A seemingly spontaneous Saudi-Israeli handshake at a European conference on security is mushrooming into what al-Quds al-Arabi calls an "unprecedented" public debate about the extent of official Arab-Israeli relations. The story isn't especially interesting on its merits: Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon (most recently in the news for an ill-considered snub of the Turkish ambassador) seized the opportunity at a security conference in Munich the other day to maneuver former Saudi intelligence chief Turki al-Faisal into an unprecedented public handshake.

While it might not seem like much, the picture of the handshake has rocketed through Arab politics and has become the focal point for an unusually blunt public discourse on the well-known reality of official Arab ties to Israel. The way the story is playing out is an object lesson in the power of publicity in Arab politics and in the limits of the much-mooted new "alliance" between Arabs and Israel against Iran. It shows both that many Arab leaders are indeed perfectly willing to work with the Israelis, but also that the political costs of this in the Arab sphere remain high --- and that Israel's policies towards Gaza and the Palestinians really do have a cost even if Arab leaders themselves don't seem to much care.

For the Netanyahu government, the handshake was something of a coup. It allows Israel to claim that its diplomatic isolation is less than it appears, and that the costs of their polices towards Gaza and the Palestinians are less than believed. It offered a rare glimpse of the possibility of normalization with the Arabs at a time when a sense of siege prevails. It reinforces the popular Israeli and American narrative that the Arabs are moving towards alignment with Israel in the face of a common Iranian threat, and that the immobilized peace process does not stand in the way.

At the same time, and for the same reasons, it was deeply embarrassing to the Saudis for Prince Turki to be photographed publicly shaking hands with Israel's Foreign Minister at a time when Israeli policies and its government are more loathed in the Arab world than ever. A succession of top Saudi officials, including King Abdullah, have repeatedly insisted that there would be no normalization or peace with Israel until it accepted a two-state solution along the lines of the 2002 Saudi Peace Initiative. Prince Turki therefore put out a statement that Ayalon had been apologizing for
insulting the Kingdom, and that the handshake did not mean Saudi recognition of Israel (Ayalon tweeted that this was "as fanciful as Arabian Nights stories").

The Arab media (at least the non-Saudi owned Arab media) is having a field day. Many commentators are taking the opportunity to highlight the extent of official Saudi and Arab contacts with Israel, with Turki in particular identified as a "specialist" in meeting with Israelis at international conferences. Lebanon's Al-Akhbar uses the "warm greeting" as a window into the long history of open and secret meetings between Arab officials and Israelis. I could give many, many more examples. Calling these meetings an "open secret" overstates their "secrecy"-- such contacts have long been reported and discussed. The photograph has crystallized the issue for the moment, as fleeting as the moment is likely to be.

The handshake affair is worth a post because it both reinforces and undermines the emerging conventional wisdom in Washington that the Arab regimes and Israelis are increasingly allies against Iran. Such expectations of an Arab-Israeli alliance against Iran are hardly new. The Saudis and Egyptians were more or less openly aligned with Israel in its war against Hezbollah in 2006 (remember Condi Rice's "birth pangs of the new Middle East"?), and to a lesser extent in the war on Gaza in 2008. Even in public, the "new Arab cold war" of the last few years has fairly openly and directly aligned the conservative Arab regimes with Israel against Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah and the "Resistance" bloc. Much of the official and Saudi-owned Arab media has for years been waging a heavy-handed campaign against the Resistance bloc, implicitly adopting many Israeli frames (Hamas and Hezbollah irrationality and irresponsibility, Arab moderation, Iranian threat).

But the Saudi pushback on the photo also shows the ongoing sensitivity of such relations, and the limits of the official media campaign in support of this supposed Arab-Israeli alignment. The images from Gaza and the ongoing impact of Netanyahu and Lieberman's foreign policy has more than overwhelmed all the efforts to justify and legitimate such an approach to the broader Arab public. That anger is real, and quite potent in many Arab countries and in the wider Arab public sphere. The Saudis prefer to keep such relations private because of this very real outrage, and the real political costs of being on the wrong side in public.

