Israel in Africa

This article appears in the Jerusalem Post of 24 February 2022

 

       At present Israel is in a rather equivocal position on the African political scene.  The issue cannot be resolved until 2023.

The problem revolves around the African Union (AU), which came into existence in 2002 replacing the rather ineffective Organization of African Unity (OAU), founded in 1963.  Israel, having built up cooperative relationships with dozens of African states over the years, had been granted observer status in the OAU.  When the African Union was set up, though, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi took the lead in persuading members to deny Israel its previous observer status.  

Since then Israel has tried several times to regain its old position, its efforts consistently frustrated by a group of members led by South Africa.  Finally Israeli diplomacy triumphed.  On July 22, 2021 the Chair of the AU Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat, announced that Israel would be admitted to the African Union as an observer state.

Faki’s decision, however, was not the end of the matter.  A number of members, including the Palestinians, who have enjoyed observer status in the AU for some years, objected on the grounds that the matter had not been put to the vote.  Several countries, led by South Africa and Algeria, began lobbying members in the hope of reversing the decision, and this group decided to seek a general vote at the annual AU summit in Addis Ababa in February 2022.

In a communiqué justifying his action, Faki pointed out that in granting Israel observer status he had acted entirely within the discretion granted him under the criteria establishing his office.  Moreover, he said his decision had been “taken on the basis of the recognition of Israel, and the reestablishment of diplomatic relations with Israel, by a majority greater than two-thirds of AU member states, and at the expressed request of many of those states."  In fact, only eleven AU members out of the 54 did not have full relations with Israel, and of those eleven, several enjoy various agreements or understandings with Israel.

The issue was indeed placed on the agenda of the 2022 AU summit, but the plan to persuade members to overturn Faki’s decision was frustrated when the newly elected Chair of the AU, Senegalese President Macky Sall, suspended the debate, later announcing that a special committee would be set up to deal with the issue. “It will be composed of eight heads of state and governments,” he said, “and will present its recommendations at the next summit."  Along with South Africa and Algeria, the committee will include Rwanda, Cameroon, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the next summit is scheduled for early 2023.

The foreign policy strategy most closely connected with Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben Gurion, has become known as the Alliance of the Periphery. It called for Israel to develop close strategic alliances with non-Arab Muslim states in order to counteract the then united opposition of Arab states to Israel’s very existence. 

Pursuing it, successive Israeli governments achieved a working relationship with a number of nations like the newly-independent Muslim republics of Central Asia such as Kazakhstan and Tajikistan.  Relationships were forged also with African states like Ethiopia and Nigeria.

         As prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu set about applying a renewed version of the Periphery Doctrine inside continental Africa, by-passing the apparently hopeless case of South Africa.  On July 4, 2016 Netanyahu landed in Uganda on a five-day. four-country trip inside the continent, also visiting Kenya, Rwanda and Ethiopia. He was accompanied by approximately 80 businesspeople from over 50 Israeli companies to help forge new commercial ties with African companies and countries.

          In Uganda an official ceremony was held at Entebbe to mark 40 years since the daring raid by Israeli commandos to release hostages held captive by then-President Idi Amin. Netanyahu then participated in an Israel-Kenya economic forum along with businessmen from both countries, dealing with issues like agriculture, water resources, communications and security. Later the leaders of seven East African states (Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Zambia and Tanzania) sat round a table with Netanyahu to discuss how to enhance cooperation with Israel in cyber defense, energy, agriculture, trade, diplomatic and related matters. To sweeten the discussion, Netanyahu was able to put on the table a financial assistance package of 50 million shekels ($13 million), approved by the Israeli government the previous week.

The following year Netanyahu visited Liberia to address the 15-member countries of the Economic Community of West African States – the first non-African head of state to do so. He appealed for political support in return for economic aid and technical assistance in sectors such as agriculture, water resources, energy and health.  He also lobbied for African Union observer status.

