Even by Israeli standards, Uri Tzafon (Awaken North) is a far-right fringe group. Amid mounting tension with Lebanese Shiite political group and militia, Hezbollah, along the Lebanon-Israel border, Uri Tzafon is calling for Israeli settlement of southern Lebanon.

The group has yet to gain traction. Uri Tzafon’s membership is in the low teens. Less than 300 people attended the group’s recent online conference. Few, if any, of the 80,000 Israelis who were evacuated in October from their homes in northern Israel because of daily exchanges of fire between Hezbollah and the Israeli military have expressed support for Uri Tzafon. On the Lebanese side of the border, 90,000 people were forced to leave their homes.

Ultra-nationalists, including Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, proponents of annexation of Palestinian lands and an all-out war with Lebanon, have steered clear of a group that, even for their taste, is an outlier. Uri Tzafon’s fringe status is telling in a country that is accelerating annexation of the West Bank, and many call for reoccupation of Gaza. Even so, Uri Tzafon echoes a principle that is becoming more prominent among Israelis, including soldiers serving in Gaza. The principle is whoever attacks Israel risks losing their land.

The group finds Biblical justification for its claims in Deuteronomy 3:25. Describing Moses’ appeal to God to allow him to enter the Promised Land, the chapter quotes the prophet as saying, “Let me go over and see the good land beyond the Jordan—that fine hill country and Lebanon.”

Last week, Uri Tzafon sent drones and balloons into southern Lebanon carrying eviction notices to the region’s residents. “The announcements make clear to the residents that they are in the Land of Israel, which belongs to the Jewish people, and that they are required to evacuate immediately,” the group said in a statement. Uri Tzafon’s fortunes could change if nine months of cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel in the wake of Hamas’ October 7 attack and Israel’s response escalate into a full-fledged war.

Israel has increasingly insisted that the presence of Hezbollah on its border is no longer tenable. Based on United Nations Security Council resolution 1701 adopted in 2006 to end the then war, Israel is demanding that Hezbollah redeploy to north of the Litani River, 30 kilometers from the border. “We are approaching the point where a decision will have to be made, and the (Israeli military) is prepared and very ready for this decision,” Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi said while touring an army base in northern Israel.

In his first sit-down interview on Israeli television since the Gaza war erupted, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the military’s focus could shift to Lebanon because the “intense phase of the war with Hamas is about to end.”

The prime minister said the shift would be, “First of all, for protection purposes, and secondly, to bring our residents home as well. If we can do it politically, that would be great. If not, we will do it in another way, but we will bring everyone back home – all the residents of the north and the south.” Netanyahu was referring to Israeli evacuees from the Lebanese border as well as areas adjacent to Gaza.

In December, Netanyahu threatened to do to Lebanon what Israel has done to Gaza. “If Hezbollah chooses to start an all-out war, then it will, by its own hand, turn Beirut and southern Lebanon… into Gaza,” Netanyahu said.

Hezbollah has rejected any discussion of border arrangements until a ceasefire in Gaza is implemented. Last week, Israel said it had finalised plans for a Lebanon offensive after Hezbollah drones successfully evaded Israeli air defences and penetrated the country’s airspace to film military installations and critical infrastructure.

In response, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah warned that his group would fight with “no rules and no red lines.”

Nasrallah added, “The enemy knows well that we have prepared ourselves for the worst… and that no place across the Zionist entity will be spared by our missiles and drones.”

Raising the stakes, Lebanese whistleblowers reportedly revealed that weapons, including a highly explosive and toxic white powder known as RDX, arriving on flights from Iran were stored at Beirut airport. The whistleblowers alleged that there was an increased presence of Hezbollah commanders at the airport. Lebanon’s Hezbollah-backed caretaker Public Works and Transport Minister Alli Hamieh was quick to deny the allegation.

With Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant visiting Washington for talks with Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin and other senior officials, the Biden administration appears to have another chance to avoid an escalation that could provoke a regional Middle East war. “The meetings with the senior (US) government officials are critical for the future of the war” in Gaza and Lebanon, Gallant said as he departed for Washington.

Last week, President Joe Biden’s Middle East envoy, Adam Hochstein, failed to reduce tensions in talks in Jerusalem and Beirut. Gallant’s visit comes amid a public spat between Biden and Netanyahu after the Israeli prime minister accused the president’s administration of holding up arms shipments to Israel.

US officials said they don’t know what Netanyahu is talking about. If Netanyahu is correct, resuming the shipments could be the carrot US officials dangle to achieve Israeli restraint in Lebanon. It would allow Netanyahu, pressured by his far-right coalition partners and mass protests calling for his resignation, to project himself as having stood up to the United States.

Uri Tzafon’s antecedents suggest that one ignores the group at one’s peril. Its call for settlement of southern Lebanon echoes a call by Gush Emunim or Bloc of the Faithful, the original ultra-nationalist West Bank settlers’ movement that called for the return to the “homeland of the tribe of Asher” during the 1982 Lebanon war. Asher is one of Judaism’s ten lost tribes.

Like Uri Tzafon, Gush Emunim was a fringe group created in 1974. Fifty years later, West Bank settlers are a powerful political force in Israel. Ben Gvir and Smotrich are among the 750,000 Israelis that live in West Bank settlements today.

Daniella Weiss, a one-time Gush Emunim leader, and Yehudit Katzover, a settlement activist in the 1970s and 1980s, were among the speakers at the Uri Tzafon conference. “There are many obstacles, but we will bang our heads against the wall, and the wall will break. In Lebanon as well,” said Weiss, who is on the frontline of the campaign to resettle Gaza.

Weiss and Katzover “are one of the success stories of Israel’s last half-century – and if they’re joining the movement to settle South Lebanon, who are we to call them delusional?…  They’ve already proved that in Israel, today’s delusions are tomorrow’s policy and the next day its reality,” said Israeli journalist Anschel Pfeffer.

This post first appeared on The Turbulent World with James M. Dorsey

The article Ultra rightist group says whoever attacks Israel must lose their land appeared first on Arabian Post.

Israeli military triumphs and exploits often produce battlefield victories that fail to garner political gains. The Gaza war has changed that paradigm. It has produced neither a military nor a political victory. Adding fuel to the fire, Israel has abandoned the notion that soft power is as important as hard power in the vein of scholar Joseph Nye, who recently cautioned that “ignoring or neglecting soft power is a strategic and analytic mistake.”

Nye noted that “in the short run, swords are mightier than words, but in the long run, words guide swords.” It’s advice Israel has failed to heed. As a result, Israel is losing two wars in Gaza, the war itself and the battle for hearts and minds. All Hamas needs to do to declare victory is to survive.

Israel has enshrined on an altar that notion, valid for most non-state actors battling conventional military forces, by insisting it will destroy Hamas militarily and politically. Israel’s problem is that Hamas is likely to survive even if it were to kill Hamas’ Gaza leader, Yahya Sinwar. Israel’s most wanted man, Mr. Sinwar, has eluded Israeli forces since the war erupted last October. Israel has also failed to achieve its other war goals – the rescue of Hamas-held hostages and ensuring Gaza does not remain a launching pad for Palestinian resistance.

This weekend, Palestinians killed ten Israeli soldiers, the highest toll in one day since January, while Israel Defence Forces (IDF) spokesman Daniel Hagari conceded that Israeli would not be able to militarily rescue all the remaining 116 hostages, 41 of which are believed to have been killed in captivity during the war.

In the battle for hearts and minds, Israel wasted no time in destroying initial empathy in response to the brutality of Hamas’ October 7 attack that killed more than 1,100 primarily civilian Israelis and foreigners and led to the kidnapping of 250 others. The vast majority of more than 100 hostages who have regained their freedom since October 7 were released in November in a prisoner exchange with Hamas. Israel’s military has rescued only seven. Israel’s self-inflicted defeat in the war for hearts and minds may be more consequential than its inability to crush Hamas on the battlefield despite severe body blows inflicted on the group.

Within a matter of months, Israel went from being able to claim a moral high ground to a country indicted in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on charges of genocide and whose leaders risk the International Criminal Court issuing arrest warrants for alleged war crimes.

Winning the war for hearts and minds would have been an uphill battle no matter what, given the tens of thousands of Palestinians killed and wounded by Israeli forces and the physical devastation of Gaza’s infrastructure, not to mention stepped-up Israeli repression on the West Bank and tacit endorsement of vigilante settler attacks on Palestinians and aid convoys en route to Gaza.

Israel seems bent on ensuring it ends the war as a pariah in much of the world by hindering the unfettered flow of humanitarian relief needed to address the consequences of its curtailing of food, fuel, water, and electricity and destruction of Gaza’s health sector. Adding fuel to the fire, Israel has shown no empathy for the plight of innocent Palestinians and no acknowledgment that Palestinians have rights, too. Instead, Israeli leaders have repeatedly made genocidal statements and obstructed efforts to achieve a ceasefire.

To be sure, Hamas has displayed similar insensitivity but that has no impact on Israel’s global standing. Israeli denunciation of mass anti-war protests across the globe as anti-Semitic and dismissal of public opinion polls that show Western public opinion turning against Israel has only deepened the hole Israel finds itself in. It’s a hole that Israel will find difficult to extricate itself from.

Worse, Israel’s Gaza war conduct and antithetical public relations posture, like its West Bank settlement and other policies, have hardened positions on both sides of the divide, making a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict ever more elusive. It risks giving currency to Hamas’ notion that a long-term ceasefire in Gaza, and more broadly between Palestinians and Israelis, may be the only thing that is achievable.

Israel’s self-dug grave will likely reinforce Hamas’ contention that a two-state resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should entail a long-term ‘hudna’ or armistice rather than Palestinian recognition of the Jewish state.

Israel asserts that Hamas’ notion of a long-term ‘hudna’ or armistice rather than Palestinian recognition of the Jewish state in the context of two states demonstrates the group’s determination to destroy Israel and maintain the right to armed resistance.

Unlike the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s (PLO) recognition of Israel in the 1980s as the prelude to the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, Hamas’ 2017 amended Charter envisions two states living side-by-side without recognising one another and, presumably, without maintaining full diplomatic relations.

Rejecting any Israeli rights and all United Nations resolutions and other international agreements that recognize equal national rights for Israelis and Palestinians, the Charter stipulates that “there shall be no recognition of the legitimacy of the Zionist entity… Without relinquishing any Palestinian rights, Hamas considers the establishment of a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital, along the lines of the 4th of June 1967…to be a formula of national consensus…  Resistance and jihad for the liberation of Palestine will remain a legitimate right, a duty, and an honour for all the sons and daughters of our people and our Ummah,” the global Muslim community of the faithful.

Some Hamas officials have since sought to walk back their insistence on the right to wage armed struggle. Ceasefire negotiator Khalil al-Hayya suggested in April that Hamas would agree to a truce of five years or more, lay down its weapons, and convert into a political party if an independent Palestinian state is established along pre-1967 borders.

With support among Palestinians for a two-state resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict dropping dramatically, according to a recent public opinion survey, Hamas’ position is likely to gain increased currency among Palestinians, even if Israel rejects it out of hand.

This month’s survey by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research showed that support in Gaza for two states had almost halved from 62 per cent in March to 32 per cent in June while remaining constant at one-third of the West Bank population.

Leaving aside Israel’s goal of destroying Hamas and the Netanyahu government’s rejection of a two-state solution, Israel for decades insisted that any Palestinian counterpart would have to recognize the Jewish state de jure and abandon armed struggle. It also demanded the Palestinians agree to prioritisation of Israeli security concerns even if Palestinians have equally legitimate worries.

To be sure, two states in historic Palestine irrespective of whether they have de jure or de facto relations, would likely resemble India and Pakistan, nations carved out of one another in 1947, that remain at loggerheads 77 years later. Even so, many in the West echo Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s belief that “Israel has fallen into a trap, a Hamas trap that had the aim of isolating it.”  Meloni added at this weekend’s Group of Seven summit that “it seems to be working.”

The article Israeli setbacks empower Hamas to take harder positions appeared first on Arabian Post.

By James M Dorsey

The coming week or two could determine Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s political fate and reshape the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s Gaza war. That is, if Netanyahu fails to comply with war cabinet member Benny Gantz’s demand that the prime minister produce a plan for the post-war administration of GaIf Gantz resigns, he will likely be joined by fellow war cabinet member and former Israel Defence Forces (IDF) chief of staff Gabi Eisenkot.

Gantz has good reason to stand by his ultimatum. A recent Israeli opinion poll suggests that while he would still win an election, continued presence in the government is beginning to cost him. The poll showed Gantz at 38 per cent, down from his 46 per cent high in January, while Netanyahu’s numbers increased to 30 per cent, up from 24 per cent six months ago. While Netanyahu would still lose in an election, the poll suggests Gantz can ill-afford to risk his popularity further.

One of four scenarios is likely to unfold depending on what Gantz decides and was probably part of US President Joe Biden’s decision to officially announce his Qatar and Egypt-backed ceasefire plan in a bid to pressure both Hamas and Israel:

Netanyahu could stall until his address to the US Congress on July 24. He could dump his most militant ultra-nationalist and ultra-conservative coalition partners, represented by National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who oppose a ceasefire deal that would lead to the release of Hamas-held hostages. Instead, Netanyahu could form a government cooperating with Gantz, opposition leader Yair Lapid, and two religious coalition partners, Shas and United Torah Judaism, who favour a ceasefire and hostage deal.

Another possibility is for Netanyahu to roll the dice and call for snap elections if Gantz and Eisenkot resign. Lastly, Gantz and Eisenkot could resign, leaving Netanyahu even more beholden to. Ben Gvir and Smotrich. Ben Gvir and Smotrich sought to limit Netanyahu’s space in ceasefire negotiations with tens of thousands of their supporters marching on Jerusalem Flag Day through Jerusalem’s Muslim Quarter to celebrate Israel’s conquest of East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war.

Participating in the march, Ben Gvir said it sent Hamas a message that “Jerusalem is ours.” Referring to one of the gates to the old city, of which the Muslim Quarter is part, and the Temple Mount that hosts the Al Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s third holiest site, Ben Gvir asserted that the “Damascus Gate is ours. The Temple Mount is ours, and, God willing, complete victory is ours.”

Militant Ben Gvir followers attacked Palestinian residents and journalists, chanting “Death to the Arabs,” “May your village burn,” and “Shuafat is up in flames,” a reference to an East Jerusalem Palestinian neighbourhood. A Gantz-Eisenkot walk-out that would make Netanyahu even more dependent on Ben Gvir and Smotrich would increase pressure on Gallant, the defence minister, to follow suit and complicate Biden’s support for Israel.

“I know there are those in Israel who will not agree with this plan and will call for the war to continue indefinitely… Some are even in the government coalition. And they’ve made it clear: They want to occupy Gaza, they want to keep fighting for years, and the hostages are not a priority to them…. I’ve urged the leadership in Israel to stand behind this deal, despite whatever pressure comes,” Biden said as he put forward his proposed ceasefire deal that appears to be based on a draft endorsed by Netanyahu. In effect, Biden was cautioning Netanyahu not to allow for a situation in which he increases rather than reduces his dependency on Ben Gvir and Smotrich.

At the same time, Israeli analysts suggest that in Netanyahu’s mind, potential International Criminal Court (ICC) warrants for the arrest on war crime charges of the prime minister and Gallant is turning the continuation of the Gaza war into a liability rather than an asset that would ensure he remains in office.

The United States and 16 other countries whose citizens were taken hostage by Hamas on October 7 increased pressure on Netanyahu with the release of a joint statement calling on Israel and Hamas to conclude a ceasefire deal. Meanwhile, the United Nations Security Council, with Netanyahu potentially at a crossroads, appears to have delayed discussing a resolution that would endorse Biden’s ceasefire plan.

The United States initially circulated a draft resolution in support of the plan that was likely to be vetoed because it put the onus of acceptance on Hamas. That would be more difficult to do with an Israeli government void of most “adults in the room.”With the United States less vulnerable because of its stubborn support of Israel than many assume, Netanyahu may believe that he can use his Congressional speech to get away with whatever fallout a departure of Gantz and Eisenkot would have.

Netanyahu may be right that the United States feels less pressured to tighten the screws on Israel with deeds rather than words. To be sure, the US has lost moral standing because of perceived double standards in its approach towards the Ukraine and Gaza wars. US diplomats preaching human rights and the rule of law would likely be laughed out the door.

Nevertheless, Gulf states and various Asian nations still see the United States as the only security game in town. Moreover, support for Israel has barely cost the United States economically, except for food franchises like Starbucks which suffer from boycotts in several Middle Eastern countries.

The Biden administration, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, and senior Israeli military commanders share Gantz’s frustration. Even so, countries like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates prefer cooperating with the US over China on technology, including artificial intelligence. This has not stopped Gulf states from investing in Chinese technology.

The UAE’s G42 artificial intelligence holding company concluded a partnership with Microsoft in April after agreeing with the US Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security that it would pare back its presence in China or face potentially punitive sanctions.

Netanyahu’s problem is that Biden’s frustration with the Israeli prime minister and his ultra-nationalist and ultra-conservative partners has little to do with the cost of US support for Israel and potentially more with an emerging historic shift in what was once a “special relationship” between the United States and Israel. (IPA Service)

By arrangement with the Arabian Post

The post Next Week Could Mark A Make Or Break For Netanyahu’s Political Future first appeared on Latest India news, analysis and reports on IPA Newspack.

The article Next Week Could Mark A Make Or Break For Netanyahu’s Political Future appeared first on Arabian Post.

The coming week or two could determine Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s political fate and reshape the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s Gaza war. That is, if Netanyahu fails to comply with war cabinet member Benny Gantz’s demand that the prime minister produce a plan for the post-war administration of Ga If Gantz resigns, he will likely be joined by fellow war cabinet member and former Israel Defence Forces (IDF) chief of staff Gabi Eisenkot.

Gantz has good reason to stand by his ultimatum. A recent Israeli opinion poll suggests that while he would still win an election, continued presence in the government is beginning to cost him. The poll showed Gantz at 38 per cent, down from his 46 per cent high in January, while Netanyahu’s numbers increased to 30 per cent, up from 24 per cent six months ago. While Mr. Netanyahu would still lose in an election, the poll suggests Gantz can ill-afford to risk his popularity further.

One of four scenarios is likely to unfold depending on what Gantz decides and was probably part of US President Joe Biden’s decision to officially announce his Qatar and Egypt-backed ceasefire plan in a bid to pressure both Hamas and Israel:

Netanyahu could stall until his address to the US Congress on July 24. He could dump his most militant ultra-nationalist and ultra-conservative coalition partners, represented by National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who oppose a ceasefire deal that would lead to the release of Hamas-held hostages. Instead, Netanyahu could form a government cooperating with Gantz, opposition leader Yair Lapid, and two religious coalition partners, Shas and United Torah Judaism, who favour a ceasefire and hostage deal.

Another possibility is for Netanyahu to roll the dice and call for snap elections if Gantz and Eisenkot resign. Lastly, Gantz and Eisenkot could resign, leaving Netanyahu even more beholden to. Ben Gvir and Smotrich. Ben Gvir and Smotrich sought to limit Netanyahu’s space in ceasefire negotiations with tens of thousands of their supporters marching on Jerusalem Flag Day through Jerusalem’s Muslim Quarter to celebrate Israel’s conquest of East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war.

Participating in the march, Ben Gvir said it sent Hamas a message that “Jerusalem is ours.” Referring to one of the gates to the old city, of which the Muslim Quarter is part, and the Temple Mount that hosts the Al Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s third holiest site, Ben Gvir asserted that the “Damascus Gate is ours. The Temple Mount is ours, and, God willing, complete victory is ours.”

Militant Ben Gvir followers attacked Palestinian residents and journalists, chanting “Death to the Arabs,” “May your village burn,” and “Shuafat is up in flames,” a reference to an East Jerusalem Palestinian neighbourhood. A Gantz-Eisenkot walk-out that would make Netanyahu even more dependent on Ben Gvir and Smotrich would increase pressure on Gallant, the defence minister, to follow suit and complicate Biden’s support for Israel.

“I know there are those in Israel who will not agree with this plan and will call for the war to continue indefinitely… Some are even in the government coalition. And they’ve made it clear: They want to occupy Gaza, they want to keep fighting for years, and the hostages are not a priority to them…. I’ve urged the leadership in Israel to stand behind this deal, despite whatever pressure comes,” Biden said as he put forward his proposed ceasefire deal that appears to be based on a draft endorsed by Netanyahu. In effect, Biden was cautioning Netanyahu not to allow for a situation in which he increases rather than reduces his dependency on Ben Gvir and Smotrich.

At the same time, Israeli analysts suggest that in Netanyahu’s mind, potential International Criminal Court (ICC) warrants for the arrest on war crime charges of the prime minister and Gallant is turning the continuation of the Gaza war into a liability rather than an asset that would ensure he remains in office.

The United States and 16 other countries whose citizens were taken hostage by Hamas on October 7 increased pressure on Netanyahu with the release of a joint statement calling on Israel and Hamas to conclude a ceasefire deal. Meanwhile, the United Nations Security Council, with Netanyahu potentially at a crossroads, appears to have delayed discussing a resolution that would endorse Biden’s ceasefire plan.

The United States initially circulated a draft resolution in support of the plan that was likely to be vetoed because it put the onus of acceptance on Hamas. That would be more difficult to do with an Israeli government void of most “adults in the room.” With the United States less vulnerable because of its stubborn support of Israel than many assume, Netanyahu may believe that he can use his Congressional speech to get away with whatever fallout a departure of Gantz and Eisenkot would have.

Netanyahu may be right that the United States feels less pressured to tighten the screws on Israel with deeds rather than words. To be sure, the US has lost moral standing because of perceived double standards in its approach towards the Ukraine and Gaza wars. US diplomats preaching human rights and the rule of law would likely be laughed out the door.

Nevertheless, Gulf states and various Asian nations still see the United States as the only security game in town. Moreover, support for Israel has barely cost the United States economically, except for food franchises like Starbucks which suffer from boycotts in several Middle Eastern countries.

The Biden administration, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, and senior Israeli military commanders share Gantz’s frustration. Even so, countries like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates prefer cooperating with the US over China on technology, including artificial intelligence. This has not stopped Gulf states from investing in Chinese technology.

The UAE’s G42 artificial intelligence holding company concluded a partnership with Microsoft in April after agreeing with the US Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security that it would pare back its presence in China or face potentially punitive sanctions.

Netanyahu’s problem is that Biden’s frustration with the Israeli prime minister and his ultra-nationalist and ultra-conservative partners has little to do with the cost of US support for Israel and potentially more with an emerging historic shift in what was once a “special relationship” between the United States and Israel.

The article Next week could be make or break for Netanyahu appeared first on Arabian Post.

Jordan’s King Abdullah is caught between a rock and a hard place.  Hamas and its regional supporters, as well as Israeli politicians and vigilantes, are pressuring King Abdullah from both ends of the political spectrum. Iranian-backed Syrian and Iraqi militants seek to draw the kingdom, in which Palestinians account for at least 50 per cent of the population, into the Gaza war.

Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Iran want to turn Jordan into a regional flashpoint and funnel for weapons for Palestinian militants on the West Bank. “The Iranians have instructions to recruit Jordanians and penetrate the Jordan arena through agents. Their recruitment efforts span all segments of society,” said Saud Al Sharafat, a former senior Jordanian intelligence official.

In support of Hamas, Iranian-backed Iraqi groups in January attacked a US military base, killing three American soldiers and wounding at least 34 others. Iran was quick to rein in the militias after the United States retaliated with a series of airstrikes. At the other end of the political spectrum, vigilante Israeli settlers have attacked Jordanian humanitarian truck convoys as they traversed the West Bank en route to Gaza.

At the same time, Israeli politicians, with far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir in the lead, complicate King Abdullah’s life with provocative visits to the Jordanian-administered Temple Mount or Haram ash-Sharif, Islam’s third holiest site. Jordan is Haram ash-Sharif’s custodian.

King Abdullah has put himself in the firing line by intercepting Iranian drones traversing Jordanian airspace in the Islamic Republic’s massive April 19 drone and missile attack on Israel and cracking down in March and April on pro-Palestinian demonstrations. He defended the downing of Iranian drones violating Jordanian airspace as an act of self-defence, insisting “Jordan will not be a battlefield for any party.” Even so, King Abdullah, dependent on US military and economic support, may not have had a choice but to take down the drones.

Critics posted concocted images on social media of the king wrapped in an Israeli flag or donning an Israeli military uniform with comments such as “traitor” and “Western puppet.”  The crackdown and assistance in Israel’s defence have drowned out the fact that Jordan is the only Arab country to have withdrawn its ambassador to Israel and consistently sends aid to Gaza. Jordan is one of five Arab countries that maintain diplomatic relations with Israel. Meanwhile, Jordanian sources assert the Muslim Brotherhood organised the protests.

With an unemployment rate of approximately 22 per cent and nearly half of young people unable to find a job, officials feared that the pro-Palestinian demonstrations could morph into social and economic protests. Long a close US ally, King Abdullah’s predicament highlights the Gaza war’s potential to further destabilise the Middle East. Jordan’s geography doesn’t help with the West Bank on its Western border, Syria in the north, and Iraq in the east.

The pressure on King Abdullah comes as politics could spark paradigm shifts in several key Middle Eastern states, including Israel and Iraq. King Abdullah likely sees benefit in Binyamin Netanyahu’s space to manoeuvre narrowing as a result of mounting Israeli public pressure to free Hamas-held hostages by ending the Gaza war and international courts acting to force Israel to halt its offensive in Gaza and hold the prime minister and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant accountable for its war conduct. Hamas’s recent rocket attack on Tel Aviv will probably offer Netanyahu a brief relief, if at all.

King Abdullah may also see mileage in popular Iraqi Shia cleric Moqtada Al Sadr’s decision to re-enter politics and compete in next year’s elections in a move that would challenge the pro-Iranian Coordination Framework, the backbone of Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani’s government. For now, King Abdullah’s crackdown on mass pro-Palestinian protests has reduced domestic pressures, even if widespread anger continues to bubble at the surface.

Even so, Jordan sources said earlier this month that security services had foiled a suspected Iranian-led plot to smuggle weapons into the kingdom to help King Abdullah’s opponents carry out acts of sabotage. The sources said an Iranian-backed Syrian militia had sent the weapons to Jordanian Palestinian members of the Muslim Brotherhood with links to Hamas, a Brotherhood affiliate.

In March, Israel’s Shin Bet domestic security agency said it had foiled attempts by Iran to smuggle large amounts of advanced weapons into the West Bank. Shin Bet said the smuggling was organized by Unit 4000, the intelligence unit of the Special Operations Division of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, and the Special Operations Unit 18840 of the Guards’ Quds Force in Syria. The agency said Munir Makdah, a senior Lebanon-based official of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Al Fatah movement, was involved in the foiled smuggle.

In response to the most recent plot, Hamas insisted it had “no ties to any acts targeting Jordan.” A Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood official said its arrested members had acted independently. Even so, Hamas leaders have repeatedly called on Jordanians since the Gaza war erupted in October to step up to the plate.

Senior Doha-based Hamas official Khaled Mishaal, who survived an Israeli assassination attempt in Amman in 1997, told a women’s gathering in Jordan in a video address that “Jordan is a beloved country, and it is the closest to Palestine, so its men and women are expected to take more supportive roles than any other people towards the land of resistance and resilience.”

Iranian-backed Iraqi militants asserted in April that they stood ready to arm 12,000 fighters of the Islamic Resistance in Jordan that would open a new front against Israel. Abu Ali al-Askari, a Kataib Hezbollah security official, suggested the offer was inspired by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s assessment that all Jordanian militants needed was access to weapons.

There is no evidence of an Islamic fighting force in tightly controlled Jordan despite mounting public anger, a limited number of border incidents, and the efforts by Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Iranian-backed groups. Much of the threat of renewed protest and increasing militancy may be more bluster than real.

The article Political pressure from all sides puts Jordan King in hopeless situation appeared first on Arabian Post.

US President Joe Biden doesn’t fit the mould of a high-risk gambler. Yet, gambling is the crux of his velvet glove dealings with Israel. With one eye on Israeli politics and the other on presidential elections in the United States in six months, Biden is walking a tightrope. The stakes and the costs couldn’t be higher.

At its core, despite the administration’s escalating verbal criticism of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and the suspension of an arms shipment to Israel, Mr. Biden is sticking to his bearhug approach towards Israel with a twist rather than taking coercive steps that could force Mr. Netanyahu’s hand.

The administration’s refusal to endorse a full-scale Israeli ground offensive in the southern Gazan enclave of Rafah, criticism of Netanyahu’s war tactics that have failed to destroy Hamas and the prime minister’s insistence on not planning for a post-war administration of the Strip, and close coordination with Netanyahu’s rivals in his war cabinet and the opposition, aims to tighten the noose around the Israeli leader’s neck.

The strategy, initiated in early April with opposition leader Yair Lapid’s visit to Washington, may have begun to produce results. In the most frontal assault to date on Netanyahu’s policies from within the prime minister’s Cabinet, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant this week publicly challenged the prime minister to come forward with a plan for Gaza’s post-war administration and to disavow Israeli military rule of the war-ravaged Strip.

Echoing unidentified military officials quoted in Israeli media, Gallant warned that in the absence of Israeli planning for the day the guns fall silent in Gaza, “only two negative options remain: Hamas’ rule in Gaza or Israeli military rule.”

Military officials have insisted that their failure to destroy Hamas and the group’s ability to resurface in parts of Gaza evacuated by Israeli troops was due to Netanyahu’s refusal to devise a strategy for the day the war ends. Backed by the Biden administration and supported by his fellow war cabinet member, Benny Gantz, Gallant said he opposed Israeli rule. Gallant demanded that Netanyahu publicly forswear the Israeli administration of the Strip.

A senior US official was quick to say that the Biden administration “share(s) the Minister of Defence Gallant’s concern that Israel has not developed any plans for holding and governing territory the IDF (Israel Defence Forces) clears, thereby allowing Hamas to regenerate in those areas. This is a concern because our objective is to see Hamas defeated.”

Israeli military officials have downplayed the impact of Biden’s suspension of a shipment to Israel of high payload 2,000 and 500-pound bombs and threat to halt the supply of other offensive weapons. The Israel Defence Forces “has weapons for the missions it is planning. And also for the missions in Rafah, we have the weapons we require,” said military spokesman Daniel Hagari.

Even so, Biden’s submission to Congress of a US$1 billion weapons package for Israel aimed to alleviate concerns in the Israeli military and encourage senior commanders to stand up to Netanyahu and appease the president’s pro-Israeli critics that include donors and members of his Democratic Party as well as potentially undecided pro-Israel voters.

The bulk of the weapons, including tank ammunition, tactical vehicles, and mortar rounds, have yet to be produced and will not be delivered for months at the earliest. At the core of the dispute over post-war planning is a cornerstone of any future resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: Palestinian self-rule and independence, a notion that Netanyahu rejects.

In separate statements in recent days, Netanyahu insisted that the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel “would be a reward for terrorists” and that he would “not replace Hamastan with Fatahstan,” a reference to Al Fatah, the backbone of President Mahmoud Abbas’ internationally recognised, West Bank-based Palestine Authority.

Netanyahu has insisted that Israel maintain security control of Gaza and the West Bank indefinitely and argued that there’s no point in drafting a post-war plan before Hamas is completely defeated.

“Indecision is, in essence, a decision. This leads to a dangerous course, which promotes the idea of Israeli military and civilian governance in Gaza,” Gallant said. An aide to Gallant warned that “this current trajectory serves the interest of the most radical elements in the Israeli government — (National Security Minister) Itamar Ben Gvir and (Finance Minister) Betzalel Smotrich — who fantasise about full Israeli control over Gaza and rebuilding of settlements.”

To make the point, Ben Gvir this week told thousands of Israeli settlers: ”We in the Cabinet demand war now. Demand to enter Rafah. Demand targeted assassinations… Without liberating Gaza there will be no solution. The solution is to return home…to the Land of Israel…to liberate, to colonise and also to bequeath. (Gaza) has always been ours and will stay ours.”

Contrary to Netanyahu and Ben Gvir, Galant and Gantz, as well as the Biden administration and the overwhelming majority of the international community, favour the Palestine Authority taking control of Gaza. Despite the Authority’s loss of credibility under Abbas in the eyes of Palestinians, control of Gaza would recreate the Strip and the West Bank as one entity under Palestinian administration that could evolve into an independent Palestinian state.

It would also potentially help pave the way for Arab participation in a possible international peacekeeping force in Gaza and negotiations to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Biden administration hopes that it would open the door to a Middle East mega-deal involving Saudi recognition of Israel and tighter US-Saudi military and nuclear cooperation.

In gambling on his ability to tighten the noose around Mr. Netanyahu’s neck, Mr. Biden is not only risking his chances of winning a second term in office. Even though Israel has reduced its Gaza kill rate eight months into the Gaza war, tens of Palestinians daily still pay the ultimate price for Israel’s refusal to end the war and Mr. Biden’s failure to put his foot down firmly.

In addition, even if Biden succeeds in cornering Netanyahu, the prime minister’s potential successors, whether that is Gallant, Gantz, or Lapid, envision a future emasculated Palestinian entity. That is a far cry from Palestinian aspirations for a state that is fully independent and exercises full sovereignty over its territory. To be sure, undermining Netanyahu is a worthwhile endeavour. Even so, Biden could discover that his gamble may produce results that were not worth the risks.

The article Biden plays high-risk poker with Netanyahu appeared first on Arabian Post.

Diaspora Jews, Palestinian Israelis, and Turkish Kurds have more in common than meets the eye. The similarities in how the three minority communities define themselves offer insights into what will make either a one- or two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict viable. To be sure, it’s hard to see, amid the Gaza carnage and Israel’s blinded and traumatised view of future relations with the Palestinians, how the two communities could live with each other or side by side.

Yet, neither has a choice. The alternative is continued violence, repression, and destruction that will only escalate. What is clear from a comparison of Diaspora Jewish, Israeli Palestinian, and Turkish Kurdish attitudes is that respect for national, religious, and communal identity coupled with equal rights and economic opportunity are prerequisites for peaceful coexistence.

The validity of that maxim is evidenced by the fact that a majority of Israeli Palestinians and Turkish Kurds would remain resident in either Israel or Turkey, even if a Palestinian or Kurdish state were to be established in Israeli-occupied territory or carved out of Iraq, despite discrimination and the limiting or repression of expressions of their national identity. Similarly, a majority of Diaspora Jews, despite rising anti-Semitism and irrespective of whether they support or oppose Israeli policies and the Gaza war, want a Jewish state to exist but have no intention of uprooting their lives and moving to Israel.

Acknowledging the parameters of Diaspora support for Israel, Israelis have long joked that “New York Jews will fight to the last Israeli.” Opinion polls exploring identity among Palestinian Israelis and Turkish Kurds tell a similar story. A yet-to-be-published survey by Rawest, a research and polling outfit based in Turkey’s majority Kurdish southeastern province of Diyarbakir, found that only 22 per cent of the country’s Kurds, who account for 20 per cent of the population, favoured breaking away from Turkey to create an independent Kurdish state.

Similarly, the survey, quoted in an email by Al-Monitor reporter Amberin Zaman, reported that only 9.7 per cent preferred exclusively Kurdish-language curricula in education as opposed to 44.1 per cent who advocated a bi-lingual Turkish and Kurdish language system. A majority identified themselves primarily as Muslims, while 67.4 per cent said their Kurdish identity was strong. Even so, only nine per cent defined themselves as Kurdish nationalists.

Counterintuitively, an Israel Democracy Institute poll in November concluded that the number of Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, who feel they are part of the State of Israel had risen dramatically since Hamas’ October 7 attack and Israel’s Gaza war. Palestinians account for about 20 per cent of Israel’s population. In the poll, 70 per cent of Palestinian Israelis said they had a sense of solidarity with Israel, a 20-year high, compared to 48 per cent in a survey conducted six months earlier.

A separate survey conducted by The Center for a Shared Society at Givat Haviva concluded that 55 per cent of Palestinian Israelis believed that a desire to live in peace or a feeling of shared destiny had prevented inter-communal violence from erupting since October as opposed to the violence during the 2021 Gaza war. A third survey conducted by Hebrew University researchers days after the October attack showed that 66 per cent of Palestinian Israelis supported Israel’s right to defend itself. Fifty per cent said Hamas’ attack that primarily targeted civilians was “contrary to the values of Islam.”

Even so, amid widespread anti-Palestinian sentiment in Israel fuelled by the October 7 attack and the war, Israeli Palestinian optimism about the future dropped to a five-year low, with only 27 per cent of those polled by the Israel Democracy Institute less or unconcerned about what lies ahead for them. Sixty-two per cent of Palestinian Israelis surveyed by Givat Haviva said the attack and the war had negatively impacted their sense of personal safety.

Just over 50 per cent expressed pessimism about the prospects for coexistence between Jewish and Palestinian Israelis. Even so, 49 per cent said the October 7 attack had positively influenced their attitude toward Jews. Seventy per cent feared that anti-Palestinian manifestations would increase in the wake of October 7. Asked by the Israel Democracy Institute if, given an alternative Western citizenship, they would leave Israel, 59 per cent of Israeli Palestinians surveyed said they would stay.

Commenting on various polls, Middle East researcher Rachel Friedman noted that Palestinian Israelis were among the civilians Hamas killed on October 7. Ms. Friedman’s conclusion says much about lessons to be learned from minority attitudes, whether Diaspora Jewish, Palestinian Israeli, or Turkish Kurdish, particularly for the future of Jewish-Palestinian relations.

“On October 7, 2023, Hamas viewed their victims’ religion and ethnicity as secondary to their nationality. Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs would be wise to do the same,” Ms. Friedman said.

The relevance of Ms. Friedman’s conclusion is highlighted by the acceleration of differences among Diaspora Jews, a community polarised by the Hamas attack and the Gaza war.

