[NYTr] Iraq Does Not Exist Anymore: Nir Rosen on Democ.Now

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

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Democracy Now - Aug 21, 2007
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/21/1349252

"Iraq Does Not Exist Anymore" 

Journalist Nir Rosen on How the U.S. Invasion of Iraq Has Led to 
Ethnic Cleansing, a Worsening Refugee Crisis and the 
Destabilization of the Middle East

AMY GOODMAN: Nir Rosen is an independent journalist and the author of
In the Belly of the Green Bird: The Triumph of the Martyrs in Iraq. He
is a fellow at the New America Foundation and has reported extensively
from Iraq since the US-led invasion in 2003.

Earlier this year, Nir Rosen wrote a piece, a cover story for the New
York Times Sunday Magazine, called "The Flight from Iraq." He estimated
up to 50,000 Iraqis were leaving their homes each month.

Nir Rosen joins us now from our firehouse studio here in New York, just
returned from Beirut on Sunday night. Welcome to Democracy Now!

NIR ROSEN: Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk further about the refugee crisis? Again, lay
out the numbers that we're talking about inside Iraq and outside.

NIR ROSEN: Outside Iraq, we're approaching three million refugees who
have left since 2003. There were, of course, refugees who left before
then, due to Saddam and other factors.

Inside, I think you have a similar number of internally displaced Iraqis
fleeing their homes in mixed areas and going to more homogenous areas.
Sunnis from Basra are heading to Sunni neighborhoods, Baghdad, or all
the way up to Kurdistan. Shias from Diyala province are going to safer
areas for Shias. Kurds from Mosul going up to Kurdistan, as well.

And a family like the one we just saw on the show is never going to go
back to their home again, actually, it seems.

AMY GOODMAN: Why?

NIR ROSEN: Iraq has been changed irrevocably, I think. I don't think
Iraq even -- you can say it exists anymore. There has been a very
effective, systematic ethnic cleansing of Sunnis from Baghdad, of Shias
--from areas that are now mostly Shia. But the Sunnis especially have
been a target, as have mixed families like the one we just saw. With a
name like Omar, he's distinctly Sunni -- it's a very Sunni name. You
can be executed for having the name Omar alone. And Baghdad is now
firmly in the hands of sectarian Shiite militias, and they're never
going to let it go.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you think of Senator Levin calling for the Maliki
and the whole government to disband?

NIR ROSEN: Well, it's stupid for several reasons. First of all, the
Iraqi government doesn't matter. It has no power. And it doesn't matter
who you put in there. He's not going to have any power. Baghdad doesn't
really matter, except for Baghdad. Baghdad used to be the most
important city in Iraq, and whoever controlled Baghdad controlled Iraq.
These days, you have a collection of city states: Mosul, Basra,
Baghdad, Kirkuk, Irbil, Sulaymaniyah. Each one is virtually
independent, and they have their own warlords and their own militias.
And what happens in Baghdad makes no difference. So that's the first
point.

Second of all, who can he put in instead? What does he think he's going
to put in? Allawi or some secular candidate? There was a democratic
election, and the majority of Iraqis selected the sectarian Shiite
group Dawa, Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution, the Sadr Movement.
These are movements that are popular among the majority of Shias, who
are the majority of Iraq. So it doesn't matter who you put in there.
And people in the Green Zone have never had any power. Americans,
whether in the government or journalists, have been focused on the
Green Zone from the beginning of the war, and it's never really
mattered. It's been who has power on the street, the various different
militias, depending on where you are -- Sunni, Shia, tribal, religious,
criminal. So it just reflects the same misunderstanding of Iraqi
politics. The government doesn't do anything, doesn't provide any
services, whether security, electricity, health or otherwise. Various
militias control various ministries, and they use it as their fiefdoms.
Ministries attack other ministries

AMY GOODMAN: Which is the most powerful militia?

