Allison W. Good

Two years after the mass uprising that ousted dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and instituted a system of electoral representation, Tunisia is still struggling to rebuild its economy. Chronic unemployment plagues youth and university graduates, GDP growth is slow, the budget deficit is increasing, and the country faces a $20 billion-plus external debt. The government has undertaken several initiatives to foster local entpreneurship and attract more foreign direct investment, but it has done so through the implementation of enormous foreign aid packages. Unless the unemployment rate significantly decreases through private sector growth and continuing internal unrest ends, Tunisia will be forced to rely on foreign aid to function.

To get back on solid economic footing, Tunisia has enlisted the international community. The European Union has allocated 220 million euros in financial assistance for Tunisia this year alone, and the two entities signed an agreement in November that will increase Tunisia’s European export market. Since January 2011, the U.S. has committed more than $300 million to help Tunisia pay its debts, transition into democracy, and provide entrenpreneurship and employability training for its citizens. Libya committed $200 million in aid in November. But all this foreign aid is a mere bandaid for Tunisia, whose finance minister has said that the government will need about $4.4 billion in financial assistance next year. Meanwhile, unemployment in Tunisia remains a staggering 18 percent. Private sector growth creeps at a snail’s pace in part because the government’s own employment initiatives have focused on enlarging the bloated public sector, further increasing its deficit.

Even if the private sector recovers and unemployment is addressed, social unrest, threatens to undermine any gains made. First, the recent rise in hardline Islamist demonstrations against the government, mostly by Salafist groups, deters potential investors like Qatar and Turkey from establishing self-sustaining capital development projects in Tunisia, which they may deem unstable territory for such ventures. Second, union strikes have become regular occurrences, stagnating Tunisia’s capacity for production. The crown jewel in Tunisia’s narrow resource base—its phosphate industry—has been crippled by such activities. Several plants belonging to the state-owned Compagnie de Phosphates have been forced to cease operations completely, and annual phosphate output is one-third of its pre-revolution level. If the current level of internal unrest continues, further hindering production growth and dissuading foreign direct  investment, Tunisia will become entirely dependent on foreign aid.

The only bright spot in Tunisia’s economy seems to be its entrepreneurial community. Both local and foreign entities have established seed funds for startup companies in Tunisia, and foreign aid and NGOs are providing necessary business skills. However, the success of Tunisia’s entrepreneurial sector alone will not solve the basic economic problems facing the country. Foreign aid can certainly help, but it must be accompanied by effective government policies. Unfortunately, Tunisia’s ruling coalition has neglected thoughtful economic policies in favor of short-term fixes. If this pattern continues, Tunisia will soon find itself completely dependent on foreign assistance, dimming its post-revolution hopes of becoming an important regional player.

Tunisia made a substantial bid Saturday for regional influence and foreign policy relevance when Foreign Minister Rafik Abdesslem visited Gaza, following Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Kandil’s appearance there Friday. Decrying Israel’s “flagrant aggression,” Abdesslem proclaimed Israel’s recent actions in Gaza as illegitimate and illegal, echoing President Moncef Marzouki’s affirmation of solidarity with Palestinians and Gaza and calls for United Nations Security Council sanctions against Israel. The ruling Ennahda party also made a statement about the conflict strongly condemning “Zionist savage crimes” and saluting the “heroic Palestinian people.”

While it is logical and understandable that Egypt would send an official delegation given the current government’s outreach to its counterpart in neighboring Gaza and Egypt’s longstanding status as a mediator between Hamas and Israel, Tunisia’s involvement seems, in comparison, bizarre. Its relationship with Hamas is only a post-revolution development, and it has neither political clout nor resources to offer. Sure, Tunisia is a democratic U.S. ally just like Egypt and Turkey, but it has never been nearly as powerful. Abdesslem’s visit, it seems to me, is a bid for regional prominence in both North Africa and the Middle East as a major pro-Palestinian player.

In 1996, Tunisia and Israel established interest sections in each others’ countries, but former dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali decided to break all diplomatic ties when the Second Intifada broke out in 2000. Even so, Ben Ali’s reaction to Operation Cast Lead four years ago was categorically different than the current government’s. According to AFP, he called for an immediate ceasefire and a lifting of the blockage on Gaza, characterizing the fighting as “violent, savage aggression,” but never directly implicating Israel as the aggressor and reaching out to Hamas on the scale that Marzouki and Ennahda have.

