proposals to Israel. And his government’s last-minute case of stage fright didn’t stop Abul Gheit from going through the motions of the day’s protocol and pleasantries. But the Egyptian identity crisis may be a sign that Arab enthusiasm for a renewal of peace talks with Israel is fading even in those countries that once supported it.

The Arab peace initiative began in 2002 as a Saudi proposal that called for all Arab countries to normalize relations with Israel in return for a full Israeli withdrawal from territories it has occupied since 1967, the creation of a Palestinian state, and a fair solution to the Palestinian refugee problem. But Israel reacted coolly to the idea at the time, and with Washington showing no greater enthusiasm for pressing the issue, little more was heard of it. But following the collapse of the Hamas-Fatah Palestinian unity government, and with a greater sense of urgency over the need to rally Arab moderates against Iran and its allies, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has begun expressing interest in the Arab peace initiative, and in restarting dialogue with the Palestinians.

But Arab countries are concerned that Olmert is more interested in the symbolic value of a peace process rather than in the substance of concluding it. Burdened by rock-bottom popularity thanks to his mishandling of last summer’s war in Lebanon, Olmert is hoping that the Israeli public will be wary of tossing out a leader engaged in peace negotiations. And even if he were serious about concluding a deal, his domestic political weakness would make it difficult for him to lead the country through the wrenching changes that peace would require. Thus Olmert’s announcement Wednesday that he intends to reach an agreement with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas over the principles for resolving the easy issues — the characteristics of the Palestinian state, its economy, and the customs arrangement it will have with Israel — and postpone addressing the difficult issues such where to draw the border between Israel and Palestine, the status of Jerusalem, and the fate of the refugees. Olmert’s plan, in fact, is the reverse of the Arab initiative, which attempts to jump straight to the heart of the matter.

The problem with Olmert’s approach is that the Arab world has run out of patience. It is well aware that the Oslo process floundered, at the end, not over customs arrangements and the Palestinian economy, but over borders, Jerusalem and refugees, and those issues are the ones that must be resolved if the process is to be about anything more than marking time. And the Arab League regimes don’t have much time to lose: Between the radicalizing impact on their own populations of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict and also the war in Iraq; the rising power of Iran; and growing tension between Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims, the Middle East is ready to explode. Countries that were once ready to bury the hatchet with Israel are now looking over their shoulders at their angry citizens, increasing numbers of whom see more to be gained by standing up to America and Israel than by trying to revive the peace process. Saudi Arabia, for example, which drafted the Arab initiative, is now warning that peace between Israel and the Palestinians is impossible unless Israel also negotiates with Hamas.

The Saudi warning is a sign that those in Fatah such as President Mahmoud Abbas who are closest to the U.S. and Israel have lost support not only among Palestinians, but among Arab countries as well. Not coincidentally, Saudi Arabia is also the country with perhaps the biggest jihadi problem in the region — a significant proportion of suicide bombers in Iraq are reported to be Saudi citizens.

Likewise, time may have run out for peace between Israel and Syria. Since the end of last year, Syria has been repeatedly calling for a resumption of the peace talks of the late 1990s premised on Israel returning the Syrian Golan Heights, captured in 1967. But while Olmert has largely evaded the overtures — questioning their sincerity, quibbling about who if anyone should mediate — Syria may have given up. Last week, the Israeli press was filled with rumors that Iran gave Syria $1 billion to purchase weapons in return for abandoning peace overtures towards Israel.

The Arab League country most eager to get the peace process back on track is Jordan. Even as its foreign minister talked peace in Jerusalem on Wednesday, its head of state, King Abdullah II, was visiting Washington to seek U.S. support for the Arab initiative. Jordan certainly has more to lose than any of its Arab League partners if peace fails. The pro-U.S. Hashemite Kingdom may have a peace treaty with Israel, but the majority of its population is Palestinian, and it is quickly filling with Iraqi refugees growing angrier by the day. Jordan’s enthusiasm for peace, then, may be less a sign of hope, as much as a sign of desperation.

By Andrew Lee Butters/Jerusalem

Like so much else in the Middle East, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s first trip as a peace envoy to Israel and the Palestinian territories involves a squabble over real estate — or, in this case, office space.

