Hamas stands in the way of a two-state solution

This letter appears in the Daily Telegraph of 31 January 2023 

Sir

In your Leading Article (January 30) you say, quite correctly, that Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israeli government relies on the support of ultra-nationalists with no interest in a two-state solution. But a two-state solution is not the aim, either, of the factions comprising the Palestinian leadership.

Ever since 2007, when the extremist organization Hamas seized power in the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian people have been split in two. Hamas regards Israel as an interloper on Palestinian land and aims to overthrow it and gain control of the whole territory “from the river to the sea” – that is from the Jordan to the Mediterranean. Palestinians under Hamas’s control, or supporting the Hamas agenda, would never subscribe to a two-state solution, since one of the states would be Israel. World opinion has never faced up to the awkward truth that, in order to achieve a two-state solution, Hamas would first need to be disempowered.

Another uncomfortable fact is that even the more moderate elements within the Palestinian leadership share their ultimate aim with Hamas and differ only on the means to achieve it.

The Palestine Liberation Organisation under Yasser Arafat, and now under Mahmoud Abbas, is prepared to give lip-service to the two-state concept, but only as a stepping stone to the ultimate goal of gaining control of the whole of what was once Mandatory Palestine. Any Palestinian leader who actually signed a two-state agreement legitimising Israel’s right to exist would be instantly denounced as a traitor to the Palestinian cause.

Neville Teller

Published in the Daily Telegraph, 31 January 2023:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2023/01/31/letters-yet-another-health-secretary-looks-technology-save-nhs/
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Dirty tricks ahead of Turkey's elections

 

            The polls scheduled in Turkey for May 14, 2023 will combine the election of 600 members of the Grand National Assembly with the election of the President – his re-election, if Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s current president, has his way. Yet he is well aware that his standing within the nation is far from secure, and he and his ruling AKP party will be doing all they can in the interim to secure a favourable outcome.

While the Turkish electoral system itself remains notably trustworthy, the campaign environment has been consistently rigged ahead of polls and referenda by the AKP. Their machinations have not always been successful –­ evidence, it is generally believed, that the electoral system is robust enough to frustrate any attempt to rig the actual results.  The Turkish public appears to have confidence in the system, and turns out to vote in large numbers.

Under the current constitution Erdogan is entitled to a further five-year term.  His opponents, however, are only too aware that in power Erdogan has form in changing the constitution.  He has already revised the role of president and abolished the role of prime minister.  He has consolidated his authority by placing the country in a state of emergency over a long period, accruing vastly increased powers in his own hands. He has shut down more than 150 independent media outlets and jailed large numbers of journalists and opposition figures.

To contest the forthcoming elections three main electoral blocs have taken shape: the People’s Alliance, a grouping dominated by the AKP; the Table of Six, a loose assemblage of opposition parties led by the Republican People’s Party (CHP); and the Labor and Freedom Alliance, made up of six Kurdish parties led by the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP).

The AKP and its allies, accusing the HDP of having links with the banned Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), have legally challenged the party’s right to exist, and are seeking its dissolution.  In the last elections the HDP won nearly 12 percent of the national vote, and holds 56 seats in the 600-seat National Assembly.   The party was due to receive $29 million of public funding, in accordance with Turkish law that allows for partial funding to political parties that have received more than 7% of the popular vote in the previous election. 

On January 5, Turkey’s Constitutional Court decided to suspend the HDP’s access to the finance it was due until the petition submitted by the AKP to dissolve the party, currently before the court, is resolved. Turkey's chief prosecutor made his final case in court on January 10.

With the CHP’s very existence under attack, the future of the leading figure in Turkey’s second largest political grouping, the CHP, is also uncertain.

On December 14 a Turkish court sentenced the mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu, to jail for two years and seven months.
Imamoglu is the man who inflicted on Erdogan the greatest political defeat he ever suffered, and news of the sentence brought thousands of his supporters out on the streets in protest. 

In the municipal elections in 2019 the AKP lost political control to the main opposition party, the CHP, both in the capital, Ankara, and in the nation’s commercial center, Istanbul. In Istanbul the race for mayor descended into a neck and neck gallop to the winning post, and the final result gave CHP candidate, Imamoglu, a lead of 28,000 votes out of the more than 8 million votes cast.