More recently Israel has made inroads in North Africa too. In 2019 it re-established relations with Chad, broken off in 1972.  Faki, the AU Commission chair, comes from Chad. Israel also has normalized relations with Morocco and Sudan through the Abraham Accords.  Unfortunately the deal that secured Morocco’s acceptance of normalization with Israel created an enemy in Algeria.  Then-US President Donald Trump recognized Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara which Algeria, along with the African Union, regards as an independent state, and its people as entitled to self-determination.

Thanks to the efforts of Israeli governments over the years, and of Netanyahu as prime minister in particular, Israel has established deep, strong and effective relationships with most of the member states of the African Union.  Yet almost all, friend or foe, are also supportive of the Palestinian aim to achieve an independent, sovereign state – the two-state solution.  The Abraham Accords prove that normalization with Israel is not incompatible with supporting Palestinian aspirations.  When it comes to the vote, will the members of the AU take the same position?

Published in the Jerusalem Post and Jerusalem Post on-line, 24 February 2022

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-698404

Published in Eurasia Review, 5 March 2022

https://www.eurasiareview.com/05032022-israel-in-africa-oped/

Published in the MPC Journal. 9 March 2022:

https://mpc-journal.org/israel-in-africa/

Published in Jewish Business News, 4 March 2022

https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2022/03/04/israel-in-africa-equivocal-position/

Challenging Iran’s struggle for power in Yemen

Published in the Jerusalem Post of 16 February 2022

Ever since the Arab Spring in 2011 Yemen has been torn apart by civil conflict, an extension of internecine strife that goes back much further.  The main, but far from the only, protagonists in the current struggle are the Houthis, a fundamentalist Shia militia group heavily dependent on Iranian support, 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 seven 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 swath of Yemen, controlling much of the commerce through which humanitarian aid flows.  The UN has made valiant efforts over the years to broker a peace deal, and from time to time the Houthis have given lip service to the idea, but none has stuck.

The militancy of the Houthis, backed as they are by Iranian military hardware, is growing – and to their shame they are making increasing use of children. 

A four-member panel of UN experts maintain in an annual report to the Security Council, circulated on January 22, that nearly 2,000 children recruited by the Houthis have died on the battlefield. They say the Houthis use summer camps and a mosque to recruit children and disseminate their ideology.

“The children are instructed to shout the Houthi slogan ‘death to America, death to Israel, curse the Jews, victory to Islam’,” say the experts. “In one camp, children as young as 7 were taught to clean weapons and evade rockets.”

The panel said it had received a list of 1,406 children recruited by the Houthis who died on the battlefield in 2020, and 562 child soldiers killed between January and May 2021.

For about a year the Houthis have been firing ballistic missiles into Saudi Arabia’s capital, Riyadh.  On January 24 they launched a missile at the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for the first time. On February 1 another was fired from Yemen as the Gulf state hosted President Isaac Herzog.   The UAE’s surface-to-air interceptors struck it down, but the US military also launched interceptor missiles in response to the attack.

Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said that the US military had used “Patriot interceptors to … [support] efforts by the armed forces of the UAE”, adding “I would say we are working quite closely with them.”

The intervention marks a welcome widening of US involvement in Yemen’s seven-year war between the Houthis and the Saudi Arabia-led military coalition, which includes the UAE.  Initially the Biden administration’s reaction to the Iranian threat, and in particular to Iran’s increasingly powerful position in Yemen via its Houthi proxy, was less than comforting to the Sunni Arab world and to Israel.  Intent on re-engaging with Iran in an attempt to renew the nuclear deal, Biden rejected the hard line adopted by Donald Trump.   The hardening of the US stance in Yemen may reflect Washington's confidence at achieving some sort of deal in the Vienna talks.

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. 

Saudi Arabia is attempting to deny Iran a major role in Yemen’s future. 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.  Equally unshakeable is its intention to acquire nuclear weapons. 

British born Martin Griffiths was serving as UN Special Envoy for Yemen in 2018.  He succeeded in bringing the two main protagonists to the negotiating table on December 6, 2018.  Eventually the talks were 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. 

          Any new effort would 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, perhaps a form of federal constitution.