Like Palestinian Israelis, Jews feel less secure. Sixty-three per cent of American Jews said their place in American society had become less secure, a 22 per cent increase compared to a year earlier, according to a survey commissioned by the American Jewish Committee. Forty-six per cent said they took precautions or avoided posting content online, wearing clothing that would identify them as Jews, or going to certain places out of concern for their safety.

Even so, 62 per cent of American Jews polled on behalf of the Jewish Federations of North America said they “sometimes find it hard to support actions taken by Israel or its government” and 45 per cent expressed an unfavourable view of the Israeli government. Yet, 72 per cent noted that “in general, Israel makes me proud to be Jewish.”

Increasingly ambivalent Diaspora Jewish attitudes towards Israeli policy and perceptions of how that might impact their safety is reflected in diminished Diaspora Jewish immigration to Israel and millennial Jewish responses to attempts by Israel and its supporters to depict pro-Palestinian protests on university campuses as anti-Semitic.

Israel’s Immigration and Absorption Ministry reported in December that 2,662 people had immigrated since October 7, the vast majority from Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine. Only 218 came from the United States and 116 from France, many of whom had initiated the immigration process before October 7.

Overall, the figure was a far cry from the 16,400 immigrants who arrived in the same period in 2022, the bulk of whom were people escaping the war in Ukraine. Asked in the American Jewish Committee survey whether the “actions of the state of Israel have made my life as an American Jew more difficult,” 58 per cent said the phrase did not describe their experience.

Questioned whether “the anti-Israel climate, on campus or elsewhere, has forced me to hide my Jewish identity,” 62.2 per cent said this too did not describe their experience, and 10.9 per cent said they didn’t think there is an anti-Israel climate. The poll elicited similar results when it asked respondents whether “the anti-Israel climate, on campuses or elsewhere, has damaged my relationships with friends.”

The article What Jews, Palestinian Israelis and Turkish Kurds have in common appeared first on Arabian Post.

This week’s Gazan short-lived celebration of a ceasefire that was not to be, highlights what is at stake in the seven-month-old war and Israel’s refusal to end the carnage. Thousands poured into Gazan streets within minutes of Hamas advising it had accepted a Qatar and Egyptian ceasefire proposal.

“We have shown the world that we survived this war as Palestinians. We stood our ground on our land. We survived 212 days of attacks and devastation by the world’s most advanced weapons. We did not leave. We survived on our own with no help from outside,” said Ahmad, a young Gazan, one of the thousands celebrating in the streets of Rafah Hamas’ acceptance of a ceasefire with Israel.

The celebrations were short-lived. They dissipated 90 minutes later as Israel made clear its rejection of the proposal.

“The Hamas proposal is far from meeting Israel’s core demands,” Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement.

Not to be painted as the party pooper, the statement added that Israel would “dispatch a ranking delegation to Egypt in an effort to maximize the possibility of reaching an agreement on terms acceptable to Israel.”

Netanyahu is going through the motions as he lays the groundwork for what could be a final major offensive in the southern Gazan enclave of Rafah against Hamas that could determine his chances of political survival. Rafah is Netanyahu’s desperate attempt at achieving war goals he has failed to realise in seven months of unrelenting military operations at an unspeakable cost to innocent Palestinians.

These goals include the destruction of Hamas, symbolised by the elimination of its military force; the killing or capture of its top leadership; the release of the remaining Hamas-held hostages kidnapped by the group during its October 7 attack on Israel; and ensuring that Gaza will be longer serve as a launching pad for Palestinian resistance.

Hamas continues to play whack-a-mole with Israel despite having suffered severe losses. The group’s Gaza-based leadership remains intact and in control, and roughly half of the 250 people initially kidnapped by Hamas were freed as a result of a one-week ceasefire in November, not because of Israeli military action.

Moreover, Israel believes that Hamas’ leadership, including Yahya Sinwar, Israel’s most wanted man, is hiding in tunnels under Rafah shielded by the remaining hostages.

Even so, . Netanyahu is living politically on borrowed time, irrespective of whether he succeeds in Gaza or not. Israeli opinion polls suggest that Netanyahu and his ultra-nationalist, ultra-conservative coalition partners would lose the next election.

Hundreds of angry protesters in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem denounced the government’s rejection of the ceasefire proposal. They called on Netanyahu to prioritise the release of Hamas-held hostages by accepting the deal.

Instead, Israeli forces on Tuesday took control of the Rafah side of the Gaza-Egyptian border and closed the border crossing crucial to the flow of desperately needed humanitarian supplies in the Strip as Israeli tanks pushed into the city of Rafah itself.

. Netanyahu’s rejection of the deal while going through the motions of negotiations and his impending Rafah offensive, at best, buys him time.

Even so, by accepting a ceasefire, Hamas threw a curveball at Netanyahu as well as the Biden administration.

The acceptance put the shoe on . Netanyahu’s foot and the administration on the spot. The Biden administration has repeatedly publicly opposed a massive military operation in Rafah, home to more than a million Palestinians displaced by the war.

The irony is that Hamas offered Netanyahu and the administration a way out by leaking details of the ceasefire and prisoner exchange proposal it had accepted that made clear that it was not a deal Israel would accept. At the same time, it allowed Hamas to project itself as engaging constructively in negotiations.

The leaks suggested, against all evidence from Jerusalem, that Israel would agree to a permanent rather than a temporary ceasefire, an end to the war, and a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. They also inferred that US President Joe Biden had accepted Hamas’ demand that the United States would guarantee implementation of the deal.

“The essential aim of the deal is a permanent ceasefire and full withdrawal” of Israeli forces from Gaza, senior Hamas negotiator Khali al Hayaa told Al Jazeera. “We did what we are supposed to do. The onus is on the mediators and the international community,” Al-Hayya added.

Hamas’ acceptance of a ceasefire proposal it knew Israel would reject raises the tantalising question of whether Netanyahu may not be the only one allegedly wanting to prolong the war for personal political gain. The same could be true for his nemesis, Sinwar, even if one can also wonder why he would agree to a deal that gives license to Israel’s effort to destroy Hamas by agreeing to a post-ceasefire continuation of the war.

Nevertheless, the short-lived Gazan celebrations and the fact that a ceasefire means to Gazans more than just an end to the death, destitution, and destruction in the Strip suggests that it could create a reckoning not only for Netanyahu but also for Sinwar.

Gazans want to extract a price for the suffering inflicted upon them. The devastation of their lives has not dampened Palestinian national aspirations, even if they are desperate for immediate relief. Even so, . Sinwar and Hamas are feeling the heat of growing criticism of the group for provoking the Israeli assault that has devastated Gaza and reduced its 2.3 million inhabitants to destitution.

In late March, Hamas felt compelled to issue a lengthy statement apologising to Gazans for their suffering, despite 52 per cent of Gazans favouring a return to post-war Hamas rule as opposed to the West Bank-based, internationally recognised Palestine Authority, an Arab peacekeeping force, the United Nations, or Israel. It’s a choice between what Palestinians perceive as bad alternatives. It also opts, against all odds, for the party most vigorous in defending Palestinian rights and aspirations.

Prominent Israeli columnist Anschel Pfeffer argued that “it is looking increasingly unlikely that Hamas’ chief in Gaza and the man who calls the shots on any deal, Yahya Sinwar, is prepared to agree to any compromise that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu can accept. Both men are determined to emerge with a perception of victory in their grasp – but there doesn’t appear to be any framework in which the two can have that.”

Even so, Pfeffer noted, “Israelis and Gazans aren’t stupid. Most of them have conceded that they have lost too much for there to be any notion of ‘victory’ in this war. But as long as their fates are controlled by two men who insist on being the victor at any cost, this war is going to continue.”

The article Netanyahu buys time by rejecting Gaza ceasefire appeared first on Arabian Post.

Israel’s latest Gaza ceasefire and prisoner exchange proposal puts the ball in Hamas’ court. The proposal, drafted in recent days by Israeli negotiators and Egyptian interlocutors, goes some way to address Hamas’ long-standing demands. The proposal makes concessions Israel has rejected in the past but raises as many questions as it opens doors to possible breakthroughs in the long-stalled negotiations mediated by Qatar and Egypt.

In response, Hamas said it was “studying” the proposal and was “open to any ideas” but insisted that a deal must end the seven-month-old Gaza war. The group said it is sending its negotiators to Cairo for further talks. Both Hamas and Israel want to be seen as being constructive in their efforts to revive the negotiations. For both parties, the background music to their latest positions tells part of the story, even if significant gaps remain between Hamas’ demands and what Israel is willing to accept.

Significantly, Hamas’ response was issued by political bureau member and ceasefire negotiator Khalil al-Hayya. Days earlier, Al-Hayya declared that Hamas would disarm, limit itself to being a political party, and accept a long-term ceasefire with Israel as part of a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that involved the establishment of an independent Palestinian state alongside the Jewish state.

At the same time, Hamas’s military wing published a video of two Israeli captives held in Gaza in the first sign of life of the two men, including dual Israeli-American national Keith Siegel. The video release came amid concern that an unclear but not insignificant number of the more than 100 remaining Hamas-held Israeli and foreign national hostages were killed in the Gaza fighting.

Hamas and other Palestinians kidnapped 250 people during the group’s October 7 attack on Israel. Hamas released more than 100 captives in November in exchange for 240 Palestinians incarcerated in Israel in a Qatar-engineered deal.

Israel believes many of the remaining hostages are in tunnels underneath the Gazan city of Rafah, shielding the group’s top leaders as Israel prepares to launch a ground offensive in the enclave that is home to more than a million Palestinians displaced by the war. Hamas and Israel agree on a ceasefire that involves the release of the hostages, according to Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz.

Israeli media reports suggest that war cabinet members Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, a former military chief of staff, could leave the government if a ceasefire deal is not concluded.

Adding to the pressure are reports that the International Criminal Court could soon issue indictments or arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, and Israel Defence Forces Chief of Staff Herzl Halevi.

A ceasefire deal would relieve US and international pressure on Israel not to launch a Rafah offensive that many fear could cost the lives of a large number of innocent Palestinians in a war that already has taken a devastating toll on Palestinians and prompted accusations of genocide.

Israel and Hamas, increasingly criticised by Gazans for fighting a war at their expense, were jockeying as Qatar, the United States, and Arab governments stepped up pressure on both to agree on a ceasefire. Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesperson Majed al-Ansari, in a first-ever Qatari interview with Israeli media and attempt to address Israelis directly, blamed both Israel and Hamas for the deadlock in the negotiations.

The talks have effectively stopped, and both sides are entrenched in their positions… But if there is a renewed sense of commitment on both sides, I’m sure we can reach a deal that would be able to bring more people home to their families,” . Al-Ansari told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

Egypt took the initiative to revive the negotiations after Qatar said it was reevaluating its mediating role because of Israeli and Hamas intransigence and the questioning of its role by Israel and US Congress members.

“We are reassessing the commitment of both sides, and one of the main reasons for this is that we’ve gotten all of these statements that contradict the show of commitment to the talks themselves,” . Al-Ansari said.

Speaking separately to Israel’s Channel 12, Al-Ansari added, “We need more pressure on both sides…to reach a deal.”

Al-Ansari spoke as Arab foreign ministers met in Riyadh to discuss Gaza in advance of a visit to the kingdom by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

The devil is in the details on whether the latest Israeli proposal will get the ceasefire negotiations back on track. The Israeli proposal appears to make concessions on Hamas’ demands for a permanent ceasefire; a full return of Gazans to their often destroyed homes in northern Gaza, the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Strip, and a start of the reconstruction of the war-ravaged territory.

In its latest proposal, Israel reiterated its willingness to let Palestinians return to their homes. Israel and Hamas differ on what the flow of returning Palestinians would entail, including how many would be allowed to return daily and whether Israeli forces would be able to impose security checks.

The Israeli proposal suggested that Israel would withdraw its forces from the Central Gazan corridor that separates the north from the south. It was unclear whether that would constitute a complete withdrawal from the Strip.

In early April, Israel said it was pulling its ground troops out of southern Gaza, leaving only two brigades in the Strip, one in the north and one in the Wadi Gaza corridor.

The proposal further involves Israel’s willingness to engage in discussion about Gaza’s “continuing peaceful restoration.” It was not clear whether Israel’s phrasing referred exclusively to physical reconstruction or also what post-war governance of Gaza would look like.

Rather than speaking of a permanent ceasefire, the Israeli proposal describes a longer-term end to the war as the “restoration of sustainable calm” to be negotiated after an initial six-week ceasefire during which Hamas would release the remaining 20-33 women, men over the age of 60, and people with serious medical conditions it holds captive in exchange for a yet to be negotiated number of Palestinians in Israeli prisons.

The joker in the Israeli proposal is that Hamas would have to trust Israel’s assertion that it is serious. While the Israeli proposal appears to demonstrate a degree of flexibility Israel has not displayed in the past, betting on seriousness requires a leap of faith for both Israel and Hamas, for which the last seven months provide little encouragement.

The article Israel puts Gaza ceasefire ball in Hamas court appeared first on Arabian Post.

An Israeli ground offensive in the southern Gazan enclave of Rafah is a question of when, not if. Not because Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is oblivious to US and international pressure but because it could prove to be make or break for Israel’s embattled leader.

Netanyahu has promised “total victory” in the Gaza war and to “finish the job” in Rafah.

The stakes for  Netanyahu could not be higher. The assault on Rafah, home to more than a million Palestinians displaced by the war, could determine whether and to what degree Israel’s military achieves  Netanyahu’s three war goals.

Israel suspects that Hamas’ top Gaza-based leaders, including Yahya Sinwar, Israel’s most wanted man, are hiding in tunnels under Gaza, shielded by the surviving Hamas-held Israeli and foreign national hostages.

Hamas and other Palestinians abducted 250 people during the group’s October 7 attack. Hamas released more than 100 of the captives in November in a Qatar-mediated exchange for 240 Palestinians incarcerated in Israel. An unknown number of the remaining hostages were since killed in the fighting.

Netanyahu has vowed to prosecute war until Israeli forces have destroyed Hamas, freed Hamas-held Israeli and foreign national hostages, and ensured that Gaza no longer is a launching pad for Palestinian resistance.

At first glance, things do not look good for the Israeli leader.

Despite its devastating human and physical cost, Israel’s effort to destroy Hamas has a whack-a-mole aspect.

Even though Israel asserts it has killed 13,000 of Hama’s estimated 40,000 fighters and wounded or captured thousands more, Hamas retains a presence in swaths of Gaza.

It has been able to re-establish itself, to varying degrees, in areas Israel says it has largely cleansed of Hamas militants and other armed Palestinian groups.

Similarly, seven months into the war, Israel has killed only one of Hamas’ most senior Gaza-based leaders, Marwan Issa, the deputy head of the group’s military wing.

Finally, despite  Netanyahu’s assertions that military force is needed to free hostages, the fact is that the vast majority of released captives were liberated as the result of negotiations and part of a ceasefire.

Two unidentified Israel ceasefire and prisoner exchange negotiators accused  Netanyahu earlier this month of undermining Qatari-mediated negotiations by refusing to entertain creative ideas, reversing war cabinet decisions, and imposing demands the prime minister knew Hamas would reject.

One of the negotiators said  Netanyahu’s office conveyed an attitude of “cold indifference” toward the hostages.

The other negotiator added, “I can’t say that without Netanyahu, there would have been a deal, but I can say that without Netanyahu, the chances of making a deal would be better.”

While  Netanyahu has insisted that he will launch an offensive irrespective of what the United States and the international community say, he appears to take fears of mass civilian casualties into account.

US and Israeli officials have suggested that instead of a massive ground offensive, Israel may attack in a more targeted form.

That could involve a neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood assault, allowing the Israelis to evacuate Palestinian civilians in phases, which would make moving people out of harm’s way more feasible.

Recent satellite images show rows of tents in two new encampments erected earlier this month, one to the west of Khan Younis and the other near Rafah.

Israeli media reported that Israel was buying 40,000 tents that could hold 10 to 12 people each to prepare for the evacuation of Palestinian civilians from Rafah.

The outcome of the Rafah offensive is likely to reverberate beyond Gaza.

It could impact the course of hostilities along the Israeli-Lebanese border between Israel and Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese Shiite Muslim militia, irrespective of whether Israel succeeds or fails.

The offensive could put Hezbollah between a rock and a hard place, given that neither Iran nor substantial segments of Lebanon’s multi-ethnic, multi-religious population want to be drawn into an all-out war with Israel.

“Our main goal was and remains to ensure that a different security situation prevails here and that the residents of Israel’s north can return to their homes in peace and safety. We are dealing with a number of alternatives…and the coming period will be decisive,” Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said while touring the Israeli-Lebanese border earlier this week.

Tens of thousands of Israelis have evacuated the border region since the Gaza war erupted after Hezbollah, in solidarity with Hamas, initiated hostilities calibrated to tie up Israeli forces in the north without provoking an all-out war.

An Israeli failure in Rafah to achieve  Netanyahu’s objectives could persuade the prime minister to take on Hezbollah alongside continuing its campaign in Gaza in a bid to force the group to withdraw to 30 kilometres from the Israeli border to north of the Litani River.

On the other hand, an Israeli capture or killing of  Sinwar and other top Gaza-based Hamas leaders, the defeat of four of the group’s six remaining brigades, which Israel claims are based in Rafah, and the freeing of Hamas-held hostages could put Hezbollah in a difficult spot.

Sticking to its promise to end the hostilities in Gaza once there is a ceasefire, probably on Israel’s terms, would amount to acquiescing in Hamas’ defeat.

Said hardline Israeli historian Benny Morris: “To now allow the badly mauled Hamas to emerge victorious will underline Zionism’s crucial failure. And critics in the Arab and Muslim world of making peace with Israel…may well be emboldened to reject such ties.”

The article Rafah: Make or break for Netanyahu? appeared first on Arabian Post.

Multiple overt and covert wars have pushed the Middle East to the edge of a cliff. Increased tension between Iran and Israel complicates efforts to pull the Middle East back from the abyss.

With the two archenemies walking a fine line between waging covert or overt war, escalation between Israel and Iran has the greatest potential to push the Middle East off the cliff.

That is not to say that multiple other conflicts — the Gaza war, hostilities along the Lebanese-Israeli border, Yemeni Houthi attacks on shipping in the Gulf, and Iraqi militia attacks against Israel –, could not spark an all-out regional conflagration or tip the balance in the Israeli-Iranian confrontation.

A powerful explosion at an Iranian-backed Iraqi militia base south of Baghdad early Saturday morning threatened to undermine a seemingly newfound level of deterrence in the Israeli-Iranian equation. The Popular Mobilisation Forces, a coalition of Iraqi Shiite militias, blamed Israel for the attack, even though the Islamic State is another potential culprit.

US and Israeli officials were quick to deny involvement in the incident, although Israel, unlike the US, did not release an official statement. The Iraqi military said “there was no drone or fighter jet in the air space of Babil before and during the explosion.”

While Israel has a history of selecting what incidents it comments on, the Israeli officials’ remarks on background suggested they, irrespective of whether Israel was responsible for the attack, want to keep Iran on a path of de-escalation after weeks in which the two countries were on the brink of war.

The US and Israeli denials followed a series of tit-for-tat attacks that threatened to suck Israel, Iran, and potentially the United States into an all-out Middle East war. Nevertheless, if Israel was responsible for the Iraqi explosion, the attack would suggest that Israel was signalling it wanted to revert to a covert war following strikes by Israel and Iran on each other’s territory.

The tit-for-tat kicked off with Israel’s April 1 bombing of the Iranian consulate in Damascus, in which seven Islamic Revolutionary Guards operatives, including two top commanders, were killed. Israel has not confirmed or denied responsibility for the attack. The attack took notions of deterrence to a new level, despite Israeli officials’ insistence that they did not view the assault on the consulate as an escalation of a covert war in which Israel has long targeted Iran.

The Gaza war moved Syria centerstage In the covert Israeli-Iranian confrontation. Israel has killed scores of Iranian operatives in Syria in undeclared strikes since Gaza erupted in October. This month, Iran laid down a new redline in the confrontation with a barrage of drones and missiles fired for the first time since the 1979 Islamic revolution from Iranian territory at Israel and declaring that it would respond harshly to any attack on Iranian interests, which likely includes Iran’s non-state allies in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen.

Israel’s denial of involvement in the Iraq incident constitutes an acknowledgment of Iran’s newly drawn redlines, even if that is no guarantee that Israel will abide by them. Similarly, if Israel attacked the Iraqi militia base, the denial suggests it intended to call Iran’s bluff without putting the Islamic Republic on the spot.

With Iran declaring after the drone and missile barrage that it did not want further escalation, Israel responded to the barrage by dispatching a paltry three drones to Isfahan, home to significant military bases, arms industry installations, and nuclear facilities. Like Iran’s barrage, Israel’s drones were shot down before they hit their targets. Israel did not confirm or deny responsibility for the attack.

Nevertheless, the Israeli message was clear: ‘We are not deterred, and we selected Isfahan to demonstrate our ability to hit vital Iranian targets, but we don’t want to escalate hostilities.’ It was a message Iran acknowledged by downplaying the attack and suggesting it would not respond.

Israel deployed an unidentified weapon in the strike that evaded Iran’s system to detect and counter threats to its Nantaz nuclear facility in a demonstration of Israel’s ability to bypass Iranian defenses undetected and paralyze them while deploying a fraction of the firepower Iran employed in its attack on Israel, according to The New York Times.

Meanwhile, the Gaza war has moved Syria centerstage. Israel has killed scores of Iranian operatives in Syria in undeclared strikes since Hamas’s October 7 attack against Israel. While Iran may be the determinating factor in a potential escalation of Middle Eastern tensions, Gaza holds the key to pulling the Middle East back from the brink.

De-escalation of the Israeli-Iranian confrontation would ensure that the space for a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains intact, even if ceasefire negotiations have stalled, and it’s hard to see Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu or a potential successor playing their part.

Potentially reading too much into Arab assistance in intercepting the Iranian drone and missile barrage, the Biden administration has, against all odds, revived its efforts to forge a grand bargain that would resolve the Palestine problem, cement US relations with Gulf states, and more fully integrate Israel into the region.

US officials argue that the assistance illustrates that a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian problem would substantially enhance Israeli security. It would remove obstacles to broadening Israel’s regional diplomatic relations, with Saudi Arabia as the crown jewel, and open the door to stronger military and security ties, including an integrated regional air defence system.

The Biden administration appears willing to entertain Saudi Arabis price tag on the deal: US guarantees to defend the kingdom, a proposition likely to encounter headwinds in the US Congress; US support for Saudi Arabia’s peaceful nuclear program; and a credible, irreversible Israeli-Palestinian peace process in exchange for Saudi recognition of the State of Israel.

In parallel to the US effort that the Gaza war put in the freezer, Arab states have privately touted a plan of their own that goes further by incorporating provisions for the day the fighting in Gaza ends. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Jordan, and Egypt have delayed officially announcing their plan at the request of the Biden administration.

The plan calls for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza, the replacement of Israeli forces by a predominantly Arab peacekeeping force in Gaza and the West Bank at the invitation of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, the restructuring of the Palestine Authority in which Hamas would have a secondary role to play, and a time-limited Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiation process to ensure that it does not drag endlessly.

The article Middle East totters on the edge of a cliff appeared first on Arabian Post.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is tying himself up in knots as he grudgingly, and only to a limited degree, bows to US President Joe Biden’s demands. In doing so, Netanyahu is puncturing Swiss-cheese size holes into Israel’s Gaza narrative, making it easier for Mr. Biden to take him publicly to task.

Biden has demanded that Israel allow the unfettered flow of desperately needed humanitarian aid into Gaza, an immediate ceasefire linked to an exchange of Hamas-held hostages for Palestinians incarcerated in Israel, and the dropping of Israeli plans for a ground offensive in the southern Gazan city of Rafah, home to more than a million Palestinians displaced by the six-month-long war.

In recent days, Netanyahu has granted entry into Gaza to more than 1,200 aid trucks, significantly reduced Israel’s on-the-ground military presence in the Strip, and raised to 150,000 the number of displaced Palestinians that would be allowed to return without Israeli security checks to their often destroyed homes in the north of the territory.

In addition, Netanyahu has played games with Rafah by claiming that he has set an undisclosed date for a ground offensive, even though Israeli officials are still discussing his plans with their US counterparts, and his defence minister, Yoav Gallant, insists that there is no date for the operation.

Even so, Gallant said the withdrawal of Israeli forces was to prepare for an offensive in Rafah. Israel asserts that Hamas’ remaining four armed brigades are in Rafah. It also suspects that Hamas’ top leadership, including Yahya Sinwar, Israel’s most wanted man, is hiding in tunnels under Rafah, shielded by many of the Hamas-held hostages still alive.

The contradictions in Israeli statements on Rafah reflect the knots tying up Netanyahu and the holes punctured by Israel in the prime minister and the government’s narrative. By asserting that he set a date,  Netanyahu hopes to pacify his ultra-nationalist coalition partners who threaten to topple the government if the prime minister fails to launch an offensive.

At the same time, Netanyahu is attempting to engineer a situation in which he can blame Biden if he decides not to commence ground operations in Gaza and/or for Israel’s overall failure to achieve its war objectives, including the destruction of Hamas and ensuring that the Strip no longer will be a launching pad for Palestinian resistance.

Many suspect Netanyahu of wanting to continue the war to extend his fragile political life. He is likely betting that his far-right partners may not make good on their threat, given opinion polls that suggest a new election would not return them or the prime minister to office. The far-right may not be the only threat to the longevity of Netanyahu’s government.

Depending on how Biden and Hamas play their cards in ceasefire and prisoner exchange negotiations,  Netanyahu could see a split in his war cabinet from which the far-right is excluded. A tough-talking politician and retired general, Gallant suggested that Israel could be flexible in the negotiations.

Israeli officials said neither Netanyahu nor Gallant had advance knowledge of this week’s killing of three sons and four grandchildren of Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas’ political bureau and a ceasefire negotiator. The attack came as  Biden called on Hamas to accept a ceasefire proposal put forward by CIA Director Bill Burns. Hamas says it is studying the proposal even though Israel’s response fails to address its demands.

Essentially, Burns’ proposal is a revival of a suggestion first crafted in January by US and Egyptian intelligence chiefs and Qatar’s Prime Minister in consultation with the head of Israel’s Mossad foreign intelligence service. The proposal called for a three-stage 90-day ceasefire, a phased prisoner exchange, and permanent ceasefire talks in the second stage.

The Burns proposal envisions the exchange of 40 Hamas-held civilian captives abducted during its October 7 attack on Israel for 900 Palestinians in Israeli prison. Hamas has committed itself to the release of the initial batch but has left open whether the 40 would include bodies of captives killed in the fighting.

The Hamas position has raised doubts whether the group still holds 40 live civilians. Many of the estimated 130 Hamas captives are Israeli military personnel who Hamas says it will only free as part of a permanent ceasefire deal.  Of the 130, at least 40 have died in captivity. Hamas abducted 250 people in October, more than 100 of which were swapped in November for 240 Palestinians incarcerated in Israel.

Under the new US proposal, Hamas would have to compromise on the number and identity of the prisoners they want released, while Israel would have to make concessions on the return of displaced Palestinian civilians to northern Gaza.

The CIA director’s proposal goes some way to meet Hamas’ demands for a permanent ceasefire, a complete Israeli troop withdrawal, the unfettered flow of aid into Gaza, and the return of displaced Palestinians to their homes in the north.

Netanyahu and Israel’s problem is that appearing to comply with Biden’s demands, including facilitating a ceasefire agreement, is self-incriminating.  A renewed prisoner exchange amounts to an admission that six months of military action has failed to free the hostages and, in effect, hands Hamas a victory.

For Netanyahu, that is a double-edged sword. While a prisoner exchange would take some of the stings out of growing domestic public demands that he prioritise the release of hostages, it would likely encourage mass demonstrations demanding the prime minister’s resignation.

Moreover, the entry into Gaza this week of more than 1,200 aid trucks in three days is evidence that Israeli restrictions constitute the main obstacle and cause of the humanitarian food and medical crisis rather than international organisations’ lack of capacity, a breakdown of law and order in Gaza, or allegations that Hamas hijacks aid convoys, even if all of that plays a role.

Moreover, while Israel’s failed attempt to incite a popular revolt against Hamas by depriving Gazans of the basics of life is the main reason for the crisis threatening the lives of innocent Palestinians, it is not the only culprit.

Hamas, like Israel and the West Bank-based Palestine Authority (PA), Hamas’ archrival, sees aid distribution as a battleground that will shape the contours of the post-war administration of the Strip.

While humanitarian organisations will not surrender control of distribution, Hamas believes it should play a role in securing the movement of aid trucks in Gaza and maintaining a semblance of law and order.

Hamas believes Israel is attempting to circumvent the group by approaching Gazan clan leaders and businessmen who have no ties to the Islamists as well as, albeit reluctantly, senior Palestine Authority intelligence officials to assist in securing and distributing aid.

The article Biden, Hamas tie up Netanyahu in knots appeared first on Arabian Post.

James M Dorsey

The Greater Middle East is a ticking time bomb. Generations in war-wracked Palestine, Syria, and Yemen have little, if anything, to look forward to. Moreover, discontent is mounting and could explode anytime in countries like Jordan, Egypt, and Iran.

Palestine is a pressure cooker. Gazan youth has known little else than two decades of wars and siege. Beyond the trauma of the latest six-month-old war, Gaza’s next generation is likely to experience at least a decade of a slow rebuilding of their lives that were shattered at birth.

Furthermore, Palestine threatens to be the lightning rod for widespread social, economic, and political discontent and the translation into militancy of despair and perceived double standards of not only the West but also their rulers.

As a result, the question is not if but when and how simmering frustration and anger will boil over.

“The Gaza war is stirring up every radical movement across the Middle East. Its recruitment potential against the US and Israel is enormous & will have repercussions for decades,” tweeted Middle East scholar Joshua Landis.

Landis noted that Osama Bin Laden first conceived of the 11 September 2001 Al Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington in 1982 when he watched US-built F-16 fighter jets carpet bomb Beirut during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon.

For now, much of the threat of renewed revolts and militancy may be more bluster than real.

Iranian-backed Iraqi militants asserted that they stood ready to arm 12,000 fighters of the Islamic Resistance in Jordan that would open a new front against Israel.

Abu Ali al-Askari, a Kataib Hezbollah security official, suggested Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s assessment that all Jordanian militants needed was access to weapons inspired the offer.

There is no evidence of an Islamic fighting force in tightly controlled Jordan despite mounting public anger at the Gaza war, a limited number of border incidents, and indications of attempts by Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood affiliate, Hamas, and Iran to exploit the fury, and in some cases smuggle arms from Jordan into the West Bank.

Earlier, Kataib Hezbollah said it would work with partners in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia to enable militants to strike at “any point in West Asia where the Americans exist.”

A close US ally dependent on American economic and financial aid with a peace treaty with Israel, Jordan walks a tightrope with more than half of its population of Palestinian descent.

Against the backdrop of 22 per cent unemployment, Jordan’s Brotherhood affiliate, the Islamic Action Front, hopes escalating pro-Hamas protests in Jordan will favour it in general elections scheduled for later this year.

Similarly, Hamas leaders have sought to capitalise on pro-Palestinian sentiment and Jordanian vulnerability.

“We call on our brothers in Jordan, in particular, to escalate all forms of popular, mass, and resistance action. You, our people in Jordan, are the nightmare of the occupation that fears your movement and strives tirelessly to neutralize and isolate you from your cause.,” said Hamas military spokesman Abu Obeida in November.

Last month, senior Doha-based Hamas official Khaled Mishaal, who survived an Israeli assassination attempt in Amman in 1997, told a women’s gathering in Jordan in a video address that “Jordan is a beloved country, and it is the closest to Palestine, so its men and women are expected to take more supportive roles than any other people towards the land of resistance and resilience.”

While Jordan is unlikely to emerge as a major venue for militant resistance against Israel,  escalating Baloch and Islamic State violence in Iran, a country in which widespread discontent regularly spills into the streets, and the adjacent Pakistani province of Balochistan is an indication of potential explosions of popular discontent and/or militancy.

Wealthy Gulf states see the writing on the wall. They worry that simmering public frustration and anger in much of the Middle East threatens their economic diversification and development plans.

Signalling Gulf concerns, Salah Al Budair, the Medina Grand Mosque’s imam, asked God in his prayers last week to protect Muslim countries “from revolutions and protest.”

Determined to contain public sentiment, Saudi authorities, in contrast to the United Arab Emirates and Qatar and despite official condemnations of Israel’s Gaza war conduct, have cracked down on expressions of solidarity such as the donning of keffiyehs, the chequered head scarf symbolizing Palestinian identity, T-shirts with Palestine emblazoned on them, and the waving of Palestinian flags.

Similarly, Egypt, a nation that perennially pulls back from the brink of economic disaster with the help of band-aid foreign financial injections, has largely banned public protests and criticism of the country’s ties with Israel.

Egyptian general-turned-president Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi fears that pro-Palestinian demonstrations could expand into domestic protest as has happened in the past.

“The Palestinian cause has always been a politicizing factor for Egyptian youth across generations,” said Hossam el-Hamalawy, a prominent Egyptian journalist, photographer, activist, and author of a weekly newsletter.

“In fact, for many Egyptian political activists — whether those who led the (2011) revolution or were involved in earlier protests — their gateway into politics was the Palestinian cause. The 2011 uprising in Egypt was literally the climax of a process that started with the second Palestinian intifada a decade earlier,” El-Hamalawy added.

Even so, El-Hamalawy, pointing to Al-Sisi’s harsh crackdown on dissent, cautioned that “we’re not on the verge of another 2011 because there is a substantial difference between dissidents now and then.”

Nevertheless, “the more this war (in Gaza) drags on, the more likely it is that something might happen,” El-Hamalawy said.

However, he noted that there are localized indications of mounting dissent. “So, the more this war (in Gaza) drags on, the more likely it is that something might happen.”

The article Greater Middle East is a ticking time bomb appeared first on Arabian Post.

Muhammad Manassara walked in late February into a gas station near the West Bank settlement of Eli. Armed with an automatic weapon, Manassara killed two people before he was shot dead by the owner of a restaurant at the station, the site of the killing last summer of four Israelis.

Three weeks later, Mujahid Barakat Mansour, a father of two small children, opened fire near the Israeli West Bank settlement of Dolev. Mansour killed an Israeli soldier and wounded six others in an hours-long gun battle before an Israeli military helicopter took him out.

Days afterward, Abu Rida al-Saadi opened fire on two school busses and a car in the Jordan Valley, wounding three Israelis, including a 13-year-old boy. Al-Saadi escaped the scene but turned himself in two days later amid a tightening manhunt. Manassara, Mansour, and Al-Saadi had more in common than just having attacked Israelis. The three men were active or former members of the Palestine Authority’s security forces.

The three incidents are among an increasing number of seemingly lone-wolf attacks on Israelis since the Gaza war erupted in early October and come amid daily clashes between Israeli forces and Palestinian militants on the West Bank. What sets the three incidents apart is that they shine a spotlight on the 35,000-member Palestinian security forces that the United States, Gulf countries, and much of the international community want to see in charge of on-the-ground security in post-war Gaza.

Reporting to Palestine Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, the security forces comprise the police, the National Security Forces, the Presidential Guard, Preventive Security, and the General Intelligence Services. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has insisted that Israel will retain security control across Gaza and the West Bank but refuses to take day-to-day charge of the devastated Strip. Netanyahu has further rejected US-backed efforts to pave the way for the return to Gaza of Mr. Abbas’s Authority.

At the same, Netanyahu’s envisioned alternatives – Gazan clans, Arab states, and private security and military firms – have all refused to help him fill the vacuum, starting with securing the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza. Violence perpetrated by Palestine security force associates, including some like Manassara and Mansour, who have served sentences in Israeli prison, stiffened Netanyahu’s resolve.

The three incidents serve the prime minister’s insistence on having compliant Palestinians run Gaza’s day-to-day affairs, including ensuring law and order, even if Netanyahu’s rejection of the Authority has as much, if not more, to do with his refusal to acknowledge Palestinian national rights than security concerns. The incidents and Netanyahu’s refusal lay bare not only the yawning gap between Israeli and Palestinian perceptions of what Gaza should look like the day after the guns fall silent but also what the security forces’ role should be.

Israel conceives the forces’ main task as preventing anti-Israeli violence, whereas Palestinians believe they should be protecting Palestinians against Israeli military and vigilante settler attacks. This week, issues associated with the Palestinian security forces took on added significance with US President Joe Biden pressuring Israel to substantially enhance the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza, ensure the protection of innocent civilians, and agree to an immediate ceasefire.

CIA director Bill Burns was expected to travel to Cairo this weekend for a meeting with the Prime Minister of Qatar, the director of Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service, and the head of Egyptian intelligence, to try and reach a breakthrough in stalled talks on a ceasefire and Israeli-Hamas prisoner exchange. The United States, Qatar, and Egypt see a ceasefire as a steppingstone for an end to the six-month-old war that would put post-war governance and security arrangements at the top of the agenda.

The Palestinian security forces’ inability to protect their own and their frequent crackdown on Abbas’s critics is a primary reason why the Authority has lost credibility, and Palestinians see the forces as doing Israel and the president’s bidding.

“The problem is with the politicization of the security forces’ leadership. Seeing how bad the PA’s (Palestine Authority’s) standing is right now, it’s very hard to see how they can perform security work,” said Middle East analyst and former adviser to the Palestinian peace negotiating team Ghaith al-Omari.

This week, Abbas’s Al Fatah movement accused Iran, which backs Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, of trying to sow chaos amid a surge in intra-Palestinian violence in the West Bank. “We stand on the lookout for foreign interference, specifically Iranian interference, in Palestinian internal affairs. We will not allow the exploitation of our sacred cause and the blood of our people,” Al Fatah said in a statement.

The Al Fatah warning followed clashes in the last week between Palestinian security forces and armed Islamic Jihad militants in the West Bank city of Tulkarm and a similar incident in Jenin, frequent targets of Israeli raids. Palestinian security forces have sought to prevent pro-Hamas demonstrations in West Bank cities and restricted the display of Hamas flags.

