Why are big powers so interested in a small local conflict?

            No one could call Nagorno-Karabakh the centre of the civilized world.  It is a small chunk of land in a remote region in the southern Caucuses, flanked on one side by Armenia and on the other by Azerbaijan.  Both, though at one time within the orbit of the Soviet Union, are now small independent states.  Yet a long-simmering tussle between them over ownership of Nagorno-Karabakh has suddenly flared into open conflict, and the world and his wife are busily involving themselves in the dispute. 

The US, Russia, France, Turkey, Iran – all now have their fingers in the pie, converting a little local difficulty into a world-wide diplomatic war-game.  The US and Russia have tried, though with little success, to enhance their global image by brokering a ceasefire; Turkey and Iran seem intent on boosting their regional influence by stoking the flames of conflict.  France appears to be using this situation as a proxy for other weightier concerns, and declares unequivocally that it supports Christian Armenia in opposition to Turkey’s equally unequivocal support for Muslim Azerbaijan.

Up in its extreme north, Iran has a border with both Armenia and Azerbaijan. Following stray fire from the fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh, Iran has deployed troops of its IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) across the border region. Its mission, spokesmen declared, was "to protect national interests and maintain peace and security".  Iran’s national interests are tied to the fact that approximately one-third of its 84 million population are Azerbaijani Turks.  They have not been silent during the recent upsurge.  Waves of protests have broken out in various cities across Iran, including the capital Tehran, orchestrated by  dissidents objecting to Russian military aid getting to Armenia with Iran’s help, and demanding that the border with Armenia be closed.  This issue has rapidly become one more among the many causes of popular protest within Iran.

Officially Iran recognizes Azerbaijan’s claims to the disputed territories, but for decades it has maintained good relations with Armenia.  During the conflict it has been helping president Armen Sarkissian by transferring Russian military equipment across Iran and into Armenia.  When this became known, Iran hastened to deny the story, despite confirmatory video footage.

Turkey’s involvement in the conflict stems from a long-standing relationship with Azerbaijan.  Turkey was the first nation to recognize Azerbaijan's independence in 1991. Former Azeri president Heydar Aliyev once described the two as "one nation with two states".  Even though Turkey has no border with Azerbaijan, and the two countries are separated from each other by Armenia, they share a Turkish culture.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey has backed his vocal support for Azerbaijan’s president Ilham Aliyev with military equipment including drones, and also extremist mercenaries recruited in Syria.  With Turkey’s help, Azerbaijan has slowly pushed Armenian forces back and seems to have gained the upper hand in the conflict. 

Erdogan undoubtedly sees the dispute as an opportunity to strengthen his position in the Middle East generally, and in particular in the Islamist world.  Even though Shi’ite Muslims predominate in the capital Baku, it is to the Sunnis , who comprise more than 80 percent of Azerbaijan’s population, that he makes his pitch.  Even so, he has an uphill struggle.  Azerbaijan has been designated one of the most secular of Muslim states – indeed, tolerance and respect for religious diversity are built into its constitution.  This runs counter to the whole tenor of Erdogan’s domestic strategy, which has been to turn back the clock on the secularization and religious tolerance of the founder of modern Turkey, Kemal Ataturk.

Secularization is at the heart of Erdogan’s latest well-publicized spat with French president Emmanuel Macron, with whom he has a multi-faceted dispute.  In recent weeks France has supported Greece and Cyprus against Turkish claims to explore for oil and gas in the Mediterranean.  France and Turkey are also at odds over the power struggle in Libya, backing opposing sides in the dispute.  More recently still, Erdogan denounced Macron’s wholesale condemnation of the beheading of a teacher in France by an Islamist extremist who objected to children being shown cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad.  Utterly rejecting any justification for the act, Macron declared war on “Islamist separatism” which, he said, was taking over some Muslim communities in France in defiance of the secularization that is at the heart of the French constitution.