Defeat in Ankara was bad enough, since the AKP had held power in the capital for a quarter century, but defeat in Istanbul, Turkey's largest city, hit Erdogan particularly hard.  It was as Istanbul’s mayor that he began his meteoric rise to power in the 1990s, and he is on record as saying: "whoever wins Istanbul, wins Turkey.”

The AKP appealed against the result, and petitioned for a rerun – a reaction that did not sit well with the electorate. In the new vote Imamoglu boosted his margin of victory 57-fold to win 54.2% of the vote against 45.0%. It was a record in the history of Istanbul local elections.

In a press release, issued in the heat of the political turmoil, Imamoglu referred to members of Turkey’s supreme election council as “fools”. That was enough to get him arraigned on a charge of insulting public officials, to be found guilty and sentenced to a hefty term in prison.  He has said that he will appeal, but if the appeals court upholds his conviction he will be debarred from holding any political office.  That would hand Erdogan a double win. Not only would it allow him to retake control of Istanbul, but it also would potentially prevent his strongest challenger from running in the June 2023 election.

If Imamoglu’s appeal succeeds, however, he becomes a potent electoral threat to Erdogan. Imamoglu manages to appeal to voters from across Turkish society, including the minority but crucial Kurdish groupings. He is from a secularist party, but is able to recite the Quran in public, attracting religious voters as well. In short he represents what Erdogan fears most – an opposition figure who can serve as a “big tent” candidate. If not stymied by an appeal court confirmation of his conviction, Imamoglu might just pull off his Istanbul achievement on the national stage.

The 2023 presidential election comes as Erdogan’s position in Turkey appears to have weakened, with polls suggesting he could lose to a strong contender. The opposition have yet to announce their candidate in the presidential election.  One name suggested was CHP leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu, but a recent public opinion poll indicated that Erdogan would defeat him in a straight vote.  According to most public surveys, though, Erdogan is now less popular than either Imamoglu or Ankara’s mayor, Mansur Yavas, both members of CHP.

          Erdogan’s popularity problem stems largely from the ongoing economic crisis. Turkey’s annual inflation rate has soared above 80 percent, and much of the electorate blame Erdogan.   Whether dubious pre-election efforts to ensure an AKP victory will be enough to overcome Turkey’s widespread economic and financial distress remains, for the present, an open question. 

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 17 January 2023:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-728730

Published in Eurasia Review, 27 January 2023:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/27012023-dirty-tricks-ahead-of-turkeys-elections-oped/

Published in the MPC Journal, 30 January 2023:

https://mpc-journal.org/dirty-tricks-ahead-of-turkeys-elections/

Published in Jewish Business News, 29 January 2023:
https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2023/01/29/dirty-tricks-ahead-of-turkeys-elections/

Yemen's peaceful future snatched away

 

Over the Christmas period charities in their TV appeals showed pictures of Yemeni babes-in-arms and toddlers with skeletal limbs and lifeless eyes literally dying of starvation.

Yemen remains one of the largest humanitarian crises in the world. After eight years of conflict around 23.4 million people are in need of assistance, including almost 13 million children. By late 2022, Yemen’s already dire hunger crisis was teetering on the brink of outright catastrophe. Around 2.2 million children under the age of 5 were experiencing starvation-induced wasting, more than 500,000 of whom from severe wasting.

From April until October 2022 there had been real hope of an end to the conflict.  A truce between the Houthis and the recognized government had been painstakingly put together by UN Special Envoy Hans Grundberg. It was extended twice, resulting in the longest period of stability in Yemen since the start of its civil war in 2014.  On October 2 that possibility was extinguished, when the Houthis refused to renew it.

The truce was always a fragile arrangement, and by the time the current extension came to an end, the situation had become too unstable to sustain another.  Violations of the ceasefire were on the increase, talks aimed at reopening local roads had stalled, and there was no agreement on how to meet the salaries of public employees, many of whom had not been properly compensated for years.  In the hours leading up to the deadline, Houthi military spokesman, Yahya Saree, threatened private oil companies still working in the country with seizure of their facilities if they did not leave, later tweeting that the fossil fuels belong to the people of Yemen and could be used to pay public servants’ salaries.

