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/

Israel will gain if CANZUK succeeds

This article appears in the Jerusalem Report, dated 26 December 2022 

                                                            The CANZUK symbol

CANZUK is an acronym not yet widely recognized, although it is becoming increasingly familiar in government and diplomatic circles.  It is formed from the initial letters of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom – and it emerged following a bout of vigorous activity by a body founded in Canada in 2014 called the Commonwealth Freedom of Movement Organization (CFMO).

CFMO was formed to expand the historical connections between the citizens of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, by creating a sort of travel-free alliance between them. The big CFMO idea was to use mutual travel agreements and visa-free initiatives as a way of encouraging the British, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand governments to strengthen and expand economic, political, trade, investment, military and diplomatic relationships.

In 2015 the CFMO was transformed into CANZUK International by its founder, James Skinner, and when the UK voted in 2016 to leave the European Union, thus freeing itself to enter into new international alliances not previously possible, CANZUK began to achieve greater prominence. 

Eminent British historian Professor Andrew Roberts believes that the CANZUK countries should form "a new federation based upon free trade, free movement of peoples, mutual defense, and a limited but effective confederal political structure.” He points out that were CANZUK to become a union, “it would immediately become one of the global great powers alongside America, the EU and China. It would be easily the largest country on the planet, have a combined population of 129 million, the third biggest economy and the third biggest defence budget.”

In favour of the argument, he points out that the CANZUK countries already have a common head of state in the British monarch, a majority language, legal systems based on Magna Cara and the common law, the Westminster parliamentary tradition, and a long history of working together. What they lack is geographical proximity which, Roberts points out,  is becoming less and less important in the modern world.

In a poll commissioned by a UK think tank in February 2022, people in Britain were asked for their views on 35 countries.  The results are quoted by the CANZUK organization as proof of the sound basis and viability of their campaign.  Australia topped the poll with a 59% favorability rating.  It was closely followed by Canada and New Zealand, which came joint second at 58%.  The British people view these three countries more favorably than any others.

Suppose the third major political force as envisaged by Professor Roberts were indeed to emerge on the world stage, what might its attitude be toward Israel? Judging by Israel’s current relationship with the countries involved, the connection would certainly be considerably warmer than the wary and arms-length association between Israel and the EU, stronger though that has become in recent years.  It would be boosted by thriving Jewish communities in all four CANZUK nations.

Israel’s relationship with Canada is particularly strong. The Canadian-Jewish community, which numbers around 350,000, serves as a bridge between the two nations. Nearly 90,000 Canadians, many with family in Israel, travel to the country every year.  Former Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper often reiterated that “Israel has no greater friend than Canada.” It was during his visit to Israel in January 2014, that the Canada-Israeli Strategic Partnership was signed, reaffirming the close and special friendship that underpins Canada-Israel relations.

Israel is an important economic partner for Canada in the Middle East and North Africa. It was in 1997 that the two countries signed the Canada-Israel Free Trade Agreement (CIFTA).  Since then bilateral trade has more than tripled, totalling more than $1.6 billion in 2020.

On Israel’s Independence Day 2022, Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau said: “Our two countries have shared more than 70 years as friends, allies, and close partners… We will continue to oppose efforts to isolate Israel in international fora, and we will continue to stand against any attacks on the values we share.  On this day, we celebrate the deep people-to-people ties and shared values that unite our two countries.”

A vibrant Australian-Jewish community, which numbers about 91,000, is an important element of Australia's relationship with Israel, which has been warm and close ever since its founding.  Australia has the distinction of being the first country to vote in favor of the 1947 UN partition resolution. Remaining totally consistent with the terms of that resolution, Australia has been, and remains, a long-standing supporter of a negotiated, two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian issue, as indeed is Canada, New Zealand and the UK.

Meanwhile Australia is deepening bilateral cooperation with Israel. One notable development was when Australia chose Tel Aviv as the site of one of just five designated global Australian "Landing Pads" for innovation entrepreneurship. Two-way trade is flourishing. In 2019-20 it amounted to approximately $1.3 billion.

          The total population of New Zealand is some 5 million. In the 2018 New Zealand Census, 5,274 people identified themselves as of the Jewish religion. However in their "Jewish Lives in New Zealand", published in 2012, authors Leonard Bell and Diana Morrow claim that, including non-practicing Jews, there are more than 20,000 Jewish people in New Zealand.