Mr. Blair arrived Monday on 48-hour tour aimed, in part, at finding digs in Jerusalem suitable to his stature as the representative of the Quartet of world powers — the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations — ostensibly mediating the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Blair had expressed an interest in setting up shop at Government House, the former seat of Palestine’s British colonial rulers. Though the compound has a magnificent view of the Old City, it’s also filled to burst with various UN bureaucrats, a species not known to easily relinquish its perks. So Blair may eventually check into the less august (but still glamorous) American Colony Hotel, which housed his predecessor as Quartet envoy, James Wolfensohn.

Either location, however, carries reminders that Blair’s chances of making a meaningful contribution towards Middle East peace are slim. The British Mandate ended in 1948 without finding a solution to rival Jewish and Palestinian national aspirations, while Wolfensohn left his post in frustration in 2006 after a year on the job.

Whether Mr. Blair’s tenure will be anything more than a minor footnote in the long-running conflict will depend on whether he uses his global stature to chart a course quite different from the one intended by his close ally, President George W. Bush, who appointed him to the new job.

So far, the signs aren’t promising. Rather than trying to push the rival parties back into real peace negotiations, Blair’s mandate from the White House is to help strengthen the institutions of the Palestinian Authority. To which a cynic might respond: What Palestinian Authority?

The PA, which was created in 1994 as an interim body for Palestinian self-rule in the occupied territories as a prelude to statehood, is now in shambles. After years of single-party rule by Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement, the PA became a paragon of corruption and mismanagement. As a result, the Islamist militants of Hamas won control of the PA’s legislature and government in democratic elections of January 2006, prompting a Western boycott of much of the Authority. And after the short sharp civil war in Gaza in June, Palestinians now have in effect two rival governments — one run by Hamas in Gaza, who remain in control of the Palestinian legislature, but whose government has been dismissed by President Mahmoud Abbas; the other run by Fatah in the West Bank that, although appointed as an emergency administration by President Abbas, needs the endorsement of the legislature to become a permanent government.

In the midst of such disarray, Blair has little chance of preparing Palestinians for peace and self-rule. The leadership of Fatah, reviled by most Palestinians for being pawns of the U.S. and Israel, has little ability to deliver the stability and security that Israel needs. But Iranian-backed Hamas, which has the support of a majority of Palestinians, refuses to recognize Israel, and is rapidly developing its military capability in Gaza, raising the likelihood of Israeli intervention.

Any hope of Blair bridging the intra-Palestinian rift that runs through the heart of the PA is made that much more difficult by the Quartet’s refusal to deal with Hamas. In a speech last week, President Bush announced a plan to continue Hamas’s international isolation, while lavishing money and weapons on Fatah — a scheme that few observers in the region believe is likely to bring peace any closer.

There has lately been speculation here that Blair might break with the White House and start talking to Hamas on his own. But if the former British Prime Minister’s lockstep support of Bush policy in Iraq is any guide — a loyalty that led to Blair’s political downfall in Britain — Blair’s moderating influence over the Americans is close to nil. “It’s all just more of the same,” said a British diplomat, muttering bitterly into his cups at a Jerusalem cocktail party last week. Welcome to the Middle East.

By Andrew Lee Butters/Jerusalem

It sounded very inspiring. In a major speech last night out of the White House, U.S. President George W. Bush called for a revival of peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians, and proposed that Israel and some Arab states hold a regional peace conference this fall. “The international community must rise to the moment,” he said. “The world can do more to build the conditions for peace.” All this from an administration that was once wary of repeating the patterns of previous presidencies by devoting time and prestige to solving a conflict that refused to be solved.

The difference now is that the Bush administration, with just 18 months left in office, is in dire need of some policy victories in the Middle East. In particular, it must show its Arab allies, such as Saudi Arabia — whose help Washington needs to stabilize Iraq — that the U.S. is willing to put its weight behind the peace process. But in looking to score points in the Middle East, Bush is likely to be as disappointed as his predecessors. That’s because the core of his strategy to bolster moderate Arab states and moderate Palestinians while shunning the region’s radicals is a case of too little too late. The sad reality is that the moderates of the Arab world have little to offer Israel and less and less power to promote peace in the Middle East.

