the human province

I was just reading the preamble of the South African constitution, and I couldn't help dreaming of a similar constitution for Israel/Palestine:

We, the people of South Africa,

Recognise the injustices of our past;

Honour those who suffered for justice and freedom in our land;

Respect those who have worked to build and develop our country; and

Believe that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, united in our diversity.

We therefore, through our freely elected representatives, adopt this Constitution as the supreme law of the Republic so as to ­

- Heal the divisions of the past and establish a society based on democratic values, social justice and fundamental human rights;
- Lay the foundations for a democratic and open society in which government is based on the will of the people and every citizen is equally protected by law;
- Improve the quality of life of all citizens and free the potential of each person; and
- Build a united and democratic South Africa able to take its rightful place as a sovereign state in the family of nations.

May God protect our people.

Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika. Morena boloka setjhaba sa heso.

God seën Suid-Afrika. God bless South Africa.

Mudzimu fhatutshedza Afurika. Hosi katekisa Afrika.

I've been debating, if you can call it that, some Israelis and a Palestinian about my firmly held belief in a one state solution. 

One of the Israelis has already called me an idiot and all Arabs monkeys. I highly recommend skipping his replies and reading Lirun's and Nizo's.

UPDATE: I've been locked out of the thread. So much for for an honest and respectable exchange of ideas. The exchanges I've had with Israelis in the blogosphere have left me more depressed than anything else.

I haven't had much to say in this space about Lebanese presidential politics -- mostly because I haven't had much to say about the subject, full stop. A recent interaction with a well-placed Aounist, however, has made me question some of what I think about the situation. Up till now, the only interaction I've had with Aounists, like with most other political parties here, has been with the rank and file, the man on the street who has no more inside information than I do. And the orange man on the street seems pretty practical. While he really wants Aoun to be the president, wishful thinking aside, he doesn't really believe that it's possible any more. He'd be content with a compromise candidate along the lines of General Michel Sulaiman. 

Recently, though, I had a discussion with someone higher up in the hierarchy, someone who had inside information. Although this person didn't give me many specifics, he did stress that Aoun would be president. I asked him if he meant that Aoun should be president or that Aoun would actually be president. He replied, "both." Then I asked if I should consider that remark to be from him personally or him as a party member. Again the answer was "both."

There are three possibilities here. First, it's possible that there is information to which I'm not privy, information which will assure an Aoun victory and prove my general sense of Lebanese politics to be wrong. I don't think this is the case, but that's partially why my general sense of Lebanese politics is as it is. Second, it's possible that I wasn't getting a straight answer and that this person was just giving me the party line. This seems logical and likely, but judging from the intensity and earnestness of his discourse, I don't think it's the case. Finally, I think it's most likely that this person was so personally and emotionally invested in the campaign that he couldn't really see straight anymore. This seems to be a common symptom of junior partisans who have neither the clear sighted detraction of the man on the street nor the cynical wisdom of the senior apparatchik.

In any case, not only did this person tell me that Aoun would definitely be president, but he also said that the Aounists would not accept anything less. I have the sneaking suspicion that when all is said and done, and the presidential deals have been done in smokey back rooms in Paris, Washington and Damascus, the orange upper echelons and the rank and file will be unsurprised, leaving the more zealous junior party members with inside information completely disillusioned.

I was watching CNN last night while hanging pictures and folding laundry, when Wolf Blitzer came on. All in all, it was actually fairly interesting. He interviewed El Baradei from the IAEA, Jordan's Queen Rania, the Turkish ambassador to the US, Barbara Boxer and Trent Lott. The last two were on after everyone else to respond to the issues being discussed.

Boxer was pretty well spoken and moderate about everything until she was asked about the Israeli bombing of Syria last month. El Baradei mentioned that neither the US nor Israel had provided the IAEA with any evidence of a Syrian nuclear program. He then rebuked the Israelis for shooting first and asking questions later instead of using the appropriate organization for such issues: the IAEA. So while Lott and Boxer disagreed on pretty much everything from the Armenian genocide bill to the rhetoric being used by the White House about a possible war against Iran, the one thing that they could agree on was that Israel has "the right to defend itself."

It's really uncanny. Neither said that they had been fully briefed on any intelligence concerning the Israeli strike in Syria, but both of them unequivocally supported it without any reservations. It's to be expected from Lott, but Boxer, who spends much of her time chiding the Bush administration for talking about war in Iran and having gone to war in Iraq has nothing critical to say about Israel's act of war.

Democrats seem to believe that politically speaking, they can be harder on the US, the country they're ostensibly representing, than they can be with Israel, a foreign nation. The more stories I hear about Capitol Hill and the more performances like Boxer's that I see, the more I think that there's truth in Buchanan's remark that Congress is Israeli-occupied territory.

It's not very often that I can say that I agree with American policy in Lebanon, but for the first time that I can remember, someone at the Pentagon seems to have gotten it somewhat right. Eric Edelman, undersecretary of defense for policy, had this to say in a recent interview broadcast on Lebanese television:

What we've been trying to do consistently is to create circumstances in which Lebanon can have a strong state, strong army, a democratic system with the military accountable to civilian control and to the government and to the people's representatives in the parliament. ... We believe it's in our interest to have a strong democratic state in Lebanon ... That's what we're working toward.

The problem, of course, is that the opposition doesn't trust the US at all (some would say with good reason). So of course, there are plenty of rumors that the US is building military bases in Lebanon, etc. Ideally, the Lebanese state would be built up by a more neutral country, like Sweden, but I doubt that will be happening anytime soon.

The other night I was going to meet up with a friend to watch The Kingdom, which, to my mind, was all right for an action movie, but not nearly as clever as it thought it was. I flagged down a cab and when it stopped I did a double take. The driver was a woman.

When I was a kid, I remember there being a riddle that went like this: A boy is wheeled into the emergency room, and the surgeon takes one look at him and says, "I'm sorry, I cannot operate on this boy. He is my son." The doctor is not the boy's father. Who is the doctor, then? The answer, of course, is, his mother. But at the time I remember hearing this riddle, the answer was not so obvious, and people would give answers like "his uncle" or "his grandfather," because they simply couldn't imagine the fact that a doctor would be a woman.

These days, the idea that a doctor or a lawyer or a chemist could be a woman seems obvious. For some reason, though, I was really shocked by seeing a woman cab driver. She acted just like her male counterparts: cursing, mumbling about traffic and trying to rip me off. 

Obviously, there's nothing about driving a cab, as opposed to say delivering refrigerators, that would prohibit most women from doing the job. But I suppose it's just a question of habit, and I'm not used to seeing women cabbies, not even in Europe or the States. (The only other one I've seen was an African woman in Paris.) After talking to friends about it, I've been told that there are a few in Beirut, and one even wears the hijab.

Coincidentally, a few months ago, I was near a police headquarters close to the periphery of Beirut when I suddenly saw two women soldiers walking down the street. Since then, I've run into a couple more. While I've seen plenty of women soldiers and police officers in my life, I'd never seen any in Lebanon, so I was really (pleasantly) surprised.

I recently came across an excerpt of a text by Ahad Ha'am (born Asher Ginsberg), a Zionist who went to Palestine for the first time in 1891. It's called "A Truth from Eretz Yisrael," and I found it in the collection edited by Tony Kushner and Alisa Solomon called Wrestling with Zion:

We who live abroad are accustomed to believe that almost all Eretz Yisrael is now uninhabited desert and whoever wishes can buy land there as he pleases. But this is not true. It is very difficult to find in the land [ha'aretz] cultivated fields that are not used for planting. Only those sand fields or stone mountains that would require the investment of hard labor and great expense to make them good for planting remain uncultivated. [...]

The Arabs, especially the urban elite, see and understand what we are doing and what we wish to do on the land, but they keep quiet and pretend not to notice anything. For now, they do not consider our actions as presenting a future danger to them. They therefore do their best to exploit us, to benefit from the newly arrived guests as much as they can and yet, in their hearts, they laugh at us. The peasants are happy when a Jewish colony is formed among them because they get better wages for their work and get richer and richer every year, as experience has shown us. The big landowners also have no problem accepting us because we pay them, for stone and sand land, amounts they would never have dreamed of getting before. But, if the time comes that our people's life in Eretz Yisrael will develop to a point where we are taking their place, either slightly or significantly, the natives are not going to just step aside so easily. [...]

