Zionism rejected

 Published in the Jerusalem Post online, 29 January 2025

Prominent US columnist Peter Beinart justifies Hamas

Peter Beinart’s purpose in writing Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning is encapsulated in its title.  

          In a foreword, he explains to someone he describes as a “former friend” (former, because they have diverged so sharply in their views) why he rejected the idea of calling his book Being Jewish after October 7.  It was not, he writes, because he minimizes the horror of that day. He chose his title, he explains, “because I worry you don’t grapple sufficiently with the terror of the days that followed, and preceded it as well.” In short, he believes mainstream Israeli opinion is unbalanced as regards the rights and wrongs of the Gaza conflict, and his aim is to redress the perspective he sees as mistaken.

Beinart is a prominent left-wing American columnist, journalist, and political commentator. Born and raised in an Orthodox Jewish family, Beinart began as an ardent liberal Zionist but slowly moved toward an increasingly extreme left-wing position.  Finally, in July 2020 in an article in The New York Times, he renounced Zionism entirely and declared himself in favor of a unitary Arab-Jewish state in place of Israel. 

 In this new book he writes, “When I enter a synagogue I am no longer sure who will extend their hand and who will look away.” He sounds genuinely mystified, if perhaps somewhat disingenuous, when he writes: “How does someone like me, who still considers himself a Jewish loyalist, end up being cursed on the street?”

 THE ANSWER lies partly in the pages of his new book, where one of his most contentious claims is a call to reimagine Zionism. He believes the movement is at odds with democratic principles and Jewish ethics. He suggests that it perpetuates injustice by prioritizing Jewish self-determination over Palestinian rights. 

This blinkered understanding of the movement pays no regard to the absolute need for Zionism in the early-20th century as a response to millennia of statelessness and the continued persecution of the Jewish people. So urgent did the need for a Jewish homeland become that at one point Theodor Herzl and other Zionist leaders toyed with the idea of siting it in Africa, Argentina, anywhere – a short-lived diversion from Zionism’s historic purpose, perhaps, but it demonstrates that at the time the alleviation of Jewish suffering outweighed any other consideration.

In short, Beinart entirely fails to appreciate that the establishment of Israel was not a political demonstration of Jewish colonial arrogance but a lifeline for Jews fleeing constant pogroms, widespread discrimination, and finally the aftermath of the Holocaust. For many Jews, Zionism represents the affirmation of their right to exist in a hostile world and determine their own future. 

Beinart, who believes that the State of Israel should be absorbed into some democratic Arab-Jewish entity, also disregards the historical validation for Israel’s existence.  

          A Jewish homeland in the region then known as Palestine was affirmed in an unanimous vote by the League of Nations in 1922, recommended by the Peel Commission in 1937, and further endorsed by the UN in 1947. In acknowledging that it was rejected by Arab leaders, Beinart ascribes the most nefarious motives to David Ben-Gurion and the Israeli leadership at the time of the Declaration of Independence, going so far as to suggest that Israel pre-planned a mass ethnic cleansing to ensure that the State of Israel, when founded, had at least 80% Jewish population. 

 Beinart’s central thesis is that Jewish support for Israel’s military actions in Gaza is based on flawed ideas lodged within the Jewish narrative – the twin concepts of Jewish victimhood and Jewish supremacy. While Jewish history does indeed include episodes of both persecution and resilience, they are the lived experiences of a people who have faced repeated existential threats. He fails to appreciate that these experiences have a reality that far outweighs their being used as instruments to justify Israeli policies.

 He has, for example, nothing to say about the Hebron massacre in 1929, master-minded by Haj Amin al-Husseini, the then-mufti of Jerusalem. An ardent Nazi, Husseini spent much of World War II in Berlin where he liaised with Hitler about extending his Final Solution to the Middle East.  

For Beinart to dismiss the fears of Jewish communities as outdated or exaggerated undermines their lived reality. In Israel, October 7 and the random suicide bombings and civilian deaths during the two Intifadas are only too vividly remembered.  Worldwide, Jews are currently acutely aware of rising antisemitism and threats to their safety.