It's a common mistake to assume that only the private views of leaders or only public discourse matters. Both levels matter, the private Realpolitik of Arab leaders and the real passions of the Arab public. The depth of the gap between the private views of Arab leaders and the predominant views of the Arab public explains much of the vitriol of the current "Arab cold war". Many Arabs are worried about Iran, no doubt about it, and many in the official camp are deeply hostile to Hamas, Hezbollah, and most other forms of populist opposition. But most also continue to be genuinely outraged by Israeli policies and reject any public relationship. It's a cliche to say so but also true: don't expect the much-predicted Arab-Israeli alliance against Iran to ever live up to its hype (at least publicly) without real movement towards Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Secretary of State  Hillary Clinton's remarks about how to restart the Israeli-Palestinian track have sparked some buzz, it appears.   Clinton said that "Of course, we believe that the 1967 borders, with swaps, should be the focus of the negotiations over borders."   Now analysts are in a bit of tizzy, trying to figure out whether this formulation signals some dramatic new departure and a hint about where talks are going.  Maybe.  I'm more inclined to think that it was just carelessness, the sort of thing everybody talks about in private but isn't supposed to come from a podium.  I'm far more intrigued by a couple of admittedly feeble signs that perhaps movement on Gaza will finally be put on the table -- something that I and many others have been urging for a long, long time. 

What are the signs?

First, Haaretz reported yesterday that "The United States has suggested to Israel that easing the Gaza blockade would help counter the fallout from the Goldstone report on alleged war crimes during Operation Cast Lead a year ago." The message was reportedly delivered to an Israeli Foreign Ministry delegation by several State Department and NSC officials (including Samantha Power).   The Haaretz story has been picked up widely in the Arab media. 

Second, Nabil Shaath the other day became the first high-ranking Fatah official to visit Gaza since 2007.  He met with a number of senior Hamas officials.   This has sparked a flurry of rumours that Hamas and Fatah may finally be ready to sign the fabled reconciliation document -- perhaps in time for the Libya Arab Summit next month, suggests the Palestinian newspaper al-Quds.  

Finally, in his controversial speech at the Israeli Herzliya conference, Palestinian Authority/Ramallah  Prime Minister Salam al-Fayyad said bluntly that "it was essential that “our country be reunified,” and that lifting the blockade of the Gaza Strip would go along way toward enabling the PA to reassert control there."  This follows several other references to Gaza by PA/Ramallah leaders in recent days.

Will this amount to anything?  It's easy to be skeptical.  Israel isn't likely to change its Gaza policy just because of some American suggestions (although they may do so based on their own calculations of self-interest), and this was hardly a high-profile, public Presidential (or even Secretarial) push.   Reports of an impending Hamas-Fatah deal have come and gone so often in the last year that it's become something of a regional punchline, and the underlying conflicts seem as intense and forbidding as ever.  PA leaders may be talking about Gaza now only because their failure to do so in the past has cost them with Palestinian public opinion.  I'm as skeptical as anyone, believe you me.

But if there were something brewing to alleviate the blockade of Gaza and to achieve some sort of functional rapprochement between Fatah and Hamas, this would be far significant than the latest tweak in wording over the kinds of negotiations which the PA and Israel may or may not begin thinking about considering at some point.  The Obama administration's approach thus far has appeared bereft of new thinking: overly focused on resuming negotiations for their own sake, learning the wrong lessons from the unsuccessful attempt to get a settlement freeze from Netanyahu,  and stubbornly wedded to an inadequate "West Bank First/PA Only" approach to the Palestinian side.  A bold move to alleviate the humanitarian suffering of Gaza could finally introduce some new cards into the game, strengthen the hand of the PA with its own public, generate some Arab support for the process, and -- no small thing -- significantly improve the lives of a devastated Palestinian population.  Let's hope that these faint signals develop into some new momentum for real change.   

A few days ago, a Qatari newspaper reported that the Fatwa Committee of Egypt's al-Azhar University had issued a fatwa against joining Facebook  because of its contribution to infidelity and other moral failings. The story got picked up widely, and a furious debate rapidly broke out across the Arabic internet, blogs, forums, and newspapers about the alleged Facebook Fatwa. It's now made the Jerusalem Post, and I expect we'll see more of it as it migrates over into the English internet. I mean, what a great story! It's got an Muslim authority taking a stand against the modern globalized world, nobody on the internet can ever resist a story about the internet, there's a sex angle, and it can be framed against Hillary Clinton's "internet freedom" speech. Solid gold! 