On October 2, the UN formally announced that the truce had not been renewed.

There are two main obstacles in the way of a permanent peaceful settlement in Yemen:  the Houthis, supported by sophisticated Iranian weaponry, are feeling increasingly empowered, and the coalition fighting them is riven by internal conflict.

It was in the early days of the truce that Yemen’s interim president, Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, transferred his powers to an eight-member Presidential Leadership Council, which was sworn in on April 17. The Council is led by Rashad Al-Alimi, who was accorded wide-ranging powers, and includes Aidrous al-Zubaidi, the head of the separatist Southern Transitional Council.

This arrangement amalgamates the anti-Houthi coalition, but at the same time consolidates the split in it.  The southern Yemeni provinces are seeking autonomy, or even total secession, from the acknowledged Yemeni government.  In August armed groups, supported by the United Arab Emirates, seized vital southern oil and gas fields controlled by supposed allies within the Saudi-led coalition. Clashes between them and other forces from within the alliance have killed dozens.

On October 13, with the ceasefire at an end, Grundberg reported back to the UN Security Council. He explained that since the end of the truce he had continued his “relentless efforts to engage the parties, as well as regional and international partners, on options for the renewal of the truce.  I personally believe,” he said, “that there is still a possibility for the parties to come to an agreement.”

Given current circumstances, that possibility seems remote.  Yemen has been plunged into a new uncertainty and a heightened risk of war.  Houthi military spokesman, Yahya Saree, is reported as saying the group is ready for another round of fighting, and civilian deaths and injuries from sniper attacks and shelling have continued.  

On October 21 Yemen's government said its forces had intercepted armed Iranian drones, launched by the Houthi militia at the oil tanker Nissos as it prepared to dock at the al-Dubba oil terminal.  Nissos was scheduled to load 2 million barrels of crude oil.  In the event, the drones were intercepted in flight, and neither terminal nor tanker was damaged.

            The Houthi movement, which controls a large segment of western Yemen, described the attack both as a warning, and as designed to prevent the vessel from "smuggling" crude oil from the port.  A Houthi-issued statement warned all oil companies “to comply fully with the decisions of the authorities in Sanaa and avoid contributing to the looting of Yemeni resources.”  Sanaa is Yemen’s capital, seized by the Houthis in 2014, and held by them ever since.

A few days later the UN told the media: “The members of the Security Council strongly condemned the Houthi terrorist drone attacks on 21 October…as a serious threat to the peace process and stability of Yemen… and called on the Houthis to immediately cease such attacks…and engage constructively with the efforts to renew the truce. They reiterated their support for UN Special Envoy Hans Grundberg in his efforts towards a negotiated, inclusive and Yemeni-led political settlement.”

. The six months of the truce, from April to October 2022, now appears to have been a brief breathing space in the midst of an unending conflict whose main victims are the hapless people of Yemen.  While Iran continues to supply weapons of ever-increasing sophistication, and the Houthis believe they have a chance of overthrowing the government and taking over the whole of Yemen, pleas to them to negotiate another ceasefire seem doomed to fall on deaf ears.  Meanwhile Yemen’s hopes of a peaceful future recede into the far distance.

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 2 January 2023:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-726382

Published in Eurasia Review, 13 January 2023:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/13012023-yemens-peaceful-future-snatched-away-oped/

Published in the MPC Journal, 21 January 2023:

https://mpc-journal.org/yemens-peaceful-future-snatched-away/

Rishi Sunak, Britain’s new prime minister, is Israel’s friend

This article appears in the Jerusalem Report, issue dated January 23, 2023

          It was on 14 May 1948 that David Ben-Gurion, then head of the Jewish Agency, proclaimed the birth of the State of Israel. That date in the Jewish calendar was 5 Iyar.  So Israel’s Yom Ha’Atzmaut is celebrated annually on 5 Iyar, which rarely coincides with 14 May in the civil calendar. In fact the two dates have come together only twice in the 75 years since 1948. In 2023 Iyar 5 falls on 26 April, and 14 May is nearly three weeks away. So it looks as though Israel is in for an extended period of celebration this year – which will be highly appropriate, since 2023 marks Israel’s 75th birthday.