Beinart gives full weight to the suffering of Gazans, which is undeniable and tragic, but in writing about Israel’s actions in relation to it, he minimizes or omits the context that makes them valid. For instance, he says little about the malign role of Hamas, whose brutal pogrom and seizure of hostages on October 7 were in themselves international crimes. He even goes so far as to justify Hamas’s strategy of embedding itself within the civilian structure of the Gazan population, rejecting the claim that this is using them as human shields. 

 “Under international law,” he writes, “using civilians as human shields... doesn’t mean fighting in an area that just happens to have civilians around [which] Hamas certainly does... It fights from within Gaza’s population and thus puts civilians at risk. But that’s typical of insurgent groups.”

 Beinart is strangely silent about Hamas using hospitals, schools, and mosques as military command centers, and has nothing to say about the vast tunnel network constructed beneath Gaza that is larger than the London Underground. 

Nor does he mention the misuse of the billions of humanitarian dollars donated by nations and global organizations which Hamas used to construct it, nor the corruption that enabled Hamas leaders amass huge fortunes and live in luxury in Qatar and elsewhere.

Beinart’s moral critique of Israel would be more compelling if it acknowledged the challenges posed by an adversary that rejects Israel’s very existence and openly seeks its destruction. He says nothing about the steps the IDF took to warn civilians about forthcoming attacks. By failing to address these, and other relevant realities adequately, Beinart’s narrative places the onus of blame for the Gazan tragedy entirely on Israel.

Beinart’s family came to the States from South Africa, and in the book he compares the Palestinian experience to South African apartheid, and also to other historical struggles for justice. While rhetorically powerful, such comparisons fail to capture the unique nature of the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Unlike South Africa, where a single governing entity oppressed a disenfranchised majority, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict involves two national movements with competing claims to the same land. The historical, religious, and political dimensions of this conflict make simplistic analogies unhelpful and potentially misleading.

Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza is a provocative work that raises questions about Jewish morality and identity, and the future of Jewish-Palestinian relations. However, its arguments fall short of addressing the complexities and challenges inherent in the situation. 

BEINART’S POLITICAL journey has led him to a place where everything he learned in his youth about Judaism, Zionism, and the Jewish people seems false, or at least in need of reinterpretation. He clearly feels an urgent need to reassess everything, and in his first chapter he takes this right back to the Exodus. He challenges Jewish history at every single step from that point, including the festivals. It is a long catalogue.

In his reworked vision of Jewish morality, Beinart glosses over the hard realities that have shaped the history of his people, and continue to define the struggle for peace in the Middle East. 

For readers seeking a nuanced and balanced exploration of these issues, Peter Beinart is not the author of first choice.   Being Jewish after the destruction of Gaza is a handbook filled with the skewed anti-Israel, anti-Jewish arguments that demand to be challenged by upholders of truth and justice. 

Published in the Jerusalem Post on-line, 29 January 2025:
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-839779

Nearly half the world hates Jews

 Published in the Jerusalem Post, 27 January 2025

Nearly half the world hates Jews – that is the stark message that emerges from the most comprehensive survey of global public opinion on the subject ever undertaken.  Published on January 14, the results revealed that 46% of all adults in the world hold entrenched antisemitic views.

The poll, known as the Global 100 Survey, was conducted between July and November 2024 by the long-established Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in conjunction with Ipsos, the multinational market research firm, and others.  More than 58,000 adults from 103 countries and territories were surveyed, representing 94% of the global adult population.

   Launched in 2014, the Global 100 Survey has conducted only three such polls. The latest not only revealed the startling level of antisemitism across the globe.  It also showed that the proportion of adults worldwide harboring antisemitic beliefs has rocketed from 26% in 2014 to 46% by 2024.

“Antisemitism is nothing short of a global emergency,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, ADL’s chief executive.

