https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-04-30/israeli-arab-dispute-palestinian-rights-attacked-by-u-s

Is the West Bank “occupied” by Israel? The State Department has said yes for decades. Suddenly, it says no.

If you issue a report on human rights, the least you can do is avoid damaging, dismissing or denigrating those rights. But that’s exactly what the U.S. State Department just did in the new edition of the annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, released on April 20. The targets, no one should be surprised to learn, were the Palestinians.

Ever since the first State Department human rights reports were issued in the 1970s, they always included a section on “Israel and the occupied territories.” But the new document suddenly expunges any mention of occupation, referring instead to “Israel, Golan Heights, West Bank, and Gaza.”

Recognizing that Israel’s presence in lands that came under its control in the 1967 war is a military occupation acknowledges that its expanding settlement project in the West Bank is a human rights abuse.  The Fourth Geneva Convention, which is designed for the “protection of civilian persons during time of war,” prohibits an occupying power, under any circumstances, from transferring “parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”

Supporters of Israeli settlements claim that this article of international law merely forbids forcible or involuntary transfers or expulsions. But the Red Cross’ definitive 1958 explanatory commentary on the original drafting, which took place in the late 1940s, makes clear the purpose of Article 49:
It is intended to prevent a practice adopted during the Second World War by certain Powers, which transferred portions of their own population to occupied territory for political and racial reasons or in order, as they claimed, to colonize those territories. Such transfers worsened the economic situation of the native population and endangered their separate existence as a race.

In other words, people living under the control of a foreign army have a right not to have their land taken away from them and given to the population of the victors.

But that’s exactly what Israel has done since 1967, and now more than 600,000 Jewish Israelis live as settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, both of which have been clearly identified as occupied territories by United Nations Security Council resolutions and other international legal instruments. Israel calls the territories “disputed” rather than occupied. But the dispute isn’t just between Israel and the Palestinians. It’s between Israel and the rest of the world.

The 5 million or so Palestinians in the occupied territories (East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza Strip) are not citizens of Israel and they don’t have any state of their own. The vast majority aren’t refugees. Many still live in their ancestral towns and villages. Yet they remain stateless, lacking the protections of citizenship.

What they do have in theory are the protections afforded by the Fourth Geneva Convention for persons living under occupation. But if you eliminate the reality of the occupation, you strip away the legal protections.

In other words, the State Department has now joined Israel in declining to admit that Palestinians are protected by the Geneva Conventions from Israeli colonization of their lands.

The ironies are endless. Israel claims the rights of an occupying power to justify its military rule of the occupied territories through checkpoints, firing zones, and an apparatus of discipline and control. If there’s no occupation, then most of what the Israeli military has done in the occupied territories is an outrageous abuse.

But if there is an occupation, then the settlements amount to a violent human rights violation. Try, as a thought experiment, to imagine a nonviolent settlement program. How many Palestinian villagers could be persuaded to voluntarily abandon their property in favor of newcomers from Brooklyn, Latvia or Ethiopia without the Israeli military there to “insist”?

Israel wants to have it both ways, continuously adjusting the status of these areas depending on which set of abuses is being defended. But the rest of the world has rejected this cynical shell game. Until now.

Meanwhile, Palestinians in the occupied territories live under an occupation that restricts everything they do, from the moment they wake until they go back to sleep. They live under martial law, while nearby Jewish settlers live under Israeli civil law. Their movements are curtailed. The most quotidian aspects of their lives are subject to the whim of a foreign army. And various Palestinian authorities notwithstanding, they have no access to the Israeli government that actually rules them.

Now the State Department has issued a “human rights report” that deliberately and cynically strips this almost uniquely vulnerable group of millions of stateless non-refugees from even the minimal protections they get from their legal status of living under foreign military occupation. They aren’t citizens of anything, and now they aren’t even under occupation.

There are plenty of affronts to human rights in the new State Department report. One of the most grotesque is the way it manipulates words to rob Palestinians of the few human rights they have.

https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/one-president-two-threats-and-three-flawed-deals-how-trump-s-nuclear-victories-will-be-hollow-ones-1.725486

Since he burst onto the New York property market in the 1970s, Donald Trump has fashioned himself as a brilliant deal-maker. In the 1980s he published a ghostwritten book called The Art of the Deal. And from 2003 to 2015, he portrayed a deal-making executive on the TV show The Apprentice. But since he was elected president in 2016, Mr Trump hasn’t actually made any noteworthy deals. Indeed, he has relied entirely on Republican majorities in Congress for the judicial appointments and tax bill which are his only significant achievements.

But now Mr Trump would appear to be on the brink of overseeing not just one but two major new deals, leaving the world with three flawed agreements that can substitute for two disastrous wars, which by any measure is a bargain.

Mr Trump has been threatening to leave the Iran nuclear deal if the European signatories to the agreement – France, Britain and Germany – don’t agree to a tougher stance against Iran. Because it’s actually working well to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power, the Europeans are desperate to preserve it.

