A new tune from the Middle East Quartet

 

On February 3, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that now there was a new US president in the White House, he hoped to see the Middle East Quartet reconvene “in the next few weeks”.  Sure enough on February 15 the Quartet, comprising envoys from the UN, the EU, the US and Russia, held its first meeting since September 2018. Afterwards the Russian embassy in Israel tweeted that the four envoys “emphasized the importance of creating all necessary conditions for the earliest resumption of direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.”

Tor Wennesland, UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, tweeted: “The envoys agreed to meet on a regular basis to continue their engagement.”

Established in 2002, the Quartet’s mandate was “to help mediate Middle East peace negotiations and to support Palestinian economic development and institution-building in preparation for eventual statehood”.  Over the years, its mandate seems to have been turned on its head. The first part has been swamped by the latter.   

Tony Blair took up the role of Representative of the Middle East Quartet on the very day he resigned as UK Prime Minister ‒ June 27, 2007.  To support his work, the Office of the Quartet Representative (OQR) was established.  When Blair left the post in May 2015, the OQR transitioned to the Office of the Quartet (OQ), reporting directly to the Quartet envoys. 

On its official website the OQ’s main purpose now differs significantly from the original mandate.  Augmented by a definition of a future Palestinian state ‒ the very issue that would be the subject of any future peace negotiations ‒ its mandate has transitioned to: “supporting the Palestinian people to build the institutions and economy of a viable, peaceful state in Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem”.  Mention of mediating Middle East peace is reduced to an afterthought: “In the event of a resumption of final status negotiations the OQ would support Quartet members in their efforts to realize a successful outcome.”   

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 turn in earnest to the Quartet ‒ especially if current efforts to glue the PA and Hamas together fail to gell, and the projected Palestinian elections do not materialize.  In any case, as Arab-Israel normalization proceeds apace, and the Palestinian issue is being pushed to one side, the PA may well feel pressured to seize the initiative.

The current Palestinian position on a peace deal nods in the direction of compromise. It embraces the concept of a demilitarized Palestine, and it accepts that the Pre-Six Day War boundaries would need to be modified.  These ideas are contained in a document submitted to the Quartet in June 2020 by PA prime minister Mohammad Shtayyeh.  Presented as a counter-proposal to the Trump plan. it envisages, in his words, the creation of a "sovereign Palestinian state, independent and demilitarized".  In addition, he told the media, the four-and-a-half page document foresees possible land swaps between the two future states on a like-for-like basis.

With this PA document in its possession, it looks as though the Middle East Quartet, with tacit approval from the Biden White House, is preparing to revert to its original priority – to mediate in a serious effort at achieving a peace deal between Israel and the PA.  For not the most optimistic player on the field believes that Hamas would ever be a signatory to such a deal.  How the two million Palestinians living in the Gaza strip could be released from the iron grip of Hamas and be brought into such an arrangement is the great unanswered issue, even though the Quartet is obligated to seek “a viable, peaceful state in Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem”.

          During his last months in office as the Quartet’s representative, Tony Blair visited Gaza. Later he issued a statement in which he tackled the Hamas issue head on.
                        
          “Are they prepared to accept a Palestinian state within 1967 borders or not,” he asked, “with such a state being a final settlement to the conflict? If they are,” he declared, “that would allow the international community to promote reconciliation alongside reconstruction.”

          Nothing could be simpler, clearer or more true. What Blair did not pursue is what the international community should do if – as Hamas have declared again and again – they are not so prepared because to do so would be to acknowledge that Israel has a legitimate and permanent place in the Middle East. This unresolved issue awaits the Quartet when, or if, they ever find themselves mediating a new and serious attempt to bring the interminable Israel-Palestine dispute to an end.

Published in the Eurasia Review, 26 February 2021:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/26022021-a-new-tune-from-the-middle-east-quartet-oped/

Published in the Jewish Business News, 26 February 2021:

https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2021/02/26/a-new-tune-from-the-middle-east-quartet/

Jerusalem and the embassy issue

This article appears in the new issue of the Jerusalem Report, dated 8 March 2021

                                                                                         Jerusalem - the Chord Bridge

            Israel has no doubt about the status of Jerusalem.  As the State of Israel was established in May 1948, the city was declared to be its capital.  The Jerusalem Law of 1980 asserts that East Jerusalem ‒ captured and annexed by Jordan in 1948, and recaptured by Israel in 1967 ‒ has been re-absorbed into a unified Jerusalem municipality that is once again the capital of the State of Israel. 