Erdogan denounced not only Macron, but the whole French state, as Islamophobic.  Despite being separated by the Shia-Sunni divide, Erdogan’s charge was echoed by the Iranian regime, as was his call for a boycott of French goods, a move later supported by Qatar and Kuwait.  The exchange descended into personal abuse when Erdogan suggested that Macron needed “a mental health check-up”, a classic case, perhaps, of the pot calling the kettle black.  His intemperate reaction may well have triggered the latest terrorist outrage in France, when three people were murdered in a Nice church.

The Erdogan-Macron antagonism displays itself to the full over the Nagorno-Karabakh issue, where the two leaders are at loggerheads. Erdogan has declared that Turkey is "fully ready" to help Azerbaijan recover the enclave, while Macron has announced: "I say to Armenia and to the Armenians, France will play its role."  No doubt Macron has in mind the fact that hundreds of thousands of French citizens are of Armenian descent.

          Nagorno-Karabakh has become a convenient setting for some major world powers to act out their differences or pursue their broader interests. When and how Armenia and Azerbaijan finally resolve their dispute may have consequences far beyond the narrow confines of the Caucuses. 

Published in the Eurasia Review, 30 October 2020:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/30102020-nagorno-karabakh-why-are-big-powers-so-interested-in-a-small-local-conflict-oped/

Published in the Jewish Business News, 30 October 2020:
Jewishbusinessnews.com/2020/10/30/why-are-big-powers-so-interested-in-a-small-local-conflict/

Published in The Times of Israel, 5 November 2020:
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/why-are-big-powers-so-interested-in-a-small-local-conflict/

"Kin or Country" - A flight of fancy into 2048

I review this new book by Paul Alster on the Jerusalem Post website at: https://www.jpost.com/jerusalem-report/a-flight-of-fancy-into-2048-647258

Back in 2017 journalist Paul Alster, acting on behalf of the Jerusalem Report, interviewed officials working in Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) in Givat Shaul, Jerusalem, the nerve centre of a myriad of facts and figures relating to Israeli life. Sparked by what he learned on that visit, Alster found himself speculating about the possible future of the State of Israel.  Finally he decided to give his imagination free rein, and "Kin or Country" ‒ his first novel ‒ is the result.

            The book is a flight of fancy into the year 2048, exactly a century after the founding of the state.  It is still a recognizable world, even if sophisticated smart speakers are now commonplace and vehicles drive themselves.  Back in the late-2030s, following a peace accord between Israel and the Palestinian leadership, part of the West Bank had been incorporated into a new state of Palestine, and East Jerusalem had become its capital.  Gaza had fallen under international supervision, and Arab states harbouring the descendants of refugee Palestinians had agreed to offer them citizenship. 

            With the Israel-Palestinian dispute no longer a factor, Alster’s starting point is the divergence, apparent in Israel from its very beginning, between the political and life-style imperatives of the ultra-orthodox ‒ the Haredi ‒ and those of the secular population.  In Alster’s vision of the future, that gap has widened to the point where the political and social influence exercised by each side has become intolerable to the other. Jerusalem, Jewish areas in the West Bank and a number of adjacent towns have become almost wholly haredi, while other areas, with Tel Aviv as their hub, are heavily secular.  As a result, political movements have sprung up asserting that the two ways of life are incompatible and demanding that they separate ‒ an issue, and the only one, uniting large sectors of both the haredi and the secular communities.

            The political pressure forces a vote in the Knesset to approve a national referendum on whether the nation should be divided into two independent states, Israel and Judea, the former with its capital in Tel Aviv, the latter based in Jerusalem.  The vote passes, and Kin or Country takes us through an imagined final eleven days in the countdown to the national referendum.

            Those eleven days are filled with dramatic incident.  Not only political wheeling and dealing, but death stalks them, and the novel could be described as a political murder mystery.  Even though we are in no doubt about the culprit in one of the killings, the police investigation that slowly uncovers the truth creates a tension of its own, inextricably linked to the political manoeuverings as the national vote draws closer by the day. The identity of a second guilty party we learn only at the end of the novel, and it is a revelation full of irony.  But the heart of the drama lies in the twists and turns on the political scene that leave the result of the national ballot ‒ and with it the future of the Jewish nation ‒ uncertain right up to the wire.

