Turkey and Israel - are they to be friends?

          Diplomats the world over blinked in disbelief on Tuesday, July 13 when the news broke that the previous evening Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, had phoned Israel’s newly elected president, Isaac Herzog, to offer his congratulations.  The surprise was all the greater when it emerged that the call between the two presidents had lasted 40 minutes.

For the past thirteen years relations between Turkey and Israel have been – to say the least – rancorous.  As self-proclaimed champion of the Sunni Muslim world in general, and the Palestinian cause in particular, Erdogan has lost no opportunity to castigate, censure and berate Israel.  His ire was especially roused by Israel’s incursion into Gaza in 2008 in its effort to stop Hamas firing rockets indiscriminately into the country.  It culminated in his venomous attack on Israel’s then-president, Shimon Peres, at the Davos conference in January 2009.  The Mavi Marmara affair in 2010 – categorized by Erdogan as an armed Israeli attack on a humanitarian convoy, but about which much remains to be explained – soured relations between Turkey and Israel for six years.  Diplomatic ties were restored only in 2016.  Two years later, in 2018, when the US recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moved its embassy there from Tel Aviv, Turkey recalled its ambassador to Israel, and Israel followed suit.

   The landmark Abraham Accords were perceived by Turkey as an overwhelmingly negative development.  Erdogan condemned the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain for abandoning the Palestinian cause, and threatened to suspend diplomatic ties although he never quite got round to doing so. 

            Thirteen years of sour Turco-Israeli relations – and yet trade between the two nations  grew exponentially over the period, quite regardless of the political dissensions. In 2008 bilateral trade between Turkey and Israel stood at $3.4bn.  Year-on-year expansion followed, and by 2020 it had doubled to a record $6.8 bn.

            Moreover the thirteen lean years arose on the foundation of 50 years of friendship, cooperation and flourishing trade.  In March 1949 Turkey was the first Muslim country to recognize the State of Israel. Cooperation grew between the two nations.  Over the years trade and tourism boomed.  Before the end of the century the Israel Air Force was practising manoeuvres in Turkish airspace and Israeli technicians were modernizing Turkish combat jets. Projects involving collaboration in high-tech and in water sharing were developed. In May 2005 Turkey’s prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan paid an official visit to Israel.  In November 2007, four months after being elected President of Israel, Shimon Peres visited Turkey for three days and addressed its Grand National Assembly – perhaps the high point in Turco-Israeli relations.  They then unravelled pretty swiftly.

By the fall of 2020 Turkey’s international standing was 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 Biden had expressed his sympathy for the Kurds.  Even Trump had drawn 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. 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.  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, in December 2020 the EU actually imposed targeted sanctions on Turkey.

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. 

Erdogan and his advisers must have realized that a reassessment of tactics was called for, if he was to achieve his strategic objective of extending and stabilizing Turkey’s power base across the Middle East.  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 “rebooting” of relationships with one-time enemies, opponents or unfriendly states, including Israel. 

On December 9, 2020, 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 intelligence relations with Israel had “not stopped; they continue”, and that “our heart desires that we can move our relations with them to a better point.”

Israel treated the developments warily. The media reported that at a meeting held on December 30, Israel’s then-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 had been holding secret talks with Israeli officials about normalizing relations. 

Then came the Erdogan-Herzog phone conversation.  It occurred, commented the Atlantic Council, against a backdrop of a notable decrease in Turkey of the anti-Israel rhetoric usually spouted by the state’s elites, feeding conspiracy theories and antisemitism. Additionally, the Atlantic Council has noted the recent appearance of many news articles supporting the need for reconciliation. “These are important signs,” it comments, “that create a positive atmosphere, similar to the one that existed around the time of the 2016 normalization deal” [following the Mavi Marmara affair].

Official accounts of the presidential conversation report the leaders agreeing on the importance of ties between Israel and Turkey, and the great potential for cooperation in many fields, in particular energy, tourism and technology.  They agreed also to maintain contact and ongoing dialogue despite differences of opinion, “with the goal of making positive steps toward a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which will also contribute to the improvement of Israeli-Turkish relations.”

Is this the renewal of a beautiful Turco-Israeli friendship, or an astute move by Erdogan to further his political ambitions?  It could be both.  To reap the potential benefits and sidestep the potential hazards, Israel will need to proceed with caution. 

