• The Hamas-Fatah unity deal could jeopardize aid for the Palestinian Authority, Rep. Gary Ackerman pointed out, since the United States won’t give money to Hamas. [NYT]

• The U.S. and Israel anti-missile exercise has been rescheduled for October. [JTA]

• Iran, Jeffrey Goldberg argues, is the post-Nazi Jewish nightmare—but Israel can’t attack them alone, he argues. [Bloomberg]

• The U.S. State Department put out a new travel recommendation for Americans visiting Israel: Cover up. [Ynet]

• Why hasn’t anyone resigned from the Susan G. Komen Foundation (other than in protest)? [Jezebel]

The Fatah-Hamas deal, struck by Mahmoud Abbas and Khaled Meshaal with the backing of emerging regional power broker Qatar, is as vague: The only step forward appears to be clear agreement that Palestinian Authority President Abbas, of Fatah, will be president. Yet there is some reason to believe that this deal may stick, at least for a little longer than the last one: Both sides need it a little bit more now. The P.A. is losing support, while Hamas is newly active in the West Bank; yet Hamas, which just had to abandon its longtime host in Damascus, is going broke. Just generally, the Palestinian cause needs a shot in the arm right now: As Prime Minister Fayyad pointed out last week, the Arab Spring has sapped what has frequently been the Arab world’s cause célèbre of its usual prestige and glamour. (Fayyad’s future will be a major roadblock as the unity government goes forward: Abbas will want him to stay on as head of government, in part because he is a crucial guarantor of Western support; but the Western-educated, technocratic, relatively moderate Fayyad is anathema to Hamas.)

There is the inconvenient but unavoidable fact that Hamas continues to insist on the right to armed struggle and to all of the land between the river and the sea. The peace process, however, has long been premised on the notion that each side is going to give up something. If Hamas will never give that demand up (and it may well not), then neither peace nor the unity government will work. As long as there is even a nominal peace process, however, we are operating under the assumption that Hamas is capable of adopting, as a negotiating precondition, the assumption that Israel has the right to exist. (Again, not saying it will do this, just that if it doesn’t all this talk is moot.) Moreover, Fatah-Hamas unity was going to have to happen to make the peace process work: Hamas’ popularity means it will need to be part of whichever group speaks on behalf of the Palestinian people. The best we can do is hope that the prerogatives of power and legitimacy and its being cut off from Damascus and Tehran will exert a genuinely moderating influence on the group. So, while Prime Minister Netanyahu is right to repeat the line he used several months ago, during Reconciliation 1.0—that Abbas must choose between peace with Israel or peace with Hamas—we observers can at least entertain the prospect of future Hamas reform.

And it’s telling that, while saying the above publicly (Netanyahu also said the time was “not good” for progress), the Israeli government—which surely knew this deal was coming—has also made some interesting offers privately. It suggested that the current West Bank barrier serve as the future borders of a Palestinian state—which would make for a smaller Palestine than the Palestinians would desire, but that’s why they call it negotiating. And, intriguingly, Israel stepped back from demands for permanent control of the Jordan Valley, insisting only on a “long-term” presence. (Zvika Krieger noticed this change.)

If I were a betting man—and given that I thought the Patriots were going to win last night, thank God I’m not—I’d bet against this working out: Hamas still believes what it believes, which is that Israel doesn’t have the right to exist, and it is not so hard-pressed to change tack. But Reconciliation 2.0 seems a little less ridiculous than Reconciliation 1.0, suggesting it’s conceivable that 4.0 or 5.0, a couple years down the road, will be promising.

Palestinian Factions Reach Unity Deal [NYT]
Support for Palestinian Authority Erodes as Prices and Taxes Rise [NYT]
Fayyad Says Palestinians ‘Marginalized’ By Arab Spring [Bloomberg]
Israel Proposes West Bank Barrier as Border [AP/ABC News]
Earlier: Is Meshaal Stepping Down to Step Up?
On Reconciliation, ‘The Devil Is in the Details’

• Prime Minister Netanyahu will address the AIPAC conference next month in Washington, D.C. It is not yet known whether he’ll meet with President Obama, though chances are good. [JTA]

• While we don’t know whether Israel will attack Iran, it seems clear that all the chatter is not merely idle (and not merely intended to bluff). It is on the table in even the most private discussions. [NYT]

• New York police have upped security at prominent Jewish sites in Manhattan, such as synagogues and the Israeli consulate, for fears of Iran’s retaliating for scientist assassinations and other covert actions. [CBS NY/Vos Iz Neias?]

• The special “shomer Shabbos” Nevada caucus turned controversial when participants had to sign something about their religious observance and when Ron Paul supporters flooded it and won. (Mitt Romney won most of the state easily.) [NYT]

• The Egyptian gas pipeline. It was bombed. For the 12th time in the past year. [Arutz Sheva]

Congratulations to the New York Giants on their fourth Super Bowl win—all of which have come in the past 25 years. They beat the Patriots 21-17. An even bigger congratulations to those who bet the prop that the first score of the game would be a Giants safety at 60:1 odds or better.

• Defense Secretary Leon Panetta acknowledged that it would take Iran about a year to actually develop a nuclear weapon—if it decided to. That decision, he added, is the United States’ red line. [Haaretz]

• Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal, having effectively abandoned Damascus, visited King Abdullah II in Amman, in a sign of reconciliation between estranged allies who both have reasons to be friends (but not too good friends) again. [NYT]

• The chatter in Israel is of early elections. The thinking is that Prime Minister Netanyahu will call them while his popularity is high and before the U.S. elections. [LAT]

• Russia is, like, absurdly good to the Assad regime. [NYT]

• An Israeli documentary about the legal system in the West Bank won the prize for best documentary at Sundance. [Haaretz]

It seems like Meshaal is backing away from the Hamas leadership less out of exhaustion than out of ambition. Nathan Thrall, a Tablet Magazine contributing editor who is a Jerusalem-based analyst for the International Crisis Group, answered my questions by email earlier this week.

How credible are these reports?
Highly credible, as the announcements have come from Hamas itself. One doesn’t really “run” for election as politburo head; there are no campaigns. The leader of the politburo is elected by Hamas’ senior decision-making body, the Shura Council, which is itself comprised of elected Hamas leaders. Although there remains a significant possibility that he will be chosen by the Shura Council despite announcing his intention to step down, the announcement doesn’t seem to be a ploy by Meshaal to be begged to lead for another four years.

How voluntary is his retirement?
Hamas’ internal elections are quite secret, so the deeper we get into the mechanics of them the less reliable the information we’re discussing. That said, it appears that Meshaal’s decision was not entirely voluntary.

His ambitions seem larger than to be the leader of Hamas. He speaks more and more as a leader of all Palestinians. Some suspected that he was pushing much harder than his colleagues for reconciliation with Fatah because the end-game for him was Hamas joining the Palestine Liberation Organization and his eventually becoming that organization’s chairman, which is to say, leader of the Palestinian people. These suspicions caused his behavior to come under extra scrutiny, as happened when the May 2011 signing ceremony for the Hamas-Fatah reconciliation agreement was nearly derailed by a dispute over whether Meshaal would be given a seat at the podium beside Abbas. Some in Gaza saw the highly conciliatory speech he delivered in Cairo that day as pushing the boundaries of Hamas’ internal consensus. After meetings with Abbas in Cairo in November and December 2011, Meshaal stressed that Fatah and Hamas had agreed to a joint program of popular resistance, which many—especially Fatah spokesmen and leaders—interpreted to mean that Hamas was committing to a program of nonviolence. Though Hamas leaders on the outside, including Meshaal himself, were quick to clarify that they had not abandoned their right to armed resistance, they didn’t do so as loudly, clearly, or forcefully as they could have, and some in Gaza were unhappy with the resultant misperception that Hamas had radically changed its positions.

At the end of the day, Hamas is a popular movement, based in the West Bank and Gaza, with roots in local schools, mosques, welfare organizations, charities, and, since municipal and legislative elections in 2005 and 2006, government institutions. It is the inside leadership that must be more attentive to the base of Hamas supporters. The outside leadership gets a lot of publicity, but it is the inside leadership that has borne the heaviest burdens of the movement, from arrest to torture at the hands of the Palestinian Authority to the death of family members through assassination attempts by Israel. As one member of the inside leadership told me, “Hamas is not an office in Damascus.”

In discussing Meshaal’s decision, I would caution against using the word “retirement.” He is highly respected, experienced in diplomacy, charismatic, well-connected, and powerful within the movement. It seems likely he will continue to play a prominent role, whatever his official title.

It seems Meshaal’s decision would be connected to Hamas’ abandoning of Damascus in the midst of the Syrian civil war. Is Hamas’ next leader going to be more or less committed to staying in Damascus? If they leave, do they go to Cairo? Doha? Amman?
With the exception of a small group among the outside leadership, Hamas has all but left Damascus already. If Hamas’ outside leadership had been offered an alternative home in a state bordering the West Bank or Gaza—an alternative home in which they were permitted to conduct the business of the movement unobstructed—it’s quite likely they would have relocated by now. That said, unlike Hezbollah, Hamas has managed to avoid supporting the Syrian regime while continuing to express its gratitude for the years of support Assad had offered. Having avoided the mistakes of Hezbollah and other groups, Hamas may be able to stay in Damascus should Assad be replaced.

There is talk that Hamas, much like its cousins the Muslim Brotherhood, is genuinely reforming. Do you buy it? How does the Meshaal news affect your calculation? Does this make reconciliation with Fatah more or less likely?
There’s no doubt that Hamas has undergone significant changes in the last several years. In 2006, they participated in elections for a body many of its members deemed illegitimate because it was the product of the Oslo Accords. In 2007, they agreed with Fatah to form a national unity government that would respect the past agreements signed by the PLO, which include, of course, the recognition of Israel. The platform of that unity government affirmed the PLO chairman’s right to negotiate a final agreement with Israel and to bring such an agreement back to a referendum whose outcome Hamas has said it would respect. In Gaza, Hamas is arresting and prosecuting rocket launchers, albeit less completely than Israel would like. In Cairo in May 2011, Meshaal said that Abbas could take a year to continue pursuing negotiations with Israel. Today Hamas sits in a committee affiliated with the PLO while that organization negotiates with Israel. Hamas speaks loudly, albeit not exclusively, of a state on 1967 borders, though it should be noted that the difference here is one of emphasis, as Hamas has repeated this position many times since it was first uttered in the 1990s by Sheikh Yassin. And in fall 2011, Meshaal stressed his commitment to engage with Fatah on a joint strategy of so-called popular resistance.

These developments notwithstanding, Hamas leaders also say that though they are willing to engage for a defined period in popular resistance with Fatah, and though they are willing to embrace the creation of a Palestinian state on 1967 borders, and though they were willing to form a government whose platform respected the past agreements of the PLO, including its recognition of Israel, they still retain, as members of a people under military occupation, a right to armed resistance; they still hold a long-term goal of liberating not just the territory Israel occupied in 1967 but also the remaining 78 percent of historic Palestine; and they still refuse to recognize the legitimacy of Israel. It should be noted that Fatah too insists on its right to armed resistance.

By all accounts, Hamas makes its decisions collectively, so even if Meshaal had been pushing harder for reconciliation, he cannot make decisions of enormous consequence to the movement without the consent of the Shura council. His successor will be similarly constrained. If the successor is Musa Abu Marzouk, I don’t expect to see changes with respect to reconciliation; Abu Marzouk had been the primary negotiator for Hamas for quite some time. If the successor is from the Gaza leadership, I imagine reconciliation could become more difficult.

Who is his likely successor?
The two names most frequently discussed are Ismail Haniyeh, the Gaza-based Palestinian prime minister, and Marzouk, the deputy head of the politburo, who was an early follower of Hamas’ founder, Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, created the politburo, and headed it from its inception until his arrest in the United States in 1995. The former is a skilled orator and fair mediator, is popular among female voters, and would be Hamas’ most viable candidate in a presidential election. The latter hails from Rafah [in Gaza], is respected by the Gaza leadership, and has a reputation for being one of Hamas’ leading strategists.

(Interview has been edited for length and clarity.)

Hamas Says That Its Political Leader Does Not Plan To Seek Re-election [NYT]
‘Mashaal Planning to Visit Gaza With Abbas’ [JPost]
Hamas Leader To Make Historic Visit to Jordan [AP/Haaretz]
Earlier: Hamas Smartly Departing From Damascus

• Meanwhile, Netanyahu ordered an investigation into Mufti Mohammed Hussein, Jerusalem’s top Muslim cleric, after he gave a speech that quoted a religious text referencing the murder of Jews. [JTA]

• The Syrian government rejected calls from the Arab League for President Assad to step down. [Washington Post]

• Sen. Mark Kirk, the 52-year-old U.S. Senator from Chicago who helped create the latest Iran sanctions, successfully underwent surgery after suffering a stroke. [JTA]

• Ancient Jewish scrolls, most likely belonging to Jewish merchants on the Silk Road, were discovered in northern Afghanistan and are currently in London. [Reuters/Yahoo]

• The man convicted in 1995 of killing Jewish Defense League founder Rabbi Meir Kahane has been denied the request for a new trial. [NYT]

• The Arab League’s mandate to monitor Syria expired yesterday. Activists hope the U.N. Security Council will step in. [WP]

• Rabbi Dov Linzer reads the Talmud and shows that it is up to men to deal with sexual urges prompted by women rather than, as in Haredi communities, to force women to dress modestly to prevent such urges. [NYT]

• The Chinese premier finished his Gulf trip, signing new energy deals potentially in the hopes of avoiding future U.S. sanctions over buying oil from Iran. [WSJ]

• Hamas leader Khaled Meshal will reportedly not run for re-election. [Haaretz]

• The recent spate of anti-Semitic vandalism in Borough Park, Brooklyn, has traumatized the community. [NYT]

• Shmuel Rosner argues that President Obama could receive less than 70 percent of the Jewish vote. [Rosner’s Domain]

• Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood is fully on the anti-Assad bandwagon. Maybe Hezbollah will climb aboard next? (Probably not.) [JPost]

• Robert F. Worth on Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. [NYT Magazine]

• Zvika Krieger finds evidence that Hamas is willing to reform. [Atlantic Is Peace Possible?]

