“Rebel Daughter” by Lori Banov Kaufmann

This review appeared in the Jerusalem Post weekend magazine on 19 March 2021

          When a book grabs your attention from the start and maintains its grip to the very end, you could justifiably call it a very good read. “Rebel Daughter” – Lori Banov Kaufmann’s first published novel – fulfills those criteria, and is a very good read indeed.

          Covering the five years from 65 to 70 of the Common Era, the story is set against the backdrop of the Jewish rebellion against Roman rule, its ruthless suppression, the sacking of Jerusalem and the destruction of the second Temple. These historic events impact directly on the life of the main protagonist, Esther, daughter of a Temple priest.

          Author Kaufmann tells us that it took her ten years to produce “Rebel Daughter”. For much of that time she was immersed in researching the minutiae of daily life in first century Jerusalem and Rome. Her study certainly paid off, for she succeeds in painting a picture of day-to-day living nearly two thousand years ago that is infused with authentic and convincing detail. The sights, sounds and smells of the time permeate her pages.

          The idea for “Rebel Daughter” stems from an inscription on an ancient gravestone discovered in southern Italy. It commemorates the death, at the age of 25, of “Claudia Aster, captive from Jerusalem”, and was erected by “Tiberius Claudius Masculus, freedman of the Emperor.” Kaufmann began to speculate about the sort of events that might have brought these two people together – a Roman freedman, and a Jewish girl originally named Esther (Aster is the Romanized version) who was taken captive during the uprising in Jerusalem and brought to Italy.

          So she conceived the Jerusalem family life of teenage Esther in the turbulent period when hot-headed Jewish rebels were plotting to throw off the shackles of the Roman occupation, and the sequence of events that plunged Esther and her little brother Matti into the very heart of the tragedy that overtook Jerusalem itself. Two men feature in Esther’s story – a Jew named Joseph who abandons the Jewish cause and becomes Josephus the historian, and a Roman named Tiberius, who finally rescues Esther from captivity.

          Esther emerges from the novel as a fully rounded person, motivated by her deep religious and spiritual heritage, and moved by an intense desire to acquire knowledge and understanding of the world around her. As we accompany her through traumatic incidents that would have broken a weaker personality, we witness also her growth and development as an individual.

          Kaufmann has chosen to present her story in the form of short and succinct chapters, some as short as one page. In all the novel consists of 96 of them, appropriately numbered in the Roman style. This form of presentation, as well as the theme of the novel and her lucid writing style, allows “Rebel Daughter” to be classified as a “crossover” Young Adult/Adult novel. The Young Adult (YA) classification, which originated in the 1960s, now merits its own section in public libraries. YA novels are known to appeal also to many adult readers. The most famous example of the genre, perhaps, are the Harry Potter novels by J K Rowling.

           A valuable feature of this book is the six-page historical note by Jonathan Price, Professor of Ancient History at Tel Aviv University, which is appended to the novel. It provides the reader with the historical context for the events which so shaped the life of its main characters. As he says, those events “transformed Judaism permanently and contributed to Christianity’s eventual emergence as a world religion.”

           Price describes the extent, the wealth and the power of the Roman Empire in the first century. He specifies both the benefits that Rome brought to the multitude of different peoples and cultures under its sway, but also the burdens it imposed which chafed particularly on the Jewish nation state that it had conquered a century earlier. Another contributory factor to the revolt, he explains, was the widespread belief at the time that the End of Days was nigh, a mighty battle was imminent, the Children of Israel would emerge triumphant and the Messiah would appear. As Price puts it: “It was this unshakable faith in God’s plan and purpose that the Jews, people of a tiny nation, took into battle against the mighty Roman Empire.”

          “Rebel Daughter” provides a highly readable insight into one of the most turbulent episodes in Jewish history. Kaufmann brings the period to vivid life, and we gain a unique view of first century Jerusalem and life under Roman rule. But it is Esther herself, her courage, her loyalty to her family, and the ordeals she undergoes in order to hold fast to her spiritual values, that will live in the memory long after the reader has turned the final page.

Published in the Jerusalem Post on-line, 18 March 2021
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/culture/story-of-a-roman-freedman-and-a-jewish-girl-explored-in-new-book-662419

Scotland’s Jews ‒ integration without assimilation

 An expanded version of this article appears in the new edition of the Jerusalem Report, issue dated 5 April 2021.