I certainly did not expect a Tunisian representative to become the second high-level official to visit Gaza this time around, but in retrospect it appears that Tunisia has been building up such a pro-Palestinian, pro-Hamas presence since the post-Ben Ali government was elected in October 2011. In January, Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh made an official trip to Tunis to “meet with the new moderate Islamist-led administration.”Although he was “welcomed with much fanfare on his arrival” and “was met by Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali and the head of Ennahda, Rached Ghannouchi,” this demonstration of a developing relationship between Hamas and Tunisia’s government angered official Palestinian Authority representatives in Tunis, where the PLO headquarters were located until the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993. Following the visit, rumors circulated that Hamas planned to open an embassy in Tunis. Earlier this month, Tunisia even hosted an international conference for former Palestinian prisoners, a move that won much praise from Hamas, but elicited much criticism of the PA, which did not attend.

Clearly, Tunisia seeks a more high-profile role in regional policy. While Abdesslem’s visit to Gaza was undoubtedly historical, it also reeks of a desire for a strong alliance with the Middle East’s most powerful Palestinian entity. Unfortunately for Tunisia, it can never hope to overtake Egypt as the number-one interlocutor, but this initiative is bound to pay off if Hamas remains deeply entrenched in Gaza for the long term. It is questionable what a Tunisia-Hamas alliance would involve besides diplomatic relations and coordination, since economic aid is out of the question. Foreign policy clout, however, could help leverage Tunisia as the Maghreb’s post-Arab Spring hegemony. Whether Tunisia’s government is actually capable of this, however, remains to be seen.

On November 29, the Palestinian Authority plans to bid for observer state status at the United Nations General Assembly, and a majority of member states are more than likely to approve it. Israel has tried to wrangle the Palestinians away from making such a bid, and so has the United States, but President Mahmoud Abbas is determined. Out of desperation and anger, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has decided to support two very different options, neither of which will sway the Palestinians in the slightest.

First, there’s the stick. Agence France-Presse apparently obtained a position paper from the Foreign Ministry that proposes “toppling” Abbas and his regime if the bid goes through. Although Lieberman has not officially stated this position, he “has already reportedly expressed his view” that Abbas’ Palestinian Authority should be dismantled if the UN bid is approved. Israel may also threaten to annul “part or all” of the 1993 Oslo Accords, which stipulates that every “every dispute will be resolved through direct negotiations, not by going to a third party.”

Then there’s the carrot. Haaretz reported Wednesday that Lieberman “is considering a draft document that would offer the Palestinians immediate recognition of statehood within provisional borders as an incentive for dropping their UN bid.”

1. Israel would immediately recognize a Palestinian state in provisional borders, based in Area A of the West Bank, where Palestinians would have control over security and civilian matters, and Area B, where Palestinians would have control over civilian issues alone; these areas would comprise some 40-50 percent of the territory in the West Bank.

2. The period of time for this Palestinian state along provisional borders would not be determined in advanced, and no deadline would be set for permanent borders. Negotiations over permanent borders and other core issues would be renewed.

3. The Palestinians would commit to not taking any unilateral steps, particularly with regard to approaching the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

4. Israel would not freeze construction in the large settlement blocs of Ariel, Ma’aleh Adumim and Gush Etzion.

It is quite clear that neither of Lieberman’s options will appeal to the Palestinian Authority or convince it to rethink its actions. Threatening to topple the Palestinian Authority, at least in my opinion, is an empty threat. The ensuing chaos in the West Bank could provide an opening for the more rightist factions of Fatah, or even for Hamas. Israel, regardless of the UN bid, needs Abbas, at least for right now.

The proposal to offer the Palestinians immediate recognition with provisional borders is obviously a last-minute attempt that does not reflect Palestinian desires. The document only mentions Areas A and B, whereas most of the opportunities for economic development are in Area C. In addition, the PA would be crazy to accept a clause that “no deadline would be set for permanent borders.” Furthermore, making the Palestinians promise not to take any unilateral steps is an unreasonable caveat. If Palestine is going to become a provisional state, it has to be able to act like one. Finally, we all know that Abbas is adamant about a freeze on settlement construction. Continued building in Ariel, Ma’aleh Adumim, and Gush Etzion simply would not fly.

