Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, September 23, 2011

Hezbollah fighter/spy escaped to Israel?

A Hizbullah member escaped to Israel last June after the Shiite party’s leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah unveiled that the group had captured three spies among its members, two of whom were allegedly recruited by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, An Nahar daily reported Friday.

Nasrallah said at the time that CIA members at the U.S. embassy had recruited at least two Hizbullah members and the group was investigating whether the intelligence agency or another foreign agency recruited a third.

On Thursday, Hizbullah denied media reports about the arrest of new members on charges of spying for the Mossad and said a man named Abou Abed Salim has never been a party official.

But An Nahar quoted informed sources as saying that the third member of the spying network that Nasrallah had talked about is Salim who escaped to Israel a few days after the Hizbullah leader’s speech.

Media reports said Thursday that five Hizbullah members had escaped to the Jewish state.

An Nahar’s report came as informed sources told pan-Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat that Hizbullah had arrested four of its members on charges of spying while a fifth had escaped.

Other sources said that a top Hizbullah official had gone missing “for allegedly collaborating with the Mossad.”

The man who was identified by his initials as M.S. was allegedly a top official in Hizbullah’s military operations and was questioned in April 2010 by the U.N. commission investigating ex-Premier Rafik Hariri’s assassination.

The sources said the man’s parents and wife don’t know his whereabouts since he disappeared from the family home in the Ghobeiri district of Beirut’s southern suburbs.

According to rumors, the man is an Israeli spy and was involved in the assassination of Hizbullah military commander Imad Mughniyeh. Other rumors say that the party distanced him for unknown reasons.

More rumors than facts, but if Hezbollah believes that it cannot trust its own people, that can only be a good thing.

Anatomy of an Internet myth (CiFWatch)

CiFWatch does a great job tracking down the source of this Guardian story:

12.22pm: Unconfirmed reports are coming in that Israeli police have begun fining Palestinian drivers for flying flags from their cars. The Ma'an news agency is saying that Israeli police placed a checkpoint in the north of the West Bank and imposed fines of $40 for small flags and $68 for large ones.

The Palestinian Authority media centre issued a statement saying:

It is reported that the Israeli authorities are imposing fines on Palestinians for flying flags on their cars in support of our campaign at the United Nations. It is not a crime to show pride in your country, nor to support the cause of freedom, with symbols that do no harm. Israel seems incapable of understanding the idea of peaceful protest at its illegal occupation.

They found the original story at WAFA, quoting an unnamed "security source." Read the whole thing.

CiFWatch concludes:

It seems as if the sole “source” of the Guardian allegation against Israel was the claim of one official from the PA -controlled Palestinian security service, as relayed to the PA-controlled media.

Moreover, anyone not blinded by ideologically inspired antipathy towards Israel would immediately be skeptical of such a rumor, as it flies in the face of the most rudimentary understanding of the rights of free expression in the Jewish state – which explains, of course, why it was published in the Guardian.

The story is indeed absurd, and the desire by the anti-Israel crowd to automatically accept any crazy story that demonizes the Jewish state is bottomless.

Moroccan university hosts Holocaust conference, sort of

From Ha'aretz:

The world's first colloquium in the Arab world for the study of the Holocaust took place this week, in large measure thanks to the groundwork laid by a program that seeks to educate American high school graduates about the history of cooperation between Jews and the other nations. The symposium, hosted by Al-Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco and co-sponsored by the Israel gap-year program Kivunim, included three days of presentations and panels on the Nazi genocide, its repercussions for Morocco, and the historical relationships between Jews and Muslims in the Middle East.

The only Holocaust conference held in the Muslim world prior to this took place in Tehran, Iran in December 2006, and was widely denounced by Jewish leaders as an attempt not to gain a greater understand of those events, but to cast doubt on their ever having taken place. The groundbreaking Ifrane conference received the support of local Jewish community leaders and was attended by mainstream historians of the Holocaust, coexistence facilitators, government representatives - including the American Ambassador and emissaries of the Moroccan king - and ordinary Moroccan Muslims and Jews.

