Informed Comment

Nussseibeh: Israel Wall Bars Education in Jerusalem

URGENT APPEAL by Sari Nusseibeh, East Jerusalem

THE “SECURITY” WALL BARS EDUCATION IN JERUSALEM

As Arab schools in East Jerusalem prepare to start the new academic year in early September, nearly seven hundred teachers employed by those schools will be unable to reach their classrooms. With the “security” wall around Jerusalem now reaching its completion, cutting off East Jerusalem from its natural Arab surroundings, and entry restrictions becoming more stringent, teachers who neither have Israeli IDs or special permits will no longer be able to reach their places of work. Many pupils living in those areas will also be prevented from being able to reach their schools.

Privately-run Arab schools in East Jerusalem provide an indispensable venue for the education of Arab pupils, as Israel’s government-supported school system in this area hardly covers 20% of education needs. If teachers are not allowed to reach the classrooms, more than eighteen thousand school-aged children will be unable to continue their education in some fifty schools in the area. The social and political implications of such an eventuality speak for themselves.

The Israeli Government has thus far processed and approved the applications of about a hundred teachers, mostly through a “selective” procedure discriminating between some schools and others. This discriminatory policy flies in the face of academic and religious freedom. All schools applying for permits for their teachers should be provided with those permits, without prejudicing real “security” considerations possibly affecting a specific individual.

The present crisis facing education in East Jerusalem is a test for what “the Wall” is about. In opposing the boycott to Israeli academic institutions our principle was that educational institutions should be allowed to flourish and discrimination to learning on political grounds be opposed. Today all those who uphold these principles have the opportunity for positive action. Your support is urgently needed to ensure that this Wall will not cause an education system to collapse. Address your appeal to Israel’s Prime Minister and Israel’s Minister of Interior to ensure free access to East Jerusalem’s schools.

LET THE WALL NOT STAND IN THE FACE OF A CHILD’S EDUCATION.

Jerusalem/25th August 2005

Take a stand. Send your appeal to:

Prime Minister’s Office

Ministry of Interior Office ‘

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Is the US Still Tinkering with the Iraqi Constitution?

A closer observer of the Iraq scene writes in outrage:

Filed at 9:43 a.m. ET

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) — The U.S. ambassador suggested Tuesday there may be further changes to the draft constitution to win Sunni Arab approval, saying he believed a final edited draft had not been presented.

‘ For God’s and our sake, please someone tell them (and yell, if necessary) to leave it alone for now.

The President, for God’s sake, blessed the process to the world and it is over, there being nothing in the TAL, any other law or in common political or jurisprudential sense, which justifies or even remotely supports reopening the document, which, anyway, may already be printed in 5-6 million copies.

They could be on the way to screwing this all up (again), and this time around it WOULD BE VERY CONSEQUENTIAL, if they do. It is they who did not postpone the elections, held under not “free and fair” conditions in parts of several Provinces. It is they who said that The Schedule must be maintained at all costs. So STICK TO YOUR BLOODY SCHEDULE NOW.

What, if anything, is he thinking?

They panicked in the White House in November 2003 and produced the “Agreement on Political Process,” which included the non-starter caucuses and was not an agreement, and the faux sovereignty, which is causing so much of the trouble. They seem to be panicking again. Leaders of “world’s only super-powers” do not panic for all the world to see.

This could now be beyond even nuts. ‘

COLE: There are indeed rumors flying around of continued changes in the draft of the constitution. All sorts of key issues, from Iraq’s Arab identity to human rights are still in flux. Major politicians have left or are leaving the country, which means any tinkering is being done in their absence!

It is the damnedest thing.

Al-Watan (Riyadh) [Arabic link] reports that one Sunni member of the parliamentary drafting committee told it that Washington at one point promised $5 million apiece to tthe Sunnis on the committee if they would sign off on the constitution.

Sy Hersh has also alleged bribery.

It is certainly the case that a lot of money is being spread around for cooperativeness. I was told that one high Iraqi official received one million dollars a month for serving in the interim government of Iyad Allawi, and recently went on a shopping spree at Harrod’s in London where he spent $1 million on gifts for his second wife. [We guys object to this sort of thing on two grounds. First, it gives the impression of corruption or at the least overly high living on the part of a public servant. Second, the expectations of wives just shouldn't be raised this way, especially those of second wives.] This politician supports the constitution.