• The (Jewish) policeman who arrested Mel Gibson for drunk driving will be able to sue his supervisors, who he claimed subjected him to discrimination and tried to get him to remove Gibson’s anti-Semitic tirade from his statement. [JTA]

Happy new Bruce single day!

For the United States, this is about bolstering Jordan, one of only two countries that has a peace treaty with Israel (and Egypt’s future stance is unpredictable given that country’s impending Islamist parliament), a close Arab ally sitting on a crucial piece of territory and possessing ace intelligence services. for Jordan, this is about bolstering the Palestinian Authority, which it hopes can contain Hamas (who have brethren among anti-regime Islamists in Jordan) and bring a Palestinian state to fruition before talk grows about Palestinian-majority Jordan absorbing the West Bank. One thing Jordan is doing to help P.A. President Mahmoud Abbas consolidate his power is persecute his archrival within the Fatah Party, Muhammad Dahlan: upon the P.A.’s request, it stripped Dahlan of his assets, said to include companies together worth millions of dollars. The P.A. has accused Dahlan of corruption, which he denies.

Abdullah is starting to get antsy. On his fourth prime minister since a year ago, there are reports that he has begun to crack down violently on some dissent. Jordan provides more reason for the U.S. to pressure Israel to make concessions for the sake of the peace process—pressure that almost certainly won’t be forthcoming until at least November.

Remarks by President Obama and His Majesty King Abdullah of Jordan [White House]
Jordan’s Abdullah Sees Glimmer of Hope in Mideast Talks [WP]
Jordan Seizes Assets of Muhammad Dahlan [The National]
Earlier: Israeli-Palestinian ‘Meeting’ Today in Jordan

It so happened that Pierre Mendès-France’s religion was far less problematic for the Tunisian leader than it was for his political opponents in France, who insisted that an “Israelite” was selling out the French Empire. But Mendès-France’s religion would have been equally problematic, it now seems, for some in the enthusiastic crowd of Tunisians who welcomed the arrival last week of Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader, during his official visit to Tunisia. When Haniyeh appeared in front of the crowd, members of the welcome wagon greeted him with the chant “Tuez les juifs!” (“Kill the Jews!”)

Ennahdha, the moderate Islamist party behind Tunisia’s government, denounced what it called the work of troublemakers who “could be counted on the fingers of one hand.” In a press release, the government declared that these slogans, which do not “reflect Islam and its principles,” were meant to “stain” the government’s reputation. The release concluded: “Jewish Tunisians have lived peacefully in Tunisia for centuries and have the same rights and same duties as any other Tunisian citizen.”

As with so much else in the complex history of Arab-Jewish relations in North Africa, this claim is true—except when it’s not.

The roots of the Tunisian Jewish community run deeply into antiquity: According to Flavius Josephus, Julius Caesar granted a special status to the Jews of the newly created Roman province of Africa. With Rome’s fall and Islam’s rise, the Jews of Tunisia were obliged to choose between conversion or submission to the dhimma. They overwhelmingly opted for the latter and thus embedded themselves in a rigidly hierarchical society, paying a special tax and submitting entirely to Islamic authority.

As dhimmis, Tunisian Jews flourished. But of course flourishing is relative: When confined to the bottom rung of the social ladder, one is happy not to be groveling in the mud just below. The convivencia—the term coined by Spanish historians to depict the ostensibly harmonious ties among Muslims, Christians, and Jews in the medieval Islamic world—requires a very large asterisk. This age, according to Princeton historian Mark Cohen, was “marked by a legally-prescribed regime of discrimination and even witnessed periodic outbursts of violence.” Yet, at the same time, the historical record is clear: Jews played a significant role in the culture and politics of medieval Islam, and the Jewish community as a whole knew “substantial security.” The occasional eruptions of violence signaled a temporary failure of the deal struck between Muslims and Jews, and not—as their Ashkenazi brethren could attest—a way of life (and death).

All this changed dramatically in 1881, when France, in order to secure the eastern border of Algeria, took control of Tunisia, which had been transformed into a protectorate by European powers. With the advent of French rule, the local Jewish community, numbering nearly 100,000, was once again the chosen people. This time, though, French military and civil representatives did the choosing: Thanks to their professional skills and place in the local economy, Tunisian Jewry was ideally placed to serve as their interlocutors.

Historians have long agreed that France’s much vaunted mission civilisatrice was largely a dismal charade for the vast majority of the colonized. As the sociologist (and Tunisian Jew) Albert Memmi observed in his landmark work The Colonizer and the Colonized, the civilizing mission was instead a relentless juggernaut, plundering the land, pulverizing local traditions, and transforming entire peoples into fierce opponents not just of the European presence, but European civilization as well. Tunisian Jews, along with their fellow Jews in Algeria and Morocco, nevertheless benefited enormously from French rule. Wined and dined with the promise of French citizenship, the Jews of Tunisia quickly dropped Arabic for French, traditional Arab dress for French prêt-à-porter, and Arabic (and Hebrew) names for—you guessed it—French names.

As the winds of independence grew stronger, most Jews threw themselves behind the Neo-Destour, Bourguiba’s independence party. Their rationale was simple: Bourguiba’s republican convictions would allow Jews to truly flourish as citizens of the new Tunisia. To be sure, once independence was achieved, Bourguiba’s government strove to welcome Jews. Laws guaranteed their religious and civil liberties, government ministries were offered to them, and Bourguiba maintained a vigilant eye. But the blood-dimmed tide swelling in Algeria soon spilled across Tunisia’s border. In 1961, following rumors that Tunisian Jews had helped the French army, there occurred a number of anti-Semitic acts. In 1967, anti-Semitic demonstrations enveloped Tunis; crowds stormed into the Grand Synagogue, destroying hundred of books and burning the Torah. A long series of violent provocations and murderous acts, climaxing in the bombing of the Ghriba synagogue on the island of Djerba in 2002, put paid to the historic relationship between Muslim and Jewish Tunisians.

Ever since 1956, wave upon wave of Jewish immigration has rolled across the Mediterranean to Israel or France. Those Jews left in Tunisia will soon, like the extremists welcoming Haniyeh, be counted on the fingers of one hand. Not surprisingly, the community is fearful. Its leader, Roger Bismuth, did not mince his words concerning events of the past week: “It is worse than unfortunate—it is catastrophic, especially for Tunisia, given the repercussions these actions might provoke in other countries.” No doubt, Bismuth had not forgotten a similar demonstration held last year, soon after the overthrow of the Ben Ali regime, when several dozen protesters outside the Grand Synagogue chanted anti-Semitic slogans.

Then as now, the religious and political authorities have distanced themselves from these demonstrations. Bismuth met with the head of the Tunisian government, Hamadi Jebali, and the leader of Ennahdha, Rached Ghannouchi, who reassured him they had matters under control. Significantly, France’s National Council of Imams also reacted, declaring that the demonstrations “are opposed to the humanistic values of Islam and tarnish the image of the new Tunisia.”

The sincerity of these reactions cannot be doubted. But Tunisian Jews, including the “Tunes”—the nickname given to those who have emigrated to France and who continue to visit and vacation in Tunisia—nevertheless have occasion to wonder. After meeting with Tunisia’s political leaders, Bismuth observed both he and Ghannouchi “were troubled that among those who were shouting anti-Jewish slogans were Ennahdha members.” It may well prove that Tunisian Jewry will experience the same breakdowns under the new republican contract that they had known under the old dhimma contract. If so, the troubles will not end.

The pro- side, and specifically Levy, a former Israeli negotiator currently of the New America Foundation, was able to win, ironically, by downplaying the importance of Palestinian membership. “This is not a panacea,” Levy argued at one point (it would be pointless to deny that his English accent serves him extremely well when debating policy in front of an American audience). But it would do some good, he argued: it might halt settlement-building, at least in the long run (Miller pointed out that in the short run it would likely accelerate settlement-building); it would alter “the conceptual universe” (including that of “certain people in New Hampshire tonight”), showing the doubters that there truly is international commitment for a two-state solution. Levy called it “declarative diplomacy,” at once providing an ample rationale and shrinking its importance so that the onus was on the other side either to disagree and assert that it would be a big deal—which would have been a risky gambi given the consensus that the end-goal should be a two-state solution—or to argue that this initiative would simply do more small harm than small good, a task made more difficult by its very smallness.

Miller, a former U.S. negotiator, and Gold, a former adviser to Prime Minister Netanyahu, attempted the latter. “U.N. decision in the absence of a plan will not bring the Palestinians any closer to the sovereignty they deserve,” argued Miller. He noted that Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, a hero (in the West) for building real institutions (in the West Bank), “is against this proposition because he knows it will undermine the work he has done.” Miller added, “Recognition would conflate with sovereignty. That may not be legally correct, but that would be the mindset.” Gold pointed out, “You need diplomatic flexibility.” Here he feinted toward what, to my mind, was their side’s strongest argument: that U.N. membership, like borders, settlements, and the statuses of refugees and Jerusalem, is something best left to the negotiating table rather than given up for nothing.

And here we get to the aforementioned flared tempers. For negotiations work best between two sides that are in relatively equal positions to bargain, but, of course, this arguably does not accurately describe the Israelis and the Palestinians. Barghouthi compared them to two mice fighting over a piece of cheese, with the Palestinian mouse imprisoned behind bars and helpless as he watches the Israeli mouse get the whole wedge to himself. To which the rebuttal is that the mouse, trapped behind bars, has put itself on a level playing field—and an un-level moral one—by sending suicide bombers and rockets toward the Israeli mouse.

Levy and Barghouthi had answers for this, too. For Levy, once again, it’s about symbolism: Palestinian membership would be something akin to what literary theorists call a speech-act. It would force the Palestinians to get serious. “Palestine: you’re in the U.N., read the U.N. charter,” which calls for all nations to be “peace-loving,” Levy said. “Hamas, you want in? You read the U.N. charter too.” Barghouthi went a step further, noting that Hamas has recently called for renouncing violence and accepting the 1967 borders—and without noting that other elements of Hamas have done the exact opposite and that Hamas’s infamous charter remains unchanged. “That strains the bounds of credulity,” Miller retorted in the understated fashion that was his style. He was referring to Barghouthi’s claim that Hamas has reformed, but he may as well have been referring also to Levy’s claim that Palestinian membership would reform Hamas.

Gold here went for something like the jugular, asking Barghouthi if he was at a confab in Cairo late last month that included not only members of the ruling Fatah party and other relatively moderate ones like Barghouthi’s own, but also Hamas and Islamic Jihad. He had. If the debate were a larger one, this might have been the trump card, but Levy stepped in to note that U.N. recognition would confer legitimacy on the much broader and more representative Palestine Liberation Organization, and he was never pressed on the prospect that Hamas and Islamic Jihad would need to become PLO members for the thing to have any sort of legitimacy among the Palestinian people in the near to intermediate future, and so defused that particular bombshell. (He did make a rare error in all but comparing Hamas to Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, leaving Gold the easy in to accuse Levy of “moral equivalence,” which he did, over and over and over again, like your uncle at the Seder table).

By the end, all that seemed clear is what we probably knew before: continued Israeli intransigence over settlements and continued division among the Palestinians—with a large portion if not the majority supporting the unsupportable Hamas—means there won’t be peace in the Middle East any time soon. I thought Levy and Barghouthi (specifically Levy) out-argued Gold and Miller, though it was Miller I found myself most frequently nodding in agreement with. You can make the argument that conferring membership might help compensate for continued settlement-building, both symbolically and instrumentally (as it might give the Palestinians access to international courts). But you are entering too many unknowns—who the Palestinian leadership is, how Israel will respond, how other countries in the region will react—for my taste.

“If we do not have a Palestine, we are saying Kaddish for Israeli democracy,” Levy pleaded at one point. Of course, that was not necessarily germane to the motion. The motion, of course, is impossible: full membership would require passage in the Security Council, and the United States will veto any such motion. So instead Levy’s cri de coeur would have to be filed away in the audience-members’ worried minds.

A bit of news from the Washington Times‘ Ben Birnbaum confirms the Assad regime’s importance to Iran and as a corollary the blow that the fall of Assad would represent to the Islamic Republic. He reports that Iran tried to bribe Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood into backing Assad by offering it four posts in the Syrian government. Which reveals not only Iran’s interest in maintaining Assad’s power and other actors’ support for it, but also its influence in Syria, as captured by its ability to guarantee government posts in what is, after all, ostensibly another sovereign country.

Iran Sought to Broker Syrian Deal Between Assad, Muslim Brotherhood [Washington Times]
Earlier: For Hezbollah, Keys Open Doors
Hamas Smartly Departing Damascus

It’s worth remembering, if and when the attacks on Obama for engaging with our enemies begins, that it was (Republican) neoconservatives, such as Elliott Abrams, who most fervently welcomed the Arab Spring, the toppling of dictator Hosni Mubarak, and the democracy that would presumably follow. And also that it was President Bush’s second-term Freedom Agenda that first made it U.S. policy to support democracy in the Middle East no matter the consequences—as when that administration pushed for Palestinian elections and watched as the Brotherhood’s cousin, Hamas, won. (The administration’s refusal to negotiate with Hamas wasn’t exactly a success—it led to Palestinian civil war and President Abbas’s lack of credibility. It wasn’t, however, definitively wrong or worse than negotiating would have been.)

The administration is casting its decision simply as the least bad option. “There doesn’t seem to me to be any other way to do it, except to engage with the party that won the election,” a senior administration official told the New York Times. Added Sen. John Kerry, chair of the Foreign Relations Committee and a potential future Democratic secretary of state: “You’re certainly going to have to figure out how to deal with democratic governments that don’t espouse every policy or value you have.” (He compared it to President Reagan’s negotiating with the Soviets.) And how long until supporting secular nationalism in the Palestinian territories will seem similarly impractical as Hamas and other Islamist parties gain popularity?