But faster than you can say "stop sending me cause invitations," the alleged issuer of the fatwa, Shaykh Abd al-Hamid al-'Atrash,  denied the report. He never issued a fatwa against Facebook, he says -- indeed, he doesn't even know how to work the website, and how could he issue a fatwa on something he knows nothing about?  (I'll refrain from any of the dozen obvious punchlines here.) Of course he advises against using Facebook or anything else for illicit ends like cheating on one's spouse, but that doesn't mean that he issued a fatwa against Facebook itself. Ismail Abu Haytham, media advisor to al-Azhar's Fatwa Committee, also said that the committee had issued no such fatwa. Maybe they are just backtracking in the face of the controversy, but it doesn't really look like it.  

Oh well.  It will interesting to see how the story flows through the information stream, and whether the denials get equal time with the original story. Anyway, there will always be plenty of nutty fatwas to go around -- like banning Quranic ring tones, for instance! Who cares about such fatwas, and what authority they carry, is actually a darned interesting question. It would almost be more interesting if there had been an al-Azhar fatwa against Facebook, given that half of Egypt seems to already be on it (remember when Facebook was going to lead the revolution?).  That includes plenty of Islamists -- you can check out the Facebook page of the influential Islamist Yusuf al-Qaradawi, with over 80,000 followers, right here. I doubt many people would quit because of an al-Azhar fatwa -- which raises some genuinely interesting questions about authority in Islam today that I'll leave for another day.

The disqualification of some 500 candidates for the March 7 Iraqi Parliamentary election by the Accountability and Justice (deBaathification) commission headed by Ali al-Lami and Ahmed Chalabi has reportedly been overturned only days before the launch of the election campaign.  The Independent Higher Election Commission has said that it received instructions from the Appeals Court to throw out the disqualifications, and would proceed accordingly.  Details remain sketchy, since this happened too late for today's edition of most Arab and Iraqi newspapers, but from what I've pieced together it looks like the crisis has been averted (see Reidar Visser's ongoing coverage of the crisis here).  Once again Iraq has not unraveled, and Iraqis have figured out how to prevent their own system from collapsing around them.   Quiet U.S. diplomacy, combining clear pressure for an  inclusive and fair election with clear commitment to non-interference in Iraqi internal affairs and the withdrawal timeline, appears to have worked.  Go figure.

Here are some details which have emerged.  The decision appears to include all of the affected candidates and political entities, though those candidates who had already been swapped out apparently won't be let back.  Al-Arabiya reports that their cases will be reviewed after the election, as Vice President Joseph Biden had suggested, though I haven't seen this reported elsewhere yet.   Saleh al-Mutlak, whose ban received the most attention, and his list have declared their satisfaction with the decision and claimed that it demonstrated that they had been right to reject the constitutionality of the decision.  Supporters of the Accountability and Justice Commission's bans are complaining bitterly, and warning that it will open new problems down the road.  

While the resolution appears to have been managed within Iraqi institutions, the U.S. criticism of the deBaathification bans had been mounting in recent days.  Ambassador Christopher Hill had sharply criticized the moves, as had  General Petraeus, while Vice President Biden and President Obama (among others) had pushed the point with the succession of Iraqi leaders who have come to Washington DC in recent days (don't tell Henry Kissinger, who very oddly complains today in the Washington Post that Iraqi leaders aren't being invited to DC despite the very recent visits of Barzani, Abed al-Mahdi, and Hashemi).  But it has done this without compromising its commitment to the drawdown and the SOFA, while consistently being sensitive to Iraqi concerns about overt U.S. interference, and by appealing to the self-interest of Iraqi politicians that the election be viewed as legitimate by the international community.  This appears to be a job well done by Obama's Iraq team, in a difficult and very sensitive context. 

This doesn't mean that all is now rosy.  The elections, as I wrote yesterday, may still very well fail to produce "meaningful change" (however this is defined) and could still lead to disappointment and frustration among the losers.  The process of forming a new government after the elections could prove explosive and drawn-out.   Everyone -- Iraqis, Americans and other international actors -- should be proactive about avoiding problems such as those which hamstrung the recent Afghan elections (or even the Iranian election or the 2005 Iraqi election).  The first step is to do everything possible to help ensure a free, transparent, and clean election --- which should include a robust system of international monitors (whether American, UN, EU or independent NGO), as many Iraqi political leaders (including Vice President Hashemi yesterday) have requested.

