Why Washington Has Reacted So Intensely to the Khashoggi Murder

Factors including regard for the victim, the nature of the crime, the powerful accusers, and Trump-related anxieties all contribute to the extraordinary impact in Washington of the Khashoggi murder.

Many weeks on, the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi is continuing to roil U.S. relations with a key regional ally. The journalist and critic of the Saudi government was murdered at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on October 2 and, along with mounting criticism about civilian casualties and a growing humanitarian crisis associated with the war in Yemen, has produced the greatest crisis in U.S.-Saudi relations since the attacks on September 11, 2001. In the aftermath, the reputation of the Saudi government, and particularly Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has been profoundly damaged in the United States and much of the West.

But why? There have been numerous assassinations of critics, journalists, dissidents, and others around the world in recent years that have not comparably captured the public imagination, so deeply changed perceptions, challenged accepted policies, and undermined long-standing alliances. Russia, in particular, stands accused of a wave of such killings, including in Britain and other European Union countries. Iran, too, has a long history of this behavior, and has recently been accused by Denmark of resuming such efforts. There are many other instances of such assassinations, and Turkey itself has a uniquely aggressive record in repressing and imprisoning, although not necessarily murdering, journalists in recent years.

So why has the Khashoggi affair hit politics, policies, and international relations with such ferocity and why does it not appear to be receding into the background despite numerous shifts in the usually definitive news cycle? The answers reveal much about the context in which the scandal is playing out and what its short-, medium-, and long-term impacts might be on U.S.-Saudi relations.

The Victim

To understand the impact of Jamal Khashoggi’s murder in the U.S. context, it’s necessary to understand his standing and perceived role in Washington. Many people in the Middle East and Europe may have had a somewhat different view of him, and most Americans, including most who follow politics, in the United States had never heard of him. But among Middle East watchers in Washington, Khashoggi was a ubiquitous and almost universally appreciated figure. It would be difficult to find someone plugged into this scene who didn’t know him, and even harder to find anyone who didn’t like him. He was personable, effusive, generous, charming, and blunt. He also knew a great deal, having covered the Saudi role in the Afghan war in the 1980s, and then having been very close to some Saudi ruling circles in the 1990s and beyond. This gave him a particular cachet as a commentator and critic, and made him an invaluable interlocutor for scores of U.S. policymakers, academics, journalists, and analysts of the Middle East. It also may have contributed to his assassination.

Moreover, in Washington he was widely, if not universally, perceived as primarily a liberal critic of Saudi government repression and a proponent of free speech and human rights. His Islamist sympathies were real and evident to those who know the language of such things. But they were limited to sympathies, rather than the full-fledged Muslim Brotherhood partisanship now being alleged by his critics, and were mixed with a very compelling interest in freedoms and democracy. Everyone who knew him well understood that Khashoggi’s views were evolving and complex, and very different from the caricature of his critics. But many Americans who knew him failed to pick up on those aspects of his political orientation that so riled his enemies, and which are now being frequently exaggerated. He did not, for example, make Islamist arguments in Islamist terms. He made often Islamist-friendly arguments in liberal terms. Therefore, in the United States he was widely perceived simply as a liberal, which is a true but incomplete picture.

In short, he was well-known and well-liked in Washington to a degree and in terms that are probably still not fully registered by many people in the Middle East. This author, for one, knew and respected him for 15 years, despite deep disagreements on many issues. But the universal sense of outrage in Washington is amplified by the number of people who respected and appreciated Khashoggi. Moreover, it was magnified in the slightly more than a year he spent as a contributing columnist for The Washington Post, which elevated his already significant profile considerably and provided him with a powerful posthumous champion.

The Crime

There are several aspects to the killing itself that greatly contributed to the impact of the murder. Most obvious is its location in a Saudi diplomatic mission, which is a violation of the most fundamental norms of diplomacy and international relations. Second, the notion that Khashoggi was killed while trying to advance a new marriage and with his fiancée waiting plaintively outside the consulate certainly adds to the pathos of the scenario. Third, Turkish authorities used the media skillfully to emphasize the most bloodcurdling and lurid suggestions about the murder, many of which have yet to be confirmed and some that appear utterly unfounded. However, what is now known is so appalling that there was no need of Turkish tall tales to chill the blood and rouse the spirit. All three factors added to keeping the story in the public eye, building suspense, and maximizing revulsion.

The Accused

There is no underestimating the extent to which pre-existing anti-Saudi attitudes play into the extraordinary reaction to the Khashoggi killing. Since the oil embargo of 1973, Americans have been primed to see the “oil sheikhs” of the Gulf Arab countries as thoroughly bad actors. The 9/11 attacks greatly cemented such attitudes. While the plainly vital strategic alliance between the two countries, and particularly cooperation on counterterrorism, helped to quickly repair bilateral relations, lingering American doubts about the essential nature of Saudi Arabia were never eliminated on either the left or the right. While it might be possible for such critics to precisely point to this murder as evidence of the veracity of their views, one aspect of the extraordinary and sustained response to it is rooted in a deep-seated pattern of animus that has nothing to do with the event itself.

The Accusers

At least two of the major accusers in the case have played a major role in amplifying and sustaining it: the Turkish government and U.S. media, in particular The Washington Post. The Turkish government saw an opportunity to weaken and hobble a major regional rival at very little cost and exploited it with great skill. Yet Turkey has been careful to avoid any total rupture with, or to provoke any major retaliation from, Saudi Arabia. Instead Ankara has sought to embarrass Riyadh, and particularly Mohammed bin Salman, while making clear that it does not want a break in relations and does not insist on formally blaming the crown prince personally (while continuously implying his culpability). These highly effective tactics greatly increased international attention to the case, by emphasizing and even exaggerating the cruelty of the murder and through a slow drip of information and evidence that captured the public attention around the world.

A major factor in the impact of the Khashoggi murder in the United States has been the role of the media. The Washington Post, understandably, regarded this as a killing within the family, and has spared no effort to demand information and accountability and to keep this crime in the public eye. As one of the most influential newspapers in the United States, if not the world, there is hardly a more potent information warfare adversary. Moreover, many other U.S. media outlets have taken this personally as well. The maxim that an attack on one journalist is an attack on all is not always fully operative, to say the least. But in this case, it could not have been more thoroughly embraced.

