How Thomas Friedman Gets Palestine Entirely Wrong

For years Pulitzer Prize winner Thomas Friedman has traipsed around the Middle East with a golf bag on his shoulder and a moustache full of witty catechisms about the region’s problems and their solutions. Two recent op-eds continue this trend, inspired by a recent trip to the West Bank that apparently impressed Friedman greatly.

“Green Shoots in Palestine” parts one and two, shed light on transformations in the West Bank that apparently buck the miserable trends that characterize Palestine and the Arab world at large – from poverty and underdevelopment, to illiteracy and authoritarianism.

Instead Friedman sees some “good cheer” coming from the West Bank – security, fiscal transparency, and solid economic growth – trends he encourages the U.S. to “nurture”, presumably to allow these “shoots” to mature and bear more fruit.

At least one of the articles topped the “most emailed” list on the N.Y. Times website – an accomplishment considering it is the 28^th most read webpage in America. It is also a testament of how Western editors are oblivious to how wrong and hypocritical some of the things Friedman says actually are.

Friedman is not alone in promoting recent developments in the West Bank. U.S., E.U. and even some Israeli politicians have showered praise on these developments as well. Friedman’s paeans are thus consistent with his traditional grandstanding for these government’s foreign policies – from support for the U.S.-led war and occupation of Iraq, to the promotion of neo-liberalism as the panacea to world problems.

In order to expose Friedman’s arguments, it’s necessary to first provide an overview of them. Taken at face value, they may appear to some as perfectly sound. But, it is the context that Freidman fails to provide, which is so damaging and deceptive.

Friedman’s Take

Friedman begins by describing the grim findings of the 2009 Arab Human Development Report (AHDR) – a UN-funded study outlining the most significant factors holding back the Arab world from achieving its developmental potential.

The report found that the great majority of Arab citizens today lack “human security – the kind of material and moral foundation that secures lives, livelihoods and an acceptable quality of life for the majority.”

The report accounts that human security in the Arab world is undermined through a wide series of malaises, ranging from “environmental degradation” to “population explosion” (395 million by 2015); and from “high unemployment” (an average of 14.4 percent, compared with 6.3 percent for the rest of the world) to “autocratic and unrepresentative Arab governments.”

If this seems predictable and depressing enough, don’t despair. Friedman has found “the most exciting new idea in Arab governance ever”, a phenomena he calls “Fayyadism.”

Fayyadism takes its name from Salam Fayyad, the current Palestinian Authority (PA) Prime Minister in the West Bank, who also happens to have been a former economist at the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF). But it’s not just Fayyad’s resume that excites Friedman:

“Fayyadism is based on the simple but all-too-rare notion that an Arab leader’s legitimacy should be based not on slogans or rejectionism or personality cults or security services, but on delivering transparent, accountable administration and services.”

For Friedman, Fayyadist strategy is based on the notion that “the more we build our state with quality institutions – finance, police, social services – the sooner we will secure our right to independence.” This he sees as “a challenge to ‘Arafatism,’ which focused on Palestinian rights first, state institutions later, if ever, and produced neither.”

To buttress his argument, Friedman notes that 1,200 new companies registered for licenses in the West Bank in 2008, and an additional 900 have registered in the first six months of 2009. He also references IMF predictions that the West Bank economy should grow by seven percent this year.

Friedman’s second article highlights a crucial aspect behind Fayyad’s success – the deployment of four battalions of new Palestinian National Security Forces trained in Jordan under U.S. Lieutenant General Keith Dayton, and paid for by the U.S. The injection of  “improved Palestinian policing”, has in turn spurred “an economic-security dynamic” that has the potential “to give the post-Yasir Arafat Palestinians another chance to build the sort of self-governing authority, army and economy that are prerequisites for securing their own independent state.”

According to Friedman, the combination of “improved security” and the relaxing of Israeli restrictions on movement, have brought about accelerated economic activity that make Ramallah and Nablus, little boom towns.

Though Friedman acknowledges that “men and women do not live by shoe sales alone” and that the Palestinian leadership must “eventually [be] given political authority”, he believes the Palestinians in the West Bank are on the right track. He concludes by arguing:

“America must nurture this virtuous cycle: more money to train credible Palestinian troops, more encouragement for Israel’s risk-taking in eliminating checkpoints, more Palestinian economic growth and quicker negotiations on the contours of a Palestinian state in the West Bank. Hamas and Gaza can join later. Don’t wait for them. If we build it, they will come.”

