An Alternate Witness

What does it say when Bashar al-Assad, President of Syria, which is sometimes included in the Axis of Evil, is calling for compromise on American Network TV?

"They are ready [to make a deal]," Al-Assad told CNN's Cal Perry in an exclusive interview. "They were ready, they are ready. Today, the factors have changed so the requirement will change at the same time.

"We cannot talk about the same condition, like what happened a few years ago. Otherwise, we'll keep moving from a cease-fire to another conflict to another breaking of this cease-fire and so on. The more blood you have, the more difficult to talk about peace will be."

Al-Assad met with Sarkozy earlier Tuesday. Sarkozy appealed to Al-Assad for help in bringing about a halt to the conflict in the Middle East -- an Israeli incursion into Gaza after eight days of Israeli airstrikes.

--CNN

Bashar isn't as violent and partisan as his father, Hafiz al-Assad, but he's hardly a pacifist in favor of compromise with Israel. Consider the Golan.

Here's a highly educated, well-travelled Middle Eastern blogger, Cent Uygur, who frequently lambasts both sides. Most recently, he had this to say:

The government of Israel keeps saying their actions in Gaza are justifiable because they are doing it in retaliation for what Hamas has done. Hamas says the same exact thing -- that they are firing the rockets in retaliation for what Israel did in imposing a blockade and bombing their tunnels and leaders. I find both points completely unpersuasive -- yes, including Israel's.

Every day now, I hear someone saying, "What was Israel supposed to do? Hamas keeps firing rockets into their country."

And then Mr. Uygur proceeds to answer that very question with the following well-justified points:

1. Not break the cease-fire in the first place.
2. You are stronger. Don't strike back.
3. Make a peace deal already.

He ends with this:

Finally, let me ask you this personal question to give you a sense of what people mean when they say Israel is acting disproportionately. Let's say you're walking down the street in your local town and you hear gun fire. You have a vague suspicion that someone is firing at you from a nearby school, would you firebomb the school just in case?

You know what the answer to that question is, if you're a decent human being. No way. You might be scared out of your mind. You might be afraid for your life. But you are not going to throw a bomb into a school full of children just in case (especially when you're not even sure that's where the shots are coming from). You would be called a psychopath if you did. But today, we hear excuses like, "Hey, that's what happens in wars." Maybe, that's why it is incumbent upon us to try a little harder to avoid them. So that we don't all act like psychopaths when they start.

It's not just Arabs and Turks who are speaking out about Israel's actions in Gaza. The statements of Israeli academic Avi Shlaim have been classified thusly by The Guardian:

How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe
Oxford professor of international relations Avi Shlaim served in the Israeli army and has never questioned the state's legitimacy. But its merciless assault on Gaza has led him to devastating conclusions

In his own words, he said:

On 2 June 1948, Sir John Troutbeck wrote to the foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, that the Americans were responsible for the creation of a gangster state headed by "an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders". I used to think that this judgment was too harsh but Israel's vicious assault on the people of Gaza, and the Bush administration's complicity in this assault, have reopened the question.

I write as someone who served loyally in the Israeli army in the mid-1960s and who has never questioned the legitimacy of the state of Israel within its pre-1967 borders. What I utterly reject is the Zionist colonial project beyond the Green Line. The Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the aftermath of the June 1967 war had very little to do with security and everything to do with territorial expansionism. The aim was to establish Greater Israel through permanent political, economic and military control over the Palestinian territories. And the result has been one of the most prolonged and brutal military occupations of modern times.

Four decades of Israeli control did incalculable damage to the economy of the Gaza Strip. With a large population of 1948 refugees crammed into a tiny strip of land, with no infrastructure or natural resources, Gaza's prospects were never bright. Gaza, however, is not simply a case of economic under-development but a uniquely cruel case of deliberate de-development. To use the Biblical phrase, Israel turned the people of Gaza into the hewers of wood and the drawers of water, into a source of cheap labour and a captive market for Israeli goods. The development of local industry was actively impeded so as to make it impossible for the Palestinians to end their subordination to Israel and to establish the economic underpinnings essential for real political independence.

Gaza is a classic case of colonial exploitation in the post-colonial era. Jewish settlements in occupied territories are immoral, illegal and an insurmountable obstacle to peace. They are at once the instrument of exploitation and the symbol of the hated occupation. In Gaza, the Jewish settlers numbered only 8,000 in 2005 compared with 1.4 million local residents. Yet the settlers controlled 25% of the territory, 40% of the arable land and the lion's share of the scarce water resources. Cheek by jowl with these foreign intruders, the majority of the local population lived in abject poverty and unimaginable misery. Eighty per cent of them still subsist on less than $2 a day. The living conditions in the strip remain an affront to civilised values, a powerful precipitant to resistance and a fertile breeding ground for political extremism.

That's from a self-identified Israeli loyalist. It only illustrates what I have heard from Jordanians and expats alike at least half a dozen times a day: "What does Israel think they're accomplishing? This isn't just bad for Gaza and the Palestinians. This is bad for Israel!"

I put all these out there because these men say precisely what I want to say, but with far more clarity. Many thanks to the friends who pointed these articles out to me by posting them to Facebook.

And I leave you with this level-headed, eloquent interview with my hero, Queen Noor: