The Long, Steep Road to Democracy

"Every week they come [Kabul police] asking for 100,000 Afghanis ($1,500)."
"But this month we finally started rejecting the bribes and this is why they are retaliating."
Malik Ahmad Shah, head, Hotak shura, Banayee, Kabul, Afghanistan

"They came to our home, spewed bullets everywhere, shot my brother in his neck, and dragged him out while he was bleeding to death. He was innocent! Unarmed!"
"They shot him in the neck without even a warning shot for him to surrender."
"Does anything like this ever happen in your country?"
Nawid Hotak, brother of Engineer Hotak, shot to death by Kabul police

"This was unexpected [last week's suicide bombing in Kabul]. We must now investigate whether the bomber came from among them [the Hotak clan] -- that this was revenge."
"Their so-called demonstration on the road was just a typical obstruction technique aimed at preventing us from entering farther into their village. That is perhaps what stopped us from finding the explosive vests that we suspect they possess and sell."
Major General Mohammed Salem Ehsas, Kabul police chief

A suicide attacker blew himself up near a crowd of police and protesters in Kabul on Thursday, killing at least 11 people and wounding 25 others, in the latest deadly violence to bring carnage to the Afghan capital.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant regional affiliate in Afghanistan has certainly been actively involved in suicide bombs in the country's capital. And when a dozen police officers were killed last week in yet another such bombing it was expected that they had been responsible; either ISIL or the Taliban, but ISIL took credit. Maj.Gen. Ehsas failed to be convinced. He felt that the blast that took place where residents of a Kabul suburb had established a roadblock to stop police from entering their main street, was mounted by the villagers themselves.

Previous to that blast a drug bust took place with city police raiding the home of the Hotak family, members of a a Pashtun clan known for selling black market liquor, narcotics and weapons. During the raid, the youngest of three brothers of the Hotak family known as 'Engineer' Hotak was killed. And it was that killing and the confiscation of a cache of illicit goods that Maj.Gen.Ehsas was convinced was behind the bomb blast as police were assembled and stopped from proceeding into the village.

Confiscated items, ranging from heroin to homemade liquor in water bottles, are displayed at Kabul police headquarters after the raid. (Kabul Police)

He felt that the suicide blast occurred too quickly during the impasse between militant villagers and the police, to have been carried out by Islamic State. The spontaneity with which it occurred belied the obvious need for planning, communication, arrival and execution, leaving the only reasonable suspect, in his opinion, to have been a local from the Banayee neighbourhood of Kabul. It was the Hotak clan that clogged the major highway stopping the police from proceeding, and his conclusion seemed logical to him.

Police claim to have discovered two kilograms of heroin, three of opium, over 500 ecstasy tablets, and hundreds of litres of homemade alcohol stored in buckets and water bottles, along with guns and grenade at the home. The police took possession of all of that contraband, and left behind a living room carpet deeply soaked in blood, a metal door kicked in, living room walls pocked from bullets ricocheting about the interior of the Hotak home. The blood was that of Engineer Hotak, smeared down the staircase to the front door.

The Hotaks consign the police display of confiscated goods to an elaborate setup to hide the corruption of Kabul's police. As for the suicide bombing, obviously a militant group took swift advantage of the presence of police. The head of the Hotak shura described how police have been extorting shopkeepers in Banayee since 2014. They had supported Ashraf Ghani who had won the presidency, while the police had given their support to Ghani's rival, Abdullah Abdullah. While at one time Banayee was known with reason to sell drugs and alcohol that is no longer the case.

Nawid and Ziarmal Hotak hold pictures of their brother, Engineer Hotak, 22, who was killed in a police raid in the Banayee neighborhood of Kabul on Thursday. (Max Bearak/The Washington Post)

It was the refusal by shopkeepers, said Malik Ahmad Shah, to continue to pay the bribes to the police that led to the raid, the killing of Engineer Hotak, and the display of planted weapons and drugs, 'confiscated' from the home by police. It is generally acknowledged that Kabul's police are corrupt, with bribery and extortion widespread. Maj.Gen.Ehsas went so far as to admit that to be the case. Still, he told a Washington Post reporter, the police raid demonstrates just how seriously the police force takes its Islamic duty to eradicate "mafias" like the Hotaks.