If we have this ambition to settle in a new country and radically change our way of life and we truly want to achieve our goals, then we can't ignore the fact that ahead of us is a great war and this war is going to need significant preparation. [...]

It is not our way to learn nothing for the future from the past. We must surely learn, from both our past and present history, how careful we must be not to provoke the anger of the native people by doing them wrong, how we should be cautious in out dealings with a foreign people among whom we returned to live, to handle these people with love and respect and, needless to say, with justice and good judgment. And what do out brothers do? Exactly the opposite! They were slaves in their diasporas, and suddenly they find themselves with unlimited freedom, wild freedom that only a country like Turkey can offer. This sudden change has planted despotic tendencies in their hearts, as always happens to former slaves ['eved ki yimlokh]. They deal with the Arabs with hostility and cruelty trespass unjustly, beat them shamefully for no sufficient reason, and even boast about their actions. There is no one to stop the flood and put and end to this despicable and dangerous tendency. Our brothers indeed were right when they said that the Arab only respects he who exhibits bravery and courage. But when these people feel that that the law is on their rival's side and, even more so, if they are right to think their rival's actions are unjust and oppressive, then, even if they are silent,and endlessly reserved, they keep their anger in their hearts. And these people will be revenged like no other.

Sometimes I wonder why Cyprus, a country that is still divided despite its recent membership in the EU, can be so successful compared to Lebanon, which has, to my mind, better food, friendlier people and equally nice weather. Then the electricity gets cut for a few hours and the water goes out, leaving me unable to shave or bathe before going into work.

I asked an Ethiopian acquaintance of mine yesterday if they had similar problems in Addis Ababa. She told me that while the electricity situation was worse than in Beirut, they always had more than enough water.

Shaving from a bottle of mineral water and having to hold it until I get to work because I can't flush the toilet remind me that Lebanon has a long way to go despite my occasional bouts of optimism.

In any other country, candidates on both local and national scales would be winning elections based on campaign promises to fix, or at least improve, these problems. It seems that this is not a major part of anyone's political platform in Lebanon.

For those few of you who have noticed, I haven't written in a while. This was mostly due to a change in jobs, a more permanent move (everything has been sent from Paris to Beirut and should now be on a boat somewhere in between) and the end of a big project.

When it rains it pours, I suppose. But so far so good.

In any case, I'm more or less settled into my new schedule and my new office. Time's going to be a little thin here at the beginning, but I think once I get into the groove of things, I'll find the time to post on a regular basis again.

As a good friend of mine oft reminds me: writin' is fightin'. The bell's about to ring, and I'm almost done.

I should be back here soon.

I was just reading the preamble of the South African constitution, and I couldn't help dreaming of a similar constitution for Israel/Palestine:

We, the people of South Africa,

Recognise the injustices of our past;

Honour those who suffered for justice and freedom in our land;

Respect those who have worked to build and develop our country; and

Believe that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, united in our diversity.

We therefore, through our freely elected representatives, adopt this Constitution as the supreme law of the Republic so as to ­

- Heal the divisions of the past and establish a society based on democratic values, social justice and fundamental human rights;
- Lay the foundations for a democratic and open society in which government is based on the will of the people and every citizen is equally protected by law;
- Improve the quality of life of all citizens and free the potential of each person; and
- Build a united and democratic South Africa able to take its rightful place as a sovereign state in the family of nations.

May God protect our people.

Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika. Morena boloka setjhaba sa heso.

God seën Suid-Afrika. God bless South Africa.

Mudzimu fhatutshedza Afurika. Hosi katekisa Afrika.

I've been debating, if you can call it that, some Israelis and a Palestinian about my firmly held belief in a one state solution. 

One of the Israelis has already called me an idiot and all Arabs monkeys. I highly recommend skipping his replies and reading Lirun's and Nizo's.

UPDATE: I've been locked out of the thread. So much for for an honest and respectable exchange of ideas. The exchanges I've had with Israelis in the blogosphere have left me more depressed than anything else.

I haven't had much to say in this space about Lebanese presidential politics -- mostly because I haven't had much to say about the subject, full stop. A recent interaction with a well-placed Aounist, however, has made me question some of what I think about the situation. Up till now, the only interaction I've had with Aounists, like with most other political parties here, has been with the rank and file, the man on the street who has no more inside information than I do. And the orange man on the street seems pretty practical. While he really wants Aoun to be the president, wishful thinking aside, he doesn't really believe that it's possible any more. He'd be content with a compromise candidate along the lines of General Michel Sulaiman. 

Recently, though, I had a discussion with someone higher up in the hierarchy, someone who had inside information. Although this person didn't give me many specifics, he did stress that Aoun would be president. I asked him if he meant that Aoun should be president or that Aoun would actually be president. He replied, "both." Then I asked if I should consider that remark to be from him personally or him as a party member. Again the answer was "both."

There are three possibilities here. First, it's possible that there is information to which I'm not privy, information which will assure an Aoun victory and prove my general sense of Lebanese politics to be wrong. I don't think this is the case, but that's partially why my general sense of Lebanese politics is as it is. Second, it's possible that I wasn't getting a straight answer and that this person was just giving me the party line. This seems logical and likely, but judging from the intensity and earnestness of his discourse, I don't think it's the case. Finally, I think it's most likely that this person was so personally and emotionally invested in the campaign that he couldn't really see straight anymore. This seems to be a common symptom of junior partisans who have neither the clear sighted detraction of the man on the street nor the cynical wisdom of the senior apparatchik.

In any case, not only did this person tell me that Aoun would definitely be president, but he also said that the Aounists would not accept anything less. I have the sneaking suspicion that when all is said and done, and the presidential deals have been done in smokey back rooms in Paris, Washington and Damascus, the orange upper echelons and the rank and file will be unsurprised, leaving the more zealous junior party members with inside information completely disillusioned.

I was watching CNN last night while hanging pictures and folding laundry, when Wolf Blitzer came on. All in all, it was actually fairly interesting. He interviewed El Baradei from the IAEA, Jordan's Queen Rania, the Turkish ambassador to the US, Barbara Boxer and Trent Lott. The last two were on after everyone else to respond to the issues being discussed.

Boxer was pretty well spoken and moderate about everything until she was asked about the Israeli bombing of Syria last month. El Baradei mentioned that neither the US nor Israel had provided the IAEA with any evidence of a Syrian nuclear program. He then rebuked the Israelis for shooting first and asking questions later instead of using the appropriate organization for such issues: the IAEA. So while Lott and Boxer disagreed on pretty much everything from the Armenian genocide bill to the rhetoric being used by the White House about a possible war against Iran, the one thing that they could agree on was that Israel has "the right to defend itself."

It's really uncanny. Neither said that they had been fully briefed on any intelligence concerning the Israeli strike in Syria, but both of them unequivocally supported it without any reservations. It's to be expected from Lott, but Boxer, who spends much of her time chiding the Bush administration for talking about war in Iran and having gone to war in Iraq has nothing critical to say about Israel's act of war.

Democrats seem to believe that politically speaking, they can be harder on the US, the country they're ostensibly representing, than they can be with Israel, a foreign nation. The more stories I hear about Capitol Hill and the more performances like Boxer's that I see, the more I think that there's truth in Buchanan's remark that Congress is Israeli-occupied territory.

It's not very often that I can say that I agree with American policy in Lebanon, but for the first time that I can remember, someone at the Pentagon seems to have gotten it somewhat right. Eric Edelman, undersecretary of defense for policy, had this to say in a recent interview broadcast on Lebanese television:

What we've been trying to do consistently is to create circumstances in which Lebanon can have a strong state, strong army, a democratic system with the military accountable to civilian control and to the government and to the people's representatives in the parliament. ... We believe it's in our interest to have a strong democratic state in Lebanon ... That's what we're working toward.

The problem, of course, is that the opposition doesn't trust the US at all (some would say with good reason). So of course, there are plenty of rumors that the US is building military bases in Lebanon, etc. Ideally, the Lebanese state would be built up by a more neutral country, like Sweden, but I doubt that will be happening anytime soon.