The Trump Effect

One of the most crucial and overlooked aspects of the potency of this affair is the vast range of political and social anxieties that have attached themselves to and coalesced in Khashoggi’s murder. Several key factors for this can be readily identified. Many of them have to do with anxieties connected with the presidency of Donald J. Trump. In particular, there’s the sense that Trump has cultivated an atmosphere of hatred and violence against journalists, whom he calls the “enemy of the American people,” responsible for “fake news.” This theme has been echoed by authoritarians and despots around the world, including those who have jailed and abused journalists, at times in large numbers. So, to critics of the president, the killing of a Washington Post columnist by a key U.S. ally appears to be one culmination of a campaign of vilification and violence against the media he has whipped up.

Then there is the additional impression that Trump’s rhetoric and policies have largely, if not entirely, dispensed with the notion of human rights as an issue in U.S. foreign policy, particularly in dealing with long-standing allies like Saudi Arabia. Trump’s rhetoric about the value of “sovereignty” and “nationalism” and attacks on what he calls the “ideology of globalism,” and his evident disinterest in “imposing values” on other societies have amplified fears that the policies of his administration have greatly encouraged human-rights abuses around the globe. The Khashoggi murder has been widely interpreted as a key example of this dynamic in action.

Finally, the Trump administration and the Saudi royal family have both cultivated a public perception of their closeness that has magnified the damage this scandal has caused for each. Trump has been implicitly implicated in an affair to which he has no direct connection. The Saudi government has become a favored target of Trump’s political and foreign policy critics because of this attachment and because, unlike other close Trump Middle East allies (for example, Israel) Riyadh can be bashed without any domestic political cost or backlash.

The war in Yemen was already the source of growing concern due to its mounting civilian casualties and the humanitarian crisis it has exacerbated. Because of the association between Trump and Riyadh, anti-Trump forces in U.S. politics have often seized on the Yemen war as a means of bashing the president. Criticism of the Yemen war has dovetailed with horror at the Khashoggi murder to create a massive anti-Saudi backlash in Washington that is often tied to hostility toward the Trump administration. Even some Republican critics of administration foreign policy, such as Senators Bob Corker, Lindsey Graham, and Marco Rubio, advocates for a more internationalist and traditionally conservative direction, have used criticism of Saudi Arabia as a means of applying pressure on the Trump White House. This effect is likely to be amplified in the coming months, particularly after Democrats regained control of the House of Representatives in the midterm elections. There will likely be major hearings on, and possibly investigations into, aspects of both the Yemen war and the Khashoggi murder, and possibly both together.

The Long-Term Implications

There are undoubtedly numerous other factors that have contributed to the extraordinary impact and staying power of the Khashoggi murder in the American conversation. But those outlined above are probably enough to ensure that the issue will not simply fade away, particularly as long as the Yemen war continues. The core elements of the U.S.-Saudi partnership – military ties, intelligence and counterterrorism cooperation, and efforts to stabilize and manage global energy markets – are unlikely to be affected. However, the tone and tenor, and many of the transactional aspects of the alliance (even including weapons sales) may be significantly and negatively affected.

Around the world for the past two years, the big question has been whether the new American profile is simply a Donald Trump phenomenon or whether this is a more permanent orientation for the US both at home and abroad.

After last week’s midterms, that question still cannot be confidently answered because an extraordinary number of tectonic plates in American politics are shifting concurrently.

Anyone hoping for a total repudiation of Mr Trump despite the booming US economy might have been disappointed by the outcome of the elections but compared to two years ago, it’s still good news.

The midterms delivered a mixed result, leaving, as I predicted, both sides with reasonable grounds for feeling simultaneously vindicated and vulnerable.

In The National shortly after the 2016 election, I noted that Mr Trump’s surprising victory opened the possibility of a total realignment of the American political landscape.

In that scenario, working-class and union constituencies around the country, plus domestic businesses and industries, would shift to the Republican Party, champions of Fortress America.

This would be coupled with an increasing shift of US-based multinational industries, as well as more internationalist, cosmopolitan constituencies, to the Democrats, guardians of US leadership and global order.

US politics would then no longer be divided along its traditional left-right axis but rather, based on open-versus-closed national social and economic attitudes.

Mr Trump hasn’t accomplished that yet but he’s continuing to make progress. White rural, exurban and working-class voters continued to turn out for him in massive numbers, preserving and expanding the Republican control of the Senate.

This is obviously a profound frustration for Democrats. However, the growing support of urban and suburban middle- and upper-middle-class, college-educated Americans of all ethnicities for Democrats underscored a slowly unfolding but substantial House victory.

Most notable were striking Democratic gains in midwestern and increasingly “blue” mountain states, despite disappointing defeats in Missouri, Indiana and North Dakota.

Democrats also boasted unusually strong performances in southern states such as Georgia, Florida and Texas, with some key races still undecided.

That all suggests that Democrats are consolidating strong control of the national popular vote, as indicated in their greatly disproportionate share of overall votes cast for those now serving in the Senate, despite continuing to lose ground there because of the federal electoral structure.

As the brilliant commentator Michael Tomasky notes, Democrats certainly need a rural strategy to become competitive again in many “red” areas, and a new economic narrative.

But it seems clear that Republicans face a grim future in the long run as a rural, white, ethno-national party with little appeal in the urban and suburban areas where most Americans increasingly live.

The bottom line is that Democrats have significantly cracked Republican control of the whole of government and expanded their popular appeal with the American majority.

Mr Trump, meanwhile, has almost consolidated his total control of the Republican Party. But the Democratic victory in the House of Representatives gives a new lease of life, however small, to traditional, conservative Republican opposition to Mr Trump.

Had Republicans held the House of Representatives, the US president would have been guaranteed no primary challenger, no matter what happened to the economy. Had Republicans lost the Senate, that challenge might have been formidable.

As it stands, some Republican opposition to Mr Trump will continue and there will be alternatives waiting in the wings should some crisis or scandal emerge in the next two years.

Many congressional Republicans will now worry that Mr Trump will abandon them and seek to make common cause with House Democrats on populist measures such as infrastructure, spending and healthcare.

That’s possible – but Mr Trump’s past form suggests he would prefer to fight on racial and migration issues rather than switch to the broader realignment strategy Republicans will need for their long-term viability.

