Can the Palestinian Authority survive?

          

          The Palestinian Authority (PA) is in a parlous state. Its standing with the Palestinian population has sunk to new low levels, while it has lost authority to more extremist groups in large parts of the West Bank. Voices from within Israel’s defense and security establishment have been warning for months that if the PA were to collapse, the resulting power vacuum in the West Bank would almost certainly be filled by extremist groups like Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) that would present Israel with much greater problems than it faces at the moment.

It was doubtless this consideration that led prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's security cabinet on July 9 to agree that Israel would strive to shore up the crumbling PA.  The decision, which did not sit easily with the views of his far-right coalition partners – finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, and national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir – stated: “…Israel will act to prevent the collapse of the Palestinian Authority, while demanding that it cease its anti-Israel activity in the international legal-diplomatic arena, the incitement in its media and education system, the payments to the families of terrorists and murderers, and the illegal construction in Area C” (that it, the portion of the West Bank under full Israeli control).

The reference to anti-Israel activity in the international legal-diplomatic arena concerns the PA’s request to the International Court of Justice earlier this year to rule on the legality of the Israeli presence in the West Bank. Israel’s punitive measures in response included withholding $40 million in tax revenue, and diverting it to Israeli victims of Palestinian terrorism.

          The PA is a child of the first Oslo Accord.  In September 1993 Yasser Arafat, then head of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), agreed to a new division of the West Bank into three areas designated A, B and C.   Area A would be wholly administered by a new body, to be called the Palestinian Authority under the aegis of the PLO, and Area B partially administered by the PA.  This would be a temporary five year arrangement, giving time for a final status agreement to be concluded between Israel and the Palestinians.

 Those five years have stretched to thirty, all efforts to reach a final settlement have failed, and the interim Oslo arrangement has ossified into an uneasy semi-permanent situation which satisfies neither Israel nor the Palestinians.  Meanwhile the PA has seen its popularity shrink amid allegations of graft, incompetence and widely hated security cooperation arrangements with Israel.

            It is not widely known that within the Palestinian territories an organization exists wholly engaged in fighting corruption.  Founded in 2000, the Coalition for Accountability and Integrity publishes an annual report about the state of integrity and corruption in the territories under PA administration.  Its report on the situation in 2022 appeared recently, and it pulled no punches.  Among the cases of suspected corruption reported to the organization in 2022 were:  forgery, abuse of power, nepotism, embezzlement, bribery, non-disclosure of conflicts of interest, complacency in performing public duties, occupational exploitation, illicit gain, abuse of trust and money laundering.

            The report castigates both the PA in the West Bank and Hamas in the Gaza Strip for restricting human rights and abuse of power.  The PA president is specifically accused of exceeding his authority in making high-level appointments to supporters of the ruling power, while he and other senior officials are charged with ignoring the requirement to disclose conflicts of interest and the rules on receiving gifts.

            The full facts concerning rampant corruption within the PA may not be in the public domain, but the Palestinian population is well aware of the general atmosphere of sleaze that surrounds the upper echelons of the PA, from the president down. 

            The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research is a well-regarded organization that conducts regular polls of Palestinian opinion.  The results of its survey in the second quarter of 2023 showed a decline in the popularity of Fatah and President Mahmoud Abbas.   For some years the polls have recorded a demand for Abbas to resign. In this survey it was greater than ever, reaching 80% of those polled.

            The PA's standing is also worsening. The collaboration between the PA  and the Israeli security forces in combatting terrorist activity is unpopular with the Palestinian people, and half those polled said that the collapse or dissolution of the PA would serve the Palestinian interest. No less than 63% believe that the PA’s continued existence is in Israel's interest, an increase by six percentage points in three months.

            Which may explain why Netanyahu’s offer of support apparently left the PA cold.  The organization had to maintain its street cred.  On July 10 its prime minister, Mohammed Shtayyeh, rejected the Israeli decision to extend funds to the PA and ease travel and security measures.  The strings attached, which called on the PA to end its anti-Israel activities were, he maintained, unacceptable.

          “The money withheld by Israel,” said Shtayyeh, “is our money, and Israel must transfer it to us without extortion or conditions.”

A report on July 11 by the well-respected news agency The Media Line quotes Dr. Omer Zanany, director of the Israeli-Palestinian Peacemaking Program at Mitvim, the Israeli Institute for Regional Foreign Policies.  He maintains that Netanyahu’s gesture initiative “comes from immense pressure from the defense establishment, which wants to strengthen the PA in order to take the pressure and the burden off itself.”

Should the PA collapse, he explains, Israel does not want Hamas or the PIJ to take over the West Bank, but neither does it want to step in and rule over the 3 million Palestinians who live there.  So Israeli support for the PA was “a tactical move that is supposed to relieve the pressure.”

Israel has also been under pressure from the US to make concessions to the Palestinians.  On July 9 President Joe Biden in an interview with CNN described Netanyahu’s government as Israel’s “most extreme” ever, adding that his coalition partners were “part of the problem.”