        Speaking at a high-powered luncheon in London on 12 December 2022, Rishi Sunak, Britain’s prime minister, announced that he intends to visit Israel to join in the celebrations.  The luncheon, an annual event sponsored by the Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI), was attended by three former UK prime ministers – Theresa May, Boris Johnson, and Liz Truss – as well as Israel’s ambassador to the UK, Tzipi Hotovely, Britain’s Chief Rabbi and a host of eminent figures in the political and Anglo-Jewish worlds.

   Sunak took the opportunity to make another announcement of equal significance.  The UK, he declared, would be voting against a certain forthcoming resolution in the UN General Assembly. On 11 November a UN Special Committee voted in favour of requesting the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to provide a judicial opinion about whether Israel’s 55-year occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem constitutes de facto annexation. He was as good as his word when the resolution came before the General Assembly on 30 December.  The UK joined the other 25 nations which voted against it, including the US, Canada, Australia and eight of the27 EU countries.   Although 53 nations abstained and 27 were absent, it passed with the support of 87 nations, and will move to the ICJ in The Hague.

Palestinian factions, including Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, condemned Sunak's position.  But his decision to move the UK from abstaining in the vote to positive opposition is entirely in line with his declared position in general regarding Israel and its interests. 

In a letter to the CFI on 30 November Sunak reiterated his “dedication to Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people… As a proud friend of Israel,” he continued, “I will fight very hard for the security of people in Israel, and to continue the UK’s determined efforts to end the bias against Israel. This includes standing up to Iranian hostility and their pursuit of nuclear weapons. Iran’s nuclear escalation is threatening international security and undermining the global non-proliferation system. The UK will continue working with Israel and all our allies to prevent Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon.”

Regarding the Abraham Accords, which he regards as “one of the greatest achievements in the history of diplomacy in the Middle East”, he made a positive commitment so far unmatched by any other world statesman. The UK, he said, “will continue to do all it can to leverage our strong ties with other Gulf states to expand the number of signatories to the agreement and enhance the already blossoming opportunities opened up by these ground-breaking agreements.”

A new opportunity-rich UK-Israel Free Trade Agreement (FTA) is also in the offing.

Back in November 2021, when Yair Lapid was Israel’s foreign minister, he went over to the UK and met Liz Truss, then UK foreign secretary.  They got along famously, and jointly signed a UK-Israel agreement intended to lead the way to a new FTA.

Trade relations between the UK and Israel had been blossoming ever since David Cameron became prime minister in 2010.  Under Cameron’s auspices, and with willing cooperation from then prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the highly innovative UK-Israel Tech Hub was set up.  Based in the British Embassy in Tel Aviv, it was intended to be a proactive partnership, fostering hi-tech cooperation between the two nations.  Nothing of the kind had ever been attempted before by the British government.

          It has succeeded beyond all expectations. In the year ending June 2022, total trade between the UK and Israel was £6.1 billion ($7.4 billion), an increase of 33.1% or £1.5 billion ($1.8 billion) from the same period in 2021. The rapid expansion of UK-Israel trade over the last decade has closely followed Israel’s emergence on the world scene as a global leader in high tech.

Meanwhile with a new UK-Israel FTA in mind, Britain’s then International Trade Secretary, Anne-Marie Trevelyan, visited Israel early in 2022, and followed this up by meeting with Israel’s ambassador to the UK, Tzipi Hotovely, to launch negotiations for the new “innovation focused” FTA.

To accompany the initiative, the government issued a 40-page document explaining the strategic approach to the proposed new FTA.  “The UK is proud of its deep and historic relationship with Israel,” it declares.  “As open, innovative and thriving economies, the UK and Israel are close allies and strategic partners... But there is scope to go further.”

It goes on to explain: “Israel’s economy is growing rapidly, with its service sector growing by 45% over the last 10 years. A new FTA will allow us to take advantage of this growth, generating ever more opportunities for UK firms to export their goods and services. Upgrading our trade deal with Israel will help unlock a stronger, more advanced partnership. The new deal will play to our strengths, reflecting the realities of trading in the 21st century and allowing us to take advantage of future innovations.”

