Chris Barnyard: ‘So why is the foreign secretary giving time and space to someone who should be shunned by a liberal democracy?’

A: Because it will be impossible to secure a peace between Israel and the Palestinians without talking to their political leaders, disgusting though many of them (on both sides) are.

That was Number One in the series Easy Answers to Damnfool Questions.

Cris, are you really shocked that the Foreign Secretary is meeting the Israeli Foreign Minister?

And if you are, what exactly do you think his job is?

Because it will be impossible to secure a peace between Israel and the Palestinians without talking to their political leaders, disgusting though many of them (on both sides) are.

Dan – I’ll believe that when this government talks to the Iranians and Hamas to secure peace in the region. You can’t just talk to one side, and that too such a fascist.

OK two other people beat me to the ‘because he is the foreign secretary’ punchline.

International protocol and international law are actually quite inportant if you believe in world peace (which is why is also why serving heads of state like Robert Mugabe cannot be arrested when they go on trips abroad).

Secondly, yes we need dialogue and yes that means talking to people who we don’t like. Better to call on Miliband to make clear his public disgust for Liberman’s vile views in the same way as we would also encourage him to meet with elected Palestinian representatives while publicly denouncing the Hamas Charter and its calls for the destruction of Israel.

Dan has nailed this @1.

I think the UK government is sincerely committed to Middle East peace and a two state settlement. There are valid political critiques and arguments of how they should seek to do that, and they may have got things wrong.

Unless we take the public position of the UK government as the end in itself, and can take as the goal “do whatever it is that the UK can contribute to the outcome of a viable and secure Palestinian state alongside a secure Israel”, I would be interested to hear what others would do were they the Foreign Secretary of Britain and seeling to achieve that objective.

Sunny@3
- Yes, we do have to engage with democratically elected governments. Yes, it seems a good idea to put the UK and EU positions to the Foreign Minister of Israel.

But
- unlike the US, we have diplomatic engagement with the Iranians, and have been part of the EU process which should enable the US too. We have been strongly engaged with the Arab League peace process.
- it seems to me clear that the UK, the EU and US administrations are in different ways are seeking to create an engagement which recognises that Hamas will need to be part of a settlement. That seems to me a complex diplomatic and political challenge, including what to say about that publlicly, privately, when and where, etc but the smoke signals about that do not seem enormously difficult to decipher from either London or Washington.

Now, for those who think a two-state solution remains the answer, there are many important and sometimes difficult strategic and tactical decisions about the diplomacy and politics of getting Israel, Palestinians, the broader regional settlement and the various international actors in the same place.

On the whole, condemnathons are not often directed at achieving that, in whichever direction.

Engagement is not endorsement. Do any of us on LC like the Syrian or Iranian governments. I doubt it. Should we disengage from them? Different question.

But if you can find me anybody credible who takes the position “Pro-peace in the Middle East. No engagement with Netanyahu or Lieberman on any terms. No engagement with Hamas on any terms” I will be both impressed and surprised.

The Quilliam response is interesting in two ways with regards to broader issues of “engagement” and extremism in which some of us take an interest!

1. It demonstrates the increasing emphasis they are placing on “consistency” in a never engage with extremists line, because they do not want to be themselves open to a “double standards” charge, perhaps particularly from within Muslim communities.
This isn’t the first statement they have made of that kind.

Perhaps I haven’t seen various other responses, but do we have the irony of QF being more vocal about this than those they would see as the “usual suspects” of Muslim community? (because it is necessary to legitimise the consistency of their approach on other questions).

2. Unfortunately, that necessitates an absurd attack on the Foreign Secretary meeting the Foreign Minister of a democratically elected government. So, yet more fundamentally it demonstrates the weaknesses of an “engagement is always wrong” policy. But I assume they have the same policy towards the Iranian government. Equally absurd in that case, if we are interested in non-proliferation and defusing the nuclear crisis.

So what this does is call into question either the applicability of such a blanket position, and demonstrates a lack of serious thinking about diplomacy and the two-state solution to the Middle East (which my understanding is they are for).

Still, (1) could prove interesting, because major differences of opinion appear to be opening up between, say, QF and Policy Exchange, because the former appears to me to be making some strenuous efforts to deal with their perception a credibility issue. Recall that Shiraz Maher of Policy Exchange wrote an absurd Telegraph article arguing that British Muslims must either back the IDF military action in Gaza or be pro-Hamas and there were no middle positions, and you see how wide a rift among those who have been seen as broadly allied could well be becoming once Israel is in the picture).