Authorizing an increase in settlement construction is almost certainly Netanyahu’s way of placating his coalition partners for propping up the PA in the West Bank. Yet on July 17, in his telephone conversation with Biden which included his long-awaited invitation to the White House, he reportedly told the US president that he would limit construction in West Bank settlements until the end of the year.

The PA and its president have lost the support of the Palestinian people.  How long can support from Israel, which they must seem to reject, sustain them?

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 25 July 2023:

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-752281

Published in Eurasia Review, 28 July 2023:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/28072023-can-the-palestinian-authority-survive-oped/

Published in the MPC Journal, 31 July 2023:

https://mpc-journal.org/can-the-palestinian-authority-survive/

         

The Boy Who Drew Auschwitz

Published in the Jerusalem Post weekend magazine, 21 July 2023

 “The Boy Who Drew Auschwitz”  by Thomas Geve

             This is a truly unique testimony by someone who had to fight for existence in the extermination camp of Auschwitz, and then in the concentration camp of Buchenwald, during the Second World War. 

It is unique for two reasons.  First, the author was only 13 years old when he and his mother found themselves undergoing the notorious selection process just outside the gates of Auschwitz. Although both escaped an instant march to the gas chambers, Thomas Geve saw his mother only once again, and very briefly. He never discovered how or when she died.  So it was as a boy only just into his teens, and without support of any kind, that he had to learn how to survive in the harshest of circumstances.

The selection. Males able to work; females able to work; for the rest, death

          Secondly, Geve was determined to preserve a record of what he was witnessing day by day. He began drawing his impressions of life in the camps, using the charcoal and cement sacks that were to hand during his time bricklaying in Auschwitz.  After the war he redrew these sketches, and added more of what remembered. Thirty-two of these drawings, in full color, are bound into the book. They present a series of vivid scenes, perceived from the inside, of camp regime.

          The volume is also illustrated throughout with black-and-white photographs which trace his life from his birth in Stettin in 1929.  His father was a doctor who lost his job after Hitler came to power in 1933.  With Nazi antisemitic persecution on the increase, the family decided that Geve’s father would travel to England, while he and his mother would join him later.  Meanwhile they would live temporarily with grandparents in their Berlin apartment. Only they left it all too late.  His father left for England in the summer of 1939, and when the war began in September  Geve and his mother were stranded in Berlin.

            It is well documented that in Berlin some Jews managed to lead a restricted sort of life right into the beginning of 1943.  Early in 1942 the family actually received a letter from Geve’s father in London by way of the Red Cross.  The total liquidation of Berlin’s remaining Jewish community began at the end of February 1943.

            Whether it was his youth, or the fact that he was a Berliner, or later that he spoke colloquial German among his polyglot fellow prisoners, Geve often tells of help and even kindness from unexpected quarters.  Gestures such as this, even in Auschwitz, saved his life more than once, and it was just such a gesture from an acquaintance of his mother that enabled them to survive in Berlin until the very end. 

At one point they were arrested, but instead of instant deportation to the east, Geve secured a job as a cemetery worker digging graves and burying the dead.  “This brat will have plenty of work,” said one of the German officers who approved his application. 

Meanwhile he and his mother eked out an existence in an otherwise deserted apartment.  But soon their situation became so impossible that they decided to hand themselves in to the authorities and make their way to the work they were told awaited them in the east.  Geve gives us a vivid picture of the packed cattle-truck journey to Auschwitz, with only a small grille to let in some air, and one lavatory bucket. 

Even so, he records that over the two-day journey their guards, who were far from the ruthless SS types they were about to meet, occasionally allowed them out in a lonely countryside spot to have a short stroll, find a pit latrine, empty the lavatory bucket and fetch much needed water.  He also tells of the heated arguments among the detainees over who had to clean what.  “Courtesy and sympathy had been blotted out,” he writes, “heralding a ruthless struggle for survival.”

                    Rollcall.  When the numbers didn't tally, Appell could last for hours

And that 22-month struggle Geve describes and illustrates in frank and brutal detail.  We learn of the standard whipping punishment, when candidates were strapped to a scaffold and beaten from 25 to 100 times.  “Some,” writes Geve, “never returned.” 

He tells us about the camp brothel in Block 24, above the camp orchestra’s room.  The two dozen women were drawn from all over the camp, some of them, Geve remarks, “having already practised the oldest profession.”  They catered for both prisoners and guards.  German prisoners were entitled to visit them every fortnight.  Other inmates, except Russians, Gypsies and Jews, received entrance discs every few months.  The women would sometimes drop a ration of bread from their window to a prisoner who looked particularly frail.  “We could not help but respect them,” observes Geve.

As defeat began to stare the Nazi regime in the face, Auschwitz was evacuated and the prisoners were forced into a long march. Geve ended in Buchenwald camp, where he spent the last months of the war and the first months of peace. With nowhere to go, and in any case too weak to walk far, he found a stache of postcards and coloured pencils in the abandoned offices and drew some 80 pictures of his life in the camps. 

The camp orchestra played marches as the prisoners were herded to work

Through Switzerland’s generosity, he was fostered with a Swiss family for six months to recuperate, and was then flown to London to join his father.

