Israel's flawed electoral system

 

          Israel has still not emerged from the ridiculous political logjam of 2019-20, which saw the nation making its way to polling stations three times within 12 months. This state of affairs came about simply because Israel’s electoral system twice failed to yield a workable government at the end of the polling process.

          It seemed as though the political paralysis finally ended in May 2020 when the new government was announced. The controversial power-sharing deal called for Benjamin Netanyahu to serve as prime minister for the government’s first 18 months, to be replaced by Benny Gantz for the next 18 months. Their painfully constructed coalition deal could only come about after the country’s Supreme Court ruled it had no legal grounds to block it. But it was constructed in the first instance because the electoral system had produced a situation in which Netanyahu’s Likud and Gantz’s Blue and White parties were virtually neck and neck as regards seats.

          The deal led immediately to the dissolution of Gantz’s alliance with his main partner, Yair Lapid, since it was only achieved by Gantz reneging on his central campaign promise not to serve under Netanyahu.

           Despite the criticism, Gantz argued that teaming with Netanyahu offered the country its only way out of the prolonged stalemate and prevented Israel from being dragged once again to another costly election that would have been its fourth in just over a year. Yet here the nation is again, only seven months later, facing the prospect of yet another excursion to the polls. Why?

          One obvious reason demands to be aired – that Israel’s electoral system is simply not fit for purpose in the 2020s. Or, to be generous, that it has outlived its usefulness.

          Eminent constitutionalist, Vernon Bogdanor, has pointed out that Israel’s electoral system is not a considered structure, but a procedure hastily adopted in 1948 when the infant state was at war with its Arab neighbours. With no time or inclination to construct a new electoral model, elections to the Constituent Assembly, which became the first Knesset, were held by the same method that had been used in the pre-state period for elections to the Zionist Congress and to the elected assemblies of the Yishuv, the Jewish community of Mandatory Palestine. But, as Bogdanor points out, a system suitable for a voluntary organization is not necessarily equally suitable for a mature democracy.

          When the Israeli electorate go to the polls, they are asked to choose the one party among the many competing – usually 20 or more – with whose policies they most agree. This system has been described as “one of the purest forms of proportional rule” since the number of seats that each party in the Knesset gains is almost exactly proportional to the number of votes the party obtains in the general election.

          The downside is that inevitably the nation’s vote is fractured. With every shade of political opinion represented by Knesset seats, no one party can emerge as the outright winner. After each election, weeks are spent in backroom negotiations and deals as the party with the most votes attempts to gain sufficient support from others to command a majority in the Knesset.

          Attempts have been made from time to time to ameliorate the problem caused by too many small parties. Until 1992 a political party needed only one percent of the total votes cast to enter parliament. This was gradually raised – first to 1.5 percent, then to 2 percent, and more recently to 3.25 percent – which is still a low threshold of entry compared to similar electoral systems.

          One major discrepancy between Israel’s electoral system and that of most other Western democracies is the absence of any constituency-based element. While many nations have adopted a combination of proportional representation (PR) and the direct election of representatives, the UK’s system is virtually the complete opposite of Israel’s.

          Great Britain and Northern Ireland are divided into 650 constituencies, each of which elects one member of parliament. Any political party, provided it fulfills the necessary criteria, may put up candidates and compete in the election. The candidate who wins the most votes in each constituency is elected, regardless of how many votes were cast for other candidates. PR does not feature. The idea of substituting PR for first-past-the-post was put to the electorate in 2011 in a national referendum, and overwhelmingly rejected.

          The UK system nearly always results in one or other of the two major parties – Conservative or Labour – obtaining a clear majority. Its leader becomes prime minister and appoints all government ministers. Party lists are an unknown phenomenon. Except in rare cases, which do arise from time to time, there is no need for the leader of the winning party to negotiate with anyone about anything.

          As for elected members of parliament, each is regarded by their constituents as “their” MP, whether or not they voted for him or her. All MPs hold regular “surgeries” in their constituency where members of the public with problems can speak personally to their MP and ask for advice or help. The personal connection between MPs and their local areas is very strong. This electoral system, like all electoral systems, is far from perfect. Its main disadvantage is its failure to match the national voting pattern with seats in parliament.

          Proposals for reform in Israel’s electoral system combining the constituency concept with the proportionality of the present system have been put forward on three occasions – in 1958, 1972 and 1988. The last attempt, prepared by MK Mordechai Virshubski and signed by 43 others, offered two ideas. The more interesting proposed that 60 MKs would be elected in 60 constituencies, and 60 by the current system. In short, each elector would vote for both a candidate and a list. This bill also passed a first reading, but subsequently foundered.

          Back in 2005, President Moshe Katsav set up a Presidential Commission for the Examination of the Governmental Structure, a forum of the country's leading political scientists chaired by Hebrew University President Menahem Magidor. The commission met regularly for more than a year, and it too finally favoured a combined system, recommending that half of the Knesset should be elected directly within the country’s 17 districts, while the other half would be voted in by way of the current system.

          The commission’s recommendations, like the earlier parliamentary bills proposing electoral reform, were not followed up. Nor indeed were subsequent attempts, such as the determined effort by Professor Menahem Ben-Sasson in 2006. Then Chair of the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, Ben Sasson set to work with a will. Undeterred by all the previous unsuccessful attempts, he declared: “This generation might be ready. At least I have to try”. Try he did, but his proposals were blocked by those who feared a loss of influence in any revised system.

           Despite a history replete with discouragement and failure, electoral reform in Israel is an unfinished saga. The inadequacies of the present system remain obvious. Another genuinely determined effort, supported by a consensus from within Israel’s body politic, must be made sooner or later to provide the nation with an electoral system truly worthy of it. Why not make a start?

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 27 December 2020, as: "Israel's electoral system is leaving the country stuck in a political logjam":

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/israels-electoral-system-is-leaving-the-country-stuck-in-political-logjam-653347

How far will Biden diverge from Trump?

 

          The question exercising countless minds worldwide is how much of President Donald Trump’s policies will the forthcoming Biden administration uphold?  At first glance the two men could not be further apart politically.  Closer scrutiny of the issues reveals a rather different picture.

As far as the Middle East is concerned, there is general agreement that US president-elect Joe Biden will certainly endorse the Abraham Accords. On the other hand, most Washington watchers do not expect him to maintain his predecessor’s aggressive stance towards Iran. After all, as vice-president, Biden was key in selling to Congress the Iran nuclear deal, still regarded by Barack Obama as the crowning achievement of his presidency.  Many believe that Biden will seek to negotiate a US re-entry into the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), the multi-national agreement that sealed the terms of the deal, and from which Trump withdrew in May 2018.  If he does so, there is no consensus on what he might require, or what Iran might demand, as the price of his re-engagement.   