Seems like Afghanistan qualifies as a "shithole" nation, despite its pledges of reform and aspirations to democracy, albeit Islamist-style.

And Never The Twain

"A two-state solution will be clearly underscored as the only real alternative -- because a unitary state winds up either being an apartheid state with second-class citizens, or it ends up being a state that destroys the capacity of Israel to be a Jewish state."
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry

"His equation of the democratic state of Israel and apartheid South Africa is a new low in American diplomacy and an insult to the people of Israel and South Africa."
"Had Secretary Kerry come to Judea and Samaria [the West Bank], he would have learned about the potential for coexistence without the need for incendiary comments. The time has come for the American administration to quietly exit this failed process."
Dani Dayan, Yesha Council of Jewish settlers, West Bank

"He is using the word in the future tense but [the Israelis] have already created an apartheid system in the West Bank. They don't like it when people use accurate terms to describe what they are doing. When you build roads for settlers that no one else can use, or have two separate legal systems, what else can you call it?"
Hanan Ashrawi, Palestine Liberation Organization executive council

Mr. Kerry is most certainly confused; his frequent trips to the Middle East, that boiling cauldron of sectarian religious suspicion and hatred, where Islam fiercely dominates and oppresses minority-presence Christians and Jews is itself an effective Apartheid regime, its exemplar Saudi Arabia. Israel extends citizenship and equality under the law to all who live within its borders, be they Jews, Arabs, Druze, Kurd, Christian, Judaic or Muslim.



The Palestinian Authority has stated categorically that when it assumes full and total control as a sovereign nation not one Jew will be permitted to live within its boundaries. That is Apartheid. The Arab Palestinians soundly rejected the UN's Partition plan of 1947, while the Jews accepted it and speedily declared themselves prepared to re-create a state of their own, finally; a haven, their historical homeland restored.

Not in its entirety, but in part, the world body permitting it to take possession of a tiny sliver of land. Over the years, in ferociously demanding that the tiny sliver of land be dissolved and return to Arab rule, the PLO mounted one violent atrocity after another, from plane and ship hijackings, to massacres and bombings, then finally suicide bombing. Theirs was not a demand that their right to occupy land adjacent to Israel's be recognized, but that Israel disappear.



As one attempted negotiation to arrive at a peaceful solution to the presence of two ethnic groups, two religions, two ideologies recognize one another's legitimacy failed, the Palestinians had nothing to lose since they enjoyed full material support from the United Nations and the world at large through compassionate 'refugee' financial support courtesy of many sources including the EU, UN, US and Canada.

While Palestinian Arabs bombed and murdered Israelis both in the Middle East and abroad, they took no steps to relinquish their aspirations to destroy the presence of what they termed an intruder nation, and to secure their portion of the land for themselves through the creation of a responsible, peaceful state. One war after another finally led to Israel trouncing the combined Arab armies of the Middle East, and taking Sinai from Egypt, the Golan Heights from Syria and East Jerusalem from Jordan.



The Palestinians never surrendered their goal of usurping the Israeli presence entirely from the Middle East and restoring to themselves what established Arab countries never permitted them to realize as a nation of their own. Violence became them, even as they lamented their eternal lot as refugees remaining dependent over generations on international largesse rather than make of themselves a functioning nation.

Divisions between the Palestinians with Fatah on one hand and Hamas on the other, intriguing violently against one another while both intending to defeat Israel expressed the tribalism and clannishness and religious sectarian conflict typical of Middle East societies. Where Jews are persona non grata, and Christians are increasingly endangered, their churches demolished, their parishioners attacked by the growing incidence of political Islamism.



Roads for settlers alone has a rationale; Israeli Jews are singled out for violent attacks continuously, in representation of Palestinian rage against their presence. Just as the wall to protect Israelis from the ongoing suicide-bomb slaughter diminished those attacks' frequency, so too do the roads help to protect travelling Israelis from violent Palestinian rancour. When divisions are required they reflect the savagery of exposure to Palestinian rage.