All this uncertainty leaves the rest of the world, friends and foes alike, still wondering whether “America First” is the new face of the US or simply a Trump aberration.

It’s not even clear if “America First” is a new kind of US internationalism or neo-isolationism, as Mr Trump has oscillated unpredictably between the two.

The cyclical pattern of American politics in a post-Cold War era suggested Republicans were due for a comprehensive victory in 2016, which they got. Then it hinted that Democrats would retake the House now, which they have.

It also implies that Mr Trump is now better positioned to be re-elected in 2020, barring a major scandal or meltdown, by blaming everything on House Democrats.

Yet the broader context is becoming consolidated. And there’s good news and bad news for both sides.

The good news for Republicans is that the federal American system, established at the end of the 18th century for entirely different reasons, now gives their voters disproportionate sway in much of the government and unfairly favours them.

The good news for Democrats is they have the solid and growing support of most of the American people.

And the only rational conclusion for US allies is, you had better be on good terms with both Democrats and Republicans – and not become a partisan football.

https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/handing-trump-more-power-would-be-a-disastrous-outcome-for-the-midterms-1.787485

The vote has been framed as a referendum on Trump’s tenure so far. However, a real verdict may have to wait until the 2020 presidential election

Next week’s US midterm elections are widely expected to be among the most consequential in decades. Both sides have, in different ways, framed them as a referendum on President Donald Trump, who has been doing his best to nationalise the vote and insist that he’s “on the ballot”.

But he’s not.

The vote will be exceptionally important, but unless there is a decisive outcome, which seems unlikely, the American jury will still be effectively out on Mr Trump and his nativist agenda.

Mr Trump is a remarkably unpopular president with the public at large, yet he has won the strong support of the Republican base.

A split decision reflecting that seems to be shaping up, with the Democrats’ widespread appeal, especially in urban and suburban areas, positioning them to win control of the House of Representatives, in which all 435 seats will be contested.

However, only about a third of the Senate – 35 out of 100 seats – will be decided. Twenty-six of those seats are now held by Democrats and only nine by Republicans, who currently hold a two-vote majority.

The Senate elections, unlike the House, won’t be comprehensive or in any sense national. This year, they will largely reflect the voting power and influence of the rural and exurban white electorate that backs Mr Trump and his allies.

So, it now looks likely that Democrats will win a solid majority in the House, but Republicans will keep a narrow grip on the Senate. That’s the kind of split decision that decides nothing major and postpones the national verdict on Trumpism to the presidential contest of 2020.

The political landscape has fundamentally altered since 2016. Mr Trump has seized complete control of the Republican Party, which now sometimes looks like a personality cult, with most of its officials competing to express devotion to him.

Mr Trump has accomplished a total realignment − but only on the right − by transforming the GOP from a conservative party to a white-nationalist one. His continued support among former Democratic and swing voters, especially among the white working class, is untested and a split decision will leave this question unanswered.

The US system seems to have produced a profound anomaly in 2016: comprehensive minority rule in a democratic system.

Most empirical evidence suggests that the US public, as a national whole, has a core and growing centre-left majority. But the complexities of the political system have left Republicans both in total control of national government while shifting in a white-nationalist direction.

The federal electoral system, which gave the White House to Mr Trump, even though Hillary Clinton beat him by almost three million votes, produces even starker distortions in the Senate.

The political impact of a single vote in Montana (with fewer than 600,000 residents) is significantly greater than one in California (with almost 40 million), since both states get the same two Senate seats.

Added to this are rampant partisan gerrymandering, growing voter suppression, a flood of dark money and a right-wing majority on the Supreme Court bolstered by the recent addition of long-time Republican apparatchik Brett Kavanaugh.

That all suggests that the national government has, for the past two years, been entirely controlled by a minority, and in some ways even fringe, tendency.

Democrats were hoping to demonstrate that with an overwhelming “blue wave” vote. If the midterms were truly a national election, that could have happened. But the Senate, which is more powerful than the House, makes it unlikely that Democrats can establish any such thing.

However, if Democrats can capture a House majority, the political conversation will be significantly altered.

Democrats can and will use House committee and subpoena powers to investigate a wide range of information regarding Mr Trump, his allies and other Republicans, and will conduct the kind of oversight that the Republican Congress has meticulously avoided.

Mr Trump’s legislative agenda will be essentially paralysed, unless he veers significantly to the centre and compromises with the Democrats.

However, losing the House will not be a complete disaster for him. Unless there are some easily discovered and highly damning secrets about him, it will greatly strengthen his ability to get re-elected in 2020 by blaming House Democrats for everything the public does not like. Victory now would leave Mr Trump and the Republicans solely responsible for all developments in a country that consistently prefers divided government.

There are two other possibilities, though.

First, the Democrats could win both the House and Senate, and the apparent centre-left American majority could start strongly reasserting its power, despite the significant structural obstacles. That would be widely regarded as a powerful repudiation of Mr Trump. Second, the Republicans could retain control of both the House and the Senate, and score a decisive vindication for Mr Trump and his policies.

An anthropologist from Mars, dispassionately observing this process as fascinatingly strange behaviour by an odd species, might welcome the second outcome, as it would invite Mr Trump to test just how far he can go in exercising what would be an extraordinary level of power and to experiment with the implementation of his obviously authoritarian tendencies.

That’s such an alarming prospect that many Americans will be relieved by an otherwise unsatisfactory split decision that postpones the national reckoning with Trumpism for two more, very long, years.

https://agsiw.org/the-midterms-could-reshape-u-s-gulf-arab-relations/

The midterm elections may illustrate that Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states have become too much of a partisan issue in US politics.

The November 6 U.S. midterm elections are widely believed to be the most consequential in decades. Control of both the House of Representatives and Senate hang in the balance, and several important governors’ mansions are on the line. But in addition to these, in many ways local, contests, both the Democrats and Republicans have effectively acknowledged that this will be the first major public referendum on Donald J. Trump and his presidency since his upset victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016. The outcome will determine the balance of power in Washington for the next two years and will therefore have a disproportionately influential role, at least compared to most other midterms, in helping shape U.S. foreign policy until the next presidential election in 2020.