What’s going to become increasingly clear is that even Sunni Islamists in the Levant and Egypt are, much like the Islamists of Al Qaeda and the Taliban and Iran and Pakistan, neither homogenous nor ideologically in sync. When Mubarak first went and people spoke of Turkey as a good-case scenario for Egypt, that meant some kind of Islamist government. You can wish for a world in which free and fair Egyptian elections put secular liberals in power, but right now that world doesn’t exist, and so if somebody were to argue that the administration is wrong to talk to the Brotherhood—offering them the blandishments of legitimacy in exchange for the moderation that responsibility and accountability inherently bring—then the appropriate response is: what would you do differently?

Overtures to Egypt’s Islamists Reverse Longtime U.S. Policy [NYT]
As Israelis and Palestinians Talk, the Rise of a Political Islam Alters the Equation [NYT]
Earlier: Perry’s Ascent Heralds Israel’s Rise as Issue

For this, as the New York Times’ Ethan Bronner explains, is really all about Jordan. King Abdullah II is on his fourth prime minister since the Arab Spring began, because he faces the dual threats of a native Islamist movement (kin to Hamas and Egypt’s powerful Muslim Brotherhood) and the majority of his subjects who are Palestinian (he is Hashemite). (Nicolas Pelham published an excellent primer on Abdullah II’s situation last month.) The king wants to be seen as central and important now that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who usually hosted such talks, is out of the picture; wants to empower the more moderate P.A. as compared to Hamas, whose success threatens him both insofar as it emboldens his homegrown Islamist movement and as it increases the chance of a Hamas-run West Bank sharing 60 miles of Jordan’s border; and wishes to advance a Palestinian state in the territories lest the notion that majority-Palestinian Jordan absorb all the Palestinians become more enticing.

So that’s Jordan. You could argue that Israel faces incentives to make this meeting lead to talks, on the theory that a re-elected President Obama will push it as never before, but more likely Prime Minister Netanyahu will wait to see if Obama is re-elected before considering new initiatives. For the same reason, the U.S. is likely to make small statements and take few new risks. The P.A. typically looks for big concessions—the thinking is that these would persuade the Palestinian people that its moderate path is more effective than Hamas’. But right now, the P.A. is also pursuing a more confrontational path, both by trying to establish a unity government with Hamas and, reportedly, going to the U.N. Security Council with complaints about Israeli settlements (it did this last year, too, and a resolution was vetoed by the U.S., as one certainly would be again) and referring Israel’s 2008 invasion of Gaza to the International Criminal Court. In fact, the P.A. had better not come away with anything big, as its rival and potential partner, Hamas, has called for a boycott of the talks. And Hamas has its own patrons: not only a prospective future democratically elected Egyptian government, which would have a heavy Muslim Brotherhood element, but also Prime Minister Erdogan’s Turkey, which over the weekend hosted the head of Hamas’ government in Gaza, who was able to tour the Mavi Marmara.

So, to sum up: all of the relevant players are hemmed in by their own domestic constituencies in ways that all but guarantee no real results and a continuation of the status quo. It must be the new year!

Palestinians and Israelis Will Talk This Week [NYT]
Erekat: Peace Talks Require Settlement Halt [Haaretz/Forward]
Palestinians Plan Diplomatic Steps to Put Israel Under ‘International Siege’ [Haaretz]
Erdogan to Haniyeh: Talks Must Include Hamas [Ynet]
Related: Jordan Starts to Shake [NY Books]
Earlier: Reconciliation 2.0

• Speaking of: the Israelis and the Palestinians meet today in Amman. Keep expectations very low. More later. [NYT]

• Amid the latest tensions in Israel, ultra-Orthodox protesters marched in striped prison uniforms and yellow stars. And would you believe some folks found this tasteless? [NYT]

• Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, which won a plurality of votes in two rounds of parliamentary voting and is the most popular of the Islamic parties that won majorities, said it will not recognize Israel and will try to cancel the peace treaty. [JPost]

• Hamas and Turkey grew closer as the head of Hamas’ Gaza government visited Istanbul. [NYT]

• Ilan Grapel, the Israeli-American law student, writes for the first time about his detention this summer in Egypt, and defends his trip. [WP]

• The Obama administration is beginning to make plans for helping the Syrian opposition, including a no-fly zone. [FP The Cable]

• Gerald Steinberg and others weigh in on the affair concerning certain anti-Israel tweets and blog posts by Center for American Progress staffers. As I wrote last week, the term “Israel firster” (or the implication that a senator is in AIPAC’s pocket) goes beyond mere criticism of support for certain policies. [JPost]

• Beit Shemesh has turned into the battleground against Haredi misogyny in part because many residents—including the eight-year-old girl whose harassment sparked the latest controversy—are American-born. [Forward]

• Rep. Ron Paul, the prominent Republican presidential candidate recently embroiled in charges over racist and anti-Semitic newsletters published under his name, denied he is an anti-Semite. [Haaretz]

• Meanwhile, several GOP candidates have said they would vote for Paul over President Obama in the general election—including frontrunner Mitt Romney (but not including former frontrunner Newt Gingrich). I’d be interested in the Republican Jewish Coalition’s take on this. [JTA Capital J]

• Conservative journalist Philip Klein, for one, disagrees with Romney. [Washington Examiner]

• The United States isn’t too worried about Iran’s threats to shut the Strait of Hormuz. [Yahoo! The Envoy]

• Due to the ongoing reconciliation talks with Fatah, Hamas has reportedly been ordered to cease attacks on Israel. [Haaretz]

• Six religious settlers have been arrested in connection with the riot earlier this month at a West Bank IDF base. [AP/WP]

• Casino magnate and prominent Republican donor (and Gingrich backer) Sheldon Adelson said he agreed with the former Speaker’s remark about the “invented” Palestinian people. What’s notable is he said it to a gathering of young Jews on Birthright trips. [Haaretz]

• Ignore the painting, admire the sentiment: the New England Patriots bought owner Bob Kraft a tribute to his late wife, Myra. [ESPN]

• Um, Prime Minister Netanyahu has a 180 I.Q., maybe. [JustASC]

Everybody saw this, right? Also: “We understand the East German judge made it a 9.”

• The United States is trying to articulate exactly which “red lines” would prompt a U.S. attack on Iran’s nuclear weapons program, in an effort to dissuade Israel from acting on its own. [The Daily Beast]

• A prominent Syrian activist in exile has called for humanitarian intervention. His request won’t be the last. [Yahoo! The Envoy]

• Photographer Lynsey Addario, who while pregnant was harassed at a Gaza checkpoint, gave birth this morning. [Twitter]

• Now we have the head of Iran’s navy mentioning that it would be really easy to close the Strait of Hormuz. Gulp. [AP/WP]

• In Brooklyn’s Hasidic enclaves, the Beit Shemesh conflict with the anti-women ultra-Orthodox is seen primarily as a shanda fur die Goyim. [Haaretz]

• The prominent Abstract Expressionist painter Helen Frankenthaler died at 83. [NYT]

• Hamas and Fatah are best friends again, unless you want to celebrate Fatah’s anniversary in Gaza, and then Hamas won’t let you. [JPost]

• A Tunisian-French Jew lobbies for Yad Vashem to include her savior as the first “righteous” person who is Arab. [NYT]

• Paul Berger continues his reporting on George Washington’s letter to the Rhode Island synagogue with a profile of the document’s reclusive owner, Richard Morgenstern. [Forward]

• Former yeshiva kid Brett Ratner led Hanukkah services for all the rich celebrities on St. Barts. [Page Six]

Maybe the most cogent explanation Matisyahu has offered yet for his sudden, recent change from being Hasidic. Hint: still a little confusing.

• Prime Minister Netanyahu pledged that he would not negotiate with a Palestinian government that included Hamas, as Hamas and the Palestinian Authority currently plan. (Of course, he’s not negotiating with the Palestinian government that doesn’t include Hamas, either.) [Haaretz]

• Turkey may insist on poor relations with Israel as the Knesset debates whether to commemorate the Armenian genocide. (Of course, Turkey already insists on poor relations with Israel.) [NYT]

• Are policy-makers reckoning with the potential radioactive consequences of bombing Iranian reactors (and possibly seeing Israel’s bombed in retaliation)? [NYT]

• It’s being treated as a scoop, but it’s not really news that, as his former senior aide says, Rep. Ron Paul is genuinely anti-Israel. [Haaretz]

• Netanyahu appears to be forcing the closure of an independent television station that isn’t right-wing and has also reported embarrassing details about him and his family. [NYT]

• Do I need to tell you that Don Blanquito, Brazil’s newest funk sensation, is an L.A. Jewish kid named Alex Cutler? [NYT]

• Imagine if the White House had termites and no hot water. Israel is real estate. [JPost]

• A judge dismissed two students’ lawsuit alleging that Berkeley did not adequately protect them from anti-Semitism during a campus “Apartheid Week.” [JTA/Forward]

Matt Damon and (half-Jewish) Scarlett Johansson take a Hanukkah quiz. It gets very real a little after the two-minute mark.

• Without renouncing violence, Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal pledged mass nonviolent protests against Israel. [AP/WP]

• As explosions rocked Damascus, the United States insisted that an Arab League plan to restore peace (and, potentially, enact regime change) be permitted to follow through. [Haaretz]

• President Abbas met with several former prisoners freed as part of the Gilad Shalit swap, including one responsible for the murder of an Israeli teenager. [AP/WP]

• Josh Block, the former AIPAC spokesperson involved in a controversy over liberal bloggers’ remarks and charges of anti-Semitism, was released by Rachel Kleinfeld’s Truman National Security Project, where he had been a fellow. [Salon]

• The amazing story of a multi-year film shoot—for a biopic about the Soviet Jewish physicist Lev Landau—that has basically become its own totalitarian state trapped in 1952, complete with a megalomaniacal director who is referred to as “Boss.” You’re asking if the director is Jewish? You need to ask if the director is Jewish? [GQ]

• A company uses baby foreskins to try to grow human skin. You’re asking if the company is German? You need to ask if the company is German? [Huff Post]

• A bittersweet visit to several former strongholds of Jewish life in both Poland and Spain finds the author mourning what was lost. [NYRB]

• Contributing editor Rachel Shukert remembers celebrating Hanukkah as one of the few Jews in Omaha, Nebraska. [VF]

Have happy fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh nights of Hanukkah!

• Recent attacks against U.N. forces patrolling the Israel-Lebanon border came from Hezbollah, say Israel and France. Israel is concerned about the potential for escalation. [Haaretz]

• Iran plans to hold naval war games beyond the Strait of Hormuz, in international waters, not too far from U.S. ships. This’ll end well. [AP/WP]

• As the Arab League prepares its visit, 160 more were killed in Syria’s northwest. Or as Bashar Assad calls it, “Wednesday.” [NYT]

• In pleading the insanity defense, the lawyer for Levi Aron, accused killer of eight-year-old Leiby Kletzky, suggested that the inbreeding in that Brooklyn Hasidic community may have led to his client’s mental deficiencies. [NY Daily News]

• Jordan Zane Weiner, meet the world. [Page Six]

Abbas and Meshal will meet next week to further hash out details—most germane are the holding of joint parliamentary and then presidential elections—and, as they have throughout this iteration of reconciliation and as they did earlier this year when they actually struck a deal, the meeting will be in Cairo, which post-Mubarak is newly hospitable to Hamas and generally to bolstering the Palestinian cause. However, I can’t help but wonder if the most logical meeting-place isn’t Cairo but … Ankara?

Hamas Prime Minsiter Ismail Haniyeh may soon visit Turkey as well as Qatar (to which Hamas, which is based in Damascus, is thought to be considering a move) and several other Arab states, which would be unprecedented. Somebody noted that on Twitter, Turkey’s ministry of foreign affairs referred to “Mahmoud Abbas, President of State of Palestine,” who was on a “working visit” to Turkey yesterday. “State,” eh? And what was he “working” on?

Isn’t this a move that makes sense for all sides? Erdogan’s Turkey continues to bolster its status as the prime regional power broker and stick its finger in Israel’s eye. Hamas and the P.A., together, receive the imprimatur not—or not only—of the shaky Cairo regime, with its divide between popularly elected Islamists and ruling military holdouts, but of an actually robust and actually Muslim democracy, which is also a major U.S. ally. Hamas uses the association as credibility with the European Union and others that it has indeed moderated; the P.A. is shielded from Washington’s wrath by Turkey’s friendship with Washington. How is this not the logical next step?

‘Meshal Agreed to Non-Violence, Pre-’67 Borders’ [JPost]
Hamas Moves Away from Violence in Deal With Palestinian Authority [Guardian]
Palestinian Parties Walk Out of Unity Talks in Cairo [JPost]

• After a first round of elections that handed big victories to Islamists, the Egyptian military is insisting that it will continue to handle constitutional and other big questions for some time. [NYT]

• Nicholas Kristof finds that support for and the agenda of the most popular Islamist group, the Muslim Brotherhood, is driven mainly by the desire for basic services. [NYT]

• David Ignatius reports on the growing and actually useful alliance between the United States and Turkey, predicated above all on a wide array of mutual interests. [WP]

• The comments of Howard Gutman, the ambassador to Belgium, have been like manna for Republicans looking to paint the administration as anti-Israel. It’s almost as though they should have fired him by now. [AP/Vos Iz Neias?]

• Hamas set a condition on participation in a unity government: elections in East Jerusalem, which it is allowed to contest. The demand is in part intended to force Israel to deny the request and thereby be seen as torpedoing reconciliation. Nicely done. [Haaretz]

The latest sign of its demise was Prime Minister Fayyad’s statement, which was of the obvious, that he will not remain head of government once that government is joined by Hamas. Fayyad is only able to head Fatah’s government by virtue of his rapport with its Western sponsors, and President Abbas’ recognition of his utility in that respect; once Hamas joins the government, there is no way he will hang on. (It’s also notable that with the U.N. moves stalled—the Palestinians are now members of UNESCO, but nothing else, and have been effectively stonewalled at the Security Council—it’s not just the peace process but also Fayyadism that is dead.)

All this is moot if Hamas doesn’t ever join the government. Unity has ostensibly been agreed to, with joint elections tentatively scheduled for next May. But if the past is prologue, elections won’t be held by May. The two sides can’t seem to agree even on whether there will be a unity government in the meantime. And the internecine swiping has begun, with a senior Hamas official accusing President Abbas of not really wanting a unity government.