To stop Washington from pulling out, the Europeans are proposing new sanctions against Iran if it tests missiles of certain kinds and ranges, takes various unacceptable Middle East regional actions, or, as Washington insists, gets within a year of manufacturing a nuclear weapon at any time in the future.

Mr Trump should be able to emerge from this brinksmanship by the May 12 deadline with just such a supplementary agreement with the Europeans.

That wouldn’t change the Iran nuclear deal at all but it would strengthen the western stance towards Iran. Mr Trump could therefore claim that, through this secondary agreement, he has “fixed” what he calls the “worst deal ever” and trumpet a triumph while in fact remaining in precisely the same arrangement with Tehran.

This would be a tacit admission that the nuclear deal has been effective so far in preventing Iran from building a nuclear warhead and simply needed some augmentation. But the master salesman will convince many people he has salvaged victory from defeat. And indeed, getting Europe to be tougher on Iran is useful, although it is hardly comparable in scope to preventing a nuclear-armed Tehran.

An agreement with the Europeans to preserve the Iran deal is almost certainly necessary preparation for Mr Trump’s negotiations with North Korea, which is already a full-blown nuclear power. Some Trump supporters argue that abandoning the Iran deal would demonstrate strength and show that Mr Trump won’t stick with a bad agreement so Pyongyang had better negotiate earnestly. But in all likelihood, it would only tell North Korea not to bother making any serious commitments.

That might well be Pyongyang’s attitude anyway. Mr. Trump says he is pursuing the denuclearisation of North Korea and claims Pyongyang is open to this. But there is no chance whatsoever of Pyongyang giving up its nuclear arsenal.

Nonetheless, a third nuclear agreement is so obvious, unless one is determined to actually resolve the nuclear North Korea conundrum, that even Mr Trump can hardly fail to secure it.

His bombast notwithstanding, war is the last thing Mr Trump wants. The Syria missile strike a few weeks ago showed how carefully he is avoiding conflict. Washington essentially provided the fireworks at Bashar Al Assad’s victory celebration and confirmed that Russian – and even Iranian – deterrence is highly effective. Mission accomplished indeed.

So, along with Kim Jong-un, Mr Trump can announce that North Korea promises to denuclearise while the United States agrees to seek full relations and a peace treaty.

Neither will happen.

But Pyongyang will continue to suspend long-range missile testing and, perhaps genuinely, commit to not pursuing a fully-developed intercontinental missile for the foreseeable future. It will probably also destroy some additional, marginally important nuclear assets. Washington will ease sanctions and stop pressuring China and others to squeeze North Korea. And the two Koreas will intensify their own futile reconciliation talks.

Both Mr Trump and Mr Kim will declare victory and so will many other leaders. Mr Trump will demand a Nobel Peace Prize and, given the wretched track record of the committee, he’ll probably get one, along with Mr Kim.

Two things however, will not happen. North Korea will not give up its nuclear weapons. And there will be no genuine reconciliation between Pyongyang and Washington, or Seoul for that matter.

Of the three agreements, the one with North Korea would be the most meaningless and almost fraudulent.

The Iran nuclear deal will continue to function, as it has thus far, despite Mr Trump’s hostility. And the auxiliary agreements with the Europeans will be a limited but welcome toughening of the western stance towards Iran’s nuclear ambitions and non-nuclear malfeasance.

The North Korea agreement will be almost entirely cosmetic but will also be trumpeted as the greatest diplomatic achievement since the Peace of Westphalia.

Mr Trump will then be presiding over three flawed agreements, although the one he lambasts will still be by far the most consequential and meaningful, that nonetheless forestall two devastating and otherwise probable wars.

Since all parties keenly want to avoid those wars, even the artist of the deal ought to be able to connect these dots.

https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/words-matter-particularly-when-they-rob-palestinians-of-the-protection-of-occupied-status-without-any-citizenship-rights-1.723477

For years, Washington’s standing as a mediator between Israel and the Palestinians has steadily eroded, most recently by the unilateral recognition of Jerusalem as “the capital of Israel”. Now comes another massive blow to US credibility with the State Department’s annual human rights reports, which now effectively denies that Israel is an occupying power.

Since the first of such reports was issued in 1977, they have always included a section on “Israel and the occupied territories”. But the document released on Friday instead refers simply to “the West Bank and Gaza”.

That’s not all. The phrase “Israeli-occupied Golan Heights” has also disappeared. Instead there is one section about “Israel, the Golan Heights and problems related to Israeli residents of Jerusalem”. Another section deals with “the West Bank and Gaza” and “Palestinian residents of Jerusalem”.