     Just-elected First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, visits Ephraim Borowski, director of SCoJeC, in 2014

           Individual Jews have lived in Scotland for hundreds of years, but it was only in the mid-eighteenth century that Jewish communities began to form in Scotland’s two major cities, Edinburgh and Glasgow.  Nowadays, in addition to the two main centers of Jewish life in Scotland, Jewish communities flourish in Aberdeen, Tayside and Fife, while there are also some Jewish families in the Highlands and Islands.

In the 2011 census just under 6,000 people in Scotland stated that their religion is Jewish.  However when people who were brought up Jewish, or who wrote in “Jewish” as their ethnicity, are included, the total is likely to be between 9,000 and 10,000, representing some 0.1 percent of the population.

It was while Chief Rabbi of the UK that Jonathan Sacks once described the Jewish communities of Scotland as combining “strong loyalty to our Jewish faith and way of life, with a deep attachment to Scottish culture and identity. That combination of integration without assimilation has been the delicate balance Jews have striven to achieve, and Scottish Jewry has done just that.”

The last major political event on which UK, as opposed to Scottish,  Jewish opinion was assessed was Brexit ‒ the nationwide referendum on the UK leaving the European Union.  While the Brexit result across the UK as a whole was a clear majority to leave the EU, polls taken later showed that British Jews had voted two-to-one to remain, while a survey for the Jewish Chronicle reported that 59 percent of UK’s Jews were unhappy with the Leave result. 

The Scottish public voted overwhelmingly to remain in the EU, but a separate poll of the opinion of Scotland’s Jews was not undertaken.  Assessments by Scotland’s Jewish leaders vary widely. Rabbi David Rose, long-time rabbi of the Edinburgh Hebrew Congregation, said that his members have been tapping into their European roots and “taking out European passports”.  Journalist Rebecca Myers, writing in The Times, said that some leading figures in Scotland’s Jewish community had intimated that if there were ever a new referendum on Scottish independence ‒ an issue kept constantly in the political foreground by the Scottish National Party (SNP) ‒ many in the Jewish community might back it on the grounds that the SNP is strongly pro-EU. 

On the other hand, Micheline Brennan, the immediate past chair of the Scottish Council of Jewish Communities (SCoJeC, pronounced “Scojec”), believes that the majority of Scottish Jews by no means mirror general Scottish public opinion, and are anti-independence. 

SCoJeC is the umbrella organization, set up after Scotland’s devolved parliament came into existence in 1999, in order to represent Jewish concerns to the government.  Its director was, and remains, Ephraim Borowski. I asked him about the work of the Council.   He explained that establishing devolved government in Scotland had automatically created the need for an organization that could represent the interests of the Jewish community to Scottish ministers, parliamentarians, trades unions and others. In addition, the Council provides a support network for the smaller Jewish communities in Scotland.

Ephraim Borowski and members of his SCoJeC committee in Garnethill Synagogue, Glasgow.

I asked about the two surveys undertaken under the auspices of SCoJeC, one in 2012 and the other three years later, relating to Scotland’s Jewish community. The first was titled: “Being Jewish in Scotland”, and it returned a largely positive picture of the experience of Jewish people in Scotland.  Barely a year later, in the single month of August 2014 when the Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza was at its peak, SCoJeC received almost as many reports of antisemitic incidents as in the whole of the previous year. So many Jewish people reported feeling uncomfortable, anxious, and even afraid to go about their day-to-day activities, that the Scottish Government decided to fund a further study of how the experience of Being Jewish in Scotland had changed.

The 2015 survey (“What’s Changed About Being Jewish in Scotland?”) canvassed the opinions of around 300 Jewish people.  The findings were extremely sobering. No less than 80 percent of respondents said that the events in the Middle East during the summer of 2014 had negatively affected their experience of being Jewish in Scotland.  

Antisemitic incidents in Scotland have since declined.  The statistics for 2020 now show them to be well below the rate in the UK as a whole on a per capita basis.  The situation of Scotland’s Jewish community seems to be reverting to the long-established “integrated but not assimilated” position noted by Rabbi Sacks.

History tells us that during the Tudor period the royal families of England and Scotland became intertwined, and that when Queen Elizabeth I died, the heir to the throne was the ruling King of Scotland.  Accordingly in 1603 James VI of Scotland ascended the English throne as King James I, and thereafter the monarchy covered both realms (often against active opposition from Scots preferring an independent kingdom).