Applying his imagination to political and social factors already apparent within Israeli society, Alster ingeniously projects them a little way forward.  For example, he postulates a community of interest between the extreme right wing of the ultra-orthodox, Neturei Karta, and Iran’s Islamist regime.  A secret deal between Iran and the haredi “Yes” campaign forms a vital element in the overall political mix.  The US political situation, too, bears heavily on the relative fortunes of the two referendum campaigns. Into the narrative Alster adds the human and emotional stories of individuals caught up in the intense political issues being played out. 

The question throughout the novel is whether Israel is to remain a united nation, the one and only Jewish state, or whether there are to be two Jewish states – Israel and Judea ‒ one a secular democracy, the other a theocracy.  We learn Paul Alster’s prediction only in the closing pages. The result is a truly gripping vision of the way Israel could travel in the next quarter of a century, an exciting and mind-stretching literary experience. 

For some it might also serve as a dire warning about a possible dystopian future.  For, as Alster himself says about the novel: “It foresees a scenario that could easily become reality in the homeland of all the Jewish people, unless drastic societal changes come to pass in the next few years. Israel truly faces formidable and unique challenges. More than anything else though, this is a story about the dangers of religious coercion, about flawed morality across the political spectrum, but ultimately about human emotions and family relationships that apply equally to people of all faiths, creeds and colours”.

          For anyone interested in Israel’s present situation, in the cracks and flaws within Israeli society which, if left unattended, could develop into chasms and lead to an unimaginable future, Kin or Country is required reading.  A gripping page-turner it certainly is, but it is much more – a convincing vision of a possible future that few would desire for the nation.

Published in the Jerusalem Post on-line:
https://www.jpost.com/jerusalem-report/a-flight-of-fancy-into-2048-647258

Published in the Eurasia Review, 14 November 2020: :https://www.eurasiareview.com/14112020-kin-or-country-will-this-be-israels-future-a-flight-of-fancy-into-2048-book-review/        

Published in the Jewish Business News, 13 November 2020:
https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2020/11/13/will-this-be-israels-futurea-flight-of-fancy-into-2048/

 

Why Lebanon needs its revolution

                      

             On October 27, 2020, a year after former Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri was dismissed from office, he was reappointed by President Michel Aoun.  Despite Hariri’s previous inability to manage Lebanon’s growing economic and political chaos, he has one characteristic that sets him apart from many of his fellow politicians and even from his president.  Even though he has had to compromise from time to time, he is a long-standing opponent of Hezbollah.  He has good reason.  Hezbollah, it has been shown, was involved in the assassination of his father, Rafik Hariri, back in 2005.

Saad Hariri faces a totally unstable situation.  Lebanon is a seething cauldron of popular discontent.  It took decades for the head of steam to build up but finally, on October 17, 2019, the country blew its top.  That was the day the government, in a desperate attempt to get a grip on the failing economy, announced that new taxes were to be imposed on an already poverty stricken population, and that the cost of gasoline, tobacco, and internet calls such as What’sApp were to be hiked up. 

Crowds took to the streets. The proposed taxes were the trigger, but the underlying causes of the widespread fury soon emerged. They ranged from opposition to the basic system of government by religious affiliation ‒ a system established when Lebanon became independent of colonial France in 1944 ‒ to the stagnant economy, unemployment at very nearly 50 percent of the working population, endemic corruption in the public sector, and the totally inadequate provision of public services such as garbage collection, water, electricity and sanitation.

Come the first anniversary of the national uprising on October 17, 2020, anti-government protesters attended rallies the length and breadth of the country chanting “Revolution, revolution.”  Yet revolution seems reluctant to show its face in Lebanon.  The population, apparently ready for radical change, appears unable to bring it about. 