          “It’s clear that we need new government interventions, more education, additional safeguards on social media, and new security protocols to prevent antisemitic hate crimes...and now is the time to act.”

   The results of the latest survey are not all bad news.  Perhaps demonstrating that political and economic strength is respected, 87% of respondents do not want their country to boycott Israeli products and businesses, while more than seven in ten respondents believe their country should have diplomatic relations with Israel and would welcome Israeli tourists. Moreover, despite uncovering alarming antisemitic attitudes, the Global 100 data does show opportunities for progress, since 57% of respondents recognized – such are the inconsistencies of human nature –- that hatred toward Jews was a serious issue.

There are, however, few such crumbs of comfort among the findings.  The poll tested reaction to 11 common negative tropes about Jews. Three-quarters of respondents in the Middle East and North Africa think most of them are true; the lowest levels of belief in the tropes were in the Americas and Western Europe. 

The most extraordinary aspect of these findings are the basic mathematics.  The total world population is some 8 billion, of whom about 4 billion, the Survey reveals, hold antisemitic views.  But outside of Israel and the USA, there are only 2.3 million Jews scattered thinly across the rest of the globe.  How many of the 4 billion poll-proved antisemites have ever seen a Jew? So what is the basis for all the animosity? How meaningful is it?  Given the fickleness of public opinion, could, for example, the ceasefire in Gaza effect a massive swing in sentiment?

   As for awareness of the Holocaust, sheer ignorance could account for the depressing findings.  Some 20% of respondents knew nothing about it at all, while less than half of those questioned believed that the historical depiction of the Holocaust was true.  While only 4% overall responded that “the Holocaust is a myth,“ 17% argued that the number of Jewish deaths was “greatly exaggerated by history.”

Clearly yet to make a global impact is the historical truth that a sophisticated Western European nation deliberately mobilized its industrial and military might and its bureaucracy to undertake the mass slaughter of a whole people.  Six million men, women and children were massacred for no other reason than that they had been born.

Ignorance about Judaism, Jewish people and their story, linked to incoherent and groundless prejudice, is not a modern phenomenon.  Jewish communities have been fighting it throughout their history.  It was, for example, the antisemitism rampant in parts of early-twentieth century America that gave birth to the Anti-Defamation League which sponsors the Global 100 Survey.

   Before the First World War some Jewish communities in America faced overt antisemitic discrimination.  In 1913 Leo Frank, a Jewish-American businessman from New York, was the superintendent of the National Pencil Company in Atlanta, Georgia.  Mary Phagan was a 13-year-old employee.  In April 1913 she was found murdered and sexually violated  in the factory’s basement.

Largely on account of testimony from a janitor, Jim Conley, Frank became the prime suspect,.  Giving evidence riddled with contradictions, Conley claimed that he helped Frank move the girl’s body.

Frank was arrested and, in a prejudiced atmosphere inflamed by sensationalist media coverage, was tried, convicted and sentenced to death.   His legal team filed numerous appeals, including to the US Supreme Court, which upheld the verdict.  But Georgia’s Governor John M Slaton had serious doubts about Frank’s guilt and, in 1915, commuted his sentence to life imprisonment.

His decision infuriated the public.  The next day a mob calling itself the "Knights of Mary Phagan" stormed the prison in Milledgeville, Georgia, kidnapped Frank, transported him to Marietta, Mary Phagan's hometown, and lynched him.  This horrific event was attended by a crowd, including prominent local figures, and photographs of what happened were distributed as souvenirs.

The overt antisemitic bigotry and intolerance displayed during the trial of Leo Frank encouraged Chicago attorney Sigmund Livingston to suggest creating an organization whose mission would be "to stop the defamation of the Jewish people, and to secure justice and fair treatment to all..."  He succeeded, but in the event ADL was founded on the clear premise that the fight against one form of prejudice cannot succeed without battling prejudice in all forms.  Today ADL is a global leader in combating antisemitism, extremism and bigotry wherever it occurs.