With a single monarch, the idea of uniting the parliaments of Scotland and England gained traction during the seventeenth century.  Finally the two parliaments passed separate Acts of Union in 1707, leading to the creation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain.

The UK’s system of parliamentary democracy is a peculiar affair. The Palace of Westminster, in the heart of London, houses the national parliament of Great Britain.  It comprises the House of Commons, made up of 650 Members of Parliament (MPs) representing constituencies across the nation.  A second house, the House of Lords, was originally filled with hereditary peers who had a seat simply by virtue of their birth, but is now mostly composed of worthy appointees.

At present 59 Scottish constituencies return one MP each to the House of Commons.  There are similarly 40 MPs from Wales and 18 from Northern Ireland.  These three constituent nations of the United Kingdom also have national parliaments of their own, and so hold their own parliamentary elections from time to time. (It is an as-yet unresolved anomaly that England does not have its own assembly, and so Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish MPs can vote on matters affecting England, but English MPs do not have a reciprocal right). 

On May 7, 2021 Scotland goes to the polls to elect the 129 members of the devolved Scottish Parliament.  Until quite recently the Scottish National Party, its eyes set firmly on Scotland breaking away from the UK and becoming an independent state, stood very high in the affections of Scottish voters.  A major political scandal involving leading SNP figures came to a head in the early months of 2021.  What effect, if any, this may have on the popularity of the SNP with Scottish voters in general, and Scotland’s Jewish community in particular, remains uncertain.  Whatever the future of SNP’s bid for a further referendum on Scottish independence, it seems certain that the Jewish community will remain an integral part of Scottish life and culture.

Turkey’s suspicious charm offensive

          Back in the autumn of 2020 Turkey’s relations with much of the world were at a low ebb while, at the same time, political developments were in train that seemed likely to frustrate its long-term aspirations.  Turkish President Tayyip Recep Erdogan, or his advisers, must have realized that to achieve his strategic objective of extending and stabilizing Turkey’s power base across the Middle East, a reassessment of tactics was called for.  Out of what must have been a root and branch analysis, came a plan to address the problem – Turkey would embark on a charm offensive, involving an apparent “reconciliation”, or “rebooting” of relationships, with one-time enemies, opponents or unfriendly states. 

            At the time Turkey’s international standing was truly in the doldrums.

The US presidential election was in full swing.  Trump may have turned a blind eye to Erdogan’s anti-Kurd land grab in northern Syria, but he drew the line at Turkey, a member of NATO, acquiring the US’s state-of-the-art multi-purpose F-35 fighter aircraft, while already purchasing the Russian S-400 anti-aircraft system designed specifically to destroy aircraft like the F-35. Trump ejected him from the F-35 programme and imposed sanctions on Turkey. Biden, long opposed to Erdogan’s power-grabbing activities in Syria, would certainly not reverse that.

Neither Trump nor Biden favoured Erdogan’s military interventions in Libya or in the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute, both pretty obviously designed to extend Turkish influence in the region.  These military adventures also irked France’s President Macron, and Turco-French relations – already strained because of Erdogan’s failure fully to condemn Islamist terror attacks in France – deteriorated to a new low, ultimately descending to personal insults.

Erdogan had also attracted the displeasure of the EU by continuing to explore for gas in what is internationally recognized as Cypriot waters.  After months of acrimonious exchanges between Brussels and Ankara, in December 2020 the EU actually imposed targeted sanctions on Turkey. The UK, now no longer in the EU, sanctioned Turkey on the same grounds

Turkey’s relations with Egypt had been frozen solid ever since 2013, when Muslim Brotherhood President Mohamed Morsi was ousted by Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.  Erdogan, a life-long adherent of the Brotherhood, expelled Egypt’s ambassador, and Sisi reciprocated.  Subsequently Erdogan, in a prime example of the pot calling the kettle black, repeatedly referred to Sisi as a “putchist president” responsible for the deaths of thousands of civilians. 

Egypt and Turkey backed opposite sides in the war in Libya, while Turkey – historically at loggerheads with Greece – did its best to subvert Egypt’s developing commercial and maritime partnership with Greece.  As for Saudi Arabia, relations had been overshadowed for years by the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Saudi’s consulate in Istanbul and the trial, in absentia, of the 26 Saudis suspected of carrying out the murder.