Israel’s Shin Bet domestic security agency said last month it had foiled attempts by Iran to smuggle large amounts of advanced weapons into the West Bank. Shin Bet said the smuggling was organized by Unit 4000, the intelligence unit of the Special Operations Division of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, and the Special Operations Unit 18840 of the Guards’ Quds Force in Syria.

The agency said a senior Lebanon-based Al Fatah official, Munir Makdah, was involved in the foiled smuggle. It said the weapons cachet included fragmentation bombs, anti-tank landmines with fuses, grenade launchers, shoulder-launched anti-tank missiles, RPG launchers and rockets, and C4 and Semtex explosives.

Al Fatah issued its statement as Israel braced for possible Iranian retaliation for an Israeli bombing of Iran’s embassy compound in Damascus that killed two senior Revolutionary Guards commanders and five others.

Regavim, a pro-Israeli settler NGO that seeks to paint the Palestine Authority as a terrorist threat, asserted in a 68-page report issued in February that 80 associates of its security forces were arrested or killed while attacking Israeli nationals and soldiers in the past three years. If anything, the involvement of Palestinian security forces in anti-Israeli violence shines a spotlight on the fallout of Israel’s systematic undermining of the Authority and its security forces, and an occupation policy that generates resistance, even if nothing justifies violence against innocent civilians.

As part of its rejection of any expression of Palestinian national aspirations, Israel projects the forces as dedicated to killing Israelis and threatening security instead of as a force that despite its nationalist sentiment has worked closely with its Israeli counterparts.

To be sure, security personnel chant nationalist songs and slogans during training and practice. Their facilities feature portraits of Abbas and Yasser Arafat, the late Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) leader, and pay tribute to West Bank militants.

Even so, Israel, rather than working with the security forces, has reinforced nationalist and militant sentiment with the carnage of the Gaza war and the killing of more than 400 Palestinians in six months of multiple daily raids on West Bank towns, villages, and refugee camps. Israel’s military increasingly limits areas in which the security forces can operate and subjects them to the same often crippling restrictions ordinary Palestinians are subjected to.

The article Palestine security forces caught between a rock and a hard place appeared first on Arabian Post.

Israel’s refusal to lift restrictions on the unfettered entry into Gaza of food, medical supplies, and other desperately needed humanitarian goods, has less to do with a stand-alone starvation policy and more with who controls distribution in the Strip. Both Israel and Hamas see control of aid distribution as a building block of who comes out on top once the guns fall silent.

The struggle for control explains the latest Israeli assault on Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City and highlights the willingness of Israel and Hamas to sacrifice innocent Palestinian lives in the pursuit of their political goals. The struggle also frames the battle over the future of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the foremost humanitarian organisation in Gaza, with the United States seemingly backing Israeli efforts to shut it down and Gulf states walking a tightrope.

Hamas makes no bones about Al-Shifa having served as base for a commander of Gaza’s internal security force, Brigadier General, Faiq al-Mabhouh, in the full knowledge that his presence risked an Israeli assault. Al-Mabhouh was killed during the attack on the hospital. The Israeli military asserted that Al-Mabhouh had been “hiding in a compound at the Al-Shifa hospital from which he operated and advanced terrorist activity,” while Hamas claimed he had been in charge of coordinating aid deliveries to northern Gaza with local clans, UNRWA and other international organisations.

Israel said Al-Mabhouh was among 170 “terrorists” it killed in hospital and its immediate surroundings. Israel said it had captured a further 358 Palestinian fighters. Al Jazeera journalist Ismail al-Ghoul was among the captives. He was later released but said he had been beaten by Israeli forces. Israel has targeted other senior police officials since Al Mabhouh’s killing.

Earlier this week, Israeli forces struck the home of the police’s northern Gaza investigations director, Major Raed al-Banna, killing him, his wife and children. Al-Banna, like Al-Mabhouh, focused on facilitating the entry into Gaza and distribution of aid. In contrast to Hamas military and political officials, who function from the group’s underground tunnels, Al-Mabhouh operated openly in uniform and spoke publicly about maintaining law and order in northern Gaza.

Israel killed Al-Mabhouh and Al-Banna despite a US request that it stop targeting the police force that escorts aid trucks on the Gazan side of the border. US officials warned that a “total breakdown of law and order” was exacerbating the humanitarian crisis in the enclave. In February, US officials said they feared Gaza was becoming another Mogadishu, the Somali capital long wracked by a security vacuum and desperation, in which armed gangs had a free run.

At the heart of the diverging US and Israeli perceptions of the police force are lessons learnt from the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. The United States came to regret its decision to ban Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party and remove all senior Baathists from the government and security forces. As a result, David Satterfield, the Biden administration’s envoy for humanitarian affairs, conceded that the Gazan police “certainly include(s) Hamas elements” but they “also include individuals who don’t have a direct affiliation with Hamas who are there as part of the Palestinian Authority’s remnant presence and security.”

It’s a distinction Israel refuses to make, driven by its determination to create a compliant post-war Palestinian Gazan administration. Israel sees the Strip’s clan and tribe-based gangs as the skeleton of a future subservient Gazan administration that could replace Hamas and create an alternative to Palestine President Mahmoud Abbas’ internationally-backed Palestine Authority.

In February, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu unveiled a post-war plan, entitled ‘Plan for the day after Hamas,” that envisioned Israeli security control and a Palestinian administration that “will be based on professionals with managerial experience. These local officials must not be identified with states or organizations that support terror and must not receive salaries from them.” Israel’s targeting of the police has forced officers to venture out in plainclothes and unarmed, creating an opportunity for unidentified gunmen, believed to be clansmen, to take control of aid trucks.

The struggle between Israel, Hamas, and the clans burst into the open earlier this month with reports of the death of Haj Saleh Ashur, a leader of the powerful Doghmush clan in northern Gaza suspected of looting aid convoys, and two of his associates. Israeli sources suggested that Hamas killed the three men, noting that the clan had clashed with the Islamist group in the past. The clan said Mr. Ashur died in an Israeli strike last November.

In a statement after the leaking of Ashur’s death, several clans said they would only cooperate with institutions authorized by the Palestine Authority’s backbone, the Palestine Liberation Organisation or PLO, which they described as “the only representative of the Palestinian people.” The clans demanded that “Hamas stops accusing us of treason and apostasy. Our nation can no longer bear the foreign concepts Hamas is trying to disseminate through its toxic media.”

Israel has recently sought to reinforce its preference for the clans by saying it would boycott UNRWA and bar its aid supplies from entering northern Gaza, the hardest hit part of the Strip. In January, Israel, on the warpath against UNRWA long before the Gaza war, charged that 12 of the organisation’s 13,000 Gaza employees had participated in Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel. Israel has yet to substantiate the claim, according to UN officials and officials of donor countries that initially suspended funding in response to the Israeli allegations.

Many of UNWRA’s donors that suspended funding, including the European Union, Scandinavian nations, EU member states, Canada and Australia, have since restored their support. In contrast to US allies, the US Congress banned funding for UNRWA until March 2025. With an annual contribution of up to US$400 million, the United States is UNRWA’s largest donor.

Gulf states, reluctant to be sucked into Gaza unless there is a credible pathway to a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, walk a tightrope. Rather than rushing to UNWRA’s aid, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar, together with the United States, the chief Israel-Hamas ceasefire mediators, have offered minimal assistance. Earlier this month, Saudi Arabia pledged US$40 million. The UAE disbursed US$20 million it had promised UNWRA last year but hadn’t delivered, while Qatar said it would donate US$25 million for 2024.

At the core of Israel’s campaign against UNRWA is the assertion that the organisation perpetuates the status as refugees of millions of Palestinians, most of whom were born after the 1948 expulsion of Palestinians and many after Israel’s conquest of Gaza and the West Bank in the 1967 Middle East war. In effect, Israel opposes UNRWA because it contributes to Palestinians’ national identity.

A recent report on UNWRA schools in the northern Gazan city of Beit Hanoun by IMPACT-se, a Ramat Gan and London-based textbook watchdog, sought to demonstrate Israeli assertions that UNRWA promotes hatred and violence. The report found that the schools’ books contain anti-Israel incitement, the systematic erasure of Israel’s existence, and the glorification of jihad and martyrdom. The report cited a geography book that features Palestine instead of Israel on maps. Other textbooks glorified explosive belts worn by Palestinian fighters battling the Israeli military, and praised the “image of a burnt Zionist soldier.”

A chemistry book asked students to analyze the type of chemicals contained in phosphorous bombs allegedly dropped by Israel, while an Islamic studies book described the goals of jihad as “terrorizing the enemy” and “achieving martyrdom.”

The IMPACT-se report contrasts starkly with a 2018 State Department-funded report on UNRWA that found, based on a UNRWA review, an anti-Israeli bias in only 3.1 per cent of Palestinian textbooks. The US report noted that UNRWA developed alternate materials that were rejected by Palestinian teachers. An earlier 2022 Impact-se review of Israeli textbooks reported that they taught peace and tolerance, the “Palestinian experience and perspective,” challenges Israeli Palestinians face in integrating into Israeli society, and that they included maps of Palestinian territories.

A 2021 EU-funded analysis of Palestinian textbooks by Germany’s Leibniz Institute for Educational Media or Georg Eckert Institute asserted that Impact-se reports were “marked by generalising and exaggerated conclusions based on methodological shortcomings” that require “further investigation based on an overarching and comprehensive examination of the textbooks, contextualising the specific passages mentioned.”

By the same token, an independent 2016 review of Israeli, ultra-orthodox Jewish, and Palestinian school books by scholars Sami Adwan, Daniel Bar-Tal, and Bruce E. Wexler suggested that the truth was in the middle.

“The results showed…that (1) dehumanizing and demonizing characterizations of the other are rare in both Israeli and Palestinian books; (2) both Israeli and Palestinian books present unilateral national narratives that portray the other as (the) enemy… (and) (3) (that), there is (a) lack of information about the religions, culture, economic and daily activities of the other, or even of the existence of the other on maps,” said Messrs. Adwan, Bar-Tal, and Wexler.

The scholars noted that “the negative bias in (the) portrayal of the other, the positive bias in portrayal of the self, and the absence of images and information about the other” was more prevalent in ultra-Orthodox and Palestinian textbooks than in materials used by the Israeli state.

The article Aid is at the core of Israel, Palestine struggle to control post-war Gaza appeared first on Arabian Post.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s walls are caving in. His multiple battles fall into two categories: keeping his increasingly fragile government in place and fighting a war he has already lost in the court of public opinion and possibly on the ground in Gaza if measured by the prime minister’s war goals.

On Monday, Israel suffered its most significant international setback since 2016 with the US allowing the United Nations Security Council to call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. The United States abstained in a 2016 Council vote that condemned Israeli settlement activity

The US Gaza vote strains Israel’s relations with the United States, its main backer that prevented the Security Council from demanding a ceasefire for the past six months, as well as Europe, and most of the rest of the international community.

US ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield controversially attempted to soften the blow by declaring the resolution “non-binding,” even though UN Security Council resolutions are legally binding and constitute international law. In doing so, Thomas-Greenfield was also trying to create a buffer against likely pressure on the United States to sanction Israel if it refuses to abide by the resolution.

The State Department said hours before the UN vote that the United States deemed Israel in compliance with President Joe Biden’s national security memorandum requiring recipients of US weapons to guarantee that they adhere to international humanitarian law and will not block the provision of humanitarian assistance.

That did not stop Netanyahu from responding to the US abstention in the UN vote by cancelling a visit to Washington by an Israeli delegation headed by Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, who lacks a military background, to discuss Israel’s planned ground offensive in Rafah, the southern Gazan city that is home to more than a million Palestinians displaced by the war.

With Defence Minister Yoav Gallant already meeting with senior US officials in Washington in a separate visit, Netanyahu’s defiance is largely symbolic. Nevertheless, Gallant, responding to the UN vote, warned that Israel “will act against Hamas everywhere, even in areas where we have not been yet.” Gallant stopped short of naming potential target countries, but Qatar, the main ceasefire and prisoner exchange mediator, and Turkey are likely to top the list.

Israel has accused Qatar, home to several exiled Hamas leaders, of funding Hamas, although the US and Israel acquiesced in their presence in the Gulf state to maintain a back channel with the group. Netanyahu for years solicited Qatari funding in a bid to prevent a breakdown of law and order in Gaza and keep the Palestinian polity, split between Hamas and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestine Authority, divided.

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), founded by Yigal Carmon, a former advisor to Israel’s West Bank and Gaza occupation authority and Prime Ministers Yitzhak Shamir and Yitzhak Rabin, has produced in recent months a series of reports designed to bolster Israeli denunciations of Qatar. This week, MEMRI took Qatar to task for hosting the Doha-based, Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS).

Palestinian and Jordanian members of the Union have called on their compatriots to join the fight against Israel and “the Jews” with protests and uprisings against autocratic rulers who allegedly enable Israel’s war, a reference to Arab countries that have diplomatic relations with Israel. The clerics also urged Arab militaries to come to the support of their Palestinian brethren.

Meanwhile, US Assistant Secretary of State William Russo warned in a readout of a phone call with Israeli foreign ministry officials earlier this month that “the Israelis seemed oblivious to the fact that they are facing major, possibly generational damage to their reputation not just in the region but elsewhere in the world. We are concerned that the Israelis are missing the forest for the trees and are making a major strategic error in writing off their reputation damage.”

Add to this the fact that the evolution of the war in recent weeks and running battles with Palestinian fighters in the West Bank suggests that even if the fighting ends today, Israel is looking at an insurgency in Gaza and the West Bank for the foreseeable future unless the ceasefire is linked to a credible effort to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The US intelligence community last month predicted that “Israel probably will face lingering armed resistance from Hamas for years to come, and the military will struggle to neutralize Hamas’s underground infrastructure, which allows insurgents to hide, regain strength, and surprise Israeli forces.”

In Gaza, the Israeli military increasingly is fighting in places it initially occupied and then withdrew from in the belief that it had defeated Hamas. Battles in recent days in and around Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis and Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City erupted in areas Israel earlier said had been cleared of Palestinian fighters. In addition, Hamas, hours before the UN vote, launched, for the first time in two months, rockets at the Israeli port city of Ashdod.

Israel’s seeming inability six months into the war to defeat Hamas, despite dealing it severe body blows, is compounded by its incapability or unwillingness to maintain law and order in Gaza, its effort to undermine for political rather than security reasons the United Nations Relief and Welfare Agency (UNRWA), the predominant humanitarian organisation in the Strip, and its refusal to allow unfettered humanitarian supplies to enter the territory. The power vacuum created by Israeli military tactics and policy reinforces Hamas’ resilience and its ability to return to areas vacated by Israeli forces.

Taken together, the UN setback and the evolution of the war contradict Netanyahu’s assertions that Israel is achieving its war goals, including destroying Hamas, freeing more than 100 remaining hostages kidnapped by the group in its October 7 attack on Israel, and ensuring that Gaza no longer serves as a launching pad for Palestinian resistance.

Netanyahu will have been heartened by the insistence, in response to the UN resolution, of Gallant and Benny Gantz, a member of the war cabinet, that Israel will continue the war until its goals have been realised. Nevertheless, the UN resolution weakens Israel’s negotiating position in talks mediated by Qatar, the United States, and Egypt to secure a ceasefire and an exchange of the hostages for Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.

The resolution, in effect, constitutes an attempt to force negotiating parties to reach agreement in the next two weeks by demanding an immediate ceasefire for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan that would end on April 10, but lead “to a lasting sustainable ceasefire.”

While most Security Council members will read the resolution’s demand for “the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages” as a reference to the Hamas-held hostages, it allows Hamas and others to interpret the clause as also including Palestinians in Israeli prisons. The claim would be substantiated by the ongoing ceasefire negotiations and Israel’s past willingness to exchange prisoners.

Israeli officials said before the UN vote that Netanyahu had accepted a US compromise proposal to raise the number of Palestinian prisoners that Israel would free in exchange for hostages. Media reports said Hamas had rejected the US proposal.

The article Netanyahu’s walls are caving in appeared first on Arabian Post.

A just-published Palestinian public opinion survey offers pointers for what a successful transition from the devastating Gaza war to a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will have to entail. The survey’s pointers take on added significance as the United States, Europe and Arab states seek to turn the fallout of Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel and the carnage caused by Israel’s assault on the Strip into an opportunity to create an independent Palestinian state alongside the Jewish state.

Views expressed by those surveyed by the Ramallah-based Palestine Centre for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR) suggest that much of what is being touted by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on his Middle Eastern tour this week diverges from Palestinian expectations and aspirations or is hampered by a lack of confidence that the United States and Israel will take Palestinians into account.

What emerges from the survey is that any permanent ceasefire that fails to take into account not only Israeli concerns, but also Palestinian aspirations is likely to create, at best, a fragile truce that eventually will collapse in a new round of violence. What is also clear is that reconciling the visions of Palestinians, Israelis, and Arab states requires political change in both Israel and Palestine.

The good news is that a majority of Israelis and Palestinians have little if any confidence in their leaders and want change. The trick will be getting from A to B in an interim period in which Palestinians and Israelis have an opportunity to elect new leaders. The problem is that elections in Israel and Palestine could produce dramatically different attitudes towards a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

While Palestinian elections are likely to produce a majority in favour of the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, Israeli polls could produce the opposite. Support for a two-state solution among Gazans jumped from 35 per cent of those surveyed by the Centre in December to 62 per cent in this month’s poll. In the West Bank support held at 34 per cent. Even though that means that only 45 per cent of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank support two states, the silver lining is in the details.

The Centre said perceptions of feasibility were closely linked to Israeli settlement policy in the West Bank and far-right Israeli demands for a resettlement of Gaza from which Israel withdrew in 2005. The number of Gazans doubting the feasibility of an independent state because of the settlements dropped ten points from 71 per cent in September to 61 per cent in the recent survey, while the percentage that believed a state was still possible increased from 32 to 37 per cent. To support this trend, the United States and Israel’s allies will have to demonstrate a willingness to do what it takes to halt the continued expansion of settlements and put a stop to settler vigilantism that targets Palestinians with impunity.

Recent US and European sanctioning of settlers accused of anti-Palestinian violence may be a first step but is a far cry from what would convince Palestinians of their sincerity. Similarly, support for armed struggle dropped 17 points in Gaza from 56 per cent in December to 39 per cent this month and by 15 per cent in the West Bank from 68 per cent late last year to 51 per cent today.

Increasingly, Palestinians are looking neither to Hamas nor Palestine President Mahmoud Abbas for change. Their most preferred candidate appears to be Marwan Barghouti, a member of Abbas’ Al Fatah movement who has been sentenced by Israel for murder to multiple life sentences, and a leader of the 1987 and 2000 Intifadas, or Palestinian uprisings against Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands. Barghouti ranks high on Hamas’ list of imprisoned Palestinians the group wants to see released in a second round of prisoner exchanges that is at the core of Blinken’s tour and talks between the parties in Doha.

Asked whom they would vote for in an election, 40 per cent of those surveyed opted for Barghouti, 23 per cent for Hamas political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh, and two per cent for Abbas. Barghouti’s increased popularity was starkest in Gaza, rising from 25 per cent last September to 39 per cent this month.

Blinken, with Europe and Arab states in toe, has insisted that a reformed Palestine Authority, which under Abbas has been ineffective and wracked by corruption, should take control of Gaza once the guns fall silent. Potentially Barghouti could be the figure that restores a degree of legitimacy to the Authority.

Israel has ruled out a role for the Authority in post-war Gaza and is unlikely to want to negotiate with  Barghouti, who like the Authority, will probably insist that Hamas become part of the Palestinian political mainstream by joining the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). An umbrella organisation dominated by Al Fatah, the PLO is recognised as the Palestinians’ legitimate representative and forms the Palestine Authority’s backbone.

Mohammad Mustafa, the Palestine Authority’s newly appointed prime minister did not mention Hamas by name in an article in The Economist but insisted that the non-partisan, technocratic government” he hoped to form “will foster the engagement of all Palestinian factions and parties in a constructive dialogue at the PLO level.” Only ten per cent of those surveyed expressed support for Mr. Mustafa as their next prime minister.

The quest to integrate Hamas is backed by a majority of Palestinians, 63 per cent, who in the most recent opinion poll said they wanted Hamas to regain control of Gaza. At the same time, the survey indicated that support for Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank had dropped from 43 per cent in December to 34 per cent.

Indeed, complicating issues for Israel, the United States, and its Arab partners, who want to see the destruction of Hamas, is the fact that six months into the war, Israel has dealt severe body blows to the group, but has failed to destroy it. Add to that the fact that, the cost of Gazan lives, and infrastructure, increasingly is too high for the United States, Europe, and Arab nations.

In a sign of the times, Chinese diplomat Kejian Wang, on a Middle East tour, met Haniyeh this week in Doha in the first public Chinese-Hamas encounter since the start of the Gaza war. The meeting followed last month’s defense by Ma Xinmin, the Chinese foreign ministry’s legal adviser, of the Palestinian’s right to resistance under international law “including armed struggle”, which “in this context, is distinguished from acts of terrorism.”

China has opted to reach out to Hamas despite the group’s support for Uyghurs, the Turkic Muslim minority in China’s northwestern province of Xinjiang targeted by Chinese authorities in recent years in what critics have dubbed a ‘cultural genocide.’ The shifts in Gaza in favour of a two-state solution and Barghouti are significant not just because Gazans have shouldered the brunt of the recent Israeli onslaught, but also because Palestinians and Arabs view the Strip as the ‘Mother of Resistance.’

In contrast to the Palestinians, Israeli opinion polls that for months suggested that an overwhelming majority wanted to see the back of Binyamin Netanyahu now indicate that things may be swinging back in the prime minister’s favour. Moreover, far-right and ultra-conservative parties last month made significant gains in Israel’s municipal elections.

Ironically, there may be a silver lining in a reversal of Netanyahu’s fortunes despite his alliance with Israel’s most ultra-nationalist and ultra-conservative forces, his current rejection of a Palestinian state, his support for Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and his insistence on Israeli security control in all historic Palestine.

In the ultimate analysis, Netanyahu, who in the past paid lip service to the notion of a Palestinian state, is about Netanyahu. He will do what it takes to stay in power. This is not to say that Netanyahu would suddenly make an abrupt U-turn but to suggest that he opportunistically can be more flexible when it suits his purpose.

The article Palestinians may be more accommodating than Israelis appeared first on Arabian Post.

This year’s US presidential elections are not the only potential hurdle confronting President Joe Biden’s multi-pronged vision for a Middle East peace once the Gaza war ends. So is Israeli intransigence, the prospect of a long-term insurgency in post-war Gaza, and increasing Saudi Chinese technological cooperation.

The Biden administration is pushing for a multi-pronged comprehensive Middle East deal that would not only end the war in Gaza but also produce a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The deal would involve a reformed Palestine Authority governing Gaza and the West Bank, a credible pathway to an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel, and Saudi recognition of the Jewish state.

The plan doesn’t lack ambition but the odds of all the pieces coming together are almost insurmountable, certainly in the time left until the November US election, even if Saudi Arabia has bought into the concept, albeit with a high price tag. Assuming the price is right, Saudi Arabia is interested in cutting a deal while Biden is in office. The kingdom is not sure that a second Donald J. Trump presidency would meet Saudi demands, particularly its insistence on a legally binding defense agreement with the United States.

Despite his catering to the Saudis during his presidency, Trump turned the moment the kingdom needed US assistance into a business opportunity. In response to Yemeni Houthi attacks in 2019 on Saudi oil facilities that temporarily knocked out 50 per cent of the kingdom’s oil production capacity, Trump described the incident as a Saudi, not an American problem, and offered to retaliate on behalf of the Saudis if they were willing to foot the bill. Saudi Arabia is not the only player putting a price tag on a Middle East deal.

The United States has indicated that Saudi Arabia would have to curtail its technological cooperation with China on return for a defence agreement. Nevertheless, signalling interest in a deal, Saudi media, much like Al Jazeera, the pioneer in airing Israeli voices in Arab media and covering the Jewish state with correspondents on the ground, have increasingly included Israelis in their reporting on the Gaza war, despite the kingdom’s vocal condemnation of the Jewish state’s war conduct.

Even so, the war has raised the price Saudi Arabia insists on extracting from Israel and the United States in return for diplomatic recognition. In contrast to vague Saudi references to a resolution of the Palestinian problem before the war, officials now insist on a “credible and irreversible” pathway to the creation of an independent Palestinian state. Public opinion in the kingdom and across the Muslim world enraged by the Gaza war is one reason for the hardening Saudi position.

However, an incident earlier this week suggests that changing Saudi attitudes towards Israel and Jews may not happen overnight. A delegation of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) curtailed a visit to the kingdom after the group’s chairman, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, was asked to remove his skullcap during a tour of a heritage site, despite Saudi Arabia’s projection of itself as a beacon of tolerant and ‘moderate’ Islam.

The Saudi embassy in Washington said, “This unfortunate incident was the result of a misunderstanding of internal protocols.” The embassy did not say what those protocols are.

The United Arab Emirates recently highlighted the sensitivity of relations with Israel when its state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) and multinational oil and gas giant BP suspended a US$2 billion bid to buy a major stake in Israel’s NewMed Energy company.

The UAE established relations with Israel in 2020 and has insisted it will maintain the relationship despite its criticism of Israel’s war conduct. New Med, which owns a 45 per cent stake in Leviathan, Israel’s biggest gas field, and 30 per cent of Aphrodite, located off Cyprus, said the suspension was due to “uncertainty created in the external environment.” To be sure, Israel is no less in need of a sea change in attitudes towards Palestinians for a pathway to a Palestinian state to be credible and irreversible.

That too is not going to happen overnight and may not happen before Americans go to the polls. Discriminatory attitudes towards Palestinians have always been ingrained in Israeli society but have been on steroids since Hamas’ October 7 attack. In addition, opposition to a Palestinian state, particularly one that is not demilitarised, extends far beyond Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s Likud party and its ultra-nationalist and ultra-conservative coalition partners.

While implicitly highlighting the imperative of a political solution, this week’s US intelligence’s Annual Threat Assessment also implicitly suggested that Hamas will remain a player that will need to be taken into account in any peace process. In effect, the assessment suggested that Israel would not achieve two of its three war goals: the destruction of Hamas and ensuring that Gaza no longer serves as a launching pad for armed Palestinian resistance. Similarly, Israel’s third goal, the freeing of Hamas-held hostages is likely to be a product of negotiations rather than military action.

Hamas holds hostage some 136 people and bodies of captives killed in the war. Negotiations on a ceasefire and prisoner exchange have stalled. “Israel probably will face lingering armed resistance from Hamas for years to come, and the military will struggle to neutralize Hamas’ underground infrastructure, which allows insurgents to hide, regain strength, and surprise Israeli forces,” the assessment predicted. If correct, continued Palestinian resistance is likely to stiffen Israeli opposition to the creation of a Palestinian state.

In recognition of the likelihood that Hamas will remain a player, the Palestine Authority has insisted that the group would have to be part of the mainstream Palestinian polity, even if it is not represented in a post-war transition government. The Authority’s insistence is one reason why Netanyahu opposes taking control of post-war Gaza. Instead, Netanyahu wants tribal and clan leaders to administer the Strip under Israeli tutelage.

In a first step, Israel was believed to be attempting to recruit Gazan clansmen to provide security for aid convoys entering Gaza. Bowing to US and international pressure, Israeli military spokesperson Rear-Admiral Daniel Hagari said this week that Israel, accused of using “starvation as a weapon for war,” planned to “flood” the Strip with humanitarian supplies. The website of Hamas’ Al-Majd intelligence and internal security forces indicated that the group was seeking to thwart Mr. Netanyahu’s plan by targeting Palestinians suspected of cooperating with Israel.

Earlier this week, Al-Majd warned Palestinians who cooperated with Israel that they would be treated as collaborators and handled with an iron fist. Hamas has a history of executing suspected collaborators. Arab media reports said Hamas had killed in recent days the head of the powerful Doghmush clan and two others in their family compound in Gaza City. Hamas accused the unidentified leader of stealing humanitarian aid and maintaining contact with Israel.

With links to organised crime and the arms trade, Doghmush clansmen have clashed with Hamas in the past. Clan members have been associated with multiple Palestinian groups including Hamas, Palestine Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ Al Fatah, and various Islamist organisations. Dubbed the “Sopranos of Gaza City, the Doghmush gained notoriety for their involvement in the 2005 abduction of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit and the 2007 kidnapping of British journalist Alan Johnston.

The killing is likely to persuade clans potentially willing to work with Israel to reconsider. Hamas this week welcomed a clans’ statement rejecting cooperation with Israel. The statement “underscored the families’ and clans’ support for our resistance, government, police, and security services, and the rejection of the occupation’s attempts to sway Palestinian nationalism,” Hamas said.

The article Biden may not have enough rope to push his vision of the Middle East appeared first on Arabian Post.

\Failed efforts to achieve a Gaza ceasefire on the eve of Ramadan leave innocent Gazans in the lurch, highlight the gap between Israel and Hamas’ demands in negotiations, and raise the stakes for the United States.

At the core of the stalled negotiations is Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s insistence on continuing Israel’s assault after a ceasefire and an exchange of some Hamas-held hostages kidnapped during the group’s October 7 attack on Israel for Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.

Netanyahu hopes that if he gets his way, he will reduce public pressure to prioritise the release of the hostages and the return of the bodies of captives killed in the Israeli assault, address US concerns amid the Biden administration’s mounting pressure, and be able to claim success in a devastating war that in its sixth month has failed to achieve Israel’s goals and severely damaged its international standing.

In Netanyahu’s mind, securing the release of all the hostages would deprive Hamas of its foremost trump card in negotiations over Gaza’s post-war fate, which is why Hamas will not agree to release all the captives without an end to the war, an Israeli withdrawal from the Strip and its return to Palestinian control, and a reconstruction process in the devastated territory.

Netanyahu’s problem is that getting his way may not provide the temporary relief he seeks.

Public pressure is likely to continue until all the hostages are released. Moreover, freeing the hostages will do little to weaken widespread calls for Netanyahu to resign.

In addition, relations between Messrs. Biden and Netanyahu have crossed a Rubicon, even if the US president still refuses to pressure Israel in ways that it would feel the pain.

The United States and Biden have not done themselves a favour by opting for a cumbersome and slow maritime channel for humanitarian aid instead of linking US arms supplies to Israel to an opening of border crossings that would allow the immediate flow of massive humanitarian aid sitting on Egypt’s border with the Strip.

Finally, accepting even some of Hamas’ demands would likely spark the demise of Netanyahu’s government with his ultra-nationalist and ultra-conservative partners walking away from the coalition.

The ultra-nationalists and ultra-conservatives strengthened their stranglehold with significant gains in the first round of last month’s municipal elections. Israelis went for a second round in 35 cities and towns on Sunday.

All of this does not take Hamas off the hook.

Hamas does not have much to lose if it were to agree to a proposed six-week ceasefire during which it would release only 40 hostages – mostly women, children, elderly people, and those in need of immediate medical assistance.

Hamas would retain its leverage, particularly given that its remaining hostages are primarily Israeli military personnel.

Moreover, by agreeing to a six-week-ceasefire, Hamas would help create the space for negotiations on a permanent silencing of the guns and an end to the war.

Finally, even a temporary ceasefire on terms involving a substantial flow of humanitarian aid would help avert famine and a mushrooming public health disaster in Gaza.

The problem is that neither Israel nor Hamas cares about the desperate plight of Gazans.

“#Hamas and #Netanyahu are haggling over human lives as if they were on a cattle market,” said scholar Andreas Krieg in a tweet.

At least some Hamas figures, reportedly including Yahya Sinwar, the group’s Gaza-based leader and one of Israel’s most wanted men, believe that Hamas’ negotiating position would be further enhanced if the humanitarian crisis in Gaza worsens and if the onset of Ramadan heightens tension around Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s third holiest site.

Hamas and Israel compete on who issues the most blood-curdling statements. Both display a despicable disregard for the humanity of the other.

Cloaking itself in the mantle of legitimate resistance and the assertion that all Israelis, including those within Israel’s pre-1967 borders, are settlers, Hamas has no compunction about threatening more October 7-style attacks.

Civilians accounted for most of the more than 1,100 people killed, some brutally, in the Hamas assault.

Israel digs itself deeper and deeper into a whole not only by its conduct of the war and refusal to ensure the unfettered flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza but also by abusive social media postings by soldiers in Gaza and repeated problematic statements by political and religious figures.

In the latest incident, Rabbi Eliyahu Mali, whose religious seminary in Jaffa, aims to dispossess Palestinians still resident in what is today a southern suburb of Tel Aviv that once was Palestine’s most populous city, issued what can only be called an incitement to genocide.

“The basic rule we have when fighting a holy war, in this case, Gaza, is the doctrine of ‘not sparing a soul.’ The logic of this is very clear. If you don’t kill them, they will try to kill you. Today’s saboteurs are the children of the previous war whom we kept alive,” Mali said in a conference at his Shirat Moshe yeshiva.

“It is the women who create the terrorists… It’s either you or them… ‘Do not spare a soul’ is based on the doctrine, ‘He who comes to kill you in the afternoon, kill him in the morning.’ The one who comes to kill you is not (just) the 18, 16, 20, 30-year-old who points his weapon at you, but also the next generation and those that give birth to the next generation,” Mali said.

The rabbi asserted that “there is no such thing called an innocent creature… An elderly man can carry a rifle and shoot.”

Asked if the same is true for children, Mali replied, shrugging his shoulders, “It’s the same thing… When the Torah says, ‘Do not spare a soul, you must not spare a soul. Today he is a child, today he is a youth, tomorrow a fighter.”

Mali’s comments echoed statements by Israeli President Isaac Herzog early in the war.

“It is an entire nation out there responsible (for the October 7 attack). It is not true this rhetoric about civilians not being aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true. They could have risen up. They could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza in a coup d’etat,” the president told an October 17, 2023 news conference.

When asked to clarify whether he meant to say that since Gazans did not remove Hamas from power “that makes them, by implication, legitimate targets,” Herzog claimed, “No, I didn’t say that.”

However, Herzog then went on to say that “When you have a missile in your goddamn kitchen and you want to shoot it at me, am I allowed to defend myself?”

Tellingly, neither Herzog nor Netanyahu or any other government official has denounced Mali’s comments that echo not only the president’s earlier remarks but also those of various Cabinet-level officials.

The article Innocent Gazans pay a heavy price for Hamas and Israel’s disregard for human life appeared first on Arabian Post.

The Gaza war has turned Palestine into a lightning rod for mounting frustration and discontent in Arab autocracies such as Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco.

Concerned that the war could mobilise segments of civil society, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates where any form of public protest is banned, have cracked down on expressions of solidarity with Gaza, including the sporting of keffiyehs, the chequered scarf that symbolises Palestinian nationalism.

In December, pro-Palestinian activists at the COP28 climate summit in Dubai faced unprecedented restrictions including prohibitions on flags and explicitly naming a country in news conferences, and scrutiny of their slogans.

In January, the Red Sea Film Festival in Jeddah, the biggest film event in the Middle East and North Africa, welcomed Palestinian cinema but banned the donning by attendees of keffiyehs.

Like in the second half of the 20th century, protests in the Middle East beyond the Gulf in support of Palestinians and against Israel’s assault on Gaza are as much about the war as they are about anger at governments’ faltering economic performance.

Nowhere is the anger more acute than in Egypt where the country’s currency slipped this week sharply against the US dollar after the central bank raised its main interest rate by 600 base points to 27.75 per cent and said it would allow the currency’s exchange rate to be set by market forces. It was the Egyptian pound’s fifth devaluation in two years.

Hard hit by the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, the government expected the measures to stymie Egypt’s 31 per cent inflation rate, attract desperately needed foreign investment, and tackle its staggering shortage of foreign currency.

Egypt has suffered from a loss of tourism, significantly reduced Suez Canal shipping revenues because of Yemeni Houthi attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea, rising wheat prices in the wake of the Ukraine war, and economic mismanagement, including investment in megaprojects such as a US$58 billion new desert capital, and granting military-owned enterprises preferential treatment and an oversized stake in the economy.

The floating of the pound secured an expansion from US$3 billion to US$8 billion of Egypt’s International Monetary Fund bailout loan, making the North African country one of the IMF’s highest borrowers.

The IMF agreement cemented a recent deal with the United Arab Emirates to develop a prime stretch of Egypt’s Mediterranean coast with a US$ 35 billion investment over the next two months.

Egypt will retain a 35 per cent stake in the development with the Talaat Moustafa Group, a construction conglomerate involved in building the new capital as one of the beneficiaries.

While not officially announced, well-placed sources said It was understood that the deal was contingent on Egypt reaching an agreement with the IMF.

Gulf states, including the UAE, have in recent years backed away from pumping funds into black holes. Instead, they increasingly link investments in countries like Egypt and Pakistan to economic reforms and prospects for a return on investment.

The UAE pioneered the approach when it based a government minister in Cairo immediately after general-turned-president Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi’s UAE-backed coup that toppled Egypt’s first and only democratically elected president. The UAE official attempted to nudge Mr. Al-Sisi towards economic reform.

“We work with the International Monetary Fund and according to its rules. The days of unconditional assistance are over,” Saudi Finance Minister Mohammed al-Jadaan told an investment conference last year.

Last week, 45-year-old policeman Abdel-Gawad Muhammad al-Sahlamy was alone when he staged a one-man protest waving a Palestinian flag atop an advertisement billboard in the port city of Alexandria, but many Egyptians were likely to have been with him in spirit.

Many are angry that Egypt’s Refah border crossing into Gaza remains closed despite the images of thousands of Gazans dying and imminent famine. In October, the government sought to pre-empt potential protests by staging pro-Palestinian demonstrations of its own.

Mr. Al-Sisi believes that pro-Palestinian activists who were allowed to stage protests under former president Hosni Mubarak shifted their focus in 2011 to his regime and ultimately toppled him during the popular Arab uprisings. The revolts also led to the demise of autocratic rulers in Tunisia, Libya, and Yemen and sparked mass anti-government demonstrations elsewhere in the Middle East.