            Trump’s policy of disengaging US armed forces from the conflicts of the Middle East is a broad strategy likely to commend itself to his successor.  The long-standing US military presence in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, and its involvement in Libya and Yemen, has often exacerbated conflict as much as contain it.  The announced Trump troop withdrawals will doubtless be popular domestically, but whether they will have a positive or a negative effect in the countries concerned is less certain. Biden may find himself having to reassess Trump’s decisions in some cases.

In one particular instance, Biden may diverge completely from Trump’s withdrawal strategy. Back in August 2014, with Obama as US president and Joe Biden his vice-president, the US formed a coalition of fourteen countries to oppose Islamic State (IS) military victories across Syria and Iraq.  Ever since, up in north-eastern Syria US troops had been supporting the valiant Kurdish Peshmerga forces who had led the attack against IS on behalf of the coalition.  The Kurds were embedded in the Syrian Democratic Forces (the SDF). which also contained militias from around the world.

On 6 October 2019 the Trump administration ordered US forces to withdraw from the region.  On October 9 the Turkish army, together with the Syrian National Army (the SNA), launched an attack on the SDF.  Erdogan had designated it a terrorist organization because of its ties to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), the Turkish party agitating for Kurdish independence.  He maintained that the operation was intended to expel them from the region. Amnesty International said it had evidence of war crimes and human rights violations committed by Turkish and Turkey-backed Syrian forces.

Trump's sudden pullout of US forces in Syria was criticized by many, including former US military personnel, as a "serious betrayal of the Kurds".   Biden may well reconsider that particular issue. At the time both Democrats and Republicans in Congress opposed it.  And Biden is on record as saying “Turkey is the real problem,” and that he would tell “Erdogan that he will pay a heavy price.”

Unlike his soon-to-be predecessor in office, Biden is no admirer of strong ruthless leaders. Erdogan’s recent posturings on the world stage are not calculated to impress him.  The most provocative, perhaps, was Erdogan’s decision in 2017 to purchase the Russian S-400 anti-aircraft system, which is designed specifically to counter fighter aircraft like the US’s state-of-the-art multi-purpose F-35.  In fact, and bizarrely, Erdogan was already attempting to acquire the F-35 itself.  In short Turkey, a member of NATO, was proposing to let Russia in by the back door. 

As a result the US ejected Turkey from the F-35 programme. Erdogan’s duplicity had proved a step too far even for Trump, and Biden is not likely to oppose his latest action on this issue.  On December 14, 2020. Washington imposed sanctions against Turkey’s military acquisitions agency for having acquired the Russian S-400 system.  The sanctions were also intended to hold Turkey to account for potentially allowing Russia to infiltrate Western defense technology.

Turkey’s refusal to back away from its purchase of the Russian S-400 missile defense system left “us with no choice, ultimately,” said Christopher Ford, the assistant secretary of state for international security.

Biden is equally unlikely to favour Erdogan’s recent military interventions in Libya or in the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute, both pretty obviously regarded by him as opportunities to extend Turkish influence in the Middle East.  In both cases, in terms chillingly reminiscent of Adolf Hitler justifying his military incursions in the 1930s, Erdogan said his rationale was to protect people of Turco-Ottoman descent.  Then in mid-August 2020 he sent an oil and gas exploration vessel, escorted by warships, into what has always been regarded as Greek territorial waters, accusing Greece of trying to grab an unfair share of untapped resources. None of this is calculated to endear him to Biden or his new administration.

            Biden is a reasonable man.  Unlike Trump himself, he will not reject his predecessor’s legacy lock, stock and barrel.  As far as the Middle East is concerned, Biden will probably find himself endorsing a fair proportion of what he finds on his desk on 20 January 2021.

Published in the Eurasia Review, 25 December 2020:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/25122020-how-far-will-biden-diverge-from-trump-oped/

Published in the Jewish Business News, 25 December 2020:
https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2020/12/25/how-far-will-biden-diverge-from-trump/

The Morocco-Israel deal: what Trump conceded

 

At the heart of the Morocco-Israel normalization deal announced by US President Donald Trump on December 10, 2020 is the issue of Western Sahara.

Morocco occupies an extensive coastal strip and its hinterland in north-west Africa, starting with a stretch of Mediterranean coastline and extending down into the Atlantic for more than a thousand miles.  Western Sahara, appended to the south of Morocco, extends the coastline for a further 700 miles.

A former Spanish colony, Western Sahara has a troubled recent history.  Morocco laid claim to the area in the 1950s, but in 1966 the UN General Assembly passed a resolution asking Spain to hold a referendum of the Sahrawi population on the question of self-determination. Instead, in 1975 Spain relinquished control of the region to a joint Moroccan-Mauritanian administration.  By then, though, a flourishing Sahrawi nationalist movement called the Polisario Front had sprung into existence.  Rejecting the arrangement, and declaring the region to be the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), it launched armed resistance to the new regime.  After four years of conflict, Mauritania withdrew its claims on the territory, leaving Morocco in de facto control.

A further twelve years of conflict between Morocco and the Polisario followed, and it was only in 1991 that the insurgency ended with a UN-brokered truce and a promise by Morocco of a referendum on independence.  This has not yet taken place.  Meanwhile the African Union regards Western Sahara as an independent state, while the UN considers the Polisario Front to be the legitimate representative of the Sahrawi people, and maintains that the Sahrawis have a right to self-determination.  Western Sahara remains on the UN’s decolonization list of “non-self-governing territories”. Despite having occupied its southern neighbour for nearly fifty years, Morocco’s claims are largely unrecognized internationally.

It was into this bubbling cauldron that Donald Trump plunged on December 10.  As part of a deal under which Morocco undertook to normalize relations with Israel, the White House said the US would recognize Morocco's claim over Western Sahara.

In a phone call, Morocco’s King Mohammed VI agreed that Morocco would "resume diplomatic relations between Morocco and Israel and expand economic and cultural co-operation to advance regional stability".  As a quid pro quo, Trump "reaffirmed his support for Morocco's serious, credible, and realistic autonomy proposal as the only basis for a just and lasting solution to the dispute over the Western Sahara territory, and as such the president recognized Moroccan sovereignty over the entire Western Sahara territory."

          Under the Moroccan autonomy proposal, first mooted in 2006, the Sahrawis would run their government under Moroccan sovereignty. Morocco would control defense and foreign affairs. The plan was promoted by Morocco as a means of reducing the influence of extremist Islamist groups in the Sahel region.

