The fascinating simultaneous demonstrations and challenges to democratically elected regimes in Egypt, Turkey and Brazil this month suggest that we need to look for an explanation for something structural in newly democratized societies, rather than seeking cultural explanations. The silliest common cultural line of analysis often asks about the compatibility of “Islam and democracy,” without our ever hearing an analogous discussion of, say, “Judaism and democracy” or “Christianity and democracy.”

The mass demonstrations in these three countries are particularly intriguing because the leaderships in all three are democratically elected, and therefore unquestionably legitimate. Also, all three countries have been passing through moments of great hope and achievement; these include significant mass economic improvements in people’s well-being in Brazil and Turkey, and a democratic transition in Egypt that has created a new global icon of the popular will for mass dignity and civil rights: “Tahrir Square.” Politically mummified Egypt set a new benchmark against which other political agitation around the world would be measured, whether in Madison, Wisconsin in 2011, or in Turkey this month where analysts debated whether the Turkish people were carrying out their own “Tahrir Square.”

The hundreds of thousands of people who took to the streets in Turkey and Brazil, and those millions in Egypt who promise a mass national demonstration on June 30 to seek the ouster of President Mohammad Morsi, on the first year anniversary of his presidential incumbency, raise reasonable questions that relate to several aspects of the two most compelling dimensions of governance: the policyand style of the ruling incumbents. If the legitimacy of the leaderships in these three countries is not directly in question—after all, they were elected in free and fair democratic elections—then why do the dissatisfied citizens take to the streets to show their concerns?

I suspect that we are witnessing a dramatic expression of the weaknesses inherent in two processes that are slowly expanding across the world: One is democratic rule based on majoritarian electoral victories, and the other is the continued diffusion of neo-liberal capitalism that turns citizens into consumers and gives corporations much greater power in the public realm than the masses of ordinary citizens. The convergence and the initial globalization of these two forces can be traced to the early 1980s, under the leaderships of Ronald Reagan in the United States and Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom.

The critical element at play in Egypt, Turkey and Brazil—and visible to smaller degrees elsewhere in the world—is the expression of discontent among citizens who feel that their ability to vote in or vote out their national leadership is not a sufficient expression of their rights to be treated decently or fairly by their own society. Most of the demonstrators in Brazil and Turkey are members of the rising middle classes that benefit from their country’s leaderships and their policies during the past decade or more. Their living conditions, spending power, and capacity to hold leaders accountable, or change them through the ballot box if need be, have been broadly improving; in Egypt, economic conditions remained dire, but people feel a newfound hope, empowerment, pride and dignity in their lives, and are involved in the exhilarating, unprecedented, process of writing their constitution and creating a governance system that reflects their values and aspirations.

And yet, masses of citizens still take to the streets in these countries because they do not feel that the existing democratic mechanisms are sufficiently attentive to their rights, needs, and grievances, which spann a very wide array of issues that include ethnic and sectarian identities, economic realities, political freedoms, corruption, stressed public services, and, perhaps most importantly, an arrogant style of wielding power.

That arrogance of leaders who were freely elected has tended to chip away at but not totally negate their legitimacy. It has also sparked a historic new response from masses of aggrieved citizens who now take to the streets to demonstrate in a manner that tries to force the sorts of compromises, consultations and policy changes that are not occurring as they should through the normal democratic process.

The Reagan-Thatcher approach to governance held that a 51% majority with a mandate to govern from the citizens could do whatever it deemed to be in the national interest. But the 49% or more of citizens who increasingly feel that their rights and concerns are not taken into consideration by the policy-setting majority have taken a detour around the blockages of insensitive majorities, and are trying to force change by using new tactics of street politics.

Most of the protests have been spontaneous, locally organized, and not coordinated in a sustainable national movement. The best outcome from these protests would be to reinvigorate the formal democratic processes—elections, parliaments, courts, political parties—that tend to lose their glamour and much of their legitimacy when they become callously arrogant.

Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon. You can follow him @ramikhouri.

Copyright © 2013 Rami G. Khouri—distributed by Agence Global

The latest active war in the Middle East, the Saudi Arabian-led assault on Yemen to prevent the Houthi movement from taking full control of the entire country by force, has triggered a fascinating legal and ideological debate about the legitimacy and efficacy of this venture. The significance of this war in Yemen is not really about the legally authorized use of force to ensure a calm Arab future. Rather, it is mainly a testament to the marginalization of the rule of law—and not its affirmation—in many Arab countries in our recent past.

The ten Arab and Asian countries participating in the fighting justify it on the basis of assorted legal mechanisms through the Arab League, the UN charter and the Gulf Cooperation Council, which allow countries to come to the life-saving aid of governments that are threatened by domestic or foreign aggression. The more meaningful and lasting dimension of the Yemen conflict is its expansion of active warfare in collapsing states adjacent to the energy-rich region of the Arabian Peninsula.

I am sickened but mesmerized by the nightly routine of flipping through assorted pan-Arab satellite television channels and following the four active wars that now define many aspects of the Arab world—in Yemen, Libya, Syria and Iraq—with lower intensity fighting and destruction in countries like Somalia, Egypt, Sudan and Lebanon. In all such fractured lands, violent extremists like Al-Qaeda and Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) put down anchorage and operate across borders.

The capacity for warfare and other forms of political violence across the region seems unending, just as the mass suffering of civilians seems unlimited. The telltale signs of what these wars are about and why they happen so regularly now is evident on the television screens, in the human and physical landscapes that are slowly crumbling here and there. The two most striking images that stay in my mind as I follow the day’s fighting in our four active wars is the primitive condition of our cities and villages, and the equally ravaged condition of our human capital. Streets and sidewalks are caricatures of what they should be, buildings are often simple, unpainted cement block structures with usually informal associations with water and electricity networks. Individuals are often shabbily dressed and drive dilapidated pick-up trucks and beat-up old sedans, because they do not have the money to buy anything better. This is not a consequence of the wars, it is the cause of the wars, because most Arab countries outside the wealthy oil-producing states were in these conditions in the years preceding their violent collapse.

Yemen today, with its combination of domestic and overt regional participation in the fighting, has widely been explained as the apex of a regional cold war between Iran and Saudi Arabia, who are said to be competing for regional dominance, or at least influence. I find this analysis too simplistic, mainly because the roots of the violence and country fragmentations we witness across the region go well back into the past century, before any Saudi-Iranian tensions emerged in recent years. The fundamental weakness that explains all the recent cases of Arab countries that collapsed into violent warfare is that none of these countries ever achieved the genuine stability and legitimacy that emanates only from the consent and participation of their own citizens.

Yemen is one of many examples of Arab countries that have been plagued—and ultimately destroyed—by the long-term rule of individuals who stay in power through the support of their armed forces and security agencies. Former President Ali Abdullah Saleh ran Yemen for thirty-three years and is typical of this breed. Not surprisingly, he continues to work behind the scenes, reportedly coordinating with the Houthi movement, to return to power himself or through his son Ahmad.

This modern Arab governance curse with its marginalization of Arab citizenship rights has been operational since the 1950s, and took root firmly across the region in the 1970s. It predates any Iranian-Saudi tensions by half a century or more. Widespread pauperization and vulnerability of millions of families across the Arab world took hold in the mid-1980s. A generation later, the region exploded in uprisings and revolutions.

So Arab, Iranian, Western and other leaders may speak openly about their respective fears of any single ideology, nationalism, sect or ethnicity dominating the Middle East, but this is a self-serving over-simplification that should not be allowed to camouflage the real, deeper, older and stronger causes of internal stresses and regional warfare across our region. The Yemen situation captures this reality very well. It is fascinating and perhaps historically pivotal because it comprises a combination of Arab and Asian countries waging direct warfare inside an Arab state with the active support of major international powers, including the United States. We have four such wars taking place now in the Arab world, and others may erupt elsewhere.

Rami G. Khouri is published twice weekly in the Daily Star. He was founding director and now senior policy fellow of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. On Twitter: @ramikhouri.

Copyright ©2015 Rami G. Khouri—distributed by Agence Global

Early media coverage of the Islamic State (IS) in Libya has centered on the group’s swift seizure of territory and the expansion of the caliphate’s authority into an increasingly lawless Libya. Yet IS’s efforts in the North African state have not lived up to these fears, as the organization—once thought to command control of cities such as Derna and Sirte—remains only one of many factions vying for power in these areas.

This does not mean the Islamic State is failing in Libya—indeed its trajectory inside Libya is mirroring its Iraq strategy, which sought to maximize its local competitive advantages. The group’s shift of gravity from Derna to Sirte is a highly deliberate strategic decision based on the assumption that Sirte provides greater opportunities for the group than Derna does.

But unlike Iraq and Syria, Libya is missing some of the key conditions that allowed for the group’s rapid gains in the Levant last summer. Namely, it lacks enduring ties to influential Libyan tribes and social groups, and Libya has no strong sectarian divide or a common enemy around which to rally a community. Thus, the Islamic State’s strategy in Libya seems to be directed instead at hastening state failure and fracturing the population’s sense of common nationhood. Meanwhile, it is also intensifying the conditions that will allow it to deepen its influence and form a national-religious identity in line with the caliphate’s own views.

For example, the group’s recent attack on oil infrastructure in the Sirte basin was likely not due to a desire to seize and sell oil for profit—at least not in the short term. As evidenced by Ibrahim Jathran’soil blockade in 2014, it remains incredibly difficult to smuggle crude and sell it out from under the state, owing to international assistance to Libya. This is not lost on them. Rather, by obstructing Libyan governing authorities’ access to oil, IS aims to accelerate the country’s collapse by compounding the state’s fiscal problems and undermining the government’s ability to provide public goods and services.

Nonetheless, the Islamic State’s expansion in Sirte since mid-2014 certainly provides the group with numerous additional strategic advantages. First, the town has long been known to harbor Islamist and jihadi groups. Though the Ansar Al-Sharia affiliate in Sirte was not officially formed until June 2013, the group embodies the city’s Islamist and jihadi movement, which has been active since shortly after the revolution. Throughout 2012 there were frequent shows of force by Islamist armed groups in Sirte, featuring parades of technicals flying black flags. Some groups also made efforts to institute more strict observance of sharia in the city. These groups came together in June 2013 and announced the official formation of Ansar Al-Sharia in Sirte. They have maintained strong links to the Misratan community and revolutionary brigades that have a presence in Sirte. Ansar Al-Sharia’s first leader in Sirte was Ahmad Ali Al-Tayyar, a Misratan who commanded the Faruq Brigade in that city during the 2011 revolution. There have been additional reports of recruitment efforts to join jihad in Iraq and Syria, including from the Rabat Mosque in downtown Sirte. The mosque also hosted Sheikh Turki Al-Binali, now one of the Islamic State’s most prominent ideologues, for a series of lectures in June, 2013.