To be sure, Egypt is worried that Israel’s destruction of Gaza is an effort to rid the Strip of its population by inducing Gazans to flee to Egypt. Officials in Cairo also fear that Hamas operatives could infiltrate the Sinai Peninsula where the military has been countering a low-level insurgency. Mr. Al-Sisi’s government is weary of Hamas because of its links to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Even so, many Egyptians resent the government’s close security ties with Israel and its support for a 17-year-long Israeli blockade of Gaza that has been tightened since the war.

Egyptian resentment is compounded by reports that corrupt Egyptian government officials linked to the country’s intelligence service and a well-connected businessman who hails from the Sinai charge up to US$7,500 per person for travel permits from Gaza to Egypt.

Mr. Al-Sahlamy shouted “God is Great” and denounced Mr. Al-Sisi as a “traitor and an agent” before being arrested by security forces. The Egyptian Network for Human Rights (ENHR) said Mr. Al-Sahlamy has not been heard from since.

The network quoted a friend of Mr. Al-Sahlamy as saying he was “breaking down” because of the war, which he described as “injustice.” Mr. Al-Sahlamy demanded that “the (Egyptian) borders (with Gaza) should be opened” to allow Gazans to escape the carnage, ENHR quoted the policeman’s friend as saying.

The IMF’s austerity program could push struggling Egyptians to a level of destitution not seen since the Egyptian bread riots of 1977, despite the government’s insistence that it will put in plkace social protection measures to shield the most vulnerable.

The rising cost of basic goods has deepened the hardships faced by middle sand lower-class Egyptians. They have suffered from price hikes since the government embarked on an ambitious reform program in 2016 to overhaul the battered economy. Nearly 30 per cent of Egyptians live in poverty, according to official figures.

For now, Egyptians like others elsewhere in the Arab world, fear that uprisings would only enhance the chaos already gripping their part of the world.

In Egypt’s case, “the question of Sisi’s future will arise when Egyptian citizens decide that they have nothing more to lose,” said Israeli journalist and Middle East analyst Zvi Bar’el.

The same is true for much of the Middle East beyond the Gulf with widespread public frustration at Arab states’ inability or unwillingness to alleviate Palestinian suffering as the joker in the pack.

The article Gaza war turns Palestine into a potential Middle Eastern lightning rod appeared first on Arabian Post.

A proposed temporary Gaza ceasefire and prisoner exchange appears designed to buy war-battered Gazans relief while enabling Israel and Hamas to claim a success. However, whether Israel or Hamas emerges as the ultimate victor will be determined by whether the truce becomes permanent and the war ends.

Negotiated by Qatar, Egypt, the United States, Israel, and Hamas, the deal would be whittled down to the first stage of an earlier three-phase proposal that envisioned three 45-day periods during which a permanent ceasefire would be negotiated. The whittled-down plan suggests that the parties, except for Israel, who is determined to continue the war, hope the truce will create space for a negotiated permanent ceasefire.

Hamas has yet to formally respond to the latest proposal but a senior official, told Al Jazeera, “The atmosphere of optimism does not reflect reality.” For his part, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu asserted that “if Hamas goes down from its delusional claims and brings them down to Earth, we’ll have the progress that we all want.”  This weekend, Israel’s war cabinet decided to send a delegation to Qatar for further talks.

In a nod to Hamas demands, Israel would under the plan redeploy but not withdraw its troops from Gaza and allow the return to the northern part of the Strip of internally displaced Palestinian women and children. Hamas has insisted on a full Israeli withdrawal and the unrestricted return of Palestinians to their often-destroyed homes. The plan constitutes an attempt to lower the temperature during Ramadan, Islam’s upcoming holy month of fasting that is likely to shine a spotlight on Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa Mosque, the faith’s third holiest site, as a renewed flashpoint fuelling emotions across the Muslim world. Ramadan begins on March 10.

Some analysts suggest Hamas’ possible willingness to discuss a temporary rather than a permanent ceasefire constitutes a victory for the group’s Gaza-based leader, Yahya Sinwar, who tops Israel’s most wanted list and symbolises Israel’s failure to achieve its goals five months into its devastating military campaign. Israel has yet to capture or kill any of Hamas’ Gaza-based most senior leaders.

Israel’s recent controversial military focus on Rafah, the densely overpopulated most southern part of Gaza, is driven in part by the belief that Sinwar and other senior figures shelter in underground tunnels in Rafah surrounded by Hamas-held hostages as human shields.

Convinced that Israel will not end the war soon on terms that would allow for a credible process to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with the creation of an independent Palestinian state, Sinwar, widely viewed as a hardliner within Hamas, reportedly sees a temporary truce as an opportunity to regroup the group’s military wing.

Moreover, the truce would give Sinwar a tactical success with an exchange of 40 of the 136 Hamas-held hostages and bodies of captives killed during the war for an unspecified number of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons, particularly if they include inmates sentenced by Israeli courts to life imprisonment for killing Israelis.

Hamas took some 250 people hostage during its October 7 attack on Israel, more than 100 of whom were released for Palestinians incarcerated in Israel during a one-week, Qatar-mediated truce in November. The exchange ensured that more Israeli hostages have been killed than have so far been freed by Israeli troops. Sinwar may also believe that widespread anti-government protests in Israel and demands that the government prioritise the release of the hostages rather than the war strengthen Hamas’ position.

In addition, he may be counting on his demand for the release of Palestinians sentenced to life in prison sparking the fall of  Netanyahu’s government. Netanyahu’s far-right coalition partners have threatened to leave the government if the prime minister caves into Hamas’ demands. The far-right initially opposed the November exchange but ultimately acquiesced.

Sharing with Netanyahu a callous disregard for innocent Palestinian lives, Mr. Sinwar has miscalculated if he expected international pressure to disrupt Israel’s apparent strategy of targeting Palestinian civil society to “create a shock” that would “lead civilians to put pressure on Hamas.”

Israel has ignored widespread international condemnation and mild public US criticism. Gazans, despite signs of opposition, have failed to rise up against Hamas, whose popularity on the West Bank and in the Palestinian Diaspora has risen.

Compounding Israel’s failure to achieve its war goals, the Biden administration has asked Israel to stop targeting Hamas’ police force that provides security for aid trucks entering Gaza and attempts to restore a semblance of law and order.

The administration warned Israel that attacking the police could exacerbate an already dire humanitarian crisis and warned that it could spark a “total breakdown of law and order.” Shielding the police force is a double-edged sword. Police have cracked down on merchants hoarding badly needed goods to drive up prices but have also seized items in support of Hamas. Similarly, fuel siphoned off from aid trucks entering Gaza is sold on the black market at exorbitant prices. It’s a problem that in Gaza’s dire circumstances would be prevalent regardless of who controls the police.

Complicating Sinwar’s calculations, and those of Netanyahu, is a Saudi-backed three-pronged US attempt to tie a broader Middle East deal. The deal would involve the temporary ceasefire becoming permanent and ending the hostilities, the establishment of Saudi-Israeli diplomatic relations, and agreement on a credible pathway towards an independent Palestinian state.

The US and Saudi Arabia hope Netanyahu, an opportunist who prioritises his personal and political interests, may be sufficiently seduced by the ability to claim credit for formalising relations with the Middle East’s crown jewel Arab state to risk the break-up of his government and reverse his rejection of a Palestinian state. It remains unclear whether differences between Mr. Sinwar and some of Hamas’ exile leaders involved in the negotiations to achieve a ceasefire are tactical or strategic when it comes to the group’s endgame in the war, its potential willingness to embrace a historic compromise, and its post-war posture.

Hamas negotiators have insisted that the group would only agree to a permanent ceasefire that would end the war. Even so, Sinwar, based in Gaza rather than cushy Doha, the Qatari capital, is the group’s ultimate decision maker. The difference in what drives Sinwar and Netanyahu and explains their callousness lies in an anecdote recently recalled by Aluf Benn, the editor-in-chief of Israel’s widely respected Haaretz newspaper.

Benn remembered former Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Dayan’s words at the 1956 funeral of an Israeli farmer, brutally murdered by Palestinian militants.  “Let us not cast blame on the murderers. For eight years, they have been sitting in the refugee camps in Gaza, and before their eyes we have been transforming the lands and the villages where they and their fathers dwelt into our estate,” Dayan said.

Benn concluded from that anecdote that “on October 7, 2023, Dayan’s age-old warning materialised in the bloodiest way possible… Israelis cannot expect stability if they continue to ignore the Palestinians and reject their aspirations, their story, and even their presence. This is the lesson the country should have learned from Dayan’s age-old warning.”

It’s a lesson Sinwar brutally embraced and Netanyahu and many Israelis, perhaps even a majority, have yet to grasp.

The article Ceasefire talks are about more than a Gaza truce and prisoner exchange appeared first on Arabian Post.

Two recent soccer incidents suggest that beyond optics little has changed in the Saudi-Iranian rivalry since China mediated the restoration of diplomatic relations between the two countries a year ago.

On the contrary, the Gaza war has highlighted the potential threat Iran and its non-state allies pose to the kingdom, even if both countries have toned down their rhetoric, are cautious not to provoke the other, and have regular diplomatic contact.

The war has reinforced Iran’s positioning as a staunch supporter of the Palestinians while Arab states struggle to end to the human carnage in Gaza. The war has also made Iran a key player in determining whether the Gaza conflict evolves into a regional military conflagration.

Even so, the war is not all good news for Iran.

If anything, the war has strengthened Saudi Arabia’s conviction that its security is vested in a closer defense relationship with the United States and formal relations with Israel, despite the kingdom’s condemnation of the Gaza carnage and criticism of the US refusal to force an immediate permanent ceasefire.

To be sure, the war has raised the bar for Saudi recognition of Israel but has not changed the kingdom’s fundamental strategic calculus.

Even so, that does not appear to have called into question Iran or, for that matter, Saudi Arabia’s continued interest in ensuring differences do not spin out of control.

Saudi Arabia fears that Hamas’ successful October 7 breach of Israeli defences could inspire Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels if the kingdom and the Houthis fail to conclude an agreement that would offer the Saudis a face-saving end to its 2015 military intervention in Yemen.

Saudi threat perceptions have been reinforced by the Houthis’ demonstrated ability to impede shipping in the Gulf’s strategic waterways with missile and drone attacks intended to disrupt shipping to and from Israeli ports in support of the Palestinians.

The recent arrest and questioning of Shiite Muslim soccer fans in Saudi Arabia illustrates that the dialing down of Saudi-Iranian tensions has done little to change fundamental Saudi attitudes towards Iran and the kingdom’s Shiite Muslim minority. The kingdom has long seen Shiites as religious heretics and an Iranian fifth wheels.

Saudi Arabia broke relations with Iran in 2016 after Iranians stormed the kingdom’s diplomatic missions in the Islamic republic in protest against the execution of a prominent Saudi Shiite cleric. Neither the Chinese-mediated restoration of relations nor Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s economic and social reforms and subjugation of the country’s ultra-conservative religious establishment have done much to tackle anti-Shiite bias.

Authorities earlier this month arrested 10 fans and summoned 150 other supporters of Saudi First Division club Al Safa FC for chanting Shiite Muslim slogans and songs during a match against Al Bukayriyah FC in the city of Safwa in the kingdom’s Shiite-majority Eastern Province.

The sports ministry dissolved Al Safa’s board immediately after the incident for failing to adhere to the kingdom’s laws and regulations. “The Ministry of Sports emphasises to everyone the need to adhere to the rules and regulations for sports competitions,” the ministry said.

In addition, the Saudi Football Federation’s Disciplinary and Ethics Committee ordered Al Safa to pay a US$53,300 fine. It also banned club fans from attending the team’s next five league matches.

The committee asserted that the fans had chanted slogans and songs that “violated the provisions of the disciplinary and ethics regulations.”

Iran targeted soccer fans at about the same time that Saudi authorities cracked down on Shiite supporters but for different reasons.

A Norway-based Kurdish human rights group, the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, said ten Kurdish teenagers had been arrested for celebrating Qatar’s recent defeat of Iran in the AFC Asian Cup.

Hengaw said that Kurds in several predominantly Kurdish cities in western Iran took to the streets to celebrate Iran’s loss.

The celebrations followed the sentencing three days earlier of Sherko Hejazi,, the head of the Saqqez football association in the the predominantly Kurdish city of Saqqez, to six years in prison for “plotting to undermine domestic security” and membership in opposition groups.

The incidents, weeks before Iran’s March 1 parliamentary and Assembly of Experts elections, reflected continued widespread discontent after mass protests in 2022 and 2023 in the wake of the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini, a Saqqez resident, for wearing her hijab “improperly.”

More than 500 people were killed by security forces attempting to quell the protests.

In many ways a mirror image of Saudi Shiites, Iranian Sunni Muslims played a prominent role in the protests.

However, unlike Saudi Arabia, Iran also faces a low-level militant Sunni Muslim insurgency linked to the Islamic republic’s Baloch minority.

Jaish al-Adl, a militant Sunni Muslim group operating across the border in Pakistan, attacked a police station in Rask in Iran’s Sistan-Baluchistan Province in December, killing at least 12 officers.

In a rare cross-border military operation, Iran targeted in January Jaish al-Adel bases in Pakistan’s neighbouring Balochistan province. Two days later, Pakistan struck at what it said were separatist militant Baloch hideouts in Iran.

This year’s election of the 88-member Assembly that appoints Iran’s Supreme Leader comes as Iran gears up for a potential succession to 84-year-old Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

Several reformist and centrist candidates, including former president Hassan Rouhani were disqualified in advance of the election. Many Iranians had hoped that the détente with Saudi Arabia would provide relief for Iran’s economy hampered by harsh US sanctions. Saudi Arabia has been careful not to violate sanctions.

As a result, turnout is likely to be seen as a barometer of the Iranian public’s mood. The government has claimed that voter enthusiasm is increasing but has prevented the publication of opinion polls to back up its assertion. In a rare exception, a poll conducted in December by the Iranian Students Polling Agency (ISPA) suggested that a mere 28 per cent of those surveyed would cast a vote.

A Netherlands-based Gamaan Institute survey conducted in the first week of February concluded that only 15 per cent of respondents intended to vote. Seventy-seven per cent said they would not go to the polls, while eight per cent were undecided. Three quarters of those surveyed said they would vote against an Islamic republic as their preferred governance system if given the choice.

The soccer incidents, while different and unrelated, tell a story of discontent among minorities in Saudi Arabia and Iran across ethnic and sectarian divides. They also tell a story of stepped-up repression of human and minorities rights and freedom of religion in both countries that casts a cloud over Saudi and Iranian efforts to manage their differences.

The article Soccer incidents question fundamentals of Saudi-Iran detente appeared first on Arabian Post.

By James M Dorsey

The irony of Middle Eastern geopolitics is that Israel makes it increasingly difficult for US President Joe Biden to support it, while Iran strengthens domestic US anti-Iranian and pro-Israeli hardliners. The hardliners are emboldened by the failure of calibrated US strikes in response to numerous attacks on US forces in the Middle East and on shipping in the Red Sea to deter Iranian-backed militia groups in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen.

The deaths this week of three American soldiers in an attack on a US military base on the Jordanian-Syrian border by an Iranian-backed Iraqi militia alliance potentially mark a watershed that could send regional tensions spinning out of control. American anti-Iranian hardliners and pro-Israeli forces pressure Mr. Biden to strike back hard, possibly by targeting Iran directly.

Iran may not direct or plan the attacks but likely can persuade its non-state allies, who justify their attacks with the Israeli assault on Gaza, to step back. Iran and its non-state partners have publicly affirmed that various militias benefit from Iranian funding, weapon supplies, and training. Iran would like to keep the Middle East at a boiling point without tensions expanding Gaza into a regional war. Iran benefits from Gaza fuelling popular anti-Americanism in the Middle East.

So far, rather than use its leverage, Iran cloaks itself in the mantle of plausible deniability. Iran insists that its allied militias independently decide whether to attack US facilities. In a surprise move, Kata’ib Hezbollah, a constituent member of The Islamic Resistance if Iraq, the alliance that said it attacked the US base in Jordan, announced this week that it had suspended attacking US targets.

Denying that Iran was involved in the group’s decision-making, Kata’ib Hezbollah said the suspension was intended to avoid putting the Iraqi government in a difficult spot. The group likely does not want to complicate negotiations with the United States over a US troop withdrawal from Iraq.

“We recommend to the brave Mujahideen of the free Hezbollah Brigades to commit to passive defense temporarily. If any hostile American action occurs towards them, then may Allah decide,” the group’s leader, Abu Hussein al-Muhammadawi, said in a statement on the group’s website.

Muhammadawi’s statement came on the heels of a message sent to the Iraqi government, warning that the United States would have an “appropriate response” to groups that attack its forces in Iraq and Syria. His predecessor, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, was killed in 2020 in a US strike in Bagdad that targeted Qassim Suleimani, the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ Al-Quds force that manages Iran’s ties to non-state militias in the Middle East.

Iran has more than one reason to tread carefully. With Russian troops in Syria, Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned his Syrian counterpart, Bashar al-Assad, that he does not want to see Syria embroiled in a regional conflagration. Similarly, China has advised Iran to avoid the risk of a broader Middle East war. Mounting anti-Iranian sentiment in the United States benefits Israel.

Like, Iran Biden struggles to contain conflict in the Middle East, while maintaining support for Israel. The president’s problem is that Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu makes it increasingly difficult for the president to back Israel unconditionally, not only because of Israel’s conduct in Gaza and the West Bank but also due to the extremism of his coalition partners and Likud Party members.

US Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken is scheduled to visit Jerusalem this week, his sixth visit since the war started, to persuade Israel to change its brutal Gaza and West Bank tactics, help deescalate regional tensions, and plan for a transition in Gaza towards restored Palestinian rule. Netanyahu is unlikely to be very cooperative.

This week, he was quick to pour cold water on optimism that further Hamas-Israeli prisoner swaps were in the offing. Netanyahu rejected a permanent ceasefire, insisted that Israeli troops would remain in Gaza, and vowed not to release “thousands of terrorists” in exchange for the Hamas-held hostages. An Israeli Channel 12 opinion poll suggested that 50 per cent of Israelis supported Netanyahu’s rejection.

A plan crafted this weekend by Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, Burns, and the Israeli and Egyptian intelligence chiefs envisions a prolonged ceasefire and Hamas-Israel prisoner exchanges. Al-Thani discussed the plan in Washington a day later with Blinken. The plan is reportedly a fusion of an original Qatari and Egyptian plan and an Israeli counter proposal.

The deal involves an initial 45-day ceasefire during which up to 40 women, elderly and ill Hamas-held hostages kidnapped during the group’s October 7 attack on Israel would be exchanged for 4,000 Palestinians incarcerated in Israel. A second and third phase to be negotiated towards the end of the 45-day truce would see swaps of first Israeli women soldiers and then male military personnel and the remains of hostages killed in captivity for an unspecified number of Palestinians in Israeli prisons.

Hamas holds 136 hostages and bodies captive. In November, the group freed more than 100 hostages in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners.

Netanyahu, speaking out of both sides of his mouth, rejected key elements of the plan at a religious seminary in a West Bank settlement. His remarks appeared designed to pacify Israel’s far-right who populate his cabinet. He spoke as Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas’ political bureau, winged his way to Cairo to discuss the latest proposal with Egyptian spy chief General Abbas Kamel. Before leaving for Cairo, Haniyeh said Hamas “is open to discussing any serious and practical initiatives or ideas, provided that they lead to a comprehensive cessation of aggression.”

The trick in bridging the gap between Hamas and Israel is a formula that would allow both parties to claim they had achieved their irreconcilable goals, a permanent ceasefire vs a continuation of the war. One formula under consideration is a lengthy ceasefire with no formal end to the war. This would allow Hamas to bet on Israel not getting Western support for a revival of hostilities.

Some diplomats suggest that describing the ceasefire as ‘transitional’ could make it easier for Hamas to back down from its insistence on a permanent ceasefire and withdrawal of Israeli forces. Even so, it’s a formula that Hamas’ Gaza-based leadership, as opposed to the group’s exile leaders, is likely to reject.

Gazan Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar tops Israel’s most wanted list. He is widely viewed as a hardliner, whose term is slated to end under the group’s term limits if Hamas were to move ahead with elections scheduled for later this year. Haniyeh, the hostage negotiator and Sinwar’s predecessor, is widely viewed as a frontrunner in an election.

Senior Israeli military figures argue that Israel needs to translate its on-the ground achievements in Gaza diplomatically to prevent Hamas from filling the vacuum in Gaza. Like elsewhere in Gaza, Hamas’ ability to rebuild a system of governance and law and order, was evident in Gaza’s Shaila refugee camp to which the group returned as soon as Israeli troops left. Netanyahu made his remarks as not only as Hamas but also Israel’s far right asserted itself. (IPA Service)

By arrangement with the Arabian Post

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By James M Dorsey

A recent Lebanese public opinion poll suggests there may be limits to Iran-backed Shiite militia Hezbollah’s restraint in confronting Israel. It also suggests why Iran feels emboldened by escalating tensions in the Middle East.

The poll results are significant with Hezbollah and Israel engaged in tit-for-tat cross border attacks that both parties have sought to contain but could spin out of control at any moment.

Hezbollah has wanted to contain the hostilities because a majority of Lebanese oppose their country becoming embroiled in a war, particularly with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu warning that Israel could turn Beirut into another Gaza.

In the final analysis, the poll, conducted in late November and early December by The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, suggested that public support for Iranian-backed militants was on the rise. The poll further indicated that the majority of Lebanese opposed to increased military engagement in support of Gaza is fragile.

Various factors could upset the apple cart. These include an unintended escalation of the border hostilities sparked by a large number of civilian casualties, repeated Israeli targeted killings on Lebanese soil of prominent Hezbollah and Hamas figures, a potential International Court of Justice ruling asserting that Israel’s military campaign in Gaza risks genocide in a case submitted by South Africa, and the fallout of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu rejecting the creation of an independent Palestinian state and insisting that Israel would maintain control of territory conquered in the 1967 Middle East war.

The poll showed that only a slim majority of Lebanese, 53 per cent, prioritised addressing their country’s political and economic crisis above becoming embroiled in a “foreign war.”An identical slim majority, 53 per cent, believed resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict required negotiations rather than a military solution. Even so, a vast majority postulated that Israeli weakness and internal divisions meant that Israel ultimately can be defeated. At the same time, Lebanese were unanimous, 99 per cent, in wanting Arab states to break all ties to Israel because of the Gaza war.

Hezbollah is likely to take heart from significant increases in its popularity across denominations with Shiite Muslims, Sunni Muslims, and Christians each accounting for roughly one third of Lebanon’s population. Eight-nine per cent of Shiites had a “very positive” view of Hezbollah up from 66 per cent in 2020. Hezbollah’s popularity among Sunnis who had at least a “somewhat positive” attitude towards the group jumped from six per cent in 2020 to 34 per cent, while 29 per cent of Christians expressed a similar opinion compared to 16 per cent in 2020.Similarly, 79 per cent of Lebanese viewed Hamas favourably.

Netanyahu’s public rejection of a Palestinian state fit a long-standing pattern of Middle Eastern politics in which hardliners on both sides of various divides reinforce one another. That may be only the icing on Netanyahu’s cake. He did not say anything he had not suggested over the years, which puts the emphasis on the timing of the prime minister’s comments.

His reiterated rejection of a Palestinian state was designed to pacify his ultra-nationalist and ultra-conservative coalition partners as well as stymie US efforts to persuade Saudi Arabia to establish diplomatic relations with Israel that emphasise a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The United States needs regionalization for Arab buy-in to post-war arrangements in Gaza and the West Bank which is unlikely to be forthcoming without the prospect of a credible peace process.

Speaking at the Davos forum, Israeli President Isaac Herzog described relations with Saudi Arabia as a gamechanger and a key to ending the Gaza war. However, that remains a pipedream with the current Israeli government. Moreover, the problem is that a new Israeli government may not have the sharp edges of Mr. Netanyahu’s ultra-nationalists and ultra-conservatives but may be equally unwilling to make the kind of concessions required for a credible peace process.

Former Saudi intelligence chief and ambassador to the United States and Britain Turki al Faisal, who is believed to be close to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, appeared to echo that sentiment and take it a step further.“The present leadership of Hamas, of the PLO, and of Israel should be excluded from any participation in any future political role They have to pay for what they have done… All of them are failures,” Al Faisal told CNN’s Christane Amanpour.

Responding to Netanyahu’s rejection, US President Joe Biden, wittingly or unwittingly, noted that a two-state solution means different things to different people. The president suggested a two-state solution could involve a demilitarised Palestinian state that would be more palatable for Israeli hardliners.

That has long been Israel’s often unspoken definition across the country’s political spectrum with few exceptions, reinforced by Hamas’ October 7 attack in which 1,100 people, mostly civilians were killed. The problem is that Israeli security concerns about Palestinians are a mirror-image of Palestinian security concerns about Israel after more than half a century of occupation and the current Gaza carnage, likely making demilitarization a non-starter for Palestinians.

For his part, Netanyahu feels emboldened by Biden’s poor polling in an election year, solid Republican support for Israel, and his past ability to counter a US President domestically in the United States. At the same time, Netanyahu bolstered with his comments the credibility of Iran’s opposition to Arab states normalizing relations with Israel.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei cautioned days before Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel that normalisation of relations with Israel amounted to “gambling” that was “doomed to failure.” He warned that countries establishing relations with the Jewish state would be “in harm’s way.”

Events since October 7 have reinforced Iran’s sense that the winds of Middle Eastern geopolitics are blowing in its favour. Israel’s conduct in the Gaza war has drawn criticism from much of the international community, except for the United States and several European countries. A potential international court ruling would deepen the dent in Israel’s moral standing inflicted by the war.

In Switzerland, prosecutors said they were investigating unspecified criminal complaints against Herzog as he attended the World Economic Forum. It was unclear whether the complaint was related to his remarks at the Forum or to past remarks or actions. Herzog was cited in South Africa’s international court case as suggesting that all Gazans were responsible for Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel.

In addition, Iran’s non-state allies complicate affairs for Israel and the United States. More than three months into the war, Israel has yet to achieve its goals of destroying Hamas and liberating the remaining 139 Hamas-held hostages abducted during the October 7 fighting, including the bodies of those since killed in Gaza.

While not directly involving Iranian non-state allies, mounting tensions on the West Bank where Israeli raids and clashes with Palestinian fighters threaten to mushroom into an insurgency, strengthen Iran’s hardline position. (IPA Service)

By arrangement with the Arabian Post

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By James M Dorsey

History repeats itself. Palestinian airplane hijackings and attacks on Israeli civilians in Israel as well as on Israeli and Jewish targets abroad pockmarked the 1970s and 1980s. The violence put the Palestinian issue on the world agenda. The violence erupted, and at times, was driven by fierce debate among Palestinian guerilla leaders on whether to drop maximalist demands for replacing the State of Israel with a (Palestinian-dominated) “secular democratic state” and strive for a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

It took the PLO 16 years to unambiguously accept Israel’s existence and end armed resistance against Israel in 1988. The violence ebbed and flowed. It involved targeted assassinations of Israeli and Palestinian representatives and leaders in third countries.

The 1982 shooting in London of the Israeli ambassador to Britain, Shlomo Argov, sparked the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and forced Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organisation to decamp from Lebanon to Tunisia. For much of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, Israel refused to engage with the PLO, employing the same language it uses today about Hamas. To be sure, Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel upped the ante in scale and brutality.

It has, again fitting a historic pattern, empowered the most extreme ultra-nationalist, ultra-religious elements on Israel’s political spectrum, and sparked a war, involving indiscriminate bombing and punishment of a civilian population that Israel and Hamas will find difficult to live down. While the jury is out, the war has not halted a torturous process within Hamas, much like the equally torturous evolution within the PLO. Hamas’ internal debate became evident with the adoption of its 2017 amended charter and has continued despite the war. There is no guarantee that Hamas will follow in the footsteps of the PLO.

This week’s presumably Israeli killing in Beirut of senior Hamas official Saleh al-Arouri, a 57-year-old co-founder of the group’s military wing, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, and deputy head of its political bureau, raises the spectre of renewed tit-for-tat Palestinian and Israeli killings in third countries with one difference.

Al-Arouri, was widely viewed as a hardliner within Hamas, responsible for the group’s military infrastructure in Lebanon and operations on the West Bank, where its popularity is on the rise because of the Gaza war and its contribution to a potentially burgeoning armed insurgency.

Protests erupted on the West Bank, in response to calls by Hamas for “acts of resistance,” to protest the killing of Al-Arouri, a West Bank native, and several other Hamas operatives in the Beirut drone strike. A general strike closed down businesses. In August, Al-Arouri telegraphed Hamas’s intentions long before the October 7 attack.

“A total war has become inevitable. We all consider it necessary… The resistance axis, the Palestinian people, and our nation, we want this total war. It is not (just) something we say in the media. We talk about it behind closed doors…. We are discussing together the different scenarios and possibilities,” Al-Arouri told Al Maydeen TV.

Last century’s tit-for-tat killings of Palestinians targeted primarily PLO moderates, not hardliners, and were perpetrated not only by Israel but also by Palestinian hardliners, like Abu Nidal, a renegade PLO operative.

Israel has repeatedly warned that it will hunt down Hamas operatives wherever they are. In 2015, the US State Department offered up to $5 million for “information leading to the identification or location” of Al-Arouri.

Even so, Israel failed to notify the Biden administration of its plans to take out Al-Arouri, a sign it feared the US would oppose the operation because it risked expanding the war beyond carefully calibrated hostilities on the Lebanese-Israeli border and in the Red Sea as well as Israeli-Palestinian clashes in the West Bank. Complicating the fallout of Al-Arouri’s death is the fact that Israel and Hamas are not the only players.

Hezbollah has vowed to retaliate for the killing in Lebanon of any representative of the Iranian-backed Axis of Resistance that includes Hamas, the Yemeni Houthis, and Iraqi militias alongside the Lebanese Shiite militia and the Islamic Republic.

Hezbollah has been waging a war against Israel since October 7 to tie Israeli forces down on the Jewish state’s northern border so that they cannot be deployed in Gaza without provoking an all-out conflict that could prove disastrous for Hezbollah and Lebanon.

Arouri’s killing puts Hezbollah between a rock and a hard place. It needs to find a way to be seen as living up to its vow while ensuring the hostilities do not spin out of control. Many in Lebanon fear Hamas could drag the bankrupt country into a war they do not want.

Last month, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu threatened on a visit to troops on the Lebanese border that Israel would “single-handedly turn Beirut and South Lebanon, not far from here, into Gaza and Khan Yunis” if Hezbollah started an all-out war.

In a 90-minute speech to commemorate the fourth anniversary of the US assassination of Iranian Revolutionary Guard Qassem Soleimani scheduled before Al-Arouri’s killing, Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah referred only summarily to the Hamas leader’s death.

Much of his speech was an ode to Soleimani and Iran’s role in supporting militias in Gaza, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen by funding, training, and arming them, enabling them to manufacture weaponry, and creating the Axis of Resistance. Even so, Nasrallah insisted that Axis members independently took their own decisions and did not take orders from Iran.

Clad in a black cloak and turban, Nasrallah praised Hamas’ October 7 attack with no mention of the group’s targeting of civilians. He described the carnage rained on Gaza by Israel in response as “worth the sacrifice.” The Hezbollah leader produced a laundry list of why Hamas was winning the war, including its success in putting the Palestinian plight back on the international agenda.

The war succeeded in “reviving the Palestinian cause, forcing nations across the world to look for solutions,” Nasrallah said, noting that Arab countries had been willing to establish formal relations with Israel without a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Yet, the Hezbollah leader seemed to buy time, by saying he would address the issue of Lebanon and Al-Arouri’s killing in greater detail in another speech on Friday during a ceremony for a Hezbollah operative who died recently.

At the same time, Nasrallah appeared to suggest that Hezbollah would retaliate for Al-Arouri’s killing on the group’s timeline, considering widespread Lebanese opposition to a war with Israel. Nasrallah warned, referring to Al-Arouri’s killing in the Hezbollah stronghold in southern Beirut, that “yesterday’s crime is blatant, it is serious. This crime will not go unanswered. The battlefield is there, the nights are there.”

Yet, he also noted that “we are taking the situation in Lebanon into account.” Tellingly, Nasrallah seemed to back hardliners in Hamas’ internal debate. Arguing that Jewish attachment to the land was fabricated and that Israelis were fleeing the country because Israel was proven incapable of providing security, Nasrallah addressed Israelis directly, saying, “Here you don’t have a future. The land of Palestine is for the Palestinians.” (IPA Service)

By arrangement with the Arabian Post

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By James M Dorsey

Think that the heart wrenching images streaming out of the Gaza Strip suggest that Israel has Hamas over a barrel? Think again. Talks in Europe and in Cairo suggest otherwise. The talks stalled after Hamas insisted that it would not engage in prisoner exchange negotiations unless Israel halts fighting and agrees to a ceasefire. US President Joe Biden admitted as much, declaring that “there is no expectation at this point” of a renewed prisoner exchange. Even so, Israeli media reported that talks had not broken down.

A Qatari delegation was in Egypt to discuss options. David Barnea, head of Mossad, was expected to meet Qatari officials to revive indirect contacts with Hamas.”We don’t fight just because we want to fight. We are not partisans in a zero-sum game. We want the war to end,” Husam Badran, a member of Hamas’ political bureau, told The Wall Street Journal. Speaking to Al Jazeera, Badran said an “exchange deal can still be reached. But it cannot be reached without an end to the aggression. We are prepared for an ‘all for all deal.’” All Palestine hostages for all Israeli hostages.

Hamas derives its leverage from its ability to ignore Gazan voices blaming it for the October 7 carnage and willingness to endure Israel’s relentless, indiscriminate bombing on the back of the Strip’s population. To be fair, with Israel determined to continue the war until it destroys Hamas, the United States’ increasing criticism of Israel’s conduct of the war, and the international community’s focus on getting humanitarian aid into Gaza, the group’s strategy may prove the most effective.

Working in Hamas’ favour is the fact that Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is caught in a Catch-22. Netanyahu cannot ignore mounting domestic pressure to prioritise the release of hostages rather than the destruction of the group. At the same time, Netanyahu risks a break-up of his ultra-nationalist, ultra-conservative coalition if he makes concessions to Hamas in negotiations.

The Prime Minister fears that a break-up could accelerate his political demise. The majority of Israelis blame him for the intelligence and operational failures that enabled Hamas’ October 7 attack. The risk of a break-up increases because the majority of Israelis in Hamas captivity are military personnel.

Hamas and Palestine Islamic Jihad base their demand for an ‘all for all’ prisoner exchange on the template of past swaps involving Israeli soldiers. An ‘all for all’ deal would hand Hamas a political victory. In 2011, Hamas freed Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in exchange for 1,027 Palestinians. In 1984 Israel exchanged 4,500 Palestinians for six Israelis held in Lebanon by the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and two years later 1,150 for three Israelis captured by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command.

An ‘all for all’ deal would involve the controversial release of Palestinians convicted to long-term or life sentences on charges of murder. The deal would potentially strengthen Hamas’ position in talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestine Authority about resolving their long-standing differences and forming a united front in preparation for the day guns fall silent in Gaza.

Hardline Israeli opponents of an ‘all for all’ deal note that among the prisoners released in exchange for Mr. Shalit was Hamas’ Gaza leader, Yahya Sinwar. Israel accuses Sinwar of masterminding the October 7 attack. He tops Israel’s most-wanted list. Addressing a recent security cabinet meeting, Chief of Staff Herzl Halevi argued that it took the US military ten years to locate and kill Osama bin Laden. Critics note that negotiations rather than military operations have led, so far, to hostage release.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad last month exchanged more than 100 captives, primarily women and children, for 240 Palestinians in Israeli prisons. This was during a Qatar-negotiated week-long truce. Israel’s military campaign has produced primarily dead hostages killed in bombings and fighting and only one captive liberated alive.

Pressure on Netanyahu mounted after Israeli soldiers last week killed three bare-breasted male hostages waving a white flag as they escaped Hamas captivity. Hamas and Islamic Jihad have sought to step up the pressure with the release of videos of three more hostages allegedly killed in the fighting and several elderly captives.

To avoid the pitfalls of a swap involving Israeli military personnel, Israel, so far unsuccessfully, wants to limit the next round of exchanges to the release of 40 hostages, 19 women and two children still in captivity as well as older men in need of medical care during a one-week truce. A limited exchange would allow Netanyahu to claim he is doing everything possible to get hostages released. It would also provide him with cover to comply with US demands that the military transition into a low-intensity campaign in Gaza that would require less troops on the ground, involve more targeted operations, and reduce the risk of civilian casualties. (IPA Service)

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The article Israel, Hamas Prisoner Exchange Talks Further Mired appeared first on Arabian Post.

By James M Dorsey

Israel wasn’t slamming the door on renewed indirect prisoner swap negotiations with Hamas when it this week barred David Barnea, the head of Mossad, the country’s foreign intelligence agency, from travelling to Qatar to explore possibilities for renewed exchanges. Instead, it was manoeuvring for greater leverage in potential talks and expressing doubts about whether Hamas could deliver a second temporary truce in the Gaza war that would make further prisoner swaps possible.

Israeli media reports suggested that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant opposed the trip in the belief that Hamas’ Qatar-based leaders had lost contact with the group’s Gaza leadership after it failed to respond to Qatari proposals. Exiled Hamas leaders, Khaled Mishaal and Ismail Haniyeh, served as conduits to their Gaza counterparts in talks in November that produced a week-long truce during which Hamas released 84 Israeli and 24 foreign hostages in exchange for 240 Palestinians held in Israeli jails.

Some Israeli sources suggested that Israel, despite pressure from relatives of the 138 hostages kidnapped by Hamas in its October 7 attack on Israel to prioritize the release of the captives, may not want to negotiate at a time that the United States is pressing it to adapt its military strategy to ensure fewer Gazan civilian casualties.