Erdogan’s relationship with Israel could only be characterized as frosty.  It had long been obvious to the world that Erdogan seized every opportunity to denounce Israel in the most extravagant terms, and to act against it whenever he could.  Not the least of his hostile moves was to support Hamas and to provide a base in Istanbul for senior Hamas officials, granting at least twelve of them Turkish citizenship.

In short Turkey, in pursuit of its own political priorities, had fences to mend with, inter alia, the US, the EU, the UK, France, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Israel.

It was towards the end of 2020 that its tone on the international scene began to change.  When French President Emmanuel Macron got coronavirus on December 17, Erdogan wrote him a letter wishing him well, adding: "I would like to discuss...our bilateral relations and the relations between Turkey and the EU, as well as regional issues, as soon as you feel better."

It was a clear change of tone after months of public insults and questioning Macron's mental health. In March Erdogan videoed Macron and held out the olive branch of dialogue and cooperation.

On December 9, after a gap of two years, Turkey appointed a new ambassador to Israel, albeit one with a track record of anti-Israel sentiment.  Then in a press conference on Christmas Day, December 25, Erdogan declared that Turkey’s relations with Israel had “not stopped; they continue”, and that he’d like “to bring our ties to a better point.”

Israel treated the developments warily. The media reported that at a meeting held on December 30, Israel’s foreign minister Gabi Ashkenazi decided to send “quiet feelers” to Ankara to assess how much weight to attach to them.  It is difficult also to determine whether there is any truth in media rumours that the Turkish intelligence service has been holding secret talks with Israel officials about normalizing relations. 

These feelers toward Israel, meaningful or not, were followed by conciliatory moves by Turkey in other directions.  On 18 January Mevlut Cavusoglu, Turkey’s foreign minister, met with German foreign minister Heiko Maas.  Ahead of the meeting Maas issued a statement saying that Germany welcomes "the fact that signs of détente have been coming from Turkey.”

Three days later Cavusoglu held a video conference with the EU's foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell and EU commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, during which he expressed his country's desire to get things back on track.  He spoke of a “positive agenda” mentioning migration, visa liberalization and modernization of the customs union. According to an EU diplomat, von der Leyen later told EU ambassadors that there was clearly a change of tone, but that she wasn't “over-enthusiastic”. 

Borrell, however, welcomed the Turkish gestures to defuse the tensions, adding: "Another good step is the announced resumption of exploratory talks between Turkey and Greece. We strongly wish to see a sustainable de-escalation in the Eastern Mediterranean but also in the wider region."

On January 25, after five years of standoff, Turkey and Greece agreed on a new round of exploratory talks over their disputed territorial waters. 

On March 12 Cavusoglu went so far as to declare that Turkey was ready to improve relations with the United Arab Emirates – condemned for normalizing relations with Israel – as well as Saudi Arabia.  Turkey no longer saw the Khashoggi murder as an obstacle.

“We never accused the government of Saudi Arabia,” he said. “We see no reason not to improve relations…”

In pursuit of his effort to win over the Biden administration, on March 3 Erdogan unveiled a long-awaited action plan aimed, he said, at improving human and civil rights in Turkey.  “The ultimate aim of Turkey’s action plan is a new civilian constitution.”

Washington has so far received all this with wariness and scepticism.  On the Voice of America on March 3 an American official said: “There are few signs that the leopard really has changed its spots.”

          Turkey needs to be considerably more charming, it seems, if its reversal of tactics is to convince the world.


Published in the Eurasia Review, 19 March 2021:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/19032021-turkeys-suspicious-charm-offensive-oped/

Published in the Jewish Business News, 19 March 2021:
https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2021/03/19/turkeys-suspicious-charm-offensive/

Published in the MPC Journal, 21 March 2021:
https://mpc-journal.org/blog/2021/03/21/turkeys-suspicious-charm-offensive/

Can Libya’s prime minister survive the scandal?

   Here’s a name that has not yet hit the world’s headlines – Abdul Hamid Dbeibah.  He is Libya’s interim prime minister-designate, selected on February 5 in a United Nations-sponsored inter-Libyan dialogue, the latest internationally backed bid to salvage the country from a decade of conflict and economic chaos.