At the moment the Polisario Front controls about a fifth of Western Sahara and runs the self-proclaimed SADR, which is supporte d by neighboring Algeria.  The White House statement said an “independent Sahrawi state is not a realistic option for resolving the conflict” and that “genuine autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty is the only feasible solution.”

While Morocco never formally recognized Israel, a close working relationship between the two was secretly maintained ever since Israel’s foundation in 1948, and particularly so during the reign of the late King Hassan II, autocrat though he was.  All US presidents have supported the many covert cooperative contacts between Morocco and Israel, but baulked at the international repercussions they feared might follow a formal recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara.  It took Donald Trump to convert the problem into an opportunity.  The question is, at what cost?

   US recognition certainly diminishes the hopes of the Sahrawi people, who have been seeking their independence for decades.  The UN is still mandated to oversee a referendum, but that too now seems a remote possibility.  The protracted stalemate between Morocco and the Polisario Front ultimately boils down to international recognition ‒ a new independent state cannot be established without it ‒ and the chance of that outcome seems much reduced.

            Another question hovers over this deal.  Is a future Biden administration likely to endorse or renege on it?   As president, Joe Biden is unlikely to view the development with much relish, but the balance of US interests probably lies with allowing the deal ‒ and with it US recognition of Morocco’s disputed claim to Western Sahara ‒ to stand.  As far as Sahrawi national liberation aspirations are concerned, Israeli‒Moroccan normalization has been bought at a high cost.

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 14 December 2020, and in the Jerusalem Post on-line as: "What did Trump concede in the Morocco-Israel deal?" 15 December 2020:

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/what-did-trump-concede-in-the-morocco-israel-deal-opinion-652121

Published in the Eurasia Review, 18 December 2020:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/18122020-the-morocco-israel-deal-what-trump-conceded-oped/ 

Published in the Jewish Business News, 18 December 2020:

https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2020/12/18/the-morocco-israel-deal-%e2%80%92-what-trump-conceded/

 

Trump's Middle East swan song

 

            Having apparently lost the glittering prize of Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords before he leaves office, Trump has hastened to finalize an Israeli-Moroccan normalization deal, and is grasping at another possible opportunity. Back in 2017, following years of dissension, Saudi Arabia and neighbouring states severed all relations with Qatar. Could Trump bring an end to what has become known as the Gulf Crisis?  Why else would Trump’s son-in-law and special adviser, Jared Kushner, have visited the Gulf region on November 30?

            Kushner met Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh, and then travelled to Qatar on December 2 for a meeting with the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.  Following these discussions, media reports suggested that Qatar and Saudi Arabia were close to striking an agreement to end the dispute.

Qatar is a stand-alone Middle Eastern state in more ways than one − geographically, politically, economically, influentially.  Itself a small peninsula projecting into the Persian Gulf from the vast Arabian Peninsula, Qatar clearly aspires to become a major player in the region and beyond.  In pursuit of this objective, its tactics have sometimes puzzled, sometimes infuriated, its neighbours. But then, as one of the world’s wealthiest nations – and certainly number one on a per capita basis – Qatar has reckoned that it could afford the luxury of proceeding along its own preferred path, without too much concern for what others thought.

For example, Qatar’s strategy of backing Islamists − from Hamas in Gaza, to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, to hard-line Syrian opposition fighters − while also offering itself as a key US ally, was rooted in pragmatism.  Qatar wanted to extend its influence in the region by being friends with everybody. “We don’t do enemies,” Qatar’s one-time foreign minister is reported to have said, “we talk to everyone.”  And talk they certainly do, through the Qatari-owned Al Jazeera world-wide media network.

But Qatar’s wayward policies, especially with regard to Islamist groups, had long infuriated its neighbouring Arab states. Back in January 2014, when Qatar’s 33-year-old Emir, Sheikh al-Thani, had been in power for less than a year, Gulf states suddenly pressured Qatar to sign an agreement undertaking not to support extremist groups, not to interfere in the affairs of other Gulf states, and to cooperate on regional issues.

When the Qatari government flatly refused to comply, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain broke off diplomatic relations.  The inexperienced Al-Thani was unable to withstand the pressure.  In April 2014, at a meeting in Saudi Arabia, his arm was twisted, and the Qataris signed an undertaking known as the Riyadh agreement.

Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain clearly took away a very different view of what had been agreed than the Qataris. They expected Qatar to curtail its support for extreme Islamism, particularly the Muslim Brotherhood and its supporters. They believed that Qatar had agreed to remove, or at least reduce, the appearance of Islamists on Al Jazeera and other Qatari media, and especially to eliminate the constant Muslim Brotherhood-based criticism of Egypt’s government and its president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi.

They soon discovered that Qatar had no intention of meeting their expectations. It simply continued its support of Islamist extremists intent on undermining the stability of the region. Finally, their patience exhausted, the Gulf states and Egypt took drastic action.  On June 5, 2017, without any sort of warning, they broke off diplomatic relations with Qatar, suspended all land, air and sea traffic, and virtually imposed a trade blockade.

This bombshell initiative had been preceded by Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia on 20 May for a meeting with some 50 leaders of the Arab world.  On the subject of Islamist extremism Trump had been characteristically blunt. “A better future is only possible if your nations drive out the terrorists and extremists...Drive them out of your communities. Drive them out of your holy lands. And drive them out of this Earth.”

Qatar has been under siege for more than three years.  Although most major trade routes into and out of the country have been closed off, Qatar has been sustained by continuous shiploads of food and other goods sent in by Iran and Turkey.  As for exports, Qatar is the largest global exporter of liquefied natural gas, and this has been maintained.  As a result, the country seems to have weathered the blockade and to be reasonably well placed to sustain itself indefinitely. 

According to most media comment the Trump initiative has yielded positive results.  On December 4 Qatar's foreign affairs minister, Mohammed Al-Thani, said "We are optimistic about a resolution to the Gulf crisis, but we cannot say that all problems will be solved in one day."

The New York Times sees a connection between ending the dispute and Trump’s aim of weakening the regime in Iran, which has been sustaining Qatar’s economy.  The paper reported that high among the proposed first steps, Trump is pressing Saudi Arabia to open its airspace for Qatari flights. Over the past three years Qatar has been paying millions of dollars to use Iran's airspace.

The Abraham Accords will surely be added to the credit side of Trump’s account when his years in office are eventually submitted to the judgement of history.  If his last-minute effort to resolve the Gulf Crisis yields a positive result, his reputation as a surprising and unexpected peace-maker will be further enhanced.