Marina Rosenberg, the ADL’s senior vice president for international affairs, noted that even countries with lower antisemitic attitudes, like the UK, have seen “many antisemitic incidents perpetrated by an emboldened small, vocal and violent minority.”

Indeed, Britain’s Community Security Trust (CST) reported a 204% increase in antisemitic incidents from October 7, 2023, to September 30, 2024.  Universities, hospitals and synagogues also recorded huge increases in religiously motivated criminal incidents, while ever since the Hamas pogrom large pro-Palestinian protest marches have taken place through central London every Saturday.    

“Antisemitic tropes and beliefs are becoming alarmingly normalized across societies worldwide,” warned Rosenberg.  “This dangerous trend...is a wake-up call for collective action.”

A parting thought.  If nearly half the world is antisemitic, then more than half the world isn't.  That is a solid enough base on which to start the process of building knowledge and understanding of the long and often painful story of the Jewish people, and their survival against all the odds to return, finally, to their ancient homeland. Collective action against antisemitism must prioritize the message that Israel is here to stay.

Published in the Jerusalem Post and the Jerusalem Post online, 27 January 2025:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-839326

Published in Eurasia Review, 31 January 2025:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/31012025-nearly-half-the-world-hates-jews-oped/

Published in the MPC Journal, 2 February 2025:

https://mpc-journal.org/nearly-half-the-world-hates-jews/

The Two-State solution

 This letter appears in the Daily Telegraph today, 21 January 2025

Sir

Colonel D P Dunseath (Letters, January 20) says that Hamas exists because of the Palestinians' sense of grievance at not having a viable and independent state . But the last thing Hamas wants is a two-state solution, since one of the states would be Israel. Its aim is to eliminate Israel and create a Jew-free Palestine "from the river to the sea".

The stumbling block to peace in the region has always been rejection by Palestinian leaders of Israel's right to exist (endorsed by UN Resolution 181 in 1947). That is why the numerous peace negotiations over the years have failed. Once it is accepted that Israel is here to stay (as it has been by the Abraham Accord Arab states), a peace accommodation would easily follow.

Neville Teller
Beit Shemesh
Israel

Published in the Daily Telegraph, 21 January 2025:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2025/01/20/letters-labour-government-relationship-donald-trump/

Post-War Gaza

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 20 January 2025

As the first phase of the ceasefire and hostage handover comes into effect, media and public opinion is divided on whether we are witnessing Hamas snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. 

Very early on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that one of his war aims was to destroy Hamas.  Wounded, even disabled, Hamas may be, but it is not destroyed.  Playing the hostage card to advantage, it is imposing its demands on the deal.  Even so, one thing is reasonably certain – Hamas will never again govern Gaza.  The future of post-war Gaza will lie in other hands, but exactly what follows the permanent end of hostilities in Gaza remains to be resolved.  

Meanwhile the formidable Hamas fighting machine of October 6, 2023, armed to the teeth with state-of-the-art Iranian weaponry, is a shadow of what it was. 

On October 7 it sowed the wind, and ever since it has been reaping the whirlwind.​  Its leadership has been decimated.  ​​At least half of its original 25,000 manpower has been eliminated, and its depleted ranks have been boosted by raw, untrained recruits.​  No longer a structured militia, it ​has become a degraded terrorist guerilla force. 

The three-phase agreement hammered out in Qatar and announced on January 15 is clear on phase one. 

          It is less so on phase two, involving a second exchange of hostages and Palestinian prisoners and the withdrawal of the IDF.  As for phase three, which requires establishing  a system of governance for Gaza and the start of its reconstruction, there are as yet only aspirations. 

All interested parties in the Middle East, and the West generally, understand that agreement must be achieved before too long on a clear-cut path to the reconstruction and rehabilitation of the Gaza Strip. There is no shortage of ideas, plans, proposals, suggestions.