It should be noted that the obvious lack of unity makes it easier for the Israeli government to continue to insist—not without validity, but it’s not like they’ve proposed any creative alternatives, either—that there is really nothing to be done. In compliance with the Quartet’s timeline, the Palestinian Authority actually submitted a peace proposal. As far as opening positions go, it sounds not bad: borders based on the Green Line but with two percent of the West Bank land swapped; a largely demilitarized West Bank; and permission for Israel to maintain a force along the Jordan River. It is Prime Minister Netanyahu’s turn to respond—and he hasn’t and says he won’t, not unless he gets direct negotiations, which he knows can’t be effective without unity, and which he knows that, with unity, would mean negotiating with Hamas, which he knows most of the world would see as a reasonable deal-breaker.

So, dead as a doornail. Merry Christmas.

Fayyad Won’t Lead a Unity Government [Haaretz/Forward]
Gaza Official: Palestinian President Opposes Unity [AP/Vos Iz Neias?]
Netanyahu Balks at Abbas Proposal for Palestinian State Borders [Haaretz]
Earlier: Fatah, Hamas Re-Up Alliance

Thankfully, no violence occurred at the 2007 parade, though hundreds of anti-gay activists lined the route shouting imprecations and holding hateful signs. “Go to a shrink,” one particularly blunt poster read. “Go Away. Your sickness should be healed, not flaunted,” declared another. Over 7,000 police and army officers protected the marchers, and snipers were placed on the rooftops of nearby buildings.

As the ugly reactions to the parade revealed, the vast array of rights that gay people enjoy in the Jewish state—which include serving openly in the military, adoption, domestic partnerships, and the recognition of marriages performed abroad—did not emerge from nowhere. These rights are the fruit of hard work on the part of many activists, gay and straight, who had to push for them against politically powerful, socially conservative elements. This ongoing fight for inclusion was manifested most recently in the creation of an LGBT faction within the Labor Party, supported by all the party’s Knesset members except for Arab-Israeli MK Raleb Majadele.

But the struggles of Israeli activists and the progress they’ve achieved are meaningless to some, including Sarah Schulman, professor, novelist, and self-described “active participant citizen.” In a New York Times op-ed published last week, Schulman argued that these advances in gay rights are merely a “potent tool” in the Jewish state’s “pinkwashing,” by which she means Israel’s “deliberate strategy to conceal the continuing violations of Palestinians’ human rights behind an image of modernity signified by Israeli gay life.” As evidence of this so-called pinkwashing, Schulman cited the fact that the Tel Aviv tourism board is spending $90 million on a campaign to market the city as “an international gay vacation destination.” For Schulman, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s reference to the Middle East as a region “where women are stoned, gays are hanged, Christians are persecuted” in his May speech to Congress is yet another example of the sinister pinkwashing trend, also known in many quarters as diplomacy.

Schulman, a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, isn’t the first person to employ the phrase. In May, a writer for Time magazine alleged that Israel and Israelis’ participation in a series of international gay events was part of a coordinated campaign undertaken “in the hopes of redirecting [Israel’s] global image away from politics, terrorism and the occupied territories.” Joseph Massad, a professor of Arab politics at Columbia University, told Time that Israel launched this effort “to fend off international condemnation of its violations of the rights of the Palestinian people.” (Massad has written a book, Desiring Arabs, which alleges the existence of a nefarious “Queer International,” with supporters of Israel at its core, whose “discourse … produces homosexuals as well as gays and lesbians, where they do not exist” so as to paint Arab cultures as barbaric.)

The first fallacy of the pinkwashing meme is that it’s a non sequitur. No one is saying that Israel ought to be immune from criticism because it treats gay people humanely. Israel’s stellar record on gay rights does not prevent anyone from condemning the country’s settlement policies, its proposed ban on foreign funding of NGOs, or its lackluster effort to integrate Arab Israelis—issues that Israeli gay activists, many of them leftists, would gladly join Schulman in denouncing. But none of these failings renders Israel’s record on gay rights any less impressive, nor does touting that record constitute a covert method of justifying the occupation or racism against Arab citizens.

Schulman seems incapable of such discernment. “Increasing gay rights have caused some people of good will to mistakenly judge how advanced a country is by how it responds to homosexuality,” she wrote in the op-ed. While it would be foolish to judge a country’s “advancement” solely on the rights of gays, it is a telling standard. The protection of minorities is a bedrock principle of any liberal society, and it is an indisputable fact that sexual, racial, and religious minorities are better off in Israel than they are anywhere else in the region.

Though Schulman claims that, “pinkwashing … manipulates the hard-won gains of Israel’s gay community” it is Schulman who renders these gains meaningless. According to her, the victories of gay-rights advocates in Israel do not exist in and of themselves, but are cogs in a grand propaganda machine to legitimize occupation and oppression. The effort to create a more open and inclusive Israeli society is merely part of a broader PR campaign—undertaken, ironically enough, by the same right-wing forces who recommended I see a psychiatrist to cure me of my homosexuality—to fool credulous Western liberals into believing that Israel is something it’s not.

While accusing the government of Israel and pro-Israel activists of deceiving well-intentioned progressives, Schulman and her ilk are in fact using the issue of gay rights to forward an ulterior agenda. So consumed are they by hatred of Israel that they are willing to distort the truth about the horrible repression of homosexuals in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. If there’s any cleaning of dirty laundry going on here, it is Schulman’s whitewashing the plight of Palestinian gays.

Schulman’s assertion that homosexuality has been effectively “decriminalized” in the Palestinian territories since the 1950s when Jordan revoked colonial-era sodomy laws, will come as cold comfort to the countless gay Palestinians who have fled to Israel after being tortured or receiving death threats by Hamas or Fatah agents. Schulman’s claim would certainly come as news to Maen Rashid Areikat, the PLO’s ambassador to Washington. When asked earlier this year if homosexuality would be tolerated in a future Palestinian state, Areikat replied, “This is an issue that’s beyond my [authority].” Hamas strategist Mahmoud Al-Zahar was blunter. In comments directed toward Westerners, Al-Zahar told Reuters last year that “You do not live like human beings. You do not (even) live like animals. You accept homosexuality. And now you criticize us?” And whatever law might be on the Palestinian Authority books has yet to persuade the leaders of Aswat, a Palestinian lesbian organization, to relocate their headquarters to Ramallah from Haifa. By making the absurd claim that the issue of gay rights is being “manipulated” by the Israeli government, Schulman ends up making excuses for people who kill homosexuals.

Recognizing the enormous gap between Israel and the Palestinian Authority on their respective gay-rights records, critics of the Jewish state have gone to tremendous lengths to propagate a massive lie in order to win over Western progressives. This cognitive dissonance has driven ostensible intellectuals like Columbia University’s Massad to justify the oppression of gay Arabs, as he did in the aftermath of the 2001 “Queen Boat” incident in Egypt, when police raided a gay disco and 52 men were arrested, tortured, and put through a humiliating show trial. “It is not the same-sex sexual practices that are being repressed by the Egyptian police,” Massad wrote in Desiring Arabs, “but rather the sociopolitical identification of these practices with the Western identity of gayness and the publicness [sic] that these gay-identified men seek.” In a 2006 interview with the Advocate, Aswat co-founder Raudo Morcos complained about people who portray Palestinian culture as “backward” regarding its treatment of homosexuals. “What is backward? Backward to whom? Are we comparing the Middle East, the Arab community, to the Western world? This is not a fair comparison,” she said. But if Morcos and other advocates of the Palestinian cause genuinely believed in human rights then they would, without hesitation, acknowledge the suffering of Palestinian gays. It’s not mutually exclusive to criticize both Palestinians and Israelis.

Introducing the term “pinkwashing” into the mainstream debate about the Arab-Israeli conflict is edifying in at least one respect: It lays bare the delusion, paranoia, and cynicism of the Jewish state’s most earnest detractors. In their minds, any positive statement made about the country is necessarily part of a propaganda campaign in the service of a far-right agenda. For an increasingly large swath of the international left, there really is no good Israel can do, short of disappear.

• At last night’s debate, Republican candidates argued over Iran and Syria. The most important moment at the national security-focused event, however, concerned illegal immigration—illustrating, perhaps, that foreign affairs will play a minimal role in the campaign. [NYT]

• Hamas may never have had it so good as right now. [NYT]

• An Israeli minister and retired general warned that the Egyptian unrest will likely empower elements that oppose the peace with Israel. [WP/AP]

• Speaking of, Egypt’s leaders’ concessions appeared not to alleviate the Tahrir crowds’ dissatisfaction. [NYT]

• Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged Israel to unfreeze the $100 million or so in tax revenue that it is withholding from the Palestinian Authority due to its new UNESCO membership. [AP/WP]

“I felt like a time machine,” he told me. “I could not believe all the buildings. And when I came to the village, I didn’t know a soul.”

In the village of Saffa, west of Ramallah, Sumoud Karajeh, 23, is marveling at her new lease on life. In 2009, Karajeh was sentenced to 20 years in prison for stabbing a guard at the Qalandiya checkpoint between Jerusalem and Ramallah.

“When I was in prison, I thought I will not be a mother, I won’t study until I am 40 years old,” Karajeh said last week in her living room. Now she’s moved back into her childhood bedroom, reconnected with friends, and plans to study social work at Al Quds Open University as she did before her arrest. “I will have a normal life,” she said.

***

Barghouti and Karajeh are only two of the 1,027 Palestinian prisoners Israel agreed to release last month in exchange for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, captured and held by Hamas since June 2006. Even though most Israelis support the swap, most also recoil at the idea that convicted militants like Barghouti and Karajeh have been given a chance to lead normal lives. And yet both say they have no regrets about the crimes they committed. For Barghouti and Karajeh, and scores of other Palestinians who could otherwise never enter Israel, prison, in fact, offers a rare opportunity to live in the belly of the beast. It serves as a rite of passage—a forge where Palestinian national ideals are hammered into place.

Karajeh spoke to me on a rainy day last week. A tiny schoolgirl carrying a yellow umbrella had pointed the way to Karajeh’s home at the edge of the village of about 4,000. A banner of Palestinian flags fluttered over olive trees in the yard. On the front door was a poster: “Free Palestinian Prisoners,” it said in English and Arabic. Inside, the house was cold enough to wear a jacket. A picture of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas embracing Karajeh leaned on a shelf next to an oversized stuffed puppy. Karajeh and her mother, Hanan, sat on ornate wooden chairs upholstered in gold. Karajeh wore a bright patterned headscarf, pristine white sneakers, jeans, and a blue cardigan. Pale, with thick black eyeliner and full lips, she had a gap between her front teeth that made her look younger than 23. While she spoke, her mother brought out tiny cups of strong coffee.

Though Karajeh admitted she was in prison because she stabbed an Israeli soldier, she refused to give any details about the stabbing or her motivation. An onlooker captured the event on a cell-phone video and posted it to YouTube. Karajeh said that Israeli intelligence officers had summoned her to the Ofer compound near Ramallah for a two-hour interrogation two days before we met, and she was still rattled by it.

The hardest thing about prison, Karajeh said, was the first 30 days. Israeli intelligence officers interrogated her deep underground in the Russian Compound, a prison steps from Zion Square in central Jerusalem, she said. For a month, Karajeh saw only the investigation room and the tiny cell where she was in solitary confinement. She could not tell what time it was. “Prison was like a grave,” Karajeh said.

I asked her how she stayed sane. “Well, my name is Sumoud,” she quipped. Sumoud is Arabic for steadfastness. “The soldiers would shout, and I would think to myself about my life, about my village and my street and my house,” she said. “I would remember my relatives and name their children in my head, and I would sing to myself.”

A religious Muslim, Karajeh said she trusted that Allah would deliver her from her suffering. And once she was tried and sentenced, life improved. Karajeh was transferred to the women’s division of Hadarim prison, and three months later to Damoun in northern Israel. It was her first time away from home, where she was one of seven brothers and sisters. The other Palestinian prisoners took pity on her. “They were kind to me because I was the youngest,” she said. “They would bring me gifts from the canteen. They would teach me things like English and Hebrew.”

Continue reading: ‘Israel made us kill’

• A J Street founder and board member allegedly met with Hamas officials while reporting on smuggling operations in Gaza. [Washington Jewish Week]

• In 1980, Richard Brody ran into Woody Allen at Mott Street restaurant Sam Wo’s. Absurdity ensued. [New Yorker]

• In other Allen-family news, 23-year-old Ronan Farrow—child of Woody Allen and Mia Farrow—won a Rhodes Scholarship to study international development at Oxford. Another winner was Princeton senior Miriam Rosenbaum, who will study bioethics at Oxford. [Jewish Journal]

• The Times takes a bike tour through Tel Aviv. [NYT]

• Marvin Hamlisch sold his Park Avenue apartment and moved out of New York City. [Observer]

Over the weekend, Abbas and Hamas leader Khaled Meshal will likely sign a deal, which was negotiated in secret, that will establish a joint interim government soon and schedule parliamentary and presidential elections for May. As in April, when Reconciliation 1.0 was announced, the devil is in the details. That starts with the status of Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, who is loved by the West and loathed by Hamas (and not a few other Palestinians; Fayyad isn’t even a member of Abbas’ Fatah party). He is handy to have around when it comes to securing Western aid and U.S. backing, though if the P.A. is allied in a government with Hamas, that quickly becomes a moot point.

Of course, amid the P.A.’s stagnancy, and particularly if reconciliation falls apart (as—let’s face it—it inevitably will), there is the concern that the P.A. could simply disband, leaving a total vacuum that would either be filled by Hamas or, more likely, by Israel stepping in to govern the whole West Bank, pre-Oslo style. No need to panic: This hasn’t happened—yet.

Palestinians Ponder Next Step in Their Statehood Bid [LAT]
Palestinian Reconciliation Remains Uncertain as Fatah, Hamas Agree on Elections [Haaretz]
Fatah: Fayyad Remains Candidate for PM of Palestinian Unity Government [Haaretz]
Experts Warn of P.A. Break-Up [Ynet]
Earlier: On Reconciliation, ‘The Devil Is in the Details’

Take a look at the map. In last week’s Tunisian elections, the Islamist al-Nahda Party, once outlawed, won 90 out of 217 seats. As goes Tunisia, so goes the Arab Spring. In Libya, several Islamist figures, some of them reportedly aligned with al-Qaida, seem likely to fill the vacuum left by Muammar Qaddafi’s death. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood, the region’s oldest Islamist movement, is prepared to compete for 50 percent of the country’s parliamentary seats in elections scheduled for later this month. The exact strength of the Islamist element in the ongoing Syrian uprising remains to be seen, but the contours of this new crescent are already becoming clear.