            Insofar as the 1980 Law does not specify the boundaries of the Jerusalem municipality, the United States is in agreement.  When Donald Trump as US president recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in December 2017, and was roundly condemned by much of world opinion for doing so, the words he uttered at the same time are rarely quoted. 

“We are not taking a position on any final status issues,” said Trump, “including the specific boundaries of Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem…Those questions are up to the parties involved.”  Subsequently, when Trump finally unveiled his Israel-Palestine peace plan in February 2020, he explained that it envisages a Palestinian capital in eastern Jerusalem to be called Al Quds, where the US will “proudly” open an embassy.

          International opinion disagrees with Israel over the status of Jerusalem. The reaction of the UN Security Council to the Jerusalem Law of 1980 was to adopt Resolution 478, which condemned the assertion of Israeli sovereignty over East Jerusalem as a violation of international law, and called upon UN member states to withdraw their diplomatic missions from the city. That advice stretched logic to breaking point. The thirteen national embassies concerned were sited in West Jerusalem, whose status was unaffected by the 1980 law. The recommendation to relocate them seemed perverse. Nonetheless, in the end all moved to Tel Aviv.

          The UN’s position on Jerusalem is an object lesson in illogicality. “Jerusalem is a final status issue,” declared Nickolay Mladenov, UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, in the session of the UN Security Council that considered Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and his decision to move the US embassy there.  “A comprehensive, just and lasting solution must be achieved through negotiations between the two parties, and on the basis of relevant UN resolutions and mutual agreements.”  

In other words the UN holds that the exact status of Jerusalem in international law is as yet undetermined.  Yet the Security Council, in its Resolution 2334 passed in 2016, had no doubts on the subject.  The status of Jerusalem and the West Bank, it determined, was at it had been on 4 June 1967 ­‒ that is, on the day before the Six Day War commenced ‒ referring three times to “Palestinian territories including East Jerusalem.”    

So the UN asserts that Jerusalem’s status is yet to be resolved and in the same breath that East Jerusalem is Palestinian territory.  It does not acknowledge that on 4 June 1967 West Jerusalem was Israel’s capital.  Even less understandably, it ignores the fact that Jordan, having conquered the West Bank and East Jerusalem in its attack on Israel in 1948, proceeded to annex them in a move not recognized by the UN or any other international body, nor by any countries except the UK and Pakistan.  When Israel recaptured them in 1967, logic suggests that their true status was that they were being held illegally by Jordan and, in international law, were the sovereign territory of no nation.  The UN, however, maintains that they were Palestinian territory.

            Even before Trump in December 2017 formally recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, Salva Kir, president of the newly independent state of South Sudan, told a visiting Israeli delegation in August 2011 that he planned to locate his embassy in Jerusalem.  Later that year Kir visited Israel to express his gratitude for its support during the civil war.  At a meeting with Israel’s then-president, Shimon Peres, he reiterated his intention. That wish has not yet proved father to the deed.

            It was in July 2016 that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, undertook an historic tour of east Africa.  Some of the fruits of his journey became apparent in May 2018, when no less than twelve African heads of state attended the ceremony relocating the US embassy to Jerusalem.  Since then reports, some of them solidly based, others rather less substantiated, have been swirling around the media naming one African state after another as being on the verge of following the US’s example.

            In February 2020 Uganda was reported as “mulling” its intention to do so.  In September attention had turned to Malawi.  By November it was Rwanda.  On February 19, 2021 Equatorial Guinea announced its intention to relocate its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

            The rumours were far from confined to African states.  Central and South American nations also featured.  In April 2018 Brazil was in the spotlight, together with Guatemala ‒ and then, for once, the whisper became reality.  On May 16, 2018 ‒ two days after the US formally relocated its embassy to Jerusalem ‒ Guatemala followed suit.  Later that month media rumour was focused on Paraguay and Honduras.  In December it was the Dominican Republic. 