So not only is the Trump administration relieving Israel of the burden of having to act as an occupying power in a formal and legal sense, as every single UN Security Council and all other relevant international legal documents affirm, but it is effectively imposing the logic of the Clinton Parameters onto Israeli-Palestinian affairs, especially in Jerusalem, with anywhere and anything involving Jewish Israelis rendered “Israel” and everywhere else left an undefined nebula.

This satire of reality is so absurd that if a Jewish Israeli and a Palestinian Arab lived in adjacent apartments, this formula would categorise only the Jewish home as being “in Israel”. In effect, wherever a Jewish Israeli sets foot is, by the logic of this document, “Israel” by virtue of his or her presence there. There is also every effort to avoid the term “settlers” in favour of “Israelis living in West Bank settlements”.

The illogical ethnic bias shot through the report reaches a crescendo in its reference to a July 14, 2017 incident when “three Israeli-Arab attackers shot and killed two Israeli national police officers” at a holy site in the old city of East Jerusalem. All five of these individuals were Israeli and it took place in Jerusalem. Yet the incident is cited several pages deep into the section dealing with “the West Bank and Gaza”.

One might be relieved the report includes an East Jerusalem incident in “the West Bank and Gaza”, where it indeed belongs, even if none are acknowledged as occupied. But by the logic of the report, the Israeli Arab attackers are being denaturalised and the event transferred out of Israel because of the ethnicity of the attackers rather than the location of the attack or anything else.

These linguistic games are significant because Israel’s status as an occupying power in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza confer upon it a very specific set of rights and responsibilities and protections towards the occupied population.

The status of “occupying power” is regularly cited by the Israeli military as the justification for most of what it has done in order to control the occupied territories, including establishing checkpoints, military zones, firing areas, seizing territory and, of course, systematically discriminating between Jews and non-Jews.

But when it comes to settlement activity, which is absolutely prohibited in occupied areas by the Fourth Geneva Convention, Israel likes to muddy the issue. That’s what gave rise to this ludicrous model of a free-floating Israel that emerges wherever a settler happens to be standing at any given moment, surrounded by an undefined and unnamed other reality.

Israel and the Trump administration want to have it both ways, whenever that’s convenient for Israel. The problem is, if these areas are not occupied, then most of what the Israeli military has done to the land is an outrageous abuse, not to mention the disenfranchisement and virtual apartheid inflicted on the people. But if there is an occupation, then settlement activity is a massive human rights violation.

Settlements are prohibited by the Geneva Convention because establishing them is an obvious human rights abuse against the occupied people, who have a right not to have their land colonised by invaders. So to see the word and concept of “occupation” and “occupied territories” excised from the State Department report renders the document wilfully blind, morally bankrupt and intellectually indefensible.

But it was also predictable. The most senior person in the State Department who is interested in these issues is the US ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, who is ardently opposed to a two-state solution and denies there is any Israeli occupation, precisely for that reason.

However, the State Department clearly managed to salvage some references to actual reality, including at least two references to Palestinians from the occupied territories being detained “extraterritorially in Israel”. But this term only makes sense if the detained Palestinians came from a place that was, categorically, not part of Israel at all, so that bringing them to Israel would under those circumstances be considered an extraterritorial move.

There are many other honest and rational sections, as well as a lot of Israeli right-wing and government propaganda that was never included in the past.

One of the biggest affronts to human rights in the whole report comes, sadly, from its own cynical and utterly dishonest move in stripping from Palestinians the protection of being an occupied people without granting them the rights of citizenship and relieving Israel of the responsibilities of occupation without imposing any additional burdens whatsoever.

To view the paper in full, please click here

The Power of Positive Diplomacy: Saudi Outreach in Iraq since 2014

One of the most important and least understood aspects of Saudi Arabia’s evolving proactive foreign and regional policy is its campaign of diplomatic and political outreach in Iraq. After almost a century of relations marked largely by rivalry and occasional enmity, Saudi Arabia felt increasingly frozen out of Iraq’s political dynamics as the country began to emerge from the U.S. occupation. Particularly during the second term of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, Riyadh effectively walked away from an Iraqi government that appeared irredeemably under Iranian sway. But even in this period, Saudi Arabia continued efforts to expand relations with the Kurdistan Regional Government in the north and certain Iraqi Sunni Arab constituencies.

Starting in 2014, Saudi Arabia initiated a project to regain a measure of influence in Iraqi politics and policy. Along with the restoration of diplomatic, trade, and other relations that had been frozen for decades, Riyadh’s Iraq initiative has involved building ties with numerous Iraqi Shia Arab leaders, including Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and populist leader Muqtada al-Sadr, both of whom traveled to Saudi Arabia in 2017.