The Myth of Fayyadism

I sometime wish that political realities in Palestine would follow the plot of Hollywood movies too. But everyone knows they don’t, and the reality Friedman portrays is actually a fiction that should fool no one, especially his American readers who actually foot the bill in terms of how billions of their tax-payer dollars are spent.

In that regard, “Fayyadism” truly is a “field of dreams” that deserves to be mowed.

Let’s begin with Fayyad himself. The man is hardly the most popular figure in Palestine. His Third Way party received less than 2.5 percent of the vote in the January 2006 election. Hamas won that election, but it’s not Hamas that is governing the West Bank. Fayyad was empowered to be Prime Minister by a presidential decree, without the consent of the Hamas-controlled Legislative Council. PA president Mahmoud Abbas refused to hand over genuine control to Hamas after it won elections, and worked to subvert its power through a CIA-sponsored coup attempt. The coup went miserably wrong however, and once Hamas’ hand was forced to block it, expelling the military junta leading it from Gaza, Abu Mazen tapped Fayyad to run the West Bank as prime minister, ousting the democratically elected Ismail Haniyeh. Israel did its fair share to help Abu Mazen dethrone Hamas after the election in the West Bank by arresting 34 of 47 elected representatives to parliament. (11 were already in Israeli prisons at the time of their election.)

Friedman’s failure to mention the nature of Fayyad’s tenure makes him an apologist to these undemocratic trends in Palestinian politics. It also makes him a hypocrite for pointing to “authoritarianism” as an ailment of the Arab world.

But authoritarianism in the West Bank is not limited to critiques of Fayyad tenure as Prime Minister. It actually goes far deeper encompassing a wide array of political and civil rights.

The PA in the West Bank now holds at least 750 political prisoners in its jails and at least four prisoners have died in interrogation in the past year. Friedman would do well to take a look at the bruised purple thighs of Haithem Amr, who died while being incarcerated in a PA jail in Hebron last June, allegedly under torture. Amr was allegedly a Hamas member. But is this the way Friedman promotes dealing with the political opposition? Actually, it’s Fateh that should rightly be called the opposition, because it lost the election. This is not to white-wash Hamas’ crimes when it comes to political detention, but those of the PA should not be excused either, especially when they are backed by the West.

Political arrest and torture are not however limited to Hamas activists. Ask Sari Sammouri, an independent journalist and blogger from Jenin who was arrested for three weeks without charge for writing a series of critical articles about Fayyad and Fateh.

PA censorship and intimidation of journalists even went so far as Fayyad ordering the shutting of Al Jazeera satellite station in the West Bank, after senior Fateh member Farouk el Qaddoumi released a document accusing Abu Mazen of complicity in the assassination of former PA president Yasser Arafat.

Imagine Obama ordering the shutting down of the New York Times for reporting on an embarrassing issue such as torture memos or the powers of Homeland Security? When Friedman sings Fayyad’s praises, he is encouraging policies that curtail freedom of the press, even taking sides in intra-Fateh political disputes.

Then there is the issue of the four battalions trained by the U.S. in Jordan. Why doesn’t Friedman inquire as to why these forces are being trained in Jordan? And in what precisely are they being trained to do? Lt. General Keith Dayton has answers:

Now, you might ask, why Jordan? The answer is pretty simple. The Palestinians wanted to train in the region, but they wanted to be away from clan, family, and political influences. The Israelis trust the Jordanians, and the Jordanians were anxious to help. Our equipping is all non-lethal and it is fully coordinated with both the Palestinians [the West Bank PA] and the Israelis. Make sure you understand that. We don’t provide anything to the Palestinians unless it has been thoroughly coordinated with the state of Israel and they agree to it.

Dayton humbly pats his team on the shoulder, by noting the glee with which Israeli occupation army officials look to their work:

[..] [W]hat we have created are new men. [...] [U]pon the return of these new men of Palestine [from training in Jordan], they have shown motivation, discipline and professionalism, and they have made such a difference-and I am not making this up-that senior IDF commanders ask me frequently, ‘How many more of these new Palestinians can you generate, and how quickly, because they are our way to leave the West Bank.’