Call it maneuvering, or a grave misunderstanding of reality, but these proposals reflect everything that is wrong with the Foreign Ministry’s approach to foreign policy regarding the Palestinians. They simultaneously threaten to collapse the Palestinian Authority on the one hand, and present the idea of a provisional state, which would depend on the functionality of the PA, on the other. This tactic is bizarre, and I do not expect the Palestinian leadership to give it any substantial consideration. It is time for Israel’s Foreign Ministry to accept that Palestine will soon be an observer state at the UN, and that its attempts to thwart this development have been futile.

The Gulf News has a nice roundup of Palestinian perspectives on President Barack Obama’s reelection. Senior Fatah official Yahya Rabah said that the reelection released Obama “from the political constraints the Israel lobby put on him,” and that he’s better than Romney because “we already know his views.” This is a pretty optimistic view, at least compared to the money quotes from Gaza’s Islamist resistance groups.

According to Islamic Jihad’s Khaled Al Batsh, “Nothing will change in Obama’s second term. In fact, I don’t think he will make any positive changes regarding the Palestinian people since his administration is supporting Israel with money and weapons against the Palestinians and Arabs.” The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine’s Kayed Al Ghol took the line that the Israel lobby will continue to dominate U.S. politics, stating that “American policy toward Palestine won’t change even if the president himself changed since it’s has already been drawn by the Zionist lobby and is going according to the Israeli interests.” Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri was significantly less incendiary and commented that “The people in the Arab and Islamic nations are different than they were before and president Obama must take that into consideration.”

Rabah’s comments, of course, must be taken within the context that Fatah itself is politically fractured, but they do reveal an extreme disconnect between what the West Bank and Gaza think regarding whether Obama will engage with the Palestinians. We all know that the President didn’t take much initiative during his first term to help Palestinians prepare for independence, other than making demands that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would never comply with and supporting continued foreign aid to the Palestinian Authority. In addition, Obama’s reelection does not mean that the President is free from the yoke of the Israel lobby. After all, it’s Congress that approves foreign aid to both Israel and the Palestinian Authority, and Republicans are holding on to the House of Representatives.

The West Bank’s political intelligentsia may be in denial, but Gaza’s Islamists are not. Obama’s policy toward the Palestinians probably won’t change at all. I certainly don’t expect the President to put any real pressure on Israel’s next prime minister (likely to be Netanyahu) to make any significant goodwill gestures, or develop a genuine interest in forming a relationship with the leadership in Ramallah. This reality may be unfortunate, but it’s not going to change.

Tunisia has been struggling to get back on solid economic footing ever since the Jasmine Revolution. Total unemployment for its labor force of 3.9 million people remains extremely high at 18 percent, while youth unemployment is an astounding 30.7 percent. Growth is still slow, and the country faces an external debt of $23.2 billion. USAID has helped to alleviate the debt by transferring millions in cash and borrowing from Tunisia on the promise of paying both principal and interest, but even that may be threatened in the coming months.

One source of income that Tunisia has always been able to count on is its preferential trade agreement with the European Union, which it signed in 1995. The EU has been the country’s primary trading partner since then, and in 2010 it accounted for 67 percent of Tunisian imports and 74 percent of Tunisian exports. However, the EU announced Monday that on January 1, 2014, North Africa will no longer benefit from the preferential tariff rates of the program, which aims to “contribute to the reduction of poverty and the promotion of sustainable development and good governance” in developing countries. Tunisia already suffers from an increasing trade deficit, but the end of its preferential status in the EU ensures that the country will take a huge hit in 2014.

The end of special tariffs will significantly shrink Tunisia’s export market. This is pure economic logic, but the situation will be exacerbated by Europe’s recession, which will most definitely still plague the continent by the time its agreement with Tunisia expires. Tunisia is still a developing country according to the United Nations, but it does have sustainable economic institutions and is not as impoverished as many of its neighbors. However, the preferential trade agreement has been so successful that Tunisia relies on that relationship for a huge chunk of its income, and its expiration is guaranteed to cause further economic regression.