Barnea was stopped from travelling a day after US President Joe Biden met in the White House with relatives of American nationals held hostage by Hamas. Israel’s negotiating position was weakened by a US intelligence assessment concluding that half of the air-to-ground ordinance Israel has dropped on Gaza since October 7 consisted of unguided rather than precision-guided munitions. The report challenged Israeli assertions that its military sought to spare or minimise civilian casualties. Israel was quick to counter the assertion.

The Hamas-controlled Gaza health ministry puts casualties at close to 19,000. The ministry classifies all casualties as civilian. It is unclear whether that number includes Hamas fighters or whether the ministry simply does not publish that figure. Even if fighters were included, the vast majority of casualties, including 7,700 children, are civilians. Israel puts the number of fighters killed at about 7,000, including ten battalion and brigade commanders. Hamas is estimated to have 30,000 fighters.

Qatar appears to see a second round of prisoner swaps as a possible way of turning a limited and temporary deal into something that could lead to an end in the fighting and create the basis for negotiations to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This week, Israeli President Isaac Herzog poured cold water on peace talks and the creation of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel any time soon.

In wanting to negotiate a second round of prisoner exchanges, Qatar reportedly proposes it involve not only women and children but also men. Last month’s swaps exclusively involved Israeli women and children and foreign nationals held by Hamas in exchange for Palestinian women and children incarcerated by Israel.

In a move that could influence strained relations between Hamas and the Western-backed, West Bank-based Palestine Authority, Qatar reportedly suggested that Marwan Barghouti, a popular member of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Al Fatah group be included in a potential exchange.

Widely seen as a potential successor to 87-year-old Abbas if Israel releases him, Barghouti was convicted to five cumulative life sentences in prison on murder charges. Israel accuses Barghouti of founding the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, a coalition of Palestinian armed groups in the West Bank.

In 2006, Barghouti authored from prison a National Conciliation Document of the Prisoners that was co-signed by Hamas. The document endorsed Palestinians’ right to resist Israeli occupation, implicitly including armed resistance, while appearing to envision a two-state solution.

Exiled Hamas leaders’ apparent willingness to re-engage in prisoner swap negotiations reverses their earlier refusal to further discuss exchanges until Israel halts its assault on Gaza. The turnaround fits a pattern of convoluted and contradictory statements by Hamas leaders as well as Iranians suggesting that militants and their backers are manoeuvring for the day the guns fall silent in Gaza.

The manoeuvring started when Iran signed on to a statement by leaders of Arab and Muslim-majority countries gathered in Riyadh last month endorsing the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. A month later, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian appeared to roll back the Iranian endorsement. He told the Doha Forum this week that rejection of a two-state resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was Iran and Israel’s only agreement.

Iranian political scientist Nasser Hadrian noted that “there are three views in Iran, which are reconcilable. One is a referendum. They argue that Palestinians, Jews, Christians, and Muslims should decide the future of that country. Number two is whatever Palestinians decide is fine for Iran…. And there are people in Iran who think a two-state solution is the best solution.

Making a point of condemning Hamas’ targeting of civilians in its October 7 attacks alongside tackling Israel for its conduct of the war, Hadrian argued that in the end Iran would accept realities on the ground. He was referring a 1982 Arab peace plan that proposes recognition of Israel in exchange for a Palestinian state and various Muslim countries that have maintained diplomatic relations with Israel, or in the case of Saudi Arabia, are considering recognising the Jewish state.

Iran’s manoeuvres occurred against the backdrop of contrasting Palestinian and Iranian responses to Iranian support for Hamas. Iran’s rising popularity among Palestinians is in stark contrast to sympathy for Israel among ordinary Iranians, according to Hadrian. A recent survey concluded that 41 per cent of Gazans and 30 per cent of West Bankers were satisfied with Iran’s role in the Gaza war. Yemen’s Houthi rebels, who have fired missiles towards Israel and attacked Israel-related shipping in the Gulf scored double those numbers.

Iranians’ response is diametrically opposite. Iranian manoeuvring also constitutes an attempt to facilitate efforts to ease harsh US sanctions imposed in response to Iran’s nuclear program. The United States has effectively frozen billions of dollars it had promised to release as part of a prisoner exchange deal because of Iranian support for Hamas.

Much like Iran, exile Hamas officials, in an exercise of one step forward, two steps backward, signalled that recognition of Israel was not beyond the pale. The PLO, a coalition of Palestinian factions other than Hamas, recognized Israel’s right to exist and renounced terrorism in 1988. In exchange, Israel acknowledged the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people. (IPA Service)

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The United Arab Emirates walks a geopolitical tightrope, juggling big power rivalries and mounting regional instability fuelled by the Gaza war. 

Putin’s movements beyond the confines of Russia are restricted. Signatories of the Rome Statute that established the International Criminal Court are obliged to arrest Putin against whom the court has issued a Ukraine-related international arrest warrant. Visiting the UAE and Saudi Arabia was a safe bet. Neither country is a signatory to the Rome Statute.

Even so, Putin’s visit puts the UAE at odds with its foremost security partner, the United States, that wants its allies to implement Western sanctions against Russia for its 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The UAE, like other Gulf countries, has done everything but.

Trade between Russia and the UAE increased by nearly 68% on the year to US$9 billion in 2022, according to Russian state news agency Tass. Russian exports to the UAE comprised US$8.5 billion of that total. Some one million Russians visited the UAE last year.

Similarly, the United States has pressured the UAE to halt alleged arms supplies to the rebel Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Sudan that has been fighting the country’s armed forces since April. The UAE denied supporting the RSF. The UAE, despite US designation of Emirati companies for violating sanctions against Russia, has so far successfully leveraged its value to the United States and Europe to ensure that it doesn’t rupture relations.

The UAE has earned brownie points in Washington with its recognition of Israel in 2020 along with Bahrain and Morocco, rejection of calls to break off diplomatic relations with the Jewish state in protest against the Gaza war, condemnation of the October 7 Hamas attack, and its support of the United States in Afghanistan.

The UAE is quietly positioning its Palestinian protégé, Mohammed Dahlan, a controversial Gaza-born former Al-Fatah security chief in the Strip opposed to Palestine Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, as a potential compromise Gaza administrator once the guns fall silent.

Of all the options for governing Gaza in the immediate aftermath of the war being discussed in world capitals few seem politically viable, making Israeli reoccupation a realistic possibility. With the United States and much of the international community ruling out Israeli reoccupation, Dahlan could emerge as an alternative.  Dahlan’s close associate, Samir al-Mashharawi, together with former Palestine Authority foreign minister Nasser Al-Qudwa, a proponent of political reform, met in Qatar this week with Hamas exile leaders Khaled Mishaal and Ismail Haniyeh.

Arab media reported that the discussion was intended to “come up with a political initiative based on a ceasefire and provide our people with some hope that matches the price paid by the victims.”

This week, signalling its intention to keep relations on an even keel, the Biden administration approved the $85 million sale of 18 AN/TPQ-50 radar systems to the UAE. The system is a counter-battery radar designed to identify and track incoming indirect fire, including rockets, artillery, and mortars.

“The UAE is a vital US partner for political stability and economic progress in the Middle East,” the Pentagon said in a statement, adding the “sale will support the foreign policy and national security of the United States by helping to improve the security of an important regional partner.”

Beyond oil, trade, and Ukraine, Gaza figured high on Mr. Putin’s agenda. Arab media reports suggested that the UAE sought Russian assistance in moving Iranian militias in Syria away from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights in an effort to prevent a regional expansion of the Gulf war.

In October, the UAE warned Syrian President Bashar al-Assad not to intervene in the war or allow attacks on Israel from Syrian soil. Preventing an expansion of the war is a key US and Emirati interest.

The UAE played a key role in returning Syria to the Arab and Muslim fold after a decade-long suspension of Syrian membership of the Arab League because of its conduct of the civil war that was little different from the way Israel wages war in Gaza.

Mr. Assad’s participation in last month’s Arab and Muslim summit calling for a ceasefire displayed the same hypocrisy Western countries exercise in their different approaches to the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.

Although not publicly mentioned, UAE concerns about increased Russian-Iranian military cooperation and UAE restrictions on the re-export to Russia of sensitive goods used for military purposes in Ukraine were certain to have come up in Mr. Putin’s discussions.

Putin will have been relieved that the UAE had yet to implement the restrictions even though it promised to do so in September when US, British, and European officials visited Abu Dhabi to voice concern about the Gulf country’s links to Russia. The UAE said after the visit that it was considering introducing export licenses on certain technologies, including semiconductors. The UAE insists that it restricts, as a matter of policy, the export and re-export of identified dual-use products to conflict zones and has a legal export control framework in place through which it continuously monitors dual-use exports.

Like in the case of Sudan, the UAE appears to implement policies towards conflict zones selectively. Even so, the UAE’s top artificial intelligence company, G42, acknowledged this week that balancing relations with the United States and China was no longer an option. G42 is controlled by the UAE’s secretive national security adviser, Tahnoon bin Zayed.

“For better or worse, as a commercial company, we are in a position where we have to make a choice. We cannot work with both sides. We can’t,” G42 CEO Peng Xiao told the Financial Times.

Xiao, who renounced his US citizenship to become an Emirati national, said the company was phasing out Chinese hardware to ensure access to US-made chips. US national security advisor Jake Sullivan cautioned Bin Zayed earlier this year about US concerns about G42’s close cooperation with Chinese companies, including Huawei, the telecommunications giant under US sanctions.

US officials warned their UAE counterparts that G42 could be sanctioned. Huawei provided G42 with servers and data centre networking gear. Even so, a US Congressional Research Service report cautioned earlier this year that “the degree to which the UAE may leverage its ‘soft power’ in ways that are beneficial to US interests remains to be seen.”

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By James M Dorsey

Spanish philosopher George Santayana didn’t have Palestine in mind when he coined the phrase, ‘history repeats itself. ‘Yet, Santayana’s maxim may apply to Hamas when comparing the group’s political evolution to the 16-year-torturous road traversed by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) from classification by Israel and its Western allies as a terrorist organization to establishing the Palestine Authority on Israeli-occupied Palestinian land.

To be sure, there is no guarantee that Hamas, despite its brutal October 7 attack on Israel and wanton slaughter of 1,200, mostly civilian Israelis, will emulate the PLO in eventually recognising Israel and abandoning the armed struggle. Moreover, Hamas’ current notion of realpolitik falls far short of anything that would qualify it as an acceptable and credible party to the negotiation of a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Even so, the parallels between the PLO and Hamas’ political evolution are noteworthy. The PLO embarked on its road to recognition of Israel and abandonment of the armed struggle in 1974 with a first ever direct appeal to Israelis published as an advertisement in Yediot Ahranot, a leading Israeli newspaper, by Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) leader Nayef Hawatmeh.

The PLO refused to address Israelis directly prior to publication because that would acknowledge the Jewish state. The DFLP’s pioneering advocacy of Palestinian engagement with Israel and recognition of the Jewish state as part of the PLO’s endorsement of a two-state resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict did not stop the group’s primarily Gaza-based paramilitary wing, the National Resistance Brigades, from participating in Hamas’ October 7 attack. The Brigades said it had lost three fighters in combat with the Israeli military. It said it had engaged Israeli forces in the towns of Kfar Aza, Be’eri, and Kissufim. The October 7 attack claimed the lives of at least 130 Israeli civilians or ten per cent Be’eri’s residents, including women, children, and infants.

The publication of Hawatmeh’s appeal was negotiated by American activist and journalist Paul Jacobs as part of an initiative that would have included talks hosted by Tunisian President Habib Bourguiba between the PLO and two prominent Israeli politicians, Arie Eliav, a member of parliament and former secretary general of the then governing Labour Party, and Yitzhak Ben-Aharon, the head of Histadrut, Israel’s national trade union, that was closely aligned with Labour.

The plan was scuttled months after the advertisement when DFLP operatives attacked a girls’ school in Maalot. They took 115 people hostage and killed 31, including 25 schoolgirls. The DFLP attacked Maalot to reestablish its credibility among Palestinians after being heavily criticised for its outreach to Israelis. The attack overshadowed the significance of the PLO’s first formal steps towards accepting a two-state solution a month after the incident.

The PLO’s parliament, the Palestine National Council, meeting in Cairo, adopted a 10-point programme that called for “the establishment of the people’s independent combatant national authority over every part of Palestinian territory that is liberated.”The Council endorsed three years later the Palestinians’ right to “establish their own independent national state over their national soil.”

For the first time, the PLO stressed “the importance of connecting and coordinating with the Jewish progressive and democratic forces inside and outside the occupied homeland.”It took the PLO another decade to unambiguously recognise Israel and declare an end to its armed struggle.

Similarly, Hamas adopted an updated charter in 2017 that differed significantly from its 1988 fundamental document but was as ambiguous and ambivalent as the PLO pronouncements in the 1970s.Hamas’ original 1988 charter called for the killing of Jews based on a saying attributed to the Prophet Muhammad. Hamas dropped the call to kill Jews in its new charter. The 1988 charter also insisted on a Palestinian state in all of historic Palestine that would replace the State of Israel.

Significantly, Hamas adopted its first charter months before PLO leader Yasser Arafat recognised Israel. The revised charter still calls for Israel to be replaced by a Palestinian state in all of historic Palestine but allows for the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel as an interim step provided it does not involve recognition of the Jewish state. Instead, the charter advocates a long-term ceasefire that would de facto acknowledge Israel’s existence.

Complicating Hamas’ potential to follow the PLO’s path is the group’s rejection of an Israeli and US negotiating framework that demands recognition of Israel and abandonment of the armed struggle as a prerequisite rather than an outcome of negotiations that was adopted by Arafat. Hamas concluded from the failure of the PLO’s approach and the 1993 Oslo accords to produce an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel that Palestinian concessions upfront were counterproductive.

The brutality of Hamas’ October 7 attack ensures that any role for Hamas or a potential successor in future negotiations will have to adopt the Israeli-US framework. This reduces the likelihood that Hamas or its successor may follow in the PLO’s footsteps. Even so, the jury is out on whether Hamas, or a possible successor, will retain spoiler capability.

Irrespective of whether Hamas adopts the PLO model, Palestinian moderation has proven to be a torturous process. It often adheres to the principle of two steps forward, one step backwards. To be sure, Hamas’ decision to randomly kill or kidnap anyone, Jewish or non-Jewish, during the October 7 attack rather than only target Israeli military personnel and facilities is a huge step backwards that has reeked unimaginable Palestinian suffering, which is not to absolve Israel of responsibility for its conduct of the Gaza war.

The jury is out on who Palestinians will hold responsible for the Gaza carnage, Israel and/or Hamas. Even so, it is becoming increasingly clear that Israel is unlikely to wipe Hamas off the face of the earth. Even if Hamas is destroyed, its hardline philosophy will survive, probably embodied in a successor. More than 30 years after Arafat recognised Israel and abandoned the armed struggle and three decades after the conclusion of the Oslo accords it is evident that Palestinian moderation is a fragile process that needs nurturing.

Israel’s emphasis on the stick rather than the carrot coupled with the Palestine Authority and Hamas’ failure to provide good governance and effective leadership created the environment for a nascent armed resistance on the West Bank, the October 7 Hamas attack, and the DFLP’s participation in the assault. To be clear, nothing justifies the random killing of innocent civilians. Even so, more killings and greater repression of Palestinians is not a solution.

A pathway towards a solution lies in fewer Israeli sticks and more Israeli carrots. It lies in empowering Palestinians rather than undermining them. It resides in encouraging Palestinian moderation rather than stymieing it. (IPA Service)

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By James M Dorsey

Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel has not just divided Muslim political leaders. It’s also solicited diverse responses from religious figures and institutions, reflecting deeper divisions about what Islam stands for in the 21st century.

At the core of the differences is the ability and willingness to empathise with innocent victims on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide, even if the focus is on the carnage caused by Israel’s assault on Gaza, the West’s double standards, and the international community’s impotence in imposing a long-term halt to the fighting.

The divide is mirror imaged among Israelis and Jews, many of whom have little sympathy for the extreme suffering of innocent Palestinian civilians.

To be sure, a majority of Muslim religious leaders believe that the Hamas attack stemmed from decades of occupation of Palestinian lands conquered during the 1967 Middle East war and Israeli policies designed to repress Palestinian resistance and thwart resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by establishing an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.

Many also argue that the indiscriminate Israeli bombing and ground offensive in Gaza that has killed more than 14,000 Gazans, injured more than 30,000 others, and destroyed infrastructure needed for the basics of life overshadows the brutality of the Hamas attack that caused the death of 1,200, mostly civilian Israelis.

The divide among Muslim religious leaders and scholars is evident in the response of two poles of the spectrum of Muslims who define themselves as moderate.

The spectrum ranges from religious leaders and scholars who advocate reform of Islamic jurisprudence to remove supremacist and discriminatory clauses in Sharia and political pluralism to religious figures and institutions aligned with autocrats, some of whom favour greater social freedoms, but repress dissent and oppose religious law reform.

The diversity in ‘moderate’ interpretations of Islam reflects a struggle to define what moderate Islam means in the 21st century. It also echoes the divide between moderate and more militant expressions of the faith that run the gamut from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to Iran to jihadists.

With the wanton killing of civilian Israelis in its October 7 attack, Hamas, an Islamist group inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood that cloaks its nationalism in a religious mantle, has blurred the lines between moderates and more militant expressions of Islam.

The muddling of the different perspectives highlights the need for reform of Muslim religious jurisprudence to ensure compliance with international humanitarian law and deprive militants of the ability to find legitimization in Sharia.

The contrast in responses to the Gaza war by Nahdlatul Ulama, the world’s largest and most moderate, Indonesia-based Muslim civil society movement, and Al-Azhar, a Cairo-based, 1,053-year-old citadel of Islamic learning, spotlights the muddle.

In a statement calling for a “just” resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Nahdlatul Ulama urged that religious inspiration — including the values of universal love and compassion, human fraternity, and justice — be brought to the forefront of public awareness at all times, to help resolve conflict at every level of society, from the grassroots to the corridors of state power.”

The statement called on Muslims “to collectively pray for the souls of all who have perished in the escalating (Israeli-Palestinian) violence.”

It further advocated that “people and governments everywhere…refrain from weaponizing identity or appealing to religion to fuel hatred and hostility, including in relation to the conflict and violence between Israel and Palestine.”

Following up on the statement, Nahdlatul Ulama has invited Muslim and non-Muslim religious authorities for a summit to discuss “religion’s role in addressing Middle East violence and threats to a rules-based international order.”

By contrast Al Azhar, in its statement “proudly salut(ed) the efforts of the resistance of the proud Palestinian people. It offered “sincere condolences” to Palestinians “who were martyred in order to defend their homeland and nation” with no mention of innocent Israelis killed.

Al Azhar’s Global Fatwa Centre issued a religious opinion echoing Hamas’ assertion that there are no innocent Israelis, a mirror image of Israeli statements that all Gazans are terrorists and supporters of Hamas.

“The term ‘civilian’ does not apply to the Zionist settlers on the occupied land. Rather, they are occupiers of the land who usurp rights, disregard the prophets’ ways, and attack the holy sites in historic Jerusalem,” the fatwa said.

It was unclear whether the fatwa was referring to settlers on Palestinian land conquered by Israel during the 1967 Middle East war or defined all Israeli Jews as settlers.

Endorsing the Hamas attack, various senior Al Azhar clerics described Jews as “the cursed descendants of apes and pigs.”

At no point did a stream of other official Gaza-related Al Azhar statements and declarations by individual scholars denounce the killing of innocent civilians irrespective of religion, race, or creed.

The Gaza war has evoked human beings’ most destructive instincts – survival, anger, fear, despair, and vengeance – on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide.

The war constitutes a litmus test for Muslim and Jewish religious leaders on whether they can rise above the fray and adopt humanitarian and morally and ethically defendable positions. So far, they have largely failed the test. (IPA Service)

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By James M Dorsey

Israel’s options are central to discussions about the day after the guns fall silent in Gaza. Absent from the debate is what Palestinians want. Also absent is any discussion of funding for Gaza’s reconstruction, although the assumption is that oil-rich Gulf states will step up to the plate.

The significance of Palestinians’ wants is magnified by the fact that Israel has no good options, particularly if it fails to or cannot destroy Hamas’ political and military infrastructure.

While none of the options hold out the prospect of Palestinian elections, some have been already been rejected by Palestinians and Arab states; others could be acceptable to Palestinians on an interim basis.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken returned to Israel and the Middle East on Friday to discuss the objectives and conduct of Israel’s assault on Gaza, containing the Gaza war, the rescue of hostages held in Gaza by Hamas and other groups, and potential arrangements for the day after.

Palestinian acceptance of those arrangements is key to the stability and sustainability of any post-war structure, even if it is temporary.

A 10-page concept paper dated October 13 and prepared by Israel’s intelligence ministry listed three options under discussion. Despite its labelling, the ministry is not a decision-making body, even if the options are in line with statements by senior Israeli officials and various segments of the Israeli public, and one was reportedly adopted in Israeli lobbying efforts. Moreover, the ministry does not control Israel’s intelligence services that report to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu or the military command.

The concept’s three problematic options include the creation of a homegrown Palestinian administration in Gaza that has no links with Hamas and/or other Palestinian militants. No Palestinian is likely to offer himself forward as willing to take over on the back of Israeli tanks, even though Abu Dhabi-based Mohammed Dahlan, a controversial former Palestinian Gaza security chief with close ties to the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Israel, appeared to leave the door open to his possible return to the Strip.

Without taking Dahlan’s potential ambitions into account, the paper described the option of a homegrown administration as the “most dangerous alternative” because it could “lead to the establishment of a Palestinian state,” or new, more militant groups.

The return to Gaza of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ West Bank-based Palestine Authority. Dominated by Al Fatah, Hamas’ archrival, the Authority was expelled from Gaza in 2007 by Hamas, a year after the group won Palestinians’ last election. Like the first option, the paper counselled against a return of the Authority, which is deeply unpopular on the West Bank, because it would constitute “an unprecedented victory of the Palestinian national movement, a victory that will claim the lives of thousands of Israeli civilians and soldiers and does not safeguard Israel’s security.”

In addition, the Authority would likely reject taking charge of Gaza unless its mandate was linked to a definitive resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

An Israeli foreign ministry’s options paper suggested that doubts about the Authority and the Authority’s concerns could be addressed by a multinational force and a US-led contact group that would help the Authority govern the Strip. Surprisingly, to make this work, the paper, drafted by the ministry’s policy planning department, appears to suggest a dramatic revision of Israeli policy.

Less surprisingly, Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen ignored the paper that argues the government would have to drop its efforts to separate Gaza from the West Bank and embrace a two-state solution, involving the establishment of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.

A poll conducted by the Palestine Centre for Policy and Survey Research in Gaza and the West Bank in September suggested that exiled Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh would rout by a large margin Mr. Abbas and Marwan Barghouti, a popular imprisoned Al-Fatah leader convicted in Israel on murder charges, in an election.

Yet, when asked who Gazans would want to see as the candidate to succeed Abbas, Haniyeh and Barghouti were neck-to-neck at 24 versus 23 per cent.

Barghouti is widely seen as a potential successor to 87-year old Abbas if Israel releases him. Even so, 37 per cent described Hamas as the “most deserving” representative of the Palestinians compared to 26 per cent who attributed that accolade to Al-Fatah.

Gazan attitudes towards a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict appeared uncompromising with 75 per cent rejecting a one-state solution in which Israeli Jews and Palestinians enjoy equal rights and 65 per cent opposing a two-state solution.

Moreover, 51 per cent of Gazans and 54 per cent of West Bankers favoured armed struggle rather than peaceful protest or negotiations to break the deadlock in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Sixty-seven per cent supported attacks on Israeli civilians in Israel.

While Israelis hardliners will see the poll as confirmation of their assertion that Gaza equals Hamas and justification of the indiscriminate bombing of the Strip, more moderate voices caution that Israeli policy has created a stark choice.

The intelligence ministry’s favoured and most controversial option involves the permanent transfer of Gaza’s 2.3 million inhabitants to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, which has been denounced by Palestinians and rejected by Egypt as a third ethnic cleansing reminiscent of the 1948 and 1967 expulsions and displacements of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.

Despite Netanyahu’s insistence that the intelligence ministry’s proposal is not being considered by the government, the notion of a transfer has been echoed in statements by senior Israeli officials and segments of the public.

Furthermore, Czech and Austrian leaders privately put forward, at Netanyahu’s behest, the idea of Egypt absorbing Gazan Palestinians in exchange for the cancellation of the country’s US$165 billion foreign debt in discussions on the sidelines of last month’s European summit. Germany, France, and Britain rejected the proposition.

Other proposals emerging in the debate about the day after the Gazan war include depopulating northern Gaza by pushing all the Strip’s residents into the southern half of the territory so that Israel can create an uninhabited buffer zone.

Leaving aside legal and moral implications, the problem with this proposition is that it would aggravate conditions for Palestinians already living in one of the world’s most densely populated territories in an even tighter space that would retain a border with Israel. As a result, it would likely perpetuate rather than reduce Israeli perceptions of the Gaza security threat.

While Arab states may be tempted to return Gaza to Arab control, like the Palestine Authority, they are unlikely to want to shoulder responsibility on the back of Israeli tanks without solid indications that the force’s presence would be linked to a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In addition, many Palestinians feel abandoned as much by Arab states as they do by the rest of the international community.

Moreover, Arab condemnations of the Israeli assault on Gaza notwithstanding, Arab states appear in no rush to be seen as forcefully striving to end the carnage. The Arab League, which groups the world’s 22 Arab states, has scheduled a meeting to discuss the Gaza crisis for November 11 rather than immediately.

Arab states appear to either hope Israel will bow to international pressure by then, even though there is no indication that is likely, or privately want to see Israel successfully eradicate Hamas.

Countries like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have cracked down on Hamas in the past. They see Hamas’ survival as potentially emboldening other militants such as the Houthis in Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon, as well as legitimising Iranian support for non-state allies.

At the bottom line, a return to Gaza of the Palestine Authority buffeted by a multi-national force that includes an Arab contingent, may be the most logical post-war scenario. (IPA Service)

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By James M Dorsey

It took 11 days and the death of 256 Palestinians for US President Joe Biden’s preference for a bear hug rather than a sledgehammer approach to get Israel to halt the Gaza bombing in 2021. Even then, Biden needed to be blunt and go public to get what he wanted. After 10 days of behind-the-scenes diplomacy and US blocking of condemnatory United Nations Security Council resolutions, Biden placed his fourth phone call to Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in little more than a week.

Biden advised the Israeli leader that he “expected a significant de-escalation today on the path to a ceasefire.” When Netanyahu sought to buy time to continue the bombing, Biden replied: “Hey man, we’re out of runway here. It’s over.” Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire a day later. Biden’s bear hug approach took its toll on the Palestinians in 2021, but ultimately it worked.

Two years later and 20 days into the most ferocious Israeli air attack on Gaza, likely to be followed by a ground offensive into a besieged strip that has been devastated, the toll of Biden’s approach is a multitude.

Heart-wrenching scenes of more than 7,000 dead, including 2,000 children, according to Palestinian sources, the closure of hospitals because of a lack of fuel, a blackout due to Gaza running out of energy, unimaginable situations in hospitals lacking electricity and medical supplies that are overrun by patients and displaced persons, and impending hunger as food stocks are depleted.

Pressured by the United States and international public opinion, Israel has agreed to allow humanitarian aid to trickle into Gaza. However, it is too little, and for many too late, and impeded by unrelentless Israeli bombings.

To be sure, 2023 is not 2021. What provoked Israeli ferocity was far more extreme than the clashes between Palestinians and Israeli security forces and the rockets fired at Israeli towns from Gaza by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in 2021.

The brutal and wanton killing by Hamas of some 1,400, mostly civilian, Israelis and the kidnapping of some 220 Israeli, dual, and foreign, primarily civilian, nationals was on an unprecedented scale and demonstrated Hamas’ refusal to distinguish between innocent civilians and security and military personnel, a mirror image of Israel’s approach to Gaza. The killings evoked Holocaust associations.

Dehumanizing statements by Israeli officials and calls for the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza reflect the depth of Israeli anger. Coupled with a seemingly blanket US support for Israel, they also reinforced Palestinian suspicions that ridding itself of Palestinians is Israel’s long-standing goal.

Biden’s bear hug approach and refusal to pressure Israel more forcefully involves a complicated cost-benefit analysis as well as a crucial political battle that could not only drag the United States into another Middle East war but also change the paradigm of Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking.

Republican Mike Johnson’s introduction of a bill in Congress supporting Israel that was adopted with an overwhelming majority as his first act as speaker of the US Congress demonstrates domestic restraints on Biden in the run-up to next year’s presidential election.

Even so, the depth of emotional Israeli public backing for a severe punishment of Hamas calls into question the effectiveness of a bear hug approach unless Israel decides there are reasons of its own to limit or avoid a ground offensive or stop the bloodletting.

Add to that the question of the price both Palestinians and the United States are paying for a go-slow approach. Palestinians pay the price in lives and destruction, the cost to the United States is reputation and geopolitics.

To be sure, Biden agrees with Netanyahu that Hamas leaders, commanders, and fighters should be held accountable for the October 7 killings. The problem is that even if the Israeli assault destroys Hamas physically, it will not squash militancy nor Palestinian national aspirations.

Moreover, Biden’s bear hug approach lends legitimacy to assertions of US hypocrisy, particularly when compared to his statements on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the exception to his tactics that he applies not only to Israel but also in domestic politics. The notion of hypocrisy undermines the US assertion that it stands for principles and values and perceptions of its reliability as a security partner elsewhere in the Middle East.

Similarly, it has opened the door to a shifting of the Israeli-Palestinian paradigm with Israel’s assertion that Hamas is the equivalent of Islamic State. The Israeli effort is designed to put the shoe on the other foot. Two decades after the 9/11 Al Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington sparked a push for “moderate” Islam, the Israeli assertion turns a national conflict into a struggle against religious militancy.

On a visit to Jerusalem to express solidarity with Israel, French President Emmanuel Macron picked up on the Israeli assertion by calling for the military alliance that defeated Islamic State in Syria and Iraq to take on Hamas.

While Hamas’ October 7 rampage resembled Islamic State atrocities, Hamas differs substantially from Islamic State. It is a militant religious nationalist group, not a transnational jihadist movement seeking a caliphate. Moreover, Hamas long served Netanyahu’s effort to keep the Palestinian polity divided between the Gaza group and the Palestine Authority in the West Bank.

Equating Hamas with the Islamic State serves the same purpose as Israel’s visceral response to United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterrez’s statement that the Hamas attack “did not happen in a vacuum.”

Israel cannot maintain its occupation of Palestinian lands and rejection of an equitable resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict if the Hamas attack is explained, not justified, as linked to Israeli policy towards the Palestinians. This week, Biden insisted that “there’s no going back to the status quo as it stood on October 6,” the day before the Hamas attack.

“That means ensuring that Hamas can no longer terrorize Israel and use Palestinians civilians as human shields. It also means that when this crisis is over, there has to be a vision of what comes next, and in our view, it has to be a two-state solution,” an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel, Biden said.

To achieve that, Biden, the first US president in decades to refrain from Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking, would have to engage. Bear hugs may not be sufficient to prevent Biden from becoming the umpteenth president to fail in resolving one of the world’s most intractable conflicts. (IPA Service)

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By James M Dorsey

Israel will likely win the Gaza war on the battlefield. Even so, it has already been defeated in the court of public opinion.

It no longer really matters who attacked Gaza’s Al Ahli Arab Hospital in which hundreds of innocent civilians were killed or the Greek Orthodox Saint Porphyrius Church in the Strip.

Public opinion has issued its verdict on the streets of cities across the Middle East and beyond.

It took the attack on the hospital, which Israel asserts involved a misfired Palestinian rocket launch, not Israeli warplanes, some 10 days into the Israeli assault on Gaza to bring protesters to the streets.

The time lag is telling and hints at the ultimate political fallout of a war that plays to the deepest fears and traumas of both Israelis and Palestinians as well as Arab autocrats’ security concerns.

Even if anti-Israeli sentiment runs deep in the Middle East because of its 56-year-long occupation of the West Bank, 17-year-long blockade of Gaza in cooperation with Egypt, and refusal to sincerely negotiate the creation of an independent Palestinian state, aided by the incompetence of the Palestine Authority, many were ambivalent about Hamas’ brutal October 7 attack on Israel.

No doubt, Palestinians and Arabs took pride in a Palestinian militia successfully attacking Israel and breaching its image of military and intelligence superiority and invincibility.

But at the same time, many in the Middle East were troubled by Hamas’ indiscriminate slaughter of innocent men, women, and children and kidnapping of some 200 people, mostly civilians.

Breaking taboos, Arab voices on social media took Hamas before the hospital attack to task for its unwarranted brutality, sparking a rare discussion in the Arab world.

The indiscriminate Israeli bombing, the stream of heart-wrenching images emerging from Gaza, and the genocidal language employed by Israeli leaders silenced those voices.

To be sure, Hamas’ language is no less genocidal as is its charter.

In some Arab quarters, distance to Hamas was driven by perceptions of its alleged affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood, a polarizing group that like Palestine evokes deep-seated passions.

The Israeli assault on Gaza has put that on the backburner.

Worse from the perspective of Israel and Saudi Arabia, the Hamas success raises the spectre of other groups aligned with Iran, like Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militia, and Houthi rebels in Yemen, emulating the Hamas model.

Hezbollah and the Houthis are far more battle-hardened and better equipped than Hamas.

Israel’s ferocious response to Hamas’ attack may prove less of a deterrent than many think.

Israel’s decades of wielding a sledgehammer and continued collective punishment has failed to quell Palestinian aspirations or stop Palestinians from resisting Israel.

As a result, Arab states, whether formally or informally engaged with Israel, are in a bind. They may want to see Hamas defeated on the battlefield, if not destroyed, but are restricted by pro-Palestinian public opinion.

Moreover, Hamas’ ability to breach Israeli security and trap Israel in the words of Middle East scholar and commentator Hussein Ibish, if it moves ahead with a ground offensive in Gaza, bolsters Iran as a significant security threat in the eyes of Gulf states.

The threat is compounded by comparisons between the 1973 Middle East war and the Gaza war.

To be sure, Egypt and Syria restored their pride in 1973 by, like Hamas, taking Israel by surprise and achieving initial battlefield successes.

Like Hamas, Egypt and Syria lost on the battlefield but won the war politically. Ultimately, the war led to President Anwar Sadat’s unprecedented 1977 visit to Jerusalem and the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty.

But, unlike the Hamas attack and Israel’s response, the 1973 war, fought along conventional military lines, did not evoke the Israeli trauma of the Holocaust or the Palestinian ordeal of the 1948 and 1967 expulsions and displacements.

As a result, the Gaza war is likely to harden sentiments on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide in ways that the 1973 war did not, making an equitable resolution of the conflict any time soon highly unlikely.

Some analysts have suggested that Ibish’s trap with Israel seemingly lacking an exit strategy and potentially being sucked into a long-term occupation of Gaza that would provoke criticism from its closest allies, including the United States, may open the possibility of the Strip being temporarily administered by the United Nations and/or a coalition of Arab states.

That may prove easier said than done. Condominiums tend to have a life of their own and involve the kind of commitment and involvement Arab states may not want to shoulder.

For starters, Israel, deeply suspicious of the United Nations, is likely to reject the idea.

Similarly, Israel, particularly given Arab public opinion, is unlikely to want to surrender or limit its notion of Gaza security with the involvement of Arab states.

By the same token, Arab states may be tempted by the return of Arab land to Arab control but will fear being sucked into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in ways they have avoided for the past 75 years since Israel was established, except for during the Jordanian and Lebanese civil wars.

At the bottom line, Hamas’s brutal attack and Israel’s ferocious response, true to a paradigm of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, have strengthened hardliners on both sides of the divide, even if neither Hamas nor Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu survive the war. (IPA Service)

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By James M Dorsey

Human beings’ most destructive instincts – survival, anger, fear, despair, and vengeance – dictate Israeli and Palestinian war strategy and policy in the wake of Hamas’ October 7 brutal attack on Israel.

The dominance of emotions produces an environment in which one atrocity justifies another and reinforces Israeli and Palestinian demonization of the other.It also highlights both sides disregard for the lives of the other.

“Humanity is on holiday. Empathy, the ability to understand other people’s loss and suffering, has become a rare and prized commodity. International law has been missing in action. Yet… international leadership represents perhaps the most shocking absence,” said Chris Doyle, director of the London-based Council for Arab-British Understanding.

Hamas demonstrated with its wanton slaughter of Israelis that it views all Israelis, including innocent women and children, as legitimate targets. Hamas officials deny the killings.

The closest they come to an admission is their labelling of Israeli settlers as soldiers, implicitly blurring the distinction between Israelis living within Israel’s pre-1967 borders and armed settlers on the West Bank, who increasingly attack Palestinians in a months-long cycle of West Bank violence, endorsed by members of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s cabinet.

Many of the Hamas killings during its October 7 attack occurred in towns and villages along the Israeli border with Gaza often described as settlements, muddling the difference between urban areas in Israel and settlements on the West Bank.

Refusing to answer questions about Hamas’ targeting of civilians, a spokesman for the group, Osama Hamdan, when asked whether residents of settlements were legitimate targets, insisted that “according to international law, the settlers are not civilians.”Israelis stagger at Hamas comparisons, claiming the moral high ground.

Yet, Israeli President Issac Herzog, reconfirming the fact that Israelis and Palestinians are in many ways mirror images of one another, declared as Israel’s military starved Gaza of food, fuel, water, and medicine and bombed Gaza back to the Stone Age:“It is an entire nation out there that is responsible. It is not true this rhetoric about civilians not being aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true. They could have risen up. They could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza in a coup d’état.”

A just released poll of Gazan public opinion by the pro-Israel Washington Institute of Near East Policy suggests otherwise.