How, after one failed attempt, he managed to get his story published in 1958, and then in a fuller version in 1987, he and his daughter Yifat recount in a video produced and released on YouTube by New York’s Museum of Jewish Heritage. In it Charles Inglefield describes how he became intrigued by Geve’s story, and became involved in editing and revising it to make “The Boy Who Drew Auschwitz”-  a new account for a new generation of readers.  In the video Geve himself dedicates this volume to “the 40 prisoners who helped me to survive two years of concentration camp.”  At the very start of the book he lists 18 whose names he remembers.  The others have to remain anonymous.

“The Boy Who Drew Auschwitz” is a full, frank and sometimes painfully truthful account of Geve’s experiences.  It is his personal testimony to suffering no human being should be forced to endure, let alone a youngster in his early teens – an account vividly illustrated with the drawings that accompany his story. This is a book that deserves to be read. 

Published in the Jerusalem Post on-line, 22 July 2023:
https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/article-751823

Israel at 75: What peace deal?

 Published in the new issue of the Jerusalem Report, dated 24 July 2023

In the past 75 years a great deal of time and effort has been expended by a great many people – kings and presidents and prime ministers among them – seeking a possible peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians.  Although much ink, paper and film has been expended covering this series of consistently unsuccessful efforts, the peace process still spends long periods below the political horizon.  The latest hiatus has lasted nearly ten years.  Yet it refuses to die. 

Its most recent manifestation surfaced in, of all places, Beijing.  Palestinian Authority (PA) president, Mahmoud Abbas, spent June 13 to 16, 2023 there on a state visit.  China’s President Xi Jinping has more than once proposed resolving the Palestinian issue by way of the two-state solution, and Abbas was following up on the April announcement by China’s foreign minister, Qin Gang, that China was ready to facilitate peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.  The chances of anything substantive emerging from this Chinese-inspired initiative seem remote, especially since Sino-US relations are at a low ebb and negotiations would be impossible without US involvement.

July 29, 2023 marks the tenth anniversary of the last time Israelis and Palestinians sat down together to discuss a possible end to the interminable dispute.  On July 29, 2013, by dint of a truly herculean diplomatic effort, then-US Secretary of State, John Kerry, succeeded in bringing Israeli and PA representatives together to shake hands at the start of a new determined attempt to make peace.

US President Barack Obama was in his second term in office, and was as determined as ever to broker a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians.  His first unsuccessful effort had been based on a 10-month freeze on construction in the West Bank that he persuaded Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to initiate.  Abbas frittered away most of the 10 months quibbling over technical details and seeking Arab support for the negotiations. Finally, with less than a month of the building moratorium left, the two parties met for the first time, but when the 10 months came to an end on September 26, 2010 Abbas – backed by Obama –demanded a renewal of the construction freeze as the price for continuing the talks.  Netanyahu could not gain the political backing to do this, and the peace initiative ground to a halt.

For his second effort Obama charged his Secretay of State, John Kerry, with overseeing the process.  He could not have chosen a more dedicated negotiator.  Kerry was tireless in his diplomatic efforts, travelling constantly to and around the Middle East to get all parties to agree the terms for peace talks to take place.  Finally he succeeded, and on July 29, 2013 Tzipi Livni for Israel, and Saeed Erekat for the PA, met under his aegis. 

Politicians do not generally relish being faced with their past pronouncements, but comparing what was said back in 2013 with current attitudes highlights the hardening of sentiment that has taken place over the past decade.

If Netanyahu currently envisages any two-state Palestine at all – a dubious hypothesis given the nature of the coalition he heads – he sees it, according to a recent statement, as a demilitarized entity, only partially sovereign since its security would be controlled by Israel.  His vision was simpler back in the day.  Addressing Congress in May 2011 he said:

 “Two years ago, I publicly committed to a solution of two states for two peoples − a Palestinian state alongside the Jewish state…No distortion of history can deny the four thousand year old bond between the Jewish people and the Jewish land. But there is another truth: The Palestinians share this small land with us. We seek a peace in which they will be neither Israel's subjects nor its citizens. They should enjoy a national life of dignity as a free, viable and independent people in their own state.”
            Abbas’s current position is also no longer what it was.  These days he constantly denies the Jewish connection to the Holy Land. On May 15, 2023 he claimed that the Western Wall –the retaining wall of the Temple Mount – and the Mount itself, on which Solomon built the second Temple, belonged: “exclusively and only to the Islamic Wakf.” 

He adopted a far more conciliatory tone in 2012.  In an interview on Israeli TV in the November he said: “Palestine for me is the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as the capital…The West Bank and Gaza is Palestine, everything else is Israel.” 

Addressing the UN General Assembly a few days later, he said:  “We did not come here seeking to delegitimize a state established years ago, and that is Israel.  Rather we came to affirm the legitimacy of the state that must now achieve its independence, and that is Palestine... to live in peace and security alongside the State of Israel…”

The optimisim marking these statements by Netanyahu and Abbas infected those initiating the negotiations in 2013.  Such was the heady feeling that success was just around the corner, that jointly they declared they required no more than nine months to reach an agreement.