On December 1 the Israel Policy Forum published a comparison of four extant plans for the post-war governance of Gaza.  They emanate from Egypt, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the US’s Biden administration, and the Palestinian Authority (PA).  Egypt, the UAE and the US were joint brokers of the ceasefire and hostage release operation.  The Israel Policy Forum paper reveals in some detail their individual concepts of how Gaza is to be governed and reconstructed after the war.  The various formulae overlap to some degree, but there are also some significant differences.

Egypt favors a community support committee in Gaza to focus on transitional governance.  Using local expertise, the arrangement would have minimal international involvement, and would unite Gaza with the West Bank.  Following talks with Egyptian and Fatah officials in Cairo in early December, Hamas officially approved this plan.

The UAE’s idea is to impose international control over Gaza on a temporary basis, eventually  transferring responsibility to the PA, provided the PA fulfills two conditions: meaningful reforms, including a new prime minister; and allowing regional and international forces to assume responsibility in the short term for security and law enforcement.  Gaza would be stabilized as a first step toward a two-state outcome.  Reconstruction would be led by international donors..

 The US​ position – or rather that of the Biden administration, endorsed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken in his farewell speech on January 14 – is ​to establish hybrid international oversight ​for ​a phased transfer of control to a reformed PA.  ​The transitional mission would be managed by an executive board with Palestinian and partner representatives. The IDF would undertake a phased withdrawal in coordination with the deployment of PA security forces.  An international fund would funnel donations for Gaza’s recovery through the PA.  The ultimate aim would be to establish a two-state solution.

The incoming Trump administration has not yet revealed its hand on post-war Gaza.

The PA proposes that Gaza and the West Bank unite, as a step toward the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state on territory recaptured by Israel from Egyptian and Jordanian forces in the Six Day War, including East Jerusalem.  International donors would support reconstruction and economic development in Gaza. An international peace conference would aim to establish a sustainable two-state solution, guaranteed by Arab and international partners.

The Israel Policy Forum analyses these four plans point by point in a table which enables each to be compared with the others.

Meanwhile Reuters reports that alongside the formal ceasefire negotiations in Qatar, which were joined on January 12 by the heads of Mossad and Shin Bet, behind-the-scenes discussions have included the possibility of the UAE and the US, along with other nations, temporarily overseeing the governance, security and reconstruction of Gaza after the IDF withdraws and until a Palestinian administration is able to take over.

Post-war planning for Gaza is not confined to discussions in Qatar.  It is being carried out independently by other bodies.  For example – and to mention but a few – the UN, the World Bank, and the EU, are jointly heading a Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment process, and formulating a Conflict Recovery Framework to be implemented when conditions in Gaza permit.  

This partnership has been active since late 2023, and their draft strategy aims to rebuild Gaza as an integral part of a fully independent, contiguous, viable, and sovereign Palestinian state within a two-state solution. These operations, which have been agreed with the PA, will support the PA’s own planning for recovery and reconstruction in Gaza.

The French news medium Le Monde recently reported that a group of French experts, known as the International Coalition for Peace and Security, is suggesting that a coalition of Arab and Western states assume guardianship over Gaza while the PA reforms and renews itself. This proposal includes recognizing a Palestinian state, securing a UN Security Council resolution endorsing a two-state solution, and forming a coalition dedicated to peace and security.

Analysts at the Washington Institute have proposed establishing a Gaza Interim Administration comprising three main components: a civilian administration, a law enforcement body, and a counterterrorism force. This structure would aim to dismantle Hamas's military capabilities, prevent future attacks, and create conditions for a positive socioeconomic and political reality in Gaza.   

Certain elements are common to many of these schemes.  One is the objective of a two-state solution; another the prominence many accord to a reformed PA.  The most likely source of a viable plan for the governance and reconstruction of post-war Gaza is the group that mediated the ceasefire–hostage release discussions in Qatar.

The best indication that Hamas has lost its political clout, and that a viable plan for Gaza’s future will emerge and be implemented, is the recent posting by President Trump on his social network.  He asserted that his team “through the efforts of Special Envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, will continue to work closely with Israel and our allies to make sure that Gaza never again becomes a terrorist safe haven.”   