          Jews played a prominent part in the founding of New Zealand, and in 1873 Julius Vogel was elected prime minister. He was knighted two years later. One hundred and thirty-five years later, in November 2008, John Key, whose mother was a Jewish immigrant from Austria, became New Zealand’s 38th prime minister.

          In between, Jews had risen to eminence in a whole variety of fields. And yet Israel’s relations with New Zealand are not as strong as with the other CANZUK countries. In December 2016 a major diplomatic spat followed New Zealand’s co-sponsorship of UN Security Council Resolution 2334 criticizing Israeli settlements. That has since been resolved, and Israel’s ambassador in Wellington, Ran Yaacoby, has been fostering economic ties between the two countries, including collaborative efforts and joint ventures in the areas of hi-tech, innovation agriculture and medical technology.

Israel’s relations with the UK were particularly close during David Cameron’s premiership, and have grown even stronger since Brexit. Despite some difficult trading conditions, UK-Israel bilateral trade has mushroomed.  In the year ending March 31, 2022 total trade in goods and services between the UK and Israel stood at £5.4 billion ($6.5 billion), an increase on 2021 of 19%.

Israel’s coalition government made special efforts to boost collaboration with the UK.  President Isaac Herzog, prime minister Naftali Bennett, and foreign minister Yair Lapid all visited Britain in 2021 and held the friendliest of exchanges with UK prime minister Boris Johnson, and his new foreign secretary Liz Truss.

"British-Israeli relations have entered a golden era” trumpeted a headline in the UK’s prestigious Jewish Chronicle a week or so after Lapid had left.  The article, by Jake Wallis Simons its editor, went on to claim that British officials and parliamentarians were “falling over each other in their love for the Jewish state.”  The exchanges have resulted in negotiations, currently in full swing, for a new “innovation focused” UK-Israel Free Trade Agreement, aimed at creating new opportunities for tech firms and professional services in both countries. 

            In September 2020, British MP Paul Bristow registered an All-Party Parliamentary Group on CANZUK.  Composed of six Conservative and two Labour MPs, its official purpose is, among other things, “to encourage interest in the political concept of CANZUK [and] promote CANZUK among UK parliamentarians.”

 Speaking on July 19, 2022 in the House of Commons debate on the Australia-UK Free Trade Agreement, Bristow declared that the deal with Australia was “just the start”.  He asked the junior trade minister whether he would commit himself to a multilateral trade agreement between all four CANZUK countries as soon as possible.  In a classic parliamentary response the minister agreed that the Australia-UK Free Trade Agreement was indeed only a start, rattled off a list of recent UK trade deals with a series of countries, and omitted to commit the government to a multilateral trade agreement with the CANZUK nations.

As Professor Roberts demonstrates, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK conjoined in a formal CANZUK union or federation would be a new, strong entity on the world scene.  It seems clear that if or when it emerges, CANZUK would be very favorably disposed toward Israel, while Israel would be in a position to benefit substantially should it come into being.  There is every reason for Israel to offer support to the individuals and organizations striving to make the CANZUK project a reality.

 

Iran in a ferment

 This article is published in the Jerusalem Post, 12 December 2022

          Iran is in a state of disruption unprecedented in the 43 years since the Islamic revolution, led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, substituted a religious oligarchy for the 2,500 year-old Persian monarchy.  The nation has erupted in anti-regime protests more than once in the past 43 years, but there is a fundamental difference between previous waves of demonstrations and what is happening today. According to the ultra-conservative Javan Daily, a paper affiliated to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), “93% of the protesters” are no older than 25 which, it observes, marks the rise of a “new generation of rioters in the country.” Another difference is that women have played a leading role this time.

On September 13, 2022 Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian woman from a Kurdish family, was with her brother in Tehran when she was arrested by Iran’s infamous morality police.  Her nominal offense was that she was wearing her hijab “improperly”.  Mahsa, who also went by the Kurdish name Jhina, was taken to the Vozara Detention Centre, where she collapsed.  Three days later she died. According to media reports, her head had been banged against a vehicle and she had been beaten on the head with a baton. The authorities stated that she died of natural causes.