Kerry’s carefully crafted peace project was effectively ambushed by Hamas, an organization established specifically to overthrow and remove Israel from the Middle East.  Back in 1993 Hamas had opposed the Oslo Accord which recognized Israel’s legitimacy, and accused then-PA leader Yasser Arafat of betraying the Palestinian cause.  Later they opposed Abbas supporting a two-state solution, and refused to regard it as a stepping stone toward eventually gaining the whole of Mandate Palestine. They attempted to wrest control of the PA from Abbas, and continue to do so.

To scupper the peace talks in 2014, the Hamas leadership played a master-stroke.  They hoodwinked Abbas into believing they were prepared to put aside their differences with Fatah and enter a coalition with them.   The nine-months allotted to the peace negotiations were due to end on April 30.  In mid-April Hamas set up secret talks with the PA in Gaza.  On April 23 Abbas made an announcement that shocked the diplomatic world and brought the talks to an immediate end.

Fatah and Hamas, he declared, had agreed an historic reconciliation.  Within the next five weeks Hamas would join an Abbas-led Palestinian government, and parliamentay and presidential elections would be held within six months.  Netanyahu responded by saying Abbas could have peace with Israel, or an alliance with Hamas, but he could not have both.  He would never negotiate with a government containing Hamas leaders dedicated to liquidating Israel.

Abbas had been duped, and Hamas had achieved its objective of blowing the whole peace process, and especially the two-state solution, out of the water.  Needless to say, neither a united Palestinian government nor presidential and parliamentary elections ever materialized. 

For Hamas, as for those Palestinians outside Gaza who subscribe to its philosophy, the concept of a sovereign Palestine living alongside a sovereign Israel is totally unacceptable. They regard the whole area “from the river to the sea” (that is, from the Jordan to the Mediterranean) as Arab territory to which Israel has no right.  Their aim is to eradicate Israel altogether and ensure that no Jews remain in the area. 

“Judenrein” or “Judenfrei”, with its chilling Nazi connotations, are entirely apt to describe their purpose. Indeed, the connection between earlier Islamist leaders and the Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s, and their common stance on the “Final Solution”, is well documented.   All that can be expected from Islamist fundamentalists, their eyes set on eventually subjecting the whole world to Sharia law, is constant opposition to Israel’s presence.

          Given that the two-state solution is an article of faith for China, as for much of world opinion, the Chinese and all those holding it will sooner or later have to face up to an awkward truth. In a two-state solution one of the two states would be Israel, and Hamas’s whole purpose is to eliminate Israel from the Middle East.  So until Hamas, which rules over half the Palestinian population, has been out-maneuvered or disempowered, two states can never become practical politics.

Published by the Jerusalem Post on-line (Premium Plus):
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-749927

Biden’s Iranian non-deal

 Published in the Jerusalem Post, 18 July 2023

            US President Joe Biden served as vice-president throughout the presidency of Barack Obama.  Sometimes too little significance is given to Biden’s total identification with the major policy initiatives that marked Obama’s two terms in office. 

            The Iran nuclear deal, endorsed by the UN Security Council in July 2015, was regarded by Obama as one of the crowning achievements of his presidency.  His administration master-minded an international agreement between Iran and the permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany.  Known as the JCPOA  (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) it removed a raft of sanctions and unfroze and returned to Iran vast sums of money – some $1.7 billion – confiscated during years of sanctions.  The quid pro quo was an undertaking by Iran to restrict its nuclear development programme and subject it to inspection by the IAEA (the International Atomic Energy Agency).

            The Obama administration’s policy was founded on the precarious belief that the Iranian regime would respond to conciliatory gestures, that engaging with it would bring it in out of the cold and, crucially, that it would honour any commitments it signed up to.

Despite Iran’s unremittingly hostile rhetoric (the US was and remains “the Great Satan”), Washington seemed blind to the fact that the Iranian regime had no intention of ever establishing friendly relations with the West.  It had, and has, quite different priorities.  The Islamic Revolution in Iran was spearheaded  by Shia zealots determined to convert Iran into a theocracy, gain political and religious dominance in the Middle East, battle against Western democracy, Zionism and communism, and establish Islam across the entire world.  These ends, in their view, justify the use of any means, which explains the series of world-wide terrorist incidents following the regime’s establishment in 1979, and its continued support for proxy-initiated terrorist activities by bodies like Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis. In short, the Iranian regime has always been working to its own agenda, and is hell-bent on gaining a nuclear arsenal to ensure its regional dominance.

            In April 2015, with the JCPOA deal all tied up and awaiting ratification, Obama was interviewed on America’s National Public Radio:

 “My goal,” he said, “when I came into office, was to make sure that Iran did not get a nuclear weapon and thereby trigger a nuclear arms race.…We're now in a position where Iran has agreed to unprecedented inspections and verifications of its program, providing assurances that it is peaceful in nature… You have assurances that their stockpile of highly enriched uranium remains in a place where they cannot create a nuclear weapon.”

Despite the clearest evidence that Iran’s hostility toward the US was unshakable, Obama and his team never abandoned their belief in the policy of engagement.  The nuclear deal when signed had no effect on the anti-American rhetoric in Iran – if anything, the vitriol increased.  In September 2015 Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, tweeted on his English account: “The Iranian nation did expel this Great Satan; we barred their direct access, and now we must not allow their indirect access and infiltration.”  And again: “US officials seek negotiation with Iran. Negotiation is a means to infiltrate and impose their wills.”   