          The US-Iran nuclear deal talks in Vienna seem close to an agreement. Is Biden still wedded to his original Iran-appeasement policy, has he moved sufficiently to sponsor an initiative of this sort, or is he content to see a rampant Iran actually conquer Yemen?

Published in the Jerusalem Post and Jerusalem Post on-line, 16 February 2022:

https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/iran-news/article-696612

Published in Eurasia Review, 19 February 2022:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/19022022-challenging-irans-struggle-for-power-in-yemen-oped/

Published in MPC Journal, 19 February 2022:

https://mpc-journal.org/challenging-irans-struggle-for-power-in-yemen/

Published in Jewish Business News, 18 February 2022:

https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2022/02/18/challenging-irans-struggle-for-power-in-yemen/

The Kurds are serving as the world's jailers

 Published in the Jerusalem Post of 11 February 2022

          It was on March 23, 2019 that the last remnant of Islamic State (IS) territory, the village of Baghuz, fell to the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).  It marked the decisive defeat of the militant theocracy that had once conquered and controlled huge areas of Iraq and Syria.  Tens of thousands of IS fighters and their families were rounded up and dispatched to more than a dozen prisons and displaced persons camps scattered across Rojava, the Kurdish-occupied area of north-eastern Syria.  And there up to 72,000 of them remain, to this day. 

Most of the captives are Syrians or Iraqis, but many are foreign nationals emanating from scores of different countries, few of which are prepared to repatriate them.  It suits the world to leave the Kurds running the camps and acting as prison guards.  Food, water, essential medical supplies and other basic facilities are provided by a range of humanitarian organizations, some under UN auspices.

The SDF is dependent on foreign aid to pay for prison operations. The US has provided training, uniforms and medical supplies to SDF forces running the prisons, and in 2020 the Pentagon provided some $1 million to pay for SDF guards. In February 2021, the British government announced it would fund an expansion of Gweiran prison in the north-eastern city of Hasakah, the largest facility for IS prisoners in Kurdish-controlled Syria.

The situation is highly unsatisfactory on a number of grounds. 

The Kurds were left holding the baby, as it were, simply because the detention facilities – many of them unsuitable for housing people for long periods – were in Kurdish areas.  They have been warning the West for years that they are struggling to cope.  They simply cannot continue indefinitely caring for tens of thousands of prisoners-of-war, especially with uncertain and insufficient funding.  The Kurds think it unfair that very few countries have agreed to take back their own nationals to face justice on charges of terrorism or the like.

Moreover, for years the Kurds have warned the West that the camps remain hotbeds of jihadist activity, and that outside them IS were beginning to regroup. It was known that plans were being hatched by the IS to storm the biggest prison camps and release some of the prisoners. On January 20 it happened.  IS staged a sophisticated jailbreak attack aimed at freeing thousands of the group’s fighters locked up in Gweiran prison which holds an estimated 4,000 people from dozens of countries. 

After six days of fierce conflict, the attempt failed.  British and US special forces helped Kurdish fighters reclaim the complex, and a siege of the prison ended with hundreds of jihadists surrendering.  A week later, on February 3, IS leader Abu Ibrahim al-Qurashi was dead following a US Special Forces raid on his hideout on the Syrian-Turkish border.   Best estimates of the death toll in the attempted prison breakout was 124 IS jihadists and prisoners, and 57 SDF soldiers and civilians. At least 700 children were detained at Gweiran, an unknown number of whom were killed during the operation.

“Reports that children have been killed or injured are tragic and outrageous,” said Save the Children’s Sonia Khush. “Responsibility…lies at the door of foreign governments who have thought that they can simply abandon their child nationals in Syria… All foreign children must be repatriated – with their families – without any further delay. The international community cannot have the blood of any of these children on their hands.”

Some governments are reluctant to act because many of the boys being held are alleged to have been drafted into the so-called “Cubs of the Caliphate”, a child army used by IS leaders as cannon fodder, or as saboteurs more easily able than adults to infiltrate civilian areas. “These young people were trained by IS for suicide attacks and other military operations,” said Farhad Shami, an SDF spokesman.