An Islamist alliance drawn from the region’s Sunni majority spells a kind of long-term trouble for U.S. and Israeli interests that may be equally or even more dangerous than a Shia crescent—even if Iran gets a nuclear bomb. After all, the Shia crescent is sectarian by definition, which means that its transnational character actually enfeebles it. As most analysts recognize, if the clerical regime in Tehran comes tumbling down then all its regional assets will also be weakened, if not destroyed.

That’s not true of a Muslim Brotherhood crescent, where the relative strength or weakness of Tunisian Islamists, for instance, has little bearing on the political power of Egypt’s Islamist movement. As University of Virginia professor Ahmed al-Rahim explains in a forthcoming issue of The Historical Review, “the Muslim Brotherhoods—from Morocco to Egypt to Iraq—have operated in practice as national Islamist organizations.” That is to say, the Muslim Brotherhood crescent is powerful because it both draws on the political aspirations of the regional Sunni majority and is deeply rooted in national sympathies.

Parts of the West perceive this dangerous situation with a good deal of sangfroid. France, for instance, though it backed Tunisia’s former President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali when the uprising against him first began last January, now welcomes the Islamist triumph in its former colony. The election results are “tremendously good news,” said French Foreign Minister Alain Juppé. “After decades of disputable and disputed elections,” Juppé continued, “the ballot went ahead under excellent conditions: no notable incidents, and very high turnout by Tunisian voters.” So long as hundreds of thousands of Tunisian refugees don’t wash up on French shores, Paris would settle for Osama Bin Laden’s ghost as the country’s ruler.

Washington’s position is a bit more complex. Even before the Arab Spring, the Obama Administration correctly believed that the Islamist movement was fast becoming one of the major powers in the region. The president’s advisers, including counterterrorism czar John Brennan, can be blamed for their enthusiasm in reaching out to outfits like Hezbollah, whose political program and intentions they misunderstood. But it was actually the Bush White House that set the precedent for reaching out to Islamists.

In order to keep the peace in Iraq, the Bush Administration was compelled to make peace with—and buy off—local Sunni Islamists that shared the U.S. interest in defeating al-Qaida in Mesopotamia. Moreover, the Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is from the Dawa party, a Shia Islamist organization co-founded by Hussein Fadlallah, the late spiritual leader of Hezbollah. Perhaps most significantly, despite the warnings of our Israeli and Palestinian allies, the Bush White House pushed for the Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2005 that brought Hamas to power.

All the Obama Administration did was read the writing on the wall: Given a choice in free and fair elections, Arab electorates will invariably put Islamists in power. It is for this reason that the present White House has privileged its relationship with Turkey, and to a lesser extent Qatar, while it has downplayed its alliance with Israel. If the Islamists are riding a wave, the administration’s logic goes, then it is useful to have an Islamist as a go-between, like Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He is reportedly the world leader with whom Obama speaks most often after British Prime Minister David Cameron.

Some argue that in spite of its anti-Israel and anti-Western rhetoric, Erdogan’s Freedom and Justice Party really is a model moderate Islamist organization. After all, there’s no ban on alcohol in Istanbul bars, and Turkish women aren’t compelled to wear the headscarf. Unfortunately, these domestic issues have virtually no bearing on vital U.S. interests. What should matter to U.S. policymakers is that Erdogan is the architect of an adventurist foreign policy and has promised to send warships to protect future aid flotillas. Erdogan, who uses anti-Israel rhetoric to stir the passions of the Arab masses, is no moderate, but a demagogue who has patterned his career after the modern Middle East’s most famous radical, Gamal Abdel Nasser.

Indeed, “moderate” is a word that gets thrown around recklessly when it comes to the Islamist groups that comprise this new Muslim Brotherhood crescent. Consider the leader of al-Nahda, Rashid Ghannoushi, who, after many years of exile, may well be Tunisia’s next prime minister. He is routinely described as a moderate, even though he has praised the mothers of suicide bombers and believes that the “region will get rid of the germ of Israel.”

Perhaps to better understand the term “moderate” we might consider Islamist parties in the context of how they exercise power in their local environments. Where Osama Bin Laden spoke of a revived caliphate that would unite the umma, Islamists like Ghannoushi, Erdogan, and the Muslim Brotherhood are focused on their own national projects. Extremist Islamist outfits like Bin Laden’s original al-Qaida live in caves and rely on the support of Middle Eastern governments in order to accomplish operations like blowing up planes. So-called moderate Islamist parties, on the other hand, win electoral contests that leave them in charge of Middle Eastern governments, security services, and militaries with artillery, tanks, air forces, and navies.

Despite their name, the moderates are more dangerous than the extremists by a matter of magnitude. It’s no wonder the Obama Administration seeks to appease them by keeping Israel at arm’s length.

• The IDF has been given the go-ahead to continue to stop rocket attacks from Gaza, including, in theory, a ground operation. Judge Goldstone’s op-ed may have been more well-timed than he knew. [AP/Vos Iz Neias?]

• Jason Diamond eloquently points out that the way Tim Tebow wears religion on his sleeve is the exact opposite of Koufaxing. [Jewcy]

• Brett Ratner—of Money Talks and the Rush Hour franchise—will direct an adaptation of the book Hunting Eichmann. Not sure he’s the best guy for the project, but OK. [Forward The Schmooze]

• Maybe Amar’e Stoudemire’s get-up yesterday wasn’t a costume … . [Page Six]

• A co-founder of Hamas only recently released from Israeli prison was arrested again. One of his sons was the one who became an Israeli informant. [JTA]

T.S. Eliot and Groucho Marx: best friends forever? Not quite, but the anti-Semitic poet did admire the Jewish comic, with predictably hilarious results. Here is a late-period Groucho treasure.

More worrisome is the Haaretz report (by frequent Tablet Magazine contributors Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff) that Hamas was able to secure advanced, Russian-built anti-aircraft weapons that were looted from Libya during the Qaddafi regime’s last days. Theoretically, greater ground-to-air capacity could threaten Israel’s freedom of movement over Gaza’s airspace as well as, potentially, civil aviation from the southern Israeli port city of Eilat. “The anarchy in Sinai in recent months,” Harel and Issacharoff add, “has allowed the Palestinians in Gaza to operate almost without interference, and improve their training and weaponry.”

Hamas Boosting Anti-Aircraft Arsenal With Looted Libyan Missiles [Haaretz]
IDF Responds to Rocket Fire, Targets Gaza Terror Centers [Ynet]

972+ has it. The exclusion of IHH, the Turkish charity with ties to Hamas, from the flotilla that was set to launch this past June was an early victory for Israel against a mission that ultimately never left port; IHH was instrumental in organizing last year’s flotilla, in which 9 members were killed by Israeli soldiers aboard the Mavi Marmara.

Unconfirmed reports have it that Turkish navy ships would accompany the flotilla, something Prime Minister Erdogan has at times threatened. “That would be perceived as a serious provocation by Israel,” 972+ reports. Er, actually, if Turkish ships were to deliberately attempt to run an Israeli blockade, it would inarguably be a serious provocation.

Gaza-Bound Flotilla Said Planning To Depart Turkey in Coming Days [972+]

Yesterday Israel approved a deal, seemingly hastened by the Gilad Shalit prisoner swap, which will free Grapel in exchange for 25 Egyptian prisoners. And if all goes according to plan, Grapel will be released Thursday. Some former U.S. intelligence officials believe Grapel may really have been an Israeli spy, but Israeli soldiers, never mind the Jewish state’s clandestine agents, are seldom returned alive. The Egyptians know he’s not a spy, but he’s a valuable card anyway, which is why they captured him. It is logic and behavior befitting a terrorist organization.

If Hamas and Hezbollah can get the Zionist entity to release their associates, the thinking goes, why can’t Egypt’s interim ruling body, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, do the same for Egyptian prisoners? The problem in the Middle East, then, isn’t that the Islamists are on the verge of taking over and thereby transforming Arab societies. The problem is that these societies are already governed by the passions that make the Islamists so popular.

Longtime U.S. ally Hosni Mubarak, the former president of Egypt, would not have dreamed of taking an American citizen hostage. It’s true that things have changed in Egypt, but let’s not overstate the case: Grapel’s arrest is not a sign that the Supreme Council of Armed Forces is joining hands with Iranian-backed terror organizations. The purpose of the exchange, from Cairo’s perspective, is to placate the mobs that have already laid siege to the Israeli embassy, burned Coptic churches, and may in time cause even worse problems for the ruling military council. The way to calm the situation, they believe, is to show that Egypt’s problems are manufactured by the West, and that Cairo’s ever-competent rulers managed to unearth a plot before the foreigners could once again unleash their mayhem.

Why Cairo chose Grapel as its test case seems to be merely a matter of convenience. Yes, the Queens native served in the Israeli Defense Forces in the 2006 war, where he was injured fighting Hezbollah. Yet the fact that Grapel, a law student at Emory University in Atlanta, had taken a job in Cairo in May with St. Andrew’s Refugee Services, a Christian organization that mostly provides legal aid for Sudanese refugees, is perhaps what first attracted the attention of Egyptian authorities. African refugees—Christians and Muslims—are a sensitive issue for the Egyptians, not least because their mistreatment in Egypt has caused many of them to flee to friendlier vistas across the border in Israel.

While some believe the Shalit deal set the precedent for the Grapel exchange, it’s a mistake to see the two cases in the same light. For Israel, the point of freeing a thousand prisoners in exchange for one is not merely a moral calculation, but also a form of strategic communication intended to dishearten Israel’s foes. The message it sends is not only that Israel values life above all, but that the Jewish state can afford to put its enemies back on the street because in the end, no matter how numerous, those enemies have no chance of winning.

The Grapel deal is something else—straight-up extortion with domestic political benefits. For Egypt, getting prisoners released for Grapel is more like Libya winning intelligence agent Abdelbasset al-Megrahi’s freedom from the Scottish government as part of an oil deal in 2009, or Iran’s kidnapping three American hikers and accusing them of espionage two years ago. Here the point is to face down the West publicly, and generate popular support at home. The message is: Western actors are trying to sabotage the people of the Middle East, but the ruling authorities are proud heroes of resistance who have exposed the designs of the imperialist or Zionist oppressors and have made them publicly pay for their crimes.

The Egyptian army probably didn’t want to get into this game of political extortion, but with Mubarak’s downfall it became necessary to win the affections of a very demanding audience: Egypt’s middle-class urban youth, a constituency to whom Mubarak never paid much attention, which is precisely what led to his demise. The Obama Administration believed that Mubarak’s exit would have little effect on an Egyptian political system still dominated by an army dependent on $1.3 billion in American military aid each year, but the problem should now be as obvious to the White House as it was to the Egyptian military from the outset. As angry as the army was at Mubarak for trying to install his son in the presidential palace, it also understood it was dangerous to give the mob a de facto veto that would allow it to shape the Egyptian political system however it saw fit.

That vision, unfortunately, is very popular in the Muslim-majority Middle East. It’s generally anti-Israeli and anti-American, to be sure, but Israel and the United States are details in a larger architecture of resentment of the West.

Hatred of the West, and of its local proxies, has been a central part of political Islam’s program from the outset. The Muslim Brotherhood was formed in 1928 in the midst of Great Britain’s 72-year-old occupation of Egypt. But long before London took an active role in Egyptian politics, 18th- and 19th-century Muslim intellectuals and activists counseled the masses to be suspicious of the West. Take their science and technology, they advised, but forgo the West’s secular values, which undermine you and your faith.

Today, those who advocate for engagement with Islamists argue that groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and Tunisia’s Nahda Party have matured and are now willing to play by the rules and act like democrats. The Islamists may not like the West, but they have no choice but to uphold agreements and partake in the international system. On the other side of the debate, skeptics fear that the Islamists are talking out of both sides of their mouth, and once in office they’ll never willingly forsake power. But both of these arguments miss the point.

Yes, Islamism is already turning out to be the most powerful political current across the region. But the attraction of Islamism is not simply that it appeals to conservative and traditional Muslim societies, but that it draws freely on the sources of resentment that have been part of the political language of the region for more than two centuries. It was not Egypt’s Islamists who led the charge against the Israeli embassy in September, but young and nominally secular Egyptians. And it is that mob, potentially in the many millions, with whom Egypt’s ruling body was currying favor when it arrested Grapel.

The Shalit deal—and many pointed this out at the time—was a huge victory for Hamas (quite simply, Hamas was able to trade one Israeli for more than one thousand Palestinians—a bargain any fantasy football league manager would have vetoed in a heartbeat); the hints that the deal might herald Hamas’ move from Damascus to Cairo further burnished the group’s credibility. Hamas and the P.A. exist in an essentially zero-sum relationship, so what’s good for Hamas ipso facto hurts the P.A., and diplomats are acknowledging that the Shalit deal contained exactly this dynamic. If you need further proof that the Shalit deal, which technically had nothing to do with the P.A., in fact lowered the P.A.’s standing, consider that Israel’s cabinet is now debating maybe freeing Fatah prisoners as well—if only to even things out! (There’s also something sickening about the fact that so far Israel is rewarding the terrorists and punishing the moderates, without even necessarily meaning to.) And if you need further proof that the P.A. isn’t really important right now, consider this statement from one Israeli government source: “We don’t want the Palestinian Authority to collapse, but if it happens, it won’t be the end of the world.”

Then again, part of the reason for this lack of interest in the moderates’ survival is Abbas’ U.N. gambit, which gave Israel less cause to do him any favors and which, circuitously, brings us back to Fayyad’s speech. He gave it at an event thrown by the American Task Force on Palestine. As Josh Rogin detailed on Foreign Policy‘s site, the ATFP, which has achieved real influence in pushing a pro-Palestinian agenda, has actually fought hardest not, say, with AIPAC or other pro-Israel groups, who actually admire the group and claim they want to work with it, but with Abbas and the Palestinians’ official group in Washington, the Palestine Liberation Organization. The source of strife? The ATFP remained neutral on the U.N. gambit. Even the folks who should be Abbas’ friends (and very few people can be said to exist) are abandoning him.