Similarly, IS has sought to mobilize Sirte’s potentially sympathetic population. As in Iraq and Syria, the group in Libya prioritizes network-building and recruitment efforts on individuals and communities who are marginalized by current political power dynamics. In Sirte, Muammar Qaddafi’s hometown and the location of his final stand in October 2011, they have reached out to former loyalist tribes that have a long history of conflict with Misrata. In fact, IS has repeatedly attacked and provoked Misratan forces in Sirte and surrounding areas, and not the Haftar-aligned forces of Ibrahim Jathran to the east. This may be an attempt to mobilize the grievances of former loyalist tribes, such as the Qaddafa, Farjan, and Warfalla, which chafe under Misrata’s increased influence in the Sirte Basin since the revolution.

In eastern Libya, the Islamic State’s messaging targets Haftar and the House of Representatives, both of which find support among former loyalist tribes in the Sirte Basin. In Sirte, its focus is on the General National Congress, Libyan Dawn, and Misrata. While it is impossible to verify social media claims—many of which appear to be Libyan Dawn propaganda—that former regime members are fighting on the side of IS in and around Sirte, the group is clearly attempting to manipulate such grievances and perceptions of marginalization.

Sirte’s location near the frontline of the fighting between Libyan Dawn and Libyan Dignity, the country’s two competing alliances, has allowed it to take advantage of the conflict by playing these opposing coalitions against one another, as it has done in Syria. By placing itself between the two forces, IS makes it inconvenient for either alliance to confront it, as that would leave it open to attack by the other. These dynamics appear to have again worked in its favor: Misratan forces have been forced to stop fighting IS in Sirte in order to confront Libyan Dignity forces, which renewed their assault on Tripoli in late March.

Although thus far IS has failed to win the full support of any large tribal constituencies in the Sirte Basin, the group continues to denounce both the Tripoli and Tobruk-based post-revolutionary governments as illegitimate. This may begin to resonate with youth from Sirte and former loyalist tribes that feel locked out of today’s political order. More broadly, this message is likely intended to gain support from large and growing segments of the population who neither support the Libyan General National Council nor the House of Representatives.

Despite this, it is improbable that IS will seek a showdown in the Sirte Basin unless it perceives that conditions are in its favor. In Iraq, after the Surge and Awakening degraded its leadership and rank and file, the group showed strategic patience and went back underground, where it reorganized and expanded its networks on a grassroots level. IS then capitalized on the failure of neighboring Syria to reinvent itself. Its next steps in Libya will likely mirror this approach. Its ambitions extend far beyond Sirte—and even Libya—and Sirte may prove to be a convenient base for expansion in southern Libya, as well as the greater Sahara-Sahel region.

Sirte has long possessed tribal and economic connections with Fezzan and is located along major routes of travel to the region. In fact, one of the Islamic State’s first and most overt recruiting efforts inside of Libya is captured in a Tamasheq-language video that features two Tuareg men fighting alongside the group. The men call on the Tuareg people of Libya, the Sahara, and the Sahel to join the Islamic State. In a shrewd portrayal of how IS manipulates feelings of marginalization and exclusion in its outreach and expansion, the Tuareg men refer to the caliphate as a “real state.” With Tuareg dreams of realizing their own state in the Sahel having failed to materialize, young Tuareg fighters are beginning to filter back into Libya as the national ambitions of Azawad in northern Mali stagnate. Further afield, connections with Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) networks in southern Libya, and the recent accession of Nigeria-based Boko Haram to the caliphate, indicate that IS has greater opportunities on the horizon in Libya and across the region than to make a final stand in the dusty town of Noufliya southeast of Sirte.

Many in Libya and abroad believe a decisive battle that will settle the fate of IS in western Libya is looming in and around Sirte, but past behavior suggests the group is too strategic to pursue such a confrontation right now. More likely, IS will continue to position itself between the country’s warring parties, advance its outreach among marginalized and aggrieved communities, and seek to degrade state capacities to further state collapse and advance its own national vision. In the short term, controlling physical territory will be secondary to these primary objectives.

This article is reprinted with permission from Sada.  It can be accessed online at: http://carnegieendowment.org/sada/2015/03/25/islamic-state-s-strategy-in-libya/i4w4

Kevin Casey is a researcher who consults on politics, security, and culture in the Middle East and North Africa and spent much of 2014 based in Tripoli, Libya. Stacey Pollard is a field researcher and comparative political scientist specializing in the Middle East and North Africa. Both authors previously conducted extensive field research in Syria and Iraq.

What should Israel, the Palestinians and the world make of the statement by White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough that the United States expects the next Israeli government to end nearly fifty years of occupation and clear the way for a Palestinian state?

This could be a significant turning point in one of the ugliest dimensions of the Arab-Israeli conflict during the past sixty-six years—the apparent total support or acquiescence of the United States for any Israeli policy or action, and Washington’s consistent refusal to take a clear, explicit position on the two critical dimensions of the conflict and its resolution from the Arab perspective. These are the creation of a genuinely sovereign Palestinian state in lands Israel occupied in 1967, and the need to resolve the Palestine refugees’ status on the basis of existing law and UN resolutions.

The United States always danced around these with rhetorical vagueness, never fully equating what it clearly refers to as Israel’s right to absolute security guaranteed up front, with its softer support for Palestinians living a life of dignity that meets their aspirations, or some other soft touch like that. It has rarely if ever explicitly said that Israeli settlements are illegal, usually calling them “obstacles to peace” or “unhelpful,” or said that Israel’s control of the 1967 Palestinian lands is an occupation that is illegal in international law, making Israel’s judaization and colonization practices crimes that deserve adjudication and punishment.

So it is a big deal—in the rhetoric department, for now—for a senior official like McDonough, who is as close as you get in a surrogate for the American president, to say what he did last weekend, in public, and in the context of the annual gathering of the pro-Israel American lobby group J Street. He pledged that Washington would always safeguard Israel, criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s electioneering abandonment of a Palestinian state, and bluntly said that, “An occupation that has lasted for almost fifty years must end, and the Palestinian people must have the right to live in and govern themselves in their own sovereign state.”

The explicit use of the terms “occupation” and “sovereign state” have political and probably legal and diplomatic implications, should the United States wish to pursue this line of talk and action. It would allow the United States to adjust its policy on issues such as votes at the UN or elements of American financial support for Israel, such as excluding the use of American aid in the occupied territories, so as to avoid the U.S. being taken to court for complicity in Israeli criminal actions such as settlements.

We will have to wait and see if this signals a critical shift in the American position, or is just an angry emotional repost in the passing lover’s feud that is now on show between the American and Israeli leaderships. What is clear is that the Barack Obama administration is doing something that no other American administration has ever dared to do, which is to confront and challenge Israel in public on the core issue in the Arab-Israeli conflict: how to match an ironclad commitment to Israel’s absolute security with an equally pivotal commitment to genuine Palestinian statehood.

Striking that balance has always been too costly for any American politician, as we see in the detritus of the shattered careers of a handful of American congressmen and women who dared to say what the American president’s office is now saying—that a separate, truly sovereign Palestinian state is the best guarantee of Israel’s long-term security, and, as McDonough said, “In the end, we know what a peace agreement should look like. The borders of Israel and an independent Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps.”

This position, in the American political kitchen, is now kosher and permissible, and it is likely to persist for a while because of the context of its utterance. It has been stated clearly and forcefully in front of a pro-Israel lobbying group that represents a milder form of Zionism than the extremist Likudniks of Netanyahu’s colonial-minded militaristic world. What happens next will be revealed in due course. The best we can hope for—and should actively work for—is to push for a greater, explicit, and actionable differentiation in American policy between supporting Israel’s existence and security and opposing its occupation policies.

The easiest and most useful way for this to happen would be for Washington now to respond positively to the 2002 Arab Peace Plan that was approved by all Arab states via the Arab League, which explicitly envisages a permanent peace between Israel within its pre-1967 borders and a new Palestinian state, and a negotiated, mutually acceptable, resolution of the refugees issue.

Rami G. Khouri is published twice weekly in the Daily Star. He was founding director and now senior policy fellow of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. On Twitter at: @ramikhouri.

Copyright ©2015 Rami G. Khouri—distributed by Agence Global

We should keep our eyes on one arena and two actors now in any serious assessment of the repercussions of the national election in Israel this week that resulted in a strong victory by Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party and a consolidation of rightwing sentiments: Israeli-American relations is the critical arena, and the European and Palestinian leaderships are the two pivotal actors to watch.

The American-Israeli relationship has defined almost all other developments in Arab-Israeli diplomacy since the late 1960s, when American policy structurally and decisively tilted to a pro-Israeli position. Other than the occasional, momentary and superficial rap on Israel’s knuckles by James Baker or Ronald Reagan, or an unsuccessful push by Barack Obama to freeze Israeli settlements, the United States has supported or acquiesced in all major Israeli positions on relations with Palestine. This posture of “no daylight between the United States and Israel” has covered all fields, including military, technical and economic aid, diplomacy at the UN, supporting warfare, and initiatives in other international forums.

Obama-Netanyahu tensions in recent years finally exploded this week, capped by the declaration by unnamed US officials that Washington would now reassess or re-evaluate its positions on Palestinian-Israeli issues in international forums, such as the UN Security Council. Reportedly this could include American support for a Security Council resolution outlining the broad contours of a two-state resolution, which Israel adamantly opposes.

We will know soon if these are momentous structural shifts in the American position, or passing emotional irritations more linked to personalities than to policies. If the United States does support a Security Council resolution affirming a two-state resolution, that would be an important sign of real change. It would open the door to a whole new dynamic in which the United States for the first time differentiates, in its actions rather than just its words, between its ironclad support for Israel’s security, and its objections to Israel’s occupation and settlements policies. A shift in the US position here would dramatically open doors to substantive political developments in several arenas, emphasizing the untenability of the occupation and colonization of Palestinian lands since 1967.

This ties in with the two political actors we should now watch—the European Union (EU) and the Palestinian leadership—to see if meaningful diplomatic change will occur. The EU was a global pioneer in affirming Palestinian national rights in the 1980 Venice Declaration that backed Palestinian legitimate rights and self-determination. Then Europe more or less took a leave of absence from Palestine-Israel diplomacy for some 35 years, before returning to action last year and imposing sanctions on relations with Israeli entities that operate in the occupied territories. It will be important now to see if the EU persists in this direction and more tangibly asserts its support for Israel’s security within its 1948 borders, while punishing Israel for its colonial policies in the 1967 occupied territories. A European lead here, including possibly formal recognition of the State of Palestine within the 1967 occupied territories, would spark important similar follow-up measures by governments, civil society and the private sector.

The Palestinian leadership is the weakest link in this diplomatic chain of actors and issues, due to three related factors: the impact of Israeli occupation-colonization; American, European and Arab policies that perpetuate the status quo; and, the internal incompetences and autocratic nature of Palestinian politics. The Palestinian leadership must now exploit the new landscapes of opportunity and possibility that have been opened up by the small breach in US-Israeli ties and the initial stirrings of reinvigorated European activism.