If Democrats win a strong majority in the House through a decisive “blue wave,” and especially should they also seize control of the Senate (although that seems unlikely), Trump’s authority, including in foreign policy, will be significantly circumscribed. If, on the other hand, Republicans not only hold the Senate but manage to retain control of the House, his administration and grip on foreign policy will be strengthened. A split decision, with Democrats winning a sizeable House majority but Republicans retaining a small but solid Senate majority, would be problematic for Trump, but would also result in the most complex power equation. It would mean that, in effect, the jury is still out on Trumpism, and the matter will be tabled until 2020. This scenario, leaving both sides feeling both vindicated and vulnerable, is entirely plausible, and indeed likely.

What’s at Stake for the Gulf Arab States

With several key Gulf Arab countries – especially Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – closely associated with the Trump administration, especially in public perceptions, many of their interests are in play and potentially at risk. Democratic control of the House would entirely transform policymaking in the coming two years. Under Trump, Republicans have enjoyed an unusual, though hardly unprecedented, monopoly on power in Washington, with both houses of Congress under their control. Trump has therefore faced very little resistance from Congress to his foreign and other policies. Legislators did buck Trump by insisting on new sanctions against Russia that he did not want and there was some institutional resistance in Congress to some weapon sales, including to Gulf Arab countries. But, overall, Trump has enjoyed a relatively free hand.

Democratic control of the House would transform that equation. Trump would need the cooperation of Democrats on a wide range of foreign-policy initiatives that involve U.S. funding or that can be blocked by legislative actions. While the Senate is better placed, in most cases, to block presidential initiatives, key House members can also take substantial action to restrict weapons sales, technology transfer, and anything involving the allocation of U.S. government funds. Moreover, Democrats would wield the chairman’s gavel in multiple House committees, and could therefore launch consequential investigations and actively help to shape the public debate on U.S. foreign policy. A number of policies would be affected by such a result, especially those involving Trump’s relationship with Saudi Arabia. Both Trump and the Saudis have greatly publicized their alignment following the strains of the era of former President Barack Obama. Indeed, the extremely close relations between the Saudi government and the Trump administration are now a prime avenue of foreign policy attacks against the president, and come at very little, if any, political cost to his critics.

Weapon Sales and the Yemen War

Weapons sales to key Gulf allies, especially Saudi Arabia and the UAE, already faced mounting opposition in Congress due to concerns regarding the Yemen war. A large group of Democrats and even some well-placed Republicans, including Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Bob Corker, Lindsey Graham, and Marco Rubio, have expressed growing unease about U.S. responsibility for a humanitarian crisis in Yemen that has been greatly exacerbated by the conflict. During Obama’s second term, and again under Trump, temporary holds were placed on certain Yemen war-related sales, especially 120,000 precision guided munitions that would replenish stocks expended in the Yemen campaign. A bipartisan effort to force the U.S. government to abandon any substantial cooperation with the Arab intervention in Yemen failed, but garnered substantial support.

Yet concern regarding Yemen continues to develop, and anger at Saudi Arabia is now focusing on the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi on October 2 at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. There is a widespread desire in Congress to register U.S. disapproval of the Khashoggi murder that dovetails with mounting anxiety about the situation in Yemen, suggesting that another legislative effort to restrict U.S. involvement in the war might meet with success, especially should Democrats hold majorities in either or both houses of Congress. This may also threaten certain weapon sales, at least with significant holds, delays, and legislative caveats. Several pending sales to Saudi Arabia potentially fall in this category, including the precision guided munitions and the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense anti-missile defense system. THAAD also involves potential significant technology transfer in which U.S. national security and Israel’s qualitative military edge could be invoked to delay or block it. The same applies to UAE efforts to purchase the F-35 fifth generation fighter jet, which could also face Yemen-related difficulties.

By investigating hot-button issues such as the humanitarian crisis and civilian deaths in Yemen, the Khashoggi murder, or other human rights concerns, empowered congressional Democrats could seek to sabotage Trump’s close relations with Saudi Arabia, and even the UAE, for partisan political benefit while ostensibly asserting U.S. and Democratic Party values.

Iran

Iran has also become a partisan political issue between Republicans and Democrats. Trump’s incessant attacks on Obama’s Iran policies, particularly the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear agreement, which he withdrew from earlier this year, reveal the stark divide on Iran between Republicans and Democrats. Most Republicans have welcomed Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran, but many Democrats condemn it as irrational and misguided, and compare it unfavorably to the nuclear deal, which they broadly supported. Most Iran-related policies are not dependent on congressional action and can be ordered by the executive alone. But a White House that enjoys legislative support will be much more authoritative than one that is constantly bickering with the House, or the Senate, over sanctions and other pressure against Iran.

Therefore, Democratic control of one or both chambers of Congress would significantly complicate Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Tehran. European countries seeking to keep the nuclear deal going in spite of U.S. opposition would suddenly find themselves with empowered partners in Washington. This could reinforce the feeling in European capitals and especially Tehran that the wisest approach would be to wait out the Trump administration in preparation for a more amenable Democratic-dominated government following 2020. If, on the other hand, Republicans retain majority control of all of Congress, the impression will grow that U.S. policy has decisively turned the corner, and that mounting sanctions and other pressure against Iran and U.S. allies in Europe on these issues will be the U.S. approach into the foreseeable future. Given the extent to which a pressure campaign involves shaping perceptions and psychological warfare, the impact of the elections’ outcome on the efficacy of Iran policy might be substantial.

Other Gulf-Related Policies

A range of other Middle East policies may be affected by the elections’ outcome. The Trump administration appears to be finally coalescing around a new Syria policy based on maintaining U.S. force structures in eastern Syria and cooperation with Turkey and Russia to ultimately restrict Iran’s influence in the country. It’s unclear whether Democrats substantially object to this policy, especially given Israel’s strong interest in a robust long-term U.S. presence in Syria, and therefore this approach might even be bolstered by a Democratic House.

Support for Israel among Democrats is strong, so there has been very little partisan opposition to Trump’s major swing toward Israel by moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, cutting off ties to the Palestine Liberation Organization, and defunding virtually all U.S. aid to the Palestinian Authority and agencies caring for Palestinians. There has similarly not been a partisan edge to varying opinions in Congress about the boycott of Qatar. Military aid to Egypt, though, could face objections similar to those regarding weapon sales to Saudi Arabia, based on human rights considerations.