Because of its small size, narrow resource base, and failed experiment in import-substitution industrialization, Tunisia needs strong trade relationships. More important, the government will need a new primary partner come 2014, and upgrading trade relationships in general takes months of negotiation. Giving Tunisia only one year to prepare for the end of its preferential status is outrageously unrealistic under normal circumstances, but its economy is still trying to recover from a period of major social unrest as well as persistent negative side effects caused by the regime’s embrace of structural adjustment.

The only country potentially capable of stepping up to the plate is the U.S., but there are indications that America’s romance with Tunisia as the model outcome of the Arab Spring is coming to an end. Violent Salafist groups are increasingly attempting to sabotage Tunisia’s infant democratic establishment, and the attack on the U.S. embassy in Tunis on September 11 served as a reality check that Ennahda has been unable to effectively reign in these fringe groups. Constructing such a partnership by 2014 would also be impossible, since the U.S. has only signed a Trade and Investment Framework Agreement with Tunisia, which is not nearly as comprehensive as a Free Trade Agreement. Nor is there any indication that the U.S. desires to assume the EU’s role. I doubt that the State Department will do much more than it already has regarding Tunisia’s economic situation leaving a void that, if unfilled, threatens to reverse any economic progress the country has made since the revolution.

As Ennahda’s once-rising star continues its free fall after just one year of post-authoritarian power in Tunisia, it seems that there is an opening for a coherent and credible opposition that could potentially wrest legislative power from the Islamists in the legislative elections scheduled for June 2013. As Hussein Ibish wrote Tuesday, the Tunisian General Labor Union (UGTT) is “the one group that … might be able to create a large enough coalition with sufficient power to confront” Ennahda, Even though optimists argue that the UGTT shifted the political balance by convening some 50 opposition groups in its brand-new National Dialogue Congress (NDC) last week, they ignore history and its implications for the future.

The UGTT played a crucial role in Tunisia’s struggle for independence, but its autonomy dwindled soon after President Habib Bourguiba realized that labor’s commitment to a planned economy contradicted his ruling Neo-Destour party’s interest in private sector-led growth. Thus began the authoritarian regime’s cooptation of the UGTT and Tunisia’s democratic deficit. State sponsorship of labor, as Eva Bellin notes in Stalled Democracy, experienced periods of repression, subordination, measured autonomy, and controlled cooperation under Bourguiba and his successor Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

Systematic confrontations between the regime and the UGTT, including crackdowns on the union’s freedoms to organize and publish, were interspersed with the occasional wage increase or spike in activism. Student and worker strikes, which in 1978 provoked the infamous Black Thursday riots, were common, but Bourguiba had a knack for curbing dissent. Because the UGTT was so effectively contained by the state, it had ceased to play any pseudo-oppositionist role by the mid-1980s.

The union’s role in the 2011 Jasmine Revolution further proves the UGTT leadership’s aversion to democratization. Union members may have been protesting in the streets, but UGTT secretary-general Abdessalem Jerad was holding talks with Ben Ali and reassured his constituency that the dictator “[held] workers and their union in great respect.”  The union’s National Administrative Committee, eager to be on the winning side, also agreed to back a provisional government led by Mohamed Ghannouchi, Ben Ali’s prime minister. This move to reinstate the old guard that the Revolution had worked to hard to oust angered workers who were fed up with the mass unemployment and repression of civil rights that plagued Tunisia under the Ben Ali regime.

As unemployment persists and Tunisia’s deficit steadily increases under the Ennahda-led government, the UGTT still cannot seem to organize beyond the usual protests and strikes. The NDC was certainly a noble attempt to resolve transitional issues outside the deadlocked National Constituent Assembly, but some major players boycotted the meeting. President Moncef Marzouki’s Congress for the Republic (CPR) party, which plans to drop its majority coalition alliance with Ennahda after the 2013 elections, did not attend. In the end, the UGTT-organized NDC was unable to reach any kind of consensus as the National Constituent Assembly’s legitimacy simultaneously expired because it failed to draft and ratify a constitution on deadline.