The benefits to Israel are equally real.  As well as encouraging mutual investments, the new FTA will provide Israeli companies with access to UK government and public projects.

In his letter to the members of the CFI, Rishi Sunak committed himself to seeing the FTA to its conclusion.  “I am determined to further strengthen the breadth and depth of our bilateral relationship by championing a UK Israel Free Trade Agreement,” he wrote, continuing: “This includes my commitment to the 2019 Conservative manifesto pledge to combat Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) policies with legislation.“

He made one final commitment.  The proposal to build a major Holocaust Memorial and Learning Center in central London was approved by Parliament in 2015.  Several public inquiries later, objections to its proposed location were finally put to rest early in 2021.  Even so, the project continued to languish because of planning delays, and finally members of parliament approached the National Audit Office (NAO) requesting an in-depth examination of how effectively the enterprise would be managed.  In its report, delivered in July 2022, the NAO pinpointed certain weaknesses in the proposed management arrangements and indicated how the government department concerned was proposing to deal with them.

In his letter to the CFI Sunak stood firmly behind seeing the project completed.  He wrote: “As Chancellor I committed to making the Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre free to visit in perpetuity, and it is important that the Memorial is built in Victoria Tower Gardens as soon as possible – a fitting memorial that will send a powerful signal of the importance that we attach to remembering the Holocaust and learning the lessons of the past.”

Sunak’s many remarks in support of Israel – and also of the UK’s Jewish community – are so clear and unequivocal that he must be accounted a true friend.  There is, though, possibly a cloud on the horizon.  Sunak himself, as well as his Conservative predecessors over the past thirteen years, base their warm feelings toward Israel on their dealings with the center-right coalition administrations led by Netanyahu, and those of the center-left headed by Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid.  Netanyahu’s incoming coalition administration incorporates elements of the extreme right.  Would the current close UK-Israel relationship survive the introduction of such policies by new ministers? 

On 15 December Netanyahu gave a wide-ranging interview to a group of media journalists at Al Arabiya, the Arabic news channel based in Dubai.  When queried about the possible impact his coalition partners might have on his government’s policies, he responded: “I will govern and I will lead, and I will navigate this government.  The other parties are joining me; I’m not joining them.  Remember Likud is one half of this coalition.  The other parties are, some of them, one-quarter, one-fifth the size of Likud.  They’re joining us.   They will follow my policy.”

If Netanyahu is truly able to restrain his ministers from implementing the sort of extremist policies that some of them espouse, then the close UK-Israeli relationship built up over the years should be safe.

Published on the Jerusalem Post website, 13 January 2023:
https://www.jpost.com/jerusalem-report/article-728330

Israel on the alert

On the morning of Tuesday, December 20, missiles fired from fighter jets destroyed several weapons storage facilities and other infrastructure belonging to Iran’s local proxies in the vicinity of Damascus airport.  According to Al Arabiya TV, an anti-aircraft battery positioned near the airport just after the landing of an Iranian plane was also struck.  The Syrian authorities hold the Israel Defense Forces responsible for the attack.

Later that same day a Hezbollah drone attempted to enter Israeli airspace from Lebanon.  The IDF shot it down.  It was intercepted near the moshav of Zar’it (population around 250), which is located close to the Lebanese border in Upper Galilee.  The drone was identified as a quadcopter, a small device with four rotors.

This was the latest in a recent spate of provocative anti-Israel actions promoted, if not initiated, by Iran. On November 9, for example, the Wall Street Journal reported that a convoy believed to have been smuggling Iranian weapons into Syria had been hit by Israel. According to the report the strike, near the Syrian border town of Abu Kamal, destroyed several vehicles. There were at least 10 casualties.

Israeli sources usually refrain from acknowledging the counter-measures it takes, but on December 14 Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, IDF Chief of Staff, appeared to confirm this particular operation. Speaking at Reichman University in Herzliya, Kochavi referred to both Israeli intelligence and its strike capabilities.  He said, “We could have not known, a number of weeks ago, about the Syrian convoy moving from Iraq to Syria. We could have not known what was in there. We could have not known that among 25 trucks, this is the truck—truck number eight—that is the truck with the weapons.”