The conference was originally the idea of a group of Muslim students at Al-Akhawayn University in the Atlas Mountains, who formed a "Mimouna Club" -- named for the post-Passover holiday of Jewish-Arab fraternity. The club shared their idea with students from the Kivunim program that they had met who were visiting the country to learn about Moroccan Jewish history. Kivunim Founding Director Peter Geffen, who accompanied the group, realized the historic importance of such an opportunity and agreed to help organize the event, bringing some of those same Kivunim students back to Morocco this week to attend the conference.

During World War Two, when Morocco was occupied by the French, who were in turn occupied by the Vichy regime that collaborated with the Nazis, Moroccan King Mohammed V is said to have protected the Jews living in his domain from suffering the fate that befell the Jews of Europe. On March 18, 2009, his grandson, the ruling monarch Mohammed VI, honored that tradition of inter-religious solidarity when he publicly proclaimed that he and the Moroccan people perceive the Shoah "as a wound to the collective memory, which we know is engraved in one of the most painful chapters in the collective history of mankind."

I don't see anything about the Holocaust conference specifically on the website of the school. All I can find is that over the same three day period the Mimouna Club is celebrating "Jewish Days" where there are lectures, debates, visits to museums and kosher meals in Ifrane and Casablanca. The word "Holocaust" isn't mentioned in their program, but it must be the same one that Ha'aretz is reporting on.

Which means that this is not exactly a public conference on the Holocaust.

Suicide terrorist was caught in August - hiding on the Temple Mount

From Israel HaYom:

Sunday, Aug. 21, was a tough day for the communities on the Gaza periphery. Sirens sounded in Ashkelon and Beersheba as well. Grad and Qassam rockets left destruction and traumatized people in their wake, and residents were told to remain in protected areas. While most of the media attention was directed southward, at the same time, police and soldiers in Jerusalem were in a race against time, trying to capture Qawasmeh, 20, a would-be suicide terrorist from Hebron who, according to intelligence, was on his way to Pisgat Zeev.

The bomb that Qawasmeh was supposed to use had been captured 24 hours earlier. It comprised a sprinkler filled with 6 kilograms of explosives, with ball bearings glued around it. Azhak Arrafa, a resident of east Jerusalem who was supposed to transport Qawasme to his destination, was the one who led the police officers and the security services to the bomb, which had been hidden near his home in the Ras al-Amud neighborhood.

Security officials did not know whether Qawasme was carrying additional explosives on his person. A nerve-wracking 24 hours passed. It seemed that the earth had swallowed Qawasmeh. In the end, one long-time detective guessed that Qawasme was hiding inside a mosque, perhaps even the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount. He based his guess on past experience: Over the years, there had been several incidents in which mosques in general, and the mosques on the Temple Mount in particular, have served as hideouts in which terrorists who had perpetrated attacks, or were about to carry them out, met, organized or hid.

The last connection to the Temple Mount that the detective remembered had to do with two terrorists who had allegedly planned to fire a rocket at Teddy Stadium during a Betar Jerusalem game. (One of them has since been tried and convicted, and the other’s trial is still in progress.} According to the Shin Bet, the two men served as Hamas’ representatives on the Temple Mount and were employed there at high salaries for three years. In Qawasmeh’s case, the shot in the dark proved accurate. He was indeed hiding on the Temple Mount and even stayed there overnight. He was captured the next morning near the Al-Aqsa Mosque thanks to intelligence that came from the Temple Mount.

How dare the Israelis enter such a holy spot - to stop a man from his holy mission? It is simply islamophobic.

Report: Two Egyptian politicians behind embassy attack; US embassy next?

From Al Masry al Youm:

Security forces are currently investigating the possible involvement of two well-known politicians in instigating the recent attack on the Israeli Embassy and the events that accompanied it, said a security source on Thursday.

The source pointed out that surveillance cameras located in the embassy building and photographic evidence collected by security forces from regular citizens had prompted their suspicions.

The source explained that investigations indicated the involvement of the two politicians, one of whom was involved in inciting and angering the protesters, while the other gave money to some of the defendants. He added that the evidence included “15-minutes of video footage, which includes a full account of the Israeli Embassy events”.