The Palestinians should take dynamic action to achieve several goals simultaneously. First, they must rehabilitate the Palestinian leadership itself by reconstituting the institutions of the Palestine Liberation Organization as a legitimate, active representative of all Palestinians. Second, they must push hard on several international fronts to challenge and delegitimize Israeli actions in the occupied territories, including in the International Criminal Court, the UN Security Council and General Assembly, and other forums—using nuanced diplomatic engagements to elicit American and European support for some measures that criticize Israel’s criminal colonial behavior. Third, the Palestinians must work with governments and civil society groups around the world to mobilize serious pressure on Israel’s colonization-occupation practices, including sanctions that treat Israel’s occupation in the same manner that the world mobilized against Apartheid South Africa.

New opportunities for diplomacy that may now arise from the evolving pivotal relationship between the American and Israeli governments demand proactive initiatives by Palestinians, Europeans, Arabs and civil society across the world, to provide both the pressure and the possibilities for a negotiated two-state solution that satisfies the legitimate rights of all parties.

Rami G. Khouri is published twice weekly in the 

Daily Star. He was founding director and now senior policy fellow of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. On Twitter at: @ramikhouri.

Copyright ©2015 Rami G. Khouri—distributed by Agence Global

When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called a snap parliamentary election just two years into his four-year mandate, he believed the results would give him a more stable governing coalition. Israelis seemed weary of him, but they seemed exhausted of politicians in general. Salaries were down, the cost of living was through the roof and they had just seen another major military operation, calling up reserves twice in three years. Israel had been in the grips of a leadership crisis for so long that people had become passively accustomed to the lack of options.

Then the election campaign began, and suddenly it seemed that Netanyahu might have made a serious mistake. The polling numbers for his Likud party kept sinking. His controversial March 3 speech to the United States Congress critical of President Barack Obama’s nuclear negotiations with Iran did not provide the bump in support he had anticipated. Instead, it elicited a backlash from voters who were angry with the prime minister for having damaged Israel’s relationship with its most important ally.

Meanwhile, news interviews with people on the street reinforced the perception that the average Israeli was far more worried about how to make ends meet than about Iran’s nuclear program. The cost of living had soared so high that a dual income professional couple with two children was struggling to pay rent. The center-left Zionist Union and smaller parties campaigned on the economy, while the media jeered at Netanyahu for focusing on Iran when the average Israeli could barely afford a weekly trip to the supermarket.

What was missing from the campaign agenda was the subject of Palestine. There was some populist talk about never dividing Jerusalem, but politicians put forth no suggestions for negotiating a withdrawal from the West Bank. And they spoke nothing about Gaza. The omission isn’t entirely surprising. For most Israelis, the occupation is irrelevant these days. Between the West Bank separation barrier, the Palestinian Authority’s policing on behalf of the Israeli army, and the settlement roads that circumvent the Arab towns and villages, the average Israeli is barely aware that he lives among Palestinians.

The economy shaped the election campaign, an issue that Netanyahu continued to ignore even as his popular support continued to drop. Just one day before Israelis were due to vote on March 17, polls suggested Netanyahu might not emerge as the victor. The Likud was polling at 20 seats and the Zionist Union at 24. But by the time the last ballots were counted late that night, Netanyahu had won 30 seats. Israeli media called it a landslide victory. As one Israeli journalist noted, if you take out the ultra-Orthodox and Arab Israeli voters, results show that one voter out of every three cast a ballot for the Likud.

Why were the polls so wrong? And why did one in three non-Orthodox Jewish voters cast a ballot for the Likud, headed by a man who launched two major military offensives in three years and whose economic policies reduced the middle class to penury?

The answers are complex and unquantifiable, but they boil down to tribalism and fear. The Likud’s core voters are as loyal to the party as an Englishman is to his soccer team. They respond to populism. The Likud sent out thousands of urgent phone and text messages, calling upon party loyalists to vote in order to stave off a left wing government that would trade away Jerusalem and withdraw from the West Bank. On the day of the vote itself, Netanyahu uploaded a 30-second video clip to his Facebook page in which he warned that “Arab voters are coming out in droves to the polls,” transported in buses paid for by “leftists.” His supporters listened.

The alliance that these “droves of Arabs”—Israeli citizens—were turning out to vote for is called the Joint List. In response to new legislation that raised the minimum threshold a party needed to sit in the 120-seat Knesset to 3.25 percent of the vote, or four seats, small parties representing Arab Israeli citizens united to form the bloc. The Joint List combines Islamists and feminists, secular Palestinian nationalists, Baathists and Jewish socialists, and is headed by Ayman Odeh, a charismatic 40-year-old lawyer from Haifa. Its members include at least one polygamist, and one open supporter of Hezbollah. But throughout the campaign, Odeh kept the party’s platform focused on democracy and civil rights. He succeeded in galvanizing the previously apathetic Arab vote and now heads the third largest party in the Knesset, with fourteen seats.

While Tuesday’s election results spell victory for Netanyahu, two factors foretell change that will create challenges for Netanyahu’s government. First, the prime minister has damaged relations with the  Obama administration so badly that it is difficult to imagine how he and the U.S. president will work together over the next two years. Second, on the eve of the vote Netanyahu announced that he will never allow an independent Palestinian state, creating a storm of media attention in Israel.

The rise of the Joint List and the emergence of a unified political voice among the Arab Israeli citizenry will likely challenge Netanyahu’s Palestine policies. For the past two decades, since the last Yitzhak Rabin government was dissolved in 1995, liberal Zionist parties have abided by a tacit taboo on bringing Arab parties into a governing coalition. Netanyahu ignored the Joint List completely during his campaign, only mentioning Arab citizens in the framework of race-baiting on election day. As Arabs and as Israeli citizens, Joint List representatives could be well poised to influence Israel-Palestine negotiations. What remains to be seen is how effectively the alliance can exert political power in the Knesset through legislation and committee participation.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s hardline stance against a two-state solution has led to diplomatic and possibly economic consequences. According to a European Union document leaked to Haaretz in November, Europe, Israel’s biggest trading partner, is considering economic sanctions against the country if it willingly deters progress on a two-state solution. The Obama administration also said this week that it would consider backing a United Nations resolution that calls upon Israel to engage in talks aimed at withdrawal to the 1967 boundaries. Already feeling the shifting winds, Netanyahu backtracked on his elective-eve pronouncement and reiterated support for a two-state solution. His critics remain unconvinced.

For the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, the Israeli elections changed nothing. But for the Arab citizens of Israel, the recent political awakening may have strong implications for Israel’s government. Netanyahu has emerged as a victor this week, but there is no more clarity about where Israel is headed. Instead, the election raised more questions.

Lisa Goldman is a contributing editor at +972 Magazine and a fellow at the New America Foundation. On Twitter at: @lisang.

When historians look back on the Middle East decades from now, they might find that trends in this region after 2015 were determined by the outcome of four seminal issues and battles that are in play this month.

The most important one is the struggle within Egypt to achieve a stable governance and economic system that is at once legitimate in the eyes of its own people and sustainable for generations ahead, for Egypt’s governance model will influence many other turbulent Arab lands. The last four years have witnessed a roller coaster of Egyptian political experimentation and mass action. Yet since the historic January 2011 revolution, Egyptians have not yet escaped their legacy of military-managed authoritarian humiliation combined with socio-economic mediocrity.

The latest phase of attempts to achieve political legitimacy, socio-economic efficacy and national stability was launched this week by Field Marshall-turned-President Abdul Fattah el-Sisi at the three-day international economic conference at Sharm el-Sheikh. It resulted in announcements of tens of billions of dollars of foreign investments in infrastructural and economic developments, and the unveiling of plans for a whole new administrative capital city east of Cairo, to emulate dramatic and architecturally impressive sudden cities like Dubai.

I am dubious about this process for Egypt, because it seems to have taken the neoliberal economic development model that has failed the Arab world in recent decades to a new level, where Egypt will have the world’s first gated capital. This decision was made by a handful of army officers and friendly bureaucrats, and almost totally conceived, designed, financed and validated by foreign parties. Egyptian citizens were not asked for their suggestions about how to spend $45 billion to improve conditions in the existing capital. I hope dearly that Egypt succeeds, stabilizes and prospers, but signs of these goals remain thin today. Fateful decisions continue to emerge from closed circles of military men, with Egyptian citizens relegated to enjoying shopping malls as their highest right. How the ongoing struggle for stability and citizen rights in Egypt plays itself out will go a long way to defining the Arab condition in the decades ahead.

The second fateful contest underway is the military battle for the Iraqi town of Tikrit, which has been occupied by “Islamic State of Iraq and Syria” (ISIS) for a year or so. The fight to dislodge ISIS from Tikrit and other parts of northern Iraq and Syria is just now starting to take place seriously, using a combination of Iraqi army and civilian forces, Kurdish fighters, and Iranian, Arab and American-led international support to defeat ISIS and break up the “Islamic State” it declared last June. How this battle ends will be an important determinant of the fate of militant Islamism and the condition of existing Arab states that date from the First World War era.

The third important development this week is the parliamentary election in Israel, which will help clarify whether Israel will continue its drift to the nationalist right and perpetuate the conflict with Palestine and the Arab world, or will instead move towards a centrist government that offers new possibilities for a just and negotiated peace agreement. The Arab-Israeli conflict is the oldest source of radicalization, militarization and destabilization in the Middle East. Its equitable resolution would significantly tone down emotions and tensions in the region, and help redirect national energies and resources to state-building and regional cooperation.

The Palestinians and all other Arab states in the 2002 Arab Peace Plan have long clarified their willingness to coexist in peace with Israel, but we have yet to hear a clear response from Israel. The outcome of this week’s election might clarify whether Zionism, as it is manifested in the Israeli state, ultimately affirms the ethos of the conquering warrior, or the ethics of a sage judge who honors justice for all and above all.

The fourth fateful issue that is reaching a peak moment of decision these days is the relationship between Iran and the Western world, as encapsulated by the P5+1 negotiations with Iran on resolving the two related issues of Iran’s nuclear capabilities and the international sanctions against it. How this important negotiation concludes will determine for decades, maybe even generations, a critical dynamic that has long plagued us all, and remains unclear today: Whether relations between Middle Eastern powers and the West and Israel are defined by the international rule of law that is equitably applied to all states, or by a combination of Western-Israeli neo-colonial and triumphalist assertions and accusations that are always countered by indigenous rejection and resistance from within our region.

The fate of this region remains in the hands of its people. How current events in Tikrit, Cairo, Tel Aviv and Tehran play themselves out will shape our fate for generations to come.

Rami G. Khouri is published twice weekly in the Daily Star. He was founding director and now senior policy fellow of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. On Twitter at: @ramikhouri.