Published in the Jerusalem Post on-line, 13 December 2020, as

"Could Trump bring an end to what has become known as the Gulf Crisis?":

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/could-trump-bring-an-end-to-what-has-become-known-as-the-gulf-crisis-651919

Published in the Eurasia Review, 11 December 2020:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/11122020-trumps-middle-east-swan-song-oped/

Published in the Jewish Business News, 11 December 2020:
https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2020/12/11/trumps-middle-east-swan-song/

Are Biden and Erdogan on a collision course?

          Unlike his soon-to-be predecessor in office, US president-elect Joe Biden is no admirer of strong ruthless leaders. Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, may well find that his increasingly aggressive foreign policies ‒ headstrong behaviour that President Donald Trump condoned ‒ may be met with resistance from a Biden administration. Moreover Erdogan has a long-standing grievance against the US. He got nowhere with it during either the Obama or the Trump presidencies. He is not likely to get much further with Joe Biden at the helm.

           The issue that rankles with Erdogan centres around a man that has been a thorn in his flesh for much of his time as leader – Muhammed Fethullah Gulen.  Gulen was once one of the main spiritual leaders of Erdogan’s political party, the AKP, preaching a blend of moderate, business-friendly Islam that helped the party rise to power.  Erdogan now regards Gulen as his mortal enemy, and ever since 2014 has demanded time and again that the US extradite him to Turkey to stand trial.  Washington has consistently refused to comply. 

Erdogan’s most recent effort stems from a Turkish court ruling on November 26.  It decreed that Gulen is to be charged with master-minding a coup attempt back in 2016.  However Gulen, who has been living in the US since 1999, has been granted a Green Card which allows him to live and work there indefinitely.  As President Biden is most unlikely to hand the 79-year-old cleric over to the tender mercies of the Turkish president, the trial ‒ if it goes ahead ‒ will have to be held in the absence of the defendant.

          The issue from Erdogan’s point of view was the vast influence that Gulen acquired in the early 2000s both within Turkey and abroad. As leader of the Gulen, or Hizmet, movement he built up an impressive business, social and media empire, while his schools were grooming the next generation of pious yet entrepreneurially minded followers in Turkey. Erdogan saw him increasingly as a rival for power and a potential threat to his own ambitions. He began denouncing the Gulen movement as “a state within a state”.

          Gulen had followers at high levels in the Turkish establishment, including the judiciary, the secret service and the police force.  Early in December 2013 Erdogan was furious to discover that, for more than a year and unknown to him, the police had been engaged in an undercover inquiry into corruption within the government and the upper echelons of his AKP party. By the end of the year Erdogan’s own son had been named in the widening corruption investigation.  Erdogan denounced the police investigation as a plot by the Gulen movement to discredit his government.

In December 2014 some 20 journalists working for media outlets thought to be sympathetic to the Gulen movement were arrested, and a Turkish court issued an arrest warrant for Gulen himself.  He was accused of establishing and running an "armed terrorist group”.

Then came the confusing sequence of events of 15 July 2016, amounting to what was apparently a coup against the government by political opponents who had been able to mobilize elements within the army and the air force..  Whatever the truth behind it, Erdogan’s reaction was to accuse Gulen of having orchestrated the whole coup attempt with the backing of the US administration.  At the time, be it noted, Joe Biden was vice-president.  

Erdogan instituted retribution of unprecedented severity on people in all walks of life suspected of opposing the regime.  More than 110,000 people were arrested, including nearly 11,000 police officers, 7,500 members of the military, and 2,500 prosecutors and judges. 179 media outlets were shut down, and some 2,700 journalists dismissed. 

Erdogan has returned again and again to the coup to justify ever more stringent clamp-downs on political opponents and the media, accompanied by continuing condemnation of Gulen, and repeated demands that the US extradite him to stand trial in Turkey.  Those demands may have lost something of their validity since 2017, when Erdogan removed Gulen’s Turkish nationality. 

          The latest such coup-related operation occurred in the last week of November, when a Turkish court found 475 military and civilian personnel at an air base guilty of involvement in the coup attempt and jailed them for life. This trial was one of two being conducted against members of a suspected network, which the government claims is led by Gulen whom it accuses of orchestrating the failed coup. Gulen has denied any involvement. 

Erdogan’s accusations against Gulen are just as unlikely to impress Biden as his recent posturings on the world stage.  The most provocative, perhaps, was Erdogan’s decision to purchase the Russian S-400 anti-aircraft system, which is designed specifically to counter fighter aircraft like the US’s most state-of-the-art multi-purpose F-35. He then attempted to acquire the F-35 itself.  In short Turkey, a member of NATO, was proposing to let Russia in by the back door. As a result the US ejected Turkey from the F-35 programme, but when Congress voted recently for sanctions against Turkey, Trump blocked them.  President Biden is quite likely to be in support.

Another bone of contention is Turkey’s intervention in Syria against America’s allies, the Syrian Kurds, whose valiant Peshmerga troops led the fight against Islamic State. When Trump turned a blind eye to Erdogan’s partial takeover of northern Syria, and then reduced the US troop presence there, both Democrats and Republicans in Congress opposed him. Biden is on record as saying “Turkey is the real problem,” and that he would tell “Erdogan that he will pay a heavy price.”

Biden is equally unlikely to favour Erdogan’s recent military interventions in Libya or in the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute, both pretty obviously regarded by him as opportunities to extend Turkish influence in the Middle East.  In both cases he said his rationale was to protect people of Turco-Ottoman descent.  Then in mid-August 2020 he sent an oil and gas exploration vessel, escorted by warships, into what has always been regarded as Greek territorial waters, accusing Greece of trying to grab an unfair share of untapped resources. None of this is calculated to endear him to Biden or his new administration.

With all this simmering in the background, US-Turkish relations are scarcely set fair. 

Published in Eurasia Review, 4 December 2020:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/04122020-are-biden-and-erdogan-on-a-collision-course-oped/

Published in the Jewish Business News, 4 December 2020:
https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2020/12/04/are-biden-and-erdogan-on-a-collision-course/

Getting Iran out of Iraq

Admit it or not, US President Donald Trump knows he is in the final phase of his period in office and, like most departing presidents, is working hard on his legacy.  His final weeks are likely to be marked by a fair number of newsworthy announcements.  An early example is his decision to bring home some of the American troops serving overseas.  On November 17, acting US Secretary of Defense Christoph Miller announced that the US troop presence in Afghanistan and Iraq would be reduced to 2,500 each by January 15, 2021, that is just a few days before Trump leaves the White House. 