But that's for tomorrow.  For now, a sigh of relief that the political crisis over the election ban appears to have been averted -- a good sign for the ability of Iraqis to save themselves from such logjams, and a credit to the Obama administration's approach.  

I spent almost two hours this morning at a small roundtable with about half a dozen other analysts and Iraqi Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi, who came to Washington D.C. to meet with Vice President Biden, President Obama (who dropped in for a substantial "unscheduled" private conversation) and other U.S. officials.  Hashemi kindly agreed to let me write about his remarks at the roundtable, and the wider context of a visit which has received relatively little attention here.  His extended remarks presented the upcoming March 7 Parliamentary elections as essential to delivering on the desperate hopes of the Iraqi people for meaningful change.... even as he tried to avoid discussing what might happen if they did not.   And he combined appreciation of the Obama administration's approach to Iraq with a yearning for the U.S. to do more to resolve Iraq's political impasse. 

A main topic of discussion, as one might expect, was the upcoming election and the crisis surrounding the disqualification of candidates by Ali al-Lami and Ahmed Chalabi's Accountability and Justice (De-Baathification) Committee.  Along with the usual complaints, Hashemi singled out the timing of the committee's moves as particularly egregious: why did a  committee formed by Parliament two years ago wait until less than two months before the election to act?  He wondered if the  elections were being targeted by those who did not want them to succeed, though he declined to speculate aloud on who might hold such hidden agendas.  He left little doubt that he thought that the disqualifications could significantly depress Sunni turnout and deeply compromise the legitimacy of the election --- and expressed hope that a solution would be found quickly, even as the opening of the campaign season rapidly approaches.

Hashemi argued that the Iraqi people want and need the upcoming elections to deliver fundamental change.  Only a new government, he insisted, one selected by fair and transparent and inclusive elections, could meet the challenges which the current government has failed to overcome.   He was 100% sure that such a new government would do better at addressing the many structural and political problems facing Iraq.  But when pressed by several of us in the room, he seemed loathe to speculate about what would happen if the elections did not produce such change, just another government which looks a lot like the current one.  He insisted that this was just not possible given the deep desire among Iraqis for real change.  But at the same time, his concerns about the deBaathification disqualifications and worries that some elements might prefer a failed election suggest that in fact he thinks that it's quite possible indeed for the elections to not produce meaningful change.    It's not even clear, frankly, what plausible electoral outcomes would count as meaningful change  --- would a victory by Maliki's list would be taken as "failure"? 

Hashemi of course declined to speculate about who would win the elections.  But most likely, the largest vote-winner will need to form a coalition --- and preferably an inclusive, national grand coalition.    But everyone in the room remembered the painful aftermath of the last Parliamentary elections, as forming a government took many long months of negotiation amidst a rapid descent into sectarian civil war.   And everyone is painfully aware of the deep divisions which remain along sectarian lines and the unresolved issues dividing Baghdad and the KRG such as Kirkuk, the disputed territories, the hydrocarbons law, and so forth.  Hashemi seemed surprisingly hopeful that a new government would be formed more quickly this time, since all had learned from the 2006 experience and there have been many discussions already among the major blocs.   I wonder.  Given the intensity of the unresolved issues, and his own complaints about the inability of the Iraqis to resolve their divisions on their own, why should we expect coalition talks in the aftermath of the election to go so smoothly?  

Which brings me to the question which probably most interests Americans:  what should the U.S. do about this situation?  Hashemi seemed torn over the appropriate level of U.S. involvement in the Iraqi political process.  He expressed overall appreciation at the Obama administration's approach:  Biden's clear call for transparent and inclusive elections, the U.S. commitment to the SOFA and its withdrawal timeline,  the consistent U.S. refusal to intervene in Iraqi internal affairs, the administration's attention to Iraqi refugees, and the move to broaden the Iraqi-American relationship beyond security.  But at the same time, he seemed to urgently want the U.S. to do more, publicly and privately, to help resolve the Iraqi political impasse and to prevent the deterioration of security.  Iraqis could not meet these challenges alone, he warned, and needed the U.S. to help them overcome the problem.   Hashemi's appeal for more of an American role is something you commonly hear from Iraqi leaders in private -- but that doesn't necessarily make it right.  