The other night I was going to meet up with a friend to watch The Kingdom, which, to my mind, was all right for an action movie, but not nearly as clever as it thought it was. I flagged down a cab and when it stopped I did a double take. The driver was a woman.

When I was a kid, I remember there being a riddle that went like this: A boy is wheeled into the emergency room, and the surgeon takes one look at him and says, "I'm sorry, I cannot operate on this boy. He is my son." The doctor is not the boy's father. Who is the doctor, then? The answer, of course, is, his mother. But at the time I remember hearing this riddle, the answer was not so obvious, and people would give answers like "his uncle" or "his grandfather," because they simply couldn't imagine the fact that a doctor would be a woman.

These days, the idea that a doctor or a lawyer or a chemist could be a woman seems obvious. For some reason, though, I was really shocked by seeing a woman cab driver. She acted just like her male counterparts: cursing, mumbling about traffic and trying to rip me off. 

Obviously, there's nothing about driving a cab, as opposed to say delivering refrigerators, that would prohibit most women from doing the job. But I suppose it's just a question of habit, and I'm not used to seeing women cabbies, not even in Europe or the States. (The only other one I've seen was an African woman in Paris.) After talking to friends about it, I've been told that there are a few in Beirut, and one even wears the hijab.

Coincidentally, a few months ago, I was near a police headquarters close to the periphery of Beirut when I suddenly saw two women soldiers walking down the street. Since then, I've run into a couple more. While I've seen plenty of women soldiers and police officers in my life, I'd never seen any in Lebanon, so I was really (pleasantly) surprised.

I recently came across an excerpt of a text by Ahad Ha'am (born Asher Ginsberg), a Zionist who went to Palestine for the first time in 1891. It's called "A Truth from Eretz Yisrael," and I found it in the collection edited by Tony Kushner and Alisa Solomon called Wrestling with Zion:

We who live abroad are accustomed to believe that almost all Eretz Yisrael is now uninhabited desert and whoever wishes can buy land there as he pleases. But this is not true. It is very difficult to find in the land [ha'aretz] cultivated fields that are not used for planting. Only those sand fields or stone mountains that would require the investment of hard labor and great expense to make them good for planting remain uncultivated. [...]

The Arabs, especially the urban elite, see and understand what we are doing and what we wish to do on the land, but they keep quiet and pretend not to notice anything. For now, they do not consider our actions as presenting a future danger to them. They therefore do their best to exploit us, to benefit from the newly arrived guests as much as they can and yet, in their hearts, they laugh at us. The peasants are happy when a Jewish colony is formed among them because they get better wages for their work and get richer and richer every year, as experience has shown us. The big landowners also have no problem accepting us because we pay them, for stone and sand land, amounts they would never have dreamed of getting before. But, if the time comes that our people's life in Eretz Yisrael will develop to a point where we are taking their place, either slightly or significantly, the natives are not going to just step aside so easily. [...]

If we have this ambition to settle in a new country and radically change our way of life and we truly want to achieve our goals, then we can't ignore the fact that ahead of us is a great war and this war is going to need significant preparation. [...]

It is not our way to learn nothing for the future from the past. We must surely learn, from both our past and present history, how careful we must be not to provoke the anger of the native people by doing them wrong, how we should be cautious in out dealings with a foreign people among whom we returned to live, to handle these people with love and respect and, needless to say, with justice and good judgment. And what do out brothers do? Exactly the opposite! They were slaves in their diasporas, and suddenly they find themselves with unlimited freedom, wild freedom that only a country like Turkey can offer. This sudden change has planted despotic tendencies in their hearts, as always happens to former slaves ['eved ki yimlokh]. They deal with the Arabs with hostility and cruelty trespass unjustly, beat them shamefully for no sufficient reason, and even boast about their actions. There is no one to stop the flood and put and end to this despicable and dangerous tendency. Our brothers indeed were right when they said that the Arab only respects he who exhibits bravery and courage. But when these people feel that that the law is on their rival's side and, even more so, if they are right to think their rival's actions are unjust and oppressive, then, even if they are silent,and endlessly reserved, they keep their anger in their hearts. And these people will be revenged like no other.

Sometimes I wonder why Cyprus, a country that is still divided despite its recent membership in the EU, can be so successful compared to Lebanon, which has, to my mind, better food, friendlier people and equally nice weather. Then the electricity gets cut for a few hours and the water goes out, leaving me unable to shave or bathe before going into work.

I asked an Ethiopian acquaintance of mine yesterday if they had similar problems in Addis Ababa. She told me that while the electricity situation was worse than in Beirut, they always had more than enough water.

Shaving from a bottle of mineral water and having to hold it until I get to work because I can't flush the toilet remind me that Lebanon has a long way to go despite my occasional bouts of optimism.

In any other country, candidates on both local and national scales would be winning elections based on campaign promises to fix, or at least improve, these problems. It seems that this is not a major part of anyone's political platform in Lebanon.

For those few of you who have noticed, I haven't written in a while. This was mostly due to a change in jobs, a more permanent move (everything has been sent from Paris to Beirut and should now be on a boat somewhere in between) and the end of a big project.

When it rains it pours, I suppose. But so far so good.

In any case, I'm more or less settled into my new schedule and my new office. Time's going to be a little thin here at the beginning, but I think once I get into the groove of things, I'll find the time to post on a regular basis again.

As a good friend of mine oft reminds me: writin' is fightin'. The bell's about to ring, and I'm almost done.

I should be back here soon.

I was just reading the preamble of the South African constitution, and I couldn't help dreaming of a similar constitution for Israel/Palestine:

We, the people of South Africa,

Recognise the injustices of our past;

Honour those who suffered for justice and freedom in our land;

Respect those who have worked to build and develop our country; and

Believe that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, united in our diversity.

We therefore, through our freely elected representatives, adopt this Constitution as the supreme law of the Republic so as to ­

- Heal the divisions of the past and establish a society based on democratic values, social justice and fundamental human rights;
- Lay the foundations for a democratic and open society in which government is based on the will of the people and every citizen is equally protected by law;
- Improve the quality of life of all citizens and free the potential of each person; and
- Build a united and democratic South Africa able to take its rightful place as a sovereign state in the family of nations.

May God protect our people.

Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika. Morena boloka setjhaba sa heso.

God seën Suid-Afrika. God bless South Africa.

Mudzimu fhatutshedza Afurika. Hosi katekisa Afrika.

I've been debating, if you can call it that, some Israelis and a Palestinian about my firmly held belief in a one state solution. 

One of the Israelis has already called me an idiot and all Arabs monkeys. I highly recommend skipping his replies and reading Lirun's and Nizo's.

UPDATE: I've been locked out of the thread. So much for for an honest and respectable exchange of ideas. The exchanges I've had with Israelis in the blogosphere have left me more depressed than anything else.

I haven't had much to say in this space about Lebanese presidential politics -- mostly because I haven't had much to say about the subject, full stop. A recent interaction with a well-placed Aounist, however, has made me question some of what I think about the situation. Up till now, the only interaction I've had with Aounists, like with most other political parties here, has been with the rank and file, the man on the street who has no more inside information than I do. And the orange man on the street seems pretty practical. While he really wants Aoun to be the president, wishful thinking aside, he doesn't really believe that it's possible any more. He'd be content with a compromise candidate along the lines of General Michel Sulaiman. 

Recently, though, I had a discussion with someone higher up in the hierarchy, someone who had inside information. Although this person didn't give me many specifics, he did stress that Aoun would be president. I asked him if he meant that Aoun should be president or that Aoun would actually be president. He replied, "both." Then I asked if I should consider that remark to be from him personally or him as a party member. Again the answer was "both."

There are three possibilities here. First, it's possible that there is information to which I'm not privy, information which will assure an Aoun victory and prove my general sense of Lebanese politics to be wrong. I don't think this is the case, but that's partially why my general sense of Lebanese politics is as it is. Second, it's possible that I wasn't getting a straight answer and that this person was just giving me the party line. This seems logical and likely, but judging from the intensity and earnestness of his discourse, I don't think it's the case. Finally, I think it's most likely that this person was so personally and emotionally invested in the campaign that he couldn't really see straight anymore. This seems to be a common symptom of junior partisans who have neither the clear sighted detraction of the man on the street nor the cynical wisdom of the senior apparatchik.

