David Kenner's blog

Two weeks before Lebanese Parliamentary elections, Der Spiegel has released a blockbuster report contending that U.N. investigators for the Special Tribunal for Lebanon have acquired new evidence implicating Hezbollah in the 2005 assassination which took the life of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

The piece reports that Lebanese security forces discovered that the mobile phones used by Hariri's assassins were often in close proximity to another network of phones, all belonging to members of Hezbollah's powerful militia.  The investigators received another break, the article claims, when one of Hariri's killers used his "hot" phone to call his girlfriend, allowing him to be identified as Abd al-Majid Ghamlush, a Hezbollah member who had completed training courses in Iran.

There are good reasons to be skeptical of this story. First, the entire piece is based on the claims of one anonymous source. The timing is also suspicious, with the news breaking just as Lebanon prepares for Parliamentary elections which pit Hezbollah and Saad Hariri's Future Movement. The story could simply be intended as one of the most macabre voter mobilization effort in recent memory, stoking the anger of the predominantly Sunni Future Movement in order to draw them to the polls. Nor is the author's explanation for Hezbollah's motivations in killing Hariri particularly convincing. For what it's worth, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah denounced Der Spiegel's claims yesterday as an "Israeli accusation."

Hezbollah has been known to overreach -- most recently, with the revelations of a Hezbollah cell operating in Egypt. Involvement in Hariri's assassination, however, would be Hezbollah's most spectacular overestimation of their domestic position in history. While the Special Tribunal for Lebanon has officially remained mum on its findings, whenever the court reveals what it has uncovered in the past four years of investigation into Hariri's murder, it promises to have a significant impact across the Middle East.

MAHMOUD ZAYAT/AFP/Getty Images

Hamas, in the eyes of the United States government, is a terrorist organization. It is illegal for the Palestinian Islamist party to receive American aid because it fails to meet three criteria established by U.S. law: it refuses to acknowledge Israel, renounce violence, or abide by previous Israeli-Palestinian agreements. In the event of the formation of a coalition government between Fatah and Hamas in the Palestinian Authority, this fact would prevent American aid from being delivered to the PA. To sidestep this problem, Secretary of State Clinton pressed Congress last week to amend a law, in order to keep money flowing to the PA should there be a reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas.

The Obama administration’s plan would allow the PA to receive American aid as long as the Hamas members of the coalition government met America’s three criteria, even if Hamas as an organization did not. Clinton noted that the United States continues to provide aid to the Lebanese government, despite the fact that Hezbollah is a member. She argued that cutting all of America’s financial strings to the PA would deprive it of the ability to affect a gradual change in Hamas’s behavior.

In addition to an ethical dilemma, this scheme also presents a bevy of political ones. Opinions of Democratic and Republican members of Congress have ranged from skeptical to hostile, with one Republican Congressmen describing it as similar to supporting a government “that only has a few Nazis in it.” An anonymous Israeli political source stated that the proposal was “painful and worrying.”

Obama deserves credit for bravery in putting forth a plan which will inevitably be portrayed as benefiting Hamas, an organization easily and deservedly vilified. However, the widening rift between the rival Palestinian factions makes the question of a unity government purely hypothetical, and suggests that Obama’s plan will have a greater impact in Washington and Jerusalem than it ever will in Ramallah.

Facebook recently launched an Arabic version of its popular social networking site in a bid to expand its presence among the 250 million Arabic-speaking people of the world. Facebook enlisted the help of 850 Arabic speakers in the site’s design, asking them to discuss and vote on the best translations.

Facebook is already wildly successful across the Middle East, even without a design in most Arabs' native language. According to Alexa, it is the most popular site in Lebanon, with 300,000 users, and the third most popular site in Egypt, with 900,000 users. It has long been possible to write in Arabic script on Facebook, but users have needed to be proficient in another language to navigate the site’s links and sidebars.