Donald Trump was sceptical of the JCPOA  deal from the start, and during his campaign for the presidency promised on more than one occasion to withdraw the US from it.  In May 2018 he did just that.

Biden came to the presidency believing as firmly in the policy of engagement with Iran as he had when a key player in the Obama administration.  He hoped to rejoin the JCPOA.  In September 2019, during his presidential campaign, he wrote: ““If Iran returns to strict compliance with the nuclear deal, the United States would rejoin the [JCPOA} agreement as a starting point for follow-on negotiations.” 

In point of fact Iran had never been in strict compliance with the nuclear deal, as the secret nuclear archives lifted by Israel in January 2018 from under the regime’s nose demonstrated all too clearly. 

Irrefutable proof came in February 2023 when IAEA Inspectors found uranium particles in Iran’s underground Fordo nuclear site enriched up to 83.7% – very nearly weapons grade. 

Now even Biden acknowledges that the JCPOA is dead.  But faithful as ever to the Obama engagement philosophy, and despite every indication that the Iranian regime is not be trusted, his administration is in the process of finalizing an arrangement with it.  The Washington Post reports that under the negotiated agreement payments owed to the Islamic Republic that have long been frozen by sanctions will be released.  For its part, in addition to limiting its uranium-enrichment levels and cooperating more fully with the IAEA, Iran has agreed to free three wrongfully imprisoned Americans. The ransom for the hostages may be in the region of $10 billion, released in the form of sanctions waivers.  In addition the US is offering Iran the opportunity to export more oil.

However a huge political hazard lies in Biden’s path.  It all turns on the word “deal”.  If what Biden is engaged in can be described as a deal, then Congress has the right to intervene – and Biden and his officials know that, if submitted to legislative oversight, any agreement with Iran would meet substantial bipartisan opposition.

The problem arises because Obama negotiated and signed the JCPOA deal using the executive power granted to presidents under the Constitution to enter into agreements with other countries.  However, by default or design, he overlooked the essential qualifying clause “by and with the advice and consent of the Senate”.  Members of both Houses and of both major parties were outraged, and in May 2015 Congress passed the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act (INARA).  Gaining overwhelming majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, it gave Congress the right to review any nuclear agreement reached in talks with Iran.  

INARA obliges the president to present before Congress any new or amended deal pertaining to Iran’s nuclear programme. The lawmakers would then have a 30-day review period, and the opportunity to vote it down.  A few weeks ago, the Biden administration reassured Congress that it would abide by its provisions and submit any new deal with Iran for review and approval.

          This is why “Deal” has become a dirty word in Washington.  “Rumours about a nuclear deal, interim or otherwise, are false and misleading,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told journalists in June.  In briefings with journalists, officials now use expressions like “mini-agreement” and “interim arrangement.”   So whatever the understanding or bargain is between Biden and Khamenei, it is certainly not a deal.

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 18 July 2023:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-750421

Published in Eurasia Review, 21 July 2023:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/21072023-bidens-iranian-non-deal-oped/

Published in the MPC Journal, 25 July 20223:

https://mpc-journal.org/bidens-iranian-non-deal/

Britain moves to outlaw BDS

 Published in the Jerusalem Post, 11  July 2023

         On July 3 Britain’s House of Commons voted in favour of a government Bill that prevents local authorities and other public bodies from imposing their own economic boycotts or sanctions against foreign states.  The government’s intention is to frustrate the aims of the anti-Israel BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement. 

Opening the debate, Secretary of State Michael Gove explained that “Action is required here because there is an existing, organised and malign campaign that aims to target and delegitimise the world’s only Jewish state. That campaign seeks to persuade public bodies to make commercial decisions solely on the basis of harming that state and its people.”

            Legislative action became necessary because in 2016 the UK courts ruled, and in 2017 the High Court upheld, that the government was acting unlawfully by seeking to restrict "ethical" boycotts of Israel.  Three city councils were named in the original court case, and during the debate on the current Bill a fourth was singled out for mention. 

After several hours of debate, the Bill was given what is known as its Second Reading by 268 votes to 70.   Two Conservatives voted against it, while more than 80 abstained.  So did the Labour opposition, which has said that unless the Bill is amended to its liking during its legislative passage through Parliament, they will finally vote against it.

During the debate Labour’s shadow minister, Lisa Nandy, while roundly condemning the BDS movement, said: “It is not, in our view, wrong for public bodies to take ethical investment and procurement decisions.” 

But, she continued: “To seek to target Israel alone, to hold it to different standards from other countries, to question its right to exist, to equate the actions of the Israeli government with Jewish people, and in doing so create hate and hostility against Jewish people here in the UK is completely wrong… I feel strongly that BDS offers no meaningful route to peace either for the Palestinians or for the Israelis… When BDS is used as an argument for the total economic, social and cultural isolation of the world’s only Jewish state, not only will I speak out but I have spoken out time and time again.”