The media’s apparent lack of interest in Dbeibah is about to be remedied.  On March 15 a UN report is due to be published, the outcome of an investigation into whether Dbeibah gained power as a result of his supporters offering bribes as high as $200,000 to attract votes.  Following Dbeibah’s selection, the acting UN envoy for Libya, Stephanie Williams, demanded  the investigation.

The UN-appointed 75-strong political dialogue forum met in a Tunis hotel to elect an interim prime minister capable of reforming Libya’s chaotic economic and political situation, and preparing the nation for parliamentary elections in December. The yet-to-be-published inquiry report, the media has discovered, describes how a row broke out in the hotel lobby when some delegates were outraged to discover that the bribe for their vote was lower than that being offered in secret to others. One delegate heard that as much as $500,000 was on offer.

Dbeibah’s office has described the story as fake news designed to disrupt the political process.  If so, it has succeeded in throwing the legitimacy of his appointment into doubt. What will follow the publication of the UN report is a matter for speculation, but under the original plan the interim prime minister had until March 19 to win approval for a cabinet.  If approved, the cabinet would replace both Libya’s legitimate Government of National Accord (GNA), and the illegitimate parallel administration run by strong man Khalifa Haftar, who has been leading his Libyan National Army (LNA) in an attempt to overthrow the GNA and assume the leadership of the country.  An interim three-member presidency council – selected alongside Dbeibah – is intended to head the unity administration.

Dbeibah would then be charged with bringing order into the chaos that currently afflicts Libya – the dire economic crisis, soaring unemployment, dysfunctional public services and crippling inflation – in time for the elections scheduled for December 24.

Following the overthrow of former leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, Libya became a hotbed of Islamist groups battling each other.  It was in 2015, under a UN-led initiative, that the Government of National Accord was established, endorsed unanimously by the UN Security Council as the sole legitimate executive authority in Libya.  In the event it proved totally ineffective in getting a grip on the situation.  On the contrary, it allowed the mayhem to spiral out of control. 

In the fall of 2019 Khalifa Haftar, once Gaddafi’s friend, began trying to overthrow the GNA and set himself up as Libya’s leader.  By the spring of 2020 he seemed on the brink of succeeding.  He was apparently within days of capturing the capital, Tripoli.  That never happened – and now it seems an unlikely possibility.

          One reason – not the only one – is that in the fall of 2020 Turkey offered to assist the GNA.  Under the terms of an agreement signed on 27 November 2019, Turkey undertook to provide the GNA with security and state-of-the-art military technology.  Ever since, the GNA has chalked up a series of successes against Khalifa Hafter’s LNA.

For a long time an impressive list of national governments believed that Haftar was the one politico-military figure in today’s Libya able to regain mastery of the situation and bring an end to the state of anarchy.  Opinion shifted with the setting up of the UN-sponsored peace forum, which seemed to offer a better way forward for Libya – until the rumors of bribery and corruption surfaced.  Now, the future is uncertain indeed.

In the first week of March 2021 a UN observer mission flew an advance team into the Libyan capital, Tripoli, tasked with monitoring a ceasefire between the country’s rival armed factions. According to the UN, Libya is currently host to some 20,000 mercenaries and foreign fighters.  Some of them are highly trained Russian fighters embedded in Haftar’s LNA; others are forces under Turkey’s command.  Media rumors have claimed that when an armed clash between the two sets of Russian mercenaries seemed likely, Ankara and Moscow came to a deal and Haftar’s Russian force simply melted away. This, it is alleged, is another reason for the series of defeats suffered by Haftar at the hands of the GNA. 

What is known of Abdul Hamid Dbeibah, at present Libya’s new interim prime minister?  Born in 1959 in the north-western Libyan city of Misrata, Dbeibah moved to Canada early in his career to take a graduate degree in engineering at the University of Toronto.  He moved back to his native city in the midst of a construction boom and involved himself in the construction industry.  His business success and engineering expertise were noted by Gaddafi’s close associates.  In 2007 Gaddafi appointed him to run the state-owned Libyan Investment and Development Company (LIDCO), responsible for some of the country’s biggest public works projects, including the construction of 1,000 housing units in the leader’s hometown of Sirte.

Wolfgang Pusztai, Austria’s former defense attaché to Libya, has said that Dbeibah’s past may undermine his credibility.