In the Middle East, where political expression is largely dominated by the state, the expansion of Facebook to Arabic-only speakers is a potentially big deal. Last year, Facebook’s largely censorship-free environment helped Egyptian activists organize anti-regime protests. This has caused some Arab regimes to crack down on the social networking site. Egyptian authorities arrested and roughed up the creator of a Facebook group that promoted last year’s protest, while Syria has previously blocked all access to the site.

Early reviews of Facebook’s Arabic version have been mixed, with some users complaining that the translations are unwieldy or inaccurate. Without previously existing Arabic words for Facebook terms such as a “wall” or ‘E-mail Friend Finder,” this was perhaps inevitable. But the criticism from bilingual users familiar with the English-language Facebook misses the point. This experiment will sink or swim based on the site’s ability to tap into the market of Arabic-only speakers, and to act as a  conduit for expression and organization beyond the reach of the state.

Barack Obama made the first tentative steps toward opening lines of communication with the Syrian regime in the past week. In Sharm el-Sheikh, Hillary Clinton exchanged a handshake with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem. Contacts were also reestablished in Washington, as Jeffrey Feltman, the acting assistant secretary for the Near East, held a two-hour meeting with Syrian Amb. Imad Moustapha. Today, Clinton tapped Feltman and National Security Council aide Daniel Shapiro as envoys to Damascus.
 
While the Obama administration has proven its willingness to engage with Syria, it is also signaling that negotiations do not mean that the United States is surrendering to Syrian demands. Clinton downplayed the possibility of a speedy improvement of U.S.-Syrian ties at a press conference in Jerusalem, saying that "we have no way to predict what the future with our relations concerning Syria might be." 

In his discussions with Moustapha, Feltman raised the issue of Syrian support for terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah and Hamas, its pursuit of nuclear weapons, the regime's meddling in Lebanon, and its worsening domestic human rights situation -- not issues that top Damascus's preferred agenda for U.S.-Syrian negotiations.

The very presence of Feltman (shown above being burned in effigy by Hezbollah supporters) in U.S.-Syrian negotiations is also a message. Feltman is a former U.S. ambassador to Lebanon, and was consequently the point man for George W. Bush's hawkish Lebanon policy. In Beirut, he has a reputation as a strong and energetic supporter of Lebanon's pro-Western, anti-Syrian political coalition. He was a bête noir of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, who took to calling Lebanon's anti-Syrian government "Feltman's government," rather than the government of Prime Minister Fuad Siniora. This antipathy no doubt extends to the Syrian regime.

Nevertheless, Obama's decision to establish Feltman as a primary U.S. interlocutor with Syria is a welcome sign that he is approaching a possible rapprochement with few illusions. Syria will try to leverage a decrease in tensions with the United States to attract business to the country, and gradually break down the economic sanctions regime erected against it. Feltman has the reputation to dissuade the Syrian regime that it can get something for nothing. Syria has to realize that it must take tangible steps for reconciliation to take place, not just engage in the process of negotiations. For Obama's first foray into the Arab world, this is a good start.

HAITHAM MUSSAWI/AFP/Getty Images

In the last issue of FP, Gershom Gorenberg worried that Israeli settlements in the West Bank were endangering the two-state solution. "No one knows exactly where the point of no return is — when so many Israelis will have moved into so many homes beyond the pre-1967 border that there is no going back," he wrote. Wherever that point may be, a new report reveals that Israel raced toward it at a breakneck pace in 2008.

The number of structures in West Bank settlements and new outposts increased 69% in 2008 compared to 2007, according to a new study released by Peace Now. The Israeli government has allowed new construction in larger settlements, which Israel would likely keep in any final status agreement. But of the 1,518 new settler structures, Peace Now found that 39% of the structures were built in outposts outside these areas.

This explosion of settlement growth, it is important to note, happened under a Kadima and Labor government. If you believe that Benjamin Netanyahu, whose Likud Party is leading election polls, is going to bring a halt to the settler movement -- well, I've got a bridge to sell you in Beitar Illit.

Photo: AHMAD GHARABLI/AFP/Getty Images