"In late July, when Barack Obama toured the Middle East, he met the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, for a private briefing on the state of the world's most intractable conflict - a major priority for the next occupant of the Oval Office," wrote Ian Black in The Guardian. "Abbas revealed later that when he told the Democratic candidate about the Arab peace initiative - offering Israel normal relations with all 22 Arab countries in exchange for a Palestinian state - Obama's (clearly private) response was unambiguous: 'The Israelis must be crazy not to accept that.' "It's a telling anecdote that is highly relevant as Arabs and Israelis await the outcome of the US election and ponder how - or whether - their faltering peace process can be sustained or revived once a new administration is in place. After eight disastrous years of George Bush, and zero hopes for an 11th-hour negotiating breakthrough between Palestinians and Israelis, there is a real thirst for change in Washington. "And it is also high time, some argue, to revisit that Arab initiative not because it can by itself resolve those knotty bilateral issues of borders, settlements, Jerusalem and refugees - but because it could help persuade sceptical Israelis that there are benefits and a place for them in the wider Middle East." An editorial in The Daily Star said: "It has been more than six years since the Arab League unanimously endorsed a historic peace initiative aimed at ending the decades-old conflict with Israel, but it seems that the leaders of the Jewish state are only beginning to understand the significance of the offer. On Sunday, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said that Israeli leaders are now seriously considering a response to the initiative that would allow for the negotiation of a comprehensive Middle East peace settlement. In an interview with Israel's Army Radio, Barak also emphasised that he was in full agreement with President Shimon Peres, as well as Prime Minister-designate Tzipi Livni, who is working to form a new coalition government. This alignment of Arab and Israeli leaders marks an unprecedented opportunity for Middle East peacemaking that should be immediately seized upon by Arab leaders, as well as the next president of the United States." The Associated Press reported: "Israel's ceremonial president, Shimon Peres, proposed putting Israel's various peace talks on one track last month at the United Nations, calling on Saudi King Abdullah to 'further his initiative'. He has since been pushing the idea in meeting with Israeli, Arab and Western officials, his office said. "While Peres has no formal role in Israeli foreign policy, he is a Nobel peace laureate and well respected in the international community. "In Sunday's interview, Barak said he was in full agreement with Peres. " 'I had the impression that there is indeed an openness to explore any path, including this one,' he said of his talks with Livni. "Barak, who leads the Labour Party, is expected to play a senior role in the next administration." The Israeli newspaper Haaretz said: "Turki al Faisal, the former Saudi intelligence director and a member of the royal family, presented a proposal for Israeli-Palestinian peace at a conference yesterday. "Arab, Palestinian and Israeli political figures attended the conference, organised by the Oxford Research Group, which seeks to promote the Saudi Peace Initiative of 2002. "Al Faisal, who heads the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies, expressed the kingdom's support for a comprehensive peace and the rights of the Palestinian people. Al Faisal also said that both sides must condemn violence together, and called on Israel to stop targeted assassinations and arrests, the construction of the West Bank security barrier and the expansion of settlements and separate roads. The Palestinians, he said, must stop all suicide bombings and rocket fire at Israel."
