fugitive peace

I think I must be coming down with Jerusalem Syndrome.

I was up late writing and had decided to pack it in. I went to close the balcony door and was arrested by the sight of a big billow of mist. I went outside. Warmish-coolish dampish clouds rolled by. And then I heard it.

A kind of ethereal chanting. Male voices. Hard to tell how many; sometimes it sounded like one, sometimes like half a dozen.

Hard also to tell where it came from. The walls of the buildings around here bounce sounds back and forth. My first thought was the muezzins of East Jerusalem. But the wind was blowing from the west, so they couldn’t have carried that far, and this wasn’t the prescribed chant of an Adhan but something less structured, rising and fading out, and in a more Western musical key.

I couldn’t sleep, so I took my bike out. I rode down towards the old city, stopping every so often to listen. I still heard them. The direction was still vague. I reached a vantage point in Yemin Moshe overlooking the floodlit old city walls. I could hear the voices, faintly, but they were at the threshold of my hearing; they might have been coming from inside the old city, but maybe not.

I turned and rode back up towards the centre of town. It’s hard to overestimate how empty Jerusalem is at four in the morning. In ten minutes I saw maybe half a dozen cars and a handful of pedestrians. I invented outlandish stories for what each one of them was doing walking the streets at this hour. I guess none of them looked like he was listening for disembodied voices though.

I reach the pedestrian precinct and suddenly came upon crowds of teenagers out drinking. Voices, raucous, cheerful. Not the ones I had heard. I carried on to the beginning of Mea Shearim; maybe it was from an early-bird yeshiva. But I could hear nothing.

I turned back again. A JCB digger was partly blocking a road and a taxi was trying to pass it. The taxi driver hooted a couple of times, waited, then advanced with extreme caution. Since a guy went crazy on a bulldozer yesterday everyone’s afraid of earth movers.

I got home, stopping a few more times. By now the voices were in my head as much as outside it; I thought I heard them, and they would resolve into a car engine, the wind in my ears, a radio playing in a house I passed.

Outside my house I waited a long while and listened. The unsteady flapping of the Belgian flag on the consul’s residence; distant whispers of cars; a leaf drily hitting the ground. No voices. One of the guys I had cycled past a few minutes earlier walked by. He didn’t meet my gaze.

I went in and up to the balcony. Birdsong. Wind. The beginnings of sunrise. No more mist. No voices.

A digression from my normal topic and a return to my geek days, when I wrote about science and technology.

My erstwhile colleague at The Economist (and one of the people who interviewed me for my first job there), Chris Anderson, now the editor of Wired magazine, has published an essay in the latest issue entitled “The End of Theory“. It doesn’t even come with the question mark that the authors of such audacious claims usually tack on to protect themselves.

In a sentence, it argues that the classic scientific model - come up with a theory,  then test it by experiment - is becoming obsolete with the advent of gigantic data sets (anything from the contents of a library to the genomes of all the species of microbes found in air) and extremely powerful computer networks that can crunch the data to look for patterns.

The purpose of a scientific theory is to allow you to make predictions about how things will behave - “in all cases where you have A and B, you will get C”. To be able to make those predictions you need to have an explanation, ie, a theory: “Because of XYZ, A and B will always produce C”. What Chris is saying is that in this new era we will cut out the middleman - the theory. Processing vast amounts of experimental data will find out what A and B lead to, and do so highly accurately, without your ever having to understand exactly why. (A good comparison is translation engines that “learn” to translate by comparing vast corpuses of texts that have been translated from one language to another, such as European Union documents. What emerges after the computer has been trained is a fiendishly complex, computer-generated algorithm that makes no sense whatsoever - there is no theory in it - but can translate extremely well.)

There are lots of comments running around the blogosphere about Chris’s idea; some think he’s a genius, others think he’s off his trolley. What I like is that Wired is simultaneously running a feature on its website entitled “5 Things Wired Pronounced Dead Prematurely“.

Home after a long day in Ramallah interviewing Fatah people about whether their party can ever get it together. It’s like listening to Marxist student politics (which, after all, is what Fatah started out as). Long rants about local committees, district committees, regional committees, ad hoc committees, sub-committees; the central committee, the higher committee, the revolutionary council; protocols, rules and constitutions; agendas both hidden and explicit; struggle, unity, fawda (chaos) and fitna (strife); the cadres, the party, the movement, and the national interest, which someone is always either pursuing or undermining, and often both at once.