December 2018 also saw a major news story featuring Australia’s new prime minister Scott Morrison, who went on the record announcing that Australia would consider following the US and move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. He said it may be possible for his nation both to support a two-state solution and also recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital ‒ something that Australia had "to date assumed" was unfeasible. His statement drew a tweeted response of approval from Netanyahu. So Australia joined the ever-growing list of nations with this embassy issue simmering on its back-burner.

            European nations were not spared by the headline-seeking media machine.  Shortly after Trump’s announcement, the Czechs declared that they viewed Jerusalem as the “capital of the State of Israel, in its 1967 borders”.  In other words, they rejected the UN’s equivocation but restricted their recognition to West Jerusalem.  In April 2018 the Czech ministry of foreign affairs announced that the Czech government intended to open an honorary consulate and a new Czech Center in West Jerusalem.  Relocating its embassy from Tel Aviv would seem the next logical step in the Czech Republic’s leisurely journey.

            At about this same time, sections of the government in Romania were reported to be in favour of moving the Romanian embassy to Jerusalem.  Next in the frame were Serbia and Kosovo, and in this instance substance followed rumor.

It was on September 4, 2020 in the White House that Serbia and Kosovo signed a US-brokered agreement, counter-signed by Donald Trump, to normalize economic relations between them. The agreement went wider.  It included plans for Israel and Kosovo to establish diplomatic relations between each other, and for Serbia to move its Israeli embassy to Jerusalem.

“After a violent and tragic history and years of failed negotiations,” said Trump “my administration proposed a new way of bridging the divide…By focusing on job creation and economic growth, the two countries were able to reach a major breakthrough.”

In February 1998 Kosovo. a Muslim province of the old Yugoslavia, attempted to break free from Serbia and Montenegro.  The dispute soon degenerated into armed conflict.  It was a particularly brutal struggle, into which NATO finally intervened to protect Kosovan civilians.  The war ended with a treaty under which Yugoslav and Serb forces withdrew to make way for an international presence.  Kosovo declared itself an independent state in 2008, but Serbia refused to recognize it, and in fact continues to regard Kosovo as a province of Serbia.

Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic and Kosovo’s Prime Minister Avdullah Hoti both considered the White House agreement a significant development.   “Of course,” said Vucic, “as regards the politics we haven’t resolved our problems. There are still a lot of differences between us, but this is a huge step forward.”

The White House deal also set the seal on mutual recognition between Kosovo and Israel, and as part of the arrangement Kosovo promised to open an embassy in Jerusalem, and Serbia undertook to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, both by the summer of 2021.

On 1 February 2021, in a ceremony held over Zoom in Jerusalem and Pristina, Israel and Kosovo formally established diplomatic ties.  By doing so Kosovo became the first Muslim-majority country to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.  If the full terms of the White House deal are met, Kosovo will be the first Muslim country to have a Jerusalem-based embassy, and only the third nation after the US and Guatemala to have one.  Serbia will be the first European country to open an embassy in Israel’s capital. 

Meanwhile UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres finds himself in something of a bind.  He cannot but welcome the recent agreement between Serbia and Kosovo, and the establishment of diplomatic relations between Kosovo and Israel, yet the decision of Serbia and Kosovo to site their embassies in Jerusalem is a direct violation of UN Resolution 478 which advised all nations to withdraw their embassies from the city. 

The press briefing conducted on September 14, 2020 by Stéphane Dujarric, spokesman for the Secretary-General, illustrates the embarrassing dilemma.

Asked how the Secretary General views moving embassies to Jerusalem in the context of moves towards peace, Dujarric welcomed countries recognizing and establishing relations with each other, while the location of its embassy was a decision for individual states.  As for the status of Jerusalem, he repeated the well-worn mantra that it was an issue to be decided by the parties.  This did not satisfy the media corps, one of whom pointed out that siting an embassy in Jerusalem was in direct violation of Resolution 478, but Dujarric refused to be drawn

The embassy barrier imposed by the UN is obviously breaking down.  Sooner or later other nations who have indicated an interest in re-siting their embassies in Israel’s capital will act.  One determining factor may well be the strong bi-partisan support evidenced in the US against reversing Trump’s embassy move.  On February 4, 2021 the US Senate voted 97-3 in favour of keeping the US embassy in Jerusalem. That this was the position of the incoming Biden administration was confirmed by the new US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, during his Senate confirmation hearing, when he also said that the US would continue to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.  