Unlike some of its other recent foreign policy initiatives, Saudi Arabia’s outreach to Iraq has been centered almost entirely on incentives and positive inducements. Along with aid, trade, and other standard forms of outreach, Saudis have emphasized that almost all Iraqi constituencies stand to benefit from a more independent national policy that restores Iraq’s standing in the Arab world and gains a measure of distance from Iran. Riyadh seems to have met with a considerable degree of success in rebuilding ties to Iraq. The May parliamentary elections in Iraq will be the next major development shaping this outreach. But, whatever happens, it is likely that Saudi Arabia will continue to pursue engagement and stronger relations with this crucial neighbor to the north

http://www.agsiw.org/arab-expeditionary-force-syria-far-fetched-u-s-withdrawal/

Some ideas never die. Most recently, the Trump administration, reportedly via a phone call from National Security Advisor John Bolton to Egypt’s acting head of intelligence, Abbas Kamel, proposed the creation of an Arab expeditionary force to be deployed to Syria. In the process, the White House was resurrecting a concept that, for decades, has surfaced periodically in Middle Eastern discourse only to quickly evaporate and then suddenly re-emerge. The idea of a regional military alliance that can represent collective Arab political and security interests in conflicts dates back to at least the 1950s. But the political will to facilitate its creation has never been sufficient to get past the suggestion phase, and it is unlikely to suddenly emerge now, despite U.S. pressure and the dire straits in which the concept of a collective “Arab national interest” finds itself.

President Donald J. Trump began the conversation by telling the Defense Department to begin preparing for the complete withdrawal of U.S. forces from Syria, on the grounds that the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant is the only major U.S. interest in the conflict and is virtually defeated. However, just as Trump was calling for this rapid pullout, other U.S. officials were stressing the opposite. The head of U.S. Central Command, Gen. Joseph L. Votel, said that in Syria “the hard part, I think, is in front of us.” Votel was referring to the massive task of postconflict reconstruction in a decimated country, particularly the roughly one-quarter of Syria currently under de facto U.S. control. This reconstruction is essential to avoid a dangerous power vacuum and ensure that ISIL does not reconstitute itself or that a similar jihadist group does not replace it.

But he was also referring to another crucial task confronting U.S. interests in Syria, on which Arab and European partners, as well as Israel, are also strongly focused: the need to prevent Iran and its proxies from dominating this strategically vital region in the wake of the collapse of ISIL and the departure of U.S. forces. Control of the Syria-Iraq border is essential to Tehran’s ambitions to create a militarily secured corridor under its control that can serve as a “land bridge” from Iran to Lebanon and the Mediterranean coast. Iranian-backed forces already control much of the border region on the Iraqi side. What remains to be determined are the post-ISIL conditions and array of forces on the Syrian side of the border, where fighting is ongoing.

This land bridge would potentially be a revolutionary and game-changing strategic development, and would virtually ensure that Iran emerges from the Syrian conflict as a regional superpower in control of a large swath of territory arcing across the northern Middle East. Preventing this is at least as important to the Arab states, Israel, and others as ensuring that ISIL doesn’t re-emerge. And, if Trump is serious about confronting Iran, he could hardly welcome what would be one of the greatest strategic achievements in all Persian history.

However, in the era of Middle East conflict fatigue in the United States, which began during the administration of former President Barack Obama and continues under Trump’s “America first” agenda, getting out of Middle East conflicts, even precipitously, is highly appealing and extremely popular. Trump reportedly told Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz in a recent phone call that “you [Saudi Arabia and other U.S. allies] want us to stay [in Syria]? Maybe you’re going to have to pay” for that.

Now, with the Bolton phone call, the conversation has developed beyond financial contributions to possible military ones. On April 17, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir suggested that Saudi Arabia was considering contributing forces, saying discussions with Washington “on what type of force needs to remain [in Syria] … and where those forces should come from are ongoing.” Such discussions, in general terms, have been ongoing for years.

During the initial phases of the war against ISIL, warplanes from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates flew numerous missions against ISIL forces. But Saudi and Emirati participation waned after the United States, Turkey, and others began to focus entirely on ISIL and seemed to drop any effort at regime change in Damascus. During the final months of 2015, particularly in the context of the U.S. presidential campaign, there were numerous demands that Gulf Arab countries once again start playing a major role in the campaign against ISIL. In early 2016, Saudi Arabia offered to send ground forces to Syria for that purpose, but Washington stressed that it was asking for more airpower, not troops, from Arab countries and preferred to continue to work with local Kurdish and Arab forces on the ground.

But now, the stakes in Syria are even higher for Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, and others in the Arab world, with Iran poised to consolidate a stunning and historic victory. Still, the obstacles to deploying an Arab expeditionary force are enormous. As in the past, Saudi Arabia’s willingness to participate militarily is contingent on a continued U.S. presence in and, implicitly, leadership of any such stabilization campaign in Syria. Therefore, Riyadh is potentially willing to contribute to a U.S.-led mission, but not to try to replace U.S. forces altogether. Saudi and Emirati forces are deeply engaged in a difficult campaign in Yemen against Houthis in the north and al-Qaeda in the south. Given this ongoing conflict, especially with Houthi missiles continuously being launched at major Saudi cities, it’s unlikely they would be either willing or able to shift their military attention to Syria, or that they would be more successful in that context than they have been in Yemen.