Clearly, the UGTT is struggling to become a credible opposition even though it is no longer coopted by an authoritarian regime and the field is wide open for groups that oppose the trajectory of Ennahda and wish to unseat it in the next election. Despite this golden opportunity, the union still seems to suffer from organizational problems and a lack of appeal that are rooted in its historical allergy to opposition activism. Those who believe that the UGTT can turn the NDC or any other initiative into a vibrant and influential opposition movement are simply in denial.

The following was published on openDemocracy on August 31.

I cannot say that I am surprised by the decision of Bitterlemons founders and editors Yossi Alpher and Ghassan Khatib to halt production of their weekly online magazine. Established in 2001 – amid the Second Intifada and the breakdown of the Oslo Process – Bitterlemons was a crucial source of thoughtful analysis about the peace process for academics and politicos worldwide. Earlier this week, both Alpher and Khatib wrote that the conversation is no longer relevant, and for good reason.

Alpher cited “local fatigue” as his reason for shutting down the site, as “There is no peace process and no prospect of one.” According to Khatib, “we are … at the lowest point in the arc of the pendulum,” which is swinging towards a one-state solution. Almost twenty years after the signing of the Declaration of Principles, which provided for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, “Palestinians and Israelis are barely conversational.” Recent headlines about Israeli settlers’ price tag attacks on Palestinian property, the Palestinian Authority’s increasing inability to govern, the exploding political influence of Israel’s religious right, and the total absence of a formal Israeli-Palestinian dialogue indicate that Khatib and Alpher are right – it’s time to stop harping on about a dead process that has no hope for a tangible solution.

The donors who made Bitterlemons possible may believe there is no need for a platform to host voices from the region, but this is an irrational conclusion. Bilateral talks have broken down, but the dialogue concerning several of the current issues at hand -which are more or less related to Oslo – must continue. Take the “war” over Area C in the West Bank, for example. This swathe of land encompasses 62 percent of the territory and houses most of the Israeli settlements as well as some 150,000 Palestinians. Though Israel’s total civilian and military control over Area C was designed to be temporary, the abandonment of the political process has turned it into a battleground.

As Israeli journalist Danny Rubinstein recently wrote, Area C not only “holds potential” for agricultural and minerals development, but also contains “vast expanses of vacant land” ripe for urban development and industrialization, as well as crucial water resources. This land is the crux for a sustainable Palestinian future. In July, however, the Israeli government ordered the demolition and evacuation of eight Palestinian villages in Area C to make room for an Israeli Defense Forces training ground. These demolitions have become routine in Area C, where it is nearly impossible for Palestinian residents to get permits for planning and building. Meanwhile, reports Al Jazeera, the numbers of both “legal” Israeli settlements and settlement outposts, which Israeli law deems illegal, are steadily increasing.

As there seems to be no political accountability in either Israel or the Palestinian territories for this kind of activity, or for the alleged financial abuses of the Oslo-created Palestinian Authority and a myriad of other controversies, we must count on voices from the region to provide us with non-partisan facts from the ground. Arab-Israeli conflict expert Jeremy Pressman agrees that this is a no-brainer. “Even with the end of Bitterlemons, voices from the region still exist and remain central to the emergence of a productive political pathway,” he said in an emailed statement on Tuesday.

Whether there is a need for academics with expertise on Oslo and the peace process, on the other hand, is a more difficult question to answer. There is, of course, a camp that maintains that Israelis and Palestinians are simply at an impasse, and for whom talking about the peace process is still relevant. In Washington, former State Department adviser Aaron David Miller, who has written extensively about Oslo process negotiations, told me that current apathy is just a phase. “The peace process will never die,” he said in an emailed statement this week. “What seems to have expired is the kind of leadership in Jerusalem, Ramallah and Washington willing and able to pay the price for an Israeli-Palestinian agreement.”  

Regardless of whether the peace process is dead or at a stalemate, there is still a void to be filled by scholars who know it backwards and forwards. The most glaring example is the gossip surrounding Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s willingness to get on the peacemaking track. After Netanyahu gave a speech in June 2009, in the beginning of his second term as premier, he publicly accepted the two-state solution for the first time. Subsequently, he tried to restart negotiations with the Palestinians, this time over a settlement building freeze. There was copious speculation that he was finally going to make a breakthrough at the expense of his right-wing Likud base, but those who studied the Oslo process were not surprised when these talks — despite incentives from the White House reminiscent of the formal defense treaty President Clinton offered Netanyahu in 1998 in return for complying with Oslo — ultimately failed.