The rumor mill has been busy on this issue.  Over the past few years at least fourteen nations have been identified in the media as possible candidates for locating, or re-locating, their embassies to Jerusalem.  Some are merely the subject of a whisper; others have indicated a firm intention of doing so, but have not yet matched their intention with action.  The record shows that the names in the frame are:  South Sudan, Brazil, Moldova, Romania, Paraguay, Honduras, the Czech Republic, Uganda, Serbia, Malawi, Rwanda, the Dominican Republic, Equatorial Guinea and last, but by no means least, Australia.

The potential field is, of course, far larger.  Israel enjoys diplomatic relations with more than 160 countries, virtually all of which have sited their embassies in Tel Aviv or neighbouring cities.  A wholesale relocation of these foreign embassies is unlikely ‒ unless or until a Biden-inspired peace negotiation finally determines the extent of Israeli sovereignty in what is now the Jerusalem municipality.    Once the position is clear, accepted by all concerned and endorsed by international opinion, everything else will follow.

Published in the Jerusalem Post on-line, 24 February 2021:
https://www.jpost.com/jerusalem-report/jerusalem-and-the-embassy-issue-660051

Biden’s Iran dilemma

The Iran issue poses a real predicament for Joe Biden, as he takes up the reins of office.  How can he fulfil his election promise of returning the US to the Iran nuclear deal, while avoiding the unfortunate consequences that followed President Barak Obama’s original negotiation?

As Obama came into office, he made no secret of the fact that he believed much was wrong with his country.  He felt guilty about America’s strength and its political record.  In a keynote speech in Strasbourg in April 2009 he declared that throughout the nation’s existence “America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive, of others.”  If only the power of the US could be reduced, he declared, then America would have the “moral authority” to bring murderous regimes such as Iran into the “community of nations”. 

His mention of Iran at that early stage was significant.  A widely-held view among political analysts is that the “signature issue of Obama’s diplomacy”, as political scientist Amiel Ungar put it, was to transform US-Iranian relations. If he could bring Shia Iran on side, the presumption goes, he believed it could act as a bulwark against America’s real enemies, Sunni Al-Qaeda and Islamic State.

A vital element in his pursuit of better relations with Iran was the nuclear deal between Iran and the permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany, announced in July 2015.  This Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) is considered by many to represent Obama’s most significant foreign policy achievement. 

However the deal, with its partial curtailment of Iran’s nuclear programme, the lifting of sanctions on the regime, the injection of a huge financial “sweetener”, and the opening up of Iran to global trade, had the deleterious effect of boosting Iran’s power, influence and aggression across the Middle East. The inevitable consequence was that by the time Obama left office, the US had lost the confidence, and much of the respect, of its erstwhile allies such as Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States and Egypt, all of whom had good reason to regard Iran as their prime antagonist.  The prestige of the US in much of the Middle East had sunk to a new low.   

Did Obama’s placatory approach result in any softening of Iran’s visceral hatred of the “Great Satan”, as its leaders dubbed the United States?  Not one jot. “The slogans ‘Death to Israel’ and ‘Death to America’,” proclaimed Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, just after the nuclear deal was announced, “have resounded throughout the country.... Even after this deal, our policy towards the arrogant US will not change.”

Taking every concession offered in the nuclear deal, and subsequently reneging in several vital respects on the final agreement, Iran’s leaders budged not an inch from their ultimate ambition – to become the dominant political and religious power in the Middle East, to sweep aside all Western-style democracies, and to impose their own Shi’ite version of Islam on the world.

As president, Donald Trump had no time for Obama’s aim of “reducing America’s power” (quite the reverse), nor for the Iranian regime, nor for the nuclear deal that was a keystone policy of Obama’s administration.  He could not immediately “tear it up”, in his own words, since there were five other signatories in addition to the US.  But finally, frustrated by Iran’s expansion of its missile capability, and by the evidence from Israel’s seizure of secret documents that demonstrated Iran’s continued adherence to its nuclear ambitions, Trump withdrew the US from the deal in May 2018.

Joe Biden during his presidential election campaign promised to return to the nuclear deal provided Iran returned to full compliance with its provisions.  Some observers believed that this meant Biden, on becoming president, would negotiate a speedy US re-entry into the deal. They were to be disappointed.  Rejecting much that Trump stood for, Biden could nevertheless perceive the enormous improvement in the US’s prestige in the Middle East that he inherited from his predecessor. 