With prisoners’ release, Palestinians demand Israel withdraw to 1949 lines, renounce E. Jerusalem

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report October 28, 2013, 11:01 PM (IDT)

Tags:  Palestinians,  negotiations,  Israel,  prisoner release,  Mahmoud Abbas,  John Kerry,  Binyamin Netanyahu,

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu lamented Monday, Oct. 28 that the release Tuesday night of 26 jailed Palestinians serving life sentences for murdering Israelis, the cause of widespread popular ire,  was “one of the hardest decisions” he has ever made. But he faces much harder decisions from the list of tough demands, debkafile's sources report were presented Israel by the Palestinians in ongoing  US-sponsored negotiations, The prime minister has not made them known to the Israeli public.  The new Palestinian terms are so harsh as to surely defy even US Secretary of State John Kerry’s skills in bridging differences.

The prime minister also kept mum about his offer to the Palestinians of financial compensation for land remaining under Israeli control – the first time any Israeli leader has put a price tag on disputed territory.

The 16 Palestinian demands, which debkafile reveals exclusively for the first time below, make the release of convicted Palestinian murderers a dangerous exercise in futility, because each demand is enough to drive the negotiations into impasse, just as Mahmoud Abbas did two years ago.

After seeing the Palestinian list, Netanyahu should have put the release of prisoners on hold until Abbas comes around to a rational perception of the negotiations as a give-and-take process for the object of reaching an agreement – not an opportunity for outrageous extortion.

Israel’s senior negotiator Justice Minister Tzipi Livni tried arguing that the Palestinians were just making an opening bid and they expected it to be driven down in the bargaining process. However, negotiations have been going on for three months and the process is into the fourth month of the nine-month period assigned up to deadline.

Mahmoud Abbas, rather than seeking common ground, has used the time to raise his price for a deal to an exorbitant level, while keeping his hand firmly on the terrorist spigot.

It is a matter of record that a large proportion of jailed terrorists have reverted to violence after they walked in the past through the exits of Israeli jails.

First published list of Palestinian demands

• The United States and Israel must acknowledge that the Palestinian state is “under occupation.” (This is the Palestinian response to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s demand to recognize Israel as the Jews’ national state.)
• Israeli must repeal legislation extending Israeli law to East Jerusalem
• The Palestinians will have full sovereignty over their air space. (This will bar Israeli air force flights over Judea and Samaria and the Gaza Strip).
• The Palestinians will have exclusive control of all border crossings to neighboring nations. i.e. Israel and Jordan.
• Israel’s withdrawal to the pre-1967 boundaries is not enough. Its pull-back must go all the way to the 1949 armistice lines, additionally annexing to the Palestinian state broad strips of Israeli land that were demilitarized at that time. Among the areas which the Palestinians want to lay hands on are the Ayalon Valley, the Latrun enclave and the Armon Hantatiz district of Jerusalem between the Old City and West Jerusalem; the Huleh Lake Valley; the Golan slopes running down to the Sea of Galilee; and the Nitzana belt north of the Gaza Strip – plus one third of Dead Sea water and shore.
  ( The Palestinians hope to grab substantial Israeli territory beyond the pre-1967 borders by invoking the long moribund 1949 accords.)
• Electromagnetic space (radio frequencies, satellite and other communications) will be under sole Palestinian control
• The Palestinians are ready to relinquish 1.9 percent of West Bank territory.
• All parts of East Jerusalem including the shrines sacred to Muslims, Christians and Jews will come under sole Palestinian authority against a pledge of freedom of worship.
• Israel and its armed forces will draw back from the Palestinian state over a three-year period. Six months after the drawdown is complete, the Palestinians will be willing to sign final peace treaties with the State of Israel
• The US and Israel must accept the settlement of the Palestinian refugee problem as “a just and agreed solution.”
• Every Palestinian refugee (as per the Palestinian Authority’s definition of up to the fourth generation) will be free to choose between three options: settlement in Israel or the Palestinian state or staying at their present locations.
• Whichever option is chosen, the refugees will be entitled to appropriate restitution.
• Only when the refugee issue is finally resolved will the Palestinians agree to declare their dispute with Israel at an end
• An international mechanism will be tasked with administering the disposition of the Palestinian refugees and their resettlement.  It will be composed of Palestinian, Israeli, American, European, Canadian, Australian, Japanese and Arab League representatives
• The Palestinian state will be authorized to sign treaties including military pacts without the intervention of a third party, such as Israel.
• All parts of the Palestinian state will be clear of Israeli civilian and military presence.