In any case, not only did this person tell me that Aoun would definitely be president, but he also said that the Aounists would not accept anything less. I have the sneaking suspicion that when all is said and done, and the presidential deals have been done in smokey back rooms in Paris, Washington and Damascus, the orange upper echelons and the rank and file will be unsurprised, leaving the more zealous junior party members with inside information completely disillusioned.

I was watching CNN last night while hanging pictures and folding laundry, when Wolf Blitzer came on. All in all, it was actually fairly interesting. He interviewed El Baradei from the IAEA, Jordan's Queen Rania, the Turkish ambassador to the US, Barbara Boxer and Trent Lott. The last two were on after everyone else to respond to the issues being discussed.

Boxer was pretty well spoken and moderate about everything until she was asked about the Israeli bombing of Syria last month. El Baradei mentioned that neither the US nor Israel had provided the IAEA with any evidence of a Syrian nuclear program. He then rebuked the Israelis for shooting first and asking questions later instead of using the appropriate organization for such issues: the IAEA. So while Lott and Boxer disagreed on pretty much everything from the Armenian genocide bill to the rhetoric being used by the White House about a possible war against Iran, the one thing that they could agree on was that Israel has "the right to defend itself."

It's really uncanny. Neither said that they had been fully briefed on any intelligence concerning the Israeli strike in Syria, but both of them unequivocally supported it without any reservations. It's to be expected from Lott, but Boxer, who spends much of her time chiding the Bush administration for talking about war in Iran and having gone to war in Iraq has nothing critical to say about Israel's act of war.

Democrats seem to believe that politically speaking, they can be harder on the US, the country they're ostensibly representing, than they can be with Israel, a foreign nation. The more stories I hear about Capitol Hill and the more performances like Boxer's that I see, the more I think that there's truth in Buchanan's remark that Congress is Israeli-occupied territory.

It's not very often that I can say that I agree with American policy in Lebanon, but for the first time that I can remember, someone at the Pentagon seems to have gotten it somewhat right. Eric Edelman, undersecretary of defense for policy, had this to say in a recent interview broadcast on Lebanese television:

What we've been trying to do consistently is to create circumstances in which Lebanon can have a strong state, strong army, a democratic system with the military accountable to civilian control and to the government and to the people's representatives in the parliament. ... We believe it's in our interest to have a strong democratic state in Lebanon ... That's what we're working toward.

The problem, of course, is that the opposition doesn't trust the US at all (some would say with good reason). So of course, there are plenty of rumors that the US is building military bases in Lebanon, etc. Ideally, the Lebanese state would be built up by a more neutral country, like Sweden, but I doubt that will be happening anytime soon.

The other night I was going to meet up with a friend to watch The Kingdom, which, to my mind, was all right for an action movie, but not nearly as clever as it thought it was. I flagged down a cab and when it stopped I did a double take. The driver was a woman.

When I was a kid, I remember there being a riddle that went like this: A boy is wheeled into the emergency room, and the surgeon takes one look at him and says, "I'm sorry, I cannot operate on this boy. He is my son." The doctor is not the boy's father. Who is the doctor, then? The answer, of course, is, his mother. But at the time I remember hearing this riddle, the answer was not so obvious, and people would give answers like "his uncle" or "his grandfather," because they simply couldn't imagine the fact that a doctor would be a woman.

These days, the idea that a doctor or a lawyer or a chemist could be a woman seems obvious. For some reason, though, I was really shocked by seeing a woman cab driver. She acted just like her male counterparts: cursing, mumbling about traffic and trying to rip me off. 

Obviously, there's nothing about driving a cab, as opposed to say delivering refrigerators, that would prohibit most women from doing the job. But I suppose it's just a question of habit, and I'm not used to seeing women cabbies, not even in Europe or the States. (The only other one I've seen was an African woman in Paris.) After talking to friends about it, I've been told that there are a few in Beirut, and one even wears the hijab.

Coincidentally, a few months ago, I was near a police headquarters close to the periphery of Beirut when I suddenly saw two women soldiers walking down the street. Since then, I've run into a couple more. While I've seen plenty of women soldiers and police officers in my life, I'd never seen any in Lebanon, so I was really (pleasantly) surprised.

I recently came across an excerpt of a text by Ahad Ha'am (born Asher Ginsberg), a Zionist who went to Palestine for the first time in 1891. It's called "A Truth from Eretz Yisrael," and I found it in the collection edited by Tony Kushner and Alisa Solomon called Wrestling with Zion:

We who live abroad are accustomed to believe that almost all Eretz Yisrael is now uninhabited desert and whoever wishes can buy land there as he pleases. But this is not true. It is very difficult to find in the land [ha'aretz] cultivated fields that are not used for planting. Only those sand fields or stone mountains that would require the investment of hard labor and great expense to make them good for planting remain uncultivated. [...]

The Arabs, especially the urban elite, see and understand what we are doing and what we wish to do on the land, but they keep quiet and pretend not to notice anything. For now, they do not consider our actions as presenting a future danger to them. They therefore do their best to exploit us, to benefit from the newly arrived guests as much as they can and yet, in their hearts, they laugh at us. The peasants are happy when a Jewish colony is formed among them because they get better wages for their work and get richer and richer every year, as experience has shown us. The big landowners also have no problem accepting us because we pay them, for stone and sand land, amounts they would never have dreamed of getting before. But, if the time comes that our people's life in Eretz Yisrael will develop to a point where we are taking their place, either slightly or significantly, the natives are not going to just step aside so easily. [...]

If we have this ambition to settle in a new country and radically change our way of life and we truly want to achieve our goals, then we can't ignore the fact that ahead of us is a great war and this war is going to need significant preparation. [...]

It is not our way to learn nothing for the future from the past. We must surely learn, from both our past and present history, how careful we must be not to provoke the anger of the native people by doing them wrong, how we should be cautious in out dealings with a foreign people among whom we returned to live, to handle these people with love and respect and, needless to say, with justice and good judgment. And what do out brothers do? Exactly the opposite! They were slaves in their diasporas, and suddenly they find themselves with unlimited freedom, wild freedom that only a country like Turkey can offer. This sudden change has planted despotic tendencies in their hearts, as always happens to former slaves ['eved ki yimlokh]. They deal with the Arabs with hostility and cruelty trespass unjustly, beat them shamefully for no sufficient reason, and even boast about their actions. There is no one to stop the flood and put and end to this despicable and dangerous tendency. Our brothers indeed were right when they said that the Arab only respects he who exhibits bravery and courage. But when these people feel that that the law is on their rival's side and, even more so, if they are right to think their rival's actions are unjust and oppressive, then, even if they are silent,and endlessly reserved, they keep their anger in their hearts. And these people will be revenged like no other.

Sometimes I wonder why Cyprus, a country that is still divided despite its recent membership in the EU, can be so successful compared to Lebanon, which has, to my mind, better food, friendlier people and equally nice weather. Then the electricity gets cut for a few hours and the water goes out, leaving me unable to shave or bathe before going into work.

I asked an Ethiopian acquaintance of mine yesterday if they had similar problems in Addis Ababa. She told me that while the electricity situation was worse than in Beirut, they always had more than enough water.

Shaving from a bottle of mineral water and having to hold it until I get to work because I can't flush the toilet remind me that Lebanon has a long way to go despite my occasional bouts of optimism.

In any other country, candidates on both local and national scales would be winning elections based on campaign promises to fix, or at least improve, these problems. It seems that this is not a major part of anyone's political platform in Lebanon.

For those few of you who have noticed, I haven't written in a while. This was mostly due to a change in jobs, a more permanent move (everything has been sent from Paris to Beirut and should now be on a boat somewhere in between) and the end of a big project.

When it rains it pours, I suppose. But so far so good.

In any case, I'm more or less settled into my new schedule and my new office. Time's going to be a little thin here at the beginning, but I think once I get into the groove of things, I'll find the time to post on a regular basis again.

As a good friend of mine oft reminds me: writin' is fightin'. The bell's about to ring, and I'm almost done.

I should be back here soon.