As I wrote in July, looking at the Prime Minister’s records on the implementation of the Hebron Agreement in 1997 and the Wye River Memorandum in 1999 served as indicators that the super coalition he formed in May would not last. It was not a masterstroke, as portrayed by the media, but a complete mess. The unity government with Kadima never yielded a replacement of the unconstitutional Tal Law or a halt to settlement expansion, but rather the coalition dissolved as Netanyahu proved once again that he is a creature of habit when it comes to pleasing his constituency. The patterns and undercurrents of 2012 necessitate a complete and complex understanding of the events of the 1990s.

I personally believe that the peace process and the bilateral political process in general are dead, but this does not mean that talking and writing about the Oslo period and its aftermath should be seen as irrelevant. There is still a need for objectivity from the ground, and academics can use historical indicators from that period to predict tomorrow’s outcomes. Maybe one day, policymakers will also use them to avoid future mistakes. For now, unfortunately, that remains a pipedream.

Isaac may be coming, but that’s not what sticks out in my mind on this anniversary. What I’ve been thinking about over the past few days, actually, is my high school uniform. I went to a private, all-girls school in New Orleans, probably the only one in the state that was non-parochial and non-sectarian. There were several things I disliked about it: the annual nativity scene, which I was encouraged to sing in as a member of the Upper School choir, the domineering blue-blood debutante culture that I clearly did not belong to, and the politics played that ultimately tainted my experience. That is not to say that I did not thrive; during my graduating class’ post-Katrina senior year, we all grew up and finally got on the track to adulthood. However, I definitely left with a bad taste in my mouth and only returned to watch my sister graduate three years later.

The uniform was that of a traditional Catholic school-girl: tartan plaid skirt, clunky brown Dr. Martens, and a polo, which had to be substituted for an oxford shirt and navy blazer for Tuesday assemblies and other appointed dress days. The heat and humidity meant that I was usually uncomfortable, and dress days were dreaded, but I truly enjoyed rolling out of bed and taking only 10 minutes to get ready each morning. I had previously gone to a school that required no uniform for its Middle School, but you can still imagine my confusion when, one week after the Federal Flood, I ended up starting my junior year at a school in Atlanta which had no dress code and did not even require shoes. But my school was a big part of my pre-Katrina identity, and I really missed my uniform, so much so that I wore it to school on Halloween. It was one thing that my parents had salvaged from our half-submerged home in New Orleans, a scrap of normalcy during an otherwise turbulent period of my life.

There was one month between our move back to New Orleans at the end of December and my departure for Israel, where I would spend the spring semester. I did not have to go to school during those four weeks, but I chose to because I knew that not doing anything would only sink me deeper into PTSD, even though my family was renting an apartment in the Uptown bubble. I wore my uniform, went to class, and did my best to resume some pre-K normalcy. Years later, I realized this coping mechanism reflected unrealistic expectations, but putting on that uniform did something for me that I cannot fully explain.

My five-year high school reunion was this past March. I elected not to attend, as I was starting a new life in Washington and had no desire to socialize with most of the girls in my year, with whom I have nothing in common. Most of them lost nothing in the flood and were able to return to their homes before our school reopened two months after Katrina, so there was always that gap of understanding throughout my senior year. Still, the fact that I was able to return for my senior year made me ecstatic, as I had threatened to live with my grandparents in the Garden District numerous times if my parents were unable to move back to New Orleans. On the first anniversary of Katrina, I stood on the school lawn for a commemoration, my uniform as uncomfortable as ever. But at that point, there was nothing else I would have wanted to wear.

Kadima party chairman Shaul Mofaz announced Tuesday his party would leave the coalition after it rejected with Prime Minister Netanyahu’s latest compromise offer on revising the unconstitutional Tal Law, two weeks before the deadline to agree on a replacement law and 70 days after the formation of the surprise super coalition. Unfortunately, I don’t have time to write a longer post, but I’m taking a mental victory lap right now because I predicted that the coalition wouldn’t last, though I had thought it would end a lot sooner.