Democrats and some Republicans may also continue to push back on the idea of the United States playing a leading role in helping Saudi Arabia develop a domestic nuclear industry, including the enrichment of uranium mined in the kingdom and the reprocessing of plutonium. In the wake of the Khashoggi murder, a bipartisan group in Congress has been pushing for the United States to pull back from these negotiations. However, Riyadh would probably be able to obtain most, if not all, of the required technology from other suppliers. Nuclear negotiations with Saudi Arabia are an excellent illustration of the chasm in priorities separating two U.S. foreign policy visions. Most Democrats and some Republicans want to use foreign policy to achieve broad and consistent policy goals based on the promotion of an international rules-based order and would therefore not want to assist any Saudi nuclear energy project without “gold-standard” commitments from Riyadh. Trump and his allies hold a more mercantile view that would suggest that if there are competitors willing to take the contracts, there is no good reason for the United States cheating itself out of a profit for an effectively empty gesture.

A Referendum on “America First?”

The midterms may help clarify whether this “America first” Trumpian view is gaining or losing traction with the public and, therefore, demonstrate its long-term prospects as a driving force in U.S. foreign policy. But a split decision leaving Democrats in control of the House and Republicans with a small edge in the Senate seems to be shaping up. That would decide little and postpone a more thorough reckoning until 2020. Many Arab governments in the Gulf will probably be rooting for a strong Republican showing, but history shows they can also work well with Democrats. However, the willingness of some Gulf countries, particularly Saudi Arabia, to allow themselves to become so closely associated with Trump and his policies in the public mind has made their interests more of a partisan wedge than they could, or logically should, be. And, unlike Israel, Gulf Arab countries don’t have a strong body of independent support in the U.S. system to defend them from any resulting partisan attacks. Whatever the outcome of these particular elections, reaching out to Democrats is advisable for those Gulf Arab countries that have become too closely associated with the Republicans in the Trump era for their own long-term interests.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-10-31/pittsburgh-killings-should-galvanize-a-jewish-muslim-alliance?srnd=opinion

Toxic white nationalists are targeting both religious minorities.

What if the massacre at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh last weekend could produce something constructive: a new Jewish-Muslim partnership in the U.S.?

Not a dialogue — we’ve had plenty of those — but an organized alliance to defend the civil rights, legal standing and communal safety of both religious minorities from the toxic white nationalism of the Donald Trump era.

The 11 murdered victims at the synagogue were Jewish, but there’s not a single Muslim-American who doesn’t know that the next casualties could be Muslim. The accused killer, Robert Bowers, said so himself when he wrote on a social media platform that serves as a safe space for the nationalist right, “It’s the filthy EVIL jews Bringing the Filthy EVIL Muslims into the Country!!”

White supremacy has always been aimed at African-Americans, though bigots have also targeted Irish, Italian, German, Chinese, Japanese, Slavic and other immigrant groups at various times in U.S. history. Today’s jingoist panic focuses on Latino immigrants, who are supposedly invading the country and creating a post-white, “minority-majority” America.

Where do Jews and Muslims come into it? In the front and the back, as it happens.

Bowers was obsessed with the immigration-related hysteria that characterizes the paranoid style of contemporary U.S. politics and has been shaped by Trump’s talk of foreign “rapists” and “animals” coming to “infest our country.”

Trump’s allies on social media and Fox News have cynically and falsely accused the billionaire liberal philanthropist George Soros of funding illegal immigration, notably the caravan of bedraggled would-be refugees from Central America that is slowly working its way north through Mexico. Soros, who is Jewish, has long been a target of anti-Semitic slurs. Now he’s become a central figure in Republican political advertising that resurrects classic anti-Semitic stereotypes of the sneaky Jewish plutocrat.

And the Muslims? Trump himself tweeted that the caravan was dangerous because “criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in” to it.

In other words, Jews are behind the caravan, pulling the strings. And Muslims are at the front, sneaking in to wreak terror.

That’s the bizarre fantasy Bowers was invoking in his rant about Jews and Muslims. And it appears to be what incited him to shoot worshipers at the synagogue.

American Jews and Muslims face an intertwined threat. It’s an understatement to say that they need each other now.

Which brings us to Israel and Palestine. There can’t be an effective U.S. Jewish-Muslim coalition as long as Middle Eastern politics divides the two camps.

The key to making the alliance work is for each side to stop demanding agreement from the other when it comes to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Instead, Jews and Muslims should be able to acknowledge that each has a fact-based narrative about the past 100 years that makes both perspectives legitimate.

In the end, Israelis and Arabs will have to shape their own futures. American Jews and Muslims won’t be drawing the lines in the Middle East. But they will determine their own fates and the fate of their children.

That should give them plenty of incentive to work together to defend their interests even while disagreeing about Israel.

And the mainstreams of both communities need to do more to cleanse their own ranks of Islamophobes and anti-Semites.

Several Jewish groups have been at the forefront of opposing the Trump administration’s ban on travel from seven countries, five with Muslim majorities. Muslim groups raised $180,000 in three days for victims of the Pittsburgh synagogue shootings and have become increasingly vocal about rising anti-Semitism.

That’s a good start, but it’s not enough. Anti-Semitism is alive and thriving. Islamophobia is essentially the same narrative directed against Muslims. Jews and Muslims can fight both more effectively together than separately.

https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/trump-doesn-t-believe-in-anything-but-the-recent-bomb-attempts-highlight-the-danger-of-people-believing-in-him-1.784720

The US President has repeatedly diagnosed liberal society as sick and corrupt, and prescribed violence as the cure

It was inevitable. A Donald Trump fan has been arrested for sending bombs to more than a dozen of the US president’s most prominent liberal opponents, and CNN, his most hated news organization. The only real question is why did it take so long?

Mr Trump obviously doesn’t take his own words seriously. He’s a huckster who leapt from reality television into politics, not because he wanted to achieve something, but simply because he discovered he could.

Friend and foe alike agree that he doesn’t really believe in anything and only responds to whatever he thinks makes him look good.

Mr Trump’s whole presidency has been an elaborate ego trip, increasingly unmoored from anything resembling reality, as his proclivity for lying has spun wildly out of control.