It is of course useful and indeed necessary for QF – who say they wish to engage seriously with the liberal-left – to develop some distance from the neo-con headbanger right.

Unfortunately, they have picked a daft occasion on which to do so on this particular occasion, and so I am afraid this particular liberal-left voice is going to be somewhat on the side of those (including some on the headbanger right) who think QF are being silly on this particular demand.

It is an analogous problem on the international stage to the ippr’s point that the Policy Exchnage report on ‘choosing our friends’ does seem to clearly rule out any government engagement with the Catholic Church. Now, of course, one can then maintain such a position for “consistency”. But one has departed from the real world of government and politics, and indeed undermined the argument one is trying to be “consistent’ with … reductio ad absurdum.

Well, they’d been talking to Berlusconi and his “post-fascist” roman salute-prone ministers, so there you are. Nowt new there.

Chris

you said “The anti-terrorism think-tank Quilliam Foundation…”

But that’s not how they describe themselves on their own website:

“Reviving Western Islam & Uniting Against Extremism”

If you search for them on google, that’s the banner ’1-liner’ that google gives them, because that is in their page HTML headers:

They say “our founders are former leading ideologues of UK-based extremist Islamist organizations – organizations that are still active today.”

To date, from what I’ve seen they have pitched themselves as trying to work for ‘moderate Islam’ – but I at least am not sure what they mean by that.

By the way, I understand that a major concern the Israelis have is that the birth rate among arab israeli’s is higher than among the jewish israelis -so there is a date in the not too distant future when a democratic vote would lead to a Sharia state.

Hence the 2-state idea has elements of arab israelis having to leave to join the new muslim nation.

Which has a ring of fascism to it – but may be the best of various non-ideal solutions.

Not sure if there any good solutions to that concern.

Some folks have the same concern in the UK, or Europe itself, though the date is further away I guess.

What Conor said.

Britain had diplomatic relations with communist China and the Soviet Unin when they were murdering millions of their own people.

Sunder: So what this does is call into question either the applicability of such a blanket position, and demonstrates a lack of serious thinking about diplomacy and the two-state solution to the Middle East (which my understanding is they are for).

I think Quilliam’s point is that if the government is going to take positions then they have to be consistent. Right now, they’re not. I think pointing out these inconsistencies has to be part of the process otherwise you let one side (the right wing media and thinktank circuit) get their own agenda because they scream when their favourite bogeymen turn up. And when people like Liberman turn up they’re all pretty silent.

2. Unfortunately, that necessitates an absurd attack on the Foreign Secretary meeting the Foreign Minister of a democratically elected government.

Yes it does.

Unfortunately, they have picked a daft occasion on which to do so on this particular occasion

I think their main point is to illustrate the hypocrisy. I support that aim.

David Miliband cannot be allowed to get away with double-standards if he’s serious about peace and foreign policy credibility. If he is condeming Hamas’ stances, then he should also condemn Lieberman’s positions.

But I think the QF position is much more about their positioning vis-a-vis their own domestic agenda and constituences than a serious attempt to influence foreign policy. (Or at least I hope it is, as otherwise it would suggest their advice is very weak indeed).

I do not think I heard many on the right arguing that Blair or David Miliband should not meet the Syrians, the Iranians, etc. There seems to be an attempt to suggest Lieberman should be on the ‘banned’ list with preachers of hatred, shock jocks, etc, rather than comparing him with other governments we also have to deal with. That is silly.

Of course Miliband will challenge Lieberman when they meet. But if what you mean is that he must hold a press conference to do so in the style of the Hugh Grant character from Love Actually, then do you really think that? Are we saying that, if the ambassadorial representatives walked out of, say, a UN speech by the Iranian president, it is now imperative to find a Lieberman speech to walk out of for balance.

Or are you saying Miliband can only meet Lieberman when he’s met Hamas? If so, Is that your view about any Israeli Foreign Minister, or is that specific to Lieberman? But what if taking that view made peace and the engagement of Hamas in it harder? Does consistency always trump, whatever the outcomes

Why are we worried by Lieberman?
1. He holds views and policies which are pretty toxic. One would like to think he holds them opportunisticially, but he may well also be sincere.