Inspired by their young women, the Iranian nation erupted in protest. Thousands took to the streets in cities across the country.  Very soon the demonstrations had spread to all 31 of the country's provinces.  At first they were directed against the severe dress code imposed on women and enforced by the morality police.  But soon the protesters began targeting the regime itself and the Supreme Leader, and posters with the slogan “Death to the Dictator” began appearing. Security forces responded with pellet guns and tear gas, and finally live ammunition.

Soon it became impossible to conceal the fact that people were being shot dead on the streets.  On December 3 the state security council of the Iranian interior ministry issued a statement, giving the total number of people killed as 200.  It described those shot as members of the security forces, people involved in terrorist acts, those killed by foreign-affiliated groups but falsely described as having been killed by the state, rioters and “armed anti-revolutionary elements who were members of secessionist groups”.

Iran’s establishment, hitherto watertight on state security issues, started to fracture.  Amir Ali Hajizadeh, a top general in the IRGC, went public to say that more than 300 people had been “martyred and killed” during the unrest.  A number of foreign-based rights organizations declared that his figure was an under-estimate, and put the death toll at more than 400. On December 8 the BBC quoted a Human Rights Activists' News Agency (HRANA) assessment of those so far killed by the security forces as 475.

December 8 was also the day of Iran’s first execution of a citizen for participating in the current unrest. Mohsen Shekari was hanged, after being found guilty by a Revolutionary Court of fighting and drawing a weapon. Death sentences have been handed down to at least 10 other people, arrested during the protests.

"I'm absolutely horrified, shocked, and outraged at Mohsen Shekari's execution," said Javaid Rehman, UN Special Rapporteur in a radio broadcast, adding that there was evidence that Shekari had been tortured, and that he had been denied access to a lawyer.  “A show trial without any due process,” was how one activist put it.

The extent of the frustration experienced by huge swaths of the Iranian people has been brought home to Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in a particularly personal way.

His niece, Farideh Moradkhani, a well-known rights activist opposed to the Iranian regime, was arrested on November 23.  Two days later, in a video statement shared by her brother, she called on people around the world to urge their governments to cut ties with the Iranian regime.

 “Be with us,” she urged, “and tell your governments to stop supporting this murderous and child-killing regime…Now, in this critical moment in history, all humanity is observing that the Iranian people, with empty hands, with exemplary courage and bravery are fighting the evil forces.”

Then on December 6, Badri Hosseini Khamenei, the Supreme Leader’s sister, published an open letter castigating her brother’s actions.

“The regime of the Islamic Republic,” she wrote, “…has brought nothing but suffering and oppression to Iran and Iranians.  I hope to see the victory of the people and the overthrow of this tyranny ruling Iran soon…I oppose my brother’s actions,” she continued, “and I express my sympathy with all mothers mourning the crimes of the regime, from the time of Khomeini to the current era of the despotic caliphate of Ali Khamenei.”

Badri Khamenei included criticism of the way her daughter had been arrested.  If this was the way Khamenei’s police treated his own niece, “it is clear that they will inflict thousands of times more violence on the oppressed sons and daughters of others."

With members of his own family denouncing his leadership and his regime, Khamenei must be feeling both anger and humiliation.  There was widespread speculation last week that the regime was offering the public the considerable concession of disbanding the notorious morality police. The Iranian attorney general, Mohammad Jafar Montazeri, appeared to imply that the country's morality police might be a thing of the past.  He said enigmatically: "The morality police had nothing to do with the judiciary and have been shut down from where they were set up."  Iran watchers are still scratching their heads about his exact meaning.

Meanwhile Iran remains a seething cauldron of opposition to the regime, which is being met by increasing levels of suppression.  Will the anger and resentment eventually boil over into outright revolution?  Many believe the regime is sufficiently grounded to contain and outlive the current wave of protest.  Others hope that this is the beginning of the end for Iran’s Islamic republic. 

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 12 December 2022:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-724611

Published in Eurasia Review, 23 December 2022:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/23122022-iran-in-a-ferment-oped/

Published in the MPC Journal, 23 December 2022:

https://mpc-journal.org/iran-in-a-ferment/

Published in Jewish Business News, 23 December 2022:

https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2022/12/23/iran-is-in-uproar/

China consolidates its grip on the Middle East

This article appears in the Jerusalem Post, 7 December 2022 

China’s President Xi Jinping has flown to Saudi Arabia to host a Chinese-Arab summit there on December 9.  The visit had been on the stocks for some time.  Xi was first invited to Riyadh back in March.  The long delay – during which Xi succeeded in consolidating his long-term future as China’s president –gave the Saudis time to prepare a spectacular welcome intended to reinforce the image of China as a firm ally of Saudi Arabia, and consolidate the excellent ties that already existed between Beijing and Riyadh. 