My own view of this, as regular readers know, is that the U.S. should play a minimal role in these issues because the Iraqis will only reach their own lasting agreements if they can't rely on the U.S. to do it for them.  This is a genuinely fine line to walk:  the U.S. should be involved diplomatically to resolve political conflicts which clearly affect U.S. interests, but it needs to do so without either inflaming an Iraqi nationalist backlash or re-creating debilitating political dependencies.  Such appeals are likely reflected in the administration's increasingly visible role of late -- i.e. Biden's visit, Obama's meetings with a succession of Iraqi leaders in Washington, and statements by CENTCOM Commander David Petraeus and Ambassador Chris Hill's criticizing the disqualifications -- combined with their relentless repetition that they are not intervening in Iraqi internal affairs or modifying the commitment to withdrawal.   It's telling that when the U.S. does publicly intervene, Iraqi leaders tend to just dismiss the advice or to pull the sovereignty card.  Still, active and engaged diplomacy could help.  One area where the U.S. and the international community as a whole could and should certainly step up is to insist on scrupulous electoral monitoring.   One area where it absolutely should not waver is in its clear commitment to the SOFA and the withdrawal timeline. 

 Hamas is claiming that one of its leaders,  Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, was killed by Israeli operatives in his hotel in Dubai on January 20 and threatening a response "in the appropriate place and time."  The story is all over the Arab media, in many cases as a red-bannered breaking news story.   Israel does not yet have a comment that I've seen. Hamas says that UAE authorities are cooperating in the investigation, and the first reports out of Dubai are that the killers were European and part of a "professional criminal gang".  Whatever the truth of the incident, the alleged assassination threatens to disrupt the uneasy ceasefire which has held between Hamas and Israel over the last year, and to further strain the already dismal prospects of either Fatah-Hamas reconciliation, attempts to alleviate the suffering of Gaza, or a resumption of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.  Let's hope that it doesn't spark a new cycle of violence.

The de facto cease-fire between Hamas and Israel has been no secret.   Israelis have often pointed to these efforts by Hamas to prevent attacks against Israel over the last year as evidence that Operation Cast Lead succeeded in establishing deterrence.  As Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak recently said, for instance, "The deterrence achieved during Operation Cast Lead still exists, and it is strong."   Palestinian Authority (Ramallah) Prime Minister Salam al-Fayyad similarly raised some eyebrows at Davos yesterday by highlighting that in practice Hamas and the PA agreed on security: "it is clear that Hamas has been trying to prevent attacks on Israel, it is no secret, it has been trying to do that, it is not saying it is doing it but it is doing it.”   This argument has been used against Hamas by its Arab rivals such as Egypt and the PA, who have pointed to the de facto ceasefire to mock their claims to be "resisting" Israel.   Israelis, including Barak, have argued repeatedly that what rocket fire there has been from Gaza has been due to the difficulties Hamas has faced in controlling more radical groups --- not from Hamas itself.

Why would Israel put this de facto ceasefire at risk by an assassination?  First off, it's impossible to say at this point whether they did --- no evidence has yet been presented to back up Hamas's claims.  Much of the Arab public immediately believed it, though, as it immediately recalled the botched operation against Khaled Meshaal in  Amman a decade ago, as well as the assassinations of leading Hamas figures such as Ahmed Yassin and Abd al-Aziz al-Rentissi in 2004.    That doesn't mean that it's true.  But since Hamas has already gone public with the accusation and promised revenge, it may spark off a dangerous cycle anyway. 

What if it's true?  There should be questions about the legitimacy and morality of assassinating one's enemies abroad, one would think.  But that seems unlikely in this day and age, when the United States openly brags of its Predator strikes, discusses them primarily in terms of whether or not they "work" as opposed to whether or not they are legal or morally acceptable,  and muses about whether or not to target Anwar al-Awlaki (the radical Islamist in Yemen who is also an American citizen).   The international norms against such assassinations have been thoroughly degraded by the Global War on Terror, and the Obama administration has  escalated rather than reined in such measures.