“The defendants' are close in age but live in different districts,” said the source. “The defendants confessed that two politicians were are among the masterminds behind the events, which included the Giza Security Directorate, two police stations at Cairo University, and a Nahda Square Traffic Department, in addition to the embassy."

The traffic authorities are looking for three cars that were in the vicinity of the Israeli Embassy whose drivers the defendants claimed “were handing out money to them”.

Al Ahram last week reported that an Egyptian millionaire was paying the core group of protesters; it is not clear if he is one of the people mentioned.

Meanwhile, there are reports that Egyptian youth are organizing a similar attack against the US embassy in Cairo if the US vetoes the PLO statehood bid.

(h/t Victor Shikhman tweet)

Abbas gives speech cementing his intransigence

Palestine Press Agency reports on a speech that Mahmoud Abbas gave last night to 200 representatives of American Arabs of Palestinian descent in New York.

In the name of God the Merciful, and with appreciation for the brothers and sisters here, each seeking the truth and to advocate for the free State of Palestine, God willing, I am with you to say, God willing, we will have the state of Palestine with its capital in Jerusalem.

My brothers, in a few hours I will head to the United Nations, but I have come to tell you something important. We are under huge pressure to change our decision to claim the recognition of the State of Palestine, but I tell you I am going to the Security Council and will never retract whatever the pressures. [applause]

We're going to implement the decision of the Palestinian leadership whatever the pressures and, of course, the U.S. administration has done all it can to pressure us not to go, but we continue to go no matter what the pressures and obstacles they put in us by our decision.

We are the only people who remained under occupation on this earth and I think that no one can bear more than we endured....

...I assure you that the negotiations with Israel has not achieved any progress at all, despite the fact that Israel and America, the Quartet and all brokers ask us to go back to negotiations, but we tell them again we will not [negotiate] without Netanyahu declaring his recognition of the State of Palestine on the borders of 1067 and his announcement and implementation of a settlement freeze.

Talking about the Jewish state, I tell them a final answer: We will not recognize the Jewish state .... [long applause]

They talk about many other issues they want to negotiate with us around for several more years, and I say we will not go back to the negotiations in this way; we will only accept that Palestine be free of settlers and soldiers and by the occupation, and it is better for Israel to get out of the agreement with us [than accept any Israeli Jews in the territories]. This is what we have said for all, this is our opinion and we will not give in at all.

Sarkozy made a proposal, and I'll tell you my response: I am the President and am not authorized to examine any suggestions other than the decision of the State of Palestine at the United Nations. If there are any other suggestions, then I am to go back to the Palestinian leadership, and study it first, I have here with a clear task to have the State of Palestine become a full member [of the UN.] As for any other suggestions, I say: I am not authorized, I am not authorized to accept them. I am only authorized to drive one thing, the State of Palestine becoming a full member at the United Nations.

That last part is very disingenuous - he did not seek approval from other Palestinian Arab leaders to do the UN stunt to begin with, only a close set of Fatah cronies.

Abbas has always used this gambit of saying that he must consult with others - often the Arab League - when he doesn't want to do something, but when he wants something done he does it without any consultations.

This way he can claim helplessness when it is to his advantage and then he can act like a ruthless dictator the rest of the time.

Even more ironic, Abbas accused Netanyahu of "acting like a child hiding behind his father" in the run up to the UN stunt.

Western diplomats don't call him on this.

Fatah official: US is genocidal; we should support Ahmadinejad (video)

Also, the same person who made that video also just released this one showing how "peaceful" the protests were this week:

(h/t Mesarim Today)

Report: US sold Israel "bunker busting" bombs for settlement freeze (updated x2)

From Eli Lake at The Daily Beast/Newsweek:

While publicly pressuring Israel to make deeper concessions to the Palestinians, President Obama has secretly authorized significant new aid to the Israeli military that includes the sale of 55 deep-penetrating bombs known as bunker busters, Newsweek has learned.