            The extravagant welcome prepared for the Chinese leader, which included the hoisting of thousands of Chinese banners, was in stark contrast to the low key reception granted US President Joe Biden in June.  Given Biden’s often expressed refusal to exonerate Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) from responsibility for the brutal murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, relations between the two countries remained strained throughout the president’s visit.

   As for the state visit by Xi, invitations to attend the Chinese-Arab summit went out to leaders throughout the Middle East and North Africa. The Chinese delegation signed dozens of agreements and memoranda of understanding with Gulf nations and other Arab states covering a variety of areas including energy, security and investments.

The US regards China as its prime competitor for influence and profit in the Middle East.  In 2017 Saudi King Salman signed a $65 billion-worth of memoranda of understanding with China.  The two countries immediately began implementing agreements in sectors such as petrochemicals and high technology.  Today China is Saudi Arabia’s largest trading partner worldwide, while Saudi Arabia is China’s largest trading partner in the region.

The ambitious Saudi Vision 2030 development program, designed to transform the kingdom into a modern thrusting industrialized nation no longer dependent on oil revenues, has provided Chinese construction firms with the major opportunity of developing Saudi infrastructure.  During his stay XI visited the planned megacity of Neom on the western Saudi coast, a key element of MBS’s Vision 2030.

China has a thriving relationship also with the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It is the UAE’s largest trading partner, and an essential component of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). 

            Introduced in 2013, and heavily promoted subsequently by President Xi, the BRI is his blueprint for China’s eventual political and economic dominance.  The “belt” refers to reinvigorating the historic Silk Road trade route connecting East and West, while the “road” relates to constructing a 21st century Maritime Silk Road. 

Belt and Road is the centrepiece of Xi’s foreign policy. It involves China investing roughly $150 billion a year in the 68 countries across Asia, Africa and the Middle East that have signed up to the scheme.  Some describe BRI as one of the largest infrastructure and investment projects in history, covering 65 percent of the world’s population; others consider it a plan for Chinese world domination through the creation of a China-centered global trading network.

Egypt features in Chinese strategic thinking.  As China’s commercial activities in the Middle East mushroomed, it grew increasingly concerned with transit through the Suez Canal.  As a result it has invested billions of dollars in Egypt, and Chinese firms are helping construct Egypt’s new administrative capital in the desert outside Cairo. They are also developing a Red Sea port and industrial zone in Ain Sokhna.  

Then there is Israel which, of course, will not be participating in the Chinese-Arab summit, although it is a key element in China’s overall Middle East policy.  Israeli-Chinese relations have been excellent for decades – sometimes too close for US comfort.  Finally Washington put a definitive end to Israeli cooperation on military technology with US roots.  Instead, Israel developed close commercial relationships with China in areas like advanced technology and infrastructure. Today Chinese firms are deeply engaged in Israeli infrastructure, building tunnels for light rail, expanding port facilities in Ashdod and Haifa, and striking agreements to operate the ports for 25 years. There is also talk of a China-Israel Free Trade Agreement in the offing.  Over the twenty years from 2001, annual bilateral trade between Israel and China has increased from $1.07 billion to $22.8 billion in 2021. This close collaboration remains unpalatable to some in the US Senate.

The US and the UK regard China’s expanding global influence as of great concern.  In November 2020 the US Secretary of State’s office published a 72-page document called: “The Elements of the China Challenge”.  Amid seven examples of what the authors call China’s “quest for preeminence in world affairs”, they cite the Belt and Road initiative.  The idea, they believe, is to expand foreign markets for Chinese companies, thus drawing nations, and particularly their political and economic elites, into Beijing’s geopolitical orbit. Sometimes BRI projects involve 50- to 100-year relationships that confer power long-term to China over key parts of the host country’s infrastructure.

On December 1, 2020, in his first public address since becoming chief of MI6, Britain’s secret intelligence service made famous in the James Bond films, Richard Moore declared that China was the agency’s “single greatest priority”. 