In recent years the Lebanese people have endured a civil conflict, a long Syrian occupation, two wars with Israel, several economic crises, huge unemployment and political assassinations. The past twelve months alone has seen the country very nearly brought to its knees from a collapse of the currency, the onset of the coronavirus, the devastating explosion in Beirut port and two changes of prime minister. Yet the old ruling establishment ‒ moribund, corrupt and inefficient ‒ continues in power.

In the perception of a large proportion of the population enough is enough, and only root and branch reform will put the country back on its feet. Ever since that outburst of national rage in October 2019, demonstrators have been demanding the resignation of all those in power from the president down. All, without exception, are seen as the same power-hungry chieftains who led their followers into the 1975-1990 civil war before making peace with one another, and going on to enrich themselves.

One key factor in the malaise afflicting Lebanon is the fact that, embedded within the establishment structure, is the Iranian-supported Hezbollah organization.  Founded by Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, shortly after he took power in 1979, it declared that its aims and purpose were entirely at one with Iran’s. Over the past few decades it has been consuming the political, military and administrative organs of the state, until only the outer shell of an independent sovereign country now remains.   Many now believe that the Lebanese state and Hezbollah are in effect indistinguishable. It follows that if there is no place in a reformed Lebanon for those who run the present state, there is no place for Hezbollah.

During the first riots in 2019 protesters smashed the offices of Hezbollah MPs in southern Nabatieh.  Before October was out, Hezbollah had rallied hundreds of supporters including an armed militia, and mounted a charge on protesters in central Beirut. As Amnesty International, making no distinction between Hezbollah and government forces, put it: “The largely peaceful protests since October 2019 have been met by the Lebanese military and security forces with beatings, teargas, rubber bullets, and at times live ammunition and pellets.”

France’s president Emmanuel Macron, who visited Lebanon twice in the aftermath of the Beirut port explosion, said the country’s ruling class had “betrayed” the people by failing to act swiftly and decisively against the party suspected of importing and storing the chemicals, Hezbollah. 

If the Lebanese government has undertaken any positive action in the recent past, it is the decision to participate in the US-mediated talks aimed at demarcating the country’s maritime border with Israel.  The situation is awkward.  Following the 2006 conflict Israel and Lebanon  are not technically at peace, but both are adhering to a UN-sponsored ceasefire. So the talks are being held at arm’s length.

All the same it is not Lebanon that is pledged to eliminate Israel, but Iran-backed Hezbollah, and the 2006 conflict was triggered by the armed forces of Hezbollah, not those of the state.  It is scarcely surprising that Hezbollah and its main ally, the Amal Movement, are opposed to the maritime negotiations.  They perceive the move, and perhaps they are correct, as an extension of the normalization agreements reached between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. 

All the same, some in Lebanon welcome the development. Ziad Assouad, a member of President Aoun’s party, said Lebanon’s dire economic situation meant that it should have no qualms about holding even direct negotiations with Israel. 

Realistic thinking is called for within Lebanon’s administration. How long can the country’s affairs be dictated by an organization dedicated to the interests of a foreign state?  If anyone is prepared to face down the vested interests within Lebanon linked to Hezbollah, it is Saad Hariri. Sooner or later the Lebanese establishment must recognize the inevitable.  The time for fundamental change has arrived.

Published in the Eurasia Review, 24 October 2020:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/24102020-why-lebanon-needs-its-revolution-oped/

Published in the Jewish Business News, 23 October 2020:
https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2020/10/23/why-lebanon-needs-its-revolution/

Published in The Times of Israel, 29 October 2020:
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/why-lebanon-needs-its-revolution/

Multi-national cooperation in the Middle East

                                                        Flag of the Union for the Mediterranean

          Hope is flourishing in the Middle East. Many believe that the historic normalization deals between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain will broaden into increased cooperation across the whole region, leading to growing prosperity. If this is indeed the happy outcome, the groundwork is already laid. Certain well-structured organizations have been highly active, some for decades, sponsoring a multitude of humanitarian, financial and developmental programmes. The problem is that they have been operating under the radar, and that very little is known about them.