It is certainly arguable that, as Abbas has alleged, the Obama administration led him up a tree and then removed the ladder. What seems inarguable is that Abbas is now up in the tree and isn’t going to come down. The next controversy will be over UNESCO funding—the U.N. development agency stands either to refuse entry to the P.A., whose application it has already accepted, or to lose all U.S. funding (more than one-fifth its total) due to prior legislation. And if you thought Abbas would take a construction freeze and a new round of direct talks as his excuse to revoke the U.N. bid, think again: “We submitted the request,” he said over the weekend, “and we will stick to it to the end.”

Erekat: Israel Offered Halt in Settlements [Ynet]
Palestinian PM Fayyad: Time Is Not Right for Serious Peace Talks [Haaretz]
Diplomatic Sources: Shalit Deal Hurt Chances of Renewing Israeli-Palestinian Talks [Haaretz]
Israel Mulls Freeing Fatah Prisoners as Gesture to Abbas [Haaretz]
Inside the Tiny Washington Group That Is ‘Mainstreaming Palestine’ [FP The Cable]
Palestinian Bid for Full UNESCO Membership Imperils American Financing [NYT]
Abbas: Renewal of Talks With Israel Won’t Affect U.N. Bid [Ynet]

Here’s what Blumenthal doesn’t mention: that the “interview” this morning on an Egyptian television network was the final sadistic nail in the coffin of the five-plus years’ captivity of a teenage Israeli soldier. To be very clear, the interview was not agreed to by Israel—the original plan was for Shalit to be in Egypt for less than 15 minutes, merely an intermediate point between Gaza and Israel—and the Israeli government is shocked and appalled by the propagandistic spectacle (the English-language interviewer asked Shalit leading questions about Egypt’s indispensable role in brokering the deal and whether more Palestinian prisoners should be free). If you watch the video and see this poor kid barely able to keep his eyes open and wanting only to see the family he’s been kept away from for a fifth of his life, you will be shocked and appalled, too. See that picture? The hand on Shalit’s shoulder belongs to a Hamas thug standing behind him. At a moment when Shalit must still not have been sure that the deal for his freedom was going to go through, he was subjected to this. Frankly, it’s fucking enraging.

Anyway, it’s a shame that Blumenthal only elects to display his formidable skills as a press critic (really, this was great!) when it suits his prior agenda. And does Blumenthal really want the stories of the prisoners told? The one who killed a few dozen members of three generations of one family during a Passover Seder? The one who blew up a Sbarro’s pizza joint? If he thinks that standing those stories against Shalit’s story, even with the full, appropriate context of a brutal, unjust four-decade-long occupation explained, will somehow manage to make us care less about Shalit and more about an unequivocal terrorist group, then he can go for it.

I’ll prefer to focus on what Noam Shalit told actual members of the media earlier today outside his house in the north of Israel. “When I first saw Gilad,” he said, “I did not say much, I just hugged him.”

The U.S. Media Reports: Gilad Shalit Swapped for 1000 Non-People [Al Akhbar]
Gilad Shalit: I Thought I’d Stay in Captivity For Years [Ynet]

• A member of Hamas’ negotiating team claims that Israel pledged to lift the Gaza blockade as part of the deal, though he attributed this plank to talks with the German mediator—i.e., not the talks that led to Gilad Shalit’s freedom. [Haaretz]

• President Abbas—who has been marginalized by the deal, since he had nothing to do with it—celebrated the Palestinian prisoners’ release, and asked God “to forgive these martyrs.” [JPost]

• In an unusually specific charge, Iran accused the United States of trying to foment strife between it and Saudi Arabia by revealing (or allegedly fabricating) an Iranian plot against the Saudi ambassador’s life. [NYT]

• So Israeli-American Ilan Grapel is next to be freed, right? [NYT]

• The IDF is warning its soliders not to be “another Gilad Shalit,” now that one abduction has gotten results for its perpetrators. [Haaretz]

The only blip in the exchange was Shalit’s appearance in a brief, English-language interview on an Egyptian television network. He seems relatively healthy (you know, considering) if extremely tired, and at one point the interviewer and his translator got into a fight over the fact that Shalit was tired and should be let go. Indeed, the interview strikes this viewer as idiotic, borderline sadistic; it also was pretty clearly put together to trumpet Egypt’s involvement in brokering the deal. It is appalling. The original plan had it that Shalit would be in Egypt for under 15 minutes, and there was no mention of a TV interview. If it turns out Israel did not accede to the TV appearance, whoever forced it upon a soldier who had been in captivity for more than five years deserves all the trouble that’s coming to him. [UPDATE: An Israeli official told the AP, "We are all shocked that a so-called interview was forced on [Shalit].”]

Still, most importantly, Gilad is back. Here he is emerging at an air base in central Israel:

Gilad Shalit Reunited With Family at IDF Base Following Return to Israel [Haaretz]
WATCH: Egypt TV Despicable Interview With Gilad Shalit [Forecast Highs]
Hamas Frees Israeli Soldier as Prisoner Swap Begins [NYT]
Israeli Soldier Is Freed in Prisoner Swap [WSJ]
Hamas and Israel Exchange Prisoners [Al Jazeera]

… Huh? The general assumption was that Grapel was not a spy, but rather some idealistic American kid who decided to visit Tahrir Square, foolishly lied about being a journalist, and unluckily ended up in Egyptian custody. But Israel’s willingness to trade prisoners for him—especially given that he is the United States’ responsibility, having entered Egypt with his American passport—maybe suggests otherwise? I talked to Bruce Riedel, a former intelligence hand and now senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, to get a handle on what’s going on with what is, after all, an American citizen one year older than myself.

It seems likely either that the exchange for Grapel is part of the Shalit deal, or that it is less closely linked: that the Shalit deal created a climate in which the Grapel deal could happen and also that Shalit could distract people from it—the Egyptian government is worried that its people will be angry about letting Grapel go. Which do you think it is?
I think it’s the latter. It’s an opportune moment to clean out the file system. And particularly the Egyptians want to do it because they want to continue to earn good favor with the United States and try to re-establish strong intelligence links. Our intelligence relationship was built around Omar Suleiman [former President Mubarak’s number two, now deposed]—it was very much a one-man show. This is a way they can do it and get a bunch of Egyptians free at the same time. They kind of hide it under the larger Hamas deal.

What makes now an “opportune moment” for such a deal?
Everyone wonders whether the Hamas deal—it may be dependent upon developments in Syria, and the future of Hamas’ headquarters there. The Egyptians want something if they’re going to allow Hamas’ political leadership to move there, which has costs with their relationship with the United States. It’s their way of saying that if the Hamas leadership is in Cairo, you know, ‘We can exert a moderating influence on them—look, we were able to get the deal done!’

I think it’s the general sense that the Arab world is in turmoil. Strike now when bird is in hand. Six months from now, who knows who’s going to be running what, and it may not be possible.

The other theory making the rounds—and it’s not really backed up by much, but still—is that Israel and the U.S. are striking these deals to put themselves in a favorable P.R. position so that they can then do something unpopular … like take military action against Iran.
There’s certainly a lot of suspicious and fishy things happening in the Iran arena, but I don’t think the Obama administration is interested in another war in the Middle East. I can’t see this president seeking another war when he’s spent much of the past two-and-a-half years to close down the two wars he inherited.

What is the significance of the fact that Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, previously head of the CIA, was in Cairo two weeks ago, and ostensibly failed (but probably did more than merely fail) to get Grapel freed?
Our blessing is useful for both sides, but especially the Egyptians, because the military wants to maintain the close relationship and would like us to avert our eyes when the Egyptian military has its occasional excess, like with the Copts. And this is money in the bank.

Finally, how do we square, on the one hand, the insistence that Grapel is not a spy with, on the other hand, Israel’s willingness to trade prisoners for him, especially given that he should be the Americans’ problem?
The simplest solution—not necessarily the right one—is he is some kind of Israeli agent, and they felt he would be much less likely to be arrested with a U.S. passport, and that assumption proved to be erroneous. I haven’t got a clue. But the simple answer would be: he was on some kind of mission, and therefore the government of Israel feels responsible to bring him home and would be willing to trade prisoners for him. It certainly will reinforce Egypt’s argument that he was an intelligence operative of the Israelis if he’s traded for 80 or so Egyptians.

Report: Israel, Egypt Close to Sealing Deal to Free Suspected Israeli Spy [Haaretz]
Earlier: U.S. Prisoner Unsung Player in Shalit Affair
Israeli-U.S. Law Student Detained in Egypt

And quite a plan: Haaretz reports there will be 11 phases, a series of preordained moves in which the several sides (the Israelis, Hamas, the Egyptians) take various steps to reassure the others that they will follow through on their ends of a bargain that will ultimately see over 1,000 prisoners go free. For example, Israel releases a few dozen female prisoners; then Shalit is transferred, via the Rafah crossing, from Gaza to Egypt, only at which point will Israel begin releasing some of its male prisoners. (Upon transfer from Egypt to Israel, Shalit “will be given his old cell phone in order to telephone his mother.”) Prime Minister Netanyahu is playing an extensive, symbolic role in the latter part of the proceedings. After all, this was his decision, and his to own—for better and for worse. He was reportedly difficult to persuade throughout, right back to when chief negotiator (and former Mossad official) David Meidan first made informal contacts with Hamas.

It was not hard to see why Netanyahu, or any Israeli, might hesitate to make this deal, and the disclosure of the names of nearly 500—almost half—of the Palestinian prisoners whom Israel will release makes it even less hard. “These are not just prisoners with ‘blood on their hands,’” Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff (who wrote about the Shalit situation for Tablet Magazine) report. “Rather, the list includes some of the founders of the Hamas military wing, such as Zaher Jabarin and Yihya Sanawar, and prisoners involved in some of the most ignoble terror attacks in Israel, including the 1989 attack on bus 405 and the 1994 abduction of Israel Defense Forces soldier Nachshon Wachsman.” And the people behind the 2001 Tel Aviv night club attack. And the 2001 bombing of the Jerusalem Sbarro. And the Passover massacre at Netanya in 2002 (for me, the always-remember-where-I-was moment of the Second Intifada). More names, and the crimes they committed, are listed here.

It is therefore unsurprising that the deal has not been greeted with unanimous approval. Three cabinet members—Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, the Yisrael Beiteinu head; Uzi Landau, the infrastructure minister, also of YB; and Moshe Ya’alon, of Netanyahu’s own Likud—voted against the deal outright. Interior Minister Eli Yishai, head of Shas, suggested freeing certain Jewish terrorists as part of the deal for the sake of “balances.” And speaking of: one entrepreneurial soul, an Israeli Jew who claimed he was related to terrorist victims, vandalized Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s grave in protest (click for ugly, important picture). Victims’ families have the opportunity to petition the High Court to overturn releases, but the court is expected to stare the government’s decisis on this one. In a touching article, the Times’ Ethan Bronner reports on two families of victims of prisoners who will be released—one of which opposes the deal, the other of which supports it. Two Jews, two opinions. (A new poll suggests that 79 percent of Israelis support the exchange.)

Is it a gift to terrorists? Plainly. Is it massively, just gargantuan-like, lopsided? Inarguably. The only consolation to be taken is that some of the terrorists Hamas has wanted these past five-plus years were not included (and nor is Marwan Barghouti, although he is a special case: it is far too complicated to try to parse whether Israel should truly wish him jailed, or Hamas truly wish him freed). It’s not even clear that Hamas will honor elements of the deal barring the return to the territories of some prisoners, who are being deported upon their releases. Is it going to lead to further kidnappings of Israeli soldiers in exchange for further prisoners? Well, why wouldn’t it? This is what happens when you literally negotiate with terrorists.

Meanwhile, is Israel getting much in return besides Shalit? Freeing Israeli-American Ilan Grapel will require more Israeli prisoners released. Turkey claims it aided the mediation, but Egypt disputes it, and certainly the deal is not suddenly going to repair Israeli-Turkish relations. Aaron David Miller is quite correct when he notes that this will have no effect on the peace process—in fact, in empowering Hamas and marginalizing the Palestinian Authority, it’s pretty sure to hurt it (further).

If the deal seems totally bewildering to non-Israeli readers, well, maybe it’s simply bewildering. Or maybe we don’t understand what it means to live in a society where one soldier can be everyone’s son, and everyone’s son can provide a reason for staying together, and engineering a major strategic defeat is worth it so that none of your citizens can claim they were never alive at a time that Gilad Shalit was a free man.

Shalit Swap: The Step-by-Step Guide [Haaretz]
Behind the Scenes of the Shalit Deal [Ynet]
Israel Releases Names of 477 Prisoners to be Freed in Trade [NYT]
In Shalit Deal, Israel Crossed Its Own Red Lines [Haaretz]
A Yearning for Solidarity Tangles Public Life [NYT]
Related: News of a Kidnapping [Tablet Magazine]
Everyone’s Son [Tablet Magazine]

There is something fishy going on here. And it involves an American citizen.

Grapel has been detained for nearly four months. Because he entered Egypt with his American passport (he has dual U.S.-Israeli citizenship; his father is Israeli), he is under U.S. jurisdiction and is the United States’ responsibility. Duly, he was able to meet with U.S. diplomats. And only last week, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta (previously head of the Mossad’s U.S. counterpart, the CIA) visited Cairo in part for the express purpose of seeking Grapel’s freedom.

Here is where it gets interesting. Panetta failed, but he was in Cairo—we now know—either at the same time or mere days before Israeli negotiator David Meidan—a former Mossad senior officer (who therefore must have worked with Panetta before) who was Israel’s Shalit pointman—and Hamas officials were also in Cairo. They were negotiating not with the usual German mediation but with Egyptian mediation. Flash forward to yesterday morning, when reports appeared that Egypt was now raising the stakes vis-à-vis Grapel: extending his prison stay yet again and still without an indictment, accusing him of throwing fire bombs at Egypt’s Interior Ministry building, and—wait for it—demanding the release of 78 Egyptian prisoners in Israeli jails in exchange for his freedom. That was yesterday morning; by yesterday evening, Grapel was quietly freed under the backdrop of the Shalit deal.