Copyright ©2015 Rami G. Khouri—distributed by Agence Global

The United States is pressing the Iraqi parliament to ratify the creation of a National Guard Force in all Iraqi provinces, which would involve Sunni tribes in the international effort to confront the Islamic State. The goal is to get Sunni tribesmen in west and northwest Iraq to agree to work under the leadership of the National Guard as part of a unifying framework to merge the predominately Shia Popular Mobilization Forces—which include fighters from the Badr Organization, Asa’ib Ahl Al-Haq, and other militias, along with new volunteer fighters answering Ali Al-Sistani’s fatwa last June to pursue defensive jihad—with members of Sunni tribes that are still fighting the Islamic State.

The Popular Mobilization Forces have committed serious violations against Sunnis in areas where it has regained control, leading to a backlash against them. Locals are now more likely to accept the Islamic State as a replacement for government forces and the Popular Mobilization. For these reasons, and despite the suffering caused by the Islamic State’s control of many Sunny tribal regions, the Iraqi and U.S. governments face significant challenges in recruiting Sunni tribesmen to join the proposed guard.

There is already notable security and intelligence cooperation between the Islamic State and residents of these cities—with thousands of locals still joining the group—limiting the National Guard’s ability to recruit these forces. This is largely because the Islamic State was successful in defeating Iraqi security forces and taking control of cities, which further attracted fighters from former resistance factions and tribal rebels who became convinced of the group’s military superiority. The Islamic State’s harsh deterrent tactics against those who fight it—last October, they massacred thousands from Albu Nimr tribe in Anbar’s city of Hit—have made many Sunni tribes more reticent, while others like Al-Jubour tribe in Salahuddin and the Al-Ubaid tribe in Kirkuk continue to express readiness to fight the Islamic State.

Moreover, Sunni tribes still remember the effects of the United States’ short-lived support of the Sahwa (Awakening) forces after its withdrawal from Iraq. Former Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki failed to integrate these fighters into the army and security services, stopped paying their salaries, and had some of their senior leaders arrested. The Islamic State was easily able to target senior leaders of the Sahwa councils after the government stopped paying their salaries—and the salaries of those protecting them—and many Sahwa members had previously left their hometowns for safer cities or emigrated abroad. This raises fears of a repeat situation with the government of Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi after they finish their mission. Furthermore, the government’s inability to differentiate between Islamic State fighters and local residents, and its policy of indiscriminate air and ground shelling, make it difficult to appeal to Sunni tribal fighters.

To address these challenges, the United States has expressed its willingness to send American advisers to Anbar to train and consult with Iraqi forces, the peshmerga, and fighters from Sunni tribes—on the condition that the central government supports the process to arm Sunni tribes. The United States realizes that more airstrikes will merely weaken the Islamic State and limit its progress, but not defeat it. Washington seeks to have Iraqi forces and the Kurdish peshmerga train more than 10 brigades, including 20–30,000 fighters, tasked with recovering Mosul in the first stage. The United States is also reaching out to tribal leaders from the Sunni community, whom they deem capable of defeating the Islamic State if provided sufficient support and arms. The failure to assist these tribes could further alienate them, particularly as the Iraqi security forces—seen as dominated by Shia militias—are distrusted in Anbar and other Sunni provinces where they have committed violent acts after regaining control from the Islamic State.

Even if the United States agrees to arm Sunni tribes—either through the central government or in coordination with Arab states that have strong ties with Sunni tribal leaders—other issues remain, such as the lack of a unified Sunni tribal representation, which would facilitate the process of working with fighters. Washington is aware of the depth of the rift within the Sunni community—divided between supporters of the Islamic State, those fighting it, and neutral parties—and will remain reluctant to arm Sunni tribes quickly.

But if the United States manages to cooperate and coordinate with Sunni tribes, Washington would gain greater access to on-the-ground information needed for targeted combat operations, particularly as it is reluctant to send a large ground force. This would also curb the Islamic State’s efforts to recruit more young tribesmen as it seeks to compensate for its losses caused by the international coalition’s airstrikes.

For its part, the Iraqi government under Prime Minister Abadi has slowly been taking important steps toward fulfilling his commitment, struck during the formation of the government, to a political agreement with Sunni forces. The council of ministers has ratified the creation of the National Guard at the beginning of March 2015, and parliament conducted an initial reading aimed at resolving initial disputes. Further readings will be required to narrow the disagreements. According to the Iraqi Forces Alliance, a Sunni-majority parliamentary bloc, the National Guard will mobilize as many residents of the Sunni provinces as possible and keep them away from the Islamic State by absorbing officers from the former Iraqi army.

But the fragile process also faces opposition from influential Shia groups that believe this project undermines the Popular Mobilization Forces. In addition, Sunni and Shia political groups are indispute over the National Guard’s potential leadership. Shia parties believe that Prime Minister Abadi should lead the forces, while Sunni parties want the National Guard subject to the authority of the provincial councils. If the military balance tips in favor of the Islamic State, however, the need to empower Sunni regions as much possible against the group would force concessions. Among other things, this may include denying the Popular Mobilization Forces a role in recovering cities and entering Sunni areas.

The central government adopts the view that the establishment of a National Guard is crucial to combatting the Islamic State. The failure to agree on a unified vision and to ratify the National Guard will significantly hinder these efforts. In such a scenario, the United States will find itself faced with the option of arming Sunni tribes through neighboring Arab states or relying more heavily on the less-inclusive regular forces and the Kurdish peshmerga. But without real contribution from Sunni tribes, these forces are far less equipped to battle the Islamic State.

This article is reprinted with permission from Sada.  It can be accessed online at:http://carnegieendowment.org/sada/2015/03/17/challenges-of-mobilizing-sunni-tribes-in-iraq/i4fx

Raed El-Hamed is an Iraqi researcher and regular contributor to Sada.

This article was translated from Arabic.

Syria has always been a larger idea than its own geography, whether in the past or in modern times. Half a century ago, Syria was called “the throbbing heart of Arabism,” and in previous centuries the word “Syria” always referred to a wider region that covered much of the Levant. Today, the fourth anniversary of the war in Syria provides a somber opportunity to grasp again the reasons for the crises, violence and occasional chaos and state collapse we witness in half a dozen Arab countries.

It will take many years to restore Syria to its pre-war condition, but in the meantime it would be useful to understand the underlying drivers of the country’s terrible plunge into inhuman warfare and suffering, so that we might avoid perpetuating them in other Arab lands. Syria reflects the consequence of several trends that are peculiar to this region and that have persisted over several generations. Reversing these factors will be essential if Syrians or other Arab people are to have any chance of enjoying a more stable and productive national trajectory than they have experienced in the past century.

We can clearly see in retrospect the key dynamics that have shaped much of the modern dysfunction of Arab states, whose high point of national incoherence and fragility we witness these days in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya and other countries. The three most destructive trends during the past century have always gone hand-in-hand. They are that: 1) entire countries have been ruled by small elites, often individual families or a group of military officers, which results in 2) security agencies dominating governments and defining most aspects of people’s lives, which finally leads to situations where 3) ordinary citizens never enjoy the opportunity to shape their national and civic institutions and to define the social contract that is essential to promoting decent governance, socio-economic growth, and stability.

These three phenomena all have their origins in the manner in which so many Arab states, like Syria, were established by European colonial powers, and did not necessarily reflect the free will or natural inclinations of their indigenous people. Not surprisingly, state fragility and collapse in the last half a century often have reflected tensions and then outright warfare among ethnic, national, tribal or sectarian groups that never found comfortable identity in the new state structures that suddenly defined their lives.

Local and regional wars or long-simmering ideological confrontations among Arabs, Israelis and Iranians, most notably, and with Western powers in recent years, fatally diverted attention and resources from democratic nation-building and cemented the military’s hold on power. Military-run security states resulted in large-scale corruption, mediocrity or broad incompetence in governance. This included erratic health and education systems that doomed millions of people from birth into chronic poverty, which entrenched the cycle of human despair that in recent years has been one element in fueling the growth of terror movements.

Home-grown mismanagement and oppression have always had a symbiotic relationship with foreign military invasions, coups and other political interventions across the region. The region’s heavy reliance on direct or indirect oil and gas income, rather than productive and creative economic endeavors, also minimized the role of the private sector in creating jobs and wealth and in promoting a sense of satisfaction and security among citizens who otherwise had to rely on mostly meaningless government jobs.

Such weaknesses and vulnerabilities were camouflaged during the early decades of state development last century, but ultimately they were exposed by two factors that are very evident in Syria’s current demise — unsustainably high population growth rates and steadily worsening environmental deterioration (especially water shortages). When Arab population growth outstripped economic growth in the mid-1980s, most countries in this region started to suffer more poverty, social dislocation, and expanding hopelessness by millions of ravaged citizens. Two reactions from within heightened the inevitable stresses and some collapses we witness now: more severe security oppression by the state to maintain order, and the scramble by citizens to ensure their needs by turning to their own religious and tribal movements. The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is merely the latest and most severe of many such manifestations.

With the end of the Cold War and the Anglo-American-led invasion of Iraq, weaker state authorities started to retreat from some sectors and areas of society, and the vacuums were quickly filled by tribal, religious and militant groups. Syria reminds us that we are likely to endure many years of dislocation and violence until local authorities re-establish order that is not based on the security dictates of a single family with its national army, but rather on a more credible social contract among citizens who feel they belong to a state and consensually agree on the ground rules of that state.

Rami G. Khouri is published twice weekly in the Daily Star. He was founding director and now senior policy fellow of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. On Twitter at: @ramikhouri.

Copyright ©2015 Rami G. Khouri—distributed by Agence Global

The Egyptian government has high hopes for an international investment conference planned for mid-March 2015 in the Egyptian coastal city of Sharm el-Sheikh. A great many heads of state and government are expected to take part, together with representatives of large corporations and investment banks.

For Egypt, the three-day meeting is a chance to project an image of political stability after four years of unprecedented turmoil, and, the government hopes, to attract foreign investors to help initiate a medium- to long-term process of economic recovery.

Large capital inflows would improve Egypt’s balance of payments and help rebuild the country’s foreign reserves. Foreign direct investment (FDI) would also help to stimulate growth and employment. Moreover, with both foreign and domestic public debt approaching 90 percent of Egypt’s gross domestic product (GDP)—a level generally considered unsafe by economists—foreign investment would provide a welcome alternative to an expansion in external borrowing.

Fresh capital inflows would have a political impact, too. The military-backed political regime that was installed after the July 2013 intervention against the presidency of Mohamed Morsi said it was acting to restore political stability and security, and to revive economic growth. That intervention resulted in Field Marshal Abdel Fattah el-Sisi becoming president, and today, the legitimacy of his regime is being tested by its ability to launch an economic recovery.

The March conference provides Egypt’s leaders with an opportunity to highlight the economic and political progress they have already made. That progress, however, is incomplete, and much uncertainty remains over the political system’s ability to guarantee stability. At the same time, potential international investors—particularly the Gulf states, which provided early backing to the new Egyptian regime—are wrestling with outside factors that will help determine their level of support for Egypt in the coming years.