Published in the Jerusalem Post and the Jerusalem Post on-line, 27 July 2021:

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/turkey-and-israel-are-we-to-be-friends-opinion-674980

Published in Eurasia Review:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/23072021-turkey-and-israel-are-they-to-be-friends-oped/

Published in the MPC Journal:

https://mpc-journal.org/turkey-and-israel-are-they-to-be-friends/

Published in the Jewish Business News:

https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2021/07/23/turkey-and-israel-are-they-to-be-friends/

The Nile - a source of constant conflict. Can Israel help?

 

                                         The Nile in Egypt

On July 8, 2021 a disagreement that has been simmering for more than a decade between three African nations reached the floor of the UN Security Council.  The altercation concerns the vast dam being built by Ethiopia to create the largest hydroelectric generating plant in Africa.

The long-running dispute is between Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia.  It all revolves around the waters of the Nile.

Egypt’s social and economic dependence on the Nile has been well attested from ancient times.  It remains true today.  Fly over the country and, amid vast deserts, the river and its cultivated banks appear as a narrow green ribbon snaking its way to the north, where it widens into a delta before reaching the Mediterranean. The vast majority of Egypt’s 94 million people live adjacent to this fertile belt, along which its main cities from Aswan to Cairo to Alexandria cluster.  

The Nile that enters Egypt is fed from two sources down in the south which meet at Khartoum, Sudan’s capital.  The White Nile, which rises in the Great Lakes region of central Africa and flows through Tanzania, Lake Victoria, Uganda and the two Sudans, supplies Egypt with 15 percent of its water.  The Blue Nile, whose basin is in Ethiopia, provides 85 percent. 

It was in April 2011 that Ethiopia’s prime minister, Meles Zenawi, laid the foundation stone of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (or GERD as it is generally known).  With a planned capacity of 6.45 gigawatts (that is, the maximum power output it can achieve at any point in time), the dam will be the seventh largest hydroelectric power plant in the world.  Intended to relieve Ethiopia’s acute energy shortage, it will also allow for the export of electricity to neighboring countries, and some experts suggest the future involves integrating hydro, solar and wind power with the GERD operation in an East Africa-wide Green power strategy.  Almost incredibly, GERD’s reservoir is estimated to take up to 8 years to fill with water. In fact, with the dam now nearing completion, the reservoir began filling in 2020, and it is continuing to do so this year. 

Just before the Security Council considered the issue, Egypt and Sudan issued a statement accusing Ethiopia of acting unilaterally, and suggesting the dam was being filled deliberately.  But experts point out that filling up the GERD reservoir is not like filling up a bath. Ethiopia is not able to turn a tap on and off at will.  The reservoir behind the dam fills naturally during the Blue Nile's rainy season, which usually lasts from June until September, because more water is entering the dam site than the volume of water that can physically pass through the two open outlets in the dam wall.

Ethiopia says it will take up to six more years for the reservoir to fill to its maximum flood season capacity. At that point, the lake created will stretch back some 250km (155 miles) upstream.  The intention is that subsequently, between each flood season, the reservoir level will be lowered and the flow of the Blue Nile downstream enhanced.

                                   The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD)

Egypt’s near-total reliance on the Nile for water means it sees the GERD as potentially a threat to its very existence.  While the GERD reservoir is in the filling process, Egypt can compensate for any loss of water by releasing more from its own High Aswan Dam.  Its concern is about guaranteeing its supply once the GERD is fully operational.  Ethiopia is reluctant to be tied to an amount that it must release, especially in periods of drought.  Its priority is making sure there is enough water to operate what will become Africa’s  largest hydroelectric plant. 

At the Security Council on July 8 Egypt and Sudan urged the Council to approve a Tunisian-drafted resolution.  It required Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia to negotiate, under African Union auspices, a legally binding agreement that ensures Ethiopia’s ability to generate hydropower, “while preventing the inflicting of significant harm on the water security of downstream states.”

But the Council rejected the idea of involving itself in the dispute to that extent.  It supported mediation by the African Union, and urged Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia to resume earlier negotiations which had foundered. 

This whole dispute is bedevilled by the fact that Egypt, together with Sudan and Congo, has been at odds with ten other African countries over the issue of the Nile since 2010.  Back in 1929, in the colonial heyday, Britain signed a treaty which gave Egypt a virtual monopoly over the Nile waters, with veto rights over all upstream projects. Under the provisions of this treaty, Egypt later signed a deal with Sudan which guaranteed the two countries use of 90 percent of the Nile waters.

