By drawing attention to a supposed al-Qaeda infiltration of the Occupied Territories, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas may have done Hamas a favor. Despite visceral US and Israeli hostility towards the militant Palestinian movement that won parliamentary elections in the West Bank and Gaza on Jan.25, Abbas implied that there were far worse alternatives. Al-Qaeda is undoubtedly one of them.
Abbas has no reason to love Hamas. The defeat of his Fatah party has left him much weakened. Israel has called him "irrelevant."
US efforts are now focused on how best to ostracize a Hamas government when it takes office, unless it first renounces armed struggle and recognizes Israel. Abbas has been largely reduced to the role of spectator.
Israel predictably used his comments to propagate its belief that Hamas is party to an international terrorist conspiracy, despite Hamas denials of any knowledge of the supposed al-Qaeda infiltration.
But the Palestinian president is not alone in trying to place Hamas' rise to power in perspective.
Russia irritated Washington with talks in Moscow with a delegation from Hamas, which it refuses to categorize as a terrorist organization. It says the movement's success is a reality that must be dealt with -- although Russia, too, wants Hamas to change its ways.
Turkey has also defied Israel and the US by hosting a visit from the Palestinians' new rulers; and some EU countries are wavering over proposed anti-Hamas sanctions.
The argument in Ankara and other European capitals is that you cannot promote democracy in the Middle East and then reject its legitimate consequences.
Abbas and others say if the Hamas leadership is given time to adjust, it may soften its stance, for example by implementing an indefinite truce. If the US insists on ending international funding for the Palestinian Authority, as Israel is demanding, they say Washington will only strengthen Palestinian hardliners and rejectionists such as Islamic Jihad, engender ever greater suffering for ordinary Palestinians and risk the final wreck of the peace process.
But as matters stand now, that is exactly where US policy is heading.
It might be thought that its Iraq experience had taught the Bush administration the need to show flexibility in Middle East politics rather than simply laying down the law. Yet in Iraq as in the Palestinian Territories, the White House -- although not a more savvy State Department -- continues to look at issues in black and white.
In its monochrome landscape, the only barrier between Iraqis and a peaceful, democratic future is a minority of armed Sunni insurgents and criminals, backed by foreign jihadis.
Iraq's reality is much more complicated, involving for instance lethal rivalries between Shiite militias, inter-regional tensions encouraged by the new US-approved Constitution, corrupt or incompetent political, military and police authorities, a still moribund economy, the virtual secession of Kurdistan and widespread nationalist sentiment opposed to ongoing foreign occupation.
But US President George W. Bush's White House, fixated by the fear of all-out civil war in Iraq, facing a collapse of confidence in US policy at home and beset by record-low presidential approval ratings of 34 percent, appears less and less able or inclined to pick its way through the Iraqi maze.
In the space of three chaotic years, Bush has gone from talk of a great victory to ill-disguised yearning for a quick, "honorable" exit. In between these two extremes may lie a more pragmatic and effective policy, based on the art of the possible. But like his attitude to Hamas, the president appears to see no middle way.
This all-or-nothing approach has met with similar reverses elsewhere in the Middle East. Washington's drive last autumn to unseat Syrian President Bashar Assad following the assassination of Rafiq Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister, has ground to a halt.
This is partly because US allies in the region, notably Israel, warned of Iraq-style chaos should the Syrian regime collapse. But instead of modifying its stance on Syria in the light of such calculations, and thereby advancing at least some of its objectives, the US appears to have almost lost interest. It remains viscerally hostile to Assad. But seen from Damascus, it has been left looking like a paper tiger.
It is easy to point to mistakes with the benefit of hindsight. But so predictable and repetitive are the Bush administration's policy patterns that it is possible, in its case, to identify future accidents waiting to happen. The most troublesome is Iran.
As before the Iraq invasion, Washington is building up a dossier of grievances against Tehran. They range from its nuclear activities and its links with Hamas and Hezbollah to its "interference" in Iraq and its human rights record. And it has succeeded in persuading the US public, according to a recent poll, that Iran's leadership is public enemy No. 1 and therefore a direct threat to the US.
It appears not to have occurred to Bush that talking directly to Iran on some of the above issues, rather than isolating, antagonizing and confronting it with threats of sanctions or force, might actually serve US interests on a wide range of fronts. With the possible exception of ambassador-level talks with Iran on Iraqi security, such a course of action is not contemplated -- in part because it might entail compromise. Here once again is the familiar all-or-nothing approach.
Despite the "realism" in some parts of the foreign policy establishment, Bush is still making pictures in black-and-white. And Iran, the Movie could soon be coming to a cinema near you.
Chinese agents often target Taiwanese officials who are motivated by financial gain rather than ideology, while people who are found guilty of spying face lenient punishments in Taiwan, a researcher said on Tuesday. While the law says that foreign agents can be sentenced to death, people who are convicted of spying for Beijing often serve less than nine months in prison because Taiwan does not formally recognize China as a foreign nation, Institute for National Defense and Security Research fellow Su Tzu-yun (蘇紫雲) said. Many officials and military personnel sell information to China believing it to be of little value, unaware that
Before 1945, the most widely spoken language in Taiwan was Tai-gi (also known as Taiwanese, Taiwanese Hokkien or Hoklo). However, due to almost a century of language repression policies, many Taiwanese believe that Tai-gi is at risk of disappearing. To understand this crisis, I interviewed academics and activists about Taiwan’s history of language repression, the major challenges of revitalizing Tai-gi and their policy recommendations. Although Taiwanese were pressured to speak Japanese when Taiwan became a Japanese colony in 1895, most managed to keep their heritage languages alive in their homes. However, starting in 1949, when the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) enacted martial law
“Si ambulat loquitur tetrissitatque sicut anas, anas est” is, in customary international law, the three-part test of anatine ambulation, articulation and tetrissitation. And it is essential to Taiwan’s existence. Apocryphally, it can be traced as far back as Suetonius (蘇埃托尼烏斯) in late first-century Rome. Alas, Suetonius was only talking about ducks (anas). But this self-evident principle was codified as a four-part test at the Montevideo Convention in 1934, to which the United States is a party. Article One: “The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: a) a permanent population; b) a defined territory; c) government;
The central bank and the US Department of the Treasury on Friday issued a joint statement that both sides agreed to avoid currency manipulation and the use of exchange rates to gain a competitive advantage, and would only intervene in foreign-exchange markets to combat excess volatility and disorderly movements. The central bank also agreed to disclose its foreign-exchange intervention amounts quarterly rather than every six months, starting from next month. It emphasized that the joint statement is unrelated to tariff negotiations between Taipei and Washington, and that the US never requested the appreciation of the New Taiwan dollar during the
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