NIR ROSEN: Well, the various Shia ones, such as the Mahdi Army, the Badr
Corps, the police, the Iraqi police, the Iraqi army. Of course, the
American army is also another militia, and it's a very powerful militia
in Iraq -- maybe not the most powerful. But the Mahdi Army basically
controls the police and the Iraqi army. Of course, in the north the
police are more in the hands of various Kurdish militias, and the army
is in the hands of Kurdish militias. So it sort of depends where you
are.

AMY GOODMAN: We're going to break. When we come back, we are going to
talk more about the refugees throughout the Middle East. There are not
many here in this country. We're talking to Nir Rosen, independent
journalist, author of In the Belly of the Green Bird: The Triumph of
the Martyrs in Iraq. Stay with us.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Nir Rosen, independent journalist, author
of In the Belly of the Green Bird: The Triumph of the Martyrs in Iraq,
a fellow at the New America Foundation, has reported extensively from
Iraq since the US-led invasion in 2003, most recently has just returned
from Beirut, actually on Sunday night, and has particularly focused on
refugees. His piece in the New York Times is called "The Flight from
Iraq."

Talk about why people go to different countries, why Iraqis go in this
-- you're saying up to three million Iraqis out of a population of
what? Some 27 million?

NIR ROSEN: Twenty-six, twenty-seven, originally, yeah. Nobody knows for
sure.

AMY GOODMAN: More than -- so, close to 10%.

NIR ROSEN: Yes, and, of course, up to a million have died -- 

AMY GOODMAN: More than 10%

NIR ROSEN: -- since the occupation began. Well, there are various
factors for why they choose different countries. Access is one of them.
Syria is the most open and generous of all the countries in the region.
They basically take anybody who comes in. And for a long time, they
were giving them free healthcare, and they still provide free
education. Well, they've been -- they are being overburdened, as well,
because the Syrian government subsidizes things such as bread. So every
loaf of bread an Iraqi buys is actually being paid for in part by the
Syrian government. As a result, they're finding it more and more
difficult to bear the cost.

The Jordanians basically closed their borders by the end of 2005, in
part because they were being overburdened, and they also have
demographic issues to worry about. Half of the small Jordanian
population are Palestinian, and now you've introduced another million
Iraqis. And this is a very fragile regime in the first place, the
Jordanian dictatorship.

AMY GOODMAN: What does each country gain by letting in Iraqi refugees?

NIR ROSEN: Well, Jordan took in initially many of the wealthier ones,
as did Egypt, and so they certainly gained a great deal of money and
investment, and they required for residency a certain amount of money
in the bank. But Jordan was a less friendly environment for Shias.
Syria, again, is the most friendly environment for really any Iraqi;
Shias, Sunnis, Christians each find welcoming neighborhoods there.
Lebanon, very difficult to get to, and there's a likelihood of being
expelled by the Lebanese government, but Christian Iraqis have found
that the Christians of Lebanon have been generous in protecting them.
Shia Iraqis have tended to go into the Shia neighborhoods of Beirut.
Egypt closed its borders more or less after about 150,000 Iraqis came
in, mostly Sunni. The majority of the Iraqi Arab refugees are Sunnis,
despite the fact that Sunnis are a minority in Iraq. And Sweden has
taken in, I think, 40,000 or 50,000, as well. They've been quite
generous. As you've said, we took in about 700, which is a laughable
amount.

AMY GOODMAN: What are the politics of this, given that the US said they
went into Iraq to save the people of Iraq, only allowing in 700 here?

NIR ROSEN: Well, there are various reasons for why they won't take them
in. I think the fact that they're Arab and Muslim is probably one of
them. The main factor is probably that if you take any refugees, you're
admitting that your whole program in Iraq is a failure. If Iraq is
exporting refugees, people are fleeing Iraq for their lives, then
everything we've done is a failure, which indeed it is, of course,
failure.

And there are also security reasons. Homeland Security Department is
finding it difficult to screen the Iraqis and difficult to even send
their people to various embassies to initiate the screening process.
That's taken a painfully long time logistically.

AMY GOODMAN: Why can't they screen them?

NIR ROSEN: I think it's just incompetence and sort of a lack of
interest. And one of the factors that prevents Iraqis from getting
visas, for example, if you've paid a ransom. Many Iraqis, virtually
every family I know of, have been victims of kidnapping. If you pay a
ransom to release your relative from kidnapping, according to the US
government, you have materially supported terrorism, and therefore you
can be prevented from obtaining a visa to the US.