Mustafa al-Kadhimi, Iraq’s prime minister, who took office only in May, must have received the news with some disquiet, but not with much surprise.  When he met with the US president on August 19, Trump had warned him that he planned to withdraw all American troops within three years, though later he rowed back from that specific timetable.  In Iraq the US military presence has long been a vital bulwark against the efforts of Iran to gain complete control of the nation’s affairs.

Kadhimi inherited a country far too subjugated to Iran, whose power over many aspects of Iraq’s governance is exercised through a clutch of militias, such as Kataib Hezbollah (KH) and Badr, which had virtually taken over the country’s police and paramilitary forces.  Within weeks of taking office Kadhimi began the process of wresting control of the nation from the grip of Iran.  His arm was undoubtedly strengthened by the presence of US armed forces. The thought of a complete American withdrawal had long worried anti-Iranian politicians, many feeling it would foster not only Iran’s influence, but also a resurgence of the Islamist armed groups, both Shia and Sunni, that roamed the country inflicting misery on the population.

Trump’s proposed troop withdrawal was immediately subject to political and media criticism.  To put it in perspective, the current US troop strength in Iraq is around 3000, already down from around 5000 at the start of the year.  Trump proposes to pull back another 500 men, leaving 2,500. Is that sufficient to maintain his “maximum pressure campaign” against Iran? Has he achieved a political plus by bringing American boys back, a move bound to be popular at home, or has he merely given Iran a free boost in its efforts to control Iraq? 

Kadhimi came into office utterly determined to exert his authority over the self-regulating Iran-backed militia groups.  Just about a month after he became prime minister, fourteen members of KH were engaged in setting up rocket attacks on the US embassy and Baghdad airport when, much to their astonishment, troops from the US-trained Iraqi Counter Terrorism Force (ICTS) arrested them.  The security forces then proceeded to raid KH headquarters, seize rockets and detain three leaders of the group.

            KH, a law unto itself for years, tried to assert itself. Its operational commander, Abu Fadak, pulled together a force of around 150 fighters in nearly thirty armored pickup trucks, drove to the prime minister’s residence and demanded the suspects be released to his custody.  Kadhimi declined to do so.  However he placed them under the custody of the PMF (the Popular Mobilization Forces). 

At first glance this might have appeared a somewhat equivocal move, since that body was led by a KH commander, Abu Zainab al-Lami.  But Kadhimi had already taken steps to ensure a new level of control over the PMF, and he retained the whip hand. On June 3 the had instructed the head of the PMF, Faleh al-Fayadh, to announce that all Iraqi paramilitary groups were to be merged into the main organization, which would be subject to new directives as to its future role and function. Kadhimi’s coup was described as “the strongest state action against Iran-backed paramilitaries in years.” 

Kadhimi, who will be facing parliamentary elections in June 2021, plans to continue  weakening the grip of Iran-allied paramilitaries over Iraqi security forces.  He also seeks to reduce the influence of Iran-supporting political groups over the parliamentary process.  

His attempt to gain the upper hand has been a struggle.  Using economic pressures, he has been pushing out members and supporters of the paramilitaries from state institutions. He has targeted corruption and smuggling at border crossings ‒ a major source of income for paramilitaries ‒ by strengthening government control.  Recently he ordered forces to take over the two border crossings at Diyala into Iran, and shortly afterwards to control fourteen overland and sea port border crossings.  In August he set up a committee to investigate corruption at the unofficial border crossings set up to dodge government oversight.

Yet, wedged up hard against his Iranian neighbor geographically, Kadhimi has a tightrope to walk.  Despite his clear intention to take back control of his country, he needs to maintain, and even strengthen, Iraq’s economic ties with Tehran because of the dependence of Iraqi markets on Iranian non-oil exports. During a visit by the Iranian Energy Minister in June, Iraq released $400 million to Iran ‒ half of the electricity debt accumulated under US sanctions ‒ and whereas electricity export contracts between Iran and Iraq are usually renewed annually, this time they were renewed for two years. Reports also circulated about a possible rail connection between Iraq and Iran through Shalamcheh, to improve trade and mobility. Kadhimi hopes that Tehran regards with favor these efforts to build stronger economic ties, even in spite of his efforts at home to regain political, economic and military control of his country.

Iran has been intent for years on exerting a stranglehold over Iraq, as it has nearly succeeded in doing in Lebanon through its puppet Hezbollah organization.  Iraq is a key component of its so-called “Shia crescent”, the string of Shi’ite states it sees as the foundation of its religious and political objective to dominate the Middle East.  In prime minister Kadhimi it has met with a determined patriot. Strongly opposed to the regime of Saddam Hussein, he left his native country back in the 1980s, and spend many years working in the West. 

 If any Iraqi leader is capable of extracting his country from Iran’s suffocating embrace, Kadhimi is surely that man.  

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 25 November 2020:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/who-can-get-iran-out-of-iraq-opinion-650264

Published in the Eurasia Review, 28 November 2020:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/28112020-getting-iran-out-of-iraq-oped/

A Salute to Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks - a light unto his nation

 This article of mine appears in the new edition of the Jerusalem Report, issue dated 7 December 2020

A remarkable man, a truly outstanding figure of our times, has left us.  The death of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks ‒ Anglo-Jewry’s Emeritus Chief Rabbi ‒ at what is today considered the early age of 72, came as a great and totally unexpected shock to Jewry across the world, but especially to the Anglo-Jewish community in the UK.  Chief Rabbi for 22 years between 1991 and 2013, in the past seven his already prodigious reputation has been even further enhanced.  Not only a towering presence within the Jewish community, he became a well-known and greatly respected personality in Britain generally through his radio and television appearances.  He passed away in the early hours of Saturday, November 7, 2020.

Jonathan Sacks was possessed of a combination of qualities not often found together in one individual ‒ a towering intellect allied to deep human compassion and understanding.  He bent his abilities to the service of faith in general and Judaism in particular.  Widely perceived as the public face of Judaism in modern society, he was also highly respected in interfaith circles.  In 2004 his book The Dignity of Difference ‒ a book he agreed to amend for its second edition to avoid offending ultra-orthodox opinion ‒ won the Grawemeyer Prize for Religion for its success in defining a framework for interfaith dialogue between people of all faiths and of none.  When he was knighted in 2005, the citation read: "for services to the community and to inter-faith relations".

Although widely regarded as the leader of Britain’s Jewish community, as Chief Rabbi his writ ran only in the UK’s United Synagogue organization, established by Act of Parliament in 1870. He was not recognized as the religious authority in other Anglo-Jewish movements such as the Haredi (strictly Orthodox), Reform, Liberal, Masorti or Sephardi.  Nevertheless, with only one or two bumps along the way, he established and maintained excellent relations with all, as he did with the leaders of other faith groups in the UK.