Most recently, he was painting bizarre fantasies about whole towns of Americans rapturously applauding as their neighborhoods were liberated from rampaging Latino gangs.

It’s all a game to him. But what is anyone who really believes him supposed to think and do?

Recently, he’s been telling his followers that Democrats are “evil” and operating with impunity, a lawless, angry mob intent on filling the country with violent street gangs and Middle Eastern terrorists in a deliberate attempt to destroy American society. They despise the United States and, according to him, are determined to “turn it into Venezuela”.

The media is “the enemy of the American people”; its reporting “so bad and hateful that it is beyond description”. It is also, according to Mr Trump, responsible for “a very big part of the anger we see today”.

Mr Trump doesn’t have political opponents or critics, only truly evil, destructive, dangerous enemies.

There is little sincerity here and lots of his supporters are entertained by his hyperbole. Many mistake his lack of filters with honesty and his lack of decency with a refreshingly blunt refusal to sound “like a politician”.

But some believe every word of it.

Mr Trump wants everyone to place their trust in him, and give him complete, unwavering political obedience and unfettered authority. But can that really be enough, if the dangers are as extreme as he insists?

He has suggested, many times, what kind of response he favors.

At his campaign rallies, Mr Trump repeatedly encouraged his supporters to physically attack protesters or hecklers, saying that his critics should be “carried out on a stretcher”, and promising to pay legal bills for anyone willing to make that happen.

He strongly implied that if Hillary Clinton had been elected, “Second Amendment people” (gun fanatics) would have had to stop her. Recently, he praised a congressman for assaulting a reporter, saying: “Any guy that can do a body slam, he’s my kind of guy.”

In his comments regarding world leaders, Mr Trump seems particularly impressed with murderous ruthlessness. He remains an advocate of torture and an unapologetic proponent of intentional police brutality.

So, in addition to cultivating a supposedly righteous rage in his supporters, he has consistently promoted an atmosphere of violence.

Of course, most of his followers know that he is at least exaggerating, and that he is usually not to be taken literally, and sometimes not seriously either.

Most of the rest will be inhibited by moral qualms, or a sense of self-preservation, and won’t lash out.

But some people, often loners with little left to lose, will fully embrace both Mr Trump’s alarming diagnosis and his prescription of therapeutic violence, and decide that they have to act.

It’s the same syndrome that the paranoid and chauvinistic demagogues of Al Qaeda and the so-called “Islamic State” count on, especially when urging lone-wolf terrorist acts.

More than anything else, Mr Trump has been upset that these attempted bombings have distracted attention from his new drug price initiative and, along with many of his strongest supporters, suggested the whole thing was a stunt by liberals to discredit him. In a tweet, he dismissed the bombs innocuously as “packages and devices”.

In addition to suggesting that media organizations such as CNN deserve such hatred, and leading a crowd in chants of “fake news” and “lock him up” − referring to one of the bomb recipients, philanthropist George Soros − Mr Trump has refused to tone down his rhetoric.

When questioned, he said, “I could really tone it up.” He also rejected any suggestion of his own responsibility, insisting: “There’s no blame. There’s no anything.”

But Mr Trump paints a picture of absolute evil and depravity on the part of liberals and Democrats in general, the media, and any other potential or real opponents. Anyone who takes even a small percentage of what he says as truth is guaranteed to feel enraged and besieged.

Mr Trump and his supporters have occasionally hinted at the possibility of mass violence and civil unrest throughout the country if he were ever truly thwarted. Is anyone confident that, as a last resort to save himself, he wouldn’t at least be tempted to try to unleash widespread mayhem?

Now one unhinged individual has taken his words literally, seriously, and to their logical conclusion. He is unlikely to be the last, especially if Mr Trump’s presidency is ever genuinely threatened by scandal or potential electoral defeat.

https://agsiw.org/how-the-khashoggi-affair-is-straining-turkish-saudi-relations/

With Erdogan trying to exploit the Khashoggi affair and Riyadh in damage-control mode, the controversy is inflaming the Saudi-Turkish geopolitical and ideological rivalry.

A much-anticipated speech on October 23 by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the death of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi has further strained, but carefully avoided anything that would categorically rupture, Turkish-Saudi relations. Since Khashoggi disappeared after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, an exchange of angry accusations and mutual recriminations has characterized the biggest crisis between the two countries in many years. But both sides have also been careful not to go too far and neither party wants to allow their rivalry to deteriorate into enmity or a confrontation. That careful calibration is likely to continue, particularly with Washington now fully engaged in the process of defusing the diplomatic crisis.

Erdogan emphasized two key points. First, he insisted that, contrary to Saudi accounts, the incident was a premeditated murder rather than an accident or a botched abduction or interrogation. Second, while Erdogan did not mention Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman by name, several parts of his speech clearly pointed in his direction. Instead, he addressed all his questions and demands to King Salman bin Abdulaziz, rather than his son, Mohammed bin Salman. This kept the conversation at a more formal, head-of-state, level. But it also may have been subtly calibrated to isolate Mohammed bin Salman, and exploit any real or potential divisions between the monarch and his heir apparent. Therefore, the effort to keep up pressure was intentional and calibrated.

Through a series of questions about the incident directed toward the Saudi government in general, Erdogan adopted the role of a prosecutor laying out an indictment. From the outset of this affair, Erdogan and the Turkish government have presented themselves as neutral arbiters simply trying to determine the truth. But, of course, they have actually been pursuing a complex set of political and national objectives and taking advantage of an unanticipated opportunity to make significant headway on a number of crucial fronts.

Most important, perhaps, is the effort to utilize this crisis to aid the international rehabilitation of Erdogan himself. The widespread crackdown on political opposition in Turkey since the failed coup of July 2016 has prompted a growing chorus of global criticism. But Erdogan presents himself to the Turkish public and the world as a champion of order and legitimacy pushing back against the forces of chaos and violence. The Khashoggi affair was tailor-made to advance this perception not only in Turkey, but internationally. But to produce this effect, Erdogan has had to appear measured in most of his public pronouncements, leaving the more incendiary charges to his subordinates, usually anonymously quoted in Turkish media.