 

Published in the Jerusalem Post, and the Jerusalem Post online titled: "Post-war Gaza: competing plans for governance and reconstruction", 20 January 2025
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-838242

The Kurds in Syria's future

 Published in the Jerusalem Post, 13 January 2025

What is to become of the Kurds, by far Syria’s largest minority at some two million people?

The Syrian civil war, starting in 2011, brought the Kurds to the forefront of the region’s politics. In face of the all-conquering military advance of Islamic State (ISIS), Syrian government forces abandoned many Kurdish occupied areas in the north-east of the country, leaving the Kurds to administer them.  A US-led coalition, bent on defeating ISIS, allied itself with the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga militia, which proved remarkably successful.  It look less than two years to reconquer ISIS-held territory, and in the process the Kurdish occupied area of north-east Syria, known as Rojava, gained de facto autonomy.

The capture by Kurdish forces of the township of Manbij from ISIS on 12 August 2016 produced along Turkey’s southern border a swath of territory, largely controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) – an alliance of Arab and Kurdish militias. This area was closely adjacent to Iraq's Kurdistan Region, the Kurdish populated area granted autonomy in Iraq’s 2005 constitution.

So, much to the distaste of Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the possibility of a united autonomous Kurdistan stretching across the northern reaches of Syria and Iraq seemed to be emerging.

Erdogan has consistently viewed the People's Protection Units (YPG), the dominant force in the SDF, as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), a group widely designated as a terrorist organization.

Accordingly in 2016 Erdogan instituted Operation Euphrates Shield, capturing an area  in north Syria from Jarabulus to Al-Bab.  He followed this two years later with Operation Olive Branch during which he overran Afrin.  In 2019, after the US announced its withdrawal from parts of northern Syria, he launched Operation Peace Spring, establishing a so-called "safe zone" on the Syrian side of the Turkish-Syrian border.  He aimed to use it to resettle Syrian refugees currently in Turkey.

 Erdogan has more or less annexed all the areas he has overrun.  They are now governed by Turkey-backed local councils, use the Turkish lira as currency, and are heavily influenced by Turkish infrastructure projects, including schools, hospitals, and post offices.

Turkey, a long-time supporter of the rebel movement that overthrew the dictatorial regime of Bashar al-Assad – the HTS (Hayat Tahrir al-Sham) – now has strong political influence with its leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa.  Erdogan no doubt hopes to use it to control his perennial Kurdish problem by continuing to occupy the swaths of Syria that he has overrun.  But despite his dominant political position in post-Assad Syria, it is far from certain that he will be able to do so.

 Al-Sharaa’s intentions regarding minorities in general, and the Kurds in particular, are still very unclear.  Ever since the fall of the Assad regime al-Sharaa has presented a moderate face to the world, consistently declaring that he intends to be as inclusive as possible in establishing Syria’s new governance.  In short, he may not endorse the continued occupation by Turkey of large areas of sovereign Syria.  Moreover he has said several times that Kurds are “part of the Syrian homeland” while assuring the nation that “there will be no injustice”. 

If any ethnic group deserves justice, it is the Kurds. 

Once upon a time, many thousands of years ago, a proud and independent nation lived and thrived in its own land in the heart of the Middle East. Subject to many foreign invasions, this ethnically distinct people refused to be integrated with their various conquerors, but retained their individual culture. At the start of the First World War, their country was a small part of the Ottoman empire. In shaping the future Middle East after the war the Allied powers, especially Britain, promised to act as guarantors of this people’s freedom. That promise was subsequently broken.

Similar though this sounds to the story of the Jewish people, it is in fact the broad outline of the long, convoluted and unresolved history of the Kurds.