It was this broad and enlightened attitude to religion that gained him the respect of many establishment figures in the UK, including members of the royal family.  It was at a royal tribute dinner to mark his stepping down from the Chief Rabbinate in 2013 that Prince Charles described him as “a steadfast friend", "a valued adviser", and “a light unto this nation.”

Born in London in 1948, Sacks was educated at Christ’s College, Finchley ‒ his local grammar school ‒ and Cambridge university, where he read Philosophy.  It was while studying at Cambridge that he travelled to New York to meet the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Schneerson, who advised him to seek rabbinic ordination ‒ advice he followed.  He gained a double semicha in 1976. one from Yeshivat Etz Chayim, and the other from Jews’ College, London, the seminary which prepares Britain’s rabbis for their ministry.

Sacks's first rabbinic appointment in 1978 was as Rabbi for the Golders Green synagogue in north-west London. In 1983 he moved on to become Rabbi of the prestigious Western Marble Arch Synagogue in London’s West End, a position he held until 1990. Between 1984 and 1990, Sacks also served as Principal of Jews’ College.  He became Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth on September 1, 1991, and in 2009 entered the House of Lords with the title "Baron Sacks, of Aldgate in the City of London.”

Asked once whether his chief rabbinate had been too engaged with the outside world, given his frequent media appearances and his interfaith activities, his response was that extra-communal affairs had taken up about 2 percent of his time.  Up to 98 percent had been spent working within the Jewish community.  In support of this contention, he pointed to the vast bulk of his writing.  One great innovation as Chief Rabbi was his “Covenant and Conversation” website ‒ a concept that would not have been possible for his pre-internet predecessors in office.  Through his website he both published and recorded as videos every week what amounted to a sermon, a perceptive piece of work eagerly awaited and absorbed by thousands in the Anglo-Jewish community. He later gathered these weekly pieces together and published them in several volumes.

Perhaps his greatest and most long-lasting achievement for the community was his work in revising Anglo-Jewry’s old-established and long-revered Authorised Daily Prayer Book.  Known affectionately as Singer’s after the original English translator (described on the title page in characteristically Anglo-Jewish terms as “the Rev. S. Singer”), it was first published in 1890.  It was subsequently reprinted, expanded or re-translated more than 30 times until its final edition appeared in 1992 under the editorship of Chief Rabbi Sacks.

What followed in 2006 was a totally reconceived and much enlarged Authorised Daily Prayer Book, incorporating a new translation by Sacks, together with commentary and notes written by him.  Preceding the prayers in this new edition is his highly insightful article “Understanding Jewish Prayer”, running to no less than 23 pages. 

Anglo-Jewry’s allegiance to the familiar Singer's was hard to break but eventually, often by way of sets of the new siddurim donated by members of the congregation, UK orthodox synagogues switched over to the new, expanded and more useful Sacks version, which is now standard and likely to remain so into the indefinite future.

Something similar is happening with regard to the Machzorim  (the order of prayers for festivals) for Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur.  Israel-based publishers, Koren, have brought out totally new editions, translated by Sacks, in a revolutionary format – namely with the Hebrew on the left-hand page and the English on the right.  Koren publish two versions of both Machzorim, one for the large US market and the other following “Minhag Anglia” (English custom).  The volumes are worth purchasing for Sacks’s introductory essays alone, to say nothing of his acute commentaries, some quite lengthy, which adorn each volume.  His preliminary article in the Yom Kippur Machzor runs to 63 pages.

As Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks never baulked at ruffling feathers.  Well before the spat with the Haredi over the first edition of Sacks’s prize-winning book The Dignity of Difference, ultra-Orthodox leaders were incensed in 1996 when he attended a memorial service in honour of the popular Rabbi Hugo Gryn, a Holocaust survivor and Reform rabbi. When his placatory letter to the Haredi leaders, intended as a private communication, was leaked, a storm burst around Sacks’s head.

Another brush with his community occurred two years later, when Sacks agreed to attend a reception to mark the 50th birthday of the Prince of Wales on a Friday evening.  Because it was the Sabbath, he made the journey from his Marble Arch Synagogue to Buckingham Palace on foot. Even so community leaders criticized him for not being with his family on the Sabbath. Sacks insisted that it was an established protocol for chief rabbis to accept direct royal invitations, and that an exception should be made for the “expression of Jewish loyalty to the country and its head of state”.  This proved to be a passing storm, soon forgotten as Sacks’s solid achievements in terms of the expansion of education and the rationalization of Jewish social care became manifest.

Sacks was once asked what the toughest moment had been when Chief Rabbi.  His reply was far from what most in the Jewish community would have anticipated.

“There is no question,” he said, “that the toughest moment actually came in 2002 with Jenin.”  In the midst of the Second Intifada the UK media was suddenly flooded with lurid tales of an Israeli massacre of 5000 civilians in the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank, accompanied by horrific and deliberate war crimes. Based on the uncorroborated statement of one individual, the incident at Jenin had been blown out of all proportion, and the UK media seemed to be doing their best to stoke the flames.  “I had to make a calculated decision,” said Sacks.  “I’m not the Israeli ambassador, but is this just too serious to leave?”

So he went on the BBC’s prestigious “Today” programme – sometimes described as the jewel in the crown of BBC radio ‒ and predicted confidently that when the full facts emerged, the death toll would be nothing like the figure widely claimed. Four days later, at a rally in London’s Trafalgar Square, the facts became known for the first time – the Jenin battle had indeed been fierce and bloody, but it had resulted in 52 Palestinian deaths, together with 23 Israeli soldiers. Sacks had known the truth, even before the BBC, because his staff had phoned Israeli soldiers in Jenin and learned it from them.

How to summarize the achievements of a man so erudite, so prolific, so open-minded, so revered in his own country and across the world?  He was showered with honours – 26 of them; delivered some 60 major courses of lectures; was awarded 14 prizes; authored more than 30 books.  Throughout, his focus was on scholarship, on probing for the truth in Judaism and disseminating it, and on understanding the beliefs of others.

Sacks was once asked about his major achievements as Chief Rabbi.  He singled out the fact that he persuaded community leaders of his orthodox organization to permit women to become chairpersons of synagogues. When he took office “there were no women on synagogue boards, there were no women, except in observer status, on the United Synagogue council. We had to make that a gradual change, and I’m glad that within my term of office women were able to become chair people.”