Under the new Bush plans, Israel would begin peace talks with the Palestinians on the condition that the Palestinian Authority (PA) crack down on terrorism and corruption. This is understandable but unrealistic. The Fatah leadership that has controlled the PA since the 1993 Oslo Accords has been unable or unwilling to curb Palestinian militants. A key reason terrorist acts continue is that many Palestinians simply don’t see the benefits of giving up armed struggle. With no end in sight to the growth of Israelis settlements and security barriers in the occupied West Bank, most Palestinians have lost faith in the ability of Fatah’s notoriously corrupt leadership to lead them to the promised land of a Palestinian state, and have instead put their trust in Fatah’s rival, the puritanical militants of Hamas.

Even though Hamas is the democratically elected representative of the Palestinian people, Bush’s plans continue to embrace Fatah’s failed leaders, and to exclude Hamas from the proposed peace talks. So whatever agreements the peace negotiations produce are unlikely to have any legitimacy on the ground. And while the Bush administration is doing what it can to bolster the legitimacy of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (the head of Fatah), this could also backfire. The $190-million package of U.S. aid Bush proposes to send to the Palestinians includes money to bolster Fatah-controlled security services — effectively arming Fatah thugs to fight Hamas thugs. This is a recipe for renewed Palestinian civil war, not nationhood. And if Hamas’ recent victory over Fatah in Gaza is any guide, it’s a civil war that America’s allies might not win.

Just as Bush would exclude Hamas from Palestinian-Israeli peace talks, his call for a regional peace conference notably excludes countries that are hostile to Israel, especially Syria and Iran. A peace conference that doesn’t involve enemies sitting down across from each other isn’t much of a peace conference. The countries that might show up, such as Saudi Arabia, don’t border Israel and have never fired a shot in anger at the Jewish state. (The Saudis just try to ignore Israel.) The Bush administration merely wants these countries to take some initial steps toward recognizing Israel, such as sending heavyweight cabinet-level ministers to the meetings. But many of America’s Arab allies are autocratic regimes whose populations are becoming increasingly anti-American and anti-Israeli, thanks to the American invasion of Iraq and the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. These governments are unlikely to make substantial gestures toward Israel without significant progress toward a Palestinian state, lest they incur the growing wrath of their fast-radicalizing subjects.

The reality is Israel’s safety will never be assured, and a Palestinian state will never be secured until the U.S. and Israel begin some level of cooperation with their enemies, or until they defeat them. And if dealing with the devil seems naïve and impractical, it’s worth remembering that victory in the Middle East is just as elusive as peace.

By Andrew Lee Butters/Jerusalem

Today is Jerusalem Day, the holiday commemorating the “re-unification” of the city by Israeli forces in the 1967 war with Jordan, which at the time controlled East Jerusalem. Since this year is the 40th anniversary of the war, the city is awash with festivities, including a public concert last night and a parade around the Old City today. But for all the marching bands and enforced municipal good cheer, there aren’t many people who think Jerusalem has much to celebrate.

For starters, the international community doesn’t recognize Israel’s annexation of Arab East Jerusalem, and most foreign governments don’t recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. So there were very few diplomats on hand at official ceremonies last night in the Knesset — Israel’s parliament in this city. The only countries that sent representatives were Georgia, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Cameroon, Congo, the Ivory Coast and Honduras. Not exactly the A-Team.

Jerusalem is a touchy subject for Israelis too. Religious conservatives complain that the secular leadership which ran the country in 1967 left the job of reunifying the city incomplete. In particular, they grumble about the decision by victorious General Moshe Dayan to leave Muslims in control of the Temple Mount complex, which in ancient times held the Jewish temples of Solomon and Herod but which after the Islamic conquest became home to the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa mosque. These Jews want to control the holy places in order to prepare for the rebuilding of the temple and the return of the Messiah. And many have been taking matters into their own hands and have built settlements in Arab neighborhoods in the Old City around the Temple Mount to make it more difficult for any future Israeli government to trade away these areas in any peace deal with the Palestinians.