Investor-Friendly Reforms
The Egyptian economy has been suffering from a combination of economic crises since the January 2011 revolution that ousted Hosni Mubarak: a huge budget deficit that was estimated to hover around 12 percent of GDP in fiscal year 2013–2014, according to the Ministry of Finance; a balance of payments deficit due to large capital outflows and the slowdown in tourism; and a severe decline in foreign reserves, which were more than halved from $35 billion in January 2011 to around $15 billion in January 2015. These were not new problems, but rather structural and chronic problems that became pressing and urgent due to the political turmoil and extremely poor management of the transitional period that followed the revolution.

Sisi’s government has stressed that the only way out of the crisis is through private investment. Upon assuming the presidency in June 2014, Sisi quickly sought to demonstrate both his commitment to policies that encourage such investment, and his ability to enforce them. His government put forward a bundle of investment-friendly macroeconomic reforms in the areas of fiscal, monetary, and exchange rate policies, as well as legal reforms aimed at redefining relations between the state and the private sector.

In July 2014, only two weeks after he took office, Sisi decided to cut fuel subsidies—which had constituted an average of 20 percent of Egypt’s public expenditures from 2008 to 2012¹—by 40–50 billion Egyptian pounds ($5.2–$6.6 billion). The cut came ahead of the significant drop in global fuel prices that began in late 2014, which has resulted in prices that are less than half of what they were at the beginning of Egypt’s fiscal year. This should help the government to further reduce its subsidy bill, as well as the budget deficit, without introducing additional austerity measures, which usually lack popular appeal.

In parallel with the subsidy restructuring, the Central Bank of Egypt has taken a series of measures in preparation for the March conference. On January 15, 2015, the central bank decreased interest rates, a traditional means to stimulate investment. Then, in late January and early February, the bank devalued the Egyptian pound by nearly 7 percent against the U.S. dollar, addressing a long-standing demand of international financial institutions (IFIs). The devaluation is expected to have a positive impact on foreign investors by mitigating the risk of currency conversion that could result from Egypt’s declining foreign reserves. The devaluation is also intended to curb the black market and thus unify the effective exchange rate, and it is expected to have a positive impact on Egypt’s trade balance.

The Egyptian government has also moved to limit policy and legal uncertainty in order to attract private investment. In that context, Adly Mansour, who served as interim president before Sisi took power, issued a law that immunized public contracts from administrative court oversight, significantly curbing the mandate of the Supreme Administrative Court.²

Until then, the administrative court had played a critical role in annulling a number of public contracts with the private sector, especially in the areas of land allocation and the privatization of state-owned enterprises. These court verdicts were a source of embarrassment to the executive branch, and they proved to be a source of uncertainty and risk for investors.

Several other moves further concentrated power in the executive at the expense of the legislature and the judiciary. Under Mansour, the law regulating public tender was amended, making it possible for high-ranking officials to make purchases and award contracts without competitive bidding. This is particularly important given the government’s intention to attract private, and especially foreign, investment into sectors like infrastructure and utilities through public-private partnerships.³

Many observers feared that the military’s political dominance after 2013 would translate into a state-led development model that would crowd out the private sector. However, such fears quickly dissipated, as a division of labor between the military’s economic empire and the private sectorbecame evident, with the military primarily focused on infrastructure and other sectors left to private investors.

Indeed, the military’s expanded role provided at least partial guarantees for some foreign investors. An obvious example is the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which has been both a close political ally of Egypt’s new political regime and an economic partner of the military in a number of ambitious efforts, including a 1 million-unit housing project announced in late 2014. The military’s role was taken as a guarantee against the incompetence of Egypt’s civilian bureaucracy and as a means to gain access to public resources such as land.

In addition, a number of large national projects such as the New Suez Canal are being propagated as signs of economic vibrancy that may provide opportunities for foreign investment.⁴  This is especially the case with the second phase of the canal project, which includes plans to convert the canal into an economic zone with a concentration of industrial, service, and commercial activities. The government is seeking large-scale participation from foreign investors in the latter phase of the project.

The Return of International Financial Institutions
The return of international financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank to the Egyptian economic scene since Sisi took power is a further indication that the government recognizes the need to get IFIs on board in order to attract serious foreign investment.

The IMF and the World Bank had largely been absent from Egypt since July 2013, when the military took power. Back then, both institutions shied away from dealing with a government that was largely deemed unconstitutional. Moreover, the Egyptian government received massive financial aid from the Gulf and did not need to negotiate a bailout with the IMF, which would have required the imposition of austerity measures in return.

But in the run-up to the March conference, the IMF and the World Bank seem to be increasingly involved in the development of Egypt’s monetary, trade, and fiscal policies. Communication between the government and the two institutions has intensified. In addition, Egypt’s policy and legal changes, and the consistent improvement in the country’s credit rating, which in early 2015 was close to prerevolutionary levels, have earned positive reviews. In December 2014, the Fitch rating agency upgraded Egypt’s credit rating for the first time in four years, to “B,” after successive downgrades. A February 2015 IMF report praised Egypt’s economic reforms and said the country was moving in the right direction.

This shift is likely to reinforce the Egyptian government’s intension to adhere to IMF and World Bank recommendations in areas such as cutting the budget deficit, fighting inflation, and supporting the private sector, and its commitment to future fiscal restructuring and liberalization.

Egypt’s Political System and Its Discontents
One of the principal challenges facing Egypt’s leaders at the March conference is the need to demonstrate that the political path taken after July 2013 is leading to the formation of a viable and functional political system. This burgeoning system wants to show potential investors that it is capable of producing cohesive policies that can support economic development in the future. But its stability, as well as its ability to create such an environment, are not yet assured.

The military has succeeded in rallying political and social support for its road map for the country’s democratic transition. A new constitution was passed in 2014, and presidential elections were held in May of that year. The transition to a new political system is to be completed with the election of a parliament, which had been scheduled for March and April of 2015. It was no coincidence that the investment conference was postponed several times until a clear date was set for the parliamentary elections, in order to demonstrate that the transitional period had successfully concluded.

However, the parliamentary vote was suspended following a March 1 ruling from Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court that part of the election law concerning the drawing of voting districts was unconstitutional. Sisi is intent on containing the disruptive impact of the ruling, and he has ordered the government to amend the law in no more than a month.

An escalation in protests only weeks ahead of the conference may signal early weaknesses in the new political system. The 2015 anniversary of the January 25, 2011, revolution witnessed violent clashes between police and both Islamist and non-Islamist forces that find themselves subject to intense repression and increasing restrictions on the right to associate, demonstrate, and strike.

The forces allied with the Muslim Brotherhood have been completely banished from the political sphere for allegedly committing acts of violence and terrorism. In their fight against what they deem a coup d’état against Morsi, they have been seeking to deepen the economic and security crises facing the new regime. Continuous protests, occasional bombings, and attacks on policemen and police posts all hurt the government’s credibility in the eyes of local as well as foreign investors. The increased protests may indicate the inability of the political system to contain all political and societal actors, and its limited capacity to mediate social conflict through a degree of pluralism and multiparty competition.

Such an environment may also exacerbate the grave problem of terrorism that Egypt is already facing in the Sinai in a way that precludes attempts at economic recovery and stabilization in the long term. The establishment of a cohesive and integrated political order is a crucial precondition for the capital inflows Egypt hopes to attract.

Traditional Limits on Foreign Investment
Egypt’s Ministry of Investment has said the government hopes to attract $10–15 billion in foreign investment in the two years following the March conference. That projection—far above Egypt’s usual rate of FDI—may be based on unjustified optimism given the global and local contexts and the structural constraints the Egyptian economy has long faced in attracting foreign direct investment.

Egypt has not traditionally been a major recipient of foreign investment, with FDI historically representing a minute share of the country’s overall GDP compared to other developing economies such as Brazil, Mexico, and China. Between 1990 and 2004, foreign direct investment averaged 0.9 percent of GDP. That ratio rose steeply between 2004 and 2009, reaching nearly 5.9 percent before it declined again because of the global financial crisis and local political turmoil.⁵

Egypt is highly unlikely to secure large amounts of foreign investment in the current context. Globally, financial markets have not yet recovered from the 2008 financial crisis, while locally, the stability that was present during the earlier surge in investment has not returned.

In addition, foreign direct investment in Egypt has traditionally had a sectoral concentration in oil and natural gas extraction. Given the plunge in global energy prices that began in late 2014, it is doubtful that this sector would witness any significant expansion in investment. In the meantime, there is no reason to anticipate a dramatic expansion of FDI in non-oil sectors such as tourism, services, manufacturing, and agriculture.

Gulf Support and Geopolitics
The willingness and ability of the Gulf states, especially Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, to support Egypt is perhaps the most crucial factor as the country seeks to launch an economic recovery.

A friendly government in Egypt has traditionally been considered by Gulf rulers as crucial for their regional security, and Saudi Arabia and the UAE have invested heavily, both diplomatically and financially, in stabilizing the country’s military-backed regime.

Unprecedented Gulf budget support to Egypt between 2013 and 2014 amounted to a massive $20 billion. The Gulf capital inflows took the form of aid to support Egypt’s foreign reserves and the government’s widening budget deficit. In a February 2015 speech, Sisi acknowledged that, had it not been for the Gulf’s generous support, Egypt would not have made it through the transitional period that followed the deposition of Morsi.

However, immediately following Sisi’s assumption of power, the UAE and Saudi Arabia almost completely stopped their budget support. Their efforts were redirected toward backing Egypt’s new leadership in its fiscal restructuring and economic reform efforts, with the aim of making the economy more attractive for foreign investment.

This suggests that the Gulf countries do not consider themselves to be a substitute for IFIs, but rather an ally and partner to Egypt as it attempts to reintegrate into the global economy. It was in this context that the late Saudi king called for an international conference to support Egypt. The call targeted a broad circle of states, corporations, and investment banks in an attempt to create a wide consortium of sponsors and investors who would support Egypt’s economic recovery and subsequent political stabilization.

For its part, Egypt is hoping that, if Gulf countries again show their support, other international investors will do the same. But the high hopes that Egyptian leaders have for the March conference and the investments to follow can only be achieved based on political, rather than economic, considerations. Such political, and primarily geopolitical, factors cannot be underestimated when it comes to capital transfer in the aftermath of dramatic political transformations.

For example, aid and foreign investment played a major role in easing the transition to market democracies in Central and Eastern Europe in the 1990s following the fall of the Berlin Wall. Capital flows from Western Europe were not only driven by economic motives such as the search for investment opportunities and a trained workforce, but also by the political goals of expanding the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. That experience suggests that in grand transformations, economics and politics usually overlap. This may indeed be the case in the Middle East after the Arab revolutions, as the Gulf countries followed the same political-economic dynamic and supported certain political paths.