AMY GOODMAN: If you've paid any kind of ransom?

NIR ROSEN: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: Governments have paid ransoms, like the Italian
government, for people to be released from Iraq.

NIR ROSEN: Yes, I'm sure the US government has, as well, but this has
been an obstacle for Iraqis. And in general, there's an aversion, it
seems, on the part of America to take in Arabs or Muslims, and Iraqis,
in particular. I think Christians have a much better time, Iraqi
Christians, as informally the West, whether Australia, England,
America, are more likely to take in Christians and are more interested
in their plight. I think there's also stronger interest groups in the
West, in Canada and the US, who are active on behalf of the Iraqi
Christians.

AMY GOODMAN: What does it do to the politics of a country, to Syria, to
Jordan, to Lebanon, having the Iraqi refugees come in? And then, I want
to broaden that to: what is the effect of the war on these countries?

NIR ROSEN: Well, when we think of the Iraqi refugee crisis, we have to
think of the crisis that people in the region think of in relation to
that one, and that's the Palestinian refugee crisis. In 1948, up to
800,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes in Palestine to
make way for what became Israel. They went to Lebanon, Syria, Jordan.
There were put in refugee camps. Eventually, after a few years, they
were militarized, mobilized. They had their own militias. They were
engaged in attacks, trying to liberate their homes. And they eventually
were instrumentalized by the various governments, whether Lebanon,
Syria, Jordan. Different groups used them. And they were massacred, as
well, by the Lebanese, by the Jordanians. They contributed to
destabilization of Jordan, of Lebanon, as well.

And I think you will see something similar happening with the Iraqis,
because we have much larger numbers, approaching three million, and
many of them already have links with militias back home, of course,
because to survive in Iraq you need some militia to protect you. And
there are long-established smuggling routes for weapons, for fighters,
etc.

And add to that the very sensitive sectarian issue in Syria, in Jordan.
The Syrian regime is a minority regime perceived by radical Sunnis to
be a heretical. Syria is a majority Sunni country. The majority of the
refugees are Sunni. Syria has a good relationship with a Shia-dominated
Iraqi government. There have been various Islamist opposition groups
who have sought to overthrow their government in Syria. Jordan, as
well, has its own Islamist opposition. We're likely eventually to see,
as Sunnis are pushed more and more out of Baghdad and as the militias
are pushed into the Anbar Province, that they might link up with
Islamist groups in Syria, in Jordan, in Lebanon.

So I think it's wrong to think of Iraq as its own conflict. There's now
a regional conflict. It's going to involve Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia,
Lebanon. And I think we'll see governments being overthrown -- for
example, the one in Jordan. What we already see are fighters being
exported, for example, the fighting in Lebanon the past few months.
Many Iraq veterans have sought shelter in Lebanon among -- in the
Palestinian refugee camps, for example.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about that, what's happening right now in Lebanon with
Fatah al-Islam, with, in particular, the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp.

NIR ROSEN: Well, Nahr al-Bared refugee camp doesn't exist anymore. It's
been wiped out completely. The Lebanese army destroyed, flattened
completely a refugee camp that at once housed 40,000 people. And
they've now been made homeless. They left with only their shirts on
their backs, basically.

What provoked this conflict was the existence of a group called Fatah
al-Islam that declared itself in late 2006. They sort of piggybacked
onto a pre-existing Palestinian group, a secular one called Fatah
Intifada, taking advantage of, I think, benign neglect on the part of
Syria and a very welcoming environment in northern Lebanon, where you
have Salafis already work in close reliance with the Sunni-dominated
Future Movement. And it seems like, as Sy Hersh explained in his
article, the Future Movement, led by Saad Hariri, hoped that they could
take advantage of the presence of the Salafis and jihadists in the
camps and elsewhere to be sort of the Sunni militia against Hezbollah.
But these groups weren't interested in fighting Shias. They were more
interested in fighting Israel, the US, the crusaders, and establishing
their own sort of Islamic emirate in the north. And as a result,
there's been a very brutal and bloody clash with the Lebanese army and
security forces.