“The Dbeibah candidacy is still under debate,” said Pusztai in a press interview. “He was the head of the Libyan investment and development holding company under Gaddafi, and he was allegedly involved in corruption, money laundering, financing of the Muslim Brotherhood, vote buying and so on.”

Vote buying is the charge currently hanging over his head.  His political future is in the balance.

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 14 March 2021, and in the on-line edition: 

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/can-libyas-prime-minister-survive-the-scandal-661891

Published in the Eurasia Review, 12 March 2021:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/12032021-can-libyas-prime-minister-survive-the-scandal-oped/

Published in the Jewish Business News, 12 March 2021:
https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2021/03/12/can-libyas-prime-minister-survive-the-scandal/

Is Biden content for Iran to conquer Yemen?

For the past decade Yemen has been torn apart by civil conflict, an extension of internecine strife that goes back much further.  The main protagonists in the current struggle are the Houthis, a fundamentalist Shia militia group heavily dependent on Iran, and a Saudi Arabia-led coalition of Sunni states determined to prevent Iran gaining complete control of Yemen, and thus vastly extending its power in the region. 

The battle has flowed this way and that over the past ten years, but the Houthis have gained more than they have lost.  They ‒ and that means the Iranian regime ‒ are now the de facto rulers of a broad swathe of Yemen, controlling much of the commerce through which humanitarian aid flows.  From time to time they give lip service to the idea of a negotiated truce or peace deal, but none has stuck.

The growing strength of the Houthis was demonstrated on February 25, when they targeted the city of Marib with a ballistic missile that landed in a residential area.  Marib is an important stronghold of the legitimate government, and houses the headquarters of the Yemeni Defense Ministry. The missile strike came as the Houthis launched their attack on the city.  On February 26 the Saudi-led coalition said that it had intercepted and destroyed two explosive-laden drones launched by the Houthis toward Saudi Arabia.

It is generally accepted that one key factor, among others, uniting Israel and the Arab signatories to the Abraham Accords is to frustrate Iran’s aspiration to dominate the Middle East.  The Iranian regime pursues this ambition unremittingly across the region, both directly by way of its own Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in Syria and Iraq, and through a variety of proxies like Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, extremist groups in Iraq and the Gulf, and in Yemen by way of the Houthis. 

The Biden administration’s reaction to the Iranian threat, and in particular to Iran’s increasingly powerful position in Yemen via its Houthi proxy, has been less than comforting to the Sunni Arab world and to Israel.  Rejecting the hard line adopted by Donald Trump, Biden has declared his intention to re-engage with Iran in an attempt to renew the nuclear deal.  Early approaches may have resulted in a standoff, but it is early days as yet.

The Biden White House is downgrading the effort led by Saudi Arabia to deny Iran a major role in Yemen’s future.  Instead it is giving first priority to relieving the humanitarian disaster facing the country.  On February 16, the Treasury Department formally revoked the Trump administration’s designation of the Houthis as a terror organization because, it was explained, maintaining it would exacerbate the country's humanitarian crisis.

At the same time the US urged the Houthi rebels to cease all military operations in the northern Yemen province of Marib and return to negotiations.

Referring to UN figures that estimate a million Yemenis have sought refuge in Marib to escape Houthi violence, US State Department spokesperson Ned Price said: "Marib is controlled by the legitimate government of Yemen. This assault will only increase the number of internally displaced persons and exacerbate the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, already home to the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophe."

Emphasizing that there is "no military solution," Price said: "The time to end this conflict is now."

Perhaps to emphasize the point, Biden has imposed a temporary freeze on sales of F-35 advanced fighter jets to the United Arab Emirates and precision-guided munitions to Saudi Arabia.

It can only be hoped that the full shape of Biden’s reconceived policy in Yemen and beyond has not yet been revealed.  As it stands, the US appears to be reverting to the failed assumptions of the Obama administration ‒ namely that appeasing the Iranian regime will somehow result in it complying with the norms of international conduct.  That approach certainly did not work over the eight years of the Obama administration, and it will not again.

What the world’s political leaders cannot, or will not, believe is that Iran has its own agenda.  It is pursuing domination of the Middle East and supports a widespread 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 to its purpose.  To renege on it would be to deny its very raison d’être.  Equally unshakeable is its intention to acquire nuclear weapons. 