During a break in the schedule I paid my first visit to Yasser Arafat’s new mausoleum, completed last autumn (above). It’s an austere, brilliant pearl incongruously plopped in the middle of the ramshackle Muqata complex, the presidential headquarters: a cube-shaped mausoleum at the end of a long plaza, with mosque off to one side. The whole thing is dressed in pale Jerusalem stone, which makes it impossible to look at in sunlight without getting an instant headache.

Inside we are spared a Lenin-like mummy and squadrons of goose-stepping troops. Instead a single soldier standing astride two rifles - presumably one for him and one for Abu Ammar, should he ever be resurrected - guards the tomb itself, which is inscribed with Abu Ammar’s dates of birth and “martyrdom”. [Update June 18th: a reader writes: "There are normally two guards (in equally ill-fitting suits) standing over Arafat’s grave. You must have caught one on a pee-break." ] In Palestine a martyr is anyone whose death, even if it was by natural causes, is linked with the struggle, though in Arafat’s case maybe it’s a nod to the popular conspiracy theory that the Mossad had him infected with HIV.

This evening I got back to Jerusalem, went to dinner, and came home to find that someone had, with a cardboard head and pair of arms, transformed the letterbox outside my building into a robot.

In Jerusalem any odd behaviour can usually be explained by a nearby festival belonging to one or another religion. But I’ve run through all the possible Christian, Jewish and Muslim dates and come up with nothing.

I haven’t been posting for a while, and I’ve drawn up a backlog of things to write about, so over the next few days I’ll be putting them up as I write them.

Today’s local moment: I was driving through a roundabout (US: traffic circle) in East Jerusalem when I very nearly crashed into a police car that had decided to take a short cut by going around it the wrong way.

In Britain a cop would only do this with in an emergency, with his sirens blaring, and still stop to make sure there was nothing he might crash in to. This being an Israeli cop, he didn’t seem to be on any urgent mission; he just didn’t feel like standing behind all the other cars.

In Britain a policeman could get fired for such an offence. Israeli police seem to think it’s their prerogative. In fact, even here it’s somewhat eccentric behaviour, but they allow themselves more licence in Arab areas than they would elsewhere.

In Britain I would have tried to get the car’s licence number to file a complaint, but I wouldn’t dare raise my voice. This being an Israeli cop, I stuck my head out of the window and roared at him, “What are you, insane?” He barely glanced at me, as if to say, “Yeah, and so what?” And we both drove on our separate ways.

In Britain I would have told my friends about it. Here, who cares?

“Don’t expect the talk of peace with Syria to come true,” I said on this blog a couple of months ago. Well, now Israel and Syria are holding talks via Turkish mediation. But as my piece in this week’s issue of The Economist says, there are plenty of people who think Olmert is just doing it to divert attention from the Palestinian talks and his corruption investigation. And it may be no coincidence that Bashar al-Assad and Recep Tayyip Erdogan would welcome something to distract people from their own scandals.

Or it may indeed be just coincidence. The received wisdom now does seem to be that Syria and Israel have been trying to get talks going for a long while. And if they really wanted to, points out a friend of mine who follows Syria, it should be a piece of cake compared to negotiating Israeli-Palestinian peace.

The prices are well-known: Syria wants all of the Golan back to the June 4, 1967 border. Israel wants Syria to cut ties with Hizbullah, Hamas and Iran, though that will be harder to verify. Other issues like water rights are tricky but basically soluble.

The main problem I see is that even if Olmert and Assad are both totally serious, it doesn’t depend only on them. Syria wants the West to welcome it back into the community of nations. That gift is in the hands of the Americans, first and foremost, and they don’t believe Syria will play by the West’s rules. Perhaps more to the point, Condoleezza Rice has invested all her efforts in Israeli-Palestinian peace, which she claims is “the most mature track” (mature to the point of decomposition, if you ask me) and she doesn’t want to see her hard work and her legacy as secretary of state go down the drain. So even if Olmert is ready to give up all of the Golan, he can’t in fact give Syria what it wants.

Update (May 23): An Israeli lawyer is demanding that the attorney-general open a criminal investigation into Olmert for launching the peace talks without government approval. The news report I linked to isn’t quite accurate: it says no citizen may discuss the transfer of sovereign territory to another state. The lawyer’s letter, provided by the Israel Resource Review which published the report, cites a section from the 1977 penal code that forbids any citizen from, in his words, “an act leading to the removal of any area of land from the sovereignty of the state or its coming under the sovereignty of a foreign state,” unless the government approves it. According to him, launching peace talks without a cabinet decision, which seems to be what Olmert has done, comes under this rubric.