In an earlier era, honest journalists would characterize the training of a military force who will work in another ‘state’ (in this case the West Bank), away from the concerned eyes of its locals, as akin to milita training. Isn’t this similar to what the U.S. was covertly doing when it was training Contras in Hondouras, as a means to overthrow the Sandinistas in Nicaragua? But in Friedman’s Middle East, this is something overt, necessary and worthy of encouragement.

The “security” dimensions to Friedman’s accolades of Fayyad are part of the overwhelming Western aversion to Hamas. But it is crucial to stress here that it is actually Palestinian democracy that is at stake here, and democracy as a whole in the region. This is precisely the Western double standard that contributes to the rise of movements like Hamas in the first place. Repression of an Islamist party is somehow deemed preferable to respecting the democratic process overall, even though the West bases its moral legitimacy on its very promotion of democracy as what distinguishes “us” from “them.

An Economic Boom?

Then there is Fayyadism’s supposed fiscal and administrative accomplishments – in Friedman’s words, Fayyad’s ability to “[deliver] transparent, accountable administration and services.” But this too is malarky. There has not been one trial of any big fish Palestinian figures involved in the widespread corruption witnessed throughout the Oslo era.

Moreover, Friedman ignores the work of the Palestinian organization Aman, which strives to fight corruption and foster genuine accountability. Its 2008 annual report – covering a period in which Fayyad was entirely in power – sites a public opinion poll the organization carried out that shows that 55.8 percent of respondents believe corruption is on the rise, while only 19 percent believe the opposite.

Corruption in the West Bank starts at the very top. Last April, Reuters ran a story about how companies owned by Abu Mazen’s two sons, Tarek and Yasser, won millions of dollars worth of contracts from USAID for construction projects throughout the West Bank. Correct me if I’m wrong, but not even Dick Cheney sent his daughter to run Haliburton.

The reality is, the coterie of financial elites who run the West Bank and are promoted by Fayyadism, treat the West Bank as though it is their personal captive market. This is the reason why every day in local newspapers, there are paid advertisements from fiscal groups and companies thanking Fayyad for the favorable treats he dishes out to their financial capital and investments.

And what about all that astonishing economic growth Friedman refers to in his article? The reality is, after the Hamas victory, and especially after the movement kicked out the Fateh junta from Gaza, Western and Arab governments have poured billions of dollars into the West Bank in a desperate effort to prevent Hamas from rising to power there. In the mean time, not a penny has entered the Gaza Strip to help it rebuild after the enormous devastation Israel deliberately inflicted against it during its winter military assault.

If billions of dollars was suddenly pumped into any government’s hands – remember there are only 2.46 million people in the West Bank – you would no doubt see impressive growth figures that inevitably trickle down in some form or another to the wider population. Friedman would do better to investigate who precisely is filing for these business licenses and what their connections are, if any, to Abu Mazen’s PA. I’m guessing these business licenses are not being dolled out to people who voted for Hamas, but I could be crazy.

The real point here is that it is Western governments and Israel who control all the spikets and levers of power to make one region blossom in growth (the West Bank) and make another wither on the vine (the Gaza Strip). While the PA in the West Bank has a new fleet of fancy vehicles for its security services and VIPs, it is the donkey and cart that has become the cutting-edge means of transportation for people in Gaza. One cannot be separated from the other as manifestations of the same overriding policy, though Freidman has no problem in doing just that.

The irony here is that Friedman’s arguments even ignore the warnings of Israeli commentators who warn not to be fooled by the Fayyad bubble. Veteran Israeli journalist Akiva Eldar notes:

Without the assistance, though, of the European and American taxpayer, who are paying the salaries of the Palestinian Authority’s over 100,000 policemen and officials, the economy of the West Bank would long since have collapsed along with the PA.’

Israeli journalist Amira Hass goes a step further:

‘[T]he prosperity in Ramallah and Nablus is misleading, just as it was misleading between 1996 and 2000, when the Israeli media and the Oslo spin doctors were impressed by all the coffee shops and high-tech companies. Today, as back then, the people so impressed are visitors-for-a-moment who engage in occupation denial.