On leaving office Sacks made it clear that far from slowing down, he intended to expand his activities. He would be going in “the same direction but in a global way – writing, teaching, broadcasting and speaking on a more global forum. There’s a hunger around the world for the message that we’ve been delivering of a Judaism that engages the world. So more teaching, more writing and seeing the possibilities of the web.” 

That is the story of the final seven years of his life.

Published on the Jerusalem Post website, 23 November 2020:
https://www.jpost.com/jerusalem-report/a-salute-to-rabbi-lord-jonathan-sacks-a-light-unto-his-nation-650024

A post-Trump peace process

 

          Back in February 2020, shortly after President Donald Trump had unveiled his Israeli-Palestinian peace plan, Palestinian Authority (PA) president Mahmoud Abbas addressed the UN Security Council. Having categorically repudiated everything about the Trump proposal, he added that he was ready for peace negotiations under the sponsorship of the Middle East Quartet. 

            With Biden in the White House and Trump’s “deal of the century” in limbo, the PA leadership might well be tempted to pursue its overtures to the Quartet ‒ especially if current attempts to glue the PA and Hamas together fail to gell.  In addition, pressure to seize the initiative is mounting as Arab-Israel normalization proceeds apace, and the Palestinian issue is being pushed to one side.

The Quartet was established in Madrid in 2002 and consists of the UN, the US, the European Union and Russia.  Its objective is to take "tangible steps on the ground to advance the Palestinian economy and preserve the possibility of a two state solution.” 

In recent years it has become moribund, but in June 2020 PA prime minister Mohammad Shtayyeh submitted to the Quartet a counter-proposal to the Trump plan.  It envisaged, in his words, the creation of a "sovereign Palestinian state, independent and demilitarized" with "minor modifications of borders where necessary."

Having gone so far, perhaps the PA might be prepared to sit down at the negotiating table under the auspices of the Quartet, without pre-conditions or pre-conceptions, but shielded by support from the Arab League, and especially perhaps from the nations that have signed agreements with Israel – Egypt, Jordan, the UAE, Bahrain and Sudan.

            On September 2, 2018, a delegation from Israel’s Peace Now organization travelled to Ramallah in the West Bank to discuss with Abbas prospects for settling the conflict. The statements that follow such meetings rarely contain anything of substance. This was an exception.   The next morning, the Palestinian Information Center, known as Palinfo, published a deadpan account of Abbas’s conversation with the Israelis. without comment.

          “During a meeting with an Israeli delegation that visited Ramallah on Sunday,” ran the report, “Abbas said that senior US officials, Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt, asked him recently about his opinion of a ‘confederation with Jordan’.  Abbas said: “I said yes to the offer, but I want a three-way confederation with Jordan and Israel.”

At the time Kushner and Greenblatt were, of course, heavily engaged in constructing the Trump peace plan.  By the time Abbas made his comment, the word “confederation” had been featuring in the speculation buzzing about the “deal of the century”.  This is why the Jordanians had recently issued a statement rejecting the idea of uniting with, or taking over, the West Bank.  But Abbas’s endorsement of a triangular confederation comprising Jordan, Israel and a sovereign state of Palestine could have been a game changer – and still might be. 

A confederation differs fundamentally from a federation.  In a federation, states hand over some of their sovereignty to a central government; in a confederation, sovereign states retain their sovereignty but agree to collaborate on certain political, economic or administrative matters, appointing a joint central authority to coordinate the arrangement.

In supporting a three-way Jordan-Israel-Palestine confederation Abbas has a good deal of reason on his side. Prowling around the PA stockade is Hamas, ruling over nearly two million Palestinians in Gaza, hungry for power in the West Bank, and harrying Abbas for a decade. No Hamas-Fatah reconciliation is likely to be effective. The PA is set on achieving a Palestinian state by way of an accommodation with Israel.  No matter that the PA leadership sees this as only a step towards eventual control of the whole of Mandate Palestine, Hamas will have no truck with the long game.  Hamas rejects the idea of a peace deal with Israel because it rejects the right of Israel to exist at all, and is dedicated to destroying it.

Abbas fears that if a sovereign Palestine were indeed to be established, it would not take long for Hamas to seize the reins of power just as it did in Gaza. The PA leadership has long feared losing power to Hamas, either by way of a military coup or via democratic elections. Like it or not, Abbas realizes that a new Palestine would need stronger defenses against “the enemy within” than his own resources could provide – one powerful reason for supporting the confederation concept. 

As for Jordan, the last thing it wants is a weak Palestinian state 15 minutes from Amman that could be overrun at any time by Hamas, and possibly become a base for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards and other elements keen on overthrowing not only Israel, but Jordan as well.

The political reality is that any viable solution to the Israel-Palestine dispute would have to be based on an Arab-wide consensus, within which Palestinian extremist objections could be absorbed. Facilitated by the Quartet, the Arab League could prove a broker for peace acceptable to all parties.  Under its shield the PA could participate with Jordan and Israel in hammering out a three-state confederation – a new political entity, to come into legal existence simultaneously with a new sovereign Palestine that ideally would include Gaza. 

The negotiations to bring about this kind of political solution would be lengthy, intensive and complex, but if successful the end-result would be eminently worthwhile. A Jordan-Israel-Palestine confederation could be dedicated above all to defending itself and its constituent sovereign states, but also to cooperating in the fields of commerce, infrastructure and economic development. From the moment it came into legal existence, the confederation could make it abundantly clear that any subsequent armed opposition, from whatever source, including Hamas, would be disciplined and crushed from within. 

Acting in concert with the defense forces of the other states, the Israel Defense Forces would guarantee both Israel’s security and that of the confederation as a whole.

          A confederation of three sovereign states, dedicated to providing high-tech security but also future economic growth and prosperity for all its citizens − if this is indeed Mahmoud Abbas’s vision, it is a possible route to a peaceful and thriving Middle East.

                                  A possible Jordan-Israel-Palestine Confederation

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 22 November 2020:

http://jpost.newspaperdirect.com/epaper/viewer.aspx

Published in the Jewish Business News, 27 November 2020:

https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2020/11/27/a-post-trump-peace-process/

Hospice and Palliative Care in Israel - the British connection

 This article of mine appears in the edition of the Jerusalem Report, dated November 23, 2020

          Today in Israel hospice and palliative care are readily available for most, if not quite all, patients who require them.  Globally, only some 14 percent of those who need this form of care actually receive it.  As a form of specialist treatment, the two were conceived together back in the 1960s, and initially developed hand in hand.  They are now recognized worldwide as distinct branches of medical therapeutics.