And even knowing, he continued, “We have to send the pilots. They have to know how to evade surface-to-air missiles. Make no mistake: There are operations in which 30, 40 – at peak times, 70 – surface-to-air missiles are fired at them during sorties. They have to strike, hit, come back, and they have to, in some of the attacks, avoid killing those who should not be killed. Those are very advanced capabilities.”

Recently Hezbollah operatives have been increasingly active on the Lebanon-Israel border.  They have set up dozens of lookout posts, increased their patrols, and openly monitor and document Israeli troop movements.  Hezbollah’s use of Iran-supplied drones has increased over the last few months. In the summer drones were dispatched to film Israel’s off shore gas rig, prior to the Israel-Lebanese maritime agreement. They were destroyed by the IDF.

Hezbollah is also continuing efforts to strengthen its presence in Syria. Earlier in December it was reported that the IDF attacked a radar site belonging to the Syrian military at Tal Qalib.  The next day the Israeli Air Force dropped leaflets in the Quneitra area of south-western Syria, warning Syrian soldiers against working with Hezbollah.

“The continued presence of Hezbollah in the Syrian site of Tal Qalib,” they read, “and cooperating with them will go badly for you. The presence of Hezbollah in the region has brought you humiliation, and you are paying the price for that.”

The effort to contain, or diminish, Iran’s anti-Israel efforts has spilled over to social media.  The respected Al-Monitor website recently reported that posts on Twitter from various sources claimed that Israel has the names of 63 pilots employed at the Iranian Mahan airline who are involved in flying weapons from Tehran to Beirut. The tweets promised to post the pilots’ names and photos soon. There was no indication of what action, if any, might follow.

Iran is engaged in a determined effort to smuggle advanced weapons by air to various Syrian airports, and also by land through Iraq and Syria, to Hezbollah in Lebanon.  Israel has been waging an equally determined campaign over the past decade to frustrate Iran’s intentions, which are clearly aimed at arming Hezbollah in preparation for an eventual conflict with Israel.

This campaign took a new turn on December 10 when rumours emerged that Iran was planning to launch an aerial smuggling route from Tehran to Beirut using civilian flights.  Meraj Airlines, operated by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), started direct flights from Tehran to Beirut in mid-November. This corridor would reportedly complement or replace the arms smuggling to Hezbollah carried out in recent years through Syria, shipments that Israel is believed to have targeted repeatedly.

Israel must view Hezbollah’s growing precision missile arsenal as a major strategic threat, on a par with Iran’s nuclear program. Indeed, if Iran eventually developed a nuclear capability, there would be nothing to prevent it arming its proxies similarly. The London-based Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper reported earlier in December that Israel had formally warned Lebanon’s government that it would consider bombing Beirut airport if it serves as a destination for weapons smuggling from Iran.

The implications of such an attack, were it ever carried out, are incalculable.  The mere threat may be sufficient to deter any attempt by Lebanon’s Hezbollah-dominated administration from using civilian flights as a new route for smuggling in Iranian arms.

As long as Iran is intent on pursuing its obsessional anti-Israel policies, Israel’s response must continue to be deterrence by every means, including the destruction of weaponry clearly intended to turn Syria into an Iranian armory, or to boost Hezbollah’s military capacity.  For deterrence to remain effective, Israel has to enhance its world-class intelligence capabilities even further.  It needs also to take to heart the well-known motto of the Scouting movement: “Be prepared”.  This is the only way to thwart the enemy’s malign intentions without resorting to all-out conflict.