But the eight other nations that shared the basins of the two Niles at that time viewed Egypt’s historic dominance of the river as increasingly untenable.  All Egypt’s upstream neighbors were undergoing rapid socio-economic development, and these emerging regional powers began to challenge Egypt’s control of what each regarded as its river. 

The affected countries eventually got together, and after a decade of negotiations finally, in 2010, six of the Nile Basin countries signed the Cooperative Framework Agreement (CFA) –  Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and Burundi, to be joined in June 2012 by the newly-created South Sudan.  The CFA was meant to replace the 1929 colonial agreement that gave Egypt absolute rights over all the waters of the Nile, and provide a mechanism for cooperation among all ten member countries in managing the Nile basin water resources. However Egypt and Sudan rejected its reallocation of Nile water quotas, and Congo also refused to sign.  The impasse persists.

Whatever sort of arrangement is finally agreed about the GERD dispute, therefore, a large number of African nations through which the White or Blue Nile flows remain dissatisfied with the monopoly on their waters exercised by Egypt and Sudan.  This dispute, too, awaits resolution. 

Israel has so far avoided becoming involved in either altercation.  But Egypt has acted as honest broker in the Israel-Hamas conflict.  Perhaps there is a case for Israel offering to fulfil a similar role over the Nile.

Published in the Jerusalem Post and the Jerusalem Post on-line, 25 July 2021:

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/can-israel-help-tensions-surrounding-the-nile-opinion-674786

Published in the Eurasia Review:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/16072021-the-nile-a-source-of-constant-conflict-can-israel-help-oped/

Published in the Jewish Business News:

https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2021/07/16/the-nile-a-source-of-constant-conflict-can-israel-help/

Published in the MPC Journal:

https://mpc-journal.org/the-nile-a-source-of-constant-conflict-can-israel-help/

Afghanistan – graveyard for invaders. What happens when the US leaves?

This article appeared in the Jerusalem Post on 15 July 2021

 

          Afghanistan has once again lived up to its reputation as a political minefield and a military quagmire. In the last two hundred years Britain, the Soviet Union, and most recently the US (allied to NATO and a Western coalition) have all invaded. All have been forced to retire with little to show for their efforts.

          When US ground troops entered the country in October 2001, the Taliban controlled some 90 percent of Afghanistan. President George W Bush was determined to remove them and hunt down the al-Qaeda perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks on the States. By July 3, 2021, when the US military handed over their main Bagram airbase to Afghan government forces, the Taliban still controlled some 40 percent of the country, and was on the offensive. It had withstood the worst that the world’s greatest military power had been able to throw at it, and had emerged bloodied, but unbowed.

          Early in the campaign, former coalition commander US general Dan McNeill is reported to have said: “To do this properly, I need 500,000 men.” Coalition forces never numbered more than 130,000.

          So two decades spent by the coalition in intensive military action against the Taliban, in converting Afghan government forces into a disciplined and well-trained militia, and in establishing and supporting a democratic form of government based on free and fair elections – all have gone for nothing. It seems likely that a civil war will follow the final departure of the US military, a war that the Taliban stands every chance of winning.

          The last few weeks have seen the Taliban sweep across northern districts, leaving it in control of much of the border with Tajikistan. It has seized dozens of rural district centers. Down in the south, most of Helmand province is in its hands, and by early July it was at the gates of the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah. Capturing a US base in Wardak province, an hour from the nation’s capital, Kabul, it amassed large quantities of weapons and military vehicles, many labelled “Property of USA government”.

          Back in 2001 it was Bush and his Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, who masterminded the US invasion of Afghanistan. Rumsfeld passed away on June 29, 2021. In writing about him John Bolton, the former US national policy adviser, maintains that Rumsfeld believed that it is never American strength that is provocative, but American weakness. Bolton holds that total US military withdrawal from Afghanistan is just such a weakness.

          No one in the Pentagon, he asserts, seriously contends that Afghanistan’s civilian government will long survive the departure of the last allied forces. “A worse fate will come,” he writes “if, after the Taliban resumes control across Afghanistan, al Qaeda, ISIS and other terrorist groups again take sanctuary there, threatening the resumption of significant, anti-Western terrorist operations.”