So the real debate is more likely to be about the logic of the assassination and whether it "works."   But it's not obvious what that would even mean in this context -- it makes little strategic sense.    If Israelis and the PA both acknowledge that Hamas has been controlling attacks against Israel from Gaza, what is gained by a provocation such as this?  Would it have "worked" if Hamas fails to respond,  demonstrating its impotence?  Would it have "worked" if Hamas does respond, killing innocent Israeli civilians and possibly triggering another round of horrific violence?  Would it have "worked" if a Hamas retaliation (or even an unfulfilled threat of retaliation) offers a pretext for maintaining or intensifying the blockade of Gaza?   At this point I'm seeing a blizzard of Arab commentary on the subject but no real consensus.   But smaller things have sparked disastrous confrontations in the past, and I only hope that this one does not. 

UPDATE:  as a friend points out, "it makes no sense" hardly rules it out.  Just looking back at the botched 1997 Israeli assassination attempt against Khaled Meshaal, as masterfully chronicled in Paul McGeough's Kill Khaled, is enough to show that.  The Meshaal episode, also authorized by a government led by Benjamin Netanyahu, targeted the rising Hamas leader on the streets of Israel's closest partner in the Arab world using agents holding foreign (Canadian) passports.  King Hussein was so furious and humiliated that he demanded not only an antidote to the poison used on Meshaal but also the release of a number of Hamas leaders from Israeli prisons (including Shaykh Ahmed Yassin).   It would have been difficult to make a sensible case for that attempt either.   So we'll just see how this one unfolds, I'm afraid. 

A meeting of Arab Information Ministers at the Arab League in Cairo yesterday rejected a Congressional resolution calling for sanctions against Arab satellite television stations which allegedly incite terrorism or promote anti-Americanism.  It would be pretty pathetic that the Arab League -- the Arab League!! -- is taking a stronger position in favor of media freedoms than the U.S. Congress.  But don't worry --- leading Arab states still seem quite keen to find their own Arab ways to repress and control the media.   

The Congressional resolution (H.R.2278), which passed 395-3 in December (and hopefully will die in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee) is a perfect example of mindless grandstanding which pleases domestic audiences while hurting American interests in the Arab world. 
The resolution complains of anti-American incitement on Arab TV, specifically mentioning Hezbollah's al-Manar, Hamas's al-Aqsa, and the Iraqi al-Zawra. It calls for the Obama administration to produce a country-by-country list of Arab TV stations which incite violence and to urge official and private sanctions against those deemed to be carrying out such incitement.  Who in the U.S. Congress is going to speak out or vote against complaining about al-Manar or al-Aqsa?  

But of course, it's not so simple.  Once the U.S. gets into the business of imposing sanctions against television stations deemed hostile, it's a very slippery slope.   The definition of anti-American incitement is impossibly broad: "The term ‘anti-American incitement to violence’ means the act of persuading, encouraging, instigating, advocating, pressuring, or threatening so as to cause another to commit a violent act against any person, agent, instrumentality, or official of, is affiliated with, or is serving as a representative of the United States."  Almost any critical discussion of American foreign policy on Arab TV could conceivably fit into that definition -- and given the realities of Arab views of U.S. foreign policy, any remotely free and independent Arab media will include plenty of such criticism. 

Furthermore,  H.R. 2278 calls for the U.S. to "designate as Specially Designated Global Terrorists satellite providers that knowingly and willingly contract with entities designated as Specially Designated Global Terrorists."  The list of such SDGT's is currently some 443 pages long, and includes such Arab political figures as  Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal and the influential Islamist figure Yusuf al-Qaradawi [*].    Every serious news organization in the Arab world airs interviews with Meshaal, and Qaradawi is a fixture on al-Jazeera, which is both by far the most popular Arab satellite TV station and was conspicuously not named in the text of H.R. 2278.   If simply airing interviews with someone like Meshaal becomes grounds for labeling a TV station a Specially Designated Global Terrorist, then literally almost every single Arab TV station would be so designated --- because no serious Arab TV station could cover the news in the region while ignoring Hamas, Hezbollah, or other figures on the list. 