Published in the Jerusalem Post, and in the Jerusalem Post online as "Hezbollah is as big a threat to Israel as Iran's nuclear program" on 28 December 2022:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-725964

Published in Eurasia Review as "The war between wars", 6 January 2023:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/06012023-the-war-between-wars-oped/

Published in the MPC Journal as "The war between wars", 11 January 2023:

https://mpc-journal.org/the-war-between-wars/

Published in Jewish Business News as "Truck Number Eight", 6 January 2023:

https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2023/01/06/truck-number-eight/

post.com/opinion/article-725964

Turkey and Israel in green energy partnership

 

   The tentative rapprochement with Israel, initiated by Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Christmas Day 2020 has resulted in a major environmental achievement.  On December 9, 2022 it was announced that an agreement has been signed for the world’s largest-ever wave power plant to be built by the Israeli company Eco Wave Power (EWP) in the Turkish port of Ordu on the Black Sea coast. EWP, which was founded in Tel Aviv in 2011, has developed smart and cost-efficient technology for turning ocean waves into green electricity.

The Oren Ordu Enerji company will assign nine potentially suitable breakwaters to EWP for a period of 25 years, while EWP will be responsible for constructing and commissioning power plants and selling the generated electricity in accordance with a production quota to be determined for the site.

            The $150 million project functions by connecting an array of steel floats to an onshore generator by way of an underwater umbilical pipeline. The floats are hinged to piston-equipped arms that pump in time with the rise and fall of incoming waves.  The plant, which will eventually generate 77 megawatts (MW), will be preceded by a 4MW pilot.

            Inna Braverman, head of EWP said: “This landmark agreement… will allow us to provide clean electricity from Turkish waves for the very first time.”

Inna Braverman, an Israeli entrepreneur and businesswoman, was born in Ukraine and came with her family to Israel at the age of 3. She founded Eco Wave Power aged only 24, and under her leadership the company installed its first grid-connected wave energy array in Gibraltar in 2016.  EWP became the first Israeli company ever to be listed onNasdaq Stockholm.  She is the winner of the UN “Global Climate Action Award” among many others, and in June received an honorary fellowship from the University of Haifa, her alma mater.

Unlike the other green energy sources, namely solar and wind power, waves are not only zero-carbon but continuous. The oceans are in constant motion.  As King Canute is reputed to have discovered, nothing can stop the sea. Unfortunately the cost of electricity generated by wave power, currently varying between 60 cents per kilowatt hour to as much as a dollar, is too high to be commercially viable.  However, the costs have always been predicted to fall substantially, provided more research and development money is put into the technology. That process now seems to be under way. Aptly, the tide is turning.

Turkey’s relationship with Israel too, heralded by Erdogan’s press conference on December 25, 2020, has been changing for the better. For the previous thirteen years relations between Turkey and Israel had been – to say the least – rancorous.  As self-proclaimed champion of the Sunni Muslim world in general, and the Palestinian cause in particular, Erdogan 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.

 All of which explains why Erdogan’s comments in December 2020 caught the world by surprise. Among other conciliatory remarks, he declared that “our heart desires that we can move our relations with [Israel] to a better point.”

The reason for Erdogan’s change of direction has remained a matter of speculation, but Middle East watchers soon began to notice a marked decline in anti-Israel rhetoric.  Then on July 13, 2021 the media reported the unexpected news that 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.

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. Diplomatic relations, suspended in 2018, were restored later in 2021. Israel’s ambassador to Turkey was appointed in September, to be followed by Turkey’s ambassador to Israel in November.

This year has seen several Israeli ministers visiting Turkey, their way led by President Herzog, who was hosted by Erdogan in March. On November 17, as soon as it was clear that Benjamin Netanyahu had emerged as the winner of Israel’s general election, Erdogan was on the phone to offer his congratulations. The two are reported to have agreed to work together to bring about “a new era” in Ankara-Jerusalem ties.

Now comes the news of this ambitious green energy collaboration, the largest wave power plant in the world.  The hope is that this Turco-Israeli enterprise will lead the way to freeing the enormous potential, currently locked up in the world’s oceans, for generating vast quantities of carbon-free, environmentally safe electric power.

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 20 December 2022:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-725308

Published in the Eurasia Review, 30 December 2022:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/30122022-turkey-and-israel-in-green-energy-partnership-oped/

Published in the MPC Journal, 2 January 2023:

https://mpc-journal.org/turkey-and-israel-in-green-energy-partnership/

Published in Jewish Business News, 30 December 2022:

https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2022/12/30/turkey-and-israel-in-green-energy-partnership/