          In fact ISIS, which emerged in Afghanistan in 2015, has maintained its presence in the country, even though the caliphate it proclaimed in Iraq and Syria has been swept away. It has built a stronghold in the north-eastern provinces. The local populations have been beaten into cowed submission. Beheadings and public executions have become commonplace. On July 1 John T Godfrey, the acting US special envoy, told reporters that the ISIS presence in Afghanistan remained a “serious threat”.

          Biden met Afghan president Ashraf Ghani on June 25 at the White House, where he asserted that, despite the pullout, US support for Afghanistan would be sustained. Accounts of the meeting do not specify the nature of the continued support envisaged by Biden, but reports in the media have suggested that an internal debate is under way in the Pentagon over what level of Taliban resurgence would amount to a national security threat to the US, and therefore justify military action – and, indeed, what sort of action would be possible. Airstrikes involving US aircraft or armed drones, may be justified, launched from bases outside the country.

          From the moment President Donald Trump took office in 2017, he pledged to put an end to the conflict and achieve ex-President Barack Obama’s aim of bringing the American forces back home. It took two years of secret back-channel negotiations before peace talks began in February 2019. Abdul Ghani Barada, the co-founder of the Taliban, was at the table.
                       

          This extraordinary arrangement between the world’s leading power and a hardline extremist Islamist movement 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.

          The deal that Trump eventually reached with the Taliban included, as the quid pro quo for the US withdrawal, an agreement by the Taliban to enter serious peace negotiations with the Afghan government, and also a pledge that it would never allow the regions it controlled to be used as a refuge by extremist groups like al-Qaeda or ISIS.

          Evacuating all US forces from Afghanistan was one of the few policies of his predecessor that Biden adopted, albeit with an extended deadline. Now the US element of the Trump-Taliban deal is close to realisation. Will the Taliban adhere to its part? That depends entirely on the Taliban’s end game.

          A possible scenario would see the Taliban continue its victorious campaign, regaining control of at least the 90 percent of the country it once held and dubbed the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, and then seeking talks with the Afghan government aimed at stabilizing the situation.

          On July 5 a spokesman for the Taliban, Zabihullah Mujahid, is reported as saying: "The peace talks and process will be accelerated in the coming days, and they are expected to enter an important stage. Naturally it will be about peace plans. Although we have the upper hand on the battlefield, we are very serious about talks and dialogue."

          On July 7 another Taliban spokesman, Suhail Shaheen, is reported to have said the Taliban plans to present a written peace proposal to the Afghan government very soon, possibly as early as August. On 10 July the London Daily Telegraph quotes him as saying: "We don't want to fight. We want a political resolution through political negotiations."

          "The peace talks and process will be accelerated in the coming days,” said Zabihullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesperson, “and they are expected to enter an important stage. Naturally it will be about peace plans. Although we have the upper hand on the battlefield, we are very serious about talks and dialogue."

          Afghanistan’s future is truly in the balance. If the Taliban honours its commitment to Trump and negotiates a settlement with the Afghan government, all might not be lost. If not, it looks as if the tragic loss of life over the past twenty years – nearly 7,000 American and NATO troops and contractors, and more than 47,000 civilians – and the vast expenditure by the US, estimated at more than $2 trillion, will have been expended in vain. The quagmire that is Afghanistan will have swallowed another victim.

Published in the Jerusalem Post and the Jerusalem Post online, 15 July 2021:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/afghanistan-graveyard-for-invaders-what-happens-after-the-us-leaves-673853

Published in the Eurasia Review, 9 July 2012:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/09072021-afghanistan-a-graveyard-for-invaders-but-what-follows-oped/

Published in the Jewish Business News, 9 July 2012:
https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2021/07/09/afghanistan-a-graveyard-for-invaders-but-what-follows/

Published in the MPC Journal, 20 July 2021:

https://mpc-journal.org/afghanistan-a-graveyard-for-invaders-what-happens-when-the-us-leaves/

Lebanon and Iran - breaking the bond

Lebanon is “hurtling toward total collapse”, according to one commentator.  The World Bank believes that the country’s financial and economic crisis is one of the severest the world has witnessed in the past 150 years.  A number of factors have contributed to Lebanon’s disastrous situation, but a major cause of its troubles is the dominant position that Iran has managed to acquire in the nation’s political life, by way of its proxy Hezbollah.  But now that Iran is undergoing a severe economic crisis of its own, a window of opportunity may have opened for its malign influence over Lebanon to be weakened, if not entirely eliminated.