Of course, Olmert will only have committed an offence if his decision leads to land under Israeli sovereignty being transferred to Syria. If the peace talks go nowhere he’s not guilty. And I’m no lawyer, but I’m not sure that land occupied in wartime and not internationally recognised as part of your territory counts as land under your sovereignty. The things people waste their time on here…

Just got in from the swish opening reception in Bethlehem for the Palestine Investment Conference. As Salam Fayyad, the prime minister, said, “We are throwing a party, and the whole world is invited.” Well, a lot of those who turned up seemed to be not foreign investors but expatriate Palestinians who took advantage of a brief moment of Israeli openness to get a permit to visit home. Still, that’s a party by anyone’s standards.

I spent a bit of the previous afternoon with one of the real investors, the CEO of Qatari Diar, which plans to co-build Rawabi, a new Palestinian town for 40,000 people on a hillside about 15 minutes drive north of Ramallah. I didn’t think there were any hills in the West Bank that hadn’t been conquered by either Palestinians or settlers, but there we were, scrambling over the stones while the Qataris’ Palestinian business partner described the layout and gushed over the breathtaking views (you could even see the towers of Tel Aviv silhouetted in the sunset). I and another journalist recorded the CEO talking about how important it was to him to invest “with our brothers in Palestine” and saying that the symbolism mattered more than the profits.

As we talked to him a minion walked up and handed us each little boxes with “Balenciaga” and the Qatari Diar logo embossed on them. We fingered them nervously. Our employers both have policies about accepting gifts, but you don’t offend a senior Gulf businessman who is probably related to the royal family just after you’ve met him.

The interviews over, we walked back to the cars parked on the other side of the hill, where we discovered that one of the Palestinians had left his SUV in neutral and it had rolled 50 metres down into the ravine, where it lay with its windscreen wipers waving in a forlorn distress signal. The owner seemed remarkably sanguine. My colleague backed his car out gingerly.

Back on the road, we opened the little boxes. Turned out we needn’t have worried. Qatari Diar may be willing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on its Palestinian brethren, but when it comes to journalists it makes do with the cheapest possible fake-leather notebook (and rightly so). Balenciaga might not be too happy, though.

I’m feeling pretty cynical about the Bush visit, and not just because getting around Jerusalem has been impossible (again). Akiva Eldar’s diatribe—“Bush is an accomplice to an offence far worse than all of the criminal offences of which Olmert is suspected combined”—was a shade harsher than I would allow myself, but his despairing assessment of the peace process and Bush’s non-contribution to it is right on target.

Which meant that listening to Olmert’s speech of welcome at the conference hosted by Shimon Peres, I found myself adding subtitles sotto voce:

“President Peres… Your ardent dedication to Israel throughout its 60 vibrant years is unmatched, while your rich experience and leadership provides us all with guidance and fills us with hope for the future.”

You never give up, you old has-been. You fill me with hope – hope that I don’t turn into such a perennial loser.

“It gives me great pleasure to offer a special welcome to the President of the United States of America, George W. Bush—a great personal friend whose commitment to the State of Israel is immeasurable.”

You’ve taken three days out of your last year in office to party here with the presidents of Poland, Albania, Togo, Burkina Faso and Palau. You must really have bugger-all to do back in Washington.

“You are an unusual person, you are an unusual leader and you are an unusual friend of the people of Israel.”

I’ve met some freiers in my time, but you take the biscuit.

“Our countries represent different peoples, but they have kindred souls… Our core beliefs, our founding values and our aspirations are all drawn from the same inspiration.”

Remember–it’s us versus them. The good guys against the crazy Muslims. I know we’ve got some religious nut-jobs too, but hey, you do the God stuff yourself, you know where that comes from.

“Relations between our countries have evolved into a joint vision and are based on a deep understanding of the invaluable benefits of close cooperation.”

We’ve dug ourselves into the same deep hole. So get out the chequebook already.

“With full confidence I say that the United States under your leadership represents the pinnacle of this friendship.”

And you’ve dug the deepest. Boy, would I hate to be in your shoes.

“Israel is and must remain capable of securing its own future, relying only – and I repeat again, at the end of the day – only on ourselves for our protection. But everybody in Israel knows that we can always depend on our greatest ally in the world, the United States of America, when navigating the geo-political challenges of the future.”

Don’t ever — and I repeat again, ever — tell us what to do. But when we come asking for help, you better give it or else those lobby people will be on you like a ton of bricks.

“Israel continues to actively seek peace with its neighbors, especially with the Palestinians. We are making great efforts and seeing progress on this front, which we believe, with continued dedication and labor, will come to fruition…”

We’re on the case, okay? So as I said, quit leaning on us…

“In addition to strong diplomatic relations, an integral element of the close cooperation between our countries is the dedication of the Jewish communities and the numerous Jewish organizations in America. I thank you for your efforts and know that you will continue to play a key role in preserving our special relations.”