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Sunnis Charge Interior Ministry in Killings
2000 Sunnis Protest
More Corpses Found

Al-Zaman/ AFP: The Iraqi Islamic Party accused elements in the Iraqi ministry of the interior on Monday of having kidnapped 36 citizens from Hurriyah Township in Baghdad and then throwing them in the Tigris after they were bound and shot in the head. The party called on the United Nations, the Arab League and human rights organizations to intervene immediately to protect innocents “in this wounded land.” The IIP charges are incendiary and will inflame feelings between Sunnis and Shiites. (The Ministry of Interior is controlled by the Shiite Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq [SCIRI]). The charges echo similar ones made weeks ago by the hard line Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars against the Badr Corps, the paramilitary of SCIRI. That crisis only passed when Muqtada al-Sadr mediated between the two.

2,000 Sunni protesters came out against the Constitution in Tikrit on Monday. On more than one occasion Sunni protesters in recent weeks have chanted their devotion to Saddam Hussein, a step that is probably unwise, but which underlines their rejection of the new, American-installed government.

Iran on the other hand is pleased as punch with the new constitution. Its spokesman hoped for its passage in the October 15 referendum and the formation of a new government in December. In other words, on this issue the Iranians sound eerily like the Bush administration. (The constitution was shepherded through by Grand Ayatollah Sistani, whom the Iranians consider one of their club, despite the friction in the relationship.) Despite a poorly sourced English-language report from an Iraqi newspaper, it is certain that Sistani strongly supports the new constitution, which says that the parliament may pass no civil legislation that contravenes Islamic law.

The police announced Monday that guerrillas had executed 15 Iraqis who were traveling from Samarra to Ramadi. They also found 13 bodies in Fallujah, Saqlawiyah and Karamah in Western Iraq. The US military announced that they had detained 17 persons in sweeps in the troubled northern city of Mosul. There was fierce fighting in one quarter of Mosul on Monday.

Another four were arrested near the largely Sunni Turkmen city of Tel Afar. Tel Afar is now witnessing the most vigorous uprising against the Americans in a year.

Reuters reports further violence on Monday.

“It is to laugh, it is to weep Department“: The Iraqi parliament attempted to legislate sanctions against perpetually absent members of parliament on Monday. But they could not legislate on the issue because there were too many absentees.

Apparently the session on Sunday where the drafting committee presented the new constitution to the parliament was only sparsely attended.

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Arab World Concerned about Iraqi Constitution

Arab leaders on Monday expressed consternation that the Iraqi constitution does not identify Iraq as part of the Arab world. Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa echoed these concerns but also said that the present constitution is a “recipe for chaos.”

The diction in the constitution is that Iraq is part of the “Muslim world” but then it says that “its Arabs form part of the Arab world.” The Kurds objected to Iraq being called part of the Arab world, since they deeply resent the Baath Party’s attempt to Arabize them. I figure Iraq is about 74 percent Arab. Given their performance in the Jan. 30 elections, the Kurds must be at least 20 percent of the population. Then Turkmen are about 3 percent, and Chaldean/Assyrian Christians are another 3 percent (many speak Aramaic, the language of Jesus, at home). The rest are Arabs, whether Sunnis or Shiites. You could have called Iraq an Arab country with that profile.

Morocco is probably 33 percent Berber and it identifies itself as an Arab state (I’ve met Moroccan Berbers who felt like second-class citizens, but I’m not sure they would object to their country’s status the way the Kurds do). Algeria is 25 percent Berber.

There are other member states of the Arab League that do not say in their constitutions that they are Arab states. I found an Arabic text for the 1998 Sudanese constitution on the Web, and although it says Arabic is the official language, it doesn’t say Sudan is part of the Arab world. Sudan is only 39 percent “Arab” (i.e. Africans who are native Arabic speakers; some Almanacs contrast the “Arabs” with the “Blacks” in Sudan, but I’m damned if I can see any difference. I’m told that the Sudanese make a distinction between the Yellows and the Blues, but I think a lot of it is ascriptive rather than any obvious racial difference).

