This essay argues that the significant shift in the political power balance in the occupied Palestinian territories toward the Islamists in recent years has major implications for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and must be taken into account if there is any chance for a successful resolution. The authors, who have first-hand involvement with conflict resolution and negotiations with Hamas, survey the movement's evolution on the ground, its participation in cease-fire and intra-Palestinian talks to date, and its positions on power accommodation with the other Palestinian factions and on eventual participation in peace talks or governance. Attention is also paid to the role of external actors in the process and the ingredients of successful peacemaking. The authors conclude that current peace frameworks, by ignoring Hamas's weight and its indications of readiness for political incorporation into peacemaking, are ignoring what could be the ““elusive ingredient”” for peace.
In the arena of ethno-national conflict, the adoption of a ceasefire is regarded as a key trigger for allowing the development of subsequent political initiatives in peacemaking. Armed elements within Islamism, however, are often understood as ruling out ceasefire and promoting a counter-agenda of armed struggle without compromise. Thus, in Israel and in the international community, most regarded the Hamas and Islamic Jihad ceasefire (hudna) of June 2003 with suspicion. Yet, in this respect, there was a failure to recognize that Islamists were waving, not drowning, with respect to signalling a new attitude towards the political process that animates Palestinian-Israeli encounters. This article seeks to analyse the contradiction inherent in current demands on contemporary Islamists and the part that they can play in reaching the strategic goal of peace and security. Principally, the concept of ceasefire and Islamist discourse on contemporary security issues will be examined in order to illustrate the relevance of these issues to wider dimensions of regional and global security debates.A ceasefire is acceptable, but not if we deny our rights to exist in the process. If the West deny us security and safety, we have to seek it for ourselves. 1 T HE ANNOUNCEMENT IN JUNE 2003 of a unilateral ceasefire (hudna) by armed Palestinian elements, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad, was seen as a breakthrough in the scaffolding of Israeli-Palestinian relations through the so-called road map sponsored by the international quartet of the USA, the UN, Russia and the EU. The product of years of internal discourse and months of secret negotiations within the Palestinian body politic, the hudna offered a glimmer of hope for all parties involved in
The Iranian revolution -the political realization of the "Great Refusal" of Western modernization -was a direct consequence a half century later of the forced secularization of the Ottoman Caliphate by Kemal Ataturk. With the superstructure of the Muslim ummah dismantled and replaced by the Turkish nation state, insurgent religious movements, from the (Sunni) Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt to the Shiite imams of Qum and Najaf, moved into the vacuum to reclaim Islam from the shadow of Western dominance.Now, history is turning again. Iran has been seized by violent turmoil as it seeks to reconcile democracy and religious rule. Secular Turkey is governed by an Islamist-rooted party. As they struggle to regain their balance, the global economic meltdown threatens a convergence against globalization that joins the Islamist resistance with populist backlashes elsewhere. Two legendary intelligence agents, a Hezbollah leader, an Iranian dissident philosopher and Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian human rights lawyer and Nobel Laureate, examine this historical turn. ALASTAIR CROOKE, the legendary former British intelligence (M16) agent, was adviser to EU High Commissioner Javier Solana on Middle East issues from 1997 to 2003 as well as to the Mitchell Commission looking into the causes of the Palestinian intifada. He has been involved in negotiating with Hamas and other Islamist movements, including ending the Church of the Nativity siege in Bethlehem in 2002. Currently, he heads the Conflicts Forum in Beirut. His recent book is Resistance:The Essence of the Islamist Revolution. In June, both Hezbollah in Lebanon and Iran head into critical elections.beirut -Most Western analysts of political Islam make the same mistake. They instinctively assume that conflict with the West has mainly to do with specific foreign policies, particularly of the United States with respect to Israel, the Arab world and Iran, and, if those changed, all would be well. In fact, my intensive contact over the years with Iranian clerics, Hezbollah and other movements of the recent Islamic awakening suggest the conflict with the West is much deeper. It is rooted in radically different worldviews about human nature and the good society. Failing to grasp this reality, the West continually misreads what is going on in the Muslim world. At root, the West is about individualistic, instrumental rationality and materialism, the Islamic resistance movements are about a communal and spiritual approach to life.It has been thirty years now since the Iranian Revolution, and fifty years since the first Islamist resistance movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, was formed in Egypt.Yet many in the West remain bemused: Why is there an Islamist resistance at all? "Against what are Muslims in revolt?" Westerners ask. Even now, more shockingly, there seems still no clarity about the Iranian Revolution: Was it nothing more than a populist kick against power, and the Shah's heavy-handedness that was hijacked by the Ayatollahsas many assert?Such explanations seem blindingly inadequate to ...
In a past issue of this Bulletin, J. F. Brothwell has emphasized the distinction between the marginal efficiency of capital and the marginal efficiency of investment; two concepts, he argues, '(that) have often been confused in the Literature'.l In apportioning the blame for this state of affairs, Brothwell follows A. P. Lerner (The Economics o f Control)2 and indicts Keynes as the source of the initial conf~sion.~ Whilst such a criticism may be perfectly valid in the case of many so-called Keynesian models, it is contended here that Keynes was himself guiltless of such a charge, that he was perfectly aware of the stock/flow distinction and also that he recognized the potential instability of the model should the capital goods industries be operating at a level of production well below their capacity; a characteristic of the model, which Brothwell notes as regards his own analysis 'is a far cry from the stable model usually presented '.4 Keynes defines the marginal efficiency of capital as being equal to 'that rate of discount which would make the present value of the series of annuities given by the returns expected from the capital-asset during its life just equal to its supply price'.5 For any given capital goods industry, as investment increases and additions are made to the capital stock, the rate of discount necessary to equate prospective yields to the current supply price of capital assets will decline.The required rate of discount will decline, firstly, because, as a consequence of the greater productive capacity of the enlarged capital stock, a smaller discount rate will have to be applied to that diminished prospective yield in order to equate it to a constant or rising supply-price of capital assets. Secondly, the rate of discount applied to a constant or diminishing prospective yield will have to be discounted at a lesser rate in order to equate that prospective yield to a rising supply-price. In general, the pressure on the facilities of production of any particular type of capital will, as output increascs, cause the supply-price to rise.Thus, for each capital goods industry, Keynes describes how a schedule may be built up 'showing by how much investment in (that industry) will have to increase within the period, in ordcr that its marginal efficiency fall to any given figure'.6 If this procedure is repeated for all the capital goods industries, it is possible to determine the aggregate increase in investment required within the period in order that the marginal efficiency fall to any given rate.Thus, one point on the schedule, relating aggregate investment per period to the corresponding marginal efficiency of capital in general, is determined, and, J. ,F. Brothwell, The Investment Demand Schedule and the Keynesian Equilibrium, A. P. Lerner, The Economics of Control, Macmillan, 1964, pp. 332-8. 'The confusion in much of Capital and Investment theory between these two fundamentally different, though related, concepts may be partly ascribed to Keynes himself, who called the MEI-schedule the MEC-sc...
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