In an exclusive story to be published Monday on growing military cooperation between the two allies, U.S. and Israeli officials tell Newsweek that the GBU-28 Hard Target Penetrators—potentially useful in any future military strike against Iranian nuclear sites—were delivered to Israel in 2009, just several months after Obama took office.

The military sale was arranged behind the scenes as Obama’s demands for Israel to stop building settlements in disputed territories were fraying political relations between the two countries in public.

The Israelis first requested the bunker busters in 2005, only to be rebuffed by the Bush administration. At the time, the Pentagon had frozen almost all U.S.-Israeli joint defense projects out of concern that Israel was transferring advanced military technology to China.

In 2007, Bush informed Ehud Olmert, then prime minister, that he would order the bunker busters for delivery in 2009 or 2010. The Israelis wanted them in 2007. Obama finally released the weapons in 2009, according to officials familiar with the still-secret decision.

U.S. and Israeli officials told Newsweek that Israel had developed its own bunker-buster technology between 2005 and 2009, but the purchase from the U.S. was cheaper.

While the Obama administration has touted some public cooperation with the Israeli military, Newsweek’s article Monday will reveal other covert efforts by the U.S. military to aid Israel in the volatile Middle East region, and the impact the improving military cooperation has had on the sometimes chilly relations between Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and the president’s popularity in the American Jewish community.

The leak must be intentional.

The story is quite believable. US military cooperation with Israel has remained high even as diplomatic relations appeared strained. It also makes sense that this is why Netanyahu would have agreed to a settlement freeze to begin with.

According to a Wikileaks cable, the transfer of the GBU-28s were described as "upcoming" in November 2009. The freeze started in December 2009.

However, it looks like the Bush administration did send GBU-28s to Israel during the Lebanon war and even beforehand.

(h/t Yoel, T34, JD)

List of nations that walked out of Ahmadinejad's speech, plus video

Here is the best list I could piece together of nations that walked out when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad started spouting about the Holocaust.

Australia
Austria
Belgium
Bulgaria
Canada (boycotted the speech)
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Denmark
Estonia
Finland
France
Germany
Greece
Hungary
Ireland
Israel (boycotted the speech)
Italy
Latvia
Liechtenstein
Lithuania
Luxembourg
Macedonia
Malta
Monaco
Netherlands
New Zealand
Poland
Portugal
Romania
San Marino
Slovakia
Slovenia
Somalia
Spain
Sweden
United Kingdom
United States

And here's the video:

Clinton blames Netanyahu for lack of peace (updated)

From Foreign Policy:

Who's to blame for the continued failure of the Middle East peace process? Former President Bill Clinton said today that it is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu -- whose government moved the goalposts upon taking power, and whose rise represents a key reason there has been no Israeli-Palestinian peace deal.

Clinton, in a roundtable with bloggers today on the sidelines of the Clinton Global Initiative in New York, gave an extensive recounting of the deterioration in the Middle East peace process since he pressed both parties to agree to a final settlement at Camp David in 2000. He said there are two main reasons for the lack of a comprehensive peace today: the reluctance of the Netanyahu administration to accept the terms of the Camp David deal and a demographic shift in Israel that is making the Israeli public less amenable to peace.

"The two great tragedies in modern Middle Eastern politics, which make you wonder if God wants Middle East peace or not, were [Yitzhak] Rabin's assassination and [Ariel] Sharon's stroke," Clinton said.

Sharon had decided he needed to build a new centrist coalition, so he created the Kadima party and gained the support of leaders like Tzipi Livni and Ehud Olmert. He was working toward a consensus for a peace deal before he fell ill, Clinton said. But that effort was scuttled when the Likud party returned to power.

This is a bit of wishful thinking on Clinton's part. Sharon's goal in giving up Gaza was to help strengthen Israel's hold on the settlement blocs in Judea and Samaria,and this is why he was so keen on the letter from Bush that said that the 1967 borders are a non-starter. I do not believe that Sharon would have been nearly as generous as Barak was before him and as Olmert was afterwards.

"[Palestinian leaders] have explicitly said on more than one occasion that if [Netanyahu] put up the deal that was offered to them before -- my deal -- that they would take it," Clinton said, referring to the 2000 Camp David deal that Yasser Arafat rejected.