          For example, how much is generally known about the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM)? Supported by a wide range of institutional partners, project promoters, international financial institutions and the private sector, the UfM works proactively to achieve greater levels of integration and cooperation in the region. Believing strongly that security depends upon development, since 2012 the UfM has sponsored no less than 59 regional cooperation projects with a budget of more than €5 billion. 

          The membership of the UfM consists of all 27 member states of the European Union together with 15 regional nations bordering the Mediterranean including Egypt, Turkey, Greece, Morocco, Tunisia, Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA or, as it has designated itself, “the State of Palestine”). Libya has observer status, and Syria, once a member, has been suspended.

          Euromed (the European Institute of the Mediterranean) is another rather shadowy body. Like the Ufm, it sprang from an EU initiative back in 1995 aimed at strengthening relations with the Arab nations of north-west Africa known as the Maghreb, and those bordering the western Mediterranean and its hinterland, known as the Mashriq. That EU-convened conference, held in Barcelona, aimed at encouraging cooperation between these nations, and in particular at constructing an economic and financial partnership between them and the EU leading eventually to a free trade area. The initiative came to be known as “the Barcelona Process”.

          Despite the best of intentions, the Process failed to take flight. By its tenth anniversary in 2005, it had not come anywhere near advancing its programme. The document it issued after its conference that year was not even endorsed by the partnership as a whole. The disagreement turned on what was to be understood by “terrorism”. The PA, Syria and Algeria wanted to exclude what they called “resistance movements against foreign occupation”– “foreign occupation” being code for Israel’s existence anywhere in Mandate Palestine.

          In the lacklustre performance of the Barcelona Process, France’s Nicolas Sarkozy perceived a political opportunity. He conceived the grandiose concept of a “Mediterranean Union”, paralleling the European Union. This project formed part of his manifesto during the French presidential campaign that led to his election in 2007.

          Once elected, Sarkozy invited all heads of state and government of the Mediterranean region to a meeting in Paris, to lay the foundations. Unfortunately for him, his ambitious concept failed to inspire the EU. Some European leaders felt that it would not be sensible to duplicate institutions already in existence via the Barcelona Process. The European Commission thought that a better idea would be to use the existing Barcelona structure to build a more effective organization.

          Sarkozy modified his proposal accordingly, and obtained EU agreement for a project built upon the existing Barcelona Process. No longer a Mediterranean Union, but a Union for the Mediterranean (UfM), it would include all EU member states and be dedicated to supporting socioeconomic developments in the region. Currently it is overseeing scores of such projects spread right across the Mediterranean area. One such, supported by both Israel and the Palestinians, is the €500 million Desalination Facility project for the Gaza Strip, endorsed by all 42 member states of the UfM.

          While no one could reasonably object to the encouragement of projects designed to bring improvements to the lives and living standards of the peoples of the Mediterranean, the exact relationship between Euromed and the UfM is somewhat puzzling. Both claim the Barcelona conference of 1995 for their foundation and the Barcelona Process as their inspiration, and both aim to achieve economic and developmental advances across the region. Their spheres of activity, however, are not clearly delineated. The Union, essentially project-driven, works by proactive involvement; Euromed describes itself as aiming “to promote economic integration and democratic reform across the EU’s neighbours to the south in North Africa and the Middle East”.

          Then, in 2018 a third body emerged. Self-supporting and self-sufficient, PRIMA (Partnership for Research and Innovation in the Mediterranean Area) is the most ambitious joint programme to be undertaken in the frame of Euro-Mediterranean cooperation. In the light of climate change, unsustainable agricultural practices and over-exploitation of natural resources, it was set up specifically to develop more sustainable management of water and agro-food systems in the Mediterranean region. PRIMA currently consists of 19 participating countries including Israel but not the Palestinian Authority.