Moreover, the political difficulties are daunting. Egypt does not share the profound alarm of the Gulf countries regarding Iran’s role in Syria, and has grudgingly endorsed the continuation of the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. Therefore, Cairo is unlikely to get involved in Syria, particularly after having avoided any major involvement in the Yemen conflict despite repeated requests from its Gulf Arab allies. Moreover, there are significant political and diplomatic problems if these Arab forces were to be deployed to Syria against the wishes of its government and without any U.N. Security Council mandate. Saudi Arabia has suggested any force contribution must be under the rubric of its multinational “Islamic Military Counter Terrorism Coalition,” but that entity has thus far been structured for intelligence sharing and training, not combat missions. It’s unclear how many coalition partners would be willing to participate in or endorse a military mission in Syria.

Despite these obstacles, this conversation may yet yield some practical consequences. Given the stakes in preventing Iran from consolidating its position in Syria, particularly along the border with Iraq, countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE might be willing to contribute a small number of forces to a coalition effort. And they might be willing to increase their financial support for such a mission and reconstruction in critical areas of Syria. Certainly, they cannot afford to allow Iran to become a regional superpower; and neither can Washington, if Trump and his advisors take their own rhetoric seriously. So, the creation of a multinational military coalition, led by the United States but with others participating in a modest but expanded degree militarily, and financially, might be a way of undertaking the mission with an “America first” patina of greater burden sharing.

The security contractor Erik Prince, who has strong ties to both the Trump administration and the UAE, has been reportedly promoting the creation of a private army to replace many of the U.S. troops if Washington withdraws. That’s a far-fetched idea, but under the circumstances it might help both sides to reconcile their political imperatives with their military and strategic goals. A major mercenary force in Syria probably won’t emerge, but Trump has made it clear the current arrangement is unsustainable, and proposals for an Arab expeditionary force to completely replace U.S. troops in Syria also aren’t realistic. Yet allowing Iran and its proxies, or another extremist group, to arise in eastern Syria is unthinkable. Despite the obstacles, some creative solution, possibly involving Arab troops in Syria under U.S. leadership, will have to be found.

https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/with-the-military-attack-the-us-can-finally-start-to-get-it-right-in-syria-1.721308

After much argument and delay, American, British and French military strikes against Syrian regime targets were finally begun on Saturday morning. But the strikes will only be worthwhile if they are the forerunner of a coherent, integrated Syria policy and not a pointless repetition of the largely symbolic, one-off cruise missile attack in April 2017.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Joseph Dunford urged caution while Donald Trump and John Bolton, his new national security adviser, allegedly pressed for quicker and wider action. Thus far, it seems the generals are winning out on the immediate action.

The military is not necessarily opposed to strong action but rather is averse to reckless and pointless ones. Their most important point was that any military action needs to be part of a cohesive and comprehensive Syria policy. It’s a valid and vital objection.

This military response to Bashar Al Assad’s latest chemical weapons atrocity should have not only been more robust, but also more focused and consequential, than it has been up until now to avoid repeating the 2017 scenario. An early strike shortly after the chemical attack could easily have symbolically “punished” Mr Al Assad for having made Mr Trump look ridiculous, and even complicit, by inflicting the atrocity soon after the US president’s vow to withdraw all American forces from Syria.

If it were just a matter of expunging any such impression, a quick US strike against largely symbolic targets could have been launched in short order. The delay should have meant, and could still mean, this time is different.

Given the time that passed after it was effectively announced, the strike won’t have much of a repudiating quality if it proves as limited and symbolic as last year’s. But the US actions so far are not vastly different, and leave almost all of the key regime targets, let along anything connected to Iran and Hezbollah, untouched.

That may not be the end of the story but if it is left at that it would look minimal and weak-willed rather than tough and determined.

Moreover, the delay, and Mr Trump’s inexplicable Twitter warnings, gave Syria and Russia ample opportunity to prepare, particularly by clustering Syrian government assets next to Russian ones or civilian “soft targets”.

In order to be consequential and worthwhile, this action must, at least for Washington, eventually be about more than just chemical weapons. Even if some early participants like UK Prime Minister Theresa May insist it is only that, for Washington it must be an opening salvo of a new US strategy for altering the balance of power in Syria and ensuring that Iran, in particular, does not emerge from the conflict as a huge victor.

Mr Trump was apparently dissatisfied with how limited the military action options the Pentagon presented to him appeared, though he was seemingly persuaded. The president reportedly wanted to strike harder and make sure that Russia and Iran also paid some costs. That hasn’t happened at all. Yet.

The military not only wanted to avoid an escalation, but complained that any major action is pointless outside a broader strategy.

Both sides made good points that should be seen as complementary rather than contradictory.