The UK, among other states, have claimed that it is often difficult, if not impossible, to assemble enough proof of jihadist activity to put these boys – or indeed their mothers and fathers – on trial in their home countries.  Simply to repatriate them without the evidence to charge them with acts of terrorism would be to admit highly dangerous individuals into society.  The US, Italy, Kazakhstan, Oman and Tunisia have repatriated small numbers of jihadists, but most European and Arab countries – where the majority of IS fighters come from - have balked at taking them back.

Apart from militants, the SDF is also holding roughly 65,000 women and children in the al Hol displaced persons camp.  Nearly a quarter of them, detained in an area of the camp known as the Annex, come from some 60 countries other than Syria or Iraq.  Few governments are willing to repatriate these women, who often remain committed supporters of IS.

On January 25, Human Rights Watch spokesperson, Letta Tayler, issued a statement about IS’s attempted prison break-out. 

“Recapturing the prison,” she said, “does not resolve the indefinite detention without due process of nearly 45,000 foreign IS suspects and family members, most of them young children, in deeply degrading, often inhumane, and life-threatening conditions in prisons and locked camps in northeast Syria. The IS assault should be a wake-up call to home countries that it is long past time for them to bring their nationals home for reintegration and rehabilitation and, as appropriate, investigation and prosecution. Holding men, women, and children in these conditions is unconscionable, unlawful, and denies victims justice for IS crimes.”

 She has a point.

Published in the Jerusalem Post and the Jerusalem Post on-line, 11 February 2022:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-696154

Published in Eurasia Review, 12 February 2022:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/12022022-the-worlds-jailers-oped/

Published in the MPC Journal, 12 February 2022:

https://mpc-journal.org/the-kurds-are-serving-as-the-worlds-jailers/

Published in Jewish Business News, 11 February 2022:

https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2022/02/11/the-worlds-jailers/

Israel libelled

This letter of mine appears in the Jerusalem Post, 7 February 2022

          Defamation by written or printed words, in other words libel, is a criminal offence in the UK.  In a 280-page document published on February 1, Amnesty International, a company registered in England and Wales, stated that Israel has “established and maintained an institutionalized…system of apartheid” directed against Palestinians.

          In short, the organization has libelled the State of Israel.

          English libel law permits individuals and companies to go to court to defend their reputations against the harm caused by false and defamatory publications.        A claimant must show that they have been identified in the publication, and that the publication was defamatory.

          The State of Israel should seek the remedy of British justice against the false claim that it is an apartheid state. It should charge Amnesty International in an English court with criminal libel.

          If the government balks at taking this action, surely there are organizations and individuals able and willing to defend the State of Israel, either in court or in other ways, against this monstrous accusation.

         A 280-page document, refuting Amnesty International’s charges point by point, would be a good start.

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-695688

Algeria’s last chance saloon

This article appeared in the Jerusalem Post of 2 February 2022

          In an effort to heal the long-lasting rift between the two main Palestinian political bodies, Fatah and Hamas, Algeria’s president, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, announced on December 8, 2021 that he planned to host a meeting of Palestinian political organizations.

          A Hamas spokesman told the media that Hamas was keen to attend the conference and benefit from the Algerians who "stand at the same distance" from all the Palestinian factions.

          Preparations for the conference have gone ahead, although at the time of writing an actual date had yet to be announced. Four Palestinian bodies have been invited in addition to Fatah and Hamas, namely Islamic Jihad, PFLP (the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine), DFLP (the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine), and PFLP-GC (the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command).

          By January 17 delegations from all six had arrived in Algiers for preliminary talks with officials.

          They face a hitherto insurmountable problem, for a fault line runs straight down the middle of Palestinian politics. The problem is exemplified by the feud between Hamas and Fatah. The struggle between them is not concerned with political objectives. Both bodies aspire to restore the whole of historic Mandate Palestine to Islamic rule. Their fundamental disagreement is over the strategy for achieving their common purpose.