This is all speculation, but doesn’t it seem possible that Grapel was held by Hamas and Egypt as a further bargaining chip, one who, all importantly, caught the attention not only of the Israelis but of the Americans? Actually, we almost know for a fact that Grapel was part of the bargaining, because otherwise there would be little reason to let Grapel go as part of the Shalit deal (the other explanation could be that Egypt wanted to bury the news of the release to save themselves the embarrassment, but that is a pretty contrived explanation). This would also explain the sudden burst of activity on the Grapel front yesterday morning, followed by the reversal yesterday evening: it could have been the Egyptians upping their leverage on the Americans so that the Americans would push the Israelis to strike a deal.

If Panetta were involved in the negotiating, then who else got what? The United States would like to see Hamas turn away from its alliance with Iran, which has never been less convenient seeing as it exists through Syria, where Hamas is headquartered, and Syria may well fundamentally change in the coming months. The United States might also be more eager than usual to see Hamas score this victory over its main rival, the Palestinian Authority (securing the release of one thousand Palestinians), given the recent goings-on at the United Nations.

If Grapel were a part of the deal, it would also suggest that Hamas got a far better deal than they would have gotten without Grapel, because they were able to exert additional bargaining power by appealing to the Americans. This seems plausible, too. We do know that previous negotiations put the number of prisoners exchanged in the 250-350 range, not the over 1,000 that will be released under this deal; on the other hand, in the earlier talks, many prominent figures who won’t be released, such as Marwan Barghouti, were on the table. Getting a look at the prisoners being released may tell us more. Are any of them based in Egypt rather than the Palestinian territories? Do any of them pledge allegiance more to the Brotherhood?

This entire episode occured, of course, in the context of the close ties Hamas has enjoyed with the post-Mubarak Egyptian government, which earlier this year helped negotiate the (failed) Hamas-Fatah reconciliation and which has been sympathetic to Hamas’ cousin organization, the Muslim Brotherhood. Did negotiations fail for almost five years and then succeed after only a few months not because of Shalit but because of Grapel? (Grapel was arrested about two weeks before the fifth anniversary of Shalit’s kidnapping.) Was Egypt less a mediator then merely a part of Hamas’ side?

Finally, this line of inquiry leads to a yet more tantalizing (if less consequential) one. Namely: is Grapel a spy? He has always seemed less Mossad and more particularly dumb Hitchcock protagonist, an idealistic bro who put photos of himself in Tahrir Square on his Facebook page and suddenly found himself caught up in intrigue he had nothing to do with (“he had a satellite phone like I’m an astronaut,” his father memorably put it). At the same time, if you are Egypt, why hold him so long? We may have our answer: according to Meidan, the top-secret negotiations have been ongoing for several months—which is to say, likely since before Grapel’s June arrest. Egypt may have arrested him and quickly realized that he was perfect leverage: someone they could both semi-plausibly accuse of spying for Israel (he had been an IDF paratrooper and had lied about being a journalist upon entry) and use to get the Americans involved. This is maybe what happened—probably, even.

But there is only one thing I feel I can state with confidence, and that is that there is something we have not yet been told.

Israel, Hamas Reach Gilad Shalit Prisoner Exchange Deal, Officials Say [Haaretz]
U.S. Defense Secretary Fails to Secure Egypt Release of Accused Israeli Spy [AP/Haaretz]
Earlier: Deal for Shalit Signed
Israeli-U.S. Law Student Detained in Egypt

He continued: “We will finally be a normal family.”

Since Shalit’s 2006 capture, Israeli leaders have ignored calls to secure his release by freeing Palestinian prisoners, saying it would compromise national security. In 2010, Shalit’s parents, Noam and Aviva, marched across the country to demand a deal and then moved into a white tent outside the prime minister’s residence. They’ve remained there for 14 months—and, along the way, gained thousands of supporters who saw in Shalit far more than the story of just one prisoner. Instead, the young captive became a symbol of the teens recruited to the army, as well as the state’s responsibility to the soldiers it sends to guard its borders. Shalit was a terrifying example of the worst fate that can befall an Israeli in uniform, said supporters interviewed in Jerusalem last night.

Hebrew University student Roni Ofer, 25, said she served in the army at the same time as Shalit. But while she completed her service, he remained a captive. “It was shocking,” she said. “When we are drafted, we know we will be taken care of. Suddenly someone was kidnapped and nothing was done.” Others saw in Gilad Shalit a stand-in for their own children. Ofer Nuna, 40, drove an hour from his home in Rishon Lezion yesterday to bless the Shalits. He stood outside their tent with his 3-year-old son on his shoulders.

“It’s a soldier in the army, it’s like a child of ours,” said Nuna, who still serves on reserve duty. “How can you keep a kid in captivity for five years?”

But news of the soldier’s return brought a wide range of supporters, including skullcapped young men belting out prayers to the beat of a hand drum and Sara Nagani, 53, a homeless woman living in a tent encampment in Jerusalem who last night was waving a blue-and-white Gilad Shalit flag. In summer, throngs of Israelis stood on the same street and demanded more economic equality and a welfare state. Yesterday, the rally was a meeting of people whose demands had finally been met.

Haim Shalom, 33, a reform rabbi in Jerusalem, said Shalit’s release was a correction of “a terrible injustice that we as a society allowed to happen.” He went on: “I think it’s quite appropriate that straight after Yom Kippur and as we go to dwell in our tents, we are finally able to leave this tent here, the tent of Gilad Shalit,” he said.

Just after midnight, Gilad’s father, Noam, arrived. Wearing a blue collared shirt, he pushed his rimless glasses up and offered a smile. Behind him were pictures of his son.

“The Israeli government succeeded after more than five years, 1,934 hard days and 1,935 long nights, to bring Gilad home,” he said. “Tonight we ask to strengthen and bless the prime minister on a brave decision and on leadership he showed despite the great deal of time that has passed.”

Noam Shalit thanked the million activists in Israel and worldwide who have supported him. “From our point of view, this issue will be closed when we see Gilad arrive home and go down the stairs to the house,” he added. “Then we will be able to say the circle has been closed.”

For most of the revelers, 1,000 released Palestinian soldiers was a steep but necessary price to pay for Shalit’s release. But not for Lea Schijveschuurder, 20, whose parents, brother, and two sisters were killed in a bombing in a Jerusalem pizza restaurant 10 years ago. Throughout the evening, as word spread that Abdullah Bargouti, the mastermind of that attack, was one of those to be freed in the deal—rumors later disabused by the media—she was among those standing nearby holding anti-deal signs. Schijveschuurder’s read: “My parents’ blood shouts from the grave.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu explained his thinking in a speech to his Cabinet. “I believe that we have reached the best deal we could have at this time, when storms are sweeping the Middle East,” he said. “I do not know if in the near future we would have been able to reach a better deal or any deal at all.”

I tried not to think of Gilad because I felt guilty. Not only was I doing nothing to help the campaign to free him, I opposed its implicit demand that the Israeli government release as many terrorists as it takes to bring him home. Israel has no death penalty, and now we would lose the deterrence of prison: If the deal went through, any potential terrorist would know it was just a matter of time before he’d be freed in the next deal for the next kidnapped Israeli.

But the argument could never be so neatly resolved. Each side was affirming a profound Jewish value: ransom the kidnapped, resist blackmail. And so any position one took was undermined by angst. What would you do, campaign activists challenged opponents, if he were your son? “He’s everyone’s son,” sang rocker Aviv Gefen.

One day I passed a rally for Gilad in a park in downtown Jerusalem. Several counter-demonstrators were holding signs opposing surrender to terrorism. “I happen to agree with you,” I said to one of them. “But don’t you feel uneasy protesting against the Shalit family?”

“We’re not protesting against the Shalit family,” he replied. “We’re protesting to save future victims of freed terrorists. Those victims don’t have names yet. But they could be my son or your son.”

Every debate over Gilad ended at the same point: your son.

We never referred to him as “Shalit,” always “Gilad.” The Gilad dilemma set our parental responsibilities against our responsibilities as Israelis—one protective instinct against another. The prime minister’s job is to resist emotional pressure and ensure the nation’s security; a father’s job is to try to save his son, regardless of the consequences.

And so I tried, too, not to think of Gilad’s extraordinary parents, Noam and Aviva. Even when denouncing the government they spoke quietly, incapable of indignity. The best of Israel, as we say here, reminding ourselves that the best of Israel is the best of anywhere.

For more than a year the Shalits have lived in a tent near the prime minister’s office. When I walked nearby I would avoid the protest encampment, ashamed to be opposing the campaign. This past Israeli Independence Day, though, I saw a crowd gathered around the tent, and wandered over. “GILAD IS STILL ALIVE,” banners reminded: It’s not too late to save him. Inside the tent, Noam and Aviva were sitting with family and friends, singing the old Zionist songs. I wanted to shake Noam’s hand, tell him to be strong, but I resisted the urge. I didn’t deserve the privilege of comforting him.

I wanted to tell Noam what we shared. As it happens, my son served in the same tank unit as Gilad, two years after he was kidnapped. I wanted to tell Noam that that was the real reason I couldn’t bear thinking about his family. That in opposing the mass release of terrorists for Gilad, it was my son I was betraying.

Now, inevitably, the government has given in to the emotional pressure. Inevitably, because we all knew it would—must—end this way. A few months ago, as part of its psychological war against the Israeli public, Hamas released an animated film depicting Gilad as an elderly gray-haired man, still a prisoner in Gaza. No image tormented us more.

Still, there are few celebrations here today. Even those who supported the campaign to free Gilad must be sobered by the erosion of Israeli deterrence. And those who opposed the campaign are grieving for Gilad’s lost years. All of us share the same unspoken fear: In what condition will he be returned to us? What have these years done to him?

Hamas leaders are boasting of victory. If so, it is a victory of shame. Hamas is celebrating the release of symbols of “resistance,” not of human beings. Hamas’ victory is an expression of the Arab crisis. The Arab world’s challenge is to shift from a culture that sanctifies honor to a culture that sanctifies dignity. Honor is about pride; dignity is about human value. Hamas may have upheld its honor; but Israel affirmed the dignity of a solitary human life.

In recent months the campaign to free Gilad demanded that the government worsen conditions for convicted terrorists in Israeli jails, to psychologically pressure the Palestinian public. So long as Gilad was being held incommunicado, activists argued, Palestinian families should be barred from visiting their imprisoned sons. While Gilad’s youth was wasting away, terrorists shouldn’t be allowed to study for college degrees.

The government promised to oblige. But as it turned out, there were legal complications. A newspaper article the other day noted the results of the government’s get-tough policy: Imprisoned terrorists would no longer be provided with the Middle Eastern delicacy of stuffed vegetables.

How is it possible, Israelis ask themselves, that so-called progressives around the world champion Hamas and Hezbollah against the Jewish state? Perhaps it’s because we’re too complicated, too messy: a democracy that is also an occupier, a consumerist society living under a permanent death sentence. Perhaps those pure progressives fear a contagion of Israeli ambivalence.

For all my anxieties about the deal, I feel no ambivalence at this moment, only gratitude and relief. Gratitude that I live in a country whose hard leaders cannot resist the emotional pressure of a soldier’s parents. And relief that I no longer have to choose between the well-being of my country and the well-being of my son.

But in Egypt, illusions rarely die quickly—especially when the government doesn’t let them. And from the moment that the violence broke out on Sunday evening, Egypt’s transitional government has mounted a tireless campaign to manage the public’s response and keep it firmly on the government’s side.

The government’s propaganda effort began on Sunday evening, when, according to reports, Information Minister Osama Heikal ordered state-run media to cover the clashes “wisely.” State-run television obliged, reporting that protesters were attacking soldiers and calling Egyptians into the streets to defend the military. As if on cue, thugs showed up in full force. Shouting “Islamiya! Islamiya” and “the people want the fall of the Christians,” they beat protesters, looted Christian-owned shops, and even attacked a Coptic hospital where victims were being treated. Meanwhile, soldiers raided the U.S.-funded Alhurra satellite channel and the privately owned Channel 25, both of which were broadcasting the ongoing violence. (According to reports, at the Channel 25 studio the soldiers asked for employees’ ID cards and then proceeded to beat those identified as Christian.) When a number of state-television producers began criticizing the government’s coverage of the violence on Twitter, Heikal appeared on state television and announced that anyone who “spreads rumors” about the state-run media would be tried.

While the state-run media has been forced to walk back some its initial propaganda— such as its false claim that three soldiers had been killed during the fighting when, in fact, none had died—the transitional government has promoted a series of conspiracy theories that firmly absolve the military. The most predictable of these was uttered immediately following the violence on Sunday night, when Prime Minister Essam Sharaf addressed the nation and warned of “the external fingers that stir conspiracies.” Translation from Egyptian: The United States and Israel are to blame.

Another conspiracy theory peddled by the government is that the anti-Coptic violence was entirely the work of thugs from the previous regime. Tourism Minister Mounir Fakhry Abdelnour, a Coptic billionaire who served in parliament from 2000 to 2005, repeated this line to me over the phone. What about the videos showing military vehicles running roughshod over protesters? “I saw the vehicles running into protesters,” he acknowledged. “But I didn’t see who was driving those cars. And it is very possible that the same attackers who shot gunfire or threw stones or threw Molotov cocktails took the cars and rode them.”

In a way, the government’s conspiracy-theorizing been useful because it has highlighted its alliance with Islamists, who have overwhelmingly echoed the official story. Former Muslim Brotherhood leader and presidential candidate Abdel Moneim Abouel-Fotouh—a “liberal Islamist” according to the New York Times—said that the attacks on Coptic protesters had the “foreign and Zionist aim to foment sedition in Egypt.” The Muslim Brotherhood also sought to absolve the military. “We need a fact-finding committee to see who started it, and how people who dared to attack the army,” Essam el-Erian, a leader in the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, told me. “The army is not in conflict with the people because the army is only guarding the high institutions, like television and others.”