The Kurds – nearly 35 million strong – are the largest stateless nation in the world. Historically they inhabited a distinct geographical area flanked by mountain ranges, once referred to as Kurdistan. No such location is depicted on current maps, for the old Kurdistan now falls within the sovereign space of four separate states: Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria. Most Kurds – some 25 million – live within Turkey’s borders, there are 2 million in Syria, while within Iraq the 5 million Kurds have developed a near autonomous state. Nearly 7 million Kurds are trapped inside Iran’s extremist Shi’ite regime.

The Treaty of Sèvres, marking the fall of the Ottoman Empire after the First World War, stipulated a referendum to decide the issue of the Kurdistan homeland.  That referendum never took place, and the Sèvres treaty itself was rendered null and void in 1922 by the establishment of the Turkish Republic under Kemal Ataturk.  What followed was a new treaty, the Treaty of Lausanne, which gave control of the then Kurdistan homeland to the new republic. With a stroke of the colonial pen over 20 million Kurds were declared Turkish.       

Kurdish autonomy achieved its greatest recognition in the 2005 Iraqi constitution, which  established the Kurdistan Region as a federal entity within Iraq, with its own local government and legal framework.  The Kurds in Syria will be well aware of that.  Nor will they forget that something akin to it was actually offered to them by the Assad regime.  In March 2015 the then Syrian information minister announced that the government was considering recognizing Kurdish autonomy "within the law and constitution." 

Later, in September 2017, Syria's then foreign minister stated that Damascus would consider granting Kurds greater autonomy once ISIS was defeated. Events overtook these aspirations, and nothing of the sort materialized.  But they might provide al-Sharaa with a template for a future accommodation with the Kurds within the constitution of a unified and restored Syrian state.

Much though Erdogan might deplore the effect on Turkey’s domestic political scene, he may yet see an autonomous Kurdish region recognized within a new Syrian constitution, and even, eventually, some form of alliance between that and the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. 

Published in the Jerusalem Post, and in the Jerusalem Post online titled: "What will Turkey do with Syria's Turkish population?", 13 January 2025:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-837218

Turkey boosted by the Syrian coup

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 6 January 2025

              After the Syrian people themselves, it is Turkey that has emerged as the biggest winner from the fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime.  As soon as Assad fled to Moscow, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan knew that fate had played into his hands.

It was as far back as March 2012 that Turkey broke off diplomatic relations with Assad, but within a few days of the regime’s overthrow it had re-established its diplomatic representation in Syria, and Turkey's foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, and the head of Turkish intelligence, Ibrahim Kalin, were in Damascus visiting Abu Mohammed al-Julani, leader of HTS (Hayat Tahrir al-Sham), the victorious rebel movement.

            Turkey was able to share the joy and elation of the Syrian people because it had long supported HTS, as well as other Syrian opposition forces that aimed to replace Assad's regime. So with the ascent of HTS and its leader Ahmed al-Sharaa (formerly known as al-Julani), Erdogan knew that he was well placed to play a pivotal role in shaping Syria's future governance and policies, and – he doubtless hoped – align them with Turkish strategic objectives.

Commercial benefits were also in Turkey’s sights.  On December 27 Reuters quoted Turkey’s energy minister, Alparslan Bayraktar, as saying that Turkey aims to provide electricity to Syria.  Bayraktar added that Turkey may also work with Syria's new leadership on oil and natural gas, developing its energy infrastructure, including potential oil pipelines connecting the two countries.

Speakers on the online media network NPR were saying on December 27 that Turkish construction companies are poised to go into Syria, and that Turkish businesses are talking about moving factories across the border.  This would certainly create much needed jobs for Syrians, but they pointed out that before initiatives like this could be put in place, an effective infrastructure would be needed, such as consistent water and electricity supplies and efficient  internet services, and that these basics are not widely available at present.

            In the new situation Turkey would appear to have the upper hand over the fraught issue of the large Kurdish occupied region known as Rojava in the north-east of Syria, adjacent to the Turkish-Syrian border.  It occupies nearly 30% of the original sovereign Syria.  Erdogan views the Kurdish occupied region as a security threat, because of its links with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), widely regarded as a terrorist organization, and believes it could inspire Kurdish separatists inside Turkey. 