          The main factor leading to the failure of the Barcelona Partnership – political instability – is as potent in 2020 as it was in 2005. What is new is the deal between Israel and the two Gulf states, and what it may lead to. An organization titled “The Union for the Mediterranean” might seem the expression of a far distant, possibly unattainable, vision – and yet there it is, active and flourishing, alongside its comrades Euromed and PRIMA. 

          A sensible way ahead? Amalgamation of the three existing bodies into one effective organization, rationalization of its operations, perhaps expansion of its activities beyond the Mediterranean region to embrace the Middle East as a whole, and – since public awareness of the existing bodies and their activities is minimal to the point of secrecy – better promotion of its purposes and achievements, for there is every reason for the good work to continue. 

Published in the Eurasia Review, 17 October 2020:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/17102020-multi-national-cooperation-in-the-middle-east-oped/

Published in the Jewish Business News, 16 October 2020:

https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2020/10/16/multi-national-cooperation-in-the-middle-east/

Published in The Times of Israel, 23 October 2020:

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/multi-national-cooperation-in-the-middle-east/

Published in the Jerusalem Post on-line, 25 October 2020:

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

Why the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict matters

 

           Few conflicts in what may loosely be termed the Middle East have managed to remain self-contained ‒ certainly none of those currently being played out.  The participants in each dispute in Syria, Libya, Yemen and Iraq have attracted the armed forces, or at least the logistical support, of states in pursuit of their own geopolitical interests – states prepared to play out their rivalries on foreign fields.  The Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict is no exception, and the position adopted by some of the countries involved ‒ including Israel ‒ are ambivalent to say the least.

In the heart of a remote region ‒ the wooded and mountainous neck of land separating Turkey from the Caspian Sea ‒ the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh lies between landlocked Armenia to its west and Azerbaijan, with its long coastline to the Caspian Sea, to its east. 

The seeds of the current dispute were sown by the old Soviet Union. When Armenia and Azerbaijan were absorbed into the USSR in the 1920s, the Soviets handed control of Nagorno-Karabakh, territory which lies between them, to Azerbaijan, even though most of the population was Armenian.  Decades of dispute followed and in the late 1980s, as the iron grip of the Soviet Union began to loosen, Nagorno-Karabakh's regional parliament voted to become part of Armenia.

Azerbaijan tried to suppress the separatist movement, but its efforts led to fighting in the streets and, after Armenia and Azerbaijan finally broke from Russia and declared independence, full-scale war followed.  Tens of thousands died and up to a million people were displaced amid reports of massacres and ethnic cleansing.

By the time a Russian-brokered ceasefire was declared in 1994, control of Nagorno-Karabakh had been won by Armenia. After that deal the territory, although formally remaining part of Azerbaijan, declared itself an Armenian republic and has been run by ethnic Armenians, backed by the Armenian government ‒ an unstable situation almost bound to lead to further conflict, as has proved the case.

The regional implications of the strife start with the fact that Armenia is a Christian country, while Azerbaijan is Muslim.  Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is persecuting the Christian minority in his own country, is a strong supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood and backs Azerbaijan. When the violence first erupted he tweeted: “The Turkish people will support our Azerbaijani brothers with all our means as always,” adding that Armenia was “the biggest threat to regional peace”. Media reports by the BBC and others, strongly denied by Istanbul, describe Turkey recruiting fighters in northern Syria and sending them to the front line in Azerbaijan. 

Turkish support for Azerbaijan carries forward its long-running dispute with Armenia, which accuses Turkey of committing systematic genocide against the Armenian people during and after the First World War. Although Turkey vehemently denies the charge, governments and parliaments of 32 countries, including the United States, Russia, and Germany, have recognized the events as a genocide.  Israel, aware that not only the term “genocide”, but also “Armenian holocaust” has been used to describe the Ottoman Turks’ ruthless action, is not among them.

On the contrary, it seems that Israel has established a strategic alliance with Azerbaijan based on their common hostility toward Iran, and has supplied the Azeris with billions of dollars-worth of advanced weaponry. In recent clashes Azerbaijan has used Israeli-made 'kamikaze drones' that can take out Armenian tank and artillery positions dug into Nagorno-Karabakh's mountainous terrain.  The drones – also known as 'loitering drones' – can circle a target for hours and then dive down to self-destruct with a payload of explosives.