Consequently he and his Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, have adopted a “softly, softly” approach to re-entering the deal.  Biden has given no indication of when ‒ or indeed if ‒ the US might do so, although he has suggested that fairly quick action could be possible if the Iranian regime returned to the original terms of the JCPOA.

Iran’s demand, though, was that all US sanctions must be lifted before it will return to its commitments under the deal. Biden’s response was firm.  The US will not lift its economic sanctions on Iran simply to get it back to the negotiating table.  Iran must act first, and it must return to full compliance with the terms of the deal.

Is Biden’s position as uncompromising as it appears?  A far more conciliatory attitude to the idea of reviving the JCPOA can be read into Biden’s selection of Robert Malley, who helped negotiate the original deal, to serve as his envoy on Iran.  Blinken has announced that he is “building a dedicated team”, to be led by Malley, to tackle Washington’s relations with Iran.

Hard-line opponents of the Iranian regime see Malley as a key architect of the JCPOA, and fear Biden might be willing to sacrifice the security of the moderate Muslim world and of Israel to revive the nuclear deal. 

Past experience points a way out of Biden’s dilemma.  Appeasement of the regime is useless.  Iran has its own agenda.  It is pursuing domination of the Middle East and supports a Shi’ite terrorist network to achieve it.  The regime’s enmity toward Western democracy in general, and the US and Israel in particular, is fundamental. Equally unshakeable is its intention to acquire nuclear weapons.

Based on these factors, a return to a revised deal is feasible provided it contains in-built guarantees of compliance, and no loopholes permitting Iran the eventual achievement of nuclear arms. First indications are that the Bidden administration is working along these lines, but there is a long way to go.

Published by the Jewish Business News, 19 February 2021:
https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2021/02/19/bidens-iran-dilemma/

Published by the Eurasia Review, 20 February 2021:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/20022021-bidens-iran-dilemma-oped/

Published by the MPC Journal, 20 February 2021:

https://mpc-journal.org/blog/2021/02/20/bidens-iran-dilemma/

Does normalization justify Biden’s return to the UNHRC?

 

          Comparatively speaking, the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) is still in its infancy.  Set up only fifteen years ago by the UN General Assembly, it had one over-riding purpose – to rectify the egregious faults of its predecessor body, the UN Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR).  The Commission had been a working body of the United Nations virtually from its foundation in 1946, but over its 60 years of existence it had accrued a raft of objectionable practices which finally made the organization totally unacceptable to many governments, and eventually to the UN itself.

Among its more unseemly usages was to include among its members representatives of states with records of flagrant human rights violations and, moreover, to elect such people from time to time to chair the Commission − representatives of countries like Zimbabwe, Algeria, Syria, Libya, Vietnam and China. These individuals, by opposing resolutions which condemned human rights violations, in effect sustained and promoted despotism and repression.  Finally the Commission seemed to have turned its purpose on its head, and far from identifying and eliminating violations of human rights, in many cases supported, if not actively encouraged, them.

For example, the Commission turned a blind eye towards violations of the UN charter committed by member states. When issues such as the stoning of women, honour killings, modern slavery, mutilations, and the death penalty for apostasy were raised during the 60th Session of the UNCHR in 2004, officials from certain Muslim-majority states rejected any criticism as “interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign state."  The Commission meekly gave way, and abstained from pursuing the issues.

The other face of this overt political bias – and a major cause of criticism of the Commission − was its compliance with being used as a UN-backed platform from which selective targets could be condemned and vilified.  The chief victim was Israel.  An analysis in 2003 revealed that the UNCHR had devoted no less than 33 per cent of its country-specific resolutions to condemning Israel in one way or another. 

All this finally became too much even for the UN General Assembly, which in 2006 voted overwhelmingly to disband the old Commission and to set up a shining new United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in its place.

How has the body been doing?

It is perhaps, significant, that UNHRC is UNCHR with just one letter transposed.  In short, you can barely see the difference.  For example, in its first six years – that is, from the time of its foundation in 2006 until 2012 − the Council published nine reports on Syria’s mass killings of its own citizens, and three on the terrorist-supporting repressive régime in Iran.  It published nothing on China, which was far removed from granting its billion citizens basic human rights.  Yet in those six years it published no less than 48 reports condemning Israel.