Ever since 2015, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have collaborated with the US-led coalition, leading ground operations that demolished the ISIS caliphate. This military achievement boosted the Kurdish standing in the US and more widely, and revived their aspirations to achieve autonomy in the area they occupy, on the lines of the Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) that enjoys a quasi-state status in Iraq.

Where Erdogan may miscalculate the extent of his increased influence within Syria is in relation to al-Sharaa’s intentions.  Erdogan may be perceiving the HTS achievement as a traditional military coup aimed at projecting its leader to a position of autocratic power.  But ever since Assad’s fall, al-Sharaa has presented a moderate face to the world, consistently declaring that he intends to be as inclusive as possible in establishing Syria’s new governance.  He has said several times that Kurds are “part of the Syrian homeland” while assuring the nation that “there will be no injustice”. 

How will his sweet words play out against Turkey’s pivotal influence and resistance to Kurdish autonomy in Rojava?  On December 17 the Wall Street Journal reported that US officials are growing increasingly worried that Turkey might soon launch a "full-scale incursion" into territory held by Syrian Kurds. They may have been reacting to Erdogan’s wide-ranging speech that day in which he declared “As a nation we cannot limit our horizons.” 

He may be riding high at the moment, but he would do well to take note of the old saying: “Pride comes before a fall.”  For the Kurds will not forget that something akin to the semi-autonomous situation of their compatriots in Iraq was actually offered to them by the Assad regime.  In March 2015 the then Syrian information minister announced that the government was considering recognizing Kurdish autonomy "within the law and constitution."  Later, in September 2017, Syria's then foreign minister stated that Damascus would consider granting Kurds greater autonomy once ISIS was defeated. Events overtook these aspirations, and nothing of the sort materialized.  But they might provide al-Sharaa with a template for a future accommodation with the Kurds within the constitution of a unified and restored Syrian state.

The pragmatic nature of politics means that Turkey’s augmented political and diplomatic standing has been immediately recognized by world leaders.  US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban, and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, have all reached out to Erdogan since the military coup.

On December 16 the EU instructed a senior diplomat to engage directly with the provisional government set up by HTS, while von der Leyen traveled to Ankara for a meeting with Erdogan.  He came away from the discussion with €1 billion of EU cash to support the 3.5 million Syrian refugees in Turkey, and to assist in their repatriation. 

  The fall of the Syrian regime has been a major blow to Russian interests.  President Vladimir Putin​'s vital naval and air bases in Syria, assured under the Assad regime, ​have become vulnerable. 

He had big plans, both economic and political, for the Middle East, and ​the military bases in Syria were crucial to their achievement. He may need Erdogan’s support​ to retain them, but​ there is always the chance that the Kremlin can conclude a deal with Syria’s new government.​

According to Reuters, Russia has moved its naval vessels out to sea from the Tartus naval base, and drawn down equipment from its Khmeimim air base, but intends to keep both.  With no indication that Putin is using Erdogan as a go-between, he is reported to have contacted Syria’s new leader, al-Sharaa, requesting a renewal of the deals made with Assad.  An arrangement in 2015 gave Russia full control of the Khmeimim air base, while under the Tartus Naval Agreement of 2017 Russia was granted 49-year access to the Tartus naval base, with an automatic 25-year extension option.

According to an unnamed Syrian rebel official quoted by Reuters, the new Syrian government has not made a final decision on Russia’s request.  This issue, like so much else about the future of Syria and the Syrian people, has yet to be resolved.


Published in the Jerusalem Post and the Jerusalem Post online titled: "Turkey's position boosted by HTS coup in Syria", 6 January 2025:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-836207

Published in Eurasia Review, 11 January 2025:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/11012025-turkey-boosted-by-the-syrian-coup-oped/

Published in the MPC Journal, 13 January 2025:

https://mpc-journal.org/turkey-boosted-by-the-syrian-coup/