Although Israel maintains diplomatic relations with Armenia, these arms sales have become a contentious issue.  Armenia’s spokesperson is recently reported as saying: “Armenia has consistently raised the issue of arm supplies from Israel to Azerbaijan…For sure, the provision of modern weapons by Israel to Azerbaijan is unacceptable for us.”

Other broader disputes are being played out over the Nagorno-Karabakh issue.  For example Turkey’s Erdogan and Russia’s President Putin, competing to extend their global influence, are scarcely close allies in either the Syrian or the Libyan conflicts. Their rival interests are echoed here.  While Turkey supports Azerbaijan, Russia runs an important military base in Armenia and is believed to favor Armenia in the dispute. Even so, equivocation remains the name of the game, and Putin is also close to Azerbaijan's rulers.

“Armenia was hoping to get Russia's support,” said Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in a recent interview on Turkish TV, “but Russia acted appropriately and chose to not choose sides, and it has been neutral on the issue since.”

Russia’s offer to mediate on the issue, in which it has been joined by France, has so far fallen on deaf ears.  Turkish influence might have been brought to bear on Azerbaijan.  Turkey has been at odds with France recently about a number of issues, and both are carrying their dispute over to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. They are on opposite sides in the Libyan power struggle and also over Turkey’s insistence on maintaining its oil and gas exploration in the eastern Mediterranean on dubious legal grounds. Hundreds of thousands of French citizens are of Armenian descent, and French President Macron has warned Turkey that France “will not accept” a reconquest of Nagorno-Karabakh by Azerbaijan.  At the same time he appeared to promise French support to the Armenians.  "I say to Armenia and to the Armenians, France will play its role."

In short, despite its remote location and its comparative insignificance in the great scheme of things, the Armenia-Azerbaijan dispute has become the fulcrum of major global issues, and Nagorno-Karabakh the stage on which world powers seem prepared to act out their differences.  Struggles for dominance resolved here will have implications far beyond the narrow confines of the Caucuses.

Published in the Eurasia Review, 10 October 2020:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/10102020-why-the-armenia-azerbaijan-conflict-matters-analysis/

Published in the Jewish Business News, 9 October 2020:

https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2020/10/09/why-the-armenia-azerbaijan-conflict-matters/

Published in The Times of Israel, 11 October 2020:

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/why-the-armenia-azerbaijan-conflict-matters/

Time for three Yeses

              

   Shortly after Israel had routed the combined military forces of Egypt, Syria and Jordan in the Six-Day War in June 1967, eight Arab heads of state ‒ kings, emirs and presidents ‒ attended a summit conference in Khartoum, Sudan’s capital city. Notably absent was Hafez al-Assad, the president of Syria who, to use the epithet attributed to Winston Churchill, favoured “war, war” rather than “jaw, jaw”.

The Khartoum conference established formal Arab policy in relation to Israel that was to last for more than half a century.  It boiled down to what has become known as “the three noes”:  No peace with Israel; No recognition of Israel; No negotiations with Israel.

Although these three statements of principle were, in the event, honoured more in the breach than in the observance, they remained the recognized pillars of Arab policy towards Israel until, Samson-like, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain, using their combined might, pulled them down on August 13, 2020, bringing the whole policy edifice tumbling about their ears.

The agreements signed on the White House lawn on September 15 acknowledged above all the political realities of the current Middle East. The name for the deal, the Abraham Accords, was agreed between all parties ‒ the Christian president of the United States, the Muslim leaders of the UAE and Bahrain, and the Jewish prime minister of Israel.  That name set the tone for the hopes and intentions embodied in it. 