In December 2019, after five years under the leadership of hard-left Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour party suffered its worst electoral defeat since the mid-1930s.  Labour’s leader, Sir Keir Starmer, is attempting to manoeuvre the party toward mainstream British opinion, but he has an uneasy relationship with the more left-wing Trades Union movement, the party’s main source of finance, which views his efforts with suspicion.  At its annual meeting in 2019 the Trades Union Congress (TUC) itself voted in favour of boycotting Israel, while the following year it passed a motion calling for sanctions to oppose “Israel’s annexation plans”.  Labour’s equivocal position is clearly on display as it condemns BDS while at the same time abstains from the vote on the Bill’s Second Reading.

In introducing his anti-boycott Bill, Michael Gove was determined to explain fully why the BDS movement is specifically targeted.  As he launched into this part of his speech, he rejected effort after effort by MPs to intervene, insisting on setting out the government’s position without interruption.

“The BDS movement deliberately asks public bodies to treat Israel differently from any other nation on the globe,” said Gove.  “It asks them to treat the Middle East’s only democracy as a pariah state, and to end links with those who have a commercial presence there. Let me be clear: there are legitimate reasons to criticise the Israeli Government, to question their policy and, if individuals so wish, to repudiate their leadership, as there are with many other countries…Nothing in the Bill prevents or impedes the loudest of criticisms of Israel’s government and leaders, including by elected politicians at all levels of government… But the BDS movement asks that, alone among nations, Israel be treated as illegitimate in itself…

“The founder of the BDS movement, Omar Barghouti, has been clear in his opposition to the existence of Israel as a Jewish state,” said Gove.  “He has attacked what he calls the ‘racist principles of Zionism’ – that is, the fundamental right of the Jewish people to self-determination…He opposes any idea of a two-state solution – a secure Israel alongside a viable and democratic Palestine. Instead, the BDS movement’s leader wants a ‘one-state solution…where, by definition, Jews will be a minority.’

“It is …no part of this government’s determination or intent to give any heart or succour to a movement that argues that the two-state solution is wrong, and that Jews should be a minority in one state.”

The vote on July 3 was only the first tentative step in a long legislative journey.  Most UK legislation starts life as a Bill in the House of Commons, introduced either by the government or a private member.  If it is not voted down at that First Reading stage, it is granted a full debate and vote – its Second Reading.  If it passes that test, it moves into what is known as the Committee Stage, where it is scrutinised word by word, line by line, with each change to the original draft subject to a vote.  It then returns to the Commons in its amended form for what is known as its Report Stage and Third Reading. 

The next step is for the Bill to be passed to the House of Lords, the scrutinising and revising chamber in Britain’s bi-cameral legislative system.  Here  it goes through precisely the same procedure, namely First and Second Reading, Committee stage, Report stage and Third Reading.  The Bill as amended by the Lords is then returned to the Commons, where it is either approved in its newly revised form, or rejected.  If the Commons do not like the Lords’ amendments, a tug-of-war ensues.  In the final analysis, however, the will of the Commons must prevail.  Once it has received the Royal Assent, a Bill turns into an Act of Parliament, and becomes the law of the land.

In special cases Bills can pass through the whole legislative process in a matter of days; sometimes they can take years. On average a full year is needed to complete the process. Bills can be carried over from one parliamentary session to another, but if Parliament is prorogued prior to a general election, the whole legislative machine is brought to a stop. 

The next general election must take place in the UK on or before January 25, 2025.  This Bill, scrutinized and doubtless much amended, and perhaps improved, will either have received the Royal Assent by then, or it will be up to a new administration to start the wearisome process over again.

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 11 July 2023:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-749534

Published in Eurasia Review, 15 July 2023:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/15072023-britain-moves-to-outlaw-bds-oped/#:~:text=On%20July%203%20Britain's%20House,or%20sanctions%20against%20foreign%20states.

Published in the MPC Journal, 19 Juiy 2023:

https://mpc-journal.org/britain-moves-to-outlaw-bds/

The Abraham Accords under strain

 

The recent deterioration in Israeli-Palestinian relations is putting the Abraham Accord countries under pressure.

In signing up to the Accords, each of the Arab nations involved made it clear that they did not thereby reject their support for Palestinian aspirations.  They had simply altered their priorities. Instead of the traditional Arab insistence that solving the Israel-Palestinian dispute was a prerequisite for normalizing relations with Israel, they had  taken the pragmatic decision to normalize relations first, though progress toward the two-state solution remained a priority.

  Back in March 2022 the Accords led to an unprecedented meeting in Israel attended by the foreign ministers of Israel, Egypt, the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken.  It became known as the Negev Forum.  At their inaugural meeting the members agreed to come together on a continuing basis, making the forum a hub for promoting multilateral cooperation across the Middle East in the fields of health, economy, climate change, water and security .

  They decided to meet again in a year’s time, and Morocco undertook to host the summit in March 2023 in its capital, Rabat.  Over the following months the countries concerned held a series of meetings to plan this next forum.  But as the time drew near, sectarian tensions began to rise, given the overlap of Passover, Easter, and Ramadan, while rallies and strikes in support of Land Day were being organized by Palestinian activists in Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza.  Accordingly the summit was postponed.