The big question, however, is whether the Gulf countries, namely Saudi Arabia and the UAE, can indeed meet Egypt’s expectations amid the dramatic decline in oil prices. Gulf countries have, since the 1970s, adapted to oil price cycles by amassing huge foreign reserves in the boom years in order to sustain public spending during the bust. The recent decline in oil prices will definitely put pressure on the reserves accumulated by these countries since 2008.

While the massive support provided in 2013 and 2014 is unlikely to be repeated, two factors will be help determine the level of Gulf investment in the medium term. The first is the volume of dollar reserves accumulated by the Gulf countries allied to Egypt. The second is the future of oil prices and whether the decline lasts for a long time, as it did in the 1990s.

Saudi Arabia holds the third largest dollar reserves in the world, amounting to almost $740 billion on December 31, 2013. Official UAE reserves were estimated at $58 billion at the end of 2013, while Kuwait’s were $34 billion. In addition to the dollar reserves kept at central banks, the Abu Dhabi sovereign fund had assets of up to $773 billion in September 2014, while the Kuwait Investment Authority, another sovereign fund, was reported to own $548 billion at that time.

Do such huge reserves mean that the Gulf states will inject badly needed capital into Egypt over the next few years even if oil prices continue to decline? This will likely depend on the way the Gulf countries manage their surpluses and on the domestic conditions within each of them. It can be argued, however, that the UAE—with its limited population and relative economic diversification—is better positioned than others, such as Saudi Arabia, to use its resources to help Egypt.

Conclusion: Politics Prevails Over Economics
The March conference will provide a clear illustration of the overlap between politics and economics. And, at the meeting, and in years that follow, questions of economic recovery and the regeneration of growth will be determined by political considerations and international support for the newly established regime in Egypt.

Based purely on economic considerations, the state of the global economy together with local political turmoil would seem to rule out any exceptional increases in investment inflows into the Egyptian economy. This is especially the case given that Egypt has not historically been a large recipient of foreign direct investment.

But geopolitical interests seem likely to prevail in the end over economic ones. The decisive factor will be whether Egypt’s Gulf allies and partners are willing to commit themselves to supporting the political path taken in the aftermath of the military intervention in July 2013. Given the Islamic State’s rise across Syria and Iraq, concerns about the Iranian nuclear program, and the political turmoil in Yemen, ensuring a friendly Egypt that is committed to Gulf security indeed seems necessary.

Egyptian officials expect that support, in the form of large investment inflows that would facilitate economic recovery, generate employment, and help to rebuild Egypt’s foreign reserves. The critical question is whether the Gulf states will be able to meet these obligations given the recent plunge in oil prices.

1. Calculation by the author based on General Budget Final Accounts, 2008–2012, Egyptian Ministry of Finance, http://www.mof.gov.eg/English/Pages/FinalAccountsData.aspx.
2. Personal interview with Ahmed Hossam Aldin, administrative lawyer, Cairo, January 11, 2015.
3. Telephone interview with Mohamed Gad, economic journalist at Aswat Masriya, February 6, 2015.
4. Ibid.
5. Calculation by the author based on Foreign Direct Investment, Net Inflows, 1990–2013, World Development Indicators, World Bank, http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/BX.KLT.DINV.CD.WD.

This article is reprinted with permission from Carnegie Middle East Center. It can be accessed online at: http://carnegie-mec.org/2015/03/05/will-march-investment-conference-launch-egypt-s-economic-recovery/i3hj

Amr Adly is a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Middle East Center, where his research centers on political economy, development studies, and economic sociology of the Middle East, with a focus on Egypt.

The contentious diplomatic drama that was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to the U.S. Congress last week has now expanded into a full-fledged political farce, after 47 Republican senators sent a letter to the Iranian supreme leader earlier this week. That letter basically insulted the Iranians by suggesting they did not know how the American political system operates, because, they argued, the next administration or president could reverse any agreement President Barack Obama reaches with Tehran.

The tension between the Republican-dominated Congress and Obama is nearly a constitutional crisis vis-a-vis the president’s prerogative to conduct foreign policy. It is also quite unusual to see a sitting Congress actively trying to thwart a foreign policy objective that the president is actively pursuing in close coordination with five other world powers.

Those issues will blow over in time, but the more lasting impact of these developments might well be the evolving relationship between the Israeli government, the Republican Party in the United States, and the traditional bipartisan position in the U.S. to policy towards Israel and wider Middle East issues. Both the rightwing Netanyahu-led Israeli coalition government and the Republican Party in Congress have reasons of their own to challenge U.S. President Barack Obama, and they have chosen the nuclear agreement being negotiated with Iran as the issue on which to confront him very hard and very publicly.

The unprecedented manner in which both Netanyahu and the Republicans have openly tried to shape American foreign policy on the basis of Israeli demands has shocked seasoned political analysts I have spoken to during my visit in the United States this week. Some note that this episode has crossed the line that demarcates routine ideological contestation from the charge that American elected officials are choosing to back a foreign government over their American president. Some wonder if this is treason by those congressmen and women who openly advocate the Israeli position. Others speak of a congressional gimmick, while others yet charge the Republicans with risking war with Iran simply to score political points at home.

The fact that most of Netanyahu’s accusations and scare-tactics warning about what would happen if the nuclear agreement were reached with Iran are factually wrong or highly exaggerated presumptions is not the real issue here. It is rather that American elected officials who are sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States have chosen to act in a manner that makes them look like they represent the wishes of a foreign government.

The fact that the foreign government in question is Israel also could put Jewish Americans in uncomfortable positions where they might be accused of having dual or torn loyalties to Israel and the United States—or worse yet, of supporting Israeli policy over American policy.

I am not surprised that Netanyahu has resorted to the most ridiculous manner of hysterical exaggerations, warnings, and historical analogies, because he understands that an agreement on Iran’s nuclear capabilities would be an enormous game-changer in the region, which would confront Israel with major new challenges. An agreement would certainly open the way to more normal Iranian relations with the United States and other Western powers, and would probably force a reconfiguration of Iranian-Arab ties which are now often strained.

An unsanctioned and thriving Iran would be an attractive partner for any country, and a stronger Iran that is not a nuclear threat would force a new balance of power in the Middle East among Iran, Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia and perhaps Egypt. Israel would probably be unhappy with such a situation that saw a handful of strong countries create a balance power that did not allow any one of them to impose its will on the entire region. Israel today feels it can do anything it wants to do anywhere in the Middle East, with total impunity.

That would change if a new regional balance of power arrangement were to take shape. So Netanyahu is using any available tactic to prevent an agreement that limits Iran’s nuclear capabilities, including going so far as to shatter the traditional rules that governed U.S.-Israeli ties. Those rules said that both parties in the U.S. political system would fully support Israel in virtually every arena, but Israel would not interfere in domestic American politics.

Well, Netanyahu just tore up that rulebook, and nobody is quite sure what will happen next. We are entering into uncharted territory, as senior American officials and some members of Congress now openly criticize the Israeli prime minister for brazenly trying to change American foreign policy by manipulating members of Congress against the American president. Most of the damage done to the U.S.-Israeli relationship will probably be patched up, but some of it may remain. We will find out more about this in the American elections next year.

Rami G. Khouri is published twice weekly in the Daily Star. He was founding director and now senior policy fellow of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. On Twitter at: @ramikhouri.

Copyright ©2015 Rami G. Khouri—distributed by Agence Global

On March 1, Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court ruled that Article 3 of the electoral law was unconstitutional. Two days later, the Administrative Court suspended the elections pending a change in the electoral law. This suspension plays into President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi’s hands, as it delays the devolution of legislative powers from the president to the parliament and extends his unilateral rule. Sisi’s overall approach to the parliamentary elections further reveals ambitions to diminish the political role of the parliament so it becomes a passive player to his decision-making. The elections—originally scheduled to take place over two stages in March and April—are the last phase in the country’s transitional roadmap introduced following the removal of Mohamed Morsi from office in July 2013. It will be Egypt’s first legislative body since the Supreme Constitutional Court dissolved the parliament in 2012 for technical reasons. Since then, legislative powers have been held by Sisi, who has issued a number of laws addressing Egypt’s economy.

The state sees the elections as a way to convey legitimacy by demonstrating the regime’s commitment to democracy and institution-building. Having a functioning parliament also helps Egypt convincemuch-needed foreign investors that the country’s transition is stable enough for long-term business ventures. But perhaps most importantly, the state can use the parliament as a form of “elite management” to appease family heads, businessmen, and politicians, and to secure their aid in maintaining and imposing stability.

Yet despite the likelihood of a pro-Sisi parliament, the government is still unenthusiastic about elections, foreseeing a number of potential challenges to the regime. The new parliament will be obligated to review and approve all laws passed and ratified since Morsi’s ouster in July 2013, in order for them to remain in effect. This constitutes nearly two years’ worth of legislation, including controversial ones such as the protest law of 2014. This law in particular faces strong questionssurrounding its constitutionality, opening the door for the law’s possible repeal or amendment. The regime and the military will likely view this process of reviewing laws as a waste of time, but additional delays in parliamentary elections will only push the inevitable review process back even further.

With no parliamentary ally along the lines of Mubarak’s National Democratic Party (NDP), the Sisi government’s approach to these concerns has been to limit the political space available to parties. This prevents them from operating in any meaningful way outside of the regime’s influence. Both the constitution and the electoral law actively weaken the ability of potential opposition parties to gain any kind of significant platform in the future parliament. The electoral law of 2014 strengthens the position of individuals ahead of political parties, allotting over 70 percent of the 567 seats in parliament to independent candidates. As in the Mubarak era, the emphasis on independent candidates means seats are more likely to be won by well-connected individuals, especially businessmen. For comparison, the 2011 electoral law gave parties two-thirds of seats elected through proportional representation lists.

The military establishment has long viewed political parties with suspicion, believing them to only act in their own self-interests, rather than the nation’s as a whole. Now that a former military man is president, this approach is easier to act upon. In a meeting with fifteen party heads, the president called on them to form “one inclusive coalition” by running on one list that he would endorse. Rather than backing one particular political party or ideology, Sisi is attempting to remain politically neutral by calling on all parties to unite behind a national vision. Instead of a pluralist process where a multitude of views are represented, parliament is reduced to a homogeneous political body that merely supports the president’s national projects.

Some political parties are already opposing this project, among them the Strong Egypt and Constitution parties, which have announced their boycott of the polls. But a pro-Sisi coalition is even more likely to perform well in elections due to the boycott. In reaction to Sisi’s call for a unified electoral coalition, Sameh Seif El-Yazal, a former military intelligence officer and strategic advisor, formed one such electoral list called “For the Love of Egypt.” Despite some initial criticism from the Wafd Party, “For the Love of Egypt” appears to have a strong footing ahead of the elections, and in mid-February was bolstered by the subsequent inclusion of the most prominent liberal parties, Wafd and the Free Egyptians.