I was just reading the preamble of the South African constitution, and I couldn't help dreaming of a similar constitution for Israel/Palestine:

We, the people of South Africa,

Recognise the injustices of our past;

Honour those who suffered for justice and freedom in our land;

Respect those who have worked to build and develop our country; and

Believe that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, united in our diversity.

We therefore, through our freely elected representatives, adopt this Constitution as the supreme law of the Republic so as to ­

- Heal the divisions of the past and establish a society based on democratic values, social justice and fundamental human rights;
- Lay the foundations for a democratic and open society in which government is based on the will of the people and every citizen is equally protected by law;
- Improve the quality of life of all citizens and free the potential of each person; and
- Build a united and democratic South Africa able to take its rightful place as a sovereign state in the family of nations.

May God protect our people.

Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika. Morena boloka setjhaba sa heso.

God seën Suid-Afrika. God bless South Africa.

Mudzimu fhatutshedza Afurika. Hosi katekisa Afrika.

I've been debating, if you can call it that, some Israelis and a Palestinian about my firmly held belief in a one state solution. 

One of the Israelis has already called me an idiot and all Arabs monkeys. I highly recommend skipping his replies and reading Lirun's and Nizo's.

UPDATE: I've been locked out of the thread. So much for for an honest and respectable exchange of ideas. The exchanges I've had with Israelis in the blogosphere have left me more depressed than anything else.

I haven't had much to say in this space about Lebanese presidential politics -- mostly because I haven't had much to say about the subject, full stop. A recent interaction with a well-placed Aounist, however, has made me question some of what I think about the situation. Up till now, the only interaction I've had with Aounists, like with most other political parties here, has been with the rank and file, the man on the street who has no more inside information than I do. And the orange man on the street seems pretty practical. While he really wants Aoun to be the president, wishful thinking aside, he doesn't really believe that it's possible any more. He'd be content with a compromise candidate along the lines of General Michel Sulaiman. 

Recently, though, I had a discussion with someone higher up in the hierarchy, someone who had inside information. Although this person didn't give me many specifics, he did stress that Aoun would be president. I asked him if he meant that Aoun should be president or that Aoun would actually be president. He replied, "both." Then I asked if I should consider that remark to be from him personally or him as a party member. Again the answer was "both."

There are three possibilities here. First, it's possible that there is information to which I'm not privy, information which will assure an Aoun victory and prove my general sense of Lebanese politics to be wrong. I don't think this is the case, but that's partially why my general sense of Lebanese politics is as it is. Second, it's possible that I wasn't getting a straight answer and that this person was just giving me the party line. This seems logical and likely, but judging from the intensity and earnestness of his discourse, I don't think it's the case. Finally, I think it's most likely that this person was so personally and emotionally invested in the campaign that he couldn't really see straight anymore. This seems to be a common symptom of junior partisans who have neither the clear sighted detraction of the man on the street nor the cynical wisdom of the senior apparatchik.

In any case, not only did this person tell me that Aoun would definitely be president, but he also said that the Aounists would not accept anything less. I have the sneaking suspicion that when all is said and done, and the presidential deals have been done in smokey back rooms in Paris, Washington and Damascus, the orange upper echelons and the rank and file will be unsurprised, leaving the more zealous junior party members with inside information completely disillusioned.

I was watching CNN last night while hanging pictures and folding laundry, when Wolf Blitzer came on. All in all, it was actually fairly interesting. He interviewed El Baradei from the IAEA, Jordan's Queen Rania, the Turkish ambassador to the US, Barbara Boxer and Trent Lott. The last two were on after everyone else to respond to the issues being discussed.

Boxer was pretty well spoken and moderate about everything until she was asked about the Israeli bombing of Syria last month. El Baradei mentioned that neither the US nor Israel had provided the IAEA with any evidence of a Syrian nuclear program. He then rebuked the Israelis for shooting first and asking questions later instead of using the appropriate organization for such issues: the IAEA. So while Lott and Boxer disagreed on pretty much everything from the Armenian genocide bill to the rhetoric being used by the White House about a possible war against Iran, the one thing that they could agree on was that Israel has "the right to defend itself."

It's really uncanny. Neither said that they had been fully briefed on any intelligence concerning the Israeli strike in Syria, but both of them unequivocally supported it without any reservations. It's to be expected from Lott, but Boxer, who spends much of her time chiding the Bush administration for talking about war in Iran and having gone to war in Iraq has nothing critical to say about Israel's act of war.

Democrats seem to believe that politically speaking, they can be harder on the US, the country they're ostensibly representing, than they can be with Israel, a foreign nation. The more stories I hear about Capitol Hill and the more performances like Boxer's that I see, the more I think that there's truth in Buchanan's remark that Congress is Israeli-occupied territory.

It's not very often that I can say that I agree with American policy in Lebanon, but for the first time that I can remember, someone at the Pentagon seems to have gotten it somewhat right. Eric Edelman, undersecretary of defense for policy, had this to say in a recent interview broadcast on Lebanese television:

What we've been trying to do consistently is to create circumstances in which Lebanon can have a strong state, strong army, a democratic system with the military accountable to civilian control and to the government and to the people's representatives in the parliament. ... We believe it's in our interest to have a strong democratic state in Lebanon ... That's what we're working toward.

The problem, of course, is that the opposition doesn't trust the US at all (some would say with good reason). So of course, there are plenty of rumors that the US is building military bases in Lebanon, etc. Ideally, the Lebanese state would be built up by a more neutral country, like Sweden, but I doubt that will be happening anytime soon.

The other night I was going to meet up with a friend to watch The Kingdom, which, to my mind, was all right for an action movie, but not nearly as clever as it thought it was. I flagged down a cab and when it stopped I did a double take. The driver was a woman.

When I was a kid, I remember there being a riddle that went like this: A boy is wheeled into the emergency room, and the surgeon takes one look at him and says, "I'm sorry, I cannot operate on this boy. He is my son." The doctor is not the boy's father. Who is the doctor, then? The answer, of course, is, his mother. But at the time I remember hearing this riddle, the answer was not so obvious, and people would give answers like "his uncle" or "his grandfather," because they simply couldn't imagine the fact that a doctor would be a woman.

These days, the idea that a doctor or a lawyer or a chemist could be a woman seems obvious. For some reason, though, I was really shocked by seeing a woman cab driver. She acted just like her male counterparts: cursing, mumbling about traffic and trying to rip me off. 

Obviously, there's nothing about driving a cab, as opposed to say delivering refrigerators, that would prohibit most women from doing the job. But I suppose it's just a question of habit, and I'm not used to seeing women cabbies, not even in Europe or the States. (The only other one I've seen was an African woman in Paris.) After talking to friends about it, I've been told that there are a few in Beirut, and one even wears the hijab.

Coincidentally, a few months ago, I was near a police headquarters close to the periphery of Beirut when I suddenly saw two women soldiers walking down the street. Since then, I've run into a couple more. While I've seen plenty of women soldiers and police officers in my life, I'd never seen any in Lebanon, so I was really (pleasantly) surprised.

I recently came across an excerpt of a text by Ahad Ha'am (born Asher Ginsberg), a Zionist who went to Palestine for the first time in 1891. It's called "A Truth from Eretz Yisrael," and I found it in the collection edited by Tony Kushner and Alisa Solomon called Wrestling with Zion:

We who live abroad are accustomed to believe that almost all Eretz Yisrael is now uninhabited desert and whoever wishes can buy land there as he pleases. But this is not true. It is very difficult to find in the land [ha'aretz] cultivated fields that are not used for planting. Only those sand fields or stone mountains that would require the investment of hard labor and great expense to make them good for planting remain uncultivated. [...]

The Arabs, especially the urban elite, see and understand what we are doing and what we wish to do on the land, but they keep quiet and pretend not to notice anything. For now, they do not consider our actions as presenting a future danger to them. They therefore do their best to exploit us, to benefit from the newly arrived guests as much as they can and yet, in their hearts, they laugh at us. The peasants are happy when a Jewish colony is formed among them because they get better wages for their work and get richer and richer every year, as experience has shown us. The big landowners also have no problem accepting us because we pay them, for stone and sand land, amounts they would never have dreamed of getting before. But, if the time comes that our people's life in Eretz Yisrael will develop to a point where we are taking their place, either slightly or significantly, the natives are not going to just step aside so easily. [...]