 New dates were announced from time to time, but for various reasons each failed to stick. Finally the second Negev Forum summit was scheduled for mid-July. 

 Then came the June 18 meeting of Israel’s cabinet.  The policy announcements that followed scuppered the conference, perhaps for good. The government declared that it had approved the construction of 4,500 new settlement housing units in the West Bank.  Gilding the lily, as it were, finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, noted for his hard-right views, had been granted full control over all settlement planning.

  On the following day, June 19, whether at the urging of the US or on its own initiative, Morocco announced that the second meeting of the Negev Forum, due to be held in Rabat in July, had been indefinitely postponed. 

 As disturbed as the Abraham Accord countries were at the Israeli government’s decision to expand settlement construction, Washington took it very amiss.  The US is “deeply troubled by Israel’s decision,” said State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller, repeating the administration’s opposition to the expansion of settlements and to unilateral actions that "make a two-state solution more difficult to achieve."

The Israeli move on settlements will do nothing, either, to ease the interchanges between Saudi Arabia and the US on the possibility of Saudi joining the Abraham Accords. Any back channel negotiations that might be under way aimed at enhancing normalization of other states with Israel would be similarly affected.   

Meanwhile both the Palestinian leadership and Hamas are protesting at the determined steps Israel is taking to deal with the upsurge in terrorist activity over the past few months. Incidents are occurring on an almost daily basis.   

On June 19, during a raid on Jenin in the occupied West Bank, Israel used Apache helicopters to cover the evacuation of Israeli personnel engaged in a large-scale anti-terrorist operation.   The next day Hamas terrorists shot and killed four Israelis in a hummus bar.  Nothing but condemnation is appropriate for the incident on June 21 when scores of Israeli settlers attacked villages around Nablus and Turmusaya town, north of Ramallah, setting houses, vehicles and agricultural land ablaze.  No amount of provocation can justify indiscriminate violence against innocent civilians.  Much more appropriate was the IDF operation later that day which succeeded in taking out a terror cell in the West Bank using a drone.

With Israel’s domestic situation so volatile, it is not surprising if its Abraham Accord partners feel the need to reiterate their underlying support for Palestinian aspirations, though hopefully there is no slippage of confidence in the future success of the alliance.  What may be in the wind, though, is a change of emphasis.  The well-regarded news website Axios recently reported that the Biden administration, backed by several of the Abraham Accord states, seemed to feel that the name of the proposed standing conference – the Negev Forum – is too Israel-centric. According to US and Israeli officials, maintains Axios, the Biden administration thinks that using a more general name, or an acronym, would help convince more countries in the region to join. 

One such proposed name was AMENA — the Association of Middle East and North African Countries – until Morocco asked that the new name include the word "peace." It was then proposed that the forum be called AMENA PD, or the Association of Middle East and North African Countries, Peace and Development.  According to Axios, no final decisions have been taken.

Although the future of the Negev Forum is currently hanging in the balance, a US State Department spokesperson recently sounded a note of confidence: "The Negev Forum demonstrates the promise and tangible benefits of regional integration, bringing the region together to discuss solutions to shared challenges.  We are continuing to consult with partners about a second Negev ministerial this year."

Perhaps the announcement of its indefinite postponement will turn out to be less final than appears.

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 4 July 2023:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-748717

Published in the Eurasia Review, 7 July 2023:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/07072023-the-abraham-accords-under-strain-oped/

Published in the MPC Journal, 13 July 2023:

https://mpc-journal.org/the-abraham-accords-under-strain/

Resolving the Israel-Saudi deadlock

 Published in the issue of the Jerusalem Report dated 10 July 2023

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman meets with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Jeddah on June 7, 2023.

          The idea that Saudi Arabia would be the next Arab state to sign up to the Abraham Accords is as old as the Accords themselves.  It surfaced literally within hours of the signing of the agreement on the White House lawn by Israel, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain on September 15, 2020.

Then-US President Donald Trump told reporters, in a press conference following the signing, that he had spoken with Saudi Arabia’s King Salman, and he believed that the kingdom would shortly follow suit. That statement turned the tap on what became an unceasing flow of speculation about when the magic moment might arrive. 

The issue remains as live today as ever.  Just a few weeks ago Israel’s foreign minister, Eli Cohen, said that normalization of ties with Saudi Arabia is just a "matter of time."  It was not a question of if, he maintained, but of when.  He dismissed the recent reconciliation between Saudi Arabia and Iran – which some believed ruled out Saudi-Israel normalization – as nothing more than "a façade."  Pointing out that Saudi Arabia and Israel are one in considering Iran to be an existential enemy, he said the reality is that the Saudis would do anything to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.

It is no secret that prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has always given high priority to convincing Saudi Arabia to sign up to the Accords.  Back in November 2020 he made what was meant to be a secret trip to Saudi Arabia for a meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, a trip that soon became public knowledge.  He has pushed that policy ever since.  In a speech on February 19 he said he was still actively trying to persuade Saudi Arabia to join the Abraham Accords as that would constitute a “quantum leap” towards regional peace.