2. A more important reason to worry, I think, is this: he is the Foreign Minister because he reflects a rightward shift in Israeli public opinion which saw his party do so well. It is absolutely essential to rebuild confidence and support for the compromises which peace will demand among Israelis as it is among Palestinians. There are latent majorities for peace, but other attitudes are mobiiisable.

Snubbing Lieberman when he is Foreign Minister would be a sure route to minimise support in Israel for some of the tough messages that Israelis need to hear

So is Miliband meeting with ministers from the elected Hamas government, or is that just something for the likes of Galloway?

I understand the facts on the ground, that Lieberman is a minister, but if anyone thinks speaking to this arsehole is going to bring about peace they are sorely mistaken. In general, yes, I subscribe to the view that you have to be prepared to speak to everyone if you want peace. But everyone you speak to has to also actually want some kind of peace. This guy is a wannabe genocidal maniac.

I’ve posted about QF and the dilemmas of engagement more broadly over at Next Left

Major hat-tip to Dan Hardie
http://www.nextleft.org/2009/05/david-miliband-avigdor-lieberman-and.html

Lieberman makes Michael Savage look like a saint, yet the latter has been banned from the UK while the former is entertained by the British government.

Sunny: ‘Dan – I’ll believe that when this government talks to the Iranians and Hamas to secure peace in the region. You can’t just talk to one side, and that too such a fascist.’

Oh, but you can and you should. The British Government does talk to the Iranians: Chris Brooke and I both know the guy who heads the Foreign Office’s Iran desk. I am also strongly in favour of talking to the Taliban.

Still, if your views on talking to evil people are so strong, I hope you’ll be organising protests against the appeaser who said that the United States should talk to the human-rights abusing Iranian government ‘without preconditions’- some fellow called Obama.

‘You can and you should’ talk to racists, btw, if those racists are the political leaders of countries in the middle of a major conflict.

You shouldn’t just talk to one side in a conflict, but the British Government (for all its many failings in the Middle East) isn’t doing so. Hopefully the same will soon be true of the United States, now that Barack Obama is attempting to restore a modicum of sanity to US policy.

One would struggle to get a cigaratte paper between the QF press release and that from their foes at the MCB …. Interesting alliance of the MCB, Quilliam Foundation and Sunny Hundal on this issue.

http://www.mcb.org.uk/media/presstext.php?ann_id=351
“The Foreign Secretary by hosting Mr Lieberman has undermined the credibility of our government at home and abroad. Moreover, it jeopardises its ability to act as an honest broker for peace in the Middle East.”, says Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, Secretary-General of the MCB”.

Clearly, it doesn’t.

Sunder – I don’t happen to be in the position of dictating or influencing foreign policy. Neither do the MCB or QF. In each case – what is being illustrated is this government’s hypocritical attitude when it comes to foreign relations.

Why hasn’t Miliband talked to Hamas yet? Does he really believe that peace in Palestine can be achieved without Hamas?

The point is that unless Miliband adopts a more open and balanced approach to foreign policy, then we should continue to highlight the government’s hypocrisy on the matter.

Your approach seems to be that we shouldn’t criticise because that is not an approach Miliband could take. But then, when the right start going hysterical because the govt does have an even-handed foreign policy, then they succumb to pressure – which only comes from one side – and we end up losing out.

The only way to force this govt to be even-handed on its foreign policy is by being attacked by both sides. That is what is going on here.

‘Why is Miliband not talking to Hamas?’ is an excellent question, which Chris Barnyard didn’t ask. He asked ‘why is Miliband talking to Lieberman?’, for which there is an absurdly obvious answer.

You said the British Government does not talk to the Iranians and you are quite simply wrong on that. It does. A British diplomat, Mervyn Patterson, was thrown out of Afghanistan by the Karzai government in 2007 for talking to the Taliban, which also happens to be the right thing to do.

‘The only way to force this govt to be even-handed on its foreign policy is by being attacked by both sides.’ So say what you mean and attack Miliband for not meeting Hamas, rather than attack him for doing what he should be and negotiating with the repugnant Lieberman.

not an uncommon line here -to expect more from /be more critical of Israel than of Hamas/Islamic terrorism.