If we have this ambition to settle in a new country and radically change our way of life and we truly want to achieve our goals, then we can't ignore the fact that ahead of us is a great war and this war is going to need significant preparation. [...]

It is not our way to learn nothing for the future from the past. We must surely learn, from both our past and present history, how careful we must be not to provoke the anger of the native people by doing them wrong, how we should be cautious in out dealings with a foreign people among whom we returned to live, to handle these people with love and respect and, needless to say, with justice and good judgment. And what do out brothers do? Exactly the opposite! They were slaves in their diasporas, and suddenly they find themselves with unlimited freedom, wild freedom that only a country like Turkey can offer. This sudden change has planted despotic tendencies in their hearts, as always happens to former slaves ['eved ki yimlokh]. They deal with the Arabs with hostility and cruelty trespass unjustly, beat them shamefully for no sufficient reason, and even boast about their actions. There is no one to stop the flood and put and end to this despicable and dangerous tendency. Our brothers indeed were right when they said that the Arab only respects he who exhibits bravery and courage. But when these people feel that that the law is on their rival's side and, even more so, if they are right to think their rival's actions are unjust and oppressive, then, even if they are silent,and endlessly reserved, they keep their anger in their hearts. And these people will be revenged like no other.

Sometimes I wonder why Cyprus, a country that is still divided despite its recent membership in the EU, can be so successful compared to Lebanon, which has, to my mind, better food, friendlier people and equally nice weather. Then the electricity gets cut for a few hours and the water goes out, leaving me unable to shave or bathe before going into work.

I asked an Ethiopian acquaintance of mine yesterday if they had similar problems in Addis Ababa. She told me that while the electricity situation was worse than in Beirut, they always had more than enough water.

Shaving from a bottle of mineral water and having to hold it until I get to work because I can't flush the toilet remind me that Lebanon has a long way to go despite my occasional bouts of optimism.

In any other country, candidates on both local and national scales would be winning elections based on campaign promises to fix, or at least improve, these problems. It seems that this is not a major part of anyone's political platform in Lebanon.

For those few of you who have noticed, I haven't written in a while. This was mostly due to a change in jobs, a more permanent move (everything has been sent from Paris to Beirut and should now be on a boat somewhere in between) and the end of a big project.

When it rains it pours, I suppose. But so far so good.

In any case, I'm more or less settled into my new schedule and my new office. Time's going to be a little thin here at the beginning, but I think once I get into the groove of things, I'll find the time to post on a regular basis again.

As a good friend of mine oft reminds me: writin' is fightin'. The bell's about to ring, and I'm almost done.

I should be back here soon.

I was just reading the preamble of the South African constitution, and I couldn't help dreaming of a similar constitution for Israel/Palestine:

We, the people of South Africa,

Recognise the injustices of our past;

Honour those who suffered for justice and freedom in our land;

Respect those who have worked to build and develop our country; and

Believe that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, united in our diversity.

We therefore, through our freely elected representatives, adopt this Constitution as the supreme law of the Republic so as to ­

- Heal the divisions of the past and establish a society based on democratic values, social justice and fundamental human rights;
- Lay the foundations for a democratic and open society in which government is based on the will of the people and every citizen is equally protected by law;
- Improve the quality of life of all citizens and free the potential of each person; and
- Build a united and democratic South Africa able to take its rightful place as a sovereign state in the family of nations.

May God protect our people.

Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika. Morena boloka setjhaba sa heso.

God seën Suid-Afrika. God bless South Africa.

Mudzimu fhatutshedza Afurika. Hosi katekisa Afrika.

I've been debating, if you can call it that, some Israelis and a Palestinian about my firmly held belief in a one state solution. 

One of the Israelis has already called me an idiot and all Arabs monkeys. I highly recommend skipping his replies and reading Lirun's and Nizo's.

UPDATE: I've been locked out of the thread. So much for for an honest and respectable exchange of ideas. The exchanges I've had with Israelis in the blogosphere have left me more depressed than anything else.

I haven't had much to say in this space about Lebanese presidential politics -- mostly because I haven't had much to say about the subject, full stop. A recent interaction with a well-placed Aounist, however, has made me question some of what I think about the situation. Up till now, the only interaction I've had with Aounists, like with most other political parties here, has been with the rank and file, the man on the street who has no more inside information than I do. And the orange man on the street seems pretty practical. While he really wants Aoun to be the president, wishful thinking aside, he doesn't really believe that it's possible any more. He'd be content with a compromise candidate along the lines of General Michel Sulaiman. 

Recently, though, I had a discussion with someone higher up in the hierarchy, someone who had inside information. Although this person didn't give me many specifics, he did stress that Aoun would be president. I asked him if he meant that Aoun should be president or that Aoun would actually be president. He replied, "both." Then I asked if I should consider that remark to be from him personally or him as a party member. Again the answer was "both."

There are three possibilities here. First, it's possible that there is information to which I'm not privy, information which will assure an Aoun victory and prove my general sense of Lebanese politics to be wrong. I don't think this is the case, but that's partially why my general sense of Lebanese politics is as it is. Second, it's possible that I wasn't getting a straight answer and that this person was just giving me the party line. This seems logical and likely, but judging from the intensity and earnestness of his discourse, I don't think it's the case. Finally, I think it's most likely that this person was so personally and emotionally invested in the campaign that he couldn't really see straight anymore. This seems to be a common symptom of junior partisans who have neither the clear sighted detraction of the man on the street nor the cynical wisdom of the senior apparatchik.

In any case, not only did this person tell me that Aoun would definitely be president, but he also said that the Aounists would not accept anything less. I have the sneaking suspicion that when all is said and done, and the presidential deals have been done in smokey back rooms in Paris, Washington and Damascus, the orange upper echelons and the rank and file will be unsurprised, leaving the more zealous junior party members with inside information completely disillusioned.

I was watching CNN last night while hanging pictures and folding laundry, when Wolf Blitzer came on. All in all, it was actually fairly interesting. He interviewed El Baradei from the IAEA, Jordan's Queen Rania, the Turkish ambassador to the US, Barbara Boxer and Trent Lott. The last two were on after everyone else to respond to the issues being discussed.

Boxer was pretty well spoken and moderate about everything until she was asked about the Israeli bombing of Syria last month. El Baradei mentioned that neither the US nor Israel had provided the IAEA with any evidence of a Syrian nuclear program. He then rebuked the Israelis for shooting first and asking questions later instead of using the appropriate organization for such issues: the IAEA. So while Lott and Boxer disagreed on pretty much everything from the Armenian genocide bill to the rhetoric being used by the White House about a possible war against Iran, the one thing that they could agree on was that Israel has "the right to defend itself."

It's really uncanny. Neither said that they had been fully briefed on any intelligence concerning the Israeli strike in Syria, but both of them unequivocally supported it without any reservations. It's to be expected from Lott, but Boxer, who spends much of her time chiding the Bush administration for talking about war in Iran and having gone to war in Iraq has nothing critical to say about Israel's act of war.

Democrats seem to believe that politically speaking, they can be harder on the US, the country they're ostensibly representing, than they can be with Israel, a foreign nation. The more stories I hear about Capitol Hill and the more performances like Boxer's that I see, the more I think that there's truth in Buchanan's remark that Congress is Israeli-occupied territory.

It's not very often that I can say that I agree with American policy in Lebanon, but for the first time that I can remember, someone at the Pentagon seems to have gotten it somewhat right. Eric Edelman, undersecretary of defense for policy, had this to say in a recent interview broadcast on Lebanese television:

What we've been trying to do consistently is to create circumstances in which Lebanon can have a strong state, strong army, a democratic system with the military accountable to civilian control and to the government and to the people's representatives in the parliament. ... We believe it's in our interest to have a strong democratic state in Lebanon ... That's what we're working toward.

The problem, of course, is that the opposition doesn't trust the US at all (some would say with good reason). So of course, there are plenty of rumors that the US is building military bases in Lebanon, etc. Ideally, the Lebanese state would be built up by a more neutral country, like Sweden, but I doubt that will be happening anytime soon.