Second, Erdogan and Turkey are using the crisis to advance broader claims of global religious and cultural Islamic leadership, particularly in the Sunni Muslim world. In that regard, Saudi Arabia is one of Turkey’s most formidable competitors. On October 15, Erdogan proclaimed that “Turkey is the only country that can lead the Muslim world.” Saudi Arabia, of course, claims exactly such global Islamic leadership on the grounds of its history and geography, particularly as the birthplace of Islam and the site of the two holy sanctuaries, Mecca and Medina.

But this rivalry isn’t merely religious and national. It also has a powerful ideological dimension. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and others argue that the Middle East isn’t just divided between those aligned with and against Iran, an avowedly theocratic Shia power. They hold that there is a third ideological camp of Sunni Islamists, led by Turkey and Qatar, which includes Muslim Brotherhood movements. In effect, there are now two key strategic and political fault lines in the Middle East: support or opposition to growing Iranian power and a struggle for predominance in the Sunni Muslim world between pro- and anti-Islamist forces. Turkey is the most prominent and influential of what amounts to a Sunni pro-Islamist camp, while Saudi Arabia effectively leads an anti-Islamist one. In the Turkish-Saudi relationship, this contemporary ideological schism builds on long-standing suspicions that date back to the Ottoman Empire and Saudi efforts to establish and maintain national independence despite Turkish imperial opposition.

The boycott of Qatar is, perhaps, the most dramatic example of how this struggle is being waged in the Arab world at the moment, with Riyadh leading the effort to squeeze Doha, while Ankara serves as Qatar’s most committed ally. Indeed, the growing Turkish military presence in Qatar was an important part of the boycotting quartet’s complaints against Doha and removing it was among their core demands for ending the impasse. One of Riyadh’s key foreign-policy goals in recent years has been curtailing Turkey’s efforts to reassert regional influence, especially in the Arab world, as Ankara has turned its attention away from Europe and toward the Middle East, as well as fending off Turkey’s ambitions to lead the Sunni Muslim world. The Turkish alliance with Qatar in Saudi eyes combines both themes – countering the growth of a Sunni Islamist bloc in the Middle East and limiting the spread of Turkish influence, particularly in the Gulf region.

Erdogan’s reaction to the Khashoggi affair has been significantly shaped by this rivalry. The slow drip of allegations was designed to keep the story in the public eye and steadily increase the pressure on Saudi Arabia but without leading to a total break in relations. Turkey does not want a full-blown confrontation with Saudi Arabia and its allies and must be cognizant of nonpolitical factors such as extensive Saudi investments in the Turkish real estate market.

The leaks were also designed to bring the United States into the mix. Turkey did not want to face Saudi Arabia entirely on its own and wanted and needed U.S. help. Moreover, by forcing Washington to make this a three-way conversation, Turkey was also able to gain leverage over the United States as well as Saudi Arabia. From Saudi Arabia, Turkey will want financial benefits (or at least no cutoff of Saudi investment in Turkey) which it will probably secure. Turkey will also ask Saudi Arabia to pull back from supporting Kurdish groups in Syria, which is a taller order, and possibly to ease the boycott of Qatar, which is extremely unlikely. Any prospects for those more ambitious goals may depend on the quantity and quality of whatever evidence Turkish authorities are holding in reserve. Ankara will also try to ensure that Saudi Arabia won’t retaliate in any significant manner for the extreme embarrassment and discomfort resulting from Turkish accusations in recent weeks. Finally, by bringing the United States into the conversation and releasing the jailed American pastor Andrew Brunson, Erdogan is hoping to advance his own international rehabilitation.

Erdogan doesn’t want a total rupture of relations with Saudi Arabia, and particularly not another crisis with Washington. But he does see Saudi Arabia as a key rival that he would like to weaken as much as possible without instigating uncontrolled instability. So, from the outset he has seen this episode as a golden opportunity to weaken and corner Saudi Arabia, and thereby the entire Sunni anti-Islamist camp, to Ankara’s advantage. Moreover, he’s trying to stoke maximal international outrage toward Saudi Arabia and, especially, Mohammed bin Salman, including by pointedly not naming him in his speech even though other Turkish officials have gone to considerable lengths to link the crown prince’s inner circle to the suspects they identified.

The Turkish president’s primary goals are to render the Saudi crown prince personally and politically toxic, while promoting his own image and international rehabilitation. Both the Saudi government and Mohammed bin Salman are in damage-control mode and may have to calculate what they will be willing to offer Erdogan to stop him from publicizing additional damaging allegations or, especially, evidence, and to move past the incident. As usual in the contemporary Middle East, it’s nearly impossible, on both sides of this standoff, to untangle the leaders’ personal and political concerns from the broader national interests at stake.

https://www.bloombergquint.com/view/khashoggi-killing-erdogan-s-balancing-act#gs.TjRtIKQ

It’s clear that a speech Tuesday morning by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan didn’t break much new ground about the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. What’s less obvious is why Erdogan decided not to deliver on his promise to expose the “naked truth” about the killing, especially whatever he knows about the extent of involvement by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

The answer lies in the nature of Turkey’s fraught relations with both Saudi Arabia and the U.S. Turkey is not only navigating its longstanding rivalry with the Saudis, as my Bloomberg Opinion colleague Bobby Ghosh wrote on Tuesday, but with Washington as well, and is calibrating how far it can go without overplaying its hand.

Turkey’s response to the Khashoggi killing should be viewed against the backdrop of tensions between Ankara and Riyadh.

Erdogan has recently strengthened his claim on global Muslim leadership, something the Saudi royal family has long considered its own cultural birthright. The Saudis view Turkey as the head of a hostile regional alliance of Sunni Islamists that includes their Qatari adversaries and an antagonistic Muslim Brotherhood movement.

To the Saudis, Turkey’s embrace of Khashoggi represented a challenge: He was preparing to establish a Turkish-based TV station, a series of websites, and a political group based in the U.S. to urge a bigger role for the Brotherhood in the development of Middle Eastern democracy.

That made Khashoggi’s murder an opportunity for Turkey to meet the Saudi challenge by discrediting the crown prince.

But Erdogan faces constraints. This week’s arrival in Turkey of the chief of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, Gina Haspel — ostensibly to examine intelligence that CIA operatives have no doubt already thoroughly reviewed — raised the ante for Erdogan.