Institutions dedicated to providing loving care for terminally ill patients have long existed in the western world, but the modern hospice movement, with palliative care as an integral aspect of it, were the brainchild of a most remarkable woman, Cicely Saunders.   Later showered with honors from around the world, she was made a Dame – equivalent to a knighthood – by the Queen in 1979, and was awarded the exclusive Order of Merit ten years later. 

The origins of today’s hospice movement and palliative care have a deep Jewish connection. At a major conference held in London in 1980, Dame Cicely described how she came to found the world’s first modern hospice – St Christopher’s.  Appointed in 1947 as a social worker by St Thomas’, the famous teaching hospital in the centre of London, in the first ward she entered she met David Tasma, a Jewish refugee from Warsaw.

            “I knew then the truth that he was dying,” she said, “which he did not. So I followed him up and I waited, and when he was admitted to another hospital it was in fact I who finally told him. The foundation of St Christopher's is how we coped with that truth together. He needed skills which were not then available, but still more he needed a sense of belonging and somehow to find meaning. And as he remembered his grandfather, the rabbi, he made peace with the God of his fathers. When he died he left a £500 founding gift, “to be a window in your home.”­­­

            It took her a full 20 years to enlarge that initial £500 to a sum sufficient to construct, equip, staff and open St Christopher’s, but open it did in 1967.  In memory of David Tasma, Dame Cicely, a committed Christian, insisted on calling that 1980 conference its Barmitzvah – taking place as it did just 13 years after the opening of her hospice.

            Here I must admit that I played a small part in that conference, and in the subsequent nurturing of palliative care here in Israel.

            In 1980 I was a civil servant in the UK’s Department of Health.  Dame Cicely approached the government for assistance in organizing her Barmitzvah conference, and it fell to me to help plan details, arrange for a health minister to chair the event, and finally to edit and manage the publication of the proceedings under the title “Hospice: the living idea”. 

          Years later, when I had moved on to one of Britain’s leading cancer charities, now known as Macmillan Cancer Support, I helped arrange for a group of Israeli nurses to go over to the UK and participate in a palliative care training programme at the world-famous Royal Marsden hospital. The idea of this project had been readily endorsed by my own boss at Macmillan, and I remember coming over to Israel to discuss it with Israel’s then Health Minister, Chaim Ramon, and the enthusiasm with which he authorized it. 

          Hospice care is intended for patients suffering from a terminal illness when curative treatment is no longer possible. It is an holistic approach to dealing with the physical, emotional and spiritual needs of the patient through a combination of medical, nursing and psychosocial care.  By alleviating pain and other distressing symptoms, it is designed to provide the terminally ill patient with as fulfilling a quality of life as possible, and eventually a peaceful death without either accelerating or postponing it.

These principles underlie palliative care as well, but nowadays palliative casts its net wider than the terminally ill, aiming to manage symptoms and enhance comfort and quality of life for patients at any stage of life.  It can be delivered alongside aggressive therapies and even, in some cases, together with therapies aimed at cure.

            Israel’s first hospice, located within the Sheba Medical Center, was opened in 1983.  Today there are seven which offer both in-patient and home hospice care services, and palliative care nursing is well established.  All the same, recent research by professor Dena Schulman-Green shows that there is much room for improvement.

For the past few years Schulman-Green has been working in Israel to strengthen the development of palliative care.  “I want everyone in Israel and everywhere to have access to quality palliative care when they need it,” she says, “so that’s the ultimate vision.  But that means that patients and families need to know what it is and to ask for it. And clinicians need to know to offer it and how to provide it.”

Schulman-Green has spent her career seeking to improve the lives of patients with serious, chronic illnesses. The holistic approach of palliative care integrates all aspects of care through a multidisciplinary team that works as an extra layer of support, in partnership with the patient’s other providers and family. Ideally, palliative care is integrated early in the course of a serious or life-limiting illness.

Schulman-Green supports the inclusion of regular palliative care training into the nurse education curriculum, and the full integration of palliative care into Israel’s health care system.

Recent developments have assisted the expansion of palliative care in Israel.  The Dying Patient Law in 2005 led to a directive policy statement in 2009, and in the same year palliative clinical nurse specialists were recognized.  This was followed by the introduction of periodical inspection by the Ministry of Health and the National Plan in 2016.

The National Plan is the result of work carried out in 2015, following a request from the then director general of the Ministry of Health, Moshe Bar Siman-Tov. The program was written by a steering committee and six working teams, which included representatives from “Tamicha”, the Israel Association of Palliative Care, an organization devoted to assisting professionals providing palliative care in hospices and generally. They offer support, training sessions and conferences, and campaign for palliative care to be fully included in the health baskets of the medical insurance companies.

The worldwide struggle for palliative care to be recognized as a medical specialty has been long, and Israel has had to fight as hard as any country.  The 29-year battle was led by Dr Michaela Bercovitch, the chair of Israel’s Palliative Medical Society and head of the palliative care department at the Sheba Medical Center. The long endeavour was crowned with success in May 2012, when palliative medicine became a recognized subspecialty in Israel.

Even so, a further battle is being waged to ensure that appropriate training modules are included in both nurse and medical training curriculums.  Israeli nurse education is ahead – it incorporates a palliative care module in many post-basic courses.  Medical education has some way to go. A limited university level palliative care education programme is available for 130 physicians, and various palliative care studies for medical students are offered at four faculties of medicine, but the holistic principles underlying palliative medicine and care need to be integrated into the education provided in Israel to all medical students as a matter of course. This is already the case in Britain, although not yet fully in the US.

It is not widely known that in 1996 a Middle East Cancer Consortium (MECC) was established through an official agreement of the ministries of health of Cyprus, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority. Turkey officially joined the Consortium in 2004.

The MECC has established academic-based medical programmes that bring together scientists, academicians and clinical professionals from its member countries, joined by medical personnel from many others. Since its inception, one of MECC’s major activities has been the Palliative Care Project, dedicated to promoting the availability of quality palliative care resources to patients and their families throughout the Middle East.  MECC’s motto is: "Respect all people, collaborate in fighting human suffering, and help build a bridge for better understanding among all.”

Dame Cicely Saunders was a fervent opponent of euthanasia because she argued, from long and deep personal experience, that effective pain control is possible, that distressing symptoms can be effectively relieved, and that terminally ill patients can die peacefully and in dignity. People gravitated towards euthanasia, she believed, because knowledge of what palliative care could achieve for those suffering terminal illnesses was not well enough known, nor widely enough available.

Towards the end of her life she herself developed breast cancer. She died in 2005 at the age of 87 in her beloved St Christopher’s Hospice.