More than this, the Council voted on June 18, 2007 to include, as a permanent feature of each of its three annual sessions, a review of alleged human rights abuses by Israel − a resolution sponsored by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). This Item 7, the only standing item directed at a specific country, has become a permanent feature of the UNHRC agenda, and as a result the Council has so far targeted Israel with 90 condemnatory resolutions, more than the rest of the world combined.

Which countries’ representatives sit in judgment on Israel’s human rights record? The  UNHRC’s current membership includes China, Russia, Cuba, Libya, Somalia, Pakistan and Venezuela. It almost goes without saying that in its recent 2018 session the Council passed no resolutions on human rights violations by − for example − China, Cuba, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iraq, Qatar, or Venezuela, about each of which there is much to say. 

US president George W Bush gave the UNHRC a year before deciding not to join.  The White House spokesman at the time said that the Council “has thus far not proved itself to be a credible body in the mission that it has been charged with.  There has been a nearly singular focus on issues related to Israel, for example, to the exclusion of examining issues of real concern to the international system, whether that’s Cuba or Burma or in North Korea.”

Less than two months after entering office in 2009, Barack Obama had the US join the body, on the grounds that by “working from within, we can make the Council a more effective forum to promote and protect human rights.”

In 2018, under president Donald Trump, the US withdrew.  “When the Human Rights Council treats Israel worse than North Korea, Iran and Syria,” said former ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley, “it is the Council itself that is foolish and unworthy of its name.”

On February 8, 2021 US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that the US was returning to the UNHRC as an observer.  His justification for doing so: the UNHRC is flawed and needs reform, “but walking away won’t fix it. The best way to improve the Council, so it can achieve its potential, is through robust and principled US leadership. Under Biden we are re-engaging and ready to lead.”

It seems obvious that the skewed and disproportionate emphasis on Israel over the years, by both the UNHRC and its predecessor body, has reflected their pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel membership. The OIC (Organization of Islamic Cooperation) ‒ the body which sponsored the vexatious Item 7 directed against Israel ‒ has consistently enjoyed a significant bloc of members on the 47-nation Council, as well as additional support from other states who support the Palestinian cause.

However, history has not stood still since Trump walked away from the UNHRC.  Partly as a result of his own efforts, a new spirit of normalization is sweeping across the Middle East.  Arab States have signed up to the Abraham Accords, and other Muslim states have expressed varying degrees of interest in engaging with Israel in pragmatic arrangements that disconnect economic development from the Israel-Palestine dispute.  In short, support for the Palestinian cause is no longer synonymous with condemning Israel at every opportunity.

It is possible, indeed likely, that this change of atmosphere will be reflected within the UNHRC.  It may prove the key that unlocks reform of that deeply flawed organization.  The Biden administration may have acted at precisely the right moment.

Published in the Eurasia Review, 12 February 2021:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/12022021-does-normalization-justify-bidens-return-to-the-unhrc-oped/

Published in the Jewish Business News, 12 February 2021:
https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2021/02/12/does-normalization-justify-bidens-return-to-the-unhrc/

Are the Taliban to be trusted?

       This article appears in the Jerusalem Post today, 18 February 2021:  

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/are-the-taliban-to-be-trusted-opinion-659307

          How have the Taliban, a known hardline Islamist group, come to be a significant world power, negotiating with the United States over the head of the Afghan government? One reason is that over half of Afghanistan is under their direct control.

          Following the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, it did not take Washington long to establish that responsibility for the onslaught lay with the al-Qaeda movement.  US intelligence was soon convinced that its master-mind, Osama bin Laden, was being sheltered by the extremist Islamist group, the Taliban, which at that time controlled most of Afghanistan. As a result, within a few weeks a US-led coalition invaded.

          Who are the Taliban?

          The group emerged following a 10-year occupation of the country by the Soviet Union. The USSR had invaded in 1979 in an attempt to keep Afghanistan within its sphere of influence, but a decade of guerilla warfare conducted by Sunni extremists eventually led to Soviet troops withdrawing in February 1989.