Conducted in July prior to this week’s unprecedented violence, 65 per cent of those polled believed “a large military conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza” was likely this year despite a ceasefire that ended the 2021 Gaza war.

A similar percentage, 62 per cent, supported Hamas maintaining the ceasefire. In addition, half of those polled agreed that “Hamas should stop calling for Israel’s destruction, and instead accept a permanent two-state solution based on the 1967 borders.”Nevertheless, the poll suggested contradictory attitudes among Gazans towards Hamas.

On the one hand, 57 per cent expressed at least a somewhat positive opinion of Hamas but indicated that groups engaged at the time of the poll in more active resistance against Israel, like Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) in Gaza and Lion’s Den on the West Bank, enjoyed greater popularity. It’s not clear whether the war shifted those sentiments towards Hamas.

On the other hand, the poll indicated that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestine Authority had retained some credibility in Gaza despite being marginalized by Israel and lacking legitimacy in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Seventy per cent of those polled favoured the dispatch of Palestine Authority “officials and security officers to Gaza to take over the administration there, with Hamas giving up separate armed units,” an indication that Gazans in majority opposed armed struggle.

The emotions dominating Israeli and Palestinian warfare conjure up Israeli and Palestinians’ association of the violence with historic catastrophes that shape who they are.

For Israelis, Hamas’ random, indiscriminate killing of innocent civilians is a modern-day repetition of the Holocaust, even if most Israelis were born after World War II.

Hamas’ definition of Israeli civilians as legitimate targets in deeds, if not in words, reinforces Israeli perceptions.

For Palestinians, particularly with Israel ordering Gazans to move from north to south, the Israeli attack raises the spectre of a third displacement following the 1948 and 1967 expulsions and fleeing of Palestinians as Israel conquered their lands.

Israelis have done little to assuage Palestinian fears of a third round of expulsions and forced fleeing.

“There is a way to receive them all (Gazans) on the other side for temporary time on Sinai… Egypt will have to play ball because human life is at stake,” said Danny Ayalon, a former Israeli deputy foreign minister and advisor to Netanyahu.

Amidst violence that has spun out of control with both sides violating international law, the international community is missing in action.

To be fair, few countries have any leverage to help put an end to the violence.

While the United States is the only country that could pressure Israel to halt its indiscriminate bombing of Gaza, it would need to work with the few states – Qatar, Turkey, and Egypt – that have any influence on Hamas to persuade the group to release the more than 100 Israeli and foreign, mostly civilian, hostages kidnapped during its attack.

The United States has so far publicly declared ironclad support for Israel. It has backed up its statements with arms supplies and the stationing of two aircraft carrier groups in the Eastern Mediterranean to dissuade Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah, Lebanon’s Iranian-backed Shiite militia, from opening new fronts in the war.

It’s not clear what the Biden administration may be trying to achieve behind the scenes beyond pushing for a humanitarian corridor, which the United States sees as a monkey wrench to attain a ceasefire, and, if the view of Ayalon, the former Israeli official, is representative, Israel envisions as a mechanism to expel Palestinians.

Even if Ayalon’s view does not reflect the Israeli government’s intentions, history shows that steps like wholesale forced relocation of populations take on a life of their own.

No matter what the case may be, the damage has been done. Hamas may have returned the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the top of the international community’s agenda at unconscionable human expense.

But, at the bottom line, it has made a solution to the conflict even more remote whether with two states, an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel, or one state in which Israelis and Palestinians have equal rights.

With its bombardments, a potential expulsion of Palestinians, and a looming ground offensive, Israel has put the final nail in the coffin of an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the foreseeable future.

That outcome may be the one and only thing Israel and Hamas agree on. (IPA Service)

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By James M Dorsey

Islamic Law is at the centre of debates about what constitutes moderate Islam and what it would take to reform Islam. Essentially, two schools of thought dominate the discussion. Islam’s traditional approach simply picks and chooses which elements of Sharia it opts to ignore. That is the approach adopted by autocratic rulers like Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and United Arab Emirates. President Mohamed bin Zayed.

Indonesia’s Nahdlatul Ulama, the world’s largest and most moderate civil society movement, challenges the traditional approach. It insists that removal of outdated, obsolete, and supremacist concepts in Sharia is the only way to fortify Islam against religious and political extremism and promote political, social, and religious pluralism, religious tolerance, and democracy. Andrew March, a University of Massachusetts Amherst professor, Islam scholar and author of several books, spoke about the transition taking place in the Arab world.

Andrew’s last book on Muslim democracy is a translation of essays by Rached Ghannouchi, a Tunisian politician, public intellectual, religious thinker, and founder of a political party that evolved from Islamism to Muslim democracy in many ways comparable to Christian democratic parties. The book is also a philosophical discussion between the two.

Ghannouchi was named one of Time’s 100 most influential people in the world in 2012 and Foreign Policy’s top 100 global thinkers. Eighty-two years old, Ghannouchi is the latest high- profile figure to have been arrested on charges of incitement against state authorities by the autocratic regime of President Kais Saied. Ghannouchi went on hunger strike this week.

Ghannouchi is a middle ground figure in the debate about what constitutes moderate Islam and how to reform the faith. Reform of Sharia may be one step too far for him. Yet, his evolution from Islamism or political Islam to Muslim democracy positions him as a democratic reformer.

It raises the question of whether Ghannouchi and his Ennahda Party are models for groups like the Muslim Brotherhood or the exception that confirms the rule that political Islam is inflexible, rigid, and opposed to moderate interpretations of Islam and a threat to secularism. Andrew March joins me to discuss all of this.

JD: Ghannouchi and his Ennahada Party played a key role in what long seemed to be the Arab world’s only post-2011 popular revolts, successful transition from autocracy to democracy. Can you describe what his and the party’s contribution was and maybe some of the debates that took place?

AM: Of course, Tunisia had first a long transitional period, a long constitutive period of drafting the post authoritarian constitution between 2011 and 2014, and so we need to divide the period of Tunisian democracy up into a number of periods. The first 2011, perhaps to what we call the crisis year of 2013 and 14, and then the period of 2014 to 2019 during the presidency of Beji Caid Essebsi, and then the period 2019 to 2021, which resulted in the coup by Kais Saied. At at the beginning, in the first election to the National Constituent Assembly in 2011. The Ennahada Party won 41 per cent of the vote, and so had the dominant role in the National Constituent Assembly, but not enough of a role to dictate the terms of the transition or to dictate the terms of the new constitution. So, the first thing to note, before we discuss anything related to their ideology or their own political priorities, is that their structural situation was very different from that of the Muslim brotherhood in Egypt where the combined Islamist forces of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafi parties had closer to 70 per cent of the seats in the constituent assembly.

So, from the beginning, Ennahada preferred to and had to adopt a kind of conciliatory position by entering into coalitions with other parties during the first period during the National Constituent Assembly. This was with certain more pro-democratic revolutionary forces like Moncef Marzouki’s Congress of the Republic. Marzouki, of course, was the first democratic president of Tunisia between 2011 and 2014, and so the long period of drafting a constitution was remarkable because it was a constitution that was drafted in radically democratic conditions, more democratic even than I would say Egypt, which of course had a open democratic process, but was kind of overseen and supervised by the institutions of the old regime, the Supreme Court, the judiciary, and, of course, the army. In the case of Tunisia, the situation was much more democratic and there was a strong argument that the constitution that came out in 2014 represented a constitution that reflected the actual demographic and ideological reality of the country.

JD: You’ve talked a bit about the comparison with Egypt in structural terms. To what degree, if at all, did personality play a role in the way that Egypt developed on the one hand and Tunisia on the other?

AM: It’s hard to know too much about that. It’s hard to know unless you’re really an insider, what the actual room for manoeuvring is, how much personality or personal ties played a role? Many people do believe that because the Tunisian opposition had developed ties over decades in exile between London and Paris, that there were personal relationships and a kind of groundwork for what a post-authoritarian system might look like, and I take that very seriously. I do also believe that Ghannouchi has a kind of risk averse personality and political strategy, was very, very concerned above all to prevent essentially what did happen in 2011, which was a coup and a criminalization of Ennahda and widespread imprisonment of its activists. So, I think his strategy was manifold during this period to advance Tunisian democracy to try to create a stable constitutional democratic system, including on the base of consensus with ideological rivals, but also to avoid situations in which Ennahda overreached and allowed for a pretext of justifying authoritarian backlash. So it’s very, very hard to know how you isolate the role of personality apart from what other kinds of structural and institutional pressures that political actors have. So. I don’t really have anything particularly insightful to say about a comparison, let’s say between Ghannouchi and Mohamed Morsi or other figures in the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.

JD: Right. You talked sort of structurally about the need for Ennahda and for Ghannouchi, to, if you wish, compromise work with forces it may not necessarily be ideologically aligned with. Perhaps you can walk us through some of the sort of concessions or moves that Ghannouchi and Ennahda had made, which resulted ultimately in them redefining themselves no longer as an Islamist party, but as a Muslim Democracy party. Walk us through some of those compromises and steps that they took.

AM: Well, at the ideological level, the best-known areas in which Ennahda had to compromise in the drafting of the Constitution was first in agreeing to no inclusion of any reference to the Islamic Sharia in the Constitution. So, as you and your listeners will surely know, many constitutions of Muslim majority states have some clause in their constitution that makes reference to something about the role of the Islamic Sharia in the legal system that could be defined positively, like traditionally in Egypt, that all legislation must be based on the Islamic Sharia or its principles or its objectives, or that no legislation may be repugnant to the Islamic Sharia. So that exists in constitutions like Pakistan, Iraq, Egypt, so on and so forth. And that historically never existed in Tunisia. Of course, under the secularist rule of Habib Bourguiba, and Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, and some activists and participants in the constituent assembly were hoping that there may be some kind of reference to this in the Tunisian constitution, and that was something that they had to compromise on. (IPA Service)

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By James M Dorsey

A Saudi-Israeli agreement to establish diplomatic relations involving enhanced US commitments to Gulf security could be a game-changer for great power rivalry in the Middle East.

To be sure, US President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu face formidable obstacles in paying the price tag Saudi Arabia puts on the normalisation of relations with Israel.

In return for relations, Saudi Arabia has demanded legally binding security commitments from the United States, support for its nuclear programme, and unfettered access to sophisticated weaponry – conditions that would be challenged in Congress.

The kingdom has also linked diplomatic relations to ambiguously defined progress in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – a demand Netanyahu will have difficulty meeting with his current coalition government, the most ultra-nationalist and ultra-conservative in his country’s history.

Speaking to Fox News, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman described the Palestinian issue as “very important” and one that “we need to solve.”Bin Salman shied away from spelling out what a solution would entail beyond saying he hoped it “will ease the life of the Palestinians.”

Within days of the interview, Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan told the United Nations General Assembly and a webinar normalising relations with Israel would require a plan to establish an independent Palestinian state.

On the first visit to the West Bank by a senior Saudi official since the creation of the Palestine Authority in 1994, Ambassador Nayef al-Sudairi, the kingdom’s first envoy to the Palestinian entity, said Saudi Arabia was “working towards establishing a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.”

Palestinian officials told their Saudi counterparts that as part of the kingdom’s agreement to recognise the Jewish state, Israel would have to stop building new settlements, expand Palestinian control over security and construction in the West Bank, accept full Palestinian membership of the United Nations, and consent to the opening of a Palestine Liberation Organisation office in Washington and a US consulate in East Jerusalem.

Nevertheless, senior Israeli officials asserted that Saudi Arabia was merely paying lip service to the Palestinian issue in talks about Israel.A senior Palestinian official conceded “that what is being discussed includes elements that are less than statehood. We’re talking about a pathway to getting there.”

The obstacles haven’t prevented Bin Salman and Netanyahu from raising heightened expectations recently by suggesting significant progress in agreeing on the terms of a US-Saudi-Israeli deal. Speaking to Fox News, Bin Salman said his country and Israel were getting “closer” daily to establish formal relations. Netanyahu was equally ebullient at the UN General Assembly.

Largely overlooked in public discussions about a possible Saudi-Israeli normalisation of relations is the fact that the Saudi demands signal that the kingdom, like the United Arab Emirates, which is requesting an “ironclad” security arrangement with the United States, prefers the US rather than China to be its security partner for the foreseeable future.

“Isn’t it interesting? When you look at MBS’ asks from us, they start with he wants a defence treaty with us… What that tells you is that at the end of the day, they don’t think there is anybody else they can rely upon if they really stranded,” said Dennis Ross, a former US Middle East peace negotiator. Ross was referring to Bin Salman by his initials.

Former US National Security Council official Kirsten Fontenrose argued that Bin Salman had created a situation where he could forcefully argue for a binding security arrangement even if efforts to forge a deal with Israel failed.

“MBS looks at this and says, ‘Right now, it looks like the sticking point is Israeli politics. So, even if I don’t get this, I look like the good guy’,” Fontenrose said.

I expect there will be pressure from the Saudis moving forward, even if we don’t get normalisation, to follow through… (saying), ‘Well, we have arrived so closely on some of these ideas on a US security pact, we’ve done so much work on civilian nuclear cooperation, why don’t we just continue this?” Fontenrose added.

Even so, it is hard to believe that Saudi Arabia and the UAE think they can retain the freedom to hedge their bets and expand relations with China, as well as Russia, particularly regarding the Ukraine war and Western sanctions, in ways that the United States would see as threatening its national security and undermining its policies.

While the United States would likely not disrupt the Gulf states’ economic and trade ties with China, the Gulf’s largest trading partner, it would limit Saudi and UAE cooperation with China on geopolitical issues, nuclear development, technology collaboration, and arms acquisition.

“The administration is asking for some things from the Saudis. They want them to continue to peg oil to the dollar, there was some talk that they may allow the Chinese to buy oil with the Chinese currency… What is being asked here is not to stop their commercial relationship but to create boundaries in some of the high-tech areas… It’s a two-way street,” Ross, the former US negotiator, said.

The kingdom “cannot have it both ways. If it wants that kind of commitment from the United States, it has to line up with the United States… If our security relationship with Saudi Arabia is to be deepened because the Saudis want it, then there are certain obligations that come with that,” said former US diplomat and prominent analyst Martin Indyk.

Undoubtedly, Saudi Arabia and the UAE will test how far they can push the envelope if they come to a security understanding with the United States.

Ultimately, however, they are likely also to find that a security arrangement would, at least in the Middle East, shift the geopolitical US-China power balance in the United States’ favour. (IPA Service)

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By James M Dorsey

It’s a no-brainer to suggest that we live in an increasingly polarised world. Geopolitics are polarised, so are societies. Polarisation marks the transition from a unipolar world dominated by the United States to a bipolar world with China, or more likely a tripolar world that includes India, in which middle powers assert themselves more forcibly.

The polarisation is fuelled by populism and civilizationalism, led by men with little regard for international law or rules of the game that would limit their freedom of action. To be fair, adherents of the rule of law also ignore international law when convenient. The result is a breakdown in conflict prevention mechanisms; the US toppling of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, despite foreseeable disastrous consequences; Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; and rising racism, anti-semitism, Islamophobia, and distrust and hostility towards the other as it manifests itself in anti-migrant sentiment.

Polarisation is also driven by a clash between liberal and conservative values in which both sides attempt to impose their definitions of all kinds of rights. Jason Pack, a Middle East expert focused on Libya, argues the coherent management of the world order has been replaced by what he calls the Global Enduring Disorder. Jason, who is a senior analyst for emerging challenges at the NATO college in Rome, and the author of ‘Libya and the Global Enduring Disorder’ published in 2021 by Oxford University Press, suggests that conventional geopolitical theories fail to explain a world in which many states no longer rationally pursue their long-term interests. Excerpts from the conversation with Jason Pack.

JD: Define for us what you mean with a global enduring disorder. The implication is that great power rivalry is not about creating a new world order, but about permanent disorder and unbridled competition. Is that what you envision?

Jason Pack: Not exactly, but you hit on some important points. If I could push back against some traditional views that you might’ve referenced, I do not think that we’re moving from an American-led hegemony to a bipolar struggle or cold war with China. Nor do I think we’re moving towards multipolarity with Europe regulating its area and the Indians trying to have a sphere of influence. Those are all things that are envisioned classical IR theory. I see us moving into a different kind of world which is not envisioned by classical international relations theory at all. What I see is major world powers no longer trying to order the globe nor competing with other powers for spheres of influence. Rather, if you look at the US under Trump, Brexit-oriented Britain, Putin’s Russia, Xi’s China, a Bolsonaro Brazil, or a post-Bolsonaro, Brazil, Orban’s Hungary, you see many different leaders who are not concerned at maximising their interests nor concerned in ordering the globe or even their near abroad.

I think it’s important to make a contrast between the conflict with the Soviets and the conflict with Putin. So, when we in the West had a conflict with the Soviets, Stalin, or Khrushchev, they had a fully formed ideological and economic system. They want to export it to Cuba. They’d like to win in some conflicts in Africa and export their system, and it has an economic logic. It has books and texts like Lenin and Marx, and then commentaries on them. That’s a struggle between two different camps who want to order the world in different ways. A Western capitalist, hegemonic, neoliberal, American-led world order and a Soviet Marxist authoritarian one, and you can read the books and subscribe to their economic system. Right now, there are no books about a Putin-led world order. He doesn’t want to win in Ukraine to give them a certain economic vision or that they’re going to read Tolstoy and go back to an ordered czarist empire.

He’s exporting disorder. It’s not a system, and I think that that’s critical. Putin wins by destabilising our elections and destabilising our societies and stirring up racial tension by problematizing Black Lives Matter or having vaccine conspiracies. He’s not exporting a world vision or world order. And I see Trump quite similarly and many other actors, some such as international corporations. Facebook wins by selling ads and YouTube and Twitter polarise us. They’re not exporting a world order, and this Global Enduring Disorder concept gets at the fact that this may be a novel way of looking at global affairs, of many nodes who are not competing for order, they’re competing to disorder the world.

JD: In effect, you’re describing a world without global leadership. The question is how much of this is also a world encountering the limitations of the nation-state in confronting global challenges and that at the same time is challenged by leaders who think in civilizational rather than national terms.

Jason Pack: I think that’s a part of it. The nation-state was able to handle most problems that arose until the pre-World War I era because you didn’t have massive financial flows and the world was on the gold standard. We didn’t have to have international monetary policy and there was no such thing as tax havens. Really, the line of change, of course was in the distant future. So, today’s problems are all global. The Chinese emit a lot of pollution, and it affects someone in Iceland, and Russian oligarchs take money out of their own country and they put it in the Cayman Islands, and then the corruption creates jobs in the city of London and influences British politics. We live in a global world where the tech algorithms and the flows of money cannot be solved by the nation-state, and that is 100% a part of the global enduring disorder.

JD: And to what degree is the global disorder or the enduring disorder fuelled by the lack of attractive governance models? Democracy is in crisis. Western powers are hampered by hypocrisy and double standards and marred by efforts to impose their values. China is faltering and is primarily an economic and trade partner, and Putin’s Russia has few, if any, saving graces.

Jason Pack: That’s a key part of why western democratic popular votes go for what I call anti-politics. People didn’t really want what Trump was offering. They just weren’t angry and wanted to vote against someone they perceived as the global elite. A lot of Brexit voters didn’t actually think that Brexit would make Britain richer or better, but they were like, screw the Tories, screw David Cameron. So yes, anti-politics is the product of the fact that we in the western liberal democratic elites have not made a great case for how our visions are going to help everyone, and I think that we should take responsibility for that, and we need better communicators.

What is quite tragic is that Obama as great a communicator as he was, as appealing as he was to populations in the global south and in the Muslim world, he didn’t actually succeed at making the lives of African-Americans or the underclass in America any better, and he didn’t assuage the fissures between the West and the non-West. So, we had a chance for a great communicator, and he achieved very little. So yes, there is a kind of idea deficit for how to connect to people. Why would you want to make a sacrifice to help spread democracy? I don’t think that many voters in America and Britain really know why they would want that. (IPA Service)

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By James M Dorsey

Debates about the US commitment to Gulf security are skewed by confusion, miscommunication, and contradictory policies. The skewing has fuelled uncertainty about US policy as well as Gulf attitudes in an evolving multi-polar world and fuelled misconceptions and misunderstandings. The confusion is all the more disconcerting given that the fundamentals of US Gulf relations are beyond doubt.

The United States retains a strategic interest in the region, even if its attention has pivoted to Asia. Moreover, neither China nor Russia is capable or willing to replace the US as the Gulf’s security guarantor.”None of the Gulf states believe China can replace the United States as the Gulf’s security protector,” said Gulf International Forum Executive Director Dania Thafer.

The recent US military build-up in the Gulf to deter Iran with thousands of marines backed by F-35 fighter jets and an aircraft carrier helped reassure Gulf states in the short term. So has the possibility of the US putting armed personnel on commercial ships travelling through the Strait of Hormuz.

The build-up followed the United Arab Emirates’ withdrawal from a US-led, 34-nation maritime coalition in May because the US had not taken decisive action against Iranian attacks on Gulf shipping, including a vessel travelling from Dubai to the Emirati port of Fujairah. Even so, the United States has allowed confusion and uncertainty to persist. In addition, the US as well as the Gulf states, particularly Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, appear to pursue contradictory goals.

“The US…did not formulate a very clear approach to how the US wants to work with the GCC as a whole” instead of cooperating with individual Gulf states, said analyst Nawaf bin Mubarak Al Thani, a former Qatari brigadier general and defence attaché in Qatar’s Washington embassy.“Unless the US becomes clear in its intentions about how it wants to proceed with its future defence relationship with the GCC as a whole, I think we will be going in circles,” Al Thani added.

The United States has unsuccessfully tried to nudge the GCC to create an integrated air and missile defence system for several years. Former Pentagon official and Middle East scholar Bilal Y. Saab suggests that the US has moved in the case of Saudi Arabia to enhance confidence by helping the kingdom turn its military into a capable fighting force and developing a first-ever national security vision but has failed to communicate that properly.

“Our geographical command in the region, also known as the United States Central Command (CENTCOM), has been conducting a very quiet…historic transformation from being a war-time command to something of being a security integrator…to activate partnerships to attain collective security objectives,” Saab said.“My biggest problem is that we’re not communicating this stuff well… There’s a lot of confusion in the Gulf about what we’re trying to do,” he added.

Analysts, including Saab, caution that the United States’ recent willingness to consider concluding defence pacts with Gulf states like Saudi Arabia and the UAE is at odds with its revamped security approach to the region.

Saudi Arabia has demanded a security pact alongside guaranteed access to the United States’ most sophisticated weaponry as part of a deal under which the kingdom would establish diplomatic relations with Israel. The UAE initially made similar noises about a defence pact but has since seemingly opted to watch how the US talks with Saudi Arabia evolve.

A defence pact “is incredibly inconsistent with what we are trying to do with CENTCOM… The moment you provide a defence pact to the Saudis or, frankly, any other country in the region, this is where you go back to the old days of complacency, of dependency on the United States as the guardian and as doing very little on your own to promote and advance your own military capabilities,” Saab said.

His comments may be more applicable to Saudi Arabia than the UAE, which has long invested in its military capabilities beyond acquiring sophisticated weaponry.

The roots of confusion about the US commitment to the Gulf lie in evolving understandings of the US-Gulf security relationship based on the 1980 Carter Doctrine, the United States’ response to Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution, and that year’s Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

President Jimmy Carter laid out the doctrine in his 1989 State of the Union address. “An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force,” Carter said.

Robert E. Hunter, then a National Security Council official and the author of Carter’s speech, insists that the doctrine was intended to deter external powers, notably the Soviet Union, rather than defend Gulf states against Iran or secure shipping in strategic regional waterways.

“The often-misquoted Carter Doctrine…did not refer to the ‘free flow of commerce.’ I wrote almost all of the speech… it was designed to deter Soviet aggression against Iran, following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which began a few weeks earlier,” Hunter said.

The Reagan Doctrine, enunciated five years later by Carter’s successor, Ronald Reagan, reinforced his predecessor’s position.”The US must rebuild the credibility of its commitment to resist Soviet encroachment on US interests and those of its Allies and friends, and to support effectively those Third World states that are willing to resist Soviet pressures or oppose Soviet initiatives hostile to the United States, or are special targets of Soviet policy,” Reagan said.

President George W. Bush’s development of US doctrine after the 9/11 Al Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington proved more problematic for the Gulf states. Bush defended the United States’ right to defend itself against countries that harbour or aid militant groups.

His doctrine justified the US invasions of Afghanistan and, Iraq. Gulf states saw the Iraq war as destabilizing and problematic, particularly with some on the American right calling for a US takeover of Saudi oil fields.

Nonetheless, Gulf states had plenty of reasons to reinterpret the Carter Doctrine to include a US commitment to defend Gulf states against regional as well as external threats. The Gulf states’ reinterpretation resulted from a US lack of clarity and actions that seemingly confirmed their revised understanding.

These included the United States leading a 42-nation military alliance that in 1991 drove Iraqi forces out of Kuwait, establishing bases in the Gulf in the wake of the Iraqi invasion, US interventionism following the 9/11 assaults, and the ongoing protection of Gulf shipping against Iranian attacks. As a result, a lack of clarity and confusion in Washington and the Gulf’s capitals continue to dominate the debate about the US-Gulf security relationship. (IPA Service)

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By James M Dorsey

An unexpected twist in the run-up to next year’s Indonesian presidential election puts Centrist Democratic International (CDI), the world’s largest alliance of conservative political parties, and Nahdlatul Ulama, the world’s largest and most moderate Muslim civil society movement, in a bind.

In a surprise move, Muhaimin Iskander, leader of the National Awakening Party (PKB), founded in 1998 by five Nahdlatul Ulama clerics, including the movement’s one-time leader and former Indonesian president Abdulrahman Wahid, joined Anies Baswedan, as his vice-presidential candidate.

A US-educated political scientist and former Jakarta governor with close ties to conservative Muslim circles and a penchant for identity politics, Anies is supported in next February’s election by the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), the PKB’s arch-rival widely believed to be affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. “This is causing concern,” said a senior CDI official.

Even so, and despite the bad optics of Muhaimin’s move, neither CDI, of which PKB is a member, nor Nahdlatul Ulama, with 90 million followers, is likely to respond forcefully unless Anies reverts to identity politics.

Nahdlatul Ulama quickly denied a PKB assertion that the movement backed Muhaimin’s move. Nahdlatul Ulama emphasised that it was not endorsing any presidential candidate.

“There should not be any contenders that (present themselves) on behalf of the NU. If there are any, they are doing it on their own capacity and track record,” said Nahdlatul Ulama chairman Yahya Cholil Staquf. Staquf’s relationship with Muhaimin has long been strained. Anies’ choice of Muhaimin appears to be a ploy to win votes in Nahdlatul Ulama’s Javan strongholds. The move underscores the movement’s political influence.

Like Indonesian President Joko Widodo, the country’s most popular politician, Nahdlatul Ulama is positioned to play an influential backroom role. For now, Anies is trailing in opinion polls behind the two other leading presidential candidates, Defence Minister Prabowo Subianto and Central Java Governor Ganjar Pranowo. Prabowo and Ganjar expect to nominate their running mates in the coming weeks. Muhaimin hoped he would be Prabowo’s nominee.

However, the presidential candidate appears to lean towards either Gibran Rakabuming, President Joko Widodo’s eldest son; Yenny Wahid, a daughter of the former Nahdlatul Ulama leader; or state-owned enterprises minister Erick Thohir, a businessman and member of the five-million-strong Nahdlatul Ulama militia.

Prabowo met Wahid earlier this week. To appoint Gibran, the Constitutional Court would have to lower the age of presidential and vice-presidential nominees to 35, an issue the court is debating.

While Muhaimin’s association with a Muslim Brotherhood affiliate would be sufficient to suspend PKB’s CDI membership, CDI will likely monitor developments at this point.

Analysts suggest Muhaimin’s move could either disrupt the coalition backing Anies or end Muhaimin’s political career and PKB leadership if his vice-presidential bid fails. “It’s a long-term game,” said one analyst. Past attempts to unseat Muhaimin have failed. Anies’s partnership with Muhaimin has prompted the Democratic Party to withdraw from the presidential candidate’s three-party Coalition of Change for Unity (KPP).

The Democratic Party expected Anies to nominate Agus Yudhoyono, the party’s chairperson and the eldest son of former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, as his running mate.

For its part, the PKS said its religious advisory board would need to approve Anies’s choice of Muhaimin. Analysts noted that the PKS was absent when Anies and Muhaimin announced their partnership.

The PKS attacked Staquf in 2018 for visiting Israel at the invitation of the American Jewish Committee. A former PKS head and parliament speaker, Hidayat Nur Wahid, refused in 2020 to join a Saudi-led groundbreaking to Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp in Poland.

Hidayat has long-standing ties to the Muslim World League, a Saudi government-controlled non-governmental organisation that, before Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s rise in 2015, was populated by Muslim Brotherhood figures.

For Nahdlatul Ulama and CDI, the optics are complicated given that the PKB nominally has four ministers in President Widodo’s cabinet, including Religious Affairs Minister Yaqut Cholil Qoumas, an influential Nahdlatul Ulama figure who heads the movement’s militia and Staquf’s younger brother.

In addition, Muhaimin is one of 16 vice presidents of CDI, which groups 109 right-wing parties in 83 countries. Like Nahdlatul Ulama, CDI is virulently opposed to the Brotherhood and political Islam. Driven by Staquf, Nahdlatul Ulama has embraced a concept of Humanitarian Islam that propagates religious as well as political pluralism and unambiguous endorsement of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The movement advocates reform of religious jurisprudence that removes from Sharia outdated, obsolete, and discriminatory tenets, such as the notion of a kafir or infidel, and replace the concept of a caliphate with that of a nation-state.

Analysts suggested the optics projected an oversimplified view of a complex game, part chess and part poker. “This will play out over time. Where this leads to may only be clear after the election,” the analyst said. (IPA Service)

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By James M Dorsey

Saudi Arabia’s stunning sports acquisition blitz, alongside Qatari and Emirati European club purchases, may reshape the beautiful game, just not in ways Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and other Gulf rulers like Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani envisioned.

The Gulf’s impact on European and world soccer could be determined by the outcome of a complaint to the European Commission by Spain’s top soccer league, La Liga. The complaint asserts alleged Qatari state aid to Qatar-owned Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) distorts European Union markets by paying above market sums for top players.

La Liga President Javier Tebas has frequently cited the example of the US$260 million PSG paid for Brazilian player Neymar in 2017 and US$160 million last year to retain Kylian Mbappé. Earlier this month, Neymar transferred to Saudi Arabia’s Al Hilal for US$100 million.

La Liga said it filed its complaint under newly enacted European Union foreign subsidies regulations. The rules empower the Commission to investigate funding by non-EU members of companies operating in Europe and “redress, if needed, their distortive effects.”

In a statement, La Liga said it “has filed a complaint alleging that PSG has received foreign subsidies from the State of Qatar, which has allowed it to improve its competitive position, thus generating significant distortions in several national and EU markets.”La Liga asserted that “this enables them to boost their sporting performance, as well as affecting the ability of rival clubs to recruit.”

A successful La Liga complaint would increase pressure on the English Premier League and the British government to take similar action against Saudi-owned Newcastle United and United Arab Emirates-owned Manchester City, even if post-Brexit Britain no longer is bound by European rules and regulations.

Citing Newcastle, Manchester City, and Qatar’s potential acquisition of Manchester United as examples, Gulf-focussed human rights groups called earlier this month on the English Premier League and the British government to ensure that state-aligned owners of clubs are barred from exercising ownership control.

The groups include ALQST for Human Rights, Emirates Detainees Advocacy Centre (EDAC), European Saudi Organization for Human Rights (ESOHR), Gulf Centre for Human Rights (GCHR), and International Campaign for Freedom in the United Arab Emirates (ICFUAE).

In letters to Premier League CEO Richard Masters; British state secretary for culture, media, and sport Lucy Frazer; and state minister for business and trade Nigel Huddleston, the groups said they were “concerned that the political, social, and cultural power associated with ownership of top English football clubs grants foreign states undue influence and provides cover for state authorities that continue to flagrantly commit grave human rights abuses.”

They insisted that “it is imperative that the Premier League adopts and implements sufficiently objective and robust ownership criteria to prohibit the takeover of English football clubs by individuals or entities susceptible to the influence of state actors or associated with human rights violations.”

Newcastle could prove particularly vulnerable. In contrast to Manchester City, Newcastle, like Paris Saint-Germain, is owned by a sovereign wealth fund. In Newcastle’s case, it’s Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), chaired by Bin Salman.

When the fund acquired Newcastle, the Premier League said it had received “legally binding assurances that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia will not control Newcastle United” but refused to provide chapter and verse on those assurances.

The human rights groups assert that a California court filing in a case involving PGA Tour, the organiser of golf’s flagship events, and LIV Golf, a PIF-owned start up, calls the assurances into doubt.

The filing identified the PIF as a “sovereign instrumentality of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.” The filing said the Fund’s governor, Yasir al-Rumayyan, who also chairs Newcastle, was “a sitting minister of the Saudi government.”The court case was shut down after PGA and LIV Golf agreed to merge.

Unsurprisingly, the Saudi player acquisition blitz that has netted the kingdom 15 foreign players, including superstars Cristiano Ronaldo, Karim Benzema, and Neymar, has ruffled European soccer’s feathers. With Saudi Arabia’s Al Ittihad trying to woo, so far unsuccessfully, Liverpool’s Mohammed Saleh, club manager Jurgen Klopp called on world soccer body FIFA to ensure the kingdom abides by Europe’s transfer window.

“It’s challenging for everybody and we have to learn to deal with it… But the authorities should make clear that if you want to be part of the system then you do your business at the same time like all the others… I am pretty sure FIFA could do it like this clicks fingers. I am not sure they want to, but they could,” Klopp said.

The Premier League’s transfer window closes September 1 as opposed to the Saudi window, which is open until September 20.Klopp’s pessimism may be justified. FIFA expects a revenue boost when it launches its overhauled Club World Cup in 2025.

An influx of star-studded Saudi clubs would be welcome. The kingdom’s Al-Hilal, the winner of the 2021 Asian Champions League and, currently, the world’s top net spender, has already qualified.

To be fair, Saudi Arabia’s ownership of Newcastle has benefitted the club in various ways. The club’s day-to-day managers, minority co-owners Amanda Staveley, her husband, Mehrdad Ghodoussi, and Jamie Reuben, have improved staff morale and professionalized the club’s women’s team. They introduced a living wage higher than the minimum wage, beefed up staffing, and splashed US$500 million on new player acquisitions.

Like Newcastle, PSG was acquired by Qatar Sports Investments, a subsidiary of the Qatar Investment Authority, the Gulf state’s sovereign wealth fund. The dividing line between state and private sector investment is murky regarding Manchester City.

The City Football Group owns the club with the Abu Dhabi United Group for Development and Investment (ADUG) as its 81 per cent major stakeholder. In turn, ADUG, an example of the Gulf state’s problematic handling of potential conflicts of interest, is owned by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a senior Abu Dhabi ruling family member and Minister of Presidential Affairs for the UAE.

With its franchise of stakes in other clubs in the United States, Australia, India, Japan, Spain, Brazil, Uruguay, China, Belgium, France, and Italy, City Football Group introduced a new corporate business model for global soccer.

La Liga’s complaint to the European Commission challenges that model even if the Commission’s writ is limited to EU members Belgium, France, Italy, and Spain. (IPA Service)

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By James M Dorsey

An Indonesian push for a Southeast Asian return to values rooted in an ancient Indo civilisation amounts to an innovative attempt to manage polarisation.

Exploiting its rotating chairmanship of the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Indonesia this week inaugurated the ASEAN Intercultural and Interreligious Dialogue.

The dialogue opened by Indonesian President Joko Widodo and attended by members of his cabinet, ASEAN Secretary-General Kao Kim Hourn and religious leaders from across the region highlighted Mr. Widodo’s support for the agenda of Nahdlatul Ulama, the world’s largest, Indonesia-based Muslim civil society movement.

Backed by the government, Nahdlatul Ulama organised the dialogue as well as last November’s Religion Forum 20 (R20), a summit of prominent religious figures on the eve of the Indonesia-chaired Bali summit of the Group of 20 (G20) that brings together the leaders of the world’s largest economies.

The Indonesian government made religion and intercultural and interreligious dialogue key themes of its G20 and ASEAN chairmanships.

Religious reform was at the core of the Religion Forum 20. It focused on modifying religious law, confronting historical grievances, truth-telling, and forgiveness as a basis for identifying shared civilizational values.

“This work has been taken beyond the realm of Islam to other religions and the world at large,” said Timothy Samuel Shaw, a senior executive of the Center for Shared Civilisational Values (CSCV), established in 2021 by Nahdlatul Ulama.

UlilAbshar Abdalla, a senior Nahdlatul Ulama official, cautioned that “there are serious challenges to harmony in our traditions. We need to revise our tradition to achieve harmony.”

Nahdlatul Ulama has sought to set an example with a 2019 fatwa backed by 20,000 Islamic scholars calling for replacing in Islamic law the concept of a kafir or infidel with that of a citizen with equal rights.

In February, the movement used its Hijra calendar centennial and an international conference of Islamic scholars to call for abolishing in Sharia the notion of the caliphate, a unitary state for all Muslims, and replacing it with the nation-state.

This week’s ASEAN dialogue constitutes a logical extension of Nahdlatul Ulama’s almost decade-long campaign for religious reform and a redefinition of Islam in the 21st century, and Indonesia’s effort to claim its seat as an influential regional and global player.

In his opening remarks, Widodo suggested that a driver of the dialogue was a concern that religion may be losing its relevance in parts of the world.

“The people of ASEAN…have an increasing religious spirit. Indonesia, for example, is a country where the people most believe in God, and the number is the highest in the world. According to the Pew Research Center, 96 percent of respondents in Indonesia believe that good morals are determined by belief in God,” Widodo said.

The president noted that “in the religious field, the world community is becoming less and less religious. A survey from Ipsos Global Religion 2023 of 19,731 people from 26 countries in the world showed that 29 percent stated that they were agnostics and atheists.”