The other night I was going to meet up with a friend to watch The Kingdom, which, to my mind, was all right for an action movie, but not nearly as clever as it thought it was. I flagged down a cab and when it stopped I did a double take. The driver was a woman.

When I was a kid, I remember there being a riddle that went like this: A boy is wheeled into the emergency room, and the surgeon takes one look at him and says, "I'm sorry, I cannot operate on this boy. He is my son." The doctor is not the boy's father. Who is the doctor, then? The answer, of course, is, his mother. But at the time I remember hearing this riddle, the answer was not so obvious, and people would give answers like "his uncle" or "his grandfather," because they simply couldn't imagine the fact that a doctor would be a woman.

These days, the idea that a doctor or a lawyer or a chemist could be a woman seems obvious. For some reason, though, I was really shocked by seeing a woman cab driver. She acted just like her male counterparts: cursing, mumbling about traffic and trying to rip me off. 

Obviously, there's nothing about driving a cab, as opposed to say delivering refrigerators, that would prohibit most women from doing the job. But I suppose it's just a question of habit, and I'm not used to seeing women cabbies, not even in Europe or the States. (The only other one I've seen was an African woman in Paris.) After talking to friends about it, I've been told that there are a few in Beirut, and one even wears the hijab.

Coincidentally, a few months ago, I was near a police headquarters close to the periphery of Beirut when I suddenly saw two women soldiers walking down the street. Since then, I've run into a couple more. While I've seen plenty of women soldiers and police officers in my life, I'd never seen any in Lebanon, so I was really (pleasantly) surprised.

I recently came across an excerpt of a text by Ahad Ha'am (born Asher Ginsberg), a Zionist who went to Palestine for the first time in 1891. It's called "A Truth from Eretz Yisrael," and I found it in the collection edited by Tony Kushner and Alisa Solomon called Wrestling with Zion:

We who live abroad are accustomed to believe that almost all Eretz Yisrael is now uninhabited desert and whoever wishes can buy land there as he pleases. But this is not true. It is very difficult to find in the land [ha'aretz] cultivated fields that are not used for planting. Only those sand fields or stone mountains that would require the investment of hard labor and great expense to make them good for planting remain uncultivated. [...]

The Arabs, especially the urban elite, see and understand what we are doing and what we wish to do on the land, but they keep quiet and pretend not to notice anything. For now, they do not consider our actions as presenting a future danger to them. They therefore do their best to exploit us, to benefit from the newly arrived guests as much as they can and yet, in their hearts, they laugh at us. The peasants are happy when a Jewish colony is formed among them because they get better wages for their work and get richer and richer every year, as experience has shown us. The big landowners also have no problem accepting us because we pay them, for stone and sand land, amounts they would never have dreamed of getting before. But, if the time comes that our people's life in Eretz Yisrael will develop to a point where we are taking their place, either slightly or significantly, the natives are not going to just step aside so easily. [...]

If we have this ambition to settle in a new country and radically change our way of life and we truly want to achieve our goals, then we can't ignore the fact that ahead of us is a great war and this war is going to need significant preparation. [...]

It is not our way to learn nothing for the future from the past. We must surely learn, from both our past and present history, how careful we must be not to provoke the anger of the native people by doing them wrong, how we should be cautious in out dealings with a foreign people among whom we returned to live, to handle these people with love and respect and, needless to say, with justice and good judgment. And what do out brothers do? Exactly the opposite! They were slaves in their diasporas, and suddenly they find themselves with unlimited freedom, wild freedom that only a country like Turkey can offer. This sudden change has planted despotic tendencies in their hearts, as always happens to former slaves ['eved ki yimlokh]. They deal with the Arabs with hostility and cruelty trespass unjustly, beat them shamefully for no sufficient reason, and even boast about their actions. There is no one to stop the flood and put and end to this despicable and dangerous tendency. Our brothers indeed were right when they said that the Arab only respects he who exhibits bravery and courage. But when these people feel that that the law is on their rival's side and, even more so, if they are right to think their rival's actions are unjust and oppressive, then, even if they are silent,and endlessly reserved, they keep their anger in their hearts. And these people will be revenged like no other.

Sometimes I wonder why Cyprus, a country that is still divided despite its recent membership in the EU, can be so successful compared to Lebanon, which has, to my mind, better food, friendlier people and equally nice weather. Then the electricity gets cut for a few hours and the water goes out, leaving me unable to shave or bathe before going into work.

I asked an Ethiopian acquaintance of mine yesterday if they had similar problems in Addis Ababa. She told me that while the electricity situation was worse than in Beirut, they always had more than enough water.

Shaving from a bottle of mineral water and having to hold it until I get to work because I can't flush the toilet remind me that Lebanon has a long way to go despite my occasional bouts of optimism.

In any other country, candidates on both local and national scales would be winning elections based on campaign promises to fix, or at least improve, these problems. It seems that this is not a major part of anyone's political platform in Lebanon.

For those few of you who have noticed, I haven't written in a while. This was mostly due to a change in jobs, a more permanent move (everything has been sent from Paris to Beirut and should now be on a boat somewhere in between) and the end of a big project.

When it rains it pours, I suppose. But so far so good.

In any case, I'm more or less settled into my new schedule and my new office. Time's going to be a little thin here at the beginning, but I think once I get into the groove of things, I'll find the time to post on a regular basis again.

As a good friend of mine oft reminds me: writin' is fightin'. The bell's about to ring, and I'm almost done.

I should be back here soon.

I was just reading the preamble of the South African constitution, and I couldn't help dreaming of a similar constitution for Israel/Palestine:

We, the people of South Africa,

Recognise the injustices of our past;

Honour those who suffered for justice and freedom in our land;

Respect those who have worked to build and develop our country; and

Believe that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, united in our diversity.

We therefore, through our freely elected representatives, adopt this Constitution as the supreme law of the Republic so as to ­

- Heal the divisions of the past and establish a society based on democratic values, social justice and fundamental human rights;
- Lay the foundations for a democratic and open society in which government is based on the will of the people and every citizen is equally protected by law;
- Improve the quality of life of all citizens and free the potential of each person; and
- Build a united and democratic South Africa able to take its rightful place as a sovereign state in the family of nations.

May God protect our people.

Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika. Morena boloka setjhaba sa heso.

God seën Suid-Afrika. God bless South Africa.

Mudzimu fhatutshedza Afurika. Hosi katekisa Afrika.

I've been debating, if you can call it that, some Israelis and a Palestinian about my firmly held belief in a one state solution. 

One of the Israelis has already called me an idiot and all Arabs monkeys. I highly recommend skipping his replies and reading Lirun's and Nizo's.

UPDATE: I've been locked out of the thread. So much for for an honest and respectable exchange of ideas. The exchanges I've had with Israelis in the blogosphere have left me more depressed than anything else.

I haven't had much to say in this space about Lebanese presidential politics -- mostly because I haven't had much to say about the subject, full stop. A recent interaction with a well-placed Aounist, however, has made me question some of what I think about the situation. Up till now, the only interaction I've had with Aounists, like with most other political parties here, has been with the rank and file, the man on the street who has no more inside information than I do. And the orange man on the street seems pretty practical. While he really wants Aoun to be the president, wishful thinking aside, he doesn't really believe that it's possible any more. He'd be content with a compromise candidate along the lines of General Michel Sulaiman. 

Recently, though, I had a discussion with someone higher up in the hierarchy, someone who had inside information. Although this person didn't give me many specifics, he did stress that Aoun would be president. I asked him if he meant that Aoun should be president or that Aoun would actually be president. He replied, "both." Then I asked if I should consider that remark to be from him personally or him as a party member. Again the answer was "both."

There are three possibilities here. First, it's possible that there is information to which I'm not privy, information which will assure an Aoun victory and prove my general sense of Lebanese politics to be wrong. I don't think this is the case, but that's partially why my general sense of Lebanese politics is as it is. Second, it's possible that I wasn't getting a straight answer and that this person was just giving me the party line. This seems logical and likely, but judging from the intensity and earnestness of his discourse, I don't think it's the case. Finally, I think it's most likely that this person was so personally and emotionally invested in the campaign that he couldn't really see straight anymore. This seems to be a common symptom of junior partisans who have neither the clear sighted detraction of the man on the street nor the cynical wisdom of the senior apparatchik.