From all publicly available information, the Olmert offer in 2008 went even beyond the Clinton parameters, and the Palestinian Arabs kept on asking for more. So on this point I am calling BS - the PalArabs might have told Clinton this but it is not true.

But the Israeli government has drifted a long way from the Ehud Barak-led government that came so close to peace in 2000, Clinton said, and any new negotiations with the Netanyahu government are now on starkly different terms -- terms that the Palestinians are unlikely to accept.

"For reasons that even after all these years I still don't know for sure, Arafat turned down the deal I put together that Barak accepted," he said. "But they also had an Israeli government that was willing to give them East Jerusalem as the capital of the new state of Palestine."

The reason is simple, and it is the same reason that Abbas didn't accept any peace offers as well - because in the end, they want to ensure that they can continue to make more claims against Israel even after "peace." Whether it is the "right to return" or a demand for 1947 borders or whatever, there has been no desire on the Palestinian Arab side to truly end the conflict.

The Netanyahu government has received all of the assurances previous Israeli governments said they wanted but now won't accept those terms to make peace, Clinton said.

"Now that they have those things, they don't seem so important to this current Israeli government, partly because it's a different country," said Clinton. "In the interim, you've had all these immigrants coming in from the former Soviet Union, and they have no history in Israel proper, so the traditional claims of the Palestinians have less weight with them."

The Russian aliyah took place before Camp David. However, one thing is true - the Russian Jews know a thing or two about dealing with totalitarianism, and they recognize it in the Palestinian Arab leadership and their partners in Hamas. They know the tricks and the subterfuge that they experienced firsthand.

Clinton then repeated his assertions made at last year's conference that Israeli society can be divided into demographic groups that have various levels of enthusiasm for making peace.

"The most pro-peace Israelis are the Arabs; second the Sabras, the Jewish Israelis that were born there; third, the Ashkenazi of long-standing, the European Jews who came there around the time of Israel's founding," Clinton said. "The most anti-peace are the ultra-religious, who believe they're supposed to keep Judea and Samaria, and the settler groups, and what you might call the territorialists, the people who just showed up lately and they're not encumbered by the historical record."

Clinton has fallen into the lazy trap of regarding all Jewish residents of the territories as being religious Jews from Brooklyn!

Clinton affirmed that the United States should veto the Palestinian resolution at the U.N. Security Council for member-state status, because the Israelis need security guarantees before agreeing to the creation of a Palestinian state. But the Netanyahu government has moved away from the consensus for peace, making a final status agreement more difficult, Clinton said.

"That's what happened. Every American needs to know this. That's how we got to where we are," Clinton said. "The real cynics believe that the Netanyahu's government's continued call for negotiations over borders and such means that he's just not going to give up the West Bank."

Why is Israel the only state in the world who is not allowed to change its politics to the right? After all, Netanyahu and his coalition did get more votes than their opponents. That is what would be considered a mandate in any other democratic context.

Turkey can decide on a whim to shut down diplomatic relations with other countries and to start threatening them. People aren't thrilled but no one says that Turkey must always adhere to the most dovish of its previous behaviors. Nations change, populations change, opinions change. And between Camp David and today there was a little matter called an intifada, that was enthusiastically embraced by the majority of Palestinian Arab society until they started losing. That is what made Israeli society move to the right, far more than anything else. To blame Netanyahu means to blame Israel for electing him. (And he has moved his positions leftward as well since he's been elected.)

This is why the goalposts were moved - the majority of Israelis were not comfortable with the direction that Kadima was going in giving up rights of Jewish self-determination.

Clinton is not stupid, and I respect him. But this analysis smacks more of egomania and nostalgia, a refusal to admit that it was Palestinian Arab terror that pushed Israel to the right - terror that was Arafat's strategic choice instead of accepting the Camp David offer. He doesn't even mention the slight problem of a split government between Gaza and Ramallah, and the terrorists that control 40% of the population.

Clinton wants to turn back the clock and pretend that nothing has changed in the past eleven years. It would be nice, but it is fantasy.