They took advantage of the fact that the Palestinian camps in Lebanon
are basically autonomous in terms of security. The Lebanese security
forces weren't allowed, thanks to an agreement several decades ago, to
actually enter the camps. And some of these camps, Ayn al-Hilwah, south
of Beirut, have long been exporting jihadists to Iraq. What happened
about a year ago was that the flow was reversed, and fighters from Iraq
began seeking shelter elsewhere. They can't go to Jordan. They can't go
to Syria. Lebanon was a much more permissive environment -- no strong
state, no strong security forces, Palestinian camps already sort of
lawless, and a place where Lebanese seek shelter if they're absconding
from the law, and a very friendly environment for Salafis in the Sunni
areas because of the increased sectarian tensions in Lebanon.

People in Lebanon are viewing their conflict, especially Sunnis, within
a context of the Iraq conflict. They believe in these conspiracy
theories about the Shia "Crescent," about a Shia program, and Iran is
exporting its revolution in the region. These are baseless sort of
fears, but they're very strong fears held on the part of Sunnis. And as
a result, the Sunnis of Lebanon are looking for their own militia to
protect them from what they believe is Hezbollah's attempts to control
the country.

AMY GOODMAN: What about the comments of Seymour Hersh, the investigation
that he did, specifically saying that the US and Saudi governments are
covertly backing militant Sunni groups like Fatah al-Islam as part of an
overarching foreign policy to go after Iran and the Shia influence?

NIR ROSEN: Well, Sy Hersh and I deal with sort of different levels, in
the sense that most of my work was on the ground in refugee camps and
in poor neighborhoods of Lebanon. So I dealt with the actual militias,
not on the geopolitical level with the people who might be sponsoring
them. So I found no evidence that the US government or Saudi Arabia
were directly involved.

What is clear, however, is that jihadist groups in Lebanon are being
sponsored and assisted by various Salafis in Lebanon who are very close
with the Lebanese government and who support the March 14 Movement. And
money is coming in certainly from Saudi Arabia from rich patrons. They
are well armed -- very new weapons compared to the Lebanese army --
laptops, very well fed. And some of their apartments are rented by
people who are closely associated with the Lebanese government.

But given where I was, there was no direct US involvement, as far as I
can see. It would be very foolish for the US to support these
jihadists. I think the Lebanese government and its allies found that it
was also very dangerous for them, that they cannot control these people
and use them for their own ends. We tried this ourselves in Afghanistan
and are still suffering as a result of that. And these groups in
Lebanon, I think, actually ended up taking advantage of the Lebanese
authorities, instead of the other way around.

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Nir Rosen, independent journalist, author
of In the Belly of the Green Bird: The Triumph of the Martyrs in Iraq.
He has just come out of Lebanon, has been looking at refugees, the mass
crisis. I mean, you're putting the numbers now at, well, over five
million numbers, with those refugees inside Iraq, the internally
displaced, around two million, and then you're saying three million
outside.

NIR ROSEN: I think almost three million inside. I mean, the rate is
increasing so fast every day, every month 30,000 to 50,000 are leaving
their homes.

AMY GOODMAN: Where does the UN come into this and refugee camps in these
countries?

NIR ROSEN: Well, until now, there haven't really been refugee camps
outside of Iraq. Iraqis have sort of blended into the urban
environments of Amman, Jordan; Damascus, Syria; Beirut; Cairo. These
are urban people who have fled, and they prefer an urban environment.
There's a taboo about refugee camps. And the governments have not set
up refugee camps either. So this makes it harder to help them and
harder to track them, as well.

Within Iraq, there have been some camps set up for the internally
displaced in southern Iraq. But about 150,000 to 200,000 Iraqis have
fled to northern Iraq -- Irbil, Sulaymaniyah, Dahuk -- and they have
also just rented homes in urban areas in towns.