He cited Beijing’s large-scale espionage activities in the UK, but also China’s carefully coordinated plan to lure poor countries into what Moore termed “debt and data traps”, a policy designed to consolidate Chinese influence across the globe. Causing even greater concern is the threat from China’s cyber warfare. Addressing the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado on July 21, 2022, Moore declared that China was now MI6’s top intelligence priority, surpassing counter-terrorism.

 With his leadership role now firmly secured, Xi clearly feels empowered to continue developing his long-term strategy aimed at ensuring eventual Chinese political and economic dominance on the world stage.  He doubtless regarded the Chinese-Arab summit as a key building block in that enterprise. 

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 7 December 2022:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-724212

Published in Eurasia Review, 16 December 2022:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/16122022-china-consolidates-its-grip-on-the-middle-east-oped/

Published in the MPC Journal, 20 December 2022:

https://mpc-journal.org/china-consolidates-its-grip-on-the-middle-east/

Published in Jewish Business News, 16 December 2022:

https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2022/12/16/china-consolidates-its-grip-on-the-middle-east/

Erdogan prepares for a new land grab

            On 19 November Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan began launching air, drone and artillery strikes on north-eastern Syrian towns and cities.  Over four days at least 100 strikes were recorded, and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the US-backed force in the area, began reporting military and civilian deaths.  Erdogan has now announced that the air strikes were only the beginning, and that he is preparing to launch a land operation when the time is right. 

“We are continuing the air operation,” he said in a speech to his AK party members in parliament, “and will come down hard on the terrorists from land, at the most convenient time for us,”

He asserts that Turkey is more determined than ever to secure its southern border by seizing a “security corridor” running along it west to east –f territory that is nominally part of sovereign Syria.  “We have formed part of this corridor,” he announced, and “will take care of it starting with places such as Tal Rifaat, Manbij and Ayn al-Arab (Kobane), which are the sources of trouble.”

The SDF, which incorporates a large force of Kurdish fighters known as the YPG, is viewed by Erdogan as an arm of his domestic Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK. The PKK, a militant political group seeking Kurdish independence, or at least autonomy, has not been averse to pursuing its political ends by way of armed attacks within Turkey.  Erdogan has been fighting it at home for decades, and has proscribed it as a terrorist organization.  For some years he has also been combatting Kurdish militias in northern Syria and Iraq, drawing no distinction between them and the PKK.  What puts Turkey at odds with much world opinion is that the US, the EU and many other Western countries back the Kurd-dominated SDF in the common fight against Islamic State (ISIS).

            Although Erdogan’s air offensive has clearly been planned for a long time as a preliminary to a full-scale ground offensive, the trigger was a bomb attack in the afternoon of November 13 in the center of Istanbul.  Six people lost their lives.  Official Turkish statements laid the blame firmly at the door of the PKK and YPG, although both organizations have denied any involvement in the incident.  No group has claimed responsibility. Meanwhile Istanbul's Chief Public Prosecutors' Office has opened an investigation.

Erdogan’s first military incursion beyond Turkey’s borders was in 2016, when his troops invaded Syria’s quasi-autonomous Kurdistan region – the area known as Rojava.  It resulted in Turkish forces seizing and occupying Kurdish-inhabited territory which, he announced, was to be a sort of buffer or “safe zone” protecting Turkey’s southern border.

That operation, and two subsequent efforts, obviously did not satisfy Erdogan. On April 18, 2022 Turkey launched a new ground and air offensive, named Operation Claw Lock, this time against Kurdish militants in northern Iraq.  Supported by helicopters and drones, Turkish jets and artillery struck suspected targets of the PKK, and then commando troops crossed into Kurdish-occupied Iraq by land or were airlifted by helicopters.

It was in August that Erdogan announced that he was planning a new military offensive in northern Syria.  He has lived up to his word.

Meanwhile the US-supported SDF is braced for an assault by Turkish forces that Washington has said not only risks a breach with its NATO ally Turkey, but a resurgence of ISIS in Syria. According to the Pentagon’s press secretary: “Recent airstrikes in Syria directly threatened the safety of US personnel who are working in Syria with local partners to defeat ISIS and maintain custody of more than ten thousand ISIS detainees. … Immediate de-escalation is necessary in order to…ensure the safety and security of personnel on the ground committed to the defeat-ISIS mission.”