UPDATE: read the comments - there are some very good ones.

Also Elliot Abrams slams Clinton in The Weekly Standard.

The errors and misstatements in Clinton’s interview with bloggers are sufficient to change his reputation from that of a firm supporter of Israel into that of a firm supporter of Israelis who agree with his twisted version of the facts. Clinton simply blames the Israeli right for killing peace efforts. He appears entirely—in fact, embarrassingly— unaware of what has actually happened to the Israeli right over the last ten years, where the change has been extraordinary.

(h/t Noah)

My circus poster outside the UN (photo)

Here is a version of my Eldertoons poster as a 4' x 6' banner at the StandWithUs anti-Durban three-ring circus protest:

I hope it gets on the news....

Photo of empty UN seats as Ahmadinejad spoke

From Getty Images:

Reuters shows some of them leaving;

I wonder if the representative of "Palestine" left too? After all, aren't they seeking a free, democratic state just like the nations that did leave?

Jewish satellite news channels - from zero to two?

From JPost:

Call it the battle of the Jewish Al Jazeeras.

Earlier this year Jewish billionaire Alexander Machkevitch of Kazakhstan announced plans to open a 24- hour international news channel with a Jewish twist that would compete with Al Jazeera, the popular Arab media outlet based in Qatar.

But he may have been beaten to it.

This week a separate channel called Jewish News 1 started broadcasting throughout Europe, said Peter Dickson, the station producer, and Brussels Bureau Chief Alexander Zanzer, on Wednesday.

“Some Jews came up with the idea of how to change the world and they wanted to compete with other news channels, including one in particular,” Zanzer said over the phone from Belgium. “I won’t say which one but it starts with ‘al’ and ends with ‘ra,’” referring to the Qatari-based channel.

The nascent Jewish news organization is jointly owned by Jewish businessmen Igor Kolomoisky and Vadim Rabinovich, two of the richest men in Ukraine.

Zanzer said it has a budget of five million dollars, studios in Brussels, Kiev and Tel Aviv, and is available on satellite frequency Astra 1G – 31.5°E.

“We’ll broadcast everything that might interest Jewish people in the world, whether it’s the fall of the euro or what’s happening in Israel,” he said.

Right now the best way to follow Jewish News One is on their Facebook page.

(h/t Russell)

NYT's latest push for "Palestine"

Here's the New York Times doing its usual slanted reporting in a report by Neil MacFarquhar:

The original two-state solution designed to establish separate countries for Jews and Arabs anticipated the day that both would seek United Nations membership.

“When the independence of either the Arab or the Jewish State as envisaged in this plan has become effective,” begins a paragraph deep in General Assembly Resolution 181 from November 1947, then “sympathetic consideration” should be given to the application.

Israel became a member in May 1949. The Palestinians have announced their intention to submit an application to the Security Council, setting the stage this week for the most dramatic annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly in years.

And why has it taken nearly 64 years? Could it be because the Arab world could not then - and cannot now - accept the idea of a Jewish state? Could it be that for most of that time they chose war instead of peace? Could it be because on the threshold of a peace treaty in 2000, the Palestinian Arab leadership chose a terror war instead that killed thousands?

Are those facts not relevant when trying to paint a false equivalence between Israel and "Palestine"?

The Palestinians see the membership application as a last-ditch attempt to preserve the two-state solution in the face of ever-encroaching Israeli settlements, as well as a desperate move to shake up the negotiations that they feel have achieved little after 20 years of American oversight.

Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria have not been "encroaching" on any Arab owned land. They have been building within their own boundaries.

Since Oslo, the Palestinian Arabs have gained control over Gaza, they have gained autonomy over practically all of their citizens, and they have gained economically as a result of agreements with Israel. One would think that a reporter could offset how they "feel" with a fact or two.

In the past, as long as Arab despots endorsed American control over the peace process, officials in Washington usually ignored how they treated their citizens.

Excuse me? Is MacFarquhar saying that Arab repression is somehow the fault of the American role in the peace process? I'm sorry, I didn't know that Syria and Tunisia's and Libya's support for Oslo influenced US policy. Perhaps Neil can enlighten us someday.