With the current system favoring individual parliamentary candidates rather than parties, Sisi is looking to empower military figures instead of the Mubarak-era business elite, many of whom Sisimistrusts. He has emphasized the role of the state in the economy, and suggested in an interview last year that the private sector would have to accept a smaller role than it had under Mubarak. He is particularly hesitant to rely on those closely associated with Gamal Mubarak for support, as he does not wish to be associated with that era’s corrupt practices. Instead, Sisi has sought to include figures like El-Yazal into the parliament. This would eschew traditional party politics altogether and ensure Sisi’s influence over the legislative process. In addition to the military, this new political class will include civilian politicians and businessmen not closely affiliated to Gamal Mubarak’s inner circle. Rather than rely on an ideological support base, this “apolitical” class will further diminish the parliament’s influence on the country’s political life.

Driven by its distrust of organized political groups, Sisi has gone to considerable lengths to depoliticize the parliament and the country’s new “political” elite. Parliamentary life under Sisi looks set to be little more than technocratic assistance to the president, with little room for opposition.

This article is reprinted with permission from Sada. It can be accessed online at:
http://carnegieendowment.org/sada/2015/03/06/sisi-s-parliamentary-fears/i3jh

Mohamed El-Shewy is a freelance writer and analyst, currently based in Germany. He is a regular contributor to Sada.

The recommendation by the Palestine Liberation Organization Central Council (PLO CC) this week to suspend the two-decades-old security coordination with Israel illustrates the depths of meanness, desperation and irrationality that have come to define the broken relationship between the Palestinians and Israelis. It reflects both the unsustainable colonial mentality of the current rightwing Zionist leadership in Israel, and the stresses and failures of the current Palestinian national leadership that has not been able to achieve an effective response.

The decision is problematic because it can only lead to negative consequences and security breakdowns for both Israelis and Palestinians — but it is also inevitable, in view of the severe distortions and weaknesses  in the implementation of the 1993 Oslo Accords that have served Israeli purposes and rights more than those of the Palestinians.

The 124-member PLO CC is effectively the most important national decision-making body of the Palestinian people these days, for two reasons: It includes representatives of all the leading Palestinian political factions, and the larger Palestine National Council (parliament in exile) has not met for years and is effectively moribund in the absence of new elections.

The Palestinians living under Israeli occupation or siege in the West Bank and Gaza have tried unsuccessfully to negotiate their liberation and statehood with the Israelis, under almost exclusive American mediation, since the Madrid peace conference in 1992. Most of the key elements of the Oslo Accords relating to issues like trade, finance, water, and free movement of people and goods have been forgotten or suspended. Only the “security cooperation” elements remain in force, but in a rather farcical manner from the Palestinian perspective.

Palestinians feel that their lightly armed police and intelligence system is being used to shield Israel from any attacks by Palestinian militants, while in the other direction Israeli troops routinely and uninhibitedly arrest, beat up, harass, and occasionally kill Palestinians whom they suspect of anti-Israeli acts or sentiments. This is not to mention the routine attacks against Palestinian people, homes, orchards, mosques and water systems by Zionist settler-thugs who often carry out their criminal deeds under the unwatchful eyes of nearby Israeli troops.

So the “security cooperation” helps secure Israel, but leaves Palestinians under daily assault by the same Israel. Palestinians are fed up with acting like the policemen who protect the Israeli occupation and subjugation that demeans them and seeks mainly to expel them from the land. The recommendation to President Abbas to terminate the security cooperation is not happening in a vacuum, but rather is one more step in a series of actions by both sides that reflect, above all, the total collapse of the negotiating process for a permanent peace agreement.

These include moves like Israel’s withholding every month $127 million in tax revenues it collects for the Palestinian Authority (PA), and Palestinian moves to seek a Security Council resolution on ending the Israeli occupation and also their initiation of formalities to join the International Criminal Court in order to prosecute Israelis for alleged war crimes.

Ending security cooperation means the two sides will no longer share intelligence information or coordinate arrests. It could also see the PA relax its moves to prevent demonstrations against Israel by angry Palestinians. Among the consequences of this would be tighter Israeli controls on already harsh restrictions on movement by Palestinians, and perhaps an expansion of some of the more militant nationalist and Islamist Palestinian groups in the West Bank and Gaza. Less security cooperation will hurt both sides, but it will hurt the Palestinians more, as is the norm in such colonial conditions between occupier and occupied.

It is possible also that this is a precursor to a decision by the Palestinians to dissolve the PA and force Israel to take charge of administering and funding the occupation that it had effectively subcontracted to the PA. All concerned should be braced for some bad things to happen in the arenas of security, political rhetoric, administration, finances and economy, and physical and psychological well-being of citizenries on both sides of the conflict.

We should learn again that the absence of a just peace is not permanent stalemate and perpetual occupation, but an inevitable slide into personal anger, political frenzy, and military ferocity. Both sides will suffer, until more sensible leaderships and more credible external mediators find the route to a meaningful, equitable negotiations process that meets the legitimate needs and rights of both sides. The one-sided American-Israeli-controlled “peace process” farce we have endured for decades has now suffered another warning sign that endless occupation and denial of Palestinian rights is not a sustainable condition, regardless of how safe the Israelis feel behind their walls and missile batteries.

Rami G. Khouri is published twice weekly in the Daily Star. He was founding director and now senior policy fellow of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. On Twitter at: @ramikhouri.

Copyright ©2015 Rami G. Khouri—distributed by Agence Global

While United States and Iranian officials met to outline a nuclear deal, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu derided their efforts in a controversial speech to the U.S. Congress. President Barack Obama chided Netanyahu for presenting no alternative to the deal being cooked up in Geneva, but for Netanyahu, this speech was never only about hard policy. This was grand theater.

Opponents of Netanyahu’s speech argued that the Israeli leader could have made the same case at a different time, in a different place, or in a different manner. But the time, place, and manner were the speech. Waiting until after a deal was announced would concede to Obama a crucial advantage; Netanyahu wanted the first word. The venue, too, was central. Backroom meetings on Capitol Hill or even the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s (AIPAC) stage wouldn’t have yielded the same drama and rapt audience of an event that the New York Times described as “similar to a State of the Union address, but more electric.” Even the manner of the run-up to the speech—the rudeness of the Republican invitation, the ruthlessness of its planning—helped the prime minister steal the show in American media.

The content, too, was theatrical. Netanyahu framed the Iranian issue as one of grand values, not grand strategy. At its core, much of his speech did not relate to Iran’s nuclear program at all. Instead, the prime minister gave a brief of what the Iranian regime has wrought in the Middle East. And he further dramatized the U.S.-Israel relationship, wrapping the Jewish narrative in the American one—“Overlooking all of us in this chamber is the image of Moses,” Netanyahu inserted at one point. Would the United States really embark on a sterile offshore balancing in the region and fray the bond between the two Promised Lands, of Israel and America?

Here, Obama’s grounded point—what would be the practical alternative to the potential P5+1 deal—speaks past Netanyahu. Between the lines, though, Netanyahu may have hinted at a provocative answer. Given the alternatives of (1) a “bad deal” that marginally sets back the nuclear program but significantly boosts the Iranian regime’s legitimacy and (2) “no deal,” lifting all restraints on the program but keeping the regime a pariah in American eyes, Netanyahu might prefer (2). This risks either a costly military operation to set back the program or a Middle East awash in nuclear proliferation. But that option also prevents the Iranian regime from gaining political cover to entrench its proxies further along Israel’s borders, and keeps intact the norm of international disgust with the regime’s hideous rhetoric toward Israel.

For now, Netanyahu does not want that choice: He wants both an Iran without nuclear capability and also a regime shackled by sanctions and disrepute. And he wants a more concerted will from the P5+1—and from Congress—to get there.

Crucially, Netanyahu also wants to be reelected. With Israeli elections due March 17, his speech, with its emotional plays to the Zionist narrative and the roaring applause, distinguishes Netanyahu from the duo he considers his two weakling foils: the appeaser Barack Obama and Israeli opposition leader Isaac “Bougie” Herzog, whose nickname Netanyahu says with delicious disdain. The speech also helps Netanyahu set the agenda down the campaign’s home stretch. Some 48 percent of Israelis say the economy is the most important issue for the next government to address, with only 10 percent flagging the Iranian one. Those numbers bode ill for Netanyahu, and he wants voters focused on the security arena where he holds an edge. Already, this speech pushed a devastating report on Israel’s housing crisis off the front pages.

But as grand as it was, Netanyahu’s speech has an uncertain impact. It won’t substantially affect the election’s outcome. In the multiparty chaos of Israeli politics, few, if any, voters are undecided between Netanyahu and Herzog. Netanyahu’s real rivals are smaller right-wing parties headed by figures like Economy Minister Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. At most, Netanyahu’s play in Washington might siphon a few Knesset seats from those factions toward his Likud.

Even after elections, Netanyahu will still need to lobby centrist and religious parties to form a coalition government. Those parties—representing millions of Israeli voters—have far different priorities: the cost of living and housing, stipends to Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) yeshiva students, government services such as education and health. When the coalition-building and horse-trading start post-elections, negotiations will focus on promises of ministries and budgets, not the high-minded rhetoric of grand values on display in Washington.

On the Iranian nuclear issue, the speech’s impact may linger. In the coming weeks, Congressional legislation to kill a “bad deal” might reach the cusp of the two-thirds majority needed to override Obama’s promised veto. Netanyahu’s speech could win the last few, crucial votes. Or, his burned bridges with some Democrats could haunt efforts to pass the bill, and exacerbate the already widening partisan gap among Americans regarding support for Israel. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi—a longtime, committed friend of Israel—was seething throughout the speech.

In the meantime, Netanyahu has left a legacy of a grand speech unafraid to tackle grand ideas. To contest him, Obama will need much more than a mundane appeal to practical policy concerns. Obama is too shrewd a leader and speaker to allow Tuesday’s speech as the last word. Netanyahu might have introduced the theatrics, but other acts in this drama are sure to come.

Owen Alterman is a research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.

The intense debate that is taking place across the world in recent months about the precise nature and motivating forces for the “Islamic State” movement (or ISIS) is impressive and useful, but still incomplete. It will allow all concerned to enjoy a more accurate understanding of what this group is all about and why it attracts adherents from across the world, which is critical to developing a policy to defeat it. There is hope and despair here.

The hope is that the world is slowly grasping that ISIS is not a one-dimensional phenomenon that reflects intense Islamic religiosity, economic deprivation, social dislocation, anti-modern sentiments or any other such single ideas. The birth, incubation and growth of ISIS in the past two decades or so reveals the multiple reasons for how it has been able to reach its current condition of controlling territory and waging mini-wars on several fronts.

What remains unclear—the despair—is the lack of evidence that any serious efforts will be made now and in the years ahead to tackle what I believe is the single most important underlying reason for the ISIS phenomenon, which is the modern legacy of mediocre and authoritarian governance systems in Arab countries. A few thousand nutcases and lost souls who travel from Western lands to join ISIS are important case studies for psychologists and political sociologists who need to focus more attention on why some of their minority and immigrant youth routinely become alienated and radicalized. This is a sideshow, however, and not a core element in the battle to defeat ISIS.