The conference’s declaration argued that the Indo sphere stretching from South to Southeast Asia “consists of countries that have traditionally shared a similar set of civilizational values, deeply rooted within their respective societies. These values foster a culture of tolerance and harmony while reducing conflict between groups.”

The declaration asserted that “it is of the upmost importance that ASEAN Member States cooperate to revitalize the civilizational mentality or worldview, that was long characteristic of Southeast Asia prior to the modern era. This civilizational mentality is characterised by a willingness to accept differences while preserving and strengthening harmony among society’s diverse elements.”

Although not explicitly referenced in the declaration, the dialogue is rooted in what the Center for Shared Civilisational Values describes as the Ashoka approach. The approach aims to create an “alternate pillar of support for a rules-based international order founded upon respect for the equal rights and dignity of every human being” by “reawaken(ing) the ancient spiritual, cultural, and socio-political heritage of the Indianized cultural sphere, or ‘Indosphere’ — a civilizational zone that pioneered, long before the West, key concepts and practices of religious pluralism and tolerance.”

A third-century Indian Buddhist emperor, Ashoka renounced armed conquest after years of bloody warfare to champion compassion, extensive dialogue, and interchange among followers of diverse religious paths, inter-faith tolerance, mutual understanding, and respect for others’ dignity. Ashoka fostered an Indianised civilizational worldview throughout South and Southeast Asia.

Indonesia and Nahdlatul Ulama hope that ASEAN will embrace the concept of an inter-religious and intercultural dialogue during a series of meetings in September.

The initial challenge for Indonesia and Nahdlatul Ulama is ensuring that ASEAN incorporates their approach into its operational framework by establishing the dialogue as an annually recurring ASEAN event.

In contrast to the power struggle that emerged as a result of efforts to incorporate the R20 into the walk-up to next month’s G20 summit in Delhi, securing ASEAN’s support for a civilizational approach could prove to be low-hanging fruit.

The real challenge is transitioning from lofty declaratory statements to transformative actions. That would entail reaching a consensus on definitions of terms such as tolerance, democracy, and respect for human rights on which states and civil society groups differ.

The conference statement’s reference to democracy is significant, given that only half of ASEAN members qualify as a democracy. And even they would likely disagree on definitions.

The conference put forward several suggestions for concrete steps ASEAN could undertake, including enhancing people-to-people contact, furthering the role of women, encouraging youth participation in dialogues, and incorporating underlying principles in educational curricula.

Valuable as they are, the suggestions are a way of preparing for the heavy lifting and lengthy process needed to turn an innovative approach into a living reality. (IPA Service)

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BY James M Dorsey

For Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, religious reform has long been a question of when rather than if. Bin Salman’s potential embrace of religious, not just social and economic reform, could have far-reaching consequences for the role of religion in Saudi Arabia and religious soft power rivalry in the Muslim world.

A recent Washington Institute of Near East Policy public opinion survey suggests that Saudi Arabia, long dominated by an ultra-conservative and supremacist strand of Islam, increasingly favours religious moderation and may be more open to religious reform. Forty-three per cent of those surveyed agreed that Saudis “should listen to those among us who are trying to interpret Islam in a more moderate, tolerant, and modern direction.” When asked the same question four years ago, only 20 per cent agreed.

Since coming to office, Bin Salman has pushed reforms that have significantly enhanced women’s rights and opportunities, catered to youth aspirations for greater social freedom and contributed to economic diversification. To do so, the crown prince has subjugated the kingdom’s conservative religious establishment and shattered long-held taboos. He has also brutally repressed criticism and dissent.

Yet, for all his bold moves, Bin Salman has stopped short of anchoring his reforms in religious law. Seemingly, the crown prince was concerned that religious reform could be one step too far.On occasion, Bin Salman has insisted that describing his reforms as “moderate” Islam would “make terrorists and extremists happy” because they could assert that “we in Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries are changing Islam into something new, which is not true.”

The crown prince has used a similar argument to justify a continued ban on non-Muslim houses of worship in the kingdom, home to Mecca and Medina, Islam’s two holiest cities. Saudi Arabia is the only Gulf state to forbid non-Muslim worship in public. Asked about the ban by Joel C. Rosenberg, an American Israeli evangelical author and activist, Bin Salman said he would not lift it soon. “The reason I’m not going to do it now – anytime soon – is because this would be a gift to Al-Qaeda. They would use this moment to blow up the churches… This would not make life better for the Saudi people,” Bin Salman said.

Embracing religious reform would turbocharge Bin Salman’s claim to leadership of the Muslim world and position him as Islam’s foremost reformer in competition with Nahdlatul Ulama, the world’s largest, most moderate, Indonesia-based Muslim civil society movement.

Unlike Bin Salman and other proponents of a moderate Islam that is socially liberal but politically repressive, such as United Arab Emirates President Mohammed bin Zayed, Nahdlatul Ulama advocates a concept of a socially and politically pluralistic Humanitarian Islam that unambiguously endorses the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights and a separation of mosque and state.The movement has also long campaigned for reform of Islamic jurisprudence, insisting that tenets of the Sharia were outdated and/or obsolete.

Putting its money where its mouth is, Nahdaltul Ulama hosted in 2019 a gathering of 20,000 religious scholars that declared the legal category of the kafir or the infidel obsolete and no longer operable under Islamic law. The scholars replaced the term with the word muwathinun, or citizens, to emphasize that Muslims and non-Muslims were equal before the law.This year, Nahdaltul Ulama called for replacing the concept of a caliphate in Islamic law with the notion of the nation-state and introducing the United Nations and its charter as an Islamic legal category.

The reforms would delegitimise jihadist claims that their militancy and quest for a caliphate is grounded in Islamic law. They would also create a base in Sharia for adherence to human rights as defined by the UN charter. Nahdlatul Ulama’s reforms set a benchmark for Bin Salman. The crown prince’s potential embrace of religious reform would level the playing field regarding social change.

However, in doing so, Bin Salman’s move would elevate governance, political pluralism, and human rights to core differentiators in the rivalry for religious soft power in the Muslim world. Even so, the crown prince would likely take heart from the fact that a whopping 78 per cent of those surveyed by The Washington Institute said ‘it’s a good thing we don’t have mass street protests,” a sharp increase from 48 percent in 2020.

Bin Salman has floated trial balloons several times. He backed away in 2020 when a Saudi news website quietly removed an article asserting that the Qur’an contained some 2,500 spelling, syntax, and grammar errors. So was months later, an op-ed by Kurdish author Jarjis Gulizada on Elaph, a London-based Saudi website operated by Othman Al-Omeir, a reportedly agnostic businessman and journalist with close ties to Bin Salman. Widely quoted in Arab media, Gulizada’s article called for rewriting Islamic texts, including the Qur’an, seen by Muslims as the immutable word of God.

Last year, controversial cleric Saleh al-Maghamsi, backed by Turki Aldakhil, the Saudi ambassador to the UAE and former general manager of the state-controlled Al-Arabiya television network, called for the creation of a new school of Islamic legal thought that would replace Sunni Islam’s four traditional schools. Believed to be close to King Salman, Al-Maghamsi argued that existing legal schools, unlike the Qur’an, were human constructs that could be revised.

The Council of Senior Scholars, Saudi Arabia’s highest religious body, rejected Al Maghamsi’s proposal out of hand, insisting that existing legal schools could respond to all requirements of modern life and align them with Islamic law.The Afghan Taliban’s ban on women’s education and employment by foreign aid organisations prompted a third cluster of trial balloons at the end of last year.

“The Taliban government’s decision suggests a crisis of thought, the extent to which jurisprudence needs to be revised and developed… All religious institutions must work to create contemporary jurisprudence… (that) instill(s) a spirit of tolerance, love of life…, and standards of quality of life,” said Okaz newspaper columnist and Jeddah-based lawyer Osama Al-Yamani.

“The Islamic world is waiting for (Saudi Arabia) to lead it towards contemporary jurisprudence,”  Al-Yamani added. (IPA Service)

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By James M Dorsey

A recent 27-year, four million-tonne liquefied natural gas (LNG) Qatari export agreement with China, the longest in gas export history, highlights different Gulf state approaches to navigating big power rivalry between the People’s Republic and the United States.

Widely seen as giving China a grip on Qatari gas, the deal is as much a commercial agreement as it is a security arrangement. It acknowledges China as the Gulf state’s foremost export market and gives China a stake in protecting Qatar.

Qatar is not alone in giving China preferential access to its energy reserves. So do other major Gulf exporters, such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, for whom China has become their foremost market. The difference is that Qatar’s energy dealings with China are embedded in a policy that broadly aligns the Gulf state with the United States, emphasises the Gulf state’s utility as a go-between, and avoids ruffling feathers.

In contrast, Saudi Arabia and the UAE stress their independence, on occasion counter or distance themselves from the policies of the United States, the region’s security guarantor, and sometimes poke the US in the eye.

Last month, the contrast was on full display. While UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed raised eyebrows as the only head of state to attend the St. Petersburg Economic Forum, Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani flew under the radar a week later when he met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow.

Bin Zayed “has made a sport out of rebuffing the Biden administration’s efforts to repair the relationship” between the United States and the UAE. “Of course, from his own perspective, Bin Zayed has proved himself a loyal partner to the United States time and again, but of late has had little to show for it,” said scholars Jonathan Lord and Airona Baigal.

In a further illustration of the contrast, Qatar arranged a meeting between a senior Venezuelan and US official last month to improve strained relations resulting from the United States’ recognition of opposition leader Juan Guaido as Venezuela’s legitimate president and US sanctions against the South American state. Officials said the talks could lead to a prisoner swap.

“Getting involved in Venezuela is a high-reward/low-risk strategy. By offering its services, Doha is consolidating its emerging reputation as a global diplomatic go-between, helping Washington in several particularly politically sensitive areas,” said Eldar Mamedov, a Brussels-based foreign policy expert.

A seemingly unlikely candidate to mediate in a region with which it has no ethnic or religious affinity, Qatar was well-positioned because it had neither joined a large number of governments recognising Guaido nor adhered to the sanctions. Qatar’s refusal failed to upset Washington.

Similarly, Qatar hosts a Taliban office at the United States’ request. Hosting facilitated the 2021 negotiated US withdrawal from Afghanistan and US-Taliban contacts since then. With the withdrawal underway, Qatar, like the UAE, provided significant logistical assistance.

Furthermore, Qatar, at times, mediates between the United States and Iran and serves as a postman relaying messages between the two countries. At the same time, Qatar, unlike the UAE, has not emerged as a haven for Russians seeking to circumvent US and European sanctions, including Russia’s Wagner Group, or suspected criminals and corrupt officials.

As a result, the US has sanctioned Emirati rather than Qatari companies for violating US sanctions on Russia and Iran. Moreover, Emirati freewheeling has landed the UAE on the grey list of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an international anti-terrorism and anti-money laundering watchdog.

Furthermore, Qatar has ensured that it is less dependent on Chinese telecommunications technology that the United States fears could give China access to US technology embedded in American weapons systems and other security projects. Last year, the US rewarded Qatar, home to the largest US military base in the Middle East, by awarding major non-NATO ally status.

To be sure, the UAE and Saudi Arabia have been helpful, most recently negotiating prisoner swaps between Russia and Ukraine. In the past, the UAE contributed troops to support the United States in Afghanistan. The different Gulf state approaches are rooted in Qatar’s response to the failed 3.5-year-long UAE-Saudi-led economic and diplomatic boycott of the Gulf state. The embargo was lifted in early 2021 without the Gulf state caving in to demands that would have put Qatar under Emirati and Saudi tutelage.

During the boycott, Qatar significantly tightened its security relationship and cooperation with the United States in fighting terrorism finance. As a result, Qatari perceptions of relations with the United States differ from the Saudi and Emirati experience.

Ali Shihabi, a Saudi commentator with close ties to the Saudi ruling elite, noted that the kingdom “has changed dramatically over the years, from its infancy before the Second World War to a more self-confident G-20 country secure in its place in the world today.”

Saudi attitudes have been compounded by perceptions that “the US security umbrella has been weakened as far as Saudi Arabia is concerned… (That) convinced Saudi leaders that they had to look elsewhere to guarantee their security,” Shihabi said. He was referring to a US refusal to come to the kingdom’s aid when Iran in 2019 attacked Saudi oil facilities. He was also referring to a US cutoff of arms and ammunition sales because of the Saudi intervention in Yemen.

Emirati officials voice similar complaints about US reluctance to respond to Iranian-inspired attacks. In the same vein, Karen Elliot House, an expert on the kingdom, quoted a Saudi minister as saying in March in a closed-door conference: “You tell us not to talk to Russia, your opponent, but you are talking to Iran, our opponent. You say don’t buy Chinese weapons. ‘Do you have an alternative,’ we ask? ‘Yes,’ you say, ‘but we can’t sell it to you.’”

Another minister told the gathering, “You said you were behind us in our war in Yemen, but you proved a no-show.”House, referring to Bin Salman by his initials, added, “The Crown Prince is making a virtue of relying less on a reluctant US to protect his nation… MBS is skillfully playing a tough hand of great power poker to benefit Saudi Arabia.”

Even so, North America remains a primary investment target of Emirati and Saudi sovereign wealth funds. Last year, the US$829 billion Abu Dhabi Investment Authority allocated between 45 and 60 per cent of its investments to North America. (IPA Service)

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By James M Dorsey

The sigh of relief in a swath of land stretching from China to Africa’s Atlantic coast was audible when Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Russian oligarch who heads the Wagner Group, a state-funded private military company, called off his mutiny against President Vladimir Putin’s military and security establishment.

So were the concerns and unanswered questions the revolt raised about Putin’s grip on power and the risks involved in the global rise of private military companies in the minds of Chinese, Central Asian, Middle Eastern, and African leaders.

The core question is the Russian military’s role. It remains unclear whether the military held back on Putin’s orders or hedged its bets. Also unanswered is whether Mr. Prigozhin enjoyed support from within the military ranks.

Russian military personnel surrendered without a fight when Prigozhin took control of Rostov-on-Don, a city of one million people and home to the headquarters of Russia’s Southern Military District, widely viewed as one of the military’s most competent units.

Similarly, Wagner fighters advanced along the M4 expressway to within 200 kilometres of Moscow, with no attempt by the military to stop them. A Deutsche Welle fact check of videos circulating on social media allegedly showing the Russian Air Force bombing Wagner on the M4 concluded that they were fake.

”Where was the Russian Air Force? Wagner may have had tanks, lightweight anti-aircraft systems, and some ground-to-air missiles, but long-range anti-missile and anti-aircraft defences have not been part of their modus operandi. Consequently, the mercenary convoys en route to Moscow could have been vulnerable to aerial assault,” said Alessandro Arduino, an authority on private military companies.

The question marks are compounded by reports that General Sergei Surovikin, the former top Russian military commander in Ukraine, knew in advance of Prigozhin’s planned revolt.

Another senior military officer, Lt. Gen. Vladimir Alekseyev, appeared on video chatting with Prighozin after the Rostov-on-Don takeover. In addition, General Valery Gerasimov, the military’s chief of staff and a target of Mr. Prigozhin’s ire, has not been seen in public since the failed revolt.

To be sure, Surovikin and Aleseyev issued separate videos criticizing Prigozhin and calling on him to halt his revolt. In addition, Putin sent a brigade loyal to Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov rather than a Russian military unit to Rostov-on-Don to confront the Wagner Group. Even though it did not come to a clash, Kadyrov is likely to see the mutiny as an opportunity to replace the Wagner Group.

Without answers to the questions, Putin will be hard-pressed to demonstrate unity among Russia’s military and political elite and that he retains complete control. That will affect foreign leaders’ assessment of Putin as a reliable and stable partner.

The Wagner revolt and questions about Putin’s grip on power have diminished Russia’s status as a credible security partner that has already been called into question by its inability to subjugate Ukraine. In addition, Putin’s foreign friends in China, Eurasia, the Middle East, and Africa have long felt uneasy about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, even if they were not condemning it publicly or adhering to sanctions imposed by the United States, Europe, and others.

Except for China, mediation proposals by African leaders, Indonesian President Joko Widodo, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett were primarily intended to demonstrate neutrality in the Ukraine conflict.

So was China’s plan, but China plays in a different league because many view it as the only power with real influence in Moscow. China has sought to capitalise in Central Asia on Russia’s diminished status, where Russia was long seen as the region’s security guarantor, and US neglect of the former Soviet republics.

In May, President Xi Jinping unveiled a grand development plan focused on infrastructure and trade at a meeting in Beijing with the leaders of the five Central Asian states. Rather than wanting to replace Russia, China hopes to emerge as the dominant power in the region with Russia as its junior partner.

If Ukraine wasn’t enough of a headache, uncertainty about Putin’s status is compounded by a lack of clarity about the future of the Wagner Group, particularly in the Middle East and Africa, where the Russian company may be first among equals, but Chinese and other private military companies also operate.

Russia’s defence ministry may be able to control the group in Ukraine and Syria but could find subjugating Wagner more difficult in Africa. In contrast to Ukraine and Syria, countries with a strong Russian military presence, Russia has far fewer, if any, forces in the African nations where Wagner operates.

Wagner has little incentive to surrender its positions in Africa, where it generates income from bolstering governments and warlords and lucrative mining deals. Wagner operates in Libya, Mali, Sudan, the Central African Republic, Chad, Mozambique, and Madagascar.

Media reports said an unknown drone had attacked a Wagner base in Libya south of the rebel-held city of Benghazi days after the mutiny. Wagner positions in Syria were reportedly raided by Russian troops, detaining commanders of the group. Nevertheless, Wagner, acting independently, could be a concern for Chinese private military companies on the African continent.

In contrast to Wagner, which effectively operates as a mercenary and combat force, Chinese companies, like Beijing DeWe Security Service, Huaxin Zhong An Security Group, and China Security Technology Group, serve primarily as protectors of Chinese investments, assets, and personnel. As a result, they have little contact with Wagner.

Mali could emerge as a test case of what Wagner’s post-revolt positioning could mean for Chinese companies. Mali has expelled United Nations peacekeepers scheduled to withdraw from the country before the end of this year, relying instead on Wagner. In 2021, Malian security forces freed three Chinese nationals abducted by unknown gunmen from a construction site in the country’s north. In the future, China may have to turn to Wagner in an emergency if it does not deploy its own private military.

Moreover, Russia’s experience with Wagner raises the spectre of military forces revolting against ruling elites when many in China, Central Asia, the Middle East, and Africa believe that the era of popular revolts has run out of steam.

That may not be an immediate domestic concern in China, but it is a worry given China’s preference for stability in countries across Eurasia, the Middle East, and Africa, with which it maintains close economic and other ties. For now, China, like others, sighs in relief. However, the last word on the Wagner mutiny fallout has yet to be spoken. (IPA Service)

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By James M Dorsey

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s four-day red carpet visit to the United States constitutes a microcosm of what a 21st-world order century will likely look like.

The visit spotlights the adjustments the United States faces in transitioning from a US-dominated unipolar world to a multipolar world populated by three major powers – the US, China, and India — and several middle powers with greater agency to hedge their bets and chart independent courses.

Those adjustments include the viability of a foreign, defence, and security policy anchored in alliances rather than more narrowly-focused agreements and micro-laterals like I2U2, which groups the United States, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and India, or AUKUS, a trilateral security pact between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

I2U2 was created last year to facilitate “joint investments and new initiatives in water, energy, transportation, space, health, and food security.”

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal this week, Modi asserted that the South Asian nation’s quest for great power status based on being the world’s most populous country and, by 2030, its third largest economy, did not involve “supplanting any country.“

Instead, Modi said, “We see this process as India gaining its rightful position in the world.”

The prime minister noted, “I am the first prime minister to be born in free India. And that’s why my thought process, my conduct, what I say and do, is inspired by my country’s attributes and traditions.”

A former US State Department official and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Tata Chair for Strategic Affairs, Ashley J. Tellis, argued that India and the United States differ on what a 21st-century world order should entail.

The Tata family, whose Tata Group is India’s largest conglomerate with operations in more than 100 countries, funds Carnegie and the chair.

India “does not harbour any innate allegiance toward preserving the liberal international order and retains an enduring aversion toward participating in mutual defence. It seeks to acquire advanced technologies from the United States to bolster its own economic and military capabilities… It does not presume that American assistance imposes any further obligations on itself,” Tellis said in a recent Foreign Affairs article.

Bolstering Tellis’ argument, prominent Indian commentator C. Raja Mohan noted that “the Indian argument of ‘strategic autonomy’…is only deployed in the engagement with the US. …We rarely ask how Delhi, despite the talk of strategic autonomy, has allowed a massive and unhealthy reliance on Russian weapons to develop over the decades.”

Widely viewed as India’s most popular politician rooted in Hindu nationalism with a track record of illiberally hollowing out the world’s largest democracy and rolling back minority rights, particularly regarding India’s 200 million Muslims, the world’s largest Muslim minority, Modi stands firm in the struggle to shape the 21st-century world order.

That battle is as much a power struggle as it is a battle of ideas.

“Ideologies play a central role in structuring international orders as well as mounting collective efforts to challenge and transform them,” scholars Gregorio Bettiza, Derek Bolton, and David Lewis noted in a recent journal article.

Challengers, they said, “tend to organize around alternative beliefs and values.”

Juxtaposed with the Biden administration’s democracy vs. autocracy framework, Modi’s model of illiberalism combined with non-alignment while maintaining close ties to the world’s major economies is increasingly a preferred alternative for autocratic middle powers, particularly in the Gulf, according to Middle East expert Jon Alterman.

US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said on the eve of President Joe Biden’s White House meeting with Modi that the US leader would not lecture the Indian prime minister about human rights.

“Ultimately, the question of where politics and the question of democratic institutions go in India is going to be determined within India by Indians. It’s not going to be determined by the United States,” Sullivan said.

Alterman suggested, “That is precisely the conclusion that officials in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi and Cairo—and others—would like Washington to reach about them. They would like to have the US president welcome their rulers without lectures or preconditions.”

India’s appeal as a model for authoritarians and autocrats is not simply self-serving.

It also benefits from the fact that credibility is essential in the battle of ideas. Credibility is what the United States lacks.

The effective dropping of human rights concerns in the US-India relationship is just the latest example of the United States refusing to put its money where its mouth is or, at best, its selective adherence to its democratic and human rights values.

Earlier, Biden lost ground by framing the Ukraine war as a fight between democracy and autocracy rather than what resistance to the Russian invasion is about: upholding the rule of law and the inviolability of internationally recognised borders.

Biden’s problem is that inconsistency in US policy has become as much a liability as it long was an asset. The rise of illiberalism in the United States, symbolised by former President Donald J. Trump, compounds Biden’s difficulties.

To be sure, balancing values with the requirements of big power geopolitics produces uncomfortable compromises.

The United States has yet to attempt to regain credibility by countering legitimate allegations of hypocrisy and opportunism with a well-argued rationale for selective insistence on its values that for decades have rung hollow and insincere.

Raja Mohan, the Indian commentator, put his finger on the US dilemma by noting that “if Washington can do business for many decades with the House of Saud, the Pakistan Army, and the Chinese Communist Party, it is unreasonable to think it will be squeamish about building on clearly convergent interests with the Modi government.” (IPA Service)

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By James M Dorsey

Since arriving in Saudi Arabia five months ago, soccer superstar Ronaldo has scored 14 goals in 16 games for his new club, Al Nassr. Yet, more was needed for Al Nassr to win the Saudi championship or advance in the Saudi Cup.

Even so, Ronaldo’s presence has helped improve the competitive “mentality of the dressing room and the club,” according to former Singapore international Sasi Kumar.

Ronaldo has also significantly enhanced Al Nassr’s following on social media. Tabloid reporting on his luxurious lifestyle, unmarried cohabitation with his partner, Georgina Rodriguez, and Instagram photos of Ms. Rodriguez in a bikini help Saudi Arabia project itself as a socially more liberal society, no longer bound by strict Islamic norms.

Saudi Arabia hopes to build on Ronaldo’s initial contribution to attract other superstars who will help propel the Saudi Pro League into the world’s top ten. Former Real Madrid forward Karim Benzema has signed a deal to join the kingdom’s Al Ittihad football club on a three-year deal.

As part of its effort, the kingdom this week transferred ownership of its four top clubs, including Al Nassr and Al Ittihad, to its sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund (PIF). The transfer allows PIF to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in acquiring players and preparing the clubs for privatization.

Ronaldo has a US$225 million, three-year contract with Al Nassr. Officials did not disclose Benzema’s salary. Lionel Messi, an ambassador for Saudi tourism, reportedly turned down a US$1 billion contract. In addition, Saudi Arabia acquired English Premier League club Newcastle United in 2021 for US$373 million.

Saudi Arabia’s rationale for boosting sports in general, and particularly soccer, makes perfect sense. Sport is a key pillar of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s effort to diversify the Saudi economy and make it less dependent on oil exports. The kingdom hopes to increase Saudi Pro League revenues from 455 million Saudi riyals (US$ 121 million) in 2022 to 1.8 billion riyals (US$480m) annually by 2030.

Saudi Arabia further expects its strategy to generate private-sector investment opportunities and increase the market value of the Roshn Saudi League from three billion riyals (US$799 million) to more than eight billion riyals (US$2.1 billion) by 2030. It also assumes sports will boost tourism, another key pillar of Mr. Bin Salman’s economic diversification plan.

In addition, promoting sports has public health significance in a country where more than 50 per cent of the population is overweight, and more than 20 per cent are obese. Moreover, Saudi Arabia has the Middle East’s second-highest diabetes rate and seventh-highest in the world.

Finally, massive investment in soccer and sports helps Saudi Arabia garner soft power and project itself on the international stage, polish its image tarnished by human rights abuses, and position the kingdom as the region’s top dog, in part by moving the centre of sports gravity away from Qatar, which last year hosted the World Cup, and the United Arab Emirates that fathered Gulf involvement in global soccer with its acquisition of Manchester City in 2008.

The question is not the kingdom’s rationale for emphasising sports but whether its approach can succeed. If Messi’s rejection of a Saudi offer suggests that money cannot buy everything, so does China’s experience. China’s lesson is that money alone does not buy sustainable performance or mandatory organic growth, even if a massive investment is geared towards those goals rather than relying on superstars nearing the end of their careers.

China has yet to climb the ranks of FIFA, the sport’s governing body, or emerge as an Asian soccer powerhouse despite investing billions of dollars in tens of thousands of academies and schools offering special football education over the last decade and the acquisition of top foreign players such as Carlos Tevez, Alex Teixeira, and Oscar.

This week’s merger between golf’s PGA Tour, the longstanding organizer of the sport’s flagship events, and LIV Golf, its Saudi-backed US$405 million, 14-tournament league rival, tells a similar story. The merger is as much a tale of the kingdom successfully wielding its financial muscle to gain substantial influence as it is a story of money buying a lot but not everything.

Money allowed Saudi Arabia to grease the merger and improve its weak negotiating position. Two years into its existence, LIV Golf signed top players with mouth-watering financial packages but failed to attract corporate sponsors and new star players and garner credible television ratings.

In addition, litigation threatened to put the PIF’s secretive decision-making in the public domain after a US federal judge ordered the fund to answer questions and produce evidence as part of the discovery process in a legal battle between LIV and PGA.

The merger ended the litigation that could have led to LIV Golf being deemed a foreign influence campaign in the United States This would have meant that its US employees had to register as foreign agents under the Foreign Agent Registration Act, or FARA.

In another dent in its sports blitz, Saudi Arabia suffered a setback when Egypt withdrew from plans to be part of a joint bid that would also include Greece for hosting the 2030 World Cup. The withdrawal undermined Saudi hopes of circumventing standard FIFA practice to rotate tournaments among regions by packaging its bid as a tricontinental offering. In principle, FIFA’s practice would have mitigated against awarding the tournament to a Gulf state so soon after the Qatar World Cup. To secure buy-in from its proposed partners, the kingdom had reportedly agreed to foot Egypt and Greece’s infrastructure and other costs in exchange for the right to host most 2030 World Cup matches.

Setbacks notwithstanding, Saudi Arabia is set to make a continued splash with its high-profile, well-funded sports initiative that also includes the hosting of multiple global and regional events such as this year’s FIFA Club World Cup, the 2027 Asian Cup, and chess, boxing, and horseracing tournaments as well as potential bids for the acquisition of Formula 1 and World Wrestling Entertainment.

All of which will keep the kingdom, already a regional soccer powerhouse, in the limelight. What it will not do is ensure that Saudi Arabia becomes an all-round sports performance dynamo and a major top-level international competitor. Saudi investment in infrastructure and sports academies is a key step in that direction. The kingdom has already embarked on that road. Nevertheless, the ultimate litmus test of the kingdom’s sports strategy will be the development of a sports culture in which Saudis excel at the grassroots and elite level rather than employing financial muscle to purchase sports prominence off the shelf.

The question of what the Saudi sports strategy should emphasis is brought into sharp relief by doubts about the kingdom’s ability to fund its grandiose Vision 2030 development plans. S&P Global Ratings warned this week that “the Saudi banking system alone cannot provide funding to vision 2030” as deposit growth has not kept pace to fund the expansion in loans, and foreign reserves fell in April to the lowest in more than 13 years, down more than 44% since its 2014 peak. (IPA Service)

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By James M Dorsey

Religious conservatives and nationalists in the Muslim world and beyond have the wind in their sails. So do Arab autocrats, even if they increasingly cloak themselves in nationalism rather than religious conservatism.

Last week’s first election round in Turkey saw conservatives and ultra-nationalists win control of parliament. At the same time, Recep Tayyip Erdogan appears set to win a third presidential term in this Sunday’s run-off against opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu.

Irrespective of whether he is re-elected, Erdogan’s conservative religious and nationalist coalition will enjoy a 322-seat majority in the 600-member Turkish parliament.

To even stand a chance of defeating Erdogan in the May 28 presidential run-off, Kilicdaroglu has hardened his anti-migrant and anti-Kurdish rhetoric since the May 14 first round in which he trailed the president by five percent.

Turkey is home to the world’s largest Syrian refugee community, estimated at 3.7 million, followed by Lebanon and Jordan.

As a result, Syrian refugees, like other minorities and disadvantaged groups, will be among the losers no matter who emerges as Turkey’s next president.

The Syrian plight is compounded by the welcoming of President Bashar al-Assad’s return earlier this month to the Arab fold when he attended an Arab League summit in Jeddah.

Instead of establishing criteria for handling the millions of people displaced by Al-Assad’s brutal conduct during a decade-long civil war, Arab leaders catered to the Syrian leader’s insistence that refugees return to his war-ravaged country.

The lack of criteria has opened the door to forced deportations, even if authorities in host countries deny the involuntary removal of refugees and Arab officials insist that their return must be voluntary.

Religious support for Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) fits a global mould in which conservative Muslims, Jews, Orthodox Christians, Anglicans, Hindus, and others find common ground in popularly supported traditional family values that constitute the norm in conservative societies.

Embrace of those values allows civilisationalist leaders such as Erdogan, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and the prime ministers of India and Hungary, Narendra Modi and Victor Orban, to position themselves as bulwarks against Western promotion of gender fluidity and LGBTQ rights.

Even so, Turkey is one of two Middle Eastern countries most immediately prone to a culture war given Erdogan’s use of identity politics, culture warring, and anti-migrant rhetoric in his election campaign.

If Turkey is one step removed from a full-fledged culture war, Israel, governed by the most ultra-conservative and ultra-nationalist coalition in its history, is already at war with itself.

Government policies have sparked sustained mass protests and strained relations with the United States and significant segments of the Jewish Diaspora. They have also escalated tensions with Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and the besieged Gaza Strip.

At the other end of the Muslim world, reformers in Indonesia are concerned that Anies Baswedan, a former Jakarta governor with close ties to religious conservatives, including the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as Islamic militants, is one of three top candidates for the presidency in February 2024.

“These links raise concerns among Indonesia’s religious minorities, which make up 13 percent of the population, as well as many moderate Muslims,” said journalist Joseph Rahman.

To be sure, Iran is the Middle East’s true outlier. Forty-four years after the creation of an Islamic republic, culture was at the core of months of anti-government protests that sought to reduce, not increase, religion’s role in politics.

The protests were sparked by the death in custody last September of MahsaAmini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman detained by morality police in Tehran in September for allegedly wearing her hijab “improperly.”

Interestingly, renewed popularity of religious conservatism has not sparked culture wars in the Arab Middle East like the battles fought in polarised societies such as Israel, the United States, and India or Christian faith communities like the Anglican church.

In various Arab countries, rulers pushing social and economic rather than political change subjugate religious elites potentially opposed to their liberalizing reforms. In addition, the repression of freedom of expression makes non-violent culture wars virtually impossible. So does the criminalisation of apostasy and blasphemy and, in Saudi Arabia, defining atheism calls as an act of terrorism.

Finally, Arab autocrats and authoritarians were early adapters as they waged a brutal campaign against Islamists in the wake of the 2011 popular Arab revolts in what analysts such as Shadi Hamid said amounted to a culture war.

The campaign rolled back the achievements of the revolts that toppled Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen’s leaders. A 2013 United Arab Emirates and Saudi-backed military coup overthrew Mohammed Morsi, a Muslim Brother and Egypt’s first and only democratically elected president. In addition, wars were waged to counter Islamists and jihadists in Syria, Libya, and Yemen.

In a twist of irony, that may have been round one in a Middle Eastern culture war. If recent polling is any indication, political Islam is making a comeback alongside religious conservatism, at least in terms of public sentiment.

“In most countries surveyed, young and old citizens demonstrate a clear preference for giving religion a greater role in politics,” said Michael Robbins, director and co-principal investigator of Arab Barometer. The group regularly surveys public opinion in the Middle East.

“In 2021-2022, roughly half or more in five of ten countries surveyed agreed that religious clerics should influence decisions of government,” Robbins added.

To be sure the comeback, may remain restricted to support in anonymous polling. There is little, if any, space for political Islam to express itself in countries like Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Egypt. In exile, Islamist’s space is narrowing. For now, that gives autocrats and authoritarians the upper hand. (IPA Service)

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By James M Dorsey

With Saudi-hosted talks to end Sudan fighting producing minimal results and Arab states supporting rival forces, de-escalation in the Middle East faces a major test. So does Gulf states’ ability to employ dollar diplomacy to persuade poorer Arab brethren to align with the policies of countries like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. In Sudan, the stakes are high.

Gulf states fear four weeks of fighting between the Sudanese army headed by Army General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the dissident Rapid Support Forces (RSF) led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, a.k.a. Hemedti could spark a broader war in the Red Sea that threatens their maritime and strategic interests. The most US and Saudi mediators were able to achieve in days of talks in the port city of Jeddah between the army and the RSF was “a declaration of commitment to protect the civilians of Sudan” rather than a halt to the fighting.

A US State Department official said the declaration would “guide the conduct of the two forces so that we can get in humanitarian assistance, help begin the restoration of essential services like electricity and water, to arrange for the withdrawal of security forces from hospitals and clinics, and to perform the respectful burial of the dead.”

The World Health Organisation (WHO) last week put the number of killed in the fighting at 604, many of them civilians. It said 51,000 had been wounded and 700,000 displaced.

The mediators hope that they can leverage the declaration to achieve agreement on a 10-day ceasefire to implement it. That in turn, officials said, could create the basis for a longer halt to the fighting. Officials said implementation of the declaration would be monitored with overhead imagery, satellite data, social media analysis, and on the ground reporting from Sudanese civil society members.

In an indication of the multiple obstacles, the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva narrowly passed a motion tabled by the United States and Britain to increase monitoring of human rights abuses in Sudan. Arab and African nations either opposed the motion or abstained because of Saudi and Sudanese lobbying against it.

Saudi Arabia asserted that the motion could jeopardise the Jeddah talks while Sudanese ambassador Hassan Hamid Hassan charged that the council was interfering in Sudan’s internal affairs.”What’s happening in Sudan is an internal affair and what the SAF (Sudanese Armed Forces) are doing is a constitutional duty to all armies in all countries in the world,” Hassan said.

Progress in the Jeddah talks was hampered by the fact that they are conducted by representatives of the two commanders rather than by Al-Burhan and Hemedti themselves.

Signalling that days of talks had not brought the two sides any closer together, the negotiators, the army’s Rear Admiral Mahjoub Bushra Ahmed Rahma and Brigadier General Omer Hamdan Ahmed Hammad, Hemedti’s brother, did not shake hands after signing the document on humanitarian assistance. Moreover, with both sides convinced that they have the upper hand, neither has an incentive to implement a long-lasting halt to the fighting. So far, neither the army nor the RSF has abided by several earlier ceasefires.

No external player – Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, the United States, and Russia – wants to prolong the conflict even if most of the players backed the army and the RSF in their efforts to stymie a transition to civilian rule after mass anti-government protests toppled President Omar al-Bashir in 2019.Yet, Egypt, dependent on Gulf financial and economic aid, and the United Arab Emirates have long-standing ties to opposing parties in the Sudanese conflict even though Cairo and Abu Dhabi insist that they have not taken sides.

Cairo’s view of Sudan drives Egyptian support for Al-Burhan and the Sudanese army as an indispensable ally in its long-running dispute with Ethiopia over the controversial Renaissance Dam. Egypt has described the giant hydroelectric project on the Blue Nile in northern Ethiopia as an existential threat because of its potential to control the river’s flow, so vital to life in the country.

The UAE has long worked with Hemedti, who sent mercenaries to fight in the Saudi-led Yemen and has positioned himself as a bulwark against Islamists who dominated the Al-Bashir government and are believed to be influential in the military. The UAE also facilitates Hemedti’s lucrative gold exports through Dubai. At the same time, the UAE has kept its lines open to the army and Al-Burhan.

Last year, Sudan’s DAL conglomerate signed a US$6 billion agreement, backed by Al-Burhan, Sudan’s de facto ruler, with two UAE companies, AD Ports and Invictus Investment, to build a port in Abu Amama on the Red Sea. The port would be a key node in an Emirati Red Sea string of strategic outposts.