[Palestinian Arabs] remain under occupation, the number of Jewish settlers has tripled to around 600,000, and they have far less freedom of movement in the territories ostensibly meant to become their state.

Saying that Area A or Gaza is under occupation is obviously false. Occupation means that the occupier can change the government, and clearly it cannot. They indeed have less freedom of movement than they did before the first intifada and before the second intifada. I wonder why that might be? The number of Jews in Judea and Samaria did triple since 1992, from about 111,000 to over 300,000. If you include "east" Jerusalem, which of course the NY Times is, the numbers have not even doubled (282,000 to 517,000.) It is not close to 600,000.

And, as the reporter no doubt knows, Israel is not going to freeze construction of areas that "everyone knows" will always remain part of Israel in Jerusalem's suburbs.

The newspaper of record cannot keep basic facts straight.

(h/t Ian)

What's next for Libya?

The Economist Intelligence Unit has an interesting analysis of what's next for Libya. There is a lot of good information in the document, although I am far more pessimistic about the potential political future of the country than they are.

Here is their summary:

Libya’s rebels have pushed the regime of Muammar Qadhafi out of power, and are poised to take complete control of the country. This in itself is a monumental achievement, but it marks only the start of what is likely to be a long and fraught process of rehabilitation. The new leadership must rebuild a state that for decades was run on the whims of an authoritarian leader, determined both to monopolise and to hold on to power. There are few institutions that work, and even fewer that work to the benefit of the general population, so the challenge amounts to little short of building a functioning state from scratch. Views on what form that state should take are as diverse as the regional, ideological and sectarian interests making up its would-be architects, and these stake holders must be persuaded to support the process—or at least not to obstruct it—before it can even begin.

Libya is strategically placed, adequately supplied with talent and well endowed with natural resources. If the state-building exercise is successful, it can quickly become a stable and thriving economy, offering a range of opportunities to business investors both at home and abroad. But the challenges are numerous and substantial, and a post-Qadhafi dividend is not guaranteed. This report spells out those challenges, and the business opportunities that would be the reward of success.

The first section of the report looks at the political outlook. The Economist Intelligence Unit identifies three scenarios, and attaches probabilities to each.

Scenario 1 (60% probability): According to plan - Elections to replace the National Transitional Council (NTC) with an elected government based on a new constitution take place more or less on schedule, although the election results in a weak government and parts of the country remain insecure.

Scenario 2 (30% probability): Permanent transition - The NTC struggles to overcome internal disputes and is distracted by security problems and by outbreaks of popular protest at its failure to deliver adequate services, and therefore fails to stick to its blueprint. The NTC becomes a de facto regime.

Scenario 3 (10% probability): Prolonged instability - The NTC loses control of security and fails to establish an effective interim government. Local groups including remnants of Qadhafi-era people’s committees and Islamist militias take charge of different parts of the country, threatening the viability of Libya as a unified nation state.

The second section of the report starts from the assumption that our central scenario, that the NTC blueprint is adhered to, comes to pass. We then look at the implications and opportunities for business, sector by sector.

I would reverse the probabilities for each political scenario.

The report does give some reason for its relative optimism that Scenario 3 is unlikely:

We consider this scenario to have a very low probability because of the powerful interest that Libyans have in retaining a functional unitary state. The NTC has already established a solid basis for a new Libyan state, and has overwhelming international support. This means that it will have control over the proceeds of Libya’s oil export revenue (past and present), which gives it immense powers of patronage, which would be denied to any breakaway faction.

I am not convinced that, in the Arab world, what makes sense is the most likely to happen. Although the report downplays the chances for Islamist trouble, if recent history is any guide Libya is going to be a magnet for Islamists in the next few months. Chaos strengthens them. And it only takes a small number of rabid fundamentalists to disrupt the will of the majority.

The US Energy Information Administration came out with its own analysis of the likelihood of Libyan oil flowing again soon.

Either way, timing is important - Libya has only 3-6 months of cash to keep going and it needs to get oil revenues before then.