More secular-minded Israelis have much to grumble about as well. They’ve been been leaving the city in droves in part to escape the rising influence of Ultra-Orthadox Jews, who have taken control of City Hall and neighborhoods all over town. Moderate Israelis complain that the ultra-Orthdox — who average about about 8 children per family — contribute little to municipal tax rolls, live on public welfare, and harass other Jerusalemites by trying to enforce their archaic moral codes which forbid revealing clothes for women and driving on Shabbat. The Ultra-Orthadox also annoy other Israelis because they don’t serve in the army and don’t believe in the State of Israel on the logic that the Zionist nation is a human rather than a divine creation.

Needless to say, Palestinian Jerusalemites don’t celebrate Jerusalem day at all. For them, 1967 represents conquest not reunification. Despite the Israeli annexation of East Jerusalem, most Arabs in the city don’t have citizenship, and an International Red Cross report leaked earlier this week said that the Israeli government is violating international law by denying many Palestinians in Jerusalem the status of permanent residents. The extensive network of settlements and security barriers built by Israel is also isolating Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem, cutting off friends and families from one another, and limiting access to jobs and health care. Israel systematically prevents Palestinians from building in East Jerusalem, which has led to overcrowding, according to the Red Cross.

Nevertheless, Arab population growth combined with Jewish flight is happening to such an extent that the Israeli press was filled this week with varying projections for when Jerusalem would no longer have a Jewish majority — eight, 10, or 20 years are some that I’ve seen. Either way, between Arab and Ultra-Orthadox population growth, there probably won’t be many Zionists on Mount Zion in the not so distant future.

Whatever changes demography brings, the general unhappiness in the so-called City of Peace is on a par with its entire tragic history. The city has changed hands, been fought over, and been destroyed more times than perhaps any other city on earth. As Israeli writer Amos Oz said last week at discussion about the city at the Jerusalem YMCA last week: when any one group, nationality or ideology claims Jerusalem as its own, “I can hear the stones laughing.”

By Andrew Lee Butters/Tel Aviv

Looking out at the 120,000 demonstrators gathered in Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square on Thursday night to demand the resignation of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Israeli democracy appears to be alive and kicking. The protest was sparked by Monday’s report by the official Winograd Commission that was scathing in its critique of Olmert’s disastrous leadership during last summer’s war against Hizballah, which cost the lives of more than 150 Israelis. Even Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah — presumably in a bunker somewhere in Beirut — expressed his admiration for the Israeli government. “They study their defeat in order to learn from it,” he said, unlike Arab regimes that “do not probe, do not ask, do not form inquiry commissions.”

But how healthy can Israeli democracy be when the country’s political system is unable to rid itself of a leader who is almost universally recognized as incompetent? Olmert shows no signs of being ready to quit, or of being forced out in the near future. With approval ratings as low as 3% even before the publication of the damning report, you might think the whole country would be up in arms for him to go. So why did only 120,000 people show up?

The Israeli press and civil society groups have made much of the fact that the country is fed up with its entire political class. Once led by the giants of its founding generation, Israel is now run by a generation that rose through the ranks of backroom politics and have the corruption scandals to prove it. Their lack of mettle shows in the current crisis. Not only is Olmert himself unwilling to do the honorable thing and resign, but his cabinet and the Knesset appears unwilling to risk their own jobs to force him out through a no-confidence vote that would bring new elections that put everyone at risk.

“In old Japan, leaders would have committed hari-kari in such circumstances,” said Yossi Offer, a volunteer with the Movement for Quality Government in Israel, an civil society group supporting the protest in Tel Aviv. “Our leaders our putting their interests before the public interest.”

But the listless Israeli public shares some of the blame with its politicians for the current state of affairs. The demonstrators seemed more dazed and confused than ready to mount a people power revolution. The coalition of 11 political parties that organized the event agreed on so little that they invited no politicians to address the rally lest any one speaker offend the others. But even the anodyne line-up of writers and pop stars wasn’t enough to prevent controversy. Several crowd members shouted down performers because they thought playing music offensive to the memory of the soldiers killed in Lebanon.

And Israel’s vaunted security precautions were barely in place. A photographer and I strolled into the square without anyone checking our bags for weapons or bombs. Having covered massive demonstrations in Lebanon over the past two years, I couldn’t help but think that Hizballah would never have run such a Mickey Mouse protest.