For decades Iran, al-Qaeda, Islamic State, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and Hezbollah, together with a host of often competing jihadist groups, have promulgated doctrines of Jew and Christian hatred, and non-tolerance of any Islamic belief other than the particular version favoured by that body.  Blood galore, including vast quantities of Muslim blood, have been spilled in pursuit of it. 

At the signing ceremony the UAE foreign minister, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahyan, speaking in Arabic to the Muslim world, declared that the prophet Mohamed, a descendant of Abraham, honoured Jews and Christians as believers in the one God of Abraham. By emphasizing this common heritage, the Abraham Accords provide the Middle East with a positive alternative to the negativity and hatred promulgated by Iran and the other Islamist extremists.  Jews and Christians, who share with the Muslim world the inheritance of Abraham, also have a rightful place in the Middle East.

One eminent Iraqi writer recently observed that the Khartoum conference, with its three noes, “blocked our minds from functioning rationally, branded as traitors all those who talked about realism and moderation, and made the Palestinian cause a source of material gain and profit... all in the name of liberating Palestine.”

The Abraham Accords have nothing in particular to say about the Palestinian cause, but a great deal about how the signatories see future relationships in the region.  “Mutual understanding and coexistence,” is what they support, “as well as respect for human dignity and freedom, including religious freedom.”  They encourage efforts “to advance a culture of peace among the three Abrahamic religions and all humanity,” believing that the best way to address challenges is through cooperation and dialogue.

“We pursue a vision of peace, security, and prosperity in the Middle East and around the world,” they say.  “In this spirit, we warmly welcome and are encouraged by the progress already made in establishing diplomatic relations between Israel and its neighbours… We are encouraged by the ongoing efforts to consolidate and expand such friendly relations based on shared interests and a shared commitment to a better future.”

This positive approach to building a peaceful prosperous future for the region stands in sharp contrast to the pessimistic rejectionism of the three noes.  As for the Palestinian cause, the first requirement is an agreed and determined effort by the leadership to change direction. Their priority must be the future prosperity and well-being of the Palestinian people, rather than a future of perpetual conflict with the unlikely goal of overthrowing the state of Israel and gaining control of the whole of Mandate Palestine.

There are at least two possible ways to reopen peace negotiations: the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, or the 2020 Trump Peace Deal.  Both envisage a form of two-state solution, and they are not mutually exclusive. Either could be the starting point for the process, while elements from both could be incorporated into a final agreement.  Given political will by their leaders, Israel and the Palestinians could come to an accord, and the Palestinian people could share in the future peace and prosperity that lies within grasp in the Middle East.   

Way back in 1965 the late Tunisian president, Habib Bourguiba, gave a speech in Jericho urging Palestinians and Arabs to abandon the principle of “all or nothing.”  Declaring that it was a failed policy that only brought more suffering, bloodshed and tears to the Palestinian people, he urged the Palestinians to negotiate with the Israelis. Bourguiba was not without flaws – as which human being is not – but in this assessment he proved himself a percipient statesman.

Fifty-five years later, after decades of fruitless conflict and literally thousands of unnecessary deaths, his words seem more apt than ever.  They point the way for the Arab world in general, and the Palestinian leadership in particular, to travel.  The three noes have outlived their usefulness.  They are outmoded and unrealistic.  Positive thinking and a new approach are called for – and indeed on 2 October 2020 Lebanon and Israel announced they had agreed to enter into direct negotiations for the first time ever to sort out their maritime boundaries.  At long last the time for three pragmatic yeses has arrived: Yes to peace with Israel; Yes to recognizing Israel; and Yes to negotiating with Israel. The future beckons.

Published in the Jewish Business News, 2 October 2020:
https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2020/10/02/time-for-three-yeses/

Published in the Eurasia Review, 3 October 2020:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/03102020-time-for-three-yeses-oped/

Published in the Jerusalem Post on-line, 3 October 2020, as

"Can we turn Khartoum's three "nos" in three "yeses":

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/can-we-turn-khartoums-three-nos-into-three-yeses-644401

Published in The Times of Israel, 4 October 2020:

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/time-for-three-yesses/