In an interview with the Washington Post on November 23, General Mazloum Kobane Abdi, the SDF’s top commander, arguing that Western pressure could avert a ground operation, urged Western allies to oppose further Turkish attacks,

“It’s not news to anyone that Erdogan has been threatening the ground operation for months,” said Abdi, “but he could launch this operation now. This war, if it happens, won’t benefit anybody. It will affect many lives. There will be massive waves of displacement, and a humanitarian crisis.”

Russia has added its voice to the plea to Erdogan to cancel his planned invasion.  Talks about the Syrian civil war and Syria’s future are on-going between Iran, Turkey and Russia in the Kazakh capital, Astana.  On November 23 the senior Russian negotiator, Alexander Lavrentyev, said that Moscow had asked Ankara to refrain from a full-scale ground offensive in Syria. “We hope our arguments will be heard in Ankara,” said Lavrentyev, “and other ways of resolving the problem will be found.”  Sound advice, equally applicable nearer home.

There has always been an ulterior motive for Erdogan’s land grabs along his southern border.  In addition to weakening his Kurdish opponents, he is seeking a way to rid Turkey of the millions of Syrian refugees who fled their country during its eleven years of civil strife.  His idea has been to resettle them below the Turkish border in the so-called “safe zone”. The refugees, however, are far from keen to move to what is a heavily militarized and highly populated war zone, even if it is a return to their native land, Syria. 

If he does carry out his plan, Erdogan will undoubtedly enhance his political standing at home, ahead of the presidential and parliamentary elections scheduled for June 2023.  So it is more likely than not that Erdogan’s new ground offensive will take place and that, in addition to widespread disruption and loss of life in northern Syria, vast numbers of reluctant Syrian refugees will be relocated to his “safe zone”.

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 29 November 2022:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-723590

Published in MPC Journal, 11 December 2022:
https://mpc-journal.org/erdogan-prepares-for-a-new-land-grab/

Published in Eurasia Review, 10 December 2022:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/10122022-erdogan-prepares-for-a-new-land-grab-oped/

Published in Jewish Business News, 9 December 2022: 2022:https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2022/12/09/erdogan-prepares-for-a-new-land-grab/

Where’s the justice in an ICJ opinion?

This article appears in the Jerusalem Post, 23 November 2022 

On November 11 a UN Special Committee voted in favour of requesting the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to provide an advisory opinion about whether Israel’s 55-year occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem constitutes de facto annexation. 

The motion was supported by 98 countries and opposed by 17, while 52 abstained. The Palestinian foreign minister Riyad al-Malki, jumping the gun, declared: “This decision opens a new era in which Israel will be called to account.”  In fact, the next step is for the committee’s resolution to be debated by the UN General Assembly, and only if the voting figures remain similar and the motion is passed will it move to the ICJ in The Hague. The court could then take months – possibly years – to draft an advisory opinion.

It is pertinent to question the value, and indeed the objectivity, of opinions provided by the ICJ.  Israel has historically faced an in-built majority against it within the organs of the UN.  Critics of the ICJ have always maintained that its jurists favor the interests of the states that nominate them.  The current membership includes jurists from Lebanon, Somalia, Uganda, Brazil and Russia.

In March 2020 the ICJ submitted observations in support of the International Criminal Court’s jurisdiction over Palestine which, the ICJ determined, comprises the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza.  It further opined that “Palestine is a State under international law…The decades-long belligerent occupation of Palestine…has no decisive legal effect on the validity of its claim to sovereignty and statehood.”  However Drake University, in its paper “The Legal Status of Palestine” concludes:  “Palestine is an autonomous entity, not a state… Palestine cannot legally be considered a state under international law.”

In 2004 the UN General Assembly requested an opinion from the court about Israel’s security barrier in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.  The ICJ determined that the barrier was illegal.  One international law journal declared: “the context overtook the law in the production of the opinion, and has thereby distorted the result. As a consequence, the ICJ has done significant damage to its credibility and to the aspects of international law traversed in the opinion.”