Netanyahu has striven hard to get the US administration on board.  Joe Biden came to the US presidency still wedded to the Obama strategy of appeasing Iran in the hope of getting it to re-enter the failed nuclear deal.  Moreover, Biden had no wish to engage with MBS, whom he believed responsible for master-minding the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Washington has slowly retreated from both positions. The nuclear deal with Iran is now dead in the water, and senior Biden administration figures and US Senators have been speaking to MBS about normalizing relations with Israel and signing up to the Abraham Accords.  Yet, despite efforts going back nearly four years, Israel and Saudi Arabia remain deadlocked on the issue of formal normalization. 

          Some green shoots are in evidence. Although the two countries still have no diplomatic relations with each other, on March 3, 2022, MBS said: “We don’t look at Israel as an enemy.” It was scarcely a surprising remark, since for several years extensive behind-the-scenes diplomatic and intelligence cooperation between them has been an open secret.

MBS went on to describe Israel as “a potential ally, with many interests we can pursue together. But,” he added, “we have to solve some issues before we get to that.”

What are the issues that inhibit Saudi Arabia from joining its main Gulf allies, the UAE and Bahrain, in normalizing relations with Israel?  

The biggest obstacle, perhaps, is that Saudi’s King Salman is acutely aware that the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative was conceived and proposed by his predecessor on the throne, then-Crown Prince Abdullah, his half-brother.  The Plan, endorsed on a number of occasions by the Arab League, advocates a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine dispute.  Given the establishment of a sovereign Palestine on territories overrun by Israel during the Six-Day War,  and a just resolution of the Palestinian refugee issue, the Plan promises full normalization of relations between the Muslim world and Israel.

            In September 2021 King Salman addressed the UN General Assembly.  In his speech he reiterated Saudi Arabia’s commitment to the 2002 Plan, completely disregarding the fact that the one-time Arab consensus –­ no normalization with Israel before a Palestinian state – had been breached.  Four Arab states had ignored it.  A precedent had been set.

Yet Saudi Arabia has remained consistent.  MBS and other Saudi spokespeople, have recently repeated that normalization with Israel would not be possible until the Israel-Palestine situation  is resolved or at least, in a phrase increasingly being used, “progress has been made” in resolving the dispute.

In a TV interview on January 19, Prince Faisal bin Farhan al Saud, Saudi’s foreign minister, once again repeated the traditional Saudi stance. 

“We have said consistently that we believe normalization with Israel is something that is very much in the interest of the region,” he said. “However, true normalization and true stability will only come through giving the Palestinians hope, through giving the Palestinians dignity.  That requires giving the Palestinians a state, and that’s the priority.”

The same message emerged from the recent Arab League summit.  A closing statement issued on May 19 reaffirmed that the Palestinian cause remains the central issue for Arab nations and a key factor for regional stability.  That must have disappointed Netanyahu, who had spoken by phone with MBS before the conference to discuss the possibility of normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia. He and MBS spoke to each other again after the meeting, and the issue, still unresolved, remains on the table.

A major difficulty with the League’s position is in defining what precisely is “the Palestinian cause”.  For twenty years the Arab League, led by Saudi Arabia, has maintained that the two-state solution, as set out in the Arab Peace Initiative, must be a prerequisite for normalization with Israel.  But what is rarely taken sufficiently into account is how the Palestinian leadership as a whole views the two-state solution.

In the world of Palestinian politics, paying lip-service to a two-state solution is understood to be only a tactic, a stepping stone. The true Palestinian cause, right across the political spectrum, is to gain control of the whole of Mandate Palestine, “from the river to the sea.”  Moderates and extremists differ only on what tactics are acceptable to achieve the objective.  Hamas rejects the very idea of a two-state solution.  It came into being to destroy Israel.

The original Arab Peace Initiative, of course, was drafted well before Hamas gained control of Gaza in 2007.  The situation today is radically different from what it was in 2002. The Palestinian people are now split. The proportion supporting the Hamas agenda – perhaps up to half the Palestinian population both within and outside the Gaza Strip  –  would never subscribe to a two-state solution.  Hamas regards Israel as interlopers on Palestinian land, and aims to overthrow it.  

World opinion, including Saudi Arabia, that supports the two-state solution needs to face up to some awkward truths.  In order to achieve it, any Palestinian leader agreeing to endorse Israel’s right to exist would require substantial support from within the Arab world.  In addition truly tough sanctions would need to be in place against extremist bodies like Hamas who would be bound to oppose it.

The conclusion?  The two-state solution is a non-starter until a substantial element within  the Palestinian leadership acknowledges that the State of Israel is here to stay and endorses its legitimacy.  Since Saudi Arabia and the Arab world believe in the two-state solution, the ball is in their court.  Only they can bring the more moderate Palestinian leadership to the negotiating table and circumvent or disempower rejectionists like Hamas.  

If that is too great an ask, then Saudi Arabia will need to consider aligning its position with that of other Abraham Accord signatories.  All maintain their support for Palestinian aspirations, but not at the expense of their self interests.  They have decided to prioritize the substantial benefits to their countries and the region of normalizing relations with Israel – and evidence of those benefits grows stronger day by day.

Published in the Jerusalem Post on-line, 1 July 2023
https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-748248