Last week, Al-Burhan supporters demanded the expulsion of Emirati diplomats in retaliation for the UAE’s backing of Hemedti, the general’s rival.

Arab media reported that the UAE, amid fears of a breakdown of the Jeddah talks and an escalation in the fighting, has sought to financially entice Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to back away from his support for Al-Burhan.

Grappling with economic turmoil that has seen official inflation shoot up to nearly 34 percent and the local currency halve in value over the past year, Al-Sisi last month visited the UAE in search of new funding, days before the Sudan fighting erupted.

The UAE’s effort to reportedly buy off Egyptian support for Al-Burhan would backtrack on its recent shift from unconditional support to demanding economic reform and enhanced transparency in return for its generosity. The effort also harks back to when Gulf states poured money into economic black holes in exchange for loyalty.

With the Renaissance Dam in mind, that may be, for Egypt, a high price to pay. (IPA Service)

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By James M Dorsey

America to the rescue. In a twist of irony, that may be Central Asia’s only alternative, with the Russian invasion of Ukraine upsetting the region’s security apple cart. The question is whether the United States, already rejiggering its commitment to security in the Middle East, has the will and wherewithal to engage. Depending on one’s analysis of the Middle East’s strategic importance, the glass is either half full or half empty.

With the US wanting to focus on the Indo-Pacific, it has reduced interest in the Middle East. Yet, there is no cohesive Indo-Pacific strategy that fails to include the Arabian Sea, the Western mouth of the Indo-Pacific. A similar argument could be made for Central Asia, a potential land-based counterpart to the maritime Indo-Pacific in Russia’s soft underbelly and China’s western flank.

The notion of an enhanced US security role in Central Asia and the Caucasus may seem far-fetched but no longer are the days when a Central Asian leader would invite Russia or the Russian-led Central Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) to quell domestic unrest. That’s what Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev did in January 2022, a month before Russia invaded Uzbekistan.

The invasion has put in a different perspective to long-standing Russian assertions that Kazakhstan is not a nation but “a Russian-speaking country in the full sense of the word.” That is President Vladimir Putin’s way of saying that Kazakhstan is part of the Russian world. As a result, Central Asian leaders no longer see Russia as a trustworthy security guarantor and, worse, a potential threat. At the same time, regional leaders are hesitant to depend more on China than they already are economically. Theoretically, that leaves the United States as their only option.

Russia’s failure to secure free transit along the Lachin corridor linking the disputed autonomous region of Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia, a fellow CSTO member, has deepened a lack of confidence in Russia. Nagorno-Karabakh lies within Azerbaijan but has been under the control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia since a separatist war in the 1990s. That conflict also left large chunks of surrounding lands in Armenian hands.

In 44 days of fighting in September 2020, the Azerbaijani military routed Armenian forces This forced Armenia to accept a Russia-brokered peace deal that saw the return of a significant part of Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan. Russia deployed nearly 2,000 peacekeepers to ensure safe transit across the region and monitor the peace deal. But travel through the Lachin corridor has been blocked since December by Azerbaijanis identifying themselves as environmental activists and the opening last month of an Azerbaijani military checkpoint. The Russian refusal to force the reopening of the corridor paved the way for renewed US mediation.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said last week that US-hosted talks in Washington between the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers had “discussed some very tough issues over the last few days and they’ve made tangible progress on a durable peace agreement. We really are within reach of an agreement.”

The effect of a successful mediation would ripple far beyond the southern Caucasus even if Russia has indicated that it would not accept an agreement that was not based on the 2020 Russian-brokered ceasefire. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan was scheduled to visit Moscow this week to participate in celebrations of Russia’s victory in World War II. The US mediation comes as relations between Azerbaijan and Iran are deteriorating quickly while the former Soviet republic’s ties to Israel are expanding.

Mukhtar Mammadov arrived in March in Tel Aviv to take up his post as Azerbaijan’s first ambassador to Israel, even though the two countries established diplomatic relations 30 years ago.

On a visit to Baku last month, Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen announced that his country would supply Azerbaijan with two satellites worth US$120 million. Israeli drones are believed to have played a crucial role in Azerbaijan’s victory in the 2020 war.

Iran sees the deepening of relations with Israel as part of a strategy to further isolate the Islamic republic by disrupting its trade with Russia and Central Asia. Russia and Iran are both seeking to evade crippling US sanctions. It also fears that Azerbaijan may allow Israel to use its airbases and/or airspace for a potential strike against Iranian nuclear facilities.

In his first interview after arriving in Tel Aviv, Mammadov denied that Azerbaijan would facilitate an Israeli attack. Days later, Cohen said at the opening of the embassy in the presence of his Azerbaijani counterpart, Jeyhun Bayramov, that the two countries had agreed to form a “united front against Iran.”

Iran also worries that Israeli agricultural companies that have created ‘smart villages’ in areas close to its border captured by Azerbaijan during the 2020 war can eavesdrop on the Iranians. In March, the Israel Institute of Technology or Technion helped Azerbaijan establish a cybersecurity centre in Baku. Iran is further concerned that a planned corridor connecting Azerbaijan and its Nakhchivan enclave inside Armenia to Russia and Turkey could change the Iranian-Armenian border.

Iranian concerns are fuelled by hopes that closer cooperation with Russia will revitalise a two decade-old effort to create a 7,200 kilometre North South transport corridor, dubbed the International North-South Trade Corridor (INSTC), that would link India and the Gulf to Central Asia, Russia, and Europe.

Last month, Russia began exporting fuel to Iran by rail through Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. In addition, trains have ferried 12 million tonnes of Russian grain via Iran to India. Nevertheless, Azerbaijani-Iranian friction delayed plans to complete a 170-kilometre rail line that would link the Iranian provincial city of Rasht to the Azerbaijani border town of Astara, a key node in a trans-Caspian Sea route.

Meanwhile, Iran’s Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Line Group has invested in a Russian port on the Volga River. At the same time, Iran is finalizing rules governing Iranian right of passage on the Volga and Don rivers. To underscore its concerns, Iran has deployed troops and held military exercises on its border with Azerbaijan. Heightening tensions, Azerbaijan and Iran expelled some of each other’s diplomats last week.

The expulsions followed an attack in January on the Azerbaijani embassy in Tehran in which a security guard was killed. In addition, there was an assassination attempt in March on Jan Fazil Mustafa, an Azerbaijani parliamentarian critical of Iranian influence. Last November, Azerbaijan arrested several people on charges of spying for Iran.

The US strategy seems to involve a division of labour in which the United States focuses on geopolitics while Europe is expected to increase its economic engagement with Central Asian states. (IPA Service)

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By James M Dorsey

A schism that could tear the Anglican church apart is about more than LGBTQ rights. It’s about fundamental cultural and religious differences with potentially profound consequences for the geopolitical battle to shape a 21st-century world order.

The rift also raises questions about the Church of England’s priorities at a time when the Anglican congregation in Nigeria, home to the world’s largest Anglican community, is under persistent attack by Muslim militias in an environment of escalating violence in the country that targets multiple communities.

Even so, the Nigeria-based International Society for Civil Liberties & Rule of Law reported last year that 52,250 Christians had been killed in Nigeria in the past 13 years. Jihadists also killed 34,000 Muslims in that period, the group said.

Political scientist Jideofor Adibe noted that Muslim-Christian violence dominated headlines because of competition between the two faith groups.“Both religions are constantly competing for space and control. Each suspects the other of wanting to encroach on its space and poach its members,” Adibe said. Similarly, many Muslims fear that globalisation and Western culture undermine Islam and therefore view them with suspicion if not antagonism, he added.

Asked about statements by Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury and ceremonial head of the global Anglican community, the cleric’s National Inter Religious Affairs Adviser, Reverend Richard Sudworth, directed this writer to an online listing of Welby’s pronouncements over the past decade that referenced Nigeria. Most of the 43 statements did not refer to the violence or mentioned it only summarily.

In a twist of irony, Nahdlatul Ulama, a conservative, Indonesia-based reformist Muslim civil society movement, has discreetly stepped into the breach left by the Anglican church.

The group included Archbishop Henry Ndukuba, the primate of Nigeria, in the opening plenary of a summit in Bali in November of religious leaders. This summit was part of last year’s run-up to the Indonesia-chaired Group of 20 meeting that brought together leaders of the world’s largest economies. The religious gathering was designed to position religion as a solution to global problems rather than part of the problem.

Critics accuse Lambeth Palace, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s residence, of being more concerned about the LGBTQ community’s plight than of the church’s African flock. The critics said the English church’s stance prompted the rejection of Welby’s leadership by 1,300 Anglican clergy and laypeople gathered in the Rwandan capital of Kigali for the fourth Global Anglican Futures Conference (GAFCON IV).

In what the conference dubbed the Kigali Commitment, the Anglicans said they had no confidence in the ability of the Archbishop of Canterbury or “the other instruments of communion led by him (the Lambeth Conference, the Anglican Consultative Council, and the Primate’s meetings)…to provide a Godly way forward that will be acceptable to those who are committed to the truthfulness, clarity, sufficiency, and authority of scripture.”

The schism in the church is the latest fallout of resistance by conservatives in the Global South to US and European efforts to force recognition of LGBTQ rights. This is despite widespread official and public rejection. The issue’s sensitivity and rejection of a top-down, Western-centric approach by governments, human rights and LGBTQ rights groups was on public display during and in the run-up to last year’s Qatar World Cup.

While Qataris were willing to embrace reform of their country’s onerous migrant worker regime, they were, by and large, at best willing to adopt a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy towards LGBTQ fans during the tournament.

Similarly, Russia’s more than a decade-long exploitation of the cultural and religious cleavage between North and South is one factor driving reluctance in the Global South to condemn President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Putin’s rejection of gender and sexual diversity has earned him brownie points among conservatives in the Global South.

A decade ago, Russia’s Valdai Discussion Club organized a gathering in Marrakech of Islamist groups in the Middle East and North Africa. Russian officials and journalists asserted that Russian Orthodox Christians and Muslims shared common values. The Russians argued that gays and gender equality threatened a woman’s right to remain at home and serve her family and that Iran should be the model for women’s rights. (IPA Service)

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By James M Dorsey

Think that the modern nation-state originated with the emergence of the 17th-century beginnings of the era of science and reason? Think again.

In a recently published book, political scientist Anna Gryzmala-Busse traces the origins of the modern state to medieval Europe when religion and the church played a powerful role rather than the 16th-century beginnings of the modern era.

Gryzmala-Busse’s analysis is not simply academic and historical. It puts in a different light notions of Christian religiosity and heritage in Central and Eastern Europe that have strained relations in the European Union between Western European states and former Communist countries like Hungary as well as secular Europe’s struggle to come to grips with the religiosity of their Muslim minorities, nowhere more so than in France.

Although Gryzmala-Busse’s focus is on Christianity and Europe, her analysis helps explain why the Sunni Muslim world took a different path and why the concept of a caliphate remains a hot-button issue in Islam. She asserted that secular European rulers needed to create institutions to collect taxes and have an institutional base for fighting wars and negotiating peace on a fragmented continent.

To do so, monarchs adopted administrative policies and approaches developed by a wealthy church that was Europe’s single largest landowner. It levied taxes on its land holdings. In addition, the church boasted a highly educated elite, commanded authority, and held out the prospect of salvation.

As a result, “the church was an essential source of legal, administrative, and conciliar innovations… The church showed rulers how to collect taxes more efficiently, request and answer a flood of petitions, keep records and accounts, interpret the law, and hold counsels that could provide valuable consent,” Gryzmala-Busse wrote.

“Concepts such as representation, binding consent, and even majority rules relied on ecclesiastical precedents,” she said. In short, “the medieval church was so influential because it was armed with superior organizational reach, human capital, and spiritual authority,” Gryzmala-Busse concluded.

Implicitly, Gryzmala-Busse acknowledged that the Muslim world travelled down a different path when she noted that there were no governance models in Asia and the Middle East that medieval European leaders could emulate.  She was likely referring to Islam scholar Ahmed Kuru’s ground-breaking analysis of what he called the state-ulema alliance.

That alliance precluded an arrangement similar to that between the church and rulers as portrayed by political scientist Jonathan Laurence. This arrangement involved rulers successfully deploying what they had learnt from clerics to curtail and sideline the church.

In his award-winning book, Laurence noted that ultimately the church could no longer prevail and accepted temporal jurisdiction over what became the tiny Vatican state while reaching a modus vivendi with European governments that ensured its continued existence and enabled it to thrive.

“European nations strong-armed, expropriated, violated, and humiliated the Catholic hierarchy,” forcing it to “relinquish its 1,000-year claim to political rule and focus instead on advocacy, global spiritual influence, and its evangelizing mission,” Laurence wrote.

The political scientist argued further that European efforts to undermine the Ottoman caliphate that was abolished in 1924 in the wake of the emergence of a modern Turkish state fuelled theological differences in the Sunni Muslim world.

While that may have been a contributing factor, Kuru’s analysis suggested that the evolution of relations between the state and religious scholars in the Sunni Muslim world would have prevented it from adopting the European model irrespective of external attitudes towards the caliphate. So did the absence in Islam of a central authority like the pope.

Kuru traced the modern-day state template in many Muslim-majority countries to the 11th century. This is when Islamic scholars who until then had, by and large, refused to surrender their independence to the state were co-opted by Muslim rulers.

The transition coincided with the rise of the military state legitimized by religious scholars who had little choice but to join its employ. They helped the state develop Sunni Muslim orthodoxy based on text rather than reason- or tradition-based interpretations of Islam.

It is an orthodoxy that prevails until today even though various states such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have adopted far-reaching social change as part of economic reform efforts and as a regime survival strategy. The orthodoxy is reflected in reticence with few exceptions to reform outdated religious legal tenets, particularly when it comes to notions of the state.

In a bold move in February, Nahdlatul Ulama, the world’s largest, Indonesia-based Muslim civil society movement argued that Islamic jurisprudence needs to be updated to introduce the notion of the nation-state and a United Nations that groups these states. The movement contended that this would involve abolishing the notion of the caliphate as a legal concept.

“It is neither feasible nor desirable to re-establish a universal caliphate that would unite Muslims throughout the world in opposition to non-Muslims…. Attempts to do so will inevitably be disastrous and contrary to the purposes of Sharia (Islamic law): i.e., the protection of religion, human life, sound reasoning, family, and property,” the group said in a declaration on its centennial according to the Hijra calendar.

Nahdlatul Ulama’s reforms of Islamic jurisprudence do not bind others in a Muslim world where religious authority is decentralised.

However, they lay down a marker that other Muslim legal authorities will ultimately be unable to ignore in their bid to garner recognition as proponents of a genuinely moderate Islam.

As a result, politics rather than morality or spirituality will determine Nahdlatul Ulama’s impact beyond Indonesia, the world’s most populous and largest Muslim-majority democracy.

The importance of politics is reinforced by the implicit agreement between scholars Gryzmala-Busse , Laurence and Kuru that the state has successfully subjugated religious power in Europe as well as much of the Sunni Muslim world.

However, the difference is that in Europe the church withdrew from politics and retreated to the spiritual realm while in the Muslim world religious figures retain some clout with rulers wanting them to legitimise their authoritarian or autocratic rule. (IPA Service)

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By James M Dorsey

America is in decline. Eclipsed by China’s rise, it is shifting attention from the Middle East to the Indo-Pacific.

That is one refrain in the analysis of three seemingly paradigm-challenging developments in the past month: a Chinese-mediated restoration of diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran, the kingdom’s association with the China-led, security-focused Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, and a possible Russian-facilitated revival of diplomatic ties between Saudi Arabia and Syria.

The geopolitical importance of these developments is too early to tell. While significant in and of themselves, they raise as many questions as they provide answers. Their ultimate impact remains uncertain. At the same time, these developments, although seemingly sidelining the United States, have not changed facts on the ground. Furthermore, they do not suggest tectonic plate shifting.

Geography is one immutable fact. There is no coherent Indo-Pacific strategy that does not include the region’s Western approach: the Arabian Sea with Oman, Yemen, Somalia, India, and Pakistan as littoral states. In other words, a continued US commitment to security in the Middle East or West Asia, however reconfigured, has to be part and parcel of any Indo-Pacific strategy.

Mini-lateral alliances like I2U2 that brings together the United States, India, the United Arab Emirates, and Israel with a focus on economics and non-conventional security such as food production testify to the importance of the Gulf and the Arabian Sea. Moreover, the recent China and Russia-related developments did not happen in a vacuum. They reflect a global rebalancing of power rather than the eclipse of one power by another.

Initially, the rebalancing towards a multipolar world involves the United States and China. However, it is only a matter of time before India emerges as the world’s third-largest economy and claims its seat at the top table.

In that multipolar environment, middle powers like Saudi Arabia determined not to be caught in a renewed Cold War in which they are forced to align themselves with any one side of the divide, are accruing increased agency and leverage as they play all sides against the middle.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman appeared to be flexing his enhanced muscles when he reportedly told associates late last year that he was no longer interested in pleasing the US saying he wants something in return for anything he gives Washington.

Meanwhile, depending on the outcome of the Ukraine war, Gulf states may find that Russia is, at this point, a middle rather than a global power even if that is not how it seeks to project itself. A frigate armed with hypersonic cruise missile, the Admiral Gorshkov, this week became the first Russian warship to dock in Saudi Arabia in Russia’s latest projection of itself as a global power. The vessel arrived after participating in exercises off the coast of South Africa and together with China and Iran in the Arabian Sea.

Even so, while Saudi Arabia and Iran may have had good reason to opt for China as the sponsor of their improved relations, it is not clear why the kingdom would need Moscow to restore its relations with Syria. If Saudi Arabia and Syria re-establish relations and involve Russia, it would likely be a gesture at a time when the country is sanctioned by the United States, Europe, and some of their Asian allies rather than because Moscow had a substantial contribution to make.

Earning Russian and Chinese brownie points makes complete sense. Rattled by a decade of statements by US officials and actions that cast doubt on America’s continued commitment to Gulf security, Middle Eastern states seek to hedge their bets. They do so as much based on perceptions as on facts. The role of perceptions is magnified by the US’s failure to clearly define its commitment to Gulf security and communicate that effectively.

The US’s failure to do so looms large as facts on the ground don’t bear out perceptions. In a just published study, Christopher K. Colley, a security expert at the United Arab Emirates National Defence College, concluded that “America’s forward military presence (in the Middle East) is not declining, nor even remaining stable, but in fact has increased over the past decade.”

Based on data from the International Institute for Strategic Studies, Colley noted that from 2008 to 2022, the US military increased its presence in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, and Djibouti. Nor has there been any significant shift in weapon sourcing by Middle Eastern states, according to Colley.

Taking fighter jets as a measure, he calculated that upwards of 56 per cent of fighters in the air forces of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, and Oman are US-made with France making up much of the remainder.

“The percentage of Russian and Chinese warplanes in those countries is zero,” Colley said.“With the United States supplying an estimated 75 percent of Saudi weapons systems, which require spare parts, repairs, and upgrades, the structural links between Washington and Riyadh are not only robust but create powerful economic, political, and security lobbies with vested interests in solving disagreements,” he added.

Colley concluded his study before the United States decided in late March to deploy ageing A-10 attack planes to the Middle East to replace more advanced combat aircraft that will be shifted to the Pacific and Europe. It’s not clear what impact the replacement may have on Gulf and Chinese security considerations.

China is happy to let the United States shoulder security responsibility in the Gulf as long as its military projection is reliable and credible. Many Chinese analysts assume that the United States will maintain its commitment for the foreseeable future. The question is whether the replacement of warplanes reduces the commitment’s credibility. For the moment, the replacement is unlikely to alter Chinese calculations.

Nevertheless, with the rapid modernization of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and its navy, China has increasingly acquired the capability to deploy forces to the Middle East to secure its interests. Even so, China’s deployment considerations are as much political as they are military. With good relations on all sides of the region’s divides, China fears that an enhanced security posture could force it to disrupt its carefully constructed balance if it is forced to take military action against any one party in case of a serious threat.

It’s a very different picture when it comes to Russia. Even without the growing cost of the Ukraine war and US and European sanctions, Russia’s economy, far smaller than that of either the United States or China, would struggle to shoulder the brunt of regional security in the Middle East. In addition, the size of Russia’s navy limits the country’s ability to create a security umbrella far from its shores. Nor does it have the kind of air force that could provide cover on the open seas.

For now, this means that there is no real alternative to the US security umbrella in the Gulf. But that doesn’t stop Gulf states from diversifying their military suppliers. Last year, for example, the UAE signed agreements to purchase substantial weapons systems from France, South Korea, China, Indonesia, Turkey, and Israel. Except for China, its more recent suppliers are all US allies or partners. At the same time, the sustainability of the American umbrella is less a question of US decline and more one of how the United States will define its interests and role in the world — rather than by its diminishing need for Middle Eastern oil and gas. (IPA Service)

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By James M Dorsey

A Gulf investor with an analytical and artistic bent, Ali al-Salim pinpointed the long-term challenges Saudi Arabia faces as it re-establishes relations with Iran.

While most analysts focused on the immediate reduction of regional tensions and the possible opening for an end to the eight-year-long Saudi military intervention in Yemen as a result of a Chinese-mediated agreement to restore diplomatic relations between two Middle Eastern arch-rivals, Al-Salim is looking at Iran’s long-term competitive edge compared to the kingdom.

“As relations between Saudi and Iran begin to thaw, the logic for Saudi’s ambitious ‘Trojena’ ski resort will come further into question. Iran boasts world-class ski resorts an hour from Tehran and 90km of slopes. Oh, and it’s all natural, even the snow,” Al-Salim said on Twitter.

Al-Salim was referring to a yet-to-be-built resort on mountain peaks overlooking Neom slated to be home to 7,000 people by 2026 and annually attract 700,000 visitors. Trojena would be the Gulf’s first outdoor ski resort.

Neom is Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s US$500 billion fantasia. It is a futuristic science-fiction-like new city and tourism destination along the Red Sea in a mostly unpopulated part of the kingdom.

Somewhat incongruously, the Olympic Council of Asia has awarded Trojena the right to host the 2029 Asian Winter Games.

In contrast to Iran’s up to 5,600-metre high, 600-kikometer-long Alborz mountain range that stretches along the Caspian Sea, snow falls occasionally on Trojena’s 2,400-metre high Sarawat mountains.

To compensate for its shortage, Trojena plans to create an outdoor ski slope by blasting artificial snow on the mountains. This slope would be powered by renewable energy. In Al-Salim’s mind, Trojena appears to be emblematic of the broader challenge posed by an Iran that eventually is freed of the shackles of crippling US sanctions and has rebuilt its economy.

Unshackled and recovered, Iran brings to the table much that Saudi Arabia has and more. With a population close to 90 million, Iran is almost three times the size of the kingdom. It ranks as the world’s third-largest oil and second-largest natural gas reserve holder.

Beyond boasting one of the Middle East’s largest domestic markets, an innovative and technology-savvy youth, a deep-seated identity rooted in empire, and a battle-hardened military, Iran occupies strategic geography at the crossroads of Central Asia, the Middle East and Europe, and a coastline along the Arabian Sea, the western end of the Indo-Pacific.

To be sure, Iran has a long way to go to fully capitalize on its assets with no immediate prospect of its clerical regime doing what it would take to persuade the United States to lift sanctions, rebuild confidence with its neighbours, including Saudi Arabia, and introduce necessary political, economic, and social reforms.

As a result, Saudi Arabia has a first-starter advantage, which Bin Salman is bent on exploiting with his social reforms and efforts to diversify the Saudi economy to reduce the kingdom’s dependence on oil exports, of which Trojena is one building block.

Even so, the restoration of diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia constitutes a first step to strengthen the Iranian economy. This would enable Iran to position itself as not just a formidable political rival but also an economic competitor.

“Evidently, de-escalation will reduce the cost of regional security for all parties and free up more potential for trade and cross-border investments and partnerships that the region needs,” said Bijan Khajehpour, a keen observer of the Iranian economy.

Iranian hopes have been buoyed by plans by the United Arab Emirates to boost annual trade with Iran to US$30 billion in the next two years, up from $20 billion in 2022, Emirati interest in Iranian infrastructure, including the strategic Arabian Sea port of Chahbahar, and prospects for Saudi investment in the Islamic republic.

Saudi Finance Minister Mohammed al-Jadaan recently told a private sector forum of Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund that investment in Iran could happen “very quickly.”

Optimistically, Al-Jadaan went on to say that “there are a lot of opportunities for Saudi investments in Iran. We don’t see impediments as long as the terms of any agreement would be respected.”

Al-Jadaan’s remarks did not refer to US sanctions, the elephant in the room. Instead, he hinted at Iran’s need to clean up multiple legal and operational ambiguities that pose obstacles to foreign investment, even without considering externally imposed restrictions.

Laying out a roadmap for Saudi and Gulf investment in Iran, Khajehpour suggested that initially, investors could target non-sanctioned industries, such as food and pharmaceuticals while developing “creative banking and financial solutions” that would enable circumvention of sanctions. Furthermore, Khajehpour held out the possibility that the United States could provide waivers for investments that address water scarcity and climate change.

If and when sanctions are lifted, the sky is the limit. Opportunities range from cooperation on petroleum products and petrochemicals, development of an offshore Saudi-Iranian-Kuwaiti gas field, and connecting electricity grids, to investment in transportation linkages, according to Khajehpour.

Saudi interest in getting in on the ground floor of Iran’s eventual re-emergence extends beyond geopolitical, security, economic, and commercial considerations. Economic cooperation has the potential to blunt the impact of an unleashed Iran by making the kingdom a partner.

“Iran’s rise is inevitable. When it happens, the Middle East will be a different place. Saudi Arabia knows that. It sees the short- and long-term benefits of recalibrating relations with Iran. Iran hasn’t quite thought that far but ultimately it will,” said a European official who closely monitors Middle Eastern developments. (IPA Service)

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By James M Dorsey

A push by Arab allies of the United States to bring Syria in from the cold highlights the limits of a Chinese-mediated rapprochement between the Middle East’s archrivals, Saudi Arabia and Iran.

The effort spearheaded by the United Arab Emirates, and supported by Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan, demonstrates that the expected restoration of diplomatic relations between the kingdom and the Islamic republic has done nothing to reduce geopolitical jockeying and rebuild trust.

At best, the Chinese-mediated agreement establishes guardrails to prevent regional rivalries from spinning out of control, a principle of Chinese policy towards the Middle East.

The Saudi-Iran agreement also is an exercise in regime survival. It potentially allows the two countries to pursue their economic goals unfettered by regional tensions. For Saudi Arabia, that means diversification and restructuring of the kingdom’s economy, while Iran seeks to offset the impact of harsh US sanctions. The goal of countering Iran in Syria is upfront in the Arab proposal for returning Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to the Arab and international fold.

If accepted by Syria, the United States, and Europe, it would initiate a political process that could produce a less sympathetic Syrian government to Iran. It would also establish an Arab military presence in Syria designed to prevent Iran from extending its influence under the guise of securing the return of refugees.

For Al-Assad, the carrot is tens of billions of dollars needed to rebuild his war-ravaged country and alleviate the humanitarian fallout of last month’s devastating earthquakes in northern Syria. Hampered by sanctions, Al-Assad’s Russian and Iranian backers don’t have the economic or political wherewithal to foot the bill.

Nevertheless, potential Gulf investment is likely to encounter obstacles. The US sanctions that hamper Russia and Iran, also erect barriers for Saudi Arabia and the UAE that will limit the degree to which they want to be seen as sanctions busters.

Moreover, countering Iranian influence in Syria would have to go beyond trade and investment in physical reconstruction. Iran has over the years garnered substantial soft power by focusing on embedding itself in Syrian culture and education, providing social services, and religious proselytization.

Meanwhile, China has made clear that its interests are commercial and further limited to aspects of Syrian reconstruction that serve its geopolitical and geoeconomic goals. Al-Assad was in Moscow last week to discuss trade and humanitarian aid. The Syrian president’s rejection of a Russian request that he meets his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, suggests that Al-Assad will be equally opposed to key elements of the Arab proposal.

The Syrian president said he would only meet Erdogan once Turkey withdraws its troops from rebel-held areas of northern Syria. Even so, the Arab push potentially offers the United States and Europe the ability to strike a reasonable balance between their lofty moral, ethical, and human rights principles and the less savoury contingencies of realpolitik.

The terms of the Arab proposal to allow Syria back into the international fold after a decade of brutal civil war that killed some 600,000 people, displaced millions more, and significantly enhanced Iran’s regional footprint appears to take that into account.

While Al-Assad rejects the principle of political reform and the presence of more foreign troops on Syrian territory, legitimizing the regime of a man accused of war crimes, including using chemical weapons against civilians, is a hard pill to swallow for the United States and Europe.

However, it is easy to claim the moral high ground on the backs of thousands trying to pick up the pieces in the wake of the earthquakes. The same is true for the plight of the millions of refugees from the war whose presence in Turkey and elsewhere is increasingly precarious because of mounting anti-migrant sentiment. That is not to say that Al-Assad should go scot-free.

Nonetheless, the failure to defeat the Syrian regime, after 12 years in which it brutally prosecuted a war with the backing of Russia and Iran, suggests the time has come to think out of the box. The alternative is maintaining a status quo that can claim the moral high ground but holds out no prospect of change or alleviation of the plight of millions of innocent people.

To be sure, morality is not a concern of Arab regimes seeking to bring Al-Assad in from the cold. However, countering Iran and managing regional conflicts to prevent them from spinning out of control is. Even so, the Arab proposition potentially opens a way out of a quagmire.

It would enhance the leverage of the United States and Europe to ensure that political reform is the cornerstone of Al-Assad’s engagement with elements of the Syrian opposition. In other words, rather than rejecting any solution that does not involve Mr. Al-Assad’s removal from power, the United States and Europe could lift sanctions contingent on agreement and implementation of reforms. Similarly, the US and Europe could make sanctions relief contingent on a safe, uninhibited, and orderly return of refugees.

However, there would be questions about the ability and willingness of Arab forces loyal to autocratic regimes to safeguard that process impartially.US and European engagement with Arab proponents of dealing with Al-Assad would potentially also give them a seat on a train that has already left the station despite their objections.

Ali Shamkani, the Iranian national security official who negotiated the deal with Saudi Arabia in Beijing, was in the UAE last week to meet President Mohammed bin Zayed. There is little doubt that Syria was on the two men’s agenda. Al-Assad met with Bin Zayed in Abu Dhabi for the second time in a year and travelled to Oman for talks with Sultan Haitham bin Tariq last month.

The Jordanian and Egyptian foreign ministers recently trekked separately to Damascus for the first time since the civil war in Syria erupted in 2011. Perhaps; the most fundamental obstacle to the Arab proposition is not the fact that Syria, the United States, and Europe would have to swallow bitter pills.

The prime obstacle is likely to be the Arab proponents of the plan. The UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan are unlikely to stick to their guns in presenting the plan as a package. Having taken the lead in cozying up to Al-Assad, the UAE has since last year demonstrated that it is willing to coax the Syrian leader to back away from Iran at whatever cost to prospects for reform or alleviation of the plight of his victims.

Saudi Arabia, like Qatar and several other Arab countries, initially opposed reconciliation but the kingdom has since embraced the notion of rehabilitation of Al-Assad. In early March, Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud noted “that there is a consensus building in the Arab world, that the status quo is not tenable. And that means we have to find a way to move beyond that status quo.”

Much of the Arab proposition is about enticing the United States and Europe to be more accommodating and more inclined to a conditioned lifting of sanctions. A speedy in principle US and European embrace of the Arab proposition would hold Emirati and Saudi feet to the fire and put Al-Assad on the back foot. (IPA Service)

By arrangement with the Arabian Post

The post Arab Plan For Syria Puts Europe And America In A Bind first appeared on IPA Newspack.

The article Arab Plan For Syria Puts Europe And America In A Bind appeared first on Arabian Post.

By James M Dorsey

Chinese mediation between Saudi Arabia and Iran potentially signals paradigm shifts in Middle Eastern diplomacy and alliances. The mediation suggests a more productive approach than that of the United States by seeking to manage rather than resolve conflicts based on principles enunciated by China in 2021.

The successful mediation between the Middle East’s foremost archrivals also indicates it could lead to a broader regional détente. Sources in Bahrain said the Shiite-majority Gulf state ruled by a Sunni Muslim minority might be on the verge of restoring diplomatic relations with Iran. The sources said Bahrain and Iran were already exchanging messages.

Long at the forefront of disputes between Iran and various Gulf states, Bahrain would be the only Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member without formal relations with the Islamic republic when Riyadh and Tehran exchange ambassadors in accordance with the agreement negotiated by China. The GCC groups Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, and Oman.

In what looks like a possible second wave of détente in the Middle East, Egypt, Morocco, and Jordan could be next in line. In the first wave, Saudi Arabia and the UAE buried their hatchets with Qatar and Turkey; the UAE, Bahrain, and Morocco established diplomatic relations with Israel; and Israel and Turkey patched up their differences.

To be sure, the dialing down of tensions without parties making major political concessions and the revival of economic ties meant countries were no longer showing their fangs. Instead, they put their differences on ice. Saudi Arabia and Iran appear to be travelling down the same road. The two countries agreed to no longer show their fangs, with the kingdom allegedly promising to stop funding media and groups opposed to the regime in Tehran.

In return, Iran reportedly pledged to help end the eight-year-long war in Yemen and prevent Houthi rebels from striking at targets in Saudi Arabia. The Iranian Foreign Ministry denied that Yemen had been discussed in Beijing. At the same time, the agreement appears to have potentially put a monkey wrench in geopolitical maneuvering by Israel and various Arab states, including Saudi Arabia. It also may spark new cleavages and exasperate existing ones.

The agreement has dampened Israeli and US hopes of a united Saudi-Emirati-Israeli front against Iran that could risk a military confrontation. Moreover, Saudi Arabia will likely have been fortified in its resolve to establish formal relations with the Jewish state only when there is a solution to the Palestinian problem.

In a sign of the times, Saudi Arabia this week prevented Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen from attending a UN World Tourism Organisation conference in the kingdom by refusing to discuss security arrangements for the visit. Cohen’s attendance would have been a Cabinet-level Israeli official’s first public visit to the kingdom.

While the timing may have been coincidental, the agreement put a reported Emirati decision to stop purchasing Israeli military equipment in a larger context. Israeli media reports said the decision had been prompted by Israel’s domestic political crisis, which raised doubts about Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s ability to control his far-right, ultra-nationalist, and ultra-religious coalition partners.

The UAE has forged close economic and security ties with Israel since establishing diplomatic relations with the Jewish state, together with Bahrain and Morocco. Last month, Israel and the UAE unveiled a jointly developed unmanned surveillance, reconnaissance, and mine-detecting vessel.

Ali Shamkani, the Iranian national security official who negotiated the deal with Saudi Arabia in Beijing, was in the UAE this week to meet President Mohammed bin Zayed. The Emirates has been out front in reaching out to Iran in recent years. The Saudi and Emirati moves prompted Efraim Halevy, the former head of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency and a long-time dove, to wonder aloud whether Israel, too, should reach out to Iran.

In a twist of irony, the UAE halt to Israeli arms acquisitions makes a Saudi recognition of Israel any time soon even less likely. Even so, the Saudi-Iranian rapprochement appears to have energized an emerging cleavage between the kingdom and the UAE, onetime allies who increasingly are becoming economic and political competitors.

The cleavage has prompted the UAE to suddenly speed up the gradual normalisation of relations with Qatar, two years after the lifting in 2021 of the Emirati-Saudi-led diplomatic and economic boycott of the Gulf state because of its alleged ties to Islamists, including the Muslim Brotherhood. Together with Bahrain, the UAE has, in contrast to Saudi Arabia, been slow in injecting warmth into the normalisation.

That appears to have changed. Last week, the UAE reportedly withdrew its bid to host the 2026 World Bank and International Monetary Fund meeting and said it would support Qatar as a potential host instead. The UAE also unblocked Qatari news websites it had blocked during the boycott. These include the Al Jazeera television network, the London-based The New Arab newspaper, and the state-run Qatar News Agency.

At the same time, Saudi Arabia, which like the UAE, has designated the Brotherhood as a terrorist organisation, appears to be cautiously reviving ties to figures allegedly associated with the Brotherhood. Saudi Arabia has long been more ambivalent towards the Brotherhood, a particular bete noir of the UAE.

Prominent British Muslims, whom conservative members of the Muslim community and other conservative groups accuse of having links to Islamist organisations, including the Brotherhood, earlier this month were invited to a two-day conference in London hosted by Mohammed al-Issa, the secretary general of the Muslim World League.

The conservative critics took exception to an allegedly prominent role given at the conference for British and European Muslim leaders to the Muslim Council of Britain, an organisation that has been blacklisted for much of the past 14 years by successive British governments. The government refuses to engage with the Council because its then deputy director-general called in 2009 for violence against Israel and condoned attacks on the Royal Navy if it tried to intercept arms for Hamas, the Islamist group controlling Gaza, from being smuggled into the Strip.

Since coming to office, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has converted the Muslim World League into the propagator of his autocratic form of Islam that is socially more liberal, politically repressive, and demands absolute obedience to the ruler. Once a Brotherhood stronghold, the League was a major global funder of erstwhile Saudi religious ultra-conservatism for more than 60 years since its founding in 1962.

Notwithstanding Bin Salman’s repositioning, sources privy to the League’s inner workings suggest members of the Brotherhood remain influential and on the organisation’s payroll. Saudi Arabia’s state-aligned Al Arabiya television network reported from Cairo days before the London conference that exiled offspring of prominent Egyptian Muslim Brothers were restructuring the group in Europe and the United States. (IPA Service)

By arrangement with the Arabian Post

The post Saudi, Iran Détente Sparks Potential Paradigm Shifts In Middle East Politics first appeared on IPA Newspack.

The article Saudi, Iran Détente Sparks Potential Paradigm Shifts In Middle East Politics appeared first on Arabian Post.