Thursday night — the beginning of the weekend here — was business as usual for most people in this beach city preparing for the summer season, uninterested in the Rabin Square protest. “The country has already moved on,” said a drinker next to me in a crowded bar on Ben Yehuda street. “No one cares about the war in Lebanon anymore.” With suicide bombings down and the stock market up, much of the country seems blissfully undisturbed by the growing chaos beyond its security barriers and heavily guarded borders.

By Andrew Lee Butters/Ein el-Tina

The southwestern Syrian province of Golan is normally off limits to most civilians because parts of it — the famous Golan Heights — have been occupied by Israel since the war of June 1967. But every year on Independence Day, when Syria commemorates the end of French rule in 1946, the government lifts the security restrictions allowing visitors to stream into the Golan.

Many took advantage, on Tuesday, of the rare opportunity to picnic in one of the prettiest parts of the country. As the road from Damascus rises steadily towards the Golan, olive groves give way to apple trees and pastures surrounded by dry stone walls. It all seems more New England than Middle East, until Israeli radar stations and listening posts appear from the mist on the snowy peak of Mt. Hermon. Those serve as a reminder that Syrian land, and some 20,000 Syrian citizens, remain under foreign occupation on Independence Day. Syrian demonstrators press home the point by gathering within view of one another at the small hillside town of Ein el-Tina on the Syrian side of the frontline, and at Majdel Shams on the Israeli occupied side. “My father fought the French to liberate Syria,” says Mohammed Anwar Ildibe, a protestor at Ein el-Tina, carrying a black-and-white portrait of his father in fedayeen (guerrilla) garb. “I want to continue the resistance of my father to liberate Golan.”

Many of the approximately 500,000 Syrians displaced from the Golan by the Israelis return on Independence Day for a bittersweet glimpse of their former home. “I thought I would be back in 10 days,” said As’ad Abu Zaid, 55, a history teacher who fled his home in Majdel Shams at the outbreak of the war in 1967 and has been unable to return ever since. “Even when my two brothers and my father died, I couldn’t go to their funerals.” Now, he borrows a pair of binoculars and spots some of his surviving family members. “Just a few meters away and I haven’t met them for 40 years.”

With this year marking the 40th anniversary of its loss of the Golan Heights, the Syrian government is growing increasingly impatient for its return, repeatedly calling on Israel to resume the peace negotiations that stalled in 2000. Satisfying its citizens’ demand to reclaim their land is only part of Syria’s motivation. High-level peace negotiations with Israel would help Damascus work its way out of the international isolation imposed by Washington, which accuses Syria of backing terrorism in Lebanon, Israel, and Iraq. “Syria has taken the strategic choice to have peace,” says Medhal Saleh, head of the Syrian government’s Golan bureau. “All Israel has to do is express willingness to return the Golan and to start peace talks. Peace between Syria and Israel will help solve the problems in Palestine, and Lebanon, and help find some solutions in Iraq.”

In the past, Israel was wary of returning the Golan Heights, because they offered a strategic high ground that would give the Jewish State plenty of warning against any aggressive troop movements on the Syrian side. But technology and military realities have rendered such considerations moot. For one thing, Syria is unlikely, for the foreseeable future, to risk a conventional head-to-head clash with the overwhelmingly superior arms of the Israeli Defense Force. Instead, emboldened by Hizballah’s success in fighting the Israelis in Lebanon last summer with just a few fighters using advanced guerilla tactics, the Syrian government appears to be preparing for asymmetrical warfare against Israel.

“If the peace process falls apart, we are ready to train our young people in fedayeen operations,” says Dr. Ibrahim Al Ali, politburo member of the Popular Commission for the Liberation of the Golan. “There are many Syrians waiting for the green light to cross the border and carry out martyrdom operations against Israel. Hizballah’s victory showed many Arabs and Syrians that we can use resistance to liberate our land.”

Such tough talk may just be a bargaining tactic, although it could backfire. Israeli officials this week announced that they would not negotiate over the Golan under threat, and the Bush Administration is not exactly pushing them to make peace with Syria. So, with the region bracing for the fallout from a possible confrontation between the U.S. and Iran, pray for more picnics on the Golan.