There is, in short, a certain lack of confidence in the impartiality of determinations by the ICJ.   If the ICJ is indeed going to be asked to give a judicial opinion on a matter as fundamental as the legal status of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, it would not be unreasonable for Israel to request the right to argue its case before the court, and for its arguments be given full weight in any advisory opinion.  It is not satisfactory for Israel’s case to be determined behind closed doors by jurists some of whom do not enjoy the confidence of those being adjudged.  The issues the ICJ may soon be considering are too important to be determined by a mechanism that does not command universal confidence as to its objectivity. 

The historical, political and legal issues are extremely complex.  An Israeli take on them was set out in convincing detail in a recent study by Professor Abraham Sion which he called: “To whom was the promised land promised?” 

          Sion is a former deputy state attorney of Israel, and is a professor emeritus of law at Ariel University.  If the world were governed by reason, logic and conscientious adherence to the rule of law, Sion’s book would be a game changer. 

He submitted the entire legal process leading to the establishment of the State of Israel to meticulous forensic examination, and he demonstrates beyond any doubt that judicial rulings from the UN, the EU, the ICJ and elsewhere have often been at odds with a scrupulous interpretation of their legal basis.  Over the past few decades international bodies have reached a consensus that the West Bank and East Jerusalem are Palestinian territory, and that Israeli towns and cities in Judea and Samaria are illegal.  Sion uncovers the solid legal building blocks that have been ignored or overlooked and that prove different. 

In short, he demonstrates with chapter and verse that the almost universally accepted consensus on Israel’s legal position regarding the West Bank, settlements and Jerusalem is legally flawed. 

In undertaking his scrupulous legal analysis, Sion’s original purpose was to ascertain who owned the legal right to the territory of Mandatory Palestine under international law.  He identified the two competitors as the Arab nation on the one hand and the Jewish people on the other.  Concerned solely with the legal position, and not with political or related issues, he set out to establish the legal rights under international law of both parties. Sion demonstrates that in concluding that Israel is illegally occupying territory, international bodies never refer to the treaties that shaped the legal structure of the Middle East.  He shows that the rights derived from those binding international commitments were still valid when Israel occupied the West Bank.

Sion is not alone in reaching conclusions like these, but of course they have never been tested openly in any international judicial forum.  If in due course the UN General Assembly asks the ICJ for an opinion, how could the court possibly render a valid legal determination without having the issues raised by Sion and many others argued before it?  

On the very day that the UN committee voted to appeal to the ICJ for an opinion –Thursday, November 11 – the ICJ began public hearings in The Hague in a long-running dispute between Venezuela and the former British colony of Guyana on the issue of the border between them.  Each party is presenting its case to the court in preliminary hearings scheduled to last until November 22.  The proceedings are not only open to the public, but they are being videoed and publicized widely on social media.

The precedent has been set.  Any judicial consideration by the ICJ of the Israel-Palestinian boundary dispute requires no less.  It is unacceptable for the ICJ to deliver an opinion on this seminal issue reached in private and without the benefit of representations.  If the ICJ agrees to proceed, the parties must be permitted to present their case to the court in sessions open to the public. Moreover, in the interests of fairness, the members of the court selected to consider the issue must be acceptable by all the parties concerned as truly objective and unbiased. 

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 23 November 2022:

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-723103

Published in Eurasia Review, 2 December 2022:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/02122022-wheres-the-justice-in-an-icj-opinion-oped/

Published in the MPC Journal, 4 December 2022:

https://mpc-journal.org/wheres-the-justice-in-an-icj-opinion/

Published in Jewish Business News, 2 December 2022:

https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2022/12/02/wheres-the-justice-in-the-international-court-of-justice-icj-opinion/

The Arab League walks a tightrope

 
          The first meeting of the Arab League in three years took place on November 1 and 2.  The venue was Algeria, chosen to commemorate its War of Independence against France, which began on November 1, 1954.

   On this occasion, although all 22 member nations with the exception of Syria were represented, the usual turnout of kings, sheiks, emirs and presidents was far from complete.  One long-time absentee was Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad.  Syria’s suspension from the League, imposed in 2011 for the regime’s brutality against Arab Spring activists, was not lifted despite the best efforts of Algeria’s President Abdelmadjid Tebboune.  He had attempted earlier in the year to persuade other Arab states to readmit Syria, but major Arab states, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, support Sunni Muslim rebels fighting al-Assad.