The damage that has been done by ISIS to Arab countries started decades ago and was the work of home-grown Arab extremists. This suggests that we need to probe deeper into the dynamics of Arab societies for the past half century or so if we want to grasp how this movement came to be. Such an effort quickly reveals a series of interlocking reasons across disciplines and sectors, comprising political governance, police brutality, military-run states, economic disparity, social frustrations, cultural denials, educational mediocrities, and profound and chronic indignities caused by massive unmet needs in basic services (jobs, housing, medical care, water, public transport, reasonably priced food and other such vital human needs).

For decade after decade, tens of millions of ordinary Arab men and women put up with the gnawing realization that they had no real rights as citizens of their states. They could neither complain about their home-grown subjugation in any credible manner that promised a redress of grievance, nor could they participate meaningfully in any sort of political process that allowed them to contribute measurably to resolving the problems that plagued them or to promoting better conditions in their societies. Most Arab citizens were not only deprived of basic human and citizen rights—they were also deprived of the right to do anything about their lamentable condition. They were simultaneously vulnerable and voiceless.

This litany of domestic conditions has always been the primary driver of discontent that drove Arabs to challenge their prevailing political orders and seek to change their social-economic conditions. The challenge of Zionism and the legacy of Western, Russian or Iranian interference in our region are relevant elements in the total picture of mass Arab discontent and attempts at corrective actions, but they are secondary to the fundamental problem of mass humiliation of Arab citizens by the forces of their own home-grown mismanagement and authoritarianism.

With the exception of the brief Arab nationalist moment that was mainly directed externally against Israel and the West, the majority of local, national or regional movements that challenged Arab governments included significant Islamist dimensions. So it is no surprise that yet another movement anchored in religion has emerged on the scene in the form of ISIS.

Defeating ISIS requires a combination of military forces that are now slowly being mobilized, alongside the much more difficult task of addressing the underlying domestic conditions that are anchored in a web of government incompetence, insensitivity and brutality that has prevailed for many decades. This is probably the main reason why young men, and just a few women, become so disgruntled with their life conditions, and feel so hopeless about the prospects for change, that they gravitate towards radical ideas that promise them everything they yearn and that they are denied in their lives—order, power, community, voice, respect, basic needs, and an organizing philosophy of life and the after-life.

If ISIS and other such movements are to be defeated, and not reappear in new forms that are shaped by the same underlying drivers of discontent, we need to see tangible signs of change in the way Arab societies are governed. Those signs, I fear, are still missing from the array of forces being lined up to fight ISIS.

Rami G. Khouri is published twice weekly in the Daily Star. He was founding director and now senior policy fellow of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. On Twitter at: @ramikhouri.

Copyright ©2015 Rami G. Khouri—distributed by Agence Global

On Christmas Eve Mass on January 6, 2015—when President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi became the first Egyptian president to attend a church on the Coptic holy day—the congregation erupted in applause. The Egyptian Pope Tawadros II, who took office in November 2012, expressed his steadfast support for Sisi and called on his adherents to back the regime. Other prominent clerics, such as Father Makary Younan, even claimed Sisi had been “sent from heaven.” But despite the church leadership’s conservative leanings, not all Copts support the Pope’s partisan leanings. The Pope’s lack of neutrality and support for the regime may even be limiting the church’s ability to protect the rights of the Coptic community.

The Coptic papacy has dominated the community’s political activism since the 1950s—after Nasser’s de facto dissolution of the al-Maglis al-Milli, a powerful council of Coptic laymen—but papal hegemony has not bettered the community’s lot. Discrimination against Copts is deeply embedded in Egyptian society, not only among radical Islamists (as state media frequently mentions), but among governmental and military ranks as well. Successive governments have maintained, for instance, strict policies on the construction of new churches or maintenance of existing ones. Among other things, the president’s authorization is required in order to repair basic items such as a church’s toilet. Christians were promised after Morsi’s ouster in July 2013 that the government would remove “all barriers to building churches,” signaling a long-awaited breakthrough, but the issue remains unresolved.

The Pope’s support for the military-backed regime is often explained in terms of security for Egypt’s Christian community. But the state’s record in protecting Copts has, however, been mixed. For example, documents seized by protesters storming the premises of the security services in March 2011 have raised concerns about the role of the security services in the 2011 bombing in Alexandria that killed 23 worshippers at the Church of the Two Saints. According to documents published by Youm7, security services had established a secret unit and recruited members of al-Gama ̒a al-Islamiyya and other extremist groups to conduct the attack.

In more recent cases of Islamist violence against Christians—which has warranted extensive media attention—Egypt’s security apparatus and judicial system have failed to deliver justice. In August 2013, when a wave of violence hit more than 40 churches, security forces left their posts during some attacks or stood idly by as the fury unfolded. The authorities later vowed to reconstruct the damaged churches, but those promises have largely fallen through as well.

For Coptic activists, these security incidents underscore the need for Pope Tawadros II to reverse the church’s role in domestic politics. The Pope has done little to put the issue on the political agenda, and only a few other clerics have dared to openly criticize the regime for its inertia. The Pope’s backing of the Sisi regime risks coming at the expense of the community’s long-term ability to defend its rights. Among his critics, the most prominent is Father Philopateer Gameel Aziz, who has repeatedly condemned the army over the Maspero killings. He was in turn accused of inciting violence against the Egyptian Armed Forces, and a military court imposed a brief travel ban on him in 2012. Moreover, Father Matias has repeatedly advocated for the fair representation of the Copts in politics and denounced Egypt’s judiciary for failing to protect Egypt’s largest minority.

Both clerics are coordinating with the Maspero Youth Union, which was established in the wake of the 2011 Maspero Massacre in which military police opened fire on Muslim and Christian demonstrators, killing 28 people. The pope has drawn much criticism for suggesting that the Muslim Brotherhood was behind the incident and supporting former president Hosni Mubarak’s acquittal, among other things. The union has thus provided Coptic activists an important platform to express their demands and served as a model for independent Coptic activism outside papal politics.

Yet despite these dissenting voices, the papacy is still the central political force for the Coptic community. Many Christians back the Pope out of suspicion of secular institutions such as al-Maglis al-Milli and their fear that opposition would further marginalize the community, which is already heavily underrepresented in the national decision-making process. But if persistent discrimination against Copts is to be addressed, the papacy will sooner or later have to embrace an active Coptic civil society and their demands for reform. In such a scenario, the Pope would step back from his worldly powers and grant Copts an active and critical political role by encouraging Egyptian youth to vigorously participate in society and claim equal citizenship. Otherwise Copts as a whole risk being viewed as steadfast supporters of the Sisi gouvernent.

This article is reprinted with permission from Sada. It can be accessed online at: http://carnegieendowment.org/sada/2015/02/26/egyptian-pope-s-risky-partisanship/i2zi

Johannes A. Makar is an MA candidate at Leiden University. He has written for various print and online media, including Daily News Egypt and the Atlantic Council’s EgyptSource.

The controversy over Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech before the U.S. Congress next week has generated intense reactions from Israelis and Americans of all political shades. Its long-term impact is unknown, but its significance to date is that it has provided us with a rare opportunity to see what happens when American congressmen and women are caught uncomfortably between two very powerful forces in their lives: standing with the American president, or standing with the leader of Israel regardless of what that leader does, including directly challenging the American president.

This is not merely a political popularity contest. If it were, Netanyahu wins without a fight because the Republican majority in Congress thinks Obama is a dangerous Muslim immigrant socialist or something nutty along those lines, and Netanyahu can do no wrong in the eyes of almost all members of Congress from both parties. Of course most members of Congress know little about Mideast issues, but rabidly support any Israeli leader, mainly because they fear sparking the wrath of pro-Israel forces in the United States who could jeopardize the congressmen and women’s re-election chances.

It is noteworthy that the most senior American officials pointedly criticize Netanyahu and say his actions threaten the U.S.-Israeli relationship that has always been a bipartisan one in the United States. The fact that several dozen members of Congress also have stated that they will skip the Tuesday speech points to the deeper dynamic that Netanyahu’s speech has unleashed. That dynamic is about what happens when Israeli leaders’ actions go so far they test whether bipartisan support for Israel across the American political system is stronger than what the American president deems important for the American national strategic interest.

This kind of test almost never happens, so members of Congress can routinely support everything Israel does or wants, without paying any political price at home. That pattern has now been disrupted; they must now decide on whether to attend or skip the Tuesday speech, because the Obama administration has pushed back against Netanyahu very openly, personally and forcefully.

The cracks that have opened in the heretofore solid edifice of pro-Israel support in the U.S. Congress are also reflected in other quarters. The leading newspaper in New Jersey, the Star-Ledger, noted in a blistering editorial against Netanyahu two days ago: “…For the sake of world peace, and to put an obnoxious man in his place, our fervent hope is that he loses his election so this (U.S.-Israel) relationship can get back on track… Accepting a Republican invitation to speak without the courtesy of telling the White House is insulting, not just to Obama, but to the one nation that has stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Israel from its birth, and through every one of its wars…Polls show that most Americans stand with Israel. But that support is softening among the younger generation. And if Netanyahu wins re-election, that sentiment is certain to spread.”

Such strong, personalized editorial attacks against an incumbent Israeli prime minister are particularly noteworthy when they include matter-of-fact expectations for softer American support for Israel. We also see signs that the once monochrome American-Israeli embrace is becoming more nuanced, with the United States fully supporting Israel’s security but opposing some specific diplomatic positions that Israel would like the United States to take. This was explicitly mentioned by a Republican congressman, former under-secretary of defense Dov Zakheim, who wrote earlier this week that Netanyahu’s actions could jeopardize Israel-friendly American positions on issues like an Iran nuclear accord, and the current American government opposition to the Palestinian quest for statehood at the U.N. He even hinted that American military aid to Israel could be affected, noting that Netanyahu, “is right to oppose a deal that he views as bad for his country, but he is wrong to put the Israeli-American relationship at risk.”

The likelihood that such shifts or downgrades would occur in strategic ties between the United States and Israel is extremely low to nonexistent, given the huge structural support Israel enjoys in the U.S. Congress. Yet the fact that we now see such strong, public criticisms of Netanyahu from the belly of the Israel-loving beast that is Congress suggests that a significant political and historical marker has been passed. It remains to be seen if this is mostly fleeting anger against a particularly obnoxious and insensitive man who happens to be the prime minister of Israel, or if it reflects deeper concerns among some Americans that their foreign policies in the Middle East on strategic issues like Iran are publicly manipulated by a foreign country.

Rami G. Khouri is published twice weekly in the Daily Star. He was founding director and now senior policy fellow of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. On Twitter at: @ramikhouri.

Copyright ©2015 Rami G. Khouri—distributed by Agence Global