Mr Trump may prevail on the size and scope of the attack but only if there are additional salvos in the coming days. And the military and others can, and must, use this crucial opportunity to force Washington to make a set of difficult choices that Mr Trump and, for the most part, Mr Obama before him, studiously avoided.

The generals are right that they and others can’t create an effective strategy if they don’t know what the goals are. At long last Washington must now decide what it wants in Syria beyond obliterating ISIS.

That must begin with permanently denying Iran control of key areas along Syria’s border with Iraq, particularly in Al Bukamal and Al-Tanf, where land corridor routes from Tehran to the Mediterranean could be consolidated. Then, Iran and Hezbollah’s grip on Syria must be steadily weakened.

Washington must decide how much further it will let Turkey go in attacking Kurdish enclaves and find a modus vivendi between these two US allies.

And, finally, Washington and Moscow must come to terms about the endgame in Syria, which can’t be done if the United States continues to cede the field to Russia almost entirely while annually lobbing in a few meaningless bombs. The war in much of Syria may be effectively over, at least for now. But the post-conflict landscape is just starting to develop.

It would be bizarre for Washington to launch this military action and follow it with a total withdrawal from Syria, handing the country to Russia and Iran.

Mr Trump says his priorities in the Middle East are fighting terrorism and confronting Iran. Syria is the epicentre of both battles. He desperately needs a focused and coherent Syria strategy, having inherited an indescribable mess from Mr Obama.

This US military response in Syria presents a crucial opportunity for finally starting to get it right. But the highly limited action so far isn’t very encouraging.

http://www.agsiw.org/did-mbs-break-new-ground-on-israel-no-and-yes/

http://foreignpolicy.com/2018/04/06/the-non-violent-violence-of-hamas/

The unarmed protests at the Gaza-Israel border are a desperate bid to provoke a crisis.

The killing of at least 22 Palestinian demonstrators by Israeli troops at the March of Return demonstration at the Gaza border with Israel was the first good news Hamas has had in more than a year. Hamas has decided to champion a set of demonstrations — of which this was the first — that use mass public resistance, largely if not entirely unarmed, to challenge Israel’s occupation. Every Friday will see additional protests, and already eight more Palestinians have reportedly been killed this Friday. It culminates on May 14-15, which includes the 70th anniversary of Israel’s founding, the Palestinian Nakba Day commemoration, and the scheduled opening of a U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem.

The prospects for unrest, and even chaos, are obvious, especially given Israel’s prevailing military strategy at the border. But tragedy and disorder are common in this region of the world. What’s new is Hamas’s apparent strategy. How have the ardent champions of heavily militarized armed struggle as the quintessence of resistance against Israel become the advocates of nonviolent people power?

The incongruity, however, doesn’t mark a contradiction, much less a moral reckoning.

There are several reasons for Hamas’s new approach. First, it is virtually out of options. The devastation in Gaza caused by the last full-blown war with Israel in 2014 was so extensive, with most of the damage still unrepaired, that it would be difficult to publicly explain to the group’s own constituents any choice to deliberately start another major conflict with Israel. The kind of scenario whereby Hamas has previously instigated or cooperated in the development of major armed battles with Israel would now be potentially politically disastrous in Gaza.

Yet Hamas is desperate. The situation in Gaza has become increasingly intolerable. Unemployment is widespread and chronic. Hunger is rampant. Water is undrinkable. Electricity is available for only two to four hours per day. Sewage treatment plants have failed, so the once-beautiful Mediterranean coast is now a repository of human waste. And there’s still no way in or out of the territory for almost all of Gaza’s close to 2 million people.

Since its violent takeover of Gaza and expulsion of the Palestinian Authority in 2007, Hamas has been adept at blaming others for the wretched conditions in the territory it controls. And because of repeated Israeli bombardments and other attacks, and the virtual lockdown imposed by both Israel and Egypt, finger-pointing at Jerusalem and Cairo has been somewhat effective. It has even been possible for Hamas to blame the Palestinian Authority — and especially President Mahmoud Abbas — for Gaza’s woes, particularly after he imposed considerable sanctions in the summer of 2017.

Abbas said he would no longer pay for many Gazan public employees hired after the expulsion of the Palestinian Authority from the territory and, among other things, would stop paying Hamas’s electric bill for the power the area received from Israeli grids. Abbas’s argument was, in effect, “You want to rule this territory alone? Fine. But we’re not subsidizing that anymore.” Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates pressured Qatar to stop the aid and reconstruction projects that Doha had been providing specifically to benefit Hamas. And Israel and Egypt tightened the noose, strangling both Gazans and Hamas.

Yet the Palestinian Authority, Egypt, Israel, and the others all understand that the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza is an unsustainable crisis. The question was, and still is, how to address that in a way that does not unduly strengthen or empower Hamas, especially given its recalcitrant attitudes. The answer arrived at last fall was to create the convenient fiction of political reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah, which controls the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Egypt led the campaign to prod both sides together and get Hamas to weaken its grip on the territory and, especially, give up control of the network of tunnels it had created around the Egyptian border.