The UN was very slow to respond, in part because of a lack of funding,
in part because the UN was still in a sort of intellectual mode where
they were assisting the Iraqi government. There was a reconstruction
effort, stability effort, development, not dealing with the
humanitarian crisis, because usually it's the other way around. You
solve the refugee crisis first, and then you initiate the
reconstruction, development, etc. Iraq was unusual in that sense, in
that what initially was a reconstruction effort became a humanitarian
crisis. And the UN was reluctant to admit it, that there was a
humanitarian crisis, because that would imply the Iraqi government,
which is assisting, is a failure. And, in fact, the Iraqi government is
a party in the conflict and is one of the main actors in prolonging
this conflict, to the extent that we can even say that there isn't an
Iraqi government.

So the UN has been very late, in part because it depends on funders. You
can't blame the UN. The UN is basically America and the donor
countries. But there was this lazy intellectual process of recognizing
that Iraq is a failure. And, of course, the UN was traumatized by,
first, the failure to prevent the war in Iraq -- and it's been seeking
a mission ever since then -- and, of course, the bombing in August
2003, which basically expelled the UN from Iraq.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you make of the Syrian prime minister Monday saying
that his country will help rebuild Iraq, help Iraqis rebuild Iraq?

NIR ROSEN: I think it's optimistic. I don't think anybody can really
help Iraq at this point. And Syria lacks the funds. We in the West have
been focused too much on Iran and Syria, as if they are the solution to
Iraq, or the problem or the cause of the problem, whereas, in fact,
this is mainly an internal conflict. And there isn't much that a
country like Syria can do. The US, with all of its troops and all of
its money, has failed completely.

Syria does have the advantage of having a good relationship with all the
parties in the conflict. It's been very good at maintaining relations
with Sunni resistance groups, with Shia radicals like Muqtada al-Sadr.
Maliki, the prime minister, actually lived in Syria for a long time.
President Talabani was in exile in Syria when he established his own
political party, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. So Syria does have a
very good relationship, and it could be the key to bringing some of the
Iraqi groups together. But at this time, I think there's actually no
hope.

AMY GOODMAN: Nir, what about Iran? What about the whole Bush-Cheney
push to attack Iran? And what is the significance of this? And how does
it play out in these countries?

NIR ROSEN: Well, I think we're dealing with a mentality on the part of
our administration that nobody else is going to have the guts to take
on Iran in the future, the next president, so if we don't do it, who's
going to do it, and we'll be vindicated in the future just like Reagan
was vindicated, allegedly, for bringing down the Soviet Union. So they
have this long-term view of how history will treat them, and if they
don't take down Iran, nobody else will, which is probably the case,
although they can't take down Iran, either.

Iran is not Iraq. You can bomb it, but I think you'd only basically
strengthen the support for the government, as always happens when you
bomb a country. We saw this in Yugoslavia and elsewhere. And they've
been blaming Iran for everything under the sun lately, for supporting
Sunni radicals in Iraq or attacking the Iranian-backed leadership in
Iraq, for attacking -- and then they blame Iran for supporting the
Taliban, who, of course, were bitter enemies of Iran. It doesn't make a
whole lot of sense.

AMY GOODMAN: And interestingly, the president of Afghanistan, Karzai,
coming in and saying Iran is a partner and then receiving Ahmadinejad in
Afghanistan, and President Bush at the same time attacking Iran.

NIR ROSEN: Well, the countries in the region know that they can't lose
Iran as an ally and as a neighbor. The US can easily alienate Iran,
without suffering too many consequences. But Iraq does depend on Iran
as a friendly neighbor, likewise Afghanistan. And if you were to
antagonize Iran, of course, the consequences would be much more severe
than antagonizing Iraq, which had a very weak army.

AMY GOODMAN: What are the politics? Why is Bush doing this, escalating
the rhetoric?

NIR ROSEN: Well, there is a general aversion on the part of the US
administration towards any Islamist movement or government. This is why
they brought down the Islamic Courts in Somalia, this is why they
overthrew the Hamas democratically elected government in Palestine,
this is why they refuse to deal with Hezbollah, an overwhelmingly
popular movement in Lebanon: I think a fear of any successful Islamist
model. And then, we've had a long animosity with Iran. We haven't
forgiven them, I think, for the hostage crisis a few decades ago.