In short, H.R. 2278 is a deeply irresponsible bill which sharply contradicts American support for media freedom and could not be implemented in the Middle East today as crafted without causing great damage.   Even Arab governments who despise Hamas and Hezbollah and Qaradawi and al-Jazeera could not sign on to it.   Instead, such governments proposed a pan-Arab Media Commission which would monitor and regulate political content on satellite TV -- an idea which was floated in spring 2008, and mercifully failed.    Fortunately, that proposal has again been shelved.  The last thing the Arab world needs right now is more state power of censorship over the media -- whether the Arab League over satellite TV or the Jordanian government over the internet.  Hillary Clinton just laid out a vision of an America committed to internet freedom, and that should be embraced as part of a broader commitment to free and open media.  Nobody should be keen on restoring the power of authoritarian governments over one of the few zones of relative freedom which have evolved over the last decade.  

[*] Several friends with experience with such terrorist lists dinged in to clarify that Qaradawi is on an American terrorist exclusion list, but -- despite hundreds of internet reports to the contrary -- is NOT on the Specially Designated Global Terrorists list.   That's a good thing!  But apologies for the confusion, and anybody who links through to this post should note this important correction. 

Osama bin Laden has released a new tape to al-Jazeera claiming responsibility for the attempted Christmas Day bombing, linking it to Gaza and declaring that America would not be secure until Palestinians were truly secure. Bin Laden's ability to frame an entire tape around a failed bombing attempt demonstrates how badly the American public's over-reaction played into al-Qaeda's hands. It should not be surprising that bin Laden would claim responsibility on behalf of al-Qaeda Central or threaten new attacks, whether or not it's actually true. And it should not be surprising that bin Laden would link the attempted attack to the Palestinian issue, since contrary to common American claims he almost always does talk about the Palestinian issue. Still, there are a few noteworthy points about the new bin Laden tape.

It is interesting that bin Laden released the tape directly to al-Jazeera rather than uploading it to the jihadist forums. The video and transcript are not yet available on the forums; instead there is an administrative note warning that only an official al-Fajr production should be considered authoritative, perhaps in response to what happened a few years ago when the clips from a bin Laden tape sent to al-Jazeera created the wrong impression about the thrust of his comments on Iraq. Many of those forums have been down recently, and more broadly over the last couple of years they have become increasingly unreliable --- many of the top-tier forums have either been shut down or have been forced to migrate repeatedly, which has undermined their reach and credibility. Satellite TV has always been better than internet forums for reaching the mass Arab public, as bin Laden wants to do, as opposed to the base-mobilizing qualities of the forums.

The Arab media's coverage of the bin Laden tape overwhelmingly focuses on his remarks about Israel and the Palestinians. Without access to a full transcript, it's impossible to know whether this was actually his primary focus or whether al-Jazeera chose those clips to highlight to fit its own narrative. But either way, it shouldn't be a surprise. Bin Laden has always spoken about the Palestinian issue and has always sought to use it to reach out to the mass Arab and Muslim public. Palestinians, for the most part, want nothing to do with al-Qaeda. A recent paper by the Washington Institute's Matthew Levitt and former Shin Bet leader Yoram Cohen (neither exactly known as apologists for Hamas) demonstrated the opposition between Hamas and salafi-jihadist groups. As much as al-Qaeda would like to have an effective Palestinian franchise, it has not been able to gain a foothold in either the West Bank or Gaza.

A lot of ink has been spilled since 9/11 trying to argue that bin Laden doesn't really care about Palestine. But that's always been silly -- nobody knows what he "really" cares about, and it doesn't especially matter since he talks about it a lot and presents it as a major part of his case against the United States. An Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement surely would not convince bin Laden or al-Qaeda and its affiliated movements to give up their jihad --- but it would take away one of their most potent arguments, and one of the few that actually resonates with mass publics. This is why Obama was right to put dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian issue at the center of his Middle East foreign policy, regardless of whether Israeli or Palestinian leaders are serious about it. It is one of the many reasons why his team's failure to make progress on the Israeli-Palestinian front, and ignoring Gaza, is dangerous for American national security interests. Like the failure to close Guantanamo, the issue isn't that it will or won't change the minds of al-Qaeda jihadists. It's that the failure badly hurts U.S. credibility with the mainstream Arab and Muslim audiences that he most needs to reach, entrenching a twin narrative of Obama being no different from Bush and not matching his words with deeds, while giving extremists an argument against the U.S. that resonates widely.