Reconciliation with the Taliban favoured by growing numbers of Afghans
"A generation ago, when the Soviets were in Afghanistan, they lost the battle for hearts and minds quickly by showing scant concern for human rights. Estimates run as high as 1.5 million dead and 10,000 villages destroyed. Now, Americans labour in the shadow of that history, and that helps to explain why alarm bells are ringing in the Nato headquarters here over the latest accounts of air raids that went wrong, causing dozens of civilian casualties," John Burns reported in The New York Times. "When such things happen, within an Afghan population deeply traumatised by the Soviet years, there is a quick resort to comparisons of the past occupier with the present one, even though the scale of casualties caused by Western forces - even taking the worst figures compiled by human rights groups - are but a fraction of the abuses committed by the Russians. "For Gen David D McKiernan, the American who commands 65,000 foreign troops from 39 nations in Afghanistan, concern over civilian casualties, especially from aircraft-launched bombs and missiles, has become the issue of the moment. Only if it is tackled effectively, senior officers here are now saying, can the hearts and minds of 30 million Afghans - many of them increasingly sceptical about the Western military presence, and angry about the civilian death toll - be won." After returning from a fact-finding trip to Afganistan, the British Conservative member of parliament, David Davis, wrote in The Independent: "It is time to face facts in Afghanistan: the situation is spiralling downwards, and if we do not change our approach, we face disaster. Violence is up in two-thirds of the country, narcotics are the main contributor to the economy, criminality is out of control and the government is weak, corrupt and incompetent. The international coalition is seen as a squabbling bunch of foreigners who have not delivered on their promises. Although the Taliban have nowhere near majority support, their standing is growing rapidly among some ordinary Afghans. "In Kabul, foreign delegations huddle behind concrete and barbed wire, often with the Afghans' main roads shut. That causes jams throughout the city, exacerbated by convoys of armoured four-wheel drives loaded with bodyguards that push their way through the traffic. These vehicles carry warning signs telling ordinary Afghans that the occupants reserve the right to shoot anyone who comes within 50 metres. Afghans veer between resentment of the high-handed foreigners and fear of the Taliban, who appear to be inexorably seizing the provinces around the city." In The Christian Science Monitor, Anand Gopal reported: "As violence and insecurity grow in this war-ravaged nation, a broad network of peace activists have been quietly pushing for negotiations and reconciliation with the Taliban. "This push coincides with recent preliminary talks in Saudi Arabia. The Saudi government hosted a secret high-level meeting in September with former Taliban officials and members of the Afghan government. The event was intended to ultimately open the door to direct talks with the Taliban. "Analysts interviewed say that the majority of Afghans favor some sort of negotiated settlement between the warring sides, but many peace activists are critical of the Saudi talks. 'We want reconciliation with the Taliban through a loya jirga,' or grand assembly of Afghans, says Fatana Gilani, head of the Afghanistan Women's Council (AWC), a leading nongovernmental organisation (NGO) here. 'We don't want interference from foreign countries or negotiations behind closed doors,' she says."
Markets rise on hopes for a US stimulus package
"Ben Bernanke, the Chairman of the US Federal Reserve, fuelled a global fightback by battered stock markets yesterday, boosting hopes that Washington will soon order new tax cuts and extra public spending to shore up the faltering American economy," The Times reported. "Mr Bernanke's explicit backing for fresh 'fiscal stimulus' measures to bolster US growth, combined with rising optimism that the global financial turmoil may be abating, drove a resurgence in shares on both sides of the Atlantic." Identifying a "democratic deficit" at the heart of the financial crisis, the political theorist, Benjamin Barber, wrote in The Guardian: "Adam Smith knew that moral sentiments no less than capital markets undergird the wealth of nations. The liquidity crisis is a political crisis; the credit deficit is a democratic deficit. For trust is the social capital that permits private capital to be exchanged, contracts to be enforced, promises to be kept, expectations to be realised. Democracy is the common sea in which all those competing market boats and bickering fiscal sailors are kept afloat. "So although it was bad loans and greedy bankers and stupid hedge fund managers and ignorant investors who made the mess, it has been four decades of de-democratisation that has done the real damage. A haemorrhaging of social capital that nobody noticed because government was supposed to be the problem and markets the solution. Runaway Thatcherism and exuberant Reaganism railed against government until citizens were literally talked out of their democracy. "Government was allegedly the villain, but government was just democracy's tool - not always very efficient and often insufficiently accountable, but democracy's tool nonetheless. And democracy's real product was trust. As the war on government became a war on democracy, it drew down the well of social capital and eroded trust, causing citizens to lose faith in each other and their power to govern themselves." The commentator, Madeleine Bunting, wrote: "A few weeks ago speculation began as to what might be the novels of the credit crunch. Where was the F Scott Fitzgerald, John Steinbeck or Martin Amis of 2008, the novelist who could speak to this crazily chaotic economic age? On cue last week, Aravind Adiga wins the Booker for The White Tiger. The critics have been sniffy, referring to him with discernible disdain as a former journalist. (He was Asia business correspondent for Time magazine.) But he won precisely because of his ringside seat at globalisation's boom years; he won because, despite its possible shortcomings as a novel, his book nails the myth of a benign US economic hegemony that has 'lifted' millions out of poverty across Asia."
pwoodward@thenational.ae