Lebanon is on the verge of a political, economic and social catastrophe.  It has been without a government for eight months. Food and medicines are in short supply, electricity cuts last for much of the day, while people are queuing for hours at gas stations and, as they clash over who gets to fill their tank first, fist fights have turned into shootings.  Now criminal gangs are moving in to exploit the situation. A representative of the union for fuel distributors and gas stations in Lebanon said: “Individuals claiming to be in charge of security at gas stations are using extortion… The owners of over 140 gas stations are refusing to accept deliveries of gasoline because they have been exposed to extortion and beatings.”

On June 22 the acting administration raised the price of bread for the fifth time in a year.  The latest increase — 18 percent from the last raise in February — was the result of the decision to end subsidies on sugar and yeast, which both go up in price in consequence. 

On June 1 the World Bank issued a report on the rapidly deteriorating situation.  It believes that more than half of Lebanon‘s population may have been pushed below the poverty line.  While the official rate of exchange for one US dollar is 1,507 Lebanese pounds, the banks do not permit currency conversion or foreign fund transfers and so dollars are simply not available at the official rate.  On June 25 the rate on the black market was 16,450 Lebanese pounds.  The country’s gross domestic product, close to $55bn in 2018, plummeted to some $33bn last year.  Foreign currency reserves are at an all-time low.

The World Bank pulls no punches in its criticism of Lebanon’s political elite in which Hezbollah features so strongly.  It accuses them of deliberately failing to tackle the country’s many problems, which include the economic and financial crisis, the Covid pandemic and last year’s Port of Beirut explosion.  The inaction, says the report, is due to failure to agree on policy initiatives but also a continuing political consensus that defends “a bankrupt economic system, which benefited a few for so long”.

Following the explosion in Port Beirut in August 2020, Saad Hariri was named by the Lebanese parliament as prime minister designate, and charged with forming a new government.  So far, because of an ongoing dispute between him and President Michel Aoun over the composition of the new administration, he failed to do so.  On 17 July 2021 he stepped down.

Hariri wanted to assemble a technocrat cabinet dedicated to enacting the reforms long demanded by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and donor countries such as the US and France. In March he stormed out of a meeting with Aoun, telling reporters that the president had sent him a proposed list of ministers and asked him to sign off on them. Hariri had rejected the request as unconstitutional.  Aoun is a strong supporter of Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Shi’ite group that dominates Lebanese politics and underpins his presidency. According to Hariri, Aoun was pushing for a third of all cabinet seats for his Hezbollah allies and their supporters, which would give them veto power over government decisions.

The shoeing into power in Iran on June 18 of a hard-line extremist, Ebrahim Raisi, as its new president can be seen as a desperate effort by the ruling élite to shore up the power of a regime in economic freefall.  The value of the rial, the national currency, has halved over the past two years, inflation is running at 50 per cent and the country is experiencing mass unemployment. Popular protests are bursting out in major towns and cities all over Iran.

Hezbollah’s popularity among the Shia population owes much to the vast sums it has spent in its social and health programs.  The collapse of the Iranian economy means that the regime is no longer able to pay its Hezbollah proxy in dollars.  Its financial support is now provided in the rapidly depreciating Lebanese currency.

Bahaa Hariri, the brother of Lebanon’s designated prime minister Saad, is a billionaire businessman.  He is reported to believe that if Iran cannot continue with its payments, support for Hezbollah will quickly collapse. “Some die-hard supporters will maintain their allegiance to Hezbollah,” he is reported as saying, “but many others will no longer be prepared to support the movement if the payments stop.”  

One failing economy is attempting to support another while simultaneously trying to maintain the political status quo.  That is scarcely a sustainable situation.  If Iran’s deteriorating economic position results in Hezbollah losing power in Lebanon, this might provide the opportunity for Hariri to resume his effort to assemble his technocrat cabinet and institute the economic reforms necessary to pull the country back from the brink of disaster. 

Published in the Jerusalem Post and the Jerusalem Post on-line, 6 July 2021: 

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/lebanon-and-iran-breaking-the-bond-opinion-672963

Published in the Eurasia Review, 3 July 2021:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/03072021-lebanon-and-iran-breaking-the-bond-oped/

Published in the Jewish Business News, 2 July 2021:Pub
https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2021/07/02/lebanon-and-iran-breaking-the-bond/

Published in the MPC Journal, 20 July 2021:

https://mpc-journal.org/lebanon-and-iran-breaking-the-bond/