Iraqi thinkers such as Sati al-Husri helped to invent the whole idea of Arab nationalism. But it has always been in competition with Iraqi nationalism (often favored by Shiites). And, of course, the Kurds have all along had problems with Arab nationalism, since they speak an Indo-European language.

President Jalal Talabani promised Monday that Iraq would continue to play a vital role in the Arab League.

Most educated Arabs have a map in their minds of the Arab world. It has a hole in it at Palestine, and another at Iraq, because– from the point of view of Arab nationalists– these bits of the larger homeland have been put under foreign military occupation. I heard a lower-class Lebanese woman say in a “person in the street” interview on al-Jazeera some time ago, “First Palestine went. Now Iraq is gone.” What did she mean by Iraq being “gone?” That it is not truly sovereign and is under occupation.

A lot of people in the Arab world believe that the erasure of an Arab identity for the Iraqi state is part of an American (and Israeli) plot to detach Iraq from the Arab world, thereby much weakening the latter.

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Schenkman: If Bush had been President in 1861

After Ft. Sumter: “There is much that we can be grateful for. No lives were lost during the attack. And as our vice president has indicated already, this attack indicates that the rebellion against federal authority is in its final throes.” [click the link for more at the History News Network.]

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Constitution born by Caesarian Section

So they had the ceremony, and the drafting committee (minus Sunni Arab members) presented the final draft of the permanent Iraqi constitution to parliament on Sunday. But parliament did not vote on it. The Sunni Arabs did not attend. Parliament has abdicated its responsibilities toward the constitution and put it in the lap of the October 15 national referendum. Al-Hayat aptly said that the Iraqi constitution has been delivered by caesarian section. It was plucked from the womb of the drafting committee before the latter could give birth to it naturally. Sunni negotiator Salih Mutlak called it “a minefield.”

Al-Hayat: Another member of the drafting committee, Sunni politician Abd al-Nasir al-Janabi, called for international intervention to prevent its being passed into law. He particularly asked for the Arab League and the United Nations to intervene. The Sunni Arab delegates noted that they were promised that the constitution drafting process would be based on consensus, and that this pledge had been the precondition for their involvement in it last June. On Sunday the Shiites and the Kurds reneged dramatically on that promise. Husain al-Falluji said that this constitution contains the seeds of Iraq’s bloody partition, something, he said, that would “serve American interests.”

US Ambassador in Baghdad Zalmay Khalilzad got carried away and called the Iraqi constitution the best in the Muslim world. Well, we could exclude Turkey’s constitution because it is just a slightly reworked version of the Swiss, and so not very indigenous to the Muslim world. But what about, say, Indonesia? He should look at these powerpoint slides on the Indonesian constitution. The latter also guarantees civil liberties and equality before the law, but the Indonesian government, unlike Khalilzad, resisted demands by adherents of political Islam that Islamic law be recognized in it. The new Iraqi constitution contains a provision that no legislation may be passed that contradicts Islamic law. That provision makes the Iraqi constitution read as self-contradictory (since it also celebrates human rights and democracy), and puts it in contrast with that of Indonesia, which contains no such provision. Since 1998 democracy has flourished in Indonesia.

So why must an indigenous achievement such as the 1998-2002 amendments to the Indonesian Constitution be devalued in favor of a deeply flawed and fatally self-contradictory constitution produced in Iraq under twin Iranian and American auspices? Does everything have to be about George Bush?

Why isn’t the Indonesian constitution the most progressive in the Muslim world?

Jim Carroll of the Christian Science monitor points out that the Sadr Movement of nationalist Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr rejects the provisions for federalism in the new constitution, as do the Sunni Arabs. He writes:

‘ “It’s not the time for federalism under occupation. It will draw a lot of troubles,” says Abbas Rubaie, the political director of the Sadr movement. This stance puts them at odds with the ruling Islamist Shiite parties like the Dawa Party and the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq . . . ‘

Al-Zaman also reports that Shaikh Hasan al-Zarkani, an aide of al-Sadr, said on Voice of Beirut radio that the constitution’s provisions for federalism, since they were enacted under conditions of foreign occupation, would lead to the partition of the country. Therefore, he said, the Sadr Movement rejects the constitution.