Make no mistake: The vibrant life reflects the desire and capability of leading a normal life. Yet even Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and his close entourage – who need plaudits to justify the foreign donations and privileges they receive from Israel – know that this is just a thin veil. A favor here and a gesture there will not prevent the next popular uprising, nor will they change this insane state of affairs as dictated by Israel. Only a sharp reversal in its policy will, something it refuses to undertake.

Ignoring Western Regional Policies and Israel

One final, yet important Friedman elision relates to the UN report (the AHDR), which he quotes as the basis of his argument, and that Fayyadism is supposedly the refreshing remedy to.

Friedman ignores the fact that the ADHR is considered controversial throughout the Arab world because of how higher-ups in the UN interfered with its production, particularly when it came to its addressing of Israeli and Western policies in the region. AHDR’s main researcher, Dr. Mustafa Kamel al-Sayyed, has publicly washed his hands of the final product in protest of what he called “UN staff interferences and alterations.”

“Changing the order of the chapters and moving the one on occupation, military intervention, and human insecurity from second to ninth, to follow environmental threats, marginalizes the dangers of occupation,” said Sayyed.

Another of the report’s authors, Samah Idriss, critiqued the report’s approach to Israel, which neglects “Israeli racial discrimination, displacing Palestinian refugees, the Israeli occupation of Shebaa farms, Ghajar village and Kfarshouba and the Golan, as well as imprisoning Arabs and refusing to discuss any reparations.”

The report even names Iraqi and Palestinian resistance movements “militias,” but when talking about the American occupation uses ambiguous terms such as “policies of foreign forces.”

Ignoring the West’s hands in the region’s problems, while not even bothering to mention internal Arab debates about their own well-being, has been par for Friedman’s course for years.

All this is not to apologize or justify the reactionary, authoritarian policies of Arab dictatorships. But most of these are supported by the U.S. as well. Even Barak Obama, chose to deliver his address to the Muslim and Arab world from Cairo, the seat of the police state of Husni Mubarak – a man who also wins elections by 99 percent of the vote, and is well on his way to preparing his son, Jamal, as his successor. Leadership in the Arab world still remains in the hands of de facto dynasties, whether its Kings and Emirs (in Jordan, Morocco and the Gulf) or “elected presidents” (Egypt, Syria and apparently Libya as well.)

Western support for Arab dictatorships is nothing new, and Thomas Friedman is only adding Salam Fayyad’s name to the list. True, Fayyad is no Saddam Hussein, (who incidentally was supported by the U.S., at the beginning of his presidency). But what matters here is the principle, because it’s the principles that Fayyad supposedly represents and brings to the equation that makes him such an exciting new phenomenon to Friedman in the first place.

Though this is certainly not the first time Thomas Friedman has said something foolish, what distinguishes this foot in his mouth from the others, is that virtually all the criticisms Friedman directs at Arab politics are applicable to Fayyad in their own particular way. Indeed Fayyad’s image in the West has remained conspicuously clean for too long, and its long past due that conscientious voices problematize this new/old approach to governance.

So What Were those Green Shoots?

In that regard the “green shoots” Friedman sees popping up throughout the West Bank are not positive new developments, but old-school carrots and sticks, that repeat the miserable cycle of underdevelopment and authoritarianism that so characterize the region.

His misidentification of these “shoots” makes me wonder what Friedman actually did see during his trip to the West Bank. Could these “green shoots” have been the first buds of a Hamas revival? Green after all is Hamas’ favorite color, and the environment created under Abbas-Fayyad rule, combined with Israel’s ongoing colonialism and intransigence, will continue to provide fertile ground for the emergence of a political opposition – Hamas or otherwise – even if it is repressed and unable to take power.

Another scenario could be that Friedman’s green shoots were actually marijuana sprouts, and part of the West Bank’s rising drug problem that has blossomed under the rubble of its people’s defeated hopes and crushed dreams.

In either case, Friedman, the smarmy orientalist extraordinaire, needs to be retired as a political commentator as a relic of a by-gone era. The new social and political forces that brought Obama to power and who demand genuine social and political reform, both domestic and international, and in line with principles of justice, human rights and dignity, deserve better, as do the people of Palestine and the region at large.