…or else.

“Israel’s founding generation could only have dreams of achieving a state as advanced and spectacular as we have today. As one Jewish people, one Jewish nation, we must continue with the same vision, the same energy, and the same passion for developing our country, our homeland, as our forefathers had, so that we can implement our inspiring vision for the future.”

Our grandparents showed up here with nothing, and look what they created. Now we’re so busy fighting each other, never mind the Arabs, that we’re on a straight line to trashing it all.

“Mr. President, in 2004 you said that America as a ‘nation is stronger and safer because we have a true and dependable ally in Israel’.”

You must have been on drugs. Frankly, you need us as an ally like you need a hole in the head.

“Today I say to you Mr. President, Israel is stronger and safer because we look to the future, and we know that the United States of America will always remain our closest and most dependable ally.”

But hey, we’re not complaining. Like I said, get out the chequebook.

I’m in New York, having just resurfaced from a few days of splendid isolation in the American countryside. In the meantime Prospect has published my piece on the possible obstacles facing J Street on its website. As I wrote before, I think J Street is a good idea, but it won’t be plain sailing; this piece explains why.

I’m sitting in Ben-Gurion airport waiting for a flight. In the long hallway that leads down to the duty-free shops there’s an exhibition of almost every one of the Israeli independence day posters dating back to 1949.

I haven’t found images online for now, but they’re an interesting potted history of the mood and ethos of the state. Some of the early posters are very socialist-realist in their design, especially the first one. Many over the next 20 years are rather folkloric, drawing on traditional Jewish motifs or handicraft-style patterns, and quite a lot of images of people: kibbutzniks and women in headscarves feature prominently.

In 1968, the first independence day after the 1967 war, the image is predictably of a united Jerusalem. In the years that follow the posters reflect self-confidence in times of peace or jingoism and embattlement in times of war. There’s a tribute to “heroism” in the form of what might be a war memorial and might be a tree in 1983, after the Lebanon invasion started. In the 1990s there are several optimistic and forward-looking posters talking about equality and social justice (”Different but Equal” is the title of one of them).

That all-embracing vision disappears after the start of the second intifada. One is a tribute to the army; the next is a tribute to sporting heroes; two years later there’s one about developing the Negev and the Galilee, two areas mostly inhabited by Arab-Israelis (so “developing” them, ie, putting more Jews there, has all sorts of political connotations). Last year’s again celebrates the Jerusalem’s “unification” (though the city in practice remains more divided than ever) 40 years on. There’s a return to almost socialist, and strongly nationalist emblems in some of these posters.

Finally, this year’s poster is about children, which to me reads as a sort of desperate plea. When you’re celebrating your 60th anniversary and the thing you’re proudest of is your children, it sends a message that you find little to celebrate in the present and can only hope that the future, your children’s future, will be better.

I’m finding it very entertaining that some right-wing bloggers, who don’t really like me my views (well, those few who have actually heard of me), are using my blog to support their arguments.

When I wrote about the seemingly conflicting polls on whether Israelis favoured talking to Hamas, a handful of right-wing blogs seized on the poll showing that only a minority favour it if you ask the question the right way. Of course, one of them felt obliged to clarify that I am “not exactly a friend of Israel or of truth” (though apparently I am a friend of truth when the truth suits them).

Now Noah Pollak at Commentary’s blog turns to me to help diss the J Street Project, the new “liberal” Israel lobby. His argument: J Street can’t possibly speak for Israelis because one of its members quoted the poll showing that 64% of Israelis favour talks with Hamas, and that poll, as yours truly has conclusively proved, is bunkum. Pollak’s clincher:

the J Streeters are never going to be able to escape the fact that, sitting in Washington, they are advocating policies for Israel that are overwhelmingly unpopular among Israelis — and attempting to brand this paternalism as “pro-Israel.”

Dangerous argument, if you ask me. AIPAC, sitting in Washington? Of course not. AIPAC, paternalistic? Perish the thought. But more to the point, aren’t these groups supposed to be advocating policies for the United States, not Israel?

So let it be recorded that despite having provided unshakeable evidence to the contrary, I personally think J Street is a good thing, though I’m sceptical that it will live up to expectations. No matter what your views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, something is clearly out of whack when the debate on Capitol Hill is far more constrained than it is in the rest of Washington, let alone in Israel itself. J Street aims to make it possible for American politicians to discuss talking to Hamas, something that Israeli politicians do every day, without fear of jeopardising their campaign finances and political careers. That’s not paternalistic; it’s called a healthy democracy.