The reemergence of Muqada al-Sadr as a force to reckon with is explored by Salih al-Qaisi and Oliver Poole of the Telegraph. They note that, Hizbullah-style, he has concentrated on having his organization provide aid to the people, especially Shiite refugees from the north who come down to Najaf. They say he has denounced federalism as “an Iranian plot” to divide up Iraq (i.e. he is saying that The Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq is an agent of Iran in the breakup of Iraq for Iranian purposes.)

The Associated Press discusses the last-minute changes in the draft of the Iraqi constitution, which were aimed at mollifying the Sunnis Arabs (they failed.) The Sunni Arab clans that opposed Saddam and were punished were mentioned alongside his Shiite and Kurdish victims. “The Saddamist Baath” is condemned but not “the Baath Party“. The issue of provincial confederations other than Kurdistan is postponed, and will be dealt with by a statute passed by a simple majority of parliament. (Since Shiites will probably be able to get a simple majority all on their own, this clause postpones a Shiite issue until a Shiite majority can accomplish its will. The Sunni Arabs, being no fools, had wanted a 2/3s majority required on any law authorizing further provincial confederacies.

Reuters reminds us that the guerrilla war continued apace on Sunday, with a major carbombing in Mosul and shootings elsewhere in the country.

Luciana Bohne takes umbrage at the assertion by Mark Reuel Gerecht that women’s rights are not crucial to the evolution of democracy. She wonders if ex-CIA white guys’ rights are critical to democracy, either, especially in other peoples’ countries. (The only thing I would correct is that the new Iraqi constitution does not abolish secular personal status laws for women. It gives every Iraqi the choice of whether to be under civil law in this regard or religious law. The Iraqi parliament has not yet enacted the civil personal status law, but the old one was not so bad for women.)

Basra’s academics face a wave of assassination in the southern city of Basra, probably at the hands of Shiite religious militias. You wonder if David Horowitz is happy that more “balance” is being achieved in Iraq history departments, what with the rubbing out of those secular liberal humanist professors.

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Some Sunnis

I just heard Bush’s audio on CNN concerning the situation in Iraq. I don’t know if all the news programs had the same bad feed, but the poor quality of the transmission made Bush sound like Darth Vader, with a faint electronic echo. Sounding like a science fiction villain did not help the credibility of his typically panglossian screed on Iraq.

The pro-War talking point on the collapse of the negotiations over the constitution is that “some Sunnis” oppose the new constitution.

But Reuters says this:

‘ A Sunni Arab delegate on the drafting committee said all his colleagues on the panel objected to the draft presented to parliament.

“We have not agreed on this constitution. We have objections which are the same as we had from day one,” Hussein al-Falluji, the Sunni Arab delegate, told Reuters. ‘

All of his colleagues. These “colleagues” are the Sunni Arabs who risked their lives to cooperate with the Americans and the new government by serving on the constitution drafting committee. (Bush can’t get a break in Iraq; he drew a delegate from Fallujah as the Sunni spokesman?) They are a small minority of a small minority. Most Sunni Arabs support the guerrilla movement. A minority has doubts about it and is more neutral. Sunni Arabs who are actively involved in negotiating with the Shiite/Kurdish/American government can be counted on the fingers of two hands. And even they reject this constitution.

So I think Sunni opposition to the constitution may be considered more or less unanimous. The division is between those who want to fight it at the ballot box and those who want to fight it with bombs.

It isn’t just “some Sunnis” who are opposed.

Bush also trotted out his completely wrong version of American history to suggest a parallel to the dissension over the adoption of the American constitution in 1789. Delegates representing twenty percent of the population did not refuse to sign (a number of the delegates who did not sign had just drifted away for business or other reasons, not because of opposition). And a handful who did explicitly refuse, including Elbridge Gerry and George Mason, did so to protest the lack of a Bill of Rights. Their stance was vindicated when one was added later. (I.e. even they were ultimately brought on board).

A sitting president is a kind of historian for the nation. In this regard Bush has gone from being a “C” student to an “F” one.

[Billmon has more on the idiotic parallels being made to the Philadelphia process. His postings on Iraq in recent days are strewn with pearls of insight (scroll down). And he is the first commentator I have seen to understand my worst case scenario for the war in Iraq spinning out of control and taking 20 percent of the world’s petroleum off the market.

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