That’s not how many Copts see things. “Our media is inciting hatred, because they said that the army needs protection,” Sally Moore, a member of the Coalition of Revolutionary Youth, told me. “As if the Christians are stronger than the army, and as if it’s a Muslim army—it’s an Egyptian army.” While Pope Shenouda, the Coptic patriarch, has called for a three-day fast and urged restraint, many Copts are demanding further action. At funerals held for those killed in Sunday’s violence, worshipers called for the downfall of the transitional government.

Egypt’s pro-democratic youth activists, however, are taking a more conservative approach. They fear that the government’s misinformation campaign has won over the broader public—and that they will lose the battle of ideas if they push against the government too directly. “People are being influenced by this. I feel it on the streets,” Shadi El-Ghazali Harb, a leading activist in the Coalition of Revolutionary Youth, told me over the phone as he stood outside of a Coptic hospital awaiting autopsy results. “There is a widespread belief that it was not the military’s fault.” So, in the short run, the activists seem inclined to direct their protests against Egypt’s less popular transitional government, rather than denouncing the military leadership directly.

To some extent, the public outrage that the youth activists have helped channel against the transitional government is already paying off. On Tuesday, Finance Minister Hazem el-Beblawi tendered his resignation to protest the government’s handling of the clashes. Though the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces ultimately rejected his resignation, it represented an important setback for the military junta, and rumors that Prime Minister Sharaf has resigned are further undermining it. Meanwhile, the transitional government has moved quickly to pass new legislation that Copts have long demanded, including laws that ban discrimination, legalize churches that were built before licensing became available in the 1900s, and ease church construction. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces still has to approve these laws, however, and many Copts remain skeptical. “If the law is issued, what’s the guarantee that it will be applied practically?” asked Coptic human-rights lawyer Naguib Gobrail, who was injured in Sunday’s attacks.

The deep divide in the way that the Copts and Egypt’s pro-democratic activists on one hand and the broader Egyptian public on the other view Sunday’s violence is potentially explosive. The rage within Egypt’s Coptic community—the understandable reaction to the violence against them before and after Mubarak’s toppling—will only intensify as Egypt’s state-run media continues to dismiss their anger.

Some are predicting that Copts will be inclined to leave the country in the face of this state-sponsored brutality. Gobrail, the human-rights lawyer, noted sadly that two of his sons are pharmacists in Australia and Canada. Moore, however, rejects this notion out of hand. “Copts are ethnically part of this country,” she said. “We’re not building a new Israel somewhere else.”

UPDATE (7:15): New reports say Marwan Barghouti will not be a part of the deal, which is said to involve more than 1000 prisoners.

UPDATE (4:45): You can read Prime Minister Netanyahu’s remarks to his cabinet, in which he invokes the principle of tikkun olam, here. Speaking of saving one life versus saving the world entire, already a Committee of Rabbis for the Salvation of Israel is opposing the deal on the grounds that the prisoners it will free will end up killing Jews.

UPDATE (4:12): President Abbas announced his support for the Shalit deal (if the train is leaving the station, you may as well get on board). Also, Shmuel Rosner reports that the religious Shas party, unlike Yisrael Beiteinu, is backing it.

UPDATE (4:00): “In the coming days we will return Gilad to the bosom of his parents, Aviva and Noam, to his brother Yoel, his sister Hadas, his grandfather Tzvi and the entire people of Israel,” said Prime Minister Netanyahu. Hamas leader Khamed Meshaal claims 1000 prisoners will be released. Meanwhile, speculation continues to swirl about why both Netanyahu and Hamas would desire Barghouti’s freedom: he is at the very least an ex-terrorist likely to sharply challenge President Abbas’ leadership but also strengthen Fatah against Hamas.

UPDATE (3:35): Prime Minister Netanyahu’s office tweets, “I especially thank the #Egyptian government and its security services for their role in mediation & concluding of the deal #Shalit.” Shmuel Rosner reports that a few ministers, including Yisrael Beiteinu leader Avigdor Lieberman, voted agains the deal. Haaretz reports that the deal has been several days in the making, with Israel’s and Hamas’ chief negotiators in Cairo for the past several days and with Netanyahu holding a meeting of a special committee, the existence of which was placed under a gag order.

UPDATE (3:10): According to the Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Twitter feed, Shalit “will be coming home in the next few days.” Also: “the agreement to release #Shalit was signed in initials last Thursday and today was signed formally by the two parties.” Much speculation is centering around the identities of the hundreds of prisoners which Israel would be releasing, and most of all whether Marwan Barghouti, the extremely popular Palestinian leader who was jailed for his alleged role in the Second Intifada, will be included. What’s interesting about this is that Barghouti is seen as a rival to Hamas.

(UPDATE 2:55: Israel Radio says the deal has been reached.) It might be happening. The Israeli cabinet is meeting in an emergency session over a prisoner swap deal (well into the hundreds) with Hamas, apparently brokered by Egypt (and not by the German mediator who had been handling things).

If approved, Shalit could be returned as early as November, or roughly 65 months after his capture.

Meanwhile, ABC News reports that U.S. authorities disrupted an Iran-backed “significant terrorist attack in the United States” targeting Israeli and Saudi diplomats and embassies. The Saudi embassy is in Foggy Bottom, in Washington, D.C., across the street from the Watergate complex, yards from the Kennedy Center, and a couple blocks from the State Department; the Israeli embassy is in sleepier upper northwest, a few blocks from my synagogue and a few more from my high school. In other words, the Iranians are kind of assholes.

Possible Deal Near to Free Captive Israeli Soldier [NYT]
U.S. Says Iran-Tied Terror Plot in Washington D.C. Disrupted [ABC News]

Since its founding 63 years ago, the Jewish state has been relatively isolated from much of the international community. The United States has typically used the diplomatic and political clout befitting its superpower status—including its veto at the U.N. Security Council—to shelter Israel from the slings and arrows of its adversaries. So, why is the Obama Administration jumping on the bandwagon of those who peck away at Israel’s legitimacy?

When Panetta and others talk about Israel’s increasing isolation, they are essentially referring to Israel’s faltering relationships with Egypt and Turkey and the absence of a peace process with the Palestinians. As to the first, Egyptian and Israeli officials insist that while former President Hosni Mubarak is gone, relations between the two governments remain unchanged. Egyptian officials have repeatedly stated that they have no desire to break the peace treaty and forfeit $2 billion a year in U.S. aid. Of course, the Egyptian masses that toppled Mubarak have a rather different attitude toward the Jewish state, which is why they painted swastikas on the battering rams they used to storm the Israeli Embassy in Cairo last month. It would be useful to know what sort of policies Panetta thinks Jerusalem might pursue to earn the friendship of such mobs.

Many observers argue that Israel’s strategic relationship with Turkey began to deteriorate in May 2010, when Israeli commandos killed nine armed activists aboard the Mavi Marmara, a ship that Ankara dispatched as part of an unlawful effort to break Israel’s maritime blockade of Gaza. Angry that Israel did not apologize to Turkey, the White House now peddles this narrative for reasons of its own. Washington sees the rise of Islamist parties in Egypt, Syria, and the Palestinian territories, and it believes that the Islamist government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan will be able to influence regional actors.

Unfortunately for Washington, any influence that Turkey exercises will be on behalf of its own interests—not American ones. And even then, Ankara’s ability to project power is much more limited than Erdogan’s neo-Ottoman rhetoric would let on. As Israel’s ties with Turkey have withered, Turkish rivals Greece and Bulgaria, two historical enemies of the Ottomans, have jumped at the chance to establish ties with Israel. By losing one ally and gaining two, Israel is plus one in the strategic relationship column.

Consider the current scorecard in the rest of the region. Of the two terrorist entities on Israel’s borders, Hamas had to put some distance between itself and Syria when the Alawite minority regime there started slaughtering its majority Sunni population. Syria is also Hezbollah’s customary supply line to Iranian arms, but with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad fighting for his life, that’s now been cut off. Hezbollah is isolated domestically as well: Shiites’ fear of another war with Israel has isolated Hezbollah from large parts of its own Shia constituency.

Israel’s more conventional adversaries are in equally bad shape. The nascent civil war in Syria shows that no matter how long Assad survives, his regime will be prevented from projecting power in its typical fashion: by supporting terrorism abroad. An economic meltdown in Egypt has turned its army inward to deal with domestic problems.

What does Israel’s strategic position actually look like? Hamas, Hezbollah, Egypt, and Syria are isolated. It’s true that the Iranians are still marching toward a nuclear bomb, but the possibility of losing Hezbollah and Syria along the way would represent a net loss. The fact is that only Qatar has had a more successful Arab Spring than Israel.

Contrary to Panetta’s warnings, the picture has never looked rosier for the Jewish state. What’s worrying, then, is not Israeli isolation but rather the isolation of Israel’s superpower patron: the United States. The real strategic danger to Israel is that America is losing its place as the region’s great power. Egypt, the cornerstone of the Pax Americana in the Eastern Mediterranean since the 1978 signing of the Camp David Accords, looks like an increasingly shaky ally. Half a year after the fall of Mubarak, the Egyptian military is incapable of controlling Cairo—never mind the Sinai.

In Syria, the Obama Administration has disdained to play any hand at all. The administration has hesitated to throw its weight behind the opposition movement, and U.S. Ambassador Robert Ford has warned that if Assad’s opponents take up arms they will lose whatever international support they have. In other words, as Turkey, Iran, and Saudi Arabia all make contingency plans for Syria, the White House announces it is out of the picture. Net American gain: zero.

By withdrawing from Iraq, the White House has effectively abandoned a vital U.S. interest to Iran. President Barack Obama sought meaningful engagement with the Iranians, but Tehran rebuffed even the administration’s offer to establish a hotline to prevent some minor event from turning into a major conflagration. The Iranian message is clear: There is no reason to talk, since our intent to drive you from the region couldn’t be clearer. Another zero.

The White House has shown it will not take the Iranian nuclear issue seriously. Clandestine operations and cyber-warfare are not serious actions taken by a superpower against a state threatening a nuclear breakout: They are sideshows meant to assuage Israel and distract our Arab allies in the Gulf. Accordingly, the Saudis have warned they will go their own way by building their own coalitions against Iran. Even the Palestinian Authority, which exists solely at the pleasure of the U.S. government, and thanks to the munificence of American taxpayers, has decided to strike out on its own at the United Nations.

Can Jerusalem survive Washington’s self-imposed isolation? Of course it will. Israel is a part of the Middle East—the region from which the United States, purposefully or not, is now extricating itself.

• How do you say “wusses” in French? Apple pulled the “Jew or not Jew” application from France. The Anti-Defamation League finds nothing wrong with the app, by the way. [CNN Belief Blog]

• Fifty-eight House Democrats signed a letter proclaiming support for Israel and condemning unilateral Palestinian actions. Naturally, Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor refused to sign it. [Ben Smith]

• Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon predicted that between 50 and 70 U.N. member-states would oppose a Palestinian resolution. [Washington Times]

• Israel is getting in on that crazy Swiss-French atomic supercollider. [AP/WP]

• New report points to broader, structural reasons why the United States and Israel are drifting apart. [Haaretz Focus U.S.A.]

• Famed New York political consultant Hank Sheinkopf is now an Orthodox rabbi. [NY Jewish Week Political Insider]

• The problems inherent in dividing Jerusalem. [City Journal]

• Dude, Moses was so high! [Mind Hacks]

• New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief Ethan Bronner finds himself in potentially dicey ethical territory. [Mondoweiss]

• Mile End will cater your break fast. [Mile End]

The last video of Amy Winehouse is going to end up being this, for a duet she did with Tony Bennett. (Gay Talese wrote about Bennett’s collaboration with Lady Gaga for the same album this week.)

• As the tents fold on Rothschild Boulevard, the leaders of the Israeli social justice movement wonder what’s next. [LAT]

• It was reported that the Palestinians had formally begun their statehood campaign. Then the leadership denied they had, saying instead that a letter to the U.N. secretary-general was part of a different, grassroots campaign. Good to know they have their things together. [Haaretz]

• Rep. Joe Walsh, a Tea Party Republican, plans to introduce a bill that would pledge American support for MK Danny Danon’s bill for Israel to annex Jewish settlements in the West Bank. [Politico]

• Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, met with captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit’s father and then called on Hamas to release Shalit “unconditionally.” [Haaretz]

• The French court convicted former Dior designer John Galliano, and then sentenced him to a suspended fine of several thousand dollars. [Ynet]

• For the first time in two years, Iran seemed to make a real proposal to the West regarding its nuclear program, offering U.N. inspectors five years’ “full supervision” in exchange for lifting sanctions. [NYT]

• As part of the remilitarization of the Sinai and storing more troops there to create security, Egypt began closing the smuggling tunnels between it and Gaza. [WP]

• The Palestinian Authority will go ahead with its U.N. plans, President Abbas confirmed. More at 10. [NYT]

• U.N. nuclear inspectors called for Mideast talks on nonproliferation, a subject sensitive both for Iran, widely believed to be pursuing weapons, and for Israel, wisely assumed to have them and at whom the talks seemed to be aimed. [Haaretz]

• Retired Secretary of Defense Robert Gates believed Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government to be a particularly ungrateful ally. [Bloomberg View]

-Yasmine El Rashidi on “Egypt’s Israel Problem,” which is really, it turns out, Israel’s Egypt problem.

Yet most signs point to its going forward. Israel is readying for General Assembly approval—they know there’s no way for them stop it—anticipating potential challenges both legal and physical. Indeed, in addition to West Bank reinforcements, the IDF is actually training settler security teams. That said, it should be noted that the P.A. strategy is to refrain from violence. Here’s hoping.

One gets the sickening sense that, for two years or so, Palestinian statehood at the U.N. was a bluff: not a bad one, but one that has been called; and now it is in no one’s interests more than the bluffer’s to fold.

Jordan Urges Abbas to Rethink U.N. Bid [YNet]
Are Palestinians Walking Into a Trap at the U.N.? [+972]
The Day After Palestine [Ynet]
Israel Braces for Palestinian Statehood at the U.N. [WP]
Israel Intensifies Training of Settler Security Teams [NYT]
Earlier: Is the P.A. Statehood Drive Good for the P.A.?