Haspel was plainly sent to warn the Turks not to go so far as to try to unseat the Saudi crown prince. Doing so would complicate the U.S. balancing act between defending American values and preserving U.S. interests in the kingdom.

Erdogan also needs U.S. cooperation if he intends to secure a financial windfall from Saudi Arabia in exchange for holding back evidence of involvement in the killing. And Erdogan needs U.S. help to ensure that Saudi Arabia doesn’t retaliate for the embarrassment Turkey has inflicted in recent weeks through a campaign of lurid leaks about the details of Khashoggi’s apparent murder.

Most importantly, Erdogan wants to advance his own international rehabilitation. Since a failed Turkish coup in July 2016, Erdogan has cracked down on political opposition and secured virtually dictatorial powers, wiping out the more democratic and institutionalized Turkish political system he inherited and replacing it with his own, individual authority.

Erdogan’s Turkey became notorious for political repression and human rights abuses, including against journalists like Khashoggi. Now Khashoggi’s death gives the Turkish government a chance to present itself as a responsible actor. Erdogan’s domestic and international narrative casts him as a champion of order and legitimacy. The Khashoggi killing is an unearned opportunity to push that line and encourage the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump to back his demands for international acceptance as a responsible regional actor.

Erdogan’s restraint on Tuesday reflects his understanding that even if he pushed hard to bring down the crown prince, he would sacrifice other, more important goals. Backing off a bit, by contrast, prevents a complete breakdown with Saudi Arabia and preserves leverage with Washington. At the same time, he can hope to embarrass Saudi Arabia and weaken the crown prince enough to blunt Saudi Arabia’s effectiveness as a regional rival.

As for the crown prince and the Saudi government, they are entirely in damage-control mode, and their main audience right now is Trump.

https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/the-latest-blow-for-palestinians-shows-washington-is-committed-only-to-dismantling-the-framework-of-the-oslo-process-1.782481

The closure of the US consulate in East Jerusalem is an attack on the very notion of Palestinian sovereignty and hopes for a Palestinian state

Hardly a week goes by without the Trump administration taking another swipe at Palestinians. Two days ago it was announced that the US consulate in occupied East Jerusalem, a de facto American embassy to the Palestinians, will be closed.

The separate closure of the Palestine Liberation Organization mission in Washington last month was clearly aimed at Palestinian leaders. But the shutting of the consulate is dismissive of an entire people and sends four terrible messages.

First, this will make it considerably more difficult for ordinary Palestinians to access US consular services like applying for visas. Like so much of what the Trump administration has done over the past year, it reflects a considerable hostility towards all Palestinians.

That was already fully articulated in the decision to strip Palestinian hospitals in East Jerusalem of US funding, among other gratuitous cruelties.

It effectively says that Palestinians are not a people worthy of dedicated consular relations.

To the contrary, if they want to deal with American diplomats, Palestinians can try to get to Israel to go to the US embassy in West Jerusalem, if they possibly can (but will often be unable to). And if not, the obvious corollary is that they must only have themselves to blame.

Second, this strongly consolidates the idea that, as Donald Trump keeps saying, all of Jerusalem is “off the table” in any future Israeli-Palestinian negotiations because it essentially belongs entirely to Israel, and, as he recently added, “we don’t have to talk about it anymore”.

Having a US consulate in occupied East Jerusalem might have been misconstrued, after all, as suggesting that there was some kind of independent Palestinian status in the city. It might even have been interpreted as suggesting that Palestinians could still aspire to base their capital in East Jerusalem.

This is an idea that Mr Trump’s “Middle East peace team”, led by his son-in-law Jared Kushner, has been striving to eliminate.

Closing the consulate for the Palestinians is a kind of epilogue or annex to the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and the moving of the US embassy there from Tel Aviv. Just in case anyone still held any hopes that Washington remained open to brokering, let alone committed to, a compromise on Jerusalem, this plainly signals that it is not.

Third, this move alarmingly consolidates the authority of David Friedman, the US ambassador to Israel, who will now also be in charge of consular services for the Palestinians.

Mr Friedman has played a key role in driving US policy in the Trump administration firmly into the arms of a “greater Israel” and settler movement, of which he is a major proponent.

Most ambassadors don’t play a role in shaping policy. But Mr Friedman is the highest-ranking State Department official to take any interest in Palestinian issues and, in partnership with Mr Kushner, he has effectively dismissed Palestinians, their human rights and national interests.

As long as there was a consulate in occupied East Jerusalem dedicated to serving the Palestinian population that was independent of Mr Friedman’s control, a remnant of balance in US diplomacy might have persisted. But now all US diplomacy in Israel and the occupied territories is under the direct control of this ardent backer of settlements and avowed opponent of any form of two-state outcome.

Fourth, this latest move reinforces the growing – and by now virtually inescapable – conclusion that Mr Trump, Mr Kushner, Mr Friedman and those working with them have an overriding goal, which is the destruction of any diplomatic and negotiating framework inherited from the two decades-old Oslo Accords.

With no negotiations or any progress for a long time through the Oslo process, a fresh approach was undoubtedly necessary, just as Mr Kushner argued.

But rather than building on what already existed, Mr Kushner and his team have instead been frantically destroying the structures that produced the limited gains of the Oslo framework, ones which at least kept alive the prospects for an eventual peace accord.

It’s become clear that their main goal is to wreck the existing diplomatic and political architecture so thoroughly that even if their own “peace plan” goes absolutely nowhere – as now seems inevitable, thanks largely to their anti-Palestinian vendetta – no successor administration would be able to resuscitate the two-state-orientated Oslo formula.

The real target, then, is the very notion of Palestinian sovereignty and any remaining hopes for a Palestinian state.

The Trump administration’s intervention has thus far been utterly destructive, aimed at wiping out Jerusalem and refugees as issues, impoverishing and humiliating ordinary Palestinians, granting Israel endless victories without asking anything in return and making US commitments that will be very difficult to reverse but which ensure that no meaningful negotiations can proceed.

There are no longer any grounds for attributing this nihilistic rampage to naïveté or ignorance. It’s cynically, willfully and unforgivably destructive of any hopes for progress towards peace. And when despair over negotiations leading to increasing spates of violence, as is already emerging on the Gaza border, the authors of this policy will bear a heavy responsibility for the lives needlessly lost.