Hamas was so beleaguered that it embraced the idea and agreed to surrender administration in Gaza and control of checkpoints and crossing points to the Palestinian Authority’s Western-trained (and Israeli-trusted) security forces as the first step in a national reconciliation agreement. It was also hoping to secure a foothold back in the West Bank, the epicenter of Palestinian national politics, of which it had been frozen out since the Palestinian split in 2007. For Hamas, reconciliation was a bitter pill — but also badly needed medicine — and it was certainly willing to swallow a large amount of it.

The project, however, was sabotaged when Abbas overreached, perhaps deliberately, by conditioning additional progress on reconciliation on Hamas disarming. He made the plausible case that he wasn’t willing to allow a “Hezbollah-style situation” to exist among the Palestinians, where, as in Lebanon, an Islamist militia had enough power to effectively have its own foreign and defense policies, independent of the national government.

But Abbas knew that the very last thing, literally, Hamas would ever do was agree to disarm. The Palestinian president may have been less eager to reassume responsibility for administering Gaza than he appeared. To the great frustration of Egypt, the Gulf Arab countries, Jordan, and, presumably, Israel, Abbas’s disarmament demand essentially collapsed the project to weaken Hamas’s control of Gaza and get badly needed aid and reconstruction money into the strip in a way that did not strengthen the Islamist group.

So, Hamas found itself stuck with Gaza and no one else to convincingly blame anymore. Its popularity in the territory continued to sink to unprecedentedly low levels. And its hopes of regaining a foothold in the West Bank were thoroughly stymied. When Hamas allegedly attempted to assassinate Abbas’s prime minister, Rami Hamdallah, in March, the Palestinian president announced even stronger sanctions against Hamas. The situation in Gaza, already a full-blown crisis, was about to deteriorate even further.

It’s in this context that Hamas decided to embrace a campaign of public protests, demonstrations, and popular uprisings that, at first glance, appears far more modeled on the First Intifada than the militarized Second Intifada that propelled the organization to national leadership contender status. Hamas has always preached that armed struggle of a militarized variety is the only path to Palestinian liberation. So, these unarmed or, at most, lightly armed demonstrations, which are either nonviolent or only symbolically violent (throwing stones at troops is a far cry from firing rockets at cities, after all), represent a major shift in Hamas’s thinking.

It did not initiate the calls for the protests but rather seized on them and has effectively hijacked the movement, at least for now. But Hamas’s strategy is easy to discern. First, it relies on Israel’s long-established doctrine of disproportionate force. Particularly at the border, from its founding Israel has had only one main response to Palestinians seeking to go back to their former towns and villages, and the Israeli military announced before the March of Return protests that anyone approaching within 300 meters of the borderwould face the familiar shoot-to-kill policy.

It was entirely predictable that confronted with tens of thousands of Palestinian protesters, particularly at a border area, Israel would immediately resort to deadly force, even against unarmed persons. Israeli strategic and security thinking virtually guaranteed an effort to nip the protest movement in the bud by demonstrating the level of violence protesters, particularly those that challenge the border, can expect to face. Israel’s nightmare, and Hamas’s hope, is that during these protests, the border is somehow breached and large numbers of young men cross over into what used to be their country going toward their ancestral homes and villages. Israeli authorities speak in terms of a “bloodbath” even if such “infiltrators” are nonviolent and unarmed, and history strongly suggests that this is by no means hyperbole.

But even if the border isn’t breached, and Israel stops at almost nothing to ensure that doesn’t happen, Hamas stands to gain a great deal from this campaign of protests. Already Abbas is scrambling to not be outbid in terms of nationalistic rhetoric, commemorations, and anti-Israeli bluster. Hamas’s nationalist credibility is starting to be rejuvenated. It is attempting to connect with, and coopt, the deep-seated Palestinian public’s craving for a new politics, with popular agency and a new, grass roots-led drive to end the occupation and achieve national liberation.

Hamas doesn’t stand for any of that, of course. But it can pretend to, and its operatives are now fully engaged in this campaign, in a manner similar to the way in which the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt hopped right on the anti-Hosni Mubarak protests. The Brotherhood had done nothing to conceptualize or initiate those protests, but it usurped the movement and, ultimately, translated it into more than a year in the Egyptian presidency before it faced considerably larger public demonstrations against its own misrule.

Hamas now has found a way forward. And even if, ultimately, this process degenerates into another full-blown war with Israel, that may provide the group with a way out of the intolerable predicament that emerged in 2017, especially if it is not blamed for having wantonly initiated it. As always, Hamas and reactionary forces in Israel are reinforcing each other’s radicalism and playing a vicious, bloody game from which both benefit at the expense of the public at large. Whatever else happens, if Israel continues to use live ammunition against unarmed demonstrators, even at the border, Hamas will continue to reap the benefits.