In any case, not only did this person tell me that Aoun would definitely be president, but he also said that the Aounists would not accept anything less. I have the sneaking suspicion that when all is said and done, and the presidential deals have been done in smokey back rooms in Paris, Washington and Damascus, the orange upper echelons and the rank and file will be unsurprised, leaving the more zealous junior party members with inside information completely disillusioned.

I was watching CNN last night while hanging pictures and folding laundry, when Wolf Blitzer came on. All in all, it was actually fairly interesting. He interviewed El Baradei from the IAEA, Jordan's Queen Rania, the Turkish ambassador to the US, Barbara Boxer and Trent Lott. The last two were on after everyone else to respond to the issues being discussed.

Boxer was pretty well spoken and moderate about everything until she was asked about the Israeli bombing of Syria last month. El Baradei mentioned that neither the US nor Israel had provided the IAEA with any evidence of a Syrian nuclear program. He then rebuked the Israelis for shooting first and asking questions later instead of using the appropriate organization for such issues: the IAEA. So while Lott and Boxer disagreed on pretty much everything from the Armenian genocide bill to the rhetoric being used by the White House about a possible war against Iran, the one thing that they could agree on was that Israel has "the right to defend itself."

It's really uncanny. Neither said that they had been fully briefed on any intelligence concerning the Israeli strike in Syria, but both of them unequivocally supported it without any reservations. It's to be expected from Lott, but Boxer, who spends much of her time chiding the Bush administration for talking about war in Iran and having gone to war in Iraq has nothing critical to say about Israel's act of war.

Democrats seem to believe that politically speaking, they can be harder on the US, the country they're ostensibly representing, than they can be with Israel, a foreign nation. The more stories I hear about Capitol Hill and the more performances like Boxer's that I see, the more I think that there's truth in Buchanan's remark that Congress is Israeli-occupied territory.

It's not very often that I can say that I agree with American policy in Lebanon, but for the first time that I can remember, someone at the Pentagon seems to have gotten it somewhat right. Eric Edelman, undersecretary of defense for policy, had this to say in a recent interview broadcast on Lebanese television:

What we've been trying to do consistently is to create circumstances in which Lebanon can have a strong state, strong army, a democratic system with the military accountable to civilian control and to the government and to the people's representatives in the parliament. ... We believe it's in our interest to have a strong democratic state in Lebanon ... That's what we're working toward.

The problem, of course, is that the opposition doesn't trust the US at all (some would say with good reason). So of course, there are plenty of rumors that the US is building military bases in Lebanon, etc. Ideally, the Lebanese state would be built up by a more neutral country, like Sweden, but I doubt that will be happening anytime soon.

The other night I was going to meet up with a friend to watch The Kingdom, which, to my mind, was all right for an action movie, but not nearly as clever as it thought it was. I flagged down a cab and when it stopped I did a double take. The driver was a woman.

When I was a kid, I remember there being a riddle that went like this: A boy is wheeled into the emergency room, and the surgeon takes one look at him and says, "I'm sorry, I cannot operate on this boy. He is my son." The doctor is not the boy's father. Who is the doctor, then? The answer, of course, is, his mother. But at the time I remember hearing this riddle, the answer was not so obvious, and people would give answers like "his uncle" or "his grandfather," because they simply couldn't imagine the fact that a doctor would be a woman.

These days, the idea that a doctor or a lawyer or a chemist could be a woman seems obvious. For some reason, though, I was really shocked by seeing a woman cab driver. She acted just like her male counterparts: cursing, mumbling about traffic and trying to rip me off. 

Obviously, there's nothing about driving a cab, as opposed to say delivering refrigerators, that would prohibit most women from doing the job. But I suppose it's just a question of habit, and I'm not used to seeing women cabbies, not even in Europe or the States. (The only other one I've seen was an African woman in Paris.) After talking to friends about it, I've been told that there are a few in Beirut, and one even wears the hijab.

Coincidentally, a few months ago, I was near a police headquarters close to the periphery of Beirut when I suddenly saw two women soldiers walking down the street. Since then, I've run into a couple more. While I've seen plenty of women soldiers and police officers in my life, I'd never seen any in Lebanon, so I was really (pleasantly) surprised.

I recently came across an excerpt of a text by Ahad Ha'am (born Asher Ginsberg), a Zionist who went to Palestine for the first time in 1891. It's called "A Truth from Eretz Yisrael," and I found it in the collection edited by Tony Kushner and Alisa Solomon called Wrestling with Zion:

We who live abroad are accustomed to believe that almost all Eretz Yisrael is now uninhabited desert and whoever wishes can buy land there as he pleases. But this is not true. It is very difficult to find in the land [ha'aretz] cultivated fields that are not used for planting. Only those sand fields or stone mountains that would require the investment of hard labor and great expense to make them good for planting remain uncultivated. [...]

The Arabs, especially the urban elite, see and understand what we are doing and what we wish to do on the land, but they keep quiet and pretend not to notice anything. For now, they do not consider our actions as presenting a future danger to them. They therefore do their best to exploit us, to benefit from the newly arrived guests as much as they can and yet, in their hearts, they laugh at us. The peasants are happy when a Jewish colony is formed among them because they get better wages for their work and get richer and richer every year, as experience has shown us. The big landowners also have no problem accepting us because we pay them, for stone and sand land, amounts they would never have dreamed of getting before. But, if the time comes that our people's life in Eretz Yisrael will develop to a point where we are taking their place, either slightly or significantly, the natives are not going to just step aside so easily. [...]

If we have this ambition to settle in a new country and radically change our way of life and we truly want to achieve our goals, then we can't ignore the fact that ahead of us is a great war and this war is going to need significant preparation. [...]

It is not our way to learn nothing for the future from the past. We must surely learn, from both our past and present history, how careful we must be not to provoke the anger of the native people by doing them wrong, how we should be cautious in out dealings with a foreign people among whom we returned to live, to handle these people with love and respect and, needless to say, with justice and good judgment. And what do out brothers do? Exactly the opposite! They were slaves in their diasporas, and suddenly they find themselves with unlimited freedom, wild freedom that only a country like Turkey can offer. This sudden change has planted despotic tendencies in their hearts, as always happens to former slaves ['eved ki yimlokh]. They deal with the Arabs with hostility and cruelty trespass unjustly, beat them shamefully for no sufficient reason, and even boast about their actions. There is no one to stop the flood and put and end to this despicable and dangerous tendency. Our brothers indeed were right when they said that the Arab only respects he who exhibits bravery and courage. But when these people feel that that the law is on their rival's side and, even more so, if they are right to think their rival's actions are unjust and oppressive, then, even if they are silent,and endlessly reserved, they keep their anger in their hearts. And these people will be revenged like no other.

Sometimes I wonder why Cyprus, a country that is still divided despite its recent membership in the EU, can be so successful compared to Lebanon, which has, to my mind, better food, friendlier people and equally nice weather. Then the electricity gets cut for a few hours and the water goes out, leaving me unable to shave or bathe before going into work.

I asked an Ethiopian acquaintance of mine yesterday if they had similar problems in Addis Ababa. She told me that while the electricity situation was worse than in Beirut, they always had more than enough water.

Shaving from a bottle of mineral water and having to hold it until I get to work because I can't flush the toilet remind me that Lebanon has a long way to go despite my occasional bouts of optimism.

In any other country, candidates on both local and national scales would be winning elections based on campaign promises to fix, or at least improve, these problems. It seems that this is not a major part of anyone's political platform in Lebanon.

For those few of you who have noticed, I haven't written in a while. This was mostly due to a change in jobs, a more permanent move (everything has been sent from Paris to Beirut and should now be on a boat somewhere in between) and the end of a big project.

When it rains it pours, I suppose. But so far so good.

In any case, I'm more or less settled into my new schedule and my new office. Time's going to be a little thin here at the beginning, but I think once I get into the groove of things, I'll find the time to post on a regular basis again.

As a good friend of mine oft reminds me: writin' is fightin'. The bell's about to ring, and I'm almost done.

I should be back here soon.