          A year or so later a new hardline Sunni Islamist group calling themselves Taliban (“students” in the Pashto language), began to emerge. They swiftly became a formidable military machine, advancing inexorably across the country. Towards the end of 1996 they captured the Afghan capital, Kabul, overthrowing the regime of President Burhanuddin Rabbani.

          Initial support from some of the population quickly faded as the Taliban imposed hardline Islamist practices, such as amputations for those found guilty of theft, and public executions of adulterers. Men were required to grow beards, and women had to wear the all-covering burka. Television, music and cinema were banned, and girls aged 10 and over were forbidden to attend school. Meanwhile, they continued to wage their two-handed war – against the Afghan government on the one hand, and against the US presence in the country on the other.

          From the moment US President Donald Trump took office in 2017, he pledged to put an end to the conflict and bring the American forces back home. It took two years of secret back-channel negotiations before peace talks began on February 25, 2019. Abdul Ghani Barada, the co-founder of the Taliban, was at the table.

          The talks, which took place in Qatar, appeared successful. Agreement was quickly reached on a draft peace deal involving the withdrawal of US and international troops from Afghanistan, matched by an undertaking by the Taliban to prohibit other jihadist groups operating within the country. This extraordinary arrangement between the world’s leading power and a hardline extremist Islamist movement, was headed: “Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan between the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which is not recognized by the United States as a state and is known as the Taliban and the United States of America.”

          This Doha deal was greeted with optimism by President Trump. "I really believe the Taliban wants to do something to show we're not all wasting time," he said.

         However the agreement was far from watertight, and months of wrangling followed. In particular disputed presidential elections in Afghanistan left two claimants for the presidency. A visit by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in March 2020 failed to resolve the dispute. On his way home Pompeo stopped off in Qatar to meet Taliban negotiators, later declaring that he was confident the Taliban were keeping their side of the deal. A Taliban spokesman said that Pompeo had assured them that a withdrawal of American forces "will continue in accordance with the declared timetable."

          That, after all, had been Trump’s aim from the start – an ambition rendered ever more urgent as the US presidential election drew nearer. With less than a week remaining of the Trump presidency, the US military met its goal of reducing the number of soldiers in Afghanistan to about 2,500.

          Newly-elected President Joe Biden and his administration are none too happy with Trump’s deal. In their first week in office they announced that the US intends to review the agreement, in order to check that the Taliban is “living up to its commitments to cut ties with terrorist groups, to reduce violence in Afghanistan, and to engage in meaningful negotiations with the Afghan government and other stakeholders.”

          John Kirby, Pentagon chief spokesman, went further. On January 29 he told reporters: "The Taliban are not meeting their commitments to reduce violence and reduce their ties to al-Qaeda.”

          Washington’s reservations are based on a five-page memo issued on January 4 by the US Treasury asserting that al-Qaeda remains a potent force embedded within, and protected by, the Taliban. It also said that senior figures of the Haqqani Network faction of the Taliban, known for its links to Pakistan and its high profile attacks, “have discussed forming a new joint unit of armed fighters in cooperation with and funded by al-Qaeda” to support the effort to overthrow the government of president Ashraf Ghani.

Trump’s administration hammered out the Doha deal with the Taliban by negotiating over the head of the Afghan government, while ensuring that the Taliban accepted the obligation to conduct “intra-Afghan” negotiations with it.  Biden’s team, on the other hand, are dealing with Ghani and his ministers.  Brand new US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, told his Afghan counterpart in a phone call on January 22 that the new administration will "review" the Doha deal. Just installed secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said on January 27 that the administration wanted to take a detailed look to "understand exactly what is in the agreement" before deciding how to proceed.

These statements have raised hope in Ghani's beleaguered government that Biden will rethink a deal which many in Kabul see as giving too much away to the Taliban.  Reshaping the deal, though, is almost certainly an aspiration too far.  The most Ghani can realistically hope for is a determination by the Biden administration to enforce the Taliban’s compliance.

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 18 February 2021:

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/are-the-taliban-to-be-trusted-opinion-659307

Published in the Jewish Business News, 5 February 2021:
https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2021/02/05/are-the-taliban-to-be-trusted/

Published in the Eurasia Review, 5 February 2021:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/05022021-are-the-taliban-to-be-trusted-oped/

Published in the MPC Journal, 8 February 2021:

https://mpc-journal.org/blog/2021/02/08/are-the-taliban-to-be-trusted/