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-04-04/israel-palestine-gaza-violence-is-about-to-get-worse

Palestinians are angry at both Israel and their own leaders, and feel they have nothing to lose.

The violence last Friday in Gaza, in which 18 Palestinian protesters were killed by Israeli troops near the border, was the worst since the war of 2014. But everything is in place for a significant escalation in coming weeks, particularly in mid-May.

A series of major tripwires are clustered tightly together: commemorations of the 70th anniversary of Israel’s founding on May 14-15; mourning by Palestinians who regard the same event as their “catastrophe” and observe May 15 as “Nakba Day”; and the scheduled opening of a U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem on May 14, courtesy of the administration of President Donald Trump.

Things are likely to get worse because Palestinians increasingly feel they have nothing left to lose. The “March of Return” last week drew unprecedented crowds of up to 30,000 Palestinians from all parts of Gaza society. In a festive and surreal atmosphere, vendors sold ice cream to picnicking families as young men risked their lives by approaching the border.

Over 90 percent of Gaza’s almost 2 million people are refugees from what is now southern Israel. Unlike most other Palestinians, they are still geographically close to the towns and villages from which they were displaced in 1947-48. Since its founding, Israel has had one primary response to Palestinians, armed or not, attempting to go home without permission. The Israeli military reiterated that anyone approaching within 300 meters of the border would face a shoot-to-kill policy.

But things are so bad in the wretched open-air prison of Gaza that the only surprise is that the death toll wasn’t even higher.

One of the most densely populated places on earth, Gaza is now barely habitable. Hunger is rampant. Water is undrinkable. Unemployment is close to 50 percent. Health-care is scanty at best. Electricity is available just two to four hours per day. The once-beautiful seacoast is now a giant sewer. And there’s virtually no way in or out of the territory which, since a violent takeover in 2007 by the Islamist faction Hamas, has been under a lockdown by Israel and Egypt.

For more than 10 years, the people of Gaza have been subjected to the misrule of Hamas, the heavily armed Muslim Brotherhood faction that exploits and intensifies their misery. Last summer, Hamas attempted to use a fictional “reconciliation” agreementwith its Fatah rivals, who control the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, to get out of this stranglehold. Hamas sought to get the Palestinian Authority to take up the burden of administration in Gaza, secure badly needed aid and reconstruction money, and, most importantly, win themselves a new foothold in the West Bank, where they have been frozen out since the Palestinian factions split in 2007.

But Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas made reconciliation contingent on Hamas disarming, which the militant group won’t consider. Hamas was left virtually without options.

Abbas, too, is badly adrift. He staked his entire career on negotiations with Israel, brokered by the U.S. But that “peace process” has been frozen since the first term of President Barack Obama, and Israel is moving closer to annexing large chunks of the West Bank. Virtually no Palestinians believe anymore that Israel will ever agree to end the occupation and allow them to create their own state.

The Trump administration has reinforced this conviction by abandoning Washington’s long-standing commitment to a two-state outcome, and has recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Abbas’s diplomatic strategy therefore now looks like the ultimate fiasco.

The last straw for Abbas came in March, when Hamas tried to assassinate his prime minister, Rami Hamdallah.

Enraged, Abbas has lashed out at all his antagonists in a recent series of unhinged speeches. He bitterly denounced Israel and castigated the Trump administration, describing its peace efforts as “the slap of the century” and calling the U.S. ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, a “son of a dog.” He excoriated Hamas followers as terrorist “thugs and hooligans,” and said the only reason their operatives weren’t being killed all over the world in revenge is that he won’t sink to their murderous level.

Abbas announced a new series of harsh sanctions against Hamas and Gaza, and has been prodding Hamas and Israel toward another conflict, hoping to be the prime beneficiary as his two adversaries scorch each other while Washington scrambles to douse the flames.

With Hamas’s militancy and Abbas’s diplomacy both thoroughly discredited, Palestinian civilians are desperate for a new political dynamic. The recent “March of Return” protests originally promised that, but Hamas has thus far managed to hijack them. Yet if the protest movement leads to another war with Israel, the result could prove catastrophic for Hamas’s political viability. And if widespread unrest spreads to the West Bank, that could fatally undermine the Palestinian Authority.

Both Palestinian Islamists and nationalists are out of options, out of ideas, and out of luck. The Palestinian public is out of patience and nearly out of hope. That’s a combustible formula.

A series of demonstrations in the coming weeks has already been scheduled in Gaza, beginning next Friday. But the mid-May commemorations, set against this backdrop of frustration and despair, look incredibly dangerous.

When an entire people, at almost every level of society and across the political and religious spectrum, seem to have concluded they have nothing to hope for and nothing to lose — that all their dreams will remain deferred for the foreseeable future — an explosion may be inevitable.