          The Hamas organization – a sprig of the Muslim Brotherhood – came into being in 1987, soon after the start of the first intifada masterminded by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) under its Fatah leader Yasser Arafat.

Hamas regarded the PLO in general, and Arafat in particular, with a good deal of suspicion. It strongly opposed the PLO entering peace talks with Israel, and it utterly rejected the Oslo Accord agreements of 1993 and 1995, condemning Arafat outright.

          Hamas has no truck with the two-state solution. It has opposed all the efforts by Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas to gain international recognition for a state of Palestine comprising the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. Delineating a sovereign Palestine on only part of Mandate Palestine would inevitably legitimize Israel’s place on the other part.

          While this fundamental difference about the most effective route to reach their common objective lies at the heart of the Hamas-Fatah conflict, there are others. Both bodies are engaged in a battle for the hearts and minds of the Palestinian population, and Hamas makes no secret of its aspiration to replace Fatah as the governing body of the West Bank. Sometimes it chooses to acknowledge Abbas as Palestinian leader; sometimes it refuses to recognize him as PA president at all, on the grounds that his presidential mandate, granted in 2005, was for a four-year term which has long expired. Hamas has, moreover, consistently attempted to undermine his PA administration by forming militant cells in the West Bank aimed at launching attacks on Israel.

          With such fundamental differences on open display, sympathetic world leaders have attempted time and again to broker a reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah. Wikipedia lists no less than 14 attempts since 2005 to reconcile the two warring factions. All have proved unsuccessful.

          Perhaps the most hopeful was the “government of national unity” formed by agreement between Fatah and Hamas in 2014. It brought the peace negotiations then in progress between Israel and the PA to a shuddering halt.  Abbas announced the “historic reconciliation” a month before the talks were due to end, and appeared to imply that the inclusion of Hamas in a government of national unity would make no difference to the aim of achieving a sovereign state based on the two-state solution. But it was inconceivable that Hamas would sit round a cabinet table, with Abbas at its head, and agree to discuss how a sovereign Palestine might live side by side with an Israel finally recognized as a permanent presence in the region.

National unity lasted just twelve months. Nationwide Palestinian elections, promised as part of the deal, never took place.
The failure to deliver promised elections was also the issue that scuppered the most recent reconciliation effort. Then-President Trump's Israel-Palestine peace plan, launched in January 2020, met with universal disapproval on the Palestinian side. Abbas decided to coordinate the PA’s struggle against the plan with Hamas. In September 2020, Abbas held a joint press conference with Hamas leaders, confirming a new dialog aimed at reconciliation. Presidential and parliamentary elections leading to a unity government were announced for May 2021.

          Just days before they were due to take place, Abbas issued a presidential decree postponing them, claiming that his decision was due to an Israeli ban on Jerusalemites taking part in the polls. Some claimed it was because Hamas was likely to win the elections, or at least gain a substantial number of seats. Hamas condemned the postponement, and hit back with armed attacks and a bid for recognition as the true Palestinian champions.

          Against a background like this, the chances of the Algerian initiative yielding anything approaching a lasting reconciliation seem slim. Yet there is a new factor at play. The Abraham Accords demonstrate a recognition in the moderate Arab world of the benefits of normalization with Israel. A new Middle East is emerging, and the Palestinian issue is slipping down the world’s agenda. With every passing year the hopes of those who would overthrow the State of Israel recede further into the realms of fantasy.

          The Algerians have opened the doors of a last chance saloon. Can the hardline extremists within Hamas and the other Palestinian factions reconcile themselves – even with their fingers crossed and their private aspirations undimmed – to uniting with Fatah in seeking a realistic accommodation with Israel?

Published in the Jerusalem Post and the Jerusalem Post on-line, 2 February 2022:

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-695226

Published in Eurasia Review, 5 February 2022:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/05022022-algerias-last-chance-saloon-oped/

Published in the MPC Journal, 5 February 2022:

https://mpc-journal.org/algerias-last-chance-saloon/

Published in Jewish Business News, 4 February 2022:

https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2022/02/04/algerias-last-chance-saloon/