And I think we're now in search of a new enemy. When I wrote my book, I
was doing research on LexisNexis, and I found that in May 2003
universally the US press was talking about when do we got to war
against Iran? Iraq has been such a success. We brought down Saddam's
regime so quickly. So now, Iran is next, obviously. And everybody was
behind this, of course.

AMY GOODMAN: The Lieberman-sponsored resolution condemning Iranians
fighting in Iraq for killing US soldiers, but then the report coming
out that there are more Saudi fighters in Iraq than Iranian fighters.

NIR ROSEN: It's difficult for me to understand why the Shias would need
Iranian fighters. Iraqis are very good at killing, as we've seen. Shias
were in the army. They were the majority of the army. Shias were in the
Fedayeen Saddam, as well. And they've been very eager to fight the
Americans -- the Mahdi Army, other groups.

So Iran might be sponsoring various Shia militias, of course. It has
its own proxies in Iraq: the Supreme Council, one of our main allies,
the Dawa Party, one of our main allies, the Sadr Movement to a lesser
extent, and, of course, some of the Kurdish parties, as well. Iran has
a very good relationship with various Iraqi movements.

I am skeptical that they are actually sending fighters to Iraq. I just
don't see the need for it. Iraqis are very well trained. They might be
sending some weapons. But then again, there's also a black market in
weapons, so just because a weapon is Iranian doesn't mean that it's
necessarily been sold by Iran. Various groups use American weapons. It
doesn't mean that the Americans are arming people, although, in fact,
we are arming militias.

I mean, it's very hypocritical for the US to complain about any foreign
intervention in Iraq in the first place, given that we occupied Iraq and
destroyed it, and now we're arming Sunni militias in various
neighborhoods, making the situation much worse. In various Sunni
neighborhoods of Baghdad, we're creating our own militias. We are the
ones who armed the police and the army, who are, in effect, controlled
by a sectarian Shia militia. So it's
absurd to take the American accusations seriously, except that they are
intending to go to war against Iran.

AMY GOODMAN: On that issue, Nir Rosen, Time magazine ran an article this
week called "Prelude to an Attack on Iran." It ends with a quote from an
unnamed US official: "There will be an attack on Iran," he said.

NIR ROSEN: I mean, this is just such a foolish game to play. American
soldiers are basically held hostage in Iraq. They can't leave, and they
can't
stay. And Iran has the ability to make things much more difficult for
the Americans. Until now, while we are fighting Shia militias, Shia
resistance groups, it's not a sort of universal uprising on the part of
Shias. We did face that a little bit in 2004, and it was very difficult
for the Americans. But Iran does have the ability to mobilize Iraqi
Shias, of course, against the Americans and, if it wanted to, to
sponsor other groups that might want to fight the Americans.

Iran, until now, I think, has been the primary beneficiary of the US
war in Iraq, in that their people are the ones in charge, and their
main enemy, or one of them after Israel, Saddam Hussein, was removed.
So we could have seen Iran as an ally in all this, and I think that we
could have seen them as an ally in Afghanistan, as well. But we've
chosen to invent an enemy where we didn't have one before.

AMY GOODMAN: David Petraeus, the general, this report that's coming out,
along with the Ambassador Crocker, the second week of September, it's
now reported, they may well be reporting on September 11th to Congress.
What is the significance of this?

NIR ROSEN: I don't think it's significant. What can they say that would
make any impact one way or the other?

AMY GOODMAN: What do you think has to happen?

NIR ROSEN: In Iraq? It's too late for anything good to happen in Iraq,
unfortunately. If the Americans stay, we'll see a continuation of this
civil war, of ethnic cleansing, until all of Iraq is sort of ethnically
-- or sectarian, homogenous zones, which is basically what's already
happened. If the Americans leave, then you'll see greater intervention
of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, supporting their own militias in Iraq
and being drawn into battle.

