NEWSWEEK International Editions: Highlights and Exclusives, January 12, 2009
Issue
COVER: Will It Ever End? Managing Editor Daniel Klaidman opens the cover
package with an essay laying out a draft for a lasting agreement between
Israelis and Palestinians. "There are no options other than a comprehensive
agreement that creates two sovereign states, Israel and Palestine, warily
coexisting side by side," he writes. The outline also suggests a plan to
divide the rights to Jerusalem, a call for a NATO-based international force to
be put in the West Bank that would later transfer control to the Palestinians,
and a plan for what to do about the Palestinians who fled or were forced from
their territory in 1948, and their descendants. "Israeli leaders have been
willing to accept a partial solution: some refugees living in the camps would
make homes in the newly established state of Palestine," Klaidman writes. For
this to work, "refugees living in camps in Syria and other foreign states
would have to be allowed to stay if they chose, and be granted citizenship in
their adopted countries -- the Arab host countries could not demand that all
of the refugees return to Palestine, where they would overwhelm the budding
state."
http://www.newsweek.com/id/177840
(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20090104/NYSU001 )
How We Got to This Point. Jerusalem Bureau Chief Kevin Peraino writes,
"Fighting in the Holy Land has been raging for thousands of years, the
familiar reasoning goes; it would be hubris to think America could end it. Yet
three excellent recent books suggest that such logic is seriously flawed." The
three books Peraino refers to are Daniel Kurtzer and Scott Lasensky's
"Negotiating Arab-Israeli Peace"; Patrick Tyler's "A World of Trouble: The
White House and the Middle East -- From the Cold War to the War on Terror,"
and Martin Indyk's new memoir of his tenure as a Clinton-era peace negotiator,
"Innocent Abroad: An Intimate Account of American Peace Diplomacy in the
Middle East."
http://www.newsweek.com/id/177713
Israel's Arabs Are the Answer. Daniel Gavron, author of "Holy Land
Mosaic," writes that "last week's massive Israeli reprisals against Hamas in
Gaza, which followed the breakdown of a five-month truce, have made peace
between Israel and the Palestinians seem more remote than ever." In a month,
Israel will hold an election, and unless the Gaza fighting changes things
dramatically, the winner will likely be a right-wing government, which will be
unwilling to ever make the compromises necessary to achieve a two-state
settlement. "In the age of Obama, the time has come to repudiate our old
phobias and prejudices and move forward to a better future for our children
and grandchildren."
http://www.newsweek.com/id/177757
The Truth About Plan Colombia. Senior Writer Adam B. Kushner examines
Colombia's war on drugs since alvaro Uribe took office as Colombia's president
in 2002. U.S. policymakers have hailed Uribe's determination to rid the
country of narcotrafficking, but determination is not enough. Instead of
cutting drug production, the acreage of land dedicated to coca cultivation is
up 15 percent since 2000 and now yields 4 percent more cocaine than it did
eight years ago.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/177681
An Experiment In Leadership. London Bureau Chief Stryker McGuire writes
that in Whitehall and Westminster, new thinking seems to have slowed to a
trickle, with both big national political parties transfixed by the global
financial crisis and defaulting to their timeworn left-right positions. Yet
downriver from Britain's ancient centers of power, a very different picture is
emerging. Under the leadership of London Mayor Alexander Boris de Pfeffel
Johnson, city hall has become something of an idea factory, humming with all
kinds of innovation.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/177677
INTERVIEW: London Mayor Boris Johnson. McGuire interviews Johnson, who has
turned city hall into a youthful idea factory that could position Johnson to
be Britain's next Conservative leader. Johnson says, "People expect the mayor
in a funny way to be above party politics and to be thinking about the
interests of the city. So you have scope to do and say things that your
national party would find a little bit odd and perhaps even objectionable. One
of things about everybody here [in city hall] is that they're quite young and
idealistic; they're not by any means all Conservatives, and, you know, they're
full of wheezes for improving the lot of Londoners."
http://www.newsweek.com/id/177678
The Next Turn Down. European Economics Editor Stefan Theil writes that
the meltdown in the rich countries' financial sector has hit emerging
economies hard, but no one has the money to rescue them all, and the likely
outcome is a steeper plunge. "Drowned in the emerging-market euphoria of
recent years was the fact that, except for China and a handful of other
surplus countries like the oil exporters, developing countries are still very
much dependent on inflows of Western capital. This time, however, overextended
Western banks are unable to supply it, as they struggle with their own painful
deleveraging."
http://www.newsweek.com/id/177680
Dirty Coal Is Winning. The financial crisis raises the costs and dims the
prospects of clean coal, write David G. Victor, senior fellow at the Council
on Foreign Relations and a professor of law at Stanford Law School, and Varun
Rai, research fellow and leader of the Stanford program's research on carbon
storage. "After years of deadlock, 2009 was shaping up to be the year the
world got its environmental act together. Now it's looking like the global
environment may be one of the biggest losers in the current financial crisis."
http://www.newsweek.com/id/177684
WORLD VIEW: Sam Huntington, 1927-2008. Newsweek International Editor
Fareed Zakaria pays tribute to Samuel P. Huntington, a political scientist who
died on Christmas Eve. Huntington's central insight was that so many of the
world's problems are caused or made worse by governments that are unable to
exercise real authority over their lands or people. "Huntington noticed a
troubling trend. Sometimes, progress American style -- more political
participation or faster economic growth -- actually created more problems than
it solved. If a country had more people who were economically, politically and
socially active and yet lacked effective political institutions, such as
political parties, civic organizations or credible courts, the result was
greater instability."
http://www.newsweek.com/id/177714
THE LAST WORD: Shamun Indhabur. Chief Foreign Correspondent Rod Nordland
interviews Indhabur, who Somali officials say is the leader of the pirates who
captured the Ukranian cargo ship, the MV Faina. "I justify [piracy] as a
dirty business encouraged by the foreign forces that were escorting illegal
fishing boats and toxic-waste dumpers. If we are forced to avoid fishing, then
those [commercial] ships are our fish," Indhabur says.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/175980
SOURCE Newsweek
Brenda Velez, +1-212-445-4078, Brenda.Velez@Newsweek.com, Katherine Barna,
+1-212-445-4859, Katherine.Barna@Newsweek.com, or Grace Huh, +1-212-445-5831,
Grace.Huh@Newsweek.com, all of Newsweek