Early in 2018 British born Martin Griffiths was appointed UN Special Envoy for Yemen.  Before the end of the year he succeeded in what was regarded as the near-impossible – he brought the two main protagonists in the Yemen conflict to the negotiating table. On 6 December 2018 delegations from the government of President Hadi and from the Houthi rebels sat down, facing each other. The atmosphere was far from hostile. Both sides appreciated the humanitarian disaster that had overtaken Yemen’s civilian population as a result of the conflict, and seemed willing to compromise on at least some of the key issues. 

Eventually these arrangements petered out, overtaken by renewed conflict.  But the fact that negotiations are possible should be the template on which US policy is designed.  UN Resolution 2216, which aims to establish democracy in a federally united Yemen, should be the basis.  This new effort will have to be backed by a UN peace-keeping force.  Through whatever means would be most effective – new sanctions if necessary – Iran must be deterred from supplying the Houthis with military hardware. Humanitarian aid must be given unfettered access to all parts of Yemen.

A lasting political deal would of course involve the end of the Saudi-led military operation, and probably a major financial commitment by Saudi Arabia to fund the rebuilding of the country. 

Finally the Houthis must be given the opportunity to choose. Do they wish to remain an outlawed militia permanently, or would they prefer to become a legitimate political party, able to contest parliamentary and presidential elections and participate in government? The price would be serious engagement in negotiations aimed at a peaceful transition to a political solution for a united Yemen, and perhaps a constitutional conference possibly leading to a form of federal constitution.

          Can Biden sponsor an initiative of this sort?  Or is he content to see a rampant Iran actually conquer Yemen?

Published in the Eurasia Review, 5 March 2021:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/05032021-is-biden-content-for-iran-to-conquer-yemen-oped/

Published in the Jewish Business News, 5 March 2021:
https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2021/03/05/is-biden-content-for-iran-to-conquer-yemen/

Published in the MPC Journal, 7 March 2021

https://mpc-journal.org/blog/2021/03/07/is-biden-content-for-iran-to-conquer-yemen/

Israel-Palestine: Thinking out of the box

This letter of mine appeared in the Jerusalem Post on 3 March 2021

          Neither of the March 2 articles on the Israel-Palestine situation (“How Palestinian elections will impact Israel” and “What Biden should do to advance Israel-Palestine peace”) acknowledge that:

          1. Hamas, ruling over two million Palestinians in the Gaza strip, is opposed to Israel’s very presence on what it regards as sacred Palestinian soil, or:

          2. Fatah shares that position, but is prepared to play a long game in its pursuit of an eventual Palestine “from the river to the sea”.

          Experience demonstrates that direct Israel- PA negotiations around variations of the two-state solution are ineffective. The reason is simple. Any PA leader signing a peace agreement with Israel is probably also signing his death warrant. PA President Mahmoud Abbas, like Yasser Arafat before him, took negotiations to the wire, but dared not sign a deal that acknowledges Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. The political backlash would have been unmanageable.

          A sovereign Palestine within something like the pre-1967 lines would be economically unstable and vulnerable to a Hamas takeover, by elections or military action. Nor would it be able to resist infiltration by some other Iran-supported fundamentalist group. The PA itself must be aware of this. Israel and Jordan are. Israel has no desire to have an Islamist enemy ensconced in the West Bank threatening Tel Aviv or Ben Gurion Airport from up close. Jordan doesn’t like the idea of a weak entity on its borders, unable to defend itself against a determined Iran-supported actor.

          Out-of-the-box thinking is called for. The answer could lie in a confederate structure embodying Jordan, Israel and a newly sovereign Palestine. The Israel Defense Forces would act in concert with the defence forces of the other parties to guarantee the security of Israel and that of the confederation as a whole. From the moment it came into legal existence, the confederation could make it clear that any subsequent armed opposition, from whatever source, including Hamas, would be disciplined and crushed from within.

          A confederation of three sovereign states, dedicated to providing hi-tech security and economic growth and prosperity for all its citizens – this is a configuration offering the possibility of a peaceful and thriving Middle East.

British Mandate Palestine reconceived as a three-state Confederation of Jordan-Israel-Palestine (JIP). In a confederation constituent states maintain their sovereign independence while amalgamating certain aspects of administration such as defence, infrastructure, and economic development.