Morocco’s King Mohammed VI was not present. Algeria and Morocco are currently at daggers drawn over a variety of issues, not least Morocco’s claims on Western Sahara. 

          Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) leader, Mohammed bin Zayed, both decided not to attend.  Their absence, and indeed that of the King of Morocco, forced the attention of members and observers to the great elephant squatting in the room throughout the conference - the Abraham Accords, a phenomenon beyond the bounds of belief at the last Arab League summit in 2019.

            It was on September 15, 2020 that the Abraham Accords were signed in a ceremony hosted by the US in the White House. As part of the agreements, both the UAE and Bahrain recognized Israel's sovereignty, opening the way for establishing full diplomatic relations followed by highly lucrative trade, economic and hi-tech deals.  Since then, Morocco and Sudan have signed up to the Accords, while other Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, Oman and Qatar have gone a long way toward normalizing business and security relations with Israel.

In signing the Accords, none of the four Arab states renounced their support for Palestinian aspirations.  All, though, had determined that a settlement of the Israel-Palestinian issue was not an essential precursor to adopting a pragmatic view of the benefits to be derived from cooperating with Israel across a whole variety of fields – not least in opposing the ambitions of Iran to dominate the region.

This was not the opinion of much of the membership of the Arab League, and certainly not that of its host, Algeria’s President Tebboune.  In his opening remarks Tebboune asserted: “Our main and first cause, the mother of all causes, the Palestinian issue, will be at the heart of our concerns and our main priority”.  In the event, though, ways of advancing the Palestinian cause were not discussed, nor did members address the chasm separating Arab states over normalization with Israel.  The conference maintained a precarious balance by simply ignoring the difficult issues, and issued a final declaration that confined itself to reiterating the League’s full support for the establishment of an independent state of Palestine within what it termed “the 1967 borders” (although borders they never were, as the 1949 Israel-Jordan Armistice Agreement made very clear).

In accordance with its long-established practice, the League sidestepped the glaring anomaly between supporting a two-state solution and supporting the “Palestinian cause”.  The “cause” is to establish a sovereign Palestine “from the river to the sea”; the two-state solution requires the recognition of a sovereign Israel on land which the cause regards as Palestinian.  Any Palestinian leader who signed up to a two-state solution would be regarded as a traitor to the Palestinian cause. 

Palestinian aspirations and the Abraham Accords were not the only delicate issues that the League failed to confront head-on.  Another was the relationship between the Arab world and Russia in view of the invasion of Ukraine.  The League meeting took place against the backdrop of rising inflation, food and energy shortages, drought and the soaring cost of living across the Middle East and Africa.  Comment during the conference did not move far beyond Tunisian President Kais Saied’s remarks in his opening address.  The war in Ukraine, he said, "has exacerbated the food and energy security crisis."  Several Arab countries are heavily dependent on Ukrainian and Russian wheat exports, and members concentrated on how to relieve the shortages.

As for supporting the Ukrainians, the Arab world has been notably deficient. The West quickly united against Russia after it invaded Ukraine, but many in the Arab world hesitated. The first Security Council resolution against the invasion of Ukraine was proposed on February 25, and the UAE, a key US ally, abstained.  On February 28, Egypt called for a meeting of the Arab League to discuss the situation in Ukraine. A statement issued after the meeting failed to condemn Russia’s invasion, and offered little support to the Ukrainians.

Arab states clearly wanted to keep their options open and avoid alienating Moscow if at all possible. That soon changed. It was made clear to the Arab states that if they wanted to maintain their close ties with the West, neutrality was not acceptable where Russia’s invasion is concerned.  So when the UN General Assembly resolution condemning Russia passed overwhelmingly on March 2, its backers included the UAE, as well as Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Clearly, Western – particularly American – pressure had succeeded. 

Even so, during the conference Arab leaders simply ignored the rights and wrongs of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. They chose not to discuss, let alone support, Ukraine in its fight against its Russian invaders. The final declaration made no mention of the war, nor has any Arab country up to now offered military aid to the Ukrainians. 

The Arab League has elevated equivocation to a fine art.

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 7 November 2022:

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-721627

Published in MPC Journal, 19 November 2022:

https://mpc-journal.org/the-arab-league-walks-a-tightrope/

Published in Jewish Business News, 18 November 2022:

https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2022/11/18/the-arab-league-walks-a-tightrope/