But no matter what, Iraq doesn't exist anymore. Baghdad will never be
in the hands of Sunnis again. Baghdad will be controlled by Shia
militias. They've been cleansing all the Sunnis from Baghdad. So Sunnis
are basically being pushed out of Iraq, period. They can go to the
Anbar Province, which isn't a very friendly place. I think you'll see
that there won't be any more elections in Iraq. Maliki is the last
prime minister Iraq will have for a long time. There is neither the
infrastructure for elections anymore, nor the desire to have them, nor
the ability of Iraqi groups to cooperate anymore. So what you'll see is
basically Mogadishu in Iraq: various warlords controlling small
neighborhoods. And those who are by major resources, such as oil
installations, obviously will be foreign-sponsored warlords who will be
able to cut deals with us, the Chinese. But Iraq is destroyed, and I
think we'll see that this will spread throughout the region, and this
will destabilize Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, as well.

AMY GOODMAN: Before we wrap up, I want to talk about the Occupied
Territories, about Gaza and the West Bank, particularly Gaza now, the
news out, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza enduring a
fifth day of power blackouts. The outages began after the European
Union suspended its funding of Gaza's main electricity plant. What's
happening now?

NIR ROSEN: Well, Hamas was elected democratically in elections that the
US President Jimmy Carter and the international community recognized
were free and fair. We, of course, were very upset that Hamas won the
elections, and we imposed sanctions on them and tried to overthrow the
government in a soft coup, by basically strangling the economy. And
that didn't work. As a result, we increased the heat on Hamas. We began
training and sponsoring Fatah militias, with the cooperation of Egypt,
Jordan, Saudi Arabia and, of course, Israel, and attempted to overthrow
the Hamas democratically elected government. And that, too, failed. And
Hamas actually managed to eject the Fatah militias from Gaza.

And, of course, now, thanks to US pressure, the Europeans, who would
like to deal with Hamas, who have a much more realistic view of the
Middle East, are unable to do so. And, I mean, all you're doing is
actually radicalizing this group. This is one of the more moderate
Islamist groups in the region, in fact, and they were willing to
negotiate with Israel. But what you do when you allow a group like this
to take part in elections, and then when they win you try to overthrow
them, is merely radicalize them and encourage the Salafis, those with
leanings towards al-Qaeda.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain what you mean by Salafis.

NIR ROSEN: Salafis, like the Wahabis of Saudi Arabia, a much stricter
interpretation of Islam, generally they reject any innovations and any
form of modernity, any deviations from what they perceive as a true
Islam, whether Shiism or influences of modernity, of reform. And they
often, as well, believe that if you don't follow their line of
thinking, you're a heretic, you're an infidel, and you can be killed.
Zarqawi was a Salafi, for example.

And these movements are not very strong in Palestine yet. But what we're
doing is taking a moderate group like Hamas and actually encouraging
them to be more radical, telling them that negotiations, politics,
elections won't work, all you have is violence. It is such a foolish
process, because you can't push them into the sea, which is what Israel
would like to do, of course. But if you keep them in this prison, which
is Gaza, and you bomb them every day, which is what Israel is doing,
and they've killed -- since Israel withdrew from Gaza, they've killed
over 150 children and hundreds of civilians. So it's not exactly
withdrawal in the first place.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you think needs to happen there?

NIR ROSEN: What needs to happen at this point is a one-state solution,
where Palestinian refugees are allowed to go back to their homes, where
Israel is a state for Jews and non-Jews alike, a state for its
citizens. And this one-state solution is inevitable. I think the choice
that Israeli Jews have is whether they accept it peacefully, following
the model in South Africa, or do they wait a few decades and have to
deal with a much more violent uprising on the part of the Arab Israeli
population and the population in the West Bank and Gaza? But I think,
one way or the other, it's inevitable that Israel can't exist as a
Jewish state that doesn't give equal rights to its non-Jewish Arab
citizens.

AMY GOODMAN: Nir Rosen, I want to thank you very much for being with
us. Nir Rosen, independent journalist, his book is called In the Belly
of the Green Bird: The Triumph of the Martyrs in Iraq. He is just back
from Beirut, Lebanon.